fic • I

[outblazing]

I.




They always meet in the same shabby bar across town. Every month, the same table, the same run-down chairs, same grimy jugs of beer served to them by the same fat bartender who doesn't look at them twice. Around these parts, if you've got coin, you've got confidentiality, labourers have to ration their breaths too much to afford questions, really. They know they're going to need that air down at the factory again in the morning, after all. Fox remembers what the factories smell like, what they feel like underneath your fingernails. He sympathises, he does. Not everyone gets to meet a benevolent Mr Lewis who'll buy your freedom, if you'll just let him bugger you.

"Been kissing any Germans lately," Adam asks, his words carrying an unmistakable American accent and a great deal of admonishment, but it's still safer for them to speak in German and risk overhearing than it would be to do it in English, which would surely make them too distinctive. The fat bartender might pause at an accent, sure, but a whole conversation in English? He'll remember.

Fox huffs out a breath, comes out as a small smoke ring, and stubs out his cigarette in the crystal ashtray on his left. Catching his handler's eyes, he raises an eyebrow and folds his now freed-up hands behind his head. "Would it be a problem if I had," he replies, "kissed any lovely Fräuleins, that is?"

Adam holds his gaze for a long second, then raises his jug to his mouth and drinks, grimacing at the bitterness of the pale yellow alcohol. The local beer both looks and tastes like piss, all right, smells even worse. "Wouldn't be a problem if you kissed some lovely Fräuleins, no."

As it is, they both know German women couldn't dream to hold Fox's attention long enough for him to give them even a peck on the cheek.

"Höfer's not home a lot these days," Fox tells him, thinking about Otto whom he's caught sneaking out in the middle of the night, no lights on and footfalls muted, disappearing down the street in the direction of the barracks. "Not even his wife has any idea what's going on. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was having an affair."

"Hmm," Adam says, studying his own hands. "Isn't he?"

Another huff of a laugh, and Fox takes a long drink of his piss-beer. "I don't count. I'm just a temptation, Höfer's own words."

"Something's brewing, Patrick," Adam says, then. He's the only one who ever calls Fox Patrick anymore. Every time, it feels like something dead being brought alive again inside him, something stirring and making itself known. He ignores it, habitually. Dead things don't return to life, as it is, he's tried hoping for that, for years, in vain. If wanting it was enough, willing it, everything would've been very different indeed. He certainly wouldn't be sitting here, drinking disgusting German beer in a terribly beautiful Berlin, more untouched by bombs than London has been for a century. Really, people say the Great War will be the war to end all wars, but Fox thinks to himself, as Adam calls him Patrick and reminds him of another life, it has to be over first, doesn't it? "You need to be careful," Adam continues, leaning in over the table, lowering his voice into discretion. "Don't go kissing the wrong people this time."

Oh, do they have to get into that again? The Austrian Affair. Come on. Fox frowns and puts his jug down with a clink, gesturing broadly with one hand, a sweeping motion, dismissive. "Well, Judas changed the course of history with a kiss, so why can't I?"

"Judas got himself killed in the end, as history will have it." Adam shakes his head, leans back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest. So manly and tough he looks like that, a right American agent, will you look at that. Fox gets to his feet, both palms splayed out on the table as he bends in over it enough to slip the other man a folded piece of paper with notes of every guest who's been to the house the last month, every name that's come over Höfer's lips, minus his own. He doesn't know which ones of them are important, he leaves those conclusions to Adam's team, Fox is just here to observe. Be their eyes and ears.

"And most likely, I'll do the same," he tells him with a wink and straightens up, fixes his collar, his jacket, before nodding at his handler once and striding towards the door. Much as predicted, the fat bartender is too preoccupied with a drunkard who won't pay up to follow him with his gaze, and as such, the two of them stay seemingly unimportant and unnoticed in the heart of the German empire. Like a revelation waiting to be made.

Idly, Fox wonders whether Otto will be home when he returns to the house. Whether he's done asking God's forgiveness, so they can get to the shagging again, to the pillow talking. To the damning kiss, must you betray me -

Yes, he really, really must. Thank you for asking.