Fic: covert operation

[rosanicus]

Unbelievably it turns out that finally clawing one's way to the summer holidays means that it is way easier to finish WIPs. Who would've thought!

Last night's offering is covert operation, a fic which is very close to my heart and as a result has taken over a month to write. I think most of the list here have already read it for which I am extremely grateful but I thought I'd include an excerpt here of both this fic and also the fic I started writing first and which promises to spiral rapidly out of control.

There was a short period of silence. Biggles had the impression that Algy was working himself up to saying something; several times he seemed on the edge of speaking before crawling back from the conversational precipice. An air of anxiety surrounded him.

“Spit it out, why don’t you?” exclaimed Biggles, feeling more than a little put out.

Algy blushed. His slim face went bright scarlet, another sign of his youth. Biggles knew the kid was only a year his junior, and yet he still felt the gap in their experience keenly at every sign of his inexperience. He felt as if he himself had aged a decade since he first went up all those months ago.

They had first met on one of Biggles’ rare trips to England as a child. He remembered being very put out about going such a long way to end up in a place as boring as the Lacey family estate. It had been cold and wet and the young Algernon had spent most of the week they were visiting toddling along at Biggles’ heel and tugging on his hair. They had both been agonisingly young, now he looked back on it.

“I was thinking about the last time we saw each other,” began Algy, after another long moment. “I don’t remember it very well, I’m afraid. I do wonder quite what I did to leave such a dreadful impression on you.”

“It was a long time ago,” said Biggles. “I’m not surprised you’d forget.” And he had rather hoped Algy would have forgotten it entirely.

“The thing that sticks out most to me now,” Algy continued. “Is that I’m damn sure I only had one boy cousin visiting, and he was at least three years older than you would have been.”

The other fic which will be finished in (at the rate this one took) about two years is a casefic in which Biggles is asked for help by an old friend from the RFC. It's shaping up to need a significant amount of research which I am looking forward to but is also going to involve a lot more time.

His voice shook. He took a hasty gulp and set his glass down with enough force to send some of it sloshing over the rim. “I need help, Biggles. And I know I can trust you to be good about it; you were always the most decent of the other officers.”

Biggles squared his shoulders. Thomas was looking him square in the eye; his entire air was of a deer before the huntsman and his hound.

“Tell me what’s happened,” he said calmly.

Thomas took another long gulp of his drink. Then he began, voice shaking, to describe his problem. It was a long and involved tale, one which involved a good deal of digressions into side characters and stories that, while interesting, would not serve the narrative to reproduce here. The gist of the matter was that Thomas had indulged in a few private meetings with a man who, at first impression, had seemed trustworthy enough. Biggles did not allow himself to react to the news of Thomas’ inclinations. It was hardly as if he had grounds to object, and it was his opinion that what people did in their own time was their own affair, so long as they were harming nobody.

As it happened, the man had not ended up trustworthy at all. He had taken photographs of the event, and informed Thomas of their existence at their next meeting – a tryst which Thomas had expected to be much more mutually satisfying.

“And now he’s threatening you?” Biggles asked. His voice was hot; he hated blackmail more than most crimes. And this – to entrap another man when he was most vulnerable – was truly beyond the pale.

Thomas nodded. “I don’t know what to do about it.” His voice wavered once more.

“Surely the police –”

“The police would as soon arrest me as the bastard doing it,” said Thomas, with a sudden and vicious certainty. “I’ve spent the past decade avoiding them like a bad smell. Living like a damn saint, it sometimes feels like. And after one mistake–”

Comments

[philomytha]

Oh, Thomas! That last paragraph of his hits so hard, I love him already and I am looking forward to seeing how Biggles takes on his problem...

[black_bentley]

I really enjoyed covert operation, and that's a lovely snippet of the other fic. I can see some typically Biggles outside-the-box thinking being applied here...