1. Biggles - Biggles/EvS flirting/pre-ship + a long-suffering Algy

Prompt: EvS flirts with a mark to distract him, and Biggles has Feelings about it?

Originally posted here


"Stop staring," Algy muttered, nudging Biggles. "Not that I blame you, it's like having a hornet in the room, you want to know where it is at all times ..." He paused, taking in the frown on the face of his cousin, the fair brows drawn together until they almost formed a single line. "At least you're finally as concerned about him as the rest of us. I suppose that's progress of a sort --"

"What do you think he means by making such a spectacle of himself?" Biggles asked, his voice low and hard.

Algy's own eyebrows went up and he looked across the room, where von Stalhein was not only failing to make a spectacle of himself, he was behaving with unusual decorum (or at the very least, doing nothing that could get him thrown out of the hotel ballroom, more's the pity) -- standing by a potted palm, having a friendly chat with a middle-aged gentleman who as far as Algy had been able to infer was some sort of minor deposed nobility, Czech or something, rumored to be involved in the diamond trade.

Hmm. A very friendly chat. One of von Stalhein's gloved hands was resting lightly on the gentleman's arm. But those continental types could be expansive with physical gestures.

Algy looked back at Biggles, whose attention was fixed with laser focus on von Stalhein and the foreign gentleman, and growing more dangerously intense by the moment. Algy sighed.

"Let's go get a drink," he said, taking Biggles by the arm.

"What -- no -- we have a duty to -- Algy, let go of me." Biggles pulled his arm free. "I think we should find out what they are talking about."

"I really think we're better off not knowing," Algy said between his teeth. Von Stalhein was now leaning close to speak into the foreign gentleman's ear -- which, to be fair, Algy was currently doing with Biggles, but there was a very different quality to the supple bend of von Stalhein's lithe frame.

"Don't be absurd, we must perform due diligence." Biggles swiped a flute of champagne off a passing waiter's tray. "Let us make our approach -- Algy!"

His murmur turned into a squawk when Algy shamelessly upended the champagne flute on his arm. Biggles caught it deftly before it fell, but the interplay had drawn the attention of the two men by the potted palm. Von Stalhein looked amused, the foreign gentleman embarrassed. The two withdrew swiftly from each other, and von Stalhein strolled off, very nearly slinking, like a satisfied cat.

"I quite feel ... they've made some kind of handoff ... Algy, really." Biggles brushed champagne off himself and shoved the flute into Algy's hand. "How careless. We must follow them. You take the other fellow, I'll tail von Stalhein."

"What if I take von Stalhein and you the other fellow?"

"Don't be absurd. Quickly, Algy, he's getting away!"

With that, Biggles was off, weaving deftly between waiters and couples and potted plants, angling towards his quarry. Algy muttered under his breath, but he couldn't follow two of them, so he took the other and hoped he wasn't making a mistake.




2. Biggles - Erich + Biggles enemy-era h/c

Prompt: Biggles is giving his standard "You're too good for this, reconsider your nefarious ways" speech to EvS but wholly unexpectedly/uncharacteristically EvS just starts crying in response (feverish delirium? drugged? exhausted? drunk?) and now a flummoxed Biggles has to contend with a sobbing nemesis and (horror) Emotions

Originally posted here


The sound of footsteps, one dragging slightly, heralded an arrival at the cell, so Biggles hastily stopped trying to pry loose the slightly rusty lock. It was very dim, the only light coming from a dingy bulb in the hallway, but the lithe figure that appeared as a vague shadow in the lamplight was one he would have known anywhere.

"My men told me they had caught you." Von Stalhein sounded exhausted, and Biggles, having quietly dropped the pry-bar onto the heap of dirty sacking that was the cell's only furnishing, leaned against the bars to see him better. "And only you, which I suppose means your associates are still running around free. I expect they shall be down the chimney shortly."

"I can't say where they are or what they're doing," Biggles said mildly. There was a raspy undertone to von Stalhein's voice, and when his enemy moved a little, so that some of the lamplight fell across his face, Biggles was so startled at how bad he looked that an exclamation was surprised out of him. "Good God, man, are you taking proper care of yourself?"

Von Stalhein let out a sharp sound, more an exhalation than a laugh. He move into shadow again, but not before Biggles saw him all too clearly.

His face looked cadaverous, as if he'd lost weight he couldn't afford to lose, and he was shivering a little, though he struggled to keep it under control. Damp patches of sweat soaked through the crisp creases of the uniform he wore. All in all, it presented an appearance very different from his usual precision.

Biggles had experienced something similar too many times not to know exactly what he was looking at.

"It's a tropical fever, isn't it? Those are nothing to trifle with. You should be in bed."

"I do not need advice from you," von Stalhein said sharply. "Anyway, I'm sure you'd like that, wouldn't you? I take to my bed, and let you and your associates have the free run of the place."

"Well, that wouldn't be a problem if you had surrounded yourself with men worthy of your leadership," Biggles retorted. "I can trust my associates to attend to my affairs when I am not with them."

"As I know all too well," von Stalhein shot back, his hoarse voice snappish. "Anyway, it's not a matter of mere competence. A leader cannot collapse like a wilting petunia. What on earth would your men say if you retired to your sickbed in the middle of a mission?"

"I do not have to wonder, because it has happened. As for what they would say, they would say I had need of it, and take up the slack without complaint until I am back on my feet. I would consider myself a poor commander indeed if I forced one of my men to continue working when it was clear that he needed his bed as badly as you do."

At first, Biggles thought von Stalhein had reacted with a laugh. One hand covered his face; his shoulders shook. He leaned back against the wall, still covering his face with his hand, as if overcome with mirth. And then he slowly slid down the wall to sit on the floor, still with his face hidden, head bowed, and it gradually dawned on Biggles with a slowly growing horror that this was not laughter, it was the furthest thing from it.

It appeared that von Stalhein was trying to stop and could not. His shoulders hitched, and he shuddered in brief, violent paroxysms. Biggles did not feel at all comfortable standing over him, it felt somehow -- cruel, so he sat down on the filthy floor of the cell to bring himself closer, but this did not help either. If it had been Algy, or Ginger, or Bertie he would have known what to do. (Well, more or less. The last time he had had to deal with a weeping Algy was a number of years ago, and he recalled that he had patted Algy's shoulder with an awkward "there, there" and Algy threw a teapot at him.)

It seemed not only highly inappropriate to say "there, there" to a weeping von Stalhein, but it was likely to result in a much more violent reaction than a smashed teapot that no one had liked very much anyway. But he couldn't do nothing.

"Are you ... all right?" Biggles offered hesitantly.

This resulted in another choking paroxysm, although this one seemed to have hysterical laughter mixed in. It was not an improvement.

Possibly Biggles had learned nothing from the teapot incident, because his hand moved almost without his conscious volition, reached through the bars and placed itself on von Stalhein's trembling shoulder.

Biggles could feel the heat radiating through his uniform, and the bones beneath. How long had von Stalhein been ill, how hard had he pushed himself to keep moving, keep working, in a state Biggles himself had experienced often enough to know how it felt: the grinding exhaustion, the splitting headache? Even so, he expected von Stalhein to shrug him angrily away.

He was unprepared for the way von Stalhein leaned into the touch, sagging as if the last strings holding him up had been cut. Biggles tightened his grip, with his hand still working almost without his conscious control, as if it was indeed Algy he was comforting, or someone else dear to him.

They sat like that, Biggles with his arm stretched through the bars, von Stalhein leaning into the strength of Biggles's grip, until the sobs died and von Stalhein turned his face away and wiped his sleeve across his eyes.

"Well," he said, staring at the wall rather than looking at Biggles.

"Well, then," Biggles echoed, and von Stalhein gave a sudden quick laugh -- really a laugh this time, small and weak as it was, and glanced at Biggles quickly before looking away again. His eyes were reddened, his face wet in the lamplight, but there was a slight smile on the thin lips, visible only briefly. And Biggles still had his hand on von Stalhein's shoulder.




3. Babylon 5 - Susan & Delenn post-series

Prompt: Susan / Delenn after the show ends. You might have to wait to finish the whole thing for full context. Anything. They just deserve to be happy.

(The resulting fic is basically gen, but could be pre-ship.)

Originally posted here


It was strange seeing Susan in the long, swirling brown robes of the Anla'Shok Na. Somehow there was a part of Delenn that seemed to respond to her, out of the corner of her eye, as if Susan was ... someone else, someone who should not be here. And then she would check herself, see Susan as she really was.

But then, Tuzanor was, these days, a city of ghosts. David had left, and Delenn wondered if he might not have the right of it. Memories clouded close and thick for her here. Perhaps she would be happier out in space somewhere, seeking something new and different, not here where the sweet-sad echoes of the beloved dead --all of them, not just John -- nearly smothered her.

She wondered if it might be the opposite for Susan, who had stayed, for now, on Minbar, leaving behind the ships and Earthforce offices of her past life. In the Anla'Shok training halls and the corridors of the city complex, Susan moved like both a ghost and a force of nature, silent and contained, wearing an invisible cloak made up of the power and authority that she had, over the years, learned to wield quietly. She was greatly changed from the forceful young woman who Delenn remembered so well from those early years when they were both young.

The years had honed them all. Honed them into what, she was still deciding.

Still, she would not even say that she and Susan were ... friends, exactly. So she was surprised when Susan appeared like a quiet brown ghost in her Anla'Shok robes on one morning when Delenn was, as always, watching the sun rise alone. The bench lay empty beside her, holding a place for a partner who was not there.

Everyone who knew Delenn, by now, knew this habit of hers. But no one ever came to see her then. She had not expected it.

Susan did not speak. She came over quietly, and rather than attempt to take the side of the bench that Delenn always left empty, she sat down quietly on the floor beside Delenn's side of the bench.

Susan understood -- better than anyone else, Delenn suspected. Those others who had been close to John (Michael and Stephen, and others, through the years) had gone off to live their own lives, with their own families, elsewhere. It was Susan who was still here, having nowhere else to go. Susan had always been as wedded to duty as John was, in his way, or perhaps even more so.

Before Susan had appeared, and settled in her quiet way at Delenn's left side, Delenn would have said she would rather be alone here, sitting with the ghosts of the past. Now she found that was not true. And so she put a hand on Susan's shoulder, and she felt Susan cover her own hand with a palm that was ridged with the calluses of Anla'Shok battle training.

Together, they watched the sun rise.