Chapter 15 - Oh Where Can You Be?

Justin was late getting back to London proper that Friday morning. He’d finished his mission and landed his plane well before dawn, getting debriefed and then cleared to finally leave the base not long after that. But, because the raid had taken out large sections of the rail lines from Croydon into the city, he was forced to hitch a ride with a delivery van as far as Earls Court and then take the Tube the rest of the way. So he didn’t actually arrive in Covent Garden until after 0900.

As soon as he’d climbed the stairs and reached street level, though, he was stunned. There was destruction everywhere Justin looked. The streets looked chewed up, with cobbles thrown every-which-way. Several nearby buildings were badly damaged and a few were even still smoldering from fires that hadn’t yet been completely contained. NFS crews were diligently working the pumps, their hoses trained on the ruins. As he crossed the street, he was almost run over by two Auxiliary Ambulance Service volunteers trotting past carrying stretchers piled high with blankets and other emergency supplies.

Even though Justin had been warned by Brian in advance that this raid was going to be a bad one, and he’d seen the huge numbers of German bombers with his own eyes as he flew intercept runs all through the night, he was still overwhelmed by the evidence here on the ground. Justin immediately picked up his pace, headed towards the White Lion. He was even more worried about his friends than he’d been before the raid, which was saying a lot.

His nerves weren’t at all calmed when he got to the lane in front of the pub. Even though there wasn’t as much evidence of HE bomb damage here, at least two of the buildings on this block showed some recent fire damage. One wall of the corner building had toppled over, strewing bricks and pieces of charred wood onto the sidewalk. There was a crowd of people milling around in the street, all discussing the wreckage as if this was just another day. As he ran on past them, he noticed a sad little girl sitting on a beam amid the rubble, chatting with her dolly, telling the toy not to be afraid and that Daddy would take care of it all when he came home from the war. It almost broke Justin’s heart.

Justin’s mounting sense of dread wasn’t eased when he finally made it to the familiar front entrance of his Local and found the door locked. In all the months since he’d first arrived in London, Justin had never once found the doors to the White Lion locked. Not once. He found that one little fact more ominous than anything else he’d seen so far that morning. So, even though the pub itself didn’t seem to have sustained any damage, he was still alarmed.

The panicky pilot turned on his heel and sprinted off towards the closest public shelter. That was the only place he could think of that Daphne and the others might be. Although it was awfully late in the morning for his friends to still be lollygagging in the shelter . . . Unless there was something wrong.

And something wrong was exactly what Justin found when he rounded the corner of Maiden Lane and came to a screeching halt in front of the remains of the public shelter.

Where the building that housed the shelter used to be, there was now only a crater filled with rubble. The building next door was still mostly standing, although the adjoining wall was falling over and the rebar and brickwork were exposed. There were dozens of people swarming over the site, shifting shards of concrete and charred beams, digging with shovels and handing up larger pieces of the rubble from man to man in an attempt to clear portions of the wreckage. There were police standing by directing passers-by and even a few suited men - who Justin thought must be politicians based on their clothing and demeanor - overlooking the proceedings.

Justin barely registered any of that though. All he could see were the rows of blanket draped bodies that were laid out on the pavement in front of the building and the new victims that were being added to those rows as the diggers unearthed more of the unfortunates caught in the collapse. To Justin’s eyes, it looked like an awful lot of bodies.

A little further along, there were more stretchers laid out - these holding the people who were injured but still breathing. There weren’t nearly as many of these as there were of the blanket covered forms. Justin made his way in that direction, hoping against hope that the friends he was looking for would be in that group and not the other.

He passed by a little girl, her head bandaged in a swathe of cotton, while two women knelt by her side, trying to ease the child’s frightened tears. There was an older man who looked too shocked to cry, the side of his face still dripping blood and his arm hanging limply at his side from a dislocated shoulder as another volunteer nurse worked on him. A little beyond that, there was a young woman holding two children on her lap, both of whom looked like they’d survived without too many injuries, but who were all tear stained, dusty and obviously scared.

At the end of the row of injured was a man sitting with his back to the street, a blanket draped over his hunched shoulders, and only the top of his dusty auburn head showing.

“Brian! Oh, no! Brian!” Justin screamed, running over to the injured man and falling to his knees, tears in his eyes.

Unfortunately, the eyes that looked back up at Justin when the man lifted his head were a dull, pain-filled brown and not the teasing hazel he was hoping to find.

“You’re . . . You’re not Brian . . .”

“Sorry, sonny, but no,” the injured man responded, reaching out with his hand to pat at Justin’s shoulder comfortingly in a strange reversal of roles. “I’m afeared, if you’re looking for someone, it’s not likely you’ll find him. The whole shelter collapsed. Was a huge HE bomb, they say. Nothing . . . Nothing left . . .” The man’s voice drifted off as he looked over at the rubble with a blank expression that matched the deadness in his tone.

“No! No, no, no, no . . .” Justin muttered, getting to his feet and staggering over towards where the rescue workers continued to dig in the wreckage. “No, Brian, no . . .”

“Sunshine? That you?” A familiar, deep, booming voice asked, the words slowly seeping through the horror. “Sunshine?”

Justin looked up into the face of a towering black man whose skin and clothing were all covered in soot and small burn marks. “They were . . . I-I-I told him to take care of them, Boom Boom. To get Daphne and the others to the shelter. To make sure they . . . they were . . . were safe. I asked him to do it. Brian . . . Daphne . . . What have I done?”

“Hush now, son,” Boom Boom ordered, taking the much smaller man in his big arms and hugging Justin until the boy’s shaking was contained. “Tweren’t in there, Sunshine. Tweren't ‘ere at this shelter. I don’ know where me Daphne is, but tweren’t here.”

“They weren’t . . . They weren’t here?” Justin asked, almost begging for confirmation that this might be true. “How . . . How do you . . . How can you be sure?

“I’m sure, me lad. Ya see, I was out doing me rounds last night fer the fire squad,” Boom Boom began to explain as he led Justin away from the site of the destruction, “‘an I sees that the pub is closed up. So’s just to make sure everyone’s okay, I stopped round here, early on. But the shelter warden says to me that me Daphne ain’t come round that night. I looked inside the shelter meself, jes in case, you know, but I din’ see hide nor hair of me girl. I din’ see any o’ the reg’lars either, or I would've asked ‘em where she’d got herself off to. So’s, Sunshine, unless they come by after midnight sometime whilst I was off helping with the fire over on ‘Enrietta Street, she couldna’ been ‘ere.”

“You . . . you didn’t see Brian . . . er, Handsome. . . . here either, did you?” Justin asked, starting to feel the first tendrils of hope.

“Nah. I’d’ve noticed ‘Andsome right off iffin he was ‘ere,” Boom Boom reassured. “Big bloke like ‘at? Showy an’ all? Nah, ‘e weren't ‘ere either, Sunshine, or I’d’ve seen ‘im. I’m sure your Brian and me Daph are holed up te’gether somewhere’s else, jes fine. You’ll see, son. You’ll see.”

The young man took a deep, steadying breath, nodded, swiped at his cheek with one hand to remove any evidence of the tear that had escaped and then cleared his throat. “Thanks, Boom Boom. I . . . I was thinking the worst.”

“Natch. Now, I gots ta git back to work ‘ere, me lad. You run along and find me Daphne. When ya do, tells her to come ‘round and shows me she’s alright afore she worries ‘er old man ta death,” Boom Boom ordered, then clapped Justin on the shoulder and turned back to join the rescue crew.

Justin nodded at the retreating man’s back. “Where the hell are you guys?” he mumbled to himself. Then it dawned on him. “The Palace! They have a shelter, at The Palace! Applesauce!”

He was off again in a second, running pell mell down the street, dodging people walking on the sidewalks and even darting out into the street to get around bigger obstacles. It wasn’t a long run - just around the block and two streets over - and then Justin was pelting up the front steps of The Strand Palace Hotel. He loped past the staff in the lobby, disregarding their calls asking if they could help him, and took the stairs two at a time, unwilling to wait for the elevator. Breathless and dripping sweat he made it to the third floor, but didn’t slow his pace till he reached Brian’s room. Without bothering to knock, he grabbed the door handle, turned it and shoved open the unlocked door.

The door slamming into the wall behind it startled awake the three people sleeping in the big bed inside the room. Brian, who was lying in the middle on his back, had one arm around each of his companions. Both Daphne and Fancy had been curled up on their sides, their heads resting on Brian’s chest.

While the three beauties in the bed lay there, blinking up at him, Justin slammed the door closed behind him, took two steps over to the side of the bed where Fancy was lying, shoved his friend out of the way and then launched himself at Brian.

“You scared the holy heck out of me, Brian! Don’t you ever do that again!” Justin murmured as he grabbed the older man’s head in both his hands and violently kissed the russet red lips of his lover.

Brian seemed happy enough to be kissing him back. It felt to Justin that he couldn’t get enough of this man, couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t touch enough skin or breathe him in deep enough. He wanted to go on kissing Brian forever. Right at that moment he didn’t care who knew it or who saw them, all he could think of was that Brian was there, alive, unharmed, and kissing him back.

The kissing rapidly turned into something deeper and less frantic. Brian’s arms were wrapped around him, pulling Justin’s body down as tightly against him as was possible. Things all over were heating up. Justin canted his hips forward, pressing his growing erection against Brian’s hip and moaning at the wash of pleasure that threatened to sweep him away.

“Mmmm, Blue Eyes,” he could hear Brian mumbling his nickname whenever their lips weren’t directly engaged.

Then, with a feral growl, Brian tightened his grip around Justin’s frame and rolled them both over.

Only to be stopped cold by Justin shouting, “ouch! Stop, Brian. Stop. Get off. My shoulder . . .”

“What the fuck?” Brian rolled off immediately, sitting up and looking down at Justin with worry. “What’s wrong with your shoulder, Blue Eyes?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Justin tried to dismiss Brian’s concern but couldn’t help rubbing at the area to try and relieve the pain a bit.

“Iffin it’s nothing, Sunshine, ‘ow come there’s a spot o’ blood on your shirt, then?” Daphne asked.

Justin had forgotten that the girl - and Fancy as well - was even there. The two of them were currently standing together at the foot of the bed, smirking down at the lovebirds tangled together amid the rumpled sheets. Justin felt a wave of heat rising in his cheeks and knew he was blushing. He couldn’t believe he’d just jumped on Brian like that, kissing him in front of other people. He’d just been so darned relieved to find him alive that he hadn’t thought . . .

Brian, who didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed, was too focused on Justin’s injured shoulder to care about anything else. He was already trying to unbutton Justin’s shirt so he could investigate things personally. Justin barely stopped him before Brian would have pulled the shirt off outright - in front of Daphne even.

“Stop, Brian. Stop,” Justin ordered, snatching at the cloth Brian was tugging at. “It’s nothing. Just a few scratches.”

Unfortunately, Brian had already seen the bandages that were wrapped around Justin’s left shoulder and chest. And there were indeed a few spots where fresh blood had begun to seep through. Justin probably shouldn’t have been so rough when he threw himself down on Brian and started rolling around like that. He hoped he hadn’t popped any stitches.

“What the fuck happened to you, Justin?” Brian demanded, frowning down at the pilot with a proprietary air. “And don’t tell me THAT’S nothing. You’re covered in fucking bandages!”

“It was a busy night, is all,” Justin answered, hoping against hope that the man would let it all drop.

Unsuccessfully.

Brian continued to stare at him angrily. Justin sighed and then, as Brian began to unbutton his shirt, he finally answered.

“I got caught in a firefight with two Gerries,” he explained, trying to underplay the whole thing as much as possible so as not to worry his friends, although, as the story progressed he did get a bit caught up in it. “I was holding my own at first, but then one of them did this amazing loop maneuver I’d never seen before and came back at me from above. I managed to peel off to the right, but he got a couple of good rounds in anyway. I would have been okay even then, except one of the bullets shattered the canopy and the pieces went flying everywhere. Luckily, my flight suit protected my face, or I’d a been a goner. Couple a shards sliced straight through to my shoulder though.” He shook his head at the memory. “I had to head back to the base after that, but I did manage to take out one of the Gerries on the way.”

“Shit, Justin! What the fuck happened to you promising to be careful?” Brian complained, once again undoing all the buttons Justin had just finished buttoning up. “Daphne, can you get me that first aid kit from my bag over there?” Brian directed, pointing to the leather valise sitting on one of the chairs.

“I’m fine, Brian. I just stretched it a little too much,” Justin tried to shrug off the concerned older man. “I guess I was just a little happy to see you.” He felt himself blushing again at the memory of just how happy that had made him.

“It’s NOT fine. You’re fucking bleeding, Blue Eyes,” Brian argued, zipping open the soft sided first aid kit and rifling through the contents. “Now hold still and let me fix this or I’ll have Daphne and Fancy pin you down until I’m done.” Brian took up a pair of scissors from his kit and started to cut away the part of the bandages where the bleeding seemed to be. “Damned fucking hero complex . . . Think you’re fucking John Wayne or something . . .” He was mumbling as he worked, causing Justin to smile and look away before Brian saw how pleased he was by the attention.

Of course, that’s when he saw both Daphne and Fancy looking on at the two of them with indulgent affection. With those two watching everything that was going on, Justin figured he and Brian were bound to be the primary topic of all gossip at the pub for the next week or so. Well, if the raid didn’t distract them all.

That brought to mind why he was here looking for them all in the first place. “Boom Boom is looking for you, Daph. When I couldn’t find you at the White Lion, I went by the Maiden Lane shelter to see if you guys were still there . . . Applesauce, I’m glad you weren’t, though.” The curious looks he got prompted him to explain. “Your father’s there helping out with the rest. Digging the place out . . . The shelter took a direct hit, I’m afraid. Not many got out . . .”

“Blimey!” Fancy exclaimed, sinking down on the end of the bed and shaking his head. “It’s a good thing our Brian insisted on taking us here to The Palace instead. I thought he was crazy going the extra distance to get all the way over here, but . . .”

“‘At WAS lucky, waddnit?” Daphne remarked, looking at Brian with an assessing stare that sparked a similar curiosity in Justin.

Meanwhile, Brian was ignoring all of them. He’d got the old bandages off and then checked over the various small wounds to Justin’s shoulder and chest. They were mostly small and shallow, although there seemed to be a lot of them. There were only two large gashes that had required stitches. Luckily, it didn’t look like he’d broken open any of the stitches, but the one in front, close to his clavicle, was seeping, and the big one on his arm just below the ball of his shoulder was bleeding outright. Brian ‘tsked’ at him and then tore open a package containing a large self-adhesive bandage. Justin watched as Brian smeared some ointment from a small white tube on the pad of the bandage and then he slapped it on the bleeding wound. Whatever was in the ointment almost instantly began to soothe the pain away. Justin tried to look at the bandage - it wasnt like any bandage he’d ever seen before and he’d been patched up quite a few times over the past few months already - but Brian ordered him to sit still while he went to work on the other injury. When Brian was done there, he added a few more of the smaller self-sticking bandages to one or two of Justin’s other cuts and then, examining his work with an approving nod, the man carefully pulled Justin’s shirt up over his shoulder again.

“You’d think ‘e was a right doctor, wouldn’t yer?” Daphne commented on Brian’s nursing skills. “Feel better, Sunshine?”

“I’m sure if we two left, Handsome would kiss it better right quickly,” Fancy added, giggling along with Daphne like two school girls.

“You know what - that's an excellent idea,” Brian asserted as he gathered together the trash from his doctoring work and then moved towards the door. “Not that I didn’t enjoy your company last night, guys, but . . . Didn’t you say Daphne’s father was looking for her, Blue Eyes? You wouldn’t want to worry your dad, Daphne, right?”

“Right-o! I’m off then,” Daphne said, taking the hint with good grace. “You two pop round the pub later though  . . . after you’ve ‘ad a chance ta get reacquainted like.” She winked at Justin and then turned to give Brian a big hug. “Thankee for the ‘commodations last night, ‘Andsome. Yer drinks is on the ‘ouse ta’night, big guy.”

“Later, Daphne,” Brian answered, holding open the door for the woman.

“And I better hurry home and get spruced up,” Fancy declared with a flounce. “I’m meeting Mr. Saxophone from last night for coffee at 1100. Ta ta, gentlemen!’

“Alone at last!” Brian carefully closed the door after them, deliberately locking it before turning back to Justin. “Now, where were we, Blue Eyes?”

Justin grinned up at his lover, lifted his hand and pointed to his lips. “I think you were right about here, Mr. Kinney.”