[fic] mooooore
ENTRY 02
TITLE: Bellegarde
RATING: PG-13
WORDCOUNT: ~7100
NOTES: My AU setting for this is World War II, French Resistance. Slight debt of thanks to the films Charlotte Gray and Inglourious Basterds and maybe a little of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls to help me envision this universe. The town of Bellegarde exists (I Google Map things for fun) but the events of this story are fictionalized.
Bellegarde, Loiret, North Central France
Late 1943
By night, the fields of France aren’t so different from the English countryside. The aeroplane’s official business is carrying mail from Calais to Nice, so Jun’s situated behind a stack of parcels. His jump window isn’t very long, but they’ve had him practice over Buckinghamshire for weeks.
He still lands in a tree, useless as the plane continues its way south. Things could be worse - he could have snapped his neck, the parachute could have failed, et cetera, but he’s still in a damned tree, legs dangling under him. This was not the graceful entrance he’d expected.
Fortunately, his contact saw him land. Jun doesn’t expect the guy to speak in English, but then again, it’s rather late and the fields around the village of Bellegarde are hushed. Nobody’s around.
“Rough landing?”
He looks down to see a shorter fellow walking a dog. He responds in French - it’s part of his orders. “Understatement of the century.”
His contact switches to French too. “Satoshi Ohno. You must be Jun.”
Ohno’s been in France since 1940, at least that’s what his briefing had told him. He pours beers for German patrols during the day and radios their movements back to London during the evening. He’s going to be Jun’s one connection home, and as the guy helps to cut him free, he’s glad for a friendly face.
Jun’s not exactly thrilled about his assignment. He’s been in SIS for nearly three years, pushing paper around a desk, decoding transmissions from abroad. Sure, it beat being shot to pieces on the front, but he’d joined to help take Hitler down. Now he’s in the middle of nowhere France, set to assist a local resistance group. He thought he’d get placed in Paris, Amsterdam, another big city under Nazi occupation - maybe in the mountains with the guerrilla groups fighting against Petain’s government in Vichy.
Surely he was being wasted this way.
Ohno gathers up Jun’s parachute and puts it in a bag. “I’ll incinerate this,” he says as easily as you’d ask someone for a cup of tea. “I have all your papers together in town.”
Bellegarde’s asleep when they make it back to town, so nobody thinks it’s strange that Satoshi left with his dog and returned with the dog and a completely new person. The school knows he’s coming - Ohno’s seen to that. He’s a skilled forger.
Satoshi dozes in a chair with the dog at his feet while Jun looks over the pieces of his brand new life. He’ll be a cook in the kitchen of a boys’ school, and in his off-time, he’ll be with the Bellegarde resistance. “A movement so small they haven’t bothered to give themselves a name,” his superior back in London had joked before tasking Jun with watching them.
“Report on their activities,” the superior had ordered. “Assist them as their leader commands.” Any other orders or news will come from Ohno - he isn’t affiliated with the area’s resistance. The town doesn’t even know Ohno isn’t French. Jun wonders if he’ll stand out - wonders if the resistance group will even welcome an outsider.
--
The headmaster of the school doesn’t have any places left in staff housing for Jun - teachers take priority. Jun’s got a small place in a storage room - enough for a bed roll, a lamp, the bag of clothes that Satoshi’s prepared. The last cook was arrested by a German patrol going through - he’d been a bit too vocal about his dislike for Mr. Hitler and had tried to block their progress.
Jun’s no fan of Mr. Hitler either, but he’d be a rather useless operative for His Majesty if he gets caught. He cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner for fifty-seven hungry, noisy French boys before hanging up his apron and riding the bike Satoshi’s given him back to town. Bellegarde has a resistance, but Bellegarde doesn’t seem to realize it.
They’ve apparently been taking general orders from a larger group in Orleans to dismantle train tracks in the vicinity. They’re more a disruption to the Nazis than an actual resistance, but Jun knows that taking away the Germans’ means of troop and supply transport is essential. One of the Nazis’ central hubs is in Orleans - the small group in Bellegarde is just doing their part.
The guy who answers the door is slim and short but not unfriendly. Jun doesn’t have to lie to them - he’s here to help, and the Orleans group was the one who requested SIS assistance anyhow. “Just call me Nino,” the guy says as he leads Jun through what serves as a watch repair shop by day. In the building’s basement, he’s not entirely stunned to find bits and pieces of dynamite, detonators and other bomb-making materials.
Nino’s the watch repairman. He’s also the one making the bombs, but he’s not the leader. “Your French is pretty good. I can’t hear a bit of London when you speak,” Nino tells him as he clears off a stool by his work bench for Jun to sit. “Not that I know what a Londoner sounds like.”
“My mother was French,” Jun says honestly. “Father wasn’t.”
“Don’t know how you can keep two languages in your brain,” the man continues, and Jun is fascinated by his tinkering.
The small hands that take apart intricate watches in the daylight and set the time anew make such destructive things in the wee hours of the morning. Jun would comment on the fact that Nino smokes like a chimney while he works, but he’s a guest in Bellegarde, and Nino could probably rig Jun’s pathetic room at the school to explode without batting an eye.
Nino tells Jun that their “illustrious” leader is getting orders in Orleans and will return shortly. Nino also tells Jun that the leader isn’t happy that he’s here. “He likes being in charge,” Nino says. “Sho doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do.”
They know that Jun’s not just here to help. They know Jun’s as much a spy as anything and that he’ll be reporting back about Bellegarde. Jun watches Nino’s fingers work, the smoke from the hand-rolled cigarettes tickling his nose. Sho arrives minutes later, and he’s immediately on edge.
“You could have offered him something to drink,” Sho says quietly, uncorking a half-empty bottle and pouring Jun a glass before asking if Jun even wanted some. Jun takes this in and holds back a smile.
Jun introduces himself, reiterating that his mother was French, and Sho doesn’t sit. He leans against a cupboard, watching Nino’s hands at the work bench, watching Jun’s mouth as fluent French tumbles out of it. Sho doesn’t like him.
“Replacement troops are stopping at Orleans before they head north two nights from now,” Sho says, more for Nino’s knowledge than Jun’s. He takes out a hand-drawn map from the back pocket of his pants. Sho’s hands are larger than Nino’s, his fingers longer as they skim over the map. “We’re blowing this part of the track.”
Nino nods. “Be nice to have someone else to help,” he says, trying to make peace between them. Jun watches Sho, watches the way he can’t mask his irritation. Hiding feelings was one of the first things the SIS taught Jun to do. He tries to be reasonable, talking to Sho like he’s the one in charge, since he is after all. “Don’t have much explosive experience.”
“Who does?” Sho snaps back quickly. “You don’t need to come with. You can just tell whoever you need to tell what’s getting taken out.”
Nino doesn’t offer Jun any help this time. Sho’s stubborn, and there’s work for him to do. “I’d like to learn,” he replies.
Sho doesn’t like this. “Why don’t you focus on cooking, and we’ll call on you when your assistance is required.”
He’s supposed to follow Sho’s orders, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to. “What time will you be meeting up for this?”
Sho gets him by the sleeve of his jacket, tugging Jun up the basement steps until they’re in the shop with the clocks ticking. It punctuates the silence as Sho stares him down. “We don’t need you.”
“What time?”
“You don’t know what it’s been like here.”
Jun cocks his head, and since he’s about an inch taller than Sho, he uses it.
“Maybe not. What time?”
He can see Satoshi walking his dog down the street outside, and Sho doesn’t even seem to notice. Sho has no idea of the magnitude of what’s happening. He and Nino are a two-man resistance in a town of zero interest to the Germans. But he’s passionate - Jun can tell from the fire in his eyes and the dirt under his fingernails. Jun wants to help him.
Sho escorts him to the door. “11:00. Blowing the tracks at 1:00. Don’t be late.”
Ohno doesn’t even turn around to wave when Jun gets the shop door slammed in his face.
--
The hours pass slowly, and Jun’s hardly able to contain his enthusiasm. Firearm training, all the other things SIS taught him are nothing compared to what will happen the following night. There are Germans only kilometers away, and there’s a regular patrol that passes just north of Bellegarde every other day from Orleans to Troyes.
Someone will hear the explosion. Will they assume it’s the group in Orleans? Will anyone think to search Bellegarde for a trace of the materials? Just how careful have Sho and Nino been up until now?
He stirs the pot of porridge for the boys’ breakfast. The things Nino was putting together on that bench will rip track apart, stall the transport. Jun will help. Small potatoes compared to what the Nazis have done to him, but it’s something.
One of the schoolteachers is trying to befriend him, trying to ask him to play cards in the evening tomorrow. He says yes, and he’ll go to bed early. Masaki Aiba teaches arithmetic and basic science, and the boys love him. He tells Masaki his cover story - that he’s from a little place in Normandy (his mother’s hometown), that he worked as a chef’s apprentice (which he did, but in London), and that he just wants to put in an honest day’s work.
Masaki finds this all rather agreeable. He helps Jun spoon out breakfast portions with a relaxed air. “I find the Nazis as despicable as anyone,” Masaki assures him, “but my place is here.”
Aiba believes in his students. Even though their part of the country’s under German control, it’s still Aiba’s duty to teach, he says. “I’ll be in my classroom until a mortar comes through and knocks me on my ass.”
Jun only nods. Aiba doesn’t need to know what happens when the apron gets hung up at night.
It’s not until the dinner hour’s over, and Aiba’s helping him wash dishes that he learns how Aiba and Sho know each other. “He used to teach history and writing here,” Aiba informs him, and his eyes are sad. “He quit about a year ago. Not sure what he’s doing now. Probably writing some boring textbook like he always wanted to.”
Jun doesn’t say anything, but it’s curious. Aiba knows more about Sho’s reasons than he lets on. Does Aiba know about Sho’s late night attempts at revolution?
They play cards the next night, and Aiba talks about Sho a lot. How the students found his lectures boring but still respected him. How Aiba learned a lot about teaching from him. How close of friends they’d been. When Jun asks Aiba why Sho quit teaching, Aiba puts down a full house.
“Looks like I won again! Come on, you can’t go to bed now!”
Jun smiles and tosses his cards down. He gives a sorry excuse about needing beauty sleep and retires to the kitchen. He waits until 10:30 before he sneaks off to his bicycle and heads for the watch repair shop.
--
He didn’t expect to resist the Nazis on a bicycle, but again, Bellegarde’s not exactly Paris, is it? They take the dirt road north, and Nino’s got all the materials in a knapsack as they pedal to the part of the track the Orleans group has assigned them. Bellegarde’s section will blow at 1:00 while Orleans will wait until 3:00 in case there’s troops called.
Sho doesn’t trust him with the explosives so he has Jun stay on lookout, pedaling alongside the rails as he and Nino get the track rigged. The train’s due at 5:00 in the morning, so it’s unlikely anyone of German persuasion will happen by.
Nino unspools the wire, and they roll their bikes into the woods. They take cover behind the trees as they wait for 1:00. Sho holds the torch over his watch every few seconds until the battery inside it dies. “Just blow it now,” Nino complains. “I’m tired.”
“Orleans says 1:00. We blow at 1:00.”
Jun says nothing. He agrees with Sho, but he doubts Sho requires his input. Nino gives up at 12:40, handing Sho the detonator.
“Good night, boys,” he says and gets on his bike.
When Nino’s out of sight, Jun dares to ask. “Why didn’t you make him stay? You’re in charge, aren’t you?”
Sho’s thumb is steady over the detonator switch, steadier than Jun’s would be if they switched places. “He already did his part. He’s not much for revolution.”
“He made a bomb.”
Sho actually smiles, and even in the dark, Jun likes this better than the scowl he’d seen before. “He’s always liked blowing things up. He doesn’t care much about the glory that comes after, though.”
“And you do?”
Sho’s smile falters a bit. “I...I just want the Germans out of France. I want the Nazis gone.”
It’s time, and Sho tells him to get down. When Jun’s face is nearly in the dirt, Sho leans over, covering him, and Jun can smell his cologne mingling with the sweat from riding their bikes earlier. His heart’s racing - half from the pending explosion, half from the other man’s sudden proximity. Sho triggers the explosives, and they huddle close as metal and the wooden ties splinter and break behind them.
He helps Sho to his feet, and some of the trees are on fire. They hurry to their bikes, the pair of them giddy from causing a little mayhem. Jun enjoys the biting chill of the air on his cheeks as they ride back to Bellegarde, taking his feet off the pedals as they both coast down a hill. Sho keeps a firm grip on his handlebars but lets out a loud whoop of glee as they celebrate a job well done.
--
The first frost comes a week later, and he and Sho travel further and further at night on their bikes. Nino stops coming entirely on nights when they’re not set to rig things with explosives. It’s quieter, safer to pry the tracks apart, undoing bolts and weakening the rails. It makes Jun’s hands ache even with gloves, but Sho’s working just as hard without complaint.
“You don’t act like someone in the intelligence business,” Sho remarks as they work on a few meters of track one night.
“I’m not, not really. I wasn’t expecting to ever get put in the field,” he says, twisting his wrench. “I only joined in ’41.”
Sho’s listening attentively. “Why?”
Satoshi didn’t ask. Nino didn’t ask. Aiba wouldn’t know to ask. Hell, SIS hadn’t really asked. “The restaurant I worked at,” he tells Sho. “It was destroyed during the Blitz.”
“So unemployment then?” Sho wonders.
Jun tries to ignore the fury that rages in his belly at the memory. The concrete, the heat of the fires, the thick smoke choking him as he crawled out of the building. The realization sinking in as he crawled out alone.
“My mother owned the restaurant.”
Sho is quiet, and their work continues for several minutes. They just hear an owl hooting and the sound of their wrenches twisting and loosening bolts. “That’s enough for tonight,” Sho says.
As they pack up, Sho squeezes his arm, and the sensation nearly makes Jun jump from his skin. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he tells Jun simply before hitting the bike’s kickstand with his shoe and riding off back to town.
He’s still smarting from it when he parks his bike in the storage shed at the school. He’s here to do a job - not to liberate France exactly, but to help Sho’s group however he can. Liking Sho however, is not a part of his mission. He doesn’t even notice Masaki until he’s getting out the key to the kitchen door.
“Little cold for bike riding, isn’t it?”
He’s trained, so he doesn’t show any surprise. He wonders why he can remember his SIS training so much better around Masaki than around Sho. “It gets hot in the kitchen all day.”
“Ah.”
Masaki doesn’t say anything else, and his face doesn’t register any suspicions. Then again, Jun thinks, he could just be good at hiding them. He wants to ask again why Sho left the school but doesn’t.
--
Nino stays cooped up in the basement of his shop more and more, and Sho won’t admit it, but he’s glad to not have to go out at night alone. Winter’s here, and their fingers get chilled quickly from tinkering with the rails. Tonight they’ve got another bomb ready - this time, they’ve been tasked with a bridge - no marvelous feat of engineering, this, but Nino’s doubled the power just to be on the safe side.
Most of the things they’ve done the past several weeks have already been repaired, but there have been no increased patrols in the area - Hitler’s got far more worrisome things to deal with than a few instances of railroad sabotage south of Paris.
Sho leaves him in charge of rigging some of the supports. He’s scared of heights, Jun can just tell from the look in his eyes. Jun shimmies down to tie wires, and though it’s only a few meters from the river below, Sho keeps telling him to be careful. Jun worries that Sho likes him too.
They’ve got fifteen minutes until Orleans wants them to trigger it. It’s snowing lightly, but not freezing, and he and Sho sit at the end of the unspooled wire, closer than either is willing to admit is necessary. They’ve been out most nights for weeks now, so he dares to ask the question that’s been bugging him.
“Why’d you leave the school?”
Sho sets the detonator in the dirt before them. “Figures that Masaki would try to be your friend.”
Jun presses. “He misses you. He says you two haven’t spoken since you left.”
“And I won’t speak to him,” Sho spits out, rubbing his hands together. “He’s nobody I want to know.”
Masaki’s one of the kindest people Jun’s ever met. “What did he do?”
“Nothing.” Sho’s angry, body shaking and not just from the weather. “He did nothing, that’s why.”
“Don’t follow.”
“Well, what Masaki isn’t telling you is how Headmaster Levy got fired,” Sho explains, and Jun smarts instantly at the name. “The Gestapo came in and took him off for questioning. Yeah, questioning, I’m sure. I went all the way to Paris to see where they’d taken him, but apparently there was no record of a Levy ever teaching at St. Lucie’s School for Boys.”
“Jewish.”
Sho nods. “Nobody said anything. Nobody stood up for Headmaster Levy - they let him get carted off. So I quit.”
“Didn’t bring the Headmaster back,” Jun dares, knowing that the whole thing is a sore subject with Sho. “Masaki says he won’t leave the students. Did they mean so little to you?”
Sho’s an idealist. Sho went to university in Paris, Nino’s told him. Sho was a communist for a few years, Nino had said, “but who wasn’t for a while, right?” Sho stood up for the Jewish headmaster, and now he blew up train tracks.
“They meant everything to me,” Sho admits. “Let them hate me, let Masaki hate me, but I don’t want my students living in fear of Hitler. I don’t want them living in a France that collaborates, in a France that is not free.”
It’s a well-practiced speech, or it sounds as such. Sho is a lecturer after all, and he chooses his words carefully even when it is just him and Jun in the middle of the cold winter night. He wishes Sho would speak plainly - perhaps he’d have more of a following in Bellegarde if he was less of a professor with a lofty agenda, less of an intellectual with a stubborn streak a mile wide.
“Five minutes,” he says to Sho, and a sharp wind blasts through the trees, rustling their coats and blowing snow into their hair, and sending the wire shaking. The bridge...
Sho tries to keep him from getting up, but Jun’s halfway to the bridge already, reexamining his efforts. The wire around one of the bridge supports has loosened, and he’s already scrambling down. His hands are chapped, but gloves would make him slip, so he grips the iron tight, reaching for the wire that’s dangling precariously.
“Just leave it!” Sho is calling down to him, looking through the wooden railroad ties. “It’ll still work!”
As Sho strives for perfection in his speech, so Jun strives for it in his work. If Nino discovered that they’d been lax in their task that night, well, it wouldn’t be pretty. He gets it retied to his satisfaction, and he climbs. Of course, it’s slicker than Jun had planned - the cold rain from the night before and the snow now have made the supports slippery under his shoes. It’s not a long drop, Jun muses when his foot slips and his body hits the support hard enough to knock the wind from him.
“Jun!”
That Sho is worried has Jun worried. For all that he’s afraid, already Sho is gripping the support, seeking safe footing underneath him as he tries to climb down to help.
“I’m fine, I’ll come back up. You need to trigger it on time,” he calls up as he regains his momentum and climbs. But Sho isn’t paralyzed by his fear, and he’s got his hand out as Jun reaches him. He lets Sho’s hand graze his back before he climbs up and extends his own hand to pull the other man back up onto the track.
Sho is nearly hysterical from ignoring his fear and trying to come after him, and Jun doesn’t know what to do other than embrace him. “Might have ended up at the bottom of the ravine,” Sho’s babbling as Jun rests his chin against the crown of Sho’s head.
“Calm down, I’m fine.”
Sho’s still in disbelief, and the trigger to detonate is probably in the snow-covered dirt where they’d been hiding. Jun rubs the man’s shoulder, the wool of Sho’s coat scratchy under his shivering fingers.
“You’re not even from France, and you’re helping to fight for her.”
He gets up, reaching under Sho’s arm to haul him to his feet. “We need to get clear so we can blow the bridge.”
They return, and Sho’s in no state to do it. Jun is running on the breaths his lungs will allow after his near fall, and he puts his thumb over the switch. Sho is pressed along the side of him as Jun sets off the explosives. The black sky burns orange, and Sho covers him like he had that first night as the bridge collapses into the river.
It’s time to go, time to hurry back to where they’ve parked their bicycles, but Sho won’t get off of him. Jun tosses the detonator Nino’s crafted aside, turning so his back is against the earthen mound they’ve sheltered behind. Sho is there instantly, lips burning against the chilled flesh of his face. He gasps, but only once when he finds the warmth of Sho’s mouth, sliding his hands under the wool coat to find the heat of Sho’s body.
It is some type of hysteria, Jun’s brain tries to explain, for why else would he stay in place and claim every inch of skin that he dares, letting his tongue bring moisture to Sho’s cracked lips, demanding entrance to the man’s mouth. Sho’s breath hitches as Jun tries to move against him, their bodies coming into closer contact.
Jun hasn’t known such urgency since the Luftwaffe were trying to decimate London, and obviously this is far preferable to German planes and bombs. He’s wanted to kiss Sho since the night they met, wanted the fingers that gestured impatiently to a hand-drawn map to chart territory up his spine and never drift away.
Someone is bound to have heard the explosion in one of the villages close by, and he breaks apart to catch his breath. Sho agrees without a word. They race for the bicycles, hearts beating wildly, perhaps keeping perfect time like the watches in Nino’s shop. They leave the bridge ruins behind.
Sho’s home is small and filled with stacks of books, but his bed is free. Hands and lips that met in desperation back at the bridge come together once more, but more languidly, tentatively. Jun has breakfast to cook for fifty-seven boys and several teachers, Masaki included when daybreak comes, but all he wants to know are the planes and curves of Sho’s body in the candlelight.
--
The following morning, he stumbles into the school’s kitchen, and though he’s not late, Aiba is already boiling eggs. Jun doesn’t bother to change out of yesterday’s clothes, instead throwing on his apron and finding some ham to slice up and fry for the boys. Portions are getting smaller and smaller - meat is near impossible to get and ridiculously expensive when available.
“Jun,” Aiba says quietly. He doesn’t look up from the skillet, doesn’t want to see the accusation or questioning in Masaki’s eyes. “I was in Satoshi’s bar last night. There were some soldiers there.”
Soldiers in Bellegarde town proper, and Sho hadn’t even known? He tries not to let his shoulders tense.
“My German’s not the best, but my ears are pretty good,” Masaki continues. The ham is sizzling and popping in the pan. “They said there’s some important Gestapo guys coming straight from Berlin tomorrow night, going down the line just north of town.”
Is Aiba…trying to help out with the resistance? Maybe he heard incorrectly. Most of the town stayed out of German business. Nobody wanted to end up like Headmaster Levy or the previous cook. They had families and businesses to protect. Why would Aiba take such a risk?
“We’ll have to make sure the boys are in bed early,” he says weakly, getting the chipped plates out to carry into the dining hall.
Aiba doesn’t say anything else, but when Jun accidentally meets his eyes, he can see that Aiba didn’t sleep the night before. He’s helping Jun to help Sho. Aiba’s known all along about what Sho does - about why Jun has come to Bellegarde. Aiba knows that Jun lies to his face every day, and he still smiles and helps out in the kitchen.
Masaki brings out the food and the plates with him, and when Jun says “thank you” he hopes that Aiba knows it’s not just gratitude for helping with the meal.
--
The guilt eats at Jun’s insides - he needs to report what Aiba has told him, needs to confirm it. Protocol says he reports to Ohno first, but he needs to see Sho. He only left the man’s bed hours earlier, but things have changed drastically. Important Gestapo members? Orleans will have big plans for this.
Nino finds him knocking on Sho’s door, hands shoved in his pockets and a knowing look in his eyes. “Someone from Orleans came to fetch him. Masaki wasn’t the only one in the pub last night.”
“Big security leak if it’s true.”
Nino nods, and he follows the man into his watch shop. The clocks on the wall seem to be on an erratic rhythm, but it could just be the knowledge that some of Hitler’s nastiest dogs will pass just north of town the next evening.
There’s more wires and dynamite on the table - stuff Nino’s been hoarding since Orleans halted a convoy in a daring raid the week before. Jun watches Nino putting things together. He knows what Sho’s planning instantly, knows that he’s probably making sure Orleans knows what he’s doing.
Sho arrives in mid-afternoon, and he smiles to see Jun in the basement of the watch shop. Jun wants to tell Sho about Aiba, about the man’s desperation to help Sho against his own better judgment. He can’t bring himself to do it.
“Need to help with dinner,” he says, and Nino lights another cigarette and waves.
Sho follows him up the stairwell, and it seems that Orleans gave him the okay. They’re not just blowing the track - they’re blowing it when the train comes through. They’re not just interfering now. They’re plotting to take out an entire car full of Gestapo brass.
He grips Jun’s hands excitedly. “Bellegarde’s a place they won’t suspect,” Sho tells him, running his thumbs over Jun’s knuckles. “It’s our chance, it’s really our chance.”
Jun just smiles back, unable to resist Sho’s enthusiasm. They kiss quickly - the sun’s setting soon, and it feels just as right in the fading sunlight as it did out under the stars and underneath Sho’s blankets. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Dinner really isn’t for another hour, so he stops to see Ohno. He already knows why Jun’s come.
“Still waiting to hear back,” Satoshi tells him in the back office of his bar. “They’re wiring me tomorrow afternoon…”
Headquarters sure is waiting until the last minute this time.
Masaki doesn’t say a word to Jun when he returns for dinner. He watches Aiba walk up and down the dining hall floor, gently patting students on the head, breaking up a small food fight. He doesn’t smile once. By helping Sho, he’s put the boys at risk, and he’s having trouble living with his decision.
Jun doesn’t know what to say that could help.
--
Ohno’s impatient when Jun returns to his bar the following day. Ohno has never been impatient before. He lays down the coded message on the table in front of Jun, Satoshi’s small, neat handwriting having transcribed it.
Gestapo train not to be stopped.
“What do they mean?” Jun wonders angrily, knowing that Nino’s probably got more dynamite than Sho can carry sitting in the basement of the shop. “They can’t call it off so quickly!”
Satoshi shakes his head. “Orders are orders. There’s going to be a major operation sometime in the spring, and they don’t want the Nazis knowing where the invasion force will land. All us grunts already on the ground here have to keep the Germans guessing. They want us to get all the resistance groups in line. No time to be blowing up trains now. We need to start spreading misinformation. Sho and Nino will be expected to help.”
“And what if I can’t stop them?” Jun asks him, knowing how eager Sho is to prove himself, prove Bellegarde’s usefulness to the higher ups in Orleans.
Ohno takes the message from the table, flicking his lighter before Jun can blink. The paper disintegrates, and Satoshi’s words are in English. They sound almost strange to Jun’s ears after all these weeks. “You stop him. By any means necessary, you stop Sho Sakurai from blowing up that train tonight.”
“Or else what?” Jun asks, worried about the consequences.
Ohno doesn’t answer.
--
“This is the best opportunity we’ve ever had,” Sho cries when Jun relays the message. “They can’t just pick and choose what activity to suspend like this! That’s not resistance, that’s politics!”
Nino’s still playing with wires as Jun sips wine and tries to think of a way to change Sho’s mind.
Jun needs Sho to give in, needs him to stop being so pigheaded. “You’re okay with murder?”
“Are you defending what they’ve done to us? To their own people?” Sho shouts back, spittle catching at the side of his mouth.
He tries to plead with Sho’s common sense, what little of it remains now that the man’s flown into a rage that Jun understands all too perfectly. “If the Gestapo don’t arrest you, then someone else will.”
Nino gets up from the bench, squeezing Sho’s shoulder briefly before heading up to his room above the shop. He’s rigged the dynamite, but he won’t be complicit in murder, that much seems obvious. They’re alone now, standing at opposite sides of the room. Two nights earlier, he was curled alongside him.
“Don’t go.” He doesn’t know what to say that’ll make Sho abandon his crusade, and his head’s aching. “Think of the town, won’t you? Think about the students you’ve left behind. Think about how hard the boot will come down on Bellegarde when you blow a train full of SS sky high!”
“Don’t you make me the villain here…”
He slams his hand down on Nino’s work bench, jostling the wine glass and the bombs, making Sho jump. “Why do you resist here, Sho? Why didn’t you just go to Orleans? You went to Paris for your headmaster, but you’re happy to take train tracks apart here? Are you too scared to be in the middle of it? Are you scared, Sho?”
It’s the wrong thing entirely because Sho’s got a satchel, and he’s loading the things from the table into it. “Not a coward,” Sho’s grumbling.
“Sho…” Jun’s feeling dizzy. Was it warm in here?
“I’m not a coward.” Sho’s eyes are deadly serious. “Tonight, I’ll prove it.”
His vision’s getting cloudy, and he grips the table. “You…Sho…” He sees the wine glass on the table. Some intelligence agent he was.
Sho seems sad as Jun falls to the floor. He must have gotten some sort of sleeping draught or knock-out drugs from his connections in Orleans. He’s trying to stay awake, to withstand it.
“Orleans sent a message this afternoon…I didn’t tell you, didn’t tell Nino either,” Sho says quietly, crouching down and brushing hair away from Jun’s eyes. Orleans called off the mission too. “I have to do this.”
Whatever Sho gave him works quickly.
--
The train arrives in half an hour, and Jun’s thighs ache from how fast he’s pedaling the bicycle. The path is slick with ice, and he’s already fallen twice.
Nino had suspected something fishy, discovering Jun on his basement floor. A bucket of water to the face had woken him, though he’s still woozy. He told Nino to speak to Satoshi - Nino didn’t ask questions.
His willpower’s seemingly enough to keep him moving forward. He drops the bike at the edge of the trees where Sho left his and takes off on foot, hoping that he won’t have to knock Sho out in return. The track isn’t fully rigged yet since Sho’s working alone.
“I only gave you half,” Sho says, no apologies, as Jun approaches.
“Please.” The Orleans group will punish Sho if he goes through with this. There will be no more resistance in Bellegarde, no matter what point Sho thinks he’s trying to make.
“Jun, you know I can’t.”
He watches Sho work for a full minute before he crouches down to help him. They don’t need the train coming by when they are still working. Sho looks embarrassed as they get the rest of it wired to explode. “I’ll get this bit tied, get down there with the detonator.”
Sho obeys, and Jun finishes wiring it. They sit in silence, Sho holding the detonator in his hands. The time for the train comes and goes.
“Maybe it’s late,” Sho whispers, his breath coming out in small, nervous puffs.
Jun gets up and heads for the track, putting his ear down to listen for vibrations that might indicate the Gestapo are on their way. It’s then that the lights of torches turn on, and he hears the boots coming in the gravel in both directions on the track. Run, he thinks in Sho’s direction, for the love of God, run!
The wire leading back to their position is slack as he hears the shouted German commands. The intel had been a trick - Aiba couldn’t have known. Even though Orleans had called it off, nobody had mentioned the possibility of it being a trap. He has to let Sho get back to town, so he puts his hands up and gets light in his eyes.
His subpar German is enough for him to know he’s being ordered face down next to the train tracks. He does everything they say, and they place him in cuffs and drag him off to a truck they’ve got waiting about a kilometer off. He heard them shouting about checking the woods, and he can only pray that Sho managed to escape.
They put a bag over his head, and Jun hopes that Satoshi will know what to do.
--
Two days pass with no food and no water and no warmth, and they’ve got him in a small holding cell at Beaune-la-Rolande, Jun’s best guess. It’s the last place they hold prisoners and undesirables before they get transported to Germany and never get seen again.
Jun isn’t overly fond of not being seen again. They haven’t tortured him. Hell, they haven’t even spoken to him. They think it’s wiser to break his spirits by keeping him in darkness, making him piss in a corner until the whole god-forsaken cell smells of it and the people who’ve been held here before. He doesn’t want to know how many others have been in here.
Once they get him to Germany, it’ll start. They’ll want to know where Jun’s from, who he’s been working with, and he wonders how long he’ll last. Will they try to drown him? Electrocute him? Break every bone in his body one at a time with a hammer? Will a Gestapo simply take out a pistol and shoot him in the head when he refuses?
He hears more of the cells down the hall open. They’re moving them now, and Jun can barely stand from all the hours curled up, trying to retain some body heat. He almost wishes there had been a train for Sho to blow up. Dying like a dog at German hands is not preferable to whatever punishments Ohno would have had to bring down on him for disobeying orders.
There’s another canvas sack over his head as they pull him from the cell. There are children going on the train with him. Jun can hear them screaming for their mothers. He can smell the smoke - the train is close. A gunshot rings out close by, leaving him numbed and stunned. He drops to his knees as the soldier escorting him starts to return fire. He’s blind, momentarily deafened, and he may be shot to pieces before they get him onto the train.
There’s screaming, more gunfire, and then someone’s hauling him away. He still can’t see, he can’t get the sack off his head. “Let go!” he shouts in English, unable to focus in French.
“I’m here,” Sho’s voice answers in English. “Jun, it’s me.”
--
Some of Sho’s comrades in Orleans launched the raid on Beaune-la-Rolande. Against explicit orders from Paris, against explicit orders from Westminster.
“Not just for you,” Sho says as he encourages Jun to drink from the canteen. They’re in a most likely stolen truck, bouncing along the road and away from the holding camp. There are two from Orleans up front, and just the pair of them in the rear. “Some others from their group were arrested. Just lucky you got hauled in to the same place.”
“Lucky,” Jun says.
Sho has an arm around his shoulder, hand tangled in Jun’s unkempt hair. There’s a million things he wants to tell Sho. He wants to yell, scream, shout - he wants to squeeze Sho’s hand and not let go of it. He settles for Sho’s weight and warmth beside him.
Ohno’s waiting for him by an idling truck in the middle of nowhere. His face is calm, no judgment, no anger. But no relief either. It’s Jun and Sho’s fault that Ohno’s cover has been blown in town. Sho helps him out of the truck and into the front seat of the other, slamming the door. He gives Jun a strange smile before stepping back and getting into the truck with the other resistance members.
Sho’s going back to Bellegarde, and it’s only when the truck pulls away that Jun realizes that he’s leaving France. Ohno gets in the back, and a driver that Jun doesn’t know turns the key in the ignition.
“Wait,” he says. “Wait, I didn’t even say goodbye to him. I didn’t even thank him…”
“There’s a plane waiting, and the window is very short.”
Ohno says nothing else as the truck goes in the opposite direction of Sho’s.
--
Bellegarde, Loiret, North Central France
Late 1945
Nobody’s waiting with their dog to pull him out of a tree, but he didn’t have to parachute into France this time.
Instead, Aiba’s got a tiny little car and a shy, but welcoming smile. “We never filled your place,” Masaki admits. “Cooking and teaching at the same time was getting to be a bit of a hassle.”
Jun returns the smile as they drive back to the school. Enrollment’s gone up a bit, so he’ll be cooking for nearly seventy boys now. However, there’s a room in the teaching quarters for him this time on account of him being a member of the Bellegarde resistance. It’s strange that the town had turned a blind eye to it before, but now that France is free and Hitler is dead, the town has embraced those who stood up to Germany.
Aiba lets him settle in, and he’s just getting his socks in a drawer when there’s a tap at the door. It’s the history instructor, and Jun sees the cane at his side.
“You weren’t so old when I left,” Jun says quietly, a thousand questions on his tongue that won’t come out as the teacher slowly walks into the room.
“Went to Paris,” he answers, tapping the cane against the floor a few times. “Helped a few of your countrymen. Took some shrapnel for my efforts.” He laughs and meets Jun’s eyes. “It was worth it. More exciting than unscrewing bolts, you could say.”
“Teaching again?”
“Yes.”
He takes a step closer. “Missed you.”
Sho lifts the cane, moving the hooked end of it around Jun’s arm to pull him forward into an easy embrace. It’s been almost two years.
“Bellegarde missed you more.”
vote here! :)
TITLE: Bellegarde
RATING: PG-13
WORDCOUNT: ~7100
NOTES: My AU setting for this is World War II, French Resistance. Slight debt of thanks to the films Charlotte Gray and Inglourious Basterds and maybe a little of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls to help me envision this universe. The town of Bellegarde exists (I Google Map things for fun) but the events of this story are fictionalized.
Bellegarde, Loiret, North Central France
Late 1943
By night, the fields of France aren’t so different from the English countryside. The aeroplane’s official business is carrying mail from Calais to Nice, so Jun’s situated behind a stack of parcels. His jump window isn’t very long, but they’ve had him practice over Buckinghamshire for weeks.
He still lands in a tree, useless as the plane continues its way south. Things could be worse - he could have snapped his neck, the parachute could have failed, et cetera, but he’s still in a damned tree, legs dangling under him. This was not the graceful entrance he’d expected.
Fortunately, his contact saw him land. Jun doesn’t expect the guy to speak in English, but then again, it’s rather late and the fields around the village of Bellegarde are hushed. Nobody’s around.
“Rough landing?”
He looks down to see a shorter fellow walking a dog. He responds in French - it’s part of his orders. “Understatement of the century.”
His contact switches to French too. “Satoshi Ohno. You must be Jun.”
Ohno’s been in France since 1940, at least that’s what his briefing had told him. He pours beers for German patrols during the day and radios their movements back to London during the evening. He’s going to be Jun’s one connection home, and as the guy helps to cut him free, he’s glad for a friendly face.
Jun’s not exactly thrilled about his assignment. He’s been in SIS for nearly three years, pushing paper around a desk, decoding transmissions from abroad. Sure, it beat being shot to pieces on the front, but he’d joined to help take Hitler down. Now he’s in the middle of nowhere France, set to assist a local resistance group. He thought he’d get placed in Paris, Amsterdam, another big city under Nazi occupation - maybe in the mountains with the guerrilla groups fighting against Petain’s government in Vichy.
Surely he was being wasted this way.
Ohno gathers up Jun’s parachute and puts it in a bag. “I’ll incinerate this,” he says as easily as you’d ask someone for a cup of tea. “I have all your papers together in town.”
Bellegarde’s asleep when they make it back to town, so nobody thinks it’s strange that Satoshi left with his dog and returned with the dog and a completely new person. The school knows he’s coming - Ohno’s seen to that. He’s a skilled forger.
Satoshi dozes in a chair with the dog at his feet while Jun looks over the pieces of his brand new life. He’ll be a cook in the kitchen of a boys’ school, and in his off-time, he’ll be with the Bellegarde resistance. “A movement so small they haven’t bothered to give themselves a name,” his superior back in London had joked before tasking Jun with watching them.
“Report on their activities,” the superior had ordered. “Assist them as their leader commands.” Any other orders or news will come from Ohno - he isn’t affiliated with the area’s resistance. The town doesn’t even know Ohno isn’t French. Jun wonders if he’ll stand out - wonders if the resistance group will even welcome an outsider.
--
The headmaster of the school doesn’t have any places left in staff housing for Jun - teachers take priority. Jun’s got a small place in a storage room - enough for a bed roll, a lamp, the bag of clothes that Satoshi’s prepared. The last cook was arrested by a German patrol going through - he’d been a bit too vocal about his dislike for Mr. Hitler and had tried to block their progress.
Jun’s no fan of Mr. Hitler either, but he’d be a rather useless operative for His Majesty if he gets caught. He cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner for fifty-seven hungry, noisy French boys before hanging up his apron and riding the bike Satoshi’s given him back to town. Bellegarde has a resistance, but Bellegarde doesn’t seem to realize it.
They’ve apparently been taking general orders from a larger group in Orleans to dismantle train tracks in the vicinity. They’re more a disruption to the Nazis than an actual resistance, but Jun knows that taking away the Germans’ means of troop and supply transport is essential. One of the Nazis’ central hubs is in Orleans - the small group in Bellegarde is just doing their part.
The guy who answers the door is slim and short but not unfriendly. Jun doesn’t have to lie to them - he’s here to help, and the Orleans group was the one who requested SIS assistance anyhow. “Just call me Nino,” the guy says as he leads Jun through what serves as a watch repair shop by day. In the building’s basement, he’s not entirely stunned to find bits and pieces of dynamite, detonators and other bomb-making materials.
Nino’s the watch repairman. He’s also the one making the bombs, but he’s not the leader. “Your French is pretty good. I can’t hear a bit of London when you speak,” Nino tells him as he clears off a stool by his work bench for Jun to sit. “Not that I know what a Londoner sounds like.”
“My mother was French,” Jun says honestly. “Father wasn’t.”
“Don’t know how you can keep two languages in your brain,” the man continues, and Jun is fascinated by his tinkering.
The small hands that take apart intricate watches in the daylight and set the time anew make such destructive things in the wee hours of the morning. Jun would comment on the fact that Nino smokes like a chimney while he works, but he’s a guest in Bellegarde, and Nino could probably rig Jun’s pathetic room at the school to explode without batting an eye.
Nino tells Jun that their “illustrious” leader is getting orders in Orleans and will return shortly. Nino also tells Jun that the leader isn’t happy that he’s here. “He likes being in charge,” Nino says. “Sho doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do.”
They know that Jun’s not just here to help. They know Jun’s as much a spy as anything and that he’ll be reporting back about Bellegarde. Jun watches Nino’s fingers work, the smoke from the hand-rolled cigarettes tickling his nose. Sho arrives minutes later, and he’s immediately on edge.
“You could have offered him something to drink,” Sho says quietly, uncorking a half-empty bottle and pouring Jun a glass before asking if Jun even wanted some. Jun takes this in and holds back a smile.
Jun introduces himself, reiterating that his mother was French, and Sho doesn’t sit. He leans against a cupboard, watching Nino’s hands at the work bench, watching Jun’s mouth as fluent French tumbles out of it. Sho doesn’t like him.
“Replacement troops are stopping at Orleans before they head north two nights from now,” Sho says, more for Nino’s knowledge than Jun’s. He takes out a hand-drawn map from the back pocket of his pants. Sho’s hands are larger than Nino’s, his fingers longer as they skim over the map. “We’re blowing this part of the track.”
Nino nods. “Be nice to have someone else to help,” he says, trying to make peace between them. Jun watches Sho, watches the way he can’t mask his irritation. Hiding feelings was one of the first things the SIS taught Jun to do. He tries to be reasonable, talking to Sho like he’s the one in charge, since he is after all. “Don’t have much explosive experience.”
“Who does?” Sho snaps back quickly. “You don’t need to come with. You can just tell whoever you need to tell what’s getting taken out.”
Nino doesn’t offer Jun any help this time. Sho’s stubborn, and there’s work for him to do. “I’d like to learn,” he replies.
Sho doesn’t like this. “Why don’t you focus on cooking, and we’ll call on you when your assistance is required.”
He’s supposed to follow Sho’s orders, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to. “What time will you be meeting up for this?”
Sho gets him by the sleeve of his jacket, tugging Jun up the basement steps until they’re in the shop with the clocks ticking. It punctuates the silence as Sho stares him down. “We don’t need you.”
“What time?”
“You don’t know what it’s been like here.”
Jun cocks his head, and since he’s about an inch taller than Sho, he uses it.
“Maybe not. What time?”
He can see Satoshi walking his dog down the street outside, and Sho doesn’t even seem to notice. Sho has no idea of the magnitude of what’s happening. He and Nino are a two-man resistance in a town of zero interest to the Germans. But he’s passionate - Jun can tell from the fire in his eyes and the dirt under his fingernails. Jun wants to help him.
Sho escorts him to the door. “11:00. Blowing the tracks at 1:00. Don’t be late.”
Ohno doesn’t even turn around to wave when Jun gets the shop door slammed in his face.
--
The hours pass slowly, and Jun’s hardly able to contain his enthusiasm. Firearm training, all the other things SIS taught him are nothing compared to what will happen the following night. There are Germans only kilometers away, and there’s a regular patrol that passes just north of Bellegarde every other day from Orleans to Troyes.
Someone will hear the explosion. Will they assume it’s the group in Orleans? Will anyone think to search Bellegarde for a trace of the materials? Just how careful have Sho and Nino been up until now?
He stirs the pot of porridge for the boys’ breakfast. The things Nino was putting together on that bench will rip track apart, stall the transport. Jun will help. Small potatoes compared to what the Nazis have done to him, but it’s something.
One of the schoolteachers is trying to befriend him, trying to ask him to play cards in the evening tomorrow. He says yes, and he’ll go to bed early. Masaki Aiba teaches arithmetic and basic science, and the boys love him. He tells Masaki his cover story - that he’s from a little place in Normandy (his mother’s hometown), that he worked as a chef’s apprentice (which he did, but in London), and that he just wants to put in an honest day’s work.
Masaki finds this all rather agreeable. He helps Jun spoon out breakfast portions with a relaxed air. “I find the Nazis as despicable as anyone,” Masaki assures him, “but my place is here.”
Aiba believes in his students. Even though their part of the country’s under German control, it’s still Aiba’s duty to teach, he says. “I’ll be in my classroom until a mortar comes through and knocks me on my ass.”
Jun only nods. Aiba doesn’t need to know what happens when the apron gets hung up at night.
It’s not until the dinner hour’s over, and Aiba’s helping him wash dishes that he learns how Aiba and Sho know each other. “He used to teach history and writing here,” Aiba informs him, and his eyes are sad. “He quit about a year ago. Not sure what he’s doing now. Probably writing some boring textbook like he always wanted to.”
Jun doesn’t say anything, but it’s curious. Aiba knows more about Sho’s reasons than he lets on. Does Aiba know about Sho’s late night attempts at revolution?
They play cards the next night, and Aiba talks about Sho a lot. How the students found his lectures boring but still respected him. How Aiba learned a lot about teaching from him. How close of friends they’d been. When Jun asks Aiba why Sho quit teaching, Aiba puts down a full house.
“Looks like I won again! Come on, you can’t go to bed now!”
Jun smiles and tosses his cards down. He gives a sorry excuse about needing beauty sleep and retires to the kitchen. He waits until 10:30 before he sneaks off to his bicycle and heads for the watch repair shop.
--
He didn’t expect to resist the Nazis on a bicycle, but again, Bellegarde’s not exactly Paris, is it? They take the dirt road north, and Nino’s got all the materials in a knapsack as they pedal to the part of the track the Orleans group has assigned them. Bellegarde’s section will blow at 1:00 while Orleans will wait until 3:00 in case there’s troops called.
Sho doesn’t trust him with the explosives so he has Jun stay on lookout, pedaling alongside the rails as he and Nino get the track rigged. The train’s due at 5:00 in the morning, so it’s unlikely anyone of German persuasion will happen by.
Nino unspools the wire, and they roll their bikes into the woods. They take cover behind the trees as they wait for 1:00. Sho holds the torch over his watch every few seconds until the battery inside it dies. “Just blow it now,” Nino complains. “I’m tired.”
“Orleans says 1:00. We blow at 1:00.”
Jun says nothing. He agrees with Sho, but he doubts Sho requires his input. Nino gives up at 12:40, handing Sho the detonator.
“Good night, boys,” he says and gets on his bike.
When Nino’s out of sight, Jun dares to ask. “Why didn’t you make him stay? You’re in charge, aren’t you?”
Sho’s thumb is steady over the detonator switch, steadier than Jun’s would be if they switched places. “He already did his part. He’s not much for revolution.”
“He made a bomb.”
Sho actually smiles, and even in the dark, Jun likes this better than the scowl he’d seen before. “He’s always liked blowing things up. He doesn’t care much about the glory that comes after, though.”
“And you do?”
Sho’s smile falters a bit. “I...I just want the Germans out of France. I want the Nazis gone.”
It’s time, and Sho tells him to get down. When Jun’s face is nearly in the dirt, Sho leans over, covering him, and Jun can smell his cologne mingling with the sweat from riding their bikes earlier. His heart’s racing - half from the pending explosion, half from the other man’s sudden proximity. Sho triggers the explosives, and they huddle close as metal and the wooden ties splinter and break behind them.
He helps Sho to his feet, and some of the trees are on fire. They hurry to their bikes, the pair of them giddy from causing a little mayhem. Jun enjoys the biting chill of the air on his cheeks as they ride back to Bellegarde, taking his feet off the pedals as they both coast down a hill. Sho keeps a firm grip on his handlebars but lets out a loud whoop of glee as they celebrate a job well done.
--
The first frost comes a week later, and he and Sho travel further and further at night on their bikes. Nino stops coming entirely on nights when they’re not set to rig things with explosives. It’s quieter, safer to pry the tracks apart, undoing bolts and weakening the rails. It makes Jun’s hands ache even with gloves, but Sho’s working just as hard without complaint.
“You don’t act like someone in the intelligence business,” Sho remarks as they work on a few meters of track one night.
“I’m not, not really. I wasn’t expecting to ever get put in the field,” he says, twisting his wrench. “I only joined in ’41.”
Sho’s listening attentively. “Why?”
Satoshi didn’t ask. Nino didn’t ask. Aiba wouldn’t know to ask. Hell, SIS hadn’t really asked. “The restaurant I worked at,” he tells Sho. “It was destroyed during the Blitz.”
“So unemployment then?” Sho wonders.
Jun tries to ignore the fury that rages in his belly at the memory. The concrete, the heat of the fires, the thick smoke choking him as he crawled out of the building. The realization sinking in as he crawled out alone.
“My mother owned the restaurant.”
Sho is quiet, and their work continues for several minutes. They just hear an owl hooting and the sound of their wrenches twisting and loosening bolts. “That’s enough for tonight,” Sho says.
As they pack up, Sho squeezes his arm, and the sensation nearly makes Jun jump from his skin. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he tells Jun simply before hitting the bike’s kickstand with his shoe and riding off back to town.
He’s still smarting from it when he parks his bike in the storage shed at the school. He’s here to do a job - not to liberate France exactly, but to help Sho’s group however he can. Liking Sho however, is not a part of his mission. He doesn’t even notice Masaki until he’s getting out the key to the kitchen door.
“Little cold for bike riding, isn’t it?”
He’s trained, so he doesn’t show any surprise. He wonders why he can remember his SIS training so much better around Masaki than around Sho. “It gets hot in the kitchen all day.”
“Ah.”
Masaki doesn’t say anything else, and his face doesn’t register any suspicions. Then again, Jun thinks, he could just be good at hiding them. He wants to ask again why Sho left the school but doesn’t.
--
Nino stays cooped up in the basement of his shop more and more, and Sho won’t admit it, but he’s glad to not have to go out at night alone. Winter’s here, and their fingers get chilled quickly from tinkering with the rails. Tonight they’ve got another bomb ready - this time, they’ve been tasked with a bridge - no marvelous feat of engineering, this, but Nino’s doubled the power just to be on the safe side.
Most of the things they’ve done the past several weeks have already been repaired, but there have been no increased patrols in the area - Hitler’s got far more worrisome things to deal with than a few instances of railroad sabotage south of Paris.
Sho leaves him in charge of rigging some of the supports. He’s scared of heights, Jun can just tell from the look in his eyes. Jun shimmies down to tie wires, and though it’s only a few meters from the river below, Sho keeps telling him to be careful. Jun worries that Sho likes him too.
They’ve got fifteen minutes until Orleans wants them to trigger it. It’s snowing lightly, but not freezing, and he and Sho sit at the end of the unspooled wire, closer than either is willing to admit is necessary. They’ve been out most nights for weeks now, so he dares to ask the question that’s been bugging him.
“Why’d you leave the school?”
Sho sets the detonator in the dirt before them. “Figures that Masaki would try to be your friend.”
Jun presses. “He misses you. He says you two haven’t spoken since you left.”
“And I won’t speak to him,” Sho spits out, rubbing his hands together. “He’s nobody I want to know.”
Masaki’s one of the kindest people Jun’s ever met. “What did he do?”
“Nothing.” Sho’s angry, body shaking and not just from the weather. “He did nothing, that’s why.”
“Don’t follow.”
“Well, what Masaki isn’t telling you is how Headmaster Levy got fired,” Sho explains, and Jun smarts instantly at the name. “The Gestapo came in and took him off for questioning. Yeah, questioning, I’m sure. I went all the way to Paris to see where they’d taken him, but apparently there was no record of a Levy ever teaching at St. Lucie’s School for Boys.”
“Jewish.”
Sho nods. “Nobody said anything. Nobody stood up for Headmaster Levy - they let him get carted off. So I quit.”
“Didn’t bring the Headmaster back,” Jun dares, knowing that the whole thing is a sore subject with Sho. “Masaki says he won’t leave the students. Did they mean so little to you?”
Sho’s an idealist. Sho went to university in Paris, Nino’s told him. Sho was a communist for a few years, Nino had said, “but who wasn’t for a while, right?” Sho stood up for the Jewish headmaster, and now he blew up train tracks.
“They meant everything to me,” Sho admits. “Let them hate me, let Masaki hate me, but I don’t want my students living in fear of Hitler. I don’t want them living in a France that collaborates, in a France that is not free.”
It’s a well-practiced speech, or it sounds as such. Sho is a lecturer after all, and he chooses his words carefully even when it is just him and Jun in the middle of the cold winter night. He wishes Sho would speak plainly - perhaps he’d have more of a following in Bellegarde if he was less of a professor with a lofty agenda, less of an intellectual with a stubborn streak a mile wide.
“Five minutes,” he says to Sho, and a sharp wind blasts through the trees, rustling their coats and blowing snow into their hair, and sending the wire shaking. The bridge...
Sho tries to keep him from getting up, but Jun’s halfway to the bridge already, reexamining his efforts. The wire around one of the bridge supports has loosened, and he’s already scrambling down. His hands are chapped, but gloves would make him slip, so he grips the iron tight, reaching for the wire that’s dangling precariously.
“Just leave it!” Sho is calling down to him, looking through the wooden railroad ties. “It’ll still work!”
As Sho strives for perfection in his speech, so Jun strives for it in his work. If Nino discovered that they’d been lax in their task that night, well, it wouldn’t be pretty. He gets it retied to his satisfaction, and he climbs. Of course, it’s slicker than Jun had planned - the cold rain from the night before and the snow now have made the supports slippery under his shoes. It’s not a long drop, Jun muses when his foot slips and his body hits the support hard enough to knock the wind from him.
“Jun!”
That Sho is worried has Jun worried. For all that he’s afraid, already Sho is gripping the support, seeking safe footing underneath him as he tries to climb down to help.
“I’m fine, I’ll come back up. You need to trigger it on time,” he calls up as he regains his momentum and climbs. But Sho isn’t paralyzed by his fear, and he’s got his hand out as Jun reaches him. He lets Sho’s hand graze his back before he climbs up and extends his own hand to pull the other man back up onto the track.
Sho is nearly hysterical from ignoring his fear and trying to come after him, and Jun doesn’t know what to do other than embrace him. “Might have ended up at the bottom of the ravine,” Sho’s babbling as Jun rests his chin against the crown of Sho’s head.
“Calm down, I’m fine.”
Sho’s still in disbelief, and the trigger to detonate is probably in the snow-covered dirt where they’d been hiding. Jun rubs the man’s shoulder, the wool of Sho’s coat scratchy under his shivering fingers.
“You’re not even from France, and you’re helping to fight for her.”
He gets up, reaching under Sho’s arm to haul him to his feet. “We need to get clear so we can blow the bridge.”
They return, and Sho’s in no state to do it. Jun is running on the breaths his lungs will allow after his near fall, and he puts his thumb over the switch. Sho is pressed along the side of him as Jun sets off the explosives. The black sky burns orange, and Sho covers him like he had that first night as the bridge collapses into the river.
It’s time to go, time to hurry back to where they’ve parked their bicycles, but Sho won’t get off of him. Jun tosses the detonator Nino’s crafted aside, turning so his back is against the earthen mound they’ve sheltered behind. Sho is there instantly, lips burning against the chilled flesh of his face. He gasps, but only once when he finds the warmth of Sho’s mouth, sliding his hands under the wool coat to find the heat of Sho’s body.
It is some type of hysteria, Jun’s brain tries to explain, for why else would he stay in place and claim every inch of skin that he dares, letting his tongue bring moisture to Sho’s cracked lips, demanding entrance to the man’s mouth. Sho’s breath hitches as Jun tries to move against him, their bodies coming into closer contact.
Jun hasn’t known such urgency since the Luftwaffe were trying to decimate London, and obviously this is far preferable to German planes and bombs. He’s wanted to kiss Sho since the night they met, wanted the fingers that gestured impatiently to a hand-drawn map to chart territory up his spine and never drift away.
Someone is bound to have heard the explosion in one of the villages close by, and he breaks apart to catch his breath. Sho agrees without a word. They race for the bicycles, hearts beating wildly, perhaps keeping perfect time like the watches in Nino’s shop. They leave the bridge ruins behind.
Sho’s home is small and filled with stacks of books, but his bed is free. Hands and lips that met in desperation back at the bridge come together once more, but more languidly, tentatively. Jun has breakfast to cook for fifty-seven boys and several teachers, Masaki included when daybreak comes, but all he wants to know are the planes and curves of Sho’s body in the candlelight.
--
The following morning, he stumbles into the school’s kitchen, and though he’s not late, Aiba is already boiling eggs. Jun doesn’t bother to change out of yesterday’s clothes, instead throwing on his apron and finding some ham to slice up and fry for the boys. Portions are getting smaller and smaller - meat is near impossible to get and ridiculously expensive when available.
“Jun,” Aiba says quietly. He doesn’t look up from the skillet, doesn’t want to see the accusation or questioning in Masaki’s eyes. “I was in Satoshi’s bar last night. There were some soldiers there.”
Soldiers in Bellegarde town proper, and Sho hadn’t even known? He tries not to let his shoulders tense.
“My German’s not the best, but my ears are pretty good,” Masaki continues. The ham is sizzling and popping in the pan. “They said there’s some important Gestapo guys coming straight from Berlin tomorrow night, going down the line just north of town.”
Is Aiba…trying to help out with the resistance? Maybe he heard incorrectly. Most of the town stayed out of German business. Nobody wanted to end up like Headmaster Levy or the previous cook. They had families and businesses to protect. Why would Aiba take such a risk?
“We’ll have to make sure the boys are in bed early,” he says weakly, getting the chipped plates out to carry into the dining hall.
Aiba doesn’t say anything else, but when Jun accidentally meets his eyes, he can see that Aiba didn’t sleep the night before. He’s helping Jun to help Sho. Aiba’s known all along about what Sho does - about why Jun has come to Bellegarde. Aiba knows that Jun lies to his face every day, and he still smiles and helps out in the kitchen.
Masaki brings out the food and the plates with him, and when Jun says “thank you” he hopes that Aiba knows it’s not just gratitude for helping with the meal.
--
The guilt eats at Jun’s insides - he needs to report what Aiba has told him, needs to confirm it. Protocol says he reports to Ohno first, but he needs to see Sho. He only left the man’s bed hours earlier, but things have changed drastically. Important Gestapo members? Orleans will have big plans for this.
Nino finds him knocking on Sho’s door, hands shoved in his pockets and a knowing look in his eyes. “Someone from Orleans came to fetch him. Masaki wasn’t the only one in the pub last night.”
“Big security leak if it’s true.”
Nino nods, and he follows the man into his watch shop. The clocks on the wall seem to be on an erratic rhythm, but it could just be the knowledge that some of Hitler’s nastiest dogs will pass just north of town the next evening.
There’s more wires and dynamite on the table - stuff Nino’s been hoarding since Orleans halted a convoy in a daring raid the week before. Jun watches Nino putting things together. He knows what Sho’s planning instantly, knows that he’s probably making sure Orleans knows what he’s doing.
Sho arrives in mid-afternoon, and he smiles to see Jun in the basement of the watch shop. Jun wants to tell Sho about Aiba, about the man’s desperation to help Sho against his own better judgment. He can’t bring himself to do it.
“Need to help with dinner,” he says, and Nino lights another cigarette and waves.
Sho follows him up the stairwell, and it seems that Orleans gave him the okay. They’re not just blowing the track - they’re blowing it when the train comes through. They’re not just interfering now. They’re plotting to take out an entire car full of Gestapo brass.
He grips Jun’s hands excitedly. “Bellegarde’s a place they won’t suspect,” Sho tells him, running his thumbs over Jun’s knuckles. “It’s our chance, it’s really our chance.”
Jun just smiles back, unable to resist Sho’s enthusiasm. They kiss quickly - the sun’s setting soon, and it feels just as right in the fading sunlight as it did out under the stars and underneath Sho’s blankets. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Dinner really isn’t for another hour, so he stops to see Ohno. He already knows why Jun’s come.
“Still waiting to hear back,” Satoshi tells him in the back office of his bar. “They’re wiring me tomorrow afternoon…”
Headquarters sure is waiting until the last minute this time.
Masaki doesn’t say a word to Jun when he returns for dinner. He watches Aiba walk up and down the dining hall floor, gently patting students on the head, breaking up a small food fight. He doesn’t smile once. By helping Sho, he’s put the boys at risk, and he’s having trouble living with his decision.
Jun doesn’t know what to say that could help.
--
Ohno’s impatient when Jun returns to his bar the following day. Ohno has never been impatient before. He lays down the coded message on the table in front of Jun, Satoshi’s small, neat handwriting having transcribed it.
Gestapo train not to be stopped.
“What do they mean?” Jun wonders angrily, knowing that Nino’s probably got more dynamite than Sho can carry sitting in the basement of the shop. “They can’t call it off so quickly!”
Satoshi shakes his head. “Orders are orders. There’s going to be a major operation sometime in the spring, and they don’t want the Nazis knowing where the invasion force will land. All us grunts already on the ground here have to keep the Germans guessing. They want us to get all the resistance groups in line. No time to be blowing up trains now. We need to start spreading misinformation. Sho and Nino will be expected to help.”
“And what if I can’t stop them?” Jun asks him, knowing how eager Sho is to prove himself, prove Bellegarde’s usefulness to the higher ups in Orleans.
Ohno takes the message from the table, flicking his lighter before Jun can blink. The paper disintegrates, and Satoshi’s words are in English. They sound almost strange to Jun’s ears after all these weeks. “You stop him. By any means necessary, you stop Sho Sakurai from blowing up that train tonight.”
“Or else what?” Jun asks, worried about the consequences.
Ohno doesn’t answer.
--
“This is the best opportunity we’ve ever had,” Sho cries when Jun relays the message. “They can’t just pick and choose what activity to suspend like this! That’s not resistance, that’s politics!”
Nino’s still playing with wires as Jun sips wine and tries to think of a way to change Sho’s mind.
Jun needs Sho to give in, needs him to stop being so pigheaded. “You’re okay with murder?”
“Are you defending what they’ve done to us? To their own people?” Sho shouts back, spittle catching at the side of his mouth.
He tries to plead with Sho’s common sense, what little of it remains now that the man’s flown into a rage that Jun understands all too perfectly. “If the Gestapo don’t arrest you, then someone else will.”
Nino gets up from the bench, squeezing Sho’s shoulder briefly before heading up to his room above the shop. He’s rigged the dynamite, but he won’t be complicit in murder, that much seems obvious. They’re alone now, standing at opposite sides of the room. Two nights earlier, he was curled alongside him.
“Don’t go.” He doesn’t know what to say that’ll make Sho abandon his crusade, and his head’s aching. “Think of the town, won’t you? Think about the students you’ve left behind. Think about how hard the boot will come down on Bellegarde when you blow a train full of SS sky high!”
“Don’t you make me the villain here…”
He slams his hand down on Nino’s work bench, jostling the wine glass and the bombs, making Sho jump. “Why do you resist here, Sho? Why didn’t you just go to Orleans? You went to Paris for your headmaster, but you’re happy to take train tracks apart here? Are you too scared to be in the middle of it? Are you scared, Sho?”
It’s the wrong thing entirely because Sho’s got a satchel, and he’s loading the things from the table into it. “Not a coward,” Sho’s grumbling.
“Sho…” Jun’s feeling dizzy. Was it warm in here?
“I’m not a coward.” Sho’s eyes are deadly serious. “Tonight, I’ll prove it.”
His vision’s getting cloudy, and he grips the table. “You…Sho…” He sees the wine glass on the table. Some intelligence agent he was.
Sho seems sad as Jun falls to the floor. He must have gotten some sort of sleeping draught or knock-out drugs from his connections in Orleans. He’s trying to stay awake, to withstand it.
“Orleans sent a message this afternoon…I didn’t tell you, didn’t tell Nino either,” Sho says quietly, crouching down and brushing hair away from Jun’s eyes. Orleans called off the mission too. “I have to do this.”
Whatever Sho gave him works quickly.
--
The train arrives in half an hour, and Jun’s thighs ache from how fast he’s pedaling the bicycle. The path is slick with ice, and he’s already fallen twice.
Nino had suspected something fishy, discovering Jun on his basement floor. A bucket of water to the face had woken him, though he’s still woozy. He told Nino to speak to Satoshi - Nino didn’t ask questions.
His willpower’s seemingly enough to keep him moving forward. He drops the bike at the edge of the trees where Sho left his and takes off on foot, hoping that he won’t have to knock Sho out in return. The track isn’t fully rigged yet since Sho’s working alone.
“I only gave you half,” Sho says, no apologies, as Jun approaches.
“Please.” The Orleans group will punish Sho if he goes through with this. There will be no more resistance in Bellegarde, no matter what point Sho thinks he’s trying to make.
“Jun, you know I can’t.”
He watches Sho work for a full minute before he crouches down to help him. They don’t need the train coming by when they are still working. Sho looks embarrassed as they get the rest of it wired to explode. “I’ll get this bit tied, get down there with the detonator.”
Sho obeys, and Jun finishes wiring it. They sit in silence, Sho holding the detonator in his hands. The time for the train comes and goes.
“Maybe it’s late,” Sho whispers, his breath coming out in small, nervous puffs.
Jun gets up and heads for the track, putting his ear down to listen for vibrations that might indicate the Gestapo are on their way. It’s then that the lights of torches turn on, and he hears the boots coming in the gravel in both directions on the track. Run, he thinks in Sho’s direction, for the love of God, run!
The wire leading back to their position is slack as he hears the shouted German commands. The intel had been a trick - Aiba couldn’t have known. Even though Orleans had called it off, nobody had mentioned the possibility of it being a trap. He has to let Sho get back to town, so he puts his hands up and gets light in his eyes.
His subpar German is enough for him to know he’s being ordered face down next to the train tracks. He does everything they say, and they place him in cuffs and drag him off to a truck they’ve got waiting about a kilometer off. He heard them shouting about checking the woods, and he can only pray that Sho managed to escape.
They put a bag over his head, and Jun hopes that Satoshi will know what to do.
--
Two days pass with no food and no water and no warmth, and they’ve got him in a small holding cell at Beaune-la-Rolande, Jun’s best guess. It’s the last place they hold prisoners and undesirables before they get transported to Germany and never get seen again.
Jun isn’t overly fond of not being seen again. They haven’t tortured him. Hell, they haven’t even spoken to him. They think it’s wiser to break his spirits by keeping him in darkness, making him piss in a corner until the whole god-forsaken cell smells of it and the people who’ve been held here before. He doesn’t want to know how many others have been in here.
Once they get him to Germany, it’ll start. They’ll want to know where Jun’s from, who he’s been working with, and he wonders how long he’ll last. Will they try to drown him? Electrocute him? Break every bone in his body one at a time with a hammer? Will a Gestapo simply take out a pistol and shoot him in the head when he refuses?
He hears more of the cells down the hall open. They’re moving them now, and Jun can barely stand from all the hours curled up, trying to retain some body heat. He almost wishes there had been a train for Sho to blow up. Dying like a dog at German hands is not preferable to whatever punishments Ohno would have had to bring down on him for disobeying orders.
There’s another canvas sack over his head as they pull him from the cell. There are children going on the train with him. Jun can hear them screaming for their mothers. He can smell the smoke - the train is close. A gunshot rings out close by, leaving him numbed and stunned. He drops to his knees as the soldier escorting him starts to return fire. He’s blind, momentarily deafened, and he may be shot to pieces before they get him onto the train.
There’s screaming, more gunfire, and then someone’s hauling him away. He still can’t see, he can’t get the sack off his head. “Let go!” he shouts in English, unable to focus in French.
“I’m here,” Sho’s voice answers in English. “Jun, it’s me.”
--
Some of Sho’s comrades in Orleans launched the raid on Beaune-la-Rolande. Against explicit orders from Paris, against explicit orders from Westminster.
“Not just for you,” Sho says as he encourages Jun to drink from the canteen. They’re in a most likely stolen truck, bouncing along the road and away from the holding camp. There are two from Orleans up front, and just the pair of them in the rear. “Some others from their group were arrested. Just lucky you got hauled in to the same place.”
“Lucky,” Jun says.
Sho has an arm around his shoulder, hand tangled in Jun’s unkempt hair. There’s a million things he wants to tell Sho. He wants to yell, scream, shout - he wants to squeeze Sho’s hand and not let go of it. He settles for Sho’s weight and warmth beside him.
Ohno’s waiting for him by an idling truck in the middle of nowhere. His face is calm, no judgment, no anger. But no relief either. It’s Jun and Sho’s fault that Ohno’s cover has been blown in town. Sho helps him out of the truck and into the front seat of the other, slamming the door. He gives Jun a strange smile before stepping back and getting into the truck with the other resistance members.
Sho’s going back to Bellegarde, and it’s only when the truck pulls away that Jun realizes that he’s leaving France. Ohno gets in the back, and a driver that Jun doesn’t know turns the key in the ignition.
“Wait,” he says. “Wait, I didn’t even say goodbye to him. I didn’t even thank him…”
“There’s a plane waiting, and the window is very short.”
Ohno says nothing else as the truck goes in the opposite direction of Sho’s.
--
Bellegarde, Loiret, North Central France
Late 1945
Nobody’s waiting with their dog to pull him out of a tree, but he didn’t have to parachute into France this time.
Instead, Aiba’s got a tiny little car and a shy, but welcoming smile. “We never filled your place,” Masaki admits. “Cooking and teaching at the same time was getting to be a bit of a hassle.”
Jun returns the smile as they drive back to the school. Enrollment’s gone up a bit, so he’ll be cooking for nearly seventy boys now. However, there’s a room in the teaching quarters for him this time on account of him being a member of the Bellegarde resistance. It’s strange that the town had turned a blind eye to it before, but now that France is free and Hitler is dead, the town has embraced those who stood up to Germany.
Aiba lets him settle in, and he’s just getting his socks in a drawer when there’s a tap at the door. It’s the history instructor, and Jun sees the cane at his side.
“You weren’t so old when I left,” Jun says quietly, a thousand questions on his tongue that won’t come out as the teacher slowly walks into the room.
“Went to Paris,” he answers, tapping the cane against the floor a few times. “Helped a few of your countrymen. Took some shrapnel for my efforts.” He laughs and meets Jun’s eyes. “It was worth it. More exciting than unscrewing bolts, you could say.”
“Teaching again?”
“Yes.”
He takes a step closer. “Missed you.”
Sho lifts the cane, moving the hooked end of it around Jun’s arm to pull him forward into an easy embrace. It’s been almost two years.
“Bellegarde missed you more.”
vote here! :)