Note: Dedicated (inadequately) in infinite respect and gratitude to mathematician and cryptanalyst, Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, who, among other things, served his country by cracking Nazi codes in WWII. Convicted under British sodomy laws of 'gross indecency' in 1952, (after reporting a robbery by a casual sex partner to the police) he was sentenced to 'chemical castration' with female hormones and killed himself at 41 years of age. Check for 'Turing Number' on your bank statement. Every time we turn on a computer, we owe it in part to him.
He should have had a Scotty.
And on a lighter note, here's me making Kelly bi - and still not getting them together. *bitchslaps Muse*
There's a tap on his window.
He ignores it.
The tapping is insistent.
After several minutes, he rises, padding silently on bare feet across the white vinyl floor to the wire screen. Looking out, he sees nothing but the dark. He turns to go back.
A frantic, urgent tapping.
He turns back again to the glass, white frame in black night, pale moon casting silver light. He places his thumbs on the catches, pushes them aside, tries to raise the casement. His hands are trembling too badly. He tries again, and his fingers slip off the polished wood.
There's more tapping, though he can see nothing, and he tries one last time, and the window judders open, a square of chicken-wire open to the night sky.
"About time!" the familiar voice whispers frantically. "About bloody time! Come on, we don't have all night."
He squints into the darkness, and can just make out the whites of Scotty's eyes.
The remnants of his brain, the ones that haven't lost short-term memory, whisper back from assignment in Mexico. He feels nothing but grief, and turns away.
"Duke!" comes the urgent whisper. "Can we puh-leeze save the soul-searching for when we're on the plane? This is no time for a crisis of conscience, you know that, you got lousy, lousy timing, man…" A series of small snips tell him that the chicken-wire is being cut, and his theory is confirmed when, a moment later, the black-clad figure squeezes through the window like a human oil spill. He's wearing black on black, and he stands out against the whiteness of the room like a photo negative. Everything that's ever been good about his life, black on white. He stares at the dark figure a moment, then moves to the bed, sitting heavily.
The man crosses over to stand before him, gripping him by the shoulders, eyes deep and serious, drinking in the sight of him. "Oh, man, oh, Kel…" Kelly feels himself pulled into a warm embrace. Shocked as Scotty holds him tight, he squirms, unwilling to contaminate his partner. But the man just murmurs into his hair: "Why didn't you tell me, man? Why didn't you…" he pulls back to hold him at arm's length again… "…why didn't you, y'know, just tell me?"
He stares at Scotty, unable to believe that he isn't rejecting him. That he's not disgusted by him. That he's just embraced a known sodomite. "Uh…" The man is really, genuinely expecting an answer, and he finds that surreal. "Kinda obvious, isn't it?"
"No, it isn't, Hoby!" Scotty grimaces in frustration. "I coulda covered for ya! I coulda… done something!"
The image of his pure partner covering for him is only funny until he realizes that Scotty's serious. "You don't mean that."
"Hey, what do you take me for, Homer? I've read the classics! Ancient Greece was founded on guys getting it on with guys. Just because in this century…"
Kelly stares. Scotty accepting this was the one thing he never factored in… But he shakes his head. Scotty's got to be making him feel better. His clean-cut, All-American partner accepting his deviant proclivities is – has to be – nothing but a sick joke.
"Well, Watson, much as I might desire to have a heart-to-heart with you, now is not the time," the figure rises from the bed, "because we have a date at the airstrip. We can talk all we want over the Atlantic."
Atlantic? But it doesn't matter. "I'm not going."
"Oh, that's where you're wrong," Scotty says, and the steel in his voice scares Kelly, for it has never before been directed at him. "You're coming. On your feet, preferably – if I have to, I'll drag you out of here unconscious, which I frankly wouldn't prefer – but you're coming."
"I could… call for them," he threatens, though the thought of them coming in here is enough to sluice his insides with acid. "Have you…thrown out."
"You could, but you won't." His partner pulls some clothes from a duffel, dumps them on the bed. A dark sweater, dark jeans, underwear, even socks and his favorite loafers. "C'mon, make with the sartorial eloquence. A Department hospital's easier than a KGB facility, but not by much, and I'd just as soon not have you climbing down there looking like Liberace in that…" He leans forward, fingers Kelly's scrubs. "…I dunno, phyllo pastry? Now get dressed."
He remains motionless, and Scotty grasps his wrist and pushes the sweater into his shaking, nerveless fingers. He must have winced when his sore wrist was touched, because Scotty gasps softly and snatches his hand away, then reaches for his wrist, turning it over in the moonlight, and even in the dimness he can see the shocked expression.
Silently, Scotty guides him over to the window, examining him in the pale light, and in this he can no more refuse to comply than he could ever have, in the days when Scotty was still his trainer and all was right with the world.
He wishes he didn't have to see the naked pain in the refined features as the dark hands carefully turn his head this way and that, seeing the burns on his temples, as his partner undoes the scrubs, letting them fall to the floor, wishes he didn't have to hear the indrawn breath at the sight of the needle marks on his arms, the distressed murmurs as the gentle fingers ghost over his bruises. These are what he's bought and paid for; he couldn't be content with women alone, and now he'll pay the price, and Scotty belongs far away from here.
The gentle fingers touch his temple. "How many times?" he asks, misery burning in the voice.
"Not many," he says. "I think they thought it'd make me more amenable to chemical castration, but you know me, I've never looked good in tits." Scotty flinches, hard. "Sorry."
He bends for the white jacket and Scotty is already there, placing the dark sweater into his hand. "Shoulda brought something softer," the man murmurs, "but I didn't know."
He drops the sweater to the floor. "Sorry."
Scotty grabs his shoulders, gripping them and almost shaking him with an urgent, furious whisper. "What on earth is wrong with you, Jack?! You think I want to stand by and watch you lobotomized tomorrow? Huh? Is that what you think?!"
"No," he says flatly. "It's not that." He turns away, moves to the bed, lies down. "This isn't your world, man. Get out of here."
The pain in Scotty's face as he comes around the bed, kneeling to match his eye level, reminds him of something, and it takes him a minute to place it. He's seen it once before, in a casino in Hong Kong, his quixotic partner in a hopeless quest to save a woman who didn't want to be saved…
And then it changes, transmuted into anger so blazing it scorches him. "Not my world? Not my world? How dare you?" Scotty snaps, and the sheer vehemence in his fierce whisper makes Kelly blink. "How do you think I could live if I knew you'd been lobotomized? How do you think I could live if I knew you were in a mental institution? If I knew they were gonna castrate you? If I knew anyone was gonna hurt a hair on your head?!" He glares at Kelly. "If you say that, you're saying that everything we had between us was a lie. That I never cared for you. You got the guts to say that, Charlie?"
Kelly opens his mouth, and Scotty slaps his own forehead. "Aw, I shoulda known better than to ask, because when Mr. Self-Destructive gets a choice between bad and worse, he's always gonna pick the worse! What can I do to convince you, huh? How's about if I promise to make you wear a hair shirt and whip you every day? That gonna do it?"
A joke about kinky, with an attendant smile, threatens to bubble up, then sinks to the bottom again. "When Russ finds out you've busted me out of here…"
"Russell Gabriel—can go jump in the lake. You think I'd stay on with any organization that wants to have you lobotomized, you're crazier than any of the loons in here."
Kelly frowns. "I won't let you—"
"And I won't let you, so we're even. So you gonna get dressed, or what?"
"Where…"
"France," Scotty says matter-of-factly, "that's where I figured we'd go. Paris, highest concentration of cute chicks per square centimeter, and…" As he's speaking, he pads silently over to pick the discarded sweater up off the floor, coming over, gently maneuvering Kelly into a sitting position and manhandling it over his head and arms. He pulls it down, adjusts it, gives his shoulders a little pat. "…they got the Code Napoléon." He guides Kelly off the bed, and shell-shocked, Kelly allows himself to be stripped out of the scrub pants, letting Scotty dress him as a mother would a very young son. "So you can get it on with a gal or a guy, and no-one's gonna want to fry your brain. I think they have a fried-brain restaurant that serves fried brains, too…" He's got the shoes and socks on him, now, running a thumb lightly over the gash in Kelly's heel from where they pushed him over the threshold. "…You gonna be able to walk?"
"Scotty, I…" The name feels strange on his lips. He's felt it would be somehow a sacrilege to say it.
"C'mon, it's not a hard climb. The car's not far. And if it gets rough, you can lean on me."
He's been guided, led by both hands to the window, and as he stands looking out at the night, he balks. "Scotty, you don't have to… You can't seriously mean to…" He shakes his head. "Scotty… what are you doing?"
"Well, Inspecteur Giraud says his offer still stands. And if you're sick of cloaks and daggers, you know, Roland Garros don't care who you sleep with, just how fast is your backhand."
"No, I meant…" Kelly shook his head in frustration. "You just heard about this, what, yesterday, when you got back? This is too hasty… You can't just…"
"Can we have the intellectual debate in the car?" The dark hand gestures in the moonlight. "We're kinda pressed for time, here."
"But…" He pauses, half-in, half-out of the casement, Scotty guiding him past the sharp edges of the clipped wire. "You'd be giving up… You can still go, man… I…"
"Holmes," Scotty grabs his face in both hands, carefully avoiding the burns on his temples. "The secret to life is never ever giving up the thing you can never ever give up." He releases him, gives his shoulder an encouraging pat. "C'mon. Please."
Kelly shimmies down the drainpipe with the ease of long practice, reflexes taking over as he drops into the bushes. Beside him, Scotty drops with a rustle, and clinging to the shadows, they run across the shimmering, damp grass to the waiting car, a black '55 Ford, its curves and angles catching the pale moonlight.
And Scotty hands him the keys.
It's a simple gesture, but the world is in it. I trust you. I don't think less of you. You're still a man. You're still my partner. You can still lead, and I can still follow. Even hurt as bad as you are, I'd put my life in your hands, because I have faith in your strength. Nothing's changed between us.
Kelly takes them, meets his partner's eyes, knows that he means all this, and more.
And then they bolt into the car and are on their way.