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He has waited years for this day.
It is January, and the chill lies heavy over the approach to Ostend, a damp and tenacious freezing fog that makes him dig his hands deep into the pockets of his trenchcoat. The men lined beside him are silent; they have all gravitated towards the railings and stand there more or less at attention, even those of them who are not of the Navy and therefore have no reason to adhere to Naval standards. They stand there nonetheless, a mismatched crew bound now only by the memory of war.
This day is special.
The trenchcoat is new, a sombre navy blue; the heavy worsted wool keeps out the worst of the weather. He is wearing a suit underneath, and it feels odd, out of keeping with the leaping tumult of feelings that make his breath stutter in his throat and his hands shake as he reaches up to tug his cap into place.
The thrum of the engines is a comforting familiarity. The Godetia; he had served aboard her at the beginning of the war, before they gave him a ship of his own to command, and now he knows himself to be a supernumerary, outside the day-to-day running of shipboard life. It is as if a lifeline has been cut, one of familiarity born of a sense of purpose; the passage from England has been mercifully brief, allowing little time for introspection.
“Who'll be waiting for you, sir?” asks the man next to him abruptly, and Haddock turns, surprised by the question. “Anyone?”
The true answer sticks in his throat, thwarted as it is by time and loss and the agony of not knowing. “I – I hope so, aye. And for you?”
The young man – and he is no more than a boy; thank God that some of the young have survived this years-long hell – smiles, an ucomplicated expression of delight. “My girl, sir. We hope to marry soon.”
“Then may the best of happiness go with you, lad.”
The harbour walls loom into sight, and they fall silent again. The water is still and glassy and slips past fathom by fathom as they draw near; Haddock can no longer suppress the tremor in his hands as hope long suppressed threatens to choke him. He stares towards the sea wall with the desperation of the condemned.
He has not heard from Tintin in four long years.
There may be nothing left. An unmarked grave, perhaps a rumour and a whisper of a man who died for his country; there may be a house still at Marlinspike and no life left to fill it. If this is the case, well, he has his revolver, tucked safe in his jacket, and there is no one left to mourn his own passing.
“Listen,” the boy says suddenly. “Listen, they're cheering!”
The fog is lifting with the sunrise, and Haddock blinks against the light as they glide into the harbour. The roar of the crowd rises to meet them, a bright melee of colour seperating itself out into hundreds of people, all spread out along the harbour wall; and one by one the men beside him break line and rush forward to the rail, crying out in recognition.
He stands his ground, hands now clasped behind his back, and cannot quite find it in himself to smile.
They dock in chaos, with the sound of a marching band in their ears and the men now talking excitedly, shouting to waving figures on the harbourside, throwing their caps into the air in sheer delight. Haddock reaches down to shoulder his bag – it is not heavy – and moves to the gangway with the rest, letting the others pass first, watching as the crowd surges forward to meet them. He sees the boy who had stood beside him on deck lift a bright-eyed lass into the air and twirl her around, laughing, his cap set firmly over her hair.
Everywhere thre are reunions, happiness, relief; it is a day of celebration, a day of glory for the entire country, for her heroes - diminished and battle-scarred but alive - have come home.
Tintin - Tintin is not here.
A weakness takes hold of him all at once as he stands there at the top of the gangway, a gaping ragged ache in his chest that threatens to buckle his knees. He reaches out blindly for support, clings to cold damp metal until he can see again and then steps forward, one mechanical step after another, making his way through the crowds; none of them turn to look at him, and he is glad, pathetically glad. He had not realised how strongly that hope had remained within him. It will be a long journey to Marlinspike Hall; he feels he should visit his old home, say one final goodbye to whatever is left, from one ruined shell to another.
“Captain?”
The voice makes him stop dead, blinking away wetness from his eyes, suddenly unable to move.
“Captain?” That voice again, and he can't look. He can't. It'll be the death of him, and if death is all he has left then he wants it to be a quiet, private thing, away from pity and shame.
A warm hand wraps around his wrist, suddenly, a gesture so intimate that he gasps. “Captain, look at me.”
He turns, jerks around and finds himself face-to-face with all of his wildest dreams, the ones he has not allowed himself to believe in for so very long.
It is Tintin.
They are in each other's arms before he has time to think, to feel, to do anything but grasp great handfuls of his former lover's coat and bury his face into a warm neck. Tintin's shuddering gasp is audible, and he says, muffled, “Captain – oh, Captain, I knew, I knew -”
“Hush,” Haddock manages, his world realigning. “Thundering typhoons, Tintin – Tintin.”
Tintin moves away scant inches so that Haddock can see him properly. It is a changed face, thinner, harder, with fine lines around the eyes that had not been there six years ago, when they last held each other like this; Haddock knows that he himself has changed, his hair beginning to be scattered with grey at the temples, his body hardened by rationing and the rigours of command. “I couldn't contact you,” Tintin says, his voice breaking. “I couldn't, they would have found me, and then -”
Haddock kisses him, hard; he couldn't have stopped himself, not for a hundred firing squads. Tintin breathes in sharply through his nose and surges against him, arms wrapping around his neck; there are hundreds of people around them, and Haddock couldn't care less, because this kiss is enough to mend all the half-broken hearts in the world. He'll be damned if he ever goes back to bloody Britain, he thinks, and breaks the kiss to say, “But where -”
“Marlinspike stands, Captain,” Tintin says, his cheeks hectically flushed, and for the first time Haddock notices that Tintin is not wearing his old plus-fours; the trousers make him look taller, older. “I – I went there as soon as the Resistance let me leave, and – and I've started tidying up; it was used as a base, and some of the rooms were – anyway, I thought, maybe, we could go there and maybe I could stay -”
“Where in tarnation would you go otherwise?” Haddock growled. “Y'don't think I'll ever be letting you out of my sight again? Blistering barnacles, but I didn't even know you were alive. I thought I'd find a – a grave, I thought I'd have to -”
“I'm sorry,” Tintin says helplessly. “But Captain, if you think I ever stopped missing you for a second -”
“Captain Haddock?”
Haddock turns, relaxing his hold on Tintin ever so slightly, and finds a group of men who have served with him; they want to say farewell and to shake his hand, and he obliges them all without taking his arm from around Tintin's shoulder. Once, he might have hidden that affection, but that was long ago and in a different time when such things had seemed important; now, Tintin leans against him and the warm weight is enough to make a miracle of the day, of the whole sordid mess of war.
Tintin looks up at him as the sailors depart, the old smile lurking deep in his eyes. “I bespoke rooms at the inn by the port, I don't know if you -”
Sudden wanting fills him, fierce and startlingly normal. He is taken back to the days before, remembers Tintin arching beneath him flushed and wanton in their bed, remembers the days when some madcap adventure made every touch seem like it might be the last, and he grabs hold of Tintin's arm. “Yes,” he says roughly, and Tintin's eyes darken as he swallows. “Yes.”
The inn is a quiet one, set well away from the main port and in an undamaged part of the town, and their hands brush as they walk, not quite accidentally yet not quite by design. Once a motor car forces them to stand back against the wall of a narrow alleyway, and Tintin's hand slips into Haddock's and stays there, half-hidden by the swing of their coats as they walk.
After the years of waiting, every second now seems impossibly long.
They are kissing again before they even have the door to their room properly shut, this time with an urgent hunger that makes his toes curl; Tintin's hands shove the coat from his shoulders, fumble eagerly at the suit jacket. Haddock growls in frustration and tugs him towards the bed, shoves him down onto the neatly-made covers – Tintin laughs, breathless and hungry, as together they shove the trousers down too-lean thighs – and takes Tintin's cock into his mouth as deep and as fast as he can.
Tintin gives a keening moan and grips onto his hair, hips lifting from the bed. Haddock swallows around his cock, slowly, deliberately, holding him down to stop the frantic thrusts; Tintin pants above him, the kneading of his fingers a shaky desperate rhythm. “Captain,” he says, voice breaking, “please, please, I need -”
Haddock hums, pressing the heel of his hand against his own need as those legs wrap around his shoulders and Tintin squirms desperately, saying things that make no sense, a shaky litany of endearments that halt abruptly when he slides one hand under Tintin's thigh and back, back into familiar tight heat. Tintin gives a choked cry and shakes like a leaf as he comes.
Haddock wipes his mouth and leans up to kiss him. Tintin makes a small pleased sound into the kiss and then says, low, “Have you, since -”
“No.” Of course not; what could ever compare? There were girls enough in the English ports who would have been willing, and doubtless boys if one knew where to look, but none of them would have been Tintin.
“It's been so long,” Tintin says, and there's suddenly something almost bleak in his voice; he drops his hands to the Captain's shirt, undoes the buttons there. “Six years,” he says, “and we're everything that's left. Everything.”
Haddock looks into his eyes then, really looks, and knows that there are more scars there than he can ever count or even guess at; the last vestiges of innocence are gone, blown away with the war that stripped this land to its bare and bleeding bones. “It'll be enough, lad,” he whispers.
There is a moment's silence where they really, truly see one another, and then Tintin's arms are around him again, and Tintin is heaving in great shuddering breaths that are not quite crying, terrible dry sobs that are far more raw and more painful than weeping. Haddock holds him, clings to him like a drowning man and doesn't let go. They rock together in the middle of the bed, the tears coming at last, and it's messy and uncomfortable and Haddock's shoulder is stabbing with pain as (a fragment of shell had hit two years ago, and the muscle is not quite what it should be), but this feels right, finally, finally.
Eventually Tintin pulls free; he looks shocked, his eyes red and swollen. “Captain, I – I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – oh, rats, and I meant it to be perfect.”
It's so Tintin, despite everything, that Haddock can't help but smile. “It'll keep, eh? Confound it, Tintin, d'you think that – that I can't last a little longer?”
“I was selfish,” Tintin says, a shade reproachfully, swiping a hand over his eyes; there are scars all over his fingers as if he has fought with barbed wire. There are so many stories to be told.
“No, you lubber, I was selfish.” And it's true; just the sheer joy of being together, of seeing Tintin fall apart so beautifully under his mouth, his merest touch... “I truly was. Time enough and more for that, eh?”
Tintin nods, and rests their foreheads together, thumbs rubbing over Haddock's collarbones in tiny circles. “We'll make time,” he says softly, with that old determination that he must never have lost. “And we'll – we'll never be parted again. Will we?”
“Not even when you drag me off on some harebrained scheme of adventure?”
Tintin's smile is watery but mischievous. “Especially not then, Captain. My – my harebrained schemes aren't the same without you.”
Everything in its own time, now.
It is the spring of 1945, and the war is over at last. The war is over, and Tintin is here.