Title: Untitled
Fandom: Dunkirk
Rating: PG
Length: 994 words
Pairing: Collins/Farrier
Content note: no warnings apply
Author’s note: The fic I almost didn’t post because I’ve been watching too much skating. Also the reason that this doesn’t have a title.
Summary: Set the morning after my last Dunkirk fic, Collins makes toast in search of some normality and his sister has questions.






Collins stands at the kitchen table, slicing the end off a national loaf for toast.

Upstairs, Farrier is in his bed. At some point, the reality of that is going to catch up with him, but for now he calmly slices bread and makes the tea. All very ordinary. A bit of normality in a world turned upside down.

Yesterday he'd been so glad to see Farrier alive and breathing that his mind had skipped over everything else in favour of fierce joy at seeing him again. In the morning light, the effect of the war had been inescapable. The close cropped hair, the dark shadow of bruises under Farrier's eyes, the pale grey shade to his skin even before he'd tried to get up and buckled, too exhausted to do more than be helped back into bed. The doctor had said it was probably just exhaustion, as though there was any sort of just about it. It had made Collins panic for a moment, seeing Farrier so vulnerable, seeing him submitting to being put back in bed without a protest. Remembering, he feels his hand clutch tight at the knife handle, slewing the blade into the loaf and ruining the neat slice in a jagged cut. He looks down at it and swears.

"How is he?" Mary is standing behind him, already dressed for work in her uniform and with her hair pinned up.

"Sleeping."

She makes a short, skeptical noise she learned from their mother at the non-answer. "You're making a mess of the bread."

He puts the knife down in disgust, stuffing his hands in his pockets. They haven't shaken so much since the Battle of Britain ended but they are trembling now. Mary takes up the knife without comment, cutting another slice and leaving the loaf tidy. She scrapes crumbs into a bowl for the chickens. Waste not want not.

"He's been away a long time," Mary says. "And it's early days. He only got out of hospital yesterday."

"I know." Collins rinses the teapot, feeling restless.

"He must have been through a lot."

"He has," Collins says, remembering what Farrier told him last night. "You haven't seen the state of his feet. He walked... practically walked back from Germany..." He stares at the scattering of tea leaves in the sink, imagining. He’s seen pilots hanging on to the last minute before, until they got to land and safety, apparently through sheer force of will alone. Sometimes they hung on long enough to get help. Sometimes they died, letting go as they got back to earth. He doesn't know how to explain to Mary why it matters that Farrier got to him before realising he could go no further.

"You've not had the easiest time either," Mary tells him gently. "When you were flying every hour of every day, and after the crash..."

"I know." They both know. There was a time when Mary and his mother were the only people he could bear to be around, when he had forgotten how to be himself. It's a time he doesn't want to think about.

"Have you told him?"

"I'll tell him later. There's time enough when he's feeling better."

Mary doesn't say anything, which he knows means there's a point coming. He ignores her and makes the tea. There are eggs from the chickens this morning: he thinks about scrambling them. It must have been a while since Farrier had real eggs for breakfast.

"Andrew... are you sure about this?"

"Yes." He reaches determinedly for the saucepan and a bowl for the eggs as if breakfast was the only thing in question.

"It's been a long time for both of you. You thought he was dead. It's a lot to take in, all at once. You don't have to plan the rest of your life in one morning."

"I'm not."

"You don't have to give him everything because of what you used to have, or because he turned up on your doorstep. Whatever you promised."

"Really Mary, I'm just making him breakfast."

She looks at him, somehow sadly, and he wonders how she sees him at this moment. If she thinks he's clinging to a foolish hope. The more doubtful she is, the more sure he becomes.

"I know it's a long time," he says, driven into speech by her silent watchfulness, "and I can't pretend I've got the answers. Christ, I've no idea if he even wants to stay after he's back on his feet, but he came to me and nothing's changed about how I feel about him. Think if it had been Julie."

Mary thinks, and he loves her for taking the time. He's glad he can be honest with her: he's not sure he could do this completely alone.

Mary sighs. She fetches three mugs and puts them down on the table beside the teapot. "I don't know, I just don't know. I can't imagine it, but it's such a long time to be certain about something."

"Well I am." And he is. The certainty of it is warm in his chest. He pours eggs into the pan and waits for them to thicken. "I've been missing him for years. There was nothing I wanted more than to see him again." He doesn't say that he'd like to go upstairs right now and just sit there, watching him. Just to keep him in sight in case it suddenly stops being real.

Mary doesn't say anything, but she comes to stand next to him and leans her head against his shoulder for a moment. Her eyes are bright.

"Alright then," she says, clearing her throat. "Whatever I can do, just ask."

She kisses him on the cheek, steals the skewed slice of toast and leaves for work. He stands at the stove and makes breakfast. Starting over with tea and scrambled eggs and two slices of toast. He doesn't know what comes next, but it's a beginning.