Work Text:
They were in the pub when the cry went up, Tommy compressed under the weight of Arthur’s arm and the pair slippery with drink.
John stopped drinking two hours ago. They hadn't spent enough time together since Derby Day to get this drunk, and John was sure tonight was the night Tommy and Arthur would have it out.
Wild days, really. Things hadn’t eased despite Tommy insisting everything was better than it had ever been. And he was getting fucking married, which he dropped into every conversation; John liked Grace, how her name made Tommy’s face move, but as John told Polly, he’d believe the kid was Tom’s the day he saw its eyes. They’d lived through twenty years of Tommy fucking about with no babies.
The one shot wonder was also being a real cunt in consolidating their next business tier. A mad demon crouching in his paperwork lair, no tolerance, least of all for Arthur. Arthur aggressively resisted Tom’s efforts to nail him permanently to a London desk. Instead, Arthur and John hardly stopped moving, driving around, setting up channels and checks for their new tracks, establishing local presence. Given the actions were for the business, John wasn’t sure why Tommy was so disgruntled. Why Arthur sank into that black temper every time Tommy said it would be easier if Arthur lived in London.
Never went down well, did it.
So there they were when the cry went up: John almost sober while his brothers weren't, collars and cuffs undone, so far along that path to another sloppy, inexplicable fight John would need to put down.
Tommy blinked, mazed, Arthur pulling him close enough Tommy finally shoved him off, hard. John opened the snug door to check, and outside was a scruffy kid, terrified, fist raised as if ready to knock.
‘It’s fire,’ the boy squeaked, ‘Watery Lane,’ and ran.
John ran, too. Didn’t check if his mad brothers followed. They would.
Drinking men spilled into Garrison Lane, chaotic but with uniform intent. Fire for any was a distaster for all. Only every fourth house had something resembling plumbed water, supply weaker than a stream of piss. Wood houses, wood shingle, hardly any brick or tile, and people stuffed newspaper into the cracks between board and strut to try to keep in the warm. The bell for the brigade was sounding, but no one in Small Heath trusted attendance.
When they reached Watery Lane, the Garrison crowd joining one already there, Tommy pulled to the side to vomit. Had his fingers in to do it. John felt surging annoyance because Ada did that too, a brief thought of not this shit, Tommy, why fucking now!, before John realised Tom was just getting rid of the drink.
Pragmatic, really.
Because so many people were running about aimless with buckets, uselessly, neighbours milling and children either wide-eyed or a-wail, and Tommy being drunk wouldn’t help because it had to be Tommy, it always was—
The fire wasn’t just at Watery Lane. It was in the betting shop.
John caught Tommy’s profile. The flame reflected in wide eyes. Tommy wiped his mouth.
‘The new safe’s proper fireproof,’ John reminded him. ‘You insisted. Rejected the first seven. Remember?’
Tight as a tensioned wire. ‘If it was shut.’
‘Course it was shut. It’s night. The whole shop’s shut up.’
Arthur was next to Tommy now, growling. ‘Sabini. Has to be. I’ll rip his teeth out, Tom, make him fucking eat them off the floor on his knees in front of you. One by fucking one.’
White-haired Magdalene McGuinness stumbled out of her house, four down from theirs, where she shared her rooms and rent with three lots of cousins’ families. She wore nightclothes and held someone’s wailing baby, bewildered.
Then Maggie saw the three of them, their stillness in the milling crowd. Her shock, her fear faded. Something like anger instead in her eyes, roaring high to overcome the other.
John couldn’t rightly hear what she said. She was across the street. If she even said anything, because her mouth was hung slack, open, no words shaped. As if catching a breath. But something deep in him heard.
From the bodies gone to iron at his side, he knew Tommy heard, and Arthur.
This is your fault. For bringing this on us.
Then Tommy shouldered up the way he did, no matter how drunk or wretched he was, so he could do what needed to be done. John felt it happen. Sergeant-Major now in command, and they fell into line, grateful. Tommy rolled his sleeves and started yelling orders, demanding, pointing, sometimes with both hands in different directions at once. Women, men, soldiers, children, it didn’t matter. They fell into line, too. They knew his name. A proper bucket brigade assembled in minutes, kids on relay with empties. Smoke boiled out of the lower windows, theirs and now the house adjacent that wasn’t theirs. Old ladies wrapped Arthur and three other men in layers of heavy coats and handkerchiefs over their faces, soaked in water; they split into pairs and started clearing the nearest houses of any remaining people. Further down, families left to their own panic started to throw their shit out through the windows, as if the street were safe.
A small blessing the fire had started in the shop, John thought, passing buckets with the rest. Grandad rebuilt every hollow wall with brick to make it harder for someone to bash through to the shop. Should slow the spread, so long as the top floor bedrooms didn’t go up. Thin smoke leaking from those upper windows, too.
Tommy paced some purposeful path, hand on Callum Torrens’ back and talking to the soldier low and constant, Callum sweating his own buckets and about to lose himself, wild-eyed. Obviously, something else was on Tommy’s mind, as in the middle of calming Callum, Tommy called over his shoulder the way he did, at their little gopher.
John read Tommy’s lips, the words were so familiar, so expected.
Finn, get down to the Garrison and—
The realisation hit John the same time it hit Tommy. Across that street boiling with people, they looked at each other.
Arthur ran up with a ladder. They didn’t ask why or how; whatever the friction they’d been feeling, in times like this Tom and Arthur were always that oiled machine. John set the ladder propped two houses down from the shop. His eyes stung. The smoke. Tommy and Arthur double-coated up, disappeared briefly and returned dripping with so much water it looked like they’d rolled in a horse trough. Handkerchiefs on and they were up the ladder in a beat, Arthur stretching dangerous from the top rung to reach the roof while Tommy boosted him from the shins, then Arthur reached down to haul Tom bodily up that gap after him, one-armed and roaring with effort. Scrambling low to avoid slipping, shingles sliding off after them and never stopping to avoid crashing through, they made their way across while John wiped his face on his shirtsleeve, these endless streaming eyes of his.
Hair night-wild, suddenly Esme was there. John couldn’t seem to hear her or work out why she was there. Esme wasn’t stopping to listen to him either. He grabbed her and shook her silent. Then, suddenly, he didn’t know what to say.
‘Finn,’ John tried.
Then, ‘we was thinking about the fucking safe!’
He shouted at Esme, groping for his gun for reasons he didn’t understand, looking at the faceless figure of Arthur smashing through shingle to get into their roof, Tommy bracing him so he didn’t fall. The thready smoke that act released, oily dark against dark. Then they were both eaten by that hole in the house.
‘My brother! My brothers!’
Esme slapped him.
‘No,’ he roared, ‘we don’t fucking slap!’
She turned his eyes from the house. ‘Come on, away, it’s done now. They’re in. John. It will be what it is. The kids. The kids are safe and away. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, you and me and the kids.’
The kids? A moment of panic, why did she bring the kids? He always did his best to keep them away from this. His house was three whole streets over.
But Esme didn’t bring them. That’s what she’d told him. They were away. They were safe.
Why couldn’t he stop it, that unspeakable churning guilt?
My brother!
—the fucking safe wasted that time wasted time gone talking about that fucking safe—
All my brothers!
What could he tell Polly? Worse than news of the tunnel collapse. Hadn’t felt guilt then. Hadn’t ever felt anything like that over there. But here, here, what could he do?
John groped for his gun again, Esme pulling away his hand.
My brothers are dead!
The hundreds of ways they put themselves between him and the hurt. The ways he should’ve been doing that for Finn, God, for Finn, oh, his only little brother. He’d not, never properly done for Finn the way Tommy and Arthur had done for him and why, why hadn’t he stepped up? He needed to be in there with them, he had to be with them, in the firefight, he couldn’t do nothing.
The ladder was gone. He crossed to the front door. And it was Magdalene McGuinness, who wasn’t angry because the bucket brigade was protecting her house, and Callum Torrens, who hadn’t lost himself to war memories after all, and Esme Shelby-Lee his wild wife who’d protected his kids then come for him, and other people who John couldn’t see properly with the blurring eyes, who held him from that now-steaming front door.
Held him down, poured water on him to calm him, while he howled because that was wasteful, that water should’ve gone on the fire, he needed to be in the fire!
Then he could see them.
Tears carving clean lines across Arthur’s face, Finn limp and floppy in his arms, no no no, but where was – there was Tommy, running up with water, stopping to gag again, this time on coughs. All three smudged and wretched.
Took ages, bloody ages before Finn’s eyes opened, Tommy finding a heartbeat but then doing the breathing for him; in the unhesitating confidence, John remembering vaguely the intense attention Tom paid into his combat lifesaver first aid, things he'd never forgot. Then, this wretched ripping cough until Finn threw up strings over himself. But he was all right.
‘You’re all right,’ John told him, from above, where he held Finn’s head in his lap and dripped tears on him. He wiped away the strings.
‘Get off,’ Finn groaned. He struggled to sit, clinging to Arthur’s arm. ‘What happened?’
Arthur cuffed him, held him up, shook him, held him. Held him. ‘Told you. Should’ve come to the pub.’
‘But what the— wha’s on—’ Blinking, looking around.
Arthur pulled Finn’s head close to his. ‘You’re lucky Pops packed that asbestos in the floor space. Or you’d be up in flames and so would the rest.’
Aware now what was happening after looking around, Finn clutched at Arthur’s shoulder and John’s hand.
Because it was nearly done, John saw. The brigade was there with their truck and pump and hose. The moment Finn first stirred, Tommy threw himself into the bucket gang on containment further down so the brigade could concentrate on the fire, hauling water this time, not just shouting. More smoke than flame, now. The neighbour’s house looked worse than theirs.
After, they huddled on the street for a bit. Someone brought them beer. The bottle frothed over when John cracked it, but he drank foam, passing the longneck between him and Finn and Esme.
‘I’m so glad you’re not dead,’ he said to Finn.
He hadn’t taken his arm off the kid’s shoulders since Finn was able to sit up, following Arthur’s lead. Arthur powered between Tommy's salvage effort and Finn, offering his rough, slightly drunk affection which Finn clung to, smiling and nodding dazedly each time.
‘I’m just so fucking glad. Don’t know what I would’ve done.’ John couldn’t stop tearing up. Stupid smoke.
Finn drank the offered beer, coughing. ‘Where's Tom?'
'Where do you think? Out there. Always. Doing the important stuff, running everyone about.' John waved, and wondered at the sudden crumpling of Finn's face.
Stiff. 'I’m glad, too. That I'm alive.’ Then Finn paled, freckles showing stark. ‘Oh, shit. Is the safe ok?’
‘Fuck the safe.’
Esme looked at John, unreadable.
Because, of course, John knew. When he was finally able to leave Finn to Arthur, and he could see Uncle Charlie coming down the street, sun well and truly up and hot toddies being passed around to shocked residents, John found Tommy exactly where he knew he’d find him. At the safe.
The whole shop around them was muck and grime, steaming, all slush and smoke and great particles floating in the air. A fucking mess, but less real damage than John thought there would be. Warped cage and loose furnishings and fabrics gone, some panelling so the brick showed through. The ceiling sagged where sheeting had burned or been drenched, but the beams were barely singed. He’d noticed in passing, oddly enough, Mum and Dad and Uncle Mick’s travel plates in the next room were completely fine, the display cupboard bloody well untouched near that double brick wall. All those construction materials Grandad had them skim for improvements while Dad was running materials haulage. The hours of painful after-dark labour.
‘Maybe an Ulsterman,’ Tommy said, as if to the safe's untouched contents, ‘but not a minister’s style. Doesn’t make sense.’
John agreed. It made no sense, what Tommy said. John’s anger flared. Told that hunched back. ‘Fuck it. We nearly fucking lost him.’
‘Yeah, well. We didn’t.’
‘But we nearly—’
Tommy roared, ‘We didn’t. He’s fine.’ Coiled himself again, tight, ‘Twice, now. The fucking insurance premium’s already a rort—’
‘Fuck the premium,’ John shrieked. ‘Look at me!’
Tommy turned, and John wished he hadn’t insisted. He hung his head.
‘Sorry, Tom. I thought—’ He’d forgotten what it was Tom did. Ripped open for that one second glance. ‘Sorry.’
‘We’re all right,’ Tommy said. Face on, John knew, and risked looking up again. ‘Send Finn—’
Tom paused, rubbing his eyes.
John saw then, his brother’s hands were shredded, bloody and burned and weeping in places. Like they'd been skinned. Raw meat where he'd hauled buckets over the top of it all. 'Your hands.'
Tommy looked at the horror of it, front and back. Some faint surprise.
Eventually, 'In the tunnel, in the, the hall. In the hall, there was a door. A burning door.' Tommy shook his head, hands lowered. Once out of line of sight, ‘You go, John. Go. Round up the others, including Uncle Charlie, call Polly, Michael.'
'Can't it wait til tomorrow?'
'Family meeting,' Tommy went on, as if he hadn't heard. 'We’ll discuss what next.’