Chapter Text
At first, Alek dismisses the strange warmth in his heart as simply admiration.
High off of the thrill of escaping the Germans, with the Leviathan and her new Clanker engines operating in perfect harmony as they speed towards Constantinople, all the men gather in the mess to tell stories of their own contributions to victory. Alek hears a hundred different versions of the battle, and he swears at least five of them contradict each other regarding those terrifying flechette bats, but he’s in no mood to pick a fight.
He’s simply happy to be here, sharing in the revelry and stealing sips of liquor when the Wildcount isn’t watching. He half-figured Captain Hobbs would confine him and his men to their rooms, but given their tenuous alliance rests on the expertise only Alek and his men have, the Captain makes no mention of it and neither Alek nor Volger bring it up.
Instead, Alek sits next between Mr. Newkirk and Mr. Sharp as the latter kicks his feet up onto the table and describes the battle with the Kondor from inside the Stormwalker. As he narrates and gestures with increasing fervor, Dylan’s eyes seem brighter than ever and his cheeks flush bright pink either from the excitement or the spirits – Alek isn’t quite sure how much Mr. Sharp has had to drink given the boy must be of an age with Alek and just a couple hard pulls of the handle that’s been passed around has Alek feeling warm and slightly dizzy.
“…and those Clanker walkers are dead clumsy,” Dylan says, exaggerating the Stormwalker’s clumsy gait – or just being very drunk himself – “but you should have seen Alek here! We were getting hammered by those Clanker shells and I thought the whole contraption would flip arse over barking tea-kettle, only Alek pulls the controls – these wee little levers that move the thing’s legs…” Dylan mimes the Stormwalker’s sticks, yanking them about in a way that would make a sophisticated Stormwalker knobbly-kneed like a newborn deer. “…and somehow he keeps us standing here. I doubt any of the Kaiser’s men could do it bleedin’ better, eh?”
Alek feels his own face glow at the praise in a way it didn’t even at Mr. Klopp’s Young Mozart, and he can’t help but lean in when Dylan slings an arm across his shoulders. He sees the way that Dylan Sharp commands the attentions of the other crew members of the HMS Leviathan, hero-worship of the ones nearer their age and grudging respect from the grown men and older hands, and he can’t help but feel a deep longing for a life not of endless tutors and pedigrees and shelter but instead of adventure, daring, and camaraderie.
Sure, he can speak six languages fluently, fence passably, and recite the Hapsburg family tree across several generations. Sure his father was the archduke and his home a castle. Sure the Pope himself had made Aleksander of Hohenberg the heir to an empire. But aboard a Darwinist airship he might as well be sitting around playing with toy soldiers for all the value he had. Dylan Sharp, now there was a boy worth admiring, a boy who could climb an airship’s rigging like a monkey and throw a knife at a target from fifteen paces.
Alek half expected a deep envy to gnaw at him when this mad Scottish airman sucks all the oxygen out of the room instead of he, the hidden heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, but instead there’s that yearning desire to win the respect of a boy like Dylan Sharp. To have him turn his bright eyes on Alek and say Barking good work, your Princeliness. You’re a squick more useful than the bucket of clart I expected!
The wildcount would be livid at the idea of His Serene Highness acting like a lowly airman, but that makes it all the better in Alek’s eyes.
“…and you’d think the boffin would be dead scared,” Dylan continues, “but she’s just sat on her bum in the corner of the Stormwalker with Tazza looking at us like we’re a carriage late for a meeting of the sneaky-beaks and not trying to get off this barking glacier with our barking lives!”
The rest of the midshipmen laugh at Dylan’s impression of Dr. Barlow, and Alek wonders how he’s so comfortable cursing – whenever Alek slips in a barking or bleeding or clart-snarfing he feels like an idiot. Perhaps it’s the accent? Alek learned his English to speak with royalty, and in the mess of a British airship he might as well be speaking a different language altogether.
“…so then Alek here…” Alek shakes off his liquor-induced brooding when he hears Dylan say his name again and feels the boy thump him on the back. “he stares down that big Clanker airship and tells me to man the gun, as if I know the first thing about Clanker weapons. But I figure a gun’s a gun, whether it’s on a beastie or a bucket of bolts. How hard could it be?”
He tosses Alek a coy wink, the kind he normally does before winding Alek up about the superiority of the Darwinist abominations over Clanker machinery. Normally, Alek would give as good as he gets, remarking on the certainty of steel over the fragility of flesh – or barring that just telling Mr. Sharp that he and his fellow Darwinists are going to Hell for daring to meddle in God’s domain – but something, possibly the liquor, stays his tongue, enthralled instead by the way Dylan’s mouth shapes the words, “I’ll tell you what, I’ve never felt a Clanker contraption feel like it was going to explode in my face like that one. But..” he closes one eye and mimes shooting a pistol like a marksman, “I got the bastards dead to rights!”
The boys roar their approval, thumping the table and stamping their boots, and despite himself Alek joins in, squeezing Dylan’s shoulder in what he hopes is an appropriately manly gesture.
“Oi Alek,” calls one of the younger men over the noise – Mr. Kearney? Alek is embarrassed to admit that he only ever had an interest in knowing Mr. Sharp. “Maybe you can show us how these Clanker weapons work before your friends in Germany try to kill us again!”
Even as the other boys jeer at him, Alek doesn’t rise to the bait, knowing that the boy was trying to pull a response with the jab. Instead, he feels Dylan’s arm around his shoulders pull tighter as Dylan shoots back, “Oi yourself, Kennerly! I’ve never seen any middy stand on a busted walker and stare down the Kaiser’s guns!”
A voice interrupts them before a row – the fourth of the night by Alek’s estimation – can break out. “Madness and stupidity are a lethal combination.” Volger’s icy voice somehow manages to come across both disparaging and uninterested, and all the airmen bite their tongues under the Wildcount’s keen, merciless gaze. “I apologize for pulling you from your… associates,” he says to Alek, pronouncing that last word with a sneer that could wither the Leviathan, “but I expect you and your saber first thing tomorrow morning, regardless of your nighttime activities.” He eyes Dylan’s arm around Alek’s shoulder coldly, and Alek can feel Dylan tense beside him. “If you could be so kind as to unhand Aleksander so he may retire for the night with at least some fraction of his wits about him, Mr. Sharp?”
Alek gives Dylan one last pat and reluctantly disentangles them. The weight of his arm and the warmth of their bodies so close to each other lingers still, and Alek rubs at the gooseflesh along his side as he and the Wildcount return to their chambers.
Dylan gives him a sad smile and mouths see you tomorrow as they go. Then, he catches some idea and smirks, tossing Alek a wink.
As Aleksander lies in bed, not even bothering to change into his nightclothes, he replays that look Dylan threw him and realizes he’s in danger.
***
In the morning, despite his raging headache and the anticipation of a punishing fencing lesson with Volger ahead of him, Alek finds himself able to think a bit more rationally. While last night the atmosphere and alcohol and the feeling of Dylan Sharp pressed closely against him had scrambled his attic, as a certain daring midshipman would be inclined to say, the morning after brings with it clarity.
Alek isn’t wholly unaware of the world. Such things have been whispered about in the shadowed alcoves and narrow hallways outside of polite company – perpetual bachelors and spinsters, men who preferred the company of men and women who eschewed them altogether. He’s far from the first royal heir – or even the first Hapsburg – to feel such urges. But such a thing is still verboten across the civilized world and would ruin what slim chance he held of regaining his empire, let alone what it would do to his friendship with Dylan, a dashing airman likely too busy fending off admiring girls to be bothered with the unwanted attentions of a mooning Austrian Prince.
Besides, he reasons, thinking of the various other men surrounding him since his escape from Austria, he’s never been victim to such thoughts regarding the other midshipmen, or Mr. Klopp or Mr. Hoffman. The idea of kissing Volger is so horrifying and ridiculous that Alek fears he may never look at the Wildcount the same. The sensation of the mustache alone… God’s Wounds, no wonder the Count never married!
Surely if he was so sideways inclined he would have known earlier. And he’s not unaware of the fairer sex, even if he’d rather be playing with Stormwalker miniatures. How many times had Alek’s parents introduced him to noble ladies around his age, and how many times had they sent him into a blushing, stuttering mess? So Alek sends a prayer to the Holy Father and greets Volger with eagerness, safe in the knowledge that whatever thoughts haunted him the previous night were no more than the result of too much drink and that ahead of him lay his destiny as the Emperor of Austria-Hungary with a beautiful (and hopefully exciting) Empress at his side…
…and his hopes are dashed when he sees Dylan lounging on a chair watching Volger warm up. “The captain wanted me to keep an eye on you two, just in case this sneaky-beak has any ideas.” He winks at Alek and taps his nose, and Alek knows from the way the corners of the man’s eyes tighten that Volger can read in his guilty expression the hours of laughing at the size and shape of Volger’s hook.
Furthermore, Alek knows in that moment he’s doomed, and no amount of self-deluding can save him. Dylan’s in his proper dress attire rather than his usual midshipman’s uniform, meaning he’s got a free day with Alek and Dr. Barlow on some special business in Constantinople. It suits him, the freshly starched and pressed clothes just slightly askew and undone to add to his dashing, rakish persona. His sandy hair is windswept and an eagerness graces his fair, handsome features as he urges Alek to give the Count a good thrashing.
There’s a lightness to Dylan’s crooked smile, to the way his thin lips curl around the words your princeliness. Alek swallows down this mad urge to tighten Dylan’s tie and run his fingers through the midshipman’s hair and pull them close enough to whisper…
God’s wounds, Alek thinks to himself, taking a nervous stance opposite the Count who eyes him like a tigeresque and trying to ignore the way his stomach curls in on itself. I am in terrible danger.