Archive of Our Own

The embarrassing fact is that the first time he meets Blake, he already knows he’s done for.

It’s that smile, maybe, Will thinks. Or his voice, low and light and laughing, or those eyes, like the sea after a storm. More likely, though, it’s just some thing he can’t explain, an… what do they say in French, je ne sais quoi, I don’t know what. Something you feel, and don’t understand.

Blake fills the silences that Will sits with, always talking, and Will sits back and listens. If he were a younger man, Blake’s age (which feels a great distance away from him some nights, some deep chasm between them), having seen less and smiled more, he feels sure he would rise to the occasion of speaking. As it is, when Blake talks, Will listens. When Blake reaches for a question, Will asks it. He doesn’t ask questions of his own; he finds the ones Blake wants, and feels a sense of satisfaction at oiling the machine, allowing Blake’s story to go on, energized by the participation of his peers.

And sometimes, Blake doesn’t say anything at all. Sometimes he sits, quietly, and his nearness alone drives away the sound and fury in Will’s head. He is a tether to here, to now, and when Will finds himself trying to drift away, to go into some other place where his memories are hot and thick and suffocating as black construction tar in his mouth, that tether holds him back. Do not go away, Blake seems to say, even as he lies on his back, stripping a piece of grass apart in his hands, not even looking at Will, not even minding. You are here now, with me. Stay here.

So, he’s fucked. Alright. Turnabout is fair play, though, because it seems like Blake is fucked, too.

There are discharges so dishonorable it isn’t worth getting them, even for the price of going home, so Will knows which things to keep to himself. In fact, he keeps most things to himself, even the kinds of little details that might help allay suspicion, like the wedding band he keeps on the chain around his neck along with his identification disc. He knows the costs of incaution. He thinks, feels, wants, but… oh, what does the gospel of Luke say… she kept all these things, and pondered on them in her heart. Something like that.

This is all to say it has to be Blake’s fault, then, that on a rainy night in the lonely slick of a half-collapsed dugout, while the two of them away from the rabble, sharing whiskey and getting drunk as Davy’s sow, they are suddenly, inexplicably, kissing each other.

It’s soaking wet everywhere, Will thinks madly, tasting whiskey in someone else’s mouth. That bone-deep wet of the fourth day of hard rain, when you get scared to take off your boots and look. Both of them are crawled up on some sandbags, trying to keep out of the mud and out of the way. That’s how they came to be so close together, tangled up, Blake’s knee on the bags between Will’s legs, Will’s hands tangling in Blake’s netting.

Chapped lips, nothing soft about them. Will bites, hears Blake gasp.

Nothing to separate one of us from the other, Will thinks dreamily, not quite thinking but feeling, maybe. Doesn’t remember where the bottle went, not him or his hands either. Hands… his hands fumble, grab, pull. He feels the firm line of Blake’s side under them, fat over muscle over ribs.

Blake breaks away, just enough to gasp, and Will’s eyes open, adjusted already to the dark. He’s breathless, slightly messy. Hair mussed up. Flushed.

He’s straddling Will’s lap, and Will lets his head fall back against the sandbags behind him, trying to catch his breath. Again, he wants to say, kiss me again.

Instead, Blake heaves a breath, says “Scho–”, and Will says “shut up, shut up,” and grabs him by the tunic, hauling him back down.

The second time is faster, rougher. Blake’s hands find Will’s hair, tangling in it; his tongue finds purchase. Will lets him in. His own hands run roughshod over Blake’s arms, his sides, his back, senselessly, desperately. Learning the shape of him under his hands, discovering what his eyes have known for months. The muscles in his legs are firm, and he gasps when Will touches them, spreads them wider, slumping closer. 

Blake’s hands on his face, now, gripping his jaw, controlling him, and Will sighs in relief. Wetly, they break apart, come back together. Against his stomach, Will can feel Blake’s cock, hard in his trousers. Will licks into his mouth, and he moans, shaking, clinging on for dear life. Drunk as Davy’s sow… 

A hand on Will’s chest. Blake pulls away, further this time, out of his reach, and says “fuck, fuck.”

Will stares up at him, slightly dazed, still noticing the pressure against his stomach. His own cock, pressed against Blake’s ass somewhere, is always slow to rouse with liquor running through him. It hasn’t made a showing yet. Maybe that’s a good thing.

“Blake,” he says, drowsy. Blake curses again.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, and Will’s chest caves in, “I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have done that, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it–”

“Why are you apologizing?” Will asks, mentally running behind. The whiskey is very cruel to him, and Blake hasn’t moved out of his lap. He runs a hand up the outside of his thigh to his hip and watches Blake shiver. “I—did I stop you?”

“We can’t do this,” Blake says, still not moving. His hand is still on Will’s chest. Hazy, confused, Will covers it with one of his own, lacing their fingers together. Blake shudders, eyes falling shut. “You—you’re married.”

Will thinks about this, head falling back again. “Oh,” he says, sighing a little, “that’s not important out here.”

Blake twitches. Surprised, somehow. He frowns down at Will. “Fuck’s that mean?”

Ah, Will thinks. Misstep.

Speaking is already difficult for Will. He did not excel at it before coming to France, and his time here has weighed his mouth down further. Rarely can he make enough sense of the jumble in his head to form it into words and pass it on, and when he can, something wires his jaw shut and gouges his tongue open, so he cannot speak. Now, on top of everything else, his blood is full of alcohol, making him slow and stupid and hungry.

He has said something wrong. It’s hard to know what it is, with Blake sitting still on his lap, still hard, still pressed against his stomach. He has said… ah.

“I mean,” he says slowly, “it’s alright. I’ve done this before. It’s okay.”

This is also wrong, he realizes, too late. Blake’s face changes. He is shocked—then angry. “Oh,” he says, and gets up without another word, leaving Will sprawling on the sandbags alone.

“Wait,” Will says, head spinning, struggling upright, but Blake is already standing, getting his drunken bearings in the slick mud. “Blake, wait, where are you–”

“I’m going for a walk,” Blake says sharply, as though it is not pissing rain just outside the dugout, so bad it’s pooling in the mud inside. “I’m absolutely staggered, aren’t you? Need to clear my head. Maybe you should, too.”

Will groans and rubs his face. He can’t even imagine standing upright.

A minute ago you were in my lap, he wants to say, what are you doing over there now?

But he doesn’t. He never says what he wants to say, even when he knows what it is. And Blake is shoving his helmet on and storming out into the miserable flood, in the dark, and Will watches him go, confused, almost dizzy.

After a minute, he takes a breath and holds it, so he won’t hurl.

Luckily, Will does recognize the problem the next morning after a piss and some cold water on his face. Unluckily (in the manner of all those unfortunate enough to remember their drunken activities while sober), this does not spontaneously give him the ability to go back in time and strangle himself, which means he has to live with it.

He plays with his wedding ring on its chain thoughtfully at breakfast. Blake, who normally eats with him, caught his eye from the door and purposefully crossed to the other side of the hall, so, what the hell. He’s got time.

Initially, he considers pulling Blake aside and coming clean. Coming clean is easy for men who have an easy time with words. Therefore, this option can be dismissed outright.

What is more upsetting to Blake, he wonders? That he is not the first? Or simply that Will carries on while married? He watches the back of Blake’s head from across the room, chatting with another NCO, not even glancing back to where Will is sitting. Blake, with his letters from home, and his mum and his aunties and his dogs, soft and sensitive. Blake, who is only nineteen, Will thinks, with all the wisdom and distance that he thinks twenty-three has provided him.

Well, he told me, didn’t he? Will thinks. We can’t do this. You’re married.

Blake, whose mum lives with her sisters, and raised two boys on her own, Will thinks. Oh, dear. 

He can’t help being married. That’s it, then. He can’t help Blake. He closes his eyes, chewing on something with the texture of cured leather, preferring not to know what it is, and thinks about the heat of two bodies, pressed close. Being weighed down.

Blake kissed him first, or at least, Will thinks he did. His memory is a soft sheet, tearing in places, but Will had been so pissed he’d barely been able to move. How could he have started it? That means…

Well, that means Blake takes action, of his own sort. He’ll find someone else—there’s certainly enough rats in the trenches—and leave Will to his thoughts, that vast swallowing cloud of memory.

But Blake doesn’t leave him alone. Blake finds him in the marching crowd, heading back to the reserves line, and falls in step with Will later that day. 

At first, Will thinks it’s a mistake—he hesitates, then glances over. Blake glances back, then looks ahead again. 

Okay. 

He doesn’t want anyone to think there’s a problem, is the first thing Will thinks. We’re always marching together, and now we’re surrounded by people who might notice we’re not. Someone probably asked him about it at breakfast, and he realized it looked suspicious. He’s being smart about it. Well done.

In a few minutes, he’ll come up with an excuse to walk away…

“You alright, Scho?” Blake asks, and Will glances at him again.

“Yes,” Will says carefully. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You were well under it last night,” Blake says, more cheerfully than he ought to. Will gives him another look, angry. Careful, he doesn’t say. Watch it.

“I don’t really remember,” Will says, and looks up ahead again.

There is a kind of privacy in the line, he thinks, a privacy of sorts. Ahead of them and behind them, pairs of men carry on with their own quiet conversations, laughing a little, trying not to be heard. Each man is sensitive to the ears around him, but not to their mouths; each man is suspicious of being overheard, and not one is listening in on another.

That does not make this conversation fair play. Privacy and secrecy are very different things.

“You don’t remember anything?” Blake is asking. His tone is—well, it’s hard to be sure. He’s trying to feel Will out, but he sounds a bit… embarrassed, maybe. Apologetic? No, that’s wishful thinking.

“No,” Will says shortly. “I remember it was raining. That’s all.”

“Well,” Blake says awkwardly. “You must have been well under, then. You okay? Not sick or anything?”

“Fine,” Will says. “Head hurts a bit. Fine.”

Blake blows out a breath. “Guts of steel,” he says, admiringly. “So, if that’s all, um…”

Will doesn’t say anything, mostly because Blake looks like he’s trying to. He faces straight ahead, watching Blake out of the corner of his eye.

“So,” Blake says lightly, “you ever done that before?”

Ah.

“What, had a couple?” Will asks. “Off duty, not a crime.”

“Right, yeah,” Blake says, and shifts uncomfortably. “Only, you said you’d… done it before. I know, I know,” he says quickly, throwing his hands up, “you don’t remember. Okay, that’s okay. I’m just saying, ‘cos you said it.”

Will weighs his options. No one is listening. They’re talking about getting staggered, he reasons, which everyone does and which isn’t very interesting. If any of the corporals on either side of them cared at all, it would only be in the genre of “where did you get it”, or “why didn’t you share, you greedy pricks”.

“Yes, I’ve done it before,” he says, more intentionally this time. “I’ve done… more than that before. Haven’t you?”

Blake, who has been shooting him sideways looks throughout, snaps his gaze forward suddenly, as if slapped. He’s quiet for a moment, then—

“No, not with—um,” he says, “not with—not with whiskey. No. Um, back home-“

“Back home there’s better stuff,” Will agrees, “out here there’s whiskey.”

He listens to their feet falling in step. Blake seems lost in thought. Eyes down, lips pursed.

“Are you alright?” Will asks after a moment. Blake glances up at him, surprised, then laughs awkwardly.

“Threw up twice,” he admits, “marching on an empty stomach, so I’m absolutely starving, and this morning I could barely see straight.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Will says. “Headache clearing up now?”

“Yeah,” Blake says. He shifts his netting on his shoulders. And then, “are we going to be in trouble about this, do you think?”

“Someone see us?” Will asks, but he knows the answer, which means he can ask quite lightheartedly. “You think someone was hiding in the dugout with us, and we missed him?”

“Well,” Blake says, shifting awkwardly, “well, you were there–”

“And I had half,” Will says, and shoots him a look. “You think I’m looking to rat myself out? You looking to rat yourself out?”

“No!”

“Then keep it to yourself,” he says, before Blake works himself up, “and I’ll keep it to myself. You tell someone, and I’ll let them know who I was splitting it with. So don’t be an idiot, and you’ll be fine.”

Blake laughs a little at that. “Right,” he says, fingers tangling in his netting. “And you won’t…”

“I don’t care about it, Blake,” Will says, more gently than before. “Alright? It was a mistake, it’s behind us, just forget about it. Alright?”

Blake’s quiet. “Alright,” he says after a moment. His voice is very small.

The conversation doesn’t start up again until they’re settled in that night. Someone has found a can of pork and beans, and there’s a pushing and shushing of lance corporals looking not to get caught as they try to cook it without sharing.

Will taps out. Mailbag just came by, and there was something on it for him. He takes it away to a dead end trench, out of sight, before he opens it.

He prefers to read alone. He hates explaining about it to anyone. This is another kind of privacy even the average soldier respects: a letter from your mother can be read at the dinner table, but a letter from your wife is entitled to a quiet corner.

It isn’t from Emma. It’s from command. He’s going on leave.

Proper leave. Seven days. All the way home.

It lurches up and suffocates him, then, wire tightening on his chest until it crushes him, lancing through his jaw and holding him tight. He passes a palm over his lips, pulling hard, breathing hard, and his hand goes for his tobacco tin, grasping at it through his pocket. He can’t pull it out, he thinks wildly, it will be too much, it will unmoor him–

He stares at the trees, just shapes in the muddying dark, stomach heaving, and he goes away to the kitchen in her mother’s house, where they used to live. He is holding Sadie and she is so small, so small, and it is so dark. Old fashioned kitchen, only lit by the dying fire under the oven. They had a bread oven, and the house was built around it, so that any time they made bread the whole house would stay warm. A great stone column piercing the center of the house.

And Sadie in his arms, so small, so terribly small. Crying all the time except when he holds her, all night long. So he stays awake, all night long. Lets Emma sleep, sprawled out on the couch in her work clothes, sore from helping her mother into bed.

She lays there now… he can see her, dark hair lit by the firelight.

He doesn’t want to wake her. So quietly, quietly, lips pressed against Sadie’s head, where barely any hair grows, he whispers his poems and songs, again and again, the way fathers do, until the words and the tunes are carved into his heart.

Seventeen, he thinks slowly, stupidly. Six years ago, I was seventeen.

It is a vast ocean, it is a yawning chasm. His daughter, small enough that he could tuck her inside his coat when the snow came, and she would bubble with delight…

“Scho?” Says a voice, and Will gasps, startling. His feet are soaking wet. The shapes of the trees do not move. France, he thinks distantly, I’m in France, somewhere in France. “You alright, mate?”

Will looks at Blake, who flinches back a little when he does. I must look mad, Will thinks, and looks down quickly, shaking his head. “Yes,” he says hoarsely, “yeah, I’m alright.”

His heartbeat is slowing down again, as Blake slowly moves into his corner of darkness. He radiates heat, concern. Will glances at that face, and feels the tether reel him in. You are here, now, with me. Stay here.

Blake is glancing at the letter in Will’s hands, which is folded slightly out of view. “Bad news?” He asks, softly. Distantly, Will notices there’s a cigarette in his hand, barely touched. The cherry is quite dim already.

“No,” Will says, shakes his head again. He quickly folds the letter up to tuck away in his kit. “No, it’s good news, actually.”

“Yeah?” Blake watches him. “Come on, then.”

Why is he here? Will wonders. It’s off the beaten path, away from prying eyes. The rest of the corporals saw Will turn down this way, they know well enough to leave a man alone. Maybe Blake wanted to be alone, too, didn’t know I was here.

Maybe he wants to be alone with me, says another, hungrier part of his brain. He glances down the length of Blake’s body, a clearer picture of him without his netting and pack. Strong, broad-shouldered. The war hasn’t eaten into him, yet. There’s still some of him left to lose.

“It’s my leave,” he says, and looks down again so he won’t see Blake’s face. “The one I was supposed to get in May. Got delayed.”

“It was supposed to be here in May?” Blake asks, shocked. “Bloody hell, they couldn’t drag their feet more, could they? It’s only been–”

“Your light’s going to go out,” Will interrupts, and reaches over to take the cigarette out of his hand. The cherry’s almost dead under the ash. Blake yelps, surprised, but Will ignores him, puffs it until it’s pouring out over his lips, and steals a drag.

“Hey!” Blake reaches out to snatch it back, and Will grins, holds it away across his body until Blake is hanging onto his shoulders, reaching after it. “I had to trade a sheet of stamps for that, give that back!”

“You bartered for one cigarette?” Will asks, smiling still, but he hands it back. “And you don’t even know how to smoke?”

“I know how to smoke!” Blake snaps, hotly. His arm is around Will’s shoulders, still, slowly slipping down his torso like he hasn’t noticed they’re still tangled up. “For your information, I was being fucking sensitive and leaving off until I knew you were okay. Next time, I’ll come in a cloud and blow it up your ass, how about that?”

“Just come to me if you want one next time,” Will says. “I usually have a pack somewhere, and I won’t make you give me any stamps. For the love of god, one cigarette–”

“It was a pack, okay?” Blake says, but he’s smiling a little, pretending to be angry. “And to think I was going to offer you one. Serves me right.” He takes a drag, too deep, and starts coughing. Will puts an arm around his back and hits him twice, regulation.

“Oh,” Will says, “guess it’s too late to ask for one now.”

They stand very close, their arms still around each other. Any minute now, Will thinks, one of us is going to pull away. One of us is going to step away. They’re pressed together, not quite embracing, chests still in contact… not quite embracing…

“Your leave,” Blake says, glancing up at him. “When’s that?”

“Soon,” Will says, “two days, maybe.”

“Two days?”

“I was supposed to get word more than a week ago,” Will says, as a mode of explanation. Blake is looking at him in a way he doesn’t quite understand, almost harried suddenly, almost panicked. “Mail got delayed while we were at the front. Good thing it caught us on the way back, or I might’ve missed it.”

“You’re going soon,” Blake says, a little breathlessly. His eyes are dark like this, searching Will’s face. “How long…?”

“A week, give or take,” Will tells him. “With the travel, I might get… I don’t know. Four days back home.”

“A week,” Blake repeats. “You’ll miss our rest.”

“That won’t bother me,” Will says easily, “I’ll sleep in, to make up for it.”

Blake’s free hand, cigarette still between two fingers, somehow forgotten, drifts up to touch Will’s chest. They’re very close, Will thinks, his heart starting to beat fast, not quite embracing–

“Scho, don’t leave on bad terms,” Blake says, and the words are pouring out of him in a rush suddenly, tripping over one another on their way out of his mouth, “I didn’t mean to—I mean—we didn’t have to–”

“We’re not on bad terms,” Will says, brow furrowing. He reaches out to take Blake’s shoulder with his free hand, and now we are facing each other, he realizes, now we are embracing, now we are–

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Blake says, in a rush, “I mean, I didn’t want it to be, you said it was a mistake and I–”

Will opens his mouth to say it’s alright, but they are crashing into each other again, kissing, and words are not important. He grabs on hard, pulling Blake in. My hand on his shoulder, his hand on my waist, like dancers, like lovers.

He’s new to this, Will realizes, feeling his lips moving tentatively. Doesn’t know what to do. My lead.

Will runs a hand on Blake’s shoulder up, carefully, knuckles brushing over the sensitive skin of his neck before they find his jaw. He shudders under Will’s hands, lips parting, inviting him in.

He tastes like cheap tobacco, he tastes like the plaque and spit and built-up grime of half-brushed teeth, he is warm under Will’s hands, jaw working, the sting of stubble coming in–

And then that hand on Will’s chest, Blake’s hand, pushing hard. Forcing them apart.

“Wait,” he says, raggedly, “wait, I didn’t—I shouldn’t–”

Will wants to say it’s alright, he wants to say… something, the right thing. He wants to know the words that will bring Blake back against his lips. Let me take care of you, maybe. Instead, he freezes, arms half-outstretched, as Blake pulls himself free.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so stupid,” Blake is saying, rubbing at his face with his hands, and Will realizes in a panic that he’s about to cry, about to lose control. His face is red, his mouth screwed up. “I should have just—I should have just left it alone, I should have just–”

“Blake, what–” Will starts. He reaches out, wanting to touch, but Blake stumbles back another step, like a threatened animal.

“You need to go,” Blake is saying, talking more to himself than to Will, “and you can—you should go be with your girl, I just—my head, I need to get my head right, I need–”

He breaks off, suddenly, turning away to take a too-short drag off his cigarette. Blows it out too fast. Not smoking as much as reminding himself how to breathe.

And Will stands there, watching, fingers clenching at his sides. Feet wet. Sinking into the mud. He wants to say—he wants to say–

“Blake,” he says, “what do you—want, from me?”

He must not have said it right, or said the right thing, because Blake looks back at him, his expression hunted. He turns away again, quickly, takes another too-short drag, another too-short blow, and shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he says, “I shouldn’t want anything.”

Will hesitates, wanting to reach out, wanting to say something. Instead, his mouth closes tightly and he stands, stupidly, not knowing what to do. Blake glances back at him, biting his lip, and they look at each other.

Then, like a sleeper waking up, Blake turns away, tosses his cigarette into the mud only half-finished, and walks away. The words come, then: “Blake, wait–” one hand up, reaching out, reaching after–

It always comes too late, and Blake is gone, back around the corner, into the light with the rest of the squad. Will stands there, mind running alongside, wanting to chase after him.

But he can’t. There’s too many people, too many questions that aren’t worth being asked. If he follows Blake back into the firelight, this moment is no longer secret, no longer private. There will be words that he cannot afford to send home.

So he waits in the dark, about two minutes. Then, he takes out a pack of cigarettes (never emptied into his tobacco case, the one that sits in the pocket over his heart), a pack of matches, and lights a smoke that he doesn’t want. He draws hard to make it look longer-used, spits the smoke back out of his mouth without breathing, and saunters back out into the light.

Like most travel, the trip home is long, and plagued with delays. When Will arrives at his own front door, it’s already well past midnight. The house is silent.

He uses his electric torch to light his way inside, not wanting to turn the lights on, not wanting to risk waking the house. It’s warm inside, bordering on stuffy. Every inch of it is lived in, no part of it exactly the same as when he left it. It feels like waking up with a fever, chills and aches, a great pain of missing something you went to sleep with. Time has gone on, and he has been away. He is going away, and time will go on still. 

He runs his hands over the clean counters, the dingy towels on the kitchen handles, the debris of spelling sheets and drawings and broken crayons splayed across the small table. He does not move them; it is enough to touch them, and know, this is something they have touched. It is something they have made, it is the effort of their hands. It is play.

The stairs creak in all the same places, so he moves slowly up them, avoiding the places where the boards bend until he stands at the first door on the left, the place he goes in his dreams. Carefully, he turns the handle, carefully, he presses his shoulder through the crack.

There is a little toy lamp on the table by the bed to ward off the dark, a low, orange light. It is too weak to cast shadows, too weak to do more than light a circle in the dark. The girls are still little enough to sleep in the same bed, their hair in braids, their nighties lacy and high collared for the cold, even in their warm, stuffy room. Sadie, six. Maude, four.

He stands there, across the room, looking in.

He wrote a letter for Maude’s birthday two months in advance when he sent it home, terrified the post would make it late, terrified she was too young to understand wartime delays. Emma had written back that it had arrived almost two months early, and that she had hidden it in the icebox, because three-going-on-four is an age that’s surprisingly good at getting into crannies it’s not supposed to be in, of grabbing and snatching. The “what’s this, mommy?” age, the grip like a viper age.

Slowly, he crosses the room and kneels by the low bed, listening to the girls breathe. He takes Sadie’s hand, small in his, and she grips it back. Gently, moving as carefully as he can, he adjusts the ribbon on the end of her braid, which is coming undone.

Behind him, the sound of another door opening down the hall, and a rustle.

Then, “I thought I heard you downstairs,” Emma says, her voice close. “Wash up and come to bed.”

Will stays, half-kneeling, with Sadie’s hand gripping his.

Distantly, he is aware of Emma standing in the door, arms crossed, watching him patiently. Waiting for him patiently.

He kisses Sadie’s head, and then Maude’s. And then he straightens up and goes out of the room, closing the door silently behind him.

They lie in bed, facing each other.

“How was the trip?”

“Long,” Will says. “I wanted to write ahead, but I only got notice on Wednesday.”

“That’s alright.”

“Will it spoil anything?”

“Nothing it won’t fix,” Emma says, smiling wryly. “I think the girls were hoping to go to the zoo for the weekend. Olivia was going to take them, but… I think they’ll want to stay home.” She runs a hand from his shoulder to his elbow affectionately.

“Olivia,” Will says, eyes closed, brow furrowing. The name is familiar; the woman is not. “Is she…?”

“She’s the new, ah, general that I’ve taken on,” Emma says. Will glances at her, and she looks down, flushing slightly. Will smiles, slowly, sudden recognition creeping in. “We took her on about four months ago, she’s very good.”

“I see,” he says, and sits up a little, leaning on his elbow. “Tell me about her.”

A curl of hair has come loose from her braid, and Emma tangles a finger in it thoughtlessly. “She’s… a little older than you,” she says. “Knows what she wants. Dark hair, blue eyes. Sweet. Funny.”

Will reaches over and shifts her braid slightly, adjusting it out of the way so that she won’t roll on it when she turns over. “Is she taking care of you?” He asks.

“Will,” she says, making a face at him. He smiles at her again.

“I want to know there’s someone.” He runs his nail between threads of hair. “There should be someone.”

She relaxes a little. “Yes, she takes care of me,” she says softly, and he feels relief run over him like cool water, “she knows more than me about most of it. It’s a nice change of pace.”

“Good.”

There’s a little shuffling, and Emma props herself up on an elbow as well. Dutifully, Will drops his head back down onto his pillow, so that she can stroke his hair. “Now,” she says, her voice taking on a slightly matronly tone, “tell me about your young man.”

Will presses his lips together, but it doesn’t stop him from smiling. “It’s a little more complicated,” he admits, “he doesn’t really… I don’t think he really understands. He’s… young.”

“Tell me.”

“Dark hair,” he says, slowly breaking into a smile, “blue eyes. Sweet. Funny.”

“Oh dear,” she says, and laughs. “We have a type, don’t we? We had better not get them mixed up by accident.”

“But he’s not mine,” Will says, closing his eyes. Her fingers trail over his scalp, gentle pressure, sizzling gently over sensitive skin. “He… wants to be, I think. But it’s… he’s too new. It’s too complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“He doesn’t like that I’m married,” Will translates. “I think his father might have run off when he was young. He’s anxious about it.”

“Oh, how funny,” Emma says, and then, seeing the look on his face, “I don’t mean about his father, Will, that’s disgraceful, of course. I mean, haven’t you explained everything?”

“He hasn’t really let me,” Will says. “He just runs up to me and… and runs off again. He never gives me time to get a word in edgewise.”

She shrugs. “I can’t say I quite blame him,” she says, “he could give you a week and you wouldn’t get a word in. Only joking,” she adds, as he shoots her a glare. “Tell me the truth, have they shot your sense of humor off yet?”

“No, it’s just been degraded,” he says, “I have stewed in coarse licentiousness, and the flavor has infused.”

“Braised,” Emma says helpfully, “you braise to infuse flavors.”

“I have been braised in coarse licentiousness,” Will corrects himself, sagely.

Here is a safe place: this bed, this conversation. There is no one who knows him more intimately, more totally, more perfectly. He can imagine that this is how it must be between all men and their wives—an understanding of every word, spoken and unspoken, whispering in the dark, passing stories about lovers between them like a shared cigarette.

They are not lovers themselves. They have never been lovers, and they will never be lovers. Somehow, that makes no difference; or, perhaps, it makes the kind of difference that enriches their lives, that allows them to live wholly. They share their daughters, and The Secret, and their bed. That is enough—a shared family, a shared life. It is enough. It is enough.

“Well, since your world-famous reticence has made a come-back, perhaps I should speak to him,” Emma says, in a tone of voice that indicates that she’s already decided what she’s going to do. “I’ll write him a letter, introduce myself, explain everything. What’s his name?”

Will shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that,” he says, “it isn’t serious, I don’t think–”

“Will,” she says, more softly this time, “I don’t want you alone out there. It’s been a year since–” she hesitates—breathes out. “It’s been a year. You’ve been overseas for twice that. I need to know you’re not alone over there. I need to know someone is taking care of my husband.”

She brushes a hand over his skin. He closes his eyes, and does not argue. Somehow, she makes it easy to give in, to be touched.

“Blake,” he says after a moment. “Thomas Blake. Tom.”

“Good,” she says. “Now go to sleep. The girls wake up at six, and they’ll see your bags in the hall, so you’ll be waking up at six, too.”

There are no words that can describe the journey back. No words can capture the feeling of picking his girls up for their goodbye kiss, not knowing if he will ever touch them again. Kissing his wife’s cheek, waving from the window as the train starts to move. Forcing himself to smile, wanting his girls to remember him smiling, in case it is the last thing they ever see of him. Watching Sadie run along the platform after him, Maude trailing behind, tripping and scrambling up. Waving until they are long out of sight. Sitting in the crowded compartment, a hand over his breast pocket. Touching the edge of his tobacco tin.

He stares straight ahead, a long way off, and he is standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, first one on the left.

France is the same, beaten to hell, trees ripped thoughtlessly apart, animals laying dead in the fields. The camp is the same too; lived in and foul, black and sticky as chewing tobacco. It stinks; it makes him ache.

Shouts and calls, voices everywhere. A heated argument between two privates he doesn’t know, one saying “look, mate, if you use your left hand, it’s a slower wank, but it’s got a better build-up,” and he thinks, yes, I am back again. He passes them by, slowly adjusting his kit as he goes.

It takes about twenty minutes to find Blake, who is sitting by a bucket fire with two other lance corporals, having a cigarette and laughing. His face changes when he sees Will approaching—his eyes widen, his smile falters. He waves a hand to excuse himself and gets up, tossing the butt into the bucket as he starts to jog over.

“Scho, you’re back,” he says, as he approaches. As though that wasn’t obvious. “I thought you were out another two days, how was your leave?”

Fucking awful, Will doesn’t say, kept waking up with nightmares. Dreaming about this place. Suffocating. Choking. “The weather was good,” he says, “and the girls were on good behavior. Their mum got them out of school for the week.”

“Right, right,” Blake says, in the slightly nervous tones of a man without any children anxious not to look stupid about them. And then, pointing at Will’s neck, “that’s new, eh? Not doing too bad for yourself, are you?”

Will glances down in a momentary lapse of memory, then tangles his fingers in his scarf. “Oh, yes,” he says, “made the mistake of mentioning the damp, so. Now I’ve got to wear it. Special instructions.”

Blake smiles, but doesn’t laugh. “Your wife made it?” He asks, his voice slightly tight, and Will thinks, why aren’t we alone? In a single moment, alone, he could explain everything. It would take a second, a fraction of a second, to say no, her lover did, to bridge the yawning chasm between them.

To his left, Blake’s right, stands Sergeant Hardwood. To his right, Blake’s left, stands Lance Corporal Halter, in vicious argument about Kent’s performance in the County Championship with Lance Corporals Perks and Manickle. Behind him, half a dozen privates, caught trying to light a bucket fire of their own and being thoroughly chewed out by Sergeant Headache (Sergeant Heddick, only joking, sorry sarge).

We are never alone, he thinks miserably, we are only ever in quiet corners. It can never be fast. It can never be easy. It can never make it out of my mouth.

“No, the new domestic she’s hired, actually,” he says, which is true, if dishonest. “I actually think it was meant to be a gift for Emma, but she has… graciously re-gifted it. To me.”

Blake does laugh at that. He reaches out to feel the scarf between his fingers, and Will lets him, feels the warmth of his fingers near his neck. “That’s not half starched,” he says. “Better you than me, I’m only getting stuck with socks. Mum’s not much of a knitter, but at least they wear out fast. Well!” He lets go, gives Will a nudge. “That’s enough chatting. Come on, tell me what you got for me! Don’t jerk me around, my 5p’s got to be worth something!”

“Like I’d pocket it,” Will mutters, and reaches into one of his hip bags.

This is the moment he has quietly dreaded. He will finish it as quickly as possible.

“Digestives,” he intones, tugging out each item as he names it, “Maries, Pall Malls, and… I’ve no idea why you want this, Vaseline.”

“Yeah, you’ve no idea,” Blake says, grinning, holding out his hands. “Thanks, mate, you’ve got–”

“And,” Will interrupts, speaking as coolly as he can, given how fast his heart is going, “this. A parting shot.”

He snatches the letter from Emma out, makes himself hold it out as Blake glances up, startled from the task of finding spaces in his kit that he can defend against other men and rats. Blake finishes shoving the roll of digestives into a bag intended for munitions, staring at it. His eyes dart between the letter and Will’s face, and back again.

He takes it.

“Huh,” he says, frowning at it. Emma has labeled it ‘Tom Blake’, despite Will insisting on ‘Thomas’, at the very least, for reasons of decency. “What is?”

“It’s… from… my wife,” Will forces out, and suddenly Blake is gripping it very hard, staring up at him with that look again, that shocked and hunted expression. “Look, it wasn’t my idea, alright? She worries about things. Gets it into her head that she has to fix them. But she asked me to give it to you, so…”

He trails off. Blake is looking back down at it. “Does she, um,” he says, “does she know, um, about…”

Blake looks at Will. Will glances pointedly at the lance corporals bickering not three feet away. “She’ll explain everything herself,” he says, noncommittally, “Just… read it on your own time, alright? Not right now.”

Quickly, not giving Blake a chance to respond, Will shrugs up his shoulders and turns on his heel, pushing his way past the gaggle of privates now tossing wet mud into their bucket and grumbling. It is suddenly very important not to be here, to leave this conversation behind. It must not be remembered that he was ever here. 

“Scho, hey,” Blake calls after him, and Will moves faster, desperate to make distance between them. For a moment, he thinks, I can slip away, I can disappear— and then he finds himself at a crossroads, an armory going one way, and is forced to stop and wait. Clenching his hands into fists. 

The inside of his head feels very hot. 

“Scho,” Blake says again, panting slightly as he comes up beside him, “you shot off like a cannon, mate, you alright?”

Fine, he’s supposed to say. “No,” he snaps, not looking, “I don’t want to be back here, alright?”

It’s too vulnerable—it makes him want to curse and kick something. Fervently, he wishes he had been raised less strictly, that he knew how to swear like steam escaping from a kettle. He has no way to release the pressure. 

He risks a glance across at Blake and immediately regrets it, finds him looking back, looking worried. In front of them, the clattering moves on, and the way is clear again.

“Forget it, I’m fine,” Will says, correcting the error at last, and moves on, not so fast as before. Blake falls in behind him.

They’re quiet for a moment. And then, “just as well you weren’t here,” Blake says, quite cheerfully, quite intentionally, “you wouldn’t believe for a minute how stupid some of our mates are. Remember how Haddock found that tin of pork and beans, and he wouldn’t tell us where he got it?”

“I’m not in the mood,” Will says, like he always does, when he’s flying high somewhere, when he resents the feeling of the tether bringing him back in. I don’t want to be here, now. I don’t want to stay here, with you.

The line comes in regardless.

“Alright,” Blake says innocently. “Just saying, he’s lucky they didn’t court-martial him for improvised explosives.”

With a hook on the end of it.

Will presses his lips shut tightly, and blows out through his nose. He slows, slightly, just enough to let Blake come abreast, walking alongside him. “He forgot to take the lid off, then, did he?” He asks, the question he can feel in the air, that Blake wants the chance to answer. And, alright, the question he wants the answer to.

“He wishes that was it,” Blake says, winding the tether around him, thumbs in his netting. He’s settling in, and it occurs to Will that Blake has missed him, has been missing him while he has been away. He has been waiting for Will to come back. How funny, Will thinks, when I’ve never done him a bit of good. “Remember how the food cart wasn’t coming, and it was days and days late? We had that massive bit of rain, four damn days of it, and the cart got stuck on the way in. Well, eventually…”

And they do not talk about the letter or the travel or Surrey at all anymore, and Will is grateful. He listens to an anecdote, some every day stupidity or cruelty or fundamental unfairness that turns around in Blake’s mouth, a reconnaissance trip to a nearby town, nearly abandoned, for supplies. Some idiot’s insistence on trying for a collapsed storefront despite direct orders, and a jerry-rigged grenade.

And somehow, despite their hunger, their sallow faces and bellies, when Blake tells him “and what do you think? They blew out the fucking wall, and all that was in there was one can of beans!” , he laughs long and hard. Misfortune, he thinks, to prop us up and keep us going. To keep me going.

It happens in what used to be a foxhole, before the trenches came forward and consumed the land around it. You have to crawl to get into it now, a little pockmark in the earth, no roof, with nothing to recommend it at all except that nobody else wants it.

Will has given in, and opened the tobacco tin, and looked, and touched. Now, he is running his hand over it, and staring at the sky, slumped against the collapsed wall, which is where Blake finds him.

Blake is already crying, but in the way he always does; his jaw tight, his breathing measured, trying to bridle his emotions like a wild horse. “I did it,” he announces, as Will stumbles to his feet to meet him, “I read it, like I was supposed to. Did you know–” he glances away, blows out. “Did you know how–”

“Sit down,” Will says.

Blake glances at him, and turns his shoulders as though he’s going to move away. For a moment, Will thinks, I’m going to fail again, he’s going to leave, I can’t stop him, I can never stop him—and then he reaches out and grabs Blake by the front of his jacket. “Sit down,” he says again, and Blake looks up at him sharply. “Alright? You always run off on me, don’t run off on me right now. Just sit. Just… just…”

Blake’s hands find his. They sit.

“Look,” Will says, and breathes out, “if you don’t want to, then… we never have to talk about it again. I don’t want to make you do anything. But I thought—I mean, you kept starting it, I thought you wanted—oh, hell,” he mutters, and runs a thumb over Blake’s cheek, swiping at an escaped tear.

Blake stiffens, then pulls back. “Don’t,” he says, and Will snatches his hands away like he’s been burned, “I can’t—you know how I feel when you do things like that?”

Will recoils slightly, eyes darting away. “I’m—sorry,” he says, “I didn’t–”

“Oh, Christ,” Blake says, and buries his face in his hands. “I’m really in it now.”

Will says nothing. His hands find the lapel of his jacket and hold on.

“She,” Blake says slowly, one hand going for a pocket in his jacket, “she loves you so much, you know that? Says she’s worried about you being alone out here, says she—she wants someone to take care of you, keep an eye on you, she thanked me, I mean, Jesus Christ–”

He pulls the letter out, carefully folded paper crinkling in his hands.

“And every time you touch me, I just want to—I mean,” Blake says, staring down at it, rubbing at his forehead. “I should know better, I know I know better, but I just can’t control it, I just—I just do what I want, I fly off the handle. And… and I know I’m going to be in trouble about it, and I can’t…”

“Blake,” Will says. He reaches his hand out.

“Don’t,” Blake says, one hand up, warding him off. “I can’t–”

“Tom,” Will says, and Blake hesitates just long enough. Will catches him, runs his fingers through the hair at the back of his head, the place where the sweat mats down under their helmets, and Blake slumps suddenly, like a puppet with its strings cut. His eyes shut.

Will watches him, not saying anything, not even letting himself think. Slowly, he rubs his fingers against Blake’s scalp.

“It hurts so much,” Blake mutters. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“I know,” Will says. And he wonders, did I feel like that, when I was nineteen? Did I have room in my heart, in my bed, to be angry? Did I ever bite back? Or did I just let it hurt me, was I already deciding to lie down on my belly like a snake, crawling all the days of my life? “Kertbeny called it, um, a riddle of nature, I think.”

“Oh,” says Blake, not visibly absorbing this. “I wish I read more.”

Will twists his mouth slightly. “I don’t think you do,” he admits, “everyone worth reading is too dangerous to be caught with these days.”

Blake rolls towards him. The angle of the hole is such that this leaves him laid out, slipping slowly into a recline, with Will’s hand around the back of his head. “You have to let go,” he says miserably. “I can’t do this. If you don’t stop touching me, I… I’m not…”

Will doesn’t let go. Will brings his other hand up to Blake’s jaw, strokes a thumb along the skin, raspy with tomorrow’s shave, watches his eyes fall shut. Watches his lips part, his breath pour out of him.

“I hate seeing you cry,” he says quietly. “My burden to bear, I suppose, since you cry all the time.”

“I do not,” Blake snaps, eyes opening to glare up at him. “Piss off, I’m trying to be responsible and shut this whole thing down here–”

“I could kill her,” Will mutters, not meaning it, “I told her to explain it simply, and instead she’s tied you in a knot. ‘Explain everything’, my eye–”

“Stop it,” Blake snaps, and shoves at him. Will doesn’t let go. “She loves you, you absolute prick, she–”

“Yes, I know,” Will says, “but we have… an agreement, we–”

“Yes, ‘an agreement’ while you’re away,” Blake snaps, pushing harder. Will has to release his head, and gets a sturdier grip on his shoulders. “I don’t want to be ‘an agreement while you’re away’, stick my neck out for a few months of my life and then go home, go back to being nothing to you, no one to you–”

“Blake,” Will interrupts, “it’s not an agreement while I’m away, alright? It’s—we’re not–” 

Let me say it, he thinks desperately, we’re alone now, don’t let my tongue fail me, don’t fail me, don’t fail me now–

Blake tries to pull away, and Will tightens his grip desperately, pulling him close. “Let go, Scho,” he snaps, “just stop it, I can’t–”

“No, let me say something,” Will snaps, “you always run off because I don’t—have the words fast enough, just let me say it, alright? I’m trying to—I want you to understand me. Alright?”

Blake stops struggling. “Alright, alright,” he says, and Will realizes belatedly that breath is sawing in and out of him, like the weight of pent-up words has blown a hole through his lung. “So tell me! I’m waiting for you. I’m—I will wait for you. I’m… I want to understand you, too.”

Will stares up at him, shocked. And then he loosens his grip, sits back against the side of the hole.

“Sorry,” he says, “I… I shouldn’t have…”

“S’alright,” Blake says. “Lose my temper sometimes, too.”

Will looks at his boots. He’s never had to explain it to anyone, not all of it. The men who have come before have known a little—enough—that his wife has never come into it at all. Blake is younger, newer.

I will have to tell him everything, Will thinks, before he understands.

“When I first met Emma, she was in… some trouble,” he tells him, twisting his mouth sideways. “I was in trouble, too. We… recognized each other right away. We got married two months later, and our oldest daughter came four months after that.” He shrugs. “My family was furious, of course, they could do the math—but hers was grateful, because they could, too. They knew I did it to protect her. And, thank God, they never knew what she did for me.”

“What did she do for you?”

“Gave me somewhere to hide,” Will says, and sighs, rubbing his palms over his thighs. “The blackmail stopped—everything’s harder to prove when you’re married—and together we could move away, live somewhere bigger and louder, we could be respectable again. Live without suspicion. Have our arrangement.”

He glances sideways at Blake, who is staring hard at the mud between his feet. His lips are pursed and his brow is furrowed, as though working very hard at a sum in his head.

“So,” he says after a moment, “you don’t love her?”

“I love her more than anything,” Will says, more fiercely than he means to, and Blake flinches a little. “I just don’t love her the way men are supposed to love their wives.”

Blake pauses. Then, “and your younger daughter? Is she…”

“Mine,” Will says, “they’re both mine, in every way that matters. Maude…” he shrugs. “We wanted children. We were… willing to do what it took.”

Blake nods. Emma’s letter is still clenched in his hands, Will notices distantly, a detail far away. “But she’s not alone, is she?” He asks. “She’s not… I mean, she’s not… pining away, or… suffering much, or–”

“Suffering, no,” Will says, laughing for the first time, “God, she isn’t suffering a thing. I understand she’s, ah, been well taken care of, the past few months. Enough that she’s been worrying about me again.”

There’s a crinkling of paper. He’s reading the letter again, Will realizes. He shuts his eyes and sits back.

“Take care,” Blake says softly, “someone who can take care of him again.”

“Did she write that?”

“She said again,” Blake says, “someone took care of you before?”

No, Will thinks, this I will not say, this you will not touch.

“Not since Thiepval,” he says, before the wire tightens in his mouth, before he has to turn his face away. And Blake does not say any more, and he is grateful.

Somewhere above them, there’s a rumble. Rain, maybe. It’s always raining, or about to, out here.

“Scho, you know I’m thick, right?” Blake asks. “You know you actually have to explain things to me sometimes, right?”

Will turns his face back, eyes opening, and Blake is closer to him than before. The letter is gone again, somewhere into one of his pockets. Blake is reaching out to him, a hand sliding over his belly, over his side. A tether, pulling him in.

“I wanted to,” Will says, “I didn’t know—you would run off, and I didn’t know how to make you stop, I didn’t know–”

“Could have just bloody said,” Blake is saying, interrupting, and he grabs Will by the front of his jacket and pulls him into a kiss. He rolls back, hands on Will, dragging him back, dragging him on top, letting Will weigh him down in this little foxhole on the edge of the world.

Will has a moment of hesitation, of trying to understand. Blake’s hands are on him now, fingers in his hair, tongue hot against his lips. He pulls away, gasping “Blake, Blake?”

“Yeah, okay? Alright?” Blake mutters, and pulls him back.

They are tangled, too much gear, too much extra weight, legs and hands and the dirt and muddied grass all around them. And Blake is holding him down, holding him here, not even minding, kissing him—hands on his jaw, on his cheek, on his shoulders, on his waist, grasping at him, one thing or another–

So the hunger comes, surging at last.

Blake kisses him lazily, contentedly, as though he would be happy lying there under a warm body forever, but Will is older, more experienced—in his way, more desperate. He fumbles at Blake’s kit madly, unstrapping what he can, tugging at his tunic and tearing himself away. He kisses Blake’s jaw, his neck, hears him gasp, feels the pulse of him hot under his skin. He presses his mouth, open against hot flesh, and licks.

“Scho, you can’t,” Blake says, breathless—his whole body moves, he batters senselessly at Will’s hands until he lets go of his tunic. “God, I—but we’re too exposed, we can’t–”

He is young and warm and moving and wanting, he is flushed, clinging to the straps of Will’s netting. Overwhelmed and new to it. Will breathes out, hard, and reaches between his legs, finds the hard line of his cock and squeezes, makes him gasp and buck.

Smells like sweat, Will thinks, drunk on the taste of salt under his tongue. He tugs uselessly at Blake’s tunic, digging for soft, sensitive skin, listens to him gasp and whine. Loud. Sounds different with his cock in my hands–

“You’re—you’re needy, Scho,” Blake says, breathlessly, “I didn’t know–”

“Yes,” Will gasps, breaking away, “yes, need you–”

Blake is saying something else, hands in Will’s hair, something distant and faraway, “I never thought, you’re never–”, but Will is pulling himself upright, reaching up under Blake’s jacket for the buttons of his suspenders, fumbling for any way to get him undressed, too many layers of armor, of uniform, too much between Will’s hands and his skin.

“Wait a second,” Blake stammers, his hands fumbling at Will’s, trying to push him away, “just—wait a second, just wait–”

“No, I can’t,” Will says, voice breaking in his throat, “I can’t anymore, I can’t, I need it now–”

He shimmies down in the mud, not caring about the mess, the dirt, the way his kit rucks up around him. Not caring about anything but Blake’s waistband in his hands, pulling hard, pulling him free as Blake yelps, protesting, lifting his hips anyway to help him along.

“Wait, Scho, I’m serious,” he says, as Will drops himself down, his head foggy and light. The hair on Blake’s stomach is dark and coarse, his cock short and heavy and red. The muscles of his legs struggle and flex, bound up around his knees, as far as Will bothered to go. “I’m not—we’ve been marching for days, I’m not—fuck, fuck, let me wipe myself down or something first, I’m–”

Will spits on his hole and he cries out, desperately—covers his mouth with his hand as Will grabs his cock by the shaft and leans down, mouths at his balls. He breathes in deep, closes his eyes. Hot under his hands, under his tongue.

“Oh, my god, oh, my god,” Blake moans, muffled, hiding his face, covering his mouth, and Will moans back, almost lost in the sound of him. He reaches up to Blake’s kit, patting desperately for the right pocket. “Oh my god, Scho, you–”

Will pulls off. “Vaseline,” he rasps, and Blake is fumbling for it, moving on command. He pulls the lid off the tin like a man presenting an engagement ring, holding it open as Will scoops into it, too much, too selfishly, not caring. He risks a glance up and feels the hunger rip through him again—Blake, flushed down to his neck, eyes wide, lips parted, breathing hard, and looking down at him. Just him.

“Your palm,” Blake manages, “aren’t you–”

“Need you like this,” Will says hoarsely, “don’t move.”

He’s beautiful, Will thinks, watching Blake as he finds his hole, watches his shoulders hitch, his eyes flutter. He gasps, of course—gives a little “wait, Scho, wait wait wait–”

Will pushes inside, and the volume goes up.

Will moans next, lips trembling, a little “God, God,” as he watches Blake clasp both hands over his mouth. He’s screaming into them, writhing, arching. His hips buck, bouncing his cock against his stomach, and Will drops his gaze to it, suddenly, as if breaking out of a trance.

He leans down, pulls the head into his mouth, lets it come back to him like an old habit, sucking and bobbing. Blake chokes for him, his feet scrabbling in the mud on either side of him. “Please, please, Will,” he moans, and Will feels his whole body clench like a heart, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

If I pull away now, I will die, Will thinks madly. He fumbles at Blake’s arm, tugs ineffectually at his sleeve until Blake obeys, tangling fingers in his hair.

He could pull me off, he could stop me–

Blake’s fingers clench hard, almost tearing at his scalp, and he pushes down. Will moans through his nose, pressed against the dark hair of his stomach, and sucks hard.

“Will, I can’t,” Blake is gasping again, “I don’t, I’m not, I never—fuck, I’ve never had it like this before, I never had it like this, I never–”

Will pistons into him, finger slick and curling, and his voice—his voice–

“Stop, stop stop stop, you have to–” Blake tries, then bites his fingers, gritting out a desperate noise. He gulps—gasps— “Will, please, please, I can’t, if you don’t stop, I can’t—I can’t stop it, I can’t–”

Will looks up at him, hazy, burying him, buried in him. Blake’s fingers hold him fast, hips bucking up into his mouth. Hard, and desperate, and chasing it, he thinks. So much to learn about wanting.

And he curls his finger up into him, and Blake is biting the meat of his palm and shaking, swallowing down the sound of it as it takes him completely.

When the shaking subsides, Will pulls off slowly, sucking the whole way up, swallowing the lot of it as a matter of course. Blake watches him, wide-eyed, his breath heaving in little vocal sighs, until Will pulls his finger slowly free, when his head falls back and he moans openly, his voice shaking. “Fuck,” he says, and runs a palm over his forehead as Will wipes his hand impassively on the grass, “fuck.”

He slumps back, breathing hard, and Will watches him for a moment, taking him in. He’s prone to ruddiness, cheeks and neck flushed, but his knuckles are pale from the effort of clenching his hands in fists. When he breathes out, his stomach dips, and the ridge of his hips becomes more prominent.

Blake must have been keeping the Vaseline in the same pouch as his Maries, he realizes. The button is still open, and the packet is spilling slightly onto the ground. Will reaches over and tucks them back in, closes the snap securely. Blake’s kit is usually disorganized, and he won’t watch it get worse.

“Scho,” Blake murmurs.

Will leans in to kiss him, but Blake presses a palm against his mouth. “I wasn’t messing about,” he snaps, and for a moment Will thinks, misstep, “you can do what you want with your mouth, but don’t you bring that near me! Absolutely rank, rinse that out now!”

He shoves Will back, and pushes something into his hands. Will glances down, sees the whiskey, and starts laughing. “Sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean to offend your virtue.”

“I don’t have to have delicate fucking sensibilities to know that that is rank,” Blake argues, as Will takes a tiny mouthful, not wanting to waste it, and swishes it like saltwater. “When is the last time you think I had a proper wash? You think they gave us facilities while you were gone?”

Mouth thoroughly disinfected, Will leans sideways to spit on the ground, then takes another swig. He slumps back against the dirt next to Blake, shoving the cork back in and passing the bottle back. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and feels Blake’s hand close on his as he takes it back.

His body is buzzing as he lays back, closing his eyes. What next? He thinks. He’ll have more questions, of course. They’ll be easier to answer, now; surely, the difficult part is behind them. They have bridged that chasm–

Blake takes him by the cheek and kisses him, and Will startles a little, humming.

“Thought you didn’t want to,” Will murmurs when they part, and Blake breathes out hard.

“I want everything,” he says, “show me.”

Blake’s hands fumble at his kit, his tunic, and Will gasps, stiffening all over as he comes back into himself. You don’t have to, he ought to say, his head stuffed full. It wasn’t about this. I just wanted to touch you, it doesn’t matter at all…

Shuddering, he murmurs “Blake, please,” and catches one of his hands by the wrist. Gently—always gently, always enough that he could pull away—he brings it between his legs, finds the hard line of his cock.

Blake squeezes, and Will gasps, eyes falling shut, head falling back. Lightning in his stomach. “Scho,” he says quietly, moves tentatively. Hand fumbling, slowly, up and down, limited by the fabric, limited by how little he knows. “I want to—I want to, how do I…?”

He could get me off like this, Will thinks, head full of cotton. “It’s good,” he murmurs, the sensation muffled but God! God!, from another hand, from Blake’s hand, throbbing and desperate, squeezing, touching—it doesn’t need to be more, it doesn’t need to be anything, it just needs to be him– “it’s okay, it’s good, you’re so good…”

Movement next to him, Blake sitting up a little. He pulls his hand away, and Will lets him go, groaning with disappointment as Blake’s hands run over the front of his trousers and then… up, under the cut of his armor, of his jacket. Thick fingers, and clumsy hands, Will thinks. Looking for–

The buttons of his suspenders, which he finds. Fumbles at. Curses. “I want to,” Blake starts, breathless, and Will opens his eyes, his hips rocking on instinct, grinding against the hard canvas of his uniform. “I don’t—please, please, show me, don’t—don’t let me mess up, I want to be good–”

He’s slightly panicked, and Will breathes out hard, finds his hands under everything. “It’s okay,” he tells him, undoing the buttons one-handed, the other holding Blake’s, feeling the way it shakes. “It’s good, whatever you do is good. You—want them off?”

Blake’s eyes are focused on his waist, but he glances up at Will’s face for a moment. Breathless, red-faced. He licks his lips thoughtlessly, almost a tic. “Yes,” he says, “I can help–”

“You find the Vaseline,” Will says, not unkindly, and Blake focuses up, eyes flashing over the ground around them for the tin. Unfettered, it takes seconds, and Will’s pulling himself free.

He doesn’t have any particular feelings about his cock, but he likes the way Blake stops to look at it, wide-eyed, biting his lip. In his hands, the Vaseline, open, not on his palm yet. Will glances at him, runs one finger along the length of it slowly, showing off. Watching, pleased, the way Blake’s lips fall open slightly, the way his tongue darts out unconsciously.

“Please,” he murmurs, and Blake swallows. The cap of the Vaseline tin snaps shut.

“I just—don’t want to mess up,” Blake says, scooting closer, not touching him. He laughs nervously. “I don’t—I mean, I don’t want you to get—bored, or–”

Will looks up in surprise. “Why would I get bored?” He asks, and Blake laughs again, slightly wretchedly.

“I don’t know,” he says, his hand hovering, not touching, “girls do, and–”

Will takes him by the front of his jacket and kisses him, then, fingers tangling in the soft, sweaty curls of his hair. Quiet down your mind, he thinks, feeling Blake soften in his hands, I’ll have to teach you that, too. There’s time.

“There’s time,” he murmurs, as they break away, still so close they may as well be touching, “I’ll show you everything, but it takes time. I want to take time with you.”

“I just—don’t want to do it wrong,” Blake mutters, and Will kisses him again, lightly, pulling away before he gets lost. “What if I–”

“It’s all right when it’s you,” Will tells him, “it’s—it all feels good, if it’s you. Okay?” And then, breathing out hard, “Tom, please, I need you to touch me, I need–”

His hand wraps around Will’s cock, and they moan at the same time—Blake at the feeling, maybe, or the sight of Will collapsing back, hips canting, trying to look up at Blake’s face until his eyes force themselves shut and he drowns in it.

Blake’s hand moves slow as he strokes, too slow, maybe. It doesn’t matter. Will breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, trying to keep his voice down as his body strains and struggles, eager, needy. He hasn’t been touched by anyone but himself in months, and suddenly it’s coursing through him, a path he needs to run down, desperation fizzing through him–

Blake has an arm around him, he realizes, pulling him in, holding him. Kissing his forehead, murmuring something to him, to himself. Will breathes hard and rocks his hips up, chasing, chasing–

“...Pretty like this,” Blake murmurs, something penetrating the fog in his head. Kissing his cheek, kissing anything his lips can reach as Will starts to breathe hard, chest heaving. “Didn’t know you could—could open up for me, like this–”

“Yes, I, yes,” Will murmurs, and leans his head against Blake’s shoulder, gasping, “please, Tom, need you, I’m–”

“I’ve got you,” Blake says, breathlessly, and Will peers up at him, finds him watching, eyes dark. Hair mussed up. Flushed. Just like before, he thinks, except– “do you want–I mean, tell me what you want, let me—give it to you, anything, I–”

His fingers bump, his fist squeezes, and Will arches and gasps, tells him “don’t stop, please, please don’t stop, I’m–”

Blake’s breath heaves, hard, his hand speeds up, the sound of it wet and noisy, and Will lets the need force its way out of him, a punched-out sound, as Blake asks, excited, “are you gonna—is it—are you–?”

“Please, please, Tom,” Will moans, hands scrambling for the front of his vest, hips humping up desperately into him, “don’t—stop, don’t stop, don’t stop–”

It hits, hard, and he pulls Blake into a kiss as he cums, muffling the sound of his voice against his lips, spilling messy all over his hand.

Blake breathes against him hard, like he wants to pull away, but Will doesn’t let go, and he doesn’t fight. His fist keeps working, pulling one shock out of him after another, and Will just lets him, his whole body squeezing once—twice—three times—and then he’s had enough, and pulls away, breathing hard into his mouth as Blake slowly, reluctantly, lets go of him, lets his cock fall back against his hip.

They pant the same air, in, out. His breath’s awful, Will thinks. So’s mine.

Tom’s hand wraps around his waist and pulls him in, and they’re kissing again, tongue and spit, pulled tight. He didn’t tuck himself back in, Will thinks, he’s hard against my hip. He’s hard again. He wants me again. He wants–

I can teach him how to want, I have time—I have all the time in the world–

“Fuck, Scho, you okay?” Blake is asking, pulling away and stroking Will’s cheek, and Will realizes his throat is tight. It seems to come from a long way off, something unimportant, just something his body is trying to tell him, and then he sees the way Blake is looking at him, and feels tears on his cheek. “Are you—was I too–?”

The humiliation comes up in a wave, and Will lets go of Blake all at once to scrub at his face. “Fuck,” he mutters, looking away, looking at anything else, “no, I’m fine, I—I’m sorry, you didn’t–”

Blake’s hands on his face, pulling him back. You are not something far away, your body is not separate from yourself. You are here with me.

Stay here.

“I just,” Will says, swallowing hard, “I didn’t think you would let me do that, I didn’t think I would get to do that–”

“No, fuck, it’s okay,” Blake says, and kisses him, like it’s easy, like it’s nothing. “It’s okay, you’re so—I mean—wanted you so bad, okay? I just didn’t know—I’m too thick, you have to–” he interrupts himself, kissing Will again. “Come on, please, stop crying, just because I’m thick, you don’t have to–”

“You’re not thick,” Will says, but he laughs when he does. Already, the drop is evening out, the closeness warming him back up. Yes, I am here, yes, I am alive. “And I’m not crying.”

“If you’d like,” Blake says. “There’s Vaseline on your chin, by the way.”

Will scrubs his face with his sleeve, sniffing. Then he sits up, still touching Blake’s leg with his own, and tucks himself back in.

As he reaches up under his jacket to find the loose strap of his suspenders, he catches sight of Blake tugging his trousers up as well. He’s watching me to see what I do, Will thinks, like when we’re packing kit. Doing it the way I do, a moment after me.

He looks away, smiling slightly, buttoning himself back in. No need to call attention to it, he decides. He lets Blake alone about it in the field; he may as well let him alone about it in bed, too. Whatever they make their bed, anyway.

The tunic, and his kit, are not important, and he doesn’t do anything to put them back. Instead, he lies down and grabs hold of Blake, who rolls in without any additional handling. They don’t know how to lie together comfortably, and Blake shifts up and down on his elbow once or twice before Will takes pity and lets him slide it under Will’s back. It’ll go numb in ten minutes, but at least he won’t be shifting around anymore.

“When you said you’d done that before,” Blake says quietly, “um, did you just mean… I mean, you did this before… before you came to France, right?”

“Yes,” Will says. “When you said you’d only done it with…” He pauses, unsure of how to phrase it. “You said you’d never drunk whiskey,” he says. “Did you mean…”

Blake flushes a little. “Never could get over the finish line,” he mutters. “I don’t think I did so bad, I don’t know why it… you know, never worked out before.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Will says. And, in a fit of affection, presses a kiss against the top of his head. “You’re young. There’s time.”

Blake frowns. “You had kids when you were younger than me,” he says.

“Ah,” Will says, “but I was older than you, when I was younger than you.”

Blake elbows him hard.

“We can’t talk about this, can we?” Blake asks.

“No,” Will says. “Except to each other. I’m sorry.”

“S’okay,” Blake says. “There’s technically worse people it could be.”

Will elbows him hard.

“Is it going to get easier?” Blake asks, and Will frowns.

“I don’t know,” he says. “You… have to learn to be more careful. All the days of your life. Our friend Labouchère made sure of that,” he adds, resisting the urge to turn his head and spit in the dirt, “but there will be a part of you that makes sense at last. That’s worth it, to some men.”

“Just some?”

“Just some,” Will admits.

“To you?”

“Yes,” Will says. “To me.”

“Well,” Blake says, shifting in his arms, smiling, “that’s alright by me, then.”

He is so young, Will thinks, and so warm still, and so full of life, and love, and the love of being alive. Like an empty vessel longs to be filled with water, so he wants to open himself up, and be filled with those things that are Blake’s, that are particularly his.

He does not say this. He does not say anything for a while.

And then, taken by a sudden strange fancy, he combs his fingers through Blake’s hair. “If I’m not mistaken,” he says, “Emma’s, er, particular friend is still unmarried. If you… needed somewhere to hide…”

“Mate, I’m still hard and trying to get it to go down,” Blake says, and Will laughs, “you are not setting me up on a blind date right now. We are sitting, alright? We’re sitting.”

“Alright,” Will agrees, “we’re sitting.”

Time is the enemy. The clock runs down regardless.