Chapter 2 The Trench Lines
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Charlie yelled as the shell’s impact knocked him—and the row of men beside him—into the cold, slimy mud of the trench walls.
That was no ordinary whizz-bang from the Germans; the explosion’s crack had been almost as violent as its impact. Charlie righted himself and tried to figure out if it was even worth the effort of wiping the mud off his uniform.
“His or ours?” the man to Charlie’s left asked, the cry of the shell still ringing in their ears.
“Hell if I know, and I’m not fool enough to go look,” Charlie answered. Sticking your head above the trench line was a handwritten invitation to one of the German snipers.
Charlie shifted in his soaked boots, trying to take the pressure off his blisters. No matter how many duckboards they put down, it was impossible to spend more than five minutes in the front lines and not have muddy water soak through your boots and socks.
“Captain ordered a double ration of rum,” Sergeant Henderson called down the line, thick SRD jug in hand.
Henderson had only been in the division a few months, but Charlie liked the burly Yorkshireman who was never shy about calling a spade a spade. He’d worked as a tradesman in London before joining up, and Charlie wondered whether their paths would have crossed even without the war.
Henderson also was smart enough to water down the ration with some tea, making the rum both warm and drinkable.
As the cups were passed along the line, the low chatter of conversation between the men died down.
Charlie could see the mouths of some men moving in silent prayer, the hands of others checking and rechecking their rifles, the eyes of others locked onto small pictures of loved ones.
Charlie didn’t do any of that. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift.
When he’d first shipped out to Flanders, his sergeant had informed the section that “to think was to have already disobeyed.” Charlie had taken the grizzled sergeant's words to heart, although perhaps not the way the man had intended.
If to think was to disobey, then Charlie was going to damn well make sure he was thinking whenever he had the chance.
He would think about his life in London before the war. About his family, their little shop filled with laughter and teasing. He invented futures for himself, scoring the winning FA Cup goal for Arsenal, or other such nonsense.
Mostly, though, he liked to think about sex, which was both highly distracting and highly pleasant.
Plus, it was extra satisfying to know how horrified the army would be if they could read his mind.
Especially given the nature of his recent fantasies, which featured a posh lieutenant and what he could do with his mouth.
The sniffle beside him made Charlie open his eyes. The private to his left, the one who had asked about where the shelling had come from, had long tear tracks streaking down his face.
Charlie knew all too well the fears the lad was facing. He glanced down at his half-finished cup of rum-tea. It was against the rules to share rations, but what would his officers do if he was caught? Send him to the front?
He passed it over. “Have this. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”
The man’s eyes went wide, but he threw Charlie’s remaining ration back in one fell swoop. Poor bastard.
Charlie was about to open his mouth to say another word of comfort when he noticed the break in the shelling.
Without needing to be told, the line of men readied themselves for action. Grips shifted, helmets tightened, hands at knives ready to be pulled.
One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Three heartbeats.
The high-pitched shrill of a metal whistle cut through the silence. The signal to charge.
“Over the top, lads! Over the top!” Henderson yelled as they scrambled up the ladders into No Man’s Land, standing above ground for the first time in over a week.
Charlie could only guess what motivated his fellow soldiers to go against every human instinct and run towards the machine gun fire. Maybe a grand vision of being a hero, a belief in God, or just the numbing effect of rum.
Or, in Charlie’s case, the small glow of a happy daydream.
???
Incredibly, Charlie survived the charge.
Survived the whole damn week. And he was likely going to survive another week, because his section’s rotation at the front was done, and he had eight days of relative safety ahead of him.
It would still be in the trenches, with the constant rain and the rats, but at least the shellfire wasn’t as loud.
Charlie’s daydreams had kept him pleasantly entertained on the front line, and now he quite firmly wanted—with firmly being the important point here—to move from the world of imagination to action.
He attempted to subtly alter his trousers as he stood at the crossroads of two major trench lines, trying not to look too much like a man with time on his hands.
In the month or so since that they had first drunkenly got off together in an alleyway of some bombed-out village, Ned had become Charlie’s favourite distraction.
It was never guaranteed that they would be able to meet up.
For one, it was a war and sometimes the Jerrys got in the way.
Other times, Ned was doing officious officer things or Charlie was getting called up for some insubordination.
And sometimes the morass of men that filled the trenches made any sort of interaction impossible.
Of course, asking after the bastard directly wouldn’t do, or rather, too many would notice a corporal asking after a lieutenant from another section.
The same went for just wandering around the officers’ dugouts.
He and Ned really needed to develop a better system to contact one another.
The problem was by the time they tracked each other down and found some hidden corner, logistics were not the top priority.
Charlie was still standing in the middle of the trench intersection impishly named “Oxford Circus,” trying to figure out what to do next, when he heard the cut crystal accent that made his whole body go hard. “Corporal Villiers!”
Finally.
“Yes, Lieutenant Pinsent.” He turned around and saluted.
Everything about Ned screamed officer—the perfect posture, the impeccable uniform, the crisp, even way he spoke.
Wherever Ned walked in the camp, men automatically stood to attention.
It annoyed the hell out of Charlie, but it also made him hornier than he liked to admit, knowing what he could and would make that tall, authoritative form do.
“Come with me.” Without checking whether Charlie would follow, Ned turned on his heel and started walking through the trenches. He led them to a darkened supply dugout, which wasn’t in any way comfortable but had a decent chance of being private, at least for a short while.
They had barely made it inside when Ned’s lips came crashing down on Charlie’s, the force of his body pushing Charlie against rough crates.
Charlie groaned, revelling in the sensation of being surrounded by Ned, by the softness of his lips and the power he could feel trembling behind them. Iron wrapped in velvet.
Ned ran his hands up and down Charlie’s body, touches that were wonderfully intimate even if they were through his uniform. Charlie shivered in pleasure.
“Could you’ve been any harder to find, Villiers?” Ned panted into his mouth, hands clenched around Charlie’s lapels. “Wandered half the bloody reserve line trying to spot you. Thought you’d got yourself field punishment again.”
Before Charlie could respond, Ned’s lips were on his again, his hands grabbing Charlie’s hips so tightly that Charlie could feel Ned’s own need through their trousers, grinding against his thigh.
“We can’t all be lounging in the officers' mess, waiting for others to fight the Germans,” Charlie managed to get out between kisses. He pulled at the collar of Ned’s uniform and kissed his neck, nipping it in a way that he knew would make the other man groan.
“You sure it wasn’t that your focus was elsewhere?”
Charlie thrust his hips forward to show Ned just exactly where his focus had gone. “Dodging death gives a chap horrible wood.”
Ned leaned over Charlie with his arm braced above his head, his lips against Charlie’s ear. “Must have been mighty uncomfortable for the past week.”
“Couldn’t lie down for fear of giving my position away.”
Ned laughed, his hand slowly moving more intimately around the anatomy in question, fingers creating friction against the uniform’s material that was just on the right side of rough.
“Taking your time today, are you?” Charlie grabbed a fist of Ned’s hair and kissed him with force, tongue darting and tangling with Ned’s, showing him with his kiss all that Charlie could never find the way to say in words—the joy of survival and how much he had carried Ned and these moments with him through the past week.
“Well then.” Ned dropped to his knees.
This was exactly what Charlie needed. But politeness still made him say, “Are you sure?”
Ned didn’t even bother to look up as he undid Charlie’s trousers. “My opinion on sucking cocks has not changed in the past two weeks.”
Charlie found himself actually blushing. “I mean, I’m just back from the front.”
Ned looked up at him with those damn hazel eyes and Charlie could have come right there and then. “I want you now and I want you between my lips.”
Charlie remembered being told that pleasure heightens the senses, but he found that as soon as Ned’s mouth was around him, the exact opposite was the case.
The smells and noises of the trenches evaporated.
Existence boiled down to the feel of his uniform cloth against his back, the rough wood beneath his hands, the pain in his mouth as he bit his cheek to keep from making noises, and the whirling warm pleasure of Ned’s mouth.
“Fuck, Ned!” Charlie moaned, making sure to keep his voice low.
Charlie knew the other man liked it when Charlie called him by his given name; he had asked him to do it the first time they got each other off.
Charlie had been taken aback at first. It wasn’t like tossing a man off automatically put you on first-name terms, especially an officer.
So he didn’t do it often, and he hadn’t offered the same familiarity back.
Charlie ran his hand through Ned’s jet-black hair. “You couldn’t wait for this, could you?” he whispered. “Your mouth filled with an infantryman’s cock.”
Ned’s response was a grip on Charlie’s arse that brought him deeper into his mouth and throat.
The world spun, and Charlie’s voice became increasingly broken.
“I know you’re hard for me, hard as a fucking rod since you commanded me to follow you like a puppy.
You like bossing men around, then getting on your knees for them?
Well, here is an orders for you. Rub yourself off. ”
That got a moan from Ned that Charlie swore vibrated through his bones. Charlie felt Ned reach down into his own trousers and start to move. Knowing that Ned was as frantic as Charlie shattered whatever was left of Charlie’s self-control and their rhythm.
Everything became a blur of Charlie cursing as pleasure crashed through him, Ned sucking him further, Charlie biting his own hand to muffle a moan, Ned’s hand warm on his thighs.
Charlie dropped to his knees, hand going around Ned’s cock, staring into Ned’s hazel eyes as he worked him.
“Come with me, Ned. Show me how much you missed me.”
And then Ned was lost in his own pleasure.
Charlie started to come back to himself a few minutes later, still kneeling on the damp ground.
Ned was hunched over himself, shaking. Ned didn’t always finish, which Charlie found damn odd, but accepted that sometimes Ned’s mind just wouldn't let him go there. When he did, Ned’s climaxes always shook him to the core.
Charlie knew that it would be a few more minutes before the other man was ready to stand up.
Normally, Charlie didn’t linger with his partners, women or men.
If the business at hand was done, he much preferred to button up and carry on.
But there was something about the way Ned completely gave it up for Charlie, about the vulnerability when he came, that made Charlie stay with Ned until he knew the man was right with himself.
The posh officer probably didn’t even notice, but Charlie didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone.
So he closed his trousers and waited, not touching except where the sides of their hips and legs brushed up against each other. Basking in the memories of what they had just done, he stored it away as inspiration the next time he needed to lose himself in his thoughts.
Ned straightened up further, his breathing still irregular. Charlie reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it, took a smoke, and passed it to Ned. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
Ned reached out for the cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly. “Well, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Villiers, but we’re still at war.” He took a long drag then passed the smoke back to Charlie.
“Smart-arse.” Before he could second-guess himself, he added, “You should call me Charlie.”
Silence. Maybe he shouldn’t have offered, shouldn’t have presumed that a lieutenant would want to be on such terms with a lowly corporal. Then he was immediately angry at himself for caring what the bloody lieutenant thought. He stood, dusting off his trousers. “Tell the Jerrys I said hi…”
Ned's long, lean form stood beside him, and he looked straight into Charlie’s eyes. “See you in two weeks, Charlie.” Ned whispered the last word, a shy smile teasing his lips.
Charlie suddenly wanted to stroke Ned's hair, to pull him close and just feel his breathing for a while. But none of that was possible.
He put the cigarette out and left.