Deathwatch fic: The Smoke of a Great Furnace/Part 2/2
This is fic. Slash fic. Deathwatch slashfic. Turn away at once all who ye who are not interested.
Title: The smoke of a great furnace (2/2)
Pairing: Bradford/his hand, (fantasy) Charlie Shakespeare/everyone.
Rating: 18 - possibly non con bumming, blasphemy?
Word count: 3019
Disclaimer: Characters not miiiiine. I'm sorry but it was a pretty slashtastic film if you ask me.
Notes: I firmly contend that the reason why this is deeply immoral and insane is because Bradford is....
Without verbal disagreement, because he could not muster the energy or mental clarity for words, Bradford was guided by Charlie onto a stretcher next to the sick, sweet smell that was now Chevasse. Charlie smoothed the covers over him in impersonation of a motherly gesture.
Charlie was a child, nothing but a boy and yet here Bradford was disarmed entirely.
_
He dreamt of the voices coming to Charlie, of him disentangling them, and realising what they meant, that they were clues, him following them until in a neglected part of the trench he discovered a better radio that he used to send an SOS.
Bradford dreamt he would wake to celebration.
_
He actually woke to massive, agressive, stabbing pain in his head and in his leg, worse than before, and yet he found that if he breathed through this, that his head was amazingly clear compared to how it had been earlier. His thoughts had been a warm fug of absolutely no coherence, nothing more than a catalogue of wants bobbing up to push through and out, but now it was all gone, clear.
He stared over to Chevasse beside him, the sickly pallor of his flesh with it's sheen of sweat untouched, the flies, the dirt all over him. It wasn't good enough to let him suffer like that and any man with goodness wouldn't have left him like that, but Doc had. Hatred for Doc swarmed in. Strong and hard and reasoned.
He thought of Shakespeare manning the radio and his thoughts became fluttery again, no longer focused at all, seeping back into a warm, close, gush behind his closing eyes.
Replacing hatred with love, with God's love, Bradford thought of Charlie kissing his forehead as his mother used to when he was a child, of the warmth of his goodness flowing all through him. Repairing him. It felt like the best thing he could imagine, and everything, all the rage, all the radio, all the need for salvation, all the guilt and self disappointment, the exhaustion, the mud, the hideous, horrible pain, was unimportant.
It all elapsed away.
He passed out again.
_
When Bradford woke up the second time he realised that in his sleep he had developed another throbbing hard pain, distinct and seperate from that in his leg, one that managed to quieten the considerable agony of that into submission with its own insistence.
This time it was between his legs, he was hard. On this scant plateau, so minimally away from sleep, images came unbidden.
Charlie.
The invading hands of the others were not this time wrapped around his middle when it was clothed in a khaki, starched uniform as they had been when Bradford had seen them, now they were underneath the edges of it. Ripping it up, off, exposing the young boy's body, white, soft and entirely smooth, like that of a nude bather Bradford had once seen on one of his mother's health holidays to Devon and never quite forgotten for the God given beauty of his form.
The hands were aggressive, Quinn's, Starinsky's? And the jeers and appreciation of the other men to the sight of Shakespeare being stripped, were lusty and thick. Charlie accepted, neck stretched back, eyes tight into a sigh of sacrificial, overwhelmed, ecstasy, giving his young self up for the betterment of the men, making Bradford realise that he never could.
The light caught glowing along the top of Charlie's tawny hair and in a stripe down the edge of his shoulders and bare back as on his hands and knees he sank his head even further down. Knees sinking into the dirt that sucked at them like quicksand, face sinking lower, kissing the naked feet of the men who stood before him, one after the other, on, and on, down the line.
He was taking on the humiliation, their sins, but not burdened by them, absorbing, ridding all threat of damnation with his overwhelming goodness. So young, pure and radiant. Mouth so warm, so open and full, as gradually he kissed them all over.
Feet and shins, hands and arms.
The pleasure of this thought, sent a jolt of arousal down Bradford's spine that bucked out through his hips, setting off a fire of pain in his leg that forced a spark of consciousness through him, almost causing his eyes to become unglued, where sleep had sealed them against the truth and reality of what was happening in his thoughts. Now, not quite conscious, but certainly too alert for the mindlessness of obscenity, his thoughts flowed off its prior heated topic. Bradford felt glad, and pretending to have no notion of the thoughts that awaited him, slowly allowed himself to pass back beneath the veil again.
Shakespeare kissed Macness' hand, pure and chaste, with an expression of great serenity on his face. Macness had large hands, revolting and calloused and settled the other on Charlie's small head, in his hair, he pulled him up so that he could kiss him in turn. His kisses were not good in the slightest, rasps of hot breath against the boy's thin lips, invasive, owning, as all his visible touches to Charlie had been.
As Charlie, shorter, pushed up into Macness' kiss, another hand, sat on his back, following the curve of his quite visible ribcage down his side, appraising his body sordidly. The hand then slipped lower, flat, all the way down until it reached his covered backside which it gave a proprietry squeeze.
This person pushed themself in close against Charlie's back.
Mac Ness lewdly pushed his tongue inside Charlie's chastely held lips with one hand now about his slender, white neck, and the other continuing to scrabble in the short hair at the back of his head - bringing Shakespeare's face into his, as if afraid that he might pull back.
Bradford was so excited he began to squirm, prompting greater, higher flares of pain in his thigh each time. This pain was excruciating, but it did nothing to dampen his ardour and if it didn't he wondered, what could?
What help was there for him?
His thoughts seemed to be worsening in nature, distressing to him, but he had no means to shut these contemplations off. He tried to think of the Lord's words, of the serene face of the Virgin Mary but his face flushed hot with the fire of the Devil regardless, and even these blessed figures could not keep his evilness out.
Gradually he felt as if anything he could summon to help his mind would only be sullied by it.
_
Bradford was tormented. It wasn't right for him to release at all, but particularly over such horrible thoughts.
The deep ingrained dampness of his uniform had become humid with the heat of his excitement. He was annoyingly prone. Even when he took the blanket from himself he could do nothing to reduce his temperature, because for as long as his erection remained he was flushed in the face, his heart beating far too fast, breaths trying to gasp out of him.
Pain of arousal. Stress, acute, robbing him of energy that he didn't have.
He could not physically bear this state much longer.
Finally, desperate, he put his hand between his legs, curling his fingertips hard around himself, trying to calm it's throbbing. He would rather not have touched himself at all, for, touch, instead of halting the impending shame, automatically kindled the arousal instead.
Once in mess hall, breathing hard and low he had moved his fingertips in short, light, painful pinches and even this brutal touch had caused him to release almost instantly.
He didn't want to touch himself but he had no choice.
Shakespeare lay on his back on the contaminated earth, pushed down there by multiple, firm hands. Chalk white and naked, in a hazy sense, for Bradford could not bear, and indeed did not find he needed to imagine his body in any great detail. His legs were apart, and in some horrible desecration of the act of conjunction between man and woman, one of the other men was between them. Uniform trousers barely pushed down by the taker, rubbing scratchy against his spread, unblemished thighs, against his buttocks.
Hawkstone. Dark, handsome in his way, eyes full of concentration, atop young Charlie, having him. Charlie's eyes were closed, complete surrender, and rode the thrusts made inside him, one arm and frail wrist on the man fucking him, whilst the other arm was spread across his chest, demurely covering its salient features from view.
Hawkstone grunted in his common manly way and pulled large exhalations of pure clear air out of Charlie's lips. Hot, moist air but pure all the same. Taking all of Hawkstone's desperate need and producing something so peaceful and apparently pleasing as to appear beautiful.
Bradford was aching, so terribly, worse than at anytime in his entire life. Everything itched and he was still too warm and he couldn't sleep, and he couldn't wake because he needed to sleep, and besides he couldn't imagine how he would bear the world with consciousness anymore.
The hand he kept around his length to prevent him coming off was suddenly stroking it up and down instead.
The thrusts speeded and it became clear that the other men surrounded the scene laughing. Shouting encouragements to Hawkstone, waiting their turn.
MacNess got down beside Charlie, stroking his face, waiting until Hawkstone's thrusts ceased their frantic downward jabbing turn. They soon did and Hawkstone came off inside him with a deep, panted groan of satisfaction. The moment he was done MacNess climbed ontop of him, belt at once open, not pausing before bearing down and deeply thrusting in him, his head down low to his face where he kissed the tip of his nose.
Charlie's hands spread out at his sides and he did not fight, just was given and gave accordingly.
_
At his deepest low, some semblance of self control finally came to Bradford. To fight, he belatedly decided, was futile. What he needed, was to rid himself entirely of this lust as quickly as possible, then he could start pure again. His mind splintered, the half that made this decision, detached of his bodily mechanics, his emotion, his dread, he felt was his true self, his noble soul. The other devilish, bodily, weak part of himself, was his sin, and it seemed wholly seperate from the core, centre of him.
In the prime portion of his attention they changed over discretely. He wanted to keep it this way for what was not him, but seperated out, seemed as though it could be easily discarded.
His mind's eye was still in thrall to his loins, helplessly corrupted.
MacNess, had Charlie harder now, with his weight, fucking between his hips in long, fast, throwing thrusts. Exhibitionistic, it was as though he performed the act more for the others, whose eyes, baited breath, and gripping hands shuffling beneath uniforms followed every movement, than for the boy underneath him.
He was directly uncaring for Charlie who had slipped from dreamy insensibility to the acts that used his body, and was now making small guttural grunts, minute pushes back with his hips at each new intrusion.
Gaining satisfaction from the way he was used in an essential sense.
Pumping hard now, shivering himself insensible, Bradford's back arched constantly and his thigh cried absolute agony. At the very last surge of his end, it was he, not MacNess, ontop of the boy. Charlie was very naked, sharp shoulders and hip bones, chest unobscured now, nipples hard. Scarlet flush in his cheeks, to match that which still burned Bradford down to his bones, twinning the scorch of his livid cock frictioning his hand.
Bradford's own lips touching to that blessed, hot, soft, skin of Charlie's. The tight skin of his shaft rubbed by his hands and simultaneously into him and against. He spent hard, pushing up inside the Charlie of his visions, forcing open his eyes.
Keen and bright either side of his not entirely straight line of nose, there were above his small mouthing of.
"Bradford."
Charlie's voice was sad.
Bradford's breaths were sobbing soundlessly out, he made sure of that, aware of the real Charlie not far from where he lay, but in his head every whispered exhale he gave replied, "Charlie".
Ejaculation spreading all over him.
Then afterwards, the gushing, lightening, soothing swell of it roiling around in his belly, through the pulsing settle of his penis. He was irretrievably given over. Dignity at last vanquished, his own pale thighs spread, penis, through the open v of his service issue trousers, plumply in a hand at the end of an aching, burning wrist.
The first thought he had as he slipped back to real grounded awareness was a deep revulsion.
A disgusting, filthy mess of whiteness covered his hands, his fingertips in particular, for they had been in close vicinity, pulling out the viscous clots of semen so painfully, as had become technique everytime he did this from the unexpected, unwanted explosion in mess hall.
Not having the foresight to pull down his trousers he had splashed over them a too, mainly on the inner zip but nonetheless it was a literal stain there that always would be, remindind him of his lowest point.
Pain pooling muddy in his consciousness, fresh blood hot pouring out of his leg.
He would just have to do better.
A part of him, like a parent demanded that he just sleep now.
_
It was less sleep this time. Maybe only five minutes.
The smell and the pain was all he could feel. He was calm, cool and dead. His head made a sense it could feel calm with. The Earth. It had been the dirt of the surroundings. The trench and the constant sin and barbarity of its contents and inhabitants, trying to force its filth and evil nastiness into him.
It was the death.
It was everything else but him. Nearly what he had become, but he had withdrawn from it just in time to be saved.
Chevasse mumbled in his morphine sleep.
_
It was raining. The droplets were cool on his forehead. Shakespeare was by the radio, headphones on, slumped forward a little, bored, he didn't know a thing of the battle in Bradford's head. Bradford came behind him, refusing to register any dismay, he aimed for levity.
"BOO!"
Shakespeare's eyes, wet and full of fear, locked hard on Bradford, who shuffled out, wincing, keeping his face set like stone.
"Bradford! You've been asleep for ages. Do you feel better?"
Such loveliness in his lines, fragile youth did have all the appearance of almost feminine loveliness at times. Bradford wanted to thank him. Felt it was expected of him to do so, even if he hadn't enjoyed his rest wholly, but a flicker of disgust rose alongside his contemplation of this gesture. After all, contact with Charlie, even as minimal as he'd kept it in the past, had led to unmistakeable depravity in his mind. Depravity that had almost corrupted it for good.
Charlie, Bradford thought as he looked at him was perfect demonstration of evil's technique for temptation. Cloak your twisted outcomes in a cherub's form and you would go far. Charlie was not to be trusted.
Knowing he must be strong, Bradford's resolve grew stunningly icy.
"I felt fine before Charlie. He who places his faith in God is forever strong."
Charlie's face is emptiness itself, he can't say a thing.
"Were there any voices through the radio when I was gone... From command?"
Bradford bet there wasn't, he bet that there would be when he came back to it. His saviour would save him, this was why the radio hadn't been working in the first place. It was a test to see if he would loose faith with the stress and threat and abandon all principle as Doc had done.
All of this had been a test.
"No. Just static all the time. I was turning that, that dial there, still couldn't get anything."
"They don't work."
"No. I was just, testing it, trying ya know. I mean I guessed you'd tried as well, but."
He looked hesitant, not quite afraid but his face was falling into that expression from Doc's face, a stupid, fake pleasantness, a false concern.
"Bradford."
"Charlie?"
"Earlier, before, were there voices? Through this?"
Bradford stared at him, stared through him. Light eyes, crooked nose, blunt, striping cheekbones, small panting O of a mouth, Charlie was very nearly ugly the more he stared at him. His true intent shining through if you paused to take in all the slight foulness to his form.
Charlie looked up at him expectantly and to get his attention asked.
"Bradford? What did they say?"
"Nothing. There was noone there."
"When I came it sounded like you were talking to someone."
Bradford felt himself smirk.
Clever boy.
He wanted to take the credit for saving them, just as had happened in the dream he'd had, well Bradford knew God wouldn't allow that to happen.
"There was nothing."
Bradford glared at Charlie, willing the other to crumble and withdraw like Doc, he did not.
"You can go back to Doc now. Tell him I can check on Chevasse and he doesn't need to come down here anymore."
Of course this wouldn't work, Doc would come anyway, the other men expected it of him. Charlie didn't seem to be moving away.
It was like electricity when his hand, self consciously observed by his soul, contacted Charlie's arm. When they touched there was a jolt of sensation that made his lamed leg twinge. It made Bradford afraid, he grabbed hard at Charlie, hauling him out of the seat away from the table and the radio.
The boy was paralysed by shock throughout and even after, stood over Bradford stunned still.
The radio seemed to be murmuring static and Bradford cocked a head to it automatically, still staring at Charlie, willing him to leave. Static, and Charlie's frightened eyes, and nothing was piercing through.
Title: The smoke of a great furnace (2/2)
Pairing: Bradford/his hand, (fantasy) Charlie Shakespeare/everyone.
Rating: 18 - possibly non con bumming, blasphemy?
Word count: 3019
Disclaimer: Characters not miiiiine. I'm sorry but it was a pretty slashtastic film if you ask me.
Notes: I firmly contend that the reason why this is deeply immoral and insane is because Bradford is....
Without verbal disagreement, because he could not muster the energy or mental clarity for words, Bradford was guided by Charlie onto a stretcher next to the sick, sweet smell that was now Chevasse. Charlie smoothed the covers over him in impersonation of a motherly gesture.
Charlie was a child, nothing but a boy and yet here Bradford was disarmed entirely.
_
He dreamt of the voices coming to Charlie, of him disentangling them, and realising what they meant, that they were clues, him following them until in a neglected part of the trench he discovered a better radio that he used to send an SOS.
Bradford dreamt he would wake to celebration.
_
He actually woke to massive, agressive, stabbing pain in his head and in his leg, worse than before, and yet he found that if he breathed through this, that his head was amazingly clear compared to how it had been earlier. His thoughts had been a warm fug of absolutely no coherence, nothing more than a catalogue of wants bobbing up to push through and out, but now it was all gone, clear.
He stared over to Chevasse beside him, the sickly pallor of his flesh with it's sheen of sweat untouched, the flies, the dirt all over him. It wasn't good enough to let him suffer like that and any man with goodness wouldn't have left him like that, but Doc had. Hatred for Doc swarmed in. Strong and hard and reasoned.
He thought of Shakespeare manning the radio and his thoughts became fluttery again, no longer focused at all, seeping back into a warm, close, gush behind his closing eyes.
Replacing hatred with love, with God's love, Bradford thought of Charlie kissing his forehead as his mother used to when he was a child, of the warmth of his goodness flowing all through him. Repairing him. It felt like the best thing he could imagine, and everything, all the rage, all the radio, all the need for salvation, all the guilt and self disappointment, the exhaustion, the mud, the hideous, horrible pain, was unimportant.
It all elapsed away.
He passed out again.
_
When Bradford woke up the second time he realised that in his sleep he had developed another throbbing hard pain, distinct and seperate from that in his leg, one that managed to quieten the considerable agony of that into submission with its own insistence.
This time it was between his legs, he was hard. On this scant plateau, so minimally away from sleep, images came unbidden.
Charlie.
The invading hands of the others were not this time wrapped around his middle when it was clothed in a khaki, starched uniform as they had been when Bradford had seen them, now they were underneath the edges of it. Ripping it up, off, exposing the young boy's body, white, soft and entirely smooth, like that of a nude bather Bradford had once seen on one of his mother's health holidays to Devon and never quite forgotten for the God given beauty of his form.
The hands were aggressive, Quinn's, Starinsky's? And the jeers and appreciation of the other men to the sight of Shakespeare being stripped, were lusty and thick. Charlie accepted, neck stretched back, eyes tight into a sigh of sacrificial, overwhelmed, ecstasy, giving his young self up for the betterment of the men, making Bradford realise that he never could.
The light caught glowing along the top of Charlie's tawny hair and in a stripe down the edge of his shoulders and bare back as on his hands and knees he sank his head even further down. Knees sinking into the dirt that sucked at them like quicksand, face sinking lower, kissing the naked feet of the men who stood before him, one after the other, on, and on, down the line.
He was taking on the humiliation, their sins, but not burdened by them, absorbing, ridding all threat of damnation with his overwhelming goodness. So young, pure and radiant. Mouth so warm, so open and full, as gradually he kissed them all over.
Feet and shins, hands and arms.
The pleasure of this thought, sent a jolt of arousal down Bradford's spine that bucked out through his hips, setting off a fire of pain in his leg that forced a spark of consciousness through him, almost causing his eyes to become unglued, where sleep had sealed them against the truth and reality of what was happening in his thoughts. Now, not quite conscious, but certainly too alert for the mindlessness of obscenity, his thoughts flowed off its prior heated topic. Bradford felt glad, and pretending to have no notion of the thoughts that awaited him, slowly allowed himself to pass back beneath the veil again.
Shakespeare kissed Macness' hand, pure and chaste, with an expression of great serenity on his face. Macness had large hands, revolting and calloused and settled the other on Charlie's small head, in his hair, he pulled him up so that he could kiss him in turn. His kisses were not good in the slightest, rasps of hot breath against the boy's thin lips, invasive, owning, as all his visible touches to Charlie had been.
As Charlie, shorter, pushed up into Macness' kiss, another hand, sat on his back, following the curve of his quite visible ribcage down his side, appraising his body sordidly. The hand then slipped lower, flat, all the way down until it reached his covered backside which it gave a proprietry squeeze.
This person pushed themself in close against Charlie's back.
Mac Ness lewdly pushed his tongue inside Charlie's chastely held lips with one hand now about his slender, white neck, and the other continuing to scrabble in the short hair at the back of his head - bringing Shakespeare's face into his, as if afraid that he might pull back.
Bradford was so excited he began to squirm, prompting greater, higher flares of pain in his thigh each time. This pain was excruciating, but it did nothing to dampen his ardour and if it didn't he wondered, what could?
What help was there for him?
His thoughts seemed to be worsening in nature, distressing to him, but he had no means to shut these contemplations off. He tried to think of the Lord's words, of the serene face of the Virgin Mary but his face flushed hot with the fire of the Devil regardless, and even these blessed figures could not keep his evilness out.
Gradually he felt as if anything he could summon to help his mind would only be sullied by it.
_
Bradford was tormented. It wasn't right for him to release at all, but particularly over such horrible thoughts.
The deep ingrained dampness of his uniform had become humid with the heat of his excitement. He was annoyingly prone. Even when he took the blanket from himself he could do nothing to reduce his temperature, because for as long as his erection remained he was flushed in the face, his heart beating far too fast, breaths trying to gasp out of him.
Pain of arousal. Stress, acute, robbing him of energy that he didn't have.
He could not physically bear this state much longer.
Finally, desperate, he put his hand between his legs, curling his fingertips hard around himself, trying to calm it's throbbing. He would rather not have touched himself at all, for, touch, instead of halting the impending shame, automatically kindled the arousal instead.
Once in mess hall, breathing hard and low he had moved his fingertips in short, light, painful pinches and even this brutal touch had caused him to release almost instantly.
He didn't want to touch himself but he had no choice.
Shakespeare lay on his back on the contaminated earth, pushed down there by multiple, firm hands. Chalk white and naked, in a hazy sense, for Bradford could not bear, and indeed did not find he needed to imagine his body in any great detail. His legs were apart, and in some horrible desecration of the act of conjunction between man and woman, one of the other men was between them. Uniform trousers barely pushed down by the taker, rubbing scratchy against his spread, unblemished thighs, against his buttocks.
Hawkstone. Dark, handsome in his way, eyes full of concentration, atop young Charlie, having him. Charlie's eyes were closed, complete surrender, and rode the thrusts made inside him, one arm and frail wrist on the man fucking him, whilst the other arm was spread across his chest, demurely covering its salient features from view.
Hawkstone grunted in his common manly way and pulled large exhalations of pure clear air out of Charlie's lips. Hot, moist air but pure all the same. Taking all of Hawkstone's desperate need and producing something so peaceful and apparently pleasing as to appear beautiful.
Bradford was aching, so terribly, worse than at anytime in his entire life. Everything itched and he was still too warm and he couldn't sleep, and he couldn't wake because he needed to sleep, and besides he couldn't imagine how he would bear the world with consciousness anymore.
The hand he kept around his length to prevent him coming off was suddenly stroking it up and down instead.
The thrusts speeded and it became clear that the other men surrounded the scene laughing. Shouting encouragements to Hawkstone, waiting their turn.
MacNess got down beside Charlie, stroking his face, waiting until Hawkstone's thrusts ceased their frantic downward jabbing turn. They soon did and Hawkstone came off inside him with a deep, panted groan of satisfaction. The moment he was done MacNess climbed ontop of him, belt at once open, not pausing before bearing down and deeply thrusting in him, his head down low to his face where he kissed the tip of his nose.
Charlie's hands spread out at his sides and he did not fight, just was given and gave accordingly.
_
At his deepest low, some semblance of self control finally came to Bradford. To fight, he belatedly decided, was futile. What he needed, was to rid himself entirely of this lust as quickly as possible, then he could start pure again. His mind splintered, the half that made this decision, detached of his bodily mechanics, his emotion, his dread, he felt was his true self, his noble soul. The other devilish, bodily, weak part of himself, was his sin, and it seemed wholly seperate from the core, centre of him.
In the prime portion of his attention they changed over discretely. He wanted to keep it this way for what was not him, but seperated out, seemed as though it could be easily discarded.
His mind's eye was still in thrall to his loins, helplessly corrupted.
MacNess, had Charlie harder now, with his weight, fucking between his hips in long, fast, throwing thrusts. Exhibitionistic, it was as though he performed the act more for the others, whose eyes, baited breath, and gripping hands shuffling beneath uniforms followed every movement, than for the boy underneath him.
He was directly uncaring for Charlie who had slipped from dreamy insensibility to the acts that used his body, and was now making small guttural grunts, minute pushes back with his hips at each new intrusion.
Gaining satisfaction from the way he was used in an essential sense.
Pumping hard now, shivering himself insensible, Bradford's back arched constantly and his thigh cried absolute agony. At the very last surge of his end, it was he, not MacNess, ontop of the boy. Charlie was very naked, sharp shoulders and hip bones, chest unobscured now, nipples hard. Scarlet flush in his cheeks, to match that which still burned Bradford down to his bones, twinning the scorch of his livid cock frictioning his hand.
Bradford's own lips touching to that blessed, hot, soft, skin of Charlie's. The tight skin of his shaft rubbed by his hands and simultaneously into him and against. He spent hard, pushing up inside the Charlie of his visions, forcing open his eyes.
Keen and bright either side of his not entirely straight line of nose, there were above his small mouthing of.
"Bradford."
Charlie's voice was sad.
Bradford's breaths were sobbing soundlessly out, he made sure of that, aware of the real Charlie not far from where he lay, but in his head every whispered exhale he gave replied, "Charlie".
Ejaculation spreading all over him.
Then afterwards, the gushing, lightening, soothing swell of it roiling around in his belly, through the pulsing settle of his penis. He was irretrievably given over. Dignity at last vanquished, his own pale thighs spread, penis, through the open v of his service issue trousers, plumply in a hand at the end of an aching, burning wrist.
The first thought he had as he slipped back to real grounded awareness was a deep revulsion.
A disgusting, filthy mess of whiteness covered his hands, his fingertips in particular, for they had been in close vicinity, pulling out the viscous clots of semen so painfully, as had become technique everytime he did this from the unexpected, unwanted explosion in mess hall.
Not having the foresight to pull down his trousers he had splashed over them a too, mainly on the inner zip but nonetheless it was a literal stain there that always would be, remindind him of his lowest point.
Pain pooling muddy in his consciousness, fresh blood hot pouring out of his leg.
He would just have to do better.
A part of him, like a parent demanded that he just sleep now.
_
It was less sleep this time. Maybe only five minutes.
The smell and the pain was all he could feel. He was calm, cool and dead. His head made a sense it could feel calm with. The Earth. It had been the dirt of the surroundings. The trench and the constant sin and barbarity of its contents and inhabitants, trying to force its filth and evil nastiness into him.
It was the death.
It was everything else but him. Nearly what he had become, but he had withdrawn from it just in time to be saved.
Chevasse mumbled in his morphine sleep.
_
It was raining. The droplets were cool on his forehead. Shakespeare was by the radio, headphones on, slumped forward a little, bored, he didn't know a thing of the battle in Bradford's head. Bradford came behind him, refusing to register any dismay, he aimed for levity.
"BOO!"
Shakespeare's eyes, wet and full of fear, locked hard on Bradford, who shuffled out, wincing, keeping his face set like stone.
"Bradford! You've been asleep for ages. Do you feel better?"
Such loveliness in his lines, fragile youth did have all the appearance of almost feminine loveliness at times. Bradford wanted to thank him. Felt it was expected of him to do so, even if he hadn't enjoyed his rest wholly, but a flicker of disgust rose alongside his contemplation of this gesture. After all, contact with Charlie, even as minimal as he'd kept it in the past, had led to unmistakeable depravity in his mind. Depravity that had almost corrupted it for good.
Charlie, Bradford thought as he looked at him was perfect demonstration of evil's technique for temptation. Cloak your twisted outcomes in a cherub's form and you would go far. Charlie was not to be trusted.
Knowing he must be strong, Bradford's resolve grew stunningly icy.
"I felt fine before Charlie. He who places his faith in God is forever strong."
Charlie's face is emptiness itself, he can't say a thing.
"Were there any voices through the radio when I was gone... From command?"
Bradford bet there wasn't, he bet that there would be when he came back to it. His saviour would save him, this was why the radio hadn't been working in the first place. It was a test to see if he would loose faith with the stress and threat and abandon all principle as Doc had done.
All of this had been a test.
"No. Just static all the time. I was turning that, that dial there, still couldn't get anything."
"They don't work."
"No. I was just, testing it, trying ya know. I mean I guessed you'd tried as well, but."
He looked hesitant, not quite afraid but his face was falling into that expression from Doc's face, a stupid, fake pleasantness, a false concern.
"Bradford."
"Charlie?"
"Earlier, before, were there voices? Through this?"
Bradford stared at him, stared through him. Light eyes, crooked nose, blunt, striping cheekbones, small panting O of a mouth, Charlie was very nearly ugly the more he stared at him. His true intent shining through if you paused to take in all the slight foulness to his form.
Charlie looked up at him expectantly and to get his attention asked.
"Bradford? What did they say?"
"Nothing. There was noone there."
"When I came it sounded like you were talking to someone."
Bradford felt himself smirk.
Clever boy.
He wanted to take the credit for saving them, just as had happened in the dream he'd had, well Bradford knew God wouldn't allow that to happen.
"There was nothing."
Bradford glared at Charlie, willing the other to crumble and withdraw like Doc, he did not.
"You can go back to Doc now. Tell him I can check on Chevasse and he doesn't need to come down here anymore."
Of course this wouldn't work, Doc would come anyway, the other men expected it of him. Charlie didn't seem to be moving away.
It was like electricity when his hand, self consciously observed by his soul, contacted Charlie's arm. When they touched there was a jolt of sensation that made his lamed leg twinge. It made Bradford afraid, he grabbed hard at Charlie, hauling him out of the seat away from the table and the radio.
The boy was paralysed by shock throughout and even after, stood over Bradford stunned still.
The radio seemed to be murmuring static and Bradford cocked a head to it automatically, still staring at Charlie, willing him to leave. Static, and Charlie's frightened eyes, and nothing was piercing through.