Chapter Text
Love Borrowed
Volume 1: Chapter 1 Inconvenient
Heat, that sort of dry heat makes you feel like you are standing by a range, open oven door, blasting relentlessly at your face. And dust, dust everywhere, sand in every shelter, on every item of clothing, under fingernails, in hair, frankly in every orifice. The smell of sweat, stale and musty and thick. These delights are our constant companions. I look around, my fellow soldiers wrapped up in an unnerving mix of fear and boredom. For what it’s worth, I’ll take the boredom. The waiting, the long hours spent at camp, anticipating what our next move will be. Destined to be the pawns controlled from on high, in this foreign land so very far from home.
So very far from what we thought we were meant to protect.
I understand there is a strategic reason for it. If we lose control of the Suez Canal, our entire war effort could fall apart. Ensuring access to the oil fields of the Middle East and the supply route beyond is vital. This conflict is global, after all. Set into motion by a seemingly unstoppable chain of events leading us here. As soon as Hitler invaded Poland, the stakes were clear. The lines were drawn, and our fate was determined. Another World War. Another chance for young men to pay the price of freedom with their lives. Mussolini's delusions of grandeur an added horrifying bonus, his designs of re-establishing the Roman Empire means that we’ve spent the last 2 years or so fighting in the sand, gaining and losing territory on repeat, thousands of miles from home. Still, I feel very disconnected from that original cause under the baking sun of the North African desert.
I’m not sure any of my fellows feel the same or even see the potential contradiction in fighting against an Imperialist expansion in an attempt to maintain the supply route to the strongholds of the British Empire. I’m not saying he, they, shouldn’t be stopped. I’m not saying we’re wrong. The bone chilling reports of what is happening in central Europe are enough to convince any right-thinking person that we are facing an existential threat. One that simply must be stopped. I just hope that after the dust settles, if we manage to survive as individuals and as a nation, we can consider our own flaws.
I don’t say this to anyone, of course. I’m sure no one would understand.
My reality is that I’ve always felt out of place, disconnected. This is nothing new. There’s a strange familiarity in the unfamiliar. The feeling of being on the outside. The ‘Hooray Henry’ types I was at school with could always tell. They’d call me a nancy-boy or queer. It was like they could see right through me. My quiet demeanour, my slightly soft-spoken tone, something in the inflection of my voice, in the very way I held myself apparently, as much as I tried concealment. But they could simply tell I wasn’t one of them. I always denied it.
What else could I do?
I did try to deny it to myself too, but that was an entirely fruitless task. My lip twitches at the idea of anything being fruitless about me.
I can at least now admit I am fruity as they come. At school, I believed the jibes. That I was disgusting, broken, wrong. My very desire is criminal after all, so they must be right? Years of twisted, painful self-hatred. As my teenage years took hold and puberty made my wants so very deeply unavoidable, the shame took root as fiercely as the depth of my deviancy. With every illicit fantasy I allowed, the belief in my own abhorrence tightened its tendrils round my heart.
By the time I was 18, what I took for weakness had set in so thoroughly that I decided to allow myself to give in to it. I was a deviant after all. Why shouldn’t I indulge in my deviancy?
I was attending a music recital when I saw him, a boy I vaguely recognised. Now a young man, I suppose. He had been in the year above me at school. He was visiting home during his first year at University. His hair was brown and luscious, longer than most men tend to keep it. His eyes dark and brooding, his frame slender but strong. But it wasn’t just his chiselled jaw and high cheekbones that drew me in. It was the way he was staring at me. Such unabashed heat in his eyes.
I was sure I’d never been looked at that way before in my life.
At the interval, he secured us both a glass of red and spoke of how delightful the performance was, and how he admired the musician's craft. He told me he remembered me from school, that I’d left an impression. His eyes bore into mine with such intensity, and it made my heart rate quicken.
After, I lingered as the crowd dispersed into the night, unsure if I was reading more into his attention but desperate to find out. His smile, as he approached and we began to stroll down quiet streets, told me I had not been mistaken. He led me down an alley and shoved me roughly against a wall. It wasn’t tender, or loving but it was filled with a passion of sorts and it was thrilling.
He kissed me forcefully and ground his hard length against my hip, pawing at mine before applying pressure to my shoulders and guiding my mouth to his prick. It’s a complicated tale I tell myself, when I look back on that night. I finally found a release for my lust. I finally felt that I wasn’t alone in my impure thoughts, and there’s no denying I enjoyed it. The mess I made of myself as I desperately tugged at my own cock whilst his filled my mouth was testament to that. But after, when he told me how I must never speak of it to anyone, how it wasn’t his fault, that I’d lured him to stray. That he wasn’t like me. He was the one to fuck my mouth after all and that he hadn’t returned, so it didn’t even count. It left me feeling as shameful and broken as I ever had.
Yet, it was something. Not affection, not love of course, but at least desire, at least want, at least a release.
I saw him a few more times over what was left of the year before I left for my own university career. He seemed to orbit me, showing up near my house and fixing me with his dangerous glare. Before he’d come, he’d sometimes be so worked up that he’d grant me the concession of a hurried hand job. Spitting on his palm and working me frantically before he’d inevitably tell me to get on my knees and leave me to finish myself off, his spend bitter on my tongue. If it felt wrong, which it often did, I told myself that that was inevitable, since of course it was. We were wrong. And however much Ben denied that he was like me, I’m not a fool. I knew he was every bit as perverted as I was.
When I set out for Oxford, things changed. The desperate, rough, cold exchanges I’d understood would be my lot in life were replaced with something different. I still couldn’t say it was the love of the romance novels I enjoyed. The hope of a genuine partnership or connection is beyond what I could ever wish for myself, but it no longer felt so deeply shameful. The two years I spent at University, before I left, compelled to join the war effort were certainly enlightening on that front. I discovered others like me. It was all in shadow, unspoken, but somehow we found each other. I would succumb to my desires and revel in the pleasures of the male form, but this time without the vitriol and the blame. Men would revel in me also, tell me I was beautiful even, take pleasure in my pleasure. What exactly was wrong about it? What harm did I cause? Who exactly did I hurt?
Still, here is not the place to let my tendencies show. It’s dangerous here. I’d be a threat. As if I simply couldn’t control myself in the midst of such a display of masculinity. Only, believe me, I can. They aren’t bad men, my fellow soldiers but a secret tryst is the last thing on my mind. I simply want to survive this God forsaken place. I want to go home. I want to return to my studies. My quiet little life of academia, where my inner wants can go unnoticed in the day, and I can love in the dark.
That all feels very far away. It’s best not to dwell on a life that I may never return to. That if we fail, might not even exist. That even if as a collective we succeed, I personally may not survive long enough to enjoy. So, I focus on my here and now. The tension in my muscles, the beads of perspiration on my brow and the growing ache in my empty stomach. I get up from where I’ve been napping and head to the mess tent.
“Spring!”
I look up and see Peter, my bunk mate. He’s a simple chap, and I don’t mean that to be as belittling as it perhaps sounds. I just mean, he seems to have simple wants and needs. He’s cheerful despite our situation and he’s always grateful when it’s meal time. He talks of going home and finding a wife and a job and buying a house, and the way he speaks sometimes, I wonder if it’s ever occurred to him that we might never return. But the truth is I think he’s just the same as the rest of us, too terrified to acknowledge it.
“Hi, Peter.”
“More troops joined while you were sleeping. They’ve brought a cook among them. Somehow, he’s managed to make the rations almost palatable.”
“Sounds like a miracle worker.”
“I’d say!”
I join the line of men filtering past the trays. Food has brought me very little joy, and I find it hard to imagine whatever tinned meat or steak and kidney pudding they’re serving up today will be any different, but I’m aware that I can’t forgo meals. We could be sent on manoeuvres any day, and I need to maintain whatever strength I have.
I’m surprised when the smell of some sort of stew hits my nostrils, and even more surprised when I find my mouth water in response. Perhaps the new cook is capable of wonders after all. I hold my plate aloft and a dollop of brown meat and potatoes is placed in its centre. It’s certainly not fine dining, but it looks hot and hearty. It is surprisingly appealing. I look up to offer my thanks and nearly drop my plate.
How very deeply inconvenient.