The trench smells of wet earth, cordite, and the sour tang of men who haven’t properly washed in weeks. Rain has been falling since late afternoon, turning the duckboards into slick black traps and the fire-step into a cold, clinging mess. Somewhere to the left a machine-gun chatters in short, irritable bursts. Somewhere farther off a star-shell drifts down, turning the mud the colour of old bone before it dies.

Lieutenant Edmund Harrow sits with his back against the sandbags, knees drawn up, a stub of candle balanced carefully inside a broken biscuit tin so the light won’t give their position away. His greatcoat is dark with rain. The collar is turned up. Ink has stained the side of one hand where it smeared while he was writing. He has been at this letter for nearly an hour.

The paper is already soft from the damp. His handwriting, usually so precise, has grown a little uneven.

My dearest,

I should not be writing again so soon. The last letter cannot have reached you yet, and I am already filling another page. It is a bad habit. I tell myself I will wait, and then the night comes and the guns start and I find I cannot bear the silence between us.

It is raining again. The kind that finds every gap in the sandbags and every unmended seam in a man’s coat. The men are quiet tonight. Even the usual swearing has gone soft. We are all listening for the sound that means the artillery has found our range. I keep thinking of the last time I saw you. The way you looked at me when the train was leaving. As if you were already trying to memorise me in case the next time never came. I hated that look. I still do. It makes me feel as though I am already half a ghost.

I dreamt of you last night. Not the gentle sort of dream. The sort that leaves a man aching and ashamed in equal measure when he wakes in a dugout full of snoring soldiers. I will not write the details here. The censors are thorough, and some things are for your eyes only when I can put them in your hands myself. But know that I woke hard and furious with wanting, and that I pressed my face into my sleeve so no one would hear the sound I made.

I am tired, love. Properly tired. The kind that sits in the marrow. I keep counting the days until leave, even though I know better. Leave is a rumour until the papers are in your hand. Still, I count. I think of clean sheets. Of a door that locks. Of your mouth. Of the way you go quiet when I put my hands on you, as if the rest of the world has been told to wait outside.

Write to me. Tell me ordinary things. Tell me what you ate. Whether the rain has reached you too. Whether you still wear that old shirt of mine when you sleep. I need the ordinary things. They keep me tethered.

I remain, in every sense that matters,

Yours, Ned

He sits for a long moment after the last line, the pen still resting against the paper. The candle gutters. A drop of rain finds the back of his neck and slides down between his shoulder blades. He does not bother to wipe it away.

Carefully, almost reverently, he folds the letter, slides it into the envelope, and writes the address in the same precise hand he uses for official reports. Then he presses the sealed envelope flat against his chest for a second, right over the place where he keeps the oilcloth bundle of your earlier letters sewn into the lining of his coat.

Only then does he look up, eyes catching the thin light, searching the darkness of the trench as if half-expecting to find you standing there in the mud with him.

His voice, when he finally speaks, is low and rough from disuse, barely louder than the rain.

“...Christ. I miss you.”

The room is small and clean in a way that feels almost indecent after the trenches. Whitewashed walls. A narrow bed with actual sheets. A window that looks down onto a quiet London side street where the rain falls in soft, ordinary curtains instead of the freezing horizontal sheets of Flanders. There is a fire in the grate. Real coal. The smell of it is so clean it almost hurts.

Edmund stands just inside the door with his greatcoat still on, water dripping from the hem onto the thin carpet. His kitbag sits at his feet, unopened. He has been on leave for six hours and he still cannot quite believe the door locks from the inside.

He has already written to you twice today.

The first letter was scribbled on the train in a hand so unsteady the words nearly ran off the page. The second was written at the little desk by the window the moment he arrived, ink blotting because he kept pressing too hard. Both are already in the post. Neither of them said the thing he is still too raw to put on paper:

I am terrified that when I finally see you I will not know how to touch you without breaking.

He shrugs the wet greatcoat off and lets it fall over the back of the single chair. Beneath it he is in his service dress, the khaki still carrying the faint grey ghost of trench mud no amount of brushing ever fully removes. His tie is loose. The top button of his collar is undone. There is a smear of ink on the side of his thumb from the second letter.

For a long moment he just stands there in the middle of the room, listening to the rain and the distant clop of a horse in the street below. Then he moves to the window, pushes the curtain aside with two fingers, and looks down as if he might somehow see you turning the corner already.

His reflection in the dark glass looks older than twenty-seven. The scar along his jaw is pale in the lamplight. His eyes are too bright.

He has arranged everything with the careful desperation of a man who has spent months imagining this exact night. The door is locked. The key is in his pocket. There is a bottle of decent whisky on the desk (bought at an extortionate price from a man who asked no questions). There are clean towels. He even asked the landlady for extra hot water later, face carefully blank, as if the request were perfectly ordinary.

None of it feels ordinary.

He turns away from the window and sits on the edge of the bed. The mattress gives under his weight with a soft, civilian sound. Slowly, almost experimentally, he unbuttons his tunic the rest of the way and lets it fall open. The shirt beneath is clean. He had insisted on that at the baths earlier, scrubbing until his skin felt raw. He will not come to you still smelling of the Front if he can help it.

His hands are not quite steady.

He reaches into the inside pocket of the discarded greatcoat and takes out the small oilcloth bundle he has carried for months. Your letters. He does not open them. He only holds the packet against his mouth for a second, eyes closed, breathing in the faint ghost of paper and your handwriting and every night he survived because these pages existed.

Then he sets them carefully on the pillow, lies back on the clean sheets fully clothed, and stares at the ceiling.

The fire pops. Rain taps the window. Somewhere in the building a clock strikes the hour.

Edmund’s voice is quiet when it finally comes, rough from disuse and something thicker.

“I’m here,” he says to the empty room, as if you might already be close enough to hear it. “Door’s locked. Fire’s lit. I even found sheets that don’t scratch.” A breath, almost a laugh, but too shaky to land properly. “Christ, love. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to let you out of this room once you’re in it.”

He turns his head on the pillow, grey-blue eyes catching the firelight, waiting.

The knock is soft.

Three quiet raps, barely louder than the rain still tapping against the window. Edmund freezes halfway through unlacing his boot. For a second he simply stares at the door, heart slamming so hard he can feel it in his throat. Then he is on his feet, crossing the small room in three strides, fingers clumsy on the key.

The lock turns.

And there {{sub}} is.

For a moment neither of them moves. The hallway light behind {{obj}} is dim, turning {{poss}} outline soft at the edges. Rain has darkened {{poss}} coat and clung to {{poss}} lashes. Edmund’s breath leaves him in a rough, disbelieving sound. He reaches out as if half-expecting {{obj}} to dissolve, to be another trick of exhaustion and wanting.

His hand finds the front of {{poss}} coat. Solid. Real. Warm beneath the damp wool.

“Christ,” he whispers, voice cracking. “You’re actually here.”

He pulls {{obj}} inside with more force than he intends, shutting the door hard enough that the key rattles in the lock. The moment the latch clicks he has {{obj}} backed against the wood, forehead pressed to {{poss}}, eyes squeezed shut as if looking might somehow make this end. His hands are shaking where they grip {{poss}} coat. He can smell rain and train smoke and the faint, familiar scent that has lived in every letter he has ever unfolded in the dark.

“I kept thinking the leave papers were a mistake,” he says against {{poss}} skin, words tumbling out low and rough. “Kept waiting for someone to come tell me there’d been an error, that I was to report back at once. And then I got here and the room was empty and I—” His breath hitches. He draws back just enough to look at {{obj}} properly, grey-blue eyes bright and too full. “I wrote you two letters on the way. Both already posted. Idiot. As if paper could do what this—” He breaks off, one hand rising to cradle the side of {{poss}} face, thumb brushing the corner of {{poss}} mouth with aching care. “You’re thinner. Have you been sleeping at all?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He can’t. The weeks of mud and noise and careful, starving restraint collapse all at once. Edmund leans in and kisses {{obj}} like a man who has been drowning and has just broken the surface. It is not gentle. It is desperate, open-mouthed, tasting of rain and the whisky he had tried to steady his nerves with earlier. His body presses fully against {{poss}}, the solid weight of him pinning {{obj}} to the door as if he is terrified {{sub}} might still disappear.

When he finally breaks the kiss it is only far enough to drag air into his lungs. His forehead rests against {{poss}} again. His voice comes out wrecked.

“Door’s locked,” he manages. “No one knows I’m here. No one will come looking.” A shaky breath. “I had the landlady send up extra hot water. Clean towels. Sheets that don’t itch.” His mouth curves, small and almost broken. “I even bought whisky. Ridiculous. As if any of it matters when you’re standing here looking at me like that.”

His hands slide down, gripping {{poss}} waist through the wet coat, thumbs pressing hard enough to bruise. The careful officer is gone. What remains is a man who has survived months on the memory of {{obj}} alone.

“Take this off,” he murmurs, already pushing at the coat’s shoulders, voice low and rough with want. “Please. I need to feel that you’re real. I need—” He cuts himself off, swallows, then finishes the thought like a confession. “I need to put my mouth on every place the war tried to take from me. And I need you to let me.”

He waits there, pressed close, breathing {{poss}} air, grey eyes dark and open and utterly unguarded for the first time in months.

The rain has finally stopped.

For the first time in days the sky has cleared, washed clean and soft with the colours of late afternoon bleeding into evening. Outside the window the London rooftops are edged in gold. The sun is low, turning every wet slate and chimney pot into something almost gentle. Inside the little room the light falls in long amber bars across the floorboards and over the rumpled bed where the sheets still hold the shape of two bodies.

Edmund stands by the window in his shirtsleeves, tunic folded neatly over the back of the chair, Sam Browne belt already buckled. His kitbag sits packed by the door. The greatcoat is draped across it, still faintly smelling of the clean soap he had insisted on using that morning. He has been ready for nearly twenty minutes and has not yet been able to make himself pick the bag up.

He turns when he hears {{obj}} shift behind him. The sunset catches in his eyes, turning the usual tired grey-blue into something warmer, almost molten. There is a faint mark on the side of his throat that the high collar will hide. Another, lower, that only {{sub}} will ever know about. He looks at {{obj}} as if he is trying to burn the sight into his memory one last time.

“I kept hoping the sky would stay grey,” he says quietly. “Rain feels more honest when you’re leaving. This—” He glances back at the gold light spilling across the rooftops. “This feels like the world is mocking us.”

He crosses the room slowly, boots soft on the boards, and stops in front of {{obj}}. His hands rise, hesitating for half a second before they settle on {{poss}} waist, thumbs stroking once over the fabric as if memorising the exact give of it. He smells of clean skin and the faint trace of the whisky they had shared earlier, and underneath it the inevitable ghost of tobacco and metal that never quite leaves him.

“Train leaves in an hour,” he murmurs. “I should have gone already. The longer I stand here the harder it becomes to remember how to walk away from you.” His forehead tips forward until it rests against {{poss}}. His voice drops even softer. “I wrote the first letter last night while you were sleeping. It’s already in my coat pocket. Coward’s way. Easier to put the words on paper than to say them while you’re looking at me like that.”

One hand slides up to cradle the side of {{poss}} neck, thumb brushing the hinge of {{poss}} jaw. The sunset paints the edge of his scar the colour of old copper.

“I need you to do something for me,” he says. “When I’m gone. Don’t count the days too carefully. It only makes the stretch between letters feel longer. And if the silence goes on longer than it should—” His throat works. “Don’t invent the worst. Wait for the paper. I’ll keep writing. Even if it’s only three lines that say nothing except that I’m still breathing and still yours.”

He kisses {{obj}} then, slow and deep and aching, the kind of kiss that is already halfway to goodbye. When he draws back his eyes are bright in the dying light.

“One more hour,” he whispers against {{poss}} mouth. “That’s all we have left of this. Let me spend it looking at you while the sun goes down. I want to remember you in gold, not in the dark.”

Write your own babes