For King And Country (not mine)

Christmas Festivities 1939 ☆

A/n don't mind the little stars this means I've edited the chapters so that their easier to read. Lots love love

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Christmas Day 1939 - Button House

The Christmas festivities were in full swing, but the Captain had spent most of his day avoiding them.

Downstairs, he could hear laughing, cheering, music blasting from the record player. Despite it being their first Christmas in wartime, things were lively.

But everyone was cheery, likely rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed thanks to the drinks they'd acquired from previous visits to the nearest town.

The Captain, however, was sat in his office, his jacket lovingly hung over the back of his chair. His tie, tucked under a stiff collar, was looser than entirely appropriate.

In front of him, countless reports and communications to read and stamp and send back to London by lunchtime of the following day.

Captains didn't get a day off at Christmas, it seemed. Not during a war.

It would be worse for those ranking higher than him. They would be doing ten times the workload in half the time. The least the Captain could do was suck it up and get on with it. For King and Country, of course.

A soft knock landed on his door. Had it not been for the deathly silence in his office, the Captain would have missed it entirely.

The Captain stood.

"Come!" He called. The door opened, and the Captain's breath caught slightly.

In stepped his second command, Lieutenant William Havers and the Captain felt a shift in his worldview.

Things always seemed much better, much more stable, when his second was in his line of sight.

The familiarity, the camaraderie, the dare he say friendship that had blossomed from their service together soothed him at the end of each day, knowing that he at least had someone here that understood him.

Understood him mostly, he supposed.

It hadn't taken long for the Captain to realise that things had taken a turn.

He had known for most of his life that something was going on in his heart and his head when it came to men.

His teenage years and his early military service were fraught with deep feelings of longing for something that he knew he couldn't have.

Something that scared him deeply because of how deep that longing was.

In the few instances where he had been proven wrong, where there had been dalliances with other men, it had been after months away with no women in sight.

It had been a last resort. Something hushed, all rough hands and muffled noises in the dead of night.

There was no tenderness or feelings involved. Maybe the feeling of need or desire, but never the emotions that the Captain wanted to experience.

Other men had gotten antsy, had shamefully snuck into opposing dormitories, into bathrooms and abandoned cupboards in quiet corridors after lights out, and had sought out affection with fellow soldiers.

The Captain had been sought after once or twice in his younger years by desperate friends. He had never given any inkling that he felt like this all the time. How he yearned for it even when he wasn't surrounded by only men.