We both began—in the most tentative, almost accidental way—to talk about the future. Places we would go, the kind of apartments we liked or didn’t like, whether we wanted kids someday. It was all framed innocently enough—do you want kids—yes and yes—could you ever see yourself living out in the country—him yes and me no—where will you go after all this is over—neither of us knew.
We skated around the real questions inside our spoken questions, but only just. His thoughtful attentions and orgasmic abuses were too much to withstand; what person could resist having Captain Maxen Ashley Colchester in love with them? Really? Who could have done it?
And late at night, after I’d been bruised and bitten and ridden, we’d talk about the war. Sometimes it was in my room at the base, sometimes it was in a scanty freezing outpost or out on patrol when the other soldiers were asleep, but it was always at night, always in the dark, with our faces tilted up to the ceiling or the sky. We talked about the things we’d do better or differently, the things we’d do the same if we were Congress or the President or NATO or the U.N.
I don’t know why I goaded him so much about going into politics then. Partly it was because I always knew I was going to be a politician and misery loves company—much in the same way married couples try to goad unmarried couples into getting wed. But partly it was because it just seemed like such a waste for someone as fundamentally moral and intelligent and charming not to go into politics. It was obvious he was born for it, molded and shaped for it, and the thought of Ash sitting in an insurance office or teaching high school government made me want to smash my head against a wall.
“Maybe I’ll just be career Army,” he’d say often enough when I brought up what we’d do after the war.
“You won’t,” I would promise him. “You love fixing things too much.”
He would scoff, and then I’d roll myself on top of him and murmur, “You fixed me.” And then the conversation would stop while I let him fix me over and over and over again.
And, in a strange way, I’d also grown comfortable with the corner of his heart that harbored the memory of someone who wasn’t me. His fierce attachment to this emails never waned, and there were countless times I’d see him coming out of the shower with color in his cheeks and hooded eyes. I realized that it was his way of keeping things separate—how he lived with himself—as if by taking care of his lust alone, he wasn’t betraying me by it. And once, just once, when we had a week’s leave and were drunk in Berlin, I leaned over to him in the hotel bar and whispered, “I want to pretend I’m her.”
His eyes had flashed then, and he’d searched my face for several long seconds. But we were both drunk and stupid and full of the unspoken feelings between us, and he’d brought me upstairs. The memory of the things he did to me that night still makes me ache.
There was also something attractive in having something to be jealous over, something to hurt for, that wasn’t my lie or our hidden relationship. How much easier it was to lie in my bed and pang over some teenager on the other side of the continent than it was to think about how I was putting Ash’s career and mine in danger, how I was denying Ash and me what we both really wanted.
Because even as we began to grow complacent about our boundaries in private, in public we were both model closeted men. We were careful about our assignations, how we interacted in front of the other soldiers. I made a point to go on plenty of fake dates, brought women to all the events I went to at home, partied with clouds of eager, young co-eds whenever I had the chance. Everything was fine on the surface. More than fine, it was good. As good as they get with an unwinnable war and bad food, at least.
All until the day Ash came into my room and said, “I’ve been selected for a promotion.”
I had been kicked back on my bed, reading Brideshead Revisited for the trillionth time since Ash had compared me to Sebastian Flyte all those years ago, and didn’t understand the importance of his words at first.
And then I did.
“To the rank of Major, if you were interested,” Ash clarified in a cool voice as I sat up.
“You’d have to go to Command School,” I said, thinking. Panicking. “How long?”
“Ten months.” His expression changed, softened a little. “It’s back home in Kansas. Fort Leavenworth.”
But my home is wherever you are, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Because I could hear Merlin’s voice as clearly as I could hear my own. The voice telling me to sacrifice. All of the hiding for all this time—it had been for this.
“I’m happy for you,” I forced out. “Congratulations. You’ll make an excellent major.”
He sighed and sat on the edge of my bed. “I think I’m going to decline it. I want to stay here. Fight here. It would be irresponsible to leave.”
“Ash, you can’t be serious. Think of how much good you can do at the major level.”
He looked at me, and somehow I knew what he was going to say next. “Embry…”
“Don’t.” The word came out choked. “I mean it. Don’t.”
He did anyway. “It’s been almost three years. I’ve loved you for seven. If we retire from the Army after the war, there’s nothing stopping us from being together.”
I looked down at the old paperback in my hands, dog-eared and wavy-paged. Ash always teased me for reading in the shower, but I’d discovered it in a second-hand bookshop in Portland, and I maintained it had been this way when I found it. Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews stared out from the cover with their fresh faces and dapper clothes, Anthony Andrews holding tight to Sebastian’s trademark teddy bear.