Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/414580.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Deathwatch_(2002)
  Relationship:
      Anthony_Bradford/Charlie_Shakespeare_(fantasy), Charlie_Shakespeare/
      everyone_else_(fantasy)
  Additional Tags:
      Gangbang, Mental_Illness, Religion, Masturbation, Dreams, Fantasy
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-05-28 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 5543
******  The smoke of a great furnace ******
by lulahbelle
Summary
     Bradford attends to the radio and tries to weather a mental breakdown
Notes
     Fic for the awesome, underrated Jamie Bell film, Deathwatch_(2002)
     written as comment fic in September 2011. 
     My ever constant thanks to 
     [[info]]
poziomeczka who is the whole reason for this existing, and who was so patient
with me during the writing of it. 
My favourite character in the film was always Bradford, the one, the actor who
played him described as, "the quiet, religious one who goes nuts".
Out of such delicate, subtle characterisation I've written nearly 6 thousand
words, of disturbing, nearly blasphemous/religious cliche abusing, fic about
him slowly wanking himself insane. I feel as if the film got what it deserved.
Written for people who haven't seen the film because it introduces the
situation of the film and the significant characters briefly.
Oh and btw i know nothing about how crystal radios really work. You can
probably tell.
Also also Charlie is 16 in this which isn't underage where I am but may be
where you are...
***** Chapter 1 *****
Blinded by fog Y Company stumbled upon a German trench. Poorly guarded by the
few mud caked men within it, it and its occupants were captured with ease. In
possession of a forward enemy position, a military achievement because of the
significant advantage it gave to the British campaign, Company Captain Jennings
intended to do his duty and hold it, but he knew that in order to do that they
would need reinforcements. 
 
Supplies of food were sparse, and the battle of the previous evening had left
most of the men with injuries that needed treatment. Chevasse in particular had
serious need to be transported out to medics attention, because his lack of
sensation and movement below the waist made the Doctor Fairweather afraid he'd
cut his spine in some way. 
 
They could not seek help on foot. They were in enemy territory now, and all
things considered were probably lucky to have reached the dugout with their
lives intact, raising heads above the line of the trench again would be
suicidal. The trench had a modern up to date crystal receiver, so accidentally
appointing himself radio operator by way of his confession of experience with
the new fangled beast, their resident religious man Bradford attempted to use
it to get through to HQ.

On his quick appraisal it was broken, no longer responding to any of the
buttons or dials along its plated front, but not entirely expired, for it would
sometimes search the lines of static and open channels of communication of its
own accord. Bradford monitered these in case they could be used to get out an
SOS.

After not long of waiting static to cut to voices from the outside, but
Bradford's elation turned to shocked despair when they said something like Y
Company had all been killed in the battle. Jennings, there with Bradford at the
time had frantically told them otherwise but it seemed that the radio had cut
out before they got through, because no-one had acknowledged their call, or
come to their rescue.

From this point on Bradford kept devoted vigil by the radio desperate for the
voices to break though again, hoping that the transmission would work long
enough for him to get his voice out to help.
___
A channel of static through the headphones again became voices, panicked,
shouting voices. Voices meant other souls out there, meant the wider world
still looking for them, meant saving. Bradford squawked out desperate cries for
help at once into the mouthpiece, but again the radio didn't seem to transmit
them, because there was no acknowledgement. 
The voices crackled away again.
Bradford felt the familiar coldness of disappointment shiver past his rain
sodden skin. The sensation quickly invaded his heart. Disappointment, becoming
self-disappointment easily, naturally. It was probably a failiure of his voice
that they hadn't heard him. He had been shocked, unprepared to make a noise,
and so he suspected he just hadn't been loud enough. 
As he sat there afterwards he was impossibly tense, preparing himself to do
better next time.
Pain in his head, leg and heart intense.
___
Hunched over the radio for hours now, having born the crick in it beyond
sufferance, Bradford stretched his neck upwards. The sky above him was sharp
white and empty, nothing there whatsoever, not even rain clouds to explain the
deluge that seemed to start up every hour or so in this hellish place. He
swivelled his head left to right whilst flexing, and saw brown mud walls,
glistening with the previous rain. 
Still aching, he hunkered down tighter into the radio. He stared at it
resentfully, increasingly aware that he really was bound to it, unable to leave
it's side in case it phantomly flared into life when he was away.
Unpredictable beast. 
They needed help more desperately with each passing day.  Everyone's injuries,
including the one Bradford had taken to the leg, got more severe with the hours
and Doc's supplies of morphine and bandages were depleting at a threatening
rate.
___
Bradford kept up his focus, kept himself obsessively true to the radio. He'd
developed faith in it when he'd been trained to use the radio in those clean
mess halls, months ago, a faith that didn't recede as it should have in the
face of it's uselessness but burned on. So all nights he was stuck rigidly
awake and next to it, even though the action was futile. He realised all the
same that he'd been tricked, stuck in having faith in something not true - not
of God, as those of his foolish, sinful kind often easily were.
___
When Doc came by as he often did to check on Chevasse, who lay beside his
station with the radio, Bradford stopped going to greet him. Doc accepted this
at first, but then asked to see his leg, Bradford refused, keeping the injured
limb the other side of wherever Doc was at all times. Bradford didn't want Doc
to see his wound, because he had grown too obsessed with watching the radio to
re dress it, and as a consequence it had gotten very bad, oozing black blood
continuously, new bursts, as spontaneous and often as the rain above, came all
the time, wettening his bandages through and through, until they were now
nothing but fabric clots of blood stuck to his thigh.
Pulsing, ever worsening pain, rose intensely in deep, hot radiations from the
middle of the wound.
___
The longer Bradford spent isolated from the others, the more he mused on
himself and his lacks, and the more aware he became that he was basically
flawed in nature. Just as the broken bodies of the destroyed would never be
fully removed from the mud of the trench, no matter how much Bradford tried to
be a good man he thought there was always something bad about him. 
Disgusting.
When last he'd been to church, the priest had assured the congregation that
just as one could not hide one's sinful soul from the Lord, he also could not
hide it indefinitely from the world. 
To Bradford, his leg, probably rotten by now, felt like the badness at his core
finally spilling it's filth into his visible form. They would cut his leg off
soon he mused, and think they had taken care of the rot, but Bradford knew with
depressing surety that it would go on being inside him, waiting for another
chance to wreck him, until he was as ugly and decayed on the outside as he was
within.
Doc, suddenly there again, looked up to him, but stayed away, too respectful of
Bradford's privacy to seek him where he did not come. Bradford admired Doc,
whose very eyes were so full of compassion and care and dignity. He was
abundant in goodness, past anything Bradford had ever posessed. 
This was why Bradford shut himself off from his care, he didn't deserve it, and
had the very real fear, albeit mute, lurking behind more rational thoughts,
that he might contaminate the other man if he accepted.
___
Bradford no longer had any idea why he remained, he held out no genuine hope of
being saved anymore. He was not the sort that deserved it, nor did he honestly
suspect many of the other men of Y Company were. All were immoral in their
ways, apart from Charlie, who was too young to have too many sins. His
innocence prompted immorality in the others though, as there was frequently
transparent evil in the thoughts and intentions that seemed to flit across the
other's faces and words when the young boy was around.
He was so pliable, Charlie, so quick to give himself away to the others wholly
and without pride, eyes so babyishly wide and widely blue. He served the other
men, bringing them food, lighting their cigarettes, so willing to give what he
could. He was unwary, without self-concern and so without self-protection, it
made him an easy victim for the others. 
He encouraged the parts of them that were base and low, that would seek to take
advantage.
So it had become that Charlie was a receptacle for their physical feelings. Be
they aggressive, lively or affectionate in nature. Everyone seemed to be in on
it. Sometimes rewarding his puppyish readinness, with taps on the backside or
nudges, or an arm around his waist, other times with violence, a slap around
the head, or a punch in the arm, a shove from Starinsky. 
They all did it.
Quinn, for instance, had relieved some of his never too dormant agression by
rubbing out the glow of a cigarette on Charlie's hand not long ago. He had
burned the boy quite badly as all the others, revelling in their inner
indifference and cruelty laughed.
Far from offense Charlie grew from these encounters a renewed vigour in his
servility, his feeling of group membership greatly emboldened. Somehow he was
equally friendly no matter if he was abused or not, clearly feeling himself in
service of something more important than himself.
Bradford had once been almost like him, little caring if he was laughed at, or
if he was considered humiliatingly odd or wierd, or disregarded by others for
preaching to them as he did, because he knew that it was God's word that was
important and not himself, so himself and it's concerns didn't matter. 
Gradually he had learnt, and now he knew, that he had been wrong. God did not
intend his messengers to have weak selves, or to care about impressing others
over protecting themselves, for he did not build his messengers to be weak in
any sense. Weak people were only prey to the temptations of the Devil through
other stronger sources, and if this War was proof of anything, it was that the
Devil was a very strong presence in the hearts of many men, even great ones.
So it was that Charlie was being touched alot in increasingly inappropriate
ways, being led to something sinister. 
MacNess was the worse for this, whispering to Charlie, talking to his eyes and
them alone, and stroking his face as if he meant to check that the boy was
alright, when really it was an excuse to lay physical claim to him. He seemed
to be doing this whenever Bradford looked up at Shakespeare. The others
commented upon it lewdly, calling Shakespeare MacNesse's wife when they were
feeling charitable and implying other more insulting things when they weren't.
It was abominable. Bradford would sit and guard himself by reading the word of
the Lord whenever he had to be in the company of the others, increasingly glad
whenever he could slip back to the radio away from them and their sins, even as
his true faith in the radio began to diminish.
___
Doc came again, he eyed him warily, seeming for a second to Bradford to be more
consumed with fear and disgust than with his usual all encompassing pity and
compassion. Bradford found he could finally see him. He hated him. Doc didn't
want to help him, he never had, all those times Bradford had presumed the other
man kind were all exposed as falsenesses. 
False. 
Doc was not how he wanted to appear, wearing a mask of decency to cover up the
fact that now, when his own safety was at stake, he just wanted to get away
with the minimum of help to others required to make him look good.
"How's the radio?"
Bradford was then aware that he had sat by it gently for hours and nothing. He
felt an overpowering anger toward it that he really bit back to respond
impassively.
"There was a little activity earlier but the transmission gave out. Nothing for
a few hours."
Doc left, mollified, of course he was, he didn't really care. When he did,
Bradford began to break apart into anger. He stood, his leg bursting with
furious, violent pain as it always did when he put weight on it. He imagined he
could feel the wound weeping hard jets of sour pus into his veins as for no
reason he screamed down the mouthpiece of the radio.
"THIS IS Y COMPANY...WE ARE ALIVE..."
It seemed to respond to the rough treatment as he thought it might.
Static. Then a voice shouting.

"Y COMPANY HAVE BEEN LOST. I REPEAT Y COMPANY ARE DEAD!"
Bradford was furious in proclaiming.
"WE ARE ALIVE!!!"
But the voice didn't return.
Bradford shouted again. 
"Y COMPANY ARE ALIVE!!!"
No response. Nothing. Bradford felt all things hard. A crash of disappointment
that shoved him. the pain in his leg was shrieking, burning unbearable now. He
was dizzy, his head sore with exertion and exhaustion. 
His stance would have wobbled even if he wasn't an invalid.
He could not take this.
He closed his eyes and everything was wiped away. No hope, no possibility of
escape. He wished for death, prayed for it silently, begged. 
No answer. Nothing, there was nothing for him. Maybe he was dead after all.
"Bradford, are you ok? Was there someone on the radio."
Charlie. Expression dubious, hidden behind his childish, open faced curiosity.
Bradford had nothing to say.
"I thought I'd come and check on you. Doc says you're hiding your wound from
him." There is a pause for Bradford to make some sort of response, but what
could Bradford say? That he was disgusted that Doc had sent Charlie to do his
bidding?
"Have you been to sleep at all?"
Bradford stared at him uncomprehending as his contemplation of how ashamed Doc
should feel, slipped instead as it always did recently to how ashamed he was of
himself before Charlie's fresh faced purity. 
Comparison between them made Bradford feel so obviously lacking.
 Charlie with his natural giving nature was genuinely, effortlessly what
Bradford had spent all his life attempting to be, honest, pure of motives,
empty of self interest. 
Bradford had always known that he was not decent like that at all. He had done
everything he accused Doc of doing, appropriated a prancing false goodness to
make himself feel better.
His whole body was sore with disappointment and rot and there was Charlie
before him, so beatific in the glowing light of nothingness. Charlie extended a
hand to his shoulder to encourage an answer and it felt momentous. Bradford
hadn't been touched in so long, simply no one else had liked him enough to try.
But Charlie did.
This was judgement, of the young to the old, the pure to the impure. Bradford
hoped for redemption in his disgusting coward's way. It came as Shakespeare's
goodness seemed to seep through to Bradford's flesh. He didn't seem to withdraw
it. 
Bradford wanted to be pure with Charlie. Good. To discard his rotten, worthless
flesh, become soul, pure for this hell.
His head swam dizzily on the edges of consciousness as he stared into Charlie's
eyes, willing him to proceed. His perfect, obscenely tender, face clenched in
concern, genuine concern. Bradford could feel the difference now between it and
the fakeness Doc conveyed.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     Bradford wanks himself insane.
Chapter Notes
     I firmly contend that the reason why this fic is deeply immoral and
     insane is because Bradford is....
     Possibly non con but fantasy bumming and blasphemy
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.
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