For King And Country (not mine)

Present Day V

"Captain?" Havers called gently.
"Not now, Havers."
"Is this about Alison's therapy session the other day?" Havers asked. "Is that won't look me in the eye?"
The Captain remained silent. Havers crossed the room to join him, both of them staring out across the grounds.
"I'm proud of you, Theodore," Havers said eventually.
"What for?" The Captain asked. "I didn't do anything. You managed it, and I couldn't."
"You did do something."
"I ruined it. I - I couldn't say it, the words just … wouldn’t come out."
There it was, then. The Captain was acknowledging it, at least.
"You tried," Havers argued. "I wouldn't have even considered trying if not for seeing you brave the idea first. It felt doable because I'd seen you almost there. You weren't anticipating trying the first time. But you tried anyway. How many times in seventy-five years have you gotten that close to saying it aloud?"
"Not once." The Captain said quietly.
"Exactly." Havers said. "I'm proud of you, regardless of whether you said it or not."
"I never even had the chance to say it in life. My voice has always been heard when it was trivial.
But the one time it matters ... it's taken from me again and again."
"Whether you make a joke or tell an unpleasant truth, your voice has always mattered." The Captain laughed mirthlessly and shook his head.
"If I had dared to say anything when we were alive, I would have been punished. Everything I cared about would've been taken from me."
"You never had to tell everyone," Havers said. He swallowed. "You could've only told me. You never said the words to me."
"You never did either."
"I didn't want to scare you. I could tell how afraid you were of the words, and I wanted you to say it on your own, with no pressure from me. Maybe if I had taken the first step, it would be different.
I'm sorry I never did."
"If I had said it, it would have made it real. I couldn't deal with that."
"What were we then, if not real?" Havers asked thickly. The Captain stayed silent. "Almost eighteen months, we kept this, us, hidden, and we could've kept it for longer. We have kept it hidden for longer. I tried to convince you, we could've been happy as we were. We could've gone to the coast, as I suggested, had a long and happy life-"
"Not this conversation again-" The Captain got up and went to walk out.
"It was never a conversation because you never let it become one! You made your mind up before you even let me try to convince you." The Captain whirled around.
"Convince me to ruin everything, you mean?!" The Captain exclaimed. "We would've been called abroad eventually, whether we asked to go or were summoned. We would barely be able to communicate because our letters would've been monitored by the censors." "We would've made it." Havers insisted.
"And if we'd lived, what then? If you hadn't been shot, if you had beaten North Africa, what then? The horrors would've followed us for the rest of our lives, and they would have pit us against each other. I saw it with my parents after my father came back from the Great War. He was never the same."
"You really think so little of me?" Havers asked. "I loved you then, and I love you now. Horrors or not. If you no longer love me, I can accept that. But I wish you would stop telling me how I feel. I wish you would listen to me."
His voice cracked towards the end, and Havers hated it. He hated being so desperate, of pleading to be trusted about his own heart.
The Captain looked him in the eyes for the first time in days, confusion and fear crossing his features.
Havers took a deep breath to steady himself. They'd never argued so severely before.
He had never wanted to approach the conversation with negativity or aggression. It took a few moments for his frustration to simmer down. When it did, he spoke again.
"I won't ever force you to say the words," Havers said. "I'm ecstatic that you seemed to want to say it, and I'm sorry for getting cross with you. I know I've never said it before either. It's just ..." He trailed off, hearing his voice crack again, and tried to get himself under control.
"Our era taught us some wicked ideas about men like us. Fighting against those ideas makes me feel ill some days. Fighting to hide it makes me ill. I have no doubts that if I had lived to fight it any longer, it would have driven me to an early grave.”
”Havers, don’t say that-“
”My head and my heart have been fighting each other for longer than I was fighting in a war, for thrice as long as I was alive. I couldn't hide it any longer. I'm not asking you to scream it from the rooftops. I'm just asking you to be honest with me. I don't know where we stand anymore, and the last seventy-five years of not knowing have been driving me insane. I don't want us to be ill anymore."
From where he was standing, Havers could see every bit of sadness and grief in the Captain’s face, as well as the buildup of tears flooding his eyes.
"I don’t want to be ill either, Havers. It’s been a slower journey for me, that’s all. I was never ashamed of you, or us. I was only ever ashamed of myself." The Captain admitted.
“Can you believe now that there is nothing wrong with the way we love?” Havers asked.
The Captain took a deep, shuddering breath. “I know there isn’t. I just have a hard time staying consistent with the thought. My head wins, most days. Talking to you about it always helped, but-”
“We stopped talking about it once we were no longer together.” Havers finished, nodding. “We never found our way back to each other completely.”
The Captain was quiet for another few moments, mulling over the words running rampant in his head.
Even almost a century into knowing each other, Havers knew the microexpressions on his captain’s face better than his own hand.
"You haven't called me Theodore in a long time.” He said quietly. “Once you started calling me Teddy, you only ever called me Theodore when you were frustrated. At me or the world, it was all the same."
"I always thought Teddy suited you better. You're as soft as a teddy bear, I believe I once told you." The Captain smiled lightly.
"Did you mean what you said?" He asked.
"I said a lot of things."
"About still loving me." The Captain clarified. His voice was soft, and he was looking somewhere past Havers, still partially afraid about facing this head-on.
"Yes," Havers said simply, his long since quiet heart jackrabbiting in his chest. "I never stopped feeling it. Only stopped talking so openly."
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to - "
"I do." The Captain interrupted. "I tried so hard to prevent the worst from happening with no evidence, that I actually prevented the best outcome."
"And what would be the best outcome?" Havers asked.
He was almost challenging the Captain to say it, to see if he could admit it to his oldest and dearest companion.
Havers felt incredibly selfish, but the words were behind the Captain’s eyes, lodged in his throat, ready on the tip of his tongue.
They were there, and the Captain wanted to say them.
But admitting the truth was like walking off a cliff's edge with your eyes closed. He needed to know there was someone to catch him once he fell.
The Captain finally met his eye, and when a blush graced his cheeks, he didn't try to hide it like he used to. "Letting us love each other unashamedly."
Havers took a few, slow steps forward, careful to watch his captain for any trace of panic.
"Tell me to stop." He murmured when he reached the Captain.
Those four fatal words echoed their first kiss, back on New Year's Eve of 1939, tucked into an Anderson shelter.
The fear accompanying the sirens had sliced through the air, making their emotions run higher.
The alcohol in their veins had given them the courage.
"You have to tell me to stop if you aren't ready."
"I've been ready for seven decades. If you don't kiss me now, I might die."
"You’re already dead!"
"Good Lord, come here!"
The Captain grabbed Havers by the lapels and tugged him forward, their mouths slotting together with ease.
It was a little clumsy after so long, and the Captain was trembling. His moustache was as bristly as Havers remembered, and he laughed into the Captain's mouth at the eagerness, putting a hand on the older man's waist to pull him closer and another on his cheek to steady him.
The lieutenant slowed the kiss down slightly and took the lead until the Captain gained his confidence. He soon found it, and the two spent a few minutes refamiliarising themselves with kissing each other.
When they inevitably pulled away, they leant their foreheads together, grinning from ear to ear.
"I'm glad I did that." The Captain whispered once they’d regained their breath.
"As am I," Havers whispered back. "We'll take this as slow as you need if this, us, is something you still want."
"I just kissed you, and you're really asking if we're together again?"
Havers laughed. "Yes, I suppose I am. I always did like the clarity that came with courting in the thirties and forties. You always knew where you stood."
"Oh, get out of the past!" The Captain dismissed, a maniacal kind of look in his eyes. Havers loved that a simple kiss had fuelled the Captain with so much desire to defeat the shame in his mind. "It's the twenty-first century. Courting is old fashioned."
"You're barely out of the closet to yourself. I don't think you're quite so knowledgeable about modern love yet." Havers chuckled.
"Nonsense! Julian-"
"You're taking advice from Julian about dating?" Havers asked, raising an eyebrow.
The Captain paused and gave in. "Okay, maybe you're right."
"I'm always right."
"See, that's where you're wrong. You can't always be right. Everyone's wrong about something."
The Captain said. "Besides, I'm the captain here. I have experience."
"With what multiple closet doors look like from the inside, perhaps."
The Captain pulled away, his mouth falling open in shock and a twinkle of laughter in his eyes. He soon joined Havers in laughing properly and let go of the lapels of Havers' jacket.
When their laughter died down, the Captain spoke.
"Yes, Havers. I want us to be together again. For as long as you'll have me." The Captain confirmed.
"Forever is a long time," Havers warned. "Are you sure you can bear my bad jokes?" The Captain laughed.
"Only if you can bear my terrible taste in music."
"I'll expand your taste in time," Havers dismissed. They shared a soft smile, and the Captain leaned forward to place another kiss on Havers' mouth.
"I'll never get tired of doing that." He murmured.
"Neither will I."
"Where are the others? It's high time I showed my face again. A lot of apologies are needed." “Are you sure you don’t want to hide here for a few more minutes?” Havers teased.
The Captain flushed bright red, but pressed himself closer to Havers anyway, kissing him again and again, never tiring of the endless sparks igniting in his stomach at the familiarity.
Havers’ head swam, and he held the Captain tighter, anchoring himself to the present and hoping to God he wasn’t dreaming.
“I knew it!”