Over the Trenches

IV. Chapter

"Darien, don't you fucking dare to fall asleep!"

It was a night. The summer night in 1918 with clouds hovering over their heads far above them reaching heaven itself.

"Don't tell me you have already fallen asleep?!" Simon punched Darien's shoulder.

The trenches were quiet. The no man's land was empty of the warm breath.

"Wake up! If the serge sees us, we are dead."

Darien massively yawned. "I was having a wonderful dream."

"Well sorry to interrupt you prince but we are the night watch for tonight."

Darien yawned again.

"I don't understand."

"What do you not understand Simon?"

"How are you so calm?"

Darien answered without any words, only with lifted eyebrows and a smirk on his face.

"Don't laugh! You, bastard!"

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Whatever."

"Just keep doing your job please."

"Oh so now you are begging me? How adorable of you."

"Shut up."

Darien again gave him the same answer with his facial expression.

"You are just a pain in my ass."

"Don't call me a pain in your ass just yet, don't get ahead of yourself, we'll have plenty of time to try some stuff later."

Simon looked at him seriously. "One more word and I swear I will stab you with my bayonet and shoot you at least ten times."

Darien frankly smiled with his eyes reaching out of trenches in the way of enemy lines. He felt in his bones and hoped that the end of the war was nigh like most of the soldiers.

The Allied forces overwhelmed the German forces especially when the US joined the war on the side of the British Empire and France. The battle of Amiens was the beginning battle of the Allied Offensive, later called the Hundred Days Offensive. It began on the 8th of August 1918, the Allied armies made massive advances to the enemy territories right on the first day of the offensive and were met with great successes.

"I wonder what James is doing," Darien asked himself this question as every other night. "Maybe he is reading something, even if it's just a piece of newspaper or maybe smoking a last cigarette before going to sleep. Either way I bet he's doing great." A poisonous thought snuck into his head: "But what if something occurred and he is not well, what if he got captured? I haven't received a letter from him and it's been a whole year. No, I can't be thinking like this, nothing awful has happened. I am firmly convicted." Darien sighed. "It has already been four tough years and we are still standing. I'm sure he couldn't be better. I can't wait to see him again." In Darien's head, there have never been a single thought regarding the loss of James nor that he would leave James. He knew James was special to him in a manner that he wasn't able to describe in words. Darien knew how much he valued his presence, his mind, his beauty, him as a whole. And if he heard James talking about himself the way James did in the hospital, it would hurt him deeply in his soul and would make him physically sick so much he wouldn't be able to eat till the end of the days. Since the day they have become friends till the day they departed from each other he was seeing James every day. And when they got separated for four entire years it was a challenge for both of them, an obstacle they would meet sooner or later.