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With Alec and Sandy awkwardly excusing themselves, the three of them were left alone in the room. Laurie looked down at Ralph as he sat slumped in the chair. Bunny was at his side. Laurie turned to him, catching the look in the other man’s eye. “You needn’t take me back, if you’d rather not. If you'd rather stay.” He made it as forceful as he could.“Oh, believe me.” Bunny gestured towards the figure beneath them and leaned in conspiratorially, “he’s in a state I’m perfectly familiar with.”They faced each other and Laurie felt cross and tired. The after effects of the pain in his knee from the earlier bang and the late hour left him feeling unnecessarily hostile. He simply wanted to go, return to the ward, find Andrew, just look at him again and feel a little brought back to normality. But he felt oddly responsible for Ralph, an unusual feeling, and he didn’t want to leave him alone in this horrible room. “Perhaps,” he said to Bunny, “but it’d be better if we moved him. At least out of here while the raid’s still on.”Bunny pushed his curls back and gave Laurie a frank and disarming look, “My dear, don’t you worry about dear old Ralph. He’ll be just fine where he is. Now, you and I had better get a move on. I hear you got into a little bit of trouble last time.” He smiled and held Laurie’s gaze.From below they saw Ralph struggle to his feet, but Bunny put a hand out and pressed him back. Laurie was outraged to see that Ralph gave in quite quickly and allowed himself to be pushed back into the chair.“He’s alright,” Bunny insisted, his fingers still digging into Ralph’s shoulder proprietorially.Laurie felt an inexplicable urge to slap them away, but he kept still and returned Bunny’s knowing look. “I think, if you have somewhere to be, you can leave him to me. I’ll deal with him.”Bunny removed his hand and straightened himself. “Oh, well, we all know my lovely party never came good. And you can see perfectly well Ralph’s in no fit state for anything.” He emphasised the last word a little and smiled at Laurie, “so...shall we?”“I shouldn’t think staying in here is wise,” said Laurie. He moved over to Ralph and placed his own hand on his shoulder. "Do you have somewhere to go when the raids are on?”Bunny shrugged and began another wide smile, but Laurie stopped him. “Listen, I’m not leaving him and I’m not sitting in here like an idiot either.” He sighed with irritation, “So you can either help me or you can get out of my way.”Bunny gave him an indignant look, “Well, if that’s your attitude,” he sniffed, “I’ll let you get along with him then, shall I? He won’t thank you, if that’s what you’re waiting for.” He moved to the door and opened it with a flourish. “Don’t let me get in the way of the knight in shining armour.” He gave Laurie a sour smile and stood back.“I shan’t, thanks.” He turned back towards Ralph and was suddenly aware of the enormity of having to drag him out of Bunny’s room. He hadn’t even decided where to take him.Laurie leaned over Ralph and shook his shoulder gently. “Ralph?” Ralph lay unresponsive beneath him. He could feel Bunny’s eyes on his back and refused to turn and look at him. “Ralph?” he said again a little more urgently.He was leaning in very close and saw the eyelids flicker a little. Ralph’s eyes opened slowly and Laurie found himself staring into them. He hadn’t been this close to Ralph’s face since his last day at school. The earlier moments of disquiet and muddle, what with the blackout and his knee, unsettled him, and he felt a revolting urge to say something chummy or flippant to hide his confusion. Ralph’s eyes were a bright blue, ringed by a dark line around the iris. The lids were heavy as he drooped them slightly, and the old scar, remembered from years before, was just the faintest line above Ralph’s brow. The form of Ralph’s chin and mouth were unfamiliar but put him in remembrance and he could feel Ralph’s breath on his face. For a moment they caught each other’s eyes, although Ralph’s were still rather unfocused, and as if the effort of keeping them open were too much, he said, “Spud?” and closed them again.There was nothing to do but attempt to haul Ralph upwards and shift him, as Ralph has done for him only a few hours earlier. He felt under his arms and pulled him into an embrace, the unlikelihood of it all almost made Laurie want to laugh, but he had to concentrate his efforts and his strength on achieving his purpose, which was to somehow remove Ralph from Bunny’s room and take him somewhere else.Bunny stood looking on with a satirical look in his eye, holding the door back and allowing the little scene to play out before him with no offers of help.Laurie dragged Ralph upwards, feeling the strain in every part of himself. The knee jolted, his back ached but he refused to make the manoeuvre look as painful as it was. When they were both upright, he found that Ralph was surprisingly heavy for his spare build. He was probably what people called deadweight, leaning heavily on him, and for a moment he almost gave up, but a glance a Bunny’s ironically lifted brow was enough to gather his strength again.“Come on, now,” he said into Ralph’s neck, half praying that he could imbue Ralph with some sense of the embarrassment of the situation and make him participate more.Ralph seemed to stir a little and open his eyes, looking around with a slightly affronted expression. Laurie wanted to pinch him, or kick him into noticing, but although he kept his eyes open, he did little to help Laurie move him out. They moved together awkwardly to the door of the room and then, barely pausing to give Bunny a nod, they were outside with the door slammed resolutely behind them.What now? Laurie contemplated the stairs to Ralph’s room. It was a couple of flights up and stairs were hard at the best of times, despite Miss Haliburton’s exercises. The thought of heaving both himself and Ralph up there was too stupid to contemplate. Was there a cellar? Would it be easier to pull Ralph down into it? It would probably be safer anyway if the raid continued. A brace of incendiaries came down on what sounded like a street or two away. The thud was deep and heavy and dislodged pieces of plaster from the ceiling.He propped Ralph up against the door frame and felt along the wall to see if there was another door under the staircase. It was so appallingly dark, and his fingers caught and scraped in the bolts, but he pulled them back, found the handle and tried it. It gave way and the door swung forward.Bracing Ralph against him, they went down the steps, mercifully only a few and moved across the floor, Ralph stumbling a little alongside him. He weighed quite heavily on him still, clearly not bothering to rouse himself enough to make it easy for Laurie. He was panting and out of breath by the time he got Ralph to lean against the basement wall. He kept an arm around his shoulder and his chest pressed against his, and all the unusual contact left him feeling a little flustered.The wall behind him was cold and damp and he levered Ralph down with him so that eventually they were both slumped on the ground against it, his own leg sticking out uncomfortably. The position made his knee ache, he felt tired, depressed and cold. How long would he have to wait it out until they could leave? Of course, he could have left Ralph, but he felt both responsible for him and a little frightened of the idea. And he knew that if anything happened nobody would tell him at the ward.The thuds continued intermittently outside but between them the silence stretched. He could hear the sound of Ralph’s breathing only and could barely make out the movement of his chest. Laurie wished he would wake up so that they could talk, although about what he wasn’t sure.He looked across at Ralph. His head was thrown back against the wall and his hair had fallen back more messily than he would ordinarily have ever allowed. It made Laurie want to reach out and push it into place. He leaned forward a little and lit a match. It flared into life and threw a light onto Ralph’s profile. His lips were parted slightly, and the curve of his lower lip jutted a little.They were alone and the thoughts of the past few days flitted through Laurie’s mind. It was strange to be so near Ralph and yet have him a passive object. The thought of Ralph as a passive object made Laurie smile to himself. Would he notice if he pushed his hair back off his face, he wondered? He let his hand hover near Ralph’s brow. For a moment a very unwarranted image sprung into his mind, of himself leaning forward and kissing Ralph. He could be quick and perhaps Ralph wouldn’t even wake. Or did he want him to wake? It would certainly be a shorter route to blowing the conflicting feelings, which had been pricking him over the past few days, out of the water.He moved his hand closer and felt his fingers touch the fair hair. It was as soft as he’d imagined and had a pleasantly clean and innocent texture. He had to remind himself that Ralph was neither a young boy nor a boy of nineteen.Ralph didn’t stir and continued to breathe quite deeply next to him. They were both leaning against the damp basement wall and Laurie could feel the cold from the stone floor rising through his battle dress. He shifted uncomfortably. Neither of them had a coat, it was dank and miserable, and Laurie thought again of Andrew and the cosy, muted light from the Sister’s lamp, the stewed tea, the low murmur of their voices. He felt homesick and lonely. And wished for a moment that he and Ralph could lie down. It wasn’t, he told himself, for any other reason than to be more comfortable, but he found himself thinking longingly of a bed and bed sheets.He looked across at Ralph again. Seeing him asleep made him more vulnerable than he had ever been in Laurie’s eyes. He was used to Ralph’s determination to hold himself together stiffly, his sometimes prickly manner, his sense of always being on top and in control. To see Ralph succumbing to sleep, like anyone else, made him feel quite tender towards him. And yet it also brought out a latent pleasure, rarely allowed to surface, in the thought of being dominant and in control of Ralph.Laurie was nowhere near drunk enough to forget himself and yet the longer they stayed together in the darkness and the odd silence, the more the thoughts came into Laurie’s head. He suppressed them as they emerged for a fear, ridiculous as it was, that Ralph could sense them. But of course, he could know no more about Laurie’s thoughts than the nurses in the ward and yet it made him feel he feel distracted and frustrated.The rough contact with Ralph’s inert body, the feeling of everything under his uniform, for he could feel the muscles in his arms as he hauled him around, the sinews of his back, and when he had braced him against the wall, the flat, hard stomach, had left Laurie in a state of unresolved tension. He realised that what he wanted was to touch him again. What reason would there be unless it was to change their position?He made a great show, for nobody’s benefit but his own, of the discomfiture of the wall and the ground and pushed Ralph a little to see it he would wake. He didn’t. Laurie moved him gently so that Ralph’s weight was on him and he could feel the firm press of his shoulder and chest against Laurie’s own. He daren’t do more but the feeling of Ralph against him, was deeply satisfying. He put his hand to his hair and held it to him.Against his chest he could feel the beat of Ralph’s heart, and the rise and fall of his body with each breath. He imagined pushing his head back, touching his hair, lifting his chin and feeling his mouth against Ralph’s. He imagined putting his hands against Ralph’s chest and kissing him, while Ralph lay passive and asleep. It was a strange fantasy, without much by way of an outcome but for once his imagination gave rein to himself as the instigator and not the prey.He knew it was what he longed for and in the same moment he felt as if it were out of place and surprising. And at that moment Ralph seemed to rouse himself and look around, “What the hell are we doing here, Spud?” he said a little belligerently. He was himself again, back in control and a little crabby.“Oh Christ Ralph, you could have been more awake a few minutes ago.” Laurie sat back against the wall, pushing Ralph off him swiftly and felt for his cigarettes. “I feel like I’ve done a round in the ring after dragging you down here!” Ralph looked at him blankly. He continued, “The raid. Don’t you remember?”