Dulce Et Decorum Est.

Alex stood with his back against the wall. He was trying to disguise the fear that was written clearly across his face. His hair was matted from sweat and the rain that bucketed down from the grey sky. The boy shivered uncontrollably but managed to stand tall, his chin tilted upwards, shoulders squared.
I looked around and saw a short, fat man holding a gun in his arms. A general. The gun was aimed directly at Alex's head. The general put his finger over the trigger, Alex winced-
'No!' The sweat on my forehead turned cold. It took me a few seconds to realise I had been dreaming. The dream made no sense to me. Well, clearly I did have fears about losing people. I had considered whether or not I should make friends in the first place, but seeing Alex had changed my mind. It was the feelings I was having that I couldn't explain. I would jumped in front of a bullet for him. Obviously it was a dream, but I would do it again, I know it. I had heard of homosexuality before, to be honest I never really understood the big deal about it. People should be allowed to love who they love. Do I love Alex? No... But that doesn't mean that I couldn't.

I glanced down at Alex, still wrapped in my arms. It took me a minute to realise that my stirring had disturbed him. He groaned angrily and began to move around slowly, waking himself up. Panicking, I rolled off the bed and landed, hard. Underneath me was a pile of sleeping soldiers, who must have conked out here last night. They were covering the room, tangled in each other's limbs. A string of insults hurtled it's at me from underneath me. Zack was desperately trying to push me off him but we were at such an awkward angle, I was half under the bed, half on top of him. We were stuck. Two sleepy brown eyes peered over the side of the bed. 'Fall out, Jack?' Alex asked, a sleepy grin crawling across his face. I almost died at how cute he was. Before I could reply, Alex casually threw himself off the bed and on top of the growing pile. He flopped onto me, his head on my chest and his legs entangled in mine. 'Alex! GET OFF ME NOW, YOU TIT!' Zack screeched. Alex was laughing so hard that when he tried to push himself up, he fell back down harder, knocking the air from me. I found myself laughing too, forgetting about the dream, and the fact that Alex knew I had slept beside him. He wouldn't know that I was there before anyone else, and that I did it because I had wanted to, not because of space issues. I felt my heart sinking at this thought. A big part of me wanted him to know that I had gotten in the bed because he was there, vulnerable, crying. I wanted him to know that I cared. A lot.

'You talk in your sleep.' Alex said. The day was dreary, black clouds painted the sky. 'Yeah? What did I say?' I felt bad for being so small with my conversation, but I was too tired for talking. I had barely spoken all day.
'Well, you didn't exactly speak, you said some things that I don't remember. You were clearly terrified, though. I tried to wake you up a few times and you would just start pushing me and saying no... Are you okay?' Stepping forward, he put a reassuring arm on my shoulder. We were in a courtyard full of people, waiting to be shipped off to the 'trenches', as they called them. Alex's eyes searched mine, genuine worry shining inside of them. I don't know if I was okay. I had told myself that I shouldn't make friends here, they were too easily lost, no matter how brave their death was. But as soon as I had seen Alex, my mind had forgotten about that thought. Noticing my hesitation, Alex pulled me in and wrapped his arms around me.
'It's ok' he murmured. I hugged him back tightly. 'It's not. It's not okay, but we can do it together alright?' Alex pulled out from the hug and looked at me. His eyes were swimming, tears threatening to spill over the edge. 'Yes, we'll get through it together.'

We got to the camp. We were all geared up. Trained for an hour for the last time, to see if we were fit.
Thirteen men were sent out to put barbed wire on the battle field outside the trenches. This place was disgusting. Inside the dorm building, which was basically a tent, there were small bunks, four in each room. It was obvious they had tried to be efficient, maybe too efficient. Our gear hadn't fully arrived yet, I had to brave the field in my own pants. Nobody had talked since we had gotten here. Reality was sinking in. This was not what they made war out to be. We were soldiers, weren't we supposed to be respected? Have dignity? This place wasn't fit for pigs.

We were sent to the hall to eat. It was the biggest room in the trench besides the medical ward, but that wasn't saying much. I sat down between Rian and Alex. Zack sat across from us, beside a boy called Oliver. We introduced ourselves. He was skinny and had chestnut brown hair and a handsome face. He was from england but it was a bit hard to understand what he was saying. He seemed excited for the war. Oliver was nice, but I wasn't in the mood for socialising. I looked at Alex, who looked back, despair in his eyes. What in hell had we gotten ourselves into.