"Share." The Doctor passed the wrapped cake into Ace's hand and turned away on his equipment trunk, licking pensively at his sticky fingers. Benny, huddled into a ratty blanket and sitting on another trunk, had to wonder about his strategy. Even if he'd managed to miss it in the confusion earlier, he couldn't have failed to figure out by now that Ace was having one of her bad weeks -- the nasty little grunts and growls when she demanded feeding should have been a dead giveaway.

Anyway, Ace didn't like it much when all the soldiers got to die but her. She felt left out.

Benny caught the Doctor's faraway look in profile and made a mental revision -- he'd noticed, he just didn't intend to deal with it. A night in a trench -- another night in a trench, and he was just going to try to ride it out. She wished him luck.

Ace, moving with that appalling flexibility -- as though she had rubber in all her joints -- crouched down and broke the cake into two surprisingly even pieces. She handed one over, but before Benny could get her fingers properly under it, the lump crumbled between their hands and landed on the soggy ground. Thin mud immediately began to soak sickeningly into the bigger crumbs.

"Hey!"

Ace rolled her eyes and began to turn away. "You should have been under it."

"Well, give me some of the rest, anyway!" Benny reached out for the remaining piece.

Ace jumped up, squishing her half of the cake into the palm of her hand and then mashing it into her mouth. She danced back, fast on her toes. "Fat chance." Her face exploded into a malicious grin, and then she dodged past the Doctor and out into the rain.

Sighing deeply, the Doctor drew his legs back to let Benny follow.

-

Mud. The sky (pre-tech, Benny classified automatically -- very dark, stars very bright) was black and the ground was all kinds of messy brown. Slippery sucking mud dropped her back into the trench once or twice, then let her scramble up to fall on her face. At least the chilly rain washed most of the muck away as fast as it smeared on.

Games in no-man's-land, very Ace. "If I step on a mine I'll be sure to splatter something icky on you," she called out

A triple slap of mud answered her, two misses, one hit on her shoulder. She'd got better at ducking, over the years. She threw back, and more or less by chance, scored one out of two.

Ace's strategy was strictly DK -- wham, bam, gone again. Benny crouched down, rain finding every missed stitch in her coat and sliding over her skin.

Ace threw over her head, to the left, to the right. A low mudball smeared over the top of her head. Ace, as usual, wasn't taking her seriously. While she was bending for some more mud, Bernice Summerfield executed a technically perfect flying tackle. Mud splashed in waves.

Ace flailed. Benny sat more firmly on her chest. "Give."

"I ate it."

"Give."

Ace opened her mouth wide. "Come get it."

Benny mashed that nasty grin away, cutting her lower lip on Ace's teeth. Ace's mouth tasted just faintly of cake; Benny explored it roughly for crumbs.

"Bitch." she growled down.

Ace rolled them over.

"Ace -- "

"For god's sake, shut up."

Ace's hands were efficient under her shirt, mapping out territory from nipple to nipple before pinching, twisting not quite hard enough. Waterlogged loose tendrils of Ace's hair dragged over Benny's forehead; Ace's face was closed and serious, eyes barely open.

Benny reached for Ace's hips and worked her way in. The DK issue weapon-retardant leggings were surprisingly soft.

Soaking wet denim was really uncomfortable, and the seam of her jeans was biting into her flesh. Ace worked at it with her fingers, face still solemn, and then changed tactics, rubbing arrythmically with her whole hand. Benny kicked and Ace eased off, sitting on her butt in the mud, her hand rubbing in long unhappy strokes.

Benny arched her back and let rain wash into her open mouth.

Ace got a little rougher and then, when Benny sat up, knocked her flat back into the mud with a shove and moved away.

As soon as she could breathe again, Benny sat up and pulled Ace to sit between her legs. Against her breasts, the muscles in Ace's back jumped and twitched strangely. Ace's breasts were very round. Benny massaged them for a moment and then dragged Ace's legs open and hooked her own legs over Ace's ankles.

Deep rhythm of circles and Ace let her head fall back. Brutally, Benny smeared mud up from the ground -- would the leggings hold a stain? Ace yelled, jerked, and then slumped down.

Rain went on pouring down over both of them.

-

Ace's yell disturbed a family of rabbits who had lived for generations in that field. Two of the adults were nosing at bloodsoaked grass, backhopping and twitching at every aftershock of the day's massacre. Trembling kittens, huddled in what was left of the warren, scattered frantically at the sound, then shot back into safety, their ears vibrating.

-

The Doctor, who was silently watching the little foragers nose at the lip of the trench, wasn't particularly disturbed by the sound. The night before, a hundred soldiers had waited down here. And now he was alone in the trench. Ace and Benny would come back of course, when they were done doing that peculiar human dance.

A low angry cry startled the rabbits again -- Ace and Benny were going another round.

He built a nest in the dark, of bags and haversacks abandoned by dead boys, and laid in it, not sleeping. They came back muddily together and curled in against him, letting him settle them one on each side.

On the night after the battle, the Doctor watched rabbits while sleeping human breath puffed in slow rhythm on his cheeks.

-

"Crumble Cake" 960815 by merripestin at yahoo dot com
Ace created by Ian Briggs, Benny by Paul Cornell, the Doctor by Sydney Newman or Bunny Webber or some such unlikely person.
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