It was the twenty-second of February, a Thursday, and Victor and I had spent the morning pottering around our room, drinking coffee and kissing and not much else. I was dressed in my oldest pair of trousers and my dressing gown, both of which were stained with ink and paint, and Bauer was dressed only in his silken robe, which provided little warmth on its own but ensured that I could barely keep my hands to myself, and kept him warm with near constant hugs and the friction of my palms against his skin.

It may seem strange that I remember the date so exactly but February of nineteen thirty-four had been eventful to say the least and I had been attempting that day to keep Bauer from heading out into the streets in search of trouble. It had been only two weeks since Paris had been rocked by an attempted fascist coup d'etat and there was still great unrest, not to mention the fact that extreme right-wing groups were beginning to emerge and Bauer was known as an outspoken objector. I did not want him out of my sight when passions were running so wild.

As if the trouble on our doorstep was not enough, the week of the twelfth had brought the first news of the civil war in Austria as well. I did not know how Bauer would react to the developments in the country of his birth but knew that whatever his opinions would be, they would be strong and probably upsetting for him, and I was right, after a fashion. But when he had picked up the news sheets that week and read that the Austrofascists were overthrowing the government there had been no angry ranting or lectures on politics or socialism. Bauer had pursed his lips and looked very serious, and then refused to discuss the issue with me or anyone else. He read any news bulletin he could get his hands on that pertained to the crisis, but he would not speak of it, and so I had resolved to give him a day of rest, without news papers or civil unrest or politics. But it was not to be.

I had just pulled him down into my lap with a kiss, the two of us slipping and tousling in the armchair as my hand snaked beneath the flimsy fabric of his robe to stroke the length of his thigh and up toward his already semi-erect member, when there was a powerful banging upon our door.

Victor squealed and fell from my lap in a flurry of limbs and turquoise silk, which would have been amusing except that the knocking came again, and he scurried to hide in the bedroom while I crossed to the door, willing my arousal to diminish before I had to face who ever was attempting to destroy our front door.

A concerned-looking Violette was not who I had been expecting but it was she who was there when I opened the door, accompanied by one of her fellow models, a young woman named Jana, who I knew Victor enjoyed speaking with but did not know myself, and I ushered them in quickly, calling out to Victor that he should stop hiding as I did so.

When Victor emerged, dressed in a pair of my trousers and braces and nothing else, I very nearly laughed at the fact that he had donned those clothes to appear less suspect to whoever might be knocking on our door, but I did not have a chance to tell him that he looked both ridiculous and adorable because Jana, at the sight of him, had burst into tears. She ran to him, speaking hurriedly in Bavarian and falling against his chest so that he was forced to hold her up and guide her to sit in our apartment's solitary armchair.

He spoke to her, words I did not understand but in a tone which was calm and soft and which I knew well, but she continued to sob, becoming almost hysterical as she tried to explain herself to him, before finally producing a letter from her coat pocket and pushing it into Victor's hand.

I turned to Violette but found her already in the kitchen, setting a pot of coffee to boil and slicing what was left of our bread for toasting. Her eyes held deep disquiet but she shook her head at me in silent answer to the question I had not asked - she did not know what they were speaking of either.

"Babba?" Victor suddenly yelled, angrily, and we turned to see him shake his head furiously at Jana who was still urging him to read the letter in his hand. "Ned babba! Babba neamd!"

"Aber-"

"Neamd!"

I watched as he stumbled backwards and Jana stood, she now attempting to calm him, speaking low and fast in a language that had suddenly cut me off from the man who was half of myself. He was trembling and breathing harshly through his nose, his face pale against the curtain of his dark hair as he listened to the foreign words Jana whispered to him urgently until finally he opened the letter and looked at whatever words were written there before crumpling to the floor with a sob and a single word.

"Muadda."

At that I suddenly felt I could move again, freed from the stasis that had held me whilst Victor had been speaking his native tongue. Jana was trying to comfort him, crying again herself, but I nudged her aside in order to lift Victor into my arms and carry him to our bed, lying him gently down and gathering the strewn bedclothes up and over him, trying to stop the intense shivering that had taken over his body.

I could hear Violette trying to calm Jana and even though they were now speaking French I could not understand what they were saying. They were background noise and unintelligible to me whilst I dealt with my lover's pain. And he was very clearly in pain. No sound left his mouth but there were tears leaking from his eyes and his skin had turned waxy and feverish, and the letter, open now, was still clutched in his hand.

I wanted to comfort him, more than anything in the world, but aside from brushing my fingers carefully through his hair and sitting with him, I did not know what else to do. I did not even understand what had caused his sudden collapse and wracked my brain to try and untangle the mystery, taking the letter from his hand even though I knew I would not be able to read its contents and wondered how staring at the cryptic words could possibly help.

I was wrong however, as the letter contained only a short paragraph at the top of the page, addressed to Jana, followed by a long list of names. I stared at them blankly for a moment before beginning to scan the lists for something I might recognise and felt the blood drain from my face when I stumbled upon a name that I knew well: Bauer.

Bauer, Otto (p)

Bauer, Catherine (d)

"Victor?" I whispered, but he grabbed my hand, holding tight and asking me in that action not to talk, but simply to be with him.

I nodded, glancing over to when Jana and Violette had made themselves comfortable on the floor by the armchair, speaking softly and crying together in the way women seem to be able to do but that men so rarely have the courage for. Seeing that they were relatively settled I climbed into the bed beside Bauer, pulling his shivering body close to mine, his back to my chest and my hand over his heart, listening to Violette's murmured reassurances and my Bauer's quiet sobbing.

As the minutes passed the sobs became louder until, after a time, Victor was crying properly and the tension began to leave his body. I continued to hold him, kissing his hair and mumbling to him that he was safe, that I was there, that I loved him, until eventually, at some point in the late afternoon, his calm returned.

He turned in my arms until he was facing me and looked up into my face with eyes that were swollen from crying and desperate for reassurance. But to give him that properly I needed to know what had happened.

"Victor," I asked gently, pressing soft kisses to his cheeks. "Who are Catherine and Otto?"

I watched as he closed his eyes tightly to stop a fresh wave of tears from spilling over and my heart ached for him.

"They are, no," he corrected himself, "they were my parents."

"And they are- Oh, God, Victor, I am sorry," I told him, gathering him to me in a fierce hug. "I am so sorry."

"My mother is dead," he said in a small, childlike voice. "Catherine is dead. My father, though I have not called him so for many years, has been captured. He is, was, a politician in the Austrian government. He was very outspoken against the fascist movement."

"Victor, I am sorry," I repeated, not knowing what else to say.

"Don't be," he replied bluntly. "They hated me. Otto, if he lives through this, will continue to hate me. I do not even know why I have been so affected by this news. I have been dead to them for so many years, why should their deaths affect me?"

The hardness of his tone frightened me. Bauer could be blunt, even to the point of rudeness, but he rarely used so harsh a tone.

"Tell me about them?" I begged him, and to tell you the truth of it now, I am not sure why I felt I was entitled to such information. It was not for his benefit, but I hate to think that I begged the information from him to satisfy my curiosity. I did not expect him to tell me. He did not obey orders, but he did that day, that once, and I remember his words near exactly.

"I... I was conceived out of wedlock," he began in a tone that was conversational but far from light. "My parents married, but it was an unhappy union from the start. My father insisted on a civil ceremony rather than a religious one, no family attended. It was the first blow in my father's destruction of my mother. Not that she was an angel. A devout Catholic, yes, but an angel... most definitely not. She threatened to slit my throat if he had me circumcised."

"But you are-"

"Yes," he spoke over me. "I am, and there is a small scar under my chin to testify how close my mother came to carrying out her threat. They were simply... not made for each other. And not only because she was a Catholic of the old order and he was a socialist and a Jew.

It was for the best that Otto was rarely about. He had no time for me nor any desire to know me better. He was in the middle of his doctoral studies when I was born, that was his real baby, and he refused to live in the same house as me for the first two years because my crying disturbed his study.

When he did come to live with us he argued with Catherine constantly. Every word he said to her was an insult and he never failed to remind her of her own worthlessness. She took out her anger at him on me. We were not a happy family.

When I was six tears old my mother and I moved out of Vienna to a country house that my father had provided for us, near the Italian border. I do not recall missing him, but I was desperate for him to be proud of me. He was secretary of the Social Democratic Party at that time and I read every edition of the party journal that he sent from cover to cover, hoping that he would visit and that I would have an opportunity to show my intelligence and loyalty to him. But he did not come and all I had were letters and books."

He stopped for breath and I took the opportunity to take his chin in my hands and kiss every inch of his face, tasting the tears on his cheeks and feeling the pain that he must feel in relating his story. I wanted to tell him that he did not need to continue if he did not feel able but he looked up into my eyes and I could not speak. His skin was pale save for around his eyes, and his ridiculous nose, and the cleft down to his lips, which were all painfully red and made him look far too young. I held my tongue and gave him a nod to let him know that I would not interrupt, that I would listen and stay with him until the end, and he closed his eyes as he continued his story.

"I was sent away to school in Milan when I was ten years old, the same year my father joined the Austro-Hungarian Army and was captured by the Russians. I wondered for three years why there were no letters from him, because my mother had not seen fit to tell me that he was a prisoner of war, and four years being tormented by my peers for being one of the 'damned Austrians who started the war'.

My teachers had high expectations for me, though I don't know why."

"Perhaps because of your vast intelligence?" I muttered but he scoffed at my words, pressing his forehead to my breast bone before continuing .

"I hated that school. Hated the way they talked down to us. Hated being referred to as 'boy'. Never by name, never Victor or Bauer, only 'boy'. I confronted my history master on it one day, after having my knuckles caned for my insolence. I told him my name was not 'boy' and he suggested that I might prefer the name 'girl' instead. I told him I should hate it no more or less than 'boy'. God, Rosey, but I was beaten for that. I did not even know who I was at that time, was a child, and already they were punishing me for it.

I graduated at sixteen, ahead of the boys my own age, but when I returned to my mother all that she could say was that I had my father's weedy disposition and was not a real man. She could see that I would be a sinner of the worst sort, she told me, that I needed to become a man before I was permitted to enter her presence. And so I went to Vienna and found my father.

He was... similarly disappointed in me. I told him of my plan to attend the Academy of Fine Art and he threatened to cast me out which, if it happened today would produce no more than a shrug from me, but at sixteen... I still wanted him to be proud of me. We came to an agreement, that I would be allowed to study art on the understanding that when it was done I would begin a degree in law and follow him into politics. He gave me a small allowance so that I was able to rent a room near the academy but prefered that I did not visit him too often. Even though our political leanings were very similar, he was not fond of me. But, I was able to attend art college and whilst I was far from being a star pupil I learnt so much. And I met..."

I saw him waver, his bottom lip quivering as he tried to form the words to tell me about the man who had known him before me. I kissed the top of his head, feeling his body press even more firmly to mine in an attempt to fuse our bodies and minds together so that he wouldn't have to tell me his story in words.

Sensing his reticence I wished I could tell him that he did not need to continue, that I did not need to know - that suddenly I did not want to know - but he continued speaking and I closed my eyes tightly, focusing on his words and trying to suffocate the growing pressure of tears behind my lids.

"His name was Aloys," he told me, his voice a raw whisper. "He was... one of my professors. When he approached me one evening as I left the college, and told me that he knew what I was... I thought he was going to hand me over to the authorities. I was so naive, Rosey. I was seventeen.

And when he promised not to tell my father - told me that no one understood but he did, that no one could love me but him - God, Rosey I believed him. For almost a year I believed him. And he... we..." his voice cracked and he pushed his forehead against my chest with enough force that I was able to feel the pain of his memories. "He hurt me, Rosey... and when I told him I didn't want to do that anymore, he... he sent anonymous letters to all of my professors, to the head of the academy, to my parents, and member's of my father's political party..."

And in that moment my heart broke. For so many reasons. For a young man whose trust had been abused, who had been abandoned and hurt and manipulated. My heart broke for that man who was barely more than a boy and who, when the man he had thought he was loved by exposed him publicly, had also been faced with his parents' rejection.

He told me, though his words now were broken and jumbled, how his options had been prison, an asylum, or to flee. His mother had given him the necessary funds to get as far as Switzerland but on the condition that he never attempt to contact her or acknowledge their relationship. His father had simply denied having a son and, because Victor had been so little seen in the company of his father, most people believed him. He had sealed the deal when he passed on the details of Victor's 'crime of sodomy' to the authorities, because surely no father would do that to his son.

I had to agree with that. Surely no father would do that to their son, and so I could understand why Victor referred to his father as simply Otto, and his mother as Catherine. Yet he had cried for them, or perhaps he was finally grieving what had been done to him.

He continued to cry until his sobs turned to hitched whimpers and sighs and the taut muscles of his back and shoulders relaxed into sleep, his damp face still pressed against my chest and his legs tangled around mine, and I held him, not knowing what else I could do. If our roles had been reversed, if it had been me in tears, he would have known exactly what needed to be done, but all I could do in the situation was hold him and hope that when he woke he would have recovered himself.

I craned my neck as I heard Violette walk quietly to the side of the bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her slight frame and her face ashen.

"Jana is asleep," she whispered. "I am sorry. She received the letter this morning and flew into a panic. Both of her brothers were killed in the uprising, she thought Victor would want to know about his parents. I..."

"You heard?" I asked, my voice gravelly in my ears.

"I did not mean to," she replied. "But yes."

The silence stretched out between us as I considered what to say in response but knew that there was no need to point out to a woman like Violette that discretion was needed. Her affection for Bauer ran deep and I knew that the details of his past would be safe with her. Not that Victor had been anything other than a victim to the adults who should have cared for and protected him, but people can be - and too often are - cruel to those who are different and there were those who would use Bauer's past to ruin his present.

After several minutes she leant down and gave my shoulder squeeze before offering a weak smile.

"You have no food," she told me, "and I have drunk all of your coffee, so I am going out to get you more, and bread that is not riddled with mold, and something to drink because I think we all need it. I will be back soon. Will you be alright?"

I nodded and thanked her and when the door had closed behind her, plunging the room into silence, I shuffled down further in the bed, pulled Bauer as close to me as I was able, and closed my eyes, wishing the world and all its chaos would simply stop.