Gosh, I'm so sorry I haven't updated for so long… I was preoccupied with other fanfictions then I was beset with illness then my USB stick broke yeah my excuses are sucky I'm gomen

Sorry also for the change in my writing style it's all over the shop atm I can't find anything I want to stick with.

Also, I'm taking a week and a bit off writing and other important stuffs, so there will be some updates on the way, I'm just not sure when.

Quick question am I the only person on this planet who ships CanUk?

Ok so Ivan and Gilbert have been caught in the act… what are they going to do?

There's a lot of implied romance and eye-contact-wossnames in this one.

Brace yourselves for the next chapter though.

S'gonna be, uh, steamy.

The Warden was pissing himself.

He'd taken one glance at the bunk, and that had been it.

His hands were upon his knees, and he was bent almost double, tears streaming down his cheeks as he guffawed without end. His hat was askew, his authority diminishing, as he laughed and laughed and laughed at what he saw before him. Even the men who were only laughing so not to arise suspicion found it a little bit funny, but most of them were scaring themselves shitless worrying about what was going to happen to their gang leader.

Ever since Tino had muttered that derogatory comment into his ear then proceeded to boast about the reaction it had received for days on end, the gang had known Gilbert was going to end up doing something like this. They had betted; most of them had thought it was going to be either Tino or Toris, but the bread and small articles of clothing were still changing hands as the crowd around the bunk continued to mass. Pretty soon, the entirety of the gang (and a few Finns from the barrack next door who always stuck their noses into everyone's business) was stood around or near the bunk, forcing themselves to appear idle and to hide their complete befuddlement. Out of all the candidates they had suggested that would end up in bed with Gilbert Beilschmidt, none of them, in a serious manner at least, had ever been Ivan Braginsky. Tino had suggested it as a joke, and everyone had laughed as they always did, but no-one had taken him seriously. And now the Finn was stood there with a smile wide as the Warden, his arms folded, waiting as a snake does for Ivan to wake up.

The punch line of the joke, on the other hand, was still asleep, face pressed against the German's chest, arms crushing him tight and close. The gang often woke up to see Eduard and Raivis tangled together in a not-so-platonic embrace, but they had usually been more haphazardly placed than this. Any man who held a woman, or another man like that certainly didn't just need a little bit of warming up. Ivan's arms were clasped so tight around Gilbert they were worried they were going to have a hard time prying him away from the German without waking him up. A few of the softer hearts, like Raivis, took in the Russian's neat hair, obviously stroked into place by the pale hand resting on his neck, and the fact that Ivan's head was directly over the smaller man's heart. It would enough to drive a few aww's from any female inmate, if there had been any, but the crowd of men just stared.

A couple of them were waiting with bated breath for the moment the Russian roared to life and obliterated them all, knowing that Ivan wouldn't take well to the Warden laughing in his face like he did with the squealers. They knew all too well that Ivan was never going to live this down, no matter how hard he tried, and that even a glance from him to Gilbert would be interpreted as something completely different. There were slight amounts of pity; just enough to dull their laughs to muted chuckles, but a man who outwardly shows pity is a dead man. They were going to have to act harshly in the face of this, harsh enough to appear cruel, if they wanted some kind of standing reputation.

But, as all good amusements do, it ended. The bated-breathers let out long sighs, the chucklers were silence, and the Warden persisted in his wheezing.

Ivan was the first to stir. There was a flicker of movement in his limbs, as if he was tightening his hold even more on Gilbert. Then his head shifted, his arms retracted, and he shot bolt upright with a loud curse. It was clear to see that his eyes were still blurry from sleep, and that he had absolutely no idea where he was or what was going on, but he knew that the Warden was laughing at him. For the first time in, well, ever, the men saw confusion in Ivan's features. Then, as predicted by many and feared by twice that amount, his expression darkened, and a steely, frozen silence soon descended.

Sleepy violet eyes met with ones still streaming with tears of laughter, muscles worked in jaws, and each man racked his brain for something he could say to break the silence. Watching their gang leader and the Warden lock eyes like they were two bears was uncomfortable, and even oblivious Tino was starting to feel the ice in the air. Gilbert was still immobile in the bed, and a couple of whisperers at the back contemplated the fact that Ivan may have actually crushed him to death.

"Aren't you going to wake him up?" Oddly, and to everyone's utter astonishment, it was Raivis who had spoken up. In a brief moment of confidence, the Latvian had shattered the silence like an axe through snow, and all heads turned to him, including Ivan's, as the boy's words wavered. "I mean—it's reveille— and there's… an um… parade to go to…"

He trailed off, and so did the Warden's laughing. Ivan looked like he was going to tear the Warden limb from limb with his bare hands, and his actual thoughts were something similar to that. He was livid, absolutely fuming, about the fact that he'd been caught in in a bed with another man. Not that he thought that was a crime, he'd done worse himself, but it was the fact that everyone was just watching. They were openly gawping as a sheep does to an approaching wolf, and even the fact that he had woken up hadn't made them turn their backs and get on with their work. No man ever made eye contact with him; it was the rule to never try to stare down a superior. However, as he sat rigid in that bed with a hundred eyes on him, he felt as if he'd never had so many eyes locked on his own like this.

At Raivis' comment, which he would have ignored in ordinary circumstances as it was an idiot's question; he puffed like a steam engine, the anger boiling just below the surface. He was seething, not at anyone in particular, and he was forcing himself not to turn and look at Gilbert, who was, as mentioned, still face down in the blankets.

"You're a fucking squealer," Ivan hissed, his eyes flicking from Raivis' to the Warden's, who was looking less than amused now. "Shut your mouth."

Eduard's pre-emptive skills kicked in, and he whisked the Latvian away just as the tears began to roll down his round cheeks. The venom in which Ivan had spat that retort had been tremendous, and several other squealers left the spectating circle for fear of being turned on next. Ivan was rarely this angry, rarely this openly furious about something, so the men knew immediately that they were treading on thin ice now. Any little comment, any Tino-esque quip, and that would be it. The trail of snow that led to the bunk from all the tramping feet that had rushed to see this spectacle could soon turn into a trail of bodies, and every man kept a watchful eye on their gang leader. Anger could do very strange things to a man's temperament, especially when he is the butt of the joke.

"I think our Ivan is blushing," The Warden cooed in a sick little tone, making the Russian's head whip round to focus fully on him again. It wasn't your typical on-the-brink-of-going-berserk expression; there was no chest heaving or flexing muscles just yet, Ivan wasn't that out of control of his emotions just yet, but there were clear signs that the Warden was well and truly in for it. "Embarrassed about being caught with your little man friend?"

Tino pulled a face. Even that was a step too far in his eyes.

Embarrassment didn't even cover it. Absolute mind blowing skull smashing fucking soul destroying mortification would have been a better term, but Ivan doubted the Warden was able to string that many words together without forgetting to dot his I's and cross his t's. He could feel a prickling sensation spreading from his limbs to his neck, from his neck to his ears, and it felt as if his face was burning. With this many men staring at him like he'd cut his own arm off, and with the other soon to be laughing stock still out cold next to him, there was no way he could stay calm. Retorts similar to the one he had so viciously snapped at Raivis were threatening to spill forth.

"So what about it, Tin Man?" The Warden looked like an overstuffed eagle, strutting around and clapping his hands together like Ivan had just ended the War in his sleep. "Feeling a little hot under the collar for our good German chum here? I pity the fellow, I really do. Imagine those cold hands, that's got to bring on a chill, I bet he bites too."

Ivan almost choked on his own tongue, such were the range of insults he was contemplating, but he shoved them off the table for the sake of good old schoolboy violence. Those piggish eyes that could have bullied a beetle if he was that conscious of the smaller in the world, and the set of his shoulders and the twist to his cigarette-dangling lips made Ivan forget that this man was just like the others. He scrapped and squabbled with the inmates, he nabbed smokes off them and rarely gave the donors anything more in return than a night in the cells, and he'd done his fair share of firing bullets at various people. Only he'd shot the right people and fought on the right side, so he was the one poking holes into Ivan like one might do to a pincushion, and Ivan was the one with the red face and the poison glare.

"Bet he grunts some, too," The Warden broke off into wheezy cackles. Several men joined in, several that were closer to the Warden for the sake of cigarettes, but most of the crowd kept their eyes trained on Ivan. "Like a swine. Bet our Gilbert's not the first neither, reckon our sqeualers've got a little tattle or two about where the Tin Man likes to put his—"

If it was the straw that had broken the camel's back, this was the whale that had sunk the battleship. With a strained yell in some mashed-together curse words, Ivan launched himself from the bunk and threw himself at the Warden. If it had been the other way round, if someone had decided to have a pop at the gang leader, every man would have been throwing himself like a sandbag around Ivan like a protective shield, and the attacker would be beaten out of his senses. However, as Ivan was charging happily at the Warden as many had been expecting him to, no-one lifted a finger. Several back away, knowing far too well of the consequences of a flying arm or leg, and the rest prepared themselves for a jolly good fist fight. Even Eduard, who had been wincing along with the comments as Tino had done, stepped back a little, still keeping an arm around a sniffling Raivis. As fragile and quick to sob as the boy was, Raivis knew Ivan had been too wound up to care who he had snapped at, he had just had the misfortune to be the one his fury was directed at. Which, for a fifteen year old insomniac with the metabolism of a dead stick insect, Eduard didn't think was too bad.

Ivan stuffed his feet into his boots, making the Warden's smirk crack into a grin, but this was soon wiped off as well as the majority of the teeth in his mouth as Ivan took several great steps forward and socked him clean in the mouth.

There was a resonating gasp, mainly of relief as most of the men had wanted to do that to the Warden at some point in their time in detention, but several of shock. Ivan never used violence unless he really had to, whereas the Warden was quick to dish out the punches, so they were already debating if raw vehemence was going to prevail over practiced cruelty.

During its flight from the bunk to the Warden's jaw, Ivan's fist had caught Gilbert on the shoulder, so now a stirring German joined in with the open mouthed spectators as the bear and the fox launched into battle.

The Warden reeled, a hand wrenching his jaw into a less lopsided position before his other arm drew back to clout the offender around the head. Ivan ducked as best he could and landed a solid smack just beneath the shorter man's collarbone. He was no expert at anatomy, but whatever he had hit he had hit hard, as there was an organic crunch and the Warden reeled back.

Ivan took this chance to grip his shoulder and shove him to the ground, landing above him and immediately letting his fists fly. The Warden, as you might expect, was stunned, and took a brief moment to scrabble his body for weapons before a punch to the diaphragm sent him coughing and clawing at Ivan. There were several more exchanges of punches, insults, and at one point slaps, before they broke apart and heaved themselves to their feet, circling each other once more.

Tino tore his eyes from the fight for one moment to see Gilbert looking stricken from his perch on the bunk. He had dressed himself in an astonishingly short amount of time, and although he was pink around the cheeks because of where he had been caught taking a nap, he had no trace of the utter wrath Ivan was very openly expressing. He looked like he felt inclined to join the melee, but as his eyes caught Tino's, the Finn shook his head. Ivan needed this opportunity to beat the Warden into a pulp; the Warden needed this opportunity to publish Ivan as a sissy romantic.

"You're the fucking devil." Ivan hissed, as his hand found the Warden's collar and he twisted it viciously, watching the shorter man's breaths become more strained. His fists were laying good, solid punches into his stomach and sides, but he could feel nothing save the hot fury that was baying for blood for no good reason other than the fact that the Warden existed, and that Ivan's duty was to amend that a little. He could feel his blows starting to lose their impact, but he couldn't care less. His heart was pounding along with the fists he now laid into the Warden's stomach, and his eyes were slit as he choked out strings of insults that were only half coherent.

"Try shagging them behind walls or something then," The Warden panted, a trail of blood and saliva tracking down his chin and onto his collar. "No-one but the squealer pervert's gonna come gawp at you then."

Saying 'I didn't' to the Warden was like trying to cut down a mountain with a fish slice, so Ivan decided to disagree with him in the form of a good old kick in the shins. The man let out a genuine howl of pain, and Ivan took that moment to grasp him firmly by the shoulders and end the fight with a firm shove into the barrack wall.

Another resounding gasp, and several men took steps forward as if they were going to help either Ivan or the Warden, but stepped back as Ivan gave the crowd one last glare before he lurched out of the barrack and into the sharp morning air.

The Warden slumped, swore, and lay still.

Blundering out in knee-deep snow at reveille with the risk of being stripped naked by pissy guards was not the best idea, especially for someone of Ivan's current tetchiness and tendency to beat his superiors senseless, but he continued nonetheless. He didn't have his coat, only his jacket, so the shivers would come and pay him a visit soon, but the seething anger and rapidly increasing pain made up for the fact that -20 was not a good temperature to be outside in. It had warmed up considerably overnight, so there was no way Ivan could work off his anger by just scrubbing floors. They would be out chopping wood, most likely. Although Ivan was a dab hand with an axe, and he always liked to imagine the trunks taking the shape of the Warden's face, the prospect of being amongst all those gawping men wasn't going down too well in his conscience.

Ivan ran. He ran at a steady pace, dodging the searchlights and the men stood in their rows as they were searched and paraded. He could hear his gang dribbling out in deep discussion to be searched, but even the guards didn't seem too eager about faffing around with any of that business. Good. At least it had made an impact. If Ivan-Braginsky-sleeping-with-Gilbert-Beilschmidt wasn't enough of a headline, Ivan-Braginsky-beating-the-shit-out-of-the-Warden was going to be a big hit amongst the breakfasting inmates.

He ran until he reached the boiler room where he rested his back against the side of it and breathed out. Before, when his muscles had thrummed with power and he had laid punch after devastating punch into the Warden's under-exercised stomach, he hadn't felt a thing other than primal rage. Now, his side, stomach and chest had erupted into a myriad of painful throbs, and there was a sizeable lump on his arm was he was pretty sure was a swollen vein or something. He half wanted to lift his shirt and examine his battle scars fully, but letting the pain wash over him was enough to realise that he had just been a monumental—

"Idiot!" Ivan's head lifted in defeat. If it was Tino, he was either going to treat him in the same manner he had treated the Warden, or he was going to walk away. "Where do you think you're running off to?"

Silver hair catching beams of the strangely visible sun, eyes looking a little red around the edges as well as in the irises, shirt buttons done up lopsidedly with both his own and Ivan's coat flapping over the top, Gilbert jogged up to where he was leaning against the barrack wall. Unlike the look he had predicted for Tino, Gilbert looked less than absolutely chuffed about Ivan's outburst.

"If I tell you to fuck off and leave me alone, will you?" Ivan was done with arsing around with courtesy and sensitivity; he didn't want any of the men to be in a fifty metre radius of him for the rest of the week. Any emotion he had felt the previous night, any kind of comfort he had leached from that skinny body had completely disintegrated, and he was back to cultivating his slow-moving, aching hatred for the German as one may do when taking care of a Venus Flytrap.

The German, despite his frown, laughed dryly. "Not a fucking chance in Hell am I going to leave you alone after you turned the Warden into some kind of human blancmange." Ivan didn't know what blancmange was. He didn't want to ask.

"If I had just kept it at the glaring, would you have fucked off and left me alone?" The words were coming out before Ivan could stop them, and his breathing became a little heavier as his injuries revealed themselves steadily, like a man calling out bingo numbers. So far, Ivan had a full house. "Or would you still be standing there looking like I just killed your grandmother and spread her body part around the camp?"

Gilbert faltered for a moment, and Ivan was wondering if he actually had any idea about human beings at all. Had he just followed him because he thought 'ooh, I bet Ivan's itching to talk to the man he's just been claimed to be sleeping with, let's go ask him stupid questions'? Probably, he agreed, it sounded like a Gilbert sort of thing. Not that he knew what a 'Gilbert sort of thing' was. Not that he cared what a 'Gilbert sort of thing' could entail. So far, the only Gilbert sorts of things he was imagining was a motionless Gilbert-shaped lump in the snow. He wondered how long it would take to bury him alive, or if he was going to have to knock the bastard out if he wanted to have a chance at keeping the German six feet below—

"I came to apologise."

Struck dumb would be an understatement. Hit on the head by four fucking words then shoved into a small blender in a close proximity with a porcupine summed it up nicely. Ivan blinked at him and tried to stand up straight, but winced as the next bingo number of agony was announced somewhere in the region of his solar plexus.

When he didn't get a reply more substantial than a slightly baffled look, Gilbert continued. "It was my fault they caught us… y'know. I shouldn't have complained last night and all that shit, I didn't mean to impose on you, and now you've got the Warden thinking it was all mad passionate thingummy—"

"Shut up." Ivan's tongue was doing its own little performance as the rest of his body thought carefully about whether the pain was worth dropping down dead or not. Pain flared up his arms, on his bottom lip from where he had bitten it, and down his back from where he had hit the floor.

"Isn't the reason you're pissed because I—"

"I said shut your mouth, Gilbert." Ivan rarely used his name, in fact he didn't think he had done before at all, but there were a lot of rare events cramming themselves by the dozen into his life, so this one was just another stick on the fire. "It doesn't matter."

The German looked as beside himself as he had done on the day he had arrived. His eyes had hardened, and he looked how Ivan felt. He was fighting something back, trying not to say something, but it was forcing its way up nonetheless; Ivan could see it in the way his jaw worked and the way his eyes wouldn't meet Ivan's. He couldn't imagine what it was, maybe the Warden had died or something, but Ivan was certain it was going to slip out any time soon.

"Why doesn't it matter?" That wasn't a whine. That was a gruff, sharp question, and Ivan was almost obliged to answer it. "Why doesn't it matter that the entirety of your gang thinks that you're some man-loving fucker like me? Why do you not mind that you just pummelled our version of the Kaiser into the ground because he called me your 'little man friend'? Is it the fact you look like you've broken all your ribs? Or is it because you're going to escape? Just fucking tell me why."

The questions flooded forth, increasing in volume as Gilbert was near to shouting. There were too many of those questions which were impossible to answer- it was like asking what the meaning of life was to an existentialist then presenting him with a coffin- words stuttered on his tongue but fell flat like damp flares in the snow.

"I know you dislike me a great amount, and that what happened..." He could almost hear Gilbert grinding his teeth in anguish. "… last night wasn't anything other than necessity, and I know you couldn't give the slightest of fucks if I went and drowned myself in the oatmeal vat, but do you really not give a shit about the fact you were just insulted by possibly the only man I've ever seen you openly furious at? Besides me, of course." He chuckled quietly, but he still looked uneasy.

Every dilemma Fate and Gilbert and Tino had thrust onto him collided into one, and his shoulders slumped as the last bit of resilience left his limbs. Gilbert's preaching of how Ivan so eloquently expressed his opinions was obvious; he had been disgusted about cuddling with a fellow inmate on a cold night, he hated Gilbert to the point of baking him into some sort of pastry product, insults bounced off him like bullets off a tank, and he was only ever directly pissed at the Warden and someone who had, if he dare say it, been inching his way into Ivan's fairly empty (as in totally devoid and forsaken) circle of friends. Every one of these statements he would have happily agreed and played along with, for not for the fact that a part of him vehemently disagreed with each one. He tried to think of all the shit Gilbert had shoved his face in so he could build up his agreement with his statements again; the Bread Fight on the first day, the Foot Cloth Lesson, the Introduction to Tino and the Rest of the Gang, the Fucking Wonky Wall, Ivan could and happily would go on forever.

But there was, the clichés go, two sides to every coin.

Soon, Gilbert Making a Fool of Himself at Dinner turned to Gilbert Staring at Him All the Time, Gilbert Pointing to Ivan's Heart Like He Fucking Owned It, Gilbert's Little Cross Necklace He Had Never Asked About Having Returned, Gilbert Holding Him in the Bunk, Gilbert Stroking His Hair, Gilbert's Eyes, Gilbert's—

"Enough." He muttered quietly to himself, about to thump a considerable amount of sense into his head via punching his temple before he realised Gilbert was still stood staring in front of him.

Letting out a long breath, he thought long and hard about his answer, the first shivers hindering that ever so slightly but he persisted nonetheless. It would be so easy just to tell Gilbert to fuck the hell off and leave him well enough alone, but did he really want that? To be honest, as Pain and Agony did the tango up and down his body and I'm Going to Kill the Warden and Mental Instability jived in his head, he could think of nothing better than a scalding bath and rest somewhere warm. He hadn't eaten all day as well, so a nice little meal wouldn't do any harm. Oh come on, Ivan couldn't kid a baby with his false wants and needs. It wasn't about what his head wanted, or even his body. It was what that odd little pumping organ in his chest wanted, what it craved every time he took the courtesy to actually listen to it. Opening his mouth but still staring into space, he fought for an answer he could choke out.

"God knows what's swimming in that oatmeal vat," He said eventually, choosing his words slowly and carefully. "You've better luck heading into the furnace."

There was a long pause, in which Ivan could hear the shouts of the guards as they searched, most definitely for Gilbert and himself, then the German's face split into a wide grin.

"Tino told me there's nothing but good grain in that oatmeal, the bastard." Gilbert looked relieved, openly so, but if Ivan could turn and look at his own face, so did he. "I guess that's why he laughs so hard when I go up for seconds."

Despite the pain and the headaches and the notion that the Warden wasn't dead and would be beside himself, Ivan returned the smile. "You can go up for seconds?"

"They think I'm a boy, 'cause of my weight, and they seem more than happy just to deal that stuff out if anyone's interested." Gilbert's weight balanced precariously between underweight and skeletal, and Ivan was momentarily pleased that the man was sniffing around for scraps in order to remain standing.

Ivan was about to launch into a story involving Tino, a dead man's eye, half a vat of oatmeal and the Warden when his knees decided they'd had enough of functioning and buckled beneath him.

Skinny, underweight Gilbert with his oatmeal seconds and lopsided grin may have been as weedy looking as Raivis, but he was hiding a great deal of strength somewhere under his multiple coats. His arms, as Ivan was sliding down the wall, hooked under Ivan's and hauled him up, giving Ivan enough time to regain his balance before he pulled away. His arms slipped from under his arms to his waist for a brief moment as if he hadn't meant to, and lingered for a few moments, but he was soon back at a two metre distance and was grinning a little sheepishly at him.

"Thank you." He muttered as if he hadn't meant to say that either, his grin subsiding into a soft smile.

Ivan winced then blinked in surprise. "What for?"

Gilbert shook his head. "Fuck all, you're fucking terrible."

Ivan hissed, both in laughter and in pain. "You might want to get ready to catch me again."

Gilbert's eyes flicked up to his in a way they had never done before. "Infirmary?"

It would be Ivan's first time. He was less than pleased. Nodding, he pushed himself away from the wall and got ready to limp to the other side of the camp.

"Infirmary."

I might need the infirmary as well now, this has been a stressful chapter to put together.

Thanks for reading and sticking with this story, it means a lot!

Please review or favourite or do whatever you do guys!