I'm lying to him.
I just... I didn't know what to say, alright?
What was I supposed to say when he asked me that question? When he stood in front of me, crying his eyes out, having just tried to shoot himself under his chin and through his skull?
I couldn't tell him the truth... I just couldn't. I couldn't look him in the eyes and tell him that my father was furious when I confessed my sexuality to him. I couldn't explain to him that my father had told me it was just another example of how much of a failed son I was, how much of an embarrassment I was. I couldn't explain to him what it was like to hear my father scream at me and tell me how much of a disappointment I was last year when I tried to drown myself under the ice during one of our cold-water swimming tests. I had wanted to escape from all of this so badly, but then Friedrich came into my life... and things started to change.
I couldn't let that feeling go. It didn't matter that I had fucked up before; it didn't matter that, for a short moment after we'd shared that... admittedly drunken night in my room, I was scared of the repercussions. That I was scared of what my father might do if he found out Friedrich and I were in a relationship together.
I couldn't tell him that my father told me he wished he had someone else for a son other than me. I just... I couldn't, alright? I don't expect you to understand. I can't expect you to react, considering you've probably never been in a position like mine. I just... I needed him, and the only way I could bring him down from that ledge was to tell him everything would be alright.
It would, in the end, right?
My father would eventually die, and he couldn't kill me or send me off to some re-education camp, I at least knew that much. Maybe he could have ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, but not anymore. I wouldn't be silent, and there were people out there that would do everything they could to make his life, to make our countries lives, a living hell if they found out about that sort of stuff.
I remember listening to my father complaining one night about President Obama, from the United States. He was complaining about how he had put the pressure on him at a recent meeting to put a stop to all of the anti-LGBT violence that had been going on here recently. The States had just legalized same-sex marriage a year before, and strengthening their ties with a country like ours, a country that was, at times, openly homophobic on a scale comparable to Uganda, wasn't acceptable.
Especially not when we were European. When we were supposed to be fair minded, fair handed, and fair tempered. He did do something about it; laws were put in place banning the... the things... that were done. It upset some, but in the background, my father understood that it was for the better. Having a close relationship with the United States, for the first time since the war, was extremely important. It meant having a friend that was strong, and meant an alliance that could protect against the bear a few hundred miles to our East.
When I was younger, I was different; I loved the arts, found myself engrossed in the classics of literature, and hated sports. When I was young, it was alright; my mother always protected me, told him that I would grow out of it, or that it was just a phase. That a time would come when I would realize that, while these things were nice, I needed to grow up and become strong; become a man, like everyone else did.
Sort of like my sexuality was supposed to be a 'phase'.
I didn't have a choice but to change, at least outwardly. I still loved reading, but I took up sport; any sport, so long as I could excel at it. Golf, rowing, football, lacrosse.
Lacrosse at least gave me the chance to run. Metaphorically speaking, it let me run from my problems. It was an American sport; one that their Natives played, perhaps on the open 'prairies', as the Americans called them. To me, it was freedom; the faster you ran, the better you were. So long as you held your head up to the sky and kept watch, you'd be good.
I guess it was a metaphor for what I wanted to be able to do; to keep my head in the clouds and keep running until I was free.
I didn't have a choice but to be strong, at least outwardly. As the years passed by, and I did my best to present myself as the Hero and Posterboy of our country that my father wanted, perhaps needed, me to be, things became... acceptable. I would still bide my time by reading the classics on my tablet or listen to old music on my phone, but outwardly I needed to be strong to keep him happy.
Just long enough for him to croak.
Just long enough for the poll numbers to become undeniable.
Times were changing; we all knew it, including my father. As my generation started to grow older, and now grow old enough to vote in the parliamentary elections, things would change. What the old generation wanted would become 'an option' instead of what 'would' be done. As even L.G Academy-goers began to think differently than their instructors and leaders-gone-by, things would change.
You know things are turning against the old-generation when the students of the nation's foremost political academy begin to think that what was done during the war was morally atrocious. You know things are turning around when sons of factory-workers and farmers are willing to fight for their friends when they come out of the closet, instead of fight against them.
My father was fifty-seven; He and my mother had me comparably later in life. He'd have to abdicate the throne to me eventually, and when that time came, there'd be no going back.
Until then, I needed to remain strong; at least on the outside. At least around everyone.
Everyone but Friedrich.
Friedrich. I've fallen harder for him than I could ever imagine falling for someone. It was unrealistic; someone as brave and strong as Friedrich, whom showed interminable resolve in the ring, being gay... just like me.
He would sit and let me read passages out of my favorite books to him, try and talk with me about various classical artists and playwrights. He didn't know much, but at least he tried.
I remember hearing the news about what happened with him and Erik and feeling like the world had fallen out from under my feet; not only were two other guys in the academy gay, but Friedrich of all people. He was so far from who I was that, early on, it seemed impossible. How could someone -so strong- be just as gay as I was?
Friedrich; I'd be lying if I were to say that he weren't one of the people I imagined being with, and doing things with, in the middle of the night. I wasn't obsessed, at least in the beginning; he was just one of the innumerable attractive guys who I imagined doing innumerable monotonous, daily things with. It never got past that.
At least, not until Siegfried told me about what they were doing to him. I blew a gasket; to hear that people were literally beating him into the medical ward angered me so much that, for the first time in my life, I found myself using my position for my own advantage. I had some of his tormentors kicked out of the academy, had him promoted, and when it finally came to a head, helped Siegfried and the others stop them just as they were moments away from throwing him into the pool unconscious, probably killing him.
To see him like that... to see someone who literally gave off an air of strength... so hurt.
To see [i]him[/i] hurt. To see tears welling from his summer-blue eyes, to see blood pooling from his head, his mouth, and his chest, to see him limping to and from class. To see someone so strong... so weak.
To see someone so undeserving of the pain... effectively tortured for months on end. To see someone knocked from their pillar and broken into progressively smaller and smaller pieces.
It killed me.
But it also made me realize that I was a fool for not taking the chance; for not reaching out and trying for -something- with him.
"Albrecht?"
Why couldn't my father understand? Why couldn't he just change his mind?
Why couldn't he realize that if he would just accept who I was, he could have the son he always wanted? Someone brave and stoic; someone who, in another age, would probably end up a hero of some great war? Wouldn't having a son who filled his standards by marriage, someone like Friedrich, be enough for him?
Why couldn't he just give me this?
He was too old to have another child anyway...
Why couldn't I be good enough for anyone but Friedrich?
Friedrich... whose arms wrapped around me so tightly that night. Who, despite everything he'd been going through, still had the capacity to make -me- feel safe.
There was so much I wanted to tell him, and so much I wanted to do with him. I wanted to take him on trips around the world, I wanted to rule with him by my side, arm in arm. I wanted to show him off to everyone; to prove that people like he and I were the same as everyone else.
I wanted to take him out to brunch, to sit with him in front of some random cafe in the middle of the capitol city and not have to worry about the paparazzi taking pictures of us, because the more they took pictures the more some kid like me, somewhere off in the Golderfeld or the mountains, would realize that they didn't have to kill themselves because of their sexuality.
I wanted to curl up in bed and have him wrap his arms around me, to feel his biceps pressing against my frame, his foot slowly running up and down my calf. I wanted to be able to wake up in the middle of the night, peel his arm off of me, and tiptoe to the bathroom in hopes of not stirring his gentle figure awake. I wanted to be able to watch the way his athletic figure laid quietly in bed; the way his chest gently rose and fell when he was asleep.
That was why I lied. That was why I told him that my father was fine with my being gay.
Because I wanted to be with him so badly that I began the foundation of our relationship on a lie, knowing how it would end. Knowing that someone like him needed to be able to trust someone, and that I had already broken his trust so badly once... that..
That I knew when it all finally came out; that I had lied to him just so I could feel his arms wrapped around my chest a few more times, that it would all crumble to pieces. That it would break apart so quickly and so violently that I'd have no choice but to end my own life.
That I couldn't be happy without him.
I knew it would end badly, and yet I still lied to him.
"I hope you can forgive me." I muttered under my breath.