SEVEN YEARS LATER
After traversing east and west, after reaching the ends of the Earth and back, after years of falling apart and coming back together, they found themselves alone, once again, in a little clearing in the west.
The sky was a swathe of violet and pink, with scorch marks of orange where the sun was sinking. Nearby, a tiny creek sang merrily as it hopped from stone to stone, replenishing the moss and making its way downhill to where a waterfall coursed into the mouth of a river.
A doe grazed by the tree line, paying no mind to the pair who rested in the middle of the clearing only a stone's throw away. They had been coming for years and she knew they meant her no harm.
Taki breathed in deep, awake but with his eyes still closed, feeling the comfort of the weight pressing gently on his stomach. He felt the wolf's steady breath against his hand. He heard the soft thud of its tail against the grass as it lifted once and dropped. He ran his hand over the wolf's fur without any fear. He imagined the burning gold of its eyes.
Afterwards, the wolf stirred and awoke. They stood up again. They walked once more. They walked until west became east and they were roaming among the gods.
They reached their tree. Taki crouched beside the wolf as they looked out across as the carnage. The flames that would soon reach them. He glanced down at his companion and wondered in how many ways they would meet again.
And suddenly, he saw.
He saw them in all of their lives. In all of their pairings.
In one – a life not far from theirs – the wolf was a man. Almost a man. The creature was half wolf and half man and in his arms he held a woman whose body was peppered with arrows. Whose life had been drained before her lover's eyes. Taki felt the agony of the wolf's howl stronger than the life-ending pain of arrows in his, in her, own body.*
Time and time again, they would meet. In each life they met. And in each life they were torn apart far too soon.
Ahead of Taki, the fire approached at startling speed. The wolf began its low growl.
And then Taki saw them as they would be finally. In a time he couldn't fathom but in a place that was familiar. There was the wisteria tree and, far away, the small creek threading through a vibrant, silent green clearing. There was still carnage and chaos. But amidst all of that, they had carved something out for themselves.
A small pocket of peace.
A niche in the curse of their intertwined fate.
He crouched beside the wolf and felt its growl reverberate through his body. He felt its heat one last time.
In our final lives, he thought.
The wolf heard him and it turned its head, ears pricked forward.
In our final lives, we'll have the time together that we want. Before they tear us apart again.
Even as the fire was on the point of engulfing them, they stared it down as one.
It was the second time the dream had ever come to Taki.
He sat on the bench in the rose garden and mulled it over, alone in the deep indigo of midnight. In a stillness that was unique to the countryside. Spring was inching out of the west and a breeze that was slightly too cold brought the garden to life in short bursts.
The roses would be gone soon, Taki realised. The hedges would be bare. But for now they remained, lush and full and heavy, past their prime, whispering to one another with each gust of wind.
There was, however, something about the bareness of the garden in the autumn and winter months that Taki found rather beautiful. The promise of something new. The start of a new cycle.
A new cycle.
In our final lives, we'll have the time together that we want.
Despite the intervening seven years, Taki still vividly recalled the last time he had had that dream. It had also been in the west and its realisticness left a real impression on Taki then as it did now. It had all the qualities of a memory. And, like last time, it left him feeling unsettled.
So he had left Klaus sleeping soundly in bed and walked slowly down the short hallway into the kitchen. The faint scratching of the gramophone made him take a detour into the living room where the needle skipped mutely over an old record.
The memory from the previous evening made him smile. Klaus throwing on the record, pulling him away from the latest forecasts for autumn harvests, overwriting Taki's protests with complaints that it had been years since Taki had indulged him in his whimsy. Their closeness in the living room had steadily escalated and they had forsaken the record in favour of the bedroom and never returned.
Taki lifted the needle and carefully replaced the old Reinhart number in its case. He then quietly slipped out the back door and into the rose garden.
The temperature gradually dropped. Taki had only wrapped a thin robe around himself before leaving the bedroom and the cold pressed easily on his limbs. He drew them closer together and thought almost wistfully about Klaus' warmth he had left behind.
The dream left behind more details than it had last time. Taki vividly remembered waking in the clearing beside the wolf and even parts of their walk that had lasted years. He remembered the half-wolf creature who had held him as he lay dying.
He remembered his own final words. Before they tear us apart again.
He sent a silent prayer to the gods asking for the wisdom to understand what it meant. Whether it was nothing more than his own paranoia. His sense that he didn't deserve the peace and happiness that had enveloped him for seven long years.
It occurred to him that he should tell Klaus. He could already hear Klaus' low, rumbling words that carried both empathy and derision; a precise balance of heresy that Taki had always found strangely comforting.
But he decided not to. He filed it away along with the other things, both small and large, that he hadn't been able to tell Klaus over the years.
As though the thought had summoned him, footsteps approached softly through the grass, crunching a few dry leaves. Klaus appeared around the corner, his whole body from the neck down draped in the large diamond-patterned blanket from their bed.
Taki's pulse surged for a brief moment. Even after years, it was a reaction he would have almost every time Klaus stepped into the same room.
'Hey,' Klaus said, his voice dragged down by sleep. 'You okay?'
'I'm fine, I just couldn't sleep. You didn't have to come out here.'
Klaus smirked and drew alongside the bench. Taki moved aside to give him room.
'I see. Rendezvous with a secret lover?'
He sat and yawned, flexing his toes beneath the quilt.
'I'll leave before he gets here, if you like.'
Klaus unwrapped part of the blanket and draped his arm over Taki's shoulders.
'You must be freezing.'
Instinctively, Taki shifted closer.
'I warn you, I'm still naked under here.'
He pulled Taki against his side and covered them both with the blanket. Taki slowly sank into Klaus' musk and warmth and the faint lavender scent of the blanket.
'It's not Rudi, is it?' Klaus said.
'Who?'
'The guy you snuck out here to see.'
Taki almost smiled. Klaus squeezed the side of Taki's thigh and leaned into the smell of his hair. Whenever they were in the garden together, he could never be sure if he was smelling Taki or the flowers.
'I mean, he's a tall, strapping lad. In his twenties now, isn't he? Pretty sure he's always been smitten with you. I get it if you want to trade me in for a younger model. '
At thirty-three, Klaus jovially considered himself an old man; a complaint he voiced mostly to irritate Claudia. He also found it hard to fathom that Taki was now older than Klaus had been when they first met.
His gaze moved from the pale, porcelain skin of Taki's face to the moonlight-dappled garden that surrounded them.
'The roses came out nicely this year.'
Little heads of layered petals dipped in bashful acknowledgment.
'They did.'
'Shame they'll fly off soon.'
Words that echoed Taki's own thoughts from earlier.
A new cycle, Taki thought as his head almost automatically sought out the grove between Klaus' neck and shoulder. In each life they met. And in each life –
'So how come you couldn't sleep?' Klaus asked.
Taki hesitated.
For a while, there was only silence and the quiet rustling of the hedges.
'Taki?'
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
After Taki made his broken, stuttered proposal beneath the wisteria, it took Klaus another day to see clearly past the numbing mist that had filled his mind. He spent most of it in bed, resting and taking medication under Taki's strict vigil.
Afterwards, when Klaus had made a full recovery, he found that Taki had arranged everything so carefully and meticulously that there wasn't much left for Klaus to do besides pack what few possessions he had.
It didn't feel real. It wouldn't feel real for a very long time. He felt as though he had stepped into a conspiracy of some kind, a particularly cruel one devised by the gods, where the entire world had banded together in order to give him the one thing he wanted more than anything else only to have it taken away by some sleight of hand.
With no idea how to come to terms with it – with joy tempered by equal amounts of denial and paranoia – he simply packed.
Their delay of a few days, in fact, owed to Klaus a great deal more than Taki. He asked for it under the guise of his desire for Taki to spend as much time with his sisters as possible.
While this was true, he was also waiting for Taki to take those few days to change his mind. To approach Klaus quietly and tell him perhaps he had acted too rashly in the wake of Roskilde and Eurote.
But Taki never did. Over those few days, he and Klaus would spend time with the girls and Taki's small smile, on the rare occasion that Klaus saw it, was as calm and measured as ever.
Most of their time was spent outdoors in the Reizen grounds. Yura, who had left her duties at the temple for a short time, would sit serenely on the blanket that Douman spread for her. He then awkwardly situated himself nearby and hoped that he would soon stop blushing. They would watch as Klaus crouched behind bushes or flattened himself against tree trunks to avoid his two young pursuers, who would squeal and shriek with glee when they found him. Laughter like bells.
Taki and Hebe would slowly walk with Sumi to the lake and back, sometimes passing near the antics of the younger daughters and their guardian spirit. Klaus would flash Taki a wide grin whenever he caught his eye.
'He smiles a lot,' Sumi observed when they reached the top of the slope and settled on the blanket beside Yura and Douman.
'And he can sing!' Hebe piped up. 'I heard him singing a song in his own language yesterday.'
Taki remained silent but his heart lifted. Klaus singing was certainly a good sign.
During their last few nights in the east, Klaus would lie awake holding Taki, his mind still caught in a strange limbo. He would conduct lengthy discussions with Taki in his own mind.
I can't ask you to do this.
You didn't ask me to, came the reply in Taki's voice while the real Taki slept beside him.
You can't leave your sisters behind like this.
They're in good hands.
Yura. Douman, who was so unlike his father. The kindly gaze of the girls' birth mother, Sumi, who reminded Klaus quite distinctly of their old housekeeper, Anna.
What about your people? Klaus asked him. Your country?
They're in even better hands.
Meiji. To whom Taki had spoken before he came to Klaus. Meiji, who had risen from the pain of his past to shoulder the responsibilities of an entire nation. And who had, in a small way, absolved Klaus and Taki of something which men and gods alike considered a sin.
I would have been happy here, Klaus told him silently. I would have been happy here with you. It would have been enough. I told you so many times. You didn't have to do this for me.
Something would always come up, Taki answered. For as long as we're here, my duty will always find me. We'll always be fighting, in one way or another. I want to leave it all behind. I've always wanted to. A part of me has always been searching for something, just like you. I think it was what drove me to Luckenwalde in the first place. A part of me has always, always wanted to. I've just never been able to tell you.
Klaus's arm stretched out almost to the edge of the bed. Taki slept with his head resting comfortably on Klaus' bicep. Klaus felt his gentle breaths on his skin.
He then asked Taki a question formed out of pieces that had been lingering in the corners of his mind.
Will it be enough? Just you and me?
Taki took a slow, deep breath and shifted in Klaus' arms.
Will I be enough?
There was an even deeper silence in the midst of their silent conversation.
Of course you will, came Taki's reply. You're everything.
Klaus' jaw twitched. He wondered if he was on the point of tears again, one which this time, ridiculously enough, owed to an imagined conversation. Imagined, he thought, but which had tentatively borrowed from the words Taki had said to him beneath the wisteria.
I love you, Klaus said. So much I can barely stand it sometimes.
The Taki in his head remained as silent as the one sleeping beside him. Klaus pulled him closer and pressed his forehead to Taki's temple.
During his waking hours, Klaus would try to bring the conversation up – to hear Taki respond in the real world. But he couldn't do it. Whether because of an irrational fear that simply asking might, even in the slightest, inspire a change of heart, or because Taki's response might somehow exacerbate his guilt, or for a million other reasons he couldn't identify, Klaus couldn't ask him whether he was sure he was doing the right thing.
And so, Klaus for the first time understood Taki's silent burden over the years. He understood the crushing guilt and gratitude of being the one for whom so much had been given up.
Of course it was for you.
The certainty of Claudia's voice, the prescience of it, came to him from across the intervening months.
How wonderful, she had said. That he should love you so much.
When the day arrived, the Reizen daughters, from Yura down to Midori, were pictures of bittersweet grief. Well-wishes abounded along with promises of visits to the west as soon as the train line was rebuilt.
Taki had also spent part of that morning with Azusa and Date. (Moriya sent his regards from Eurote where he had been posted by Meiji as part of the Nuclear Committee.) Klaus was fascinated to see the three of them interacting outside the pressures of war. He could almost picture their childhoods spent together on those very grounds.
Even Hasebe and Uemura had arrived, to Taki's surprise and slight embarrassment. Though they claimed to bring news and regards from Meiji and others in the capital, Klaus suspected, from their even stiffer-than-usual expressions and the fact that they were dressed to the nines with rows of pins and badges adorning their uniforms, that they simply wished to see their commander off.
He almost expected Haruki and Ryoumei to come careening around the corner, flushed and out of breath. But the surprises ended with the Grand Chamberlain, at whom Klaus threw a wink designed to aggravate, and with the Major, at whom Klaus directed a final and sincere apology which was received, as he expected, with the gracious but awkward civility unique to his people.
Then Taki climbed into the backseat of the car beside Klaus.
And they, simply, left.
After they arrived, it took Klaus just over a week to realise that he was trying to hang onto the guilt – as repentance or as a safeguard or perhaps, more irrationally, as a self-imposed barrier to the kind of peace he didn't think he deserved.
Taki noticed and it made him nervous in his turn.
In the first week, Klaus' feet weren't quite yet on the ground, metaphorically. Physically, this managed to make him somewhat gauche and ungainly. He would bump into Taki as they moved about in the kitchen or when they passed one another down the short hallway. He would sometimes stutter an apology that made Taki blink and flush and realise they had stumbled into a strange domestic embarrassment. It was almost as though, after two years, they had somehow come full circle and found themselves back in their first few days as awkward roommates at Luckenwalde.
Even at night, when Klaus kissed him and held him and moved inside him on the bed that had once been Claudia and Wilhelm's, and his parents' before that, he was far less vocal than usual and there was a curious silence that followed in the wake of heavy breathing.
By then, Taki, who had guessed the source of Klaus' strange behaviour, had slowly begun to nurture a kind of patience that almost went as far as fond amusement.
He had long since come to terms with the decision he had made. But he guessed, rightly, that Klaus needed a little more time in order to catch up. And so at night he would let Klaus fold him into a tight embrace. And he waited.
Klaus, meanwhile, waited for it to all be whipped out from beneath him.
He never told Taki of the nightmares he had during those first few nights. He would wake in a thin sheen of sweat, having been shot down again over enemy lines. Falling and falling and falling. Crawling over miles and miles, over barren, broken land to the cottage where Claudia ran to him, tears already in her eyes.
Or he would wake from the moment Berkut looked him in the eye, raised the gun and fired into his chest.
Or he would see the faces of the men he had lost. Men he had been responsible for. Men he should have died with. A part of him had, in fact, died with them. And that part of him never deserved to come back to life.
But it did. It slowly flickered back to life when Taki arrived at Luckenwalde. When Klaus found he was able to feel something again – something close to happiness. It was enough for him to climb into the cockpit again with nothing but excitement in his chest. For him to lose even more men under his command with a hollowness that spoke of the brutality of war but one that, somehow, didn't drag him down into the depths with them. Through it all, he remained upright and afloat because he had found… something.
And it was here now in his arms, lying asleep and dreaming and entirely his. In the home where he had grown up.
He didn't deserve any of it, but it was here now.
Quite possibly, his ability to let it all sink in, that one definable moment when he felt his feet hit the ground, owed to a small ceramic vase engraved with a rose.
A little ways down the slope behind the cottage, past the rose garden and the washing line, Klaus' grandfather had built a small wooden shed to house his gardening utensils and equipment for the harvest.
Bit by bit, in a way that Klaus' grandmother fondly lamented, the shed's more useful purpose gave way to her husband's lifelong passion for ceramics; a passion second only to his love for his roses. The gardening and harvest equipment was relegated to a corner while the centre of the dusty workspace was devoted to a turning wheel, benches, an old kiln and pots of aging, unusable clay.
The walls were lined with shelves containing jars, vases and containers of all shapes and sizes, some in various stages of construction.
Klaus, who had brought Taki there to introduce him to the pieces of equipment they had on hand for the harvest, was surprised to hear that Taki knew how to use the turn wheel. Then, after a moment's introspection, he wasn't surprised at all.
'I guess the east would be nuts for that kind of thing, huh?' he observed, also remembering an old conviction that there was nothing in the world his prince couldn't do.
Seeing how Taki fondly ran his fingers over the wheel was enough for Klaus to bring back a vat of mouldable clay after his next trip to town. Taki was surprised at first but warmed to the idea soon enough.
That evening, a week after they first arrived, Klaus had finished making dinner and wondered what was keeping Taki. The bright yellow light of the shed stretched in a long slit across the grass. Inside, he found Taki in an apron, his arms covered in small splotches of hardening clay and his critical gaze on his first attempt which sat before him on the workbench. The kiln behind him was simmering down.
'Already done?' Klaus asked in surprise. Taki had only begun that afternoon.
Taki was unhappy with the slightly uneven base of the vase, which he could see if he stared straight into it. Besides that, he had envisioned a broader gourd shape but the spinning clay had moulded itself into something more slender than he intended. The fluted neck and wide mouth, however, were more or less what he had in mind.
He had also been disappointed to find that the shed didn't contain any painting or glazing supplies. Klaus' grandfather had opted for sturdy, heavy pieces that retained their original colour. Taki recalled from his youth, under the discerning eye of his sensei, the simple joy of choosing colours and breathing life into something that had started off so shapeless and empty.
Without the supplies, he had improvised with the vase while it was still wet. Using a scalpel he had etched a complex, layered rose onto the vase's lower curved half, decorated with delicate spirals and curves reaching out towards the thinning neck.
As it was, uncoloured but etched and finished, he passed it doubtfully to Klaus.
Klaus held it and turned it over carefully, running his fingertips through the sharp grooves of the flower. It was small and delicate, especially compared to the hefty pots and jugs lining the room. It was just large enough to hold a few stems.
But it was exquisite.
'Was this really your first try on that wheel?'
'Yes.'
The vase seemed a lot smaller in Klaus' hands. Taki's self-consciousness went up a few notches.
'I'm a little rusty,' he said hesitantly. 'And there wasn't any paint, so I couldn't -'
'I love it,' said Klaus, his voice flat, as though he were stating an axiom. 'It's never leaving the kitchen table.'
And when this typically overzealous praise made Taki's cheeks colour a little, when he glanced at the floor and his lips twitched, it came to Klaus properly for the first time.
Perhaps it was because the clay-splotched Taki was so unlike Taki the commander and prince and more like Taki as he had been in Luckenwalde, when the two of them had grown close enough to become friends. When Klaus had cooked for him and watched him eat, or when he listened to Taki talking about his sisters for the first time.
So, in that unlikely moment, it finally sank in that it was real. It had happened. He was with Taki, and Taki had brought him home.
He took a step towards Taki and kissed him, somehow tasting wheat and clay and dust and roses all at once. Caught off guard, Taki didn't get a chance to return the kiss before Klaus, in a few swift moves, placed the vase on one of the stools and pulled his body in close.
'I'm...' Taki tried breathily during the few seconds he was able to surface. 'I'm covered in...'
But he recognised the change that had come over Klaus and knew excuses like those wouldn't make a shred of difference.
Klaus pushed him backwards onto the work table and the pottery wheel clattered to the floor.
And when Taki realised that his Klaus, his wolf, had finally surfaced after a week of inertia, he was surprised at how relieved he was.
Pottery. Etiquette. History. Art. Duty and purity. They made up a younger Taki's world. They enveloped him every bit as tangibly as the robes that his attendants helped him slip into every morning. They would even peter into his happy interludes with Azusa, Date and Moriya; childhood companions who were still separated from the young prince by barriers they could sense but couldn't name.
And now, when Taki was wrist-deep in soil in the vegetable patch or learning from Klaus how to hand-pick wheat, he remembered his spiritual teachings. Lessons about harmony. Balance. The mindful middle path that avoided the extremes of both hedonism and deprivation.
Wasn't that his life now? Didn't it make the most sense here, where he felt as though the world had stopped its relentless hurtling and had finally come to rest?
He held the potato bulb in his hand, cut in half as Klaus instructed, and imagined it slumbering in the soil, unmoving and yet sprouting at the same time. The simple thought left him with a strange feeling. As though this was what his teachings had been trying to get across to him all along.
Lessons about balance, however, would almost immediately blend into those about honour. Ancestors and duty and obligation. Vows. Taki had absorbed them with the same vigour as those about harmony.
But Klaus gradually, inadvertently, had made him question those teachings in particular, beginning as far back as Luckenwalde. Enough that, after years of confliction, he found they were things he could simply, if hesitantly, take off. Like the clothes Klaus peeled off him at night.
Leaving it all behind had almost been easy. But he could never be sure if the gods had forgiven him. Months ago, after the knighthood ceremony, under the wisteria, Klaus had offered Taki his own brash theory: they had. Surely they had. And Klaus had sworn to protect Taki from any god who might be keeping score and planning to come for him.
He glanced at Klaus across the field where he stretched his arms luxuriously over his head before continuing to work. The heretical thought occurred to Taki that perhaps Klaus could. And that, perhaps, he already had.
TWO MONTHS LATER
Taki awoke shortly after dawn when the smell of a new day was still being made outside, being delivered to him in gentle waves. Before he had a chance to properly open his eyes, a large arm reached for him and dragged him across the mattress, holding him fast against a huge, warm body.
'Klaus?'
But Klaus kept snoring.
Taki almost smiled at the strength of him; strength even in sleep. He looked down at the hand on his chest which had loosened its hold since it pulled him close. He carefully picked it up and held it up to the weak light of dawn.
He spent the next few idle seconds in his state of half-sleep examining the hand that was the size of a dinner plate. Though he would never admit it in a thousand years, it was those hands that had most intrigued him about Klaus, physically, in Luckenwalde. Taki had often cast furtive looks at the size and shape of them, how they held textbooks or closed around the handle of his bag, how they would rest like live creatures on his chest when he was lying on his back, telling a story. How they were cumbersome but surprisingly swift and graceful in their actions. Those thoughts had, of course, been laden with a brand new, consuming sort of shame and disgust.
Now he inspected the hand freely. He stroked it and turned it over. He observed the size of each finger, the way the knuckles were slightly, and somehow charmingly, wider than the fingers themselves. The toughness of the palm. The light golden hairs on the back. When it was a sleeping giant like that, it was hard to believe all the things it had done to him.
'You know,' a voice rumbled behind Taki, making him jump. 'If you like it so much I can cut it off for you.'
Turning slowly, he met Klaus' sleepy, amused gaze between the hairs that had fallen typically low over his forehead. Taki's eyes roamed over the golden, diagonal slash on his cheek and reached out to brush the hair back from his eyes. He then gently ran his fingers over Klaus' lips.
Over the past few months, it had been happening more and more. At first, Klaus had borne it with breath-held, anxious patience, again feeling like the hunter whose one wrong move might make him bolt. Now he sank into it. His new reality.
He buried his face between Taki's pillow and the back of his neck near his shoulder.
'You always smell so damn good here in the morning.'
He tilted his head slightly into Taki's neck and kissed it while running his hand over Taki's chest and up to his jaw, his thumb parting Taki's lips.
Taki's breathing alerted him to what might be happening further south. He slid his hand back down over Taki's chest and taut stomach and held his cock firmly, prompting a small moan. Before Taki was submerged in the sensation, he felt about for Klaus' and found it. He felt it stiffen under his touch and Klaus breathed more urgently onto his skin.
For a few minutes their hands worked slowly but steadily, drawing out the pleasure. They both breathed heavily, Klaus's face still firmly wedged against Taki's neck where he would occasionally plant small kisses or pull at Taki's earlobe.
An idea slowly took shape in the back of Klaus' mind. With each stroke from Taki's hand, and each little sound that escaped Taki's lips, the image began to gather momentum. And suddenly, Klaus' need to see it had taken over.
He kissed Taki's neck and swiftly rolled them over so Taki was on top. He then drew back a bit.
'I want to try something,' he said.
Taki tried to look at him through eyes that were misted over. His pupils were blown wide, Klaus thought, his cock stiffening even more.
'Sit up.'
The way he said it - a tone that was somewhere between being commanding and coaxing - made Taki's body flush with anticipation. He pushed against Klaus' chest and sat up.
'Turn around.'
Blinking a few times, Taki nervously obeyed. As he tried to reposition himself over Klaus' body, he felt Klaus grab hold of his hips and pull him up until his lower half was spread wide and hovering above Klaus' face. The sudden shift in position made Taki gasp and almost fall face-first onto Klaus' thigh. Klaus' cock, stiff and slick, was right beside his cheek.
'Suck it.'
There was nothing at all coaxing about that command. Lust raced through Taki in a powerful wave, both from the raspiness of Klaus' voice and the feeling of being so exposed. He lifted Klaus' cock carefully and his lips met his hand halfway down the shaft.
Klaus groaned and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead.
The tip of Klaus' cock nudged against the back of Taki's throat.
'Fuck, yes,' Klaus grunted.
As Taki slid his mouth over him, always meeting his hand around halfway, he considered taking Klaus all the way down his throat again; something which always required at least some forethought and focus. He was distracted, however, by the hand that was kneading his ass cheeks. And suddenly, Klaus' finger had pushed in, deep, without any warning.
It surprised Taki enough that he bit down on Klaus' cock near the tip.
Klaus gasped.
Taki pulled off to apologise in shock, and was both guilty and relieved to hear him laugh.
'My own fault,' Klaus conceded.
Without another word, he then tilted his chin up and swallowed Taki's cock right to the base. Taki moaned and dropped his head on Klaus' thigh. He felt Klaus' tongue circle the tip of his dick before his mouth plunged over him again.
It took Taki a few seconds to remember where he was. With effort, he raised his head and took Klaus into his mouth once again.
They sucked in sync for long minutes, Klaus breaking off to thrust his tongue into Taki, occasionally alternating with his fingers as well, pushing in as deep as he liked from that angle. He felt the reverberations from Taki's moans on his own cock, loving the closed circle of it.
Taki then pulled off again, gasping, and warned him to stop or he would come.
Klaus took him far, all the way into his throat, at the same moment that he pushed three fingers in, angling them just right so they would brush his prostate hard. Klaus felt Taki's cock shudder and release in his mouth.
It was an effortless transition from Taki's cock to his ass, where Klaus pushed Taki's own come inside him, massaging it in with his fingers, pulling the rim apart as wide as he could. Taki made soft sounds, his cheeks blazing, feeling entirely at Klaus' mercy.
Klaus then sat up so suddenly that Taki's breath left him. His face was pressed down against the mattress by the footboard. He held his breath when Klaus' cock nudged at his hole.
Changing his mind, realising suddenly that he hadn't yet kissed him that morning, Klaus then flipped him over. Their eyes met for a few moments as he lowered his torso over Taki, arms on either side of his head, claiming him fully.
Taki's eyes, blue-black and glossy, were still lost behind the cloud of his climax. His hair was everywhere. Klaus took his face in his hands and kissed him.
The room smelled of sandalwood and spring but Klaus, for one, could only smell one thing. His mouth never lifted from Taki's, even for a breather, as he lined himself up. His mouth covered Taki's completely even when he thrust in and Taki's long, desperate moan was muffled against his lips.
Taki's mind, meanwhile, on the way Klaus' huge hands were holding his own in an unyielding grip. He thought about how they had held textbooks and bags. Then how they had curled around the handle of a gun. How they plunged deep into fresh soil. And how they had held Taki's face as he kissed him.
FOUR MONTHS LATER
In a strange way, Taki was almost glad of the things that went wrong.
They grounded him. Reminded him that happiness wasn't an all-encompassing shroud. That it was, rather, a broad, white sheet that was settling over the world and showing protrusions where it landed.
The worst of those protrusions took form six months after they arrived.
Taki walked down the dusty street towards the truck, his arms full of groceries. The night air had just turned cold and his first winter at the cottage was around the corner. He was anticipating the first snowfall and how the fields might look coated in white.
Around him, shops were closing down for the night. The warm lights spilling out of windows were put out one by one. Slowly. At an ambling pace, with an amiable 'Gute Nacht' punctuating the air every now and then.
Taki reached the truck, which he had parked on a side street, and fumbled through his pockets for his keys. Klaus was at home fighting a fever which he had made worse by refusing to acknowledge it as a fever in the first few days and continuing to work outside in the cold.
Thoughts of Klaus' sheepish grin, and specifically how his huge palms had grown even warmer than usual over the course of his fever, swam through Taki's mind as he stood before the truck.
Which was possibly why he didn't notice them until they stood around him in a semicircle.
'Hey, Schlitzaugen.'
Taki turned in surprise.
Six of them. The oldest boy seemed to be around seventeen. The youngest, who hovered in the background, looked a few years younger.
Most of them were bigger than Taki.
Their looks were ones Taki had seen before. He tensed up and he felt his body instantly shift into defence mode. They stared him down on the deserted street, puffs of steam emerging from their mouths and noses in the chilled air.
'What do you want?' Taki said quietly, relieved to hear he sounded guarded and not angry.
They're just kids, he told himself, remembering his first day at Luckenwalde. It would be almost too easy, despite how big they are. Despite it being six against one. Control yourself.
'Listen to that,' said the one closest to Taki. 'My dad's right. He talks like he thinks he's one of us.'
A small, humourless snigger riffled through them.
Taki thought he recognised the one who had spoken. The sheriff's son. He recalled an old moment of hostility in the town's hardware store. How the sheriff had leaned back on his elbow and scrutinised Taki unkindly. He hadn't said a word but his lazy eyes carried a passive threat.
We don't serve your kind here.
The same sentiment surrounded him now, taking the form of impertinent leers and the threat of something more.
But Taki had learned since Luckenwalde, when he had taken down a small group of bullies who had meant him no real harm. He had also learned, since his brush with the sheriff and the owner of the hardware store, that he wouldn't be so easily welcomed into Klaus' world.
Klaus had withstood the same hostility in the east. It was time for him to do the same. So he stood his ground and waited.
He stood his ground even when the sheriff's son deftly pulled a small knife out of his pocket, which flashed under the streetlamp as he gripped it almost casually.
'Franz, come on,' said a quiet, hesitant voice from the back of the group. 'That's enough...'
Taki recognised it. He glanced at the boy who stood furthest away. The lanky form and the flushed cheeks were familiar.
'Rudi?'
Rudi caught Taki's eye only for a moment before turning away, looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
The sheriff's son smirked.
'Rudi here tells us you and your bodyguard moved in for good.'
He held the knife by his side casually. Taki tried to keep his gaze level.
'Bought the place, did you? Bought Saxon farmers off their land and moved right on in. Is that what you orientals are doing now?'
He took a slow step towards Taki.
'Just 'cause you beat us in the last war, you think you're better than us?'
Both of Taki's arms were weighed down by the bags of food and medicine. Don't react.
'Or is it that you think you're one of us?'
A few of the others closed in as well. And then suddenly Franz had stepped right up to Taki and knocked the bags to the ground. Bottles smashing, stains spreading on the paper bag, bits of glass scattering over the dusty street.
The knife then suddenly flashed through the air, swiping sideways, amateurish and not nearly close enough for contact. It was still so sudden that Rudi called out in alarm and Taki jolted backwards.
Franz drew back and laughed loudly as though it was the funniest joke in the world.
'Jumpy little thing, aren't you?'
He then stepped around Taki towards the pick-up. It was a second-hand truck Taki had bought when they first arrived and one Klaus had grown especially fond of. The sheriff's son dragged his knife across it, from the door handle all the way along the body. The grating, piercing sound filled the night. Taki felt it in the back of his teeth.
The others watched, some serious, others smirking and Rudi looking miserable.
After making the thin, deep gouge, Franz then turned to Taki and pocketed the knife.
'We're not stupid,' he said. 'You're lucky you have your own guard dog up there. We know who he is. He'll probably beat us to a pulp if we mess up that pretty face of yours.'
Franz then walked backwards and away, keeping his eyes on Taki. The others began to follow. Franz' final words were called over his shoulder.
'Just because you live here and speak our language doesn't make you one of us, Schlitzaugen. Watch your back.'
Taki watched and waited until they rounded the corner and were completely out of sight. The air was cold and still. Taki unclenched his fists and his pulse steadied. He glanced at the mess on the floor.
He then slowly knelt on the ground and tried to gather together what he could. The shops had all closed, after all. And Klaus was ill.
The words spoken by the sheriff's son were still ringing dully in his ears by the time he heard footsteps.
Tensing again, he glanced up.
It was Rudi. He approached alone, his hands out a little and his face beseeching. He stopped in front of Taki. For a moment, it looked as though he didn't know what to do with his heavy, gangly arms.
He's getting tall, Taki thought idly.
'I'm sorry,' he said, in a voice that sounded a lot younger than fifteen. 'I'm sorry, I tried to tell them not to - and I didn't think Franz would -'
After a tense second where he couldn't seem to find the words, he abruptly crouched in front of Taki and began to salvage what he could from the broken glass.
Taki watched him for a moment, remembering how a silent, shy Rudi had helped his father turn the boiler room into Taki's bedroom. He then stooped over once more to pick glass away from a soup can. They worked in silence for a while.
'Please don't tell my father,' Rudi implored suddenly without even looking up.
Taki thought of Verner's small, kind eyes widening in dismay and knew he could never bring himself to do it.
'I won't.'
Rudi then looked up and met his gaze head-on.
'Are you - are you going to tell Klaus?'
For a split second, the genuine fear in Rudi's eyes almost made Taki want to laugh.
'No,' he promised.
Rudi's relief was tangible.
When they had gathered together what they could and Taki loaded it into the truck, Rudi stood nearby, apparently locked in some kind of internal struggle.
'I don't - I don't think that,' he finally said, in something close to an outburst. 'What Franz said about you being here. I don't think that. I... I like that you're here.'
Taki stared in surprise, embarrassed by the way that Rudi's entire face was consumed in a fierce blush. He wondered how to respond.
'I - thank you,' he said finally.
It was only after he spoke that he realised he meant it quite sincerely.
Rudi thrust his hands into his pockets and turned to head back up the street. He refused the offer, blushing again, when Taki asked if he wanted a lift home.
THREE YEARS LATER
During their third autumn at the cottage, one afternoon found Taki in the living room trying to balance their revenue against expenses while Klaus was outside trying to jump start the faulty combine again. Hand-picking, he realised, might have to make a come back that season.
He gave up on the combine and went inside, wiping grease off his hands onto the sides of his work pants. He was contemplating taking a shower before he caught sight of Taki on the living room couch covered in documents, lost in his little world of numbers. Klaus wondered fondly whether anything had really had changed since the young commander had pored over telegrams in his office at the Fifteenth Armoured Division.
And so Klaus, still in his grease-stained pants, sprawled himself liberally over the papers on the couch just so he could lie in Taki's lap and revel in the look of annoyance and the huff. The still-absent gaze.
It came to Klaus suddenly: the image of Taki as an old man, glasses-bedecked, doing the same thing with almost the same look on his face. And Klaus was taken up in a sudden wave of love.
He refused to budge and Taki was forced to work around him.
Taki had cushioned their move with enough money from his income and inheritance that they would be able to keep their heads above water for the first few months. But by then, they had hired workers for each harvest and organised distributors and market fairs and deals. Despite his seriousness about the upcoming harvest and his absent annoyance over Klaus' antics, Taki secretly loved the work. Even the planning and the bookkeeping.
Klaus could read him well enough by then to be able to tell. His eyes simmered through half lids as he watched Taki work.
Taki then remembered something. He reached over to the coffee table, Klaus' head still inconveniently in his lap, to sift through one of the piles of papers.
'I found one of Claudia's old letters in a pile of receipts,' he said as he handed Klaus a sheet of familiar writing.
The letter was nearly three years old; the first that Claudia had sent after hearing about Klaus and Taki's permanent move. Klaus smiled as he read over the first few lines. Taki watched him for a few seconds, realising his reprimand had gone unnoticed.
'Klaus, there's an entire drawer for things like letters -'
'Yeah, yeah.'
'You could even just give them to me and I can file them away properly so we don't mix up all our -'
'Oh, come on, it's just one letter from three years ago,' returned Klaus, who always rather enjoyed their mundane bickering. 'Won't happen again, Commander.'
Taki bit back his reply, not without some effort, and returned to the numbers.
Klaus kept smiling as he revisited Claudia's barely concealed excitement. She had followed that up with an almost equally happy report of their new life in the capital three hours away. Klaus read through to the final few lines.
One last thing before I sign off: please keep an eye out for Ori! That silly cat was a ghost in the weeks leading up to our move. We sent out search parties for her to no avail and Eva is still upset over it. We even asked the new owners to let us know if she ever made a comeback but since they didn't once see her in over two months, I think it's a safe bet she's finally left us for good. Anyway, I thought I'd mention it to you just to mollify Eva, poor thing.
Honestly, that Ori. I don't think I'll understand cats for as long as I live.
Klaus flipped the page down and peered over it at the armrest of the couch. Ori slept there in a perfect geometrical circle beside Taki's mug of tea.
*Author's note: For the panel in the manga that inspired Taki's vision about a man/creature/man-creature and his lover, please head to my Ao3; same chapter and same asterisk.