The people here had eyes like hunted things.
Matthew had thought he could blend in by taking off his military jacket and keeping his head down, but he realized now that you couldn't learn the wary, stubborn look in their eyes in the time it took to cross a concrete border. They could see every glittering fallacy of the West on him, and he could see the harshness of Soviet rule on them. People stared at him as he walked by, but Matthew couldn't make himself meet their gazes. They must hate him, and he didn't blame them.
The Western military was allowed here. It was not welcomed.
Matthew walked through the whispering alleys, weaving past the crumbling fronts of empty shops. Nobody bothered him, nobody so much as spoke to him. Some part of him wanted to turn around and retreat to the West, try to wipe this experience from his knowledge, but it would be futile. He kept moving, eyes drinking in the grey, the guns winking black from towers, the way every Red Army guard turned to him as he passed. The older officers had harsh eyes. Some of the soldiers were younger than he was, younger than Alfred, hands white-knuckled from under worn cuffs, clutching their splintery rifles.
He turned a corner and a guard stepped out in front of him. Matthew stopped dead, adrenaline coursing through him, suddenly and horrifyingly aware he hadn't brought a gun. The man seemed to move in slow motion, sun gleaming across the metal of his rifle dropping to his side, and then the liquid shine of his eyes as he took off his cap. Matthew was still trapped in the haze, trying to understand. The man was really a boy.
'You're a Wessi,' he said in halting English. 'A Westerner. Aren't you?'
Matthew nodded slowly, unsure. The boy's eyes flicked back and forth, glancing down the street. His grip tightened on his patched cap. 'Do you have any food?'
He was sure it would have been considered treason in some way, to help this boy. Alfred never would have done such a thing- at least the Alfred he used to be. He'd changed. Matthew immediately started searching his pockets and came up with half a field ration he'd left from breakfast. He handed it over, his apology for it not being enough- for none of this being enough to justify this boy soldier- caught in his throat. The boy clutched it gratefully, the cellophane making crinkling sounds in his hands. He ducked his head, murmured thanks in an unfamiliar language, and retreated into the shadows of his post, unfolding the ration to eat.
Matthew turned away from him, somehow sick at this quiet happiness, this almost-ritual that gave such sudden and generous goodness to some intolerable unfreeness. He stumbled away, bile in his throat, and washed the bitterness from his mouth and lungs with any drink he could find.
That- that was likely why the officers found him.
Matthew woke to their blazing lights, their heavy hands around his wrists. He could see the healthy flush in their cheeks. The officers certainly ate well enough. That was what made him fight them when he thought fighting for anything in this godforsaken war was beyond him. He tasted the copper from his lip and realized that Francis was right, resistance was terrifying and terrible and as utterly vital as the blood in his teeth. He still lost, laid out on the rough concrete, hurting far more inside than out. He couldn't stop thinking of the boy, of the guns and concrete everywhere. He wanted Francis. He wanted him but it wasn't enough to save them.
One of the officers found his dog tags and barked an order. They wouldn't kill him. It was odd that they wouldn't, or they couldn't. He let his head roll back as he was forced back to his feet and marched to the border again. He wondered how many people were looking at him now, and was only glad that Francis couldn't see him spiraling.
A guard walked him through the checkpoint, blood crusted over his nose and dripping down his uniform, showing all the hungry, haunted marks of the East. He felt like he couldn't breathe in the West anymore.
He could faintly hear his commander and other officers talking, talking at him and over him and to each other until he finally closed his eyes and sank into it all, sank into moonlit dreams and yearned for Francis. They led him back to base and he found himself in front of Alfred's door. He opened, and Matthew drifted as Alfred cleaned the blood off in the bathroom, staring into the mirror, hollow all over the inside. He couldn't look away from the hunted look in his eyes, even as Alfred asked too many questions he couldn't answer. The only one he remembered was as he was drifting off on the couch, still confused and hurting, fighting back the edges of sleep and the nightmares of tanks. That, he thought, that day was the breaking point for him.
'Why did you do it?'
'Couldn't do anything else,' Matthew mumbled, and then sleep slipped over him and took him back to the border a thousand ways.
0o0o0o
Francis heard about the newest incident of volatile Berlin in the whispers first. A Canadian soldier had been harassed by the East guards- came back bloodied, they said, and his eyes were nightmare-wide. Francis' heart hurt already. He knew, in some way, that it was Matthew, who was still too gentle and fragile. He worried and knew the same way, deep down, that this war of will had broken a piece of him.
He loved Matthew. He loved his gentleness, and his quiet humour, and the way he laughed and loved. He loved the person he was away from war, but that person could be broken, was right now being chipped apart piece by piece. There was only so much someone could take of the brutality. Matthew had never wanted to be part of Francis' warring world. He was never supposed to be.
He went empty-handed to the American buildings and simply asked for the Canadian. My Canadian, he almost said, and the words slipped through him with painful want. Something about the exhausted need in his voice must have convinced them. The soldiers let him up to the floor, and Francis walked down the hallway, suddenly aware of the sunlight and the creaking of the floors. This was where Matthew had been.
He knocked on the door he'd been instructed, and a door just across the hall creaked open instead. Francis started in shock. He recognized the tousled blond hair, the sky of his eyes.
'Alfred?' he asked. The pilot gave a smile, not quite as cocky as it once would have been.
'That's me. I guess you've heard, huh?' It wasn't really a question. 'Are you looking for Mattie?'
Francis swallowed the sudden emotion in his throat and nodded. Alfred opened the door wider.
They walked down the hallway, and Francis took the time to look at Alfred. All he could see was all the places he differed from Matthew, and the ache in his chest increased.
'He's here,' Alfred whispered, motioning to the couch. 'He's in rough shape. Be gentle with him.' The way he said it demanded compliance, but his tone softened. 'I know you will.'
'Why do you know?' Francis asked, wondering, with a sudden, guilty shiver of hope, if his love was really so obvious. Alfred tilted his head and smiled wider.
'Mattie told me about someone who was everything for him. A long time ago, it feels. The way...the way Artie is for me.' He paused, his stance lightening into something boyish, something that wasn't the pilot of the nuclear bombs. 'Is your name Francis?'
Francis felt some ridiculous laugh bubbling from him. He wanted Matthew more than anything, to touch him and kiss him. 'It is.'
Alfred left them there, and Francis knelt by Matthew. His lip and eye were bruised, but the worst thing was the sudden weight of pain inscribed on his face. It looked like twenty years had settled on him since the night of the tanks. Francis couldn't help a soft, pained sound as he touched him, and Matthew's morning-purple eyes fluttered open, blurrily fixing on his face.
'Francis,' he rasped. Francis wrapped the blankets tighter around him and kissed his hair, wanting to be closer but not daring to with his damage. 'You...you heard?'
'You always seem to be around the worst trouble,' Francis murmured. Matthew laughed tiredly.
'I'm sorry,' he whispered. Francis brushed his hair back from his face, noticing with a sick turn of his stomach the cuts on his forehead.
'Don't be sorry,' he said. Matthew would apologize for a war that he had fought against in every second. 'I'm going to put you in a proper bed. Can you stand?'
'Are you taking me home?' Matthew blinked up at him, slowly unfolding himself from the blankets and leaning heavily on Francis' shoulder. He breathed in, breath tickling his neck, words slurring slightly with pain. 'You're home to me.'
Francis couldn't say anything for a second, so utterly lost to him. He kissed him once, lingering.
'I'll be home for you,' he offered. The words made his eyes sting, thinking of some future where they'd have a house together.
Matthew smiled for him, shining like the sun. Francis kissed his hair again, throat thick, and they weaved their way out and into Matthew's room. After he was tucked back into the blankets, Francis paced, head buzzing.
'Francis?' Matthew called. His eyes were slightly more lucid now that he was resting again. Lucid, and older and sadder than they should be. 'Do you want to sit with me?'
Francis did, curling into the bed at his side. His Canadian's chest was warm, and it soaked through him. He hadn't even realized he was shivering. Matthew's fingers, calloused from the wild, carded through his hair.
'What have they done to you?' Francis asked sadly, almost wonderingly. How could he possibly still be so gentle?
What have they done to you was not just about his new bruises. It was about every break he could see across Matthew's love, every piece stolen by a world that didn't deserve him.
'I...I don't know.' Matthew sounded lost, furious, broken in a thousand different ways, voice wavering through rage and sorrow. 'I had to leave, I had to get away for a while. It's because of Alfred's trial, but it's not just that anymore. It's that I could start a war, or that I could hurt so many people, or because I keep having nightmares of the tanks, or because the only thing I know is true in this city is you. I am tired, Francis. I'm so tired.'
He nodded, understanding with terrible poignancy everything, every word, and silently opened his arms to him. Matthew crumpled forward into his embrace, gasping, crying, muffling his raging against the pain of this war that was not yet a war into his shirt. Francis held him tight and stared out at the city, whispering not soothing words or denial but simply a broken-hearted chorus of I know, I know, my dearest, lovely Matthew.
They stayed that way until Matthew's body went slack. Francis kissed his brow and wondered if one day he could weave a crown of poetry and blue moonlight for him.
'Sorry,' he whispered again, voice hoarse. His mouth twitched at the corners.
'Stop apologizing,' Francis said, attempting to be stern. His own voice wavered, and suddenly Matthew was kissing him with a deep, deep hunger, hands tracing over his own scrawled scars, needing something to be true in the perfect way equations always were.
Francis gazed at him in awe, the moonlight dripping across the swaying of his body, the musculature of his arms. He loved him. He loved him beyond compare.
'Can I?' Matthew asked, almost worshipful with his mouth at Francis' shoulder. Francis kissed him again and said yes, yes, let Matthew dance them both into a better space of nothing but blue moonlight and want for beautiful things.
Matthew moved like it was a goodbye, and in some way, Francis knew it would be. He held on, whispering endearments, and Matthew closed his teeth where his shoulder met his neck, leaving a bruise of memory.
'I love you,' Matthew repeated, morning eyes drinking him in. For these glorious moments, they were wide and clear and endless, like the lakes of Canada.
'I love you, je t'aime, my dearest Matthew,' Francis said back, and they found each other, over and over until they finally collapsed together. Matthew tucked his head against Francis' shoulder, and they both breathed in.
Some time in the dove grey morning, Francis felt his touch again, skimming his jaw and the bruise on his neck. He couldn't tell if he was still dreaming.
'I'm sorry,' he said, from some place far away, calm and soft and decisive. 'I'm going to take leave soon. You're right, you know. You're right about everything. The army isn't for me.'
Before Francis could think about it, Matthew leaned down and kissed his eyelids, gentle as moonlight.
'Stay with me,' he heard himself say, and Matthew chuckled softly.
'Only for you,' he whispered.
0o0o0o
:: Walking the lengths of echoing galleries