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He wasn’t sure he wanted to be there. Dusty looked straight ahead, right at the door – familiar, nondescript, just like his own, without really seeing it. All he could think about was what waited for him beyond it – what he had been trying to avoid.
Dusty set his jaw. He hadn’t been here in weeks. The man who lived behind that door hadn’t been, either, until yesterday. It wasn’t all that unusual, really; there had been more than one occasion where he’d come to this door with a bottle under his arm and a swagger in his step, ready to whittle the night away with good company and better gossip, only to be left waiting for a greeting that would never come. It was fine, though – Dusty was used to it. He didn’t mind calling and not being answered, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about calling when he wasn’t sure he wanted to be answered.
Deep breath, he told himself, because he couldn’t keep running forever.
He knocked on the door.
"Ah. I was wondering if you'd ever come to visit."
The door swung open. Walter von Schönkopf leaned against the doorframe in a T-shirt and comfy, well-worn sweatpants, one arm propped against the wall. There was a smirk on his face, a wry, knowing little twist of lips that made Dusty want to turn back, rethink this whole thing, try another day. Not because he didn’t like the smirk – far from it – but it pissed him off that he felt his whole body unwind with relief when he saw it.
“Yeah, well, things have been busy,” he said, averting his eyes and pretending there was a very interesting speck on the corner of the doorframe. He tapped his foot. “I didn’t even have time to stop and pick up flowers for you on the way. I hope you can forgive me.”
Schönkopf laughed. “What makes you think I’d want to get flowers from someone who couldn’t even put on a little makeup to come see me?”
“Right, right.” Despite himself, Dusty snorted and found himself grinning, too. “Walter von Schönkopf only accepts the prettiest flowers from the most beautiful girls.”
“You’re damn right I do,” Schönkopf said. He stepped aside, sweeping into a completely unnecessary bow to grant Dusty entry, and only straightened up when his guest had moved past the threshold of his home (though not, Dusty noticed, without a wince that he probably wasn’t supposed to see). “I’ve had my fill of flowers, anyway.”
Dusty pursed his lips. He decided he shouldn’t say anything – but then decided to say something anyway. “I’ll bet,” he muttered, “with how long you were in that hospital bed for.”
The door closed behind him. Schönkopf didn’t answer right away. He expelled a huff of breath through his nose instead, and leaned back against the wall with his weight on his shoulder. “It felt like all of Iserlohn came to visit me while I was cooped up in there,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how many boxes of tissues I went through trying to comfort all those women crying at my bedside in relief.”
Dusty shot him a deadpan frown. “You sure it was the tears that burned through all those tissues?”
He kicked off his shoes. Schönkopf laughed again, louder this time, and pushed off from the wall. “I’m not paralyzed, Attenborough. And comfort comes in more forms than one.”
“Ugh. Too much information.” Dusty shook his head, as if that would rid him of the mental image of Schönkopf splayed out naked on his hospital bed. “You’re lucky the doctors didn’t kick you out.”
“Cazerne did come in to scold me about eating through the hospital supplies.”
“Sounds like him.”
Schönkopf lifted his arm to gesture toward the living room. Dusty followed the silent direction, socked feet scuffing against the hallway carpet as he went. Behind him, Schönkopf followed, his rubber-soled slippers slightly louder against it. It was strange, thinking of Schönkopf wearing slippers – seeing him wear them – even though this was far from the first time Dusty had.
He eyed the rack by the door, and decided not to fetch the pair Schönkopf kept for him.
“You know,” Schönkopf said, voice low as he crept up behind Dusty, gently laying a hand on his bicep and leaning in close. “I noticed a certain someone forgot to sign my guestbook when he came to visit.”
Dusty shivered. He turned his head, glancing down at the hand on his arm, and twisted his lips wryly. “I didn’t come to visit you.”
“I know,” Schönkopf retorted. He moved in closer. Close enough Dusty could feel his breath at his ear. “Are you here to make up for lost time, then?”
A hand came around his waist. The one on his arm crawled up higher. Dusty clicked his tongue and sidled away, wrenching himself out of Schönkopf’s grip and turning to hide his reddening face.
"I'm not here to have sex with you, Schönkopf," he said.
"You're not?" Somehow, Schönkopf didn't seem surprised. Dusty turned; he watched Schönkopf’s lips curve upward in a sharp grin, and he rubbed his chin as though in thought. "That's too bad. I've missed having you in my bed."
Dusty bit the inside of his cheek. He didn't want to admit that he'd missed Schönkopf, too, but he had a feeling the other man already knew.
"So what are you here for, then?"
There it was: the million-dinar question. Truth be told, Dusty didn't know. There were so many reasons he could have come here – concern, or anger, or just because he wanted some company. Because he wanted to see him. To see Schönkopf. One of those answers was the right one, he knew, but he couldn’t quite figure out what the winning answer was.
In the end, he shrugged. "I don't know. To scold you, I guess."
Schönkopf's brows raised, not in surprise, but in that way they did when something unsaid caught his attention. "Oh? What for, coming back alive?"
Dusty scoffed. "Something like that." He frowned, letting his annoyance show in his face, but it fell away a moment later: he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, keeping it there in the tangled mess he had never quite been able to tame. "I don't know what you were thinking back there, when you – when everything went down. But what you did was stupid, you know?"
There was a long, pregnant pause. Schönkopf was no longer grinning, but he did hold Dusty's gaze for at least a few seconds before he looked away. "Sit down," he muttered, gesturing to the sofa. Dusty did, though a part of him bristled at the idea that Schönkopf may have thought he was waiting for permission. Just as he fell into the soft, worn-out cushions, Schönkopf retreated into the living room's adjoining kitchen.
"You know," he called from it, voice competing to be heard with the clinking of glasses, "some might say that everything I do is stupid.”
“I know. I’m one of them,” Dusty called back.
“Blumhardt did."
Dusty shut his mouth. Schönkopf came back into the room, two glasses held together between his fingers and the neck of a whiskey bottle in his other hand. He set it all down on the table. “He was among my many visitors, you know. Him and Der Decken both.”
He filled their glasses. Dusty watched his eyes. “You’ve talked about Der Decken before.”
“Yeah. That’s all in the past, though. Not far enough back they didn’t come and yell at me for buying my ticket to Valhalla too soon, though, I guess.” Schönkopf shrugged. He capped the bottle of whiskey and picked up his glass. Dusty picked his up, too, and swirled it around.
“You know…” he said, speaking around the lump in his throat, "some might also say you're losing your touch a bit."
Schönkopf hummed. "I’m getting up there in years, Attenborough. Not even I can stay young and fit forever. And besides—” He lifted his drink. “Ever heard the saying that a sword has no purpose but to be a sword? Or whatever it is. I can't recall the translation at the moment."
"Bullshit," Dusty shot back, more aggressively than he meant. His whiskey sloshed around in his glass. "And that's not what I meant, anyway. I meant that it took you a trip to another room to hit me with a comeback."
That earned him a pause, followed by a short, barking laugh. "I've been injured. Give me a break," he said.
"Almost dying must do something to your sense of humour."
Schönkopf looked away. He took a pull of his drink. Dusty did, too.
"So…" Dusty started again, breaking the silence with the low, hushed, tentative whisper. "...Can I see it?"
Schönkopf turned back to him. He grinned. "Changed your mind, did you?"
"I'm still not here for sex," Dusty insisted. "Just…"
A quiet scoff parted from Schönkopf's throat, but he didn't try to protest (perhaps because he felt guilty for all the worry he knew, but wouldn't mention, that Dusty had gone through – or perhaps he had suddenly developed a sense of decency and humility in his latest scrape with death). He just set his glass down, turned at the waist, and lifted his T-shirt over his head.
Dusty sucked a breath in through his teeth. He recoiled instinctively, unable to keep still. Scabs and scar tissue ran up the length of Schönkopf’s back in the form of a thick, clean line spanning nearly from one shoulder to the narrowest part of his waist, the pink and red flesh surrounded on either side by lines of small but pronounced pockmarks. It wasn’t a full, straight cut, though – there was one end that switched angles, suddenly, like whatever had struck him had been pulled out and taken another chunk of flesh with it. Even so, it wasn’t as messy as Dusty had expected…
But somehow, that almost made it worse.
"Just got the stitches out yesterday," Schönkopf said, almost proudly. "How's it looking?"
"Bad," Dusty replied. He couldn't even come up with something witty; all he could feel was a cold sense of dread wash down his torso, rushing down his throat and settling in the pit of his stomach. It felt like he had just guzzled down a river of ice water. Then, all at once, he felt that ice water start to rise up in him again, roiling in his throat like a waking geyser, and he felt the need to cover his mouth to keep himself from retching. He really had – Schönkopf really had almost—
He let a breath out through his nose. Shaking, Dusty leaned forward, hand slipping up to nest in his fringe, and he propped his bent elbow up on his knee. "God," he breathed. "You – you really are lucky Linz found you."
"Am I?"
Schönkopf laughed. He looked over his shoulder to catch Dusty's eye, and grinned, though there was far less devil-may-care amusement in it than usual. "He was half-dead himself when he found me, you know. I thought him carrying me back might have ended with both of us dying."
"It didn't, though," Dusty protested.
"It could have."
Dusty quieted down. Still hunched over, he sipped his whiskey, though it did little to warm the chill in his breast. “And that’s okay?” he asked, voice little more than a shaking whisper. “It would have been okay if he’d made it back and you hadn’t?”
Next to him, Schönkopf remained silent. Dusty turned his head to look at him. He was completely still, still facing away from Dusty, with his head tilted down and just the tips of his ears and the dark brown waves of his hair visible. He took another drink, draining the glass, and then leaned over to pour himself another.
The whiskey swirled around the glass, sloshing about its sides until it settled. Schönkopf set the bottle down. He didn’t re-cork it, this time.
"Do you believe in God, Attenborough?"
Dusty frowned. He sat up a little. "Not really. I’ve had more than enough of any kind of organized religion after dealing with those lunatics from Terra,” he said. Then, “…Why?"
"Because you said 'God' when you saw my back." Schönkopf grinned – or rather, Dusty thought he grinned; he'd already lowered his head again to hide his expression.
"Right. Well, I guess I did sometimes clap my hands together and give thanks to the Almighty Rear Admiral Cazerne for keeping food on our plates, even as unappetizing as it could be sometimes. That's probably the closest I've ever come to praying." Now it was Dusty's turn to grin, even despite the scar he could still see on Schönkopf's back. It wasn't nauseating him anymore, at least – or at least not enough to stop him taking another sip of whiskey. "You?"
Schönkopf snorted. "I feel like I kind of have to, don't I? That's the only explanation for all that I've had to endure to get to this point. Fleeing one country, abandoning another, finding out I've got a spitfire of a daughter who can't even bring herself to tell the man she likes that she wants him, losing…"
He trailed off. Dusty leaned forward unconsciously, waiting for more, but knew already that he wouldn't get it. Sure enough, Schönkopf reached for his drink, took a sip, and shifted on the couch to lean against the backrest before pulling the conversation to the left. "You know, in the empire, they pray to a whole multitude of gods. Maybe they're right about some things, after all. I can only hope that I was the favourite plaything of some beautiful shining goddess of caprice."
Dusty rolled his eyes. "Of course you'd say that."
"It's true."
"And what if it was some hideous, vile, vengeful god looking out for you instead?"
"Then it would be just my luck, wouldn't it?" Schönkopf's eyes slipped shut. The grin never left his face, but it seemed, to Dusty, to take on something of a rueful twist. "Goddamn Poplin gets a guardian angel, and I'm stuck with the patron saint of foppery and whim."
"Hey." Dusty scowled. "You said you missed me."
"I did." One of Schönkopf’s eyes cracked open. It fixed directly on Dusty, and he raised his glass to watch him through it. "I've never had a better man in bed."
"Now I know you're fucking with me," Dusty said, but he let his annoyance go with a sigh and a sink back into the cushions behind him. "I can barely be bothered to get myself off most days, let alone give another guy a decent hand job. Don't worry, you don’t have to comfort me; I know I'm a bad lay.” He grinned and raised his own glass. “I even take pride in it."
"That's not what I meant."
Dusty stayed silent.
“Well,” Schönkopf sighed, “think what you want. I really did miss you while I was in that hospital bed.”
“...I know.”
“Do you? You nearly gave me the wrong idea, staying away like that,” Schönkopf said. He swirled his glass, pausing for a moment to let the liquor re-settle.
“Why did you stay away, anyway?”
Dusty looked down. He tilted his glass forward, letting what little whiskey was left in it run up against the crystal-clear walls before sliding back down again. He sighed, and closed his eyes, and then threw back the last of his drink.
“Because I didn’t want to see you,” he said.
“I wanted to see you.”
Dusty slammed his glass down to the table. “Yeah?” he snapped, turning and shooting Schönkopf a glare. Schönkopf was looking at him, his expression carefully blank, but there was no hiding the sharpness in his eyes, the calculations running behind them. It made Dusty feel like a mouse running on a wheel – running and running endlessly, never reaching the destination he wanted. Always being watched. He hated it. It was like being back at Officer’s Academy.
He scoffed and flicked his glass. “You should have thought of that before you nearly got yourself killed.”
Piece said, Dusty sat back. Schönkopf watched him, still unreadable, and Dusty folded his arms in front of his chest. He wished Schönkopf would put his shirt back on, but he made no attempt to say so, and Schönkopf made no move to do it. Instead his lips quirked upward at one corner, and his eyes closed before reopening and focusing on the ceiling.
“I did think about it,” he said. Then: “I thought about you.”
Dusty’s jaw tightened. “Sure.”
“I did. I thought about two people before I passed out.” Schönkopf looked at him sidelong. “The first was Katerose’s mother. I remembered her name.”
Dusty glanced back. “Really?”
“Rosalein,” Schönkopf murmured. “Rosa.”
Despite himself, Dusty couldn’t help but smile. “Karin will be happy to hear that.”
“She nearly sent me to the grave after all after I told her that sweet Rosa kicked me out of it.” Schönkopf laughed – the sort of laugh that was more fond than rabble-rousing, even though there was no doubt in Dusty’s mind that he was proud of himself for kicking the hornet’s nest that was his daughter’s temper.
“But that’s not important,” he tacked on with a wave. “Do you know who the other person I thought of was?”
Dusty smiled wryly. “Yang?”
“No, but that might have been better,” Schönkopf shot back. He laughed again, and lifted his drink toward Dusty. A toast. “I thought that I should get you to write my last words.”
He drank, swallowing down half the whiskey in his glass along with the chuckle that had risen in his throat. Dusty could do nothing but watch, gaping dumbly at him, until he finished and licked his lips clean of the liquor that remained on them. Then a sigh left Schönkopf, ragged and rolling, and he leaned back, hands coming up to drape over the couch's backrest. His right still held his glass, and the fingers of the left came close enough that if they stretched, they would be able to flick the ends of Dusty's hair.
His head tilted back toward the ceiling. Dusty watched him a moment longer, still trying to make sense of what he’d just heard, and then finally snapped his mouth shut.
"Make room," he said.
"Hm?"
But Dusty didn't wait. He slid over on the couch so that his leg pressed up against the outside of Schönkopf's thigh, and he leaned over further than that to rest his cheek on the other man’s shoulder. He felt Schönkopf stiffen beneath him, the well-maintained muscles in his neck and chest flexing for a moment before they slowly relaxed again.
"It's not like you to be so cuddly," Schönkopf murmured. He didn't look down.
“So what?” Dusty closed his eyes. "Just let me have this."
“Mm.”
They sat like that for a while, Dusty’s face tucked into Schönkopf’s neck and Schönkopf’s chest rising and falling steadily with his breath. Dusty closed his eyes and turned his head in further, nosing along the curve of Schönkopf’s trapezius muscle; he lifted a hand and pressed it to the bare chest beneath him, over the patch of wiry, untamed hair between his pectorals. Bump. Ba-bump. A heartbeat, real and slow, but unmistakable. Dusty’s eyes squeezed tighter shut.
“...Hey, Attenborough.”
Dusty swallowed. He waited a moment before opening his eyes, but didn’t move. Neither did Schönkopf. “Yeah?”
“We’re…” Schönkopf paused. He still didn’t look at Dusty – he just kept his head back, still tilted toward the ceiling. He flicked the edge of his glass with the back of a nail. “We’re… more than just friends, aren’t we?”
Dusty let out a breath: short, harsh, fond. “Come on. If you’re just figuring that out now, then you’ve never been as sharp as people say.”
He felt a rattle of laughter. Real, physical laughter, a jump beneath his palm. “Hey, at least they’re talking.”
“Too much,” Dusty agreed.
“And I suppose they’ll have something else to talk about now, won’t they?” Schönkopf pulled back. Dusty groaned; he hadn’t been ready to move yet, but he sat back up anyway. “And for once, you’ll be the one at the center of the rumours instead of just ground zero for spreading them.”
He brought a hand to Dusty’s cheek. Dusty leaned into the touch, sighing as the backs of strong, sturdy, calloused fingers caressed the curve of his jaw. “Who says I can’t be both?” he asked. “You’re not the only one with adoring fans. What would the bored housewives of Iserlohn do without my gossip column in the local paper?”
Schönkopf leaned in. Dusty did, too.
“Stay the night,” Schönkopf said.
Dusty snorted. “I’m still not having sex with you. Especially not now I’ve seen your back.”
“Then don’t,” Schönkopf said. “Just stay. You can just pretend to be my sexy nurse, and I won’t even try to lay a hand on you.”
“Unbelievable,” Dusty muttered. But he smiled anyway, to mirror Schönkopf’s grin, and leaned in until both their smiles melded together.