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I.
The first thing he looks for is Bertolt. This has always been true, in any room, since he was a child, but now it feels new. Fresh, somehow.
Karina picked him up at the airport, and his whole family gathered around the table to have dinner. Dinner was endless and tortuous, his mother bragging like she’s proud, proud of her son who went into a foreign land and killed other men, boys, all the same as him except different skin tones and languages and religions, and for what? For oil? Capital? Empire? He’d thought he was saving the world as he set out; the campus protests ramping up seemed to him ridiculous, products of feeble minds. And then he broke bread with other scared boys and realized they were just like him inside, where it mattered. He was wrong. So wrong. And he still pulled the trigger, because he had to, because he was saving the world.
Yet Karina still talks about him reverently. Like he’s a hero and not just another dime-a-dozen camo-wearing killer. His jaw has grown square, more masculine; he hasn’t bothered to shave. Miraculously, no one’s gotten on his case. He answers his uncle and aunt’s questions monosyllabically, devours the home-cooked meal, and realizes later he doesn’t remember what was in the soup he drank. The only bright spot of dinner is his little cousin Gabi: sprightly, irreverent, eternal, she’s grown slightly taller and lost none of her childish enthusiasm despite being at the age where she’s engaged. A rock shines on her hand. “Not a real diamond,” she says. “But Falco promised.” She asks him questions that scandalize the older adults, who seem to think he’s fragile (and maybe he is), and he answers.
Did you get to shoot a gun? Yes, many times, many guns.
Will you show me? I could. It’s not that hard. You’d be great at it. (Reiner! She’s getting married in the fall, for fuck’s sake, she’s not a baby. Reiner, mind your language. I know, I know. These aren’t the barracks.)
Did you watch anyone die? Too many. On our side and theirs.
Her honesty–his honesty when she’s around–is refreshing. But soon, dinner is over, and his aunt and uncle are saying their goodbyes, Gabi dragging her feet and clinging to him like she did when she was still an innocent little kid and he was eighteen and knew everything.
So he sneaks out, like he’s still fifteen and not a soldier, a man grown, and jumps the fence and crosses the street. He goes around the back, does their secret knock. Prays, selfishly, that Bertolt still lives there. That he still remembers their childhood Morse-like codes. A part of him wishes he’d be gone–it’s been a year and a half; shouldn’t Bertolt move out of his dad’s house; shouldn’t he go to college, get a good job, do anything but waste his life rotting away from the sun in between wiping his dad’s messes and giving him his medicine? Surely Mr. Hoover wouldn’t want this for his son, but Reiner knows how Bertolt is, he can even picture the conversation: Bertolt stubborn, refusing to go anywhere he won’t get a free ride to–and yet the biggest part of him, the selfish part, the part that makes Reiner Reiner, wishes he will open that door, wills him to be standing behind it, all sleepy and bedheaded.
His prayers come answered: he’s conjured him. Like a saint, shining brightly with his love.
“Reiner,” Bertolt yawns, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “I didn’t know you were back.”
II.
Bertolt’s room hasn’t changed in years; it’s like a time capsule. Being back here, really, is like a time capsule: first his mother’s house, the portraits in the mantle the same, the smell of her cooking still vaguely appealing; now, this room detached from the rest of the Hoover house, where he spent many a sticky summer afternoon canoodling with Bertolt. He’s always wanted him, he realizes, always loved him–and the strength of that realization terrifies him.
He’s had other trysts with men in the Army. Boys get lonely, boys get bored, boys get horny. It was all very hush-hush, no one wanting to get discharged under “other than honorable conditions”, but it happened, his fingers on other men’s mouths and prostates, his mouth on other men’s dicks–foreign tastes that were never quite what he was searching for–hoping for a sparkle, a release, a way out. The ones that completed their deployment and flew back home, after, probably went back to their high school sweethearts, married them. Will be okay to good to shitty husbands. The ones that didn’t. Well.
Reiner knows he should feel happy that he made it out. He didn’t, not really. Not until he saw Bertolt, standing before him, stretching. His shirt lifts up a little; his happy trail’s exposed. Reiner holds a gasp back. Dark lush hair, a forest Reiner can’t wait to lose himself in.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come see you,” says Bertolt, awkwardly adjusting the covers that, in his haste and sleep-shifting, he’s thrown mostly on the floor. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
Reiner blinks. “I always want to see you,” he says.
It’s true. He’s lost sight of himself. And there were many boys, horny boys, lonely boys, boys who just wanted something familiar to kiss. But at night, when he was gone, while he touched himself, and then as the tears fell out of his eyes, it was with Bertolt’s name on his lips. He’s always worshipped at his altar.
III.
The lush wilderness of his bedroom, the oft-explored corners of his body. Bertolt has grown muscle since he left, he notices, but also there’s a newfound softness in him, in his stomach, padding his thighs, in the way he looks at Reiner like he could devour him whole. Reiner wishes he would. And yet, even though it’s different, it’s so familiar, the way Bertolt kisses his chest like he’s holy, all fervent in prayer, the way Bertolt puts him gently stomach-down on the bed and begins opening him up.
He can’t help the sounds that come out of his mouth as Bertolt kisses his neck, whispers sweet nothings like I missed you so much and every day I prayed you weren’t gonna die, I needed you to come back to me, Reiner, in his delectable low voice. Bertolt takes care of him. He always does. Always knows just what he needs, even when he doesn’t know what that is himself.
Bertolt expertly puts another oiled finger inside him. He’s coiling it, searching for something, the spot that will surely make him scream. When did Bertolt learn how to do that? With Reiner, he hopes. For some reason, it makes him incredibly jealous that Bertolt might have had other trysts when he was gone. He wants to turn around, wants to kiss him, but his neck’s sore from the long flight home. He’s both blessed and taunted by the confines of his anatomy. Who decided, what gave Bertolt the right, to make him feel so good?
He lets out a gasp, a small gush of air, he guesses, because Bertolt’s mouth is so close to his ear now; Bertolt’s whispering “be quiet”, shushing him, soothing him, two fingers inside him and the other hand on his heart. Reiner can’t remember when was the last time he felt this sure of something, this absolute sense of belonging, and it makes him want to cry. Involuntarily, he does.
Bertolt, still behind him, stills. “Reiner, don’t cry,” he says, and kisses his tears, licking the salt in them. Reiner cries more, now, openly, red, unable to stop himself.
Bertolt stops what he’s doing, puts Reiner on his back. “Reiner, don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s okay,” he repeats.
Between his irregular breaths, Reiner sputters out, “Bertl, don’t–don’t stop–”
So Bertolt kisses his tears, buries himself in Reiner’s faintly-growing stubble, and then moves down his body until he reaches a tuft of blond hair, the arctic forest he’s meant to conquer. Bertolt’s mouth is on him, taking all of him in, devouring him, with an incredible hunger. No one, he realizes, has ever been this hungry for him, wanted him this much. Then Bertolt’s hands have snaked around Reiner’s back once more, found their way inside him once more, and as Bertolt finds the spot inside him, the one he’s been searching for all along, Reiner sees marvelous little dots behind his eyes like stars.
IV.
It’s an almost pedestrian kink, this thing he has. He likes being praised. Loved. Worshipped. Believed in, faithfully, like a lesser god.
“You’re doing so good, Reiner,” Bertolt says as he thrusts inside Reiner, petting his short hair slowly and tenderly, as Reiner’s back collides with the headboard. “So good for me. I missed you so much.”
Reiner can’t cry again, shouldn’t cry again. And yet. Bertolt is reciting little praises, little pretty things about him, like litanies; he wants to be his amanuensis, to keep them in his mind, but his mind is giving in, his mind is collapsing, in the best way possible. He thinks he’s actually died, tripped on an IED and fallen to earth, wilted like underwatered roses. He’s died and gone to heaven, except that’s impossible, because he knows that’s not where he belongs. For everything he did. He–
Then he stops thinking. Life is just a sharp cry. Just Bertolt’s hand on his dick, Bertolt’s cock fucking him like he’s a spoil of war. He is. He is, he is, he is. And he’s so warm, and he’s so full, and he’s so loved. As he succumbs to the warmth, he knows he is nothing. He is everything. He is one, in communion with the world.
As if on cue, Bertolt cries out. He spills. He comes in Reiner, with Reiner, hands holding Reiner’s face, like he’s special and beautiful. Beloved. He believes it, almost, that he could be this loved.
When they’re more or less clean, they hold each other under patterned covers.
“You’ve changed,” Bertolt remarks, as he runs his hand down his chest, tracing patterns near his nipples. Always too far away to touch them, though. If Reiner wasn’t completely spent, he’d cry again.
“I feel the same as I’ve always been,” Reiner says, “when I’m with you.”
Bertolt smiles. “Good. I missed my Reiner.”
Reiner takes a moment to register the phrasing of Bertolt’s words, the love, the underlying possessiveness of them. My Reiner. Yes, he decides, he is Bertolt’s forever, to do what he pleases with. He’s changed. He will give himself, open, red, bloody, whole, with all the new indelible marks he now carries, etched permanently on his body and mind.
V.
Because it’s true, he went to war, he’s a whole man changed. He’s nothing like who he was before. And yet lying in this bed with Bertolt feels so familiar. He inhales; it smells like home and Bertolt’s dollar-store shampoo; it smells like sex and sleep; they’re once again shirtless, breathless. Panting. But there’s a key difference: they’re not out of time. They’ve got nothing, nothing but time. So Reiner asks the question on his mind.
“Did I disappoint you? By going? Did you not want me to go?” Reiner murmurs, softly, his voice a flickering melody. Outside, bees hum, pollinating the world, repopulating it with beauty.
“You will never disappoint me,” whispers Bertolt. “But of course I didn’t want you to go.”
“If you’d told me not to go,” Reiner says, “I’d have never enlisted. Swear on my life.”
They fall silent again. Their chests rise and fall in sync.
“You have some new posters,” Reiner remarks. “But most of them are the same.”
Bertolt smiles. “I’m still the same. I haven’t changed.”
The room, even in the dark, is a shrine to someone Bertolt used to be, before his father got sicker and sicker, withering away in the next room. Wilted flowers all return to dust, ashes, ground.
“You’ve grown,” Reiner says. “Taller, I mean.” Also, he’s grown his hair out to the nape of his neck, almost like a barrier, or like wildflowers, growing blue-black berries in their stems; Reiner reaches out, plays with the sweaty strands, thinks of pulling on them. “Baby boy,” he calls Bertolt, almost involuntarily.
Bertolt chuckles, slaps Reiner’s arm. “Don’t call me that. I’m big and strong.” But he’s smiling, leaning into Reiner’s chest, kissing his jaw like tiny fireflies flickering. Silence falls, and only the humming of nature outside remains. Reiner allows himself to let go once again, lets sleep lull him into its domain, that sweet seductress.
“I look the same as I always have,” Bertolt says. “Sometimes I wish I could change it.”
“But I like the way you look,” protests Reiner, and Bertolt looks at him, deep into his eyes. He props himself up on one elbow.
“You don’t think my nose is too big?” says Bertolt, self-consciously. “Ugly?”
Reiner has faint memories of Bertolt being called Snout when he was little. Only once, though. Reiner had punched the daylights out of the little shit who did that. He lost the fight, came out with a bloody knuckle and broken bones; but it was worth it, because Bertolt had immediately run to him, chastising him, all what did you do that for, Reiner, you’re hurt, here, let me see, and he’d kissed his bruises, every inch of them, and for a moment he’d really believed what his mom always said, that kissing bruises made them better; now, he kisses the tip of Bertolt’s nose, and watches as his best friend, his lover, his reason to live, the person he knows most in the whole world, blushes like he hasn’t just fucked Reiner to little tiny fractal pieces, until Reiner was nothing but bark and land and flowers and evergreen tumbleweeds and all.
“Your nose,” says Reiner, “is perfect.”
Bertolt smiles gratefully. “And you are perfect.”
Reiner considers this. “Mmm, no,” he says. “I’m a real fuckup. You, on the other hand–”
He can’t finish his thought. Bertolt interrupts him with a kiss, tongue inside him, urgent and aching, like he’s scared Reiner will leave again. He will bite, will mark Reiner, and Reiner will let him, will even beg for it, on his knees, hands tied behind his back if possible. Ablution. Atonement, if he still deserves forgiveness. This fragile flesh body of his will be a temple, this room a garden of earthly delights. It’s paradise, really. Tomorrow Reiner will beg for his job at the mechanic back, and he’ll surely get it, muscles stronger than ever. He’ll start saving up for a little apartment, a place to escape, to bring Bertolt to. So why would Reiner ever leave his Bertolt, even for one second, one blink of an eye as the dust of the world settles in, ever again.