His heart pounded; what if Mark had found him too forward? What if rebuffing him constantly had ruined every chance of … more? Some small thing he wanted to rescue from the wreckage of their past. He was too aware he’d made himself vulnerable with the message. He’d debated it for hours and finally just done it, knowing that committing himself to a lunge like this opened him up all the way.
Footsteps outside reminded him where he was. He slid the folded page into his pocket and casually stepped out of the cell.
The two guards, one on either side of Mark, stopped dead. Mark halted as well, and though it was hard to tell in this light, Armin thought he’d paled.
“Kommandant,” one of the men said with a sharp nod. His voice held a note of curiosity, maybe confusion.
Armin set his shoulders back and straightened, schooling his expression to a hard one. He didn’t need to explain himself, and so he didn’t. He returned the nod, then strode past the three men.
“Back in there,” one grumbled to Mark, and a moment later, the cell door banged shut.
Armin put his hand in his pocket and thumbed the edge of the note. Though it was understood that the Kommandant of a place like this answered to higher men, and could at any time be summoned to his office immediately to address an urgent issue, whether a phone call from Berlin or a prisoner who’d been caught with contraband, Armin didn’t let himself rush. He was certain any increase in speed, anything beyond his already fast gait, would rouse suspicion. And he didn’t dare look at the paper in his hand until he was in the safety of his office.
Once he was there, with the door shut behind him and the fire an arm’s length away and ready to consume the note as soon as Armin had read it, he withdrew the folded paper from his pocket.
He’d expected Mark to be a man of few words. Maybe educated, maybe not, but likely not the kind to respond with something poetically cryptic. The note, though, was almost startling in its brevity:
How?
It wasn’t a No. But it was the worst question of them all. There was hope and futility in that question, and Armin looked around as if any of the books held the answer. None did. They were all silent, inert repositories of emotions, unable to convey any meaning unless opened.
He balled the piece of paper and tossed it into the fire, watched it be consumed in less than a moment.
* * * *
Armin left the office and went back down to the cells, past a sleepy guard who likely didn’t even notice (small blessing, though a slip in discipline—he would have to place the man here more often at night), and all but crept down the corridor to Mark’s cell.
This was madness. No, madness had been having the guards walk in on them in the first place. Attracting further attention by heading back downstairs?
But he had to. He wasn’t breaking the rules, and by now the castle would be asleep.
When he reached Mark’s cell, Armin turned the key in the lock and then paused in the door to switch on the light.
Mark rose from the bed and blinked into the light. Armin locked the door again and slipped the keys into his coat.
“I’m sorry to disturb you this late at night.”
“It’s your castle.” Mark sat up and drew back against the wall, huddled under the blanket. “I suppose you can do anything you want.”
“It isn’t mine, but …” Armin gestured dismissively. He stepped closer, like he had the other day, but didn’t sit beside him this time. “To answer your question”—he shook his head—“I don’t know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because this seemed like the best place to find the answer.”
The rack creaked as Mark shifted. “Here?”
“Where else?”
Mark sighed. He let his head fall back against the wall. “This is pointless.”
“Perhaps.” Finally, Armin allowed himself to sit beside him, but kept a few inches of space between them. “This all seems pointless to me. The war. Being here.” Shaking his head, he glanced at the window and the night beyond it. “What is to be gained by spending our best years in a place like this?”
“If these are our best years, then it really is pointless.”
“Maybe so.” Their eyes met. Anything Armin could think to say seemed ridiculously cryptic or dangerously incriminating. The guard may have been dozing, but he wasn’t far from here. He’d patrol the corridor from time to time. What would be gained from him overhearing a whispered “in eight years, I’ve never forgotten you” or “in what years I have left, I never want to”?
“Why did things happen the way they did in Berlin?” Mark asked after a while.
“What do you mean?” So many things had happened for so many reasons, and Armin wasn’t sure he could explain any of it.
Mark sat up. He stretched out his legs. Bent them. Let his boots land on the floor with quiet taps. When he sat up completely, hands on the edge of the rack, he was closer to Armin. A lot closer. “All of it, I suppose.”
“There’s hardly a simple answer to that. A lot of things happened.”
“I think you know what I mean.”
“Perhaps.” Armin breathed slowly in spite of his pounding heart. “But I suppose I don’t know why those things happened any more than I know why the universe saw fit to bring us both here all these years later.”
Mark twisted toward Armin. “That, I think, might have a simpler answer.”
Armin didn’t have a chance to respond before Mark’s hand—cool and warm at the same time—touched the side of his face, and he didn’t see the advance until it was completed, and by then, Mark’s lips were against his, and it didn’t matter how it had happened. Mark had attacked, Armin was defeated, and neither fought it any further.
How could the kiss of one man be so much more intense than the whole repertoire of more experienced, more jaded bodies, of claiming and entering and straining? There was some, maybe all, of the magic of those first touches, the ones he’d shared with Oskar, and which he’d been too nervous to enjoy fully, feeling as if he were standing at the precipice of some enormous secret, an unchallenged mountain or a fathomless pit.
It had been neither, just strange and magical and something that felt like an addiction, as necessary as eating and breathing. With Mark, that magic was coming back alive, that probing and testing and becoming alive to possibilities and beauty. Bodies weren’t mechanical now—just a way to connect souls, minds, spirits.
With considerable willpower, Armin pulled back, placed his hand against Mark’s chest when Mark chased him. “I don’t know how, Mark. I just know this: it’s worth striving for, though how much to sacrifice …”
“Nobody’s asking you to sacrifice anything. Not for me.”
But I would. I’d give you all I have and I’d be terrified to think it’s not enough.
Mark sighed, and his chest no longer pressed against Armin’s hand. He drew back slightly. “This is crazy. We’re torturing ourselves for something we know we can’t have.”
Armin reached for Mark’s face, and was thankful he didn’t pull away from the brush of his gloved fingers. That touch wasn’t enough, though. Armin pulled his hand back, bit the fingertips, and pulled it off. It was a clumsy motion, one he hated performing in front of anyone, but it was either that or touch Mark with a layer of leather between them, and that was just not something he could do.
The glove fell onto the bed, and this time, Armin’s fingers met the coarse, unshaven skin of Mark’s jaw. Mark pushed out a breath, and he pressed against Armin’s hand.
“We’re both intelligent men,” he whispered, the words labored as if it was hard to speak at all. “We know damn well this can’t—”
Armin kissed him. Gently, tenderly, but with enough force to silence him. Mark immediately dropped any defenses he’d put up, and he parted his lips to grant Armin access to his mouth. He slid his fingers up into Armin’s hair, ran his other hand along the inside of Armin’s leg, and the more he gave in and didn’t fight Armin,
letting his body give in where his mind kept them at odds, the more Armin realized Mark’s initial resistance had been wise. This was pointless. This was impossible.
But, God, so was resisting.
Most of the time he denied the fact that he’d lost half an arm and a hand, though his day was full of reminders, and he woke sometimes from a dream where he’d been complete, but most of the time, he ignored it.
Right now, though, the disadvantages were clearer than ever. He couldn’t touch Mark everywhere he wanted, not nearly in every fashion he wanted, tender and demanding and teasing and cherishing.
One hand had to do all those things, and it was firmly between Mark’s shoulder blades, making Armin otherwise defenseless. Their bodies pushed against each other, unwieldy now, and the frisson of arousal tightened Armin’s muscles. He wanted to pull Mark even closer, ask to be touched in ways that had seemed so natural before the war, before all the hiding and deceit, and he wanted to take the hand off his thigh and tell Mark that this was getting too much, too much in this place, and too much between them right now, but the truth was, he yearned for that contact.
He hadn’t been touched like this in (eight years) too long. Mark challenged him, teased him and pushed his hand against Armin’s groin, which made Armin almost see stars. Did anything else matter? He wasn’t sure. No, it didn’t.
Mark broke the kiss this time, and touched his forehead to Armin’s. “We’re—”
“This is madness.”
“I’ve been telling you that all along.” Mark’s lips grazed Armin’s. “It hasn’t stopped us yet.”
“No.” Armin’s stomach tightened, and his heart sank because now that he wasn’t kissing Mark, reason and reality set in, and he couldn’t pretend this wasn’t madness or that they could do anything beyond wish things were different.
He pulled away and stood. “I shouldn’t have come down here.”
Mark rose. He touched Armin’s arm just firmly enough to keep him from moving. “You’re already here.”
“And I should go.” Armin pulled his arm free and started for the door, but Mark was faster, and he grabbed Armin’s hips.
His breath warmed Armin’s ear. “Don’t go.” Command? Plea? A little of both?
“A moment ago, you wanted me to leave.”
“I’ve never wanted you to leave.” Mark’s hand followed Armin’s belt—or its outline through his coat, anyway—around to the front, and he pulled their bodies closer together. Lips soft against Armin’s neck, he whispered, “Never, Armin.”
Armin closed his eyes. He let himself lean against Mark, felt the warmth of his body even through both of their clothes. “You were never so aggressive in Berlin.”
Mark pulled him even closer, pressing his erection—God, but Armin remembered that—against him. “Life wasn’t quite so short back in Berlin.”
Maybe it was, but we didn’t know it then.
“This is dangerous. Few of the guards speak English, so a word won’t give us away, but …” A touch, or the terrible risk of more. “They aren’t stupid. Chandler already hates me, and if the sentries see anything. If Schäfer suspects …” Armin turned around and touched his forehead to Mark’s, tried to not let their groins touch so they could both calm down. “You are the last thing I have left, Mark. And I don’t even know if I can hope to have you. I don’t know what this is, just that I cannot see it destroyed, and I can’t lose you. You are the only prisoner I do want to keep in this place, because without you, I’m …” It was too much to confess, but Mark’s words had rattled his foundations. Life was short.
Armin, please don’t go out there.
I need to try to help. There might be wounded.
You are wounded yourself!
But I have one arm. I can carry somebody.
Armin, don’t go.
No, love, I’ll be back. You’ll see. Don’t worry.
Mark took his head between his hands. “Then what?”
“My office. I’ll find a reason to see you in there. Meanwhile, you have books, and food, and quiet.”
“Chocolate? How did you come by that?”
“Well, I guess …” Armin straightened his uniform. “It was worth breaking the rules for that. I kept a few Red Cross parcels back for your use. I’m not touching them otherwise.”
“And if you’re caught?”
“I’m the Kommandant.”
“Someone will shoot you.”
“Someone will likely shoot me anyway. Sooner or later.” Armin touched Mark’s face and pressed a gentle but earnest kiss onto his lips, one that almost made him consider finishing this tonight after all. “I might as well have at least a few pleasant memories to take with me.”
Mark shivered. “I don’t want to think about that. You getting shot. Especially not for anything involving me.”
“Then don’t think about it.” Armin kissed him again, harder this time. In his mind, he was already walking out the door, locking it behind him, gruffly telling the sleeping guard to keep the prisoners in line, and returning to his office. If he had a shred of sanity left, those actions wouldn’t be confined to his mind.
But he gripped the back of Mark’s neck and kissed him like a man who had no intention of going anywhere. And Mark kissed him the same way, fingertips twitching against Armin’s scalp and body pressing against him through layers of clothing that were nowhere near adequate for winter in a castle cellar, but were far too much to keep between two men who’d waited this long to touch this way.
The world was moving. Armin’s balance faltered, and he instinctively caught himself with his foot. He was certain Mark would think he’d lost his mind, nearly falling over just because they were standing in the middle of this cell in yet another kiss that never should have happened, but Mark didn’t protest.
In fact, his center of gravity shifted too, and when Armin took another step, his back hit the cold wall, and Mark pressed hard against him. Mark grabbed Armin’s wrist and pinned it beside his head, the back of Armin’s arm against icy stone while Mark’s palm warmed that one, small area of his wrist.
“We shouldn’t do this,” Mark murmured, leaning down to kiss Armin’s neck, “but we also shouldn’t be here at all. Not the war, not this fucking prison.” He nipped Armin’s flesh just above the collar of his jacket, just hard enough to send an electric shock all the way to his toes. “None of this should be happening, but at least this doesn’t hurt.”
Yes, it does. It absolutely does.
It was the kind of sharp pain like gripping a solid sheet of ice that had half-thawed into slivers and edges, fragile and viciously sharp at the same time, near translucent with the promise of spring.
It was cold down here, warm only where they touched, and Armin shivered at being held back. The rest of his arm was damn near useless for pushing or gripping—the levers were all wrong, and he hated touching people with what remained of it. Though sometimes, being a left-hander, he forgot.
“I want to do this in a better place—safer.” His hoarse whisper nearly choked off when Mark continued to kiss his throat, nip at his jaw, his lips, and he couldn’t think clearly. He had to.
Life is short.
Don’t go, Armin.
“Let me …” Armin looked back at his arm, flexed the muscle, pushed back.
“You’ll stay?” It was nearly a threat. An “or else.”
Armin just nodded. And Mark let him go, so Armin could put his arm around his waist. They were close, Armin trapped between the rough stone wall and the demanding hot body in front. Useless. Helpless. If they were caught, they couldn’t really do anything to Mark but put him in the hole longer, or maybe discipline him in some other way. But Armin knew that he’d be offered a bullet—a revolver with one single bullet to take his own life to keep his dignity. That was how it was done.
And with him out of the picture, he couldn’t protect Mark anymore. Maybe Mark needed him a bit, too, though he didn’t dare ask. Needed him enough right now to risk life and
sanity for release. But it wasn’t just that, and Armin groaned when Mark pushed harder against him, their groins rubbing together through the coarse uniform cloth, every movement a jolt and an electric charge. All he could do was pull Mark closer, push back against him, spur him on with kisses and silent breaths.
Mark’s hand slid between them, and everything turned white for a second as his palm rubbed over Armin’s cock. “There were things we didn’t … we never did. In Berlin.” He kissed Armin lightly. “Felt … unfinished.”
Armin closed his eyes, pressing against Mark’s hand. “There wasn’t time.” Or opportunity. Too many people who might notice. Too many consequences.
“Not enough time,” Mark murmured, and as he kissed Armin full-on, he squeezed him hard through his trousers, hard enough to make Armin’s knees nearly buckle beneath them. And then, “Promise me something.”
Armin tensed slightly, though he couldn’t be sure if it was the loaded words or the way Mark’s thumb was tracing electrifying arcs along the head of his cock. “Promise you what?”
“That—”
“Kommandant?” A sharp voice from the corridor drove Mark back a step, and Armin gasped, suddenly feeling completely naked and exposed to the chill of the room but also to the scrutiny of every man in the castle. “Everything all right in there, Kommandant?”
“If I need you, I will call for you,” Armin spat. “Get back to your post.”
“Are you sure you—”
“Back to your post or you can sleep in one of these cells.” His voice was strong and solid, completely belying how badly his knees shook from both the moment with Mark and the intrusion that had brought it to a halt.
After a second of hesitation, the guard walked away, presumably returning to his post.
Armin exhaled and faced Mark again. Mark’s gaze was fixed on the door, his eyes wide. Armin reached for his cheek. “Go on.”
“Go—what?” Mark turned toward him. “Can he hear us?”
Armin shook his head and drew Mark in, which took some effort since the man had tensed so badly. “He’s probably concerned because I’ve been in here so long.”
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