by Amy Lane
“You okay?” Walter asked, closing the door behind him. He was shivering and wiping his hands on the back of his pants as he walked to the kitchen. He kept a basin of soapy water there, always, and used it to wash his hands—apparently again.
“Privy?” Nate asked, blinking hard.
“Yeah. You gotta use it?”
“Probably later,” Nate answered with a sigh. He could get up and walk around the room now, but even the half flight of stairs to the bedrooms and the short trip to the outhouse were both a risk still. His body felt tight and uncomfortable from the dream, and he didn’t want to stand in case Walter would see.
“Well, you could always go back to sleep.”
Nate closed his eyes but didn’t obey. The dream was settling into his bones now, settling into his heart. Hector had been happy with his girl, vibrant, alive, and Joey had been too.
And Nate had danced with Walter, close as any man and woman, and his whole body had yearned for that touch, yearned for more. With a struggle, Nate turned to face the back of the couch and brought his knee up to hide his aching and erect flesh.
It was all so much easier when he’d harbored a faint yearning for a man who could not want him back.
The next weeks were a study in getting better. His lung was the slowest thing to heal—his leg and ribs were sore, but simply walking across the room or the wooded yard to the outhouse took all his breath. Still, step-by-step, he built up his health. If nothing else, he didn’t want to be a burden to Walter.
He repaired the hole in his trousers, as promised, using the neat, delicate stitches he’d seen his mother use, and Walter whistled low over his shoulder as he’d sewn.
“That there is fancy work,” he said with awe. “My ma couldn’t do that unless she used a machine.”
“Your mother wasn’t relying on the trousers to get her through enemy territory to find an Allied outpost, either,” Nate said drolly.
Walter’s sweet expression of praise dried up. “Do you have to?” he asked, sounding naked. “Do you have to leave?”
Nate shrugged. “Well, not this minute, Walter, but we can’t stay here forever. The Nazis or the Vichys—or even the Allies—somebody is bound to stumble across this place. And we don’t even have a radio. At this moment, we don’t know who’s who or what’s going on at all. And we’re in the woods, aren’t we? It’s not like another plane is going to crash and give us a clue as to what’s going to happen.”
“Yeah,” Walter muttered. “Yeah, I get it. I just— One army or the other, it felt just the same to me.”
Nate held on to his temper and reminded himself that Walter’s world had been very small before he’d taken a bus to Fort Dix from Iowa. “Perhaps that is because you’re not Jewish.”
Walter’s silence was offended at first, and then simply thoughtful. “I forget,” he apologized. “I mean, I’m white trash—I know it. But I carry that chip on my shoulder, and I forget sometimes there’s bigger reasons to be in the war than politicians saying stuff over the radio.”
“There are rumors,” Nate said lowly, because nobody wanted to talk about this, not at Menwith Hill, not back in the States. “Terrible rumors, about where all the Jews are going. I don’t have a gun, but wouldn’t it be something if I could help make it stop?”
Walter’s hand on his shoulder was both electric and disquieting at once.
“You think so big,” he said disconsolately. “My only plan when I signed up was three squares a day. And keeping by Jimmy.”
Ah, the elusive and mysterious Jimmy. “Did you sign up with Jimmy?” Nate asked, going back to his stitchery. The dim light in the little front room was at its best this time of day.
“Naw. Met in boot camp. Little guys. Watched each other’s backs.” Walter’s voice buckled. “Best friend I ever had.”
“It’s good,” Nate said carefully, thinking about Hector and Joey. “When you find someone who accepts you for everything you are.” Well, not everything, but enough of who he was.
“You try,” Walter said, with another of those condescending pats on the shoulder. “But you’re smarter. You’re an officer. You gotta keep all professional. I know that.”
“I’m . . . what?” Nate gaped at him as he walked toward the door. “I . . . I have to what? I have . . .” He flailed the needle Walter had gleaned from an upstairs cabinet. “In what way have I been distant?”
Walter turned the doorknob. “Don’t take it wrong, Nate, but you’re Lieutenant Nathan Meyer—it says so on the flight jacket you’re gonna stitch up next. Don’t worry, I never forgot it.”
A surge of red washed across Nate’s vision, and he shoved himself upright and took two steps toward the door, breathing hard enough to make his ribs and chest ache. When he opened his mouth he was trying to yell, but he didn’t have enough wind.
“I have bared my soul to you!” he whisper-shouted, then dragged in a big, painful breath. “What else could I have told you about myself to make you—”
The door slammed, and he staggered back down to the couch. How was he supposed to finish that sentence? He’d thought they’d been growing closer, each and every day. Make you feel close to me? Was that what he was going to say? When they’d started out, Walter had no reservations about talking to Nate honestly, but that seemed to have changed. Make you forget that we’re different? Was that what he wanted?
Oh, come now, Nate. It’s an empty room in the middle of the woods. Be honest.
“Love me,” he finished aloud, then closed his eyes. Because, of course, the answer was right there. Such a risk—such a terrible, terrible risk—to tell another man he loved him. The only way to let them in was to tell them; the surest way to lose him was to do the same thing. It had never been tempting with Hector.
But then, he and Hector had never been locked in a small house for what was going on a month now, with only tales of their childhoods for company.
When Walter came back in about an hour later, Nate held up the trousers with ironic aplomb.
“They look great,” Walter said, not meeting his eyes. “You want to wear them to accompany me to the crash site tomorrow? I’m thinking we can get the radio from the plane. There’s outlets here. If you’ve got a cord, we can maybe listen and see if we can pick up some Allied frequencies.”
Nate’s face fell. “I’d love to, but . . . I can’t even yell from across the room. Maybe a few more days,” he said, and Walter’s return smile was unaccountably brilliant.
“Two more days is fine,” he said. “Tomorrow we can go outside and walk around the house. You can get a feel for the terrain.”
“And tonight I’ll read some more,” Nate said, feeling naked. Walter was making plans for them already. He didn’t even want to leave himself, but he was making plans to split up from Nate.
“That’s real generous of you, sir,” Walter said.
“Don’t,” Nate said harshly. “For weeks I haven’t been ‘sir’—don’t do that to me now.”
“Why not?” Walter asked in a little voice, heading for the kitchen. He’d tried making the bagels, and they hadn’t turned out badly. He’d sifted the flour many, many times, so the weevils were few and far between, and they had enough rabbit stock left over to make gravy to sop with the bagels. It was neither a deli in New York nor the KP at Menwith Hill, but Nate had no complaints. Nate watched as Walter moved to wash his hands first and wondered what he was going to do. Toast the bagels? Warm the gravy?
Pull old potatoes out of his pockets and start washing them?
Of course it was the last thing—clever, clever Walter.
“Because I think of you as a friend,” Nate said, wanting to thank him and celebrate him. “Calling me ‘sir’ feels like a slap in the face.”
“It helps me remember,” Walter mumbled, going for the broken kitchen knife that had been left behind.
“Remember what?”
“That you need to leave, and I’m going to be left alone again.”
“We’ll g
et you assigned somewhere when we get back to a unit,” Nate said, desperate for Walter to feel remembered.
“Wonderful.” Walter concentrated on peeling the potato with the exactness of die-cut machinery.
“Or perhaps you could be transferred to Menwith Hill. I’ll be there. We could see each other—”
“Do the officers even talk to the enlisted men?” Walter asked with deep suspicion.
“I’m an officer by accident!” Nate argued, not even sure what he was arguing about. “Please, Walter!”
“Please what?” Walter snapped, forced to raise his face and look Nate in the eyes. “I don’t even know what you want from me!”
Your love. For you to not withdraw from me now that I’ve gotten used to us being close. I don’t want you to pull away now.
“Your . . . your friendship,” Nate said quietly, fighting not to pull back. “I . . . I enjoy your company. Please . . . we’re . . . we’re soldiers in the same war, but . . . I like you. Can’t we just deal with each other in that way?”
Walter turned back to the potatoes. “Sure,” he said softly. “Sure. But . . . we’d never be friends outside this house. You know that, right, Nate? Me and Jimmy—we coulda met at a grange meeting, or in the drugstore, or at the post office. You and me?”
“We would have met somewhere,” Nate said, his heart beating in his throat. He knew—he wasn’t stupid. Class differences. Walter was poor white trash, not that Nate or even his father would have said that out loud. Where did a middle-class Jewish boy think he was going to meet a Walter. But oy! Not to have met Walter? Ever? “I refuse to believe we wouldn’t have met in a place where we could be friends. Isn’t that what the war is about? Hitler is saying to hate everybody not him, and everybody not him is saying they deserve to be equal?”
Walter grunted. “I thought it was because Hitler is bombing everybody who’s not white to powder. What he says is nothing. It’s when he starts shedding blood that we need to put that asshole down!”
Of course. There were ideals and there were practicalities. Nate dealt with the first, but Walter? Walter was the one who could cook dinner and breakfast for two grown men given nothing but a sack full of flour, an old winter garden, and a forest full of rabbits.
“What I’m saying,” Nate tried once more, “is that there should always be a world in which you and I meet.”
Walter’s shrug would have done an old uncle at temple proud. “We meet, we don’t meet—if we don’t know each other, it doesn’t make a difference.”
But it does. I was missing you before you were born.
The next day, Walter boiled more water and filled one big pot and one big basin with it and added soap. He went into the stores and the painstakingly stocked drawers full of borrowed clothing and came back with two suits, underthings included. Then he spread a mat on the kitchen floor and started to unbutton his shirt while Nate stood and watched, uncomfortable and curious.
“You want to go first or should I? I like the water real, real hot, so I don’t mind taking the first shift, but you’re gonna need to do my back.”
Nate gaped as Walter continued taking off his clothes. He didn’t fold them up. Instead, he put them in a small pile that Nate assumed was wash.
“I take it we’re bathing?” Nate said through a dry throat. Walter skinned off his undershorts quickly and left them in the pile.
“I am tired of smelling my own privates,” Walter said frankly. “And while I can’t smell yours yet, I imagine you are tired of smelling yours too.”
Nate’s entire body was awash with embarrassment. One more surge didn’t make any difference. “You have, um, cleaned mine more recently, I would imagine. And I do less to sweat than you do.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want a bath? Even a GI bath?”
“No,” Nate said, trying to keep his breathing even. “Not at all. Proceed.”
Without ceremony, Walter squatted down over the basin, naked in the kitchen, and started scrubbing while Nate was torn between looking and not looking, trying to determine which action would make him look less—
Oh God. Even Walter’s narrow back, peach and pink colored, with freckles all over his slender shoulders, blocking out anything untoward, rushed the blood to Nate’s aching, circumcised cock. All Walter had to do was turn his head and see Nate’s rampant erection as it fell down the side of his shorts and he’d know Nate for what he was.
So flamingly, irredeemably queer that just the sight of Walter’s pale skin made him hard.
“Your ribs paining you?” Walter asked, casting a glance over his shoulder.
“No,” Nate squeaked. “Why?”
“Your breathing went all funny there for a minute.” He dipped the washcloth in the still-steaming basin and squeezed the water out, then handed it back over his shoulder to Nate. “Here—get my back and my neck after I stand up, okay? It gets itchy if you don’t.”
Nate took the cloth automatically and then waited while Walter stood. Firmly, and without fuss, he rubbed the washcloth along Walter’s shoulders, trying to ignore the sensual shiver that Walter gave. Standing this close, Nate could smell wet animal, and he had to concede that yes, it had probably been some time since Walter had bathed. But that didn’t mean that the smell of the new, cleaner Walter wasn’t . . . intriguing . . . all on its own.
Nate slid the cloth down to Walter’s lower back, and his heart lodged in his throat.
“What?” Walter turned his head and grinned. “I’ve got the whitest ass you ever seen, don’t I?”
Nate grinned back, supremely conscious of his size and feeling awkward in Walter’s personal space in a unique and disturbing way. “It is a small and shining moon,” he said with a wink. “But I’ll let you wash that yourself.”
Walter shrugged. “I got the creases, nuts, and bolts—it’s pretty clean. Here, give me the cloth. I gotta get my pits, and then it’s your turn.”
Nate tried not to gasp when their fingers met, warm and damp, as Walter swung around and took the cloth. Nate stepped back to rest some of his weight on the counter, and so he could turn a little and disguise his body as it burgeoned.
Walter noticed though, and being Walter, he commented. “The draft in the kitchen got to you, didn’t it?” he asked impishly. “Happens.” He swiveled his hips, and Nate’s eyes were drawn to Walter’s cock, pale and growing, as it flopped against his slender thigh.
Oh. Good. They could make this a natural thing, an everyday thing among men, and not Nate’s longing to run his darker-skinned hand down Walter’s pale skin and to count those myriad peach-colored freckles.
Nate stared forward resolutely and went to skin off his undershorts, but his ribs were still a little sore and the shorts caught on his foot. Walter bent to help him out, and the sight of Walter’s head that close to his naked groin made his supposedly “natural” condition pulse a little harder.
Walter jumped back, startled, and then grinned up at him like a little kid. “Hello, Little Nathan, and aren’t you happy to see me!”
“Thrilled,” Big Nathan said, mortified. “Now let me have the cloth.”
“Here, let me get your back first,” Walter said, “and then I can get dressed so Little Walter ain’t flapping around in the breeze.”
“Very wise,” Nate said, wondering how this moment could possibly get longer or more awkward.
Then Walter started scrubbing his back, and Nate closed his eyes and prayed for it to continue a little longer.
The cloth swooped down the back of his neck, soaking the hair there that was growing long enough to curl, and then across his shoulders, the warm water being left to dry on his newly clean skin. His shoulders did that surprisingly sensual shiver he’d seen Walter’s do, just from the joy of not having sweat clinging to his skin anymore.
“You’re right,” Nate told him, eyes rolling in appreciation. “It feels wonderful to be clean.”
“Yeah? Wait till you get to your privates—that’s the best part.”
“Crap. Wait a second,” Walter said suddenly, hauling on his boxers and then trotting through the house and up the mysterious stairs. He came back with a short stool, which he bent down and set by Nate’s foot. “No—don’t squat!” he ordered and picked up the basin, careful not to slosh, and set it on the counter.
“That’s probably better,” Nate admitted, not sure if his body was flushing because he was naked or because Walter had seen how weak he still was.
“Yeah. It’ll be even better when I add new water,” Walter confirmed. He dumped the water he had used out the open window. There was a bush down there that was growing bigger and faster than anything else in the yard, and now Nate knew why. Within minutes, he had a clean basin filled from the kettle on the stove, and Nate gingerly dipped the rinsed cloth into the steaming water and started to wash.
And yes, it did feel heavenly.
As he swiped the warm water across his chest and his neck, he tilted his head back and gave a sensual sigh.
“How wonderful is this?” he asked rhetorically. “Ah, God, I can see why people go to hot springs now, or sit in saunas. Just the heat alone on the muscles—it’s a good thing.”
“You’re welcome,” Walter said decisively, hauling a T-shirt on. Nate watched him out of the corner of his eye, missing his skin as soon as it disappeared. He picked that moment to wash around his genitals, spending as much time as was reasonable on his creases. His cock was clamoring, crying for attention, but he knew better. For one thing, all it would take was a little squeeze, a little stroke, and he would be pleasuring himself in front of this man who had done nothing but be kind to him, and that was embarrassing, even without the other thing. The thing that made it happen in the first place.
His foot was propped up on the little stool, and his weight was on his good knee when a sudden trick of tired muscles made his knee give. He grabbed the counter, and Walter grabbed his elbow, and he bore himself up with Walter’s help, his small body pressed against Nate’s, and everything—sun, moon, birds outside, Nate’s blood and breathing—froze in time as he stood, naked, with another man’s hand, however peripherally, touching him.