#pruausweek2016

Some of the candles were lit: they burned a coppery ring around Roderich’s hair. An angel with clipped wings. The wheels of his chair cast elongated shadows over the checkerboard tiles. If Gilbert had been a different kind of man, he might have felt something like mercy, or sympathy. But Gilbert was born out of the same stones that Stephansdom stood on, and his bones were hollowed with debt and fatigue, and his bloodstream pumped rivalry through him to keep him alive.

Roderich controlled the rhythm—beat, beat, on and on, even after the dust cleared and his marriage was scrapped and they were left much as they had begun.

“You don’t have to just stand there.” Roderich’s voice was full where his body was not, reminiscent of centuries of commands and threats he had, more often than not, made good on.

Gilbert pulled a hand out of his pocket to run it through his hair; the other remained hidden, running rosary beads between his thumb and first finger.

(Old habits died as hard as their owner.)

“Hope I’m not intruding,” he replied.

“Since when have you ever cared about intruding?”

Lightning flashed outside and the cathedral was painted blue-white for one beat of Gilbert’s heart.

His feet propelled him forward, to familiarity open-armed and beckoning. Gilbert knew these walls, the masses, the Latin etched into the weathered graves his boots stepped on. Memory clung to him like a second skin, beneath a white-button-down pushed past his elbows, suspenders criss-crossed in the back. “You got a smoke?”

Gilbert felt Roderich shift in his chair, his open suit jacket brushing against his thigh. He felt like a giant; he felt like a child.

Roderich looked up at him, eyes as violet as the day they met cutting through his hair into parts of Gilbert he himself didn’t know. “I don’t smoke.”

“Everyone smokes.” Gilbert settled into the pew beside him. Something creaked—it could have been the wood, or it could have been his joints, his lips giving way like rusted hinges into a thin smile. He extended a hand.

There was a sigh, and the metallic snap of a silver case. Roderich was predictable, most times, but not in a way Gilbert disliked too much, certainly not now.

He fished a cigarette from the case gratefully. Roderich followed suit, maneuvering the contraption with one hand and pulling a lighter from his pocket with the other. One, two flicks, and another glow was added to the rain-cloaked sighs and swells of the church. Roderich tilted his head, and Gilbert leaned in, cigarette between his index and middle finger. Their foreheads met briefly.

He breathed in, grateful for a burn that didn’t taste like gunpowder. Gilbert held the smoke in his chest until his lungs ached in protest. Somewhere beneath his ribs, whatever the other man always seemed to ignite in him hummed and glowed along with the tip of his cigarette.

As was often the case, Gilbert found himself watching Roderich’s hands. He zeroed in on the constants: long, talented fingers that performed, that executed. The curve of his index holding a vibrato, poised over the trigger of a pistol. The kiss of his thumb depressing a clavichord key; its soft, uncalloused pad resting coolly on Gilbert’s windpipe. His hands alighting in a seamless fit in his, on his shoulder; those same hands pulling him closer with furious urgency.

(The waltz, Gilbert had learned long ago, had been considered perverted for a reason.)

Here, balancing his smoke between his fingertips, Roderich’s hands betrayed legacy, betrayed war. His nails were bitten to the quick; two of his knuckles were stained the fading green of bruises. After a moment, Gilbert realized there were no rings on his fingers. Roderich had taken them off. They left white bands in their wake, even paler, untarnished skin that recalled some sort of youth—before empires and kingdoms and too-long, too-hot days.

“One too many, hm?” Gilbert snorted quietly between drags.

Roderich looked at him out of the corner of his eye. Gilbert half-expected a smack, a reproach, but they were tired, and Roderich only blew a plume of smoke from his nostrils and replied, “A few, probably.”

Latin was a Romance language, drilled into Gilbert’s marrow and sticky-sweet in the back of his throat when he hollered a battle cry. His voice was hoarse and traitorously young, his retroflexes less like water and more like ice (Glorias less a laud and more a warning).

What intimacy Roderich lacked with Latin he made up for in other Romance tongues. Spanish, fast, lyrical, green-eyed; sun-kissed skin that smelled like seawater. When the line had begun to wither and rot, two voices had risen—one native, panicked undertones colouring the air a sickly orange, one irritatingly patient, with the sighs of anger and unrest and need that marked Roderich Edelstein as kin.

Then French—the language of love, his best friend liked to brag. French was a language of compromise: the roughness they both were familiar with, made tangible when blond hair was pulled back with a bow and Francis taught vowels and lexemes to Roderich’s waiting lips. Gilbert’s French, clipped and courtly, always seemed to taste a little more bitter, like he’d just bitten the inside of his cheek.

Somewhere between chasing an Austrian headache and forging friendships with his husbands, Gilbert could map Roderich’s private life, could write it in one of the dozens of diaries he kept. To the trained ear, or perhaps the Prussian eavesdropper, or both, Roderich’s Spanish revealed naïveté—teenagers in a room far too large, pulling off clothes in a desperate attempt to stay the fever of ambition that plagued them. His French was elegant, practiced, but tense—bedroom talk of casse-moi and dépêche-toi and tu n’as pas honte? gritted through teeth and reddened lips, with matching, aged purple lines around their necks courtesy of their doomed Majesties.

But it was Roderich’s German that Gilbert knew best. Even the dialect he laughed at sank into his dreams. In the earliest reaches of his memory, they spoke identically, a long-dead tongue the both of them still remembered, that they slipped into easily as silk in heightened emotions or unsightly outbursts.

Antonio called it brutish. Francis called it ugly. Gilbert called it home.

Silence, a long-forgotten thing, draped itself over them until they finished their cigarettes. Gilbert tossed the butt on the floor (Roderich was not tired enough to not shoot him a dirty look) and leaned back in the pew, draping one arm over the backrest. “You look like shit, by the way.”

Roderich smoked his to the filter, mashing it against his chair and hesitating before flicking it away to join the other. “I haven’t been sleeping very well.” He turned again, studying Gilbert with a cocked head and a crease in his brow; markers of a more innocent boy. “And from the looks of it, neither have you.”

Gilbert rubbed his jaw. “Understatement of the century,” he admitted. “Things are—things aren’t—”

He trailed off, at an uncharacteristic loss for words. Showing defeat was not high on Gilbert’s list of things he enjoyed doing, and he avoided it whenever possible. But when he closed his eyes he saw flares; the droning ting-ting-ting of emptying magazines rattled his teeth; somewhere back home his brother paced long into the night, a frenzied thing that sank into Gilbert like a fever. Debt clawed at his back, coiled under the muscles in his shoulders like tired boxsprings.

It took a moment for him to realize Roderich was still looking at him. His eyes had softened, and Gilbert felt smaller than he had in years and years. “I want to show you something.”

And this was how they were—they raised their voices for centuries, unyielding despite every armistice, filling silences with insults, deprecation, humiliation. Roderich burned him and spat in his ashes: reduced him to nothing more than a fleeting thought between his frivolities. Gilbert pried him open and bled him for his pride, created a new beginning for himself and slammed the door in that arrogant face. And after it all Roderich called him forth, and Gilbert stood, and wheeled him where he pointed.

The south tower was an imposing thing, as old and worn as Gilbert felt. Roderich followed his gaze along the winding stairs, his mouth set in a thin line.

The silence was starting to press down on his lungs. “You know, princeling, the war didn’t do anything to these bitchin’ eyes. I’ve seen this tower before.”

“Sorry to see the war didn’t do anything about your inflated head, either,” Roderich said, and Gilbert swallowed the strange sort of relief at how easy it all still was. “It’s higher—a third of the way up, or so.”

He shifted in his chair, bracing his hands on the armrests as if to get up: veins ran ropy and blue beneath his skin. He shook a little, and Gilbert felt it in his core.

“Don’t,” he said, before he realized it. He rounded the chair, palms up. “Let me.”

Roderich looked like he was wrestling between feeling petrified, ashamed and suspicious. The latter finally won out, and his eyes narrowed behind his glasses to sharp purple slits. “I really don’t need—”

“Yeah, you really do,” Gilbert interrupted, and plucked him from the chair like a weed into his arms.

Roderich was light, almost alarmingly so, and Gilbert felt the stretch and pull of muscles beneath his layers. He scooped him up like a bride, and when Roderich let out a cross between and shriek and a groan he rolled his eyes and feigned dropping him. “Please. Nothing you’re not used to, and you’re not the only one who’s been married, remember?”

Another silent beat, but Gilbert was so tired of those, and continued, “besides, a breeze could probably knock you flat on your arse.”

It worked: Roderich’s shoulders shifted in an awkward shrug of surrender, and his arms wrapped loosely around Gilbert’s neck.

His hands were cool, each finger tapping lightly against the first knot of Gilbert’s spine in quick, trained succession. It was a strange, intimate sort of thing, and Gilbert didn’t look at him as he set up the stairs. Candles and dim incandescent bulbs lined the walls, casting disfigured shadows on the uneven brickwork. His legs ached in protest, the war was over and he wanted to rest for once, but a quitter he was not. Besides, the winding flights of the south tower felt sure against the soles of his boots: Stephansdom had been here when fate threw Gilbert at the boy in his arms, Stephansdom would be here tomorrow and the day after, until whatever drum line they marched to faded into quiet.

Gilbert didn’t realize his grip on the other man was tightening: Roderich headbutted him in the chest (“Reparations, Rod, reparations”) and freed one of his hands. “Here.”

They were between two thin windows, the steps rife with divots and holes from decades of wear. Roderich nudged his shoulder with his head again (honestly, he could use his words) and Gilbert begrudgingly set him down: he leaned heavily against the wall, one hand on the rusting metal railing.

It was almost heartbreaking. Almost.

Roderich reached with his other hand, brought Gilbert’s own up to the stonework. The brick felt cold and alive under his fingers; like he could push warmth into it by touch alone. Graffiti ran up and down in a column of souls determined to leave their mark on Roderich’s soil. Gilbert traced the etchings with his index, the divots and harsh lines of children dulled by time, until he saw what Roderich had been talking about.

“Oh.”

Gilbert’s name was jagged, the rushed angry script of a duchy eager to get rid of the cross on its back. The first line of the P had been gone over several times; the curves of the eszett were too angular. No question, sixteenth-century Gilbert had horrid penmanship. But it hummed under his touch with the rest of the wall—perhaps even more—an echo of something Gilbert had known before and, maybe a little shamefully—sometimes missed.

Roderich’s own name was beneath his. The smoother flow of letters implied this probably hadn’t been the first church tower he’d defiled, the two neat dots over the O and i like stab wounds in the body of the cathedral, the cross on the t crisp and as Roderich as it could get. Gilbert couldn’t have imitated it if he’d tried, and he enjoyed trying.

One of Roderich’s fingers brushed against his as he followed the four-hundred-year wake of a bored boy’s pocketknife. Gilbert stole a glance at him: royal purple sparked in the storm light outside, half-hidden by his lashes and focused intently on the autographs. For a minute, he looked painfully tender. Roderich was many things—proud, firstly, and arrogant, and angry, and gutted for it—and to see this strange sort of peace on his face now gripped at something in Gilbert’s chest, slippery and funny and strong all at once.

He beat him to opening his mouth.

“Prussia,” Roderich said softly, eyes still on the brick, and Gilbert’s pulse roared in his ears like a maelstrom. The man may as well have plunged his hand directly into his ribcage and shaken his heart loose of its bindings. Gilbert’s name was so natural on his lips, curling around the vowels and the flash of perfect teeth on the sibilant, on the n, to leave a spectre of a smile in its place.

Fuck warming a bunch of rocks. Roderich was doing it all himself.

Gilbert let his fingers hover over his, trailed them up his arm and under his chin. Roderich met his gaze, bright-eyed and waiting; cracked amethysts left behind in an empty jewelry box.

When he kissed him, he tasted salty-sweet, like everything else in Gilbert’s life stained by Austrian hands. Gilbert felt Roderich’s weight shift, and moved like his shadow to support him. He smelled like flowers, and defeat, and everything Gilbert had ever known. Outside, thunder shook the sky and ground, and they stayed rooted, defiant.

Roderich breathed his name a second time, against his lips. Gilbert accepted it like an offering, a tryst in the shadows of courts they’d both played grown-up in so many times before. Of all his self-proclaimed fantastic qualities, Gilbert also had an excellent memory: snippets of encounters to keep the restlessness at bay.

He’d sleep easier, at this rate. Maybe get a decent night’s sleep through West’s pacing.

They broke apart again, averted eyes and fists in each other’s shirts. Roderich smoothed the fabric before lowering his hands the slightest bit. “I could use another smoke,” he confessed, after a beat so long Gilbert thought maybe his heart had finally given out for good.

Instead, he laughed—a real, genuine thing, the first one in longer than he could remember. “You just want me to carry you again, you distressed damsel.”

“Oh, come off it, I don’t have to share—”

“Nope, nah, you have to, you reactionary little shit.” Gilbert grinned easily, lifting Roderich a second time and turning. “Old habits and all that crap.”

“It is a lot of crap,” Roderich agreed, his voice muffled into the crook of Gilbert’s shoulder. “I don’t know why we still do it.”

Gilbert was slower going down the stairs. His left hand—his writing hand, the one quartermasters slapped with rulers and pages stared at when handing him weapons—itched with something unnameable and familiar and welcome. “Neither do I, princeling.”

Annaliese absently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear: loose, deep chocolate curls tumbled down her back. Julchen had often considered this one of her finest features, the envy of her neighbours and her favourite thing to grab onto in several situations indeed.

She let her gaze trace the waves of locks now, under the guise of a nonchalant look over her shoulder. “What about this isn’t fair?” Julchen asked, reaching for another arrow.

Annaliese lowered her own bow, extending a slender, accusing hand. “She’s had more practice than either of us, I’d imagine.”

(Julchen had spent enough time around Annaliese to recognize the particular lilt of her voice when she teased at a challenge: a conductor’s baton, held aloft in the stillness of a dim concert hall.)

On the brunette’s other side, Eliza’s lips curled into a smile, her eyes trained on the target, body poised like some warrior goddess from a time all three remembered. “I wouldn’t call it ‘practice’ so much as ‘necessity.’”

She loosed the arrow: both onlookers followed it as it lodged itself in the painted target. Eliza blew stray bangs from her face. Her hands were bare; Annaliese and Julchen wore gloves; her sleeves were rolled to her elbows; their wrists were covered. Eliza wore men’s britches, a habit Julchen and Annaliese were both too proud to admit they enjoyed.

Julchen scoffed, lining up a shot. Like Annaliese, she wore her hair down, a shocking white curtain well past her shoulders. Eliza’s was braided (Annaliese had offered, and had hummed as she’d worked her fingers in the other girl’s hair) and, combined with late summer freckles, gave her a familiar boyish, mischievous look. “Spoken like someone whose confidence is shaken.”

“Certainly not.” Even in the middle of the woods, Annaliese had a way of covering her voice in sugar, a velvet timbre that skewed Julchen’s shot to the left. She swore; Annaliese had the decency to cover her laughter with a cough.

Julchen scowled. “Go on, then,” she said, nocking another arrow in one fluid movement. “Prove it.”

Her shot punctuated her dare, striking the centre of of the target, the tip buzzing like a cicada. Eliza raised a knowing eyebrow.

Annaliese pursed her lips, looking over Julchen to Eliza, who merely shrugged, watching. Her gloved fingers hovered over the arrows before curling around one. Shaking her hair from her eyes — rays of Sun caught in it and glittered like it was woven through with precious stones, not a far-fetched thing for Julchen to picture — she raised her bow again.

Loose: it buried itself in the target with a thwack.

Julchen clucked her tongue. “Your aim is a little high.” She rested her bow on the rack and leaned towards the other girl, hands on her hips in mock scrutiny. “But then again, that’s nothing new, is it?”

Annaliese rolled her eyes, but Julchen noted the rosy dusting on the apples of her cheeks, the tightening of her grip on the polished oak of the bow.

“Lower your arm, here.” Julchen reached out, her hand on the other girl’s forearm: silk sleeves, a pale blue that made Annaliese’s eyes crackle with violet light. She felt her tense, a fraction of a second, before composing herself. Annaliese, after all, was no stranger to intimacy in the role she played.

As if in testament to this, Eliza dropped her bow and wandered over, her gaze green and curious.

Julchen’s other hand slid over the small of Annaliese’s back, lingering over the ribbed boning of whatever godforsaken corsetry she was laced into.

“Better?” Annaliese asked, her voice a whisper of honey that coated Julchen’s ears and skin in warmth. She turned, and Julchen breathed in her perfume, vanilla and spices and centuries of golden majesty.

For a moment, she forgot to respond. “Much,” she managed, her lips at Annaliese’s temple. “Wouldn’t you agree, Eliza?”

Breath on Julchen’s ear. “Looks good from where I’m standing.”

Julchen’s arms tightened around Annaliese until (mercifully) she let go of the third bow, and skilled hands — musician’s hands — trailed up her arms.

Locked in place between two girls that were, loathe she was to admit it, better at this game than her, Julchen let herself be kissed, her head turned and Eliza’s mouth, soft and grinning and hungry, against hers with no resistance.

Ever dutiful, Julchen passed it along: Annaliese tasted as sweet as she sounded (a potentially dangerous trait), lips painted pink and her hair tickling Julchen’s neck. One hand brushed over the other girl’s side to link fingers with Eliza’s.

Tangled together, in a way as they had been for years, they fell backwards into the grass with breathless laughter.

When Annaliese and Eliza kissed, brown-haired princess and pauper, Julchen watched in quiet reverence. When those skilled hands slid up her dress, Julchen murmured their names like she was reciting prayer. Eliza’s legs were slender, her neck laid bare by her braid; Annaliese drew out her name like a song.

They lay in the grass, hand in hand in hand, a circle aimed skyward. The eagles surveyed the abandoned range once more before flying home, and time pressed forward again.

“You know,” Annaliese said, “you’re not a very patient teacher.”

“Maybe you’re just a shit student,” Julchen commented.

Eliza snorted. “Maybe you’re both shit.”

“Oi.” Julchen smacked her; Eliza doubled over in laughter.

1956.

Thunder groaned in the mountains, not that far away from Austria's manor. No rain had fallen yet. Lightning stroke once again, startling Roderich. It seemed like he wouldn't sleep tonight. He couldn't. Thunder kept him awake now, every single time. It was the same word, right? Blitz. The sound... It remembered him of the World Wars. He couldn't help hearing cries, bombings and awful screams.

The Austrian left his bed -cold, empty sheets. He tried to calm his heart beats. He needed to find something to busy his mind with. He walked up and down for a while, waiting for the next lightning. Then, he reached his bookshelf, next to his bed, and thought that maybe that could appease him. He had always loved reading. Books could solve nearly every problem, there was something magical about them. He turned on the light and read the titles until he found a catchy one.

He did find one eventually. He felt his stomach tighten. It felt like centuries since he last read this one. Tristan und Isolde. An original from Eilhart von Oberg, centuries old indeed. Most of historians and philologists would have killed to read it, and Roderich... Roderich could read it whenever he wanted, and yet didn't. He wasn't even sure he still understood Middle High German.

It was more of a manuscript than an actual book. Eilhart had written it eight centuries earlier on parchment. Austria had been so careful since, it still looked new. As if it hadn't aged. And yet God knows how old it was! And how many memories it carried between the pages...

It was a gift. A gift Prussia had offered Austria, centuries ago. Written especially for him. He smiled at the memory of Gilbert shyly giving the precious book to Roderich. They were so young... They both still looked like children. To be honest, Gilbert seemed older than the Austrian, but he wouldn't admit it. He remembered the pale skin, pale boy, colourful personality. He missed it.

He missed him.

Tristan und Isolde was the first gift Gilbert had given him. Roderich cherished it with all his heart, not only because he liked the story and loved reading. The book was precious, special to him. And over the years he had filled it with notes, letters, drawings and then photographs, once it had been invented. Every single one was bound to Gilbert and carefully placed between heavy pages. It started in early 1100s, then history seemed to be told from their memories stuffed in there. Drawings painters had used to portray the two of them, or even Gilbert alone. Hair of the horse Gilbert had given him in 1500 and which Roderich had ridden on many occasions -including battles. Letters they had exchanged for centuries -only Gilbert's answers, though. Roderich's had been carefully kept by their intended reader. The words changed, the times changed, the language itself changed over the centuries. Then started the pictures.

Gilbert had immediately liked photographs, so much easier to take than making paintings. He bought every  so-called camera that ever existed and took lots of pictures over the years. Mostly of Roderich who then started to take some too.

He found one on which they looked trully happy. Elizabeta had taken this one by surprise during a garden party Roderich hosted in 1853. Gilbert seemed more handsome than ever in his uniform, and grinned as he always did while offering a signet ring to Roderich -one he still wore anytime. Austria, suprised and delighted, was smiling genuinely. Others had been taken during wars, military exercises, treaty signing. And there were more private pictures too, of course. Some they had taken together. Kissing, holding hands, dancing, drinking tea or schnaps or anything, really. Some they had taken here in Austria's manor, some in Prussia's. Some in Berlin, some in Vienna. Some were even set in Italy or Spain where they met up for impromptu and secret holidays.

As if they were humans, as if they had a private life. Well, they had managed to create one, one they were together in and no one else could enter -no country, no nation, no war, no politics. And all of it  stayed in that old book filled as the years and centuries went by.

The last photograph was almost ten years old. Taken at Prussia's, months after the treaty had been signed. Prussia didn't exist anymore. But Gilbert was still there, at the time. He seemed ill, but was smiling for the photograph nevertheless. Becoming human until even that became too much to handle by a centuries-old organism.

Roderich's violet gaze caught Gilbert's eyes on the black and white paper and he felt tears arise once again. He remembered why he didn't read Tristan und Isolde more often. His fingertips touched the paler than ever face. He still felt the soft silvery hair, the gentle hands that once played in his own hair. He could still hear the low voice humming old  Minnesang then classical pieces of music then jazz. He could still feel the empty space in his heart. He still felt the pain.

No more thunderstorm outside. Maybe he could sleep now. Maybe he could find Gilbert there, in his dreams of better times where his lover stood by his side.

«Goodnight, Gilbert.»

For a second he thought he had heard an answer. He sighed. It was just the rain that had started to fall on his window.

Notes

Tristan und Isolde : Tristan and Iseult in German. Eilhart von Oberg did indeed write about the cursed lovers, but his work is titled “Tristrant” and written in Middle High German. I translated it in “Tristan und Isolde” for better understanding.

Middle High German stands for the German language as it was spoken between 1050 and 1350. I may or may not be overwhelmed by medieval history and literature so... You know. That kinda affects me and makes me realise that Hetalian countries speak an incredible amount of ancient languages.

Blitz means lightning in German and was a German military strategy during World War II.

Minnesang is an ancient form of German literature, linked to the Middle High German languages. Minne is the word for “love” meaning those were songs about love.

The tent opened with a flutter. Gilbert glanced up for a split second before returning to the inner workings of his gun. “Isn’t it past your bedtime? Beauty sleep or whatever?”

“Not all of us are nocturnal creatures, I’m afraid.”

For a man on the brink of humiliation, Roderich had a way of looking pretty as ever: dirt and dried blood smudged his cheekbones and temples, and the glow of the oil lamps danced in his eyes.

Leaning back in his chair, Gilbert lifted the pistol and aimed it theatrically at Roderich’s chest. “Bang.”

“You’re a lot more intimidating when there’s a round in the chamber.” Roderich pulled off his gloves (his hands were always painfully clean—manicured too, probably) and tossed them at the other man. Gilbert caught them and set them beside his gun.

“Flattery won’t get you a win, priss.”

Roderich shrugged. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“No? Then why are you here?” Gilbert stood, drumming his fingers on the table and looking him up and down. “Not for a lesson in laundry, I hope.”

“What?” Roderich followed his gaze, looking down at himself, arms spread like some martyr to a cause Gilbert cared little for. His tunic was a mess; a kaleidoscope of red and green and black over his country’s livery.

Gilbert whistled. “I’m surprised you’d show your face around here with a ruined uniform. Didn’t anyone in your rotting empire think that maybe white isn’t the best idea on a battlefield?”

Roderich opened his mouth to protest, but Gilbert held up a hand. “Here. Put something clean on.”

Before the other man had a chance to object, Gilbert fished in the trunk at the end of his cot for shirt, vest and pants. His hand hovered over a tunic, an idea like a lit fuse at his fingertips.

When in Rome, little prince.

He tossed the lot to Roderich, who had begrudgingly pulled off his tunic and vest and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing wiry arms that, in Gilbert’s opinion, seemed out of place brandishing a sword on horseback. He pulled on the clean linen and reached for the pants when his gaze landed on the navy coat.

“You can’t be serious.”

Gilbert mimicked his earlier shrug. “I’m always serious. In war, anyway.”

Roderich’s glasses were off, discarded somewhere out of sight: his eyes were dark in the dim lights of the tent, a little too threatening for a man who was stripping in front of someone who had been trying to kill him a few hours ago. “I’m not wearing it.”

“It’s not very respectful to wear an incomplete uniform,” Gilbert replied smoothly, “and besides, you’re technically under my roof.”

Custom was something both men were slaves of sorts to, and Roderich knew it as well as he did, judging by the scowl on his face when he buttoned the vest and pulled the tunic over his shoulders.

Gilbert should have thought of this years ago.

Prussian blue hugged Roderich’s wiry frame like a second shadow, the red at the cuffs and collar pushed over pale wrists and around his throat. Riding boots stretched toward his thighs, slender and clad in pristine white.

“Aren’t we a goddamn pair.” Gilbert closed the gap between them in two easy strides, adjusting the lapels of the tunic. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

Roderich looked up at him, any comeback left in the pockets of his own discarded uniform.

Gilbert eased his hands up the fabric, giving an experimental tug: Roderich didn’t resist, not when the final bridge between the pair was breached and not when Gilbert’s lips met his, at once curious and relieved.

Roderich tasted sweet, like candied figs and luxury Gilbert could do without but sought after like a starving man nonetheless. When his lips parted further, practiced hands snaking around his waist beneath his coat, Gilbert found himself on a different field with the same adrenaline; the same hunger for victory.

He pulled him backwards in an awkward, urgent dance of sorts. Roderich’s hands moved over his ass, and Gilbert could feel him smile against his mouth. The smile quickly morphed into a soundless “o” when Gilbert spun him and pinned him against the dresser.

A little counterproductive, to have given him clean trousers to change into when he was about to take them off again, but Gilbert’s arousal was already straining his own pants, and patience had never been his strong suit. By the feel of Roderich’s skin on his, the rush of breath on his neck when his hand wandered into his pants, he was not the only one.

Patience must be reserved for courts, he supposed.

Roderich unraveled like ribbons in his hands, flushed cheeks and eager kisses along Gilbert’s jaw. When Gilbert undid his own trousers and lifted the other man almost effortlessly, Roderich’s hands looped loosely around his neck, every synapse of his body fired like an infantry line.

“Gil…”

How typical of Roderich, to make even the most obscene of moans sound like song. (Or maybe that was his imagination, his centuries of living interwoven with the other man.)

Roderich’s fingers dug into Gilbert’s back, claws on the uniform that they shared. And oh, wouldn’t it just be easier that way, sometimes, to share a uniform, a flag, borders and palaces and anthems? But a part of him—a part of them, really—knew this was how things were.

This was how they were, night and day, feeding off each other and pulling each other along to greatness.

Brown hair filled his periphery as Roderich buried his head in his shoulder. Gilbert’s rhythm picked up, their breaths tangled in the air and mixing with the smoke from the candles. He was tempted to say he hadn’t pegged Roderich to be loud, but that was a lie. Still, that didn’t mean Gilbert didn’t relish the other man’s muffled cries against his uniform; didn’t mean the vibrations of Roderich’s voice didn’t rattle him to his core.

Seeing Roderich undone like this, his eyes a deep, unfocused violet, it didn’t take long for Gilbert to climax, a name on his lips like a prayer.

(Roderich’s relationship with God was also a complicated one, but he didn’t seem to have too much trouble invoking him as he shuddered and curled into Gilbert anyway.)

For a long, long moment, neither moved, content with pretending that Roderich wasn’t leaving, that tomorrow any handprints they left on the other would be covered in blood. They both stirred at the same time, a sculpture come to life. Gilbert hoisted him a little higher just as Roderich pulled away, and he smacked his head on the dresser.

“Ow.”

“Wuss.” Gilbert was gentler, though: Roderich’s reddened lips pressed together and his eyes closed, his hair over his face.

Pretty as ever, indeed.

“You never did say,” Gilbert commented as Roderich laced up his trousers, “what you came here for.”

“Didn’t I?” Roderich pulled off the tunic, passing it distractedly from hand to hand. Gilbert committed it to memory. “I must have forgotten.”

Gilbert raised an eyebrow. “If you say so.”

Roderich handed him the tunic; his fingers lingered above the fabric, sandwiched between their hands, tapping out some nervous trill. “Do you want the rest back?”

I don’t want any of it back. “Keep it, wash it, burn it, whatever. I guess we didn’t really respect the uniform after all.” Gilbert grinned.

Roderich rolled his eyes, but Gilbert caught the quirk of a betraying smile before he turned to collect his belongings. “Thank you. I suppose they’re a close enough match to mine.”

Gilbert hugged the tunic closer to him. “They’re really not that different.”

Roderich looked over his shoulder, one hand on the tent flap. “They’re really not.”

Gilbert watched him go, the moon a spotlight on the other man as Roderich pulled his tunic over himself, a fault line in the form of a few square yards of dyed scraps.

A complicated relationship with God was nothing compared to a complicated relationship with an Austrian.

When he bent to blow out the candles, he noticed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the table. Roderich had forgotten them.