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It’s day… fucking hell, who knows, of the war. Maybe they’ve only been here for a month. Maybe it’s been two years, and three months, as Paul has counted. Maybe longer. Maybe he hasn’t even counted accurately. Is this how prisoners feel?
Kat’s been uncharacteristically quiet, at least for a few days.
Of course, war tends to do that to you – making you clash with others, picking fights when you don’t really have anything to fight about, and isolating yourself because you think it’ll make you feel better once you’ve been alone for four solid hours.
Sometimes, dreaming of suicide takes you by storm throughout the day, milling around the trenches and finding yourself hoping to get a spare moment to steal away, walk away from your comrades and take a pistol to the underside of your chin.
Especially with knowing there’s somebody at home, waiting for your unguaranteed return, and not knowing exactly how long it’ll take to get there. That person, being your beloved wife, who is already grieving your son. Can’t the governments just make their minds up and end this fucking thing?
Paul can’t imagine what Kat must be thinking, what must be going through his head. It’s agonising, to even try and think about what he has had to endure, and to not even be able to read the very words your wife has written on a piece of parchment for you is the icing on the cake. Except, this cake is not a pleasant thing, and it only promises something of peril, and that very icing is a promise of the least appealing addition to an already dire circumstance.
He has to get Paul to read his wife’s fucking letters written to him. How humiliating that must feel.
He’s lying down next to him, on their shared bed, because that’s all they can afford to have now.
They’ve been sleeping on this single bed for at least a few nights now – they’re losing more and more men, each and every single day, and thus downsizing at an even more rapid rate reacting to this.
They may be lying down together, arms pressed up against each other, but Kat is completely silent. It could be tense if it weren’t for the way that this has become normal life. Living in such close proximity to somebody, as though they are your best friend, who was a stranger to you – in the grand scheme of things – such a short amount of time ago.
It’s not tense, it could never be tense between the two of them, but Paul wants to set things right in the way he knows best. Talking.
“Kat?” he says quietly, not turning his head, for he can still see Kat in his peripheral vision.
It’s quiet for a few moments, and Paul thinks he’s managed to nod off to sleep, before there’s some rustling beside him, and he can feel Kat turn over a little to see him.
“Yes, Paul?” Kat whispers.
“How… how are you doing?” Paul eventually settles on, wincing as the words tumble out clumsily.
They often avoid asking such a personal question. Usually it’s a joke, a light-hearted remark, or a jab they both know is completely impersonal and without any heat beyond the words, and so this is out of the question.
Kat remains silent for just a few moments, possibly out of feeling stunned from such a request for vulnerability, before he chuckles under his breath.
“We just watched our comrade kill himself right in front of us,” Kat starts, rubbing an agonised hand over his face and closing his eyes, “So I don’t know how to answer that.” he finishes.
Trauma tends to warp memory, or the concept of time, and Tjaden, having just killed himself about two hours before, felt like it could’ve happened years ago. Kat could have just told Paul that Tjaden’s death happened seven years back, and he wouldn’t even question it.
Before he can think of stopping himself, because he simply doesn’t know what else to do, Paul grabs Kat’s hand. He grabs Kat’s hand, and entwines their fingers, and it’s awfully embarrassing how much Paul’s heart jolts at that mere contact.
“I’m– uh, I’m sorry, for what you saw earlier…” Paul starts, but trails off, unsure of how to express himself. His other hand twitches tensely, with a great effort upon the other hand to not clamp too hard, too intensely around Kat’s hand, to scare him off.
Thankfully, thirty seconds into their awkward hand-holding, Kat still hasn’t pulled away.
Not yet.
Paul’s stomach clenches in such a foolish manner.
Kat replies, “It’s okay.”
It’s a lie. Kat isn’t the sort to lie, but Paul gets that it’s appropriate just this time.
Out of pure anxiety maybe, Paul pulls on Kat’s hand. Not that Paul really intended for it to happen, but it makes Kat collapse entirely atop Paul, landing with his full body weight on the younger man.
There’s a lot he can blame this strange tick on, but his mind can’t come up with anything right now — not when Kat is totally sandwiched against him, and their faces are just inches apart. Not when all he’s eaten in the last week has been an inadequate portion of stolen goose, a mouldy, stale heel of baguette and a few foraged berries from at least four kilometres away. It’s coming up for winter now, so there’s no hope for that anymore.
“Scheisse!” Kat exclaims gruffly, “What was that?!” he says, pushing himself up off of and away from Paul. He rolls over, his body half on their bed, feet on the concrete floor.
Their shoulders are still joined, and Paul still feels the trembling heat radiating from him. If he wasn’t so bright and alert for the sake of being next to Kat, he would inch closer to the man. He stops himself from going any further.
“You’re ridiculous sometimes…” Kat murmurs, shaking his head, but smiling to himself all the while. Paul grins, trapping his lip between his teeth as he huffs out a relieved laugh. Things already feel much less tense at this point between the two of them, even if the way they got here was awful and clumsy.
“You know, Paul,” Kat continues with much less tightness in his voice, as he turns himself over onto his side to prop himself up on his hand so he could take a better look at his friend.
“What is it?” Paul mutters quietly, eyes flicking down to Kat’s mouth – only so briefly, but long enough to linger.
They haven’t showered, shaven, nor even looked in the mirror for god knows how long – it’s so easy to lose track of time when you spend every moment of your days guarding the trenches, the plains, your fucking country. Maybe it’s not worth it, for the metaphorical symbol of heroism tacked onto you wherever you go, once the war ends — if, if it ever ends.
What’s to be expected, anyway? Pity? Congratulations? Is it worth it, for that? After a while, it’ll become sickening. An unwelcome reminder of what he had to endure out here. The chilling recollection of having seen some of his best friends see their demise.
Even though Paul knows, he knows so deeply that Kat has a wife back home – they’re happy — the misery that comes with serving the country makes him selfish. He doesn’t care, that Kat may be happily married. He doesn’t care, for the plain fact is that Kat is here, right now, and he could get what he needs from him.
Something that isn’t really breached amongst their friends – maybe aside from himself and Albert – is the increasingly unbearable craving for contact with another human. And being so close to Kat evokes those feelings. It’s undeniable.
Kat seems to lose his next words, as his mouth falls agape but he makes no sound, when he realises the implication of where Paul’s eyes just fell.
“Can you teach me how to read?” Kat eventually asks, an uneasy tone clear in his voice, pulling his face back a slight inch. That warm, inviting look on his kind face, is rapidly replaced by a slightly cold, guarded one. “I want to read my wife’s letter.”
Paul lands back on the ground – more plummeting, out of control and clumsy. Of course, there wasn’t any sort of moment between the two. Not in the trenches, not when they ran full-pelt to steal a goose from the local French farm, and most definitely not in their shared bed tonight where even atoms of empty space would struggle to fit between their bodies.
“Sure.” Paul agrees, nodding and not making eye contact with Kat — he can’t afford to.
“Let's sleep.”
—
No matter how much he tosses and turns, Paul just cannot fall asleep.
He tries to keep it to a minimum, his writhing around, but he knows that he’s disrupting Kat throughout the night as well. It could possibly be as late as three in the morning, as the sun hasn’t risen just yet and the night sky is still completely jet-black.
“Paul,” Kat hisses, raising his head to get a better look at Paul. “Please, go to sleep.”
“Doesn’t it look like I’m trying?” Paul claps back indignantly, but it’s playful all the same.
“Just– just… come here.” Kat insists. And it’s not as though Paul can really get much closer to Kat, and he supposes he must assume Paul’s lack of sleep is from feeling cold.
Partly, yes, Paul is extremely cold. In fact, Paul is chilled to the bones. It’s winter, for fucks sake, and it’s snowing, and he has water eroding his feet to smithereens, day in, day out, and the amount of times he’s had frostbite nearly remove the tips of his fingers is beyond counting on his two hands. His uniform worn on the plains frankly isn’t enough to keep him warm – overnight, hanging his uniform up to dry from the blood, sweat, tears, snow, rain, whatever precipitation that goes on, doesn’t change a thing, and he goes out into the battlefield with freezing, icy overalls that never got the chance to dry completely.
The other side of it, however — the way Paul can’t fall asleep without having to endure at least an hour of that slideshow behind his eyelids of seeing a replay of every single life he’s taken with his own hands — could be accused of being indicative of a larger problem. If he manages to escape the hellscape that is the battlefield - the battlefield he wanted so badly to be a part of - then he’ll have mental health problems that will likely last him a lifetime.
Paul, hesitantly enough, shuffles a little closer to Kat, who wraps his arms around him. It’s not the first time — of course it isn’t. This sleeping arrangement has been occurring for a little while — again, he has no clue for how long — and it has been getting colder, so who’s to blame them for needing some extra warmth?
“Thanks,” Paul murmurs, bare bones chilled to the core, but the gratitude washing over him warms those same bones enough to feel a difference.
“Go to sleep,” Kat whispers.
Paul is not a stickler for the rules. Paul instead commits the grave mistake of looking up into Kat’s eyes, which then flick down to land on his mouth.
They don’t say anything, for words seem insufficient to make up for what they do next. Kat seems to make up his mind as he leans down, and presses a soft kiss against Paul’s mouth.
Paul’s instant reaction, even though he knows deeply he shouldn’t mess around with a married man, is to kiss him back.
As clumsy as it is, it’s the exact fix Paul had needed. Not what he had ever expected, not in 1910s Deutschland, and not when his own family were awaiting his return to wed a girl, start a respectable family and live happily ever after. A soft, tender girl - one with a sparkle in her eyes, a drive to be a mother, and endless devotion to her veteran husband – her husband who can protect her – he has proven that, hasn’t he? A dream come true – some would think.
But no, he hadn’t expected this, this moment where the person he’s kissing oh so desperately is a man with a moustache, bristly stubble and strong arms – well-equipped for holding onto his rifle, a shotgun, for taking an enemy’s life with his own bare hands if he truly wanted. Maybe Paul’s the one who needs protecting, and Kat could be his protector.
Kat could protect him like this, with his hands caging his face in, and his mouth panting out pleading gasps, swallowed right up by the other. He clambers back atop him, even though a few hours prior he had just pushed himself off of him, but that doesn’t seem to matter at this very moment.
Paul thinks he hears him mutter, “Need you,” but puts it down to his hunger-induced hallucinations, or wishful thinking. Even so, Kat’s hands find themselves travelling to the hem of Paul’s shirt, grasping and bunching it up to his chest.
It’s like an electric shock when Kat’s hands rejoin Paul’s body, tacking onto his torso and clutching firmly, like an overly-enthusiastic puppy who doesn’t know what to do with itself. He licks into Paul’s mouth, swallowing each and every single moan from Paul beneath him. Kat didn’t even realise that he was grinding against Paul, but once he started, he couldn’t find it within himself to stop.
Paul wants this just as much as he does, with his body reacting impossibly fast and grinding up in a rhythm against Kat. Kat feels him, feels how bad he wants him.
Those same hands continue travelling, now dancing around the waistband of Paul’s boxers, before his nimble fingers pull the band down.
Paul gasps into Kat’s mouth when his hand wraps around him firmly. It’s dry, and the friction is near-unbearable, but Paul ruts up into Kat’s fist nonetheless, moaning and writhing against his body. Kat’s hand moves like he’s a man on a mission, desperate, fervent, and without giving a break to Paul to even heave a full breath back into his lungs.
“Oh— oh, fuck Kat,” Paul whines out against Kat, silenced by his mouth, before the trance is suddenly broken, and Kat remembers himself.
“My wife,” Kat suddenly whispers, strained, “I have— I have a wife,” he finishes, pulling his face back from Paul just a few centimetres, as though he’s considering the circumstances of launching back in for another kiss.
“I need to see her again.” he mutters, detaching one of his hands from Paul and pinching his nose bridge. His other hand, ironically enough, is still attached to Paul’s chest, where it had started to inch lower and lower.
“You will,” Paul promises under his breath, anguished but determined nonetheless. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Without another word, Kat pulls his hand away, and turns his body over, so he faces the wall. He takes the warmth with him, leaving Paul to feel chilled again.
–
The very next day, Paul discovers himself next to an empty space, implying Kat had maybe left to go hunting, or start out in the trenches early. Paul didn’t awaken to the sound of gunshots, or bombs going off, and so he assumes it’s more likely to be the former.
He ignores the sickness creeping up his throat when he thinks about Kat hunting alone, without him by his side, to make sure that he was safe. He hopes he’s safe.
Pushing himself up and off their bed, he traipses across to pull his clothes over his head, and up over his freezing body, before venturing out.
Turns out, he didn’t have to search for long.
When he walks through the door, the sight ahead of him is enough to make him collapse onto the floor. Kat was here, but not in the condition Paul had expected.
An unconscious Kat, with his rifle in his hands, was slumped against the wall. Blood has trickled and dried from his neck, and as Paul gets a closer look, he notices a silencer attached to the mouth of the rifle.
“You fucking bastard,” he whispers, spitting venom at a dead man, with any other words completely trapped in his throat. “I promised you – you said you needed to get out.”
Paul crawls closer to Kat, hands shaky, until he gets to cradle his face in his hands. Pulling his face close, Paul watches as a few teardrops land in the dip underneath his eye. In his delirious state, he grabs his wrist to place two digits on where his pulsepoint should have been, just to find something – a faint jolt, a staccato beat – anything to prove he was alive.
Anything but dead, would be just fine.
Instead, Paul feels absolutely nothing – just the ice-cold skin of a corpse, one that had once been able to warm Paul up.
Paul hardly noticed the passersby shooting him strange, confused glances. He pays them no mind, not when Kat is dead right in front of him.
He resigns to slumping down next to his friend, grabbing his icy-white hand and wonders whether he’ll ever feel warm again.