The Spy and his Boy (ending) (Patreon)

Having to retype this because I lost it in the big computer crash was not fun, but it’s done now, and retyping it all led me to make some little tweaks that I like a lot more than the original. I should ask the m/m group to take that version down now that I have a better one.

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Chapter Four

Jakob had forgotten what Reims smelled like – the scent from the river drifting through the streets filled with the fragrance of French cooking. His nose seem to have a direct line to his cock because he could already feel the heat gathering. This was the home of Merle, the smell of it was intertwined with memories of their love, of sleepy mornings and their big bed and nights with his collection of whips.

Three years Jakob had lived in the city and learned to build and tend the great machines of industry. He never expected that would make him a valuable soldier. Fixing a machine gun or a broken mechanical loom had more similarities than most understood, more than Jakob had understood before he'd received a summons to join the Army. If he had, he might have been more wary of showing up in Berlin with his hat in hand. He might have run for the farthest corner of the world. But back then, he had not understood that broken gears were broken gears.

The army made good use of what he had learned from the factories in Paris. He had not had as much call to use the lessons he learned kneeling at Merle's feet. Late at night when he would stroke his own cock in the silence of the barracks, he would think of Merle, but most of those thoughts he kept locked away. Jakob couldn't afford those sorts of indulgences now, not when he lived with other soldiers and could be turned in for acting against the natural order.

In the Führer's new Germany, there were rumors that soldiers who lay with one another vanished. The thought made Jakob's guts tighten in fear.

Despite that fear, Jakob’s steps had taken him deep into Paris the first time his duties had landed him on the outskirts of the city. Even if this trip was in foolishness, Jakob could not stand to be so close to Merle and not hear his voice or feel his touch. He was a starving man willing to take any risk in order to earn for himself the food he required. He had been careful to slip away without anyone noticing, and if anyone questioned his absence, he would have a story of walking the river looking for a French girl. The soldiers often laughed about how they loved to teach some arrogant French girl a lesson about the superiority of the German people, so who would question such a story?

“Halt!” A voice called, and Jakob's hand fell to his sidearm. When he whirled about, he found another soldier standing in the shadows. But this was no common man. He had an arrogance in his gaze and a way of holding his body at the ready for a fight. He was trained, and danger slid over Jakob skin like oil.

“What business do you have here?” the stranger asked. For a fraction of second, Jakob considered claiming he was out for a walk, but that was implausible in this part of town. These were the homes of those French who had some money and power before the Germans came, and no soldier would walk alone through the dark streets the way someone might walk through the slums seeking a woman.

“I thought to take some revenge on a Frenchman I knew, an arrogant bastard who once told me Germany was too broken to ever rise again.” Ironically, it had been Jakob who had made that argument, and Merle who'd advised him to be aware of Germany’s ambitions. Jakob had been so young back then. The war had cured him of that flaw.

His words seem to soothe the stranger, and he stepped forward. “Does this is arrogant French man have a name?”

Jakob dare not hesitate, and he did not doubt that Merle’s fondness for honesty had already brought him to the attention of the authorities, but it still made a small part of his soul die to say, “Merle Dubois. Unless something has happened, he has a house on the street.”

“He does.” So the authorities were watching Merle. Jakob should not be surprised, but it still made him want to throw himself on this monster and beat him bloody. He wanted to protect Merle but he had no idea how he might do that. The Führer's bureaucracy was too efficient at writing down the names of all those they took an interest in. Killing this man would only bring more suspicion into Merle's life.

The bastard grinned at Jakob and pointed his chin toward Merle's house. “You cannot do him any permanent harm, otherwise you will face charges, Stabsgefreiter, but have your fun.” From the way he said Jakob's rank, it was clear he felt himself the superior. So Jakob treated him as such.

He came to attention and saluted. “Yes sir. Are there other rules for how I must handle this French mouse?”

The stranger laughed. “No. Go on.”

“Thank you, sir.” The stranger sank back into the shadows and Jakob continued on his way. The other’s gaze followed him, and he loathed putting his back to such danger. If he were a good German soldier, that man would be his ally, and he would not fear having a conversation with someone who was clearly from the more secretive of the Führer's Armed Forces. So Jakob forced himself to play the part the world has forced upon him.

He walked into Merle's door with the familiar carvings. There was still a small nick where they had tumbled home late one night, heavy with drink and Merle had slammed him into the door before kissing him senseless. The next morning, they realize that Jakob's boots had taken out the tip of a carved leaf. Jakob had been horrified at damaging such a beautiful work, but Merle had laughed. Jakob clung to the memory of that laugh as he pounded on the door.

“Dubois! Open the door little mouse!” Jakob pounded again. It took a minute or so before the door came open, and Merle stood there in a half-buttoned shirt.

“Miss me? Jakob asked with all the contempt and hatred he could muster, but all he wanted was for Merle to grab him and pull him away from the madness of life.

Merle looked him up and down and then leaned against the knob of his door. “Not really. I thought the one good thing to come out of this war was one less arrogant German to bother me. Oh, I found many more arrogant Germans wandering the streets, but I've been grateful for your absence.” The words were hateful, but Jakob saw the twitch of his fingers, and the way Merle leaned the tiniest bit forward. Merle knew he was being watched, and he played his part for the watcher.

“You owe me a drink and an apology, and if I dislike either, I will put you into your place,” Jakob said before he roughly shoved Merle back inside. He stepped through the door and slammed it shut.

“More German arrogance. Lovely.” Merle's words condemned Jakob and the hated uniform he wore, but he raised his hand and cupped Jakob's cheek. The simple gesture was enough to send Jakob to his knees. He wrapped his arms around Merle's waist and held on tightly. The world had lost its mind, and if these few stolen moments were to be all he had, he wanted everything.

“Come,” Merle whispered. Jakob had never disobeyed that voice and he forced himself back to his feet when all he wanted was to lay his head on Merle’s stomach and never move. They walked farther into the house, into the library. There was only one window, and it was heavily draped. “I believe we are safe to speak here.”

“I was afraid I would find you gone.”

“I fear that every morning,” Merle confessed. He sat in the heaviest chair, and Jakob came to him and knelt. When Merle took Jakob's face in his hands, they were transported back in time.

“Someone is outside watching. I think he is from the secret police,” Jakob said.

“They often do. What did you tell him about coming here?”

The fear crept back in as Jakob described the conversation.

Merle smiled at him. “You have some talent at lying. I didn't expect that. Before you leave, you will need to beat me.”

“What? No!” Jakob jerked away, but Merle caught him by the back of the neck and held him.

“Do you think I'm too weak to handle a few punches?”

The very thought made Jakob ill, but he couldn’t call Merle weak. He knew Merle’s strength. His hands never failed, never gave out. Even when he was spanking Jakob's ass until it was on fire, Merle never tired. Merle insisted it came from working with unbroken horses. “You've never been weak. You are stronger than I am.”

“You underestimate yourself. But you're right that I will survive a few bruises. However, if I don't have some marks to show for your visit, we may both be in danger. Since I can't take a whip to that backside of yours, maybe you can show me your loyalty another way.” Merle unzipped his trousers, and Jakob nearly trembled in need. His cock began to harden, but more than that, he wanted to make Merle happy. He needed to do something to make up for the years of being apart, the pain, the sacrifice and the fear. He had chosen to return to Germany when he should have fled, and now there was no escape for either of them.

He took Merle in his mouth and explored with his tongue. He moved the foreskin around and sucked gently, and Merle rewarded him with a low groan. Jakob’s cock twitched in response. Instead of grabbing himself, Jakob kept his hands on his thighs as he remembered each lesson learned at Merle's feet. He gone from a man afraid of his own reactions to someone who embraced his own needs and took pride in pleasing himself and his lover.

Leaning leaning closer, he took more of Merle's shaft in his mouth and began to bob, his motions growing more and more aggressive. Merle clutched the arms of his chair and thrust up, and Jakob felt the cock press against the back of his throat. He brutally suppressed the urge to gag. The hint of pain, the need to control himself, to subordinate himself to Merle's desire, all made Jakob’s cock grow harder. It pressed against his uniform pants, the seam digging cruelly into the hot flash.

But Jakob ignored all that.

Merle was grunting and thrusting his hips up, and Jakob slowly lowered his mouth until Merle's every thrust pushed against the back of his throat. Then Merle grabbed Jakob's head and shoved him down until Jakob couldn't breathe around the flesh shoved deep in his throat. When Jakob started to get lightheaded, Merle pulled out.

Jakob gasped for air and a line of spittle slipped free from the corner of his mouth, but before he could get more than one lungful of air, Merle forced himself back down Jakob's throat. Merle thrust mercilessly, using Jakob, and Jakob grew harder until finally Merle came with a deep grunt.

Jakob sucked the salty come from Merle, swallowing the bitterness that had grown to be an aphrodisiac. The first time they had met, Jakob and not understood why Merle had held off from coming, but now he knew the divine pleasure and pain of refusing to give into his orgasm. That was one of a thousand lessons Merle had taught him, and Jakob treasured each one. They were his own personal sanctuary that he held on to when the horrors of the war threatened to break him.

When Merle's eyes finally opened again, he had the sated look of a predator who has taken a full meal. Jakob loved this moment when he saw past all Merle's masks and into the man. Merle reached down and stroked his fingers along Jakob’s close cropped hair.

“I miss that shaggy mess of yours.”

“The army disapproved of it.” Just that quickly, reality intruded into their nest.

Merle sighed. “How did he get so bad?”

Jakob had no answer and he remained silent.

“Have you any news of the front?” Merle asked—the question a little too sharp. Even distracted by his hard cock and unfulfilled need, Jakob knew what Merle was really asking.

“My loyalty has always been with you, and it always will be. If I knew anything, I would tell you. But I've been stationed in Karlsruhe working on repairing equipment for the front lines. I don't have anything of interest to you or your people.”

“My people?” Merle grew still.

Jakob was still on his knees, and he curled his hands around Merle's legs in supplication. “I know you too well to believe you would do nothing while your country was invaded. So if you have not tried to assassinate the Nazi leadership or their French collaborators, it is because you have some other plan. I know we argued about the Great War and the unfairness the German people suffered, but what the Führer has done his madness. I will be shot if I am heard saying that, but it's true. Men are afraid of their own children, afraid of their fellow soldiers. There are whispers everywhere.” He scrubbed his face with a hand, the weariness dragging on his soul. “ You would not sit back and allow this to happen without doing something.”

Merle took Jakob's face in his hands. “You can't talk like that. You have no idea what it would do to me if they caught you having such thoughts.”

“So instead I must worry about you?” Jakob demanded. Perhaps some part of him was still Merle’s boy, but he was not a boy in the wider sense of the word. He was a soldier—someone who was expected to fight for his country. To kill for it, although so far Jakob had been saved from that fate. However, he did not fool himself. He fixed the machines others used to kill, and that made him equally guilty. Merle couldn’t protect him from this war. Merle likely couldn’t even protect himself.

Merle leaned close enough that their foreheads touched. “If the Germans hold the town long enough, not much could save me. They already suspect I'm working with the resistance or they wouldn't be watching me.”

“Perhaps he is watching a number of people on the street,” Jakob said, but he knew better. The officer in the shadows had been too quick to recognize Merle's name.

Merle shook his head. “But perhaps you can tell me something. I know the supply routes go through your area. Is there food being moved to the interior of Germany?”

“The supplies go largely to the front.”

“Yes, but if you are in Karlsruhe, you must see grains from France, bread and cheeses and dried meats.”

“All of those,” Jakob agreed. Germany was stripping her neighbors to feed her soldiers.

“Jakob,” Merle said softly, “millions of enemies of Germany are vanishing, sent, they say, to work camps to the east in Poland or the Slavic lands. We know there is one such camp in Natzwiller, but if so many are in custody, then surely they require more food. Is the army diverting additional food into territories they hold? We fear that we can get no word of those who are vanishing. We think the Germans may be choosing to deny them food or even killing them outright. We hear rumors, but people are not willing to talk.”

Jakob shook his head. “That's not possible. Millions are missing?” Jakob could not even fathom what that number of people would look like. Berlin was a huge city, and it only had about 4 million. Now that the young men were gone to war, far fewer. “I know that many are arrested in the night, and the ghettos are full of Jews who are kept under guard. But there cannot be millions of people missing.”

“It is millions,” Merle said. “And if they do not feed those moved to work camps, I imagine these poor souls will not work for long.”

Jakob wanted to deny the veracity of such a claim, but he knew better. He hated what it happened to his Fatherland. He knew the cruelty that bred, not in the corners of his society but out in the open. Still, his mind could not encompass what Merle was implying. Perhaps million were in work camps, but Germans would not allow them to starve. “Perhaps your sources are overstating the danger. Germans would not lock people up and refused to feed them.”

Merle looked at him sadly. “Did you not say that men are afraid of their own children?”

That was true. The schools taught children that to turn in a disloyal parent was a great honor. It was hard to defend German honors when so many acted dishonorably. “I don't understand my country anymore. I don't understand any of this.”

Merle stroked his cheek. “None of us do. It seems that God has abandoned us to suffer for our own mistakes. But there is something we can do.”

Jakob took a deep breath as fear caught him under the ribs. There were so many things Merle might ask of him. “Most of the soldiers are good men.” He wanted to beg Merle to not ask him to do some atrocity. It Merle asked him to poison the grain, Jakob wasn't sure what he would do. Certainly evil ran free in Germany. He couldn’t deny that. But could he poison Alfonse who had turned down a promotion to officer because he wished to avoid associating with Nazis more than required by law? Could he poison Rolf, who was too foolish to understand any of the political realities? Rolf believed what he was told the way a child would.

Could he poison the hundreds of men he'd seen on these bases who cared nothing for Hitler's policies and only wished that the war would end so they could go home?

Sadly, those numbers were outweighed by the thousands he had seen with the same light of evil in their eyes as the monster who watched Merle’s street and the other members of Hitler’s secret services. They looked down on anyone they perceived as being weak or inferior. The jokes in the barracks had an edge to them, and even when Jakob had commented that he needed to find a French girl, several of the men had joked that he should find one who did not take money. He should find some girl who had never known a man and should hold her down and show her the mercy of a German cock in her cunt. These were not the Germans Jakob remembered from his youth.

But how could he kill one group without killing the others? And how could he stand in judgment when he fixed the great machines of war that made Germany’s victories possible?

“I would not ask you to put yourself at risk,” Merle said gently. At one point, Merle could almost read his mind, but a distance had grown between them because that had not been Jakob’s concern. Merle cupped Jakob’s cheeks. “I cannot know what you've been going through in these last years.”

“I never should've left you. I should've stayed here.” That was as close as Jakob could come to confessing that some days he felt so brittle that he felt like his soul would shatter.

“The war would've found us anyway,” Merle said gently. “But if you can help, we may be able to assist the Allies. That there is a man. He is on our side—he hates the Germans. However, he is clever enough to hide that. He hopes to get the Nazis to listen to his intelligence reports so that England can send lies in to undermine the army’s intelligence.”

“He’s a British spy?” Jakob knew Merle would have some scheme, but hearing the details made it clear that he was taking huge risks with his life.

“Not yet,” Merle said.

Jakob looked at him in confusion.

“He must first get the Nazi’s to trust him. Once he has that trust, he can go to the English and work to stop the Germans. But we have to find a way to make him look credible to the Germans. One of our operatives volunteered to have our spy identify him, but we do not want to put lives in danger.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Do you have to leave soon? Our intelligence says your unit is heading west.”

It warmed Jakob that Merle wanted to know where he was. “Yes. We’re being sent west to support the troops in France and reinforce the coast. My officers laugh that soon we will all be stationed in London itself.” Jakob feared they may be right.

Merle did not comment on the odds of that happening.

“We need to come up with a city and a time for a good German soldier—a reliable German soldier—to find a spy. We need to invent a person who does not exist, and with that bait, we can convince German officers that our insider person has credible intelligence.”

“What do I need to do?”

“You need to report that you have seen someone suspicious with radio equipment. That is all. We will use that to create the fiction of a spy watching the coast, and when the Germans realize that our inside agent already warned them, we will set the hook. Our man will move closer to convincing these monsters to listen to him.

This was the turning point. If Jakob did this, he could no longer call himself a good German. He was considering betraying his country, his fellow soldiers. Men he knew and liked might die because German intelligence officers believed lies.

But if he did not, Germany would continue to act as the hands for the mad Fuhrer, and sooner or later Merle would die. That was a future Jakob could not endure.

“I'll do it,” he said, and his voice cracked in the middle.

Merle pulled him close and kissed him gently. “I only wish I didn't have to ask this of you.”

“You don't have to ask. I'm offering.”

Chapter Five

Jakob was a shadow of his old self as he once again stood before the carved door that had been his refuge eight years ago, before the war or the Reich or Poland – and Jakob cursed all of them. He'd not heard from Merle since a few prearranged coded messages after that last meeting. After the end of the war, he had believed Merle would come for him. As the days had turned to weeks and months, he'd been forced to bury the dead and plant crops, to listen to British soldiers call him a murderer and to eat rotting food, but still no Merle.

The war had stolen his home and his strength and now he feared he would find it had stolen his love as well. The Germans must've discovered Merle's involvement and killed him. He braced for that reality. Five years ago he'd walked out of this house with bleeding knuckles and a dying heart, leaving Merle behind. And now he would find the time had robbed him of the chance to make up for that.

Grief wrapped around his heart as he knocked at the great door, preparing to have some stranger answer. Jakob would make some excuse for his German accent and flee. The French would arrest him and return him to his work detail otherwise. Rumors had begun that his unit was to be sent to Russia for work, and is much as Jakob did not believe in the Jewry of the West as the Fuhrer had called it, he did believe the Bolsheviks had no souls. He would die escaping before he would be forced to serve that master.

The door opened, and Jakob braced himself for the wash of pain, but then Merle was there, standing in the entrance to his home with his jacket unbuttoned and slippers on his feet. Pain still slammed into Jakob – the pain of not being good enough for Merle to come for, the realization that he was not the center of Merle's life as Merle had been the center of his. Jakob sacrificed everything, including his own integrity, and Merle had abandoned him.

Jakob did not realize he was backing away until Merle darted forward and caught his arm. “Jakob,” Merle whispered the word like a prayer, and now Jakob was confused. “Mercy me. I thought you were dead.”

“I thought the same.”

“That you are dead? Were you near death?” Merle studied him as though searching for some great gaping wound.

“I thought you were dead,” Jakob said. “I thought…” How could he admit that he thought Merle would come for him? While the volkerchaos of Americans and British and Australians had forced him to work at gunpoint, and to sleep with the smell of death in his nose as he buried the emaciated skeletons of dead prisoners, Jakob had thought Merle would come. While these well-fed English speakers with their broken German commands blamed Jakob for each sad victim, Jakob waited. He believed Merle would tell them the Jakob never wanted to be part of the madness. Merle would explain that Jakob helped the French resistance at great risk of his own life.

But Merle had done none of that. How could Jakob confess his own foolish fantasies?

“Come, come inside,” Merle urged him. Suddenly Jakob didn't want to. The man who'd once called Merle's home his own—that man was gone. All Jakob could remember of that foolish boy was the way his knuckles hurt after he had beaten Merle in order to satisfy the secret police of his hatred for all things French, and for Merle in particular.

He remembered his anger at having to hurt someone he loved, and that tangled with this fury at Merle's abandonment. It robbed him of the ability to even speak because his emotions threaten to tumble out of his mouth. Jakob stepped into the familiar hall. The carpet was more worn, and paintings were missing from the walls—the darker squares of wallpaper evidence of fading.

“So you took what you needed from me and then abandoned me?” Jakob demanded as soon as Merle closed the front door so they had some privacy.

“What? I would not –“

”Save your words. I came to find out how you had died, but now I see that you have cared for yourself quite well. It was only I that was left out in the cold.” Cold fury rolled through his guts.

“Jakob!” Merle sounded shocked. Jakob never managed to surprise him, but Jakob had grown up since then. He strode down the hall to the room where they had met last time they'd seen each other.

The library too had subtle changes. A few shelves were half-empty, and the serving set was missing. However the rest was painfully familiar. Jakob had knelt on this carpet. He'd come on that chair. But it wasn't him. He wasn't that boy anymore.

“You said it all, back when I was doing my apprenticeship, didn't you? Germany brought the grief upon yourself. So is that why you left me to be forced into work crews – because I brought the grief down on myself by serving in the German army? Perhaps you want to call the authorities on me now?” Jakob curled his hands into fists. If Merle tried to make that very call, Jakob wasn't sure what he would do. The anger was a living beast inside his chest.

“Work? Who are you working for?” Merle look confused.

“The Americans. The British. Word was that men of my unit would be sent to the Bolsheviks. Whoever held the weapons ordered us to do the work. That is what you abandoned me to once I had served your purpose and you no longer needed me.” Jakob took a step toward Merle as his hurt and fury grew. “Or perhaps you do not want your neighbors to see you with a dirty German. You do not want to be tainted with my smell, is that it?”

Merle turned deathly white. “What?” The word came out as a whisper. “No. No, they would not have held you all this time.”

Jakob stared at Merle. Nothing he said made sense, but then Jakob was so soul weary that he wasn't sure anything in the world made sense anymore. “What are you talking about?”

Merle took a step forward, but when Jakob backed up and brought his hands up in a fighting stance, Merle held out his palms in supplication. “I put your name on the list – a list of Germans who helped us. I was promised that if you were alive they would release you. I was promised.” Merle sounded lost.

Jakob stared at Merle, the words sliding past him like elusive fish he couldn't quite grasp. “You didn't forget me?” The question sounded pathetic.

“No! Never!” Merle threw his arms around Jakob. For one brittle second, the anger was there between them and Jakob wanted to hurt Merle, hurt him until he wept the way Jakob had over the years. However the touch shattered the rage, and all the pain bubbled up through the cracks. Jakob gave one single sob and Merle held on so tightly that Jakob couldn't breathe.

Despite the discomfort of having his arms caught between their bodies, Jakob wanted the embrace to last forever. The fear and desperation that had clung to him over these last years begin to flake off like old paint.

“I thought… When no one came…” Jakob stopped. Anything he said would make him sound like a child whining about mother's attention.

“I would of come. I would have stolen a car. I would have stolen a horse to ride over the broken roads. I was promised they would look for you. I was promised that if you had been taken alive, that your name on the resistance’s list would protect you. They said–” Merle's voice broke. Suddenly he whirled away and drove his fist into the wall. Lathing strips behind the plaster yielded to the force of the blow, and plastered dribbled down to the ground in a fine dust, leaving a fist-shaped crater behind.

Jakob flinched from Merle's anger.

“I'm sorry.” In a moment, Merle backed away and only then did Jakob realize he’d brought his fists up. He lowered them again, and Merle gentled his voice. “I'm sorry. I'm not angry with you. I'm angry that after all you risked, they could not be bothered to find you.”

After sinking down onto the couch, Jakob rubbed his hands over his face. He felt a thousand years old. He had planned for so many eventualities, but this was the one reality and not expected. Merle had thought him dead. “The allies do not keep records nearly as well as the Germans.”

Merle gave a ragged laugh. “On that we agree.”

“Did it help? Did any of it help?” Jakob fear the answer more than he could admit, but he didn't know what he feared more. If his deception helped the resistance, he was responsible for the deaths of men he'd served with, respected, liked. But if his deception had been worthless, then he had done nothing while his country had committed atrocities that he could not forgive himself for.

Merle moved close enough to rest his palm on Jakob's cheek. It was a familiar gesture that Jakob no longer knew how to accept. Once it would've made him slip to his knees at Merle's feet, but now Jakob was simply confused. After a pause, Merle said, “It may have been the most important mission in the war. Whatever you did, you convinced the Nazis that our spy was more reliable than anyone else in their network. It put Arabella on the path to be the Nazi’s most trusted asset, and he worked to stop the Nazis.”

“One man… Surely one man could not have done much.”

Merle inched closer. “One man convinced Hitler that Normandy was a distraction, and the larger force would land near Pas-de-Calais. One man made sure that the Allies faced as few enemies on the beaches as possible, and even then, the number who died…” Merle looked away. “I'm sometimes ashamed that I sat home while others did the dying. When I was told you were dead, I…” Merle's voice broke and he sank down on the sofa next to Jakob.

They sat in silence, two men wracked by a war they hadn’t wanted. Jakob slipped off the couch and to his knees, resting his head on Merle's leg. For time they were both still, but then Merle rested his hand on Jakob's head and began to stroke it. “I miss your shaggy hair.”

“I can regrow it,” Jakob offered.

Merle was silent for a time. Eventually he said, “Hitler gave Arabella an iron cross.”

That made no sense. “Those are for frontline fighters, not spies.”

“Hitler himself signed off on the exception.” Merle sounded amused.

Jakob understood why Merle was so pleased. Hitler had made fools out of much of the world, so to know that he had been made a fool was a perverse pleasure. And a half second later, guilt assaulted Jakob. Too many had died for him to find any humor in this situation. And while Germany had not suffered as much as places like Poland or the Soviet Union, Jakob had seen what happened to his fellow soldiers when they’d been force-marched into the camps to clean up what the Fuhrer had done. So many who had insisted that the Fuhrer was a bringer of an age of greatness had fought against the truth. But the bodies, the pain, the starved children with hollow eyes condemned all their willful ignorance.

Jakob suffered when faced with the horrors, but some of the men who had believed in the Fuhrer with all of their hearts could not survive the truth. One soldier had cut open his own arm on a sharp rock. The rest of them had found him in the morning because he had died without make a noise. Some days Jakob thought that the German soldiers who died in the field were the lucky ones, the ones who never had to know what their loyalty to the Fatherland had created.

“One of my officers said he wanted to put me up for a metal,” Jakob said. At the time he been horrified that too many people would hear his story—that one of them would recognize his lies, but now he was simply ashamed that they had thought so highly of him. If all the soldiers had refused to fight, they could've stopped Hitler, and they had not.

Merle continued to stroke Jakob’s head. “You are brave. You risked everything to support Arabella's claim that there was a spy, and whatever you did, the Nazis were convinced. Whatever you had to do to keep yourself safe, forgive yourself. I do. And more than that, I’m proud of you for taking action when too many people did nothing.”

Jakob felt the familiar warmth of Merle's approval. “I invited a girl out to the countryside with me. I pretended I saw something and then I yelled for her to get help before I ran through the woods. When the officers found me, I said I'd seen a man working a radio and the girl was so excited about being in the middle of the action, she agreed with every word.” Jakob remembered how she’d flushed at the thought of catching a spy. He wondered if she ever felt the guilt he did. “She told the others he had dark hair and a degenerate luck, although I claimed I was watching my footing and was not able to identify the spy.”

“And they believed you?”

“I had slipped chasing the spy. I broke my collarbone and arm. They called me a great hero for running toward danger instead of running away.”

Merle chuckled as he moved his hand down to rest against the back of Jakob's neck. “You are brave and wonderful.”

“I don't feel like either,” Jakob said softly.

”You are. You helped win this war, and perhaps no one will ever know, but you know. You know you did the right thing. We've never been about public fame you and I.”

Jakob turned his head so his cheek rested on Merle's knee. For a long time, there was only silence between them. Jakob waited for the condemnation and guilt to creep into the empty spaces, but he felt only the warmth of Merle's presence. Jakob could've lived in the quiet forever, but eventually Merle whispered, “It killed me to send my beautiful boy into such danger.”

“I was a stabsgefreiter. The Fuhrer put me in danger; you gave me a choice of which side to fight for,” Jakob said. But he doubt many Germans would see his actions as justified. Even those who had to see the results of the Fuhrer’s madness would not forgive him for the horrors that would likely follow this war as surely as it had followed the last war. The Bolsheviks now held Torgau, and much of eastern Germany. He did not believe they would leave easily. Jakob feared that Germany would have to fight to free herself from the Bolsheviks, but after what he had seen, after what his fellow soldiers had learned of Hitler's true plans, he could not see his countrymen being willing to fight again soon. Besides, they were broken people. Jakob didn't know how they would survive. “I can’t forgive myself.”

“Time heals wounds.”

“But my countrymen will never forgive me.” Jakob swallowed his guilt because he had no right to it. German had been wrong, and justice demanded they lose the war.

“The allied forces will want to return to their families. It will not stay forever,” Merle promised. “Not even Soviet anger can outlast their soldiers’ desire for home. But you don't have to worry. You are here now. Let's get you fed and rested, and then I'll get some of my friends in government to get the necessary papers for you. Perhaps the Brits and Americans didn't care that your name was on our list, but we French will not forget, just like we won't forget which of our countrymen help the occupiers.” Merle's voice had a hard edge.

Jakob no longer knew how to have a conversation. Words were nothing. They were air. They counted less than a hangnail to a soldier. Worse, Jakob had seen them twisted too often to trust them. So he hid in silence.

“Come, I don't have fine foods, and the wine has long since been sold to buy bread, but I do have enough simple fair for us both.” Merle stood and pulled Jakob to his feet. This last burst of emotion seem to drain Jakob, and he moved where Merle directed him, to a chair in the kitchen where Merle presented in a large bowl of stew made with potatoes and vegetables Jakob could not identify. He ate two bowls before Merle led him upstairs to a bedroom.

“You look as though you might fall over. Sleep. I'll check on you later.” Merle tried to leave, but Jakob caught his hand. He didn't want to be alone, not now. For weeks now, he had drifted through the woods, avoiding barbed wire and people. His German accent made him an enemy to anyone who heard him, and he had suffered for that isolation.

Merle looked at him. “I could lie down with you.”

“Please,” Jakob asked.

Merle's mouth twisted into an unhappy line, but he sat on the edge of the bed.

“If you're busy…” Jakob stopped. He didn't want to manipulate Merle into staying, but he couldn't bring himself to say he was fine alone.

“I don't want to bother you,” Merle said gently. He stroked Jakob's cheek. “When I'm in the room, you never seem to tend to your own needs, and you look so tired.”

“It's not the lack of sleep that is worn me out,” Jakob said. “A group of soldiers camped near a cave where I sheltered for the night, and for almost a week I was trapped inside with nothing to do but sleep.”

Merle ran a finger under Jakob's left eye and then down his nose. Jakob closed his eyes.

After a second the bed tilted as Merle stood, and Jakob tamped down an urge to run after him. Instead he lay on the bed stiff and silent until Merle began to under unbutton Jakob shirt. Then he opened his eyes. Merle stood shirtless, his chest hair thinning until became a narrow line that led to his naval. As he slowly unbuttoned Jakob's shirt, revealing the pale skin below.

Jakob didn't know how to be Merle's lover anymore. “You – I –”

“Hush,” Merle ordered, and Jakob knew to obey. Leaning close, Merle kissed Jakob's collarbone and then his shoulder as he pushed the fabric of his shirt back. “Up,” he ordered. When Jakob sat up, Merle stripped him of his shirt and then urged Jakob to lie back down with a gentle touches.

Merle's hands usually demanded – commanded – with lash marks and authority. Now they were whispers against Jakob’s skin as he urged Jakob down onto the bed and guided him closer to the center. He tenderly unbuttoned Jakob's pants. The trousers were the only part of the uniform Jakob still wore, but without the boots and with the patches and various stains, one would be hard-pressed to recognize them as such. Jakob had shed the rest of the uniform as he traveled, swapping it for whatever clothing he could find in abandoned houses or hanging from some laundry line.

Now Merle stripped him. “I'm so very sorry. I never would've abandoned you.”

“I think I knew that. I'm just…” Jakob ended his statement with a sigh. He didn't know what he was. Angry. Guilty. Afraid, furious, sad, ashamed, hopeless. He couldn't even put names to some of the darkness that threatened to engulf him.

Merle stroked his cheek. “For once, let me take care of you.”

“You don't need to. Just being here is enough.” Jakob had been running for weeks, so to lie in the bed felt decadent. He didn't need anything more.

Merle stretched out next to him and then arched his back so he could slide his own pants off. “If you don't want my touch, tell me. But caring for you is never a chore. The war stole you from me, but I never gave up on getting you back.” Merle reached down between Jakob’s legs and stroked Jakob's perineum with a knuckle. “Do you need me to stop?”

“No,” Jakob said. “I want you. I missed your touch. Some nights… All I can remember is the feeling of my knuckles aching as I beat you.”

“Hush. You did me a favor. The beating was enough that when I appeared to back away from my political allies, the Germans thought you had frightened me into compliance. It helped to keep Arabel’s secret. So forget that.” Merle brought Jakob’s hand up to his lips and kissed the knuckles.

“I need…” Jakob stopped.

”What do you need?”

“I want to feel you,” Jakob whispered. He closed his eyes as Merle cupped his face, his thumb stroking the corner of Jakob's mouth.

“I'm here. You are here.” Merle pressed a hand against Jakob's chest. “You can feel my warmth.”

“I want to feel you in me,” Jakob said. He wanted time to reverse so he could return to the man he had been before he had left Merle’s side, but that wasn’t possible.

Merle smiled. “I am more than happy to indulge my boy.”

“I'm no boy, not anymore.”

”You are my boy, and you always will be.” Merle quieted him with a kiss. Then he reached for something on the bedside table before rolling back toward Jakob. When he reached down between Jakob’s legs, his fingers were slick with lotion. Merle traced figures on Jakob's perineum and circled his balls.

Jakob leaned his head back against the pillow and tried to relax. It'd been a lifetime since Merle had touched him this way, since anyone had touched him at all. Jakob had never trusted anyone else with such intimacy, especially not after the Reich had made it clear that homosexuality was an abomination worthy of prison. And under the Reich, too few people survived to ever be released from prison.

Merle pressed against Jakob's hole. Jakob grabbed Merle's broad shoulders and bore down to help loosen the ring of muscle. Merle's fingers slid inside, and then Merle looked down at Jakob before kissing him senseless. Without breaking contact, Jakob hooked an ankle behind Merle's thigh, pulling him closer.

Jakob was pinned under Merle's weight as Merle took control of the kiss. He kissed the way he made love, hard and brutal with little flickers a kindness that sent flashes of need and lust through Jakob. Teeth clashed and Merle fisted Jakob’s short hair, his fingers slipping as he failed to find purchase, but then he gentled his kiss so it was featherlight against Jakob's lips.

Moaning happily, Jakob squirmed his encouragement, thrusting his hips up. When Merle pulled back, Jakob threw his head back and tried to grind down onto Merle's finger. Merle continued to stroke just a little too lightly to set off the sparks of pleasure that Jakob felt so tantalizingly close. It was torture through pleasure, and Jakob’s body knew this dance. He thought it would feel wrong after so many years, but this was the most familiar place he'd found in forever.

“Are you ready?” Merle asked as he curled his finger to provide the extra pressure to make Jakob shiver.

“Please,” Jakob begged. He bore down as Merle pressed two fingers inside. That brought back a familiar sting as his body struggled to remember the steps to this dance. Merle hovered over him, propped on one elbow, and Jakob kissed Merle's neck since that was all he could reach. Tiny stubble prickled his lips as he trailed kisses up to the underside of Merle's jaw. Finally Merle looked down at him, and Jakob laid back, his lips parted an invitation.

Merle ravaged his mouth again, even as the fingers inside Jakob stretched him. The feeling of being used sexually pressed all the dark emotions to the back of his memory. For a bright moment, Jakob existed only in the now, and now was like a hundred other times when he'd been younger and more innocent, before a sprinkling of gray had marked Merle's hair, and their lives had been so complicated.

Jakob tilted his head and gasped as Merle added a third finger. It hurt now, and Jakob panted through the pain to find the pleasure just on the other side. His cock had no objections as pre-come began to gather at the tip. He trembled with the need to thrust or be thrust into. He needed more.

Merle pulled his fingers out, but then he pressed one finger back and slowly enough to leave Jakob groaning and tightening his muscles in a vain attempt to regain the feeling of fullness.

“You are tight. Do I assume you've not been with men for a number of years?”

”Since you,” Jakob said.

Merle was silent for a time. Then he pressed against Jakob shoulder. “Roll onto your stomach. It will make this easier,” Merle said hoarsely. Merle guided Jakob onto his stomach, and Jakob tucked his forearms under Merle's pillow. It smelled like him. He had forgotten that scent of musk and spice that he associated with his lover. Jakob closed his eyes and breathe deeply.

When Merle removed his fingers, Jakob pressed his face to the pillow and swallowed the complaints he wanted to voice. He knew what happened when he complained during sex. Actually, he didn't. Jakob doubted either of them would be as comfortable with restraints and whips now that they'd seen other uses for those tools. Jakob was in danger of losing himself to his memories when the pressure at his ass was duller, larger.

The head of Merle's cock pressed inside in one swift motion. It'd been too long because the muscles screamed and Jakob started to tense. However, Merle ran his hands over Jakob's back.

“You're okay.” Just breathe, Merle told him. Jakob had always listened to that voice, and he allowed himself to slowly relax. Only then did Merle began to rock back and forth. He pressed farther and farther into Jakob's body, impaling him a fraction of an inch of the time. Jakob groaned as the pressure built. Then Merle ran fingernails down Jakob's back, digging rows of fire into his skin, and Jakob nearly launched himself off the bed as pleasure and pain twined together and washed through him until he shook with need.

Jakob pushed himself up to his knees and Merle tightened his hands on Jakob's hips as he thrust harder than before, wringing a shout of surprised pleasure from Jakob.

“Yes!” Jakob shouted.

Merle pulled back and slammed in again, and now Jakob started squirming for real. Merle's groan sent a shiver through him. That one moan said everything. Jakob fisted the sheets and Merle's punishing thrusts drove him up the bed.

Merle reached around and grabbed Jakob's cock as the sex degenerated into an uncoordinated thrusting and moaning and cursing and straining. Jakob rarely pushed Merle to the point where he lost control, but he could feel the wild need as Merle pounded him. Jakob's orgasm tore through him, shredding every dark memory until all he cared about was this moment.

Merle came at the same time, is cock buried deep in Jakob's body as he jerked and dug his fingernails into Jakob’s arms. A half second later, Merle collapsed onto him. The weight was an effective form of bondage, and Jakob wondered at how comfortable he felt under Merle. For years he had spent every moment trying to figure out how to defend himself, but now he had Merle. He felt safe.

He wasn't. The world was still out there, and he was technically a fugitive, but Merle had contacts, and Jakob trusted himself to Merle's care.

“I want things I should not,” Merle whispered.

Jakob sucked in a quick breath is a dozen fears all rows up at once.

“Calm yourself,” Merle said as he stroked Jakob's shoulders. “I just see how much you suffered. I see how much pain you carry, and I want to keep you.” Merle captured Jakob's hand and kissed his knuckles. “I want to lock you in this house and keep all others away. I want you naked in my bed so that I can tend you. I want things I should not want because you are a grown man. I should not take over your life. I have no right.”

Jakob thought of all the mistakes he made. He'd been so sure as a young man, and since then he tumbled from one mistake to another. Jakob gave his lover the only answer he could.

“You don't have to ask. I'm offering.”

Merle studied him, searching Jakob’s face for some answer. Jakob didn't turn away. Everything he had he was willing to lay in front of Merle.

“In return, I offer you the love we both feared so much when we were younger. We talked about lust too much and love too little when I loved you dearly. I was a fool for letting you leave without saying that you had become the center of my life. I felt ripped in half when you left.”

Jakob was silent for a time. He remembered the train station, and Merle standing silent near the back of the crowd. “I knew. I loved you, so how could I fail to recognize the expression in your face?”

Merle kissed his shoulder. “Then we were both fools for not holding onto each other. I can't offer you what I could have back then. My money has largely gone to the cause, and while that will bring me political favor, I fear we will both have to work hard to keep this house, or perhaps sell the house to an American in return for money to live.”

He couldn't help it – Jakob started to laugh.

Merle shifted onto the bed. “Are you unwell?” he asked cautiously.

Jakob smiled. “You remember my father?”

“He left Russia as a young man to avoid the revolution, and his will would not allow you to inherit without training outside of Germany. Yes, I remember the story.”

“He had a lot of money, which is why the Bolshevik revolution frightened him. In Germany, he bought factories and enjoyed success for decades, even through the Great War. But something frightened him. I thought much of his wealth vanished in the German depression and all I was left with was the large farm.” Jakob frowned. “I do wonder who has ownership of that farm now.”

“Do I take it from your tone that there was another parts to your inheritance?”

“There was, but I didn't learn of it until a couple of years ago. One of the party members came to me and asked me about my funds in Switzerland. I was confused, but it turned out that my father sold most of his factories and very little of the money went into that farm. He moved to the money to Switzerland, and it remained there. If it were not for the war, I probably would've learned of the inheritance when I reach some magical age that my father believed made me an appropriate caretaker for such wealth. Perhaps twenty-five or thirty or perhaps when I married. However, my father's lawyer was a Jew. When they took his office and sent him to the camps, it was the Nazi party who learned of my wealth. I agreed to turn it over to the war effort, but getting money out of Switzerland was not easy.”

Merle frowned. “What are you saying?”

“Money is the only thing I don't worry about. My father's accounts are still sitting in Switzerland waiting for me. If I have the papers saying I am free from arrest for being a German soldier, I can claim my fortune. But the money that mattered so much to me in my youth matters little now. You can't imagine what I've seen.” Jakob closed his eyes and fought back the memories.

“No matter,” Merle said, and he kissed the end of Jakob’s nose. “Sleep. I will rest here with you today, and tomorrow we will begin to settle the rest.” Merle pulled a bedsheet over them and pressed close. Despite his claim that he hadn't been tired, Jakob found himself drifting off to sleep.

When he was on the edge of slumber, he heard Merle whisper, “Everything will work out, my love. Now that I have my boy back, everything will work out fine.” That promise followed Jakob into his dreams, and for the first time in years, he slept without nightmares