Unhinge the Universe

  “My—” Hagen blinked.

  “Your English is good enough,” John said with a playful grin. “You heard me.”

  Hagen looked at the cuffs on his wrists and scowled, but did as ordered. It was a clumsy operation, fumbling the laces and maneuvering the tall boots off his still half-numb feet. He set them neatly aside and then stood, facing John again.

  “Good. Now that you won’t be taking any ‘walks’ tonight . . .” He unlocked the cuffs on Hagen’s wrists. As Hagen rubbed his tender, chafed skin, John picked up the boots. He took them to the chair where his pistol-hiding coat was laid, and, using the now vacant cuffs, chained them to the chair. Then he grinned and, as he undid his trousers, said, “Definitely won’t be taking any walks now, will you?”

  “With an undisciplined bunch of half-drunk Amis just itching to string me up on the nearest tree? No.” He watched John take off his boots and socks. Little toes fairly long and crooked, and a dusting of dark hair on the tops of his feet, which somehow captivated his attention. The trousers came down, underwear, too, and Hagen stared and didn’t want to stare because while naked comrades were one thing (and he avoided them), this man wasn’t. It was enough to set his heart racing and make his mouth dry. He’d seen John’s dick, but not . . . everything. Every line and the long legs and his balls. And he thought he saw John harden somewhat under his scrutiny.

  John chuckled. “We won’t fit into the tub at the same time, unless you sit on one end and I on the other and we agree not to kick each other in the face.”

  Hagen shook his head. “I can wait.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  John lowered himself into the tub, and Hagen looked away, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. The subtle sloshing of water accommodating John’s body made him shiver. He envied him the warm, clean submersion, but in an insane way, he envied the water too, molding around the man Hagen had only touched with clothes and cold in the way.

  I’m going mad. I truly am.

  For no other reason than to give himself something to focus on besides John—naked, wet John—Hagen turned toward the mirror. His dirty, disheveled uniform turned his stomach to lead. He was unshaven, unkempt; this was no way for an Untersturmführer to present himself.

  Because I’m not an Untersturmführer anymore. I am a prisoner. A failure. A target for well-armed vigilante Americans.

  He shifted his gaze toward John’s reflection. Maybe that was a better place to look after all. John lay in the tub, dark hair plastered across his chest, arms resting on the sides and head tilted back on the edge. His eyes were closed, his lips and brow relaxed for once. Hagen wondered for a moment if the man in the mirror was John at all, or a glimpse through the looking glass at some carefree man in another world, one who wasn’t fighting a war in some wintery hinterland while a loose—if barefoot—Nazi lingered by the mirror.

  Hagen turned around. No, it wasn’t a glimpse into another world. If only for right now, John appeared as if he simply didn’t care about anything.

  “You really should give this a try.” John didn’t open his eyes. “It’s wonderful.”

  Tempting. Very tempting.

  “Perhaps when you’re finished.”

  One eye opened. The corner of John’s mouth rose. The eye closed again. “Suit yourself.”

  Hagen glanced in the mirror again, this time bringing his hand up to inspect the coarse shadow of a beard that was taking over his jaw. “I could, um . . .”

  “Hmm?”

  Hagen faced John again. Both the man’s eyes were open this time, but his expression was still relaxed, as if the hot water had melted whatever ice had formed beneath his skin.

  Hagen cleared his throat. “A shave would be nice.”

  John gave a quiet grunt of acknowledgment and closed his eyes again. “That can be arranged, I think.”

  Hagen cleared John’s clothes off the chair, draping what he could over the back and setting the rest on the floor, and then sat. He propped his socked feet against the bathtub. Oh, that was nice. He surveyed John’s body, what was visible from this position, studying the lines of his shoulders, the strong arms and wrists. He probably should have seen the strength that John wielded to break people—punches and slaps or even the threat of a blade, but those thoughts had paled a great deal recently. John still seemed capable of terrorizing people, but Hagen found he’d stopped being afraid a long time ago. Of John, anyway.

  “That order,” he said. “Do you think it’s real?”

  John kept his eyes closed. “It’s hard to say. Men sometimes go to extremes to avenge their own.”

  They do, indeed.

  John went on. “But I’ve not heard of the order, and anyway, the men here haven’t been directly given that order, so they have no business carrying it out.”

  “But such an order . . . it’s possible?”

  John sighed. “In this crazy war? Anything is possible.”

  Hagen shuddered. “And if you’re given the order?”

  John’s eyes flew open. “Are you asking if I would kill you?”

  I don’t think you’re ready to die, and quite honestly? I’m not ready to kill you yet.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know.”

  “Hagen.” John put a wet hand on Hagen’s forearm. “I came along to make sure you make it safely to the transfer. I have no desire to kill you.”

  Hagen said nothing. John drew his hand back and submerged it again. A sick feeling twisted in his guts, and his heart beat like he’d just downed a handful of Pervitin. No more of this subject, then. He couldn’t think about it anymore. Not tonight.

  He cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to mind. “I know nothing about you.” His voice sounded odd even in his own ears. First, why had he noticed, and second, why did he care? Enough to ask for more. “I’ll trade you. One bit of information for another?”

  John opened an eye, then the other. “You weren’t supposed to. It was bad enough that you knew even one thing about me.”

  Hagen set his feet down and leaned forward. “To keep me guessing.”

  “Listen. You did drive a hard bargain, but the interrogators at one of the bigger camps? They’d have ground you to a fine powder. It might have taken them a week or two, but . . . what I’m saying is that you don’t have to feel bad about what happened and how it happened. This way, you’re in one piece, and, for that matter, I don’t have you on my conscience, too.”

  Hagen nodded and stared down at his wrists. Maybe John was misunderstanding him for a reason? What was he aiming for?

  Making a friend, Hagen?

  His gaze drifted to John’s exposed chest and abdomen. No uniform to grant him authority and intimidation. Just bare flesh. Vulnerable. A man, not a soldier at all.

  Hagen shifted a little, and the Iron Cross pressed into his chest through his jacket. Maybe that was it. He was looking at a man while John was still looking at a Nazi, an enemy.

  Focusing his eyes on the edge of the tub—some tiled neutral ground between them—he reached for the top button of his jacket.

  Skin rubbed against the inside of the tub, and water sloshed quietly. “What are you doing?”

  Hagen didn’t respond. Not until he’d stripped to the waist. He neatly folded his shirt and put it on top of John’s coat over the back of the chair, the steamy air cool on his newly exposed skin. It wasn’t the first time he’d been without a shirt in front of John, but there wasn’t so much discomfort this time. A leveling of the field rather than a confiscation of power.

  Only then did he look at John, whose brow was furrowed and lips were taut with confusion, echoing the question he’d asked a moment ago.

  Hagen moistened his lips. “I know nothing about you,” he repeated. “The man. Not the interrogator.”

  John swallowed. He slowly lowered his gaze, and Hagen’s skin prickled with goose bumps as John looked him over, inspecting every inch of flesh as if he’d never seen it before. In a way, maybe he hadn’t. He’d seen the
stripped-down, vulnerable prisoner, but perhaps not Hagen?

  “I don’t understand.” John’s voice was little more than a breathless whisper.

  “Your English is good enough.” Hagen managed a nervous grin. For a long moment, he feared he’d overstepped. He still was the man’s prisoner, though he’d given up trying to escape. Seduction now was honest, not about dazzling and confusing and winning time or maybe freedom.

  Then John’s lips quirked into a smile—no, more, he laughed, and the sound made Hagen’s heart leap again in his chest. It was a short burst of laughter, but genuine.

  “And here I thought Germans got their sense of humor surgically removed.”

  “Maybe I escaped before they did it to me?” Hagen rubbed his hand against his chest, caught there on a scab. He remembered that John had cut him there, quite by accident. It helped to sober him. “It’s not—it’s no longer important that I don’t know you. No advantage.”

  Or was it?

  What did John’s scrutiny mean? Maybe the man did despise him so much that he simply didn’t want to tell him. Maybe what they’d done was all there was to it. Maybe he should just stop talking and enjoy the fact that he wasn’t chained and getting beaten up and accept everything else.

  “Here, before the water gets cold.” John stood up in the tub and reached for a towel. Hagen couldn’t take his eyes off the naked body, the way the water ran along his legs.

  Hagen undressed completely and stepped in while John was toweling himself dry, but turned away. His misgivings faded when he sat down and leaned back, the heat from the water no less cozy than last night when . . .

  He shook his head and finally looked at John, who’d wrapped the towel about his waist and was busying himself in front of the mirror, likely getting ready to shave.

  “I’m curious,” he said. “What can I say?”

  John’s reflection scowled at Hagen. “The less you know about me, the easier it’ll be to forget me.”

  Hagen swallowed. “Maybe that’s why I’m asking.”

  The answer made the reflected eyebrows jump. John quickly lowered his gaze. His hands were busy, his eyes focused, and neither of them spoke for a long while. The water around Hagen seemed colder now, or maybe that chill was under his skin.

  John lathered his face and broke the silence. “I have two sisters. Both married.”

  It was something. Hagen relaxed as the chill gradually faded. “Older? Younger?”

  John leaned closer to the mirror, and Hagen tensed as John drew a blade down his face—not the antler-handled one, thank God. “One older. One younger.”

  “No brothers?”

  “No brothers.” John’s reflection met Hagen’s eyes again. “And you?” He paused, quickly adding, “Besides . . . besides the one brother?”

  Sieg. Hell. If he’d actually known John, would he have liked him?

  “A sister. She’s . . . she’s in school. Eight, no, nine years old now. Damn, I forgot her birthday over the preparations. Her name’s Gudrun. My mother likes classical music, Wagner, the old stories, Grimm’s fairy tales. I guess we can all be lucky she didn’t call us fairy tale names. No father. He died in a street battle. A riot.” Hagen frowned. “We weren’t close.”

  “Sorry to hear it.” Hagen wasn’t sure if John meant about Father’s death or the fact that they weren’t close. John concentrated on running the razor over his throat, pushing away the lather that coated his skin like the snow outside. Line by line, he exposed his neck, his angular jaw, and as he crested his chin with the blade in a single, smooth motion, Hagen swore he felt that now absent stubble and soft lips against the back of his neck.

  Suppressing a shiver, Hagen said, “What about you? Parents?”

  John’s lips quirked again, a sliver of foam on his upper lip creating an odd mock mustache. “We all have them, don’t we?”

  “At some point, yes.”

  The humor faded. The sliver of foam straightened, and John sliced it away so quickly Hagen flinched, certain it would be replaced by a streak of red in a second or two. No blood came, though. No answer, either.

  Hagen closed his eyes, soaking up the heat, because that was the only thing he could do to distract himself from having been rebuffed. Or from staring at John’s back and how the shaving made the tendons and muscles of his lower arm play under the skin. It might also stop the building arousal that drew his attention back into his own body. He didn’t know what else to do, so he used the bar of soap to wash away several days’ worth of dirt and sweat and misery, washing his hair last. By then, the water was beginning to get cold, and he placed his hands on the rim of the tub to stand up.

  “If you stay in, it’ll be easier to shave you,” John said, and came toward him with the razor and the shaving brush. “Bristles should be softer now.”

  Hagen eyed the blade in John’s hand. “Shave me?” He held out his hand. “I can manage myself, danke.”

  John hesitated, but didn’t draw back. He sank into the chair beside the tub. “I’m offering.”

  “Offering? Or ordering?”

  The freshly shaved skin along the front of John’s throat rippled with the single jump of his Adam’s apple. “Offering.”

  “Or don’t you trust me with a blade?”

  John leaned closer. Hagen couldn’t tell if the perfumed soap he smelled was on the brush in John’s hand or lingering on John’s smooth, slightly flushed skin.

  “I think the question here,” John said, glancing at the wet razor between his fingers, “is do you trust me with a blade?”

  Hagen swallowed, imagining his throat pressing against a sharp metal edge. “Should I?”

  John said nothing, just kept looking at him.

  Hagen could have sworn he’d once seen the pits of hell in those dark eyes, but now . . . now something surely smoldered there, but not hellfire. Not malice. Nothing that would lead to a gaping wound and bloody shaving soap floating on the gray, cooling water. Still dangerous, yes, but the kind of danger that drew Hagen in rather than backing him against a wall in search of escape.

  He took a deep breath and leaned against the tub, tilting his head back on the edge. Throat exposed. Belly, chest, groin exposed. And all he could say to the man with the razor was, “All right then.”

  He even managed to not jump out of his skin when John slid the chair closer and settled in his blind spot. He could picture him: wearing nothing but a towel, leaning forward, now cradling Hagen’s jaw with one strong hand.

  Wouldn’t it be poetic if he snapped my neck instead of cutting my throat?

  Hagen shuddered, especially when John’s hand reached into the water and wet the stubbles again, then, holding his chin, ran the soap brush along his jaw, down the sides of his face, and, when Hagen drew in his lips, around his mouth. The smell of oranges was balanced by something woody, forestlike. The brush went across Hagen’s throat, and he shuddered again.

  “Relax. Nothing happening yet.”

  Hagen was of a mind to disagree. He didn’t even like having his hair cut. In foreign countries, surrounded by enemies, going to the barber had been out of the question. Sieg had shown him how to shave, and once he’d mastered it, Hagen had never even considered letting anybody get this close to him. Not with a weapon.

  John used a finger to wipe some soap off his cheek, maybe to tease him. “Well, I expect I have everything covered. Now you can relax.”

  Hagen realized his hands were still on the rim of the tub, ready to launch himself out of the water at a moment’s notice. But if John chose to cut his throat and be done with him—and wouldn’t the driver back him up if he claimed it had been a fight?—he wouldn’t get far. Cutting the jugular meant a terrible spray of blood, and nobody, nothing could stop it. No tourniquets for the throat.

  “Relax.” John placed the blade along his cheek, and then, when Hagen barely managed to breathe, slid it along his skin, scraping off some of the bristles. “I’m actually quite interested to see you shaven,” John murmured l
ow against Hagen’s ear, making every hair on Hagen’s arms and neck and scalp stand on end.

  The sharp edge reached his jaw, with just a few corrective scrapes to clean up that side. John then turned his head and started on the far end of the cheek, leaving the tricky bits until Hagen relaxed or maybe broke enough to beg him to stop.

  “See. I know what I’m doing.”

  No, you don’t. And neither do I.

  Hagen swallowed again. He couldn’t speak. He tried to tell himself he was afraid to move his mouth or his jaw while the sharp edge was that close to his flesh, but he didn’t believe it any more than John likely would have.

  John cleared the soap and stubble from above Hagen’s lip with surgical precision. Then he touched Hagen’s forehead and encouraged him to tilt his head back just a little farther.

  “I still have to do your neck,” he whispered, and his breath cooled the damp skin in front of Hagen’s ear. “I haven’t drawn any blood yet, and I don’t intend to start now.”

  Hagen couldn’t even nod. Especially not with John’s hand still on his forehead, simultaneously reassuring him and restraining him in case he jumped.

  Cool pressure—smooth, not sharp—met Hagen’s throat, about halfway up from his collarbone. He sucked in a breath.

  “Relax.” Fingers ran through his wet hair, and breath once again cooled his skin. “It’s only the side of the blade. Nothing sharp yet.” The blade pressed a little harder, as if to emphasize it couldn’t break the skin even if John wanted it to.

  Hagen released his breath carefully.

  The blade left his skin. Paused. Then slowly, so slowly, scraped upward. With each stroke, Hagen relaxed a little more. Let his guard down. Accepted—embraced?—his vulnerability. By the time John had cleared every inch of Hagen’s neck, he could have done an about-face and opened Hagen’s jugular, and Hagen just . . . didn’t care. As long as John kept stroking his hair, pausing only to wipe away some soap or check that the skin was satisfactorily smooth or maybe just caress his tingling and tightly wound nerve endings, Hagen didn’t care.

  The blade disappeared. A fingertip inspected beneath his jaw, along the edge of his lip, just beneath his cheekbone. And then there was nothing. No contact at all.