Unhinge the Universe

John stopped pacing, but he didn’t turn toward Hagen. He stroked his chin, the rough fingertips scraping noisily on his jaw. He hadn’t shaved this morning. Hagen’s chin tingled at the memory of John’s stubbled chin on—

  He shook his head and focused on the silent interrogator.

  Closing his eyes, John pushed out a breath. It was a slow, heavy breath, one that made Hagen wonder just how close the man was to the end of his tether. Perhaps this tactic was unwise. Hagen wasn’t the only one who was threadbare with exhaustion, after all, and John wasn’t chained.

  John’s boot heel scraped on the hard ground, and Hagen’s heart stopped when the American faced him. John raised his chin slightly, emphasizing how much he towered above Hagen, and stepped closer. A lot closer.

  Don’t let him see any fear.

  Don’t let any fear exist. You’re an Untersturmführer of the Waffen-SS. Act like it.

  Hagen set his jaw and glared up at the interrogator.

  A full minute must have gone by while John stared down at him. With each passing second, Hagen had less idea what might happen now. The fear didn’t have to show; it was undeniably there, coiling in the pit of his stomach and tingling at the base of his spine.

  Then John leaned down. He put one hand on Hagen’s shoulder. Then the other. Not gentle caresses this time. Heavy hands, strong hands, pushing down like a warning that he could push Hagen all the way to hell if he wanted to.

  Their faces were close now. So close they may as well have been touching, and staring into John’s eyes was like staring into the same pits of hell Hagen thought he might find himself in if he didn’t cooperate.

  “Fine,” John whispered in his coffee and tobacco voice. He leaned in even closer, until Hagen couldn’t focus on his eyes and looked away. Straight to John’s thin lips, which said, almost soundlessly, “Tell me what you want.”

  Want? Hagen frowned. In what way? Tell him what he wanted to tell him, which was nothing? He had no right to share information with an enemy. He wouldn’t even share information with his own side. Or tell him what he wanted, which was a bed, sleep, despite the jittery exhaustion that would likely keep him up for hours even then?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your English is good enough,” the interrogator scoffed. “You even have an American accent. You understood me.” He drew back enough to bring his eyes into focus. “And you asked me to give you something in exchange for an answer. So . . .” Closer again, too close, so damned close, tobacco, smoke . . . “What do you want, Hagen?”

  Hagen’s gaze shifted to the man’s lips again. Coffee, maybe? A cigarette? It was a filthy habit and frowned upon in some circles, but the occasional cigarette did soothe his nerves. Coarse stubble against his chin. Hagen, Hagen, what is the matter with you?

  He swallowed hard and forced himself to look into those pits-of-hell eyes again. “Sleep.” It was the only word—English or German—he remembered that wouldn’t give away what else he wanted.

  “Sleep.” The American rolled his eyes and snorted derisively. “You want sleep.”

  Among other things.

  It occurred to Hagen he needed only shift his gaze downward just slightly to see if this . . . this situation was having the same effect on John that it was having on him. At the same time, he prayed John wouldn’t look. Wouldn’t find out. Wouldn’t use it against him.

  Or would look. Maybe they’d have an understanding about—

  Hagen.

  “I need sleep.” He gulped. “I haven’t really slept in I don’t know . . . forty hours? Fifty?” He was giving the interrogator a weakness, hoping to slide one out from under him and offer him another in its place.

  And you just told him you’ve lost your sense of time.

  Hagen blinked. He was too tired to weigh everything he did. It was just sheer determination now that kept him this side of total failure. “I can’t . . . think.” Very nearly begging now to be left alone and find just a little rest.

  John didn’t pull away. Hagen thought he caught a whiff of disinfectant. Clothing starch. Soap. Smoke. He gulped again when John shifted the weight resting on his shoulders, then slid one hand from his shoulder to the side of his neck, a firm touch, powerful, not teasing. Hagen’s hair stood on end. But that was nothing compared to John’s lips vanishing from his view as the man leaned even closer.

  The breath against his ear sent an electric current all the way to his toes. “Something tells me you’re lying again.”

  “I’m . . . I’m not . . .” Hagen turned his head toward John, and his own stubbled jaw brushed the American’s, coarseness grazing coarseness.

  John jerked back a little, but the sharp motion didn’t mask the shiver. Hagen thought it might have been his exhausted mind playing tricks on him, but no, no, there was gooseflesh above that starched collar.

  Looking John straight in the eyes, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering, Hagen said, “I’m not lying.”

  John’s Adam’s apple jumped. Then he collected himself and once again narrowed the space between them. “You slept this afternoon. I was there beside you the entire time.”

  “With your hands on me.” Hagen’s eyes flicked toward John’s right hand, then his left, then back to the American’s eyes. “Just like now.”

  John’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. His fingers twitched on Hagen’s shoulders, the pressure lightening just slightly.

  “You slept.”

  “It wasn’t restful sleep,” Hagen snarled. “The pills, they . . .” He jerked back a little. “It was not the sleep I need if you want me to be able to think clearly.”

  “And if I let you sleep? What then?”

  “I will . . .” Hagen fought to hold John’s gaze. “I will answer your questions.”

  John’s eyes narrowed and his jaw moved from one side to the other, like he was rolling Hagen’s words around on his tongue. He leaned in again, and the warm breath on Hagen’s neck vibrated with four simple words: “Three hours. No more.”

  Oh, Gott sei Dank. Hagen had to tense every muscle in his body to not slump with relief that he could sleep now, and also that John had moved away, breaking the touch that had become nearly unbearable. John unchained him. “Get up. You don’t want to lose any of your precious rest.”

  Hagen stood, turned away from John to not betray just how rattled he was, how . . . He tightened his hands into fists as John bound his hands behind his back. What was it that made him so vulnerable to the American? It can’t have been that kiss that he still remembered. A stupid mistake.

  But the touches hadn’t been.

  “Need a moment to calm down?” John asked, eyebrow lifted.

  Hagen closed his eyes with the humiliation and turned back away. But that changed exactly nothing, because John came up behind him and grabbed his shoulders again. Hard. Demanding.

  His pulse jumped into the sky, worse when the man’s hip brushed his tied hands. He tightened his hands again to fists, wondered what exactly he’d brushed. Thigh? Groin? “Move.”

  Hagen opened his eyes but looked at nothing and nobody when John returned him to the cell. He didn’t dare imagine if the man shared his predicament.

  Back in the cell, John removed the cuffs, but gave no indication he was leaving.

  Hagen settled in his corner, back to the wall, tried to ignore the cold and hard ground. He’d rested in worse places, in a forest, shivering under a tarp as ice rain pounded a dozen tarps around him, comrades hacking and coughing and waiting for reinforcements that never came.

  “What do I get for a blanket?” John asked him in the voice of a hard-pressed father with his unruly son.

  “A goodnight kiss,” Hagen hissed.

  The American’s eyes darkened, but Hagen couldn’t decide if the response was one of anger, amusement, or . . . perhaps something more dangerous.

  Turning his head, but never looking away from Hagen, John said over his shoulder, “Bring the man a blanket.”

  Hagen fidgeted. Ho
w much would a blanket cost him? He wasn’t in a position to negotiate except with answers, and sooner or later, John would start taking things away—sleep, food, blood—to get what he wanted.

  The blanket came. John tossed it onto the floor beside Hagen, but he still didn’t leave. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door, like an impenetrable barrier, reminding Hagen in no uncertain terms that he’d stay.

  Finally, he broke the cold silence: “You’re not the only man who’s responded that way.”

  Hagen shifted. The response had long since gone away, thanks to the cold and the nerves, but John’s comment reignited some of the glowing embers that still remained. “I don’t understand.”

  John smirked. He shouldered himself off the door, and when he reached for the chair against the wall, Hagen groaned. Those three hours of sleep were getting farther and farther away.

  John straddled the chair as he always did. And of course, where Hagen sat now, he had an unobstructed view of the way John’s trousers pulled tight across his crotch. Son of a bitch. Another weakness the American had found and would capitalize on.

  “I thought you were going to let me sleep,” Hagen growled.

  “Oh, I will.” John smiled, but his eyes didn’t reflect it. Or perhaps they did, adding a demonic gleam to his expression. “But not yet.”

  Hagen closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. “What do you want?”

  “Is it true what I’ve heard?” The mocking note in John’s voice set Hagen’s teeth on edge. “That the SS is reserved for the men who were . . . perhaps not as blessed as the men going into the Wehrmacht?”

  “Wie bitte?” Hagen’s eyes flew open. In English, “What?”

  The smile took on an even more demonic look. Satan himself, sitting here in this cold cell with his legs apart and his arms folded on the back of the wooden chair. “Well. Is it true?”

  “Of course not,” Hagen spat.

  “Your track record when it comes to honesty is less than impressive.” John raised one shoulder, let it fall. “I don’t believe you.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Hagen snarled. “Take it out and show it to you?” The instant the words left his tongue, Hagen’s heart jumped into his throat. That was exactly what the fucking American pervert wanted, wasn’t it?

  “Well, that depends.” John leaned forward, resting his chin on top of his folded arms. “How much credibility do you want?”

  Hagen ground his teeth. “You don’t want to give me credibility. You just want to see more than you did in there.” He nodded sharply in the direction of the interrogation room.

  “And I think you want to show me, don’t you?”

  No. He was pretty private . . . with his privates. Shy even about communal showers, and he’d positively hated standing naked in front of the medical officers when he’d been examined and graded for the SS. He didn’t like anybody touching him, and certainly didn’t share the easy physical banter with other men. He had reason not to. Better to be seen as a prude than . . .

  Degenerate.

  He leaned his head against the wall again, hated even looking at the man who seemed to share none of those feelings of shame or regret or anything else that marked him as different from the others. There was nothing wrong with him as long as he suppressed it. The constant threat to be put in a penal battalion and a first-class trip on the first train to the Eastern Front to wash out the shame with his own heartblood helped with the control.

  It had happened to others. He knew it was a warning to everybody else not to indulge in such acts, to not even think them. And the war took away any time for Hagen to indulge in anything. There had been a few moments with a comrade at the Junkerschule, where they had been trained as officer cadets, but Hagen had just worked harder and harder until those temptations had melted away. It had confirmed, however, the one fatal flaw that the doctors assessing the quality of his blood had missed and that Hagen had been suspected of since childhood. He’d staunchly even resisted the lure of Paris while on leave, where anything was possible. He’d scoffed at Paris as a “soft” assignment, while the others had indulged in girls and drink and bought silk stockings for the wives and girlfriends at home.

  “That’s how you’re going to break me? Rape me?” The words were out before he’d even considered them.

  “No.” A simple answer, and oddly sincere. “I’m thinking the better way to break you is to withhold things we both know you want.”

  Hagen tried to laugh, tried to make it sound derisive, but it came out as a pathetic exhalation, like the man’s intuition—no, his ridiculous assumptions—had forced out all the breath he’d been holding.

  “It’s just the two of us in here, Hagen.” John was whispering, likely for his own benefit rather than Hagen’s privacy. “Just two men. Your chain of command can’t hear you.”

  “I could arrange it so yours can.”

  It was only when John’s expression hardened that Hagen realized how gentle it had been for the last minute or so. “I don’t think you want to do that, Hagen.”

  Stop saying my name. Stop saying my name, you American pervert.

  “If you know so much about me,” Hagen said, “then why don’t you tell me what I do want?”

  Verdammt, idiot! Keep feeding him ideas. I’m too damned tired for these games.

  He silently cursed the pitiful pleading voice as he said, “Just let me sleep. Please.”

  “You might find it difficult to sleep just now.” The low, gravelly tone reverberated against Hagen’s most sensitive nerve endings. “Too . . . tense.”

  He’s planting suggestions, part of Hagen warned him. The other part knew from experience that he might just be so tired that sleep was impossible. And wouldn’t it be ironic to spend the next three hours trying to sleep?

  Hagen pulled the blanket closer and opened it. Gray, heavy wool. Right now, it was as cold as the whole room, but it’d warm up.

  John smiled at him, but it didn’t look very affectionate. “You might want to relieve the tension.” And as if his suggestive tone hadn’t been enough, the American lowered his hand for a lewd gesture in front of his own groin. “Do you understand?”

  Hagen bit back a frustrated groan. “And you’re going to watch?”

  “I think you’d like it if I did.” Taunting. Mocking. And strangely, no voice inside Hagen piped up to argue.

  Because once I let him watch, then he’ll leave, and I can sleep. Give and take. Concessions.

  “And if I let you watch me,” he said, wondering when his voice had begun to tremble like this, “you’ll leave me in peace? To sleep?” He glared at John. “For the three hours you’ve promised?”

  “The three hours started when we left the interrogation cell.” John smirked. “How much of that time is spent sleeping is up to you.”

  “Arschloch.”

  “Let’s not play games.” John was almost whispering again. “When I kissed you in the guard shack, you only resisted like a man surprised. Not offended.”

  Hagen gulped before he could warn himself against it. “Go to hell.”

  “And when I cut away the uniform you wore, it was only fear, then? Just like in the chair earlier?”

  Hagen closed his eyes. If he wasn’t already getting hard—damned traitorous body—his memory made sure he was more aroused than he had any desire to be. The cold blade and the warm hands on his skin as his clothes were cut away, and standing in front of John in almost nothing, he’d had no choice. No chance.

  “When I took your papers,” John said, no longer taunting him, “you thought I was coming for something else, didn’t you?”

  Hagen swallowed again and didn’t dare look at the man. “I thought you would rape me.”

  “I’m not a monster.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not.” John’s voice had that steely edge that almost translated into, “Unlike you Nazis.”

  Hagen found it hard to breathe. Just
what was the man aiming at then? What did he want? Was this about breaking or about something else? Just two men who . . .

  Stop this.

  Hagen shook his head, aware of how hard he was. He shifted his position to relieve the pressure on his groin. Right now, the blanket covered him, but he knew that John knew. No protection at all, really, then. But damn John for being so good at reading him. He’d been tested, spooked into giving up the biggest weakness of them all, and now that man was using it for all it was worth.

  And yet. They couldn’t trust their own sides with this. In this one thing, they were alike. Cut from flawed cloth and somehow managing to pass themselves off as belonging.

  “You’re right, though,” John said. “I did like touching you. At least when you sleep, you trust me.”

  Hagen scoffed. “I do not.” Asleep, he couldn’t make those decisions. Asleep, it didn’t matter. Nothing did. He dropped his hands in his lap underneath the blanket. Just the weight from his wrist near his dick jolted him a little.

  It’s something he wants. You can use this weakness against him, if you play it smart. He can cancel out your own weakness that way. Turn a weak position into strength.

  He flattened his hand against his groin, and the sweet shock of arousal was strong enough to negate everything else: The cold. The dreadful prospect of death. Their mismatched uniforms.

  John would likely even keep any guards away if he did as he was told.

  Hagen closed his eyes, and opened his trousers under the blanket.

  Now there was something you didn’t see every day. John had never expected it to happen, though clearly the young soldier was in dire need of some relief. He inched closer, taking liberties with the space between them because Hagen wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were firmly closed, and all he could see was Hagen’s arm and shoulder moving. He could tell he’d unbuttoned, fished out his dick, and used the shelter and warmth of the blanket as a final protection of his pride.

  John stood and stepped closer, snatching the blanket away, and while Hagen’s eyes opened and he seemed about ready to protest, he didn’t. John smiled down into that flushed face and gingerly returned to his chair. Despite the cold in the room, the German soldier was certainly not lacking in that department, though with the speed and maybe anger that his hand moved, John didn’t get to see very much, too torn about which part to watch. The flushed cheeks, the opened lips, the hard strong body under the uniform tightening in that position—against the wall, legs drawn up and open—or the furious movements of his hand, the other digging strong fingers into his hard thigh. The German uniform added a bite to the image that John honestly hadn’t anticipated. An enemy humiliating himself for his pleasure, to be able to find rest, despite the looming threat of violence—even sexual violence.