Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

playlist

“Michael, that’s Sascha Röhr—” 

Michael glares, tucking himself further into his hoodie as the older man, an ‘Authourity’, eyes him. He blows smoke in their faces. His eyes water, he fights not to show it. 

“Sascha, this is Michael Kaiser, you’re brothers from now on,” The Authourity gestures for the thief. 

He does not look the boy’s way, busy with his own cigarette. 

“You’ll be at Alexanderplatz and Klosterstr.—after some time, you’ll be given a list of names and addresses. Deliver money and the products to the usual location before then.”

The thief drops his bud, smothering it with the sole of his shoe. “Got it.”

They’re dismissed. The thief starts the trek and Michael lags like a shadow. Leaving the street art scrawled blocks, he recognizes Alexanderplatz as where he transferred from. Except any security or police are gone, letting the underbelly of society show: the homeless and addicts. Scum like Michael. The thief goes up to each of them, uttering a Russian phrase to hand over a packet of drugs or roll of money, allocated to a paper bag or envelope. At the platforms of Klosterstraße, Michael is thrust into the spotlight before a dishevelled man. The lesson is over.

He pressed his lips together, doing his best to mimic the phrase: “Нарциссы.”

His heart almost leaps out of his throat as the man dives for his ankles, stomping on his hands.

“Two days! Just two days!” He exclaims.

“You know that’s not how this works,” The thief digs his heel into his back, pressing the man’s face into the concrete and nailing him in the ribs, rolling him over to address Michael. “Look, this is protocol. Give him some.”

This is where the whispers on the streets have led him. Their rules are the same.

Michael is to apply that logic. The sun is setting, all the blended sounds of the world concentrated. He times his footsteps with the thief’s, enlarging the strides bigger until he can reach into his pocket. He waits until he’s in between steps and taking hold of the envelope. He scans for a shift in demeanour before opening the flap and picking a bill. The thief stops. 

Michael freezes.

“I wouldn’t try that.”

The other doesn’t seem stronger or taller. He will win. “You’d snitch?”

“Wow. You are a new thief,” He replies, dryly amused. “Nah, I’m just saying I’ve seen what happens to those who fail to even meet the quota by a single Euro. Besides, word has it part of the money also goes to ‘Ndrangheta. Bratva pays fair as long as everything goes as it should.”

Michael surrenders with a click of his tongue. He thankfully isn’t that stupid. And strangely, the thief does nothing after taking the envelope back. No hitting, no spitting on him, not even a curse leaves his mouth. The question of why is on the tip of his tongue, but he knows better—

A knife comes at his throat. He grabs the assailant’s forearms and trips them. 

It’s the desperate man from the train station. 

He brings him to the ground with him, getting on top of him, screaming in his face and pressing the knife lower. Michael’s grip on the man’s wrists trembles; his body going lax as his mind replaces the stranger’s face with someone else’s. His eyes dart around, looking for something, anything, maybe an empty vodka bottle lying around to give him an opening to run.

There’s a bang.

The man collapses.

Michael scurries from under the body, panting. Something grabs his wrist with the faint scream to run. Michael, in a daze, follows the other figure. 

He’s ready to fall over from exhaustion when they stop, being hustled inside somewhere. His heart thunders in his chest, gasping for air, but he doesn’t dare take his eyes off the thief. He moves first, going through cupboards in a shabby kitchen area on the opposite side of the room, withdrawing two mason jars and filling them from a jug on the counter: a slab of wood laid on an old stove top. Michael almost flinches when he offers him the water, just noticing up close he’s his age. He’s too tired to skepticize anything else, chugging it down and not caring that he soaks his hoodie. 

The thief sits back down on the mattress, throwing a gun on the nightstand. Was that how he got loose? He shot that man?

Michael’s stomach drops, remembering the door was locked behind them. 

“How did you get a gun?”

“Just have to look in the right place, I suppose,” He replies coolly. Too level for Michael’s liking. 

“What. . .” Michael positions himself before the exit as if he could run. As if he wasn’t trapped with someone he pissed off earlier with a gun. “Is this place?”

“A place I fixed up. Found a mattress and that desk,” He jerks his head at the far left corner to a rustic dark wood piece of furniture, the last figments of natural light casting in through a window above. “The sink and electricity don’t work, but the bathtub and toilet do,” He points to the door across from the mattress. “The kitchen needs a lot of work, so there’s only a cooler.”

“Did you just. . .” Michael’s voice trails off, his fear vapourizing. Even if that attitude is a poker face, it’s rocksolid. This guy must be insane. “. . .Give me a tour?”

“I. . .” He blankly stares back at Michael, “I guess I did.”

Chapter Text

playlist

Michael leans over Sascha’s desk, squinting down at the array of papers. “What’s that stuff you’re always working on?”

He lets out a puff of tobacco smoke, responding with a sigh and without lifting his pencil: “What does it look like?”

He doesn’t reply, bracing the prelude to an explosion.

Sascha looks up at him, head tilted. “It’s homework.”

“Oh,” Michael nods. “Homework.”

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to get when you go to school?

“You’re very bad at pretending, Michael—” The gears are turning in Sascha’s head, the pieces fall into place. 

“Fuck off,” He finds the door, the humiliation and venerability of a visible chink in his armour baring on his shoulders. “I’m going to the train station.”

Sascha grabs the hem of the back of his hoodie. Michael could easily pull free. He could run, ask to be assigned to another thief, and never see this crazy person again. He should— 

“You. . . don’t go to school? Even though it doesn’t count as work?”

“No. . .”

“I mean nothing by that. . . can you even read?”

His ears burn, shrinking into his filthy clothes. “I tried once, the letters looked weird.”

“Weird?”

“. . . Fuzzy-like.”

Sascha lets go, and a certainty he’s never been addressed with pierces right into him. “We get our paychecks tomorrow. We’ll see if we can buy a pair of reading glasses.”

“Is that better?”

The fine print of the price tags on the department store displays is less foreign, the similar tones of colours blending seamlessly. “It is.”

Sascha pops back from behind the stand with glasses made of a clear, hard plastic. “There, those look better on you.” 

“You think so?”

“Perfect,” He affirms effortlessly, picking the lenses off his face and placing them inside a case. “Consider this a gift.”

“‘A. . . gift’?” A lump forms with another question of ‘why?’; those only exist for children behind frosted windows on Christmas Eve, for people. “. . .You don’t have to—”

An obnoxious cough of the word ‘fags’ from the clerk cuts him off.

Michael leers with disgust. “You got something to say?”

“I said, you’re a pair of fa—”

Sascha digs into his pocket and throws the required amount at the clerk, dragging Michael out of the store by his sleeve, middle finger up proud.

“Now let’s spell your name: ‘Mich-a-el’.”

Two lines, two arches between, fit in the column of Sascha’s notebook. “What the hell comes after the ‘M’?”

“The sound is spelt ‘i-c-h’, like ‘I’.”

He nods, repeating the three characters in his head. Beyond memorizing the locations of grocery store cameras, nothing has required this much concentration. At the curve of the ‘c’, the muscles in his wrist strain and the ‘e’ is equally annoying. With the simple line to make the ‘l’, he sets the pencil down, staring down at his creation. The same defiant gratification ripples through as stashing away money in his safe or that night, buying his football. The printing says ‘Michael’; not ‘subhuman’, not ‘trash’, or ‘piece of shit’. ‘Michael’.

Sascha writes something beside his name, adding a plus sign in between, and points with the eraser. “What’s that?”

“Sa. . . sch-a—” He huffs at the other’s foolish aim of inflating his ego, resting his chin on his palm before repeating to complete, “Sascha.”

“That’s perfect.”

The smile is of pride. It’s soft, and that sends a swarming warmth through his chest.

He studies the footballers on the TV, the way the player orients his body to strike at the goal. The goalie blocks the shot, but the technique is worth trying to mimic in a park later on.

“Stop gawking at them like a fag and get me the orange juice—” His father dumps vodka into an empty beer can, not caring as it spills on the coffee table. “Then go to work.”

He bows his head, “Yes, Sir.”

“‘Yes, Sir’!” The man mocks with a slurred, shrill voice, throwing the empty spirits container at his feet to throw away. Even though anything else would get him smacked. 

In the kitchen, he takes mental stock of what’s running low. The thing on the couch never bothers to give him a list, but since he’s going for screwdrivers this early, he’ll be passed out by the evening.

The entry has EAS systems and there are cameras in the cashier area, bathroom, and the storage, making a rear escape impossible. The overhead ones in the aisles are fake, and mirrors are posted in the corners of the store. 

Bread, milk, cheese smokies, and toothpaste for himself.

The three other things go in his bag, stuffed in the middle of the second last aisle, all the employees are busy elsewhere. Effectively a blind spot. He’d rather run from security guards everyday of his life than spend his earned money on anything intended for the bastard’s gullet.

Michael pays for his toothpaste and trips the EAS on his way out. He freezes, looking back at the cashier with faux shock. The store doesn’t have a strong history of shoplifting, but instead of letting him go under the assumption of a glitch, they question his backpack. 

The man behind him in the line speaks up as he is about to make a break for it. The Authourity who entered him underground. “He paid, didn’t he?”

The man gives him a look as he leaves. The one to want to talk. So he waits by the dumpsters in the alleyway. Right at home, because places like these were his favourite to build up the courage to steal when he was a kid, prepare himself to face his father’s wrath, or even inside to hide.

He flinches from approaching footsteps.

“I would ask why you’re still stealing even though you have plenty enough, but that’s none of my business,” The Authourity digs into his coat and holds out a quartered piece of parchment. “Get this done. You can find your partner out of the highschool in central Wedding, if needed. Usual drop off place.”

Michael nods.

“You’re like Sascha when he was brought in. Is he teaching you well?”

“How old was he?” He asks before he can bridle his curiosity.

“Thirteen, words have it, looking to provide for himself. The youngest since the last century. He might even become a modern Thief-In-Law.”

“Прощание,” He grunts out, turning tail to suppress more questions, a mutual ‘farewell’ echoing behind him.

A bell rings and innumerable people his own age flood out the doors. Each one is grinning with loud voices; Michael’s ears cannot keep up, latching onto every piece of intel and tracking where each person is going. When Sascha exits the school, he drags his feet. No one follows him, an interloper among his people. Opposite of Michael’s impression. His eyes are hollow, eyebags more pronounced, but instincts sharper. The weighted aimlessness in his posture evaporates as he feels his eyes on him, and they walk parallel out to the sidewalk. Then Sascha meets his eyes and laughs. Laughs. As if he was not a shell of himself, like those they collect from, minutes ago. “How the hell did you find me?”

“It’s not like I’m a part of the mafia, or anything.”

They sit on a pair of rusty, creaking swings in a park nearby. Sascha does not waste any time lighting a cigarette up, kicking pebbles as he sways.

“Those names came in today,” Michael tests the waters. The other takes in a lungful of nicotine, waiting for him to finish speaking. He isn’t angry, only tired. “They ended up mostly being in my district, so I did them while you were doing whatever the hell you were doing.”

“You did?”

“I spent three hours using Google Maps on a fucking library computer. Libraries are fucking weird.”

Sascha chuckles softly, the reaction this time genuine. “I guess that would have been your first time in a library.”

The seed of shame returns coupled with a scowl. He sends himself over to an abandoned football in the middle of the grass.

“Why’d you come here, then?”

Technically, since he’d done the rounds, he didn’t have to see Sascha until the weekend for a lesson in the underworld. Or, hell, for two weeks if he felt like it for the next collection. 

“Bored,” He guesses for himself. The ball is slightly deflated, but dribbling isn’t impossible. He sets his sights on a tree, quickening his pace, projecting the movements of the player on TV to the front of his retinas. He plants his non-dominant foot ahead of the ball, winding up his leg, aiming for the centre, and swings as hard as he can. The target quivers, and as always, the ball comes back unblemished right to his feet.

“You play football?”

“I will.”

It’s a half-baked dream. It would take a miracle for a rat like him to even step on a field.

“I believe it,” Sascha acknowledges effortlessly, no contrivity or hesitation. He pulls a thick book out of his bag, a piece of lined paper in the cover. “The vocabulary might be too advanced, but try it. Copy down all the words you don’t know and we’ll go over them.”

“‘A Bri. . .” Michael gnaws at his lip, his head about to be sent into a tizzy. “Brief His-tory of Man-kind’.”

Another gift.

Why?

“Even though I haven’t finished it, I feel you would like it. It covers the theories of human evolution with sociology, psychology and a bit of philosophy.” 

He’s already on his way, expecting Michael will follow him side-by-side. He does.

Chapter Text

playlist

“Harlow’s Monkeys,” Sascha starts, barely above a whisper, pointing to the article title on the library’s computer screen. Their knees knock together to accommodate the small console space. “A scientist took baby monkeys and made them grow up with non-living mothers made of wire—one covered in a warm cloth and the other without, which only provided milk.” He clears his throat, shifting in his chair. “It showed that the monkeys would always choose the one covered in cloth. If the monkey were to grow up with only the wire mother, who would not provide comfort, it would become self-dependent—learn to comfort itself when it is afraid.”

They had to spend the next hour discussing why love is oh-so important for human development. Michael wanted to laugh.

“‘We are so en-am-oured’—” Michael rubs his temple, turning to the inside of the cover to his list of unknown words, jotting another down. “—‘of our high intell-igence that we assume that when it comes to cer. . . cere’—”

There’s a presence by his doorway.

Michael’s head shoots up.

“What is that?”

He doesn't respond. When the book is ripped from his hands and flung into the corridor, he does not go to retrieve it. He knows better.

A vein pops in his father’s bloated neck. He must have made heavy losses at the gas station lottery. “You think you’re better than me now—” He pulls him by the collar, drags him into the living room, and forces him over the coffee table. The hoarded cans scatter, and the bottles shatter. He bites a yell as a shard pierces his thigh; his glasses tumble to his father's feet. “Is that it, subhuman!” 

Michael throws himself on top of them. The man nails his ribs with each kick.

He flicks the shards out. He’s been given worse bloody noses, but it makes a messy pile of toilet paper to make it stop gushing. Under his bed, beside his safe, the darker colour patches fraying, he takes and cradles the ball in the corner of his bedroom, waiting for an opportunity to slip away.

“Could I,” Michel shuts the case, setting them with the book in front of Sascha, hoping he doesn’t notice the mishandled pages from its own bout of violence. “Keep these here with you?”

He tilts his head, waiting for an explanation. 

“My—” Michael pushes down the repulsion in his throat, bracing himself to pronounce the title. “My father doesn’t like it.”

“I see,” Sascha says flatly. The charged rising from his chair betrays his calm. “Let me walk you to the train station.”

It isn’t propositional. He knows everything, but questions nothing. Admiring the dingy scenery of used needles and cigarettes lining the sidewalk, he keeps pace with him, however slow he is. He waits for him at the bottom of every staircase as he fights the pain, needing to put weight on both feet to not look weak. 

He should have never come if it’s just to pity him. 

Michael is in a staring contest with the schedule board. If only the train derails when it pulls into the station, he wouldn’t go back to his house ever again. 

It delays three minutes. 

Whether it prolongs the misery of the inevitable or keeps him safe a little bit longer is beyond him.

“Your father is a piece of shit?”

“Yours is?” He counters without hesitation.

Sascha cocks his head, staring ahead into somewhere he can’t see. The rails screech through the station, the train comes to a halt before them. 

“I suppose.”

His window is closed. It wasn’t that way when he left.

The years of hard-wired intuition tingle in Michael’s gut, the hairs on the back of his neck standing. He has no other choice than to hop his own fence to reach the back door. 

The first thing he does is take off his shoes; walking in socks dampens noise. Up the small flight of stairs into the kitchen, he clutches the rail, stepping on the sides of each stair. Then across the tiles, he walks on the outsides of his feet, limiting contact with the floor, with his back to the hallway.

His father skulks in front of the television, swallowing back a beer and setting it down empty.

His bedroom is in sight.

That one pesky floorboard outside his door creaks.

“You think you’re fucking smart now, huh?” His beady eyes lock onto him, a cougar readying to pounce. He moves.

Michael rushes into his room, pressing his weight against the door. The lock is long broken.

“You think you just sneak out!” He pounds on the door, trying for the knob. “Let me in, you piece of shit!”

The door gives an inch as the man slams his weight into it. On the next, Michael goes flying. Grimy hands fly to his neck, the nauseating scent of vodka entrapping him. Michael musters his strength and kicks the man as hard as he can in the chest. The grasp slacks enough for him to make a break for it. He’s yanked by his hair, his temple colliding with the wall hard enough to make his vision spot. The man squeezes tighter. He can no longer feel the ground under his feet. His ears ring. He must play dead.

Michael’s limbs flail, eyes rolling to the ceiling.

Play dead.

He closes his eyes, willing his muscles to lax.

Play dead.

He’s dropped, slumping against the wall. 

A glob of saliva lands on his arm. “Fucking disgusting.”

He gasps, diaphragm fighting. His ears follow the lumbering footsteps. The fridge door opens. Michael bolts for the exit, head spinning. 

His hands tremble as he works the dial of the upside-down padlock. Sascha is here, reaching for his gun. He races for the bathroom. He rummages under the sink for the red bag with a cross. Fix himself up and leave. 

The door creaks. Michael’s head snaps to the figure, bracing himself. Sascha stares and stares for a while. If he is even disturbed, it’s impossible to tell. 

He turns the bath faucet on.

“You should wash up first.”

Then he leaves him alone. Perhaps he anticipated something like this.

Michael curls up half-submerged. The water barely qualifies as hot, but it’s warm at least. It cradles his core and no one will badger him for stealing it. 

The scene in his house replays through his mind. He should have prioritized being quiet over hiding, he should have kicked the bastard harder—

Sascha sits down on the side of the tub. His body leans, his head resting on the other’s bare thighs. Sascha is warm, so much more than the bath and he isn’t put off; dipping his feet in the water to give him better access. The storm in his head calms and he lets his eyes close. Goosebumps ripple across his back as he puts a hand on his head; it rests instead of gripping and pulling, settling his heart rate. Then it moves, something akin to petting, not forcing through the tangles.

“Micha?” He says quietly.

The adrenaline in his system has died down, leaving only an aching pain in his throat. He manages something between a grunt and a hum.

“Do you think you might want a haircut in the morning?”

“You can do that?” He croaks.

“I’ve read books.”

Michael bites the inside of his cheek. What happened should never happen again. “Okay.”

“Your hair needs to be washed. . .” Sascha trails off, “Can I do it?”

He weighs his words before nodding. He wants to do this?

After slipping on a pair of underwear, he takes the first aid pouch again, but he is sat down and there’s not an ounce of belligerence in Sascha’s eyes as he picks out the size of bandages and rips open the alcohol wipe. It’s the first time someone gets on his knees for him or treats him with more dignity than a stray. And a far cry from the quick, scalding-hot shower episodes to purge filth, dried by dirty bed sheets only to change back into clothes already thrice worn.

“I’m just going to use this on your bow and thigh,” He murmurs, cutting medical tape into exact, perfectly ratioed tabs to support a piece of gauze. 

Sascha also has steady hands, he notices dumbly as he flinches at them getting close to his face. On his right ring finger is a wedding band-like tattoo with a singular dot in the centre. Where this person reassures him with an apology before smoothing it reverently onto his skin to soothe the pinprick pain; sickening sympathy oozed from nurses in the scarce situations being forced into a hospital.

The gash on his thigh is swollen and red, dirt visible in the layers of ripped skin. Too agitated to even scab over. Still, Sacha doesn’t hesitate, washing it with soap first and requesting him to lift his thigh. He even knows how to use bandages properly, efficiently cross-wrapping and tying a secure knot. 

“And this is for your neck,” He unscrews a jar, the pungency of yarrow pooling out. “My mother always uses this stuff and it works like a charm, even on busted lips.”

Michael balls his fists, going rigid, lifting his chin. He expects the feather-like touches to morph into carnage; if he concentrates enough, he’ll register alcohol in his senses.

“It’s all done, I’ll leave you alone now.”

He closed his eyes without realizing.

Sascha is smoking when he comes out; lying down under the bed sheets, enveloped in a quiet exhaustion. Before he can question where he’ll sleep, the other pulls away the sheets, opening his arms. The promise of warmth overpowers anything else and he leaves no space between them. The last hours fade, and so do the previous fifteen years. any advanced perception turns off, the static in his brain disappears.

Michael wakes up naturally for the first time in his life, sun rays trickling inside via the back window. He’s comfortable.

Comfortable.

Something along the lines of ‘fuck’ rebound from his throat into a coughing fit. The body beside him grumbles. Sascha’s eyes lock with his, surveying his state, processing their position. There’s no monster he needs to be on guard for. No errands to be done. A moment like this is forbiddenly sweet. The clothes he was lent are a bit baggy, masked with tobacco. He wouldn’t mind staying this warm for the rest of his life. If Sascha were to decide to blow his brains out with the thing on the nightstand, Michael wouldn’t mind too much, either.

Neither of them speak. 

Unsurprisingly, he finds his cigarette pack upon blinking the sleep from his eyes. 

“Eggs on toast?” He proposes, voice a little rugged.

Michael smiles. 

That undoes him. Breaks the illusion. He almost covers it with the back of his hand. What the hell did he do last night? Why did he come here? 

The sizzling of butter and Sascha moving about his kitchen breaks Michael’s trance momentarily.

No one has ever made him breakfast for him. 

Still, while he eats, Michael’s mind scatters with the humiliation of being witnessed. When will the questions come? 

Still, when he follows him outside to watch him do the laundry by hand, he figures that there must be some price for this treatment. 

He must want something.

A brush of the comb follows scissors cutting the air, strands from his bush-like head falling onto the bathroom tiles. “Are you with me?”

He almost winces at the tone; an invitation back to the world of the living. This room is a crime scene. Too much happened here.

Michael crosses his arms, twinging the bangs between his fingers. “I think I had something like this when I was younger.”

Sascha pauses sweeping, hands twitching, processing a reply. “Is that good?”

He almost rolls his eyes. “Maybe—don’t remember my childhood.”

It’s a half-truth. The only things he remembers before buying his soccer ball are his father’s hands. Perhaps there is nothing else worth remembering.

“Me too.”

Those words are an offering. With the casual admittance, a shadow casts itself in Michael’s mind. Anything about him at all has been drip-fed. But he himself is laid bare. 

Michael might as well have been literally bare with how he was letting everything happen last night—

“. . . Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

Sascha is waiting on the sidewalk, just off his driveway. He glances down at the ball under his arm, but does not ask questions, as per usual. The shunned part of him wishes he would.

“Have you heard of a Thief-In-Law?” He starts.

“Is that a title?” Michael looks down at the grass, choosing to play dumb.

“One of the highest, lost to time from the Soviet Era. Basically means they’re hot shit.”

“Do we have ones here?”

“Who knows if any of them would be interested in Berlin. I think they’re focusing on expansion out west again.”

Every morning, he tells himself he’ll not leech onto these habits, yet the next, he’ll have clean clothes and bedsheets; a hot breakfast. The other has long memorized how he takes his coffee; never needing more than two reminders of what he likes and doesn’t. All at the price of his dignity.

“Recite the thieves’ code for me.”

“One: forsake your family, two: you must not make a family—except for a lover,” Michael drops the soccer ball and begins passing it from foot-to-foot, “Three: make your living off thievery. Four: support other thieves. Five: never give away the information of accomplices,” He stops dribbling and balances his ball on the crook of his ankle and his foot, “Six: always take the fall for another thief’s crime, seven: draw a hearing to settle disputes between thieves and take part if needed—that’s eight. Nine: you must carry out a punishment onto another thief if it is commanded. . . for ten, you must not resist that order,” Michael’s balance gives in. Like seen on television, he bounces the ball off the ground and sends it to the other side of the alley. “Rule eleven we do not use.”

“Why is that?” Sascha glances up from his novel. The authour’s foreign name is difficult for Michael to decipher.

The ball ricochets off the other buildings’ walls and rolls back to its owner. “Very few of our members are fluent in Russian, so jargon is not common.”

“Continue,” He flips a page.

“Twelve: never gamble to the point of debt. Thirteen: teach our ways to young beginners. Fourteen: have connections. Fifteen—” Michael puts a particularly strong amount of force behind this kick. “Never get drunk,” He catches the ball with his chest. “Sixteen: have no personal connections with the law. Seventeen: never serve in the military. And finally,” He squeezes it in his hands and sits beside Sascha. “Always honour your promises to other thieves.”

It’s Sascha that initiates these evenings. With the night settling in, sharing a bed is the only choice. Their sides brush, one thing leads to another and there are arms wrapping around him. Saving would be needed if they wanted a heater.

“This is a tattoo?” Michael stares down at their intertwined hands, at Sascha’s with the marking. The escalation.

“Hardly,” Sascha trails their hands up his chest, across his collarbone, hooking Michael’s fingers into the fabric of his sweatshirt, and pulling it down to present his shoulder.

“The fuck?” Michael recoils his hand. Was the freak making him strip him?

“Not my fault Bratva has strange motifs,” He shrugs, covering up a spider that crawls up his shoulder.

“Can I?” He ventures, hand hovering over his mouth.

“Why would you want to smoke?” 

Did he mean to sound like he cares about the side effects?

“Curious.”

Sascha gets another stick for him, curling his arm around the dip in his back to make the two butts to ignite each other. “Breathe in,” He lures with a drop in his voice.

The foreign smoke constricts his breathing, reviving strangulation and irritating his still-sensitive trachea. He surges and hacks. 

Sascha is laughing at him, not noticing the scowl. Cigarettes are disgusting. He whips it at the glass used as an ashtray, and switches off the fairy lights above the mattress. This place will not be stuck in the eighteenth century.

“Put that thing out before I fall asleep, or I’ll kill you.”

“Yes, ma’am—”

Michael jabs Sascha with his bony knee in his gut for good measure. 

Sascha isn’t in bed.

Michael sits up. The bathroom door is open, but it’s common for him to step outside for a—

Sascha huddles in the corner, arm squeezing around his legs to make himself as small as possible, owl-eyed. He grips his gun, finger on the trigger.

“Sascha, it’s just me. . .” Michael puts his hands up,  “You can put the gun down.”

A tremor runs through Sascha’s weapon hand as he inches closer, flinching when he reaches, his chest heaving as if it might burst.

He doesn’t look at him: at the door, poised, waiting. For someone.

Michael sits. 

What would Sascha do with him?

He pulls him closer. The frail thing makes a choked off sob. A sound so human and fragile, it startles him.

“You can sleep now, Sascha,” Michael tries, for what he would want to hear during the times he would do the same thing with a kitchen knife. “I’ll make sure nothing will happen to you.”

“No one will. . .”

He slides his hand down his arm, stopping at the end of the gun, trusting he will let go. “No one.”

He stiffens as the other surges to grasp onto him, instinctually raising his fist. He peers down at the figure through the darkness, finally breathing right and settling. Michael’s mere presence soothes him? Why him? Why now? Just what is happening?

The same questions circle his head like the stars outside. He watches the door, the duty of a century keeps the pistol in hand.

“Are you feeling okay?” He questions as Sascha stirs.

He feels him nodding after a couple seconds.

“Good,” He sighs. The muscle tension hits him all at once. “My ass hurts and I’m hungry—can we get up now?”

“Sure,” Sascha’s voice is weak; he wouldn’t have heard it if he weren’t pressed up against his chest.

Michael’s spine crinkles like tinfoil. Sascha looks away at his gun, gnawing on his lips as he hugs himself.

“Up,” He reaches out to steady the other on asleep legs by holding his forearms. Sascha is forcing himself not to cling, his fingers twitch, giving Michael the opportunity to pull away now that he’s on his feet. 

“I’ll just make butter toast and coffee.”

He lets him decide. It’s what he would do for him.

Michael shakes three packets of sugar to sink the crystals to the bottom before tearing. One for him, two for Sascha.

“And you like. . . milk in it too, right?”

Sascha nods.

Michael holds the carton an arm’s stretch out. He throws in a dramatic wretch pouring it into the mug, even though he probably could gag and throw up if he tasted it. He’s been beaten too many times for forgetting it. It’s almost worse than vodka.

That earns an airy chuckle. Progress.

Sascha takes small bites, mechanically opening his jaw and chewing as if eating were a foreign tradition. Their sides merge. Sascha has not let there be an inch of space between them, as if being without warmth would drive him mad. 

“Outside?” He proposes awkwardly after piling their dishes on the counter.

Michael is still in shock, still in the motion of flying out a windshield. There’s something different about Sascha’s resting face. Perhaps its sincerity, now that the guise of stoicism is broken.

“Michael.”

“Yeah?” He pauses, trapping the ball. It’s better to leave it here.

“We should run away together.”

The ball rolls out from under his foot.

“In two days, I have a job to rob a jewellery store. If we put our money together along with the payment, we should have enough to leave Berlin and go somewhere else.”

Leave?

It sounds like the impossible.

He could holler from happiness. Glee. “My bedroom window is on the side of the house up the driveway. Come tell me how it turns out.”

Chapter Text

They left the conversation there. They didn’t discuss specifics, but Michael has no reason not to trust Sascha.

He has already gathered his three sets of clothes from atop the dresser, filled with garments to fit a ten-year-old. As well as prematurely unlocked his safe. Ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Five consecutive taps come from above his head. It’s Sascha. He unlocks and throws the window open.

“How’d it go?”

Sascha falters, tilting his head to the side and tightening his lips. That look.

“Sasch,” Michael slips out firmly, interrupting his racing mind. “Are you in trouble?”

“The bulls came too close,” He admits. “And I had to run, but I think I’ll be fine. Just need to lie low for a couple of days—not see each other kind-of-thing.”

“Shit. . .”

“Now,” He puts his hand up. “This is kind of faggy,” Sascha rummages through his pockets, presenting a pair of rings. “But hear me out.”

Michael stares dumbly. Just what the hell has he thought up now? “Engagement rings?”

“Promise rings in this case, I guess.” 

The pieces are silver, jeweless. It is the easiest way to play off stolen goods. As your own.

“You’ll find mine in your mailbox. You’ll know where to find me.” 

The habitual flinching and repulsion has long been tamed out when his fingers wrap around his wrist, sliding the other ring onto place. Every time he thinks he has Sascha figured out, he out uproots his expectations.

“If I don’t come for you, Michael,” He softly snorts, his voice carrying notes of exaggeration. “I’ll never walk by your side again.”

“That’s so faggy, Sascha,” He cradles his hand, grinning, trying not to alert his father. “Holy shit—but, sure. I’ll know where to look.”

The lightness in him is something Michael needs to get used to. Maybe Sascha himself doesn’t notice his shoulders are less stiff around him.

Three knocks resound.

“Get the door!” The man in the house yells.

It’s two police officers and a man in a suit. Something churns in Michael’s gut. There would only be one of them if it were a wellness check.

“Hello,” He says plainly. Best to treat this like addressing ‘noise complaints’ from the neighbours. Pretend everything is fine, wish them on their way, and get the piss beaten out of him the second the door closes.

“Hello,” The man in the suit greets back unevenly. The officers behind him share an odd glance at his casual demeanor. “Is there a Mr. Kaiser we can speak with?”

“Yes,” Michael opens the door wider, standing to the side in the corridor with his hand folded behind his back. “Come in.”

His eyes find the rose in the glass dome as the four adults talk. Allegedly, it was from his mother. The piece of shit of a father treasures it as much as his booze, even though she ruined his life. It had long died, but the flower impossibly preserved its form, thorns and all. That is his tendency: to latch onto vile things. Maybe that’s the only reason Michael isn’t dead.

The two officers split off down the hallway to his room. The unease redoubles.

Something smashes across his head. Michael loses his footing, vision swimming.

“How often do I have to tell you!” His father screams, thrusting a broken bottle in his face. “Don’t take things that aren’t yours, you fucking subhuman!”