Ein Neuer Anfang Part 3 of 3
The last part of Ein Neuer Anfang. It's been snowing all day and it's gross out. I'm not such a big fan of the snow.
I feel so iffy about this whole sidestory because I know I'm a bitch about OC's. Either the whole world has to OC's or I start to flinch away from it by nature. The only real Panik OMC I like is AlchemyEcho's Maule and yet I write this, y'know, epic about an Mpreg kid wanting to jump Juri's bones. I believe I just clinched on the least popular pairing in the whole of Panik. Oh! I was so sad the other day when I saw a poll on a Romanian Panik site about choose your favorite Panik guy and Juri was dead last. He had maybe 12%.
The more Wolf thought about Max’s words, the more his head hurt. The man had made no sense, talking about his parents and then about Juri. It was a jumble of information that Wolf did not have the energy to unravel and set straight. So he picked and chose, gleaning what actually mattered to him right then and going with it. It was probably not the wisest or best processing method but it kept him sane. In this regard, he was very, very much like Frank.
Wolf started coming around after work, just stopping in with dinner to say hi or, really, since it was Wolf, to sit around and make awkward conversation. He was never quite sure what to say to Juri but he couldn’t stand seeing the world leave his uncle behind. It was not smart to leave Juri alone because he was suffering and impossible to be around, dragging everyone down with his negativity and pain.
They had gotten to watching movies or listening to music, Wolf laid out on the sofa while Juri sat on the floor, his knees up to his chest, staring at the screen like a fascinated, lost little child. Wolf could not remember what had first made him reach out and comb his fingers through all that long, still thick blonde hair. Wolf had always been fascinated by his uncle’s hair. No one in his family had blonde hair, his father having dyed his black for years and years, nor hair of that length. Wolf remembered playing with it when he was younger, thoroughly amused by the feel of silky strands and the way it felt to brush it back with a comb. He had carried that interest into all of his relationships, toying with strands of his infrequent girlfriends’ hair but it had never thrilled him as much as Juri’s did.
Whatever had made him do it, it had changed things between them. Juri had turned to look at him with clear eyes and Wolf knew Juri was seeing him for the first time. He had held Juri’s gaze, his fingers still wrapped around those blonde strands, his heart pounding with a ferocity he’d never felt before, and Juri had stared back.
Then…nothing. Juri had turned back to the TV and Wolf had kept his hand where it was.
It had been a start. Not exactly a bombastic one but neither of them really were that way. Wolf had continued to show up at Juri’s house, never at exactly the same time of day but he had showed up and that was what truly mattered.
The first time Juri smiled after Jan’s death would be forever burned into Wolf’s mind. August 15, it had been summer. A warm night, they had sat out in the garden with two beers and some crackers to watch the stars. Wolf didn’t remember what he had said to make Juri laugh but Juri had laughed. Hard. Deep. Amazing. It had filled Wolf’s stomach with a twisted, glorious feeling that wouldn’t go away and only deepened as Juri’s laughter faded and the smile showed on his handsome face.
ØØØ
Juri kissed him tenderly, barely nipping at his bottom lip before Wolf let him in. They ended resting their foreheads against each other, their breathing heavy.
“Are you okay with this?” Juri whispered, a broken plea barely hidden in his voice.
“Only if you are,” Wolf whispered back. He couldn’t think, could barely remember to breathe around Juri. Kissing him was…perfection. Slow but so deep and caring, and this was just the beginning. If he ever got to be anywhere near Jan in Juri’s heart…Wolf didn’t think he could take that much love.
But hell if he wasn’t going to try.
Wolf pressed his lips against Juri’s, pushing forward, tilting his head just enough to fit into that notch of lips and warm mouth. Juri’s nose brushed against his cheek and then Juri was all around him, dominating him in a way Wolf had never been dominated before. At twenty-five, Wolf had only taken a girl to bed a handful of times and he’d never been told he was a good kisser. He wasn’t horrible but it just hadn’t happened that he’d known what he was doing. Now…Wolf wondered if maybe all those girls hadn’t known what they were doing. This was amazing. Juri left him breathless, his body tingling and the core of him surging with an addictive energy that just kept growing.
ØØØ
“Help me forget,” Juri pleaded softly, stroking Wolf’s soft, black-dyed hair. Wolf rested his chin on Juri’s chest, one hand clasped loosely around Juri’s wrist because he couldn’t hold on and he couldn’t let go.
One year had passed since Jan’s death, one year of struggle and suffering. Struggling to keep Juri going, struggling to remind him that there had been life outside of the one he had made with Jan, struggling to help Juri find a reason to stay awake and alive and not to fall back into emptiness. Struggling to understand the broken words, the painful cries of Jan, Judith, Mama, Benjamin, the last the most painful, more cracked and broken than Jan’s one-syllable name. There had been so much suffering, too, suffering in watching Juri lose himself in memories, in falling for a man who had been in love with someone else longer than Wolf had been alive, whose whole marriage in fact seemed to be situated around a miracle and a tragedy Wolf had only recently come to understand.
Juri, it seemed, was the exception to everything. Calm, steady, sure- those words would have described Juri up to a year ago. Wolf had seen that entire persona disintegrate, seen Juri turn into a wretched wreck of a man and…he’d still fallen for him. Juri, strong, tall, blue-eyed, male Juri.
A year was enough time to begin moving on surely and enough time to find a new path in life, and yet it wasn’t.
“Don’t forget,” Wolf said, looking up at Juri. He got up on his elbows and took Juri’s face in his hands firmly. “Talk. Tell me about him. Tell me about Jan.”
Juri opened his mouth. No sound came out for the longest time but something in his eyes shifted, the pain Wolf had seen for so long changing to something calmer.
“Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Wolf said. “Start at the beginning and go from there. Say anything. It doesn’t matter so long as you talk. I’ll listen. I’m not going anywhere.”
Juri swallowed and nodded.
“The first time I met Jan was in a club,” he began slowly, his voice deep and just that little bit less than calm that told Wolf in tones Juri barely realized just how much the words hurt him. Wolf didn’t want to see Juri in any more pain, but he had to get this out. This story was so much more than words, it was a history, one that had begun before Wolf had ever been conceived and had continued all his life up until the fatal events of more than a year ago. Juri needed to tell this story far more than he needed to forget if he and Wolf were to have any sort of life together.“I was nineteen, he was barely eighteen. I had been playing that night with my other band…”
Juri talked long into the night, plying with Wolf’s long hair thoughtlessly. As he said he would, Wolf listened.
The story was new to him and, even though it was Jan’s story and Juri’s, too, Wolf could not help his excitement every time he heard his papa and his father’s names. He had been ignorant of his parents’ lives for so long that every scrap was too dear to let go. He memorized everything Juri said but still he mulled over parts, such as when Juri talked about the time he had played in concert with Martin Kilger and Wolf’s papa.
Juri had so much to say. It felt to Wolf as though it was the first time he’d said some of these words, not just the bits about the way Jan’s eyes changed in the light or how entrancing his mask had been when it covered most of his face (because, really, was it not just the same romantic spiel that every lover recited at some time or another to the boredom of his listener? Wolf could not see Juri sitting down with Uncle Timo one day and discussing the facets of Jan’s eyes or, god forbid, how alabaster his ass had been in the fluorescent lights of their hotel room that one time in Strasbourg) but the bits about how Timo’s teasing of the DJ had stung Juri, how there had been days when Jan would withdraw into himself and Juri couldn’t say or do anything to bring the man back to him because that had been before they had ever dated, before Juri had let himself so much as look at Jan without fear that the DJ would take it the wrong way.
The words acted as a sort of panacea, directing the pain away from Juri’s body better than sex would have. Wolf would not turn Juri into someone he was not; he had loved Jan and Wolf suspected he would always love Jan but Wolf wanted his chance with the man who had formerly been his uncle and now was his lover. Wolf saw the thinning hair, saw the lines on Juri’s face, saw the veins raised on his hands and feet but it was as nothing to him. Juri was older than him, Juri did not look so much like the man who had helped to raise him anymore, and for that Wolf was grateful. He would take the lines and the wrinkles if only to keep that barrier between his uncle and the man whose bed he was lying in, the man whose essence was within him, the man whose kisses felt more alive and real than anyone Wolf had ever been with before.
ØØØ
Midnight was not meant for phone calls, Timo growled into his pillow as he grappled for the phone. He almost missed the call as his sleep-numbed fingers slid over the godforsakened buttons and the speaker. Timo growled louder and winched his eyes open.
“Who is this?” he snarled as politely as possible.
“Hi, Dad!” Emelyn announced cheerfully.
“Girl, do you know-”
David leaned over Timo and grabbed the phone from him before he scared Emelyn off with his not-so-pleasant manners, placing it against his ear, half lying on his husband as he talked to their daughter. It was a mystery to Timo as to why the phone was on his side of the bed if David was the one who used it but David’s weight was comfortable so Timo didn’t complain much.
“How’s Julia?” David asked. Timo rocked his hip into David experimentally, earning him a soft slap. Nope, David wasn’t in the mood for playtime. Timo massaged David’s hip, listening to the sound of their daughter’s voice, wondering why she had called. The phone was close enough that Timo could hear every word Emelyn said, not as much of a feat as it seemed when you considered how loud Emelyn typically talked.
“She’s fine,” Emelyn said quickly, obviously in a rush to say what she had called about. “Dad, you’re not going to believe this! Oh my God, it’s so unreal. Uncle Juri’s dating again!”
Timo and David shared a look. Emelyn had called at midnight for this?
“That’s great, honey,” David said smoothly as Timo shrugged and closed his eyes. Might as well go back to sleep. “I didn’t realize you were so interested in your uncle’s life.”
“Wait, I’m not finished.” Emelyn always was a charmer. “The guy he’s dating is, Dad, it’s Wolf.”
David’s jaw dropped and he nearly dropped the phone as well. Timo burst out laughing.
“Ask her how Wolf likes catching,” Timo howled. “Oh, wait, Juri doesn’t exactly pitch, now does he?” He collapsed into giggles, throwing his head back onto the pillow as David stared at the wall, trying to form some sort of response for Emelyn. “Linke’s son’s a gold digger, Linke’s son’s a gold digger,” he chanted, laughing hard. “Oh, man, this is hilarious.”
“You shut up,” David said, elbowing Timo with a grin. “No, Em, not you. Your father’s being rude.”
Timo just kept laughing. He couldn’t stop himself; it really was hilarious and horrifically white trash, and Timo knew a thing or two about white trash. His family had never been particularly well-off and after his dad ran off, the Sonnenscheins had just kept losing money. His mother could not hold down a high-paying job or a boyfriend who lasted more than six months and most of the ones who did stay were only interested in taking her money. There were not a lot of men willing to hang around a woman with two kids, no matter how pretty she might be. Timo’s aunts and uncles had not been much better, growing up mostly the way he had except they were still living at home, leeching off their mother’s paychecks without paying so much as a Euro of rent. Not many people wanted them around and those that did tended to be just like them which led to some rather interesting relationships. Wolf, at least, was not legitimately related to Juri.
It was still funny as hell.
David reached over Timo. He fumbled with putting the phone back and would have left it half on the hook if Timo had not grabbed it and put it back. No point in wasting energy on a dial tone.
David frowned.
“This is weird. How long do you think this has been going on? I don’t think Wolf would have told Emelyn if they were just starting out. Do you think they’re already having sex? Is that why Wolf told Emelyn?” David shoved Timo. “Ti, hey, wake up, there’s so much to think about. You can’t really be that tired.”
Timo opened one eye.
“You can think all you want. I am going to sleep next to the most handsome man in the world who will hopefully join me before too long,” Timo said, yawning and turning over.
“You’re horrible,” David said. He laughed. “Emelyn’s right. This is unreal.”
ØØØ
Emelyn, it seemed, was the bearer of the news of Wolf and Juri’s relationship. Soon it was not only Timo and David who knew but most of their family and friends’ networks. Few people actually knew who Wolf or Juri were but they knew the ins and outs of the pairing better than Wolf’s own parents. Uwe, Juri’s brother, was one of the few to learn from Juri himself but Uwe did not truly care one way or the other so long as Juri was doing okay. His wife, however, was as much of a gossip as Emelyn and Uwe was subject to many conversations he had no interest in. For his part, Uwe thought it said something about Juri’s personal score that he had snagged someone half his age.
Frank and Linke, when it finally got around to them, were not so amused. It worried Frank to have his son attached to one of his closest friends. Juri and Jan’s relationship had been more than steady but Frank was not sure if there was the proper framework for another such relationship. He worried that Juri might be using Wolf, taking the first person who offered himself and running with it. Frank didn’t really think Juri was like that but he just did not know. Worse, Frank had no basis for warning his son or telling Wolf to find someone else. His own relationship with Linke did not have anything resembling an unmarred past. Frank had to settle with accepting it and hoping that Wolf was truly happy.
“Are you happy?” Frank asked his son. He had called Wolf up, not having the nerve to talk to Wolf face to face about it in case he ran into Juri. “Is this what you want, Wolf?”
“Da, I- I really like him and he’s a great guy.” Frank bit his bottom lip, toying with it as he tried to make his next words less harsh.
“Make sure you’re not trying to take Jan’s place, okay?” Frank said, his heart aching with every word. Wolf did not deserve this. He should be with some sweet, little, brown-eyed girl who could give him children and who could start a home with him, not a man with a mess of a broken home and a relationship ended not by choice but by natural causes. Juri had never even had the chance to say goodbye. Frank was afraid that would stay with him forever. “If you try and try and try, you’re going to burn yourself out. Jan’s always going to have a place in Juri’s heart and I don’t want to see you get hurt trying to fill that place left by his passing. It can’t be done, Wolf. It just can’t.”
Frank talked for a bit longer, his eyes burning with the threat of tears. His son deserved more than this. All Frank could see in Wolf’s future was pain and the feeling of never being enough for Juri. The tears spilled over when Frank realized that what he was most worried about was Wolf making the same mistakes he had. The situation not exactly the same but Frank feared the suffering would be.
ØØØ
Linke invited Juri out to lunch under the pretense of catching up. The lunch went well, it was a nice restaurant and the food was good. Frank had picked it out after Linke said he was going to take Juri to McDonald’s since the food didn’t matter as much as the talking. Frank hadn’t thought that was funny.
He set his fork down and simply looked at Juri. Juri’s eyes still held pain and a sadness Linke knew would never leave them. He was older, more pained, experienced in loss and conflict. Linke wondered when they had all gotten so old.
“You’re dating my son,” Linke said. Might as well get it out there.
“Yes,” Juri answered, his eyes pleading for understanding under that mask of pain. “I love him.”
“You barely know him!” Linke snapped. “Juri, he’s just a kid! He doesn’t understand-”
“He understands a lot more than you think he does,” Juri said coldly. “And he’s an adult. He doesn’t live with you, you don’t count him as a dependent. He has his own life and he’s chosen to be with me. Please understand.”
Linke stared at his friend, his eyes boring into Juri’s face. He wanted to tell Juri all the reasons Wolf shouldn’t be with him. He wanted to say how it wasn’t fair to drag Wolf down just because Juri was too lazy to find someone else, how it wasn’t right for Juri to be with someone he had practically helped raise, how it wasn’t good for them, how Juri needed more time, how he couldn’t have possibly made a full recovery yet…and yet, Linke knew everything he said could be rebutted. Juri was doing nothing wrong, Wolf had chosen to be with him. Wolf was not some naïve little kid and Linke certainly did not know enough about Wolf’s sex life to know whether Juri had been his first. For once, Linke wished his son were stupider so he could at least fight for him. But this wasn’t his fight or his decision. Linke had no right to intervene.
Linke sighed.
“You’re right,” he told Juri. “It’s his life.”
ØØØ
The feeling of the party was, in one word, strained. Everyone seemed uncomfortable but Wolf had been invited, as had Juri, and neither could have given an excuse that would have been acceptable. Christmas parties were supposed to be about pretending to be happy meeting up with friends and family, not about personal, intergroup political sentiments. Wolf wished someone other than his parents had been holding it.
They had both come, both very aware that the atmosphere two years before had been different and that they were the reason for the current scandal. Every party had one. Still, it was torture.
For the first hour, Wolf had stayed with Emelyn and a few of the younger people who had been invited but his eyes kept straying to where Juri was listening to someone talk, obviously someone he knew but Wolf didn’t. There were a lot of people like that. Every so often, Juri would look up, scanning the crowd for Wolf until Wolf looked up and quirked his lips or raised his eyebrow, anything to make that tense look on Juri’s face disappear. Juri would grin and turn back to whoever was talking with a little more interest and a lot more energy.
Then Emelyn decided to leave and the true threads holding the party together became unbelievably clear. Without Emelyn, the others drifted away, not wanting to be seen talking to him. Wolf tried to approach people as he slipped through to get something to eat or drink, anything to keep him from being seen standing alone, silent. No one wanted to talk to him, though. There were polite smiles attached to hostile eyes and aversive looks that quickly turned to nothing when Wolf glared at the sender.
Wolf wanted to leave, wanted to take Juri’s arm and walk out the front door so no one could see his cheeks burning. His papa came up to talk to him once or twice but these were Frank’s friends and he could not spend the evening talking to his son and be a good host. Linke had disappeared (that had lightened Wolf’s mood up a bit; his father was not a fan of these small parties and was likely in his room, pretending not to be a host as he did every year) so Wolf did not have to feign interest in talking to him, either. He was still unsure of his father’s feelings about his relationship with Juri.
Wolf grabbed a bit of pie, making his way to a corner where he would not be too conspicuous. Unfortunately, he was found.
Uncle Timo raised an eyebrow at Wolf horking down a piece of pie and grabbed Wolf’s shoulder, dragging him aside.
“Before you even say it, I’m not trying to take Uncle Jan’s place,” Wolf snarled before his uncle could even open his mouth. Shit, he’d known this would be hard for people to accept but couldn’t they give him a little credit? He was as far from Jan physically as he could be and stay in the same race and by fucking God, he wasn’t trying to be Uncle Jan. “I’m dating Juri, we’re not related by blood, and there’s nothing wrong with that so give it up already. I’m not going to stop seeing him simply because you and Uncle David and my parents think it’s fucking weird.”
Timo looked amused.
“Defensive, are we?” he chuckled. “I actually wanted to tell you I know what it’s like having people tell you that you’re wrong to be dating the person you’re with.”
Wolf sucked on his teeth but he was listening. Timo grinned and shook his head.
“Boy, if you’d stop for a second and look around you, you might realize we’re not trying to tell you off. Yeah, your dads are a bit weirded out but you flipped sexualities on them for someone twice your age and a widower to boot. Juri’s been through a lot and no parent wants to see their child sucked into that. Look at it from their perspective. They’re worried is all but heck if you aren’t as stubborn as the pair of them.”
Timo clapped Wolf’s shoulder. Wolf glanced at the rapper’s hand shrewdly, then looked back at Timo's face, making his uncle laugh.
“Keep that attitude up and you’ll do fine, kid. If you want to be with Juri, be with him, I say. You’re both adults and he’ll treat you well if you stay with him.”
“That it?” Wolf asked, the words coming out less acidic and more plaintive than he wanted.
Timo grinned.
“Actually, I came to tell you Juri’s brought the car around front. He says he’d like to get the fuck out of here if you’re interested.”
Wolf had his plate down and his coat on before Timo could even finish his words.
“Kid’s got his priorities straight,” Timo muttered as he headed back to find David.
Damn these holiday parties. Timo wouldn’t mind getting out of there himself. He checked the clock on the wall. One hour to midnight. Fuck.
I feel so iffy about this whole sidestory because I know I'm a bitch about OC's. Either the whole world has to OC's or I start to flinch away from it by nature. The only real Panik OMC I like is AlchemyEcho's Maule and yet I write this, y'know, epic about an Mpreg kid wanting to jump Juri's bones. I believe I just clinched on the least popular pairing in the whole of Panik. Oh! I was so sad the other day when I saw a poll on a Romanian Panik site about choose your favorite Panik guy and Juri was dead last. He had maybe 12%.
The more Wolf thought about Max’s words, the more his head hurt. The man had made no sense, talking about his parents and then about Juri. It was a jumble of information that Wolf did not have the energy to unravel and set straight. So he picked and chose, gleaning what actually mattered to him right then and going with it. It was probably not the wisest or best processing method but it kept him sane. In this regard, he was very, very much like Frank.
Wolf started coming around after work, just stopping in with dinner to say hi or, really, since it was Wolf, to sit around and make awkward conversation. He was never quite sure what to say to Juri but he couldn’t stand seeing the world leave his uncle behind. It was not smart to leave Juri alone because he was suffering and impossible to be around, dragging everyone down with his negativity and pain.
They had gotten to watching movies or listening to music, Wolf laid out on the sofa while Juri sat on the floor, his knees up to his chest, staring at the screen like a fascinated, lost little child. Wolf could not remember what had first made him reach out and comb his fingers through all that long, still thick blonde hair. Wolf had always been fascinated by his uncle’s hair. No one in his family had blonde hair, his father having dyed his black for years and years, nor hair of that length. Wolf remembered playing with it when he was younger, thoroughly amused by the feel of silky strands and the way it felt to brush it back with a comb. He had carried that interest into all of his relationships, toying with strands of his infrequent girlfriends’ hair but it had never thrilled him as much as Juri’s did.
Whatever had made him do it, it had changed things between them. Juri had turned to look at him with clear eyes and Wolf knew Juri was seeing him for the first time. He had held Juri’s gaze, his fingers still wrapped around those blonde strands, his heart pounding with a ferocity he’d never felt before, and Juri had stared back.
Then…nothing. Juri had turned back to the TV and Wolf had kept his hand where it was.
It had been a start. Not exactly a bombastic one but neither of them really were that way. Wolf had continued to show up at Juri’s house, never at exactly the same time of day but he had showed up and that was what truly mattered.
The first time Juri smiled after Jan’s death would be forever burned into Wolf’s mind. August 15, it had been summer. A warm night, they had sat out in the garden with two beers and some crackers to watch the stars. Wolf didn’t remember what he had said to make Juri laugh but Juri had laughed. Hard. Deep. Amazing. It had filled Wolf’s stomach with a twisted, glorious feeling that wouldn’t go away and only deepened as Juri’s laughter faded and the smile showed on his handsome face.
ØØØ
Juri kissed him tenderly, barely nipping at his bottom lip before Wolf let him in. They ended resting their foreheads against each other, their breathing heavy.
“Are you okay with this?” Juri whispered, a broken plea barely hidden in his voice.
“Only if you are,” Wolf whispered back. He couldn’t think, could barely remember to breathe around Juri. Kissing him was…perfection. Slow but so deep and caring, and this was just the beginning. If he ever got to be anywhere near Jan in Juri’s heart…Wolf didn’t think he could take that much love.
But hell if he wasn’t going to try.
Wolf pressed his lips against Juri’s, pushing forward, tilting his head just enough to fit into that notch of lips and warm mouth. Juri’s nose brushed against his cheek and then Juri was all around him, dominating him in a way Wolf had never been dominated before. At twenty-five, Wolf had only taken a girl to bed a handful of times and he’d never been told he was a good kisser. He wasn’t horrible but it just hadn’t happened that he’d known what he was doing. Now…Wolf wondered if maybe all those girls hadn’t known what they were doing. This was amazing. Juri left him breathless, his body tingling and the core of him surging with an addictive energy that just kept growing.
ØØØ
“Help me forget,” Juri pleaded softly, stroking Wolf’s soft, black-dyed hair. Wolf rested his chin on Juri’s chest, one hand clasped loosely around Juri’s wrist because he couldn’t hold on and he couldn’t let go.
One year had passed since Jan’s death, one year of struggle and suffering. Struggling to keep Juri going, struggling to remind him that there had been life outside of the one he had made with Jan, struggling to help Juri find a reason to stay awake and alive and not to fall back into emptiness. Struggling to understand the broken words, the painful cries of Jan, Judith, Mama, Benjamin, the last the most painful, more cracked and broken than Jan’s one-syllable name. There had been so much suffering, too, suffering in watching Juri lose himself in memories, in falling for a man who had been in love with someone else longer than Wolf had been alive, whose whole marriage in fact seemed to be situated around a miracle and a tragedy Wolf had only recently come to understand.
Juri, it seemed, was the exception to everything. Calm, steady, sure- those words would have described Juri up to a year ago. Wolf had seen that entire persona disintegrate, seen Juri turn into a wretched wreck of a man and…he’d still fallen for him. Juri, strong, tall, blue-eyed, male Juri.
A year was enough time to begin moving on surely and enough time to find a new path in life, and yet it wasn’t.
“Don’t forget,” Wolf said, looking up at Juri. He got up on his elbows and took Juri’s face in his hands firmly. “Talk. Tell me about him. Tell me about Jan.”
Juri opened his mouth. No sound came out for the longest time but something in his eyes shifted, the pain Wolf had seen for so long changing to something calmer.
“Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Wolf said. “Start at the beginning and go from there. Say anything. It doesn’t matter so long as you talk. I’ll listen. I’m not going anywhere.”
Juri swallowed and nodded.
“The first time I met Jan was in a club,” he began slowly, his voice deep and just that little bit less than calm that told Wolf in tones Juri barely realized just how much the words hurt him. Wolf didn’t want to see Juri in any more pain, but he had to get this out. This story was so much more than words, it was a history, one that had begun before Wolf had ever been conceived and had continued all his life up until the fatal events of more than a year ago. Juri needed to tell this story far more than he needed to forget if he and Wolf were to have any sort of life together.“I was nineteen, he was barely eighteen. I had been playing that night with my other band…”
Juri talked long into the night, plying with Wolf’s long hair thoughtlessly. As he said he would, Wolf listened.
The story was new to him and, even though it was Jan’s story and Juri’s, too, Wolf could not help his excitement every time he heard his papa and his father’s names. He had been ignorant of his parents’ lives for so long that every scrap was too dear to let go. He memorized everything Juri said but still he mulled over parts, such as when Juri talked about the time he had played in concert with Martin Kilger and Wolf’s papa.
Juri had so much to say. It felt to Wolf as though it was the first time he’d said some of these words, not just the bits about the way Jan’s eyes changed in the light or how entrancing his mask had been when it covered most of his face (because, really, was it not just the same romantic spiel that every lover recited at some time or another to the boredom of his listener? Wolf could not see Juri sitting down with Uncle Timo one day and discussing the facets of Jan’s eyes or, god forbid, how alabaster his ass had been in the fluorescent lights of their hotel room that one time in Strasbourg) but the bits about how Timo’s teasing of the DJ had stung Juri, how there had been days when Jan would withdraw into himself and Juri couldn’t say or do anything to bring the man back to him because that had been before they had ever dated, before Juri had let himself so much as look at Jan without fear that the DJ would take it the wrong way.
The words acted as a sort of panacea, directing the pain away from Juri’s body better than sex would have. Wolf would not turn Juri into someone he was not; he had loved Jan and Wolf suspected he would always love Jan but Wolf wanted his chance with the man who had formerly been his uncle and now was his lover. Wolf saw the thinning hair, saw the lines on Juri’s face, saw the veins raised on his hands and feet but it was as nothing to him. Juri was older than him, Juri did not look so much like the man who had helped to raise him anymore, and for that Wolf was grateful. He would take the lines and the wrinkles if only to keep that barrier between his uncle and the man whose bed he was lying in, the man whose essence was within him, the man whose kisses felt more alive and real than anyone Wolf had ever been with before.
ØØØ
Midnight was not meant for phone calls, Timo growled into his pillow as he grappled for the phone. He almost missed the call as his sleep-numbed fingers slid over the godforsakened buttons and the speaker. Timo growled louder and winched his eyes open.
“Who is this?” he snarled as politely as possible.
“Hi, Dad!” Emelyn announced cheerfully.
“Girl, do you know-”
David leaned over Timo and grabbed the phone from him before he scared Emelyn off with his not-so-pleasant manners, placing it against his ear, half lying on his husband as he talked to their daughter. It was a mystery to Timo as to why the phone was on his side of the bed if David was the one who used it but David’s weight was comfortable so Timo didn’t complain much.
“How’s Julia?” David asked. Timo rocked his hip into David experimentally, earning him a soft slap. Nope, David wasn’t in the mood for playtime. Timo massaged David’s hip, listening to the sound of their daughter’s voice, wondering why she had called. The phone was close enough that Timo could hear every word Emelyn said, not as much of a feat as it seemed when you considered how loud Emelyn typically talked.
“She’s fine,” Emelyn said quickly, obviously in a rush to say what she had called about. “Dad, you’re not going to believe this! Oh my God, it’s so unreal. Uncle Juri’s dating again!”
Timo and David shared a look. Emelyn had called at midnight for this?
“That’s great, honey,” David said smoothly as Timo shrugged and closed his eyes. Might as well go back to sleep. “I didn’t realize you were so interested in your uncle’s life.”
“Wait, I’m not finished.” Emelyn always was a charmer. “The guy he’s dating is, Dad, it’s Wolf.”
David’s jaw dropped and he nearly dropped the phone as well. Timo burst out laughing.
“Ask her how Wolf likes catching,” Timo howled. “Oh, wait, Juri doesn’t exactly pitch, now does he?” He collapsed into giggles, throwing his head back onto the pillow as David stared at the wall, trying to form some sort of response for Emelyn. “Linke’s son’s a gold digger, Linke’s son’s a gold digger,” he chanted, laughing hard. “Oh, man, this is hilarious.”
“You shut up,” David said, elbowing Timo with a grin. “No, Em, not you. Your father’s being rude.”
Timo just kept laughing. He couldn’t stop himself; it really was hilarious and horrifically white trash, and Timo knew a thing or two about white trash. His family had never been particularly well-off and after his dad ran off, the Sonnenscheins had just kept losing money. His mother could not hold down a high-paying job or a boyfriend who lasted more than six months and most of the ones who did stay were only interested in taking her money. There were not a lot of men willing to hang around a woman with two kids, no matter how pretty she might be. Timo’s aunts and uncles had not been much better, growing up mostly the way he had except they were still living at home, leeching off their mother’s paychecks without paying so much as a Euro of rent. Not many people wanted them around and those that did tended to be just like them which led to some rather interesting relationships. Wolf, at least, was not legitimately related to Juri.
It was still funny as hell.
David reached over Timo. He fumbled with putting the phone back and would have left it half on the hook if Timo had not grabbed it and put it back. No point in wasting energy on a dial tone.
David frowned.
“This is weird. How long do you think this has been going on? I don’t think Wolf would have told Emelyn if they were just starting out. Do you think they’re already having sex? Is that why Wolf told Emelyn?” David shoved Timo. “Ti, hey, wake up, there’s so much to think about. You can’t really be that tired.”
Timo opened one eye.
“You can think all you want. I am going to sleep next to the most handsome man in the world who will hopefully join me before too long,” Timo said, yawning and turning over.
“You’re horrible,” David said. He laughed. “Emelyn’s right. This is unreal.”
ØØØ
Emelyn, it seemed, was the bearer of the news of Wolf and Juri’s relationship. Soon it was not only Timo and David who knew but most of their family and friends’ networks. Few people actually knew who Wolf or Juri were but they knew the ins and outs of the pairing better than Wolf’s own parents. Uwe, Juri’s brother, was one of the few to learn from Juri himself but Uwe did not truly care one way or the other so long as Juri was doing okay. His wife, however, was as much of a gossip as Emelyn and Uwe was subject to many conversations he had no interest in. For his part, Uwe thought it said something about Juri’s personal score that he had snagged someone half his age.
Frank and Linke, when it finally got around to them, were not so amused. It worried Frank to have his son attached to one of his closest friends. Juri and Jan’s relationship had been more than steady but Frank was not sure if there was the proper framework for another such relationship. He worried that Juri might be using Wolf, taking the first person who offered himself and running with it. Frank didn’t really think Juri was like that but he just did not know. Worse, Frank had no basis for warning his son or telling Wolf to find someone else. His own relationship with Linke did not have anything resembling an unmarred past. Frank had to settle with accepting it and hoping that Wolf was truly happy.
“Are you happy?” Frank asked his son. He had called Wolf up, not having the nerve to talk to Wolf face to face about it in case he ran into Juri. “Is this what you want, Wolf?”
“Da, I- I really like him and he’s a great guy.” Frank bit his bottom lip, toying with it as he tried to make his next words less harsh.
“Make sure you’re not trying to take Jan’s place, okay?” Frank said, his heart aching with every word. Wolf did not deserve this. He should be with some sweet, little, brown-eyed girl who could give him children and who could start a home with him, not a man with a mess of a broken home and a relationship ended not by choice but by natural causes. Juri had never even had the chance to say goodbye. Frank was afraid that would stay with him forever. “If you try and try and try, you’re going to burn yourself out. Jan’s always going to have a place in Juri’s heart and I don’t want to see you get hurt trying to fill that place left by his passing. It can’t be done, Wolf. It just can’t.”
Frank talked for a bit longer, his eyes burning with the threat of tears. His son deserved more than this. All Frank could see in Wolf’s future was pain and the feeling of never being enough for Juri. The tears spilled over when Frank realized that what he was most worried about was Wolf making the same mistakes he had. The situation not exactly the same but Frank feared the suffering would be.
ØØØ
Linke invited Juri out to lunch under the pretense of catching up. The lunch went well, it was a nice restaurant and the food was good. Frank had picked it out after Linke said he was going to take Juri to McDonald’s since the food didn’t matter as much as the talking. Frank hadn’t thought that was funny.
He set his fork down and simply looked at Juri. Juri’s eyes still held pain and a sadness Linke knew would never leave them. He was older, more pained, experienced in loss and conflict. Linke wondered when they had all gotten so old.
“You’re dating my son,” Linke said. Might as well get it out there.
“Yes,” Juri answered, his eyes pleading for understanding under that mask of pain. “I love him.”
“You barely know him!” Linke snapped. “Juri, he’s just a kid! He doesn’t understand-”
“He understands a lot more than you think he does,” Juri said coldly. “And he’s an adult. He doesn’t live with you, you don’t count him as a dependent. He has his own life and he’s chosen to be with me. Please understand.”
Linke stared at his friend, his eyes boring into Juri’s face. He wanted to tell Juri all the reasons Wolf shouldn’t be with him. He wanted to say how it wasn’t fair to drag Wolf down just because Juri was too lazy to find someone else, how it wasn’t right for Juri to be with someone he had practically helped raise, how it wasn’t good for them, how Juri needed more time, how he couldn’t have possibly made a full recovery yet…and yet, Linke knew everything he said could be rebutted. Juri was doing nothing wrong, Wolf had chosen to be with him. Wolf was not some naïve little kid and Linke certainly did not know enough about Wolf’s sex life to know whether Juri had been his first. For once, Linke wished his son were stupider so he could at least fight for him. But this wasn’t his fight or his decision. Linke had no right to intervene.
Linke sighed.
“You’re right,” he told Juri. “It’s his life.”
ØØØ
The feeling of the party was, in one word, strained. Everyone seemed uncomfortable but Wolf had been invited, as had Juri, and neither could have given an excuse that would have been acceptable. Christmas parties were supposed to be about pretending to be happy meeting up with friends and family, not about personal, intergroup political sentiments. Wolf wished someone other than his parents had been holding it.
They had both come, both very aware that the atmosphere two years before had been different and that they were the reason for the current scandal. Every party had one. Still, it was torture.
For the first hour, Wolf had stayed with Emelyn and a few of the younger people who had been invited but his eyes kept straying to where Juri was listening to someone talk, obviously someone he knew but Wolf didn’t. There were a lot of people like that. Every so often, Juri would look up, scanning the crowd for Wolf until Wolf looked up and quirked his lips or raised his eyebrow, anything to make that tense look on Juri’s face disappear. Juri would grin and turn back to whoever was talking with a little more interest and a lot more energy.
Then Emelyn decided to leave and the true threads holding the party together became unbelievably clear. Without Emelyn, the others drifted away, not wanting to be seen talking to him. Wolf tried to approach people as he slipped through to get something to eat or drink, anything to keep him from being seen standing alone, silent. No one wanted to talk to him, though. There were polite smiles attached to hostile eyes and aversive looks that quickly turned to nothing when Wolf glared at the sender.
Wolf wanted to leave, wanted to take Juri’s arm and walk out the front door so no one could see his cheeks burning. His papa came up to talk to him once or twice but these were Frank’s friends and he could not spend the evening talking to his son and be a good host. Linke had disappeared (that had lightened Wolf’s mood up a bit; his father was not a fan of these small parties and was likely in his room, pretending not to be a host as he did every year) so Wolf did not have to feign interest in talking to him, either. He was still unsure of his father’s feelings about his relationship with Juri.
Wolf grabbed a bit of pie, making his way to a corner where he would not be too conspicuous. Unfortunately, he was found.
Uncle Timo raised an eyebrow at Wolf horking down a piece of pie and grabbed Wolf’s shoulder, dragging him aside.
“Before you even say it, I’m not trying to take Uncle Jan’s place,” Wolf snarled before his uncle could even open his mouth. Shit, he’d known this would be hard for people to accept but couldn’t they give him a little credit? He was as far from Jan physically as he could be and stay in the same race and by fucking God, he wasn’t trying to be Uncle Jan. “I’m dating Juri, we’re not related by blood, and there’s nothing wrong with that so give it up already. I’m not going to stop seeing him simply because you and Uncle David and my parents think it’s fucking weird.”
Timo looked amused.
“Defensive, are we?” he chuckled. “I actually wanted to tell you I know what it’s like having people tell you that you’re wrong to be dating the person you’re with.”
Wolf sucked on his teeth but he was listening. Timo grinned and shook his head.
“Boy, if you’d stop for a second and look around you, you might realize we’re not trying to tell you off. Yeah, your dads are a bit weirded out but you flipped sexualities on them for someone twice your age and a widower to boot. Juri’s been through a lot and no parent wants to see their child sucked into that. Look at it from their perspective. They’re worried is all but heck if you aren’t as stubborn as the pair of them.”
Timo clapped Wolf’s shoulder. Wolf glanced at the rapper’s hand shrewdly, then looked back at Timo's face, making his uncle laugh.
“Keep that attitude up and you’ll do fine, kid. If you want to be with Juri, be with him, I say. You’re both adults and he’ll treat you well if you stay with him.”
“That it?” Wolf asked, the words coming out less acidic and more plaintive than he wanted.
Timo grinned.
“Actually, I came to tell you Juri’s brought the car around front. He says he’d like to get the fuck out of here if you’re interested.”
Wolf had his plate down and his coat on before Timo could even finish his words.
“Kid’s got his priorities straight,” Timo muttered as he headed back to find David.
Damn these holiday parties. Timo wouldn’t mind getting out of there himself. He checked the clock on the wall. One hour to midnight. Fuck.