springkink fic. [Into the Rabbit Hole, Kyou Kara Maou, Yuuri/Conrart/Gwendal/Wolfram]
Title: Into the Rabbit Hole
Rating: PG
Warnings: Incest.
Word count: 3,327 words
Summary: Some shifts in the magics, and they all end up on Yuuri's Earth. June 17: - Kyou Kara Maou, Yuuri/Conrad/Gwendal/Wolfram: domesticity - "I'm trying but it's all I can do"
He's not sure how it happened. Some shifts in the magics, Gwendal says, but Wolfram doesn't believe it. There's no such thing as coincidence when it comes to Yuuri, and Wolfram's learned to distrust the twisting feeling in his stomach whenever the unexpected happens. Like when they're in the Temple courtyard, and the very sky seems to open up, drenching them with water, and sending them, all of them, spinning. And when it leaves them, dripping, on Yuuri's Earth.
"Oh," Yuuri says, surprised, and Wolfram wants to kick him. He flips his hair instead, grimacing when he just splashes himself with water droplets, and mimics Yuuri's "oh".
Then it's just one confusing event after another, with Yuuri trying to figure out where they are, and then realizing that none of the brothers have Anassina's strange little ear-bud invention. The humans’ language sounds like gibberish to Wolfram, and all the humans look the same, with black hair and black eyes, just like Yuuri. He's sure Gunter would be falling over himself with joy, but he can't dredge up much of anything except frustration and a quiet, angry fear.
There's no such thing as coincidence when it comes to Yuuri and the First King, and so when Wolfram's sharing a too-small bed with Yuuri, Gwendal and Conrart sleeping on the floor, he tries to convince himself this is all for a reason he just doesn't understand yet.
A few days go by, and nothing happens, and Wolfram can't find any underlying reason of any kind. The Great Sage hasn't shown up on Earth, and no portals have opened up to take them home. Wolfram's tired of jumping into every bit of water Yuuri can find, and he's ready to take a break and wait for the First King to make some kind of move, even if that means Wolfram will lose himself again. But really, even possession is sounding better by the moment, when confronting with jumping into another dirty, muddy, freezing body of water. Especially when he always ends up wet and shivering and covered in slime.
The days go by, and it gets colder. It was springtime in the Demon Nation, but here it's already autumn, and there's frost on the ground every morning, and the edges of the ponds are turning to a cold, soggy slush. After throwing himself into another slimy pond (the thirty-third in the past four days, not that he's been keeping count) headfirst, Wolfram drags himself out of the water, fingers numbs and feet squelching in his shoes. Even Conrart is looking strained, shivering as he scrubs at his hair. When Wolfram starts coughing as he lunges onto dry ground, Gwendal calls an end to things.
"A shift in magic," Gwendal says, as though that explains everything, and Wolfram would argue, because who could think this is a coincidence, but Conrart's wrapping Wolfram in a coat, and Yuuri's nodding along to Gwendal's every word, and Wolfram’s shaking too hard to be bothered to do much of anything other than trying to get warm.
And like that, they’re stuck on Yuuri’s Earth, shuffled into Yuuri’s parents’ house with a half-hearted “until things work out.” And there they stay, for two weeks, then three, and Wolfram, lying on the couch with a sore throat and a runny nose, and not understanding anyone but Yuuri and Gwendal and Conrart, begins to feel bruised.
Conrart’s getting on better than the rest of them. By the time a month has gone by, he’s speaking the humans’ language with a look on his face that means he’s thinking hard. And by the time Wolfram’s sore isn’t as sore, and he’s trying to be useful around the house, but is spending more time running into people and breaking dishes, Conrart is laughing and talking in the humans’ language, looking happier than he ever looked at home.
One night, when they’re all clustered around the table, Yuuri’s family and Wolfram’s, Yuuri’s mother says something, and Conrart laughs, and Wolfram’s tired, and homesick, and he’s tired of being left out, of not understanding anyone, or anything. He slams his sticks on the table, and shoves his chair back, and Conrart’s starting to stand up, and Gwendal’s saying, sharply, “Wolfram,” as he storms out of the room. He barricades himself in Yuuri’s room upstairs, sliding down the door, and propping his feet on the dresser, and when Conrart tries to push the door open, Wolfram shoves back.
“Go away,” he says, and he feels childish, but he can’t help it, doesn’t want to help it. Conrart’s quiet for a long moment, then he’s saying, so patient, “Wolfram, open the door.”
“No,” Wolfram says, and Conrart’s sighing like Wolfram’s wearing on his patience.
“Why are you angry, then?”
“I’m not,” Wolfram says, because he is, but he doesn’t know why. He can hear Conrart rest against the door, weight shifting on the other side of the door, and says, lowly, “you don’t laugh like that for Mother.”
“Mother’s not here,” Conrart says, like he has to explain it, like Wolfram wouldn’t have noticed that he hasn’t seen Mother, or Greta, or Uncle, or anyone, for over a month.
“I know that,” he punches the floor, feels stupid for it, and punches it again, because there’s nothing else he can do, “and I hate it here. I want to go home-”
“The magics will shift,” Gwendal’s voice says from the other side of the door, and Wolfram never wants to open the door again, because Gwendal’s out there, and Gwendal heard Wolfram, homesick and lonely. “We’ll get home.”
Wolfram swallows, feels like he’s going to throw up. The palms of his hands are sweaty, so he wipes them against the trousers Yuuri’s mother gave him. The trousers, jeans, or whatever Yuuri had called them, are rough, and Wolfram wipes his hands against the fabric until his palms feel raw and tender.
“Open the door, Wolfram,” Gwendal says, and Wolfram slowly scoots away from the door, until he’s in the middle of the room. Conrart opens the door a few moments later, and when he’s crouched in front of Wolfram, and Gwendal’s standing in the doorway, Wolfram feels his eyes burn.
“I’ll fix things,” Conrart is saying, and Conrart is always trying to fix things, always by himself, leaving everyone else behind in his never-ending quest to be someone’s hero. Wolfram clenches his eyes shut, curling his hands into fists against the carpet, and when Conrart asks “Wolfram?” Wolfram leans against him.
x
Yuuri goes back to school, and then he’s gone most of the days, leaving in the mornings, and not getting home until the late evenings. They all hesitate over whether Wolfram should go, too, but Wolfram, sick at the thought of being surrounded by hundreds of humans, unable to understand them, and them unable to understand him, asks what the point would be, and then they’re trying to figure out if Wolfram can pass as a human from another country, and if their language sounds anything like another human language. In the end, Yuuri walks to school by himself, and Wolfram lurks in the hallways of the house, trying to stay out of anyone’s direct line of sight.
Yuuri’s father leaves for work about the same time Yuuri leaves for school, and Yuuri’s brother is usually gone in the early mornings, or just strangling in, hiding away in his room. Then it’s just Gwendal, Conrart, Yuuri’s mother, and Wolfram, rattling around the house with awkward, jerky movements. Wolfram begins to take the couch, sitting on it with a book in his lap, staring at the strange words. Yuuri’s mother looks at him sometimes, a smile on her face, and one day, when he’s flipping the pages of the book idly, she dumps a load of books, children’s books, in his lap. After that, he spends the days staring at pictures, and then the words, trying to sling them together to make something out of nothing.
When Wolfram looks up from the couch, he sometimes sees Gwendal. Gwendal is usually shadowing Yuuri’s mother, ready to carry her laundry baskets or groceries, and when he looks back at Wolfram, he looks bored and empty. When Gwendal stands behind the couch, a hand resting near Wolfram’s shoulder, Wolfram wonders if maybe Gwendal’s as broken as Wolfram is, trying to read the pictures of glossy-paged books.
Conrart disappears for hours at a time, day after day, and after a while, Wolfram’s startled if he looks up and sees Conrart leaning on the kitchen table, talking to Gwendal. When Wolfram asks, frustrated, what Conrart’s been doing, Conrart looks away, murmurs something Wolfram can’t hear. Then he pulls his shoes on, slips on a coat, and leaves from the front door, the same way everyone does, except Gwendal and Wolfram.
It’s nearly their second month when Conrart falls into the house, flushed and panting for breath. He grabs Wolfram from the couch, dragging him up by the arm, and Wolfram yelps, stumbling after him.
“Where’s Gwendal?” Conrart asks, and Wolfram says, “I don’t know, you’re hurting me-” and then they’re running into Gwendal in the hallway, Gwendal’s arm catching about Wolfram’s waist before Wolfram can fall.
“What,” Gwendal asks, and there’s the line between his eyebrows he gets whenever he’s confused, “is it?”
“I got a job,” Conrart says, and he’s laughing, speaking too fast and too loud, and he’s never been this happy at home, never been this happy after Suzanna Julia died for their war. Wolfram doesn’t want to be happy for him, doesn’t want this human world to make Conrart happy when nothing in the demon world could. He hates all of this, the way everyone can see Conrart laugh when Mother hasn’t seen him laugh for twenty years. But Conrart’s laughing, a strange, hopeful laugh, and Wolfram doesn’t want Conrart to laugh, but he doesn’t want Conrart to stop, either, so he smiles, and lets Conrart rest his hands upon his shoulders.
It’s a whirlwind, then, with people coming and going through the front door, and Wolfram stands in the hallway, and watches them go. Yuuri leaves, then his father and brother, and then Conrart. And in the evenings, when the sun is already set, they all stumble home, one after another, and Conrart smells like cold air and wind. Conrart sits by Wolfram, looking tired but happy, and when Wolfram stares down at his picture books, glossy-eyed cats and dogs, Conrart says, “I’ll fix this.”
x
They find another place to live, through men who work with Yuuri’s father. It’s small, an apartment of only one bedroom, but it’s enough. Conrart says they’ll find a better place, a bigger place, but Wolfram doesn’t want a better place, a bigger place, because that means Conrart thinks they’ll be staying, that they’ll need a place to spend years, instead of just months. But the months are piling on, and winter is already ending, the slush at the ends of the ponds melting to plain water.
They start with mostly nothing in the apartment, just a few odds and ends from Yuuri’s family. Lent clothes, a few chairs, a table that’s a little lopsided. One mattress, barely big enough to fit the three of them when they’re lying close together. It’s enough, though, is always enough, and Wolfram doesn’t want more, doesn’t want any more picture books dropping in his lap. But Conrart is gone most of the day, working, and as the weeks go by, the apartment gets a little fuller. Dishes in the cupboard, a bedframe so they can shove the boxes of clothes beneath the bed. New shoes for Conrart, because his are almost worn through, and a new coat for Gwendal, because his is too heavy for the springtime. New books for Wolfram, with less pictures and more words. Wolfram sits at the lopsided table, bent over the books, and reads the pages with his finger pressed beneath the lines, the words, strange and boxy, swimming in his eyes.
There’s a neighbor woman who knocks at their door every few days, holding a wrapped bowl of food. Her hair is shot through with gray, and there are wrinkles around her mouth. When she smiles, though, she reminds Wolfram of Mother, as different as they are, and she smiles at Wolfram every time she sees him. Sometimes, if Conrart is home, she talks to him, the sounds tripping over her tongue, and Wolfram sits at the table, and listens to them talk.
“I told her,” Conrart says, when he shuts the door behind her, “that we’re from Germany. I moved here for work, and my brothers came with me.”
Gwendal’s smile is small, but it’s there. Wolfram snorts, then asks, curiously, “Germany?”
“It sounds the closest to home,” Conrart says. Then they’re the German family, and everyone in the apartment building smiles at them in a pitying way, because they’re strangers and foreigners, and forever away from home. Wolfram hates the looks, but he hates hiding in the apartment, and so, when spring is half over, and the air is hot and humid, he stares straight ahead, and tells himself it’s only until he gets home.
Yuuri stops by the apartment nearly every day, usually a few hours before Conrart gets home. He sits at the table with Wolfram, studying for school, and sometimes, when Wolfram is bent low over his book, Yuuri will lean close, and murmur, “it says, ‘into the room.’” Then he sits closer to Wolfram, shoulder nearly touching Wolfram’s, and when Wolfram’s tired of the blocky words, he leans against Yuuri, and watches Yuuri’s schoolwork. Yuuri loops his numbers wide, and sometimes, when his pencil is hovering over the paper, Wolfram reaches over, and taps a three.
“It should,” he says, “be a six,” and then Yuuri erases his numbers, flicks of pink scattering across the page.
By the time Conrart gets home, it’s nearly dark, and Yuuri’s ready to go home. They eat together, clustered around the table, and afterwards, Gwendal gathers up the dishes, begins to wash them in the soapy water, as Yuuri grabs his schoolbag, throws books and pencils inside. When Yuuri leaves, Conrart follows him, hand closer to Yuuri’s waist, and sometimes, when Gwendal is bent over the sink, Wolfram stands by the window, and watches the street below, and the way Yuuri leans up towards Conrart. Then he goes to the bedroom, tearing off his clothes, and when Gwendal and Conrart come into the room, Wolfram turns his face to the wall, and sleeps on the far side from Conrart.
x
By summertime, Wolfram is feeling as though he’s going crazy. The walls of the apartment feel too close, the air feels too still, and he hangs out the windows most of the day, watching the people pass on the streets below. He thinks he can hear a buzzing in the air, bugs or the murmur of people’s voices, but when he listens harder, the world sounds too silent. Gwendal’s growing more impatient by the day, his hands heavy on Wolfram’s shoulders as he moves Wolfram out of the way. Wolfram wants to sleep, make the time pass faster, but the mattress is too hot, and Gwendal stumbles over him whenever he tries to sleep on the floor. By the third week of summer, Wolfram leaves the apartment in the early morning, the same time Conrart leaves, before Gwendal is awake.
He follows Conrart to work, then, when Conrart’s disappeared into the building with a “don’t forget to eat,” he turns towards early sun, and begins walking. The streets are crowded, men and women passing him by, and the shoulders that bump his are always in a hurry. He moves slowly, feels like a rock in the midst of a river, and when he looks up, the sky looks empty and blue.
He finds a park the second day he walks Conrart to work. The shade beneath the trees is cool, and the grass is long, tickles his palms. The buzzing of the world drones on in his ears, and he watches mothers and children come and go, the swings across the way rattling on their chains. When he gets home, he shuts the door, leans against it, and says to Gwendal, “I found a park.”
Gwendal nods without looking up, bent over something on the table, and Wolfram moves past him into the bedroom. He sits on the bed, then kneels up to slide the window further open. He can hear the traffic below, the sounds rising faint to the window, and when he leans back, he says, “there were flowers there. Mother would like it.”
When he looks up at the doorway, Gwendal is standing there, face blank. Wolfram swallows, then rolls onto his side, turning his face towards the wall. He can hear Gwendal step into the room, then the bed shifts as Gwendal sits, weight bending the mattress.
“Wolfram,” Gwendal says, and Wolfram rolls back when Gwendal says, “look at me.” Gwendal’s eyes look strange, old and tired and human, and Wolfram closes his eyes, swallows again. He feels the bed shift as Gwendal moves, then Gwendal’s fingers are along Wolfram’s jaw, turning Wolfram’s face up-- and then Gwendal’s kissing him.
“What do you want?” Gwendal asks, and Wolfram shakes his head, lying his arm over his eyes. Gwendal’s fingers are still on Wolfram’s jaw, and they barely move, gentle and half a caress, and then Gwendal is standing up, and pulling a blanket over Wolfram before he leaves the room.
Wolfram drags himself out into the other room when Yuuri arrives, and when Gwendal moves into the bedroom, he sits at the table next to Yuuri. Yuuri’s bent over his schoolbooks, and Wolfram picks one up, looks at it, then reaches across for Yuuri’s pencil bag. He pulls out a pencil, then begins to fix Yuuri’s figures, erasing the numbers, then writing new ones in their places. The apartment is painfully quiet, the quiet before the war, and when Yuuri fidgets next to him, shoulder brushing his, Wolfram drops the schoolbook from his nervous fingers.
“What,” Yuuri asks, “is wrong?”
Wolfram shakes his head, because he doesn’t know what he wants, and what he should want. Yuuri’s frowning, looks like he’s going to argue, and when he opens his mouth to say something, probably something stupid and entirely Yuuri, Wolfram leans forward and kisses him. Yuuri’s mouth is still beneath Wolfram’s, and Wolfram touches Yuuri’s wrist, wraps his fingers about it, and Yuuri’s pulse is wild beneath Wolfram’s fingertips. Wolfram kisses him harder, and then Yuuri groans, begins to kiss Wolfram back.
When Conrart gets home, Yuuri is sitting on the other side of the table, blushing and staring down at his schoolbooks with marked determination. Wolfram is sitting on his side of the table, the blocky words of the books spinning in his eyes, and Gwendal is leaning by the sink, his hair pulled back, an apron tied about his waist. Conrart shuts the door with a click, and Yuuri jumps at the sound, sending his pencil bag to the floor, pens and pencils clattering. Conrart bends to grab a few of the pencils, and Wolfram leans over, reaching beneath his chair to catch a rolling pen.
“Welcome,” Yuuri begins, but his voice breaks, and he swallows noisily, and begins again. “Welcome home.”
Conrart smiles, like he’s really home, with or without their Suzanna Julia, dead in their war, and when he touches Wolfram, a hand brushing over Wolfram’s head, Wolfram feels himself laugh, and he’s shaking, and laughing, and can’t stop laughing, until Gwendal leans down to quiet him with a kiss.
“I’m happy,” Conrart says, and then someone is kissing Wolfram, and he can hear Yuuri say, from across the table, “oh.” And when another mouth is pressed against his, Wolfram leans up, and, in their little apartment, on Yuuri’s Earth, says, “oh.”
Rating: PG
Warnings: Incest.
Word count: 3,327 words
Summary: Some shifts in the magics, and they all end up on Yuuri's Earth. June 17: - Kyou Kara Maou, Yuuri/Conrad/Gwendal/Wolfram: domesticity - "I'm trying but it's all I can do"
He's not sure how it happened. Some shifts in the magics, Gwendal says, but Wolfram doesn't believe it. There's no such thing as coincidence when it comes to Yuuri, and Wolfram's learned to distrust the twisting feeling in his stomach whenever the unexpected happens. Like when they're in the Temple courtyard, and the very sky seems to open up, drenching them with water, and sending them, all of them, spinning. And when it leaves them, dripping, on Yuuri's Earth.
"Oh," Yuuri says, surprised, and Wolfram wants to kick him. He flips his hair instead, grimacing when he just splashes himself with water droplets, and mimics Yuuri's "oh".
Then it's just one confusing event after another, with Yuuri trying to figure out where they are, and then realizing that none of the brothers have Anassina's strange little ear-bud invention. The humans’ language sounds like gibberish to Wolfram, and all the humans look the same, with black hair and black eyes, just like Yuuri. He's sure Gunter would be falling over himself with joy, but he can't dredge up much of anything except frustration and a quiet, angry fear.
There's no such thing as coincidence when it comes to Yuuri and the First King, and so when Wolfram's sharing a too-small bed with Yuuri, Gwendal and Conrart sleeping on the floor, he tries to convince himself this is all for a reason he just doesn't understand yet.
A few days go by, and nothing happens, and Wolfram can't find any underlying reason of any kind. The Great Sage hasn't shown up on Earth, and no portals have opened up to take them home. Wolfram's tired of jumping into every bit of water Yuuri can find, and he's ready to take a break and wait for the First King to make some kind of move, even if that means Wolfram will lose himself again. But really, even possession is sounding better by the moment, when confronting with jumping into another dirty, muddy, freezing body of water. Especially when he always ends up wet and shivering and covered in slime.
The days go by, and it gets colder. It was springtime in the Demon Nation, but here it's already autumn, and there's frost on the ground every morning, and the edges of the ponds are turning to a cold, soggy slush. After throwing himself into another slimy pond (the thirty-third in the past four days, not that he's been keeping count) headfirst, Wolfram drags himself out of the water, fingers numbs and feet squelching in his shoes. Even Conrart is looking strained, shivering as he scrubs at his hair. When Wolfram starts coughing as he lunges onto dry ground, Gwendal calls an end to things.
"A shift in magic," Gwendal says, as though that explains everything, and Wolfram would argue, because who could think this is a coincidence, but Conrart's wrapping Wolfram in a coat, and Yuuri's nodding along to Gwendal's every word, and Wolfram’s shaking too hard to be bothered to do much of anything other than trying to get warm.
And like that, they’re stuck on Yuuri’s Earth, shuffled into Yuuri’s parents’ house with a half-hearted “until things work out.” And there they stay, for two weeks, then three, and Wolfram, lying on the couch with a sore throat and a runny nose, and not understanding anyone but Yuuri and Gwendal and Conrart, begins to feel bruised.
Conrart’s getting on better than the rest of them. By the time a month has gone by, he’s speaking the humans’ language with a look on his face that means he’s thinking hard. And by the time Wolfram’s sore isn’t as sore, and he’s trying to be useful around the house, but is spending more time running into people and breaking dishes, Conrart is laughing and talking in the humans’ language, looking happier than he ever looked at home.
One night, when they’re all clustered around the table, Yuuri’s family and Wolfram’s, Yuuri’s mother says something, and Conrart laughs, and Wolfram’s tired, and homesick, and he’s tired of being left out, of not understanding anyone, or anything. He slams his sticks on the table, and shoves his chair back, and Conrart’s starting to stand up, and Gwendal’s saying, sharply, “Wolfram,” as he storms out of the room. He barricades himself in Yuuri’s room upstairs, sliding down the door, and propping his feet on the dresser, and when Conrart tries to push the door open, Wolfram shoves back.
“Go away,” he says, and he feels childish, but he can’t help it, doesn’t want to help it. Conrart’s quiet for a long moment, then he’s saying, so patient, “Wolfram, open the door.”
“No,” Wolfram says, and Conrart’s sighing like Wolfram’s wearing on his patience.
“Why are you angry, then?”
“I’m not,” Wolfram says, because he is, but he doesn’t know why. He can hear Conrart rest against the door, weight shifting on the other side of the door, and says, lowly, “you don’t laugh like that for Mother.”
“Mother’s not here,” Conrart says, like he has to explain it, like Wolfram wouldn’t have noticed that he hasn’t seen Mother, or Greta, or Uncle, or anyone, for over a month.
“I know that,” he punches the floor, feels stupid for it, and punches it again, because there’s nothing else he can do, “and I hate it here. I want to go home-”
“The magics will shift,” Gwendal’s voice says from the other side of the door, and Wolfram never wants to open the door again, because Gwendal’s out there, and Gwendal heard Wolfram, homesick and lonely. “We’ll get home.”
Wolfram swallows, feels like he’s going to throw up. The palms of his hands are sweaty, so he wipes them against the trousers Yuuri’s mother gave him. The trousers, jeans, or whatever Yuuri had called them, are rough, and Wolfram wipes his hands against the fabric until his palms feel raw and tender.
“Open the door, Wolfram,” Gwendal says, and Wolfram slowly scoots away from the door, until he’s in the middle of the room. Conrart opens the door a few moments later, and when he’s crouched in front of Wolfram, and Gwendal’s standing in the doorway, Wolfram feels his eyes burn.
“I’ll fix things,” Conrart is saying, and Conrart is always trying to fix things, always by himself, leaving everyone else behind in his never-ending quest to be someone’s hero. Wolfram clenches his eyes shut, curling his hands into fists against the carpet, and when Conrart asks “Wolfram?” Wolfram leans against him.
x
Yuuri goes back to school, and then he’s gone most of the days, leaving in the mornings, and not getting home until the late evenings. They all hesitate over whether Wolfram should go, too, but Wolfram, sick at the thought of being surrounded by hundreds of humans, unable to understand them, and them unable to understand him, asks what the point would be, and then they’re trying to figure out if Wolfram can pass as a human from another country, and if their language sounds anything like another human language. In the end, Yuuri walks to school by himself, and Wolfram lurks in the hallways of the house, trying to stay out of anyone’s direct line of sight.
Yuuri’s father leaves for work about the same time Yuuri leaves for school, and Yuuri’s brother is usually gone in the early mornings, or just strangling in, hiding away in his room. Then it’s just Gwendal, Conrart, Yuuri’s mother, and Wolfram, rattling around the house with awkward, jerky movements. Wolfram begins to take the couch, sitting on it with a book in his lap, staring at the strange words. Yuuri’s mother looks at him sometimes, a smile on her face, and one day, when he’s flipping the pages of the book idly, she dumps a load of books, children’s books, in his lap. After that, he spends the days staring at pictures, and then the words, trying to sling them together to make something out of nothing.
When Wolfram looks up from the couch, he sometimes sees Gwendal. Gwendal is usually shadowing Yuuri’s mother, ready to carry her laundry baskets or groceries, and when he looks back at Wolfram, he looks bored and empty. When Gwendal stands behind the couch, a hand resting near Wolfram’s shoulder, Wolfram wonders if maybe Gwendal’s as broken as Wolfram is, trying to read the pictures of glossy-paged books.
Conrart disappears for hours at a time, day after day, and after a while, Wolfram’s startled if he looks up and sees Conrart leaning on the kitchen table, talking to Gwendal. When Wolfram asks, frustrated, what Conrart’s been doing, Conrart looks away, murmurs something Wolfram can’t hear. Then he pulls his shoes on, slips on a coat, and leaves from the front door, the same way everyone does, except Gwendal and Wolfram.
It’s nearly their second month when Conrart falls into the house, flushed and panting for breath. He grabs Wolfram from the couch, dragging him up by the arm, and Wolfram yelps, stumbling after him.
“Where’s Gwendal?” Conrart asks, and Wolfram says, “I don’t know, you’re hurting me-” and then they’re running into Gwendal in the hallway, Gwendal’s arm catching about Wolfram’s waist before Wolfram can fall.
“What,” Gwendal asks, and there’s the line between his eyebrows he gets whenever he’s confused, “is it?”
“I got a job,” Conrart says, and he’s laughing, speaking too fast and too loud, and he’s never been this happy at home, never been this happy after Suzanna Julia died for their war. Wolfram doesn’t want to be happy for him, doesn’t want this human world to make Conrart happy when nothing in the demon world could. He hates all of this, the way everyone can see Conrart laugh when Mother hasn’t seen him laugh for twenty years. But Conrart’s laughing, a strange, hopeful laugh, and Wolfram doesn’t want Conrart to laugh, but he doesn’t want Conrart to stop, either, so he smiles, and lets Conrart rest his hands upon his shoulders.
It’s a whirlwind, then, with people coming and going through the front door, and Wolfram stands in the hallway, and watches them go. Yuuri leaves, then his father and brother, and then Conrart. And in the evenings, when the sun is already set, they all stumble home, one after another, and Conrart smells like cold air and wind. Conrart sits by Wolfram, looking tired but happy, and when Wolfram stares down at his picture books, glossy-eyed cats and dogs, Conrart says, “I’ll fix this.”
x
They find another place to live, through men who work with Yuuri’s father. It’s small, an apartment of only one bedroom, but it’s enough. Conrart says they’ll find a better place, a bigger place, but Wolfram doesn’t want a better place, a bigger place, because that means Conrart thinks they’ll be staying, that they’ll need a place to spend years, instead of just months. But the months are piling on, and winter is already ending, the slush at the ends of the ponds melting to plain water.
They start with mostly nothing in the apartment, just a few odds and ends from Yuuri’s family. Lent clothes, a few chairs, a table that’s a little lopsided. One mattress, barely big enough to fit the three of them when they’re lying close together. It’s enough, though, is always enough, and Wolfram doesn’t want more, doesn’t want any more picture books dropping in his lap. But Conrart is gone most of the day, working, and as the weeks go by, the apartment gets a little fuller. Dishes in the cupboard, a bedframe so they can shove the boxes of clothes beneath the bed. New shoes for Conrart, because his are almost worn through, and a new coat for Gwendal, because his is too heavy for the springtime. New books for Wolfram, with less pictures and more words. Wolfram sits at the lopsided table, bent over the books, and reads the pages with his finger pressed beneath the lines, the words, strange and boxy, swimming in his eyes.
There’s a neighbor woman who knocks at their door every few days, holding a wrapped bowl of food. Her hair is shot through with gray, and there are wrinkles around her mouth. When she smiles, though, she reminds Wolfram of Mother, as different as they are, and she smiles at Wolfram every time she sees him. Sometimes, if Conrart is home, she talks to him, the sounds tripping over her tongue, and Wolfram sits at the table, and listens to them talk.
“I told her,” Conrart says, when he shuts the door behind her, “that we’re from Germany. I moved here for work, and my brothers came with me.”
Gwendal’s smile is small, but it’s there. Wolfram snorts, then asks, curiously, “Germany?”
“It sounds the closest to home,” Conrart says. Then they’re the German family, and everyone in the apartment building smiles at them in a pitying way, because they’re strangers and foreigners, and forever away from home. Wolfram hates the looks, but he hates hiding in the apartment, and so, when spring is half over, and the air is hot and humid, he stares straight ahead, and tells himself it’s only until he gets home.
Yuuri stops by the apartment nearly every day, usually a few hours before Conrart gets home. He sits at the table with Wolfram, studying for school, and sometimes, when Wolfram is bent low over his book, Yuuri will lean close, and murmur, “it says, ‘into the room.’” Then he sits closer to Wolfram, shoulder nearly touching Wolfram’s, and when Wolfram’s tired of the blocky words, he leans against Yuuri, and watches Yuuri’s schoolwork. Yuuri loops his numbers wide, and sometimes, when his pencil is hovering over the paper, Wolfram reaches over, and taps a three.
“It should,” he says, “be a six,” and then Yuuri erases his numbers, flicks of pink scattering across the page.
By the time Conrart gets home, it’s nearly dark, and Yuuri’s ready to go home. They eat together, clustered around the table, and afterwards, Gwendal gathers up the dishes, begins to wash them in the soapy water, as Yuuri grabs his schoolbag, throws books and pencils inside. When Yuuri leaves, Conrart follows him, hand closer to Yuuri’s waist, and sometimes, when Gwendal is bent over the sink, Wolfram stands by the window, and watches the street below, and the way Yuuri leans up towards Conrart. Then he goes to the bedroom, tearing off his clothes, and when Gwendal and Conrart come into the room, Wolfram turns his face to the wall, and sleeps on the far side from Conrart.
x
By summertime, Wolfram is feeling as though he’s going crazy. The walls of the apartment feel too close, the air feels too still, and he hangs out the windows most of the day, watching the people pass on the streets below. He thinks he can hear a buzzing in the air, bugs or the murmur of people’s voices, but when he listens harder, the world sounds too silent. Gwendal’s growing more impatient by the day, his hands heavy on Wolfram’s shoulders as he moves Wolfram out of the way. Wolfram wants to sleep, make the time pass faster, but the mattress is too hot, and Gwendal stumbles over him whenever he tries to sleep on the floor. By the third week of summer, Wolfram leaves the apartment in the early morning, the same time Conrart leaves, before Gwendal is awake.
He follows Conrart to work, then, when Conrart’s disappeared into the building with a “don’t forget to eat,” he turns towards early sun, and begins walking. The streets are crowded, men and women passing him by, and the shoulders that bump his are always in a hurry. He moves slowly, feels like a rock in the midst of a river, and when he looks up, the sky looks empty and blue.
He finds a park the second day he walks Conrart to work. The shade beneath the trees is cool, and the grass is long, tickles his palms. The buzzing of the world drones on in his ears, and he watches mothers and children come and go, the swings across the way rattling on their chains. When he gets home, he shuts the door, leans against it, and says to Gwendal, “I found a park.”
Gwendal nods without looking up, bent over something on the table, and Wolfram moves past him into the bedroom. He sits on the bed, then kneels up to slide the window further open. He can hear the traffic below, the sounds rising faint to the window, and when he leans back, he says, “there were flowers there. Mother would like it.”
When he looks up at the doorway, Gwendal is standing there, face blank. Wolfram swallows, then rolls onto his side, turning his face towards the wall. He can hear Gwendal step into the room, then the bed shifts as Gwendal sits, weight bending the mattress.
“Wolfram,” Gwendal says, and Wolfram rolls back when Gwendal says, “look at me.” Gwendal’s eyes look strange, old and tired and human, and Wolfram closes his eyes, swallows again. He feels the bed shift as Gwendal moves, then Gwendal’s fingers are along Wolfram’s jaw, turning Wolfram’s face up-- and then Gwendal’s kissing him.
“What do you want?” Gwendal asks, and Wolfram shakes his head, lying his arm over his eyes. Gwendal’s fingers are still on Wolfram’s jaw, and they barely move, gentle and half a caress, and then Gwendal is standing up, and pulling a blanket over Wolfram before he leaves the room.
Wolfram drags himself out into the other room when Yuuri arrives, and when Gwendal moves into the bedroom, he sits at the table next to Yuuri. Yuuri’s bent over his schoolbooks, and Wolfram picks one up, looks at it, then reaches across for Yuuri’s pencil bag. He pulls out a pencil, then begins to fix Yuuri’s figures, erasing the numbers, then writing new ones in their places. The apartment is painfully quiet, the quiet before the war, and when Yuuri fidgets next to him, shoulder brushing his, Wolfram drops the schoolbook from his nervous fingers.
“What,” Yuuri asks, “is wrong?”
Wolfram shakes his head, because he doesn’t know what he wants, and what he should want. Yuuri’s frowning, looks like he’s going to argue, and when he opens his mouth to say something, probably something stupid and entirely Yuuri, Wolfram leans forward and kisses him. Yuuri’s mouth is still beneath Wolfram’s, and Wolfram touches Yuuri’s wrist, wraps his fingers about it, and Yuuri’s pulse is wild beneath Wolfram’s fingertips. Wolfram kisses him harder, and then Yuuri groans, begins to kiss Wolfram back.
When Conrart gets home, Yuuri is sitting on the other side of the table, blushing and staring down at his schoolbooks with marked determination. Wolfram is sitting on his side of the table, the blocky words of the books spinning in his eyes, and Gwendal is leaning by the sink, his hair pulled back, an apron tied about his waist. Conrart shuts the door with a click, and Yuuri jumps at the sound, sending his pencil bag to the floor, pens and pencils clattering. Conrart bends to grab a few of the pencils, and Wolfram leans over, reaching beneath his chair to catch a rolling pen.
“Welcome,” Yuuri begins, but his voice breaks, and he swallows noisily, and begins again. “Welcome home.”
Conrart smiles, like he’s really home, with or without their Suzanna Julia, dead in their war, and when he touches Wolfram, a hand brushing over Wolfram’s head, Wolfram feels himself laugh, and he’s shaking, and laughing, and can’t stop laughing, until Gwendal leans down to quiet him with a kiss.
“I’m happy,” Conrart says, and then someone is kissing Wolfram, and he can hear Yuuri say, from across the table, “oh.” And when another mouth is pressed against his, Wolfram leans up, and, in their little apartment, on Yuuri’s Earth, says, “oh.”