[Family by Choice] Good Ideas
Title: Good Ideas
Story/Character: Family by Choice / Adolf, Mattias & Kalmenka
Rating: PG-13 (for language and animal death)
word count: 3,929
note: Deutsch language deliberately mangled into phonetic spelling of a dialect.
The sharp crack of the gunshot rang out loud and clear in the crisp air and Adolf froze, heart skipping hard and fast in his chest. For one long moment afterwards there was nothing but shocked silence, even the birds startled into a quiet that was only broken by the ragged sound of an indrawn breath.
Adolf had to swallow around the dry, bitter taste of his mouth, adrenaline pulsing with sick hotness through his veins. His voice, he was pleased to find, was steadier than it had any right to be. "...Baba?"
Mattias was rigid, the tension of it screaming through the line of his shoulders and back that Adolf could see, but his stance was textbook form and his hands, at least, were wrapped around the grip of the P09 - which had been holstered at Adolf's hip only moments before - in a rock solid aim that was only belied by the hitched gasps of his shaken breath. That aim was directed into the trees, but the finger on the trigger was tight and trembling more than Adolf cared to see when there was a gun involved and nothing at all visible stirring between the woods and the brush.
He let his breath out slowly, easing his weight gingerly onto the foot nearer to the boy. The quiet, smooth tone that he needed was still so damned easy to call up, the one that had eased Hans down when the kid's eyes had been ringed in vein shot white, or when Randolf had bit clean through his lip, blood streaked across his bared teeth as he shook so hard Adolf had feared for the other man's bones (the one, his memory traitorously reminded him, that had failed when their Häptman's eyes had gone just as dead, hard and lost and beyond recall, just before the entire damned world had ended, and oh Luck, he wasn't going to think of that, not within arm's reach of a AU classed Mathematiker who wasn't bound, merciful Luck no). "Mattias? What is it?"
The boy was panting in short, sharp puffs of air that plumed into the chill air. "Sorry," he gasped and Adolf hated the part of his mind that said that that was good, that was definite steps up from the world ending if the boy knew something was wrong, because good was entirely relative and that was his son who was holding a loaded pistol in his hands and trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind. "There was... saw something... sorry..."
Adolf eased another step closer, close enough to touch, his hands rising so, so slowly (to catch the boy's arm if he turned, mercy, please, no) and his heart throbbing in his throat. "Pssst," he breathed, trying to keep his tone no different from the one he used to sooth the boy's dreams at night. Mattias gulped, the sound half sob, but obediently hushed afterwards, his lips pressed thin and tight. Adolf kept half an eye on the boy and half on the woods around them, straining to listen, but the only sound was the rush of wind through leaves and the broken sound of resumed birdsong.
"Don't hear anything," Adolf said softly when he had counted out seventy too-fast beats of his laboring heart. "You?"
"N-na," Mattias gasped, and the aim of the gun was wavering, the tremors wracking through his chest and down into his arms. "Sorry. Sorry, Papa, I..."
"Pssst," Adolf repeated, and it was one more bare half step and then he was there, the boy barely flinching as Adolf's arms reached around him, hands sliding down his forearms from behind. The gun all but fell out of his grasp, fingers opening spasmodically, and Adolf caught it one handed and dragged the boy bodily into his embrace with the other. Mattias turned and collapsed against his chest, the boy's breath coming hard and fast on stuttered sobs.
A decade of life in the ranks demanded the gun be cocked or holstered at the ready, adrenaline and the memory of the sound of the shot calling forth a hundred ingrained habits of life on the Eastern Front, but Adolf had barely had time to even register Mattias had moved before the boy had ripped the pistol from its holster with lightning speed, aimed, and fired. The sound of the shot made him itch to have the gun ready in his own hands, but his son was clinging to him and an entirely new set of priorities trampled over old habits with a force that took his breath away, cold ice chasing away combat ready heat. Thumbing the safety on, Adolf viciously flung the pistol aside, and if habit made him mark where it fell amid the heavy blanket of leaves it didn't matter because it was out of his boy's grasp and out of reach and left Adolf both hands free to pull the boy close and hold tight.
He wasn't sure how long it was before he could breath steady again, the throb of his heart subsiding to a dull roar in his ears. He was, he found, whispering, an endless string of meaningless, soothing syllables and words he wasn't even aware of, breathed into the sweat-damp curls of his son's hair as he rubbed his palms in circles and sweeps over the boy's back. Mattias's shaking had faded into shivers, the boy's gasps coming softer where his face was pressed into the front of Adolf's coat, and his white-knuckled grip on the fabric had eased somewhat.
Adolf drew a deeper breath, swallowing down a sour taste. All around them the sound of the forest continued as though nothing had interrupted it. No one, he told himself firmly, was hurt, no harm done, no enemy in sight, and Luck willing they were far enough from the house that the sound of the gunshot wouldn't have traveled the distance. The product of the afternoon's rambling walk was spilled at their feet, mushrooms and late season berries scattered into the leaf mulch where they had both dropped their buckets, but it was a small price to pay in what had been little more than an excuse to get out of the house for a bit and try to walk off the boy's jittering in the first place. He buried his face against Mattias's hair, inhaling the scents of soap and skin and the acrid tang of fear, and pressed a kiss to the boy's forehead. "Pssst, Baba, pssst. It's alright. It's alright."
Mattias hiccuped softly. "Sorry," he whispered, voice small and young against Adolf's chest. "Sorry, Papa. I don't... something moved and I didn't... sorry. Sorry."
"Pssst," Adolf repeated, hushing him. "It's alright. No harm done."
The boy sniffled, wet and miserable, but the shivering was slowing under Adolf's hands. "Sorry," he repeated one more time, choked. And then, after a bit, sniffling again, "...I think I hit it."
Adolf blinked, hands keeping up their motion on automatic as he smoothed a soothing line from the boy's nape to his waist and back again, slow and regular as Mattias gingerly unwound until he was standing almost steady on his own. "Well," Adolf said at last, somewhat at a loss, "there's no one out here but us. Let's go see what you hit."
It didn't take a genius in tracking, thank the Luck, to find the splash of blood or the easily marked trail of it dotted across the leaves. Adolf, who had put the remains of the buckets firmly in Mattias's hands and had retrieved his pistol, thumbed the safety off as he took point and tried not to think about wild boar - or worse, bear - which had been the entire reason he agreed to going out armed in the first place.
The source of the blood, when they found it not too far away, was thankfully nothing so dangerous.
Adolf circled carefully around the body but there was no breath and no motion left in it, just an ungainly pile of short pelt and long legs and a fairly impressive rack of buck antlers. One last nudge of his boot proved that it was dead, the bullet ripped clean through the slender throat and he couldn't quite suppress a brief whistle. "It was a good shot," he noted and Mattias flushed, pleased and embarrassed all at once, but the color chased the lingering pallor from his face and let Adolf breath a little easier.
"I didn't really see it," the boy admitted. With the beast confirmed safe he had put the buckets down and stepped closer, eyes wide and curious. "I just caught it out of the corner of my eye - it was brown, kind of grey, and it moved." He glanced up, catching Adolf's raised eyebrows, and shrugged sheepishly, the corners of his mouth pulling down. "Everybody was brownish grey up north. Too much mud and dirt."
"Well," Adolf allowed, choosing to ignore that bit, "it was a damned good shot." He holstered his pistol, eyeing the buck carcass for a long moment, and scratched thoughtfully at the line of his jaw. "Seems a shame to waste it."
Mattias, who had crouched down on his heels to better examine the body, tilted his head. "I watched Apa take that last one apart."
"Ja," Adolf agreed, "I did too, but I don't think we'll get too far with a pocket knife, Kend, and that's all I've got."
The boy worried at his bottom lip for a moment, eyes half shuttered, then abruptly stood and went back to scoop up one of the abandoned buckets, emptying the contents into the other. The half-felt prickling ripple of the Mathe made Adolf shiver, but in another moment Mattias had turned back to him and the thin tin of the bucket had melted and re-solidified in his hands into a fair approximation of the curve handled knife that Adolf could remember Kalmenka using when they had last gone hunting. "Will that work?"
Adolf eyed the dead deer and the newly formed knife, and then shrugged. "Guess we'll find out."
* * * * *
Kalmenka stood on the porch, the towel that he had been drying dishes with hanging forgotten in his hands, and found that he was almost completely at a loss for words. "...What?"
It didn't really seem like enough but he was having a hard time coming up with any other response to the sight in front of him. There was some sort of essential disconnect between the relatively harmless announcement of "we’re going for a walk" and coming home covered from top to boot tip in mud and blood and hadn't that given him a close pass with a heart attack before he'd realized both of them seemed to be walking hale enough. The majority of the mess appeared to be coming from the rough hewn haunches of whatever the fuck it was that his partner and his boy were carrying and Kalmenka, who had been expecting some unavoidably muddy boots and a pail of the mushrooms he had asked for was confounded for what to do when presented with offal instead.
Adolf tried, without much success, to blow a sticky clump of disarrayed hair off of his forehead. The other man's glasses were the only relatively unsplashed part of his face, though the lenses bore streak marks from haphazard wiping, probably on the hem of his undershirt, which Kalmenka hazarded might be the only salvageable part of what he was wearing. "It's a deer," he announced, in the same flat tone Kalmenka was familiar to hearing from some of the more noteworthy reports to assorted upper brass during their Rank days, reports that had included straight faced statements like 'there was an unavoidable altercation in the vicinity of the bar' or 'after which, for unknown reasons, the transport exploded' or one particularly memorable instance of 'our radio unit suffered irreparable damage due to an encounter with multiple swine and an enemy goose, sir'.
"I… see," Kalmenka said. He didn't, really, though he supposed, if he squinted hard enough… well, yes, if they had taken off the head, and for some Luck benighted reason the legs, and then tried to cut it in quarters but came up with something more like random pieces, then yes, he supposed it might be a deer. He tried to come up with something more to say on the matter, but ended up circling back to his first response when nothing else seemed appropriate. "What?"
"I shot it," Mattias supplied helpfully, looking rather too pleased with himself for a boy who was covered in drying deer blood and carrying half of the aforementioned questionable animal. Kalmenka started to open his mouth and then discovered that there was absolutely nothing he could think of to say that even came close to addressing this new revelation.
"It was an accident," Adolf said quickly. "It's a long story. Doesn't this thing have to… I don't know…" He started to wave a hand in the general direction of their outbuildings and then caught himself with a scowl as the piece of meat across his shoulder began to slip, irritably shrugging it back into position. "Whatever you did to the other one?"
"Hang," Kalmenka supplied dutifully, his voice thinner than he would have liked. "Though… it's going to take more hooks than the last one."
The other man heaved a sigh. "Yes, fine. Can we get on with that bit so that maybe there can be baths had before all of this dries?"
The first thing the Ranks taught any good soldier was how to deal with an abruptly changed schedule, because neither enemy fire or the whims of top brass ever politely filed advance notice with a man's carefully planned out calendar. Kalmenka could almost feel the moment habit kicked in, straightening his spine and pushing the multitudes of alarm, confusion, and dumbfoundedness far enough away from the forefront that the scene in front of him turned into a list of things to do rather than to be stared at. "Right, yes. Alright. Let me get my boots. We can hang it in the barn - well, wash it, skin it, and then hang it, I suppose. Hold on."
It took Kalmenka two minutes to stamp into his most worn pair of field boots, find his skinning knife, and to decide he would rather be cold and only have to wash his own skin and undershirt afterwards, rather than be warm and have to try to scrub blood stains out of yet another set of outerwear in addition to the other two. He caught up to them at the small barn - shed, really, just large enough to store a few tools and winter feed for the little piebald goat that was out in the equally small pasture - and had to suppress a sigh as Mattias unceremoniously dumped his portion of the meat onto the dirt and hay strewn floor. "Now what?" the boy asked.
A glance at Adolf was singularly unhelpful; the other man had the shuttered look on his face that said, alternately, 'your call, main Harr' or 'your son, you deal with it'. Sighing, Kalmenka reached back to catch the braided length of his hair, looping it to knot the trailing tie to the base at his nape with quick practice to shorten the length of it by half. "Now," he said firmly, "you are going to go take a bath and let your Papa and me deal with this. Leave the boots outside, mind you, and for Luck's sake, use the tub in the laundry room. Try not to track it all through the kitchen."
Mattias opened his mouth and Kalmenka ruthlessly cut off the protest he could see forming on the boy's face. "After which, you can scrub the tub out and refill it hot for your Papa. Leave everything to soak in the cold sink, and make sure you put a scoop of salt in the water with it - we'll do laundry tomorrow. And after that there's a sink of dishes that need drying and putting away, and a pile of potatoes and carrots on the table that need peeling and cutting if we're going to have supper tonight. Vorstäst?"
The boy's expression fell, his shoulders slumping, and the set of his mouth said without a word that he knew exactly what he had just been assigned, benefit of first crack at washing up or not. "Jowuhl," he answered, and the Ranks had drilled most of the teen sullenness out of his voice but not out of the all too eloquent line of his posture as he turned back to the house.
Kalmenka waited until he was out of earshot before turning back to Adolf. "He shot it?" he hissed.
The other man closed his eyes, the thin line of his mouth pained. "He had an… incident while we were walking," he said tiredly. "Saw the deer move out of the corner of his eye and had the pistol off me before I knew what he was about. Said he didn't know what it was, just saw something grey and brown moving in the trees." He took a deeper breath and opened his eyes, his weak attempt at a smile coming out as more of a tight, unhappy grimace. "It was a good, clean shot."
Kalmenka winced, rubbing a rueful hand over his eyes. "Ja," he agreed reluctantly. "He always was a crack shot. Could've given Randolf a run for his money." He made a face, fingers flicking a vague gesture at his own temple. "Something about how he perceives the Mathe, sharp memory for spatial geometry. Not front line range, but… eh." Sighing, he glanced back towards where their son had disappeared into the house. "He seems alright now?"
"Carving up a deer was apparently a good distraction," Adolf replied wryly.
Kalmenka let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. Stepping closer, he palmed the other man's filthy cheek and leaned in to press the barest ghost of a kiss to one of the cleaner portions of Adolf's brow. "Suppose that's something," he agreed. "Though honestly - next time I say mushrooms might be nice for supper, I really do mean mushrooms, not venison." Backing up, he surveyed the pieces of deer that Mattias had left on the floor, the bloody fur spotted in mud and picking up a fresh coating of gravel and bits of straw. Sighing again, he tucked the sheath of his knife into the back of his sash and bent to retrieve the haunch. "Of all the fucked Luck… come on. We're going to have to wash this off before I skin it. You want to wash or work the pump?"
"Wash," Adolf answered promptly, his disgusted tone speaking entire volumes. "Me, first, and then the damned buck. I really never wanted to have blood in my hair and down the back of my neck ever again."
* * * * *
It was three very messy hours later before Kalmenka had changed clothes and scrubbed down his hands and arms enough to feel as though he might be able to get back to the business of putting together supper for the household. Mattias, in the interim, had not only finished washing and drying the dishes, but had neatly peeled and chopped every required ingredient including the chicken that Kalmenka had left in easy reach just inside the cold shelf, set the places at the dining table, and had a creditable attempt at dumpling dough resting in a covered bowl, just waiting to be dropped and boiled.
The boy himself, looking apologetic and a thousand times cleaner, copper hair still curled in damp ringlets around his neck where it was slow to dry, leaned up against Kalmenka's side when the man pulled him in to drop a kiss on his forehead and thank him for the work. "There's coffee, Apa," he volunteered quietly. "I put the pot on when you started washing."
"Brilliant," Kalmenka breathed wholeheartedly and his son shyly smiled, face lighting up. "You've had any?"
Mattias shook his head. "Not yet. Do you need help with supper?"
"Start the dumplings boiling?" Kalmenka suggested. "And get the stewpot going with some oil. Just let me take some coffee to your Papa first." He paused, ruffling the boy's curls. "Any idea what you want to do with the venison?"
Mattias blinked, startled. "Me?"
"You shot it," Kalmenka told him, grinning. "Your deer. Preferences?"
His son tilted his head to one side, face serious as he considered. "Stew?" he asked hopefully. "And maybe sausages?"
"Think we can do that," Kalmenka agreed. "Maybe salt and dry whatever's left." He gave the boy a light shove with his hip. "Water, bette, and the stewpot. I'll be right back."
The smell of the coffee alone helped chase away some of the last few hours and Kalmenka poured himself a mug as well as one for Adolf, carrying it through the back door into the laundry room. It was significantly warmer there, the air wet and heated from steam, and the other man had sunk himself as far into the wooden tub usually reserved for laundering clothes as he could, head tipped back against the rim as the hot water lapped around his shoulders. "Coffee," Kalmenka announced, dropping down beside the tub.
Adolf opened one eye, squinting nearsightedly at the mugs before pushing himself up with a grunt to reach for the one Kalmenka extended to him. "Luck bless," he sighed, inhaling a lungful of the smell before taking a sip. "How do people do this without a Mathematiker in the household?"
Kalmenka chuckled. "The longer, harder way. And you'd have a lot less water that wasn't nearly as warm." He reached in, scooped up a handful of water, and let it drain over the other man's shoulder. "Kend votes for sausages. You want to help me make 'em later?"
"Fuck no," Adolf replied waspishly. "I don't ever want to see a deer again unless it's already cooked and on the plate."
Kalmenka laughed, and the sour look on the other man's face only made him laugh harder. "How do you think it gets there?" he asked, grinning and shaking his head. "Such a city boy, Meyer. I can't believe you cut off its legs."
"They were in the way!" Adolf protested.
"They make good carrying handles," Kalmenka corrected.
"Well, I didn't know that until it was too late," the other man huffed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." He grimaced, the roll of his eyes expressing his own horror at himself for using a phrase they had all fallen prey to multiple times during their years in the Ranks. "Its not as though you can put them back on afterwards. At least I didn't try skinning it!"
"Luck save us all if you had," Kalmenka agreed. "Next time, leave a marker where it is and come get me. It'll save us half the work and a good chunk of the meat."
"There isn't going to be a next time," Adolf assured him. "Like fuck am I doing that again."
Chuckling, Kalmenka shook his head and then reached over, catching the other man's chin and tilting his head up to press a firm kiss to his mouth. "Crazy city boy," he repeated fondly. "Love you, but you're still fucking nuts. Supper's in an hour - try not to spend all of it in here, will you?" He scrambled up before Adolf could splash him and retreated, still laughing, to the kitchen.
Story/Character: Family by Choice / Adolf, Mattias & Kalmenka
Rating: PG-13 (for language and animal death)
word count: 3,929
note: Deutsch language deliberately mangled into phonetic spelling of a dialect.
The sharp crack of the gunshot rang out loud and clear in the crisp air and Adolf froze, heart skipping hard and fast in his chest. For one long moment afterwards there was nothing but shocked silence, even the birds startled into a quiet that was only broken by the ragged sound of an indrawn breath.
Adolf had to swallow around the dry, bitter taste of his mouth, adrenaline pulsing with sick hotness through his veins. His voice, he was pleased to find, was steadier than it had any right to be. "...Baba?"
Mattias was rigid, the tension of it screaming through the line of his shoulders and back that Adolf could see, but his stance was textbook form and his hands, at least, were wrapped around the grip of the P09 - which had been holstered at Adolf's hip only moments before - in a rock solid aim that was only belied by the hitched gasps of his shaken breath. That aim was directed into the trees, but the finger on the trigger was tight and trembling more than Adolf cared to see when there was a gun involved and nothing at all visible stirring between the woods and the brush.
He let his breath out slowly, easing his weight gingerly onto the foot nearer to the boy. The quiet, smooth tone that he needed was still so damned easy to call up, the one that had eased Hans down when the kid's eyes had been ringed in vein shot white, or when Randolf had bit clean through his lip, blood streaked across his bared teeth as he shook so hard Adolf had feared for the other man's bones (the one, his memory traitorously reminded him, that had failed when their Häptman's eyes had gone just as dead, hard and lost and beyond recall, just before the entire damned world had ended, and oh Luck, he wasn't going to think of that, not within arm's reach of a AU classed Mathematiker who wasn't bound, merciful Luck no). "Mattias? What is it?"
The boy was panting in short, sharp puffs of air that plumed into the chill air. "Sorry," he gasped and Adolf hated the part of his mind that said that that was good, that was definite steps up from the world ending if the boy knew something was wrong, because good was entirely relative and that was his son who was holding a loaded pistol in his hands and trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind. "There was... saw something... sorry..."
Adolf eased another step closer, close enough to touch, his hands rising so, so slowly (to catch the boy's arm if he turned, mercy, please, no) and his heart throbbing in his throat. "Pssst," he breathed, trying to keep his tone no different from the one he used to sooth the boy's dreams at night. Mattias gulped, the sound half sob, but obediently hushed afterwards, his lips pressed thin and tight. Adolf kept half an eye on the boy and half on the woods around them, straining to listen, but the only sound was the rush of wind through leaves and the broken sound of resumed birdsong.
"Don't hear anything," Adolf said softly when he had counted out seventy too-fast beats of his laboring heart. "You?"
"N-na," Mattias gasped, and the aim of the gun was wavering, the tremors wracking through his chest and down into his arms. "Sorry. Sorry, Papa, I..."
"Pssst," Adolf repeated, and it was one more bare half step and then he was there, the boy barely flinching as Adolf's arms reached around him, hands sliding down his forearms from behind. The gun all but fell out of his grasp, fingers opening spasmodically, and Adolf caught it one handed and dragged the boy bodily into his embrace with the other. Mattias turned and collapsed against his chest, the boy's breath coming hard and fast on stuttered sobs.
A decade of life in the ranks demanded the gun be cocked or holstered at the ready, adrenaline and the memory of the sound of the shot calling forth a hundred ingrained habits of life on the Eastern Front, but Adolf had barely had time to even register Mattias had moved before the boy had ripped the pistol from its holster with lightning speed, aimed, and fired. The sound of the shot made him itch to have the gun ready in his own hands, but his son was clinging to him and an entirely new set of priorities trampled over old habits with a force that took his breath away, cold ice chasing away combat ready heat. Thumbing the safety on, Adolf viciously flung the pistol aside, and if habit made him mark where it fell amid the heavy blanket of leaves it didn't matter because it was out of his boy's grasp and out of reach and left Adolf both hands free to pull the boy close and hold tight.
He wasn't sure how long it was before he could breath steady again, the throb of his heart subsiding to a dull roar in his ears. He was, he found, whispering, an endless string of meaningless, soothing syllables and words he wasn't even aware of, breathed into the sweat-damp curls of his son's hair as he rubbed his palms in circles and sweeps over the boy's back. Mattias's shaking had faded into shivers, the boy's gasps coming softer where his face was pressed into the front of Adolf's coat, and his white-knuckled grip on the fabric had eased somewhat.
Adolf drew a deeper breath, swallowing down a sour taste. All around them the sound of the forest continued as though nothing had interrupted it. No one, he told himself firmly, was hurt, no harm done, no enemy in sight, and Luck willing they were far enough from the house that the sound of the gunshot wouldn't have traveled the distance. The product of the afternoon's rambling walk was spilled at their feet, mushrooms and late season berries scattered into the leaf mulch where they had both dropped their buckets, but it was a small price to pay in what had been little more than an excuse to get out of the house for a bit and try to walk off the boy's jittering in the first place. He buried his face against Mattias's hair, inhaling the scents of soap and skin and the acrid tang of fear, and pressed a kiss to the boy's forehead. "Pssst, Baba, pssst. It's alright. It's alright."
Mattias hiccuped softly. "Sorry," he whispered, voice small and young against Adolf's chest. "Sorry, Papa. I don't... something moved and I didn't... sorry. Sorry."
"Pssst," Adolf repeated, hushing him. "It's alright. No harm done."
The boy sniffled, wet and miserable, but the shivering was slowing under Adolf's hands. "Sorry," he repeated one more time, choked. And then, after a bit, sniffling again, "...I think I hit it."
Adolf blinked, hands keeping up their motion on automatic as he smoothed a soothing line from the boy's nape to his waist and back again, slow and regular as Mattias gingerly unwound until he was standing almost steady on his own. "Well," Adolf said at last, somewhat at a loss, "there's no one out here but us. Let's go see what you hit."
It didn't take a genius in tracking, thank the Luck, to find the splash of blood or the easily marked trail of it dotted across the leaves. Adolf, who had put the remains of the buckets firmly in Mattias's hands and had retrieved his pistol, thumbed the safety off as he took point and tried not to think about wild boar - or worse, bear - which had been the entire reason he agreed to going out armed in the first place.
The source of the blood, when they found it not too far away, was thankfully nothing so dangerous.
Adolf circled carefully around the body but there was no breath and no motion left in it, just an ungainly pile of short pelt and long legs and a fairly impressive rack of buck antlers. One last nudge of his boot proved that it was dead, the bullet ripped clean through the slender throat and he couldn't quite suppress a brief whistle. "It was a good shot," he noted and Mattias flushed, pleased and embarrassed all at once, but the color chased the lingering pallor from his face and let Adolf breath a little easier.
"I didn't really see it," the boy admitted. With the beast confirmed safe he had put the buckets down and stepped closer, eyes wide and curious. "I just caught it out of the corner of my eye - it was brown, kind of grey, and it moved." He glanced up, catching Adolf's raised eyebrows, and shrugged sheepishly, the corners of his mouth pulling down. "Everybody was brownish grey up north. Too much mud and dirt."
"Well," Adolf allowed, choosing to ignore that bit, "it was a damned good shot." He holstered his pistol, eyeing the buck carcass for a long moment, and scratched thoughtfully at the line of his jaw. "Seems a shame to waste it."
Mattias, who had crouched down on his heels to better examine the body, tilted his head. "I watched Apa take that last one apart."
"Ja," Adolf agreed, "I did too, but I don't think we'll get too far with a pocket knife, Kend, and that's all I've got."
The boy worried at his bottom lip for a moment, eyes half shuttered, then abruptly stood and went back to scoop up one of the abandoned buckets, emptying the contents into the other. The half-felt prickling ripple of the Mathe made Adolf shiver, but in another moment Mattias had turned back to him and the thin tin of the bucket had melted and re-solidified in his hands into a fair approximation of the curve handled knife that Adolf could remember Kalmenka using when they had last gone hunting. "Will that work?"
Adolf eyed the dead deer and the newly formed knife, and then shrugged. "Guess we'll find out."
* * * * *
Kalmenka stood on the porch, the towel that he had been drying dishes with hanging forgotten in his hands, and found that he was almost completely at a loss for words. "...What?"
It didn't really seem like enough but he was having a hard time coming up with any other response to the sight in front of him. There was some sort of essential disconnect between the relatively harmless announcement of "we’re going for a walk" and coming home covered from top to boot tip in mud and blood and hadn't that given him a close pass with a heart attack before he'd realized both of them seemed to be walking hale enough. The majority of the mess appeared to be coming from the rough hewn haunches of whatever the fuck it was that his partner and his boy were carrying and Kalmenka, who had been expecting some unavoidably muddy boots and a pail of the mushrooms he had asked for was confounded for what to do when presented with offal instead.
Adolf tried, without much success, to blow a sticky clump of disarrayed hair off of his forehead. The other man's glasses were the only relatively unsplashed part of his face, though the lenses bore streak marks from haphazard wiping, probably on the hem of his undershirt, which Kalmenka hazarded might be the only salvageable part of what he was wearing. "It's a deer," he announced, in the same flat tone Kalmenka was familiar to hearing from some of the more noteworthy reports to assorted upper brass during their Rank days, reports that had included straight faced statements like 'there was an unavoidable altercation in the vicinity of the bar' or 'after which, for unknown reasons, the transport exploded' or one particularly memorable instance of 'our radio unit suffered irreparable damage due to an encounter with multiple swine and an enemy goose, sir'.
"I… see," Kalmenka said. He didn't, really, though he supposed, if he squinted hard enough… well, yes, if they had taken off the head, and for some Luck benighted reason the legs, and then tried to cut it in quarters but came up with something more like random pieces, then yes, he supposed it might be a deer. He tried to come up with something more to say on the matter, but ended up circling back to his first response when nothing else seemed appropriate. "What?"
"I shot it," Mattias supplied helpfully, looking rather too pleased with himself for a boy who was covered in drying deer blood and carrying half of the aforementioned questionable animal. Kalmenka started to open his mouth and then discovered that there was absolutely nothing he could think of to say that even came close to addressing this new revelation.
"It was an accident," Adolf said quickly. "It's a long story. Doesn't this thing have to… I don't know…" He started to wave a hand in the general direction of their outbuildings and then caught himself with a scowl as the piece of meat across his shoulder began to slip, irritably shrugging it back into position. "Whatever you did to the other one?"
"Hang," Kalmenka supplied dutifully, his voice thinner than he would have liked. "Though… it's going to take more hooks than the last one."
The other man heaved a sigh. "Yes, fine. Can we get on with that bit so that maybe there can be baths had before all of this dries?"
The first thing the Ranks taught any good soldier was how to deal with an abruptly changed schedule, because neither enemy fire or the whims of top brass ever politely filed advance notice with a man's carefully planned out calendar. Kalmenka could almost feel the moment habit kicked in, straightening his spine and pushing the multitudes of alarm, confusion, and dumbfoundedness far enough away from the forefront that the scene in front of him turned into a list of things to do rather than to be stared at. "Right, yes. Alright. Let me get my boots. We can hang it in the barn - well, wash it, skin it, and then hang it, I suppose. Hold on."
It took Kalmenka two minutes to stamp into his most worn pair of field boots, find his skinning knife, and to decide he would rather be cold and only have to wash his own skin and undershirt afterwards, rather than be warm and have to try to scrub blood stains out of yet another set of outerwear in addition to the other two. He caught up to them at the small barn - shed, really, just large enough to store a few tools and winter feed for the little piebald goat that was out in the equally small pasture - and had to suppress a sigh as Mattias unceremoniously dumped his portion of the meat onto the dirt and hay strewn floor. "Now what?" the boy asked.
A glance at Adolf was singularly unhelpful; the other man had the shuttered look on his face that said, alternately, 'your call, main Harr' or 'your son, you deal with it'. Sighing, Kalmenka reached back to catch the braided length of his hair, looping it to knot the trailing tie to the base at his nape with quick practice to shorten the length of it by half. "Now," he said firmly, "you are going to go take a bath and let your Papa and me deal with this. Leave the boots outside, mind you, and for Luck's sake, use the tub in the laundry room. Try not to track it all through the kitchen."
Mattias opened his mouth and Kalmenka ruthlessly cut off the protest he could see forming on the boy's face. "After which, you can scrub the tub out and refill it hot for your Papa. Leave everything to soak in the cold sink, and make sure you put a scoop of salt in the water with it - we'll do laundry tomorrow. And after that there's a sink of dishes that need drying and putting away, and a pile of potatoes and carrots on the table that need peeling and cutting if we're going to have supper tonight. Vorstäst?"
The boy's expression fell, his shoulders slumping, and the set of his mouth said without a word that he knew exactly what he had just been assigned, benefit of first crack at washing up or not. "Jowuhl," he answered, and the Ranks had drilled most of the teen sullenness out of his voice but not out of the all too eloquent line of his posture as he turned back to the house.
Kalmenka waited until he was out of earshot before turning back to Adolf. "He shot it?" he hissed.
The other man closed his eyes, the thin line of his mouth pained. "He had an… incident while we were walking," he said tiredly. "Saw the deer move out of the corner of his eye and had the pistol off me before I knew what he was about. Said he didn't know what it was, just saw something grey and brown moving in the trees." He took a deeper breath and opened his eyes, his weak attempt at a smile coming out as more of a tight, unhappy grimace. "It was a good, clean shot."
Kalmenka winced, rubbing a rueful hand over his eyes. "Ja," he agreed reluctantly. "He always was a crack shot. Could've given Randolf a run for his money." He made a face, fingers flicking a vague gesture at his own temple. "Something about how he perceives the Mathe, sharp memory for spatial geometry. Not front line range, but… eh." Sighing, he glanced back towards where their son had disappeared into the house. "He seems alright now?"
"Carving up a deer was apparently a good distraction," Adolf replied wryly.
Kalmenka let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. Stepping closer, he palmed the other man's filthy cheek and leaned in to press the barest ghost of a kiss to one of the cleaner portions of Adolf's brow. "Suppose that's something," he agreed. "Though honestly - next time I say mushrooms might be nice for supper, I really do mean mushrooms, not venison." Backing up, he surveyed the pieces of deer that Mattias had left on the floor, the bloody fur spotted in mud and picking up a fresh coating of gravel and bits of straw. Sighing again, he tucked the sheath of his knife into the back of his sash and bent to retrieve the haunch. "Of all the fucked Luck… come on. We're going to have to wash this off before I skin it. You want to wash or work the pump?"
"Wash," Adolf answered promptly, his disgusted tone speaking entire volumes. "Me, first, and then the damned buck. I really never wanted to have blood in my hair and down the back of my neck ever again."
* * * * *
It was three very messy hours later before Kalmenka had changed clothes and scrubbed down his hands and arms enough to feel as though he might be able to get back to the business of putting together supper for the household. Mattias, in the interim, had not only finished washing and drying the dishes, but had neatly peeled and chopped every required ingredient including the chicken that Kalmenka had left in easy reach just inside the cold shelf, set the places at the dining table, and had a creditable attempt at dumpling dough resting in a covered bowl, just waiting to be dropped and boiled.
The boy himself, looking apologetic and a thousand times cleaner, copper hair still curled in damp ringlets around his neck where it was slow to dry, leaned up against Kalmenka's side when the man pulled him in to drop a kiss on his forehead and thank him for the work. "There's coffee, Apa," he volunteered quietly. "I put the pot on when you started washing."
"Brilliant," Kalmenka breathed wholeheartedly and his son shyly smiled, face lighting up. "You've had any?"
Mattias shook his head. "Not yet. Do you need help with supper?"
"Start the dumplings boiling?" Kalmenka suggested. "And get the stewpot going with some oil. Just let me take some coffee to your Papa first." He paused, ruffling the boy's curls. "Any idea what you want to do with the venison?"
Mattias blinked, startled. "Me?"
"You shot it," Kalmenka told him, grinning. "Your deer. Preferences?"
His son tilted his head to one side, face serious as he considered. "Stew?" he asked hopefully. "And maybe sausages?"
"Think we can do that," Kalmenka agreed. "Maybe salt and dry whatever's left." He gave the boy a light shove with his hip. "Water, bette, and the stewpot. I'll be right back."
The smell of the coffee alone helped chase away some of the last few hours and Kalmenka poured himself a mug as well as one for Adolf, carrying it through the back door into the laundry room. It was significantly warmer there, the air wet and heated from steam, and the other man had sunk himself as far into the wooden tub usually reserved for laundering clothes as he could, head tipped back against the rim as the hot water lapped around his shoulders. "Coffee," Kalmenka announced, dropping down beside the tub.
Adolf opened one eye, squinting nearsightedly at the mugs before pushing himself up with a grunt to reach for the one Kalmenka extended to him. "Luck bless," he sighed, inhaling a lungful of the smell before taking a sip. "How do people do this without a Mathematiker in the household?"
Kalmenka chuckled. "The longer, harder way. And you'd have a lot less water that wasn't nearly as warm." He reached in, scooped up a handful of water, and let it drain over the other man's shoulder. "Kend votes for sausages. You want to help me make 'em later?"
"Fuck no," Adolf replied waspishly. "I don't ever want to see a deer again unless it's already cooked and on the plate."
Kalmenka laughed, and the sour look on the other man's face only made him laugh harder. "How do you think it gets there?" he asked, grinning and shaking his head. "Such a city boy, Meyer. I can't believe you cut off its legs."
"They were in the way!" Adolf protested.
"They make good carrying handles," Kalmenka corrected.
"Well, I didn't know that until it was too late," the other man huffed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." He grimaced, the roll of his eyes expressing his own horror at himself for using a phrase they had all fallen prey to multiple times during their years in the Ranks. "Its not as though you can put them back on afterwards. At least I didn't try skinning it!"
"Luck save us all if you had," Kalmenka agreed. "Next time, leave a marker where it is and come get me. It'll save us half the work and a good chunk of the meat."
"There isn't going to be a next time," Adolf assured him. "Like fuck am I doing that again."
Chuckling, Kalmenka shook his head and then reached over, catching the other man's chin and tilting his head up to press a firm kiss to his mouth. "Crazy city boy," he repeated fondly. "Love you, but you're still fucking nuts. Supper's in an hour - try not to spend all of it in here, will you?" He scrambled up before Adolf could splash him and retreated, still laughing, to the kitchen.