Work Text:
It was an early morning, somewhere in the middle of the forest, the snow began to pile up from the previous night’s storm. Aarne Juutilainen and Simo Häyhä had been resting in a cottage, with barely any good heating. Of course this had its problems, the former of the two men got sick. Nothing more than a cold, but in this weather it had been a bit ruthless. He was able to take care of himself with a little help from Aarne, but the more they had to stay in that stuffy cottage in the blistering weather it seemed to have gotten worse.
Nothing he couldn’t handle right? Right.
Simo and Aarne had been going through natural remedies, and the ones that the totally not inaccurate as hell army provided. They hadn’t tried soup though, Aarne wanted to make him soup. Simo didn’t even like soup that much but Aarne though it would be the one cure, for whatever reason. He sure was crazy.
The stove in the cottage was a piece of shit, evidently. As well as the fact that the can of soup looked expired, but hey perishable food is perishable...they guessed. They both had tried their hand at getting the stove to work, Aarne continuously telling Simo to go lay down and the shorter man refusing to each time. At some point they had to try to check the burners to see if it even had any fuel left.
“I can check it…” Simo tried to push past the arm holding him back.
“No. You’re too sick, I’ll do it” Aarne gently shoved him away.
“It’s only a cold! I’m perfectly capable of fixing a stove…” The younger man protested, crossing his arms defiantly.
Aarne shushed him, “And that cold has gotten worse since yesterday, you didn’t even wanna wake up this morning. Now go, lay down, I’ll take it from here” He smiled smugly. Simo sighed, giving up and going back to the couch. He watched Aarne from afar fiddle with the stove, messing with the spark head and then just straight up banging on it.
The banging seemed to have done something, actually, the bottom left burner finally turned on.
Aarne lifted up his arms triumphantly, “Ha! See, fixed it.” Simo rolled his eyes and once he saw Aarne start to make the soup he decided to get up and go back to their room. They had to share a room, there were only two other rooms and one was stuffed with boxes seemingly filled with useless items and was generally very disheveled. The other was being used to stash their gear and was arranged like an office, it was a pretty annoying setup but they weren’t going to be here for much longer anyway.
He laid on the single bed, Aarne usually uses this one but he wasn’t using it now so it didn’t matter, his scent lingered on the sheets though. Simo had to sleep on the floor with a mattress and a single pillow, not a very lucky outcome and of course they argued about it when they first came here. Simo dealt though, he always does.
He was actually feeling a bit drowsy now, it was only noon but his cold kept making him sleepy. He started to doze off for a moment until Aarne came through the door with that fateful soup. Simo wasn’t startled at all though, he could already sense it, he opened his eyes to the corner of the room and Aarne paused.
“Haha, what are you doing in my bed?” He asked slightly sarcastically and walked over to give the younger man that prophetic soup.
“Well...you’re not using it, unless…” Simo trailed off and took the bowl.
“What if I was going to?” The lieutenant joked, he sat near the end of the bed. Simo felt an oddly warm feeling wash over him, he couldn’t decide in that moment whether he liked it or not, so he just ignored it. He shrugged and took a spoon full of the soup and tasted it, the combination of it being possibly expired and the mucus in his mouth was not a very pleasant experience.
“This tastes like shit” He stated but kept eating it anyway, in sort of a comedic gesture.
“It’ll cure you though” Aarne smiled.
“Are you sure? It looks like it would give me some unknown disease” Simo replied and they both shared a laugh. They sat in comfortable silence while Simo ate and Aarne watched the snow fall from outside, sensing another storm on its way.
“You think there’s gonna be another blizzard soon?” Aarne asked passively. Simo set the bowl on the night stand and sat a little closure to the taller man.
“Probably…” Simo sighed.
There was another moment of silence, it was a little awkward this time. Simo was half laying down on the bed with Aarne in front of him and he suddenly felt the wrath of 2,000 gay chinese twinks take over him, in one swift movement he sat up and kissed Aarne gently on the lips.
Did I just...do that. Simo’s thought turned into more of a statement than a self-reflective question. There was another even longer moment of extremely awkward silence, Aarne being more shocked than Simo, surprisingly. Simo didn’t really know what to feel actually, it was the weirdest thing he has ever done, it wasn’t the worst feeling...physically. He’d have to get used to it. Wait no...that implies doing it again. Shit.
Aarne scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, “Uh...care to explain that?.” Simo was currently incapable of making any coherent thought that would translate into a verbal sentence, so he did what any sensible man would do and shrugged in absolute overwhelmed confusion.
“Sorry,” is all he could muster. He looked away from Aarne in shame while the other man was confused more than anything.
Aarne threw up his hands light-heartedly, “Hey, I’m not gonna say anything..uh..I’ll just...go,” and with that he slowly left the room, the two of them sharing more awkward gestures. Simo just sat there, thinking on that unusual sequence of events, feeling a whirlwind of different emotions.
But what he found the most odd is that he wasn’t feeling sick anymore.