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It happens because war veterans are overlooked and uncared for. If Falco weren’t aiming to be a warrior, maybe he’d work to maintain safer (and saner) conditions at the war vet hospital. He wonders if it’s something he can bring up to his superiors when he’s higher up in the ranks, when he’s respected, but Falco’s not a stupid boy. Just an optimistic one. He wrings out the sponge he’s holding just over a bucket of steaming murky water. Mister Kruger is leant up against the tiled wall of the non-functioning shower, and he’s quiet beyond the rasps rattling in his chest. A nurse should be doing this but the hospital is short staffed and Falco isn’t currently training, so there's time to volunteer. He wants to do this.
It's a relief not to be walking that morally grey tightrope he’s grown so used to.
Helping Mister Kruger is undoubtedly the kindest thing he can do.
The man is pretty under his grime and Falco has only recently noticed, but nurses, Marleyan soldiers, and other veterans noticed long before he did. Falco grits his teeth as he reaches a pruny hand out to touch a bruise on the man’s hip. Purpling. It vaguely resembles fingers and he’s old enough to understand where they came from and how it happened. He still doesn’t quite comprehend why people take advantage of the weak, but he knows Gabi would have an answer for it, probably. He’d ask her but maybe he’s comfortable being ignorant.
“I need you to do something for me.” Mister Kruger says that as he peers up at the ceiling. All around them there is nothing but white tile. Barrier free, it’s easily accessible even for wheelchairs- not that the hospital can afford to give every veteran one, his new friend being an example of that.
“Do you need me to send more letters? Mr. Kruger, I understand that you um, that you’re worried about your friends and all… But shouldn’t you try worrying about yourself too?” Falco drops the sponge on the wet floor, reaching between the man’s legs. He offers a quiet apology before spreading the man’s entrance open, watching semen slime its way out. He wants to get it all out of him. It has no business being inside of the man. Mister Kruger shudders and fixes a hazy eye on the mess. He doesn’t seem to be entirely lucid. He rarely is.
“No, I need you to feed the birds today. I don’t feel like going outside but they’ll be so hungry… Do you mind?”
Falco imagines it’s some sort of coping mechanism, blatantly ignoring what should and would be traumatic for anyone else. He knows all about that from watching Reiner, who carries a flask around. And the warrior chief, who chain smokes. And Pieck, who’s almost always sleeping and still crawls around like she’s tired. Falco thinks a more suitable reaction would be sobbing, or screaming, or anything but asking about the birds.
Falco tries not to get angry about it.
The pigeons aren’t special in any capacity. Meaning, they have no given names and all resemble one another. He’s not even sure if this is the same crowd from yesterday. Falco never fed them before meeting Mister Kruger. It’s something the elderly do and he’s always been busy with this or that and, well, who has time to sit and throw bread at flying rats? That’s what Porco’s always calling them. Falco sits on their bench alone and throws pieces of his lunch. They seem to eat just about anything. Even meat, which he finds especially unusual.
Falco isn’t sure when it started or how long it’s been going on. And it’s not as if he found out because Mister Kruger told him.
He visited late one day, while the sun was bleeding all over the horizon. A dying animal. He wandered the grounds in search of his missing friend, and found him in the patch of dead grass behind the hospital, getting used by another vet. A grunting pig missing some of his fingers. His friend had been sprawled there, staring into space. Trousers off and legs held open by the chewed up remains of the other man's hands. The stranger had run off when caught and Mister Kruger had interrupted all of Falco’s yelling with the quiet, faraway question of, “Where am I?”
Falco is certain Mister Kruger occasionally dips out of reality. Sometimes he doesn’t seem present. And again, maybe other people noticed sooner than Falco did.
And he’s too busy to be constantly playing knight in shining armor when the man forgets who he is. Sometimes Falco has come and Mister Kruger isn’t Mister Kruger. Falco has had full conversations with strangers occupying Mister Kruger’s body. He isn’t afraid. He’s only sorry the man’s so broken up. Like bits of glass scattered in the sun, none of them quite reflecting the man he’s come to know in his entirety.
Falco strips up the ham from his sandwich into bits and tosses the sticky handful at the pigeons. The birds skip and hop around as the ringleader scuttles forward to eat first. Beady eyed and quiet. Falco wonders what he’s supposed to feel when he feeds birds. Peace? Mostly he just feels apprehension at leaving Mister Kruger alone in that forever grey hospital. Even if they painted the walls and the floors, he’d still get the feeling that under all the bright paint there was nothing but hard soulless cement.
Falco flips the flap to his messenger bag open and stuffs the empty brown paper bag into it. He tugs out a dead soldier’s old silver wristwatch and examines the cracked clock face. He was friends with that man too- but he was turned into a titan in battle, and even before you actually die you’re already just about dead in that walking flesh prison. Falco drags his thumb along the crack. It’s getting late.
He flinches as a pigeon flies up and settles beside him on the bench, cocking its head in that odd way birds do. Falco meets its gaze, and he’s unnerved by the brief spark of intelligence in its eyes. Falco abandons the bench; he needs to get home.
Falco has kissed Mister Kruger while the man was Away.
He can privately admit he shouldn’t have. He worries he’s worse than the men who use him, because Falco is supposed to look out for him.
The first time it happened, Mister Kruger was acting so strange. They’d been in that barrier free shower with the floor to wall all around tile. And Falco’s fingers had been hooked inside of the man, scooping out all that evidence and letting it creep down the drain. As he slowly and carefully dragged his fingers out, not wanting to hurt him, Mister Kruger murmured, “Oh I don’t know, I think I’d like a child. Wouldn’t you?”
Falco had learned that it was better not to snap him out of these trances. Arguing, telling him he was here, now- Mister Kruger only ever spiraled further. Better to play along. “Maybe.” He began washing his hands in the bucket, a pink bar of soap between them. “I don’t know, I don’t like to think that far ahead. Do you want a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t care, just… I want to be a good father this time, I…” Mister Kruger paused. Blinked rapidly, his wet matted together eyelashes fluttering. “I don’t know what I meant by that. Wouldn’t it be funny if I’d forgotten that I had a child somewhere else?” The man laughed, staring into space.
“You wouldn’t forget something like that.” Falco grabbed for a folded towel and used it to dry the man’s damp hair. His face, then his chest. Mister Kruger was toned everywhere. Falco imagined he’d be strong enough to fight back, were it not for his being Away. “Where are we right now anyway? Describe it to me.”
“Are you teasing me?” Again, the man laughed. He reached out for Falco, setting a hand on his cheek. It was a gesture so fond that Falco flinched at it. No one had ever touched him like that. It was the way he thought about touching Gabi sometimes- not that she’d ever let him. “Home. We’re home. Let’s never move, alright? It’s so peaceful here. I don’t think I’ve ever been so… Content.” And Mister Kruger leaned forward and kissed the boy on the mouth. Whispered against it, “I love you.”
It was enough to turn Falco to stone. He squatted there with his mouth slightly ajar and his eyes bugging out of his head like they were about to pop. He pictured the runny whites of his exploded eyes drooling down his cheeks.
It wasn’t like Falco had pushed the man to do it, but he hadn’t stopped him.
And he isn’t stopping him now either.
Falco has just finished dressing him. Has just lied him down on his cot. The white curtain to his section of the room is drawn for privacy, and there is the groaning and weeping of veterans in other cots to keep Falco’s ears from ringing. Udo says they’ve all got tinnitus on account of the bombs and gunfire they’ve been subjected to for years. Partly, Falco just wants to earn a titan to make the church bells in his head stop tolling.
Mister Kruger is kissing him again. The cot is creaking because he’s on top of the man, small body trembling and tongue nervously meeting and knocking against Mister Kruger’s. He knows he shouldn’t. He knows Mister Kruger is Away right now. Still. He feels an odd kind of excitement that pushes him to rub his crotch against the man’s thigh. It feels good to do that. He knows why even though he pretends he’s never touched himself there before.
Gabi says it’s gross, and so does Udo, and so does Zofia. All of them, collectively, hands on their hips and lips parting to say: “It’s gross to touch yourself. Right?”
And of course, Falco had emphatically agreed, sweat creeping down the back of his neck and swollen heart thumping in his throat.
Mister Kruger parts from the kiss, snapping the strand of spit between them. “We can only do it once tonight.” His tone is dry and dead and full of grit. He isn’t looking at Falco and it makes the boy feel so guilty. He swallows as he fists at the sheets, knuckles white. “Why’s that?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions. It’ll make me reconsider the whole thing. Take off your uniform, okay?”
Falco bit at the fat of his own bottom lip. Released it as he asked in a whisper that could barely be heard over the raucous coughing from behind that thin curtain, “Where are we right now? Are we… In the trenches?” The boy’s still aroused, but he’s stopped in grinding against the older man. He wants to know where his shell-shocked friend is.
And Mister Kruger shuts his one eye like he’s tired. Lines that shouldn’t be in that soft face of his crease. “You’re fucking with me, right? I’m supposed to be on patrol. And you’re trying to get me fired. What else is new?”
The right thing to do-
But if Falco leaves, it’ll just be someone else. Someone worse, who doesn’t care that the man is hurting in places the bandaids Falco carries around can’t reach. He won’t hurt Mister Kruger like they do. He won’t so-
He shivers as Mister Kruger reaches down to squeeze at his clothed erection. “So are you going to fuck me or should I get back to work?”
Falco can barely keep himself up on his hands and knees as the man unbuttons his trousers and slips his hand into his underwear. The man begins to stroke him and it’s not like how Falco’s done it at all. Falco, who’s only ever touched himself over his pants, only ever rubbing something else against his crotch. A pillow while in bed or a rag while in the tub. And he’s never gripped his length quite as firmly as Mister Kruger is doing now. The man still has his eye shut. He’s still Away, but of course he is.
The boy bows his head and begins to pant, slowly rocking his hips into Mister Kruger’s clenched fist. He worries his breathing is too loud, even though it couldn’t possibly be. But it sounds like that in his ears. He thinks he can hear his heart beating. When Mister Kruger withdraws his hand to spit on it, when his hand returns to the confines of Falco’s pants, he thinks he can hear the way it’s wetly sliding up and down his cock too.
Fucking him- he’s seen other men do it, every now and then. He thinks he could figure out the mechanics, but he also thinks it might be too awful a thing to do. Mister Kruger always makes sounds like it hurts when it happens. Falco buries his face in the man’s pillow. He’s sure he’s making some horribly strained expression, eyebrows drawn together and teeth clenched. Pupils blown wide. “Ah… I r-really like you, sir. I like you so much.” This is muffled but coherent enough for Mister Kruger to dryly mutter, “I’ve never seen a man get so sentimental over a handjob. Are you going to propose to me?”
The man’s being ironic but Falco does picture it. Just for a moment.
He’d take care of Mister Kruger. Every version of him. He’d get him a proper wheelchair. Feed him, bathe him, fuck him.
Falco breathes through clenched teeth and shudders. Then, stills entirely, his heavy panting muffled by that pillow. He can feel his dick spasming. Can feel that all over good feeling he always gets when he comes. The world is perfect. He’s glad to be alive.
Then there’s the guilt. There’s the disgust.
Mister Kruger drags his hand out of Falco’s pants.
“I’ll… Clean that up.” He just needs a minute to catch his breath. He raises his head and watches as Mister Kruger cleans his sticky, slender fingers with his tongue. His eye is open and fixed upon the boy. Lush green, like the jungles Falco has seen in foreign glossy magazines. Falco grips at the man’s wrist and gently but firmly pins it to the bed. He thinks of his friends. The word 'gross' echoes and bounces off the walls of his skull. Falco blushes. He scowls too. “Don’t. I said I’d clean it, okay?”
Even if his stomach twists and his nerves tingle in ways that suggest Falco likes to watch Mister Kruger lick his cum.
He returns his face to the pillow, keeping the man’s wrist pinned. Falco just wants to rest his eyes.
Church bells.
Falco wakes in the war veteran hospital, and oh no, he isn’t supposed to be here. He’s got his whole body wrapped around his stiff cot mate, who is likely awake too based on the way he’s breathing. Careful, quiet. Falco’s eyes stray to his shoes, which he must’ve kicked off in the middle of the night. They’re on the unmopped floor. There’s grime that’s been alive longer than he has down there. Falco untangles his limbs from the man and pushes himself to sit up on the very edge. “Sorry, I must’ve-!”
“Good morning.” Mister Kruger sits up as well, hair hanging in front of his face. A physical rift between him and reality. It’s so pretty when Falco washes it, but who would know with how poorly the man manages the upkeep? Falco finds himself crawling on his knees. He stops behind Mister Kruger and reaches his fingers up to comb them delicately and absently through that long hair. “Falco?”
“Mm, hang on, I’ve almost got it.” He wants to tell the man he should cut it if he’s not going to take care of it, but he can’t picture him without it. So he says nothing for fear Mister Kruger might actually take his advice for once. “There we go! Alright. I really need to get going, will you be okay without me sir?”
Mister Kruger glances over his shoulder at the boy. Then, reaches out to adjust Falco’s bright yellow armband. And Falco flinches as he notes they're crusty with the mess he left on them last night. He fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket and grasps at the man’s sullied hand, cleaning it vigorously. “That’s-! I-!” His tongue is tied, twisted. And Mister Kruger is just staring at him in that distant way he does when he’s thinking about something.
The man jerks his hand away and Falco flinches, Falco waits, Falco expects to feel the back of the man’s hand or- but it only settles in his hair. A quick ruffle is given to his short, dirty blonde locks, and nails pleasantly scratch at his scalp.
“Let’s feed the birds before you leave. Okay?”
Mister Kruger has such a nice smile. The skin around his eye is crinkling, and he looks younger than he did last night. Sounds softer and talks just like how the boy is used to. Falco melts into his socks and thinks he wants to kiss him, instead of all of those ghosts in the man’s head. He wants the man to want him. And to look at him like he is now. With all that clarity.
Maybe one day Falco will work up the nerve.