Work Text:
It's late at night when Mittermeyer and Reuenthal reach the officers’ lounge. Far later than it has any right to be, really, to the point it might more accurately be called early in the morning. But they are busy men, and these are busy times, and with the winds of war stirring around them, there isn't much choice. Soon enough they will be back among the stars, fighting their own countrymen in order to push the Galactic Empire in a newer, brighter direction.
But none of that matters now, at least for a time. They’ve got a bottle of fine aged wine sitting between them, hours after arriving – the second one of the night. It’s nice to be able to relax like this, Mittermeyer thinks, with no upcoming battles to prepare for just yet: a brief reprieve in tumultuous times, and one he intends to make the most of. He knows Reuenthal does, too, and probably in far less innocuous ways; for now, though, he’s decided to spend the night here with Mittermeyer in the officers’ lounge, whiling the hours away with wine and mostly-pleasant chatter.
It’s when the third bottle arrives that something catches Mittermeyer’s attention in the corner of his eye: a sudden flash of red across the room, just slightly hidden behind a decorative column, and then a glimpse of gold to accompany it. He turns his head toward the back of the room and grins, tilting his chin up towards the only other patrons in the lounge tonight.
“Looks like someone had the same idea we did,” he says, and Reuenthal follows his gaze.
“It seems so,” he agrees, lifting a brow and sipping his wine. There’s a playful little smile hiding behind the glass, one Mittermeyer only knows is there from years of having known the man. He finds himself wondering what Reuenthal must be thinking, but as is often the case, he puts the thought out of his mind.
“Shall we go say hi?” he asks, shifting to the end of the couch he’s sitting on in preparation to stand. He scoops the bottom of his wineglass up, but Reuenthal sets his down instead and holds up a hand.
“We’d better not,” he says, that smile unhidden now, and far wider than Mittermeyer had expected.
“Why not?”
“Look closer.”
Mittermeyer does. He turns his attention back to the table in the corner Count Lohengramm and Kircheis are sitting at, and cranes his neck to see around the pillar they’re partially obscured by. What he sees is nothing unusual: the two of them are sitting together, knee-to-knee, Reinhard’s elbow up on the backrest and a hand twining gently around a lock of Kircheis’s hair.
“I don’t see the problem,” Mittermeyer says.
“Closer, Mittermeyer.”
It’s hard to see any closer than he can now, and he wonders if he should shift over so he can look at an angle more like Reuenthal’s – but he doesn’t, because he realizes, belatedly, that Reinhard and Kircheis not just-knee-to-knee, but Reinhard has one leg draped over Kircheis’s, and Kircheis has tilted his head to lean heavily into Reinhard’s touch.
“I don’t think they know we’re here,” Reuenthal says quietly, when he realizes Mittermeyer has noticed.
“That’s fine,” Mittermeyer says. “I suppose they deserve to relax as much as the rest of us. If we’ve been kept here this late, I can only imagine the amount of work on the count’s plate right now.”
“I suppose,” Reuenthal agrees. He reaches for his wine again and takes another sip, closing his eyes as he does. “...Though you would think they would have the decency not to be so blatant in public. Just because the Kaiser is dead…”
“Hm?” Mittermeyer blinks. “What are you talking about?”
Reuenthal lowers his glass abruptly. He blinks, too, and fixes Mittermeyer with a look that’s both stern and uncertain. “...Nothing,” he says at last, in a way that Mittermeyer knows means there is definitely something on his mind. He chooses to ignore it, though; if Reuenthal doesn’t want to be forthcoming, then he won’t push. It's usually better – safer, at least – if he doesn't.
They lapse into comfortable silence, alternating sips of wine and glancing over at their unknowing companions. The two of them are locked in their own little world, it seems, eyes fixed on each other and oblivious to the world around them, even as it narrows and they move closer together. Close enough that Reinhard is practically in Kircheis’s lap, Mittermeyer realizes, and leaning his head into the arm draped over the back of the couch they both occupy.
“...Hey, Reuenthal.”
“Hm?” Reuenthal looks up from the wine glass in his hand (currently hovering halfway to his mouth), and fixes Mittermeyer with a curious look, inviting him to speak.
"Why don't we ever cuddle like that?"
Reuenthal just about chokes on his wine. He very nearly spits the little that had passed his lips back into the glass, and he coughs carefully to clear his throat.
"I don't think your wife would like that," he says.
Mittermeyer's brows pinch. "What does she have to do with it?" he asks, and Reuenthal blanches.
"You must be joking."
"I'm not. " Mittermeyer frowns. "Seriously, they're doing it. Why can't we? There's nothing wrong with a little bit of cuddling between friends."
"Do you think…" Reuenthal starts incredulously, but before he finishes his sentence, he thinks better of himself and shakes his head. "It’s because that's not cuddling, Mittermeyer," he says; and then, looking back at Kircheis and Reinhard on the couch across the room, adds, "And it's certainly not friendly."
Mittermeyer lets out a hum of displeasure, but follows his friend's gaze all the same. Sure enough, when he looks back at Reinhard and Kircheis, their positions have changed: Reinhard is now kneeling over Kircheis's lap, arms hooked around his shoulders, the fingers of one hand playing idly with the ends of Kircheis's bright red hair and the other fiddling with the back of his uniform collar. He's smiling, a small and private thing, boyish in how free and unhindered it is – and Kircheis returns it, his lips curling into an expression brighter than Mittermeyer has ever seen on him.
"I didn't know he could smile like that," Mittermeyer mumbles.
"Which one?" Reuenthal asks, sarcasm dripping from his tone the same way wine slides around the walls of his swirling glass. He takes a sip, clearly not expecting an answer, but Mittermeyer gives him one anyway.
"Both," he says. "Either." They're usually so reserved, at least in public. The few times Mittermeyer had seen them in private, in their own home, they had seemed more relaxed; but even then, Kircheis had almost always stood while the rest of them sat, hands behind his back as though waiting for orders. He'd always thought it was some kind of act, but this is…
He shakes his head. "I still don't see the problem," he insists, though the protest sounds weak even to his own ears.
"Really."
Across the room, Reinhard runs his hands through Kircheis's hair, and Kircheis's eyes slip shut, reminding Mittermeyer of nothing so much as a tired puppy being petted.
"Really," he says, and pinches his wine glass more firmly between his fingers to stop his hand from twitching. It does nothing to even out the tremble in his voice. "There's nothing… It has to be platonic." His voice tapers off into a mumble at the end. At the other end of the the room, Kircheis opens his eyes, and Mittermeyer swears they're shining, looking for all the world like they're reflecting the stars in the heavens rather than the man kneeling on his lap. He misses Eva, all of a sudden, though he isn't quite certain that's the only reason he suddenly wants to go home.
"That's not the sort of look friends give each other, Mittermeyer," Reuenthal quips, cutting through Mittermeyer’s thoughts and drawing his attention away from the supernova across the lounge. He's smirking, still swirling his wine glass, which he had apparently refilled sometime between the last sip Mittermeyer had watched him take and now. "Surely your limited experience can tell you that much."
"Hey, watch it. There's nothing wrong with devoting yourself to a single woman."
"Or a single man, as it were." Reuenthal tilts his glass towards Reinhard and Kircheis, and oh, no, Kircheis has got his hands on His Excellency now too, one between his shoulder blades and one at his waist—
That feeling from before, of wanting to be home – or anywhere, really, but here – intensifies in Mittermeyer. He feels his face heat, and he turns his head away to try and hide it, but even so, he can't tear his eyes off the two of them crawling all over each other on the other side of the room.
"We shouldn't watch this," he mumbles.
"Why not?" Reuenthal asks. There's laughter in his voice. "It's just some friendly cuddling, is it not?"
"Don't start wiih me, Reuenthal," Mittermeyer grumbles.
"I'm not starting anything. You're the one who insisted…"
"Well, maybe I've changed my mind." He downs the rest of his glass gracelessly, then fills it up again. There's almost no wine left in the bottle now. They'll have to call for another – not that there's anyone left to call, though. It's late enough that the staff has either gone home for the night, or they, too, had witnessed the scene before them, but had made the much wiser decision to make themselves scarce rather than expose themselves to whatever… this is. Whatever it's about to be.
Mittermeyer takes another deep, deep drink. Across the room, Reinhard leans in. Mittermeyer drinks again. He drinks even deeper this time, throat bobbing and head tilting back, and when he’s done, his glass comes away empty. He sets it down on the table, just a little bit too loudly, and…
Kircheis glances out of the corner of his eye from his spot on the couch (and under Reinhard), turning his head as if to look for something. Someone. Anyone. And Odin All-father, watching from above, does Mittermeyer hope he sees them.
But Reinhard places a hand on his jaw and turns his face back towards himself. He whispers something – ‘Nobody's here,’ Mittermeyer can guess – and leans in close.
And then they're kissing.
Reinhard's eyes slip shut, and his lips curl up into the barest hint of a smile, almost unseen against where they press against Kircheis's mouth. It takes Kircheis a moment longer to relax, to lean into the kiss, but when he does, oh, he melts. His hands come up around Reinhard, the one on his waist squeezing lightly and the other crawling delicately up his back… And then he grabs, twisting his fingers in the fabric of Reinhard’s uniform and pulling him flush to his chest.
"It's a good thing you've changed your mind, then," Reuenthal says, and there's just enough satisfaction in his smirk and in his words to tempt Mittermeyer to toss what's left of their wine bottle over his head. "I would have hated to be the one to tell you that I don't think that's just a friendly kiss."
They both turn their heads, ever-so-subtly, back to their commanding officers, who are now wrapped around each other like gift ribbon on their couch in the center of an isolated universe. Both Mittermeyer and Reuenthal watch them, equal parts horrified and enthralled, as they shift against each other, and as Kircheis opens his mouth and Reinhard parts his lips to—
"Definitely not friendly," Mittermeyer agrees.
And then, as though to drive the point they haven't heard further, Kircheis surges up and pushes, all but throwing Reinhard down on the couch beneath him. He's on top of him in a moment, moving impossibly fast, one knee up at Reinhard’s hips and hands at his shoulder and on his face. Reinhard's own hands come up to run through his hair again, and then one moves down, to his front, pinching at the clasps at the uniform collar around Kircheis's neck and—
"We shouldn't watch this," Mittermeyer says. "We should… we should leave."
"Probably, yes," Reuenthal says.
A beat passes. Neither of them move. They do, however, both take a synchronized sip of wine. Reinhard and Kircheis remain oblivious to their presence, ignorant entirely that there are spectators watching their every move, watching as the kiss breaks – and oh, Odin above, there's a string of spit still connecting them, snapping and breaking only when Kircheis whispers something against Reinhard's lips and makes his way down to his throat…
Beneath him, Reinhard gasps, his eyes flying wide and his lips parting even further. His entire body jolts, and Mittermeyer has to look away (he can't look away), because he's suddenly thinking of Eva, her hands on his back while he bites and licks and kisses her, and he does not want to be thinking about Kircheis doing the same, or about Reinhard in the position of his wife—
"Huh," Reuenthal says, his tone almost entirely neutral, as though he were mildly and pleasantly surprised by something mundane, like finding his wine glass had been magically refilled on its own. "I didn't know that Admiral Kircheis even knew that word."
"You can hear them?!" Mittermeyer asked incredulously, his voice dropping to a frantic hiss, just in case now, all of a sudden and this far gone, Kircheis and Reinhard happened to be able to hear him.
"No," Reuenthal admits with half a shrug, "but I've gotten quite good at being able to read lips." He levels his friend with a mocking grin. "Don't tell me—"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm inexperienced, I’ve only been with one woman, whatever. Can we please go now? I feel like we're seeing something we shouldn't."
Again, Reuenthal shrugs, but this time he finishes off his wine. "I suppose. Though I can't say I'm pleased by the idea of being pushed out of this lounge because the two of them have forgotten they aren't home yet."
He sets his glass down and makes to stand up – but he stops, suddenly, when he hears something slam against the table across the room. Mittermeyer snaps his gaze over, too, to the source of the noise: Reinhard’s hand slamming against the table. His fingers curl against it, and when Kircheis angles his head to – presumably – bite or kiss or do something just below his ear, his arm flails out, searching for something, anything, to grab on to. He gropes with one hand for stability on the table, while the other twists in Kircheis's hair to pull him closer—
And then, suddenly, something breaks.
Where there had been two mostly-full glasses of wine standing together a moment ago, now only one of them remains, alone, surrounded by shards of glass littering the floor and table under Reinhard's hand. The frantic, desperate kiss that had just started breaks, and Kircheis pushes himself up on to his hands, looking from Reinhard's wide, bewildered eyes to the shattered wine glass and puddle of rosé dripping off the side of the table.
And then they both burst out into laughter.
The two of them laugh, and they laugh, and they laugh, Kircheis still holding himself up over Reinhard until Reinhard finally pushes him off so they can sit up, Reinhard half-leaning on Kircheis and Kircheis half-falling off the couch. Finally, though, they calm down, and Reinhard shakes his head, while Kircheis wipes a tear from the corner of his eye.
"Let's go home," Reinhard says at last, and though his voice doesn't quite carry all the way, it's audible enough that both Mittermeyer and Reuenthal can hear it from their position on the other side of the room.
"Yes, please, go home," Mittermeyer mumbles, burying his face in one hand. They don't hear him, of course, but Reuenthal does, and he lets out a low chuckle at his friend's expense.
Moments pass. Mittermeyer hears the shuffling of clothing – and prays, silently, that its Kircheis righting his uniform – and then the steady fall of boots against the thinly-carpeted floor, growing quieter and quieter until they finally taper off and fade away completely.
"They're gone," Reuenthal says cheekily. "You can open your eyes now."
Mittermeyer does. He glowers at nothing, playing the scene over in his mind again, and lets out a long, relieved sigh. It isn't even that he's in a bad mood because of this; on the contrary, really, he's happy that the two of them have found each other, and that they can… experience each other in this way, he supposes. But sometimes ignorance is bliss, in its own way – certainly, it’s easier – and now they just have one more secret to keep until the old regime is out and the new one takes its place.
Mittermeyer looks back toward that couch in the corner of the lounge and sighs. Upon slightly more careful examination, he realizes that the bottle of wine Their Excellencies had been sharing, the light-looking rosé with a boring, unoriginal label, is almost full.
He groans. Mittermeyer stands up anyway, despite his mixed feelings, and makes his way toward the table, feeling Reuenthal's mismatched gaze on his back, equal parts intrigued and confused, he's sure. He feels no need to explain himself, though – and he's sure that bringing the bottle back with him is explanation enough, anyway.
He sits down. "Reuenthal."
Reuenthal looks up at him with a pleasantly amused grin. He's having the time of his life, it seems. The bastard. "Yes, Mittermeyer?"
Mittermeyer doesn't answer right away. He takes Reuenthal's wine glass from the table, fills it up to the brim, and then takes his own to do the same.
"Were drunk," he says, staring pointedly at Reuenthal. Thankfully his takes the cue, and he lifts his glass into the air.
"Drunk and hallucinating," he corrects, with just enough of a gleam in his eyes that Mittermeyer knows he will remember the entirety of this night, drunk or not. He doubts Reuenthal will say anything, though, and he's issued warning enough with this fake excuse that the suggestion will most likely stick.
"Right," Mittermeyer agrees. He raises his glass to Reuenthal's, and Reuenthal clinks his own against it.
"Prosit," they say, drinking in unison and smashing their glasses to the floor.