Work Text:
Brothers
by T'Len
2004
I can't help myself but glance at any of your movements. Your blue-black, long hair has something mystical in the pale light of the stars and the restless flashing of our fire. Something mysterious. So mysteriously as I still perceive you from time to time- after all the years we know each other. You surely know me better than anyone else on the entire planet.
I can see the playing of your muscles under your tight clothing. Elegantly, almost graceful and yet so strong. As I do often in my secret observations, I compare you now with a big cat, a black panther. Slim but always ready and enormously elegant.
Even at the times, when we still faced each other as enemies I sensed your power and admired your elegance. In the last years I often enough had the opportunity to observe you in battle - and in quieter times I had my secret dreams and longings.
My view is glued to your strong back, your muscular shoulders, slides then down to the shapely roundness of your rear. There they are again - the forbidden thoughts. Thoughts full of passion and desire for something, that may not be. That can not be.
Deep in thoughts I hear again the voice of my father. A voice that speaks about perversity. Not to me, but rather to his friends in the inn. That I - just eight years old - overheard their speech in the adjoining bowling alley, where I was putting up the cones, remained obviously unnoticed.
Just as father didn't notice later the same evening, that I heard his conversation with mother. He worried that I -much too weak for my age - would end like the son of our neighbour. He had been caught with the new teacher in an unambiguous situation. His father committed suicide about that shame.
My fathers fear, his only son could possibly be a pervert, pursued me my entire life. "An orderly man hasn't any interest on other man," he often said to me. And so it was burned deeply into my own morality.
My father surely would be proud of me, if he yet had been able to see which life I live today. Full of adventures and dangerous situations. And yet it had been this mannish life which leaded me to find the person that I love more than anyone else, yet more than my own life.
Can it really be a shame to be in love? Love - another word a real man shouldn't think off, let alone take it into his mouth. "Boys don't show feelings" was another often heard sentence.
But I love you. And I don't wish to fight it any longer. I do not know, what connected the neighbour boy and the teacher then. Perhaps it was love, perhaps it was only desire.
I stopped a long time ago to deny that I also feel the latter for you. How often did I imagine to feel your tender hands - the hands that also fought so many battles, that understand it so excellent to lead weapons - caressing my skin?
How often did I wish to comb my hands through your long, silky hair, to feel your seductive lips on mine? I didn't count. The dream already last too long, without hope, that it can become reality one day.
You bend to caress Iltschi's mane. Again I admire your supple movements. But suddenly you wince slightly. You're still in pain from your wounded left shoulder, where two days ago a Sioux arrow hit you
It was close, like so often in our adventures. Too close. One day an arrow will hit deadly) - or a bullet or a tomahawk. And then it will be too late.
Missed chances and opportunities - there are already so many in my life. All at once I am not willing to allow another chance to pass. We experienced and shared so much together. We are so close that we can often guess the thoughts of the other, before they are thought to end.
Why shouldn't we take this last step? Perhaps fate determined, that today is the night of truth. My feelings tell me, that you will listen and understand and accept. This is time for honesty between us.
Yet as I still try to gather my courage to make the first move, you suddenly turn to me. For a moment your dark eyes fix on me, as if you wanted to look directly into my soul - then you smile when you come to me with extended arms. "My brother, Scharlih!"
-End-