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The summer sun set a hazy mist across the field, the Sunday bliss leaving the two boys in utter contentment. Tangled limbs of the two boys were hidden from view of any passersby, not that there would be any in a field just out of town. Innocently enough, the two boys just held each other close, shoes and socks discarded due to the heat of the day. The heat of an August day was settling into the humid eve of an August night.
Summer was drawing to a close, and Hänschen would go back to Hans Rilow, the top of the class with the icy blue-green eyes, a stare that could prickle your skin and priding himself in hiding his emotions. And Ernst, Ernst would stay Ernst Röbel, the tall, quiet boy who is always one step ahead of failing Latin, who hung out with mostly the girls, with the occasional study session with Herr Rilow every month or so. Ernst never changed much, he loved too purely and too innocently to hide his true nature, which is why Hans had to pick up his slack.
Twisting to the shorter, hearing boy, Ernst yawned slightly, taking his hands from him, and started to sign. “School starts in a week.”
A short, sweet comment, he'd thought, maybe to try to convince the other that their relationship could continue in secret during the school year- and maybe even ask for a public friendship between the two boys.
Yet, when Hänschen sat up and started signing back, Ernst could feel his spirits already falling. “Oh, Ernst”, the blond signed, his icy eyes always melted to warm blue-green puddles with the other, taller boy. “You know this can't last. Two boys? We'd get publicly humiliated, executed, perhaps. When we part ways this school year, each of us shall find a nice girl and settle down with her, and we can live our lives the way the system wants us to.”
“What happened to skimming off the cream?” The deaf boy signed, clearly getting upset over Hans's answer.
The blond sighed, gently threading his fingers through the brunette’s open hand, bringing his hand up to his lips and giving it a soft kiss. He let go to continue to sign to the other, since he figured Ernst wouldn’t want to focus on reading lips on this lazy eve.
"This isn’t the way the world works, you know that. Two Catholic boys from a small town, one wanting to go into the clergy, the other into politics? It’s 1895, you know that people...such as you, would not be able to display your love for others so...openly. Especially not for me.”
“What do you mean?” Ernst frowned, brows furrowing as he sat up, starting to back away from the other. “Hansi, you’ve seen me say I love you. You’ve heard me say it, and you know how much I hate using my voice. How come you never say it back? Do you not love me?”
“Ernst,” the shorter, hearing boy let out another sigh, running a hand through his honey locks. “You know I can’t, this is just a summer fling-”
He was interrupted as Ernst grabbed his hand and shook his head, looking peeved. “Hans, we started during school, after Moritz’s funeral… and continued it after Wendla’s. It’s not just a summer fling and you know it. Do you love me?”
Hänschen bit his lip, turning away from the other as he cursed under his breath. The voice of his father filled his mind, mentioning how his...friendship with the sickly boy, Max, was suspicious, and he had better not let him down. That was a year ago, before Max succumbed to the fever. And everything was fine, he distanced himself from everyone, keeping a cool, calm, collected stature of elegance and poise. Then Ernst kept catching his eye.
Beautiful, tall Ernst, with his chocolate brown hair and matching warm coffee eyes. How the boy would doodle in his notes instead of pay attention in class, how some of those doodles would be of Hänschen himself. How he offered to the boy to brush up on his Greek with a little Achilles and Patrocles. How he flushed when Hans whispered the meaning of the two… friends on their way home.
Yes, Hans Rilow was in love with the deaf boy, who loved with all of his heart, giving it away to a blond monster who would have to rip out his heart, due to the society they live in. If things were different, if people like… them were more accepted.
Hans was one of the lucky ones, enjoying both the masculine and feminine physiques, though Ernst, he knew, had eyes for only one. The wrong one, or so says the law and the church. The brunette would be better off being the priest he so desires to be, living a life without a wife to go home and pretend to love. But Hans, Hans could do a much better job at pretending.
He couldn’t say he loved Ernst, it would give the sweet boy too much hope. But he didn’t want the time he did have to spend with the other to be ruined.
So Hans lifted a hand, gently brushing the fluffy, chocolate bangs of the other with his fingers. “I love you,” he murmured, quietly and expressionless enough to where the deaf one could not make out what he had said.
Hans withdrew his hand to sign to him. “You know I cannot say it, Ernst. I told you time and time again, I don’t love anyone. However, I do hold you dear to me, now please, my little Mousie, let us finish out the summer, and I will think about the school year…”
Ernst searched the other’s eyes, biting his lip as he frowned, hearing only a muffled sentence as the blond said something. He leaned into the touch, yet he so desperately wanted to know what his dear Hansi had said to him. He watched the other’s hands, pouting.
“Please, oh please? You know how much I love you… and I know you must care for me if you continue our outings like this,” Ernst signed quickly, albeit a bit sloppy. “You’re everything to me, Hänschen. I can’t bear to part from you just yet. We graduate this year, yes, but how can I graduate if my tutor decides to quit tutoring me?”
“Okay, okay,” Hans smiled, laughing lightly at his lover’s urging. “I shall continue our tutoring… only so you can graduate and live out your sentimental life as a member of the clergy. The very same clergy who says it is wrong for you to have such a pure love for me.”
Ah, the age old argument of Ernst’s religious dream. He knew the way he felt was wrong, and every kiss from the blond was another nail in his coffin, but Ernst believed that such a loving God would not damn him for loving, it was not wrong to have love for another.
“Oh, let us not speak of the future, please? Let us talk of the here and now, or perhaps not even talk. Just sit, in the summer haze, and we can enjoy each other right now,” Ernst pleaded, and once he was done signing, he took the other’s hands in his and settled back down in the soft grass, urging the other to do the same.
And so they laid there, holding each other close, wishing to slow down time so they didn’t have to face the future that is to come.