Work Text:
CONFOUNDED
by Natasha Barry
Posted 2006, edited 2022. Eyal/Axel Based upon the film WALK ON WATER. Israeli Mossad assassin Eyal is assigned to play tour guide to a German visiting the country in hopes it leads to the whereabouts of a Nazi war criminal.
Axel walked in while Eyal was signing off the phone communication. To Axel, Eyal looked steady, calm, and Axel didn't think twice about it – only wished, like his sister, he was picking up Hebrew. But she was living in a Kibbutz in Israel while he was back in his old job in Berlin. He was confident the man would tell him anything he needed to know: they had that between them.
When he'd killed his grandfather upon Eyal's failure to do so their covenant was sealed.
Eyal sighed, but managed to come up with a slight smile. "I quit Mossad." He was speaking in English, the language he and his German-raised companion conversed in.
"Is it that easy?" Axel was stunned. The man was an assassin, after all. Can you quit that? "With a phone call?"
Eyal switched to German, "They won't assassinate the assassin – only happens in movies." But Menachem hadn't been cooperative over the phone.
"Then you're free – to do anything you want." For a moment, Axel wondered what training and education his Israeli friend had in anything other than Army life and then the superlative self-defense and arms skills acquired for serving one's government.
"Free to stay here – in Berlin – for a while.” Eyal switched back to English. “If you don't mind."
"Of course not." Axel was struggling to digest all the new information, not just technical, but the attitude of his friend. He already accepted Eyal had never lied to him on his soul, only the important details like his real job. It would be funny, if he hadn't lived through it. "But you must stay here," he interjected before the other man could say more, "with me. You can leave the hotel."
Eyal admitted softly, hesitantly, even awkwardly, "That was better than I was hoping for, thank you."
"Nonsense. We're friends, more than friends, I think by now."
"After the lying, I didn't want to presume too much."
The man had cried in his arms, a broken man struggling to rebuild himself, Axel was thinking. Like he could reject such a man now? An extremely hot man, quite the hunk, too, if he admitted it to himself, as he hadn't done since first meeting Eyal at the airport in Tel Aviv. He was straight, so obviously straight, Axel had put all possibility of flirtation out of his mind, had even encouraged his sister, Pia, in seeking their "tour guide" out in romance. But the mysterious Eyal had kept his distance. Now, of course, Axel knew why: the assignment was less about tour guide and more about subterfuge.
Enough of this, Axel prodded himself. "I have only one bed – if that doesn't bother you."
"I have my things with me." He'd only carried a weekender bag with him from Tel Aviv, and he'd brought that with him to Axel's parents. He'd basically been on the road since he'd arrived in Berlin. "I can call the hotel to cancel."
"Good. Then we can discuss going out later."
Another gay club, Eyal assumed, after a quick meal somewhere for the two of them. But the gay clubs didn't intimidate him anymore – he was comfortable in the company of his German friend, and if someone else were attracted to him, well, that was hardly an insult, was it? If the two of them were left to talk….
Of course, if Axel had to leave with some other guy, he would assume his host would go elsewhere with the man. One bed, after all.
He would let it go, relax, in Berlin, the home of his mother, rooming with the philosophical German grandson of a Nazi war criminal. It was all perfectly ordinary if one thought it through.
Giving a quick check of the room and bed, Eyal laid his belongings atop the mattress as Axel appeared at the door.
"I have your property." He handed over the photos he'd confiscated from Eyal's satchel the night before.
"Oh, I should get rid of those."
"Wait," Axel objected. "I like that picture. It's a good one of my sister, too."
"Yes, she looks attractive there." Eyal agreed, comparing the two blondes, the one darker than the other, but after a moment he realized his gaze was frozen on the photo of the brother, who was standing before him. The German was so tall, there were several inches difference in height, and Eyal was conscious of lifting his head in order to address the man. "Go ahead; keep the pictures. I don't need them anymore."
"Mission accomplished."
"Well, if your parents are okay with this."
Axel handled the photos. Though he couldn't be sure, he thought the Israeli more focused upon him than his sister. He was confusing, this Israeli, and it was more than cultural. He'd been so different when they were in Israel, shying away from the gay club they'd gone dancing in. Upset with his Palestinian friend, though perhaps it was jealousy, after all? If a gay man, it would have signified possessiveness, but at the time Axel had been so resigned to his tour guide's heterosexuality, even asexuality on the job, he assumed it was objection to his homosexuality that had been the turnoff. And of course, Pia was attracted to the swarthy, handsome guide. So he'd been telling himself to back away from any attempt at seeing flirtation in those dark teal-colored eyes. Now, however, especially after the events of last night, when he'd been required to give comfort, but before that, the unmistakable look of desire on a man's face when seeing his date all dressed up – stunned? - made him wonder if Eyal wasn't undergoing some transformation. Perhaps it was an extension of the emotional base Eyal needed to sustain himself, so lacking for him since his wife's death. Had Axel assumed the privilege; and more than the shoulder to cry on?
And what about the other night, Eyal had been comfortable in the gay bar, had defended his gay friends from attack, had even questioned him on gay sex. A straight man revealing too much curiosity?
To check his sudden theory, Axel bent his head, slowly, giving his target plenty of time to pull back. But the head tilted just a bit to ensure the meeting of their lips, and the kiss was soft, undemanding, yet passionate for all that. As Axel lifted his head, he had a flashback to his instant attraction to the other man, quickly submerged.
"Give me a few minutes, all right?"
Axel nodded and left the room. It occurred to him he should call his parents. They must be dealing with the aftereffects of the death of his grandfather. He'd hoped with their abrupt departure, his and Eyal's, they would have taken for granted their son's culpability in the man's death.
"It's me, Axel." He was transferred quickly to his mother, who was shouting immediately into his ear, the curses strong but not penetrating as he waited for her to gather a breath. "No, Eyal is not a Mossad agent, it is I who killed Grandfather." He was calm, vaguely aware of the half-lie, but it was a necessity. "Because he was a war criminal, and achieved a more peaceful death than he bestowed upon others." But his mother continued on how distraught his father was over the death of his own father the night of his birthday party. What a celebration turned to disaster! Axel was not welcomed home, perhaps never again, like his sister he could consider himself in exile.
Now, when Axel hung up the phone it was to see Ayel standing there. "How much did you understand?"
Eyal was through lying. "Everything."
For the sake of his assignment, the brother and sister hadn't known Eyal was fluent in German, but there was no point to that now. The game had been given away during battle with the skinheads in the underground station. Those same skinheads would have despised Eyal as a Jew, if they'd known it. Fortunately as an intelligence agent for his government, Eyal could board any flight out of Tel Aviv with a weapon.
But Axel had been so confused by the swirling events of that night, it was something, the bringing of a gun from Tel Aviv, how it got through security at all.
Eyal still had the gun with him, though it would be confiscated from him upon his return to Israel. His former allegiances would be removing his clearances about now. And they would be laying in wait upon his return, not to punish him, as he'd assured Axel earlier, but it was necessary he be escorted from the airport and certain items in his possession confiscated as they belonged to the job.
But he hadn’t lied about something. He had always understood German better than spoken it, through lack of practice.
"Well, they weren't going to the police anyway. They couldn't, not with the fact they were hiding a war criminal. Now he's dead, they will pay a friend of my father's, he is a mortician, the burial will be private, no death certificate. Everything under the rug, as usual."
"But you're in the clear," pointed out Eyal. "Your fingerprints were on the medical equipment."
"That's true." Axel considered it. "I didn't care. I knew what your orders were and wanted to see the job was done."
"Doesn't matter any more, but it's clean. The Israeli papers will mention the assassination of your grandfather, but it's nothing for the German authorities to care about or care to investigate. They never do. This case was more a personal vendetta. If I'd had a choice, I would never have come. But your grandfather and my mother, and Menachem, let's say they crossed paths."
"And she left Berlin." Since the other man was hesitating, Axel took the initiative. "Why don't we go for a walk."
They left his apartment together, the two of them heading for another cheap round of street fare known as currywurst, since Eyal was fond of it. Also, maybe a good time to put them back on more familiar footing, before they returned home, and to the issue of what had arisen during their kiss.
While grabbing the food from the street-side vendor, Axel took in Eyal's appearance, and laughed softly.
"What is it?" Eyal challenged him, but he always enjoyed it when Axel was pleased about something, even if it turned out he was the butt of the joke.
"Your jacket."
"What about it?"
They leaned against a concrete wall to enjoy their repast.
"I should think of you as in black: very dramatic." It seemed the other man was always in that slim fitting leather jacket. It made for a sexy presence, but formidable. He'd always been slightly afraid of his Israeli guide. Maybe that's why he hadn't told him he was gay. Until he let it slip, just prior to his departure – maybe it was all about testing Eyal's reaction? The disapproval he'd faced the next day; complicated by the presence of the night's Palestinian lover. Well, it was difficult to presume which the other man had been more disapproving of, the Palestinian as a choice or the fact he was gay. Pia had been equally confused. That lack of resolution hadn't made the departure at the airport any easier between them, nor had Eyal's abrupt acknowledgment of his address in Berlin – as if the distasteful assignment was over and he couldn't wait to free himself of the contamination. It had been so unfortunate, Axel had been obsessing on his Israeli guide all the flight home.
Axel's smile broke suddenly, remembering there could be another connotation to the man's attire – he'd been widowed recently. At least that had nothing to do with this.
Eyal didn't get the connection. "What's wrong with black?"
"Looks good on you." And this time, Axel didn't let his appreciation of the other man's appearance dim. "My friends were very appreciative also."
"Oh, yeah." Eyal had been faithful to his wife, hadn't thought about sex at all recently, even if he did come across the odd person or two who seemed to respond to him. He knew he was handsome but it was more an intellectual appreciation, could actually be a job disadvantage since it required effort to blend in with a crowd, to become a mere accessory. "Not all cross-dressers are homo, are they?"
"Well, these were. It's quite a tradition on the Berlin scene. Maybe that's the answer to that question you had, as to why I'm not attracted to German men."
As his friend looked as if he were really thinking about it, Eyal gave a survey of the other man. "Well, I could see their attraction to you, at the bar the other night, and in Tel Aviv. The tall blond is desired in every culture."
"You could have anyone you want." Axel looked him over. "Surely you know that. Handsome, and I know you've got a great body."
Now Eyal was flushed. "I wondered if that would come up again."
"It was nice." Axel was remembering their time showering the minerals from their otherwise bare skin at the Dead Sea. But he defended himself from the silent accusation. "You wouldn't have been so relaxed with me if you'd known I was gay."
"Probably. No wonder you know so much about cut versus uncut."
"Your innocence was charming."
"You thought I would be rude if I knew you were gay?"
They were nearly done with their meal, and then onto the bar. The gay bar, just as on Eyal's first night in Berlin where he allowed his host to take command. Dropping the waste into a receptacle, Axel volunteered, "I didn't want to risk it. Offending you, I mean."
"But you're usually so open about your homosexuality. I mean, even at your parents' everyone assumed I was your boyfriend."
"And that was all right with you?"
Eyal shrugged. It had been all right with him, in fact, though he'd told himself the misunderstanding was a useful aid. It was making him a member of the family, so to speak. Like in his job with Mossad, going undergover, like as a tour guide, it was normal to assume identities
But Axel was pressing it. "You don't mind if someone thinks you're gay?"
Eyal shook his head. "I'm a professional killer, " he pointed out. "What does it matter what anyone thinks? I don't exist, really, not as a person."
"That's not true." Obviously they had to work on the other's self-esteem. "Anyway," they'd arrived at their destination, "here we are."
"Two beers?"
"Two beers," Axel agreed.
On this third visit to a gay bar Eyal was even more comfortable, and there were less looks in his direction than in Tel Aviv, that cosmopolitan city where Arabs mixed with Jews and straights with gays. There weren't always obvious differences between the two races: you needed a sign sometimes to tell the difference. He figured maybe because the inference was he was taken as Axel's lover that he was left alone now.
With a drink in hand, Axel was in the mood to tease. "What would you do if someone made a pass at you?"
"In here?"
"Of course."
"I would say I'm not interested."
Before he had finished Axel was shaking his head no. "No, you have to be polite about it. Tell them you're with me; I'll do the same."
"So you don't plan on picking someone up?" Eyal flashed back to the brief scene in the bedroom, the kiss that was a dream.
"I'm already on a date. It's not like Tel Aviv. I agree I should have told you."
"It was rude, don't you think?"
"I'm not normally rude."
Eyal agreed. "What made you do it then?".
"Too long without sex? Too long without being myself?"
"So it's my fault?"
"Not really; maybe. I was in your company and… I told you, you're attractive. I had to shut down, physically and in my conversation, remind myself all the time you were straight. I guess I needed to cut loose, eventually. It was unfortunate, for your sake, it was with a Palestinian, but I have no regrets."
"Maybe it wasn't so much the Palestinian." But also, "Maybe it was."
The man was obviously trying to come to terms with something. "What else could it be? I wasn't honest with you; I took up with a Palestinian you didn't approve of."
"I enjoyed your company; your attention."
So he was right then, and there was jealousy at work in the Israeli's departure from the club. He'd basically abandoned Axel and his sister, then the next day the so-called tourist guide was obviously fuming, and rude with it as well. The cover for the anger was the Palestinian, but also the dishonesty in the brother's homosexuality, and its not being shared. So Eyal had been easy to talk with, knowledgeable about so many things, but blatantly rude upon Axel's departure at the airport. It was as if Axel had been dealing with two or more individual Eyals and he never knew which would make an appearance. Now so much of that was understandable, but then it only left him flabbergasted when not long after returning home he found the Israeli on his doorstep.
"Did you wonder what the Palestinian waiter had that you – the Israeli tour guide – didn't?"
Eyal shrugged, still trying to sidestep any evidence in concrete. "Waiters make more money."
His lips were firming. "Did you feel rejected because I hadn't made a pass at you, even though you were straight?" Maybe, running out of time in the country, he needed to provoke Eyal, but had chosen the wrong way.
"If you'd made a pass," Eyal tried to imagine it, "your life would have been in serious jeopardy."
"That bad?"
"Maybe not. But you'd have been wounded, seriously."
"But when we kissed at my apartment?”
"I know you now. Shit. You know me."
"So what do you think now? Since we're being serious."
"Are you wondering if it's acceptable to me, our going to bed?" Eyal sighed. "I think you're the most beautiful person I've ever met. I've learned more from you than anyone. But you confuse me sometimes, too."
"In what way?"
"You're prepared to kill when someone doesn't meet your expectations."
Stung, and not wanting to retaliate without first thinking it over, Axel realized they needed privacy. "Let's go, if you're ready." Indicating the beer, he finished his in a gulp. They'd been drinking Heineken brand since that's what the Israeli favored. They drank it in Israel and now in Germany, because Eyal always placed the order.
As they left the club, a veritable duo, Eyal placed his hand in the small of Axel's back as Axel slung an arm over the smaller man's shoulders.
"And how do you feel about the physical?"
"I don't know." They were back in the apartment, jackets removed, and the gloves figuratively off. "I never thought about sex with a man before."
"Are you attracted to me – physically?"
"I think so. I enjoy your company, I know that. Charming. If another man tried that - "
"Well, I have been attracted to you. I mean it wouldn't take much. I don't approve of gay crushes on straight men, they're so unproductive."
There was something about the young German that demanded liberation. Eyal had tried despising him so often, at least back in Israel, and he'd never managed it. He couldn't even accuse the young man of being a flower sniffing limp-wrist, as he was neither effeminate nor a pacifist. Confounded, that's what he'd been ever since meeting Axel Himmelman. "I don't think I have been as close to anyone." Not even Iris, his wife.
"I guess I need to know how close you want to be with me."
Not good at talking to express his feelings, Eyal stripped off the jacket and started on his shirt. His gaze steady on the other man, he followed Axel's move into the bedroom.
The beer helped relax him. There was nothing familiar about this, about stripping naked with another guy in the room, when this wasn't a barracks. But he wasn't shy about his body, privacy was something you knew not to rely on when three years of your life were spent with men and women in confined spaces; the bunkers were like that.
Though he didn't see any wavering, Axel offered a soft encouragement. "It's okay." And he began to strip, reminding himself he had to read the signs carefully, for this man was virgin, and couldn't take anything for granted.
Shortly they were standing across from each other, and Axel gestured toward the bed, watching for signs of nervousness as Eyal climbed onto it. "You're beautiful, you know."
The compliment initiated a cross between a smile and a grimace. "You'd better get on with it." Eyal had no shortage of nerve, but until a few moments ago he wasn't sure he was even going through with this.
But instead of something aggressive, Axel began stroking the other man's skin, along the calves, softening him up for the kill, he joked to himself. Get Eyal relaxed and see if he was still determined to move forward. He inched up to the darker face: "Turn onto your belly," he whispered. As the man looked shocked, he reassured him. "Not so fast. I think a massage, okay?"
Eyal obeyed, slipping onto his side and then onto his stomach. He tried to relax his muscles which threatened to tense. He imagined himself on the Dead Sea, the buoyancy from the super-rich water enough to prevent any drowning. "Like this?" He was proud of himself, almost unaware of the hands sliding into his thighs, the delicate parting of his legs.
"Don't go to sleep now."
"Wouldn't miss it." It wasn't exciting, but it wasn't forbidding either, and he'd made a decision after all.
Reaching to the side table, Axel retrieved the tube he kept there. "Hold on. This will make it better."
Eyal felt the probing at the bud of his interior, and the wetness, and he fought his instinct to bolt from the room. But the intrusion came sweetly, in a way, in fact it was a moment before Eyal realized the other man had a – finger? – in him. "What is it?"
"Just my finger. To get you accustomed." After a while, a second finger was added.
Eyal had never felt anything like this. He wasn't sure he was pleased; just decided to go with it. The groan he gave was a clue.
"Your prostate," Axel answered. "I can get you off like this, you know." It was the voice of expertise as he increased the stroking motion inside the other's cavity.
In response, his legs splayed further and his knees rose higher up the sheets, and Eyal knew Axel was right. His cock was pulsing with a persistent beat. "Go ahead and do it. Fuck me."
"In a little." And the long body moved up to enrapture the caught one in a kiss, coaxing the dark head to turn just so. After several minutes of breathless wonder, it was time, the smaller Israeli was more than ready for the intimacy they would share.
Axel had no trouble being ready, the sight of the hard muscled body attached to the handsome face was enough. But this was also Eyal, and their deep friendship, and whose projection of sexiness was ingrained.
Mouths joined together for long moments, and Axel was eager now he was accepted. He increased the penetration with his fingers, widening the area, silently ensuring his fresh lover the ease from pain when it came to insertion.
Eyal gave a soft sigh as his body was penetrated.
The next morning, after a leisurely time spent over coffee, they were departing the building together, Axel's last day off before returning to work, but Eyal was brought up short.
"Menachem," it being directed to his ex-boss in Mossad. Obviously the man hadn't taken a flight out of Berlin yet.
The elder Israeli gave a short glance to the tall blond. "May I have a word with Eyal, please." Though softly spoken, it was a demand, in English, and acknowledging and yet dismissing the two men's allegiance.
Left alone, the men quickly switched to Hebrew. So, from a distance, Axel observed as Eyal held a short but frenzied conversation with his former supervisor. He was stunned, at first, to find the man standing outside the apartment complex, but then put two and two together and realized the man from the diner hadn't been any old friend of Eyal's mother, casually met, but someone who had an interest, greater than Eyal's, in the Himmelman family. How would he feel if he knew it had been a German who did the deed, and not the Mossad agent?
Axel relaxed as his friend left the older man behind.
"It's finished," Eyal said shortly. "We can go now."
Eyal came to a dead stop at spying a vendor.
"Can we have that? I've heard about it, never had one."
"Impossible to avoid, here in Germany or Austria." But Axel consented. It had been a while since he'd indulged in a chocolate covered pretzel. "I don't think I've spent so much time eating at street vendors in my life."
"But it's good, and it’s cheap."
"Yes, it’s good." And he smiled at the enthusiasm on the man's face, the brightness of the blue-green eyes. If he was lucky, the crooked, self-conscious sexy smile and swagger would make a reappearance soon.
To Axel, the steely depths that had been evinced in the Israeli, especially after the inclusion into their circle of the Palestinian, hadn't been seen since. Striking, it had been though, a hint at a determination and toughness not physically exhibited by the man until the incident in the Berlin underground.
"What do you want to do today?"
"Nothing really. I want to see Germany through your eyes."
"I'm just a person." Axel was curious. "How do you know I wouldn't have done what the others did?" He meant his countrymen during World War II. He wanted to think he was different, but how would a Jew look at it?
"You have too good a heart. You'd never be able to justify it to yourself, in spite of what I said last night. I don't see you doing those things."
"Really?" He'd been made aware he could be quite intolerant himself.
"You're not just a person. I think you have limits. I couldn't despise you even in Israel." Eyal shrugged. "And I tried."
"So you did?" He'd been aware of the questioning, and even the furtive openness, but not to that level of suspicion. "I haven't been in your place; how I would react if I'd been a Jew raised with that behind me."
"We are too serious sometimes, you know?" Eyal shrugged again. There was a darkness in his land, in his people. The result the buildup from too many generations with very long memories.
But the intolerance his German friend exhibited towards the skinhead had been jarring, the slur made upon the villain the same type of slur made against the Jews by the Third Reich. The image was so disturbing, Eyal had shunted it from his mind at the time, and needed to continue to do so. There was no time capsule, anyway, no way to determine how someone would behave in another time and culture.
For himself, in his vocation in Mossad, he was hardly blameless, even if he was exterminating the guilty.
"It's all perspective," he realized. "One person's villain is another person's hero." He shook his head. "Too serious."
Having observed the play of emotions upon the man's face, Axel grinned. "There's that Jewish male, `I don't want to talk about it,' slipping in again."
Eyal had to lash back. "You really don't know why you don't have sex with German men?" As the blond looked perplexed, Eyal made to walk away.
With a quick grasp, Axel held him back, while standing ground. "No, tell me."
The demand elicited Eyal's response: it came as too much an order from an officer. "Your sister runs to Israel. And you deny your heritage. At least you did. Until your grandfather." He didn't mention the intentional extermination. "Are you angry?"
"Well, by that logic, you can want to have sex with me to prove you're not prejudiced against Germans – or homos."
"But I'm not gay."
"I know that." For Axel this was either too serious or too stupid a discussion: likely because it was occurring in the street. So he considered it. "No. You may be right. I mean, it would explain things, wouldn't it? Pia living in Israel, wanting an Israeli for a lover." As Eyal laughed, Axel went, "What?"
"I was thinking… No matter where you go, there you are."
Now Axel was laughing. It really was ridiculous, and he supposed they all were.
"I'm stuck with my heritage – in my skin – too," Eyal assured him. "And an Aryan boyfriend wasn't on my agenda."
"That is silly. No boyfriend was on your agenda."
The visitor to the city took in their location. "So, what do you want to do today?"
"You really want to see the city, or explore more of your newfound homosexuality?"
Not really homosexual, as his preference for males was strictly this man. "How about this morning, exploring the city. The afternoon back at your place, doing whatever."
Axel grinned.
THE END