Northern Waters

Author's note: Human names used, and the pairs are going to go (Sweden/Norway), (Sweden/Germany) [Main Pairing], (Norway/Denmark), and there's a brief, tiny bit of (Sweden/Finland).

“Ber?” Lukas called quietly into the dark house.

He was here. He had to be. Yet, there was no answer.

“Berwald?” he asked again, a bit louder.

Panic threatened to overtake him until he spotted a tiny bit of light stretching down the hallway. Walking closer, he could see the faint light of what must have been a single candle behind the closed door to the washroom. He stood a bit straighter and walked more heavily down the hallway. He was heard. A light, muffled sound of scrambling reached his ears, putting him even more on edge. Still, when he reached the door he didn’t hesitate before turning the knob and pushing it opened. Hesitating wasn’t in his nature.

“Ber?” he repeated as the door swung opened.

The sight made his heart wrench in his chest hard enough to suck the air from his lungs. The tall Swede was crouched over on himself, the dark red rivulets of dried and wet blood contrasting his pale features. His arm looked nothing short of mangled, and various other open cuts littered the skin of his face and arms, complimented by dark bruises of purple and blue too fresh to be tinged with yellow.

“Don’t look, Luke. Please, don’t look.” his voice was deep, but, it was broken.

The stupid man. He was too proud.

“Shut up.” Lukas snapped at him, lighting the other candles in the room with the single one.

Once the room was properly lit, he looked again to Berwald. It was even worse that what it had seemed. And his arm…

“Can you feel your fingers?” Lukas asked as he swallowed and approached him, taking over where Berwald was trying to wrap it.

Through the cracked lenses of his glasses he studied him, and then nodded once.

“Fuck, Ber,” he swore quietly, wrapping it tightly to stop the blood. “What the hell happened?”

He didn’t look like he wanted to speak, but Lukas heard the story through his bloody lips.

The job had been simple, honestly. Berwald, the Dane named Mathias, and Lukas were all to intercept a German supply train that was scheduled to come through at 2:34am. Mathias and Lukas were set to detonate the explosives on the tracks eight miles down. Berwald was stationed further up, simply as a precaution. He wasn’t sure if they had been tipped off or if the stars were in alignment against him that night, but there were people there, waiting for him.

“I killed them,” the bleeding man before him confessed. “Killed them all,”

Lukas swallowed; his throat felt dry as he began to feebly help him shrug off his heavy jacket and began to patch up some of the large injuries. “How many?”

“Five.” he told him with a cold certainty.

“Shit,” he hissed, his hand slipping and making the tall Swede wince. “Sorry,”

He just grunted.

There was a long stretch of silence, the middle-of-the-night kind of silence, with both of them utterly on edge. If any creature moved within half of a mile of the house, they heard it. All Lukas could picture was soldiers coming to the house, breaking down the door, and tearing Berwald out of his arms. They wouldn’t take him to prison then, they wouldn’t show him any mercy. A loud shot by the side of the house, and that would be it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Berwald suddenly reached forward with his less-injured arm and brushed his cheek which only then he realized was wet. “Don’t cry,”

He angrily wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“This it,” he told him.

“What?” Lukas asked, looking up at him.

He frowned the way he did when words became harder for him. “This is it. No more. No more fightin’.”

Lukas looked down as he resumed cleaning and dressing the wounds. Would Berwald really do it? Would he really stop fighting?

“Just, don’t cry,” he muttered, cupping his face with his large hand and tilting his head back up so they were looking at each other again.

“Ber,” he whimpered and bowed his head, allowing the Swede to wrap himself around him, grunting a bit at his injuries.

He tried to fight the embrace, to tell himself he had no intention of actually crying, but he was powerless now. Sobs began to wrack his body as he pressed himself into that broad chest, clutching tightly to him as the image of him being taken and thrown down against the side of his house, hardly having time to look up and meet their eyes before the gun was brought down, aimed at his defined brow. Lukas let out a shrill shriek as he heard the pistol go off in his mind, feeling as though he were trapped in a waking nightmare; he knew the images were false, but he couldn’t stop them. There was no escape. There was no way out.

Then, he became aware of something other than his sobbing and the image of blood against the snow. Berwald was singing to him. In Norwegian. It was an old lullaby his grandmother had sung to him a few times. He almost wanted to hit Berwald for doing such a stupid thing, but instead he only drew deeper breaths, and allowed himself to be rocked slightly.

When the sobbing had subsided to less than pathetic hiccups, he pulled back, aware that Berwald’s wounds were not fully treated. He opened his mouth to speak, but Lukas covered it quickly.

“Don’t say anything. Not a word until I’ve finished.” he commanded.

Berwald closed his eyes in a silent nod and Lukas removed his hand. He finished cleansing the wounds and dressing them in silence. There were many, and a few were deep, but most of them were simple cuts that might even be healed up before the end of the week. There was nothing to be done about the bruises, but as he helped him pull his shirt off, he sighed in relief to see that his ribs looked unharmed. Once he was patched up, they looked at each other.

“Where’s Mat?” he asked, his voice strained and cracking.

“At the safe house. I told him we’d meet him there if we had to. It’s better for us to be spread out,” he told him like he didn’t know.

He nodded once, a dark and sinister feeling behind those deep blue eyes.

“Can you get to the bedroom?” he asked, stepping back.

Berwald nodded, but took a minute standing. He could only imagine the pain in his legs from having to run so far. He allowed himself to be used as a crutch, although if anyone had seen them they both would have denied it. That’s how they were. Mathias, too. They were all just too goddamn proud.

Lukas pushed open the door to the bedroom, helping him to the large bed that Berwald had built for himself, since he didn’t fit on any others. He helped him over to it and tried to set him down carefully, despite his apparent want to flop down carelessly. Then he began to yank off his boots and socks, absently realizing that he had very nicely shaped feet. They were cute, even.

“Luke?” he called suddenly.

“Yeah, Ber?”

“Stay with me tonight?” he asked almost timidly.

His heart did something strange, but he tried to ignore it. “Of course I am, you idiot.”

“Here?” he emphasized, putting his large hand palm-down on the bed.

Lukas began to blush but then just arched his eyebrow slightly instead. “Do you see another bed in here?”

Berwald began to smile and reached out gently, touching his face again. That smile, god, how long had it been since he had seen him smile like that?  A part of him wanted to pull away, to remind him that whatever they had had was now gone, lost in the past, but another part of him, a stronger, secret part, held him in place. He had never wanted it to fall apart like that, but with Mathias thrown into the mix…no, there had been no other option. Still, he was here, wasn’t he? With Berwald. And Mathias was absent, for the time.

Once he had helped him strip down to his underwear he helped him shift beneath the heavy covers and then he began to pull off his boots and jacket, ignoring the bloodstains as best he could. It was a sickening though to wonder if it was Berwald’s blood, or if it had previously belonged to someone who was now dead somewhere in the many Swedish forests.

Berwald called to him when he sunk too deeply in thought, and although he cast him his best annoyed look, he was thankful. Sometimes it felt like he was always trying to drown himself with heavy thoughts, but Berwald’s deep, wise voice could always bring him back.

Then he climbed into bed beside him after putting out the candle that he had taken with him from the washroom, enclosing them in darkness save for the bluish midnight light that silently fell through the window. He was hardly allowed to shift his weight on the bed before Berwald pulled him close, pressing their bodies together hard. That bastard was going to open up all the wounds he just closed if he kept using his strength like that. Still, he couldn’t deny how good the embrace felt. It had been so long since they were able to touch and hold each other. Lukas had never been quite sure what had happened when he brought Mathias to Berwald’s home, but whatever feeling the Dane carried, it was strong. Strong enough to silence Lukas and keep Berwald from taking what he desired.

But he wasn’t here now.

Slowly, Lukas felt Berwald’s lips trailing across his forehead, down to the side of his face.

“Ber, you need to rest, you idiot,” he grumbled.

“Am resting,” he muttered, continuing to kiss him.

Lukas wiggled just a bit out of his reach. “Sleep.”

Those deeply blue eyes echoed with and old kind of wisdom and power, but also something so innocent Lukas almost wanted to coo at him.

“Ya really want me to stop?” he asked, his voice low and serious; he was asking about more than just forehead kisses.

Lukas slowly began to hold his arms to his chest. “For now, Ber. For now.”

He was silent but then nodded with a grunt. “Alright.”

Still, they cuddled closer as they settled in to sleep, Lukas having to force himself to focus only on Berwald’s breathing in order to silence the many painful thoughts in his mind. For now…it was all he could think to say. Something else was coming; he could feel it deep in his bones. He just didn’t know what it was.