Boys Don't Cry

Rostock

[Major Headcanon Alert! This is set in what used to be Eastern Germany in Rostock, 1996. This is... This can be percieved as OOC, but C'mon. It's Mello. Not much background information. Italics mean said in a foreign language for this piece.]

Mihael woke slowly to the dull blush of light stumbling in from the window outside. It was one of those days when the sky was a bright gray, and almost hurt to look at, while the cold ate at your fingers and toes with every blowing gust. The walls of the bedroom he shared with Karel were adorned with chipping paint, the carpeting chilled and almost damp to the touch. The cast iron bedframe was colder, Mihael could feel it through the beaten mattress. Karel had ripped the blanket off of him when he got up, and he felt a deep penetrating shiver pass through his entire torso. He wondered where his little brother was.

His hair stuck to his temples, bangs shoved over to one side. He felt dirty; It had been a while since Mami cut his hair.

He walked into the kitchen in his black tee shirt and a pair of Luc's hand-me-down underwear from before he was born. He really remembered Luc from an old picture of him as a kid and Mami... she looked so much prettier then. The upside of forgetting what she looked like was remembering her like that... Babi (from Babicka, but she wanted him to call her Oma) had the underpants around somewhere.

She was taking her pills with a pint glass of water by her side on the kitchen table.

"Mihael, klein, come sit on my lap."

Her and Pappa have tried to speak more English around him, so he'd pick it up. It was working.

He came to her and clambered into her lap. She nudged the water glass towards the center of the table as he wiggled. He found a comfortable place to sit on her right thigh, the nook of her elbow finding his slight, boyish waist. Her hand laid at his hip and made him re-adjust slightly, feeling the tissue bruise Babi left on him when he lingered too long than she'd have liked, reading a sign.

Her left hand met his defined jawline, blonde hairs stuck under his ear, and she pulled him forward a bit to plant a dry kiss on his faintly sticky cheek and to lead his head to rest on her collar afterwards. He enjoyed this part.

He felt the heat of her cigarette as she lit it, and closed his eyes as the thick incense clouded his senses. The smell reminded him of Danil, and why he should never try to be combatic with him. His eyelids pressed together, squinting shut until colors began to prick at the surface as he felt the band of his underwear stretching and felt someone's hand reaching inside. His thighs felt a chill as he snapped them together.

He thought that only Myrna, Danil's fiancée, would touch him like that. Did everyone know? He wished and wished that Babi wouldn't do it...

"Stop, stop, no crying for you. Some thing smelled bad. It not you."

In her mother tongue, German, she began to coo comforts to him while rubbing the small of his back. Wiping his eyes, he realized he wasn't supposed to be crying. Danil said only little girls cried, but Mihael never saw Mami or Babi cry.

She pulled his head into her collar again and let her hand rest across his left ear before asking him why he was so upset. Before he could think, he spit out "I miss Mami!" in his best German.

He did miss his mother, even though all she really did day in and day out was take care of Karel. She wouldn't let Pappa yell at him because it would wake Karel. She'd cut his hair and (begrudgingly) darn his stockings so his feet wouldn't get cold, she'd even let Mihael sit beside her as long as he would stay still and quiet. She was always holding Karel, and didn't want a fractious Mihael to bother them. They spoke Slovak together, because she taught him how to speak, and her German was barely fluent at best.

He'd found himself speaking more German since she'd been gone.

The door opened, and in bustled Pappa and Danil, chatting while they removed their boots at the door. There was a ridiculous amount of mud outside, like always.

"Oh, look! Mihael has been crying! Poor girl!"

Mihael scrambled out of Babi's lap up to the two brothers.

"No! I don't cry! I'm a boy! I'm a man!"

Pappa looked down at the little blonde boy- his little blonde half-Slovakian boy. Pinkened cheeks, but a furious scowl. A hard-worked shirt, but a kid's underpants

Danil scoffed and opened the front door to let Myrna in. Myrna was an ugly little wiry woman with thin lips and hastily severed hair at her shoulders.

She, like Mami, was Slovak, too.

Mihael's eyed trailed to the floor, and he pulled his shirt down over his underpants, suddenly all too aware of how revealed he was.

Babi made herself busy in the kitchen while Danil and Pappa talked less-than-brotherly politics the afternoon long. They talked about how socialism was the only way. Babi stayed by to be sure, should the matter escalate, that her beloved antique nick knacks wouldn't be destroyed.

Myrna had slipped into the small bedroom with Mihael and Karel.

Mihael dreaded it, but the inevitable came. She asked him to stand in front of her, and she hid his underwear away just before she would start. He bit his tongue so that he wouldn't yell out. No one should have to see it, he repeated in his head like a broken gramophone.

She reached gently, and he anticipated what would come. He struggled to keep himself from going rigid at her fingernails against every magnified surface. Closing his eyes, he let out the breath he'd been holding.

"Yes... What a good boy you are today. You have learned."

♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀♂

A sharp thump rolled throught the apartment, drawing Babi and Pappa away from their activities.

It came from the bedroom, and they opened the door slowly. Myrna was standing above Karel, who was on the floor, his face pressed against the carpet. Mihael was sitting against the wall beneath the open window, naked from the waist down; his flesh was patterned by irritated redness and fading bruises. His eyes were shocked, the even fresher stream of tears stalling in the silence. Karel wasn't moving.

Babi scooped him up and hurried him to the living room, Pappa started to argue with Myrna. When Danil joined it, the screeching echoed off the walls. Literally brother gainst brother.

It was a few minutes before Babi came to collect Mihael, who was too frightened to move. When he got up, the three adults turned and saw his nakedness, his injuries, and his struggling to keep from bawling. When the fight resumed, it was given fuel and burned hotter than before. Touching a man's children in his mother's house?

Myrna swore up and down that she didn't mean to hurt Karel. She had no opinion on Mihael. Danil blamed Mihael, saying he was being provocative and took his own pants off trying to get someone to touch him, without a word on Karel. Pappa, who never liked Myrna, blamed it all on her spitefulness for the family's money- what they had, anyway.

Mihael bathed in cold water (the hot was used up by his wasteful uncle) and dressed himself, locking himself in the bathroom until the fight cleared out of his bedroom. Every time something touched a bruise or a sore spot, he'd overreact and feel the achy hotness rising into his eyes. He didn't wanna cry, not for the third time today, he told himself. He wanted to be brave, to be tough, to be a man. A crumpled, stiff towel was his only solace in that bathroom. It smelled like dust and cleaning chemicals, and scratched his skin, but he held fast to it anyway. It was there. He didn't want anyone to see him with that, either, but badly wanted the security...

Babi stayed with Karel on the sofa all night to see if he would wake. He did once, groggily crying out for Mami. Babi had seen boys fall off horses onto rocks, they were the same way. Like the horsemen, Karel didn't see morning. The next day, Babi took him to the hospital to no avail, he wasn't even warm.