Archive of Our Own

It was as though that moment in No Man’s Land had broken a seal they’d kept on whatever was between them, because from then on, Gilbert chased him across the front. 

The Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele. Wherever the Canadians were fighting, Matthew found Gilbert waiting for him. They didn’t kiss again — no, there was no time for soft caresses and gentle words — but the fight itself became a sort of assurance between them. A reminder that the other was still there, that there was beauty in this hellscape. 

Of course, that didn’t mean that they stopped trying to kill each other — they were on opposite sides of a war, after all. But now it came with a quiet understanding that the other would be revived and waiting on the next battlefield. 

The last time Matthew had driven his bayonet into Gilbert’s shoulder, he was pretty sure he saw the hungry look in his crimson eyes darken before they rolled up in his head.

oO0Oo

Even after the end of the war, they don’t tell anyone about their relationship. Gilbert thinks Alfred might suspect, given how there’s a knowing look in the man’s eyes whenever they cross paths at Matthew’s house or world meetings. 

But he keeps his silence and their secrets. 

Still, Gilbert worries how their relationship must seem to the others. Gilbert’s so much older than him, has known Matthew since he was a boy. Even now, Matthew’s only nineteen, forever stuck in immortal youth, while Gilbert looks to be in his mid-twenties. Hell, he’s known the man’s fathers since they were children. That’s a whole new level of weird. 

He tells Matthew his worries one night a few years into the Roaring Twenties, when they’re both blissfully drunk on illegal alcohol and lie in bed, curled around each other. Gilbert is sure the taste of Matthew’s lips should be a sin worse than the bottle of moonshine on the bedside table.  

“I’m too old for you,” Gilbert says quietly and in the darkness, Matthew’s lips twitch in a smile. 

(Many years later, after the Iron Curtain has fallen and Gilbert holds Matthew in his arms without fear for the first time in decades, Matthew whispers, “I’m older, actually.”

Gilbert turns to look at him and Matthew continues, staring at the ceiling. “I’m nearly a thousand years old, Gil.” Then he tells him of his mother and Skandia, of centuries wandering the land with his brother before they were swept away by Europe and forced into their mold. 

And, well, it explains a few things. Gilbert relishes in how Matthew’s face turns beet red when he teasingly calls him a cradle robber.)

oO0Oo

Matthew storms the beach at Dieppe, bullets whizzing into the water around him and soldiers falling when they meet their marks, and tells himself he’s not looking for a man with eyes as red as the blood that soaks the sand.

The rata-tat-tat-tat of the machine guns echo from everywhere and he can no longer tell if it’s coming from his side or the enemy’s. Sand and dust and smoke billows thickly in the air, creating a dense fog that chokes the air from his lungs. He can’t see, is running blindly towards the seawall, but—

Something burns through his leg and he falls to the ground with a scream, clutching at the hot gush of blood that flows freely from the wound in his thigh. 

Someone grabs his arm and hauls him up. “Go go go!” The soldier yells, dragging him out of the sight line of a pillbox. 

They duck behind a small dune to catch their breath. Matthew groans and clutches at his leg, hissing out an order to the soldier through his pain. Hands fumble for the belt buckle and slide the leather from around his waist.

“Make a tourniquet,” Matthew gasps. He squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden wave of agony as the soldier wraps the belt around his leg and ties it off, hands slipping slightly from the slickness of the blood.

The flow has slowed, Matthew knows. He’ll need medical aid unless he wants to die and regenerate, but hopefully the tourniquet will stave off the necessity for a few hours. Nations heal faster than humans, so really he’s only in danger of losing the leg because he cut off circulation to the limb, but that’s an easy, albeit uncomfortable, fix. He’ll just reattach it and let the muscles and nerves regenerate it if necessary. It’s much better than a full regeneration. 

There’s no need to worry the soldier about that.

“Thanks,” Matthew grunts once he’s no longer in immediate danger of bleeding out. He props himself on his elbows to better see the man who’d saved him.

He recognizes the insignia of the Black Watch immediately, the other regiment storming Hitler’s Fortress Europe via the Blue Beach. Then he meets the terrified eyes of the soldier and immediately notices three things.

One, the soldier looks even younger than him, maybe only eighteen, and terribly inexperienced.

Two, his blue eyes are filled with terror and are distant with a thousand-yard stare.

Three, the face, despite being caked in wet sand, sweat, and Matthew’s blood, is one he has known for decades.

“Papa,” Antoine says, voice shaking. “What are we going to do?”

Matthew swallows heavily and closes his eyes for a heartbeat. He never wanted any of his children to have to see him like this, to see the monster he could become in the heat of battle. 

He opens his eyes, plans solidifying in his mind. “You’re going to run for the forest.” Antoine begins to protest but Matthew cuts him off quickly. “Listen. You might be able to hide there and get away from the bulk of the fighting. It won’t be safe, but you’ll be safer than you would be trapped on this beach.”

“I’m not going to leave you—”

“Antoine, please!” Matthew’s not proud of shouting but his leg is on fire and bullets are hitting the sand in bursts around them. Even crouched behind the dune, they’re too exposed. It’s only a matter of time before a sniper lands a lucky shot. “Get to the town, get somewhere defensible. They’ve already radioed for reinforcements and an extraction. You just have to survive until then.”

“But you—”

“I’m not burying another family member!” Matthew cries, the winces and clutches at his leg as the jostling sends pain licking up the limb and more blood to well from the tear in the fabric. Tears form in the corners of his eyes.

“You won’t have to bury me, papa,” Antoine promises, placing a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “I’m a Nation, remember?”

So was he.

Matthew swallows past the lump in his throat. “Please, Antoine. Just go. Please. Do it for me.”

Hurt and fury flickers in Antoine’s eyes for a heartbeat before it’s quickly hidden behind a steely mask. “Fine.”

Matthew closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Antoine leave him. Tears slip down his cheeks, cutting through the sweat and sand on his face. 

When he opens them again, Antoine is gone.

He fights his way out from where he’s trapped behind the dune, taking another bullet to the side and nearly being knocked off his feet by the explosion of a nearby shell. How he makes it back to the ships, he’s not entirely sure, but it’s only when he’s limping through bloody water, past pieces of flesh that had once been men, that he realizes he sent Antoine away from their only point of escape.

(He doesn’t realize he won’t see Antoine again for nearly four years.)

He’s hauled up onto a small craft and lies there, soaked and gasping, as someone tends to the wound on his leg and another to his side. 

From this position, he can see the looming white cliffs high above and the battlements positioned at the top.

Though it’s much too far, even with his Nation-enhanced senses, he swears he sees one of the men on the ramparts still. A man with white hair and blood red eyes.

Matthew turns away from Gilbert and lets oblivion claim him.

oO0Oo

A soft knock at his door rouses Gilbert from the light sleep he’d fallen into. He always seemed to sleep lightly these days.

He padded over to the door and opened it, half expecting to see one of the other Soviet-annexed territories looking for comfort, but it’s not Elizabeta or Katyusha or Raivis. It’s not even Natalia, come to scream at him for whatever perceived offense he’d committed against her brother this time.

Matthew stares back at him with an expression of longing and nervousness on his face. 

“Hey, Gil,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I’m in town for a while — you heard about the hockey games, right? — and anyways, I thought you might maybe want to, um—“

His sentence hangs half-finished in the air as Gilbert grabs his collar and yanks him inside his room, kicking the door shut behind him, hardly caring who hears. Fuck Ivan, fuck the Soviets, fuck everything that’s kept them apart until now. It’s been too damn long, too many damn years with Matthew’s lips haunting his memories.

He presses Matthew against the hard oak of the door and kisses him senseless. 

oO0Oo

After they’ve satiated themselves, their lips so swollen and bruised Gilbert wonders if they’ll even be able to speak tomorrow, he releases his grip on Matthew’s sweater and leans back, breathing heavily.

“I missed you,” he says, and the whisper is a confession he never dared voice until now. 

Matthew stares back at him, hair mussed and pupils blow wide, lips and cheeks flushed a delicate shade of pink. “I can’t stay,” he says, and it’s full of regret, words sorrowful and bitter, because isn’t that the constant in their story? 

Always on opposite sides of a war, stealing kisses at gunpoint, forever slipping away before dawn breaks. Some people were made for beautiful, soft endings, but not them. 

“Stay,” Gilbert pleads. “Just for a little while.”

“I have to get up early,” Matthew protests even as his shoulders slump in silent defeat and he lets Gilbert strip him of his clothes and manhandle him into a spare pair of sleep pants. It gives him no small amount of satisfaction to see Matthew in his clothes, even if the ankles were several inches too short and the fabric gloriously tight around his thighs and hips.

Seeing Matthew in tight pants is a bonus, Gilbert decides. He’ll definitely have to figure out how to sneakily update Matthew’s wardrobe.

“I have to be at the rink for practice,” Matthew continues. “I can’t let Ivan know I was here. I won’t give him that sort of leverage over either of us.”

Gilbert’s bed is a rickety old thing, made of creaking metal and threadbare blankets, but the mattress is firm enough and he has a pillow, which is more than he can say for most people.

Besides, it’s big enough for the two of them and that’s all that mattered.

“I’ll deal with Ivan if it comes to that,” he promises, sitting down and gesturing for Matthew to follow. “He mostly ignores us, though. If we don’t do anything actively rebellious or try to, you know, leave, he lets us do our own thing.”

“What about his government?” Matthew asks, hovering just out of reach. “They certainly wouldn’t be happy if they heard about this.” He gestures between the two of them, like it was something that could be named.

Gilbert’s silence is answer enough. Ivan might be content with letting them, as individuals, exercise a certain amount of autonomy within his household, but whatever is going on between him and Matthew has ramifications greater than just themselves. If they were to get caught…

He can’t think like that.

“A few of the others are planning on going to the game tomorrow,” he says instead. “We could say we caught a cab together or something.”

Matthew’s frown deepens even as he slides into bed beside Gilbert. “I don’t know…”

“C’mon birdie,” Gilbert adjusts their positions so he’s curled around Matthew’s back, face tucked into the warm tan skin between his shoulder blades. “Let’s not talk about this right now. Just… just let me hold you, m’kay?”

There’s no further protest from Matthew’s side of the bed. Slowly his breaths even out, soft snores disturbing the cold air of Gilbert’s tiny room.

He smiles and presses a feather-light kiss to the nape of Matthew’s neck. 

As he drifts off, Gilbert allows himself, if only for that night, to dream of better times. 

oO0Oo

Matthew adjusted his tie in the mirror above the bookshelf and nervously brushed some lint from his shirt. 

“Dad, it’ll be fine.” Seated nearby with his Walkman blaring the Tragically Hip through his headphones, Jack looked up from the folder he was flipping through. “It’s just a formality, right? You’ve already given it to him anyway, you’re just letting him know now.”

Matthew made a noncommittal noise, fiddling with his tie clip again. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jack grumbled, slipping from his seat. He smacked Matthew’s hands away and quickly undid the knot of the tie, sliding it out from around his neck and tossing it somewhere in the corner of the office. He unbuttoned the collar of Matthew’s dress shirt, then stepped back to study his work. “There, that’s better. Less stuffy. Dad, just chill out — he’s your boyfriend, not some super important ambassador.” 

Matthew wanted to protest that a) Gilbert was very important to him, and b) they weren’t boyfriends. They hadn’t really settled on a title — not boyfriends, not significant others, not even partners — because none of those fully encapsulated their relationship. 

They were simply Matthew and Gilbert, and that’s all they needed to be. 

He stayed quiet, though. In the silence that had fallen between them, he could hear the music playing from the headphones draped around Jack’s neck. The mournful strumming of a guitar and the low crooning of Gord Downie’s voice filled the room. 

“You can't be fond of living in the past

'Cause if you are, then there's no way that you're gonna last

Wheat kings and pretty things

Wait and see what tomorrow brings”

He swallowed down his nerves. “Yeah, you’re right…” He cocked his head to the side, listening to the otherworldly sense that told him of Gilbert’s arrival. “Can you go wait in the antechamber? I’ll let you know when it’s alright for you to come in.”

“Whatever,” Jack said, putting his headphones on and giving the folder one last tap as he strode out of the room, closing the door behind him with a deafeningly silent click. 

Matthew took a deep breath and strode over to the table. He stared at the documents all assembled in a neat cream-coloured folder, and gathered his courage. 

He couldn’t delay any longer. Nerves twisted his stomach as he pressed the call button on his phone for his secretary.

“Send Mr. Beilschmidt to my office, please,” he said into the speaker, and went to open the door for his lover.