Title: The Five Times That Ernst Died
Author: fai_believes
Pairing: Ernst/Hanschen
Rating: PG-13ish
Word Count: 1,137
Warning: Unbeta'd
He is nine and the dog he’s found and taken in for about all of week, has run away. His parents tell him the dog must have found its way home. And his brothers tell him the dog couldn’t get away from him fast enough. He believes them of course. Ernst later discovers that his mother had gotten his father to get rid of the dog. But the damage is already done. He feels the sting of rejection from something he thought would love him unconditionally if he just fed him and let him sleep in his bed. But if the dog didn’t want to be around him, then who would? That must be why he always hung around the edges, fitting in just enough to fill the space. He believes he has already begun to die from loneliness.
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He is thirteen and the boys are at the lake. It is so very hot out; they all race towards the water, shedding their clothes as they go. Everyone except Ernst. He isn’t a very strong swimmer and he doesn’t like it when the other boys sneak up behind him and push him under the water. So he just watches even though it really is very hot out. The other boys are having so much fun that they don’t pay him any attention or try to cajole him into getting in the water. He prefers to watch and it doesn’t occur to him how strange that might be. Melchior is the first one out of the water and Ernst doesn’t realize how he is staring at the way the water drips down Melchior’s body until Georg laughs and points at him, accusing him of having, er…inappropriate thoughts about Melchior. He blushes brighter than the any of the sunburns that later show up on the boys and dies of embarrassment when he realizes it’s true.
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He is fifteen when he must say good bye to a friend for the first time. Until Moritz’s death, he never realizes that anyone else might feel the way he does-lost, misunderstood, and even alone sometimes. But now he knows they are all just moments away from falling, maybe even as hard as Moritz fell. Moritz, whose fears and worries have always been so close to the surface, who couldn’t hide himself as well as the others. Even Ernst. He wonders just how far apart from everyone else Moritz must have felt to successfully attempt such a thing. Did Melchior-the person Moritz had always been closest to-know what he was capable of. Maybe none of them really know each other at all, despite sharing years. He wonders if Hanschen, who puts on the best face of them all, ever feels that way. He seems so together so perhaps not, but then maybe he just works the hardest at trying to keep from falling. When Moritz dies, Ernst feels his youth and all its illusions die with him.
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He is in love and therefore, by definition, foolish. He lives for the quiet moments when he and Hanschen cast their schoolbooks and jackets aside and lie back in the grass. It is then he doesn’t have to pretend he is normal or hide his true feelings. The irony that he could be his true self with Hanschen, the one who’s always been best at putting on airs, doesn’t escape him. And being so in love, he is inclined to do things against his better judgment. Like letting Hanschen brush his thumb over Ernst’s lips and then follow with his own lips, or letting Hanschen’s hands wander down his body, unbuttoning his shirt as they go. He ignores Ernst’s protests, which Ernst is secretly glad for. He squirms a bit under Hanschen’s mouth and hands, uncomfortable with his own desire. Hanschen seems to take joy in teasing him, dragging out his pleasure until it overwhelms any other feeling, like that nagging shame. Something that felt this good, this right, it couldn’t be wrong, could it? He teases him-his mouth so warm and perfect-until Ernst begs him for some something intangible that he can’t even put a name to yet. And then it falls on him, the purest of pleasure, and everything else just disappears. It draws the breath from his body, and he feels himself drifting, blissfully, away from this cold life. Hanschen seems content to let him drift along, reveling in that aching pleasure, his mouth still so attentive to Ernst until he becomes aware of his fingers woven through Hanschen’s hair and the grass prickling his skin. He dies a little death that day with Hanschen.
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He is old enough to know better, to know enough of how the world works, and yet it doesn’t stop the pain from coming. From coming in devastating waves that stop his breath short and make his heart clench up as if Hanschen is gripping it in his hand, which in a way, he is. He wants to hate Hanschen for making him feel this way. For making him feel. But he can’t hate him; he could hate the world they live in, but mostly he just hates himself for believing that someone like Hanschen could ever love someone like him. Hanschen, who is so good at fooling others including himself, who made him believe it was okay if you loved someone. And the guilt, the shame-was for those who were actually guilty of something. But he knows now that those feelings are a warning of pain to come, and oh why hadn’t he paid more attention to them. It isn’t fair that Hanschen should string him along, making Ernst count down the minutes until they are together and then quite abruptly, pull away. And it isn’t fair that Hanschen should move on, rather intact, as if their time together hadn’t been more than an amusing way to pass the time, while Ernst has to try and gather up what is left of himself, realizing he has nothing to move on to. Everyone expects him to marry a nice girl like Anna after he finishes school and have a pleasant family of his own. But that world, the smiling wife and their happy children and the church, no longer exist for him if it ever really had. And to see Hanschen, who’d taken that life away, every day in school, at church, go on to live a normal life and be infinitely better at it than Ernst could ever hope to be, cuts away at him a little more each day. He has never been very good at hiding. Ernst is still young and in love but wise enough to know now that it has no real power. He dies from pretending, from having to pretend his whole life.