Chapter 20: A Reich Built for Three (and Addie is very angsty as always)

Adolf sighed, watching the little whisps of cigarette smoke travel from his trembling lips into the Berlin breeze. 5 days had passed since the meeting with Goebbels at the restaurant. The patio air was thick with the slightly cloying scent of the evening, as the night's moist embrace began to chase the still glowing sun across the sky. He gazed unflinchingly into the sun's gaze, this centre of blinding lightness that was supposedly sustaining all life on earth . He didn't believe that for a second though. Reality, it didn't turn to the whims of a passive star in the sky, but to the shocks and tremors contained within his own ravenous heart, pulsating sickly beneath his tightly fitted SS uniform. The world could be plunged into a fit of cold, clammy darkness, sapped of its colour, its oxygen, and yet he would persist. So long as the thought of Joseph Stalin remained, etched against his will into the contours of the totality of this thing we call life, Adolf Hitler had not choice but to persist.

Suddenly, voices materialised from the house, as the garden door clicked open behind him. Not wanting to talk to anyone (as nobody could understand his tortured and lonely soul), Adolf expertly leapt into a nearby flowerbush as Jürg and...was that Hermy-G's thin features??...emerged onto the patio. Adolf peered at them from behind the bush, curiosity most definitely aroused...

'You wanted to speak to me?' Jürg's auburn orbs peered apprehensively around his little garden, as if mapping out potential escape routes.

Hermann Göring looked hesitant almost...sheepish. The expression clashed oddly with his gaunt, grim demeanor, like a rat with chlamydia wearing bright, rainbow dungarees and a pair of light up trainers. 'Ja. Thanks for coming alone.'

'That's what you said in your note...'

There was a long pause. Göring carefully removed his jacket, fastening around it his waist, making it even more SNATCHED. 

'First of all,' he began, 'I wanted to thank you for letting us stay in your home.'

'Sure thing! ... And second of all?'

'Oh...I just wanted to say...I'm...I'm sorry for-'

Adolf shuffled forward slightly, wincing as thorns scratched across his dainty arms. Evidently, his measly Joseph-less existence wasn't torture enough for the cruel universe.

'Uhhhh...did you hear that?' asked Göring.

Hitler clamped a greasy palm over his lips.

Jürg squirmed excitedly. 'You hear it too? I'm telling you, this place is haunted by some very dramatic ghosts!'

'...What?'

'You have to believe it! They're OBSESSED with me, ja! Heinie-Pie thinks I'm making it up...' his voice trailed off at the mention of Himmler. He looked away, embarrassed. 

A mosquito buzzed angrily beside Adolf's ear. Just his luck... 

'Well, something's been haunting me,' said Göring at long last, 'and at this point I wish it was a ghost...'

Hitler watched them lock eyes, feeling slightly sickened. He suddenly wished there was someway he could slip away...

Jürg bit his lip. 'Would you like to talk about it?' 

'That's literally why I'm here.'

Another pause. And then...

'I just wanted to, I just needed to-,' Göring blurted out, each word a cascading domino, 'I have to- I-I...I wanted to apologise.'

Jürg opened his mouth to reply.

'NEIN!' he screeched, causing a startled Adolf to jump, 'Nein, I need you to listen. You have to know, please, someone has to know. Because I've always been like this, and I need someone to realise that I'm self-aware enough to admit it. Because that makes it better, right? And I can't...I can't have you blaming yourself for this. So I'm going to say it now, and then you never have to listen to a word I say every again, ok?

'Alright...'

Hermy-G closed his eyes before continuing, softly now. 'For as long as I can remember, my biggest fear has been love. Not love as in affection, emotion...any of that...but love as in this deep seated unconditional necessity, this...this outside thing that becomes so important to who you are that you're nothing without it. You get me, nein?'

That's why I've been keeping the people I care about at arms length. I'm so afraid of that base attachment developing into something so pivotal, something so ... out of control

And then, at the same time, I've found myself fearing that maybe love is something I can never give in the first place. That the route cause of my anxiety is some liminal awareness that I can never grow to be fully content with another human being. That if I ever truly got to the bottom of someone, anyone, I would lose whatever emotions I had, finding just emptiness. And so I-'

He was crying now, his screwed up face contorted in the darkness like a potato left in the sun. A twig snapped beneath Adolf's bare foot. There was no reaction from the patio as Göring continued into the night.

'As if I knew, deep down, that I could never have it, so I told myself I didn't want it. And then-,' he sighed, mopping his wettened eyelids, 'And then he finally got tired of my bullshit and left me. And I realised I was already in love with him. That I had been all along...'

Adolf suppressed a yawn, wanting nothing more than to lie down and pretend he was no longing breathing. Why couldn't the former chief of the Luftwaffe have an emotional and heartfelt moment with a pretty Swiss boy somewhere else? Literally anyway else??!!

'Can I speak now,' asked Jürg, softly yet firmly.

'Ja,' whispered Göring, 'thanks for hearing me out...'

'I'm always happen to listen,' Jürg smiled slightly vacantly, 'But, don't you feel like you owe me a proper apology?'

Göring stared, surprised. 'Y-yes. I'm sorry, Jürg. I gravely insulted you at dinner w-when I said you weren't a real German. I'm so, so sorry. The Swiss are true Aryans and to state otherwise was counterfactual and...so profoundly insulting...'

Jürg raised an eyebrow. 'Hermann, how can I forgive you for what you've done when you're so clearly running away from all the actual hurt you've caused. Are you going to take it back or not? You know what I'm talking about - you told me you HATED Swiss cheese!'

'What? I didn't even say that...'

'You very heavily implied it!'

Jürg glared, pretty eyes threatening to leak. 'Well, thanks for apologising, I suppose.'

He started towards the door... 

Adolf suppressed a sigh of relief, praying that this was the end. The soil was burrowing beneath his uniform, creeping inside his undergarments...

'Wait-' called Göring, 'Jürg, please...'

'What is it?'

'I really am sorry. I'll even try your cheese, please stay with me...' begged the sly-faced man.

'You're really sorry? ...'

'Go back inside. Go back inside. Go back inside...' muttered Adolf under his breath.

'DID YOU HEAR THAT?' demanded Göring.

'I told you about the ghosts, Hermann,' Jürg exclaimed as he hesitantly joined Hermy-G on the side of the patio once more, 'I think they're telling me to go inside...'

'That's uhhhh really odd...'

'Yeah,' Jürg let out a slight but genuine smile, 'Well, I'll have to stay here all night now. I hate following orders.'

Adolf cursed every single thing on this stupid earth. Except Joseph...

'Well, I can't relate to that,' said Göring, 'I can't complain if it means you'll stay though...'

'I thought you hated me,' whispered Jürg.

'I could never hate you, Jürg. I wanted to, believe me. I wanted to hate you so fucking badly for storming into our Führer's inner circle and changing everything! For making me reconsider all I took for granted. B-but you're too goddamn beautiful to hate...'

Jürg glanced towards the grass, unknowingly displaying his deep blush to Adolf as he concealed it from the man beside him. 

'I need you to know you're not going to hurt me like that again,' he whispered, 'I want to forgive you but I don't get over things easily.'

'Me neither,' said Göring, breathless, inching a little closer towards his ex boyfriend's new lover, 'But we're both here together, aren't we? Together...'

'I suppose, we are,' conceded Jürg, 'you know, you really have a way with words, Hermann...'

'You can call me Hermy-G, if you like...'

Jürg laughed softly. 'I might think of my own nickname for you?' he suggested.

'Go on then...'

They shared a slow, tentative smile.

'What do you reckon Heinrich would think if he saw us together like this?' whispered Jürg.

'I'm more interested to know what you're thinking of us being together, Jürg. You know, like this...'

Hitler groaned as he watched, almost paralyzed, as Göring leant ever so slowly forward. Eyes wide open, he panted slightly, pressing Jürg's lips open to explore the Swiss Canyon within. Several seconds passed. Jürg halfheartedly pulled away.

'We shouldn't-'

Göring seized the younger man's face between his hands, preventing him from turning away. Passion visibly possessed him, filling his cheeks with a vibrant yearning as he whispered:

'I want you, Jürg. And you want me. And I want my Himmler back and I know he still loves me. I just know it. So why can't we have what we all want? I don't understand...'

Adolf let out a small, strangled noise at the back of his throat. Both men turned.

'Ok, if you tell me that was a ghost, I'm turning you into one...'

'Maybe it was a fox!' exclaimed Jürg in excitement, 'OH MI GOTT! I used to go fox hunting with my family back in Switzerland...'

'What! That's barbaric!' gasped Göring.

'What? You guys had your war, or whatever it is Heinie-Pie talks about when I'm not listening, and so surely we get to-'

Adolf sneezed, noisily, saliva spraying the grass beside with three months worth of rain.

'Quiet!' hissed Göring, springing to his senses, 'They could be spies looking for mein Führer!'

'You mean Adolf? Why would spies be looking for-'

'I said quiet! There's no time to explain. I can't believe you're still so out of the loop. Grab a pitchfork or something! I'm going to investigate. We have to-'

Hitler tried to sink lower into the bush, yelping as another thorn penetrated his soft and squishy flesh. He held his breathe as Hermy-G approached.

'I don't have any pitchforks!' called Jürg from the patio. 'Would a menorah work?'

'I don't what that is but it had better be pointy! DON'T JUST STAND THERE, YOU USELESS FOX MURDERER! WE MUST ARM OURSELVES, VERDAMMT!'

'Hermann, don't speak to me like-'

One second, Hermy-G was hovering above the flower bush, putting on his most menacing expression; the next, a Führer-shaped package tumbled onto the grass with a loud thump.

'Oh...hey Hermy-G...How's it going? Uhhhh...Heil?'

'Uhhh Heil Hitler...' muttered Göring, instinctively, very confused. 'What are you-'

'Adolf!' gasped Jürg, sprinting onto the lawn, 'Oh mein Gott, it was you! What were you doing in the flower bush?'

Hitler grimaced. 'Well Jürg, that's a good question. Such a good question, in fact! To answer it...uhhhh...'

'What the Reich is going on!???' 

Da Real Heinrich-H was standing in the doorway, dressing gown blazing around his voluptuous body. 'I was asleep and heard voices-'

'Speaking of sleep,' exclaimed Hitler, 'Imma head out now, lads. Keep it groovy, ja-'

With that he turned, and hurried, panting, into Jürg's house, thundering up the stairs before any of them had the time to even comprehend his words.

...

Collapsing into bed, he sighed as the short-lived adrenaline of the evening war off. Underneath, his heart was still aching. It it was the same ache, every minute of every day, a constant clock ticking off the days and nights he was alone. Alone and desperate. The awkwardness of the last fast minutes was nothing compared to what Joseph had done to him. Joseph, commanding the USSR with one hand and ripping him to shreds with the other. A butcher of his own people, a butcher of his heart. He began to sob.

He thought back to that night, in which a poorly concealed tenderness had seemed to permeate Joseph's calculating eyes. That night they had ventured beneath the steel, beneath the salutes. The night he had come so close to venturing beneath that thick coat, to reveal the thicker...

But, alas, he had been deceived. He could see those handsome and brooding eyes now, taunting him, laughing in a strong, seductive accent: 'I've sent better men than you to Siberia...'

Try as he might, he couldn't shake the image of Stalin, fiery hot like a hammer and sickle shaped flame, pressing his masculine lips to the mouth of that nameless girl. The image was bound to him now. It would stay in the pits of his mind as long as he lived.

Suddenly, a noise perturbed his ever enduring heartbreak. A long series of noises...

Running to the window, Adolf peered into Jürg's garden. However, he instantaneously regretted his decision to investigate as the abomination below violated his deep brown orbs.

Heinrich Himmler reclined on a velvet chaise longue - where (and more pressingly WHY) did they even get that - one hand feeding grapes to Hermann Göring, who was glittering with Bavarian body oil like a roast duck. More pressingly, he was wearing nothing but a pair of knee hair socks that he'd got on his last trip to Japan (they were fully see-through by the way). Himmler's other hand was on his incredibly short, yet somehow very thick, erection, spraying a very mysterious stream of creaminess into Jürg Elias' plump mouth. Elias sat lounged between the two Nazis, coated in more liquid than the island of Kiribati and looking up at the window, at Hitler's petrified expression, and waving happily.