October 29 he spent the “saddest birthday of my life.” Not only did Magda give him a “very frosty” birthday greeting that morning; Hitler was also very cool, sending him just a “short, frosty telegram.” He did, however, derive some comfort from Göring’s “extraordinarily kind and comradely telegram.” – Goebbels: A Biography by Peter Longerich

–

There was nothing particularly subtle about the invitation he’d left written between the lines of the telegram. Though in fact Goebbels might have felt fondly towards something more cryptic, a little puzzle for his keen wit, Göring lacked the patience to pen it. More importantly, he suspected Goebbels was just as likely to talk himself into believing there was nothing there at all as he was to ferret out a well hidden signal given the mood he’d been in lately. So Göring chooses words they will both understand.  

Even so, Goebbels arrives so late that Göring had been starting to wonder if he hadn’t made himself clear. Another time he would have dealt him a hard look and sent him trotting straight back through the door, but it is his birthday after all. It’s the end of the day and the light lies like a yellow thread on the floor – Goebbels’ coat is a sort of washed out yellow too, like the cheap smock of an overseer at a factory. No doubt Goebbels would have some barbed reply to such an observation, though perhaps not today. Göring would have said there wasn’t a more wan colour than the colour of that coat but looking at Goebbels’ skin right now that would be a lie.

He takes Goebbels outstretched hand and pats him on the shoulder.

“Happy Birthday,” he says.

Goebbels is attempting to smile politely. It’s a bad effort. The last time they were together he had been coaching Goebbels through a tortured dialogue with his Czech actress. He’d almost broken the cord off the receiver, striding back and forth and flapping his arms as he spoke. The civil distance Goebbels is trying to maintain now is already badly fractured. All it takes is for Göring to slide his fingers upward and touch his fingers to the bare skin of Goebbels’ neck and his throat is bobbing in a swallowed sob.

“It’s a fine joke to call it happy,” he chokes out, baleful, sleep starved eyes staring up at Göring.

An hour later and with a few glasses of brandy for good measure, Goebbels has allowed his tie to be slipped off and the collar of his stiff, starched shirt loosened a button or two. Up close Göring can see the fading blotches of eczema that spring up ‘like a rose garden’ when stress is bearing down on his little doctor.

“I have something for you,” he says.

He hands Goebbels the book all wrapped up in green tissue paper. Goebbels face screws down into suspicious uncertainty as he weighs the parcel in his hand.

“What is it?”

“You could open it and find out.”

Goebbels tears the tissue paper right down the middle and pulls it away in strips from the centre. Once he has it unwrapped he holds it up in front of him, his eyebrows tightening into a deeper frown before suddenly swooping up in disbelief.

“Is this…”

Goebbels flips the book open and reads his own name printed there, shakes his head and then closes the cover and stares.

“How did you do this?”

Göring simply smiles as Goebbels traces the thick embossed leather of the book; the golden script that spells out Michael, the jewels adorning the spine, the gilded edges of the pages. Göring had it made to something like the specifications of a medieval bible, though in his opinion the final effect of the book in Goebbels’ hands is  far finer than anything in his collection since naturally it had benefited from the keen input of his eye.

“I don’t understand,” Goebbels says, weakly, resting the heavy tome in his lap.

“Joseph!” Göring exclaims. “It’s an heirloom!”

“But-”

“Ah, don’t you see? Your words are going to be an important legacy to the world. You will never be forgotten for the vital part you played in the making of our triumphant future. In the future scholars will want to pour over all of your writings. It’s fitting they’re displayed properly.”

Goebbels is eyeing him as though he’s not sure if he’s joking or not.

“Have you read it?”

“I thought you might read it to me,” Göring replies.

“Hermann-”

“Like you read to me when I was…ill.”

Goebbels gaze fixes down hard at that book. His mouth draw tight in the most expressive of ways. Göring thinks it’s almost fantastical that Goebbels manages to lie as well as he does, when each little twitch of his jaw seems to give everything away in moments like these. He can’t hide behind a dull, vacuous mask of stupidity like some, when he is dissembling it must be so much more of an effort.  

“You can’t remember that,” Goebbels says. “I don’t think you even knew what year it was.”

“I thought I had been hallucinating, but Carin told me you’d been there at my bedside.”

There’s that twitch again. One could almost hear the clench of Goebbels’ teeth. Bringing it up has broken an unspoken rule between them but Goebbels has been breaking so many rules himself lately in his desperation over this Baarová crisis – in the way he has been sweating, frightened, feverish, grasping for comfort from him late into the night.

There’s sweat on his brow now. Göring swipes his thumb over it.

“Well, we needed you,” Goebbels says, holding himself so unnaturally statue-still it makes his effort to ignore the touch feel like a bad play. “The movement. I was merely keeping an eye on the situation.”

“Naturally.”

They sit in silence for a while. Goebbels’ is almost white knuckling the book by the time he speaks again, his mouth twisting like he’s chewing on it from the inside.

“I should be leaving,” he says.

If it wasn’t his birthday then perhaps Göring would let him.

“No,” he says.

Goebbels stares at him and his chest swells up with breath. It’s plain to see, skinny as he is. Göring has heard him complain enough, over and over, but now he truly does wonder – how does Magda, how do any of those girls look at him, to make that gaze so ravenous?  

Goebbels is a brittle pole of nerves, inviting as a jar full of hornets right up until the moment he presses their mouths together and then all at once he goes limp beneath the kiss, as if every defence he has has been overwhelmed. He moans in a low vibrato when their tongues touch.

Göring waxes and wanes between kissing Goebbels as hard as he likes and breaking that seal to smile against his mouth at the way Goebbels’ fingers twist into the fabric of his shirt, one hand clutching at his collar with the tenacity of a climber ascending the sheer face of a cliff. The more aggressively he drives his tongue into Goebbels’ mouth the more desperately Goebbels clings to him and squirms in his seat, every movement a display of his eagerness to burrow in close.

As soon as he stops, Goebbels’ head turns away fast to one side, hiding against his chest. Göring imagines he can feel the anxious throb of his temple resting there.

“You’re unbearable,” Goebbels mutters, after a moment.

Göring allows his fingers to drift, tickling over the short hairs at the back of Goebbels’ neck, prompting a tight shiver from the little body leaning into him.

“I suppose I won’t be missed at home,” Goebbels says, then snorts. “Well. Magda might want me there so I can witness how thoroughly I’m-”

Göring shushes him and pinches gently at the nape of his neck but Goebbels has cut himself off anyway, one hand cradling his book close and the other groping blindly toward the table for his glass. Göring snaps up his wrist before he can get to it and places it onto his knee without an inch of resistance. He picks up Goebbels’ glass himself and holds it up, there’s a slight smear of brandy resting in the bottom.

If he allows his little doctor to drink much more there’s a better than decent chance it will set him off to ranting about something tiresome enough to wear down Göring’s good nature even if it is his birthday. But Goebbels, like any exotic pet, responds well to certain sorts of handling, certain sorts of physical touch easily undo him completely. He wets two fingers in the brandy and pushes them into Goebbels’ mouth, rubs them over his tongue and his gums, like you would soothe a teething child.

Goebbels’ breath rushes over him, a little panting exhalation. His teeth graze the pads of his fingers but he doesn’t nip and when he pulls his fingers out Goebbels stays staring up at him, mouth parted and lips moist, only the furrow in his brow lending him a faint air of reproach.

It all seems so natural, although it has been a good while since they’ve been alone like this. But why is that? Goebbels’ fault of course, his stubborn refusal to ask for what he needs, his bristling indignant attitude, the trouble he insists on causing for Göring. If only he would behave and understand his place.

He does enjoy the feeling of Goebbels’ pulse jumping when he pulls him close, palm pressed to palm; that drowning way he tries to maintain his indifference while Göring can read every letter of the strain it puts on him.

Goebbels is still looking up at him, his eyes like pitch and senselessly intense. Göring dips his chin and kisses him again, slow and thorough. Goebbels sighs into the meeting of their mouths. His fingers twitch against the buttons of Göring’s shirt and Göring keeps kissing him until his breath has deserted him and he moans again and begins to try and clamber into his lap. Goebbels has always been so greedy for kisses but also so impatient for more, that he can’t ever wait to get his fill of them either. When Göring cups his hand against his groin he’s not surprised to find him hard as a youth, cock straining against his trousers.

They stumble their way into the bedroom, Göring leading, their chests pressed together and Goebbels’ hands threading urgently through Göring’s hair. He strips Goebbels’ down with the same efficiency he’d have field dressed a deer and then pushes him onto the bed where he lies still, all hard angles – bones jutting and the garish spike of his erection, yet soft and passive too, wrists laying on the pillow beside his head, his knees akimbo.

“Oh, oh,” moans Goebbels.

And bites his lip as Göring kneels between his legs and pours the oil generously, half onto his own fingers and half down below Goebbels’ balls and all of it dripping down to stain the sheets between them. Göring presses just one finger inside him and the way it makes Goebbels arch off the mattress is a beautiful thing. He slides that finger in and out, just one, savouring the hot, tight clench of Goebbels’ body and the way it makes Goebbels rock his hips and clutch at the sheets.

He pushes Goebbels’ knees further apart so he can watch as he adds a second finger and forces them apart. Inside, Goebbels is so pink and silken, Göring pours more oil down over his hand and into the little gape he’s made and it shines back at him, begging to be fucked. Goebbels’ body pleading the way he won’t force Goebbels’ mouth to as he lies there, worrying his lower lip, his rib cage flexing so violently he looks as though he’s on the verge of hyperventilating.

Three fingers now and he holds his fingers there, spreading and then contracting, enjoying the way Goebbels’ body fights and then slowly slackens around him and how the fight diminishes and diminishes until his hole is loose around him and Goebbels looks half drunk on it, squirming back against him, lost in his own pleasure.

The room seems to echo with the sound of their own humid breath. Göring has four fingers buried in Goebbels as he strokes the scalding bar of his erection but Goebbels is fidgeting his hips, still begging.

Do you want my cock? Göring thinks, with a smile, but it would an unkindness to ask so he simply pushes the fat head of his erection up against Goebbels’ hole and watches the way Goebbels takes one gasping breath of air and then lies still, lax and making an utter accommodation of his body while trying to bury his face into the pillows.

He pushes gradually inside to the sound of Goebbels’ broken gasps. Goebbels wraps his legs around him as best he can, clutches at him, tosses his head back and makes the sort of guttural, animal sounds that can only mean more and harder and faster and, seeing as it’s his birthday, Göring does his best to oblige.