“Have you been getting carried away?”

Meyer’s voice, gentle, mild, and the rough packed earth scouring Peiper’s cheek. Meyer holds him against it, kneeling beside him. When he shifts his weight the crackle of his boots on the frozen ground reverberates against Peiper’s ear.

“I’ve only-”

He stops, scowling as his hair falls into his face. He tries to blow it away and Meyer helpfully assists, yanking him an inch off the floor by his roots.

“What about in here?” Meyer asks and rags his head from side to side as though he’ll shake Peiper’s thoughts out that way. “Isn’t it nice when they shiver and beg?”

“It’s disgusting.”

Meyer nods.

“I understand.” Pausing. “It’s no good you know.”

The water in the trough in front of them is thinly glassed with ice. Peiper sucks in a frantic breath as his head is slammed through its blistered surface  and held down, cold slicing like knives into his lungs. The fist in his hair pulls him free before shoving him immediately back under.

His knuckles scrap against the side of the trough, a distant hollow clamour. Expansive pain, like a flare glittering in his chest. Just as he’s starting to fear Meyer will drown him whether he means to or not, he’s tossed back onto the floor and slapped hard on the sternum, three times. Water sprays from his lungs in a bitter arc.

Puddles of water darken the earth around him. Meyer hauls him up to his knees, he sways a little. Meyer’s hard hand trails a line of tenderness across his cheek, draws back. Peiper doesn’t flinch. The creases on Meyer’s face when he smiles are well-worn and genuine. His eyes move over Peiper as if he’s studying a field map. Looking to see where he can inflict most damage.  

“Think of something nice,” Meyer says. “I know you can.”

He steps closer, tapping the holster of his gun. He smells like cordite and oil and a brute arousal that breaks through the antiseptic chill of the air like the steam of their breath. Peiper’s eyes are fixed on the pistol, the tap of Meyer’s finger. He thinks of blood on the barrel, not the messy blow back from a shot to the head but from hard steel flaying the back of a throat raw. He pictures himself with his finger on the trigger, someone else on their knees.

Meyer gives him a knowing look. “Going to share?”

Peiper tries to work his jaw free of the clench that’s come from the constant, crippling cold in the room. When Meyer touches him it isn’t to tip his head back or slide his palms into the hollows beneath his cheekbones. Instead, he puts a hand on Peiper’s left shoulder –  digging inquisitive fingers into the stressed tendon until Peiper’s forced to wince – and another on his left wrist and begins to apply torque.

“Tell me about the bad thoughts, Jochen,” Meyer says, peering into his face.

Reflexive tears make his vision swim. He feels a scream building that will stay in his skull long after his elbow has been forced from its socket, imagines Meyer prodding at his dislocated joint with all the callous curiosity of a child poking a stick at a dying animal.

Meyer lets go of his arm.

“Can’t have you coming to proper harm now, can we?” he says, jovial. Peiper, panting, barely registers the fractious rub of a thumb across his lower lip as Meyer continues. “I’ll just have to assume the worst.”