“Get on the floor, next to the bed, on your knees,” Göring instructs Goebbels, and he quickly scrambles down to the cold, hard wood.

(Once, as they sat side by side, Göring’s slow regard of him slanting more predatory by degrees, he had asked, do you miss Confession, Goebbels? Turning his rings on his fat fingers. You must, I’ve heard that sort of…upbringing is impossible to completely scrub out.)

“Lower,” Göring says, maintaining an aura of the beneficent and, a queasy yet unavoidable lurch in Goebbels’ stomach, the paternal even while he grips the back of his head and pushes him lower beneath him, trapping him against the bed, smiling at the tremble in Goebbels’ shoulders

(Your lot must have some more grandiose term for it though? The amusement in Göring’s voice had Goebbels turn his scowl toward the window, wanting to deny him the satisfaction, wanting to bite back at the implication of ‘your lot’, to tear apart the utter audacity of Hermann Göring of all people to scoff at grandiosity. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, quietly, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.)

This isn’t a ritual or an unburdening of sins. Those aren’t the things he misses. He looks up at Göring’s cock, the bed frame is a dull ache at the back of his skull. Göring smears his erection around his cheeks, lips, forehead, and back again and again. The hot, wet tip of his prick slides against the side of his nose and presses against his eyelid, leaving a sticky stripe of precome in its wake. The oily salt-tang of it fills his nostrils. A tiny retch hiccups at the back of his throat.  

“I am going to fuck that pretty little face,” Göring says, then pulls Goebbels’ head back, so he can look up into his eyes as he positions his cock in front of his mouth.

(All the words spilled out of him in the end, escaped while he wasn’t watching. Göring pressed a thumb against his mouth to stop him but he continued until the outpouring became a trickle, stuttered in-between desperate flicks of his tongue and the suckling of his lips around Göring’s fingers until finally there were only two words left.)

“Yes, please,” he says in a soft little tone, widens his mouth and sticks out his tongue.  

It’s not often they have a night alone together. At times they can carve moments out – on Hermann’s train where the door can be locked and stiff and diligent men steadfastly ignore any noises that come from the compartment they’re guarding. 

But when they do, Göring likes to sleep with his arms around Goebbels, his forearm resting against his throat. A claustrophobic feeling – that huge body warm against his back, one arm wrapped around his waist and the other pressing against his windpipe just enough that he feels controlled, knowing that he couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

When he wakes early, in the grey before dawn, still half caught in a dream of typewriters, he feels Hermann’s arm tightening around his throat. Another hand starts making slow, soft circles on his belly, growing wider and wider and edging closer to the throbbing urgency between his legs.

He bucks his hips but the forearm against his throat tightens until it’s hard to breathe. He doesn’t care about the lack of oxygen, it would be better to choke himself to death if he could rut against the hand pressed between his thighs. His balls are drawn up close to his body, he’s dripping from the head of his cock.

He leans back and tries to turn his head to kiss Göring but Hermann tightens the grip on his throat again and slaps his cock.

“Stay. Still.”

No gentleness in his voice at all, but the fingers gliding over the wetness leaking from his prick are feather-light. Goebbels whimpers with every breath, and every breath is a struggled gasp as Hermann chokes him.

“Please,” he manages to force out.

“Shut up,” Hermann says.

And pushes all the way inside him without hesitating and despite how those fingers have stretched and felt their way inside him it’s still almost too much.

There is no better feeling than the pain of Hermann’s cock driving into him and the pressure of his grip around his throat and the sense of possession, of being his.

Hermann thrusts into him deep and hard. Now he’s melting and moaning and bucking against him, pushing back on the cock that’s fucking him so beautifully.  The moan that comes from him is a despairing plea.

“Shhhh. Good boy,” Hermann says. “Go back to sleep.”

His forearm tightens just slightly against Goebbels’ throat. Göring’s fingers slide into his foreskin and his knee pushes between his legs, holding him open. There is no part of his body he has control over.

“I know what you want,” Göring murmurs the words in a low somnambulant purr that drifts up from the wide chest where Goebbels’ ear is resting and out through his mouth, barely audible.

Goebbels isn’t sure Hermann’s not sleep-talking, honestly, despite the fact that every so often one eye will crack open a touch and consider Goebbels inscrutably for however long it takes for him to reach a satisfactory judgement of what he beholds. Perhaps it’s merely, as Göring had snapped earlier, to check that Goebbels is still tucked next to him on the bed and not off tossing all of Emmy’s good glassware from the windows.

“What do I want?” Goebbels asks, playing with the ridiculous lace adorning the front of Hermann’s nightshirt idly. The jagged edge of a nail he does not remember biting to such a sorry state catches and he pulls it free with a grimace. Hermann pays no attention to either the question or the grumbling little flurry of movement.  

Of course it’s the drugs that have sent Göring off to the land of Lotus-eaters and Goebbels would have his objections at any other moment but he will admit, for now (no warranty for even so much as an hour younger than the present) and only silently to himself (an unscrupulous biographer he trusts on necessary sufferance  and since he is a prophet and not the one to employ prophets) that after the entire lousy uproar of the week. It’s nice.

It’s the first time since the unpleasant business at the air ministry (where naturally Hermann had to throw his weight around and bellow and stab his finger into his palm and all about the economic question for pity’s sake) that each spare space in any room between them  hasn’t felt as though it were packed with thorns.

Goebbels is more careful with the lace this time as he passes his hand across the broad, solid expanse of Hermann’s belly. He does it again and is startled by the sound of his own sigh. Like an out of body experience to witness his own hunger. The weight of Hermann’s body draws him, settles the pricking knowledge of so many whisper cloaked daggers behind his back –   the sheer, unabashed presence of so much Hermann Göring: a bulwark to all of it. He stretches his greedy fingers over the country of Hermann’s body and then brings them back to himself.

(His own whispers asserting even now as he rubs Hermann’s stomach in relief and adoration that of course it had been him, Goebbels, who had been the more gracious in admitting perhaps there had been some calculations that had not occurred to him. Or a complete lack of calculation at all as Hermann may have, possibly, most emphatically, put it.)

“You don’t understand what I want,” Goebbels whispers. Partly to Göring.

He can feel the smile in Göring’s fingertips when a heavy hand finally works it’s way into his hair and takes hold.

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.

Göring gives Goebbels a little something to relax him but misjudges the appropriate dose (sort of a sequel to this but it’s not very important)

Göring places the palm of his hand on top of Goebbels’ chest. His little doctor, his little sparrow. Always he can’t help clucking the diminutive with affection when it’s prefaced with a note of ownership; sometimes so saccharine that Goebbels will squint at him in terse suspicion and Göring will merely smile, more-so when they both know it can’t have been a week (a day!) since Göring was grumbling ’that little viper’ about him to others behind closed doors over some disagreement or another. Right now his little viper is sleeping like the dead, the rise and fall of his chest barely perceivable. Like a maiden from a fable, Göring thinks wryly and leans down close enough to give him a waking kiss, double checking that he can feel the subtle exhalation of his breath.

Next time he wants to relax the little doctor he shall have to be more mindful of the dose, creating a Sleeping Beauty was certainly not his intention and who can say how close they’d flown to real danger. The notion of some ‘what if’ can’t disturb the pacific calm he feels though, his own handful of pills doing their job and wonderfully numbing his (vestigial at the best of times) capacity for such concerns. Besides, he thinks looking at Goebbels, perhaps this isn’t such an unfortunate accident.

Satisfied he is breathing, now Göring does kiss him. The small body beneath him doesn’t stir at the touch, not even when Göring pries his jaw open none too gently and laps inside it, sloppy and self indulgent. The soft, wet, utter passivity of Goebbels’ mouth banks the formless thrum of arousal these opiates sometimes bring on in him – he feels it in the near numbness of his fingers pressed into Goebbels’ cheek, a buzzing under his skin, the pleasant, lazy swelling between his legs.

He opens up the buttons of Goebbels’ white shirt and works his skinny arms out of the sleeves, they lay like abstract wings on the bedspread under the   naked curl of his arms, wrists falling a little to one side from where Göring places them on the pillow beside his head. Bare chested it’s easier to see the languorous tempo of his lungs, impressive bellows for such a slim cage, or that is how Göring imagines them as he  covers the span of Goebbels’ ribs with both hands, thumbs resting on his sternum. He adds pressure, feels the bones flex under his weight. For a moment he feels like he is peering through a keyhole, to some glimpsed shape of the truth of whatever this improbable thing is that lies between them.  

There’s a little more difficulty in unwrapping Goebbels from his trousers, but more pleasure too. Göring patiently tugs the dead-weight of his unusual doll one way and then the other, shucking him nearly naked. The skin from his belly to his ankles is pale. The cut of Goebbels’ clothes are trim enough but still hide something of the delicate nature of his frame and this – Göring strokes the brace buckled tight around Goebbels’ leg and then unfastens it.  He holds the heel of Goebbels’ crippled foot in his hand and turns it slowly back and forth, his eyes travelling up the unfortunate limb to Goebbels’ peaceful features. Any other time and Goebbels would be as tense as a bowstring, regarding him like a cornered terrier, frightened and as likely to bite as not.

He picks the brace back up and, smiling to himself, casts his eye around the room until he alights upon a set of folded blankets. Clambering off the bed and over to the pile with a certain ungainly sloth to his steps, he tucks the brace underneath the blankets. He pats the topmost blanket free of creases (and for their dutiful service) and slips his robe off from his shoulders, stepping out of the puddle of silk toward the foot of the bed. Standing there, he reaches down to grasp his prick and stroke himself over the sight of Goebbels slumbering sweetly oblivious to it all. The pulse of blood into his cock is hot and sluggish, he’s still barely hard but there’s a luxury to the slow squeeze of his fist, pride in appreciating the gradual, magnificent rise of his erection.

He drapes himself over Goebbels to slide his thickening cock against the soft, shy thing between Goebbels’ own legs. He realizes he could leave some dark, sucking bruise at Goebbels’ neck without the strident, piping sound of protestations in his ear for once and so that’s exactly what he does; even knowing the tearful spells and icy silences with Magda have been in full storm season lately and one more indiscretion to hide is the last thing poor Joseph needs. There it is though, Göring admires the maroon bloom while he ruffles his fingers purposefully through Goebbels’ hair to leave it sticking out in gamin, askew tufts.

Still not so much as a sigh or twitch of a finger as he turns Goebbels over onto his stomach, turning his cheek to the pillow so he isn’t smothered and stuffing a second pillow under his hips to raise them. Göring spreads apart his thighs and there’s the dusky pink knot of Goebbels’ hole. How mortified Goebbels had been the first time he told him how pretty it was, speechless with embarrassment. Göring rubs his thumb against it and groans in pleasure at the promise of the heat that lies beyond.  

He slicks up with a little spit and nudges his cock head at Goebbels’ entrance, the knowledge of what he is about to do (pierce his little sparrow to the hilt in one savage thrust) drops like a plumb bob from some bestial part of his brain straight down to his groin. Goebbels’ eyelashes lie still on his cheek, his body defenceless against any of it and Göring drops his head to kiss him on the arch of his cheekbone before his right hand flexes on Goebbels’ hip and he drives into him, deep and hard.

Oh. Every inch of him throbs with pleasure, the exquisite pressure of it is perfect, even the friction from taking him nearly dry. Tight enough to work its way past the slight haze of the opiates and even so he knows he can fuck for hours before the final edge is toppled past on these pills. Goebbels’ hole will be even prettier then won’t it, ruined and aching and owned. Göring pulls Goebbels’ body back against him as he starts to fuck him like a rag-doll.

A slow, warm night in Paris with Göring and Goebbels

Half-past ten in Paris, still warm on this cloudless night with the moon hanging high and luminous above the balcony; Goebbels sits outside and smokes and the breeze is enough to lift strands of his hair, unstuck with the muggy heat of the day.

He still feels a little sun-struck from strolling with Göring down the boulevards, from the reflected spectacle of their presence and Hermann himself, his periwinkle bulk awash with medals that flashed like spots of light upon the sea.

And down one narrow alley, shaded by tall brick buildings rising up on either side, he’d seen a man pushing a girl against a wall, his hand covering her mouth, her skirts up around her waist. Now he remembers it as if she had been smiling and touches his own neck, a brush of knuckles like a breath.

He stubs out his cigarette upon the railing. Inside, Göring is reclining comfortably on the bed, his silk robe half open to the waist.

“Ah, Joseph,” he says, smoothing down the sheets beside him and then. “Patience now.”

As Goebbels clambers onto the bed and pulls at the cord holding his robe together. There’s a slow, warm smile spreading across Göring’s face and he wants to kiss the haughty, devilish curl of it but Göring just repeats the word, patience, though he pushes his fingers into Goebbels hair, tugging him forward so they touch, brow to brow and when their lips meet Goebbels cannot help but thrust his tongue in, fast and greedy.

Göring growls, a slow, subdued rumble, and pulls him back.

“What did I say?”

His pupils are huge and black and unmindful of the expression Goebbels tries to affect, innocent of any wrongdoing as his hand still works insistently at the knot of the robe; the serpentine rustle of silk and his panting breath full of urgency. Göring bats his hand away and pulls him over to straddle one of his large thighs and the skin on the inside of his leg, as Goebbels steadies himself there, feels like silk too.

“Here.” Göring hands him the pills, a glass of red wine to wash them down with.

Goebbels obeys and swallows and like a reward Göring brings his mouth down onto his neck and licks along the twitch of his pulse, which seems to slow and ebb away from him as a numb and sublime softening of his senses falls upon him.

Then Göring kisses him tenderly. A brush of his mouth, the merest hint of his tongue. Goebbels melts against him, too busy sighing to beg for more – each breath he takes is a glorious effort and pulled from Göring’s warm exhalations as they lie pressed against each other, lips just touching and when he cannot hold his head up any longer he turns his face into Göring’s neck and smiles drowsily at the scent of him while Göring takes his pleasure in idly stroking him like a pet.

Goebbels returns to Carinhall to provide some lipservice.

Goebbels smiles bitterly to himself. He’s survived this long and seeing as he isn’t dead, he must be getting stronger – that’s what Friedrich would say, isn’t it? Naturally he can appreciate a slick mantra but there’s enough proof of Nietzsche’s fallibility right here with him now tonight. When Göring looks at him from across the room he feels as though he might evaporate in any particularly harsh light.

The goblets the staff are serving the wine in are ridiculously gaudy things, little golden buboes decorating each honoured guest’s stem. He’s only nursing his drink, careful of himself. He can see his profile cast on the wall, the movement of his arm raising the cup to his lips. He smiles at the pretty redhead standing to his left and his shadow shifts over the wallpaper too like a Peryton.  

Lately everything has felt like minor puppet theatre, maddeningly inconsequential. Göring is charming some general and Goebbels is maintaining his smile quite excellently while what he aches for is to find himself in some dark, lonely corner of this hunting manor and hear the tread of heavy footsteps coming up behind him, the creak of the floorboards, that low, knowing chuckle.  

He knows what Göring wants him to ask. He knew it well before the moment his car drove through the maw of Carinhall’s gates tonight. The difference between knowledge and action is his cowardice, casting its long shadow over everything.

It’s almost time to leave before he can bring himself to find the moment, the greater fear of another week strewing in purgatory propelling him on rather than some hidden reservoir of determination, approaching Göring without ceremony and affecting like it’s nothing, some personal aside, to entreat almost softer than a murmur – please.

–

“Let me see that pretty neck,” Göring purrs.

Kneeling between Göring’s feet, Goebbels fumbles with his neck tie. The expression on Göring’s face is exactly like the cat that got the canary. It suits him and Goebbels knows he should hate him for it, but that’s not what swells within him in response. He thinks instead with something like despair that Göring looks perfect from this angle, monumental really.

Would this be easier if it had been some waifish boy he lusted after? A delicate blond of indeterminate sex or even one of those fine soldiers, statuesque and emblematic of all they believed in – to make love to an ideal would perhaps be understandable. The rumours of his intentions toward Harald were vile things, but what of this? Göring’s erection is an obscene bulge in his periwinkle trousers, so blatant, he’s blushing to look upon it but he does look, doesn’t he?

“Open your collar for me, Joseph,” Göring says and Goebbels closes his eyes and undoes the top two buttons of his shirt.

The heat from Göring touches him a moment before his hand does, followed by the cool metal of the rings he’s wearing – especially for him it seems as 

Göring

strokes his face roughly with the backs of his knuckles, a hard press of gemstone and bone. He pats his cheek; once, twice, like he would a pet.

“Kiss it,” Göring says, stentorian.

Goebbels looks at the ruby stone presented to his lips, Göring’s crest emblazoned there in silver. The theatre of it is is absurd but is it theatre? Göring’s stare has both the chill of drawn steel and the blue heat at the heart of a flame. He kisses Göring’s ring once, hesitantly, then again, slow and damp and lingering. His cock throbs with a deep, leaden fullness between his legs.

“Hermann,” he’s begging already, lips still pressed against the ring.

“Ask for it, my little sparrow.”

“Please…”

An aspirated plea that fades away, he clutches Göring’s knee and looks up at him, entreating, wide eyed, utterly hopeless. Göring’s crooked smile, the aristocratic arch of one expectant eyebrow, fills his mouth with cotton – the words seem so impossibly filthy to him, he shudders.

“Let me,” he says and kisses Göring’s ring again.

Göring takes his hand away and trails it over the tight, serious knot of his face, one finger down slow behind his ear and to the hollow of his exposed throat. He makes a mocking, chiding sound and Goebbels clenches his fists at his sides.

“Anything you want,” he says, in a small, constricted voice and Göring sighs, unimpressed.

He’s trying to compose a speech to excuse himself, his head is muddy with rhetoric.

“Please let me have your cock,” he whispers. He can hear how weak he sounds, hear the vacillation in his voice, and it sickens him. Göring will swallow him up, deserves to, even as he’s the one who-

Göring unfastens his trousers and as if from very far away Goebbels can hear the noise he makes, the whimper, as he watches his cock spring out, larger than he remembers or maybe it’s only that he’s kneeling before it now, a supplicant. He flinches back a little but doesn’t look away; the weighty fullness of Göring’s erection points toward the floor, thick as a club, still swelling. Goebbels thinks of bulls, of animals in rut; the male musk of him is heady, sweat and sex, the broad head of his cock shining wetly, just peeking out of the wrinkled folds of his foreskin. Goebbels has never seen another man’s erection this close in his life.

Göring’s large palm cups his skull and brings him closer, pulling him in, not to his cock but to the hefty purse of his balls. Goebbels inches forward on his knees, the marble floor is unforgiving and his right leg twinges slightly, the premonition of an ache. Steadying himself with a hand on Göring’s thigh he thinks of the scars that must be hidden just out of sight, he wonders if Göring would let him kiss those badges of honour and rubs his thumb over the seam of his trousers back and forth as the heat from Göring’s cock presses against his cheek like a glowing iron.

“Show me how hungry you are,” Hermann says.

“Hermann…” He breathes the name and his mouth moves against the thin, velvet skin of Göring’s balls and the sweat damp blond thatch of his pubic hair. I can’t, he thinks, bleating seriously to himself as he puts out his tongue and laps meekly, hesitant, at Göring.

“Marvellous,” Hermann clucks, holding him there, strong fingers on the back of his head that make him think of a clenched fist. “Just right.”

He means to say he is right in his place, Goebbels thinks, his head swimming dangerously at the thought of it; his mouth full of the flavour of salt and degradation. This lowliness of the act feels like peine forte et dure; he wants to smear himself against the floor, rub himself against it, his skin is boiling. He licks at Göring with less reserve, longer broader strokes of his tongue.

“God,” he gives a little moan and wets his lips and turns his head to reach where Hermann’s sack isn’t yet spit slick from his attentions. Göring’s cock slides across his face as he does it, it’s such an intimate defilement. He groans at the thought of what Hermann is seeing and then again when he spreads his knees to dip his head lower still and the stretch of his trousers pulls against his own erection.

A little longer and Göring pulls him backward with a wrench and he pants there on his knees, dazed while Göring smooths down the tacky ruffle of his hair. Looking up at him, his eyes are such a clear blue that they seem to reflect nothing, only pierce through into him and Goebbels senses at once the predator lurking beneath his jolly dimples and fluffed up plumage of medals, feathered hats and fur. It’s the most disturbing and arousing thing he’s ever seen.

“You want more don’t you?” Göring says, hand around the base of his cock.

Goebbels nods his head and bends his head to kiss Göring’s ring again where his fingers are curled holding his wide girth up before Goebbels face, so eager his teeth knock against the stone.

“Tell me,” Göring says.

“I want more.” Goebbels exhales, leaning back, eyes on the floor. “Reichsmarschall.”

Göring does chuckle them, that throaty jovial sound that has been haunting him now for what seems like an age.

How long has he wanted this? Goebbels can’t tell; the register of his desire has shifted to another pitch here in this moment, but it’s the culmination of so many more stains upon his conscience; his sallow romances, the pages of his notebooks cradling unpenned significant silences and outbursts of mania and despondency, the gradual curdling of his body and his mind.

“Do you think my prick is beautiful, little sparrow?” Göring asks with a lazy grin.

He looks at it, so large, so proud.

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

He stares at the tear of precome forming at the tip and the flutter of revulsion in his stomach is as frantic as the beating of his heart.  

“Please,” Goebbels says, and then. “Let me suck you, let me taste you.”

He’s ashamed of the quaver in his voice.

“Are you going to cry, Joseph?”

“Please….”

“You can kiss me,” Göring says.

His voice is cloyed with magisterial magnanimity, thick as treacle. It makes Goebbels shudder and he feels as though he’s moving through a kind of golden tar too as he leans in slowly and then presses his lips to the head of Göring’s cock, a perversely chaste press of his lips that makes Göring scoff.

“Now, now, that’s not how you like to kiss, is it Joseph? Kiss my prick like it’s one of your pretty starlets.”

A choppy little glottal noise emerges from his throat as he kisses Göring’s cockhead again, mouth open, lapping up the glassy wetness pulsing from the tip with the twitching of his prick. The loving, desperate fastening of his lips there, with Göring’s words all he can imagine is the raw, pornographic framing of the moment on the big screen, softened perhaps with a vignette.

Göring pets his hair as he plasters more kisses, sloppy and sucking, down his shaft. The brush of fingertips next to the fine hair of his ears fills his head with a kind of white noise static of desire and cloistering heat, his touch hums like the murmur of a far off thunderstorm.

“Good boy, good boy,” Göring says, dragging him away again. “Now open your mouth.”

And he does, jaw open, tongue hanging out in what feels like excruciating accommodation and Göring merely looks at him for a long, long moment before pulling him down onto his cock.

Goebbels gasps mechanically as Göring fills him. He tries to ratchet his mouth open wider, tremulous over the idea of grazing Hermann with his teeth but already his jaw is aching.

“Look at me,” Göring commands.

He meets Göring’s gaze while his mouth is forced open, that’s all he can do really, look up at Göring with wide pleading eyes that are still not as wide as the stretch of his mouth around Göring’s invading prick. He thinks of the columns of red Veronese marble that line the banqueting hall here, it feels impossible to close his mouth by as much as a millimetre, as though he were swallowing that same unforgiving rock.

He feels it pressing at the back of his throat and he tries to unlatch something there in a panic as Göring doesn’t stop, merely drives harder, battering at his throat. He’s intoxicated by it, by his size, by his brutality, by his force and hardness and strength but there’s still so much of his length to take, so thick and there’s not an ounce of mercy in how Göring is jamming it into him; as though he’s less than a man, not even a woman, not even a person, just a lucky little hole.

His eyes start to burn, fill up as the pain in his throat increases and the awful, humiliating noises of his gagging reach his ears, as it becomes hard to harder to breath – he presses them shut and Göring pulls out, leaving him drooling and hyperventilating and then the sharp crack of Hermann’s hand slaps him across the face.

“I told you to look at me,” he growls.

Goebbels screws his eyes up, blinking away the tears, still burning he tries to keep them open, fixed on Göring. His body is failing to live up to any standard he has set for it, his cock so hard he’s pawing at it even as Göring presses angry fingers into his jaw and starts fucking his mouth again. His tongue flaps uselessly as Göring presses thumbs into his temples, holding him still, choking him, ravishing him and he can make as much noise as he likes, hidden from the sound of his own depravity by the cock stopping up his throat.

Göring spills wedged so deep inside him he has no choice but to swallow. It slides down his throat, a syrupy contamination that sticks to his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his teeth – he tries to lick his gums clean of the taste and almost gags again.

“Lovely.”

He thinks he hears Göring say it. He’s trembling, his cock still stiff.

Göring reaches for his cigarette case. His movements are languid, slow. Goebbels rests his head against his knee feeling like a jumble of glass shards. He wants to touch himself but he can only weakly rub the inside of his forearm against his thigh, both palms planted on the cold floor and his head bowed.

Göring lights two cigarettes in his mouth and hands one to Goebbels, blowing a line of smoke straight up toward the ceiling. Goebbels’ cigarette burns down between his fingers into a line of serpentine ash.

“Don’t worry my sweet,” Göring says. “We’ll retire to the bedroom soon.”