Chapter Text
The evening was orange and bruised, the last sortie still echoing in Erich’s bones. He dropped into the chair like a man twice his age. No swagger, no jokes, no grin. Just a low grunt and a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips.
Kurt didn’t say anything at first. He knew that silence. He’d heard it in the engine rooms, smelled it in the sweat of boys who didn't come back.
“Long day?” he asked, finally.
Erich gave a little chuckle, dry and low, almost bitter. “Long year, Kurt.”
Kurt offered him a swig from a battered canteen. Rum. Strong enough to burn the dust out of a man’s throat.
“I think I want out,” Erich muttered. Not looking at him. Just watching the shadows lengthen across the dunes. “Not from the war. From here. From this… sand-trap coffin.”
Kurt didn’t flinch. He’d heard men say worse. But this was Erich. Rudorffer, the mad bastard who laughed in the face of hurricanes. Saying he wanted out?
“Eastern Front?” he guessed.
Erich nodded slowly. “At least the cold might keep me awake. This sun—it’s… it’s like it’s bleaching my insides, you know? Like it’s drying up everything good in me. I shoot them down, they burn, I land, we eat stew, and then it starts again. And again. And I’m just...” His voice cracked, just a bit.
Kurt lit his cigarette, took his time. “You ever ask yourself why you’re still here?”
“All the time.”
“And?”
Erich stared at the horizon. “Because if I leave… they’ll put some 19-year-old in my seat. And he won’t come back.”
That silenced them both.
For a while, there was just the whistle of desert wind and the far-off sputter of a generator choking on sand.
Then Kurt leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re tired, Rudi. I get it. But the front's the front. East, West, South—it all eats you the same. The difference is who you’re with.”
Erich finally looked over. His eyes were red from the sun, but still sharp, still dangerous.
“You saying you’d miss me?” he teased, weakly.
“I’m saying we’d miss you,” Kurt said, quiet but firm. “You keep this unit alive in ways that go beyond flying. You go east? Fine. But don’t think they have a better sky over there.”
Erich exhaled smoke slowly, watching it vanish like a ghost. “Yeah. But maybe they have snow. And maybe snow can hide blood better than sand.”
Kurt didn’t argue. Instead, he clinked their canteens together, metal on metal, two tired devils with wings clipped by heat and conscience.
“To snow,” Erich said.
“To surviving,” Kurt answered.
And in that twilight, they sat side by side, the wind picked up, stirring little snakes of sand across the packed earth, brushing against the tent canvas like whispering ghosts. Erich rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm, knuckles still black from the throttle lever. His fatigue hung off him like an oil-stained overcoat.
Kurt watched him, amused despite himself. That mopey, scowling look didn’t suit Rudorffer—not the man who once sank a goddamn British submarine or the always smiling camarade who lifts up everyones mood.
“Look at you,” Kurt said, cocking an eyebrow. “Sitting there like some broken romantic hero. ‘Alas, the sky is too cruel for me, Kurt, send me to the snow where I may perish with dignity...’” Kurt dramatically acts like he is fainting on pile of sand.
Erich snorted. “I didn't say that.”
“You implied it.” Kurt leaned forward, voice dropping mock-dramatic. “Next thing you’ll be writing poetry. ‘Oh cruel North wind, freeze my aching soul—’”
“Oh shut up,” Erich muttered, but the edge of a grin pulled at his mouth.
Kurt pounced. “You know what this really is? You just want one of those Russian girls to knit you a scarf and call you Erichka while you pretend to hate borscht.”
Erich laughed, finally. A full-body thing that shook dust from his jacket. “You think they’re handing out babushkas to Luftwaffe pilots now?”
“You? They might.” Kurt leaned back with a lazy grin. Erich still giggles while watching him.
“You’ve got that sad puppy face. ‘Please, madame, I’m so cold… also I shot down fifteen of your comrades yesterday.’”
“Fourteen,” Erich corrected automatically, taking a sip from Kurt's long forgotten rum.
“See? Modest. Deadly. Ladies love that.”
Erich groaned and buried his face in his hands, but his shoulders were shaking again.
Kurt reached into the ammo crate they used as a table and pulled out the last bar of chocolate—a ragged, half-melted lump they’d been saving for a better day. He tossed it at Erich’s lap.
“Here. Eat something sweet before you start crying into your flight logs.”
Erich caught it, looked at it, looked at him. “Are you flirting with me, Bühligen?”
“Every damn day,” Kurt said with a wink. “But you never notice. Too busy whispering to your aircraft like she’s your girlfriend.”
“Well, Suse listens to me,” Erich quipped, breaking off a piece of the chocolate and tossing one at Kurt’s face. “Unlike some assholes I know.”
Kurt caught it with a grin, then sat back with a satisfied sigh. “There he is. The desert bastard we all know and hate.”
And for a little while, the weight lifted. Just enough. The sun dipped behind the dunes, and the war, for all its endless appetite, left two friends alone for the night. Maybe tomorrow Erich would still want to leave. Maybe he'd write the letter. But for now? He sat with Kurt under a bruised sky, the chocolate melting slowly on his tongue, and for just a moment, felt like a man again. Not a machine.
As they are sitting together, Kurt poking the campfire with a stick, Erich looks away and thinks about it. Eastern front is much better right now. Yes. He wont have to deal with British or American planes and their skilled pilots. But on the other hand he really loves his gruppe. He has friends. Hauptmann Dickfeld, Karch, Kurt and many more that trusts to him...
He nodded himself. He will tear off the order form thats been sitting on his desk and stay in Tunisia until Luftlotte orders him to go to the Eastern front.
The fire between them crackled, small and pathetic against the yawning desert night. Kurt was still poking at it with a stick, eyes half-lidded, already half-asleep in that content, guarded way of his.
Erich spoke without looking over.
“I’m not going.”
Kurt blinked, brows furrowing. “Hmm?”
“Eastern Front. I’m not transferring.”
Kurt sat up a little straighter. “I thought you were ready to march into the frost like Napoleon.”
Erich shrugged. “Maybe I am. Doesn’t matter.”
Kurt eyed him for a long time. “So what changed?”
The answer hovered for a second, trembling in Erich’s throat like a fresh kill not yet plucked. He turned his head slowly. The firelight cut shadows across his face, carving out the hollows under his cheekbones, making his eyes burn amber.
“You.”
Kurt stared.
“I’d die out there,” Erich said quietly. “Not from the cold. Not from the Russians. Just… from being alone. Without my 'dear friend'”
Still, silence. Just the fire crackling, and somewhere in the distance, a hyena laughing like the war itself.
Kurt swallowed. Then he looked away and muttered, “Well that’s stupid.”
Erich laughed. “Yeah. But true.”
And then Kurt was moving. Not fast. Not sudden. Just a lean, a shift, the space between them closing by inches. His shoulder brushed Erich’s. Their knees touched. That was all. No drama. No declarations.
But Erich’s chest ached anyway. A sweet ache. A furious, terrifying, living ache.
“You know,” Kurt said after a long pause, voice low, “if you keep saying shit like that, I might actually start liking you.”
Erich smirked. “God forbid.”
“You’d better not make me your reason to fight. That’s dangerous.”
“You already are.”
Kurt exhaled sharply. “Then you’re an idiot.”
But he didn’t move away. And Erich didn’t leave.
Not for the frost. Not for the snow. Not for peace. Not for anything.
Because when the world’s on fire and the sky wants your soul, the only thing worth staying for… is the man beside you who laughs like thunder and burns brighter than any star above the sand, is the one who gave your heart.