Differences Aside

Story by Ceeb on SoFurry

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This particular story is something of a collaboration between FA: moodyferret and I. I had expressed some interest in doing a story based around her WWII-era Jewish character Max, and all that that entails. I think you know what I mean.

I want to put it out in the open right now that she and I both had reservations concerning my posting this once it was finished. However I'm very happy with this and I feel that it's one of the best things I've written in recent weeks.

Absolutely no part of this is meant to glorify Nazism or condone their persecution of the Jewish people. I ask that you read the story and understand that it doesn't cast a positive light on the Nazi party before you storm down to the comments to bitch or unwatch/block me. I'm all for intelligent debate, but anybody who immediately assumes that I'm glorifying Nazis will be blocked without a second thought. I ask you to be intelligent.

So beyond that... I'm happy with this piece, like I said. I think it's touching and enjoyable. c:

Thumbnail background is from CGTextures.

Writing (C) me

Max Steinmarder (C) FA: moodyferret


--1

Max shuffled through the sheaf of papers on his desk. Each page was emotional prose and he sought no specific piece but merely something to continue working on. In perpetuity his nerves were wracked and his conscience was overwhelmed but writing and occasionally dabbling in visual arts provided a mild outlet. But instead of relief, he felt near-disgust at the nature of his written ramblings. A great many pages were spattered with teardrops which marred the ink.

Within the terror and sorrow as a Jew who had seen his family snatched away, Max felt anger and survivor's guilt. Acknowledging that said guilt was possibly premature circled him around into a vicious cycle of sadness and anger. Enthralled by the latter, he crumpled the pages, slapped them off of the desk and put his head down against the chilly wood. Around him were stone floors and walls, caskets of wine, crates of jarred food and a stockpile of dry firewood. To drink and forget as some might, he thought as he gazed at the wine caskets.

For weeks Max had been under the roof and floorboards of a sympathetic German rabbit by the name of Mischa, a widow with an absent adult son whom had taken Max in when she discovered him cowering near her vegetable garden. It had never occurred to her to turn him in, she explained as she fed him. She gave him what shelter she could and once lied to soldiers while he hid in the dank crawlspace below freezing soil.

That Mischa's son had never come up in even the most candid of discussions told Max everything he needed to know and the irony of the situation would one day be immortalized in a short story which Max would years later recall, rewrite and publish to minor fame. In but one conversation, as they ate across from one another, she had settled her milky, kind eyes on Max and she spoke of her son. She said that his name was Hans. Hans was a handsome and tall young man whom greatly resembled his father. No more had come of the topic and Max dared not to pry.

The stone marten found a sheet with only three lines scrawled upon it. I sit and wonder sometimes when this will be over. Where I should be when the earth stops shaking. I should wonder how the world will flourish again so peppered with ashes. As he clutched the sheet and reflected upon its insight, footsteps shook the floorboards and knocked dust loose into his face. Out of survival instinct he suppressed his sneeze and came to a quick realization: Mischa did not wear shoes or boots. All he could think of were the heavy footsteps of Nazi soldiers looting. We are here under good intelligence that a Jew is sheltered here and we shall find him and punish you accordingly, good woman! The thought made Max whimper; his skin crawled and he hugged himself before making for the crawlspace.

--2

"I had no idea you would be home with me," Mischa said with genuine surprise but affection all the same. She regarded Hans in his full soldier's attire with no animosity despite her opposition. In her tired eyes was the resignation which came only from a mother's undying love.

Hans smiled tightly and his handsomely cut face had a quality of mischief compounded by his long incisors. "I was given one week of leave for exceptional performance. I decided to come and see my dear mother." Despite an officious tightness in his words, Hans spoke sincerely to his mother and he embraced her in a rare moment of little regard for his uniform.

Pleased though she was to see her son in one piece, Mischa's thoughts fell upon Max and she felt a sudden distance from her son. She did not quite consider him a monster, but at the same time she didn't feel that he was the same child who had bounced on his father's knee or suckled at her tit when he was an infant. It passed slowly like a knot in her stomach. Finally she forced a smile. "It's wonderful to see you, son," she murmured. "Why don't you change out of... Out of this?" Mischa said with a gesture.

The hare peered down at his uniform languidly before meeting Mischa's eyes again. He had the coyest of smiles but said nothing as he trudged away, his boots heavy on the floorboards. In his old room he changed from his uniform into clothing more pedestrian and he felt as if he were in the wrong skin at doing so, but he suffered through it for his mother. When he greeted her again, she smiled with fondness at seeing her son as she remembered him.

"Do I look presentable?" Hans asked.

"Yes you do," Mischa answered with a quirked smile. Once more she thought of Max and their strategy for dealing with soldiers at the door; she frowned at the notion of the young Jew shivering in the crawl space and held up a paw to Hans. "Give me a moment," she said to him, starting for the basement stairwell. "Let me just fetch wood for the stove. If I am to cook my son a fine dinner..." she chuckled.

Almost aggressively, Hans muscled her aside and she again felt the frightful unfamiliarity, but his words did atone for it. "You needn't break your back while I'm home," he said sweetly.

Mischa could think of nothing to stall or dissuade her son. Instead she thought herself foolish for not foreseeing his compulsion to help. As he descended the stairwell she did have one moment of brilliance and she called after him, quite loudly, "Hans, do be careful!"

Hans laughed heartily, his voice booming in his thick chest, for he was a fine specimen of a male. Nearly six feet tall, compact but muscular with especially powerful legs to be expected of a rabbit. He was followed down into the basement by Mischa and they were seemingly alone. She was particularly relieved to not see Max out and about but the sight of his writing desk and provisions made her cringe.

"Have you taken up the written word, mother?" Hans asked on his way to the lumber pile. It was fortunate for her that Max's cot was obscured behind the wine caskets.

"I--, yes," Mischa answered with blind hope.

"But why down here, hm?" Hans pressed as he hoisted two great logs into either arm, bracing them against his shoulders. Mischa gave no answer but Hans didn't push the question. The strong soldier headed up the stairs without compunction and Mischa's relief was palpable.

"I will be a moment longer," Mischa called, "let me just grab a few goods for supper tonight." Content in the knowledge that Hans would also take it upon himself to load the stove, Mischa made for the crawlspace and beckoned out the shivering stone marten. With an air of guilt she squeezed him to her warm, plump body and whispered, "Forgive me, but my son is here to stay for a week." They both knew the implication and the unease in Max's brow told her that he knew just what Hans was. "I will cook a heavy stew tonight. When Hans sleeps, I will try to bring you some. If not..." She bit her lip. "Be as quiet as you can."

Max nodded slowly, and Mischa left with potatoes she and her husband had jarred years before.

--3

In constant agitation, Max lurked at the foot of the stairs and couldn't will himself to move away. Terror at the prospect of being caught kept him far too on edge to rest or write and soon hunger added to his unease. For hours he waited and loitered around the cellar, daring not to touch Mischa's jarred vegetables of which there were worrisomely few. His stomach churned and grumbled and he flinched at every squeak of floorboards, once nearly hiding with the spiders in the dusty, frigid crawlspace at such a sound. The hours were agonizing for Max whom had no timepiece.

Acknowledging that Mischa would not be bringing him food helped Max to set his resolve but not dispel his fear. He had no clue as to Hans' size and demeanor but he doubted if a Nazi would hesitate to break him with his bare paws. Just being a hare meant he was certainly muscular, and Max soon had a rich tapestry of a long-toothed demon leering at him in his mind. Briefly he humored the idea of going to bed hungry. A ravenous snarl from his gut convinced him otherwise. He peered at the bed, then at the stairwell. Finally he snuffed his candle and crept barefoot up the stairs.

Max was thankful that his lanky, slim body did little to upset the floorboards and the cellar door yielded silently to a gentle shove. No lights in Mischa's home and no voices that he could hear. The stove radiated warmth from the dying embers within. Max allowed himself a brief warming of his paws in the dead, dark stillness of the sleeping house. With that luxury out of the way he looked through the dark kitchen and found a bowl on the countertop. Inside he found a thin layer of stew rendered muddy from the cold. Young Max wasn't picky and he carefully ladled more into the bowl.

Like a rat in the night, Max scurried back to the basement. Hans stoically watched his every move from the den and swiftly made his way up to the second floor. In his mother's room, he softly jostled her by the shoulder. Before Mischa had even blinked the sleep from her milky eyes, she knew what was wrong.

"Mother." Hans said lowly and tightly. "There's an intruder. Stay up here. I'll take care of this."

"Hans--," Mischa said in a plaintive bleat.

"Mother--," Hans tried to say in a quiet tone.

"You must listen to me," said Mischa, sitting up. "I know somebody else is in my home." Even in darkness, she could feel Hans' icy gaze and she knew what her son must have thought of her. "Hans, he's only a boy. He's even younger than you are."

"A Jew?" Hans asked through clenched teeth as he started for the door with boosted resolve.

Mischa followed him down the hall and stairs. "How can my own son be so defiant and hateful?" she asked him, at last halting him midway through the den. As he peered back at her, she turned on a light and the dusty fixture in the ceiling cast briefly frightful shadows over Hans' blue eyes.

"Because you don't understand what is best," Hans barked. "As I risk my life, you are sheltering that which must be eliminated! You have the nerve to lie to me, your flesh and blood, and what would father think?"

Mischa's kindly face became dark and stone-like at once. "My husband was dead years before this sick purge ever began. You will not try to tie him to what's happening out there, child."

Anger flushed Hans' features and he stomped heavily on the floor, shaking dust loose over the trembling marten. "Tomorrow," he hissed, and then he shouted it again down into the floor, "Tomorrow!, I'll right what's wrong in this house." He stepped near Mischa, who now trembled in anger and indignation, but a solemn tear ran down one cheek. "Mother," he said softly.

A sudden and exquisitely painful slap reddened Hans' cheek and left Mischa's tough paw sore. Despite the pain in his cheek Hans dared not retaliate. Even in light of her foolishness, she was still his one and only mother. "I love you," she said lowly, "but you have changed. Something inside of you has died. I don't wish you to be here any longer than you must be." She turned on her heel. Putting her back to Hans seemed to hurt him more than the slap ever could. "I can't change your demeanor, but please don't harm Max. That boy has been through too much for one lifetime. Just go."

After Mischa disappeared up the stairs, Hans sat in the den and fumed. What kind of a kike name is Max? he thought and nearly spat at the notion. To think that his own mother could host a fugitive turned his stomach. More so, he saw her coming to care for the Jew more than her own son, her only link left in the world. First this thought brought savage anger, but it gave over to a queer form of respect. Not for the kike, never in a thousand years could he respect that, but for mother's wishes and affection.

Nothing had changed in Hans' mind and he still planned to see to it that Max disappeared whether mother wept and screamed or not, but first he wanted to look the Jew in the eyes. He got up and started for the stairwell.

--4

Hans descended with a candle and found the cellar pitch black. Nothing scurried within but he detected the smell of an alien creature through the dust. He hadn't noticed it before but now that he sought the Jew, he smelled the trail. "Come out," he said in an authoritative boom. "I know you're in here. Show yourself," Hans commanded, walking through the cellar and studying the jumping shadows cast by his candle. "If I must hunt you out, I'll break your back and let you drag your legs up the stairs. Show yourself!"

From the crawlspace emerged Max, dusty and shivering. With sunken eyes he stared at the imposing hare and hugged himself tightly. "You're a soldier," Max said, not as a query.

"And you are Jewish," Hans growled. "Being sheltered in my home, by my mother," he spat.

Max thought to plead and explain. Then he decided death was better faced with dignity. "You'll do what you will with me," he sighed, "so do it. I'm exhausted. I can't struggle any longer."

A queer smirk twisted up Hans' handsome face and rendered it sinister. "Not going to beg or barter for your life?"

"What have I to barter with?" Max asked. "I have nothing. If I had anything you'd just take it after killing me. My life means nothing to you."

So you understand, Hans thought with a chuckle. "You look nothing like a kike," he crudely remarked, reaching out with a heavy paw. Max shied away from the touch but Hans wasn't denied. He somewhat awkwardly petted the marten's hair and then prodded the pad of his nose. "Your hair is smooth and your nose is small."

Max peered at the flickering candle Hans held. Even its limited warmth tantalized him. "I'm not a caricature," he stated bluntly, "if that's what you hoped for."

Hans' smirk evened though some mischief stood out in his eyes. "I'd only ever seen your kind in posters and guide books. You are not what I expected my first encounter with a Jew to be like."

Less in defiance and more out of comfort with the cellar, Max padded past Hans and lit his own candle again. It was substantially larger and it cast a much more helpful glow throughout the room. The young marten warmed his paws at its flames. "And I've never spoken to a Nazi," Max said, peering at the hare. "You must look much different in uniform..."

"I wear it proudly," Hans said with no apology in his tone. "But not around my mother." Soon he had stepped up close to Max and he loomed over the marten, studying him and taking mental notes. "I wonder what it is she sees in you."

Max peered up at Hans and found his blue eyes surprisingly soft. Had he not known, he wouldn't have thought the rabbit to be a Nazi. "Mischa strikes me as very kind and loving. She doesn't care for this war. I'm sure you understand why I feel the same way."

"Yes, I do," Hans said. "Although..."

"Although?" Max warily nudged.

"I don't understand her sentiments. Of course no country wants a war, but war is inevitable. I'm startled that she would shelter you."

An awkward silence came to pass. Max finally queried the hare, "What are you going to do to me?"

Mere minutes before, Hans had his mental kike caricature on the train to a labor camp and he had felt no remorse. Having taken in Max's appearance and seen his sad eyes put a stop on that thought. Suddenly he didn't see the cartoonish big nose of an obnoxious, greedy weasel; he saw Max's sunken eyes peering at him between the slats of a boxcar, getting smaller and smaller in the distance. "I don't know," Hans sullenly admitted.

Max looked up at the hare with a measured expression. He looked for wicked humor, seeking it with great distrust, but he saw only confusion and sadness on the hare's face. When he turned back to warming his paws, he was startled and terrified to feel a heavy paw wrap around his shoulder in the next instant. He shrieked softly and thought the hare would squeeze down or maybe switch to his neck to throttle. Instead Hans gently turned him and then came a gentle but awkward kiss.

"Ah!" Max squeaked, putting his paws at once on the dense bulk of Hans' chest. Instinct said to push him away but the warmth of the rabbit's body drew him in. Despite that, he waveringly asked, "What are you doing?"

"I don't know," Hans repeated. So many very strange emotions fluttered through his head and heart. Out of his uniform and in the cool darkness, he felt as if he were freed from something. His loyalties did still lay with the Nazi party but he thought of Max as an exception. Again he kissed the marten who offered submissive deference and seemed just as lost in confusion. Hans had never kissed another man but soon his tongue slipped past his own incisors and then Max's lips to tease across the marten's palate.

Conversely, Max found Hans' warm lips and hard teeth strangely pleasant against him. With all that he had suffered, to suddenly realize his gay proclivities wasn't as difficult as it might have been otherwise. So tempered by genocidal horror, he welcomed any comfort he could get and he wrapped his arms around the dense hare. The kiss proved short lived but their bodies remained close together.

"Your name is Max," Hans said tentatively, as if to himself. "Isn't it?"

With a numb voice Max replied, "Yes, it is." Then just as tentatively, "And yours is Hans?"

The hare nodded softly and reached up whereupon he brushed Max's dusty hair from his eyes. "Within the Nazi party, I've found myself attracted to many of my fellow men," he lowly admitted. "Such a thing is kept under lock and key, of course."

"Why let it out around me?" Max asked with an attempt to sound wary and incisive. Instead he sounded lethargic.

Hans' reply began with an almost lewd grin. "Because who would believe a Jew if he said he'd been seduced by a Nazi soldier? You'd have your tongue cut out before they shipped you off," he said. Forlornly he added, "I wouldn't want that to happen. I suppose you and I, our kind, we are not meant to be close..."

"I think you're right," Max replied, looking away but keeping close. He hid under the pretense of enjoying only Hans' warmth, but such strong and capable arms made him feel safe and content.

"Shouldn't be close," Hans mused, "not at all..." Hans considered for all of five seconds as he idly petted down the length of Max's spine.

"Hans?" Max began to ask, but he was silenced with another kiss. It was no firmer than the first but his silence was implicit. Now Hans' masculine paws slipped around to the marten's front where they fumbled with the buttons that closed his shirt. Max himself reached up with his own trembling mitts and helped the hare with the buttons, and the moment they were undone the plain-clothed soldier shucked Max's shirt off of him and stroked possessively over his naked back. Despite malnourishment and stress, Max was still so much softer and kinder than any man Hans could hope to get hold of.

The kiss ran deeper as Hans' paws took hold of Max's slender body. Soon his thick tongue invaded the marten's maw to tease along the Jew's palate and gums. Max's game was submission but he found Hans close and accessible. He demonstrated his comfort when he similarly undressed the hare, albeit with no assistance. Under Max's nimble fingers, the hare's shirt was fast unbuttoned and dropped to the floor to bare his stiffly muscular form. While Hans was no bodybuilder, he was well-exercised beyond what his duties required of him.

Though Hans' conscience ran wild with fears on the wrongness of the moment, his body resonated with Max's. There was a subtle fear of mother discovering them - what would she think then? Undoubtedly it would confuse her into silence for days. But Hans pushed away the fears and he realized that nobody was more apt to keep secrets than Max. Again the kiss died but in its wake the rabbit gnawed and smooched with genuine fondness on the marten's slim neck.

"Oh, Hans, what are we doing?" Max bleated, feeling the hare's swollen erection pressing against him through their trousers. He wasn't far from one himself.

"I have no good answer for that," Hans panted. "I spend my days taking orders... I could never think for myself," he smiled. "So I do what feels right." He realized the implications of what he had said, but he didn't linger on it and neither did Max seem to. With great lust underscoring each action he eased the marten back from his hard body and took a moment to gaze upon him in the fickle candlelight. Hans had only seen other masculine men in his duties and only naked under extraordinary circumstances. To have this poor and weak thing with no strings attached was a freedom to make his mouth water and his heart race. He reached for the stone marten's trousers and unbuttoned their fly to the tune of a startled squeak from Max. When he pushed them down, he heard a shy laugh, a beautiful little sound.

"You-you're very serious about this?" Max blushingly asked, left only in dull gray underwear which the hare violated by slipping a paw down their front. When the rabbit clutched his half-hard, circumcised shaft, Max gasped and wrapped his arms around his unusual seducer again.

Hans had no reply but his own actions. An awkward but eager grip molested the marten's stiffening penis and encouraged it to grow to its full length. In a moment of breaking shyness, Max somewhat returned the favor and set a paw upon the swollen bulge in Hans' trousers. Under Max's paw, it throbbed firmly and a content rumble echoed in the rabbit's dense torso.

Once Hans felt that the marten was as hard as he could be, he slid his paw free of those ragged underpants and grabbed them at opposite ends of the waistband. Quite reverently, he pulled them downward and bared Max's modest, cut cock to the chill air. From its tip dribbled a bead of pre, and any shyness Max was still feeling disappeared when Hans took hold of it again and softly pumped its length.

"Also strange," Hans said in a conspiratorially low voice. "Your penis isn't... Mutilated, as I'd read they are."

Max briefly chewed his lower lip. Hans' strong paw was wonderfully tight and hot around his shaft and the pleasure made his spine tingle. Any intimacy at all would have liked to make the broken marten weep. Instead of letting his emotions get the better of him, however, he opened the rabbit's fly up and shyly pulled apart the flaps, which incidentally loosened his trousers enough for them to drop down to the floor. Beneath Hans' own underpants was a thick bulge to be expected of such a large man. Where its blunt glans rubbed was a wet stain of pre.

Just as reverently as Hans had done, Max pulled down the hare's underpants and bared his swollen, uncircumcised member. The foreskin stopped short of the drooling, pink glans and so made an arousing spectacle of itself. To somebody who had never seen an uncircumcised member, it was a curiosity. For Max, whom had never explored sex with another man, it was just a matter of course. He wrapped his soft paw around the flesh and found he could just barely touch his fingertips into his own palm. "You're much larger than I am," he said sheepishly.

"I suppose that I am," Hans said with modesty. His tone suggested that it didn't much matter. "Where do you lie? Did my mother give you a bed?"

"Well..." Max mumbled and eased away from Hans, who released his penis. "I have a cot, over here," he said and led the hare around the wine caskets where his small nest of sheets and lay. Hans knew taking the marten upstairs where it was warm was out of the question, and so he made due and knelt in the mess of sheets, quickly joined by his new friend.

Face to face, Max and Hans shared another gentle kiss, it being the best they could think of on short notice. So furtively in the cold darkness with sex on his mind, Hans thought back to puberty and his first discovery of his own penis. He wondered if Max had similar thoughts, but then he thought better of trying to get in the marten's head.

"What now?" the marten asked, one paw on Hans' swollen penis, the other on his chest.

The rabbit's nose quivered and he licked his incisors in a moment of thought. Then, gently, he eased the marten down into the sheets. Max tried to lie face-up but Hans rolled him onto his stomach. He thought the marten might ask what he was up to, but Max said nothing and Hans, with his lack of explanation, was grateful. All he could think of was to explore the marten so that he might know intimately his slender young body. Never once had he given real thought to gay sex or how things could work between two males. All he knew was that the male form appealed immensely to him.

Hans petted and nuzzled his way up one of Max's slim legs which twitched softly upon being nosed at the tender back of the knee. This made the rabbit smile. Higher and higher he kissed and nosed, soon reaching the tight skin of the marten's rump. Exploring there provoked strange thoughts, but he released his concerns just as he had so many times that night. Both of his paws came to rest on the marten's behind which he then spread apart to reveal a pucker clenching tightly against the chill air.

Hans softly rubbed the pad of his thumb against Max's tail hole and the marten shuddered and cooed at this strange new attention. "Do you like that?" he asked evenly, pausing with his thumb against it as if pressing a button.

"I... I think so," Max sheepishly offered. "This is new to me, but please, go on..."

"This is new to me, as well," Hans easily admitted. He rubbed again and again but he didn't think to try penetrating the marten. That was fortunate given the dryness of his thumb. But soon just rubbing was losing its thrill for Hans. Touching Max in such a taboo manner was a thrill, but taboo thrills seemed to be common suddenly. It took him a moment to gather his nerves but he soon eased his short snout down into the warm cleft of Max's rear. Much more shyly than when they had kissed, he let his tongue drag across the quivering rim of Max's tail hole. This resonated with the marten whom groaned but closed his lips tightly so as to be discreet. Crudely aroused and spurred by the Jew's reaction, Hans licked harder and harder just to hear the marten groan and whine. The sounds he made were unambiguous bliss.

For the first time in years, Max's face was plastered with a happy grin. His eyes rolled back in his skull and his virgin pucker clenched beneath Hans' tentative licks. He pinched the blankets up and writhed against them to hump his aching penis against something out of desperation for some pleasure to augment what Hans was giving him.

Max's pleasure both pleased and somewhat amused Hans whom found the act strange but certainly enjoyable. Soon he grew bolder and began to slip his tongue beyond the ring of the pucker. His deeper licks were adorably inexperienced and short-lived but for that time Max whined in total bliss and let the fluffy length of his tail sway and lash. Hans awkwardly unhanded one of Max's rump cheeks but rather liked when it rested against his snout, for the warmth and the heady musk of the marten both proved pleasurable to his tender nose. Exhibiting more confidence, he gripped his own penis and softly pumped it, pulling back his foreskin to stretch and ready it. Tonguing Max's behind like so was giving him ideas. Nature itself gave the hare some rough idea of what to do, at least had he been with a woman. His own dirty mind filled in the blanks.

When Hans eased his tongue back, Max sighed somewhat dejectedly until the hare began to move over top of him. Max himself had no idea what the hare had planned and he took the closeness only as the beginning of a warm cuddle, perhaps a snooze. The marten was fine with that and had even lulled himself into a sense of security when Hans gingerly prodded his moistened tail hole. Not Hans' tongue or finger bumped him, but the blunt tip of his drooling cock.

"Aah, umm," Max blushingly crooned, "what are you doing...?"

"Must I repeat myself?" Hans lowly chuckled. Max joined him. "I thought this would..." he mumbled and trailed off. "I want to feel close to you. This is what feels most right."

Max still blushed and pawed at the blankets. The pressure of Hans' penis against his unaccustomed tail hole was sweet but awkward. The marten surprised himself just slightly when he truthfully said, "All right, Hans. I trust you."

With a face given more to stoicism, Hans' blushing and inattentive features must have looked out of place but cute. This Max was unable to appreciate or even see in the low light with his face practically in the bedding but other things were on the marten's mind when Hans pressed forward. As Hans' blunt length opened his pucker and began to grind in, Max bunched up the bedding in his paws and whined into the muffling fabric. Only the hare's tip was inside to hold open the young Jew's virgin entrance. It spurred enough raw pain to make Max nearly call it off. It was only partly a desire to remain close to Hans that he decided to bear the pain; in the distress of the pain he found Hans threatening, however briefly, and he dared not resist the soldier.

But soon the hare eased more of his dense penis in and Max found the pain dissipating slowly but noticeably. Max eased off of the bedding and let out with a long sigh of forced relaxation. It occurred to the marten to relax his behind and his steady breathing helped the pain level off more quickly.

Half sunken into Max's rear, Hans bumped his quivering nose to the Jew's shoulder. Softly he asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm getting better," Max whispered. "Would you... Would you kiss me?" he asked lowly as he turned his head.

Hans continued to ease into the marten but he found the time to lean over his unusual friend more completely. Over the marten's shoulder he hooked his chin, and when their lips nearly touched he cooed, "I would do so gladly."

The kiss was slow to begin and awkward to hold but Max shivered at the much-needed intimacy. So soothing was Hans' masculine kiss that Max had largely pushed away the lingering pain and he didn't realize the hare had buried himself completely until he began to ease back. This lovemaking was slow and suitably tender for such a clandestine pair of lonely young men. Hans himself shivered while he pulled back but Max himself loved every moment when the Hare pressed flush to him. Those warm loins against his scrawny behind made him feel appreciated.

Max's pleasure was mostly emotional but that wasn't to say he didn't still have a throbbing erection grinding into the bedding. Hans broke the kiss off to huff into and grunt and they shared breath this way amidst gentle talk. "I didn't think I could find pleasure like this, lying with another man," the hare admitted.

"Neither did I," Max concurred. And neither did I think I'd be so close to a Nazi soldier, he thought and wondered if Hans wasn't harboring similar thoughts or maybe even disgust. But he doubted if the rabbit could be disgusted with how prideful his bucking had become and the sweet regularity with which he pecked and nibbled Max on the cheek. There was raw and obvious affection in how Hans behaved. Max dared not think how it would last once lust had ceased to cloud the hare's judgment.

Hans hunkered down over Max. He straightened out and put his short snout in the Jew's hair where he absently sniffed and snuffled, teasing Max's scalp. Through their coats of fur came a soft whap-whap-whap of his sturdy pelvis on Max's tight behind. Slightly more subtle was the mild, wet suck as his thick member ground in and out of the marten's tail hole. Before long the soldier's breathing grew more haggard, indicative of impending climax. Max didn't masturbate often with his mind so occupied but he knew exactly what the hare was going through and it put a tiny, happy smile on his snout.

Under Hans' breath came lewd nothings fit only for Max's ears, even if not always understood. Dirty little German words and blasphemy, praise for the marten's fuckable body in so many ways and disbelief at how he could lie with another man, let alone a Jew. A need to be loved however briefly was the true catalyst and yet the sheer taboo of what they did was just as much fuel on the fire of their combined lust. Max was snug around Hans' throbbing penis and those pleasures of the flesh did make his breathing catch and his toes curl but down in his gut was a rotten little tingling of pleasure, a crude thought of taboo: I'll wear my uniform and do my duties having sodomized and kissed a sweet young Jew.

Cotton tail quivering and toes curling, Hans grunted and grumbled into Max's hair as he delivered unto the marten his last potent bucks. These were downright noisy in the silence of the cellar but still too subtle for Mischa to catch; that alone was luck, for Hans had forgotten her in the dumb swirl of pleasure. Max whimpered but not in pain, for his muted cries were pure pleasure. When Hans at last came his muscular body tensed and he sank his cock home but one last time. Into the quivering Jew he shot his sticky seed, a month of pent-up frustrations and unacceptable gay lust exorcised in a half-dozen powerfully fertile shots.

The marten's blush at being seeded like so matched the quick bulge of his eyes, but like every other facet of his time with Hans, he soon found it very pleasant and he relaxed beneath the hare. But Hans was not quite through, and the hare couldn't have have been any less subtle when he wrapped his arms around the marten, held him in close and rolled over onto his back.

"Oh, ah, what are you doing?" Max asked mid-shiver, for the new position on Hans' member put unexpected yet pleasant pressure on his insides.

Though the sweetest pleasure of his orgasm was quickly waning, Hans' afterglow saw him suitably affectionate to see to Max's own release and he made this much apparent when he clutched the marten's prone member. At Max's soft gasp he smiled and began his steady, firm stroking. Under his meaty hand, Max's shaft felt strange but not unpleasant and he commonly teased the bared glans with the pad of his thumb. At all of this Max shuddered and sighed but kept his voice necessarily low while Hans treated him to soft verbal encouragement. Though still uttering little nothings, they were geared toward Max's pleasure and well-being. Let me take care of you now, he softly whispered once. Max was able to look over the dark connotations of such a phrase from a soldier to take away only the affection.

Hans' other strong paw caressed Max's chest and rubbed down his flank. The marten was not skeletal but neither was he pudgy. All the same, Hans cherished his young form. Once he unintentionally tweaked a pert nipple. Another time he softly tickled the Jew but Max stifled the giggle.

"Oh, Hans," Max softly whispered as the pleasure began to peak. Hans' stroking was steady and ruthlessly efficient as one may expect from a soldier but the marten saw fondness in it. Why else would he have been doing it? Soon the Jew began to writhe and buck into Hans' paw and his sore behind clenched the hare's softening penis, prolonging it from falling completely flaccid. More and more quickly Max panted and crooned and soon he held his mouth closed with a paw. It wouldn't do for Mischa to find him in such a compromising position with her son.

At long last Max had his own orgasm. Hans' paw eclipsed most of his cock, the upper inches especially, and so none of his salty seed escaped that masturbating grip. The hare hardly seemed to mind the mess it made of his fur and though a kiss was impossible positioned as they were, he smooched and nosed the marten's neck with no ambiguity as to affection.

"That feels so very nice," Max whispered with a shaky voice.

--5

Max and Hans stood in the light of the candelabra, each wax shaft melted down several inches. Hans' features had regained their military coldness, just as Max feared. Since they had risen from the bedding, neither had spoken a word and they wondered what to think of themselves.

"This was... An interesting night," Max finally said to Hans, avoiding the hare's eyes.

"What we did tonight," Hans said lowly and firmly, "never happened."

Max nodded slowly. He brought his gaze up to Hans' and lamented the lack of affection and curiosity in them. He saw the kind of killer eyes that could watch a boxcar full of Jews roll off to die. "You will... Turn me in, won't you?"

Hans looked away but Max caught a glimpse of his face. The rabbit was clearly pained. A tiny catch in his throat precluded his words. "It will be unfortunate when I leave here," Hans said as Max's heart sank.

"Hans," Max whispered. "Hans, please..."

The rabbit held up a paw for silence. It was the very paw he had pleasured Max with. "It will be unfortunate," he said softly, "that I won't be able to watch over you myself." His face never broke even as a queer, happy little smile started to cut through the ghoulish exhaustion on Max's face. "But I know my mother will keep you safe from soldiers like me."

The marten wondered what was appropriate gratitude. Hans took the difficulty out of the decision when he surprised Max with a kiss. "I know of no Jews living in my childhood home," he said as he turned. Max grabbed his paw before he could go. Hans lingered in the marten's grip for but a moment. Finally Max turned Hans loose and the hare disappeared up the stairs. Max was smiling but sniffling when he returned to his bedding. He wasn't quite sure why.