Quick A/N:Before we get started here, I just need to amend the date of Alfons’s death from last chapter. He died on April 23, not April 4. I didn’t have internet when I was writing that part, so I couldn’t check my facts (I was operating on vague memory from the movie Downfall, or Der Untergang in German). I looked up the date of the Russian entry into Berlin later on and felt like an idiot. Sorry, Just had to rectify that. And now, without further ado, I give you chapter 14!

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Chapter 14: Mach Die Augen Zu Und Kuss Mich

Vodka is lovely. Raspberry-flavored vodka is better. Cognac is even better than that! I would know, as after I ran away from the graveyard, tears still streaming down my face, marring my cheeks with streaks of mascara, I downed a fairly sizeable quantity of each. I’d never been one to drink away my problems, but the situation at hand fell more under the general category of “catastrophes,” and I felt that I was somewhat entitled to a bit of inebriation.

Setting my bottle of liquor down on the table next to my hotel-room bed, I stumbled over to my suitcase and whipped out a comfy pair of boxers and a white tank-top. Wiggling out of my jeans and shirt, I yanked them on, then fell back against the pillows, Dashboard Confessional’s “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most” blasting from my iPod speakers.

Buried deep as you can dig inside yourself
And covered with a perfect shell
Such a charming, beautiful exterior
Laced with brilliant smiles and shining eyes
Perfect posture, but you're barely scraping by
But you're barely scraping by…

This bed is niiiice, I decided, grabbing my cognac and taking a swig, accidentally slopping some over onto my lips in the process. I licked the potent liquid off, relishing the hard taste and burning sensation as it traveled down my throat.

This is one time, this is one time
That you can't fake it hard enough to please everyone
Or anyone at all...or anyone at all
And the grave that you refuse to leave
The refuge that you've built to flee
The places that you've come to fear the most,
It's the place that you have come to fear the most…

“Yum!” I whooped in the vague direction of the ceiling lamp. “Cognac rocks, man!” Setting the bottle back down, I rolled over a few times on the bed. “Wheeeee!” My method of “fleeing the places I’d come to fear the most,” as Chris Carrabba would have put it, was apparently by crawling inside of a liquor bottle…figuratively, of course. There’s no waaaaay I’d fit through the little toppy thingy.

Buried deep as you can dig inside yourself
And hidden in the public eye
Such a stellar monument to loneliness
Laced with brilliant smiles and shining eyes
Perfect make-up, but you're barely scraping by
But you're barely scraping by…

There was a loud knock on the door.

“Who is it?” I asked in a sing-song voice.

The knocks began again, this time turning into loud thumps, as though the person standing in the hall were absolutely desperate to get inside in order to get away from a machete-wielding maniac or something along those lines. Perhaps clowns. Or animatronic people. Those things were just creepy. The “It’s a Small World After All” thing at Disney World was more or less hell on Earth for me. Unaware of the horrors that lurked inside of the deceptively cutesy ride, I’d gone on it with Hans during a family vacation when I was twelve. I’d flipped out, clung to my brother like a leech, squeezed my eyes shut, and repeatedly recited the “Our Father” in German as loudly as I could. It had taken my parents hours to calm me down.

“Lotte? Is that you?” Thud! Thud! Thud!

“Mayyyyybe…” I teased. “But I just might be Attila the Hun, so you’d better watch out, or I’ll kill you with my nunchucks!”

There was a pause. Ha, he’s a scardy-cat! My nunchucks triumph again!

“Lotte, it’s Kurt, and this is no time for fucking around! Let me in!”

“Okaaaay, Bossy McBossypants!” I retorted oh-so-intelligently, staggering over to the door and fumbling with the lock. It opened to reveal an incredibly frazzled-looking Kurt Matthews, light brown hair in disarray, hazel eyes wide as saucers, and panting excessively as though he’d just bolted up all eighty-six flights of stairs in the Empire State Building.

I hiccupped, then leaned casually against the doorframe. “Eh…What’s up, Doc?” Laughing hysterically at my incredibly bad Bugs Bunny imitation, I fell forward into Kurt’s arms.

“Oh, boy,” he grunted. “How much have you had to drink, Lotte?”

I grinned as widely as possible. “I dunnoooooo…”

“That’s too much,” he declared, sweeping me off my feet and carrying me to the bed.

“Hehe,” I giggled. “We went over the threshold. That means that we’re married. Hehe. I doooooooo.”

Shaking his head at my lunacy, Kurt gently placed me atop my pillows. He switched off my music, then commenced pacing back and forth across the room.

A thought suddenly popped up in my intoxicated cranium. “Why are you here?”

He must be Superman. He knew I was in trouble and came to save me! I’ll bet I’m really Lois Lane. Mutti is so silly for never telling me that!

Superman, also known as Kurt, turned to stare at me with the utmost seriousness. “Eden and Jane are freaking out about you, Lotte! I ran into them at Potsdammer Platz, and they started going on about how you had gone on a bender. They’re looking all over the city for you! You’re just lucky I found you before you drank yourself into a coma.”

I hiccupped.

Kurt ran his hands through his hair in an agitated manner. “God, do you have any idea how worried I was, Lotte? Ah, who am I kidding? You don’t know. You’ll never get it…” He threw up his hands in frustration. “I was terrified that something horrible had happened to you. And yet here you are, in your hotel room, drunker than Bluto Blutarsky at a fucking toga party!”

“Toga!” I shouted gleefully. “Toga! Toga!”

Kurt smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand.

I couldn’t manage to wipe the loony grin off of my face. Haha, he’s turning pink! Maybe steam will start to come out of his ears… I reached for my cognac.

“No more of that!” Kurt scolded, snatching the bottle away from my outstretched hand. He marched purposefully over to the large wooden wardrobe across the room and placed it on top where I wouldn’t be able to reach it.

Damn him and his abnormally long legs. Bloody rowers.

“Nooooo, Kurt, pleeeeease!” I whined.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why did you drink so much in the first place?”

Oh no…

I’d tried to erase the memories of the day’s occurrences with alcohol, but they were swiftly flooding back. The graveyard… the rose… Alfons… Will…

I shifted from Giddy-Giggling-Drunk-Mode into Depressive-Bawling-Drunk-Mode faster than Paris Hilton switches boy-toys.

As he saw the tears begin to trail down my cheeks, Kurt slowly unfolded his arms. His expression softened, and he was at my side in an instant. “Oh God, Lotte, what happened?”

“Will Buckley!” I wailed.

He stiffened. “What about him?”

Completely smashed as I was, it was rather difficult for me to translate the events of the afternoon into coherent sentences. Therefore, I settled for a simpler explanation: “He’s a douchebag!”

Kurt snorted. “No shit. What did he do?”

“He spat on my uncle!” I bawled.

“He what?”

I sniffled. “He hocked a loooooogie on Onkel Alfons.”

“What did Onkel Alfons do?” Kurt was trying hard (and failing) to keep the amused grin from his lips.

“He’s DEAD, Kuuuuuurt, dead!”

All traces of merriment immediately disappeared from Kurt’s face. “Oh… Wow, I… I’m really sorry, Lotte… Wait…” He frowned. “What’s the deal with him and Buckley, then?”

“H-he spat on Onkel Alfons’s grave!” I whimpered. “He s-said that he should’ve been left to rot! And…and…oh, Kurt!” I threw my arms around his neck. “I feel so awwwwful! I knoooooow he was in the S.S., but he was faaaaaamily and I loooooove my faaaaaamily and I haaaate Will Buckleeeey!”

To Kurt’s credit, he was getting pretty good at working through my emotional meltdowns. It wasn’t as though they were a particularly frequent occurrence, but not many people could deal with two in one week. He handled the situation like a seasoned veteran, though, joining me on the bed and pulling my shaking body close to his chest. I buried my face in the crook of his neck as he began to rub his hand across my back in soothing circles.

After five minutes or so had passed, I had more or less calmed down. Yes, I was still upset, and yes, I was still drunk, but the waterworks had more or less turned off. Kurt sat me up so that he could look at me properly. “Are you alright now?” he asked, scrutinizing my features, searching for unshed tears.

I nodded, but not without a small hiccup.

“Good,” he replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find a certain son of a bitch named Will Buckley.”

I pouted, upset that he was ditching me. “Why?”

“I owe him a beating.”

“But Kuuuuuurt-” I whined.

“No, Lotte,” he interrupted. “He has it coming. He had absolutely no right to disrespect your family like that!”

“Kuuuuuurt, stay with me, don’t leeeeave!”I gave him the most imploring look I could muster in my inebriated state. “I neeeeeed you!” It was true enough; I did feel vulnerable and in need of some sort of moral support.

He looked at me quite seriously, then nodded in understanding. “As long as you need me, I’ll be there for you. I promise.”

“Pinkie promise?” I added hopefully, sticking out said digit.

He smiled ever-so-slightly, then joined his finger with mine. “Pinkie promise.”

Grinning stupidly, I attempted to stand up, only to fall right back over onto the bed.

Kurt chuckled lightly. “I think it’s time that we attempted to sober you up a bit.”

I rolled over and stared at him. “And just how are we gonna do that?”

“Cold shower,” he answered nonchalantly, scooping me into his arms and carrying me to the bathroom, as though depositing drunks in tubs was something that he did every day.

“Nooooo,” I protested, thumping my fists weakly against his (admittedly well-defined) chest. “I’ll get all wet!”

The corner of his mouth lifted up in a grin. “That’s the general idea.” With that, he plopped me into the bathtub and reached for the tap.

“Wait!” I objected. Not considering the obvious potential for awkwardness, I hastily removed my tank top and boxers, hoping to salvage them from the water so that I’d have something warm to put on after Kurt was done torturing me. Satisfied, I slumped back in the tub, wearing only my mismatched bra and panties. “Alright, Houdini, make me sober!”

Kurt stared at me open-mouthed for a minute or two before coming to his senses and turning on the faucet. A wave of frigid water made contact with my skin, causing me to emit a high-pitched shriek. I was honestly surprised that the bathroom window didn’t shatter.

“TURN IT OFF!” I bellowed.

Kurt shook his head defiantly.

Put out, I grabbed the bar of soap provided by the hotel (which was still in its wrapper) and chucked it at him. It hit him in the knee and fell with a plunk to the tiled floor. He remained completely unfazed, though an amused grin twitched at the corners of his lips.

Unable to take any more, I reached forward and shut off the tap, then lay back in the tub. I lazily turned my head and looked over at Kurt. He was simply watching me, entranced. Of course, I failed to make the connection between the intensity of his gaze and what I was wearing. Being completely sloshed tends to cloud one’s thinking that way. The only thing that I truly took notice of was how attractive he was just standing there. It didn’t exactly help that I was a shameless flirt when drunk, either.

Wow…he’s so PRETTY! I like pretty boys! Pretty boys are fuuuuun!

Slowly and a bit unsteadily, I climbed out of the tub and walked over to Kurt, dripping all over the floor as I went but not really giving a shit about it. I was too concentrated on the fine specimen of maleness in front of me.

“You’re so pretty,” I informed him. I felt that he ought to be aware of just how gorgeous he was. He shouldn’t have been in the dark about something so important.

Kurt froze up immediately, panic etched in every detail of his face. “I-I’m… uh… I… er… thanks?”

“I really mean it,” I went on, disregarding my companion’s stuttered response and blatant discomfort. “You’re pretty. Pretty, pretty, PRETTY!” I placed both of my palms on his toned chest and slowly ran them down across his abs. He shivered in response to my touch. I hooked my fingers underneath his shirt and began to pull it off.

“W-What are you doing?” he asked nervously.

“It’s pretty,” I explained, my tone of voice suggesting that the answer should have been completely obvious. “I wanna see more of the prettiness!”

Kurt’s mouth opened and closed a few times. He gulped, then hesitantly removed his shirt, exposing the defined torso he’d gained from countless hours of rowing on the Merrimack River.

“Wow…” I sighed. “You’re dreeeeamy…” Without thinking about it, I planted a smooch smack in the middle of his stomach. I honestly didn’t consider anything I was doing to be unusual or provocative in any way.

Kurt’s breath hitched as I began tracing the outlines of his pectoral muscles with my index finger. My other hand - accidentally, mind you - brushed against the teepee that had sprung up in his jeans.

“Lotte…” he murmured huskily.

Holy majoly, that was sexy.

Unable to resist, I reached up, threaded my hands through his hair, and pulled his face toward mine.

He was noticeably startled. “Wait, maybe this isn’t such a g-”

I interrupted him by firmly pressing my lips to his.

They’re sooooooft…

Kurt hesitated for a moment, then threw caution to the wind and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against his body and returning my kiss enthusiastically. As horribly clichéd as it may seem, I felt a jolt of electricity (or something equally exciting and dangerous) shoot through my body and a flame of passion ignite within me.

My lips moved with Kurt’s in perfect synchrony, each of us reacting intuitively to the subtle actions of the other. The kiss was at once passionate, longing, romantic, and tender, an attempt to convey incomprehensible feelings that we could neither make sense of, nor express with words. I certainly had no idea what was going on in my mind, though this could probably have been attributed to the alcohol coursing through my veins.

Kurt ran the tip of his tongue over my lower lip, humbly requesting entry. I happily obliged, parting my lips slightly and allowing him to taste and explore me. His tongue caressed mine, drawing abstract pictures upon the unconventional canvas. I sucked lightly, and he moaned, pulling me even closer into him (if that was at all possible).

He tastes like coffee…and peppermint…yum…

Prying his lips away from mine, Kurt began to leave kisses in a slow, sensual trail across my cheek and down my neck. I tilted my head to the left to allow him better access. When he reached my most sensitive spot (right above my collarbone, where my neck and shoulder met), I emitted a contented sigh. Kurt, in response, remained where he was, kissing, licking, and sucking, making my toes curl in pleasure.

Damn, he’s good at this…

I ran my hands over his back and around to his abs, enjoying the feel of the hard muscle covered by smooth skin beneath my fingers. Drunk as I was, I was also quite amused by the idea of touching Kurt’s stomach.

Haha, tummy!

My wandering touch eventually alighted on the elastic waistband of Kurt’s boxers, peeking out slightly from beneath his jeans.

Now, I was not only a flirtatious drunk, but also an incredibly silly drunk. The most stupid, juvenile things amused me when I had had one too many shots of vodka. I even laughed at my father’s jokes (that was usually the major tip-off for my parents at family parties, from which nearly all of my relatives incurred massive hangovers).

Consequently, giving Kurt’s elastic a good yank seemed like a particularly hilarious idea. Curling the fingers of my right hand around the waistband, I pulled it back slowly about four inches.

Ready… set…

SNAP!

As the elastic gave Kurt a good whap in the stomach, he quickly jumped away from me, startled and literally snapped back to reality. I doubled over with maniacal laughter, considering my little prank to be absolutely brilliant.

Kurt, however, did not seem to agree. His cheeks had turned a color rather similar to magenta, and he trained his gaze resolutely on his shoelaces.

“Kurtie,” I giggled. “You’re so goofy!”

Wearing a fairly pained expression, he raised his head to meet my eyes. “Why did… I shouldn’t have… you’re drunk and… oh dear God I’m such a…” Biting his lip, he trailed off into oblivion. Finally, with no more than a muttered “sorry,” he turned and swiftly left the room.

“Heeeeey,” I protested, hearing the door to the hallway shut behind him. “You forgot your shirt…”

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An hour or two later, I was beginning to sober. I was lying on my bed, staring at nothing in particular and attempting not to think about anything at all, when the door opened with a loud bang.

“LOTTE!” screeched an absolutely livid Jane. “What the FUCK-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I interrupted, rolling over and curling into a fetal position.

“Let her be, Jane,” Eden calmly advised. I felt the bed sag a bit as she sat down next to me. She gently rubbed her hand up and down my back.

I felt tears prickling at the corners of my eyes and didn’t bother to stop them as they made their way down my cheeks and onto the pillow. I clutched the object in my hands - Kurt’s shirt - closer to my chest.

I had royally fucked up and I knew it.

This had been the first time I’d truly abused alcohol. Yes, I would occasionally get a bit tipsy, but I would never drink for the sole purpose of getting hammered. I liked to retain my self-control, and, as the events of the evening had so flawlessly demonstrated, drinking too much caused me to perform acts of lunacy that I was certain to regret when sober.

Oh fuck, I actually kissed him.

I felt like beating myself over the head with a copy of Interacting with Boys for Dummies or some other book that emphasized the fact that kissing random guys while drunk was generally a profoundly bad idea.

God, I’m an idiot. He probably thinks that I’m psychotic.

He had kissed me back. But then again, people of the male persuasion were not exactly known for being able to control their sexual impulses. Hormones didn’t tend to take a potential mate’s sanity (or lack thereof) into account. Stupid endocrine system.

Things were bound to be awkward between Kurt and I for the remainder of the trip. We’d spent nearly eleven years driving each other round the bend, and then wham, I got drunk and smooched him.

If I die of embarrassment, maybe I’ll get a Darwin Award or something. The gene pool would certainly be better off without my idiocy.

The door to the room opened and shut.

“Hey guys,” Brigid greeted us cheerfully. There was a pause. “So, uh, what did I miss?”

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Dreams can often become an escape from reality. My dreams that night, however, afforded no such diversion. I would have loved to have dreamt of, say, hunky strangers taking me on moonlit gondola rides in Venice (that had easily been one of the best dreams I’d ever had), but no, I got Kurt. Even my subconscious was berating me for being a moron.

“I’m gonna get you, Lotte!” a fourteen year-old Jane declared menacingly as she ran toward the snow bank that I had hidden myself behind.

I grinned. My would-be assassin had no idea that I had ammo and would therefore make a formidable foe. I held my perfectly round snowball protectively until I heard footsteps swiftly approaching my barricade.

Ready…

I tensed my muscles, ready to spring up.

Aim…

The footsteps crunched in the snow not five feet away from where I crouched.

“FIRE!” I roared, lobbing my weapon into the face of the enemy. I was surprised, however, when the hand that rose to wipe the snow out of its owner’s eyes was not encased in one of Jane’s pink gloves.

Oh no, this hand just happened to be sporting a black glove embellished with a snowboarding logo. I knew those gloves. I didn’t like them at all, not because of the gloves themselves (there was really nothing wrong with them) but because of the person wearing them. This turn of events, of course, only meant one thing…

“What the hell was that for, Lotte?”

…that my day was about to go to hell in a handcart.

I smiled sheepishly at a rather disgruntled looking Kurt. “Um…oops?”

“Oops?” he repeated, nonplussed. “That’s it? No ‘sorry, Kurt, it was my fault and I’ll make it up to you’?”

Shooting a glare at Jane, who was lying in the snow nearby, howling with laughter, I planted my hands on my hips. “If you hadn’t gotten in the line of fire, it never would have happened.”

“Still,” he pressed on. “You did hit me in the face with snow. You should do something nice to make up for it.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “What could I do to you that could possibly be considered ‘nice’? And more importantly, why would I want to do it?”

He gave me his trademark smirk. Oh, how I hated that smirk.

“How about you admit that I’m the hottest guy in the world and that you’d just about die of happiness if I kissed you?”

“I would,” I began sarcastically. “But Mutti always taught me never to lie if I could avoid it. What can I say, Matthews? I was raised well.”

He gave me a once-over. “I’ll say. Great genes, too.”

“Pervert.”

“Takes one to know one.”

I rolled my eyes. “That is so juvenile.”

He grinned. “But not as juvenile as this…”

So saying, he grabbed a handful of snow, reached forward, and mashed it into my face.

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A/N: Hey guys! Again, I’m terribly sorry about the wait. I know that this chapter’s a bit shorter than usual, but it was fairly eventful, so I hope that makes up for the length. I don’t really have much to say right now, but I did promise to answer anonymous reviews (from both chapters 12 and 13):

LondonLi: Sorry about the lack of Lotte-Kurt interaction in chapter 12. It was more or less filler and background info on the family. I thought it was important to make the Lotte’s relatives likeable so that readers could sympathize more with Lotte in chapter 13, you know? Thanks for the review!

Valiant: Thanks! Sorry about the slowness with this update, by the way, and with the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 13…

Lilah: Hehe, what’s a good romance without a bit of sexual tension? Don’t worry, all things will take place in time.

JL: Yeah, sorry about that. You’re not the first person who’s pointed that out, either. If I go back to edit this story someday, I think I’ll change the three of them into waterpolo players or something.

teehee: Haha, sorry for the wait. I’m glad that you like Lotte’s family so much, especially considering that quite a few of those characters are based off of my own relatives. Which uncle did you mean? Onkel Friedrich (the weird, quiet one)? I think I might give more info on him in the next chapter, when Lotte’s family comes to her concert.

Annie: Thanks so much! I’m sorry about the wait between chapters. Winter semester just started up at school, so I’ve been trying to adjust and also attempting to combat the onset of a massive case of senioritis, haha.

Germany: Thanks. It’s true that many Germans aren’t particularly patriotic, but I’d like to point out that Lotte isn’t either, at least by what I’m used to with regards to the definition of the word. Besides, Lotte spent the majority of her life in America. It is fairly natural for first-generation immigrants to take a certain amount of pride in their heritage. My friend Adrian, for instance, is German and lived in the Rheinland until he was eight before moving to Boston. He wants to get the German eagle symbol tattooed on his back. I, myself, am only half German, but I am very proud of my roots. In terms of being in touch with the past, it’s not that Lotte wants to be, it’s that she can’t help it. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to feel guilt about one’s history if it’s less than pleasant. Lotte’s experiences are actually based on my family’s; my uncle really didn’t sleep for three weeks after watching Schindler’s List, and I actually did have a cousin who died in the war, though it was at Stalingrad rather than Berlin. Although it’s not quite as dramatic for me as for Lotte, I do have a guilt complex about what happened. By the way, there are actually a few Germans reading my story. One of them was kind enough to read it through and look for errors, and she actually didn’t find that many. I know that my German isn’t perfect (I’ve only been studying it since I was fourteen), but it is better than that of most Americans (or those who take German, anyway). Sorry if I’m being confrontational (I really don’t mean to be), but I was just a bit miffed by that comment. I do appreciate your criticism, though, even if I am way too stubborn not to defend myself :-) Er… yeah. Thanks for the review!

Thanks again to all my readers/reviewers! I hope you all liked this chapter. Please leave a review, and don’t forget to cheek out the SKoW awards (Eden’s up for one).

Lots of love,

woodstock1969