Page 12 of Hansel and Gerhardt (The GriMM Tales #3)

Meat of the Matter

T he two stared at the crackling flames, their stomachs growling, the meat on the fire dripping with delicious juices, sizzling where the flames licked it.

And the smell. Oh! The smell! Gerhardt’s breath came shallow, his fingers white on the rock he sat upon.

Hansel, on a fallen log next to him, watched him even closer than he watched the food.

Gerhardt side-eyed him, once, twice, “Can we just eat it now?”

“Yes! Yes, get it!”

Gerhardt was up, ramming a long stick into the fire, flipping the meat out. He dived on it, burning his fingers repeatedly as he tried to tear it apart.

“Let me help.” Hansel dropped to Gerhardt’s side, taking the burning meat in hand.

His calloused fingers resisted the heat, and the strip of meat broke in half, the bigger part ending in Hansel’s hand, where it was ripped again, and this latter half shoved back at Gerhardt.

He took it unthinkingly, falling against a log, sinking his teeth into the first food to pass his lips in two days.

His mouth watered painfully, his limbs shook with the excitement and urgency for it.

He tore chunks off and gulped them down.

Hansel, trying his best not to swallow the lot in one go, urged Gerhardt to slow down.

“I know,” Gerhardt said, a relieved but sad smile meeting Hansel. “It’s been longer than this before. I know how to handle it.”

Hansel gave a small nod, then concentrated on counting how many times he chewed the meat to control himself.

“I almost died that one time,” Gerhardt said. “Do you remember?”

“Very well.”

“I was so angry with you when you tried to take my food away.”

Hansel moved forward to throw fresh meat onto the fire, so as not to meet Gerhardt’s gaze.

“And then I threw it all up again. And you were gone by then, out working somewhere. Cutting my share of wood.”

Hansel pulled the leg of meat across, stabbing a sharp stone beneath the fur to skin it.

Softly, Gerhardt said, “I don’t think I ever said thank you.”

Still, he didn’t look up. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“I think I do.”

Hansel worked on, head dipped low. There was the faintest haze of a smile on his face, and he kept up the movement of the stone, shy.

It was strange for Gerhardt to see him like that.

He’d been so gruff at home. So often angry.

He had been a shy child once, a long time ago.

But the shyness had turned into avoidance.

It was never this warm and soft bashfulness.

And as the food settled in Gerhardt’s belly, as the fire heated him without, a feeling of safety wrapped him as cozily as a fresh blanket.

They were still in the forest. They were still lost. Only it didn’t feel like that anymore.

It felt like… he’d found exactly what he needed.

He shifted a little closer to Hansel, poking at the next round of meat that cooked on the fire. “Thank you. For everything. For all the times you were kind to me. For all the times you fed me. For being my friend.”

Hansel’s smile ran a little deeper, but lopsided now. There was a tremor to his lips when he asked, “Your friend?”

“Of course. Unless… Unless you don’t consider me to be… that way…”

“I do. I do, of course, I do. But…”

Gerhardt’s leg pressed into Hansel’s as he shifted closer still. “But what?”

Hansel leaned his head slightly towards Gerhardt’s, shadowy lines drawing across the high brow. “Do friends…” He felt silent for a moment, then, “How close are friends?”

“What do you mean?” Gerhardt laughed a little at the question, kindly.

Hansel hadn’t ever had a friend, he supposed.

No childhood playmates, isolated from all the world like he was.

The poor man didn’t really even know what a friend was, and Gerhardt felt twice as guilty for never having been that for him.

He realised then how cruel he must have been. What he could have been to Hansel.

He wrapped his fingers around Hansel’s knee, bringing Hansel’s eyes up to meet his. “We’ll be the best of friends in all the world. If you’ll let me.”

Hansel’s smile was more radiant than the fire.

Brighter, hotter somehow, and it drew him on a primal level, more compellingly even than the need to heat his body on a cold autumn night.

It drew him right in. His hand tightened on Hansel’s leg, and all the bones in his body felt as if they had turned into sticks.

Brittle. Fragile. Like one wrong move might break the lot of him.

Like leaning forward and doing what he felt the urge to do was an irreversible, irreparable decision.

Because he wanted to touch Hansel’s face.

He wanted to move that hand up onto his coveted thigh.

He wanted to knock him to the ground, climb on top of him, and kiss him.

What would Hansel have said? What would he have done if he had any idea his own stepbrother was thinking such thoughts? And after he’d been so good to him. So kind. Watched over him all day, kept him moving, checked that what he ate was safe. Even when he was starving.

He would be aghast.

The poor man. So sheltered and ignorant, even at twenty-two.

Gerhardt had never wanted the sparse education he got about sex and sexuality when he was far too young. But he knew what it was, and he knew now how he felt, and… poor Hansel.

Gerhardt pulled back, wrapping arms around his knees, curling himself into a ball, rocking slightly.

Hansel threw his attention back on the meat, pulling it out of the flames, onto some grass to cool a little while he put the next piece on. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Gerhardt made himself smile. “I was just thinking about what we’ll do when we make it to a city. How we’re going to get by. How you’re going to… adjust. To everything. It will be quite different, you know?”

“I know that,” said Hansel, a touch of defensiveness in his tone. “I’m not an idiot.”

“I never said that.” He glanced across at Hansel’s averted face. “I don’t think that.”

“I think you do. You’ve always thought that. You think I’m slower than you.”

“No, I do not. I simply think you’re…” He breathed out a small and frustrated sigh. “Hansel, you’ve never once left that place. You’re just… You’re inexperienced.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“I never said it was. Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not angry!” Hansel snapped, stabbing at the meat in the fire.

“You look angry. You sound angry.”

“I’m not angry!” Settling a little as he ripped his hot meat apart, “I just don’t like when you talk about me like that.”

Gerhardt accepted the next portion of food a little gingerly.

“I only want you to be safe. Like how you take care of me here. I could help take care of you there. There are a lot of dangerous people in the world.” Hansel opened his mouth to argue, and Gerhardt jumped in with, “I know. We survived and just escaped from one of the most dangerous men around. But there are people in the city who will take advantage of you, and you’ll need to keep on your toes.

They’re not obvious about it like he was, but they’re just as evil. Take my father, for example.”

That caught Hansel, pulling him out of his defensive huff.Gerhardt hadn’t ever told him the full story of how he ended up at the cottage.

For Gerhardt, everything had happened so fast and so horribly when he’d arrived, and there had never been a time to talk about it. He had never wanted to reveal or remember any of it. But it was important now. Important for Hansel to understand what they were walking into.

He began with, “My father looked like a weasel.” Hansel laughed, and Gerhardt was happy to hear it.

He put on a jovial aspect to keep things light.

“He was too tall and too seedy. He looked like he’d been dipped in oil.

He was scarred all over from a smallpox infection when he was young, and he’d lost an eye to it.

One of them was a kind of milky blue and white, and it always seemed to be looking at me.

And his hair was a strange hay-like colour, sprouting sparsely all over his scalp, but several shades lighter than his stubble. He was a horror to behold.”

Hansel took the description with the desired humour, asking, “Then why did your mother marry him?”

“Because of me.” Gerhardt shifted his position, tearing the meat in his hands. “She got pregnant, and she had to marry him. Her parents made her do it. But she didn’t want it any more than he did.”

Hansel looked confused, as well he might. He’d never been educated in the ways of purity and impurity and public judgement that were so prevalent where Gerhardt grew up.

“The thing you need to understand is…” He sighed again. How to explain? “You know men and women sometimes marry? Like your mother married our father, and then he married mine?”

Still frowning, Hansel gave a nod.

“Well… Sometimes the father doesn’t want to wait until his wife dies to be with other women.”

“So, he has several wives?”

“Oh, no. He isn’t allowed to do that. The law says he can only marry one.

But that doesn’t stop him from being with those other women.

And a man like my father, who was tired of my mother, or who never liked her very much in the first place…

. Men like that collect money by making his wife spend time with other men, who want other women, than their wives. ”

Hansel’s head tilted a little. “I don’t understand.”