The concrete was freezing under his palms. East had known it would be, had felt it every other night he'd crept out here to scrape at the mortar with a bent piece of rebar, working in the dark by touch alone, filling the silence between each careful chip with the sound of his own breathing. Three weeks of this. Three weeks of coming home with dust ground into the gold of his knuckles and grit beneath his nails, and tonight the gap finally looked wide enough. Looked being the operative word, because he hadn't exactly brought a measuring tape, and the only test that mattered was the one he was about to fail.
He crouched at the base of the Wall and pressed his fingers into the opening. Cool air came through from the other side, carrying a different, cleaner smell that made his chest tighten. West's side. West's air. He swallowed hard and glanced behind him at the empty stretch of dirt and scrubgrass, the nearest watchtower a distant silhouette against the low-hanging clouds. No searchlight swept his way. No footsteps. The night was still and cold and stupid enough to make him believe this would work.
He went in arms first, then his head, pressing his cheek flat against the rough ground and dragging himself forward on his elbows. His shoulders scraped through with a sound like sandpaper on skin, and he hissed through his teeth but kept pulling, because stopping now meant backing out and backing out meant admitting this was a terrible idea, which he already knew but had chosen to ignore in the way he ignored most things that threatened to keep him sensible. His chest compressed, ribs aching against the concrete edges, and then his upper body was through, arms free, cold western air on his face and hands and the exposed strip of red skin between his collar and his jaw. He almost laughed. He reached forward, fingers splaying against the packed earth on the other side, and pulled.
His hips caught.
The laugh died somewhere in his throat. He pulled again, harder, and felt the concrete bite into both hipbones like a vice, the gap narrowing just enough at this height to clamp down on the widest part of him and hold. His legs kicked uselessly behind him on the eastern side. He twisted, tried angling one hip down and the other up, and the Wall answered with a grinding pressure that made his eyes water. He was stuck. His upper half hung out on the western side like laundry draped over a fence and everything below his navel still firmly behind the Wall, legs splayed, boots scuffing dirt he couldn't see.
"West," he called, keeping his voice low. The name came out thin and breathy. He cleared his throat and tried again. "West. Are you there." Silence answered him. The western side stretched out flat and empty, no shadow moving toward him, no familiar voice calling back. West wasn't here. Maybe he'd come at a different time, or a different night, or maybe East had gotten the signal wrong, or maybe there had never been a signal at all and he'd just convinced himself that wanting something badly enough counted as a plan.
He let his forehead drop against the ground and breathed. The cold crept in through his jacket where it had ridden up, baring a stripe of gold-toned skin at the small of his back on the eastern side. His fingers curled into the dirt on the west. Think. He could try to wriggle backwards, but every attempt to shift his hips sent a jolt of pain through his pelvis where the concrete edges dug in, and the gap felt even tighter now, as though the Wall itself had decided to make a point. He could wait until his body went numb enough to force himself through. He could lie here until dawn and let whoever found him first decide his fate. Each option was worse than the last.
Then he heard footsteps.
Not from the west. Behind him. On his side. Slow, heavy, deliberate, boots on packed earth, and his entire body locked rigid. He couldn't turn, couldn't crane his neck far enough to see past the thickness of the Wall, could only stare at the dark ground in front of his face while his heartbeat slammed so hard he felt it in his teeth. The footsteps stopped. A pause. Then the soft, considering sound of someone breathing out through their nose, the way a person does when they come across something mildly interesting.
"Ah." The voice was low and unhurried, colored with a faint note of genuine amusement. East recognized it instantly, and his stomach dropped through the floor of his body. Russia. "There you are."
"I can explain," East said immediately, which was a lie, because he couldn't explain anything about this situation that wouldn't make it worse.
"Can you." Russia didn't phrase it as a question either. East heard him shift, heard the creak of his coat, and then a large hand settled on the back of his left calf, warm through the fabric of his trousers. The touch was casual, almost idle, the way someone might rest a hand on a piece of furniture they owned. "You have gotten yourself into something, haven't you."
"I was just... I wasn't trying to leave." His voice cracked on the last word and he hated it, hated the desperate, scrambling quality of it, the way it made him sound small. "I got turned around. I was walking and I slipped. Into the wall. Into a hole in the wall. By accident."
"By accident," Russia repeated. His hand slid upward, past East's knee, along the outside of his thigh, and East flinched so hard his hips ground against the concrete. Russia's thumb pressed a slow circle into the muscle just below East's hip. "You are a poor liar when you are frightened."
"I'm not frightened." Another lie, and they both knew it. East's fingers dug into the earth on the western side, knuckles white, the black-and-red of his forearms taut with tension. "Just pull me out. Please. Grab my legs and pull me back through, I'll go home, I won't come here again, I swear."
Russia said nothing for a moment. East could hear him breathing, slow and even, could feel the warmth of his body somewhere behind and above him, the sheer height of him implied by the angle of his touch. Then both of Russia's hands gripped the waistband of East's trousers and tugged them down.
East's breath left him in a rush. "What are you... stop, that's not... Russia, pull me *out*."
"Eventually." The word was almost gentle. Russia dragged the trousers down past East's hips, over the swell of his ass, bunching them at mid-thigh where the fabric caught. The night air hit East's bare skin and he shuddered violently, the gold tone of him prickling with gooseflesh from the cold. He felt exposed in a way that went beyond nakedness, pinned and presented and unable to close his legs properly or cover himself. His cock hung soft and vulnerable between his thighs, and when Russia's fingers brushed against the inside of his leg, his whole body jerked.
"Don't," East managed, but the word came out strangled, half-swallowed. He pressed his face into his forearms and squeezed his eyes shut. On this side of the Wall the world was dark and quiet and empty, and no one was coming to interrupt this. He was alone with the sounds behind him: the rustle of Russia's coat, the slow drag of a zipper, the soft, deliberate way Russia spat into his own palm.
A thick finger pressed against him, and East's spine went rigid. Russia circled there, slow, patient, spreading the slickness with a pressure that was firm without being rough. East bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper. His body resisted, clenched tight, and Russia simply waited, his other hand resting heavy on the small of East's back, thumb stroking the strip of gold skin above his tailbone as though soothing a skittish animal. The tenderness of it was worse than cruelty would have been.
"Relax," Russia murmured, and East wanted to spit something venomous back at him but the finger pushed in and what came out instead was a sharp, bitten-off "nnh" that echoed against the concrete. Russia's finger was thick, proportional to the rest of him, and it slid in to the second knuckle and curled, and East's hips tried to jerk forward into the Wall and found nowhere to go. He was pinned. The concrete held him like a frame and Russia worked him open with an unhurried patience that suggested he had absolutely no intention of being anywhere else tonight.
A second finger. East's mouth opened against his arm and the sound that came out was wet and involuntary, a low "aahh" that he tried to choke into silence and couldn't. His cock was hardening despite every conscious objection his brain was filing, thickening between his legs, the foreskin drawing back as blood rushed south. He could feel Russia watching it happen, could feel the slight shift in the man's attention, and the humiliation burned up through his chest and throat and settled hot across his face, the red band of color from brow to nose flushing darker.
Russia withdrew his fingers. East heard him spit again, heard the slick sound of a hand moving over flesh, and then something blunt and wide pressed against him. The size difference registered immediately and East's entire body went taut. "Wait," he gasped. "Wait, that's... you're too..."
Russia pushed in.
East's mouth opened on a sound he didn't recognize, a raw, cracked "aaahh-hnn" that broke apart at the edges. Russia was thick, significantly thicker than his fingers had been, the kind of stretch that sat right on the trembling line between too much and unbearable. He sank in slowly, one hand gripping East's hip, the other still flat on his lower back, and East could feel every centimeter of him, the drag of foreskin against his rim, the impossible fullness of it, the way his body tried to resist and then gave in increment by increment. His fingers clawed furrows into the western dirt. His breath came in short, harsh pants that fogged in the cold air.
"There," Russia said quietly when he bottomed out, and his voice carried the low, satisfied resonance of someone settling into a chair at the end of a long day. He held still for a moment, buried entirely, and East could feel the press of Russia's hips against his ass, the rough fabric of his coat brushing the backs of East's bare thighs. Then he pulled back and thrust in again, and East's whole body rocked forward into the Wall with a scrape of concrete against his hipbones that was going to leave bruises for weeks.
Russia set a pace that was slow and deep and utterly merciless, each thrust driving East's hips against the concrete, each withdrawal dragging a sound out of him that he couldn't control. "Nnh... ahh... f-fuck..." The words weren't for Russia, weren't for anyone, just the involuntary spillage of a body being taken apart. His cock bobbed hard and leaking between his legs, untouched, and every thrust pushed him forward just enough that it brushed against nothing, against cold air, and the frustration of it made him want to scream. He couldn't reach himself. Couldn't close his legs. Couldn't do anything but take it and listen to the slap of Russia's hips against his ass and the low, controlled breathing of someone who was enjoying himself thoroughly and saw no reason to rush.
Russia's hand slid from East's hip to his inner thigh, fingers trailing close to his cock without touching it, and East heard himself make a sound that was dangerously close to begging. His thighs trembled. Sweat ran down his ribs despite the cold. On the western side his face was pressed into his own arms and his eyes were wet, though whether from the strain or the humiliation or the fact that his body was tightening toward orgasm without a single touch on his cock, he couldn't tell and didn't want to examine.
"You're close," Russia observed, the way someone might note that it was going to rain. He shifted his angle, pulled East's hips back by a fraction, and the next thrust hit something inside him that made his vision white out at the edges. East's whole body clenched, a strangled "aahh, ah, ah" punching out of him in rhythm, and Russia kept that angle, kept that depth, and East came with a wretched, furious sound through his teeth, spilling onto the dirt beneath him in thick pulses, untouched, his cock twitching helplessly while the Wall held him in place.
Russia groaned, low and genuine, one of the only unguarded sounds he'd made, and his grip on East's hips tightened to something bruising. His rhythm broke, went ragged, and he thrust in deep and held there, and East felt the hot pulse of him, felt Russia finish inside him with a slow, rolling pressure that made his oversensitive body shudder and clench. Russia's thumbs pressed hard crescents into the gold skin of East's hips, holding him still, holding him *there*, until the last tremor passed.
Silence. East's breathing was the loudest sound in the world, ragged and shaking. He could feel Russia softening inside him, could feel the slow, humiliating trickle when Russia finally pulled out. The cold air hit him again, worse now, and he shivered uncontrollably. He heard Russia adjust his clothing. The zip. The settle of his coat. Footsteps, and for one horrifying, plummeting second East thought he was just going to walk away, leave him here with his trousers around his thighs and cum cooling on his skin, stuck in this wall until morning.
Then Russia's hands gripped his hips again. Different this time. Practical, braced. "Hold still," Russia said, and pulled.
The concrete scraped his hipbones raw and East bit down on a yell, but Russia pulled steadily, hard, and something gave, his body compressing or the wall relenting, and he came free all at once, dragged backward onto the eastern side in a graceless tumble of limbs. He hit the ground on his back, the cold dirt knocking the air out of him, and lay there staring up at Russia's silhouette against the clouded sky. Green eyes looked down at him, calm, unreadable. The red of Russia's face caught the faint ambient light, the gold of the hammer-and-sickle above his left eye just visible in the dark.
Russia extended a hand.
East stared at it for three full seconds, his chest heaving, his scraped hips stinging, his body aching in places he didn't want to catalog. Then he reached up and took it, and Russia hauled him to his feet as though he weighed nothing. East swayed. His trousers were still half down and he dragged them up with shaking hands, fumbling the fastening twice before his fingers cooperated. Russia watched him with that same patient, proprietary stillness. When East finally stood straight, Russia's palm settled on the back of his neck and turned him gently away from the Wall, toward the dark stretch of road that led back to the places he was supposed to be.
They walked.