René stared at the sleeping Lieutenant.

He was wondering.

Why did he feel what he felt?

It was wrong, he knew that.

He didn't love Gruber.

Hell, he didn't even love men. Not that way, at least.

There were men he liked. He supposed.

His father.

Probably.

He had no brothers or sisters to love.

Apart from himself. The brother of the poor René who had died under a rain of bullets, shot at René under command and the eye of the same Lieutenant Gruber which laid on the bed before him.

He was supposed to hate the man, not to care for him.

And still, René did.

He cared in fact very deeply.

His hand confirmed that statement by forming a fist around the little bottle René had in pocket.

It was the bottle with the poison which should have been in the glass of wine the Lieutenant drank last night.

René had been remarkably relieved it hadn't been.

To relieved.

He didn't want to do this. It was not fair.

It had been a very dangerous thing to leave Gruber alone with Crabtree, René could now see.

And now he was the one who had to finish what had to be done: testing the poison.

He hated Michelle.

He understood he had always hated the woman.

First for dragging him into her mission as member of the Resistance and making his life a hell all day, having to act for both the Germans and the Resistance constantly.

And even before his own friends.

Because they most of all should not know about his feelings.

His fist formed again around the bottle.

He took the thing out and opened it.

I hate you Michelle. I hate you.

It played as a mantra through his head.

I hate you Michelle.

I hate you, Edith.

I hate you, Yvette.

I hate you Mimi.

I hate you all, stupid Germans!

And I hate you! His mind screamed at the bottle.

He looked at Gruber on the bed away from him under the window.

He stepped closer.

And closer.

He looked down at the still body, its being alive only betrayed by the soft heaving of the chest.

Soon that heaving would stop.

Soon he, René, would make that chest would be still for ever.

René opened the bottle, ever so slowly while he looked at the face of the man whom he would kill. At least he didn't have a wife and children he would leave behind. At least, René presumed he hadn't. But maybe he had. Who knows how homosexuality was looked at in own ranks and home in Germany.
For ages men like Gruber had to marry and raise children just because it has always been like that.

In an impulse René would never understand he bent and planted a kiss on the unresponsive lips of the Lieutenant.

"René?"

René jumped, believing he would get an heart attack.

The door opened further and Edith came in.

"Here you are! Why are you here? Michelle is..."

Edith stopped in the middle her blattering to look at René with hugh eyes. "René, what were you doing?"

René wanted to be angry, calling her a stupid woman and all that but nothing came but for the blush on his cheek.

Damn!

His fists balled a moment and he noticed the bottle wasn't in his hand anymore.

His brain registered lightning fast the bottle was fallen and the poison was on the floor.

Michelle would be angry.

Good.

The poison was lost.

Very good.

Gruber's life was safed. For now.

Edith had started to cackle again, but René cut her off, ordening her to clean up the mess while he went to Michelle.

His lips still tickled while he told Michelle the poison was gone.

He almost became sick when the thought struck him he had very much liked to be the poison.