Notes

Ivushkin starts coughing up daisies in the first camp. It's bad timing, but the soft, delicate petals don't even irritate his throat, even though they look ridiculous. Too... innocent for a German concentration camp.
Someone loves him quietly, gently, still, perhaps, not understanding all the feelings, but everyone knows - flowers grow from the throat, only if you do not touch your soul mate. But it's a sign that you happen to meet her. Ivushkin tries to survive only to find her.

Daisies and the thought that for someone else he is his whole life is what keeps him from falling. He could, if he wanted to, kill himself: attack the lookout, try to make a sloppy escape, find a shiv to slice open the veins in his dirty hands. In the first camp, he cures his wound, recovers his strength, and escapes with the first riot, and so he is not shot like the ringleaders of the rebellion but is exiled to another camp. It is there that Ivushkin first remembers the German tank man. It broke his kneecap, and Kolya tries not to recall the defeat, but when his cellmates ask him to tell them something, Ivushkin allows himself to return to the village on the Volokolamsk frontier. And he realizes that there is no girl waiting for him somewhere far away.
***
Jaeger suffers himself quietly as a nameless Russian tanker, carries somewhere in his heart and recalls often when the cognac fogs his head. He would suffer more if it were not for the strict discipline in his brain. Yes, he is brave. Handsome, selfless. Equal. Was a good enemy. Could have been a beloved partner. I don't think he survived, so why be sad. Come on, Klaus, you're no stranger to loneliness.
He doesn't let himself fall apart, only the damp, dirty autumn of the forty-second begins to cough up flowers.

Love begins with sympathy - and these are usually small, soft flowers. Klaus immediately vomits juicy, thick rosebuds. By New Year's Eve, the stems appear, and Klaus has his throat stitched twice from the inside out, joining the bloody rags.
His love is devastating, terrible, on the verge of hatred, and Jaeger realizes that Ivushkin has found out everything. Sometimes it seems to the German that his kindred soul wants to kill him this way - beautifully and brutally, with all the passion of the Russian enemy.
***
Ivushkin hates him. Him - distant and beloved, the one who broke his tank, his life, and his heart.
Kolya had the whole war ahead of him, the battles, the tanks. But he would escape from another camp and get trapped again.

In the long exhausting summer of 1942, the daisies changed to bells, and Ivushkin felt that his German was ill. It was an unexpected pain in his heart, and Kolya mentally apologizes to his soul mate. He knows it is because of him.
It is foolish to shift his anger onto the distant and somewhat defenseless one. Ivushkin lets go of the rules and morals and breathes more freely.
***
Jaeger can't get out of bed for days, periodically losing consciousness, and through a painful haze, he hears what the doctors are saying about surgery. If it lasts another day, they will cut open his chest and pull out the flowers by hand. The roses have ruptured one lung and are drinking his blood instead of water.

"Please," Klaus mentally pleads, "my soul, my heart, my life, it hurts. Stop it, please. It hurts."

He sobs, with no hope of escape, and tries helplessly to breathe.

And suddenly... he lets go.
He opens his mouth, inhaling with his chest full, and for a second, instead of relief, panic hits him: what if he's not in love...? No, no, please! Let it be cruel, hating, but just love, Lord!
And then something new crawls down his throat gently, not even noticeably after the roses.
Jaeger coughs up rounded, fluffy leaves and soft cone-shaped blossoms.

"It's..." the paramedic begins in amazement.

"Peppermint," Klaus says hoarsely. Something sweet and loving and happy spills under his heart.

"Thank you, my love."
***
Ivushkin wheezes, covers his ribs and head with his hands, and sets his backbone. From the front he is softer and more vulnerable, let the Krauts hit in the back better, the skin is stronger there. He can't get away: Kolya is lost in space after a kick to the back of the head and opens his chest. The next moment a heavy black boot crashes into his ribs to a nightmarish crunch and a flash of pain. The Russian screams, tearing up his voice, because it's scary, it hurts, and hatred spills over the edge toward this...freak. Asshole. Son of a bitch.
Fritz growls. Ivushkin managed to learn the demand.

Name. Titel.

Name. Title.

...nothing, Krauts, you won't get...
***
Jaeger senses that something is wrong. Mint leaves at first became small, half-dry, then thinned, lilac fragrant inflorescences disappeared altogether. And then, instead of mint, the creeper grew out. The longest stem had to be pulled by force; it clung desperately, to his throat, his tongue, and his teeth. Klaus swallowed the blood and examined the creeper more closely.
Even given the not-so-careful handling, the plant looked unhealthy. There were no flowers, and the leaves barely clung to the stem. Jaeger pressed his lips together nervously:

"What can I do?"

The plant predictably did not respond.
Klaus closes his eyes and as if feeling someone else's pain.

"I will protect you," he stands up with a jerk, addressing everyone and no one at the same time, "from everyone! From disease, from enemies, from myself, if necessary," he takes the weak, mangled flower in his palms and presses it to his lips.
***
During the next interrogation, Ivushkin spits a soft purple, mangled flower in the Kraut's face. It hits him well - the poison will go somewhere, in his mouth, into his nose, through his skin - it doesn't matter. Fritz recoils and rubs his face away squeamishly, and Ivushkin grins - fearfully, with a broken bloody mouth, like a madman. He recognizes the poisonous autumnal agelessness in its soft petals and deceptive tenderness. Ivushkin is not afraid. All flowers are his flesh and blood, and also part of his kindred soul. He won't get poisoned if he wants to.
Fritz jumps out of the cell and never comes back, and Kolya is transferred to another camp. This is the fifth camp and the end of 1943.
***
Ivushkin realizes that he is at his limit when he is transferred to Ohrdruf. His body, a strong, hardy body on camp rations, has exhausted all his internal reserves. Exhaustion reaches some edge, after which he just doesn't care. Ivushkin collapses in front of the train and is thrown right on top of it, and that is what saves his life. He is pushed back to the window and there he can at least breathe. He coughs up light, weightless pansies and mentally thanks his German. And as soon as the carriage opens, Ivushkin senses that all will soon be well.

Ohrdruf is a little better than the previous camp: it is a base camp, not a prison, the guards are kinder and the routine is lighter. However, the first thing they do is to hang Ivushkin on a hook and try to extract information. But there are no professionals here, so the Russian pretends to be hurt, and they quickly get away from him.

What's really bad is that his cell is cold and damp. Kolya wraps himself in a thin blanket and wipes the blood from his cut wounds. The Fritz, who tortured him, beat him ineptly, out of sheer stupidity, so it did not hurt, but the blood...
Ivushkin suddenly twists, something rolls down his throat in a wave of pain, and he coughs up a whole handful of dandelions. Yellow as sunshine, a little in blood, but despite his pitiable situation, Kolya smiles:

"What are you so excited about, my precious one?"

Something of anticipation rises in his heart as someone scrapes the keyhole with the key from the other side.
Ivushkin does not have time to let the dandelions out of his hands, as the door opens and Kolya gasps for breath.
***
Ohrdruf seems to Jager to be unnecessarily quiet, clean, unproblematic. The constructions are too proper, the prisoners too loud, the air too warm. Where he had served before, the entire concentration camp was blown through with its inhabitants. But despite this, Klaus settles in quickly. He likes it better here: quiet enough to hear footsteps at the door, loud enough to cough up heavy, heavy peonies unnoticed. They're not as painful as roses, but it's still too much. Klaus wrinkles his nose: he has to work, and the petals are coming out of his throat.

He sorts out the papers, leisurely destroying three cups of coffee one by one, steps back to the window, sticks out halfway, in his boyish stupidity trying to reach the tree next to the window, and returns to study the files on the future tankers.

He looks through one, another, his subordinates are talking behind him, and Jaeger easily slips his gaze from the name and rank to the photo.
Something inside soars like an airplane to the clouds. Klaus gasps and can't get enough of it.
Afterwards, he will not remember how he flew there, ordered to be let into the cell, could not get the key into the keyhole for a long time. The girl interpreter sneaks indifferently behind his right shoulder, and Jäger completely forgets about her.

He enters without taking his eyes off the Russian, frozen in the corner. In his hands is a handful of dandelions, and Klaus knows who is to blame. This awakens the possessive and jealous man inside, and the beast inside growls contentedly.
Klaus hesitantly freezes three meters away, waiting for a reaction. The captive looks him over, as if he can't believe it, and then stretches his arms forward and whispers softly:

"You..."

And then they are thrown towards each other, and the girl cries out frightened, and they kneel on the floor, and Klaus presses his boy to him, thinking that he will have to fatten him up - he is weak and frail.

"You, you, you... My savior, my precious, beloved, beautiful," the Russian whispered in a strangled voice.

"What is your name?" Klaus asks, warming the boy in his arms. They sit on a hard couch and the German kisses the Russian, who is nestled in his lap, with bruised knuckles.

"Nikolai Ivushkin," Kolya says muffledly, his nose resting on his shoulder.

"Kolya..." Jager dreamily drawls. "Kolenka..."

The boy snorts and kisses him with flowery, fragrant lips.

His chest doesn't hurt for the first time in three years.