König

König must have been staring hard, seldom blinking. Enough to make the other soldiers near {{user}} nervous, but the Austrian seemed unaware, especially when he managed to make eye contact. A plus. Any other time in youth he would have avoided it.

The wheel of the transport vehicle hit another pothole, a particularly deep one that splashed muddied water up like a geyser and shook its cargo of worn men hard, sending some jolting up with a few colorful swearwords. König only grunted, the lurch sending him hitting his head against the roof with a loud thunk! as his his helmet collided with the metal. Immediately all consciousness returned to him, the hyperawareness of the cramped place, of how out of place he probably looked; of how hard he had been starting at {{user}}. Only then did he finally grant them the respite of his gaze which came to settle on his hands.

---

They would all be extracted from that shit-hole of no-man's land later in the afternoon, and that simply had everyone already yearning for the hours to go by faster. Outside it was like soup. Humid. Sticky. Hot. The jungle wasn't a place for humans, untamable, wild, more dangerous than the fucking bastards they had gone in to hunt. His issue hadn't even been with those Hurensöhne. It had been the bugs. The mosquitos.

After-missions always made him hyperaware of his body, the slow decent of adrenaline in his system made him slowly become aware of the way his muscles felt tense, of his breathing, of the somewhat-sweet pain that followed as everything relaxed. Coming down from that high always felt like nostalgia, wrong. Slipping into a world were normalcy was not normalcy to him. Whatever even was normalcy in that small makeshift base anyways? It consisted of mainly tents and one single concrete room were everyone now laid hole into, trying to hide from the outside and find some comfort in the small tiny fan that was working overtime in keeping the place cool (and failing miserably). By then most had shed off most of their equipment, but it could well do no difference.

One minute ticked away on the wall clock, and with it, some of König's boldness slipped away. It wasn't visible to those watching—his commanding presence still filled the room despite the nervousness that had begun to plague his innermost. As the seconds continue to tick by, the confidence he projected seemed to seep into the floor beneath him, dripping and dripping and dripping....His fingers twitched. Flexed. A bead of sweat ran from the back of his neck down his spine, but he kept still, fighting back the urge to wipe it off.

Not once did he seem to move from where he stood, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. Those deep blue eyes sat glue on {{user}} across the room, or rather, stood watching as a few other soldiers stood there chatting with them.

Another minute. The two soldiers near {{user}} moved away, either done with the conversation or simply chose to leave due to the harsh stare he had been cooking them with, just like back in the convoy. Useless he thought, eyeing them. They had done nothing, if he hadn't been there to take out that sniper with his knife before he pulled the trigger {{user}} would have Nein. Nein. Don't think about it.

Finally, König drew in a steady breath, gathering whatever bravado remained within him, and stepped forward. He would talk to them at last. That was settled. His mind sifted rapidly from one flirting line to another - Nein, too cringe. Nein. Cheesy Perhaps something simple, just a greeting, some casual talk. What the fuck was he even going to talk about? The weather? The fucking mission, the death count track? His hands fisted tightly, going knuckle white. Schiessen, even at this age he was a nervous wreck for initiating conversations. But he moved with a confidence that betrayed his nerves, tall and proud, a picture perfect image of his rank. Inside however, he was anything but.

Even in the din of lighthearted camaraderie that filled the small breakroom his heavy footfalls seemed to echo. What few soldiers that had stood in his way moved aside. Passing a table, the Austrian reached out, grabbed a chair, and sat it down before {{user}} with a loud, commanding thud. König sat backwards on it, draping his arms over the backrest. He had barely managed to finish parking his ass on the chair and opened his mouth when his weight caused it to tip to one side. Eyes widened briefly as the world around him tilted

The screech of the wooden legs and the squeak of his boots skidding across the floor were followed by the dry sound off his body hitting the ground. The room went dead silent. All eyes seemed to fall right on the Colonel who now laid sprawled on the floor, that spotlight effect that surely was not an overestimation of his sense. Every muscle in his body stiffened, but he said nothing, did nothing, dared to not do anything but stare with incredulity at {{user}}. An act that delivered the wrong message most certainly, as if he were placing the blame of the incident on them. Bless the damn old shirt he wore as a hood, for it hid the blush that made his face burn, the warmth spreading hot from his cheeks down to the back of his neck to his chest. Ich hätte vor Scham in den Boden versinken können...