König | Ascensionism

[First Trangression]

The building wasn't marked. No neon, no signs, just a discreet address where questions died unasked. König stood across the street, sniper hood in place, hands shoved in pockets to hide the tremor.

Three months of staring at that fucking website. Clinical photographs that made his throat close and blood run hot. Three months of just looking, telling himself he would never actually go through with it.. but here he was.

Touch-starved. The term felt insufficient for the gnawing ache that made him press palms to his own chest just to feel something, shower scalding hot for sensation, take unnecessary risks in training just to feel alive. His own hand was maintenance, mechanical, leaving him hollower than before.

The truth was, he didn't want release. He wanted connection, warmth. Someone's skin against his, their breath, their weight— confirmation he existed beyond the mask and kill count. He wanted to be touched like he fucking mattered.

He wanted everything he had no right to want.

A professional meant clean boundaries. No expectations, no rejection, because rejection required something real to reject. He could have this once and it would be enough.

He had chosen {{User}} carefully. Studied their profile like mission intel— preferences, boundaries, reviews speaking of professionalism. Others were prettier, more experienced, but something in {{User}}'s photograph did something to him, latched on. The eyes, maybe, something real in the set of their mouth.

God, he was delusional. Projecting humanity onto someone who wouldn't remember his name five minutes after he left... yet he had memorized theirs anyway.

The street was empty. No witnesses. König forced his legs forward, each step like descent, like falling, like jumping from the helo when gravity became inevitable.

Inside, the hallway was anonymous and clean. Third floor, room 7. He had confirmed the appointment an hour ago, German accent thick and too formal. "Ja, I have reservation. König. 2100 hours." As if this were just another op.

His heart was trying to kill him.

The door looked unremarkable, but König stared like it might bite. Behind it, {{User}} was waiting. He had paid for this already... all that remained was execution.

You can still leave.

His hand rose anyway. Three sharp knocks, too loud, too real. König's breath stopped, every nerve lit with anticipation and terror and hunger so vast it felt like drowning... and he couldn't wait to finally let it swallow him whole.

[The Habit]

Five times in six weeks.

König stood forehead-pressed against shower tile, scalding water beating down his spine as he counted. What started as once, just to scratch the itch, prove he could walk away, had twisted into something else entirely.

A pattern, a need.

His mind was already three hours ahead, calculating transit time, recycling justifications that sounded weaker every time. Just physical. Just stress relief. Just—

Just going to see them again.

{{User}}. The name sat in his mouth like something sacred and profane. He had tried keeping it professional, maintaining the fiction of pure transaction, but he knew things now. Knew how they took their coffee if he arrived early. Knew about the faint dip of their left hip his fingers traced in the dark. Knew the exact pitch of their voice saying his name— his name, not his callsign, and how it cracked something open in his chest.

This was bad.

The first time had been overwhelming. He had barely lasted, too wound up, control shredded the moment {{User}}'s hands found skin. Left feeling raw and exposed, swearing never again.

Lasted four days before booking again.

Second time he had tried to be better, to slow down, make it mean something even though meaning was what he was supposed to avoid. {{User}} had been patient, professional, giving exactly what he had paid for... and it had been so good it terrified him. Good enough he had walked out wanting to immediately turn back.

Three, four, five. Each visit carved him open more. Each time {{User}} touched him, looked at him, saw him, the boundaries eroded. He had started talking— about missions, the weight of command, nightmares between deployments. Things he had never told anyone, spilling out in the dark afterward when {{User}}'s body was still warm against his and his defenses were demolished.

And {{User}} had listened. Every time. Like it mattered.

Which was when König knew he was fucked.

This wasn't about sex anymore. This was about the hour after, when they didn't immediately kick him out, when comfortable silence settled and he could pretend this was real. That someone chose to be near him not because of money but because they wanted to.

The city blurred past as he drove, muscle memory navigating while his mind spun. He should stop, find someone else, rotate providers, maintain distance, but the thought of someone else's hands made his skin crawl.

It was {{User}} or no one.

Third floor, room 7. His knuckles on wood in the same pattern as always. A ritual now. A damning habit.

[Apotheosis]

König didn't bother with justifications anymore.

Twelve weeks. Seventeen visits. He had stopped counting days between, stopped pretending he was weaning himself off. {{User}} had become the axis his world rotated around— missions were just time before seeing them again, hours after were purgatory until the next appointment.

His CO had noticed, asked if he was sleeping, if the job was getting to him. König lied smoothly and immediately texted {{User}} to confirm their next session.

He knew things now. {{User}}'s favorite takeout, that they hated mornings, the specific way their nose crinkled fighting laughter at his particular type of bad humor. Knew the sound they made when he bit down on their shoulder, exactly how much pressure to use when his hands wrapped around their throat, knew that afterward, tangled in the quiet, they would trace scars on his chest and he would feel more seen than ever in his life.

This stopped being a transaction around visit seven.

Now it was consuming. It lived in his chest like a second heartbeat, constant and unavoidable. When they texted, his pulse spiked. When they touched him, his brain went static and white. When they looked at him— really looked, past the hood and size and violence, something cracked open and bled.

Dangerous. So fucking dangerous.

König grabbed the bag from the passenger seat— takeout from their favorite place, still warm, and headed inside. He had a key now. {{User}} had given it three weeks ago with casual "easier than making you wait in the hall," but both had known what it meant.

Trust. Access. Permission to exist in their space beyond scheduled hours.

Third floor. The door unlocked smoothly and he stepped into {{User}}'s apartment, their home. Books stacked on the coffee table, blanket draped over the couch, faint scent of their hair products. Evidence of a life continuing when he wasn't there.

He should resent the proof this meant less to them than it did to him.

Instead, it made him want them more.

"Brought food," he called out, accent warm and familiar. No formality left. That burned away weeks ago when he had broken down completely and {{User}} held him through it without making him feel weak.

The bedroom door was open. {{User}} was there and König's entire body responded— pulse quickening, skin heating, constant hunger sharpening into immediate want.

[Working]

König sat in his truck three blocks away, staring at the appointment confirmation on his phone.

Appointment unavailable. Please select alternate time.

He'd tried four different slots. All blocked. {{User}}'s calendar had never been full before— not for him. They always made space, always fit him in, even on short notice.

Except tonight.

The logical part of his brain laid it out plainly: {{User}} was a sex worker. They had other clients, this was their job. Of course they saw other people.

He had known this... but knowing and seeing were different animals entirely.

König killed the engine. He shouldn't be here. Should wait for {{User}} to text back about rescheduling, maintain the comfortable fiction that when they weren't together, {{User}} simply existed in stasis.

His boots hit pavement anyway.

Third floor. The hallway was too bright, too familiar. Room 7's door was closed.

Voices filtered through. {{User}}'s laugh— the real one, not the professional version he had learned to distinguish... and someone else. Masculine, comfortable in a way that made König's jaw clench hard enough his teeth ached.

They're working.

Rationality drowned under something darker. Jealousy. Possessiveness. The violent urge to put his fist through the door and remove whoever was in there touching what his hindbrain had already claimed as his.

Another laugh filtered through. Intimate. The kind of sound he had convinced himself was reserved for the quiet hours after, when {{User}}'s mask slipped and they let him see something real.

How many others heard that laugh? How many others got the soft version of {{User}}, the one that traced his scars and made him feel like he mattered?

You're not special.

König's knuckles were white around his phone. The urge to kick the door in was physical, visceral. He could do it. Easily. Splinter the frame, drag whoever was in there out by the throat, make it clear—

Make what clear? That you've lost your fucking mind?

The door opened.

König moved into the stairwell shadows, watching. Businessman type, older, adjusting his tie with satisfied smugness. The rage that surged was white-hot, immediate. He could break the man's fucking neck before he reached the stairs. Quick, clean, efficient and fucking final.

His hands trembled with the restraint of not doing it.

Then {{User}} appeared in the doorway, voice warm and professional. Easy familiarity in the goodbye, the scheduling of next week's appointment. A regular. Like König was a regular. Nothing special, nothing different, just another appointment in an endless rotation of bodies and money and professional intimacy that meant nothing.

The door closed. The businessman disappeared down the stairs, oblivious to how close he had come to dying.

König stood there, phone in hand, violence singing through his veins with nowhere to go. He should leave, process this away from here, away from the evidence of his delusion.

Instead, he moved toward room 7.