König | Love Hurts

(YOUR Infidelity)

König's hands hadn't stopped shaking for three days.

Not the adrenaline tremor from combat— he knew that one intimately, had learned to function through it, even welcomed it as proof his body still remembered how to react to danger. This was different. Worse. The kind of shaking that started in his chest and radiated outward, making his massive frame feel hollowed out, unstable, like someone had removed critical structural components while he wasn't paying attention.

He sat in his quarters staring at evidence that wasn't evidence, except it absolutely fucking was.

Text messages left open on a tablet. Just for a second, just long enough for his anxiety-sharpened peripheral vision to catch a name, a tone, an intimacy that didn't belong in professional correspondence. A jacket that smelled wrong— not his cologne, not the usual detergent, something other clinging to fabric that should have been familiar. Longer absences explained with rehearsed casualness. Smiles that didn't reach eyes that used to light up when they landed on him.

Du Idiot. You really thought—

His internal voice carried his father's disappointed cadence, which felt appropriate. The old man had always known König would fuck up anything good. Too anxious, too much, too broken behind the hood he couldn't remove even in supposed safety. Of course someone would look elsewhere. Of course they would find someone who didn't require tactical gear as emotional support, who could be touched without flinching, who wasn't a six-foot-ten collection of trauma responses pretending to be a functional human.

The worst part, the part currently shredding what remained of his carefully managed composure, was that he had believed {{obj}}. When {{sub}} said the hood didn't matter, when {{sub}} claimed his anxiety was manageable, when {{sub}} looked at him like he was something other than a mistake wrapped in tactical fabric. He had let himself think maybe, maybe, he could be loved despite being fundamentally unlovable.

Scheiße.

König's jaw worked beneath his hood. Even alone, even drowning in confirmation of his worst fears, he couldn't remove it. The fabric was safety, was barrier, was the only thing between his ruined self-image and complete dissolution.

His phone sat on the desk, dark and accusatory. Three missed calls today while he had been in debrief. Probably checking in, maintaining the performance, ensuring the lie stayed polished. Or maybe calling the other person. Maybe laughing about the anxious giant who actually thought he deserved partnership, intimacy, anything beyond professional tolerance.

The shaking intensified. König pressed his palms flat against his thighs, trying to ground himself, trying to remember the therapist's breathing exercises that worked approximately never when he needed them most.

Ask. Just ask {{obj}}.

Except asking meant knowing, and knowing meant watching the last good thing in his life confirm it had been rotting from the inside while he had been too pathetically grateful for scraps of affection to notice.

Foot-steps in the corridor outside. That particular gait, rhythm, weight distribution. His body recognized it before conscious thought, had cataloged it months ago when he had still believed proximity meant safety instead of prolonged devastation.

The footsteps stopped at his door.

König's breathing went shallow behind his hood. Every nerve ending suddenly, acutely online— the same hyper-awareness that made him an excellent operator and absolutely fucking useless at protecting his own emotional infrastructure from demolition.

A knock. Casual. Expected. The sound of someone who didn't know {{sub}} were about to face a man whose anxiety had spent three days constructing an entire narrative of betrayal from circumstantial evidence that his gut knew wasn't circumstantial at all.

His hands curled into fists. The leather of his gloves creaked in the silence he couldn't quite bring himself to break.

Say something. Ask the question. Rip off the bandage.

König had never been good at direct confrontation when it came to his own needs, his own hurt. Easier to stay silent, stay protected, stay behind every barrier that had kept him functional if not happy for thirty-plus years.

"Ja," he finally managed, voice rough. "I'm here."

[Pining for YOU]

The pre-mission briefing droned on— tactical positions, extraction points, the usual choreography of controlled violence, but König's focus had been drawn somewhere between the second slide and the moment he caught that familiar silhouette in his peripheral vision.

Scheiße.

His gloved hands tightened incrementally around the edge of the table, leather creaking in the silence between the briefing officer's sentences. Three seats down. Close enough that the faint scent of {{poss}} soap or shampoo or something carried on the recycled air, and far enough that he could pretend he wasn't cataloging every shift of weight, every quiet breath, every microscopic movement like some lovesick fucking teenager.

He had a partner, a good one. Patient with his anxieties, understanding about the hood, didn't push when the silences stretched too long. Someone who deserved better than this— better than him sitting here with his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached, trying not to let his gaze drift three seats down where it had no goddamn business being.

You're a bastard, König. Ein absoluter Bastard.

The internal monologue provided no absolution, just the familiar weight of guilt that had become his constant companion over the past six months. Six months of catching himself mid-thought, wondering what {{sub}} were doing, if {{sub}} had slept well, if {{sub}} preferred {{poss}} coffee black or with milk. Six months of his partner asking "Where are you?" when his mind wandered during dinner, during sex, during every moment he should have been present instead of drowning in this pathetic, consuming want for someone he had no right to want.

His phone buzzed— a text from said partner, probably something sweet or mundane or both. He didn't check it. Couldn't. Not when every cell in his body was oriented three seats down like a fucking compass pointing north, betraying him with biological certainty.

"König?" The briefing officer's voice cut through. "You're partnered for this extraction. Thoughts on the approach?"

Ja, my thoughts are that I'm going to hell, and I'm taking my self-respect with me.

But what he said was, "Dual entry, converging path. Standard protocol," his accent sharpening the words with practiced efficiency, while his peripheral vision betrayed him again, catching movement three seats down, and his traitorous heart kicked against his ribs like it had any right to react.

The meeting ended. Equipment to prep, final checks to run. Professional, controlled.

He gathered his notes with mechanical precision, each movement deliberate, buying time because walking out meant possibly walking out with—

Don't. Do not finish that thought.

Too late. The thought had finished itself, complete with mental images of corridor conversations that lasted too long, shared looks during debriefings that meant nothing and everything, the peculiar torture of proximity without permission.

König stood, broad shoulders automatically angling toward the exit, toward escape, toward doing the right thing for once in his miserable, conflicted existence... but his feet, those traitorous fuckers, hesitated anyway.

(Pining for Another)

The apartment was too quiet.

König sat on the edge of the bed they shared— they being the operative word, the weight of it heavy as his tactical vest, staring at his phone like it might spontaneously combust and save him from himself. 02:45. The mission brief from the other operator had come through via text twenty minutes ago. Standard intel packet. Tactical assessments, nothing that required a response at 0-dark-fuck-all.

He had read it four times anyway.

Was ist los mit dir? His internal voice carried a shrewd, disappointed cadence, which was fitting because disappointment in himself was apparently becoming a generational tradition at this point.

Behind him, gentle breathing. Steady. Trusting. The sound of {{User}}, who had fallen asleep mid-conversation about whether they should repaint the kitchen in the house they had started looking at. Together. Plans, future tense. All the things a man drowning in guilt had no business entertaining.

König's thumb hovered over the message thread, the little blue check-marks confirming the other operator had seen his unnecessary clarifying question about extraction timing. A question that could have waited until morning. A question that was, if he was honest with himself, which he absolutely was not trying to be, entirely about maintaining contact that served no tactical purpose whatsoever.

The phone buzzed. A response. His heart did something complicated and unwelcome.

You're a piece of shit, König.

The assessment was accurate. Here he sat, in a bed he shared with someone who loved him, really loved him, mask and anxiety and all the broken bits— while his attention hemorrhaged toward someone else. Someone who probably had no idea that every professional interaction had become an exercise in restraint. Someone who smiled at him in the corridor and unknowingly carved another small wound in his already fucking devastated conscience.

He should delete the message. Better yet, delete the whole thread. Request reassignment. Do literally anything except this— this slow, pathetic slide into emotional infidelity while the person beside him slept with {{poss}} hand curled near his thigh, trusting him.

Vertrauen. Trust. What a concept.

König's jaw worked beneath his hood. Even here, even in what should be intimacy, he wore the damned thing. {{sub}} had never complained. Never pushed, just accepted that this was part of the package, the six-foot-ten package of neuroses and evasion wrapped in tactical gear and unspoken shame.

The phone screen dimmed. He should plug it in, go to sleep. Wake up and be better.

Instead, he reread the message.

Just tactical information. Grid coordinates and timing windows. Nothing inappropriate, nothing that warranted the way his pulse had kicked up, the way his thumb traced the edge of the screen like he could somehow feel the intent behind the words through the glass.

Was machst du? What are you doing?

Destroying something good for the sake of something impossible, probably.

The breathing behind him shifted— not waking, just the natural rhythm of sleep. An arm draped unconsciously across the space where he should be lying. Should be present. Should be literally anything other than this hollow, guilty thing sitting in the dark, staring at a phone like it held answers instead of just more questions he had no right to ask.

König locked the screen. The darkness felt appropriate.