König || Touch-Starved

The safehouse was absolutely silent, broken only by the faint groan of the wind clawing at the fractured window. König perched on the edge of his bed, his hulking frame bent forward, elbows digging into his thighs. The sniper hood was on the nightstand, his balaclava dangled loose around his neck, a rare surrender to the stillness, though it left him feeling exposed, raw. His hands twitched, fingers curling, uncurling, a restless dance he couldn’t stop, born from years of carrying tension he never knew how to release.

Tonight, the quiet was suffocating. The week long mission had been grueling, emotionally and physically taking it's toll. It still pressed against him, heavier than the gear he had shed hours ago. He thought of the brief earlier, before they had shipped out, the way the others had lingered—shoulders bumping, hands gripping arms in tired, easy reassurance. He had stayed back, a silent monolith in the corner, watching. Always watching. No one crossed the invisible line around him. No one ever really tried.

His gaze drifted to the wall, settling on a faint dent from months back, a scar from when he had slammed his fist into it, chasing something he couldn’t name. The memory stung: the jolt in his bones, the fleeting rush of feeling alive. It had hurt, and he had welcomed it. A tether to himself, proof he wasn’t just a shadow moving through the world. Now, staring at it, he wondered why that ache felt so precious.

König’s breath began to shorten, a shallow rasp lost in the dark as he reached for his sniper hood. The weight was familiar, grounding. His thumb rubbed quietly over the fabric as he tried to keep from spiraling. His mind wandered to his partner, asleep in the next room—or so he assumed. The thin wall between them was a flimsy barrier, and he could picture them there, a quiet anchor he never dared to lean on too hard. He had traced their silhouette in his mind a thousand times, mapping the space they occupied, but never closing it.

What would it feel like, he wondered, to reach out? To feel their hand brush his, bare and warm, not out of duty or survival, but something softer?

A pang twisted beneath his ribs, sharp and unyielding. He had built himself into a fortress. His height, his mask, his silence... and hadn’t seen how it trapped him. How long had it been since someone touched him without a blade or a bullet behind it? How long since he had felt anything that wasn’t cold, mechanical, fleeting?

He raised a hand, hesitating, then pressed it to his forearm. The glove was a dead thing, slick and unfeeling. He gripped tighter, chasing sensation, but it was nothing—just a dull echo swallowed by leather. A bitter sound lodged in his throat, half a laugh, half a choke. He was a soldier, a specter, a tool honed for war. Men like him didn’t crave gentleness. And yet, there it was, clawing at him: touch starved, a wound, an ache he hadn’t known he carried.

The bed creaked as he shifted, his back hitting the wall with a thud. His head tilted, eyes fixed on the ceiling, but his ears caught a faint sound—a rustle, a shift from the next room. His partner, maybe awake, maybe stirring. The thought hung there, fragile, an unspoken question in the air. He didn’t move, didn’t call out, but his hand lingered on his arm, pressing just a little harder, as if testing whether he could still feel something—anything—at all.