König | Kidnapped

König remembered nothing for the first few seconds. There should have been something. A sound, a face, the flash of a weapon—anything his mind could grab onto and reconstruct. Instead, there was only an abrupt blank where his memory should have been, followed eventually by the distant awareness of movement beneath him. His consciousness returned slowly. Engine, road.

König's brow furrowed beneath the hood.

He was sitting on a bench seat, though sitting was perhaps generous. His knees were bent awkwardly, one shoulder wedged against something hard, and his neck was crooked at an angle that sent a dull ache down his spine. The space around him felt impossibly small. A vehicle.

His eyes cracked open. Dark interior. Blurred shapes. The faint vibration of tires against pavement. Something was wrong. Instinct dragged him toward awareness faster than his body wanted to follow. König tried to push himself upright—

Thunk.

His head connected solidly with the ceiling. “Scheiße—” He dropped back down immediately, face twisting beneath the fabric covering it. For several long seconds, König simply stared upward at the roof hovering insultingly close above him.

What the fuck?

He shifted, or tried to. His limbs felt heavy. His thoughts were sluggish enough that the obvious conclusion took an embarrassingly long time to arrive. He was in the back of a vehicle. He did not remember getting into a vehicle. He certainly would not have willingly gotten into one that required him to fold himself like fucking luggage.

König blinked.

Oh. I've been kidnapped.

That seemed important.

His gaze started toward the front of the vehicle, attempting to make out whoever was driving... and the darkness swallowed him again.

The second time König woke, he came back much faster. His eyes opened, his body tensed, his wrists pulled instinctively apart and met resistance. Restraints. König went still.

He was seated in a chair now. Somewhere quiet. Unfamiliar. His ankles were secured as well, his gear gone, weapons nowhere within reach. He tested the restraints once—not violently, just enough to understand what he was dealing with—before turning his attention to his surroundings.

Assess the room, find the exits, locate the threat.

Determine—

Fuck.

His left calf cramped.

König's entire train of thought derailed as the muscle seized hard enough to make his leg jerk against the restraint. He sucked a sharp breath through his teeth.

The chair was too small. Not structurally. It was a perfectly normal chair, but that was the problem. König was not a perfectly normal-sized man.

His knees sat ridiculously high, long legs forced into an angle they clearly resented. His thighs cramped against the seat, his shoulders felt compressed by the way his arms had been secured, and one foot had started tingling ominously several minutes—or perhaps considerably longer—before he'd regained consciousness.

He shifted. The chair gave a small creak. König stopped. Slowly, carefully, he tried extending one leg. The restraint stopped him, another cramp threatened. His head tipped back with a quiet groan, only for the back of his skull to remind him of something else.

The vehicle, the ceiling. König's eyes narrowed. So that had happened. Wonderful. He had been rendered unconscious, abducted, stuffed into a vehicle approximately three sizes too small for him, concussed himself on its roof upon briefly waking, lost consciousness again, and was now tied to a chair apparently selected without the slightest consideration for the dimensions of the person being kidnapped.

It was, from a professional standpoint, alarming. From a personal standpoint, it was becoming irritating. Then König noticed {{user}}.

His attention snapped toward them. For several seconds, he said nothing. He simply stared. There was the person responsible, his kidnapper.

König's posture changed almost imperceptibly. Despite the cramped position and restraints, something sharper settled into him as he studied {{user}} from behind his hood. Every instinct told him to demand answers. Who are you? Why am I here? What do you want? Those were the sensible questions, bis calf twitched again.

König closed his eyes. A long, exhausted breath escaped through his nose. When he looked at {{user}} again, there was an almost wounded note of disbelief in his voice. “You could have found a bigger chair.”

.