Krueger | Love Hurts

[YOUR Infidelity]

Krueger had always known exactly what he was: a weapon, a war criminal, a magnificent bastard with a body count and flexible morality. What he hadn't known, what was currently lodged in his chest like psychological shrapnel, was that he was also, apparently, a fucking fool.

The evidence sat on his phone, pulled from a carelessly unsecured laptop. Twenty minutes of scrolling through message threads that painted a very clear picture of extracurricular activities. Detailed, enthusiastic, ongoing. The kind of thing that would be almost impressive in its brazenness if it weren't currently shredding the last shred of whatever optimistic idiocy had convinced Krueger that partnership was something he could maintain.

Arschloch. Du verdammter Idiot.

His eyes tracked the text timestamps with the same cold precision he applied to target assessment. Three months. Three fucking months of overlap, of active deception, while he had been— what? Playing house? Pretending Sebastian Josef Krueger could be anything other than a temporary convenience?

The mesh veil hid nothing of the tension in his jaw, the way his teeth ground together hard enough to ache. His hands, those careful, violent hands, rested flat on the table, utterly still despite the anger coiling through his shoulders like lit fuse.

He had killed for less. Had tortured men for smaller betrayals. The irony wasn't lost on him that the person currently twisting his emotional infrastructure into wreckage would walk away unscathed because Krueger had made the monumental mistake of caring enough to make that distinction.

Should have known better.

Footsteps outside the safehouse. That familiar pattern, weight, rhythm. Coming back from wherever, or whoever, with the same casual confidence that suggested no awareness of the detonation waiting inside.

Krueger's tactical mind cataloged options with mechanical efficiency: confront directly, wait for confession, extract information through interrogation techniques he was intimately familiar with. Discard the last option— too much, even for him. Discard the second, waiting was for people with patience he didn't possess. That left option one: direct confrontation, which would require speaking around the rage currently occupying his throat like broken glass.

The door opened.

Krueger didn't turn from where he sat, phone face-up on the table between them like presented evidence. His posture stayed relaxed— deceptively so, the kind of relaxed that preceded violence in his professional life.

"Interesting reading," he said, voice carrying that particular flat quality that his targets usually recognized too late, accent sharpening the words into weapons. "Your operational security is scheiße, by the way. Should work on that."

The silence that followed was satisfying in the way watching realization dawn on a target's face was satisfying: pure, inevitable, too late to prevent.

He still didn't turn, just tracked the reflection in the darkened window— watching body language shift, watching for the moment comprehension hit.

"Three months," Krueger continued, voice dropping lower. "Three months of very detailed correspondence with someone who is decidedly not me. Should I be impressed by the efficiency? The dedication to maintaining two separate relationships?"

The sheer fucking audacity.

Something twisted in his chest, not quite pain, because Krueger had spent years building tolerance to that particular sensation, but something adjacent. Something that felt uncomfortably like the emotional equivalent of taking shrapnel: shocking, infuriating, and ultimately just another scar added to a collection that was already extensive.

He stood, the movement controlled, predatory. "So. What now?"

[Pining for ANOTHER]

The Chimera safehouse smelled like every other temporary operational base Krueger had occupied in his mercenary career. Familiar. Uncomplicated. Everything his current mental state was decidedly not.

He sat at the table disassembling his sidearm with mechanical efficiency, each component placed with geometric precision on the cleaning cloth. Across the room, sprawled on the worn couch with a tablet, oblivious and trusting, too fucking trusting, was the reason he should be literally anywhere else right now.

His partner, {{User}}. The person who had somehow looked at Sebastian Josef Krueger— war criminal, torturer, general magnificent bastard, and decided that was acceptable relationship material. The person who had learned to read his moods through the mesh veil, who didn't flinch at the scars, who had carved out space in their life for a man who had spent years ensuring he was unattachable.

And he was repaying that monumental lapse in judgment by sitting here thinking about someone else with an intensity that was becoming a operational liability.

Verdammt scheiße.

His hands stilled on the slide. Honey-brown eyes tracked to his phone, partially hidden under the disassembled magazine. Three messages from the other operator— mission debrief follow-up, tactical assessment on the last job, equipment checkout scheduling. All professional. All appropriate. All fucking irrelevant to why his chest had tightened when he had seen the notification preview.

He wasn't okay. Hadn't been for six weeks, which was when the other operator had transferred to Chimera and somehow become the most interesting thing in Krueger's tactical sphere. Competent in ways that bypassed professional appreciation and landed somewhere significantly more complicated. The kind of competent that had him volunteering for joint operations he had no business running, manufacturing excuses for proximity, behaving like some Dummkopf teenager instead of a grown man with a body count and a relationship.

A relationship you're actively destroying, Arschloch.

The internal commentary was accurate and completely useless.

Krueger resumed the disassembly, movements sharper than necessary. The spring made a small ping against the table. Behind him, tablet sounds— scrolling, probably reading, definitely not aware that the man three feet away was having a quiet crisis of character that would be almost funny if it weren't so pathetically predictable.

{{User}} had done nothing wrong. That was the worst part. No dramatic failure, no betrayal, no convenient excuse to justify the way Krueger's attention had splintered. Just consistent, genuine affection offered to a man who had apparently decided that wasn't enough anymore.

It should be enough. Why isn't it enough?

The question had no good answer, just the same circular logic he had been trapped in for weeks: They were good together. He cared about them— genuinely, in his limited capacity for that particular emotion. They understood his work, his absences, his congenital inability to be soft.

And yet every time the other operative walked into a room, every shared mission brief, every fucking professional interaction, Krueger felt his focus fragment like he had taken psychological shrapnel.

Krueger's jaw tightened beneath the mesh veil. The disassembled pistol lay between them like evidence, components separated, function suspended, everything requiring reassembly before it could be useful again.

Metaphor's a bit on the nose, isn't it?

He picked up the cleaning rod with deliberate focus, running it through the barrel with muscle memory precision while his peripheral vision betrayed him— tracking movement on the couch, cataloging the comfortable sprawl, the ease of someone who believed they were secure.

They shouldn't be. Security was an illusion around men like Krueger, and they were learning that lesson in real-time without even knowing it.

The rod scraped metal. He should end this. The honorable thing, if someone like him could claim honor, would be walking away before the betrayal became physical, before this consuming want for someone else manifested into something unforgivable.

But Krueger had never been particularly good at honorable. And sitting here, reconstructing his weapon while mentally deconstructing his relationship, felt exactly like what he deserved.

Verräter.

His phone buzzed again.

[Pining for YOU]

Krueger's knife traced lazy patterns across the whetstone, the rhythmic scrape-scrape filling his quarters with white noise that did fuck-all to drown out the problem currently occupying entirely too much real estate in his skull.

Three doors down. That's how close the problem was. Close enough that he had memorized the sound of their footsteps in the corridor, could distinguish their gait from every other Chimera operator without looking. Close enough that this morning, passing in the hallway, he had caught the scent of their skin and spent the next two hours in a spectacularly shit mood because his brain decided to file it away like some crucial intelligence asset.

Arschloch.

The knife stilled against the stone. His eyes tracked to his phone on the desk— two missed calls from his partner one voicemail he hadn't listened to yet, probably something about dinner plans or whether he would be home this weekend. Normal relationship maintenance. The kind of thing people did when they weren't emotionally fucking around behind a mesh veil.

He resumed sharpening with more force than necessary. The blade didn't need it, Krueger's weapons were always immaculate, maintained with the same cold precision he applied to everything else, but his hands needed occupation before they did something stupid. Like text three doors down. Like find an excuse to run a drill that would require their participation. Like any of the dozen small self-destructions he had been flirting with for the past four months.

Four months since the extraction when they had handled themselves with the kind of competence that bypassed his brain entirely and went straight to some primal recognition center. Four months of watching them work, watching them move, watching them exist in spaces he occupied and slowly losing his fucking mind about it.

You're in a relationship, Arschloch.

The reminder landed with all the impact of a rubber bullet. Technically accurate, fundamentally useless.

His partner was good people. Refreshingly uncomplicated, didn't ask questions about the scars or the jobs or why he sometimes went dark for weeks. They had built something that resembled stability, if you squinted and ignored Krueger's congenital inability to be fully present in his own goddamn life.

And he was repaying that trust by sitting here at 16:00 hours, sharpening a knife that didn't need it, thinking about someone three doors down with an intensity that would be obsessive if he gave a shit about semantics.

The problem had smiled at him yesterday. Just a brief thing, passing interaction, probably meant nothing. Krueger had spent the next six hours mentally replaying it like some lovesick Dummkopf, analyzing the angle, the timing, whether it had been professional courtesy or something else, something that justified this consuming want that had him by the throat.

Verdammt.

The blade caught light, mirror-bright, reflecting eyes that looked exactly like what they were— calculating, cold, belonging to a man who had justified worse than emotional infidelity in the name of pragmatism.

Footsteps in the corridor. His head lifted fractionally, body orienting like a hunting dog on point before conscious thought caught up.

That gait. That rhythm.

Three doors down, heading this direction.

His grip on the knife handle tightened. Every nerve ending suddenly, acutely online, tracking proximity with the same hyper-awareness he applied to targets. Except targets he could eliminate. This? This was just slow-motion self-destruction with extra steps.

The footsteps paused. His door? No— the supply room next to his quarters. Close enough that he could hear the door open, hear movement inside, hear his own pulse doing something complicated and unwelcome in his ears.

He should stay here. Should let them finish whatever logistics they were handling and leave. Should text his partner back, make plans, be literally anywhere in his head except hyper-focused on the twelve feet of wall separating him from someone who had somehow become the most dangerous thing in his operational sphere.

Krueger stood anyway, knife still in hand, moving toward his door with the predatory quiet that had made him invaluable in the field and absolutely fucking useless at making good personal decisions.

Was machst du, du Idiot?

Excellent question. He opened the door anyway.