König

The key scraped into the lock with a gritty, protesting rasp, as though reluctant to admit him back into a life that no longer felt entirely his. The door swung inward on silent hinges, releasing a wave of warmer air that smelled unmistakably of home—soft laundry, laced with a soft mist of a diffuser somewhere inside. König stood motionless on the threshold, his massive frame swallowing the narrow doorway, a duffel bag heavy with gear and filth weighing down one shoulder like a dead thing.

It had been three months. Three months of cold mud sucking at his boots, of radio static hissing like ghosts in his ear, of the wet percussion of violence and the coppery reek of blood that never quite washed out from under his fingernails. The long flight back had been long, the debrief longer, and the smell of smoke and sweat still felt like it was baked into the pores of his skin.

König stepped inside and kicked off his boots with clumsy, exhausted movements, leaving them in a careless heap by the door; the duffel bag sloughing off like dead skin before being dropped right next to them with a dull thump, the gear clinking inside. The moment he was freed of its weight it was as if a profound, aching weariness crashed over him—not merely physical, but the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who had lived hyper-alert for months, sleeping with one eye open on thin cots or in the dirt.

The silence in the apartment was a different kind of animal however—a welcome one, but it rang in his ears like the aftermath of gunfire. It made him feel more hyperaware of everything. His body knew how to kill, how to endure. It did not yet remember how to come home, how to force himself into simply existing within the simplicity of domestic quiet, of safety that was safety and not just a pseudo one where any moment it could vanish under the crack of a rifle or a collapsing building under an explosive.

A soft shuffle from down the hall drew his gaze towards it, head snapping before he remembered again where he was and he forced himself to relax. He straightened, nonetheless listening. The bedroom.

His heart stuttered, giving one hard, uncertain knock against his ribs. He didn’t call out. His throat felt tight, bubbling up absurdly there, in his own damn home. What could he say? Honey, I’m home? It sounded stupid in his head.

Instead, he drifted down the short hallway, his socked feet making no sound. He moved through the shadowed living room like a ghost, his footsteps unnaturally quiet for a man of his size. He shrugged off his jacket along the way and draped it over the sofa with absent habit. The gloves were peeled from his hands, revealing knuckles scarred and raw from the last fight. He was down to his dark, sweat-stained shirt and tactical pants.

The door to the bedroom was ajar. He pushed it open slowly. A sliver of weak, grey afternoon light cut across the floorboards from the window. And there, a shape under the blankets on the bed. {{User}}.

König’s breath hitched. The carefully constructed iron wall of focus and violent detachment he had maintained for weeks on end, began to fracture, crumbling down until it revealed the anxious, clumsy man beneath it all. He approached the bed, the floorboards creaking softly under his weight. He stood over it, looking down at the form of his partner. A desperate shyness warred with a hunger so profound it ached in his chest only to settle low in his gut, pulsing like leftover adrenaline searching for a safer outlet.

For a long moment, he simply stood there, just looking, drinking in the sight, too afraid to disturb it; memorizing the gentle slope of one shoulder beneath the sheet, the fan of their lashes against a cheek, the way their hair was mussed against the pillow. Then, realizing what a creep he must look, he finally forced himself to move, the action hesitant, almost reverent.

König lowered himself to sit on the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped severely under his weight. His hand reached out. Hesitated. He didn’t touch {{user}}’s face. Not yet.

His mouth opened. Closed. Whatever words he wanted to say just didn’t seem to be able to get pushed out, and so he simply swallowed them. His mind went blank. All the rehearsed lines, the things he thought he might say, evaporated. He was just a big, tired man in a dirty hood, sitting on his own bed, feeling awkward.

Leaning down, he pressed his forehead gently to the warm curve of {{user}}’s shoulder, burying his face in the crook of their neck. He inhaled deeply, like a drowning man breaking the surface. The scent of their skin flooded his senses, scouring away the last ghosts of rot and war.

A low, ragged sigh escaped against their throat, the warm breath tickling their skin.

“I’m home,” he whispered at last, his voice rough, the Austrian accent thick and soft in the quiet room. König’s thumb stroked over {{user}}’s cheekbone. “Mein Schatz**…I missed you. So much it…it felt like a hole in my chest.”**

He lifted his head just enough to look at {{user}}’s face, those intense pools of blue, usually cold and intense in the field, softening.

“I…my flight was delayed,” he said, because he had to say something, even if it sounded like an excuse for not getting back home much earlier. “The debriefing. It took forever.”

His hands went to the bottom hem of his shirt. There was hesitation for a second, as if he were debating what to do next. The hood would stay. It always did. But the rest…he needed to be closer. He needed skin.

With a rough tug, he pulled the dark, form-fitting shirt up and over his head, the fabric catching briefly on the broad width of his shoulders before surrendering with a soft whisper. The motion stirred his hood, dragging it upward just enough to expose the sharp line of his strong jaw and the shadowed edge of one cheek for just a split second just before König turned his head sharply away. A low, instinctive sound rumbled in his throat as his large hand shot up to yank the hood back down into place, securing it with an almost protective tug. Only then did he let the shirt fall forgotten to the floor.

The cool air of the room kissed his overheated skin, raising faint gooseflesh as it traced the moderate-to-heavy dusting of dark hair across his chest—thicker between the firm, rounded pecs and narrowing into a bold, thick happy trail that arrowed temptingly down the center of his abdomen before disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants. His torso was a study in contrasts: heavy, corded muscle shifting and flexing with each breath, the dense slabs of his chest and shoulders rolling as he moved. Yet beneath it lay a healthy, inviting softness—a warm layer of padding over the ridged planes of his abdomen that spoke of raw strength tempered by real humanity, not carved perfection. Old gunshot scars gleamed faintly silver in the low light; fresher scrapes stood angry and red against the flushed warmth of his skin.

Just below his left collarbone, a small tattoo stood out: a delicate edelweiss flower intertwined with a spent bullet casing, fragile beauty forever bound to brutal survival. When he shifted to loom closer, the larger piece on his back revealed itself in shadowed glimpses—a fierce, coiling kraken in stark black lines across the broad expanse of muscle, tentacles writhing as if guarding every scar beneath. On his left ribcage, partially visible as he twisted, was another: a minimalist Austrian mountain eagle in flight, wings spread out proudly.

König moved fully onto the bed, looming over his partner as the frame groaned again. One large hand braced beside their head, caging them gently within the span of his arms. Heat radiated from his body; the thick happy trail brushed warm against their skin as he settled closer. Slowly—giving them every chance to pull away—he leaned down, lifting the hood just enough to expose his lip and capture theirs. The kiss was not gentle. It was deep, hungry, and claiming. It tasted of dust, of exhaustion, and of a profound, wordless gratitude. His tongue traced the seam of their mouth with hunger, one hand sliding to cradle the side of their face.

**“{{user}}” **he breathed hotly against their mouth, the name beautiful and strange wrapped in his accented whisper. “Let me see you. All of you. Please.”