Chapter Text
Approaching the cabin’s front door feels intimidating, but you’re determined to inspect the lock to get an idea of what kind of key you’ll be looking for. You sneak across the living room with soundless steps, having memorized a crude map of where the worst creaking planks are after stretching your legs yesterday. The door’s lock looks surprisingly old, you can easily see the bolt between the frame and the door itself. Well, not like you assumed the hostages / prisoners kept here tended to have free access to it. Maybe that’s why the cabin isn’t such a bunker one would’ve thought it should be considering its uses.
You press on the handle experimentally and peer through the crack.
A breeze of cool air breathes against your face and makes the thin fabric of your clothes flutter as the door clicks open.
You flinch before you go completely numb, like all thoughts drip down your body and slither away. A complete daze takes over.
The front door isn’t locked.
Your confused blink might as well be audible, but instead it’s your mouth that makes a soft click when it falls open.
What the f– Has it been open this entire time? That lying sack of–
König made you touch him, search for something that wasn’t there, made you sit around like a mouse in a cage, he–
Ohhh that immediately makes you seethe, angry both at him and yourself. You could’ve ran at any moment, and you were stupid enough to not even properly try. Shit, now you kind of want to escape, just to show him you could. You scrunch your lower lip and think upon it for a second, but the fear of losing what little you have highlights your sense of self-preservation.
There’s that, and you hear a noise. A loud one, multiple. You turn your head towards the running thumps of footsteps coming from the bedroom and your heartbeat immediately begins to follow their rhythm.
You forget your plan entirely, just stare wide-eyed as König emerges on the other side of the large living room, rounds the corner and digs his heels into the wooden floor to break, grabbing hold of the side of the fireplace. As soon as he sees you, he stops on his tracks, looking like a wild animal.
Caught red-handed.
König’s entire body is tense. Shoulders hunched, body ready to shoot forward. He stares at you with wide eyes, bare chest slowly heaving up, down, up, down. Even from across the room, you can tell there’s a glint of something frightening in his eyes.
”Um.” Somehow stupidly you had forgotten this man could make your poor body fit inside a matchbox if he so wished. You swallow thickly as the original plan of a nice little moment alone on the porch withers away. You can explain.
”It’s not what you thi–”
König moves.
And he’s fast.
Out of sheer terror to have a shirtless beast storming right at you, you let out a frightened gasp only to immediately dart outside in a mindless panic and bang the door closed behind you to put anything between you and him. König’s shoulder slams against the wood on the other side and you hear the faintest crackle on the frosted window before you stumble backwards. Your almost slip on the cold porch planks as you turn to jump down the stairs, landing on wet gravel under the soft rain.
Holy shit, you’re actually outside. You can’t help but stare out of pure shock as you look around you. The thick evergreen forest surrounding the old cabin looks like it would only lure you deeper, lose you among the thick natural maze, swallow you whole, and the trees are tall enough to look like they’d block the sky to choke you and leave you to rot. And suddenly being outside on your own feels scary. Having König on your heels does nothing to ease that feeling.
This is not what you wanted. You bite your lip and spin around only to see König has ripped the door open and stepped outside, heading straight towards you.
”This isn’t what it looks like, I promise!” you desperately yell at him as you back away, clutching the hem of your shirt. Stray raindrops fall down from the grey sky, creating a map of dark stars on your shoulders.
”You’re scaring me,” you whisper to yourself as you stumble backwards, sharp gravel digging into your soles. You panic as König descends the two steps with his eyes never leaving you. He’s going to kill you he’s going to kill you he’s going to–
”Stop, you’re scaring me!” you scream at him.
König halts immediately as if a rope had tugged him back. Soft rain patters on his bare shoulders, still tense like never before. What you said made him stop on his tracks, his eyes widen. You let out a couple of shaky breaths and take the moment to try and calm him down.
”I’m not running away, I only wanted to sit on the porch like yesterday, I swear,” you try again and raise your hands in front of you in a useless effort to soothe him, voice trembling because you’re this close to crying. There’s no reason to be found in his eyes. ”Just listen to me!” you plead.
It seems your talking only wakes König from whatever emotion he had fallen under in the first place, because he steps towards you. And since he won’t listen, but instead closes in and doesn’t seem to have calmed down, you foolishly make a run for it. You dig your soles into the gravel and take off into a sprint towards towards the thick forest.
As expected, you certainly don’t get far.
You don’t even manage to get to the treeline when the thumping footsteps against the ground catch you. Large arms scoop around your midriff and yank you backwards, leaving your feet kicking the air. Fight or flight kicks in – and since you can’t run, your brain goes in defense mode.
”NO! Let go!” Sudden fright takes over inside you, the horror of him being angry at you twisting your insides and you’re actually scared of him like this. Nothing compares to the first time you saw him, but this is pretty close – now that you know what’s at stake.
”You left.”
Your stomach loses its bottom at the tone of his voice – jesus christ it’s a real punch to the gut. You can feel his shock, how he thinks you’ve betrayed and abandoned him. And realizing you might have lost his trust makes you feel ten times worse than losing the ten minutes of freedom you had initially wanted.
Still, you try to get through to him, thrashing in his iron grip as he hauls you back towards the cabin and switches to carry you from behind your back and knees.
”Let – go! I just wanted some time to–”
”You left me.”
It really is about you leaving him, not the cabin.
You pull on his arms as he walks back inside and you realize he’s going in a different direction than where you’ve ever been to. He opens a door at the far end of the first floor’s short hallway and starts going down a flight of stairs you didn’t know were there – and that, if anything, is worrying. You can’t even see properly in the darkness, so you opt to kick at the walls of the narrow stairway as if it would get him to lose his grip.
”You can’t be serious! The door has been open this entire time–”
It’s only when he opens a screeching metal door at the end of the steps that you realize the gravity of your mistake. The lightswitch flicks. What you see makes your guts twist.
A basement. One single, neatly square room. The floor, walls and ceiling lined purely with nothing but pale, coarse concrete. Absolutely cut off from everything else, visually so numbing it’s a horror of its own. A single light bulb high up above the only furniture in the stony cage: the wooden chair the men had made you sit on when you first arrived.
The room was specifically made for a singular purpose.
Holy. Shit. Is this what had originally awaited for you? Reality hits you. You have been spared of a fate much worse than what you got. And to think, at one point you had been so sure your situation couldn’t get any worse… You should be fucking grateful for what you got.
And it’s all because of him.
König steps inside the room and you react immediately.
”PLEASE, no no no, not here!!” you sob in panic and grab at him, kick the air wildly to make him halt.
”I’ll do anything, please!”
And you sure do. You reach your hands behind his neck and, in an effort to confuse him if nothing else, your lips crash against his face through the hood. You barely find your target, kissing the corner of his mouth.
Your brows knit together tighter when you feel his shape in your palms, your fingers digging into the back of his neck. He’s so human under that stupid hood, something you can reach, and it pains you that he’s not an actual monster; you would have one more reason to hate him in addition to what he has done, but you don’t. You want to understand why he wants you that badly and reacted so strongly. Or wanted? God, if he doesn’t need you anymore... You were so stupid to run, so fucking stupid–
The kiss makes him halt, at least. You keep your trembling lips against him and hold him tight. When he doesn’t deny your attempt, you move your lips against his properly through the fabric, both trying to find comfort in him and make him see the truth in you. You only notice you’re crying when your tears manage to fall down halfway your cheeks before they absorb into König’s hood.
When nothing – good or bad – happens, you back away slowly. You search for his eyes but König looks like he sees nothing. He’s in a different state entirely. It both frightens you and makes you feel sorrow deep enough to want to understand why.
König’s breathing sounds strained, like his entire body is charged. He’s still for a moment, just stands there at the doorway and stares at the empty chair peeking from behind your frightened face.
Like your fate had been a breath’s away from turning out different, to your absolute relief König turns around to walk back up the stairs and flicks the lights off. You don’t bother to hide your sobbing exhale, because you’re so fucking lucky.
”Please, please, don’t be mad, you’re not getting it,” you cry as you resume your desperate explanation. ”I wasn’t going to escape, I promise!” You stare into his eyes and keep holding onto him like it would stop whatever he’s planning. You’re no longer struggling, because surely anything is better than what had just threatened you.
”You left me,” he repeats coldly once again like it’s the only thing he understands in his devastation as he rounds the corner and begins to march up the more familiar wooden stairs towards the attic. The creaks of the stairs sound more ominous than ever, like fitting tunes to go along with your weak voice.
”I– no, I didn’t! I just didn’t want to wake you!”
He pushes the attic door open and brings you inside. It’s eerily familiar, like he’s putting you back in your room but it’s a place where you’ve only ever felt sorrow – it brings up a lump in your throat. As König approaches the abandoned mattress, you grab his shoulders in despair.
”Earlier you said I could go outside!” He said that, he promised, he told you there’s a ’key’ and you have claimed it, haven’t you? Last night, didn’t you give him what you– he wanted..?
With no answer, he dumps you onto the mattress, your bum hitting the thin cushion with a thump. The impact takes the breath out of you but before you manage to collect yourself and scramble back on your feet, König has turned around and is headed back towards the door.
”Please don’t do this–!” Your broken voice echoes in the dark, sad space when you push yourself up and stare at König’s back. You dash towards him, but he’s already pulling on the handle, the only sliver of light growing thinner and thinner as he disappears behind the cruel barrier between you.
”I’m sorry, I’m SORRY–”
But the door closes with a bang right in front of your nose and the lock clicks when your palms hit the frame. You bang on it, beg for him to open it but all you get is silence. He doesn’t answer anymore.
You’ve fucked it.
You’ve ruined everything.
König slumps down on the floor and lets his back thump against the door, leans his arms against his knees. His breathing is quickened, stays that way for a while. And before long, your desperate banging switches to quiet sobbing. König is too numb and disconnected to let it clench his heart right now.
He blindly stares forward.
You leaving his bed felt all too familiar, a déjà-vu. It’s painful, he didn’t expect to see what he saw and that’s the worst of it. He was looking forward to waking you up himself, tug you against him, keep you warm and comfortable like no one else ever because he could. But he got too careless last night, distracted only by what he wants, as always, and left you to your own devices.
This is not how this was supposed to go. What the open door should’ve been was a well thought out show of trust – but on his terms, not yours. You should’ve played his game until the end, build that bridge between you, let him make you see that he’ll treat you well if… If you’ll treat him good, too.
But he let his guard down with you one time and he’s already paying for it.
He takes a shaky inhale, then breathes out like he’s physically pushing the air. Breathe, breathe, fucking breathe, just like they told him to do back in therapy. They said he tends to overreact; it leads to him losing his temper, he won’t be able to make logical decisions and in the field he’ll put the mission and his entire team at risk whenever he charges off like a smoking grenade.
König grabs his hood and pulls it off to let the air flow better.
The scar over his lip is even paler than the rest of him. It rises up to his cheekbone, a prominent feature on his face were one to see him for the first time. Even after sleeping better than in ages, the hours had been scarce – the lines under his eyes dig deeper. He runs his fingers along his hair, then presses the back of his head against the door to have his airways nice and free.
Deep inhale, controlled exhale. Again, slowly, then again. The pounding in his ears begins to calm into a soft buzzing.
They told him to split his plan into three: stop, breathe, think. He’s stopped. He’s breathing. So it’s only now he’s beginning to actually process your words through the thumping of blood in his ears.
Believe me.
Please.
You promised.
I won’t run.
I’m sorry.
But he doesn’t have time to ponder on your honesty for long. It’s right then the sound of your sad pleading is cut by the sound of the phone vibrating against the living room coffee table. The buzz makes it clatter against the wood, forcing König not to ignore it.
Biting down hard he gets up and storms downstairs, your voice echoing through the door with every step. He grabs the phone and wants to crush it. He should’ve kept it switched off through the night, not put it back on silent–
”What,” he snaps as he answers, caring absolutely none about who the person on the other end of the line is.
”Calm down,” goes the immediate, tiredly unofficial response at HQ, preceded by a sigh. They should be used to him always acting interrupted by now, but unfortunately it’s exactly what likely makes them stay in contact more often – to keep an ear out on his mood. König hates any and all options. If they contact him, he gets sucked out of his fantasy of being alone with you. If they don’t, he has zero info on what’s going on behind the scenes and how much time he has.
And despite the suggestion König won’t, in fact, calm down.
”Hostage still breathing?”
Sounding more like a disgruntled caveman rather than an expert operative, König makes an affirmative sound, more irritated by you getting called a ’hostage’ rather than the question itself. You’re not a hos– shit, yes you are, you still are. He just fucking proved that by forcing you back inside. Shit, shit. König leans his other arm against the fireplace, curling his fingers against the rough edges of the bricks.
”Unharmed?” goes the following question, which makes König’s fingers twitch, scratching reddish brick dust under his fingernails. Until now, HQ hasn’t really cared about what state you’re in.
”Just tell me what this is about,” König simply grunts. Speaking coherent words – and thinking about what the correct answer to asking what state you’re in should be – actually helps him ground himself a bit.
”We got in contact. Price let us know they’re coming up with a counteroffer. No info on what it actually is. Could just be money.” Son of a bitch Price – you’re not an item he can just buy off. ”We gave them two days. Just–” A bit of a worried pause. ”Keep her intact while we wait.” It’s a solid request from HQ’s part, knowing that König isn’t known for pampering anyone on the opposing side. Oh, if they knew–
”But if we’re not happy or they won’t cooperate–”
”Ja, we head back–” König starts to fill in the usual plan he had negotiated. You’d return to another secure location near the base, they’d contact the government but of course König would figure out something else before–
”–we’ll let you know so you can dispose of the hostage.”
König shuts up. His eyes fly wide, a pang in his chest hurts like nothing else.
”Was?” König’s voice is barely audible enough to hear through the phone.
”You copy?” they ask for confirmation. He shouldn’t officially have any kind of qualms with getting rid of someone.
For a solid moment, König doesn’t respond, just stares blankly ahead. Having been lost in his head and in the hazy horror scenario of being left to lick his wounds once again, he is firmly pulled back into the reality of the situation.
”Ja,” he says with absolutely no readable tone in his voice. Just a word, monotone and meaningless to just say what he’s meant to say, no matter what. ”Copy.”
Blip, and the call dies.
The emotions he went through with you just a moment ago are beginning to feel something he can actually name. He was shocked, distraught. Angry, even. At you or something else – he doesn’t know. But right now, knowing that your head is on the block redirects those feelings towards everyone else. He was supposed to keep you safe.
And he gets it: why you’d want to run away from all of this. And it’s exactly why he can’t let you know what he just found out.
If you’re not a hostage, then you’re also not going to get disposed of.
***
Time painfully crawls forward until you’re just simply existing and can’t feel it anymore. Maybe it’s been an hour, or a couple, or half a day – you don’t even know anymore. It’s hard to tell with the weather as gloomy as it always is outside the small window. You exhausted yourself in König’s arms as you tried to pry yourself free, but now merely existing feels tiring. But you can’t sleep, not with the worry gnawing at the back of your head.
You heard him walk back upstairs a while ago, relieved beyond words although he didn’t respond to anything you asked – where he went, what was he doing, is he going to keep you here again from now on. Even though it’s been quiet the entire time you know he’s still there with you, his shadow still blocking some of the light coming from under the door.
Your tears have died hours ago and the initial panic has subsided into something blunt and unpleasantly logical: The reality of your fate being in someone else’s hands sinks in once again, but it doesn’t feel the same as it did when you had arrived. A strange feeling of indifference colors your attitude. You still don’t want to die, no.
But if you’re choosing to stay, is it by your own will?
Quite soon you realize you have to have your basic needs met, no matter the circumstances. König has to see reason for you to do that. So if he’s unwilling to listen to your explanations and begging, you might as well appeal to something stupid while you’re at it.
”I saw a mouse in the corner,” you try weakly. For a second, nothing, and you almost lose hope.
”That’s you,” goes the stoic response through the door. Your lower lips trembles for a moment, relieved to hear his voice and the long absent tears begin to well in your eyes again. At least he’s willing to talk to you again; it keeps the glimmer of hope alive. The side of your head softly knocks against the wall.
You think offering to give him a blowjob now would be pathetic and distasteful.
König is silently hoping you’d offer to suck him off just to show him how sorry you really are.
He doesn’t want to hear you cry anymore. Well… Okay, maybe a little bit. It shows him you care and that he’s right to do this to you. König rubs his face roughly. He’s put a lot of faith in you. Well – expectations, rather. He just needs a little more time. Two days. Two days to make you his.
Since he’s reachable at last, you might as well test the waters again. Your fingertips caress the cold floorboards, a nail catches on one of the cracks and you lazily pick on it a couple of times. Drained, you stare at the pale light pouring from under the door. If you can’t explain yourself out of this, you can at least remind him of his promise – and admit you’re thinking about what… happened.
”Last night, you…” you start, pausing for a moment. You’re not really even thinking about what you’re going to say, there’s no proper planning behind it. No desperation anymore. Just disappointment in yourself and what you went and did.
”You said you’d take care of me.”
König closes his eyes. He did. On the one condition that you would let him. He can’t do that if you’ll only run away, and especially if his group would hunt you down to ’dispose’ of you. But if you’re still open for the offer, then...
”You promised,” he hears you say, almost with a whisper because you’re not making a real effort to force him to hear you anymore.
”I liked that,” you finally admit in a sad, pathetic tune. König releases his exhale with a quiet huff.
It’s all he’s waited to hear. You had every chance to plan your escape more properly, possibly even find the guns and shoot him while he dreamed the softest of dreams. He would’ve died happy. König pulls the hood back over his head.
Well, you have some proving to do.
The lock clicks. It doesn’t even startle you, but you exhale in tired relief and wipe your nose before looking up at the familiar hooded figure with the saddest, most pathetic expression imaginable. Your eyes glisten, the tip of your nose shines a bit, your lips are flushed. Whatever tears have still gone undried cling to the corners of your eyes and cheekbones and you don’t bother to wipe them off in case the view makes König more likely to forgive you. You’ll do anything for it. You– you will..?
You’re exhausted – from crying, from being afraid, from struggling with your feelings. From everything. You just want to rest.
”I’m not– going anywhere,” you sniff as you stare up at him. König stands in the doorway, his body choking the only exit and you don’t even care that it does. As long as you’re not alone, you might as well stay in the attic. It’s just that you rather wouldn’t.
”Why,” he asks. You have a really hard time answering him – the reasons are still too complicated and embarrassing. König peeks at your face to find out the truth in your expression, but you hide it from him. Thankfully he gives you some rope by offering what you believe is the correct answer. ”You'll stay in the house?” He holds a meaningful pause. ”With me?”
”Mm,” you let out a sort of an affirming hum as if you could ever hide how you have already yielded to him last night. ”I’m sorry,” you mumble quietly.
”I believe you.” That’s not quite an ’I forgive you’, but it’s something. Right now, you’ll take whatever he will give.
König kneels down and lets out a sigh as his mind once again concentrates on you and you only. Okay, so you’ve had your first lovers’ spat. Better to get it over with sooner rather than later. You’re a woman, of course you’ll act all spicy and silly – he’ll have to get used to that. Or he’ll just make you behave. He’ll have to think about the appropriate approach while he still can.
You can’t get scared right now, you’ll just have to think everything is still as it was – he’s got it all under control.
He eyes you from top to bottom for a second and you feel smaller than ever.
”You showered,” he says out of the blue.
”Yes..?” Well, partially. You washed off your shame, or at least tried to. König blinks a couple of times and looks at you like you’re really not getting why he said that, so he makes it very clear.
”I made a mess – it was my job to clean it.” He sounds like he’s sulking. Actually disappointed. Your cheeks flash hot and you look away with a flustered frown on your face.
”Oh my god…” you mumble in embarrassment because he’s so straightforward and crude and insatiable and... ”I felt dirty.”
”You are dirty,” he hums, sounding more like himself already, which is a huge – well, plus? Better have him speak his mind and blurt everything out rather than see him lose his damn mind so bad he can’t get a word out. ”And difficult,” he adds. What’s ’difficult’ is him simply letting you get some fresh air–
”Do you still want to go on that silly porch?” he says and you blink when you turn to look at him, surprised. Is it a trick to see if you’re still overly excited about the idea of freedom?
Stick needs some carrot to even things out. You’ll be better for him that way. And with that, you’ll do yourself a favor in the long run.
”Can I?” Better not get your hopes up too much. Yet König makes a vague sound – this is not what he wants to do obviously – which you still interpret as him giving in. That’s… This can’t be him accepting your apology so easily.
”Yes… Please,” you say with a well chosen, humble tone in your voice. König grumbles and steps away from the door to head towards the stairs. When he says nothing more, you quietly get up and the wary tapping of your feet follows his steps.
***
”You scared me,” you say as you sit on the first step of the porch stairs. The fresh smell of rain has soothed your sorrows a tiny bit, and you hope it does the same for König.
He stands vigilantly next to you, leaning against a sturdy wooden pillar. He snatched one of his shirts off the couch on your way to the door, now looking a bit more modest than five minutes ago. It sort of separates last night and the present moment and you’re relieved for it. You have to think things through. Too bad the optimal opportunity has already gone and went and you likely won’t get another.
You can’t see it, but König glances at you regularly; it’s only when you turn your head his way to gaze into the forest he raises his head. He’s on edge, and why wouldn’t he be? You’re clearly not to be trusted to roam around freely – yet. You’ll be the death of both him and yourself acting like that.
König doesn’t apologize for his reaction.
”Gut. You scared me,” he counters. You pinch your eyes closed, reeeally wanting to bring him back down to earth. He’s got no business pretending he’d have to be scared of anything. Maybe it’s risky to start arguing again, so you stop and bury your head against your arms. König lets out a heavy sigh, sounding impatient. He’s got nothing to fear; not like you’d get up and run off anymore with him being as vigilant as he is. You’re a prisoner with surprising amount of comfort and freedom – but still a prisoner, that much has been proven.
”That basement. Is that where I should’ve been put in?” you ask. The thought alone makes your muscles tense up.
”M-hm.”
”You wouldn’t– wouldn’t have put me there today, right?” You peek up at him, your expression betraying the worry that clearly haunts you.
König gives no reply, just side-eyes down at you. It’s not a very reassuring gesture. This punishment is way too harsh considering the true nature of the crime, you think.
”Cold yet?” he instead asks with a heavy emphasis on suggesting that yes you are. You nod sadly. You’re a bit disappointed by the way this turned out although you’re grateful for not having ended up in the basement. Still, he could’ve acted differently; believe you, first of all. But no, he just had to lose his marbles. It didn’t matter how many times you tried to convince him, you think he still doesn’t fully believe you.
You let out a deflated sigh as you get up on your feet and go inside with König demandingly holding the door open for you. You can feel his eyes on your back even after the door closes.
Hour by hour, the evening sky gets darker. The tapping of ever persistent rain wets the bottom stairs of the front porch, droplets race down the old, irregularly thick window panes that distort the view just a tiny bit.
With the gentle crackling coming from the fireplace only a few steps away, you sit in the living room under the yellowish hue of an old floor lamp, the cone shaped shade of it embellished with some sort of tassels hanging off of it. Sometimes you look at the big pelt hung up on the wall and wish it still had a stuffed head so you could at least see another face of some sort, other than your own when you stare into the grimy bathroom mirror.
Visually, the atmosphere in the cabin could be described as comfy from an outsider’s perspective.
But, surprise surprise, you’re not quite feeling it. Your early morning mistake has made the mood a bit awkward. König has kept you in his sights at all times, or behind a door you can’t lock. But he doesn’t touch you. And you know exactly why.
He wants your apology.
In what form? That seems to be for you to decide – and you haven’t made up your mind yet, since verbal excuses haven’t made much progress.
But last night has set your mind ablaze and the embers still burn at the bottom of your stomach, churning with the uncertainty of it all. Your budding emotions feel like treachery, like you’re cheating on yourself and making up lies to have this entire ordeal go by easier. You’re in survival mode, you want to tell yourself.
You feel uncomfortable whatever you do – whether you’re sitting on your own or have König escort you wherever, tap you on the back to get you moving, generally be closeby. Everything feels safe, yes, but still strange. For König, seemingly not as much. He seems to have mostly gotten over the little drama you caused, since he’s not sulking anymore. That, or he’s got something else in mind.
König rattles something in the room next to the kitchen. Likely a storage closet, judging by what he brings out when he shuts the door behind him with his leg and returns. He’s carrying two massive dumbbells. The muscles on his forearms are, unfortunately, very distinct and you quickly whip your eyes away before he notices you ogling.
With two massive thuds, König drops the weights on the floor (on the carpet, because those massive boulders would’ve made craters on the floorboards) and finally exhales when he looks at you.
"Schatz? Why aren't you eating?"
At least you’ve still got a pet name – hearing it makes you sigh. Nevertheless, König’s question has no effect in encouraging you. Your supper – a mush of rations – is cooling on the plate set on the coffee table in front of you. Soon you’ll beg for König to let you in the kitchen to engage in at least some form of basic cooking in this trap of a house. But he had insisted on ’making’ you something to eat because you never seemed to ask for it. In truth, you were afraid of being dependent on him with everything when you were perfectly independent in your normal life; not that it didn’t tire you out from time to time. And you do want to let go… However, König seems to almost enjoy you acting up and being a bit pouty and difficult.
Good. He’s been threatening you quite enough considering he wants to get in your panties.
"Mnothungry." Your mumbling is barely audible. You’re too stressed about the coming night – where you’ll be sleeping, and how, and what’s likely to happen again. And whether you really want this or not.
Not hungry? The corner of König’s mouth twitches under the hood. Well, he sure has something very accessible for you to stuff your mouth with…
”Are you still mad about earlier?” he asks. You are, aren’t you. You were behaving badly, of course he had to punish you. He sees you squirm uneasily because surely you don’t want to admit you were in the wrong. You should feel sorry, and he’ll welcome your teary apology with open arms. You’ve had the entire day to think about it, after all.
So has he – in fact, he’s had to think about so many awful things after what happened this morning that he’s ready to forget, even if only a moment.
"So fussy," he chuckles. "What can I do to raise your appetite, hm?" He could suggest a physical activity or two– Ahh bad dog, bad dog… Oh. Unless.
"Want to help me work out?"
Your eyes flick up to him, then on the worn metal dumbbells. If he wants you to be his spotter–
"No–" Ah, but König has already made up his mind, and there isn’t much you can say about it. He steps forward.
"Too bad. Auf geht's, Kätzchen." You let out a stupefied ’eep’ as he lifts you off the couch like you weigh nothing.
Within minutes, he’s explaining how much he can bench press and how these weights are actually just baby tier (if you tried to lift one your spine would pop) and he can do this many reps of these and this many reps of those and his set usually consists of this and that and he hates it when people stare at him at the gym but he doesn’t mind you and if only he had a pull-up bar here so you could hang on him like a cute little koala–
And before long, you find yourself sitting on his back as a weight replacement while he does pushups. His broad, hard, muscular back. He's all sweat and low grunts and breathy huffs after keeping at it for a while now.
He wants physical attention and intimacy. Unfortunately, you notice that so does your body, no matter how your mind still struggles. The testosterone just reeks and fills the entire space and the conditions make your head dizzy with something you desperately want to lock away, then hurl the key into the depths of the ocean rather than let it drown you like it so hungrily wants to. And it will. It will grab you and pull you under because you already feel it in your gut, your quickened heartbeat. Between your le– No. You can’t be that easy.
"You smell like sweat," you blurt out in the middle of his session in a poor attempt at sounding disgusted, so you drop yourself off of him because you can’t stand having his warm body awaken these feelings in you. And you don’t want his sweat to stick to you, yeah, that’s a good reason, too. And you’re still acting mad because he threatened to lock you in the basement.
König could've caught you easily but chooses not to. He gets up with a huff and rolls his wide shoulders.
"Like a man, you mean," he chuckles like your halfhearted jab had been a compliment and you're just too prissy to openly drool for him – which is quite close to the truth. He stretches his neck a bit, not even bothering to hide how he’s presenting himself to you. "You like it?"
"No." Yes. Yes you do because your cheeks are hot and there's a rabbit's heart clapping away in your chest. Shit–
König lets out a warm hum. He steps over to you, doesn’t mind it when you turn your back to him so that he wouldn’t see your urgently warming face. He either senses your inner struggle or he doesn’t, but no matter. König takes you into a hug from behind, wraps his arms around your stomach and you halfheartedly grab his wrists but… You don’t push him away, because he’s finally intimate again.
"Would you rather I smelled like a woman, then?" He’s teasing. You’re having none of it, instead frown in secret as blood pumps in your veins so warmly you can feel it where his body is touching yours. Your fingers slide against his bracelet, and you almost want to twirl the beads between your fingertips to steal his anxious habit for yourself.
"That's silly – I could never compete with you, mein Schatz." He leans down to rest his face against your hair and discreetly breathes in your scent like a predator that runs its tongue over a row of sharp teeth before they get covered in blood. Ready to dig in, to bite, to devour.
Working out always makes König’s instincts flare; the hot blood pumping in his veins rewires his body to become excited and horny and yearn for action because training is not a sufficient outlet for his need for physical attention.
”You’re still pouting, aren’t you,” he coos, a bit mocking. Your half-hearted attempt at elbowing him makes him chuckle. Time for you to get over it already – and he knows exactly how to push you. To get you to show him how sorry you really are.
”I might still be persuaded to forgive you.” König’s voice is low against the top of your head and you have to know what he means. His hood dips lower.
”Do you know what this reminds me of?” he purrs next to your ear as he moves his arms a little, emphasizes the way you two are positioned. And you remember, of course you do, and now it all floods back to you; fear and something else entwining in the way he holds you now. You remember your frightened reflection in John’s bedroom window. It highlights the way this situation has been flipped on its head, surreptitiously. You should be afraid, you should be mad as hell, you should– Shouldn’t you..?
König is past the point of reeling you in. You’ve been slippery, tested his limits, he’ll give you that. But he’s also been very patient, like a fucking saint. He was a good hunter in the field – aggressive and relentless – but never ever good with women because of that very same reason. Now… Now he’s finally caught something worth catching. You just have to admit you want to be caught.
It will save your life.
"I love how you struggled… Just thinking about it gets me hard."
He doesn’t mind your quiet appalled gasp. But that’s all you do. He has no need to tighten his grip on you, doesn’t need to worry you’ll punch him from this position. The worst you can do is use your words the wrong way.
He has both dreamed and daydreamed of that night – of trapping you, hunting you. Surprising you from behind and grabbing your smaller body in a hold you could never pry yourself away from.
He pushes his nose against your hair and talks only after he presses his hips against your ass to make sure you can feel his length as he continues to unfold his fantasy. And you still don’t pry yourself away – just give him lovely, shallow breaths. Beneath them, he can almost hear your heart race.
"I wish I could do it again," he confesses, voice so low it makes you shiver.
You swallow hard and the click of your throat is immediately followed by an open-mouthed exhale, starving for a break because the heat is once again becoming unbearable. There's no fairness in his fantasy: he's a trained soldier and you... You're just a woman, tiny and frail compared to him and your only experience with this sort of thing is an afternoon self-defense lesson you had once. It would be him hunting you for sports. And you – god, you can’t deny how it does something to you now that he’s promised you’d be safe… He’ll forgive you. Won't he?
König’s arms move. His other palm slides down your side as the other finds a nice spot on top of your stomach, gathers some of your – his – shirt in his large fingers and pulls the fabric up a little, unable to contain himself from taking these small sips of you only to end up strengthening his thirst.
"I want to take you back to... No, not his house. Your home."
The thought of him standing in a dark corner and watching you without you knowing forces a quiet sound from your lips, equally scared and excited. Shit, he knows. He knows, he knows, and he loves every second of this.
"I want to watch you do your evening routine… Wait and listen while you shower." You hear a rumble come from his throat as the mental image of you naked amidst the steam no doubt floods his mind right fucking now. It sends goosebumps up your arms, to hear someone want you like that. Passionate – or depraved?
"I want to enter your bedroom, watch you sleep so soundly. You wouldn't have the slightest idea what would happen next." But you do, you imagine exactly what he would do and the thought alone betrays you as your stomach clenches against the fingers he had kept there just to catch that precious tell.
"I'd wake you up with–" He breathes in and censors himself, just this once, to let you feast on your imagination of what would follow. "–my hand on your mouth. Scheiße... You could kick and scream all you wanted. You could cry like you did then." His hand presses against your tummy just below your breasts to let you imagine him controlling you. You love it, you know you do. He sure as hell does.
"And I'd steal you away again, out of that silly little life of yours. To mine." He brings it up to let you get used to the option of coming with him. But he wants you to save yourself willingly.
His head tilts against your temple, coaxing you to accept his generous offer. König wants confirmation – he always does. He wants to hear it come from your sweet lips. A part of your apology.
"You'd want that. Wouldn't you, Schatz?"
Your throat has dried up, tongue like lead in your mouth. Do you? Do you want it..?
”Mh…”
That’s good enough for him. König flips you around to face him and enjoys seeing your absolutely flustered expression. So cute.
”Since you think I’m so sweaty…”
He wipes his hands on the back of your shirt, then pulls your body against his damp chest just to make his point stick. With hooded eyes, he nods towards where the shower is.
”Let’s go make us both smell like you.”