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There’s a sudden, sharp clink from the kitchen. Metal on wood. A clatter, followed by a sharp exhale. Then a muttered “Scheiße.” The kind of sound König makes when something doesn’t go his way.
Gone is the rhythmic melody of vegetables being chopped.
“What was that?” you call from the living room.
He doesn’t even feel it at first, stares at his finger a second too long. Blood beads up, fat and bright against his skin. It’s a cut. A stupid, shallow little thing. Annoying, inconvenient, but not painful. He’s had worse stubbing his toe.
You look up from your mug of tea, squinting toward the kitchen at the sudden silence. “You okay, baby?”
“Ja, just—” He glances at his finger. More blood. “Nothing.” He’s already reaching for a paper towel when you shuffle in from the living room, padding over in those ridiculous fuzzy socks he secretly loves.
“That didn’t sound like nothing.” You poke into his space like you belong there. “Let me see,” you say, voice soft but full of that bossy warmth you get when you’re fussing.
He opens his mouth to say It’s fine, but the words never make it out. Because you’re already in front of him, gently taking his wrist in both hands, cradling his palm like it’s fragile.
“Baby,” you breathe, like he’s just told you his leg got blown off. It makes something turn upside down in his chest. Not in a bad way. Just… weird. Unexpected. Like being tapped on a bruise he didn’t know he had.
“It’s nothing—” he starts, but you’re already pulling him toward the sink.
“You’re leaking blood all over the floor.”
He watches you like he’s outside himself, rinsing the blood away under the cool stream of water, your thumb pressing just behind the wound to tilt it toward the light. The cut stings a little, but König hardly feels it. He’s too busy watching the way your brows pinch together in worry, kissing your teeth and muttering about how he shouldn’t have denied your help earlier.
You’re babying him.
And—
He likes it.
God, he likes it.
You disappear for a moment to get a first aid kit and his knees feel unusually soft.
“My big, scary boyfriend brought down by a vegetable,” you muse as you gently dab his wound with disinfectant.
He snorts. Quiet. “I don’t usually bleed out over onions.”
“Oh, this is bleeding out now?” you tease, unwrapping a colorful bandaid. “Better sit down before you pass out on me.”
He takes the joke for what it is. He doesn’t need to reassure you because… well. You know it’s nothing. Of course you do. You’ve seen him come home with real injuries. The kind you had to look away from when he changed his dressing.
“Want me to kiss it better?”
You’re joking. Obviously.
But his heartbeat picks up anyways.
Because yes. Yes, he wants that. He thinks about nodding. Showing his boo-boo off like some scraped-knee schoolboy. He wants you to coo over him. Call him baby like he’s fragile and not two hundred pounds of trained aggression and thick skin.
You smooth the bandaid down with your thumb. And then, without fanfare, you lift his hand to your lips and place a soft kiss right over it. “There. All better.”
He should laugh. Roll his eyes. Brush it off. Something.
But all he can do is stare.
Because—
Jesus Christ.
He expected to feel small. Stupid. Silly.
But instead…
He feels quiet.
The kind of quiet that only comes once the shooting stops. After the mission’s done. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, heart thumping like he’s finally catching onto the fact that he’s not dead.
He looks down at your hand holding his. Your thumb is rubbing slow little circles against his skin like you don’t even realize you’re doing it. Like soothing him is second nature.
And suddenly, it hits him.
You’ve done this before, time and time again.
The times he came home and couldn’t speak. When his hands trembled from adrenaline he hadn’t worked off yet. When he stared at nothing for too long, trying to remember how to act, how to be, how to feel.
You gave him comfort. Space. Distractions.
Kissed his wounds.
Healed them. Healed him.
In a way time alone never could.
König swallows. He glances down. The bandaid is pastel yellow with little smiley stars on it because of course it is. His ears burn.
You turn to wash your hands. Miss the way he stares at you. Or how he absently flexes the hand you bandaged like he’s trying to feel it more.
God help him—he thinks next time maybe he’ll nick himself on purpose.