Work Text:
To you, waiting at the airport always felt like waiting outside the doctor’s office, apprehensive of what horrible news might be given to you.
You paced in front of a small bakery, gnawing at your hand or the occasional pastry given to you by a sympathetic employee. By now, the entire staff knew you and only worried about the damage your teeth did to your skin.
Every half minute or so, you looked at the huge clock hanging from the glass ceiling of the airport. You then looked at the plane schedule, having learned the serial number of the flight, and calculated in your head how many minutes you had left until the plane landed. Rinse and repeat.
The aggressive lights and loud crowds did absolutely nothing to aid your anxiety. You had considered, a few times, just letting your beloved take a cab or bus and to wait for him at your apartment. But no.
You needed to know, to confirm that he was alright.
It was silly, and you knew it. He was part of the elite, one of the most qualified soldiers in one of the most well renowned military companies in the world. Plus, he always promised before leaving.
A gloved hand grips yours, a hand much larger than yours, gentle as a thumb comes to rub at the centre of your palm.
Gingerly, König lowers his face mask, one that he wears in lieu of his preferred hood when he’s in public.He brings your hand to his mouth, brushes your knuckles to his lips. You have to stretch your arm quite far for it to reach.
He whispers, “I promise I’ll come back, mein bärchen.”
Finally, you saw a hand rising above the heads of the crowd, waving at you. You sprung up from your seat, hurrying towards the man you'd been waiting for.
As you got near, König dropped his hand and opened his arms instead, picking you up for an embrace.
The two of you didn't say anything for a few moments, and you were content just basking in König's warmth and the pressure of his arms.
"I'm ok, schatzen, I'm here. Breathe slowly, like me, ok?", you heard from where his head was resting on top of yours.
This is when you realised that you were gasping for air, breathing shallow and irregular. You took a minute to synchronise your breathing to König's, feeling his chest expand with every breath in.
Once you'd calmed down, he gently put you back on the ground, where you swayed a bit for a second. No matter how many times he did that, it was always a little disorienting.
"Do you have everything?", you asked him. He nodded, picking up the baggage he'd dropped off of the ground.
His other hand went to hold yours, and without a word, the two of you headed out.
In the car, as usual, you knew better than to ask about how work had been. First because it was probably classified, and also because you didn't want to force König to talk about it.
The tidbits he did drop sometimes were always random anecdotes, of bets he took while his team was idle, of relationship drama he'd managed to glean. You'd have never guessed that such an imposing man could eavesdrop that easily, but then again, his teammates couldn't have guessed that he was this gossipy.
He never gave any actual names, of course. Privacy and all that. It was fun though, hearing the kinds of bets people made on König's strength.
"And then he challenged me to try and pick him up with one arm," he said, the tail end of another story.
"Again? Wasn't he the third person to do that?", you enquired.
"Fourth, actually. Anyways, I did it, but I told him to keep his pocket knife. I didn't need it," he concluded with a shrug.
By then, he'd put his signature hood back on instead of a regular face mask. Not that you'd never seen him without it, but he always felt more comfortable with it on.
You chuckled at the mental image of König lifting a full grown soldier in his hand like a misbehaving kitten. "Should have known not to fuck with the king, eh?", you said.
"Should have known not to fuck with the king," he echoed with a laugh.
His laugh tapered off into a low, content hum. When you looked away from the road to glance at him, you saw him lazily swaying his head from left to right, eyes closed. You smiled and got your eyes back on the road, enjoying the comfortable silence.
After a few minutes, König spoke up, “you remember Oni?”
“Wasn’t he that one guy who’s really good at blindfolded knife throwing?”, you guessed.
“Yes, him. One time, we were eating next to each other, and I started to daydream a bit,” he said. After a minute, he sheepishly added, “It was not too long before I was supposed to come back, so I couldn’t wait to see you, you know?”
You only smiled at him in response, not wanting to interrupt him. He continued, “Oni snapped his fingers in front of me and asked what I was thinking about. I said nothing, he didn’t believe me, of course, and he asked if I had a girl back home that I was dreaming about.” He closed off his story with a laugh and a shake of his head.
You tried to ignore the pang of insecurity in your chest, tried to sound casual when you asked, “What did you tell him?”
You were extremely bad at hiding your emotions around him however.
König turned his head towards you with slight confusion in his eyes, “I said no,” he responded. “Of course I said no. I don’t have a girl back home.”
“I’m sorry,” you sigh, angry at yourself for letting your anxiety get the better of you. Then, König delicately brought his hand to your nape, caressing the cropped hair there. “I have a gorgeous man,” he said, “the most gorgeous man in the world.”
You couldn’t help but lean your head into his hand, taking advantage of a red light to close your eyes and take a deep breath. “Thank you sweetheart. I’m sorry for doubting you. You’re wonderful,” you say before opening your eyes again and smiling at König.
“It’s fine,” he responds, regretfully taking his hand away from your nape, “it would be rich for me to judge you for being anxious.”
You would have continued to stare into those gorgeous eyes peeking out of that dark hood if you weren't driving at the moment. Oh well. There would be plenty of time for that later.
As the two of you entered your apartment, you knew the first thing König was going to do, because he always did it, and today was no exception.
Right after hanging his coat and entering the living room, he went right to the clock that was nailed high on the wall next to the door and gave a gentle high five to the hand shaped pendulum that was swinging below it.
He'd done that every single time he came home without fail since you put this clock up and every single time, you didn't need to see his face to know he had the biggest, goofiest grin beneath that hood.
He also did it to tease you a bit, since you couldn't reach high enough to do the same. That bastard.
You paid him no mind as you went to sit down on the couch, the exhaustion of being outside in such a noisy, bright place for so long starting to sink into your bones.
"Are you okay?", you heard from where König had come to stand behind the couch.
"Fine, just tired. Thank God I made the food in advance, because I am not getting up anytime soon," you responded.
König let out an amused hum and pet your hair. "Stay right here, bärchen, I'll get your plate, you put on the movie," he said before heading to the kitchen.
The two of you had a tradition. The stress of waiting for your boyfriend at the airport took a toll on you, but most of all, after several months of thankless fighting, König just wanted to sit back and rely on simple, comforting routines.
Every time he came home from a mission, you made enough mashed potatoes to feed four people, mixed with the same volume in melted cheese. You put that in a big pot and then spent the evening eating bowls of the thing in front of König's favourite movie, The Iron Giant.
The entire kitchen smelled like cheese for a few days after that every time.
After eating, you tried to convince König to cuddle with him lying on top of you, declaring that you "needed him to crush your soul back into your body". The position turned out to be pretty incompatible with watching the movie, so you settled for sitting in his lap, pressed comfortably in his arms.
You could feel him squeezing you slightly every time the movie amped up the suspense. He already knew what was going to happen of course, he had watched this movie dozens of times and could have recited the entire script by heart. It just seemed like the emotions never faded for him.
In fact, he knew the script so well that you could hear him mutter certain lines under his breath as they were said by the characters.
At one point, you stopped following the movie and dozed off. From where you were, slipping into unconsciousness, you heard the rustle of fabric indicating that König had taken his hood off.
You didn't know how long it was before the movie ended, but once it did, you roused from sleep just a little, feeling König remove his arms from around your torso and move them to your back and knees, picking you up.
You felt yourself be lifted and moved, presumably to your bedroom. You felt the soft mattress beneath you and the way it dipped when König sat on it, next to you.
You opened your eyes, blinking away sleep for just a few seconds to look at his face.
He smiled and leaned forward, giving you a short and soft kiss and ruffling your hair a little.
"Sweet dreams, herlich.”