Chapter Text
The whirring of a small fan was overlaid by the quiet sounds of some commentary video that Scott’s brother had been watching. The older man was now sleeping, or similarly distracted.
Blind, or perhaps ignorant to the small mattress on the floor, with a too-large frame folded over the other.
Klaus stared at Scott with wide, wild eyes. Weak, untrained limbs with just enough strength to lock into place and try to hinder the hands grasping at him.
“Scott,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Please, he’s right there.”
Scott just huffed some unintelligible response, brushing off his concern – yanking at the tight spandex shorts Klaus had worn under his jeans. He felt a thread pop, felt the almost-rugburn feeling of cloth rubbing painfully tight against his skin as he was bared.
“Stop,” he breathed.
“Just let me,” Scott whispered back.
“No, no, no-” he choked, so quiet, biting his tongue as he hooked his feet on the inside of Scott’s thighs, straining to keep himself from being yanked down. “Stop- he’s right there-”
Shame kept him silent. A stubborn sense of loyalty kept him pliant.
The way his thoughts spun through his head kept him from digging his teeth into the exposed throat in front of him as Scott took what he wanted.
His reward was a kiss pressed to his hair, a quiet apology that had never sounded so hollow.
~~~
König floated through the next couple of days. He knew he was losing his grip on things; his own thoughts, his own body. John and Simon were worried, he knew, but things didn’t feel… real.
He stayed in his room for the most part – lost hours of time feeling an utter sense of blank that he usually associated with that last step of a panic attack where he simply shut down. Dissociation, or something like it, wasn’t particularly foreign to him. But it usually lasted for a few hours and was fixed by a nap or a night of sleep. It wasn’t usually like this, following him even to the peace of his own space.
Depression then, maybe. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe that.
Hours more, lost in debate with himself. Scrolling through his usual social medias and looking at everything that caught his eye without actually absorbing anything.
It was somewhere around 1800 when he stepped foot out of his room and found his way to the nearest exit. He was intent on getting at least some exercise in, and perhaps that way he could clear his mind of the fog he’d been settled into.
So, he let himself run. Felt his feet pound to the ground, a steady one-two-one-two beat. He found himself counting along, before scowling at himself. He used to do that with Scott, after he mentioned that the doctor encouraged him stretches and exercises for his bad knee. Counting a one-two beat to see how bad he was limping, noting the space between steps as they walked together.
He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about Scott, and hands on him, and money slipped out of his wallet, waiting outside in the cold.
König didn’t want to think about the peaceful memories, of summer nights spent sneaking out and trying to find somewhere to eat at three in the morning. A head pressed to his belly, arms around his waist as he listened to quiet midday snores. Dancing in a kitchen that had become familiar to him, sweet words pressed to his ear that made him feel precious.
It wasn’t until his steps slowed, coming to the base of a hill, that he realized he was shaking. For a moment he desperately gasped for air, seeing black spots swim in his vision.
The crest of the hill was where Simon had brought him, weeks ago now. A quiet morning just before dawn, the man’s own way of telling Klaus how much he cared.
His stomach churned – he didn’t want to taint those memories with the pain he was feeling now, not any more than he had just at the passing thought of them.
So for now, he turned around and started walking. He purposefully went a roundabout way back to base until the sun had fallen beneath the horizon. By the time he got back the dinner hour was thoroughly past, and he realized that he hadn’t eaten more than a stray granola bar that day.
König didn’t bother to undress when he laid down, just kicking off his boots. Inevitably he would overheat in the night, but he couldn’t find the energy to care.
It’s not like he slept much that night anyway.
~~~
He could feel his mother’s accusing glare. Anxiety flared in his gut, made his heart flutter in sick fear.
Klaus turned away, a hand raising to his neck where a dark hickey laid – he dug his nails in and scratched. Swore he could feel blood vessels burst under his nails, just under the surface of his skin. Reddening the skin around it until it almost matched the blotchy purple-red of the mark.
He’d once held a fantasy, some giddy urge to be owned, to be wanted enough to be marked with possessive intent. But now he just felt sick with it, too exposed, evidence against his own vehement denials right there on his skin, impossible to hide with materials he didn’t have.
“Alex-”
“Guten Nacht, Mutter,” he choked out, wide-eyed and afraid as he fled.
~~~
The floating wasn’t getting better.
It felt like he was only ever coming down from it when he crashed back into old memories, and honestly he preferred the floating nothingness over that.
He felt guilt, when he could, in between it all and parallel to the pain of those memories of Scott. He felt the ache of it, projecting apologies at his lovers when he turned away and hid at the sight of them. His- panic attack, breakdown, whatever it was on the night of Simon’s return was still too fresh.
It still didn’t make sense to him, when there had been nothing out of the ordinary about that night. There had been plenty of instances of one or the other coming in late, or walking in while Klaus was undressed, or even both of them finding him pleasuring himself.
It shouldn’t have taken him so off-guard, and it shouldn’t have triggered… whatever all that had been.
“König,” Price greeted him quietly, sliding into the seat across from him.
He paused, looking up at the man and tugging his headphones out of his ears. He hadn’t even been listening to any music – just using them to muffle the sounds of the mess hall around him. With all the time spent in the quiet of his room recently, he had found himself growing sensitive to the constant rush and buzz of more public spaces.
“Captain,” he greeted in turn, nodding. He debated picking at his food to keep his hands busy, but it had gone cold already. At least he’d gotten through the bread roll. Anything more solid seemed to sit uncomfortably in his stomach now, leaving him both over-full and starving. “Is there- something you need?”
Price shrugged, glancing at the plate between them with a considering look. “I haven’t seen you around much for the last few days. Something going on?”
“Ah…” the underlying offer to help was left unspoken, but König had come to know that Price always offered whatever he could give. The man was selfless, through and through. Anything for his team. “It is… I am not sure.”
“Simon and John have seemed a bit off as well,” he prodded, voice quiet and as gentle as it could get in the middle of the mess hall. It made König’s skin prickle with the thought of listening ears.
But there was an odd sort of safety here, as well. They weren’t in Price’s office, where every ounce of the attention in the room would be on him. Price could let his eyes wander, instead of staying fixated on his hood. Too-honest words could be fumbled and explained away in the rabble of such a public space. It didn’t have to be such a big conversation, here.
He licked over his lips, feeling the dry skin under his tongue, resisted the temptation to rip at the excess with his teeth. “I had- some- episode. A panic attack.” He could feel one coming on now, just talking about it. Felt his thighs go shivering and numb at the memory of it. “I still don’t know what caused it.”
Price was watching him carefully, eyebrows downturned. Concerned. “Did… one of them cause it?”
“No,” he said, a touch too quickly. He lifted a hand with a so-so motion. “Maybe. It is so confusing, neither of them did anything different.”
“Well, maybe you need to talk to them about it, huh?”
König could feel his heart thumping along in his chest, too hard and too fast. Still, he nodded as he looked down at his cold plate of food. John and Simon had already left the mess hall. He wanted to go back to his own room, return to the numbness instead of keeping the cap on this bubbling panic. To talk to them he would have to go to Simon’s room, probably. He could retrace every step of the way between here and there in his mind. It felt exhausting just thinking about it.
Price reached out, his hand not quite touching where it came to rest next to König’s elbow. “Talk to them, Klaus. It might help figure things out.”
He breathed, gave a long exhale to try and calm his nerves, and nodded. Tilted his arm just a hair, to let the captain’s fingertips press against him, and hoped that it wouldn’t be read as him nudging the man away.
In return, Price smiled and briefly squeezed at his arm before he pulled away. König did his best to not mourn the contact, or – god forbid – even chase after it. “Good lad. Go on now, I’ll take care of your tray.”
“I can-”
“I know, I know. Just go, I gotta go break up some trouble anyways.” He nodded over to the side, and abruptly König became intimately aware of the shouting starting in one of the corners of the hall. “I’ll see you later, we might have a mission coming in soon.”
He dragged in a deep breath, his senses once again being assaulted now that his focus on Price had been broken. For a moment all he could do was shake out the buzzing energy in his arms, blinking rapidly. It felt like a wave of reality washing over him, coming in and out in little pulses.
“Yes, sir,” he murmured, but Price was already standing.
The captain left with a quick rap of his knuckles against the table, and König darted for the door just as Price’s voice boomed out over whatever group was acting up.
~~~
Klaus stood outside of Simon’s door, picking at a stubborn hangnail. His head felt fuzzy once more, overwhelmed and twisting in even more vicious circles than normal. It was the kind of spiral that made him want to lash out- to throw things at the walls to watch them shatter, to test the sharpness of his knives on his own flesh, to bite down until he felt something tear and break. Anything to make the world around him feel real.
In what world does one of his lovers cause one of the worst panic attacks he’s had in years? In what world did it ever get bad enough that he avoided them for days on end?
He resisted the temptation to check his phone – he was fairly certain that he hadn’t even responded to the texts that John had been sending him.
Eventually, he carefully bit off the offending hangnail, having run out of patience to continue trying to get it with his nails alone.
And, with that dealt with- he had no more distractions. No more excuses to wait outside.
So he knocked, quietly. Softly enough that he worried about them not hearing, so he put slightly more force behind the third short rap against the door.
He always hated knocking. Hated the sting left in his knuckles, the feeling of being unsure if he knocked too quietly or too loudly.
Klaus hated waiting.
Beneath his hood he felt himself flush as the seconds wore on. He felt some old, familiar panic well up in his chest. His ears strained to hear some sign of life within the room – voices, footsteps, the sound of water running through pipes to indicate someone in the shower.
Unexpectedly, he sniffled.
Christ, he had a key, he didn’t need to sit outside and wait for his lovers to collect him from the door.
Klaus was just reaching for the bit of metal in his pocket, kept safely pressed to his thigh, when his phone buzzed.
His hand redirected to the device, finding the screen already lit up with a text.
John (Soap): Want us to grab anything? <3
It left him confused, until he unlocked his phone properly and read the previous texts. They were from hours ago now, left unanswered while he had been floating through his day.
John (Soap): Ghost ran out of his pirouettes :(((
John (Soap): I think he still has some of those cookies from Amsterdam though, if you want
John (Soap): We might make a trip off base to grab more of the pirouettes
John (Soap): Do you want to come with? Maybe we can meet whoever his cookie dealer is
Klaus pressed his phone to his chest, breathing out a long sigh. He leaned a shoulder against the door of the lieutenant’s room and closed his eyes. For a long moment he just stood there, focusing on the long pulls of his breath. He remembered reading somewhere that long exhales were better for anxiety, as long inhales activated the fight or flight response- or something. It didn’t really seem to do anything for him either way.
They’d been trying. John and Simon were both trying, for him. Giving him time and space, reaching out from the distance he put between them. Even then, John was clearly being careful with his wording, making sure that he didn’t feel pressured.
And he just kept fucking it up.
He’d just been blatantly tossing aside their kindness, their patience, just to get lost in his own head. He kept fucking dragging them backwards, ruining the perfect, precious love they held between them.
Their patience wouldn’t last forever. Someday they would get tired of this- the back and forth, the everything and nothing, the constant gentle hands required to handle him.
Klaus had shards of hurt stuck into his heart, things he wasn’t sure that he could ever remove. They had long since sliced him open and made their home in him. He knew how to deal with the ache of it on his own, for better or worse.
But then John and Simon had come along. The hands that cradled him eased some parts of the hurt, worsened others.
Surely, those shards hurt them both as well. And it was inevitable that they would get tired of dealing with him on top of everything they already did. It was only a matter of time before they left.
He felt it with a heavy, dangerous certainty. It had stray tears gathering in his eyes, just barely enough for a couple of drops to fall and be soaked up by his hood. Already, he could feel the pain of that separation – how it would shake him to pieces and leave him utterly unmoored.
Klaus unlocked the door with a faintly shaking hand, locked it again behind him, and stripped before crawling into the bed.
Grieving early had always been how he survived it. Sprinting his way through the stages of grief, sometimes – often – before things were even certain. Bracing himself for the weight of it, letting himself feel the pain of loss. Running through endless scenarios of how he could lose this lovely piece of everything that he had come to adore.
Quiet words said in parting, his imagined pleas falling on deaf ears. A transfer notice handed to him by Price, apologetic yet cold eyes turning him away. The thought of raised voices and shouted accusations made him shake, turn his face into the pillow that smelled like both of his lovers. Klaus knew that he wouldn’t be able to respond, if it somehow turned into an argument. But he liked to think that he could, that he could even go as far as to match such raw, angry energy.
All he could think of saying were apologies, though. There was nothing to accuse them of. The only thing they were guilty of was letting him take too much.
With his face half buried, he let himself ride the wave of thoughts until they settled.
Eventually he propped his head up again. Let his neck stretch uncomfortably with the position, breathed in deep.
He almost felt numb again. It came with the weight of acceptance this time, though. Painful, aching in such a bone-deep way that he barely felt it, and strangely liberating. There was no need to worry about whether he was going to fuck this up. There was no room to doubt – he would ruin this good thing that he had. But that also meant that there was no reason to not enjoy it while he could.
Maybe he was selfish for it, so blatantly intending to squeeze every ounce of anything good out of this relationship. Maybe it was selfish to want to take everything that John and Simon would give.
But where would the blame lay, truly, if they gave everything to him so willingly?
With a long sigh Klaus stretched just enough to grab his phone from where it sat on the edge of the bed, then curled onto his side as he unlocked it with his fingerprint. Idly he caught his nail into the groove of a shallow scratch on the back of his phone case, producing a faint plastic click, click, click-
Until he tapped on John’s contact and instead listened to the phone ring.
Once, twice- remembering how he would invariably count to six before hanging up-
“Hey there, precious,” John said, his voice soft and layered with emotions.
“Hi,” he responded. He didn’t know what to say. “Hay is for horses.”
It pulled a surprised laugh from a familiar source, slightly further away from the microphone – before Simon covered it by clearing his throat.
“How are you feeling, love?” The Brit’s voice sounded rough, though Klaus couldn’t pinpoint the source. “It’s-”
A long pause after his cut-off words, heavy, before John filled the silence. “We’ve been worried.” Said softly, carefully, trying to not project any blame.
It still made Klaus’s chest sting with guilt. It was a small thing for now, that now-established acceptance dulling it, but perhaps later it would fester and turn feverish.
“I am sorry,” he sighed. Another pause as he chewed on his lip and tried to think of how to talk about it, his absence, the silence between them.
John interrupted before he could, breaking the silence just as he always did. “Ye don’t have tae be, precious. Do ye want to come out with us? We’re still close enough tae turn around.”
He wasn’t sure when the two of them left, but he doubted that they were that close still. “Nein- no, it is fine, Schatz.”
“Okay. Want to stay on the phone?” A soft desperation, a need that Klaus wished he felt more keenly at the moment.
“I’d like that,” he said.
“Anything you want us to grab?” Simon spoke again.
Klaus hummed, running a hand over the sheets of the bed. They weren’t the softest – nothing like the silk sheets that John had in his flat – but they were cool against his skin, and comfortable enough. Familiar. “If you could find that marzipan I like?”
“Of course, love.”
He was barely able to draw in a breath around the words that fought to escape him, desperately pushing up and out of his throat. “I love you,” he blurted.
A moment of silence, quiet broken only by the faint tick-tock of the car blinker, before the lieutenant spoke again. Soft and meaningful, carrying every ounce of emotion he must know that Klaus needed.
“We love you too, Klaus.”
That was all he needed. It helped him settle, content to listen in on the two as they drove, their easy bickering before they arrived in town. He got some minutes alone with John when Ghost disappeared to make his apparently ‘illicit’ cookie purchase, listened to the man complain about it, and Ghost’s teasing when he returned.
When he hung up, it was with a soft murmur as the car started again.
“I will see you when you get back.”