Chapter 3: Under the Hood
Three days turns into five.
That's normal. You know it's normal. You've worked contracts for nine years and you know that "three days" in operator-speak means "somewhere between three days and the heat death of the universe." You know that a radio blackout means nothing. You know the job.
You reorganize the entire optics cage anyway. Alphabetically, then by serial number, then by weight, and then you stand in the middle of it at eleven at night with a clipboard and realize you've been holding a thermal scope for ten minutes without looking at it.
The cheerful Belgian, whose name is Matthias and who has never once in his life minded his own business, leans in the doorway on the fourth night and says, "He'll be fine, Mum."
"Who'll be fine?"
He gives you a look of enormous pity. "The whole compound knows, QM. You think a man that size walks out of your shop at seventeen hundred hours with his shirt on inside out and nobody notices?"
You throw a roll of gaffer tape at his head. He catches it, salutes, and leaves. Then he comes back and tosses something onto your bench. A purple wrapper. Milka. Alpine milk.
"He asked me to put one out every day he's gone," Matthias says. "In case you thought he'd forgotten. Big softie." He leaves again, and you sit down very suddenly on your stool.
The helicopters come in on the fifth night, just before two. You hear them from your quarters, the heavy chop rolling down the valley, and you're out the door in your boots and a parka over your sleep shirt before you've thought about it.
You don't go to the pad. You know better. There are medics and debriefs and a whole procedure, and the last thing anyone coming off a bird needs is the quartermaster hovering. So you go to the Shop. You unlock the shutters, you turn on the lamp over your bench, you put the kettle on, and you wait.
He comes forty minutes later.
You hear him before you see him. The gravel, the long stride, the pause at the door. Ten seconds. Exactly ten, the same as always, and you almost laugh out loud.
"Hello," he says.
"Hi," you say. "Come in. Mind your head."
He minds his head. When he straightens up, you see the bandage. A field dressing taped across his left forearm, the gauze stained rust-brown at the center. He's still in his kit, the new carrier scuffed and filthy, his rifle slung, and the hood is on. Of course the hood is on. There's dust caked in the mesh.
"You're hurt."
"It is nothing. A fragment."
"Sit down."
"Liebling, it is really..."
"Sit down on that stool, König, before I make you."
He sits. On the stool, he's still taller than you standing, which shouldn't be funny and is. You strip the carrier off him, checking the plates with your thumbs out of pure habit, and find a long silver gouge across the front one where something hit it hard enough to dent the ceramic. You stand there holding it for a second. Your hands aren't steady.
"It worked," he says quietly. "Your carrier. It fit perfect."
You put it down very carefully on the bench and don't say anything, because if you open your mouth something's going to come out that isn't a word.
You clean the arm. It is just a fragment, a shallow slice that the medics have already looked at, but you peel the dressing back and irrigate it and re-dress it anyway, with your good kit, the one you keep for burns and plate cuts. He watches you the whole time. You can feel it. He doesn't look away once.
When you've taped the last edge down, you don't let go of his arm.
"Five days," you say.
"I know. I am sorry."
"Matthias put out a chocolate every day."
"I know." A pause. "Did you eat them?"
"All of them. Standing up. Like an animal." You look up at him. "I was so scared."
His other hand comes up and cups the side of your face. Same as the first time. Slow. Careful. Except now you know what that hand can do, and you lean your whole weight into it.
"I said," he murmurs, "when I come back."
"You don't have to. König, I don't care. I mean it. You can wear it forever. You can wear it at our wedding, I don't..." You stop dead. Your face goes hot. "That's not. I didn't mean."
But he's laughing, low and helpless, his forehead dropping to rest against yours through the dusty mesh. "Our wedding."
"I didn't say that."
"You said that. I heard you." His thumb strokes your cheek. "I want to do this. For you. Only for you. Will you help me?"
You swallow. You nod.
You reach up with both hands and take hold of the hood.
It's heavier than you expected, the mesh stiff with grit, and you lift it slowly, up and back, over the top of his head. Underneath is the balaclava, dark and close-fitting, and the cloth mask over his nose and mouth. He bows his head toward you so you can reach. You find the edge of the mask, and the knot at the back. Your fingers fumble with it. He doesn't help. He just waits, eyes closed, breathing slow and deliberate like he's on the range lining up a shot, and when the knot finally comes free and the mask falls into your lap, he flinches. Just slightly.
Then the balaclava. You roll it up from the bottom, past the jaw you already know, the scarred lip you already know, the nose that's been broken at least once and healed with a slight lean to the left. Over high cheekbones. Over the eyes, which are closed. Over a broad forehead, and then it's off, and you're holding it in your hands, and his hair is dark blond, buzzed short, flattened with sweat.
He has a scar running from his left eyebrow up into his hairline, white and puckered, old. Another, thinner, across his chin. A spray of tiny marks along one cheekbone like something exploded near him once, a long time ago. His ears stick out slightly. His lashes are pale, almost white. He has a face that's been through things, and survived them, and has never once in his life believed it was worth looking at.
He opens his eyes. Pale blue, and terrified.
"So," he says. His voice cracks on it. "Now you know."
You put your hands on his face. Both of them. You trace the scar over his eyebrow with your thumb, and he shuts his eyes again like it hurts.
"You," you say, "absolute idiot. You've been hiding this?"
His eyes fly open.
"You're beautiful," you tell him. "You're so beautiful, König, I can't believe I've been talking to a sack of mesh for six months when I could've been looking at this."
He stares at you. And then his whole face crumples, the way faces do when they haven't had practice holding feeling, and he pulls you in hard, both arms around you, his face pressed into your neck, and you stand there between his knees in your parka and your sleep shirt and hold his bare head against you while his shoulders shake.
"Ich liebe dich," he says into your skin. "I am sorry. It is too soon. I do not care. I love you. I love you since you made procurement cry."
You laugh, and it comes out wet. "I love you too. Since the chocolate. Since before the chocolate. Since you said my hands were cold, you giant disaster."
He lifts his face. And for the first time, the first real time, you get to watch him kiss you.
His eyes stay open almost all the way to your mouth. They close at the last second. You feel the stubble now with nothing between you, his bare cheek against yours, his lashes brushing your skin. He kisses you slower than he did on the bench. Deeper. He kisses you like he wants you to see every second of it.
You end up on the cot again. You're not sure how. You remember the parka going somewhere, and his boots, and you remember tugging his filthy compression shirt over his head and this time not having to work around a hood, and him laughing into your mouth at how easy it is. You remember his hands under your sleep shirt, rough and warm, and pulling it off over your head, and his face. His face. Watching you. His mouth going soft and open when he looks at your body, his brow drawing down when you touch him, every flicker of it out in the open now, nothing hidden.
"Let me look at you," you say, pushing him onto his back. "Just. Let me look."
He lets you. He lies back on that narrow cot, which he hangs off at both ends, with one arm behind his head and the other bandaged across his stomach, and he lets you look, though you can see what it costs him. You kiss the scar over his eyebrow. The one on his chin. The little constellation of marks across his cheekbone, one at a time, until he's breathing hard and his hands are fisted in the blanket.
"You are torturing me," he says.
"I'm admiring you. There's a difference."
"Liebling. Please."
You've never heard him beg before. You decide you're going to hear it a lot.
You roll the condom on him yourself, slowly, enjoying the way his hips jerk under your hands, and then you climb on top of him and sink down, an inch at a time, the way he did for you. It's still a stretch, still overwhelming, and you have to stop halfway with your palms flat on his chest, breathing through it. He doesn't move. His hands find your hips and just hold them, steady, his thumbs stroking, and you watch his face while you take him.
You'll never get over that. His face. His jaw clenched, his lips parted, the way his eyes go almost unfocused and then snap back to you, like he can't stand to miss anything. When you finally sink all the way down he lets out a breath that's half your name, and his head falls back against the wall, and the tendons stand out in his throat.
"Look at me," you say. "Don't hide."
He looks at you.
You ride him slow. You've got all night, and he's back, and he's whole except for a fragment and a dented plate. You roll your hips and watch every single thing it does to him. When he can't take it anymore he sits up, one arm sliding around your back, the bandaged one braced on the mattress, so you're chest to chest, face to face, his forehead pressed to yours, and he starts moving with you. Long deep thrusts from underneath that take the breath out of you on every stroke.
"Mine," he says, half a question.
"Yours." You hold his face in both hands. "And you're mine. All of you. Face and all."
He makes a sound like something breaking open. His hand slides between you and finds your clit, and he watches you while he works it, and you've never been looked at like that in your life, like you're the only thing he's ever wanted to see. You come with his eyes on yours and his name falling out of you over and over. He follows you down with his face buried in your neck, shaking, holding you so tight you can barely breathe, and it's perfect. All of it.
At 0700 the next morning, the mess hall at KorTac's Carinthian compound goes quiet.
Not entirely quiet. Somebody's cutlery keeps clinking for a second before it stops. But every head turns, and every conversation dies, as the tallest man any of them have ever served with walks in through the double doors, ducking out of habit.
He's wearing the hood. Of course he is. You'd told him he didn't have to, and he'd said, "One thing at a time, Liebling," and you'd kissed him for it.
But he doesn't go to his corner. He doesn't fold himself into the farthest table with his back to the wall like he has every morning since he arrived. He walks straight down the middle of the room, carrying two trays, and sets one down in front of you at the quartermaster's table by the window. Coffee, black. Two rolls. And, propped against the coffee cup, a purple wrapper with a cow on it.
Then he sits beside you. Close. His thigh pressed all along yours under the table. And under the edge of the mesh, so only you can see it, he smiles.
Across the room, Matthias starts a slow clap.
Nobody else joins in. Everyone's far too afraid of losing a limb. But König's shoulders lift, just slightly, under the hood, in what you're almost sure is a laugh. And under the table, his enormous hand finds yours, and holds on, and doesn't let go.