Mornings used to come gently.

Light slipping through the curtains you kept talking yourself out of because they felt “too dainty,” too small of a man like a mountain. König bought them anyway: face pink, hands fumbling with the receipt, and installed them with all the awkward concentration of a man defusing a bomb. When he finished, he pressed a kiss to your temple and whispered, “Pretty… like you.”

He always woke first. half discipline, half nerves. König was a man who needed time to ease into the day, time to remember he was safe, time to switch from soldier to softened man; and in those moments, leaning over you with that fragile, barely-there smile, he forgot the world ever expected him to be the colonel.

Coffee burbled in the background. His playlist: terrible in a distinctly König way, alternating metal and bubblegum pop; hummed through the kitchen because he couldn’t decide what mood he was supposed to feel. You’d stumble in wearing one of his shirts that hung halfway to your knees, and he’d turn so fast he’d nearly drop his mug, cheeks going scarlet because he always looked at you like sunrise was something he didn’t deserve to witness.

He’d kiss you slow.

Slow like he was afraid of scaring you. Slow like he’d practiced in his head a hundred times. Slow like he was memorizing you with every breath.

Dance first, breakfast second. It started because he was too tall to look you in the eye when he was nervous: so he bent down, forehead brushing yours, hands tentative at your waist. The first time he asked you to dance, he whispered it like an apology: “I… I am not good at this. But I want to try. For you.”

And oh god, he did try.

He’d guide you carefully across the tile, steps huge and hesitant, like he was terrified he’d crush you if he breathed wrong; but when your hands came to rest on his chest? When you leaned in?

His laugh: low, warm, shaky...would spill out like a secret he’d been keeping for years.

He smelled like cedar soap, gun oil he could never fully wash out, and that quiet, aching hunger to be loved without fear.

You didn’t know a moment could become a memory while you were still inside it.

Then the knock came.

No alarms. No chaos. Just a too-soft knock, as if even grief knew to be gentle with you.

A folded Austrian flag. Dog tags lying heavy. His ring: the one he fidgeted with when the world got too loud and nights in the field got too quiet, looped around the chain.

“The colonel didn’t make it back.”

Your whole world went still. As if even the air refused to move without him.

They spoke. You didn’t hear a thing. All you could think about was how he always kissed you before pouring coffee. How he hesitated before touching you: not from doubt, but devotion. How he danced like a man who couldn’t believe he finally had something worth dancing for.

The world didn’t end, but it dimmed.

His presence gone, but his absence loud.

His jacket still hangs on the hook: impossibly large, impossibly empty. His socks by the washer, scrunched the way he always forgot to unroll them. His half-finished mug by the sink, shadowed by dust now.

You still play his playlist. Even the chaotic songs. Especially those.

Sometimes you feel the urge to look over your shoulder: expecting to see him there, shifting nervously, hands behind his back, hoping he wasn’t intruding on your morning.

You start dancing again.

Not because it brings peace. Not because it brings closure.

But because your body remembers the way he held you like an oversized shield trying desperately to be gentle.

Your hands rise into empty air, reaching for shoulders that aren’t there. Just the echo of your breath in a house that feels two sizes too big without him.

And for one fleeting, impossible heartbeat… you swear you feel enormous hands settle around your waist. Careful. Trembling. Devoted.

You keep dancing anyway.

Because loving König was learning how to be held gently by a giant. And remembering him is the only way you can still feel his arms around you.