Chapter Text
After you and Horangi had finished taking stock of the pantry, you’d moved on to the bed, curling up with a few extra blankets, a pen, and your notebook propped up against your thighs as you alternated between doodling, writing, and watching the little black and blue bird outside the window dance and chirp raspy little trills as it pecked at the bird seed in the feeder.
It was funny, this was the first hint of life beyond the cabin you’d seen to this point. Despite the marten that supposedly lived behind the cabin and the presence of the bird feeder, you hadn’t seen nor heard so much as a track in the snow or a bird song at dawn.
Just as you start to debate names for the small, round, and very fluffy bird bouncing around outside the window, its head shoots up and it goes silent. A moment later, the bird takes off.
You watch the bird leave, frowning and silently lamenting the loss of your companion courtesy of whatever must’ve spooked it. But you’re not given much time to dwell on it, because a few minutes later you hear the heavy clomp of boots climbing the wooden stairs to the porch, followed by the sound of König clumsily grabbing the wire brush hanging off the hook by the door and brushing the snow off of his books.
The front door swings open and König strides into the cabin with loud, heavy steps and heaving breaths that make you wonder how this man ever sneaks up on you. He’s carrying a small, brown ferret-like animal over his shoulder. Despite the pang of sympathy you feel for whatever poor animal he’s managed to catch, you find yourself sitting up and setting your journal to the side, curious about what he’s brought back to the cabin.
“You’re back.” Horangi states, not looking up from the book he’d been reading when König walked in.
König doesn’t respond immediately, breathing heavily as he yanks off his hat, gloves, and the neck warmer he had pulled up over his lower face. Underneath the gear, he looked plain run-ragged. The area between his cheek bones and brow was pink and wind burnt from the cold, while his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, creating a stark juxtaposition between the two areas of his face.
“There wasn’t much out.” König grunted, his boots- despite having the majority already knocked off- leaving a small trail of snow along the cabin floor as he walks towards the kitchen, unceremoniously dumping the small animal onto the counter before bracing himself against the surface and catching his breath.
Your face twists as you watch him drop the animal onto the counter and you make a mental note to disinfect the surface as soon as possible as you walk up to stand beside König.
“It’s getting too cold out.” Horangi chimes, although the two’s conversation fades to the background of your mind as you stare at the animal on the counter with wide eyes…
There was no blood. No bullet holes, no trap marks, nothing. Just the animal’s neck bent at a jarringly unnatural angle with a look of fear struck into its features. You can hardly hear the other two now- as if their voices were traveling through water instead of air. It felt like you were drowning, silent even as your body and mind screamed for air.
You took a gasping breath, snapping out of your daze and forcing yourself to turn away from the small animal’s corpse and push past the prickly feeling at the pit of your stomach.
You had to get out of here.
Horangi excuses himself to leave not long after König’s return, leaving the two of you alone for the night. When the door shuts behind Horangi, you find yourself sad he’s gone. It’s a strange bittersweet combination of relief from social interaction and of missing the closest thing you’ve had to company (not a friend. Firmly, not a friend.) since coming here.
As you hear Horangi’s footsteps recede, a heavier set approaches behind you. You feel König wrap his arms around you and pull you into his chest, resting his chin on top of your head with a content hum.
“Did Horangi take care of you?” He asks, rubbing his hands up and down your sides and trying to covertly slip them up and under your shirt.
“Yes, it was fine.” You say, trying to keep the grumbling from your voice. You’re not looking to start the fighting so early.
König seems relieved at your answer, squeezing you close to him. “Good.” He says warmly, and you can feel the way he relaxes against you.
“Are you hungry? I can help you with dinner.” He offers, and even though you’d usually tell him no, you find yourself nodding.
He moves to face you, looking down at you with a wide smile.
“Alright, I’ll show you how to skin a mink.”
Any sense of being okay is immediately pulled from you as your stomach lurches and you shake your head no. You can feel the way the blood drains from your face at the reminder of what König had brought back from his hunt.
“Can’t you do that part?” You ask, beginning to worry at the skin around your cuticle without even realizing it.
König frowns. “It’s already dead, Schatz. You need to learn how to prepare meat- it’s an important skill.”
“Please?” You try again, trying desperately to keep yourself from sounding too pleading or desperate- while at the same time being exactly that.
Again, König frowns, tilting his head at you and furrowing his brow.
“But I want to teach you.” He says looking down at you with sad eyes that remind you of a begging puppy.
“Come on, we can sauté it up in a pan with some garlic and green beans, make a nice little stir fry- that sounds good, right Schatz?” He continues, giving you a smile as he tried to get you excited about dinner.
And with that, your fate is sealed.
He leads you to the kitchen, taking you loosely by the wrist until you’re both standing in front of the kitchen sink. You’re left to watch as he pulls his pocket knife out and checks the sharpness of the blade, positioning himself behind you so you’re trapped between him and the counter.
He grabs the animal- the mink, he’d said- and a cutting board from the drying rack, laying the animal onto the polished wood. Your stomach twists and you feel a pained expression cross your face as you watch him handle the small corpse. You can’t stop looking at it. There’s no blood, no trap line snared around its neck, nothing. Just its neck bent at an unnatural angle.
“How did you catch it…” You ask, jaw tensed and eye’s blown wide as König gets and opens a gallon plastic bag, setting to the side as he pulls a hunting knife you hadn’t even realized he’d had on him from a sheath at his hip.
“It was in a trap I set out.” König says simply.
“…there’s no snare-“
“I went ahead and reset the trap while I was there.”
“When did you set-“ Your breath hitches and you flinch when König gives your hand a squeeze, a silent warning to drop the subject. At the same time, he rests his chin on top of your head to look over you, his body caging you further against the counter even as you press back into him, trying to keep your distance from the cutting board.
“Don’t worry, Schatz. It didn’t suffer.” He says, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb as he uses the other to turn the small animal onto its back.
“First, you cut from the….”
König’s voice fades into the background as you watch him start to skin the animal. Your eyes are open, but you’re not really seeing. The only thing you can focus on is how wide and scared the animal’s eyes are.
Blood blooms a deep red against the animal’s fur under König’s blade. Your mind is racing a mile a minute, feelings of sorrow, loss, and pity for the poor animal that had lost its life and the swell of your own discomfort at how its neck was twisted to the side.
The whole time, you’re forced to watch- to stand there and listen as he moves slowly and purposely, explaining what he’s doing as he does it.
You gag violently at the sound that’s made when König pulls back the skin, seperating it from the animal’s muscles in a single jerk. Your entire body rolls with the force of it and you worry you’re about to vomit.
König frowns, instantly lifting his arm so you can slip out from between him and the counter- which you do, promptly.
Before he can say anything, you’re by the sink, washing your hands under water that’s so hot it scalds and ignoring the confused, almost hurt look that König was giving you.
“I’ll start on the rest of dinner. The green beans are in the freezer, right?” You ask before he can question your reaction, not waiting for him to respond as you squat down, finding the bag of frozen string beans and putting them on the counter.
You go about collecting the rest of what you’ll need, keeping your head down and avoiding looking at the increasingly bloody scene atop what had formerly been your favorite cutting board.
Shit. You’ll have to sanitize the whole thing. God knows how many times you’ll have to wash it before using it for anything other than meat again. Actually, maybe that one can just stay as only for meat.
Every once and a while, you catch König watching you from across the kitchen. He’s always got the same frown when you do- stuck somewhere between confused and disappointed.
To you, it’s quickly become clear that you’re not going to be able to handle any meat König brings back from hunting, but you doubt König will let you easily avoid the task.
You take a large glass bowl from the highest shelf, mixing worcestershire sauce, minced garlic, oil, rice vinegar, and a few spices you think will go well with the combination as a marinade. Once you’re all done, you push it towards König.
“Put the meat in here.” You say, pointing to the mixture and looking up at him, making eye contact to make sure he actually hears you. “It needs to sit in there for twenty minutes while I cook the green beans.”
“Of course, Schatz.” König says, nodding as a bit of the worry for you fades from his face and he goes back to preparing the meat- which, by now, he was almost done with. He had one side of the cutting board occupied with a pile of semi-uniformly sized chunks of meat, the scraps and bones collected in a gallon ziplock bag, the pelt set off to the side, and an increasingly smaller pile of meat to be cut.
The two of you work in silence as he finishes, putting the meat into the marinade before cleaning up his mess as you gather the rest of your ingredients.
While the selection of canned, frozen, and dried goods was wide, there was a bit of a learning curve in going from using something like fresh carrots in your cooking to canned carrots- especially when you were trying to avoid them tasting like they were ever canned in the first place.
For the most part, it was fine. Frozen vegetables were usually indistinguishable fresh ones once cooked, and despite your initial reservations about using jarred garlic in your cooking, it worked just as well as the fresh stuff. You also couldn’t deny that using an eighth of a bag of diced, frozen onions was much easier than having to dice half an onion yourself.
But thank god for the large variety of spices. If you’d had anything less than the healthy cupboard full you’d been blessed with, you doubt there’d be much hope- especially when it came to using canned foods in your cooking. You wouldn’t call yourself an expert at this point, but you’d like to think what you’d made so far was palatable, at the very least.
It had all tasted fine to you so far, at least. And König never complained, although that may be because he’d eat just about anything put in front of him- especially if you made it.
You combined garlic, vegetable oil, salt, and the beans in a pan, stirring them often as the oil popped and sizzled from the heat and the frozen green beans de thawed and started to soften, gaining a bit of color from the heat as you kept the pan’s contents from burning.
By the time König had cleaned up his area and taken the pelt outside to do… something or other with it, the meat had been marinating long enough that you had started a bit of oil, salt, and onions browning in a second pan for König to add the meat to when he returned.
It was easier now to touch or handle the meat (not that you wanted too) now that it was, frankly, not attached to the creature that it came from. But you still left it for König to handle, waiting for him to move the meat from the marinade to the pan once he got back- washing his hands and putting the dirty bowl in the sink before returning to your side to stir the meat and cook with you.
For a moment, both of you stand in silence with only the sounds of wooden spoons against metal and popping oil filling the room. The tension is only broken when König pulls you against him by your waist and leans towards you, sighing contentedly when you don’t pull away.
You’re conflicted with yourself for not doing so, but not enough to make you pull away from him.
“It smells lovely, Schatz.” König says, his fingers starting to rub up and down at your waist as he speaks. “I’m sure it’ll taste amazing.”
You nod idly in response, continuing to move the green beans and garlic around in the simmering oil of your pan as König does the same with his.
The silence that falls is comfortable, and things go remarkably without conflict as the two of you work together to finish dinner.
Dinner goes without a fight too- with the two of you sitting at the table and enjoying the meal relatively peacefully. You poke around the meat on your plate, trying- and struggling- to detach the image of it from the animal it had come from. König however, has no similar hesitancies- shoveling food into his mouth and complimenting your cooking constantly in between mouthfulls of food.
After you eat, you start on the dishes- begrudgingly thankful when König stays and helps to clear the table and clean the kitchen from cooking.
For the most part, you’re silent, while König spends the time talking at you. Mostly about his new plans to expand the porch and to build an overhang so the two of you could enjoy the weather once it gets warmer.
It’s somewhat comforting in it’s simplicity- because even as König babbles about his apparent new found hobby of home improvement, you can fall into a rythm with the dishes; clear, scrub, rinse, dry- all while giving König the occasional hum or nod in agreement that keep him happy to drone on and on instead of bothering you.
You’re too absorbed in the task to realize König sneaking up behind you until it’s too late.
You yelp at the feeling of ice-cold hands on your stomach, slapping his hands away and shooting him a nasty glare.
“What? Come be my little hand warmer!” He teases, laughing and starting to come after you.
“No!” You growl, taking another step back, your voice lacking all of the playful energy of König’s.
König doesn’t miss a beat, wiggling his fingers in a mockingly menacing manner as he chases after you.
You draw your line in the sand, and he always ignores it- crossing it and trampling your wishes like a toddler ripping up his mom’s garden without the slightest understanding of what he’s doing wrong.
“König, stop.” You try again, your tone stern and serious and your eyes narrowed in a decisively unamused manner. You can feel your heart beating through your chest, an adrenaline rush readying you to run and squirm away from him for however long it takes for him to get the hint that you don’t want to play fight- because just saying “no” doesn’t work- not anymore.
For all the times he’s missed (or ignored) your clear no’s and disinterest, he graciously recognizes this one, dropping his hands and slouching his back- pouting, you realize.
“Why not? My hands are cold, and you’re warm.” He says.
“Because I don’t want to.” You insist, crossing your arms and staring down the grown man pouting in front of you with all the intensity you can muster.
“Alright, Schatz.” He sighs, continuing to pout but blissfully dropping the subject, flopping down dramatically on the couch and grabbing the book he’d been recently reading from the coffee table.
For a moment, the two of you sit (well, you stand and König lays) in silence. You find anger biting at the edges of your already strained patience at how König splays out across the couch, leaving you to either stand or move his feet if you want to sit down.
You don’t… but that doesn’t change much of anything.
After a moment, König lowers his book, watching you over the top as you stand- admittedly- somewhat passive aggressively across the living room.
“Would you like to go with me on a walk, Schatz? I would like to show you something.” He says- the fact that he was pouting completely forgotten.
You stand slack mouthed, watching him with wide eyes as you’re caught completely off guard by the question.
You catch yourself though, nodding quickly- and oh boy do you nod. Leaving the cabin sounds fantastic. You’d do just about anything to be allowed to leave it, even for just a moment. You’d been cooped up long enough that even if you’d likely never be more than an arm’s length away from König, you imagined that just getting to go outside at all would do wonders for the anxiety and constant feelings of being on-edge that you carried. Hell, if you couldn’t get any space from König, maybe this way you’d at least be on a longer leash.
König watches your response with a grin, setting his book to the side before standing up and slapping his hands against his knees with an air of finality.
“Alright then, let’s get you dressed.”