𝐖𝐖𝐈𝐈 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐲
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ It's a brittle winter in 1943 when you're stationed within the borders of occupied Alsace, France. Time and time again, you've proven yourself to be a worthy operative for America's OSS, but as the conflict worsens, your espionage carries greater risk.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ Currently, you're posing as an heiress, a cover that provides security and repute. Your objective is simple: infiltrate Gestapo circles and intercept German troop movements for the Allies. How you go about collecting the intelligence is entirely your prerogative.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ Tonight, you carry transit documents sewn into the lining of your coat. You're to meet an Allied courier at a railway depot on the outskirts of the sector to deliver it. Already, an icy foreboding grips you, but wariness turns to dread the moment you reach the rendezvous point.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ The bodies of a German garrison litter the frozen ground around you, thoroughly massacred. Your hand slips down to retrieve your handgun when a voice calls from across the tracks. "You've been burnt, kid. And I just saved your life." The wind has picked up, and from a curtain of flurries emerges a man, American by the looks of it, dressed in a stylized combat uniform.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ You recognize him instantly from the papers. The black-and-whites don't do the roguish glint in his eyes any justice, but it's him all the same. "Soldier Boy," you breathe, and he responds with a curt nod. When he approaches, you get a closer look and see blood under his eye. "You're hurt," you say, reaching out your hand. He turns his cheek with a sly grin. "Ain't mine," he reassures you. Then it's his turn to reach for you. With one hand, he swoops you forward by the waist and catches your lips for a kiss. "Small token for saving your life," he explains. "We're not square, but it's a start."
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ After that night, your run-ins with Soldier Boy become frequent. Luckily, your cover wasn't blown as you had suspected. Over the course of eighteen months, you continue to deliver intel to the Supe. You meet under ravaged rooftops and yellowed farmland, slowly forming a bond that surpasses geopolitical interests.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ You've both been marked by brutality, and it softens the space between you. Soldier Boy finds himself falling for you, and in a breath, accepts your tenderness if it means forgetting his duty for a few days at a time. One Sunday morning, you find yourselves waking to golden hour in a gutted French monastery. You've stolen hours to lay together on wool blankets caked in dust. He makes love to you under the collapsed roof of that deconsecrated ruin, finding relief in the softness of your skin and the sounds that fall from your lips.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ When you fall asleep on his chest, he studies the rise and fall of your breaths and is reminded of life. His mind's eye raises a partition until his kill count becomes an abstract value. When his hand slips between your legs and you stir, he's simply a man, and that's enough.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ Twenty months after having met you, Soldier Boy is stationed in occupied Belgium. The campaign cuts off all contact between you for six weeks, and he resolves that the next time he lays with you, he'll collect a photograph to keep for long stretches in the future.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ During his final week in Belgium, Soldier Boy learns that you were deployed to a liberated French sector when a German aerial bomb devastated the area. The blast leveled a town to rubble and killed dozens. Your name was among the casualties. Though he hadn't been there to protect you, the finest parts of him died right along with you. He listens to the briefing with a vacant stare, wishing for rage to envelop his grief.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ In the weeks that follow, Ben stops caring about the ultimate outcome of the conflict. He takes orders from Vought and becomes a tool, consistently delivering unethical slaughter. The press praises his grit and history writes him down as a true patriot after the war, but he doesn’t care. It doesn't matter anymore.
⋆｡𖦹°‧★ Decades later, when muddy battlefields have long grown over with wild grass and the war is relegated to school curriculums, Ben remains haunted. He never did have the chance to get your photograph, so one-night-stands become canvases for your memory. In the dark, he sees your eyes on every lover’s face, and when they cry out and orgasm beneath him, his chest constricts with a familiar grief. His mind will only let him hear the catch of your breath from that harsh winter in 1943.
