「Proud of you, Bitch」

⋆˚꩜｡ 20s ⋆˚꩜｡

[superising]

Random Thought 💭

Had this story idea for a Soldier Boy x Reader x Bombsight that doesn’t want to leave my brain so I’m gonna leave it here feel free to use it and tag me if you do ˃͈◡˂͈　

So heres my thought: 

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Past:

Before Vought became what it is today, there were the V1 Trials.

Reader was one of the original volunteers, and it was there that she met Ben and Robbie.

The three of them survived the trials together, enduring the pain, fear, and uncertainty of becoming some of the first successful V1 subjects. While many volunteers died, five survived and emerged stronger than anyone could have imagined, becoming the world’s first superheroes.

In those early years, Reader and Ben fell in love, and for a time, they were inseparable. But things started to change when Clara Vought began showing too much interest in Ben.

Reader watched as Ben slowly gave his heart to Clara. Despite loving him, she eventually accepted that she could never compete with her. She talked to Ben about Clara and admitted that she knew Clara wanted him and that he clearly wanted her too. So she ended the relationship, leaving herself devastated.

At the same time, Robbie was nursing wounds of his own. He had fallen in love with Clara as well, only to watch her choose Ben.

Heartbroken and alone, Reader and Robbie found comfort in each other.

Their friendship, already strong, became deeper not quite love, but something that mattered just as much. They understood one another in ways nobody else could. Both carried the pain of loving people who had chosen someone else.

Over the years, their relationship evolved into an on-and-off physical arrangement built on trust and affection. They were partners in everything except love, and to them, that was enough.

Until Ben found out.

Even though Ben and Reader had been separated for years, he reacted badly when he learned she was fucking Robbie. He couldn’t stand the thought of Reader being with him. Likewise, Robbie had spent years resenting Ben for taking Clara from him. (Not that she ever cared about him to begin with)

The relationship between the two men eventually curdled into bitterness and hatred. Decades passed, and neither could stand being in the same space as the other.

Present - during season 5

During their search for the V1, The Boys seek information from The Legend.

He points them toward someone he believes might know where Bombsight has been all these years: Reader.

The Boys eventually track her down to a remote off-grid farm, hidden far from Vought’s influence. Unlike most Supes, she wants nothing to do with heroes, corporations, or power.

There, she decides to cooperate, even though they nearly attacked her upon arriving at her farm (mainly Butcher’s idea) She hates Vought, hates Homelander, and certainly doesn’t trust Soldier Boy. Any chance she gets to fuck them over, she’ll take it.

She reveals that Bombsight might have the V1 because she knows he would do anything to stay with Goldie forever.

So The Boys go after Golden Geisha.

When Bombsight leaves to rescue Goldie, Reader decides to go with him. She feels guilty for putting Goldie in danger because she didn’t imagined The Boys would kidnap her to get to Robbie.

During the confrontation involving The Boys and Bombsight, Reader tries to de-escalate the situation, but everything changes when Soldier Boy shows up.

Bombsight and Soldier Boy begin fighting, and Reader ultimately joins the battle. Neither man wants her involved because, in their heads, this fight is between them.

When The Boys and Reader arrive at the location where Bombsight and Soldier Boy landed, they witness Robbie handing the V1 to Ben.

She understands why she knows Robbie would do anything to be with Goldie, even if it means losing his powers.

But while part of her hopes Ben will do the right thing and destroy it, she can’t take that risk. There is no universe where she allows Homelander to get his hands on the V1 especially if that’s what Clara would have wanted. 

So she attacks Soldier Boy.

She isn’t as strong as him, but she can hold her own, combining her invulnerability and decades of combat experience and her powers she’s one of the few people capable of challenging Soldier Boy directly.

In the chaos, she manages to grab the V1 from him.(she either destroys it or gives it to the boys)

When Homelander arrives and realizes he’s lost his chance to become immortal, he immediately decides that Reader needs to die.

But Soldier Boy intervenes, despite everything between them, despite decades of resentment, heartbreak, and unresolved feelings, he refuses to let Homelander kill her.

The realization frustrates him more than he’d ever admit because Reader still matters to him, far more than she should.

Before anyone can stop him and seeing that she’s already exhausted from using her powers, Ben knocks her unconscious and takes her back to Vought Tower. He’s not entirely sure what to do with her, because for the first time in decades, Ben is forced to decide who and what really matters to him.

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Now I’m gonna rant about her power I’m sorry (⚈₋₍⚈)

In my mind her powers are pretty much like the standard v1 supes (at least that’s what I think from what we see from Stormfront, Soldiers Boy and Bombsight but idk) 

But her primary power could be inflicting neurological pain directly into the brain through touching the other person head, having 3 levels:

Lowest level:a soft touch to the head can trigger migraines, dizziness sensory overload, etc, the person is left disoriented and unable to focus after only a few seconds of contact ( basically like typical migraines symptoms)

Medium level: With prolonged exposure through touch, the effects become more dangerous, provoking temporary paralysis, seizures and fainting.

Highest level: taking her power to its absolute limit while maintaining direct contact with both hands at a person’s head, she can overload the brain, causing blood vessels to rupture and resulting in cerebral hemorrhage and only a few people are able to survive. 

Downside of using her powers for a long period of time is physically draining, the more damage she inflicts, the greater the strain on her body, leaving her exhausted with blurred vision that can lead to fainting.

Reader and Soldier Boy  fighting is basically Ben trying to keep her hands from grabbing his head long enough to hurt him 

I think it shows that I thought way to much about this but yeah it’s been in my mind for weeks so finally got this idea out of head and now my brain can rest

ᕙ(  •̀ ᗜ •́  )ᕗ

Also why was everyone obsessed with Clara (≖_≖)  either way I’m sad that The Boys ended but I’m excited to see Vought Rising  (ᕑᗢᓫ)

[lickabeefslair]

Meeting Mister Marathon

Summary: USO Girl meets Mister Marathon (probably her biggest fan) while on the quest for V1 with Soldier Boy and Homelander. Let’s just say she’s really good at her job. - SMUT

The trio rang the bell to the big mansion. In a flash, a washed-up supe appeared who went by the name of Mister Marathon.

“Homelander, it is really, uh, really good to see you. Um, why…” he stammered. “Uh, you know, what-what brings you by?”

“Relax. We’re just here to talk,” Homelander said calmly.

“Yeah, yeah, great, awesome… And Soldier Boy, wow. Big fan, sir. I actually, uh, popped my cherry in your Underoos.”

“Nice,” Soldier Boy said dryly.

Mister Marathon’s eyes landed on her next. USO Girl stood there in full pin-up glory red lips, perfect hair, curves poured into that retro outfit. She gave him the brightest, sweetest America’s Sweetheart smile. “And you, USO Girl,” he pointed, almost reverent. “Those pin-up posters? Yeah… you in fishnets holding a rifle. I spent a LOT of time alone with that one.” His eyes darted from her chest back to her face. She smiled, polished and effortless. “Glad we could be of service.”

Soldier Boy snorted quietly beside her, the corner of his mouth twitching in amusement. He knew that voice. That was full-on performative USO Girl, America’s Sweetheart dialed to eleven. She was working the mark, and it was fucking hilarious to watch. They had their arrangement: fuck whoever you want, just come home to each other. No outsiders in their bed. This? This was all business… with a side of fun.

“So you were part of The Seven?” she asked sweetly, stepping closer.

“Uh, I was, I was. You know, until this one replaced me with A-Train.”

“Hey, aren’t we out of a speedster?” USO Girl said playfully to Homelander, placing a gentle hand on Mister Marathon’s bicep and giving it a light squeeze. She surveyed the B-movie posters surrounding them, shooting Soldier Boy a quick, mischievous wink. He just smirked, arms crossed, clearly entertained by the show.

“Check it out. Come on,” Mister Marathon said, leading them deeper into the mansion.

The walls were lined with posters Mister Marathon launched into his pitch “Hey, check this one out. Grossed 35 mil.”

“On a $200 million budget,” Homelander shot back.

“These aren’t even Vought films.”

Soldier Boy asks “What’s the difference?”

“These were made where washed-up Supes go to die. Sony Pictures TV.”

Mister Marathon replied “It’s a legit studio. And I save half on their TVs. And maybe we’re not part of the official VCU, and maybe we can’t mention Vought or any licensed Vought hero, but hey, I’m still making magic. That and I, uh, I sling a little bit on the side. Blow, pills, Ozempic, whatever you need. Fastest dealer in town.” He chuckled nervously.

USO Girl laughed softly, trailing her fingers along his arm as they walked. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Homelander got to the point “We came here looking for something. What do you know about V1?”

Mister Marathon perked up. “You’ve come to the right place.” He led them to a locked room, keypad beeping, lock clicking open. “Here you go.”

The room was packed with vintage Vought memorabilia. USO Girl took note of the room and noticed the excessive amount of bottles “Puff Baby” oil bottles and locked eyes with Homelander with a look that reads “what the fuck” for a moment before turning her attention back to Mister Marathon. Soldier Boy picked up an old comic of himself.

“Oh yeah, Vought yanked that one from newsstands after Kent State,” Mister Marathon said.

“Good times,” Soldier Boy replied.

“How’d you end up with it?”

“Some old bitch on eBay. I paid 20 bucks. I mean, it’d go for half a mil at auction easy.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, Dr. Vought was a titan, a visionary.”

“He was a pansy with a German accent and sweaty palms,” Soldier Boy said.

“He’s a fucking asshole.” USO Girl says to Soldier Boy.

“He was a complicated guy.”

Homelander pressed “Do you or do you not have V1?”

“I-I don’t. But Bombsight does. He does.”

Soldier Boy is amused “That piece of shit’s still alive?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he was my best customer for a long time. One night he was tweaked out of his gourd and told me he had some, and I believe him. Me and Bombsight are still cool. Why don’t we all just hang out for a sec, and I-I’ll call him. He’ll fly right over.”

But USO Girl had already drifted back toward the main room, drawn like a magnet to the display hook. There it hung: her old army green USO tour jacket. Worn, cleaned, preserved, her name stitched proudly across the back in metallic gold thread.

For a second, everything else faded.

“…Where did you get this?” Her voice dropped, quieter, genuine for a moment.

Mister Marathon beamed. “Oh, that? Private collector auction. Cost me a fortune. That’s history right there.”

She stepped closer, fingers hovering over the stitching. Then the Sweetheart mask clicked back on. She turned to him with a slow, sultry smile, voice warm and inviting. “You’re cute, I don’t exactly carry cash,” she said lightly, tilting her head just so. “But I’m sure we could work something out…”

Soldier Boy leaned against the doorway, watching with open amusement. He muttered under his breath with a low chuckle, “Jesus Christ…” She was laying it on so thick it was comedy gold but damn if it wasn’t effective. The speedy little has-been was already putty in her hands.

USO Girl moved in closer, performative charm dialed to maximum. “You’ve got quite the collection, Mister Marathon. All these memories… all this history.” Her fingers trailed lightly down his chest. “A girl could get very nostalgic. Especially over something that used to belong to her.” She leaned in, letting him feel the warmth of her body, her voice dropping to a husky purr. “I’d be so grateful if you let me have it back. Maybe I could… show you just how grateful?”

Mister Marathon swallowed hard, face flushed. “Y-yeah? I mean… anything for you.”

She smiled sweetly, the picture of America’s Sweetheart, while her hand slid lower. “Good boy. Why don’t you make that call to Bombsight… and then you and I can have a little private tour of the rest of your collection?”

Later, once Homelander and Soldier Boy stepped out to give them “space,” she made good on every promise.

She pushed Mister Marathon onto the couch, straddling him with practiced grace, the reclaimed USO jacket draped over a nearby chair like a trophy. “You really jerked off to my posters, huh?” she whispered, grinding slowly against his hardening cock. “Tell me all the dirty things you imagined doing to America’s Sweetheart.”

He was panting already. “Fuck… everything. You in the fishnets, bending you over, those tits bouncing while I—”

She kissed him deep, biting his lip. “Good. Because tonight you get to do more than imagine.” Her hand slipped into his pants, stroking him firmly. “You tell me everything you know about Bombsight and V1 while I ride you… and I’ll make sure you never forget what it’s like to fuck a real legend.”

Mister Marathon moaned, hands gripping her hips desperately as she sank down onto him. She rode him hard, performative sweetness gone raw, hungry, enjoying how fast and eager he was underneath her. Soldier Boy was probably laughing his ass off somewhere nearby, knowing exactly how this “interrogation” was going.

She’d get the intel. She’d get her jacket. And she’d get a fun, speedy fuck out of it.

Then she’d go home with her man.

While they waited for Bombsight to show, Mister Marathon left for a a quick moment. Malchemical still looking vaguely confused after his awkward reintroduction to Homelander turned his attention elsewhere. The supe’s eyes widened when they landed on USO Girl. She caught it immediately and flashed her brightest, most polished America’s Sweetheart smile.

“Hi there,” she said warmly, extending a graceful hand. “I don’t think we’ve properly met. I’m USO Girl. You have gorgeous blue eyes, and the smile of an angel.” She winked playfully, her voice carrying that soft, soothing lilt that immediately put people at ease.

Malchemical took her hand like it was something sacred, a faint flush creeping up his neck. As a newer supe, he’d grown up on her classic pin-up posters and wartime footage half the guys his age had. “Malchemical,” he managed, voice a little too eager. “Holy shit… I mean, it’s a real honor. I’ve kinda… been a fan for a long time.” He held the handshake a beat too long, starstruck and obviously a little in love already.

USO Girl let her fingers linger in his just enough to keep that spark going, her presence radiating calm, relaxed energy through the room. “Well, aren’t you sweet,” she purred softly, giving him a gentle squeeze before letting go. It was all part of the performance but the way his eyes followed her afterward made it clear she’d just gained another admirer. Soldier Boy left to take a piss and Mister Marathon came back in maybe 5 minutes tops. He pulled out a small mirror and a baggie of pristine white powder, laying out lines like the eager host he was. Rap music played quietly in the background from hidden speakers.

Soldier Boy leaned over and snorted a fat line, then cleared his throat with a satisfied grunt. Mister Marathon followed right after, sniffing hard.

“I scooped this up from Bogotá while you were taking a piss,” Mister Marathon said, wiping his nose. “I mean, for the Soldier Boy, nothing but the best.”

“Mmm,” Soldier Boy replied, already feeling the rush.

Mister Marathon’s eyes kept drifting back to USO Girl with that same starstruck, horny reverence. She’d been laying the Sweetheart act on thick all evening laughs, touches, lingering looks but now she was relaxing into it. He’d disappeared for a moment earlier and returned with something special just for her: a perfectly rolled joint of some truly excellent weed he’d also grabbed on that Bogotá run. “Figured America’s Sweetheart might prefer something a little classier than coke,” he’d said with a nervous grin, handing it over like an offering.

She lit it up now, taking a long, slow pull and holding it in before exhaling a thick, sweet cloud. The weed was fantastic smooth, potent, hitting her just right. She leaned back on the couch, legs crossed, jacket now draped possessively over her lap like a trophy, and smiled lazily at him. “Mmm, this is really good. You’re spoiling me, Marathon.”

He looked like he might melt on the spot.

Soldier Boy watched the whole thing with open amusement, chuckling low as he caught her eye. She was still performing that polished, flirty persona, but the weed was softening the edges, making her look even more fuckable. He loved watching her work a mark like this especially one as desperate and speedy as this guy.

The three of them were standing close while the celebrities lounged at the round table. USO Girl smoothly positioned herself right between Soldier Boy and Mister Marathon, her back brushing lightly against Soldier Boy’s chest while she faced the washed-up speedster. She let her hips sway just a little, effectively sandwiching herself between the two supes.

“Mmm,” she hummed, voice low and sweet but dripping with suggestion. “You know, this is one of my secret little dreams… being sandwiched between you two.” She glanced over her shoulder at Soldier Boy with a playful wink, then forward at Mister Marathon, running a hand slowly down the speedy supe’s chest. “Big strong Soldier Boy behind me… and an eager, fast little thing like you in front. A girl could get into all kinds of trouble in a spot like this.”

Mister Marathon’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head, his breath catching as he stared down at her curves pressed close. He looked ready to combust on the spot. Soldier Boy let out a deep, amused laugh right behind her, one hand casually resting on her hip. “You’re laying it on real thick tonight, sweetheart,” he murmured, clearly entertained. He knew exactly what she was doing working the mark while enjoying herself. He liked that she actually was having fun on a mission for once.

She laughed softly, the sound melodic and relaxing, her mood-altering presence already easing the energy in the room. “Can you blame me? It’s a very nice dream.”

Before Mister Marathon could stammer out a reply, he blurted eagerly, still starstruck, horny, and buzzing hard from the coke, clearly riding the high of having USO Girl in his house, leaned forward with wide, starry eyes. “God, I’m dying to hear your angelic voice live,” he said, the words tumbling out pathetic and eager. “Just… one little song? Please?”

A few of the celebrities lounging around the round table half-stoned, half-coked out, passing joints and bottles perked up immediately. “Yeah, come on!” one of them called out. “USO Girl in the flesh? Sing for us!” Another whistled. “Do the classic stuff!”

USO Girl let out a soft, melodic laugh, taking another slow drag from her joint before setting it aside. She glanced around the room with playful hesitation, then turned those big, innocent eyes on Soldier Boy. “Oh, I dunno… what do you think, Soldier Boy? Should I give them a little performance?”

Soldier Boy grinned, leaning back in his seat like a king watching his favorite show. “Go on, sweetheart,” he said sweetly, voice warm and encouraging. “Show ‘em how it’s done, Honey. You know they’ve been waiting their whole lives for this.”

She bit her lip, pretending to think about it for a second, then stood up with effortless grace, smoothing down her outfit. “Alright, alright. But I’m gonna need some backup.” Her gaze swept over the round table. “You all know ‘Da Doo Ron Ron,’ right? I need you on the ‘da doo ron ron’ parts. Mister Marathon… Malchemical… you too.” She pointed at them with a wink. “Don’t let me down, boys.”

Mister Marathon looked like he’d just won the lottery. Malchemical shrugged but smirked, clearly game. The celebrities at the table laughed and nodded, already starting to hum along as the mood in the room shifted.

She tried turning her charm on Homelander next, flashing him the sweetest smile. “Come on, Homelander… even you. It’ll be fun.”

Homelander just crossed his arms, stubborn as ever. “Not happening.”

USO Girl shrugged it off with a laugh. “Suit yourself.” She nodded at Soldier Boy, who rose to his feet with a lazy grin. As the familiar oldies beat kicked in (someone had queued it up on the speakers), she started singing her voice pure, nostalgic, and effortlessly powerful.

“I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still…”

The group jumped in on the chorus, Mister Marathon especially enthusiastic (if a little off-key): “Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ron!”

Soldier Boy joined in on the backup. As she sang the next verse, he caught her hand and gave her a playful twirl. She spun gracefully, laughing, then pulled Mister Marathon up for a quick, flirty dance his hands on her waist while she kept the lead, moving like the pin-up dream he’d jerked off to for years.

Her voice filled the room, and that’s when her powers kicked in. The song wasn’t just entertainment it carried that subtle, soothing vibration that only she could weave in. Tension melted. Shoulders relaxed. Even the celebrities who’d been jittery from the drugs settled into easy smiles. The whole chaotic waiting game for Bombsight turned softer, warmer, almost nostalgic. Laughter came easier. Mister Marathon looked blissed out, staring at her like she hung the moon while clumsily trying to keep up with the dance.

By the time the song wound down, the entire space felt lighter. Homelander was still brooding in the corner, but even he seemed fractionally less murderous. USO Girl took a little curtsey, flushed and glowing, as applause and whistles erupted from the table.

Mister Marathon was panting, half from the dance, half from pure adoration. “Holy shit… that was incredible. You’re even better in person.”

She gave him a sultry little smile, brushing her fingers along his arm as she sat back down. “Glad you liked it. Now… where were we?”

Soldier Boy dropped back into his seat beside her, still chuckling. The weed, the song, and her lingering performance had everyone nicely loosened upjust the way she liked it.

The conversations turned back quickly.

Mister Marathon leaned in, still buzzing. “Homelander still as weird as he was when I was there?”

“Well, I wasn’t there back then,” Soldier Boy said, “but yeah.”

Mister Marathon laughed. “So get this. One time at Les Deux, Mischa Barton wanted to suck him off, right? He spent two hours talking to her about Nietzsche, then left when she stepped on his cape.” USO Girl let out a bright, melodic laugh the kind that used to sell war bonds and took another hit off the joint before passing it lightly toward Mister Marathon. “That sounds exactly like him. The man treats that cape like it’s his emotional support blanket. It’s pathetic, really.” She shook her head, grinning. “I’ve seen him throw actual tantrums, like a toddler.”

Soldier Boy barked out a laugh. “Ugh. That fucking cape.”

“Like a baby with a blanket,” Mister Marathon agreed, chuckling. “Pretty sure he jerks off into it. Probably why it’s so stiff.”

USO Girl nearly choked on her exhale, laughing harder. “Oh my god, that tracks. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” She shot Soldier Boy a wicked, amused look, the weed making everything funnier. Mister Marathon was eating it up, laughing along with her like they were old friends.

The laughter died instantly when Homelander’s voice cut through the room like ice.

“Say that again.”

Unsettling silence fell. Soldier Boy rolled his eyes. “Oh, can’t you take a fucking joke?”

“Say it again,” Homelander repeated coldly. “Thought as much.”

USO Girl just took another calm pull from the joint, unfazed, still wearing that sweet smile even as the tension spiked. She knew better than to poke the bear too hard, but the weed had her loose enough to enjoy the chaos.

“If Bombsight’s not coming, I’m leaving,” Soldier Boy said, standing up.

Mister Marathon jumped in quickly. “No, he’s on his way. Be here any minute. I swear.”

The moment stretched, awkward and heavy, until Homelander finally spoke again.

“By the way… Hey! I heard you all. And I want you all to know that very soon, gentlemen, you are going to pay for your sick posts and your hateful memes. Especially the memes.”

USO Girl exhaled another cloud of smoke, her voice still light and playful even in the face of Homelander’s threat. “Oh, come on. We’re just having a little fun while we wait.” She gave Mister Marathon’s thigh a gentle, reassuring squeeze under the jacket, keeping him sweet and pliable. The speedy supe looked like he was torn between terror of Homelander and bliss from her touch.

Soldier Boy just smirked, clearly still entertained by his girl’s whole performance. This night was turning into exactly the kind of messy, ridiculous chaos they both secretly enjoyed.

—

Part 2 coming later tonight! I did not expect this one to be so long. 😂 This one was actually a lot of fun to write.

Masterlist

Taglist

@mornixgstar18 @ladysparkles78 @nightlark100 @mirwors @rubyverone @dianaforever @omgbrianab

[wvffles]

don't show the world how alone you've become

pairing; soldier boy x supe!reader word count; 11.2k 🪐 summary; decades spent apart, you've lived an entire life without each other. that was never the original plan, and a chance reunion reminds you both of that fact

tags/warnings; language / not canon-compliant / heavy angst / time jumps (pre and post vought rising era) / canon typical violence / best friend bombsight (completely platonic) / op supe!reader / jealous ben / hurt/comfort / mentions of depression and suicidal ideation / loss and sad feels / childhood best friends to lovers to strangers to ?, the boys season five spoilers, 18+ only ✮.ᐟ

⋆˚࿔ notes; okay so this part is a lot of backstory / lore .𖥔 ݁ ˖ (working our way up to where we left off in the last chapter). but it's needed for the finale to make sense :p also sorry in advance I went a little crazy with the angst for this part 👉🏽👈🏽

♪ now playing; tears in the rain by the weeknd

cause no one will love you, like her, it's pointless, like tears in the rain

part one ⟡ part three series masterlist ᝰ. ben masterlist

the past

You'd never really spoken to Ben's brother.

Maybe once or twice in passing. A few glimpses here and there when you were growing up. But you were never actually around his family, didn't interact much with them.

Part of it was because you were in a lower class, in comparison. His father owned half the mills in the state, while your father was a humble carpenter—complete coincidence you managed to end up as neighbors. It was also because he kept shipping Ben off to wherever he could so he wouldn't have to deal with him, unable to stand the sight of him.

It seemed despite the loss of his other son, the sentiment for his youngest remained the same.

Mere weeks after the horrors of harmony, you accompany Ben to his brother's burial and funeral reception—a large event considering he was beloved in the community and known as a hero. Seems the only person you actually recognize is your boyfriend, though he’s been understandably closed off and reserved since he'd gotten the news.

When you step outside for air as he talks to some people you don't know, his father comes to stand next to you on the empty deck, facing the massive yard.

A minute passes before he breaks the silence. "I've known about the apple since the day it happened. You are terrible at climbing trees, even worse at getting helped off 'em."

You turn your head sharply in his direction, eyebrows in furrowed confusion, and he looks at you in amusement. "You think I don't know what goes on under my own roof?" He clicks his tongue. "I thought you would be good for him, that maybe he just needed someone different to show him why he should aim to be the best man he could be."

You cross your arms in front your chest, more for comfort than defense, as you continue to listen quietly.

"Thought with you he’d have more motive to shape up and stop getting sent back from those schools, you seemed like a good enough girl. Your father built some benches for one of my factories, sturdy and reliable. Figured you couldn’t have been terrible bein’ raised by a hardworking fella like that."

He looks away from you and into the yard for a moment.

"I didn’t expect him to go anywhere near the army, after what his brother went through, how he came back. No I thought he’d finally wise up for good. He was supposed to get a respectable job, nice dame on his arm. Get married, have a couple rugrats running around callin' me grandpa. I would’ve handed over the mills to him, keep the legacy going, make our family proud..."

He sighs deeply, his expression dampening as he turns to look at you once more. "But of course, only thing he could manage is the lazy route, the easy one."

At that you can't help but speak up, "It was actually far from easy, believe me. What he went through—"

"Was entirely his decision." He interrupts sharply, and you bite your tongue.

"I don't know how you could've, encouraged that ridiculous train of thought. Super powers? Please. It's not natural, and it's a damn shame he took you down with him sweetheart."

Your jaw clenches, but you opt to keep your silence, mindful of where you were. He shakes his head, clicking his teeth again before taking a step closer.

"I'm telling you this now, he will disappoint you if he hasn't already. Not a matter of why, just of when. It's who he is, it's in his nature—the walking embodiment of what could've been."

A strong arm wraps around your waist moments later, the solid feel of Ben's embrace startling you for a second. He looks between the two of you, at his father's stoic expression, your tense form. "Everything alright?"

His father merely stares, at his son's face, yours, the arm snaked around you and back up into Ben's eyes again. He walks away without a word, but his expression told you both everything you needed to know.

Your eyes stay on him as his form retreats into the crowd, his words lingering in your mind and it takes a hand on your cheek to snap you out of it. "You good?" He murmurs.

"Mhmm." You manage, steeling yourself. Not the time or place to unravel. With a deep breath, you turn to face him and bring your hands up to his shoulders, rubbing them in soft circles. "I'm fine. How're you holding up?"

He wants to question you further, since he was unable to pick up any hints of your conversation outside with all the chatter surrounding them inside. Maybe if he had focused harder, but there's too much going through his own mind—the unit leader for his upcoming assignment let him know he'd be shipping out in a week for the war (or whatever it was Vought really wanted him to do).

You don't tell him what his father said that night.

Even when it's all you're thinking about the longer time goes on, as you slowly watch him slip away from you. Unknowingly proving the words true—not what you wanted, but what happened anyway.

Left with nothing more than the thought of what could've been.

Soon after the funeral and just before Ben got shipped off, the group gets summoned to the building they'd designated as Vought Headquarters.

He still hasn't said much since then, but he keeps a careful eye on you. Full of wonder and questions, surely. You think maybe he doesn't ask because of the lingering guilt he feels, at what happened to you.

The less he knows the better.

You're in a small room—several couches, tables with water and snacks among them filling the space. You watch the others walking around antsy, wondering what this was going to be about, but thankfully it's not long before someone walks in to explain.

"Alright if I could please get everyone to stand in a line, shoulder to shoulder, we have much to discuss regarding your image!"

An enthusiastic woman with an interesting outfit, strong voice and a southern accent sizes you all up eagerly. It's like she's already dressing everyone in her mind. "But of course, where are my manners? My name is Lottie, i'm here to assign your figure names and costumes, courtesy of Vought."

Everyone goes along with it, cautious but not questioning. She starts with names, going down the line that started with the blonde woman and ends with you. She reads each file, asks more about the documented powers, and brainstorms out loud in real time, then assigns the name.

So you can heal injuries? And you look absolutely ethereal my dear, we shall call you Private Angel. Our lovely healer, the perfect combat nurse.

Hmm...super underwater speed, you can breathe down there too, and you're very durable...like a Torpedo. The perfect coastal machine to aid our navy.

Extreme durability...wow. You can fly? It says you have a tendency to land heavy...the most accurate Bombsight we have if you ask me. Air force's best assist.

She gets to Ben, and you can't help but shuffle slightly closer to him. You don't like the way she's eyeing him at all, like she wants to devour him whole. Can't exactly blame her but, still.

Also extremely durable...tremendous super strength, great in combat, toxin resistant...everything a perfect solider should be. Soldier Boy.

Your eyebrows furrow the slightest bit, and she reluctantly turns her attention from him to you, side eyeing your proximity for a moment.

"And you...well the only thing in your file is 'unworldly durability' and 'teleportation'. Not much to work with there...how about you show me? Teleport to the other side of the room." She smiles, and you fight the urge to roll your eyes. Instead you zap across the space with a purple glow, and back next to Ben in seconds.

Her eyes literally light up with glee.

"Oooo okay okay, bright and sudden...a beautiful hue...unworldly durability...I got it! Like the formation of a new star, you will be known as Nova."

She claps her hands and gets ready to move onto costumes.

Everyone gets moved into the photo room after being given their new outfit—except you.

You're still wearing your black trousers, a silky plum colored blouse under a cute bolero jacket and black slip on loafers. Not that you mind, you're comfortable. Ben can't say the same in his fitted leather costume, but damn if he didn’t look good.

You're standing off to the side with him away from the others, helping with a few adjustments. He watches you quietly, fondness in his chest at the sight of you so focused.

"Mmkay, just gotta secure this here, I think, and—is that too tight? Can you move okay? Talk to me baby i'm flying blind here."

He finally smiles, grabbing your fussing hands in his gloved ones and placing a gentle peck onto them both. "I'm fine, thank you."

You soften in return, taking a breath and smiling nervously back. "Of course." You murmur. "Here, let me help you with these um, goggles?"

"Protective eye wear."

"Protective where, they're literally empty. Like glasses but just the frame." You tease, easing them onto his pretty face anyway. "You look gorgeous."

He huffs. "I do not look gorgeous, I look handsome. Dashing. Unbelievably good looking—"

"And don't forget incredibly humble." You deadpan.

He just smirks. "Of course."

For a moment, it was just the two of you like the old times. Playful banter and tender affection, exactly what you've both missed and needed. But it's interrupted by Lottie walking in with an excited squeal.

"Oh you guys look wonderful!! Fantastic, lets get your pictures taken!"

She ushers everyone except you to the photo backdrop in the corner of the room, and Angel looks in confusion. "Wait, why doesn't she get to be a part of this? And where's her costume? Doesn't seem very fair."

Lottie looks through her chart. "Well, she's not in the notes."

"I'm more behind the scenes, just here to get you guys from point A to B—think of me as your cosmic chauffeur." You explain, and she tilts her head. "So you don't get to be in the pictures?"

You assure her it's fine, and she reluctantly gets into place where Lottie is ushering her to. Ben watches with a slight clench in his jaw, understanding why, but not liking it. You were never meant to be a part of whatever Vought had planned for the group of survivors.

And they certainly weren’t trying to give you any sort of ammunition against them now, but you didn't mind the slightest bit, wanting no part of it. You're still only here to support Ben and for your own comfort.

After everything you just want to be close to him; you're not sure how you'll withstand the time apart. You'll cross that bride when you get there.

They follow Lottie's directions, smile and strike their poses. For about an hour it goes on, group photos and individual until they hear a final shutter and a cheerful clap. "Alright, I think we got it! It'll take about a day to get the results, but I'm sure they're perfect."

Everyone relaxes, wandering around the room, grabbing snacks or talking to Lottie, but Ben goes to bring you closer and stops the photographer from putting away his equipment just yet.

"I want one with her, but not for them. You give it to me when it's ready. Deal?" He hands over a wad of money, and the guy easily agrees.

Your heart warms at the gesture, and he holds you gently from behind, wrapping strong arms around your frame. Your hands lay gently atop of them, both of you smiling softly into the camera.

With a click and a flash, the moment is captured.

As he gathers his equipment up and leaves, Ben still holds you in his arms, turning you around and smirking at the sight of your lovesick face. "What?"

"That was sweet."

"Need something to hold me over during our time apart sweetheart."

"...Okay now it's less sweet, perv." You smack his arm playfully.

He laughs. "Hey I meant that sincerely, whenever the bullshit gets to be more annoying than usual I'll just...look at that picture, let it ground me or whatever. Your face is all I need to see for my heart to be at ease doll."

You snort, face warming up regardless at the cheesy line. "Romantic."

"I agree." He brings a hand up to caress your cheek.

You smile up at him, and he leans down to give you a tender kiss.

Bombsight catches the interaction from where he stands, smiling softly. He'd hope to find something like that someday, he thinks to himself.

After two extra pecks you finally part, and you take his hand in yours as you start moving closer to the group again.

"Okay everyone, if you can please gather 'round, we need to discuss next steps—"

Before Lottie could finish her sentence, something gets thrown through the window, crashing through the glass and releasing a loud and steady blare of high frequency sound waves, affecting everyone in the room.

For you it lasts a couple seconds, then it feels as if your body adjusts to the noise. Still ringing, still feeling some pressure on your ears, but you had enough stability to focus.

With an inhale you look for whatever was thrown in, a small grey device that landed in the middle of the room. You zap yourself over to stomp on it, and the ringing stops for a moment.

Everyone takes a breath, before it starts up again, but this time through the open window. They grunt, moving their hands to cover their ears again and you zap yourself outside in the direction it's coming from.

A burly man stands next to a strange device—looks almost like a record player—facing the building, producing those sound waves. He's startled by your sudden appearance, clearly not expecting you to pop up in front of him like that. "The hell—"

You don't let him finish before you're punching the device, your strength shattering it into silence before it even clatters to the ground. He picks it up, exclaiming angrily. "You dumb broad, look what you did!"

You roll your eyes and grab him by the arm, zapping the both of you back inside. He shakes your hand off and makes the mistake of sucker punching you. You barley even feel it, still, the damage is done.

In seconds Ben is crossing the space and scooping him up by the throat, choking him out. The gadget clatters to the ground, and you zap it onto the empty coffee table before placing a hand on your boyfriend's arm.

"Hey, he can't talk with a broken windpipe, put him down. I'm fine, m'sure his hand hurts more than my face." You say softly, and he looks at you, holding him up for only another moment before he lets him drop to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

The guy's coughing and wheezing, you take the opportunity to zap yourself and Ben a bit further from everyone, to his discontent. The abruptness of it throws him off. "Don't do that—"

"Are you okay? Your ears are bleeding—"

"Quit fussing, I'm fine." He grumbles but you just sigh, using a soft handkerchief from your pocket to gently clean the blood away.

Around the room, some Vought 'agents' had shuffled in to detain the culprit, Angel reluctantly healing him enough so he could talk on their orders. Another group in suits shuffled in soon after to collect the strange sound devices and take them for investigation.

Everyone was seemingly alright, no permanent damage, and you were all dismissed for the day.

It took some time for the strange phantom feeling of pressure to go away for the both of you, longer for him, taking the time to lounge at home. Something you hadn't done much lately; time with him you cherished despite the circumstances.

He observes you throughout it, when you feel better and start on dinner. As you're eating quietly with him at the table, eyes tired but full of love. You were being gentle with him, showcased especially later with the soothing feeling of your hands on his skin in the shower.

After so much grief weighing him down lately, it felt amazing having someone care for him so tenderly, wholeheartedly and sincere.

You took your time to wash him gingerly, extra careful when you get to his face, and by the time he's able to open his eyes again he can't take it anymore, sliding his hands up to cradle your jaw and bring you into a loving kiss. Not rough, not hungry, just...sweet. Words he'd hardly said lately pouring through his actions the rest of the night.

Calm before a storm.

The day before phase one begins and the team gets shipped off, Fredrick and Clara analyze the fresh photographs in his office, discussing their images and super personas, among other things.

"Everything is in motion, should go according to schedule. How did the fail-safe test go?" He asks his wife, skimming through the individual pictures, before looking at the group ones.

She smiles at first, "They are susceptible to the sound—it affects them enough to slow them down if the need calls for it." She starts to hesitate. "But...the machine was destroyed...and Ritchie was captured. He won't talk, I've made sure of it. We are down a man however."

He takes a deep breath. "Thanks to Nova, I'm assuming?"

She nods, and he clicks his teeth.

"We cannot risk losing everything on the chance that this girl might change her mind, Clara."

"I know, I have a plan."

He rolls his eyes, but she continues. "Isolation. We can't get rid of her, so she has to leave on her own—and the only reason she's even around is because of Benjamin. We separate them."

"Have you not heard the phrase, distance makes the heart grow fonder? Or do you choose not to remember?" He quips in their native language, and she sighs.

"Men like him are predictable, darling." She retorts carefully. "With enough power and distraction, he is sure to gravitate towards things she is no where near interested in. I assure you."

For a long moment, he's quiet, thinking. Looking between his wife and the pictures laying on the table. With a final nod, he simply responds with "We will see."

Saying goodbye was a lot harder than you thought it would be.

You knew it would hurt, but you didn't expect the deep ache in your chest to settle in so quickly at the thought of so much time apart, and the painful silence that followed his departure.

The entire night before had been spent in each other's arms—talking, thinking, feeling. Enjoying each other's presence and affection while you still could, much needed for you both.

Your picture together from the day of the photo shoot came in the mail that morning, and Ben shows you as you're plating breakfast. Two small 3x4 rectangles, one for you and one for him.

You smile at the sight of them.

Quiet music plays on the record player as he holds you close, settled on his lap. Perks of your power—you don't actually have to drive anywhere, which meant he could stay with you until roll call. But the time came eventually, and you parted with a tearful goodbye.

"Be safe, yeah?"

"Baby you realize I'm like, practically indestructible right?"

"Practically." Your pout gets to him, and he rolls his eyes to deflect.

But your hands are still on his cheeks, caressing soft skin, asking him to please come back to you.

And he can't help but soften, assuring you with a gentle kiss and a low murmur. You're stuck with me sweetheart, promise.

A part of you counts that as the last time you really saw your Ben. The version that came back was too hard, too cold. No longer did you see the warmth reserved for you in his eyes or in his demeanor.

Once again his father's words had come to haunt you.

The first few weeks were the hardest.

Without him around your mind was free to spiral, about what you went through at Fort Harmony, about what your life has become.

It's why you accepted small jobs from Lottie—transportation mostly. Easy to stay on schedule, no annoying road trips, no nausea inducing train rides. Just a flash and a brief moment of disorientation, well worth it if you asked her though.

Your first day, you accidentally bump into a guy who was rushing into the building like his ass was lit on fire, zapping right into his path. The box he carried falling—papers scattering everywhere.

"Shit, I'm sorry. You alright?"

He looks a little taken aback, maybe you shouldn't have cursed.

"Woah...where did you come from??"

Oh, right. Your powers.

You busy yourself with picking up some of the papers, helping him gather them back into a pile he plops back into the small cardboard box instead of answering him. He straightens up, clearing his throat as you finally meet his eye. "Sorry about that."

He shakes his head "Oh no problem, it's alright. Probably shouldn't have been rushing like that anyway."

You hum in agreement. "I'm sure they won't fire you for being a few minutes late."

His face drops, suddenly remembering the reason for his rushing. But he didn't wanna leave without introducing himself at least, it was the polite thing to do. "I'm uh, Theo, by the way."

You nod, "You work for Vought?"

"Yeah I'm their new creative director—gonna help them come up with their signature design." He smiles.

You squint slightly. "Isn't that what Lottie does?"

"Well uh, no. She works with the people under Vought, I'm working with them. She takes care of the asset personas and I'm in charge of the company's image as a whole." He rambles, adjusting the box in his arms.

You hum quietly in response, smiling politely as you bid him goodbye. "Well, sorry again, glad you're alright. Have a good rest of your day."

He seems a little disappointed, but smiles back nonetheless. "No worries, really, I'm sorry too. See you around!"

You watch him scurry into the building and sigh.

Barley day one and you're already messing up, you've got to be more careful. Get a firmer grip on your abilities.

The work isn't too bad, though sometimes you're bored out of your mind, which leads to thinking. So you try to multi-task, busy yourself, revel in the distraction. Taking the time to train, to get a better hold of yourself so you don't accidentally hurt anyone.

You're lucky that civilian wasn't carrying hot coffee or something.

Distractions only work for so long though, and you couldn't escape the loneliness taking root in your soul. You needed something soothing, something familiar. It's why you chose to go check in with your parents after weeks of radio silence.

You knew it would go poorly the moment you appeared on the lawn of the house you once called home. Your mother immediately scowling at the sight of you, your dad bracing himself for what he knew was coming.

"How dare you show your face here again."

Your eyebrows furrow, "Mom—"

"No, let me stop you right there." Her voice grows angrier. "You don't think we would've reached out after those suits came down here to tell us what had happened with you if we wanted to? But you made your choice, and it wasn't us. Wasn't a noble profession, or a life where we'd actually become grandparents someday. You took that from us."

A slight tremble in your small cracking voice appears. "I-I didn't—"

"You chose to be a whore, followed that man without a ring on your finger into something you were never supposed to be a part of, and now look at yourself. At what you've become. You were always difficult, but now, instead of someone honorable you're a complete and utter abomination."

That stops anything you had to say, eyes watering.

"The day you left, I officially lost both my kids. Because of you. And i'll never forgive you for that." Her voice wavers, but the venom in her stare remains. "And for what? A rich boy who doesn't give two shits about you. You think he would've done the same for you? He'll toss you aside once you've served your purpose, and you'll think of me when he does."

Your chest feels tight, a stubborn lump lodged in your throat.

"Get the hell off my property, I don't ever want to see you again."

With that she gives you one last tearful look of disdain, before turning around and walking back inside the house.

Tears silently stream down your face, lip quivering as you watch your dad step closer to you after a moment. "Dad..."

Without a word, he takes a small rectangle from his shirt pocket, warm hands placing it into yours before walking away, following his wife.

You unfold it.

It's a picture of you and Max, taken the day of his third birthday when you were only seven, a simpler time. Your dad had saved up so much for this photo, working extra jobs and holding on to the little memory in his shirt pocket, close to his heart, for decades.

The way he just gives it to you now, no hesitation, no problem...it hurts yours in a way you didn't think was possible.

You'd always been closer to him, especially after the accident that claimed your brother's life, and the resentment your mother started to feel towards you began to build. The annoyance, the hatred. For having the audacity to survive since her son couldn't.

He was always there to hold you, to remind you it wasn't your fault, to make you feel better. Now he can't even stand the sight of you in a photograph.

That's the last time you see either of them.

After a few months of working for Lottie here and there, a few members of the unofficial team come back to town—except for Ben.

He's still busy, one of the managers had told you. But it seemed strange. Bombsight and Angel came back, why couldn't he?

Your new assignment was transporting them to wherever Vought needed them to go. Meetings, events, more meetings, commercial sets, whatever.

You stayed hidden in the shadows, doing your job quietly. At first you did ask about Ben, when Bombsight introduced himself officially and thanked you again for helping him when they initially got to Harmony.

"They separated us, to be honest. Also I spent more time in the skies than on the ground. But I will say, when I was around the base I'd see him practically glued to Clara's hip. Not sure what that was about."

It made you feel sick.

You could teleport to him...you think. The problem comes with obtaining his exact location. In order to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going. You're still learning to navigate these abilities.

Slowly you start to bond with Bombsight—Robbie. Angel was polite but kept her distance for reasons unknown to you both. You didn't take it personally though, she was still nice.

Robbie was kind, very respectful. He'd listen to you talk about Ben, hearing you vent about how much you miss him. You'd be there for him too, hearing him out on his own issues; familial ones, frustrations about his love life. It felt like you were gaining an actual friend for the first time in a long while.

Then he randomly gets reassigned again, somewhere nobody wouldn't tell you. Makes you wonder if it was intentional. You're not stupid, you know the only reason Vought has kept their end of the truce is so you don't retaliate. Doesn't mean they can't be petty though.

Overtime you take less jobs, opting to stay home instead despite Lottie and her team's annoyance. They couldn't make you go though and the sadness was starting to drain your energy more with each passing day.

By the time Ben did come home, months later, you were almost a complete shell of who you once were. Of the bright eyed girl he fell in love with, the woman who followed him to hell because of what she felt for him in her heart.

Peace and quiet with your love was all you wanted, all you craved.

You didn't realize how hard he was trying to cope with the conversation he just had with his old man, you couldn't have possibly known that his first stop wasn't the house—it was his old one, where we went to talk to his father. Hoping to have finally made him proud like all the people cheering for him in the streets. But he was hit with a cruel reality when his father expressed nothing but disgust and disappointment.

Saying that he cheated, took the easy way out. Telling him those powers didn't matter cause he would let everyone down eventually, including you if he hasn't already.

And when he got home to you telling him that they should run away from everything he just accomplished? It struck a nerve you didn't know had formed. You didn't mean to. But there was no shaking the voice in his head reminding him of his father's words.

He hated that some of them rang true, worried him. Because if they all rang true, everything he's done with his life thus far, what he's accomplished, would mean nothing at all.

He just didn't realize what he was trying to avoid, became the reality for you. Everything you'd done, what you went through, for the sake of staying with him, reduced to nothing in a single night.

When you decided you wanted to disappear, you meant it.

So after you'd cried your heart out on an empty beach, you waited until you caught your breath. You checked that the picture of you with Max, and the picture of you with Ben were still carefully tucked into your pocket. The only two possessions you carried, only ones you cared about. You looked up into the sky, thought long and hard. Took one deep final breath, and zapped yourself onto the moon.

It worked, to your surprise. But beyond that, you took another deep breath as you stood on the new ground. You were completely fine.

As trippy as it was, it's a welcomed distraction. You were always fascinated by the stars, by space and the unknown. Now here you were, able to start knowing them. First hand, authentically, no limitations (within reason, of course). It felt freeing in a brand new way, like a newfound purpose with no barriers.

Who had jurisdiction on the moon? No one.

So you settled your affairs on earth, quietly. Took all the money you'd earned, bought a small property in California. It was really cheap because of the location—a small house surrounded by grass and trees, next to a beautiful lake. An isolated location, surrounded by land. Difficult, nearly impossible to get to by car. The roads that led to it super tricky to maneuver, it's why the owner wanted to sell so urgently.

Clearly getting to it wouldn't be a problem for you. And it gave you an extra sense of security, a win win.

From there you fixed it up, made it cozy, your home.

You took the skills you'd learned from your dad, built a nice bench to sit on outside and watch the lake. Even planted a tree behind it, making sure it was far enough from the water so the roots could grow comfortably but close enough to enjoy sitting near it.

Your teleportation was your greatest asset, your lifeline. You didn't feel trapped anymore—caged in a bubble or a pawn in somebody's game. Hidden from Vought and from anything that had to do with such a painful past, you finally felt free.

Certainly bittersweet, but ultimately better than you've been in a very long time.

Ben couldn't say the same about life without you.

At first he brushed it off, feeling odd but focusing on the attention he was getting. Everyone wanted a piece of him, even the proposal of a day being named after him floating around. Clara was all over him since learning of your sudden departure, pushing him to be the face of whatever project she was cooking up.

But it caught up eventually.

It was in everything. How the house was just silent all the time now. No jokes he could easily laugh at, no genuine conversations. Everybody around had a motive behind their words, all wanted something from him. He could see right through them.

Even within the team they were more formally putting together come the 50s, there were no sincere connections. Angel was polite, she never made any moves on him. Robbie was getting more annoying by the day and Torpedo, well...he never talked much. To anyone.

All he could think of the more years passed and the more shit went down, was how much he missed you. The regret eating away at him throughout the decades, after Clara broke it off for good because he "couldn't fulfill her vision", whatever the fuck that meant.

Long after the team disbanded, it's short but chaotic run.

Even during his time with Payback in the eighties, when he was with Countess trying to have a semblance of the life he once discarded, all he could think about was you. Your softness, your light. He could only hope you were having somewhat of a good life, wherever you were.

And when he's in captivity, it's not Countess or Clara he thinks about—it's you. Wishing nothing more than to see your face one more time, not only in his memories. He knows if he was given that chance, he would do anything not to fumble it, again.

back in the present

Your hand is still trembling a bit when you slowly ease it back, out of his grasp and close to your chest.

He looks like he wants to protest, but knows he has no right to contest anything. "Are you alright? The hell was that."

You nod. "M'fine, just used a good bit of energy." You start to walk past him, but he places a hand on your arm, uncharacteristically gentle.

Whatever he's going to say gets cut off with a tired sigh, as you carefully shake it off. "Ben I didn't come here for you, okay? If it had been up to me, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now."

Ouch. Don't lash out, he reminds himself.

"I just...it's been so long."

A contemplative hum escapes you. "It has. Do you remember why?"

"You left."

"You told me to." You rebuttal immediately, and he wisely doesn't try to defend himself again. "I'm not doing this, okay I'm tired, and I've said what I needed to say."

You don't give him another chance to answer, walking over to your friends, watching as the mystery crew beside them scramble to seem as if they hadn't been eavesdropping. Or, trying to.

"Robbie, what the fuck?"

He looks apologetic, "I didn't know, all this would go down, alright. These people were holding Goldie hostage and once Ben showed up I knew the best way to resolve the situation...was to..."

"To call me in as a distraction for my ex?"

"And to help her, which you did."

You can tell he does feel bad for bringing you into this, rubbing a hand over your forehead. "Okay, but why did they take Goldie?"

"We just want the V1." You hear one of the guys chime in, thick British accent, a little weary of you. After what they just witnessed, you don't blame him.

"Compound V1? As in the little blue serum?"

At his confirming nod, you snap your head back to Robbie. "Why do they think you have that?" Guilty silence has you scoffing in disbelief. "God dammit, do you have some on you? Seriously?"

"It's for Goldie! I, I don't wanna lose her. And I can't stop time. This can give us a chance."

You shake your head. "Everything you've heard me talk about in regards to that shit over the years, all the harm, and you want to inject the love of your life with it, are you actually fucking insane—"

"What other choice do I have! If you had this back then you know it could've helped Rue."

You flinch back without even thinking about it, the words feeling like a slap to the face, and he immediately regrets it, cursing himself softly. Goldie wheels herself close enough to smack his leg, giving him a look.

"Wait no, I'm sorry. That's not fair of me to say." He backtracks, complete sincerity in his voice.

You take a deep albeit shaky breath, refusing to cry in front of all these strangers (again). In front of Ben, who watches you both with a mix of curiosity and jealousy. At your closeness with him, your dynamic.

It's clear you two share history, he just wonders how the hell it even started, and how long it's been. Last he saw Robbie, years before his captivity, you were still nowhere to be found.

When would your paths have crossed?

the past

You'd become somewhat of a hermit, over the years.

Avoiding as much as you could about Vought, and Ben, and anything that would spike your sorrow, honestly. Peace was all you wanted, all you could manage. Your home became your solace.

You had a garden that blossomed beautifully. Flowers and plants and various vegetables—it was a wonderful way of passing the time. With your abilities you were able to travel wherever you wanted, opting to go out when it's quiet, not too hectic. Most of your interactions came from small family shops, open markets, places that still operated with cash and couldn't tell you the first thing about what a supe even was.

The places you'd gone to were peaceful, your time spent finding a mellow activity, volunteering (without necessarily exposing your powers), exploring the local wildlife and exhibits. Very different from the hustle and bustle you grew up around, but in a good way.

The only times you didn't choose peace were when you'd go on stealthy vigilante missions, in neighborhoods that needed it. When the law failed, and people continued to get hurt. Few believed it wasn't coincidence, called you phantom punishment. It was a win win—bad people would be stopped, you'd practice and evolve your abilities.

Decades pass with only a few interesting adventures here and there, some adrenaline pumping but nothing major, and when the 90s roll around you felt like you'd finally found your footing. In what were technically your seventies...geez.

You thought you'd seen it all by then, but you were proven wrong one chilly night somewhere in downtown LA, mid November of 1990. On occasion you would volunteer at shelters under an alias, one of the many things that helps you stay grounded, connected to your humanity.

You're wrapping up after a tame night, getting ready to teleport home after your goodbyes when you hear something from the nearby alley.

A small voice, pleading. A little shaky, "are you okay? why can't you wake up? I-I don't know how to help—"

You round the corner behind a couple dumpsters, taking in the sight before you. A scared little kid, couldn't have been over nine, hovering worriedly over an unconscious figure. She turns her head as she senses your presence, and you get a good look at the guy laying on the ground.

Holy shit.

"Hey, sweetheart. Are you okay? What happened? I gotcha." Your voice is low, soothing as you try not to startle her further. Poor kid is shaking.

"I was running from, over there and I came here to hide but this guy hasn't moved and it's really cold." She rambles, and your heart aches even more. How the hell this sweet little girl ended up out here with your old friend of all people you'd have to figure out, after getting them both some help.

During one your endeavors, you made friends with the lovely owners of a small clinic not too far from where your house was, after helping them with an emergency one hot summer night a couple years ago.

Not that the location would be an issue for you anyway. It was lowkey and trustworthy, the perfect place for you to zap into with two new patients at three in the morning on a wednesday night.

Scaring the shit out of Desiree at the front desk, of course.

"Jesus—dude, you've got to give some kind of warn—" She stops herself at the sight of a passed out Robbie leaned against you with one arm wrapped around him, your other one holding the little girl's hand.

She quickly pages for a gurney, a small team of nurses laying him onto it and starting to treat him immediately. The girl leans closer to you at the sight of another person in scrubs coming to a stop in front of you both, crouching slightly.

"Hi honey, what's your name?" Dr. Green asks, but the girl only hides behind you, clutching on to your hand.

You share a look with Sandra who steps back for a moment, as you're crouching down yourself to look her in the eye. You introduce yourself softly, careful not to frighten the kid further. "And that's my friend over there, she's a doctor. Means she can help you if you're hurt."

You explain, feeling the weight of the world staring at you behind big glossy eyes. "...i'm not hurt."

Your heart skips a beat. "You sure?"

"just...cold."

You nod, Sandra going to get a warm blanket for her.

"Okay, we'll get you warmed up sweetie. Is it okay if my friend takes a look at you? Makes sure you're okay? I'll stay with you the whole time."

She comes back with the blanket, and you wrap it around the little girl's shoulders—she looks at you for a moment, before nodding her head.

You ask her about her parents, and she seems to shut down at the mention. So you ask for her name.

"...rue"

"Pretty. Just Rue?"

"it's short for ruby..."

"Really, wow. Like the gemstone."

She nods slightly, lighting up the tiniest bit at that. "mommy would say I'm her favorite one."

Would. You take note. "That's so sweet. What's your mommy's name?"

"I call her mommy, but it's sah-fire."

"Sapphire?" She nods. "Oh that's so cool, you guys match pretty much."

"papa too. sorta. his name is Edward but mommy says it's close enough to emerald." She rambles, and another nurse takes note of that information, going to search for them in phone books and public records. Shouldn't be too hard to find this family with those names.

Hours later, Ruby is napping in a warm bed, safe and comfortable. No harm on her person, thankfully. You can't say the same for her family though. Sapphire and Edward Stone, a young couple not too far from the alley you found her and Robbie in.

They were on a newspaper, local house fire rattles quiet neighborhood. But they were all listed as deceased, Rue included, and alarm bells rang in your mind. You'd have to ask her about any relatives when she woke up.

Meanwhile you check on Robbie in the next room. At nine in the morning he's finally waking up, startled to see you standing over him. "Huh...how high am I right now..."

"You're not hallucinating, we're at a clinic right now."

You help him sit up, gentle hands guiding him into a sitting position before getting him a cup of water. He takes it appreciatively, still looking at you as if you were a figment of his imagination. After a shaky sip, you set the cup down on the table for him and he clears his throat.

"Whatcha doin' here?" He asks quietly.

You take a good look at him, at how exhausted he looks. The bags under his eyes, the paleness of his clammy skin. You take one of his hands in yours as you sit on the edge of his bed, your voice calm and gentle. "You had enough drugs in your system to knock out fifteen horses. Robbie, what's going on?"

He wants to lie, to brush it off and say he doesn't have a problem. Convince you to pick up some authentic supply (not that you have or would even go for it). But he's so tired. Of the drugs, and the hangovers, and the side effects and the way it doesn't solve any of his problems. Also, seeing you after all this time had to be some kind of sign, right?

So he opens up to you, about his problem with substances over the years. How much he has to take for it to even cause any effect on his super-powered body. You listen with no judgement, hearing him ramble like old times. In the end he asks for your help, and you take him in.

You also take Ruby with you, after finding no living relatives. When she awoke, she said her parents didn't have friends or family. Said she'd been hiding where she can, since her mom helped her climb out a window and told her to run and get as far from the burning building as possible. The whole thing was too strange, and all you wanted was to keep this little girl safe.

They explore your home with awe. It's a beautiful little place on massive grassy land, next to a lake, blue on the outside with whimsical star, moon and sparkles painted around the outer walls.

The roof was a shade darker, an almost navy blue, matching the window trims. The inside was painted a soft brown—same as your childhood home was—for a sense of comfort. It had three bedrooms, three bathrooms (one in your room), a cozy living room with a reading nook by the window, and a lovely kitchen—the small window above the sink facing the water. The other rooms were empty up until that point, and they got to each claim one as their own.

Decorating was fun considering you could go anywhere to get anything. Princess painted drawers for her stuff? Check. Wacky mirror? Sure. Race car be—race car bed? ...Robbie you won't fit in that.

And though she was still quiet, Ruby had a lot of fun with it. She'd lost everything—her family, her home, all her things. It broke your heart, so you made sure to make her feel as loved and cared for as you could, beyond just material.

Not that it was hard, she was the sweetest kid. With your guidance, and some from Robbie, that remained the same the older she got.

And you always made sure to keep her parent's memory alive.

A few months after taking her in, you tracked down a few photos of her family, mostly from public records. Gave her all of them except one. A family portrait from a local newspaper—her mom planted the biggest pumpkin their small town had ever seen.

She seemed to be about four or five in it, smiling in between her parents, held in her dad's arm. All of them looking so happy into the camera, the prize winning pumpkin beside them. It was in fact massive.

You framed it, placing it up in the living room, and she gave you the softest hug when she saw it, something in the gesture soothing the ache of guilt in her soul.

Realizing you weren't replacing what she lost—you were just someone new to love. Both you and Robbie, who stuck around.

He also recovered over the years, improved greatly. They both flourished with your love and care, and in return you finally felt the warmth of the sun on your skin once again.

But of course, every bit of calm, in your life tended to be followed by a raging storm.

Among the few friends you've made over the last few decades, one of them was an Astronomer. She was sweet and humble and passionate about the subject, after a few months of friendship you opened up about your abilities, told her you could help. And you did.

Every month you'd go down to the space center she worked at to help with research. Even taking them up there (the moon) with the proper precautions and equipment—not that it was known to the public. And you were only willing to do it for her, basically giving her tenure of sorts. She appreciated it greatly, relieved to have that stability for her family.

Aurora was amazing at what she did, stayed humble always. When you'd told her you had to step back for a while (after adopting Ruby) so you could focus on your kid, she was nothing but supportive. Even reaching out and checking in, she soon became Auntie Borealis (her idea of course).

It was no surprise that Rue gravitated towards astronomy, fascinated by it all throughout the years, eager to learn and grow. You'd gone back to the center when she was thirteen, after finally settling into a familial rhythm. One of the lovely ladies there would keep an eye on her if Robbie didn't tag along (while you were in space—at the base she was practically glued to your hip) but he usually did.

It's a chilly day, late November of '99.

With a fanny pack full of snacks, a notepad, her favorite writing pen and a yellow disposable camera, your sixteen year old buzzes with excitement for today's trip. She'd finally be going to the moon—briefly, with all the proper equipment. You're quadruple checking everything.

She only grumbles a little, playfully since she's still the best kid. The way you prep Robbie too makes her laugh.

Keep your harness on and do not try to fly away, I don't know how to zap into the open space yet.

I'll be on my best behavior, don't worry

You said that last time—

—I mean it this time

And he did, really mean it.

You guys arrive at the building after her favorite breakfast—blueberry pancakes and an oreo shake—meeting Aurora in the front hallway, the usual banter and chatter amongst the three of you as you made your way inside. Two interns were tagging along to hold down the base communications for the day since all three of you would be in space, chiming into the conversation every now and then. You all walk down the corridors, Ruby chattering with excitement.

"Do you think my camera will work in space? I bedazzled it last night with the kit Uncle Bobbie gave me for my birthday." She asks Aurora.

"Hmmm i'm not sure honey, but we have some specialized cameras that might, like the one she uses when she helps us out." Tilting her head in your direction. "Of course you're more than welcome to use those sweet pea."

Robbie nudges her with his elbow. "Hear that kiddo? Official space exploring equipment. You're practically an astronomer already."

You smile as she beams, "You think so?"

"Yep, know so. Nova commands outer space while Rockin’ Rob, Rori and Rue are taking over the skies together, just you wait.” He nudges her again and she giggles.

"Wait isn't space just a big sky?"

He shrugs. "Uhh maybe, I don't think so? We'll have to explore extensively to find out I guess." He teases, and she shakes her head with a smile.

“I don’t think mom would like that.”

You smile, your heart still warming every time she calls you that (she started to last year after an emotional christmas).

“I’d be fine with it…as long as you’re safe. Responsible.” You muse.

“I’m both.” She protests, and you nod.

“I know, you’ll be the best of us honey. I was talking about Robbie.”

She laughs again, the sound bringing a smile to everyone’s face. It was so joyous, contagious.

It’s all you’re focused on when the bullets begin to spray out of nowhere.

Seconds before the forcefield goes up, before you can even process the situation, what just happened—the ambush had worked in their favor.

Ammunition clatters against the dome, but all you hear is a high pitched ringing in your ears. The interns, Ava and Anna, are lying unresponsive, gone. Blood pooling from beneath them. Aurora’s hurt, placing pressure on her side, onto where she was struck. Robbie’s shaking, unscathed, saying something.

But you can’t focus on anything other than your baby girl.

Eyes still open, unmoving in your arms—you gently ease her down onto the ground. You’re trembling violently, waiting for her to blink, to move, even the slightest twitch...and you’re met with nothing but silence and a heartbreaking new reality.

You can’t fall apart yet though.

It’s like moving on autopilot.

You don’t even register how you tell him to stay with her, don’t notice how he complies immediately, tears streaming down his own face as he cradles her gently. You zap Aurora to the nearest hospital, and set your sights on the ones responsible.

They've stopped shooting by now, staring you down with their guns raised. A tactical team of roughly fifteen agents, dressed in heavy black and grey armor—and behind them all you spot Phillip. A former employee, a dishonorable one at that, he left a few years ago when Rori got promoted over him. Not without some choice words and a bitter attitude, he held a grudge for sure.

You don't have to look down at your blood stained hands to see red.

Flashes of purple are all they see, as you go picking them off one by one. Sickening cracks and grunts and screams, you tore through them all with nothing but your fists and your rage. They didn't stand a chance with your speed or your super strength.

But it seems ol' Phil had a backup plan. He uses a pager when he sees how his men drop like flies, signaling in what seemed to be a rogue group of a wannabe supe team to enter the fight.

They came in from behind him, a speedster shoving you across the room. It sends you tumbling for a moment before you're rolling back up on your feet, into a defensive stance—annoyed but not injured.

Robbie watches in hesitant conflict from under the protective dome, wondering if he should step in and help you but you turn your head to give him a look of reassurance. With that enraged glint in your eye? He knew you'd be fine. Granted this was the first time he was really watching you in action with your powers, besides the teleportation. It's safe to say he wasn't expecting what you were capable of.

The speedster darts straight to you, but with a flick of your wrist you slow him down, zapping him right in front of a solid concrete wall before releasing him back to full speed. He splatters against it instantly.

His friend—wearing some sort of golden metal around his wrists—yells in outrage. He rushes forward, stepping closer and raising his hands to launch scorching flames at you. The contraptions he's wearing are basically guardrails; instead of uncontrolled wildfire it's aimed in one place, making it more powerful, more damaging to whatever he decided to blast.

But it's still fire.

Before it can even brush against the hairs on your arm, you raise your hands and counter it with icy wind. At first you're just blasting the fire back, the strong gust becoming too much for him and his flames to handle. But you keep hitting him with that chill even after the fire's out, and he yells in agony and fear, as you freeze him. Literally, leaving him as practically an ice statue. After he's a solid popsicle, you walk in his direction towards the remaining two that are more weary than angry now. Probably slight shock.

Ice scatters across the floor under the pressure of your shoe.

The next dude to try and fight you wears a silver bodysuit with a bunch of tiny panels adorning the outfit. Turns out they were small panels of metal he could control and manipulate, mold them to his liking—he was basically wearing his ammunition. He starts launching them as tiny spears towards you in a desperate attempt to keep you back.

You dodge and weave, blocking them with simple hand movements and zapping them into empty space where they couldn't hurt anyone, way out of his control range.

After the last blade is gone he shouts, brandishing a bigger piece of metal from his boot, morphing it into a long sharp spear. He runs and launches it at you like he was performing a javelin throw at the olympics. You let it get close before taking control, flipping the sharp end towards him and launching it right back. You zap it closer before he can even think to dodge and it impales him in the heart, leaving him stuck against the wall.

By this point, Phillip has used the distraction to run outside, and the last supe standing has figured it out. You can counter any power used against you. He'd have to kill you old school, hand to hand combat.

But he should've gone ahead and joined the slimy weasel in running, standing no chance against you.

At first you just block his hits, letting him tire himself out. It's making him angrier, and one bold move is all it takes for the fight to be over. He tries to land a sucker-punch to your cheek but you weave to the side, grabbing his arm and twisting it behind his back painfully. You then kick the back of his leg, and he stumbles onto his knees. You use that to your advantage, wrapping your other arm around his neck and choking him out.

In a last ditch effort, he uses his power, eyes turning completely milky white as he stutters out, "I-I heard a rumor, y-you let me g-go."

Before the invisible swirl of words can reach your system, your own eyes become white as you block them out, whispering in his own ear, "And I heard a rumor you dropped dead."

He collapses like a sack of potatoes, unconscious and lifeless.

Robbie watches you scan the area, breathing heavily, covered in blood, still glowing purple. You pause when you don't see Phillip, breathing deeply and focusing. Sensing his energy outside.

You zap directly in front of the car he was trying to hot-wire in the parking lot, ripping the door off and grabbing him by the collar, flinging him onto the open pavement behind you.

He's scrambling back in a panic, shaky hands coming up in from of him. "It, it wasn't me, I-I don't, It didn't..." He can't even think of what to say, trailing off in defeat. Before you can even do anything, he takes a gun from his belt.

Doesn't point it at you when it goes off.

You stare for a moment, before stepping back and taking a deep stuttery breath. For a moment you just want to believe the last twenty minutes have been nothing more than a nightmare—that you're gonna wake up startled, at home, with your daughter and Robbie safe and sound in their rooms.

But you have to go back inside and burst that wish.

He watches you zap in front of them and approach the dome, slowly, trembling. Hears the way your heart beats a mile a minute. Rue's eyes were closed now, by his gentle hand.

You crouch in front of them, tears already blurring your vision, and he carefully eases her into your arms. She feels colder now.

You just look at her for a moment, before you bring her close to your chest, your head resting in the crook of her shoulder and a hand on the back of her head. Cradling her like you used to when she was smaller and wanted your comfort.

It's then you ultimately break down, holding her as you cry.

In Robbie's long, nearly eighty years on this earth—he's never heard anything as sad as the way you sounded that day.

It's a quiet autumn morning. The air crisp, sunrise reflecting majestically on the water.

You and Robbie stand near the edge of the lake next to your house, right beside the massive tree you had planted so long ago when you first moved here. It grew to be massive, stunning. Next to the sturdy bench you had built so long ago—that you dedicated to her parents on her tenth birthday, a small metal plaque adorning the middle—laid her beautiful headstone.

Rue Rue ˚˖𓍢ִ໋❀ 1983 — 1999 Beloved daughter, niece, friend, astronomer. "A new friend is only a conversation away."

You held a small ceremony for her a few days ago at the funeral home in town, letting her friends say their tearful goodbyes. Aurora was still recovering in the hospital, devastated she was unable to go. She felt so guilty, but you reassured her, told her to rest up and recover for her family. You then attended Ava and Anna's combined funeral the next day while the cremation took place.

Now, you stand here with only Robbie. You both performed the burial yourselves, spending the sunrise and early hours of the morning to make sure her resting place was as secure and cared for as possible.

With the way your tears won't stop silently flowing, you don't even bother with sunglasses. Both your eyes are red and glossy. Small sniffles are heard every few moments. He lays a gentle hand on your back, rubbing small circles near your shoulder.

"She was a great kid, and you gave her a wonderful life."

Your voice is small and congested. "I didn't protect her when it mattered."

"It always mattered. And you always did." He immediately counters, gentle but firm. "You can't blame yourself for something you couldn't have predicted. It's not fair."

You simply stare at the shiny black onyx marble, thinking of your Rue. Of the sweet kid you'd met while she was trying to help a random stranger at her small age. Even then, a heart of gold.

"None of this is fair."

He didn't have an answer for that.

the present

You clench your jaw now, willing the knot in the back of your throat to go away, your eyes stinging slightly.

"None of this is fair." You whisper, making him flinch as he remembers the echo of the conversation those words were from. Felt like deja vu with a large helping of guilt.

"Robbie that poison...it stole my entire life from me. Everything I had, everything I wanted, it took it all. Ruined it. And when I finally managed to pick up enough of the pieces to actually try and have a life again..."

He nods solemnly.

"It's truly a curse, to live this long where the only consistent thing you have is loss. I wouldn't have done that to her—put her through that. I know you wouldn't want that for Goldie either."

He sighs in resignation, looks to his love who nods at him, before taking the small container from his pocket and handing it over.

You take it carefully, opening the case and inspecting it with disdain and sorrow. So much destruction, so much pain that you've endured—all because of this tiny little thing. You're glowing as you evaporate it with a purple hue, everyone watching in fascination as it disappears.

The group all breathe sighs of relief at the fact Homelander would never get his hands on immortality. And of course, Butcher always takes an opening when he sees one.

"Oi, Tinky Winky, if you got nowhere to be, we could use your help with a little somethin'. Don't know if you've been livin' under a rock but that caped cunt you handed the belt to, he's a psychopath terrorizing the general public back in the states. Soon enough the bloody bastard's gonna want to expand, worldwide."

Your brain buffered at the nickname. "Did you just refer to me as the fucking Purple Teletubbie?"

"Ah, so you're not hiding under some boulder? You just watch the world burn and do nothing about it with all that power?"

"My foot's about to be hiding up your ass if you keep insulting me Quagmire. I've been disconnected from the general public for decades now, and that's all I'll tell you about my personal life cause it's none of your damn business. Now what's this about that guy terrorizing people?"

Ben chimes in, annoyed by your lack of attention. Irrational? Yes. But again, just how he feels. "That psychopath is my son."

Your head whips in his direction. "What?"

Okay maybe he shouldn't have chimed in.

"I almost killed your son??"

"He's—honestly the only thing that binds us is my nut. Beat my meat into a cup back in the fall of '80. I tried giving him a chance but the truth is...he's nothing more than a failed lab experiment on a delusional rampage. He's...weird." He explains, leaving you even more confused.

They each take turns giving you the rundown on who Homelander was and what he's done, what he plans to do, and by the end of it you're more than inclined to help them stop what's clearly a problem to thousands of innocent people.

It's past midnight by the time a plan is made, and you zap everyone (and their van) to a lowkey motel in the desert, somewhere in California.

You ask Robbie if he and Goldie would like to stay at your house for now, if he's ready to face it again after so long, and they agree. With a nod, you turn to face the crew. "Okay so, I'll come back here tomorrow and we can go from there? Come up with more plans? Also whatever we need won't be a problem either, as long as it has a solid location. So don't waste your gas unnecessarily."

They nod, agree, and start to head in to grab a room. Ben stops you before you can turn away. "Wait, can I come with you?"

You take a breath, willing yourself to stay strong against those shiny eyes, the pleading look on his face you used to fold for all the time. "Ben...I'm not ready to bring you into my home, like everything is just fine. Not when the only reason I even have it is because you decided you didn't want me anymore."

He clenches his jaw, nodding. There's nothing he can say to dispute facts, not with you. He remembers your heart, and knows he won't get anywhere with you through anger and demands. You may have been soft, but never naive. He's seen enough to know the version of you now is a lot stricter than the one he had planned to propose to once upon a time.

And he's willing to do anything to earn your trust back, knowing that's always been the most important thing for you.

You part ways, agreeing to see him the next morning, and he watches you zap away with an ache in his chest.

One he can only blame himself for.

part one ⟡ part three series masterlist ᝰ. ben masterlist

⋆˚࿔ notes; soooo how we feelin? 🤠 there will be more conversations and action and other goodies with ben and the crew in part three! <3 this was just getting superrr long lol, had to split it into multi parts. but ty for reading !! let me know what u think 💜💜 :')

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ series tag list;

@scorpioempress @mostlymarvelgirl @mylifeisanoxymoron21 @monteyli77 @gingermars830

@pinkypieva @wandabillywrites @indigenousgirl @catalysticnebula @soullessambs

@kollover24 @kakuchosbff @crvcified-kinx @sra7riddle-malfoy @the-house-of-auditore-frye

@hu41 @miraclegirl16

[kilad0806]

The Best Part

Pairing: Solder Boy x Reader (Female)

Summary:

A rainy afternoon. A powerless bookstore. A jealous Soldier Boy.

Ben is beginning to realize that seeing you every day isn’t a habit anymore.

It’s a necessity.

Notes: Inspired by the song Best Part by Daniel Caesar feat. H.E.R.

AO3 link

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

~~~~~~~~~~

The first sign something was wrong was that Soldier Boy started smiling. Not often. Not enough for most people to notice. But you noticed.

You noticed because it usually happened around you.

The realization came one rainy Thursday afternoon. The bookstore was empty. The weather had driven away customers, leaving only the soft sound of rain against the windows. And Ben. As usual.

He was sitting in the corner armchair pretending to read. Pretending being the important word. Because he’d been staring at the same page for fifteen minutes.

“You gonna turn that page?” You asked.

His eyes immediately lifted. Caught.

“What?”

“The book.”

“What about it?”

“You’ve been reading the same paragraph since I made coffee.”

A pause.

“You timing me?”

You grinned.

“You wish.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

And there it was again. That smile. Small. Rare. Almost shy.

You’d never expected Soldier Boy of all people to be shy.

Yet somehow Ben was.

Not all the time. Just around things that mattered.

That thought lingered with you far longer than it should have.

Across the room, Ben finally turned the page. Immediately upside down.

You burst out laughing.

“Jesus Christ.”

“What?”

“It’s upside down.”

He looked down.

Silence.

Then:

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t notice?”

“No.”

“You weren’t reading it.”

“No.”

The confession came so easily that it caught both of you off guard.

You blinked.

Ben blinked.

Then suddenly he looked very interested in the rain outside.

And your smile softened.

Because you knew.

Not exactly what he was feeling. But enough.

Enough to understand that the reason he kept showing up wasn’t because of books.

It was you.

The dangerous thing was… You weren’t sure you minded.

Later that afternoon, the power went out.

The bookstore plunged into darkness.

You sighed.

“Perfect.”

Ben barely reacted.

“Thought humans used electricity because they liked suffering.”

“You are literally a hundred years old.”

“Close enough.”

You threw a bookmark at him.

He caught it effortlessly.

Without even looking.

Show-off.

The rain continued. The lights remained out. The city became gray and quiet beyond the windows.

And somehow neither of you left.

Instead you sat together behind the counter drinking coffee.

Talking.

Nothing important. Everything important.

Favorite movies. Worst jobs. Childhood memories.

The conversation drifted naturally. Easy. Comfortable.

At one point you laughed so hard coffee nearly came out your nose.

Ben looked horrified.

“You okay?”

You nodded. Still laughing.

And for a second he simply stared.

Not at your face.

At your happiness.

As if he was memorizing it.

As if it was something precious.

Something rare.

Something worth protecting.

The look disappeared quickly. Too quickly.

But you noticed.

Because lately you noticed everything about him.

The way his voice softened around you. The way he always waited until you locked the store before leaving. The way he somehow remembered every random thing you ever mentioned.

Even things you forgot.

Especially things you forgot.

“You said your favorite flower was lavender.”

You looked up.

“What?”

Ben shrugged.

“A month ago.”

“A month ago?”

“Yeah.”

Your eyes narrowed.

“Why do you remember that?”

His answer came immediately.

“Because you said it.”

Silence.

A strange warmth settled in your chest.

Because it wasn’t the answer itself.

It was how obvious it seemed to him.

As if of course he remembered. As if forgetting was never an option.

Outside, the rain intensified.

Inside, the bookstore felt smaller somehow.

Warmer.

Safer.

Your gaze drifted toward the window.

“Think it’s gonna stop?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“How?”

Ben looked amused.

Then he pointed.

Across the street.

Three people were opening umbrellas.

You frowned.

“What does that mean?”

“Means it’ll rain another hour.”

“…That’s your evidence?”

“Been alive a long time.”

You laughed.

And Ben felt something inside his chest tighten.

Not painfully.

The opposite.

Dangerously.

Because he was beginning to realize something.

Something he probably should’ve realized weeks ago.

This wasn’t just attraction.

Wasn’t curiosity.

Wasn’t a crush.

You had become part of his day.

The first thing he looked forward to every morning.

The last thing he thought about every night.

And the terrifying part?

He couldn’t remember when it happened.

Only that it had.

Quietly.

Completely.

The bookstore door suddenly opened.

A man stepped inside.

Young. Confident. Handsome.

Ben instantly disliked him.

For absolutely no reason.

The man smiled at you.

You smiled back.

And something ugly twisted in Ben’s stomach.

“Hey.” The stranger said.

“Hey!” You brightened.

You knew him.

Ben’s mood immediately worsened.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Because apparently there were still new ways for Soldier Boy to suffer.

The man approached the counter.

You chatted casually. Asked about his job. His family. His weekend plans.

Normal conversation. Completely harmless.

Ben hated every second of it.

Not because the guy was doing anything wrong.

Because your attention wasn’t on him.

The realization struck hard.

Possessive.

Embarrassing.

Pathetic.

And yet.

When you laughed at something the man said, Ben found himself staring.

Not at him.

At you.

At how easy your smile came.

At how bright you looked.

At how much he liked being the reason for it.

The stranger eventually left.

The bell above the door chimed.

And suddenly the bookstore felt normal again.

You looked over.

Ben was staring into his coffee.

“Everything okay?”

His eyes lifted.

For a second, you could’ve sworn something intense flashed across his face.

Gone before you could identify it.

“Yeah.”

“You look annoyed.”

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

“I’m not.”

A beat.

Then:

“You seem to know him.”

Your smile widened.

“Oh my God.”

Ben immediately regretted speaking.

“You were jealous.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

The grin you gave him was positively criminal.

And for the first time all afternoon, Ben laughed.

A real laugh. Deep. Warm.

The sound filled the bookstore.

And suddenly neither of you were looking away.

The rain continued outside. The lights remained out. The world carried on.

But for one quiet moment, sitting together in the dim bookstore, neither of you seemed in any hurry to be anywhere else.

And though Ben would never admit it aloud, not even to himself—You had become his favorite part of the day.

[lila-lou]

✨The hardest Thing - 3/3✨

Summary: Eighty-five years after Soldier Boy left you behind, he finds you frozen, kept as leverage, and drags you back into a world you never got to live. Far from Vought’s spotlight, you and Ben try to stitch a marriage back together from ash.

(sequel to "the softest thing")

Pairing: Soldier Boy x Reader

Warnings: Language, angst

Word Count: 6657

DISCLAIMER: Everything is purely fiction. I do not intend to attack or hurt anyone. The story is, of course, entirely made up and meant for entertainment purposes.

Seven months later, the quiet still felt borrowed. But it had held.

You and Ben lived in a small town outside Oklahoma where the roads ran flat and long under a wide white sky, where people still waved from pickups and left pies cooling on windowsills and minded their own business with the kind of stubborn politeness that passed for mercy. Vought barely existed there except as a name some folks had maybe heard once on a television they didn’t trust much anyway. Supes were city nonsense. News was what happened to other people. So you got your quiet.

A rented little house with a porch. A kitchen with too much morning light. A bedroom where the dresser drawers stuck in damp weather. A church three streets over with white clapboard siding and a bell that sounded thinner than the one you remembered from home, but near enough.

You and Ben had built a routine because routine was safer than promises. Coffee. Groceries. Laundry. He fixed things badly at first and better after you made him do them twice. You learned which modern food brands were edible and which ones tasted like punishment. He drove into town for hardware and came back with tools, soap, canned peaches, and once—absurdly—a bouquet of grocery-store carnations he shoved at you like he was handing over ammunition.

You had not let him kiss you much. Not really. A few quiet ones. Careful ones. Mostly when emotion got too large for words and both of you were tired enough not to fight it. Touch had been slower still. A hand at your back crossing a street. His palm hovering at your elbow when the steps iced over. Fingers brushing yours over a grocery list.

Sex was nowhere near the table. He knew better than to push, though that didn’t stop him from trying his luck now and then in that shameless, infuriating way of his. He was trying, though. God, he was trying. With all the charm he’d still somehow kept. With all the rough-edged patience he’d had to teach himself. With all the, "But I’m your husband", he could pack into one glance, one muttered comment, one hand lingering a second too long at the small of your back before he made himself step away.

And every Saturday for the past seven months, Soldier Boy had gone to church.

Because you had insisted.

“You need to wash yourself clean”, you had told him the first week, standing in the kitchen with your arms folded while he stared at you like you’d announced he was joining a convent.

He had barked out a laugh. “Sweetheart, I don’t think a Baptist church in Oklahoma has enough holy water for me”.

“It isn’t funny”.

“No Baby”, he’d said, still grinning a little. “No, it really isn’t”.

Then he went anyway.

The first time, half the congregation had turned to look because even in a town that didn’t care much about the outside world, Ben looked like trouble in a dress shirt . Broad shoulders, hard face and too much confidence even when he was trying to sit still. He had looked personally offended by the hymnal and deeply suspicious of the potluck sign-up sheet. But he went. Sat beside you in polished shoes he hated and listened to the pastor talk about repentance while his jaw worked like he wanted to argue with God directly.

Now it was habit.

This morning, sunlight striped the bedroom floor through the curtains while you got dressed. The air already held the dry warmth of early day. You slipped into your long soft satin skirt, the pale cream one that moved quietly around your legs when you walked. Then you buttoned your blouse and tucked it in with careful fingers, smoothing the fabric at your waist the way you always did. Old school, Ben had called it once, half-teasing and half-awed, watching you pin your hair back at the vanity like the whole century ought to slow down and take notes.

Now he sat on the edge of the bed in dark slacks, bare-chested still, because he had not yet bothered to pull on his shirt. One elbow rested on his knee. He had been pretending to lace one shoe for the last minute and a half, but his hands had gone still. He was just watching you.

You caught his gaze in the vanity mirror. “What”.

Ben blinked once, as if remembering his own face. “Nothing”.

“Benjamin”.

That made one corner of his mouth twitch. “You want the truth?”.

“I assume I’ll regret it”.

His eyes moved over you again, slower this time. Not vulgar for once, not even really hungry, though that lived under his skin often enough. Something softer and fuller. The kind of look that made you feel seen in places you weren’t sure you wanted seen.

“You look beautiful”, he said. The words came plain. No clever line. No grin built around them. Just the truth, and somehow that made them land harder.

You looked back at yourself in the mirror instead of at him. The blouse was modest. The skirt fell nearly to your ankles. Your hair was pinned simply, the way the older women in town wore theirs, though yours always came out a little softer around the face no matter how neat you tried to make it. “It’s for church”, you said.

“As if that changes anything”.

You almost smiled.

From the bed, he exhaled and finally bent to finish with his shoe. “You know”, he muttered, “this has gotta be some kind of crazy ass joke”.

You reached for your earrings. “What is”.

“Me”. He tugged the lace tighter than necessary. “Sitting in a bedroom in Oklahoma on a Sunday morning—”.

“Saturday”.

He pointed at you without looking up. “That too. Getting ready for church while my wife looks like…”. He stopped, then glanced up with that familiar rough heat in his eyes. “Like that”.

You put one earring in and gave him a warning look through the mirror. “Behave”.

“I am behaving”.

“That was not behaving”.

“That was admiration”.

“That was trouble”.

His mouth twitched again. “Yeah. Maybe”.

You turned from the vanity to reach for your cardigan, and the movement made the satin shift around your legs with a soft brush. Ben’s eyes dropped to the sound. He looked for one second like a man remembering far too much all at once. Then he checked himself.

That part still struck you sometimes. The stopping. The fact that he could now. The visible act of reining himself in not because he feared your anger, but because he had learned, finally learned, that wanting something did not entitle him to reach.

He stood to pull on his shirt. White, clean, sleeves rolled once before he shoved his arms through. On anyone else the motion would have been ordinary. On Ben, even dressing looked faintly combative. Buttons did not deserve that much force, but he gave it to them anyway. When he was halfway done, he looked at you again and said, quieter now, “You sure I’m not gonna burn alive in there one of these days?”.

You slid on your cardigan and picked a speck of lint from the cuff. “One can hope”.

That got a real laugh out of him. Then, because he was still Ben and because every so often sincerity came out of him before he could catch it, he added, “I go because you ask”.

You looked up. He was standing at the foot of the bed with his shirt open at the collar. “I know”, you said. His expression shifted a little. “And because I like sitting next to you while you sing”.

The room went still for a beat. You hadn’t expected that. Maybe he hadn’t either.

“You sing loud”, he added, with a shrug that tried and failed to make it casual. “Not good. Just loud”.

You stared at him. Then you picked up the nearest hairbrush and threatened to throw it.

He held both hands up at once, laughing properly now. “All right, all right. Beautiful and loud”.

“Awful man”.

“Your husband”.

That could have irritated you. Some days it still did. But this morning the words landed softer than they once would have.

You adjusted his tie when he couldn’t get the knot right. Neither of you commented on the intimacy of that.

Your fingers worked at the silk while he stood very still above you, looking not at the tie but at your face. You could feel his gaze there. “Don’t”, you murmured without looking up.

“Can’t help it”.

“Yes, you can”.

“Not this one”.

You tightened the knot a touch more than strictly necessary. He made a face. “Cruel”.

You smoothed the tie flat against his shirtfront. “Clean enough for church”.

Ben looked down at where your hands rested for the briefest second against his chest, then back to your face. Something warm and almost wondering moved through his expression.

You stepped back before it could become too much. He let you. Then he reached for your coat from the chair and held it open for you without a word. Small things like that had become the shape of this new life. Not declarations. Not grand speeches. Just a thousand ordinary gestures done a little more carefully than before.

You slid your arms into the coat. He settled it over your shoulders without touching more than he had to. When you turned toward the door, he caught your wrist lightly and you looked up.

His fingers loosened at once, giving you every chance to pull away. His eyes searched yours in that old restless way of his, hope and apology and want all mixed together. “Can I kiss you before church”, he asked, “or is that sacrilegious?”.

You shouldn’t have laughed. You did anyway. And it surprised both of you.

Then, because he had earned at least this much, you tipped your face up. Ben kissed you softly. Just once. Brief and careful. His hand never left your wrist. His mouth was warm and familiar and still capable of stirring old grief and newer tenderness in the same breath. When he pulled back, he looked steadier somehow. Less haunted for the moment. “There”, he said quietly.

You smoothed your skirt once, though it didn’t need smoothing. “Try not to fight with the pastor today”.

“No promises”.

“Benjamin”.

He sighed like the burden of righteousness had once again fallen unfairly upon him. “Fine. I’ll behave”.

You gave him a look. He reached for the front door before you could say anything else, opened it, and stood aside for you to step out into the Oklahoma morning first.

-

Over the next few weeks, you started fitting into the town a little better. Not into the century. That still felt unlikely. But the town, yes.

You learned which grocery store carried decent flour, which older lady at church made a pie crust worth respecting, and which roads Ben should avoid if he didn’t want to get trapped behind tractors for twenty minutes and come home muttering about “agricultural tyranny”.

You also learned, unfortunately, that the world had invented something called smart TVs.

Which was how, on a Tuesday afternoon, you walked back into the living room carrying folded laundry and found Ben sprawled on the sofa, one arm slung over the back, watching the sort of thing that made you drop a dishtowel in pure outrage.

“Benjamin”.

He jerked like he’d been shot. Not because he was ashamed, exactly. More because your voice had hit that sharp note he had learned to fear. He grabbed for the remote. The television went black.

You stood there with a pillowcase over one arm and stared at him.

His expression shifted through guilt, annoyance, and the faintest trace of a grin he was trying very hard not to let happen. “What", he said, too casually.

You pointed at the television. “In my living room?”.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “It’s our living room”.

“That makes it worse”.

Ben rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Sweetheart, I was alone”.

“You were not alone. The Lord was here”.

That finished him. He bent forward with a laugh he tried and failed to hide in his fist, and you marched across the room and smacked the back of his shoulder with the pillowcase. “This is not funny”.

“It is a little funny”.

“You need help”.

“I’m aware”.

You stood over him in full offended-wife splendor, cardigan buttoned, hair pinned up, and gave him a lecture so pointed that by the time you were done he had actually muttered, “Yes, ma’am”, just to get you to stop.

You did not stop.

But later that night, when you found the television parental controls mysteriously switched on and Ben acting like it had happened by divine intervention, you had to bite the inside of your cheek not to smile.

Another day, you discovered TikTok. This happened by accident, which somehow made it worse. A woman from church had said, “Oh, honey, you should look up recipes on there” and you had nodded politely, only to discover three hours later that modern people apparently took cooking instructions from dancing girls, shirtless men, and women narrating casseroles in voices too cheerful to trust.

You were scandalized. You were also fascinated.

So the next morning you announced, with great dignity, that you were making “that baked feta pasta everybody seems possessed by”.

Ben looked up from the newspaper. “The what”.

“Don’t mock. It has millions of views”.

He lowered the paper slowly. “You know what, that sentence alone tells me this century was a mistake”. Still, he hovered in the kitchen doorway while you worked, arms crossed, watching you treat the whole absurd thing with way too much seriousness. Cherry tomatoes. Olive oil. A block of feta you regarded with suspicion. Pasta boiled properly because no internet person was going to tell you how to salt water.

When it came out of the oven and you stirred it all together, Ben leaned over the pot, sniffed once, and said, “That actually smells pretty good”.

You gave him a smug look. “I know”.

He took one bite that evening, chewed, and pointed his fork at you. “Don’t get cocky”.

“You ate half the pan”.

Also, your mouth had grown back. Just in little flashes. A comment under your breath. A look. A soft answer with enough edge tucked into it to make him blink, then grin despite himself. Ben had started to live for those moments in a way he would never have admitted plainly. You could tell. Especially when you caught him off guard.

One Saturday after church, while he was trying and failing to fix the porch step without swearing in front of Mrs. Tallou next door, you stood in the doorway and said, “You know, for a man who spent years being called a hero, you are surprisingly bad with a hammer”.

Ben looked up from where he was crouched with the toolbox at his feet. Mrs. Tallou covered a laugh with one gloved hand.

“You trying to embarrass me in front of the neighbors?”.

You folded your arms. “No. I think you managed that on your own”.

He stared at you for one beat, then laughed hard enough he had to sit back on his heels.

That night, he kissed you in the kitchen while the dishwater cooled in the sink and murmured against your mouth, “You’re getting brave”. You had looked up at him and answered, very softly, “Maybe I’m just remembering myself”. That had shut him up in the best possible way.

You baked more too. Partly because it calmed you. Partly because baking still made the house smell like something stable and decent and yours. Partly because in a world that had become almost too strange to hold in your head all at once, flour and butter and sugar still obeyed.

You made banana bread from another TikTok recipe and declared it “acceptable, though overpraised”. You made cinnamon rolls one rainy afternoon that had Ben standing in the kitchen pretending not to hover while they cooled. You learned that modern ovens ran hot and modern measuring cups were somehow more annoying than old ones.

And then one day, without telling him why, you made his favorite cake from the fifties. Yellow cake. Chocolate frosting. A simple one. The one he had once loved so much he used to eat ate night in the dark kitchen while you were asleep. The one you’d made for his birthday the year before Vought gave him Compound V, when he’d come into the kitchen behind you in his work shirt, stolen a fingerful of frosting, and kissed your temple while you pretended to be annoyed.

He came in from the yard that afternoon smelling like cut grass and stopped dead in the kitchen doorway. For a second he only stood there. Then he looked at the cake. At you. Back to the cake. “No”, he said quietly.

You looked up from the counter. “No what”.

“That’s not fair”. His voice had gone rough in a way that had nothing to do with humor.

You wiped your hands on a dish towel. “Do you want a slice or not?”.

Ben crossed the room and stopped in front of you, close enough that you could smell sunlight on his skin and the faint soap from his shower that morning. “You remember that?”.

“Yes”.

Something moved over his face too quickly to name.

When you cut him a piece, his hand brushed yours taking the plate. He looked down at it for a second like he was afraid of what it might do to him. Then he took one bite. Closed his eyes. And had to set the fork down before he said, very low, “Jesus”.

You smiled a little. “Still good?”.

He looked at you over the plate, eyes too bright for something as ordinary as cake. “Yeah”, he said. “Still good”.

It was a few nights after that when he asked about the baby. The question came out of nowhere and yet, somehow, not out of nowhere at all.

You were in bed with a book open and unread in your lap. Ben sat on the edge of the mattress. He said your name first. Just your name. You looked up.

“I saw it in the file”, he said.

Your chest tightened before he even finished.

“The medical records”.

You closed the book carefully and set it aside. Your fingers stayed resting on the cover for a second longer than necessary. “I didn’t know for sure”, you said after a moment. “Not really”. Ben didn’t move. “I thought maybe”, you went on quietly. “I’d been late. Tired. But then… then it happened”.

He stared at the floorboards. You looked down at your own hands in the blanket.

“For over two years before that, it never worked”. Your voice thinned around the old shame, still somehow alive enough to sting. “I used to cry in the bathroom so you wouldn’t hear me. I felt like…”. You let out a small breath. “Like a terrible wife”.

Ben’s head came up so fast it almost startled you. “No”. The word came sharp. Immediate. You looked at him. “No”, he said again, softer now but no less certain. His jaw flexed once. “That was never on you”.

The old grief shifted inside you, surprised to find itself contradicted so forcefully after all these years. You looked down. “I know that now”, you murmured. “Mostly”.

For a few seconds neither of you spoke. Then Ben rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, glanced at you sideways, and because he was still himself enough to reach for humor when the pain got too close, he said, “Well”. You blinked at him. He looked almost cautious now, which on Ben was a strange enough sight on its own. “I’m just saying”, he muttered, “if we ever wanted to… take another crack at it, I do still remember the basic mechanics”.

You stared at him. Then your cheeks turned hot all at once. “Benjamin”.

He held up both hands. “What? I’m trying to raise morale”.

“You are impossible”.

“Not impossible”. His mouth twitched. “Motivated”.

You pulled the blanket higher though it did absolutely nothing to hide your face. “That was indecent”.

“Probably”.

“You should be ashamed”.

“I usually am”, he said, and then, because he saw the way your mouth wanted to soften despite yourself, he added more gently, “I meant someday. If you ever wanted. No pressure”.

The room settled around that. Your face was still warm. Your heart too. Because the truth was, for all your modesty and all the hurt still sitting between you, you had missed him. Not just the idea of him. Not just having a husband in the house or another body in the bed. Him close. His weight of attention. His mouth at your temple. His hand at the small of your back. The private softness that had once belonged only to the two of you.

You looked at him for a long moment. Then you said, quietly, “You talk too much”. That made him grin.

But only a few nights later, it happened.

You had been lying awake listening to him breathe. You turned toward him first. His head shifted on the pillow, eyes finding you in the dim. “You all right?”, he asked, voice rough with sleep.

You nodded once. Then, because the words felt old and tender and humiliating and true all at once, you whispered, “I want my husband again”.

He went completely still.

Your hand found his wrist over the blanket. Warm skin. Steady pulse. “And I want”, you said, softer now, “to be your wife again”.

Ben made the smallest sound in his throat. He turned onto his side slowly, like any sudden movement might scare the moment away. Even then he didn’t touch you yet. “Yeah?”, he asked.

You looked at his face, half-shadowed on the pillow beside yours, and saw how hard he was trying not to rush even this. “Yes”, you whispered.

His hand came to your cheek. When you leaned into it, his eyes closed for one beat, like that small permission had hit him harder than anything else. Then he kissed you. Slowly. Like he had all the time in the world to relearn you right. Your hand slid up into his hair. He shuddered at that, the reaction so immediate and honest it made your own eyes sting.

When his hand moved to your waist, it stayed light until you pulled him closer. When his mouth found your throat, it was with reverence instead of hunger first. When the old want came into him stronger, sharper, he held it back with visible effort until you asked for more in your soft, shy way that had always undone him worse than anything bold ever could.

It was not the same as before. It could never be. It was gentler. Sadder. More careful. Full of pauses and quiet checks and his voice rough in the dark asking, “Like this?” and “Feels good?” as though he needed every answer from your own mouth before he trusted himself to keep going.

And when you finally let yourself have him again, it was not because you had forgotten anything. It was because, for the first time in a very long time, he was loving you like your heart and body were both things worth protecting.

By the time it was over, you were utterly spent. You lay half across him with your cheek on his warm chest, one leg tangled weakly with his under the sheets, the summer-dark room smelling like cotton, skin, and the open window where the night air still moved the curtains in slow, lazy breaths. Ben’s heart beat strong and steady under your ear. Sweat cooled along your spine. Every muscle in your body felt loose and heavy, the kind of deep exhaustion that only came after being held too close for too long in the best and worst ways.

He had not stopped after the first time. Or the second.

By the end of it, more than an hour had slipped by in pieces too soft and blurred to count properly, and now you could barely lift your head. Your fingers rested uselessly against his chest. Even your scolding energy had mostly gone thin. Mostly.

Ben, unfortunately, looked far too pleased with himself. His hand moved lazily up and down your back, broad and warm, while the other rested at your waist beneath the sheet. Every now and then his fingers flexed there like he still couldn’t quite believe you were really in his arms letting him hold you like this.

Then, in that low, rough voice that always sounded like trouble when it dropped into a tease, he said, “You alive there, sweetheart?”.

You made a faint, exhausted noise against his skin. He chuckled under you. “Thought I might’ve fucked you tired”.

You lifted your head just enough to give him a glare. It was not your strongest glare. You knew that. He knew it too. That only made his mouth twitch.

“Don’t you start”, you murmured, voice breathy and ruined with tiredness.

“There it is". His grin turned lazy and shameless. “That face”.

You narrowed your eyes. “What face”.

“That offended little look you get when I say something, in your words, filthy”. His thumb brushed once at your side, absent and warm. “Cute as hell”.

Your cheeks heated at once. “Benjamin”.

The satisfaction on his face was immediate. He loved this. You could tell he loved this. Not just teasing you, but specifically getting you just scandalized enough to lecture him. Over the past months it had become one of his favorite games and he played it with the delighted patience of a man who had discovered a private treasure.

“You hear your voice when you scold me?”, he asked, entirely too smug. “All soft and breathy”.

You tried to push yourself up straighter and failed halfway, your arm giving out and dropping you right back onto his chest. Ben laughed outright then. Not cruelly. Warmly.

“You’re impossible”, you muttered.

“And you married me anyway”.

“I was young”.

“You still like me”.

That earned him another look, weaker than before but no less sincere. Ben only smirked and brushed your hair back from your face. His touch gentled almost immediately under the teasing. That was the way of him now more often than not, mouth shameless, hands careful. “Go on”, he said. “Tell me I’m indecent”.

“You are indecent”.

“Mm-hm”.

“And vulgar”.

“Sure”.

“And entirely too full of yourself”.

That actually made him grin. “There she is”.

You tried to stay stern. You really did. But exhaustion and warmth and the steady rise and fall of his chest under your cheek made it difficult to hold onto proper outrage for long. Your eyelids had gone heavy again. The room had softened at the edges. His hand kept moving in that slow rhythm over your back, making it even harder to remember why you were meant to be offended.

Ben noticed the exact moment your body started melting back into him. His voice changed with it, dropping lower, softer. “Tired?”.

You let out a tiny hum that was probably yes. He pressed his mouth to the top of your head. “Yeah. Thought so”.

-

Over the next few months, Ben stopped pretending he could keep his hands to himself. And you stopped pretending you wanted him to. It was small and constant. His palm on your lower back when you passed him in the kitchen, his mouth finding the back of your neck while you stirred a pot, his fingers sliding into your hand like he owned the right to comfort now and wasn’t wasting it. He was still cocky about it too, because of course he was.

You’d be rolling dough, flour on your cheek, and he’d lean in and murmur something filthy-soft in your ear just to watch you freeze, scandalized. Then you’d swat him with the dish towel and hiss, “Benjamin”, and he’d grin like that was his favorite hymn.

He stayed gentle with you. Always checking without making a big show of it, always in control in a way he hadn’t been decades ago. But he was still so… him. All muscle and heat, that masculine smell of soap and sweat and sun, shoulders filling doorways, voice so deep when he was amused. It made it easy to be soft again. Easy to be your feminine self, not because he demanded it, but because he made room for it like it was precious.

Some mornings you didn’t even make it to coffee before he’d catch you around the waist, pull you back against him, and mutter, “You’re killin’ me, sweetheart”, like you were the problem. And you’d roll your eyes and say, “Then go be strong somewhere else”. He never did.

He took you shopping in the next town over like it was a mission.

He was weirdly into checking the modern world’s lingerie while you stood in front of a rack of ripped jeans looking like you might faint. That made his mouth twitch. “Try ‘em on”.

You did, because he was your husband and because, annoyingly, the jeans fit. You came out of the dressing room stiff as a board, tugging the hem of the too-short shirt downward.

Ben leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, eyes dragging over you like he couldn’t help it. “Yeah”, he said, smug. “You look hot”.

You narrowed your eyes. “I look like I’m auditioning for sin”.

“Same thing”.

You threw the hanger at him. He caught it and laughed like he’d won.

Then you found a little 50s-style dress with soft fabric, modest neckline and a nipped waist. You stepped out and immediately felt like yourself again.

Ben stopped talking. For a beat, he just looked at you like the air had changed. Then he cleared his throat and said, rougher, “That one”.

You tilted your head. “You like it?”.

He blinked like you’d asked whether he liked oxygen. “Yeah, I like it. Christ”.

He bought it without checking the price, then acted annoyed about the whole thing in the parking lot because being openly tender still embarrassed him.

He learned to do small domestic things without acting like they were beneath him. He replaced a broken hinge. He even installed a smoke detector and complained the entire time.

“Why’s it gotta beep.”

“So we don’t die.”

“I’m not dyin’.”

“I am.”

He stared at you. Then he installed two.

At night, he’d pull you into his lap on the couch like it was casual, like it was nothing, like his hands hadn’t once been the reason you feared beds. He’d watch whatever you put on. Old movies, sermons or the news he pretended not to care about, and he’d keep one hand on your thigh under a blanket with his thumb moving slow over your skin.

And when you scolded him for the way his mouth worked, for the way he teased, for the way he’d whisper something indecent at the worst times, he’d grin and say, “You’re cute when you’re mad”.

“I am not cute”.

“You’re fucking adorable”.

“You need prayer”.

“I need you”.

That shut you up every time, because it sounded too honest to fight.

Then days were passing. You were tired in a different way. Hungry, but picky. Your temper a little shorter. Your body softer around the edges.

One morning you were folding laundry and Ben leaned in the doorway watching you like he was doing math. “You’re late”, he said.

You blinked. “Late for what”.

He stared at you like you were joking. “Your period”.

Heat rushed to your face. “Benjamin”.

“What? You are”.

“That is not your business".

He walked over and took the calendar off the kitchen wall with one finger like it had personally offended him. Flipped the page. Counted silently. Then he looked at you, brows lifted, mouth already twisting into that smug, dirty humor. “Sweetheart”, he drawled, “you are so bad at that simple women stuff”.

You grabbed a dish towel and snapped it at him. “Stop talking”.

He caught your wrist gently and his eyes went bright in a way you recognized instantly. Not fear, not even shock. Something that looked suspiciously like excitement, filtered through Ben’s ego like everything else. “We’re goin’ to the store”, he said.

You frowned. “For what”.

He smirked. “For the little stick that tells you whether you made me a baby”.

Your mouth fell open.

At the pharmacy he bought two tests. Back home, he hovered so hard you finally snapped, “Do you want to come in with me too?”.

Ben leaned on the bathroom doorframe, arms crossed. “I’m your husband”.

“You are not watching me take a test”.

He looked mildly offended. “I wasn’t gonna watch”.

“You’re literally standing guard”.

He shrugged. “Habit.”

You shut the door in his face. From behind it, you heard him mutter, “If it’s positive, I’m naming it John Wayne”.

“You are not!”. A pause. Then, quieter: “Okay. Maybe we talk about it".

When you finally opened the door, he tried to look casual and failed completely. His eyes went straight to your hands. You held up the test with a palm that had started shaking. Ben went still. Then his face changed. “Yeah?”, he whispered.

You nodded once, breath catching.

Ben exhaled hard through his nose like he’d been punched, then stepped forward and stopped himself halfway, hands flexing at his sides. “You okay?”, he asked, too careful for a man like him.

You swallowed. “I think so”.

He nodded, eyes bright, and tried to make his mouth work around something cocky. Something dirty. Something that wouldn’t show how much it meant. What came out instead was, “Holy shit”. Then he cleared his throat and recovered just enough to add, “Guess I’m still good at my part”.

You smacked his arm. He laughed and finally, finally, he reached for you. Slow. Asking with his body first. When you didn’t pull away, his arms came around you like he’d been holding his breath for months. “I got you”, he murmured into your hair.

-

The morning you told the pastor, the sun came up clean and gold over the little town like it didn’t know anything about the years you’d lost.

You sat on the porch step afterward with a glass of water sweating in your hand, watching dust drift down the road behind an early truck. Ben paced the yard, then stopped and pretended he wasn’t pacing by “checking” the fence post for absolutely no reason. He’d been doing that a lot since the test. Hovering, without admitting it. Like if he kept moving, the joy couldn’t turn into fear.

You watched him for a moment. “Ben”, you called.

He stopped instantly. Looked at you like you’d snapped a leash. “What”.

“You’re wearing a hole in the grass”.

He blinked. Then that crooked little grin tried to show up and couldn’t quite find its place. “Habit”.

“You’re allowed to sit”.

He hesitated, then came over and dropped down beside you with a heavy exhale, shoulder brushing yours. His knee bumped yours and stayed touching, as if he’d decided he didn’t want any space left between you today.

You held your water with both hands, staring out at the quiet street. For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then Ben said, rough and oddly careful, “You want tea?”. You almost smiled. It was such an ordinary question. The kind of question a husband asked in the morning in a small house on a quiet street. The kind of question you’d once answered without thinking. “Yes”, you said softly. “Please”.

Ben nodded like he could do that at least. Like tea was something he could make right when so much else had been ruined. He stood to go inside, then paused and looked down at you. His eyes moved to your hand. To your wedding ring. To his ring on his own finger. He reached out, slow enough that you could stop him if you wanted, and tucked one loose strand of hair behind your ear. His knuckles barely grazed your cheek. “Still can’t believe you’re here”, he murmured.

You leaned into the touch before you could stop yourself. “Neither can I”.

He huffed a breath through his nose and left his hand there for a second longer than necessary. Then he went inside.

You listened to him in the kitchen: cabinet doors opening, the old kettle filling, the low curse when he bumped his hip on the counter because he still hadn’t learned that small houses didn’t move out of the way for big men.

The sound settled something in you. It reminded you, painfully and sweetly, of another small house. Another quiet street. Another kitchen where you used to sit with a mending basket at your feet and listen for footsteps that didn’t come.

Back then, you had waited in silence. Now, you didn’t have to.

Ben came back out with two mugs. He’d even put a spoonful of sugar in yours the way you liked without asking. That made your chest ache in a small, secret way you didn’t name.

He sat beside you again and handed you the mug carefully, then stared out at the street.

After a minute he said, “You scared?”.

You glanced at him. He didn’t look at you when he asked it. He was looking past the fence line, past the mailbox, out at nothing. The question sounded like it had cost him.

You blew gently on the tea. “Yes”.

Ben nodded once. Like he had expected that. Then he finally looked at you. His eyes were too honest for his own comfort. “Me too”, he admitted.

You shifted your mug to one hand and reached for his other on the porch step. His hand was warm, callused and heavy. He stiffened for half a second, then let your fingers lace with his like he’d been waiting for permission.

“You know”, you said softly, “in the beginning… I used to sit and sew and listen for you”.

Ben’s mouth tightened. “I know”.

“I stayed up because I thought one day you’d walk through the door and be him again”.

Ben’s gaze dropped to your joined hands. For a moment you saw the old shame try to rise. The old instinct to get mean or dismissive to escape it. But he didn’t. He stayed. You watched the choice happen in his face, and it made something in you loosen, just a little.

“I’m… sorry”, he said, quiet as breath.

You didn’t answer with forgiveness. But you squeezed his hand. Ben’s thumb moved across your knuckles.

“You still gonna make me go to church every Saturday?”, he asked.

You tilted your head. “Yes”.

He sighed like a man enduring terrible hardship. “Unbelievable”.

“You need it”.

“You need it too”, he grumbled, then added, quieter, “I’ll go”.

You smiled into your mug. "I know".

———————————

A/N: Please let me know what you think.🥰 AND I may have a surprise for you 🙈

-

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[kilad0806]

The Night We Met

Pairing: Soldier Boy x Reader (Female)

Summary:

Ben is beginning to realize that loving someone and grieving them can feel alarmingly similar.

The problem is, you’re still standing right in front of him.

Notes: Inspired by the song The Night We Met by Lord Huron.

AO3 link

Chapter 1

~~~~~~~~~~

The strange thing about happiness was that Soldier Boy never trusted it. Not when it lasted. Not when it felt real. And especially not when it came from you.

Three weeks after your conversation in the bookstore, he found himself developing routines. A dangerous thing. Routines became habits. Habits became attachments. Attachments became weaknesses.

Yet every afternoon, around four o’clock, he somehow ended up standing outside your bookstore. Every single day.

He’d tell himself he was just walking. Exploring the city. Killing time. Anything but the truth.

The truth was embarrassingly simple. He liked seeing you.

You’d smile when he walked through the door. A small smile. Nothing dramatic. Nothing life-changing.

And somehow it became the best part of his day.

Pathetic.

If his old teammates could see him now, they’d never let him live it down. America’s greatest hero reduced to looking forward to bookstore conversations.

You were shelving books when he arrived one evening. The bell above the door chimed. You looked up. Smiled.

And there it was. That stupid feeling again.

“Hey, Ben.”

Not Soldier Boy. Ben. Always Ben.

His chest tightened.

“Hey.”

You pointed toward a cardboard box. “Help.”

“That’s not a greeting.”

“It’s a request.”

“Demand.”

“Demand.”

You grinned. He hated how much he liked making you laugh.

The worst part was how natural it felt.

As if you’d known each other longer than a few weeks. As if he’d always been here.

As if there had never been a version of his life without you in it.

The thought followed him home that night.

And lingered.

Because Soldier Boy remembered every version of his life. Every decade. Every city. Every war.

And not one of them had included this.

Not one of them had included someone waiting for him.

Someone happy to see him.

Someone who looked at him without wanting something.

The realization should have comforted him. Instead it filled him with dread.

Because good things didn’t stay.

They never had.

His mother. Gone. His team. Gone. His reputation. Gone. His century. Gone.

Everyone eventually left. Or died. Or betrayed him.

So why should you be different?

That night he sat on the roof of his apartment building. The city stretched endlessly beneath him. Lights glowing in distant windows. Lives continuing without him.

And for the first time in a long time, he felt old.

Not physically. Never physically.

But tired.

Tired in the way only someone who had lived too long could be.

His phone buzzed.

A text.

From you.

His heart stopped.

Actually stopped.

Ben, you left your jacket.

A second message arrived.

I know you’re pretending you forgot it.

A third.

You can come get it tomorrow, idiot.

Soldier Boy stared at the screen.

Then laughed.

A real laugh. Not the public one. Not the television one. Not the Soldier Boy one.

Just Ben.

For a few precious seconds, he felt lighter.

Then the fear returned.

Because the more he cared, the more he had to lose.

And he was beginning to care far too much.

The next afternoon, he returned for his jacket.

You handed it over immediately.

“There.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Neither of you moved.

The bookstore was empty. Quiet. Warm.

Outside, rain tapped softly against the windows.

Inside, time seemed slower somehow.

You leaned against the counter.

He leaned against the bookshelf.

And for a moment, neither of you spoke.

Comfortable silence.

The kind he wasn’t used to.

The kind he didn’t realize he’d missed.

Then you looked at him. Really looked.

And asked softly: “Why do you always seem sad?”

The question hit harder than any punch.

Because nobody was supposed to notice.

Soldier Boy immediately looked away.

“I’m not sad.”

You raised an eyebrow.

“Right.”

“I ain’t.”

“Ben.”

His name sounded different when you said it. Gentler.

“Everybody’s sad about something.”

The bookstore suddenly felt too small.

Too bright.

Too honest.

Because the answer wasn’t complicated.

He was sad because he already missed you.

Even when you were standing right in front of him.

He missed future versions of you. Future conversations. Future smiles. Future days that hadn’t happened yet.

Because some part of him was convinced they would eventually be taken away.

That one day you’d learn who he really was. What he’d done. What kind of man existed beneath the shield.

And you’d leave.

Everyone always left.

The terrifying thing wasn’t that he expected it.

The terrifying thing was that he didn’t know how he’d survive it this time.

You were still watching him. Waiting.

Patient.

Finally, he forced a smile.

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

His eyes met yours.

For one brief second, honesty almost escaped.

About how I’m already afraid of losing you. About how I haven’t even had you yet. About how I can still remember the night we met, and somehow that memory already feels like something I’ll miss.

Instead, he shrugged.

“Nothing important.”

You didn’t look convinced.

But you let it go.

And later, after you’d gone home and the bookstore lights were dark, Soldier Boy remained standing across the street. Watching the empty windows. Listening to the rain.

Thinking about the first day he’d seen you.

Thinking about the impossible future he wanted.

Thinking about all the ways it could disappear.

And for the first time in years, Soldier Boy found himself wishing he could go backward. Not decades. Not centuries. Just a few weeks. Back to the night he met you. Back before he knew what your smile could do to him. Back before losing you became something to fear. Because loving you—even quietly, even from a distance—already felt a little like grief.

[godzillawillsaveus]

Jensen Ackles in The Boys

Who Approved This Script? | The Boys Season 3 | Amazon Prime Video

[samdeancass]

The Woman Between Walls

Requested by Anonymous

Pairing: Soldier Boy x Female Reader

Genre: Fluff

Characters: Soldier Boy, Y/N, Homelander

Description: Homelander introduces his newest messenger, a mysterious Supe who can phase through anything and disappear at will. While everyone is distracted by Homelander's absurd new "Bible," Soldier Boy can't take his eyes off the woman floating beside him. The moment he meets her, he knows she's exactly his type, and he's determined to learn more.

The conference room at Vought Tower was unusually crowded. Everyone on the team was there, plus a few executives who clearly wished they were somewhere else. The mood was tense, mostly because Homelander stood at the front, looking far too pleased with himself. That was never a good sign.

Soldier Boy sat at the end of the table, boots up on the polished surface. He looked bored, spinning a pen between his fingers. "Can we get this over with?" he asked. "I've sat through hostage situations that were more entertaining than Vought meetings."

Homelander ignored him. Instead, he lifted a thick leather-bound book into the air with a flourish. The cover gleamed under the conference room lights. Gold letters stood out on the front, and the pages had gold edges. Several people blinked. Nobody spoke.

Finally, one executive cleared his throat. "Wow."

Another nodded uncertainly. "It's... shiny."

"Very shiny."

Soldier Boy stared at the book. Then he burst out laughing. "No way."

Homelander's smile widened. "This," he announced proudly, "is the Homelander Bible."

You couldn't tell if he meant it as a joke or a threat. Deep down, you knew Homelander never did anything without a reason. This book was meant to do more than stroke his ego; it was here to remind everyone who was in charge. The room fell silent. Again.

Soldier Boy laughed even harder. "A Bible?"

"It's a collection of my teachings."

"Jesus Christ."

"Exactly."

The Deep covered his face. Someone at the far end of the table looked seconds away from quitting. Homelander held the book up for another moment, then stopped in the middle of his gesture.

Suddenly, his hand was empty.  The room froze. The Bible was floating. Several inches above Homelander's hand. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The book drifted higher. The pages started turning on their own. Security immediately reached for weapons.

"What the hell-"

"Who's doing that?"

Then you appeared beside the floating book, as if you had always been there. You hovered in the air, looking completely at ease. Rumour had it you had been recruited straight out of some top-secret government program, and even Vought's senior teams only spoke your name in low voices. Some whispered you were the only person who had ever survived that infamous blackout in Minsk, but nobody quite agreed how. You crossed your legs as if sitting in an invisible chair. One hand held the book while the other flipped through its pages. You looked completely unimpressed.

"Page twenty-three has a typo."

The room erupted. Several people jumped. One executive nearly fell out of his chair.

Homelander sighed dramatically. "Oh, for God's sake."

You turned another page. "This chapter is literally just pictures of you."

"They're inspirational."

"There are twelve pages." "They're very inspirational."

You looked unconvinced. Soldier Boy couldn't stop staring. At first, it was because you had appeared out of thin air. Then it turned into something else. You weren't intimidated. You weren't nervous. You weren't desperately trying to impress Homelander like most people in the building. You looked relaxed. Confident. Comfortable. Like you belonged there.

It was clear that none of these people could make you feel small. That alone caught his attention. Then you smiled at another ridiculous page, and Soldier Boy felt something change inside him. Well. Shit. There she was. The woman he’d imagined for decades and never thought he’d actually meet.

Homelander finally gestured toward you. "This is my messenger."

You rolled your eyes. "Your employee.”

"My trusted messenger."

You shut the book. "I'm literally on payroll."

A few people laughed. Even Soldier Boy grinned. You were funny. That wasn’t helping at all.

As the meeting continued, Soldier Boy paid almost no attention to what Homelander was saying. Instead, he watched you. Whenever someone asked a question, you answered without hesitation. Whenever Homelander exaggerated something, you corrected him without fear. You floated beside him, occasionally pacing halfway across the conference table because you seemed bored.

Every time Soldier Boy looked away, he looked back. He wasn't subtle about it either. At one point, your eyes met his. You caught him staring. Instead of looking embarrassed, he simply smirked. You raised an eyebrow. His grin widened.

Eventually, the meeting ended. People hurried toward the exits. Nobody wanted to spend more time around Homelander than necessary. Within minutes, only you and Homelander remained in the conference room. Soldier Boy lingered outside the doorway. Not because he was interested in Homelander. Absolutely not. He was interested in you. There was a difference. From outside, he heard your voice as you delivered your report.

"The V1 shipments have been moved again."

Homelander leaned against the table. "Can you track them?"

You nodded. "I can get inside places nobody else can."

"Good."

You handed him a tablet. "I'll have more information tomorrow."

Homelander smiled. "You're my favourite."

You immediately replied, "Pretty sure you've said that to half the building."

"Only the talented half."

You laughed softly. Soldier Boy found himself smiling. Then he stopped, because smiling felt weird.

A few minutes later, you stepped into an elevator. The doors began closing. A hand suddenly shot between them. The doors slid open again. Soldier Boy stepped inside. You looked up.

"Really?" "What?"

"You were waiting outside the room." "I was passing through."

"You were standing there for ten minutes." "Traffic."

You laughed. Soldier Boy felt pretty pleased with himself. The elevator started descending. For a few moments, neither of you spoke. Then he glanced sideways.

"So."

You folded your arms. "So."

"You're the ghost girl."

You looked offended. "Ghost girl?"

"I couldn't see you." "That's generally how invisibility works."

"You float too." "I phase."

"Still counts."

You shook your head. "No, it doesn't."

"Pretty sure it does." "It absolutely doesn't."

Soldier Boy laughed. You were impossible. He liked that.

"What exactly can you do?" he asked.

You shrugged. "I can phase through solid matter," you said. "Walls, doors, floors. Even steel. I can slip through almost anything if I concentrate. Can't do it forever, though, too tiring. And I can't take anyone with me, just myself. Also, if I pass through anything with a high electric current, my hair stands on end for about an hour. Kind of annoying, honestly." You paused for a second, then added, "Once, I forgot to check before stepping through the security doors downstairs. Ended up with my hair looking like I'd been electrocuted for the rest of the day. Security kept calling me 'Static.' Trust me, you only make that mistake once."

"What about people?"

You looked at him. "Why would I phase through people?"

He shrugged. "Just curious."

"That sounds concerning." "You've met me."

"Fair point."

The elevator reached the next floor, but neither of you left. Neither of you mentioned it.

"You know," Soldier Boy said, "most people around here act terrified."

"Of Homelander?" "Of everyone."

You shrugged. "I'm hard to intimidate."

"I noticed." "And?"

His gaze met yours. "And I like it."

For the first time since he got in the elevator, you seemed a little caught off guard. Only slightly. But it was enough for him to notice. A small smile tugged at your lips.

"That's your pickup line?" "No."

"Good." "I haven't started yet." You laughed. Again. He couldn’t get that laugh out of his head.

When the elevator finally reached the lobby, you stepped out. Soldier Boy followed immediately. You looked over your shoulder. "Why are you following me?"

"I'm not." "You absolutely are."

"I'm providing security."

You stared. He stared back. Neither of you believed that.

"Security?" "Yep."

"I'm a superhuman who can walk through walls." "Dangerous walls."

You rolled your eyes. Soldier Boy grinned.  "I'm heading to the Research Division," you said. "Cool."

"To investigate leads." Cool."

"You don't need to come." "I know."

You stopped walking. "Then why are you coming?"

Soldier Boy looked completely serious. Because for the first time in ages, someone had really caught his attention. Someone smart. Confident. Funny. Someone who wasn't afraid of him. Someone who didn't care about his reputation. Someone who could walk through walls and still leave him wanting more. So he simply shrugged. "Because I want to." For a moment, you stared at him. Then you laughed softly and shook your head. "You're impossible." His grin returned instantly. "Yeah." Together, you continued down the hallway.

For the first time since waking up after decades in captivity, Soldier Boy actually looked forward to what might happen next. Something told him this was only the beginning, that crossing paths with you would lead to complications, surprises, and maybe trouble he couldn't even imagine yet. But lately, whispers of sabotage deep inside Vought's Research Division kept circulating, sharp and persistent as a paper cut. Earlier that morning, he had opened his locker and found a black chess piece, a knight, polished and heavy, with his name carved neatly into its base. It sat at the back of his locker, daring him to pick it up. Through the day, the image kept flashing in his mind, the piece silently waiting for its move. Whatever was coming, he had a feeling it would be worth it.

[anklbiter]

T O L D Y O U S O

pairing : bf!soldier boy x reader

summary : after denying you were pregnant , despite the very obvious signs , you finally took a test. don’t panic , but.. congrats!

warnings : fluff , slight smut , pregnancy , happy ben , lmk if i missed any

Over the course of around a month and a half, your mornings had been spent hurled over the rim of the toilet and puking up what you had eaten the day prior, sometimes when you hadn’t even eaten. You brushed it off at first, claiming that it must’ve just been something you ate at a restaurant Ben took you to or something, after all, it was a restaurant you two hadn’t tried before.

Then came the swelling after the second month. You didn’t even it until you were in missionary one night and Ben had pressed down on your stomach to feel the outline of his cock, only for his brows to furrow as he felt your stomach a little rounder than usual. Don’t get him wrong, he loves the extra fat, apparently it gives him more to hold onto when fucking you stupid, but he knew that the firmness on your stomach wasn’t there before.

It was like his eyes lit up and entire demeanor switched all of a sudden. In the back of his mind had always been the thought of getting you pregnant, giving you a mini-him (or you) that caused mayhem as they ran around the living room. So, when he felt your stomach and remembered the puking every morning, that idea of breeding you immediately shot forward and became the only thing his mind focused on.

"Alright, how long were you gonna hide this from me, huh? Thought I wouldn’t find out?" His gruff voice abruptly cut through the moans and sound of the headboard smacking against the wall, hips slowing until they came to a painfully slow and steady pace.

It was like a bomb went off with how quick you went quiet, your eyes snapping open and focusing on his own that were still sparkling. Your back flattened against the sheets from its arched position, your fingers uncurling from their tight grip on the pillows. "What are you talking about?"

Ben rolled his eyes and leaned down so his forehead rested against your own, breath tangling with yours when he spoke again. "The pregnancy, doll. When were you gonna tell me?" His lips curled into a smirk when he saw your surprised face, one hand reaching up to wrap your thigh around his hip. "Don’t act all shocked now, you knew and weren’t gonna tell me."

".. Ben, I’m not fucking pregnant."

"Honey, I think I know when a lady’s pregnant. You know many I’ve knocked up—"

"I don’t wanna hear about that when you’re still balls deep inside of me."

Ben chuckled at the sharpness in your tone, knowing how you felt whenever he brought up anything sexual from his past, whether it was just a girl flashing him or him getting women pregnant. Obviously, he made them get rid of it. A kid would’ve gotten in the way of his career, and he didn’t want America’s Greatest Supe to slow down just because he got greedy (👀👀).

After the little pregnancy talk, and your quick defense to shut up him up, you both quickly forgot about it and went back to fucking like rabid rabbits, the pace quickly speeding up aswell as the decibels of your moans and his grunts. Well, you forgot about it, Ben didn’t. After that night it was practically glued to his brain, even if you had shut the idea down immediately.

Despite his past of knocking up women and making them get an abortion, that idea didn’t even cross his mind when it came to you, for some odd reason. It wasn’t really an odd reason, to be honest, you two were together and had been for almost a year. The past girls were all just flings or one night stands.

Instead, when he thought of it with you, he found himself unable to think of anything but keeping it. Maybe it was the fact he was actually in love with you, or maybe it was the fact that he had lived 107 years (40+ incapacitated) and hadn’t once known what it was like to be a father. Most of the reason he hadn’t yet been a father was because he was afraid he’d become like his own, something he couldn’t bear to do with you.

But, if you were actually pregnant, he silently vowed to himself to be there. He’d always be there for you and his child, show up to every parent teacher conference at school, watch them graduate and head off to college. He wanted to be the father he wished he had and give his kid the childhood he only dreamt of.

Not even a week later, you got a test, mainly due to Ben’s persistent nagging for you to take one just for precaution. You knew how giddy he was for you to realise he was right all along and you were actually pregnant with his kid, but you had your whole faith in the fact you were just bloated from eating alot lately.

That was another thing: the cravings. It could be midnight and you’d still be on the couch stuffing your face with snacks or full course meals, other times you’d be fast asleep in bed, snoring away without a care in the world.

Ben didn’t mind the cravings, even if he was the one who had to drive to the stores and back just because you wanted a specific kind of snack at 10 am. In fact, he found it amusing and endearing, something he told you on many occasions. He’d said you looked like a squirrel with it’s cheeks full of nuts one time, and you gave him the most adorable side eye he’d ever seen, even if you throw a tv remote right at his head.

When you finally decided to do the test, he was sitting on the edge of the bed while you were in the bathroom doing whatever for the past 10 minutes. You’d gotten multiple sticks just to make sure you weren’t pregnant, something you were absolutely adamant on, and you’d had to piss in a cup so there’d be enough for each stick.

His knee was bouncing uncontrollably, elbows resting across his knees as he impatiently waited for you to be done. He’d been impatient ever since you got home from the store, his mind swivelling and the need to prove you wrong stronger than ever.

"Cmon, doll, can’t be hard to piss on a few sticks. Took you quicker that one time when I had you bent—"

Before he could finish, the door to the bathroom swung open and you stood there in all your glory. He would’ve rolled his eyes and made an ‘about damn time’ joke, but it would’ve fell flat as soon as he noticed your teary wide eyes and his own locked onto the three sticks in your hand.

The cross on two and the "positive" on the other stared back at him like he won the lottery, and it some cases, he did, but the lottery was the life everyone dreamt off as a kid. And now, he was gonna have his own kid that would have that fantasy in a few years.

"Holy shit.." The words left his lips before he could stop them, his features now matching your own shocked ones, slowly standing up from the bed to make his way over to you. Once he was towering over you, accidentally due to how tall he was, he gently took the sticks from your hand, ignoring the disgusted look you gave him when he grabbed the ends with piss on, examining the tests in extreme detail.

He wasn’t angry or upset, oh, fuck no. He would genuinely think something was wrong with him if he wasn’t happy with the news. The grin that spread across his face reminded you of the cheshire cat, and you had to bite your lip to stop your own grin when you saw the childlike giddiness in his eyes, the same eyes that made others almost wet themselves in both arousal and fear.

But, when those stupid words left his lips next, you rolled your eyes and fought the urge to smack him upside the head.

"We’re having triplets??"

"No, you fucking idiot. Just one. Well.. I don’t know! We haven’t had the ultrasound yet, so."

Ben’s grin faltered as he blinked a few times before just letting out a quiet ‘oh’, only for a few moments though, as that grin was immediately back on his face. Before you had the time to react, you were swept off of your feet and had to wrap your legs around his waist to stay up, a squeal leaving your lips until it was cut off when his lips crashed against yours.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, his mouth swallowing your giggle as his hands squeezed your ass, only pulling away to get air a few moments later, the positive tests laying abandoned on the floor. You rested your forehead against his, lightly panting, eyes gazing deep into his.

The love in his eyes almost made you collapse right then and there as he stared back at you, a soft smile curled in the edges of his lips, your hands now playing with the hair that dangled down the back of his neck. "We’re gonna be parents, baby. I’m gonna be a dad."

You mirrored his smile and nodded in response to his words, confirming what he already knew from that day, the day that you had firmly denied being pregnant and have ever since. Now, your words were thrown back at you as you looked down at the sticks laying on the floor, your foreseeable future right there in just two crosses and a single word.

"Yeah, we are. You’re gonna be the best damn dad they could ever have."

a/n ;

cranked this out in an hour or two with too long of a break inbetween 🫩 this is my favourite so far , and im thinking about doing a pt2 with the pregnancy and maybe the birth? lmk tho bcs i dont know yet !

part two is in the making 💋

feedback appreciated , requests are open 🫶🏼

[lickabeefslair]

Perfect Symbol

Summary: USO Girl is surprised and angry at during press.

Forty goddamn years in a Russian laboratory. Another few years spent frozen and somehow Vought was still putting her on stages. Different audience. Same bullshit.

Firecracker’s voice droned through the auditorium, praising Soldier Boy like he was some kind of American saint. USO Girl stared out at the crowd of reporters. Every one of them eating it up. Beside her, Soldier Boy shifted his weight. That alone was enough to keep her grounded.

The applause rose again as Soldier Boy accepted the medal. USO Girl plants a perfectly placed kiss on his cheek. Something she’s done tons of times on the cameras. Then Homelander stepped forward. The room practically held its breath. “I’m also very proud to say that this great hero is my father.” Questions immediately started flying. USO Girl rolled her eyes. Of course Homelander would take Soldier Boy’s moment and make it all about himself. The whole damn country loved a family story. Especially one Vought could sell. She was already planning her escape route when Homelander’s voice cut through the noise again.

“And America’s Sweetheart here…”

Her stomach dropped. “Oh no. No. Absolutely not.” She thought to herself the moment he opened mouth “…is my mother.” For a moment she thought she’d misheard him. Then the reporters exploded. Camera flashes fired like machine guns. Questions came from every direction. “How does it feel to be the mother of Homelander?”

“America’s first superhero family!”

“Do you see yourself in him?”

“Will the three of you be appearing together?”

“What does Soldier Boy think?”

She didn’t answer. Not one word. Because she knew exactly what would happen if she did. One quote. One reaction. One soundbite.

And suddenly every headline tomorrow would read:

America’s First Family.

The Original Superhero Mother.

Homelander’s Mom Speaks.

She’d seen this machine before. Hell, she’d spent decades feeding it. The microphones were already moving toward her. People shouting her name. Wanting reactions. Wanting quotes. Wanting her face attached to whatever insane narrative Homelander had just invented. USO Girl slowly turned her head. Homelander was smiling. Not looking at her. Looking at the cameras. Like this was done, she’d already agreed. Like she was another fucking poster. Something inside her snapped. Just a quiet, exhausted break. She leaned slightly toward him, and said just to Homelander. “Fuck off.” The smile twitched. Just for a second. It was worth it. Then she turned around and walked away. The reporters immediately swarmed. Questions chased after her. She ignored everyone, the cameras, the shouting, the security guards trying to keep up. All of it. By the time she pushed through the doors of the meeting room, her pulse was hammering. Not because she was nervous. Because she was furious.

Mother.

The word made her laugh. A short, humorless sound. She’d spent most of her life being told who she was supposed to be. America’s Sweetheart. The nation’s darling. The perfect woman. The perfect symbol. Now Homelander had decided she was somebody’s mother, without asking or a warning. Without so much as a conversation. The hallway was blissfully empty... For about five seconds. Then the doors opened behind her. She didn’t have to look. The footsteps gave him away. “Really?” she asked. Homelander stopped beside her. “You could’ve warned me.”

“I thought it was nice.” She stared at him. “Nice?”

“It is.” His expression didn’t change.

“We’re family.”

“No.” The answer came immediately. Flat. Certain “No, we’re not. You didn’t come out of my vagina. You may be Soldier Boy’s son but you are not mine.”

His jaw tightened. For the first time all day, she felt a tiny bit better. “Good, let him be uncomfortable for a change” she thought to herself. A handler appeared at the end of the hallway. “Sage needs everyone back in the meeting room.” USO Girl pushed off the wall. “Fantastic.” She says sarcastically. Without another word, she walked past Homelander and headed for the meeting room, leaving him standing there alone.

The conference room felt blessedly quiet after the circus died down with the reporters. USO Girl sat slouched in one of the leather chairs, arms crossed. As far away from Homelander as possible but still next to Soldier Boy. Unfortunately, Homelander kept talking.

“Forty years out of the spotlight, you still got it, huh?” He says to his father. Soldier Boy snorted. Homelander chuckled like they were sharing some private joke. “Sage tells me socials are blowing up.” Neither of them answered. “People Magazine’s calling us America’s Sexiest Dynasty.” USO Girl barked a laugh. “Me and Soldier Boy, sure. Addin’ you? Jesus Christ, there goes the ranking.” Homelander fake smiled. “You believe that?”

“No.” Soldier Boy didn’t even look up. Homelander’s smile faltered. Then he shifted gears. “I would’ve never sent you in there if I knew Butcher had the virus.” USO Girl responds “bullshit!”

“I wouldn’t have.” Homelander defends himself. Soldier Boy stared at him. Expression unreadable “Swear to God.” USO Girl rolled her eyes.“Although,” Homelander continued, “I did tell you not to engage, so if we’re pointing fingers, I don’t think I should be exclusively at fault here.” The doors slid open. Sister Sage entered carrying a tablet. The room immediately changed. “Lab results are in.” Now Soldier Boy looked up. Sage tapped the screen. “Frederick Vought’s first iteration of Compound V. V1’s ten times more potent than today’s formula, Highly unstable.” She glanced toward Soldier Boy. “Only worked on a handful of early Supes.”

Her eyes shifted to Soldier Boy “You.” Then to USO Girl. “You.” That caught Homelander’s attention. Sage continued. “Bombsight. Torpedo. Private Angel….. Stormfront.” Soldier Boy frowned. “Who the hell is Stormfront?” Sage looked up from the tablet. “Dr. Vought’s wife, Clara.” Nobody reacted then she continued “I think you knew her as Liberty.” The conference room fell quiet as Sage scrolled through the report. The room went still. USO Girl slowly lifted her eyes. Soldier Boy was already looking at her. A single glance. The woman who’d drifted in and out of their lives for years. Herogasm, Vought parties, Press tours. Late nights. Soldier Boy looked away first. USO Girl followed a moment later. The conversation continued. But neither of them were really listening anymore.

“Bring me some.” Homelander demands like a child. Sage didn’t even look up from her tablet. “I can’t.” Homelander’s jaw tightened. “Why not?”

“Vought destroyed every vial, there’s none left. The room fell silent. For a moment, nobody moved. Then Homelander stood. “No.” Sage blinked. “No?”

“There has to be some left.” “There isn’t.” “Search again.” “Search harder.” Sage stared at him. USO Girl rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

Homelander’s head snapped toward her. “What?”

“You heard her.” She says in a very obvious tone. “There has to be some.” Homelander insists “There isn’t, dickhead.” She says now fully annoyed. “You don’t know that.” He whines

“And you don’t know how to take no for an answer.” Her voice firm the room went still. Homelander’s stare sharpened. “You got something to say?” She laughed, a short, humorless sound. “Plenty.” Soldier Boy leaned back in his chair. Already sensing where this was going. Homelander folded his arms. “Then say it. USO Girl met his gaze. “You’ve spent the last twenty minutes demanding things like the universe owes them to you.” His expression darkened. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.” She pushed herself out of her chair. “I’ve got eighty years of people telling me what I am, where I go, and what I’m worth.” Homelander scoffed. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No. It ain’t.” She took a step closer. “Because when somebody finally tells me no, I don’t throw a damn tantrum.”

Soldier Boy covered his mouth with his hand. Poorly disguising a grin. Homelander noticed. His eyes narrowed. “You think this is funny?”

“I think,” Soldier Boy said, “you’re proving her point.” That only made Homelander angrier. USO Girl shook her head. “You know what your problem is?” She argued. “Enlighten me.” Homelander says sarcastically.

“You didn’t get told no enough.” The room went quiet. Even Sage stopped pretending not to listen. Homelander’s smile appeared. Dangerous and forced. “What is that supposed to mean?” USO Girl shrugged. “It means if Ben had actually raised you, you would’ve gotten the belt a few times.” Soldier Boy choked, a startled bark of laughter escaping before he could stop it. Sage looked down at her tablet to hide her expression. Homelander stared at both of them, completely stunned. For one glorious second, he actually looked speechless. Then his face hardened. “Get out.” USO Girl smiled. The first genuine smile she’d worn all day. “Gladly.”

—

Finally a new chapter!

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[lila-lou]

✨The hardest Thing- 2/3✨

Summary: Eighty-five years after Soldier Boy left you behind, he finds you frozen, kept as leverage, and drags you back into a world you never got to live. Far from Vought’s spotlight, you and Ben try to stitch a marriage back together from ash.

(sequel to "the softest thing")

Pairing: Soldier Boy x Reader

Warnings: Language, angst

Word Count: 5709

DISCLAIMER: Everything is purely fiction. I do not intend to attack or hurt anyone. The story is, of course, entirely made up and meant for entertainment purposes.

The next few days were awkward as hell. There was no graceful way around it.

You were weak, disoriented and eighty-five years out of place in a motel off some road you did not know. Ben, for his part, had apparently decided that if he let you out of his sight for longer than half an hour, the earth itself might split open and swallow you. So he hovered. Not obviously—he would have died before calling it that—but practically, relentlessly, he did.

The first morning he left for exactly twenty-three minutes.

You knew because you watched the red numbers on the motel clock the whole time, sitting up in bed with your knees drawn under the blankets and your heart doing little nervous jumps every time headlights swept past the curtains.

When he came back, he had a paper bag in one hand, coffee in the other and an expression that already suggested he expected trouble. “Got you clothes”, he said, setting the bag on the bed like he had accomplished something noble.

You looked inside. Then you looked at him. Then back at the bag.

It contained a tiny skirt, a top that appeared to have surrendered in the battle against fabric, and something he was apparently trying to pass off as a jacket though it looked more like decorative sleeves.

You pulled the top up between two fingers. “Where”, you asked very slowly, “is the rest of it?”.

Ben leaned one shoulder against the wall, coffee in hand, and had the nerve to look confused. “That is it”. You stared at him. He glanced at the clothes, then back at you, and, Ben was Ben, he added, “I thought it looked hot”.

Your mouth fell open. “Hot”, you repeated.

“Yeah”.

You held up the skirt. “This is not a skirt. This is an apology for a skirt”.

One corner of his mouth twitched.

You pointed at the bag like it had personally offended the Lord. “I am not putting on something that makes me look like I’m selling my body for money”.

That wiped the twitch right off his face. “Jesus”, he muttered.

“Yes”, you said. “Exactly. Go again”.

He did. Grumbling.

The second outfit was only slightly better. This one featured jeans already torn at both knees, which you regarded with visible distrust, and a sweater so wide at the neck it kept sliding off your shoulder like it had no morals. Still, it covered actual skin, and the coat was real, and the boots looked sturdy enough not to break an ankle in, so you accepted defeat with whatever dignity remained to a woman dragged into 2026.

He had also brought food.

At first you thought it was wrapped engine parts. Grease had soaked through the paper bag in wide translucent circles. The smell of salt, meat, frying oil and something sharp and pickled and chemical and aggressively modern hit you instantly.

You looked inside and found a burger the size of your head and fries glossy with oil. Your expression must have said enough.

“What?”, Ben asked.

You looked at the food. Then at him. “Do people still have stomachs in this century?”. He barked a short laugh and sat on the edge of the dresser. “Try it”.

You did. It was vulgar. It was delicious. It upset you on principle. You ate half of it anyway.

Ben noticed and looked unbearably smug about it.

“Don’t”, you warned.

“I didn’t say anything”.

“You’re thinking very loudly”.

That got a low chuckle out of him, and for a second the room almost felt less impossible.

The next few days passed in uneven pieces like that.

You learned about smartphones and hated them immediately. You learned people now ordered groceries through apps and said, flatly, “That sounds lazy”. You learned televisions could stream anything at any time and said the whole country was doomed. You learned cars beeped at people now for drifting in lanes and muttered that perhaps the cars were the only responsible ones left.

Ben kept explaining the world in the bluntest ways possible, usually from the motel chair, sometimes leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed, sometimes sitting at the edge of the bed if you were too exhausted to sit up on your own. He was bad at patience, but weirdly decent at repetition. If something overwhelmed you the first time, he circled back later in smaller pieces.

You tried your hardest not to lose your mind. Some moments almost did it anyway.

The first time he showed you a phone screen and casually pinched two fingers together to make a photograph zoom, you recoiled hard enough that he snorted.

“That’s unnatural”, you said.

“It’s a touchscreen”.

“It’s witchcraft”.

“No”, he said. “That was the forties”. You threw a motel hand towel at him for that one.

By the fourth day, you were strong enough to walk to the bathroom without your knees shaking. By the fifth, you stood at the window for a full ten minutes just staring at the parking lot and all the wrong-shaped cars in it. By the sixth, the walls of the motel room started to feel less like shelter and more like a padded box.

That morning, while Ben was standing by the little coffee machine trying to bully it into producing something drinkable, you said, “I want to go home”.

He looked over his shoulder at you. Very still.

Your fingers tightened in the sleeves of his shirt (you were still wearing it to sleep, though now you had actual clothes of your own folded on the dresser) and you said again, quieter this time, “I want to see the house”.

Ben turned fully then, coffee forgotten. For a second he said nothing. Then he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and looked away. “I don’t even know if it’s still there”.

“It’s there”.

“You can’t know that”.

You lifted your chin a little. “Neither can you”.

His jaw moved once. That meant you’d hit something. Finally he muttered, “Even if it’s standing, it won’t be…”. He stopped. He didn’t finish because there was no way to finish.

Won’t be home. Won’t be what it was. Won’t be untouched by everything the world had done since you last stood in it.

You looked at him for a long moment. “I still want to go”.

He nodded once. “All right”.

The drive took hours.

The farther you got from the city, the stranger the world became in a different way. Less glass. More sky. Old roads folded under new ones. Towns stretched wider than they used to, signs brighter, gas stations uglier. Ben drove with one hand on the wheel and the other loose on his thigh, sunglasses on, jaw set, saying little unless you asked something.

When the turnoff finally came, your heart started beating too hard. You recognized the road before you recognized anything on it.

Trees were bigger now, thick and old where they had once been saplings. The ditch line had shifted. A mailbox was gone. Another stood rusted and leaning. The street itself looked narrower somehow, as if time had let the grass creep closer from both sides.

Then you saw the house. You stopped breathing. It was still there.

Built solid, just as people used to build things when they expected weather and years and bad luck and war. Paint had long since peeled to gray, then weathered past gray into something almost silver. One shutter hung crooked. The garden beds were wild with weeds and volunteer growth. One front window was clouded at the corners, another cracked clean through. Ivy had climbed halfway up one side and died there in brown tangles.

Eighty-five years had done a number on it. But it stood.

Ben killed the engine. For a moment neither of you moved. You just sat there looking at the house with both hands folded too tightly in your lap, as if letting them go loose might make the whole thing disappear.

“It’s really here”, you whispered.

Beside you, Ben looked at it too, his face unreadable behind the dark lenses. “Yeah”.

You got out of the car slowly. The gravel crunched under your boots. The air smelled like dirt and old leaves and sun-warmed wood. Ben came around the hood and stopped next to you. You stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the place where your whole life had once fit inside four small rooms.

The front door looked swollen in its frame, paint cracked and flaked around the handle. “It’ll be locked”, you said.

Ben glanced at it. Then, with the smallest sigh of annoyance, he put one hand on the knob and gave it the tiniest bit of supe force. The lock snapped with a soft metallic pop. The door swung inward. Dust and old wood and eighty-five years of closed-up silence breathed out to meet you.

“You never came back?”. You looked up at him.

He looked at you for one long second. Then he said, “No”.

Nothing dressed up around it. No excuses first. No quick lie. No reaching for war or Vought or the Russians before the truth had a chance to stand there naked. Just no.

The word moved through you quietly and did its damage all the same. Because from the fifties to the day the Russians took him, there had been thirty years. Thirty years in which he could have come back once. Knocked on a door. Asked a neighbor. Stood in this street and looked for you. Thirty years in which one apology, one moment of courage, one act of love not poisoned by pride might have changed something.

He had not.

Your throat tightened, but no tears came. Not yet. You had cried too much lately. Now the hurt mostly sat deeper than your eyes.

“If you had”, you said softly, “you would’ve known”.

Ben’s jaw flexed. “Yeah”, he said. That one came rougher.

You nodded once, as if he had confirmed something practical instead of tearing another strip out of your heart. Then you turned and walked to the stairs.

The steps creaked under your weight exactly the way they used to. Third one from the bottom, then the fifth near the banister. The sound hit you so hard you had to stop for half a second with your hand on the rail, breathing through the sudden rush of memory. Bare feet at night. Ben taking the stairs two at a time. Your hand gliding over this same wood twenty lives ago with a laundry basket tucked to your hip.

Behind you, he did not follow right away. He gave you the room to climb alone. That, more than anything, told you he knew what this was.

Upstairs, the hallway was smaller than you remembered. Dust lay silver over everything. The wallpaper had peeled. Your bedroom door stood half-open, just as if someone had left it that way for air and meant to come back before supper. You pushed it open with careful fingers.

The room held. Not untouched, no. Time had gotten in around the edges. The curtains had yellowed. A crack ran down one corner of the wall by the window. The quilt on the bed had gone stale with dust. But the shape of it was still there. The vanity. The narrow bed. The little night desk by your side, tucked under the lamp with the chipped cream base.

You crossed to it in silence. Your hand shook when you touched the drawer pull. You didn’t open the drawer first. You looked at the top. Your wedding ring still sat there. Small. Gold. Dull with age, but unmistakable. Exactly where you had left it.

For a second you just stared. Then you picked it up.

The metal felt cold in your palm, lighter than something that had once meant forever had any right to be. You remembered taking it off. Remembered your fingers swollen from crying and the motion feeling unreal, like a bad scene in a play you were too tired to perform properly. You had set it here because you could not bear to look at it and could not bear to throw it away.

You opened the drawer with your free hand. His ring was inside. It lay in the back right corner, just as heavy and plain as it had been the day you slid it onto his finger in church. For one wild second it looked less like a ring and more like proof that a whole other world had once existed and expected to continue.

You heard him come to the doorway behind you. Slowly. No heavy Soldier Boy tread meant to fill a room. Just Ben, or as close to him as the years had left. He stopped there and did not come farther in.

You stood with your back to him, your ring in one hand, his in the other. When you finally spoke, your voice was so quiet it almost disappeared into the dust. “I waited”.

Nothing from behind you. So you went on.

“For months at first. Then years in stupid little ways”. Your thumb rubbed over the inside of the band without meaning to. “I kept thinking maybe you’d come in through the front door and say you were sorry. Or angry. Or drunk. I didn’t even care which, not really. I just thought one day you’d be there”.

Ben made a sound in his throat. Not a word. Something lower. Wounded. You turned then.

He was leaning one shoulder against the doorframe, eyes fixed on the rings in your hands. “I should’ve”, he said. The answer came immediately. Like he had been carrying it in his mouth for years.

“Yes”, you said.

He shut his eyes for one brief second. When he opened them again, he looked older than ever in the helplessness of a man who could punch through steel and still not lay hands on the one thing he’d broken most cleanly.

“I thought…”. He stopped and gave a short, bitter laugh. “No. That’s bullshit. I didn’t think enough, that was the problem”.

You watched him.

He pushed off the frame and took one step into the room, then stopped himself there. “At first I was mad”, he said. “At you, at me, at the whole goddamn thing. Then I was busy. Then I was famous. Then I was drunk”. His mouth twisted. “Then enough time had passed that coming back meant having to look at what I’d done”.

The honesty of it hurt, but it also fit him too perfectly to deny. “So you didn’t”.

“No”. He looked at you directly. “I kept telling myself you were better off”.

You laughed once, softly and without humor. “That’s what cowards say when they want to feel noble”.

That landed.

“Yeah”, he said after a moment. “Probably”.

The room went still again. Your fingers closed around both rings until the edges pressed into your palm. It grounded you, that small pain.

“If you’d come back”, you said, “you would’ve found an empty house”.

His eyes sharpened. You looked down at the gold in your hands.

“You would’ve known something happened to me”, you whispered. “You would’ve known I didn’t just leave”.

Ben went completely motionless. All the blood left his face. And there it was. Fresh guilt, new and horrible, layering itself over the old kind. Not just that he’d abandoned you. That his abandonment had helped bury the evidence of what Vought had done. That if he had loved you bravely instead of selfishly, even once, the trail might not have gone cold.

He looked at the floorboards for a long time before he said, very quietly, “I know”.

You turned back to the desk because looking at him was too much. On the far wall, your old mirror gave back a strange picture: a woman in modern clothes standing in a bedroom from another century, and behind her a man who had once been her whole life and now looked like a wound that had learned to walk.

Then you crossed the room to the closet. The door stuck at first. Time had swollen the wood just enough that it resisted, then gave with a dry little groan. Dust drifted down from the top frame in the late light. The smell inside, cedar gone faint with age and old fabric hit you immediately. Lavender sachets long since surrendered into powder.

You stood there for a second with your hand on the knob, breathing it in. Behind you, Ben said nothing. He only watched.

You reached in slowly, fingertips skimming over hangers and cloth covers and dresses that no longer belonged to any world you understood. Cotton. Wool. One good church dress in blue. A coat with foxed buttons. A cardigan with one cuff still turned up the way you used to wear it while doing dishes. Every piece felt impossibly patient, as if it had been waiting without complaint all this time. Then your hand found satin. Soft pink. You stilled.

Very carefully, you drew the nightgown out from between two dresses. The fabric slid over your fingers with that same quiet whisper it always had. Time had yellowed one strap slightly and the satin no longer gleamed the way it used to, but it was still there. You held it up in both hands and looked at it.

For one second, the room doubled over itself. The motel. The bunker. The digital clocks and neon signs and all the ugly bright machinery of 2026 fell away. You could almost feel the old floor under your bare feet, hear the rattle of rain at the bedroom window, smell your face cream and his cigarettes.

Behind you, Ben had gone so still he barely seemed to breathe. He watched the way you moved with the gown in your hands. Careful not to tug a seam, careful not to catch the strap, careful even with a thing that had no nerves left in it. There was nothing rushed in you. Nothing hard. No modern bluntness. No jaded carelessness. You moved the way you always had: quietly, gently, as though the world might bruise if handled too fast.

When you finally turned, the nightgown folded over your arms, Ben looked like someone had struck him somewhere internal and left the bruise blooming in real time. His face had gone strange. Open in places he usually kept bolted shut. His eyes stayed fixed on you. Not on the satin, but on your hands, your carefulness, the old softness in you that no tank and no century and no company full of monsters had managed to grind entirely out of existence.

Something deep in his chest had finally caught up with him.

Love.

Real love. Old love. The kind he had felt before he learned how to bury every vulnerable thing under pride and violence and noise. Before Vought. Before Countess. Before the stage lights and the blood and the lies he told himself about what kind of man he had become.

And then came the shame. It moved over his face so sharply it almost looked like nausea. His mouth tightened. One hand came up and scrubbed hard over it, as if he could physically wipe the feeling away before it settled too deep. He looked down, then back up at you, and his expression only got worse. Because loving you, truly, in that old helpless way, meant feeling all at once what he had done to something he knew had been good. Not perfect. Not naive. Good.

You had been the softest thing in his life. The cleanest part of it. And he had put his hands on that softness with all the wrong kinds of strength.

His throat worked once. “You kept it”, he said. It came out lower than usual. Not quite steady.

You looked down at the satin in your hands. “It was in the closet”.

“That’s not what I meant”.

You looked back at him then. He had not moved from where he stood near the bed, but he looked as though the floor under him had shifted anyway. Shoulders tense. Hands open and useless at his sides. A man who could split steel and still had no defense against a pink nightgown in a dusty bedroom. Your voice stayed quiet. “No”. You folded the nightgown once, carefully, over your forearms. “I didn’t keep it because of you”.

He nodded immediately, too quickly. “I know”. But he didn’t, not fully. Or maybe he did, and that was part of what made his face look so wrecked. Because whether the gown had stayed because you loved it, because it was expensive, because you forgot it, because throwing it away had once felt like sawing off your own wrist—none of those answers saved him. None of them made this easier.

You watched him for a long moment. Then you said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”.

He gave a short, rough laugh that held no humor. “Because I’m an fucking idiot”. It was so plain it almost startled you.

The silence after it stretched. Then, more quietly, with his eyes dropping from your face to the satin and back again, “I forgot”.

You frowned faintly. “Forgot what?”.

His jaw tightened. “What you were”, he said. The words landed wrong at first, and he must have seen it in your face because he shook his head once, hard. “No. Not like that”. He dragged a hand through his hair and started again. “I forgot what it felt like to be around something…”. He stopped. Swallowed. “Something good”.

That made your chest ache in a new place.

He looked almost sick now. Pale under the roughness. A man trying not to throw up on his own shame. “I treated you like—”. He cut himself off, eyes dropping to the floorboards. “Christ”.

You waited.

He didn’t finish the sentence because maybe there wasn’t a version of it he could bear to hear out loud. Like property. Like punishment. Like convenience. Like something he was entitled to keep no matter what he did to it. You knew all the endings. He probably did too.

For a moment the room was so quiet you could hear the old house settling around you. Then Ben said, very low, “I loved you”.

The tense of it sat between you. You looked at him steadily. “Loved”.

His eyes closed for half a second. When they opened again, there was no attitude left in him at all. “No”, he said. “That’s not what I meant”. He looked at the nightgown in your hands again, then at your face. And you understood. Not because he said the words. Ben had never been a man who could hold something that tender out cleanly in front of him. But because you saw it all over him anyway. In the ugly guilt, in the racing pulse at his neck, in the way his eyes kept catching on your hands like he still could not believe they were real.

He loved you. Still. Maybe had never really stopped, not in the place that mattered. Only buried it so deep under Soldier Boy that by the time it clawed its way back up, it found blood on its hands.

You did not stay in that room much longer after that. Not because there was nothing left in it. Quite the opposite. There was too much. Too much dust holding the shape of old days. Too much light falling across the bed where you had once lain awake listening for his key in the lock. Too much of yourself tucked into drawers and folded into fabric and preserved in corners that had not asked to survive you. The whole house felt like a held breath that had lasted eighty-five years and now did not know how to exhale.

So you packed. Not everything. You couldn’t. Even if you had wanted to, there was no carrying a whole life out in two arms and one afternoon. You chose the way people do when they know every object is about to become a decision. A few dresses. Practical ones first, then one nicer one because some old reflex in you still believed a woman ought to keep at least one proper thing ready. A cardigan. The pink satin nightgown, folded so carefully your hands hardly seemed to touch it. Two picture books from the shelf in the hallway cupboard downstairs—one of family photographs, one of pressed cards and notes and yellowed clippings tucked between the pages. The small jewelry box from your vanity. Your brush. A Bible with your maiden name written in slanted ink on the inside cover. The old fountain pen that no longer worked but had once been your father’s. A little hand mirror with a crack at one edge.

Ben helped quietly. That, more than anything, kept striking you. The quietness of him. No commentary. No impatience. No trying to take over the whole task just because he could carry more. He only stepped in when something was too high or too heavy or too awkward to reach, and even then he moved like a man afraid of making too much sound in a church. He held open boxes while you chose what went in them. Wrapped picture frames in old pillowcases. Took the suitcases down from the top closet shelf and set them on the bed without jarring the mattress.

Once, your fingers both reached for the same stack of photographs. His hand pulled back immediately. “Sorry”, he said. The word came so automatically that you looked at him before you could help yourself. Ben had his eyes on the floorboards. One of the photographs had slipped sideways in the album, and he straightened it with the side of one finger. There was something almost unbearable in the concentration of it, in the restraint. This giant, brutal man who had once moved through rooms like he owned the air itself was now helping you pack your old life in near silence and apologizing for brushing your knuckles. You looked away first.

By the time the car was loaded, the light had gone thinner and cooler. Evening settling in. The boxes sat in the back seat and trunk in careful stacks, absurdly small compared to the weight of what they stood for. Ben shut the trunk with one hand and glanced toward the house. You followed his gaze. The porch leaned. The windows reflected sky. The broken front lock hung useless inside the doorframe where he had popped it loose. The place looked tired. Wounded. Still upright.

He knew you weren’t going to stay there. You knew he knew. Not after what the house held. Not after what it didn’t. Not after the years inside it had split cleanly into before and after, and before was dead enough already without forcing yourself to sleep in its rooms.

Neither of you said it. You just got into the car. Ben behind the wheel. You in the passenger seat, coat over your lap, one hand still tucked in the pocket where his ring had been resting against yours ever since you’d taken it from the drawer.

For a minute he didn’t start the engine. The old house stood in the side mirror, half-obscured by overgrown shrubs and years. Ben had one hand on the wheel and the other resting loose over the gearshift. His face was turned toward the window, jaw set, not tense exactly, thinking. Or maybe bracing. With him, the difference had always been hard to tell. Then he said, still looking out at the yard, “What now?”.

Not where do we drive, not which motel, not what state line to cross before morning. What now. What were two people supposed to do with this? With eighty-five stolen years, with betrayal and grief and survival and love that had somehow stayed alive badly enough to wound on contact.

You looked at him for a long moment. Then you slipped your hand into your coat pocket and drew both rings out into your palm. Your wedding ring. His. Gold worn dull with time, lying side by side on your skin like two tiny pieces of a language you had both once spoken fluently and then spent a lifetime forgetting on purpose.

You held your hand out between you. Palm up. Not offering them exactly. Not demanding.

Asking.

It was the gentlest question you knew how to ask, and the most dangerous one.

Not "do you still love me". You already knew the answer to that, in his way. Not "can I forgive you". You didn’t know that yet. Maybe wouldn’t for a long time.

Something more fragile and more frightening.

Do you want to try. Do you want to be my husband again. Not Soldier Boy. Not the man Vought made. Not the one who let the world sand him down into something harder and meaner and easier to market.

The old Ben. Loving, when he knew how. Protective, when it came from tenderness instead of possession. Supportive, when his pride wasn’t choking it at the root. Good, in the ways that had once mattered most.

Ben looked down at your palm and stopped moving altogether. The whole car seemed to go still with him. Even his breathing changed. His eyes went from your ring to his and back again, and you saw the exact second he understood what you were asking. Not a romantic gesture. Not nostalgia. Not some soft, easy wiping away of everything ugly that had happened between then and now. A choice. A real one. And with it, responsibility.

He looked at your face then, as if checking whether you truly meant it. Whether this was pity. Shock. Some post-cryo confusion that would evaporate in better light.

You didn’t look away. Ben’s throat worked. Slowly—so slowly that in another moment it might have looked like fear—he reached toward your hand. His fingers hovered over the rings before they touched. Then he picked up yours. He held it for a second between thumb and forefinger, staring at the band like it might burn him. When he finally took your left hand, he did it with a care that nearly undid you. Turning your wrist gently. Supporting your fingers from beneath as though even this, this small familiar motion, had to be relearned from scratch.

He slid the ring onto your finger. So gently. No rush. No claim in it. No arrogance. Just a man putting back something he knew he had no right to touch roughly again. The band settled at your knuckle and your breath caught.

Ben’s hand stayed around yours a second longer than necessary. Then he let go.

You picked up his ring. His hand, when he offered it, was broader than you remembered and more marked. Old scars, roughened knuckles, one faded burn near the base of the thumb, veins standing heavier beneath the skin. But it was still his hand. The one you had held walking to school. The one you had once guided to your waist in a little kitchen and church halls and moonlit sidewalks because you were young and in love and trusted what he touched.

You took it carefully. He watched your face the whole time. You slid his ring back on, over the knuckle, into place. For one second neither of you breathed.

Ben turned your hand over in his and looked at the ring like it was the strangest thing he had seen in a century. Then he lifted his eyes to yours. There was no No joke. No Soldier Boy. Only a man who looked wrecked by hope. “You sure?”, he asked.

It would have been easy to say yes. It would have been easy to say no.

The truth was harder and smaller and more human than either. “No”, you whispered. “But I want to try”.

His face changed at that. He lifted his free hand and touched your cheek. Just the backs of his fingers at first. Waiting. You didn’t pull away. His hand settled there fully then, warm and careful, thumb resting near the corner of your mouth. His expression had gone almost unbearably bare. “You don’t know what that does to me”, he said.

Maybe you did. Maybe that was why your own eyes stung.

He leaned in slowly enough to stop a dozen times if you wanted.

The first kiss in over eighty-five years should have been dramatic. It wasn’t. It was quiet. Tentative. His mouth brushed yours once, barely there, like he was asking a question and still didn’t trust himself to hear the answer right. When you didn’t move away, he kissed you again, a little more fully this time, still impossibly gentle. No heat. No taking. No demand. Only the old softness, shaken and ashamed and careful. His hand stayed at your cheek. Yours was still around his.

The kiss tasted like old grief. It hurt. It healed nothing. It made no promises the world could be trusted to keep. But when he drew back and his forehead rested against yours, you felt something shift.

When he finally opened his eyes, they looked brighter than before, rough with feeling he would hate named too plainly. “I’ll do better”, he said.

You looked at him for a long moment. Then, because you knew him, because you knew what grand vows became in the mouths of men like Ben, you answered the only way that mattered. “You will have to”.

That got the faintest broken huff of laughter from him. “Yeah”, he murmured. “I figured”.

Then he started the car, and with both rings back where they belonged, you left the old house behind together.

———————————

A/N: Please let me know what you think.🥰 

-

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[soldierboys]

Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy GEN V | 1.06 Jumanji

[pienjoshigomi]

SOLDIER BOY — PLAYBOY BUNNY [NSFW + SEASON 5 SPOILERS]

Soldier Boy x fem!reader

summary: the hunt for V1 led you to Mr. Marathon's house. you thought this would go smoothly, until the weirdo admits that he used to jerk off to your old Playboy shoots—and Ben isn't happy to learn he is the only man in this whole country to not know about those.

wc: 2,681

tags: V1 supe!reader, smut, a lil jealousy, playboy bunny suit, making out, dry humping, implied size difference, fingering, p in v, orgasm control/denial if you squint, dacryphilia, one mention that reader has a bush, rough sex, doggy style, creampie

a/n: so... this took the whole month to write. this was pitched to me by @ukor02 in my comments and i just loved it so much. so sorry for the lack of content lately, life is rough lol

available on ao3

You haven't been to Los Angeles in... forever. Yet the California sun is still as hot as you remember.

"Well, this place still looks like a dump." Ben muttered as he walked next to you, boots crunching on gravel. "Just... shinier." His head tilted up to take a look at Mr. Marathon's luxurious home—too white and too big for a washed-up B-lister like him. Being in the Seven for a few years really did him a favor, it seemed.

You snorted. "You say that about every city."

"Because every fuckin' city is a dump." He grumbled, before lowering his voice. "Last time we came here was in—what, '81?" He bumped his shoulder into yours intentionally, and Homelander—who was walking a step behind and looking like a sulking kid following behind his father (which, fair enough)—had to suppress a sigh.

"Almost, '82." You corrected, climbing up the stairs to the front door.

You’d known Ben for decades now. Seen the kid with daddy issues playing macho man after his first shot of V1 until he became America's number one tool for war propaganda—and everything in between.

"We were supposed to come back in '84 for the Olympics but... y'know. Had to go alone." You casually brought up his betrayal and alleged death—just a couple months before your actual last trip to LA.

"Very touching." Homelander said flatly before Ben could reply to you, reaching over your shoulder to ring the doorbell with impatience.

The door opened shortly after, Mr. Marathon's jaw going slack as he took in the three famous faces standing at his door. "Oh my—holy shit." He opened the door wider, ushering you in. "Come in, come in."

The interior was just as white and detestable as the exterior, and you couldn't help but make a face when you saw the guy's self-portait hanging in the entrance.

"Homelander, it is really, uh... really—good to see you!" He stammered, vibrating with both excitement and anxiety. "W—what brings you by?"

"Relax, we're just here to talk."

"Yeah! Great, awesome—" His gaze drifted to Ben, one hand vaguely gesturing towards him. "Soldier Boy—wow, big fan, sir. I actually, uh, popped my cherry in your Underoos."

Ben was about to dismiss this awful conversation when Mr. Marathon spoke up again with renewed excitement, his gaze turning to you.

"And—you!" He exclaimed with a breathy chuckle of amazement. "God, i definitely rubbed one out to your Playboy bunny shoots more times than i can count—the pages were stuck together, i had to find another copy."

Silence.

Long, horrible, awkward silence.

Homelander looked like he was considering just lasering the place to pieces.

"...Shoots?" Ben was the first to break it, eyes narrowing at Mr. Marathon and tilting his head like he'd heard wrong. "What shoots?" His eyes then snapped towards you with not-so-subtle interest. "Playboy?"

"Ben—"

"Since when the hell were you doing Playboy?" He finally asked with a confused shrug, struggling to believe he could've missed something as juicy as this.

"Since you were busy snorting half of Nicaragua and never came back." You shrugged back, but the way he looked at you made it clear he wasn't about to let you brush this off. "It was the eighties! You did your fair share of stupid shit, too!"

He gave you a once over, completely ignoring your point. "...Full nude?" He asked shamelessly, raising a brow at you.

"Of course not!"

"They still out there?" He ignored your whining as well, already turning back towards Mr. Marathon.

"Seriously?" You deadpanned.

"Well—i might still have a... clean copy."

───

Mr. Marathon was still bleeding out on the marble floor, head crushed to pieces when Ben bent down with a grunt, plucking something glossy from under the rubble.

"No fuckin' way. He does have a copy." He muttered, thumb rubbing the dust off the magazine cover.

There you are.

Curled up on a loveseat in a black satin teddy and ridiculous bunny ears, one heel dangling off your foot while you smiled at the camera like there wasn't a single thought behind those eyes. Big hair, dramatic makeup, and a fluffy white tail to top it all off.

America's Sweetheart Finally Lets Loose!

"Oh god, burn it." You gritted your teeth in disgust, glaring at the magazine like it could bite.

"Fuck no, this is gold."

Homelander made a sound somewhere between disgust and exhaustion. "Can we focus?"

"You're insufferable." You grumbled, ignoring Homelander's complaining.

"And you were apparently more flexible than i remember." He clicked his tongue approvingly. "Jesus."

He stopped on a certain page that made him grin like a kid on Christmas Day. "Oh, now this—" He let out a low whistle. "Damn."

You lunged for it instantly. "Give me that!"

He jerked the magazine out of reach effortlessly, laughing as you smacked uselessly at his arm. "No no no, hold on—" His eyes flicked over a full-page spread. "You said no full nude."

"It's not full nude!"

"There is one ribbon covering your tits."

"That doesn't count."

"Kinda does, though."

Homelander stared straight ahead with the thousand-yard look of a man questioning every life decision that had led him here, his facial tics starting to act up.

Ben kept grinning as he finally lowered the magazine enough to look at you properly, and there it was—that smug, annoyingly entertained look that always riled you up.

"Can't believe every asshole in America got to see this before me."

Homelander finally snapped. "Are you two done flirting over a dead body?"

───

"You bought this?"

"Yeah."

You stood in your room back at Vought Tower, Ben at your side with his chest puffed out and an infuriatingly proud grin on his pretty face.

He'd been pounding on your door five minutes ago, insisting that this was an emergency—before dropping a package on your mattress and demanding you open it.

You regretted it the moment you ripped the carboard open and caught a glimpse of black, shiny fabric.

"How did you even—"

"Spent three fuckin' hours figuring out that... that jungle website." Ben shrugged with an edge of frustration.

"Wha—Amazon?" You let out a huff of a laugh, the very entertaining image of him grumbling and cursing at a screen for three hours straight popping in your mind.

"Yeah, whatever. Site kept askin' me about cookies or some shit."

"You learned online shopping for this?" You huffed in disbelief, carefully digging through the plastic bag to pull out the costume, staring down at it with conflict—and maybe a bit of pink on your cheeks.

Fighting the internet just to see you in a skimpy bunny suit was actually pretty romantic, by Ben's standards.

"Won't you put it on, sweetheart?" He leaned towards you, hand reaching to grope the meat of your ass and head ducking down until his hot breath hit the shell of your ear. "Figure if every Tom, Dick, and Harry got the photoshoot, i oughta at least get the sequel."

You folded, eventually.

And you realized you'd rarely seen Ben this invested.

Took you in his arms the moment you walked out, changed in this bunny suit—that you insisted was stupid and raunchy—hands all over your curves and squeezing flesh like he had to make sure this was real. They slid down to your waist again, pinching the soft skin through the satin fabric appreciatively.

"Stop making that face. Smile a little, bun." He teased, amused by how commited you were to looking annoyed despite how red your ears were turning. He could feel your body burning under his palms, flushed and squirming.

"This is not funny."

"Yeah? I think it's hilarious." He retorted, flicking the white fluffy tail on your lower back and tugging at the ears on your head just to rile you up some more. You were about to protest like you always did when he interrupted you, lips crashing hungrily against yours while he pulled you closer until there wasn't an inch left between your bodies.

You squirmed without much conviction when he steered you towards his bed, the empty package falling to the floor as he pushed it off carelessly and sat down on the edge, pulling you onto his lap.

"You're such a pretty bunny, i might just fuck you like one." He purred, gripping your thighs to keep you still. "Wouldn't you like that?"

The grumpy but slightly shaky whine you let out told him everything he needed to know. You're still embarrassed, but so damn into it—and it's exactly what he wants.

One finger hooked into the collar of your bowtie, pulling you in for another rough kiss just to draw more of those adorable grumbles out of you. He was as mean as you remembered, always trying to dominate with his tongue and biting on your lower lip whenever he didn't get his way.

His other hand slid to your hipbone, urging you to grind against him and guiding your movements while his own hips thrust up, the hard line of his erection rubbing deliciously against your clothed slit. He reached for your chest to caress one breast possessively, grunting at the way you arched your back and pressed further into his palm whenever he pinched your nipple through the fabric.

"Gettin' all excited just from a little rubbin'." He murmured against your lips teasingly as he felt you grind harder on your own, chasing more of that sweet friction as your heart pounded through your ribcage and against his hand. "C'mere, bun."

He never stopped kissing you as he maneuvered you onto the mattress, switching your positions until he hovered above you, forearms braced on each side of your head to avoid crushing you under his weight—not that you'd mind. He only pulled back to take you in, from your flushed cheeks to the way the satin strained against your curves. So vulnerable—and fucking delicious.

"Look at you," He muttered, his voice dropping into a rough, gravelly rumble. "All red and pouty. Actin' like you didn't want this the second you saw the damn box."

He trailed kisses down your neck, leaving harsh bites and hickeys on the way to your collarbone until he nuzzled his nose into your cleavage—leaving one last open-mouthed kiss on your sternum.

"Roll over." He ordered with a nudge to your thigh with his knee.

"Really?"

"What, you ever seen bunnies go at it in missionary, smartass? Ass up." He didn't wait for you to move, manhandling you onto your stomach and lifting your hips up, bunny ears tilting forward as his fingers tangled in your hair to keep your face down. He hooked his thumb into the crotch of the teddy to pull it to the side followed by a sharp tearing sound that made you jump, mesh snapping to form a jagged hole in your fishnets as he ripped it apart.

"Fuck," He hissed at the sight of your dripping pussy, pink and puffy under that bush of yours he loved so much. "You kept bitchin' all night, but look at that. Little bunny's soaked, just waiting for the big bad wolf to tear her apart." He let out a condescending chuckle, thumb swiping through your folds as he spread your cheeks apart. He relished the way you shuddered and let your head fall forward into the sheets, whimpering softly.

"Pathetic." He snorted, two fingers abruptly breaching past your ring of muscle—earning himself a surprised little yelp. "All tight and snug." He commented, digits already curling and scissoring inside of you while his free hand tugged his pants off, his hard cock springing free from its confines.

"Hnn, Ben—" You couldn't help but whimper as he scratched that spongy spot along your walls, voice muffled against the comforter.

"Yeah, yeah. Stop complainin', you're gonna get it." He scoffed, fingers sliding out of your pussy with a wet squelch. He watched you clench around nothing at the sudden feeling of emptiness, wordlessly begging to be filled. "You gonna be good?" He asked, one hand sliding up your spine to tangle with the hair at your nape, fisting his cock with the other to press the blunt head of it against your slick folds.

"Yes," You nodded frantically, hips twitching with need. "Please, Ben—"

"Please what?" God, you could still hear that infuriating smirk in his voice.

"Please, ngh—fuck my pussy..."

"Atta girl."

He buried himself in one harsh thrust, savoring that desperate cry you let out—something between a moan and a sob that made his dick twitch inside you.

"You like that? You like being stuffed full, bunny?" He drawled mockingly, pelvis pressing against your ass in a deep grind that made you whimper some more. He leaned down until his chest pressed against your back, body blanketing your smaller form.

"Yeah... you love takin' my big fuckin' cock. Always have." He pulled out just enough to make you whine, before slamming back inside you over and over again, the sound of skin slapping against skin mixed with your pathetic, muffled cries filling the room.

"Good girl. Good bun..." He grunted appreciatively against the side of your neck, hand sliding from your nape to grip your jaw and lift your head just enough to catch a glimpse of that flushed face and those glazed over, teary eyes.

"T—too much—" You choked out, each thrust making your body jolt forward.

"Aww, really?" He cut you off by squeezing your cheeks with his fingers a few times, thumb and index finger digging into the squishy flesh—like you were nothing but a cute pet. "Can't handle it, sweetheart?" His movements stopped abruptly, leaving you whining and squirming at the sudden loss of friction.

"You either take it all, or get nothin' at all. And judgin' by the way your legs are kickin' for more right now, i reckon you prefer the first option." He chuckled cruelly, his free hand kneading your hip. "So, are you gonna take it or not?"

You nodded desperately, chin pressing into his palm. "No no, use your words." He nuzzled further into your neck, his beard scratching against your shoulder.

"Mmn—i'll be good... i—i'll take your cock, please—" You barely had the time to beg that he was already hammering into you again, thrusts shallow but hard, balls slapping against your sensitive mound.

"Yeah you will," He grunted while you choked on your own moans and saliva, his grip on your hip tightening bruisingly. "Like the good little bunny you are."

He didn't slow down when he felt your walls tighten and your moans turning into shaky wails, pounding into you until you finally came, gushing around him with a throaty, almost inhumane sob.

"Good fuckin' girl, cummin' so hard on this fat cock—" He felt that familiar heat pool in his gut, thrusts turning sloppy and slightly uncoordinated. "I'm almost there, sweetheart—you can take it."

He came with a roar, hips flush against yours as he spilled himself as deep in you as possible, holding himself there until he was empty. "Fuck—nghh, fuck..."

Your knees gave out the moment he pulled out, goosebumps rising on your skin when you felt your pussy drool with his hot, thick release. The mattress dipped next to you as he let himself collapse, one arm sliding between your waist and the sheets to pull you closer.

"C'mere." He panted, reaching to take those ridiculous ears off your head. A miracle that they stayed on the whole time. "Let's get you out of this, hm?"

He fumbled with the buttons on the cuffs, pulled the zipper down your back and tugged the torn fishnets down your legs—until you laid bare and dazed.

"Y'know, all those dickheads probably fantasized about this," He pulled the blanket over you, tucking you in gentler than you'd expect him to, before getting comfortable himself with a proud grin on his face. "But i can say that i got the real fuckin' thing."

[inacatastrophicmind]

[mind-empty-just-fictional-people]

I Almost Forgot You

main masterlist | the boys masterlist

SPOILERS! for s3 (obv) & s5 (barely) 

summary: it’s been years since you’ve seen him… was it ever even love?

pairing: soldier boy/ben x female supe!reader 

rating: R for language, smut

word count: 6.8k

warnings: some smut (very ooc for me, but i promise it fits into the plot haha), cursing, mention of our baby boy (and reader) being tortured :(

author’s note: this has been in my head for like over a year omfg!!!! sooooo happy it’s finally on paper!! ALSO! this is the longest one-shot i’ve ever written fuuuuck!

Starlina was your supe name. You got it because of the way your eyes lit up yellow, like stars. It was a basic name; Vought didn’t give it much thought. You had been the very first successful human V injection before Fredrick Vought gave it to his wife. He didn’t want her to know he had given it to you first, so he buried you. Vought kept you in a cage all your life, only giving you the slight comfort of watching Vought shit. They didn’t put you on ice, they wanted to see if you aged or if the V-1 in your system really stopped that.

You didn’t get an assignment til the 70’s.

Vought sent you the new suit to wear on your first day at work. It was tight in all the right places, accenting your breasts and butt, and when you put it on, you realized a lot of it was see-through. You gulped nervously — the mesh lines swirling up your legs, dodging the bright silver stars, and instead just replacing some of the navy blue leather pants. Your white bodice was also see-through, but decorated with opaque sparkling stars. You turned around, and were happy when you saw your red cape that draped down to your lower back, covering the open skin, because (of course) Vought had designed you a suit with basically no back.

You had accepted your place in Payback because you adored Soldier Boy. (Not that you really had a choice, you were just pretending you did.) You slept with him the first night in the tower, but you’d come to regret being so close to him.

You’d come to realize he was… kind of an evil person. But you held your tongue because you noticed how a kiss from you would stop him from beating on Gunpowder. 

How the soft brush of your manicured hands on his rough cheek made him calm down enough so the others could leave peacefully. And you bit the bullet each time and slept with him. You’d give him “the best sex of his life” (his words, not yours), and he wouldn’t care enough to cause hell for the others. 

“So, what exactly are your powers? Cause there’s rumors going around you like… aren’t allowed to use them? Besides super strength, of course.” Ben had asked you after a few weeks of sleeping together.

“Vought doesn’t want me, uhm, showing you up,” you had admitted quietly. He scoffed, offended by the thought. “I can move things with my mind, which means I can fly. And nothing is there to see, so I can work stealthily. And laser eyes, and, like you said, super strength.”

“Man, they are wasting your fuckin’ talents!”

But the facade took its toll on you. You hated what you had become, and every time he stuck his dick in you, a part of you died. But you stayed with him for years. A part of you loved him.

Then you fell ill. No one could explain what was wrong, and you knew they were hiding something from you. You were throwing up several times a day, sometimes with blood in the mix of regurgitated food. No one would tell you shit. You knew they knew what was wrong, because if they didn’t, they’d be acting way more worried. They would’ve quarantined you in case it was contagious. Soldier Boy seemed more worried than all of them combined, and that made you hate him just a little less.

As you hunched over your toilet, wearing sweatpants and a dirty t-shirt, you hurled your breakfast. A knock came at your apartment door, and you told whoever it was to come on in.

“I brought you some chicken soup,” Soldier Boy announced when he walked in, and put the food on your kitchen table before he made his way to the bathroom. “You feeling any better?”

“Fuck no,” you groaned, rubbing your temples.

He knelt down next to you and put a strong, warm hand on your back. He rubbed it up and down comfortingly, not really knowing what to do.

You were about to say something, but instead you threw up again; pure blood this time.

“You shouldn’t be here, Ben, what if it’s contagious?” you reasoned. 

“Nah, if Vought thought it was contagious, they’d be quarantining you,” he countered. He touched the side of your cheek with the back of his hand, and you turned to look at him, after quickly wiping your mouth on a towel next to you.

His heart broke, it actually fucking broke.

Your cheeks were sunken in, your eyes were laced with red, and the color in your face was just… off.

“I know, I know, I look like shit,” you laughed. “You don’t have to stay, Ben, I know you’re grossed the fuck out.”

“Babe, honey, you really think I’mma leave you when you’re like this? What sort of pussy of a man would that make me!? I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again — you’re still fuckin’ gorgeous, and I love you.”

You smiled as he leaned over and planted a soft kiss on your forehead.

“I love you, Benny Boo,” you mumbled. He pursed his lips and shook his head. You laughed loudly. He hated the nickname, but he loved you so much, he tolerated it. “No, but seriously, I love you, dearly, Ben.”

“I’ve been thinking…” Soldier Boy started after a short pause in the conversation. “What if… What if you’re, uh, pregnant?”

You smiled sadly, “I already checked. They did an ultrasound on the first day. Nothing.” His face fell, and he nodded.

***

You were asleep when he came to visit you. He did the selfish thing and woke you, which you’d come to be so grateful for in the next four fucking decades.

He sat next to where you were sprawled out in bed, and he smiled down at you. He bent down and kissed your forehead. You stirred awake.

“Hey doll,” he whispered.

“Ben!” you all but squealed. You sat up so you could hug him, a little too quickly, but you dismissed the dizziness. You had been woken from a dream where he was next to you in bed, but in the dream, you knew it was just a dream, so you still missed him dearly.

“Sorry to wake you, but they’re sending the team to Nicaragua. They said it’ll take a while, maybe a few weeks. I just wanted to say goodbye,” he said. Your face fell before you swallowed thickly and nodded.

“Mkay,” you mumbled, squeezing him with everything you had in you. “Be safe, okay? I need you back home in one piece.”

“Babe, look who you’re talking to!”

“Maybe… could you not go?” you asked. You pulled away so you could look into his eyes. His brows were furrowed. “I just… me being sick, Vought doing basically nothing, and now they're sending everyone but me to Nicaragua? For weeks? It just… something’s off?”

He shook his head with a smile, “You worry too much, doll. I promise I’ll be okay. Hey, maybe you’ll be feelin’ better by the time I get back! I’d love to take you to a fancy restaurant, we haven’t done that in a hot minute.”

“Just…” You continued looking into his deep eyes. You loved his eyes. So fucking much. The way they’d change color in the light, the way they softened when he saw you, the way they lit up every time you said those three words, and the way he looked you up and down periodically just to throw a compliment your way. “Please be careful! I love you more than anything, Ben!”

“Okay, I’ll be careful. If anything starts happening, I’ll get the fuck outta there.”

“Thank you.”

A loud knock came at your door. 

“Soldier Boy! We’re leaving! Hurry up!” Countess yelled.

Ben rolled his eyes, “Fucking bitch!” 

“Be nice to the team while I’m not there, okay?” you asked.

“I’m always nice!”

You gave him a look.

“Okay, yeah, I’ll be nice,” he laughed a little.

You both said your ‘I love yous’, and that was it. You wouldn’t see him again for forty years.

When they came back, you were feeling better. (Fucking figures, a little too fucking late.) You went to meet the team at Vought’s private airport. You brought flowers for Ben (something he fucking hated, but you thought it was hilarious when he’d try not to smile, and acted like he was annoyed) and the team’s favorite food truck, prepaid by you.

Your face fell when you noticed everyone was in tears.

“Where’s Ben?” you asked as they closed the door to the plane.

Crimson Countess and Tessa wrapped you in a hug. You never fucking hugged, but you hugged back awkwardly.

“I-I’m so, so sorry, Star!” Countess sobbed. “We tried to s-save him!”

“Wha-What’re you… What’re you saying?” you whispered. Your eyes quickly flooded with tears, and you hugged your teammates tighter. “Wh-Where’s Ben?” you began to cry as you jumped to correct conclusions.

“The Russians had some kind of gun or weapon… they killed him,” Countess sobbed.

You leaned on them as your whole world came crashing down. You dropped the flowers and sank to the floor, letting out a loud as fuck sob. 

***

You were content in your life since escaping Vought. You’d bought a small farm in Pennsylvania, and you’d been raising animals with the utmost care. You had a daily routine of milking your four cows, letting your sheep roam free, and tending to the other animals you housed, including your flock of chickens and your three pigs.

You were brushing your brown horse Shadow (basic name, but you still loved it and him) when you heard a car pull up to your gate half a mile away. 

“Fuck me,” you mumbled when you listened and realized they were here because of Vought.

You quickly made your way to your gate as two men got out of the black car. It took you a moment, but you arrived there fairly soon, landing near the gate.

“Can I help you?” you called out, a frown etched in your features.

“We’re here for Starlina?” one of the men said. He was the bigger of the two and wore a long black coat.

“Uh huh,” you crossed your arms, “and who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Hughie,” said the other. “This is Butcher. We’re here about Soldier Boy. We know you knew him, and we’re—”

“What about him?” you asked as you went over to the side of the gate and typed in the code. Hughie and Butcher looked at each other. “I’m fucking Wonder Woman, two random ass men coming to my driveway asking about a dead man doesn’t scare me. Come on in.”

***

You poured yourself a hot cup of coffee.

“Want any?” you asked the two men who were now seated on your couch. They both declined. “So why are you here? Doing a research paper on Soldier Boy and thought I’d give you some new dirt on him?”

“We’re here to stop Homelander. Whatever killed Soldier Boy must be able to do the job.”

“Fuckin’ finally! I’ve been waiting for someone to take that asshole down.”

“So what did kill Soldier Boy?” Butcher asked you.

“I don’t know,” you sighed before taking a sip of your coffee and sitting down on the chair across from your couch. “I wasn’t there when he uh… yeah, I wasn’t there.”

“Seriously?” Hughie said. “…Why?”

“I was…sick…”

“Sick? I didn’t think you cunts got sick?” Butcher said.

You shrugged. “I think Vought was poisoning me,” you said honestly. “I think they were planning on killing Soldier Boy, and they thought I’d stop them.”

“Would you?” Hughie asked.

“At the time? I don’t know… I think we were in love. But then I also remember hating his guts… at least I think I did. But since losing him, something’s…changed.”

“So you have no idea what killed Soldier Boy?” Butcher said.

“No clue.” You shook your head. 

“Well then, we’ve wasted just about a day’s worth of driving because it sounds to me like you’ve got fuck all for us.”

“I’d say I’m sorry, but honestly, you seem like a real asshole.”

“Come on, you gotta be able to give us something,” Hughie all but begged.

“I can say this one thing.” You cleared your throat. “I don’t believe Soldier Boy is dead.”

“Uh…what?” Hughie asked, a nervous smile gracing his face.

“I mean, think about it. How the fuck would anything kill Soldier Boy? And why leave me alive? Why not kill me too? Why let me run away and find a beautiful little life for myself?”

“Isn’t this all hidden from Vought?” Butcher asked.

“C’mon,” you scoffed, “you really think anything stays hidden from those pieces of shit?” You smiled sadly and shook your head. “Nah, I bet they’re just scared they can’t kill me, so they decided to let me have my little slice of paradise.” There was a pause in the conversation. “They can sure fuck with my head, though.”

“And that means…?” Hughie asked.

“My memories. They’ve completely poisoned me, plagued my thoughts.”

“Uh huh…?” Hughie furrowed his brows.

“They fucked with my memories. I’m one of the strongest Supes alive, but they found my weakness. And they used my own mind against me. Said they’d take away all my memories of Be-Soldier Boy if I wasn’t compliant. So… I bit the bullet. I watched as Payback became The Seven. I watched as they changed my name and my costume, my whole fucking identity, after they had me disappear from the public eye for like five years. I watched as Homelander slowly became more and more unstable. But then one day, a few years ago, seven now, I think, I just… I couldn’t fucking take it. I barely remembered Soldier Boy, which meant I no longer loved him, so losing all my remaining memories of him didn’t seem like a big deal. 

“So… I left. I just fucking ran. Like a fucking coward. I found this place, bought it from an old man and his wife, whose kids didn’t want it. I put them in a nice home in Malibu, and I checked up on them until they both passed away. Slowly, my memories came back, and every time I heard Soldier Boy’s name, saw his face, or heard his voice… suddenly I’d remember. So, naturally, I dedicated my entire life to trying to remember. Bought a shit ton of memorabilia, watched all his shit on replay, listened to his stupid music, the whole shebang.”

“And?” Hughie asked. “Did it work? Do you remember everything?”

You shook your head, “There’s still chunks missing, years missing. I know there were bad parts of our relationship, but I only remember the good stuff.”

You heard his boots hit the rocky dirt at the end of your driveway, and your heart leapt to your throat. You couldn’t move, pure joy rushed through your veins, and yet… You couldn’t move a muscle.

“Uh…Y/n?” Hughie laughed nervously. “What’s uh…what’s wrong.”

“Did you bring him here?” you asked quietly as tears slowly filled your eyes. 

Hughie laughed again. 

“You… fuck.”

You finally moved to your feet just as the door swung open.

“Ben,” you whispered. “Oh my god!”

He charged at you, gripped you by the neck, and shoved you against the wall.

“How could you?” he yelled in your face. “How the fuck could you look me in the eyes and send me to my demise?”

“I-I didn’t know,” you said honestly. You looked into his deep green eyes and let out a laugh of pure bliss.

“You think this is fuckin’ funny, bitch?” he yelled. He pulled you toward him so you were inches away from his face. “I fucking loved you.” His hot breath graced your face, and you let out another small laugh. He shoved you back against the wall, further breaking the drywall. 

“I love you more than anything,” you sobbed. “I swear I didn't know. There was a reason they were fucking poisoning me. They fucking knew I loved you and that I wouldn't let them hurt you. I loved you back then, I love you now, and I have loved you every fucking second of the last forty years.”

He slowly took his hand off your throat and put it on your cheek. You didn't fall to the ground; you hovered, so you stayed at eye level.

“I waited for you,” he whispered. You closed your eyes, then opened them back up quickly when you realized you needed to see his face. “All those years they fucking tortured me, I prayed you would come and save me. Where the fuck were you?”

“I'm sorry, Ben,” you replied. “I swear I tried. I flew to Nicaragua the second the team got back and said you were dead. I sobbed at the base they said you died at. I went to Russia and didn’t leave for two weeks. I threatened people. I bribed people. I fucking… I killed people. And eventually, Vought came to get me. They didn't just send Payback, they sent dozens of Supes. They tried gassing me, which is what I assumed they did to you, but it didn't work. Then they let out this noise and I… I could feel my mind being ripped open. I watched as memories were taken from me. How we met, the first time we had sex, our first real date. Then it stopped. And I begged them not to do it again. And they said I could either cooperate and go back to New York, or I could lose every memory of you.” You continued looking into Ben's eyes as tears slipped down your cheeks, as well as his. “So I went with them. I sulked in your apartment, I wouldn't leave, I wouldn't eat or sleep. I would just…cry and drink water and piss and do all the drugs I could find at your place.”

“That's a ton of fucking drugs.”

“Yeah. And when your bed no longer smelled like you, I went through your dirty laundry. And when I was worried that would lose your scent, I just started going through your things.”

His eyes widened ever so slightly, and you smiled, knowing why he made that face.

“And I found it. In your sock drawer, a basic ass hiding spot by the way. And…” 

You reached under your shirt, grabbed the fairly thick chain around your neck, and pulled it out, revealing the gorgeous engagement ring you had found forty years ago.

“I assumed this was meant for me?” You smiled through the tears.

“That's presumptuous of you.”

“Just shut up and kiss me. I've fucking missed those gorgeous goddamn lips.”

***

The second Soldier Boy had you in your room; he tore, literally tore, your top off.

“Oh,” you pouted, “I liked that shirt!”

He just laughed as he unhooked your bra. He took a moment to soak in the gorgeous sight before his rough hands found their way to your delicate skin.

“Fuck!” you squealed with joy. “God damn how I’ve missed you!”

“Preachin’ to the fucking choir, gorgeous.” He smiled down at you before he kissed you. He guided you with his hips over to your bed, not letting go of your boobs for even a second. When you were seated on the mattress, he whipped off your pants and knelt down in front of you. He kissed all the way up to your inner thigh and planted a firm kiss on your covered cunt.

“Shit, you still smell the same!” he commented.

“Well, you did always like the smell. Figured I’d keep it up.”

He tore off your panties the same way he had torn off your shirt. 

“Fuck!” he reveled at the gorgeous, bushy sight. “Oh, how I‘ve missed you!” 

You laughed, knowing he was now talking directly to your pussy. 

He began doing the Lord’s work down there, remembering all your favorite spots, and had you coming on his face in minutes.

“As much as I’ve missed that tongue,” you breathed heavily, “I have missed that dick inside me so much more.”

He took off the suit as quickly as possible, and your brows furrowed when you saw his limp dick.

“Uuh, Ben honey… are you not turned on?”

“Of course I am!” he chuckled, and he followed your line of sight. “Shit!” He chuckled awkwardly. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I thought maybe I wasn’t feeling properly down there and that I was rock fuckin’ hard!”

“Don’t apologize!” you told him. “Here, let me help.”

You began jerking him off slowly, and although he concentrated on the feeling and closed his eyes, he still couldn’t get it up.

“Shit! Fucking motherfucking shit!”

He took matters into his own hands and started roughly tugging. He took a few minutes before he gave up and sat next to you on the bed.

“I-I don’t know what’s wrong,” he sighed, running his hands down his face. “It’s probably fuckin’ broken now.”

“Ben, I’m sure it’s not broken.” You leaned on his shoulder, and he turned to kiss the crown of your head. “It’s probably just temporarily malfunctioning cause it’s been frozen solid for years, maybe decades!”

“Of all the ways to fuck with me, they just had to tear apart my fuckin’ manhood!”

“Babe, we both know they could never do that,” you assured him. “That dick filled me more times than I can fuckin’ count!”

His hand went to your bare thigh and trailed upward.

“Ben, whatcha doin’ down there?” you asked quietly.

“What, you thought just cause my manhood is fucked I wouldn’t make you see stars for the next two hours?”

You moaned as he slipped four fingers inside you, and he smirked at the sound as he began pumping.

Ben was true to his word, and two hours later, you had lost count of how many earth-shattering orgasms you’d experienced. It was over twenty, you were sure (thank you, supe stamina!), but you weren’t keeping track after the first thirty or so minutes.

Ben pulled his tongue away from you slowly and grinned, wiping the insane amount of come from his face.

“Come up and kiss me now, please!” you exclaimed, feeling a pause and wanting nothing more than to hold him close.

“Mkay, whatever you say, pretty lady.” He smiled and made his way beside you before he planted a kiss on your lips and crashed onto your chest. “I’ve missed these pillows.”

“They’ve missed you, too.”

There was a pause in the conversation.

“It was hell without you, Ben,” you said quietly. “E-Everywhere I looked… I saw your face! I even,” you chuckled sadly, “I even found this actor that kinda looks like you, without the insane amount of muscle and that gorgeous beard, and I watched everything he’s ever been in!”

“Hm, nothing compared to the real thing, I assume?”

“Absolutely fuckin’ not!”

“It was hell without you, too, you know.”

Your hands went to play with his hair, and he closed his eyes for a moment, loving the feeling he had missed so dearly.

“I-I was praying for you to come find me,” he said quietly. “And you know me, I never fuckin’ pray.”

“I was praying to join you,” you admitted. 

“Can I see the ring?” he asked, barely above a whisper. You’d been waiting for this moment, begging any god up there to let it happen. 

You took off the necklace and handed it to him.

“Alright, don’t look,” he told you, and you covered your face with your hands. And, after a moment, “Open them,” he said.

You gasped when you saw him holding the ring and down on one knee.

“Y/n, Starlina, my girl, my precious love!” he started. He was trying not to cry; he had been dreaming of this moment for forty-something years, too. You, on the other hand, let the tears flow. “I love you with all my heart. I know I’m a fuckin’ asshole sometimes, but I’m your asshole!” You laughed. “Wait, shit! That did not come out right.” He shook his head, also laughing. “I shoulda practiced this.”

“No, no, it’s perfect!” you assured him. “Keep going!”

“Point is, these hands of mine were made to hold you. This heart of mine was made to love you. My soul was made to be fully dedicated to you. I promise to be good to you for as long as we both live. So… eternity, basically. Y/n, will you marry me?”

You threw yourself off the bed and jumped into his arms. Both of you fell to the ground as you kissed him deeply.

“Yes, yes, Ben. I would be honored to be your wife!” you squealed and kissed him again. And again, and again, until you both needed to catch your breath.

You stayed like that for a second before you felt his bulge grow against you. You both smiled, knowing exactly what that meant you’d be doing next.

***

When Soldier Boy found out he was Homelander’s dad, everything changed.

“I-I don’t think I wanna kill him,” he admitted to you, and only you, quietly. You were sitting on The Legend’s bed. You were rubbing his back comfortingly, your brows furrowed with concern. “I mean, he’s the only family I’ve got left.”

“I know I’m not family yet, but the second we get married? We will be family, Ben.” You turned his cheek so he would look you in the eyes. “We can start a family.”

He sighed, “He’s my kid! Doesn’t that… I mean, doesn’t that mean something?”

“You’re right,” you nodded, “maybe we can just depower him. Bring him back here, keep him safe. Keep the world safe… from him.”

Ben shook his head and stood up abruptly, “If we don’t kill him, those assholes out there will never stop hunting us. I know we’re strong as fuck, especially teamed up, but… Homelander’s strong, too. If they were able to find his weakness, they’ll find ours.” He ran his hands down his face. “I know I have to kill him. I just wish I didn’t.”

“I don’t know what to say, Ben. I wish I did,” you said. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through, what you went through… over there.” His jaw tightened. “Just… tell me how to help, please? I know that’s a cop out, and really fuckin’ stupid, but… I’m rusty at this.” He chuckled at that.

He walked over to you, lifted your chin, and kissed you deeply. He got down on his knees and placed his head in your lap. He wrapped his arms around your torso and closed his eyes, as you rubbed his back lovingly, and leaned down (as best you could) to be closer to him.

“Just… Say you won’t leave,” he whispered.

“Of course I won’t leave! I love you, Ben!”

“That’s just cause you don’t remember everything. When you’d get drunk… you’d ramble. You fucking hated me.”

You shook your head, “I’m sorry, Ben. I really don’t remember that.”

“You gotta promise me that if you do ever remember it, that you’ll give me a second chance. I’m different now, I swear. I’m not a complete dick, just, like, ninety percent dick.” You laughed lightly, and he smiled and took a deep breath. “I don’t think I could navigate this world without you. I’ve never been able to. Ever since you first walked into that tower – perfect body, soft voice, those god damn eyes that looked at me with a mix of ‘You hung the damn moon, Soldier Boy,’ and ‘I’m not scared of you, asshole.’” He laughed again. 

“I remember.” You smiled. “You really were everything to me back then. All the comfort I had in the fucking torture center was the Vought movies, the interviews, the behind-the-scenes footage. And you seemed incredible. I just… I fell head over heels. And, when they said I’d be joining Payback? Your team? I knew I didn’t have a choice, but I loved the idea.” He gripped you tighter. “Then… from what I remember, we fell for each other pretty quickly.”

“We did fall pretty quickly, at least I know I did,” he chuckled. “I mean, that pussy! God damn! You just pulled me in, and I couldn’t bear to let you go!”

You chuckled, “Hm, I always had a feeling it was my pussy that drew you in… I think?”

“It might’ve been what drew me in, but it’s not why I stayed. I loved you like crazy, incredibly quickly! I felt like a fuckin’ fool! I didn’t know what to do with the feelings, so any time I felt like you were my whole world, that I couldn’t stand to lose you, I bought you shit — jewelry, nice dress, flowers if I didn’t have time to get anything else — I just… didn’t know how else to show I loved you.”

“You bought me so much shit!” you laughed. “Am I misremembering, or did you buy me a car?”

“No, I did,” he laughed loudly.

“Babe… I can fly! I didn’t have to drive a car until I left Vought and stopped using my powers!”

“Well, yeah, but it was your dream car! A black 67 Chevrolet Impala. We had the best sex after that,” he chuckled.

There was a pause in the conversation, a long pause, before he lifted his head.

“How’re you feeling?” you asked him, holding his face in your hands.

“Let’s go kill the son of a bitch!”

***

This was it, the fight of your lives. Ben was ready to go off as Butcher, and Maeve held Homelander down, while Starlight held back a sobbing Ryan.

Before Ben blasted his fucked up chest blast thing, you used your powers to push Maeve and Butcher out of the way. Then, to hold Homelander down. He couldn’t move a muscle; he was frozen, as Ben went off.

Soldier Boy fell to his knees, then onto his face, and passed out.

The second Homelander was powerless, Butcher beat him to death with the crowbar in his hand. Fucking iconic.

You looked over at Ben and smiled a little. He was still passed out, but he still looked so fine. You rushed over to his side and knelt down between him and the window. 

You brushed his hair out of his face and bit your lip a little. This was it… this was going to be the happy ending you had been wanting for forty fucking years.

“Ben,” you whispered and shook him gently, but he didn’t wake up. You figured he was just exhausted, and you settled on pulling him into your arms and hugging him. “I love you so much, Ben,” you whispered into his ear.

You looked up from him when you heard a familiar click — the safety cap had been lifted from the device used on you all those years ago.

“Fuck no!” You gritted your teeth as tears rushed to your eyes.

“Get away from him, Y/n,” Butcher said. “We all know we can’t fuckin’ kill you, but we will wipe you.”

“N-No, please!” You didn’t want to hurt Butcher, you didn’t want to hurt any of them. “We’ll go back to the farm, we won’t talk to people, we-we won’t even have fucking kids, if that’s what you want! I just… I just can’t lose him.

Butcher was about to press the button anyway, so you stood up abruptly, eyes flashing red. 

“You are not taking him away from me again,” you shouted and began to walk to Butcher. He pressed the button, and you fell to your knees, letting out a loud cry of pain as you held your head.

Your scream woke up Ben, and he winced as he sat up, not hearing the sound that was making your brain mush.

“Y/n?” He furrowed his brows. “Y/n… what the fuck?”

Butcher let go of the button.

“You fucking asshole!” you screamed. “Now he’s gonna have to propose all over again!” Butcher was about to press the button again, but you said something that made him stop. As your eyes flashed red, you said, “You can erase as much as you want, but deep down, I’ll know Ben’s still alive this time. And I won’t wallow in pity. I will find every single one of you and tear you apart slowly, until I find him.” You stood up as Butcher’s finger moved away from the button.

You turned around and helped Soldier Boy to his feet.

“You okay?” he asked you, touching your cheek gently. You nodded before you turned back to Butcher.

“You have two options. One, try and fucking fight me, and I'll kill all of you. Two, let me and Ben go live our lives together, like we were meant to, and everybody’s fucking happy.”

The Boys looked at each other, looked at Mallory.

“You step out of line — kill a civilian, hell, injure a civilian in any fucking way? We will come for you,” Mallory said. “We will get to work now, finding a way to kill you both. Don’t fuck up.”

You and Ben nodded, though Ben was clenching his jaw tightly. How dare they threaten you?

“Understood.” You smiled softly, then turned to Ben as your smile widened. You wrapped your arms around his torso, as he wrapped his around your shoulders. “We’re free, Ben!” you whispered, tears beginning to roll down your cheeks. “No more Vought, no more interviews, no more fucking torture! Just you, me, and a shit ton of animal friends!”

Ben laughed lightly, “And a shit ton of kids.”

You glanced over at Butcher and Mallory; they both silently nodded.

***

“Why don’t we just eat the fuckin’ chickens?” Ben groaned, looking at the vegetarian breakfast before him. “Hell, we’ve got bacon on legs out there!”

“Hey! Wilbur is not bacon on legs! Neither is Filbert or Gilbert! They are my dear, dear friends who have kept me company when I had no one else. All these animals… I could never eat any of them! They’re like family to me!”

Ben smiled, laughed a little, and was going to mock you, but then you both heard a car pull up at the edge of the driveway.

“Oh, what fuckin’ now!” you grumbled. You got out of your seat, and Ben followed you outside and to the gate.

“Grace? Grace, uh, Mallory, right?” Ben asked when they were close enough to see who it was.

“H-Hey Ryan,” you said softly, giving the kid a small wave. He smiled sadly back, barely looking at you. “And Butcher, of course, you’re here, too! Wouldn’t be a team up without a major asshole leading the way!”

“Kinda like how Payback had lover boy, you mean?” Butcher smirked. You rolled your eyes as Ben’s jaw clenched.

“Why are you here?” you asked.

“We’re here-” Grace started.

“They’re here cause of me,” Ryan cut her off. He finally looked at you and Ben. “'Cause even though you just killed my dad, you’re still my grandfather, Soldier Boy. And I’d like to get to know you guys… if that’s okay?”

“That, uh, that’d be lovely, Ryan!” you exclaimed quickly, a wide smile gracing both your and Ben’s faces. You put the code in and opened the gate. The three of them walked in.

When everyone walked into the house, Butcher laughed when he saw the food on the table.

“Couple of fuckin’ rabbits now, are ya?” Butcher commented.

“Right!” Ben exclaimed. “It’s fuckin’ inhumane!”

“We are not eating any of the animals on this property, and that is final!” You shook your head. You led the group to the living room, and everyone sat down. Ben sat next to you and one hand immediately wrapped around your shoulders while the other went to your thigh.

“So, uh, how do you wanna do this?” you asked awkwardly.

“Was my dad really a bad guy?” Ryan asked suddenly. He wasn’t really asking you and Ben; he was asking Butcher and Grace.

“You don’t wanna know all the fucked up things that cunt did, Ryan,” Butcher told him. The kid shook his head.

“Look, if I’m ever gonna forgive you guys for killing him, I have to know! Why did you guys want him dead? I mean, his own fucking parents wanted him dead!”

“He was a fucking pussy,” Ben said suddenly, when no one was answering Ryan. Butcher had rambled about him; Ben knew basically everything the cunt did.

“Ben!” you scolded.

“He took advantage of women, literal fucking children, he killed people for fun, he kidnapped recent mothers from the hospital so he could suck the milk-”

“Ben!” You stopped him. 

There was a long, long pause as Ryan digested what he’d heard.

“I-Is that true?” he asked the room quietly. Everyone nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry, kiddo. But he was a fucking monster,” Grace said.

***

The three guests spent the night on the couches and the guest room, while you sat up in bed thinking. Ben was draped over your thighs, clinging to you with all his sleeping strength. Light snores were escaping his perfect lips, and every few moments, you smiled at the sound. Fuck, how you missed those snores. 

Then you went back to thinking — Ryan was such a good kid. All you wanted was to protect him, to show him there was a way to use his immense powers for good. That he didn’t have to hurt people the way his dad did. Fuck, the way his grandfather did, too.

And you stayed like that; up, awake, and thinking until the sun rose and you heard your rooster crow. You didn’t want to wake Ben, but you didn’t really have a choice. The animals needed you.

“Ben, baby?” you whispered, shaking his shoulders lightly.

“Just like two minutes, I need to see her,” he mumbled. “Fuck I need her!”

“…Who, Ben?” You furrowed your brows; was he dreaming about another woman as he slept curled up next to you? Fuck, man!

He slowly opened his eyes, lifted his head, and smiled when he saw you.

“You, obviously,” he whispered. “Sometimes I forget we’re together again. Sometimes when I’m dreaming, I know I’m dreaming, but I think I’m dreaming in that fucking lab.”

“I love you, Ben.” You held his face in your hands and kissed his forehead. He sat up and kissed you.

“I love you, Y/n,” he mumbled. 

“You can stay in bed, I’m gonna go take care of the kids,” you said as you rolled out of bed.

“And by kids, you mean the animals, of course,” he laughed before putting his head on the pillow.

You got dressed and left the house to take care of your pets.

You met up with Ryan, who was sitting on the porch petting your calico cat, Bebe. He asked to come along with you to meet the animals, and you were happy to let him.

And so began a lovely little life for you and your family. You and Ben built a second house next to the one you shared, so Ryan, Butcher, Grace, or anyone they invited would have their own space and wouldn’t be “forced” to hang out with the two of you.

Ryan loved the animals and was a natural at taking care of them. At first, he was terrified he’d hurt them, but after watching you enough times, seeing how gentle and loving you were with them, he gained such confidence.

You let the other people in the houses stop being vegetarians, but they never, ever ate any of the animals! Even if they died naturally! You had a little graveyard at the edge of the property with their names on headstones. When Ben first went there, he realized you consistently, always had one dog in your life named after him. 

And after a few weeks, you and Ben got married in a small chapel on the edge of the nearby town. And another few months later, you were pregnant with his baby. A beautiful baby boy, who was born with powers just like his parents. As the baby (Jensen, you named him after the actor who helped you when you missed Ben) grew up, he got along well with his nephew Ryan.

And one day you woke up, it was Jensen’s first day of his senior year at high school.

You watched as he scarfed down his breakfast before he hugged you tightly and flew off to school.

This was it. This was the life you had been dreaming about for the past century.

author’s note: okay! so this is like my favorite thing i’ve written and published so far? yeah! so, even if no one wants it i’mma keep this little universe going with one-shots about the reader and ben’s life — baby jensen’s birth, first kiss, first ‘i love you’s, etc — it’s on the way!! thank you for reading!! 💞🥰🥳

[lamentationsofalonelypotato]

Chapter 2: The Rules Of Engagement

Pairing: Soldier Boy x f!reader / Billy Butcher x f!reader

Summary:When you first joined Butcher's team the last thing you expected was to develop a crush on him, but after two years of pining, you get a proposition from the last person you'd expect to care. This is Chapter 2 of my Promise Not To Fall In Love With Me Series!

Tropes: Fake Dating, Pining, Faking It, Awkward/Shyish Reader, Friends To Lovers

Word Count: 6.4K

Warnings: I'm gonna label this 18+ (For the S-E-X, and by the S-E-X I mean FAKE sex), Cursing, Sexual innuendo, References to sex, Snail Genitals (had to be there), Toaster Bath Joke, Just A Hint Of Soft!Ben, Reader is a little anxious/anxiety/socially awkward?, Reader has Self Deprecating Thoughts, Soldier Boy being Soldier Boy (He's a warning, we all know it and somehow still love him for it).

Note:This is told from Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!

Internal monologue is in italics and is in first person.

A/N: It's been a while since I wrote a chapter for this one, but I really wanted to take a little break and go back to Ben, because I've missed him.

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Reader POV

How can we be out of milk? I just went to the grocery store!

You think to yourself with a sigh, scanning the dismal array of products on the shelves of the rusted refrigerator in front of you. All you really wanted was a bowl of cereal and like hell you were going to have it with water like some kind of psychopath.

I bet Homelander ate his cereal with water instead of milk. Or maybe he was one of those freaky dry cereal eaters who drink a glass of milk at the same time.

You shudder.

It was easier to focus on things like the lack of cereal now that you were inside the cabin and no longer drooling over Butcher chopping wood outside. The image begins to tiptoe back across your mind,  the tensing of his muscles with each mighty swing, the sweat that curved down his perfectly tan and muscular body, catching in his thick dusting of chest hair, that leads down to-

Nope, nope, nope. Not going back down that road.

Instead of fantasizing about being a drop of sweat you force yourself to focus on the conversation that Ben and you had earlier, when he agreed to fake date you. Which was maybe the oddest conversation you’d had with anyone… and you’d had an argument with Hughie over the possibility of making a lightsaber. Something that Hughie was sure the government was hiding and that you knew how to do.

Because obviously my engineering degree came with a minor in lasers, lightsabers, and Luke Skywalker.

But you’d thought the universe was throwing you a bone by letting you stare at Butcher's gloriously sweaty body with no consequences. Which meant that maybe Ben agreeing to fake date you was again the universe apologizing for the two years of you trying to get Butcher's attention (without trying to get his attention). 

Maybe things are looking up.

You think to yourself with a smile and then remember the current dilemma:

Dry cereal, no milk.

Your shoulders droop in defeat. It wasn't enough that there wasn't a coffee maker in this cabin, which meant you were dragging your body around the grounds like a blob, now you had to eat your cereal dry because no one else in this damn cabin went grocery shopping!

AND NO ONE ELSE DOES THE DISHES! I swear no one helps me in this house.

The small poorly stocked grocery store is twenty miles from the cabin down a bumpy back road that curves around a mountain so tight that you thought you were going to go soaring off when Ben took the turn too fast. You’d gone two days ago, walking down the three measly aisles trying to find something edible while Ben complained and said grocery shopping was a woman’s job.

Why he thought that and came with you anyway, you had no idea, but it was his fault you were out of milk.

You'd already caught him contaminating the jug with his man germs last night when you found him drinking straight from the carton like an animal.

Probably finished the job when I fell asleep. Damn it.

It often surprised you how someone who was supposed to be from a more cultured and upstanding generation still had the manners of a horny sailor who hadn't felt the touch of a woman in six months and the attitude of a toddler who just wanted his mom to buy him a lollipop at the checkout.

The man in question was in the (for all intents and purposes) "shower." The warm water pattered against the rusted tub below and steam rose from under the curtained area that was separated from the rest of the great room in the corner, confusing you further over the way the cabin was built.

The layout alone was odd.

It had one big room that served as a living area furnished only with a couch that had more than a few questionable stains, a kitchen, and a dining room. Two thinnly walled bedrooms were off the main room holding beds that creaked even when you weren't moving.

Every single sound was amplified, and you’d heard more than enough sounds coming from Ben's bedroom over the past three days to last you a lifetime.

But the "bathroom" was nothing more than a sectioned off area in the far corner of the living room with the toilet and shower shielded from view by a faded floral curtain.

You were thankful for the curtain, but at the same time you really hated that you couldn't go to the bathroom without everyone hearing everything. It made you feel like you were living in a frat house.

All you wanted was to go back to the city where Annie and you shared an apartment that always had toilet paper in the bathroom and where the seat was always down so the possibility of falling into the toilet in the middle of the night was zero.

Because no matter how many times you told Ben to actually put the seat down, he never did.

It's a wonder that he's still single…

But you liked living with Annie. You'd grown up with three sisters so you had no qualms with living with another woman, not to mention Annie and you had grown into good friends since your time working at Supe Affairs, and you were kinda scared to live alone as a single woman in New York.

Sure you had an engineering degree and you worked on a team that took down supes, but what were you supposed to do if someone broke in? Start talking about the quadratic formula and hope the intruder fell asleep? Or maybe start a debate with him over the structural integrity of a washing machine?

It wasn't that you couldn't handle yourself if the situation called for it,  more that there were other people on the team who handled that kind of thing before you needed to.

And by people it was usually Ben, because he never cared to listen to what Butcher was saying and because you were so whipped someone might as well give you the nickname Dole, you listened to everything Butcher said and stayed out of the line of fire.

You audibly sigh when you shut the refrigerator door.

Dry cereal it is.

The Lucky Charms box sitting pretty on the wooden countertop is a welcome sight. One little piece of civilization you'd found in the grocery store that was still selling dried meal kits and gas masks from World War I.  Ben hadn't thought it was funny when you held one up and asked if he was happy to see something familiar.

"Hey." Butcher's voice shatters the welcome silence in a low rumble that sends the prickle of goosebumps over your arms.

You gasp and jump at the sudden intrusion of his voice, sending bits of marshmallow raining down over the counter. Pieces roll under the refrigerator from the now empty box in your hand, taking your last wisp of hope of a good meal in this godforsaken place.

"Shit. Sorry Poppet. Didn't mean to sneak up on you." He apologizes.

The heady smell of sweat and Butcher's musk wafts over you with his close proximity, the heat from his sun-kissed skin buzzing through the air around you and making your throat tighten. You fight the heat that kisses your cheeks, hoping that you don't look too much like a startled doe.

Butcher raises a hand to wipe away the drops that curl across his forehead, the sleeve of his brightly colored Hawaiian shirt pulling with the flex of his muscular bicep.

He flashes a sheepish smile that makes it difficult for you to breathe, words evaporating from the tip of your tongue as you stare at him for a moment too long, the silence stretching between the two of you.

You drop to the ground to avoid his gaze, frantically scrapping the bits of cereal together while trying to stop the collection of emotions scrambling around your head screaming: "Defcon 1, alert, he's talking to us! This is not a drill!"

"It-it's okay. Totally fine-" You wave a hand anxiously. "I meant to do that."

Cleaning the cereal from the floor had been a good idea in theory, until Butcher dropped down next to you to help you clean up the mess.

It was another reason why you couldn't seem to shake the crush that you had on him, because William Butcher was different whenever it was just the two of you. He'd go out of his way to help you, he always had your back in the field, and on the nights when you were up late tinkering on something Butcher would talk to you softly, so different than the harsh growl he had whenever Ben was around.

Breathe. In and out- He's just a person. I can talk to a person. I do that everyday, no big deal...

Unfortunately the rest of your body thought it was a very big deal because deep breathing only seemed to make things worse. Now you could smell the sweat you’d dreamed about being twenty minutes ago when you'd shamelessly watched Butcher chopping wood outside.

There was something underlying it, a strong masculine scent, something heady, the way the earth smells before a storm when thunder rumbles in the distance, rainwater rippling through a quiet forest.

You could feel your mouth water, imagining the salty tang against the tip of your tongue if you were to taste it.

What is wrong with me?

"Meant to spill the cereal on the floor?" Butcher asks amused. His large hands are mirroring your frantic movements with a clean precision, over the ground as he picks up bits of your dinner.

"Yeah. You don't do that? It's good luck, like throwing salt over your shoulder-"

You had no idea what you were saying, just that you were babbling and you wanted it to stop, because you knew that you were only digging a deeper hole and that none of this was attractive to Butcher.

In the two years that you'd been dying to get his attention, you'd seen a few of the women that Butcher usually hung around. Beautiful, confident women. Women who looked like they chewed the world up and spat it back out. Women who actually owned tight-fighting designer clothes, were confident, wore bold colored lipsticks, clicked around in high heels, and knew how to do more makeup than just the random flick of mascara.

None of them were like you.

You didn't think that you were beautiful or sexy.

Cute, occasionally, when you weren't putting your foot in your mouth.

Pretty maybe on a good day when you tried a little harder and the aforementioned mascara didn't smear under your eyes and your hair actually cooperated.

Awkward, always... unfortunately.

Your sisters had always been like those women, you not so much.

Not to mention all of those women were older and probably knew how to do things to men in the bedroom that made the limited experience (ie. none) with men look like a single grain of sand sitting at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.

"Did you know that there are some kinds of snails that chew each others genitals off during sexual intercourse and-"

You continue, not sure how in the hell you got here in the past minute since the cereal fell and you kept screeching along like a broken record, but you were desperately wishing that you were one of the marshmallow bits that rolled deep underneath the refrigerator.

At least under there Butcher wouldn't be able to hear the ridiculous psychobabble you were spouting because every damn time you were in his vicinity, your mind seemed to forget things like boundaries and appropriate small talk and your phd and instead switched to the B side cassette tape where all the random info you'd learned at four am on YouTube resided in the dark recesses of your brain.

Please somebody make it stop.

Butcher's face has gone from amused to confused within seconds, an awkward chuckle working it's way up through his chest, because honestly how do you respond to that juicy little tidbit of info?

A wave of embarrassment and shame has already began to work it's way through your body, the urge to cry building in the back of your throat.

Why am I like this? Why can’t I just talk to someone without it turning into the fifty shades of how much of a freak I am?

You stand from the ground with a handful of dusty cereal in your hand, before throwing it away in the small rusting trashcan on the other side of the creaky kitchen table.

At this point you would have just run away to the bathroom or another room, but given that Ben was still in the shower, and Hughie was in one of the bedrooms, and you were sleeping on the couch so basically Butcher was in your bedroom right now, there wasn't anywhere to go.

Maybe Ben will get out of the shower long enough to let me commit toaster bath.

Butcher stands from the ground. "I didn't know that."

"Now you do." You clear your throat, avoiding eye contact the best you can.

The small kitchen seems to grow even smaller with his presence and the open window above the sink does little to cool down the wave of heat that travels through you at Butcher's close proximity to you. Your fingertips fidget at your sides when the silence grows.

You hated that this only happened whenever you were talking to Butcher. You never had problems keeping up with Frenchie and Kimiko, laughing with Hughie or Annie, or even just talking to Ben, but whenever you were around Butcher it was like your brain ejected things like common sense and wit. Sometimes you wondered if Butcher noticed and was just too polite to say anything to you.

Then again he probably just thinks I'm a freak that enjoys snail porn.

"So what were you and that yank talking about?" Butcher asks.

"What?"

It was difficult to talk to him when he was standing so close to you, but at least now he was wearing one of his signature Hawaiian shirts, soaked a little bit under the collar.

You were sure that if he was still shirtless you wouldn't have been able to make a sound, then again you could still see a delicious peak of chest hair sprouting beneath the two unbuttoned top buttons of the shirt.

The thud of your heartbeat thunders in your ears as you scramble for some lie, anxiety bubbling in your stomach the longer you look at Butcher, because there was no way in hell you could blurt out:

"Oh Ben agreed to fake date me so that you'll see me more than just a teammate or a little kid!"

"Well-" Butcher starts again.

Ben's arm comes around your waist so fast you don't have time to wonder how he snuck up on you. He tugs you back easily against his warm chest, still wet from his shower, and presses a kiss directly under your right ear, lingering a little bit too long to just be friendly. His beard scrapes against the sensitive skin of your neck, wet hair falling forward to tickle against the sides of your face, leaving the spicy scent of his shampoo under your nose.

"Showers free." He smirks at Butcher, before dropping his gaze to you, green eyes locking on yours and his lips pulling up in a mischievous smirk. "You ready for bed baby?"

Ben's other hand wanders just under the edge of your cotton t-shirt, pushing it up enough that the rough skin of his fingers finds the soft and supple flesh of your hips.

"Um-" You squeak in alarm.

Your face was so warm you were sure that if someone cracked an egg it would be fried to perfection in seconds.

Oh holy guacamole. This was so not what I meant. I meant maybe flirty talking or maybe him bringing me coffee and pretending to laugh with me about something! We need boundaries and maybe one of those squirt bottles you get for a cat that's unruly!

"I'm not really tired-" You choke out, still not able to make eye contact with Butcher. All you could think about Ben's very wet and naked chest pressed against you and the water from his shower soaking into your t-shirt.

This is worse than the snail genitals.

"Good." Ben purrs, the word rumbling up through where your back is pressed against his muscular torso. He leans closer to you, smirk widening. "I'm not either. Figured we could wear each other out first."

Butcher's body goes stock straight in surprise, eyes shifting from you to Ben for some kind of explanation.

"W-well-" You stammer.

Ben's eyes twinkle in the light streaming through the kitchen windows that picks up the flecks of gold hidden in the deep green that you'd never noticed.

"Fuck baby, I love that cute little stutter." His lips trail down your throat sucking a mark just below the shadow of your jaw, the prickle of his beard against your skin making a shiver travel down you spine.

Oh my sweet potato pie.

Unconsciously your body leans back into him, your hands falling to where his rest on your waist, as you try to control the heat wafting off of your face. An uncontrolled sound comes up through your chest as Ben's mouth continues to work down the column of your throat, earning a dark chuckle from the man behind you.

"Wait a minute are you two-" Butcher clears his throat as if he can't quite stomach it, the look on this face somewhere between someone choking and someone trying to pass a kidney stone.

"Have been for a while." Ben flashes a lazy smile. "She wanted to keep it quiet, but I said fuck it. I want everyone to know who she belongs to." His hand slides down your back to squeeze a handful of your ass.

Another uncontrollable squeak erupts from somewhere deep inside.

Time of Death 18:35:00. Goodbye cruel world.

Right about now you no longer believed that the universe was throwing you a bone with Ben pretending to date you, because this was beyond mortifying. You couldn't imagine Butcher giving a single fuck about the two of you. If anything Butcher was probably only worried about the one person on the team who could build whatever he wanted at the drop of a hat getting killed in a sex related accident.

Your throat closed a little tighter with the thought, because Ben was the strongest supe in the world now after everything with Homelander had fizzled out, and you couldn't imagine him being able to control himself in the throws of passion. Not when he barely had the self control to keep his temper in check.

But with it came the memory of what Ben had told you outside with a gentleness you didn't think he had, when he said that he wasn't going to hurt you or make you do anything that made you uncomfortable.

And maybe you were crazy, but you believed him.

You're not going to have sex with him.

You remind yourself, but with Ben's entire body wrapped around yours and the ghost of his beard against your throat, it seemed like you were going to have to remind him of that little thing all over again.

“But I thought you were-" Butcher tries again, but Ben interrupts him.

“Bring the cereal.” Ben nips at your earlobe, ignoring the man standing in front of the two of you. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to work up an appetite.”

He smacks your ass before sauntering off to the bedroom he’d been sleeping in the past few nights, his towel slung low over his hips.

The idea of crawling under the refrigerator with the bits of marshmallow cereal resurfaces, but you were sure that even if you were under there they'd still be able to feel your embarrassment and anxiety all the way in Antarctica.

Butcher was staring at you open mouthed, unable to process. He closed it, then opened it again, looking far too much like a fish gasping for air on a beach.

If the error message on a computer had a picture assigned to it, Butcher's face would be smack dab in the middle of the screen.

Error. Does Not Compute. Please Try Again Later.

There was nothing you could say, nothing you could do to relieve the oppressive anxiety and embarrassment building in your chest with every second that passed following Ben's disappearance into his bedroom.

Maybe I was too soon to think that the universe was throwing me a bone, maybe it's beating me with it into submission.

Butcher coughs awkwardly. "I'm sorry. I think I just hallucinated, love. Did that wanker just say the two of you were-"

"Dating?" Your voice comes out high pitched. "Yeah."

"But he's-" Butcher searches for the word. "He's-"

"Older?"

It was the exact reason why you believed Butcher would never date you, because he was older and experienced. But it made you hopeful that Butcher would stop seeing you as just "kiddo" and "poppet" if he saw you with Ben.

"I was going to say a dick."

"Oh well Ben is- um- he's um-" You stutter, eyes dropping to the multicolored Hawaiian shirt Butcher was wearing trying to find some courage written in the chaotic colors swirling together. "He grows on you after a while."

"Like a fungus."

"He can actually be kind of sweet-" As soon as the words pass through your lips, Butcher laughs so loud you're sure that people would be able to hear it all the way back in NYC.

"You're joking right? Him? Mr. Casual Fuck? Mr. I'm Going To Disintegrate Everyone On My Old Team?"

Butcher lets out a deep sigh and rests his hip against the counter, while crossing his arms over his chest. You watch his eyes trace over you, inquisitive and somewhat curious.

"I don't think you should-" Butcher clears his throat. "I don’t think you should be with him, poppet."

If you'd been drinking something you would have done a spit take for sure.

"What?"

"He's-" Butcher tries to find his words, but you can see how difficult it is for him. "He's a prick and you're- I mean, you're nothing like him. Not to mention he's literally a walking Chernobyl waiting to 'appen."

"I think he has it under control." You say slowly. It was easier to talk to Butcher when you didn't have to talk about yourself. "He's just a little rough around the edges, um- like an onion!"

"Or a hand-grenade."

Ben appears in the doorway of his bedroom, still wearing the towel and a bored expression. But instead of saying anything or calling your name, he strides again over to where Butcher and you are standing, and unceremoniously slings you over his shoulder.

"Ben what are you doing?!" You screech.

"I told you. We're going to bed. I'm sick of hearing you and that British fuck talking. Not when you and I could be doing something a hell of a lot more satisfying."

"But-"

Hughie picks that exact moment to open the door of the bedroom he's been sharing with Butcher for the past few days. "Hey, what's-" He looks at Ben and you squinting in confusion. "Going on?"

"Pay attention you might learn something." Ben has the audacity to wink, all the while you're praying that his towel doesn't fall open.

At this point, I’d rather face the locusts.

Your gaze flicks up to where Butcher stands in the kitchen one last time before the bedroom door shuts.

His arms are still crossed over his chest, mouth turning down into a frown, jaw tight, but just as it closes you see something flicker across his face, an emotion that breaks through the usual mask of hardened grizzle that Butcher wore all the time.

What the hell was that?

Your body goes flying onto the bed with a deranged scream of Ben’s name passing through your lips followed by the pterodactyl like screech of the ancient bed when you land on top.

The spicy smell of Ben’s signature cologne, sweat, and mothballs comes wafting up in a cloud with the motion as one of the springs digs into your spinal cord.

"That's right baby. Keep saying it just like that." Ben reaches for the end of his towel and you scramble off the bed with flushed cheeks.

"Ben!" You hiss, eyes flitting to the door beyond, knowing that Butcher and Hughie can hear everything. "I told you that I wasn't going to- We aren't going to-"

"Relax princess." He gruffs out. "Didn't mean to ruffle your delicate sensibilities."

"You didn't-" Your eyes squeeze shut in frustration and anxiety, the embarrassment washing over you all over again when the events of everything that just happened two minutes ago out in the kitchen comes roaring back. "Damn it I- I mean I-. What are you doing?"

Ben's smirk dips into a bored frown. "You told me that you wanted me to pretend to date you. That's what I was doing."

"Pretend to date me yes! Not throw me around like some sort of Caveman-"

"Butcher isn't going to give two fucks about any of it, if he doesn't think I'm fucking you." Ben huffs. "Which I still think would be better than doing whatever the fuck this is."

He walks over to where his suitcase sits in a state of unpacking on the threadbare chest of drawers squeezed into the corner of the room. Underwear, t-shirts, and several pairs of jeans spurt out of the black bag like multicolored fish erupting from a tank.

The rest of the cabin is oddly silent and you wonder if Butcher and Hughie are out there whispering about what just happened to avoid Ben and you hearing.

Jokes on them, I'm gonna make Ben eavesdrop and then tell me everything.

"I just think that we need to make some boundaries-" You start to say at the exact moment Ben decides to drop his towel.

Holy. Fucking. No-

You slap your hand over your eyes so loudly that the clap ricochets through the bedroom, however, not quick enough to block the image of Ben's muscular ass assaulting your mind. "This is exactly what I was talking about."

"Aww come on princess, I'm giving you an inside look. A million girls would dream to be where you are."

"I'm pretty sure they already have." You mutter under your breath, earning a chuckle from Ben.

"You could be a million and one."

"No thanks. I'm all good."

The tell-tale signs of Ben getting dressed fill the room, but you refuse to take a peak. You knew it was exactly what he wanted, but at the same time something stirred in the pit of your stomach that you'd never felt before, a small flutter of something unnamable when you thought about Ben being naked in the same space as you.

The bed screeches again as Ben slips onto the creaky mattress with an audible sigh. You take this as confirmation that it's safe to open your eyes, but still wait another beat before you do.

He's leaning back against the wooden headboard, smirking at you, eyes tracing over your body. Ben's chosen not to wear a shirt, instead he's clad only in a pair of gray sweatpants. Again, how he can do that in a cabin that has absolutely no air conditioning, you have no idea.

The full sized bed looks even smaller with Ben's hulking figure laid across it, leaving very little space beside him or even space for you to walk around the bed back to the door that lead back out into the living room without hitting his feet that hang over the end. It was enough to make you think that the four of you were trapped in Green Acres rather than a small mountain cabin in the armpit of America.

Ben pats the dusty quilt beside him.The space is barely fit for a toddler let alone another person. 

“Come on. I don’t bite.” His smirk turns mischievous. “Unless you ask me to baby.”

You swallow, biting your lip.

A part of you wanted to go back out to the living room, but that meant you'd have to face Butcher again. And with you stuck smack dab between:

Telling Butcher that Ben and you had sex quickly.

Telling Butcher that you asked Ben to pretend to be in a relationship with you to get his attention.

You were trapped in this little bedroom with Ben until sunrise… or until Jack Nicholson started breaking down the front door with an axe.

Ben sighs heavily and drops his voice into a whisper, aware that Butcher and Hughie are listening. “Okay come on. I’m not going to fucking do anything.”

"I'm not sure I trust that and I'm okay over here." You point down at the floor, feeling the uneven wooden floorboards anxiously with the tip of your big toe.

"You can't stand there all night."

"You don’t know that! Maybe I could learn to sleep standing up like a Flamingo or something."

Ben crosses his arms over his chest. "Look I might be an asshole, but I'm not the kind of asshole that's gonna let you sleep on the floor. So just get in the fucking bed."

You mentally calculate the options in your head all over again. "Not before we make some rules."

"Told you I wasn't too good with those sweetheart."

Ignoring him seems to be a skill that you'd been developing forever, so instead you say, "First, no sex."

"You said that already. Kinda sounds like you're trying to convince yourself not me." The smirk pulls at the ends of his lips again, making you narrow your eyes.

"Second, no touching-"

"Okay wait a damn minute." Ben sits up. "I have to be able to touch you."

"Why?"

"Because nobody is going to believe that you and me are together if I can’t touch you."

He did have a point, you knew that. You'd seen Ben a few times with women in the office that he'd gone home with, not to mention the guy was a walking HR violation.

"Okay fine." You hold up one finger. "No inappropriate touching."

"What the fuck does that mean? I can't slip my finger under your panties when we're in a meeting or something? Because I didn't really peg you as the type who wanted to get hot and heavy at the office princess."

A wave of heat blooms beneath your cheeks. "No! I mean-"

"You want to get hot and heavy at the office." He tilts his head to the side. "Because I could make that happen."

"Let me finish!" You begin to pace back and forth in front of the bed. Moving seemed like a good option right now, the anxious energy flickering through your body needed places to go and because you were stuck in this room that might as well be a jail cell you were making do with what you had. "You can touch me, just no squeezing my butt or anything like that. Maybe hugging me from behind or holding my hand-"

"Holding your hand? You've got to be fucking with me."

"Ben, please." You whisper, eyes darting to the bedroom door. "You said you would do this."

"I said that I would pretend to fucking date you, not pretend to be a fucking pussy." He grouses. "Nobody is going to believe that you and me are together if you don't let me be the way I am. I've got a reputation to uphold princess."

You stand there for another beat, because he was right. Who was going to believe this? The anxiety was back lacing around your ribcage and pulling tight.

The memory of all the years you spent watching Butcher walk around the office dreaming of something that was never going to happen comes washing over you. The nicknames Butcher called you ring in your ears things that made you feel like a little kid in fourth grade who had a crush on the high schooler who occasionally smiled at her.

He's right. I should just let this go. It's never going to happen. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

"You're right, this is a ridiculous idea, there's no way it's going to work and-" You begin to say, but Ben interrupts you.

"Shut up and get in bed." Ben says bluntly.

"Huh?" You clear your throat, fighting the tears that were already beginning to blur your eyes like the heartache that ate away at your chest. "

"Get in the fucking bed."

"Why?"

"Because I can't stand seeing you look all fucking pathetic like that. So you can either get in this bed or I can throw you in all over again."

"I'm not pathetic." You mutter, but you did feel that way. After all, you'd asked Soldier Boy to fake date you. Soldier Boy.

"Yes, you are. You've wanted Winston Churchill to fuck you for the past two years and you're obviously too fucked in the head to figure out how to do that so come here."

"Why?"

Ben starts to get up.

"Okay fine!" You sit on the end of the bed. "There. I'm in the bed, but I don't understand how this is going to-"

Ben's arm suddenly wraps around your waist and he pulls you back against his chest, to where he leans back against the headboard.

"Whoa, wait a minute-"

His hand clamps down over your mouth.

Your body immediately goes into fight or flight, eyes widening, beginning to struggle against his grip.

"I'm not going to hurt you. How many fucking times do I have to say that?" He grumbles, his voice a pleasant low rumble in your ear. "Just relax for one second."

Ben's face is so close to yours that you can feel the warmth of his breath on your face and the rough prickle of his beard against the curve of your ear. His eyes meet yours the flecks of gold inside like falling stars and a sprinkle of cinnamon colored freckles brushed over his nose and the top of his cheeks that you'd never noticed.

"You're too much in your head." Ben breathes. "Now moan."

He removes his hand from your mouth.

"But-"

He pokes your forehead with a frown. "No. Too much in here. Shut up and moan."

You open your mouth to probably to ask him why, but then you catch his gaze again. Something twinkles in his eyes, something that’s different than the bored or angry or aroused expressions that you’d seen before. It looks almost, amused.

So instead you moan and feel like a complete idiot.

"Good, now try a little louder." Ben's arm around your waist gives you an encouraging squeeze.

You do as he says, emboldened by his motivation.

Ben's other hand reaches back to hit the headboard once up against the wall, before he lets loose a moan that makes your entire body flush and an awkward giggle bubble up past your lips.

"You laughing at me sweetheart?" Ben chuckles, hitting the headboard up against the wall again, and motioning for you to moan again, which you comply without a second thought.

"No."  You whisper back with a smile.

"Kinda sounded like you were."

"I'd never do that."

This time Ben moans your name loudly, sending a thrill up your spine, before hitting the headboard against the wall.

You’d never heard anyone say your name like that before, and even though you know that Ben is pretending, for the first time in a long time you don't feel like the awkward girl that seemed to stumble through life, the one that was only 'just' and nothing else, the one who chose to pretend not to like someone because it was easier than the reality, and the one who was always so behind everyone else when it came to the opposite sex they might as well be on another planet.

So you take a chance and moan back his name just as loud as he did yours.

Ben's eyes darken, the arm he has around your waist tightening slightly, before he hits the headboard against the wall again.

"Fuck. You feel so good baby." Ben groans, the headboard banging so hard it makes dust from the ceiling flutter down onto the two of you.

"Ben!" You moan back, leaning into his chest and feeling the heat from his skin envelop you like a warm blanket.

The smell of Ben's shampoo is everywhere around you, soaking through your body, going up your nose with every inhale of breath. It was almost overwhelming. This was the first time that you'd ever been close to someone else of the opposite sex, besides the awkward hug you gave your study partner when the two of you graduated and he told you that he had feelings for you and you blurted out "How about those Yankees?" to cover, even though you'd never been to a game.

*Bang*

"You want more baby?" He growls.

*Bang*

"Please!"

*Bang*

"I love how polite you are sweetheart, even when I'm fucking you like this."

You cover your mouth to stop an awkward squeak from breaking through your lips, that only makes Ben's smirk grow as he hits the headboard against the wall.

"You like that?" He says it just as loud, but you know that it’s not directed at the two men in the other room listening to your performance.

Maybe. A little voice whispers inside your head, but you don't answer, because you're not sure where it came from. Not when Ben and you are in here trying to make someone jealous and the same someone that you can't remember the name of with Ben looking at you like that.

"Ready for the grand finale?" Ben mutters.

*Bang*

You nod.

"Ladies first."

"What a gentleman." You whisper back.

"Always." He winks at you, squeezing you tighter against him.

The sound that comes out of your mouth doesn't sound like you at all, but you don't care. Something about being here with Ben didn't make you feel like you, and it made you feel almost relieved.

Ben mirrors the moan, all the while looking at you with the same smile/smirk combo that only made you smile back at him. You couldn't remember the last time that you had smiled this much. He knocks the headboard one more time up against the wall for good measure before letting go and relaxing his arm beside where you sit between his outstretched legs.

"Look" Ben shakes his head, relaxing back against the headboard that left a pretty good sized dent in the peeling poorly painted wall behind it. "I get it, you really want Butcher to fuck you. But you're not going to get him with those silly rules of yours."

"But-"

"I'm not asking you to do something like shoot a porno in the office. All I'm asking is for you to trust me."

"Trust you?" You snort, raising an eyebrow.

"I know men sweetheart, and you don't. Me holding your hand isn't going to do anything to him." Ben leans in a little closer to you, mouth pulling up in the same mischievous smirk that he's had all night. "But him hearing me fuck you, it'll drive him crazy, not to mention keep him up all night."

You bite the inside of your cheek. As much as you didn't want to admit it, Ben might be right. Okay, maybe a whole lot more than right. Butcher wasn't going to think of you 'experienced' with Ben only holding your hand. It was things like what the two of you had just done that was going to get his attention.

Oddly enough, the usual embarrassment and anxiety that came wasn't there. You were waiting for it, waiting to feel shame, but you didn't have any.

That's weird.

"You might be right." You say slowly.

"I'm sorry, say that a little louder sweetheart."

"Shut up!" You smack him across his muscular chest. "And pinky swear."

"Pinky swear?"

"Yes. Pinky swear, because you won't let me make rules."

His eyes flick from your outstretched pinky to your face, looking as if you'd suggested hand holding all over again.

"Are you sure we can't just seal the deal with a good fuck instead?"

"Isn't that what we just did?"

"No." Ben chuckles, the low rumble vibrating against your back where it rests against his chest. "Trust me sweetheart, if we really had, you wouldn't be able to say anything, much less move."

But he wraps his pinky around yours, dwarfing your hand slightly, with a sigh.

There's a part of you that wishes that you had a camera to capture the moment of Soldier Boy pinky swearing with you. It was up there with photos of Bigfoot and flying saucers, something that even the experts couldn't prove impossible.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Ben sighs retracting his pinky from yours, eyes narrowing. "Really, don't fucking tell anyone I did that."

"I won't promise that." You say with a giggle, before trying to slide away into the space beside Ben, but he doesn't move his arm from around your waist.

"Where are you going?" He smirks.

"To bed?"

It seemed obvious given the fact that you couldn't go back into the living room and you figured you might as well stay in here with Ben. All inhibitions you had about staying in here with him seemed to completely evaporate in the wake of your mutual (fake) orgasms.

"Not a chance princess. Need to let them catch an earful of round two, I've got a reputation to uphold after all."

A/N: And by rules of engagement I mean, THERE ARE NO RULES! It was so fun to come back to these two, I really missed seeing Ben with the fake dating trope. Also, I tried to make sure that I tagged everyone who asked, but if I missed you, please be sure to let me know! 💗

Thank you so much for reading! Likes, Reblogs, and Comments are not required, but are always appreciated! I love hearing what y'all think! 😊 If you'd liked to be added to my taglist for this series please let me know!

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[prettyinpeaches]

Still got it

Soldier Boy (Ben) x Reader | The Boys

NOTES: I really have nothing to say for myself. Based on this ask <3 as always, keep on sending in those requests!

TW: smut, dirty talk (like. a lot), younger!reader (20s in my brain but I don’t think I mention an age), fingering (f receiving), unprotected sex (p in v), brief oral near the end, lots of kissing, lots of profanity, very Ben, intense sex, and so very much dirty talk, this is filthy I’m so sorry, Ben’s done with old ladies!!!

Masterlist

You hadn’t meant to go home with him.

It was supposed to just be a drink. One drink. Maybe two. You’d gone out with a few friends who’d already bailed by the time you spotted him across the bar—broad shoulders, smug smirk, leaning back like he owned the fuckin’ place. You’d recognized him instantly, of course.

Everyone did.

“And here I was thinking I was done with the young ones,” he muttered when he slid onto the stool beside you, voice like smoke and gravel, loud enough for you to hear over the music. “Then you had to walk in lookin’ like that.”

You didn’t flirt, not right away. You just laughed, tucked your hair behind your ear, and let him look. And he did—openly, shamelessly. Like he wasn’t in any rush.

And God, you let him.

You liked the way he spoke—cocky, unfiltered, every word dipped in that scratchy drawl. You liked the way he spread his legs when he talked to you, the way his hand brushed your knee once, twice, before settling there like it belonged.

By the third drink, your chair was so close that your thigh was pressed against his. By the fourth, he was talking into your ear, his expression growing more self satisfied with every giggle he pulled from you.

“You’re trouble, aren’t you?” he asked, clearly not expecting an answer. “All sweet voice and big eyes, sittin’ there so fuckin’ pretty, and so fuckin’ young—I’m almost worried for you with all the dirty shit I wanna do to you.”

You smiled at him then, slow and soft, and said, “I’m not the one you need to worry about.”

That’s when he stood up, tossed a few bills on the bar, and reached for your hand.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he said, smirking. “Let’s go find out.”

If only you’d known then.

“Holy fuckin’ hell.”

Now, Ben’s voice is shot—ragged and stunned, like he just stepped into a wet dream he didn’t think was real. He’s on his knees between your thighs, hair a mess, jeans shoved down just enough to free his cock as he spreads you open on the bed like he’s about to devour you.

“Look at this fuckin’ mess,” he groans, dragging two fingers through your soaked folds, then holding them up, dripping, gleaming in the low light. “This is from me? Just talkin’ to you?”

“Yes…?” Your voice ticks up at the end, clearly confused. He almost sounds shocked.

He looks at you then—really looks. You’re all blown pupils and parted lips, because you want him.

“Fuck,” he mutters again. “I forgot this is what young pussy does.”

You whimper, but you still don’t close your legs. In fact, you tilt your hips a little higher, thighs trembling, one hand sneaking down to run your fingers over yourself.

And Ben nearly stops breathing.

“Ohh, fuck yes,” he growls, grabbing your wrist and holding it there like he wants to frame the image in his memory. “Hold it open for me, baby—just like that. Let me see that sweet little pussy drippin’ for me.”

You shudder as he leans in, nose brushing your inner thigh, breath hot and wrecked.

He lets out a breath, thumbing lazily across your clit just to watch you jolt, and the slick sound it makes punches a groan out of him.

“Fuck, hear that?” he says, stunned. “That’s all you, baby. Music to my fucking ears.”

You gasp, clutching his arm as he moves, rocking up to meet him without being told, chasing the pressure like it’s instinct.

“I love when you touch me,” you say, breathless. “Feels really good.”

“Yeah,” he huffs, clearly amused, rubbing over your clit so slowly it shouldn’t even feel good but god does it ever. “I can fuckin’ tell. You’re a damn natural, sweetheart.”

“You have any idea how many chicks I’ve fucked?” he mutters, almost annoyed, like it’s your fault he’s so floored. “Decades of fucking. Hundreds of women. Thousands. Models, porn stars, you name it. The women my age, they needed convincing. Time. Half of ‘em wouldn’t even get this wet with help.” His fingers press just right and you cry out. “Had t’fuckin’ spit on my hand just to fake what you’re doin’ all by yourself.

He looks up at you, dark eyes wild, voice low and reverent.

“And here you are, soakin’ through the fuckin’ sheets before I’ve even fucked you proper. How the hell’s that fair?”

Your eyes flutter, lips parting, a high whine slipping free as your hips buck up toward him.

“Then fuck me,” you breathe. “Please, Ben—just… I need it. Need you.”

That breaks him.

He doesn’t answer—just grabs your thighs, yanks you closer, and really get to work, his fingers plunging in as deep as they can go with a wet squelch that makes you both moan.

“Goddamn, baby, listen to that,” he grits out. “So fuckin’ wet. So tight. You’re suckin’ me in like you don’t ever wanna let go.”

You whine, rocking against his hand now, chasing every curl of his fingers like you’re desperate for more. “Faster,” you beg. “Please, Ben, faster.”

“Greedy little thing,” he grunts, but he does it—fucks you with his fingers until your slick is dripping down his wrist, obscene and sloppy. “I bet you’d let me bend you over right now and fuck you stupid with half the block watchin’, wouldn’t you?”

You moan, nodding, mindless, grinding down into his hand.

“Yeah,” he breathes, twisting his fingers just right, thumbing your clit until you squeal. “That’s what I thought. You don’t even know what you’re doin’ to me.”

You’re trembling, your whole body pulsing around his fingers, and when he pulls out, you whine at the loss—until you see what he’s doing.

“Look at this,” he groans, dragging his soaked hand across your stomach. “This cunt’s been waitin’ for me since the day you were born.”

“Ben, please,” you sob, desperate.

He grabs himself, thick and hard and already leaking, and presses the head of his cock against your entrance. His eyes stay locked on yours, hungry and unhinged.

He growls—actually growls—and not a second later, he’s pressing in, slow and deep, hips flexing, his jaw clenched tight as your heat swallows him whole.

“Christ on the cross, sweetheart,” he snarls. “You’re better than I ever could’ve fuckin’ imagined. Tightest, wettest little thing I’ve ever been inside.”

You both groan when he bottoms out, and then he’s moving—hard and deep, the wet slap of skin and the obscene squelch of your slick echoing like music in the room.

“M’fuckin’ spoiled now,” he pants, eyes locked on the way your tits bounce with every thrust, hands gripping your thighs like he’s holding on for dear life. “I’m not pullin’ out. Not ever. You hear me, sweetheart? I’m stayin’ in this pussy ‘til I die. It’s mine.”

You nod, breathless, wrapping your legs around his waist and pulling him even deeper. “Yours,” you gasp. “All yours.”

And Ben just grins, cocky and ruined all at once.

“Damn right it is.”

He’s fucking you hard now—deep and relentless, hips slapping against yours in messy, soaked rhythm. The room smells like sweat and sex and heat, the bedframe groaning with every brutal thrust, and you can’t even form words anymore. Just whimpers. Gasps. Breathless, broken sounds as you cling to his back, your nails biting into his skin like you’re afraid you’ll slip under.

“Shit, baby,” he pants, jaw tight, voice wrecked. “You feel that? How you’re milkin’ my cock?”

You nod—barely. You don’t even know if you’re saying yes or just trying to stay conscious at this point.

His hand slips between your bodies, thumb finding your clit like it’s second nature, and the moment he presses down, you’re gone.

You come with a strangled moan, your whole body seizing beneath him. Back arching. Vision white-hot. It hits you like a punch—shaking, pulsing, wet and overwhelming—and Ben feels it.

“Fuck, that’s it,” he snarls. “Keep squeezin’ me, sweetheart. Just like that—fuck, I’m—”

He drives in one last time, deep and brutal, and grinds his hips down into you as he comes. He curses—loud, raw, guttural—as he spills inside you, hands gripping you firmly, every muscle in his body pulled tight as he rides it out.

It’s messy. Loud.

He stays buried inside you, both of you panting against each other’s mouths, too stunned to speak for a long moment. Your legs twitch around his waist, and his body’s still shaking a little above you.

Then, slowly, he lowers himself down until he’s resting fully on top of you, helping move your legs back down onto the bed.

Your fingers find their way into his hair, and he lets you hold him there.

You feel him smile against your neck.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until Ben leans over and presses his mouth to your cheek—rough and warm and still catching his breath—and feels the damp there.

“Aw, fuck,” he all but groans, voice sounding more resigned. “Did I hurt you?”

You shake your head fast, but the tears keep coming. You’re not sobbing, not panicking—just raw. Overwhelmed. Overstimulated. Wrung out in every way a person can be.

“No,” you suck in a deep breath. “No, you didn’t. I’m okay. Just…”

You trail off, and he waits. Doesn’t push. Just keeps breathing against you, thumb rubbing circles over your hip like it’s the only thing he knows to do.

“I feel like I just got hit by a truck,” you laugh a little at the absurdity of the entire night.

He huffs a low laugh in return. “Yeah? You and me both.”

You blink up at him, lips parted, dazed. He’s still inside you—softening, twitching, warm—and you don’t want him to move.

“You sure you’re alright?” he asks, quieter now. Still gruff, still him, but the edges are sanded down.

“Uh-huh,” you nod slowly. “I just can’t feel my legs.”

That gets a real grin out of him, crooked and proud. “Hell yeah,” he mutters. “Still got it.”

He pulls back just enough to look at you. His hair’s a mess, his cheeks are flushed, but his eyes are softer than you expect—dark, but not wild anymore.

He leans back down and kisses your neck. Slow. Lingering. Then the curve of your shoulder. Then your chest, right between your breasts. His stubble drags across your skin with every lazy shift of his mouth, warm and heavy.

“I don’t think that performance can be outdone.” he mumbles against your skin. “You have absolutely ruined me for anybody else.”

You hum quietly, eyes heavy and dazed. “Wasn’t trying to.”

“That makes it even worse,” he huffs a laugh, mouth still moving—lower now. Lazier. “You don’t even know what you’ve got goin’ for you. Just layin’ there all sweet and soaked and lookin’ up at me like I hung the fuckin’ moon. It strokes a guy's ego, sweetheart.”

You shiver under him, overstimulated and spent, but there’s a flutter low in your belly.

“Damn near lost it the second I got inside you.” He drags his nose across your collarbone.

You hum quietly, nails scratching gently at his scalp and he moves. “You did good.”

“Fuckin’ right I did.”

His hand slips back between your thighs to feel just how messy you still are. “Yeah,” he mutters, grinning against your skin. “That’s what I thought.”

You twitch when his fingers brush your oversensitive clit, and he pulls back just enough to look down your body at the wet shine still dripping down your thighs, now mixing with his own release spilling out of you.

“You’re still fuckin’ soaked.”

“Ben…”

“Relax,” he drawls, voice going low again, predatory and reverent all at once. “I’m not gonna fuck you again.“

His mouth drags down your stomach, his hands warm on your hips.

“I’m just gonna clean you up a little.”

And when he settles between your thighs again, mouth hot and open, he doesn’t say another word.

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