Man Out Of Time - Benjamin 'Ben' Solider Boy
Summary: Reunited in a strange new century, you fall right back into the toxic, possessive grasp of a newly returned Soldier Boy.
CW: No use of y/n - Not exactly canon - Implied dark themes - Reader is German - Reader is a born Supe - Reader gets called 'Pretty Boy' - Reader is traumatized - Language - Slight angst
Words: 3k
A/N: Okay this started at like 900 words and I somehow ended up with this, I fucking hate this but I'm desperate to post something. God this is so bad and the German maybe off, cause I don't speak it at all. Last thing, forgive me for this garbage.
FEMALES DNI
The rain that night didn't wash away the blood; it just diluted it, turning the Alsace mud into a slick, crimson soup. Every breath you took tasted like copper and woodsmoke, a brutal reminder that despite whatever gifts God had seen fit to curse you with, you were still terrifyingly breakable.
If you had just kept your mouth shut. If you had just accepted that you were caught in the gears of a war you never asked to fight. If you had just died with what little dignity a conscript was allowed, it wouldn't be so bad. But the instinct to survive is a filthy, primal thing. It strips away pride until there is nothing left but the screaming in your chest.
Through the ringing in your ears, you heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots.
He loomed over you like a monument of olive drab and tarnished gold, the eagle emblem on his chest darkened by grease and German blood. Ben. Soldier Boy. America’s golden boy looked down at you with an expression that wasn't even hateful—it was bored. To him, you weren't a person; you were just another piece of foreign debris he had to clear off the board.
Panic, hot and sharp, overtook every fiber of your being. You scrambled backward in the dirt, your hands slipping in the mire.
“Bitte, ich tue alles!” The words spilled past your swollen lips, frantic and broken. “Ich werde euch im Krieg helfen! Bitte…"
Soldier Boy stopped. He tilted his head, his fingers casually hooking into his tactical belt, right near the heavy grip of his combat knife. He let out a short, scoffing laugh—a low, raspy sound that made your stomach drop.
"Help us?" he said, his voice dripping with that smooth, old-school Brooklyn arrogance. He took a slow step forward, the mud groaning under his weight. "What makes you think we want help from some kraut rat who can't even stand up straight? You're out of your depth, sweetheart. The whole damn fatherland is."
How could you prove your worth? How could you make a man like this see you as something other than target practice? Your mind raced, grasping for the only leverage you had left—the secret the German high command had tried to weaponize.
“Ich bin ein Supe!” you gasped out, desperate to bridge the language barrier before he lost interest. “I am… like you! Born with it. They wanted me for a spy. I can disappear—I can make shields. Please! Ich schwöre, ich werde alles tun!”
That stopped him cold.
The casual indifference vanished from his face, replaced by a sharp, calculating stillness. Soldier Boy crouched down, the heavy leather of his boots inches from your face. The stench of stale tobacco, cheap whiskey, and gunpowder wafted off him, suffocatingly thick. He reached out, his gloved fingers clamping around your jaw with enough pressure to make the bone groan. He forced your face up, staring into your eyes with a terrifying intensity.
"A supe, huh?" he murmured, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register. He twisted your chin slightly, inspecting you like a piece of livestock. "Funny. Usually, German science projects have a bit more fight in 'em. You're telling me you were born this way? No serum?"
You could only nod, a pathetic, jerky motion that sent fresh agony through your face.
Soldier Boy let out another laugh, but this one was darker, devoid of any humor. "Well, ain't that something. A naturally grown freak. And here I thought Vought had the monopoly on the special stuff."
He didn't look impressed; he looked annoyed that the world was more complicated than his propaganda reels suggested. His grip tightened for one agonizing second before he shoved your face away, letting you drop back into the dirt. He stood up, wiping his gloved hand on his trousers as if you had left a stain.
"Get up," he barked, turning his back on you as he signaled to the shadows behind him. "Move it, before I decide your little magic trick isn't worth the rations. We're taking him back to the command tent. Let’s see if this bird sings as good as he begs.”
None of it really mattered. You had simply traded one prison for another.
At first, the American command tents weren't much different from the German labs—just different men in different uniforms staring at you like a weapon they hadn't learned how to aim yet. But then, Ben took a liking to you.
It wasn't a kind sort of affection. It was the possessive, careless favor a man shows to a stray dog he’s successfully broken. He liked the way you looked, sure—the contrast of your sharp, European features against the rough canvas of his quarters—but mostly, he liked that "no" wasn't in your vocabulary. You became his shadow, his human shield, and his dirty little secret. When the artillery got too loud or the pressure of being America’s golden boy pressed too hard on his shoulders, he’d drag you into his private quarters. He’d take whatever he wanted from you, leaving you bruised and breathless, and in return, he kept Vought’s white-coats from dissecting you.
"He's a useful little freak," Ben had told the suits, his hand heavy and warning on the back of your neck. "Keeps his mouth shut, does what he's told, and his shields keep the shrapnel off my suit. We’re keeping him."
So you stayed. You let him mold you, use you, and call you his "pretty little kraut." It was entirely one-sided, a twisted transactional nightmare, but you endured it because beneath the degradation was a semblance of safety. As long as you belonged to Soldier Boy, the rest of the world couldn’t touch you.
But safety in Vought’s world is an illusion. When Ben vanished in Nicaragua in '84, your protection went with him. No longer deemed useful, Vought treated you like surplus military hazardous waste. They pumped you full of experimental stabilizing agents—burning cocktails that made your veins feel like dry ice—and put you under. A relic of a war everyone wanted to forget.
Decades later, you woke up to a world that had moved on without you.
Navigating the 21st century was a slow, agonizing rebirth. You forced yourself to shed every remnant of the old country. You practiced in front of mirrors for months until you could perfectly mimic a flawless, generic American drawl. You hid your invisibility and your shields so deep you almost forgot how to use them. You reinvented yourself entirely.
Yet, some habits never die. You still needed an anchor. You still needed someone to tell you where to stand so you wouldn't drown, and that was how you fell into the orbit of Billy Butcher.
A sharp, violent buzzing cut through the dark, heavy silence of your bedroom. You let out a low groan, shifting against the mattress as your hand blindly scrambled across the nightstand. Your fingers wrapped around the sleek metal of the smartphone—a piece of technology that still felt entirely alien to you sometimes.
Swiping the screen blindly, you pressed it to your ear and rolled onto your side. "Yeah? What d'you want?" you murmured, your voice thick with sleep.
"Oi, pretty boy. Get your arse out of bed, I need a favor," a raspy, gravelly voice barked through the speaker.
The familiar, abrasive cadence of Billy Butcher instantly cleared the fog from your brain. You sat up, the bedsheets pooling around your bare waist as you rubbed a hand over your face. "Butcher. It’s three in the morning. Why the hell are you calling me?"
"Because you're the only reliable bastard I've got on the payroll, that's why," Butcher chuckled, a dark, dry sound. "And lose the attitude, yeah? Sounds a bit too much like hard work. Look, I need you at the safehouse. Now."
You sighed, a weary, defeated sound. It was happening again. The same pattern, the same trap. You had traded Ben for Billy, always falling into bed or into line with men who smelled like gunpowder and bad intentions because you simply didn't know how to exist without a master. You couldn't say no. To Butcher, you were a ghost with a useful set of skills and a clean record, and you let him keep using you because it was better than being completely alone in a century you didn't belong to.
"What's this about, Billy? I told you, I'm trying to keep my head down," you said, though you were already swinging your legs out of bed, your feet hitting the cold hardwood floor.
"Let's just say an old mate of yours dropped by. A real blast from the past," Butcher said, his voice dripping with a terrifying, smug satisfaction. "Bit of a family reunion, you might say. Peep your texts, sunshine. Don't keep us waiting."
The line went dead with a sharp click.
A heavy dread settled into the pit of your stomach, turning your blood to ash. Your phone vibrated in your palm, a text notification lighting up the dark room. With trembling fingers, you tapped the screen and opened the attached photo.
It was a blurry, dimly lit surveillance shot inside a dilapidated building. Standing in the center of the frame, looking older, rougher, but unmistakably him, was Ben.
Soldier Boy was alive.
The drive to the safehouse was a blur of streetlights and cold sweat. Your hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly your knuckles turned white, the ghost of an old war humming in your veins. You hadn't used your real voice or your real name in decades. You had buried the boy from the Alsace mud deep beneath layers of American slang and a quiet, unassuming life.
But as you pulled the car up to the curb outside the derelict brownstone, the past caught up to you in a single heartbeat.
Billy Butcher was standing under the amber glow of a flickering streetlamp, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked as rugged and unbothered as ever, his heavy black trench coat shifting slightly in the night breeze. You killed the engine, but you didn't get out right away. You just stared through the windshield, letting the silence of the car envelop you for a few agonizing seconds. Your heart was a rabbit in a snare.
Finally, you forced your door open and stepped out into the damp night air.
Butcher watched you approach, his lips curling into that sharp, knowing smirk he always gave you. It was the look of a man who knew exactly which strings to pull to make you dance. Neither of you spoke for a moment, the tension thick enough to choke on.
Butcher took one last drag of his cigarette, dropped the butt, and crushed it beneath his boot. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy brass ring of keys.
"Need you to play babysitter, mate," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He tossed the keys. They cut through the air, and your hand flew up automatically, catching them with a dull metal clack.
Before you could even form a question, Butcher walked right past you, giving you a rough pat on the shoulder that felt more like a warning than a gesture of comfort. He headed straight for his own car, leaving you alone on the pavement. You rolled your eyes, a heavy, tired sigh escaping you as you turned toward the heavy wooden door of the safehouse. You unlock it, the hinges groaning in protest as you push it open and step into the dim, musty hallway.
"Back so soon?"
The voice drifted out from the kitchen, low and raspy, carrying the distinct, heavy drawl of mid-century Brooklyn. A voice you had heard in your nightmares for forty years.
Your entire body went rigid. You froze in the doorway, your fingers gripping the brass keys so fiercely the metal bit deep into your palm, drawing pain that barely registered against the shock.
"Was zum Teufel…?" you whispered. The words slipped out before you could stop them, raw and unpolished, your carefully practiced American accent instantly shattering.
A figure stepped out of the shadows of the kitchen, holding a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey. Ben. He looked different—his hair was longer, his face weathered by whatever hell Vought had buried him in—but the posture was exactly the same. The same arrogant, casual stance of a man who owned every room he walked into.
But when Ben’s eyes landed on you, he stopped dead in his tracks. The smug, careless look vanished from his face, replaced by a sudden, jarring stillness. He stared at you, his chest rising and falling as his gaze swept over your face, recognizing the sharp European features he used to hold in his grip.
"You're alive?" Ben breathed.
The words didn't come out as a taunt, or a boast, or even a threat. His voice dropped into a quiet, gravelly register that sounded entirely wrong coming from him. It sounded like... relief. Like he was genuinely, deeply grateful that you were standing there.
The unexpected softness of his tone hit you like a physical blow, sparking a sudden, bitter fire in your chest. You let your shoulders drop, abandoning the American disguise completely. When you spoke, your voice was thick with the harsh, rolling consonants of your native tongue, cold and sharp as winter ice.
"Maybe," you whispered, staring back at him with wide, unblinking eyes. "Or maybe... maybe I am finally dead, Ben. And you are only looking at your past mistakes.”
Ben didn’t move. He just stood there, the whiskey bottle heavy in his hand, looking at you like he’d just unearthed a ghost from the trenches. That arrogant, untouchable shield he always wore around his shoulders cracked, just for a second, letting something raw and horribly human blink out at you.
"Don't talk like that," he said, his voice dropping into that gravelly, low register. He took a slow step forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight, just like the mud used to. "You ain't a mistake. And you sure as hell ain't dead."
"No?" You let out a short, humorless laugh, the sound sharp and grating in the quiet house. You didn't back away this time. Decades on ice and a new century had given you a different kind of spine, even if the fear still pulsed like a phantom limb. "You think because I breathe, I am alive? Vought took me after you disappeared, Ben. They put me in a box. Cold. Dark. For forty years, I was nothing but ice because I had no master left to tell them I was useful."
Ben flinched. It was a minuscule movement—just a tightening of his jaw, a slight twitch in his broad shoulders—but you caught it. The great Soldier Boy, bothered by a ghost.
"I didn't know," he muttered, shaking his head. He took another step, closing the distance until you could smell the familiar, suffocating mix of stale tobacco and cheap liquor pouring off him. He looked down at you, his eyes scanning your face, searching for the boy who used to tremble under his touch. "They told me everyone was gone. I thought... I thought you died in Nicaragua with the rest of 'em."
"And if you knew? What then?" Your German accent bit into the English words, heavy and unforgiving. "Would you save me? Or would you just keep me in your tent like a pretty dog? A shield to stop the bullets?"
Ben’s face darkened, the familiar, volatile heat flashing in his eyes. He set the whiskey bottle down on a nearby table with a loud, deliberate thud. He stepped right into your space, towering over you, testing the old boundaries. He reached up, his large, calloused hand hovering near your face for a fraction of a second before his fingers clamped around the back of your neck.
It wasn't the brutal grip of a captor, but it wasn't gentle either. It was possessive. Demanding.
"I kept you alive," Ben growled, his thumb pressing firmly into the skin just beneath your ear, forcing you to look up into his bloodshot eyes. "Don't you forget that. Those corporate suits wanted to slice you open the day we brought you in, and I told 'em no. I gave you a roof, I gave you food, and I kept you safe. You belonged to me."
"Ja," you whispered, your breath hitching despite yourself, your heart hammering against your ribs in that old, terrifying rhythm. The familiarity of his weight, his scent, his absolute certainty that he owned you, was an intoxicating, terrifying poison. "I belonged to you. Because 'no' was a word that would get me killed."
Ben’s gaze dropped to your lips, then traveled back up to your eyes. The anger in him seemed to simmer down into something heavy, thick, and complicated.
"Well, you're here now," he murmured, his grip softening just a fraction, his thumb tracing a slow, familiar line along your jaw. "And so am I. The rest of 'em... Payback, Vought... they're gonna burn for what they did to us. But you? You're still my pretty boy. Ain't ya?"
The trap was closing again. You could feel it. The keys Butcher had given you were still biting into your palm, a reminder that you were supposed to be the handler here, the babysitter. But looking at Ben, feeling the heat radiating off him in this strange, terrifying new world, you realized some things never changed. You were still the boy in the mud, and he was still the only monster big enough to keep the other monsters away.
"You have not changed at all, Ben," you breathed, your voice a fragile, rolling whisper against his chest.
"Why change perfection?" Ben tilted his head, a faint, dangerous ghost of his old smirk returning to his lips. "Now... tell me what kind of trouble we're making with that asshole.”