Hi! I love your writing! Have just binge read all of your BoB fica and would love to read some more 😍🙌 Could you write something for Floyd Talbert from BoB by any chance? Maybe something with mutual pining? Anything honestly! Hope you have a great day!
OHMYGOODNES YOUR MY FIRST ASK, i am happy and honored to oblige!! Of course!!! AND Thank you so much Im so glad you're enjoying my works!!
THIS WAS SO CUTE ill make a small part 2!!
You Keepin' Tabs On Me?
Floyd Talbert x Reader
You weren't planning to eye anybody or even bump into someone.
You had to deliver messages is all, it was even a miracle you had the position, so you kept to yourself. And ran with orders.
Counting from one to twenty, trying not to panic, trying not create interest.
The problem was someone was in your way.
A certain sergeant who was half crouched as Operation Market Garden fell apart around them, you arrived too late, you could see it in the way the men eyed you, shouted to retreat.
You came stumbling through a side street with one hand clamped on your helmet, dispatch bag banging against your hip.
You we're still counting in your head,
Sixteen,
Seventeen
Then BAM.
Your heel caught as you heard a blast and stumbled against someone.
"Whoa! Easy there sweetheart." you felt a hand around your waist as someone pulled you low from the firefight.
You we're going to duck your head and just ask which way you should go, already losing your focus.
But your eyes found his, brown almost hazel eyes that searched yours and for a moment you almost forgot commonsense.
They had no right being so sweet in the middle of war but here he was. Eyebrows scrunching, half disbelieving he had a woman nearly in his arms.
“You lost?” his voice was low.
You pulled your arm back too quickly. “Working.”
“Hell of a route.”
“The road was clear when I started.”
“Roads do that.” His eyes flicked over the street behind you. “Change their minds.”
You shoved the folded dispatch against his chest. “You Easy Company?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Someone with orders.”
His grin widened.
“Yes, ma’am.”
You hated that you almost smiled.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
That was the problem with Talbert from the beginning.
He noticed too much and made it look like flirting.
Easy stayed longer than anyone expected, long after the first bright welcome had turned into wet roads, dikes, patrols, shell bursts, and Dutch rooms crowded with soldiers who were trying to look less tired than they were.
And you had found yourself rounding a corner to deliver paperwork and he'd be there, he'd look surprised, but you had caught him already from a distance, rocking on his heels, catching your eyes once.
As if waiting for you.
You told yourself, to turn away. To remind yourself of work and war.
And work...
You worked from a commandeered town building near battalion’s mess of maps and messages, where damp wool steamed by the walls and papers went soft from too many hands. Officers came in and out. Runners tracked mud across the floor. Someone was always asking for a road, a grid, a name, a company position.
You learned the companies by their markers first.
Able. Baker. Dog. Easy.
Little pins on a map. Little names pushed from road to road as if men could be made that simple.
Talbert started appearing more and more by the building you we're at.
Then he gravitated inside, closer to your table with excuses that became more absurd as time went by. You couldn't help but feel amused and a touch fond.
He needed directions.
He needed to check a road.
He needed to know where battalion was.
He needed to ask about a message no one had sent him to ask about.
Mostly, he needed to lean over your shoulder and make himself impossible to ignore.
You remember the first time he plucked the courage to approach, standing next to you. His eyes looking over at yours, his hair falling over his eyebrows, your faces too close to each other.
“That us?” he asked one afternoon, pointing at the green marker.
“That’s Easy Company.” Your finger brushed against his.
“Same thing.” His finger sweeping under the pad of yours.
“You’re not the whole company, Sergeant.”
“No,” he said, grin soft and easy. “Just the part you keep looking for.”
Your fingers slipped away, but it had tapped his once. Experimental, a curious thing, sorting out your feelings and wondering if he felt the same.
He saw.
You pretended he didn’t.
“So,” he said, softer now, “you keepin’ tabs on me?”
You looked up.
He was smiling like it was a joke. Like he had only said it because his nickname made it easy and because Floyd Talbert never missed a chance to make something easy.
But his eyes gave him away.
Too hopeful.
Too careful.
Too caught on your face.
You swallowed and looked back at the map before he could see you smile.
“I keep track of company positions.”
“Yeah?” he said. “That all?”
You pressed Easy’s marker into place.
“For now.”
Talbert’s grin came back slow, pleased and a little stunned, like he had just won something he had not been sure he was allowed to want.
“Well,” he said, tapping the edge of the table once before stepping back, “don’t lose me.”
You kept your eyes on the map.
But you were still smiling after he left.
That was how it went for weeks.
Talbert flirted with everybody, so you taught yourself not to believe him.
Winked at clerks. Made Dutch girls giggle from doorways. Talked himself into extra coffee, cigarettes, information, and trouble with the same effortless charm.
So when he lingered beside your map table, when he lowered his voice just for you, when he looked at you like he had forgotten the rest of the room existed, you told yourself it was just Talbert being Talbert.
And Talbert, for once, did not know how to convince you otherwise.
Because you were kind to everyone.
That was what ruined him.
You helped lost replacements find the right street. You fixed names on forms before officers could bark about them. You handed over messages with steady hands even when shelling made the windows tremble.
You smiled at tired men like you had saved a little warmth just in case somebody needed it.
So when you smiled at him, he never knew if it meant anything.
And when he smiled at you, you never trusted it enough to ask.
It made the whole thing stupid.
It made it worse.
Made it so that you felt sick to your stomach you'd pace, it did not help that Talbert was also pacing, you'd see him from where he was billeted.
You groaned and told yourself not to be stupid.
One evening, while Easy was still in Holland, the message room had gone quiet for once. Not peaceful. Holland was never peaceful anymore.
But quieter. Rain tapped against the windows. Somewhere outside, men moved through the street, boots sucking through mud, voices low under the wet dark.
You were bent over the map, trying to shift Easy’s marker without smudging the pencil lines.
Then you felt it.
That strange, warm pressure of being watched.
You looked up.
Talbert stood across the room with his jacket open, not saying anything. Not leaning in a doorway. Not grinning for an audience.
Just looking at you.
For once, he did not have a line ready.
“What?” you asked.
He blinked, then recovered too late. “Who? me?"
“You were staring.”
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” His mouth tilted. “Must be the lighting. You know how these buildings get."
You looked around the dim room. “The lighting is terrible.”
“Then it’s you.”
Your hand froze on the map.
Talbert seemed to realize what he had said at the exact same moment you did.
His grin came back, but smaller. Less sure of himself.
You looked down quickly, pretending Easy Company required urgent geographical attention.
“You say things like that to everyone.” you almost snapped and inwardly winced at what you had said.
but he didn't recoil, he said. "No"
You did not look up.
He came closer. Slow enough that you could have told him to stop. Close enough that his sleeve brushed the edge of the table.
“No,” he repeated, quieter. “Not like that.”
The rain tapped harder against the glass.
You swallowed. “You’re very hard to take seriously, Floyd.”
He huffed a laugh, soft and almost embarrassed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m starting to regret that.”
That made you look at him.
There was no audience now. No nurses. No clerks. No Dutch girls smiling from doorways. No Easy men waiting to laugh at him for turning sincere.
Just Talbert, caught staring, trying badly to make honesty sound casual.
He reached for the pencil tucked behind your ear, then stopped before touching it.
“May I?”
You nodded.
He took it carefully, like the permission mattered more than the pencil, and leaned over the map. Beside Easy’s green marker, he drew one small crooked line.
“There,” he said.
You stared at it. “That is not regulation.”
“No.” His voice warmed again. “That’s me.”
“On the map?”
“Near Easy.” He glanced at you. “Near you, if you keep standing there.”
You tried not to smile.
Failed.
His eyes dropped to your mouth, and the look on his face changed into something so open and startled that your chest hurt.
“You keep a tab on everyone?” he asked, low and rough with it as if asking you something more.
“I keep track of company positions.” it was the same answer you gave him before bit you couldn't risk saying anything else.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
You touched the edge of the green marker. “Maybe I keep a tab on you.”
Talbert went very still.
Then, softly, “Yeah?”
You looked up at him. “Maybe.”
The smile that broke over his face was not the one he gave everybody else.
It was quieter.
Yours.
Outside, someone called his name from the street.
Talbert stepped back, but he did not leave right away.
“You better not lose that mark,” he said.
“You better stay where I put you.”
His grin came back, sweet and helpless around the edges.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Then he went out into the Dutch rain.
You tried to go back to work.
You really did.
But Easy’s green marker sat exactly where it belonged, and beside it, hidden from every officer with sense, was one crooked little line that meant Talbert.
You found him later outside, under the narrow overhang of the building. He caught your eyes, rain pooled at his helmet and darkening his shoulders, he had just come back from watch.
He flicked his helmet towards yours and you chuckled and raised your hand to wave.
The street was nearly empty. The windows glowed dull behind blackout curtains. Somewhere farther down, men were laughing too loudly in a billet, trying to make Holland feel less haunted.
“There she is,” he said.
You hugged your coat tighter. “Were you waiting?”
“Resting.”
You look around, couldn't help but grin as you let out a small laugh. “In the rain?” you lifted your eyebrows, looking up and sticking a palm out as the rain grew heavy
“I’m dedicated.” he angled his body towards yours, leaning his weight on his left foot as he tilted his head.
“To getting pneumonia?” you yelled through the thunder and that made him laugh as you pressed your hands to your ears. He moved closer then, ducking so you can hear him.
“To making sure you didn’t lose my mark.”
You smiled and looked up at him, he was tall and you stood on your toes. "I didn't"
He softened and nodded with a pleased little look.
That was the thing you were beginning to learn about Floyd Talbert. His charm was loud, but his hope was quiet. He could grin through a whole room, but the second you smiled like that, he looked almost nervous.
"Get outta the rain with me." he whispered.
You hesitated, some sort of courage hurting in your chest but you still hesitated.
Rain silvered the street. The Dutch town sat around you in wet brick and dark windows, still occupied by Americans, still too close to German guns, still pretending morning was a promise.
"Live a little, Tab." You laughed and for the first time in your life, you took his hands and pulled him further into the rain.
"Christ!" he barked out a laugh half stumbling with you. "You trying to kill me, hmm?"
You let out a gasp as the rain plummeted down, mean and heavy, banging against the rooves.
He scrubbed his face, feeling the thunder but it wasn't in the sky. You let go of his hands and he ran with you down the street. "Hurry!" You cried out and he chased after you. "I'm tryin'!"
And because Talbert couldn't leave well enough alone, he grabbed your waist, half swinging, half scooping you up, you let out a startled squeal.
"Put me down!"
"I'm living a little, ma'am. Just following orders."
He finally settled down, steadying you infront of him, the rain began to whittle down in a steady shower, you push the hair off your face, your skin buzzing with adrenaline and hot feeling you thought the rain could wash away.
You looked at him and that's when you noticed, his grin softened, you couldn't read his face but he let out a small huff.
Then he said, quieter, “I’ve always been sure of what I want in my damn life.”
You waited.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, like the words had come out wrong and he was trying to fix them before they got away.
“But you,” he said. “You scare me.”
Your chest tightened.
“Me?”
“Yeah.” He laughed once, soft and disbelieving. “You. Because this isn’t me wanting an easy night or a quick kiss before the next bad thing happens.”
His eyes found yours.
“This is me wanting more than I know how to ask for.”
The rain filled the silence.
You looked up at him, warm all over despite the cold.
“Is that what you want?” you asked softly. “A kiss?”
“No,” he said at once.
Then his eyes widened.
Yours did too.
He blinked, caught by his own answer.
Then his mouth opened, startled and helpless.
“I mean yes!" he corrected quickly, ducking his head as you began to giggle. "No not... Fuck." he raised his hands, you laughed a little harder. “Jesus. Yes. That came out wrong. "
"Just..." he continued, dropping his hands, almost exasperated trying to explain as he looked away then ran a hand through his hair, "Not, just a kiss, ma'am, not just to have you now and then... never."
“Very smooth, Sergeant.” but the teasing had gone out of your voice as you stepped closer.
It had been weeks, of not knowing, of wanting and your chest felt impossibly light.
“I told you,” he said, smiling down at you. “You make me regret being charming.”
“You’re still charming.”
“Good.” His voice dropped. “Because I’m out of ideas.”
He leaned in slowly enough for you to stop him.
You didn’t.
The kiss was soft, a little rain-cold at first, then warmer when his hand came carefully to your sleeve, holding on like he had finally found the one place on the map he did not want to move from.
When he drew back, his forehead hovered near yours. His eyes hooded as he let out a quiet sigh.
"Don't lose me now." he whispered his thumb running down your cheek.
"No, sergeant...
I'm keepin' tabs on you."
