#Something In The Way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zepskies · 11 months

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Break Me Down - Part 8

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x Female Reader

Summary: You’re a private investigator by trade, but now you happily sit at a desk — leading a surveillance team at Supe Affairs. After managing to end Homelander in New York, Soldier Boy escapes custody. You are recruited for the manhunt, joining Butcher’s team.

Truly, you joined the S.A. for the right reasons. But after you become his accidental hostage, Soldier Boy will break down every single one of them…

💚 Break Me Down Masterlist

AN: Thank you guys so much for all the wonderful feedback on the last chapter! It made my week. 🥰 I truly thrive on hearing back from all of you — it gives me the fuel I need to finish this story!

(And it's rapidly becoming a beast lol.)

Word Count: 6,000 Warnings: 18+ only! Smut, mentions of past domestic abuse/trauma, PTSD, hurt/comfort, fluff, and a (small) cliffhanger.

Part 8: Something In the Way…

It was three more rounds before he finally let you sleep.

Or rather, you couldn’t help but drift off. Ben had said he would help you sleep, and in his words, a promise is a fucking promise.

After you’d scarcely recovered from the first round, he’d taken you from behind in your bed. You’d repaid the favor by dropping to your knees for him in the shower, after which he’d propped you up against the bathroom counter and ate you out with his talented tongue until you really did see fucking stars.

But he’d gotten what he wanted; your voice reverberated his name off the bathroom walls with superior acoustics…

And when you next woke up, to your surprise, Ben was still there. He was sitting up against the headboard and watching a nearly silent TV while he smoked a blunt.

“What time is it?” you muttered.

“Around 6 a.m.,” he replied.

For God’s sake. He had to be tired by now.

You rubbed at your bleary eyes and turned onto your side. For a moment, you just stared at his profile, wondering what the hell you were going to do if Butcher and the rest of your team actually found you.

“Go back to sleep,” Ben said. He glanced over at you after blowing some smoke. A smirk started to curve his lips. “Thought you’d be knocked out until noon.”

You too, if you were honest. Your insides felt like warm jelly.

“What keeps you up if even last night can’t tire you out?” you asked. Ben didn’t answer you. He faced the TV again and took a long drag of his blunt.

Slowly you sat up, wincing at the soreness in your muscles, in your legs, arms, and between your thighs. Your entire body felt like a bag of stones, but it was a good ache. A thoroughly sated one.

You managed to sit up next to him and reach over to lay a tentative hand on his chest. It was warm, even with the ceiling fan and AC on full blast above you. He briefly looked down at your hand, then at your face.

“What’s it really like?” you asked, before your inner filter could catch up with your brain. “The new power the Russians gave you.”

His expression changed from relaxed to tightening around the edges.

“They didn’t give me anything,” he said, puffing away.

You read between the lines of that statement, surprised that he was even that honest about what he went through in Siberia.

They carved it into him, you realized. Like a wound he couldn’t heal from. Without wanting to, you remembered the CIA files you’d studied about his imprisonment.

“Did it hurt?” you asked, moving your hand down to the center of his chest. The corner of Ben’s mouth twitched humorlessly.

“Nothing fucking hurts me,” he said. His voice was flat, and matter-of-fact. But he didn’t even look at you.

Maybe he didn’t want you to catch the lie in his eyes. But as curious as you were, you didn’t want to push too hard. Not for the first time since you got here, you realized that you weren’t really sure what you were doing.

During the day, the two of you had your own lives. You swam in the pool, trained yourself in the gym, and read in the garden. You played cards with Loco and Saul when they had time for a break (from whatever it was Soldier Boy had them doing).

And over dinner one evening, Frank even told you that his daughter was fifteen going on sixteen, and sweet as pie, but she could get an attitude real quick.

“You remind me of her sometimes,” Frank remarked.

You scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Frank’s answer was merely a wry raise of his brow.

You just rolled your eyes and carved into your steak. Simone’s cooking was in rare form tonight.

And at night, Ben invaded your room like it was his own.

You couldn’t help but let him in, and into your bed. You were frankly surprised that he hadn’t gotten bored of you now that he’d gotten what he wanted.

But apparently, he felt the same way as you…that one taste was just not enough.

Like now, while the radio played on the nightstand. And he had you naked and writhing beneath him on the bed.

One of his hands rested below your ribs, holding you down while his head was caged between your thighs. Your knees were squeezing his head like a grape, but of course, all he felt was encouraged.

Your moans were getting higher, more keening as his tongue worked inside your hot core. Meanwhile, his thumb circled and pressed at your clit relentlessly.

Your grip threatened to pull out a chunk of his hair, your leg wrapping tighter around his neck. “Ben…goddamn it…”

“A little busy right now, sweetheart,” he teased, taking a beat to nip hard at the inside of your thigh. It had you bucking against his chin with a gasp. His gaze raised up to yours, dark and filled with desire between your legs. Sweaty locks of his brown hair were falling over his brow.

Though you were panting for breath, you managed to sweep his hair away from his dewy forehead. His eyes traced the path of your hand, but he stared back up at you again.

“Tell me what you want while I’m still feeling generous,” he demanded. Two of his fingers found their way into your entrance, a placeholder for his mouth. “I’ll fucking finish you just like this, have you coming apart on my tongue—”

You were surprised he was giving you a choice at first. But you saw his intentions in his eyes—he wanted to fill you up regardless. His dick was straining hard against your thigh, and your core was pulsing with need anyway.

“Want you inside me,” you panted, though not without a cheeky smile of your own. “Almost as much as you wanna be in me.”

Ben smirked and wiped at his mouth and chin. “Yeah, fucking right. You know how hard you’re squeezing my goddamn fingers right now?”

He twisted said fingers inside you, making you utter a strangled sound. His smirk deepened, but he withdrew them just long enough to line himself into your entrance and slide right in, with little resistance as he bottomed out.

You clung to his shoulders as you shuddered at being entirely filled to the brim. You still weren’t used to that feeling—of being consumed from the inside out.

“Jesus fuck,” he muttered, “so fucking tight.”

You squeezed around his hips with your legs, digging your heels into his ass. Your hold was desperate, but Ben just braced himself above you.

“For god’s sake,” you blurted. “What’re you waiting for?”

Even he was breathing harder now, maybe more from restraint than exertion. His smirk was devilish though. “What’s the magic word, baby doll?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Ben rocked against you a little, but not enough to give you what you wanted. Just enough to drive you insane. On some level, you had to admire his restraint.

“Fucking say it,” he said, his gaze firming. “Unless you want me to leave that pretty pussy on fire.”

You had a hard time believing that one, considering he was the one who couldn’t seem to go twenty-four hours without getting some. But you were just desperate enough in this moment to oblige his demands.

You hooked a hand behind his neck and pulled him down to crash your lips into his. You licked into his mouth and bit sensuously on his bottom lip. He rumbled a deep, pleased sound that you felt in your chest.

And you felt his hand spanning the small of your back. Your fingers once again dove into his hair.

Eventually you spoke against his lips, “Please. I fucking need you…”

His lips twitched in satisfaction. But he read the sheer wanting in your eyes, and the bit of vulnerability in your voice. Like you hadn’t been taken apart quite like this before. Or maybe it had really been that long for you.

Whatever it was, this seemed to matter to you. The way you responded to his every touch, the way you demanded from him, was incredibly fucking hot.

So he was more than willing to help you make up for lost time.

Ben licked his already wet lips and guided you back down. He actually put his all into fucking you. Not only were you the hottest piece of ass he’d had in a long time, but it was a point of pride for him.

He wanted to be the only one you remembered—the one who’d turned you inside out and made you forget that you were supposed to hate him.

Because yeah, he was that fucking good. And you were worth the effort.

He held you tight enough to bruise as your release hit you in waves, sending hot tingles all over your body and making you freaking light-headed. Your tightening inner walls around his cock brought him along with you, and he spilled into you with a straining grunt.

Once he’d pulled out and slid onto the bed next to you, an exhausted sigh fell from between your lips. But Ben turned to you with an almost boyish grin.

“You mentioned something about the new Bond movie,” he said.

You blinked at him, for a moment uncomprehending. Then you had to laugh. “Yeah, I said that an hour ago. Then you all but tackled me onto the bed.”

He shrugged and turned on your TV.

“Put it on while I wash up,” he said, tossing you the remote. You had a feeling it was because he still hadn’t gotten the hang of the apps on smart TVs. You sent him a narrowed look, but you found Skyfall on Netflix.

“It’s not new, exactly. New to you, maybe,” you quipped.

“I already know it’s not gonna be as good as Connery, but I’ll give this British asshole a try,” he said from inside the bathroom.

“You will, huh?” you asked with a grin. “Didn’t think you were into that sort of thing.”

“What?”

He finally came back out, still buck naked, and returned to your side on the bed. He gave you a quirking brow.

“Never mind,” you said with a chuckle. You went to the bathroom to clean yourself up too, then dragged on a large shirt over a pair of underwear. By the time you returned to the bed, Ben had gotten a bowl of popcorn and, of course, a large blunt.

You knew he was self-medicating. According to Butcher and Hughie, the guy had been suffering from PTSD big time…well, you hadn’t needed them to tell you that.

Even though your interactions with him before now had been somewhat limited, you knew that he couldn’t sleep. He boozed and drugged hard, from what you’d seen of his hangovers in the morning.

The rest of it, he tried to keep a tight lid on. A byproduct of the bygone “never share your honest man feelings” era. Butcher was another one. But you were perceptive enough to see that Ben was hiding.

You were still curious though; still wanted to know what it was he hid behind stoicism and lust. And what then?

“I’ll give Hollywood one thing. The stunts and effects are fucking incredible now,” Ben said. He was glued to the car chase on the TV screen. He was almost like a little kid, his eyes lighting up with every explosion and seemingly impossible move James Bond made to evade his enemies.

It had been a while since you’d seen this movie, but then it dawned on you that there was a certain erotic-ish scene between Bond and the villain, Raoul Silva, that you weren't sure of how Ben would react.

You shook your head. Another consequence of him being from a much different time, along with his outdated views on gender roles, among other things.

No matter how frustrating he could be, you reminded yourself of the night he helped you cook. And the night he saved you.

He could change, you reasoned. Maybe. With the proper motivation—

A shootout with a machine gun on the screen jolted you a bit, interrupting your thoughts. You reached over to the bowl of popcorn in Ben’s lap and grabbed a handful. But when you heard his breathing shallow, you glanced at him and frowned in concern.

His gaze was on the TV, but his eyes were glazed over, slightly dilated. He was sitting very still, and he looked pale.

“Ben,” you tried, with a tentative hand on his bare chest. His skin was hot to the touch, and clammy with sweat.

“Hmm, what?” He turned his head towards you, but you he wasn’t really hearing you. His gaze ran through you, and above your head.

“Ben,” you said, more firmly. You kneeled next to him, grabbing his shoulder for leverage, and grabbed his face to turn it towards you. He blinked down at you.

Your name fell from his lips, almost like a question. He wasn’t able to focus on you though. You called his name again and took his face with both hands.

“Wherever you are in your mind right now, you’re here with me. Stay with me!” You raised your voice. His skin was getting really hot.

You gasped and had to let go of him when it threatened to burn you.

His chest started to glow and hum. Your eyes widened, and finally, so did his.

Ben pushed you away from him and knocked you clean off the bed. He managed to angle himself with his chest upwards, just in time for the nuclear power in his chest to carve a huge hole into the ceiling, through the entire roof of the mansion, and up into the sky.

Afterwards, Ben slumped, taking in ragged breaths and wiping sweat from his face. But then his eyes widened with realization. He looked over and saw you prone on the floor.

He slid off the bed and went to you, dropping a knee at your side and reaching a hand to your cheek. He called your name once, then twice. When you didn’t wake up, his hand hesitated, then moved to feel your pulse.

He felt it thrum beneath the pads of his fingers. You were alive, just knocked the fuck out for a bit…

So he eased you into his arms and slid your hair away from your face, unwilling to admit, even to himself, that he was worried.

Not until you roused in his arms did he let out a subtle, relieved breath.

He gave you a crooked smile. “Hey, sweetheart.”

You groaned. “What the hell…”

Your beautiful eyes opened and met his.

“You with me?” he asked.

“Yeah,” though you winced at a nod. Your gaze shifted behind him and a soft gasp fell from your lips. Ben glanced over his shoulder, and the two of you looked up at the giant hole in the ceiling that was letting the bright glow of the moon into your bedroom.

There was a mess of debris and wood and plaster all over the room. Even you and Ben were covered in a fine layer of it. He was avoiding your gaze now.

But you couldn’t find it in yourself to be mad at him.

You just sighed and offered him a smile.

“At least now I have a window in here,” you joked. “Was getting stuffy as hell."

That night, you slept in his room. You practically drowned in his large, plush bed that smelled like his cologne and aftershave.

Though you hoped he didn’t expect you to stay here from now on. As much as you were starting to like him (and you still didn’t want to admit that fact), there were times when you needed your privacy.

By the time you woke and started your day, however, Ben led you to a new room. It was bigger, with nicer furnishings, including a king-sized bed instead of a queen. It was bigger than your entire apartment back home in New York.

“Wow,” you said, turning to him with a smile. “Thank you.”

Though at that point, you knew Stockholm syndrome was real.

Ben shrugged, returning your smile a bit. “Got twenty more of these. No big deal.”

“Right.” You raised a brow, then turned to survey your surroundings with your hands on your hips.

He’d insisted on carrying all your things himself (likely due to an old-fashioned sense of machismo-backed chivalry), even though the room was on the same floor as your old one. It was much closer to his, you noticed.

Then you felt his hands snaking down your sides from behind, molding to the curve of your waist. You felt the warmth of his chest through his clothing as he pressed against your back.

“Time to break it in,” he said, with the deepening turn of his voice that too often made your insides quiver and melt into goo.

“Do you ever get tired of fucking?” you quipped. Though it lost its effect somewhat when you leaned against him, all too willing.

Ben chuckled into your ear. “Take it as a fucking compliment, sweetheart. Your pussy is the sweetest I’ve had since before I went under.”

That made you pause. You turned in his arms and looked up at his face with a challenging brow. You wondered if he was just sweet-talking you (his version of it, anyway), or if he really meant that shit.

“Don’t believe me?” he asked.

“You’ve been plowing through hookers and escorts for months. Professionals,” you pointed out. “You don’t have to lie to me just to butter me up.”

“Why the fuck would I lie about some stupid shit like that?” he retorted. You frowned at him.

“Because it’s not stupid,” you said.

You pushed his hands from you and turned away, but he held you fast by your wrist, pulling you back toward him. You frowned in annoyance at his manhandling.

“What’s the real reason you hadn’t fucked anyone in three years?” he asked. Though it was more a demand than a question.

“Why’re you so hung up on that?” you asked. “It’s no big deal.”

“Why are you so shocked by what I said?” he countered. He was giving you a choice: answer one question, or the other.

You let out a frustrated breath and waved your arms in exasperation.

“I was busy, okay?” you said. “Vought had me on tough hours and shitty details. I didn’t have time for a life.”

And after the things you’d seen, you didn’t much feel like interacting with people, be they supes or normal humans.

“That’s not the real reason,” Ben said. His fingers held your chin so you couldn’t look away. In the deep green of his eyes, you saw the same curiosity that plagued you.

Maybe…maybe if you gave him an inch, he’d give you one.

Metaphorically speaking.

“I didn’t like who I was,” you confessed at last. “I just…I don’t know. Nothing felt right back then. It just took me a while to finally do something about it.”

He seemed to consider that, and you.

You took the opportunity of his distraction to extricate yourself from his grip, and you ventured further into your new room. Your eyes lit up when you found an old record player sitting on a dresser, and a basket full of vinyl on the floor next to it.

“Wow, seriously retro,” you said with a chuckle. But you knelt down and started flipping through the collection. Ben followed you. With his arms crossed, he looked over your shoulder at the record you fished out. Abbey Road by the Beatles, 1969. You placed the record and set the needle at a specific song.

The drums kicked off into a familiar electric guitar melody. Then John Lennon’s voice echoed through the room.

“Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover…”

Nostalgia flooded through both of you, albeit for different reasons. For you, it reminded you of your grandpa (on your mother’s side). He’d dedicated this song, “Something,” to your grandma on their 50th anniversary. He’d made sure you played it again a year later, at her funeral.

Meanwhile, this song always reminded Ben of fingerfucking Farrah Fawcett at a Beatles concert. Ah, the ‘70s. A wild fucking time.

“Good choice,” he remarked.

You flashed him a smile.

And with a sigh, you turned to sit against the dresser while the record played. You pat the ground next to you, and while Ben looked reluctant, he eventually sat down beside you. It seemed he had nothing better to do.

“I dabbled in music myself, you know?” he told you, with a smug raise of his brow. “Had a few hits on the charts.”

You grinned in amusement. “Yeah, I had to muck through every one of your cheesy-ass music videos.”

“Hey, every one of those fucking singles were gold.” He shot you an indignant look. “What, had to?”

“When I was researching you,” you said with a chuckle. He raised a brow at that.

“Oh, yeah?” He rubbed a hand over his beard and met you with a critical eye. “What else did you dig into?”

You met his eyes, and you knew he had some idea of what you were thinking.

Ben let out a breath through his nose, craving some reefer.

“Ah. That, huh?” he said. After a moment to gather your courage, you took a breath.

“Ben—”

“It’s not worth fucking talking about,” he said, a bit of grit edging in his voice.

“It is if you’re still blowing craters into ceilings, Ben,” you replied sharply. “Do you even remember what happened yesterday?”

His steely silence was all you needed to know.

“Look, I’ve gone through some shit too,” you said. “But forty years? …I know I’ll never completely understand what you went through, but—”

“You don’t have a fucking clue,” he said. His eyes were sharp, but also guarded.

You couldn’t help it. The footage you watched was playing inside your mind in perfect scenes. You remembered the sound of his desperation, his struggle. And it had been all-too familiar to you.

“Maybe,” you agreed. “But I do get having shit that flashes behind your eyes, like a bad movie. Things you can’t forget. Things that won’t even do you the mercy of letting you sleep.”

Ben was reluctant to meet your eyes, as if even that small thing would be an admission of weakness. But when he did, you knew he would see a kindred spirit.

“Things that clog up the works,” you continued. You wet your dry lips, swallowing past a tendril of nerves. “And things that should be easy get…complicated. Like watching a movie, or…”

You had to take in a somewhat shaking breath, turning your face away.

It allowed Ben to look at you a fraction softer. His mind was able to flash away from some of the past, to a more recent memory: the first time you’d pulled him into your room and let him into your bed.

You’d pleasantly surprised him a few times that night, but there was one moment where he hadn’t known what to do next.

When he saw panic instead of pleasure take over, and however briefly, he’d wondered if he truly was the monster everyone seemed to think he was.

So now, Ben couldn’t help but reach out to you. The back of his hand touched your neck. Your eyes widened a fraction when his thumb brushed down the column of your throat.

“What happened to you?” he finally asked. He seemed more than just curious. There was more behind his eyes, and enough earnestness for you to consider trusting him with this part of you…

But still, you were reluctant to give him that big of an inch.

“It’s only fair,” he pointed out. “The CIA gave you the full low down on me.”

Once again, you sighed. Can’t argue with fair.

You rested you head back against the wooden dresser as “Oh! Darling” started to play from the record. Now didn’t feel like a particularly good time for a doo-wop, but such was your reality.

“I told you about my dad, right?” you said. Ben inclined his head.

“Something about the family business.”

You nodded. “He trained me. How to read people, how to fight…but he was the first one we had to defend ourselves from.”

Ben considered that with a deepening frown. He’d had an idea this story was going that way, but hearing you come out and say it (even without really being able to say it) just made him angry. His hands clenched into fists where they rested at his sides, on the ground. Until something you said called his attention.

“We?” he repeated. You nodded again.

“My mom, and my younger sister,” you said, with a tremulous breath. “He was a drunken bastard for most of my childhood. I was about thirteen when he put my mom in the hospital, and it was…bad.”

You swallowed past a lump of emotion in your throat—mostly at the guilt. If it hadn’t been for you, and your weakness, your mom wouldn’t have needed to intervene. She wouldn’t have had to try to protect you…

“From there, my grandparents got us out of that house,” you said, with a suspect sniff. “Mom finally divorced him.”

Unfortunately, the story didn’t end there.

By the time you were in high school, your father had gotten through his court-ordered rehab and managed to get his life back together. He built his P.I. firm back up, and by all appearances, he seemed to turn his life around.

He convinced your mother of it enough that she let you work for him after school.

You hadn’t wanted to, but your father had a way of manipulating you too. He reminded you that your grades were shit (I fucking wonder why?). You had little chance of making it to college, so at least he could teach you a trade.

“I’ll even pay you,” he’d said. And you’d taken the bait.

He’d been unrelenting in your training, as he was in most respects. As a former Marine, he was rigid in his discipline, demanding perfection from you.

However, when he felt his lessons weren’t being drilled into your head, he reinforced them with his calloused hands.

And when Vought came to him, offering him a contract, he negotiated one for you too, without even asking if that was what you wanted. But you went along with it…until you couldn’t anymore.

“I finally broke contact with him when I left to join Supe Affairs,” you finished, quickly wiping a tear from your cheek. You glanced over at your captive audience with slight hesitation.

Ben looked stoic on the surface, calm even. But you didn’t know that it had taken every cell of self-restraint in him to stay quiet. Your red, shining eyes, the way you’d had to stop a few times to collect yourself—it all grated on him in the worst way.

“Christ on a cross,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his mouth and chin. “Why the fuck did you work with him?”

“I told you. I was a kid—”

“No, I mean when he got the fucking deal from Vought,” he said tersely. “You could’ve split. Found yourself a husband, got your own life. Why the fuck would you sell yourself out like that?”

Your lips pursed. “First of all, I don’t need a husband to have my own life. Second, I’m not the only one here who worked for Vought.”

Ben huffed. He wanted to call you a fucking idiot. He wanted to say, See? This is why you need a real fucking man in your life.

But with daddy issues this bad, you’d probably fuck that up too.

“Answer the goddamn question,” he said instead, though none too gently.

You gave him a soft glare. Didn’t he realize how hard it was for you to say all of this aloud, let alone confide in him?

But now that he did know, maybe he’d be more likely to open up to you. You would be able to understand him better, and maybe…maybe one day, you could convince him to let you go.

So you felt you had no choice but to answer his real question.

Why the fuck did you follow your father to Vought?

The truth was, that man had a way of getting into your head, living in your skin, and making it crawl.

“He’s a manipulative bastard,” you said.

He knew how to work you, just like your mom. And your mother was…well, damaged. You knew you couldn’t rule yourself out of that one either.

However, the thought did spark your own curiosity.

“What were your parents like?” you asked.

The question seemed to surprise him. His frustration with you melted into a more uncertain frown. You bumped his shoulder with yours.

“Come on. It’s only fair,” you teased. A smile lifted his lips, but his eyes became rueful.

“She was a good woman,” he replied, speaking of his mother. “Quiet maybe, unlike you.”

You smiled in amusement at that.

“But elegant,” Ben said. The softening edges of his smile told you volumes.

“She didn’t grow up with much, so when she married my father, she learned how to live in his world," he said. "But she still cooked and cleaned and pretty much ran the house, even though we had people to do that shit.”

“How did she meet your dad?” you asked. You knew his father’s family was from old money. He’d inherited his empire from his father before him.

Ben glanced at you. “She sang at this club…a nice one though, not some fucking dive. She wasn’t the star or anything, but my father noticed her. Said she was the only one who could pull off red lipstick without looking like a whore.”

That made you roll your eyes, which provoked an amused grin out of Ben.

“Charming,” you remarked. It must’ve really upset the old apple cart when his father married his mother. You wondered how she’d felt about Ben becoming Soldier Boy…

“Doesn’t sound familiar?” he asked. "Pretty girl in red, croonin' for a bunch of assholes in a musty fucking club?"

At first, you were confused.

And then, you realized the reason for his not-so-subtle grin. With an incredulous blush, you supposed that you and Ben had met in much the same way as his parents.

Well, that’s not creepy at all, said the more rational part of your brain.

…Or maybe, weirdly romantic, whispered the other part. The part that had probably caved after you watched Ben try and fail to chop onions for the first time.

“What was your favorite thing about her?” you asked.

“You know, all my pictures of her are in black in white…I don’t even remember what color her eyes were,” he admitted. “But I remember her voice. Smooth as warm butter. She’d hum with the radio whenever she cooked. If Dad wasn’t there, she’d belt out a tune or two. I’d sit in the kitchen and watch.”

Imagining that scene made you smile softly.

“Her captive audience,” you teased. Ben took it with a quirk of his mouth.

“What about your dad?” you asked. He turned to you with a knowing look. You both knew what the man had thought of Ben. But you wanted to hear it in his own words.

“My father was a stern man,” he said. The softness was gone, and your smile fell. “This kind of larger-than-life force when I was a kid… Of course, when I became a man, he didn’t consider me worth the fucking effort. Not even when I became a hero, and everybody in the fucking world knew my name, he couldn’t admit that I’d fucking surpassed him.”

You sighed. More than anyone, you understood the underlying resentment in Ben’s tone. The kind of young recklessness that pushed him into becoming Soldier Boy, trying to prove his father wrong.

“He thought you cut corners to do it. And while he wasn’t wrong,” you said, as gentle as possible. You held your ground when Ben looked sharply at you. “You didn’t deserve to be ignored either.”

Ben scoffed at that, as if he didn’t give two shits one way or the other. You knew better.

So the two of you kept talking, sitting there on the floor long after the record finished. You traded stories and bickered as you often did.

But when you managed make him laugh, genuine, hand-on-chest, and almost boyish, you had to try and stem off a blush as you felt a pleasant flutter in your belly.

“It’s been two fucking months since you lost him in Colombia, and what do you have to show for it?” Grace Mallory said into the screen of her cell phone. FaceTime was only glitching slightly, at least.

On the other side of the looking glass, Butcher was annoyed.

“He’s like a coil of smoke,” he said. “Pulled a motherfucking Houdini act. I have half a mind to think he’s gettin’ some help. Other than the ex-military cunts he recruited on the road.”

Grace thought for a moment. “Give me five minutes.”

Butcher hung up before she did. With a purse of her lips, she searched for another number in her contacts. Some personal assistant answered the line.

“Get me Stan Edgar,” she said.

“Well, he’s actually in a meeting right now—”

“Now,” Grace snapped. “Unless you want a CIA squad storming the tower for withholding evidence.”

In less than thirty seconds, Stan’s familiar monotone greeted her.

“Good afternoon, Grace,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“You fucked up, Stan,” she replied, resting back in her office chair. “This doesn’t bode well for you.”

“To what matter are you referring?”

“You know exactly what. I’m going to ask you this once,” she said. “If I don’t get a straight fucking answer, I’ll have no other recourse but to rake through your records all over again. And we both remember how pleasant that was.”

“We’ve done nothing but comply with the government’s demands.”

“Right,” Grace scoffed. “Listen to me. If I find out that you’ve withheld information about Soldier Boy’s location—or even so far as helping him evade my grasp—I will dig so far up your ass, you won’t be able to fucking breathe.”

There was a pause on the other line.

Eventually, however, the little toad spoke.

“You’ll have the coordinates shortly.”

Grace’s mouth curved with a grim smile, and she hung up.

Meanwhile, in his office at Vought Tower, Stan sighed and turned to his Chief of Security, Jon.

“Should we send them the comprehensive list of Soldier Boy’s safe houses?” he asked.

“No. Just the one in Colombia,” Stan said. “But Jonathan, it is time for our contingency plan.”

Jon met Stan’s gaze with a nod.

“I’ll give the order.”

AN: 😬 Welp, things are going to start getting bumpy from here lol.

Next Time:

His frown deepened the moment he saw you, which you didn’t quite understand.

“Ben,” you said, even though it was an effort to do so. Every breath was like a hot knife cutting deeper into your side.

Your eyes closed at the pain, and at tears that burned down your cheeks. It also cut through the brain fog enough for you to realize this was bad.

It was very bad.

Keep Reading: PART 9

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