+†+ you walk a fine line between god and animal +†+
SUMMARY: After accidentally revealing your slight, very insignificant, totally-not-breathtakingly-huge crush on Captain Speirs to the rest of your company, you're forced to scramble for a cover-up plan. Turns out, it ends up working way better than you expected. 6.8k
WARNINGS: ronald speirs x fem!paratrooper!reader. ww2 content. attempt at humor. getting together. fluff. off-screen s/a. not by any main characters. light angst. religious themes. catholic imagery. author has religious trauma. but this is actually very fluffy. no use of y/n for reader.
This fic is solely inspired by the characters depicted in the HBO show Band of Brothers. In no way was my intention to offend any real life veterans.
The glaring spring sun beating down on you would’ve felt like divine punishment a few months ago, but after that unspeakable winter spent in the Ardennes, you couldn’t be more glad to feel your skin burn under the angry golden light.
A lot of things had changed in those woods no soldier dares to speak about yet. The proof came in the shapes of empty chairs and ragged skin, of night terrors and daily paranoia, of newfound fears and trembling fantasies. Because amidst the grief and the rage, there is something far worse sizzling under Easy’s skin—the hope of making it home.
Haguenau had been the start of it all, hot showers and warm stoves defrosting your insides and getting rid of the rotting misery clinging to your bones, but with the gloomy sky and the constant shelling, there was only so much comfort one was expected to foster. Driving into Sturzelberg had felt like finding the Garden of Eden.
You’ve all made yourselves at home in the little German village, enjoying the fresh food from the farms, the contact with friendly and not-so-friendly civilians, and of course the fleeting moments away from the line. Still, Bastogne had impregnated itself on the company. Besides the bullet wound on your shoulder and the recent urge to stash rations down your pockets until the seams burst, you carry a few other sequelae from the hellish cold. There is the weight on your shoulders and the bags under your eyes, but there’s one in particular that’s not all that bad—a newborn appreciation for things you would’ve otherwise despised.
Like the gummy texture of army bread, the stale smell of abandoned European houses, the bitter taste of lukewarm beer.
Like the loud hollering of your comrades as they grab their lunch plates and find a seat on the multiple metal chairs spread across the cobblestoned street, Luz’s noisy jokes and the men’s screeching laughter hitting your ears like an angel chorus after the deathly silence of the frozen trenches.
Like the smell of sweat and sunwarmed skin that rises with every friend that sits beside you, dirty nails tapping against metal containers and B.O. filling the air when someone reaches out to smack the man in front of him.
The snow had no smell, nothing but blood and gunpowder to enter your lungs and erode them from the inside. You take a deep breath of human-imbued air and hold it there until your cheeks grow red.
“It was terrifying, man,” Janovec huffs as he shambles toward the group of soldiers, pushing Christenson off from where the man was clinging to his side, doubled over with laughter. The young private slumps down next to Talbert, dropping his head on his hands, making Christenson snicker even louder. “It’s not fucking funny!”
“What’s not funny?” Malarkey asks, seizing his opportunity to steal a biscuit from Luz now that everyone had turned to stare at the groaning soldier.
You smother a chuckle against your next spoonful of mashed potatoes—courtesy of Berta, the old German woman you’ve been quartered with—drawing the sergeant’s attention. He meets your eyes, and it’s so heartening to watch that mischievous sparkle come back to life after almost extinguishing, that you don’t even chastise him when he kicks the underside of your boot with his, no remorse shown on his face.
Janovec refuses to speak a word that isn’t muffled grunts, so the men’s attention shifts to Pat instead.
“He—” he chokes on his own hooting, face red and eyes teary. You can feel laughter building on your chest from the sight only. “Little Johnny here got walked in on while he was spending some quality time with Kristina.”
Janovec lets out a wounded sound, making you frown. As mortified as you’d be, had it been you in his place, it’s not bad enough to get John all flustered like that.
Being used to having no concept of privacy or shame left in their bodies, the answer barely draws a chuckle from the rest of the soldiers. Webster, who’s sitting to your right, sends you a puzzled look. You just shrug in response.
“Walked in by who?” Bull questions, bringing his usual cigar up to his lips.
That one gets a reaction.
A cacophony of gasps and no-fucking-way’s echo across the crowd, jaws dropping to the floor and knees being smacked in disbelief. Someone’s cigarette slips from their lips, another one chokes on their mouthful of beans, laughter starts to filter among the shocked sounds.
You simply wince, eyes dropping to your almost-empty plate.
“Fucking Speirs? Are you serious?”
Still hiding behind his hands, Janovec nods.
“Did he shoot you?” Babe leans forward on his chair, wide eyes laser-focused on John.
“Obviously not!” Janovec barks, finally freeing his face just to smack Babe on the shoulder.
“Ouch! It was a fair question!” Heffron pouts, rubbing his arm like it actually hurts. You can’t help but smile softly, pushing the last bite of mashed potatoes back and forth on your plate. There’s a strong impulse to hide it in your pocket, to save it for later just in case you run out of rations again. The rational part of your brain forces you to pick it up with the spoon. “Y’know, he did shoot that one private.”
“You don’t know that,” Lipton intervenes, seemingly completely uninterested in the gossip, savoring his cup of fresh coffee instead.
“Please,” Babe huffs. “We all know it’s true, just like the POWs incident.”
You catch Malarkey’s flinch at the words, the way his smile dims as his eyes get that hazy look.
“Even if you ignore all that, he’s still pretty fucking scary,” Talbert chimes in, wrapping his arm around the back of Martin’s chair. “I mean, the man ran into Kraut territory alone. And he came back.”
That was pretty hot, you think in the back of your mind, still trying to force the stupid spoon inside your mouth and not into your pocket.
Except, everything grows eerily silent in the next second. You can feel at least ten pairs of eyes on you, reminding you of the time when you’d just arrived at camp Toccoa, as odd as an alien to the men. Slowly, you raise your head, wondering if an 88 had suddenly crawled up from behind you.
“Hot?” Liebgott spits out the word like it’s poisonous, face deformed in horror.
Oh. You said that outloud.
Knowing that these boys smell embarrassment like sharks smell blood, you know better than to blush and stutter. That’d only make it worse. Instead, you disinterestedly shrug again, filling your mouth with mashed potatoes to win some time.
You’d planned on taking your slight, very insignificant, totally-not-breathtakingly-huge crush on the captain to the grave, or now that the future grew brighter, back home to Boston. You’d foreseen no future in which the rest of the company ever learned about it, not even entertaining the thought whenever it dared to sneak up on you in the middle of the night, so now you’re left to scramble for a cover-up plan.
“You think Speirs is hot?” Even Pat had stopped laughing, all the attention pointed at you.
“Oh, come on.” You roll your eyes, still not meeting anyone’s gaze. The potatoes taste like acid down your throat, your pulse growing quicker under your stoic mask. “You all have eyes, you know he’s attractive.”
“No, we don’t.” Babe shakes his head furiously, Talbert and Liebgott mirroring him.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Malarkey blurts out your name, sending you a perturbed look. “He’s a psycho!”
There being no going back, all that’s left for you to do is smirk and double down. “A hot psycho.”
“No, no. He’s a plain and simple, good-old psycho.”
“He’s not even that scary, guys.” Somehow, that wins you even more flabbergasted stares. “You’re all so dramatic.”
“Wait, wait.” Luz theatrically raises a hand to quiet down the rest of the men, leaning over Malarkey to look you straight in the eye. “You’re telling me, that all this time, all I had to do to charm you was to… speak like this?”
He says those last few words in that same low drag the feared captain always uses, as if his voice is melting off his tongue and lazily dripping down onto whoever is lucky enough to hear. More than once, you’ve had the urge to lick them out of his mouth, to drink them down directly from the source, even when he’s threatening some Kraut prisoner with a gun to their head. Especially when he’s a little bloody.
But coming from Luz, it just sounds ridiculous.
“So, Private,” he calls you, putting on what you guess his idea of a seducing face is. “You got a lighter?”
“Oh, Sparky,” Malarkey joins him in what must be an attempt at your voice. It sounds more like the mewl of a dying cat. “I got a couple other shiny things I could show you.”
“Okay, I’m done here.” You try to get up and leave, but Perconte, who’d at some point decided to stand behind your chair, grabs you by the shoulders and pushes you back onto your seat. “Hey!”
Luz tsks, shaking his head slowly, trying—and miserably failing—to recreate that crazed look that sometimes takes over captain Speirs’s face. “When you talk to an officer, you say Sir, private.”
You scoff at that. Seriously, Speirs isn’t even that mean.
At least, he’s never been to you.
“Oh, I apologize, Sir.” Malarkey whispers the title in a saccharine, salacious way that feels right out of those excessively-lewd soap operas. It makes you cringe, sliding lower on your chair with a grimace.
“Is this how you actually see me, Malark?” You raise an eyebrow at him, not waiting for a response before turning to Luz. “No wonder you can’t manage to get laid, that was terrible.”
George opens his mouth, surely a retort ready on the tip of his tongue.
“What’s going on here?” It’s the same tar-like drag, but more smoky and cold-blooded, less Luz-y. “Aren’t you all supposed to be at calisthenics right now?”
If you had a camera on you, you’d love to immortalize the faces of pure panic that Malarkey and Luz pull. They freeze like statues of a Greek comedy, eyes so big they might just fall off their sockets, pale as the snow that still haunts your dreams.
As if in slow motion, them and every other man turns to stare at the devil they were just speaking of. He stands, tall and untouchable, just a few feet away from the backs of your torturers, impassive expression on his face and crossed arms filling his uniform just right.
Oh, for God’s sake. You’d have to be blind not to think he’s hot.
It’s a reward to watch the boys scramble for their words, fumbling and mumbling all over each other, shrinking under the relentless eyes of the officer. It makes you straighten up with renewed leverage, head tilting back smugly. You could swear Speirs’s lips twitch into the start of a grin, but it’s gone before you can be sure, leaving nothing but gun metal-hardness.
“Calisthenics were cancelled, Sir.” Lip takes mercy on the men, saving them from digging themselves into a deeper hole. “There’ll be a baseball game later, they want us focused on that.”
After the first week of no action—patrols by the riverbank feeling like nothing more than a walk in the park—the officers had started to let the men organize baseball and football games in the afternoons, always that they weren’t on patrol duty.
Anything to keep away the excessive drinking and bloody fights.
“Right, I’d forgotten.” There it is, like syrup dribbling from his tongue. Your mouth dries with the need to taste it. His stone-gray eyes sweep over the men, and it’s hard not to smirk at the way they all recoil under it. “Carry on, then.”
In unison, Luz and Malarkey let out a relieved sigh, sharing that we-got-away-with-it look you’ve witnessed so many times. You glare at them through narrowed eyes, biting your tongue to stop yourself from calling them out and getting them in real trouble.
Speirs turns around without another word, slipping a pack of smokes out of his pocket and pulling one out with his teeth, marching toward some house he’ll probably clear out of any sparkling stuff.
He stops in his tracks, black leather boots digging into terracotta dirt. They’re the same ones every paratrooper uses, but on him, they somehow look more imposing, glinting onyx and heavy rubber. You’re beginning to feel parched.
It’s been way too long since you’ve gotten laid.
The captain snaps you out of your far too-horny-for-work thoughts by spinning back around, holding the cigarettes out toward the men.
It’s an old trick by now, one that barely makes sense when half of the men are smoking already. Still, it dawns on them like a spell, various degrees of tension taking over their bodies. Only Lipton is unfazed by it, giving the officer nothing but a subtle snort.
With the kind of bravery that only comes out whenever you have to charge into a Kraut-infested town, you decide to take a chance to prove your point.
That’s the only reason why you rise to your feet, leaving your plate on the ground along with your sanity—to prove a point. Not because you’re dying to be a little closer to Speirs. Not because ever since Haguenau, he’s been spending most of his time collecting souvenirs or with the other officers playing cards, and you’ve barely been able to delight your eyes with that pretty face. Not because your veins fill with electricity when his eyes settle on you.
Of course not. You just want to shut your comrades up.
Because this is the only language they seem to understand—boisterous stupidity.
“I do.” And look at that, your voice isn’t even that shaky. You pat yourself on the back mentally.
With everyone’s stunned eyes on you, you make your way through the sea of soldiers and toward the looming captain, holding his gaze valiantly. Malarkey tries giving you an alarmed look, but you ignore him completely, drawn like a moth to a forest fire.
And there it is, that same ephemeral twitch of his mouth.
Funeral silent, Speirs’s calloused fingers fish a cigarette out of the carton. Your fingers brush as you grab the smoke, bringing it up to your lips while he pulls out his lighter—some glossy zippo he no doubt stole from some poor private.
Time seems to halt as the flame heats the space between you, burning all the oxygen out of your lungs. The golden glow reflects on his irises when he lights his cigarette, as deep as the pits of hell, as luring as a homely hearth.
He extends the lighter your way, surely expecting you to take it like you did with the smoke. Instead, with your eyes still staring into his, you lean forward, dipping the end of your Lucky Strike into the fire he offers you.
Okay, maybe the point had been proven already. This one might’ve been just for you. Still, it draws a gasp out of someone, and that’s enough to make you smirk.
You pull back then, cigarette between your fingers, a cloud of smoke rising from your parted lips. But even through it, you catch the faint hint of surprise in Speirs’s eyes. It makes it all the sweeter.
“Thank you, Sir,” you murmur, nothing like Malarkey’s pornographic taunt. Still, it leaves a tingly aftertaste on your tongue.
For a single moment, you play with the idea of him actually pulling out his gun and putting a bullet through your head. Instead, something far more unsettling happens.
A smile—real and tender around the edges, nothing like the admittedly maniacal one he gives soldiers sometimes—takes over his face, perfectly straight teeth and framing lines.
“No problem,” he says your name, leaving you with no chance to retake the air that’d been just knocked out of your lungs. He’s gone in less than a second, gliding over the dusty ground like a ghost, melting into the distance as if nothing earthshaking had just occurred.
Your friends’ befuddled silence confirms that it had.
With your heart pounding against your ribcage like it’s trying to burst out, still breathless and high on the rush, you face them in complete nonchalance.
“See?” You take a drag of your cig, tilting your head cheekily. “Nothing to be scared of.”
With that, you retreat as well, striding away from the men in search for a safe place where you can properly freak out.
The sharks had been dissipated, the mission had been successful.
It shouldn’t surprise you anymore that things like this happen. It’s definitely not the first time, and sadly it doesn’t seem like it’ll be the last. Still, there’s a small part of you that continues to have faith that the men will one day come to see you as one of their own, as an equal they can respect and not just tolerate, as a human and a soldier, not just a broad.
And while most of them had come around to it, there will always be a too-drunk soldier that’ll try to “put you in your place” or “show you what you’re good for.”
It shouldn’t surprise you anymore.
But the tears still come, behind the locked door of Berta’s bathroom, away from the sight of any comrade. It takes you a while to drag yourself out of the shower—the guy’s hands barely made it up your shirt before you knocked him down with a kick to the nuts, but you still scrub your whole body raw, phantom touches making your stomach turn—and get dressed in the same uniform you were wearing then. The fabric feels itchy on your red skin, soiled with something unwashable. There’s nothing you can do but wrap yourself in it.
It hurts, but you’ve become incredibly good at pulling yourself together in record time, so you’re as good as new in less than an hour.
Your eyes might still be red around the edges, and your palm might sting from how tight you’re holding your rifle, and the simple image of that barn you’d been cornered in is enough to push bile up your throat—but you’re good. You have to be.
Like sharks to blood. You won’t let them see you bleed.
Still not quite ready to rejoin the rest of the soldiers for another afternoon game, knowing that the few witnesses who’d dragged the guy away from you had for sure already passed down the tale like folklore, you make your way down to a small meadow by the riverside. It’s where you’ve spent most of your free days in Sturzelberg, just a few yards away from the town square, secluded enough to allow you some privacy but close enough to be within earshot of any emergencies.
Orange and golden swirl across the water as the sun begins to set, the clouds painted a soft shade of pink that bathes over the daisies posed at the edge of the water. Your steps are quiet as a fawn’s as you make your way through the trees, eyes a little too swollen for you to notice the silhouette that hovers near the flowers.
Which is why the sudden whisper of prayers carried by the breeze makes you nearly jump out of your own skin. Your rifle is up and cocked in a heartbeat, ready to shoot anything that might be about to pounce on you. What you find instead is Speirs, kneeling by the river, forehead firmly pressed against intertwined hands. The book you’d been planning on reading slips from your hand and lands in the mud.
There are many, many shocking aspects to the sight.
For once, to watch a powerful, unbreakable man like Captain Ronald Speirs in such a vulnerable position feels inherently wrong. As if a silent universal rule had been shattered, unsettling in an intrinsic way. He belongs in the skies, between the gods and the immortal heroes. Not in the mud, with the rest of you animals.
This is the first time you’ve seen him praying, too. You’ve all been there—in the C-47s on your way to Normandy, on the frozen ground of Bastogne while Father Maloney prayed over you, in that church in Rachamps under the candlelight. Rosaries and crosses are no strangers to the suffering men of Easy, a flimsy reassurance that there’ll be comfort after all this torture, that there’s someone out there watching over you. Speirs always seemed above it, though, not one to believe in silly things like salvation.
There’s also the inescapable fact that he’s shirtless. You refuse to let your eyes linger on the toned muscle, shimmering golden with sweat and condensation, calling your name like the forbidden fruit.
Instead, you focus on the scars.
Scattered all across every inch of visible skin, they vary from thin and silver to red and jagged—around the curve of his flexed biceps, drawing X’s over his shoulderblades, down his sides like gills. Some look recent and barely healed, the skin still pink and tender. Some look old, way too old to be war-related.
One of them—raised scar tissue spanning from his nape to his lower back, right over the ridges of his spine—slithers like a serpent when the muscles around it shift under iron-strong skin. His face stays hidden against bruised knuckles, but you know he’s aware of your presence.
“Sorry, Sir.” Hopefully that came out less breathy than you think, your own voice like a distant echo in your ears. “I didn’t mean to—I was just here to—uhm, I’ll leave now.”
Before you can flee with whatever resemblance of dignity you still have, Speirs straightens up, getting to his feet in one swift movement, bare back still facing your way. “No need for that, trooper. This is public property after all.”
The occasions in which you’ve held a one-to-one conversation with the officer have been scarce, nothing more than shouted orders and patrol-related questions. There’s also that one time you ran into each other in Carentan, amidst the woods with nothing but the moon to light your way. You don’t allow yourself to mull over that memory too much, not when his glowing gray eyes come back to haunt you at night if you do.
You awkwardly shuffle in your place, toeing at the damp soil under your boots and searching for appropriate words to say to the man you’ve spent the best part of the last two years fantasizing over.
“Sorry I interrupted you, Sir,” is what ends up leaving your mouth.
He chuckles, and it’s as groundbreaking as any shell or mortar. He stands with his feet planted shoulder-width apart, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes set where the sky meets the river. Relaxed, but still so grand.
“It was nothing important. I’ve never been big on prayers anyway.” His voice sounds slightly off, more grave than usual, slightly cavernous. “It just gets… complicated, the closer we get to the end.”
The earth under your feet cracks further, giving way to a place so holy you never dreamt of reaching it, and you’re not quite sure on how to proceed without getting crushed in the way.
Captain Speirs—the legend, the boogeyman, the heartless super-soldier—willingly opening up to you.
He takes your silence as an invitation.
“I spent so long convincing myself I was already dead, I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the fact that I might make it out of this alive.” He lets out a dry laugh, one that sinks under your skin and nestles against your bone marrow. “I hoped divine wisdom might do the trick. I just wish I’d paid more attention during Sunday school. I didn’t even bring my own rosary.”
An idea, batshit enough to make your brain hurt, comes to you like a real godly revelation.
There’s nothing else much for you to lose. You might as well.
With a loud gulp, you force your body to start functioning again, lowering your rifle to rest against the trunk of a nearby tree and approaching the captain with slow steps while your hands reach for your neck.
“I know, it feels like a trap. Like the moment you take a leap of faith, the floor will give under your feet.” You unclasp the leather cord resting around your neck with quick fingers, white gold crucifix digging into your skin as your hand wraps around it tightly, clammy with the nerves coiling up inside you. “But if it helps at all, I always expected you to make it out of here.”
It was mostly wishful thinking, but he doesn’t have to know that.
You reach his side just as he’s taking in your words, humming under his breath, his eyes dropping down to the daisies swaying in the late afternoon wind. Yours remain on the horizon, the sun a few minutes away from starting to dive into the Rhine.
“And why is that, private?”
A million words dance behind your lips, you’re once again stuck hunting for the right ones.
“I don’t know, maybe because you seemed so convinced you wouldn’t. Life has a tendency to be ironic like that.”
You twirl the necklace around your index finger until the tip grows white, the gold warming up against your palm, the small carved Christ engraving itself on your flesh.
“I got a couple other shiny things I could show you,” Malarkey’s voice flashes through your head, forcing you to hold back a wince.
Those are exactly the kind of words you’re avoiding.
“I’ve never been an avid prayer, either,” you say instead. There’s a sudden burning weight washing all over your body, equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. Speirs is looking right at you. “But it’s solacing, to have something on you to protect you.” With that, you offer him the crucifix, still not brave enough to meet his gaze. “But even if for you it’s not, I’ve been told you like sparkling things, Sir.”
The quiet seconds in which the necklace dangles from your fist between your bodies are excruciating, nothing to distract you from the reeling possibilities of this ruining everything. His eyes on you only get heavier, your breaths becoming short and shallow, pink prickling at your cheeks in that way you’ve hidden from the men for so long.
“You know, it’s usually good manners to look a man in the eye when bestowing such a gift upon him.”
It’s mostly military obedience that drives you to finally face him, every muscle wound up hard enough to ache, about ready to launch yourself into the Rhine and swim all the way back to America. But rather than the anger or disdain you’d prepared for, on his face you encounter something far worse.
“Holy shit,” you gasp, fingers spamming with the urge to cradle his pretty face, allowing the cross to slip from your grasp. With impeccable reflexes, Speirs catches it before it can plummet to the ground. But you don’t even swoon over it like you would’ve before, not when there’s crimson trickling from his nose, some more drying over the bridge. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Do you wear this often?” You’re not even sure what he’s talking about anymore, forgetting about the necklace all together.
With enough recklessness to get you killed, your hand makes its way to his jaw, holding him in place while you look over his injuries. It’s the first time you’ve seen him bleed. It’s as disturbing as the sight of him on his knees.
“Did you run all the way to Berlin and fought the SS on your own?” His face attempts to slip from your grasp as his eyes continue to drift to the crucifix. You stop him with trembling fingers, his piercing gaze like a laser dot flashing on your forehead. “What happened? Did you break it?”
“So you’re a nurse now, too?”
Exasperated, you scoff. Out of everyone you expected to be this stubborn…
“Ron.” It’s like your brain short circuits, nothing but static resounding between your ears. You think a confused little noise leaves your throat, but you can’t be sure. His lips twitch, and he doesn’t fight it this time, finally giving into that same smile he gave you just the day before. “You can call me Ron.”
Your first thought is: It’s a trap. A test, maybe. A trial to see whether you’d break the rules as soon as the opportunity is presented. You remember Captain Sobel at Toccoa, all his tricky questions and extra tasks, all his attempts at making you falter.
But Speirs continues to look right into your eyes, silver lakes bottomless but crystalline, no hidden threats waiting to bite you under their ashen waters.
“Ron.” It comes out low, like a newborn butterfly with quivering wings, fluttering on your tongue and launching itself into the air. It makes his smile widen, and the miraculous sight kickstarts the gears in your brain. “How did you get this?”
The name makes you flinch, almost imperceptibly. He still catches it, his mellowed expression hardening like steel.
“I heard about what happened. I got to the barn after you’d already left, but the men were still holding him down. I had a word or two with him,” he says casually, as if reality as you knew it isn’t crumbling all around you. “The bastard managed to lay one on me before I finished him off, though.”
The question is out before you can dump it in the landfill where you keep all the stupid things you want to say. And maybe there is a God out there, because it makes Speirs–Ron. It makes Ron laugh, hearty and loud.
“No, I didn’t. Though maybe I should’ve.” His jaw, still cradled in the cup of your palm, ticks under your touch. “The world would be better off without scum like him.”
You stare, unblinkingly, still not quite sure that you’re not dreaming.
It’d be no surprise that the captain had taken punishment into his own hands, but the fact that he’d gotten into a fight with the private—that he’d been hit, in the face, hard enough to bleed—all because the guy had gotten touchy with you was unfathomable.
You’re no Helen. Not the kind to launch a thousand ships in her name, not the kind to have war gods like Captain Speirs dropping from Olympus just for her. It's just not how your life works, and you’d come to terms with that.
“You shouldn’t have,” you murmur, thumb wiping away the blood that drips over his lips and down his chin. There’s the distant desire to lick it off your finger, you push it back until it vanishes. “He was just drunk, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“I’ve been drunk before,” he says your name, sending goosebumps down your spine. “Not once have I felt the need to assault a woman because of it. There’s no excuse for the man’s actions, so don’t search for them.”
You swallow harshly, your gut wrenching with the memories of the event. There’s a small part of you that’s glad to know Wiseman won’t be a problem anymore. There’s another one that would deal with him a thousand times if it meant no harm for Ron.
“Still, a court martial would’ve sufficed. You didn’t have to get yourself hurt.”
He snorts, the sound rumbling against your skin. “Hell, this is nothing. You should’ve seen how he fared off.”
“You said you didn’t shoot him.”
“I didn’t.” His hand comes to scratch at a mosquito bite placed on his collarbone, giving you a direct view of his torn knuckles. And also reminding you of just how naked he is from the waist up, bare skin just a few inches apart from your body. “He still won’t be out of the hospital for a while.”
A beat of silence, only the soothing murmur of the river and the occasional buzz of a flying bug filling the space between you.
“Thank you,” you whisper, a million other words stuck behind your teeth.
Ron doesn’t answer, his face revealing nothing of what might be going on inside that fascinating head of his. This time, you allow his face to slip away as he turns to stare at your crucifix, your hand dropping to your side and feeling useless now that’s not caring for him.
“Do you feel protected when you wear it?” He gives the necklace a little shake. Your eyes remain on his face. “Has God ever answered your prayers?”
“Not quite.” After all, the worst things that could happen, have happened while it was firmly around your neck. “It’s mostly a token now, a sort of reminder. But if it helps you… come to terms with your own survival, I want you to keep it.”
Another still moment. Your fingers fidget with the urge to return to his skin, addicted after just a small dose. There’s scarlet clinging to the tips, and you wish there was a way to make it stay forever. Eternal evidence that this mindbreaking moment actually happened.
“I’ll keep it,” he finally says.
You wonder how much the choice was influenced by faith, and how much by his adoration for shinies.
Then he hands you back the cross, no word uttered, expectant eyes returning to your face. You frown, perplexed.
“What?” you choke out, eyes widening.
He doesn’t repeat the order, simply swinging the necklace in front of your face, waiting.
“You want me to—Oh, okay. Okay.”
When this all ends—either buried six feet under ground or under the missed blankets of your bed—you’ll have time to regret your moronic babbling. Right now, all your mental power is concentrated on taking the crucifix in your hands and fitting the tiny lever of the clasp under your torn nails.
Your teeth dig into your bottom lip when you realize that to fasten the cord around his neck, you’re going to have to put your hands around his neck.
Men have been killed for less.
“I’m just gonna—yeah,” you pathetically mutter. You’ve looked Krauts in the eye and stabbed them to the heart with your bayonet, for Christ’s sake. You can do this. “Excuse me.”
Ron’s broad shoulders force you to take a step closer, arms hovering awkwardly over his frame in an attempt to touch as little bare skin as possible. His chest ends up just a whisper away from yours, the warmth and scent of his skin engulfing you like mist, the soft hairs curling on his nape brushing against your fingers as you unsuccessfully try to hook the claw in the opposite loop.
“You wanna know why?” The whispered syrup of his voice lands right over your cheek, so close to where you’ve wanted it for so long, enough for you to lick it if you tried.
“It’s a token. A reminder.” The necklace finally latches into place, your gaze flashing back to Ron’s. “That I have something to live for now. Someone.” Your hands linger on his neck, pinned in place by his intense eyes, hanging off of every word melting off his tongue. “And for you, a reminder that the next time you pray, I’ll be there to protect you.”
Your mouth feels swollen, your lungs empty, your knees weak.
“Sir—” He gives you a pointed look. “Ron. What are you talking about?”
“This might be a godless land,” and you might never get used to the sound of your name leaving those lips. “But nothing bad will happen to you while I’m around. Just call my name, and I’ll be there.”
He laughs roughly, shaking his head.
“I’m no God, sweetheart.” He licks his lips slowly, eyes dropping down to your mouth. Your breath hitches, lips parting on instinct. “But I make a good attack dog.”
You make a little protesting noise in the back of your throat, open palms coming to rest against the marred skin of his shoulders.
“You’re so much more than that.”
“Yeah?” He leans slightly closer, mischief flashing on his face. “Like a hot psycho?”
Your mouth widens with a scream of pure horror, ready to bolt back into town to kill Luz and Malarkey with your bare hands. Maybe you’ll rip their heads from their bodies, maybe you’ll dunk their faces into a bowl of Malarkey’s soup until they drown, maybe you’ll convince some farm girl to lend you her horses so you can quarter them.
But before you can do any of it, Ron presses his lips to yours.
He tastes just like you’d expected him to—like bubbling amber candy, dark with whiskey tobacco, intoxicating and maddening. Then there’s the taste of blood, almost better than anything else. Because it’s purely his, staining your teeth and coating your tongue and washing down your throat.
A tiny moan leaves your mouth when his arms come to wrap around your middle, pulling you closer until your bodies melt into one. Your fingers bury themselves into his hair, somehow still smooth and soft even after two years at war. His dig into the meat of your waist, hard enough to leave what you wish will be fingertip-shaped bruises all along the skin.
You allow his tongue to slip past your teeth, yours peeking out to welcome it, the muscles tangling together like two currents of water. He growls, his hold on you tightening to the right side of painful, like he’s forcibly holding himself back.
Fuck whatever the rest of the men have to say, no one on this earth has ever been hotter than Ronald Speirs.
“I don’t need you to save me,” you whisper against him, licking over his swollen lips. “I just need you to make it out of here with me.”
“I don’t plan on going anywhere, darling.”
You dive back into the waiting heat of his mouth, wishing you could crawl inside of it, slip down his throat and make a home under his ribcage, just to the right of his heart. Your hands drift to his bare chest, steel-hard skin turning into molten metal under your touch, gentle and malleable, ready to turn into whatever you mold it into.
Little does he know, he’s already all you’ve ever wanted.
You continue kissing for a while, enough for the sun to hide halfway behind the horizon, everything around you painted in shades of pink and orange. It’s languid and ardent, almost lazy but not any less fervid. You take your time to explore each other, no need to hurry, the army and the Krauts and the war all insignificant beside the collision of your universes.
Ron does something truly wicked with his tongue, licking behind your teeth and sucking your tongue into his mouth until your knees give up, only the strong hold of his arms around your waist keeping you upright. You pay him back with a nibble to his lip, metallic and honeyed whiskey coating the roof of your mouth, a taste you won’t ever be able to wash away.
Or at least, you hope so.
Then someone calls your name, breaking through the air like thunder, making you jump in your place.
Maybe your secret hideout wasn’t as secret as you believed.
“Hey, you heard the news?!” Janovec stumbles out from the trees, kicking grass off his boots before suddenly freezing at the view in front of him.
You quickly take a step back from Ron, wiping away spit and blood from your lips. But the Captain doesn’t let you go far, arms around your waist pulling you right back against his side.
John blinks at the two of you for a second before his instinct kicks in, giving the officer a stiff salute.
“Sir, I didn’t realize you were here.”
Biting down a giggle, you slump slightly against Ron’s side. “What news?”
“300,000 Krauts just surrendered.”
“Yeah, we’re moving out in an hour.” John’s lips part, clearly wanting to ask but not brave enough to do so with Ron’s blazing glare on him. He shuffles in his place, clearing his throat and dropping his gaze to the ground. “So, uhm, I’ll leave you to—” He points at your general direction without looking. “Do you thing.”
With that, he rushes back into the woods, all heavy steps and flushed cheeks.
“Well,” you sigh, turning to Ron, hands returning to his neck, hanging from it along your cross. “That’s for sure gonna spark some rumors.”
He chuckles, and this time there’s nothing stopping you from drinking it right from the source.
“Luckily I’ve never been one to care about rumors,” he murmurs with a boyish grin.
“Yeah.” One of your hands slips up to his jaw, nails scratching along the stubble there, placing a quick peck on the bloody tip of his nose. “Me neither.”
NOTES: he's so scawwy guys, can't you see?
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