⋆。 ˚ mouth like that ³⁰
lowdown ☆ the team barely makes it out of the safehouse before black noir arrives. trapped together in a motel room afterward, soldier boy demands the truth—and the argument turns into something neither of you can take back. ride or die ☆ soldier boy x reader ( f ) miles ☆ 2892 ride style ☆ even more tense danger on the trail ☆ betrayal, intense argument, references to past captivity and torture, involuntary loss of bodily autonomy, power-induced compulsion, rough physical confrontation, panic response, fear, cliffhanger!!
liv's log ☆ before i hear any complaints, remember that yall voted and chose this power so 🤭
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the motel room smells of industrial cleaner, trying unsuccessfully to erase every trauma that has happened inside.
one bed. one chair near the window. carpet patterned loudly enough to hide every drop of blood it absorbed. the curtains are shut tight, but a thin stripe of parking-lot light slips through the middle where they don’t quite meet, cutting across the floor and climbing the side of the dresser in an ugly yellow line. somebody in the room above you keeps walking from one end to the other with heavy, uneven steps.
nobody complains. the safehouse is gone. not burned, not abandoned properly, not cleaned of fingerprints and half-empty beer bottles and every quiet little thing that made the place start feeling like home. just left behind in a rush because black noir appeared somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.
the team splits across three rooms because keeping everyone together makes the motel look suspicious and because butcher says you need an hour to regroup before anybody starts making decisions with adrenaline still rattling around inside their skulls.
you end up with soldier boy.
you close the door behind you and throw the deadbolt. then the chain. after, you check the gap in the curtains because motion feels better than stopping, and stopping means noticing the way your body still feels wrong. too alert. too hot beneath your skin. every sound comes in sharper than it should—the ice machine coughing several doors down, a car pulling into the lot, the faint scrape of a key against metal from the room beside yours.
your pulse hasn’t settled since the safehouse. neither has the strange pressure behind your eyes.
you wipe your cheek with the sleeve of your jacket and look at the faint red smear it leaves behind. barely enough blood to matter. annie had checked your pupils before you left the van, fingers firm under your chin while she asked whether you felt dizzy and you lied badly enough that her mouth tightened.
you need water. sleep. maybe several hours of silence. you need to speak to butcher before soldier boy starts asking questions you’re not sure how to answer.
the thought arrives a second too late.
“what the fuck did you do to me?” his voice cuts through the room from behind you.
you stop with one hand still pressed against the curtain. slowly, you turn. soldier boy stands near the foot of the bed. he hasn’t taken off his jacket. hasn’t set his shield down properly either; it rests against the edge of the mattress close enough to grab in a second, leather straps hanging loose against the faded bedspread. his shoulders are rigid beneath his shirt. jaw locked. eyes fixed on you with an intensity that makes the stale little room feel several feet smaller than it is.
you breathe in through your nose. “ben—”
“don’t.” the word lands fast. sharp enough to stop you before you take the first instinctive step toward him.
you stay where you are. “we had to leave.”
“wasn’t what i asked.”
“black noir found the safehouse.”
“i heard you the first time.”
“then you know why we couldn’t stay there.”
his mouth pulls into something humorless. “yeah. i know what you wanted.”
the parking-lot light catches the side of his face when he shifts, leaving the rest in shadow. he looks angry. soldier boy wears anger well enough that it’s become the closest thing he owns to a neutral expression. but there’s something beneath it now that you haven’t seen directed at you before. something meaner than fear because he hates himself for feeling it.
your stomach knots. “i was trying to get everyone out safely.”
“so you told me to leave.”
“you weren’t listening.”
“i was listening just fine.”
“you wanted to stay and fight noir in a safehouse full of people who didn’t have time to prepare for that.”
“it was my choice.”
the words come down flat and heavy between you. you blink. “what?”
“my choice,” he repeats. “you don’t get to make it for me.”
your throat tightens. “i wasn’t trying to—”
“bullshit.”
you flinch before you can stop yourself. not enough to give him the satisfaction of pretending he scared you. enough that his eyes catch the movement.
soldier boy laughs once beneath his breath. no humor. none. “all those little errands with butcher… sneaking off with hughie. closed doors every goddamn time i walk into a room.” he steps closer, slow enough that the space has time to change around him. “that’s what you’ve been doing? figuring out how to put me on a leash?”
the line hits harder than it should. maybe because you know where it came from. maybe because you stood in front of butcher weeks ago with your bruised knuckles curled at your sides and told him soldier boy wasn’t a weapon he could manage with a freezer. maybe because you meant every word.
“no.”
“right.”
“i didn’t know that would happen.”
his expression shutters. “you didn’t know.”
“no.”
“but butcher did.”
you hesitate. wrong. too small. barely a pause. still, it is enough.
his eyes harden. “there it is.”
“ben, listen to me.”
“don’t fucking tell me to listen.”
you take one step toward him before you think better of it, hand lifting automatically. not to restrain him. not to order anything. just to touch his arm because touching him has become habit in the weeks since the gym wall. a palm against his bicep. fingers catching his wrist. your cheek against his chest in the dark when neither of you knows what to say.
soldier boy steps back before your fingers reach him. not violently. worse. his whole body recoils from the possibility of your touch with a quick, instinctive movement that leaves your hand suspended uselessly in the space between you.
for a second, neither of you speaks.
your fingers curl slowly into your palm. “i’m not going to do anything.”
“you already did.”
“it wasn’t intentional.”
“my legs moved!” his voice changes around the sentence. rougher now. scraped down to something you almost wish he’d hide beneath anger again.
he looks past you for half a second, not at the curtain, not at the parking lot behind it. farther. somewhere colder.
“had a guy on my team,” he says. “crawled inside people’s heads and left ’em trapped in whatever ugly shit their brain could come up with. nightmares. memories. didn’t matter. once he got in, your body stopped belonging to you until somebody pulled you out or you rotted where you stood.”
you swallow. “ben—”
“i know what it feels like when somebody else gets their hands on the controls.”
russia sits beneath the words without needing to be named. the chamber. the restraints. the hiss of gas. decades of waking up into somebody else’s decision and having no way to stop what happens next.
your chest pulls tight. “i’m not them.”
his eyes snap back to yours. “then what are you?”
that hurts because you don’t know yet. not fully. you know about the vial. the ugly green liquid. butcher setting it on the table between you and hughie with an expression too casual to be trusted. you know hughie looking at it like he remembers exactly how it felt to become powerful enough to stop being afraid for a few hours and hates that some part of him misses it. you know the quick burn of the needle. the cold rush under your skin. the headache that arrived twenty minutes later and the metallic taste crawling over your tongue when panic spiked at the sight of noir behind you. you know your voice sounded wrong when you told soldier boy to leave. heavier. doubled for half a second by something that didn’t sound human enough to belong inside your throat.
you didn’t have time to understand it then. you barely have time now. “i took something,” you say carefully.
his jaw tightens. “from butcher.”
“yes.”
“what?”
you look toward the door. the closed bolt. the chain. the narrow room suddenly holding far too much. “i need to talk to him first.”
soldier boy’s face goes cold. “wrong answer.”
he moves toward the door. you step in front of it before he reaches you. not close enough to touch. enough to block the handle.
“move.”
“not until you calm down.”
“move.”
“ben—”
“get out of my way.”
you shake your head once. “you’re not going across that walkway ready to tear butcher apart while everyone is still trying to figure out whether noir followed us here.”
“butcher gave you something that crawled into my fucking body.”
“i know.”
“do you? because from where i'm standing, it don't like it.”
he takes another step. you hold your ground.
the old version of this would almost be familiar: soldier boy crowding your space, your chin lifting because you refuse to give him the satisfaction of watching you retreat, the two of you turning every conversation into a collision because neither of you knows how to step around anything cleanly.
but nothing about this carries the charged, almost-playful rhythm training taught you to trust. no opening he expects you to use. no restraint hidden beneath the pressure of him. just anger. just the fact that he doesn't want you touching him.
“last chance,” he says.
your pulse kicks harder. “you need to stop acting like i did this to hurt you.”
“you don’t get to tell me how to act.”
“i’m trying to explain.”
“you’re trying to keep me in a room.”
“because you’re furious.”
“smart girl.”
“because butcher is across the walkway and you look ready to kill him.”
“smarter than you look.”
his hand reaches for your shoulder—not to hit. not to hurt—you know that even with adrenaline pouring too loudly through you. he intends to move you aside. simple. effortless. the same way he always could before. one hand closing around your upper arm, shifting your body out of the path because the difference between his strength and yours has never been a debate worth having.
your own hand catches his wrist and you shove. the movement happens faster than thought. one second, soldier boy's in front of you, solid and immovable and furious enough that the entire room feels built around him. the next, the strength inside your body surges upward in one sharp, unnatural rush, answering the panic before you can understand what it's doing.
his balance breaks. actually breaks. his boots scrape hard against the carpet. his shoulder slams into the dresser with enough force to shove it sideways against the wall. the lamp rattles violently. the water glass tips over and rolls toward the edge before falling to the floor, splashing across the cheap carpet. the framed print above the bed swings crooked on its nail.
soldier boy catches himself with one hand braced against the dresser.
silence.
you stare at him.
your palm tingles where it pressed against his wrist. your breath comes shallow and quick. the rush beneath your skin remains there, humming through your muscles with an intensity that feels impossible and sickeningly good at the same time.
“i—”
soldier boy looks down at the hand braced against the dresser. then toward the few feet of space you put between you. then back at you.
the surprise leaves his expression slowly. what replaces it is worse.
“ben,” you say.
he straightens.
“i didn’t mean—”
“what the fuck did you take?”
“let me explain.”
“start talking.”
“i will. just—”
his laugh is short and vicious. “just what? calm down? sit? stay?”
your stomach drops. he starts toward you. not slow this time. you know him well enough to understand he still isn't trying to hurt you. beneath the panic. beneath the noise. beneath the image of him shoved backward by your hands and the terrible certainty that you no longer understand the limits of your own body.
but you also know how quickly his anger can become something larger than either of you. you remember the glow under his shirt. the pressure in the gym. the wall breaking beside your head. he closes the distance.
your palm hits his arm. “stop.” your voice changes. the word leaves your mouth carrying something underneath it. a second note laid beneath the first, deeper and heavier, vibrating faintly through the air with enough force that the room seems to tighten around the sound.
soldier boy stops. mid-step. completely.
his boot remains planted against the carpet. shoulders locked. one hand half-curled at his side. breath caught halfway through his chest as if his body has become a photograph of the motion it intended to finish. only his eyes move.
they find yours. betrayal floods them so quickly it makes you feel physically ill.
“ben,” you breathe.
his jaw strains. a muscle jumps near his temple. his fingers twitch once at his side, small and violent, fighting against an order his body has already accepted. the stillness isn’t peaceful. every line of him looks pulled tight against invisible restraints.
you pull your hand away as if the contact burned you. “i’m sorry.”
his nostrils flare. one shoulder shifts. barely. then again. the command trembles under the force of his resistance. you can see it happening. feel it somehow in the pressure behind your eyes, in the sharp ache blooming at the bridge of your nose. soldier boy drags one foot forward by less than an inch, body moving through the order with the ugly effort of someone forcing himself through concrete.
you step backward. he moves again. one small, furious step. his jaw unlocks with visible strain. “don’t—” the word scrapes out of him. “fucking—”
the last word breaks apart in his throat. his whole body jerks forward. not cleanly. not easily. nothing about it looks like freedom at first. it looks like a man tearing himself through barbed wire made of his own nerves. his shoulders shake once, hard, and the tendons in his neck stand out so sharply they look painful. sweat has broken at his hairline. his breathing turns harsh, ragged, every inhale dragged through clenched teeth while the command fights to keep him where you put him.
your hand lifts before you know what you’re doing. panic moves faster than thought. faster than guilt. your fingers reach for his arm because some stupid part of you still thinks contact can steady what your voice has already broken. then you stop yourself—your hand freezes halfway through the air. the word is there. already forming behind your teeth. stop. one syllable. quick. useful. monstrous.
you clamp your own hand over your mouth. the sound that catches in your throat dies against your palm, small and strangled. your eyes burn. not from tears. from pressure. from fear. from the ugly, electric thing still running beneath your skin and waiting for your voice to give it shape.
soldier boy sees it. even through the command. even through the brutal effort of breaking himself out of it, his eyes flick to your hand over your mouth.
he forces another step. the carpet bunches slightly beneath his boot. his hand curls into a fist, then opens, then curls again as if his own fingers have to remember who they belong to. his whole body trembles with the effort. not weakness—never that—but strain so violent it almost looks like pain.
then something snaps in him. soldier boy lurches forward, dragging in one brutal breath as the command breaks apart around him. the force of it doesn’t send him at you. it sends him down.
his knee hits the carpet first. then the other. the sound is dull and heavy in the motel room, louder than it should be. his hand slams against the floor to catch himself, broad palm pressed into the ugly patterned carpet, shoulders rising and falling hard. sweat shines along his temple. his jaw’s clenched so tightly you can see it jump.
soldier boy is on his knees. because of you.
your hand stays clamped over your mouth. for a second, you can’t move. can’t breathe properly. you just stand there with fingers pressed against your lips, staring at the impossible shape of him on the floor. soldier boy, who doesn’t bow, doesn’t bend, doesn’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing what hurts.
he drags a breath in. then another. each one rougher than the last. the command is gone now, but the room still feels full of it.
slowly, he lifts his head. his eyes find yours.
there’s rage there. of course there is. but under it, it’s something worse than rage. betrayal. violation. the black, horrible certainty of a man who has just learned that your voice can turn his body into a locked door from the inside.
when he speaks, the words come out low and hoarse, stripped down to the bone. “what did you take?”
your palm trembles over your mouth. you lower it slowly, terrified of your own voice now. terrified of what shape a sentence might become if your fear sharpens the wrong syllable. for half a second, you think about lying. not because you want to. because the truth feels big enough to split the motel room open.
but his eyes don’t leave yours. and you can’t handle one more secret. your voice comes out small this time. human.
“temp v.”
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