Soap who goes out to the pub with the lads, fellow soldiers who wheedle and jab and egg each other on. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when they caught on to his one-sided staring contest with a man sitting on his lonesome, black face mask on with a glass of something amber between his hands, observing the chaos around him. He’d met Soap’s eyes once and well… he’s always been a sucker for a pretty pair, especially with the unspoken challenge being presented as he’d lifted his brows with a flat stare. So, when his friends push at his shoulders and hedges him to approach the man, Soap only puts up a token protest.
“What do you want?”
And Soap’s off rambling. He’s never been good at acting suave or mysterious. Put him in front of someone attractive he wouldn’t mind a sliver of attention from and Soap turns into a babbling mess. At least the guy looks amused by it, gaze flickering from Soap to the table he’d vacated a while back. Soap knows he’s blowing his shot with every damn word he speaks but he can’t help himself. Silence would somehow be worse on his fraying nerves.
“You need better friends,” the man, Simon he learns later, says once the topic of how he’d ended up here had come and gone.
Soap nods his head in miserable agreement. “Aye. ‘m sorry for takin’ up so much of yer time. I can buy ye a drink to make up fer it? The waitress will bring it out so ye won’t have to stare at my ugly mug no more.”
He tries to rise, fully intent on flagging down one of the waitstaff when Simon’s hand circles around his wrist.
“Or we can give ‘em something proper to gossip about.”
Soap’s dragged, wide-eyed and disbelieving and to the tune of wolf whistles from his supposed allies, through the front door. Simon might be laughing, his eyes certainly are and Soap goes along with him like a trained dog on a leash all for the chance of seeing them light up like that again.
They wander. Weaving through streets and alleys and around town squares. Soap talks and Simon listens and all-in-all it’s a pleasant evening. He’s got a new friend out of it, a number on a paper slip and the satisfaction of saying: “a lad doesn’t kiss an’ tell,” when Wright tries to prod him for information over their shitty, mess hall breakfast.
