𝄞𝄞𝄞𝄢

soldier boy doesn’t come out of his room.

that’s the shape the day takes. his closed door. the file still open on frenchie’s laptop. firecracker’s broadcast playing muted on the tv until mm finally snaps and shuts it off, leaving your face burned into the back of your eyes anyway. your name beneath a red headline. your town. your age. your body caught in a grainy still while soldier boy’s hand closed around your wrist and dragged you out of a hallway where the deep had cornered you. a story built around half truths that vought decided to take and use.

you should be more frightened by that. you are frightened by it. but the fear has to share space with everything else, and everything else is louder.

homelander is his son.

the words keep arranging themselves wrong in your head no matter how many times you think them. samples collected. stored. transferred. paternal genetic source. ugly clinical phrases for the kind of violation that makes the whole body feel less like a body and more like evidence. 

they didn’t ask soldier boy for a child. they didn’t give him one either. they took something from him and built homelander out of it, then buried the truth under files and dead men and decades of vought polish.

and then he called him.

no one else knows that part. no one else heard the filtered voice, the static, homelander’s voice so small it had made your skin go cold. no one else heard soldier boy’s answer.

the situation’s changed.

you don’t tell anyone despite knowing that secrets aren’t a pretty thing to keep. especially now. despite soldier boy deserving your protection. you keep it because it isn’t yours. because mm had looked at you in the kitchen and told you to give him space, and for once, you listened.

night comes slowly. the safehouse settles by degrees, each room giving up its noise one at a time.  you go to bed because there’s nowhere else to put yourself. still, sleep doesn’t come.

your new room is too unfamiliar to lie to you properly like the old safehouse did. the walls answer differently. the floor complains in sharper spots. the window rattles when the wind hits it, and the radiator makes a thin metallic tick every few minutes that keeps tricking your body into bracing for movement. you lie under the blanket with your hoodie still on and listen anyway.

maybe that is why you hear him.

not at first. at first there’s only the house doing what houses do when people try to rest inside them. soft, barely there, noises. then, beneath that, a door opens down the hall. slowly. carefully. too careful for butcher. too steady for hughie. not light enough for annie. not quick enough for kimiko. your body knows before your brain earns the certainty. you sit up.

another sound follows. leather. a faint metallic adjustment. the low, unmistakable scrape of something heavy being lifted from where it had been resting against a wall. the shield. your throat tightens so fast it hurts.

you’re out of bed before you decide what you’re doing, bare feet finding the cold floor, fingers dragging the hoodie sleeves down over your hands as if that’ll make you less obvious, less afraid, less late. 

the hallway’s dark when you open your door. only a weak strip of light from the living room cuts across the far wall. for a second, all you can see is the shape of him near the front door. 

fully dressed—not an old shirt and sweats; not the half-human version of him that haunted the kitchen this morning. soldier boy stands in the narrow entryway in the suit, chest armor catching the low light, gloves on, boots planted, shield strapped to one arm. 

his jaw is rough, hair pushed back badly, and from behind he looks built out of every version of himself vought ever sold: weapon, legend, monster, flag.

his hand is on the door. for one sick second, you understand that he’s not sneaking out for air. he’s leaving. not the room. not the house for an hour. all of it. all of you.

“wait,” the word comes out before anything else can. not loud. not strong. nothing like an order. it almost breaks in the middle and has to crawl the rest of the way from your throat.

his hand stills on the lock.

you step into the hallway. “please, don’t go.”

he doesn’t turn right away. 

you watch the line of his shoulders, the slight lift of his breathing beneath the armor, the shield angled against his side. he could leave before you reach him. he could open the door, step out, disappear into the dark, and no one in this house could stop him without turning the hallway into another battlefield. even then.

when he finally looks back, his face is hard enough to make you wish he’d kept facing the door. “saying please now?” 

the hit lands with less force than it could have. maybe because you expected worse. maybe because the word is still sitting open between you, embarrassing and naked.

“yeah,” you say. “i am.”

his eyes move over your face once. not gently. not without anger. thoroughly, like he’s checking whether this is another trick your body has taught itself to survive him. “you want something.”

“i want you to stay.”

his mouth shifts into something cruel by habit and too tired to enjoy itself. “that’s what we’re calling it?”

you swallow. “i’m asking.”

that makes his stare sharpen.

for a moment, neither of you says anything. the house behind you remains too still, doors closed, everyone sleeping or pretending well enough not to matter. your pulse beats sickeningly in your throat. the front door waits under his hand.

“go back to bed,” he finally grunts.

“come with me.”

his mouth twists. “that didn’t end well last time.”

your face burns. you let it. there’s no version of this conversation where you get to pretend last night isn’t under the floorboards with the rest of the damage. “different motives this time.” 

he looks away, jaw tight.

you take half a step closer, then stop yourself. leave space. let him keep the door. let him know it’s still there. the discipline of that nearly splits you open.

“ben…”

his eyes come back to you. here, in the hall, with the house dark and his shield on his arm, the name feels less like comfort and more like a hand reaching toward a fuse.

“don’t call me that,” he says.

you nod once, even though you keep looking at him. “okay.”

that seems to throw him more than arguing would have.

you breathe in carefully. “i heard the call.”

everything in him goes still. aimed. “you spying on me now?”

“no.” the answer comes quickly, then you force yourself to slow down because panic’s never been a friend. “i heard enough from the hall. i should’ve walked away sooner.”

his eyes narrow. “but you didn’t.”

“no,” the honesty sits there, ugly and plain.

he studies you for a long second, and you can’t tell if he wants to punish you for it or if some part of him is too exhausted to spend anger on one more thing. “did you tell anyone?”

“no.”

“why not?”

“because it wasn’t mine.”

something shifts in his face. not softness. not forgiveness. only a small disruption in the armor, a place where the expected answer fails to arrive and leaves him with nothing ready to throw back.

you hold your sleeves tight inside your fists. “i’m not going to tell them. if you want them to know, you can tell them.”

a humorless breath leaves him. “that supposed to make you sound trustworthy?”

“probably not.”

“smart.”

“i’m trying something new.”

his grip tightens on the helmet. you see the leather of his glove crease around it. “you don’t know what you heard.”

“i heard him ask if it was really you,” you wish you hadn’t said it. you wish you’d said it better. you wish there were a way to touch the truth without making it bleed again. 

soldier boy’s jaw works once, and the expression on his face makes something behind your ribs hurt badly enough that you have to press your nails into your own palms. he’s not crying. he’d probably walk into traffic before letting that happen where someone could see. but his eyes are wet in the dark, furious with it, shining just enough to make him look betrayed by his own body. 

“guy picks up the phone like that,” he says. “like he’s been waiting.”

you think of homelander’s voice. is this really you? almost boyish and young. almost hopeful. a monster with a child’s hunger trapped underneath the cape and the cameras and the bodies.

“maybe he has,” you say quietly.

soldier boy’s face hardens, but the hurt doesn’t disappear fast enough. “yeah, well… now he found me.”

“you don’t owe him anything.”

he laughs once with disbelief sharp enough to cut. “you giving advice on parenthood now?”

you close your eyes for half a second. when you open them, he’s still there. “no,” you say. “i’m not.”

his stare stays on you.

“i know what i did,” you continue, and your voice threatens to shake, but you don’t let it become an excuse. “i know saying i’m sorry doesn’t fix it. i know wanting you to stay doesn’t give me the right to keep you here. if you walk out that door, i won’t stop you. i won’t follow you. i won’t wake them up and turn it into a team vote.” you swallow, throat tight around the next words. “i’m asking you not to go because i think you’re about to make a choice while you’re bleeding from something nobody can see.”

he looks at you like he hates that sentence. maybe he does. maybe he hates that you aren’t wrong.

“you don’t know shit about it,” he says.

“i know they used you.” your voice comes out low. careful. not gentle enough to be pity. “i know they took pieces of you and put them somewhere you never agreed to. i know they made him in a lab, raised him in one, sold him to the world, and then left you to find out from a file. that’s not fatherhood. that’s theft.”

his mouth opens slightly, then closes. the shield shifts in his hand. 

you see the words hit him one by one. not healing. nothing that clean. only reaching the place under the anger where the truth’s been pacing all day without a name.

“he’s mine,” he says. it sounds like hatred. or grief. 

you shake your head. “he’s your blood. that’s not the same thing.”

his eyes flash. “blood means something.”

“yeah, it does,” you take a breath, then keep going before fear can make the words smaller. “it means homelander is tied to you in a way none of us get to pretend doesn’t matter. but it doesn’t mean he’s you. it doesn’t mean what he’s done belongs to you. it doesn’t mean whatever rotten thing vought built into him was sitting in you first.”

soldier boy looks away. the shield lowers by an inch. you notice because you notice everything about him. it’s one of the more humiliating things about being alive.

“you don’t know that,” his throat moves.

“ben…” you say, softer, and he doesn’t tell you not to this time. “he doesn’t represent you.”

the hallway holds still around the words.

for a moment, he looks young in a way that has nothing to do with age. not innocent. never that. but stripped down to something before the suit, before the shield, before vought taught him how to become a headline and a warning at the same time. confused. angry. scared enough to hate anyone who noticed. his eyes are still wet, and he turns his face a fraction away like the dark might hide it better.

you want to touch him so badly your hand actually moves.

you stop it at your side.

his gaze drops to the aborted motion. neither of you says anything about it.

then, because your mouth has never known when to leave a wound alone and because the alternative is standing there until one of you breaks worse, you say, “besides, if he were really you, he’d have better hair.”

the silence after that is enormous.

soldier boy looks back at you very slowly. “that your idea of comfort?”

“i said if.”

“his hair’s fine.”

you blink. “wow. that’s the part you’re defending?”

his mouth doesn’t pull into a smile. not really. but something in his face breaks by one degree. the smallest fracture. enough to let air through. enough to hurt. you take that for what it is and don’t ask it to become more.

“come to bed,” you repeat.

his eyes darken immediately. “watch it.”

“to sleep.” your face warms, but you keep your voice steady. “literally sleep. unconsciousness. eyes closed. no stupid decisions.”

“you made most of those.”

“and i’m taking accountability by offering a mattress instead.”

that earns you a look. a real one. flat. exhausted. insulted despite everything.

you lift one shoulder. “you can decide if this new mattress is just as shit as the other one.”

“that supposed to sell me?”

“i’m working with what i have.”

“what you have is a shitty mattress.”

“then come complain about it,” the words settle softer than you mean them to.

he looks at the door and you think that that’s it. that you got close enough to almost matter, and almost wasn’t enough. maybe he’ll leave anyway. maybe he needs to. maybe staying inside this house with files and pity and butcher’s mouth and your sorry eyes is worse than whatever waits outside. 

you promised you wouldn’t stop him, so you step aside. you give him the path.

his eyes flick to the open space you leave, and something in his face tightens as if the choice itself is crueler than a locked room would have been.

“if you go, i won’t follow.” his jaw flexes. “but please don’t go.”

the second please is worse than the first. quieter. stripped of panic now. only want, which is harder to survive.

soldier boy looks at you for so long you feel every bruise you have left, every place he’s touched and hurt and wanted and held back. then his hand drops from the lock. 

he doesn’t say yes. he doesn’t have to. you turn before your face can do anything embarrassing. 

the house remains asleep around you, though part of you knows mm probably wakes at every shift in the air and may already be listening from behind his door. no one comes out. no one asks. you open your bedroom door and step inside first, because letting him follow matters more than you expected.

the room looks exactly as you left it and somehow too intimate with him in the doorway. your bed is narrow enough to make the offer ridiculous and wide enough to make refusing to touch each other possible if both of you are very disciplined, which neither of you has been ever.

soldier boy stands just inside the room, fully armored and wrong for the space.

you look him over once. shield, suit, gloves, boots. “are you sleeping in all that?”

“might.”

“seems comfortable.”

“you got a problem?”

“with metal in my bed? weirdly, yes.”

he gives you a look that would have worked better if his eyes weren’t still red around the edges.

you sit on the mattress, giving him something else to look at while he decides what parts of soldier boy he can take off without feeling stripped. 

he sets the shield down first with a quiet, heavy shift that makes the room feel different the second it’s no longer attached to him. his gloves come next. then his boots. each removal is practical, irritated, almost aggressive, but you understand the trust inside it anyway.

he pauses at the armor.

“i’m not putting moves on you,” you say.

his eyes lift. you immediately wish you’d phrased that any other way. “good,” he says. “you’re bad at it.”

“i got you on the couch.”

his mouth twitches before he can stop it. “you got yourself on the couch.”

“details.”

“big details.”

“take the armor off, ben.”

the name lands between you. he doesn’t correct it again. after a second, he reaches for the fastenings with short, annoyed movements, unstrapping enough of the suit to be able to lie down without turning your mattress into a weapons rack. 

when he’s done, he’s still dressed, still guarded, still too large for the room, but less like a monument and more like a man who’s run out of places to stand.

you crawl under the blanket first. you leave space beside you. more than instinct wants. the mattress dips when he finally sits, and for a second he only stays there on the edge with his back to you, elbows resting on his knees, hands loose between them. the curve of his spine beneath the dark shirt makes your chest hurt in a way that has nowhere useful to go.

“i should hate you,” he says.

you stare at his back. the words aren’t what surprises you. it’s the fact that he says them here. “yeah,” you answer, because lying would be worse.

his head turns slightly. “that all you got?”

“i’m not going to argue you out of it.”

a rough breath leaves him. “first time for everything.”

your mouth almost smiles. it doesn’t make it. “i’m trying something new, remember?”

he stays sitting there. then, quieter, “i actually don’t,” he sounds angry about it. like the failure to hate you is another thing his body has done without permission. “but i’m still mad.”

“you should be.”

“don’t do that.”

“do what?”

“agree with me like that.”

your fingers curl lightly against the blanket. “i don’t know what else to do.”

he looks over his shoulder then. there are things in his face you aren’t allowed to touch yet. maybe not ever. 

the motel room is still there. so is last night. so is the door he almost walked through and the son vought made from him and the call no one else knows about. but there’s something else too, something tired and raw and almost insulted by its own need.

“don’t do anything.”

you nod.

he lies down beside you like it costs him. the mattress dips badly toward his side, and under any other circumstances you would make a joke about him being dense in more than one way. you lie on your back, staring at the dark ceiling while he settles stiffly beside you, close enough that the air changes between your bodies, far enough that neither of you has to admit you came here for comfort.

the silence isn’t easy. but it’s shared.

after a minute, he says, “mattress is shit.”

your laugh comes out so quietly it almost disappears into the pillow. “i knew you’d have notes.”

“springs are fucked.”

“i’ll file a complaint with the safehouse committee.”

“tell them to get beer that doesn’t taste like piss too.”

“anything else?”

he’s quiet for a second. then, “no.”

you turn your head slightly. he’s staring at the ceiling too, jaw tight, eyes open. in the dark, without the shield, without the suit, without anyone watching from the kitchen, he looks less impossible. not smaller. never smaller. only closer to something breakable, which is almost harder to look at.

“i won’t tell them about the call,” you say.

his eyes shift toward you. “i know.”

you blink. “you know?”

“you would’ve done it already.”

that shouldn’t feel like trust. it does anyway. you look back at the ceiling before your face can betray you. “okay.”

the room settles around you. pipes in the wall. a low rattle from the window. the strange new house making strange new sounds you still don’t know how to read. beside you, soldier boy breathes like a man trying to keep himself awake because sleep is one more place he can’t control.

you don’t touch him. but, god, you want to. 

the first touch comes from him. not his arm around you. not his hand pulling you close. nothing big enough to become a promise. 

after a long time, when the silence’s thinned, his fingers find the hem of your hoodie in the dark. barely there. catching the fabric near your hip with the lightest grip he’s ever put on you. not pulling. not asking with words. only holding on to proof that you’re still beside him.

your throat tightens until breathing becomes something you have to remember how to do. you keep your eyes on the ceiling. you keep your body still, because moving too quickly might scare the moment back into hiding.

the new mattress is terrible. the house doesn’t know either of you well enough yet. homelander’s alive somewhere with soldier boy’s blood in his body, and vought has your face, and noir’s still a shadow waiting at the edge of every plan. none of that disappears. but in the dark, with two fingers hooked carefully in the fabric of your hoodie, soldier boy lets himself stay.