The motel room is a washed-out echo of America—mustard yellow walls, cracked blinds bleeding neon red from a flickering diner sign outside, and a ceiling fan that creaks like an old war story no one wants to hear. Soldier Boy sits on the edge of the bed, hands limp on his thighs, smoke from his half-burned joint curling up like regret. His shield leans against the wall like a discarded truth.

And you? You’re across the room, curled up on a chair that groans under the weight of your exhaustion. One boot kicked off. A bandage pulled halfway up your thigh. Blood crusted on your temple. His blood. Someone else's. Doesn’t matter. It’s all the same after the fifth firefight this week.

He watches you like the television he can’t figure out how to turn on. Quietly. Obsessively. His eyes linger on the trail your collarbone makes, the slow rise and fall of your chest beneath that ruined hoodie. You shifted slightly, eyes fluttering in sleep, and the exposed line of your jaw in the pale lamplight makes something inside him ache. A forgotten ache. The kind that doesn’t come from war wounds or betrayal. The kind that came before Vought.

Soldier Boy exhales. The fan catches the smoke, spins it toward you like a lazy ghost. You wrinkle your nose in your sleep.

He smothers the joint with his thumb and rises—quiet for a man who walks like a loaded cannon. You don’t wake when he crouches beside you, muscles creaking, the scent of pine soap and gun oil clinging to his skin. His fingers hesitate midair, then hover near the scrape on your cheek.

He doesn’t touch.

You stir. Groan. Your eyes flutter open, brown and molten and still too good for this world. You don’t speak. Just blink at him. He looks away.

You shift, knees curling up, pressing your socked foot into his thigh. Testing. Then trusting. He doesn’t move. The silence between you crackles.

You lean your forehead against his, and that breaks him.

His hands find your waist like muscle memory, firm but trembling with restraint. You melt toward him, fingers lacing into his thick hair, tugging gently. Not demanding. Grounding. He grips your hips tighter.

This man, who once broke spines in stadiums to applause, now sits cross-legged at your feet like a soldier stripped of orders. You tilt his head. He lets you. You touch the side of his mouth. He leans into it like it’s oxygen.

There are no words.

Only the rough scrape of his stubble against your jaw. The slow brush of his nose along your cheekbone. The catch in his breath when your fingers slide under his shirt, tracing scar tissue like you’re learning a language he forgot how to speak.

He doesn’t know how to do this slow.

So he clenches his fists and lets you lead.

Your lips barely graze. A test. A tremor. His throat bobs. Your palm slides over his chest, right where the world tried to hollow him out. You kiss the corner of his mouth. Once. Then twice. He shudders like it hurts.

And then he kisses you like it’s war.

It’s heat and hunger and too many years of silence packed into one violent press of mouths. His grip on your waist turns desperate, like he’s trying to weld you to him, to make you permanent. Your hands cup his face, thumbs brushing under his eyes, soft in a way no one has ever been with him. His breath hitches. He pulls back, just barely, forehead pressed to yours.

He doesn’t say it.

But the way he noses into your temple, the way his fingers tangle in your shirt like it’s armor, like it’s home—that says enough.

You curl into him, legs folding around his lap, arms wrapping around the man history forgot. And he—this relic with blood-stained hands—buries his face into your shoulder like it’s the only warm thing left in the world.

And maybe it is.