The air in the grocery store was a cold, antiseptic hum, a far cry from the warm, yeasty smell of a proper bakery. Soldier Boy hated it. He hated the garish fluorescent lights that made everyone look half-dead, he hated the endless, soul-crushing choices of everything, and he especially hated the fucking elevator music piped in to soothe the savage beasts they’d all become, pushing these rickety metal carts.

He trailed behind you, a hulking shadow in a leather jacket that had seen more history than this entire prefabricated monument to consumerism. You were a point of focus, the only real thing in this plastic nightmare. The way your hips moved in those soft-looking jeans was a poem he was constantly trying to decipher.

His eyes scanned the shelves with a soldier’s tactical disdain. “What in the absolute hell is this?” he grumbled, picking up a pod for the coffee machine you’d insisted on buying him. “Folgers? This isn’t coffee. This is brown water. This is what they served as punishment.”

You didn’t even turn around, just kept moving toward the dairy section. “Just put it in the cart, Ben. It’s fine. It’s coffee.”

“It is not fine,” he announced to the entire aisle. A woman in a puffy vest gave him a wide berth. “Coffee should be ground from beans that smell like something. This smells like… regret and corporate dividends.” He tossed the box back on the shelf with a clatter. He could feel the itch under his skin, the need to break something just to prove it could still be broken.

Then you stopped, and his world narrowed. You were looking at the milk, your brow furrowed in that way he found both adorable and infuriating. You reached for a carton of something called ‘Oat Milk.’

He saw his opening. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. No. Absolutely not.”

You sighed, a sound he’d come to learn was the precursor to a battle of wills. “It’s for me. I’m lactose intolerant. It’s a thing now.”

“A modern weakness,” he declared, his voice booming enough to make a stock boy flinch by the yogurts. “We drank milk from a goddamn cow. It built character. And bones. We didn’t have bones made of glass. What’s next? Air milk? Feelings milk?”

That’s when he saw him. Some kid, probably twenty-five with a haircut that looked like a startled bird was nesting on his head, was staring. Not at you, not really. At him. At the spectacle. The dinosaur roaring in the frozen food section.

Ben’s head swiveled, the predator instinct surging up, warm and familiar. “You got a problem, pal?” he growled, the words low and gravelly, a threat woven into every syllable. “See something you like?”

The kid’s eyes went wide as dinner plates, and he practically tripped over himself scurrying down the aisle toward the organic kale.

He felt a sharp, insistent pull on his arm. Your hand, wrapped around the tough leather of his jacket sleeve. “Will you stop?” you hissed, your voice a furious whisper meant only for him. He could feel the heat of your anger, a tangible force. “You can’t just threaten people in the goddamn dairy section! This isn’t… whatever back-alley brawl era you’re used to!”

He let you drag him, a concession he’d only ever make for you. The smirk that spread across his face was utterly shameless. He loved this. Loved the fire in your eyes, the way your cheeks flushed with that pretty, furious pink. You were a scrappy little thing, all five-foot-whatever of you, thinking you could manhandle a century-old weapon of mass destruction.

“Why not?” he rumbled, letting you push him back against the chilled glass door of the yogurt case. He caged you in, his arms planted on either side of you on the cart handle, the metal groaning in protest.

"He was bein’ rude,” Ben murmured, his voice dropping an octave. He leaned in, close enough to feel your breath hitch. “But you know what? I like it when you get all fired up. Your eyes get all bright. It’s a hell of a look.”