You and Ben had slipped into a strange sort of friendship after he got out of Russia. Not many people could handle him — he was loud, abrasive, crude — but you had this way of not flinching, of standing your ground, and somehow, that earned you a place he didn’t chase off. He’d never say you were his friend, not out loud, but he stuck close. Too close, sometimes.

So when you mentioned going to a vintage thrift shop, he insisted on coming with. Claimed it was because “you’d get rolled in five seconds without him,” but really, it was paranoia mixed with boredom.

The bell above the door jingled when you stepped inside, and immediately, his face twisted. Racks of faded denim, cracked leather jackets with “40's & 60’s Originals!” signs above them, shelves stacked with rusting trinkets.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath, brushing his hand over a jacket sleeve. “They’re selling this crap as vintage now? I wore this exact shit to go to malls. Still had the price tag on it. Now it looks like my goddamn skin after a week without lotion.”

You wandered ahead while he kept stopping, staring too long at random objects. A cracked lunchbox. A vinyl record he recognized but didn’t touch. And then he found the toy aisle.

He picked up a tin car with chipped paint, turned it over in his hand. You could almost see the kid he used to be, the boy who’d wanted something simple, before Vought shoved the mantle of Soldier Boy on his shoulders.