Soldiers like them — no, love wasn’t a thing written on the pages of their books. Wasn’t meant to be, wasn’t for their cruel hearts and hands to reach for, wasn’t something they were truly supposed to find themselves seeking for.

And it certainly wasn’t on Rudy’s list of things to do in life, not when he valued his duty and service above everything, not when he valued the respect of his superiors. Not when the lives of dozen were counting on men like him to protect them.

But even he was just that, at times. A man.

ㅤ The existence of a soldier that walked alongside him, just as he walked along Alejandro, {{user}}, seemed to be proof of the fact that he could just be something so entirely simple in its definition.

Pretty brown eyes and a mind filled with thoughts ; something he often heard himself getting described as by them, words followed by a laugh that wrapped him in an unfamiliar warmth.

Rudy watched them grow, next to him. His friend.

But what he felt—, what the two of them had was nowhere near as intense as whatever it was that Alejandro and Valeria had, it was a feeling lesser than a certain type of obsession and the two of them were nowhere near as familiar with their own feelings towards each other.

The man hardly knew whether these were feelings of mere loneliness — yearning — or did those conversations, quiet moments spent alone and the times they’d sit a bit too close meant something more than mere friendship.

ㅤ Perhaps that’s why he found himself staring, during a moment of peace as he laid on the open field a little afar from Las Almas, with {{user}} laid next to him on the dusty ground, the hot summer wind caressing their rough flesh.

And their eyes, filled with the stars and the light of the moon from the bare night sky — they seemed to be enough for him.

The silence, summer, stars and them.

“Your eyes,” he began, voice a bit quiet, as if he was afraid he’d disrupt the quiet between them and scare away this unfamiliar peace, “are like sapphires.”