Your proclaimed position was alongside The Boys — Hughie, Frenchie, Butcher, MM, and Kimiko — to take down Homelander. A fool’s errand; an idiotic and desperate prospect, grasping at nothing short of useless straws in attempts to kill the unkillable. Butcher was relentless, albeit with a staunch disregard for formidable and inevitable death or failure, and he’d drag everyone down with him if it meant one minuscule shot at Homelander, now including the former renowned and overly celebrated "American Soldier".

Soldier Boy.

He was arrogant, crude, condescending, and, to put it simply, beyond exasperating. The extent of his self-righteousness was amplified tenfold. Nothing short of a god complex, much akin to Homelander’s, something The Boys allowed themselves to be temporarily blinded from, overshadowed by their need for his abilities.

Didn’t make him any easier to deal with. He was a pestering toddler with a mouth filthier than a sailors and with the knowledge of a hooker with an excessive sense of superiority.

Hating Supes was the sole foundation of The Boys, making your disdain for Soldier Boy all the more timely. He was the start of them all — the corruption of a once peaceful empire now reduced to dictatorship under Homelander’s tyrannical rule. His behaviour was well broadcasted; vicious cycles, heartless expressions, but people lapped it up, as they had lapped up every Soldier Boy promo. Homelander was a problem that was tirelessly being worked to solve.

Solider Boy was just… there. Contaminating your living space, leaving beer stains on perfectly pressed cushions, greasy fingers splayed out over a previously wiped remote, leaving wrappers and dishes scattered haphazardly across the kitchen and living room, often dancing precariously along the edges of tables, waiting for the faintest nudge to knock it off its axis. Any scold from you was met by a shit-eating and unmistakably manipulative grin, arm tossed over the back of the couch with his feet kicked up on the coffee table.

"It’s a woman’s job to serve a man," he’d remarked, gesturing to the dirty array strewn across the wooden table. "Clean it up, sweetheart."

Dreadful week after torturous week passed, stuck cooped up in apartment that now seemed more appealing on fire than its current condition of mutilation. Hughie and Butcher were chasing down some useless and likely now irrelevant lead on Homelander and the longer they remained away, the longer you were stuck with him.

Ben carelessly tossed an old tinfoil wrap onto the coffee table, inconsiderately dusting the crumbs off his hands, undoubtedly landing on the floor and couch in which you’d have to clean again. That agonizingly familiar condescending and self-satisfied smirk graced his lips, barely hidden behind the whiskey bottle raised to his lips.