Chapter Text
“Modern history,” she says, and Bass is so busy watching the dimple in her cheek play peekaboo that he forgets to keep Miles in line. They were introduced three days ago, and the woman is as hot as sin, and that’s all Miles needs to make a move.
“That’s not the Civil War is it? Because if it is, this guy will talk your ear off, and that’d be bad,” Miles offers, deadpan. “You have really pretty ears.”
Bass stiffens the minute Miles sidles into his throaty, panty dropper voice. .He’s been hearing it since the tenth grade and sometimes, it’s his very favorite thing. It means Miles will touch her in a minute, earlobe probably, and then tangle a finger in one of her crazy curls. That’ll be the cue for Bass to stroke her knee, and if she doesn’t object, move in for a kiss while Miles nibbles at her neck. Some girls get naked within minutes.
Not this girl, something inside of him insists. Shelley. Her name is Shelley, even if Miles doesn’t care enough to remember. The hot black chick, he’d called her, and Bass had rolled his eyes and sucked back his urge to bite.
“Shelley the hot historian,” he’d deflected, because Miles thinks his history kink is hilarious, and the chance to poke fun at him will mean he leaves it alone, the fact that Bass cares enough to remember this girl’s name. He likes the way it flips on his tongue, even if it evokes a rush of complicated feelings he’s pretty sure Miles doesn’t want to know about.
Complicated as in: he wants to get her naked, sure, but he doesn’t need Miles there at the time. Doesn’t want to have to divide his attention between them. Doesn’t fancy the mental gymnastics he has to do to decide whether it’s pussy or cock that’s getting him so hard, or the leashed intensity on his brother’s face. He’s been in love with Miles too long, and Shelley, Shelley …
Something tells him she could be the one to set him free.
Shelley doesn’t seem to like Miles much, her eyes flinty as she rebuffs his flirt. “They’re ears. Like everyone else has,” she says dismissively, and shifts away, towards Bass. Her entire posture changes as she smiles at him, not seductively, but … open.
“Why the Civil War?”
“Why history at all?” he shrugs, because he’s never really known why he loves the uniforms and the weapons and the battlefield accounts as much as he does. “I just … we’re soldiers, right? And everything we do … did … has its roots there. Birthplace of modern warfare.”
She’s looking puzzled and normally he’d get Miles to help him out here (because the bastard knows a lot more about military history than he’ll ever admit) but … he rubs a finger over the tattoo on his arm instead. Just his index finger, the others curled tightly in his fist, and Miles glowers at him for a second before he levers himself to his feet.
“And I’ve heard all this before. I’m going to leave you two nerds at it and find me someone talking about beer and the ballgame,” he smirks, the mirth falling from his face as he raises an eyebrow at Bass. Done, brother.
Tonight, M stands for Monroe.
He offers Miles a salute of thanks then angles his body back to hers. “What about you? How’d you end up studying history?”
Her smile is wry. “Poetry, would you believe. I fell in love with this Chilean poet, Neruda. Started with his love sonnets but his political stuff just grabbed me and before I knew it, I ended up doing my thesis on aspects of the Revolution in epic poetry. Eventually I end up working in the history department rather than the lit department,” she shrugs, as if embarrassed by her passion.
He wants to tell her it’s the sexiest thing he’s ever seen, but for the first time in his life he’s too intimidated to open his mouth.
“The irony of it is that when everything stopped, I’d been on my way home to visit my folks and I’d promised not to bring any work home.” She reaches down into the duffel at her feet, and pulls out a slender volume. “So all I had with me was this.”
Bass takes the opportunity to move closer, then lets his hand stroke over hers as he takes the book. He tries not to smirk as he reads the title - 100 Love Sonnets - and allows the book fall open on a well-thumbed page, hoping for something revealing. Erotic, if he’s lucky. “I thought of dying, I felt the cold close by …”
At first, the words are an afterthought as he watches her out of the corner of his eye, marveling at the vertiginous slope of her cheek, and the spray of dark lashes when her eyes drift shut as she listens. Then the rhythm catches him, and he can’t help but pay attention himself, his heart starting to pound as the meaning filters in, line after line, each verse a revelation.
“ … there is only your glance for so much emptiness, only your clarity to cease being, only your love to close the darkness.”
He blinks, stunned, the demands of his body only registering once he is able to pull himself from the vast, swirling whirlpool of his mind.
Somewhere out in the night, Miles is getting drunk, and Jeremy is trying to get laid. Tom and Julia Neville are no doubt scheming, and Jim Hudson is telling stories, the kids of the camp hanging on his every word. Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. But there’s gooseflesh pricking at the back of his neck, and a vast, yawning something trying to get his attention.
They’re just words, he tells himself, but it doesn’t stop the frantic slamming of his heart. You like this woman a lot, he rationalises, and he really, really does, but that’s not what has dumped him on the edge of a panic attack. It’s the words, twisting and slithering into that place that will never allow him to forget, part of him now, whispering of his past, this night, the unknowable future to come.
Except, somehow he knows. Somehow, this poem is the primer for his life. And maybe his death too.
“Only your love to close the darkness,” Shelley repeats softly, her husky alto making his cock quiver with awareness. He needs, he needs …
He kisses her slow, the words still reverberating in his head. “My terrestrial day and night,” he growls when he lifts his head, and she knows it as the invitation it is. They walk back to his tent slowly, no need to hurry forever, and she takes her own clothes off, folding them neatly as he sprawls on his bedroll, watching.
There’s no bashfulness in her smile, nothing coy or forced as she stands naked before him, nipples already puckered and the nest of dark curls below promisingly damp. “Come conquer your Republic, general,” she invites, and it’s just play, a sexy adult game, but that smile, that smile … he’d conquer the world to see it again.
Four years later it will be that smile haunting him as he scrawls his signature on the papers proclaiming the birth of the Monroe Republic. She would have hated it, his leftist revolutionary love. But it had been born that day, come out screaming in that gush of blood and gore that claimed two innocent lives, just like Neruda had predicted.
Death had come knocking on his door, and taken everything. Clarity is his, sharp and cruel in the glare of the new day. He does what he must, but it’s hard every time. Until it’s not. The man he is can’t survive in the face of who he needs to become, so he lets go of Bass-who-loved-Shelly. Turns his soul over to Miles one more time.
Dies. Again and again and again. When there’s no one left to pull him back, the fall is easy. Almost welcome.
Life will pursue him no more.