literature

Soldier!England x Reader: All's Fair Pt2

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Arthur was mesmerized by her singing. Mostly it was just a handful of wartime songs that she crooned into the microphone, nothing special. But there was just something about the way she moved when she sang the slower ballads that held him spellbound. The way she swayed to the music made her skirts swish pleasantly around her legs. Her eyes sparkled under the stage lights, and frequently she would turn her gaze over to him and smile, which set his heart skipping every time. The majority of the crowd consisted of men and soldiers stationed in the area, and unfortunately half of the time Arthur could barely hear her above the whistles and catcalls. Who was this girl? All this popularity and attention from men, and yet she was still unmarried. He couldn't fathom why.

At the end of the night, he waited for her by the front door where she had instructed him to while she and the rest of the band finished closing up for the night. His heart thumped in his chest in anticipation. He found himself strangely eager to see her. Glancing around himself, he realized he wasn't alone. Several other men loitered in front of the theater watching the front doors anxiously, presumably for a chance to meet her and talk to her.

After what seemed like ages, she finally emerged, looking tired, but smiling brightly. Arthur couldn't help but stare as his breath caught. She was beautiful. Almost immediately three of the loiterers crowded around her, all of them trying to talk over one another as they vied for her attention. Arthur watched as she kindly and graciously thanked each in turn for attending the performance, while at the same time not giving too much attention to any of them that might encourage them. A true lady. But then her attention was diverted, and she started to look around for something. A little thrill went through Arthur when he realized she was looking for him. And then her eyes landed on him and she smiled wider than ever. She made her way over to him and startled him a bit when she said brightly, "Darling, there you are!" And threw her arms about his neck. Even though he was surprised, he returned the embrace automatically. How easily she fit into his arms...She pressed a kiss to his cheek, which made him flush, and said, "I'm so glad you're here, I was worried you couldn't come!" She winked.

Arthur understood and played along, relaxing slightly and smiling down at her, "Of course I came. Not even the war could have kept me away."

Her nose wrinkled as she giggled, and she took his arm and steered him away from the theater and the lingering crowd. Arthur took the lead in walking her home, and before they reached the end of the street, she leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked. Arthur assumed she did so to send every pair of eyes behind them the message that she wasn't available. When they rounded the corner, she raised her head from his shoulder, but still kept his arm as they walked.

After a few moments of silence, save for the clacking of their shoes on the cobblestone pavement, she said, "Thank you for keeping up your end of the deal, by the way."

Arthur glanced down at her briefly and then returned his gaze to the road, "It was my pleasure." He smiled, "You sing beautifully."

***************

When the two of you arrived at your house, he followed you in and helped you to light a few candles on the mantle of the fireplace. You crossed over to the window to draw the heavy blackout curtains closed, but when you tugged on the one facing the beach, it stuck. You tugged harder and then attempted to stretch up on tiptoe to see what the curtain was caught on.

"Here, allow me." Suddenly Arthur was right behind you, reaching up past your outstretched fingers and pulling the curtain free of whatever it was caught on. He had unconsciously set his hand on your waist to steady himself as he did this, and you turned slightly at his touch, gazing up into his face. Arthur felt your eyes on him and he paused, looking down at you. All was still, except for the beating of your heart.

You met his evergreen eyes steadily, silently asking him to kiss you. He lowered his head slightly, his breath touching your lips, making your heart flutter. But he didn't kiss you. Instead, he took a deep breath through his nose, closing his eyes.

Finally, he said very quietly, “________, I can’t do this.”

You felt like a child when you asked, “Why not?”

He just shook his head and looked away.

You took a deep breath, letting it seep out slowly. “Is there someone else?” You asked, suddenly wondering if he might have a sweetheart or a wife.

“No,” he shook his head, “It’s not that at all.” He turned away and crossed over to take a seat on the sofa. You followed and settled into the cushions beside him.

“It’s complicated...getting involved with me.”

“Complicated how?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got all night.”

His lips pressed into a hard line.

“Look, if you’re just telling me this to avoid telling me you don’t like me, then just say it. You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t like me.”

“It’s not that either. I do like you. But there are some things about me...”

“Things about you...?”

“Look, I’m not going to discuss my life’s problems with you, all right? I just can’t be with you. That’s all there is to it.”

You hugged your knees to your chest, “At least give me a category. You as a person, or your past?”

He hesitated for a minute before saying, “Both.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

You shook your head, “That’s not as horrible as you might think.”

“No as horrible as I might think?” He demanded, his voice rising in anger.

You looked him right in the eye, “Those issues are something we have in common.”

His angry face calmed and he turned to look away from you. For a long time, neither of you spoke. His face was both pained and thoughtful, and as you watched him he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the sofa, “All right, what’s so horrible about your past?”

You almost smiled, but your memories were nothing to grin about. "One moment," you stood, "Let's have a drink before we start telling sad stories about the past." You went to the kitchen, and Arthur watched you as you went. When you returned a moment later, you had a bottle of wine and two glasses.

"What's all this about?" Arthur eyed you curiously.

You smiled softly, if not a little teasingly at him, "Humor me."

Arthur didn't like the idea of having a drink at the moment. He was quite a lightweight and he knew it, and being around you and rather incapable of forgetting the sight of your bare skin...yes, it was definitely a bad idea to start drinking. But the next thing he knew, he had a glass in his hand, and he was sipping from it steadily. You laid a fire in the hearth to warm up the room. You took your seat beside him on the sofa and sipped your wine thoughtfully for a moment before beginning your story.

“Since I was a little girl," you began, "my father worked in an appliance factory up until the war broke out. After that, it was converted into a factory that made parts for airplanes, tanks, weapons, things like that. He had been married to my mother a good ten years before the war. Everyone says I look just like her, but I've never thought that could be right."

"You mean you look more like your father?"

You shook your head, "No, it's just that--" you glanced at Arthur and then looked straight forward again, "I just remember that she was very beautiful."

Arthur's chest tightened, and without even thinking he blurted out, "You're beautiful, too."

"You think so?" You looked up at him hopefully.

Arthur hesitantly reached his hand up and shyly tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. Your eyes met and locked for a moment. His touch sent tingles along your skin and made you shiver. Arthur dropped his hand and hugged his knees to his chest again, breaking his eyes away from you.

You looked down again and continued your story, "Anyway...I was fifteen when the first bombs hit. I was at school at the time. My father had forgotten his lunch, and Mother had gone to take it to him at the factory..."

A long silence followed, filled with the crashing sound of the waves outside. You hugged your knees to your chest and inhaled the bitter, salty scent of the ocean, letting out a long breath after a couple of seconds.

After a moment Arthur said quietly, “I'm so sorry, ________.”

You set your chin on your knees, "I've never told anyone that before." You glanced at him, gauging his reaction with quiet eyes. His eyes were soft and sad. “What did you do?” He asked quietly.

You continued, “After the raid was over, I ran home. I didn't know Mother had gone. When she didn't come home I crawled under my bed to hide and wait. I kept wondering why she didn't come home - why my father didn't come home. Then it started up again around ten o'clock or so. I thought the whole world was tearing itself apart when the bomb hit."

Arthur flinched.

"When the bombs finally stopped, my ears rang so much from the concussions that I couldn't hear anything else. But within minutes the air started to get thick...”

Arthur's eyes were fixed steadily on you now. 

You continued, “I had very little time to get out, and when I did, all I could do then was watch as my house burned to the ground, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. After that, I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t bear the thought of being adopted, and my only other relative was my mother’s sister, and I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t have long to figure out what to do though, because a week later I was caught stealing a loaf of bread from the market. The authorities were about to cart me off, but one man stepped forward, claiming to be my father and offered to pay for the bread. He also promised that I would be dealt with harshly when he took me home.

"I didn't know why he was helping me, but I would have done anything at the time to avoid going to jail, so I blindly accepted his help. When we were alone, he told me that his assistance hadn't come without a price and that by accepting his help, I now owed him a debt. For the next two months, I worked off my debt helping him collect intelligence from the enemy. He came up with the most ingenious plans I'd ever seen, and he was good at what he did. Having a child to work with became a huge advantage for him, and after my debt was paid, he offered to take me in as his own daughter and teach me everything he knew.”

Arthur's gaze was unwavering, “And you accepted him?”

“He would have had to kill me otherwise. I knew too much. But then, I had nowhere else to go anyway. I had food, a home, and protection. So I became the daughter of an intelligence agent.” You smiled fondly, remembering your Baba. “He may have been a spy, but he was the best man I’ve ever known.”

"Where is he now?"

"'I'm getting to that."

He turned back to the fireplace.

“After being with my Baba for so many years, I didn’t know any other life apart from the one Baba had raised me in. So naturally, when I turned eighteen, Baba wanted to know what I wanted to do. He told me that living a life married to someone like him was not what he wanted for me. I told him honestly that I didn’t want anything different from our life together. He knew that as well as I did, but he told me that a good marriage was something he didn’t want me to miss.

"And so, he created a new life for me; he changed my identity and he got me a job in the theater. 'Start a new life for yourself,' he told me, 'and when you find the right man, settle down and raise a family. One day, when the war is over, I will come to find you, and we'll be together again.'” You sighed, “Finding a husband turned out to be a very tedious task though, and I soon decided that it was a worthless use of my time.”

Arthur's brow furrowed, "Why tedious?"

You rolled your eyes, "I thought you might have gathered that earlier at the theater."

Arthur shook his head at you, still not understanding. You certainly hadn't seemed in want of suitors. He didn't understand what the problem was.

You sighed, "There's a war on, Arthur." You laughed bitterly to yourself, "I swear, if I hear 'Come on, baby, I could be dead tomorrow' one more time I'll box my own ears."

Arthur nodded sympathetically, sipping from his glass. You shook yourself and smiled more pleasantly at him, "Enough about all that. I've got an idea."

Arthur raised an eyebrow at you inquiringly.

"For tonight, let's pretend there isn't a war at all and talk about things that we normally would if there wasn't a war."

Arthur smiled slowly, "I rather like the sound of that."

Slowly but surely between the wine and the cheerful blaze of the fireplace, the conversation was coming easier and easier between the two of you and Arthur was letting his guard down more and more. He couldn't help it. The way you sat there with one leg tucked up under you and your hair draped over your shoulder had him hypnotized. Who was this strange, beautiful girl who had rescued him without having anything to gain from it?

Eventually, the conversation came to a lull, and the two of you sat in companionable silence for a time. You turned your head to look at Arthur, his beautiful, pale face glowing in the warm light of the fire. After another long silence you murmured softly, “Arthur, what makes getting involved with you so complicated?”

He looked at you but said nothing. Your eyes were all hope and innocence. How he yearned to tell you everything - who he really was, what he was doing here...but how could he ever convince you? What was the point? He tried to weigh out every possible option in his head in the hopes that he might somehow find a way to stay here with you and never leave, or somehow bring you with him. But through the haze of the wine, his thoughts couldn't get far. He gazed into your eyes for so long that the question was eventually forgotten in the unspoken pull between the two of you.

Against his better judgment he found himself drawn in by your unwavering eyes, and he slowly he began to unfold his arms from his knees. Even more slowly he found himself leaning toward you. Your heart began to pound as you leaned to meet him as he tenderly pressed his lips to yours. It started with two or three soft kisses, sweet and gentle, but then he brought his hand up to your face, deepening the kiss, and you sighed, sliding your arms around his neck and stroking his hair. Arthur wrapped his arms around your waist and drew you close, his heart thundering in his chest and his hands trembling.

He broke away from your mouth and made a trail of kisses from your cheek to behind your ear, and then your neck. The sensation of his lips on your skin was indescribably euphoric, but you couldn't suppress a giggle that escaped your lips. Arthur paused and then raised his head to meet your eyes, "Something the matter?"

"That tickles."

Arthur blinked, and then at the same time, the two of you burst into a fit of giggles and chuckling. Arthur sighed and leaned back into the corner of the sofa, resting his arm around your waist when you laid your head on his chest, wrapping your arm around his middle and sighing through your nose.

You couldn't hold your words back after a minute or so, "You never answered my question, you know."

Arthur stiffened, but said nothing

“Arthur, please tell me.”

“_______, please don’t ask that of me.”

“Are you going to leave?”

Silence.

“Take me with you.”

“No.” His answer was abrupt and stern.

Your face fell, although he couldn't see it. You turned your face up to his, “Arthur, I don’t care what your past is.” Your voice cracked, and you immediately hated it for doing so.

Arthur's face was pained, his eyes solemn. After a moment, he brushed back a strand of your hair and said softly, “Hush now. Let's talk about this tomorrow. Tonight let's just...not think about it.”

"Promise we'll talk about it tomorrow?"

Arthur nodded.

You weren't sure if you believed him, but you snuggled closer to him and he put both arms around you, kissing the top of your head. Between the wine, the late hour, and the warmth of Arthur's arms around you, it wasn't long until you were lulled into a dreamless sleep.

***************

In the morning the sensation of being cold woke you. A blanket had been drawn over you, but without Arthur's body heat it did little to keep off the morning chill. You sat up on the sofa and stretched. But then you froze when you recognized the familiar ringing silence that living alone had made you grow accustomed to.

"Arthur?" You listened for a moment and then got up from the sofa. “Arthur?” You made your way into the kitchen, and then checked the rest of the rooms in the house. Arthur was nowhere to be found. You wondered if maybe he had wandered out onto the beach somewhere, and ran outside to check, scanning up and down the beach for any sign of him. He wasn’t there. A cold little lump of foreboding crowded your ribs as you tried to take a breath. You stood with your bare feet in the sand, your heart filling with dread.

“Arthur?” You whispered.

Silence.

You trudged back to your house. In the living room you sank to your knees by the sofa. You didn't want to believe it, although you knew it to be true. How could he do this? You lay back on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, tears pricking your eyes. Arthur was gone.

Yes, I went back to part one and changed your place of employment, but as I'm the author, I do what I want! My apologies for any confusion in regards to that. Anyway, this story is taking on a life of it's own, so I'll have to see where it takes me.


Part 1 

Part 3 
© 2016 - 2024 katiejobagles
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DJ-The-Artist's avatar
This is amazing!!! I can't wait for the next chapter!!