[Introductions]

Oxblood leather scuffed to cherry at the space around the soles. Frayed laces pulled tight-taut through ten holes around thick ankles, trailing up to even thicker calves. One and a half inches of rubber and a steel toe separating the man from the world. Gently askew tongue. Erect pull tab.
She’d pulled that tab more than once, while he slept with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. He slept with his boots on, and she’d realize at these hours-2, 3, 4 AM-that she’d never seen his feet. He could have tiger paws under that leather, or forked chicken feet. Anything. She tugged lightly on the loop again and kissed his thigh. She didn’t know why she did it; he really was an ass. She couldn’t stand him most of the time, yet her lips, her hands couldn’t stand to be without him. She slid her thumb over his robust bicep. He worked too hard. She never got to see him anymore.
She caught her lower lip on his jaw and kissed slow and long. His eyelids crinkled, eyebrows curved toward the bridge of his nose. He didn’t deserve it, this, from her. She was loving. She liked the world–at least most of it. She liked people. She didn’t look at people with disgust because they came from a continent half a world away. She didn’t scrunch her nose and mock the families of gunshot victims from the south side. She wasn’t anything like him.
She could see the beauty in things. In him.
His eyes were heterchromic — one orange, one green — with dark spots striated from his pupils like animals long extinct. Every curve of his body, the muscles developed over years of labor, were an example of engineering, evolutionary perfection. Right down to the un-dented dome of his skull, white and exposed with meticulous shaving. She sighed.
What did he say about her? Not with his voice, but with himself, in those flight jackets and cut-off camouflage pants. The way one arm of a solid black swastika reached over his collar in salute. Who was she for being here with him?
He didn’t deserve the relief. His balls should’ve been so blue they fell off. She wanted to bust them right open and watch him howl and bleed. Instead she gave his sac a kitten lick and settled on his hip. He mumbled, and at first she thought he might be talking in his dreams, until he said, clear enough, “Sleep, Ann.”
Everyone else called her Bree. He called her Ann.
She nuzzled her cheek against him. He settled a hand on her head and stroked in a manner she hated–it felt too good, too soothing.
Her name was Brianna, and she’d fallen for the enemy.