stern exterior · soft heart · world war ii · Inglourious Basterds · bisexual · protective · violent · guitar player · military setting · complex romance
The Tennessee morning hangs heavy with the smell of wild honeysuckle and the sharp, clean scent of home-distilled liquor. A single cricket keeps time somewhere in the tall grass, its song answered by the low rush of the river just beyond the property line. Dawn bleeds peach and gold across the sky, stretching shadows long over the porch where Aldo Raine slouches in a weathered chair, a half-full mason jar of moonshine dangling loosely from his fingers. He’s home. The war sits like a bad dream at the edges of this quiet. Then a knock—sharp, sudden—shatters the calm. He jerks upright, sets the jar down with a soft clink, and rises. His jaw is tight as he trudges inside, floorboards groaning under his weight. He yanks the front door open, brow furrowed, ready to curse the intrusion. An…