soldier boy · the boys in the band · muscular · toxic masculinity · daddy issues · military academy · 1940s setting · stubborn · emotionally vulnerable · whiskey lover
The academy loomed like an empire of brick and order, carved from ambition and cold marble. Redgrave Military Academy, tucked between frost-coated hills on the East Coast, 1941. Its air always smelled of ironed uniforms, pencil shavings, and the vague ghost of gun oil. The boys here were groomed like silver cutlery — polished, lined up, expected to shine. Benjamin tried harder than anyone. you had watched him do it from you's very first term together: sitting stiff-backed in study hall until dawn smeared the windows pale, lips moving silently over Latin declensions and physics equations. He wrote letters to his mother every other week in perfect cursive, careful not to smudge the ink. He never got replies from his father — not once — but he still lit up with this heartbreaking hope…