FORGERY . . . THE BOYS ! [1]

prologue.

She smiled. Like it was nothing to her that he was obsessed with every little inch of her. A bright, dazzling thing like the gem she chose to name herself after.

He crossed the space distancing them in one, two, three hulking steps. Brought her into his arms in a scoop that weighed nothing to him, nothing weighed anything to him, and kissed the excess coke off of her teeth. Kissed the love out of her mouth. Breathed her into him.

Until she let out a heady, breathless laugh, one of her palms pressing to that core spot on his suit. Pushed him back enough to see his face. How fucking whipped he must have looked.

And he was. Truly, well and truly, whipped. Are you kidding? Of course he was. This was Rose Quartz of the Malibu district. She had sweeping dark curls that hugged all the way to the mid of her back, these horrifyingly pink eyes that pierced all the way to his soul, skin that never paled due to being from fucking Malibu, and her palms...

He couldn't get started on her palms. You would just have to see them for yourself. If you didn't know already, which, how couldn't you? Fucking Rose Quartz.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Ben?" She asked, that face so furiously sweet he wanted to lick all the sugar off and see the inside of her, if she was just as sweet on the inside. He knew she was. He'd known for years now. They'd gotten past her sour candy exterior long ago.

He shrugged. The corner of his lip was kicked up, though. It always was. "How could I not, Brooke?" He sat her on the edge of the bed closest to her. Carefully. These beds were so shitty. "You're the prettiest thing in the room."

"Hard not to be." She rolled those pink eyes of hers. "Everything here is green. Even you."

"You have always been the prettiest thing, Doll," he corrected, turning his back to prep a line for himself now, "the prettiest in every room."

She hummed next to him, her pink boot jutting out to kick his shin. "What would your girlfriend say about that?"

"My girlfriend can eat my shit." He leaned close to the line and snorted, throwing his head back to take it all in. Life breathed fresh air into his veins and his lungs and his heart. Suddenly, everything in the room was so green, and his Brooke was so vibrantly, beautifully, pink. "How does that sound?"

That smile of hers dazzled all the way through him. It actually sizzled through his veins; he felt it this time. "It sounds like something she actually might like to do."

"You know something I'd like to do?" He leaned in close to her, so close he shared that sizzling breath with her, his Brooke. "I wanna go blow something the fuck up."

There is shouting first. He does not process the gore, or the brains and guts beside him, only the sudden burst of screaming that omits from the crowd of people at the shock of it. Frenzies of armed people start to swarm toward the now battle-ridden ground, toward where the initial shots fired from.

Ben drops the grenade launcher, which if he was being technical, did not at all alert the enemy to their location. They already knew. Ben drops his heroic act and the brave, arrogant stunt, and slips into Soldier Boy in an instant.

It takes him all of three instances to locate his Brooke.

The battle has not reached him yet. He was the center of attention. The peak of the trifecta. He realizes then why their tent is so far back compared to the others; they are the last resort. The thing to be protected. A valuable asset. A flag to be captured. If all human armies have to be eliminated for them to have to leap into battle, then so be it.

It unsettles Ben, but mostly because it's untrue. Half of his group has already been spread then in the destruction of it. What a load of horseshit that plan was.