The mess hall smelled like burnt coffee and whatever Roach had managed to ruin on the camp stove this time. Something with eggs. Probably. It was difficult to tell.
Ghost sat at the far end of the long table with his back to the wall, the way he always did, a habit so deeply grooved into him it didn't feel like a choice anymore. His mug was in front of him. His eyes were on the window. His balaclava was pulled up just enough to drink, which was the most anyone got.
He hadn't invited company. That never stopped anyone.
"You're doing it again," Soap said, dropping his tray across the table with the particular lack of grace that was somehow uniquely his. He had the look of a man preparing to say something insufferable.
"Eating breakfast?" Ghost didn't look at him. "Shocking habit, I know."
"Staring at nothing like the war already ended and you missed it."
"'M thinking."
"'Bout what?"
Ghost picked up his mug. "Not you."
Soap grinned, which was the wrong response, as it always was with him. "Price wants a word after debrief."
"'Course he does."
He wasn't wrong to feel the low simmer of suspicion at that. Price wanting a word after debrief could mean a dozen things, half of them operational, half of them the kind of conversation Ghost would rather conduct by walking briskly in the opposite direction. He'd learned to read the difference. Price's operational face was tight around the jaw. His other face, the one that meant he was about to involve himself in something that was technically none of his business, went very carefully neutral.
He'd had the neutral face at breakfast.
---
The debrief was routine. Rio follow-up, logistics for the next rotation, Roach demonstrating that sign language could absolutely be used to ask whether there were any more biscuits left, which Price chose to ignore with the patience of a man who had made peace with his circumstances.
Afterwards, when the others filed out, Price stayed.
Ghost stayed too, because leaving would have been obvious.
"Sit down, Ghost."
"I'm alright standing."
Price looked at him over the rim of his own mug. "Sit down."
Ghost sat.
There was a pause that Price clearly thought was comfortable. Ghost did not find it comfortable.
"You've seemed off lately," Price said finally.
"I'm always off. 'S part of the charm."
"More than usual."
Ghost said nothing. He'd found that saying nothing was a reliable method of not handing people ammunition.
Price set down his mug. "There's a woman. Sergeant from the American liaison team. She asked about you."
The silence that followed was very different from the one before it.
"No," Ghost said.
"You haven't heard what I was going to say."
"Didn't need to."
"Ghost—"
"Price." He said it flatly, which meant this conversation was over as far as he was concerned. "No."
Price had the decency to look at least mildly guilty. He pressed on anyway, because he was Price and that was what Price did. "You've turned down every—"
"Aye, I have."
"—social opportunity in the last—"
"They weren't opportunities."
"—two years at minimum—"
Ghost stood up.
"—and I'm not saying you've got to marry the woman, I'm saying one coffee, off-base—"
"I said no." He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "Respectfully."
Price watched him go. "That wasn't respectful."
"It was for me."
---
The thing no one seemed to understand, or want to understand, was that Ghost had tried.
Not enthusiastically, not willingly, but he'd tried. He had sat across from people in restaurants and bars and once, memorably, a bowling alley, because Soap had thought that was funny. He had been civil. He had listened. He had even, on occasion, found himself genuinely enjoying the conversation, someone with a dry wit, someone who didn't need silence filled, someone who talked about something other than themselves.
That part was fine. That part was occasionally even good.
It was always what came after that wasn't.
The expectation was so consistent he could map it. The shift in the evening, the lean across the table, the assumption that a good time meant a particular kind of good time in the bedroom afterwards, and the expression people got when he redirected, politely the first time, bluntly by the third, and they realised he meant it.
Confusion, usually. Then one of two things: pity or irritation.
He hated the pity worse.
He'd had a woman in Marseille tell him that sounded very lonely, in the tone of someone diagnosing a tragedy. He'd had a bloke in Edinburgh look at him like he'd said something in a foreign language and ask if something had happened to him. He'd had people assume it was the job, the history, the mask, some wound that explained the absence of his interest in sex they apparently couldn't imagine living without.
He just didn't want it. That was all. He didn't miss it. He wasn't waiting to want it. He wasn't broken and he wasn't sad about it and he didn't need fixing.
He'd stopped trying to explain that.
---
Roach found him on the roof of the equipment block at half past nine, which meant Soap had sent him, because Roach never sought anyone out of his own initiative unless biscuits were involved.
He hauled himself up with his usual catastrophic lack of stealth and signed, without preamble: "Price told Soap. Soap told me. I'm not here to talk about it."
"Then why're you here?"
Roach shrugged, pulled a battered pack of cards from his jacket pocket, and looked at him with the expression of a man making a very reasonable offer.
Ghost stared at him for a moment.
"Fine," he said, and shifted over to make room.
They played in silence for a while, which was the one thing Roach was categorically better at than anyone else on the team. The base noise carried up from below, engines, voices, someone playing music two buildings over. The sky had gone that dark blue that happened just before it gave up and went black.
Roach dealt another hand and signed, without looking up: "You okay?"
Ghost picked up his cards. "Mint," he said flatly.
Roach gave him a deeply sceptical look.
"I'm fine," Ghost said, which wasn't quite the same thing and they both knew it. "Just tired of everyone deciding I need something I didn't ask for."
Roach considered that, tapped the edge of his card against his knuckle, and signed: "They mean well."
"So do landmines."
A small, reluctant smile crossed Roach's face. He laid a card down.
Ghost laid one down after.
Below, the base carried on. Somewhere, Price was probably preparing another tactical approach to the situation. Soap was probably helping him, which was the worst possible outcome. There would be another conversation, another suggestion, another well-meaning ambush dressed up as concern.
Ghost pulled his jacket a bit tighter and looked at his cards.
He didn't need saving.
He just needed people to stop trying.
