Everyone, sooner or later, drifts into that particular season of life where routine begins to weigh like damp wool. The days slip, indistinguishable, into one another—wake, work, drive the same route home, shop at the same supermarket on the same day, at the same hour, avoiding the crush of people in the dairy aisle like some absurd battleground over blocks of cheddar. It’s comfort, yes, but also a kind of quiet stagnancy, the creeping suspicion that life has begun folding itself into neat, predictable lines, all the sharp corners smoothed away.

It was a wet autumn afternoon when John came home, the kind of rain that soaked the pavement into mirrors and hung heavy in the air, leaving the whole street smelling faintly of wet leaves and cold metal. He looked tired, in the way a man does when the old pace of life—the adrenaline, the chaos, the sharp edges of danger—has slowed to something gentler, quieter, less demanding of blood and bone. Over the last year, he’d stepped down from the edge, trading mud-caked boots in some far-off field for cleaner shoes behind a desk. Fewer deployments, more strategy. He had learned, at last, how to sit still.

And though he’d never admit it outright, you knew why. He did it for you. For evenings together instead of half-crackling calls from some anonymous base. For mornings with coffee across the same table rather than silence stretching miles and oceans wide. John Price, who had spent most of his life rushing headlong toward danger, had slowed—deliberately, stubbornly—to match the rhythm of your days.

Still, that slowing down wasn’t seamless. A man like him, built on adrenaline, doesn’t surrender it without a fight. He’d been restless. Trying on hobbies like he tried on new uniforms. There was the racing bike—standing in the garage after a month. The great stack of wood he’d promised would transform into a handmade bedframe, now better suited to roasting marshmallows when his friends came around. And the BBQ smoker, which he’d hauled out with great ceremony each summer only to curse the cleaning process after, muttering about “bloody grease traps” under his breath. You’d learned not to tease too hard; the defeat in his sighs was sharp enough.

So when he walked into the kitchen that afternoon with a grin too boyish for his years and a package big enough to demand your immediate suspicion, you only arched a brow. He was already tearing into it like Christmas morning, paper and tape discarded in impatient handfuls.

“Right—hear me out,” he began, voice warm, eager, his hands unwrapping bag after bag of mysterious supplies. “Gonna start baking our own bread. Proper sourdough. None of that shop-bought rubbish, full of preservatives. Just flour, water, time. Healthy. Simple. Save us a fortune, too.”

You eyed the growing pile—flour sacks, thermometers, bannetons, a scale that looked fit for a laboratory experiment. He caught your look and barrelled right over it, excitement carrying him like a current.

“All we need’s a starter, see. That’s where the magic happens. Yeast, wild stuff, floats about in the air—” He gestured vaguely, as though you might catch the invisible creatures in your palm. “—you just give it a home. Flour, water, bit of patience. Feed it, like a pet. Then, bang. Dough rises like it’s alive. Which it sort of is.”

You sank into a chair at the table, chin in your hand, watching him. Rain tapped against the windows, the kitchen light soft on his face as he fussed over the bags and jars, explaining hydration percentages and crumb structure as though he’d studied it his whole life. His sleeves were shoved up, forearms inked and scarred, moving with all the authority of a man who’d led soldiers—except now he was giving a lecture on how much steam you needed in the oven to get that perfect crust.

And you couldn’t help but smile. Because here was John Price: war hero, captain, gruff and sharp-edged when he needed to be—rambling on about wild yeast with the same reverence he once reserved for battlefield plans.