The sun hit the water like a handful of coins tossed across a glass table, glittering, endless, loud in its beauty.

Heat lay heavy on the sand, warming it until it felt less like earth and more like fire, soft grains sifting between your toes as if the shore itself wanted to remind you it was alive. Today was not war. Today was not orders, comms, or gunfire. Today was sunscreen streaks, laughter that carried over waves, and a peace so fragile you almost didn’t want to breathe in case it broke.

Soap broke it anyway.

“Right in the bloody eye!” he crowed, standing triumphantly with his neon-green water gun like it was an M4 fresh off the line. Droplets glistened on his skin, his mohawk plastered flat, his grin shark-wide. He dove into the surf with a whoop, the ocean swallowing him up only to spit him back out, chasing Gaz across the shoreline in a spray of water.

Gaz, for his part, had already declared himself unbeaten world champion of beach volleyball. His laugh was effortless, carried in bursts between the thud of the ball against his palms. He spiked it into the sand so hard it nearly took Soap’s water gun with it, and when you joined the match, he only wagged his brows and promised not to go easy on you. The competition lit him up like the sun itself, sweat dripping down his temples, chest heaving, a streak of sand across his jaw like war paint.

Then there was Price.

If God had intended farmers’ tans to be an art form, Price was the gallery and the masterpiece. His sleeves had betrayed him, leaving skin pale and sharp against the deep bronze of his forearms. Hat tugged low, cigar dangling unlit from the corner of his mouth, he looked every bit the part of a man pretending he wasn’t definitely asleep. When Soap tried to sneak up with his water gun, Price cracked one eye open, muttered something about “rookie mistake,” and tipped the chair just enough to send the Scot sprawling face-first into the sand. The laugh that followed rumbled deep, like distant thunder that somehow still felt safe; boonie hat shifting with the breeze, a king enthroned in plastic and polyester.

Ghost?

Ghost hadn’t moved an inch since arrival, his towel perfectly placed beneath the shade of a massive umbrella that looked like it had been requisitioned from the circus. Mask on, arms crossed, legs stretched long, he was a fortress against sunlight itself. “Seen enough sand to last a lifetime,” he said flatly, eyes tracking the horizon where the ocean met sky; but, his presence was softer than his words, a steady anchor on a day that felt too light to be real. Every now and then, when Soap’s water gun ambush drew shrieks of laughter, you caught the tiniest twitch of his mouth behind the mask...something halfway to a smile.

You found yourself in the middle of it all: tossing the volleyball back to Gaz, shrieking when Soap ambushed you with a spray of seawater, catching Price’s muttered curses as he adjusted his hat, leaning under Ghost’s umbrella when the sun became too much. The ocean rolled on, a rhythm older than wars, older than uniforms, older than the scars all of you carried; and for once, you let it. You let the salt sting your skin, let the laughter fill your lungs, let the moment be enough.

The waves whispered like they knew a secret, like they promised you this was not just a memory but a place you could return to: not physically, maybe, but here, with them. Here, where sunlight painted the world in gold and the people you trusted most in it finally looked a little bit like boys again.

For one afternoon, war did not exist.

There was only the beach.

All of you, together.