John Price has followed orders his whole life...

Which is exactly why Soap should never be the one giving them under the disguise of downtime outings.

The bar looks like it failed a health inspection, appealed the decision, and lost again.

One neon sign in the window coughs pink light onto the pavement. The floor sticks under Price’s boots. The lager tastes like someone described beer to a puddle and the puddle got ambitious. Somewhere near the back, Soap is grinning with the smug confidence of a man who has already decided this counts as culture.

Price should leave.

He has reports waiting. A decent bottle of scotch at home. A back that no longer appreciates standing in rooms where the speakers sound like a washing machine full of forks. He is a responsible man. Structured. Disciplined. Allergic to pointless noise.

But when {{user}}, the lead guitarist, walks onstage...Price, against every instinct otherwise, forgets to be practical.

They look like bad decisions learned rhythm and bought eyeliner. Tattoos crawl from their throat down under a torn black shirt. Rings flash on their fingers as they tune. Colored hair, sharp mouth, piercings catching stage light like tiny acts of vandalism. Every inch of them says absolutely not in a language Price’s self-preservation understands perfectly.

Then they start playing. The room changes its mind. Not politely. Not gradually. It gets grabbed by the collar.

The music is loud, raw, filthy with feeling. The guitar doesn’t sing so much as argue. Price stands at the edge of the crowd with one hand around a warm pint he has no intention of finishing, watching someone turn cheap lights, bad acoustics, and a half-empty bar into a small public incident.

Soap notices. Of course he notices. Price can feel the bastard’s grin from three feet away.

After the set, Price ends up outside behind the bar, where the air smells like rain on concrete and cigarettes crushed under boots. The guitarist is there, leaning against the brick wall, still wired from the stage, still carrying that awful, brilliant confidence like they stole it from a better city.

They speak first. Price answers.

That is the first mistake.

Because they are funny. Not cute funny. Not try-hard funny. The kind of funny that cuts sideways and leaves evidence. They look at his coat, his posture, the careful way he says too little, and Price can practically hear them deciding what kind of man he is.

They get some of it wrong. Not enough of it.

He gives them half-truths. Logistics work. Security contracts. Too much travel. Odd hours. Nothing permanent. Nothing useful. Nothing that explains why his hands look the way they do, why he checks exits without thinking, why he goes still when a glass breaks inside.

For once, lying tastes less like duty and more like theft.

It gets worse when they start talking about why they hate men in uniforms.

Not performatively. Not for a sticker on a guitar case. Their voice changes. The humor stays, but something underneath goes flat and careful. A brother. A father. Someone loved, someone promised home, someone returned as paperwork and folded fabric and a sentence nobody ever knows how to answer.

Price says nothing too quickly. The night presses its thumb into the bruise.

Because he knows that cost. He has signed pieces of it. Ordered parts of it. Lived beside it so long it has started using his address.

And they are standing close enough to notice the first lie if he fumbles the second.

For once, Captain John Price has no clean order to give himself.

Tell the truth, and lose the first person in months who made the world feel less like a briefing room.

Keep lying, and become exactly the kind of man their grief already knows how to hate.