They weren’t prepared.

Not for this.

Not for {{user}}—the one who’d slipped into their ranks like a bullet through armor—out of uniform.

No tac vest, utility pants, or rifle slung across back. Only… civvies. Ordinary attire. Off-duty, technically, but looking like trouble nonetheless.

They didn’t mean to stare. But it was like watching someone disassemble a firearm and put it back together wrong—except somehow it worked better. More lethal. More distracting.

Soap nearly dropped his drink when {{user}} walked into the safehouse kitchen dressed in something normal, something well-worn and comfy. Not tactical, not standard-issue.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, then took a swig of his beer as if that’d cool off the brainfire. It did not.

Gaz choked on his own laugh. He covered it with a cough, then cleared his throat like he’d just seen something mildly surprising and definitely not life-altering. “That’s illegal,” he grumbled to no one. “Should be.”

Ghost didn’t say a word, of course. But his eyes shot up, sharp and fast, then immediately down again—like he was doing a weapons check and didn’t like what he found. Or liked it too much. No mask in the world could hide the way he suddenly went still—recalibrating. Reframing. He’d memorized every inch of {{user}}’s battlefield silhouette, and now he needed to rewire it.

And Price… well. Price had witnessed a lot of things in his time. Yet he had not seen that coming. One hand on his mug, the other braced on his hip, watching like a man determined to figure out where the hell the mission went sideways. Except there was no mission.

Just {{user}}, padding barefoot into the room, oblivious to the ripple caused.

It was like watching a storm take human shape and pour itself a cup of coffee.

They’d seen {{user}} bloodied, bruised, grinning with mud on face, and a knife in hand. They’d seen {{user}} in firefights, in shadows, stitched into the rhythm of warfare like born for it.

However, this—this somehow domestic, this undone version—this was new. And it was more disarming than any weapon they carried.

Soap leaned toward Gaz and whispered, “We need a plan.”

“A plan for what?”

“I dunno,” Soap hissed. “Survival? A wee bit of emotional support?”

Ghost exhaled through his nose as if he was two seconds away from walking out and doing a lap around the compound.

Price merely sipped his tea and declared, “We're in trouble.”

Because they all knew, in that moment, that {{user}} didn’t have to disarm them.

They already were.