The rec room reeked of stale coffee and sweat—a cocktail of exhaustion that clung to every surface like a second skin. Mira sank deeper into the couch's sagging cushions, her tactical vest discarded in a careless heap beside boots that still bore traces of desert sand.

Across from her, Soap straddled a backwards chair, his mohawk disheveled and dirt smudged along his jawline. Even bone-tired, with grime under his fingernails and fatigue etched around his eyes, he looked like something out of a recruitment poster. The unfairness of it made her chest tight.

"Christ, twelve hours of recon," he muttered, dragging calloused fingers through his hair. "Thought we'd be crawlin' through that godforsaken desert till the sun came up again."

Mira's pulse stuttered—it always did when his accent thickened with exhaustion. She'd been carrying this pathetic torch for months now, ever since her transfer to the taskforce.

"At least no one took potshots at us this time," she said, injecting false energy into her voice. "Remember last month when you dove behind that crate like some action hero wannabe?"

"Aye, an' ye were pissing yersel' laughin' while bullets were whistlin' ower ma heid," Soap's grin transformed his weathered features, crow's feet deepening with genuine amusement. "Some bloody partner ye are."

Three weeks ago, she'd finally worked up the courage to test the waters—subtle hints about grabbing drinks off-base, lingering touches during weapons training, comments that skirted the edge of professional. Soap had deflected every attempt with that easy charm of his, jokes about her being "too much trouble" and needing someone who wouldn't drag him into her brand of chaos.

He'd been laughing when he said it, blue eyes twinkling with mirth, but the message carved itself into her bones anyway. His standards lived somewhere in the stratosphere, and she was grounded in the dirt with the rest of the mortals.

"You know what you need?" Mira pushed the memory down, buried it beneath layers of practiced indifference. "A proper drink. Not that battery acid they serve at the mess."

"Whit Ah need is twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep," Soap replied, rolling his shoulders with a series of small pops. "But knowin' Price, we'll be back oot there wi' the sunrise."

Mira memorized the way he moved—cataloged the stretch of muscle beneath his tactical shirt, the unconscious grace in his gestures, the small scar on his knuckles from some long-ago mission. She collected these moments like a miser hoarded coins, pathetic and desperate and completely unable to stop herself.

Dawn brought them to Price's office, standing rigid at attention while their captain's weathered hands shuffled through classified files. The room smelled of pipe tobacco and old leather, masculine and authoritative in a way that demanded respect.

Price's signature boonie hat sat at the perfect angle despite the early hour, and when he finally looked up, his expression could have cut glass.

"We've got fresh meat joining the team," Price began, his voice carrying the kind of authority that made seasoned killers straighten their spines. "Straight from Hereford, but her scores are impressive enough to catch my attention."

He slid a photograph across the mahogany desk with deliberate precision. Mira caught a fleeting glimpse—serious eyes, sharp cheekbones, the kind of classical beauty that belonged in magazines—before Soap's scarred fingers claimed the image.

She watched his face transform as he studied the photo, professional interest bleeding into something that made her stomach drop through the floor. His thumb traced the edge unconsciously, the gesture intimate in a way that felt like a slap.

"Your assignment, MacTavish," Price continued, leaning back in his chair with the casual confidence of a man accustomed to being obeyed. "Take her under your wing. Show her how we operate, keep her alive long enough to be useful."

Soap cradled the photograph like it contained state secrets. "She's a bonnie lass, isnae she?"

The words detonated in Mira's chest, shrapnel tearing through carefully constructed walls. There was warmth in his voice—genuine appreciation, the kind of easy admiration he'd never once directed her way despite months of trying to earn it.

Price's eyebrows climbed toward his receding hairline. "I'm assigning you a rookie to mentor, MacTavish, not a bloody date to the officer's club."

"Just makin' an observation, sir," Soap's grin was all teeth and Scottish charm, but his fingers never stopped caressing that photograph.

Behind her back, Mira's hands curled into fists tight enough to leave crescent moons in her palms. The casual cruelty of it—how easily he'd given a stranger what she'd been begging for without words, how readily his interest sparked for someone he'd never even met. It was everything she'd been desperately trying to earn, handed out like pocket change to a woman who hadn't lifted a finger for it.