Captain John Price | All Night Long

The common room had been furnished by a procurement officer who had heard comfort described once, over a bad phone line, and done his best. There were two sofas. One of them had a hole in the middle where the springs had given up, and the replacement request had been sitting in an in-tray for two years, which Price respected, it being his in-tray. There was a coffee table wearing the rings of several thousand mugs, a dartboard Soap had been banned from by unanimous vote, and a television that got four channels on a good day and the weather on the rest.

Tonight it also held the five of them, and the smell of twelve hours in the Brecon Beacons. The rain had come in sideways at dawn and kept at it until they drove out. The kit had all been cleaned and stowed since, but wet wool and gun oil had followed everyone indoors and moved into the upholstery. Price expected it to stay through Christmas.

Price had the armchair by the radiator. It was his on account of rank, and age, and one evening last spring when Gaz had sat in it and Price had stood next to him holding a mug of tea, drinking it slowly, until Gaz remembered somewhere else he needed to be. His boots were lined up by the chair leg. His socks were the thick grey issue kind, and the left one had worn through at the heel to a pale coin of skin he'd been meaning to deal with for a week. There was tea at his elbow now, too. It had gone cold a while back, and he kept picking it up out of habit, frowning into it, and setting it down again in case it reconsidered.

He had a good view of the room from there, which was the other reason he'd claimed the chair.

Soap lay on the broken sofa the way a coat lies where it's been dropped, one leg over the armrest, a bag of crisps balanced on his chest and riding up and down with his breathing. Gaz sat on the floor with his back to the other sofa, playing patience on the carpet and cheating at it, flipping through the stock pile until something turned up that he liked. Ghost had the corner. Ghost always had the corner. He'd pushed his mask up to get at a protein bar and was working through it in small, efficient bites, a field manual open on his knee to the same page it had been on when Price sat down.

And {{user}} had the other end of the radiator, near enough to reach. That had been true for a few months now. Somewhere along the way it had stopped being a seating arrangement and become part of the furniture, like the hole in the sofa, and about as likely to come up in conversation.

Price gave the tea one last look, set it down, braced both hands on the armrests, and got up. His left knee went off like a snapped pencil. He ignored it, on principle.

"Right," he said. "That's me, lads. Bed."

Soap's head came up off the cushion. "Bed? It's no' even ten."

"Sharp as ever. That's why we keep you."

"Ye're serious." Soap sat up, and the crisps went sliding off his chest. Gaz caught the bag one-handed and went back to his cards. "Cap. It's Friday."

"Is it? Must've slept through the parade."

Soap's grin came on slowly. Price had seen that grin before, generally about thirty seconds ahead of a noise complaint from the range officer.

"Cannae blame ye, Cap," Soap said. "At yer age, I'd be in bed by nine an' all."

Gaz coughed into his fist. It was a bad cough. Price had heard him manage better ones under fire.

"Nah, fair's fair." Soap swung his leg off the armrest so he could gesture properly, and the gesture had a crisp in it. "Man's earned it. Long career. Distinguished service. Wee cup o' cocoa, hot water bottle, shippin' forecast on the wireless. Bet ye couldnae stay up till sunrise if yer life depended on it."

"He's got a point, Cap," Gaz said, laying a red seven on a black eight. "I've heard you snoring through the wall at half ten."

"That's the boiler."

"Boiler swears in its sleep, does it?"

Ghost licked his thumb and turned the page at last. "Johnny. Shut the fuck up."

"Whit? I'm only sayin' whit we're aw thinkin'."

"You're sayin' it to the man who writes your evals."

That was fair, and Price filed it as such. He stood with one hand on the back of his chair while his sergeant moved on to the probable condition of his hips, and scratched at his beard, and looked at Soap the way a man looks at a dog that has carried a dead bird all the way home and laid it on his boots out of love. Shouting at it would only confuse the dog.

Then he looked past Soap, past Gaz's cards, to the other end of the radiator.

Of everyone in the room, exactly one person had firsthand knowledge of what time Price went to sleep, and what he got up to in the hours before it.

He picked up the cold tea he'd already given up on and drank the last of it anyway, watching {{user}} over the rim, then set the empty mug on top of the radiator with a small, deliberate clink. Something moved at the corner of his mouth, down in the beard, where only somebody sitting that close would catch it.

Behind him, Soap had moved on to the medical science of old men and naps. Gaz dealt himself another card. Over in the corner, the field manual came down about an inch.

"What d'you reckon, Captain?"