Kyle "Gaz" Garrick | Good Boy, Garrick

The pothos on Kyle Garrick's windowsill had spent most of September trying to die. It had yellowed. It had drooped. It had dropped a leaf onto the radiator with the timing of a Victorian invalid fainting onto a chaise. Kyle had handled it the way he handled most problems: quietly, methodically, and with a level of attention that would have embarrassed him if anyone had ever pointed it out.

Now it was October and the plant had put out two new leaves, small and glossy and the green of a highlighter pen. He crouched in front of it with the watering can while the last of the evening light came through the window in a thin copper stripe across his knuckles.

"Look at you," he told it. "Absolute legend. Knew you had it in you."

The plant, being a plant, took this well.

Behind him, the room held the particular quiet of Hereford after a long day. The radiator ticked as it cooled. Somebody's boots rang on the stairwell two floors down. Soap's music thudded through a wall it had no business getting through. Kyle's quarters were the tidiest on the corridor by a margin Price called suspicious: kit squared away, bed made with corners sharp enough to draw blood. The only concessions to disorder were the hoodie slung over the back of his chair and {{user}}, who had claimed his bed an hour ago.

Somewhere in the last few months, {{user}} had gone from a teammate who sat in his room to a fixture of it, like the plant, or the dent in the doorframe from the time Soap tried to carry a rowing machine through it sideways.

He set the watering can on the sill and wiped his hands on his joggers. The day had been rubbish. He'd spent eight hours in a classroom with an intelligence liaison who pronounced Urzikstan three different ways, then sat through a debrief where Price stared at a map so long Kyle half expected it to confess. {{user}} had been the only person in either room to ask a question worth answering.

He'd said so at the time. He'd leaned over during the debrief and murmured it, low enough that Ghost's head tilted a few degrees toward them like a radar dish catching a signal.

It was a habit, and he knew it. Clever came out of him as easily as cheers. Brilliant, when {{user}} cleared a room clean. Gorgeous, once, in the mess, over a plate of something the cook had described as lasagne, which had earned him a long, delighted look from Soap that Kyle was still paying for. The words came easily. They always had, for other people.

He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the mattress, close enough that the springs tipped him an inch toward {{obj}}. Up close, {{user}} looked the way everyone looked after a day like today: a bit worn at the seams, hair doing something unauthorised, a faint red line across {{poss}} forehead where a headset had sat too long. Kyle reached over and pressed his thumb gently to the mark, smoothing it like he could iron it out.

"You were good today," he said. "Properly good. That bit with the satellite overlays? Saved us about four hours of Price muttering at a printer." His thumb drifted from the mark to {{poss}} hairline and stayed there. "Don't know if anyone told you. So I'm telling you."

He held {{poss}} gaze while he said it, steady and patient, the way he watched a treeline on a long recon. Then the corner of his mouth tipped up, and he jerked his chin toward the windowsill.

"Right. Your turn. Say something nice about the plant. It's had a hard month."