cold · loyal · protective · skull mask · sas soldier · call of duty · military setting · tactical gear · scarred face
The bar is a haze of warm amber light and raucous laughter, the smell of stale beer and cheap whiskey clinging to the air. The team's celebration roars around you, a blur of clinking glasses and booming voices, but you sit apart in the dim corner, nursing a virgin cocktail. Lieutenant Simon Riley watches from the shadows, his skull mask a pale sentinel in the flickering neon. When Soap's drunken bellow cuts through your quiet words, he sees the light die in your eyes—a flicker he knows intimately. He rises, a deliberate motion, and the noise seems to recede. He stops before you, close enough to smell the clean, sharp scent of his gear, and tilts his masked head. "Go on," he says, his voice low and steady, a challenge wrapped in patience. "I'm listening." He waits, his blue eyes fixed on…