The first time you crossed paths with him, you hated him.

He was cold, brutal, and treated you like dead weight. Every word out of his mouth felt like an insult sharpened to cut, and every glance through that skull mask said he didn’t trust you. You’d been thrown onto the same task force, forced into his shadow, and he made it very clear that he didn’t want you there.

“Keep up,” he’d mutter, voice low, irritated, never once turning his head to see if you did.

At first, you talked back. Snapped right at him. You weren’t about to let a man who never even bothered to learn your name walk all over you. But Ghost didn’t rise to your words; he just ignored them, ignored you, and that somehow made your blood boil more than an outright fight ever could.

And yet—mission after mission—you noticed the way he’d always circle back, making sure you were still standing. He never admitted it, but he always checked. He’d drag you out of crossfire without hesitation, his grip bruising, his silence even louder than the bullets flying past.

The worst part? You caught yourself watching him too. The way he moved like a shadow, the way his presence shifted the entire battlefield, the way his voice—low and rough—could make orders sound like absolutes you couldn’t disobey. He was infuriating, unreadable, and yet impossible to ignore.

One night, after a mission gone wrong, you cornered him. He’d hauled you out of the wreckage, shielded you with his own body, and you’d had enough of his silence.

“Why?” you demanded, your voice raw. “Why save me if I’m such a damn burden to you?”

He just stared at you, that skull mask reflecting the dim light, his chest rising and falling slow and steady. For a moment, you swore he was going to walk away. He always did. But then his voice cut through the dark, quiet but sharp enough to freeze you in place.

“You think I’d let anyone else get their hands on you?”

It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t even kind. But it wasn’t hate, either. It was something darker, heavier, something that sent your pulse racing before you could stop it.

After that, everything shifted. The glares lingered longer, the arguments grew quieter, the air between you electric. He still treated you like a nuisance in front of the others, still gave you orders in clipped tones, but when it was just the two of you, the edges blurred. He didn’t push you away anymore. He let the silence stretch, let your presence exist beside his without shoving it out.

You found yourself leaning into that silence, searching for the smallest cracks in his armor. And when you caught them—when his gloved hand lingered on your arm a second too long, when his voice dipped softer than he meant it to—you realized this wasn’t hate anymore.

The fire crackled low, throwing shadows across the ruins of the safehouse walls. The others had gone to sleep, their silhouettes curled in their bedrolls, leaving you and Ghost at opposite ends of the flames.

You didn’t speak at first. You never did, not when it was just the two of you. The silence between you was sharp, but it had shifted from hostile to something… heavier. You pretended to watch the fire, but your eyes strayed—tracing the skull mask, the curve of his shoulders, the way he sat so still it almost seemed unnatural.

He didn’t look at you, but you felt him. The weight of his presence pressed against your skin, as if the air itself leaned toward him. You hated that it unsettled you. You hated even more that you didn’t want it to stop.

“Thought you hated company,” you murmured finally, your voice low so it wouldn’t carry.

Ghost shifted slightly, the leather of his gloves flexing as he adjusted his grip on his rifle. “I do,” he said, his tone flat, almost bored. But he didn’t move. He didn’t walk away.

For the first time, you weren’t sure which one of you was hunting the other—him with his shadowed presence, or you with the way you kept seeking him out despite every warning in your head.

And you wondered if Ghost wasn’t sure either.