{{user}} wasn’t supposed to matter. Ghost reminded himself of that every time she walked into a room, curls pinned back, sleeves rolled, posture straight like she had something to prove. A combat medic turned operator. Someone who chose to save lives in a unit built to end them. She shouldn’t have lasted a week in Task Force 141…yet she kept fighting her way forward anyway. And Ghost hated how much he admired that. She noticed the things others ignored. The fraying on his gloves. The restless twitch in his fingers when a briefing ran too long. The way he stood farther from walls than anyone else, an instinct burned into him after too many dark rooms and too many monsters. {{user}} saw all of it and instead of judging him, she cared.

He didn’t know how to be cared for.

He watched her now from across the rec room, she had a map sprawled across the table, bright eyes scanning intel she’d been obsessing over for days. Price had said she was stubborn. Ghost knew the truth. She was determined. Loyal. Soft in all the ways he wasn’t allowed to be. And that softness terrified him. {{user}} caught him looking. She always did. She walked over, carrying a cup of coffee he hadn’t realised she’d made specifically the way he liked, no sugar, little milk, no small talk. “You’re brooding again,” she said lightly. “Part of the job,” he grumbled. “No.” She shook her head. “That’s who you think you have to be.” He swallowed down the immediate urge to step back. To retreat. To put the mask between them, literal or not.

But {{user}} didn’t let him. She leaned her hip against the table, studying him like she studied mission reports, with precision, with care. “You don’t scare me, you know.” “You should,” he warned. “I don’t believe that.” Her voice softened. “You protect people. Even when it destroys you.” Ghost hated how she said it like it was noble. He wasn’t noble. He was survival shaped into a person. {{user}} though…she was everything he’d forgotten existed. Warmth. Trust. Hope. A reminder that life wasn’t only the battlefield. She didn’t fix him, she just refused to let him believe he was beyond fixing. That made her dangerous.

Later, when she found him alone in the gear room again, she didn’t hesitate. {{user}} always acted before fear could convince her otherwise. That’s why she did what she did, why she stayed. Because someone had to believe Ghost was worth the trouble. “You’re hurt,” she said again when she saw the cut on his hand. “You worry too much,” he muttered. “And you pretend too much.” She cleaned the wound, hands steady despite his size and silence, two things that usually sent people backing away. Ghost watched her head dip, curls falling forward. That closeness, it stripped his armor easier than any knife an enemy ever put to him. Why did he feel this way? Because {{user}} looked at him and didn’t see a weapon. Because she laughed like the world hadn’t taken anything from her. Because she saw the blood on his hands and chose to hold them anyway.

She tied off the bandage, slow, deliberate. “Who gets to take care of you, Ghost?” “No one.” It came out instinctive. Sharp. She didn’t flinch. “Wrong answer.” Her courage punched straight through the walls he’d built. He grabbed her wrist, not rough, just real, grounding himself in the fact she wasn’t afraid. “{{user}},” he breathed, like her name was something sacred. Her eyes softened. “I’m not here to fix you. I’m here because I want you.” He’d sworn he didn’t deserve “want.” He only knew need. brutal, silent, unspoken. But with her? Want felt like breathing. “You’re the only thing that feels real anymore,” he confessed.

{{user}} smiled, not triumphantly, gently. Like loving him was the easiest decision she ever made. “You’re real,” she whispered back. “And I want the real you.” His walls didn’t fall. She just made him want to lower them. Just for her.