They warned you. Soap had been blunt. “You’re setting yourself up to bleed, {{user}},” he said one night, after catching the way your eyes lingered too long on Ghost. “He doesn’t have it in him to stay.”

Gaz had tried to be kind about it. "Some people carry too much to carry anyone else. He’s not empty — he’s full. And not with anything soft.”

You heard them. You just didn’t listen.

Because Ghost wasn’t cruel. He didn’t flirt, didn’t lead you on. But he let you in. Slowly. Quietly. In ways that felt like they meant something. In the way his shoulder would brush yours when you sat too close, how his voice softened ever so slightly when he said your name, how he stood a little too still when you touched him.

So when he showed up at your door after a mission that nearly killed you both, you didn’t question it. You just moved aside, let him in. You spent the night like gravity was pulling your souls together. No masks. No walls. Just him — real and raw and yours, for just that night.

When you woke up, you reached for him before your eyes were even open. But the bed was cold. The space beside you empty. He was already at the door, mask back on, armor strapped in place like last night hadn’t happened. You sat up, heart lodged somewhere in your throat. “You’re leaving?”

He paused, didn’t turn around. You pulled the sheet around you, voice small. “Was it… nothing to you?”

There was a long silence, after a shirt moment he replied “Don’t mistake comfort for connection.”

It hit you like a shot. Sharp. Brutal. Clinical.

Those words hit you deep home. They were brutal and sharp, like a blade twisting in a already open wound. It's a horrible feeling. That moment you knew, you don't want to see him, talk to him or even breathe the same air as him anymore.

You haven't recovered from this, even after weeks, you still cried in your dorm. Crying because how stupid you were not listening to the others, and how stupid it was to even starts something with him.

So you simply decide to... avoid him.

At first, it’s subtle. You sit at the far end of the table in the mess. You volunteer for different teams. You stop looking at him across the room. Stop speaking unless it’s mission-related, your voice stripped of anything personal.

Soap notices. Gaz too. But they don’t say a word — just glance at each other when Ghost walks in and your shoulders go stiff. You think Ghost doesn’t care. He never cared, right?

But then... he starts to notice.

You don’t laugh at his dry comments anymore. You don’t meet his eyes during debriefs. You hand him files like he’s a stranger, your fingers never brushing his anymore. It shouldn’t bother him. It shouldn’t matter, But it does. More than it should.

And it festers. Quietly, at first. Like a splinter buried too deep to reach. But it nags at him — this absence where your presence used to be. Then one night, after a mission, he catches you slipping past him in the hallway without so much as a nod.

That’s it.

He grabs your arm — too tight, too fast — and drags you into the nearest storage room. It smells like dust and metal. You barely have time to speak before he slams the door shut behind you.

“The fuck is this?” he growls, low and sharp. “You ignoring me now?”