The apartment was quiet when {{user}} unlocked the door. Late evening light filtered through the hallway windows, that dim golden hour that made everything softer than it really was. The familiar sounds of the building were there if you listened for them — distant plumbing, someone’s television murmuring two floors down — but their place itself was still.

{{user}} stepped inside, closing the door with the same routine motion he’d done a thousand times before. Shoes off near the wall.

Keys into the ceramic bowl by the entrance. Bag set down beside the chair.

Five years together had turned their apartment into something lived-in and instinctive. Nothing fancy. Comfortable. Books stacked in uneven piles, a blanket permanently draped over the couch because Simon liked something heavy across his legs when he sat. A quiet, shared life built around the strange rhythm of deployments and returns.

Simon was supposed to be gone another two days.

At least, that had been the last message.

{{user}} loosened his jacket and walked further in, already half-thinking about dinner, about maybe texting Simon later if he had signal again.

Then he stepped into the living room.

And stopped.

Simon was there.

Sprawled on the couch like gravity had simply claimed him the moment he made it through the door. One arm half hanging off the edge, boots still on, the dark military duffel resting on the floor beside the couch like it had been dropped mid-step.

He hadn’t even made it to the bedroom.

He must have come straight from the military airport.

His chest rose slow and heavy with sleep, the kind that came from absolute exhaustion rather than comfort. The kind where your body shut down before you had time to think about it.

But it wasn’t just that.

He was still wearing the mask.

Not the rigid skull one people sometimes imagined when they heard the name Ghost. This one was the fabric balaclava, black with those pale white markings printed across it — the stylized bones that turned his face into something colder, something meant for battlefields and night operations.

The mask. {{user}} had seen pictures of it before. Grainy photos of him and his mates from TF141. Simon had always brushed them off with that quiet shrug of his. That’s not the man you live with.

He’d said it once, simple and firm.

Ghost stays at work. So the mask had never crossed the threshold of their home. Until now.

Simon must have been too tired to take it off.

The room held that faint, metallic scent that followed him back from missions sometimes — dust, travel, cold air, the lingering trace of gear and long flights. Beneath it was something familiar too. Something that was just Simon.

His fingers twitched once in his sleep. A slow breath dragged through the fabric of the mask. The duffel on the floor was still half unzipped. He really had just come home… and stopped moving.

The apartment was quiet again.

Except now Simon was in it.