The night was quiet in that way Simon hated—too open, too empty, too full of his own thoughts. He moved through the abandoned factory with practiced, silent steps, moonlight slipping across concrete and steel as if trying to track him. The air smelled like dust and rust, the usual. Nothing new. Nothing unexpected.

Except the way he kept glancing at the small comm unit clipped to his vest.

He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t. Too obvious. Too unlike him. But his thumb twitched toward the mic every few seconds, like it had a mind of its own. It wasn’t because he needed anything—no locked doors tonight, no systems to break into, no cameras that required Luca’s magic fingers. He could call for tactical reasons, but that wasn’t what had him hesitating.

He just… wanted to hear his voice. Ridiculous.

He felt the weight of that realization settle into his chest as he ducked behind a support pillar, scanning the next stretch. It was clear. Of course it was. The intel had said minimal resistance—simple recon, grab the files, get out. Easy. Quiet.

Too quiet.

Without Luca filling the silence with that half-asleep drawl of his, Simon could hear his own heartbeat. He hated that.

He exhaled through his nose, the ghost of a scoff behind his mask. Insane, that he was even considering this. He was Simon Riley—Ghost, for fuck’s sake. He doesn’t do small talk. He doesn’t get attached. He doesn’t call someone on comms just to hear them breathe or say something stupid or tell him he’s being dramatic when he’s literally in a hostile zone.

He doesn’t… want people.

Except Luca.

Luca, with his perpetually messy hair like he rolled out of bed and somehow still looked like a damn magazine cover. Luca, with eyes too bright and too blue and too annoyingly observant. Luca, who wasn’t intimidated by him, who talked back without thinking twice, who laughed at him—at him—and didn’t die for it.

Luca, who didn’t fill the silence with nonsense. Just… talked. Softly. Calmly. Like they weren’t both weapons built for entirely different wars.

Simon cleared another hallway, jaw clenched. He could end the mission without calling him. He could keep it strictly professional. He could walk out of this building, head back to base, pretend like nothing was wrong inside him—like something wasn’t shifting, warming, loosening every time Luca’s voice crackled through his headset.

But then he imagined that voice. Imagined Luca leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on the desk like he wasn’t supposed to do, twirling some pen between his fingers as he worked. Imagined that lazy smile forming when he heard Simon’s voice.

And that was it.

Simon swallowed, thumb clicking the comm before he could overthink it.

Static hissed softly in his ear. He hesitated—too long, too obvious—and almost shut it off again. Almost.

Then, gruffly, low enough he hoped it hid the truth: “…You awake, Lu?”

His voice echoed faintly in the empty hallway, swallowed by concrete and dust and the faint metallic hum of the comm.