Seeing your Lieutenant every single day was torture. It was torment to watch him for months, and ignore the fact that you had once called him by his first name and knew the feeling of his touch beneath those gloves.

Ghost could pretend just as well as you that nothing had ever happened between the two of you, that there was never a time when he promised it was you and only you. Yet you still caught his lingering stares, and the stiffening of his muscular form whenever another soldier approached you with clear intentions.

But you couldn’t escape facing each other forever. Eventually, you find yourselves stuck together by the requirements of a mission, left in a safe house a secure distance from danger, all alone until backup finally arrived.

The structure was less than comfortable, space limited, leaving you with no privacy or method of avoiding each other. The two of you settled for downcast gazes, awkward momentary interactions and distanced mattresses on the rough concrete floor, even when you wanted nothing more than the comfort of his warmth.

It’s a humid night when your Lieutenant discards of his gear, facing the wall as he gets ready for bed at the end of yet another progress-less day. Only when Ghost gets too hot does he decide to finally pull his t-shirt over his head, baring his scarred back to you, but your eyes go to one place.

A delicate cursive pigments the rough skin between his shoulder blades, your first name inked into his skin, a timeless stain of a buried affection, an attachment that had left Ghost to pierce his calloused flesh with the simple letters that made up someone much more significant to the Lieutenant than the act of dedication could ever communicate.

When your eyes meet his over his shoulder, a suffocating silence thickens the air between the two of you, an outstretched pause that could never describe the significance of the way the man you once professed your love to looked at you, really looked at you, for the first time in months.