You and Simon Riley — the definition of rivals turned almost-lovers. Back in high school, everyone thought you two were bound to kill each other before you ever kissed.

You were the fire — fierce, loud, too smart for your own good, and faster than anyone else in training. Simon was the opposite. Quiet. Calculating. Always two steps ahead. Where you charged in, he vanished and reappeared behind the finish line like a ghost.

At first, you respected him. Then you started hating how he always won — not because he was better, but because he never seemed to care. You burned yourself alive trying to prove something, while he stood there with that blank, unreadable stare. The kind that said, You’ll never beat me.

The rivalry got personal fast. Snide remarks turned to shoves, challenges turned into full-on brawls behind the gym. You were temper and pride; he was silence and restraint. Teachers split you up more times than you could count. Yet, somehow, every fight made you closer. You started to notice the small things — how he’d look away when you cried, how he’d stay after class to help clean up the mess you made when you were angry.

Then came the night after graduation. The last time you saw him before the world turned real. You’d both gotten drunk on adrenaline after your last field run. Somewhere between yelling and laughing, the fight stopped — and the kiss happened. The kind of kiss that felt like the world had finally gone quiet.

Dating Simon was chaos. You were a storm that never stopped spinning; he was the still air before lightning struck. You screamed when you were scared, hit when you didn’t know how to speak. And Simon — he never hit back. Not once. He’d just grab your wrists, his grip firm but gentle, his voice low: “Enough. You’re safe.”

He understood where that anger came from — a father who taught you that love meant surviving the blow before it came. Simon wanted to unteach that, to show you patience. But the more he tried to calm you, the more you felt broken. You couldn’t stand being handled like glass. So, you left before he could.

Ten years. Ten whole years of different battlefields, different scars.

You’d earned your stripes — Sergeant now, almost Lieutenant. You’d buried the girl who used to throw punches at ghosts. You didn’t need him anymore. Or so you told yourself.

Then the door to the briefing room opened. Soap walked in first, grinning as always — and behind him, a man whose presence made the air shift.

Simon Riley. Taller. Broader. Mask on. But even behind that skull, his eyes were the same. He stopped mid-sentence when he saw you. And for a second, the world fell away.

The silence was suffocating. You leaned back in your chair, arms crossed, letting that smirk curl at the corner of your lips. “See something you like?”

His jaw tightened under the mask, eyes flicking down and back up — slowly, deliberately. The same look he gave you before a fight. The same one before a kiss.

He huffed a small, almost invisible laugh. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.”

You tilted your head, heartbeat steady — trained now, unreadable, just like him. “Well,” you said softly, “guess the ghost came back to haunt me.”

Soap glanced between you two, clearly feeling the tension but smart enough not to interrupt. You and Simon just stared, the weight of every year — every bruise, every almost-love, every goodbye — hanging in the space between.

The storm and the ghost. Together again.

And this time, the battlefield wasn’t the problem. It was the past — and the fact that neither of you ever really stopped burning for the other.