Chapter Text
Ghost stood in front of the big house that would be his temporary home with two duffle bags in his hands.
With a heavy sigh, he observed the tall door before pushing the key inside the lock.
It swung open and revealed an inviting hallway with a kitchen to the left and a spacious living room to the right.
Admittedly, the house was nice. Flooded with light because of the big windows, perfectly sized to spy.
That was his mission after all. Spying.
The previous mission had taken a toll on him, physically and emotionally, so Price had sent him on one that was like a holiday compared to his usual work.
He didn't like holidays though. It ripped him out of his usual habit of burying his thoughts in overworking himself.
The duffle bags dropped to the floor, the door falling shut behind him with a click.
Sighing once more, he started setting up his new living space, starting with a tour of the rooms.
He didn't know how long the mission would take, so he even unpacked his clothes and put them in the empty wardrobe in the bedroom.
He glanced out of the window at the target's house while neatly folding his fifth black shirt.
The CIA didn't have nearly enough information on the man, so Laswell directly asked Price for help. He sent Ghost to find proof about his ties to a foreign, violent drug cartel.
In all honesty, Ghost didn't think he was the best man for the job. His skull mask was safely stored behind his clothes, but there was no way he would take the balaclava off. This would surely garner attention from the neighbours... but Price trusted him, and he always had some excuses at the ready.
The target was nowhere to be seen yet, but there was something else catching his attention from the corners of his eyes.
In the house neighbouring the target was movement.
He turned his head and spotted a young woman on the top floor.
It was you, doing nothing other than tidying or something trivial like that, but still managing to look ethereal while doing it.
Your hair was beautiful, framing your features exactly how he liked it. The curves of your body hugged perfectly by casual jeans and a tight shirt, all in all definitely a woman he would turn his head for if she passed him on the streets.
And that was rare.
He hummed in appreciation as he watched you making the king size bed in the room you stood in like a hawk, his professional habit allowing him to not miss a single detail.
From what he could tell from the short time, the room fitted you well. Minimalistic and exquisite, but not soulless. Even the simple act of shaking the sheets looked graceful when you did it, and Ghost couldn’t help but stare.
Neither could he help but wonder why your pretty face looked melancholic and sad, while your body portrayed the opposite.
You looked like you were in your mid-twenties, too young to be that unhappy. But for all he knew, you could just have a bad day.
You finished tidying and left the room, helping Ghost to snap back into reality when you were out if his sight.
Amused at how oblivious you had been to his staring, he turned back to the other window, concentrating on his initial task.
He ordered a grocery delivery online to his temporary house and settled down in the chair in his bedroom, after pulling down the blinds to ensure nobody could see him setting up the military grade telescope.
He developed a routine quickly, efficiently as usual.
A navy shower in the morning, coffee or tea and a cigarette for breakfast, spying, some easy lunch, spying, spying, a cup of tea, an easy dinner – mostly delivery food, spying, little sleep, then all of it again.
Anyone else would find it dull and mind numbing, and he felt the same to a certain degree, but after all it was simply part of his job.
That’s what he kept telling himself for the first week.
By that time, he had tried every dinner option on the delivery app, and he felt more like a restaurant connoisseur than a special operations soldier.
He looked at the piece of paper in front of him, on which he meticulously wrote down every piece of information on the target, down to the time he spent on the toilet.
No wonder the CIA had nothing on him, that man was fucking boring. Very good at hiding what he did, rather.
Since the target didn’t exactly deliver, Ghost had started letting his gaze wander over to your house from time to time. Just like once or twice a day at first, then more often until he caught himself watching you living your daily life every thirty minutes.
The temptation to let the telescopes aim slip over to see you better than with his eyes alone was high, like a little devil was sitting on his shoulder whispering into his ear.
“Just for a minute”, the tiny, horned companion chuckled, until Ghost shut the image out of his mind with a shake of his head.
Your pretty, yet miserable face and the way you carried yourself had been subject of his dreams a few times now, a nice little change from the gruesome nightmares waking him up in cold sweat the other nights.
In no way that meant that he should give into the temptation.
Boredom was no excuse to lose focus on his task.
Though was it boredom drawing him to you?
It surely must have been.
A pretty face wasn’t enough to distract him after all, no matter how perfectly it sat on a slender neck leading down to the inviting curve of –
“Bloody hell”, he mumbled to himself, although he wasn’t the type to hold soliloquies.
On top of that, to his own dismay, that intent barely lasted for half a day.
He allowed himself to misuse his work equipment for a miniscule amount of time, to check on you before he went to bed. Just once, a quick glance that was gone so fast that it might as well not have happened.
Checking on you.
As if he needed to do that. It was not part of the mission, it was solely for him.
In all honestly, he was starving at this point.
His gaze fell onto the empty takeout box next to the chair.
No, not like that.
Starving.
Pent up desire forced him to let the temptation get a hold of him, the acceptance that it wasn’t just boredom followed soon after.
As soon as the realisation had come to him, he was able to spy on you almost guilt free, obviously without losing the target out of sight.
One detail he noticed during the week, whether he saw it from afar or closer at night, was that you were always alone. The house was big enough for a family of four, maybe five, but there was nobody with you. Not even a pet.
You didn’t seem to be going out during the day either, or he would have caught movement in your driveway immediately.
Maybe you inherited the house or had rich parents? Because he was sure that someone in their twenties wouldn’t be able to buy and upkeep a house this size all alone.
He spent another three days keeping up his routine, but from time to time he caved and let his gaze wander over to your house for longer.
At one of these times, you sat at the kitchen table, typing onto your laptop keyboard. It was the middle of the day, Ghost had just finished his lunch.
Working from home he reckoned.
Your window was open, and you seemed to enjoy the slight breeze playing with your hair.
Ghost cocked his head. It was weird.
He couldn’t help but compare you to a bird, a beautiful, magnificent one that was caged against its will, having its wings clipped by someone who didn’t understand its urge to be free.
Who that someone was in your case, he didn’t know.
He watched how you took your phone, then shaking your head in defeat before chucking it onto the chair next to yours.
He sighed and tried concentrating on the target again.
As expected, no news. If it stayed like this, he would soon climb up the walls in frustration.
He couldn’t foresee that you would be the person making his day a little more interesting.
Roughly an hour after your husband had texted you that his business trip would last two more days, you had packed the dinner you had initially prepared for him into a glass container, which was now safely nestled in your arm.
It was always the same, business trip after business trip, and then out of the blue it would last one more day, or two, or even three, and then your husband would be home for one night before leaving you again.
You were proud of him and understood that his work was important to him, but it had become excessive over the last two years.
Marrying a guy ten years older than you at such a young age hadn’t been the best idea.
Everyone had warned you, your friends and your parents mostly, and now they didn’t speak to you anymore and your friends couldn’t help you either after you moved across the pond to be with your husband.
It was a dream come true a few years ago. He was genuinely kind, caring, and treated you like a goddess, his goddess. Then he started working more and more, becoming increasingly distant and cold.
The main problem was, there was no reason for him to work that much. His job was so well paid that a normal 35-hour week would suffice, so you had suspected an affair, but there were no other signs of that.
You had looked for clues. The lingering smell of another woman’s perfume on his dress shirts, maybe stains of a lipstick shade you didn’t wear, sneakily observing if he hid his phone or laptop from you – which he didn’t, or inexplainable withdrawals from your joint bank account.
Although the constant trips to God knows where (he rarely told you where he went) didn’t make sense to you, there was nothing indicating infidelity.
With the emotional distance came the physical distance, inevitable like the days passing. What once felt like being on cloud nine and being put on a pedestal by someone who loves you, turned into an agonising yearning for any kind of touch.
Just a comforting hug would do.
There was not much left of your dreamy relationship, but you still loved him more than anything, and although a rational part of your brain begged you to think about yourself for once, your heart refused to listen.
Despite having hopes of fixing your marriage, a frustration you couldn’t combat pushed you towards being spiteful, which resulted in an idea concerning the house across the street.
It had been empty for a while now, but about a week ago you had seen a mysterious man with duffle bags standing in front of the door.
What had struck you the most was the fact that he was wearing a black balaclava with a skull print, immediately making you think he was a burglar.
The phone had been in your hand instantly, a nine and a one already typed in before you saw that he had a key.
You would lie if you said he didn’t make you curious. Since he moved in, the only sign of life was the frequent food order that he obviously placed, always around the same time.
There were no boxes or anything else being brought in, so you guessed that the house was already furnished, and he might very well be a minimalist for that matter.
How pathetic, you thought, loneliness has really turned me into some kind of surveillance neighbourhood watch grandma.
But to be fair, you just wanted something about your day to be interesting.
Therefore, instead of just creepily spying at him from afar, curiosity and concern for the new neighbours eating habits pushed you into carrying homemade curry over to his house, as an offer to get to know him and welcome him to the neighbourhood.
You had cooked this for two people anyways, so someone else could have your husband’s part before it sat in the fridge.
Naturally, Ghost had already spotted you and watched you with intense eyes as you crossed the empty street.
Paranoia had driven him to put his Beretta into the hem of his jeans, just in case. You were the targets neighbour after all, and although there were no signs of any ties between you and him, he couldn’t know for sure.
The container you carried might contain a threat, but with a scoff he pushed that thought away. Also his paranoia speaking.
He stayed in his spot until you rang the doorbell, then he waited a few more seconds before making his way downstairs.
There was no need to open the door, but curiosity got the better of him. He blamed it on you, bewitching him with nothing more than your mere existence.
The heavy door swung open and the two of you faced each other, the sun shining brightly from behind you blinding Ghost, who stood in the greyish hallway.
“Yes?”, he said, his harsh tone hiding the curiosity in his voice.
You were taken aback a little by the slight, unexpected hostility in his reaction, but that didn’t mean that you would run off. It just made you stumble over your next words.
“Uh, hi… I’m your neighbour from across the street, I…”
You thought about what to say next, you definitely didn’t want him to know that you had been watching him.
“I saw you moving in last week, and I wanted to introduce myself.”
You smiled brightly at him, covering up the tracks of the dull and lonely days successfully.
He cocked his head, eyes not leaving yours for even a second.
You swallowed and your smile nearly faltered. Were his ocean blue eyes just emphasised by the mask hiding the rest of his face or did you actually have a hard time keeping eye contact?
You wanted to ask what the deal was with the mask in the first place, but it seemed intruding.
Instead, you quickly let your eyes drop to the container in your arm.
“I made this. It’s curry, I don’t know if you like it, but I have plenty and I kind of always do this when there’s a new neighbour.”
That wasn’t even a lie. You tried connecting to all of your neighbours, more or less successfully.
You held the container out for him to take it, but he didn’t.
“What’s your name?”, he asked.
“Oh! Of course, sorry.”
You gave him your full name and your right hand reached out to shake his. He hesitated for a second before he returned the gesture.
The tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood up as you told him your name and he nearly shivered when your delicate hand with the slender, spotlessly manicured fingers was engulfed in his, no gloves blocking the skin-to-skin contact.
As expected, you had a beautiful name that fell right into place with all the other aspects of your being.
“Ghost”, was all he said, and you nodded.
“Is that a nickname?”, you asked, immediately scolding yourself for the stupid question.
“Yes.”
What followed was a brief, uncomfortable silence. You had already put the container back under your arm, but then he reached out.
“Thank you. I like curry.”
“Oh”, you smiled widely and gave him the homecooked meal.
Now his gaze flickered downwards, and he spotted something shiny and polished on your ring finger. The silver ring looked expensive, and there was a tiny diamond embed in the material.
You were married.
“Is your husband gonna introduce himself too?”, he then asked nonchalantly, to mask the tinge of disappointment he felt.
Ghost knew that he wouldn’t because you were clearly alone at home all the time.
A shadow washed over your features, and it vanished as quickly as it came, although he still caught it.
“He’s at work. Business trip”, you pressed out.
Right, so he’s not dead, Ghost thought.
“Well, I’m used to being alone”, you said when he didn’t reply, a bitter smile wrapping your pretty features in gloominess.
Used to, but not content with.
And just now you told your mysterious, masked neighbour whom you have spoken to for the first time today, that you were basically alone twenty-four seven.
You hoped that this wouldn’t come back to bite you in the arse, and for now you decided that it would be better to just say your goodbyes.
The food was dropped off and the first piece in the puzzle of curiosity had been found and placed, so you could go back home in good conscious.
If you knew that Ghost watched you anyways…