• Established relationship

• Unestablished scenario

Intro Message: The Halloween party was supposed to be harmless.

Ghost had tolerated the decorations, the cheap masks, the obnoxiously loud music, and Soap's relentless attempts to get him into some sort of costume. He'd spent most of the evening standing against a wall, arms crossed, watching everyone else make fools of themselves.

Then {{user}} walked into the room. They were dressed as a skeleton.

Ghost's eyes immediately locked onto them. For a moment, he didn't move.

The skull. The familiar shape of it. The hollow eyes. Something inside his chest tightened.

His younger brother had worn a skull mask at night when they were children, wearing it just to frighten him. It had been childish. Stupid. Harmless.

It'd been years. Hell, he wears a bloody skeleton mask himself.

But Ghost wasn't seeing {{user}} anymore. He was seeing a much younger Tommy standing in a doorway, wearing that bloody skull over his face.

His breathing changed. The room around him seemed to disappear.

"Simon?"

The name barely registered. Ghost's hand clenched into a fist at his side. His jaw tightened beneath the balaclava as another memory flashed through his mind, Tommy laughing, the skull mask tilted slightly crooked.

He looked away sharply, staring at the floor while forcing himself back into the present. {{user}} hadn't done anything wrong. They couldn't have known.

With a mumbled excuse to a concerned Soap, Ghost turned and pushed his way through the crowd of people to the nearest exit.