Another thing I've drawn for a fanfic I'm writing. Excuse my art style being all over the place, I'm experimenting! Bonus points if someone can guess the breed
Anyway here's something I drew a while back instead of paying attention during lectures 🙂↕️ Don't mind if the anatomy is kinda rough, haven't drawn a human for months but the obsession is strong.
Synopsis: You had no idea that being hired as the personal assistant to the most powerful executive, Leon Kennedy, would pull you into a world this intense. What starts as a job quickly blurs into something far more personal, forcing you to question where professionalism ends, and whether it’s worth the risk.
Tags: CEO!Leon, alternative universe, boss x employee, workplace relationship, close proximity, elevator, mutual pining, slow burn, power imbalance.
Warnings: a job
Words: 16k~
The lobby feels too polished to belong to real people. Everything gleams, glass, chrome, marble, reflecting movement in softened fragments as if even the building itself has decided nothing abrupt should happen here. You pause just inside the entrance, adjusting your bag on your shoulder, smoothing a hand over the front of your blazer more out of habit than necessity. This is it. First day. Biggest bank in the city, maybe the country, and you’ve somehow landed at the very top of it. You take a breath, square your shoulders, and walk toward reception.
The woman behind the desk looks up when you give your name. Her eyes flick down, then up again, slow and deliberate, taking in your outfit, your posture, the folder tucked under your arm. It isn’t overtly rude. There’s even a polite smile attached to it. But there’s something else underneath, something measured and quietly assessing. When you add, “I’m here for Mr Kennedy. I’m his new personal assistant,” the look shifts, just slightly. Not surprise. Not quite skepticism. Something closer to recognition, like she’s seen this before.
“I see,” she says, tone smooth. She types something into her computer, then gestures toward the elevators. “Top floor.”
There’s a beat where it feels like she might say something else. A warning, maybe. Advice. Instead, she just smiles again, the same polite curve of her lips that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You thank her anyway and turn toward the elevators, trying not to read into it more than you should.
The ride up is quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you aware of every small movement, every shift of fabric as you adjust your sleeves again, tugging them into place. Your reflection looks back at you from the mirrored walls, composed but not quite settled. You glance down at your portfolio, flipping it open with your thumb, scanning the pages you’ve already memorised. Previous clients, project management experience, glowing references. It’s solid. More than solid. You know you’re good at what you do.
It just doesn’t feel like enough here.
The numbers climb steadily. Each floor feels like a step further away from anything familiar. By the time the doors open, you’ve already closed the portfolio again, tucking it back under your arm as if that might make you look more certain.
The top floor is quieter than the rest of the building. Fewer people. Less movement. The kind of controlled environment where everything feels intentional. You step out, taking in the layout briefly before heading toward the nearest desk. The woman seated behind it glances up as you approach, her glasses slipping slightly down her nose as she studies you.
“Yes?”
“I’m here for Mr Kennedy. I’m his new-”
“I know who you are,” she says, not unkindly, just efficient. Her gaze lingers for a second, not unlike the receptionist downstairs, then she nods toward the double doors behind her. “Mr Kennedy will see you now.”
There’s no small talk. No attempt to ease you in. Just a direct line from arrival to confrontation.
You nod, offering a quick smile that she doesn’t return, and walk toward the doors. Your hand pauses briefly on the handle, just long enough for you to steady yourself, then you push them open and step inside.
He doesn’t look up.
For a moment, you wonder if he’s even aware you’ve entered, but that feels unlikely. The room is too still, too controlled for anything to go unnoticed. He’s seated behind a wide desk, papers arranged in precise stacks, a laptop open in front of him. His focus is absolute, attention fixed on whatever he’s reading, pen moving occasionally in short, deliberate strokes.
You step further into the room and wait.
Five seconds. Ten.
You don’t interrupt. You don’t introduce yourself. If this is a test, you’re not going to fail it by speaking too soon.
Fifteen seconds. Twenty.
Your awareness sharpens, every small detail registering, the faint hum of the air conditioning, the way the light falls across the desk, the exact angle of his posture as he leans slightly forward, entirely absorbed in his work.
Thirty seconds pass before he looks up.
The movement is unhurried. Controlled. His gaze lands on you with a precision that feels almost physical, sweeping over you from head to toe in a single, assessing glance. It isn’t leering. It isn’t inappropriate. It’s clinical. Like he’s evaluating something and has already decided what it’s worth before confirming it.
He’s sharper up close than you expected. Not just in appearance, though that’s undeniable, the tailored suit, the clean lines of it, the kind of presence that doesn’t need to announce itself, but in the way he holds himself. There’s a stillness to him that feels intentional, like every movement has been pared down to only what’s necessary. His eyes are tired in a way that suggests it isn’t from lack of sleep but from something more constant, something ingrained.
“You’re the new assistant,” he says.
Not a question.
“Yes,” you reply, keeping your tone steady, offering a small, polite smile that he doesn’t acknowledge.
He sets his pen down, leaning back just slightly, enough to create space without losing any of the control he seems to carry naturally. “Sit.”
You do.
He doesn’t waste time. There’s no introduction, no attempt at conversation that isn’t directly tied to the role you’re here to fill. A phone is placed in front of you first, then a laptop, each set down with the same precise motion. “These are yours. They are not optional. You are expected to be reachable at all times during working hours.”
You nod once. “Of course.”
“Your desk is outside this office,” he continues. “You will manage my schedule, my communications, and any additional tasks as required. If something is unclear, you clarify it. If something is wrong, you fix it.”
No softness in it. No room for interpretation.
“The hours will be long,” he adds, voice even, detached. “You will be compensated accordingly.”
There’s a pause, brief but noticeable, like he’s waiting for something. A reaction, maybe. Hesitation.
Instead, you smile. “That’s alright. I like staying busy. Keeps things interesting.”
It slips out easily, the kind of light, optimistic response that has carried you through every other role you’ve had. For a second, you almost expect it to land the same way here.
It doesn’t.
“I would like to remind you, Miss ____,” he says, tone unchanged, “that you are my third assistant in five months.”
The words settle between you without emphasis, but they don’t need it. There’s no threat in them. No raised voice. Just a statement of fact that carries more weight than anything louder would.
You hold his gaze, the smile still there, though smaller now, more controlled. “Then I’ll do my best to improve that statistic.”
There’s a beat where nothing moves. His expression doesn’t change, not in any obvious way. If there’s a reaction, it’s too subtle to catch, buried under the same composure he’s maintained since you walked in.
“See that you do,” he says.
That’s it. No encouragement. No dismissal. Just an expectation placed where you can’t ignore it.
You nod, gathering the phone and laptop, standing when it’s clear the meeting is over. He’s already looking back down at his work by the time you reach the door, your presence dismissed as efficiently as it was acknowledged.
Outside, the air feels different. Not lighter. Just less concentrated. You move to your desk, setting your things down, taking a moment to orient yourself before the day properly begins.
You feel it then, the weight of what you’ve stepped into. Not overwhelming, not enough to shake you, but present. He’s not difficult in the way you expected. Controlled in a way that leaves no room for anything unnecessary.
You straighten slightly, pushing that thought aside as you power on the laptop, already preparing yourself for what comes next.
The first few days blur into something relentless. The work doesn’t come in waves; it arrives as a steady stream that never quite slows, each task folding into the next before you’ve fully finished the last. Paperwork stacks on your desk faster than you can clear it, documents that need reviewing, revising, sending, resending. Emails come in at a pace that demands immediate triage, each one flagged, prioritised, redirected. You don’t get the luxury of easing into it. You either keep up, or you fall behind.
The phones don’t help. Your work phone vibrates almost constantly, sharp bursts against the surface of your desk that pull your attention away from whatever you’re focused on. The desk phone joins in, ringing at intervals that never quite line up, forcing you to juggle both at once while still tracking everything else. And then there’s the intercom. Always the intercom. It never knocks. It never waits. A short buzz, your name, and then instructions delivered in the same clipped, efficient tone every time. No greeting. No filler. Just what needs to be done and when.
“Reschedule the eleven.”
“Cancel this afternoon’s meeting.”
“I need you to review this document.”
You stop expecting context. You learn to fill it in yourself.
The calendar becomes its own kind of battlefield. Meetings overlap, priorities shift without warning, entire blocks of time collapse into each other and have to be rebuilt on the fly. You move things, adjust things, call people back, apologise without apologising, all while keeping his schedule intact in a way that feels less like organisation and more like constant correction. Double bookings become puzzles you solve in real time, rearranging everything around a single fixed point; you.
He doesn’t comment when you get it right. You’re starting to understand that he won’t.
The car rides are quieter. The first time you step into the back seat beside him, the door closing with a soft, final sound, you expect something, conversation, instruction, acknowledgment of your presence beyond the work itself. Instead, there’s nothing. The windows are tinted, cutting the city off into a muted blur, movement reduced to shadows and passing light. He sits beside you, posture unchanged from the office, attention on his phone or the tablet in his hand. You sit the same way, back straight, hands folded loosely in your lap when you’re not checking something, the silence stretching without invitation.
You try once, early on. A simple comment about traffic, something neutral, something easy to respond to.
He doesn’t look up. “Focus on the afternoon schedule,” he says, not unkindly, just firm.
You don’t try again.
Meetings are another adjustment. You’re present in all of them, seated slightly behind or beside him, laptop open, notes ready, documents organised before they’re needed. You don’t speak unless you’re addressed directly. Not by him, not by anyone else in the room. You become part of the background, an extension of his workflow rather than a participant in it. When he does look to you, it’s brief, purposeful.
“Availability next week.”
“Send that through.”
You answer quickly, clearly, and then you disappear again into the edges of the room. Invisible, but necessary.
It’s a strange position to hold. To be both overlooked and relied on at the same time.
His behaviour doesn’t change. Cold isn’t the right word, it suggests something emotional, something reactive. This is more precise than that. Controlled. Efficient. He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t show frustration in any obvious way. He just expects. And when something doesn’t meet that expectation, it comes back to you corrected without commentary, the adjustments made in a way that assumes you’ll understand them without explanation.
There’s no praise. No acknowledgment beyond the absence of correction.
You adjust anyway.
Somehow, you manage to keep your personality intact through it. It surprises you a little. You’d expected the environment to wear it down, to force you into something sharper, more guarded. Instead, you find small ways to hold onto it, brief smiles at people in the hallway, light comments when the moment allows for it, a tone that stays warmer than his without crossing into unprofessional. It’s a balance you’re learning in real time.
The kitchen becomes one of the few places where the pressure eases, even if only slightly. It’s quieter, tucked away from the main flow of the office, the kind of space where people allow themselves to relax for a few minutes before stepping back into the controlled environment outside. You step into it mid-morning, more out of necessity than anything else, your focus still half on the emails waiting for you at your desk.
The coffee is not good. You knew that already, but you make it anyway, watching as the machine produces something that looks right but smells slightly off. You take a sip, wince faintly, and lean back against the counter.
“How’s the new job?”
You glance over. Another admin staff member, someone you’ve seen around but haven’t properly spoken to yet, steps in, grabbing a mug from the cupboard.
“Fine,” you say, offering a small smile.
She raises an eyebrow, like she doesn’t quite believe that. “Fine,” she repeats. “That’s it?”
You shrug lightly. “It’s busy.”
“He’s kind of scary, isn’t he?” she says, lowering her voice slightly, leaning in just enough to suggest this is something shared rather than stated outright.
You let out a small laugh, more reflex than anything. “He is a great boss,” you say, careful with your wording, even as you feel the need to soften it. “He puts a lot of hours in.”
She studies you for a second, then nods slowly, like she’s deciding whether to accept that or not. “You know he isn’t married, right?”
You blink, caught off guard by the shift in topic. It hadn’t crossed your mind. Between the constant work, the structure of his days, the complete absence of anything personal in the way he operates, it simply hadn’t come up.
“Oh,” you say. “Is that so?”
She leans in a little closer, the tone shifting into something unmistakably conspiratorial. “Yeah. No wife. No kids. Nothing.”
You nod, filing that away without really knowing what to do with it. It feels like information you shouldn’t have, even if it’s harmless.
“And he’s like-” she pauses, searching for the right phrasing, then grins, “really hot, right?”
You snort before you can stop yourself, the sound sharper than you intended. It pulls you out of the rhythm of the morning in a way that feels almost inappropriate. “I guess,” you say, a little more flustered than you’d like to admit, shaking your head. “He is kind of handsome.”
It feels ridiculous as soon as you say it. Like you’ve stepped into something you shouldn’t have. You both laugh, the moment light, almost normal.
Then the sound of footsteps cuts through it.
You turn your head instinctively, the movement immediate, and your stomach drops.
Leon Kennedy stands in the doorway.
For a second, your brain doesn’t catch up. This isn’t where he should be. Not here, not in the kitchen, not in a space that’s this casual, this exposed. He doesn’t belong in this part of the office.
He steps in anyway.
The atmosphere shifts instantly. The easy warmth of the conversation collapses into something tighter, more controlled. Your coworker straightens, stepping back slightly, her earlier tone gone completely.
He doesn’t look at either of you immediately. Moves past with the same measured precision he carries everywhere else, reaching for a mug like this is something he does all the time. It isn’t.
Your face feels warm. You’re suddenly very aware of everything you just said.
He heard you. He had to have.
He fills the mug, the sound of the machine louder now in the silence, then turns slightly, his gaze landing on you with the same calm, unreadable focus as always.
“____,” he says, your name precise, uninflected. “I need those files reviewed before the end of the day.”
“Yes,” you say quickly, the word coming out a little tighter than you intended. “Right away.”
You don’t meet his eyes again. Your attention drops to your shoes, to anything that isn’t him, as you set your cup down and move toward the door. The moment stretches just long enough to feel like it might break, then you’re past him, back into the hallway, the cooler air doing nothing to settle the flush in your face.
You don’t look back.
There’s too much work waiting for you anyway.
The day starts early and never really lets up. By the time you sit down at your desk, there are already three changes waiting in your inbox, two marked urgent, one flagged directly from him. You work through them quickly, adjusting schedules, confirming availability, replying where needed, your attention splitting across screens and devices in a way that feels automatic now. The rhythm is familiar, constant, demanding, manageable as long as you stay ahead of it.
You almost do.
The interruptions don’t stop. Your work phone vibrates in sharp bursts against the desk, your office line rings just as often, and the intercom cuts through both with its usual precision. It never knocks. Never waits. It just expects.
“Move the eleven.”
“Push that draft to legal.”
“Cancel the afternoon meeting. Something else has come up.”
You handle it all without hesitation. Calendar shifts, calls made, apologies delivered smoothly, solutions found before problems fully form. It works.
Somewhere in the middle of it, your personal phone lights up. A reminder. Dinner tonight. Something you agreed to weeks ago, before your time stopped being your own. You glance at it briefly, just enough to feel the pull of it, normal, easy, yours.
The intercom buzzes.
“Change of schedule,” he says. “Dinner meeting tonight. Seven.”
Of course.
You don’t hesitate. “Understood.”
You send the text under your desk. Can’t make it. Work thing. Rain check? The replies come in quickly. Mock outrage, light teasing, promises to reschedule, but you don’t linger on them. You can’t. You flip your phone over and get back to work.
By the time evening rolls in, you’ve been moving non-stop for hours. The meeting itself is controlled, sharp, exactly what you expect. You sit just behind him, notes organised, tracking every shift in conversation, every figure mentioned, every implication that isn’t said outright. At one point, the client references a revised projection, something newer than what you’d been sent earlier that afternoon, and you feel it immediately, that small disconnect. You check your notes again. Nothing. No updated document. No revision in your inbox. Just the original file Leon forwarded to you with a single line: Prepare summary.
You adjust anyway. You always do.
You build the summary based on what’s said in the room, aligning it as closely as possible with the numbers you were given earlier. It’s not perfect, but it’s cohesive. It works.
You send it through when you’re back at the office.
It comes back quickly.
This is wrong.
No explanation. Just that.
Your jaw tightens slightly as you open the document again, scanning for the issue. It takes a second, but when you find it, your stomach drops, not because you made a mistake, but because you didn’t.
The figures are different.
Not slightly. Not rounding errors or formatting issues. Entire projections shifted, percentages adjusted, timelines altered, margins tightened in a way that changes the entire tone of the summary. You scroll back to the original file he sent you earlier. The numbers don’t match.
He sent you the wrong document.
You check the meeting notes again, replay the conversation in your head. The client had been referencing the updated version, the one you were never given. You’d built your summary off outdated information because that’s what you had. Because that’s what he sent you.
And now: This is wrong.
The frustration hits sharp and immediate, cutting through the exhaustion you’ve been carrying all day. It’s not just the mistake. It’s everything around it. The hours. The constant pressure. The expectation that you get everything right without being given what you need to do it. You’ve adjusted to it, worked around it, filled in gaps that shouldn’t have been yours to fill.
You fix it anyway. Pull the updated numbers from the fragments you remember, cross-reference what you can from the meeting, rebuild the section properly. It takes time. Time you shouldn’t have to spend. Time you already don’t have.
The intercom buzzes.
Your name.
Of course.
You stand, tablet in hand, and walk into his office without hesitation. He’s behind his desk, posture unchanged, attention already on you before you fully step inside.
“You saw the issue,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It’s been corrected.”
A pause.
“It shouldn’t have needed correcting.”
That’s it.
Flat. Controlled. Final.
And something in you snaps.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a clean break in the restraint you’ve been holding onto for weeks.
You hold his gaze.
“Maybe if you actually gave me the right information,” you say, voice steady, precise, sharpened just enough to make it land exactly where it should, “that wouldn’t have happened.”
The silence is immediate.
Outside, through the glass, movement stops. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. You don’t need to look to know people are listening.
Inside, nothing shifts.
Leon doesn’t react the way you expect.
No irritation. No raised voice. No immediate correction.
He just looks at you.
A long, unbroken look that feels heavier than anything he’s given you before. Not dismissive. Not clinical.
Focused.
There’s something there this time, something clearer than before. Not anger.
Interest.
It flickers behind his eyes, brief but unmistakable, like you’ve just done something he didn’t anticipate, and did it well.
“Is that all?” he says.
The tone is unchanged. It could be any other moment, any other instruction.
“Yes,” you reply.
Another beat.
You don’t wait. You turn and walk out, pace even, posture steady, not giving anything else away. The outer office is too quiet, the attention too obvious even when people pretend otherwise. You reach your desk, grab your bag, and head straight for the elevators.
The doors close.
You stare at your reflection in the mirrored wall, the adrenaline hitting all at once now that you’re alone. Your heart is beating faster than it should. Your hands are steady.
You replay it. The words. The tone. You didn’t soften it. You didn’t apologise.
Three assistants in five months.
You exhale slowly.
You’re fired.
Not now. Not like this. Tomorrow. Clean. Efficient. Final.
“Fuck you, Leon Kennedy”, you whispered to yourself, walking out of the building.
The next morning feels sharper than usual. You arrive on time, earlier than you need to, settling into your desk with a quiet kind of resolve that sits somewhere between preparation and acceptance. If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen today. Clean. Efficient. The way everything here works.
Your inbox is already full.
You pause for half a second, fingers hovering over the keyboard, then open it anyway.
No termination notice. No meeting request from HR. No carefully worded message about “next steps.” Just work. More of it than usual flagged, prioritised, layered in a way that immediately demands your attention. You scan through the first few items, then the next, your focus narrowing as the content settles in.
These aren’t routine.
The documents are heavier, more detailed, tied to ongoing deals rather than surface-level scheduling or coordination. Draft agreements. Internal projections. Communication chains that require context you haven’t been formally given, but can follow anyway. It’s not less work. It’s more. And more importantly, it’s different.
You straighten slightly in your chair.
The intercom buzzes.
You don’t hesitate this time. “Yes?”
“Come in.”
His office looks the same. He looks the same. Composed, controlled, already working before you’ve fully stepped inside. There’s no pause for tension, no acknowledgment of what happened yesterday. He doesn’t mention it. Doesn’t even look up immediately.
“Close the door.”
You do.
He slides a file across the desk toward you, precise, deliberate. “You’ll handle this.”
You pick it up, scanning the first page quickly. It’s not something you’ve dealt with before. Not directly. The kind of task that requires more than coordination, analysis, discretion, independent judgement.
You look up.
He’s watching you now.
Not waiting for you to speak. Just watching.
“I’ll need access to the full correspondence thread,” you say, tone steady, professional. “And the updated projections from yesterday’s meeting.”
A beat.
Then, a single nod. “You’ll have them.”
That’s it. No explanation. No acknowledgment of the shift.
You nod once in return. “Understood.”
When you step back out into the outer office, the air feels different. You sit down, open the file again, and start working through it piece by piece. It takes more concentration than your usual tasks, more attention to detail, but you settle into it quickly. The pressure is still there. It just feels directed now.
The morning passes faster than you expect.
You’re halfway through cross-referencing a set of figures when you hear footsteps approach. Measured. Familiar. You don’t look up immediately. You don’t need to.
He stops beside your desk.
“I have double checked the document I have sent to you,” he says.
There’s the faintest lift of his brow. Subtle. Controlled.
It takes you a second to process it.
It’s not quite a joke. Not in any conventional sense. There’s no change in tone, no shift in expression. But it’s there. Intentional. A reference. Acknowledgment without saying the words.
You glance up at him.
“Good,” you reply, just as evenly. “That should help.”
Another beat.
Something flickers at the edge of his expression not quite amusement, but close enough that you notice it. A smirk
He moves on without another word, continuing down the hallway like nothing happened.
The car ride over is quieter than most, but not empty. The city moves past in blurred streaks beyond the tinted windows, softened into something distant and irrelevant, like it exists on a different timeline to the one you’re in. You sit beside him in the back seat, tablet open on your lap, running through the meeting notes again even though you already know them. You always do this, check, recheck, tighten what doesn’t need tightening. It gives your hands something to do.
Leon doesn’t look at you when he speaks.
“This is a high-profile client,” he says, tone even, like he’s stating a fact you should already understand. “We want this to go well.”
You glance up briefly, then nod once. “Understood.”
It’s not new information. You knew that the moment the meeting landed in your calendar, flagged, reshuffled, given priority over everything else. Still, there’s something about the way he says it, measured, deliberate, that sharpens your focus just a little more.
He doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t need to. The expectation sits clearly between you.
The car slows, then stops smoothly outside another glass-fronted building, just as polished as your own, just as controlled. The driver steps out to open the door, but Leon is already moving, stepping out with the same unhurried precision he carries everywhere. You follow a second later, adjusting your grip on your folder as you fall into step beside him.
Inside, the building feels different but familiar in structure, clean lines, quiet conversations, people moving with purpose. You check in, confirm the meeting room, handle the small logistical details without needing direction, and then you’re moving toward the elevators.
They’re already busy.
People cluster in front of them, waiting, conversations overlapping in low, contained tones. When the doors open, the space fills quickly, bodies shifting inward, everyone making room without quite acknowledging each other. You step in with them, adjusting your position instinctively, angling yourself just enough to avoid contact while still holding your ground.
The doors start to close.
A hand stops them.
Leon steps in behind you.
The space tightens immediately. There’s nowhere to move now, nowhere to shift without making it obvious. You keep your posture steady, shoulders back, gaze forward, professional in a way that feels almost automatic at this point.
He’s right behind you.
Not touching. Not quite. But close enough that you feel it anyway, the presence of him, solid and unyielding, the faint shift of air when he settles into place. Someone brushes past your side as the elevator lurches upward, but it’s him you’re aware of. The space, or lack of it, between you.
Your fingers tighten slightly around your tablet.
“This is nothing,” you tell yourself, focusing on the numbers lighting up above the door, tracking each floor as it passes.
It should be nothing.
His arm lifts slightly at one point, bracing against the wall just above your shoulder as the elevator slows again, and for a second you’re caught between him and the polished metal, not trapped, not quite, but aware in a way that feels sharper than it should. You don’t move. Neither does he. There’s no adjustment for comfort, no unnecessary shift to create space that doesn’t exist.
His breathing is steady behind you. Controlled. Measured.
You don’t turn your head, but you can feel the angle of his attention, the quiet awareness that mirrors your own. It passes quickly. Or maybe it just feels like it should.
The doors open.
Air returns. Space expands. You step forward immediately, out of it, the moment dissolving as quickly as it formed, but it lingers anyway, settling somewhere under your skin.
The meeting itself runs smoothly, at first. You take your usual position slightly behind and to the side of Leon, laptop open, notes aligned, every document already pulled up in the order you anticipate they’ll be needed. The room is all glass and polished wood, the kind of place designed to reflect control back at the people sitting in it. You register faces quickly, titles even quicker, mapping who matters, who speaks first, who waits. Leon doesn’t rush into anything. He lets the room settle around him, lets the other side open with their projections, their expectations, their carefully rehearsed confidence.
You track everything. Numbers, phrasing, pauses. When figures are mentioned, you’re already pulling them up. When timelines are questioned, you have the corresponding documents ready before Leon even needs to ask. It’s seamless in a way that feels almost invisible, the kind of efficiency that only works when no one notices it happening.
You only speak when necessary. When Leon glances back at you for confirmation, you give it, clear, concise. When someone across the table directs a question your way about availability or scheduling, you answer without hesitation, then fall back into silence just as quickly. You exist at the edge of the conversation, but you’re holding half of it together.
It’s routine. Until it isn’t.
The shift is small at first. A slight change in tone from one of the executives across the table. He’s the kind of man who fills space even when he’s sitting still, expensive suit, practiced ease, the sort of confidence that leans just a little too far into assumption. He watches you when you speak the second time, longer than necessary, eyes narrowing slightly like he’s reassessing something.
You don’t react. You keep your focus on the screen, fingers still moving, notes still updating.
The conversation continues. Terms are discussed. Adjustments proposed. There’s a moment where Leon asks for a specific figure and you pass it to him without looking up, already knowing what he needs. He takes it without comment, integrates it into his response like it was always part of the plan.
It should stay there. Professional. Controlled.
The executive leans back slightly in his chair, fingers tapping once against the table before he speaks again, tone lighter now, almost conversational.
“I trust your assistant has everything under control this time,” he says, glancing at you briefly before returning his attention to Leon. “We wouldn’t want any oversights.”
It lands softly. Polite enough that no one immediately calls it out. But there’s something underneath it, something deliberate in the way he doesn’t quite address you directly, like you’re not worth the full attention.
You feel it. Of course you do.
But you don’t react. You’ve learned not to. You keep your posture steady, your expression neutral, your attention on the screen like it didn’t land at all. You don’t need to defend yourself here. Not like this.
Leon doesn’t give you the chance to decide.
“If you have an issue with my assistant,” he says, voice quiet, even, cutting cleanly through the room without raising even slightly, “you bring it to me. Otherwise, don’t waste my time.”
The shift is immediate.
The room stills in a way that’s almost physical, like the air itself has tightened. Conversations don’t stop entirely, but they pause, just for a second, enough for the weight of what he said to settle properly.
There’s no anger in his tone. No visible irritation. That would be easier to dismiss. This is something else entirely, controlled, deliberate, absolute. The kind of authority that doesn’t need to repeat itself.
The executive’s expression flickers. Just slightly. A recalibration. His posture adjusts, the ease slipping just enough to reveal something sharper underneath. He nods once, the movement tighter than before.
“Of course,” he says. “No offence intended.”
Leon doesn’t respond to that. Doesn’t acknowledge it. He simply continues, picking up the thread of the conversation exactly where it left off, as if nothing happened.
But something did.
The rest of the meeting moves forward, but the tone has shifted. Subtly, but unmistakably. The executive is more measured now, his comments cleaner, his attention more focused. The balance of the room has tilted, just enough that it’s noticeable if you’re paying attention.
By the time it ends, everything is back on track, agreements outlined, next steps confirmed, hands shaken in that firm, practiced way that signals professionalism even when something underneath it has changed. You gather your things, closing your laptop, organising your notes with the same efficiency you’ve maintained throughout.
The car ride is quieter than before. Not uncomfortable, just still. The city moves past outside, blurred by the tinted windows, the same as it always does, but you’re more aware of the space inside the car now. Of him sitting beside you, of the way he doesn’t fill silence unnecessarily.
You sit the same way you always do, posture straight, hands resting lightly in your lap, but your thoughts are still on the meeting.
You didn’t need him to step in. You could have handled it.
“I can handle myself,” you say.
It comes out calm. Not defensive. Just factual.
He turns his head slightly, his attention settling on you without urgency.
“I know,” he says.
It should be enough.
It isn’t.
You let out a small breath, your gaze flicking briefly toward the window before returning forward. “Do you realise you just lost a client?”
There’s a short pause, just enough to register the question.
“I don’t care,” he says, “That guy was being an asshole to you.”
You glance at him then, just briefly, trying to read something in his expression, but it’s the same as always. Controlled. Unreadable. He looks forward again a second later, attention already elsewhere.
The rest of the ride passes without either of you saying anything else.
The call comes just as you're starting to unwind.
You've barely been home an hour. Your bag is somewhere near the door where you dropped it without caring, your blazer draped over the back of a chair with none of the usual consideration you give to things that cost money to dry-clean. The rest followed quickly, heels by the sofa, work trousers exchanged for something soft, something you never wear where anyone can see you. An old university hoodie. Leggings. Socks that don't match because you'd stopped caring about that particular detail somewhere around the second month of this job.
You are standing in your kitchen in mismatched socks, watching something uninspiring rotate slowly in the microwave, when the work phone starts vibrating against the counter.
You look at it.
Leon.
You pick it up on the second buzz.
"There's been a leak." His voice is exactly the same as it is at nine in the morning, controlled, economical, each word placed where it needs to be and nowhere else. No preamble. No apology for the hour.
That's all it takes.
The microwave beeps. You ignore it. Your mind is already moving, assembling the shape of the problem from those four words, internal, sensitive, moving fast, containment window closing, and you're reaching for your bag before he's even finished the outline.
"I'm on my way," you say.
You don't change. There isn't time.
The city is different at this hour. The aggressive daytime energy settling into something more ambient, more honest. You move through it efficiently, your mind already in the office, already pulling at threads.
The lobby is reduced to a skeleton of itself. Low lighting, one security desk, your footsteps louder than they should be across the marble. The elevator arrives immediately, which only happens after hours, and you ride it to the top in silence, watching the numbers climb.
The fortieth floor is nearly empty.
Most of the lights are off. The open-plan desks sit dark and unoccupied, monitors sleeping, the usual ambient noise of the place, keyboards, phones, low voices, completely absent. Just the clean hum of the building doing what buildings do when the people inside them have gone home.
His office light is on.
You don't knock. In three months you have never knocked, because by the time you reach his door you have always been expected, and tonight is no different. You push it open and he's at the desk, already working, jacket gone, sleeves pushed to his forearms, his tie loosened to a degree that on anyone else would read as barely notable.
On him it reads like a significant concession.
He doesn't look up immediately. "What do we have."
"Internal document." You set your bag down, pull out your laptop, your voice already in work mode. "Preliminary projections for Q3. It's circulating out of context, someone in compliance thinks it went through a personal account."
His jaw tightens. Not anger. Calculation. You know the difference now.
"Containment?"
"PR's been looped in. Their draft is soft. It needs to be harder."
"Then we fix it."
"Already started."
He looks up then. And it's not the usual look, the quick, functional glance that clocks your presence and moves on. This one lands differently. Takes a second. His gaze moves from your face down, briefly, just once, registering the hoodie, the complete absence of anything resembling work attire, the socks, probably, before coming back up with the neutrality of a man who has decided not to make it a thing.
He doesn't look away.
"I've never seen you like this," he says.
It isn't a criticism. It isn't anything, just an observation, delivered with the same straightforward precision he gives everything. But there's something underneath it, something in the way his gaze had made that unhurried trip and come back to your face and stayed there, that makes the words land differently than a neutral statement should.
Heat climbs the back of your neck anyway.
"I didn't have time to change," you say, and you're aware of how you sound, slightly defensive, slightly flustered, neither of which are things you particularly want to be in front of this man at eleven o'clock on a weeknight in your university hoodie. "I came straight from home, I would have but you said it was urgent so I just… I'm sorry, I know it's not-"
"No."
You stop.
He says it simply, without particular emphasis, but it cuts cleanly through the rambling in the way his voice tends to cut through things.
"It looks good on you," he says.
"Right," you say.
Your voice comes out remarkably even. You're proud of that.
You pull up a chair and get to work.
Time stops behaving normally after that.
It always does when the work is urgent enough. The hours compress into a series of immediate problems, each one demanding your full attention before it dissolves and the next takes its place. Emails drafted, rewritten, stripped back. Phone calls made and concluded. The PR statement reconstructed from the soft, hedging thing it had started as into something clean and precise and deliberately unremarkable, the kind of language designed not to draw further attention by the very fact of its steadiness.
You work in tandem. There's less friction in it now than there was in the beginning, less of that slight resistance that comes from two people not yet calibrated to each other. Somewhere in the last few months the calibration happened without you particularly noticing, you anticipate what he needs before he asks for it, and when he does ask, the requests have gotten shorter, because he no longer has to explain the context.
You both already have it.
By midnight the urgency has ebbed. Not resolved, not fully, but stabilised enough that the immediate crisis has a shape now, contained rather than spreading. The work slows. The silences between tasks get longer.
At some point, food appeared on the corner of the desk. A paper bag, handles twisted, bearing the logo of the Thai place two blocks over that you'd mentioned in passing approximately six weeks ago when he had asked, because he asked, sometimes, in the way that people asked who were gathering logistical information rather than making conversation, what was within walking distance worth knowing about. You hadn't thought he'd retained it.
You pull the bag toward you without comment, start unpacking. He reaches over without looking, takes one of the containers, opens it. No commentary from either of you about the fact that someone ordered for two, that the order was correct, that this is objectively a small and somewhat significant thing.
You eat in a silence that is not uncomfortable.
He's different like this. You've thought it before, on late calls, in cars, in brief unguarded moments that close over again almost before they're fully open, but tonight it's clearer. Without an audience the performance of it drops. Not the competence, not the precision, those are just who he is. But the particular quality of control he maintains in rooms with other people, the authority projected rather than simply held, that's quieter now. He's just working. Just a person in a room, solving a problem.
It's dangerously easier to be around.
"Do you ever stop?" you ask, after a stretch of quiet that has gotten comfortable enough to speak into.
He doesn't look up. "Stop what."
"Working." You gesture loosely at the desk, the screens, the general atmosphere of sustained professional output at midnight. "Like, in general. As a concept."
A pause.
"Do you?" he says.
"Sometimes," you say. "I like having a life."
Another pause. He turns a page. "Sounds inefficient."
You laugh, a real one, quiet, surprised out of you, and shake your head. "You should try it. Genuinely."
He doesn't answer right away. His attention stays on the document in front of him, but something shifts, just slightly, in the set of his shoulders.
"People are unreliable," he says. Tone even. Flat, the way it gets when something is being stated rather than shared. "Work isn't."
It's not an explanation. It's not intended to be one. But it's more than he normally gives, and you're aware of that, and you let it sit for a moment before you answer.
"That sounds miserable," you say, and you mean it without cruelty.
"It's accurate."
You look at him. He doesn't look back, but he knows you're looking, you've learned to tell. "Someone prove you wrong at some point?"
The pause this time is different. Longer. Something tightens beneath the surface of him, just briefly, the way it does when a question lands closer than expected.
"Something like that," he says.
That's all.
You nod, and look back at your screen, and don't push. That's the thing about him you've learned gradually, without meaning to, he offers things at the edge of his own comfort, small and oblique, and if you reach for them too quickly he closes over and you lose the moment entirely. So you've started leaving them where he puts them. Letting them exist without being examined.
It seems to be working.
You end up at the same document.
It happens practically, the final version of the PR statement, both of you reviewing it simultaneously, heads angled toward the same screen. You don't register the proximity until it's already there: your shoulder an inch from his arm, close enough that you can see the faint reflection of the screen in his eyes. His sleeves are still rolled. He smells like the kind of cologne that's simple and expensive in the way that simple, expensive things tend to be.
You are being extremely professional about all of this.
"That line," he says, low, indicating near the middle of the page with one finger. "Change significant concern to notable development. Concern implies reaction. We're not reacting."
"We're responding," you say, already typing.
"Correct."
The correction runs three words and takes approximately four seconds and he says, quietly, without looking away from the screen, "Good."
You have received his approval before. Concise and functional, that works, send it, this is correct, but it has never landed quite like this, at this hour, in this specific proximity, with the particular quietness of a building that has mostly gone to sleep around you.
You look up to ask about the closing line.
He's already looking at you.
Not the assessing look. Not the professional one. Something else, briefly present, that you don't have a name for and don't try to find one for either, because the moment you name it you'll have to do something with it and right now it's easier, so much easier, to let it exist as just a quality of the light, a trick of the late hour, the ordinary disorientation of working past midnight with someone.
"The closing line is fine," he says.
"I was going to ask about the closing line."
"I know."
You hold for exactly one second too long. Then you look back at the screen. "Right."
He straightens. Steps back. The distance returns between you, natural as breathing, and with it the familiar shape of things.
You finish what's left. Tie the loose ends, confirm the statement is queued, close the windows down one by one. The crisis is as contained as it can be tonight. It'll hold till morning.
You gather your things slower than you normally would, the exhaustion arriving now that the urgency has cleared, filling in the space behind it. He's already moving toward the door, jacket retrieved from the back of his chair, a quality of efficiency in it that makes you aware of how little the late hour costs him.
It costs him something. You can see that now, if you look. The tiredness he keeps too tightly held to call tiredness.
The elevator is quiet on the way down.
Not the same quiet as before. Not the kind that's neutral and unremarkable. The kind that has something in it, an awareness, a slightly altered weight, that neither of you is going to be the first to name.
The doors open.
You cross the lobby. The night security guard nods. The door doesn't move when you reach it, and you realise a half-beat later that he's behind you, one hand on the handle, holding it open with the unhurried ease of someone who simply noticed it needed doing.
You step through.
"Thank you."
He nods once.
Outside the air is cooler than you expected, the city at this hour doing its own quiet thing all around you. You adjust the strap of your bag, and you're aware, walking away, of the particular feeling of an evening that has shifted something without declaring what.
You don't examine it on the walk home.
You examine it later, in the dark, in your flat, in the specific silence of a question you haven't asked yourself out loud yet. The answer doesn't come.
The next time it happens, it isn’t a crisis, it’s scheduled, structured, and meant to go exactly to plan. You’ve had it in your calendar for days, flagged, prioritised, built around with the same precision you’ve learned to apply to everything that involves him. It took longer than it should have to secure the reservation, a careful sequence of calls and confirmations to get a table at a place that doesn’t usually make room for last-minute requests. You don’t mention that part when you confirm it to him earlier in the week. He simply nods once, like it was inevitable.
By the time evening arrives, you’ve shifted back into something more formal again, the ease of your flat replaced with structure, posture straightening as you step into the lobby and find him already waiting. He looks exactly the way he always does in public, sharp suit, controlled presence, nothing out of place, but there’s a moment, brief and unguarded, where his eyes flick over you as you approach. Not clinical this time. Not entirely. Something quieter sits underneath it, gone almost as quickly as it appears.
“Ready?” he asks.
You nod once. “Always.”
The car ride is quiet, but not empty. You run through the key points, the client’s expectations, the direction the conversation is likely to take, and he listens, adding a correction here, a clarification there, his tone steady but less clipped than it would have been a few weeks ago. There’s a rhythm to it now, something that feels less like instruction and more like alignment.
The restaurant is exactly what you expected, dim lighting, low conversation, polished surfaces that reflect everything back just slightly softened. You step inside together, the host greeting you with practiced ease. You give the name, already reaching for the confirmation in your email out of habit.
The host disappears briefly.
Returns.
“I’m very sorry,” he says, the apology already prepared. “Your party has cancelled.”
You blink once, the words taking a second to land. “Cancelled?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
Of course they did.
You glance at Leon, already expecting the shift, leave, reschedule, move on. Efficient. Controlled.
He doesn’t react. Not outwardly. His expression doesn’t change, but there’s a flicker of something in his eyes, brief and unreadable, before it settles again.
“Your table is still available,” the host adds carefully. “If you’d like to keep it.”
There’s a short pause.
“We’ll take it,” Leon says.
You look at him, just slightly, not enough to be obvious. He doesn’t return it. Just gestures for you to follow as the host leads you through the restaurant.
You sit across from each other, menus placed in front of you, water poured with quiet efficiency. It should feel like a misstep, like something slightly off balance, but it doesn’t. Not really.
You glance down at the menu, then back up at him, a small smile pulling at your mouth. “I guess it did take me two weeks to get a reservation for you in this restaurant.”
His gaze lifts, settling on you properly this time. There’s a faint shift in his expression, something almost amused.
“Then it would be inefficient not to use it.”
You huff a quiet laugh. “Exactly.”
His gaze lifts to yours, steady, intent in a way that feels different from the office. “I’d hate to waste your effort.”
“Oh?” you say lightly. “Not the reservation?”
“That too,” he replies, but there’s something deliberate in the way he says it.
You hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary before looking back at the menu. “Good answer.”
The waiter returns, you order, and when the conversation resumes, it doesn’t quite return to what it was before.
“So,” you say, resting your chin lightly on your hand, “do you always stay when plans fall through, or is this a rare moment of spontaneity?”
He leans back slightly in his chair, studying you. “Do I seem spontaneous to you?”
“Not even a little.”
“Then you have your answer.” He looks at you again, holding it for a second longer than necessary. “Don’t read into it.”
You tilt your head slightly. “I will anyway.”
That earns you something, small, controlled, but there. Not quite a smile, but close enough that you catch it.
The first drink goes down easily. The second follows with less thought than you’d usually allow. It softens the edges of the evening, loosens something in the way you both sit across from each other. You talk more than you normally would in his presence, small things, light things, the warmth in your tone coming through without you checking it every second.
He doesn’t shut it down. He listens. Responds.
Still brief, still measured, but there’s less distance in it now, less of that deliberate wall he usually keeps in place. At one point you say something, half teasing, half observational, and he exhales through his nose in a way that’s just slightly off his usual rhythm.
You notice immediately. “You almost laughed.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t,” he repeats, but there’s a fraction of hesitation now that wasn’t there before.
You grin, leaning back slightly. “I’m counting it.”
He doesn’t argue again, just takes another sip of his drink, but his gaze lingers on you a second longer than it should before he looks away. It’s subtle. You wouldn’t notice if you weren’t already paying attention.
“You’re not as bad as everyone says, you know,” you add, the words coming easier now, softened slightly by the warmth of the evening.
“High praise,” he says, dry as ever.
“I’m serious,” you insist, a quiet laugh slipping through. “They make you sound terrifying. Like people avoid eye contact in the hallway and pray you don’t say their name.”
“They should,” he replies without missing a beat.
You smile, shaking your head. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“It’s efficient,” he says, setting his glass down with a quiet clink. “People work faster when they’re nervous.”
“Or they make more mistakes,” you counter lightly. “Hard to think clearly when you’re convinced your boss is about to end your career over a calendar clash.”
He glances at you then, something sharper flickering briefly behind his eyes. “You weren’t convinced of that?”
“Oh, I was,” you admit easily. “Elevator ride and everything. Very dramatic internal monologue.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
“I’m stubborn,” you say with a small shrug. “And I like proving people wrong.”
“Is that what this is?” he asks, tilting his head slightly, studying you in a way that feels more curious than critical now. “You proving me wrong?”
“Partly,” you admit. “The rest is just me doing my job.”
“That’s not all you’re doing.”
The comment is quiet, but it lands differently. You pause for a second, searching his expression, but he’s already taken another sip of his drink like he didn’t just say something that felt pointed.
“You still haven’t convinced me you’re terrifying,” you say after a beat, lighter again, though your tone has softened.
“I haven’t tried,” he replies.
“Really?” You raise an eyebrow. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“That wasn’t me trying,” he says, and there’s the faintest edge of something almost amused in it now. “That was me being efficient.”
You laugh softly, leaning back slightly in your chair. “That’s concerning.”
“It should be.”
You study him for a moment, head tilting just slightly, your expression thoughtful rather than challenging. “I don’t think so.”
There’s a pause.
His gaze settles on you again, slower this time, like he’s not just assessing anymore. Like he’s actually considering what you said.
“No?” he asks.
You shake your head lightly. “No. I think you’re very good at acting like you are.”
That earns you a reaction, not immediate, not obvious, but there. A small shift in his posture, the slightest narrowing of his eyes like you’ve landed closer to something real than he expected.
“And what exactly am I acting like?” he asks.
“Unapproachable,” you say simply. “Cold. Like you don’t have time for anything that isn’t work.”
“And you think that’s not true?”
“I think it’s convenient,” you reply, holding his gaze. “For you.”
Another pause.
This one stretches just a fraction longer.
He doesn’t look away.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” he says finally, but there’s less resistance in it now, less certainty.
You smile faintly. “I work for you. It’s kind of part of the job.”
“Is it?”
“Mm,” you hum. “Reading between the lines. Figuring out what you’re not saying.”
“And you think you’ve figured me out?”
You take a slow sip of your drink, buying yourself a second, then meet his gaze again. “Not completely.”
“Good,” he says, and there’s something quieter in his tone now, something that doesn’t quite match the words. “I’d be disappointed if you had.”
You huff a soft laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Frequently, I imagine.”
“Only by people who don’t last,” he says, but the edge of it is softer than it should be.
You tilt your head again, studying him like you’re trying to decide something. “I think people just don’t stay long enough to understand you.”
“And you do?” he asks, a slight lift of his brow.
“Not yet,” you admit. “But I’m getting there.”
Something shifts in his expression again. Subtle. Controlled. But unmistakable if you’re looking for it.
“I don’t make that easy,” he says.
“I know.”
“Then why try?”
You don’t answer immediately. You could give him something light, something easy to deflect with. Instead, you shrug slightly, the movement small, honest. “Because I think it’s worth it.”
The words settle between you.
He goes still for just a second.
Then he leans back slightly, exhaling quietly through his nose, like you’ve just said something he wasn’t entirely prepared for.
“That’s a dangerous assumption,” he says.
You smile, softer now. “I’ve made worse.”
His gaze lingers on you again, longer this time, like he’s trying to decide whether to challenge that or let it stand.
He lets it stand.
“Careful,” he says instead, voice quieter now, almost undercut with something that sounds like a warning but doesn’t quite feel like one. “You might be right.”
The restaurant empties slowly around you without either of you noticing.
That's the thing you register first when you finally look up from the conversation, the tables around you have thinned, the low hum of the room quieter than it was an hour ago, the staff moving with the particular patience of people waiting for the last guests to decide they're done. The couple two tables over have gone. The larger group near the window that had been loud in an expensive, self-congratulatory way have settled their bill and filtered out. Even the ambient music feels quieter, turned down by some imperceptible degree, the restaurant gently, politely suggesting that the evening has reached its natural end.
Outside, the air is cool and immediate in the way evening air always is after the warmth of a restaurant, like stepping from one world into another. The city is doing its late Friday thing, taxis threading through traffic, the low spill of light from restaurants and bars still open further down the street, the kind of noise that isn't loud but is constant, the city just breathing. You stop on the pavement and breathe it in, and feel the wine warm in your chest, and the edges of everything are softened just enough that the city looks like something you want to stand still and look at for a minute.
Leon stops beside you.
Not a step ahead, the way he usually positions himself when you're moving somewhere with purpose. Not half-turned toward the next thing, already calculating the route. Beside you. Still. Like he's doing the same thing you are, standing in the evening and just letting it be an evening.
"The car's-" you start, reaching for your phone, the instinct to be useful arriving even now, even here. You find the notification you're looking for and then immediately lose the thread of what it said.
"Two minutes," Leon says.
"Right." You lock the screen. "Two minutes."
You're both quiet for a moment. Somewhere between the table and the door you'd been laughing about something, you're reconstructing it now, the shape of it assembling slowly, something about the host, the particular way he'd arranged his expression when Leon had looked at him directly while you were thanking him on the way out. A very specific kind of expression. The kind that meant someone was trying to appear professionally neutral while internally questioning their career choices. You'd done an impression on the pavement, just briefly, not cruel but accurate, and Leon had -
You glance at him.
He's still slightly loose around the edges. Not drunk, you don't think this man is capable of drunk, not in any visible way, you think he'd simply decide not to be and his body would comply out of sheer professional obligation. But something in the controlled precision of him has settled. Like a tension that he carries so constantly he's forgotten it's there has, over the course of the evening, quietly released. He's looking down the street, jaw relaxed, hands in his coat pockets, and the streetlight falls across the side of his face and he looks like a person. Just a person standing on a pavement at the end of an evening, with nowhere pressing to be.
You find this version of him extraordinarily dangerous and file that thought away for later.
"You actually laughed in there," you say, picking the thread back up. "Twice."
He doesn't look at you. "Once."
"Leon. Twice."
"The second one wasn't -"
"It was laughter," you say, with the calm certainty of someone delivering a verdict. "Audible. With sound and everything."
"It was an exhale."
"An exhale," you repeat.
"Yes."
"With your mouth open."
He turns his head to look at you then, and you were ready for the expression, the flat, controlled, I'm not having this conversation look, but that's not what's there. What's there is something completely unguarded, a flicker of genuine exasperation lit up underneath with something much warmer, something with no business being this visible, this readable. He looks almost caught out. Like you've gotten somewhere he didn't entirely plan to let you.
You laugh. Actually laugh, the sound coming out louder than you mean it to in the relative quiet of the street, and you don't bother reining it in.
And then he does it again.
A real one. Short, low, surprised out of him, the laugh of a person who forgot, briefly, to manage themselves, and it sounds slightly rusty, like something that hasn't been used at its full capacity in a while, which somehow makes it better.
"There," you say immediately, pointing at him, delighted. "Sound. And I'm fairly certain I saw teeth."
"You didn't -"
"Top row. Briefly. But present."
"You are -" he starts.
"Correct," you say pleasantly.
He shakes his head, and the smile, the real one, the one that changes his whole face into something warmer and younger and far less manageable, lingers longer than it usually would. He looks back down the street, and it stays. You watch it in your peripheral vision and feel something in your chest move in a way that has nothing to do with the wine and everything to do with the particular, inconvenient fact of him.
The laughter settles the way good laughter does. You stand side by side on the pavement in the quiet that follows, and it's a different quality of quiet to the ones you've shared before. Not the car silence, purposeful and contained. Not the office silence, functional and bounded. Something looser than that. Something that doesn't need anything from either of you.
The city moves around you, indifferent and continuous.
Your arm is close to his. Not touching, there's still a narrow inch of space between you, but close in the way proximity gets when guards have come down and no one has consciously put them back up yet. You're aware of it without looking at it directly, the way you're aware of the warmth still sitting in your chest, the way you're aware that the evening has become something neither of you planned for and neither of you seems to be in a hurry to end.
"It's been a while," he says.
His voice is quieter than usual. Not directed at the street anymore.
You glance up at him. "Since?"
He doesn't answer right away. He's looking at something in the middle distance, somewhere down the street where the lights blur slightly, and you recognise the quality of his silence, the kind that means he's deciding whether to say the thing he's already thinking. Whether the thing is worth the saying. Whether, tonight, the answer to that question might be different to what it usually is.
"Since an evening felt like that," he says.
You don't say anything. You've learned, over months of this, when not to.
The traffic moves. Someone somewhere down the block is laughing at something, the sound carrying briefly before the city swallows it.
"Easy," he adds, after a moment. Quiet. Like the word costs something small but he's decided to spend it anyway.
You look at him properly then, turning slightly, and he turns his head at the same time, and the distance between you is closer than you realised, or maybe you've just become more aware of it in a way that makes it feel different. His gaze settles on your face with a quality of attention that stopped being clinical a long time ago and hasn't found its way back. It moves, just slightly, eyes, expression, the particular unhurried way he takes things in when he isn't performing anything for anyone, and something in his expression has opened, just fractionally, in a way you recognise because you've been watching for it for months without letting yourself admit that's what you were doing.
"You do that," he says, and his voice has dropped just slightly, not deliberate, just a natural product of the hour and the quiet and the particular stillness of the space between you. "Make things easy."
You open your mouth, something light was right there, something warm and deflecting and safe, the instinct is so practiced by now it was already forming -
He speaks first.
"You're beautiful."
Just that.
No preamble. No careful construction. No qualifier tucked in before or after to soften it or make it manageable. Said the way he says things when he's decided they're true and has run out of reasons to keep them to himself, straightforward, almost matter-of-fact, like it's a piece of information he's been holding for a while that has simply, tonight, found its way out.
The street keeps going. A taxi passes, close enough that you feel the displaced air. Somewhere further down the block a door opens and closes, spilling music briefly into the night before it's gone again. The city does not pause. It does not acknowledge that something just shifted on this particular pavement outside this particular restaurant on this particular Tuesday.
You look at him.
He's looking back at you with that steadiness he carries everywhere, but there's something underneath it now that you've never seen quite this clearly before. Something open. He's not performing composure. He's just standing there, coat collar turned up against the cold, looking at you like he meant it, because he did.
He doesn't take it back.
Doesn't glance away and smooth the moment over with something professional. Doesn't reach for the distance he usually keeps between himself and anything that isn't work. Just holds your gaze, steady and unhurried, and waits.
Your voice, when it finally comes, is quieter than you meant it to be. Just his name. "Leon."
"I know," he says.
And that's the part that gets you.
Not the words themselves, though those have settled somewhere in your chest where they're going to be very difficult to dislodge. It's the I know after them. The quiet acknowledgment of everything they mean, everything they open, everything they make true that was already true and now can't be unfiled. He knows what he said. He knows what it costs. He said it anyway.
You look at him for a long moment in the amber light of the street, the city moving around you like a current around two fixed points, and you feel something you've been carefully not naming for weeks become suddenly, undeniably named.
The car pulls up to the kerb.
You both stand there for one more second before he steps forward and opens the door for you. Not the driver. Him. The same easy, unannounced way he'd done it the night of the crisis, like it's simply something that needed doing and he was closest.
You get in.
He follows. The door closes. The city seals itself off beyond the tinted windows, softened into shadow and passing light, the familiar shape of it reduced to something distant and irrelevant.
Inside is quiet.
Not the working quiet of the car rides before, the purposeful silence with phones and tablets and schedules, the kind of quiet that has a function. This one is different. Warmer. Full of something that neither of you is going to name out loud tonight, because tonight it doesn't need naming. Tonight, it just needs to exist, which it does, easily, in the space between you.
You sit the way you always sit. Back straight, hands resting in your lap. Posture that has become automatic by now, the shape of professionalism so ingrained it persists even here, even now, even after you're beautiful said quietly on a Tuesday pavement in the amber light.
The difference is that you're not maintaining the posture to be professional anymore.
You're maintaining it because if you let it go you're not entirely sure what happens next, and the wine and the evening and the look on his face have made you less certain of yourself than you usually allow.
You look forward. He looks forward. The car moves through the city, the route splitting into yours and his somewhere ahead, the logistics of the evening reasserting themselves quietly in the background.
His arm is an inch from yours on the seat between you.
Neither of you moves.
You watch the lights of the city go past outside, blurred and amber through the glass, and you carry the warmth of the evening inside you like something you don't want to put down just yet, his laugh on the pavement, real and slightly rusty. The way easy had cost him something small and he'd spent it. The steadiness of his gaze when he didn't take it back.
I know.
You exhale slowly, quietly, and feel the specific, terrifying warmth of something that is no longer avoidable.
The car slows. Your street.
You gather your bag, and your coat, and the remnants of your composure, and you turn to say goodnight the way you always do, brief, professional, clean.
He's already looking at you.
"Goodnight," you say.
Something in his expression shifts, just slightly, at the edges. "Goodnight," he says.
Nothing else. No addition. No qualifier.
But the way he says it, like it's not entirely finished, like it's the end of this evening and not the end of something larger that has only just begun. It makes you feel it all the way to the door of your building, up the stairs, into the quiet of your flat.
You set your bag down.
You stand in the dark for a moment, coat still on, the city a low hum outside the window.
And you let yourself think it. Fully. Without deflecting, without filing it away, without reaching for something lighter or easier or safer to hold instead.
You're beautiful.
You sit down on the sofa in your coat. You're not going to sleep for a while.
Monday arrives the way Mondays always do. Early, indifferent, already full before you've had time to prepare for it. You get in earlier than usual, which is something you've started doing without acknowledging why, the habit forming quietly over the past few weeks. Coffee on your desk, laptop open, the morning's first round of emails already sorted by the time most people are stepping out of the elevator.
You feel good, actually. Just enough that Monday morning had a different quality to it. A quiet anticipation that you hadn't let yourself name but could feel at the edges of everything, a warmth sitting underneath the routine of coffee and emails and the familiar shape of the day starting.
You're halfway through your second email when the intercom buzzes.
You reach for it automatically. "Good morning -"
"The Rhodes file." His voice is exactly what it always is. Clipped. Precise. Each word placed and nothing else. "I need the revised figures before nine."
You pause for just a fraction of a second.
"Of course," you say. "I'll have it to you in twenty minutes."
The intercom clicks off. You sit with that for a moment. Then you open the Rhodes file and get to work.
It's nothing, you tell yourself.
It's a busy morning. He's focused. This is what focused looks like on him, you know that, you've known it for months, the clipped efficiency that isn't coldness so much as the absence of anything that isn't necessary. You've sat across from that version of him in meetings, in cars, in his office at midnight, and you know how to read it.
You send the Rhodes file at eight fifty-three and go back to your emails.
By mid-morning you've handled four intercom calls, two of which were corrections delivered without context, one of which was a reschedule that collapsed half your carefully arranged afternoon calendar, and one that was simply your name followed by a request for a document you already had waiting because you'd anticipated it an hour earlier. You deliver it. He takes it. The door closes.
No acknowledgment. No pause. Nothing.
You go back to your desk.
He's busy, you think. It's a busy week. This is what busy looks like.
You are very good at explaining things away.
By Tuesday you've started to notice the shape of it. Not loudly. Not in any way that announces itself. It's in the texture of small things. The quality of the silence when you enter his office, the angle of his attention when you speak and the way conversations that two weeks ago had developed a certain ease now end a beat earlier than they should, clipped off cleanly.
He doesn't look at you the way he looked at you on the pavement. He barely looks at you at all.
Wednesday the intercom buzzes four times before ten. Each one the same. Clipped, functional, stripped back to its barest components, a task, a deadline, an expectation. No filler. No deviation. You complete each request without hesitation, without variation. You are excellent at your job and you do it excellently, and somewhere underneath the professional surface of that you are quietly, steadily, trying to work out what happened.
The dinner. The restaurant. Two weeks and a reservation and a conversation that went places neither of you had planned for it to go. You make things easy. Standing on the pavement in the cool evening air. The laugh, real, unguarded, slightly rusty, the most human you'd ever seen him. You're beautiful. The car ride home and the inch of space between your arms on the seat and the weight of something present and undeniable sitting in the quiet between you.
And then this.
You stare at the intercom for a second after it clicks off.
Then you pick up the document he requested and go back to work.
By Thursday you've stopped expecting anything different and that's almost worse. You feel it in the small things, which is where you've always felt everything with him. You sit at your desk that afternoon and look at your screen and think, with a clarity that arrives quietly and stays: he regrets it.
It's not a dramatic conclusion. It doesn't announce itself. It simply settles in with the weight of something that has been assembling for days and has now finished assembling and is just sitting there, complete, waiting to be acknowledged.
Friday afternoon is when it solidifies into something you can't reason away.
You've been in his office twice already today, both times brief, both times businesslike to a degree that leaves no room for anything else. You've done everything right. Anticipated what he needed before he asked. Delivered it cleanly. Answered questions directly, concisely, professionally. Given him the version of you that exists purely in relation to the work, because that version is safe and familiar and apparently the only one that's welcome now.
You're at your desk, coat already on, running five minutes past the point where you'd normally have left, finishing a thread of emails that needs closing before the weekend. The office has emptied out around you, the floor down to its end-of-week skeleton, a few lights on, low hum of the building, the particular quiet of a place winding down.
The intercom buzzes. You stare at it for a second. Then you lean over and press the button. "Yes?"
"Before you leave." His voice, exactly as it's been all week. Clipped. Even. A task incoming.
"Of course," you say.
You take your coat off. Hang it back over your chair. Pick up your tablet and walk to his office and open the door with the same professional composure you've maintained all week, the same composure you intend to maintain until you are on the other side of the revolving door downstairs and can do whatever you need to do with the quiet, persistent ache that has been sitting in your chest since Monday morning.
He's at his desk. Jacket still on, late in the day, which is unusual. Papers in front of him, pen in hand, his attention lifting to you as you enter.
You stand just inside the door.
"The Wrenwood correspondence," he says. "Check the draft I've forwarded. Make sure the tone is right before it goes out Monday."
That's it.
No preamble. No acknowledgment of the week, of the distance, of the particular quality of the last five days. No flicker of anything behind the professionalism that might suggest he's aware of any of it.
You look at him for just a moment. Just one.
"I'll review it over the weekend," you say.
He nods once. Looks back down at his papers.
You turn to leave.
And underneath the professionalism, underneath the composure you've held perfectly all week without letting it slip once, something quiet and honest moves through you.
You were wrong, you tell yourself, hand on the door. You read it wrong. You built something out of an evening that was just an evening, out of words that were just words. He's your boss. This is your job. That's all this is. That's all it was.
You believe most of that.
The part you don't believe you fold up very small and put somewhere you don't intend to look at.
"Have a good weekend," you say, without turning back.
He doesn't reply.
You close the door.
Outside in the cooler air of the empty office, you stand for a second, hand still resting on the door handle, not thinking anything in particular. Just existing for a moment in the space between one thing and whatever comes next.
Then you take your coat from the back of your chair, pick up your bag, and walk to the elevator without looking back. The doors close.
Your reflection looks back at you from the mirrored wall, composed and steady, the same as it always is. The numbers count down. You look fine.
The weekend passes the way weekends do when your mind has already decided it isn't going to rest.
You go through the motions of it , the Saturday errands, the coffee with a friend you'd been cancelling on for weeks, the long walk you took on Sunday afternoon more out of restlessness than any desire for fresh air. You smile at the right moments and answer questions and laugh at things that are funny and from the outside it probably looks like a normal weekend belonging to a normal person who is perfectly fine.
Underneath that, you are assembling something.
Not dramatically. Not with tears or catastrophising or the kind of spiralling that demands witnesses. Just quietly, over the course of two days, the way you tend to handle things that matter, turning it over, looking at it from different angles, setting it down and coming back to it, until the shape of it becomes clear enough that you can't argue with it anymore.
The shape of it is this: you cannot go back in there and pretend.
Sunday night finds you at your kitchen table with your laptop open and a cup of tea that has gone cold without you touching it.
The resignation letter takes less time than you expect.
That's the part that sits uncomfortably, how easily it comes. A page, maybe a little less. Professional, measured, appropriate. You thank him for the opportunity. You cite personal reasons, which is vague enough to be unarguable. You offer two weeks notice, standard, the kind of clean exit that doesn't create problems for anyone.
You read it back twice.
It's good. It's exactly right. It sounds like someone who has made a calm, considered decision for entirely reasonable and professional reasons.
You press print before you can talk yourself out of it.
The printer hums. The page emerges. You pick it up, read it one more time in hard copy, and then fold it into thirds and slide it into an envelope and set it on top of your bag.
You sit with it for a while after that.
Not reconsidering. Just sitting with it the way you sit with things that are already decided, letting the weight of the decision exist without trying to change it. It's the right thing. You know it's the right thing. The alternative is going back in there indefinitely, managing the gap between what you'd thought was real and what actually is, feeling that specific shame every time his eyes move past you with professional indifference, every time the intercom buzzes and his voice arrives clipped and impersonal and you remember standing on a pavement thinking I think it's worth it.
It isn't sustainable. You know yourself well enough to know that.
You pick up your cold tea, take it to the sink, and go to bed.
You don't sleep particularly well, but you didn't expect to.
Monday morning is grey and certain.
You dress with the particular care of someone who needs their armour on properly. Everything pressed, everything right. The blazer you'd worn on your first day, which you haven't thought about in months but reached for this morning without quite knowing why. Some instinct about endings and beginnings and the way certain things ask to be marked.
You look at yourself in the mirror.
You're fine, you tell yourself.
You believe it, mostly.
The envelope goes into your bag. You leave earlier than usual, moving through the morning city with a quiet focus that has nothing underneath it now, no warmth, no anticipation, just the clean straight line of a decision already made.
The lobby is exactly as it always is. Polished, gleaming, the world softened in its own reflection. You cross it without pausing. The elevator arrives immediately. You ride it to the top in the mirrored quiet, watching the numbers climb, and you don't think about the first time you did this, you don't think about the portfolio under your arm and the composure that wasn't quite settled and the entire unknown weight of what was waiting at the top.
You think: I'm good at this job.
You think: I'll be good at the next one.
The doors open.
The top floor is its usual early-morning self, the quiet before the day properly starts, a few people at desks, the low hum of the building. You walk to your desk. Set your bag down. Take out the envelope and hold it for a second, just briefly, and then you set it on the desk in front of you.
You don't sit down.
There's no point delaying it. That's not who you are, you don't build things up, you don't circle, you don't let difficult things sit longer than they need to. You do them and then they're done. It's one of the better things about yourself, you think, one of the ones you've always been quietly grateful for.
You pick up the envelope.
You walk to his office door.
You knock. Something you've never done, you have genuinely never knocked, in months of walking into that office you have always been expected and always known it and gone straight in, and the knock feels like its own kind of punctuation. A small, deliberate signal. This is different. This is the last time.
"Come in."
You push the door open.
He's at his desk, exactly where he always is, exactly how he always looks, composed, controlled, already working, the morning already fully his. He glances up when you enter, the brief functional look, and then something shifts in it slightly as he takes in your expression. Nothing obvious. Just a fractional change, there and gone.
You cross the room.
You set the envelope on his desk.
You step back.
"My resignation," you say. Your voice is steady. You're proud of that, quietly, in the part of you that notices things. "Two weeks notice, as per my contract. I've outlined everything in the letter."
Silence.
He looks at the envelope.
He doesn't pick it up.
A second passes. Then another. The silence in the room has a quality to it you don't entirely recognise, heavier than the usual kind, weighted in a way that presses against the composure you've arrived here wearing.
You keep your eyes just above his eyeline. Not quite meeting it. You've learned that his gaze has a way of getting into things you haven't given it permission to get into, and today you can't afford that.
"I want to be professional about this," you add, because the silence is stretching and you need somewhere to put your voice.
"What?" he says.
The confusion in it catches you off guard. You'd expected the composure, the controlled nod, the clean efficient acceptance of a situation being resolved. Not that. Not his eyes doing that, blinking, just once, like the words haven't landed in the right order.
"I'll make sure the handover is thorough," you continue, because you started this and you're going to finish it, that's who you are, you finish things. "Whoever comes next will have everything they need. The calendar system, the contacts, the filing structure, I'll document all of it. It won't take long to -"
"What are you doing?"
His voice is different. Not clipped. Not controlled. Almost breathless. Like the words came out ahead of the composure that usually accompanies everything he says.
You keep going.
Because if you stop you won't start again.
"I should have -" you begin, and there it is, the thing sitting in your throat that you hadn't planned for, the thing that arrived somewhere in the walk across this room and hasn't left. You push past it. "I want to say it was a good experience. Genuinely. I learned a lot and I -"
"Don't."
Quiet. Immediate. Like a reflex.
You stop.
The room is very still. You make the mistake of looking at him.
He's already looking at you. Not the professional look, not the clipped, functional assessment that you catalogued in the first weeks and learned to read like a language. The other one. The one from the pavement outside the restaurant, amber light and cool air and the city going past like it had somewhere better to be. The one from the dinner, across the table, when he'd said I know and meant something wider than the words. The one you'd spent a week convincing yourself you'd imagined.
You hadn't imagined it.
It's right there. Open, and direct, and more than you're equipped to handle in this particular moment when you came in here with an envelope and a decision and the clean straight line of something already finished.
Your chest does something complicated and unhelpful.
"Sit down," he says.
"I'd rather -"
"Please."
You turn toward the door.
It's not a decision exactly, more like your body making a choice before your mind catches up, the animal instinct of something that has been holding itself together very carefully suddenly understanding that it cannot hold if you stay in this room one more minute. You take one step and then another and the door is right there and you reach for it -
His hand closes around your wrist.
Gentle. That's the thing that stops you more than the contact itself, the gentleness of it. Leon Kennedy, who moves through the world with precision and efficiency and the complete absence of anything unnecessary, holding your wrist like it's something he's afraid of breaking.
"Please talk to me."
You stop walking. You don't turn around.
His hand moves, both of them now, finding the sides of your arms, turning you with a care so deliberate it almost undoes you on the spot. With his hands, because apparently this is a man who has run out of ways to ask with anything else.
You shake your head.
You're looking at the middle of his chest because it's the only safe place and even that isn't particularly safe right now.
"____."
Your name. Not the way it sounds through the intercom, not the brisk professional syllables of it. The other way. The way it had sounded on the pavement. Like it means something specific in his mouth.
"I can't," you say. Your voice comes out quieter than you intended. "I can't do this, Leon. I came in here to - I have a letter, it's right there, it's done, I just need you to let me -"
"I'm not letting you resign."
"That's not -" you shake your head again, something tightening in your throat. "That's not your decision."
"No," he agrees. "It isn't."
His hands are still on your arms. You're still not looking at his face.
"Then let me go," you say.
He doesn't.
"Look at me," he says instead.
"Leon."
"Please." Again. That word, in that register, that keeps arriving like something he's had to learn to say, like it costs him every single time. "Just look at me."
You look up.
And whatever you were going to say next dissolves completely, because his face, this controlled, composed, unreachable face that you have been trying to read for months, is doing something you have never seen it do. Something unguarded in a way that goes all the way down, no layer of professionalism underneath it to catch on. He looks, for the first time since you've known him, like someone who is afraid.
Not of you. For you. For this. For the envelope on his desk and the coat you're still wearing and the door you were about to walk through.
"I've been avoiding you," he says.
The honesty of it, just that plainly stated, without preamble or qualification, hits you somewhere undefended.
"I know," you say, and your voice comes out smaller than you want it to.
"Not because I wanted to." His jaw tightens slightly, the way it does when he's working through something, when he's finding the shape of words for something that doesn't usually get words. "Because I didn't know what to do with it."
You wait.
"The dinner," he says. "The things I said."
"You don't have to explain -"
"I do." Not harsh. Just certain. "I need you to let me explain."
You close your mouth.
He exhales slowly. His hands are still on your arms, anchoring. You're not sure which of you he's anchoring, you or himself.
"I meant it," he says. "Everything I said. I meant all of it."
The thing in your chest that you'd spent a week dismantling very carefully reassembles itself in approximately four seconds.
"Then why?"
"Because I woke up Monday morning," he says, "and I understood exactly what I'd done. What I'd said. And I looked at it and I -" he stops. The pause is brief, but it's real, the kind that comes from a person choosing their words with genuine care rather than efficiency. "I've done this before. Got it wrong before. And it cost -" another pause, shorter. "I wasn't going to do that to you."
You stare at him.
"So you just went cold," you say slowly. "You thought you were protecting me."
Something in his expression confirms it without him saying a word.
"Leon." You breathe out through your nose, something between disbelief and a feeling you can't name. "I was about to quit."
"I know." His voice drops. "I know. I saw you come in this morning and I knew, before you even crossed the room, what you were holding." Something moves behind his eyes. "I've spent the last week telling myself it was better this way. That you'd be fine. That you didn't -" he stops again. "And then you walked in here and I couldn't."
"Couldn't what?"
"Let you believe that what happened didn't matter to me."
The room is very quiet.
Outside his office, through the glass, the floor is starting to fill with the ordinary noise of morning. Phones, keyboards, low voices, the unremarkable machinery of the day beginning. In here there is just this, his hands on your arms and his face open in a way you've never seen it and the envelope on the desk and everything that has been sitting between you for weeks, finally taking up the space it was always going to take up eventually.
"I'm not easy to be around," he says. It's not self-pity. It's just factual, delivered with the same directness he gives everything. "I know that. I know what it costs people. I know what it costs -" something tightens in his voice, just briefly. "I've spent a long time making sure nothing outside work gets close enough to go wrong."
"That sounds lonely," you say softly.
"It's been fine."
"That's not the same thing."
He looks at you. A long, steady look.
"No," he says. "It isn't."
The space between you has narrowed without either of you deciding to narrow it. His hands have shifted slightly on your arms, less anchoring now. Present. His thumb moves once, a small unconscious motion against your sleeve, and you don't think he knows he's doing it.
"That evening," he says, quieter now, "was the first time in a long time that something felt -" he searches for it, and you watch him search, watch the usually effortless precision of him work harder than usual for the right word. "Worth it," he says finally.
Your breath catches.
He'd used your word. Knowingly, deliberately, his gaze steady on yours in a way that makes it absolutely clear he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You said that to me," he says. "At dinner. I think it's worth it. And I thought -" the corner of his mouth moves, barely, a ghost of the thing on the pavement, the one that had teeth and sound and had been slightly rusty. "I thought you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about."
"And now?" you say.
He looks at you for a moment.
Then one of his hands moves from your arm, slowly, and his fingers brush your jaw, just barely, just the edge of it, the most careful thing you've ever felt. Tilting your face up the fraction it doesn't need to be tilted because you're already looking at him, have been looking at him, are going to keep looking at him.
"Now," he says, very quietly, "I think you might have been the only one who did."
And then he closes the distance.
It's careful, the way he does everything, deliberate, unhurried, certain without being forceful. His mouth against yours is a question asked in the specific language of a man who doesn't ask questions lightly, who has considered this one from every angle and arrived at it as the only answer that makes sense.
You answer it.
Your hand finds the lapel of his jacket, not pulling, just holding, and the envelope on the desk behind you ceases to exist, and the morning noise filters in from outside like something from another world entirely.
He pulls back after a moment, just enough. His forehead drops to yours, a gesture so unguarded, so unlike every version of him you've catalogued, that it makes your chest ache quietly.
"Don't resign," he says.
You let out a breath that's almost a laugh. "You can't just kiss me and then make employment decisions."
"I'm not." His voice is still low, still close. "I'm asking."
You lean back just enough to look at him properly. His hands are at your waist now, light, like he's still not entirely sure he's allowed, like he's waiting for you to tell him he's wrong.
You look at his face, open, careful, still faintly afraid in that way you've never seen before and suspect very few people ever have.
And you close the distance.
His breath catches and then his hand comes up to your jaw, slow and careful, the way he does everything when it matters, tilting your face up the fraction it doesn't need to be tilted because you're already there, you're already looking at him, you have been looking at him for a long time now.
His mouth meets yours.
It's careful at first. Of course it is. This is Leon, measured, deliberate, a man who does not do anything without first being certain, and the certainty is right there in the way he kisses you, like he's thought about this, like he's been thinking about this, like he's finally just decided to stop thinking about it and do it instead. Quiet and unhurried and so focused it makes everything else in the room go distant, the Monday morning bleeding out at the edges until there's just this, just here, just his hand at your jaw and yours at his lapel and the particular stillness of something finally arriving after a very long journey.
Then something shifts.
His other hand finds your waist and draws you in, just slightly, just enough, and the carefulness of it deepens into something warmer, something that has been waiting underneath the control for longer than either of you has been willing to admit. You feel it in the way his fingers press gently at your waist like he's making sure you're real. In the way your hand has moved from his lapel to his chest without you deciding to move it. In the way neither of you is in any hurry for this to end.
He pulls back after a long moment.
Not far. His forehead drops to yours, resting there, and the gesture is so unguarded, so completely unlike every composed and controlled version of him you've catalogued over months, that it knocks something loose in your chest quietly and completely.
His eyes are closed.
Just for a second. Just long enough for you to see it, the specific expression of a person who has been carrying something heavy for a very long time and has just, finally, been allowed to set it down.
You stay like that for a moment. Foreheads together, the room quiet around you, the morning doing its ordinary thing just outside the glass like the world hasn't just tilted very slightly on its axis.
Then you lean back just enough to look at him properly.
"I'm still mad at you," you say. "For this week."
"I know."
"That was genuinely awful."
"I know."
"You went full robot. It was like the first week all over again but somehow worse."
Something pulls at the corner of his mouth. "I know."
"You're going to have to do significantly better than that."
"I intend to," he says, and the simplicity of it, the complete absence of deflection in it, makes everything around you both dissolve.
"We have work to do," he says eventually, quietly, not moving.
snowghoul
2087
stormborns
prguitarman
titsay
