Mission: Marriage
Synopsis: You and Leon have to pretend to be married for 48 hours to complete a mission. He goes a little crazy when he realizes just how much he actually wants that
Words: 1.3k
A/N: 100% will be doing a part 2. He's so cute, he deserves a cute little marriage with someone that can tease him when he's being silly
Part two found here
Whole story (4 chapters) found here
The first sweetheart is an accident, or at least that’s what Leon tells himself.
The two of you are standing in the polished lobby of some overpriced mountain resort under assumed names, your forged wedding bands catching warm chandelier light while a concierge smiles too brightly and asks how long Mr. and Mrs. Carter will be staying.
Leon’s hand is on the small of your back, purely tactical. Purely for appearances. His thumb is not supposed to move in reassuring strokes like it is.
“Two nights,” he says smoothly, sliding over the IDs. “Just us, sweetheart.”
The word leaves him in that low government-trained voice and lands directly in your spine.
You turn. Just a little, just enough to look at him.
Leon does not look back at you.
His face remains professionally blank, all clean lines and practiced indifference, but the tips of his ears go pink.
You smile. Oh, this is going to be fun.
By hour three, he has said sweetheart seven times. You were counting because every single one hit differently.
There’s the clipped, efficient sweetheart he uses in public when ushering you through doors or steering you away from security cameras.
“This way, sweetheart.”
“Careful on the steps, sweetheart.”
“Forgot your purse, sweetheart.”
Each one accompanied by his hand at your waist, your elbow, the center of your back, touches that are supposed to look casual but linger one beat too long because Leon is suddenly, catastrophically aware that he is allowed to touch you whenever he wants under the guise of maintaining cover.
Then there is the low murmur he uses when hotel staff are nearby.
“You cold, sweetheart?”
You nearly trip because that one sounds domestic. Familiar, like he has been saying it to you for years.
And Leon hears it too, judging by the way his jaw tightens immediately after.
You glance at him.
He is staring dead ahead like a man who just stepped on a landmine but cannot stop walking.
By dinner, the problem becomes obvious: Leon is getting too good at this.
Not at surveillance or gathering intel. At husbanding.
He pulls your chair out, orders your drink from memory, cuts into some overpriced chicken while discussing case details through clenched teeth, then absentmindedly slides the better-looking portion onto your plate because you always steal his food anyway.
Your amused stare makes him freeze. He looks at the plate then looks at you.
“…habit,” he mutters.
“Leon.”
“Don’t.”
“You fed me.” Your tone is lightly teasing. Like you know something he doesn't.
“It was tactical.”
“With the larger piece? The big juicy one we'd normally fight over?”
His expression says he wants the earth to open and swallow him whole.
You grin into your wine.
Sweetheart count: thirteen.
Sleeping arrangements are where it starts to ruin him.
One room. One king bed. Of fucking course.
You don’t even bother pretending outrage; both of you have done this dance before. Missions are uncomfortable. It happens.
What does not usually happen is Leon looking at the bed like it has personally betrayed him.
“It’s fine,” you say, already kicking off your shoes. “At least it's a king.”
“Yeah,” he answers too fast. “Fine.”
It is not fine because married couples do not build a pillow wall.
Married couples do not sleep rigidly on opposite edges of the mattress like Victorian strangers.
Married couples, if anyone is listening through the walls or watching through optics, sleep close.
So close that Leon can feel your body heat through the thin hotel blanket. So close that every shift of your leg brushes his. So close that when you roll over in your sleep and tuck unconsciously into his side, one hand splayed over his chest, Leon’s entire central nervous system exits the building.
He goes perfectly still.
Your breath fans warm against his throat. Your knee slots between his. Your wedding band - fake, fake, fake - taps softly against his sternum when your hand flexes in sleep.
Leon stares at the ceiling all night with the expression of a man being slowly executed.
Because now he has to call you sweetheart in the morning. Now he has to wake up with you draped over him and act like this is normal.
Now he has to survive thirty-six more hours of pretending you belong to him in front of witnesses while his body starts reacting to that fiction like it has found religion.
The second morning is fatal.
You are both in the breakfast lounge scanning suspects.
You lean over his shoulder to whisper an observation. Your hand lands on his thigh under the table.
It's tactical. Something about keeping up appearances, Leon remembers vaguely. You feel the muscle in his leg jump violently beneath your palm.
He turns his head just enough to glare at you.
You widen your eyes innocently.
“Something wrong, sweetheart?” you ask.
His pupils blow wide. There is a full two seconds where Leon forgets how language works.
Then, through gritted teeth, “You are enjoying this too much.”
“Enjoying what, honey?”
He makes a strangled noise. You have to bite the inside of your cheek not to laugh. This is no longer a mission for Leon, this is psychological warfare.
Every pet name from your mouth hits him like a bullet.
Honey.
Baby.
Darling.
One time, in the elevator, just to watch him malfunction, you smooth nonexistent lint from his tie and murmur, “You look handsome, sweet husband.”
Leon walks directly into the closing doors.
By the final night he is wrecked.
Forty-eight hours of sweetheart. Forty-eight hours of rings. Forty-eight hours of your head on his shoulder in public, your fingers linked with his, your smile tossed at him over breakfast like you’ve done this a thousand mornings before.
Forty-eight hours of pretending to be a man who gets to keep you.
The mission concludes at 11:37 p.m.
Target apprehended. Intel secured. Cover no longer necessary.
You close the hotel room door behind you and immediately start peeling off your ring.
“God, I’m ready to stop being married.”
Leon says, very quietly, “Don’t.”
You look up. He is standing across the room, jacket half unzipped, hair a mess from the rain outside, staring at your fingers.
At the ring.
At the small pale indent the metal left behind.
The room changes.
You lower your hand.
“Leon?”
His laugh comes out thin. Disbelieving. Ruined.
“I have called you sweetheart for two days,” he says, like this is an indictment, “and every time I did it, it sounded less fake.”
Your heartbeat stumbles. Leon drags a hand over his face.
“I know your coffee order. I know which side of the bed you sleep on. I know you steal the olives out of my drinks and leave me with the stupid toothpick.” He looks at you then, eyes dark and exhausted and frighteningly open. “Do you understand how bad it got in my head?”
Neither of you moves.
His voice drops. “By this afternoon I stopped pretending for them.” He swallows. “I was pretending for me.”
Oh.
Oh, that poor man.
He looks furious about it. Furious that two days of domestic theater exposed something he had apparently been keeping chained in the basement of his chest.
Furious that hearing sweetheart in his own voice made him want things.
A kitchen. Your shoes by his door. Arguments over laundry. Lazy Sunday mornings. A life he was never supposed to let himself imagine.
And now that he has imagined it, even by accident, he cannot force it back out.
“What do you want?” you ask softly.
Leon’s eyes drop to the ring still pinched between your fingers.
When he answers, his voice is almost wrecked enough to shake.
“I want you to put that back on before I do something stupid.”