Chapter Text
Leon had fallen asleep in Krauser’s arms.
They had sex. Maybe most of the time, Leon wasn’t even sure it had anything to do with love—those spur-of-the-moment fucks in the training room after hours, when Krauser would give him a look that meant bend over, ass up, and take him from behind like he was some back-alley whore, one hand yanking his hair, the other braced hard on his lower back. The bitter nicotine sting from Krauser’s breath and fingers would linger in his ear and on his hips for days.
There were jokes, too. The kind that belonged to soldiers, to men—about Leon’s hair, his eyes, the too-obvious shape of his lips, his knife work, the way his knees were always scraped and bruised. There were those moments when he was lining up a target, finger just brushing the trigger, and a hand would lift his elbow ever so slightly, no more than half an inch.
The barked command that followed, loud and sharp. Rounds fired in perfect unison.
He remembered it, just one week before their whole messy entanglement began.
It was a Monday, right around sunset.
He and Krauser had shared a glance in the office, one that never would’ve happened during morning drills. It was awkward, too long, and too pointed. The officer raised an eyebrow at the physical evaluation report in his hand, then at a manila envelope stamped with the White House seal. In his palm, the standard-sized document looked like a piece of wrapping paper of chewing gum.
He handed it over silently. Leon took it with a blank expression, not even glancing at his scores. He frowned at the envelope instead.
“What’s this?”
“You know I’m not authorized to know.” Krauser replied, pausing. “I think you’ve graduated from me.”
“Mm.”
He stood with his back to Krauser, shoulders rising and falling, tense, then released, then tense again. Then he reached out, turned the doorknob.
The sunset spilled in like someone had knocked over a glass of whiskey on the porch. It flooded the floor in a heavy amber wash, stretching all the way to the desk in a perfect rectangle of gold. Krauser thought of an archway, tall, solemn, carved from golden ash, leading to Valhalla.
Then the gap closed.
Leon was gone.
Krauser told himself not to think about it. About him. Do not think too much.
Leon wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan, afterall.
He wasn’t supposed to slip under his skin, wasn’t supposed to take up space where only creed, orders and muscle memory belonged.
So he did what he always did, he defaulted to routine. Filed the paperwork. Ran the drills. Didn’t look at the empty chair by the wall in their tactical theory classroom.
Tuesday morning, across the field, the recruits doing laps all had regulation haircuts.
Wednesday, the soldier he picked for the injury-evacuation drill moved with him in perfect sync, and didn’t flinch when he cracked a filthy joke that got the whole class laughing.
Thursday, in the mess hall, he noticed that the overly sweet strawberry yogurt Leon used to hoard had all been replaced with bland rice pudding.
Friday, he tucked the only photo he had of Leon—blood and dirt-streaked and in his ruined cop uniform—into his Bible. He wasn’t religious, but he knew no one would ever think to check the Bible on Jack Krauser’s shelf.
Saturday ended in drunken chaos with Leon’s old training group shouting songs and spilling beer down his chest, and yet, somehow, it felt like a closing.
Sunday night, after a long call with the Pentagon, Krauser strolled past the back wall of the men’s bathhouse. The lights were off. Two weeks into winter, no one liked showering after lights-out anymore. Except Leon.
Monday, the most tedious and necessary of days. He always scheduled Leon’s solo training on Monday evenings, just to keep the week from rotting too soon.
Before bed, he received a reply from his contacts in Washington: No one knew where Leon S. Kennedy had gone.
Krauser never had much direct interaction with the White House. Leon’s case wasn’t especially complex, just one of those files that lingered. He hadn’t expected old Uncle Sam to ask him for more.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, Leon came back.
Krauser heard it not from the brass, where such news should’ve gone, but from whispered rumors drifting through the barracks.
He set down his tray mid-meal, half-eaten food still on the plate, and left it on the return rack. Leon wasn’t in the dorms, but under his bunk sat a civilian jacket and a nearly weightless travel duffle bag, neither regulation, both unmistakably his.
Krauser let go of the bag. Then turned and headed straight for the training room.
Leon was sparring with dummies and heavy sandbags in the training room, movements sharp, breath even, his focus so absolute that he didn’t hear the door open behind him.
Krauser paused in the doorway, watching in silence.
And in awe.
After mastering the fundamentals and the cleanest, most efficient kills, Leon began to layer his own stylistic signature onto them, like adornos in tango. Moments of pausa. A subtle drawing in of the shoulder blades. The dagger switching hands between fluid wrists. The slight tilt of his head before or after a strike.
It was flamboyant, yes, but deliberate. The flourishes served to mask the true end of movement, to misdirect.
And they always ended the same way: drilled precisely into the chest of a practice dummy.
Leon’s solo practice seemed to be winding down. He reached back and pulled his sweat-drenched olive-green shirt over his head in one fluid motion, revealing the flush and swell of muscle beneath, the kind of physique honed by high-intensity endurance training. Clearly, a year at Fort Bragg had transformed him from a domesticated dog into a lone wolf.
It was curious, really.
In both biology and the broader arcs of human history, wolves are considered the ancestors of dogs, creatures defined by wildness, pride, and an inherent refusal to be tamed. The military, on the other hand, civilization’s final, legalized form of violence, exists precisely to do the opposite: to turn the individual into a dog. Obedient. Trained. Conditioned to act not out of instinct, but by command.
So what happens when a dog turns feral again? Is that evolution, or collapse?
If it bares its teeth at the hand that trained it, runs alone through the forests of night, and howls from mountaintops, not to call for kin, but simply to be heard before the end, is it dangerous, or is it free?
Fort Bragg had taught them how to kill. How to go sleepless. How to swallow every question.
But it never taught them what to do after the war. How to live without a mission. How to be more than a body not yet buried.
Existentialists say that man is thrown into the world, unbelonging, unprepared, that all things move toward death, and none of us truly belong here. We are left with the task of forging meaning from meaninglessness.
And yet he knew. Leon knew: there were still habits he hadn’t shed.
He still looked for the warmest corner of the tent at night. Still remembered which outstretched hands could be trusted. Just for a moment, just long enough to believe he wasn’t the only lost wolf in the dark.
And perhaps, that’d be more than enough for him. For the world they’re living in.
Krauser cleared his throat, finally making his presence known. He hadn’t expected what came next: The knife in Leon’s hand flew without warning, slicing the air with deadly precision.
Krauser dodged just in time. The blade struck the steel panel behind his head with a sharp clang and clattered to the floor.
Leon’s eyes widened. He jogged across the room toward Krauser but didn’t salute the way he used to. Instead, he just stood there, gaze steady, holding something like an apology in his eyes.
Aside from the taut line of his mouth, so starkly out of sync with his age and the burn still in his spirit, Leon was radiant.
Krauser wanted to kiss him. His lips, specifically. But something unfamiliar in his mind whispered, What the hell are you doing?
“What the hell are you doing?” Leon echoed aloud.
Krauser’s eyes snapped open. The boy’s face was inches from his own, their features mirrored in each other’s irises—he couldn’t tell if the fear belonged to him, or if it was Leon’s confusion reflected back. Their noses nearly touched, left wing brushing right.
So he didn’t move further, he simply paused. Let his mouth settle in a soft, almost soothing press against the corner of Leon’s lips, nothing more.
It was his hands that touched Leon’s side first, gripping the boy’s tender but well-developed muscles, fingers pressing in just enough to leave faint, reddish indentations. Leon didn’t resist, but he didn’t look at him either. He simply turned around without a word, obediently bending over the table. He’d already undone his belt buckle. All Krauser had to do was give a gentle tug, and the last piece of fabric fell away.
He did exactly that.
He gave the bare ass in front of him a few light slaps, measuring, appreciating the firm resilience that came from months of training.
Then he leaned in, almost folding Leon over the table, his hands sliding forward from the dimples of his lower back to his groin, where he grabbed roughly.
And then his entire body went still.
He grabbed Leon and turned him around with primal urgency. The boy resisted, but only for three seconds, maybe less.
Then he simply closed his eyes, letting Krauser see for himself what he had imagined, perhaps even hoped for. Beneath the sparse, dark-blond pubic hair, where there should have been a cock and a pair of balls, there was nothing. Only a slit—timid-looking, almost delicate.
Krauser stared.
He reached out, brushing his thumb and forefinger over the soft skin there, gently working the tender folds. The folds, warm and dry and pale-rose like his nipples, remained closed.
You're a soldier. Trained. Unshakable. Krauser told himself. He spit into his hand, rubbed it over his fingers, and went back to touching that forbidden place.
Leon’s breath started to quicken. He was trembling, eyes to the ceiling, but still, he didn’t say a word.
They found their balance, some strange, unspoken compromise. Krauser lifted him partway onto the table, and Leon’s legs opened without resistance, falling naturally to either side.
Krauser stared at the tight little cunt that refused to sweet-talk him. The darker inner folds became more visible with Leon’s thighs spread, but the spit hadn’t done much. Maybe he hadn’t touched him enough.
Leon’s breath began to settle, his body retreating from the edge. He looked like he might close his legs and walk away.
Krauser stopped him, one firm hand pinning Leon’s thigh down.
With his other, still-wet hand, he parted the folds again, tugging lightly at the fine hair above them. He circled the clit once, then slowly slid half a fingertip inside.
Leon let out a sigh that fell somewhere between pain and embarrassment. His inner thighs trembled like saplings in a windstorm, slender and struggling to stay upright.
Krauser felt sweat forming at his hairline. Even the first knuckle wouldn’t go in. He slowed, eyes studying that glistening, unstained, boyish face, handsome, closed off, refusing to look at him. At first, he’d thought it was just shyness.
Twenty-two years old. There had been no mention of religion on his file. No school records like St. Ignatius High or Immaculate Conception Academy. So that means—
“Yeah,” Leon cut in, voice sharp with impatience, interrupting thoughts that had clearly dragged on too long.
“I’ve never done this before. Does that turn you on more?”
Krauser didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure why Leon had gotten defensive. He had taken virgins before, girls, and the occasional tight-assed boy who liked it rough. He didn’t mind being the first. Hell, he enjoyed it. Watching a trembling little hole trying to refuse and invite him at the same time, it was a turn-on. It made the act satisfying.
But Leon... Leon wasn’t the same.
By around his eighth month in the program, Leon had improved significantly, enough that Krauser could call him his most gifted student. He remembered that one noon on the training field, Leon’s fist slamming into his left chest. He barely held steady, but the rookie had already stepped back, pivoting with a perfect spin kick that sent Krauser’s beret flying off his head.
It proved he earned every damn qualified stamp on that evaluation report.
And now, here he was, pinned beneath him, legs wrapped tightly around Krauser’s waist, that round, muscular ass heavy in his palms, the upper edge of the mons rubbing against his aching cock.
“Relax,” he said through gritted teeth, forcing his voice to soften as his fingers kept easing into the resisting slit, slow and unrelenting.
“You didn’t even think about lube before sticking it in a guy’s ass? Or did you decide my virgin pussy was easier to fuck?” Leon shot back fiercely.
That goddamned mouth.
“Easy now. Try to relax,” he said again, softening his tone. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“...So this is a reward now, huh? Sir.” The title came out laced in sarcasm, followed by a dry, bitter laugh. But they both knew it wasn’t a question.
So Krauser stopped.
He let go of Leon’s trembling thigh, stood up, grabbed the recruit’s shirt—the one he’d taken off just five minutes earlier and tossed it onto Leon’s naked hips.
“Come to me after dinner.” He finally said to the boy.
Krauser never thought of himself as the type who’d retreat like a man running from guilt. But as he shut the door behind him, the weight on his shoulders didn’t come from shame alone, it came from the way his own thoughts refused to land clean.
Because Leon hadn’t said no. Because Leon had opened his legs and unbuckled his belt. Every day in the barracks, in their routine briefings and passing drills, he’d throw him these looks, too young, too curious, too full of want.
But still.
Still, Krauser knew what this was. He knew the difference between wanting someone and being able to say no to them. Between consent and compliance. And he knew damn well what it meant to be in green, what was written between the lines of the code he signed his name under: You don’t fuck your subordinates.
Not even when they look like they’re asking for it. Not even when they don’t say stop.
He ran a hand over his face, jaw tight.
Leon was younger, newer, still learning how to walk through the smoke without flinching. And he—He was supposed to be the one teaching him how not to burn. So why did it feel like he’d just handed him the match?
It’s about supper. He didn’t head to the mess hall. He walked to the infirmary instead.
He could still feel it, his cock half-hard against the inside of his thigh, a lingering pressure that hadn't yet gone away. Shame crept up not because he wanted Leon, but because he wanted him like that.
Like it meant nothing. Like it was just another goddamn release.
He told himself it was about discipline. About responsibility. About doing the decent thing—checking if he’d missed a report, overlooked an ammo requisition, or if there was some urgent paperwork he could bury himself in. But that wasn’t it.
The truth was, he couldn’t stand the idea of seeing Leon under those white cafeteria lights. Couldn’t stand the chance that Leon might smile at him. Or worse—act like nothing had happened.
So he wandered across the base. Deliberately slow. Like an old man with nowhere to be.
At one point, he found himself copying the shuffling gait of young soldiers forced to wake after barely four hours of sleep, sluggish, begrudging, dragging their boots like schoolkids who didn't want to go to class. He caught himself mid-stride and huffed a laugh. Then leaned into the parody, just for a few steps longer.
He ended up sitting on a bench near the obstacle course, still, quiet, unbothered by the November biting wind.
He lit a cigarette and thought about his life.
What did he want?
A stable career and economic security. Health and physical well-being. Personal growth. Self-actualization. Meaningful relationships. A sense of belonging.
On paper, he wasn’t doing bad. He was a major. The paycheck was fine. There was still room for promotion. He was in top shape. He had friends, well, people he could call in a crisis.
But the word belonging felt foreign in his mouth.
He didn’t move for a long time. Just sat there, smoking through the cold, watching the lights of the compound flicker and die one by one.
By the time the mess hall had gone dark, the sky was fully black. No moon tonight. Just the red tip of his cigarette, glowing like a tired pulse.
He dropped it, ground it under his boot, and finally decided to head back to his quarters.
There was someone waiting at his door.
Leon.
He’d showered. His hair was still damp at the roots.
“You didn’t have to come.” He said, “That wasn’t an order.”
“But I want to.”
Krauser stood there, stuck in a silent standoff with his rookie. Then he let out a sign, led him inside and locked the door.
The younger man found himself pinned between the door and Krauser’s solid frame, looking up at him in silence. He blinked up at him, lashes batting. Compared to the defiance he’d shown in the training room that afternoon, Leon now looked completely out of his depth.
Leon averted his gaze when Krauser didn’t respond. Slowly, almost hesitantly, his hand reached for the hem of Krauser’s shirt. Fingers slipped underneath, brushing against warm skin, then drifted lower, grazing along the waistband of his pants, testing the edge where fabric met muscle.
This time, Krauser didn’t hesitate.
He cupped Leon’s blushing face. Leon’s mouth tasted like standard-issue toothpaste, minty, clinical. Clean.
Their first kiss was restrained, careful. Just a press of lips. Then another, longer, deeper. The dam cracked. They clung to each other with a hunger that had simmered too long beneath uniforms and silence.
Leon rose onto his toes, and Krauser cradled the back of his head to keep him from hitting the wall. A hand knocked over the desk lamp with a dull thud. Papers fluttered to the floor. Chairs scraped.
They didn’t care to stop.
Clothes came off in ungraceful pulls, shirts yanked over heads, belts unbuckled by trembling fingers. Palms pressed against bare skin, mapping heat and tension. Krauser growled low in his throat, half-cursing against Leon’s mouth.
His hand paused at Leon’s shoulder. There was a scar, thin but deep, Like a halo scorched into flesh, as if drawn in fire. Medium range gunshot. Not old enough to be a childhood wound.
Krauser’s thumb hovered over it for a second longer than it should have. He wanted to ask. What happened? Who pulled the trigger?
But he didn’t. Because that, too, was one of those things he wasn’t authorized to know.
Leon, flushed and breathless, kissed him until they were both dizzy. At one point, his hand trailed down and cupped the hardness between Krauser’s legs, bold for a second, then retreating as if stung.
His cheeks turned scarlet. And Krauser was already painfully hard.
He let Leon lie down. The officer dorms weren’t luxurious, but better than the barracks and their row bunk hell. He folded a pillow and placed it beneath the small of Leon’s lower back, bunched up the blanket so his spine wouldn’t press directly into the too-hard mattress. He thought he ought to brush his teeth too, but Leon reached out and took hold of his arm.
Their mouths found each other again. Leon’s body was warm, breaths short and shallow, and Krauser chased that rhythm with his own. His fingers pressed into the nape of Leon’s neck, his hips grinding between the younger man’s legs until Leon let out a broken sound and covered his eyes with the back of his hand, red-nosed and trembling.
Krauser hadn’t been part of Leon’s past. And he couldn’t see the future—not Leon’s, not his own, not theirs, not what lay between them.
So this—this was all he could give. Make it easier. For a moment.
He reached into the small medical kit he’d picked up from the infirmary earlier, just in case, and pulled out a tube of lubricant. Military standard-issue, unscented and enough.
He uncapped it, squeezed out more than necessary, and spread it across his fingers.
Leon flinched slightly at the sudden coolness between his legs, but didn’t stop him. Krauser’s hand was methodical, fingers slow, firm, spreading the slick gel over the flushed lips, massaging gently between them, easing it in.
Leon squirmed. A small, breathless whimper escaped his throat, shaky, like it had caught on something inside. His hips jerked when a finger circled his entrance, slipping just inside.
“Hey,” Krauser murmured, almost under his breath. “I’ve got you. Do you trust me?”
Leon bit his lip but nodded, barely.
Krauser dipped lower, brushing his thumb over the puffy outer folds, which now glistened with lube and heat. The lips had started to part on their own, damp and bashful, but inviting.
He couldn’t help himself. He leaned down.
His tongue traced along the slit, slow, deliberate, then pressed in, warm and firm. Leon gasped, whole body tensing. Krauser sucked gently at the swelling clit, teasing it with the flat of his tongue, then gave it a firmer pull with his lips.
That earned him a sound, a little choked cry, fragile and high-pitched. Leon’s hands gripped the sheets, his thighs trembled around Krauser’s head.
He made another sound then, almost like a sob, but softer, as if pleasure had cracked something in him, and it didn’t know whether to weep or beg.
God, it was a beautiful sound.
Krauser didn’t stop. He worked him open with his fingers and mouth both, one gliding, two stretching, until Leon was flushed, wet, pliant, breathing in short desperate bursts.
He waited patiently. Waited for Leon to soften, to grow ready. Leon gasped again. A sudden trickle of wetness touched his tongue, warm, sweet, unmistakably him.
Krauser swallowed it. His fingers kept moving, steady, attentive. He straightened his spine, rising to meet Leon’s gaze, bringing their eyes level.
Leon’s lids were half-lowered, lashes damp, the barest flush blooming around his eyes.
He looked dazed. Barely holding on.
Then Leon leaned in, slowly, his fingers trembling as they cradled Krauser’s head, threading into his hair, before kissing him again.
Krauser closed his eyes.
For a moment, it felt like he didn’t need anything else in the world.
He broke the kiss only long enough to reach for the condom, ripped the foil with one hand, ready to roll the latex down over his cock.
But Leon caught his wrist.
Krauser paused, frowning slightly.
“What—?”
Leon didn’t quite meet his eyes. His voice was low.
“Don’t.”
Krauser looked at him for a moment. The boy was flushed, breathing hard, but steady.
“You sure?” he asked, voice tighter than he meant it to be.
Leon nodded.
“I want to feel it.”
He dropped the condom and pressed forward, guiding himself between Leon’s legs, the head of his cock rubbing against the slick, swollen entrance. Leon inhaled sharply, hands gripping his shoulders.
“It might hurt,” he said. “Tap my shoulder twice if it’s too much.”
Leon’s hands around his back tightened. He gave a nonchalant hum in reply, but his shimmering pretty blues met Krauser’s, direct and steady.
Krauser entered slowly, carefully. Leon was slick and yielding, but still impossibly tight. He resisted the urge to thrust deep all at once. When Leon moaned, long and low, he pulled out again. His cock was coated with lube, slick with fluids, and faintly stained with a thread of crimson.
Leon blinked down at it, half startled, half curious. And maybe, just maybe, a little shy. That look—dazed and pink-cheeked—nearly broke him.
Krauser leaned down and kissed that stupidly cute face, unable to help himself. Leon, still breathless, whimpering, buried his sweaty face in Krauser’s shoulder and whispered:
“…Thank you.”
God. This kid had no idea the kind of trouble that mouth could get him into.
That was all it took. Krauser began to move again. He pushed in slowly, fully, each inch earned, each drag along the inner walls deliberate. Leon clung to him, his fingers digging into muscle, his breathing no longer shy but sharp, reactive.
Every thrust drew out a different sound, some choked, some pleading, all involuntary. His legs, once hesitant, now wrapped around Krauser’s waist without being asked. He was opening up to it—more than that, he was starting to want it.
Krauser gritted his teeth, fucking him with measured control, but the tight heat was driving him insane.
It was already too much, he was too close to burst.
Getting a trainee pregnant would be a disaster, career-wise, even if he didn’t know whether Leon’s body could conceive.
Should he ask? Did the White House know? Of course they did. And they still threw Leon in here, surrounded by testosterone, muscle, and violence—eating, sparring, showering, surviving.
“Can I come on you? Your stomach, your back? You choose.” He kept moving, faster now, breathing hard. “Fuck, you’re so tight.”
Leon didn’t answer right away. His arms wrapped around Krauser’s neck, his body trembling, the soft sounds in his throat syncing with every thrust.
Finally, he whispered:
“…Stay.”
So Krauser did. He came inside Leon—without hesitation, without resistance.
Their bodies moved in tangled rhythm, breath catching, hips meeting again and again. Krauser was spilling deep with a low, rough groan, arms wrapped tightly around Leon’s waist as though he could hold him in place, hold their pounding hearts together, chest to chest, right here, just like this.
Leon followed half a second later, he cried out, soft and high, muffled against the crook of Krauser’s neck as he came, his body clenching tight around him.
He watched Leon catch his breath, then brushed the tear from his cheekbone with his thumb and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
Leon’s index finger kept rubbing the ridge of his left arm, over and over, as if trying to wipe away a stain no one else could see.
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. The only sounds were panting, the quiet tick of the heating unit, and the fading echoes of their own need.
Leon fell asleep not long after, curled on his side, legs still slightly parted, cheeks flushed, the sweat on his back drying in the cooling air.
Krauser stayed awake for a couple more minutes. Then he lay down behind Leon, wrapped an arm around his waist, and let himself fall asleep.
Morning light crept in through the slats of the blinds, pale and gray-blue. Krauser stirred first.
He didn’t move at once. Just watched.
The slope of Leon’s nose. The way his lashes rested against his cheeks. The faint twitch of a dream in the corner of his mouth.
The subtle rise and fall of his throat. His Adam’s apple rose and fell with each slow breath, and that nearly forgotten mole beneath his left cheek looked like a note the sun had scribbled in haste before departing mid-conversation—a quiet promise to return.
All of it was quiet. Unarmed. All of it was his, for now. And for the first time in a long while, he allowed himself to plan.
If Leon was really graduating from training soon. If they were assigning him to covert ops, or some field detail under the D.C. chain of command, maybe Krauser could angle for the same post. He had the rank. The years. The commendations. Enough pull to request a transfer, even to babysit some rookie asset. His rookie.
They were both American soldiers, after all. In this polished, high-pressure machine of a military system, wasn’t that what the uniform was supposed to mean? We take care of our own.
They could be assigned as a sniper team, one as the primary shooter, the other as the spotter, providing cover and calculating ranges. On missions, they’d share a comms channel, synchronize breathing and heart rate, align on every trigger pull.
A buddy pair in an infantry fireteam, moving in tandem could be ideal as well. One advancing, one covering. From breach to exfil, neither of them allowed to fall first.
Or maybe, they could be deployed under Delta’s protocols, a combat operator and a mission support partner. They’d share the same briefing packet, the same tent, maybe even the same chain used to hang their dog tags.
And if Leon said yes—
To a real date.
Nothing fancy. Just a half-day stroll in the city park. They’d find a bench somewhere under a maple tree, sit shoulder to shoulder, maybe share a drink. Talk. Talk about anything, and about nothing.
To a candlelight dinner, yes, but with roses. Not the kind you get at the supermarket last minute, but the kind you order ahead. The kind that mean: I thought of you earlier today. I wanted to make this nice.
To moving in together. Finding an apartment with a big window and decent plumbing. Krauser would insist on a King Size bed. Non-negotiable. They’d argue over the sheets, maybe. Leon would probably pick something absurdly fluffy and soft.
And on Friday nights, they could order Vietnamese takeout, put on a blockbuster from six months ago—and before long, they’d get distracted. Eating tortilla chips, talking nonsense, inching closer without meaning to, then meaning to. Eventually forgetting where the movie even left off.
Hell, Krauser wasn’t married to the idea of never marrying. Maybe he could wait for the right moment.
It would be nice.
He checked the clock.
6:28 a.m.
He usually had his first cup of coffee by six. But this morning—He could wait for Leon to wake up.
And so, he waited.