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The envelope shouldn’t be there.
It’s the first thing she notices when she enters the bedroom. The white paper sitting in stark contrast to the dark wood of the bedside table. It rests near the empty water cup placed there the night before.
Everything in this space is controlled; access filtered through levels of government clearance, movements accounted for, information monitored before it has the chance to become an intrusion. All actions hidden to maintain the guise of independence, of course.
And yet, this object arrived, untouched, unchallenged, existing now as a quiet violation of the rules that were never supposed to fail.
The envelope is plain, unassuming. Almost insulting in its simplicity, with no insignia or seal to explain its arrival. But the name written across the front demands attention with a kind of intentional intimacy. The handwriting is careful, uneven in a way that confirms human effort rather than mechanical precision, as though whoever had written it wanted the act itself to be recognised as part of the message.
For several seconds, she doesn’t touch it.
When she finally reaches for it, her fingers hesitate just before contact. Not from fear, but from the faint expectation that it might not behave like paper at all, that it might reveal itself as something else once acknowledged. But it remains stubbornly real beneath her touch, textured and slightly rough, lacking the polished finish of anything processed through official channels. It had been handled, carried, and placed deliberately. The realisation settles slowly, like sediment sinking through water, forming an uneasy foundation of everything that came after. Her stomach sinks with it.
Inside, there is no letter. No formal message. No introduction or explanation. Only a single photograph, sliding free of the envelope with a quiet friction of paper against paper, light enough to feel almost insubstantial until it is fully in her hand. It takes longer than it should for recognition to settle in.
It’s her apartment.
The east side window, partially obscured by the tree nearby, captured from a distance that suggested observation rather than coincidence. The framing was imperfect, the edges of the image grainy in a way that hinted at haste or concealment, as though the person behind the camera hadn’t been meant to hang around long enough to ensure clarity.
Her breathing changes before her thoughts fully form the reason for it.
The timestamp in the corner confirms what instinct has already begun to whisper. It had been taken tonight.
The implication arrives in stages rather than all at once. First as recognition, then as discomfort, and finally as certainty so complete it stops feeling like thought and starts feeling like fact. Someone had been there. Someone had watched. And worse than that, someone had known exactly where to stand in order to remain unseen.
Beneath the photograph, written in the same handwriting as her name on the envelope, was a single line of text.
We are coming.
The Oval Office has a way of making everything feel official, even when the conversation itself was anything but.
Late afternoon light stretches across the windows in long, pale bands, catching on polished surfaces and the edges of framed photographs that had been arranged with care, each one a reminder of legacy, control, permanence. Things that, lately, felt far less certain than they were meant to.
(Y/N) stands near the window, arms crossed loosely but with intention, her posture composed in the way she’s learnt to be when she refuses to appear anything less than in control, even when control has already begun to slip through unseen cracks. The envelope hasn’t left her thoughts. It loiters somewhere behind everything else, a constant, unwelcome presence that no amount of reassurance has managed to dislodge.
Behind the desk, her father watches her with a patience that feels thinner than usual, tested too many times in too short a span. He hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t turned the conversation into an argument, but the firmness in his tone early had made it clear that whatever was about to happen was not up for discussion.
“We’re not revisiting this,” he says. “What happened yesterday changes things.”
“Doesn’t change me,” (Y/N) replies, her gaze drifting from the window back towards him, steady and unyielding. “I’m not Ashley.”
The accusation settles between them, carrying more weight than either of them chooses to acknowledge aloud. Ashley already paid the price for underestimating a threat, and while that truth lingers in every tightened security measure, every recalculated protocol, it does nothing to make this feel like anything other than an overcorrection.
“No one is saying you are,” the President says. “But someone out there thinks you’re close enough.”
Her jaw tightens a bit, the memory of the photograph flashing sharp and unwelcome behind her eyes, the grainy image and those three words refusing to lose their edge no matter how often they are revisited.
“Doesn’t mean I need a full-time escort,” she says. “I already have a security detail.”
“Your security failed,” he replies. The words are simple. Precise. Impossible to argue without stepping directly into denial.
Before she can respond, the door opens.
The shift in the room is subtle, but immediate. As though the air itself adjusted to accommodate a different kind of presence, one that didn’t belong to politics or procedure, but something more direct. He enters without hesitation, without the need for an introduction to justify his place here, his movements controlled in a way that suggests habit rather than effort.
Leon Kennedy doesn’t look like the kind of person who belongs in a room like this.
Not because he lacks authority, but because he carries it differently. Less visible. Less performative. There is no attempt to smooth the edges of what he is, no effort to present himself as anything other than exactly what the situation requires, and perhaps that’s why the room seems to adjust around him rather than absorb him.
Her father stands, gesturing towards him with quiet certainty. “This is Agent Kennedy.”
She has seen him before, of course. Never in person, but in fragments, in briefings she wasn’t meant to focus on, in the quiet aftermath of a situation no one had been prepared to handle until it was already too late. He is the reason Ashley was home.
That did not mean she had asked for him.
Her gaze settles on him, assessing in return the way she feels his attention settle on her.
“So,” she says, the word carrying a faint edge of challenge, “you’re the guard dog.”
There’s the faintest shift in his expression; not offence, more an acknowledgement that he’s been called worse things by people who meant them more sincerely.
“Something like that,” he replies.
(Y/N) lets out a quiet breath that borders on a laugh, though there’s no humour in it. Her arms tighten across her chest, head tilting just enough to make her scepticism clear.
“Right,” she says, “Because what I really need is a babysitter.”
“I’m not here to babysit,” the agent says, his voice calm but tense.
“Good,” she shoots back, “because I’m not a child.”
“Then don’t act like one.”
The response comes faster than expected, sharper than the room seemed to allow for, and for a moment, the silence that followed felt heavier than anything that had come before it.
Her eyes narrow slightly.
“That’s exactly my point,” she says, her voice quieter now but no less firm. “I don’t need someone following me around every second of the day.”
“You do if someone can walk past your security, into your apartment, and leave you a message without being seen,” Leon replies, the words landing with controlled precision.
The room stills again.
“That doesn’t mean I give up my autonomy,” she says finally.
“It means you stay alive,” he answers.
There is no softness in it. No attempt to make it easier to accept.
Her father steps in then, his voice reclaiming the space before the tension could sharpen further. “This isn’t optional,” he says, the finality in his tone leaving no room for negotiation. “Agent Kennedy will be with you at all times until we determine the extent of this threat.”
At all times.
(Y/N) exhales slowly, her gaze moving once more to Leon, studying him.
He does not look away.
“Fine,” she says, at last. “But if you’re going to follow me everywhere, you’re going to have to keep up.”
Something almost imperceptible crosses his face then.
“That won’t be a problem,” he replies.
The meeting ends soon after. Her father is pulled into another call, another crisis, another room where the fate of strangers will be discussed in polished language. (Y/N) leaves before she can be dismissed, irritation carrying her toward the hall in brisk, measured steps.
She has nearly reached the elevator when a voice sounds behind her.
“(Y/N).”
She turns.
Leon stands several feet away, one hand in his coat pocket, expression unreadable as ever.
“What now?” she asks. “Forgot to leash me already?”
“Cute,” he says dryly.
He closes the distance, then pulls a small card from his pocket. Not official stationery. Just a plain white business card with a number written across it in dark ink.
He offers it to her.
She looks at the card, then at him.
“What is this?”
“My number.”
She takes it despite herself, the paper warm from his hand.
“I already have security.”
“Congratulations.” She glares. He continues as if she hasn’t spoken. “If you ever need anything, you call me.”
The words are matter-of-fact, almost casual, but something in the delivery roots them deeper than that. She glances down at the card again.
“Anything?”
“Within reason.”
“And if I call at three in the morning because my sink is leaking?”
“I’ll send a plumber.”
“If I call because I’m bored?”
“I’ll hang up.”
“If I call because I’m being stalked by a humourless federal agent?”
“Then I’ll already know where you are.”
That startles an unwilling laugh out of her. For the first time, the corner of his mouth lifts. Then it is gone.
“Keep the card,” he says. “Emergency or not.”
She slips it into her bag before she can think better of it.
She leaves fifteen minutes earlier than usual.
It’s petty, maybe, but that won’t matter much if it gets results.
The apartment complex is quiet at this hour. Families across the hall are slowly waking up and getting ready for the day ahead, drunken college students are just crawling into bed, and everything in between. She had forgone the formality of living at the White House with her family, suffocated by the constant shuffle of staff and the distinct lack of a personal life she would be allowed there. She still has to suffer through her own secret service entourage, of course, but at least they know when to make themselves scarce. This new agent was already proving to be a problem.
Cold air meets her the second she steps outside. For the first time since Leon Kennedy arrived in her life, she let herself enjoy the feeling of being alone.
It lasts all of three seconds.
“Going somewhere?”
She skids to a stop so abruptly her heels scrape the sidewalk.
He stands a few yards away, hands stuffed in the pockets of his leather jacket, leaning against the building she just exited. There is no smugness in his face, which somehow makes it worse.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“You left early.”
“Doesn’t answer my question.”
“Answers enough of it.”
She stares at him for a moment, then turns and starts down the sidewalk again without waiting. Her heels click with each step.
“I’m going to work,” she says.
“I know.”
“So… go do something else.”
“No.”
She keeps walking, faster now. “Do you only know one word?”
“I know a few. You just bring that one out in me.”
She shoots him a look over her shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Was that a joke?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
The sidewalk forks ahead. One way curves straight to her work building. The other leads away, towards a small shopping centre, before eventually circling back in the direction she needs to go. She takes the second option.
Leon doesn’t miss a step, shadowing behind her about a yard.
“You know this route adds seven minutes,” he says.
“Maybe I just like walking,” she replies without looking back at him.
“I think you like being difficult.”
“Maybe I like proving you can’t predict everything.”
“I predicted this one.”
“You did not.”
“You looked at the fork before we got there.”
She hates that he is right.
They walk in silence for several more minutes, the air between them filled with the background noise of the city. Cars passing, pedestrians shouting for taxis, shoes smacking the ground. Somewhere behind them, a group of kids play a game of basketball in an alleyway.
“You don’t have to follow me to work,” she says at last.
“Actually, I do.”
“No, you don’t. I work in an office, not a war zone.”
“And yet you got a threatening envelope delivered inside a secure residence.”
“It was one time,” she says petulantly.
“One time too many.”
She stops entirely, turning to face him. Leon stops too, keeping the same careful distance he always did.
“I am trying to have one normal morning,” she says.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why won’t you let me?”
His expression changes, just slightly.
“Because whoever sent that threat is counting on you wanting normal,” he says. “Routine is easy to study.”
She folds her arms against the cold. “So what, I’m supposed to live like this now?”
“For now.”
“With you attached to my shadow?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“That sounds insane.”
“ If it makes you feel any better, it’s temporary.”
She looks at him for a long moment. He looks back without challenge, without apology.
“You really don’t bend, do you?”
“Sometimes.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“You’ve mostly been trying to outrun me.”
That almost makes her laugh. Almost.
Instead, she turns and resumes walking toward the office.
He falls into step beside and behind her, exactly where he always placed himself.
“You know,” she says after a moment, “I could still fire you in my imagination.”
“I’ll take the hit.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
She sighs.
“Do you ever get tired of being right?”
“Not really.” Something in the way he says it makes her glance back, but his face has already gone unreadable again.
They reach the office steps. She puts one foot on the first step, then turns to him.
“I still think this is ridiculous.”
“I know.”
“And I still don’t need a babysitter.”
“I know.”
She narrows her eyes. “Do you know anything else?”
He nods once toward the door. “You’re late.”
She glances down at her watch. Nine-oh-one. Oh shit.
When she looks back, Leon is almost smiling. Almost.
(Y/N) finds him exactly where she expects to find him, which somehow makes the sight more irritating rather than less.
The hallway outside her office is long and bright with late morning light. Windows along the eastern wall cast pale rectangles across the dull carpet. Staff move through now and then, folders tucked close to their chests, voices lowered out of habit more than necessity. It’s the sort of hallway that’s designed to feel orderly. Neutral. A place where nothing dramatic is meant to happen.
And yet.
Leon stands near the wall opposite her office door, one shoulder resting lightly against it, arms folded loosely across his chest. He is not visibly guarding anything. He doesn’t pace, doesn’t scan with theatrical intensity, doesn’t bark into an earpiece like the men her father usually employs. If someone passes quickly enough, they might mistake him for a man waiting for a meeting that has run late.
She has begun to suspect that it is part of what makes him so difficult to deal with. He occupies space without seeming to take any, and because of that, it is impossible to resent him in the obvious ways. He is never rude. Never overbearing. Never clumsy enough to give her a clean reason to dislike him.
He is simply there.
Always there.
She slows as she approaches, keys in hand.
“Do you plan on waiting outside every room I enter now?”
His gaze shifts from the corridor to her, calm as ever.
“I was thinking of branching out. Maybe windows next.” The answer comes so quickly she almost laughs.
“That wasn’t a real question.”
“It got a real answer.” There is that same maddening steadiness in his voice, but now it carries the faintest edge of something drier. He says ridiculous things as if they are official statements.
She turns from him with a small shake of her head and unlocks her office door.
The room beyond is cool and neat, exactly as she leaves it each evening: desk arranged, papers stacked, blinds half-drawn against the glare. A place built for concentration. A place where, once upon a time, she might spend a morning without thinking about threats or envelopes or the man posted ten feet from her threshold.
She steps inside, sets her bag on the desk, then looks back.
He hasn’t moved.
“Well?”
He lifts a brow. “Well, what?”
“Are you coming in too?”
“If you’d like privacy, I can stay outside.” He glances at the hallway. “Very exclusive corridor access. Hard to get reservations.”
“Generous,” she says.
“I try.”
She stares at him for a moment, then lets out a breath that is nearly a laugh and not at all amused.
“You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She believes that.
There are hints of it in him sometimes, in the pauses between words, in the way certain silences seem more familiar to him than conversation. Whatever makes Leon Kennedy this measured, this difficult to unsettle, it is not kindness alone.
She should let the exchange end there. Close the door. Go about her work. But irritation, once invited in, rarely leaves quietly.
Instead, she steps back into the hallway and leans one shoulder against the frame.
“This is ridiculous.”
He glances at her. “Probably.”
That answer catches her off guard enough to sharpen her temper.
“Then do something about it.”
“I am.”
“No,” she says. “You’re lurking.”
“I prefer ‘maintaining a visible security presence.’ Lurking sounds unprofessional.”
The hallway remains politely indifferent around them. A woman from communications passes with a stack of folders, offers them both a nervous nod, and disappears around the corner. Somewhere farther off, a phone rings until someone answers it.
She lowers her voice, though anger gives it more edge than volume. “Standing outside my office door is work?”
“You’d be surprised what people expense these days.”
“That’s the problem with you, isn’t it?” He says nothing. “Everything is life or death. Everything has to be treated like some operation.”
“That’s because sometimes it is.”
“And sometimes,” she replies, taking a step toward him, “it’s just a woman trying to get through a workday without someone shadowing her every move.”
His gaze settles on her fully then, no longer split between her and the corridor.
“You’re not just a woman trying to get through a workday.”
“There it is.” The familiar tightening in her chest, that old frustration she knows too well. The feeling of being translated into categories by other people before she has even spoken for herself. “The part where everyone decides what I am for me.”
His jaw clenches.
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
“No.” His voice remains level, but firmer now. “I said there’s a threat against you.”
“And I said I can handle myself.”
“I’m sure you can.” The calmness of it stings more than doubt would.
“You sound patronising.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
For the first time, he seems to lose a fraction of patience. Not much. Just enough to show in the slow breath he draws before answering. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“I don’t need you to save me.”
“I’m not trying to save you.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Something sharpens in him then, though it never rises to anger. “I’m trying to make sure nothing happens in the first place.”
She folds her arms across herself, less from defensiveness than to hold herself steady.
“I’m not Ashley.” The words change the air between them. They land with more force than volume, and she knows at once that he understands why she says them. The president’s daughter. Targeted. In need of rescue. The parallels sit too close to ignore.
For the first time since she met him, Leon looks briefly unguarded.
“I know,” he says.
“Do you?” (Y/N) asks. “Because from where I’m standing, this looks awfully familiar. The president’s daughter is in danger. Send Leon Kennedy.”
He looks past her then, down the long corridor washed in sunlight, as if gathering whatever part of himself he prefers to keep separate from conversation.
When he speaks again, the words are flat and unadorned. “I didn’t ask to be assigned to this case.”
She blinks.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t request it,” he says. “I was told to take it.”
The honesty of it is almost cruel in its simplicity.
“So you don’t even want to be here.”
His eyes return to hers.
“I didn’t choose the assignment,” he says. “I’m still here anyway. And I don’t do anything half-assed.”
They stand facing each other in the doorway of her office, close enough now that lowering their voices no longer matters. Her anger doesn’t vanish. It merely changes shape.
She hates that she believes him.
Hates even more the small, shameful relief that comes with it.
“Good for you,” she says.
“It should be good for you, too.”
She lets out a short breath. “God, you really do think highly of yourself.”
“No,” Leon replies. “I think highly of staying ahead of people who want to hurt you. Big ego problem, I know.”
That takes some of the force from her temper. Not enough to surrender it. Enough to feel the shift.
She looks away first.
“I’m still not Ashley,” she says, quieter now.
When she looks back, something in his expression gentles by degrees so small they might go unnoticed by anyone else.
“I know,” he says again. “That’s why I’m handling you differently.”
She frowns at once. “Handling me?”
A flicker of regret crosses his face.
“That came out wrong.”
“It really did.”
For the first time, the corner of his mouth moves— as if humour is something unfamiliar he nearly remembers.
Then he straightens from the wall.
“Protecting you differently,” he says.
She should remain angry.
Instead, to her lasting annoyance, she almost smiles.
Lunch with Ashley is the only thing (Y/N) has looked forward to in weeks. That realisation irritates her on principle.
She is a grown woman with her own office, her own schedule, her own life, and yet the highlight of her week is sneaking an hour with her younger sister in the private dining room at the White House. It feels childish to admit, even to herself.
Still, when she steps out of the elevator and sees Ashley already seated by the window, sunlight caught in her blonde hair and both hands wrapped around a sweating glass of iced tea, something in her chest loosens.
Ashley looks up and breaks into a smile so immediate and bright it almost belongs to another, simpler world.
“There she is!”
“There who is?”
“My favourite sister.”
“I’m your only sister.”
Ashley shrugs. “Still counts.”
(Y/N) crosses the room and lets Ashley pull her into a quick hug before sitting opposite her. The table is already set with salads neither of them ordered, and bread neither of them will finish. Outside the window, the south lawn glows in the noon sun, green and manicured and offensively peaceful.
For a few precious seconds, it feels normal.
Then Ashley glances toward the closed door and grins.
“So. Where is he?”
(Y/N) reaches for her water. “Who?”
“The reason half the staff suddenly takes lunch near this hall.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Liar.” Ashley leans forward. “Leon.”
(Y/N) nearly chokes on the water. “Oh my god.”
“What?” Ashley says, delighted. “It’s true.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is. Martha from scheduling told me she saw him this morning.”
“Martha from scheduling needs a hobby.” (Y/N) drops her glass a little harder than necessary onto the table. “He is not the topic of this lunch.”
“He is if he looks like that.”
“Ashley.”
“What? I’m serious. It’s weird seeing him in a suit.”
“He’s always in a suit.”
“Not like this. Usually, he looks like he’s about to jump through a window.”
Despite herself, (Y/N) laughs.
Ashley points triumphantly. “There. See? You like him.”
“I laughed at your description.”
“You blushed first.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
She hates that Ashley still knows exactly how to needle her the way she did at sixteen. Ashley tears a piece of bread and studies her with infuriating cheerfulness.
“So how is it going?”
“How is what going?”
“Being assigned a brooding federal agent who follows you around and says mysterious things.”
“He doesn’t say mysterious things.”
“What does he say?”
(Y/N) thinks of Leon in the hallway, dry-eyed and unreadable. Usually something sarcastic.
“He says annoying things.”
Ashley beams. “Even better.”
“You are impossible.”
“I learned from you.”
Lunch arrives in earnest then, giving her a momentary reprieve. They pick at their plates, trade stories about staff disasters, old family embarrassments, and a senator who apparently fell asleep during a briefing with his eyes open.
It is easy with Ashley. It has always been easy. She has a way of carrying lightness into rooms that need it. Their father loves her for it. So does everyone else. (Y/N) has never resented that. Not really.
Eventually, Ashley sets down her fork and mellows.
“How are you actually doing?”
The room seems quieter all at once.
She looks down at her plate. “I’m fine.”
Ashley gives her a look.
“That answer is illegal. Try again.”
(Y/N) sighs.
“I’m angry,” (Y/N) admits. “And embarrassed that I’m angry. And tired of everyone looking at me like something fragile they need to move out of the way.”
Ashley listens without interrupting. Another gift she has.
“And him?” Ashley asks after a moment.
“Especially him.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
(Y/N) looks up. Ashley is smiling again, but gentler now.
“He treats me like a problem to solve.”
Ashley tilts her head.
“No,” she says quietly. “He treats danger like a problem to solve.”
(Y/N) opens her mouth to argue, then closes it again.
Ashley knows Leon differently from how she does. Ashley has seen the man who crossed half the world to bring her home alive. Whatever bond exists between them was forged in something harsher than office corridors and clipped arguments.
“He’s not very warm,” she says instead.
Ashley laughs so hard she nearly spills her drink.
“Oh, wow. You really don’t know him yet.”
“There is no hidden warmth there.”
“There is,” Ashley says. “It’s just buried under trauma and bad jokes.”
“Bad jokes?”
“The worst jokes.”
That startles a smile out of her.
Before (Y/N) can answer, there is a knock at the door. Ashley’s grin widens instantly.
“Speak of the devil.”
The door opens. Leon steps halfway inside, gaze moving first to the room, then to them.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he says. “Just checking in.”
Ashley leans back in her chair. “We were just talking about you.”
Leon’s face remains perfectly neutral. “My condolences.”
Ashley laughs. (Y/N) does not. Mostly because she can feel herself smiling already.
Leon lingers only long enough to confirm the room is secure. His gaze sweeps the windows, the adjoining door, the service entrance. Habit more than suspicion. Then he gives a small nod, already stepping back into the hall.
“I’ll be outside.”
Ashley lifts a hand sweetly. “Try not to brood too hard.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The door closes behind him. Silence lasts exactly one second.
Then Ashley grabs the edge of the table and leans forward like a conspirator. “Oh, you are doomed.”
(Y/N) stares at her sister. “Excuse me?”
“You smiled at him.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I was being polite.”
Ashley gasps theatrically. “Now you’re lying to family.”
(Y/N) reaches for her water, mostly to avoid throwing bread at her. “You are insufferable.”
“I am observant.”
“You are bored.”
“That too,” Ashley says cheerfully. “But mostly observant.”
Ashley tears another piece of bread and points it accusingly.
“You know, when I first met him, I thought he was the most irritating man alive.”
“That’s because you met him while being kidnapped.”
“True,” Ashley admits. “Not ideal conditions for romance.”
(Y/N) nearly inhales her drink. “Ashley.”
“What?” Her sister smiles into her glass, entirely too pleased with herself.
“You had a crush on him.”
Ashley gives an airy shrug. “Who didn’t?”
“Oh my god.”
“I was twenty. He saved my life repeatedly. He had floppy hair and sad eyes. Be serious.” Despite herself, (Y/N) laughs. Ashley seizes the opening immediately. “My point is, first impressions with Leon are misleading.”
“My first impression is current.”
“No, your current impression is that he’s annoying, stubborn, emotionally constipated, and follows you around like a particularly handsome guard dog.”
“That is not my wording.”
“It could be.”
Ashley settles back in her chair, studying her with that bright, infuriating look siblings reserve for moments of weakness.
“But he’s also decent,” Ashley says. “And loyal to a fault. And funny, if you can survive the delivery.”
“He’s not funny.”
“He just said ‘my condolences’ with a straight face.”
“That was mildly tolerable.”
Ashley points triumphantly. “Progress.”
Lunch plates are cleared quietly by staff who know better than to dawdle. Fresh drinks appear in their place. Outside, the lawn shimmers under the heat, immaculate and unreal.
(Y/N) traces a bead of condensation down her glass.
“You talk like you know him.”
Ashley’s expression softens. “I know enough.”
There is something older in her voice. Something shaped by memory rather than teasing.
“He was kind to me when I was scared,” Ashley says. “Even when he was exhausted. Even when things were bad. He never made me feel like a burden.”
The humour leaves the room for a moment.
(Y/N) looks down. “He makes me feel managed.”
Ashley considers that. “Maybe because he thinks management is safer than caring out loud.”
“That sounds ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous,” Ashley says. “Have you met men?”
That earns another laugh. Ashley smiles.
“He’s probably worse with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you argue back.”
“I argue with everyone.”
“Exactly.”
Her sister folds her hands beneath her chin.
“And because,” Ashley adds, voice turning sly again, “I think he notices you.”
She nearly rolls her eyes.
“He notices everyone. It’s his job.”
“No,” Ashley says. “He notices you.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means he interrupted lunch under the excuse of checking security when there are three agents posted outside already.”
(Y/N) blinks.
“There are three?”
Ashley beams. “See? You didn’t notice anyone except him.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It’s close enough for me.”
(Y/N) groans and leans back in her chair. “You are impossible.”
“And you,” Ashley says, “are interested.”
“I am irritated.”
“The line is thinner than you think.”
She opens her mouth to argue. Nothing comes out. Ashley’s smile turns almost fond.
“Oh no,” she says. “It’s already worse than I thought.”
“You’re so smug,” (Y/N) says.
“I’m correct.”
“I am not interested in Leon,” she says at last.
Ashley nods solemnly. “Of course not.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I can’t help my face.”
(Y/N) glares. Ashley smiles wider. There is no use fighting a battle your enemy enjoys. She exhales and lets her shoulders loosen for what feels like the first time all week.
“I just want one thing to be simple,” (Y/N) says quietly.
That wipes some of the mischief from Ashley’s face.
“I know.” The words are subdued.
Ashley reaches across the table and takes her hand, thumb brushing once across her knuckles the same way she has done since childhood after nightmares, funerals, bad speeches, broken hearts, and every smaller disaster in between.
“He doesn’t have to be a complication,” Ashley says. “He can just be a person.”
(Y/N) looks down at their joined hands.
“That might be the problem.”
Ashley laughs under her breath. “Then you really are doomed.”
(Y/N) squeezes her sister’s hand once before letting go.
Another knock sounds at the door. Neither of them needs to guess who it is.
“Come in,” Ashley sings. The door opens, and Leon steps inside just enough to be polite. His gaze flicks briefly to the cleared table, then to the two of them.
“You ready?” The question is meant for (Y/N).
Ashley sits back with far too much innocence. “She is.”
“I can answer for myself,” (Y/N) says.
“Then by all means,” Leon replies.
There is that dry edge again, so restrained it almost disappears if she is not listening for it.
(Y/N) rises, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her skirt.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m ready.”
Ashley stands too, crossing the room to kiss her cheek before leaning close enough that only (Y/N) can hear.
“Try to be nice to him.”
(Y/N) mutters something impolite under her breath. Ashley only beams brighter. Then Leon is holding the door open for her, one hand braced against the frame, patient in that maddening way of his.
She pauses as she passes him.
“For the record,” (Y/N) says quietly, “my sister is a menace.”
“I gathered that,” he says.
“And if she says anything embarrassing after I leave—”
“I’ll assume it’s true.”
(Y/N) turns to glare at him. He is almost smiling. Almost.
Ashley’s laughter follows them into the hallway, bright as sunlight, and for the first time in days, the world feels lighter on (Y/N)’s shoulders.
The days do not improve as much as they settle.
(Y/N) supposes there is a difference. Nothing about her situation is ideal. Leon is still there when she leaves in the morning, still there when meetings run long, still there when she returns home tired enough to resent the sound of another person breathing nearby. He still insists on walking half a step behind her in public and scanning every room as if danger might be hiding behind decorative ferns.
But irritation, like most living things, cannot survive forever at full intensity. It adapts. Soon she learns the rhythm of him.
He drinks coffee too black to be enjoyable and too hot to be sensible. He dislikes elevators but tolerates them without complaint. He checks exits automatically whenever they enter a room, and windows whenever they leave one. He carries silence the way other men carry wallets— always on him, often reached for.
He also, to her continuing annoyance, becomes easier to talk to.
“You know,” (Y/N) says one morning as they cross the front drive toward her office, “if you keep glaring at every passing vehicle, people are going to think you’re deeply unpleasant.”
“I am deeply unpleasant.”
“No, you’re selectively unpleasant.”
“Thank you. I’ve been working on my range.”
She glances sideways at him.
“Was that self-awareness?”
“Don’t go starting rumours.”
Another day, she catches him standing in her office doorway while she digs through a filing cabinet.
“Do you need something?” she asks.
“Just checking in.”
“You checked in twelve minutes ago.”
“A lot can happen in twelve minutes.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
He hesitates. “You looked frustrated.”
She straightens slowly. “With the filing cabinet?”
“You were muttering.”
She blinks. “You heard that?”
“You weren’t subtle.”
It is absurdly difficult not to laugh. So she does. He looks faintly suspicious of the sound.
Lunches become less tense. Car rides are less silent. She learns he has a dry, almost reluctant sense of humour that appears only when least expected, as if embarrassed to be caught existing. He learns she takes two sugars in tea, hates being interrupted, and will absolutely walk into danger if told not to.
“Stay here,” he tells her one afternoon while security clears a blocked corridor.
“No.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
“It sounded lazy enough to be one.”
He closes his eyes briefly. “(Y/N).”
“That’s my name.”
“You’re exhausting.”
“And yet you persist.”
Something like a smile threatens his mouth before he suppresses it. She notices. Of course, she notices.
That is the dangerous part of new normals: one begins to depend on them.
It happens on a Thursday.
The day is dull in the way office days often are— meetings that could have been memos, memos that should have been burned, lunch eaten at a desk while pretending to read briefing notes. By late afternoon, rain has started needling against the windows.
(Y/N) returns to her office with Leon at her shoulder and a headache behind one eye.
She reaches for the doorknob.
Stops.
Something white lies on the floor inside the threshold. An envelope.
No stamp. No seal. No markings. Just her name. The letters are cut from printed text and pasted crookedly across the front.
The world seems to narrow around it.
Leon is moving before she fully inhales. He catches her wrist lightly, drawing her back a step.
“Don’t.”
His voice changes when he means it. Lower. Sharper. All trace of humour gone.
“I wasn’t going to touch it,” she says, though she might have.
“Sure.”
He shifts in front of her, already reaching for his phone.
The corridor that has felt ordinary for weeks becomes strange again in an instant. Too quiet. Too long. Too exposed.
Security arrives within moments. Gloves. Questions. A perimeter where none should be needed. (Y/N) barely hears any of it, her eyes focused on the envelope.
Leon ends the call and looks at her.
“You okay?” It’s a stupid question. He seems to know it as soon as he asks.
“No,” she says.
His jaw tightens.
“Yeah,” he replies quietly. “Me neither.”
They take the envelope away unopened. That is somehow worse. Knowing it exists somewhere nearby, carrying words meant for her.
The ride home is silent. Rain streaks the windows in thin silver lines. The city blurs beyond them.
At one red light, (Y/N) realises her hands are shaking. She curls them into fists. A second later, Leon reaches across the seat and places a bottle of water in her lap without looking at her.
She stares at it.
“When did you get this?”
“Lobby.”
“I didn’t see you take it.”
“You were busy.”
“With what?”
He glances out at the rain. “Pretending you weren’t scared.”
She looks down at the bottle. The plastic crackles beneath her grip.
“I hate when you’re right.”
“I know.”
His voice is gentler than usual.
Outside, thunder rolls somewhere far off.
Inside the car, the new normal breaks quietly between them.
The rest of the drive passes in fragments.
Rain against glass. Brake lights smearing red across wet streets. The low murmur of the radio from the front seat, turned down so far it is little more than static with ambition. (Y/N) keeps the bottle in her hands without opening it, fingers worrying the label loose in slow strips.
Leon doesn’t push conversation onto her. He also doesn’t offer easy reassurance or the sort of polished lines men in government offices hand out when they have nothing useful to give.
You’re safe now. We’re handling it. Try not to worry.
He says none of it. For once, she is grateful.
When the car turns through the White House gates, relief doesn’t come with it. That surprises her.
Home is meant to be the place where fear ends at the door. Tonight, the gates look decorative. The lights along the drive are too soft to matter. Even the building, warm and familiar beyond the rain, seems less like a sanctuary than a structure.
The car stops beneath the covered entrance.
A guard moves toward the door, umbrella already open.
Leon is out first. He circles to her side, opens the door himself, then pauses when he sees she hasn’t moved.
“(Y/N).”
She looks up.
“We’re here.”
“I know.” But she is still sitting there, bottle clutched in one hand, pulse too high, body refusing to catch up with reality.
He studies her for half a second, then crouches slightly so they are nearer eye level. “You need a minute?”
The question is so plain it nearly undoes her.
She swallows.
“No.” A lie. He seems to know that, too.
“Okay,” he says. “Take one anyway.”
The guard tactfully looks elsewhere as the rain hisses around them.
(Y/N) draws a breath. Then another.
When she finally steps out, Leon takes the umbrella from the waiting guard and holds it over both of them without comment. They walk the short distance inside shoulder to shoulder, close enough that the sleeve of his jacket brushes hers once.
The foyer is bright, polished, and entirely unchanged.
She hates it for being unchanged.
A housekeeper appears from nowhere, asks if she would like tea, dinner, or anything at all.
“No, thank you,” (Y/N) says automatically.
“Tea,” Leon answers at the same time.
She turns to glare at him. He doesn’t even glance her way.
“Two cups,” he adds.
The housekeeper disappears before (Y/N) can protest.
“You can’t order tea for me.”
“I just did.”
“I said no.”
“You say a lot of things.”
“That is an insane sentence.”
“It’s been a long day.”
He starts toward the sitting room as though the matter is settled. After one indignant second, she follows him.
The room is dim except for two lamps and the storm-light at the windows. Rain taps steadily at the glass. Leon waits until she sits on the sofa before taking the armchair opposite, posture alert even at rest.
He is never really off duty. She wonders if he remembers how.
Neither speaks for a while.
When the tea arrives, Leon thanks the housekeeper, waits until the door closes, then slides one cup across the table toward her.
She wraps both hands around it for the heat.
“I’m not fragile, you know,” she says at last. His eyes lift to hers.
“I know.”
“You keep treating me like I’m about to break.”
“No,” he says. “I’m treating this like it got closer than it should have.”
She looks down into the tea. Steam curls upward, vanishing almost immediately.
“I hate that it scares me.”
“That’s a weird thing to hate.”
“It feels weak.”
“It’s normal.”
She gives a humourless laugh. “You don’t strike me as an expert on normal.”
He dips his head. “Fair.”
Thunder rolls again, nearer this time. (Y/N) traces the rim of the cup with one thumb.
“When I saw it,” she says quietly, “I couldn’t move for a second.”
Leon says nothing, so she continues.
“I just stood there staring at it like an idiot.”
“You froze. It happens.”
She looks up.
There is no performance in his face. No attempt to say the right thing. Just someone speaking from experiences that he would rather not have.
“How many times has it happened to you?” she asks.
He leans back slightly.
“Enough.”
“That’s not a very good answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She should be annoyed. Instead, she finds herself smiling faintly into the steam.
“There you are,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re being difficult again. I was worried the trauma made you nice.”
“That was close.” The corner of his mouth shifts. The storm deepens outside. The room grows warmer. For the first time since leaving the office, (Y/N) feels her hands stop shaking.
She doesn’t realise Leon has noticed until he says, quietly—
“There you are.”
The envelope in the office changes something between them.
Not dramatically. No sudden confessions. No miraculous softening. Leon doesn’t wake up the next morning, suddenly transformed into a man who volunteers feelings over breakfast.
He’s still Leon. Still maddeningly private. Still alert before dawn. Still capable of turning a sentence into a locked door.
But after the incident, the distance between them no longer feels deliberate. More like it was practised on purpose.
And practised things can be unlearnt.
(Y/N) decides, perhaps unwisely, to test that theory.
It begins three evenings later in her apartment.
The White House has never truly felt like her own space. Too many staff. Too many polished surfaces. Too much inherited history in every room. So after the second threat, against everyone’s advice, (Y/N) insists on spending nights at her own place— a quiet, high-rise apartment the Secret Service has already swept three separate times.
Leon hates the arrangement on principle. Which is, naturally, part of why she keeps it.
The city glows beyond her windows in blurred gold and white. Rain has passed, leaving the streets slick below. Inside, lamps cast warm pools of light across hardwood floors, shelves crowded with books, and a coat draped carelessly over the sofa arm. It is lived-in in a way the White House never manages to be.
(Y/N) cannot sleep.
When she pads into the kitchen in an oversized T-shirt and bare feet, she finds Leon still there, leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee that should be illegal at this hour.
He is wearing no jacket, only a dark shirt with the sleeves pushed to his forearms. Without the structure of a suit, he looks younger and more tired at once.
She stops in the doorway.
“Are you haunting my kitchen now?”
He glances up. “I’m conducting a final perimeter check.”
“With coffee?”
“It’s an advanced procedure.”
She moves past him toward the kettle. She fills it with water from the sink and sets it on the stove to warm.
There are some people whose presence fills a room. Leon does the opposite. He narrows spaces, quiets them, draws attention toward whatever he is not saying.
Tonight, (Y/N) decides she is tired of that trick. Ashley’s words return to her: You really don’t know him yet.
She leans back against the opposite counter.
“So,” she says lightly, “Spain.”
Leon doesn’t even blink. “No.”
She folds her arms. “I didn’t ask anything yet.”
The kettle begins its low pre-boil murmur. (Y/N) studies him in the warm kitchen light, the city reflecting faintly in the dark windows behind him.
“You never talk about it.”
“There’s not much to say.”
“That seems statistically unlikely.”
He takes a sip of his coffee. “It rained.”
She stares at him. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She crosses her arms tighter. “My little sister was kidnapped by a cult.”
“Bad tourism campaign.”
“She was nearly killed.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Leon.”
His gaze lifts to hers then, steady and unreadable.
“You asked what happened,” he says. “I’m telling you how it ended.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s the part I like best.”
The kettle whistles sharply. (Y/N) turns it off with more force than necessary. When she faces him again, he is watching her with that infuriating composure.
“You nearly died too, didn’t you?”
A pause.
“No.”
“You lie like a rug.”
“Let’s call it a selective summary.”
She laughs once, sharp with disbelief. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Unfortunately.”
She pours hot water over a tea bag and lets the silence steep with it.
Then, quieter—
“Why won’t you tell me?”
Something changes in his expression. Not much. Enough. He sets the mug down. “Because people hear stories like that and think they know you after.”
“I’m not people.”
“I’m like 98 per cent sure you’re a person.”
“Only 98?”
“There’s always a little room for doubt here. Maybe you’re an android.”
She shakes her head. They’re getting off topic.
“You know what I meant, Leon.” He does. That is the irritating part. (Y/N) wraps both hands around her tea. “I just want to understand.”
“No, you don’t.” His voice is gentle enough to sting. “You want the version that makes you feel better.”
The kitchen hums around them— the refrigerator motor, the tick of cooling pipes, distant traffic ten floors below.
She studies him.
“You think if you say it out loud, it becomes real?”
A faint breath leaves him. Almost a laugh. Almost not. “I think it was real enough.”
He picks up the mug again, though the coffee must be cold by now.
She changes tactics. “Were you scared?”
He answers too quickly. “No.”
Then, after a beat— “Frequently.”
(Y/N) blinks. It is the closest thing to honesty she has gotten all night.
“Of what?”
He looks toward the dark window above the sink, where both of them appear as ghosts in the glass. “Being too late.”
The room is still. There it is, she thinks. The seam in the armour. She softens without meaning to.
“You weren’t.”
“That’s one opinion.”
“You both made it home.”
“And other people didn’t. Good people.”
His tone closes again the moment it opens. She feels it happen like a deadbolt sliding into place.
“Leon—”
“Don’t,” he says quietly. No anger in it. Just a warning.
(Y/N) exhales through her nose. “You are exhausting.”
“I know.”
“You dodge every real question.”
“I answer some fake ones too.”
“That isn’t charming enough to work.”
“Wasn’t trying to charm you.” Another lie, perhaps. Or a joke. With him, the line sometimes blurs.
She lifts her tea and moves toward the doorway.
“When you’re ready to be honest,” she says, “I’ll be thrilled to witness history.”
He lifts the mug in a lazy salute.
“When you’re ready to stop interrogating me in your pyjamas, I’ll mark the calendar.”
She should leave annoyed.
Instead, she stops at the threshold and glances back. He is staring into the dark window again, reflection doubled in the glass. A man standing in her warm kitchen while some colder place still keeps hold of him.
“Leon.”
He looks over.
“You were late to nothing,” she says.
For once, he has no one-liner ready. (Y/N) goes back to bed before he can find one.
Night in the city has a way of making danger feel theatrical. Lights burn in distant windows like watchful eyes, sirens rise somewhere far below and fade before they ever reach anything she can see, and rain from earlier in the evening has left the streets black and gleaming, every passing headlight dragged long across the pavement like molten wire. From the tenth floor, (Y/N)’s apartment seems suspended above all of it, removed from consequence, hovering in that expensive illusion only height can buy.
Separate. Safe.
Leon is not there tonight.
After two weeks of arguments disguised as discussions, of scheduling conflicts and (Y/N) insisting she deserved one uninterrupted evening in her own home, he had finally relented— relented being a generous word for the expression he wore when he dropped her at the building and told her he would be fifteen minutes away, max. She had rolled her eyes, accused him of dramatics, and told him she was perfectly capable of surviving a quiet night alone. He had handed her his card again anyway, that same plain white rectangle with his number written in dark ink.
Call if you need anything.
She had laughed at him then. Told him the most dangerous thing in her apartment was the wine she planned to open.
Now, at 1:13 a.m., she is wide awake and wishing she had been less proud.
The sound is small enough to be mistaken for something innocent. A metallic click from the far side of the apartment, faint and clean, the sort of noise old buildings make when settling into themselves for the night. She lies still beneath the sheets, eyes open to darkness, waiting for reason to explain it away. Then it comes again, followed by the hushed, deliberate scrape of metal against metal.
Not pipes.
Not the building settling.
Her front lock.
(Y/N) sits upright so quickly the room tilts around her. The digital clock beside the bed glows red in the dark, each number too bright to bear looking at. Her pulse rises hard and sudden, loud enough that for a moment it seems to drown out the city below. Another careful rattle comes from the front door, then the slow turn of a handle testing whether someone has been invited in.
She is moving before thought fully catches up. Bare feet strike hardwood chilled by night air, her phone is snatched from the nightstand, and she crosses to the bedroom door with every instinct telling her to be silent. She opens it only a fraction and listens to the dark apartment beyond.
Too quiet.
Then a low, solid thud sounds from the entryway. Wood under pressure.
Her hands shake so badly she nearly drops the phone as she dials from memory.
He answers on the first ring.
“What happened?”
No greeting. No confusion. No trace of sleep.
“Someone’s at my door,” she whispers, voice thin and breathless despite herself. “I think they’re trying to get in.”
There is silence for half a heartbeat, the kind that means focus rather than hesitation. “Where are you?”
“My bedroom.”
“Lock it.”
She does, fingers fumbling once before the bolt slides home with a sound that feels far too delicate to matter.
“Turn the lights off.”
She reaches back and kills the bedside lamp. The room drops into shadow, lit only by the faint glow bleeding through the curtains from the city outside.
“I’m on my way,” he says, and the sound of a car engine behind his voice tells her that he truly is. “Stay on the line. Do not open that door for anyone except me.”
Another impact strikes the front entrance hard enough that she hears the frame rattle.
“Leon—”
“I heard it.” His voice changes then. The dry edge disappears. The sarcasm, the half-amused patience, the nonchalance he wears like camouflage— all traces of it are gone in an instant. What remains is something colder. A tone built for crisis.
“Listen to me carefully,” he says. “Is there another exit nearby?”
“The bathroom window, but it’s ten stories up.”
“Then you stay exactly where you are. What can you use to barricade?”
She looks wildly around the room, mind refusing to think in useful shapes. She drags a chair beneath the knob first, the legs shrieking over the wood floor, then braces herself against the dresser and shoves with everything she has. It moves only inches, heavy with clothes and the trinkets that litter the top.
“I can’t get it far enough.”
“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” Leon says. “It needs to slow them down.”
“It won’t.”
“It will until I get there.”
The front door splinters before she can answer. The sound rips through the apartment like a gunshot. (Y/N) clamps a hand over her mouth to keep from making noise. Footsteps enter. Measured. Unhurried. Whoever it is knows she is here.
Leon remains on the line. She can hear tyres hissing over wet streets, the low growl of acceleration, wind cutting past an open window.
“(Y/N), talk to me.”
“They’re inside.”
“Keep breathing.”
She cannot seem to remember how.
The footsteps move through her living room with the calm confidence of someone walking through property already claimed. A lamp crashes. A drawer is yanked open. Something ceramic shatters. They are searching, methodical enough that terror sharpens into something colder.
For her.
“Leon.”
“I’m two minutes out.”
The footsteps stop outside her room. Every nerve in her body goes white-hot.
The knob turns once. Then again, harder this time, rattling the lock. The chair jerks in place. Wood groans in the frame.
(Y/N) makes a sound she doesn’t recognise as her own.
“Stay away from the door,” Leon orders.
She stumbles backwards just as something slams into it hard enough to shake the wall. Again. Again. Each blow sends the chair skidding.
Then, from somewhere beyond the apartment, a voice cuts through the chaos.
“Federal agent!”
Leon.
The hallway explodes into motion. Running steps. A body pivoting fast. The front door crashes wide. Leon shouts again, closer now, the command sharp enough to break stone.
“Stop!”
Someone bolts across the apartment. (Y/N) hears the balcony door slam open, the rush of night air, then the violent crash of breaking glass.
By the time her bedroom door swings inward, she is crouched beside the bed with the phone still clutched in both hands like prayer.
Leon fills the doorway, chest heaving, gun drawn, eyes sweeping the room in one brutal pass before they find her. Whatever he sees there makes something in his face loosen.
“It’s me.”
She cannot answer.
He holsters the weapon immediately and crosses to her in three strides, dropping into a crouch in front of where she huddles against the bedframe.
“Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head.
Only then does some terrible tension leave his shoulders. He reaches for her wrist, fingers pressing lightly to the pulse hammering there as if to confirm she is real and still here.
“He got away,” he says, anger banked so deep it sounds almost calm. “Fire escape off the balcony.”
“I heard you.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought…” The words collapse before they become anything coherent. Thought he would get in. Thought you were too late. Thought I was alone. Her hands shake visibly now, impossible to hide.
Leon notices, of course.
His expression changes in ways so small that another person might miss them entirely. The hard lines ease. His gaze steadies into something warmer than she has ever been given from him.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
She hates how close she is to crying. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s the worst lie you’ve told me so far.”
A broken laugh escapes her before she can stop it. Then, without seeming to think about it, he places both hands lightly on her upper arms.
“You did the right thing,” he says. “You called me.”
Those words undo something in her more effectively than fear ever could. She folds forward before pride can intervene, forehead pressing against his shoulder as one shuddering breath leaves her.
For a second, he goes still, surprised perhaps, or simply careful. Then one hand slides between her shoulder blades and rests there, broad and grounding.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, voice low enough to belong only to this room. “I’ve got you.”
Outside the bedroom, radios crackle, and voices begin to fill the ruined apartment. Agents arriving too late to matter, discussing entry points and perimeter checks and the things men say when danger has already passed.
Inside the room, only his voice reaches her.
After a long moment, she pulls back, mortified by herself. “I cannot believe I just did that.”
“Did what?”
“That.”
“Pretty vague report.”
She laughs wetly and wipes at her face. “You’re awful.”
“I’ve been told.”
He rises first, then offers her a hand. She takes it without thinking, and his grip closes firm and sure around hers as he pulls her to her feet.
“You’re not staying here tonight,” he says, glancing once toward the shattered doorway, the broken glass glittering in the hall, the wreckage of the place she had called safe.
“I know.”
“For once, glad we agree.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
He looks back at her then, jaw set, eyes still carrying the coldness of the man who had come through her front door like judgment itself.
“With me.”
There is no room in his voice for argument. Oddly, that is what makes her nod.
Leon’s apartment is not at all what (Y/N) expects.
She isn’t entirely sure what she did expect— bare walls, perhaps. A mattress on the floor. One plate, one fork, and a minifridge containing only beer and resentment. Something transient and joyless, the home of a man who never planned to stay anywhere long enough to belong there.
Instead, the place is quiet, clean, and unexpectedly human.
It sits high above another part of the city in a building so anonymous that she forgets its exterior the moment they step inside. The apartment itself is modest by comparison to what she is used to, but warm in a way wealth often fails to be. Books line one wall in uneven rows. A record player sits near the window beside stacks of vinyl handled often enough to fray at the corners. Two mismatched mugs are drying beside the sink, a blanket is thrown carelessly over the sofa, and a potted plant on the sill looks stubbornly alive despite neglect.
She stops just inside the door.
“You own things,” she says.
Leon drops his keys in a bowl by the entrance. “Sharp observation.”
“I mean… personal things.”
“I also own several government-issued things, if that helps.”
She glances at the plant.
“You’re keeping greenery alive. I didn’t know you had that in you.”
“I’m not. The neighbour comes by when I’m gone to water it. It usually dies again when I’m here.” He says it lightly, already moving toward the kitchen before she can decide whether it was a joke.
For the first few days, the arrangement feels temporary in every possible sense. (Y/N) sleeps in the guest room, though “guest room” is generous for what is clearly an office with a pullout sofa and shelves full of files he forgot to hide. Leon leaves early, returns late, and keeps a careful distance that reads less like rejection than discipline. He gives her space to be unsettled, to be angry, to pace around someone else’s home in borrowed sweatpants and wonder how her life became this.
But danger, oddly enough, has made them honest.
Without the choreography of escorts and schedules and public appearances, they are simply two people sharing walls. The pretence falls away in increments.
She learns he hums absently while making coffee, always the same few bars of something he never seems aware of. He learns she cannot cook anything without setting off at least one alarm. She discovers he folds laundry with military precision. He discovers she steals the blankets in her sleep, somehow from a room he is not even in.
“That last one is impossible,” she says over breakfast.
“I’m living it.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“You kicked the door open at three in the morning and stole my comforter.”
“I was cold.”
“You were a criminal.”
She laughs into her coffee.
Movie nights begin by accident. One stormy evening, the power flickers, the city grumbling under heavy rain, and (Y/N) finds a stack of DVDs in a cabinet beneath the television.
“You own The Terminator?” she asks.
Leon looks up from the kitchen.
“I contain multitudes.”
“And Dirty Dancing?”
“That one’s classified.”
She holds the case aloft. “I’m watching this immediately.”
“You touch that, and I’m calling in backup.”
She watches it anyway.
He complains through the first twenty minutes, arms folded, posture arranged into theatrical misery. By the end, he is quoting lines under his breath and pretending he is not invested.
“You’ve seen this before,” she accuses.
“Says who?”
“You know the choreography.”
“I’m just very good at pattern recognition.”
“You mouthed the song.”
“No evidence.”
After that, it becomes a habit. They eat takeout on the sofa and critique terrible action movies with the smugness of people who could survive them better than the characters onscreen. (Y/N) introduces him to old black-and-white comedies he claims to hate and laughs at anyway. Leon chooses horror films with increasingly implausible premises solely to watch her insult them.
“No one would go into the basement,” she says.
“They always go into the basement.”
“Then they deserve what happens.”
“That’s cold.”
“It’s practical.”
He glances sideways at her. “You’d survive.”
“Obviously.”
Late nights become something else.
The television clicks off. The city glows dim beyond the windows. Rain taps the glass or traffic murmurs below, and they remain where they are, conversation stretching long after either intended to sleep.
Sometimes it’s nonsense. Sometimes it’s everything.
She tells him about childhood in rooms too large to feel cosy, about learning early how to smile for cameras and speak in complete sentences before she knew what she thought. About Ashley sneaking into her room after nightmares. About the loneliness of always being known as something rather than for anything.
Leon listens the way he does most things: fully, quietly, with no need to perform concern.
“That sounds miserable,” he says once.
“It was very privileged misery.”
“Still.”
She turns that over for a long while.
He offers less freely, but still more than before.
Bits of his past. Parents gone early. Police academy stories that somehow end in minor explosions. Bad summer jobs. Worse apartments. The first time that he realised competence often gets rewarded with more suffering.
“That sounds cynical,” (Y/N) says. Sometimes she asks about Spain, and he still goes guarded, but the walls no longer slam down so fast. They lower slowly now, enough for glimpses through the cracks.
“It was weirdly loud,” he says one night, staring at the dark television screen instead of her. “Everyone remembers hero stuff after. They forget most of it is just noise and trying not to be late.”
She doesn’t press harder than that. Trust, she is learning, can’t be crowbarred open.
One night, she falls asleep on the sofa midway through a movie she insisted she was enjoying. She wakes hours later beneath the blanket from his bed, television dark, apartment quiet.
Leon is asleep in the armchair, neck bent awkwardly, one hand still resting near the remote. She watches him for a long moment in the blue hush before dawn.
In sleep, he looks younger. Less armed by himself. She drapes the blanket back over him before returning to the guest room.
The next morning, he says, without looking up from his coffee, “You snore.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“Sounded like a chainsaw.”
“You’re lying because you’re embarrassed I caught you being nice.”
“I’d deny that under oath.”
They are laughing more now.
Touching more, too, though neither names it. Her hand on his shoulder as she squeezes past in the kitchen. His palm at the small of her back, guiding her away from traffic without thinking. Knees brushing on the sofa and not moving apart.
Friendship arrives so quietly she almost misses it.
One evening, as the credits roll on another terrible film and the city glitters beyond the windows, (Y/N) glances at him and realises something simple and startling.
She is no longer waiting for him to leave the room.
And perhaps worse—
She thinks he has stopped waiting for her to.
Their lives develop a rhythm the way some songs do— so gradually that (Y/N) does not realise she knows it until she is already moving in time with it.
Mornings always begin with the smell of coffee before sunrise, rich and bitter enough to wake the dead. Leon is always up first, as if sleep is a hobby he never fully committed to. By the time she wanders out in socks and some variation of stolen loungewear, he is usually leaning against the counter with a mug in hand, the news murmuring low from the television.
Only now, the suits begin to disappear.
At first, it is subtle. The jacket abandoned over a chair instead of being worn. The tie loosened by noon and never retied. Crisp white shirts were replaced with dark compression fabric that clings to shoulders and forearms, built by a profession more practical than glamorous. Then, one morning, she walks into the kitchen to find him in charcoal cargo pants and a fitted blue shirt, coffee in hand, looking less like a government escort and more like the kind of man people wisely move away from in alleyways.
She stops dead in the doorway.
He glances up.
“You forget how doors work?”
“You own casual clothes.”
“Try to contain your shock.”
“That is not normal,” she says, gesturing vaguely. “That is… tactical foreplay.”
He nearly chokes on his coffee. “You need hobbies.”
“I had hobbies. Then you showed up dressed like that.”
He looks down at himself.
“It’s just clothes.”
“It is absolutely not just clothes.”
From then on, the suits became reserved for official appearances and White House obligations. In the apartment, grocery runs, security sweeps, or the ordinary hours in between, Leon defaults to practical things— cargo pants, boots, compression shirts, henleys with sleeves pushed to the elbow, old hoodies worn thin with age.
(Y/N) discovers that this affects her peace more than the break-in did.
There is something disarming about seeing a man stripped of uniform but not capability. The suits had belonged to Agent Kennedy, polished and distant, all clean lines and federal detachment. This version belongs only to him. Broader somehow. Rougher at the edges. Real in a way pressed collars never were.
It is deeply inconvenient. He notices her staring on the third day.
“You’ve been weird all morning.”
“I have not.”
“You walked into a cabinet.”
“That cabinet instigated.”
“You also poured orange juice into your coffee.”
She freezes. He lifts the mug she had apparently ruined and examines it.
“Give me that.” She snatches it from him while he laughs under his breath.
Movie nights become actively hostile to her concentration. It is difficult to focus on the plot when Leon lounges at the far end of the couch in grey sweats and a dark shirt, one arm thrown across the cushions, looking infuriatingly comfortable in a way no one has a right to be.
“This movie is terrible,” he says halfway through an action scene.
“You’ve missed half of it.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“No, you’ve been talking.”
“I made one comment.”
“You’ve made seventeen.”
He turns to look at her. “You’ve been counting?”
She hates that she blushes.
Late nights deepen around them, the same as before. The city glows outside, traffic murmurs below, and conversation stretches until the clock becomes theoretical. (Y/N) curls into one end of the sofa while Leon sits cross-legged on the rug, cleaning a handgun with methodical calm in a sleeveless training shirt that should probably be illegal.
“Do you have to do that in front of me?” she asks.
“Do what?”
“Be… alarmingly competent.”
He glances up. “That sounded personal.”
“It was a general complaint.”
“You’re staring again.”
“I am observing.”
“Uh-huh.” He smiles.
She throws a pillow at him. He catches it one-handed without looking.
Insufferable.
Sometimes she watches him train when he turns the living room into a makeshift gym— push-ups, pull-ups, shadowboxing, the disciplined violence of someone keeping old ghosts in check through movement. Sweat darkens the fabric at his shoulders. Music pulses low through headphones. Every motion economical and precise.
She tells herself she only watches because it is interesting. This is a lie so transparent that even she is embarrassed by it.
He catches her leaning in the doorway once.
“Need something?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
She crosses her arms. “I live here now, unfortunately.”
“You evaluating my form?”
“I’m judging it harshly.”
He smirks and drops for another set of push-ups. “Count for me, then.”
She lasts until twenty-three before forgetting numbers entirely.
Domestic life grows around them anyway. He cooks in combat boots. She reads at the kitchen counter while he sharpens knives that are definitely too large for vegetables. They argue about music while he fixes a loose cabinet hinge. He teaches her how to check a deadbolt properly while wearing a Henley rolled to the elbows, and she retains none of the lesson because forearms have ruined her ability to learn.
One rainy evening, she finds one of his old suit jackets hanging near the door.
“I almost miss these,” she says.
He looks over from the stove.
“You hated those.”
“I hated what they meant.”
“And now?”
She glances at him in dark cargos, sleeves tight across his arms, stirring pasta sauce like some heavily armed housewife.
“Now I’m developing new problems.”
He studies her for a beat too long and then turns back to the stove. “Sounds serious.”
“It is.”
“Should probably keep an eye on that.”
The line lands between them warm and dangerous.
One Sunday afternoon, she finds him asleep on the sofa in grey sweats, shirt discarded somewhere, an open book face-down on his chest and sunlight turning the room gold.
She nearly walks directly back out.
Instead, she stands there, entirely too still, taking in the broad lines of him softened by sleep, the scar at his shoulder, the slow rise and fall of breath that proves even relentless men eventually rest.
Then she drapes a blanket over him.
His hand catches her wrist instantly.
Eyes still closed.
“Caught you staring,” he murmurs.
“I was being kind.”
“Sure.” One eye opens. “You gonna keep standing there or make coffee?”
She looks down at him, smug and half-asleep and impossible.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
The certainty in it startles them both.
Weeks pass in the strange, tender blur that happiness often uses as camouflage.
The threat against (Y/N) hasn’t vanished, per se, but it has quieted into background noise— briefings, check-ins, tightened protocols, men in earpieces speaking in low voices beyond closed doors. No arrests. No second attempt. Just enough danger remaining to justify the arrangement, and just enough peace settling over it to make leaving feel less inevitable than it should.
Life with Leon becomes ordinary in all the ways that matter.
Ordinary is coffee waiting for her in the morning because he has memorised how she takes it and refuses to admit it. Ordinary is his keys in the bowl by the door, boots abandoned carelessly by the couch, a half-read book face-down on the armrest because she interrupted him with some complaint he pretended not to care about. Ordinary is the sound of him moving through the apartment while she brushes her teeth, the low murmur of music from the kitchen, the shape of another person woven so thoroughly into her days that she can no longer remember where the empty spaces used to be.
It is dangerous, how quickly the heart adapts.
They have become shameless with each other.
She steals bites from his plate. He steals blankets. She adjusts the collar of whatever shirt he has thrown on when he is too lazy to do it himself. He tucks her hair behind her ear absentmindedly while reaching past her for a glass and only seems to realise what he has done when her breathing changes.
Neither mentions these things.
Naming them would require action. And action would require courage.
The night it happens is unremarkable at first, which feels fitting. No grand event announces the shift. No dramatic confession waits in candlelight. It begins on a Wednesday with rain against the windows and a movie neither of them is truly watching.
(Y/N) lies lengthwise along the sofa, feet tucked beneath his thigh. Leon sits beside her, one arm draped across the back cushions, the blue light of the television passing over his face in restless flashes. Some action hero is monologuing about vengeance.
“This is terrible,” (Y/N) says.
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“It has gotten worse.”
“That’s impressive.”
“You aren’t even paying attention.”
“I’m multitasking.”
“With what?”
He glances down at her. “Trying to figure out why you keep watching movies you hate.”
She smiles lazily. “Trying to figure out why you keep watching them with me.”
He doesn’t answer.
Rain taps harder at the glass. Thunder rolls somewhere distant, low and patient. The room feels smaller lately. Or perhaps they simply take up more of it.
When the credits begin, neither reaches for the remote.
(Y/N) repositions upright, blanket sliding into her lap. Leon remains turned slightly toward her, one arm still stretched behind her shoulders. They are close enough now that she can make out the faint scar near his jaw, the tiredness gathered at the corners of his eyes, the way he looks at her when he forgets to guard it.
“You’re staring,” he says softly.
“You’re one to talk.”
“I was here first.”
“That’s not a defence.”
“It’s all I’ve got.” There is laughter in him, but quieter than usual.
She should look away. Instead, she says, “You know, you’ve become much less unpleasant.”
“Careful,” he murmurs. “I have a reputation.”
Something in her chest aches with sudden affection.
Before she can think better of it, (Y/N) reaches up and smooths a loose strand of hair back from his forehead. A simple gesture. Innocent enough in theory.
Leon goes still.
Her hand lingers because she is foolish.
His eyes drop briefly to her mouth.
“If you’re going to make fun of me for this,” she says quietly, “I’d prefer some warning.”
“For what?”
“This.”
And then she kisses him.
It is not practised or cinematic. It is hesitant for half a second, the collision of two stubborn people startled by their own bravery.
Then Leon exhales against her mouth like he has been holding that breath for weeks. His hand finds the side of her face, careful and warm, and he kisses her back with a tenderness so at odds with the man she first met that it nearly undoes her. There is no rush in it, no greed, only relief and wonder and something long-denied finally allowed to exist.
When they part, barely, his forehead rests against hers.
“(Y/N).” The way he whispers her name makes it sound newly discovered.
“Was that a complaint?” she asks softly.
“Trying to decide.”
“Take your time.”
He kisses her again before she can finish smiling.
(Y/N)’s hand slides up into the front of his shirt, as if distance is suddenly the most unreasonable concept in the world. Leon makes a quiet sound against her mouth, something almost like restraint finally giving up its claim, and his arm tightens around her waist with a carefulness that still somehow feels like possession in the gentlest sense of the word.
When they break apart again, it is only because oxygen becomes necessary, not because either of them wants to.
“Bedroom,” Leon breathes. “Now.”
His hand finds hers properly, fingers threading together with a familiarity that doesn’t belong to tonight alone, and he leads her without asking, because he already knows she will follow.
She does.
They move through the apartment together, the city outside blurred into hazy light and distant sound. There is laughter as she bumps lightly into his shoulder in the hallway, and he catches her without thinking, steadying her with an ease that makes her heart do something inconvenient.
The room is dim when they step inside, lit only by the spill of streetlight through the curtains. Everything feels slower here, quieter, like the world has finally agreed to give them privacy without asking for anything in return.
(Y/N) turns to face him fully, and for a second, neither of them speaks. The air between them feels full. Charged in a way that is no longer tense, just alive.
Leon reaches up, brushing his thumb lightly along her knuckles where he is still holding her hand.
“You sure?” he asks, and the question sounds like care instead of caution.
(Y/N) doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
That’s all it takes.
He kisses her again, even slower this time, and she lets herself fall into it completely, letting go of everything that exists outside this room, outside this moment, outside the careful life she has been trying to hold together.
She tugs at his shirt, pulling away only long enough to fully remove it before diving back in headfirst. He doesn’t seem to mind, instead backing her up against the bed. Her knees bend as soon as they hit the mattress.
“Lie back,” Leon says, voice rough.
Near-frantic, she nods and complies, shuffling up to the top so her head rests on his pillows. In an instant, he’s crawling up the bed, crawling up her, settling his elbows on either side of her head. Strands of his blond hair fall into his face, and she reaches up to brush them away again.
He tilts his head, kisses the inside of her wrist. “You’re gorgeous, you know that?”
“Shut up,” she blushes. He doesn’t argue, even though she can tell he wants to.
Instead, he pushes himself up a bit, resting his weight back on his knees. One hand lowers to the waistband of her tiny sleep shorts while the other sneaks under her oversized shirt to rest on her stomach. He glances at her face, waiting for approval, which he readily receives, before he tugs the shorts down fully. She isn’t wearing anything underneath, a fact which makes him smile privately. He hides it by pulling off her shirt next.
He takes a moment to admire her before leaning back down to capture her lips in a kiss again. Without thinking, she wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him as close as she can.
“No fair,” she whines, pawing at his sweats. “Take these off.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, fuck,” she breathes. “That was hot.”
He chuckles a little as he shimmies out of his sweatpants and boxers in one go, letting his already hard cock spring free.
And— yeah, okay.
Yeah.
“Jesus,” (Y/N) curses under her breath, struggling to tear her eyes away from him. He grins unabashedly, which only makes her blush harder. Damn him for being so composed when she feels one second away from crumbling into pieces under his gaze.
“You okay there, princess?” He asks, only a little smug. The nickname sends a wave of heat straight up her spine. She’s never seen this side of him before, and god, she hopes she gets to see it again.
“Just fuck me already,” she says with a half-hearted glare.
“Patience,” he says. “I wanna take my time with you.”
Before she can say anything, he leans down and kisses her again. He thinks he might be addicted. Her quiet gasp eggs him on as he begins to trail kisses down her neck, careful not to leave any visible marks despite how badly he wants to. He doubts she would appreciate having to cover them up before going to the office the next day.
He makes his way down her chest from there, pausing briefly to scatter kisses across her breasts before moving on to her navel. She squirms under him.
“What are you doing?”
“Wanna taste you,” he replies, sliding down the bed fully until he’s between her legs. He sucks a bruise into the meat of her thigh, savouring the little noise she makes. “My pretty girl.”
“God, Leon—” she moans, feeling his breath ghost over her core. She twitches forward ever so slightly, aching for even the lightest touch. He doesn’t leave her waiting for long before he leans forward and licks a stripe up her soaked folds. The sound he lets out is unholy, but fuck, she tastes good. He thinks he could be buried alive in her cunt and die a happy man. He grinds his hips against the mattress below him just to relieve some of the pressure building in his stomach.
She squeezes her eyes shut and her hips lift off the mattress. He grips her thighs, pushing her back down.
“Stay still for me, baby,” he says softly, but it has the undertone of a command. She sucks her bottom lip in between her teeth and bites down, trying not to moan from him calling her baby.
His mouth is on her again, stopping at her clit, sucking in between his lips as he slides a finger into her, relishing in the feeling of her unravelling beneath him.
“God, you’re soaked for me,” he says, pulling away for a moment. His eyes are tracing her cunt reverently as his fingers thrust into her.
She combs her fingers mindlessly through his hair as Leon takes her apart with expert precision, tracing his tongue in perfect little circles over her clit while his fingers work at her from the inside, hitting that spot that makes her see stars.
“Leon,” she moans his name, unable to think of any other words to say. She hopes the desperation in her tone adequately conveys her message. He seems to catch on because he increases the pace of his tongue against her, his fingers digging into the flesh of her spread thighs as he tries to keep her still. He groans against her cunt, and the vibrations against her are what finally send her over the edge.
“Fuck, Lee—” she cries out again as she grinds against his face, body seizing in release. She peels her eyes open to look down at him, her chest heaving. He’s pressing little kisses to the inside of her thigh, smoothing over the indentations of his fingers left in her skin with tender brushes of his lips. She pulls him up to face her.
His hair is thoroughly ruffled now, his eyes heavy with lust, and his lips and chin are covered in her slick. She feels another wave of heat rush through her at the sight of him dripping with her cum. She places her hand on his cheek and brings his lips to hers, moaning when she tastes herself on his mouth.
She gasps in equal parts surprise and excitement when she feels his cock slide between her legs. He ruts in between her folds a few times, but avoids her entrance. She squirms under him, anticipation building. “Stop teasing.”
Leon just smirks, finally giving her what she wants and entering in one quick trust. He buries himself to the hilt, and any thoughts she might’ve had are instantly replaced with the hazy fog of pleasure. He feels like he was made for her.
He starts to move, drawing back slowly and entering again in perfect, hard thrusts. She wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him flush against her heated skin. She drags her fingernails down his back. His breath tickles as he buries his head in her neck, groaning in her ear.
“Jesus, baby,” he says, voice rough. “You take me so well.”
He punctuates the statement with another deep thrust.
“Faster,” she whimpers. He increases the pace, and the wet sounds of skin slapping skin fill the room. Her back arches off the bed, legs shaking as Leon fucks her.
“I’m close,” he says breathlessly.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, fingers tangling in his hair again. “Please, don’t pull out.”
The moan that spills out of him is filthy, and his hips stutter. He’s right at the brink, she can tell. “Oh fuck, (Y/N)—”
“Wanna feel you,” she whispers.
That’s what finally sends him over the edge, and she feels his cock twitch, hot ropes of cum filling her completely.
Neither of them moves for a moment, both content to just lie there, completely spent and panting hard. Leon comes back to his senses first, lifting himself off of her, not wanting to crush her under his weight. He presses kisses to her neck and ear, finally drawing back to look at her.
She brushes his hair out of his eyes, a smile taking over her features.
“So…” she draws out. “Just checking— is this covered under my protection plan?”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m violating at least six policies right now.”
“Only six?”
Leon groans, rolling out of the bed. He leans down to kiss her sweetly before he goes to grab a towel from the bathroom. He returns quickly and gently swipes it over her sex, cleaning the moisture from between her thighs. Her eyes are starting to get heavy, vision blurring at the edges. He notices, because of course he does.
“Tired?” He asks, looking pleased about wearing her out. Bastard.
“Yeah, think I’m gonna head back to the guest room,” (Y/N) taunts, a grin tugging at her lips as she waits for his inevitable objection.
“Like hell you are,” he says, sliding back onto the bed and snaking his arms around her waist. She can’t contain the tired giggle that escapes her as he presses another kiss to her shoulder before burying his face in her hair.
“Goodnight, Leon,” she sighs contentedly, enveloped in his soft bed, with the heat of him behind her. As much as she wants to savour the moment, it isn’t long before sleep tugs at her vision.
“G’night, sweetheart,” she hears vaguely before being pulled into unconsciousness.
Later, the apartment lies hushed around them in a kind of fragile stillness that feels borrowed rather than owned. Rain continues to tap serenely against the windows, a slower, gentler rhythm now, as if even the weather has tired itself out. The city beyond the glass glows in muted streaks of amber and white, distant and indifferent, while inside everything has narrowed to the small, contained universe of a queen-sized bed.
(Y/N) sleeps curled against his side, one arm is draped loosely over his waist, fingers resting without tension, anchoring herself to him. Her breathing has settled into something deep and unguarded. Her lashes rest against still-flushed cheeks, and her hair spills across his shoulder and pillow, catching faint light whenever she shifts.
Leon doesn’t move.
He stares at the ceiling as if it might offer something more useful than silence.
The room smells like rain, like skin warmed by hours of proximity, and like the faint trace of the expensive shampoo she keeps in his shower and insists that he use. It is too intimate a combination of things to belong in a space that is supposed to be temporary, too domestic for anything that still calls itself a mission.
His hand rests lightly over hers where it lies against him.
What the hell are you doing, Kennedy?
The thought arrives without warning, sharp enough to cut through whatever remains of calm he has managed to construct.
He knows the answer all too well, and that’s what makes it worse.
Crossing lines that were never meant to be crossed. Forgetting the clean boundaries of assignment and responsibility. Wanting something that was never included in the briefing, something that was never meant to survive contact with reality.
She trusts him without hesitation now, in the quiet, unthinking way people trust doors that have never once been locked. Her father trusts him with the kind of authority that does not need to be spoken aloud because it is already assumed. The entire arrangement exists on the premise that he is here to protect her from danger, not become a new version of it wearing familiar hands and a familiar voice.
Beside him, (Y/N) adjusts in her sleep, moving fractionally closer as if even unconsciousness prefers proximity to distance. Her arm tightens around his waist, entirely unaware of the war happening quietly on the other side of his thoughts.
Leon closes his eyes.
He has survived things that should have stripped the idea of tenderness out of him entirely. He has survived bioterror outbreaks that turned cities into containment zones, where protocol replaced panic because panic meant death. He has made decisions that never make it into reports, choices measured in seconds and acceptable loss, where hesitation spreads faster than any virus. He has learned how to compartmentalise fear, how to function while everything collapses.
None of that prepares him for this.
For the quiet, almost unbearable gravity of wanting to stay exactly where he is.
He lies awake long after her breathing deepens further, long after the rain fades completely and the city begins to move toward morning. Time loses structure in the dark. The ceiling doesn’t change. Neither does the weight of her against him. At some point, his hand shifts slightly, adjusting without conscious thought, as if even sleep has begun to rearrange what he is willing to hold.
When (Y/N) wakes, the bed is cool on one side.
The apartment is silent except for the faint hum of the city waking up beyond the windows. No coffee. No low music from the kitchen. No sound of movement in another room.
No Leon.
For a moment, she just lies there, eyes open, staring at the place where he should be, as if stillness alone might explain it into reversal. Then she sits up slowly, the remnants of sleep giving way to something sharper, more alert, more unsettled than anything that belongs in a morning like this.
On the nightstand sits a folded piece of paper.
She knows it is his before she even opens it.
The handwriting is blunt, controlled, familiar in a way that feels unfairly personal now.
Had to handle something. Don’t wait up.
No signature. Nothing added to reduce impact.
(Y/N) reads it twice, then again, as if repetition might produce a different meaning the third time. It does not.
The room feels larger than it did last night. Colder too, though nothing has changed except the absence of him. She sits there for a long moment with the note still in her hand, the quiet stretching out around her, laden with everything that wasn’t said before sleep arrived.
As if leaving like this could make what happened feel smaller. As if it could make him feel smaller, too. But it does not.
She tells herself not to be dramatic.
People leave early. People have obligations. People with Leon’s life and Leon’s job disappear at strange hours for reasons that have nothing to do with the woman asleep in their bed. The note is practical.
She repeats those facts to herself whilst showering, whilst dressing, whilst brushing out her hair. She repeats them while making coffee in a kitchen that feels abruptly impersonal, as if every surface has been scrubbed clean of any warmth in his absence.
By the time she leaves for work, unattended for the first time in months, she has almost convinced herself.
The day helps.
It’s busy in an exhausting, bureaucratic way. The way that leaves no room for personal reflection. Meetings stacked atop meetings. Calls transferred from one department to another. A luncheon she attends physically and remembers none of. People ask for decisions, signatures, and statements, and (Y/N) gives them all with practised efficiency.
Leon has never vanished before.
She understands. Really, she does. He’s a highly sought-after government agent; he’s bound to have other responsibilities at some point. Before her, he was probably used to being called away mid-conversation, pulled into briefings, sent elsewhere without warning. She has always been aware of the nature of his life.
It only feels different now because she knows the shape of him in the dark.
At noon, she nearly calls.
At one, she resents herself for nearly calling.
By three, she is angry enough to function properly.
Fine. If he wants distance, he can have it.
If the last night was a lapse in judgment to be tidied away by sunrise, then she will not be the woman who asks for clarification like some needy teenager in a melodramatic summer blockbuster.
By five-thirty, she is tired, hungry, and determined not to think about him at all.
Then she opens the apartment door.
The first thing she notices is the sound— cardboard scraping hardwood, tape pulled sharply from a roll, the low murmur of unfamiliar voices. The second is that her framed photographs are stacked against the wall.
Two men in agency attire are wrapping dishes in paper at the kitchen island. Another is carrying a sealed box out of the study.
(Y/N) stands frozen in the doorway, keys still in hand. No one notices her for three full seconds.
Then one of them looks up and goes pale. “Ma’am.”
“What,” (Y/N) asks very clearly, “is happening here?”
The room stills instantly.
The man nearest her sets down a bundle of plates with the caution of someone handling explosives. He is younger than she expected, with the unfortunate expression of a person who has just realised he has been chosen to deliver the wrong news to the wrong woman.
“We were informed you’d been briefed.”
“You were informed incorrectly.”
A glance passes between the men. No one moves. (Y/N) steps inside and closes the door behind her with measured precision. The young agent swallows.
“You’re being relocated to a new secure residence effective immediately.”
She laughs once. It is not a pleasant sound. “Am I?”
“Yes, ma’am. Updated threat protocols.”
“By whose authority?”
This time, the hesitation is fatal. She knows before he speaks. “Agent Kennedy submitted the recommendation this morning.”
Something cold and clean cuts through her all at once. Not panic or grief. Humiliation. She sets her keys on the entry table because otherwise she might throw them hard enough to injure someone.
“And where,” she asks, voice calm enough to frighten herself, “is Agent Kennedy?”
The room becomes fascinated with the floor.
“He accepted reassignment to another operation,” the agent says carefully. “Transport left at fourteen hundred.”
Reassignment. The word echoes strangely. A transfer. A departure. A neat administrative term for abandonment.
(Y/N) looks around the apartment— the half-packed boxes, the strangers handling her books, the drawers left open like wounds. He did this today. After last night. After holding her like she was something worth staying for.
“Did he leave any message?” she asks.
“No, ma’am.”
Of course not. Her throat tightens so suddenly that she hates it. Hates that these men might see even a fraction of what that answer costs. She folds her arms.
No one speaks. Because what can they say? Sorry your bodyguard slept with you and fled the jurisdiction? Sorry the man who kisses like confession handles feelings like a tactical retreat?
She walks past them into the bedroom. The sheets are stripped. Her clothes are already boxed. Even the note from the nightstand is gone. That nearly undoes her.
She stands in the middle of the room, staring at the blank mattress, at the absence of every small trace that last night happened at all. For one awful moment, the thought slips free before she can stop it.
Did I do something wrong?
Did she mistake tenderness for obligation? Desire for affection? Was she simply convenient until dawn made consequences visible? The shame of even wondering burns hotter than anger.
Behind her, someone clears his throat softly from the doorway.
“Ma’am?”
(Y/N) turns. The young agent looks deeply regretful.
“We can have you moved within the hour.”
She lifts her chin, every inch of heartbreak forced beneath polish and posture.
“Then stop standing there,” she says. “And pack faster.”
The new apartment is safer.
That’s what everyone keeps telling her. As if repetition can turn a sterile box of reinforced concrete and expensive furniture into something resembling comfort. Safer building. Safer locks. Safer floor plan. Safer neighbourhood. Every sentence delivered with the same practised certainty people use when they know they are describing inconvenience as privilege.
(Y/N) hates it immediately.
The place is too polished, too carefully neutral, decorated in shades of beige that suggest no one involved in its design has ever felt joy strongly enough to choose a different colour. The windows are large but barely open. The kitchen is immaculate in the deeply suspicious way kitchens are when no one has ever used them. Every room feels staged, as though she has been relocated into a brochure about controlled environments.
Worst of all, it comes with a replacement.
“Nice view,” the man says from behind her.
(Y/N) turns around.
Agent Grant Holloway stands in the centre of her living room with the casual ease of a man who has mistaken confidence for charm often enough that no one has corrected him. He is handsome in the polished, generic sense. Navy suit. Expensive watch. Smile calibrated for trust.
(Y/N) dislikes him on sight.
“You’re leaning on my counter,” she says.
He looks down at the marble edge supporting his elbow.
“So I am,” he says, extending a hand lazily. “Grant Holloway.”
She looks at it, but doesn’t grasp it.
“(Y/N) Graham,” she replies. “Try to keep up.”
She walks past him. He drops the hand without offence, which somehow irritates her more.
Agent Holloway is competent in the way résumés are competent.
He knows the procedures. Knows radio codes. Knows where to stand in photographs and how to speak in briefings with just enough jargon to sound impressive. He is courteous to staff, punctual to the minute, and entirely too relaxed for a man assigned to a credible threat.
Leon had made safety feel inconvenient. Holloway makes it feel optional.
On the second morning, (Y/N) finds the lobby entrance propped open for a furniture delivery.
“Is that normal?” she asks.
Holloway glances up from his phone. “They’re expected.”
“So were several wars.”
He blinks once, then shrugs. “They’re carrying couches, not rifles.”
Leon would have checked the truck, verified names, inspected the loading dock, and glared at the couch until it confessed.
By the sixth day, (Y/N) slips out through a side exit while Holloway is flirting with the concierge. No one stops her.
She walks three blocks to a bookstore, buys a novel she doesn’t need, and is halfway through the first chapter in the café when he finally appears beside her table.
“There you are,” he says, mildly winded.
She looks at her watch. “Thirty minutes. Impressive.”
“You know most protectees don’t treat surveillance like a sport.”
“Most protection details don’t lose visual contact in their own building.”
Holloway lowers himself into the chair opposite her without invitation.
“You done proving your point?”
“Not remotely.”
He smiles like this is banter. It is not.
That evening, her phone lights up while she is brushing her teeth. Unknown number. She stares at it until it stops. A minute later, a voicemail notification appears. She does not listen.
The next day, there is a text.
Need to talk.
No greeting. No explanation. No apology. (Y/N) deletes it so quickly that it feels juvenile.
At lunch, Ashley watches her stab a salad into submission.
“You’re being scary.”
“I’m eating.”
“You’re murdering lettuce.”
(Y/N) says nothing. Ashley narrows her eyes.
“He reached out.” Silence. “Oh my god, he did.”
“It’s irrelevant.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to key his motorcycle.”
(Y/N) doesn’t answer.
“So, what did he say?”
“Nothing worth reading.”
“That bad?”
“That brief.”
Her sister deflates. “(Y/N).”
“He left.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, he left. Packed me out of my apartment, transferred himself, then texted like we forgot to schedule brunch.”
Ashley winces. “Okay. Yeah. That’s stupid.”
“Thank you.”
“That man has the emotional instincts of roadkill.”
Despite herself, (Y/N) laughs.
Back at the new apartment, Holloway is standing in the hallway outside her door, talking to a neighbour he has apparently allowed to remain there for several minutes.
The neighbour is holding a steaming loaf pan.
(Y/N) stops. “Who is that?”
Holloway glances over. “Mrs Donnelly. Unit 14B.”
Mrs Donnelly beams. “I brought banana bread.”
(Y/N) stares. “You let a stranger approach my residence?”
“She’s eighty.”
“She could be eighty and armed.”
Mrs Donnelly gasps. Holloway chuckles.
Leon would have had the bread X-rayed. Holloway accepts a slice.
Later that night, another text arrives.
Please answer.
She sits on the edge of the bed in a room that still does not feel like hers, reading those two words until they blur.
Across the apartment, Holloway laughs at something on television.
The locks are strong. The cameras are modern. The guards are present. And yet she has never felt less protected.
She turns the phone face down. Lets it buzz once more into silence. And hates herself for wishing it were Leon knocking at the door instead.
Leon tells himself he is busy.
The new assignment makes the lie easier to maintain. Two states away, attached to a joint task force operation that no one will ever publicly acknowledge, he spends his days inside the familiar machinery of counterterrorism and bioweapons response. There are intelligence briefings in rooms with no windows, shipment logs scattered across tables, shell corporations traced through six countries, grainy surveillance footage of men whose public smiles conceal private appetites for catastrophe. It’s the sort of work that usually consumes him completely. The kind that demands vigilance, precision, and the ability to put away every personal concern until further notice.
Typically, Leon excels at that. Instead, he knows the weather in Washington, D.C.
He checks it every morning without thinking. Rain on Tuesday. Wind on Thursday. Cold front by the weekend. Meaningless details for a city he no longer protects, except they let him imagine whether (Y/N) remembered a coat, whether she cursed the humidity while fixing her hair, whether she stood at those broad apartment windows and looked out with that expression she got when she was restless but pretending not to be.
It is pathetic.
He acknowledges this privately and continues doing it anyway.
At the hotel, his chunky laptop remains open to operational files late into the night. Beside them sits another tab he closes whenever anyone walks in: local D.C. news, traffic incidents, public schedules, charity events, anything that might mention the president’s family or some disturbance near the district. Most nights, there is nothing. No mention of her. No incident reports. No photographs of (Y/N) attending some event in a dress that would make him remember too much.
Nothing is exactly what he wants.
He still checks again before bed.
“You seeing someone?”
Leon glances up from his phone to find Agent Ramirez in the kitchenette holding a paper cup of coffee and wearing the insufferably amused demeanour of a man who treats other people’s discomfort as a hobby.
“No.”
“You smile at that screen sometimes.”
“I do not.”
“You did just now.”
“I was reading about tax reform.”
Ramirez snorts loud enough to qualify as hostile. “Must be love.”
Leon looks back down at the phone.
“Shut up.”
He has (Y/N)’s new protection detail memorised, despite never having requested it through official channels.
Grant Holloway. Eight years of service. Strong evaluations. Clean disciplinary record. Former diplomatic protection.
Leon hates him immediately and on principle. Not because the man has done anything demonstrably wrong, but because he is there, occupying a position Leon abandoned.
The first time Leon calls a contact in D.C. to ask, with carefully manufactured casualness, whether the new detail is solid, he spends ten minutes pretending the question is professional curiosity.
“The Holloway guy?” the contact says. “Yeah. He’s fine.”
Fine. Leon has fought infected monstrosities described with more enthusiasm.
“Fine, how?”
“Relaxed. Easygoing. Clients like him.”
That answer keeps Leon awake for most of the night. Relaxed gets people hurt. Easygoing misses patterns. Leon nearly calls (Y/N) then and there, if only to hear irritation in her voice and confirm she is physically unharmed.
Instead, he stares at the motel ceiling and remembers her asleep beside him, one hand resting over his ribs as if trust had weight.
What the hell are you doing, Kennedy?
The same question as before, only now the answer is simpler.
Missing her.
He tries not to interfere. For five days, he manages it.
On the sixth, he uses an old contact to quietly verify a rumour about a minor perimeter breach at (Y/N)’s new residence. A delivery driver carrying falsified credentials had reached the secured entrance before being turned away. No injuries. No escalation. Incident closed.
Leon sees red so quickly it almost surprises him.
He makes three phone calls in ten minutes, each one sharper than the last. By the fourth, he learns Holloway signed off on the delivery manifest without secondary verification because the vendor was “expected.”
Leon hangs up before he says something that would require apologies in writing.
That night, he drafts messages to (Y/N) like a teenager with brain damage.
Are you okay?
Delete.
I miss you.
Delete.
Need to talk.
He sends that one and immediately hates himself.
There is no response.
He deserves that much. Still, every ignored call and unread message becomes a kind of reassurance. Her phone remains active. She is there to disregard him. She is alive enough to be angry.
There are worse comforts.
Weeks begin to pass in fragments of work and memory. He notices things he never used to register. A scarf in a store window, the same shade as her winter coat. A woman laughing in an airport with (Y/N)’s cadence and none of her features. Coffee that tastes wrong because she always added cream when he forgot. Songs playing in elevators that she used to hum absentmindedly while reading reports at his kitchen counter.
Love, Leon discovers, is embarrassingly domestic.
It’s remembering that she hates mushrooms, that she always steals fries off someone else’s plate, that she prefers the corner of the couch nearest the lamp because the light is better for reading. It’s knowing she pretends not to be cold before eventually asking for a blanket. It’s missing someone most intensely when something mildly funny happens, and there is no one there to tell.
Ramirez catches him staring into space during a briefing and tosses a pen that bounces off Leon’s shoulder.
“You’re gone again.”
“I’m here.”
“Body’s here. Soul’s filing paperwork somewhere else.” Leon ignores him, which only encourages further stupidity. “You break up with someone?”
Leon almost laughs.
“You need to date first for that.”
Ramirez studies him for a beat, then nods with theatrical sympathy. “Ah. So it was serious.”
Later that night, Leon stands alone in the hotel parking lot beside a rental car that smells faintly of stale air freshener and bad decisions. He calls (Y/N)’s number, knowing she will not answer.
It rings. Then voicemail.
He says nothing when it picks up, just listens to the possibility of her voice after the tone, then hangs up before the beep because hearing her name in that recorded greeting would probably do something undignified to him.
The sky above the lot is clear and empty. Somewhere several hundred miles east, (Y/N) is living in an apartment she hates with a bodyguard Leon does not trust, likely furious enough to throw something heavy at him if given the chance.
The thought makes him smile despite himself.
Good.
Anger means she still cares.
Before going back inside, he checks the D.C. forecast one more time.
Rain tomorrow.
He hopes she remembers a coat.
Weeks after the incident that never quite gets named out loud, things begin to loosen in a way that is almost convincing if you don’t think about it too hard.
The threat level, according to the briefings (Y/N) is still technically looped into, has “decreased significantly.” The wording is always careful. No confirmed follow-up activity. No credible chatter. No observed movement.
Which is why the changes happen.
At first, she still has near-constant supervision. Someone outside the building. Someone in the lobby. Someone following her routes in a way that makes her feel like she is never entirely alone, even when she is trying to pretend she is.
Then, gradually, that tight net starts to loosen.
Fewer check-ins. Longer gaps. Less visible presence.
Agent Holloway calls it “normalisation protocol easing.”
(Y/N) calls it what it feels like: being slowly let go.
She is not under 24/7 supervision anymore. Not officially. There are still protocols, still contact points, still a car that shows up when it is supposed to. But the sense of immediate containment that followed the envelope, the incident, Leon, all of it has faded into something quieter and more administrative.
Like the world has decided the danger must have moved on. Or given up.
So when her old friends suggest drinks, there is no immediate refusal from security. No firm scheduling conflict. No escort insisting on accompanying her inside.
The bar is the kind of place that feels harmless. Warm lighting, crowded enough to feel safe, loud enough to make conversations easy to lose track of. Her friends are already there when she arrives, already laughing, already halfway into the kind of evening that doesn’t require attention from anyone outside the group.
For a while, it works again.
She drinks. She laughs when it is expected. She lets herself exist without scanning exits every few minutes. The absence of constant supervision is almost as intoxicating as the liquor.
Then, predictably, it thins out.
One friend leaves early, citing an early meeting. Another disappears with someone she met an hour ago. The last one gives a quick goodbye hug and says she will text tomorrow, which they both know is a formality.
And just like that, (Y/N) is alone again.
She should leave. She almost does.
But the bar is warmer than outside. And the idea of going back to her empty apartment makes her stomach sink to the floor. So she stays, ordering another drink she doesn’t really need, watching the crowd shift and blur in and out of focus around her.
That’s when he shows up.
He doesn’t feel immediately wrong. That’s the problem.
He slides into the space beside her like it is already partially his, like they were mid-conversation, and she forgot about it. He makes an easy comment about the music, something casual about the night, and when she responds, it is without suspicion. It is easy. Normal.
For a while, it even feels good.
He laughs at the right moments. Lets her talk without interrupting. Orders a drink of his own and keeps the conversation balanced enough that she stops thinking about the fact that she is alone.
At some point, her glass is set down between them.
She doesn’t see him do it.
Only the way the conversation switches afterwards. Slightly slower. Slightly warmer than it should be. Like her edges aren’t quite aligning the way they were a minute ago.
She blinks it off at first. Probably just tired. Probably just alcohol. She tells herself she is fine. He suggests another drink, and she says yes without thinking too hard about it.
From behind the bar, the bartender has been watching. At first, it is nothing unusual. Just another conversation between strangers at a bar. But then she notices the change.
The way (Y/N) pauses somewhat longer between responses. The way the man leans in closer than necessary. The way he moves her drink just a little further out of reach when she tries to take it again.
It’s subtle, but it’s enough. The bartender sets something down, moves closer, eyes narrowing faintly as she watches the man’s hand hover near (Y/N)’s arm, guiding her in a way that is no longer social.
“Hey,” the bartender says, voice calm but firm as she steps in. “Everything okay here?”
The man smiles like nothing is wrong.
“Yeah, we’re good,” he says.
(Y/N) tries to respond, but her words feel delayed, like they are arriving half a second late to her mouth.
“I’m fine,” she says, though it comes out more timid than she intends.
The bartender looks at her directly now. “You sure?”
(Y/N) nods, but it is not convincing even to her.
The man shifts again, closer now, hand settling lightly at her waist in a way that makes her stomach twist immediately. That’s when the bartender stops pretending.
“No,” she says, sharper now. “Take your hand off her."
The man laughs, as if it’s an overreaction.
“She’s fine,” he insists.
(Y/N) tries to pull away, but her balance is off now, the room just barely tilting at the edges in a way she cannot fully correct.
The bartender is already moving. She steps between them, physically placing herself in the space the man is trying to control.
“I said move,” she repeats. Something in her tone reframes the situation enough that he hesitates. The bartender doesn’t give him time to recover. She turns, guiding (Y/N) back a step, steadying her with a hand at her elbow.
“Hey,” she says to (Y/N). “You with me?”
(Y/N) nods, slower than she should.
The bartender’s expression tightens.
“Okay,” she says, already reaching under the bar for her phone. “We’re getting you out of here.”
The man protests immediately, stepping forward again.
“She’s fine,” he says again, more forcefully now.
The bartender doesn’t look at him. She is already dialling.
“Yeah,” she says into the phone, voice steady. “I need help at the front bar. Now.”
The man tries to follow (Y/N) as she is guided further behind the counter. The bartender blocks him again, firmer this time.
“Back up,” she says. “Or I call it in as harassment, and you don’t get to stay for the explanation.”
That lands better than anything else has. He stops, but he doesn’t leave.
(Y/N), now partially seated on a stool behind the bar, leans forward, trying to steady herself. Her head feels too full, like everything is arriving moderately out of sync.
“I think I just need air,” she murmurs.
“You’re not going anywhere alone,” the bartender says immediately. She glances at (Y/N)’s phone, unlocks it gently with (Y/N)’s consent, and scrolls through contacts until (Y/N) tells her to stop.
Leon Kennedy.
She hits call.
It rings once.
Then—
“(Y/N).”
His voice is immediate. Focused. Already alert.
The bartender answers instead.
“Not (Y/N),” she says quickly. “This is the bartender. She’s here. She’s okay, but she needs to be picked up. Right now.”
A pause on the other end.
“Where is she?” Leon asks instantly.
She gives him the location.
“I’m on my way,” he says without hesitation.
The bartender exhales once, looks at (Y/N) again, and gently adjusts her position so she is sitting more securely.
“You’re okay,” she says. “You’re gonna sit right here for a minute, alright?”
(Y/N) nods faintly.
She loses track of the time as they wait. Eventually, the bar door opens and cold air slips inside, cutting through the noise just enough to make people look up without immediately knowing why. Conversations falter in small, scattered ways. Glasses halt midair. The atmosphere alters before anyone can name the reason.
Leon steps in, already scanning the room, his eyes moving through the room with practised precision, filtering noise from relevance until everything collapses down to a single point.
(Y/N).
She’s behind the bar now, seated on a stool angled slightly inward by the bartender like a makeshift barrier between her and the rest of the room. The bartender’s hand is still steady at her elbow, posture alert in a way that suggests this stopped being casual a while ago.
(Y/N) looks up when she hears him.
It takes her a second longer than usual to focus, like her mind has to travel a little further than it should to reach her own thoughts.
Then: relief, sharp and unfiltered.
“Leon,” she says.
That is all it takes. Leon’s expression changes immediately. She wouldn’t call it panic. Just a tightening at the edges, focus narrowing until everything except (Y/N) stops mattering.
He crosses the room without hesitation. The crowd parts in small, instinctive adjustments, because something in his presence makes not moving feel like the wrong choice.
The bartender notices him and straightens. “You the boyfriend?”
Leon nods without thinking about it too hard.
“She’s back here,” the bartender says quickly, stepping aside. “Some guy was getting too close. I caught it early, but she started feeling off. She didn’t finish the drink.”
Leon nods again, already seeing enough to understand the shape of the situation. His eyes flick to the glass on the counter, then to (Y/N)’s posture, then past her to the edge of the bar, where a man is watching a little too closely.
Everything clicks into place without needing confirmation.
He reaches (Y/N) and slows immediately.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice shifts the moment it’s just for her. Softer. Lower. “I’m here, sweetheart.”
(Y/N) exhales like she’s been holding something in her chest that finally has somewhere to go.
“Leon,” she says again, quieter this time, like the sound of his name alone is enough to steady her.
He doesn’t crowd her. Doesn’t overwhelm her with questions. He just steps close enough to stabilise her when she leans, one hand coming to her elbow before her balance can fully give out.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
The bartender watches for another second, then leans in, voice low but clear.
“I didn’t see him put anything obvious in it,” she says, “but something’s wrong. She started going off after a few minutes. I stopped it before it got worse.”
Leon grits his teeth for a moment before regathering himself.
“Good,” he says simply.
Behind them, the man fidgets again. He straightens, smooths his expression, and takes a step forward like he can reinsert himself into the narrative.
“She’s fine,” he says quickly. “We were just talking. She’s overreacting.”
Leon doesn’t turn toward him immediately.
He adjusts (Y/N)’s jacket around her shoulders instead, carefully making sure it sits properly, as if the act of covering her is more important than anything being said in the room.
Then he speaks. “Shut the fuck up.”
The man scoffs, trying to recover ground. “Excuse me? I’m just explaining—”
Leon finally turns fully toward him.
“You’re done,” he says. “You’re not talking to her again.”
The man tries again, but is weaker now. “She’s a grown woman. She can handle herself.”
Leon nods once, like he accepts the statement in principle.
“Then she decides who gets near her,” he says. “Not you.”
The man opens his mouth again, but nothing comes out with the same certainty anymore. He looks around briefly, as if expecting the room to support him, but it doesn’t. The energy has already moved away from him.
Leon lets the silence sit for a moment longer, then simply stops engaging him altogether. He turns back to (Y/N) as if the conversation has ended permanently.
“You ready to go?” he asks gently.
(Y/N) nods.
Leon steadies her with a hand at her back and guides her out from behind the bar, careful and unhurried. The bartender steps aside without hesitation, her attention still on the man who now looks like he has nowhere left to place himself in the situation.
At the door, Leon pauses just long enough to look back once.
“Thank you,” he says to the bartender.
“Get her home safe,” she replies.
“I will.”
Outside, the air is colder, quieter, almost distant in comparison to what just happened inside. Leon opens the passenger door before (Y/N) has to think about it, waits until she is seated properly, then closes it only when he is sure she is stable.
He stands there for a moment longer, looking back at the bar entrance. Then he gets in, starts the car, and drives.
The city moves past in blurred stretches of light and shadow outside the windshield, streetlamps washing across the interior in slow, passing intervals.
(Y/N) sits stock-still in the passenger seat, hands loosely folded in her lap like she’s trying to remember what to do with them. The adrenaline is gone now, but whatever replaced it hasn’t settled into anything namable yet. She keeps blinking slowly, as if the motion itself helps her stay anchored.
Leon’s hands stay steady on the wheel.
At one point, without looking over, he reaches across the centre console.
His hand finds hers. (Y/N) looks down at their conjoined fingers for a moment, like she isn’t entirely sure how to process the contact, then slowly lets her hand settle into his grip properly.
Neither of them speaks.
(Y/N) leans her head back against the seat, eyes drifting toward the window. The reflection of passing lights moves across her face in fragments, like the world is still trying to decide what shape it wants to be around her.
Leon notices none of it overtly. Or rather, he notices everything without making it visible.
“I didn’t even notice,” she says after a while.
Leon glances at her briefly, then back to the road.
“That’s kind of the point,” he replies.
(Y/N) lets out a breath that almost becomes a laugh, but doesn’t quite make it.
“That’s a comforting answer,” she says dryly.
The rest of the drive passes in the same quiet rhythm. His hand doesn’t leave hers once. Not even when he shifts gears or turns. It stays there like an anchor.
When they finally pull into his building’s parking area, the car idles for a moment before he turns it off. The sudden absence of engine noise makes everything feel partially closer.
Leon still doesn’t let go of her hand right away.
“You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” he says.
(Y/N) looks over at him.
“I don’t want to go back to my apartment tonight,” she says honestly.
He nods once, like that answers something he already suspected.
“Okay,” he says simply. Only then does he release her hand, but not before giving it a small, steady squeeze that lingers for half a second longer than necessary.
They get out of the car together.
The building is quiet this late, the kind that feels safe rather than empty. Leon leads the way inside without rushing her, staying close enough that she doesn’t have to think about direction or distance.
Inside the elevator, neither of them speaks again. The space is small, enclosed, and reflective in a way that makes everything feel closer than it actually is. (Y/N) watches the floor numbers rise while Leon stands beside her, still, composed, and present.
His apartment is familiar in a way that makes (Y/N) want to cry. She steps inside anyway, taking it in without saying much.
Leon sets his keys down, then waits like he’s deciding what matters most in the moment.
He turns to her.
“You want water?” he asks.
(Y/N) nods.
He goes to the kitchen, comes back a moment later with a glass, handing it to her carefully. Their fingers brush briefly when she takes it, but neither of them reacts to it like it’s unusual anymore.
She sits on the edge of his couch without being told, holding her jacket around her shoulders like a safety blanket. He doesn’t turn on the TV or try to fill the space with anything unnecessary. Instead, he sits in the chair across from her, positioned so she knows exactly where he is without having to look for him.
(Y/N) takes a sip of water.
“You left,” she says.
The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be.
Leon goes still in a way that is different from how he usually holds himself.
“I didn’t want to,” he says after a moment.
(Y/N)’s gaze stays on him, unblinking now, fully present despite whatever is still floating around in her system. “Then why?”
Leon exhales slowly, like the answer has weight before it even becomes words.
“Because I was losing objectivity,” he says.
The phrase lands between them in a way that feels clinical at first, until he continues:
“I was assigned to protect you,” he says, “and that’s supposed to stay clear. Controlled. Boundaries that don’t change. I could feel myself crossing lines I wasn’t supposed to cross just by being around you.”
(Y/N)’s expression tightens. “So you decided I wasn’t worth the risk.”
“No,” Leon says immediately, and there’s something firmer in his voice now. “I decided I wasn’t.”
He looks at her properly now.
“I started making decisions based on things that weren’t part of the job,” he says. “And I knew exactly what that does if you don’t stop it early.”
(Y/N) lets out a small breath that doesn’t quite turn into a laugh. “So you stepped away before it could get messy.”
“I stepped away before it could hurt you,” he corrects quietly.
She stops moving entirely for a moment, like she’s trying to decide whether that distinction is meaningful or just another form of control dressed up as protection.
“And you didn’t think I deserved to know any of that?” she asks after a beat.
Leon looks down briefly, then back up at her. “I didn’t think I could be close to you and still do my job properly.”
(Y/N)’s voice drops, less sharp, more raw at the edges. “And now?”
Leon doesn’t answer immediately, and the absence of an answer is its own kind of truth.
Finally, he says, “I don’t know.”
(Y/N) leans back a bit into the couch.
“I don’t like being managed,” she says.
“I know,” Leon replies.
Another pause. This one is longer, but not hostile.
“I wasn’t trying to manage you,” he adds. “I just wanted to keep you safe.”
(Y/N) studies him for a long moment, her eyes clearer now than they were when she first walked in, even if whatever was in her system hasn’t fully worn off yet.
“You didn’t even ask me,” (Y/N) says.
“I couldn’t,” Leon replies, and there’s something almost tired in it now. Something more than just exhaustion from the day. Something older. “Because if I had, I don’t think I could’ve done it.”
(Y/N) looks away for a second, like she needs distance from the heaviness of that sentence, even in the same room. When she speaks again, her voice is milder, but more precise. “You chose for both of us.”
Leon doesn’t answer right away.
He looks at her like he’s trying to find a version of this conversation where he can still stand on familiar ground, where everything can be explained in terms of duty and containment and what he was supposed to do. But there isn’t one anymore.
When he finally speaks, his voice is gentler than before, stripped down to something more honest than structured.
“Yes,” he says.
(Y/N) doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t soften either. She just waits, still watching him like she’s bracing for the rest of it. Leon exhales slowly, accepting that this is no longer something he can keep partial.
“I chose,” he repeats, more deliberately now. “Because I thought if I stayed close to you, I wouldn’t be able to do what I was there to do anymore.”
A moment of silence.
“And I was right.”
That hangs there.
(Y/N) doesn’t speak. Not immediately. Her gaze stays on him, steady in a way that asks for something more than the version of the truth he’s given so far.
Leon exhales once, slow, already past the point of turning back from what comes next.
“I love you, (Y/N),” he says without fanfare, like it isn’t a revelation so much as a fact he’s finally stopped resisting.
A pause.
“But my life is dangerous. People I care about get hurt. I can’t keep you safe,” he continues, “if I can’t keep you at arm’s length.”
“I’m not asking you to stay for my own protection,” (Y/N) says, her voice steadier now, like once she’s started, she can’t stop herself from saying it all. “I’m asking you to stay because I want you. I want my Leon— not Agent Kennedy. I want the Leon who forgets to put cream in his coffee, who pretends to be asleep on the couch just so he can catch me looking at him. I want the Leon who still shows up to pull me out of some bar even when I’ve been ignoring him for weeks.”
The last part lands more delicately than the rest, but it carries the most meaning anyway.
Leon looks at her like he’s been hit with something he didn’t see coming. Something too specific. Too real. Like she’s describing parts of him that he doesn’t usually let stay in the same room as the rest of his life.
For a second, he doesn’t answer.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking for,” he says.
(Y/N) doesn’t move.
“I’m not… separate from it,” he continues, more carefully now, like he’s trying to make sure she hears every part of it. “Agent Kennedy isn’t something I switch off when I leave a room. It’s everything I’ve built my life around.”
His jaw clenches slightly.
“I don’t know how to do… whatever this is.” That sentence sits there between them, unfinished in a way that feels more vulnerable than anything he’s said so far. (Y/N) watches him for a long moment, the intensity of her expression diminishing just a fraction— not because she’s backing down, but because she’s finally hearing the fear underneath the refusal.
“You don’t have to switch it off,” she says.
Leon’s eyes stay on her.
“You just have to stop using it as a reason not to be here,” she adds.
He looks at her for a long moment. (Y/N) doesn’t move from her spot on the couch.
Leon exhales slowly, and something in his posture changes. Like he’s stopped bracing against a decision he’s already made without admitting it. (Y/N)’s earlier certainty steadies into something calmer now, less like a declaration. She doesn’t reach for him. She doesn’t need to. The choice has already stopped being theoretical.
Leon steps closer until he’s standing between her knees, close enough that the rest of the room feels irrelevant by comparison. (Y/N) looks up at him without speaking.
His hands find her first, settling lightly at her waist like it’s the only place it makes sense to be, like his body already knew before his mind fully agreed. (Y/N) tilts her head up at the same time that he leans down.
The kiss that follows is sweet. (Y/N)’s hands rise instinctively just to rest on his cheek, as if confirming that he is indeed real.
When they do part, it’s only enough to breathe.
Leon lingers. So does (Y/N).
For a moment, the world outside the couch feels suspended— still dangerous, still uncertain, still unresolved— but no longer in control of this space between them.
Leon stays there, close, forehead brushing hers, like he’s finally stopped trying to decide whether he’s allowed to want this and simply chosen it instead.
Then (Y/N)’s shoulders slump with the weight of everything the night has taken out of her. Whatever was slipped into her drink still haunts the edges, pulling exhaustion through her limbs no matter how hard she tries to stay present.
Leon notices immediately.
His hand moves from her waist to the side of her face, thumb brushing lightly along her cheek before he straightens. There’s something almost fond in the way he looks at her now, tempered by concern.
“You need sleep,” he murmurs.
Before she can argue, he slides one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, lifting her carefully from the couch.
(Y/N) lets out a sound of surprise that turns into a tired laugh, one arm instinctively circling his neck as he carries her down the hall. The apartment is dark and hushed around them, the only sound the measured rhythm of his footsteps and the rustle of fabric when she shifts closer against him.
He lays her down gently on the bed like she’s something precious he’s afraid to mishandle.
(Y/N) watches him through heavy eyes as he pulls the blankets over her and starts to step back, already reaching for old habits, old distances.
Her hand catches loosely around his wrist.
“Will you be here when I wake up tomorrow?”
The question is quiet, blurred by fatigue, but clear enough in what it asks. He turns back, easing down onto the edge of the mattress before brushing a strand of hair from her face.
“Yes,” he says softly.
No hesitation. No caveat. No note left on a nightstand.
Just yes.
Some of the tension leaves her face. Her grip loosens, fingers sliding into his hand instead as sleep begins to pull her under for real this time.
Leon slips in beside her only after she’s half-asleep, staying close enough for her to find him in the dark.
Within minutes, her breathing evens out.
When morning comes, he intends to be exactly where he said he would be.