KlongSkie

You stood with your arms folded, posture casual in a way that took effort. Like you weren’t waiting. Like you didn’t already know exactly who you’d be fighting for space with.

The board flickered.

For a split second, everything went dark.

Then the names snapped into place.

#1 — YOU #2 — LEON KENNEDY

The reaction was immediate.

A low whistle cut through the room. Someone muttered, “Jesus, again.” Another agent laughed softly, like they’d just lost a bet.

You didn’t smile.

Smiling would’ve felt like gloating, and gloating around Leon Kennedy always came back to bite. Instead, you exhaled through your nose, jaw tightening just enough to hurt. Relief tangled with triumph, knotted together in a way that never quite felt like a win.

Across the floor, Leon stood a few feet away. Too close. Close enough that you could feel him without looking, like static in the air, irritating and unavoidable. He didn’t react. No sigh. No curse. No flicker of irritation that would’ve been satisfying to see.

He just stared at the board, hands loose at his sides, shoulders squared like this was exactly where he expected to be. Second.

That was the thing about Leon. He never looked bothered. Which only ever made you want to bother him more. Finally, he turned his head. Not fully. Just enough to acknowledge your existence.

“Congrats.”

The word was clean. Controlled. Devoid of warmth. Not a compliment, an obligation. You turned on him immediately.

“Wow,” you said, voice light in a way that wasn’t. “That sounded painful. You okay?”

A few agents nearby froze, suddenly very interested in anything that wasn’t the two of you. Someone cleared their throat. Loudly.

Leon’s eyes slid to you then—really looked. Blue, steady, unreadable. Like he was cataloguing you, the way he always did, as if you were a problem he hadn’t solved yet.

“I’ll survive,” he said. “I usually do.”

There it was. The implication. The reminder. That he didn’t need the board. Didn’t need the validation.

You scoffed. “Right. Keep telling yourself that.”

Your heart was beating faster than it should have. You hated that. Hated that he still had that effect. You told yourself it was just rivalry. Professional friction. Two agents chasing the same metrics.

Except metrics didn’t make your blood boil. Metrics didn’t make you remember every mission where he’d overridden your call. Every briefing where he’d questioned your judgment with that infuriating calm. Every time he’d acted like you were a variable to manage instead of an equal.

Leon gave a short nod, not concession, not respect. Closure.

Then he turned away.

As if the conversation hadn’t mattered. As if you hadn’t mattered.

Your fingers curled before you could stop them. You remembered the first time you’d tried to talk to him. Fresh out of training, adrenaline high, stupid enough to think camaraderie was a given. You’d said his name.

He’d walked straight past you. You’d decided then that he was an asshole. Every interaction since had only reinforced it.

The operations floor slowly returned to life as agents peeled away toward briefings, the tension dispersing but not disappearing. Not between you and Leon. It never did.

As you headed toward the briefing room, you caught his reflection in the glass wall ahead. Same expression. Same calm. Locked down so tight it felt deliberate. Like a wall he wanted you to slam into. And God help you, part of you wanted to break it. Just to prove that something under there could crack.

You squared your shoulders and kept walking. You didn’t care. You absolutely did.

The mission briefing chime cut through the operations floor with surgical precision.

“Conference Room A. Five minutes.”

The reaction was immediate and universal.

Groans rippled through agents who hadn’t moved fast enough to make themselves scarce. Chairs scraped back. Tablets were snapped shut. The loose, post-leaderboard tension evaporated, replaced by something sharper, more disciplined.

You moved with the crowd on instinct alone.

It wasn’t until you were halfway there that you realised exactly where it was taking you.

Conference Room A.

You grimaced internally.

The room was large by design, tiered seating, wide tables, enough space to accommodate egos as well as bodies, but it had a habit of shrinking whenever certain people occupied it.

You stepped inside and scanned for an open seat, already bracing yourself.

Of course.

Leon was already there.

Middle row. Dead centre. Prime vantage point of the screen and the handler’s podium. Perfect posture. Perfectly composed. Like he’d planned it that way.

There were empty chairs scattered throughout the room, but they might as well not have existed. Too far. Too obvious. Too cowardly. The only viable option, the one that didn’t scream avoidance, was the seat beside him.

Unavoidable. You took it. You dropped into the chair with more force than necessary, the legs giving a brief, sharp screech against the floor. Leon didn’t look at you. Didn’t need to.

The tension snapped into place the instant you sat down, tight and immediate, like a wire pulled too far. You felt it in your shoulders. In the way your spine straightened despite yourself.

Conversations around you faltered. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just enough that you noticed the sudden lack of noise in your peripheral hearing. Someone a few rows back leaned in to whisper something to their partner. Another agent glanced at the two of you, eyebrows lifting before they very deliberately looked away.

No one wanted to be involved. The air felt thick. Pressurised. Like it might rupture if either of you pushed too hard.

Leon crossed his arms, posture relaxed but closed. Casual in the way that required discipline. Control. You leaned back, ankle resting on your knee, adopting your own version of indifference. Two opposing stances. Same message.

The handler entered, and the room snapped to attention.

Lights dimmed. Screens flared to life, flooding the space with satellite imagery, data streams, mission headers scrolling in clean, clinical fonts. The low hum of equipment filled the silence left behind by agents who suddenly remembered how to listen. For a few minutes, it was almost normal. Almost.

“Umbrella-affiliated assets have increased activity along the European biotech circuit,” the handler said, laser pointer gliding across the map. “High-profile events. Private funding galas. A lot of noise. Very little traceable movement.”

Leon leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the table.

“Which means the actual exchange won’t happen on-site,” he said. Calm. Certain. “It’ll be routed through a secondary node. Off-grid. Clean.”

You didn’t look at him.

“Or,” you cut in, eyes still fixed on the screen, “they keep it local because no one expects them to risk exposure in a room full of donors and diplomats.”

The room stilled. You felt the shift before you saw it, attention pivoting, subtle but undeniable. Leon turned his head slowly. Deliberately.

“That would be sloppy,” he said. No heat. No edge. “Umbrella isn’t sloppy.”

You let out a soft, humourless breath. “Neither are shell corporations hiding in plain sight,” you replied. “Especially when they’re backed by people who think money makes them invisible.”

A pause. Leon’s mouth twitched. Not irritation. Amusement.

“That’s an assumption,” he said. “Arrogance isn’t a reliable variable.”

You turned then, meeting his gaze head-on. “It is when arrogance is the only reason they’ve survived this long.”

For a split second, his eyes held yours. Then he smirked. Not big. Not obvious. Just enough. And it pissed you off instantly.

A few agents shifted uncomfortably. Someone cleared their throat. The handler didn’t intervene, never did. Not when it was the two of you. They’d learned better. From somewhere across the room, barely under someone’s breath, came a muttered, “God help whoever has to work with them.”

It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t annoyed. It was resigned.

You saw Leon’s reaction out of the corner of your eye. The faint tightening at the corner of his mouth. Not anger. Something closer to agreement. Like the comment confirmed something he already knew. The rivalry wasn’t subtle. It never had been.

Leadership knew it. Field agents knew it. Even analysts who avoided combat zones like the plague knew better than to put the two of you on the same assignment without contingencies.

And yet. Here you were. Side by side. Again.

As the briefing continued, the friction didn’t ease, it deepened. You filled gaps Leon dismissed as irrelevant. He dismantled assumptions you made with surgical precision. Neither of you raised your voice. Neither of you yielded an inch.

It wasn’t about ego. It was about being right.

Leon shifted beside you, the movement small but unmistakable. Intentional. Close enough that you could feel his presence without looking. Close enough to feel like a provocation.

You refused to glance at him.

The handler cleared their throat sharply.

“Enough,” they said. Calm. Firm. “Both of you.”

You leaned back in your chair, jaw tight, eyes still forward.

Leon didn’t move at all.

Except for that damn smirk that hadn’t quite faded.

The briefing ended the way most did.

Not with resolution but with an abrupt cutoff and a roomful of people pretending they hadn’t been holding their breath.

The lights brightened. Screens went dark. Chairs shifted as agents remembered how to move again. Conversations started up too fast, too loud, like noise could erase what had just happened.

It couldn’t.

Agents filed out in a rush, boots striking the floor with sudden urgency. No one lingered. No one made eye contact longer than necessary. The tension was something physical now. Something that could snag you if you weren’t careful, wrap around your ankle and drag you down with it.

You were halfway to the door when the handler’s voice cut through the noise.

“You. Kennedy. Stay.”

Your spine stiffened.

Of course.

Leon stopped beside you without looking at you, like he’d been expecting it. Like this was just another outcome he’d already calculated. You hated that most of all, that nothing ever seemed to catch him off guard.

The rest of the room emptied fast.

Too fast.

Even the analysts who usually hovered with questions and clarifications suddenly remembered pressing deadlines and non-existent meetings. The last agent slipped out, the door sliding shut behind them with a soft, almost polite hiss.

Click.

The sound echoed.

Silence flooded in, heavy and deliberate.

The handler didn’t bother with theatrics. They never did. They stood at the head of the conference table, hands loosely clasped, posture easy in a way that only came from authority earned the hard way.

They looked unimpressed.

Calm. Experienced. Patient in the way of someone who had watched far worse people implode and lived to tell the story.

Their gaze flicked to you.

Then to Leon.

Like they were reviewing two familiar problem variables in a report they already knew by heart.

“You’re going to hate this assignment,” they said evenly. “So I’m going to give it to you quickly.”

Leon’s shoulders barely moved. No reaction. No protest.

You crossed your arms tighter, already bracing for impact.

The handler tapped the remote.

The screen behind them changed, maps and data streams replaced by a glossy event flyer dripping with gold accents and forced elegance.

THE KENSINGTON BIOTECH BENEFIT

A private gala supporting global medical innovation.

You scoffed quietly.

The kind of event that smelled like money, power, and immunity.

“Umbrella-adjacent shell companies have been laundering research funding through three different foundations,” the handler continued. “One of them is sponsoring this gala. Donors, executives, foreign ambassadors. Wealth. Influence. Enough plausible deniability to make a prosecutor cry.”

Another click.

A timeline appeared. Then a guest list, names blurred, titles redacted, power implied without explanation.

“Tonight,” the handler said, “their data broker makes a handoff. We believe it includes proprietary files and field logs. Evidence of illegal trials. Off-book transport routes. Personnel rosters.”

Your focus sharpened despite yourself.

“Where’s the handoff happening?” you asked.

Leon beat you by half a second.

“And how do we extract it without tipping the room?”

You felt irritation spark immediately. Predictable. Of course he’d jump straight to logistics, like this was just another clean operation and not a nest of vipers in tuxedos.

The handler’s eyes flicked between you again, cataloguing the tension like it was another asset to manage.

“The handoff is digital,” they said. “Encrypted drive. Stored temporarily on a secure device in the VIP lounge. The broker uploads it to an off-site server at 23:00. We need the device before then.”

Too clean.

You frowned. “So we infiltrate. Grab the device. Disappear.”

“Correct,” the handler said. “Which is why this is an on-site operation. No drones. No external breach. Umbrella’s countermeasures are tight.”

Leon’s jaw flexed once. Barely noticeable. You caught it anyway.

“Then we’ll need invitations,” he said.

“Already handled.”

The handler clicked again.

The screen changed.

Two names appeared. Two immaculate profiles. Wealthy. Connected. Polished to perfection.

A couple.

Your stomach dropped.

You read it once.

Then again.

And again.

Couple profile.

You looked up slowly. “No.”

The handler didn’t blink. “Yes.”

You let out a short laugh, sharp, humourless. “Absolutely not.”

Leon still hadn’t spoken.

His eyes were locked on the screen, but his posture had gone rigid in a way you recognised. The same way it did right before a firefight. Before something went wrong.

His jaw was tight. Mouth set into a flat line.

If a bullet had been aimed at his head, he would’ve looked exactly like this.

“The guest list is exclusive,” the handler continued. “Couples only. It’s not charity, it’s a filter. Singles draw scrutiny. Couples imply stability.”

You leaned forward, palms slamming onto the table. “Send literally anyone else.”

“There is no anyone else,” the handler replied calmly. “Not for this.”

Your temper flared hot and fast. “Why? Because we’re top-ranked?”

“Because your skill overlap is ideal,” they said. “One of you excels in social manipulation and close-quarters infiltration. The other excels in threat assessment and extraction under pressure.”

You opened your mouth.

“Don’t,” the handler said sharply. “You’re both excellent. Together, you’re efficient.”

Leon finally spoke.

“And if we refuse?”

Low. Controlled. Dangerous in its restraint.

The handler didn’t soften. “Then we miss the handoff. Umbrella keeps their data. People die later because we didn’t do our jobs now.”

Cold. Final.

You clenched your jaw. “So your plan is to shove us into a ballroom and hope we don’t kill each other.”

“My plan,” the handler said, “is to send two professionals into a controlled environment with a clear objective. Your personal feelings are irrelevant.”

“They’re not irrelevant if they compromise the mission,” you snapped.

Leon glanced at you then.

Brief. Sharp.

Unreadable.

He didn’t defend you. Didn’t agree. Didn’t disagree.

He just stood there, calm, contained, infuriatingly above it, like he always did.

You wanted to shake him. To crack that composure just once.

The handler watched you both like someone observing a storm they’d already charted.

“If you can’t play nice for one night,” they said evenly, “you don’t deserve that leaderboard.”

The words landed hard. Because they were true.

Because the leaderboard wasn’t just numbers. It was proof. Of every sacrifice. Every cut corner. Every fight you’d survived to get here. You felt the hook sink deep.

Leon didn’t react outwardly, but you saw it. The subtle lift of his chin. The tension in his throat as he swallowed. Pride caught him too. The handler shut off the screen.

“You’ll attend as Dr. and Dr.,” they said, sliding dossiers across the table. “Long-term couple. Convincing. You will touch. You will smile. You will sell it.”

You stared at the dossiers like they were weapons. Leon picked his up with careful precision. Of course he did.

“This is not optional,” the handler said. “Get the device. Get the data. Come back.”

They looked at you both.

“Try not to embarrass me.”

The door unlocked with a hiss.

You didn’t move.

Neither did Leon.

The truth settled ugly and heavy in your chest.

You weren’t being asked to work with Leon Kennedy. You were being forced to pretend you wanted him.

The training wing smelled like disinfectant and old sweat, cleaned often, never enough. The kind of smell that clung to the back of your throat no matter how many times they scrubbed the floors. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, cold and unforgiving, washing everything in a sickly white glow that did no one any favours.

The DSO didn’t do cozy. It did functional. It did survive.

A door slid open at the handler’s badge swipe, revealing a smaller room tucked off the main mat space. It was laid out like an interrogation room that had tried—and failed—to pass itself off as an office.

One table. Two chairs. A stack of folders.

And a tablet already lit up with a form that made your soul leave your body on sight.

UNDERCOVER COHABITATION PROFILE — COUPLE LEGEND BUILD

You stared at it like it had just insulted your family.

“Sit,” the handler said.

Leon took the chair opposite you immediately. No hesitation. No comment. Of course he did. You waited half a second longer, purely out of spite, then sat, crossing your legs and folding your arms like the tablet might try something.

The handler slid two clipboards across the table.

“You’ll fill these out together,” they said. “Your cover is long-term. Married. High-value donors with private ties to the foundation. Security will look for inconsistencies: names, habits, timelines. If you don’t align, you’ll set off alarms before you hit the champagne.”

They pushed a third folder toward Leon. “Apartment layout. Memorise it. If someone asks where the bathroom is in your home, you answer without thinking.”

Leon scanned the paperwork with that infuriatingly calm focus he brought to bomb schematics and ambush routes. No sarcasm. No commentary. Just silent efficiency.

You hated him a little extra for it.

“I’ll be outside,” the handler added. “You have forty minutes. Try not to kill each other.”

The door shut.

Click.

You and Leon were left alone with the lie. For a moment, neither of you moved. Leon’s eyes stayed on the paperwork. Yours stayed on him.

You grabbed the top sheet and skimmed it.

How did you meet?

When did you move in together?

Anniversary date:

Pet names used in public:

Pet peeves:

Shared routines:

Preferred terms of endearment (optional):

Your jaw clenched.

“This is ridiculous.”

Leon finally lifted his gaze. “It’s standard.”

You scoffed. “Standard. Right. Because nothing says ‘authentic marriage’ like a fill-in-the-blank worksheet.”

He picked up his pen. “How did we meet?”

The bluntness threw you for a second. “Wow. No warm-up? No foreplay?”

Leon didn’t blink. “Focus.”

You rolled your eyes. “Fine. Prague.”

His pen paused midair. “Vienna.”

You stared. “I’m sorry, did you just veto my city?”

“Vienna makes more sense,” he said evenly. “Diplomatic circuit. Donors. Embassy galas.”

“Prague is beautiful,” you shot back. “Historic. Romantic. Exactly the kind of place two rich idiots would pretend to fall in love over overpriced wine.”

Leon’s mouth flattened. “It’s cliché.”

“And Vienna isn’t?”

“It’s believable.”

“So is Prague.”

He exhaled slowly, like he was counting to ten. “We need a story that holds up under scrutiny.”

“And we need one that doesn’t sound like it was written by a man who alphabetises his spices.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed his eyes. “I don’t alphabetise my spices.”

“Wow. Growth.”

The argument escalated almost instantly. It was petty. You both knew it. It was also loud, because neither of you was willing to lose the first detail. Like it mattered. Like this wasn’t all fake anyway.

Leon tapped the page. “Vienna. We met at a benefit dinner. You spilled a drink on me.”

You barked a laugh. “Of course I did.”

“It’s memorable.”

“It makes me clumsy.”

“It explains why we talked.”

You bristled. “Or you bumped into me.”

Leon raised an eyebrow. “That makes you the victim.”

“And?”

“It makes me the asshole.”

You smiled sweetly. “Finally. Something accurate.”

For a second, his mouth twitched. Barely. Gone as fast as it appeared.

“Anniversary date,” you said quickly, flipping the page.

“November,” Leon said without hesitation.

“Why November?”

“Forgettable.”

“Wow. Romantic.”

He didn’t react. “The fifteenth.”

You paused. “That’s weirdly specific.”

His gaze flicked away. Just for a fraction of a second. “It’s fine.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You absolutely have something on the fifteenth.”

“No.”

“Uh-huh.”

You wrote it down anyway.

Pet peeves.

You read the line and looked up. “This is where you put ‘people who talk too much,’ isn’t it?”

Leon folded his arms. “It’s where we put things we can answer quickly.”

“Oh. Then write ‘emotion.’”

“What’s yours?” he countered.

“Men who think silence counts as depth.”

His pen stilled. “You hum when you’re thinking.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“That’s not a pet peeve.”

“It is when it’s constant.”

Heat crept up your neck. “You’re creepy.”

“Observant.”

Next line.

Pet names used in public.

You stared at it like it might explode.

“No.”

“We need something.”

“Something neutral.”

“Babe.”

You physically recoiled. “Absolutely not.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Try again.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Honey.”

Leon grimaced. “That’s worse.”

“It’s normal.”

“It sounds like a threat when you say it.”

You gasped. “Rude.”

“Pick one.”

You exhaled hard. “Love.”

He froze.

“What?” you snapped.

“It’s… British.”

“We’re in London half the year. Write it down.”

He did.

Your stomach did something annoying.

You shoved the clipboard away. “Done?”

Leon flipped to the apartment layout. “No.”

He started listing details like a man preparing for war. Door directions. Furniture placement. Appliance locations.

“You’re insane,” you muttered.

“It’s my job.”

The way he said it stopped your next insult cold. Before you could unpack that, the door hissed open.

“Time,” the handler said. “Training.”

The training room was louder. A raw, grinding decibel that felt less like sound and more like physical pressure against your eardrums. It was hotter, a dense, clinging heat that rose from the mats and bodies and pooled against the ceiling. This place was brutally, viciously honest in a way the slick corridors and polished debriefing rooms of headquarters never dared to be. Here, pretence was the first thing stripped away.

Every sound was amplified, thrown back by the barren walls: the scuff and slap of boots against padding, the meaty thud of bodies hitting the mat, the sharp, bitten-off bark of instructors.

This was where elegance went to die. Where you were reminded what you were underneath the tech and the tactics: flesh, bone, and flawed instinct.

Leon shrugged out of his jacket as if shedding a second skin. The movement was economical, unshowy, the muscles in his back and shoulders shifting in a deliberate roll beneath his dark shirt as he pushed his sleeves to his elbows. He didn’t look at you. He didn’t need to. His indifference was a practiced weapon, and he wielded it perfectly.

You hated that you tracked the motion anyway. Hated the way your eyes followed the line of his forearm, the shift of his weight. A silent catalogue of the enemy.

Mirroring him was a reflex, but you made it aggressive. You rolled your shoulders back until the joints gave a soft pop, tilted your neck until it burned. Your pulse was already climbing, a drumbeat of pure, undiluted adrenaline bleeding into your veins ahead of the impact. This wasn't nerves. It was a craving for collision.

“Close-quarters,” the handler’s voice cut through the din from the edge of the mat. “No distance. No weapons. You’re going to be in each other’s space until one of you breaks or the clock does.”

Lucky me.

Leon turned to face you fully, and the overhead lights carved him out of the gloom. The sharp, unyielding line of his jaw, the steady, metronomic rise and fall of his chest. His eyes swept over you once. Not dismissive. Not curious. Assessing. Coldly, clinically reassessing a variable he already had quantified.

“Try to keep up,” you said, the words grating out, already furious at the glacial calm on his face.

The corner of his mouth twitched. A phantom of a smirk, there and gone. “Show me.”

The first clash was less a fight and more a detonation.

You lunged without preamble, a silent, violent blur closing the distance before he could settle into a textbook stance. He reacted not with surprise, but with a speed that felt like an insult, catching your leading arm, redirecting your momentum with infuriating efficiency. Your shoulder slammed into the wall of his chest. Solid. Immovable. The impact reverberated up your neck, rattling your teeth.

You hooked his leg; he countered your hook. You twisted for leverage; his grip shifted, strong, calloused hands locking like manacles around your wrist and forearm. He stepped into you, using your own forward drive to uproot your balance.

The mat rushed up to meet you. You hit with a force that punched the air from your lungs in a sharp, humiliating wheeze.

He followed you down, a controlled avalanche. One knee braced near your hip, his weight a deliberate, undeniable pressure. One hand planted beside your head, caging you. The other pinning your arm with machined precision.

Too close.

His heat enveloped you, a living, breathing furnace. You could feel the coiled tension in the muscles of his arms and chest as he held himself back, a restraint that was somehow more arrogant than full force. His breath, still steady, washed over your cheek.

“Yield.” A single, quiet word, dropped into the scant space between your mouths.

You bared your teeth, a soundless snarl. “Dream on, Kennedy.”

You bucked, shifted your hips, used the micro-second his weight adjusted to hook your leg and roll. The world flipped, ceiling lights streaking, his form a blur of controlled motion, and suddenly you were on top, your forearm braced against the solid column of his throat, your knees digging into the mat on either side of his ribs.

Beneath you, his chest heaved once. A deep, aborted expansion. For a suspended heartbeat, neither of you moved.

Sweat slicked your skin where you pressed against him. The mat was warm and smelled of defeat. Leon’s hand came up, his grip closing around your wrist, not to throw you, not to hurt. To test. To measure the resistance. He was already adapting, his body learning yours even as yours screamed to reject his.

Your pulse was a roar in your ears, a chaotic counter-rhythm to his terrifying calm.

You shoved off him as if burned, scrambling to your feet before the strange, charged stillness could solidify.

“Not so perfect,” you spat, your breath coming in gusts you hated.

Leon sat up smoothly, as if rising from a lounge chair. As if your reversal had been a predicted, inconsequential sub-routine. “You’re fast.”

It wasn’t praise. It was data entry. And you hated that the distinction felt so vital, and that it landed somewhere in the uncharted, dangerous space between contempt and something else.

“Again,” the handler barked.

The next round was worse. Longer. More intimately brutal. It was a war of pressure and proximity. He caught a strike and used it to drive you back into the mat, his shoulder pinning you down, his forearm a bar of iron across your chest, not crushing, just absolutely controlling. You could feel every breath he took. You kicked out, twisted, your hands scraping against the corded steel of his arms as you broke free.

“You fight angry,” he muttered, the words a low vibration in the scant space between your bodies as you circled again, panting.

“You fight like a robot,” you shot back, your voice raw.

“You’re predictable.”

“Only to someone arrogant enough to think they’re smarter.”

“I think you’re reckless.” His eyes were chips of ice in the heat.

You lunged again, if only to wipe the assessment from his face.

He caught you, of course he did, but this time you were ready. You rolled with the momentum, dragging him down with you in a tangle of limbs. The mat shuddered. The grapple became a raw, grinding struggle for dominance, a silent conversation of strain and resistance. Your knee found his side; his elbow bracketed your ribs. Sweat-slick skin slid against damp fabric. Neither of you would yield an inch. The sheer, stubborn will of it was a third entity in the fight.

By the time the handler called the reset, your skin was sheened, your lungs burned, and your muscles trembled with fatigued fury. Across from you, Leon’s breathing had finally deepened, still controlled, but unmistakably heavier. His shirt was plastered to the planes of his back, darkened in a long, damp streak down his spine.

You refused to acknowledge it. You refused to even look.

“Live-fire simulation,” the handler called, gesturing to the adjacent door. “Now.”

The next room was a labyrinth of moveable walls, strobing lights, and disorienting sound cues. Training pistols, heavy with marking rounds, were thrust into your hands. No room for error. No room for anything but the drill. You and Leon moved through the doorway as a single, fractured unit. No words. No signals.

You took point on instinct. He covered the angles you couldn’t see, his presence a shadow at your six. It felt profoundly wrong, this seamless coordination, how your strides synced, how you pivoted around a corner and he was already there, clearing the blind spot. It felt like a betrayal of the mutual contempt that had been your only common ground.

A target snapped up from a left-side port.

You pivoted, weapon rising, finger finding the trigger -

Leon moved.

No shout. No warning. A pure, unthinking kinetic shift.

He stepped into your line of fire, his body turning, his shoulder angling to intercept the shot that wasn’t even real. A blunt, physical declaration.

Protective. Automatic.

The training round smacked into the hard plate of his vest with a dull, final thwack.

Your finger froze. The world narrowed to the spot of neon paint now blooming on his shoulder, to the broad back that had just placed itself between you and a theoretical threat.

“Reset!” the handler’s voice was distant, irrelevant.

Leon stepped away immediately, his posture snapping back into that flawless, impregnable control as if the last five seconds had been edited out. As if his body hadn’t just made a decision his mind would never consciously permit.

You stood rooted, your pulse a frantic bird in your throat, staring at the mark on his vest.

The venue rose out of the city like a monument to excess.

Marble columns framed the entrance, pale and flawless, each one tall enough to make a statement about permanence, about money that didn’t worry about time or consequence. Crystal chandeliers glittered beyond the glass doors, scattering light across polished floors in a way that felt deliberate, curated to impress and intimidate in equal measure.

Inside, an orchestra played something classical and unobtrusive, strings swelling just enough to fill the space without demanding attention. The music threaded through conversations held in low, confident voices, people who had never had to check over their shoulders when they spoke.

This place wasn’t just expensive. It was insulated.

You stepped inside and felt it immediately: the invisible barrier between the people here and the rest of the world. Consequences didn’t reach this far. They slid off champagne flutes and tailored suits, drowned under polite laughter and charitable donations.

Umbrella executives were everywhere. Not obvious. Not branded. Just… present. Men and women with immaculate posture and smiles that didn’t quite reach their eyes. People who knew exactly how much power they held and exactly how well it was hidden.

You straightened instinctively, not because you needed to, but because the room demanded it. Tonight, you weren’t an agent.

The dress was a calculated piece of armour. It clung and moved in a way that looked effortless, the kind of confidence that came from knowing every movement would be watched and finding satisfaction in it. Hair styled, posture relaxed, expression composed. Lethal, but not visibly so. Danger tucked beneath refinement.

Leon stood beside you, and the contrast was almost obscenely perfect. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t noticed. The tailored suit fit him like a second skin, draping over broad shoulders and a lean frame with an almost insulting elegance. It was dark, understated, and it made him look disarmingly respectable, the kind of man donors instinctively trusted. The earpiece was invisible, his edge concealed beneath a veneer of sophisticated calm. He looked… safe. Predictable. It was the most effective disguise he’d ever worn.

No weapons. No tactical gear. Just a man who cleaned up a little too well. Neither of you looked like agents. You looked like you belonged.

Leon’s eyes swept over you as you adjusted a strap on your shoulder, his gaze lingering a fraction longer than strictly operational. When he spoke, his voice was a low, private rumble. “They didn’t mention the dress.”

You kept your eyes forward, scanning the crowd. “It’s not in the briefing notes, Kennedy. It’s called a uniform.”

“It’s a distraction,” he said, and there was a trace of something in his tone, not warmth, but a clinical sort of acknowledgment.

Before you could retort, the second you crossed the threshold fully into the ballroom, his hand settled at the small of your back.

It wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t awkward. It was proprietary.

His palm rested there with a pressure that was both grounding and possessive, his fingers splayed just above the curve of your hip. His thumb brushed once, a slow, deliberate stroke against the delicate fabric, and your entire spine went rigid in response. The heat of his hand burned through the silk, a brand you felt in every nerve ending.

He leaned in, his breath disturbing the hair near your temple. “Easy,” he murmured, his voice a velvety counterfeit of intimacy. “Smile.”

You did, a perfect, glazed curve of the lips. Under your breath, barely moving them, you hissed, “If you leave your hand there any longer, I’m billing the DSO for emotional damages and a dry-cleaning bill. Your palm is sweating.”

Leon didn’t look at you. His hand didn’t move. If anything, his fingers pressed more firmly, pulling you a millimetre closer into the orbit of his body. “Relax, sweetheart,” he said aloud, his tone soft, affectionate, convincingly doting. “You look breathtaking.” The endearment was a bullet wrapped in velvet.

A nearby couple glanced over, their smiles fond and approving.

Your jaw ached from clenching. “You sound disturbingly natural. I think I might throw up.”

His mouth curved, a private, dangerous flicker. “That’s because you’re holding your breath. They’ll notice the lack of oxygen before they notice the lie.”

“Maybe if you weren’t manhandling me.”

“My hand’s not moving,” he replied, his calm an infuriating counterpoint to your tension. “You’re just hyper-aware of it. Mission focus, remember?”

You hated that he was right. The awareness was a live wire running from the point of contact straight to your core. Publicly, you were seamless, an elegant couple drifting into the flow of the gala, bodies aligned, steps synchronised. Privately, it was a silent war of attrition.

Leon guided you toward the bar with infuriating ease, his hand a constant, navigating pressure. He nodded politely, offered brief, warm smiles. You felt every shift of his fingers, every minute adjustment of his grip.

An Umbrella executive, tall, with cold, appraising eyes, glanced your way.

Leon’s hand shifted. His fingers spread, pressing more fully against your spine as he angled you subtly, protectively, closer to him. His head dipped, his lips near your ear. “This is ridiculous,” you muttered, your own gaze locked on the executive.

“Focus,” Leon murmured, his voice a low vibration you felt in your bones. “He’s not just looking. He’s calculating. Smile at him. Like you find him tedious.”

You tilted your head, letting your gaze drift over the man with the lazy, disinterested contempt of the truly privileged. You offered a faint, dismissive smile. The man’s gaze lingered, then moved on, satisfied you were no one of consequence.

Leon exhaled, a soft sound that feathered against your skin. “See? That’s the point.”

You glanced up at him, your cheek nearly brushing his jaw. “Don’t get smug.”

“I’m not smug,” he said, raising a hand to effortlessly snag two champagne flutes from a passing server. He handed one to you, his fingers brushing yours. “I’m effective.”

“You remembered the champagne,” you noted flatly, taking the glass.

“I remember things,” he replied, his eyes scanning the room over the rim of his flute. “Drink with your left hand. Your ring’s on the right. It flashes under the lights.”

You froze for a half-second, a tiny, betraying stumble in your composure. Then you switched hands smoothly, the crystal stem cool in your left fingers. “Stop paying attention to irrelevant details about me.”

“Can’t,” Leon said, his voice dropping back into that confidential murmur as he guided you away from the bar. “That’s the job tonight. Every detail is relevant.”

The orchestra swelled as the evening deepened. The air grew thick with perfume and false camaraderie. Leon’s hand remained on your back, a constant, maddening presence. You became a connoisseur of its pressure, firmer when navigating a crowd, lighter but no less present when stationary, his thumb tracing an absent, subconscious arc that made your breath catch.

As you moved, you saw the illusion take hold. The casual glances from guests, the approving nods from older patrons, the way security teams assessed you as a unit and then dismissed you. They bought the story. The elegant, connected, slightly bored couple.

The realisation was a cold trickle down your spine. Because it wasn’t just them. It was him, too.

He moved through the charade with a terrifying, fluid ease. His touches, his murmured words, the way his body curved around yours in a crowd, it all looked effortless. Like it cost him nothing. Like the simmering hostility that defined your every interaction had been switched off, replaced by this seamless, galling performance.

You were starting to resent how good he was at it.

A guest intercepted you near the edge of the ballroom, an older man with silver hair and a practiced smile, glass of champagne cradled loosely in one hand. His eyes flicked between you and Leon with open curiosity.

“Forgive me,” he said pleasantly, inclining his head. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.” Leon smiled before you could respond, warm and unhurried. “Of course. This is my wife.” The word still sent a strange jolt through you.

“And you are?” the man asked, turning his attention to you. “Involved in the foundation as well?”

You opened your mouth to speak. To think of something fast before you started spilling word vomit.

“She is,” Leon answered smoothly, his hand settling at your back again. “She led the data consolidation project for the Helios Initiative last year. Streamlined the entire reporting pipeline. Saved the board six figures and a lot of embarrassment.”

You stilled. Just for a fraction of a second. The man’s brows lifted, impressed.

“She has a talent for finding inefficiencies people prefer not to admit are there,” Leon continued, tone light, almost fond. “She’s very good at seeing patterns others miss.”

Your heart stumbled. The guest chuckled. “Dangerous skill.”

Leon’s thumb brushed your spine once, subtly. Familiar. “Only if you’re hiding something.”

The man laughed and excused himself moments later, drifting back into the crowd, already satisfied. You remained where you were, gaze fixed ahead, the music suddenly too loud in your ears.

“How did you know that?” you asked quietly, once you were certain no one was listening.

Leon didn’t look at you. “You did it during the Marseille op,” he said simply. “Flagged the discrepancy in the shipping logs. Everyone else missed it.”

“That was years ago,” you said. “I remember,” he replied.

There was no pride in his voice. No edge. Just fact.

You leaned back into his touch, your shoulder blades pressing against his chest as you pretended to point out a painting. Your voice was a razor in the velvet dark between you. “They’re eating this up. It’s almost pathetic.”

“Yes,” Leon replied, his chin nearly resting on your shoulder. His breath was warm on your neck. “They are.”

He gave you nothing else. Just the steady, burning pressure of his hand.

The orchestra shifted, the music melting into a slower, more intimate piece. The dance floor began to fill. Leon felt the shift in the room’s rhythm a moment before you did.

He turned to you, his expression softening into something convincingly expectant. He extended his hand, palm up. Not a question. A quiet command in the language of the evening.

You stared at his offered hand, at the faint scars across the knuckles you knew the origin of. Then you placed yours in it, your cool fingers sliding against his warm, calloused palm. “You step on my feet,” you whispered, “and I’ll make a scene they’ll talk about for years.”

A ghost of a real smile touched his lips. “Noted.”

He drew you into him, one hand returning to its familiar place on your back, the other closing around your hand. The world narrowed to the space between your bodies. You could feel the fine wool of his suit under your splayed fingers, the solid muscle beneath.

“You dance like you fight,” you accused as he led you into the first steps.

“Precisely?” he murmured, his eyes holding yours.

“Stiffly. Like you’re waiting for an attack.”

“You’re leading.”

“I am not.”

“You’re anticipating my lead and resisting it. It’s the same thing.” He adjusted his grip, his hand on your back firming, guiding your turn. “Stop fighting the rhythm. Let it happen.”

You bristled. “I don’t just let things happen.”

He leaned in, his lips a breath from your ear. His voice dropped, losing its polished edge, revealing the rougher truth beneath. “You do. You always have. You anticipate the strike. You brace for the impact. You’re doing it now.”

The direct hit silenced you. The banter evaporated, leaving only the truth of the movement. You were bracing. Against him. Against the music. Against the unnerving synchronicity.

Somewhere in the next turn, the resistance broke. Not with a surrender, but with a mutual, unspoken recalibration. Leon’s guidance became less a direction and more a suggestion. Your following became less a resistance and more a mirror. Your weight settled, your steps aligned. He shifted; you matched. It became effortless. Fluid. A silent, perfect dialogue of motion.

It felt exactly like the rare, terrifying moments in the field when everything went to hell and instinct took over, when you moved not as two separate entities, but as a single, coordinated organism.

Your breath hitched. You felt his do the same, a stutter in his otherwise controlled chest. Neither of you spoke.

The music carried you, and his hand on your back was no longer a point of conflict. It was an anchor. His other hand held yours, not with performance, but with a simple, undeniable connection. You were suddenly, acutely aware of every point of contact: his thigh brushing yours, the heat of his palm, the steady beat of his heart against your own racing one.

The song began to wind down. Security was tightening; you could see the increased scrutiny at the edges of the room.

Leon’s voice was a raw scrape against your ear, all pretence of gentleness gone. “They’re locking the perimeter. Broker’s in the east wing. We need to move.”

You nodded, your forehead almost touching his chin. The final note hung in the air. Applause scattered through the room. Couples began to separate. Leon didn’t let go.

His hand remained on your back. His fingers were still laced with yours. In the dim, chandelier-lit haze, for a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, you just stood there, locked in the echo of the dance and the glaring, inconvenient truth it had revealed.

You were still holding on. And so was he.

Finally, he released your hand, the absence feeling like a sudden chill. His palm slid from your back, leaving the ghost of its heat imprinted on the silk. You took a half-step back, the ballroom noise rushing back in.

“Next time,” you said, your voice strangely thin, “warn me before you decide to be competent at something.”

He looked at you, his blue eyes stripped of their usual ice, something darker and more complicated swirling in their depths. “You didn’t need a warning. You kept up.”

He turned, offering his arm again, the picture of the attentive partner. After a stunned second, you slid your hand into the crook of his elbow, your fingers trembling slightly against the fine cotton.

Conversations continue, a tapestry of polished lies, but your senses have already pared them down to a meaningless drone. Your focus narrows, homing in on the anomaly. Across the room, an Umbrella scientist, a man with the pallid complexion and careful detachment of someone who spends more time with data than people, has stopped moving.

He isn't staring. That would be amateur. His attention is a series of precise, surgical observations: the way you stand with your weight slightly forward, not relaxed back; the subtle, the specific tension in your shoulders that speaks of readiness, not repose. His head tilts, a fraction of a degree.

Your pulse kicks, a single, hard thud against your ribs. "Leon," you breathe, the word a ghost against the rim of your champagne flute.

"I see him." His reply is immediate, a low current beneath the placid surface. His posture hasn't changed, but you feel the minute shift in the energy beside you, the coiling of a spring. "Don't look at him. Look at me."

But it's too late. The scientist’s eyes, cold, magnified behind thin glasses, flicker. Not with full recognition, but with the dawning, critical suspicion of it. I know you. From where? The unspoken question hangs in the charged space between you. The danger isn't here yet, but it's coming, a tide you have seconds to turn. Leon doesn't hesitate. He never does.

One moment you are two adjacent entities, sharing a cover story. The next, his arm bands around your waist, pulling you in with an irrevocable certainty. His other hand rises, fingers threading into the hair at your nape, his palm cradling the line of your jaw with a possession that steals the breath from your lungs.

And then his mouth is on yours.

It is not a kiss born of passion, but of pure, unadulterated necessity, a tactical strike executed with devastating precision. There is no cautious exploration, no soft inquiry. His lips meet yours with a firm, undeniable pressure, sealing the world out. It is immediate. Consuming. A forced intimacy that feels more like a claiming than a performance.

The shock of it is a lightning bolt to your system. Every thought, every alarm bell, is momentarily short-circuited by the sheer, overwhelming physicality of him. The warmth of his skin, the faint, clean scent of him cutting through the cloying perfume of the gala, the solid, unyielding wall of his chest against yours.

His mouth moves, and it is not the gentle persuasion of a lover. It is decisive. Convincing. He angles his head, deepening the contact just enough to be unquestionable, his thumb stroking a slow, deliberate arc along your jawline, a gesture of affection that feels, in its practiced perfection, like a weapon. He is building a shield with his body, blocking the scientist's view, rewriting the narrative in the space of a heartbeat: You are not a threat. You are distracted. You are mine.

And you respond. It is the true betrayal. Your body, trained for survival, obeys a different instinct. Your free hand, the one not clutching the forgotten champagne flute, comes to rest against his chest, not to push him away, but to steady yourself. A small, stifled sound catches in your throat. Your lips part beneath his, not in invitation, but in a gasp of pure, stunned reflex that he seamlessly incorporates into the act.

And then, as abruptly as it began, the pressure changes. Leon’s kiss softens, becomes a lingering press, a final punctuation mark. The immediate threat has passed; the scientist, presented with an indisputable picture of private passion, has turned away, dismissing his suspicion as irrelevant.

But Leon doesn't pull back. For three endless heartbeats, he remains there, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with yours in ragged sync. His eyes are closed, his expression a stark mask of concentration, as if he is listening for an echo of the danger, or perhaps for something else entirely. His thumb continues its slow sweep along your jaw, a soothing rhythm that feels anything but soothing.

You are the one who breaks. You wrench your head back, a shudder running through you. The cool air of the ballroom hits your damp lips, a shocking contrast. Your hand, still splayed on his chest, pushes, a weak, belated attempt to reinstate a boundary that has been utterly demolished.

"Don't," you manage, your voice a scraped-raw whisper. "Don't you dare read into that."

Leon's eyes open. They are dark, pupils blown wide, the usual icy blue swallowed by a storm you've never seen before. He looks at you and for a second, the professional facade is utterly absent. There is only a raw, unsettled intensity that mirrors the chaos in your own veins.

"Trust me," he says, his voice low and rough, stripped of its earlier polish. "I'm not." It is the most transparent lie either of you has told all night.

The silence that follows is louder than the music. He slowly, carefully, unwinds his arm from your waist, his fingers loosening from your hair as if disarming a live wire. The distance between you feels cavernous, charged with the aftershocks of what just happened. You can still feel the imprint of his body against yours, a phantom brand. Your lips are tender, buzzing with a sensation that has nothing to do with the champagne.

Leon clears his throat, the sound harsh in the quiet between you. His gaze darts away, reassembling his composure piece by piece. "He's moving toward the east corridor. The distraction worked."

"Right," you say, the word tasting like ash. You straighten your spine, a soldier coming to attention after a devastating blow. You smooth your dress, a futile gesture. The elegance feels like a costume now, hanging awkwardly on the raw, shaken thing you've become underneath.

He offers his arm again, a formality. You take it, your fingers trembling slightly as they settle on the fine wool of his sleeve. The contact is sterile, polite. A mockery of the intimacy that just fused you together.

You know now, with chilling clarity, that Leon's first instinct was not to create distance, not to signal a retreat, but to eliminate the threat to you by any means necessary. He didn't just sell a cover. He consumed it. He didn't hesitate. And in that breathless, stolen moment, neither did you.

The line has not just been crossed. It has been incinerated.

You keep your chin high, your smile in place, moving back into the glittering fray. But the gala has shifted. The colours are too bright, the music too shrill. Every nerve ending is alive, hyper-aware of the man beside you, of the memory of his mouth, his hands, the terrifying efficiency of his protection, and the even more terrifying echo of your own response.

The gala breathes around you, music swelling and receding, laughter rippling through the crowd, the illusion of safety pressed into every polished surface. But the clock is ticking louder now.

You feel it in the way security shifts positions too often. In the way conversations stall, restart. In the subtle tightening of the room’s rhythm as the night edges closer to whatever Umbrella has planned.

Leon’s hand rests lightly at your elbow as he steers you toward the edge of the ballroom, bodies angled just close enough to sell the cover. His touch is careful now, less possessive than before, more controlled. Like he’s consciously reining himself in. His voice reaches you through the comm, low and steady beneath the orchestra.

“Broker’s device is active. Signal spike just came online.”

Your gaze sweeps the room automatically, cataloguing exits, shadows, patterns. “VIP lounge,” you murmur.

“Yes,” Leon replies. “But there’s a secondary access corridor behind the east stairwell. Two choke points.” A pause. “If we go together, we bottleneck.”

You glance up at him, jaw tightening. “If we split, we lose eyes.”

“We gain speed.”

“And risk,” you counter quietly, lips barely moving as a couple passes too close. “Security’s tightening. They’re already clocking patterns.”

Leon slows just enough to turn toward you. Not fully. Not enough to draw attention. But enough that you feel the weight of his focus settle on you. The chandelier light catches his eyes, sharp, intent, stripped of the softness he’s been wearing for the room.

“Protocol says split,” he says. “Two access points. Redundancy.”

You scoff under your breath. “Protocol didn’t account for Umbrella improvising.”

“It accounts for us adapting.”

“It accounts for you adapting,” you snap back, the edge in your voice slipping through despite your control. “I’m the variable you’re pretending isn’t there.”

His jaw tightens. A muscle jumps once, just beneath the skin.

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t it?” You lean in closer, the pretence of intimacy giving your words cover. Your pulse is loud now, insistent. “Because ever since that-” You stop yourself, breath hitching. “Since earlier, you’ve been playing it safe.” Leon’s breath stutters once. Barely perceptible. But you feel it.

“I’m playing it smart,” he says.

You shake your head. “Same thing. Different excuse.”

A server brushes past, tray wobbling dangerously close. Leon reacts instantly, his hand sliding to your waist, pulling you in as he murmurs something affectionate aloud. You force a smile, lean into him, sell it.

The server moves on. Leon’s hand doesn’t. His fingers remain splayed at your side, warm and grounding, the pressure unmistakable.

“Listen to me,” he says quietly now, close enough that his breath warms your ear. “The device will be gone in minutes. If we hesitate, we lose it.”

“And if something happens?” you whisper back. “If one of us gets boxed in-”

“We won’t,” he says too fast.

You pull back just enough to look at him. “You don’t know that.”

For a moment, the argument stalls. You don’t like being away from him. You hate that you know the cadence of his movements. That you can predict his choices before he makes them. That the thought of moving through hostile space without his presence at your back makes your chest feel tight and exposed. Leon looks away first. His hand slips from your waist, deliberately, like he’s forcing himself to let go.

“Two minutes,” he says, voice clipped. “If either of us hits resistance, we abort and regroup at point C.”

“And if comms drop?” you ask.

He doesn’t hesitate. “Then you trust me.”

The words land harder than they should. You swallow. “That’s a big ask.” Leon turns back to you, his expression carefully neutral but his eyes give him away. “You already do.”

You hate that he’s right. The realisation burns low and sharp in your chest.

“Fine,” you say, forcing steel into your voice. “East stairwell. I’ll take the service corridor.”

Leon nods once. No hesitation. No argument. Like this was always the plan.

You separate smoothly, drifting apart like any other couple momentarily distracted by different conversations. His presence fades from your side, and the absence of it is immediate, an ache you weren’t prepared for.

The service corridor is quieter, narrower. The music fades to a distant hum, replaced by the soft whir of ventilation and the echo of your own footsteps. The lighting here is dimmer, more utilitarian, less forgiving. You move with practiced ease, posture relaxed, pace unhurried. Just another donor who took a wrong turn.

A guard stands at the far end of the corridor, back partially turned. He glances up as you approach, eyes narrowing just a fraction too long.

You smile. “Sorry, restrooms?” He hesitates. Just long enough. “Down the hall,” he says eventually, gesturing.

You thank him and keep walking, heart thudding. You feel the weight of the distance now, the absence of Leon’s quiet presence through the comms, the way he usually covers angles you don’t have eyes on.

You reach the door marked AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY and slide the keycard from your clutch with steady fingers. The lock clicks open.

Inside, the air is cooler. Server racks hum softly, lights blinking in orderly patterns. The device should be here, hidden, discreet, temporary. You scan quickly. Nothing. Your pulse spikes.

“Leon,” you murmur into the comm. “Device isn’t here.”

A beat. “I’m seeing the same,” he replies. “They’ve moved it.”

“Where?”

“VIP lounge,” he says. “Security just doubled.”

Of course they did. You pivot toward the exit, and the door slams shut behind you. Your heart jumps. You spin, hand already moving toward the concealed weapon at your thigh. The lock engages with a sharp click.

“Leon,” you hiss.

“I hear it,” he says immediately. “Stay calm.”

“Working on it.”

Footsteps sound outside the door. Two sets. Guards murmuring. You scan the room, calculating. No windows. No alternate exit. The ventilation shaft is too small.

“You okay?” Leon asks, voice steady but tight.

“Yes,” you lie. “Just… boxed in.”

A pause. You can hear his breathing through the comm now, controlled but faster.

“I’m rerouting,” he says. “Hold.”

You close your eyes for half a second, forcing yourself to breathe. You trust him. The guards’ voices grow clearer. Keys jingle. Someone tests the door. Your hand tightens around your weapon.

“Leon,” you whisper. “If this goes loud-”

“It won’t,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

The certainty in his voice steadies you more than you want it to. Seconds stretch. Then, gunfire. Shouts. Chaos, distant but unmistakable. The lock disengages. The door bursts open and Leon is there. Breathing hard. Suit rumpled. Eyes sharp and furious and fixed entirely on you.

“Move,” he says.

You don’t argue. You slip past him, shoulder brushing his as you fall into step, moving together like you never separated at all. As you disappear down the corridor, adrenaline still singing in your veins, one thought cuts through the chaos, clear and undeniable.

You barely make it three turns before the building decides to turn hostile.

It starts as a low chime, soft, almost polite, like a warning meant for staff, not guests. Then the lights above you flicker, the bright warmth of the gala’s corridors stuttering into something colder.

Red emergency strips ignite along the ceiling.

A beat later, the sound hits, an alarm that rises in pitch until it becomes a physical pressure against your skull.

Leon’s head snaps up. “That’s not fire protocol,” he says into the comm, voice already shifting into command mode.

“It’s not us,” you reply, breathing hard as you jog. “We haven’t even touched the-”

“Doesn’t matter.” His tone turns razor-thin. “Umbrella emergency.”

As if the words themselves flip a switch, the corridor ahead explodes with movement. A door slams open. Men in black tactical uniforms pour out, armed, masked, efficient. Not event security. Not rent-a-cops.

These are Umbrella’s.

The sound of the orchestra fades behind the thick walls, replaced by the heavier music of boots and shouted commands. Guests scream in the ballroom somewhere distant, the party dissolving into panic on the other side of a carefully controlled barrier.

Leon grabs your wrist and yanks you down a side hall just as a round cracks past where your head had been. The bullet bites into marble, spitting stone dust into the air.

“Contact!” someone barks. “Target moving, east corridor!”

Your comms crackle with interference, the line spiking and dropping as systems overload. Leon’s grip tightens once, steadying you, not for comfort, you tell yourself, but for speed.

“You okay?” he asks, already moving.

“Fine,” you snap, then add, because honesty feels like weakness, “They’re faster than I expected.”

“They’ve been waiting,” Leon says. “We triggered something they wanted triggered.”

You hate that he’s right. Hate that it means this wasn’t just security tightening. It was a trap snapping shut.

A door ahead locks with a heavy clunk as magnetic seals engage. The hallway narrows into a dead-end stretch lined with service entrances. Red light pulses across steel panels, making everything look like it’s bleeding.

Leon slows just long enough to scan. “No exits.”

“Then we make one,” you say, already reaching for the weapon concealed beneath your dress.

Leon’s gaze flicks to your thigh holster, then to your face. No comment. No surprise. Just that quiet, grim acceptance that you’d both come prepared.

A burst of gunfire erupts behind you.

Leon pushes you forward. “Move.”

You sprint. He’s right beside you, close enough that you feel the air shift with him, matching your pace without effort. You round a corner and slam into a tight corridor that funnels you into a narrow kill zone.

Two Umbrella operatives are already there.

No time for thought.

You fire once, clean shot, shoulder. Leon fires in the same breath, headshot. The second operative tries to swing their weapon up. You’re already moving, stepping in, elbow driving into their throat. Leon catches their arm and twists, disarming with a practiced snap that looks almost casual.

The man drops.

Silence doesn’t follow. More footsteps. More coming.

Leon reloads without looking, hands moving fast and sure. You pivot, back hitting his for half a second as you take position.

Back-to-back.

It happens instinctively.

No discussion. No argument. No ego.

Just movement.

Leon’s voice is low, calm. “Three behind. Two ahead.”

You swallow the adrenaline and check your magazine. “Left side is mine.”

“Copy.”

You hear the click of his gun as he finishes his reload. You don’t need to see it. You know the sound now, the rhythm of him, how long it takes, when he needs cover, when he’s about to shift.

The first wave hits.

A door bursts open to your left. You pivot and fire, dropping one before his boots fully clear the threshold. Another lunges in right behind him, weapon raised. You duck, feeling the heat of a shot pass over you, then slam your shoulder into the wall and rebound forward, knife flashing out of your clutch like it’s always been there.

Leon’s gun cracks twice at your back, perfectly timed, covering you as you close distance.

The man goes down.

Another steps into the corridor ahead, weapon trained. Leon shifts his weight, shoulder pressing lightly to your back, a cue, not a shove. You understand instantly, stepping left as he steps right, breaking the enemy’s line of fire before it can settle.

You fire.

Leon fires.

Two bodies fall.

You’re breathing hard now, sweat slick against your skin beneath the elegance of the dress. The fabric pulls tighter across your ribs with every inhale, a reminder that you’re fighting in clothes meant for champagne and photo ops, not blood and bullets.

And Leon is still in his suit, jacket discarded somewhere behind you, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. He looks like a man who stepped off a runway and straight into a warzone.

He moves like he belongs here.

So do you.

A sharp crack echoes, too close. Stone dust sprays across your cheek as a bullet hits the wall inches from your head. You flinch, just once, and Leon’s hand comes up immediately, palm to your shoulder, guiding you down behind a corner.

“Stay low,” he murmurs.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you hiss automatically.

Leon doesn’t take the bait. He leans out, fires twice, then pulls back, already reloading. “Cover me.”

You do, because you always do. Because your body already knows what to do when he says it.

You step out, firing controlled shots that force the operatives back. Leon’s reload finishes. He’s up and moving again, switching positions with you so smoothly it feels like choreography.

It hits you mid-fight, sudden and unwanted.

You fight the same way.

Not identical but the same mind. The same instincts. The same calculation running behind your eyes at the same speed. The same ruthless efficiency under pressure.

You both make decisions in fractions of a second.

You both adjust without needing to speak.

You both anticipate.

Mirrors.

The thought is so sharp it almost distracts you.

And suddenly the rivalry makes sense.

Because it was never really hate. It was recognition.

A loud mechanical whine cuts through the chaos, the sound of an internal security shutter descending. The corridor ahead begins to seal off, metal plates sliding down from the ceiling to block the route.

“We’re getting boxed,” you warn.

Leon’s eyes flick. “We go now.”

You don’t argue. You surge forward together, moving fast as the plates descend. A man steps into your path, too late to stop you. You slam into him like a force of nature, knee driving into his stomach. Leon’s elbow snaps into the side of his head, clean and brutal.

You clear him and keep moving.

The shutter slams down behind you with a heavy, final clang.

For half a heartbeat, there’s only your breathing and the distant muffled alarm.

Leon’s chest rises and falls hard. His hair is slightly out of place now, a thin sheen of sweat at his temple. His eyes are bright with adrenaline, sharp as a blade.

You’re too close, face to face in the tight corridor, bodies still buzzing from combat. You can feel the heat of him, the electricity of the movement that just happened between you without words.

He scans you quickly, your face, your arms, the exposed skin at your shoulder. “You hit?”

“No,” you say, then more softly, “You?”

He shakes his head once.

Your comms crackle again. A burst of static. Then the handler’s voice cuts in, strained: “Emergency protocol is fully active. Extraction compromised. Get that device and get out. Now.”

Leon’s gaze meets yours.

And for the first time all night, there’s no sarcasm in it. No rivalry. No distance.

Just certainty.

“We finish this,” he says.

You swallow, pulse still pounding.

“Yeah,” you reply. “We finish it.”

Then you move again together, like you’ve been doing this side by side for years.

Like you were always meant to.

You duck into the service room just as Leon slams the door shut behind you, shoving a metal cart into place with a sharp grunt. The barricade isn’t elegant, but it’s solid enough to buy you time. For now.

The alarms are muffled here, reduced to a distant, angry pulse. Red light seeps through the narrow window in the door, flashing in slow intervals that make the room feel like it’s breathing.

You lean forward, hands braced on your knees, dragging air into your lungs. Your heart is still racing, adrenaline buzzing so loud it drowns out everything else. Sweat clings to your skin, your dress ruined, hair pulled loose from its careful styling.

Leon turns toward you immediately.

“Stay still,” he says, already closing the distance.

“I am still,” you snap, even as you straighten reflexively.

His hands are on you before you can object—efficient, professional. He checks your arms first, fingers firm but careful as they skim for blood. Then your shoulder, where stone dust still clings to your skin. His touch lingers there a fraction longer than necessary, thumb brushing lightly as if confirming something he already knows.

You swat his hand away. “I said I’m fine.”

Leon’s jaw tightens. “Humour me.”

“I don’t recall that being part of the mission.”

His eyes flick up to meet yours, sharp, annoyed, but there’s something else there now too. “You flinched.”

“You were in my line of fire,” you fire back. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not,” he says quickly, hands dropping. “I’m checking my partner.”

The word lands heavier than either of you expect.

You scoff, turning away to pace the small room. “Don’t get sentimental now.”

Leon exhales slowly through his nose. “You’re the one snapping.”

You whirl back on him. “Because you nearly got yourself shot pulling that move back there.”

“And you nearly took a round to the head rushing that corner,” he shoots back without missing a beat.

There it is, the familiar bite. The clash. But it doesn’t sting the way it used to.

You hold his gaze, chest still heaving. “You didn’t have to cover me.”

Leon’s voice is steady, but quieter now. “Yes, I did.”

The certainty in it disarms you more than any argument ever has.

Silence stretches between you, thick with everything neither of you is saying. The room hums softly around you, vents rattling overhead, the smell of oil and metal grounding you in the aftermath.

Your pulse finally begins to slow.

You look at him properly then, not as a rival, not as an obstacle, but as the man who just fought back-to-back with you without hesitation. Who knew when you needed cover before you did. Who moved when you moved, adapted when you adapted, like your thoughts were running parallel tracks.

It clicks.

He never underestimated you.

Not once.

All those arguments. The clipped remarks. The way he never rose to your jabs, never reacted the way you wanted him to. You’d always read it as arrogance. Distance. Superiority.

But standing here now, suit scuffed and tie gone, breathing hard just like you, the truth settles uncomfortably into place.

He wasn’t looking down on you.

He was matching you.

Meeting you at the same level and refusing to drop below it. Treating you like an equal long before you were ready to believe it. Long before you’d stopped mistaking restraint for dismissal.

Leon shifts his weight, eyes still on you. “You good?” he asks again, softer this time.

You nod once. “Yeah.”

A beat passes.

“You fight like me,” you add, almost against your will.

His brow furrows slightly. “No. You fight like you.”

You huff a quiet laugh. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he says.

Another silence, but this one is different. Less sharp. Less hostile. Charged, but steadier.

Leon glances toward the barricaded door, listening. “We’ve got maybe ninety seconds before they reroute.”

You straighten, rolling your shoulders despite the ache settling into them. “Then we’d better move.”

He nods, and for the first time, there’s no tension in the agreement. No need to assert control or prove anything.

Just two agents, side by side, breathing in sync.

The safe room isn’t safe in any comforting way.

It’s a concrete box tucked behind an unmarked service door three levels below street access, the kind of place that doesn’t show up on public blueprints. The air smells faintly of dust and old metal. A single strip light hums above, casting pale, uneven illumination across gray walls and a scarred steel table. No windows. No softness. No distractions.

Just four walls and the aftertaste of adrenaline.

You shut the door behind you and twist the lock twice out of habit, even though the handler swore this location was clean. Leon stands a few feet away, chest rising and falling hard. His suit is ruined, dark smudges at the knee where he’d hit the floor, the white of his shirt stained with sweat and dust. His tie is gone. His sleeves are rolled up, forearms streaked with grime, knuckles raw.

He looks like a man who belongs in a fight, not a ballroom.

You look… less polished too. Your dress is torn at the hem, a thin snag running along your thigh where you’d caught it on something sharp while vaulting a barrier. Your hair has slipped free of its careful pins. There’s stone dust at your collarbone. The only thing that stayed flawless is the shape of your posture, trained, controlled, refusing to collapse.

You cross the room and drop the data device on the steel table. It makes a solid, satisfying clack that echoes in the small space.

Done.

For now.

Leon reaches up and removes the earpiece, rolling it between his fingers before setting it down beside the device. You do the same, tugging yours out with a little too much force. Without comms, the room gets quieter. The silence doesn’t feel empty. It feels loaded.

Weapons come next, unclipped, unloaded, set aside. You place your handgun on the table, then the spare magazine. The movement is efficient, practiced. Leon mirrors you without a word, laying his gear down in clean, ordered lines like he can impose control on chaos by arranging it neatly.

A tremor runs through your fingers when you reach for a chair. You close your hand into a fist before anyone can see.

Leon’s gaze flicks to you anyway.

You hate that he notices everything. Hate that you’re suddenly grateful he does.

For a long moment, neither of you speaks.

The adrenaline is still in your bloodstream, buzzing like a live wire under your skin. Your thoughts keep trying to sprint, to latch onto the next move, the next threat, the next exit.

But there is nothing to chase.

No alarms. No targets.

Just the hum of the strip light and the slow return of sensation: the ache in your ribs, the sting across your knuckles, the bruise blooming at your hip where you’d hit the wall harder than you meant to.

Your body is remembering you’re human.

It’s the worst part, the calm. In the fight, everything had been simple: move, shoot, breathe, survive. Now, with nothing pressing in, the silence forces everything else forward.

The kiss. The way Leon moved in front of you. The way your hands had lingered on his wrist. The way he’d said I’ve got you like it was an unshakable fact.

You take a slow breath and realise your lungs are still working like they expect to be chased.

Leon finally breaks the stillness, voice low. “We got it.”

“Yeah,” you answer too quickly. “We got it.”

He nods once, but his eyes don’t move away from you. There’s something in his expression, still controlled, still restrained, but the edges have softened, as if the adrenaline has melted some of the steel away and left the person underneath exposed in small, dangerous ways.

You don’t know what to do with that.

You turn toward the wall instead, stare at the blank concrete like it can offer you an instruction manual.

Your hands shake again, just slightly. You flex your fingers, forcing them steady. You refuse to let your body betray you, not after everything. Not in front of him.

“Sit,” Leon says.

It isn’t an order. Not really. It’s… practical. Almost gentle.

“I’m fine,” you snap automatically.

Leon’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t argue, he simply steps closer and reaches for the small first aid kit mounted on the wall. You hadn’t noticed it. Of course he did.

He sets it on the table with a quiet thud and flips it open, movements clean and efficient. Like tending wounds is just another protocol.

You watch him for half a second too long.

The light catches the lines of exhaustion in his face. A faint scrape along his cheekbone. A smudge of dried blood at the edge of his knuckles that isn’t his, you think. The muscles in his shoulders shift as he rolls them once, like the weight of the night is settling in.

A tremor runs through his hand as he pulls out antiseptic wipes.

He pauses, almost imperceptibly, then continues like it never happened.

So he’s not untouched either.

That realisation lands strangely. You’ve spent so long imagining him as something unbreakable—smooth, composed, always in control. Seeing the cracks should satisfy you.

It doesn’t.

It makes your throat tighten.

“Give me your hand,” Leon says, still not looking directly at you.

You laugh once, short and sharp. “That’s rich.”

He finally looks up. “Don’t start.”

The tone is familiar, dry, controlled, but it lacks its usual bite. It’s not a challenge. It’s tired.

You should refuse out of principle.

Instead you step forward and extend your hand, palm up, because the alternative, fighting him on this, feels suddenly exhausting.

Leon takes your hand.

His fingers are warm, steady, calloused. His grip is firm but careful, like he’s handling something that matters more than he wants to admit. He inspects your knuckles, the small splits in the skin, the smear of grime.

“You’re bleeding,” he says.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s blood.”

You roll your eyes. “Congratulations, Kennedy. You can identify bodily fluids.”

A flicker, almost a smile, touches his mouth. It’s gone before you can be sure it was real.

He cleans your knuckles anyway. The antiseptic stings. You hiss and try to pull away. Leon holds your hand a fraction tighter, not letting you retreat.

“Hold still,” he murmurs.

Your pulse jumps at the softness of it.

You hate that.

“You’re enjoying this,” you mutter, trying to salvage something sharp.

Leon doesn’t look up. “I’m not.”

The honesty in his voice knocks the air out of your sarcasm. He sounds… genuine. Like he’s too worn out to pretend.

He finishes cleaning your hand, wraps it quickly, efficiently. The tape catches briefly on your skin, and his thumb brushes your wrist as he smooths it down.

You feel it like a spark.

You hate that you feel it.

Leon lets go, but his hand lingers for a half second too long, fingers resting against your pulse as if confirming it’s still there.

Then he pulls back, clearing his throat, gaze shifting away like he’s caught himself doing something he didn’t mean to.

The silence returns.

He starts tending to his own wounds next, wiping blood from his knuckles, wrapping tape with the same clinical focus. But his hands still shake faintly, the aftermath of adrenaline refusing to fade completely.

You don’t comment. He doesn’t either.

The strip light hums.

Your breathing finally slows to something normal. With it comes the weight of everything you’ve been avoiding since you first saw his name on that leaderboard.

The first time you tried to speak to him.

The way he ignored you.

The silence that followed you for years like a ghost.

It’s there now, in this room, louder than the alarms ever were.

You don’t plan to say anything. You don’t want to hand him another weapon.

But the words break loose anyway, scraped raw by exhaustion and adrenaline and the fact that he just held your hand like it mattered.

“Why,” you ask, voice quiet enough it barely exists, “did you ignore me back then?”

Leon freezes. The strip light hums. Somewhere in the building, pipes creak. The sound feels unbearably loud. His gaze lifts slowly. For once, there’s no immediate retort, no controlled reply. Just stillness.

You swallow, suddenly aware that you’ve crossed a line you can’t uncross. “You walked right past me,” you continue, the old anger flaring in your chest like it never left. “I said your name. You didn’t even look at me. Like I wasn’t-” Your voice catches. You force it steady. “Like I wasn’t worth the effort.”

Leon’s throat works as he swallows. He looks down at his hands for a moment, fingers flexing, then back up to you. His eyes are hard, not with anger, but with something else. Something that looks a lot like regret.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says quietly.

You laugh, brittle. “Could’ve fooled me.”

He exhales slowly, like he’s choosing each word with care. Like he can’t afford to get this wrong.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Leon admits. The words hang in the air, plain and stark.

You blink. “What?”

“I didn’t know what to say,” he repeats, more firmly this time, like he’s pushing through something stuck in his throat. “You… came up to me. Confident. Like you belonged here already. Like you weren’t scared of anyone.”

Your chest tightens, caught between disbelief and something dangerously close to understanding.

Leon’s jaw flexes. “And I…” He hesitates. It’s subtle, but it’s there, the first real hesitation you’ve seen from him that isn’t tactical. “I didn’t want to screw it up.”

You stare at him, thrown off balance. “Screw what up?” you demand, too sharply.

Leon’s eyes meet yours, steady but exposed. “Whatever it was,” he says quietly. “I-” He exhales, a sound that almost turns into a laugh but doesn’t. “You intimidated me.”

The confession hits like a punch. You’re speechless for a beat, mouth opening and closing like you’re trying to find words that aren’t there.

“Me?” you echo finally, incredulous.

Leon nods once, almost reluctantly. “Yeah. You.”

He shifts his weight, restless, uncomfortable, like he’d rather be facing down a dozen armed guards than this conversation. “I’d just transferred. I was… trying to keep my head down. Trying to be the guy who didn’t make mistakes.”

His gaze drops again briefly, then lifts. “And you looked at me like you expected something. Like you wanted to talk. And I didn’t know what to do with that.”

The room feels smaller. You remember that hallway. Remember the way you’d felt, nervous but determined, trying to be friendly, trying to prove you weren’t just another ambitious agent. You’d thought it would be simple. You’d thought he’d smile. Instead he’d walked away and left you standing there with your pride bleeding out on the floor.

“And you decided ignoring me was the best option,” you say, voice tight.

Leon’s mouth twists. “I thought if I said the wrong thing, it’d be worse.”

“So you said nothing.”

“I said nothing,” he agrees, and there’s no defence in it. Just ownership. “And then you looked at me like you hated me, and…” He pauses, eyes flicking to yours. “It was easier to let you.”

Your throat tightens. Because it’s suddenly all too clear: the rivalry didn’t start because he thought he was better than you.

It started because he was scared, and you were hurt, and neither of you had ever been brave enough to admit it.

The strip light hums above you, the only witness to the truth finally surfacing between bare concrete walls.

You let out a slow breath, hands still, heart quieter now but heavier.

“Leon,” you say, voice low.

He looks at you, waiting. The silence after his confession is different from the ones that came before it. It doesn’t feel sharp or loaded with expectation. It feels… open. Exposed. Like something has finally been set down between you instead of hurled back and forth.

Leon doesn’t move. He doesn’t fill the space with explanations or excuses. He just stands there, shoulders tense, waiting. For you.

You stare at the concrete floor for a long moment, jaw tight, pulse steadying as the truth rearranges itself in your chest. All the years of irritation. The constant edge. The way every victory against him had tasted hollow, every loss unbearable. It clicks into place with an almost humiliating clarity.

“You know what the worst part is?” you say finally, voice quiet but steady.

Leon’s eyes lift to yours. He doesn’t speak.

“You made me better.” The words scrape on the way out. You let out a short, humourless breath. “Every time I saw your name above mine, or just one slot below, it pissed me off. And I worked harder. Smarter. I pushed myself because I refused to be second to you.”

Leon’s brow furrows slightly, but he stays silent.

“And I told myself it was hate,” you continue, forcing the words out before you can second-guess them. “That you were arrogant. Cold. That you thought you were better than me.”

Your laugh this time is quieter. Rougher. “It was easier to be angry than to admit the truth.”

Leon’s jaw tightens. “Which is?”

The room doesn’t collapse. He just watches you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle.

“I hated you,” you say, softer now, “because it was safer than wondering why your opinion of me mattered so much.”

The admission leaves you raw. Exposed in a way gunfire never could. Leon exhales slowly, like he’s been holding that breath for years.

“I noticed,” he says quietly.

You blink. “Noticed what?”

“That you were always pushing.” His voice is calm, but there’s something unguarded in it now. “That every time I thought I’d finally pulled ahead, you closed the gap. That when I messed up, you didn’t gloat, you got sharper.”

He shakes his head once, a small, almost self-deprecating motion. “I told myself I didn’t care. That it was just competition.”

You snort. “Let me guess. Lie.”

“Yes.” He meets your gaze fully now. “I measured everything against you. Missions. Scores. Decisions. I never wanted to be less in your eyes.”

The words land heavier than you expect.

Leon shifts his weight, restless. “I mistook the tension for hostility because that was easier than admitting I was… invested.”

“In what?” you ask quietly.

“In you,” he answers, just as quietly.

The air between you changes.

Not explosively. Not dramatically.

It settles.

You look at him finally, as someone standing on the same ground, stripped of armour and pretence.

Equals.

“I thought you ignored me because you didn’t respect me,” you say.

Leon’s mouth tightens. “I respected you too much.”

That shouldn’t undo you.

It does.

Your shoulders sag slightly, tension bleeding out of muscles you didn’t realise were still locked. “We’re idiots,” you mutter.

Leon huffs a quiet laugh. “We’re agents.”

“Same thing.”

For the first time, the humour doesn’t feel like a weapon. It feels shared.

You step closer without fully realising you’ve moved. The space between you narrows until you’re acutely aware of his presence again.  You can hear his breathing. Feel the warmth radiating off him.

Leon doesn’t retreat.

His hand lifts slightly, then hesitates, hovering near your wrist like he’s unsure whether he’s allowed to cross that line. The restraint is somehow worse than if he’d just touched you.

Your fingers twitch, an instinctive response.

The moment teeters.

It’s there in the closeness, the shared breath, the fragile understanding humming between you. One step closer. One hand reaching. One choice away from something that feels inevitable.

Leon’s gaze drops briefly to your mouth.

Your heart stutters.

Then -

A sharp crackle tears through the stillness.

Your discarded earpiece comes to life on the table, static bursting from it in an ugly rush of sound. You both jerk back instinctively, training snapping into place.

“-repeat, safe room compromised-” the handler’s voice cuts in, distorted and urgent. “Umbrella units inbound. You need to move. Now.”

The spell shatters.

Leon’s hand drops instantly, professionalism snapping back into place like a reflex. Your pulse spikes, adrenaline surging back through veins that had only just begun to calm.

You exchange one look.

Not rivals. Not enemies.

Partners.

“Guess we don’t get a quiet ending,” you mutter.

Leon’s mouth curves faintly, not a smirk, not yet. Something steadier. “We’ll finish this first.”

You nod, already moving toward your weapon. But as you pass him, your fingers brush his wrist, deliberate this time.

Just enough to promise. This isn’t over.

Then the door rattles under the first distant impact, and whatever comes next barrels toward you both at full speed, truth laid bare, denial gone, and something fragile and dangerous waiting on the other side of the fight.

The first impact hits the door like a warning.

Metal groans. The cart you shoved against it shudders, wheels squealing against concrete. Dust shakes loose from the ceiling in a fine gray drift.

Leon’s eyes snap to the lock. Yours snap to your weapon.

“Move,” he says at the same time you do.

The strip light overhead flickers once, then dies.

Darkness swallows the room.

For half a heartbeat, there’s nothing but the faint red pulse bleeding through the narrow window in the door and the sound of your own breathing.

Then the world explodes.

Gunfire tears through the door in a blistering spray. Splinters of metal and concrete burst inward, sparks flashing like violent stars in the dark. You drop instinctively, hitting the floor hard, shoulder slamming into the table leg as rounds chew the space where you’d been standing a second ago.

“Down!” Leon barks, unnecessary, because you’re already there.

Your ears ring. The air smells like hot metal and smoke. The darkness makes everything closer, sharper. You can’t see Leon, but you can hear him, his breath, controlled but quick, the scrape of his boots as he shifts.

Another impact slams into the door. The cart grinds forward an inch.

“They tracked us,” you spit, teeth clenched.

Leon’s voice is tight. “They wanted us to bring the device somewhere quiet.”

Personal, then.

Not a show of force. Not a random contingency.

A message.

A punishment.

You raise your pistol, steadying your aim toward the door’s window slit. Red light strobes across your hands in pulses. You can’t see targets, but you can predict movement by sound, boots, the clink of gear, the clipped rhythm of someone stacking up for entry.

Leon moves to your side, a shadow in the dark. You feel the brush of his shoulder against yours, close, grounding, real.

“On my mark,” you murmur.

“Always,” he whispers back, and the word lands heavier than it ever has.

The door buckles.

A wedge of light knifes through as the barricade gives. Someone rams it again, and the door bursts inward with a metallic shriek. Figures flood the gap, black armour, masked faces, rifles up.

You fire first.

A clean shot, then another. The muzzle flash briefly illuminates the room in harsh white bursts, enough to catch glints of visor, the sharp edge of a weapon, Leon’s face set and fierce beside you.

Leon moves in the same instant, firing over your shoulder, his shots precise, economical. An operative drops in the doorway, collapsing into the pile of debris. Another stumbles back with a curse.

“Push!” Leon barks.

You surge forward together, slipping through the smoke and chaos. Close quarters now, too tight for long-range. Your shoulder slams into one attacker, throwing him off balance. Leon’s elbow drives into another’s jaw, cracking hard enough that you feel it in your teeth.

You don’t think.

You move.

Someone grabs your arm from behind. You pivot, wrenching free, gun coming up, only to have Leon’s hand catch your wrist, redirecting your barrel a fraction.

“Left,” he snaps.

A shot cracks where your aim would’ve been wrong. A man drops behind you, silent and sudden.

Your pulse spikes, raw gratitude laced with terror.

You’re alive because Leon didn’t hesitate. Again.

More operatives spill into the corridor outside, attempting to funnel you back into the room. You back up instinctively until your spine hits the wall.

Leon shifts behind you.

Back-to-back, without discussion.

The old rhythm returns, but it’s different now. It’s sharpened by something you can’t pretend is just training.

A rifle butt swings toward Leon’s head. You hear it more than see it. You react—knife flashing up, slashing across the attacker’s forearm. Leon ducks and counters, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest, sending him crashing into the corridor wall.

“Leon!” you call, not as a warning, but as an anchor. A check-in. Still there?

“I’m here,” he answers, voice tight.

Gunfire erupts again, closer. A round clips the wall by your ear. Another slams into Leon’s side.

For a second, you don’t register what happened.

Then Leon makes a sound, sharp, involuntary, like his body betrayed him.

He staggers.

Your stomach drops through the floor.

“Leon!” you gasp, turning-

He catches himself against the wall, one hand pressing hard to his ribs. When he lifts it, his palm is dark in the strobing red light.

Blood. Too much.

His face tightens, not with fear, with frustration. With the shock of losing control for even a second.

“I’m fine,” he grits out.

“No,” you snap, voice cracking with something you can’t hide. “No, you’re not.”

Another operative charges, and instinct takes over before panic can swallow you whole. You fire, dropping him mid-step. You move closer to Leon without thinking, body angling to shield him from the corridor.

“Don’t-” Leon starts, but his breath catches, pain stealing the rest of the sentence.

You rip some fabric from your dress, and shove it against his side. “Hold pressure.”

Leon’s eyes flare. “We need to move.”

“We are moving,” you hiss. “But you are not dying in front of me.”

He tries to straighten. He’s breathing harder now, sweat slick at his brow, his usual control slipping at the edges. Disorientation flickers in his eyes for half a second, like his body is threatening to go down whether he wants it to or not.

The sight guts you.

The fear hits fully then, hot and absolute, stripping you of everything sharp and snarky and protected.

“I am going to be so mad if you die on me,” you say, voice raw, unfiltered.

Leon’s eyes rolled before his gaze locks on yours. You could’ve sworn you saw a smirk on his face.

Then his jaw tightens. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and for once, it isn’t a challenge. It’s a promise.

The corridor fills with footsteps again.

You pivot, planting yourself between Leon and the oncoming threat. Every muscle in your body tightens with purpose. Protective. Focused.

You fire in controlled bursts, forcing the operatives back. Leon pushes off the wall, gritting his teeth, raising his weapon despite the tremor in his arm. You hear the strain in his breath, the way his body fights him now.

“Stay with me,” you mutter, not a command, an insistence. “Match me.”

Leon’s voice is ragged but steady. “Always.”

You move together again, but now every decision is laced with instinctive concern. You take the riskier angles, so he doesn’t have to. You cover him longer than necessary. You bark directions closer, faster, because the thought of losing him makes your vision narrow into something dangerous.

An enemy lunges from the side. You catch him with your shoulder and slam him into the wall. Leon steps in to finish it, but his knees buckle for a heartbeat. Your hand shoots out, gripping his forearm, hauling him upright.

You clear the last attacker with brutal efficiency, and the corridor finally opens, an escape route just beyond the carnage.

Leon sways, teeth clenched. You hook your arm around his back, taking more of his weight than you should be able to, and he lets you.

That, more than anything, tells you how deep this has gone.

You stagger forward together into the dim service stairwell, alarms still wailing, red light flashing, the world still trying to tear you apart.

The extraction is quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after everything loud has already burned itself out.

You barely register the transition from stairwell to armoured transport. Leon’s weight leans heavy against you until medics swarm, voices overlapping, hands pulling you apart with practiced urgency. Someone eases you back while someone else lowers him onto a stretcher. The world narrows to flashes: gauze pressed to his side, blood-stained shirt cut away, a monitor chirping insistently.

You stand there uselessly for half a second too long before someone tells you to sit.

You don’t remember sitting.

You remember your hands shaking when you notice they’re covered in his blood. You scrub them together reflexively, like you can erase the image if you try hard enough. A medic hands you a bottle of water. You take it without drinking.

Leon is alive.

The knowledge settles slowly, like something too fragile to trust all at once. His chest rises and falls, uneven but steady. His eyes flutter open briefly when they stitch him up, unfocused but aware enough to find you where you stand.

He doesn’t say anything.

Neither do you.

Later, how much later you’re not sure, you’re in another room. Cleaner. Brighter. Too sterile to feel real. Leon is propped up on a narrow cot, bandaged and pale but breathing without effort now. The monitors have gone quiet, content to hum along instead of scream.

Your injuries are minor. Someone fussed over them anyway. You let them, numb and obedient, because the alternative was thinking.

Now it’s just the two of you again.

Silence settles between you like a blanket instead of a weapon.

You stand by the wall at first, arms folded, posture rigid out of habit more than necessity. Leon watches you from the cot, expression unreadable but soft around the edges in a way you’ve never seen before.

“You should sit,” he says quietly.

You shake your head and answer as you always do. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t argue but rolls his eyes as he always does.

The adrenaline has fully drained now, leaving behind a heavy, bone-deep exhaustion. Your hands are still trembling slightly, even as you clench them into fists and force them still. You feel wrung out, scraped raw, like something vital has been stripped away, and something else left behind in its place.

Leon shifts, wincing faintly, then settles. His gaze never leaves you.

“I scared you,” he says.

It’s not an accusation. It’s not fishing for reassurance.

It’s a statement.

You swallow. “Yeah.”

Another silence. Thicker. More honest.

“I didn’t mean to,” he adds.

“I know.” You push off the wall before you can stop yourself, closing the distance until you’re standing beside him. You don’t look at the bandages. You look at his face. “But you did.”

Leon nods once. “I won’t apologise for getting hit.”

“Good,” you say immediately. “Because I’d never forgive you for it.”

That earns the faintest huff of a laugh, more breath than sound. It fades quickly, leaving the room quiet again.

You don’t sit. Instead, you reach out without fully deciding to, your fingers brushing the edge of the bed. Leon’s hand shifts instinctively, stopping just short of yours.

The hesitation is mutual.

“You don’t have to-” he starts.

“I want to,” you say softly.

The words feel different now. Steadier. Chosen.

Leon’s fingers close around yours, careful, deliberate. His grip is warm, grounding, real in a way that has nothing to do with cover stories or mission parameters. He doesn’t pull you closer. He just holds on, like he’s confirming you’re still here.

You breathe out slowly, the tension easing from your shoulders in a way you hadn’t realized was still there.

This isn’t the gala. There’s no music. No audience. No danger pressing in from all sides. No reason at all, except want.

You step closer, close enough that your knees brush the side of the cot. Leon tilts his head up slightly to look at you, eyes searching, open.

When you finally lean in, it’s slow. Unrushed. Intentional.

Your lips meet his with a softness that surprises you both.

It’s nothing like the kiss before.

There’s no urgency driving it this time. No desperation, no need to convince anyone watching. No sharp angles or calculated pressure. Just the quiet, deliberate meeting of mouths, slow, careful, unguarded in a way that feels far more dangerous.

Leon kisses you like he’s letting himself feel it.

His lips are warm, firm but unhurried, moving against yours with a patience that makes your breath stutter despite yourself. It’s not demanding. It’s exploratory. As if he’s memorising the shape of you instead of claiming it.

His hand lifts to your wrist, fingers closing there gently, thumb brushing over your pulse. You feel it jump beneath his touch, too fast, too loud, and the knowledge that he can feel it too sends a low, unwanted heat curling through your stomach.

He doesn’t comment.

He just deepens the kiss slightly, a subtle shift that draws a quiet sound from the back of your throat before you can stop it. His other hand hovers at your side, not quite touching, the restraint almost worse than contact.

When he finally does settle his palm against your waist, it’s careful. Grounding. Like he’s reminding both of you exactly where you are, and exactly how close you’re choosing to be.

You kiss him back without thinking, lips parting just enough to meet his, the world narrowing to breath and warmth and the steady strength of him in front of you. The orchestra fades. The room dissolves. There is only this, this shared, wordless understanding humming between you.

When you pull back, it’s slow.

Reluctant.

Your forehead rests against his, breaths mingling, close enough that you can feel the faint tremor he hasn’t quite managed to suppress. His thumb still strokes your pulse, absent-minded now, like he’s forgotten he’s doing it.

Neither of you speaks.

You don’t need to.

There’s no declaration. No promise shaped into words. Just the shared understanding humming between you, solid and undeniable.

When you finally straighten, Leon’s eyes are still on you, softer now. Lighter.

“Guess,” he murmurs, “that wasn’t part of the cover.”

You smile, a real one, unguarded. “Guess not.”

The silence returns again after that.

But this time, it doesn’t ask anything of you.

It simply lets you be.

The debrief room looks exactly the way it always does.

Gray walls. Steel table. A screen mounted at the far end displaying mission timestamps and sanitized summaries. The kind of room designed to strip events of their chaos and compress them into bullet points.

You sit side by side. Your shoulder almost brushes Leon’s, close enough to feel without touching. He’s back in clean clothes now, bandages hidden beneath a fresh shirt, posture straight despite the stiffness he hasn’t quite shaken.

The handler stands across from you, expression neutral as ever.

“Extraction successful,” they say. “Data secured. Umbrella assets neutralised. Collateral contained.”

You nod. Leon nods.

Professional. Controlled.

There’s no need to look at each other to confirm anything. You already know what the other is thinking. Where they’ll speak. When they’ll stay quiet. It’s effortless now, like the friction burned itself out and left something smooth behind.

The handler’s gaze flicks between you briefly. Assessing. Noting the absence of hostility.

“Good work,” they add. “Both of you.”

High praise, coming from them.

They dismiss you with a clipped nod and turn back to the screen. The door slides open with a soft hiss, and you stand at the same time, movements synchronized without thought.

Outside, the operations floor hums with its usual low-level chaos. Agents pass, analysts cluster around consoles, voices overlap in familiar rhythms. Nothing looks different.

But it feels different.

You walk together toward the leaderboard without speaking, the silence companionable instead of sharp. The board flickers as you approach, updating, recalculating, doing what it always does after a major operation.

For a split second, the screen goes dark.

Then the names appear.

You stop.

So does Leon.

#1 — YOU

#1 — LEON KENNEDY

Perfectly even.

Tied.

You stare at it longer than you expect to, waiting for something, satisfaction, irritation, the old flare of competitiveness.

It doesn’t come.

Leon exhales softly beside you, something between a laugh and a breath of disbelief. He tilts his head, eyes moving from the board to you.

That familiar smirk appears, not sharp, not challenging. Lighter. Easier.