It's one step too far, and it's my fault because my warning was too weak, and I made the same mistake as Leo in thinking I was safe enough to let my emotions loose around him.
There are three windows in the kitchen. Every single one of them implodes inwards, spraying glass at my back and cutting into Leo. He instinctively tries to duck away from the blast, covering his face, but pieces of glass still slice at his bare arms.
It's like a fog of grey and black comes over my mind, everything around me disappearing as a lightning strike of rage and grief courses through me as if I'm a rod stuck out in the middle of a storm.
Between one blink and the next, my hand wraps around Leo's throat, and I slam him into the nearest wall, pinning him there. Leo's head hits the wall hard, jarring him badly, pain creasing his features. He closes his eyes and tries to suck in a breath. I tighten my hold on his throat, preventing him from inhaling much-needed air.
Leo's eyes are wide and blue and completely devoid of the fear I expected,wanted, which makes little to no sense. How could he look more afraid of me when we were arguing about my sense of morality in regards to hurting other people than now, when I'm cutting off his lifeline with my hand?
He looks at me with those pale-blue eyes, and there is only one thing I see in them. Empathy.
It makes me so fucking pissed I want to snap his neck right here and now.
I keep my hand firmly clasped around his throat and bring my face close enough to his that our noses brush. My free hand is fisted, forearm braced against the wall beside Leo’s head.
"You couldneverreplace him!" I snarl into his face.
Leo doesn't flinch. If anything, his expression saddens, eyes becoming almost wet with a sympathy I want to beat out of him. It's weak. He's so fuckingweak.
Pick it up, Jack.
I hate how vulnerable he allows himself to be for the sake of other people. I hate how much it scares me to know he would put himself in peril to protect someone less worthy than him. I want to show him the consequences of letting his kindness control his choices. He should understand how cruel the world really is, how much it will take from you if you let it.
Leo brings his hands up to touch my waist, one hand slipping under my T-shirt to touch burning skin. I feel flushed from anger, the heat of our argument lighting me up from the inside in a way the extreme weather is incapable of. My blood feels like tar in my veins, thick and scalding, eating away at my flesh and bone like acid through metal.
I don't know how it works, but Leo's hand gently stroking over my torso and back seems to ground me in the moment. His touch is oddly soothing, calmer than it should be given how violently I'm still holding him against the wall. He keeps it up, not stopping no matter how much I tighten my hand on his throat.
Rather than struggling for freedom when it becomes clear he's in dire need of oxygen, Leo takes his campaign of confusing softness one step further and leans forward just enough to press his lips to mine. It isn't a kiss so much as a reassuring touch, just like the touch of his hands.
I loosen my hold on Leo's throat enough to let him breathe and wait as he gasps in lungfuls of air, almost panting against my face, hot, wet heat expelling from his mouth. When he's calmed down enough to breathe normally, he doesn't try to escape or put any distance between us at all, like I thought,hoped, he would. Instead, he moves both of his hands to my back and presses me in closer to him, melding us together until we're so tangled up in each other I can no longer tell where he begins, and I end. It's startlingly intimate and sets my heart pounding to a rhythm that feels too fast behind my ribs.
We breathe together for a while, our mouths brushing lightly whenever we shift position in any direction.
When Leo speaks, it's with a rasping tinge from having been choked. I'd be sorry for it, but in reality, I'm only sorry he doesn't seem to have learned anything from it. Leo never learns to be afraid of the right threats, to protect himself from things like me, to put a value on the life I would kill and die to protect, no matter what he thinks about how I've connected my feelings about him to my grief over the loss of my brother.
"No, I won't ever be able to replace Dan." Leo runs his fingers along the base of my spine, rubbing across it with the same soothing gentleness, banishing the ache and stab of emotion any mention of Dan usually evokes. "That's exactly my point." He leans his head back enough to meet my eyes again, and I allow it even though the distance feels all wrong, and I instantly want to eclipse it.
At my questioning look, Leo tries to explain, voice as soft and calming as the feel of his hands on my skin. "You said you're tired of feeling like a failure in this partnership? Well, the same goes for me. You think I refuse to see the darkness in you. I think you're using me as a way to cope with losing Dan. If we're both right, then we need to stop closing our eyes to the truth; otherwise, we'll never be able to see each other clearly. We'll never be able to work together."
"Do you still want to work together?" I ask, then feel the instant kick of regret. I don't want to know if his honest answer is in the negative. He has every reason to say hell, no. I've given him every reason. But if he tells me what I deserve to hear, I'm not sure what it will do to me.
The thought of losing him in any capacity despite everything I've done to purposefully drive him away is terrifying.
Leo is probably right to say part of the reason I'm scared to lose him is because he's all I have, the same way Dan was all I had. The problem with only having one person you care about is that when you lose them, you don't just losethem, you loseeverything. I know what that feels like now, and I'd genuinely rather let Snow terminate me than try to live through it again. There isn't a day that goes by when I don't curse Dan for not letting me take the fall that day in the grey room.
"Yes," Leo answers like it's an easy decision for him, which is yet more evidence he has a death wish. His expression flattens out into something more serious when he adds, "But we can't keep going as we have been. I need you to be real with me. You can't just run off like you did yesterday and do things without telling me. Seriously, Jack, do you have any idea what I thought when you were gone for so long?" When I shake my head no, Leo releases a harsh breath and bumps his forehead against mine. "I thought you'd run off for good. Escaped, finally. I didn't think you'd be coming back."
That throws me off balance like a swift steel-toed boot to the cranium.
His assertion that I would leave the agency, leavehim, just like that because of a stupid disagreement about a mission is genuinely bewildering to me. How could he think that? How does he not understand there's absolutely nothing in this world that matters to me as much, let alone more, than being with him?
Since I'm too much of a coward to tell Leo how I'd rather fucking die than be without him, I tell him the other reason. "Leo, I've spent my entire life having my time dictated by an agency, living within a certain kind of structure. Without it, I don't know how to …be."
"You could find out," Leo pushes although he tightens his grip on me as he says it, like his mouth is saying one thing and his body another. "Learn how to do life, just like the rest of us."
I expel a loud, annoyed sound and tighten my hold on his throat again in punishment or possibly for emphasis. "Stop trying to make me leave you," I growl at him.
"It's not about me!" Leo argues vehemently, always the master of his own demise. "You could have alife. A proper one, where no bloody agency would ask you to kill for them."
