kintsugi

Uninvited and Inevitable

LEON'S POV

I have survived seventeen assassination attempts, two inter-clan wars, one genuinely unhinged polar bear encounter in Siberia that I have agreed with myself to never document or discuss in any formal capacity, and a board meeting that lasted eleven hours with no coffee and one man who kept saying "but have we considered the alternative" every single time we were thirty seconds from a conclusion.

I am not easily unsettled.

And yet.

P'Vegas was running.

Not the controlled, authoritative stride of a man who commands half of Thailand's underworld. Not even the brisk walk of someone late and aware of it. I mean running full sprint, dress shoes losing traction on marble with a sound like a very expensive mistake, one hand pressing his hair flat against the aerodynamic consequences of his own speed, wearing the expression of a man who has absolutely committed a crime and has chosen velocity as his primary response.

Behind him, P'Pete walked.

Not ran. Walked. Unhurried. Inevitable. With the specific energy of a man who does not need to hurry because there is nowhere on this earth his husband can go that he cannot, eventually, reach.

The gap between them was closing anyway.

Physics, it turned out, has always sided with P'Pete.

I have observed this dynamic for years. It never stops being quietly terrifying. P'Vegas has survived situations that would end most men, and yet P'Pete walking at a moderate pace behind him reduces him to a full sprint every single time. There is probably something philosophical in that. I have chosen not to examine it too closely.

Normally I would have filed this under Minor Family: Ongoing Situation, Not My Division and continued with my morning.

But today he was running while carrying something.

I stopped walking.

A child. Small. Dressed in pale yellow. Fully, completely, profoundly asleep against P'Vegas's shoulder  head lolled to one side, one small fist loosely curled near her chin, with the boneless, absolute trust of someone who has decided that the arms holding her are safe and that is the end of the discussion. She had not stirred through what was clearly multiple corridors of sprinting. She was not stirring now.

My chest did something I am taking to my grave.

Bunny.

I started walking toward them.

P'Vegas spotted me. In approximately two seconds his face performed a complete emotional audit panic, relief, guilt, mischief and then through sheer force of will he straightened his jacket and became, improbably, a composed and dignified human being.

I was not fooled. But I respected the speed.

"Leon!" he said warmly, as though we had simply encountered each other at a pleasant social gathering. "Perfect timing."

"Is it," I said.

"Yes. Wonderful morning. Very productive. I have been—"

"Vegas."

P'Pete had arrived. Not breathing harder than usual. Looking at his husband with the expression of a man who has opened the same cabinet many times and found a different disaster inside it each occasion.

"Why," he said pleasantly, "were you running."

"I was not running—"

"I watched you run."