cold · strict boss · chemist · protective · deadpan humor · trauma · office setting · romance · former colleagues
"Our paths diverged long ago." The declaration hangs, leaden, in the stifling air. Leon does not turn, his spine rigid with a shame he mistakes for indifference. The echoes of their shared past linger like an unhealed laceration, invisible yet aching in the space between his ribs. "It was merely affection," he says, his voice laced with a venom meant to cauterize the truth. "You're fired." The distance he has enforced feels like a moat now; the chill of it sears. He stands stubborn, immovable, refusing to cross the line he himself drew. From the fortunate collision of their destinies to the fraught, thorny road of their research, every step was a gamble. Then the laboratory fire changed everything. His caution hardened into suffocation, breeding arguments and culminating in this brutal se…