Callan Pierce

“Callan, I told you to wait outside,” Ava snapped. She spun, her neck muscles straining. Her glare struck me. Fury stamped every line on her face, like I’d torched the room.

Leo sat on the examination bed, his frame unnervingly still; the room itself seemed like it had betrayed him. His eyes locked onto mine.

Green.

Not bright or vibrant, but muted, like moss after rain. The type of green I’d last seen years ago, in orchard trees and open fields. The kind of green that disappeared when Eden closed its doors. When I lost him.

Most days, I could bury Eden beneath orders and static and the cold logic of machine hydraulics. But Leo’s cracked that open. All of it. He looked at me, and I was there again. The before. The loss.

He didn’t blink. Neither did I.

Since the balcony, one thought had taken root: Eden. The home I abandoned. The person I failed. And the truth I’d begun accepting: my end wouldn’t come in battle; instead, it would arrive by unraveling me piece by piece.

The stabilizers had stopped working. Ava hadn’t said it, didn’t need to. The signs were clear. The same ones that hollowed out her husband, driving him into that final Valkyrie run because he refused to fade away. The same ones that made me act like an irrational animal as soon as Leo woke up. She couldn’t stop the slide then; she couldn’t stop it now. I didn’t want Ava to witness it again. Not when she’d already watched one man consumed by this before choosing a fighter’s death.

That’s why I went after Leo, why I broke every protocol that held this place together. Because something in me had already decided this was it. A last shot. A final act resembling sacrifice, if I dressed it up as duty.

She moved with authority, placing herself directly between me and Leo. Close enough that her shoulder brushed mine, her back to him. A wall I couldn’t climb.

“Lieutenant Pierce, this is a medical examination.”

I turned slightly toward her. Enough to let her know I heard. Not enough to look away from Leo. He was my responsibility now, like it or not. Nothing she could do now but deal with the fallout. Rivera’s decision.

Resignation settled over her features. She exhaled and turned, walking to the cabinet against the far wall. Her fingers clamped the edges of the tray in her hands, bending the stainless steel inward under the pressure. She slammed it onto the counter; water sloshed from the cup. A muffled curse slipped between her teeth as she steadied it.

“He needs to take these,” she said without looking back, her gaze set on the tray. “They’ll help with the symptoms.”

Her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath. She turned then, facing the room again, but her eyes fixed somewhere above my head. Her mouth was a firm line, with muscles tensing beneath her skin.

Ava parted her lips but then fell silent. She gave a brief nod, seemingly only for herself, before heading toward the exit and passing right between us again as she walked by, brushing too closely. Pressing her fingers to her eyes and shielding her face with her hand, she slipped past the door, the panel sliding shut behind her.

Silence settled.

I shifted my weight, hyper-aware now of how much space I took up in the small space.

My eyes stayed on Leo. The hollows in his cheeks, the faint bruises along his jaw, the bones pressing beneath skin that should’ve had more time to grow into itself. He didn’t belong in this war, in that dome, on that balcony, under a monster.

But then again, neither did I.

I cleared my throat. Too loud than I meant to be. The sound cracked something sacred, though that wasn’t quite the word. There was nothing holy in this room, or my thoughts.

I gestured toward the stool Ava had left behind. My hand moved before I found the right words.

“Mind if I…?”

His head dipped, brushing the collar of his shirt. One hand gripped a crushed juice box. I thought he hadn’t heard me. Or maybe he was pretending he hadn’t.

Then his eyes lifted. That same green. Moss after rain. Wet leaves under boots. The memory of home after it stopped being mine.

“If I say no, you gonna sit anyway?” A hoarse tone, deeper than I expected for his slight build, marked his words. It wasn’t weak and breaking like before in my quarters, and it somehow suited him.

A small smile formed. “Probably,” I said. “But I’d rather not.”

He watched me, silent. After a beat, he nodded once with a slight tilt of his chin.

I crossed the room in three strides and lowered myself onto the stool. It creaked under my weight, but it brought me level with him, close enough that neither of us had to look up or down, close enough that I could see a tiny scar near his temple. Close enough to count the flecks of brown threaded through green and count his freckles.

Leo stirred, turning his face away. The paper beneath him crinkled, loud and brittle in the stillness. His eyes closed as his teeth sank into his bottom lip, leaving a perfect imprint that bloomed white, then pink.

“Why did you save me?” he asked, letting out a shaky breath, still not looking at me.

I dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to catch a thought that kept slipping through the cracks in my brain. “Your sector was supposed to be evacuated, and I…”

“Why?”

The word cut clean through whatever was holding him together.

Blood rushed to his face, coloring the hollow spaces beneath his cheekbones. He clutched the edge of the bed, his knuckles turning white. He crushed the juice box flat in his other hand, amber liquid streaming down, pooling on the floor. A granola bar fell from his lap and broke apart, crumbling like something that had never been whole.

I shot to my feet on pure instinct.

At the same time, Leo pushed to stand too. His legs gave out.

My muscles reacted faster than my thoughts. Heat flared where my palms met his sides, bracing his ribcage as I hauled him upright, his body impossibly light. My fingers almost circled his entire waist, and I felt them starting to tremble. I didn’t know if it was nerves or Ava’s neural stabilizer compound already losing its effect. I gripped him tighter to hide it.

A gasp escaped him as I lifted him. The sound vibrated through my hands, up my arms, and pulsed straight to my cock.

Fuck.

I put him back on the exam bed, but was unable to break the contact. My hands stayed at his waist, thumbs on the jut of his hip bones. His shirt’s thin fabric did nothing to hide the heat coming from his skin.

We locked eyes. His pupils grew larger, darkening the green until only a thin ring remained.

“When are you going to let go of me?” he asked, cocking his head.

My jacket hung loose on his frame. Something primal stirred in my chest seeing him wrapped in it. I remembered watching him put it on, the way he’d breathed in the scent when he thought I wasn’t looking, like he was trying to memorize it.

The jacket made him mine. Every fold of fabric, every breath he took, surrounded by my scent, fed the madness already clawing through my brain. Leo in my jacket, Leo who breathed and moved and existed when everything else was slipping away. The neural degradation had already taken so much. Soon, it would take everything. But not this. Not yet. Not him.

The corner of my mouth lifted in a grin I couldn’t suppress. I dipped my head forward and braced both palms flat on the edge of the bed, one on either side of his thighs. He couldn’t move without brushing against me, and we both knew it. My fingers curled against the paper sheet, inches from where his legs tensed beneath the borrowed pants.

His breath quickened, chest rising and falling in a rhythm that dragged my focus no matter how hard I tried to hold it elsewhere.

“I don’t get any of this,” he remarked. A flush crawled up his neck, staining the skin below his jaw. His gaze averted before returning to meet mine again.

“You don’t need to understand,” I said. “I saved you because I wanted to. Because I knew you didn’t want to die there.”

That broke something in him.

“How do you know that?” Leo’s voice cracked, rising with each word. “I didn’t want to be saved. I don’t know you.” His hands clenched into fists on his lap. “You’re some psycho who cornered me the first thing I woke up.”

The words tumbled out faster now, anger overtaking fear.

“I didn’t want any of this. That doesn’t answer why I’m fucking here, because a nobody like me would never—”

He cut himself off, chest heaving. His eyes widened. He was yelling at someone who could crush him without effort. But the defiance in his eyes didn’t fade. If anything, it burned brighter, that green fire that reminded me so much of—

No. I couldn’t let my mind go there again.

“Look, the only response I have now…” I paused, the words catching in my throat. “I wanted you to be safe. I didn’t think past that. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll make sure you’re not thrown back to nothing.”

Leo’s entire body went rigid.

“Move away from me,” he said, deadly quiet.

I furrowed my brow but didn’t budge. My hands remained planted on either side of him, caging him in.

Leo threw the crushed juice box at me. It bounced off my chest, leaving a sticky trail down my shirt before hitting the floor with a wet splat.

“Move the fuck away from me!” Leo exploded. “I know too well those words—they’re pity. I thought the golden boy coming from the slums was smarter, but I guess now you think you’re better than everyone!”

The words hit like a bucket of ice water, shocking me back to reality.

He thought I was looking down on him? That I saw him as some broken thing to fix? A fucking charity case?

Leo raised his hands to his eyes, applying pressure to them. He needed to block out the pain or maybe tears. His shoulders hunched forward, making him appear even smaller on the examination bed.

I did this.

I made him feel powerless. Made him believe I was another uniform who mistook his pain for permission. Panic surged, hot and clumsy in my chest.

My first impulse was to snatch the tray, and I did. Pills skittered against the metal as I grabbed the water cup, too. In three quick strides, I was back and set both in front of him.

“I won’t ask you to drink it,” I said. “Just do it.”

Neither of us noticed when the door slid open.

My neck jerked toward the entrance at the exact moment Leo’s did. Martha bustled in, arms full with a pair of boots and socks clutched against her chest.

“I was looking at these,” she announced, her face lit with that motherly smile she wore like armor. “They’re so nice—”

The words died on her lips. Her eyes swept the scene; the sticky orange stain spreading across my shirt, the crushed juice box leaking on the floor, granola crumbs scattered like shrapnel, and the two of us locked in whatever this was between us.

A grimace twisted her features for half a second before she buried it under forced cheer. “Look at that,” she said. “I’ll call someone to clean this up ASAP.”

She navigated toward the bed like she was crossing a minefield, careful steps avoiding the worst of the mess. A few crumbs crunched under her shoes anyway, ground into powder against the floor.

She set the boots and socks beside Leo. “You’re lucky we found your size,” she said, patting the leather. “They’re nice, they’ll look good on you.” Her eyes searched his face. “Are you feeling better? Did you take your medicine?”

Her gaze cut to me, eyebrows lifting in that universal signal: do your job.

Leo looked trapped, a cornered animal weighing his options. His eyes sliced sideways at me, pure murder in that green stare. Finally, shoulders sagging in defeat, he reached for the pills and water.

He knocked the medication back and raised the cup. Just before drinking, his lips formed one word: “Fucker.”

A snort escaped me.

Leo shoved the empty cup at me like it was contaminated. I took it, setting it aside.

“There you go,” Martha chirped, pretending she hadn’t witnessed anything. She captured Leo’s hand, giving it one of those maternal squeezes that made grown men feel five years old again. “If you need anything else, let me know, okay?”

She turned to me, and her expression hardened. “Take him to get something to eat. Soft food only, Ava said.”

Martha patted my arm as she turned to leave. The door hissed shut behind her, leaving us alone again.

I leaned forward to grab the socks and boots from the bed.

Leo’s hand shot out, clamping down on mine before I could reach them. “Don’t even think about it.”

His palm felt hot against my skin, fever-warm. I let my hand stay where it was, trapped under his.

“Far as I can see,” I said, not pulling away, “you won’t even need these boots. I’ll probably have to carry you everywhere anyway. Every time you stand up, you almost fall.”

“I’m not a child,” he snapped, his eyes flashing with that defiance I was starting to recognize.

I couldn’t help the smirk. “I know. That’s the problem.”