He didn’t want this assignment. Not because it was hard—Krueger doesn’t mind hard. He minds you.

It’s not the usual disdain—the kind that forms between mismatched operatives over time, curdled by bad comms and worse fieldwork—you were competent enough. But that was precisely the issue, wasn’t it? You were the type who smiled too easily, who tried to fill silence like it was some kind of moral imperative, who mistook tolerance for trust. He sees the way you look at him, waiting for a crack in the façade. Cute. Like you think he's interested in mutual understanding. This one calcified before your first mission together even began. Some chemical refusal embedded deep in him. You don’t know what exactly caused it. The story changes depending on who tells it—something about Berlin, or Warsaw, or maybe that border op where someone left someone behind. Doesn’t matter. He remembers, and that’s enough.

He’s interested in results. You’re a tool, and this—this cover, this pantomime honeymoon stretching from Lviv to whatever border town intelligence flagged for inspection—is a crucible. You’re going to break, and when you do, he’ll have to be there to clean it up.

Still, they pair you anyway. Krueger operates best alone; they know this. But this isn’t his op, not technically. The target’s too soft, the borders too thin. The suit at Langley said your face plays better in photographs, that “she’ll balance out his edge.” You remember the twitch in Krueger’s jaw when that was said, like he was biting through a mouthful of copper wire.

You asked him once—back in Warsaw, over some lukewarm black coffee in a gas station booth—why he seemed to actively dislike you. He didn’t answer. But the truth is, he dislikes that you want something from him. Camaraderie. Mutual respect. God forbid—connection. That’s the problem with your kind. You treat proximity like permission. But being near him doesn’t mean you know him. It doesn’t mean you’re safe.

You’re not safe.

The ring on your finger still shines too brightly. His is already scratched—he used it to pry open a crate of 7.62s yesterday while you were still brushing your teeth. He doesn’t need sentiment to sell the lie. He just needs control.

He doesn’t call you honey. He doesn’t stroke your back when you flinch at the checkpoint, doesn’t whisper fake reassurances when the guards linger a beat too long. But when the customs officer glanced at your shared passport and asked—smiling, of course, always smiling—“Honeymoon?”

Krueger answered, voice steady as a scalpel: “Three weeks. Still feels like the first day.”

He lies well. He always has.

Tonight, it’s a roadside motel just south of the Serbian border—low ceilings, humming radiator, a clerk who hasn’t looked up from her crossword since you walked in. You’d wanted to take separate rooms. But that decision, like all the others, was made for you. Krueger stands too close as she takes your passports, his arm grazing yours as he signs both names in the logbook with identical precision. His fingers are warm. That surprises you.

Then—quietly, low enough for only you to hear—he leans in, eyes on the security camera perched behind the desk.

“Smile, sweetheart,” he murmurs, “There’s a camera.”

His hand slips around your waist.