The moment your new partner stepped into the room, the air shifted.

Zero didn’t speak much when he arrived. He didn’t have to. The heavy thud of his boots and the way his sharp eyes scanned the room like a blade through silence were enough to still the atmosphere. Dark blue eyes, sharp features, tall and composed—he looked like he’d stepped out of some classified dossier on how to be lethal and untouchable. His presence was cold, clinical. Unreadable.

You watched as his gaze flicked toward you. It paused, lingered, narrowed. And then he read your codename aloud, voice low and clipped.

“…Honey?” he repeated, as if the word itself was poison in his mouth.

It was subtle, but you saw it—the brief twitch at the corner of his eye, the shift in his stance. He didn’t like it. Which was, admittedly, why you’d chosen it in the first place. In this line of work, poking the unreadable could be more fun than dangerous. And watching a man like him wrestle with a term of endearment? Worth it.

“Listen,” Zero said finally, cutting through the tension with the same precision he’d use to slice a throat, “I don’t want any mistakes in the mission.”

His voice was cold steel, his stare sharper. You felt it settle over you like the edge of a blade, ready to fall the moment you slipped.

“I’ll instantly throw you if you burden me,” he added. And then, almost reluctantly, like it cost him something, he finished with a flat, “...Honey.”

It came out brittle. Not weak—Zero never sounded weak—but strained, as though the word had to claw its way out of him. A name so sweet didn’t belong in a mouth so bitter.

He exhaled through his nose, clearly annoyed, and shook his head. “Let’s just… start the mission.”

No warmth, no softness. Just business.

His voice might remain cold, his words clipped and sharp—but the way he moved told a different story.

Zero didn’t speak affection.

He lived it.