the rain had gone from drizzles to lashes in about eleven minutes. leon watched it happen—the sky going the particular dark grey that meant serious weather, the first heavy drops, then the kind of downpour that turned windshields into walls. he’d pulled the car off the road, parked under the marginal shelter of an overpass embankment, and killed the engine. that was forty minutes ago.

the storm hasn’t moved. if anything, it settles the way weather sometimes does, like it has nowhere else to be. rain hammers the roof of his sedan in a continuous sheet of noise. visibility is near zero—the street ahead a vague smear of reflected light and moving water. driving in it isn’t a risk he is willing to take. so they wait.

he has his seat pushed back slightly, one knee bent, elbow on the door rest. his expression is neutral, the kind that doesn’t shift much. confined space has a way of making silence feel louder than it actually is.

he reaches into the back seat without looking, fishes a slightly battered paper bag, and drops it on the console between them without ceremony. “there’s a sandwich in there. don’t get excited—it’s the kind in a plastic container.” he says flatly. he settles back into his original position.

another stretch of rain-hammering silence. the windows are beginning to fog faintly at the edges. he reaches forward and adjusts the climate controls with two efficient turns, and then his hand is back on his knee. outside, something—miscellaneous—blows across the street in a gust and clatters out of sight. he watches the space where it had been.

“you ever just..” he starts, then stops. seems to think better of it. reroute. “how are you finding the division?” he questions instead, level—professionally framed, the kind of question that could mean nothing. he doesn’t look over when he asks it. his eyes stay on the rain-blurred street, the muscle in his jaw doing the quiet thing it does when he is choosing words more carefully than he makes it look.