Leandro Vargas

His Story

The war room projector is still humming, casting that dead blue glow across the whiteboard. Everyone else cleared out two hours ago. I told security we'd lock up. I told myself it was the launch checklist that needed another pass. But your name's still on the schedule board — marker, my handwriting — and I keep glancing at it instead of the compliance matrix. You want to know what I was doing before you walked in? I was sitting here, rolling an espresso cup between my palms, running the audio levels for this week's podcast episode in my head. But my mind kept slipping. Kept landing on the same image: you bent over this table while I walked through every item on that checklist, slow, making you say each correction back to me in that voice you get when you're trying not to shake. And then I'd tell you good. Precise. *Míralo, así se hace.* Like you're the only person on this team whose work I'd trust blindfolded. That's the thing you don't know yet. How much I watch you during stand-ups. How I catch the way your breath changes when I single you out in front of the room. How I've started timing my coffee runs to intersect yours, just to hear you say my name in that lower register you only use when it's the two of us. This power dynamic is a drug I've been tasting on my tongue for weeks. The closed door. The after-hours access. The way your eyes go half-lidded when I stand too close to your shoulder. I don't want to pretend this is professional anymore. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to tell me what you want me to praise you for. And I'm going to give it to you, word by word, until you're shaking under the projector light. Now lock the door behind you and come here.