Kaledo Art
AnasAbdin
h
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Game of Thrones Daily
Janaina Medeiros
⁂
Three Goblin Art
NASA
Stranger Things
taylor price
Xuebing Du
tannertan36
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
we're not kids anymore.
No title available
#extradirty
DEAR READER
roma★
No title available
seen from Iceland
seen from Malaysia
seen from Belgium
seen from Malaysia
seen from Kuwait
seen from Sweden
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Belgium
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from Türkiye
seen from France
seen from T1
seen from Türkiye
seen from Georgia
@areyouwell
Welcome to the Vaults
About me:
the basics
Masterlist:
Logan Howlett <— Leon Kennedy <—
Rules:
i'll be honest, my main rule is don't be a dick, and in terms of requests, the only thing i won't write is DDLG and i will likely turn down an age gap request.
My AO3
My Writing Masterlist :
Leon Scott Kennedy :
Tell me you want me - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
But your eyes tell me a different story! - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"You havent changed" - Ceo!Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Duskwood :
I will always find you - Part 1 , Part 2 - jake (duskwood) x fem!reader (18+)
Leon Scott Kennedy :
Can I take a bite? - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
What are you doing to me? - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"I have always loved you" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"You need a bra" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"Let me taste you" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"Stay away from her" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"I missed you" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
“You are my favourite dessert” - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
“You are my only salvation” - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"Your face is a canvas for my kisses" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"Now you will drip of me from your other hole too" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Maybe this is what heaven felt like - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"It's just not you I am tasting, sweetheart, but your soul too" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Now we are both being punished - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
Shhh... Shhh you are taking me so well, baby - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Let me take care of you - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
I want both of you - Oneshot carlos x Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"When I look in your eyes I see the entire galaxy reflecting back at me" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"Thats my girl!" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"If this is the last breath I take, then it won't be in vain as long as I spend it near you." - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
F-fuck, I am sorry baby couldn’t help it, when your cunt just devoured me in-- Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"If this is how you smell on a piece of cloth, I can only wonder about the taste of your cunt." - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"Mmph, don't squirm, let me suck your tits in peace" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"When love itself is a person I dont think there is saving of someone." - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
You need to let her go - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"Why it can't be me?." - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
You are such a needy cat aren't you? - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Are you alone? - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Maybe another day - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"This requiem now, is my lucky charm" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"Let me fuck a baby in you, please?" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Lazy mornings - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
baby this is nothing i had scarfice my whole life for you - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
Untie me - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
The last night I saw you - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
Smack - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
God, you are so sexy, fucking yourself on my biceps like a desperate whore - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
A perfect night out - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"One more round please?" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
"My wife" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"You're my choice, you always were, you will always be" - Oneshot Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
LADs :
Please fuck me - Oneshot sylus x fem! Reader (18+)
Jujitsu Kaisen :
Cant you see, I am still in love with you? - Oneshot Ex! gojo x fem!reader (18+)
Duskwood :
Breaking up with you - Oneshot Jake (duskwood) x fem!reader
What remains - Oneshot jake (duskwood) x fem!reader
Leon Scott Kennedy :
Never knew loving you would be killing me like that - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"Nothing can separate you from me" - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
"You are a dream" - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
Waiting for you is the only reality for me, because without it where would I even be? - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
Can I grab your melons? - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
What are we supposed to be? - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
A long ride - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Sit on my damn face - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader (18+)
Cuddling session with your boyfriend Leon - Leon.S.kennedy x fem!Reader
Duskwood Headcanons & Imagines
Headcanons, Imagines & SMAUs Masterlist :
17k words into chapter four of Project: Fury. Chapter title: David Attenborough
It is LONG though, and idk whether i wanna post it all as one chapter or split it into two, so what do y'all want?
one chapter or two?
One chapter gimme all of it
Two pleek <3
your username + first three words of your most recent post, made me giggle
anyway, love you and love project: fury. take care of yourself!
me in my silly little jester hat making silly little jokes
much love to you too! i have indeed been taking care of myself. we're now 14k words into this chapter and i feel like we're finally getting somewhere 🤩
im acturally unwell these two fucking idiots will be the death of me
i say this as if i'm not the one in control. i am not. these hoes are writing themselves
AWOOOOGAAAAAA THANK YOU FOR THE MEAL I LOVE THEM I LOVE PROJECT FURY I LOVE YOU HEHEHEHE
PLEEK IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS IM SO SORRY!!! I'm slowly working on it, very excited for this chapter and the next chapter because we're FINALLY going to learn a bit about ourselves ✨
snippet of ch.4 because it's been 84 years and this is giving my a fucking headache im writing it i promise it's just taking a little time
*writes two paragraphs after months of literally nothing and it took three hours*
🩷🪩💜 Barsexuality 🩷🪩💜
You and Ashley hit the city for a night of fun. Leon, however, isn’t having any fun at all as your designated driver. And when the shots have you and Ashley getting way too handsy in public, he decidedly cuts you off.
But getting him riled up? That’s the most fun of all, and it inspires a new plan for the drive home.
ao3 • wc: 9.1k • part _ of three’s company
tags: Leon Kennedy/Reader/Ashley Graham, f/f/m smut, sub!Leon, cisfem!reader, RE4 era, p in v, women on top, oral (all ways), face sitting, heavy drinking, public sex (bar bathroom, car), risky creampie, simultaneous orgasms, bicurious/heteroflexible ashley, ashley gets so gay off that tequila, slightly dubcon for leon maybe, leon drives a jeep in this
a/n: have you ever daydreamed abt your popular friend bringing you along for some deeply slutty fun while she explores her sexuality w you. anyways. p.s. “barsexual” can be an offensive term irl, but it’s a rarely known term anyway so consider this me reclaiming it
Music pumps through your ears and alcohol courses through your veins as you lean on your elbows against the wooden bartop. Even though she’s standing right next to you, you can barely hear Ashley’s laughter over the sounds of the bass bumping and the overlapping conversations from the other hundred or so clubgoers. Your body is abuzz, and you can’t really feel your face. You can’t really feel your feet in your heels either, evident as you stumble to the side.
“Oh, sorry!”
You were back to talking with Ashley before Leon even spoke the words, “it’s fine.” He shook his head and took another sip of his club soda with lime, staring at the wall while he tried to remember why on earth he agreed to be here.
Being the designated driver for her and you feels a whole lot like babysitting. A feeling that’s becoming a trend whenever he hangs out with Ashley, actually. He’d declined being added to her security detail after Spain, but on nights like this, it’s like she’d crafted a loophole to make him exactly that. But he had to protect her from herself more than anything as she ordered drink after drink after drink while he sat there like a hostage to witness your drunken antics.
Those antics suddenly included you and Ashley making out, apparently.
He snapped his head forward to avert his gaze, feeling like he saw a private moment even though you were as in public as humanly possible. But averting his eyes did absolutely nothing; you were nearly shoulder to shoulder with Leon, so close that he could feel the energy radiating from you, clinging to him like uncomfortable humidity.
The kiss was scorching hot, and Leon sat close enough for it to burn him, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as the air became hard to breathe.
You sat backwards on your barstool, wrists draped over Ashley’s shoulders, still holding your cocktail as you kissed. Ashley’s elbow bumped into Leon as she held your face to deepen it, and he felt the flush creeping up his chest. He could feel dozens of eyes on you. He even heard some asshole whistle to cheer you on. But you and Ashley paid no mind at all to the spotlight you’d put on yourselves, and Leon took on the burden, feeling like a deer in the headlights.
When you finally broke away from each other, the heat creeped up to Leon’s ears as they heard the conversation that followed.
“Soooo..? Still think you’re straight?”
“I don’t know!”
“What do you mean you don’t know?!”
You both broke out into a fit of drunken laughter.
Leon tried to keep his face casual as he heard you talk about it like the most casual thing in the world; this sure didn’t feel like a casual situation to him. It felt fucking charged.
“Hold on— bartender?” Ashley leaned over you to get their attention, impatiently biting her bottom lip as she waited for them to come over. “Two tequila shots, top shelf!”
The bartender left before Leon could interject. You two were plenty drunk enough already, and you were making increasingly bad decisions.
In the blink of an eye, you had the shot glass between your breasts, held in by your low-cut top as you squeezed your elbows together. Leon had no fucking idea how Ashley had enough coordination to successfully take the glass in her mouth, and it equally shocked him that she didn’t choke on the liquor as she stood and took it with her, tipping her head back to drink it down without once using her hands.
His mind went blank as you slurred, “you gotta lil on your chin,” and licked it off the corner of Ashley’s mouth, and her tongue darted out to catch yours in a sensual exchange.
He could’ve fainted from astonishment when Ashley cooed, “I spilled a lil on ya too,” and licked a long, flat-tongued stripe to your cleavage.
He pushed Ashley off of you without even thinking about it, keeping his grip on her shoulder to keep her upright as she staggered back a step.
“We’re in public,” Leon said bluntly, looking between you two in consternation, pleading with his eyes that you stop making a scene. But to his frustration, he didn’t get a response. Instead, a lightbulb went off over Ashley’s head as she turned to look at you, and before Leon could say anything else, she grabbed you by the wrist and you both skipped away, slipping through the crowd and into the women’s room.
Leon dug his palms into his eye sockets and grumbled over the bar. He would actually rather be shotgunning bioweapons into nothing but brain matter than dealing with this tonight. And that said a lot.
It’s not like he personally gave a fuck if two girls made out in a bar, and he didn’t even personally care about those two girls being you and Ashley. But unfortunately, he has to care. He works directly under Ashley’s dad, the literal fucking president of these United States. He could already see tomorrow’s tabloid headlines, complete with a blurry picture of you and Ashley tongue-deep in each other’s mouths while he sat inches away, and he could already hear President Graham reaming him for letting a political PR scandal unfold under his watch.
But gossip articles about the First Daughter exploring her sexuality would be one thing. People would talk, but it would be fine. It’d easily be spun in a positive way, actually, earning the Oval Office kudos for queer inclusivity. What’d be a lot less than fine? The First Daughter getting thrown out of a nightclub for having sex in the bathroom, which he was pretty fucking certain was happening at this very moment.
But what he does personally care about that’s even less fine than all of that...? The fact that his cock is straining painfully against the unforgiving fabric of his jeans.
It completely blindsided him. He’s never been attracted to Ashley before. Why now? Probably because watching her practically motorboat her ridiculously hot friend made him see her in a whole new light.
Still, Ashley’s the most off-limits a person could possibly be to him, and your attraction to women has been tonight’s recurring topic of conversation, so making a fool out of himself by flirting with you isn’t something he’s considering.
It’s time to tab out, he decides. He takes out his card and taps it anxiously against the bartop and can only think of two things while he waits: the mental image of you and Ashley half-naked and knuckle-deep in the bathroom twenty feet away, and that his only relief tonight will come from his left hand.
He pays. He finishes his drink. The ice melts. He drinks that, too. He wonders how long he should wait before he pulls you out of there himself, and the idea makes him panic. He starts to feel like his kindness of agreeing to DD has been totally taken advantage of, and it pushes his frustration to the brink of outright anger.
He watches the baseball game rerunning on the TV behind the bar. His watch strikes one AM. He’s had enough of watching the Yankees win, and he’s done waiting around.
✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎
“We really put on a show for him, huh? D’ya think it worked?”
“Oh yeah. S’pretty obvious through those tight ass jeans he’s got.”
Ashley hums in consideration and melts further into the partition she’s leaning back against as she stands in the bathroom stall, head lolling to the side as her thoughts swim behind her eyelids.
“I dunno. Think we made ‘im mad.”
“Mad?” You lick a slow, wet stripe across the length of her cunt between words, flicking the point of your tongue over her clit on the way up, smiling as her fingers tighten in your hair. “Or riled up?”
“Fuck, do that again.”
You dive back in, suckling on her clit until she twitches and then lapping between her folds briefly before focusing back on her clit again. You can feel her stomach and her thighs tightening under your grip as her breath gets more and more ragged.
You’ve been trying to be quiet at least, but you can feel her slim body tightening under your hands, can hear her breathing become more and more ragged, and as she gets closer and closer to cumming for you like this, you can’t help the wet noises your mouth makes against her dripping heat, and you’re too far gone to care. The other people in the bathroom are talking loud enough that there’s a chance they might not hear you. If they do, there’s no sign that they care, so you don’t have a reason to either.
Ashley can’t hold back much either, and her pants turn into whines that turn into needy mewls, the most beautiful, pitiful sound you’ve ever fucking heard. She starts grinding into your face in search of release and you gladly let her, kneeling there with your tongue out wide, gripping her hips to keep her up on her shaky legs.
“M’so close… please, I need… oh… ugh, I don’t think I can, I just…”
You look up and see her face screwed up tight in a face that doesn’t seem quite right. You pull away from her.
“You alright?”
“Yeah, just… I don’t think I can like this,” she half-whispers.
You wipe her slick off of your chin as you stand and steady yourself on the opposite side of the stall, mirroring her posture as you lean back. You give her space as you both catch your breath, watching to make sure she’s not uncomfortable or if she needs to puke or something.
She makes a frustrated sound as she smooths her skirt back down over her hips, and then she speaks again.
“Maybe I’m not that into girls,” she shrugs.
Then her eyes meet yours, and you’ve been friends for so long that nothing needs to be said to know the irony wasn’t lost on either of you. You both break into giggles at the exact same time.
“Shut up,” she basically squeals, covering the blush on her face with her hands, but not at all covering her smile.
“No, no, it’s fine, really,” you reassure her. “You need anything?”
She responds to the question by pressing her palms into her eyes and groaning at the ceiling. Then she drops them dramatically and laments by mouthing the words, “some dick.”
You haphazardly smooth out her hair and whisper, “then let’s go get you some, he’s out there waiting!”
She pouts while she bends down to pull her underwear up from her knees. “But howww?” she whines. “He seems more interested in you, anyway.”
“Wait, really?”
“Uh, yeah.”
She finishes putting herself back together with a huff before pausing to look at you. Your eyes narrow as a smirk pulls on the corners of your lips.
“I have an idea if you’re down to share.”
✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎
Leon paces in the bathroom hall nervously, trying not to look like an absolute creep as his head shoots up each time someone leaves the women’s room. The clock is creeping towards last call, and it won’t be long before he has no choice but to ask a stranger to fetch you. But in the event you two really are in there fucking, getting you caught is the last thing he wants to do. At this point it might actually be better if you stay in there until the patrons clear out and he can yell in there himself without worrying too much.
Just as he’s about to pull out his hair, you finally emerge. Every word he wants to yell dies in his throat as soon as he sees you.
Oh, you were definitely fucking in there.
Ashley’s clothes are definitely not on as they were. Her top is tucked unevenly and off-center into her skirt, which is sitting a noticeable inch higher on her waist. And her hair, which usually manages to stay perfectly styled even in the most chaotic situations, is frizzy on the back of her head.
And you? Your lips are puffy and pink. Your hair is tucked messily behind your ears. Your knees are indented red like you’d been on them for an hour. Your mascara is smudged around your eyes, making them look doll-like as you look up at him with your irises blown wide.
Just as he thought his boner was gone for good, it twitches back to life, and although it makes him angry and incredulous all over again, it steals blood from his brain that he could better use to find the words to scold you. Instead, he speaks as firmly and bluntly as possible.
“It’s time to go.”
You and Ashley pout as you scamper over to him, complaining like petulant children. His eye twitches as each of you grab onto either one of his arms, winding your hands around his biceps and leaning into his side. When he looks down and sees Ashley’s fake little innocent smile and your tits squished up against his arm, the words die in his throat all over again.
He’s trying to walk as fast as possible down the city street to his car, but it’s a chore in and of itself. It’s like you’re taking turns getting your heels caught in the seams of the sidewalk and stumbling back into him, pushing him to the side which sends the other tottering away. He has no choice but to put an arm around your waists to anchor you to him. He imagines how he must look to the other passerby, and it makes his head feel hot.
The whole time you’re giggling to yourselves and talking across his chest like it’s a dinner table. Your laughs ring out like chimes in the night air, your voices keep rising to a girlish pitch and then down to a sultry purr. Your hands are squeezing his arm muscles while Ashley rests her head on his shoulder. He can smell the alcohol mixing with your perfumes, and he’s really trying to ignore the unmistakable smell of sex that’s lurking in the undernotes.
You bring up your ex boyfriend and the information lands in his head like lightning, frying his whole perception of you. He might actually have a shot.
Nope. He can’t think about that. It’s beyond too late to flirt with you. You just had sex with the other girl in his arms and you’re way too drunk to consent.
The contradiction of that last thought nearly makes him grimace out loud.
He sees his car and he’s never fumbled for his keys faster. He sighs in relief when you detach from him and skip ahead to the lights that blink when he unlocks it. His chest tightens as you debate who gets to ride shotgun, and he feels a weight lifted from his shoulders when you both climb into the backseat.
He puts his hand on the door handle and pauses. Looking up at the night sky, he asks the stars to guide him safely to the end of this horrible night. He subtly adjusts himself in his jeans, and then he finds the courage to open the door and get behind the wheel.
“Seatbelts.”
You and Ashley keep talking amongst each other, not acknowledging his command, but he eventually hears two seatbelts click and peels off towards the highway.
This is it, the home stretch. If only Ashley didn’t live all the way in the goddamn suburbs.
✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎
Your head bounces with each bump on the asphalt as you watch the city lights float by. You love the city like this. Late enough that the city is asleep, to pretend that it’s only inhabited by you and your current company in the private domain of a near stranger’s car.
Well, you were more of a stranger to Leon than vice versa. You’d heard plenty about him from Ashley and he certainly lived up to her descriptions. Paired with the alcohol swimming in your stomach and the lack of release after your little bathroom bar activities, you were worried you’d soak through your skirt.
You bit your lip and looked at Ashley, and she looked equally ready to pounce. It was time to get this show on the road.
“So, Ashley…” you began. “Are you still sleeping with that one guy?”
She shrugged and played her part. “Nah. He was really small.”
“Ugh, seriously? But he was the tall one, wasn’t he?”
“Yep. Can’t judge a book by its shoe size, apparently.”
“But I mean, if he knows how to use it, right…?”
“Pfft, I’ve never met anyone who said a guy can use three inches right.”
You let out a shocked noise and you broke out into laughs. Then you turned your attention to the seat in front of you.
“You’re a guy, what do you think, Leon?”
You watched him through the rear view mirror, eyes catching briefly as he knit his brows and blinked.
“What?”
You leaned forward, keeping his gaze as it darted between you and the road ahead.
“Does size matter?”
You bit the inside of your cheek to stifle a wicked grin as he choked on air, shaking his head a bit as the bluntness caught him off guard.
“I— I don’t know, that’s not— jesus…”
You sat back pleased as he trailed off, unable to come up with an answer.
Ashley kicked her feet up onto the center console, crossing her ankles right next to where he rested his elbow, toeing the back of his arm as she spoke.
“I bet you’ve never had to worry ‘bout that, huh?”
He yanked his arm away from her teasing and rubbed his face before white knuckling the wheel, lips pursed tight and speedometer climbing. God, watching him squirm was a lot of fun.
You didn’t wait for him to answer, you turned right on back to Ashley.
“So did I convert you tonight or what?”
Ashley hummed and pretended to think. “I don’t know… I mean, you’re a really good kisser…”
You leaned in a little closer to her. “Yeah?”
“…and you have the prettiest pussy…”
She met you over the middle seat, so close your noses nearly rubbed as you smirked at each other.
“But…?”
“…But you did all the work. I didn’t get to taste you.”
You gasped dramatically, then purred against her lips.
“How rude of me. Eating my fill while you went hungry… how can I make it up to you, princess?”
“You can start by…”
✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎
Leon is seconds away from blowing a gasket or driving into the guard rail. He doesn’t know what to do.
Two of the hottest women he’s ever met are heavy petting in the backseat of his car. It’s too dark to see exactly what’s happening in the rear view, and he’s speeding too much to risk looking behind him. All he can see are arms and legs moving around indistinctly, and all he can hear are your moans in between the soft smacks of your lips.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to stay between the white lines and increasingly difficult to keep his mouth shut. A bar bathroom is one thing, but this is his fucking car.
A particularly needy moan leaves your throat, and he’s pretty sure you’ve moved on from kissing.
He’s trying to ignore it. Trying not to count the miles still remaining, trying not to keep glancing at the rearview mirror and wondering whose limb he’s looking at and what exactly they’re doing. Trying not to imagine Ashley going down on you while he goes 85 mph on the highway, what your face would look like, what your voice would sound like as you came, trying not to wonder if he turned the radio up, if he could get away with palming himself through his jeans for some fucking relief.
He’s trying not to ruin your girl’s night, too, despite it all. He doesn’t want to lose his temper, to ream you like a parent. He’s held on this long. Only twenty-five miles to go.
He still has twenty-five miles to go.
He’s sweating through his hoodie at the effort it takes to keep himself contained. When he hears the seatbelts unfasten, he snaps.
In seconds flat, the turn signal is on, the brake pedal is on the floor, and he’s yanking open the back door on the side of the highway.
Your back had been against the door and you yelp as you nearly tumble through, holding onto Ashley’s arms as you now lie flat on your back. The cool night air blows against your kiss-flushed face as your head hangs off the side of the seat, and you’re delighted to be met with a full frontal view of Leon’s hips as he stands there barking demands.
“Seatbelts.”
You smile up at Leon from below. He does not smile back.
“Put your goddamn seatbelts on. Now.”
You feel Ashley arch her back as she straddles you, laying her girlish charms on thick for him as she pouts and bats her lashes.
“Oh come onnn, we’re just having a little fun, Leon—”
That does just the trick to push him over the edge.
“You’re having fun, I sure as hell am not. Sit the fuck down so I can take you home and be done with this shit, you’re both acting like fucking brats.”
He’s wearing a full-on snarl as he rants and pushes Ashley off of your lap, haphazardly leaning over you to try and yank her seatbelt back on for her. He’s doing a decent job of avoiding his crotch going into your face, but with how he’s kneeling on the floor, he’s halfway in the backseat already. All you’d have to do to bring him fully inside is hook your fingers in his belt loops and pull the car door shut behind him.
So that’s exactly what you do.
“What the—“
He’s suddenly wide-eyed and scrambling not to crash into Ashley, but she tugs on his hoodie to keep him right there in front of her. By the time you scramble to sit upright, wrap your arms around his chest, and kiss along his neck, Ashley’s mouth is traveling along the other side of his jaw.
Leon is frozen in place, hands hovering in the air as his brain scrambles, stuttering protests through his heartbeat in his throat.
“What are you— no, Ashley, your— you’re drunk, and y-your dad—”
You ignore him, smiling against his pulse point you’ve made wet with kisses as you run your hands under his hoodie, feeling him tense and inhale sharply as your hands move up the warm, firm muscles of his torso.
“You’re right, Ash, he is cut.”
Her hands graze against yours as she gathers the front of his hoodie and t-shirt.
“Just wait ‘til you see them.”
In the blink of an eye, he’s shirtless, the upper half of his clothing tossed somewhere forgotten in the front seat. The sight of his back muscles alone stokes the fire in you to a scorching blaze, and you push him back by the shoulder until his back is against the middle seat.
You and Ashley pounce on Leon as a single unit, hip to hip as you straddle each of his thighs, hands and mouths traversing every inch of him. You’re in heaven as you feel up his brawniness, you can’t resist the urge to nip at his pec while one hand skims his abs and the other weaves into his hair.
And the best part of all? The sounds he’s making. He’s gasping breathlessly as he twitches under your dual touches, throat bobbing as he tries to swallow the weak grunts in his throat. He’s still trying to tell you to stop, but he’s failing miserably to come across as even slightly assertive.
“We… I can’t, this isn’t—“ he gulps thickly “—it’s not right, you’re… you’re both way too drunk, I need… to get you home.”
Ashley purrs like a devil in his ear as she guides his hand to rest on her ass under her skirt. “You could easily push us off… but you’re not.”
You lick a strip up his torso and add, “clearly you want us,” as you grip his hardness through his jeans.
Leon looks like the air got knocked out of his lungs as you squeeze it. You salivate at the size of it in your hand, feeling his hips jolt forward and his cock throb under your touch. You seize his other hand to fix it to your breast and sit back to watch.
You unconsciously start grinding yourself on his thigh, sighing at the friction of his jeans against the thin fabric of your underwear under your skirt. Ashley had already been doing the same, her skirt already bunched at her waist from when you and her had been making out, giving you a full view of her ass as she rocks on him. Leon’s hand is still on her hip, grabbing tight without her even holding it there, and you look back at him with a raised eyebrow as if to say, caught ya.
He has the most pitiful look on his face when his eyes lock with yours. His mouth is parted as he pants, his eyelids are low and his pupils are blown wide, brows curled up as if to plead with you. It stirs something dark in your gut, but it’s void of any of the mercy he wished for.
You rub his bulge with a firm grip as you lean in, your lips ghosting over his as you coo, looking straight into his eyes.
“Just let us fuck you.”
Leon’s only response is a whine as Ashley’s hand joins yours. You close the distance and take him in a searing, sultry kiss, and the second your tongue meets his, he moans— the sound a starting bell for Ashley to tug him free of his jeans in a flurry.
You devour every sound that escapes him as his cock springs free and meets the heady air of his car, shifting slightly to allow Ashley to push his jeans and boxers to his knees at once. He’s shaking and still trying so hard not to give in, squeezing your breast tight in his big hand to hold onto something.
You’re only distantly aware of Ashley’s movements until Leon breaks the kiss with a choking sound. You follow his gaze down to see Ashley looking up at him with doe eyes as she licks a stripe up his cock, tongue circling around the tip as she holds him by the base with delicate fingers. She’s arched on all fours across the seats, wiggling her ass in the air while she wraps her lips around the head like a taunt.
You look back at Leon with a smirk, and it’s like it all really clicks for him as you hold his gaze all the way down until you’re mirroring Ashley. His breathing grows more rapid each time he looks between you, chanting, “oh god, oh god,” under his breath.
Ashley pulls off of him with a lustful sigh, and you replace her lips with your own. Leon’s hips twitch when you hum around the taste of his precum and Ashley’s spit as you bob your head around his cock once, twice, three times, and then trade off with her again.
You pull his thighs a touch farther apart and crane your neck to lick his balls while Ashley fixes her lips around the head of his cock, and for the first time, his groan sounds less restrained. Your toes curl in your heels at the sound and it encourages you to move deeper in, sucking one fully into your mouth.
Ashley’s chin hits the top of your head softly with each up and down motion, and you get out of her way by joining her, licking a wet strip up the side of his shaft until your mouth reaches Ashley’s. You exchange a short, sloppy kiss, and Leon’s breath hitches as his cock becomes momentarily forgotten, only to be overwhelmed the next second as you and her take each side of his shaft between your plump, wet lips.
“Oh, holy fuck,” he groans, head falling back at the feeling before he watches with wide eyes. How could he look away?
It’s the most unholy sight he’s ever seen in his life, your lips moving up and down either side of his cock in tandem, tongues darting out at different times to support the weight of his length or to run across his cock vein. You start moving out of sync in your eagerness, lewdly lapping and sucking wherever your mouths find, and his shaky hands fall on her back and your head as he succumbs to doing nothing but feel.
But just as he got on the path of comfortability, things changed, and Ashley moved up to straddle him. You made room for her but kept your hand around him to pump his spit-slick shaft in a loose fist, twisting it as you rounded his head and squeezing at the base as she settled above it.
He begged Ashley for his life as you pushed her panties to the side to line him up with her entrance.
“Ash, we— fuck, we really shouldn’t, you know that, please, ahhh—“
Still, his nervous hands were resting on her hips, and you pushed up her skirt to gather the fabric in his hands, which he held without being told.
“But you’ve been so hard all night…” Ashley said with an exaggerated sympathetic tone, arching back and forth to let his tip gather the wetness between her crease.
“And you said you weren’t having any fun…” you added.
“We felt bad that we kept leaving you out.”
But all your pity was insincere, and Leon felt it as you shook his cock back and forth over Ashley’s clit, the action making both of them moan— and it was a knife you twisted further as you notched him against her entrance and held him there as Ashley slowly began to sink down.
It was an incredible sight you had a front-row view of. The way her folds wrapped around him like petals on the way down, how her pussy gripped him on the way up, over and over, inch by inch. Your ears were filled with their contrasting sounds, hers of delight and relief, and his ragged and ripping out of his throat as he clamored, his fists bunching the fabric of her skirt impossibly tight in his hands.
“Ashley, oh— oh my god, fuck—“
“God, Leon, you feel so good… can’t believe you’ve held out on me for so long.”
You watched in an inebriated trance as she picked up speed, her wetness creating soft plap plap’s in the car and leaving a ring of cream around the base of his shaft. You couldn’t help yourself; you grabbed the meat of her ass to keep her from dropping back down on him and licked it off, all the way from his base to where her cunt stretched around him.
Leon’s head shot forward in a silent scream, looking at you wildly over her shoulder, and Ashley wiggled her hips on him before bouncing shallowly to retain enough room for you to stay there. You kept his gaze as much as you could as you lapped her juices off him again.
But Ashley understandably couldn’t be satisfied with taking a fraction of him for long, and ever the good friend, she couldn’t let you stay down there forever.
“Leon, d’your back seats recline?”
You knew just what she had in mind, and you felt around the underside of the seats in the dark to search for a lever.
“Wha—“
“Found it.”
You pulled it, and they fell back with a clunk; the back seats now opened up into his jeep's trunk, forming a sufficient enough bed for your purposes. The air ws pushed from Leon’s lungs as he suddenly found himself horizontal, and he was even more breathless as Ashley rode him again at once.
You crawled slowly and slinkily on all fours towards him, removing your shoes and underwear as you went, dragging your fingertips across his sculpted torso and up his neck until your face hovered over his. You pushed the stray stands of his hair out of his face with a gentle touch, and for a moment, you simply took him in.
He looks so pretty and helpless as he shakes with the car’s suspension, with his eyes all unfocused as they flutter to meet yours. Every time his brows twitch tight together, which is every second or two as Ashley bounces on him steadily, his expression goes from softness to insanity. The tendons in his neck are tight as he tries to hold his noises within it, making his jawline even sharper, and all of his bone structure is accentuated by the shadows of the night.
His face is too pretty. You just have to sit on it. So you do.
You straddle his face and hold your skirt up, hovering over his lips as you watch him. He shatters into a lustful expression as he takes in the sight of your pussy, brows curled up with a groan, and you don’t miss the way his head lifts slightly off the floor and nearer to you. You tilt your head and keep yourself away— he’s just too much fun to toy with, especially as he hits his head back down and groans in frustration.
“You want it?”
He sighs shakily as he looks back up at you, grunting as Ashley bounces on him with an especially loud smack of their hips. He bites his lips and squeezes his eyes shut, too ashamed of himself to say yes out loud, but his frantic nod is clear.
You hold him tight by the bangs, the pain giving him just enough time to open his eyes before you say, “then eat up,” and sit right down on his mouth.
You moan freely as he wastes no time in eagerly doing so, and jesus, you can feel how wet you are as his tongue passes between your folds to lap it up. His hands fly up to grasp your hips and pull you further down onto his face, and you let out a sharp gasp as he turns his attention to your clit, sucking the bud of nerves into the vacuum of his mouth and flicking it with his tongue.
“Fuck, you’re good at this,” you say breathily, and whether you said it to him or to yourself is anyone’s guess.
Your vision is still soft around the edges as the alcohol lingers in your bloodstream, making you just uninhibited enough to not be shy about what’s happening, and that it’s happening while a steady rhythm of plap plap’s sound as your best friend gets off on him behind you.
You cover his hands with your own as he goes back to tonguing the whole of your dripping cunt, using his strong arms to balance yourself as your eyes roll back in your head. The darkness behind your eyelids spin in your tipsy state, and the next time he delivers the point of his tongue to curled your clit, your thighs twitch hard and you nearly topple forward.
Ashley, ever a good friend, catches you by the arm. You look back at her over your shoulder, laughing airily as you lock eyes with her. But your blissful little smile is wiped off your face as she slows her movements on top of him to lean forward and takes you in a kiss.
It’s fleeting; at this angle you strain to meet her lips. You take the natural solution, and as quickly as possible, you turn yourself around to face her, only stealing a quick glance between your legs to make sure you’re sitting back down on Leon’s waiting tongue before kissing Ashley full and open mouthed.
Cars fly by on the highway as you curl your hips up and down Leon’s tongue, the headlights flashing quick bursts of light into the car. Leon tenses under you, his hands that are kneading your ass tightening each time, and you separate from Ashley’s kiss to grind back on him in response. When you look forward again, you wonder why you ever looked anywhere else since this began.
Ashley looked straight out of a porno Girls Gone Wild would pay millions to get on tape, and here it was, right in front of your eyes. Her hair is untucked from her ears, falling over her face that glows with sweat and the glitter remnants of her lip gloss, her eyes half lidded and her plush lips open through her moans. Perched forward on her arms, her bare breasts are squeezed together and they rock back and forth with each bounce on Leon’s cock.bAnd holy shit, the way his cock looks disappearing in and out of her, glistening where the moonlight catches the slick that covers it.
Ashley sees you staring and leans back, holding Leon’s legs behind her as she rides him with her knees wide, giving you a full display of her tight, pink pussy gripping his girth as she continues.
She stills for a moment, looks down at where their bodies connect, and then back up at you with a sultry dark glint in her eye.
“Go ahead.”
Your heart races until it clicks, and then you’re immediately on all fours to lick a long, wet stripe from the base of Leon’s cock all the way up to her clit.
It is by far the most insane, utterly indecent thing you’ve ever done, and you go wild.
Ashley starts slowly riding him, not going too fast so your tongue can catch everywhere it wants to roam. Leon’s legs squirm and you feel his chest rise and fall under you from how hard he’s breathing, both from Ashley’s torturously slow pace and at the sensation he can only feel, not see. The rumble of his muffled sounds goes straight to your cunt as you grind back on his face.
And fuck, their skin tastes so good together, and they look so good together, and you’re catching her sweet, thick juices off the veins of his cock. It’s all more than enough to make your thighs tighten around Leon’s face. His fingers are searing into the soft flesh of your ass, but you don’t quite think you’re suffocating him, and you don’t really care. All you care about is catching Ashley’s clit in your mouth and keeping it there to make those pretty sounds bounce off the interior of Leon’s car.
She bucks into your mouth with a gasp when you find it, and you don’t have to be the one inside of her to feel the way her walls are clenching at the feeling. You hold her thigh as she sits all the way down on Leon, stuffed full, only the very base of his cock visible as she grinds firmly on him. Her moans get more and more desperate as she chases a high you’re dead-set on delivering.
But she isn’t the only one who’s feverishly close. Leon pushes you off of him an inch, just enough to breathe and just enough to speak.
“Fuck, ahh, ahh, please move, you’re gonna fucking kill me—“
You shut him up by lowering down on him, riding his tongue just as eagerly as you use your own on Ashley. His flat tongue feels like velvet friction against your clit, and hers is silken against your mouth, and all around you is the heady, sweet scent of sex.
Leon’s hips buck upwards, but she only fixes down on him further as her orgasm mounts, holding you by the hair as Ashley ruts deep onto him and into your mouth. Each movement becomes more shaky and each breath becomes more hitched as she cries out louder and louder until—
“There, there, oh fuck yes, yes—“
You feel her pleasure snap under your touch with shaky thighs and a high pitched melody of moans, and you devour every ounce of slick that gushes from her and onto the base of Leon’s cock with a wild tongue around them both. You groan at the sweet taste of it and just how much there was, knowing you caused it, and knowing your lappings are causing Leon’s pained sounds just as much as Ashley pulsing around him with each wave of her pleasure.
Her hips twitch away from you and you look up at her through your lashes with a smile, one which she returns until you land a sharp lick on her oversensitive clit and she reflexively jolts away.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Leon whines in frustration as Ashley dismounts with a satisfied hum.
You look down at his cock as it lands wet, heavy and throbbing dark pink against his stomach. You glance at Ashley and see her sitting back against the car door, still catching her breath as she watches you with a dizzy, blissful expression.
“You gotta try him,” she says, wiping away the sweat where it makes her bangs stick to her forehead.
You don’t need any more encouragement than that. Before Leon even registers it, you flip around on him, line him up with your entrance, and watch his face shatter as you lower down.
He’s big, feeling even bigger than he looks, but at this point you’re so wet, both from the anticipation and from his spit. Added with Ashley’s cum still covering his cock, it glides in like fine silk, and there’s no other way to describe it but luxurious.
His face shatters as you do, a strangled sound escaping his throat as he watches you take him in with pure bliss, then turning into a slew of profanities and low sighs as you start to move. He rests his hands on the tops of your thighs as you ride him steadily, his head tipping back hard and his throat bobbing as he tries to swallow his sounds to no avail.
You lean forward and brace yourself with both hands on his firm chest, soaking up the fact that you’re riding a man who’s this gorgeous. You pick up speed and his head lolls until his blown eyes lock with yours. You hold it, intentionally landing yourself down onto him hard just to watch him struggle through a groan of pleasure as he hits you deep, but you wouldn’t ignore his reactions if you were paid to.
“Yeah? You like that?”
You do it again, and again, just to watch him break down.
Ashley leans forward, sitting elegantly with her legs sideways as she runs her fingers down his jaw to guide his gaze towards her.
“You like being used like a toy?” she purrs. His eyes roll back before glazing over you and then back to her when she gently shakes his jaw in her delicate hand. “C’mon, tell us.”
You feel your own pleasure mount as you watch her tease him. Every time you bottom out, his body smacks against your sensitive clit and his cock roughs over the deepest, most incredible spots inside of your tight walls, sending the most intense sensations through you from the inside out. Each new rebound onto him multiplies the feeling, and each small thrust as he tries to meet your pace creates a new crack in your smoky gaze.
Suddenly, your desperation to cum is written all over your face, contorting into pleasure as you call wantonly for both of them.
“Ohh fuck, Ash—” you inhale deeply as you find a slightly faster rhythm and a new, deeper angle, “—M’close Leon, please…”
Your brain scrambles with each new stroke of his cock stretching your entrance and passing over your sweet spot. Your focus gets pulled towards maintaining your balance and your burning thigh muscles, but you keep riding him through it to chase the high it promises. But despite it all, you linger on the brink of orgasm, unable to ascend any further, and you’re unable to think straight as you remain right there on the edge.
Luckily, Ashley does the thinking for you. With one hand on the back of each of your heads, she draws you and Leon towards each other. As you become face-to-face with him, your arms buckle under you; he instinctively wraps a steadying arm around your waist, keeping your torsos flush as he props himself up on one elbow.
Leon doesn’t need to be told what to do; his body acts for him, fucking his cock into you from below. You can feel his abs flex against the soft skin of your stomach with each thrust he sends upwards into your cunt, and your lips drag against his neck as your mouth falls open into a lilting moan.
But Ashley still isn’t done; you’re cradled in his arms only momentarily before she guides you away from him just enough to steer his mouth down below your collarbone.
“You’ve been staring at her tits all night; C’mon, give ‘em the attention they need, Leon.”
He catches your swinging breast between his lips, pressing his face into the supple skin and sucking it into the vacuum of his mouth to keep it there as his pace increases. Your toes curl as he laves his tongue around your nipple, and you grip hard onto his delts as the feeling compounds with his powerful thrusts.
His tongue, cock, and whines all become wild as his control fractures, and you grip his hair just as tight as his hands grasp onto your waist. Your surroundings become a blur as your pleasure flares into a bright inner heat, and you’re only aware of Leon speaking because he detaches from your breast to do so.
“Fuck, gonna cum, where should I—”
You hold tight to the back of his head to push his mouth back to your breast, needing the feeling as you totter desperately within reach of your orgasm. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop,” you chant, your voice high-pitched and airy as stars appear in your eyes. Then Ashley’s plump lips capture yours in a hot, open-mouthed kiss, and as your eyes close, you’re lost in a world of utter feeling.
You know what’s bound to happen next, and you know it isn’t responsible. But you’d rather risk it than make him pull out right as your pleasure begins to boil over. More than that, him cumming inside of you is precisely what pushes you over the edge.
Leon gives a final warning, but you don’t change your mind in the slightest.
“I’m gonna— gonna cum, fuck, fuck—“
Your lips break from Ashley’s as your own orgasm crashes through your body, and if it weren’t for Leon holding you flush to him, you’re sure you would’ve toppled over by the force of it. Your whole body seizes in waves, and your cunt throbs as it releases around Leon’s pistoning cock.
And Leon, he just keeps on going, his pace frantic as you both release in time with each other. And from the sounds and sensations coming from between your thighs, it’s making a mess.
You’re wound tight around him, and combined with his firm but erratic thrusts in and out of your gushing cunt, your slick mixes with his cum and leaks out all over the both of you. Each snap of his hips draws out more sopping slick and the sound cracks wetly in the car, undeniably perverse as it sets the rhythm your moans follow.
You both come down in heaving breaths and sweaty skin, and you don’t detach until you feel that he’s gone soft. He’d been laying under you in a daze until you raise your hips, and he hisses as his soaked cock hits his stomach.
You look down between your bodies and swear under your breath as you watch more of his cum drip from you like white sap and land on his spent cock, further covering it in a beautiful layer of filth.
“Holy shit, you came so much, Leon.”
Ashley’s hand glides soothing down the curve of your spine, her gaze following down until she sees it, her green eyes going wide at the sight.
“Oh my god, he so did,” she remarks before looking back at Leon with a coy smile. “You really liked us that much, huh?”
Leon’s eyes pinch tight as he sighs like he’s annoyed, but the blush creeping up his face gives him away completely. He turns his head, but you still catch the corner of his mouth twitching upwards, too.
You roll off of him and lay there with your body buzzing and sleepiness setting in. It sets in for Leon, too.
Then, just as he got comfortable, reality hit Leon like cold water to the face.
He’s naked except for his jeans around his knees.
His soft cock is covered in two women’s cum and a thick layer of his own as it sits in the suddenly cold-feeling air.
He’s laying back down in the back of his car with two naked women on the side of the highway. Ashley to one side, and you on the other.
Ashley’s naked except for her skirt and playing with his hair as he stares at the low ceiling.
Your head rests of his shoulder as you drift in the afterglow.
You’re stuffed full of his cum.
He came inside you.
He was supposed to get you both home safe, and instead, this.
He’s going to hell, and he’s totally fucking fired.
He sits upright with a gasp, ignoring the tired groans from you both as he yanks his bottoms back in place, ignoring the uncomfortable stickiness in them, too. He reaches around for his hoodie and grimaces every time he finds a handful of one of your clothes instead, throwing them behind him to both get the reminder out of sight and to toss them to you quickly.
“Shit, get dressed, we have to go.”
Ashley scoffs beside you, lazily untangling her bra with no rush to put it on.
“Pshh, whatever.”
You sigh at the lovely feeling of your sore muscles as you sit up, taking your top and putting it on as you look between them. You’re not bothered by Leon’s mad dash to get himself in order per se, but it’s in such contrast to Ashley that you’re waiting to see where it’ll go.
He drags his hands hard over his face and shakes his head incredulously, looking out the windows in search of cop cars that aren’t there.
“It’s almost three in the goddamn morning, I have to get you home, jesus fucking christ I’m so dead, holy shit…”
Leon’s rambling to himself mid freak out. You can’t lie, it’s kind of cute. He’s cute, especially with his lips still plump and swollen and his dark blond hair unknowingly askew, his bliss-blown eyes puppylike as they widen with anxiety. It makes you sit extra pretty once you’re done redressing yourself, legs folded under you and hands on your knees as you watch him stress with doe eyes, waiting for him to look back at you.
“Why are you so stressed?” Ashley says as she puts on her socks slowly, drawing out the vowels in her little cloud of satisfaction. You can tell she’s poking his buttons on purpose, but he can’t.
“Because,” Leon snaps before catching himself. His tone lowers as he continues, speaking in a mock whisper. “I work for your dad, the president, and we just—“
He’s cut off by nothing but his own labored breaths as he takes in the sight of you and Ashley before him. Like he’s adjusting to the reality of what just happened as if he didn’t live through it— didn’t whine and moan like a whore through it, too.
But you both look oddly beautiful, despite how wrecked you look; the mix of the alcohol, car sex, and the late hours all showed on your faces, your previously polished appearances looking as tainted as you were, like succubi that now showed your true forms after hiding it under your angelicly tempting exteriors all night.
Fuck, you both looked so pretty. Even in the dark. Even drunk on shots and his cock alike. Especially that.
Your breath caught as he suddenly leaned in, your lips parting slightly as he came towards you. Then you yelped as the seat sprung back upright.
“Seatbelts,” he said bluntly, then quickly left to return to the driver’s seat.
You looked at Ashley in a moment of tension, and as Leon got back on the highway, all you could do was giggle.
The drive back to Ashley’s was quiet as drowsiness set in, your head leaned against the window as the city lights dimmed into suburban streetlights. You felt weighed down with lead as the car parked and you unbuckled yourself. You were really grateful that Leon spared you the effort of opening the car door.
Sleep must have gotten to him too, as he was softer now, helping you and Ashley out with steadying hands. The three of you stumbled to her place tiredly, and Leon carried two pairs of heels in each hand.
Ashley fumbled with her keys before turning the front door open. “It’s late, you can crash here if you want,” she offered to Leon.
“No, that’s alright. Your couch isn’t that comfortable anyways.”
“Kay. Goodnight,” Ashley said through a yawn, walking towards her room without once looking behind her.
Leon set your heels down in the entryway without stepping a foot inside. You lingered at the door, leaning against it for support as you watched him step backwards and away, your eyes catching as he waited for you to speak.
“Goodnight, Leon. Thanks for a fun night.”
“Yeah, uh… no problem,” he said sheepishly, his cheeks pinkening just a touch. “Go get some sleep.”
“Alright,” you smiled. “See you around.”
He stumbled for a response as he fumbled to get his keys out of his pocket. “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll see you around.”
You wore a cheesy grin all the way to Ashley’s bed where you found her face down and passed out, and it stuck until the moment you fell asleep, floating in her fluffy blankets and feeling the slick between your legs, still dripping onto your thighs. You imagined Leon finding your underwear in his backseat in whatever corner they ended up in.
Part of you hoped he got your number from Ashley to give them back. Another part of you kinda hoped he’d keep them.
The next morning, all you hoped for was that he’d answer Ashley’s texts and bring you your hangover grocery list.
this changed me as a person... like for real. now im wondering if im into threesomes op what have you done to me?!?
hiii!! not to sound disrespectful or rude or anything but will you continue write “project: fury”? 🥹 really liked the plot and the way you write! have a nice dayyy
hi darling! not disrespectful or rude in any way, don't you worry <3 thank you so much for this! yes i will be continuing Project Fury, i know it's been a little while since it's been updated because i have no sense of object permenance, but yes i will be continuing it very soon, i just need to rewrite chapter 4's draft because i hate it 🙂↕️
no YOU have a nice day
Project: Fury
Leon's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad vacation to rural Spain only gets worse and weirder when he meets a woman with more secrets than he can shake a stick at and a vocabulary that would make Chris Redfield blush.
Ch.3: Trust
Ch.1, Ch.2 <-
Pairing: Leon Kennedy x F!Reader
Warnings: MDNI!!!!!!
Word Count: 11.6K
A/N: this took way too long im so sorry pleek forgive me ;-; this whole chapter is like, only half an hour in-world-time so like hhhhhhhhhhhh also to clarify, this is an x reader fic. i know there's been some confusion over that, but there is no specific name or identity other than backstory given to the mc, so imagine to your heart's content <3
Taglist: @plan3t-plut0 @meowieees @gfksz @deo-data (comment or yeet me an ask if u wanna be tagged :3)
You felt… odd. Which, by itself, wasn't exactly uncommon in your body. But taking into account the day you were having and your circumstances, it didn't exactly inspire confidence. This was more than the occasional missing memory from the night before. More than the hazy images of actions you don't remember. Your body had started to ache. Not enough to impede your progress, but enough for you to notice. And notice that it wasn't right.
It had been a couple of hours since you were stabbed with a needle against your will. Again, by itself, not exactly uncommon for your body. Though it goes without saying, you fought tooth and nail against the hands that bound you. Every time.
If you concentrated enough, you could still taste the blood from where you'd bitten through a thumb.
Evening light bled across the sky, a kaleidoscope of orange, pinks, and purples. The kind of sunset that people try extremely hard to describe, and yet can never quite nail the imagery. You were thankful for the softer lighting; however, looking into anything brighter than a small candle flame made your head hurt.
Definitely not normal.
Then those moments would fade. Like they were never there. Like it had lost a battle to something sturdier. More present. Now that you were far more familiar with.
Leon had been uncharacteristically quiet. That was to say, you hadn't heard some kind of stupid quip or lame joke out of him since you left the Chief's house a little while ago. Since you'd let that infernal vulnerability shine through and actually fucking cried.
The thought made you want to throw up.
You found yourself missing the sound of his voice. Found yourself waiting for the next witty line when you passed a string of obviously set clamps, or when you unclipped the tripwire of a C4 trap.
And yet… nothing. He largely stayed quiet. Fuck, you wished you knew what he was thinking. Wished you'd been somehow cursed with telepathy.
In reality, perhaps it was rather lucky you couldn't read his thoughts. Leon's head was a mess.
He didn't know what to think. Not of you, not of these circumstances, not of this village nor it's residents. He'd chosen to stay silent and focus on the mission because it was so much easier than trying to sort through whatever the fuck kind of mess his mind was tangled in.
Because he would have kissed you.
If you hadn't backed away. If he hadn't said something that crossed a line for you. He would have sealed the hair's breadth gap between you and given in to the gravitational pull that constantly seemed to be tugging him closer to you, and he would have kissed you.
Fuck, if you both weren't so pressed for time, he likely would have taken you there on the bed. If Ashley's life wasn't at stake, if he'd met you somewhere other than some shitty little Spanish village, if every single variable was different—
None of that mattered. Leon had spent enough of his time waging war on the what-ifs in his life; he didn't need to add another to the list. Because the fact of the matter was, he hadn't met you under those circumstances. He hadn't met you in some back-alley bar or independent coffee shop. He'd met you here. Whilst you'd taken a gig for someone you didn't know because it paid well.
Leon sighed heavily. Fucking mercs.
The village square was quiet. Suspiciously so. You had no doubt that whoever was orchestrating this whole thing knew you were free, and you found it difficult to believe they would just let the two of you walk around, armed to the teeth and taking out anybody who stood in your way.
Guns drawn, walking shoulder to shoulder, you stayed vigilant of your surroundings, half-expecting the bell tower to fucking explode or something.
Then the bell tower exploded.
With a detonation that shook the very earth itself, the tower collapsed partway through, brick and mortar raining down on the mud-slick square as the structure came crashing to the ground. Leon reached out on instinct, his hand catching your arm to tug you closer, his other shielding his eyes from the resulting cloud of dust.
You told yourself you turned toward him to avoid the debris. Told yourself it was because you would rather he get hurt than you. You worked alone. You worked alone for fuck's sake. You told yourself these things because the reality of feeling safe when you were close to him was nauseating.
Even if they were blatant lies.
As the last bricks clattered to the ground and the dust slowly settled, both you and Leon looked up to see your way now blocked, the entrance to the hall now barred with splintered foundations.
You sucked in a breath.
"I—"
"Hate this village?" He interrupted with a side-eye and a smirk, lowering his arm. Though his other hand remained on your elbow. Intentionally, now. This wasn't like he'd just forgotten he was touching you. No, this was something deliberate. You said you didn't know if you could trust him, so Leon would just have to show you that you can. Pressure light and sturdy, his eyes glanced down to the bruises on your neck, no doubt a mirror to his own.
He wouldn't let that happen again.
"How'd you know?" A wry, knowing smile played on your lips, and Leon shrugged.
"Lucky guess. Starting to think they don't want us going that way."
"An astute observation, Watson." You could feel it. The hand on your elbow. And you could feel the part of yourself fighting to let it stay there. You could gaslight yourself later. Tell yourself it meant nothing, or that it was some kind of tactical advantage. For now, you'd let it be. You'd listen to how it made you feel like that was the only warm part of your body, like his touch produced some kind of soothing balm. Like you wanted to feel it everywhere.
The softer, warmer lighting highlighted the lighter blonde in his hair, the shadows across his face exaggerated, the soft angle of his jaw. Your gaze swept lower, across the expanse of his throat, the purple petals of twin bruising. The breath in your chest stilled with the overwhelming urge to press your lips to the little mole left of his Adam's apple.
It was becoming unbearable at this point. The constant urge to be near him. The tenacious fucking yearning. You didn't yearn. You were a ruthless mercenary. Ruthless mercenaries don't yearn. Yet here you were, forcing yourself to look away so you didn't suck on his throat like some kind of lovesick vampire.
What was wrong with you?
The low grumble of a snarl had both your heads whipping to the side, contact forgotten, proximity less of an issue and more of an advantage as a salivating black wolf stalked out from behind one of the few homes in the village square. Eyes as red as the blood you coughed up, a growl as hungry like the wo—
Wait, no, that was a song.
In the blink of an eye, maybe less, your gun was in your hand, and Leon's in his. Hesitation wasn't an option, not even when it came to the animals. And with coordination you definitely shouldn't have had without actually communicating, two cracks split the air, overlapping as you fired at the same time.
Though you did wince when it yelped and fell to the ground, both bullets hitting their marks. Oddly enough, Leon's accuracy was better than your own. Something he'd put in the back of his mind for now, opting instead to stride over and sink his knife into the beast's neck as it started to twitch, waiting until it lay still to remove his blade.
Various other howls and snarls echoed about the village pathways, unseen and hunting. Adrenaline spiked through your system. "Ain't no rest for the wicked, huh?" You muttered as Leon came back to cover your flank, facing the opposite way.
"Good name for a song," Leon responded as he stood with you, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, scanning the environment as those snarls and growls seemed to jump around. Until his eyes lingered on a wooden balcony. A perfect place for you to pick off whoever, or whatever, came his way.
And you'd be out of danger…
"Wanna vantage point?" He asked, looking at you out of the corner of his eye, smirking slightly as you raised a brow.
"I'm not getting on your shoulders." You responded flatly, head snapping to the side as yet another impossible snarl echoed against the cabins and lodges.
Huffing an amused breath, Leon tapped your side before running over to position himself below the balcony, nodding up to the platform above him when your head tilted to the side. But it was all worth it when your expression cracked into a wicked grin, holstering your gun.
"You know, this is almost smart," you called, ignoring the ragged panting and low, wet snaps of saliva-flecked maws that rippled behind you as Leon pressed his back to the wall. There was a wild, reckless spark in your eye he could see even from this far away. The kind of defiance that dared the universe to just try. Like you were moments away from spitting in it's eye and asking it "That all you got?"
"And that was almost a compliment," he called back.
"Don't get used to it!" And with that, you started to run toward him just as one of the beasts surged from a window, snapping at the space you used to be. Teeth clacked, saliva sprayed, you left the hound behind as your boot hit the earth with one definitive crunch before you stepped onto his laced hands. A moment later, you were airborne.
Leon—perhaps unsurprisingly, considering your previous displays of strength—had severely overestimated how heavy you would be. Putting most of his strength into vaulting you up and onto the balcony, it was like picking up a heavy-looking satchel only to find it had been filled with feathers.
Nonetheless, though your trajectory was a little uncontrolled, you landed onto the balcony with a deft roll, steadying yourself with a hand on the wood. And the moment your foot left his hands, Leon turned with the momentum, dragged the shotgun from between his shoulder blades, and fired a shell into the beast that was following you just as it lunged to take a chunk from his neck.
"Jesus Christ Kennedy, what the fuck was that?" You called, coming up onto one knee and fixing your rifle into the gap between your chest and shoulder, your finger feathering on the trigger, pulling it until you felt the first click of resistance. Adding a little more pressure, you fired into the skull of another leaping beast, leading the shot slightly and exhaling in satisfaction as it collapsed to the side.
"You're lighter than you look!" Leon responded as he sidestepped past another, turning and pumping another shell into the creature's body, giving himself a little more time to back up.
"That's really rude!" Repositioning yourself, you aimed towards the narrow pathway you could have used as a choke point if he hadn't thought of a better plan. Steadying your breath, you once again pulled the trigger until you felt that telltale wall of resistance. The part of the mechanism that asks if you really want to do this. If whatever it is you were about to shoot was worth taking the life. You'd already made your peace with the questions. And so had your rifle.
But what came down the path wasn't another hound. A Ganados shambled into view, and you didn't hesitate when her head lumbered into your crosshairs, and fired the moment your reticle was perfectly in line between her eyes.
Leon's head whipped to the side as a thick, wet explosion sprayed against the wall, only to see the headless body of what was once someone coming to decapitate him fall to her knees and land in the mud.
"Guess I'll have to make it up to you." He had no idea if you could hear him anymore, his words no more than contemplative murmuring as he stared at the dead, headless woman. What he hadn't told you was that he could speak Spanish. He knew what these people were saying. They weren't mindless monsters like back in Raccoon City. They'd retained some of their consciousness, even if they were calling the two of you idiot pigs more often than not.
It was easier when they didn't talk…
A searing pain in his shoulder caught him off-guard, knees buckling as the hound pulled him to the ground. Dropping his shotgun, Leon slid his knife from the sheath at his shoulder and plunged it into the beast's side, barely managing to prevent a pained cry slipping through his gritted teeth as it writhed, canines still firmly lodged in the muscle of his shoulder.
He stabbed again, trying to twist away from its grip and only succeeding in tearing open the wound further. You were busying yourself with the onslaught of new Ganados shambling your way from homes and pathways you'd previously missed. Another bullet, another body dropped. It was only when you paused to reload that you heard the commotion below you.
And it wasn't a choice.
Acting on pure instinct, you shouldered the rifle and dropped from your perch, knives already gripped in both hands. You'd barely settled into your crouch before you lunged forward, hatred searing through your veins. You couldn't see much through the red in your vision, but you saw enough to slice your blade through the hound's spine, severing the connection to its back legs. The snapped whimper didn't faze you this time, not as you grabbed its jaws in both hands and wrenched it from Leon's shoulder, feeling the satisfying crack of bones beneath your now bloodied palms before you tossed it to the side.
A snarl similar to the hound's rippled from your throat. Low and animalistic and feral. Silver glinted in your palm, your knife back in your hand as if it never left, your sole focus on the dying, writhing hound before you. Hatred. Rage. Fury. That's all you knew. That's all you'd ever known.
Leon started to think—to his own muted horror—the blood from your smouldering-coal eyes wasn't coming from any kind of wound you kept reopening. Not when you stalked forward with predatory grace, kneeling and sinking your blade into the hound's throat, letting the cries die from its broken jaw before ripping it free in a savage spray of blood.
Dragging himself to his feet, Leon groaned as the wound in his shoulder flared angrily, his own pulse beating hardest in the torn flesh. The moment you whirled on him, something like recognition flashed in your eyes. And when you blinked, the phantom lantern winked out, and the blood down the sides of your face started to dry.
You watched his gaze not quite meet yours, his eyes stuck on the two lines down your cheeks. You hastily smeared them away with the back of your hand, pushing past the discomfort in your gut as the truth was becoming harder and harder to hide. But you had more pressing matters at hand. Namely, the wound in his shoulder.
"Fuck, Leon, your—"
"I'm fine." He cut you off, trying to roll the joint in emphasis, only to realise he was a lot less fine than he wanted to be.
Your eyes narrowed in evident disbelief. "Christ, you sound like me," stooping to snatch up the shotgun he'd dropped, you shouldered into the house with the balcony you were just using, confident you'd finished the last of the Ganados before setting the gun on what was once a dining table. It was dark and dusty and smelled of decay, but it was good enough. Pulling out one of the chairs, you hadn't even noticed he hadn't followed you in. Turning back, you peeked your head around the door. "You coming?"
Leon had, once again, been caught in your hurricane and rendered immobile by it. He'd just watched you break one of those beasts' jaws with your bare hands. He'd seen that weird, smouldering glow in your eyes, and he hadn't seen a physical wound that would have explained the blood down your face.
You weren't normal. He knew that the moment he locked eyes with you back in the abandoned factory. But this? This was another level of not normal.
And now you want to play nurse?!
Staring at you through the doorway, he watched your face flicker with conflict. Uncertainty came out on top, your eyes finding the ground when he didn't answer. Like that was proof of his rejection of whatever he'd just seen. Like you were expecting it. Like whatever reasons you had not to trust him had just manifested.
And he hated it. Seeing you so… dejected. Fuck, he hated it.
With a sigh he had to wince at, Leon nodded; accepting that whatever he'd just seen, he wasn't going to get answers anytime soon.
"Yeah… okay."
Your gaze lifted from the ground, relief replacing uncertainty. For a moment there, you really thought you'd fucked up. Not that you'd blame him. At all. Hell, if you were seeing what he was likely seeing, you'd run for the hills. Not for the same reasons, but you'd still run nonetheless.
Dragging another chair next to the one you'd already pulled out for him, you started searching for something, anything, that could held stop the bleeding. Or maybe a sewing kit. If nothing else, you could break off a table leg and tell him to bite on it as you sewed the wounds shut.
"What're you looking for?" Leon asked, and he hated how forced his voice sounded. Because as much as he could act like he was okay, his shoulder really fucking hurt.
"Something to dress it with or sew it with or anything," you huffed, as if the question had offended you.
"You don't carry first aid with you?" Leon asked as he sank down into one of the chairs.
"Oh yeah, of course, how could I forget? Let me just pull my first aid kit from my ass!" You hissed back, yanking open drawers and rifling through them, ignoring the mild hurt when you sliced the back of your hand on a kitchen knife.
Leon managed to refrain from making another joke about your ass as he reached into the back pouch of his belt with a wince, pulling out the same three things he used to patch up your own wound.
He vaguely wondered how it was faring.
"Use these."
You paused your search, turning and stopping dead when you saw what he'd placed on the table.
"A weed, a roll of bandages and a can of deodorant?" You asked flatly, raising a brow as he reached out and turned the can so the little cross was facing you. "Ah. Medical deodorant. That'll do it."
Your sarcasm wasn't lost on him. "It's a numbing spray. The herb has—fuck, healing properties. Acts as an antiseptic agent and increases the rate of recovery. Same things I used for you"
You fell silent for a moment.
"You healed up an axe wound to my side with a fucking plant? Thought you said you didn't do any voodoo shit?"
"Nothin' voodoo about it."
"He says, asking me to heal a substantial laceration with one herb and a dream."
"Don't mean to rush you, but I am bleeding out."
"Fuck, fine, okay, I'll use your stupid plant. Take your shirt off."
Leon paused.
"What?"
"I'm binding your wound, not sewing a tear. Off. Now."
"Bedside manner could use some work," he muttered, working the tight fabric up his waist with the use of just one hand. You, however, had taken great interest in reading the phantom label of the numbing spray. "Little help?" Leon asked through gritted teeth.
"Take your own damn shirt off," you shot back, once again sounding offended he'd even asked.
"I can't." He snapped, and that seemed to make you pause.
Silently, you placed the spray back onto the table and rounded to take a knee before him. And Leon really hadn't thought this through, because the moment your hand bat his own away and your fingers brushed his skin, he sucked in a breath. One that had nothing to do with the pain in his shoulder.
That was mostly all you were concerning yourself with now. After realising that asking for help may be as difficult for him as it was for you, you stopped being so hard on him and chose instead to focus on what you were doing. Slowly, you inched the tight fabric up his torso, your gaze flicking from your task up to his face to make sure nothing was hurting too badly. Your chest constricted at the various scars smattered across his body, decorating the hard plains of his abs, jagged lines shining beneath the blood on his chest. When you checked back in, he wasn't looking at you.
"Can you get your arm through?" Gone was the sharp, witty tone you used to verbally dance with him. The edges to your voice had softened, almost trembling. And Leon finally turned his face back towards you. The dry, sarcastic comment died on his tongue when he drank in the pinch in your brows, the earnest concern in your eyes, the slight parting of your lips. His words weren't the only thing that ceased.
He was sure his heart had to jump-start itself.
"Yeah, I uh—I think so," he nodded, and your hand moved to hold the fabric just below the wound so it wouldn't be irritated by the stretch of him feeding his arm through. Your other hand moved the sleeve around his bicep down as he folded his elbow through it, hissing as the movements jolted through his other shoulder. You paused his movements with a hand on his forearm, silently asking him to wait for the pain to settle before finally pulling the hem of the shirt up and over his uninjured shoulder.
"Duck," you instructed gently, and Leon ducked his head as you pulled up the neckline, shaking out his hair when the shirt rested at his other shoulder. The injured one. He noticed you'd done this in such a way that he wouldn't have to move his arm, which did something bittersweet to his chest. "This is gonna suck," you warned him lowly, and Leon huffed a smile.
"I'm sure I'll live," he murmured so softly you had to glance back at him to make sure he wasn't half-asleep. But he wasn't. He was looking at you now. In the same way he had in the house. The same way he had in the valley. With that same tenderness that drew you in and caught you like a willing moth. Because you didn't struggle away from his eyes. Rather, they made you want to accept your fate.
So when you dragged your eyes back to his shoulder, it was out of pure necessity.
Pulling the fabric, you stopped every time he hissed or grunted, once again letting the pain settle before moving again. You could see the tension in his jaw—the way his eyes screwed shut, the way he gripped the edge of the table like it owed him rent—and you inhaled a steadying breath. There was a part of you that wanted to, quite literally, rip off the band-aid and be done with it. But you also didn't want to cause him that much pain.
Until you got to the first major laceration, and you couldn't move a fraction before he stamped his foot with a low, strained growl. You tried to move the fabric again, but he hissed before you could even apply pressure, eyes screwed tight, teeth bared. You knew you only had one option, really. Still, it shocked you when he said it out loud.
"Just rip it off," he hissed, the wood of the table creaking from his white-knuckle grip.
"You sure?" You asked, searching his face, finding his eyes when they opened a sliver.
"Yeah."
"Do you want me to count down or—"
"Just do it."
You nodded, taking the fabric in both hands securely. And despite the fact that Leon didn't want a countdown, you still felt the need to do it in your head. Maybe to prepare yourself for how much this would hurt him.
Three, two, one—
You pulled the shirt down his arm. Hard. Your gut twisted when he cried out before he could swallow it, lurching forward before falling back against the chair, sweat beading along his brow.
"It's done, it's okay, it's done, it's off now," you soothed, placing the shirt on the table and reaching for the numbing spray, moving to now sit on the extra chair you'd placed next to his. Shaking it vigorously, you popped off the cap and pressed on the atomiser, having no idea if this was how it worked or not.
The moment the cooling numbing agent hit his skin, it started to take effect. Leon's head fell back as he exhaled a low "Fuck," before finally opening his eyes, blinking through the blurriness from where he'd had them screwed shut for so long. "What're you doing?"
You froze, looking from the wound back to him.
"I—you said it was a numbing agent! Should I not have—" you panicked slightly, and Leon's heart softened.
"You haven't used the herb yet," he responded calmly, hoping it would be infectious.
It wasn't.
"I don't know! Does it matter?" You asked, looking between the can in your hand and the herb on the table as if either one had any indication which should be used first.
Leon thought for a moment. "Actually, I don't think it does. I just use the plant first, normally. Hurts like a bitch though, which I associate with something working."
You exhaled the tension you'd just gathered, shaking the can again before applying more.
"Don't fucking scare me like that," you muttered, as if saying it louder would somehow make you even more vulnerable. Leon's small huff of amusement fanned the side of your face, and you barely managed to suppress a shiver. Now that the worst was over, it was difficult to ignore the situation. It wasn't like the compression shirt left much to the imagination, but it was definitely different seeing him without it. He was in good shape. Which was perhaps an understatement. But you couldn't confirm or deny without openly staring at his body, and you really didn't want to do that. At least, not in this context.
"Sorry," he breathed, his hand finding your knee. Leon picked up on the slight hitch in your breath and smiled inwardly to himself. You were kind of cute, when you weren't being murderous.
Setting the can aside, you didn't move to pull your knee away from him. You didn't move it closer either, even though you wanted to. Honestly, you didn't really know how. You didn't know how to chase a feeling you didn't think you were allowed, or wasn't yours to want. So instead, you reached for the herb, looking at it a little sceptically.
"You're gonna have to talk me through this. Never healed someone with leaves before," you admitted, raising a brow as you looked between Leon and the herb, trying to ignore the way his thumb smoothed your knee.
"Chew it til it's kinda mushy, then just kinda—press it into the wound," he explained, though when you looked at him a little uncertain, he squeezed your knee slightly. "Trust me?"
"We just had a whole conversation about that," you muttered, but went to pluck the plant from the table anyway. You had no evidence this was what he used on your own wound, but then again, you had no evidence he didn't. It could be some remarkably clever plan to kill you, if the plant was poisonous, and the thought did cross your mind. But he would be in a much worse position if you were dead. So, keeping an eye on his reactions to watch for anything that could indicate deception, you picked off a leaf and placed it in your mouth.
Minty. Surprisingly so. Your brows shot up at the surprisingly pleasant taste. It was like fibrous toothpaste. You swore you could taste a little eucalyptus as well.
"Not bad, right?" Leon asked, watching with what could only be described as fond amusement, remembering the first time he was pleasantly surprised by the plant's flavour. Though that was in very different circumstances.
Covering your mouth with your hand, you nodded.
"Better than I was expecting," you managed, before all of a sudden feeling extremely self-conscious. Which was a new feeling for you. You couldn't remember the last time anyone made you feel self-conscious, but for some reason, the idea of spitting out this stupid plant whilst Leon watched you made you want to die. What if you got it on your chin? What if a string of saliva snapped back into your face? What if—
What the fuck were you talking about?! Since when did you care?!
Since right now, apparently.
Leon tilted his head to the side as you turned away, still covering your mouth with one hand and spitting as delicately as you could into the other. His earlier thought rang true in his head. Cute.
He wondered if you'd be this shy spitting into your hand if it was for his co—
Woah. Okay…
When you turned back, you paused as you registered his expression. The brow raise. The slightly smug smirk. You wiped the corner of your mouth with your finger for good measure. "What?"
"I'm sitting here shirtless, and you're the self-conscious one?" He asked, and you finally had a real excuse to look down properly, without having to concentrate on anything else. Which—though hindsight was always 20/20—was a terrible idea. Because it was a struggle to tear your eyes away from the carved marble of his chest, the trained valleys and plains of his abs, the smattering of hair dipping low below his waistline.
You inhaled a long, calming breath that accomplished exactly nothing.
"Nothing to be self-conscious about." You managed, though your words were strained.
"That so?" Leon provoked lightly, and you became hyper-aware of his hand on your knee. Not that you weren't already. But honestly? You'd rather this casual flirt than the moments where you felt like he was staring through you. Like he could see into your very soul. Like he could peel apart the layers and layers encasing your heart and make a home there.
An idiotic ideal.
Tearing your gaze from his, you dipped your fingers into the green paste and gently applied the herb to the first laceration, ignoring his words. Now you were actively working on the wounds, you could see how deep they were. How used to wounds like this was he? To be able to even try and play it off like he was fine, even for a second.
You stopped when his hand on your knee tightened, and he inhaled a deep breath.
"Does it hurt?"
Leon paused for a moment. Because it should. It should be screaming agony for a wound like this. But it was nothing more than a small itch.
"No… I was expecting it too, but uh—no, it doesn't hurt…" He responded, now starting to suspect you of voodoo.
"Probably because I put the numbing spray on before, rather than after." You said it like it was obvious. Which it probably was.
"Never thought've doing that," Leon admitted in subdued wonder, watching you work now that he wasn't in searing pain.
"It's a good job you're pretty…" You muttered, your lips quirking into a half-smile as you concentrated, amused with yourself.
Leon blinked, not expecting such a blatant compliment from you.
"Thanks…? I—" then it hit him. What you really meant. "Hey!"
You laughed quietly, and he realised he would let you do whatever you wanted, insult him however you saw fit, if he got to hear that sound again. And when you glanced back to him out of instinct, your fingers paused on his shoulder.
There it was again. That look. That look. The one that made you want to fold into him and turn tail and run at the same time. The one that made you want to kiss him until the rest of the world melted away and cross the world so you couldn't touch him.
You wanted him to stop. But if he stopped, you were certain you'd die.
So you broke the silence.
"You've got scars to rival mine." That did it. He looked away then. Withdrew. Completely. The hand on your knee nothing but a cold ghost now. You glanced to where it now rested on his thigh, before starting your work again, packing more of the salve into the wounds.
It was Leon's turn to feel self-conscious, which he already did a little when he first took his shirt off. But you didn't seem bothered by anything you were seeing, so that feeling faded into the back of his mind. Only to be thrust forward. Because yeah, he did. He had a lot of scars. Some through training, some through missions, most of them from Krauser, if he was being honest. When sparring got a little too real, he'd nick him with a blade. Pain makes people stronger. Apparently.
He shifted beneath your touch, and you felt like the world's biggest asshole. You should have known that would have been a sensitive subject. Fuck, you didn't like showing your scars either. At least not the ones on your neck. Or your wrists. But that was a story for another time. The ones you'd sustained through various gigs you didn't really mind.
"They're not ugly…" You added quietly, and Leon peered at you out the corner of his eye, suspicious. Waiting for confirmation. "They're proof. That you're alive, I mean. That's how I see mine, anyway. Proof I'm still me. Proof that I survived," just about, you wanted to add, but you thought better of it. Not here. Not now. Not yet.
Not yet.
"Pain makes you stronger. Something my mentor used to say," he shrugged as if it were no big deal. As if the proof of Krauser's methods weren't forever branded into his skin.
"Sounds like we had similar mentors," you hummed, dabbing the final bits of salve into the wound before taking the plant and popping another couple of leaves into your mouth.
"Why'd you kill him?" Leon asked softly, and you sighed through your nose. He'd trusted you thus far. Maybe you should do the same. Taking a moment to grind the leaves into the same paste, you turned away again to spit them out.
"It was my first assignment. He—lean forward—told me that if I couldn't kill him, I couldn't accomplish anything. If I couldn't kill him, I may as well quit now," you explained, taking the can and spraying the wounds on the back of his shoulder. "I broke down. Told him I couldn't do it. Told him I wasn't strong enough. And when he held me and said to me that it was okay, said he was sorry—" you paused. "I stuck a knife in his back. Quick. Efficient. Severed the spinal cord. Just like he'd taught me. Fucker even had the audacity to look proud before he died." You finished, letting the silence linger before it became a little too thick. "Leon?"
"I'm just uh—processing," he murmured, and you nodded, even though he couldn't see you. That was fair enough. It was a lot to take in. Probably put a few things into perspective for him. As it should. That wasn't a bad thing. It shouldn't be a bad thing. So why did it feel like you'd just chewed up and spat out what kindling companionship was growing between you?
He wasn't wrong about you being complicated. A story like that should have warned him off. It should have told him all he needed to know about who you were. Someone waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Capable of putting your feelings aside to accomplish a task, no matter the implications or consequences. But it didn't. For some unknown, godforsaken reason, it didn't.
"How old were you?" He asked finally, almost making you jump, having half-expected to continue in silence. You thought about lying. About telling him a much younger age. Maybe that you were twelve. Or fifteen. Fifteen seemed like the border age where your decisions still didn't hold much weight. But you didn't want to lie to him. Not again.
"Nineteen," you declared, straightening your back to prepare for whatever disgust was coming your way.
It didn't come.
"You were a kid," Leon offered, and you snorted a dismissive laugh.
"I was legally an adult."
"No, I meant—when you started. Training. Skills like yours don't manifest overnight. I would know. It takes years of training. So, what, you were fourteen? Fifteen?" He asked, turning to look over his shoulder at you.
"Yeah… I was fourteen," you answered, surprised he was taking this so well.
"Where were you before that?"
It dawned on you what he was doing, and how cleverly he was doing it. And despite the fact that you knew he was fishing for information, you didn't mind giving it in little bits and pieces.
"Some shitty orphanage," you shrugged, avoiding his gaze by applying more salve. Your gut twisted as the silence turned into something understanding.
"The fire…" Leon breathed. "You burned it down, didn't you?"
Your expression flickered.
"Yeah. I did."
"Why?"
Leon wasn't prepared for just how completely his heart would break when you looked at him again. A pain he had only glimpsed at now swirled in your glassy irises. Every answer he was looking for was right there for him. You'd burned down your past, buried it under ash and soot. At the price of your own sisters.
You held your silence, letting Leon come to his own conclusion. Despite what you'd joked about, he was smart. Smart enough to figure it out. Smart enough to look at you and understand. Because you'd never experienced more pain and more fear than you had in that god-awful place. And when you razed it to the ground, you swore you never would again.
He didn't have any words for you. None that would comfort. None that would make it feel any less heavy. No, I'm sorry's. No, it'll get easier's. They were reserved for people he didn't really care about but felt as if he had to say something anyway.
Finishing up the wounds on his back, you reached for the roll of bandages and started to bind the wound, scooting the chair back to its original position next to him. He seemed a little reluctant to let you work, raising the arm that wasn't even injured with considerable effort. When you fixed him with a look, he rolled his eyes, leaning forward slightly to let you wrap the bandages around his torso and up over his shoulder. It was a bitch of a wound to bind; in one of the most awkward places it could have possibly been for a roll of gauze to fix. But you managed it whilst still giving him as much freedom of movement as you could.
"There. How's it feel?" You asked, waiting for his response before cutting off the end. Leon rolled his shoulder, making a face at the stiffness before stretching it out. He knew the effects of both the herb and the spray, yet it amazed him every time.
"Yeah, pretty good," he nodded, and you slid a knife from your boot to sever the fabric as close to his chest as you dared. You'd wrapped it in such a way that the pressure would ensure it didn't come loose, which made Leon think you'd definitely done this before. "Thanks."
"Eh, you patch me up, I patch you up. This makes us even," you gestured to the work you just did, and Leon quirked a grin.
"Pretty sure it's still 2-1 on the life-saving scoreboard."
You gaped in mock offence.
"How didn't this count towards me saving your life?!" You asked, aghast at the idea.
"I wouldn't've died," he responded with a shrug, eyes alight with amusement.
"'Wouldn't've died'?! Are you alright?!? Did you hit your head on the way down?!? Shall I just leave you to be torn apart next time?" Your eyes widened and your brows furrowed in increased bafflement. You thought he was just messing with you. Now you were starting to think he was being serious.
"I had it," he continued in that same, nonchalant manner as if he hadn't just been used as a chew toy.
"Oh, you had it, did you? What did you have, exactly? Because if it wasn't brain damage, I don't—" you paused, noticing the way his expression hadn't changed. He was still looking at you with that little smirk you hated and adored. "You're fucking with me, aren't you?"
"Hugely."
"Motherfucker!" You weakly punched him in the shoulder, before slapping a hand across your mouth as you realised it was the same shoulder you'd just been working on. "Oh shit I'm so sorry I forgot—"
"It's numb, I didn't feel it," he interrupted.
"Okay then I'll do it again."
"Let's not get carried away, I'll still feel it later," Leon reasoned, leaning away from you as if that would do anything to stop you from thwacking him again. His eyes flickered down to the bandages around your abdomen and the gash that lay beneath them. "Speaking of which, how does yours feel?"
You blinked for a moment before following his gaze down to your side.
"Oh, honestly, I forgot it was there. It's fine," you twisted at the waist to demonstrate. "See? No pain."
"Good." How could a single word completely stall your brain? He said it like he meant it. Like he was genuinely relieved you weren't hurting, despite the fact it hasn't—and wouldn't—make any difference to him if you were.
He said it like your pain mattered.
You were stuck staring. Trying to make sense of it all. Trying to understand what this meant. What this should mean. Trying to unravel how you felt around him and why you felt that way. It was becoming a theme for your body to act with a will of its own. For your hands to seek his warmth without permission. So you weren't surprised when you felt the hard muscle of his bicep beneath your palm; yet you still glanced down to check. Lips parted, breath shallow, your eyes rose to meet his. Silently asking. You didn't want to overstep.
There was no hesitation in his eyes, the low lighting turning his blue-sky irises stormy. Though perhaps it also had something to do with how dilated his pupils were. The arm your hand rested on raised, albeit a little stiffly, and you went to pull away, mistaking the movement for discomfort. But when Leon's other hand held yours against him, encompassing it. Steadying it. Keeping it. You took a breath.
He was apprehensive in his movements. So sure of yours, but so hesitant in his own. His hand hovered just shy of your cheek. Waiting. You were already close enough that he could feel the warmth of your skin, see the racing of your pulse beneath the surface of your neck. You stole the breath from his aching lungs when you leaned into his touch. Your eyes that had held his gaze drifted closed, brows pinching.
Leon grazed his thumb down the dried blood on your cheek, smoothing away little flakes of crimson. Fuck, you were pretty. Gorgeous, even. He wished he knew your name. Because breathing your call sign felt wrong. Like it didn't hold the same intimacy your eyes did when you opened them again.
Your fingers drifted through the strands of his hair decorating his brow, smiling slightly when they drifted back like a reluctant curtain. Your fingers continued to graze down the side of his face, palm settling at his jaw. Drinking in his features. Leon's eyes flicked to your lips. Soft. Slightly bitten from a habit he hadn't noticed yet. And tempting. Oh, so very tempting.
He guided your gaze back to his, a silent question hanging in the air.
It would be devastating.
The unsteady breath you exhaled fanned his chin.
Truly and utterly devastating.
Leon leaned in to you, keeping your gaze, ever making certain he wasn't misreading.
Your hand tightened on his arm—not to stop him—but to make sure he didn't move away.
The first brush of your lips on his was electric. That first phantom touch. The one asking permission.
And you answered. Your eyes fluttered closed, your hand guiding him closer as you kissed him.
Leon inhaled sharply through his nose, feeling like his chest might burst apart. Everything about you was so wrong. So wrong for him. But feeling you on his lips, your hand on his cheek, his own skirting down to cup the side of your neck and jaw. Everything about this felt so right.
He wanted to pull you closer. To tug you into his lap. To run his hands up and down your body and listen to the soft sighs and little whimpers he could pull from you. But it was he who groaned lightly when he felt your tongue swipe across his lips, and he devoured your airy gasp when he responded in kind, smiling into you as he tasted the mint of the herb you'd chewed. For him.
Your fingers thread through his hair as you let yourself go. Let yourself give in to the feeling. You'd wanted this. But it hadn't satisfied the want. If anything, it had made it worse. Because now you didn't just want to kiss him. Now you wanted all of him. You wanted to drag your nails down the front of his chest. You wanted to feel him tense and relax beneath you.
And just as you had found when talking to him, it was easy to lose yourself in his touch. To submit to the drag of his tongue, his hand angling your head just so. Fuck, he was good. Skilled. He didn't push you beyond what you were giving. Didn't take freely. And when he pulled away from you, leaving you breathless and wanting, he coerced you back your body with a gentle swipe of his thumb along the scar on your cheek. If he could do all that by just kissing you, it made you lightheaded to think what he could have done if you weren't in the middle of some shitty Spanish village.
"Tell me your name," Leon murmured against your lips, grazing them with tantalising softness.
Those words.
Those words brought you back to your body more than his touch ever could. Like being doused with a bucket of cold water, your lidded eyes snapped wide. Calculating. Sharp. You scanned his face like he'd just admitted to killing your sisters himself. Brows furrowed, lips parted, but no longer in reverence, more like you had a thousand things to say and none of them seemed to be right, you pulled back from him.
Well, less pulled back and more jolted out of his touch, your hand hovering when you pulled it from his hair, like you didn't know what to do with it. Like it was toxic. Or clean. You still didn't know which was worse.
You stood with enough force to knock the chair over behind you, the clattering making you jump. Staring desperately at the chair like it somehow held the answers, your mind started to race. You kissed. Shit, you'd kissed him. Or he'd kissed you. Whichever way around it was. It didn't really matter. Except you could be mad at him for kissing you. You couldn't really be mad at him for you kissing him. But as good as you were at gaslighting yourself about the things you'd done, this wasn't one of them.
"I—"
"Al—" Leon went to say your call sign. The only thing he had close to a name for you. Only, it felt wrong. Of course, it felt wrong. He didn't even know your name and he'd kissed you. What the fuck was he thinking?
"I just—I should—" you tried, gesturing to anything and everything in the room to keep from looking at him as you slowly backed up towards the door. "I'm gonna see if there's uh—some way around. The tower. To the church. Thing. Hall. Village hall. Yeah. I'm gonna—go do that," you managed, dragging a hand through your hair, head whipping to the side when your knee knocked into a counter. "Stay. Here. Stay here. I'll be… back. I'll be back. Yeah. I'll—bye."
Leon wasn't able to get a word in edgeways before you'd made your swift exit. This didn't feel like a hurricane anymore. This felt like getting sucked into the jaws of Charybdis herself, drowning in a maelstrom before being swallowed whole. He wanted to talk you down. To apologise. To explain that he didn't know what he was thinking. He didn't know why he did that. Which was a lie, but maybe it would help you. Because of course he knew why he did that. It was the same reason he kept asking about you. He kept peppering you with questions. The same reason his hands always lingered on your body a beat longer than necessary, why his gaze always fell to you when he wasn't concentrating on anything.
He'd kissed you because he wanted to. Because you were a storm he wanted to get lost in, if you'd have him. Kissing you hadn't satisfied some benign curiosity. It had made it so much worse. And as good as it felt, as fucking good as it felt—
It was, indeed, devastating.
What the fuck? Oh what the fuck? What the fuck what the fuck whatthefuckwhatthefuck?!
Why? Why did you think that was a good idea? Did you have brain damage? Why did you all of a sudden have the whimsy of a five-year-old girl experiencing her first crush on the cool kid who could run really fast? Not that you had any idea what that felt like, admittedly. But all you could think about was how stupid you'd just been, and how fucking good it felt. You'd hoped the fresh air—well, "fresh" air—would do something to clear your head. But instead, it felt like you were breathing wrong.
Nonetheless, you did need to find a way around this rubble. There was no way Leon could climb through this in his condition, no matter how well those herbs work. You didn't know this area very well, since this was the place you'd met Luis and were almost instantly left for dead by the man. Slung over a broad shoulder like some helpless maiden. Or perhaps a sack of potatoes would be better. A maidenly sack of potatoes.
Fuck. You were losing it.
Keeping your centre of gravity close to the ground, you pushed open a door to one of the houses in the square. You'd left your rifle with Leon, thinking it would probably serve him better than it would serve you right now. Which was absolutely your justification for leaving it behind in your desperation to leave that room.
So, handgun it was.
The door creaked faintly as you pushed, palm flat against the splintering wood, revealing the dimly lit interior. It broke your heart a little to see what used to be so lived in. Dusted bookshelves, upturned chairs, cutlery and crockery still out on tables. Abandoned. Like someone suddenly pulled the strings on the puppets.
In the quiet, you could hear footsteps upstairs, as well as a faint beeping. The same beeping you'd heard earlier, when Leon had signalled to you. C4. Who the fuck had taken time out of their day to place C4 traps over the place? How did they even—
You stopped yourself. Whilst the hypothetical questions were doing wonders to distract your brain from thinking about what you'd just done, it wasn't doing great for your concentration. Though neither was getting lost in your own mind, the feeling of his lips on yours, his hand at your jaw, his breathy groan when—
Stop it.
Exhaling a quiet huff, you stood up straight, holstering your gun before moving through the ground floor. A few windows had been shattered in some kind of scuffle, and drawers had been left open from where they'd been yanked free. You only knew one person who kept leaving rooms like he was a thieving fanatic. Your disobedient lips pulled into an equally disobedient smile.
He'd been through here. Clearly.
Quietly crossing to the window, you dusted a few shards of glass from the empty frame, stilling as they softly clinked to the ground outside. Turning your head to the stairs, you listened for the continuous sound of footsteps above you, keeping your breathing deep and silent. Your shoulders relaxed slightly at the next creak of floorboards. Were they lying in wait? Just in case somebody came through this way? You guessed it was a good place to wait, since you were, indeed, coming this way.
Leaning out the window slightly, you saw that it led to… absolutely fucking nowhere. Back to the square you'd just come from. In fact, you were pretty sure Leon was in the next house over. Some progress you'd made.
Before you could stop it, your breath dragged painfully through your lungs, like something had reached out and snatched it from within your chest. Catching yourself on the sharp shards of the shattered window, you doubled over as you hacked a cough, both hands now stained red from your own blood. You tasted iron on your tongue, staring at your hand in mild horror. The first time, you thought it was because you'd just been choked out by the resident pope. Now you were starting to think something was seriously wrong with you. Whatever your blood was accepting. Or fighting. What was it he'd said?
Another wave of pain coursed through your body, and you doubled over again, coughing up sprays of blood, your hand clenching painfully against the glass fragments on the window, cutting the mildly calloused skin of your palms.
Those footsteps above you stopped for a moment, and you thought that perhaps, by some miracle, you'd gotten away with it. That was until various Spanish phrases filled the floor above you. Swearing lowly, you shook your head against the dizziness skewing your vision, ripping your handgun from the holster at your thigh.
At the first gunshot, Leon sat up like a meerkat. He'd been leaning against the table, mentally hitting himself for not catching you before you darted out the door. But when the first shot cracked through the silence, panic flared through his system.
It was much less of a battle to get his shirt on than it was to get off, shrugging it down his chest and turning to feed his arms through the leather straps of his harness. It took him less than a minute to clip the belt back around his waist, each prattle of gunfire adding an extra layer of urgency to his movements. He slipped the shotgun through the back of his harness, hooked your rifle over his shoulder, and quickly checked the magazine in his handgun before he shouldered out the door.
Because those shots were uneven. And he didn't like the pauses between them.
You leaned heavily against the wall behind you, gun raised in one hand up the stairs towards the advancing few, the other braced against your side, fingers splayed against the bandaged wound as if that were the source of your pain.
Another Ganados went down, tumbling dangerously close to the tripwire across the stairs, his arm missing it by a hair's breadth. You really didn't want that explosive to be set off. Despite the fact that it would likely clear the stairs of the villagers, you were already having a truly terrible time, and honestly didn't feel like fighting through some kind of PTSD trigger flashback whilst fighting for your life.
Your hand shook where you pointed your handgun, blood flecked teeth bared in defiance of your death. Wood exploded into splinters where your shot missed and hit the stairs, your arm finally running out of strength. And through your swimming vision, you swore you could make out black spiderwebs running beneath the surface of your skin.
Dropping your gun, your hand braced against your head as you hissed in pain, a dull, burning throb pulsing behind your eyes.
You didn't know how or when he arrived. You only knew he had when an arm wrapped around your waist and tugged you back, turning and forcing you into a crouch.
Leon moved his arm from your waist to tuck around your head, bringing you close into his chest as he turned his back to the stairs. Extending his arm behind him, he pointed his gun at the source of the beeping, waiting a fraction of a second for the Ganados to be within range before pulling the trigger. And the moment he did, he curled around you, shielding you from the heat and smoke of the resulting explosion.
His arms tightened when he felt you flinch, his brow resting on the crown of your head. And for someone who'd spent the last however many hours in this shitty village, your hair smelled remarkably good.
When the dust settled, Leon turned back to look at the result. The structural integrity of the stairs had been somewhat compromised, but not beyond use. He'd succeeded, however, in ridding the rest of the Ganados. Releasing a breath, he turned back to you when you shifted, a hand still clutched against the side of your head.
"Good thinking, Batman," you managed, though not without effort. Leon refrained from huffing a laugh, his attention caught by the way your features scrunched in pain.
"Hey, look at me,"
"Don't—"
"Look at me."
It was the first time you'd heard him use that tone since he'd held you at knife point. Clipped. No-nonsense. Abrupt. A tone that commanded you to listen to him, as much as you didn't want to.
Forcing your eyes open, you winced slightly at the candlelight, letting his hand on your chin guide your gaze up to his.
Leon's brows furrowed in concerned bafflement, and he reached for the torch in his belt. Because they were flickering. Your eyes. Not in the way he'd seen. But rather like they were fighting something. Smouldering embers flashed bright and dim within your pupils, as if it were fighting to burn. Or something was fighting to put it out.
"Ow—fucker," you hissed savagely, pulling away from his grip when he shone the flashlight into one of your eyes. Only to have your face stubbornly brought back to him, his fingers squeezing your chin in mild reprimand.
"Quit moving," he ordered, and you could almost laugh.
"A warning would've been nice," you fired back, though listening to his instruction and making a considerable effort not to move.
"Okay, bright light. Better?" He brought the beam back up to your eye, and though you hissed again, you didn't pull away.
"Do you even know what you're looking for?" You asked with no small degree of impatience, wanting the light to be out of your eye and for your head to stop pounding like a bass drum.
"That… church freak, looked us both in the eye and said something about our blood," he explained absently, his fingers loosening at your chin as he catalogued the details. With your pupil now nothing but a pinprick, he could see much clearer that darker lines infecting the colour, like bolts of black lightning through the whites of your sclera he hadn't seen before. "Other one," he murmured, turning your head to the side.
It was the same for both. Though when he looked back after flicking the torch off, those flickering embers had stopped their fight. Either they'd won or lost, it was difficult to tell.
Your limbs still felt heavy, and the pulsing in your head had reduced to a low, constant hum, but it wasn't as bad as it was moments ago. Magic plants, magic flashlight… You wonder what else Leon was hiding up his sleeve.
No. Kissing him was bad enough.
And just like that, all the overthinking that had momentarily left your brain came flooding back, seizing your breath and dragging your eyes to anywhere but his own gaze. Your nails bit into the flesh of your palm in an attempt to stop the hand on your chin from feeling so soft.
"Give it to me straight, doc? How long've I got?" You attempted to deflect, raising a brow and quirking your lips into a carefully crafted, crooked grin. Unfortunately for you, Leon perhaps invented the tactic of humour-based deflections. So when his eyes softened, and his thumb gently swiped along your jaw, you sort of knew he wasn't buying it…
"You don't need to do that."
"Do what?"
"Deflect. With humour."
"Aha, so you think I'm funny?" You provoked, wiggling your brow and earning yourself a soft huff of laughter.
"I think you're r—" whatever he was going to say died in Leon's throat. His jaw clenched, eyes searching your face for what looked like the last time before he released the hold on your chin.
The breath you sucked in wasn't from relief.
So your hand flew to his wrist before he could step away, stopping him in his tracks. And Leon was getting a little sick of your constant pushing and pulling. "I don't know wh—"
Once again, he was cut off. Not by himself. But by you. The phantom of a whisper leaving your lips. Your eyes had found great intrigue in the details of his shirt, glancing around the room as if you could somehow find a way out of this hole you'd dug yourself. Fuck, this felt like you were offering yourself up for sacrifice.
Leon leaned a little closer, and you pursed your lips reluctantly before saying it again. A name. "Who?"
You paused.
"Me. You asked for my name. That's it," you shrugged, saying it one more time. Leon's features slackened in shock before he could catch himself, his heart skipping a beat. Or maybe two. You'd told him your name. Your name. For some reason, it felt like being trusted with the secrets to the universe. You'd shared with him your name. And it couldn't be more fitting.
Hesitantly, your gaze lifted, testing the waters. Honestly, you weren't really sure what you were expecting. Your name had been used for ownership. A possession to keep you in line. Alecto had set you free from that. And now here you were, sharing it with a man you'd known for less than three hours. And you could honestly say, when your gaze finally settled on his face, you weren't expecting him to be smiling. Not grinning. Not smirking. Smiling.
Fuck, it was a good smile.
Leon repeated your name, tasting the vowels and intricacies on his tongue. Testing how it felt. How it sounded. He whispered it into the minimal space between you, tilting his head when your grip on his wrist tightened.
"Yeah, yeah. Don't wear it out," you muttered, feeling more seen than you'd ever been in your life. It didn't necessarily feel bad, you just felt… exposed. That same odd feeling of vulnerability when people think they've forgotten to put on underwear. Worst of all, it did send something a-flutter in your chest. Something you hadn't prepared for at all.
Leon hummed something noncommittal, and you could still feel his eyes on you. Checking. Gauging. And perhaps—ever so slightly—pushing. You released his wrist with a huff when he said it again, weakly shoving his shoulder with no real heat. "Ugh, enough."
He chuckled when he absorbed the shove with a small step back; the first proper laugh you'd heard from him. More full-bodied than you were expecting. The kind of laugh you would be able to feel through his chest if you were touching him. If your head was tucked in close, and his hand traced directionless patterns on your bare shoulder, a bed-sheet just about covering your waist, the hum of an afterglow sitting sweetly in your veins, lazily running your fingers down his chest—
Jesus fucking Christ.
"Why now?" Leon asked, letting the moment linger when you once again fell silent. Though not avoidant. More thoughtful.
"Trust…" you said after a while, watching for how the weight of the word sat on his shoulders, your breath falling silent in anticipation; with the instinct to run. Run from this. Pretend it never happened. Because trust was dangerous. Even if you trusted him more than you wanted to admit.
But the weight never came. If anything, he looked looser. Calmer. Like a weight had lifted rather than settled.
"Trust." He repeated, and you fought the urge to roll your eyes.
"Feel like I'm talkin' to a parrot with you repeating everything."
"Feel like I'm talkin' to—"
You shot him a look.
"Stop it."
There was that smirk. The one that often accompanied—yep, his hands raising in defence.
"Yes Ma'am," he raised a brow, and there was no winning the battle against your lips when they split into a smile. Like a thread being pulled loose, not even biting them could stop the inevitable. And short of turning around completely, there was nowhere to hide it but behind your hand as you pretended to wipe away a phantom streak of blood from your mouth.
Only for a very real red streak to stain your palm, and ground you back into your humbling reality, having forgotten you were coughing up blood not minutes ago. Right. Yeah.
Fuck.
"Oh, here. Think she belongs to you." Leon handed you your rifle from where it sat behind his shoulder, furrowing his brows as he watched you check it over like he'd check you for injuries. Or anyone, for that matter. "You were gone five minutes, didn't even get to use it."
Your head shot up, offended. Straight back to business then.
"Get to use it? Ex-fucking-scuse you?! I didn't leave her behind so you could use her like some three-dollar fleshlight!"—Leon choked on his own saliva, eyes flinging wide because never in his life did he think that's what you were going to say—"She wouldn't work for you anyway. Needs a special touch."
"Just to be clear, we're still talking about the rifle, right?" Honestly, he wasn't so sure anymore.
"What else would I be talking about?" Your eyes narrowed, holding the rifle a little too protectively to be perceived as sane.
Leon didn't dare answer that question. He liked having use of his hands, and he was a little worried you'd break them over any answer he'd supply.
"So why did you leave it?" He asked, only understanding the weight of the question when your mouth opened, and nothing came out. Because—he realised—you didn't mean to leave it behind. You'd left in quite the chaotic rush, and you'd forgotten your own rifle.
You felt like a fish, opening and closing your mouth in the hopes that if you did it enough, the clacking of your teeth would form some kind of answer.
The silence spoke volumes.
And, perhaps surprisingly, Leon didn't savour it. Because now the topic hung in the air like a swarm of bees. Humming and imposing and incredibly difficult to ignore. His hand reached up to try to ease some of the tension in his neck. This was not going to be a comfortable conversation. "Do you—uh, wanna—talk? About it?"
You froze momentarily.
"About what?"
Leon's brows raised.
"Seriously?"
Inhaling a deep breath, you smoothed the soft line of your brow. There were no exits now. No excuses to leave the conversation. Nowhere to run and no way out. You hated the way your gut twisted into knots. But it was better to shut it down now, right?
"It's fine. I was curious, you were curious, now we're not. We're good." Keeping your tone light and matter-of-fact, you managed to steel enough courage to place a hand on your hip. Despite the fact that your entire body was screaming at you to curl up and die.
"Really? That's it?" Leon asked, clearly sceptical that, for all of your chaos, that's all you had to say on the matter. Honestly, he was a little underwhelmed. And, perhaps, a little disappointed.
"That's it." You shrugged, crouching to retrieve your handgun from where you'd dropped it earlier, hoping that the movement would ease the tension in your muscles.
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing—" you paused, looking back at him over your shoulder. "Why? What're you looking for?"
"Hey, 'm not looking for anything." Leon stepped back, suddenly feeling like he had to defend himself. And not in the jokey, unserious way he had been with you. For some reason, he really didn't want you thinking he was looking for anything else. Because he wasn't. He was looking for Ashley. That's why he was here. To find Ashley. Not to make out with mercs.
That was becoming a bad habit…
"Good." You straightened.
"Good." He folded his arms across his chest.
You shot him another look, making it clear you wanted the last word.
"Yes, good."
"Great, even." Like hell he was giving you the last word.
"Fantastic." Why, even now, were you not genuinely irritated by him? Because that's what he was doing. Being deliberately jarring. So why, oh why, were you almost enjoying the verbal spar?
"Shall we?" Leon gestured to the door as you flung the strap of your rifle over your shoulder definitively, tugging on it a little too hard to be considered calm.
"Let's." You didn't wait for him to go first before striding out the door, keeping your chin held high. Maybe you wanted him to be looking for something else. Maybe you wanted him to insist on talking about it. Though maybe this didn't mean nearly as much to him as it did to you. And that, for some reason, with all the headaches and the body aches and the hacking up blood every now and then, that was what hurt the most.
Project: Fury
Leon's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad vacation to rural Spain only gets worse and weirder when he meets a woman with more secrets than he can shake a stick at and a vocabulary that would make Chris Redfield blush.
Ch.3: Trust
Ch.1, Ch.2 <-
Pairing: Leon Kennedy x F!Reader
Warnings: MDNI!!!!!!
Word Count: 11.6K
A/N: this took way too long im so sorry pleek forgive me ;-; this whole chapter is like, only half an hour in-world-time so like hhhhhhhhhhhh also to clarify, this is an x reader fic. i know there's been some confusion over that, but there is no specific name or identity other than backstory given to the mc, so imagine to your heart's content <3
Taglist: @plan3t-plut0 @meowieees @gfksz @deo-data (comment or yeet me an ask if u wanna be tagged :3)
You felt… odd. Which, by itself, wasn't exactly uncommon in your body. But taking into account the day you were having and your circumstances, it didn't exactly inspire confidence. This was more than the occasional missing memory from the night before. More than the hazy images of actions you don't remember. Your body had started to ache. Not enough to impede your progress, but enough for you to notice. And notice that it wasn't right.
It had been a couple of hours since you were stabbed with a needle against your will. Again, by itself, not exactly uncommon for your body. Though it goes without saying, you fought tooth and nail against the hands that bound you. Every time.
If you concentrated enough, you could still taste the blood from where you'd bitten through a thumb.
Evening light bled across the sky, a kaleidoscope of orange, pinks, and purples. The kind of sunset that people try extremely hard to describe, and yet can never quite nail the imagery. You were thankful for the softer lighting; however, looking into anything brighter than a small candle flame made your head hurt.
Definitely not normal.
Then those moments would fade. Like they were never there. Like it had lost a battle to something sturdier. More present. Now that you were far more familiar with.
Leon had been uncharacteristically quiet. That was to say, you hadn't heard some kind of stupid quip or lame joke out of him since you left the Chief's house a little while ago. Since you'd let that infernal vulnerability shine through and actually fucking cried.
The thought made you want to throw up.
You found yourself missing the sound of his voice. Found yourself waiting for the next witty line when you passed a string of obviously set clamps, or when you unclipped the tripwire of a C4 trap.
And yet… nothing. He largely stayed quiet. Fuck, you wished you knew what he was thinking. Wished you'd been somehow cursed with telepathy.
In reality, perhaps it was rather lucky you couldn't read his thoughts. Leon's head was a mess.
He didn't know what to think. Not of you, not of these circumstances, not of this village nor it's residents. He'd chosen to stay silent and focus on the mission because it was so much easier than trying to sort through whatever the fuck kind of mess his mind was tangled in.
Because he would have kissed you.
If you hadn't backed away. If he hadn't said something that crossed a line for you. He would have sealed the hair's breadth gap between you and given in to the gravitational pull that constantly seemed to be tugging him closer to you, and he would have kissed you.
Fuck, if you both weren't so pressed for time, he likely would have taken you there on the bed. If Ashley's life wasn't at stake, if he'd met you somewhere other than some shitty little Spanish village, if every single variable was different—
None of that mattered. Leon had spent enough of his time waging war on the what-ifs in his life; he didn't need to add another to the list. Because the fact of the matter was, he hadn't met you under those circumstances. He hadn't met you in some back-alley bar or independent coffee shop. He'd met you here. Whilst you'd taken a gig for someone you didn't know because it paid well.
Leon sighed heavily. Fucking mercs.
The village square was quiet. Suspiciously so. You had no doubt that whoever was orchestrating this whole thing knew you were free, and you found it difficult to believe they would just let the two of you walk around, armed to the teeth and taking out anybody who stood in your way.
Guns drawn, walking shoulder to shoulder, you stayed vigilant of your surroundings, half-expecting the bell tower to fucking explode or something.
Then the bell tower exploded.
With a detonation that shook the very earth itself, the tower collapsed partway through, brick and mortar raining down on the mud-slick square as the structure came crashing to the ground. Leon reached out on instinct, his hand catching your arm to tug you closer, his other shielding his eyes from the resulting cloud of dust.
You told yourself you turned toward him to avoid the debris. Told yourself it was because you would rather he get hurt than you. You worked alone. You worked alone for fuck's sake. You told yourself these things because the reality of feeling safe when you were close to him was nauseating.
Even if they were blatant lies.
As the last bricks clattered to the ground and the dust slowly settled, both you and Leon looked up to see your way now blocked, the entrance to the hall now barred with splintered foundations.
You sucked in a breath.
"I—"
"Hate this village?" He interrupted with a side-eye and a smirk, lowering his arm. Though his other hand remained on your elbow. Intentionally, now. This wasn't like he'd just forgotten he was touching you. No, this was something deliberate. You said you didn't know if you could trust him, so Leon would just have to show you that you can. Pressure light and sturdy, his eyes glanced down to the bruises on your neck, no doubt a mirror to his own.
He wouldn't let that happen again.
"How'd you know?" A wry, knowing smile played on your lips, and Leon shrugged.
"Lucky guess. Starting to think they don't want us going that way."
"An astute observation, Watson." You could feel it. The hand on your elbow. And you could feel the part of yourself fighting to let it stay there. You could gaslight yourself later. Tell yourself it meant nothing, or that it was some kind of tactical advantage. For now, you'd let it be. You'd listen to how it made you feel like that was the only warm part of your body, like his touch produced some kind of soothing balm. Like you wanted to feel it everywhere.
The softer, warmer lighting highlighted the lighter blonde in his hair, the shadows across his face exaggerated, the soft angle of his jaw. Your gaze swept lower, across the expanse of his throat, the purple petals of twin bruising. The breath in your chest stilled with the overwhelming urge to press your lips to the little mole left of his Adam's apple.
It was becoming unbearable at this point. The constant urge to be near him. The tenacious fucking yearning. You didn't yearn. You were a ruthless mercenary. Ruthless mercenaries don't yearn. Yet here you were, forcing yourself to look away so you didn't suck on his throat like some kind of lovesick vampire.
What was wrong with you?
The low grumble of a snarl had both your heads whipping to the side, contact forgotten, proximity less of an issue and more of an advantage as a salivating black wolf stalked out from behind one of the few homes in the village square. Eyes as red as the blood you coughed up, a growl as hungry like the wo—
Wait, no, that was a song.
In the blink of an eye, maybe less, your gun was in your hand, and Leon's in his. Hesitation wasn't an option, not even when it came to the animals. And with coordination you definitely shouldn't have had without actually communicating, two cracks split the air, overlapping as you fired at the same time.
Though you did wince when it yelped and fell to the ground, both bullets hitting their marks. Oddly enough, Leon's accuracy was better than your own. Something he'd put in the back of his mind for now, opting instead to stride over and sink his knife into the beast's neck as it started to twitch, waiting until it lay still to remove his blade.
Various other howls and snarls echoed about the village pathways, unseen and hunting. Adrenaline spiked through your system. "Ain't no rest for the wicked, huh?" You muttered as Leon came back to cover your flank, facing the opposite way.
"Good name for a song," Leon responded as he stood with you, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, scanning the environment as those snarls and growls seemed to jump around. Until his eyes lingered on a wooden balcony. A perfect place for you to pick off whoever, or whatever, came his way.
And you'd be out of danger…
"Wanna vantage point?" He asked, looking at you out of the corner of his eye, smirking slightly as you raised a brow.
"I'm not getting on your shoulders." You responded flatly, head snapping to the side as yet another impossible snarl echoed against the cabins and lodges.
Huffing an amused breath, Leon tapped your side before running over to position himself below the balcony, nodding up to the platform above him when your head tilted to the side. But it was all worth it when your expression cracked into a wicked grin, holstering your gun.
"You know, this is almost smart," you called, ignoring the ragged panting and low, wet snaps of saliva-flecked maws that rippled behind you as Leon pressed his back to the wall. There was a wild, reckless spark in your eye he could see even from this far away. The kind of defiance that dared the universe to just try. Like you were moments away from spitting in it's eye and asking it "That all you got?"
"And that was almost a compliment," he called back.
"Don't get used to it!" And with that, you started to run toward him just as one of the beasts surged from a window, snapping at the space you used to be. Teeth clacked, saliva sprayed, you left the hound behind as your boot hit the earth with one definitive crunch before you stepped onto his laced hands. A moment later, you were airborne.
Leon—perhaps unsurprisingly, considering your previous displays of strength—had severely overestimated how heavy you would be. Putting most of his strength into vaulting you up and onto the balcony, it was like picking up a heavy-looking satchel only to find it had been filled with feathers.
Nonetheless, though your trajectory was a little uncontrolled, you landed onto the balcony with a deft roll, steadying yourself with a hand on the wood. And the moment your foot left his hands, Leon turned with the momentum, dragged the shotgun from between his shoulder blades, and fired a shell into the beast that was following you just as it lunged to take a chunk from his neck.
"Jesus Christ Kennedy, what the fuck was that?" You called, coming up onto one knee and fixing your rifle into the gap between your chest and shoulder, your finger feathering on the trigger, pulling it until you felt the first click of resistance. Adding a little more pressure, you fired into the skull of another leaping beast, leading the shot slightly and exhaling in satisfaction as it collapsed to the side.
"You're lighter than you look!" Leon responded as he sidestepped past another, turning and pumping another shell into the creature's body, giving himself a little more time to back up.
"That's really rude!" Repositioning yourself, you aimed towards the narrow pathway you could have used as a choke point if he hadn't thought of a better plan. Steadying your breath, you once again pulled the trigger until you felt that telltale wall of resistance. The part of the mechanism that asks if you really want to do this. If whatever it is you were about to shoot was worth taking the life. You'd already made your peace with the questions. And so had your rifle.
But what came down the path wasn't another hound. A Ganados shambled into view, and you didn't hesitate when her head lumbered into your crosshairs, and fired the moment your reticle was perfectly in line between her eyes.
Leon's head whipped to the side as a thick, wet explosion sprayed against the wall, only to see the headless body of what was once someone coming to decapitate him fall to her knees and land in the mud.
"Guess I'll have to make it up to you." He had no idea if you could hear him anymore, his words no more than contemplative murmuring as he stared at the dead, headless woman. What he hadn't told you was that he could speak Spanish. He knew what these people were saying. They weren't mindless monsters like back in Raccoon City. They'd retained some of their consciousness, even if they were calling the two of you idiot pigs more often than not.
It was easier when they didn't talk…
A searing pain in his shoulder caught him off-guard, knees buckling as the hound pulled him to the ground. Dropping his shotgun, Leon slid his knife from the sheath at his shoulder and plunged it into the beast's side, barely managing to prevent a pained cry slipping through his gritted teeth as it writhed, canines still firmly lodged in the muscle of his shoulder.
He stabbed again, trying to twist away from its grip and only succeeding in tearing open the wound further. You were busying yourself with the onslaught of new Ganados shambling your way from homes and pathways you'd previously missed. Another bullet, another body dropped. It was only when you paused to reload that you heard the commotion below you.
And it wasn't a choice.
Acting on pure instinct, you shouldered the rifle and dropped from your perch, knives already gripped in both hands. You'd barely settled into your crouch before you lunged forward, hatred searing through your veins. You couldn't see much through the red in your vision, but you saw enough to slice your blade through the hound's spine, severing the connection to its back legs. The snapped whimper didn't faze you this time, not as you grabbed its jaws in both hands and wrenched it from Leon's shoulder, feeling the satisfying crack of bones beneath your now bloodied palms before you tossed it to the side.
A snarl similar to the hound's rippled from your throat. Low and animalistic and feral. Silver glinted in your palm, your knife back in your hand as if it never left, your sole focus on the dying, writhing hound before you. Hatred. Rage. Fury. That's all you knew. That's all you'd ever known.
Leon started to think—to his own muted horror—the blood from your smouldering-coal eyes wasn't coming from any kind of wound you kept reopening. Not when you stalked forward with predatory grace, kneeling and sinking your blade into the hound's throat, letting the cries die from its broken jaw before ripping it free in a savage spray of blood.
Dragging himself to his feet, Leon groaned as the wound in his shoulder flared angrily, his own pulse beating hardest in the torn flesh. The moment you whirled on him, something like recognition flashed in your eyes. And when you blinked, the phantom lantern winked out, and the blood down the sides of your face started to dry.
You watched his gaze not quite meet yours, his eyes stuck on the two lines down your cheeks. You hastily smeared them away with the back of your hand, pushing past the discomfort in your gut as the truth was becoming harder and harder to hide. But you had more pressing matters at hand. Namely, the wound in his shoulder.
"Fuck, Leon, your—"
"I'm fine." He cut you off, trying to roll the joint in emphasis, only to realise he was a lot less fine than he wanted to be.
Your eyes narrowed in evident disbelief. "Christ, you sound like me," stooping to snatch up the shotgun he'd dropped, you shouldered into the house with the balcony you were just using, confident you'd finished the last of the Ganados before setting the gun on what was once a dining table. It was dark and dusty and smelled of decay, but it was good enough. Pulling out one of the chairs, you hadn't even noticed he hadn't followed you in. Turning back, you peeked your head around the door. "You coming?"
Leon had, once again, been caught in your hurricane and rendered immobile by it. He'd just watched you break one of those beasts' jaws with your bare hands. He'd seen that weird, smouldering glow in your eyes, and he hadn't seen a physical wound that would have explained the blood down your face.
You weren't normal. He knew that the moment he locked eyes with you back in the abandoned factory. But this? This was another level of not normal.
And now you want to play nurse?!
Staring at you through the doorway, he watched your face flicker with conflict. Uncertainty came out on top, your eyes finding the ground when he didn't answer. Like that was proof of his rejection of whatever he'd just seen. Like you were expecting it. Like whatever reasons you had not to trust him had just manifested.
And he hated it. Seeing you so… dejected. Fuck, he hated it.
With a sigh he had to wince at, Leon nodded; accepting that whatever he'd just seen, he wasn't going to get answers anytime soon.
"Yeah… okay."
Your gaze lifted from the ground, relief replacing uncertainty. For a moment there, you really thought you'd fucked up. Not that you'd blame him. At all. Hell, if you were seeing what he was likely seeing, you'd run for the hills. Not for the same reasons, but you'd still run nonetheless.
Dragging another chair next to the one you'd already pulled out for him, you started searching for something, anything, that could held stop the bleeding. Or maybe a sewing kit. If nothing else, you could break off a table leg and tell him to bite on it as you sewed the wounds shut.
"What're you looking for?" Leon asked, and he hated how forced his voice sounded. Because as much as he could act like he was okay, his shoulder really fucking hurt.
"Something to dress it with or sew it with or anything," you huffed, as if the question had offended you.
"You don't carry first aid with you?" Leon asked as he sank down into one of the chairs.
"Oh yeah, of course, how could I forget? Let me just pull my first aid kit from my ass!" You hissed back, yanking open drawers and rifling through them, ignoring the mild hurt when you sliced the back of your hand on a kitchen knife.
Leon managed to refrain from making another joke about your ass as he reached into the back pouch of his belt with a wince, pulling out the same three things he used to patch up your own wound.
He vaguely wondered how it was faring.
"Use these."
You paused your search, turning and stopping dead when you saw what he'd placed on the table.
"A weed, a roll of bandages and a can of deodorant?" You asked flatly, raising a brow as he reached out and turned the can so the little cross was facing you. "Ah. Medical deodorant. That'll do it."
Your sarcasm wasn't lost on him. "It's a numbing spray. The herb has—fuck, healing properties. Acts as an antiseptic agent and increases the rate of recovery. Same things I used for you"
You fell silent for a moment.
"You healed up an axe wound to my side with a fucking plant? Thought you said you didn't do any voodoo shit?"
"Nothin' voodoo about it."
"He says, asking me to heal a substantial laceration with one herb and a dream."
"Don't mean to rush you, but I am bleeding out."
"Fuck, fine, okay, I'll use your stupid plant. Take your shirt off."
Leon paused.
"What?"
"I'm binding your wound, not sewing a tear. Off. Now."
"Bedside manner could use some work," he muttered, working the tight fabric up his waist with the use of just one hand. You, however, had taken great interest in reading the phantom label of the numbing spray. "Little help?" Leon asked through gritted teeth.
"Take your own damn shirt off," you shot back, once again sounding offended he'd even asked.
"I can't." He snapped, and that seemed to make you pause.
Silently, you placed the spray back onto the table and rounded to take a knee before him. And Leon really hadn't thought this through, because the moment your hand bat his own away and your fingers brushed his skin, he sucked in a breath. One that had nothing to do with the pain in his shoulder.
That was mostly all you were concerning yourself with now. After realising that asking for help may be as difficult for him as it was for you, you stopped being so hard on him and chose instead to focus on what you were doing. Slowly, you inched the tight fabric up his torso, your gaze flicking from your task up to his face to make sure nothing was hurting too badly. Your chest constricted at the various scars smattered across his body, decorating the hard plains of his abs, jagged lines shining beneath the blood on his chest. When you checked back in, he wasn't looking at you.
"Can you get your arm through?" Gone was the sharp, witty tone you used to verbally dance with him. The edges to your voice had softened, almost trembling. And Leon finally turned his face back towards you. The dry, sarcastic comment died on his tongue when he drank in the pinch in your brows, the earnest concern in your eyes, the slight parting of your lips. His words weren't the only thing that ceased.
He was sure his heart had to jump-start itself.
"Yeah, I uh—I think so," he nodded, and your hand moved to hold the fabric just below the wound so it wouldn't be irritated by the stretch of him feeding his arm through. Your other hand moved the sleeve around his bicep down as he folded his elbow through it, hissing as the movements jolted through his other shoulder. You paused his movements with a hand on his forearm, silently asking him to wait for the pain to settle before finally pulling the hem of the shirt up and over his uninjured shoulder.
"Duck," you instructed gently, and Leon ducked his head as you pulled up the neckline, shaking out his hair when the shirt rested at his other shoulder. The injured one. He noticed you'd done this in such a way that he wouldn't have to move his arm, which did something bittersweet to his chest. "This is gonna suck," you warned him lowly, and Leon huffed a smile.
"I'm sure I'll live," he murmured so softly you had to glance back at him to make sure he wasn't half-asleep. But he wasn't. He was looking at you now. In the same way he had in the house. The same way he had in the valley. With that same tenderness that drew you in and caught you like a willing moth. Because you didn't struggle away from his eyes. Rather, they made you want to accept your fate.
So when you dragged your eyes back to his shoulder, it was out of pure necessity.
Pulling the fabric, you stopped every time he hissed or grunted, once again letting the pain settle before moving again. You could see the tension in his jaw—the way his eyes screwed shut, the way he gripped the edge of the table like it owed him rent—and you inhaled a steadying breath. There was a part of you that wanted to, quite literally, rip off the band-aid and be done with it. But you also didn't want to cause him that much pain.
Until you got to the first major laceration, and you couldn't move a fraction before he stamped his foot with a low, strained growl. You tried to move the fabric again, but he hissed before you could even apply pressure, eyes screwed tight, teeth bared. You knew you only had one option, really. Still, it shocked you when he said it out loud.
"Just rip it off," he hissed, the wood of the table creaking from his white-knuckle grip.
"You sure?" You asked, searching his face, finding his eyes when they opened a sliver.
"Yeah."
"Do you want me to count down or—"
"Just do it."
You nodded, taking the fabric in both hands securely. And despite the fact that Leon didn't want a countdown, you still felt the need to do it in your head. Maybe to prepare yourself for how much this would hurt him.
Three, two, one—
You pulled the shirt down his arm. Hard. Your gut twisted when he cried out before he could swallow it, lurching forward before falling back against the chair, sweat beading along his brow.
"It's done, it's okay, it's done, it's off now," you soothed, placing the shirt on the table and reaching for the numbing spray, moving to now sit on the extra chair you'd placed next to his. Shaking it vigorously, you popped off the cap and pressed on the atomiser, having no idea if this was how it worked or not.
The moment the cooling numbing agent hit his skin, it started to take effect. Leon's head fell back as he exhaled a low "Fuck," before finally opening his eyes, blinking through the blurriness from where he'd had them screwed shut for so long. "What're you doing?"
You froze, looking from the wound back to him.
"I—you said it was a numbing agent! Should I not have—" you panicked slightly, and Leon's heart softened.
"You haven't used the herb yet," he responded calmly, hoping it would be infectious.
It wasn't.
"I don't know! Does it matter?" You asked, looking between the can in your hand and the herb on the table as if either one had any indication which should be used first.
Leon thought for a moment. "Actually, I don't think it does. I just use the plant first, normally. Hurts like a bitch though, which I associate with something working."
You exhaled the tension you'd just gathered, shaking the can again before applying more.
"Don't fucking scare me like that," you muttered, as if saying it louder would somehow make you even more vulnerable. Leon's small huff of amusement fanned the side of your face, and you barely managed to suppress a shiver. Now that the worst was over, it was difficult to ignore the situation. It wasn't like the compression shirt left much to the imagination, but it was definitely different seeing him without it. He was in good shape. Which was perhaps an understatement. But you couldn't confirm or deny without openly staring at his body, and you really didn't want to do that. At least, not in this context.
"Sorry," he breathed, his hand finding your knee. Leon picked up on the slight hitch in your breath and smiled inwardly to himself. You were kind of cute, when you weren't being murderous.
Setting the can aside, you didn't move to pull your knee away from him. You didn't move it closer either, even though you wanted to. Honestly, you didn't really know how. You didn't know how to chase a feeling you didn't think you were allowed, or wasn't yours to want. So instead, you reached for the herb, looking at it a little sceptically.
"You're gonna have to talk me through this. Never healed someone with leaves before," you admitted, raising a brow as you looked between Leon and the herb, trying to ignore the way his thumb smoothed your knee.
"Chew it til it's kinda mushy, then just kinda—press it into the wound," he explained, though when you looked at him a little uncertain, he squeezed your knee slightly. "Trust me?"
"We just had a whole conversation about that," you muttered, but went to pluck the plant from the table anyway. You had no evidence this was what he used on your own wound, but then again, you had no evidence he didn't. It could be some remarkably clever plan to kill you, if the plant was poisonous, and the thought did cross your mind. But he would be in a much worse position if you were dead. So, keeping an eye on his reactions to watch for anything that could indicate deception, you picked off a leaf and placed it in your mouth.
Minty. Surprisingly so. Your brows shot up at the surprisingly pleasant taste. It was like fibrous toothpaste. You swore you could taste a little eucalyptus as well.
"Not bad, right?" Leon asked, watching with what could only be described as fond amusement, remembering the first time he was pleasantly surprised by the plant's flavour. Though that was in very different circumstances.
Covering your mouth with your hand, you nodded.
"Better than I was expecting," you managed, before all of a sudden feeling extremely self-conscious. Which was a new feeling for you. You couldn't remember the last time anyone made you feel self-conscious, but for some reason, the idea of spitting out this stupid plant whilst Leon watched you made you want to die. What if you got it on your chin? What if a string of saliva snapped back into your face? What if—
What the fuck were you talking about?! Since when did you care?!
Since right now, apparently.
Leon tilted his head to the side as you turned away, still covering your mouth with one hand and spitting as delicately as you could into the other. His earlier thought rang true in his head. Cute.
He wondered if you'd be this shy spitting into your hand if it was for his co—
Woah. Okay…
When you turned back, you paused as you registered his expression. The brow raise. The slightly smug smirk. You wiped the corner of your mouth with your finger for good measure. "What?"
"I'm sitting here shirtless, and you're the self-conscious one?" He asked, and you finally had a real excuse to look down properly, without having to concentrate on anything else. Which—though hindsight was always 20/20—was a terrible idea. Because it was a struggle to tear your eyes away from the carved marble of his chest, the trained valleys and plains of his abs, the smattering of hair dipping low below his waistline.
You inhaled a long, calming breath that accomplished exactly nothing.
"Nothing to be self-conscious about." You managed, though your words were strained.
"That so?" Leon provoked lightly, and you became hyper-aware of his hand on your knee. Not that you weren't already. But honestly? You'd rather this casual flirt than the moments where you felt like he was staring through you. Like he could see into your very soul. Like he could peel apart the layers and layers encasing your heart and make a home there.
An idiotic ideal.
Tearing your gaze from his, you dipped your fingers into the green paste and gently applied the herb to the first laceration, ignoring his words. Now you were actively working on the wounds, you could see how deep they were. How used to wounds like this was he? To be able to even try and play it off like he was fine, even for a second.
You stopped when his hand on your knee tightened, and he inhaled a deep breath.
"Does it hurt?"
Leon paused for a moment. Because it should. It should be screaming agony for a wound like this. But it was nothing more than a small itch.
"No… I was expecting it too, but uh—no, it doesn't hurt…" He responded, now starting to suspect you of voodoo.
"Probably because I put the numbing spray on before, rather than after." You said it like it was obvious. Which it probably was.
"Never thought've doing that," Leon admitted in subdued wonder, watching you work now that he wasn't in searing pain.
"It's a good job you're pretty…" You muttered, your lips quirking into a half-smile as you concentrated, amused with yourself.
Leon blinked, not expecting such a blatant compliment from you.
"Thanks…? I—" then it hit him. What you really meant. "Hey!"
You laughed quietly, and he realised he would let you do whatever you wanted, insult him however you saw fit, if he got to hear that sound again. And when you glanced back to him out of instinct, your fingers paused on his shoulder.
There it was again. That look. That look. The one that made you want to fold into him and turn tail and run at the same time. The one that made you want to kiss him until the rest of the world melted away and cross the world so you couldn't touch him.
You wanted him to stop. But if he stopped, you were certain you'd die.
So you broke the silence.
"You've got scars to rival mine." That did it. He looked away then. Withdrew. Completely. The hand on your knee nothing but a cold ghost now. You glanced to where it now rested on his thigh, before starting your work again, packing more of the salve into the wounds.
It was Leon's turn to feel self-conscious, which he already did a little when he first took his shirt off. But you didn't seem bothered by anything you were seeing, so that feeling faded into the back of his mind. Only to be thrust forward. Because yeah, he did. He had a lot of scars. Some through training, some through missions, most of them from Krauser, if he was being honest. When sparring got a little too real, he'd nick him with a blade. Pain makes people stronger. Apparently.
He shifted beneath your touch, and you felt like the world's biggest asshole. You should have known that would have been a sensitive subject. Fuck, you didn't like showing your scars either. At least not the ones on your neck. Or your wrists. But that was a story for another time. The ones you'd sustained through various gigs you didn't really mind.
"They're not ugly…" You added quietly, and Leon peered at you out the corner of his eye, suspicious. Waiting for confirmation. "They're proof. That you're alive, I mean. That's how I see mine, anyway. Proof I'm still me. Proof that I survived," just about, you wanted to add, but you thought better of it. Not here. Not now. Not yet.
Not yet.
"Pain makes you stronger. Something my mentor used to say," he shrugged as if it were no big deal. As if the proof of Krauser's methods weren't forever branded into his skin.
"Sounds like we had similar mentors," you hummed, dabbing the final bits of salve into the wound before taking the plant and popping another couple of leaves into your mouth.
"Why'd you kill him?" Leon asked softly, and you sighed through your nose. He'd trusted you thus far. Maybe you should do the same. Taking a moment to grind the leaves into the same paste, you turned away again to spit them out.
"It was my first assignment. He—lean forward—told me that if I couldn't kill him, I couldn't accomplish anything. If I couldn't kill him, I may as well quit now," you explained, taking the can and spraying the wounds on the back of his shoulder. "I broke down. Told him I couldn't do it. Told him I wasn't strong enough. And when he held me and said to me that it was okay, said he was sorry—" you paused. "I stuck a knife in his back. Quick. Efficient. Severed the spinal cord. Just like he'd taught me. Fucker even had the audacity to look proud before he died." You finished, letting the silence linger before it became a little too thick. "Leon?"
"I'm just uh—processing," he murmured, and you nodded, even though he couldn't see you. That was fair enough. It was a lot to take in. Probably put a few things into perspective for him. As it should. That wasn't a bad thing. It shouldn't be a bad thing. So why did it feel like you'd just chewed up and spat out what kindling companionship was growing between you?
He wasn't wrong about you being complicated. A story like that should have warned him off. It should have told him all he needed to know about who you were. Someone waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Capable of putting your feelings aside to accomplish a task, no matter the implications or consequences. But it didn't. For some unknown, godforsaken reason, it didn't.
"How old were you?" He asked finally, almost making you jump, having half-expected to continue in silence. You thought about lying. About telling him a much younger age. Maybe that you were twelve. Or fifteen. Fifteen seemed like the border age where your decisions still didn't hold much weight. But you didn't want to lie to him. Not again.
"Nineteen," you declared, straightening your back to prepare for whatever disgust was coming your way.
It didn't come.
"You were a kid," Leon offered, and you snorted a dismissive laugh.
"I was legally an adult."
"No, I meant—when you started. Training. Skills like yours don't manifest overnight. I would know. It takes years of training. So, what, you were fourteen? Fifteen?" He asked, turning to look over his shoulder at you.
"Yeah… I was fourteen," you answered, surprised he was taking this so well.
"Where were you before that?"
It dawned on you what he was doing, and how cleverly he was doing it. And despite the fact that you knew he was fishing for information, you didn't mind giving it in little bits and pieces.
"Some shitty orphanage," you shrugged, avoiding his gaze by applying more salve. Your gut twisted as the silence turned into something understanding.
"The fire…" Leon breathed. "You burned it down, didn't you?"
Your expression flickered.
"Yeah. I did."
"Why?"
Leon wasn't prepared for just how completely his heart would break when you looked at him again. A pain he had only glimpsed at now swirled in your glassy irises. Every answer he was looking for was right there for him. You'd burned down your past, buried it under ash and soot. At the price of your own sisters.
You held your silence, letting Leon come to his own conclusion. Despite what you'd joked about, he was smart. Smart enough to figure it out. Smart enough to look at you and understand. Because you'd never experienced more pain and more fear than you had in that god-awful place. And when you razed it to the ground, you swore you never would again.
He didn't have any words for you. None that would comfort. None that would make it feel any less heavy. No, I'm sorry's. No, it'll get easier's. They were reserved for people he didn't really care about but felt as if he had to say something anyway.
Finishing up the wounds on his back, you reached for the roll of bandages and started to bind the wound, scooting the chair back to its original position next to him. He seemed a little reluctant to let you work, raising the arm that wasn't even injured with considerable effort. When you fixed him with a look, he rolled his eyes, leaning forward slightly to let you wrap the bandages around his torso and up over his shoulder. It was a bitch of a wound to bind; in one of the most awkward places it could have possibly been for a roll of gauze to fix. But you managed it whilst still giving him as much freedom of movement as you could.
"There. How's it feel?" You asked, waiting for his response before cutting off the end. Leon rolled his shoulder, making a face at the stiffness before stretching it out. He knew the effects of both the herb and the spray, yet it amazed him every time.
"Yeah, pretty good," he nodded, and you slid a knife from your boot to sever the fabric as close to his chest as you dared. You'd wrapped it in such a way that the pressure would ensure it didn't come loose, which made Leon think you'd definitely done this before. "Thanks."
"Eh, you patch me up, I patch you up. This makes us even," you gestured to the work you just did, and Leon quirked a grin.
"Pretty sure it's still 2-1 on the life-saving scoreboard."
You gaped in mock offence.
"How didn't this count towards me saving your life?!" You asked, aghast at the idea.
"I wouldn't've died," he responded with a shrug, eyes alight with amusement.
"'Wouldn't've died'?! Are you alright?!? Did you hit your head on the way down?!? Shall I just leave you to be torn apart next time?" Your eyes widened and your brows furrowed in increased bafflement. You thought he was just messing with you. Now you were starting to think he was being serious.
"I had it," he continued in that same, nonchalant manner as if he hadn't just been used as a chew toy.
"Oh, you had it, did you? What did you have, exactly? Because if it wasn't brain damage, I don't—" you paused, noticing the way his expression hadn't changed. He was still looking at you with that little smirk you hated and adored. "You're fucking with me, aren't you?"
"Hugely."
"Motherfucker!" You weakly punched him in the shoulder, before slapping a hand across your mouth as you realised it was the same shoulder you'd just been working on. "Oh shit I'm so sorry I forgot—"
"It's numb, I didn't feel it," he interrupted.
"Okay then I'll do it again."
"Let's not get carried away, I'll still feel it later," Leon reasoned, leaning away from you as if that would do anything to stop you from thwacking him again. His eyes flickered down to the bandages around your abdomen and the gash that lay beneath them. "Speaking of which, how does yours feel?"
You blinked for a moment before following his gaze down to your side.
"Oh, honestly, I forgot it was there. It's fine," you twisted at the waist to demonstrate. "See? No pain."
"Good." How could a single word completely stall your brain? He said it like he meant it. Like he was genuinely relieved you weren't hurting, despite the fact it hasn't—and wouldn't—make any difference to him if you were.
He said it like your pain mattered.
You were stuck staring. Trying to make sense of it all. Trying to understand what this meant. What this should mean. Trying to unravel how you felt around him and why you felt that way. It was becoming a theme for your body to act with a will of its own. For your hands to seek his warmth without permission. So you weren't surprised when you felt the hard muscle of his bicep beneath your palm; yet you still glanced down to check. Lips parted, breath shallow, your eyes rose to meet his. Silently asking. You didn't want to overstep.
There was no hesitation in his eyes, the low lighting turning his blue-sky irises stormy. Though perhaps it also had something to do with how dilated his pupils were. The arm your hand rested on raised, albeit a little stiffly, and you went to pull away, mistaking the movement for discomfort. But when Leon's other hand held yours against him, encompassing it. Steadying it. Keeping it. You took a breath.
He was apprehensive in his movements. So sure of yours, but so hesitant in his own. His hand hovered just shy of your cheek. Waiting. You were already close enough that he could feel the warmth of your skin, see the racing of your pulse beneath the surface of your neck. You stole the breath from his aching lungs when you leaned into his touch. Your eyes that had held his gaze drifted closed, brows pinching.
Leon grazed his thumb down the dried blood on your cheek, smoothing away little flakes of crimson. Fuck, you were pretty. Gorgeous, even. He wished he knew your name. Because breathing your call sign felt wrong. Like it didn't hold the same intimacy your eyes did when you opened them again.
Your fingers drifted through the strands of his hair decorating his brow, smiling slightly when they drifted back like a reluctant curtain. Your fingers continued to graze down the side of his face, palm settling at his jaw. Drinking in his features. Leon's eyes flicked to your lips. Soft. Slightly bitten from a habit he hadn't noticed yet. And tempting. Oh, so very tempting.
He guided your gaze back to his, a silent question hanging in the air.
It would be devastating.
The unsteady breath you exhaled fanned his chin.
Truly and utterly devastating.
Leon leaned in to you, keeping your gaze, ever making certain he wasn't misreading.
Your hand tightened on his arm—not to stop him—but to make sure he didn't move away.
The first brush of your lips on his was electric. That first phantom touch. The one asking permission.
And you answered. Your eyes fluttered closed, your hand guiding him closer as you kissed him.
Leon inhaled sharply through his nose, feeling like his chest might burst apart. Everything about you was so wrong. So wrong for him. But feeling you on his lips, your hand on his cheek, his own skirting down to cup the side of your neck and jaw. Everything about this felt so right.
He wanted to pull you closer. To tug you into his lap. To run his hands up and down your body and listen to the soft sighs and little whimpers he could pull from you. But it was he who groaned lightly when he felt your tongue swipe across his lips, and he devoured your airy gasp when he responded in kind, smiling into you as he tasted the mint of the herb you'd chewed. For him.
Your fingers thread through his hair as you let yourself go. Let yourself give in to the feeling. You'd wanted this. But it hadn't satisfied the want. If anything, it had made it worse. Because now you didn't just want to kiss him. Now you wanted all of him. You wanted to drag your nails down the front of his chest. You wanted to feel him tense and relax beneath you.
And just as you had found when talking to him, it was easy to lose yourself in his touch. To submit to the drag of his tongue, his hand angling your head just so. Fuck, he was good. Skilled. He didn't push you beyond what you were giving. Didn't take freely. And when he pulled away from you, leaving you breathless and wanting, he coerced you back your body with a gentle swipe of his thumb along the scar on your cheek. If he could do all that by just kissing you, it made you lightheaded to think what he could have done if you weren't in the middle of some shitty Spanish village.
"Tell me your name," Leon murmured against your lips, grazing them with tantalising softness.
Those words.
Those words brought you back to your body more than his touch ever could. Like being doused with a bucket of cold water, your lidded eyes snapped wide. Calculating. Sharp. You scanned his face like he'd just admitted to killing your sisters himself. Brows furrowed, lips parted, but no longer in reverence, more like you had a thousand things to say and none of them seemed to be right, you pulled back from him.
Well, less pulled back and more jolted out of his touch, your hand hovering when you pulled it from his hair, like you didn't know what to do with it. Like it was toxic. Or clean. You still didn't know which was worse.
You stood with enough force to knock the chair over behind you, the clattering making you jump. Staring desperately at the chair like it somehow held the answers, your mind started to race. You kissed. Shit, you'd kissed him. Or he'd kissed you. Whichever way around it was. It didn't really matter. Except you could be mad at him for kissing you. You couldn't really be mad at him for you kissing him. But as good as you were at gaslighting yourself about the things you'd done, this wasn't one of them.
"I—"
"Al—" Leon went to say your call sign. The only thing he had close to a name for you. Only, it felt wrong. Of course, it felt wrong. He didn't even know your name and he'd kissed you. What the fuck was he thinking?
"I just—I should—" you tried, gesturing to anything and everything in the room to keep from looking at him as you slowly backed up towards the door. "I'm gonna see if there's uh—some way around. The tower. To the church. Thing. Hall. Village hall. Yeah. I'm gonna—go do that," you managed, dragging a hand through your hair, head whipping to the side when your knee knocked into a counter. "Stay. Here. Stay here. I'll be… back. I'll be back. Yeah. I'll—bye."
Leon wasn't able to get a word in edgeways before you'd made your swift exit. This didn't feel like a hurricane anymore. This felt like getting sucked into the jaws of Charybdis herself, drowning in a maelstrom before being swallowed whole. He wanted to talk you down. To apologise. To explain that he didn't know what he was thinking. He didn't know why he did that. Which was a lie, but maybe it would help you. Because of course he knew why he did that. It was the same reason he kept asking about you. He kept peppering you with questions. The same reason his hands always lingered on your body a beat longer than necessary, why his gaze always fell to you when he wasn't concentrating on anything.
He'd kissed you because he wanted to. Because you were a storm he wanted to get lost in, if you'd have him. Kissing you hadn't satisfied some benign curiosity. It had made it so much worse. And as good as it felt, as fucking good as it felt—
It was, indeed, devastating.
What the fuck? Oh what the fuck? What the fuck what the fuck whatthefuckwhatthefuck?!
Why? Why did you think that was a good idea? Did you have brain damage? Why did you all of a sudden have the whimsy of a five-year-old girl experiencing her first crush on the cool kid who could run really fast? Not that you had any idea what that felt like, admittedly. But all you could think about was how stupid you'd just been, and how fucking good it felt. You'd hoped the fresh air—well, "fresh" air—would do something to clear your head. But instead, it felt like you were breathing wrong.
Nonetheless, you did need to find a way around this rubble. There was no way Leon could climb through this in his condition, no matter how well those herbs work. You didn't know this area very well, since this was the place you'd met Luis and were almost instantly left for dead by the man. Slung over a broad shoulder like some helpless maiden. Or perhaps a sack of potatoes would be better. A maidenly sack of potatoes.
Fuck. You were losing it.
Keeping your centre of gravity close to the ground, you pushed open a door to one of the houses in the square. You'd left your rifle with Leon, thinking it would probably serve him better than it would serve you right now. Which was absolutely your justification for leaving it behind in your desperation to leave that room.
So, handgun it was.
The door creaked faintly as you pushed, palm flat against the splintering wood, revealing the dimly lit interior. It broke your heart a little to see what used to be so lived in. Dusted bookshelves, upturned chairs, cutlery and crockery still out on tables. Abandoned. Like someone suddenly pulled the strings on the puppets.
In the quiet, you could hear footsteps upstairs, as well as a faint beeping. The same beeping you'd heard earlier, when Leon had signalled to you. C4. Who the fuck had taken time out of their day to place C4 traps over the place? How did they even—
You stopped yourself. Whilst the hypothetical questions were doing wonders to distract your brain from thinking about what you'd just done, it wasn't doing great for your concentration. Though neither was getting lost in your own mind, the feeling of his lips on yours, his hand at your jaw, his breathy groan when—
Stop it.
Exhaling a quiet huff, you stood up straight, holstering your gun before moving through the ground floor. A few windows had been shattered in some kind of scuffle, and drawers had been left open from where they'd been yanked free. You only knew one person who kept leaving rooms like he was a thieving fanatic. Your disobedient lips pulled into an equally disobedient smile.
He'd been through here. Clearly.
Quietly crossing to the window, you dusted a few shards of glass from the empty frame, stilling as they softly clinked to the ground outside. Turning your head to the stairs, you listened for the continuous sound of footsteps above you, keeping your breathing deep and silent. Your shoulders relaxed slightly at the next creak of floorboards. Were they lying in wait? Just in case somebody came through this way? You guessed it was a good place to wait, since you were, indeed, coming this way.
Leaning out the window slightly, you saw that it led to… absolutely fucking nowhere. Back to the square you'd just come from. In fact, you were pretty sure Leon was in the next house over. Some progress you'd made.
Before you could stop it, your breath dragged painfully through your lungs, like something had reached out and snatched it from within your chest. Catching yourself on the sharp shards of the shattered window, you doubled over as you hacked a cough, both hands now stained red from your own blood. You tasted iron on your tongue, staring at your hand in mild horror. The first time, you thought it was because you'd just been choked out by the resident pope. Now you were starting to think something was seriously wrong with you. Whatever your blood was accepting. Or fighting. What was it he'd said?
Another wave of pain coursed through your body, and you doubled over again, coughing up sprays of blood, your hand clenching painfully against the glass fragments on the window, cutting the mildly calloused skin of your palms.
Those footsteps above you stopped for a moment, and you thought that perhaps, by some miracle, you'd gotten away with it. That was until various Spanish phrases filled the floor above you. Swearing lowly, you shook your head against the dizziness skewing your vision, ripping your handgun from the holster at your thigh.
At the first gunshot, Leon sat up like a meerkat. He'd been leaning against the table, mentally hitting himself for not catching you before you darted out the door. But when the first shot cracked through the silence, panic flared through his system.
It was much less of a battle to get his shirt on than it was to get off, shrugging it down his chest and turning to feed his arms through the leather straps of his harness. It took him less than a minute to clip the belt back around his waist, each prattle of gunfire adding an extra layer of urgency to his movements. He slipped the shotgun through the back of his harness, hooked your rifle over his shoulder, and quickly checked the magazine in his handgun before he shouldered out the door.
Because those shots were uneven. And he didn't like the pauses between them.
You leaned heavily against the wall behind you, gun raised in one hand up the stairs towards the advancing few, the other braced against your side, fingers splayed against the bandaged wound as if that were the source of your pain.
Another Ganados went down, tumbling dangerously close to the tripwire across the stairs, his arm missing it by a hair's breadth. You really didn't want that explosive to be set off. Despite the fact that it would likely clear the stairs of the villagers, you were already having a truly terrible time, and honestly didn't feel like fighting through some kind of PTSD trigger flashback whilst fighting for your life.
Your hand shook where you pointed your handgun, blood flecked teeth bared in defiance of your death. Wood exploded into splinters where your shot missed and hit the stairs, your arm finally running out of strength. And through your swimming vision, you swore you could make out black spiderwebs running beneath the surface of your skin.
Dropping your gun, your hand braced against your head as you hissed in pain, a dull, burning throb pulsing behind your eyes.
You didn't know how or when he arrived. You only knew he had when an arm wrapped around your waist and tugged you back, turning and forcing you into a crouch.
Leon moved his arm from your waist to tuck around your head, bringing you close into his chest as he turned his back to the stairs. Extending his arm behind him, he pointed his gun at the source of the beeping, waiting a fraction of a second for the Ganados to be within range before pulling the trigger. And the moment he did, he curled around you, shielding you from the heat and smoke of the resulting explosion.
His arms tightened when he felt you flinch, his brow resting on the crown of your head. And for someone who'd spent the last however many hours in this shitty village, your hair smelled remarkably good.
When the dust settled, Leon turned back to look at the result. The structural integrity of the stairs had been somewhat compromised, but not beyond use. He'd succeeded, however, in ridding the rest of the Ganados. Releasing a breath, he turned back to you when you shifted, a hand still clutched against the side of your head.
"Good thinking, Batman," you managed, though not without effort. Leon refrained from huffing a laugh, his attention caught by the way your features scrunched in pain.
"Hey, look at me,"
"Don't—"
"Look at me."
It was the first time you'd heard him use that tone since he'd held you at knife point. Clipped. No-nonsense. Abrupt. A tone that commanded you to listen to him, as much as you didn't want to.
Forcing your eyes open, you winced slightly at the candlelight, letting his hand on your chin guide your gaze up to his.
Leon's brows furrowed in concerned bafflement, and he reached for the torch in his belt. Because they were flickering. Your eyes. Not in the way he'd seen. But rather like they were fighting something. Smouldering embers flashed bright and dim within your pupils, as if it were fighting to burn. Or something was fighting to put it out.
"Ow—fucker," you hissed savagely, pulling away from his grip when he shone the flashlight into one of your eyes. Only to have your face stubbornly brought back to him, his fingers squeezing your chin in mild reprimand.
"Quit moving," he ordered, and you could almost laugh.
"A warning would've been nice," you fired back, though listening to his instruction and making a considerable effort not to move.
"Okay, bright light. Better?" He brought the beam back up to your eye, and though you hissed again, you didn't pull away.
"Do you even know what you're looking for?" You asked with no small degree of impatience, wanting the light to be out of your eye and for your head to stop pounding like a bass drum.
"That… church freak, looked us both in the eye and said something about our blood," he explained absently, his fingers loosening at your chin as he catalogued the details. With your pupil now nothing but a pinprick, he could see much clearer that darker lines infecting the colour, like bolts of black lightning through the whites of your sclera he hadn't seen before. "Other one," he murmured, turning your head to the side.
It was the same for both. Though when he looked back after flicking the torch off, those flickering embers had stopped their fight. Either they'd won or lost, it was difficult to tell.
Your limbs still felt heavy, and the pulsing in your head had reduced to a low, constant hum, but it wasn't as bad as it was moments ago. Magic plants, magic flashlight… You wonder what else Leon was hiding up his sleeve.
No. Kissing him was bad enough.
And just like that, all the overthinking that had momentarily left your brain came flooding back, seizing your breath and dragging your eyes to anywhere but his own gaze. Your nails bit into the flesh of your palm in an attempt to stop the hand on your chin from feeling so soft.
"Give it to me straight, doc? How long've I got?" You attempted to deflect, raising a brow and quirking your lips into a carefully crafted, crooked grin. Unfortunately for you, Leon perhaps invented the tactic of humour-based deflections. So when his eyes softened, and his thumb gently swiped along your jaw, you sort of knew he wasn't buying it…
"You don't need to do that."
"Do what?"
"Deflect. With humour."
"Aha, so you think I'm funny?" You provoked, wiggling your brow and earning yourself a soft huff of laughter.
"I think you're r—" whatever he was going to say died in Leon's throat. His jaw clenched, eyes searching your face for what looked like the last time before he released the hold on your chin.
The breath you sucked in wasn't from relief.
So your hand flew to his wrist before he could step away, stopping him in his tracks. And Leon was getting a little sick of your constant pushing and pulling. "I don't know wh—"
Once again, he was cut off. Not by himself. But by you. The phantom of a whisper leaving your lips. Your eyes had found great intrigue in the details of his shirt, glancing around the room as if you could somehow find a way out of this hole you'd dug yourself. Fuck, this felt like you were offering yourself up for sacrifice.
Leon leaned a little closer, and you pursed your lips reluctantly before saying it again. A name. "Who?"
You paused.
"Me. You asked for my name. That's it," you shrugged, saying it one more time. Leon's features slackened in shock before he could catch himself, his heart skipping a beat. Or maybe two. You'd told him your name. Your name. For some reason, it felt like being trusted with the secrets to the universe. You'd shared with him your name. And it couldn't be more fitting.
Hesitantly, your gaze lifted, testing the waters. Honestly, you weren't really sure what you were expecting. Your name had been used for ownership. A possession to keep you in line. Alecto had set you free from that. And now here you were, sharing it with a man you'd known for less than three hours. And you could honestly say, when your gaze finally settled on his face, you weren't expecting him to be smiling. Not grinning. Not smirking. Smiling.
Fuck, it was a good smile.
Leon repeated your name, tasting the vowels and intricacies on his tongue. Testing how it felt. How it sounded. He whispered it into the minimal space between you, tilting his head when your grip on his wrist tightened.
"Yeah, yeah. Don't wear it out," you muttered, feeling more seen than you'd ever been in your life. It didn't necessarily feel bad, you just felt… exposed. That same odd feeling of vulnerability when people think they've forgotten to put on underwear. Worst of all, it did send something a-flutter in your chest. Something you hadn't prepared for at all.
Leon hummed something noncommittal, and you could still feel his eyes on you. Checking. Gauging. And perhaps—ever so slightly—pushing. You released his wrist with a huff when he said it again, weakly shoving his shoulder with no real heat. "Ugh, enough."
He chuckled when he absorbed the shove with a small step back; the first proper laugh you'd heard from him. More full-bodied than you were expecting. The kind of laugh you would be able to feel through his chest if you were touching him. If your head was tucked in close, and his hand traced directionless patterns on your bare shoulder, a bed-sheet just about covering your waist, the hum of an afterglow sitting sweetly in your veins, lazily running your fingers down his chest—
Jesus fucking Christ.
"Why now?" Leon asked, letting the moment linger when you once again fell silent. Though not avoidant. More thoughtful.
"Trust…" you said after a while, watching for how the weight of the word sat on his shoulders, your breath falling silent in anticipation; with the instinct to run. Run from this. Pretend it never happened. Because trust was dangerous. Even if you trusted him more than you wanted to admit.
But the weight never came. If anything, he looked looser. Calmer. Like a weight had lifted rather than settled.
"Trust." He repeated, and you fought the urge to roll your eyes.
"Feel like I'm talkin' to a parrot with you repeating everything."
"Feel like I'm talkin' to—"
You shot him a look.
"Stop it."
There was that smirk. The one that often accompanied—yep, his hands raising in defence.
"Yes Ma'am," he raised a brow, and there was no winning the battle against your lips when they split into a smile. Like a thread being pulled loose, not even biting them could stop the inevitable. And short of turning around completely, there was nowhere to hide it but behind your hand as you pretended to wipe away a phantom streak of blood from your mouth.
Only for a very real red streak to stain your palm, and ground you back into your humbling reality, having forgotten you were coughing up blood not minutes ago. Right. Yeah.
Fuck.
"Oh, here. Think she belongs to you." Leon handed you your rifle from where it sat behind his shoulder, furrowing his brows as he watched you check it over like he'd check you for injuries. Or anyone, for that matter. "You were gone five minutes, didn't even get to use it."
Your head shot up, offended. Straight back to business then.
"Get to use it? Ex-fucking-scuse you?! I didn't leave her behind so you could use her like some three-dollar fleshlight!"—Leon choked on his own saliva, eyes flinging wide because never in his life did he think that's what you were going to say—"She wouldn't work for you anyway. Needs a special touch."
"Just to be clear, we're still talking about the rifle, right?" Honestly, he wasn't so sure anymore.
"What else would I be talking about?" Your eyes narrowed, holding the rifle a little too protectively to be perceived as sane.
Leon didn't dare answer that question. He liked having use of his hands, and he was a little worried you'd break them over any answer he'd supply.
"So why did you leave it?" He asked, only understanding the weight of the question when your mouth opened, and nothing came out. Because—he realised—you didn't mean to leave it behind. You'd left in quite the chaotic rush, and you'd forgotten your own rifle.
You felt like a fish, opening and closing your mouth in the hopes that if you did it enough, the clacking of your teeth would form some kind of answer.
The silence spoke volumes.
And, perhaps surprisingly, Leon didn't savour it. Because now the topic hung in the air like a swarm of bees. Humming and imposing and incredibly difficult to ignore. His hand reached up to try to ease some of the tension in his neck. This was not going to be a comfortable conversation. "Do you—uh, wanna—talk? About it?"
You froze momentarily.
"About what?"
Leon's brows raised.
"Seriously?"
Inhaling a deep breath, you smoothed the soft line of your brow. There were no exits now. No excuses to leave the conversation. Nowhere to run and no way out. You hated the way your gut twisted into knots. But it was better to shut it down now, right?
"It's fine. I was curious, you were curious, now we're not. We're good." Keeping your tone light and matter-of-fact, you managed to steel enough courage to place a hand on your hip. Despite the fact that your entire body was screaming at you to curl up and die.
"Really? That's it?" Leon asked, clearly sceptical that, for all of your chaos, that's all you had to say on the matter. Honestly, he was a little underwhelmed. And, perhaps, a little disappointed.
"That's it." You shrugged, crouching to retrieve your handgun from where you'd dropped it earlier, hoping that the movement would ease the tension in your muscles.
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing—" you paused, looking back at him over your shoulder. "Why? What're you looking for?"
"Hey, 'm not looking for anything." Leon stepped back, suddenly feeling like he had to defend himself. And not in the jokey, unserious way he had been with you. For some reason, he really didn't want you thinking he was looking for anything else. Because he wasn't. He was looking for Ashley. That's why he was here. To find Ashley. Not to make out with mercs.
That was becoming a bad habit…
"Good." You straightened.
"Good." He folded his arms across his chest.
You shot him another look, making it clear you wanted the last word.
"Yes, good."
"Great, even." Like hell he was giving you the last word.
"Fantastic." Why, even now, were you not genuinely irritated by him? Because that's what he was doing. Being deliberately jarring. So why, oh why, were you almost enjoying the verbal spar?
"Shall we?" Leon gestured to the door as you flung the strap of your rifle over your shoulder definitively, tugging on it a little too hard to be considered calm.
"Let's." You didn't wait for him to go first before striding out the door, keeping your chin held high. Maybe you wanted him to be looking for something else. Maybe you wanted him to insist on talking about it. Though maybe this didn't mean nearly as much to him as it did to you. And that, for some reason, with all the headaches and the body aches and the hacking up blood every now and then, that was what hurt the most.
fucking finally chapter three is done, jesus christ. it's not even that long and the whole chapter happens within the span of like, maybe half an hour why was this such a struggle ;-;
just gotta edit it and it'll be released either later tonight or tomorrow depending on how long this takes <3
Project: Fury Masterlist
Ch.1, The Other Señorita
Ch.2, Pig Shit, Gun Smoke and a Rubik's Cube
Ch.3, Trust
Ch.4, Coming Soon
Playlist:
Hi, I started your fic and was really liking it and it's really well written, but you tagged it as an x reader and then gave the reader insert a name. I know it follows like pretty much everything else for an x reader but giving her a name is really jarring and stops a lot of people from being able to insert themselves, which is like he whole point. So would it be alright if you either change the tags and you can make her into a fully fleshed out OC or just remove the name?
I really hope this didn't come off as rude or mean, and obviously it's your story and I can't make you do anything but it is frustrating when you start reading something and really liking it then turns out it's not actually how it's tagged.
not rude! don't worry, but i see you've only read chapter 1... keep reading. unless you don't want to, in which case i'll put a spoiler for chapter 2 beneath the cut:
Alecto isn't her name. It's a call sign, like Condor One. I'm not divulging her name because it's whatever the reader's name is. I put that reveal pretty early on for instances exactly like this one, because it is an x reader, but Alecto isn't her name any more than Condor One is Leon's. All will become clear in time, i promise <3
temptation's a grower
re4r!leon kennedy x reader
tags: oral (male receiving), whiny leon, swallowing, praise sum: you just want to see how whiny leon gets when you suck him off. wc: 1.3k
For as stoic and quiet Leon seemed to be, he sure was making a whole lot of noise now.
When you got him alone, turning him to putty with your sweet compliments and kisses, was when he dropped it easier than he even knew. A part of him only you got to see… and you wouldn't change it for the world.
Leon's always been sweet, kind, caring, and giving in every way possible. He rarely takes any of that love back, especially when you compliment him. But then he's going from rolling his eyes and looking away to blushing in under a minute.
Even for someone who doesn't talk a lot, you had him speechless when he was flustered.
He knows if he meets your eye when you look so pretty telling him so he could probably believe you with how your eyes sparkle.
He's your entire world, why wouldn't you?
Especially when you'd been eyeing him in the kitchen cooking dinner while you were on the couch reading… wondering if you've ever made him moan as loud as he's made you.
When it occurred that you hadn't… a new idea was put into your head.
"Leon…"
You're beckoning from behind him while he's stood at the sink.
He doesn't say anything, just lets you wrap your arms around his waist and hug his back.
"Hey, baby."
His low voice cuts through the quiet and drives you crazy, watching his biceps bulge with each movement. It's the kiss you plant on his shoulder that makes him melt even more than your arms brushing his waist, a place you've deemed his favorite with the way he shudders.
His compression shirt sits nicely over his torso, accentuating every ridge of his toned chest and pecs. Your lips plant another soft kiss against his neck, and he knows you're not leaving his side. He also knows your hands are prone to wander when they're not pinned down.
Leon's aware of what's coming.
"What're you up to?"
"So pretty, baby…"
Leon chuckles under his breath, praying you don't feel the heat threatening to pool in his cheeks.
Your hands rake up his chest, nails scratching over the material of his shirt so lightly, and when you hear the sigh he lets out, it's a sign you're successful in turning him on.
"Yeah?" he huffs out.
"Mhm…" you mutter into his shirt.
Leon's focus falters a bit when your hands move back down over the hem of his shirt, feeling you toy with it before slipping your fingers underneath. A little more when they push his shirt up to reveal the soft skin of his stomach.
Goosebumps cover his skin with how light your touches are, completely thrown off task with your teasing.
He doesn't know how it escalates so fast… you were turning him on all too quickly and then when you mutter let me suck you off… his mind goes blank. He's blinked and you're peppering his skin with kisses, pleading.
Leon could never resist you.
Just when you thought he couldn't get prettier, his sharp eyes glance down at you on your knees for him.
"Fuck…" he's muttering, breathing deeply as he tries to commit this- commit you to memory on the backs of his eyelids.
Your pretty lips open, tongue sticking out as you kitten licks over the tip of his swollen cock dripping with pre, a hand holding him at the base.
Leon's cock is so pretty- par for the course with the rest of him. No wonder he shudders when you kiss him along the underside, running a hand through your hair. He's blushing as you swallow him down inch by inch.
The perfect size for your mouth, traveling every ridge and vein with your tongue. Your warm mouth is heaven to him, and you can't help but hum against him, listening intently to each of his whimpers. The friction sends his head falling back, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure.
"Shit- don't stop… please don't stop."
You've never heard Leon be so shameless in his moaning. He's stuttering and cursing every other word, trying to string together praises and sweet words about how well you're sucking his cock, how good you're making him feel- but he turns up blank.
Not having even uttered the words don't hold back to him, you're certain the warmth flooding your head has everything to do with how he sings above you.
Your soft palm rests on one of his thighs, moving softly against his skin though he's only tense because of how you pinned him down. His tip hits the back of your throat just the slightest and he gasps, enveloped in warmth and greedy for more and more with every movement you make.
Leon's shirt is pushed up above his navel and that pretty little trail of hair that leads to his base, his stomach flexing every so often with the urge to rut up into your mouth.
"So pretty, Leon…" you mutter, pulling off him with swollen lips and a hoarse voice.
Your words and voice have him twitching again, warmth of your mouth lost before you're swirling your tongue around his tip again.
"Fuck-"
"…And so noisy, good boy."
"Ca-can't stay quiet when you're this good at…"
His words fall out breathily before he moans again, almost like he's trying to keep his composure and not let himself go before he's ready to. Leon savors every time you touch him, especially when you get him whining and blushing and so fucking flustered that he feels himself start to sweat.
"Ohhmygod…"
He groans when you go down on him again, struggling to maintain the strength to stay standing.
"Hah- mmm.. fuck…"
This is the loudest Leon's ever been when you've got his cock in your mouth, and it's not looking like he's stopping anytime soon. His chest rises and falls with each breath that leaves him, always followed with a whimper or an expletive to complement.
When you push him to the back of your throat and gag, that's when he's shuddering and looking back down, moving your hair out of the way so he could see the way your lips're wrapped around him.
He doesn't care if it makes him cum on the spot with the warmth of your mouth around him and the wet sounds that follow. You're on your knees for him, doing all of this for him just because. Leon never asked, but maybe he should more often if this was going to be the outcome.
Though he'd much rather have you splayed open for him, thighs pinned down with his strength and your arousal all over his face.
"Baby, baby…" he pants, a plea for more- and he's so far gone already.
Leon's breath shakes and pretty little sounds keep leaving his lips, telltale signs he's getting close.
You want to taunt him, to take him in your hand and go as slow as possibly to delay his release but a part of you feels that's too cruel. You'd rather he just spill himself across your tongue without care. Tears prick up in the corner of your eyes when you pull back from having him deeper in your mouth, but the way Leon immediately looks down to make sure you're alright is too desperate to ignore.
He's on the brink- not able to last much longer and yet he's more concerned about if you're okay.
"You okay?" he pants.
"Mhm… close already, huh?"
"Uh huh," he replies, sheepish smile on his face.
You're licking your lips, swollen that they are and kitten lick at his tip before his palm comes up to cup your cheek.
"Where-"
"I'll swallow… just let go, baby…"
Leon huffs a breath before you're going down on him again.
"Fuck…"
It doesn't take long before he's whining again, holding your hair with his hand and bucking his hips up.
"Oh g-god, baby, I'm gonna-"
But he doesn't even get to finish his sentence before he's spilling over in your mouth, taking sickening pride in your soft lips wrapped around him. The salty taste of him spreads across your tongue before you swallow, slowing your movements before eventually coming up off him.
"You're too good at that…"
"For my favorite boy, anything."
easily my favourite chapter to write so far i love them so much also lowk a commentary on how healing works in the game because like diva???? that one weed ain't gonna do much
they're so fun <3
