who hasn't ever wondered:

am i a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

[bkgexe]

・❥・hello! i'm eli! late twenties, she/her, he/him ・❥・this blog is 18+ ・❥・all my writing is x reader ・❥・i am awful at answering asks but pls know i cherish them ・❥・thank you so much for stopping by !!!

recent works: ・✩・damage control / bakugou x reader / 41k ・✩・rotary devotion / caleb (lads) x reader / 35k

listening to: ・✮・houston girls by souf$ide

book recs: ・➷・she’s always hungry by eliza clark ・➷・temporary by hilary leichter

masterlists / ao3

[willowser]

sort of on that note, my favorite setup for ex bakugou is you having some sort of something with him at like 18-20 and then it ending terribly because he's so bad at expressing himself. like i think this really really hurts him, especially if you are in close circles and he sees you or hears about you on occasion through the years. like 28 year old bakugou that lost you by being stupid at 19 is sooooooo ajfhdjakaka

[willowser]

oh this is especially emotionally damaging if you have sex during your first whatever. like to you, this is just a guy that you were into that was kind of an asshole. but to him, it's like . i have never been more vulnerable to a human being and now i can't even talk to you anymore.

[slowerghost]

the pin and the grenade

leon kennedy x fem+dso reader (no y/n)

warnings: 18+ mdni smut; p in v penetration, hand stuff (m/f receiving), intimate desperate sex, creampie, leon isn't great with feelings and represses himself, angst with a happy ending, established relationship, banter, yearning, taking care of wounds, canon typical violence, near-death experience. literally 8k words because im insane but it's worth it

♪ i won't quit on you by hayley williams [spotify] [youtube]

You’ve never really believed in the honeymoon phase of a relationship. You’d like to think when the right people get together, the behavior just evolves, but still has that same spark.

You had always imagined, all the years yearning for Leon to pick up on your feelings, that if the two of you finally crossed that threshold, it would be like that. A sure thing. Solid and unbreakable.

And it was like that for a few months.

But now, Leon’s distant. You’ve been working more and more lately, sure, but even when you have time together, it feels like he’s reverted back to how you were when you first met. The lingering touches turned into brief brushes. The long kisses and late nights turned to him kissing your forehead and leaving your apartment before the sun had even set. It's torture.

And then there was the sex, or what was becoming a lack of it. After you’d first confessed your feelings to one another, you’d been fucking like rabbits. Every night without fail, sometimes multiple times a day. It was exciting, he was a little rough and loved stretching out that time with you. It slowly waned, which you figured was just a symptom of getting busy at work mixed with the relationship becoming less new. But then it was twice a week, once a week if you were lucky. And those times were much faster, less foreplay, less rough-housing. Still sweet, and still enjoyable, but it felt like he was holding himself back from you on purpose. No grabbing, no fierceness that was so present before. Now he handles you like glass, like he’s going to shatter you with his touch.

You’d almost been convinced you were imagining it, sugaring up the beginning of your relationship with rose-colored glasses. But even your friends had noticed. They had brought it up when Leon dropped lunch by your office as a surprise, and had left without so much as a touch on your back, let alone a kiss, which had been very unlike him before. Your friend had straight up asked if the two of you broke up, or if it was a fling. It tore your heart open to realize that you weren’t being dramatic. Leon was giving you a cold shoulder.

You’ve wracked your brain for every possibility, anything you could have done to lead to this. There was a close call on a stealth mission, while the two of you had been separated. Leon had pried what happened out of you during your week of rest. He knows your silences too well for you to hide much from him, anyway. He was really upset. Not at you, really; just at the situation. That’s what he had said, at least, but you doubted it was the extent of it.

Leon’s bit of a hero complex tends to rear its head when you’ve been in trouble, and it’s something you’ve learned to quell over your years beside him in the DSO. But now, all of a sudden, it seemed to be affecting him more than ever. The only thing that had changed was your relationship status.

You try to compartmentalize those feelings on your way to the briefing. Thankfully, this mission is solely you and Leon. Sure, it’s work, but you look forward to spending time with him. It’s how you fell in love with him in the first place.

And, you thought, how he fell in love with you.

Dispatch gives the two of you a quick refresher, just to re-emphasize your goal. Retrieve data, get out. Don’t worry about arrests yet. Kill any BOWs you see. Try not to die.

Business as usual.

They drop you in a field just outside of a forest, about an hour’s walk from the facility. It’s overcast, with a coming storm hanging over the sky. Thankfully, there’s a car waiting for you on the closest road, you just have to traipse through a bit of the trees to get there. Leon trails behind you as you lead the way northeast, as instructed. It’s awfully quiet, crunching leaves and snapping sticks intruding on the silence as you go. You hold yourself back from littering him with the questions plaguing your mind the past few weeks. It can wait, you tell yourself. After. Stay focused.

“Shit.”

“What?” You nearly break your neck to look at him, worried.

“Forgot my pocket knife,” he’s frowning like he’s dropped an ice cream cone.

“That’s unlike you, Mr. Prepared,” you joke. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he says it too quickly, like you’ve caught him doing something he’s not supposed to. You raise an eyebrow. He touches your shoulder as he walks past you, continuing on. It tingles, and you wish he’d put it back. “Let’s go.”

Leon’s mostly silent on the way to the car, which isn’t necessarily unlike him, he’s a true professional when he’s on the job. He knows all too well where getting distracted will land you. Even so, there’s something awkward that lingers in the air between the two of you. Something uncertain, quiet but yet so loud. Even if you’re not speaking, you find yourself spacing out.

Right as you approach the car, a fallen tree limb gets you. You’re too busy staring at the back of Leon’s head, trying to project your thoughts into his brain. It’s his turn to whirl around when he hears you swear, and watches you fall forward. The asphalt rips up the skin on your knee and you just stay on all fours on the ground for a moment. Of all the injuries you’ve acquired over the years, nothing pricks tears in your eyes the way skinning your knee still does.

Leon helps you back to your feet, and you feel more like a kid than a weathered DSO agent. He checks over your face for any scratches first, and you’re almost glad you fell. Just to feel his fingers run over your cheeks and hold your chin like he sometimes does when he pulls you in for a kiss. You miss it as soon as he looks down at your knee, now gushing blood from the scraped skin. You can feel a trickle down your elbow, too.

“You’re a mess and we haven’t even gotten to the car yet,” he jokes. You follow him to the vehicle, a sleek black SUV, and he digs around for the first aid kit. Luckily they’d been nice enough to stock one for you in the glovebox. He sits you in the passenger seat, beginning to wipe your wounds with disinfectant.

“We’re wasting time, I can do this myself.”

“I’ve got it, babe, it’s alright,” Babe. It’s been what feels like too long since that had slipped out of his mouth. He says it like it’s what he’s always called you, like you’re meant to be his babe, his sweetheart, his baby. The second he stops talking he looks like he’s a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. You see him tense, occupy himself by unrolling the gauze. You watch him with a look that must scream of longing. He begins to wrap your leg just right; secure, but not tight enough to suffocate your legs. He smooths down medical tape on the end for insurance. “Your elbow?”

“Yeah,” you mumble. He lifts your arm to inspect the injury. You already miss the warmth of his palm on your leg. “This is so stupid.” You mean to talk about the fact that you tripped, but it held a layer of deeper frustration.

“What? That you fell on your face?” You shove his chest and feel a glimmer of warmth when he laughs. It’s so light. Almost golden. “Hold still for me.” He presses more disinfectant to your skin, and you grit your teeth. He feels you tense. “You’re struggling more with this than when I gave you stitches after Vancouver.”

“In my defense, you got me drunk before you started those,” you grunt when he presses gauze to your wound.

“Hey, I took some shots, too,” he defends. 

“What you did afterwards helped more.” Leon almost blushes at your flirting. You’d been so loud the hotel called you with a noise complaint the next morning. 

“All done. You need me to kiss it better, too?”

“Jerk,” you finally retorted after too long of a pause, where you’d considered a pathetic yes.

“Buckle up, we don’t need you getting more injured.”

The facility is in some derelict warehouse, of course.

“Looks like it used to be for car parts,” Leon studies the dirty sign outside. The word manufacturing is painted in what you imagine used to be a bright red. The name of the company above it is far too covered in bugs and mildew to read. You scan the grey concrete walls. It seems abandoned. But you know that’s nothing but a false flag. You walk around the building to find a side door. Best to avoid the main entries. Leon follows you, murmuring in his ear piece that you two had arrived at the location. He doesn’t mention that you face-planted within the first twenty minutes, to save your dignity. But if you know anything about him, he won’t let you live it down for quite a while.

He turns back on his focus, and you use the opportunity to do the same. It’s relatively uneventful for the first floor. An abandoned factory, littered with stray nuts and bolts. It gets far more interesting once you open a door to find the stairs to the basement. Dread settles in your stomach. There’s never anything good in a basement in your line of work.

Leon takes the lead with you close behind. The hallway is never-ending, and you swear it takes 10 minutes before you reach the door. You quickly pull Leon against the wall when you spot someone through the window. He’s pressed against your front, and you can tell by the smirk on his face he’s holding back some smartass comment.

The two of you stay plastered against the wall as you eavesdrop. Leon’s breath fans over your neck. It’s hot, he’s close, and it sends shivers through you. It’s probably been over a month since he was last flush against you like this. His eyes drag over you and you try not to shrink under his cool gaze.

The two of your heads flick back to the door when you hear someone mention Umbrella. You listen carefully. They talk about a few suspects you’d had on your radar for a while, and you peek just enough through the window to spot a computer. Perfect.

Eventually, the workers leave the room, and you wait a while to ensure they don’t return before you break out your lockpick. Leon covers you while you fiddle with it. You let out an aha when you hear a familiar clunk.

You retrieve the hard drive from one of your belt pockets and begin to find your way into the computer. It’s a suspiciously simple system to break into. Leon keeps a lookout while you work, but you can feel the heat of his gaze return to you after every pass around the room.

The silence is almost deafening as you watch the progress bar tick forward ever so slowly. Leon’s still sweeping the area with his eyes, and you’re staring at him. As he comes back around the room to you again, he raises an eyebrow.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing,” you shrug and adjust your holster. Shift your weight from foot to foot. You can’t stop thinking about it. About him. The absence of his touches and his flirting.

“I know you,” he tilts his head slightly. “It’s not nothing.”

“Later,” you push, before adding, “I just missed you, is all.”

Leon’s got something close to guilt in his eyes as he processes what you say. It’s not as simple as him being gone, geographically in another place. He’d been right in front of you this whole time. Just a different version of him, one that was blurred, a mere shape of Leon instead of the crisp, detailed vision of him that you had blissfully taken for granted.

You just give a small smile, tinged with a bit of sadness. He drops his gun to his side and just stands there, facing you. He looks so small suddenly. His normally hardened, steel eyes are softened by his affection for you. You fight the urge to run to him and tackle him right there. 

You glance back at the computer. 85.

“I…” he trails off, stumbling for words.

“We don’t have to talk about this right now, we should focus,” you inhale deep. Hold it. Push the feelings coming up your throat back down. Leon looks like he’s doing the same. The computer beeps at you, loud and shrill. An emergency firewall has been activated. “Shit. Someone knows we’re here.”

“I knew that was all too easy,” He’s next to you again, staring at the huge red alerts on the screen. He winces at the piercing beat of the alarm. “Can you shut that thing up?”

“Already on it,” your fingers fly across the keyboard with ease. Leon watches you and can’t fight the smile of admiration. Your brows pinch in focus, and your tongue pokes out of your mouth just ever so slightly. You’re downright cute like this. Absurdly beautiful. He gives into himself, allowing a long look, taking in the way you lean over the desk, one knee bent. Your fingertips are nimble on the keys, precise as he watches the wheels in your head spin. You’re focused and confident, and it reminds him of the way you command a motorbike. He lives in his memories for just a moment. The way your face lights up with the wind in your hair. A smile full of mischief as you rev your bike and speed ahead of him. The cock of your helmet as you look back at him chasing you. Leon’s always right behind you. He’d follow you into the pits of hell.

After a few clicks and finagling, the siren quiets and it’s all too still again. Your senses are heightened. Every creak of Leon’s leather jacket raises your hackles, like a cat ready to strike.

“I disabled the firewall. It’s downloading again. But keep an eye out, I have a feeling we’re about to have company.” Leon’s already read your mind, scanning the perimeter again. He stays next to you now, so close you catch the scent of his cologne. You wonder if it’s childish that you wish he’d hold your hand right now. Give you some kind of affection. Just a touch.

92.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop being impressed by you,” he’s said as much plenty of times, but the compliment still sends a wave of pride through you. No matter how close the two of you are, you’re a glutton for his praise. “You’re good at your job, you know that?”

“Yup,” you snort. “Don’t stroke my ego too much, we’re not out of the woods yet.” He balances out the glaze with his next comment.

“Speaking of impressive feats, how’s your knee?”

“I’m gonna strangle you, Scott.” 

You go silent when footsteps sound outside the door. You both draw your guns and close in on the hard drive, facing the two exits. A low, inhuman growl sounds from outside the door Leon’s watching.

“Looks like you have some competition.”

It bursts through the door as if on cue after Leon’s comment, and you begin to fire off rounds at its head. Or at least, what you think is its head; you’re honestly not sure. It’s a conglomerate of flesh, goopy and dripping blood. A bit of annoyance hits the back of your mind. You like the jacket you’re wearing and you now know the likelihood of it coming out unscathed is zero to none.

Leon falls in step with you just as easily as taking a breath. He fills in each space you leave, counting your own shots and covering you when you have to reload. Every grunt he makes, every shot he takes, you’re zeroed in on. It’s not until two rounds have been unloaded into the creature, and it's still swinging talons at you, that you begin to worry. A tingle starts to form on the back of your neck. This isn’t going to be as simple as a bullet to the head. 

The creature begins to close in on you and Leon, still flanking the hard drive and computer as it finishes downloading. You eye the percentage. 95, 96.

It’s not going to make it.

Leon knows this, too, He sprints across the room, shooting an entire clip into the monster as he goes to draw its attention away from you. You try to swallow your concern as you watch the download climb ever so slowly to 100. You practically rip it out once it’s finished, turning around to find Leon cornered, focusing all his energy on just dodging the creature’s swings. You tuck the hard drive securely back in your pocket and shoot the back of the thing’s head.

“Hey ugly! It’s my job to piss him off, over here!” You yell, and try to ignore the fear overwhelming you as it takes off in your direction. You manage to slide under the desk and cross the room in time to avoid a slash to the face.

It’s not until the BOW crashes into a pole and a stray piece of scaffolding pierces its eye that you figure out its weak spot. It’s screaming so loud that your ears ring. You manage to raise your voice over the high-pitched noise.

“Focus on-”

“Its eye,” Leon finishes for you. Always on the same page. “Let’s get rid of this thing.”

The debris from the fallen scaffolding has broken apart, leaving several perfectly sharp objects to stab an eyeball with. You’re not a javelin thrower, but you do your best to hit the target from afar, and you’re getting pretty close as Leon distracts it. Unfortunately for you, it’s way more pissed off at the many sticks piercing its skin. When it rears back and turns toward you, a chill runs down your spine.

You’d set yourself up behind the desk for cover, but now that cover has you trapped. And your doom is fast approaching. 

“Mother of fuck,” you scramble for your gun, and shoot at its eye as many times as you can before it’s directly in front of you. Your feet dangle off the ground and all you can do is look at Leon in terror. You take in him as best you can, trying to ignore the look of fear all over his face to let him be the last thing you see. You squeeze your eyes shut when he rushes towards you, not bearing to look at the thing that has you in its grip again. It constricts your ribs so tightly you’re sure that several of them are bruised and broken, and your lungs begin to contract violently as you gasp for air. You can’t see Leon anywhere, and you wish you’d given him the hard drive so he can run. At least then, this all wouldn’t be for nothing.

Suddenly, the creature stills and croaks. Blood explodes from its head, a pipe inches away from piercing you as well as it begins to fall over. Your vision is blurry, bright white stars littering the grey of the warehouse. You can’t do much but try to fall away from that thing as it dies. Blood showers you, sticky and warm. All you can smell is sweat and metal.

You’re coughing violently, blood coming up with some of your heaves as you manage to get to your knees. Leon’s running over to you in an instant, a look of fear and relief fighting for claim on his expression.

He hugs you so tight it hurts, saying your name over and over again. You can’t bear to have him let you go, for your own sake and his. He says your name desperately, wet with tears and worry. You’re still shaking violently from the coughing fit, and from the fear. Your eyes are wide as they meet his. They’re tinged silver with tears as he pulls you against him again. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say.

You fumble at the back of your belt to check that the hard drive is still there, sighing with relief when you feel the hunk of plastic. Leon’s too busy focusing on you to worry about the mission. He clutches you tight as you make your way back up the stairs and out the exit. The men from earlier must have sent in their goon, hoping to take care of the two of you before they fled.

The clouds have opened up over the abandoned factory, and rain pours down on the two of you relentlessly as you stumble past overgrown roots and vines. Leon has you tucked into his side, which honestly isn’t making it easier to walk, but you can’t complain. The warmth is grounding, and you can tell he’s measuring his pace so that your pain isn’t any worse. 

He opens the passenger door for you, eyes trained on you as you lower yourself into the seat with a sharp breath. The same dynamic as a mere few hours ago, but this time Leon’s not cracking jokes. Something much scarier is lingering in his eyes. His hands hang at his side, still and clenched. You wait for him to close the door, but he doesn’t move. 

“We should call evac.”

“Leon, I’m fine. Let’s just go to the safe house.”

“You could have internal bleeding, I really don’t think-”

“Look,” you suck in a breath. “Maybe. But one night shouldn’t kill me. If it gets worse, you can call. I promise.” You can see him trying to form an argument in his mind. “Leon. I don’t- I can’t be swarmed by a bunch of doctors right now. Please.” Your voice begins to shake as you process your near-death experience. You reach for his arm and he lets you take it, hold it to your chest just to feel him. “I just want to be with you right now.” He’s fighting something, staring at the fresh cut on your face, the bruise on your chin. He looks like he’s the one in pain, not you. He just nods, curt, and shuts your door.

The drive back is silent. Leon white knuckles the steering wheel every time you cough in between shivers from the rain and the terror. You wish he’d put his hand on your thigh, just like he used to. Pretend everything is normal. Like you’re on your way home from work. You’d shower together, washing away the grime and muck, then you’d steal one of his shirts to lounge in. He wouldn’t complain. Then the two of you would order takeout and fall asleep on the couch together so you could do it all again tomorrow.

It takes an hour and a half to reach the safe house. The only thing that punctures the quiet is your wheezing, and eventually your body gives into exhaustion. Your head slumps against the window, and Leon almost slams on the breaks before he reaches over to check your pulse. You’re just sleeping— your heart pumps, even and strong. He leaves his fingers against your neck for longer than he should. Fingertips fall slowly down your neck to your collarbones, over the necklace that glints in the setting sun. It’s a dainty chain, with a bullet casing hanging down at the apex. It’s from your first mission together. He’d gifted it to you to commemorate your first year as his officially designated partner, which felt like ages ago. You’d not been a field agent before then; just an analyst and tech expert in his ear. Full of wit, sharp as a tack, and haunting the corners of his mind even when your voice wasn’t tinkling his ears with laughter at his stupid jokes. It wasn’t until a year or so later when you’d put in the request to change roles. 

He runs his thumb over the casing. It’s dented a little at the edge, from where it’d fallen out of his pants after the mission it came from. He doesn’t really know why he kept it. Maybe because it was his first time with an official partner, a new step in his career. No longer a lonely wolf. Maybe it was that he’d realized he liked you a little more than colleagues should; that he’d purposefully made excuses to see you in person, telling himself he wants to get to know the person who’d saved his life more than once from miles away. Wanted to commit your face to memory as more than a few pixels on a screen or a faceless reprieve in his ringing eardrums. 

Whatever it was, he’d made sure the memento was safe, tucked away alongside his father’s old lighter. It stayed there until he’d dug it out of his work pants one day, the chain beside him on his desk. A remnant of a weapon and a loop of beautiful silver shining under his lamp. He opened the jump ring with steady pliers and slipped them onto it together. The casing dangles from the necklace, swinging seemingly precariously, but he knows it won’t break. The metal links are woven together thoroughly, forged in fire and now offering a jump ring to hold onto. It’s tightened in a secure loop now; no way of separation. Like the two were meant to be joined as one.

He’d been so nervous to gift it to you, not wanting you to see right through his shield that he’d carefully reinforced the closer the two of you had become. But sentimentality had created a bridge that he knew he should burn, to keep you from the depths of his fortress of a fucked up heart, but he couldn’t bear it. You looked at him like he was something special; like he wasn’t a tired, scarred mutt.

You’d hugged him so tightly when he presented you with the gift that he wasn’t sure if his lungs had restricted because of your hold, or his heart’s rapid pumping. He’d managed to wrap his arms around you in return, and he’d relived that moment for years afterwards. The scent of your shampoo, the way you’d mumbled his name into his shoulder, your hands over his back. He’d realized then that he’s not sure he’d ever get over his dumb little crush on you. His little crush that wasn’t so little anymore.

And it was confirmed the next time he’d watched that necklace, years later, swinging in his vision as the two of your bodies melded together, your breathy moans like salvation in his ear. The way you’d desperately gasped that you loved him, had for a while, and he felt on top of the world. You’d stayed with him after, in his arms, warmer and sweeter than anything from his dreams. Caring touches tracing over his skin, his scars. No bleeding wounds, just his heart held in your strong, fierce grip. You still had it now, and he was trying hopelessly to pry it back from you. For your own safety. He wants to put the pin back in the grenade. It’s been too long since something truly bad has happened, and he’s worried you may be the next thing to be struck by the inevitable explosion. And maybe that’s why he was causing one himself.

But you clutch it, hugging it like you’re the one protecting him. He’d pulled away more and more, trying his best to get you to stand down. And yet, you were still there. And somewhere deep within him, he knows you’ll stay like that, hunched over the grenade, shouldering the shrapnel leftover in him from so many years spent worrying about nothing but weapons, failed science experiments, and loss.

As he pulls into the gravel outside of the safe house, he stares at you, long and hard. You’re still sleeping, and his chest aches at every shallow wheeze. He has to force himself to get out of the car, to rip his eyes from your peaceful form. 

You stir when he lifts you out of the car without any struggle, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“‘Sposed to be married when you do all this,” you mumble with half a smile as he crosses the threshold. Leon looks down at you with a mix of fondness and tension. You tug at his heartstrings as he pushes away a flash in his mind of your hands, adorned with bands on your ring fingers. A home, with photos on the wall and a dog sleeping soundly at the door. Something domestic and forbidden for soldiers like him. And now, likely for you, too. 

The safe house is an old cabin, tiny and rickety. It’s four walls, one room, with a kitchen just across from a bed, and a fireplace in the remaining corner. There’s a thick layer of dust blanketing just about every surface, and the smell of rain permeates each corner.

You’re placed ever so gently on the small loveseat by the fireplace. Leon checks over you for the thousandth time. You shiver under his gaze, still soaking from the rain. Your body feels like a freight train, and you just want to sleep. He presses a hand against your forehead to check for a fever, and is relieved there is none, but nearly jumps back from how cold your skin is. Your eyes are glued to him as he crosses the room to retrieve fire wood, beginning to make a fire to get you warm. It’s a methodical process, one he’s done a thousand times. The spark catches the wood and a flame bursts amongst the brick. Heat radiates and if you weren’t injured, you’d already be right next to it, greedily breathing in the pleasant scent of the embers.

Leon pilfers through the backpack of supplies next, eventually coming up with the change of clothes you had packed for this very situation. The t-shirt would do for sleep, but not so much the jeans. He sets them on your lap and turns back to dig through the bag some more.

“Shit,” you seethe in pain as you try to lift your arms to remove the wet shirt stuck to you.

“Let me help,” Leon’s voice is ginger, soft alongside the crackle of the fire. He offers his help, but when he goes to touch you, it’s like your skin is going to sting him. He’s careful to only touch the fabric, pinching at the hem of your shirt so delicately. As if he hadn’t taken your shirt off plenty of times before, touch much more open, hands wandering. You feel sick. You just want him.

“Are you going to touch me at all?” You finally say. He’s not looking at you, but he can feel how heavy your gaze is. He swallows hard, doesn’t answer. The tension between you as you sit there shirtless in front of him is thick and unforgiving. He just reaches behind you to unclasp your bra, following it immediately with the fresh shirt. After some shifting around carefully, your pants join the discarded top in a wet pile. 

Leon’s dragged out the first aid kit once you’ve settled again. You raise your eyebrow at him curiously, attempting to break the already cracking ice that’s frozen between you.

“How exactly are you gonna patch up my broken ribs, doc? Need a scalpel?”

“Stop,” he’s uncharacteristically short with you, and you frown. You’ve had some close calls before, but this one is different. There’s something lurking beneath his worried, furrowed brow. You can’t quite pin what it is.

“I’m alright, Leon. Swear.”

“You almost weren’t,” he just says, finally daring to touch you, to take your hand in his. He rubs his thumb over the shallow scrapes there from earlier, when the worst you felt was stinging, scraped flesh. Now the ache is deep in your chest. From your injuries, and from Leon.

“Yeah,” you just say. He’s not wrong. You know that. Terror sticks in your throat. You choke on it. “Yeah, I know.” Leon inspects your arms in silence, brushing his fingertips over every bruise and scratch. He comes up empty for injuries once he checks your entire body and lets out a heavy sigh. He fidgets like he doesn’t know what to do. No injuries he can fix, nothing he can make better. All he can do is fumble over his words, and try to solve this situation. Try to stop you from getting hurt again.

“I don’t…” His words are uncertain. Rare, for him. When he’s so sure about everything else. There’s a small tremor in his voice; so small you almost don’t catch it. “Maybe it’d be better if you- if you switch departments. If you go back to being an analyst. Without me.”

“What?” You’re gobsmacked. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“You- you almost died,” he says, like it’s an obvious train of thought. “I’m the one who pulled you into the field. Got you into this shit. I can’t watch you risk your life so closely like that again- I…” His hands hover just above your bandaged knee. “I can’t lose you.”

“Fuck you, Leon,” you’re trembling so hard it’s difficult to keep up your frustrated tone. “I joined the DSO to help people. You are not responsible for my decisions,” you poke a finger at his chest. “I’m here because I love my job. I’m not turning back. These are all choices I have made. Don’t you dare pretend like this is all your fault.” Tears build at the corner of your eyes, you’re angry. You’re sad. “You think I don’t think about the same thing with you? I know what I signed up for, and we’re in this together. We’re supposed to be a team, Leon. We both have a hand in this. You can’t keep putting it all on you; especially when it’s my job that I chose, and I, frankly, earned.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that—”

“That may be true, but it’s still not fair,” you cross your arms and try your best not to sniffle. The tears are hot, fast, and angry, and have you gasping for air with your already strained lungs. “I watched the way you work, sure. The accomplishment you felt on the field. And it made me reconsider where I want to be in this department. But I did this on my own.” Even though you’re sitting, and he’s looking down at you, the fire in your eyes is intimidating. You love so fiercely, with conviction and confidence that Leon wishes he could show you. “I chose you on my own. I chose this job myself. And I’m not going back on it,” you’re breathless, and have to regulate your breathing so you don’t start coughing again. The burn of your lungs as you suck in air only makes you more passionate. This ache, this injury, this sacrifice; it’s your calling. “This is the life I picked. And sometimes it’s shit. Sometimes it scares the hell out of me. But at the end of every assignment, I’m reminded why I do this. What I fight for,” you manage to stand on your own, placing your palms flat against Leon’s chest. His eyes are stormy, conflicted. They scan over every scar, every freckle on your face. Something opens within him when you continue. “I fight to come home to you. To someone who gets it. Who wants to help people as much as I do. And I know I don’t need anything else in my life. So don’t tell me to walk away from all of this. I’m not walking away from you.”

Leon’s hand finds yours. His fingers grip yours like you’ll disappear from his grasp if he breathes wrong. 

“I don’t- I don’t want to ruin this. To contaminate you with… whatever the fuck bad karma I have. You deserve to be happy. And I just-” His eyes are glassy when they finally rise to meet your own. “I don’t want to take that from you because of all my shit.”

“I am happy,” you just say. “Because I have you. I want this,” he shivers as your hands slip up his neck to his cheeks. “I’ve got my own shit, too. You’re not the only one with a chip on your shoulder, my love,” you squeeze his face. “Life’s hard, but it’d be harder without you next to me.”

His eyes bore into yours. The fire crackles amongst the silence.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you. It scares me.”

“Is that why you’ve been so cold with me?”

“I just- I’m so afraid of putting you in danger,” he hangs his head. “I thought maybe it would be easier to see you walk away from me on your own. For a simple reason.”

“It’s too late for that,” you murmur, pushing him onto the sofa. You straddle his lap, and his hands fall on your hips, still so light it feels like a ghost. “Please touch me, Leon. I need you.” He hesitates and almost pulls away, but you press his palms fully onto you. “You can put your hands on me. Handle me. I’m not going to break.”

“I’m afraid I might,” he swallows his cry. You hold his face between your hands and wipe away the few stray tears he hadn’t been able to stop. He’s all scarred tissue and callouses, but you touch him so gently, like he’s the softest blanket. Like you want him to wrap you up until the two of you are indistinguishable. His fingers begin to dig into your hips, but the harsh contact is a relief. Your skin has begun to warm up, and he cherishes the heat against his fingers. He’d missed touching you. Holding you. Bad. He just wouldn’t let himself admit it.

“It’s okay to break,” you whisper. He sighs when you finally kiss him. It begins so chastely, yearning and full of regret for the past few months of Leon’s foolish behavior. You pull away from him and his mouth chases after you. Now that he lets himself have you again, he can’t get enough. You break from him, kissing his cheek, his jaw. “You can’t control everything. Shit happens. None of it is your fault, okay?” He shakes underneath your hands now, like a dog that’s been left out in the cold. But he’s the one who put himself there. “You can let go sometimes, baby. I’ve got you.”

“I’m sorry.” His apology is so quiet, so weak that you almost don’t hear it. But you can see the regret in his eyes, the worry swirling the blue like a hurricane. They calm a little when you put your hands on him, when you hold him like this. “I’m so fucking sorry.” You can hear the I love you in his voice, surrounding the words in concrete.

“Please don’t pull away from me again. I can’t do this without you, either, you know.” He presses another kiss to your mouth, all messy and desperate. His lips are needy, against every bit of skin he can touch. He can’t control himself around you now that he’s tasted you again; can’t control how badly he craves you. You make him feel like the world can be good again, can make him want to live again. And he feels so selfish. Ever since he was little, he’s been selfish. He has to save you, save everyone. Whether it’s from himself or the forces that made him this way. Trying over and over again to fix something that’s long been out of place in his heart. Despite it all, you love him anyway. You love him so brazenly, so easily that it makes him sick that he struggles so badly to let himself show you that he feels the same. When you’re touching him like this, he feels like maybe he is worthy of love; worthy of happiness. And that’s exactly what you’re trying to do. You want to be the one to show him that. And maybe that’s selfish, too. 

That’s the pair of you; two greedy lovers, holding onto each other to survive.

“Leon,” you breathe. He pulls back to look at you. The pads of his fingers trace over your face deliciously slow. You let him take control as he shifts and lays you underneath him now. He lowers himself onto you so gently, like the world's most comforting weighted blanket. “I need you.”

“I know,” he sighs. Your shirt bunches underneath you and he helps it further, pushing it upwards to reveal your plush thighs. Clad in nothing but your underwear below the waist. Goosebumps litter your bare skin, the fireplace not doing much to quell the way you shiver beneath him. He runs his palm over your legs to warm you up and it draws a desperate moan from you. Normally he’d make some smarmy comment about how needy you are for him, but he’s in as deep as you are. He knows he’s starved you for too long, too selfishly. “I’m here, I promise.”

You pull his hips into yours with your legs and grind. His breath hitches as you capture him in another kiss. His hips move careful and intentional, mindful of your fragile ribcage.

The desperation is too much, and you’re fumbling with his belt in less than a minute. He helps, shedding his pants and underwear and one go. Yours fly onto the floor next to them. He’s hard, red, and weeping arousal. He drops his head on your chest when you close your hand around him and stroke.

“Fuck,” his breath is hot against the fabric of your shirt. He trails his own hand down to your heat, slick coating your thighs from need. 

“I’m so wet for you,” you whimper. His finger slides down your slit so achingly slow, circling your clit just enough to make you twitch. Kisses press to your jaw, the length of your neck as he touches your pussy ever so gently, slipping a finger inside without much resistance. Your strokes falter at the pleasure. “Leon.”

“I missed this so much,” he confesses, so sweet against your collarbone. His hand is moving steadily, still slow and agonizingly shallow. You push him back on you with your legs around his waist. His cock nudges your spread thighs and you inhale sharply. You can’t wait any longer. You may die.

“Please, I need you inside me,” you’re so vulnerable, begging for him. You can’t bear another second without him as close to you as possible, completely surrounding and one with every part of you. He moans, deep and vulgar in his throat.

“Come here, sweet girl,” he slots himself behind you on the couch, an arm coming beneath you. It rests just below your breast, and the other pulls you against him again. You press your ass back into his length greedily, and spread your legs for him. He notches himself against you and begins to press in. The stretch is like heaven incarnate; hot and long until he’s fully pressed inside you, breathing heavy. He turns your head back to him so he can kiss you. It elicits a long whine from you, feeling so warm and complete. A trail of spit connects your lips as he pulls away, just enough to look at you. His hands cover your neck, without pressure, tracing over the bruises there from your near-death experience earlier. A frown tugs at his lips and he swallows the choke of a sob in his throat. You kiss the expression away, hand at the back of his neck. He keens into you like a touch starved animal. 

“I’m with you,” you breathe. His eyes are pools of rain water. The storm has passed, and now all that lingers is the fresh dew; the rising sun over the clouds. He finally begins to thrust, deliciously slow and deep. His pants are heavy in your ear. He tugs your earlobe with his teeth and squeezes your breast. You’re melting under his hands. It’s like a long-needed salve to an open wound.

He sucks at your neck like a hungry creature of the night, no doubt leaving a purple mark in the shape of the space between his lips, right between all the bruises so cruelly pressed into your skin. A stamp of his protection, his vow to never let it happen again, if he can help it.

Leon’s leg comes under yours, tangling your limbs together and spreading you even further so he can take you apart. He slips his hand down to your clit, angling his hips just so. It sends a racket of warmth up your body that has you moaning, loud and shameless. The response encourages him, and he speeds up just enough to have your legs start to shake with the impending release. You can feel his cock twitch inside of your contracting walls, fast approaching his own end.

“Just like that,” you sigh. Your hips grind desperately into his, and he’s panting into your skin. Your shirt, once fresh, is now damp with sweat. It smells of him now, and you think you love it more that way. He’s all over you, filling each sense with intense pleasure and care.

“Yeah?” He presses particularly hard against your clit and you have to hold back a near scream. “Fuck, I’m getting close, baby.”

“‘M gonna cum,” you whimper. He digs his nose into your neck, squeezing you tight against him so he can fuck his hips into you faster and faster. He hits your g-spot repeatedly, hammering into you with a determined pace. His fingers circle your clit in tandem, and you go lightheaded as the thread inside you unravels. “Fuck, oh my god, Leon.”

“I’ve got you,” he just says. And he does. He’s got you wrapped around his finger, tucked into his hold like a protective shield. Tears prick the corner of your eyes as you finally reach your peak as he thrusts, so deep and so good that all you can do is say his name once, twice. He relishes in it, the pleasure in your voice encouraging his own release as he moans louder and louder, hips slapping faster and faster against your ass.

“Shit, o-oh,” you shake underneath him, but he holds you strong through your orgasm, whispering sweetly in your ear.

“That’s it, sweetheart, fuck, you’re gonna make me cum.”

“Please. Need to feel you,” you’re honestly shocked that you say it as coherently as you do. The post-orgasm haze floods over you in a radiating halo. Leon continues chasing his own end with sharp breaths. You kiss at his jaw as he cries out into your skin one last time. His thrusts turn into a shudder as he exhales all his air, a little lightheaded as he floods you with hot ropes. It leaks out around where the two of you are joined, a lewd cloudy mix of fluids. He kisses you again, lightheaded and a little dizzy from his orgasm. You can feel him pulsing within you as you turn in his arms, careful to not let him slip from you.

“I love you,” he says, so tender. Your hearts race in tandem with one another as you come down from your shared high. He pushes your messy hair from your face, damp with sweat now instead of the rain. He takes this moment in as much as he can. Your beautiful features, the curves of your bone structure and the softness of your skin. Your eyelids are lazy with pleasure and exhaustion, lips kiss-bitten and slick with his spit. He’s sure he looks similar; mussed from your touch and fucked-out bliss. Though he’s certain he doesn’t hold a candle to you.

“I love you, Leon.”

You both lay there, wrapped in each other, for a long time. Listening to the fireplace crackle and your breath even out. A sense of emptiness washes over you when he finally slips out, reaching over to his discarded bag to dig for a spare rag to clean the both of you up. The cloth is a little rough, not meant for such sensitive skin, but it’ll have to do. Leon makes the best of it he can, gentle dabs and swipes against you. He’s so careful, never once taking your show of vulnerability for granted. He just wants to be worthy of you.

It’s a relief when he finally settles back down with you. He pulls you half onto his chest, slinging your thigh over his. His hand falls to the curve of your waist so naturally, the other searching until he can tangle his fingers with yours. Neither of you speak; you don’t need to. The air is now thick with affection instead of unspoken desperation. The fireplace sizzles and hisses with heat, but nothing is warmer than the man underneath you, tucking you into his side like he’s afraid you’ll disappear. You leave a kiss on his chest, just over his heart. A mark of your own protection. A reminder that you’ll be cradling that grenade until the day you die.

[familyvideostevie]

no matter how it ends

leon s kennedy x reader | 8.4k

a mission goes awry when you're infected with a fever virus...and there's only one way to cure you.

warnings: smut, fem!reader, sometime after re4!leon, sex pollen (kind of), possible dubious consent 'cause it's fuck or die but really everyone here wants to be there and consents heartily, feelings realization, confessions, desperate sex turned tender sex, dry humping, fingering, p in v sex, oral (f receiving), leon kennedy one liners, canon-typical violence, a few sneaky references to other re games/movies, fake science i made up

a/n: picture your favorite leon for this. it was just sex pollen but became lots of plot with sex pollen and mush in the second half. what can i say, i'm a lover at heart. just like leon!

--

It starts with bad intel.

The facility is supposed to be abandoned. No bio signatures on the initial recon scan, no movement from hostiles after an extended stakeout, nothing. An abandoned underground lab for an experimental arm of Umbrella, potentially full of important documents on bioweapons research.

Your mission is to gather as much information as possible, should any of the viruses created there pop up on the black market or worse.

Easy, compared to the shit you're usually assigned.

Leon agrees.

Well, you think he agrees. He treats every mission as seriously as the last. You've grown to appreciate his consistency. It makes him easy to trust, which is essential in this line of work.

He's the best partner you've ever had. Thorough, direct, and smart. He never questions your abilities and relies on you just as much as you rely on him.

And, god. He's kind. Funny, too, when he wants to be. One time on a weeklong stakeout in the middle of nowhere, Argentina, he explained to you, in detail, the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo, all because you said you'd never read it. You hadn't even known he liked to read.

He's hard to crack, though. Professional to a fault, more dedicated to the cause than anyone you've ever met. And he's handsome.

How could you not fall in love with him?

You keep your ever-growing feelings to yourself. Asking him if he feels the same isn't worth ruining your partnership, isn't worth being someone else who wants something from him that he maybe can't give. Not when you can have him this way -- at your side with your life in his hands, his in yours.

In some ways, this is more intimate than any regular relationship you've ever had.

You'd spent the chopper ride here watching him as he looked out the window, even though you knew he felt your gaze. He's always doing that, always taking in everything around him with militant attention. You wonder what he sees that most people don't. Connections, patterns, maybe even beauty. You've never asked. Whatever it is has kept him alive this long. It's kept you alive, too.

And so, the mission.

You drop from a very long hatch into dark, stale air. The ladder leaves your hands aching and your shoulders tight, but there's no time for recovery.

Training takes over. Leon leads, with you at his right flank. Flashlights on, service weapon at the ready.

"Stay sharp," he says.

Sometimes you tease him about it, his constant readiness for a threat. But you feel it this time. Something's not right here, scans be damned.

Flecks of dust and grime float through your bright beams. The corridor ends maybe 15 meters in front of you in a set of metal doors, no windows. The security pad on the left side blinks a dull red.

"Emergency power," you say.

It was in the brief as a possibility but not a guarantee. Leon approaches, and you follow, digging into one of your belt pockets for the access card some other agent had to steal last week for this purpose.

"You want to do the honors?" you ask.

Leon shakes his head. "Be my guest."

The red light blinks green with a hover of your hand, and the unlocking mechanisms creak to life. The doors open slowly with a hiss. You're greeted with a dark lobby, dull yellowish lights lining the base of the walls.

"Must be on throughout," Leon says. Sometimes these places are zoned, or some other needlessly complicated system of power distribution. "Hopefully that means doors will keep opening."

He's still tense, arms outstretched to shine his light into the new space, shoulders taut. You feel it too, a prickle at the base of your neck.

"If not, I'm sure the power systems will be super easy to find with no issues," you say lightly.

He huffs, as close to a laugh as you can hope for at the start of a mission, but it's a win.

"Ready?" he asks.

You dip your chin. He glides into the room, clearing one side as you clear the other. There aren't any signs of disturbance, but that's how it goes with these places. The closer you get to the exit, the more normal it seems -- because all of the horrible things happen behind closed doors.

And no one makes it out.

"Clear," Leon calls. You echo it.

There are two single doors that reveal a bathroom hallway and the security office, as well as a set of double doors that resemble the locked entrance, another keypad glowing red at one side. Leon finds a map of the facility in the office and spreads it on the desk.

"That locked door will take us to an elevator that goes down to the labs," he says, tracing the path with a finger under the beam of his flashlight. "Three of them, all on different levels, connected by staircases instead of the elevator shaft, only accessible by keycard and on the other side of an anti-contamination corridor."

"Isolated," you observe. "In case of an outbreak?"

"It's bare bones compared to the other Umbrella stuff we've seen. This must be really out-there shit. Less resources, less of a footprint, less of an issue when it goes wrong."

You try to commit the map to memory. Leon will undoubtedly fold it into one of his pockets, but it's hard to consult a piece of paper when you're running from a B.O.W..

Level B1: MENIS, Level B2: KAMATOS, Level B3: PYRETOS

"Greek," Leon mutters. "More creative than T-virus, that's for sure."

This is just like him, surprising you after countless missions as your partner.

"Do you speak Greek, Leon?"

He shrugs.

"Not really." He tightens the strap on his glove, a cue that he's frustrated. You know most of his tells by now. "I don't know the last one. Fire, maybe?"

"Not really, he says," you tease. "What else are you hiding, Kennedy?"

He rolls his eyes at you, but if the lights were on, you're sure you'd see some pink in his cheeks. Battle-hardened agent he may be, Leon S. Kennedy still blushes for you.

If only...

No. You swallow the pang in your chest and roll your shoulders. "Start with B1 and go down, then loop back up?"

It wouldn't be out of the question to divide and conquer, but the slimy unease dripping down your spine prevents you from suggesting it.

He grunts his agreement, eyes still on the map, frowning.

As a pair, you work so well together because of your communication. It took practice, sure, but now you know each other across a crowded room, through the heat of a fight, in the dark. You don't let things go unsaid.

Well, most things, your traitorous heart says.

"Leon," you say. "It feels off, right? We're missing something."

Blue eyes meet yours. He sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "Guess we just have to find out what."

You can't help it -- you put your hand on his bicep and squeeze just a little, holding his gaze. His fringe hangs in his eyes. In another life, you'd push it back.

"Be careful, okay?" you ask him, faces so close you can feel his breath.

Leon got shot on your second ever mission together. It was a clean wound, through and through, except for the fact that he'd already been shot in that shoulder back in Raccoon City. The bullet fucked up the already fragile joint, so he needed surgery and was benched for six weeks (he was back at your side in four).

There was nothing you could have done. It was nobody's fault. But you felt responsible for waylaying your new partner, who was one of the most well-known agents in the whole damn place, so you went to see him in the hospital to alleviate your guilt.

"They have you with anyone while I'm out?" he asked you.

They did, actually, but hadn't told you who. Leon was troubled by it.

"Well, be careful," he said, as if he didn't trust anyone else to watch your back, even then.

"Only as careful as you," you replied, pointing at his shoulder.

That was the first time you made Leon Kennedy laugh.

Now, it's something you say to each other in the field. A mantra, a reminder, a promise.

Leon gives you a small smile.

"Only as careful as you," he replies, like he always does. We keep each other safe.

You release him and busy your hand at your belt immediately, god forbid you touch him more.

He rolls his shoulders back and checks the chamber of his sidearm.

"Into the depths, huh?"

"Into the depths."

--

Level B1: MENIS

The elevator opens to a dead contamination chamber. Nothing happens as you walk through the three zones where you'd expect to be scanned, doused, and dried. Another set of metal doors opens with a hiss when you tap the keycard. The smell of death hits your nose and makes your eyes water.

There are at least 10 bodies piled on the other side, most of them in pieces.

"Fuck," you curse, sidestepping a caved-in head.

"Looks like the party started without us," Leon says quietly.

"Great," you mutter. "God, that's nasty."

There aren't any claw marks or avid stains or other tell-tale signs of B.O.W.'s you see with this caliber of violence. One look at Leon and you know he's realized the same thing. You tilt your head down the hall. He nods, following your lead deeper into the floor.

Red emergency lights pulse along the base of the walls, illuminating the blood splattered pretty much everywhere. You pass the occasional corpse, most of them so horribly disfigured it's hard to tell if they were staff or test subjects or something else.

There are so many things you want to say, but you keep them to yourself until Leon leads you to the floor's main office. You slide in but don't relax.

"They look like they were torn apart," you say as soon as the door is closed. Leon frowns at you, since you didn't clear the room first, but it's a square office. You can see all the corners from where you're standing.

"I know," he replies. "But no sign of what did it."

You sigh. "So, are you going to tell Hunnigan the location survey was wrong, or should I?"

"I think I've run out of my 'bad news' calls for the year," he says. "That one's all yours once we get topside."

"How generous of you."

Leon smirks. "I'm a giver."

The office is small and the computers are dead. There are papers scattered around, so you divide and conquer.

You find an official logbook. Mostly in-the-weeds science stuff, but you skim until you find a change in handwriting.

LOG #57:

Development continues under new staff. Blood transmission remains the only method that carries enough sample to infect a host; airborne tests were unsuccessful. Vaccine/suppressant formulas abandoned for the time being after we were told that our subject supply would be steady. B2 wants to set one of theirs against one of ours, which seems pointless because any B1 subject will win that fight. B3 is a joke, but they're insistent that it'll work.

No vaccine...that's not good news. But what were they actually testing here? Infecting people with what?

You flip more pages until you find something that makes your blood run cold.

LOG #63:

We've finally gotten a host to survive. B2 and B3 are nowhere near this. We won't be sharing. Their subjects die within hours. B3 is practically useless, anyway. What use is controlling people if they die on you in an hour? But here, we've cracked it. I managed to figure out how to get the virus to work with the host's adrenaline production, stabilizing it into a constant state of fight or flight without short-circuiting the nervous system. If this batch survives the week, we'll ask permission to start on the suppressant. Once we have that, we'll be able to control the whole herd. The future of hostile takeover is here! Now, if only they'd let us out of this fucking dungeon more often…

Holy shit. They were making viruses to infect large populations, to control them. But using what? Changing their brain chemicals, making them reliant on suppressants? Leon told you about this kind of manipulation, how it infiltrated a military unit and even made its way to the White House a few years ago. Who knows how far they got this time?

"Leon," you call, turning with the folder in your hands. "You should look at this --"

You make eye contact and fall silent. He's got his finger over his lips and his gun at the ready. 

You toss the papers aside and take your place on the other side of the door.

That's when you hear it.

Groans, grunts, screams. Footsteps -- a lot of them.

He holds your gaze.

Clear the chokepoint, get into the lab rooms down the hall around the corner, make for the stairwell on the other side of the floor.

That's what you'd do, so you know it's what he's thinking, too. No confirmation needed.

The door bursts open. You duck, missing the arms reaching for your neck. It's dark in here, but you rely on muscle memory and gravity to sweep the zombie's legs out from under it and stomp on its head while you fire at the next one.

The attackers are -- well, they look mostly human. But their eyes are wild, blood running down their faces like tears, pink foam and spit dripping from their mouths.

Leon's movements are sharp and decisive. Headshot, parry, twist. Uppercut, knee sweep, headshot. He occupies the air around you like he's magnetized to your movements, always filling the space where you aren't, ceding room when you need it. After hours upon hours of mat practice between the two of you and hundreds of field opportunities to master it, you work together like a well-oiled machine.

It's exhilarating.

You're forced back from the door, but you keep firing, slicing, covering each other. It's essential that you get into the hall sooner rather than later to avoid being trapped in this room.

A zombie rips the arm off another in its attempt to get to you. That's new.

"What the fuck were they doing with this shit?" Leon grunts. He's splattered with blood now. No doubt you are too.

"That's what I was going to tell you before our party of two got crashed," you say between shots. 

"They wanted to control people."

"Yeah, this sure looks like control to me!"

"We have to clear it or we'll have to fight through on our way back up."

Leon grunts his agreement. "They're not biting." His aim is true, as always. He downs two, three, four infected. "They just want to rip us apart!"

"We need to go into the hall. Cover me," you say, dodging bloody fingers and sliding through the door. "Switching weapons!"

Your assault rifle is strapped to your back. You holster your pistol and reach around for it, but something catches your jacket and pulls.

The fabric tears. For a split second, you worry your flesh will be next, but then the tug disappears. Leon grunts and he breaks the neck of whatever had you.

You keep your gaze on the approaching pack, maybe 10 or 15 strong. Leon keeps taking them down while you holster your pistol and check the new cartridge.

"Gonna need to reload in a second here," he calls. "Six left. Five. Four --"

"Ready," you shout. Leon stabs a zombie in the neck and walks behind it, using it as a wall against reaching fingers until he's at your side again. He tears his knife free and slides beside you, solid, ready.

You open fire.

That's all it takes. The hallway is soon empty and bloodier than before. All you can hear is your combined panting.

Leon lowers his gun. "Nice job," he says.

You drop yours, too. "What was this floor called again? Menace?"

"Basically," he says, slamming in a new clip. "Divine wrath or anger."

"No shit." You look down at the tear in your jacket. "God damnit, this is my favorite."

Leon checks his chamber. "I'll get you a new one," he says.

You laugh. He almost smiles, like that was his goal all along.

The rest of the floor is mostly clear. A few stragglers here and there, but they're no match for the two of you. The containment chambers seem to be where the infected gathered in the months since this facility went dark -- the walls are covered in scratch marks.

"I can't believe they didn't kill each other," Leon says with mild disgust. "Not having control of yourself like that...I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

You've read the report from Spain. He knows how it feels.

"Do you think they're aware?" you wonder aloud.

He looks so sad for a moment that you almost reach for him. "I hope not."

--

Level B2: KAMATOS

The stairwell is a mess. The door to B2 is barricaded, but you manage to get through after slamming your shoulders against it over and over.

This floor is quiet, but in a different way than upstairs. Years of field-trained instincts tell you there's nothing left alive on this floor. That, and it made a hell of a lot of noise getting the door open, and nothing popped out.

It's dustier down here, like things have been still for longer.

"What's this one mean?" you ask. "This virus."

"Extreme fatigue," Leon tells you.

"So if they controlled adrenaline levels on the first floor to make them angry, they're depriving people of sleep on this floor?"

He shrugs. "Maybe they found a way to keep the brain awake without killing it."

They did not.

The documents you find suggest the virus was a failure. The bodies you find confirm it. Hosts died from heart failure, self-inflicted wounds, a number of things, no matter what the scientists did to keep the mind from giving up. All by depriving them of sleep.

Being so tired that you see no other way out…

The horror of it all rises in your throat. You leave Leon with the corpses so you can press your forehead to the cool hallway wall.

This job asks a lot of you. Your time, your well-being. Your security, your personal relationships, your hobbies. It's overwhelming and can bury a person. The things you see, the things you do -- it gets to you. It’s easy to shove it down, to pretend like you're untouchable, but that's no way to live, either.

Sometimes you just have to feel it.

These poor people.

Leon's hand is light on your shoulder. Not patronizing, not rushing, just there. Warm, solid.

You take a deep breath, then stand up straight.

"Let's take a quick break before the last floor," Leon says.

"I'm fine."

You turn to face him, but he's already crouching, back against the wall.

He grins, a real smile this time. It makes him look younger. "Who said it was for you?"

It's like he's giving you permission to put it all down for a second. To forget where you are, why you're there, what you're doing. Leon's guard is rarely fully down, and right now he's telling you that he's got you. Rest for a second, I'll take care of us.

He's proven to you over and over that he will.

So you smile back, shaky but genuine. "Getting old, Kennedy?"

"Something like that." He looks up at you, grin softening into something fond. "Do you remember Greece?"

You slide down the wall to his level. "Do I remember Greece? Be serious. How could I forget --"

"All those stairs," Leon finishes. "Exactly."

It was last year in the height of summer. A small, sleepy cliffside town, except for the fact that a scummy billionaire moved into the monastery and started developing B.O.W.'s in the catacombs.

The town was evacuated. You were sent in to apprehend the guy and secure whatever virus he was using. It turned into three days of running up and down stone staircases away from bats with tentacles and lizards with thousands of teeth where you wouldn't expect teeth to be.

Over the course of your partnership, you've seen each other in all states, but you've never seen Leon as exhausted as he was after that mission.

"I thought I was going to have to carry you to the rendezvous point," you remind him. "You fell down so many stairs."

Leon rubs his knees as if remembering the way they smacked stone over and over.

"And you would have," he says.

He catches your gaze and holds it. He's reminding you that you're in this together. That he trusts you, something you do not take lightly. It's hard to know who you can trust in this job, even your very own employer, but he never doubts you. You never doubt him.

The familiar ache of everything you feel for him sits warm and heavy on your chest. He's the best man you've ever known.

"I would have," you say.

Leon dips his chin, his mouth curling into a smaller smile than before, but this one is just as fond.

"We should go back," you say without meaning to.

It surprises him, but he hides it well.

"That would be nice," he muses. "I don't know the last time I took a vacation."

"We could go to the beach," you continue. It's scarily easy to imagine -- Leon in swim trunks, cheeks pink from the sun. "Stay at the bottom of the stairs and not walk up a single one."

"But you liked the monastery," he reminds you. "We'd have to go back up to see the windows."

Of course he remembers how you'd looked up in awe at the stained glass, gun in your hand and blood on your face.

"I'll climb up by myself. You can relax."

Leon sighs. "Relax," he says. "I don't even know if I know how to do that."

"You're good at everything," you say. "You'll pick it up in no time."

Whatever game this is, you're having too much fun playing it. Leon doesn't lie to you, so while he might be indulging you, there's a part of him that means all of this. He has to know that you mean it, too.

He stands and offers you his hand.

"One more floor," he says. "Then we can go to Greece."

--

Level B3: PYRETOS

The hit comes out of nowhere.

Maybe you're distracted by talk of vacation, or your guard is down after the silence of B2, but you don't see it coming. One second you're rounding the corner, the next you're flying backwards through glass, back slamming against a cabinet. You land heavily on the ground, more glass and something wet raining down on you.

Leon yells your name.

You try to catch your breath, but it's stuck in your chest. He's still calling for you in between gunshots.

"Fuck," you croak, finally finding air. You roll onto your side. Glass crunches under your weight as you try to figure out what the hell just happened.

Everything hurts, but you try to shake it off and push up to standing. Leon hauls himself through the broken window. He begins to clear the room after he sees you on your feet.

"Clear. That was one ugly son of a bitch," he says. "Must have gotten down here from upstairs."

You open your mouth to say something, anything, but the words catch in your throat.

Something isn't right.

Your skin feels tight, like you already went on vacation and got burned to a crisp. Your pulse won't slow. Deep breaths feel impossible. Strangest of all, it's almost like –

Well, your core is buzzing. You press your legs together and try not to panic.

In the early days, after Leon got shot but well before Greece, you hid an injury from him.

You took a knife to the ribs during a fight. It wasn't too deep, but it was wide and bleeding steadily. Adrenaline allowed you to get through it. You figured you could patch yourself up the next time you slowed. But Leon pushed on ahead, and you followed without saying anything.

That is, until you left a bloody handprint on a door. He stopped immediately.

"Is that yours?" he said. "Where are you hurt?"

"It's nothing," you protested. But Leon S. Kennedy does not give up easily.

"Show me," he said, pulling out bandages from his hip pouch. "When did this happen?"

"I'm not compromised," you said, even as you lifted your jacket to show him.

"I know you aren't," he said. "I want to know when you're hurt so I can make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine," you said weakly. He patched you up quickly and thoroughly.

"We're partners," he told you. "We have to help each other."

Here, now, you don’t hide from him.

"Leon," you croak. "Something's wrong. I think I --"

He's at your side in an instant, so close your breath hitches. Why are you so affected by him? Why are you so warm?

"The rip in your jacket," Leon says. "Your arm is bleeding."

"Liquid," you gasp. "It felt wet when I hit the cabinet."

The pieces come together. Shattered vials at your feet, an empty cabinet behind you. The dull red emergency lights make it hard to tell what color the puddle is, but you know it can't be good.

"They wouldn't keep a virus out in the open, would they?" you ask weakly. You're shaking now, shivering even though you don't feel cold.

"Fever," he breathes. "Pyretos. It means fever."

You've rarely seen Leon afraid. He's human, so it happens, but normally he faces things head-on without complaint.

Right now, he looks terrified. That scares you more than anything.

"Leon," you whisper. "What do we do?"

He snaps into action. He hands you a roll of bandages.

"Wrap it," he says. He presses a few buttons on his watch until it beeps. Setting a timer, no doubt. Just in case. "How do you feel? Describe it to me."

"Feverish," you say. "But not dizzy. I can think clearly."

Leon starts to dig around the lab, tearing open drawers and rifling through what he finds. The office on this floor wasn't in the same place as the other two, so any information must be in here, right?

"What else?"

You follow his lead, desperately searching for anything helpful. How do you explain the fact that your entire body is pulsing with a very specific kind of need? It scares you, feeling this out of control physically while also being in your right mind.

You land on achey. The buzzing under your skin gets worse every minute you spend looking and finding fuck all.

"There's nothing here," he says, frustrated. "Shit."

You're thinking the same thing: no vaccines. Any hope for you is in this lab.

But then -- your eye catches on a cabinet sitting on deep grooves in the floor.

"There's a door," you tell him, already heading for it. A wave of need hits you so suddenly that you have to brace yourself on the wall to catch your breath. Leon brushes by you. The slight contact has you swallowing a moan.

Jesus Christ.

He shoves the cabinet aside. Behind it is a door that opens into the lab office, as dark as the others.

You follow him in and start searching the shelves. Leon drags a table into the perfect place to effectively barricade you in.

"We don't have time to be interrupted right now," he says. He starts searching the desk.

You're sweating now. If this thing is going to turn you, Leon can't be here for it. You don't want him to see it. "Maybe you should go back to the surface --"

"I'm not leaving you," he interrupts. It's sharp, final.

"But if I turn--"

Leon whirls around. "I'm not leaving you," he says again.

Your nose stings. It's not the rational choice, but it's the Leon Kennedy choice. You can't help but be grateful for it.

He returns to the papers. Everywhere your clothing touches your skin feels heavy, almost painful. Your skin is sensitive, your throat dry, breath still fast.

You're so turned on, you think you might explode. It's all you can do to just stand there and try to keep it together.

"I found something," Leon says. He says nothing else. It's hard to see his expression in the dark without being close to him. You don't know if you can handle that right now.

"Bad news, doc?"

He swallows and begins to read.

"In an effort to bend the subject to commands, a fever is introduced via the bloodstream that increases testosterone and dopamine to near-unbearable levels of arousal. We have successfully altered the balance to allow the mind to be unaffected, making the reaction purely physical. The fever, if detected and combated within 1 hour, can be reduced by repeated bursts of oxytocin until the subject's internal temperature returns to normal. Required oxytocin levels seem to vary by subject; no pattern discernible at this time."

"What the fuck does that mean?" you pant. Your skin feels too tight. You still can't take a full breath. Control is becoming a missed opportunity. "Do I have a sex fever?"

No answer.

"Leon."

He exhales sharply.

"I think you need to be touched," he says. "To release the chemical that will help you fight this on your own."

Your responding laugh edges on hysterical.

"I do have a sex fever. So, what, you're going to hug me and hope I don't die?"

"I could," he says. He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. "I just don't think it'll be enough. This says bursts, and a lot of them. The best way to trigger that kind of response is --"

It clicks in your mind.

"Orgasm," you whisper. "Oh, god."

Leon closes his eyes for a second too long.

"I don't know what to do," he admits. He looks at his watch. "It's been 10 minutes. I don't know what--"

"I'm so sorry," you breathe. The gravity of your situation is like a bucket of cold water. If only it actually made you feel cold. You have to fuck your partner or die. What kind of sick joke is this? "Leon, I'm so sorry. You don't have to do anything, this is my fault --"

He tosses the file onto the table.

"I'm not going to let you die," he says with all his usual conviction. He really believes it, and it makes it easier for you to believe it, too. "Not when there's something I can do about it."

"But not like this," you croak. "This is --"

"I know."

God, you wish the lights were on. You want to see every detail of his face to discern what he's feeling. Can you ask him to do this? Will it ruin everything forever?

A tremor wracks through you. You have to brace yourself on the desk.

He yanks open drawers until he finds a thermometer. It beeps alive, somehow, and he holds it up to your forehead.

"Shit," he mutters.

"What?"

Leon flips the device to show you the screen. 103.2.

"Shit," you echo.

Your brain is going to cook in your skull sooner rather than later. You swallow frustrated tears along with your pride.

"I'm so wet," you whisper. It's the lewdest thing you've ever said to him. "I can feel it."

Leon inhales sharply, standing ever-so-still just next to you, just out of reach.

The pain radiates through you, molten lava in your veins. It's strange to be able to think so clearly. You want Leon as badly as you always do. That's bearable. But the pain. The heat. It's something else, something all-consuming.

You need him to touch you.

"Please don't make me beg," you whimper, turning towards him.

"Jesus," he mutters, filling the space you make for him. His hands find your face. You groan. The contact is like a balm, even through his gloves.

"Oh god."

You nuzzle into his palms. It's like you can feel the battle in your blood, the virus doing its best to cook you from the inside out, but Leon's touch is giving you a foothold, a reprieve.

If it wasn't so awful, you'd laugh at the idea that you're so horny you might die.

"Whatever you need, I'll do," he says. His voice is already hoarse. "But just -- you have to tell me if it's not okay. And I'll stop. We'll figure something else out."

You lean back on the desk and grab his elbows. You've touched plenty, but never like this. Never loaded with all of the unspoken things between you, never with such desperation.

"It's okay," you tell him. "Whatever it takes, it's okay. I trust you."

His thigh slides between your legs.

"Can you forgive me? If I do this?" he whispers, lips so close to yours. You lean forward on instinct, pulled to him by more than just the fire in your core.

"There's nothing to forgive," you say, and then you're kissing.

What you need is an orgasm, but this is something you've wondered about for a long time. Something you've wanted. It almost feels selfish to take it now.

But, fuck, it's good.

He's not shy. You trace the seam of his lips with your tongue. He opens for you immediately, licking into your mouth as he pulls you forward and onto his thigh.

His kisses are desperate, exposing his worry, but also tender, exposing his care. You're in good hands, hands you love.

Even through your pants, the pressure of your cunt on his thigh is enough to steal your breath.

"God," you gasp.

"Not quite," Leon says, kissing a path from your mouth down your neck. "Does that help?"

You grind down on him in reply. His palms have made their way to your hips, aiding you in your quest for pressure on your core.

It's too much. It's not enough. But still, the coil tightens. "Sorry, I just need --"

You chase it, grinding down on his thigh even harder, panting into his neck. You're close, you can feel it. You're chasing it, that snap, that reward. Leon just lets you take and take and take.

You thread your fingers through his hair, panting into his neck. When you tug just a little, he bounces his leg and you keen.

"More, please."

It only takes three more bounces before you're coming, shudders ripping through you, his name on your lips.

When you return to your body, Leon is dragging his palm up and down your back.

"Did you just--"

You're becoming very familiar with the fabric of his shoulder, his leather harness pressing into your cheek.

"Mhm," you manage.

There's a world where you're embarrassed. In that world, you asked Leon out for dinner and then up to your place after. In that world, you made out on the couch and ground down on his thigh until you came. In that world, he laughed with you, utterly charmed, and it was the beginning of something wonderful.

In this one, he gently tilts you back so he can check your temperature with the thermometer.

"Holy shit," he breathes. "102.1. It worked."

You don't feel that different, but the number doesn't lie.

Leon is panting, too. "More?"

You nod. Your cunt aches like you didn't have an orgasm at all.

He tugs off a glove with his teeth, dropping it god knows where.

"Don't know how clean my hands are," he says.

A laugh bursts out of you, but it sounds close to a sob.

Two fingers go in his mouth faster than you can open yours. He doesn't waste too much time wetting them, given how turned on you already are, but he gives them a good suck. A trail of spit hangs from his lip when he finishes.

You work at the buttons of your pants, unbuckling your tactical belt. It clangs onto the desk behind you. Leon slides his hand down under the waistband of your panties. You collapse into him with a guttural moan.

"Leon," you gasp. He holds you up, no problem, even as you go utterly boneless at just his fingers in your folds.

"You weren't kidding," he says, breathy. "You are wet."

"I'm sorry," you pant into his shoulder.

"Please don't say sorry again," he groans. "I can't take it."

"Can I say thank you?"

"That's worse," he says, sliding two fingers into you at the same time. "I just wish it wasn't like this, is all."

The absurdity of the whole thing makes it hard to keep your emotional walls high. What's the point? You're having sex with your partner to save your life in an underground Umbrella laboratory. You're way past keeping your emotions from him.

So you hear his words for what they are. For what he's not saying.

"Oh, yeah?" He curls his fingers and you groan, arching into him. "You have something you want to tell me, Kennedy?"

"Little late for that."

He presses his lips to your jaw, but you pull back so you can see his eyes. He's flushed, his pupils taking over almost all of the blue you love so dearly.

"I always want to know how you feel," you tell him. It's honest, raw, perhaps out of place when he's knuckle deep in your cunt.

"Fuck," he breathes, like eye contact is enough to undo him.

"I just want to help you," he says. "I always want to help you when you need it." He picks up the pace with his fingers. "I like being the guy who has your back."

His thumb circles your clit. It’s all you can do to hang onto his shoulders and ride it out as he keeps talking.

"I want to give you everything you've ever wanted," he says. "I miss you when you leave the room. I trust you more than anyone I've ever met."

"Oh, Leon," you gasp, grinding down onto his hand. "Me too. Me too."

He scrapes his teeth along your neck. "Yeah?"

"Yes, yes, yes --"

The orgasm washes over you. You clench around him over and over. He carefully pulls his hand from your panties and licks his fingers. Good god.

Something has shifted between you. It's still about the mission, about breaking your fever, but now it's more. It's more, because you both want it.

Leon leans in for a kiss. You meet him halfway, tasting yourself on his lips.

Beep.

"101.3," he says.

You push his hair back from his forehead. "Is that low enough?"

This time, you do feel a bit different. Maybe it's the confirmation that Leon has feelings for you, but your muscles feel more relaxed, your skin less taut. The need still burns, though.

"There's no way to say this without sounding like a creep," he says wryly. "But I think you should have a few more."

You drag your hands up and down his torso, but your gaze lands on his makeshift barricade.

"Do we think we have time?"

Even as you ask, you're toeing off your boots and shoving your pants down. Leon is quick to help you.

"If anything comes through that door," he says, fingers hooked in your underwear, "I can kill it with my eyes closed."

He hooks his hand under your thighs and helps you up onto the desk fully, sweeping everything onto the ground.

"So could you," he adds. You hum in agreement. Your hand returns to his torso, trailing it down to the front of his pants.

He's hard.

It's not entirely a surprise, but you're pleased.

"I know, I'm sorry, it's kind of fucked up --" he tries. You don't let it get very far.

"Don't you apologize," you say. "You're allowed to want, Leon. I promise you, whatever you want, you can have. You already do."

His answer to that is a kiss, not searing and heated like before, but soft and slow. Like he's memorizing you, learning every inch of your mouth just because he can.

A wave of heat rolls through you, so intense and unexpected that you have to close your eyes and grit your teeth against the pain.

Leon rubs your back and tells you to breathe, it's okay, you're going to be okay.

The heat dulls. "How long has it been?" you ask through gritted teeth, eyes still shut.

"26 minutes."

His thumbs stroke your cheeks, helping you come back to yourself.

"Are you okay to keep going?" he asks. "I'll do whatever you want."

You reach for his belt with shaking hands. Not because you don't want him, or because you're scared, but because you need him. You need him to survive. This was just as true before you got infected as it is now. And you have him.

He has you.

Leon lets you unbuckle his pants as he undoes his harness and his tactical pouches. They both fall to the ground.

You take him in hand and he hisses. His cock is warm, another layer of heat against your already burning skin. His hips jerk when you stroke him root to tip.

His fingers circle your wrist to stop you.

"Another time," he says. He kisses your chin. "Okay?"

There will be another time. Leon doesn't say things he doesn't mean, so you take it to heart. This will happen again.

It's not exactly romantic, the way you lean back on some long-dead bioterrorist's desk naked from the waist down, Leon's pants shoved down his thighs and his cock in his hand. But it's what you've got, and it's what you'll take.

You spread your legs for him. He sucks in air like a man just saved from drowning.

"Ready?" he asks. You feel his tip at your entrance and can't swallow the moan that rips from your throat in the shape of his name. He wastes no more time sinking into you in one stroke.

You come immediately, legs wrapped around his hips. You might scream, it's hard to tell. But you're so full and it finally feels right. Like you've been missing something all along and finally found it.

Leon says your name over and over, like a mantra, like a prayer.

"I wish I could see you properly," he says, voice breaking. "I wish –

His hips jerk forward even though he's bottomed out. He leans forward until he's bracing his forearms on either side of your head, brushing your nose with his. He's right. It's hard to see him fully in the red-washed office.

"You know what I look like," you tell him.

"Not like this," he shakes his head. "Not like this."

"You're doing so good," you say, lips brushing the shell of his ear. "Leon, it feels so good --"

It's a strange sensation to feel your blood cooling while he's inside you, to regain control of your body just as you surrender your heart.

Leon starts to move his hips, a slow drag at first, but it quickly becomes a snap. You dig your fingers into his biceps and hold on. You can hear how wet you are as he fucks you.

The coil in your core tightens again. "Leon," you moan. "I'm gonna--"

He kisses you, hips slowing to a grind. He reaches between you with one hand to find your clit and give it some messy circles.

"Go ahead," he says against your mouth. "I can take it."

Your cunt clenches around him. Tears prick in your eyes not from overstimulation but from everything else -- the heat in your veins, the tenderness of his hold, the way he's kissing you as you fall apart, swallowing your gasps.

"So beautiful," he says. And god, it sounds like he means it. Half-dressed, sweaty and bandaged, he means it.

Leon goes back to shallow thrusts, but they're becoming more erratic.

"How many is that?"

"Four," Leon says.

"Are you..."

He nods. "I'm close."

His forehead is damp from the effort. You wipe it with the heel of your hand.

"It's okay," you tell him. "It's okay, Leon. You can --"

You tighten your legs around him to hold him inside.

His breath hitches, but he picks up the pace without argument.

The smack of your flesh fills the room. The only thing on your mind is Leon Leon Leon.

The noise he makes just before he comes inside you is a punched-out whine of your name. He stills above you entirely, eyes screwed shut in pleasure.

"So beautiful," you echo. "So beautiful, Leon."

He keeps his weight off you but presses his face into your neck as he catches his breath.

"Fuck," he says. "How do you feel?"

You need to check your temperature, but remarkably better. The heat in your veins is an expected one. You can feel sweat cooling on your skin. The incessant need in your cunt has dulled to a satiated ache.

"Still alive." You kiss him chastely, considering he's still inside you.

"Let me check -- where the hell did that thing go?"

He pulls out. You both hiss just a bit, but he finds the thermometer on the ground.

Beep.

"98.3," Leon says. "That's normal."

You feel boneless and make no move to get up from the desk. If you did, you'd surely make a mess.

"Finally, something normal about today."

Leon tucks his cock back into his briefs, buttons his pants. He drags his hands up and down your thighs.

"Can I clean you up?" he asks.

Even though you now know how he feels, know that he wants you just as much as you want him, he's done so much for you today. Your temperature is back to normal. You still need to make it back to the surface.

"You don't need to," you say. "Just...give me a clean bandage, or something --"

"Let me do this for you," he interrupts. Begs, really, already getting on his knees between your legs. "One more. Just to be safe."

The heat that builds is nothing like the wild, uncontrollable fire of before. This is all you, all Leon. 

The fact that he wants his mouth on you, wants to lick his own come from your cunt.

"Okay," you breathe. You thread your fingers through his hair. He preens.

He kisses the inside of your thigh and pushes your legs wider.

Maybe you should feel exposed, but you don't. You feel wanted. You feel safe.

Leon pulls your folds open with his thumbs. He starts with long licks with the flat of his tongue along your seam, flicking your clit when he reaches the top. But your entrance quickly becomes his focus, and suddenly he's a man possessed.

He laps up his own release as it drips from you, humming when you tug on his hair. He hardly comes up for air, but you know he's paying attention to your reactions based on the way he moves his mouth. He sucks on your clit. Your hips buck, so he does it again.

"Leon," you gasp. How is it possible that you're going to come again? But you feel it, the rising tide in your core. All it takes is a glance down to find him watching you, soaking in whatever he can see in the dim light.

He keeps his mouth on you through your final orgasm. This time, a few tears leak from your eyes. Your breath evens out and your heartbeat actually slows the way you expect it to. The fever is broken, you're certain of it.

"Just to be safe," you say to the ceiling. "You just wanted to show me how good you were at that."

Leon wipes his face with the back of his hand.

"I like to be thorough," he replies. He stands, drags your underwear and pants up with him. 

"Are you okay? How are the symptoms?"

"I think so." You scoot forward on the table so he can pull your clothes over your hips. "It doesn't feel like a fever anymore."

"What does it feel like?"

Your legs are a little shaky, but you stand and wrap your arms around him. You've just had sex to save your life, but you don't know if you've ever hugged Leon before.

"It feels like you," you tell him, cheek pressed to his shoulder.

Leon stills, but you can hear his heartbeat pick up. He envelops you in his embrace, lips pressed against your temple, his inhale shaky.

"I'm glad," he whispers. "I'm so fucking glad."

He's hidden his fear from you so well this whole time, but you saw the look on his face when he realized you were infected. You hug him tighter, willing the fear to leave him. You're okay. You're here, in his arms. He saved you.

"What now?" you ask. You turn in his arms. He releases you so you can reach for your tactical belt.

"We get out of here in one piece," he says. "We get you to medical."

"Fucking medical," you mutter. You shove your foot back in your discarded boot.

"I won't leave you there," Leon says. They could keep you for days, but you know he means it. "Then I'll take you home. And we'll sleep for days."

You almost forget that you don't have to keep your feelings from him. You let the joy take over your face. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he says, a little sheepish. "If you want to."

"I want to," you assure him. "I want to."

You'll have to talk about this, surely. The way it changes your partnership, how to navigate field work. There is so much to learn about him. What he's like on a quiet morning at home instead of a stakeout. The noises you can pull from him in a real bedroom. His face when you tell him you love him.

The future is bright.

Leon buckles his harness. He laughs to himself, tearing you from your thoughts.

"What?"

He straightens your belt and grins crookedly, boyish and lovely.

"Are you writing this into the mission report, or am I?"

[spacelabrathor]

also I do think it would take Some Event for bakugo to finally force himself to confess to you

because he’s pretty definitionally demisexual, he doesn’t start to catch feelings until you two know each other pretty well and find that you get along surprisingly easily. and by the time he realizes he’s catching feelings, he’s too….attached to what you have. he is acutely aware that doesn’t have that ease of knowing with many people and that whatever relationship the two of you have fostered together is Special in some way.

so I think he shoves those inconvenient feelings deep deep down, because he refusesssss to blow it up by confessing and ruin what he considers to be one of the only good things to ever happen to him (you)

so I do think it takes Some Event to push him to do it. to admit first to himself and then to you what he feels. he has to almost lose you in some way (villain attack, new boyfriend, etc) for him to be willing to risk losing the relationship you already have with him, which is so so precious to him

[bkgexe]

i would love to know your leon kennedy thoughts......

thank u so much for sending this in omg i have been thinking about this ask since i got it.....

he is such an enigma and i don't think it's on purpose. i think he really wants to be close to people but has lost the ability to do so. i think he cares about others in a way that's more selfish than he'd like to admit. i think when he was younger he used to cry a lot, but only when he was alone and only when the lights were off. i think after the events of re4 he becomes an alcoholic and doesn't start going to AA meetings until his late forties. and he doesn't remember the majority of his thirties because of this. i think up until he gets sober he would be a terrible partner to a civilian and only a marginally better one to someone that can be told about the things he has to go through for the dso. and despite that i think he has an insane capacity for love and devotion and if he ever married someone he would be SUCH a wife guy.

he is a steel trap of grief and i think he's scared to let anyone inside that, but he's also not allowed to be scared. because he's leon kennedy, dso. so he jokes about things and brushes everything off and tries to be the stern, hardened soldier that he was trained to be. but he's an innately empathetic and caring man, and even after he forgets how to feel fear for himself, he still feels it for other people all the time. and he's so bad at disguising that. it's like the one thing he hasn't mastered covering up. anyone that's worked with leon peripherally wouldn't be able to tell you the first thing about his personality, but none of them could ever say he doesn't care.

he's so tragic to me and so much of his life was taken away from him against his will but i really like to imagine that he gets to settle down in his fifties with someone he loves, and he'll see out the rest of his life with them. maybe someone he meets later on in life but tbh if we're talking like fic specific i would love to write a little angst where he meets a person in his late twenties who he treats super poorly and he has to atone for that up until he can prove that he's changed like two decades later. and he will prove it because he'll have the time and energy and mental capacity to learn how to be a good partner. he's been the best at so many other things in his life and he knows he'll never be the best at this. he's a bad communicator and he'll pull away before admitting something is wrong and he'll take things said unseriously or in passing much too personally. but he's gotten to a point in his life where he can recognize his flaws and work on them because he wants to. more accurately, because he's allowed to. living isn't about what he was doing before. that was survival. this is a life where he's allowed to grow and to care and to cry, even if the lights are on.

[miffybug]

i made some ceramic snoopy charms

[emryses]

listen to me. this is my final message to you. when you are at your lowest a fictional guy will come to you and when that happens you must start putting them in situations. this is the meaning of life.

[minovskyy]

yes this is an exploration of guilt and culpability but it could also be a sex thing if you just give me a minute

[bkgexe]

I think you might be into shoulders

how could you possibly accuse me of such a heinous crime….. there is NO EVIDENCE that I’m into shoulders………. a good broad set of shoulders……………. toned enough that u can see definition………………… wide…….. good for…… nay. nay I shan’t say it. jdjddkjdkdkkd

[hheaven-sentt]

gentle intimacy

summary: leon would not describe himself as good or kind, and he's cut open and bleeding at your feet, but you know he can be gentle | leon kennedy x f!reader

word count: 6.2k

warnings: a sickening amount of yearning, leon taking care of you, seriously this guy is down bad, leon being self deprecating, alternating povs, acts of service as a love language, mentions of injuries, sherry birkin appearance /// 18+ MDNI, SMUT!!!, unprotected piv, oral (f receiving), creampie by technicality, trust me there's plot, this is LOVE MAKING at its core

notes: re9 gave me the leon bug BAD. personally, I wrote this with DI!leon in mind but re9!leon also works here bc that old man's still got it | ao3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That was stupid,” Leon says, hauling you into him. The words aren’t unkind, but they’re not gentle either. You stumble against him.

“Have I been known to be anything else?” you ask. He grunts. “Besides, I’ve got you to take care of me,”

He doesn’t respond. He finds a quiet spot, a reclusive corner where he can assess the damage. There’s a wicked gash along your side, cutting from near your navel up towards your ribs. It makes your vision tunnel when you finally lay eyes on it. You hadn’t known how bad it was. His fingertips are gentle around the surrounding skin.

“You’re lucky evac is two minutes out,” he says. His voice is hushed, like he’s telling you a secret. Maybe he is.

“Yeah?” you ask, a breathy noise that you’re not certain you could recreate. The sound is deep, rooted in desperation and blood loss. Leon’s eyes flick up at you from where he’s crouched, icy gaze cutting through his lashes. He looks pretty like this, bent low in front of you, looking at you with something you can’t place. It makes you shiver.

“You’re losing blood,” he says. You nod.

“Gonna give me yours?” you tease. Your vision tunnels a bit, and you slump forward. Leon catches you, pulling you flush against him. He smells like sweat and cedar and smoke, something that nearly lulls you into sleep. You hear a distant rumble as the building continues to crumble.

He helps you out of the derelict building. You’re barely even walking, just sort of stumbling beside him as he carries most of your weight, and you feel strangely guilty for making him do all the work. The helicopter’s blades never slow as it touches the ground. Leon helps you into your seat, guiding you gently. He’s soft as he slides the headphones over your ears, even going as far as to smooth a piece of hair out of your eyes. You can hardly keep them open.

“Stay with me,” he murmurs. It feels like a promise. “Can’t have you dying on me, now,”

“That would ruin your whole week,” you say, trying to smile. It’s a weak attempt at a joke, and he knows it. You can see tension make its home under Leon’s skin. It rears its head with every pull of muscle, every furrowed brow.

“We’ll be home soon,” he says. You nod. You’re not sure if he’s reassuring you or himself.

When you do finally land, you’re pulled away from him for medical attention. You fight as best as you can, attempting to sit in on the briefing, but Leon levels you with a gaze you’ve never seen him wear, and you accept defeat. There’s two medics standing idly in the room, and they turn to see you hobble in, eyes widening.

“What the hell happened?” one of them asks. You shrug, sitting down on the bed.

“Caught something sharp,” you say. They lift your shirt, which is in ribbons. A shock of pain rips through you, and you stifle a groan.

They work quickly, giving you a tetanus shot. You wince as the needle sinks beneath your skin. The pain only adds to the rest of it searing through your muscles. Now that you’re sitting, adrenaline having dissipated, everything hurts. The gash oozes blood, which makes you feel dizzy. Your back hurts, your legs hurt, your side hurts. Every time they touch you, you suck in a breath.

Finally, you’re stitched up. They tell you to take it easy for a week, shove pain meds into your hands, and send you out the door. Leon leans against the opposite wall, watching his boots. He looks tired, run down. He’s covered in dirt. Black streaks smear across his cheeks, his biceps. His hair falls like a golden frame over his eyes. You sigh.

He looks up then, watching you. He scans over your body, checking for any lingering injuries the medics managed to miss. You offer him a weak smile.

“No hospital?” he asks, pushing off the wall to meet you where you stand. His steps are heavy, tired. You shake your head. “Good. Let’s get you home,”

You follow him out of the building. It’s winding turns and desolate hallways until fresh air smacks you in the face. You take a deep breath, trying to let the residuals of the mission fall off of you. Leon’s car faces you, a beat up old Buick–he refuses to get anything newer–and it stares at you like it knows something you don’t. You fit easily into the passenger seat, like you were made for it. You lean back against the headrest. You feel suddenly exhausted, like a two ton weight rests in your chest. You just want to sleep. The drive to your apartment isn’t long, and you’re counting down the seconds until you’ll be able to slip into the shower and let the day wash down your back.

Leon helps you upstairs. You try to protest, tell him that the elevator isn’t going to exert you any more than the walk to the building itself, but he refuses to listen. He follows silently behind you until you reach your door. He’s like a shadow as you enter the apartment, still bathed in the darkness of night. You hate to do it, but you turn on the light, flooding the room and making you wince. Leon holds your arm to keep you steady as you toe off your shoes.

“You don’t have to babysit me, you know,” you say, not looking at him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been hurt,”

He doesn’t say anything for a long, pregnant moment. But then, “I would like it to be the last, preferably,”

You huff a weak laugh, something hoarse and weary. “You and me both, partner,”

He follows you from room to room, picking things up as you drop them. Your right arm is effectively useless because any movement on that side sends shockwaves of pain through your entire body. You sigh heavily, fighting back tears. Leon stands in the threshold of your bathroom, holding your bundle of clothes and hairbrush. He looks at you with something you can’t identify–not quite pity, but something adjacent. He looks so pretty, so collected, even in his dirty state. You clutch your side.

“I can take it from here,” you say, breathless. “I’ll see you in a week,”

Leon stares at you. His fingers fidget with the hem of your sleep shorts. He opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again. Then, “Do you want help?”

You blink at him. You hadn’t considered he’d be willing to help you. You hadn’t thought so far ahead as to know what you’d do to get out of your clothes.

With a breath, you say, “Yes, please,”

He nods wordlessly. Your clothes find their home as a heap on the sink counter. He pats the top of it once as if casting a spell to make them stay put. He turns to you then. He’s broad, forces you to dial in on him. His hands linger at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

You lift your left arm above your head, a silent encouragement to get him to touch you. His hands fall on you like a caress. Gently, he lifts your shirt up. His knuckles brush against your side, making your breathing hitch. He’s not watching you, fully focused on his task, but you can’t look away from him. He looks so focused, like one wrong move would paralyze you. He catches one end of the shirt in your armpit, pulling the other side out so you can slip your arm through. He helps ease your head through the collar, then pulls it off entirely via your other arm. He breathes in heavily through his nose at the expanse of skin he’s revealed. Then he takes a step back. You swallow thickly.

“I need…” you mumble, brain rotting inside your skull. “I can’t reach-”

“I got it,” he says. The words sound broken on his tongue.

You spin for him, presenting the clasp of your bra. You purse your lips when his warm hands make contact with the smooth skin on your back. He makes surprisingly quick work of it. Within seconds, you feel it loosening around your ribs, a small blessing. You breathe out something heady and heavy.

“I’ll be out there if you need anything,” Leon says. He leaves little room for argument by bustling out of the room as quickly as he can. You blink.

The shower water is hot on your skin, but it feels good. You can feel the tension slipping down your shoulders in rivulets. Somehow, you manage to wash yourself one handed, which you feel mildly proud of. The steam loosens you. It’s only when you step out of the water that you remember that you have to put a shirt on.

You struggle for what feels like hours. Every movement pulls on your stitches. You’re near tears when you finally call out for Leon.

“Yeah?” he asks, cracking the bathroom door. You sniffle.

“I can’t…” you say, taking a breath to recollect yourself. “I can’t get my shirt on,”

“I’ll help,” he says. His voice is so soft, so intimate. He enters quietly, staring at anything that isn’t you.

The shirt looks miniscule in his hands. Carefully, almost reverently, he eases the collar over your head. His gaze still lingers just past your shoulder. You frown. You slip your good arm through the sleeve.

Leon finally looks at you. You nod, letting him know it’s okay to put his hands on you. You see the turmoil in his eyes, the need for consent.

“You can touch me,” you say, voice barely above a whisper. He nods once.

He grips the hem of the shirt, pulling as far down as the fabric will let him. Then, softly, he helps guide your arm through the sleeve. His fingers brush against you again, just along the curve of your breast, but the touch is electric, crackling with something unsaid. The moment is so intimate, so personal, you could burst into tears. Then the shirt is fully on your body. You wonder if Leon can hear your heart hammering against your chest. If he can, he doesn’t acknowledge it. 

“Thanks,” you say, breathless. He nods. “I can handle the rest,”

“You sure?” he asks. There’s no suggestion in his tone, and that almost makes it worse. You breathe heavily through your nose, nodding.

He stands there as you fumble with your hairbrush. Your lips are pursed as you stare at yourself in the mirror. You’re barely halfway through the tangled strands before he stops you.

“Let me help,” he says–no begs. You glance at his reflection. He looks as wrecked as you feel. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, gaze unblinking as he waits for you.

“Okay,” you say softly, voice hollow and breathy as you pass him the hairbrush.

He’s gentle as he works the brush through your hair. His gaze remains focused on the wet strands, but yours is on him. His brow furrows slightly, that bottom lip pulled snugly between his teeth as he pulls on a particularly tough tangle. His eyes look so blue in the yellowing light above the mirror. The care he takes with you is enough to make you sick. His hands are frustratingly warm as they bump against the back of your neck. He never once pulls or yanks, never scrapes the bristles against your skin, never gets frustrated. He works until it is done, unwaveringly, and you didn’t expect anything less. The moment is so soft, so delicate, you’re afraid that something might break when you pull away.

“I think I got it,” he says, soft as a whisper against you. You nod.

“Thank you,” you say. You stay idle for a moment, just watching him. He looks so unsure.

You think, in another lifetime, miles and miles away from here, that you could’ve loved him. He’s funny when he wants to be, charming in a boyish sort of way. You count on him, but he doesn’t let it get to him. He gives because he thinks it a privilege that you let him. You reach up to wipe away some of the dirt still smudged on his face. He stiffens beneath your fingertips, not prepared for such affectionate contact.

He swallows thickly. You remove your hand, and you see him relax just a fraction.

“Do you need any more help?” he asks in an almost broken way. You shake your head. “I’ll see you later, then?”

“Yeah,”

He ducks his chin at you, then shuffles out of the bathroom. You hear the front door open and click shut a moment later, leaving you alone in your apartment.

...

Leon is not sure that he would describe himself as kind or good. But on his drive home, as he thinks about your withered form presented to him in the dim light of your bathroom, looking up at him through your lashes like he was something holy, he starts to think that that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he is kind or good because you kept looking at him like he was all you ever needed. He can still feel your skin against his fingers, sending shivers down his spine. 

He’d frozen up. He knows that he probably looked ridiculous, like a flushed school boy who had just stumbled into the girl’s locker room by accident. Your skin had been so soft. The expanse of flesh he’d discovered beneath your tattered shirt lives in his brain as he shuffles into his apartment. The space is dark and empty. He has very few personal items, unlike you. His space looks abandoned, which he guesses it usually is. He really only uses this place to sleep and eat sometimes. 

He crashes onto his couch, still unshowered and unclean. He just needs a moment, he tells himself. Just one moment, to collect the memories of you like precious items to set on his vacant shelves. The way you shivered against him when he brushed your side, the way you watched him, doe eyed, in the mirror as he brushed your hair, the humidity of the room clinging to you; they all go, framed and perfect, on shelves in his mind. He breathes out, something heavy and soft all at once. 

He’s unfamiliar with this feeling. He doesn’t know how to embrace it, so he decides that he shouldn’t. He’s not sure he deserves something as sweet and gentle as you. You’re better than him, in almost every way. You don’t let the job wear you down, you take pride in what you do. You tease him. The mercy and compassion you give him are foreign in his brain. And he feels so selfish for accepting every last scrap. He eats up the way you look at him, the way you laugh at his weak attempts at jokes, the way you worry after him even with a ten inch gash on your side that very easily could’ve gutted you. He is gluttonous and greedy and selfish. You are consuming him, and he is letting you. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t let you plague him this way. He knows that it could all too soon be ripped away from him, but in this moment, in the dim light cast by the moon streaming through his curtains, he doesn’t care. A shudder rakes through his body, from head to toe. 

It would be all too easy to blame you. He could curse you for whatever spell you’ve cast to make him stupid in this way. But he knows the fault is his and his alone. It’s his fault that he mistakes your casual compassion for anything more. It’s his fault that he devours whatever good comes his way, just to corrupt and blacken it. And he doesn’t want to do that to you. He doesn’t want to see where this will end, even if he has before and knows it as intimately as he knows every other aspect of death and decay.

He tips his head back against the couch. There’s a crack in his popcorn ceiling, cutting through the expanse of white like a vein. 

He knows he’s cut open and bleeding at your feet. He’s wounded in a way that doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t want you to help him. Not because he doesn’t ache to feel your gentle hands smooth over his scarred flesh, working out the evil with every electrifying touch, but because he does, and that would make you the universe’s top priority. 

He is cursed, a bad day after a worse one. And he knows that if he were to let you have him the way he wants, you’d become cursed too. Cursed with him and his aches and pains, his scars and bruises, his anger and resentment. 

When he settles beneath the sheets that night, he dreams of you. He dreams of your soft skin against him, your laughter, your easy smiles. He dreams of the life he could have were it not for his exceedingly awful luck.

He could save you. He could prevent you from ever coming nearer. But that somehow feels like a worse, more torturous ending. And he is nothing if not selfish.

...

The next time you see Leon, it’s nearly a week later. The swelling on your side has gone down and most of the pain has subsided, but it’s still tense and unforgiving, especially so early in the morning. There’s little light coming through the curtains thanks to the steady stream of rain pelting the earth.

His hair is soggy, casting thick shadows over the high points of his face. There’s crystal droplets on the shoulders of his jacket, ones you want to reach out to shake off, but you refrain. He smiles at you, that gentle half smile he only ever wears when he’s half exhausted. 

“Came to check on you,” he says softly, words turned plush on the corners of his lips. You smile.

“Unfortunately, I’ve succumbed to sepsis. You’re seeing a ghost,” you joke. He rolls his eyes and pushes past you into the apartment.

He shakes off like a dog as he hangs his coat on the hook. A few rogue water droplets smatter your face. You take a moment to observe him. The lines of his body are rigid like there’s something pulling him taught. For a moment, you ache to reach out and smooth your palms over his muscles, to help him relieve some of that tension. You wonder if that’s something that would be okay, if he would welcome your touch. There is a line that stands between you, and you’re not sure which side of it you reside on. 

“Anything interesting happen in the week that I’ve been gone?” you ask, leaning against the back of the couch.

Leon hums, pursing his lips as he thinks back on the last few days. “There’s a new coffee machine in the break room,”

You huff a laugh. “Can’t wait to try that baby out,”

Silence stretches thick between you, like a rope that’s been left out in the rain. You watch him move with careful precision, finding where would be the best place to exist within. You wonder why he never seems to relax, even in your space. You wonder if he knows how much you care. Subconsciously, you run the pads of your fingers over your injury. It’s a rough stretch of skin now, bubbled with scar and scab. You frown.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, suddenly standing again to get to your side. He catches your wrist where it hovers near the tear.

You shrug. “Only when I think about it,”

He purses his lips and emits a low hum, giving you a once over. “Have a fever at all?”

You shake your head. He nods, once and curt, before dropping your wrist and stepping away from you. 

“Do you need any help?” Leon asks, avoiding your gaze by scanning around the room. “Any chores that have been neglected? Any errands I can run for you?”

You feel the corner of your mouth tick up in a small smile. Shaking your head, you say, “No, Leon. I’ve been able to manage on my own,”

“I know,” he says. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, gnawing on the soft flesh there in thought. Then, soft as a whisper, he says, “I was worried about you,”

You feel your heart catch in your throat. You think back to the way he looked at you that night, like you were broken before him and he couldn’t do anything to fix you. You think about how gentle he was with you, how careful he was like you were bursting at the seams. You see his cheeks turn a tinge of pink as the silence stretches thick between you. You reach out, placing a flat palm against his chest. There’s no sound in the apartment, just the rain outside and your own heavy breathing.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Leon,” you say, just as soft. “I know you’ll always take care of me,”

He swallows, something heavy and unsaid, and nods. “I will,”

It feels like a promise. It feels like a vow.

With an intake of breath, you say, “Anything on our docket?”

Leon purses his lips. “Not on yours,” he says. You frown. “You’re on light duty for a while,”

You twist your face up in a nasty expression, which makes Leon smile a fraction. “I don’t like that,”

“That’s what I figured you’d say,” he says. He moves around you to finally sit down. You’re almost surprised as he gets comfortable on your couch. You move to join him. “I tried to tell Hunnigan you wouldn’t go down easy,”

“I can’t imagine I have much choice,” you say, grumbling. “Did they say for how long?”

Leon shakes his head. “Could be a while,”

You groan.

“Hey,” he says, gently. “You took a hard hit. It’s either office duty or a grave,”

You scowl at him, and he flashes you a smile. “Promise me you won’t get yourself killed while I’m gone,”

He makes a motion over his chest. Cross my heart.

The next week, Leon is shipped out to God knows where. They won’t tell you, probably afraid you’d commandeer a craft to chase after him. You’re checking in with Hunnigan by the hour, who tells you you’re being paranoid. How can you not be? He’s out there, alone, doing something, something dangerous, and you’re stuck writing reports and drinking watered down coffee from the new machine in the break room. He could be hurt, he could be dead, and you would never know the difference. It makes you sick, it makes you scared.

“Separation anxiety?” Sherry asks, taking a seat beside you. You’re staring at a monitor, feeling like your eyes are melting out of your head.

“Shut up,” you retort, making her laugh. “I just worry about him,”

“Y’know, I think I had this exact conversation with him a couple weeks ago,” Sherry says, grinning at you. You scowl at her. “You two act like if you’re not attached at the hip, you’re basically dead,”

“That’s what it feels like,” you murmur. You sigh. “You don’t get it,”

“Maybe not,” Sherry says, shrugging. “But I do know what it’s like to feel,”

You blink at her. “Don’t you have somewhere else to go be annoying?”

Sherry jabs a finger into your side, making you yelp. “Don’t be mean to me just because you’re grumpy,”

You huff.

You are not grumpy.

...

Leon feels half dead on his feet as he trudges up the stairs of your apartment building. He’s been gone almost two weeks, with little to no contact with you. It feels like it’s killing him. He feels like it’s sucking out his will to live. He just wants to see you.

He knocks gently on your door. It’s late, just past midnight, but he knows you’re still awake, always the night owl. You open it a second later, wearing a shirt three sizes too big and an old pair of sweatpants; he thinks you’ve never looked more beautiful. You give him a once over, scanning him for injuries, and when you don’t appear to find any, you crash into him. He lets out an oomph as his arms settle around your waist. You smell like home, and he feels his heart crack open a little.

“Worried about you,” you whisper into his shoulder. He holds you a little tighter.

“Not over yet,” he says, and you pull away, squinting at him. He shrugs his jacket off to reveal a nasty cut along his bicep. He smiles sheepishly at you.

You sigh, and it’s like the greatest symphony ever written. “Grab a seat at the table. I’ll patch you up,”

His pain ebbs as he sits. You return to him moments later with a first aid kit and a scowl. Your soft hands against his skin are what keep him tethered to the earth. Pain threatens to eat at his muscles and sinew, to consume him. But you’re gentle, easing through it like a softbed creek, curving over already smooth stones.

“Did you even try to get out of the way?” you murmur. You don’t look at him, but he’s watching you. He sees the twitch at the corner of your mouth as you clean the wound, the pull of your brows in concentration. You look so beautiful like this, like a pink sunrise, a reminder that good is out there.

“Sort of,” he mumbles back. You frown at him. “I didn’t really have time,”

You hum. Once the wound is thoroughly disinfected, you prime the needle for stitches.

“This will hurt,” you say, sinking the steel beneath his flesh. He doesn’t react. You make quick work of the area, making sure to tape over it to protect the stitches. When he’s all patched up, you pat his other arm, saying, “Try to make time so that this doesn’t happen again,”

He nods, watching you. You’re a breath away, inspecting him for any other injuries he may be sequestering. He reaches up hesitantly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. He feels giddy at the way your eyes widen.

“Pretty,” he says, so softly he’s not even sure you hear it. He wonders if he’s concealing the deep, desperate love he has for you, or if he’s bearing it all with his gaze. At this point, he’s not sure he cares. 

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Kennedy,” you say, smiling at him. “I’m still mad at you,”

Soft as a whisper, he says, “I think I can handle that,”

Without much further thought, Leon closes the gap. You let out a little squeak when his mouth meets yours, but you almost melt into him. He’s so relieved that he could cry. Your hands find purchase along the curve of his jaw, his own grasping at the loose fabric of your shirt. You sigh sweetly into him, coating his nerves in a saccharine so destabilizing he can’t help but return it. When you fall into his lap, parting your lips and winding your arms around him, he’s afraid he’s died and gone to Heaven. And when your tongue finally meets his, he groans, something deep and guttural and unbecoming.

You pull away, a string of saliva hanging from your kiss bitten lips. You rest your forehead against his. His every perception centers on you; your hands on his chest, your nose bumping his as your chest heaves, your smell, the skin of your neck, open and exposed for him. He wants you, needs you like you’re the only thing that can save him. And when you kiss him again, a fire burns anew in his chest. Your hands are everywhere; his arms, his shoulders, his chest, and they find a home winding into his hair. A gentle tug against his scalp has his hands tightening their grip on your hips, begging you to still.

“Leon,” you murmur against his mouth, heady and soft all at once. 

“I’m here,” he says, and he means it. He has never been more present. And then he’s standing, lifting you with him to place you back on the floor. You stare at him, pupils blown wide, gnawing on your bottom lip.

He pulls you flush against him because he can’t help himself. He is nothing if not selfish, nothing if not gluttonous and greedy, and now that you’ve given him this small victory, he wants to see if he can keep winning you. He sees the quiet desperation in the deep color of your eyes, the way you’re watching him with your full, rapt attention.

“You can touch me,” you say, voice low and barely audible. He wants to eat you alive.

He wastes little time after that, mouth crashing against yours with renewed energy. His heart swells in his chest when you cling to him all the same. Your fingers dig into the tops of his shoulders. He taps his fingers once against your thigh, signaling you to jump. He catches you, carries you close against him until you’re laid out against the sheets. He doesn’t stray far, following you into the linen, soft and sweet.

He watches you for a moment, taking it all in. You’re smiling at him, grinning really as he hovers above you. You brush your fingers against his cheek, smoothing away whatever doubt may be lingering. He ducks his head, pressing feather light kisses to the column of your throat, making your breath hitch there. He doesn’t get far, not when you pull his mouth back to yours, grasping at his shirt in an effort to rid him of it. Leon is a compliant man, flashing you a grin as he pulls back to yank it off. He wonders if your cheeks warm like his, if you can hear the hard hammer of his heart in his chest.

...

Leon is all rigid muscle, sinew pulled tight and corded along his arms, the plans of his stomach, his shoulders. You feel almost animalistic, feral. You run flat palms over him, feeling him twitch and tremor under your touch.

“Pretty,” you say, soft as a whisper. He huffs a laugh.

You push him back slightly, only giving yourself enough room to sit forward to pull off your own shirt. You watch him swallow thickly as it gets discarded somewhere across the room. His hands are soft, gentle against the revealed skin as he kisses you again. Feather light touches across your waist, your stomach. Rough and callused palms against your breast, thumb finding your nipple. You arch into him at the contact, tightening your grip on his shoulders.

You’re aching, cut open and bleeding. His hands leave goosebumps and fire in their wake as he lays you back against the sheets, tracing his lips down your torso, stopping at the waistband of your pants. He looks up at you, chest heaving. You nod, a gentle duck of your chin. Your breath catches in your throat as he slowly–painstakingly slowly–tugs your pants down. He lets his hands wander over your exposed thighs, hopefully ignoring your choice of underwear. Light touches against your hips cause them to fall open. You wonder if you look as vulnerable as you feel. He presses the gentlest kisses to the insides of your thighs, head bouncing between them.

“I’ll take care of you,” he says, a mumble against your skin. It sends shivers down your spine.

When he presses an open mouth kiss to the apex of your thighs, you think you black out for a second. A breathy gasp echoes off the walls. He tugs your underwear out of the way to flatten his tongue against you. The sound you make is unbecoming, head dropping back against the pillows. He wastes little time, sucking and kissing and licking as he finds his rhythm, finds what you like, what makes you the loudest. He eats you out like it’s a game, like he’s determined to get the highest score. Your vision is nearly white, fingers buried in his hair. When you tug on it a bit, he groans, deep and sultry, sending shocks to your brain. 

Your thighs begin to shake when he pulls your clit between his teeth, a breathy moan escaping you. He locks an arm across your hips to keep you in place. You’re shamelessly grinding against his face, chasing release. You keen high and whiny as he slides two fingers into you.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he says, low and heavy. “Make a mess on me,”

He curls his fingers against you. The stretch and tempo and timbre of his voice were nearly enough to send you over the edge, but what does you in is seeing him lean back to watch you, stubble brushing the inside of your thigh. You clench around his fingers as you come, writhing and panting like an animal. You watch him lick his fingers clean before you’re clawing for him, pulling his mouth back up to yours. You groan as you taste yourself on his tongue. Your fingers fumble with the clasp on his belt, fighting to free him of it. You feel him chuckle against you as he reaches down to help you. He pulls away a bit to shuck off his trousers.

Your mouth waters when his cock springs free from his boxers, thick and flushed and dripping. Instinctively you reach for it, but he stalls you, gently grasping your wrist. You frown up at him.

“Won’t last very long,” he says by way of explanation.

“Next time, then,” you say, chest heaving. He grins at you, climbing over you again.

His kisses are addictive, you decide. You’re not sure how you ever went without them. They’re all consuming, send you spinning. You’re flat on your back again, pulling him as close as you can, running your hands down the expanse of his chest. He lines himself up with your entrance, gently pushing himself inside. The stretch is devastating. You break the spell of his kiss to gasp, jaw slack. His chest heaves as he buries himself in you, arms flexing on either side of your head. He stalls once he’s fully seated inside you. You smooth his hair away from his face, thumb swiping against his cheekbone. You feel so full; of him, of want, of love.

“You okay?” he asks, voice hoarse and heavy. You grin at him.

“Never been better,” you say.

You lock your legs around his waist, begging him to stay close to you. He drops his head, turning into your palm more as he begins to slowly pull out of you. The drag of him against your walls has you keening. He almost pulls out fully before pushing back in, setting a languid pace that has you boneless. One hand smooths up your side, cupping your breast. You pull him back down to you, mouth meeting his in a devastating kiss. He sighs heavy against your lips, a whimper so delicious it has you rolling your hips just to hear it again. He moves to bury his face in your neck, pressing gentle kisses to the skin there.

“So pretty,” he mumbles. You sigh. “Like you were made for me,”

The praise has you scratching your nails lightly down his back, earning you another pretty noise. His thrusts pick up their pace but never lose their softness. He ruts into you like a man consumed, mumbling against your sweat slick skin.

“Dreamed of this,” he says. His hands wander over you, fingertips gentle against your injury. “Dreamed of you. My pretty girl,”

There’s a pressure building in your stomach, a coil wound tight, threatening to burst every time he opens his mouth.

“Yours,” you say. “Always have been,”

His thrusts turn shallow, deep. He says, “Doin’ so good, fuckin’ perfect,”

You clench around him, huffing a breathy moan. “Leon,”

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m right here,”

His thumb finds your clit, and you’re seeing stars. White hot pleasure radiates throughout your body, threatening to consume you. He picks up the pace, chasing his own release. He thrusts one, two, three more times before he’s groaning in your ear and filling you up. He collapses against you, chest heaving and panting. Your fingers wind into his hair, toying with the ends. Every now and then you feel him press kisses to the column of your throat. 

“Leon,” you whisper. He hums. “I think your stitches split,”

He laughs then, a bright, airy sound that splits your chest open with want. He pulls back to look at you, and you note the way his eyes brim with adoration. You feel suddenly shy.

“You gonna patch me back up?” he asks, soft against you. You grin.

“Yeah,” you say, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “I will,”

When he kisses you, it feels like a vow.

[ceruleanheaven]

guys i liedddddd 😭😭😭😭😭 i actually want it 😭😭😭 i want it so bad 😭😭😭😭 i want it so bad its ruining my life 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[tearsof-scarlet]

Equal Ground

Pairing: Leon Kennedy/Reader

Synopsis: Rivals turned undercover partners, you and Leon Kennedy fake a relationship during an Umbrella operation. Only to realise the hardest mission isn’t survival, but choosing each other. Tags: Enemies to Lovers, Fake Relationship, Forced Proximity, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Emotional Vulnerability, Miscommunication, Action/Combat, Protective Leon Kennedy, Rivals to Equals, Confession Scene.  Warnings: Gun Violence, Injury, Blood, Emotional Distress, Arguments, High-Stress Situations, Feelings Words: ~17k

A/N: im just going to ignore the infection on leon's neck in the new trailer :') (pls capcom dont play with me rn)

The Division of Security Operations headquarters never slept, but it also never felt alive.

Steel-panelled walls reflected fluorescent light in a way that flattened everything, faces, voices, victories. Even the air felt regulated, filtered until it lacked personality. The kind of place that existed to remind you that emotions were liabilities and efficiency was king.

Which was ironic, considering how personal things always got.

The leaderboard hung at the far end of the operations floor, suspended like a silent judge.

Agents gathered as the system refreshed, boots echoing against polished floors, conversations tapering off mid-sentence. There was always a crowd when post-mission reports finalised. Half anticipation, half fear. Careers shifted on that screen. Egos bruised. Grudges sharpened.

You stood with your arms folded, posture casual in a way that took effort. Like you weren’t waiting. Like you didn’t already know exactly who you’d be fighting for space with.

The board flickered.

For a split second, everything went dark.

Then the names snapped into place.

#1 — YOU #2 — LEON KENNEDY

The reaction was immediate.

A low whistle cut through the room. Someone muttered, “Jesus, again.” Another agent laughed softly, like they’d just lost a bet.

You didn’t smile.

Smiling would’ve felt like gloating, and gloating around Leon Kennedy always came back to bite. Instead, you exhaled through your nose, jaw tightening just enough to hurt. Relief tangled with triumph, knotted together in a way that never quite felt like a win.

Across the floor, Leon stood a few feet away. Too close. Close enough that you could feel him without looking, like static in the air, irritating and unavoidable. He didn’t react. No sigh. No curse. No flicker of irritation that would’ve been satisfying to see.

He just stared at the board, hands loose at his sides, shoulders squared like this was exactly where he expected to be. Second.

That was the thing about Leon. He never looked bothered. Which only ever made you want to bother him more. Finally, he turned his head. Not fully. Just enough to acknowledge your existence.

“Congrats.”

The word was clean. Controlled. Devoid of warmth. Not a compliment, an obligation. You turned on him immediately.

“Wow,” you said, voice light in a way that wasn’t. “That sounded painful. You okay?”

A few agents nearby froze, suddenly very interested in anything that wasn’t the two of you. Someone cleared their throat. Loudly.

Leon’s eyes slid to you then—really looked. Blue, steady, unreadable. Like he was cataloguing you, the way he always did, as if you were a problem he hadn’t solved yet.

“I’ll survive,” he said. “I usually do.”

There it was. The implication. The reminder. That he didn’t need the board. Didn’t need the validation.

You scoffed. “Right. Keep telling yourself that.”

Your heart was beating faster than it should have. You hated that. Hated that he still had that effect. You told yourself it was just rivalry. Professional friction. Two agents chasing the same metrics.

Except metrics didn’t make your blood boil. Metrics didn’t make you remember every mission where he’d overridden your call. Every briefing where he’d questioned your judgment with that infuriating calm. Every time he’d acted like you were a variable to manage instead of an equal.

Leon gave a short nod, not concession, not respect. Closure.

Then he turned away.

As if the conversation hadn’t mattered. As if you hadn’t mattered.

Your fingers curled before you could stop them. You remembered the first time you’d tried to talk to him. Fresh out of training, adrenaline high, stupid enough to think camaraderie was a given. You’d said his name.

He’d walked straight past you. You’d decided then that he was an asshole. Every interaction since had only reinforced it.

The operations floor slowly returned to life as agents peeled away toward briefings, the tension dispersing but not disappearing. Not between you and Leon. It never did.

As you headed toward the briefing room, you caught his reflection in the glass wall ahead. Same expression. Same calm. Locked down so tight it felt deliberate. Like a wall he wanted you to slam into. And God help you, part of you wanted to break it. Just to prove that something under there could crack.

You squared your shoulders and kept walking. You didn’t care. You absolutely did.

The mission briefing chime cut through the operations floor with surgical precision.

“Conference Room A. Five minutes.”

The reaction was immediate and universal.

Groans rippled through agents who hadn’t moved fast enough to make themselves scarce. Chairs scraped back. Tablets were snapped shut. The loose, post-leaderboard tension evaporated, replaced by something sharper, more disciplined.

You moved with the crowd on instinct alone.

It wasn’t until you were halfway there that you realised exactly where it was taking you.

Conference Room A.

You grimaced internally.

The room was large by design, tiered seating, wide tables, enough space to accommodate egos as well as bodies, but it had a habit of shrinking whenever certain people occupied it.

You stepped inside and scanned for an open seat, already bracing yourself.

Of course.

Leon was already there.

Middle row. Dead centre. Prime vantage point of the screen and the handler’s podium. Perfect posture. Perfectly composed. Like he’d planned it that way.

There were empty chairs scattered throughout the room, but they might as well not have existed. Too far. Too obvious. Too cowardly. The only viable option, the one that didn’t scream avoidance, was the seat beside him.

Unavoidable. You took it. You dropped into the chair with more force than necessary, the legs giving a brief, sharp screech against the floor. Leon didn’t look at you. Didn’t need to.

The tension snapped into place the instant you sat down, tight and immediate, like a wire pulled too far. You felt it in your shoulders. In the way your spine straightened despite yourself.

Conversations around you faltered. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just enough that you noticed the sudden lack of noise in your peripheral hearing. Someone a few rows back leaned in to whisper something to their partner. Another agent glanced at the two of you, eyebrows lifting before they very deliberately looked away.

No one wanted to be involved. The air felt thick. Pressurised. Like it might rupture if either of you pushed too hard.

Leon crossed his arms, posture relaxed but closed. Casual in the way that required discipline. Control. You leaned back, ankle resting on your knee, adopting your own version of indifference. Two opposing stances. Same message.

The handler entered, and the room snapped to attention.

Lights dimmed. Screens flared to life, flooding the space with satellite imagery, data streams, mission headers scrolling in clean, clinical fonts. The low hum of equipment filled the silence left behind by agents who suddenly remembered how to listen. For a few minutes, it was almost normal. Almost.

“Umbrella-affiliated assets have increased activity along the European biotech circuit,” the handler said, laser pointer gliding across the map. “High-profile events. Private funding galas. A lot of noise. Very little traceable movement.”

Leon leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the table.

“Which means the actual exchange won’t happen on-site,” he said. Calm. Certain. “It’ll be routed through a secondary node. Off-grid. Clean.”

You didn’t look at him.

“Or,” you cut in, eyes still fixed on the screen, “they keep it local because no one expects them to risk exposure in a room full of donors and diplomats.”

The room stilled. You felt the shift before you saw it, attention pivoting, subtle but undeniable. Leon turned his head slowly. Deliberately.

“That would be sloppy,” he said. No heat. No edge. “Umbrella isn’t sloppy.”

You let out a soft, humourless breath. “Neither are shell corporations hiding in plain sight,” you replied. “Especially when they’re backed by people who think money makes them invisible.”

A pause. Leon’s mouth twitched. Not irritation. Amusement.

“That’s an assumption,” he said. “Arrogance isn’t a reliable variable.”

You turned then, meeting his gaze head-on. “It is when arrogance is the only reason they’ve survived this long.”

For a split second, his eyes held yours. Then he smirked. Not big. Not obvious. Just enough. And it pissed you off instantly.

A few agents shifted uncomfortably. Someone cleared their throat. The handler didn’t intervene, never did. Not when it was the two of you. They’d learned better. From somewhere across the room, barely under someone’s breath, came a muttered, “God help whoever has to work with them.”

It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t annoyed. It was resigned.

You saw Leon’s reaction out of the corner of your eye. The faint tightening at the corner of his mouth. Not anger. Something closer to agreement. Like the comment confirmed something he already knew. The rivalry wasn’t subtle. It never had been.

Leadership knew it. Field agents knew it. Even analysts who avoided combat zones like the plague knew better than to put the two of you on the same assignment without contingencies.

And yet. Here you were. Side by side. Again.

As the briefing continued, the friction didn’t ease, it deepened. You filled gaps Leon dismissed as irrelevant. He dismantled assumptions you made with surgical precision. Neither of you raised your voice. Neither of you yielded an inch.

It wasn’t about ego. It was about being right.

Leon shifted beside you, the movement small but unmistakable. Intentional. Close enough that you could feel his presence without looking. Close enough to feel like a provocation.

You refused to glance at him.

The handler cleared their throat sharply.

“Enough,” they said. Calm. Firm. “Both of you.”

You leaned back in your chair, jaw tight, eyes still forward.

Leon didn’t move at all.

Except for that damn smirk that hadn’t quite faded.

The briefing ended the way most did.

Not with resolution but with an abrupt cutoff and a roomful of people pretending they hadn’t been holding their breath.

The lights brightened. Screens went dark. Chairs shifted as agents remembered how to move again. Conversations started up too fast, too loud, like noise could erase what had just happened.

It couldn’t.

Agents filed out in a rush, boots striking the floor with sudden urgency. No one lingered. No one made eye contact longer than necessary. The tension was something physical now. Something that could snag you if you weren’t careful, wrap around your ankle and drag you down with it.

You were halfway to the door when the handler’s voice cut through the noise.

“You. Kennedy. Stay.”

Your spine stiffened.

Of course.

Leon stopped beside you without looking at you, like he’d been expecting it. Like this was just another outcome he’d already calculated. You hated that most of all, that nothing ever seemed to catch him off guard.

The rest of the room emptied fast.

Too fast.

Even the analysts who usually hovered with questions and clarifications suddenly remembered pressing deadlines and non-existent meetings. The last agent slipped out, the door sliding shut behind them with a soft, almost polite hiss.

Click.

The sound echoed.

Silence flooded in, heavy and deliberate.

The handler didn’t bother with theatrics. They never did. They stood at the head of the conference table, hands loosely clasped, posture easy in a way that only came from authority earned the hard way.

They looked unimpressed.

Calm. Experienced. Patient in the way of someone who had watched far worse people implode and lived to tell the story.

Their gaze flicked to you.

Then to Leon.

Like they were reviewing two familiar problem variables in a report they already knew by heart.

“You’re going to hate this assignment,” they said evenly. “So I’m going to give it to you quickly.”

Leon’s shoulders barely moved. No reaction. No protest.

You crossed your arms tighter, already bracing for impact.

The handler tapped the remote.

The screen behind them changed, maps and data streams replaced by a glossy event flyer dripping with gold accents and forced elegance.

THE KENSINGTON BIOTECH BENEFIT

A private gala supporting global medical innovation.

You scoffed quietly.

The kind of event that smelled like money, power, and immunity.

“Umbrella-adjacent shell companies have been laundering research funding through three different foundations,” the handler continued. “One of them is sponsoring this gala. Donors, executives, foreign ambassadors. Wealth. Influence. Enough plausible deniability to make a prosecutor cry.”

Another click.

A timeline appeared. Then a guest list, names blurred, titles redacted, power implied without explanation.

“Tonight,” the handler said, “their data broker makes a handoff. We believe it includes proprietary files and field logs. Evidence of illegal trials. Off-book transport routes. Personnel rosters.”

Your focus sharpened despite yourself.

“Where’s the handoff happening?” you asked.

Leon beat you by half a second.

“And how do we extract it without tipping the room?”

You felt irritation spark immediately. Predictable. Of course he’d jump straight to logistics, like this was just another clean operation and not a nest of vipers in tuxedos.

The handler’s eyes flicked between you again, cataloguing the tension like it was another asset to manage.

“The handoff is digital,” they said. “Encrypted drive. Stored temporarily on a secure device in the VIP lounge. The broker uploads it to an off-site server at 23:00. We need the device before then.”

Too clean.

You frowned. “So we infiltrate. Grab the device. Disappear.”

“Correct,” the handler said. “Which is why this is an on-site operation. No drones. No external breach. Umbrella’s countermeasures are tight.”

Leon’s jaw flexed once. Barely noticeable. You caught it anyway.

“Then we’ll need invitations,” he said.

“Already handled.”

The handler clicked again.

The screen changed.

Two names appeared. Two immaculate profiles. Wealthy. Connected. Polished to perfection.

A couple.

Your stomach dropped.

You read it once.

Then again.

And again.

Couple profile.

You looked up slowly. “No.”

The handler didn’t blink. “Yes.”

You let out a short laugh, sharp, humourless. “Absolutely not.”

Leon still hadn’t spoken.

His eyes were locked on the screen, but his posture had gone rigid in a way you recognised. The same way it did right before a firefight. Before something went wrong.

His jaw was tight. Mouth set into a flat line.

If a bullet had been aimed at his head, he would’ve looked exactly like this.

“The guest list is exclusive,” the handler continued. “Couples only. It’s not charity, it’s a filter. Singles draw scrutiny. Couples imply stability.”

You leaned forward, palms slamming onto the table. “Send literally anyone else.”

“There is no anyone else,” the handler replied calmly. “Not for this.”

Your temper flared hot and fast. “Why? Because we’re top-ranked?”

“Because your skill overlap is ideal,” they said. “One of you excels in social manipulation and close-quarters infiltration. The other excels in threat assessment and extraction under pressure.”

You opened your mouth.

“Don’t,” the handler said sharply. “You’re both excellent. Together, you’re efficient.”

Leon finally spoke.

“And if we refuse?”

Low. Controlled. Dangerous in its restraint.

The handler didn’t soften. “Then we miss the handoff. Umbrella keeps their data. People die later because we didn’t do our jobs now.”

Cold. Final.

You clenched your jaw. “So your plan is to shove us into a ballroom and hope we don’t kill each other.”

“My plan,” the handler said, “is to send two professionals into a controlled environment with a clear objective. Your personal feelings are irrelevant.”

“They’re not irrelevant if they compromise the mission,” you snapped.

Leon glanced at you then.

Brief. Sharp.

Unreadable.

He didn’t defend you. Didn’t agree. Didn’t disagree.

He just stood there, calm, contained, infuriatingly above it, like he always did.

You wanted to shake him. To crack that composure just once.

The handler watched you both like someone observing a storm they’d already charted.

“If you can’t play nice for one night,” they said evenly, “you don’t deserve that leaderboard.”

The words landed hard. Because they were true.

Because the leaderboard wasn’t just numbers. It was proof. Of every sacrifice. Every cut corner. Every fight you’d survived to get here. You felt the hook sink deep.

Leon didn’t react outwardly, but you saw it. The subtle lift of his chin. The tension in his throat as he swallowed. Pride caught him too. The handler shut off the screen.

“You’ll attend as Dr. and Dr.,” they said, sliding dossiers across the table. “Long-term couple. Convincing. You will touch. You will smile. You will sell it.”

You stared at the dossiers like they were weapons. Leon picked his up with careful precision. Of course he did.

“This is not optional,” the handler said. “Get the device. Get the data. Come back.”

They looked at you both.

“Try not to embarrass me.”

The door unlocked with a hiss.

You didn’t move.

Neither did Leon.

The truth settled ugly and heavy in your chest.

You weren’t being asked to work with Leon Kennedy. You were being forced to pretend you wanted him.

The training wing smelled like disinfectant and old sweat, cleaned often, never enough. The kind of smell that clung to the back of your throat no matter how many times they scrubbed the floors. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, cold and unforgiving, washing everything in a sickly white glow that did no one any favours.

The DSO didn’t do cozy. It did functional. It did survive.

A door slid open at the handler’s badge swipe, revealing a smaller room tucked off the main mat space. It was laid out like an interrogation room that had tried—and failed—to pass itself off as an office.

One table. Two chairs. A stack of folders.

And a tablet already lit up with a form that made your soul leave your body on sight.

UNDERCOVER COHABITATION PROFILE — COUPLE LEGEND BUILD

You stared at it like it had just insulted your family.

“Sit,” the handler said.

Leon took the chair opposite you immediately. No hesitation. No comment. Of course he did. You waited half a second longer, purely out of spite, then sat, crossing your legs and folding your arms like the tablet might try something.

The handler slid two clipboards across the table.

“You’ll fill these out together,” they said. “Your cover is long-term. Married. High-value donors with private ties to the foundation. Security will look for inconsistencies: names, habits, timelines. If you don’t align, you’ll set off alarms before you hit the champagne.”

They pushed a third folder toward Leon. “Apartment layout. Memorise it. If someone asks where the bathroom is in your home, you answer without thinking.”

Leon scanned the paperwork with that infuriatingly calm focus he brought to bomb schematics and ambush routes. No sarcasm. No commentary. Just silent efficiency.

You hated him a little extra for it.

“I’ll be outside,” the handler added. “You have forty minutes. Try not to kill each other.”

The door shut.

Click.

You and Leon were left alone with the lie. For a moment, neither of you moved. Leon’s eyes stayed on the paperwork. Yours stayed on him.

You grabbed the top sheet and skimmed it.

How did you meet?

When did you move in together?

Anniversary date:

Pet names used in public:

Pet peeves:

Shared routines:

Preferred terms of endearment (optional):

Your jaw clenched.

“This is ridiculous.”

Leon finally lifted his gaze. “It’s standard.”

You scoffed. “Standard. Right. Because nothing says ‘authentic marriage’ like a fill-in-the-blank worksheet.”

He picked up his pen. “How did we meet?”

The bluntness threw you for a second. “Wow. No warm-up? No foreplay?”

Leon didn’t blink. “Focus.”

You rolled your eyes. “Fine. Prague.”

His pen paused midair. “Vienna.”

You stared. “I’m sorry, did you just veto my city?”

“Vienna makes more sense,” he said evenly. “Diplomatic circuit. Donors. Embassy galas.”

“Prague is beautiful,” you shot back. “Historic. Romantic. Exactly the kind of place two rich idiots would pretend to fall in love over overpriced wine.”

Leon’s mouth flattened. “It’s cliché.”

“And Vienna isn’t?”

“It’s believable.”

“So is Prague.”

He exhaled slowly, like he was counting to ten. “We need a story that holds up under scrutiny.”

“And we need one that doesn’t sound like it was written by a man who alphabetises his spices.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed his eyes. “I don’t alphabetise my spices.”

“Wow. Growth.”

The argument escalated almost instantly. It was petty. You both knew it. It was also loud, because neither of you was willing to lose the first detail. Like it mattered. Like this wasn’t all fake anyway.

Leon tapped the page. “Vienna. We met at a benefit dinner. You spilled a drink on me.”

You barked a laugh. “Of course I did.”

“It’s memorable.”

“It makes me clumsy.”

“It explains why we talked.”

You bristled. “Or you bumped into me.”

Leon raised an eyebrow. “That makes you the victim.”

“And?”

“It makes me the asshole.”

You smiled sweetly. “Finally. Something accurate.”

For a second, his mouth twitched. Barely. Gone as fast as it appeared.

“Anniversary date,” you said quickly, flipping the page.

“November,” Leon said without hesitation.

“Why November?”

“Forgettable.”

“Wow. Romantic.”

He didn’t react. “The fifteenth.”

You paused. “That’s weirdly specific.”

His gaze flicked away. Just for a fraction of a second. “It’s fine.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You absolutely have something on the fifteenth.”

“No.”

“Uh-huh.”

You wrote it down anyway.

Pet peeves.

You read the line and looked up. “This is where you put ‘people who talk too much,’ isn’t it?”

Leon folded his arms. “It’s where we put things we can answer quickly.”

“Oh. Then write ‘emotion.’”

“What’s yours?” he countered.

“Men who think silence counts as depth.”

His pen stilled. “You hum when you’re thinking.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“That’s not a pet peeve.”

“It is when it’s constant.”

Heat crept up your neck. “You’re creepy.”

“Observant.”

Next line.

Pet names used in public.

You stared at it like it might explode.

“No.”

“We need something.”

“Something neutral.”

“Babe.”

You physically recoiled. “Absolutely not.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Try again.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Honey.”

Leon grimaced. “That’s worse.”

“It’s normal.”

“It sounds like a threat when you say it.”

You gasped. “Rude.”

“Pick one.”

You exhaled hard. “Love.”

He froze.

“What?” you snapped.

“It’s… British.”

“We’re in London half the year. Write it down.”

He did.

Your stomach did something annoying.

You shoved the clipboard away. “Done?”

Leon flipped to the apartment layout. “No.”

He started listing details like a man preparing for war. Door directions. Furniture placement. Appliance locations.

“You’re insane,” you muttered.

“It’s my job.”

The way he said it stopped your next insult cold. Before you could unpack that, the door hissed open.

“Time,” the handler said. “Training.”

The training room was louder. A raw, grinding decibel that felt less like sound and more like physical pressure against your eardrums. It was hotter, a dense, clinging heat that rose from the mats and bodies and pooled against the ceiling. This place was brutally, viciously honest in a way the slick corridors and polished debriefing rooms of headquarters never dared to be. Here, pretence was the first thing stripped away.

Every sound was amplified, thrown back by the barren walls: the scuff and slap of boots against padding, the meaty thud of bodies hitting the mat, the sharp, bitten-off bark of instructors.

This was where elegance went to die. Where you were reminded what you were underneath the tech and the tactics: flesh, bone, and flawed instinct.

Leon shrugged out of his jacket as if shedding a second skin. The movement was economical, unshowy, the muscles in his back and shoulders shifting in a deliberate roll beneath his dark shirt as he pushed his sleeves to his elbows. He didn’t look at you. He didn’t need to. His indifference was a practiced weapon, and he wielded it perfectly.

You hated that you tracked the motion anyway. Hated the way your eyes followed the line of his forearm, the shift of his weight. A silent catalogue of the enemy.

Mirroring him was a reflex, but you made it aggressive. You rolled your shoulders back until the joints gave a soft pop, tilted your neck until it burned. Your pulse was already climbing, a drumbeat of pure, undiluted adrenaline bleeding into your veins ahead of the impact. This wasn't nerves. It was a craving for collision.

“Close-quarters,” the handler’s voice cut through the din from the edge of the mat. “No distance. No weapons. You’re going to be in each other’s space until one of you breaks or the clock does.”

Lucky me.

Leon turned to face you fully, and the overhead lights carved him out of the gloom. The sharp, unyielding line of his jaw, the steady, metronomic rise and fall of his chest. His eyes swept over you once. Not dismissive. Not curious. Assessing. Coldly, clinically reassessing a variable he already had quantified.

“Try to keep up,” you said, the words grating out, already furious at the glacial calm on his face.

The corner of his mouth twitched. A phantom of a smirk, there and gone. “Show me.”

The first clash was less a fight and more a detonation.

You lunged without preamble, a silent, violent blur closing the distance before he could settle into a textbook stance. He reacted not with surprise, but with a speed that felt like an insult, catching your leading arm, redirecting your momentum with infuriating efficiency. Your shoulder slammed into the wall of his chest. Solid. Immovable. The impact reverberated up your neck, rattling your teeth.

You hooked his leg; he countered your hook. You twisted for leverage; his grip shifted, strong, calloused hands locking like manacles around your wrist and forearm. He stepped into you, using your own forward drive to uproot your balance.

The mat rushed up to meet you. You hit with a force that punched the air from your lungs in a sharp, humiliating wheeze.

He followed you down, a controlled avalanche. One knee braced near your hip, his weight a deliberate, undeniable pressure. One hand planted beside your head, caging you. The other pinning your arm with machined precision.

Too close.

His heat enveloped you, a living, breathing furnace. You could feel the coiled tension in the muscles of his arms and chest as he held himself back, a restraint that was somehow more arrogant than full force. His breath, still steady, washed over your cheek.

“Yield.” A single, quiet word, dropped into the scant space between your mouths.

You bared your teeth, a soundless snarl. “Dream on, Kennedy.”

You bucked, shifted your hips, used the micro-second his weight adjusted to hook your leg and roll. The world flipped, ceiling lights streaking, his form a blur of controlled motion, and suddenly you were on top, your forearm braced against the solid column of his throat, your knees digging into the mat on either side of his ribs.

Beneath you, his chest heaved once. A deep, aborted expansion. For a suspended heartbeat, neither of you moved.

Sweat slicked your skin where you pressed against him. The mat was warm and smelled of defeat. Leon’s hand came up, his grip closing around your wrist, not to throw you, not to hurt. To test. To measure the resistance. He was already adapting, his body learning yours even as yours screamed to reject his.

Your pulse was a roar in your ears, a chaotic counter-rhythm to his terrifying calm.

You shoved off him as if burned, scrambling to your feet before the strange, charged stillness could solidify.

“Not so perfect,” you spat, your breath coming in gusts you hated.

Leon sat up smoothly, as if rising from a lounge chair. As if your reversal had been a predicted, inconsequential sub-routine. “You’re fast.”

It wasn’t praise. It was data entry. And you hated that the distinction felt so vital, and that it landed somewhere in the uncharted, dangerous space between contempt and something else.

“Again,” the handler barked.

The next round was worse. Longer. More intimately brutal. It was a war of pressure and proximity. He caught a strike and used it to drive you back into the mat, his shoulder pinning you down, his forearm a bar of iron across your chest, not crushing, just absolutely controlling. You could feel every breath he took. You kicked out, twisted, your hands scraping against the corded steel of his arms as you broke free.

“You fight angry,” he muttered, the words a low vibration in the scant space between your bodies as you circled again, panting.

“You fight like a robot,” you shot back, your voice raw.

“You’re predictable.”

“Only to someone arrogant enough to think they’re smarter.”

“I think you’re reckless.” His eyes were chips of ice in the heat.

You lunged again, if only to wipe the assessment from his face.

He caught you, of course he did, but this time you were ready. You rolled with the momentum, dragging him down with you in a tangle of limbs. The mat shuddered. The grapple became a raw, grinding struggle for dominance, a silent conversation of strain and resistance. Your knee found his side; his elbow bracketed your ribs. Sweat-slick skin slid against damp fabric. Neither of you would yield an inch. The sheer, stubborn will of it was a third entity in the fight.

By the time the handler called the reset, your skin was sheened, your lungs burned, and your muscles trembled with fatigued fury. Across from you, Leon’s breathing had finally deepened, still controlled, but unmistakably heavier. His shirt was plastered to the planes of his back, darkened in a long, damp streak down his spine.

You refused to acknowledge it. You refused to even look.

“Live-fire simulation,” the handler called, gesturing to the adjacent door. “Now.”

The next room was a labyrinth of moveable walls, strobing lights, and disorienting sound cues. Training pistols, heavy with marking rounds, were thrust into your hands. No room for error. No room for anything but the drill. You and Leon moved through the doorway as a single, fractured unit. No words. No signals.

You took point on instinct. He covered the angles you couldn’t see, his presence a shadow at your six. It felt profoundly wrong, this seamless coordination, how your strides synced, how you pivoted around a corner and he was already there, clearing the blind spot. It felt like a betrayal of the mutual contempt that had been your only common ground.

A target snapped up from a left-side port.

You pivoted, weapon rising, finger finding the trigger -

Leon moved.

No shout. No warning. A pure, unthinking kinetic shift.

He stepped into your line of fire, his body turning, his shoulder angling to intercept the shot that wasn’t even real. A blunt, physical declaration.

Protective. Automatic.

The training round smacked into the hard plate of his vest with a dull, final thwack.

Your finger froze. The world narrowed to the spot of neon paint now blooming on his shoulder, to the broad back that had just placed itself between you and a theoretical threat.

“Reset!” the handler’s voice was distant, irrelevant.

Leon stepped away immediately, his posture snapping back into that flawless, impregnable control as if the last five seconds had been edited out. As if his body hadn’t just made a decision his mind would never consciously permit.

You stood rooted, your pulse a frantic bird in your throat, staring at the mark on his vest.

The venue rose out of the city like a monument to excess.

Marble columns framed the entrance, pale and flawless, each one tall enough to make a statement about permanence, about money that didn’t worry about time or consequence. Crystal chandeliers glittered beyond the glass doors, scattering light across polished floors in a way that felt deliberate, curated to impress and intimidate in equal measure.

Inside, an orchestra played something classical and unobtrusive, strings swelling just enough to fill the space without demanding attention. The music threaded through conversations held in low, confident voices, people who had never had to check over their shoulders when they spoke.

This place wasn’t just expensive. It was insulated.

You stepped inside and felt it immediately: the invisible barrier between the people here and the rest of the world. Consequences didn’t reach this far. They slid off champagne flutes and tailored suits, drowned under polite laughter and charitable donations.

Umbrella executives were everywhere. Not obvious. Not branded. Just… present. Men and women with immaculate posture and smiles that didn’t quite reach their eyes. People who knew exactly how much power they held and exactly how well it was hidden.

You straightened instinctively, not because you needed to, but because the room demanded it. Tonight, you weren’t an agent.

The dress was a calculated piece of armour. It clung and moved in a way that looked effortless, the kind of confidence that came from knowing every movement would be watched and finding satisfaction in it. Hair styled, posture relaxed, expression composed. Lethal, but not visibly so. Danger tucked beneath refinement.

Leon stood beside you, and the contrast was almost obscenely perfect. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t noticed. The tailored suit fit him like a second skin, draping over broad shoulders and a lean frame with an almost insulting elegance. It was dark, understated, and it made him look disarmingly respectable, the kind of man donors instinctively trusted. The earpiece was invisible, his edge concealed beneath a veneer of sophisticated calm. He looked… safe. Predictable. It was the most effective disguise he’d ever worn.

No weapons. No tactical gear. Just a man who cleaned up a little too well. Neither of you looked like agents. You looked like you belonged.

Leon’s eyes swept over you as you adjusted a strap on your shoulder, his gaze lingering a fraction longer than strictly operational. When he spoke, his voice was a low, private rumble. “They didn’t mention the dress.”

You kept your eyes forward, scanning the crowd. “It’s not in the briefing notes, Kennedy. It’s called a uniform.”

“It’s a distraction,” he said, and there was a trace of something in his tone, not warmth, but a clinical sort of acknowledgment.

Before you could retort, the second you crossed the threshold fully into the ballroom, his hand settled at the small of your back.

It wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t awkward. It was proprietary.

His palm rested there with a pressure that was both grounding and possessive, his fingers splayed just above the curve of your hip. His thumb brushed once, a slow, deliberate stroke against the delicate fabric, and your entire spine went rigid in response. The heat of his hand burned through the silk, a brand you felt in every nerve ending.

He leaned in, his breath disturbing the hair near your temple. “Easy,” he murmured, his voice a velvety counterfeit of intimacy. “Smile.”

You did, a perfect, glazed curve of the lips. Under your breath, barely moving them, you hissed, “If you leave your hand there any longer, I’m billing the DSO for emotional damages and a dry-cleaning bill. Your palm is sweating.”

Leon didn’t look at you. His hand didn’t move. If anything, his fingers pressed more firmly, pulling you a millimetre closer into the orbit of his body. “Relax, sweetheart,” he said aloud, his tone soft, affectionate, convincingly doting. “You look breathtaking.” The endearment was a bullet wrapped in velvet.

A nearby couple glanced over, their smiles fond and approving.

Your jaw ached from clenching. “You sound disturbingly natural. I think I might throw up.”

His mouth curved, a private, dangerous flicker. “That’s because you’re holding your breath. They’ll notice the lack of oxygen before they notice the lie.”

“Maybe if you weren’t manhandling me.”

“My hand’s not moving,” he replied, his calm an infuriating counterpoint to your tension. “You’re just hyper-aware of it. Mission focus, remember?”

You hated that he was right. The awareness was a live wire running from the point of contact straight to your core. Publicly, you were seamless, an elegant couple drifting into the flow of the gala, bodies aligned, steps synchronised. Privately, it was a silent war of attrition.

Leon guided you toward the bar with infuriating ease, his hand a constant, navigating pressure. He nodded politely, offered brief, warm smiles. You felt every shift of his fingers, every minute adjustment of his grip.

An Umbrella executive, tall, with cold, appraising eyes, glanced your way.

Leon’s hand shifted. His fingers spread, pressing more fully against your spine as he angled you subtly, protectively, closer to him. His head dipped, his lips near your ear. “This is ridiculous,” you muttered, your own gaze locked on the executive.

“Focus,” Leon murmured, his voice a low vibration you felt in your bones. “He’s not just looking. He’s calculating. Smile at him. Like you find him tedious.”

You tilted your head, letting your gaze drift over the man with the lazy, disinterested contempt of the truly privileged. You offered a faint, dismissive smile. The man’s gaze lingered, then moved on, satisfied you were no one of consequence.

Leon exhaled, a soft sound that feathered against your skin. “See? That’s the point.”

You glanced up at him, your cheek nearly brushing his jaw. “Don’t get smug.”

“I’m not smug,” he said, raising a hand to effortlessly snag two champagne flutes from a passing server. He handed one to you, his fingers brushing yours. “I’m effective.”

“You remembered the champagne,” you noted flatly, taking the glass.

“I remember things,” he replied, his eyes scanning the room over the rim of his flute. “Drink with your left hand. Your ring’s on the right. It flashes under the lights.”

You froze for a half-second, a tiny, betraying stumble in your composure. Then you switched hands smoothly, the crystal stem cool in your left fingers. “Stop paying attention to irrelevant details about me.”

“Can’t,” Leon said, his voice dropping back into that confidential murmur as he guided you away from the bar. “That’s the job tonight. Every detail is relevant.”

The orchestra swelled as the evening deepened. The air grew thick with perfume and false camaraderie. Leon’s hand remained on your back, a constant, maddening presence. You became a connoisseur of its pressure, firmer when navigating a crowd, lighter but no less present when stationary, his thumb tracing an absent, subconscious arc that made your breath catch.

As you moved, you saw the illusion take hold. The casual glances from guests, the approving nods from older patrons, the way security teams assessed you as a unit and then dismissed you. They bought the story. The elegant, connected, slightly bored couple.

The realisation was a cold trickle down your spine. Because it wasn’t just them. It was him, too.

He moved through the charade with a terrifying, fluid ease. His touches, his murmured words, the way his body curved around yours in a crowd, it all looked effortless. Like it cost him nothing. Like the simmering hostility that defined your every interaction had been switched off, replaced by this seamless, galling performance.

You were starting to resent how good he was at it.

A guest intercepted you near the edge of the ballroom, an older man with silver hair and a practiced smile, glass of champagne cradled loosely in one hand. His eyes flicked between you and Leon with open curiosity.

“Forgive me,” he said pleasantly, inclining his head. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.” Leon smiled before you could respond, warm and unhurried. “Of course. This is my wife.” The word still sent a strange jolt through you.

“And you are?” the man asked, turning his attention to you. “Involved in the foundation as well?”

You opened your mouth to speak. To think of something fast before you started spilling word vomit.

“She is,” Leon answered smoothly, his hand settling at your back again. “She led the data consolidation project for the Helios Initiative last year. Streamlined the entire reporting pipeline. Saved the board six figures and a lot of embarrassment.”

You stilled. Just for a fraction of a second. The man’s brows lifted, impressed.

“She has a talent for finding inefficiencies people prefer not to admit are there,” Leon continued, tone light, almost fond. “She’s very good at seeing patterns others miss.”

Your heart stumbled. The guest chuckled. “Dangerous skill.”

Leon’s thumb brushed your spine once, subtly. Familiar. “Only if you’re hiding something.”

The man laughed and excused himself moments later, drifting back into the crowd, already satisfied. You remained where you were, gaze fixed ahead, the music suddenly too loud in your ears.

“How did you know that?” you asked quietly, once you were certain no one was listening.

Leon didn’t look at you. “You did it during the Marseille op,” he said simply. “Flagged the discrepancy in the shipping logs. Everyone else missed it.”

“That was years ago,” you said. “I remember,” he replied.

There was no pride in his voice. No edge. Just fact.

You leaned back into his touch, your shoulder blades pressing against his chest as you pretended to point out a painting. Your voice was a razor in the velvet dark between you. “They’re eating this up. It’s almost pathetic.”

“Yes,” Leon replied, his chin nearly resting on your shoulder. His breath was warm on your neck. “They are.”

He gave you nothing else. Just the steady, burning pressure of his hand.

The orchestra shifted, the music melting into a slower, more intimate piece. The dance floor began to fill. Leon felt the shift in the room’s rhythm a moment before you did.

He turned to you, his expression softening into something convincingly expectant. He extended his hand, palm up. Not a question. A quiet command in the language of the evening.

You stared at his offered hand, at the faint scars across the knuckles you knew the origin of. Then you placed yours in it, your cool fingers sliding against his warm, calloused palm. “You step on my feet,” you whispered, “and I’ll make a scene they’ll talk about for years.”

A ghost of a real smile touched his lips. “Noted.”

He drew you into him, one hand returning to its familiar place on your back, the other closing around your hand. The world narrowed to the space between your bodies. You could feel the fine wool of his suit under your splayed fingers, the solid muscle beneath.

“You dance like you fight,” you accused as he led you into the first steps.

“Precisely?” he murmured, his eyes holding yours.

“Stiffly. Like you’re waiting for an attack.”

“You’re leading.”

“I am not.”

“You’re anticipating my lead and resisting it. It’s the same thing.” He adjusted his grip, his hand on your back firming, guiding your turn. “Stop fighting the rhythm. Let it happen.”

You bristled. “I don’t just let things happen.”

He leaned in, his lips a breath from your ear. His voice dropped, losing its polished edge, revealing the rougher truth beneath. “You do. You always have. You anticipate the strike. You brace for the impact. You’re doing it now.”

The direct hit silenced you. The banter evaporated, leaving only the truth of the movement. You were bracing. Against him. Against the music. Against the unnerving synchronicity.

Somewhere in the next turn, the resistance broke. Not with a surrender, but with a mutual, unspoken recalibration. Leon’s guidance became less a direction and more a suggestion. Your following became less a resistance and more a mirror. Your weight settled, your steps aligned. He shifted; you matched. It became effortless. Fluid. A silent, perfect dialogue of motion.

It felt exactly like the rare, terrifying moments in the field when everything went to hell and instinct took over, when you moved not as two separate entities, but as a single, coordinated organism.

Your breath hitched. You felt his do the same, a stutter in his otherwise controlled chest. Neither of you spoke.

The music carried you, and his hand on your back was no longer a point of conflict. It was an anchor. His other hand held yours, not with performance, but with a simple, undeniable connection. You were suddenly, acutely aware of every point of contact: his thigh brushing yours, the heat of his palm, the steady beat of his heart against your own racing one.

The song began to wind down. Security was tightening; you could see the increased scrutiny at the edges of the room.

Leon’s voice was a raw scrape against your ear, all pretence of gentleness gone. “They’re locking the perimeter. Broker’s in the east wing. We need to move.”

You nodded, your forehead almost touching his chin. The final note hung in the air. Applause scattered through the room. Couples began to separate. Leon didn’t let go.

His hand remained on your back. His fingers were still laced with yours. In the dim, chandelier-lit haze, for a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, you just stood there, locked in the echo of the dance and the glaring, inconvenient truth it had revealed.

You were still holding on. And so was he.

Finally, he released your hand, the absence feeling like a sudden chill. His palm slid from your back, leaving the ghost of its heat imprinted on the silk. You took a half-step back, the ballroom noise rushing back in.

“Next time,” you said, your voice strangely thin, “warn me before you decide to be competent at something.”

He looked at you, his blue eyes stripped of their usual ice, something darker and more complicated swirling in their depths. “You didn’t need a warning. You kept up.”

He turned, offering his arm again, the picture of the attentive partner. After a stunned second, you slid your hand into the crook of his elbow, your fingers trembling slightly against the fine cotton.

Conversations continue, a tapestry of polished lies, but your senses have already pared them down to a meaningless drone. Your focus narrows, homing in on the anomaly. Across the room, an Umbrella scientist, a man with the pallid complexion and careful detachment of someone who spends more time with data than people, has stopped moving.

He isn't staring. That would be amateur. His attention is a series of precise, surgical observations: the way you stand with your weight slightly forward, not relaxed back; the subtle, the specific tension in your shoulders that speaks of readiness, not repose. His head tilts, a fraction of a degree.

Your pulse kicks, a single, hard thud against your ribs. "Leon," you breathe, the word a ghost against the rim of your champagne flute.

"I see him." His reply is immediate, a low current beneath the placid surface. His posture hasn't changed, but you feel the minute shift in the energy beside you, the coiling of a spring. "Don't look at him. Look at me."

But it's too late. The scientist’s eyes, cold, magnified behind thin glasses, flicker. Not with full recognition, but with the dawning, critical suspicion of it. I know you. From where? The unspoken question hangs in the charged space between you. The danger isn't here yet, but it's coming, a tide you have seconds to turn. Leon doesn't hesitate. He never does.

One moment you are two adjacent entities, sharing a cover story. The next, his arm bands around your waist, pulling you in with an irrevocable certainty. His other hand rises, fingers threading into the hair at your nape, his palm cradling the line of your jaw with a possession that steals the breath from your lungs.

And then his mouth is on yours.

It is not a kiss born of passion, but of pure, unadulterated necessity, a tactical strike executed with devastating precision. There is no cautious exploration, no soft inquiry. His lips meet yours with a firm, undeniable pressure, sealing the world out. It is immediate. Consuming. A forced intimacy that feels more like a claiming than a performance.

The shock of it is a lightning bolt to your system. Every thought, every alarm bell, is momentarily short-circuited by the sheer, overwhelming physicality of him. The warmth of his skin, the faint, clean scent of him cutting through the cloying perfume of the gala, the solid, unyielding wall of his chest against yours.

His mouth moves, and it is not the gentle persuasion of a lover. It is decisive. Convincing. He angles his head, deepening the contact just enough to be unquestionable, his thumb stroking a slow, deliberate arc along your jawline, a gesture of affection that feels, in its practiced perfection, like a weapon. He is building a shield with his body, blocking the scientist's view, rewriting the narrative in the space of a heartbeat: You are not a threat. You are distracted. You are mine.

And you respond. It is the true betrayal. Your body, trained for survival, obeys a different instinct. Your free hand, the one not clutching the forgotten champagne flute, comes to rest against his chest, not to push him away, but to steady yourself. A small, stifled sound catches in your throat. Your lips part beneath his, not in invitation, but in a gasp of pure, stunned reflex that he seamlessly incorporates into the act.

And then, as abruptly as it began, the pressure changes. Leon’s kiss softens, becomes a lingering press, a final punctuation mark. The immediate threat has passed; the scientist, presented with an indisputable picture of private passion, has turned away, dismissing his suspicion as irrelevant.

But Leon doesn't pull back. For three endless heartbeats, he remains there, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with yours in ragged sync. His eyes are closed, his expression a stark mask of concentration, as if he is listening for an echo of the danger, or perhaps for something else entirely. His thumb continues its slow sweep along your jaw, a soothing rhythm that feels anything but soothing.

You are the one who breaks. You wrench your head back, a shudder running through you. The cool air of the ballroom hits your damp lips, a shocking contrast. Your hand, still splayed on his chest, pushes, a weak, belated attempt to reinstate a boundary that has been utterly demolished.

"Don't," you manage, your voice a scraped-raw whisper. "Don't you dare read into that."

Leon's eyes open. They are dark, pupils blown wide, the usual icy blue swallowed by a storm you've never seen before. He looks at you and for a second, the professional facade is utterly absent. There is only a raw, unsettled intensity that mirrors the chaos in your own veins.

"Trust me," he says, his voice low and rough, stripped of its earlier polish. "I'm not." It is the most transparent lie either of you has told all night.

The silence that follows is louder than the music. He slowly, carefully, unwinds his arm from your waist, his fingers loosening from your hair as if disarming a live wire. The distance between you feels cavernous, charged with the aftershocks of what just happened. You can still feel the imprint of his body against yours, a phantom brand. Your lips are tender, buzzing with a sensation that has nothing to do with the champagne.

Leon clears his throat, the sound harsh in the quiet between you. His gaze darts away, reassembling his composure piece by piece. "He's moving toward the east corridor. The distraction worked."

"Right," you say, the word tasting like ash. You straighten your spine, a soldier coming to attention after a devastating blow. You smooth your dress, a futile gesture. The elegance feels like a costume now, hanging awkwardly on the raw, shaken thing you've become underneath.

He offers his arm again, a formality. You take it, your fingers trembling slightly as they settle on the fine wool of his sleeve. The contact is sterile, polite. A mockery of the intimacy that just fused you together.

You know now, with chilling clarity, that Leon's first instinct was not to create distance, not to signal a retreat, but to eliminate the threat to you by any means necessary. He didn't just sell a cover. He consumed it. He didn't hesitate. And in that breathless, stolen moment, neither did you.

The line has not just been crossed. It has been incinerated.

You keep your chin high, your smile in place, moving back into the glittering fray. But the gala has shifted. The colours are too bright, the music too shrill. Every nerve ending is alive, hyper-aware of the man beside you, of the memory of his mouth, his hands, the terrifying efficiency of his protection, and the even more terrifying echo of your own response.

The gala breathes around you, music swelling and receding, laughter rippling through the crowd, the illusion of safety pressed into every polished surface. But the clock is ticking louder now.

You feel it in the way security shifts positions too often. In the way conversations stall, restart. In the subtle tightening of the room’s rhythm as the night edges closer to whatever Umbrella has planned.

Leon’s hand rests lightly at your elbow as he steers you toward the edge of the ballroom, bodies angled just close enough to sell the cover. His touch is careful now, less possessive than before, more controlled. Like he’s consciously reining himself in. His voice reaches you through the comm, low and steady beneath the orchestra.

“Broker’s device is active. Signal spike just came online.”

Your gaze sweeps the room automatically, cataloguing exits, shadows, patterns. “VIP lounge,” you murmur.

“Yes,” Leon replies. “But there’s a secondary access corridor behind the east stairwell. Two choke points.” A pause. “If we go together, we bottleneck.”

You glance up at him, jaw tightening. “If we split, we lose eyes.”

“We gain speed.”

“And risk,” you counter quietly, lips barely moving as a couple passes too close. “Security’s tightening. They’re already clocking patterns.”

Leon slows just enough to turn toward you. Not fully. Not enough to draw attention. But enough that you feel the weight of his focus settle on you. The chandelier light catches his eyes, sharp, intent, stripped of the softness he’s been wearing for the room.

“Protocol says split,” he says. “Two access points. Redundancy.”

You scoff under your breath. “Protocol didn’t account for Umbrella improvising.”

“It accounts for us adapting.”

“It accounts for you adapting,” you snap back, the edge in your voice slipping through despite your control. “I’m the variable you’re pretending isn’t there.”

His jaw tightens. A muscle jumps once, just beneath the skin.

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t it?” You lean in closer, the pretence of intimacy giving your words cover. Your pulse is loud now, insistent. “Because ever since that-” You stop yourself, breath hitching. “Since earlier, you’ve been playing it safe.” Leon’s breath stutters once. Barely perceptible. But you feel it.

“I’m playing it smart,” he says.

You shake your head. “Same thing. Different excuse.”

A server brushes past, tray wobbling dangerously close. Leon reacts instantly, his hand sliding to your waist, pulling you in as he murmurs something affectionate aloud. You force a smile, lean into him, sell it.

The server moves on. Leon’s hand doesn’t. His fingers remain splayed at your side, warm and grounding, the pressure unmistakable.

“Listen to me,” he says quietly now, close enough that his breath warms your ear. “The device will be gone in minutes. If we hesitate, we lose it.”

“And if something happens?” you whisper back. “If one of us gets boxed in-”

“We won’t,” he says too fast.

You pull back just enough to look at him. “You don’t know that.”

For a moment, the argument stalls. You don’t like being away from him. You hate that you know the cadence of his movements. That you can predict his choices before he makes them. That the thought of moving through hostile space without his presence at your back makes your chest feel tight and exposed. Leon looks away first. His hand slips from your waist, deliberately, like he’s forcing himself to let go.

“Two minutes,” he says, voice clipped. “If either of us hits resistance, we abort and regroup at point C.”

“And if comms drop?” you ask.

He doesn’t hesitate. “Then you trust me.”

The words land harder than they should. You swallow. “That’s a big ask.” Leon turns back to you, his expression carefully neutral but his eyes give him away. “You already do.”

You hate that he’s right. The realisation burns low and sharp in your chest.

“Fine,” you say, forcing steel into your voice. “East stairwell. I’ll take the service corridor.”

Leon nods once. No hesitation. No argument. Like this was always the plan.

You separate smoothly, drifting apart like any other couple momentarily distracted by different conversations. His presence fades from your side, and the absence of it is immediate, an ache you weren’t prepared for.

The service corridor is quieter, narrower. The music fades to a distant hum, replaced by the soft whir of ventilation and the echo of your own footsteps. The lighting here is dimmer, more utilitarian, less forgiving. You move with practiced ease, posture relaxed, pace unhurried. Just another donor who took a wrong turn.

A guard stands at the far end of the corridor, back partially turned. He glances up as you approach, eyes narrowing just a fraction too long.

You smile. “Sorry, restrooms?” He hesitates. Just long enough. “Down the hall,” he says eventually, gesturing.

You thank him and keep walking, heart thudding. You feel the weight of the distance now, the absence of Leon’s quiet presence through the comms, the way he usually covers angles you don’t have eyes on.

You reach the door marked AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY and slide the keycard from your clutch with steady fingers. The lock clicks open.

Inside, the air is cooler. Server racks hum softly, lights blinking in orderly patterns. The device should be here, hidden, discreet, temporary. You scan quickly. Nothing. Your pulse spikes.

“Leon,” you murmur into the comm. “Device isn’t here.”

A beat. “I’m seeing the same,” he replies. “They’ve moved it.”

“Where?”

“VIP lounge,” he says. “Security just doubled.”

Of course they did. You pivot toward the exit, and the door slams shut behind you. Your heart jumps. You spin, hand already moving toward the concealed weapon at your thigh. The lock engages with a sharp click.

“Leon,” you hiss.

“I hear it,” he says immediately. “Stay calm.”

“Working on it.”

Footsteps sound outside the door. Two sets. Guards murmuring. You scan the room, calculating. No windows. No alternate exit. The ventilation shaft is too small.

“You okay?” Leon asks, voice steady but tight.

“Yes,” you lie. “Just… boxed in.”

A pause. You can hear his breathing through the comm now, controlled but faster.

“I’m rerouting,” he says. “Hold.”

You close your eyes for half a second, forcing yourself to breathe. You trust him. The guards’ voices grow clearer. Keys jingle. Someone tests the door. Your hand tightens around your weapon.

“Leon,” you whisper. “If this goes loud-”

“It won’t,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

The certainty in his voice steadies you more than you want it to. Seconds stretch. Then, gunfire. Shouts. Chaos, distant but unmistakable. The lock disengages. The door bursts open and Leon is there. Breathing hard. Suit rumpled. Eyes sharp and furious and fixed entirely on you.

“Move,” he says.

You don’t argue. You slip past him, shoulder brushing his as you fall into step, moving together like you never separated at all. As you disappear down the corridor, adrenaline still singing in your veins, one thought cuts through the chaos, clear and undeniable.

You barely make it three turns before the building decides to turn hostile.

It starts as a low chime, soft, almost polite, like a warning meant for staff, not guests. Then the lights above you flicker, the bright warmth of the gala’s corridors stuttering into something colder.

Red emergency strips ignite along the ceiling.

A beat later, the sound hits, an alarm that rises in pitch until it becomes a physical pressure against your skull.

Leon’s head snaps up. “That’s not fire protocol,” he says into the comm, voice already shifting into command mode.

“It’s not us,” you reply, breathing hard as you jog. “We haven’t even touched the-”

“Doesn’t matter.” His tone turns razor-thin. “Umbrella emergency.”

As if the words themselves flip a switch, the corridor ahead explodes with movement. A door slams open. Men in black tactical uniforms pour out, armed, masked, efficient. Not event security. Not rent-a-cops.

These are Umbrella’s.

The sound of the orchestra fades behind the thick walls, replaced by the heavier music of boots and shouted commands. Guests scream in the ballroom somewhere distant, the party dissolving into panic on the other side of a carefully controlled barrier.

Leon grabs your wrist and yanks you down a side hall just as a round cracks past where your head had been. The bullet bites into marble, spitting stone dust into the air.

“Contact!” someone barks. “Target moving, east corridor!”

Your comms crackle with interference, the line spiking and dropping as systems overload. Leon’s grip tightens once, steadying you, not for comfort, you tell yourself, but for speed.

“You okay?” he asks, already moving.

“Fine,” you snap, then add, because honesty feels like weakness, “They’re faster than I expected.”

“They’ve been waiting,” Leon says. “We triggered something they wanted triggered.”

You hate that he’s right. Hate that it means this wasn’t just security tightening. It was a trap snapping shut.

A door ahead locks with a heavy clunk as magnetic seals engage. The hallway narrows into a dead-end stretch lined with service entrances. Red light pulses across steel panels, making everything look like it’s bleeding.

Leon slows just long enough to scan. “No exits.”

“Then we make one,” you say, already reaching for the weapon concealed beneath your dress.

Leon’s gaze flicks to your thigh holster, then to your face. No comment. No surprise. Just that quiet, grim acceptance that you’d both come prepared.

A burst of gunfire erupts behind you.

Leon pushes you forward. “Move.”

You sprint. He’s right beside you, close enough that you feel the air shift with him, matching your pace without effort. You round a corner and slam into a tight corridor that funnels you into a narrow kill zone.

Two Umbrella operatives are already there.

No time for thought.

You fire once, clean shot, shoulder. Leon fires in the same breath, headshot. The second operative tries to swing their weapon up. You’re already moving, stepping in, elbow driving into their throat. Leon catches their arm and twists, disarming with a practiced snap that looks almost casual.

The man drops.

Silence doesn’t follow. More footsteps. More coming.

Leon reloads without looking, hands moving fast and sure. You pivot, back hitting his for half a second as you take position.

Back-to-back.

It happens instinctively.

No discussion. No argument. No ego.

Just movement.

Leon’s voice is low, calm. “Three behind. Two ahead.”

You swallow the adrenaline and check your magazine. “Left side is mine.”

“Copy.”

You hear the click of his gun as he finishes his reload. You don’t need to see it. You know the sound now, the rhythm of him, how long it takes, when he needs cover, when he’s about to shift.

The first wave hits.

A door bursts open to your left. You pivot and fire, dropping one before his boots fully clear the threshold. Another lunges in right behind him, weapon raised. You duck, feeling the heat of a shot pass over you, then slam your shoulder into the wall and rebound forward, knife flashing out of your clutch like it’s always been there.

Leon’s gun cracks twice at your back, perfectly timed, covering you as you close distance.

The man goes down.

Another steps into the corridor ahead, weapon trained. Leon shifts his weight, shoulder pressing lightly to your back, a cue, not a shove. You understand instantly, stepping left as he steps right, breaking the enemy’s line of fire before it can settle.

You fire.

Leon fires.

Two bodies fall.

You’re breathing hard now, sweat slick against your skin beneath the elegance of the dress. The fabric pulls tighter across your ribs with every inhale, a reminder that you’re fighting in clothes meant for champagne and photo ops, not blood and bullets.

And Leon is still in his suit, jacket discarded somewhere behind you, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. He looks like a man who stepped off a runway and straight into a warzone.

He moves like he belongs here.

So do you.

A sharp crack echoes, too close. Stone dust sprays across your cheek as a bullet hits the wall inches from your head. You flinch, just once, and Leon’s hand comes up immediately, palm to your shoulder, guiding you down behind a corner.

“Stay low,” he murmurs.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you hiss automatically.

Leon doesn’t take the bait. He leans out, fires twice, then pulls back, already reloading. “Cover me.”

You do, because you always do. Because your body already knows what to do when he says it.

You step out, firing controlled shots that force the operatives back. Leon’s reload finishes. He’s up and moving again, switching positions with you so smoothly it feels like choreography.

It hits you mid-fight, sudden and unwanted.

You fight the same way.

Not identical but the same mind. The same instincts. The same calculation running behind your eyes at the same speed. The same ruthless efficiency under pressure.

You both make decisions in fractions of a second.

You both adjust without needing to speak.

You both anticipate.

Mirrors.

The thought is so sharp it almost distracts you.

And suddenly the rivalry makes sense.

Because it was never really hate. It was recognition.

A loud mechanical whine cuts through the chaos, the sound of an internal security shutter descending. The corridor ahead begins to seal off, metal plates sliding down from the ceiling to block the route.

“We’re getting boxed,” you warn.

Leon’s eyes flick. “We go now.”

You don’t argue. You surge forward together, moving fast as the plates descend. A man steps into your path, too late to stop you. You slam into him like a force of nature, knee driving into his stomach. Leon’s elbow snaps into the side of his head, clean and brutal.

You clear him and keep moving.

The shutter slams down behind you with a heavy, final clang.

For half a heartbeat, there’s only your breathing and the distant muffled alarm.

Leon’s chest rises and falls hard. His hair is slightly out of place now, a thin sheen of sweat at his temple. His eyes are bright with adrenaline, sharp as a blade.

You’re too close, face to face in the tight corridor, bodies still buzzing from combat. You can feel the heat of him, the electricity of the movement that just happened between you without words.

He scans you quickly, your face, your arms, the exposed skin at your shoulder. “You hit?”

“No,” you say, then more softly, “You?”

He shakes his head once.

Your comms crackle again. A burst of static. Then the handler’s voice cuts in, strained: “Emergency protocol is fully active. Extraction compromised. Get that device and get out. Now.”

Leon’s gaze meets yours.

And for the first time all night, there’s no sarcasm in it. No rivalry. No distance.

Just certainty.

“We finish this,” he says.

You swallow, pulse still pounding.

“Yeah,” you reply. “We finish it.”

Then you move again together, like you’ve been doing this side by side for years.

Like you were always meant to.

You duck into the service room just as Leon slams the door shut behind you, shoving a metal cart into place with a sharp grunt. The barricade isn’t elegant, but it’s solid enough to buy you time. For now.

The alarms are muffled here, reduced to a distant, angry pulse. Red light seeps through the narrow window in the door, flashing in slow intervals that make the room feel like it’s breathing.

You lean forward, hands braced on your knees, dragging air into your lungs. Your heart is still racing, adrenaline buzzing so loud it drowns out everything else. Sweat clings to your skin, your dress ruined, hair pulled loose from its careful styling.

Leon turns toward you immediately.

“Stay still,” he says, already closing the distance.

“I am still,” you snap, even as you straighten reflexively.

His hands are on you before you can object—efficient, professional. He checks your arms first, fingers firm but careful as they skim for blood. Then your shoulder, where stone dust still clings to your skin. His touch lingers there a fraction longer than necessary, thumb brushing lightly as if confirming something he already knows.

You swat his hand away. “I said I’m fine.”

Leon’s jaw tightens. “Humour me.”

“I don’t recall that being part of the mission.”

His eyes flick up to meet yours, sharp, annoyed, but there’s something else there now too. “You flinched.”

“You were in my line of fire,” you fire back. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not,” he says quickly, hands dropping. “I’m checking my partner.”

The word lands heavier than either of you expect.

You scoff, turning away to pace the small room. “Don’t get sentimental now.”

Leon exhales slowly through his nose. “You’re the one snapping.”

You whirl back on him. “Because you nearly got yourself shot pulling that move back there.”

“And you nearly took a round to the head rushing that corner,” he shoots back without missing a beat.

There it is, the familiar bite. The clash. But it doesn’t sting the way it used to.

You hold his gaze, chest still heaving. “You didn’t have to cover me.”

Leon’s voice is steady, but quieter now. “Yes, I did.”

The certainty in it disarms you more than any argument ever has.

Silence stretches between you, thick with everything neither of you is saying. The room hums softly around you, vents rattling overhead, the smell of oil and metal grounding you in the aftermath.

Your pulse finally begins to slow.

You look at him properly then, not as a rival, not as an obstacle, but as the man who just fought back-to-back with you without hesitation. Who knew when you needed cover before you did. Who moved when you moved, adapted when you adapted, like your thoughts were running parallel tracks.

It clicks.

He never underestimated you.

Not once.

All those arguments. The clipped remarks. The way he never rose to your jabs, never reacted the way you wanted him to. You’d always read it as arrogance. Distance. Superiority.

But standing here now, suit scuffed and tie gone, breathing hard just like you, the truth settles uncomfortably into place.

He wasn’t looking down on you.

He was matching you.

Meeting you at the same level and refusing to drop below it. Treating you like an equal long before you were ready to believe it. Long before you’d stopped mistaking restraint for dismissal.

Leon shifts his weight, eyes still on you. “You good?” he asks again, softer this time.

You nod once. “Yeah.”

A beat passes.

“You fight like me,” you add, almost against your will.

His brow furrows slightly. “No. You fight like you.”

You huff a quiet laugh. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he says.

Another silence, but this one is different. Less sharp. Less hostile. Charged, but steadier.

Leon glances toward the barricaded door, listening. “We’ve got maybe ninety seconds before they reroute.”

You straighten, rolling your shoulders despite the ache settling into them. “Then we’d better move.”

He nods, and for the first time, there’s no tension in the agreement. No need to assert control or prove anything.

Just two agents, side by side, breathing in sync.

The safe room isn’t safe in any comforting way.

It’s a concrete box tucked behind an unmarked service door three levels below street access, the kind of place that doesn’t show up on public blueprints. The air smells faintly of dust and old metal. A single strip light hums above, casting pale, uneven illumination across gray walls and a scarred steel table. No windows. No softness. No distractions.

Just four walls and the aftertaste of adrenaline.

You shut the door behind you and twist the lock twice out of habit, even though the handler swore this location was clean. Leon stands a few feet away, chest rising and falling hard. His suit is ruined, dark smudges at the knee where he’d hit the floor, the white of his shirt stained with sweat and dust. His tie is gone. His sleeves are rolled up, forearms streaked with grime, knuckles raw.

He looks like a man who belongs in a fight, not a ballroom.

You look… less polished too. Your dress is torn at the hem, a thin snag running along your thigh where you’d caught it on something sharp while vaulting a barrier. Your hair has slipped free of its careful pins. There’s stone dust at your collarbone. The only thing that stayed flawless is the shape of your posture, trained, controlled, refusing to collapse.

You cross the room and drop the data device on the steel table. It makes a solid, satisfying clack that echoes in the small space.

Done.

For now.

Leon reaches up and removes the earpiece, rolling it between his fingers before setting it down beside the device. You do the same, tugging yours out with a little too much force. Without comms, the room gets quieter. The silence doesn’t feel empty. It feels loaded.

Weapons come next, unclipped, unloaded, set aside. You place your handgun on the table, then the spare magazine. The movement is efficient, practiced. Leon mirrors you without a word, laying his gear down in clean, ordered lines like he can impose control on chaos by arranging it neatly.

A tremor runs through your fingers when you reach for a chair. You close your hand into a fist before anyone can see.

Leon’s gaze flicks to you anyway.

You hate that he notices everything. Hate that you’re suddenly grateful he does.

For a long moment, neither of you speaks.

The adrenaline is still in your bloodstream, buzzing like a live wire under your skin. Your thoughts keep trying to sprint, to latch onto the next move, the next threat, the next exit.

But there is nothing to chase.

No alarms. No targets.

Just the hum of the strip light and the slow return of sensation: the ache in your ribs, the sting across your knuckles, the bruise blooming at your hip where you’d hit the wall harder than you meant to.

Your body is remembering you’re human.

It’s the worst part, the calm. In the fight, everything had been simple: move, shoot, breathe, survive. Now, with nothing pressing in, the silence forces everything else forward.

The kiss. The way Leon moved in front of you. The way your hands had lingered on his wrist. The way he’d said I’ve got you like it was an unshakable fact.

You take a slow breath and realise your lungs are still working like they expect to be chased.

Leon finally breaks the stillness, voice low. “We got it.”

“Yeah,” you answer too quickly. “We got it.”

He nods once, but his eyes don’t move away from you. There’s something in his expression, still controlled, still restrained, but the edges have softened, as if the adrenaline has melted some of the steel away and left the person underneath exposed in small, dangerous ways.

You don’t know what to do with that.

You turn toward the wall instead, stare at the blank concrete like it can offer you an instruction manual.

Your hands shake again, just slightly. You flex your fingers, forcing them steady. You refuse to let your body betray you, not after everything. Not in front of him.

“Sit,” Leon says.

It isn’t an order. Not really. It’s… practical. Almost gentle.

“I’m fine,” you snap automatically.

Leon’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t argue, he simply steps closer and reaches for the small first aid kit mounted on the wall. You hadn’t noticed it. Of course he did.

He sets it on the table with a quiet thud and flips it open, movements clean and efficient. Like tending wounds is just another protocol.

You watch him for half a second too long.

The light catches the lines of exhaustion in his face. A faint scrape along his cheekbone. A smudge of dried blood at the edge of his knuckles that isn’t his, you think. The muscles in his shoulders shift as he rolls them once, like the weight of the night is settling in.

A tremor runs through his hand as he pulls out antiseptic wipes.

He pauses, almost imperceptibly, then continues like it never happened.

So he’s not untouched either.

That realisation lands strangely. You’ve spent so long imagining him as something unbreakable—smooth, composed, always in control. Seeing the cracks should satisfy you.

It doesn’t.

It makes your throat tighten.

“Give me your hand,” Leon says, still not looking directly at you.

You laugh once, short and sharp. “That’s rich.”

He finally looks up. “Don’t start.”

The tone is familiar, dry, controlled, but it lacks its usual bite. It’s not a challenge. It’s tired.

You should refuse out of principle.

Instead you step forward and extend your hand, palm up, because the alternative, fighting him on this, feels suddenly exhausting.

Leon takes your hand.

His fingers are warm, steady, calloused. His grip is firm but careful, like he’s handling something that matters more than he wants to admit. He inspects your knuckles, the small splits in the skin, the smear of grime.

“You’re bleeding,” he says.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s blood.”

You roll your eyes. “Congratulations, Kennedy. You can identify bodily fluids.”

A flicker, almost a smile, touches his mouth. It’s gone before you can be sure it was real.

He cleans your knuckles anyway. The antiseptic stings. You hiss and try to pull away. Leon holds your hand a fraction tighter, not letting you retreat.

“Hold still,” he murmurs.

Your pulse jumps at the softness of it.

You hate that.

“You’re enjoying this,” you mutter, trying to salvage something sharp.

Leon doesn’t look up. “I’m not.”

The honesty in his voice knocks the air out of your sarcasm. He sounds… genuine. Like he’s too worn out to pretend.

He finishes cleaning your hand, wraps it quickly, efficiently. The tape catches briefly on your skin, and his thumb brushes your wrist as he smooths it down.

You feel it like a spark.

You hate that you feel it.

Leon lets go, but his hand lingers for a half second too long, fingers resting against your pulse as if confirming it’s still there.

Then he pulls back, clearing his throat, gaze shifting away like he’s caught himself doing something he didn’t mean to.

The silence returns.

He starts tending to his own wounds next, wiping blood from his knuckles, wrapping tape with the same clinical focus. But his hands still shake faintly, the aftermath of adrenaline refusing to fade completely.

You don’t comment. He doesn’t either.

The strip light hums.

Your breathing finally slows to something normal. With it comes the weight of everything you’ve been avoiding since you first saw his name on that leaderboard.

The first time you tried to speak to him.

The way he ignored you.

The silence that followed you for years like a ghost.

It’s there now, in this room, louder than the alarms ever were.

You don’t plan to say anything. You don’t want to hand him another weapon.

But the words break loose anyway, scraped raw by exhaustion and adrenaline and the fact that he just held your hand like it mattered.

“Why,” you ask, voice quiet enough it barely exists, “did you ignore me back then?”

Leon freezes. The strip light hums. Somewhere in the building, pipes creak. The sound feels unbearably loud. His gaze lifts slowly. For once, there’s no immediate retort, no controlled reply. Just stillness.

You swallow, suddenly aware that you’ve crossed a line you can’t uncross. “You walked right past me,” you continue, the old anger flaring in your chest like it never left. “I said your name. You didn’t even look at me. Like I wasn’t-” Your voice catches. You force it steady. “Like I wasn’t worth the effort.”

Leon’s throat works as he swallows. He looks down at his hands for a moment, fingers flexing, then back up to you. His eyes are hard, not with anger, but with something else. Something that looks a lot like regret.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says quietly.

You laugh, brittle. “Could’ve fooled me.”

He exhales slowly, like he’s choosing each word with care. Like he can’t afford to get this wrong.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Leon admits. The words hang in the air, plain and stark.

You blink. “What?”

“I didn’t know what to say,” he repeats, more firmly this time, like he’s pushing through something stuck in his throat. “You… came up to me. Confident. Like you belonged here already. Like you weren’t scared of anyone.”

Your chest tightens, caught between disbelief and something dangerously close to understanding.

Leon’s jaw flexes. “And I…” He hesitates. It’s subtle, but it’s there, the first real hesitation you’ve seen from him that isn’t tactical. “I didn’t want to screw it up.”

You stare at him, thrown off balance. “Screw what up?” you demand, too sharply.

Leon’s eyes meet yours, steady but exposed. “Whatever it was,” he says quietly. “I-” He exhales, a sound that almost turns into a laugh but doesn’t. “You intimidated me.”

The confession hits like a punch. You’re speechless for a beat, mouth opening and closing like you’re trying to find words that aren’t there.

“Me?” you echo finally, incredulous.

Leon nods once, almost reluctantly. “Yeah. You.”

He shifts his weight, restless, uncomfortable, like he’d rather be facing down a dozen armed guards than this conversation. “I’d just transferred. I was… trying to keep my head down. Trying to be the guy who didn’t make mistakes.”

His gaze drops again briefly, then lifts. “And you looked at me like you expected something. Like you wanted to talk. And I didn’t know what to do with that.”

The room feels smaller. You remember that hallway. Remember the way you’d felt, nervous but determined, trying to be friendly, trying to prove you weren’t just another ambitious agent. You’d thought it would be simple. You’d thought he’d smile. Instead he’d walked away and left you standing there with your pride bleeding out on the floor.

“And you decided ignoring me was the best option,” you say, voice tight.

Leon’s mouth twists. “I thought if I said the wrong thing, it’d be worse.”

“So you said nothing.”

“I said nothing,” he agrees, and there’s no defence in it. Just ownership. “And then you looked at me like you hated me, and…” He pauses, eyes flicking to yours. “It was easier to let you.”

Your throat tightens. Because it’s suddenly all too clear: the rivalry didn’t start because he thought he was better than you.

It started because he was scared, and you were hurt, and neither of you had ever been brave enough to admit it.

The strip light hums above you, the only witness to the truth finally surfacing between bare concrete walls.

You let out a slow breath, hands still, heart quieter now but heavier.

“Leon,” you say, voice low.

He looks at you, waiting. The silence after his confession is different from the ones that came before it. It doesn’t feel sharp or loaded with expectation. It feels… open. Exposed. Like something has finally been set down between you instead of hurled back and forth.

Leon doesn’t move. He doesn’t fill the space with explanations or excuses. He just stands there, shoulders tense, waiting. For you.

You stare at the concrete floor for a long moment, jaw tight, pulse steadying as the truth rearranges itself in your chest. All the years of irritation. The constant edge. The way every victory against him had tasted hollow, every loss unbearable. It clicks into place with an almost humiliating clarity.

“You know what the worst part is?” you say finally, voice quiet but steady.

Leon’s eyes lift to yours. He doesn’t speak.

“You made me better.” The words scrape on the way out. You let out a short, humourless breath. “Every time I saw your name above mine, or just one slot below, it pissed me off. And I worked harder. Smarter. I pushed myself because I refused to be second to you.”

Leon’s brow furrows slightly, but he stays silent.

“And I told myself it was hate,” you continue, forcing the words out before you can second-guess them. “That you were arrogant. Cold. That you thought you were better than me.”

Your laugh this time is quieter. Rougher. “It was easier to be angry than to admit the truth.”

Leon’s jaw tightens. “Which is?”

The room doesn’t collapse. He just watches you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle.

“I hated you,” you say, softer now, “because it was safer than wondering why your opinion of me mattered so much.”

The admission leaves you raw. Exposed in a way gunfire never could. Leon exhales slowly, like he’s been holding that breath for years.

“I noticed,” he says quietly.

You blink. “Noticed what?”

“That you were always pushing.” His voice is calm, but there’s something unguarded in it now. “That every time I thought I’d finally pulled ahead, you closed the gap. That when I messed up, you didn’t gloat, you got sharper.”

He shakes his head once, a small, almost self-deprecating motion. “I told myself I didn’t care. That it was just competition.”

You snort. “Let me guess. Lie.”

“Yes.” He meets your gaze fully now. “I measured everything against you. Missions. Scores. Decisions. I never wanted to be less in your eyes.”

The words land heavier than you expect.

Leon shifts his weight, restless. “I mistook the tension for hostility because that was easier than admitting I was… invested.”

“In what?” you ask quietly.

“In you,” he answers, just as quietly.

The air between you changes.

Not explosively. Not dramatically.

It settles.

You look at him finally, as someone standing on the same ground, stripped of armour and pretence.

Equals.

“I thought you ignored me because you didn’t respect me,” you say.

Leon’s mouth tightens. “I respected you too much.”

That shouldn’t undo you.

It does.

Your shoulders sag slightly, tension bleeding out of muscles you didn’t realise were still locked. “We’re idiots,” you mutter.

Leon huffs a quiet laugh. “We’re agents.”

“Same thing.”

For the first time, the humour doesn’t feel like a weapon. It feels shared.

You step closer without fully realising you’ve moved. The space between you narrows until you’re acutely aware of his presence again.  You can hear his breathing. Feel the warmth radiating off him.

Leon doesn’t retreat.

His hand lifts slightly, then hesitates, hovering near your wrist like he’s unsure whether he’s allowed to cross that line. The restraint is somehow worse than if he’d just touched you.

Your fingers twitch, an instinctive response.

The moment teeters.

It’s there in the closeness, the shared breath, the fragile understanding humming between you. One step closer. One hand reaching. One choice away from something that feels inevitable.

Leon’s gaze drops briefly to your mouth.

Your heart stutters.

Then -

A sharp crackle tears through the stillness.

Your discarded earpiece comes to life on the table, static bursting from it in an ugly rush of sound. You both jerk back instinctively, training snapping into place.

“-repeat, safe room compromised-” the handler’s voice cuts in, distorted and urgent. “Umbrella units inbound. You need to move. Now.”

The spell shatters.

Leon’s hand drops instantly, professionalism snapping back into place like a reflex. Your pulse spikes, adrenaline surging back through veins that had only just begun to calm.

You exchange one look.

Not rivals. Not enemies.

Partners.

“Guess we don’t get a quiet ending,” you mutter.

Leon’s mouth curves faintly, not a smirk, not yet. Something steadier. “We’ll finish this first.”

You nod, already moving toward your weapon. But as you pass him, your fingers brush his wrist, deliberate this time.

Just enough to promise. This isn’t over.

Then the door rattles under the first distant impact, and whatever comes next barrels toward you both at full speed, truth laid bare, denial gone, and something fragile and dangerous waiting on the other side of the fight.

The first impact hits the door like a warning.

Metal groans. The cart you shoved against it shudders, wheels squealing against concrete. Dust shakes loose from the ceiling in a fine gray drift.

Leon’s eyes snap to the lock. Yours snap to your weapon.

“Move,” he says at the same time you do.

The strip light overhead flickers once, then dies.

Darkness swallows the room.

For half a heartbeat, there’s nothing but the faint red pulse bleeding through the narrow window in the door and the sound of your own breathing.

Then the world explodes.

Gunfire tears through the door in a blistering spray. Splinters of metal and concrete burst inward, sparks flashing like violent stars in the dark. You drop instinctively, hitting the floor hard, shoulder slamming into the table leg as rounds chew the space where you’d been standing a second ago.

“Down!” Leon barks, unnecessary, because you’re already there.

Your ears ring. The air smells like hot metal and smoke. The darkness makes everything closer, sharper. You can’t see Leon, but you can hear him, his breath, controlled but quick, the scrape of his boots as he shifts.

Another impact slams into the door. The cart grinds forward an inch.

“They tracked us,” you spit, teeth clenched.

Leon’s voice is tight. “They wanted us to bring the device somewhere quiet.”

Personal, then.

Not a show of force. Not a random contingency.

A message.

A punishment.

You raise your pistol, steadying your aim toward the door’s window slit. Red light strobes across your hands in pulses. You can’t see targets, but you can predict movement by sound, boots, the clink of gear, the clipped rhythm of someone stacking up for entry.

Leon moves to your side, a shadow in the dark. You feel the brush of his shoulder against yours, close, grounding, real.

“On my mark,” you murmur.

“Always,” he whispers back, and the word lands heavier than it ever has.

The door buckles.

A wedge of light knifes through as the barricade gives. Someone rams it again, and the door bursts inward with a metallic shriek. Figures flood the gap, black armour, masked faces, rifles up.

You fire first.

A clean shot, then another. The muzzle flash briefly illuminates the room in harsh white bursts, enough to catch glints of visor, the sharp edge of a weapon, Leon’s face set and fierce beside you.

Leon moves in the same instant, firing over your shoulder, his shots precise, economical. An operative drops in the doorway, collapsing into the pile of debris. Another stumbles back with a curse.

“Push!” Leon barks.

You surge forward together, slipping through the smoke and chaos. Close quarters now, too tight for long-range. Your shoulder slams into one attacker, throwing him off balance. Leon’s elbow drives into another’s jaw, cracking hard enough that you feel it in your teeth.

You don’t think.

You move.

Someone grabs your arm from behind. You pivot, wrenching free, gun coming up, only to have Leon’s hand catch your wrist, redirecting your barrel a fraction.

“Left,” he snaps.

A shot cracks where your aim would’ve been wrong. A man drops behind you, silent and sudden.

Your pulse spikes, raw gratitude laced with terror.

You’re alive because Leon didn’t hesitate. Again.

More operatives spill into the corridor outside, attempting to funnel you back into the room. You back up instinctively until your spine hits the wall.

Leon shifts behind you.

Back-to-back, without discussion.

The old rhythm returns, but it’s different now. It’s sharpened by something you can’t pretend is just training.

A rifle butt swings toward Leon’s head. You hear it more than see it. You react—knife flashing up, slashing across the attacker’s forearm. Leon ducks and counters, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest, sending him crashing into the corridor wall.

“Leon!” you call, not as a warning, but as an anchor. A check-in. Still there?

“I’m here,” he answers, voice tight.

Gunfire erupts again, closer. A round clips the wall by your ear. Another slams into Leon’s side.

For a second, you don’t register what happened.

Then Leon makes a sound, sharp, involuntary, like his body betrayed him.

He staggers.

Your stomach drops through the floor.

“Leon!” you gasp, turning-

He catches himself against the wall, one hand pressing hard to his ribs. When he lifts it, his palm is dark in the strobing red light.

Blood. Too much.

His face tightens, not with fear, with frustration. With the shock of losing control for even a second.

“I’m fine,” he grits out.

“No,” you snap, voice cracking with something you can’t hide. “No, you’re not.”

Another operative charges, and instinct takes over before panic can swallow you whole. You fire, dropping him mid-step. You move closer to Leon without thinking, body angling to shield him from the corridor.

“Don’t-” Leon starts, but his breath catches, pain stealing the rest of the sentence.

You rip some fabric from your dress, and shove it against his side. “Hold pressure.”

Leon’s eyes flare. “We need to move.”

“We are moving,” you hiss. “But you are not dying in front of me.”

He tries to straighten. He’s breathing harder now, sweat slick at his brow, his usual control slipping at the edges. Disorientation flickers in his eyes for half a second, like his body is threatening to go down whether he wants it to or not.

The sight guts you.

The fear hits fully then, hot and absolute, stripping you of everything sharp and snarky and protected.

“I am going to be so mad if you die on me,” you say, voice raw, unfiltered.

Leon’s eyes rolled before his gaze locks on yours. You could’ve sworn you saw a smirk on his face.

Then his jaw tightens. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and for once, it isn’t a challenge. It’s a promise.

The corridor fills with footsteps again.

You pivot, planting yourself between Leon and the oncoming threat. Every muscle in your body tightens with purpose. Protective. Focused.

You fire in controlled bursts, forcing the operatives back. Leon pushes off the wall, gritting his teeth, raising his weapon despite the tremor in his arm. You hear the strain in his breath, the way his body fights him now.

“Stay with me,” you mutter, not a command, an insistence. “Match me.”

Leon’s voice is ragged but steady. “Always.”

You move together again, but now every decision is laced with instinctive concern. You take the riskier angles, so he doesn’t have to. You cover him longer than necessary. You bark directions closer, faster, because the thought of losing him makes your vision narrow into something dangerous.

An enemy lunges from the side. You catch him with your shoulder and slam him into the wall. Leon steps in to finish it, but his knees buckle for a heartbeat. Your hand shoots out, gripping his forearm, hauling him upright.

You clear the last attacker with brutal efficiency, and the corridor finally opens, an escape route just beyond the carnage.

Leon sways, teeth clenched. You hook your arm around his back, taking more of his weight than you should be able to, and he lets you.

That, more than anything, tells you how deep this has gone.

You stagger forward together into the dim service stairwell, alarms still wailing, red light flashing, the world still trying to tear you apart.

The extraction is quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after everything loud has already burned itself out.

You barely register the transition from stairwell to armoured transport. Leon’s weight leans heavy against you until medics swarm, voices overlapping, hands pulling you apart with practiced urgency. Someone eases you back while someone else lowers him onto a stretcher. The world narrows to flashes: gauze pressed to his side, blood-stained shirt cut away, a monitor chirping insistently.

You stand there uselessly for half a second too long before someone tells you to sit.

You don’t remember sitting.

You remember your hands shaking when you notice they’re covered in his blood. You scrub them together reflexively, like you can erase the image if you try hard enough. A medic hands you a bottle of water. You take it without drinking.

Leon is alive.

The knowledge settles slowly, like something too fragile to trust all at once. His chest rises and falls, uneven but steady. His eyes flutter open briefly when they stitch him up, unfocused but aware enough to find you where you stand.

He doesn’t say anything.

Neither do you.

Later, how much later you’re not sure, you’re in another room. Cleaner. Brighter. Too sterile to feel real. Leon is propped up on a narrow cot, bandaged and pale but breathing without effort now. The monitors have gone quiet, content to hum along instead of scream.

Your injuries are minor. Someone fussed over them anyway. You let them, numb and obedient, because the alternative was thinking.

Now it’s just the two of you again.

Silence settles between you like a blanket instead of a weapon.

You stand by the wall at first, arms folded, posture rigid out of habit more than necessity. Leon watches you from the cot, expression unreadable but soft around the edges in a way you’ve never seen before.

“You should sit,” he says quietly.

You shake your head and answer as you always do. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t argue but rolls his eyes as he always does.

The adrenaline has fully drained now, leaving behind a heavy, bone-deep exhaustion. Your hands are still trembling slightly, even as you clench them into fists and force them still. You feel wrung out, scraped raw, like something vital has been stripped away, and something else left behind in its place.

Leon shifts, wincing faintly, then settles. His gaze never leaves you.

“I scared you,” he says.

It’s not an accusation. It’s not fishing for reassurance.

It’s a statement.

You swallow. “Yeah.”

Another silence. Thicker. More honest.

“I didn’t mean to,” he adds.

“I know.” You push off the wall before you can stop yourself, closing the distance until you’re standing beside him. You don’t look at the bandages. You look at his face. “But you did.”

Leon nods once. “I won’t apologise for getting hit.”

“Good,” you say immediately. “Because I’d never forgive you for it.”

That earns the faintest huff of a laugh, more breath than sound. It fades quickly, leaving the room quiet again.

You don’t sit. Instead, you reach out without fully deciding to, your fingers brushing the edge of the bed. Leon’s hand shifts instinctively, stopping just short of yours.

The hesitation is mutual.

“You don’t have to-” he starts.

“I want to,” you say softly.

The words feel different now. Steadier. Chosen.

Leon’s fingers close around yours, careful, deliberate. His grip is warm, grounding, real in a way that has nothing to do with cover stories or mission parameters. He doesn’t pull you closer. He just holds on, like he’s confirming you’re still here.

You breathe out slowly, the tension easing from your shoulders in a way you hadn’t realized was still there.

This isn’t the gala. There’s no music. No audience. No danger pressing in from all sides. No reason at all, except want.

You step closer, close enough that your knees brush the side of the cot. Leon tilts his head up slightly to look at you, eyes searching, open.

When you finally lean in, it’s slow. Unrushed. Intentional.

Your lips meet his with a softness that surprises you both.

It’s nothing like the kiss before.

There’s no urgency driving it this time. No desperation, no need to convince anyone watching. No sharp angles or calculated pressure. Just the quiet, deliberate meeting of mouths, slow, careful, unguarded in a way that feels far more dangerous.

Leon kisses you like he’s letting himself feel it.

His lips are warm, firm but unhurried, moving against yours with a patience that makes your breath stutter despite yourself. It’s not demanding. It’s exploratory. As if he’s memorising the shape of you instead of claiming it.

His hand lifts to your wrist, fingers closing there gently, thumb brushing over your pulse. You feel it jump beneath his touch, too fast, too loud, and the knowledge that he can feel it too sends a low, unwanted heat curling through your stomach.

He doesn’t comment.

He just deepens the kiss slightly, a subtle shift that draws a quiet sound from the back of your throat before you can stop it. His other hand hovers at your side, not quite touching, the restraint almost worse than contact.

When he finally does settle his palm against your waist, it’s careful. Grounding. Like he’s reminding both of you exactly where you are, and exactly how close you’re choosing to be.

You kiss him back without thinking, lips parting just enough to meet his, the world narrowing to breath and warmth and the steady strength of him in front of you. The orchestra fades. The room dissolves. There is only this, this shared, wordless understanding humming between you.

When you pull back, it’s slow.

Reluctant.

Your forehead rests against his, breaths mingling, close enough that you can feel the faint tremor he hasn’t quite managed to suppress. His thumb still strokes your pulse, absent-minded now, like he’s forgotten he’s doing it.

Neither of you speaks.

You don’t need to.

There’s no declaration. No promise shaped into words. Just the shared understanding humming between you, solid and undeniable.

When you finally straighten, Leon’s eyes are still on you, softer now. Lighter.

“Guess,” he murmurs, “that wasn’t part of the cover.”

You smile, a real one, unguarded. “Guess not.”

The silence returns again after that.

But this time, it doesn’t ask anything of you.

It simply lets you be.

The debrief room looks exactly the way it always does.

Gray walls. Steel table. A screen mounted at the far end displaying mission timestamps and sanitized summaries. The kind of room designed to strip events of their chaos and compress them into bullet points.

You sit side by side. Your shoulder almost brushes Leon’s, close enough to feel without touching. He’s back in clean clothes now, bandages hidden beneath a fresh shirt, posture straight despite the stiffness he hasn’t quite shaken.

The handler stands across from you, expression neutral as ever.

“Extraction successful,” they say. “Data secured. Umbrella assets neutralised. Collateral contained.”

You nod. Leon nods.

Professional. Controlled.

There’s no need to look at each other to confirm anything. You already know what the other is thinking. Where they’ll speak. When they’ll stay quiet. It’s effortless now, like the friction burned itself out and left something smooth behind.

The handler’s gaze flicks between you briefly. Assessing. Noting the absence of hostility.

“Good work,” they add. “Both of you.”

High praise, coming from them.

They dismiss you with a clipped nod and turn back to the screen. The door slides open with a soft hiss, and you stand at the same time, movements synchronized without thought.

Outside, the operations floor hums with its usual low-level chaos. Agents pass, analysts cluster around consoles, voices overlap in familiar rhythms. Nothing looks different.

But it feels different.

You walk together toward the leaderboard without speaking, the silence companionable instead of sharp. The board flickers as you approach, updating, recalculating, doing what it always does after a major operation.

For a split second, the screen goes dark.

Then the names appear.

You stop.

So does Leon.

#1 — YOU

#1 — LEON KENNEDY

Perfectly even.

Tied.

You stare at it longer than you expect to, waiting for something, satisfaction, irritation, the old flare of competitiveness.

It doesn’t come.

Leon exhales softly beside you, something between a laugh and a breath of disbelief. He tilts his head, eyes moving from the board to you.

That familiar smirk appears, not sharp, not challenging. Lighter. Easier.

“Guess we’ll have to settle this another way,” he says.

[kcokaine]

big yuji

[asiatic-apple]

Severing fate

Stalker!Caleb x female reader

Word count: 5.9k (I got carried away)

Content: soulmate au, caleb is your stalker, he is an unreliable narrator and very much unhinged, he breaks into your home and sets up cameras, possessive and obsessive behavior, he kills someone but it's non-graphic, smut, L-bombs, oops reader is a little unhinged too, talk of marriage, marathon sex, somnophilia (with prior consent given)

➢ Read on AO3

From a young age, Caleb has always had a knack for seeing patterns. He makes mathematics look easy, he breezes through things like puzzles or building model airplanes, and he observes everything in life with a quiet calculation that unnerves most people.

His family calls him special. People who meet him for the first time call him a bit strange yet charismatic. Since childhood, he knew there was something different about him. Caleb has a gift no one else has: he can see fate.

Fate is beautiful. Connections and relationships are woven throughout the universe in the form of deep red threads. Some are thick cords, strengthened by a bond that's been realized early on in life. Others are thin, fraying, and tangled when someone touches a body they aren't meant to be with but want anyway.

These threads aren't exclusively for romantic bonds. Some destined relationships are lifelong friends, platonic life partners, or anything in between. A few people even have more than one if they're lucky. No matter the type of soulmate, everyone has a thread tied to them. Everyone except Caleb.

It's a cruel thing, seeing everyone else's destiny but being blind to your own. He doesn't even know if he has a soulmate at all. As a teen, he convinced himself it was a test—maybe he just needed to work harder to find his soulmate. He spent far too much time researching old mythology about destiny and fated lovers.

Growing into young adulthood, he spent even more time watching people, searching for someone else who might be missing their own thread. With Caleb's good looks and charming personality, he's always been spoiled for choice when it comes to a potential partner. Many people throw themselves at him, not realizing their threads tug them back toward someone else entirely.

It's not like he needs to reject his admirers. He knows he could just be another passing tangle or knot in someone's connection with a true soulmate. But that doesn't appeal to him. He wants to feel that undeniable pull, that intimate connection that comes with finding the person who was made for him. So he continues waiting—and watching for patterns he can study.

He soon learns how to guess people's whole life stories just from the way their threads are woven. It becomes second nature to figure out someone is having an affair or if they've lost a loved one or are desperately trying to escape fate altogether.

When he bumps into you at a café, he initially thinks nothing of it. He plasters on his usual suave smile while reaching down to grab your fallen bag. And when he hands it back to you, he freezes in place.

Caleb has never believed in sparks flying or love at first sight. Especially not when he's witnessed firsthand how every connection is planned by some higher power. But when he sees your face—your apologetic smile and the way you look at him with genuine kindness—he thinks fate becomes inconsequential.

His eyes land on the red thread tied around your left wrist like a shackle, and his heart drops. For a fleeting moment, he hoped you'd have no thread like him. He almost turns away, until he notices the wrongness of it.

Your thread is…ugly. A weak, dull color as it yanks at your wrist like an incessant child, trying to tug you toward something you don't seem to have any interest in.

The moment you turn your back on Caleb to resume your order, his eyes never leave you. You become an obsession—half because of that immediate flicker of something he felt when he saw you, and the other half because he has to find out why fate feels different around you.

His feet carry him mindlessly behind you when you leave the café. Careful not to arouse suspicion, he follows you all the way to your apartment. And imagine his surprise when he realizes you live right down the hall from his own apartment.

Caleb doesn't believe in coincidence. So he takes it upon himself to learn even more about you.

Clearly, the universe is sending him a sign. Maybe it messed up when writing your destiny. Maybe some cosmic being needs his help in fixing the mistake. Either way, he's the only one who can correct that dreadful thing holding you back from having a true soulmate. He's the only one who could be your soulmate.

He watches you for weeks, taking his time to collect as much information about you as he can before he makes his next move. People, normal people, are hilariously predictable. Not only are they beholden to fate, but they also desperately cling to routine. Just another pattern that Caleb picks up on with far too much ease.

It barely takes him a month to have your entire schedule mapped out and memorized. Even on the rare occasion when you do something spontaneous, he's able to intuit where you might go, who you might be with, and what time you'll decide to head back home.

He takes advantage of one of the moments you're not home, picking the lock on your front door with ease. Knowing exactly how much time he has before you return, he's planned the perfect opportunity to plant hidden cameras in each of the rooms of your apartment.

He's so well-prepared that he even has a few extra minutes afterward to go through your most precious belongings. It's hard not to steal a caress of your soft bed, rifle through the diary hidden underneath it, or gingerly smell one of your hoodies hanging on the couch.

If you were here now, you would freak out. Caleb's not insane enough not to know that. But he also believes if you gave him a chance to explain—you're meant to be with him, duh—maybe you wouldn't be too mad. That's why he does something completely unplanned and leaves with your hoodie after double-checking that all the cameras work.

Luckily, you don't notice the missing item or the added tiny red dots peeking out from strategically placed spots. One of the things Caleb loves about you is how sweet and trusting you are. It's something anyone else could easily take advantage of, though. And he doesn't like the thought of that.

Being a guardian angel isn't enough for him. Watching from afar won't mean much if someone gets too close to you when he's unprepared or turns his back for a moment. He needs to make sure no one else slides into your life. Especially if that someone could be whoever is on the other end of that counterfeit bond wrapped too tightly around your wrist.

So Caleb manufactures more accidental meetings with you. You're neighbors, after all. When you take out your trash, Caleb times his exit perfectly, turning a corner just fast enough to bump into you. His charming apology makes you a bit flustered, and he thinks you're even cuter when you're within arm's reach.

The second meeting happens at a bookstore three blocks down. The one you frequent every Saturday around lunchtime to read a new book while snacking on something salty. He’s already browsing the shelves when you walk in, glancing at you with feigned surprise when you notice your neighbor likes one of the books you read last week.

After that, it becomes easier. He embeds himself into your routine until he's impossible to ignore.

First, he's a simple stranger who you notice every once in a while. Then, an acquaintance who happens—coincidentally—to love the same cafés, the same obscure novels, the same quiet walking paths you prefer at dusk. He laughs at the right moments. Listens when you speak. Remembers little details you share that you think anyone else wouldn't bother paying attention to.

Finally, he becomes a friend. A staple in your daily routine. A shoulder you cry on when days are hard and you need someone to rely on.

In those moments, Caleb wants nothing more than to confess his feelings for you. Everything is going so well, and he can sense that you'd reciprocate his confession.

With every cozy hangout, conversation that stretches past midnight, and shared meal where your knees brush his under the table, Caleb watches the subtle shift in your body language. The way you lean closer and your voice softens. You're falling for him.

But that grotesque thing around your wrist begins to thrash in protest whenever he gets too close. His teeth grit every time he sees its blatant disapproval.

Why is the universe resisting him now? You are his other half. He's never been so sure of anything else in his life. Is this the real test he mistakenly thought he'd been put through as a child?

At night, he lies awake and dissects every possible next step. No matter the scenario, he arrives at the same conclusion. There is only ever one outcome with fate.

He's seen it before in past observations: no matter how much fate veers off course, it always finds a way to correct itself. But perhaps that's only because no one with Caleb's gift has ever tried to intervene.

People believe fate does not bend for desire, or that it doesn't reward patience and effort. They believe it simply is. But when you grow up seeing its physical manifestation and the way people fight against it, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that even something preordained can be manipulated by someone strong enough.

If Caleb's been given such a gift…then it would be a shame not to use it.

He'll make sure there is no possible way the universe could pull you into someone else's orbit. Which means he needs to find the parasite at the other end of your tether. He needs to measure their worth. Even though deep down, he already knows what answer lies at the end of his calculations.

And he's proven right when he finally does find your dead weight. Your so-called soulmate doesn't seem to treasure true love or fate at all. Even worse, the man doesn't even add up to a quarter of the exceptional person you are.

Your destined counterpart spends his days slouched at a bar that smells like stale beer and desperation. Caleb watches from across the street first. Then from inside. Then a day later, from a camera discreetly installed in the man's messy home.

He scowls as he watches your fated half drown in cheap booze and women that barely stay the night before being kicked out onto the street like trash. One could barely call this a routine when it's more like a never-ending rut for a loser who thinks he's the shit when he actually just smells like it.

This is what pulls at your wrist every night? This is what dares to fight when Caleb leans into you with a look full of yearning?

The knowledge taunts him for three days. That's all it takes before he ponders something brand new about the universe while watching a belligerent idiot snore facedown on a stained mattress.

Can fate defend itself?

Caleb makes sure what he's about to do will look like a freak accident. It's just something that happens to a drunkard who no one will miss anyway.

It turns out it's easy to sever the very thread of fate that he always admired as a kid. In fact, he's a little disappointed by the lack of ceremony. There's no bolt of lightning striking him down, no divine intervention or a voice booming from above in anger of what Caleb has taken into his own hands.

Fate is weak and pathetic as it tries to resist its new order from a power more determined than a fickle thing like the universe. It bleeds and whimpers before the last rush of air leaves its lungs.

Caleb stares down at the broken thread, now unattached from the man you were never meant to meet.

It feels like a stupid thought now, but he knows he has to attach it to himself. He doesn't believe in its power anymore, but you might. You might feel its loss if it decays, the same way he's seen remnants of other people's bonds that ended when their lovers passed away too soon. Besides, he wants there to be no question that there is an unshakeable bond between you two—even if you can't see it for yourself.

Caleb works quickly, tying a knot around his left wrist a bit too tightly, like he's scared it might come undone if he isn't meticulous enough. Some strange bit of life still left in the thread resists him at first, stubbornly recoiling from the wrongness of what just transpired. But familiarity is a powerful thing. He has already watched you, memorized you, and diligently shaped his life around the edges of yours. He makes fate recognize effort now.

It stings for a few minutes, feeling like forcing a shape into the wrong space. Fortunately, his lack of a thread becomes an advantage. There is nothing to conflict, nothing to reject the intrusion other than your own thread trying to hold onto something irrelevant.

And after a few heart-pounding moments, the knot finally holds—and your thread stills. Caleb exhales for the first time in minutes. He leaves the unmoving body on the dirty mattress, smiling when he thinks of the next time he'll see you with a strengthened bond.

Your neighbor—and new best friend—is the sweetest man you've ever had the pleasure of meeting. You never thought you'd find someone like him in this day and age. A true gentleman, he makes you feel seen in a way that feels inevitable. Like he was always waiting for you to run into him on a busy day at your favorite café.

Lately, you've been unable to stop yourself from flirting with danger. And it really is a dangerous thing to fall in love with a neighbor. If things don't work out, then you'll have to bump into an ex every day just to go in and out of your apartment.

But if the only dangerous thing about wanting a man like Caleb is the possibility of a constant heartache, then you'll take your chances. Besides, your chest already tightens painfully every time he smiles at you. Your heart really does skip a beat when he laughs at your jokes, or hugs you when you're sad, or when his hands wander just a bit while he cuddles up beside you on your couch.

Caleb is different than any men you've ever met. He's better. Maybe he's the best you might ever get. And you're not going to let someone else snatch him up.

That's precisely why you've already put so much faith in him. Someone as gentle as Caleb could never hurt a fly, so you happily gave him a key to your apartment for emergencies. You let him come over even when you're looking like a mess after tiring days at work. You even fall asleep on him sometimes, so trusting that he would always protect you even in your most vulnerable states.

His easygoing charm and innocent puppy-like eyes make your heart beat only for him. But you're also a bit annoyed; no matter how much his touch might wander at times, he always holds himself back.

You've tried baiting him with shorts that "accidentally" ride up a bit between your thighs when you bend down in front of him. You've even let your hands trail his chest and abs while watching movies beside him.

It takes all your willpower not to jump him right then and there the moment your fingertips trace the quivering lines of his lower stomach. His breathing always turns heavier with cute little gasps of air when you touch him. But still, he doesn't take things further.

It's for this reason that you decide to take a leap of faith and ask him on a date. You're not usually this bold with your crushes, but something about Caleb makes you want to be brave. When the two of you meet up at your usual café for lunch, you take advantage of a quiet moment.

"Caleb?" you say, trying to keep your voice steady as he looks up at you over the rim of his coffee mug.

He sets the cup down, giving you his full attention like he always does. You stammer for a second, and he smirks, as if he can guess what you're about to say. That cockiness is what makes you turn a nervous question into a headstrong declaration.

"I want to go out on a date with you."

Immediately, you feel a bit stupid for the phrasing and the way you looked at him like he had no say in the matter. But Caleb—always the type to play along with your every whim—smiles, his dimples making you swoon a bit. You notice a flicker of something strange in his expression, but it's too fast to put to words.

"You do?" he asks with a chuckle, far too calm when you're over here sweating buckets and waiting for a proper response. "Well, I could never say no to you."

The warmth that spreads through you is immediate and dizzying. You laugh in relief, feeling ridiculous for ever doubting yourself or his feelings for you. Caleb wipes away any residual doubt the second he gets up from his chair and presses a chaste kiss to your cheek.

He promises to plan everything for your date, even though you were the one who asked him out. The next weekend, he meets you at your apartment promptly on time, with a bouquet of your favorite flowers and a small box of treats from that dessert place you love visiting.

Everything is perfect and effortless. Even more so than how it usually feels being by his side. He picks a restaurant you mentioned wanting to try weeks ago—one you hadn't expected him to remember. He holds doors open for you, rests his hand lightly at your back while leading you to the table, and looks at you like you're the only person in the room.

As always, conversation with Caleb flows easily. Since you've known him, he's always been able to guess what's on your mind, what might be bothering you or making you nervous. It's uncanny just how much he can stay in sync with you, as easily as breathing.

But this time, there's something just a bit different about your dynamic. Something charged with a heightened tension.

When your fingers reach across the table to brush against his hand, he doesn't pull away or avoid eye contact. He looks at you like what you've just done has sealed something he's been waiting to finalize for a long time.

It should scare you, that dark look in his eyes. Because for a second, he looks a bit unrecognizable. But all you feel is a sensation like something clicking into place.

You intertwine your fingers with his and ask, "Do you believe in soulmates?"

For the first time since you've met him, Caleb looks surprised. Nothing ever catches him off guard. Yet somehow, this simple question does the trick.

Wondering if maybe your question was a bit embarrassing, you backtrack. "I know it sounds silly. But—"

"Yes," he interrupts with a whisper. "I mean…I'm not sure if I did before meetin' you." His thumb rubs your knuckles back and forth as he holds your hand just a bit tighter. "But now I know."

If it was anyone else, you might have been amused by how cheesy his words are. But when Caleb is the one saying them—so earnestly, too—all you feel is a rush of heat through your body.

The rest of the date happens in a bit of a blur. Both of you can't seem to keep your hands off each other, even opting to skip dessert if it means getting back home quicker.

You really aren't the type to invite a first date inside your home, no matter how well the night goes. This time it's different because it's Caleb, the man you've already shared so much with. He's been inside your home before. He's seen you in every way but one. And you're desperate to show him that missing piece now.

As soon as you unlock your door, you push him inside, all pretense forgotten the moment your shoes and coats come off. You crash into him, feverish kisses stealing his breath away as he chuckles between them. You don't care how eager you seem, you just want his lips on yours.

Using his tie as a leash, you tug him backwards with you, blindly stumbling to your bedroom. But even when you think you might bump into a wall, Caleb redirects you with his eyes closed, like he's memorized the route you need to take without so much as parting from your lips. If you weren't getting drunk off his kisses, maybe alarm bells would ring in your mind—you've never taken him to your bedroom before now.

Nothing matters anyway. Nothing except getting him out of these stupid clothes and showing him just how much you've wanted him all night. When Caleb gently pulls you down onto your bed, you move with more roughness, your frenzied kisses pausing so you can shove him to sit back against the headboard and straddle his lap.

His eyes sparkle with mirth, but he lets you manhandle him. The realization makes your stomach flutter. Testing the waters further, you use his shoulders as leverage before grinding down on him. Caleb's hands fly to your hips with a gasp, but he doesn't control your movements. He just lets you rock at your own pace, basking in the weight of your core rubbing against his clothed erection.

His compliance encourages you, making you needy for leaving more kisses along his Adam's apple and neck. He moans for you while his hips buck instinctively beneath yours, and it makes another flood of arousal pool between your thighs.

"Mm, is this okay?" you mumble against his skin while grinding with more pressure, desperately chasing friction.

His fingers tighten on your waist, but he still doesn't stop you. "Y-you can use me however you want, baby," he replies through another breathy moan. "I'm yours. All yours."

How did you get so lucky, you wonder before biting down on his neck. You make sure to suck a mark worthy of being on someone who gives himself to you so eagerly. It's the least you can do for how sweetly he whimpers and claws at your hips while you hump him until you're nearly coming on his lap.

In the midst of your greed, you've undone his tie and ripped a few of the buttons on his shirt, making room for more licks and bites. When you lean back to look at your handiwork, both of you are panting, not nearly satisfied yet but needing a moment to catch your breath. And your sweet friend, no, boyfriend now, looks at you like he's ready to worship you.

He slides one hand up your body, taking his time to feel every curve until his fingers gently wrap around your left wrist. He holds his breath and glances at you with hesitation, like touching your arm is a sin.

It's cute how even after your frenzied touches and kisses, he acts like he still needs permission to reciprocate them. You nod, and then he carefully lifts your hand to his trembling lips before kissing the inside of your wrist.

The gesture seems deeper than you can understand, especially with the way he keeps glancing at you as if you know its hidden meaning. But you're lost for words, only feeling that aching throb between your legs and needing him to soothe it. He notices your confused expression but presses another kiss to your hammering pulse before smiling up at you.

"Let me take care of you now," he says, tugging you by the wrist to reposition you beneath him.

It's your turn to be maneuvered, and you let him. He kisses down your body, fingers still tickling that wrist he seems fixated on before he pins it to the mattress.

The two of you pull at each other's disheveled clothes until you're both bare. Until the tip of his cock nudges against your lower belly as Caleb continues showering you in love. But before you can feel it inside you, he seems to have other plans.

His kisses travel across your chest, against stiffened nipples, along the softness of your tummy, then finally between your thighs. When he pushes your legs apart, you shudder, feeling the cool air kiss your soaked folds a second before his warm breath does. Then he drags the flat of his tongue in one long, deliberate stripe from your entrance to your clit.

The sound you make is obscene. Your hips jerk up before you can stop them, accidentally shoving your cunt harder against his mouth. But Caleb's only response is a needy moan, like he’s the one being pleasured, the vibration humming straight through your core.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he mumbles, lips brushing your swollen clit as he speaks. “Let me hear you, baby. You're mine now—those sounds are mine.”

You barely have time to let the certainty of his words sink into your fluttering stomach before he dives in like a man starved. No teasing anymore. Just hungry, wet, open-mouthed kisses to your pussy.

It's like he knows exactly what pace to set and how much pressure his tongue should apply to make you wail for him. Could it be possible this man was sent from Heaven to satisfy all your cravings? You swear you might become religious after this.

His tongue nudges against your clit before his lips suction around it, and your back arches off the bed while you moan for him. One hand flies to his hair while your other fists the sheets, and still he doesn’t let up. If anything, the way you yank his hair only makes him moan louder against you.

There's a faint rustle of movement, and you glance down to see Caleb gently rocking against your mattress, so lost in the taste of you that he needs to hump your bed.

"Oh my god, I think I'm gonna come," you cry, feeling overwhelmed by how quickly he's able to pull this much pleasure from you. You fuck his face with more fervor now, shamelessly bucking your hips and pulling on his hair with a tightness you'll only regret after you come down from this high. "Caleb, please…need your fingers. Wanna come around them," you whine with each buck.

You peek down at him, and he's watching you with dark eyes, a scary determination in them while his hand snakes in between your legs. His fingers slide inside you with ease, curling in a rhythm that matches how he laps up your slick.

The soft smacks of his lips against your skin and the squelch of your wet pussy fill the room, mingled with your growing screams. And then you gush around his thick digits—coating his lips, chin, and palm with your orgasm. Caleb takes it all with a look of reverence on his flushed face, licking every drop you give him and gasping for air when he finally parts from your twitching body.

When he slides up your body to look at you with a satisfied grin, your pussy clenches again at the sight of his glistening mouth and pupils blown wide. He looks dazed, proud. His cock slides against your still-twitching pussy, smearing precum against the mess you already have between your legs—but he doesn’t rush you. Instead he kisses you deep, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.

“Please,” you whisper against his lips when he pulls back just enough to breathe. “More, I need more. Need you inside me.”

He exhales a shaky laugh that turns into a groan when you wrap your legs around his waist. “Yeah…yeah, baby. I’ve got you, don't worry.”

Reaching down, he nestles the head of his cock between your folds and then finally pushes in. It's slow, so fucking slow, but you revel in the jolt of pleasure that shoots down your body as he stretches you out cautiously. He's bigger than any man you've had before, but every thick inch slides inside easily, filling you all the way until his hips are flush with yours.

Caleb curses beneath his breath, head falling to rest against yours while he pants and gasps at the feeling of you wrapped so tight around him. His eyes meet yours, locked and unable to tear away when he starts to move.

You both groan from the feeling, gripping each other tighter and starting to build up a faster rhythm. It's easy to get lost in this feeling, and you lose track of what you mumble and chant while Caleb picks up the pace. But while you struggle to keep your eyes on him, he can't stop staring.

He also can't keep his hands off you while fucking you nice and deep. His fingers toy with your nipples, rolling and pinching them to get more sounds out of you. And then they caress your stomach, pushing down slightly right above your mound to elevate the feeling of how he fills you up. You stutter and shake, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him into a breathless kiss.

His lips find yours again and again between thrusts, sharing his breath with you before he whispers, "Fuck, I love you."

That sentence sends your thoughts to a screeching halt, but your pussy clenches even harder around him. You should be appalled that he's saying such a thing so soon. You should reconsider this whole relationship and how quickly you've allowed it to escalate.

You should, but you don't want to. In fact, you think you love him too.

Feeling your second orgasm barreling toward you too fast, you crash your lips against his again, nails digging into his shoulders and leaving little red crescents.

“Hm, I…love you too,” you babble, after breaking the kiss. Your brain practically short-circuits with how close you are to coming. You can't stop the words spilling out of your mouth. “Love you so much. Don’t stop, oh, don’t stop—”

The second those words leave your lips, a switch seems to flip in Caleb's brain. His whole body locks up for one heartbeat, buried deep inside you, cock throbbing hard enough that you feel it pulse against your walls. Then he exhales a ragged sound against your mouth, and the slower, careful rhythm he’d been holding onto shatters. His hips snap harder, punching the air from your lungs and making your eyes roll back.

“You can't take that back now,” he growls, his voice alarmingly different from the sweet, hesitant Caleb who kissed your wrist like it was sacred.

He’s moving faster, rougher, but still so deep it feels like he’s trying to carve himself into you permanently. Your foreheads stay pressed together, making it impossible to look away from the wild, glassy look in his eyes.

“I’m gonna marry you one day,” he groans, like it's a fact and not a hypothetical. “I'll put a ring on this finger"—he snatches the same hand he’s been obsessed with all night and brings it to his lips to kiss the bare spot where a ring would sit—“and make sure everyone knows you belong to me.”

This is so wrong, god this is so wrong. Everything is moving so fast. You shouldn't like this. You can't tell if this is just dirty talk or something more serious, but that look in Caleb's eyes is a little terrifying.

And yet? Your cunt flutters hard around him at the words, more of your arousal gushing down and soaking the sheets beneath you.

“Oh, fuuuck, that's it," he says with a manic laugh, folding your legs higher until your knees are pressed up against your sweaty chest. "I can feel how much you like this, baby. It's okay if you do," he coos. "Gonna ruin you for anyone else. No one else gets to touch you. No one else gets to hear you moan like this. You’re mine—only ever gonna be mine. Say it again for me, sweetheart." His voice cracks, and it's the only thing making you refocus on his words while your ears ring from the pleasure. "Say you love me while I fill you with my cum.”

You’re beyond proper speech now, just broken whimpers and gasps, but you manage to choke out, “Love you—I love you, Caleb.”

He slams in one last time, hips grinding flush against yours, cock pulsing as he comes with a choked sob that makes your toes curl. Your pussy spasms and clamps around him, milking him dry as wave after wave of pleasure crashes over you.

Turns out you're just as crazy in love as he is. And you don't have it in you to be ashamed right now.

Caleb's counting his lucky stars that he spent all those nights watching you touch yourself through the flickering camera feeds he set up. It's what helped him learn all the ways you like to be caressed, the speed you prefer when you have a silicone cock deep inside you, and the fantasies you'd whisper to yourself when you imagined someone above you.

You won't need fantasy anymore, though. He knows everything about you. That's why he's able to make you cream on his cock over and over again, while his hips move at a speed even he didn't know he was capable of.

The gravity of this moment—of finally claiming the person he's going to keep for the rest of his life—is heady. It makes Caleb insatiable and greedy for more. More of your addicting sounds, more of your shaking orgasms, more of his cum spilling deep inside you.

More, more, more. Caleb can't stop chanting it each time you melt and rake your nails against his back and allow him to take everything from you.

You're so pretty, so perfect, all his. It goes straight to his head, and his cock, when you beg for all that he's giving you even when your body is so weak that it can't hold itself up.

You like being pushed to your limit, it seems. Right when you become too exhausted to keep your eyes open, you sleepily tell him he can keep going if he wants to. He can't help but come inside you again just from hearing your whispered permission to use you while you fall asleep.

The fact that you trust him so readily…god, he knew you were made for him. He doesn't keep you awake too long, even though his cock already throbs insistently for more of your warmth after he pulls out with a groan.

Caleb is no stranger to patience. He's glad he waited to find you. Because now he'll never let you go—and there will be many more days to spend reminding you of that if you ever forget.

No matter what happens now, you're bound to him forever. Fate made sure of it.

a/n: thank you all for the 2k celebration votes 💕 I hope I made good on our wish for more scaryleb teehee

and none of this would be possible without my ride or die @heartyluv, who constantly inspires me with her takes on scaryleb and toxic!caleb. everyone say a big thank you to her bc she let me yap about this fic to her and she beta read it for meeee, ilysm Jay 😘

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reblogging now so as many people as possible get to see THISSSSS!!!! GO READ IT, GO READ IT, GO READ IT!!! please…

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Photoshoot with Izuku :)

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we live in a fake freak epidemic