summary : just because of a chocolate bar in the grocery store and a little girl, leon met his greatest loves.
tags : post ID!leon, single mom, tooth rotting fluff, reader is 31 and leon is 29ish, inaccurate toddler language, strangers to lovers??? or strangers to friends to lover, girl dad leon
notes : i finished this last week but it took me awhile to get back on this to edit everything, sorry 😭 enjoy tho and thank you for reading!
masterlist : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
time seemingly stopped for leon as his eyes stayed fixed on the little girl standing a few feet away from him, bouncing excitedly on her tiptoes while clutching a comically oversized pizza box in her hands. her entire face had lit up the second she saw him moments ago, pure excitement shining in her eyes and his name echoed brightly through the hallway when she yelled it.
from behind her, you were there standing too. still just as beautiful as the last time he saw you which was only few days ago to be honest and leon had been in a short mission for days but you remained a constant thought in the back of his mind.
more often than he cared to admit, which is absurd cause he just met you and lilah.
and now here you are again, standing in front of him like nothing had changed which nothing really considering its only been a few days ever since he met you again in this very same hallway.
but what really caught him off guard was lilah. the kind of happiness written all over her face wasn’t something leon was used to receiving. it was the sort of excitement that you can only really see in movies, where a child looked at someone like they were the best thing they’d seen all day.
full of warmth and full of joy, like simply seeing him had made her evening better.
and honestly? leon couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked at him like that.
sure, claire and sherry were always happy to see him, and he cared deeply for both the of them, theybe been through everything in this wretched world but somehow this felt different.
simpler and softer like a breath of fresh air slipping into spaces inside him he hadn’t realized that is there but at the same time, something heavier settled quietly in his chest because did he even deserve this kind of enthusiasm from her?
if you and lilah truly knew what his life looked like, like what he does for a living, the blood, the violence and the things that followed him everywhere.
would you still smile at him like this?
or would you avoid him entirely once you realized what kind of man stood in front of you?
"eon!!! youre here". lilah exclaimed as he found himself walking towards them. the little girl then looked up towards you and you took the pizza box cause she might let go of it because of excitement. "he's here".
you cant help but smile at the joy in lilah's face. "surprise, baby".
lilah widened her eyes before whipping her head towards leon, her hair moving frantically with her. she looked at him like he hung the stars and eyes full of wonder.
"are we.... neighbows?". lilah asked, her voice full of hope and eyes still full wide.
leon chuckled under his breath as he crouched down to level with her and now theyre face to face properly. he then pointed at the door behind him causing lilah to gasp again.
"i live here". leon nodded before he suddenly got his arms full of a bouncing kid. he looked at you in surprised and in unsureness cause he was shocked and doesnt really know what to do.
you just smiled at him. you watched how he fumbled his arms and loosened his hold on his duffle bag before putting his arms around lilah with small hesitation.
it is such a cute sight, his face looks so caught off guard and he looks so unsure on what to do with lilah on his arms.
but as you look at him, you noticed a white patch on his shoulders, just peeking behind his shirt. you squinted your eyes a little bit and immediately looked at his face again. there it was, a faint purple mark on the side of his left cheek. its really not noticeable csuse it looks like its fading now but its still there, along with a faint scratch on the side his forehead.
you frowned, a slight pang on your chest when you also noticed the small wounds on his knuckles. you dont know what he does and what his job is but you felt a bit of pity and sadness for him. he looks so tired and wounded as you give him another look.
its just a sudden feeling that you couldnt comprehend so you looked away for a moment.
"we gonna be fwiends for ever". lilah giggled on his neck before she pulled away, her little hands still on his shoulders. "we have fwood, do you wanna eat?".
he widened his eyes at the invitation and he smiled softly before shook his head to decline the invitation, but before he could say something, you cut him off.
"we bought quite a lot, so uhm if you want". you said as you grip the pizza box in your hand while lilah just kept looking at leon's face with a soft smile. "you can eat dinner with us".
this is probably a bad idea but you just cant help it. he looks miserable, now that you have noticed his wounds. you observe how his eyes looks tired when he looked at you after you told him that its okay to eat dinner with you guys.
"i—... i dont want to impose". leon said, his voice breathy and you could really tell that there's a bit of tiredness in them.
"you wont, trust me". you assured him before glancing at lilah who is looking expectantly at him.
he then looked back at the little girl in his arms, she's so small and soft, still so pure in this kind of world. he doesnt want to ruin her perception of the world, cause lilah looks like the kind of person who looks at the world so beautifully.
when its not.
she's so kind and good.
but maybe he should let himself indulge in this serenity that you and lilah are showing him.
maybe this wont backfire on him.
"i'll go change first into something more comfortable, is that okay?". leon softly asked lilah who nodded. he smiled then slowly stood up, wincing a little bit as his ribs screamed at him.
you noticed it but you didnt mention anything.
"come here, baby. lets ready the table". you called at lilah who didnt seem to want to let go of leon.
you then finally opened your door and pushed it open while waiting for lilah who keeps waving at leon with a grin.
"dont eat all of the food, okay?". leon teased the little girl who just stuck her tongue out at him before running inside the apartment.
"we'll wait for you, dont worry". you chuckled at leon who just rubbed a hand behind his neck.
"thank you". he softly said which you replied with a smile.
he deserves a good night.
both of you then went inside your respective apartment to get ready for dinner. you called out to lilah to start getting ready for a quick bath while you delivered the box of pizza in the living room table.
tonight calls for a dinner in the living room considering you have a guest. you thought that maybe you guys should watch a movie too so before you could set up anything, you followed lilah first in your room.
you looked at her in amusement when you found her already naked in the bathroom and is waiting for you patiently.
"arent you a little excited?". you tease her after putting your bag in your small vanity and went to tie your hair up.
"leon". she answered a simple response causing you to chuckle under her breath.
its amazing how attached she is to the man who she just met a few days ago.
after that, you focused on helping lilah wash up for the night while she happily sang under the shower. the bathroom is then filled with her laughter and dramatic little performances, making you laugh along as you carefully washed her hair. every now and then, she’d suddenly switch songs halfway through or make up her own lyrics entirely, clearly entertained by herself.
soon enough, you found yourself washing up beside her too. between the singing, lilah then started telling you everything she did with mrs. caske throughout the day, jumping from one story to another without pause.
you listened attentively while washing up, you hummed along and occasionally asking questions to keep her entertained.
her little voice echoed warmly around the bathroom as she rambled happily, completely energized despite the long day.
once the both of you were clean and finished showering, you wrapped lilah up and yourself in a towel before heading back to the bedroom together and to dress yourselves in comfortable clothes for the night.
"so soft". lilah giggled loudly as she hugged herself to feel the softness of her minnie mouse pajamas.
she then went and hugged your pajama covered legs. you laughed softly before hefting her up in your arms and proceeded to walk out of the room to ready your dinner.
both of you worked in tandem as you guys took some utensils, plates and mugs for the drinks ; and put it on the living room table. you then opened your fridge to take out some left over pasta that you made yesterday night. you'll eat it again cause its still good anyways.
"careful". you told lilah when you handed her a carton of juice.
lilah nodded as she gripped it tight on her hands and carefully moved to the living room to put the juice on the table. after watching her successfully put down the pitcher, you went to the stove to reheat the pasta with some butter.
your stomach grumbled lowly when the aroma of the butter hits your senses, everything is just so good with butter.
as you reheat the pasta and lilah entertaining herself in the living room, you both finally heard a knock on your door causing the little girl to snap her head up and look at the door.
you then put the finished pasta quickly on a big bowl and brought it on the living room before you went to the door with lilah following you like a duckling.
she started singing leon's name causing you glance at her in amusement. you unlocked the door then opened it softly to finally see leon in a more comfortable clothes.
it kinda looks illegal to look this good in just black sweatpants and a white tshirt. you gulped unknowingly when you glanced at his arms, its big alright? it looks like a thing to be just held.
"leon". lilah jumped with her hands in the air.
the man gave you a small smile before he looked down at lilah and feign a shock expression at her minnie mouse pajamas.
"look at you, looking so good". he praised causing lilah to beam up at him.
"come on, come on". lilah went forward to grab his hand while giggling.
leon looked at you again as the little girl just grabbed and drag him inside. you just shrug at him before closing the door behind them.
you followed them inside while lilah just continued babbling away to leon who keeps nodding and eyes darting from place to place to observe the surroundings.
your place is quite similiar to his too but the major difference that he noticed is that its so filled in and it smells good. leon thought that it might be coming from the flowers all around the room. he could see vases of flowers and plants in some of the tables, one at the middle of kitchen table, and on by the windows.
theyre blooming and just so beautiful.
lilah made him sit on the couch and his eyes went to the table that is filled with food. his stomach growled in hunger and he felt shy all of the sudden while you just laugh quietly.
"uh oh". lilah said as she tilted her head at leon before looking at the table and grabbed a plate. "les eat".
you then opened the pizza box and all three of you looked at it in awe. its looks so good and juicy, the smell even covered the whole apartment. its literally glistening in the box too while the oil is staining the surfaces.
"that looks good". leon stated as he felt his mouth water at the sight of it. it felt so long ago ever since he had some pizza. its always been ready made food, coffee or some food in the cafeteria in DSO. hell, sometimes he even gets ration meals if he's too tired to think on what he is going to eat.
"i wish i bought the chicken with it". you sighed while still looking at the pizza.
"s'okah mommy, we ave pasta". lilah smacked her lips and leon gently took the plate that lilah gave him before she pointed at the plate of your pasta. "try, mommy makes the best spahetti".
you cooed at your baby who just grinned proudly at you before pointing at the pizza next, to signal you that she wants to eat now. you then proceeded to take a squared slice of pizza and it was a good thing that the restaurant can cut their slices into squares one so that it'll be easier for kids to hold it.
you put three slices on lilah's plate before you twirled some spaghetti and put it on her plate too.
"thank you, mommy". lilah politely said as she carefully took her plate and moved down to sit on the floor.
seeing how lilah looks comfortable on the floor, leon then followed her down causing you to widen your eyes. he visibly winced as he adjusted himself on the floor but he sighed when he finally found himself comfortable and felt his body go lax.
"good floor". leon shot you a grin then took some pizza for himself and some spaghetti.
you watched them both in amusement before you took the carton of juice and poured them some in their mugs.
"seems like we have an old man here". you teased lightly as you finally took some slices of the pizza for yourself.
"who are you calling old?". he muttered under his breath before giving you a look, making lilah giggle loudly beside him while you just laugh and bite into your pizza.
“you’re silly, leon.” lilah quipped before slurping her noddles.
"thank you, lilah. finally, someone appreciates me in this apartment". leon sighed dramatically before taking a bite of his pizza with a small moan in delight as the little girl just grinned at him with spaghetti sauces on her cheeks.
you snorted softly while shaking your head before finally joining them on the floor too, settling beside leon as your little girl was already sitting on his other side and the warm smell of pizza and pasta filled the apartment.
outside, the city continued quietly beyond the windows, cars occasionally passing by while the soft glow of streetlights filtered through the curtains.
and in the inside of your cozy apartment, everything felt warm and comfortable.
lilah happily chatted away between bites of food, occasionally trying to steal more spaghetti from the plate while leon pretended to be deeply offended whenever she reach for his pizza too.
her laughter echoed around the apartment easily, bright enough to make both you and leon laugh along without realizing it, and for the rest of the night, the three of you simply stayed there together on the floor sharing food, teasing each other, and enjoying the kind of quiet happiness that felt almost too easy between the three of you.
its funny cause days ago, you guys were only strangers but now here you are, eating dinner together like you guys knew each other for years.
slowly coming back to writing again with my usual agenda of girl, dad! leon. unnamed daughter. wife/ spouse! reader (your daughter calls you mommy once) | 973+ words
Procrastination is a silent killer. It affects everybody, right?
Leon leans back in his leather desk chair, shoulder stiff and his joints pop with a sound he cringes at and makes him feel every single second of his forty-nine years of life. He rubs his rugged palms against his face, feeling the scruff of his stubble.
‘Goddamn, I need a shave.’ He thinks.
And yes, even Leon is affected by it.
He can only blame himself but at the same time he really doesn’t. He knows how to spend his time, and he spends it in something more meaningful and loving.
He has spent the last two weeks avoiding the paperwork like it was a dangerous containment zone. ‘How ironic.’ He then thinks to himself again. It was nearing midnight. His desk lamp casts a harsh, cone-shaped shadow over the mountain of papers he ghosted. Forms A-1 all the way to H-5, non-disclosure amendments for the DSO, local security consulting, trainee’s profiles, background checks, and some mission reports were spread out over the mahogany desk like the aftermath of a battle Leon was all too familiar with.
Instead,what he did was he built a wooden play-fort, which, was DIY-ed by himself, attended some PTA meetings, and he had chosen to spend five consecutive afternoons pretending to be a hostage, held by an adorable child-sized stuffed alligator, fleet member, crew member, and whatever his daughter’s imagination was with her pirate’s ship. Sure, it did give him time to spend it with his daughter but as a government agent (and maybe at the top at that), it meant that he had a lot. Of. Work. To. Do.
He will never regret it though. And oh, how he will forever cherish spending it with his daughter.
A soft snore comes out from the couch, shifting its position to a more comfortable one.
His baby was stubborn tonight. She hadn’t gone to her own bed and flatly refused with all her small body could handle, to leave the “Helm Area” (Leon wonders how on earth she knew those words that he’s sure a four-year-old isn't old enough to want to learn and understand yet) as she wants to not leave her Daddy—big Captain’s side.
“Are you sure, baby?” You asked, twirling a strand of her hair on your fingers as she was sitting down on the couch, with her daddy beside holding her hand, tracing the tiny fingers that were a mixture of you and him.
“Ay, Ay, mommy! The big captain and I will be staying here to navigate the waters!”
“I’ll just bring her to bed once I’m done here, sweet.” Your husband tells you, fingers still holding on to small ones.
You sigh, a slow smile appearing. You pulled your fingers away from her hair. “Okay, little and big captain.” You then snickered behind your hand. “Let me prepare your blankie and your alligator on the couch.”
“Tick-tock the alligator?” She gasps with large doe eyes sparkling under the lamp and the low ambiance of Leon’s home office, “Can you also please bring Mister Hook. Thank you, mommy!”
You did what your little captain asked, left tender kisses on both of their cheeks, with extra kisses to your husband’s lips (to which he happily reciprocates) and your daughter’s chubby cheeks, bidding them goodnight.
"And no staying up late past 12, got it?"
She was fast asleep, the stuffed alligator and Captain Hook plushies had fallen off the couch. Her fruit-designed pjs and blanket were ruffled from the constant turning from her dreams. She was also clutching a heavily illustrated hardcover book of Peter Pan that she had gotten with Leon’s help reaching for it, from the office bookshelf earlier.
He smiles, a familiar warmth following in his chest, the weight of DSO paperwork being forgotten for a while. He slid out of his chair and turned his lamp off, slippers silent against the floor. He knelt down, his hands gently pulling the book away from her.
Her eyes fluttered. She let out a tiny puff of air through her nose, her blue eyes, staring down to a familiar set, cracking open just enough to register the room.
“Daddy?” She murmured with slurred confusion.
“Hi, peanut.” Leon whispers softly, thumb smoothing and feeling the plush of her cheeks. “C’mon, Let’s get you into your proper bunk, huh? A captain deserves her rest.”
The little one sleepily moves her hand around the creases of the couch where she was lying in, then stops, and then shows a paper with what seems to be an illustration of a map… in outer space?
“Oh? What’s this baby?”
“Treasure planet, daddy.” She sleepily replies, leaning into her father. “Will find it…tomorrow. It’s in the Hula-Hoop Ball planet….and, with the big red dot…’X’ marks the spot…”
Leon hides a chuckle, choosing to bury his face into her locks of hair, inhaling the strawberry shampoo you picked for her. He figured that his baby was just saying what her dreams were—full of pirates, treasures, cookies, and all those warm things, he hoped.
“Is that Jupiter, peanut?” He asks, trailing his finger on the ball with a red circular shape on its interior.
“Mhm…” She mumbles into his neck, breathing slowly down to a pattern. “Treasure…cookies…”
Leon lets out the chuckle. Oh, how his daughter was so adorable. A perfect blend of you and him. He stood up, shifting her weight until she was perfectly secure in the crook of his massive arm. Leon pauses for a moment, sinking in the present. He’s afraid that one day he blinks and then…his daughter won't be small enough to fit in his arms anymore. He shakes the thoughts off, that’s still in a decade or so.
“Treasure cookies, huh?” He repeats, walking out of the office and shutting the lights all the while holding his sleeping child.
“Got it. Sweet dreams, my little captain. I love you.”
‘The paperwork can wait.’ He smiles to himself and presses a kiss to his daughter’s hair.
As a total newbie in the fandom, I hardly know anything about the lore, but fell in love with these two. As I have seen this is a controversial ship, so please only read if you like this pairing. I also love to see Leon with any other characters, no ship shaming around my page.
Part 1, Part 2; Part 3, Part 4
Description: After the events in Rhodes Hill, both Grace and Leon try to move on with their respective lives. Not like they could forget about each other. Longing thoughts, intrusive ones, inappropiate ones. Must be one-sided, they think. He doesn't want to be weird, she doesn't want to be stupid. So Leon does the only thing he can justify. He brings flowers for International Women’s Day.
Tags: Soulmates, Comfort No Hurt, Survivor Guilt, Semi-slow burn, Falling in love, Explicit sexual content, Grace is a grown and competent woman, Younger Woman/Older Man, Domestic Fluff, They are sweethearts, Eventual smut, Body Worship, Oral sex, Vaginal sex, Blowjobs, Awkward flirting, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating
dividers credit: @strangergraphics
He watched her hands, the graceful little fingers curled around the semitransparent lemonade bottle. They tensed, then relaxed. The soft fuzz along her neck shimmered gold beneath the sunlight; the sun itself had begun drifting lower across the sky, a gigantic dandelion floating through a field of cheerful blue.
The arms he’d kept resting on his knees until now wrapped around Grace’s waist. Not tightly, because then he would have lost whatever remained of his self-restraint. The smoothness of her top against the youthful firmness of her stomach felt almost obscene beneath his rough palms, one knuckle still carrying the pale memory of a scar left by a scalpel. When had he gotten that one? Back in 2006? Spain?
Grace didn’t care about his scars, and even less about the possibility that maybe he should have been keeping himself under control. She offered him the bare line of her neck despite how cautious she usually was. A technical analyst always calculates risks.
“I am safe with you.”
Leon drew in a deep breath of her scent: almond, the flower crown perched atop her head, and the delicate sweetness of perspiration warmed by the sun. Being this close to her was wrong. Pressing his mouth against her skin, tasting her warmth and salt, was wrong.
It had been a fucking disaster from the very moment he started feeling this way about her, back in the middle of a burning chapel, when she looked up at him with those big, wet green eyes and cared only about Emily’s wellbeing. The way she'd said his name—
Leon!
—with relief he hadn’t earned at all back then.
Maybe never would.
Her clawing pleadingly against his thigh, holding his face even when it had been blackened by infection. She could’ve left him there, the wheezing old man who disgustingly wanted her, even while her eyes brimmed with tears, bruises and scratches covered her body, and panic barely let her breathe.
You sick fuck.
And now she fit in his arms far too perfectly, and the sweetest sigh in the world escaped her lips beneath the gruff scrape of his kiss against her neck.
Leon felt drunker than he ever had in his life, and his blue eyes were no excuse for it.
“Leon…”
“Yeah,” he murmured, his mouth still on her skin. Grace trembled so much he could almost have believed she was afraid, and he found himself stubbornly trying to decode her. This was so different from what he was used to—the bold sex appeal, putting a collar around his neck and handing out affection in measured portions so he would bark like a good boy. “Want me to stop?”
“No!” she responded immediately.
That wasn’t something he could misunderstand.
He wasn’t restraining her, only holding her. She could have pulled away, but Grace leaned into him instead like a tame cat aching for affection. Leon’s lips moved slowly, only brushing over her skin. He didn’t suck or bite, didn’t want to leave marks, only wanted to feel her.
A faint, damp shine remained in the wake of his kisses. When he reached the sensitive spot beneath her ear, he paused there, touching the soft little lobe with his nose and drawing a shy smile across Grace’s face.
Emily’s dandelion tumbled free from behind Leon’s ear.
Grace turned toward him, closing the last inches between them. Their foreheads knocked together lightly, and her lips searched for his with purpose.
Then Leon kissed her properly.
It was even sweeter than he had imagined, carrying the fruity imprint of her lipstick and her own taste. They opened for each other at the same time, deepening the kiss, and Grace cupped his face in her palm. Leon felt her slightly bitten-down nails scratch at the nape of his neck, pulling him even closer.
The tiny sound that broke from her shattered whatever strength he had left to dust. He was a feather in a tornado, a marshmallow held over a bonfire, something that could not have stood further from the reality of his everyday life, from gun holsters, death throes and guts smeared under his boots.
Weakness had never felt this comforting.
He had kissed women before, plenty of times, actually. Back at the academy, you practically couldn’t pry him away from his girlfriend’s mouth. Then Ada. Claire too, a few times, then neither of them ever spoke of that again. Women beside whom he occasionally woke up during his thirties, years spent mostly at airports, mission briefings, hospitals and rolling-drunk. Booze used to make him forget how dry and underwhelming emotionless sex felt for him. He hated looking them in the eyes afterward; hated hurting them, hated feeling hurt in return, just because God had given him this quirk of instantly getting attached after exchanging body fluids.
Grace’s kiss was pure. Free of planning, free of expectation, free of burdens. There was only desire sparkling in every little flutter of her, palpable, almost out there to taste and touch. So much so that it felt as if the meadow itself exhaled around them, lascivious scents breaking loose into the spring air.
The dandelion crown slipped forward over Grace’s forehead. Leon’s face fell back against her half-bare shoulder, his lashes sweeping softly against her skin.
“Hey.”
“H-hi,” Grace echoed, her voice hitching.
“I like this shirt.” Another small kiss against her neck. “For the record… I’m finding this a little suspicious.”
Grace nearly choked. “S-suspicious?”
“I mean… around now I usually either wake up, or some mutant Nemesis weed bursts out of nowhere.”
Her nails dug crescent moons into his scalp as Grace pulled him back in and kissed him again. She was rushed, self-conscious, pink blooming across the peaches of her cheeks, yet somehow Leon was the one forced to retreat. Grace tried to press closer, and it took every tactical instinct he possessed to let her do it without letting her notice how hard he was becoming in his jeans.
Goddamn Elpis… or Elpis da bomb. And bees. Dandelions ripe with seeds the wind could scatter in a million directions.
Grace was warm even through the blue fabric of her shirt. He could feel the flailing of her muscles under his hands, and Leon desperately tried not to wonder whether her pussy had got wet a bit for him. This was neither the place nor the time. Grace didn’t seem like the type who would ever be comfortable with something like that in public anyway, and he himself had aged out of that. Long ago.
Grace, pressed against a tree, back taut as a bowstring, blonde hair all messy, an FBI analyst and a DSO agent going at it like festival teenagers—
He broke the kiss and shifted awkwardly where he sat, heat flooding his face.
“Just got a little sunburned,” he improvised after noticing Grace’s searching eyes had caught the redness.
She stared at him for a moment.
Then she stifled a tiny grin.
“I see.”
“Grace—”
She covered her mouth with her palm, trying to swallow back her laughter. There was no escape for Leon S. Kennedy: the facts were clear. In the end, his downfall had not been some grotesque genetic experiment, a presidential-level conspiracy, or a chainsaw-waving fanatic, but a beautiful twenty-six-year-old woman who had placed her hand on his knee at the bottom of a garbage chute.
He tilted his head to the side, enjoying the way that delicate hand smoothed down the hair at the nape of his neck.
Leon had certain weak points. Terrorists and some of his haters at the DSO or BSAA would have sold their souls to learn them, though chances were they had never considered that bumper-to-bumper traffic moving at the speed of a snail might be one of them.
Leon sucked on his teeth and gripped the steering wheel near the airport exit ramp. Beside him, Sherry visibly wasn’t nervous about missing her flight. She had kicked off her ballet flats, her necklace resting against the collar of her white blouse. She no longer wore gloves. Leon still hadn’t managed to break himself of that habit.
A driver behind them leaned on the horn as if that would magically change anything. If Leon hadn’t loved the Porsche so much, he might have reversed straight into him.
“So. Matching tattoos.” He circled back to their earlier topic. Transparent film covered the tiny tattoo on the inside of her wrist, keeping it sterile: a little smiling half-avocado. “Whose idea was that?”
“Oh, don’t pull my leg.” Sherry shot him a sidelong look. “You two are just going to end up seeing each other later because of this.”
“I raised a real little gremlin.”
“Claire helped too.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “Also, you still haven’t told me a single thing about the picnic.”
Traffic lurched forward for maybe half a minute, and in the distance the outline of a descending Boeing became visible. Leon had crashed in planes like that before. Honestly, it would have taken less time to list things that hadn’t happened to him yet, though quite a few of those missing experiences had finally been crossed off on that sunlit meadow.
“It was a good idea. Thanks, kiddo.” He sent her a warm half-smile. “Emily loved it.”
“Only Emily?”
“You’re in remarkably good spirits when you’ve got a mind-numbingly boring conference waiting for you in fucking New York.”
“What’s wrong with New York?”
“Everything.”
“That isn’t an answer, Leon. And you failed to answer my previous question too.”
Sherry unwrapped one of the granola bars Leon had brought her. Among other reasons, she wasn’t worried about missing her flight because she knew he always thought of everything, as long as it wasn’t for himself. Just to be safe, Leon had shoved a paper bag full of painkillers, hand sanitizer, wet wipes, three granola bars, and a Subway sandwich into Sherry’s luggage.
You never knew.
“And Grace liked it too,” Leon finally answered, and that inevitably brought the memories of that day rising back to the surface. The frustration from the traffic melted away like ice under hot water. “And I kissed her. Or she kissed me. We’d need a sports referee to settle that.”
“Oh, that.” Sherry didn’t seem especially surprised, though after sending him eggplant emojis, pretending would’ve been ridiculous. “Good.”
“Let’s not blow this out of proportion, okay?”
“Not blow out of proportion the first healthy, amazing thing that’s happened to you since the Bronze Age?”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.”
Leon rubbed at his jaw. Sherry stayed quiet, only looking out the window, crumpling the granola bar wrapper into the pocket of her leather skirt. Leon knew that technique—oh, he knew it. Even as a kid she’d already been a master at squeezing the truth out of him through apparently disinterested silence.
Another airplane roared overhead nearby, this one heading toward the sheep-clouded sky.
“It really was,” Leon sighed. “The best thing that’s happened in a long time. In that sense.” He looked at Sherry for a moment, a soft light in his eyes. “Right after hearing you're recovering.”
Sherry touched his arm over his Hamilton watch and squeezed gently.
We’re in this together too, she had told him through the headset back in Gideon’s lab, when he’d been forced to face the cold facts. The worst part of dying had been knowing he couldn’t save his daughter from that ending either.
“You still taking the Oxy?”
“Way less now. I’m coming off it.” Then Sherry looked at him. “But Leon… I can tell you’re still chewing on something. Is it the age gap?”
At first, the answer was only a grunt, because he was wrestling with the parking machine.
The barrier lifted, and Leon smoothly backed the Porsche into a spot that looked available. He wasn’t entirely convinced parking was actually allowed there, but good luck to the poor soul who’d have the nerve to ticket him.
“It’s more complicated than that.” He pulled Sherry’s suitcase from the trunk and slid the handle free before handing it over. Sturdy, sand-colored, zip-locked—the Christmas gift from her boyfriend. “This is… a power thing. I know damn well what it’s like when control gets taken out of your hands. I know even better what it’s like when someone makes you think that’s good for you.” He averted his gaze. “Grace being attracted to me… maybe it isn’t even about me. You get it? She was under insane stress, and I came shambling in, throwing out my usual dumbass routine.”
“And you kind of fell for her.”
“Yeah, thanks for clarifying.”
He lit a cigarette, because at this point, there really wasn’t another option. The usual airport chaos unfurled around the terminal; suitcase wheels screeched over thresholds, the automatic doors tirelessly sliding open and shut. Armed guards with walkie-talkies paced back and forth, occasionally throwing suspicious glances toward rougher-looking travelers with a backpacks. Someone spilled their coffee.
“You know…” Sherry said, “if you're done demonizing yourself in forty different ways, I have a thought.”
“Forty?”
“At least.” She looked at him. “Listen, Grace isn’t eighteen, and she didn’t just fall out of a school desk. Yeah, she saw you handstand-kicking zombie heads off, but from what you told me, she also saw you as a disgusting drunk idiot. Facts are facts. Grace is raising a child. She’s not some confused little duckling that imprinted on you.”
Leon stared at the cigarette in his hand. It was probably time for him to quit too. “Very specific wording.”
“Just don’t make decisions for her. There are very few more irritating things you could do in a relationship like this.” They started toward the terminal, and Leon flicked the half-smoked cigarette into a storm drain. “The woman who yanks a piss-bucket over your head because you disappeared again like usual? She’s not being oppressed.”
Leon smothered a smile. There was something to that.
Grace didn’t only look at him with those impossibly cute, devotion-filled eyes when he was playing save-the-world with a shotgun in his hands. She looked at him like that while fumbling around with his herb plants, and awkwardly shuffling in front of her holding that Women’s Day bouquet.
No. He shouldn’t have thought about Ada. There was nothing in common between that story and this one. The silver ring on his finger reminded him never to confuse life-threatening danger with passion again, pain with destiny, care with whimsy.
Not in either direction.
“Oh.” His daughter’s voice yanked him back into reality. Sherry was grinning—not teasingly, but with genuine excitement. “You are lost.”
“No.”
“You’re in love.”
“Kiddo. I’m leaving you here.”
“Okay, I’m already where I need to be.”
Instead of answering, Leon just pulled her into a hug. “Go before you actually miss your flight.”
Sherry hugged him back, nodded, and thanked him for the ride. She pulled out her phone—maybe to coordinate the conference one last time, or maybe to call her mysterious boyfriend.
Partner, he corrected himself. A forty-year-old woman doesn’t have a boyfriend, right?
Hard getting used to that.
“Call her,” she ordered him with that real, smart Birkin smile. “After a first kiss she’s definitely checking her phone like a maniac, you old dork.”
The office felt especially soul-killing that day.
Most of Grace’s coworkers had been infected by the complaint-virus, which could be nearly as dangerous as some of the Progenitor variants. Between organizing and cataloguing two dozen crime scene photos, Grace listened to the struggles of dog-hair allergies, someone’s son applying to college, and several other things she immediately forgot.
Work wasn’t entirely to blame.
The photos had been taken in a half-burned building: zero casualties, but plenty of evidence of black-market activity and strange organic substances being sold. Another case handed to her because she was the initiated one—the FBI agent splashed over with a bucket of DSO-colored paint.
No. The real reason was that she’d been texting Leon under the desk. Leon Kennedy, with whom she had undeniably and irreversibly made out over the weekend, while Emily slept in the car beneath an emergency blanket cocoon, like an adorable little caterpillar.
Grace bit down on her finger as she replayed the film of that kiss in her mind again, for maybe the hundredth time now. Leon’s lips against her shoulder, against her neck—soft, unbelievably soft. Exactly like the way he spoke. Not a predator’s hunger, only warmth, only yearning, only the need to be closer to her.
That contradiction in him was agonizingly attractive.
Grace had done a little more digging too, and among other things found the database list of service vehicles assigned to Agent Leon S. Kennedy from 2010 onward. Cars totaled beyond repair. Motorcycles. SUVs. A bus. Even a goddamn airplane.
And this was the same man who always spoke to her so kindly, who even while kissing her seemed entirely preoccupied with making sure she felt safe.
The question of whether she felt safe around him wasn’t a problem. The danger was that she might explode from desire right there on the spot. Even in retrospect it gnawed at her that no matter how willfully she’d tried to curl closer against him, Leon had always pulled back a little.
Obviously to bring her back to her senses. Cool her down.
Because they couldn’t do anything... like that. Not there. Maybe not at all.
She was gawking at a selfie she'd somehow managed to talk Leon into taking. If it had been literally anyone else, it would’ve been terrible: shot from below, mildly confused expression, no filters, no flattering lighting, and a shower stall in the background.
Leon, however, wasn’t anyone else. And even in that amateur selfie, he looked so ridiculously handsome that heat immediately flared between Grace’s thighs. The thought crossed her mind that she could retreat to the restroom and take care of herself (not seriously, of course, because the very idea of getting caught already gave her a screaming panic attack).
She hurriedly pushed her phone beneath a pile of folders when an unexpected window flashed across her monitor.
Green, squared letters on a black background. Encrypted line. Not internal.
The computer didn’t label an intrusion, and Grace only had a wandering second to consider calling someone.
@>>>hunn>>miss ashcroft, perhaps someday over tea you could tell me how you managed to get access to fragments of Agent Kennedy’s files
@>>>hunn>>though not the interesting ones.
@>>>hunn>>these messages will disappear in fifteen seconds. don't worry, i'm merely the one who noticed you found this database with outdated security. since i happen to understand your motivations, let's overlook it
@>>>hunn>>please somehow convince Leon to finally sit his ass down and stop trying to get himself killed. goodbye
It felt as if the air had been sucked straight from Grace’s lungs. Her eyes widened, and for a moment she thought she might actually piss herself, despite having fought Lickers in close combat before.
She should’ve known the DSO would notice that she’d shown any interest at all in one of their agents, let alone one of their most high-profile ones. Their system probably flagged anyone who searched Leon’s name in anything even slightly more sophisticated than Google. Grace had a bit of an affinity for computers. Extra university courses, and a fair amount of autodidactic learning during a very long period of her life spent wrapped in blankets between four walls.
“JesusMary,” she groaned, and returned to the black-market case photos. Metal cases full of packets. Tweezers stained with tar-like liquid. Discarded protective gloves and goggles.
She didn’t dare check, but she suspected the mysterious messages had indeed vanished without a trace. Still, she looked around her cubicle out of reflex, but thankfully no one was paying attention to her, or what she was doing. Dempsey had the day off.
She only dared text Leon back once she was sitting in her car, a safe distance from coworkers and cameras. She’d also saved the picture of him.
Grace: Emily has classes tomorrow afternoon. Would you maybe have the time—and want—to finally do our gaming date?
Leon answered first with a thumbs-up emoji, and Grace couldn’t decide whether it was a teasing callback, or simply Leon being Leon. Had that agent told him Grace had been snooping? It had to be someone who knew him and liked him—but probably not his adopted daughter.
Sherry.
Neither of them knew her, yet both of them knew… about this thing between them. They surely had opinions about it, too. Under any other circumstances, Grace would have thrown herself headfirst into that pit and tortured herself sick with the certainty that people must despise and judge her, but looking at Leon’s clumsy selfie, such warmth flooded every inch of her that it buried those urges beneath itself.
Would he kiss her again?
When he dropped her and Emily off, all she had gotten was a modest little kiss on the cheek. But not once since then had he tried to deny it or explain it away — it had become the new status quo.
Leon: 👍
Leon: Before this comes up, this is not a passive-aggressive thumbs up. This is a yes on my part.
Grace: Who briefed you about texting etiquette?
Those three dots she simultaneously loved and hated hopped across her screen.
Leon: A reliable source.
His daughter, Sherry. One hundred percent, Grace concluded, and that instantly made the black window with green text flash through her mind again. She bumped her forehead against the steering wheel and, holding her breath, typed her next message at lightning speed:
Grace: Leon, I looked into some of your old files. not entirely legally
What are you doing, what are you doing?! Her heart was pounding in her throat, and it only got worse when the three dots appeared again, just to terrorize her. She couldn’t unsend it anymore. Damn it, but it was better if he heard it from her, right? What would it look like if Sherry spilled it? "That little twenty-something you’ve been making out with has been spying on you."
Oh no. Someone kill me.
Leon: Sunshine
I hope one of those files wasn’t how many service vehicles I’ve totaled.
Grace exhaled with such force she nearly coughed up her own heart with it. She turned the ignition and turned up the radio, needing something to dilute the silence inside the car. Nelly Furtado was singing at the top of her lungs about man-eating.
Grace: …
and there was a bus too, right?
Leon: Look, those were difficult times.
Grace started driving home before someone walked up to her car and asked why she was sitting there tomato-red, simultaneously panicking and grinning.
Like a complete lunatic.
She stopped by the local grocery store to buy ingredients for dinner (she’d promised Emily homemade tacos). She also bought herself a bottle of rosé, because after this she needed it.
Her phone buzzed again, and another photo arrived — another selfie. Leon on his couch (Grace recognized it: gray fabric, barely used, almost new, with long pendant lights hanging above it). Some sports broadcast played on the TV, only the corner visible. Sandy bangs hung over his forehead, his stubbled face resting against his fist.
Leon: See? I’m trying really hard.
Grace couldn’t answer. She was too busy saving the picture. Wallpaper material. Hundred-and-fifty-times enlargement straight onto the wall. She would’ve been ready to go to war with this photo taped to her helmet.
She only had to pick Emily up at six after physical therapy, so she had enough time to make dinner. She changed out of her black business suit into something more comfortable, but this delay apparently planted doubts in Leon’s mind.
Leon: I didn’t accidentally send a nude, did I?
Grace chortled. After the selfies she’d received, she couldn’t imagine Leon taking naked pictures of himself, but if she’d been a little braver than she was, she might’ve floated the topic.
So many times she wished she were more daring. That she could just say the thoughts that absolutely appeared in her mind instead of locking them behind iron bars with her anxiety.
She poured the pre-packaged taco shells onto the kitchen counter, trying to picture a dick pic from Leon. She knew he’d never send her something like that.
Unprompted, at least.
In the end, she replied with a blushing cat GIF.
Leon: So if you come over tomorrow... can I kiss you again?
To hell with all her coworkers, dog allergies, college applications, and especially the DSO servers. Grace squirmed where she stood like a newborn fawn that still hadn’t learned how to stay upright.
Because the question — Leon’s question — wasn’t whether he would kiss her.
It was whether he could.
She would have found her way there from memory, but Leon had given her the address anyway.
It was a modern, secure building with a twenty-four-hour concierge service. Black, glossy floors and extravagant decorations on the beige-and-gold walls that resembled three-dimensional braids. Even the elevator made no sound, as though a light breeze had simply carried her up to Leon. It suited him perfectly, and not because of the elegance: it was pragmatic, easy to defend, safe.
In the silence, Grace thought she could hear her blood racing through her veins, the pressure of hot liquid straining against elastic walls. Under her taupe jacket she wore a white blouse and a red corduroy pinafore dress with black tights, though she had changed her outfit more than three times before finally leaving home. She had only put on lip gloss, and even that sparingly, because Leon had mentioned kissing, and she hoped it would happen as soon as possible.
Because this was a date. There was no arguing with that anymore. Just the two of them. This was really happening: Grace stepping out of the elevator, and Leon already waiting there, standing in the open doorway. He wasn’t much taller than her, and yet he still felt enormous, gigantic compared to her, as his hand smoothed up her arm in greeting, and those biceps—whose shape the fitted black turtleneck concealed absolutely nothing of. The material looked incredibly soft, and Leon had rolled the sleeves up, so Grace could once again see the upraised veins, the dusting of hair trailing toward his wrists.
She grabbed onto him and rose onto her tiptoes.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Leon’s voice rang out, smoother than usual.
“M-me? Oh. N-no, not really.” She shouldn’t have said that, but who on planet Earth would have thought she was the prettier one between them?
Smiling, Leon maneuvered them inside while Grace remained latched onto his arm like she intended to stay there all evening. “Careful, step. Closing the door.”
The thick security door clicked softly shut. Leon helped her out of her jacket when she finally, reluctantly accepted she couldn’t spend the entire evening hanging off him like that.
“I had a plan.”
“Mmm?”
“That you’d come up, I’d say something funny, you’d laugh, and then I’d kiss you.”
Grace blinked up at him, lips parting. It could have sounded like a smooth charmer line if Leon hadn’t said it with visible embarrassment, scratching the back of his neck with his left hand. Suddenly he didn’t seem much older than her at all, and Grace found herself wondering, involuntarily, how many girlfriends he’d had before. With that face? She would have guessed armfuls.
“I l-liked it t-this way too,” she smiled, adjusting her glasses.
Everything around Leon smelled of cedar, bergamot, and something light and salty that was maybe the lingering trace of freshly made popcorn. His apartment had gained a little more color since Grace had last been there; an electric guitar and a landscape painting had appeared on the wall, and sealed military storage crates sat stacked near it. The little plants in the kitchen window still looked miserable, although he had managed to save the rosemary and parsley.
On the coffee table, beside a volume of Guns&Ammo left open, waited a large bowl of hot popcorn and two PS4 controllers. As Grace looked around, she could feel Leon watching her; at her neck, her back... and a little lower, too. The skirt only just covered her ass, and the neckline would have been very daring if not for the blouse underneath. The awareness made her cheeks heat, but it stroked her pride too.
“So, before I embarrass myself again—”
“A-again?”
“I just informed you I developed an actual strategy for kissing you, girl,” Leon hummed. A black belt circled his hips, and the cut of his black jeans was loose, a little 2000s. He took Grace’s hand; the coolness of his ring was paradoxically scorching against her burning skin. “If I remember correctly, I asked your permission for something.”
Grace nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck when she finally felt his lips against hers. It was slow, tentative, his fingers resting at her waist. Only then was she truly able to believe she hadn’t dreamed the whole thing in the meadow—that Leon really did thirst for her kiss, her scent, her, the result of one of Spencer’s horrific experiments.
The afternoon was still young. By the time they settled onto the couch, Leon tucked into the corner and Grace comfortably leaning back against his side, golden splinters of sunlight danced over their faces and hair, shining through the half-drawn curtains. The PS4 came to life with a familiar beep, and Grace examined Leon’s game library with sparkling eyes. She had to admit that while Leon’s list of neutralized mutant horrors was considerably longer, she had collected more platinums.
She had already been rambling about Elden Ring lore for twenty minutes before it hit her that someone might actually find this boring. Leon, however, only listened, faint crow’s-feet gathered around his cool blue eyes, his thumb absently circling the analog stick on the controller. He took her hand again and lifted it to his lips.
“So this is an Elden Lord’s hand.”
He kissed the backs of her fingers, and Grace swallowed the urge to launch into an explanation about the game’s different endings. Besides, who cared about any game at all when…
Leon launched COD in split-screen. Grace let out an appreciative whistle at the sight of his achievements and rank, though obviously there wasn’t much reason to be surprised. She felt sorry for the poor people the matchmaking system threw into lobbies with him—
—and then realized she was about to be his teammate, and immediately broke into a sweat.
Not long afterward she was shouting at bat frequency while her character ran frantically back and forth across the screen.
“LEON, B-BEHIND YOU!”
“I see him.”
“YOU D-DON'T SEE H-HIM! NO!”
Grace couldn’t see Leon’s expression, partly because she was using him as a backrest, and partly because she hadn’t taken her eyes off the TV at all. One thing was certain, though: he fired with complete cold-blooded composure, thereby inflicting severe emotional trauma on someone somewhere in the depths of the internet.
HEADSHOT. VICTORY.
“You can come out from behind the dumpster now,” Leon chuckled, his chest brushing against Grace’s shoulder blades. The light had turned amber over the passing hours, and half the popcorn was gone too, which was salted exactly the way Grace liked it.
“I-it was just strategy,” Grace retorted, but even with her competitive spirit flaring up again, one thing was obvious: Leon had been carrying these matches on his back. “Okay, y-you’re insanely g-good at this too. Is t-there anything you’re not?”
She set down the controller and reached for the popcorn bowl, but it unexpectedly slid farther across the table, onto the open magazine. Smiling to himself, Leon pinched a handful and shoved it into his mouth.
“Sorry, Sunshine.”
“Leon.”
“It’s a tax. Victory tax.”
Grace turned to face him, utterly incapable of hiding the curve tugging at her lips. Yes, axe-grinding Leon was appealing, and so was his sensitive, vulnerable self—but this impossible dipstick stealing popcorn from her outranked both by a mile.
For a long second she simply looked at him: the stunning hair falling over his forehead, the hands that had felt so wonderful touching her. She swung her tights-covered legs onto the couch, between the two of them, the tips of her toes brushing Leon’s shin.
She lowered her eyes, but regardless, her leg continued its sly journey. Pale skin showed faintly beneath the black tights, skin that bruised so easily, and beneath it Leon’s muscular thigh felt steel-hard. She lifted her other leg into his lap too, slowly, and dragged the sole of her foot along his inner thigh with a gentleness she could only hope was arousing.
The memory still lived vividly inside her of the moment she had massaged Leon’s aching toes, and how instantly wet his touch and his care had made her.
Leon froze. On the television screen his character collapsed, and maybe this was the first time he had lost, but he didn’t seem to care in the slightest. His controller joined Grace’s on the table, and he slid his hand over her ankle. His nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth to speak—but he didn’t say the first thing that came to mind.
“Grace, I’m afraid you have no idea how badly I want you.”
Grace drew in her lower lip. She didn’t dare speak because she was afraid she’d blurt out something that ruined everything—instead, she just kept stroking his thigh, a little higher this time. She saw Leon’s gaze flicker toward her leg, carrying that same thirst barely reined in as on that night when she’d brought him home from that putrid bar.
With feather-light gentleness, she brushed her foot against his crotch, and heat nearly raced down her spine when she felt the beginning hardness of Leon’s erection.
“Naughty.” Leon grabbed her waist and pulled her into his lap with irresistible force. Grace thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he scooped her up and rose to his feet with her, so effortlessly it was as though she weighed nothing at all. “The little lady spies on me, and afterward tries to kill the old man with her shapely little leg?”
“Oops,” Grace squeaked, her fingers tangling in Leon’s hair. She kissed him, nearly losing her glasses in the process.
Not long after, she found herself on her back on Leon’s bedsheets, which frankly deserved changing by now. From Grace’s perspective, though, in that moment he could have tossed her onto a pile of hay and she wouldn’t have cared. She propped herself up on her elbows and willingly let Leon firmly, yet gently, peel off her tights. He slowly rolled the nylon from her foot and immediately pressed his lips there afterward, scattering hungry kisses along her ankle, her calf, the edge of her knee.
“Beautiful,” he muttered, his large, broad hand gliding over her now-bare thigh. “Grace, tell me if—”
“I want it.”
It wasn’t entirely clear what exactly she meant by that, but it didn’t matter. Grace knew perfectly well that Leon would never knowingly do anything to her that didn’t feel good. Excitement left her barely able to breathe as Leon pushed up the corduroy skirt all the way to her navel, revealing her white panties decorated with little watermelon slices.
Fuck. At home she had thought they were cute. She hadn’t known how the afternoon would turn out, and she hadn’t wanted him thinking she had planned something. No lace, no thong, no strings. Still, she didn’t have long to dwell on it, because contrary to what she expected, Leon didn’t unbuckle his belt or climb over her. Instead, he knelt beside the bed, pulling her closer and hooking his fingers into the waistband of her panties.
“C’mere.”
Oh God oh God oh God
Her panties landed on the floor beside her tights, and in her embarrassment she immediately tried to snap her thighs shut, but Leon resisted. He spread her legs apart, staring at her as though she were a lavishly loaded buffet table, and then his eyes flashed.
“Leon, are you sure that—”
“Yes, Sunshine, I’m sure I want to taste your sweet pussy.”
He clasped his fingers around her thighs and drew an exploratory, wet stripe with his tongue along the line of Grace’s petals. Gently, he made his way in, finding her clit, tasting at first. When he traced the first circle over it, a muffled moan broke from Grace, and she grabbed the blanket beside her, jaw hanging slack. The sight alone—Leon with his head buried between her legs—was too much. Too perfect, especially with what he was making her feel.
Leon loved eating pussy, and it didn’t take a genius for someone to figure that out. He spoiled her with a devotion that seasoned every knowing movement. He closed his lips around Grace’s sensitive little spot and sucked at it, enjoying the way she trembled beneath his hands, trying more and more to rub herself against his face.
“Oh, fuck…”
Leon’s tongue found her entrance, sticky with her arousal to an almost embarrassing degree. He wet one finger, then his tongue wandered back to her clit while he first sank one knuckle inside her, then two. He started circling faster, sometimes sucking at her again, his finger moving in and out of Grace’s painfully throbbing pussy in a gentle but rhythmic pace.
Sounds escaped her she hadn’t even known she was capable of making. With one hand she tangled her fingers into Leon’s hair, trying not to pull, though she still ended up tugging it, and the sound that slipped into a groan against her thighs suggested he enjoyed it. Heat bubbled in Grace’s lower stomach, her breathing turning more and more ragged, her legs trembling around Leon’s head.
She screamed his name, humiliatingly loud, and came with her back arching into a curve. Looking down, she saw Leon lift his head and… his whole chin was slick with her. Embarrassed, she leaned toward him, still panting, and tried to wipe it away.
“Oh—”
“Relax, this isn’t cocoa powder,” Leon said, trailing his fingers over his chin.
Grace burst into laughter, disguising her embarrassment, and almost melted into the kiss Leon initiated. Still, she had to glance at her watch, which very clearly informed her she had only half an hour left to get back home to Emily.
She crept off the bed and stepped back into her panties. She waited for Leon to say something, but he didn’t seem like he had expected anything in return at all. He only looked at her, hands tucked into his pockets, face flushed and satisfaction obvious.
“Sorry, but… b-but l-later…”
“Shhh.” Leon smoothed down Grace’s tousled strands of hair. “You never have to apologize. Emily comes first. We’ll have plenty of chances for this.”
Grace searched for his eyes, but despite the easy, crooked smile on his face, she could feel something rippling beneath it.
No—not disappointment. Not expectation.
More like confusion, somehow, and Grace sincerely wished they had time to talk about it.
But Leon was right: the world’s time belonged to them now. They weren’t being chased anymore. They had each other now.
At the door she turned back toward him, her shoulders drooping a little.
“Did I d-do something w-wrong?”
“What?” Leon looked genuinely stunned. Horrified, even, by the thought alone; his palm immediately came up to cup her cheek. “No, Grace. Of course not.”
He pressed a light little kiss to her lips.
“You’ll text me when you get home?”
Grace rose onto her toes so she could breathe in the scent of his hair, eyes slipping shut.
Masterlist
AO3
Pairing: Leon Kennedy x Reader
Summary: Leon falls victim to the cat distribution system.
As an emergency vet, you have strict rules about giving out your personal number to clients. But when a soaking wet, broad-shouldered man walks into your clinic holding a shivering neonate kitten like it's a live grenade, you make an exception. Strictly for cat emergencies, of course.
(It does not stay strictly for cat emergencies. Not when he keeps using "suspicious sneezes" as an excuse to see you)
Content: Sick animals, grief and loss, burnout, alternating POV, no Y/N, fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, gentle romance, Leon becomes a cat dad, flirting, awkward Leon, domesticity, reader is a veterinarian, realistic vet med content
DM or Comment to join the taglist
The rain is a relentless, gray sheet that turns the Washington D.C. outskirts into a blurred watercolor of brake lights and misery.
Inside his Porsche Cayenne, Leon S. Kennedy feels the familiar, hollow hum of a post-mission comedown. His suit is wrinkled, his tie is loosened to the point of uselessness, and the smell of stale coffee and government-issued paperwork seems to have seeped into his very pores.
The debriefing had been a disaster. Four hours of bureaucrats in sterile rooms asking him to quantify the "unquantifiable horrors" he’d seen in a damp basement in Eastern Europe.
They want data; Leon just wants a drink and a decade of sleep.
"Note to self," he mutters, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely carries over the rhythmic thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers. "Next time Hunnigan calls with an 'easy' reconnaissance job, tell her I’ve retired to open a bakery. At least bread doesn't try to grow extra heads."
He’s doing sixty on the slick highway, his grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel light but practiced. His mind is already drifting toward the bottle of aged bourbon sitting on his kitchen counter—his only roommate in an apartment that’s too quiet and too clean.
It’s a dangerous headspace to be in. In his line of work, the moment you start looking forward to the end of the night is the moment something bites you.
Suddenly, the world narrows.
A flash of neon orange darts into the cone of his high beams. It’s small—too small for a deer, too erratic for a trash bag.
"Son of a—!"
Leon reacts before he thinks. It’s a muscle memory honed by years of dodging charging Ganados and careening through Raccoon City in a stolen cruiser.
He slams the brake pedal, the ABS system pulsing violently beneath his boot. The car skids, its tires screaming in a high-pitched protest against the wet asphalt. The back end fish-tails, a graceful but terrifying slide that Leon corrects with a sharp, disciplined jerk of the wheel.
The car lurches to a halt, the engine idling with a low, mechanical pant. Leon’s heart is hammering against his ribs, a frantic rhythm he usually reserves for when a Tyrant is breaking through a drywall.
"Great. Just great," he sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. "If I’ve totaled the suspension for a squirrel, I’m never living this down."
He throws the car into park and steps out. The rain hits him instantly, soaking through his dress shirt and plastering his blonde hair to his forehead. He rounds the front of the car, expecting to find a mess on the road. Instead, he sees a tiny, shivering lump huddled against the front passenger tire.
It’s an orange kitten. It couldn't be more than five weeks old, its fur spiked into pathetic, sodden needles. It looks less like a predator and more like a very angry, very wet dandelion.
Leon stares at it. The kitten stares back with wide, watery eyes, letting out a pathetic, high-pitched mew that sounds like a rusty hinge.
"You’ve got a real sense of timing, kid," Leon says, crouching down. The water is already pooling in his expensive shoes. "Of all the lanes in all the world, you had to walk into mine."
He reaches out, and the tiny creature tries to hiss. It’s a valiant effort, really—a miniature display of bravado that makes Leon’s chest ache with an unexpected, sharp tug of empathy.
He knows what it’s like to be small, cornered, and surrounded by things much larger and meaner than you.
"Easy. I'm not a zombie. Well, not on the weekends, anyway," he murmurs.
He sheds his suit jacket—the one that cost him more than an average paycheck—and scoops the kitten up. The creature is so light it’s terrifying; he can feel every individual rib beneath the soaked fur. It’s vibrating with a bone-deep chill. Without a second thought, he swaddles the kitten in the heavy fabric of his jacket, shielding it from the downpour.
Back inside the Porsche, the heat is blasting, but the kitten is still shaking. Leon sets the bundle on the leather passenger seat, watching as a tiny, pink nose pokes out from the lapel of his jacket.
"Come on, little guy," Leon mutters, his voice softening in a way he hasn't heard in years. "Don't clock out on me yet. I didn't almost wreck my favorite car just for you to quit now."
He taps the GPS on his dashboard with a frantic, wet finger. 24-hour emergency vet.
"Alright, hold on," he says, shifting the car back into gear. He glances at the kitten, who has now curled into a ball inside the jacket, looking exceptionally small against the vastness of the interior.
"I hope you like German engineering, because we’re about to break some speed records."
As he pulls back onto the highway, the bourbon is forgotten. His focus is entirely on the tiny, rhythmic rise and fall of the orange fur beside him. For the first time in a long time, the mission isn't about saving the world or stopping a virus.
It's just about making sure one small thing makes it to tomorrow.
──────•✦•──────
The clock on the wall of the treatment area mocks you. It’s 3:00 AM, the literal witching hour of veterinary medicine, where the cases are either bizarre, tragic, or a headache-inducing combination of both.
You take a sip of coffee that has reached a temperature and consistency best described as "over-brewed sludge," feeling it burn a slow path down your throat. It’s the only thing keeping your eyes open.
"The tulips really did a number on him," you mutter to Sarah, your lead tech, as you both stare down at a sedated domestic shorthair in cage four. "Bloodwork looks like a disaster zone. His liver’s basically thrown in the towel and headed for early retirement."
Sarah sighs, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses. "Are we starting him on the lactulose titration now?"
"Yeah," you say, your fingers dancing across the sticky keyboard of the workstation with a weary, mechanical rhythm. "And hang the fluids. I’ve already typed in the orders. Honestly? I could use a Propofol coma myself right about now. Just ten minutes of medically induced silence. Is that too much to ask of the universe?"
The chime of the front bell rings—a sharp, cheerful ding that feels like a physical blow to your sleep-deprived brain.
"The universe says yes," you grumble, pushing off the counter.
You catch a glimpse of the security monitor. Standing in the lobby is a man who looks like he just crawled out of a shipwreck. He’s soaking wet, broad-shouldered, and wearing a look of such raw, high-octane panic that your professional instincts override your exhaustion.
"Well," you mutter, adjusting your stethoscope around your neck. "This is going to be interesting."
You head out to the lobby, the smell of wet pavement and expensive leather hitting you before you even reach him. He’s striking—harsh jawline, blonde hair plastered to his forehead in messy clumps, and eyes a startling, piercing shade of blue that seem to be vibrating with adrenaline. He’s cradling a high-end suit jacket like it’s made of glass.
"Exam room one," you say, your voice blunt but not unkind. You don't wait for him to move; you lead the way, the squelch of his boots following behind you.
Once the door clicks shut, he gingerly places the jacket on the stainless steel table. "I found him on the highway," the man rasps. His voice is deep, underscored by a slight tremor he’s trying very hard to hide. "He almost... I almost hit him. I think he’s dying."
"Let’s see the damage," you murmur. You carefully peel back the wet fabric, expecting a gore-fest. Instead, you find a tiny, orange scrap of fur that lets out a pathetic, high-pitched squeak.
Your hands, practiced and steady, move over the tiny body. You grab a warm, chlorhexidine-soaked gauze to wipe away the road grime and grease. You check the gums—pale, but pinking up. You listen to the heart—fast, but steady. No broken bones. No internal bleeding. Just a very cold, very hungry little life.
"Good news, sir," you say, looking up at him. "He’s not dying. He’s just a dramatic, malnourished neonate."
"Leon," he corrects instantly, his voice slightly breathless. "Just... Leon."
You blink, then tap your ID badge with a tired, playful smirk. "Okay, Leon. We can do first names. It saves time in an emergency." You go back to drying the kitten with a soft towel. "He’s probably five weeks old. He’s thin, he’s got a bit of a chill, but he’s remarkably intact for someone who took on a car and won."
Leon sags against the counter, his hands shaking as he runs them through his wet hair. The relief on his face is so profound it makes your chest twinge with a rare spark of empathy. Usually, people are just annoyed about the bill. He looks like he just saw a ghost be resurrected.
"So, what happens now?" he asks. "You... you have a shelter? Or a rescue?"
You stop scrubbing and give him a long, grim look. "It’s kitten season, Leon. Every rescue within a three-state radius is currently overflowing. They won't take a bottle-baby right now. If I send him to the city shelter, his chances are... well, they aren't great."
The silence that follows is heavy, thick with the sound of the rain lashing against the exam room window. You watch the conflict play out across his face—a man clearly burdened by a world of "heavy" things, staring at a three-ounce kitten. He rubs his temples, looking at the orange scrap that is currently trying to burrow into his damp shirt.
"I don't know the first thing about cats," he admits, a dry, self-deprecating humor touching his lips. "I'm more of a... tactical entry kind of guy. Not a 'nanny' guy."
"You managed to not squash him with a car," you shrug, reaching into the cabinet to pull out a starter kit. "That’s a passing grade in my book."
He sighs, a long, defeated sound that ends in a nod. "Fine. I’ll take him. What do I do?"
For the next ten minutes, you give him the 'Neonatal 101' crash course. You pack a box with formula, tiny bottles, and a snuggle-safe heating pad. You show him how to hold the kitten—belly down, never on his back—and how to test the temperature of the milk.
"And here’s the best part," you say, a mischievous glint in your tired eyes. You pick up a cotton ball and dip it in warm water. "Since he’s this small, his mom would usually lick him to make him go. Since you are now the mom, you have to stimulate him to go to the bathroom after every meal."
You hand him the cotton ball. Leon stares at it as if you’ve handed him a live grenade with the pin pulled.
"I have to... what?"
"Stimulate," you repeat, suppressing a grin. "Gently. It’s glamorous, I know. Welcome to parenthood, Leon. Try not to get any on the suit."
The moment of levity is shattered when Sarah’s head pops through the door, her expression grim. "Doc, we’ve got a hit-by-car ten minutes out. It’s a Golden Retriever, multiple fractures, looks like he’s in shock. We’re prepping the crash cart."
The shift in your energy is instantaneous. The playful vet vanishes, replaced by the clinical commander. You reach for a pen stuck in your pocket and use it to shove your messy hair up into a makeshift bun, tightening the knot with a sharp tug.
"Copy that. Get the O2 ready and start a warm saline bag," you say, already moving toward the door. You look back at Leon, who is standing there holding a box of formula and a terrified-looking orange kitten.
"Leon, he's stable. Take the kit, go pay the tech at the front desk, and get that cat into a warm bed," you say, your voice now a sharp, professional staccato as the adrenaline begins to flood your system. "I’ve got a real crisis coming through those doors. Good luck. Don't be a stranger if he stops eating."
You don't wait for a goodbye. You're already sprinting toward the treatment area, the "Propofol coma" forgotten.
──────•✦•──────
The apartment is a monument to a man who expects to leave it at a moment’s notice and never return.
It’s located in a quiet corner of D.C., all cold granite countertops, brushed steel, and a sofa so ergonomically perfect and devoid of character it might as well have come with the lease. There are no photos on the walls. No stray mail on the entry table. The air usually smells of nothing but filtered ventilation and the faint, metallic tang of the gun oil he uses to clean his gun.
Now, it smells like kitten formula and desperation.
Leon sits on the edge of his bed, the glow of his phone illuminating the deep grooves of exhaustion etched into his face. He sets an alarm for 02:00. Then 04:00. Then 06:00.
"Great," he mutters, his thumb hovering over the save button. "I've gone from tactical extractions to a scheduled piss-watch for a creature that weighs less than a standard-issue magazine. My career trajectory is really peaking."
He looks down at the shoebox he’s lined with one of his softest, most expensive hoodies. Inside, the orange kitten—whom he has tentatively dubbed 'Cheeto' in a moment of sleep-deprived weakness—is a vibrating ball of fluff.
The 02:00 alarm blares with the subtle grace of a flashbang. Leon is upright in half a second, his hand flying toward the nightstand before his brain registers that he’s not in a trench in Edonia. He’s in a climate-controlled bedroom, and the only 'hostile' is a hungry five-week-old feline.
He stumbles into the kitchen, his movements stiff. The process of heating the formula is an exercise in agonizing precision. He uses a meat thermometer to ensure the liquid is exactly 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit. If it’s 98.4, he’s convinced the kitten will get hypothermia; if it’s 98.8, he fears he’s essentially serving lava.
"Okay, kid. Chow time. Don't make it weird," Leon whispers as he gathers the kitten into his lap.
His hands—hands that have steadied a sniper rifle in high-wind conditions and punched through the reinforced glass of Umbrella laboratories—are shaking slightly. He holds the tiny plastic bottle like it’s a detonator with a frayed wire.
When the kitten finally latches, a frantic, rhythmic tug-tug-tug vibrating through the silicone nipple, Leon finds himself holding his breath.
"Easy there, tiger. It’s a buffet, not a race," he says, a small, lopsided smirk tugging at his mouth. "You eat like a zombie at an all-you-can-eat brain buffet."
The "glamorous" part comes next. Leon stares at the box of cotton balls you had handed him with that knowing, mischievous glint in your eyes. He can still see your face—the way your hair was a mess, the way you didn't even flinch when he walked in looking like a drowned rat.
You had looked at him like he was just a guy, not a government asset, not a survivor. Just a guy with a cat.
"Stimulate," he repeats your words, his voice a flat, dry monotone. "She said it would be fun. She lied. I’m definitely filing a complaint with the veterinary board for emotional distress."
He performs the task with a grimace of intense concentration, murmuring apologies to the kitten the entire time.
By day three, the "sterile" nature of the apartment has surrendered. There are half-washed bottles in the sink. A trail of discarded paper towels leads from the sofa to the trash. A stray sock, mangled by tiny needle-teeth, sits in the middle of the hallway.
Leon should be annoyed. He should be furious that his sanctuary has been breached by an orange chaos-agent. But as he sits on the sofa at 4:30 AM, watching the sun begin to bleed over the D.C. skyline, he realizes his internal monologue has gone quiet. The anger—that low-simmering hum of PTSD that usually keeps him company in the dark—has been drowned out by a tiny, motorized purr.
The kitten crawls up his chest, stumbling over the buttons of his shirt, and tucks its head directly under Leon’s chin. The fur is soft, smelling faintly of the soap you’d used to clean him.
Leon freezes, his arms hovering awkwardly for a moment before he slowly, tentatively, rests a hand over the kitten’s back. He feels the tiny heart beating against his own.
For the first time since the world ended in a rain of missiles over Raccoon City in 1998, the crushing weight in his chest feels... lighter.
"I think the vet might be onto something, Cheeto," Leon breathes into the quiet room, his eyes heavy with a sleep that feels, for once, like it might be dreamless. "But don't tell her I said that. She already thinks I’m a pushover."
He closes his eyes, the minimalist apartment finally feeling like something it has never been before: a home.
──────•✦•──────
The fluorescent lights of the clinic are humming at a frequency that is starting to feel like a drill against your temple.
You’re leaning your lower back against the cabinetry of the pharmacy station, clutching a lukewarm cup of coffee like it’s a holy relic.
"I mean it, Sarah," you mutter, watching your tech draw up meds with terrifying efficiency. "One more pyometra. Just one more emergency spay where the uterus looks like it might burst, and I’m done. I’ll donate my scrubs to a thrift store and start a new life. Maybe I’ll go into accounting. Numbers don't bleed on your shoes or try to bite your face off.'"
"You’d be bored in a week," Sarah chirps, not even looking up. "Besides, you love the drama. Oh, speaking of drama—look who’s back."
The front bell dings. You peer around the corner. It’s Leon.
He looks like he’s been through some shit. The rugged, leading-man handsomeness is still there, but it’s buried under a layer of profound sleep deprivation. He’s got dark, bruised circles under his eyes that rival your own, and his blonde hair is a mess of spikes. But then you look at his hands.
He’s holding that plastic carrier with a level of tenderness that is honestly offensive. It’s like he’s carrying a box of nitroglycerin.
"Room two," you tell Sarah, snapping into a professional mask that is mostly held together by caffeine and sheer stubbornness.
You walk into the exam room and find him standing by the table, looking at the carrier like it’s a bomb he forgot how to disarm.
"Back for more punishment, Leon?" you ask, your voice dropping into that comfortable, blunt cadence. "You look like you’ve been living in a war zone. Which, granted, is a normal Tuesday for a kitten owner."
"He doesn't stop," Leon rasps, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that makes your nerve endings tingle. "I followed the schedule. I monitored the intake. But he just keeps screaming. Is he broken?"
"It’s called meowing, Leon. It’s how they demand your soul." You reach into the carrier and scoop out the orange scrap. He’s already gained weight; his belly is a round, healthy little pear, and his eyes are bright. "Wow. Look at you. You’ve actually kept him alive. I’m impressed. Most guys usually give up by the third bottle feeding."
"I don't like failing assignments," Leon mutters, though there’s a flicker of a lopsided smile on his face as he watches you examine the tiny creature.
You perform the check-up, checking the heart rate and the lungs, all while Leon stands way too close. He smells like woodsmoke and laundry detergent, a combination that is currently frying your brain.
You praise him for the kitten’s hydration levels, and you see his shoulders drop about two inches in relief.
As you move to pack the kitten back into the carrier, Leon starts firing off a string of hyper-specific, borderline neurotic questions.
"The water for the formula—I’ve been using a thermometer to keep it at exactly 98 degrees. Is 98.5 too high? Does it cause thermal shock? And the cotton balls—are the quilted ones too abrasive for his skin?"
You stare at him. This man is currently worried about the abrasive quality of a CVS-brand cotton ball. It’s the most endearing thing you’ve ever seen, and your filter—already weakened by a twelve-hour shift—completely disintegrates.
He’s hot, your brain shrugs. He’s a good dad. And you haven't been on a date in ages. Just do it.
"Leon," you interrupt, putting a hand on his arm to stop the frantic flow of questions. The muscle beneath his sleeve is hard as a rock, and the heat of him makes your palms itch. "Stop. You’re doing great. The cat is thriving. You, however, look like you're about to have a stroke."
He pauses, looking a little sheepish. "I just... I don't want to mess it up."
"You won't." You reach over to the counter, grab a neon-pink sticky note and a pen, and scribble your personal cell number on it. You press the note into his large, calloused palm, your fingers lingering just a second longer than necessary.
"Look," you say, flashing him a playful, slightly crooked smirk. "If you have any more midnight panics about formula ratios or quilted vs. non-quilted cotton, just text me. Strictly for cat questions, of course. My expertise is limited to things with four legs, but I can talk you off a ledge."
Leon stares at the pink paper in his hand like it’s a piece of top-secret intel. He looks up at you, his blue eyes searching yours, and for a second, the sarcastic vet and the stoic man are just two people standing in a cramped room with a tiny cat.
"Strictly for cat questions," he repeats, his voice low and a little amused.
"Obviously," you say, walking him toward the door. "I'm a professional, Leon. Now get out of here and go take a nap before you face-plant in the lobby."
As he walks away, you lean against the doorframe, watching the swing of his shoulders.
"What was that?" Sarah asks, appearing out of nowhere with a smirk.
"Professional consultation," you mutter, taking a final, cold sip of your coffee.
Oh god, what did I just do? If he texts me a picture of his cat's poop at 2:00 AM, I'm never living this down.
──────•✦•──────
Leon is a man who understands protocol. He understands mission parameters, chain of command, and the strict rules of engagement. So, when you handed him that sticky note with your number on it, his brain filed it under a very specific, very restricted category: Emergency Technical Support.
He spends the better part of forty-eight hours staring at the digits, convinced that a woman like you—someone who handles life-and-death crises with a sarcastic quip and a steady hand—has better things to do than talk to a government-sanctioned blunt instrument like him.
You’re light, and full of life, and you probably have a social circle that doesn't involve handler-reports and ballistic testing. In Leon’s mind, you are firmly out of his league, occupying a world that isn't stained by the things he’s seen.
But then, the kitten—Cheeto—starts doing things. Weird things.
His first text is sent at 11:30 PM. He attaches a grainy photo of the kitten standing in the middle of the hallway, arched like a Halloween decoration, scuttling sideways with a chaotic energy that Leon can only describe as "biological anomaly."
Leon: He’s moving at a forty-five-degree angle and his tail looks like a pipe cleaner. Is this a neurological tremor? Do I need to bring him in for an MRI?
Your reply comes three minutes later, and Leon feels a pathetic jolt of electricity at the buzz in his pocket.
You: Leon, he’s just playing. It’s called crab-walking. He’s trying to look big and scary. Is it working?
Leon looks at the kitten, who has just tripped over its own paws and face-planted into the carpet.
Leon: I’m terrified.
By Thursday, the anxiety reaches a fever pitch. Leon is sitting on his bed, watching the kitten knead a fleece blanket with a rhythmic, intense focus. He doesn't text this time. He calls. He needs a professional voice to talk him off the ledge.
"He's vibrating," Leon says the moment you pick up, his voice a deadpan, military monotone that betrays the fact that his eyes are currently dinner-plate wide. "The whole cat. He’s vibrating and poking the blanket with his claws. It’s some kind of repetitive motor reflex. Is he having a seizure? Should I be checking his airway?"
He hears you let out a long, melodic breath on the other end—a laugh you’re trying to stifle.
"Leon," you say, and the way you say his name makes him grip the phone a little tighter. "He's making biscuits. He's purring. It means he's happy. It means he thinks the blanket is his mom."
Leon looks down at the orange fluff currently 'baking' against his thigh. "Making biscuits. Right. So it’s a culinary instinct, not a medical emergency. I’ll cancel the medevac."
"Please do," you chuckle. "Go to sleep, Leon."
But sleep doesn't come easily. The climax of his "cat-dad" neurosis hits at 1:00 AM on Saturday. Cheeto had been particularly enthusiastic about his bottle, guzzling the formula until his stomach was a hard, round little marble. Afterward, the kitten had simply... collapsed.
He’s sprawled out on his back, limbs limp, unresponsive to Leon’s frantic prodding.
Leon’s heart is in his throat. He hits the FaceTime button before he can talk himself out of it.
The screen flickers to life, and suddenly, you are there. You’re in your pajamas—something soft and mismatched—and your hair is a magnificent, messy bird’s nest that tells him he definitely just woke you up. You look soft, blurry around the edges, and devastatingly beautiful in the low light of your bedroom.
"Leon?" you mumble, squinting at the screen. "Is everything okay?"
"He’s unresponsive," Leon says, his voice dropping into a low, intimate rasp of genuine distress. He turns the camera toward the kitten. "He’s just... lying there. I tried poking his paw and he didn't even hiss. I think I broke him."
You lean in closer to the camera, your eyes scanning the image. Then, you smile. It’s a gentle, warm expression that makes Leon’s apartment feel ten degrees warmer.
"Just a milk coma, Leon," you explain softly. "Look at that belly. He’s just full. He’s passed out in a food haze. He’ll be up and terrorizing your curtains in two hours."
Leon sags back against his headboard, the adrenaline draining out of him and leaving a hollow, aching exhaustion in its place. He covers his face with one hand, letting out a jagged sigh.
"I'm a disaster at this," he admits, his voice sounding raw even to his own ears. "I've faced things that—things that shouldn't exist—and I'm losing my mind over a cat that's just... full."
"It's because you care," you say. There’s no mockery in your tone, no punchline. Just a simple statement of fact that cuts right through his armor. "Most people would have just ignored him on that road, Leon. You didn't. You’re a good man. Even if you are a neurotic cat-dad."
Leon lets the words sink in. A good man. He hasn't felt like one in a long time. Usually, he’s just a weapon that the government points at problems.
"A 'cat-dad,'" Leon repeats, a dry, self-deprecating smirk appearing as he looks back at the screen. "Is there a badge for that? Or do I just get a lifetime supply of lint rollers and a permanent coating of orange fur on all my tactical gear?"
You laugh—a real, bright sound that echoes through his quiet bedroom. Leon finds himself staring at the screen, watching the way your eyes crinkle at the corners, the way a stray lock of hair falls over your forehead.
He realizes, with a sudden, jarring clarity, that he’s stopped looking at the kitten. He’s just looking at you.
The silence stretches, becoming something heavy and electric. Leon realizes he’s spent the last forty-eight hours coming up with increasingly flimsy, ridiculous reasons to see your name light up his phone.
He isn't worried about the cat anymore. He’s worried about how much he doesn't want to hang up.
"You look tired," he says softly, his thumb tracing the edge of the phone. "I should let you get back to sleep. Sorry for the... milk coma false alarm."
"It’s okay, Leon," you say, your voice dropping to a sleepy, tender murmur. "Call me anytime. Even if it’s just for biscuits."
As the screen goes black, Leon stares at his own reflection in the glass.
He’s a mess. He’s a DSO agent who just got called a "good man" by a woman who makes him feel like he’s eighteen again, before the world turned into a horror movie.
He looks at the sleeping kitten and then at the phone.
"You've failed miserably, Kennedy," he whispers to the empty room. "You’re definitely flirting now."
──────•✦•──────
The daily text updates from Leon have become the highlight of your grueling, twelve-hour rotations—a digital breadcrumb trail of "cat-dad" neurosis that you’ve come to rely on more than caffeine. What started as a clinical safety net has morphed into a steady stream of orange-furred chaos. You find yourself smiling at your phone in the middle of the surgery prep, looking at a blurry photo of a kitten stuck in a tissue box.
But lately, the digital interaction isn't enough for him.
"He’s back," Sarah, your tech, sings out from the pharmacy area. She leans against the doorframe with a devious, toothy grin. "The hot brooding guy with the orange accessory is in the lobby. Third time this week. What’s the 'emergency' today? A crooked whisker? A suspicious meow?"
"Shut up, Sarah," you mutter, though you can feel the heat crawling up your neck. You instinctively reach up to smooth a stray hair back into your ponytail.
"Oh, please. You’re wearing the 'fancy' scrubs and you actually used mascara today. I see you," she teases, checking the clipboard. "He’s here for... a bag of gastrointestinal kibble. The kind we sell for a 20% markup that he could literally Prime-deliver to his door in four hours."
You roll your eyes, grabbing a clean lab coat. "Maybe he just likes supporting small businesses."
"Maybe he likes supporting your specific business," she retorts, following you toward the lobby. "The girls in the back have a pool going. Twenty bucks says he asks for your number by Friday. Fifty says he’s already got it and he’s just a massive coward."
"I don't think 'coward' is in his vocabulary," you whisper, though your heart is doing a rhythmic thud against your ribs that feels suspiciously like a drumroll.
You push through the double doors and there he is. Leon stands near the display of prescription diets, looking entirely too large and too handsome for a sterile veterinary lobby. He’s wearing a charcoal sweater that hugs his shoulders in a way that should be illegal, his blonde hair perfectly tousled despite the humidity outside.
"Leon," you say, your voice landing in that sweet spot between professional and playful. "Don't tell me. He’s developed a sudden, life-threatening allergy to his own tail?"
Leon turns, and the way his blue eyes light up when they land on you makes your stomach do a slow, dizzying somersault. He clears his throat, shifting his weight. He looks incredibly cool until he opens his mouth, and then that slight, charming awkwardness leaks out.
"He sneezed," Leon says, his voice a serious, low rumble. "Three times in a row. It was... rhythmic. I thought it might be the early stages of a respiratory collapse. Or a dust mite allergy."
You walk over, taking the carrier from him. Your fingers brush against his—just for a second—and you feel the static electricity zip up your arm. You peek inside at the kitten, who is currently busy trying to eat a loose thread on his bedding.
"He looks like he’s on death’s door, truly," you say, your voice dripping with dry sarcasm. "The 'rhythmic sneezing' was likely just him being a cat, Leon. But since you’re here, I suppose I can perform a very expensive, very rigorous five-second nose check."
"I also needed food," he adds quickly, gesturing to the shelf. "The bag I have is... getting low. Maybe."
"You have half a bag left at home, don't you?" you ask, tilting your head, a smirk playing on your lips.
Leon stays silent for a beat too long, his gaze dropping to your name tag before meeting your eyes again. "I like the atmosphere here," he says, a bit of that one-liner bravado returning. "Very... clinical. Good lighting."
"Right. Everyone comes to the vet for the 'ambiance' of barking dogs and the smell of anal glands," you retort. You lead him to the counter, ringing up the overpriced kibble. You’re acutely aware of the techs watching from the window, probably exchanging silent high-fives.
You feel a pang of doubt as you hand him the receipt. A guy like this—rugged, mysterious, probably used to high-octane thrill-seekers—couldn't possibly be interested in you.
You’re a woman who spends her days getting peed on by Chihuahuas and her nights smelling like antiseptic and wet fur. You’re exhausted, your under-eye circles are permanent residents, and your social life is a graveyard.
But then Leon reaches out, his hand hovering over yours for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary as he takes the bag.
"Thanks," he says softly. The way he says it isn't like a client. It’s a low, intimate vibration that makes the bustling clinic fade into the background. "I’ll... let you know if the sneezing returns. Or if he looks at me funny."
"I'm sure you will," you say, your bluntness softened by a gentle, tired smile. "Go home, Leon. Your cat misses you."
As he walks out, his stride confident and his shoulders broad, you lean against the counter and let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.
"Twenty bucks!" Sarah yells from the back. "He’s totally into you, Doc! He’s just waiting for the cat to give him the green light!"
You just shake your head, looking down at the counter where he stood. You find yourself hoping the kitten sneezes again tomorrow. Just once. Just to be safe.
──────•✦•──────
The air in the treatment area is thick with the scent of antiseptic, metallic blood, and the heavy, lingering stillness of the recently departed. You’re standing over the stainless steel prep table, your hands steady despite the tremor of exhaustion in your knees as you pull the heavy plastic of a cadaver bag over a sweet, senior Greyhound who just couldn't fight any longer.
"If the shift keeps up like this, we're going to run out of freezer space," your tech, Marcus, sighs, his voice flat with the kind of gallows humor that keeps hospitals running at 2:00 AM.
"Don’t," you whisper, zipping the bag with a sharp, final schlick. "I hate this part the most. Every time. Packing up someone’s best friend in a glorified trash bag. It’s a hell of a way to say goodbye."
You lean your forehead against the wall for just a second, letting the grief wash over you and then drain away. You have to stay empty. If you let the "sad" stay in your lungs, you’ll drown.
Then, the front bell doesn't just chime—it screams. Someone is leaning on it.
You’re moving before you even think, your clogs squeaking on the linoleum. You burst into the lobby and stop dead.
It’s Leon. But the charming, awkward "cat-dad" who buys too much kibble is gone. In his place is a man who looks like he’s standing in the middle of a war zone. His face is pale, his eyes are blown wide with a jagged, frantic terror, and his chest is heaving.
He isn't holding a carrier. He’s holding the orange kitten against his chest, his large hands trembling so violently you can see the tremors from the doorway.
"Please," Leon chokes out. The sound is raw, a jagged piece of glass in his throat. He thrusts the limp, tiny body toward you. "I can't—don't let him die. Please. Not him too."
The kitten is a wet rag. His breathing is a shallow, agonizing rasp—the "guppy breathing" that makes every vet’s blood run cold.
You swear under your breath and snap into action the internal "vet-mode" slamming into place. You snatch the kitten and sprint back through the swinging doors. "Marcus, get the O2 cage prepped! I need a 24-gauge IV and a dose of dex. Now, move!"
For the next twenty minutes, you are a machine. You slide the needle into a vein thinner than a piece of thread. You listen to the crackle in the tiny lungs—pneumonia. Aspiration, likely. The kitten is tucked into the oxygen-rich plexiglass box, a tiny, fragile heartbeat under a mountain of IV lines and telemetry wires.
You finally step back, wiping a smear of blood off your thumb. You look toward the door. Leon is standing in the entryway of the treatment area, looking utterly lost. He’s hovering in the "no-man's land" between the lobby and the sterile zone, his hands still curled as if he’s holding a ghost.
"He’s in the cage, Leon. Steroids, antibiotics, and oxygen," you say, your voice softening as the adrenaline begins to ebb. "It’s touch-and-go. The next six hours are the decider. You should go home. Get some sleep. I’ll call you the second anything changes."
Leon doesn't move. He just looks at the floor and then slides down the wall, his long legs stretching out across the cold linoleum directly in front of the kennel bank.
"I'm staying," he says. It’s not a request. It’s a directive.
"Leon, I have four other critical patients in here trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not exactly a five-star hotel," you say, trying to inject a bit of your usual dry bite into the air to break the tension.
"I don't care," he mutters, leaning his head back against the cages.
You leave him there because you have to. You spend the next three hours wrestling with a diabetic ketoacidosis cat and a bloated Doberman. Every time you pass the kennel ward, you see him sitting on the floor like a dejected kid, watching the rhythmic puffing of an orange kitten in a plastic box.
Around 5:00 AM, you find a lull. You walk over and nudge his boot with your clog.
"Leon. Seriously. The floor is disgusting, and you look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin. Go home."
He looks up at you, and the sheer weight of the shadows under his eyes hits you. "Sometimes," he says, his voice a low, hollow echo, "I feel like I can't save anyone. Not my teammates. Not the people I’m sent to protect. And now... not even a cat."
You feel the breath hitch in your throat. You slide down the wall next to him, your shoulder brushing his. The warmth of him is startling against the sterile chill of the room.
"You and me both, Leon," you sigh, staring at the rows of monitors. "The 'God complex' they give us in vet school is a lie. Most days, we’re just finger-plugging a leaking dam."
Leon looks at you, his gaze intense. "Sorry. I shouldn't... this has been a hell of a shift for you, hasn't it?"
"They all are," you say, leaning your head back. "Some just have more body bags than others."
──────•✦•──────
Your shift officially ends at 7:00 AM. Your relief vet walks in, and you should leave. You should go home, take a scalding shower, and sleep for a week. But you don't. You go to the break room, grab two lukewarm coffees, and walk back to the floor.
You sit down next to Leon again.
"You're still here," he notes, a ghost of a smile touching his lips.
"I’m a glutton for punishment," you mutter, handing him the cup.
For the next hour, the barriers crumble.
You find yourself telling him about the "soul-crushing" parts—the people who bring in their pets to be euthanized because they’re moving, the neglect cases that make you want to break things. But then you tell him about the good parts—the dog that woke up after three days of a coma, the kitten that beat the odds.
Leon listens with a terrifyingly focused intensity. He doesn't interrupt. He just watches you speak, his blue eyes mesmerized by the way you navigate the darkness of your profession without letting it turn you cold.
"You’re a lot stronger than you look," he says softly.
"I'm not strong, Leon. I'm just stubborn," you retort, nudging him with your shoulder. "But thanks. You’re not a bad listener."
──────•✦•──────
Leon is no stranger to stakeouts.
He’s spent weeks in cramped vans eating lukewarm rations, and he’s spent months in damp trenches waiting for a target to blink. But this? Sitting on a stool that’s three inches too short for his frame, staring into a plexiglass box at a creature that weighs less than his handgun? This is the most grueling mission of his career.
Over the next week, the clinic becomes Leon’s base of operations. He shows up at the start of your night shift and doesn't leave until the sun is high enough to make his eyes ache. He’s become a fixture in the kennel ward—the tall, brooding man in the leather jacket who looks like he could snap a neck but spends four hours straight whispering to a kitten with a congested nose.
You become the highlight of his vigil.
Whenever the clinic settles into that eerie, midnight lull, you find him. You don't just check the charts; you check on him. You start bringing him half of your sandwich—usually something with way too much sprout-to-protein ratio for his liking, but he eats it like it’s a five-star meal because you made it. You sit on the floor next to his stool, your shoulder occasionally brushing his knee, and the contact sends a low-voltage jolt through his system that he’s doing a poor job of ignoring.
"You look like you're trying to intimidate the pneumonia into leaving," you murmur one Tuesday at 3:00 AM, sliding a container of pasta toward him. "I hate to tell you, but bacteria doesn't care about your 'scary agent' eyes."
Leon takes the plastic fork, his thumb grazing yours in the exchange. He lingers for a second too long, his gaze dropping to your lips before he catches himself and looks back at the kitten.
"I’m just providing overwatch," Leon grunts, though his tone is fond.
The conversation drifts, as it always does, into the quiet, heavy things. You talk about the "little miracles"—the paralyzed dog that wagged its tail for the first time today, the elderly cat that finally started eating. You speak with a weary, glowing passion that Leon finds intoxicating.
He realizes he’s spent years surrounded by people who are hollowed out by their work, but you? You’re tired, sure, but your heart is still terrifyingly intact.
The weight of his own secrets starts to feel like a physical burden. He’s used to being a ghost, a name on a redacted file. But sitting here in the dim light of the clinic, with you looking at him like he’s someone worth knowing, the lie feels like a wall he’s tired of leaning against.
"I don't just do 'security,'" he says suddenly. The air in the room shifts. He stares at the oxygen monitor, his voice dropping into that professional, gravelly register. "I work for the DSO Division of Security Operations. Directly under the President."
He waits for the shift in your expression. He’s seen it before—the way people’s eyes go cold when they realize he’s a professional dealer of death, or the way they start prying for gruesome details like he’s a character in a movie. He explains the bio-terrorism, the BOWs, the constant cycle of violence that has defined his life since the night he drove into Raccoon City as a rookie cop.
He braces for the disgust. For you to realize that his hands, the ones that have been helping you bottle-feed a kitten, are stained with things you couldn't imagine.
Instead, you just take a slow bite of your sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. You look at him with a gentle, tired smile that makes his breath hitch.
"So, you fight bio-weapons," you muse, leaning your head back against the cold kennel. "I guess that means we have the same primary skillset."
Leon blinks, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Which is?"
"We both try really hard not to get bitten on the clock."
Leon stares at you. He waits for the punchline, for the horror, but all he sees is your playful, sparking gaze. A laugh bubbles up in his chest—not the dry, sarcastic bark he uses to deflect trauma, but a genuine, soft sound that echoes off the metal cages. It’s a sound he hasn't heard from himself in years.
"That’s... one way to put it," he says, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. The heavy weight he carries every day feels, for a moment, like it’s been halved.
"I'm serious," you say, laughing softly as you nudge his arm. "I've seen the teeth on a grumpy Malamute, Leon. I think I could handle a zombie."
"Don't test that theory," he says, but he’s smiling now—a real, lopsided Kennedy smirk.
He looks at you, and the tension that’s been simmering for weeks suddenly boils over. The ward is quiet, the only sound the hum of the oxygen machine and the soft rain against the window. You’re close—close enough that he can see the gold flecks in your eyes and the way your scrub top dips at your collarbone.
Leon reaches out, his hand hovering near your face before he loses his nerve and settles for tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. His fingers linger on the skin there, warm and soft, and he sees your breath hitch.
"You're a strange woman," he whispers, his voice thick with a sudden, heavy longing.
"And you're a very dramatic cat-dad, Leon," you whisper back, not pulling away.
For a second, the mission, the BOWs, and the world outside don't exist. There’s just the smell of antiseptic, the hum of a kitten’s recovery, and the terrifying realization that he’s falling for you faster than he ever fell into a trap.
──────•✦•──────
The dawn light is a sickly, pale yellow as it bleeds through the clinic’s high windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing over the surgical bays. You feel like a ghost inhabiting a body made of lead and caffeine. Your neck cricks as you stand up from the floor, your joints popping in a rhythmic protest that sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies.
Leon is still there. He’s slumped on that too-small stool, his head bowed, his hands clasped between his knees. He looks like a man waiting for a verdict from a hanging judge.
"Alright," you murmur, your voice sounding like it was dragged over gravel. "Let’s see if the little guy is ready to join the land of the living."
You walk over to the incubator. The hum of the oxygen concentrator has been the soundtrack to your week, a mechanical heartbeat that you’ve grown to loathe. You unlatch the plexiglass door with a soft click.
Inside, the orange scrap of fur is no longer a limp rag. He’s sitting up, his head wobbly, his copper eyes half-open.
"Hey, tough guy," you whisper. You scoop a tiny dollop of calorie-dense recovery mousse onto your finger and hold it to his nose.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, a tiny, sandpaper tongue darts out. Then another. He starts to lap at your skin with a desperate, frantic hunger. A weak, high-pitched mew vibrates through his chest—a sound of life, demanding and stubborn.
"He’s eating," you breathe, and the sheer, ridiculous relief of it makes your vision blur for a second. "He’s actually eating. The little bastard made it."
You turn to Leon, a triumphant, sleep-deprived grin plastered on your face. "He’s actually eating. He’s—"
The words die in your throat.
Leon has stood up, his massive frame casting a long shadow across the kennel ward. He’s staring at the kitten, but his face isn't the stoic mask of a government agent. His jaw is trembling, just a fraction, and his eyes—those piercing, icy blue eyes—are brimming with tears that he’s desperately trying not to let fall.
He looks shattered. Not because of the danger, but because of the hope.
Oh, Leon, you think, your heart doing a slow, painful squeeze. You really were ready to lose everything again, weren't you?
You don't think. Thinking is for people who aren't running on thirty minutes of sleep and pure empathy. You are about to do something wildly unprofessional. You don't care.
You step across the linoleum, closing the distance between you and the man who fights monsters, and you wrap your arms around his waist.
Leon goes rigid instantly.
It’s like hugging a statue carved from granite. He stays perfectly still, his breath hitching, his arms hovering uselessly at his sides. He feels like a man who expects a blow to follow the touch—someone whose only experience with physical contact in the last decade has been a struggle for survival or a professional handshake. It’s jarring, feeling the tension radiating off him, a high-voltage wire ready to snap.
"It’s okay," you mumble against his chest, squeezed tight. "He’s okay. You can breathe now."
Slowly, agonizingly so, the statue crumbles.
You feel a shudder rip through him, a deep shift of his shoulders. Then, his weight collapses into you. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, his stubble scratching against your skin, and his arms finally come around you.
They are heavy. They are massive. He wraps them around you with a crushing, desperate strength, as if you’re the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. You can feel his heart thudding against your collarbone—slow, heavy, and raw.
He doesn't say anything, but the way he clings to you tells you everything. He isn't just relieved about the cat. He’s drowning in a decade of loneliness, in the weight of the bodies he couldn't save. He’s so touch-starved it feels like he’s trying to absorb the warmth of your scrub top through his skin.
It’s not just "he’s hot and I’m tired." It’s the feeling of two people who spend their lives in the trenches finally finding a place to put their packs down.
Your hands move up his back, rubbing small, soothing circles into the expensive fabric of his shirt. You feel the dip of his spine, the hard muscle of his shoulders, and the way he lets out a long, shaky exhale into your hair.
"You're okay," you whisper again, your voice softening, losing its sharp, sarcastic edge. "He’s got you."
Leon pulls back just an inch, his hands sliding down to rest on your waist. He doesn't let go. He looks down at you, his lashes wet, his face mere inches from yours. The air between you is thick, charged with the scent of his woodsy cologne and the clinical tang of the ward. His gaze drops to your mouth, and for a second, the world stops spinning.
"I don't... I don't know how to do this," he rasps, his voice a broken low-frequency hum.
"Do what? Hug? You're doing a C-plus job, Kennedy," you tease, though your voice trembles. "A little less 'death-grip' and a little more 'gentle human interaction' next time."
He lets out a watery, huffed laugh, his forehead dropping to rest against yours. "I think I've forgotten what 'gentle' feels like."
"Well," you say, closing your eyes and leaning into him, savoring the solid, terrifying warmth of him. "Stick with me. I’ve got plenty of practice. Usually with Golden Retrievers, but I think I can make an exception."
He squeezes your waist, a silent, grateful pressure. In the quiet of the dawn, with a recovering kitten purring in the background, you realize you’re in a lot of trouble. Because Leon Kennedy isn't just a client anymore—he’s someone you’d fight a world-ending virus just to keep holding onto.
──────•✦•──────
Leon’s smartphone vibrates against the granite countertop with the persistence of a terminal alarm. He doesn't need to look at the ID to know it’s Hunnigan.
The universe has a twisted sense of humor; the moment his life gains a shred of stability—symbolized by an orange kitten currently trying to disembowel a feathered toy—the DSO decides it’s time for him to jump out of a plane.
"Yeah, Ingrid," Leon sighs into the receiver, his eyes tracking the kitten's chaotic movements. "Tell me it's a seminar on file organization. Tell me I’m being sent to Hawaii to count palm trees."
"It's a hot-zone extraction in the Balkan periphery, Leon. Transport leaves in four hours," Hunnigan’s voice is crisp, devoid of the sympathy he’s looking for.
"Four hours. Right. I’ll just tell the cat to order pizza and lock the deadbolt behind me," he mutters, his mind racing.
Panic, cold and sharp, stabs at him. He can’t leave Cheeto. Not after the pneumonia, not after the nights spent on a linoleum floor praying for a meow. The idea of a stranger from a boarding app—some teenager who might forget the water bowl or leave a window cracked—makes his skin crawl. He finds himself dialing your number before he’s even processed the thought.
When you answer, Leon’s cool persona is nowhere to be found. He’s just a man with a cat and a very specialized, very annoying career.
"I have a problem," he says, skipping the pleasantries. "Work called. I'm being... deployed. A week, maybe more. Do you know a medical boarder who doesn't mind a kitten with a God complex and a lingering cough?"
He hears you pause on the other end. "Leon, it’s short notice. Most medical boarding is booked out through the month. Is it somewhere... dangerous?"
"It’s never a spa day," he says dryly. "Look, if I have to, I’ll—"
"I’ll do it."
Leon freezes. "What?"
"I can stay at your place. I'm overqualified and I can keep an eye on his lungs. Besides," you add, your voice taking on that playful, blunt edge he’s grown addicted to, "your apartment probably needs a woman’s touch. Or at least someone to throw away the three-week-old takeout."
"You'd... stay here?" Leon asks, his throat suddenly tight.
──────•✦•──────
An hour later, you’re standing in his foyer. Leon is dressed in his tactical gear—dark, reinforced fabrics and heavy boots—looking every bit the agent he tried to describe to you. He holds out his keychain. The metal is warm from his palm. As he drops the keys into your hand, his fingers linger against your skin.
It feels like a surrender. He’s giving you the keys to his sanctuary, the only place on earth where he doesn't have to look over his shoulder.
"The alarm code is 1998," he says, a flicker of dark, self-deprecating humor in his eyes. "Try not to set it off. The response team is... unfriendly. And if he stops eating, call me. I don't care if I'm in a tunnel. Make them patch you through."
"1998? Creative," you remark, looking at the keys. "Go save the world, Leon. I’ll make sure the kitten doesn't burn the place down."
He lingers at the door, the weight of the mission pulling at him, but the sight of you standing in his living room—framed by his sterile, gray walls—makes him feel like he’s actually leaving something behind for once.
"Don't eat all my cereal," he says, a lopsided smirk appearing. "It's the only thing I have left."
──────•✦•──────
Leon’s apartment is exactly what you expected: a high-end, minimalist cave that screams 'I don't plan on being here for long.'
The furniture is expensive but looks like it’s never been sat on. The fridge contains three bottles of high-end bourbon, a jar of pickles, and enough Gatorade to hydrate an army. It’s a gorgeous space, but it’s inhabited by a ghost who clearly spends his life waiting for the next disaster.
"Alright, Cheeto," you sigh, dropping your bag on the granite island. "Let’s see if we can make this place look like a human actually lives here."
Over the next week, you start a quiet insurrection against Leon’s minimalism. You buy a soft throw blanket to cover the "ergonomic" sofa. You bring over a small succulent that Leon will almost certainly forget to water. You organize the chaos of his mail and make sure the kitten’s toys aren't just limited to "stray socks."
It becomes a semi-regular occurrence. Every time Leon gets the call, you get the keys. You’ve mastered the 1998 alarm code and you know exactly which floorboard creaks near the bathroom. You send him daily updates—photos of the kitten sleeping on his discarded hoodies, or videos of Cheeto "hunting" his toys.
When he’s home, you linger. You’ll stay for an hour after he returns, leaning against his kitchen counter while he tells you—in vague, redacted terms—about where he’s been. You find yourself liking the routine. The way he looks at you when he walks through the door, his eyes scanning you first before they even find the cat.
"You moved the blender," he notes one evening, leaning against the doorframe, looking exhausted but softer than you’ve ever seen him.
"I put it where a normal person would use it, Leon," you retort, not looking up from your phone. "You had it stored like it was a classified weapon."
"It's a high-RPM motor," he deadpans. "It’s practically a turbine."
You laugh, and you see his shoulders drop an inch.
The messages between you two have evolved from 'Is he breathing okay?' to 'Saw this and thought of you' and late-night Facetimes where you talk about nothing and everything. You’re becoming a permanent fixture in a life that was never meant to have any.
──────•✦•──────
The wind in the mountains is a serrated blade, cutting through his tactical layers and biting into his skin. Leon is crouched in a blind, his rifle steady, the world around him a monochrome blur of snow and gray rock. His breath mists in the air, his fingers numb despite the heated gloves.
It’s the kind of environment where his mind usually goes to dark places—to the faces of the people he’s lost, to the smell of burning plastic in Raccoon City, to the weight of the kills he’s had to rack up to keep the world spinning.
But today, his mind wanders somewhere else.
He thinks about you. He thinks about you sitting on his couch, probably wrapped in that fuzzy blanket you "donated" to his living room. He thinks about the way his apartment smells like your shampoo instead of gun oil when you’re there. You are currently three thousand miles away, probably complaining about a difficult client or a dog that wouldn't stop barking, and the thought is his only anchor to reality.
He pulls his phone from a secure pocket, shielding the screen from the wind. He has one bar of satellite signal. A photo from you has managed to crawl through.
It’s a picture of you on his bed—the kitten curled up on your stomach, both of you looking half-asleep. It’s a domestic, quiet image that has no place in his world of bioluminescent horrors and political assassinations.
"Hunnigan’s going to kill me if she sees I’m using secure bandwidth for cat photos," Leon mutters to himself, a tiny, genuine smile cracking his frozen face.
He wouldn't admit it to you—not yet, maybe not ever—but he’s stopped dreading the "end" of the mission. He used to hate coming back to the silence of his flat. Now, he finds himself checking his watch, calculating the hours until he can walk through his door and hear your voice.
He doesn't just have a cat to come home to anymore. He has a presence. He has a reason to stay sharp, to stay fast, to stay alive.
"Target in sight," his comms crackle.
Leon shifts his grip, his eyes focusing. He feels steady. The cold doesn't matter. He has a cat-sitter to get back to.
"Copy that," Leon whispers, his thumb flicking the safety off. "Let’s wrap this up. I’ve got a date with some bad takeout."
──────•✦•──────
The shift didn’t just break you; it ground you down into a fine, bitter powder and scattered you across the linoleum.
It started with a car crash that sent two mangled retrievers into your bay and ended with a client screaming at you that you were a "heartless gold-digger" because you couldn't perform a miracle on a sixteen-year-old cat for the price of a drive-thru burger.
You’d spent four hours in emergency surgery, your hands slick with blood and your back screaming in protest, only for the monitor to flatline anyway. You’d had to tell a ten-year-old boy that his best friend wasn’t coming home, and then you’d been reprimanded by management for the "negative impact on wait times" caused by you taking five minutes to cry in the supply closet.
By the time you let yourself into Leon’s apartment, you’re less of a human and more of a walking bruise. You don't even turn on the lights. You just drop your bag, kick off your clogs, and collapse onto the sofa—the one with the soft throw blanket you bought—and bury your face in your hands.
The kitten, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, trots over and lets out a concerned chirrup. He kneads your thigh, his tiny claws snagging on your scrubs, before curling up against your chest.
"I hate it, Cheeto," you sob into his orange fur, the tears finally bursting the dam. "I hate the people, I hate the blood, and I really, really hate the wait times."
The front door clicks. The 1998 alarm code beeps—one, nine, nine, eight—and then the heavy thud of boots hits the floor. You don't even look up. You’re too deep in the salt and the snot to care that the owner of the house is back early.
Leon freezes in the entryway. Even in the dim light of the city skyline peeking through the window, he looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. His shirt is torn at the shoulder, there’s a nasty, dark bruise blossoming across his cheekbone, and he’s limping slightly. He looks like a man who just survived a war, only to find a different kind of casualty in his living room.
"Hey," he says, his voice a low, startled rumble. "What—is the cat okay? Did something happen?"
"The cat is fine," you choke out, wiping your nose with your sleeve and failing miserably at looking composed. "Everything is fine. I’m just... Go away, Leon. You look like you need a medic and a gallon of ibuprofen."
He doesn't go away. He drops his duffel bag with a heavy thud and walks over, his movements stiff and cautious. He looks wildly out of his depth, his hands hovering at his sides as if he’s trying to remember the manual for 'Human Comforting 101.'
"You’re crying," he notes, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly register.
"Astute observation. They really do pay you for the big brain, don't they?" You let out a jagged, watery laugh. "I just had a shitty day, Leon. A patient died after four hours of me playing God, and then some guy called me a bitch because he had to wait forty minutes for his dog's ear cleaning while I was doing CPR. I’m just... done."
Leon stands there for a beat, the blue of his eyes scanning your face with a terrifying intensity. He’s seen trauma, he’s seen death on a global scale, but seeing you falling apart on his couch seems to rattle him more than a BOW ever could.
"Move over," he says.
"Leon, you’re bleeding on my 'donated' blanket—"
"Move over," he repeats, firmer this time.
You slide over, and Leon sinks onto the sofa next to you. He smells like gunpowder, cold rain, and woodsmoke. He doesn't say anything at first; he just reaches out, his large, scarred hand hesitating before he pulls you tentatively toward him. You collapse against his side, your head landing on his shoulder.
"I've got you," he murmurs.
He wraps an arm around you, pulling you flush against his chest, and starts to stroke your hair. His touch is awkward—clumsy, even—as if he’s afraid he’ll break you, but it’s the most grounding thing you’ve ever felt. You grab the front of his torn shirt and just sob, letting all the bitterness and the exhaustion pour out of you and into his expensive, ruined gear.
"It’s just... so much sometimes," you whisper, your voice cracking. "I try so hard, and it’s never enough. The world just keeps biting."
"I know," Leon says, his voice vibrating against your temple. "Believe me, I know. But you did your job. You showed up. That’s more than most people can say."
He keeps stroking your hair, his calloused fingers snagging slightly on the tangles, but he doesn't stop. He doesn't try to "fix" it with a one-liner or a tactical solution. He just holds you. You realize, as your breathing finally starts to level out, that this is the first time in your life someone has held the weight for you instead of you holding it for everyone else.
"You look like hell, Leon," you mumble against his chest, feeling a flicker of your usual bluntness returning through the haze of grief.
"You should see the other guy," he retorts, a ghost of a smirk in his voice. "Actually, don't. He’s currently a smudge on a highway in Sarajevo."
You let out a tiny, genuine huff of a laugh, and you feel his arm tighten around you.
"See? There she is," he whispers.
You stay like that for a long time—a battered agent and a broken vet, curled up on a minimalist couch with a kitten sleeping between you.
In the quiet of the apartment, the monsters and the body bags feel a million miles away. You’re still tired, and your heart still aches, but as Leon rests his chin on top of your head, you realize that maybe the "ghost" has finally moved out of this apartment.
And for the first time in a long time, you don't feel like you're fighting the dark alone.
──────•✦•──────
The transition from "emergency technical support" to "semi-permanent fixture" happens so gradually that Leon doesn't even see the trap until he’s happily walking into it.
It starts with you dropping by after your shift to "check the kitten's weight," and then somehow you’re staying for a coffee, and then—suddenly—you have your own designated spot on his couch and a spare toothbrush in the guest bath.
Leon finds himself leaning against the kitchen island, watching you move through his kitchen with a grace that is utterly at odds with the clinical chaos of your day job. For years, this kitchen has been a graveyard for styrofoam containers and a shrine to a single bottle of high-end bourbon. His culinary skills are limited to reheating things and not burning the water.
"You know, the FDA suggests that a human being cannot actually survive on a diet of ninety percent spicy tuna rolls and ten percent Scotch," you remark, your back to him as you chop fresh parsley with a rhythmic, practiced speed.
Leon takes a slow sip of water, leaning his hip against the counter. "I’ll have you know I also eat the occasional multivitamin. And once, a piece of fruit that I'm reasonably sure wasn't plastic. I'm practically a health nut."
"You're a disaster," you retort, but the look you throw him over your shoulder is fond, lacking the sharp bite of your usual sarcasm.
You’ve taken over his stove, and for the first time since he moved in, the apartment doesn't smell like filtered air and gun oil. It smells like sautéed garlic, crushed basil, and browning butter. The scent hits Leon with a physical force, dragging up buried memories of a childhood —the sound of heavy pots clanking, the steam on the windows, the feeling of a home that was loud and full.
It’s a sensory overload that makes his chest ache with a sudden, sharp pang of nostalgia he wasn't prepared for.
"Is that... actual garlic?" Leon asks, his voice dropping into a low, slightly dazed register. "I forgot it came in cloves. I thought it was just a powder that lived in the back of the pantry until it turned into a solid brick."
"God, you're pathetic," you laugh, sliding a pan of chicken onto the burner. The sizzle is loud in the quiet room. "Go sit down. You look like you're having a religious experience over a bulb of garlic."
"I might be," he mutters, though he doesn't move.
He likes watching you. He likes the way your hair starts to frizz slightly from the steam and the way you’ve tucked your ID badge into your back pocket.
He realizes, with a dry, self-deprecating twist of his gut, that he’s become addicted to this. To you. The mission-driven part of his brain—the part that usually keeps him scanning for exits and checking his six—has gone completely quiet. He feels safe. Not "perimeter secured" safe, but actually safe.
He walks over, ostensibly to reach for a glass, but he lingers in your space. He’s still a touch awkward with the physical stuff, his hands hovering near your waist before he settles for gently bumping his shoulder against yours.
"Smells better than my grandmother's Sunday gravy," he admits, the honesty feeling like vulnerability. "And she would have hit me with a wooden spoon just for thinking that."
"Well, don't tell her ghost I'm trying to upstage her," you say, nudging him back. Your smile is gentle, and Leon feels the last of his professional walls crumbling. "I just figured since you're busy saving the world, someone should make sure you don't succumb to scurvy."
"It's a noble cause," Leon says, his blue eyes softening as they fix on you.
"Just doing my civic duty, Agent," you tease.
Leon watches you stir the sauce, and he feels a surge of protectiveness so fierce it surprises him. He spends his life in rooms with people who want to tear the world apart, but here, in the dim light of his kitchen, you’re putting things back together. You’re making a home out of a man who thought he was just a weapon.
"You're staying for dinner, right?" he asks, and he hates how much he hopes the answer is yes. "The cat gets lonely if you leave too early. And I... Well, I'm not great at talking to the furniture."
"I'm staying, Leon," you say, reaching out to pat his hand. "Relax. I'm not going anywhere."
Leon breathes out a sigh he feels in his very marrow. He looks at the garlic, the herbs, and the woman currently occupying his heart's center of mass, and he decides that if this is a trap, he never wants to be rescued.
──────•✦•──────
The blue light of the television flickers across the living room, casting long, dancing shadows against the walls. On the screen, some generic action flick is playing at a low volume—something about a heist that Leon has already found sixteen tactical flaws in—but he isn't watching the movie.
He’s watching you.
You are out cold. Your head is tilted back against the cushion at an angle that looks like it’ll require a chiropractor by morning, and your breathing is deep and rhythmic. On top of you, Cheeto—who has graduated from a palm-sized scrap to a lanky, teenage chaos-agent—is sprawled across your stomach like a heavy, orange weighted blanket.
Leon sits in his armchair, a glass of bourbon sweating in his hand, and feels a strange, terrifying tightness in his chest.
He should wake you up. He should tell you that the movie is over and offer to call you an Uber. That would be the professional, just friends thing to do.
"Right," Leon whispers to the empty room, his voice a dry rasp. "Because I’ve always been so great at following the 'sane' path."
He sets his glass down with a soft clink and stands, his joints popping. He gently nudges the cat aside. Cheeto lets out an offended mrrp but settles into the crook of the sofa, watching with wide, glowing eyes as Leon slides one arm under your knees and the other behind your back.
He braces himself, expecting you to be dead weight, but as he lifts, he’s struck by how light you feel—and how perfectly you seem to slot into the space against his chest. You let out a tiny, sleepy sigh, your head rolling naturally into the hollow of his neck, and Leon freezes. His heart kicks against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Don't wake up, don't wake up, don't make this weird, he thinks, his internal monologue screaming in a way it never does during a fire-fight.
He carries you down the short hallway, his boots silent on the hardwood. His bedroom is the inner sanctum—a place that usually feels like a cold, utilitarian bunker. But as he lays you down on the mattress, the room feels different. It feels occupied.
He pulls the heavy duvet over you, tucking the edges in with a focused, military precision. He lingers there for a moment, his hand hovering over your face. He can't help it; his thumb grazes your temple, smoothing away a stray lock of hair, before his knuckles lighty brush the warmth of your cheek. Your skin is soft, a stark contrast to the rough, scarred texture of his own hands.
"Rest up, Doc," he murmurs, his voice barely a breath. "You’ve earned it."
He backs out of the room, closing the door with a click so soft it’s almost silent. When he turns around, Cheeto is standing in the middle of the hallway, tail twitching, staring at him with unblinking, judging eyes.
"What? I’m being a gentleman," Leon grunts, stepping past the cat toward the sofa. He doesn't go back to his chair. Instead, he collapses onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. The cat hops up onto his chest, pinning him down and staring directly into his soul.
"I’m a DSO agent," Leon tells the cat, his voice flat and defensive. "I’m stoic. I’m professional. I’m a guy who deals with world-ending threats and international conspiracies. I definitely don't have a 'crush' on the veterinarian who makes me eat kale salad."
Cheeto blinks slowly, looking entirely unimpressed by the lie.
Leon sighs, rubbing his face with both hands. The lie is thin. It’s paper-thin and tearing at the seams. He lies there in the dark, listening to the silence of the apartment. For years, he’s filled this silence with the burn of cheap whiskey, the hum of a background news cycle, and the crushing weight of old regrets—Raccoon City, Krauser, the faces of people he couldn't pull out of the fire.
But tonight, the silence feels... full.
He thinks about the way you’ve invaded his space. The way you cook him actual meals because you know he’d live on protein bars and spite if left to his own devices. Most of all, he thinks about the night you fell apart on this very sofa, and how holding you felt more important than any mission he’s ever been assigned.
He realizes then, with the terrifying, crystalline clarity of a man staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, that he isn't just "interested."
He is completely, hopelessly, and dangerously gone for you.
It’s a catastrophic tactical error. He’s spent his entire adult life running from attachments because in his world, attachments are liabilities. Attachments get turned into leverage. Attachments get you killed. But as he looks at the closed door of his bedroom, knowing you’re safe inside, he knows the truth.
He’d burn the whole world to the ground—he’d take on an army of Ganados with a pocket knife—just to make sure you wake up tomorrow without a care in the world.
"Great," he mutters, his hand dropping to scratch Cheeto behind the ears. "I’m officially a Hallmark movie protagonist with a body count. Hunnigan is going to have a field day with this."
The cat purrs, finally satisfied, as Leon closes his eyes and accepts his defeat.
──────•✦•──────
The air in Leon’s apartment has changed.
It’s no longer just the scent of high-end bourbon and your lavender shampoo; it’s thick, electric, and heavy with the kind of "will-they-won't-they" energy that usually precedes a season finale. Every time you’re near him, the space between you feels like a magnetic field, pulling you toward him until you can practically hear his heart thudding in sync with your own.
You’re not an idiot. You’ve seen him look at you when he thinks you’re not looking—that soft, guarded yearning that makes your own chest tighten. You’ve felt the way his hand lingers on your waist when you pass him in the kitchen. He’s a DSO agent, a man who survived Raccoon City and global bio-terrorism, but apparently, asking a veterinarian on a date is the one mission that has him completely paralyzed.
And then, there’s the cat.
"You know, I was thinking," Leon starts, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that usually makes your knees feel like they’re made of cotton candy. He’s leaning against the kitchen island, his blue eyes fixed on yours with a terrifying intensity. He takes a step closer, his hand reaching out toward your arm. "I’ve been meaning to ask you—"
CRASH.
You both jump. Cheeto, now a lanky, orange blur of destruction, has successfully swiped a half-full glass of water off the side table. The glass doesn't shatter, but the water spreads across the hardwood in a slow, mocking puddle.
Leon closes his eyes, his hand dropping back to his side. He lets out a long, weary sigh that suggests he’s currently contemplating buying a kennel.
"He’s just expressive, Leon," you say, struggling to keep the smirk off your face. You grab a roll of paper towels, your internal monologue providing a dry commentary. Mission failed, Kennedy. The orange menace has you beat.
Ten minutes later, the puddle is gone, and the tension is back, sweltering and inescapable. You’re sitting on the sofa, and Leon is beside you, closer than usual. The movie on the TV is just background noise now. He turns toward you, his arm draped along the back of the couch, his fingers inches from your neck.
"Anyway," he says, his voice a breathy murmur. "What I was trying to say before we were so rudely interrupted by the feline Special Forces... is that I’ve really appreciated you being here. Not just for the cat. For me."
He begins to lean in. You can feel the heat radiating off him, the faint scent of his woodsy cologne wrapping around you like a promise. Your heart is hammering against your ribs, a frantic thump-thump-thump that screams finally.
"I was wondering if—"
Suddenly, there is a soft fump sound, followed by the sensation of four pounds of orange fur landing directly on Leon’s face.
Cheeto hasn't just jumped; he has launched himself from the top of the bookshelf with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. He is now perched on Leon’s head, his tail flicking rhythmically against Leon’s nose.
"Are you kidding me?" Leon’s muffled voice comes from beneath the cat.
You burst out laughing. You can't help it. The legendary Leon S. Kennedy is currently being used as a landing pad by a cat who still hasn't figured out how to bury his own poop correctly.
"It’s not funny," Leon grumbles, gently detaching the cat and setting him on the floor. Cheeto just looks at him, lets out a smug little mrrp, and starts grooming his shoulder like he didn't just ruin the most romantic moment of the year.
"It’s a little funny, Leon," you wheeze, wiping a tear from your eye. "I think he’s gatekeeping you. He knows you’re about to make a move and he’s not ready for a stepmother."
"I am a professional," Leon says, straightening his shirt, though his ears are a distinct shade of pink. He looks adorable—awkward, frustrated, and so deeply human it makes your breath hitch. "I have survived international conspiracies. I have navigated minefields. I can handle a five-pound orange domestic shorthair."
"Can you, though?" you tease, leaning back and watching him with a playful, expectant look. "Because so far, the score is Cheeto: two, Leon: zero."
Leon looks at the cat, then back at you, a lopsided, determined smirk finally breaking through his frustration.
"The night is young," he says, his voice regaining some of its cocky, one-liner edge. "And eventually, that cat has to sleep."
"Good luck with that," you retort, your heart singing even as your inner skeptic sighs. He’s going to chicken out again. I’m going to have to be the one to do it, aren't I?
You watch him settle back into the couch, his eyes fixed on you with a renewed focus. The tension is still there, humming under the surface, but now it’s tempered with the hilarious reality of your domestic life. You realize you don't mind the interruptions. If anything, they make the quiet, stolen moments feel even more earned.
You just hope the cat doesn't decide to launch a third offensive when things finally get interesting.
──────•✦•──────
The dinner is kind of a disaster.
Leon has spent the last hour trying to act like a normal human being, which is difficult when his heart is trying to beat its way out of his ribcage like an escaping experiment. He’s made pasta—the one dish he can’t screw up—and the table is set, the wine is poured, and you are sitting across from him looking so devastatingly beautiful in the low light that he’s forgotten how to use a fork.
The air between you is thick enough to choke on. Every time your eyes meet his, Leon feels like he’s standing on the edge of a skyscraper with no parachute. He clears his throat, leaning forward, his hands clasped tight.
"So," he begins, his voice dropping into that low, serious register he uses for briefing the President. "I was thinking that maybe—"
Clank.
In one fluid, chaotic motion, the cat—who has apparently developed a taste for expensive Pinot Noir—swipes a paw at the wine bottle. Leon lunges, catching it before it tips, but the moment is shattered. The cat lets out a defiant meow and begins to weave through Leon’s ankles, tripping him as he tries to sit back down.
Leon’s patience, a resource he usually has in abundance when dealing with global catastrophes, officially hits zero.
"That's it," Leon mutters.
He doesn't hesitate. He scoops up the lanky, protesting orange blur with the efficiency of a man clearing a room. He strides to the hallway, ignores the indignant squawk from the feline, and gently but very firmly sets the cat on the other side of the door. He shuts it with a definitive thud and turns the lock.
Silence. Blessed, complete silence.
Leon turns back to you, leaning his back against the door. He’s breathing a little hard, his blonde hair a mess, and his face is flushed with a heat that has nothing to do with the stove. He rubs the back of his neck, the "cool agent" mask finally crumbling into a thousand pieces.
"I face bio-terrorists for a living," he starts, his voice rough and stripped of its usual bravado. He looks at his boots, then finally, desperately, at you. "I’ve survived things that defy the laws of physics and biology. But asking you out is officially the most terrifying thing I've ever done. My heart rate is higher right now than it was when I was being chased by a ten-foot-tall man in a trench coat."
He takes a step toward you, his hands trembling just enough for him to notice. "I don't want to just be the guy with the cat anymore. I don't want to be the guy who only sees you when things are bleeding or when I’m being deployed to some hellhole. I want to be... yours. If you’ll have me."
He braces himself. He’s ready for a "let’s just stay friends," or a polite laugh, or even a tactical retreat. He’s spent his life waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the mission to fail.
But you don't say a word. You just stand up, and the look in your eyes makes Leon’s knees go weak. You cross the kitchen in three purposeful strides, your gaze locked on his.
Scritch. Scritch. MEE-OWW!
From behind the door, the cat begins a frantic, rhythmic assault on the wood, accompanied by a series of yowls that sound like a siren. Leon flinches, his eyes darting toward the hallway.
"Dammit," he curses softly, his shoulders sagging.
He never finishes the sentence. You reach out, your hands snaking up his chest to grab the collar of his shirt. With a strength that catches him entirely off guard, you pull him down toward you.
You can feel the exact moment Leon’s brain goes entirely offline. There is no more DSO. No more missions. No more orange cats trying to sabotage his life. Beneath your hands, his chest seizes with the shock of a man who has finally stopped running and found exactly what he was looking for.
He freezes for a millisecond, his body going completely rigid. He is so utterly unaccustomed to physical contact that doesn't involve violence or a medical triage that he genuinely doesn't know what to do with his hands. But then, a low, fractured groan vibrates from deep in his chest, and the dam breaks.
His hands, clumsy and hesitant at first, suddenly scramble to find purchase at your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. He kisses you back with the terrifying, unbridled hunger of a man who has been starving in the dark for years. It’s a searing, desperate collision that tastes like red wine and the heavy weight of shared secrets.
You can feel the slight tremor in his fingers as they dig into the fabric of your shirt, gripping you like a lifeline. Months of suffocating tension, of late-night FaceTime calls and lingering, aborted touches, all shatter in this frantic, messy connection.
He feels you smile against his mouth, and he forces himself to pull back just an inch, his breathing ragged as he rests his forehead against yours. He’s delightfully dazed, his blue eyes blown wide and glassy, completely stripped of his cool-agent armor.
"Took you long enough," you whisper, your voice breathless and playful, your thumb tracing the line of his jaw. "I’ve been waiting for you to do that since I gave you my number."
Leon blinks, his mind clearly struggling to process the information. A slow, lopsided smirk finally pushes through his shock, accompanied by a faint, boyish flush on his cheeks. "You have? I thought... I thought that was really just for cat questions."
"You are so incredibly clueless," you laugh, grabbing his shirt and pulling him back down by his collar.
"Maybe," Leon breathes, his hands tightening possessively around your waist, completely ignoring the cat that has begun to scream and scratch at the hallway door. "But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it."
He kisses you again, and the second kiss is even better than the first.
Where the first was a desperate, panicked collision, this one is a slow, deliberate exploration. He’s a man carefully mapping out a territory he never thought he’d be allowed to claim. His initial awkwardness melts into a heavy, intoxicating rhythm.
Leon’s hands are surprisingly gentle as they slide up your spine, settling warmly at the small of your back. He pulls you in tighter until you can feel the frantic, heavy thud of his heart against your chest.
He’s so profoundly touch-starved that it aches; he chases your lips when you pull back to catch your breath, his mouth hot and insistent, sliding a hand up to cradle the back of your neck so he can tilt your head exactly how he wants it. His thumbs trace small, rhythmic circles against your skin.
Your inner monologue, usually a sharp-tongued critic, has finally been silenced. About fucking time, you think, your fingers tangling into the soft, blonde hair at the nape of his neck. I was starting to think I’d have to perform a personality transplant to get you to make a move.
The moment is perfect. It’s cinematic. It’s everything a slow-burn romance should be.
And then, there’s the scratching.
Scritch. Scritch. Mrow?
The sound of claws on wood is followed by a heavy thud against the door, as if the cat has decided to use himself as a battering ram. The rhythmic, indignant yowling has escalated into a sound that can only be described as a feline operatic tragedy.
You huff a laugh into Leon’s mouth, the vibration of it making him let out a low, frustrated groan. You reluctantly pull back just an inch, your hands still resting on his broad shoulders. He looks absolutely wrecked—pupils blown wide, lips slightly swollen, and a dazed expression on his face that you’re definitely going to tease him about later.
"He's going to tear through the drywall, Leon," you whisper, your voice breathless and playful.
Leon leans his forehead against yours, his eyes closed. "Let him scream. I’ve survived interrogations in darker rooms than this hallway. I can outlast him."
"He’s a cat, Leon. He has nothing but time and spite."
With a reluctant sigh, you disentangle yourself from his arms—feeling the immediate, cold void where his body heat was—and walk over to the door to pull it open.
Cheeto doesn't even hesitate. He streaks into the kitchen, his tail puffed out to the size of a bottle brush. He doesn't go for the food bowl. He doesn't go for the toy. He marches straight to the space between you and Leon, sits down, and begins to lick his paw with a level of smugness that is almost impressive.
"See?" you say, leaning back against the counter and crossing your arms. "He’s the third wheel we never asked for."
Leon watches the cat, then looks at you. The adrenaline of the confession is still fading, replaced by a soft, domestic glow. He walks over, invading your personal space again, and traps you against the counter with a hand on either side of your hips. He’s smiling now—that lopsided, cocky Kennedy smirk that usually means he’s about to say something incredibly cheesy.
"You know," he says, his voice dropping into a low, teasing rumble. "I just realized something. As a professional, I have to ask... is this even allowed? Isn't it a little unethical to be dating a patient's owner? I feel like there’s a code of conduct for this."
You stare at him, a deadpan expression flat on your face. Oh, here we go. Tactical awkwardness at its finest.
"Leon," you say, your voice dripping with sarcasm. "The 'patient' is currently trying to eat his own tail. And his 'owner' is a man who carries a handgun to the grocery store. I think the ethics board has bigger fish to fry than us."
"I'm just saying," he continues, his blue eyes dancing with mischief as he leans in closer, his nose brushing yours. "I’d hate to be the reason you lose your license. 'Vet caught in scandalous affair with local cat-dad.' The headlines would be brutal."
"You are such a dork," you mutter, though you can feel the stupid, helpless grin breaking through your defenses.
"I have my moments," he murmurs.
"Shut up, Leon," you say softly, the playfulness fading into something warmer, something real. You reach up, grabbing the front of his shirt again to bridge the tiny gap he’s left between you. "And kiss me again. Before the cat decides to jump on the ceiling."
Leon doesn't need to be told twice. He closes the distance, his mouth finding yours with a renewed confidence. This time, there’s no hesitation, no tactical stalling—just the quiet, certain knowledge that the empty apartment isn't empty anymore.
And as the lanky orange cat finally settles on the floor to watch you both, Leon realizes that for the first time in his life, he isn't just surviving a day.
summary: Leon tries his luck with Tinder dates and thinks it didn't work out, but ends up finding the right person by accident instead. This is before R9, basically a little fanfic on how Leon met his wife (you)
warnings: none I think, just pure fluff <3 maybe a lil swearing somewhere
The coffee shop, even though crowded because of the weather, was nice and cozy. Many people came and went, but you and Leon kept sitting at the table, not even planning on leaving yet. It felt as if only minutes had passed, when in reality it's been over two hours since you've walked in. The conversation topics changed every few minutes, from funny situations of the past week, discussing more places like this one, contemplating the coffee choice, to the design of the cafe.
And then came the topic.
Leon had been trying his best for the past hours. He didn't want to get too excited at meeting you. It didn't work out for him today with the Tinder date, perhaps he should take this as a sign... but then again, you showed up so unexpectedly, and he enjoyed your company every second. It was getting harder and harder not to let his imagination wander when you had so much in common... in his head he was already taking you out on another date. Picking you up properly in his car this time, taking you to some rich restaurant and giving you fresh flowers, not already half-wilted peonies that were meant for someone else. He tried his best, really, but when you excitedly mentioned a cat being over in your very own house? That was just another point crossed from his little future dream list. It sounded silly even to himself, getting excited over such a small thing like it meant anything, but to him it very much did...
"You have... a cat." He spoke softly, raising his eyebrows.
"Yes!" You answered with a huge smile on your face, already fumbling with your phone, scrolling through your gallery just to hand it over, showing him the precious ball of fur that you mentioned seconds ago. "Isn't he adorable?"
"He is..." He answered, his mind already elsewhere. He tried his best to fight his own mind, but that image that he had in his head for the past few months? Now the person greeting him was not an unknown silhouette, not a faceless woman that he hadn't met yet... it was you. You and that silly little cat that you seemed to love so much.
He felt pathetic, really. It's been only... what, almost three hours since you sat beside him on that bus stop bench? He was already smitten. He already adored you. Every single thing you said seemed to make it even worse. He's never met a woman he had so much fun with... and so much in common.
"Sorry, am I talking too much? I tend to ramble a lot sometimes." You said, gently slipping your phone back into your own hands as you saw his reaction. His answer was short, voice quiet, and he didn't even say anything else, just... stared at the pictures as you swiped.
The thing was, he didn't even realize.
"What?" He snapped out of it, looking at you in confusion, only then realizing he's been awfully quiet... probably because he was drifting somewhere completely else. "Oh, no... no, I don't mind." He quickly corrected himself.
He shifted in his seat, a little uncomfortably, not with you, of course. Uncomfortable with his own mind. Here you were, innocent as ever, probably just enjoying your time on a simple coffee that you didn't have to spend alone, and he was imagining a future with you. This wasn't even meant to mean anything. Hell, he felt like a creep now. He offered it just like that, to cheer you up, to make you a little happier about the sloppy weather and even worse valentine's day. But he fell into his own trap.
He didn't realize how lonely he must've been until now...
"I... considered getting a cat too." He added quickly, nodding to himself. "Never became more than a plan, though. I wanted to have one so the house wouldn't be so quiet, but I'm away too much... and I don't really have anyone that would want to take care of one while I'm gone."
Don't have anyone in general would've been a better phrasing. He couldn't name a single person who would actually want to... come over and talk to him, spend time together in a non work-related matter. Let alone burden them with a whole ass cat to take care of every few weeks.
"I did the same thing. I was lonely after moving into the city, so I got a cat." You stated, turning off your phone and putting it aside. "I thought about getting a dog, but... you know. Cats are cats. They don't need much attention as long as they are fed and pampered. Then comes that one special evening when they come to snuggle with you on the couch, if you're worthy of it." You said jokingly, which you both laughed at.
"Yeah, well... I'm away long enough to neglect the feeding part too sometimes." He answered, which intrigued you. You never really asked where he worked. He didn't say much about his life in general... interests, yes, but not what he does or who he is.
"Hey, that's not a problem at all. If you ever decide to actually get the cat, you can just drop it off at my place. I don't mind taking care of another one." You smiled as you saw his surprise, like he didn't even consider it a possibility. Because he didn't. Yet here you were, offering help. "Where do you work, then?" You changed the topic, making him freeze. Not even letting him process the first part...
Right. He forgot for a moment. He was here, in the coffee shop with you, but outside of it, he was still just... agent Kennedy. Just an old, grumpy dude who didn't have a life outside of work. Somehow, he pushed that into the back of his mind for a while...
"I'm..." Should he lie? Brush the topic off? Tell the truth and keep the details to himself?
The first one was the safest, but for how long? Of course, if this was a one-time coffee date, he should just lie. Should throw some lies about working in finance or business and go on with the date. But that just didn't feel right. If his mind was set, if he really was starting to believe that this might work out as something more, he had to be honest. He couldn't change the topic or make a half-assed excuse, he couldn't hide the truth... Of course, he couldn't reveal it all either, but she had to know at least a part of it. For now.
"I'm a federal agent." He said finally, immediately reaching out to grab his cup and take a sip of his coffee.
The words felt heavy now. Normally, usually on missions, he threw them around while stopping criminals, reassuring civilians or alarming other agents... Not meeting a nice girl in a corner coffee shop, when she probably thought he was just a regular guy. When she had no idea what he's been through in his life and what emotional baggage he was carrying.
At first you looked at him in confusion, then let out a forced laugh. You waited for him to smile and laugh too, and then change the answer, like he did many times earlier, but he didn't. He just stared at you. Waiting.
"Oh... you're serious." You said, eyebrows knitting together. "Like... like FBI or some shit?" You asked in confusion, not sure how to understand or interpret his answer. You didn't expect it, that's for sure... and you didn't know a lot about stuff like this, or how it works exactly.
"No. Not FBI. I can't tell, though. It's classified." Something in his stomach turned when he said that, nervously looking out the window. Of course, it was just a simple look... Leon Kennedy was never nervous, no. Not about something like this. He would not care if you got up and left right now, surely. "Maybe... maybe one day.."
"No, it's fine, I... get it? I guess. I don't know how that type of stuff works." You frowned to yourself, not because you were upset, but because you didn't get it. In your head, you only had the image of what you saw in movies. Sure, you heard a lot about secret operations since the outbreaks had started, but only what they showed on the news, which was... barely anything. "I'm... not being investigated though, right?" You squinted your eyes at him, attempting a joke.
It seemed to surprise him, but he immediately smirked. A little different than the other little smiles he gave you. It was both playful, but also relieved, in a way.
"I don't know. Didn't you see me taking notes under the table?" He asked jokingly, which you both snorted at. He seemed to relax again, the tension in his shoulders easing, making them drop forward a little.
"Oh no. What did you write? Am I being arrested?" You raised an eyebrow at him and he followed the lead, leaning both elbows on the table, propping his chin on his knuckles. He hummed to himself, looking you up and down.
"Let's see, well... I definitely wrote down you're way too funny and have way too many talents. Definitely fishy. Who taught you all that?" He squinted his eyes at you. "You also have a terribly cute cat, amazing taste in coffee and a beautiful face."
He only realized what he said when he saw your reaction. The way your face seemed to light up a little... that small smile that seemed to move the corners of your lips, the blush spreading on your cheeks.
You didn't seem... weirded out, though. You seemed to like the compliment. And that was good, because he could tell you a hundred more right on the spot, just after two hours of conversation.
"Unfortunately, I think your informant sucks, Mr. Kennedy." You grimaced, trying to cover up your confusion with something funny. As much as you liked the banter, the sudden compliment sent you panicking. Was he flirting, or was this just a regular compliment? You couldn't tell... but you appreciated it either way.
"Mm, I don't think so. I know what I'm saying." He pushed. He should've settled for the first one, but he still pushed... trying to let you know he was flirting.
"Thank you..." Was all you managed to say as you reached out to take your coffee, taking a nervous sip. An embarrassing ring of foam formed on your upper lip, which made him bite his lower lip to stifle a laugh.
"...Here." He said, handing you a tissue from his side of the table. He watched you wiping it off in a hurry, the redness on your face just increasing. He pretended to look out the window again, not wanting to make you feel even worse. "It's late..." He pointed out, "And it's not raining anymore. We should probably get going, huh?"
He said it against his own will. He wanted to stay longer... talk to you a little more, get to know more. More of you in general.
He hoped for another date, though, and he didn't want to push it. It was going too well to rush things.
"Did I scare you off by the foam mustache?" You asked, glancing into the mirror on the other side of the wall, thankfully with nothing on your face anymore.
"Not at all. It was cute, actually." He admitted, once again, pushing his luck. He just couldn't help it. "Hey, uh... do you want me to walk you to your house? It's already dark outside."
You side eyed him at the proposition, and he already sensed a teasing joke, right before you even managed to open your mouth to speak. "Trying to find out where my house is, huh? I'm really being investigated."
"You're not." He reassured, giving you a deadpan look. "I'm just being a gentleman, as I said earlier." He got up, standing awkwardly next to the table as he watched you finish your coffee and get up from your seat.
He walked over to the counter, paying for both of your orders, as he insisted before you even ordered. One thing you were sure of, since you two started talking, was that when his mind was set on something, it was set. Probably the thing that would lead to arguments in the future, because you were just as stubborn as he was.
He opened the door for you on the way out.
Held your hand when you had to walk through an uncomfortably huge puddle of rain on the way home.
Laughed along with you as you tripped on absolutely nothing just moments later.
Offered you his suit to drape over your shoulders when he saw you shiver.
But as much as you've had more fun than ever with anyone before, one thing sat constantly in the back of your mind... the idea of not being able to know him fully, ever. Perhaps this was a one time meeting. Perhaps you'd never talk again, and then you'd wonder who really was that guy that unexpectedly took you on a date. Or perhaps this would grow into something more... and then what? Would he ever open up, or would he stay like this? Shielding himself, or you, from the truth?
He shun those thoughts away in one simple gesture, as you stopped in front of your house.
"You know..." He started, wanting to say so much, but unsure how to start. He wasn't good at things like these at all... opening up was a real issue when you weren't taught to do it, and when you never had anyone around who would be your safe space. He wanted to try, though, and right now it didn't matter to him too much if you wanted him back or not. He just needed to try. "I don't remember the last time I've had so much fun with anyone."
"Really?" You said, smiling a little wider at his words... not only because you felt warmness spread in your chest at the admission, but also because you felt the same.
"Yeah... well, living as an agent is... not easy." He started, choosing his words carefully. He couldn't say too much, but didn't want to scare you off with overdone secrecy. "I can't fully trust people and people can't fully trust me." He continued, and you listened, not daring to stop him right now. "I know this might be... weird. Unusual, maybe even... scary."
"It's... alright." You said, shrugging. "I mean, I... never met anyone who's an agent before, but I've had a really nice coffee with you, Leon."
"Yeah, well... still, I believe I should clarify. Keeping things in secret is not permanent. I might open up in some time, but I need you to understand I need to be sure." He spoke in a serious tone, and you nodded, even though you weren't sure where this was going. "Keeping things out from close ones is... unfortunately a huge part of our life. Not only because we don't want to reveal too much, but also because we want to keep them safe. Do you understand?"
"Yes." You said, nodding again. You tilted your head right away, asking the most important question. "I don't understand what you're getting at, though."
"I'm implying I... would want to take you out on another... proper date. If you agree, I'll pick you up whenever you're free." He said, hesitantly reaching out to take one of your hands. "But... you need to be sure you want this. I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable situation, or-"
"I'd love to go on another date with you." You spoke up, cutting him off now without shame. He seemed surprised, his hand freezing in air before he could fully hold yours.
"You're... sure about this? If this is ever too much, you can always change your mind, of course-"
You cut him off again with a little laugh, stepping closer.
"I'm sure, Leon. I'm hundred percent sure that I'd love you to take me out on a proper date."
"That's... good." He said, once again looking relieved. He didn't brace himself to take your hand, though, putting it right back into his pocket like he'd hurt you at the simple touch. "You're really unlike anyone who I've ever met before."
"Really? Me?" You said, pointing at yourself. "You're the one who's a... federal agent. I mean, I don't think I've ever met one in my life."
"Fair point..." He chuckled, "Well... I think it's best if I get going. I will call you tomorrow, alright?"
"Alright." You hesitated, before feeling a little, tiny wave of confidence. You reached up, pulling him down for a kiss. Not on the lips, not yet, but you did place a small kiss on his cheek, leaving a stain of your favourite lipstick right there.
"I'll see you around, Mr. Kennedy." You said, pushing the jacket of his suit into his hands as you turned around, rushing to your house before he could fully respond.
You still saw him stand still, completely stunned for a moment when you looked over your shoulder while opening the door.
I get that people say how they personally view their relationship. I just genuinely don't understand why people cannot simply allow others to express what they like abt two fictional characters. Like does it matter if you find them platonic or not, let other people ship what they want to ship as long as it's CONSENSUAL.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖆 𝖍𝖔𝖒𝖊 ✦ Leon Kennedy x Reader ✦ Rating: T+ ✦
𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞:Leon Kennedy's crush begins the moment he watches you calm a sobbing child in the precinct with nothing but kindness and a stuffed raccoon.
Warnings/Notes:Tooth rotting Fluff, Leon being Lovesick, Soft Leon, He wants a Family, Domestic Bliss, Loneliness, Finding a Family, Sweet meet-cute, Co-workers to Friends, Friends to Lovers, Soft Moments, girl dad Leon, boy dad Leon, did I mention Leon was a dad in this?!
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Leon was crouched next to a crying kid sitting at his desk in his chair, feeling like the world's most useless cop. The boy couldn't have been more than five or six, gangly limbs, sharp elbows, and a Pokemon t-shirt two sizes too big and he was wailing. A full-body, hiccupping sob that made his whole frame shake like a leaf in a storm. His face was red and blotchy, eyes swollen, and snot ran down to his upper lip in a glistening trail he kept trying to wipe away with the back of his hand, smearing it across his cheek instead.
Every attempt Leon made only seemed to make it worse. The sticker he'd peeled from the sheet on Sergeant Branagh's desk, a faded "Junior Officer" star that looked like it had seen better days, the edges curling and yellowed, had been met with a look of sadness, like Leon had kicked a puppy. The awkward "hey buddy" he'd tried in what he thought was a soothing voice had triggered a fresh round of tears so loud that Rita had actually stopped mid-phone call to stare, receiver still pressed to her ear, her expression full of pity and secondhand embarrassment for him.
The boy's wails echoed reverberating through the bullpen like the siren on a cruiser, and Leon could feel every eye in the precinct on him. The back of his neck burned, heat crawling up from his collar and spreading across his cheeks. His knees ached from crouching down next to the boy in his chair to seem less intimidating, the stiff fabric of his uniform pants digging into the backs of his thighs. He was only three weeks into this job, still getting used to the work and second-guessing every move he made. Not once in the academy did they teach him how to diffuse this type of bomb, and now he was being defeated by a kindergartner.
He was about to try again, maybe offer his keys to jingle like the kid was a toddler or something, a desperate and humiliating attempt that would have probably made everything worse, when he saw you.
You came through the precinct door with a stack of manila folders threatening to spill from your arms, your ID badge swinging on its lanyard against your chest. He'd seen you around before. You were a paralegal intern, always busy with somewhere to be. You wore your hair pulled back most days, dressed in business casual, you’d been here long enough to stop trying to impress anyone. There was a coffee stain on the cuff of your blouse today, faint but visible if you looked close enough, and Leon had looked, he often found himself looking toward you like his eyes was a compass and you were due North.
You stopped mid-stride, your eyes landing on the sobbing kid, and something shifted in your expression. Your brows drew together in concern, and your mouth pressed into a thin line. Without a word, you pivoted towards your desk that was pushed into a corner of the precinct near the many filing cabinets. The files hit your desk with a loud thump that made Leon flinch. He watched, confused and a little dazed, as you opened your bottom drawer and pulled out a stuffed raccoon, just a little something that they handed out at community events and elementary school visits. It had a little stitched badge on its chest, a slightly crooked smile, and a tail that looked like it had seen better days, the fur matted in places from too many hands.
Then you walked right over, and Leon stepped back instinctively as you dropped to the floor beside the boy. You didn't hesitate or pause to dust off the linoleum and adjust your skirt. You just knelt down, one knee hitting the ground and leaned in close.
"Hey," you said softly, holding the raccoon out in both hands. Your voice was warm and soft like a blanket fresh from the dryer, comforting. "You know what this is?"you said softly, in a kind of maternal tone.
The kid hiccupped, his crying stuttering to a jerky stop as he stared at the toy. His eyes were still wet, lashes clumped together in dark spikes, but he was looking at you now. His bottom lip trembled, but the wail had died down to a shaky, uneven breathing and he was completely focused on your gentle face and soft caring tone.
"This is Officer Bandit," you continued, wiggling the plushie a little so its stubby arms moved up and down, waving to the small child. "He's the bravest raccoon in the whole city. Solves crimes, catches bad guys, the whole deal. But you know what?" You leaned in, your voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that made the boy's eyes go wide. "He gets scared sometimes too."
"...R-really?" the kid whispered back, his voice small hoarse from all the crying.
"Mm-hm." You nodded seriously, your expression solemn, like you were sharing the most important secret in the world. "Especially in big loud places like this, it's a lot, isn’t it? But you know what helps him feel better?"
The boy shook his head, sniffling hard, his nose still running. You gently took your blouse and wiped his face without even thinking about it.
"When someone holds him tight. Just like this." You smiled softly, and pulled the plushie to your chest, wrapping your arms around it in an exaggerated hug. You even rocked a little, side to side, like you were comforting a real person. "See? Makes him feel safe. You think you can help him feel brave?"
The boy sniffled again, but his hand was already moving. Tentative at first, fingers reaching out to brush the raccoon's worn fur. Then he took it, his small fingers curling into the soft fabric, clutching it to his chest tightly. He squeezed, his knuckles going white, and buried his face in the plushie's fuzzy head.
"There you go. I bet bandit feels so much better, right?," you murmured, and the kid nodded, squeezing the raccoon tighter. He gave it a hug, burying his face in its fuzzy head, and his shoulders, which had been hitching with sobs just moments before, finally started to drop as he calmed down. His breathing evened out, the hitching sobs fading into soft, shaky exhales that shifted the fur on the raccoon.
Leon's heart thumped, hard. His heart tripped over itself and forgotten how to find its rhythm at the sight of you. And then his heart was racing so loud, he swore he could hear it thumping between his ears. He reached up unconsciously to grip at his shirt right In front of his heart willing it to calm down.
You smiled and reached out, brushing a strand of sweaty hair off the boy's forehead. Your touch was gentle and careful, your fingers barely grazing his skin, and the kid leaned into it, starved for kindness. You didn't flinch or pull away from his searching touch. You sat there, one hand resting lightly on his back, rubbing slow circles between his shoulder blades, your thumb tracing a soothing pattern over his spine.
Leon stood there, still as a statue, and he found he couldn't look away from you and the now calm child. Watching you murmur something else to the boy, your head tilted close to his, your lips moving in soft quiet and reassuring words.
"Hey, I like your shirt," you said, tapping the Pikachu printed across the front. "Is Pikachu your favorite?"
The kid nodded, clutching Officer Bandit a little less desperately now.
"Yeah? How come?" You asked gently and you sounded genuinely interested in what he had to say.
"Cause—'cause he's fast," the boy said, his voice still thick with mucus but he wasn’t crying anymore, which was a miracle in itself. "And he can do Thunderbolt and he's Ash's best friend and—and he's yellow, yellow is my favorite color."
"Oooh, yellow's a good color," you agreed, nodding like this was the most important conversation you'd had all day. "You know what? My favorite is also yellow! Do you know Psyduck."
The kid blinked, surprised and nodded quickly. "...Psyduck"
"Yup." You grinned. "You know why?"
He shook his head.
"'Cause he's silly." And then, without warning, you crossed your eyes and put both hands on your head like you were holding it in pain, doing a spot-on impression of the confused little duck.
The kid giggled a bright, hiccupping giggle that filled the room like a rainbow after a storm, and you laughed with him, your whole face lighting up, Leon's mouth went dry as he watched a smile curl on your lips, your eyes crinkled at the corners.
He swallowed hard, a pit the size of a peach stuck in his throat. His pulse was beating loudly in his ears, drowning out the precinct noise around him.
You glanced up then, catching his eye, and raised an eyebrow. "You good, Kennedy?"
Leon blinked, his brain scrambling to form words. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm—" He cleared his throat, feeling heat crawl up the back of his neck, flooding his face until he was sure he was bright red. "Good. I'm good."
You shrugged, a little smirk tugging at your lips, and turned your attention back to the boy. Leon just stood there like an idiot, rooted to the spot, watching the way your fingers carded through the kid's hair again, so naturally, like you'd done this before. Leon wondered if you had kids and felt a seed of disappointment and sadness grow in his stomach.
You tucked a strand behind his ear and the kids’ eyes fluttered closed for just a second, all the crying finally catching up to him as he suddenly grew tired.
He couldn't stop staring at you as you sat there on the dirty floor in your work clothes without a care and you spoke to the kid like he was just as important as the work on your desk that you abandoned, you made something hard look effortless.
After that day whenever he saw or thought of you his chest felt tight and warm all at once, he'd often find himself looking for you in the break room, hoping to catch a glimpse of you pouring coffee or sorting through files. Your smile stayed the longest, replaying in his head when he was trying to fall asleep every night. He'd spend the next week trying to think of excuses to talk to you, to hear your voice again, to see if you'd smile at him the way you'd smiled at that kid.
It started there, with a crying kid, a stuffed animal and you, looking up at him with eyes that would haunt him every waking moment.
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The precinct smelled like cheap pizza and sugar, a sickly-sweet combination that clung to the air and made Leon's head throb. Dozens of kids swarmed the lobby, their voices a cacophony of shrieks and laughter that bounced off every hard surface. Leon stood near the front desk, arms crossed, watching a group of eight-year-olds chase each other around a display table that held pamphlets about stranger danger and bicycle safety. A awkward and nervous smile on his face, a bead of sweat trailing down his temple despite the October chill that had blown in when the doors opened.
This was worse than any training scenario Raccoon City PD had thrown at him.
The lobby looked like a bomb had gone off, if that bomb was filled with glitter, juice boxes, and about forty screaming children from the local orphanage, community center, and the officers own children. Streamers hung from the ceiling in drooping arcs of blue and red, some already torn and dangling down. There were balloons tied to every available surface, and squeaking every time someone brushed past. Someone had set up a craft table near the far wall that was now covered in a layer of glue, construction paper scraps, and what looked like an entire bottle of glitter that had exploded across the surface like a disco ball.
Leon was trying to look authoritative while a kid in curly little space buns with cat ears tugged insistently on his belt and asked if he had a real gun.
"Uh, yeah, but—hey, don't touch that—" He tried to gently redirect her hand, his voice strained with the effort of trying to wrangle a small child, his fingers hovering uselessly near hers like he was afraid to actually touch her and make things worse.
The girl didn't listen. She was already trying to poke at his radio, her sticky fingers leaving smudges on the black plastic.
"Is it heavy? Can you shoot bad guys? Do you have handcuffs? Can I see them? Do you have a Taser? My dad has a Taser too—"
"Maybe later, okay? How about you go—" Leon gestured vaguely toward the craft table, but the girl just stared at him like he'd suggested she eat broccoli.
"But I wanna see your gun," she insisted, and Leon felt his face heat up as Officer Branagh glanced over from across the room, clearly trying not to laugh as his daughter pestered him.
Then you appeared, out of nowhere, sliding between the desk and the swarm of kids. You moved like water, smooth and unbothered, and the kids seemed to part for you instinctively. You were wearing jeans today, not your usual business slacks or pencil skirt, and a blue Raccoon City PD volunteer t-shirt that had seen better days, the logo faded and cracked across your chest. Your hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a few strands escaping to frame your face, and there was a smudge of purple marker, on your forearm, trailing up toward your elbow like you'd been drawing with the kids earlier.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Junior officers!" you called out, clapping your hands together twice.
The kids froze. Even the ones who'd been mid-sprint screeched to a halt, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, their faces turning toward you with wide-eyed attention.
You crouched down, gathering the kids around you like a storyteller at a campfire, your hands moving as you spoke. "We've got a major situation on our hands," you said, your voice low and serious, like you were briefing a SWAT team before a raid. "There's been a report of a missing cat. Orange tabby. Answers to the name Mr. Whiskers." You paused for dramatic effect, letting the silence stretch, and the kids leaned in, eyes wide, mouths hanging open. "Last seen near the break room."
A collective gasp rippled through the group.
"But here's the thing," you continued, standing up and scanning their faces with a grave expression. "Only the best junior officers can help me find him." You pointed dramatically toward the hallway, your finger jabbing the air. "Think you're up for it?"
The kids erupted in agreement, bouncing on their toes, hands shooting into the air like they were trying to touch the ceiling.
"Me! Me! I can do it!"
"I'm really good at finding stuff!"
"I found my mom's keys once!"
You grinned, and Leon felt something in his chest shift. You stood there, surrounded by chaos, completely in your element, and you looked...you looked happy. Like this was exactly where you were meant to be.
Then your eyes landed on him and your grin widened before you walked over, weaving through the kids with a few pats on heads and "hang on, team, one second" reassurances. When you stopped in front of him, you reached into your pocket and pulled out a plastic junior officer badge, the cheap ones that they had abundance of that they gave out to all the kids earlier, with a safety pin on the back and a shiny gold finish. You pressed it into his palm, your fingers brushing his and Leon's brain short-circuited.
"Officer Kennedy," you said, loud enough for the kids to hear, your voice warm and teasing, and you winked. Actually winked at him, your eye closing in a slow wink that made his stomach flip. "I'm deputizing you. We need all hands on deck for this one."
Leon blinked down at the badge, then at you, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. "Wait, I—"
"No time!" You turned back to the kids, clapping your hands again. "Alright, team, Officer Kennedy is joining the search party. Let's move out!"
Before he could protest a gaggle of kids swarmed him, tiny hands grabbing at his uniform and arms, tugging him forward with the force of a small army.
"Come on, Officer Kennedy!"
"We gotta find Mr. Whiskers!"
"He's probably scared!"
And just like that, Leon found himself on his hands and knees, peering under chairs and desks while a gaggle of children shouted directions at him like he was defusing a bomb.
"No, not there! Over there!"
"Check under the desk!"
"I think I saw a tail!"
"Maybe he's in the trash can!"
One little girl with braids tugged on his sleeve, her face scrunched up in concentration, insisting she saw something orange under the desk. Leon crawled over, his knees protesting against the hard floor, the fabric of his pants pulling tight across his thighs. He reached under the desk, his fingers brushing something soft and fuzzy, and pulled out a stuffed tabby cat, clearly planted there ahead of time, its fur slightly dusty, one of its button eyes hanging by a thread.
The kids erupted.
"He found him!"
"Mr. Whiskers!"
"Officer Kennedy saved him!"
"Is he okay?!"
"Can I pet him?!"
They cheered like he'd just solved a murder case, like he was a hero, and Leon couldn't help it, he laughed. Bubbling up from his chest and spilling out, as he held up the stuffed cat, and the kids crowded around, petting it, asking if it was okay, if it was scared, if it needed water.
"I think he's alright," Leon said, grinning his cheeks aching from the stretch of smiling so wide. "Just a little dusty."
"Good job, Officer Kennedy!" a little boy shouted, pumping his fist in the air, and the others joined in, chanting his name like he'd won the Super Bowl. Leon's face flushed, heat crawling up his neck and spreading across his cheeks, but he was still smiling when he looked up at you.
You were across the room, a kid on your hip, another kid hanging off your arm, and you caught his eye. You smiled at him softly, your eyes crinkling at the corners, and Leon felt that thump again. Like his heart stopped and was restarted, Harder this time. He could feel the cup that held all his emotions inside him cracking and every desire he kept deep inside him spilling out faster than he could contain it, flooding his veins with warmth.
"Good work, Officer Kennedy," you called out, your voice carrying over to him through the noise, the tone full of warmth like a hearth place directly into the home if his heart. He suddenly felt like he had to do something with his hands but they felt clumsy, and he didn't know what to do with them.
He managed to give you a nod and a small nervous smile, his throat tight and face flushed.
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As the event was winding down he retreated to the break room, a poor soldier covered in sticky substances and glitter returning from the front lines, pouring himself a cup of coffee that had been sitting on the burner for at least three hours. It tasted like burnt rubber and was bitter and thick like sludge on his tongue, but he didn't care he really needed it after the past few hours. He leaned his back against the counter and closed his eyes, his head tilting back against the cabinet.
After a few mins Leon opened his eyes, and there you were. You had a kid on your hip, one of the orphanage kids, a little boy with a mop of dark curls and chocolate from the raccoon cake pops smeared across his cheek. You were murmuring something soft to him, your free hand brushing his curls back from his forehead as you grabbed a napkin from the counter, your movements gentle and practiced.
Leon watched, frozen, as you wet the napkin under the tap and gently wiped the boy's face. The kid squirmed, giggling, his little hands pushing at yours, his legs kicking against your side.
"Hold still, mister," you said, your voice playful but firm, that same tone you'd used with the other kids all day. "You've got half a chocolate cake pop all over your face."
"Nooo," the boy whined, squirming with the biggest smile on his face. His smile was so innocent and infectious that you couldn’t help but return it, smiling down at the mischievous little kid that refused to have a clean face.
"Yeeesss," you said in a sing song tone playing along with him, dabbing at his cheek with the napkin. "There we go. All clean."
You set the boy down, and he ran off toward the door where one of the chaperones was waiting, to whisk him away. He waved at you over his shoulder, his hand opening and closing in an exaggerated motion.
"Bye-bye!" he called.
"Bye, sweetheart," you said, waving back, your voice the same soft and warm tone you used on all of the children today.
You turned eyes drifting towards Leon and you caught him staring yet again.
"Is there something on my face too?" you asked, raising an eyebrow, your lips quirking into a smirk, your head tilting to the side.
"No! Nothing…." He took a sip of his coffee, trying to look casual like he hadn't just been imagining what it would be like to wake up next to you every morning.
But his brain was spinning and painting pictures he had no business imagining. You, in a kitchen that wasn't the break room, all warm and lived-in, with toys scattered across the floor and crayon drawings stuck to the fridge with magnets. Sunlight streaming through the windows, catching in your hair. A kid, his kid he thought, with his blue eyes and your smile, tugging on your hand, begging for one more story before bed, their voice sweet like cotton candy.
In his imagination you were there, glowing and laughing, the center of it all. The heart of a home. Of your shared home. A hand resting on a rounded belly, your face soft and content, his ring on your finger and his name on your lips.
Leon's grip tightened on his mug, his knuckles going white. He wanted his vision to be true, wanted to build a life with you, brick by brick. A messy and imperfect life, but a life shared with you. More than anything despite it being inappropriate to imagine you like this when you didn’t even know his feelings for you he wanted more than anything to watch you grow round with his child, wanted to feel them kick under his palm, to see you glow with the knowledge that you were growing a life inside you. He wanted to do anything and everything for you. To wake up in the middle of the night and get you whatever weird craving you had, pickles with peanut butter, mango with hot sauce, you name it he would get it. He would be happy to rub your feet when they ached, and hold your hair back if you got sick. He wanted to be there for every single second of it
He would be the happiest man on earth if only he could slide a ring onto your finger and stand in front of everyone they knew and say I do.
Everything hit him all at once like a freight train directly to his chest and he had to look away from you, before you could noticed the way his face had gone completely red, his hands trembling slightly around the mug.
"You okay, Kennedy?" you asked, your voice softer with concern, and he heard you take a step closer.
"Yeah," he said, his voice rough before he cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm good. Just... tired."
You nodded, accepting the answer, and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. "You did good today," you said, glancing at him over your shoulder, your ponytail swinging. "The kids loved you."
Leon's heart started racing as it always seemed to do around you, an uncontrollable reaction to your presence. "Thanks," he managed quietly. "You were... you were great with them."
You shrugged, but your cheeks flushed, just a little, a soft pink spreading across your skin. "I like kids," you said simply, twisting the cap off the water bottle. "They're honest...maybe a little too honest sometimes ."
Leon huffed a laugh. "Yeah. That's one way to put it."
You smiled, and for a moment, the break room felt smaller. He wanted to cross the room. Wanted to cup your face in his hands and kiss you until you were breathless, like he'd imagined a thousand times before in the dark hours of his room when he finally let his thoughts of you run wild. If only he could press you against the counter and bury his face in your neck just to breathe you in.
But he didn't and couldn’t, he just gripped his coffee mug tighter and watched you leave. Tossing the now empty water bottle in the recycling bin, before you gave him one last smile and walked out of the break room, your footsteps fading down the hall. Leon was alone again, staring into his coffee, his mind racing and heart pounding, his whole body aching.
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It was late and the station had emptied out hours ago, the building now quiet except for the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, casting everything in a yellow glow that made Leon's eyes sore.
It was just the two of you in the breakroom, surrounded by stacks of paperwork that never seemed to end. A pocket of calm, a bubble of warmth in the cold, empty precinct. It was mind-numbing work, that made your eyes glaze over and your hand cramp around your pen, but Leon didn't mind. Not when you were there.
You were across the table, pen in hand, scribbling notes on a case file. Your handwriting was neat, precise, each letter carefully formed, and Leon found himself watching the way your wrist moved, the way your fingers gripped the pen with each stroke. He'd given up pretending to work about twenty minutes ago. He was just watching you now, as you chewed on your bottom lip while you were concentrating. Your hair kept falling into your face, pushing it back with the heel of your hand, leaving a smudge of ink on your forehead that you didn't seem to notice.
You were wearing glasses tonight, thin-framed lenses that were perched on the bridge of your nose, and Leon had never realized how much he liked that look until now. You looked beautiful, and it made his fingers itch with the urge to reach across the table and brush that unruly strand of hair behind your ear.
"You ever think about the future?" he asked suddenly.
You looked up, surprised, your pen pausing mid-word. "Like... tomorrow? Or?"
"I…just in general. Like what you hope or dream about for yourself." He leaned back in his chair, the plastic creaking under his weight, and rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted. "I don't know. I just... I grew up pretty lonely, you know?" He dropped his hand, staring at the table, at the coffee ring stains and the scratches in the laminate. "After my parents died, it was just me and my focus was on my career. I joined the force because I wanted... A place to belong where I could do good."
You set your pen down, giving him your full attention. Your eyes were soft and full of understanding, watching and listening as Leon was spilling out all the things he'd kept locked away.
"I never knew what I wanted beyond doing some good as a police officer. Never thought about marriage or kids." Leon paused, his eyes shifting toward you, in a quick glance before darting away again. He exhaled slowly, shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever nerves had sunk their claws into him.
"But lately I've been thinking about it," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "Imagining myself with a house. A couple of kids running around, causing trouble..." His lips quirked into a faint, uncertain smile. "Honestly? It doesn't sound too bad." He finally lifted his face, his bright blue eyes meeting yours.
"Is that stupid?" He laughed self-consciously, and rubbed the back of his neck, fingers digging into the tense muscle there. "I mean, I don't even know if I'd be a good dad."
You were quiet for a moment, and Leon's stomach dropped. He'd laid himself bare and now his heart was in your hands. You reached across the table, covering his hand with yours. The contact sent a jolt or electricity racing up his arm and he stared down at your hand on his.
"It's not stupid, Leon." you said softly, your thumb brushing over his knuckles in a slow, soothing motion that made his skin tingle. "You'd be a great dad. You're kind, you care so deeply about people, even strangers, and you work hard at everything you do no matter how difficult it might be. Your kids?" You squeezed his hand gently. "They'd be so lucky to have you."
The words were everything he needed to hear and more and he felt his chest fill with affection as he stared at you, the warmth in your eyes, the sincerity in your voice, the way you were looking at him. A piece Clicked into place like a puzzle he hadn't known was missing.
This wasn't just a crush, attraction, or just lust. No this feeling was a need to wake up next to you every morning and fall asleep with you every night.
Leon cleared his throat. "Can I... can I ask you something?"
"Sure," you said, your hand still covering his, your thumb still tracing circles on his skin.
"Would you want to—" He stopped, his courage faltering, his throat tight. Then he forced himself to keep going, forced the words out before he could lose his nerve and talk himself out of it. "I really like you. Would you want to go out sometime? With me. Like, on a date."
Your eyes widened, and for a second, Leon thought he'd just made the biggest mistake of his life. You were going to pull your hand away, tell him you didn't see him that way, that he was a nice guy but—
You smiled brightly as you laughed. "I like you too, Leon." you said, your voice a little breathless, your cheeks flushed pink, the color spreading down your neck and disappearing beneath the collar of your shirt. "Yes, I'd love to go out."
Leon grinned, his whole body flooding with relief and joy, a happiness so bright and overwhelming. "Are- I mean really?"
"Yeah, Leon." You squeezed his hand, your smile widening, your eyes sparkling under the shitty fluorescent lights like they were stars. "I'd really like that."
Leon laughed and ran his free hand through his hair, his grin so wide. "Okay. Okay, good. Great. That's—" He shook his head, still grinning like a kid who'd just been told Christmas was coming early. "That's great."
You laughed too, and the sound wrapped around him like a blanket.
"So," you said, your thumb still tracing circles on his knuckles, sending sparks up his arm, making his skin feel too tight and his face to warm. "When were you thinking?"
"Uh—" Leon's brain scrambled, trying to form coherent thoughts through the haze of happiness and disbelief. "This weekend? Saturday? If you're free?"
"I'm free," you said, and you were looking at him like you'd been waiting for him to ask.
"Okay," he said, his voice rough. "Saturday."
"Saturday," you echoed, and your smile softened. You sat there for a moment, hands still touching across the table. The paperwork was forgotten, It was just the two of you, bathed in the sickly yellow light.
He wanted to lean across the table to pull you close and never let go. Instead he just held your hand, grinning like an idiot, and let himself bask in the warmth of your smile.
"I should probably let you get back to work," you said eventually, your voice soft and reluctant.
"Yeah," Leon said.
Your thumb brushed over his knuckles one more time, and then you slowly pulled your hand away, your fingers trailing across his palm, leaving a trail of heat in their wake. Leon's hand felt cold without yours, to keep him warm and he had to fight the urge to reach out to pull you back across the table and keep you there.
You picked up your pen, your cheeks still flushed, a soft smile still at the corners of your lips. you went back to your files, but Leon saw the way your smile lingered and your eyes kept flicking up to meet his.
Leon picked up his own pen, pretending to read the report in front of him, but the words blurred together, meaningless. All he could think about was you. Saturday couldn't come fast enough.
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You'd noticed him on his first day, it was hard not to really. He'd walked into the precinct with his shoulders back and his chin up, trying so hard to appear more confident than he was, but you'd seen the way his eyes had shifted around the room quickly in a way that betrayed his nerves. He was a new rookie, fresh out of the academy, still carrying that fresh untested energy that was obvious in all of them in the beginning.
You'd been at the filing cabinets, sorting through a stack of case files that seemed to multiply every time you turned your back, that all needed to be cross-referenced and filed in the correct order, and you'd watched him shake hands with Sergeant Branagh. He nodded along to whatever speech the sergeant was giving about duty and honor and serving the community, his expression earnest and attentive. He'd tugged at his collar when he thought no one was looking, like the uniform was too tight or the room was suddenly too hot, a nervous tick if you ever saw one.
He was cute, you'd give him that. Tall, with broad shoulders, a young pretty face, with a constellation of moles that dotted along his neck and face, blonde hair that fell just a little too long over his forehead and blue eyes that were startlingly bright and earnest. He was the kind of guy that would've made your college roommate swoon and start planning a wedding after one conversation and you wouldn’t have blamed her.
You'd looked at him with no more than a curious glance before turning back to your files, pushing all of those thoughts away. you had a job to do and you didn't have time to get distracted by every good-looking rookie who walked through the door.
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The first couple of weeks, you'd kept your distance. Not because you were cold, no, it wasn't that. You weren't a cold person normally or at least you didn't think you were, but you kept your head down because you were busy. The precinct was always busy, and the paralegal internship was demanding in ways you hadn't fully anticipated when you'd accepted it. So, you worked. Head down, focused, moving between the filing cabinets and the desks upstairs with the energy that discouraged small talk. You didn't linger in the break room or chat with the officers unless it was necessary. You were polite, professional, and you kept to yourself.
But you noticed him, sometimes, when you would stop and look up for a second, pausing to stretch your back or rest your eyes from the endless sea of paperwork, you'd catch glimpses of him. And you noticed that he tried, so hard at everything he did. No matter how small or difficult the task.
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You'd been coming back from upstairs, arms full of manila folders, something your supervisor Elle had thrust into your arms that morning with a bright smile on her face, which was deceptive because despite her cheerful demeanor and clothing, she meant business.
Your desk was pushed in the corner, closest to the door and the filing cabinets, which worked for you. You weren't at your desk too often, anyway, always running from Elle's office upstairs down to here where you would file and do most of your actual work. The setup wasn't too ideal for you but Elle did t have room for you in her office and keeping you here kept you out of the way of the officers who needed space to move.
You could hear the crying through the door, It had carried through the wood and glass like a siren. A high-pitched wail, crying that made something in your chest clench instinctively. You'd stopped in your tracks as you entered the bullpen, your arms still full of folders, eyes scanning the room until you'd found the source.
A little boy, no more than five or six, sitting in a chair by Leon's desk. His face was red and blotchy, tears streaming down his cheeks in fat, glistening tracks, snot running down to his upper lip. He was full-on sobbing, not the fake crocodile tears that your siblings would use on you to make you feel bad for not getting their way. These were real tears, the kind that kids shed when they were truly upset and overwhelmed. His whole body was shaking with it, his small shoulders hitching with each gasping breath, and Leon was crouched next to him, looking completely lost.
You were sure that no one had asked him to help. No one had told him to deal with the kid. The boy's mother had probably stepped away for a moment, and the other officers had conveniently found reasons to be busy elsewhere, but there Leon was, trying anyway like he always was.
You'd watched him pull a sticker from Sergeant Branagh's desk and offer it to the boy with a hesitant smile. Watched the kid look at it like Leon was offering him a live grenade, not a harmless sticker to deputize himself right there on his Pokémon shirt. You watched Leon's face fall, his shoulders slumping just a little, the hope draining from his expression before he tried again, his voice soft and uncertain.
"Hey buddy," he'd said, and the kid had just cried harder, and it felt like someone had reached in and squeezed your heart with a firm, unrelenting grip.
You knew that feeling. In fact, you had been in Leon's place many times before. You knew what it was like to try so hard and feel like you were failing, like nothing you did was enough, like you were floundering in deep water with no idea how to reach the surface. You'd felt it a thousand times growing up, trying to wrangle your siblings, trying to be the second parent your mom needed you to be when she was working two jobs and barely had time to breathe, let alone handle four kids under the age of twelve.
You'd felt it when your little brother had scraped his knee on the playground and you'd been the one to clean it up, to kiss it better, to tell him he was brave even though you were only ten years old yourself and had no idea what you were doing. When your baby sister had cried for hours and you'd been the one pacing the living room at two in the morning, bouncing her in your arms until your shoulders ached and your eyes burned, whispering nonsense words until she finally, finally fell asleep against your chest.
So, you'd set down the folders on your desk, with a soft thump, not caring that they were probably out of order now. You’d opened your drawer and pulled out Officer Bandit.
You hadn't planned to keep the plushie in your desk. It had just sort of... ended up there. Left over from some community event months ago, just something that you thought was cute, shoved into the drawer and forgotten until you'd needed it. You'd started using it to comfort yourself when things got rough or you had a particularly bad day, opening the drawer and reaching down to just brush the fur in one direction, feeling the soft texture under your fingertips, the rhythmic motion soothing you.
It was the same trick you'd used on your siblings when they were upset, a soft stuffed animal went a long way when you were trying to calm an overwhelmed child. And somehow, you'd adopted it yourself, a self-soothing measure that you were probably too old for but couldn't quite give up. But now you were glad you had officer bandit tucked away for a moment like this.
When you'd crouched down next to that little boy, watching as his sobs had stuttered to a stop as he'd stared at the raccoon with wide, wet eyes, when his small fingers curl into the soft fabric and squeeze. You'd felt something inside you melt, something warm and tender spreading through your chest. But It wasn't just about the kid finally looking at peace, his breathing evening out, his tears slowing to hiccups. It was about Leon too.
You'd brushed the kids hair off his forehead with gentle fingers, rubbing slow circles on his back between his shoulder blades, but you'd been acutely aware of Leon standing there, watching you.
You'd glanced up at him, and he'd been staring at you like you'd just performed a miracle, like you'd walked on water or pulled a rabbit out of a hat. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open, and the soft, warm expression on his face made your stomach flip in a way that was both thrilling and terrifying. You'd felt your cheeks flush subtly, heat crawling up your neck.
When you'd caught his eye and raised an eyebrow. "You good, Kennedy?" you'd seen the way his face had gone red, the color flooding his cheeks and spreading down his neck. How he'd stammered out a response, his voice rough and unsteady, his hand rubbing the back of his neck in that nervous gesture you were starting to recognize, and you'd had to bite back a smile.
Oh…he was cute. He was really, really cute. But you'd again forced yourself to focus on the task at hand, you didn't have time to get distracted by a rookie who was cute…with nice eyes and a smile that made your heart do stupid things.
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Except It seems the universe was not on your side and you couldn't stop thinking about him. You'd started noticing him more after that day with the kid.
Leon often smiled when he thought no one was looking, a soft smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle, made his whole face light up in a boyish way.
He always held the door open for people, even when his hands were full. He'd juggle files and coffee cups and evidence bags, contorting himself into awkward positions just to keep the door propped open with his shoulder or his foot, waiting until everyone had passed through before he'd follow. He never complained.
He’d often make extra coffee in the breakroom and leave it on the counter for whoever needed it, never asking for thanks. You'd come in some mornings to find a fresh pot brewing, still hot, and you'd know it was him. You'd seen him do it once, early, before the day shift had fully rolled in, setting it to brew before slipping out like he was afraid someone would catch him in the act of being kind.
One night when you'd walked into the breakroom, exhausted and frazzled from a long day of chasing down missing files and dealing with an attorney who'd been an absolute nightmare. Your hair had been falling out of its ponytail, your blouse wrinkled, your eyes burning from staring at documents for too many hours straight. You'd just wanted coffee and to sit and relax for five minutes, anything, to get you through the last hour of your shift. The break room usually had more chairs, but you suspected, as you looked at the single table that usually had at least two chairs, that people forgot to bring them back after a briefing.
Leon had been sitting there in the break room, head down just reading a report when he’d looked up from the table, his eyes widening slightly when he saw you, and without a word, he'd stood up and offered you, the only chair.
Not in a showy way that was meant to be some grand gesture of chivalry, where he expected something in return. No, he'd just... stood up, gestured to the chair, and said, "Here. You look like you need it more than I do."
His voice had been soft, sincere, and when you'd tried to protest. "No, it's fine, I'm just grabbing coffee" he'd shaken his head and gently guided you toward the chair with a hand on your elbow.
"Sit please," he'd said kindly with a smile on his face. And you found you couldn’t say no to that face.
You'd sat, and he'd poured you a cup of coffee without asking how you took it. Two sugars, no cream. He'd remembered. And then he'd set the cup in front of you, his fingers had brushed yours, just for a second.
"Thanks," you'd murmured, wrapping your hands around the cup, and he'd smiled at you and said, "Anytime."
Then he'd gone back to his reports, standing at the counter, because you'd taken his chair, and he hadn't complained once.
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After that day in the break room It was like you couldn’t stop looking for him, It wasn't conscious at first. You'd just... find yourself glancing up from your files when you heard his voice, your eyes tracking him across the bullpen as he moved from desk to desk, helping other officers with their reports or asking questions about procedures. You'd linger in the breakroom a little longer when you saw him there, pretending to be engrossed in the bulletin board or the vending machine selections, just so you could be in the same space as him, hear his voice and see his smile.
You'd find excuses to walk past his desk. Dropping off files that could have been left. Asking questions, you already knew the answers to. Offering to help him with paperwork you had no business touching.
And he always looked up. His face would light up when he saw you, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his mouth curving into that smile that made your stomach flip. "Hey," he'd say, like he'd been waiting for you to walk by. And you'd smile back, your heart doing that stupid flutter that you were starting to associate exclusively with him, and you'd find some reason to stay a little longer. To lean against his desk and chat about nothing, about the weather, about the latest ridiculous call that had come in, about the new coffee shop that had opened down the street.
He'd look at you when he thought you weren't paying attention. His gaze lingering on your face before he'd catch himself and look away, his cheeks flushing. He'd often find excuses to touch you. Brushing past you in the narrow aisles of the filing room, his hand grazing your arm. Reaching across you to grab a file, his arm pressing against yours. Handing you a pen and letting his fingers linger on yours just a second too long.
It was subtle. So subtle you weren't sure if you were imagining it and reading too much into innocent gestures, if your own growing feelings were coloring your perception.
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It had been during the community event, the one with all the kids running wild through the precinct, their voices echoing off the walls, their laughter filling every corner of the building. You'd been helping wrangle them, handing out juice boxes and wiping sticky faces with damp napkins, tying shoelaces and settling disputes over who got to sit where. Leon was on his hands and knees searching for a stuffed cat while a gaggle of children shouted directions at him like he was navigating a minefield.
He'd been grinning and laughing, his hair was a mess, sticking up in six different directions from where at least three kids had tried to style it with their sticky hands. His uniform was wrinkled, the collar askew, and there was a suspicious sticky spot on his shoulder that you were pretty sure was juice box residue, and he'd looked happy. His eyes were bright, his face flushed, and when he'd finally pulled that stuffed cat out from under the desk and held it up, the kids had erupted in cheers, and Leon had laughed, a full, belly-deep laugh that made your chest tighten, and you felt that familiar ache settle deep in your ribs, spreading through your whole body like warmth from a fire.
You'd grown up in a big family. Four siblings, all younger than you, The house was always loud and chaotic, and someone was always demanding something of you. Your mom had worked two jobs to keep the lights on and food on the table, and you'd been the one to pick up the work. You'd been the one to make sure everyone got to school on time, to help with homework, to break up fights and kiss scraped knees and read bedtime stories.
You'd been a second parent before you'd even hit puberty, and you'd loved it and hated it equally. When it was bad, it was bad and you hated it, but when it was good, it was amazing and you'd loved it. You'd loved the noise, the chaos, the way your little brother would climb into your lap and fall asleep during movie night. Loved when our baby sister would reach for you when she was scared, and the way your other siblings would come to you with their problems, their secrets, their fears.
You'd loved being needed and loved by them, but then you'd left for college, and everything had gone quiet. Your dorm room had been silent, your apartment after graduation even more silent. Sometimes it ate at you, and you craved being home, where it wasn’t so quiet that you could hear your every thought like a drop in a still lake. I mean sure the precinct was loud at sometimes which helped, but it wasn't the same, It wasn't home.
You'd buried that longing deep inside, told yourself you didn't need it, that you were fine on your own. You'd thrown yourself into your work and into building a career, you were strong, independent, and self-sufficient.
But then you'd met Leon, and that desire had come roaring back, clawing through your chest cavity to eat at your insides. You wanted him. You wanted to build a life with someone who would get down on the floor with kids, who would try so hard even when he didn't know what he was doing, who would look at you like you were the only person in the room. Who would laugh like that let himself be silly and messy.
You wanted the noise and chaos. The sticky fingers and the laughter and the bedtime stories and the scraped knees. You wanted the life you'd had growing up, the life you'd been missing for so long, the life you'd buried under career ambitions and independence and the lie that you didn't need anyone, and you wanted it with him.
Later once the children had left and you were alone, he'd asked you about the future. You'd been working on paperwork together, the precinct quiet and empty around you, and he'd looked up from his files and said, "You ever think about the future?” This was the moment in which you knew that everything could change.
So, you'd set down your pen, and you'd looked at him, and you'd listened, and when he'd talked about wanting a house, kids, dogs, a family. When he'd looked at you with those blue eyes full of hope and vulnerability and asked, "Is that stupid?", you'd reached across the table and taken his hand.
"It's not stupid, Leon," you'd said. "You'd be a great dad.” And you'd meant it with every fiber of your being, because you'd seen someone kind, and patient, and selfless. Someone who tried so hard, who cared so much, who wanted to make the world a better place.
When he'd told you that he liked you and asked you out, his voice shaking, his face flushed, you'd said yes without hesitation.
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The house was a disaster.
Leon stood by the counter top, surveying the wreckage like a cop at a crime scene. Toys littered the floor, action figures, a headless Barbie doll that had seen better days, building blocks scattered like shrapnel from an explosion, a stuffed raccoon that looked suspiciously like the one from the precinct all those years ago, now missing an eye and most of its stuffing.
The breakfast table was a war zone. Cereal scattered across the surface like confetti. Milk dripped steadily onto the floor in a rhythmic plink that was starting to drive him insane. There was a suspicious sticky puddle near Oliver's placemat that might have been syrup or jelly.
The TV blared a cartoon theme song at full volume, singing about a talking dog and a mystery van, bright colors and loud voices that drilled into his skull. The dishwasher was rattling through its cycle, the plates inside clanking together and the refrigerator hummed and over it all, the voices of his three children, each one louder than the last, competing for dominance like they were auditioning for a reality show about who could drive their father crazy first.
Leon stood in the middle of it all, barefoot, his old RPD academy shirt wrinkled and riding up slightly from where Sophie had been using him as a climbing post five minutes ago, her sticky hands leaving prints on the fabric. His sweatpants had a suspicious stain on the thigh and his hair was sticking up in about six different directions because he hadn't had time to shower yet.
He had Oliver wrapped around his leg like a koala, tugging insistently with sticky fingers on Leon's pant leg, his small face scrunched up in determination. While Leon tried to grab items from the fridge.
“Papa, Papa, I want pancakes!”
Leon looked down at him, four years old, blue eyes wide and demanding, his blonde hair, the color of honey in the sunlight sticking up in cowlicks that defied gravity and every attempt Leon had made to smooth them down. He was wearing his Batman pajamas, the ones with the cape that he refused to take off even though he'd been wearing them for three days straight and they were starting to smell like a combination of sweat and maple syrup.
“Ollie, buddy, we just had pancakes yesterday—“
"Papa! Look what I can do!" That was Emma, their oldest, standing on her chair at the table like it was a stage and she was the star of the show. Seven years old and already too smart for her own good, with a vocabulary that sometimes made Leon wonder if she was secretly a tiny adult in a kid's body.
She was waving a spoon like a sword, her blonde hair cascading past her shoulders in tangles that would take ten minutes and a bottle of detangler to fix, whipping around as she moved. She had food smeared across her cheek and her pink nightgown was twisted around her waist, the hem riding up to show her knobby knees.
"Em, get down before you—"
"Mine!" That was Sophie. Three years old, a tiny whirlwind of chaos who was currently on top of the kitchen counter. Leon's heart seized, his dad instincts kicking in as he watched her curls bouncing, chubby little hands yanking at a box of cereal she'd somehow managed to reach despite being three feet tall on a good day. She teetered dangerously close to the edge, her toes curling over the granite, her balance precarious, and Leon could already see the trajectory of the fall in his mind.
"Sophie, no—" he said reaching for her, but you were faster.
You swooped in from the hallway before Leon could even take a step, your reflexes honed by years of wrangling three tiny humans who seemed determined to injure themselves in increasingly creative ways. You scooped Sophie off the counter with practiced ease, one arm hooking around her waist.
"Nice try, Fi-bug," you said, your voice warm and patient despite the fact that it was seven in the morning and you'd probably been up for a while. Leon was up at five in the morning when Sophie crawled into your bed and kicked Leon in the ribs until he'd groaned and rolled over, giving up on sleep entirely as he got up to let you sleep some more.
You settled Sophie on your hip, and she pouted, her lower lip jutting out in a move that was pure manipulation and had worked on Leon more times than he cared to admit. Her blue eyes, Leon's eyes, not the only thing she'd inherited from him, went wide and glassy, threatening tears. But you were immune to her manipulation, and just kissed her forehead, your lips pressing against her curls, soft and gentle, and smiled.
"How about we sit at the table like a big girl, huh?" Sophie grumbled, an indignant little whine, like a tiny angry bear cub, but she didn't argue, never with mama. You set her down in her booster seat, the pink one with the unicorns on it that she'd picked out herself at the store, screaming "THAT ONE!" at the top of her lungs until Leon had caved and bought it. She immediately grabbed a fistful of Cheerios and shoved them into her mouth, her cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk.
Emma was still standing on her chair, spoon raised and you pointed at her without even looking, your mom-radar finely tuned after seven years of this.
"Emma Kennedy, sit. Now."
Emma sat. Just like that. No argument or negotiation. She plopped down into her chair, crossed her arms over her chest in a huff, and went back to eating her cereal.
Leon stood there, next to the microwave waiting for Ollie's pancakes, watching you move through the chaos like you were performing some kind of magic he didn't understand but was endlessly grateful for. You wiped Sophie's face with a damp cloth you'd pulled from seemingly nowhere your movements efficient and gentle, your touch soft. You poured Oliver a cup of juice without him even asking, because you already knew he was going to ask. You somehow managed to get Emma to eat an actual bite of cereal instead of flinging it at her brother, which was a minor miracle in itself, the kind of thing Leon would have needed at least thirty minutes to accomplish.
And then you looked at him, your hair was falling into your face, strands escaping the messy bun you'd thrown it into before bed last night, the elastic barely holding on. Your shirt the one with the faded RPD logo on the chest that he'd worn during his first week on the job, was stained with God-knows-what. There was a smudge of something on your cheek. You looked exhausted and frazzled. Your eyes had dark circles under them, your skin a little pale from lack of sleep.
You looked beautiful and you laughed as you looked at him, like you knew exactly what he was thinking. It was the same laugh, the one he'd heard in the precinct all those years ago, when he'd been a nervous rookie with no idea what he was doing, watching you calm a crying kid with nothing but a stuffed raccoon and a smile. The same one he'd heard on your first date, when he'd spilled red wine on the white tablecloth and you'd told him it was fine, that you liked messy, that perfection was overrated. The same one he'd heard in the delivery room, exhausted and radiant and covered in sweat, holding Emma for the first time while Leon cried like a baby himself, his hands shaking as he touched her tiny fingers.
It was the same laugh, and it still made his chest tighten, still made his heart do that stupid thump that he'd never quite gotten used to.
Leon looked at the kids, Emma, now actually eating her cereal her spoon moving from bowl to mouth in a rhythm that was almost civilized; Oliver, shoveling tiny pieces of leftover pancakes that Leon placed in front of him into his mouth by the fistful, syrup and chocolate dripping down his chin; Sophie, babbling to herself in a stream of nonsense words punctuated by the occasional "mine!" and "no!" and kicking her feet against the chair, and then back at you.
This was what he'd wanted all those years ago, this exact moment.
He crossed the kitchen, his bare feet sticking slightly to the floor where syrup had pooled, the tile cold and slick. He ignored all of that as he wrapped his arms around your waist from behind, pulling you against him, and buried his face in the curve of your neck.
You smelled like coffee and baby shampoo.
"Leon," you said, laughing, your hands coming up to rest on his forearms, your fingers warm and slightly damp from the washcloth. "What are you doing?"
He didn't answer. He just held you tighter, his chest pressed against your back, his arms wrapped around you like he could keep you there forever, keep this moment frozen in time. His chin hooked over your shoulder, and he closed his eyes, breathing you in.
"We did good," he whispered.
You went still and he felt you take a breath, felt the way your body softened against his, the tension draining out of your shoulders. And then you turned in his arms, your hands coming up to cup his face, your palms warm against his stubbled jaw, your thumbs brushing over his cheekbones.
When you looked at him, your eyes were soft and warm and full. "Yeah," you said quietly, your thumb brushing over his cheekbone, tracing the line of his face like you were memorizing it. "We really did."
Emma made a loud gagging noise from the table, her face scrunched up in exaggerated disgust. "Ew, gross."
Oliver giggled, a high-pitched sound that was pure mischief, his eyes sparkling. Sophie threw a piece of cereal at the wall. It stuck, clinging to the paint.
Leon didn't care. He leaned down and kissed you, his hands sliding up to cradle the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair. You smiled against his lips, and he felt the curve of your mouth, the warmth of your breath, you melted into him like you always had, like you always would.
When he pulled back, you were grinning, your eyes sparkling with that same warmth, that same light that had drawn him in all those years ago and never let go.
Leon thought about that rookie cop. The one who'd stood in the precinct with a crying kid and no idea what to do, who'd watched you drop to the floor without hesitation and felt his heart thump for the first time.
When you'd smiled at him across the break room table, late at night with paperwork scattered between you, and told him he'd be a great dad, your voice soft and sincere and full of a belief he hadn't known he needed.
"Love you," he murmured, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with yours.
"Love you too, Kennedy." you said, soft and teasing and full of affection, full of a love that had only deepened over the years and made him want to kiss you all over again.
Sophie threw another piece of cereal. It hit Leon square in the head, bouncing off and landing somewhere near the dog's bowl, where their golden retriever, Super-Biscuit-princess, Biscuit for short, immediately gobbled it up.
You both started laughing, the sound filling the kitchen, drowning out all the noise and chaos. Leon pressed a quick and messy kiss to your lips, catching the corner of your mouth, and you swatted at his chest, still laughing.
"Go shower, Kennedy," you said, pushing him gently toward the hallway. "You smell like a gym sock and syrup."
Leon's grin widened, his chest filling with a warmth. He stole one more kiss, his lips lingering on yours for just a moment longer, and then he headed toward the bathroom stepping over toys.
Behind him, he heard Emma ask, "Mama, can we get a big lizard? Like, a really big one? like a dinosaur."
"Absolutely not," you said, but your voice was warm, patient, the same voice you used when you told Sophie she couldn't eat ice cream for breakfast or when you explained to Oliver why he couldn't bring all of his action figures everywhere he went.
Leon shook his head, still grinning as he stepped into the shower, the hot water hitting his shoulders and washing away all the exhaustion.
✦┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈✦ 𝖆 𝖓 𝖔 𝖙𝖊 ✦┈┈┈┈┈┈┈✦
Here we goooo, finally!!! I was very excited about this concept, and really wanted to do something fluffy and cute so I got carried away!! This was actually a request I got in my messages weeeeeks ago from the lovely @king-thunderstorm, I'm so sorry this took so long and thank you so much for the request! I really needed this one, and I hope you liked it!
✦✧✦ 𝖊𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖋𝖎𝖑𝖊 ✦ see you in the next life ✦✧✦
This post was brought to you by BUNI ✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
“Say dada,” Leon says, before filling up the baby’s face with kisses. It’s the sweetest sight, truly, especially since your baby girl bursts into laughter.
“You know she can barely hold her head up, right? She won’t fulfill your wishes,” you answer, smiling as you watch Leon play with your three-month-old. Your husband, who complains that his daughter is growing too fast, is desperate for her to say her first words.
“She’s a smart girl, isn’t she?” he asks before blowing a raspberry on her tummy, earning a giggle from his little girl. Leon can’t help himself before pinching her chubby cheeks. “She’ll be speaking in no time.”
“Say dada, sweetheart. Dada.” He drags out the word, hoping that it’ll incite her to speak. As if the refined motor skill just needs some motivation from dad for it to get going. You let out a low laugh before deciding that you’ll let your husband be.
You never pictured Leon as this type of father. While he made it clear that he was overjoyed, you didn’t expect him to be so loving with the baby. It’s only natural though. And you can say that you’re overjoyed as you discover this new side of Leon. A side only you and your daughter get to see.
“Look she’s about to–” Leon’s eyes widen as she opens her mouth. He’s filled with false hope until he remembers that she loves to put her hands in her mouth. He sighs before he lets out a chuckle. He kisses her cheeks before saying, “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
“Honey, she won’t speak any time soon,” you remind him and he shakes his head.
“Don’t listen to mama, love. She doesn’t know just how smart you are,” he says, eyes engrossed with the baby. He looks at her adoringly up until she sneezes– And even then he’s completely enamored. She has the absolutely cutest sneezes.
Of all of Leon's ship prospects, Ada is honestly the least convince IMO and yeah, he did, in fact, have more on-screen chemistry with Grace than he did with her. Every time Ada has been in a game after RE2, it's like 10% interaction with Leon, 90% Ada doing her own thing, but we're supposed to believe they're the only people who truly and deeply understand each other... it's such a joke? Call me an anti but A*eon is dead in the water as of the remake era, confirmed by that interview from late April where Nakanishi says outright that they couldn't find a necessary or compelling role for Ada in Requiem. The fact that they don't think the old precedent of her always appearing in Leon's games is necessary or compelling says everything we need to know about that ship and it kind of makes me laugh??? She didn't appear in Requiem because it was a Leon game and she's irrelevant to whatever point in his life he's at. I feel a little mean but I do get some schadenfreude from seeing A*eons explode on twitter about it after they've historically been insufferable about that ship and people who dare to think it doesn't work or ship something else lmao.
Hi, anon!
Honestly, I thought we'd have to wait for the DLC to drop for the delusional people to finally be disillusioned, I did not expect the director to give that interview. 😹 I know we're sick of those people, but I cannot even imagine how sick the devs are to say that A*da doesn't fit. Then again, I'm sure most of the delulus are still expecting A*da in the DLC (as Leon's wife probably, even though they've effectively debunked that being anyone we know/one could argue being a thing at all), so I'd stock on popcorn for another imminent crash and burn.
But like, Capcom could have put her in cartoons if they wanted do, it doesn't even have to be games, but nope, they probably realize there's only so many times she can come in, try to manipulate Leon, call him a good doggie and fuck off into the sunset before he cuffs her the moment he sees her or something, and not in the fun way her fans would like. They are NOT doing that character assassination after they've just established him as being older, wiser, done with the bullshit AND after he's brought it a ton of new fans.
I'm currently replaying RE4 remake with Kennecroft swaps (thank God there are decent mods, and I don't have to mod that as well). And I've literally just got through the "good boy" cutscene, and damn, I hate this shit. You don't talk about someone you care about this way, period. Can you even imagine how it would look to bring A*da in now to do her usual routine of "Oh, he's the same naive stupid boi I can manipulate"? The ONLY way I honestly see them writing her in at this point is to purely spite them tbh, or like idk, kill her off or whatever, basically to do something drastic to stop A*eon fans from harassing them.
100% agree they're DOA in the remakes. I don't know how they were in the original games, I can't even begin to give a fuck. Clearly, Capcom has zero, zilch, no interest in ever touching this bullshit, so they can be buttheart all they want, but they'd have to face reality sooner or later. At the rate they're going, maybe after the next 28 years pass, but hey, they'll get there!
Meanwhile, Angela is probably recording lines for the DLC, so Grace seems to continue to be important in Leon's life. Tough luck. 🤗
PS if anyone has funny screenshots of the insufferables loosing their shit, do share. XD
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