summary: every time dante tears another hole through his red coat, he brings it to the same tailor to be mended. the coat keeps coming back and, eventually, so does he
word count: 5,376
content: dante x gn!reader, fluff, humour, mild hurt/comfort, minor injury and blood, dante should be banned from owning leather
a/n: thank you to the lovely anon who requested this and gave me an excuse to spend 5,000 words thinking about dante, his beautiful coat and his slutty little waist 🖤
The first time Dante brought you his coat, he arrived eleven minutes before closing with one sleeve hanging by a few stubborn threads and three enormous claw marks raked through the back. He laid it across your counter like a body awaiting burial, planted both hands beside the remains and said, “Caught it on a fence.”
You looked from the ruined leather to the stranger leaning comfortably into your workspace. He was tall enough to make the shop feel abruptly smaller, white hair falling around a face arranged into cherubic innocence which might have been more convincing had he not entered carrying a sword nearly as long as you were tall. Dried blood marked his collar and stained one glove, though whether it belonged to him seemed less concerning than the fact he appeared serenely unaware of it.
“Was the fence alive?”
“Not by the time I left.”
That sounded closer to the truth. The coat had once been beautiful and, beneath the abuse, still was—scarlet leather cut to accommodate broad shoulders and a narrow waist, with enough weight in the sweeping tails to turn every movement into theatre. Whoever had made it knew exactly what he wanted from it: to be seen coming. The red entered a room before his sword did and made certain everyone was looking when he followed. Unfortunately, its owner appeared to regard being mauled as a routine laundering method.
You lifted the severed sleeve and turned back the lining. “This needs to be partially dismantled. The back panel has stretched out of shape, the lining will have to come away, and I may be able to save the sleeve if you haven’t lost any pieces.”
He bent to inspect it beside you, bringing with him the faint scents of gunpowder, old leather and something recently singed. “You’re the expert.”
“I am, which is why I’m telling you it will take at least four days.”
He tried two days, then three, and when neither moved you, deployed a charming please with all the confidence of a man unaccustomed to finding doors closed after he smiled at them. You assured him that such a polite customer could collect his coat in four days.
The grin came easily then, quick and bright and entirely too pleased by your refusal. “I like you.”
“I charge extra for flirting.”
“Put it on my bill.”
You reached for the order book and asked for his name. Dante offered no surname—“Just Dante,” he said, as though one should have been enough for you and generally was for everyone else—then watched your pen move down the page until you paused over the blood saturating the torn lining. Curiosity had its limits, yes, but professional safety required several answers.
“Is there anything on this coat likely to dissolve my hands?”
“Not anymore.”
“Venom?”
“Nope.”
“Curses?”
“Not in the traditional sense.”
Your pen stopped. “In the traditional sense.”
Dante leant closer, lowering his voice as though confiding an ancient superstition. “You know how people say red attracts trouble?”
“No.”
“Well, they should. You’d be amazed.”
You wrote the estimated cost on a separate slip. Dante whistled at the alleged abundance of zeroes, all two of them, and excavated his pockets in the desperate belief that money might have bred in one of them. Across your counter appeared two loose cartridges, a pizza voucher, several keys, a silver lighter, four coins, a demon tooth and a handful of crystallised organs.
You picked up the tooth between two fingers. “Should I ask?”
“Souvenir.”
“Take it away.”
“You don’t think it adds character?”
“I think it has saliva on it.”
He returned it to his pocket and contemplated his four coins. His attempts to negotiate instalments and barter met with escalating hostility, but the offer to handle any demons troubling you deserved an answer. “The only demon giving me trouble,” you told him, “is standing in my shop without enough money to pay the deposit.”
Dante pressed a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”
“I think you’ll recover.”
His attention sharpened, amusement gaining a flicker of curiosity. You had the peculiar impression of answering a question he had not asked, then levity swept back over it and he reached for the enormous sword strapped across his body, apparently intending to leave it as collateral.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s worth more than the coat.”
“I’m not keeping a sword in my workroom.”
“Rebellion’s perfectly behaved.”
“It has a name?”
“Don’t be rude.”
“You came here carrying a named weapon, several unidentified organs and no money.”
“Well, when you put it like that, I sound interesting.”
“When I put it like that, you sound like a police report.”
He eventually discovered several crumpled notes in an inside pocket, enough to cover most of the deposit. You accepted the shortfall on the condition that the coat remained with you until he paid the balance, and Dante offered his hand across the counter as though you had concluded some vital piece of diplomacy rather than negotiated with a delinquent peacock. His palm was warm, rough with old calluses and large enough to swallow yours.
“Four days,” you reminded him.
“I’ll miss you.”
“You’ve known me for twelve minutes.”
“Longest twelve minutes of my life.”
The bell chimed as you escorted him outside. Stripped of that red flare, he seemed oddly diminished, although the dark clothes beneath revealed how much of his apparent size belonged not to the garment but to the man himself. He caught you looking, flexed one shoulder with shameless deliberation, and laughed when you shut the door in his face.
The sound followed you back to the counter, where the coat lay waiting like the first bad decision in a story you had not yet agreed to tell.
The coat proved more complicated than you had initially expected. The claws had dragged the leather out of shape, stretching the edges until the panels could no longer meet, and the damage spread each time you opened another seam. You removed the lining and built a fine support beneath the worst of it, strengthening without making the leather rigid; then you placed each stitch so the repaired sections would flex with Dante’s body rather than split during his next quarrel with something possessing talons.
The deeper you went, the more old repairs emerged. Some were competent, others appalling. One sleeve had been reattached with what looked suspiciously like fishing line, and the left side had been scorched, conditioned and scorched again. Beneath the lapel, your fingertips found the mouths of bullet holes, a dark stain near the ribs and a narrow cut through the collar which had missed the wearer’s throat by perhaps an inch if you were being generous. The garment had become an accidental biography, each scar evidence of some disaster its owner had survived and reduced to a joke. You suspected Dante would be much the same beneath it.
He returned on the fourth day carrying the remainder of your money and a pizza he introduced as a peace offering. When you pointed out that he owed you fifteen and the restaurant offered free delivery, Dante maintained that a large pizza held at least twenty in emotional value, then surrendered the money when it became clear charm would not alter arithmetic. You accepted a slice while he stepped onto the fitting platform and slipped into the restored coat.
It settled across his shoulders as though relieved to have found him again. The reconstructed leather bent cleanly when he rolled his arms, the long tails sweeping around his legs as he turned before the mirror. Yet for all his earlier noise, Dante fell quiet when his fingers reached the seam crossing his back.
“You saved it.”
For once, Dante let the sincerity survive without smothering it beneath a wink. You busied yourself with the collar and told him that was generally what people paid you to do, but his thumb continued slowly over the repair. “Most would’ve replaced the whole panel.”
“Most would have told you to buy another coat. The original leather was still workable, it just needed a little patience.”
In the mirror, mischief had fallen away from a face seemingly built to contain it. Without the grin, older things became visible. The weariness feathered around his eyes, a habitual distance in the set of his mouth, sorrow worn for so long it no longer troubled to announce itself. You looked away before observation became intrusion and smoothed the scarlet leather over his shoulders.
“Lucky me,” Dante said.
You pretended not to hear the answer beneath the answer.
The second catastrophe arrived several weeks later as a neat, smouldering hole through the coat. Dante invited you to see the other guy, who turned out to have been a flaming skull mounted on a demonic centipede. Because it fired projectiles, he insisted, it was cannon-adjacent. You asserted it made him an idiot.
This time he had remembered money, or at least enough that you accepted the garment without conducting another financial inquest. He had also brought coffee prepared exactly as you liked it, a coincidence requiring him to pass over several nearer cafés in order to visit the one you frequented each morning. You did not mention that just as he did not mention how carefully he watched you take the first sip.
The damaged panel required new measurements, so Dante climbed onto the fitting platform and spread his arms while you circled him with the tape. He asked you to buy him dinner before wrapping it around his chest, expanded his ribcage by three blatant inches and claimed nervousness when confronted. You pulled the tape snug enough to expel the breath in a betrayed rush.
“Cruel,” he accused.
“Occupational necessity.”
He remained unrepentant while you measured the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his back and the fall from waist to hem, offering opinions throughout, most of which concerned additional pockets. He wanted one large enough for a slice of pizza that was insulated, removable, and perhaps came with a waterproof flap. You were threatening to pin the measurements directly to him when his reflection asked whether that was a promise.
The tape slipped between your fingers.
His delight was immediate, warm and intolerable. You recovered by tightening it around his waist, but Dante merely laughed until you stepped nearer to check the fit beneath his collar. Then, with the abruptness of a curtain falling at the end of an act, he became quiet beneath your hands.
You would come to recognise that stillness. Dante filled any silence left near him, whether with a joke or the extravagant sprawl of his body. Under your hands, he let the quiet remain. His eyes followed you in the mirror while you adjusted the line of the coat and marked the damaged panel with chalk, but he made no attempt to disturb your concentration.
Few customers recognised how intimate a fitting could become. You learnt the angle of their shoulders, where tension gathered through the spine, which parts of themselves they concealed and which they exaggerated. Dante wore confidence with the same dramatic ease as scarlet leather, but his body held truths the costume could not completely disguise. There was an old stiffness beneath one shoulder blade, a faint flinch when your fingers passed his left side, pale scars rising wherever the shirt pulled taut; there were too many to count, and more beneath the surface than any mirror could offer you.
“You always stare this intensely at your customers?” he asked.
“Only the ones assembled incorrectly.”
“That hurts, sweetheart.”
“Hold still.”
He did.
After that, one repair threaded itself into the next. Dante returned with a singed hem, a missing cuff and, on one memorable occasion, a sleeve stiff with something he insisted was not technically blood. You banished him until it had been cleaned and he reappeared the following morning with the coat dripping wet and the righteous expression of a schoolboy who believed literal compliance should exempt him from consequences.
Soon the damage barely justified professional attention. A loose button required an hour on your fitting platform and most of the sweets beside the till. A pulled thread became an excuse to occupy the little sofa while you worked on commissions, his long legs hanging over one arm as he supplied increasingly improbable accounts of his latest hunt. You learnt that he ran a business called Devil May Cry, although ‘ran’ seemed generous. Most days, he appeared to survive through bad planning and a body too stubborn to die. Whatever god protected fools had clearly made Dante a personal project. In return, Dante learnt which afternoons were quietest, where you hid the good coffee and how to distinguish the expression that meant you were listening from the one that meant you were considering stabbing him with your shears.
His pockets developed their own ecosystem. Shell casings bred beside lollipops and overdue bills while the demon teeth multiplied until you suspected the first had begun a dental archive. You made him empty everything before surrendering the coat, and during one such excavation found a scrap of scarlet thread looped carefully around a card.
It was the thread you used for his repairs.
“You’ve been carrying this?”
Dante glanced over from the mirror. “Emergency.”
“You can’t perform emergency leather restoration with six inches of thread and no needle.”
“Good luck charm, then.”
Lightly said, but he took the card from you with surprising care and returned it to the safest inside pocket. After that, you began signing your work with a tiny line of embroidery concealed beneath the lining, where nobody would find it unless they went searching. Dante said nothing when he discovered the first, but he arrived the following week with pizza from the expensive restaurant across town and the entire cost of his repair in cash.
You might have carried on pretending his visits meant nothing if you had not caught him manufacturing one. Late on a rain-swept afternoon, Dante placed the coat across your counter and pointed gravely to a separation in the lining. The stitches had been snipped one by one. The leather was neither strained nor frayed; even the loose thread remained caught beneath the lining, damning him.
“Must’ve been a very small demon,” he said.
“A demon carrying a seam ripper?”
“They’re evolving.”
“You picked this open.”
He received the accusation with magnificent offence. You informed him that your trust had died the moment he disembowelled his own lining. Dante called that dramatic, and you reminded him he had come to the right shop.
Rain threaded silver down the windows behind him. Without the usual catastrophe demanding your attention, the absurdity of the arrangement stood plainly between you—he had sabotaged a perfectly sound repair because he wanted an excuse to visit. Apparently, a man who could face a flaming centipede without hesitation could not ask whether you wanted to see him outside the shop.
You pushed the coat back across the counter. “This doesn’t need a tailor. It needs ten minutes and someone capable of threading a needle.”
“Know anyone?”
“I’m busy.”
His grin faltered—not enough to disappear, but enough to reveal the uncertainty underneath it—and he reached for the coat. You let his fingers find the leather before adding that you finished at seven and intended to eat at the restaurant around the corner. They served pizza, since that appeared to constitute the entirety of his diet.
Dante’s hand remained where it was. “Are you asking me to dinner?”
“I’m telling you where I’m eating tonight. Your interpretation is your own problem.”
“At seven?”
“If you’re late, I’m leaving without you.”
He arrived at half past six.
Dinner became another kind of routine. Dante remained an inconsistent correspondent and a terrible planner, but he appeared at odd hours with coffee, takeaway or news of some minor disaster he insisted you would find entertaining. Sometimes he vanished for several days, never warning you before he went; you refused to ask when he would return, as though silence could make the waiting less revealing.
The coat always came back eventually, until the night Dante arrived wearing it over an injury he thought you would not notice.
The damage he presented was almost insulting. There was a narrow tear beside the lower seam, simple enough to mend within the hour. He launched into a story about an overgrown lizard with attachment issues while you examined it, but the familiar animation had thinned into effort. He kept his left side angled away, one hand braced upon the counter and carrying far more weight than his careless posture would admit. When your fingertips touched the torn leather, it was wet with blood.
“How long ago?”
“Couple of hours.”
You told him to take off the coat. Dante attempted a remark about finally winning you over, but whatever he found in your expression discouraged the rest. He drew the garment gingerly from his shoulders, and beneath it his shirt clung dark and wet to his side.
The tear was forgotten. You caught his wrist when he tried to wave you away and found a steady pulse beneath skin colder than it should have been. “Sit down.”
“I heal fast.”
“You’re bleeding on my floor.”
“I’ll pay for cleaning.”
“With what money?”
“Good point.”
The joke had no shine left in it by the time Dante lowered himself onto the fitting platform, the same narrow stage from which he had posed, preened and stolen enough pins to establish a private armoury. Now he folded instinctively around an injury he insisted did not deserve attention, and the sight of him there felt wrong enough to hollow out the room. You fetched the medical box from beneath the counter, cut through the darkened side of his shirt, and listened as he pointed out, with dwindling conviction, that the shop was already closing.
“Then you can stop bleeding whenever it becomes convenient.”
“You should see the other guy.”
You looked up. “If you say that again, I will make this hurt.”
“There’s my favourite bedside manner.”
The wound curved across his ribs, vicious but already surrendering to his unnatural healing. Once the blood was cleaned away, new skin showed beneath the torn edges; it would not kill him, but relief did not arrive softly. It entered your hands as anger, sharpened by the sudden knowledge of how much the coat had hidden. How many times had it reached your worktable like this while Dante laughed until you attended to the leather and overlooked the body that had bled into it?
You pressed clean gauze against his side, drawing a hiss through his teeth. Dante assured you the wound would be gone by morning, but you secured the dressing anyway. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt tonight.”
The answer seemed to hit harder than you intended. Without the sword, the coat or the swagger broadening his shoulders, Dante seemed less like the impossible figure who had once occupied your doorway than a man who had never learnt what to do when someone noticed his pain and refused to be distracted by his survival.
“The jacket can wait,” you said.
“I knew it. You only love me for my wardrobe.”
“I’d prefer if the man inside it stayed in one piece as well.”
Outside, the rain had thinned to a whisper beneath the awning. Your hands remained at his waist, one resting over the bandage and the other warm against his back. In the hush following your admission, the intimacy of your position asserted itself all at once. You stood between Dante’s knees, close enough to feel heat returning gradually to his skin and each careful expansion of his ribs beneath your palm.
His hand closed loosely around your wrist. “You worried about me, Stitches?”
Usually the nickname earned an eye-roll. Tonight it had lost its teasing edge. You accused him of arriving half-disembowelled; he accused you of melodrama, reminding you that his rapid healing had already begun. The coat, he pointed out, had once survived being set on fire beneath your care.
“The coat, yes. You are considerably more difficult.”
His thumb moved once across your pulse. “You keep trying anyway.”
The glib answer waiting behind your teeth refused to come. You knew what to do with Dante when he was flirting. You knew considerably less about what to do when he meant something, and now he watched you without offering either of you a place to hide.
“I come here ‘cause you don’t ask,” he said at last, his gaze drifting towards the scarlet leather darkened by his blood. “Most people see the sword and the whole half-demon thing, and decide what I’m supposed to be. Monster, hero, tragedy—depends who’s asking.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “You just think I’m bad for leather.”
“You are calamitous for leather.”
“Exactly.”
There was no self-pity in him, only an old fatigue spoken plainly for once. You smoothed the edge of the bandage and told him that catastrophic nuisances still deserved medical attention, a sentiment he warned might give a man ideas. Yet when he lifted his chin and drew you a fraction closer, the confidence with which Dante faced every violence deserted him before compassion. His gaze fell to your mouth; your breath caught, the shop contracting around the narrow distance between you.
Then his stomach growled loudly enough to qualify as a demonic incident in its own right.
Dante closed his eyes. “You didn’t hear that.”
You had undressed him, lost a considerable quantity of his blood upon your floor and were now ordering him dinner, he observed once you insisted upon food. As far as he was concerned, the evening was going exceptionally well. Your laughter loosened the moment without quite breaking it, warmth returning to his face at the sound.
He fell asleep on the shop sofa before the pizza arrived, one arm folded beneath his head and his long legs trailing over the edge. When the leather was clean enough to move, you laid the coat across him and watched scarlet rise and fall with the deep rhythm of his breathing.
By the time you woke at your worktable, Dante was gone. He had taken the remaining pizza and left enough money to pay for it beneath your empty coffee cup.
For nearly two weeks afterwards, you saw nothing of him. His work took him beyond the city without warning, and Dante treated plans as polite suggestions rather than obligations, so the silence should not have troubled you. You told yourself it felt different only because you had seen him injured before he left. Even so, every ring of the bell lifted your attention from the needle in your hand, and every customer who entered left a little more disappointment hanging in the doorway behind them.
On the twelfth evening, the door struck the wall hard enough to rattle the glass. A young man with short white hair stood on the threshold, breathing heavily, one mechanical hand clutching a bundle of ruined scarlet leather.
Your body understood before your mind did. “Where is he?”
The stranger assured you Dante was alive, which was not an answer and did nothing to slow the cold travelling through your veins. He laid down what remained of the coat. For one dislocated instant, you could not recognise it. The back had split almost from collar to hem, one side eaten brittle by acid, the lining in ribbons and blood drying to rust across the surviving panels.
You braced your fingers against the counter because touching it felt impossible. “How alive?”
“He was standing when I left. Complaining, showing off, being a pain in the ass. Normal Dante.”
“Then why isn’t he wearing this?”
“Demon grabbed it. He slipped out before it dragged him into a mouth the size of a van.” The stranger paused, sympathy tempering his impatience. “Would’ve left the coat, but he went back for it.”
Of course he had. Dante had told him to rescue the leather before the acid dissolved it and predicted, with satisfaction, that you would kill him. You informed Nero, once he finally introduced himself, that this stayed under consideration. He received your promise to save the coat with offensive scepticism, then left after swearing he would contact you when the hunt ended.
You worked through the night.
There would be no hiding what had happened to the coat. You could replace every ruined panel, but Dante would return to something cut from the same pattern and stripped of all the same history. Instead, you cut away only what could not be restored, treated the acid damage and built support beneath the torn back. New leather bridged the missing sections, dyed to belong beside the old scarlet without pretending to share its age, while the lining was pieced together from whatever had survived. Each pass of the needle drew the longest rupture closer, not erasing the wound but teaching its edges how to hold.
The coat had always narrated Dante’s survival. Beneath the work lamp, it became an omen.
Every old repair passed through your hands; the claw marks from the first night, the scorched panel, the cuff once torn away during an alleged fall through a church roof. Your hidden embroidery remained safe among the wreckage. He had not replaced a single piece bearing your mark unless the damage made it unavoidable, and when the creature tried to take all of it, he had gone back.
The tenderness of it hurt, though the idiocy, at least, kept your hands steady. You drove the needle through the backing, pulled the thread taut and tried not to wonder whether anyone would remain to wear what you were saving.
Morning slowly unpicked the darkness from the windows. Beyond the glass, the city stirred, oblivious to the terror gathered in your shop. Coffee cooled beside your elbow and cramps stiffened your fingers, but stopping would mean waiting, and waiting offered nothing you could mend.
The bell rang shortly after nine.
Dante stood in the doorway, bruised, filthy and missing part of one boot. Blood had dried through his hair and a fresh cut crossed his forehead, yet he remained upright, breathing and leaning against the frame with exaggerated ease, as though returning from the dead was simply another late arrival.
“Morning, Stitches.”
You crossed the shop before deciding whether you planned to strike or embrace him and managed both in swift succession. Your palm met his chest with enough force to wipe the grin from his face, and when Dante confirmed that he had gone back into a demon’s mouth for the coat—“Would’ve ruined the leather,” he attempted—you caught the front of his shirt and dragged him against you.
For one heartbeat, he was motionless. Then his arms folded around you, one hand spreading over your back while the other cradled your head with a care so immediate it hurt. Beneath your ear, his heart beat hard and steady.
“There,” he murmured into your hair. “Still ticking.”
You called him an idiot, told him you hated him and tightened your arms until his answering laugh dissolved into something without humour. Dante rested his cheek against your temple and, for once, made no attempt to rescue either of you with a joke. He simply held you while the fear drained slowly from your body.
When you stepped back, his hands lingered at your waist and his attention travelled to the worktable where morning light found every alteration. The new leather among old, fine stitches crossing the back, the pale scar left where the acid had bitten too deeply to erase.
“I couldn’t make it look untouched,” you said. “Not without replacing almost everything.”
Dante ran his fingers along the reconstructed seam. “Wouldn’t want that.”
“The marks will still be there.”
“So will I.”
The answer was quiet. He turned while you lifted the coat and settled it over his shoulders, easing the repaired side around his arm and drawing the collar into place. Despite all your measurements, it fitted differently now, a garment assembled from several versions of itself, altered by every survival and strengthened where it had once given way. Dante rolled his shoulders once and the seams held.
You reached around him to fasten an interior closure, your arms almost encircling his waist, and he covered your hand before you could retreat. When Dante turned within the loose circle of your embrace, the tails swept around your legs and enclosed you both in scarlet.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’ve been awake all night.”
“Because of the coat?”
“Don’t insult me.”
He lifted your hand to his chest, pressing your palm over the heartbeat waiting beneath the leather. “Still here.”
You warned him that he had better remain there, because you refused to perform another restoration before next month. Dante considered that a vote of confidence, and when you threatened to sew him into the coat, his smile tilted and he accused you of promising him a good time again.
“For the record,” he said, thumb following the pulse inside your wrist, “I didn’t go back because it’s a nice coat.”
“No?”
“Lots of nice coats in the world.”
“None you can afford.”
“Low blow.” His forehead lowered towards yours, mischief softening into something unguarded as the distance disappeared. “I went back ‘cause you made this one mine.”
The words drew tight every thread stretched between you—the two sleepless weeks, one unbearable night, months of small returns and the hidden marks of your hands carried faithfully against his body. Rather than trust yourself to answer, you closed the remaining distance and kissed him.
After months of shameless provocation, Dante kissed you with startling care. One hand slid into your hair while the other settled at your waist, close without presuming; it was only when you caught his lapels and pulled him nearer that the familiar confidence came rushing back. Even then, beneath all that instinct and flair, he listened to every change in your breath.
When you parted, his smile was softer and slightly dazed. “So, does kissing the tailor get me a discount?”
“Actually, romantic partners incur a nuisance fee.”
His laughter filled the shop, bright enough to scatter the shadows the night had left behind. There were conditions, of course. Dante would pay his invoices, stop opening perfectly sound seams and attempt to avoid being swallowed by anything larger than a delivery van. He considered the last restriction unreasonable, but stole another kiss and promised to try.
It was a worthless promise. You both knew it.
Later, while Dante sat on the fitting platform eating the breakfast he had persuaded you to order, you discovered one final weakness beneath his right arm. He lifted it obediently while you threaded the needle and leant close, your arm curved partially around his waist as his free hand settled at the small of your back with the ease of something finding its intended place.
“Could add that pizza pocket while you’re in there.”
“I have a needle beside your ribs.”
“Just brainstorming.”
“You’re already storing food in my shop. Your coat doesn't need provisions.”
“Our shop.”
Your needle paused, but Dante continued eating with an expression of calculated innocence while the hand at your back drew you slightly closer. You should have corrected him. The shop was yours, as were the bills, the workrooms and the demon teeth hidden in an empty button tin. He had just wandered through the door one evening carrying trouble, blood and four coins. Instead, you tied off the final stitch.
It sat hidden beneath his arm; a small scarlet promise holding old leather to new. Dante could not see it, but he tested the seam with a roll of his shoulder and smiled when it held.
He would tear it again. He would return scorched, bloodied and carrying some outrageous explanation, and you would curse him, mend what you could and remind him that survival did not render pain inconsequential. The coat would never be pristine again. Neither would Dante, but you had never asked them to be. The difference was that now, when Dante came home carrying the damage, he would find someone waiting to let him in.
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Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"
tags; anime vergil x female reader, nightmares, hurt and comfort, bed sharing, wing hugs, soft vergil.
Shadows softened in the corners of your apartment.
The room was partially dark. Somewhere, something was dripping—surely the bathroom faucet that had yet to be repaired. The sound was accompanied by the distant murmur of the city. At least the walls were thick enough to keep the noise of the traffic at bay. When you opened your eyes, the faint glow of the streetlights filtered through the curtains, casting stripes of light across the bed.
You let out a silent yawn, and the digital clock on the nightstand blinked. The sun was still nowhere near rising.
Then, the sound of steady breathing reminded your sleepy mind of who occupied the other half of the bed. Beside you, Vergil slept. Or rather, he did what he referred to as sleeping. You described it as remaining eerily motionless for hours with his eyes closed.
He claimed there was no difference, but there was.
Ever since Vergil decided to share a space with you—or rather, ever since you sheltered him in your home—you had watched him adjust to being back in the human world. Or among the sapiens, as he sometimes called them. Sleep, among other things, was an abstract concept to him. And it didn't always come easily.
Vergil tended to stay perfectly still, his eyes squeezed shut as if he were listening to something in the far distance. Or as if he were waiting for something to happen. Rare were the occasions when he truly slept, and when it did happen, it was because you were with him.
You tried not to let that affect you. You failed.
Tonight, however, he seemed genuinely submerged in sleep. Without his shoulders tensed and his brow furrowed, he almost looked younger, less defensive. His breathing was slow and constant. Peaceful.
Then, you remembered why your body had decided to wake you. Ah, right, you thought. I need to use the restroom.
You tried to be as quiet as possible. The sheets slipped slightly as you climbed out of bed. Once sitting on the edge, you looked over your shoulder. Vergil hadn't moved. You took a selfish moment to look at him. Even while doing something as banal as sleeping and wearing the most mundane clothes, he exuded something that made it glaringly obvious he wasn't completely human.
The floor was cold beneath your bare feet.
You just needed to use the restroom.
You slipped out of the room cautiously, careful not to interrupt Vergil's sleep, unusual as it was. The door remained ajar behind you.
And the room fell silent once more.
Nightmares were enemies whose ambushes Vergil could never anticipate.
When they caught him, they dragged him into a darkness of no return, deeper than the hell that had torn him to pieces only to rebuild him out of rot. Then, he would see them: grotesque demon faces reaching for him, claws and wings pursuing him, training him.
Then came the fire.
The heat of the flames scorching stone, consuming wood until it splintered apart, made him feel terribly small, even within himself. He was. Surrounded by fire once more, back in the body of a child. The panic felt so real. Through younger eyes—his own eyes—Vergil desperately tried to find salvation, only to find it on the ground, pooled in blood. Then the fire consumed everything, and he was dragged to a prison where the horrific heat would only intensify, swallowing his tortured screams along with it.
He snapped awake.
It was never a gentle return.
It was like being ripped from his own mind by claws and fangs.
In an instant, Vergil was sitting up, his hands clenched into fists over whatever fabric he could grasp, his heart hammering violently against his ribs. For a dizzying fraction of a second, he didn't know where he was. The memory of the fire and a cell in the bowels of hell were still too vivid. Blood could be smelled in the air—dense, and undeniably his own. What his senses perceived was the darkness enveloping the space, the silence, and the cold. He tasted smoke and the blistering heat on his skin.
Then... nothing.
Reality rushed back as quickly as it had vanished. The room, the cracked and faded walls of the apartment, the sheets he remembered falling asleep on beside—
He snapped his gaze sideways, letting go of the fabric and instinctively reaching for the space beside him. Empty.
Any lingering remnant of sleep vanished.
The room was empty. Far too empty.
Vergil stood up without a second thought. Every muscle in his body stiffened with a tension he only ever felt before a fight. His breathing grew shallow; to his ears, it was barely perceptible, yet it felt deafening. His gaze swept the room until it locked onto the door left ajar. The apartment remained silent. No voices. Nothing.
An unpleasant pressure constricted his chest.
She left. The thought surfaced before he could stop it. It was absurd, irrational. And yet, there it was. The ghost of the fire and a childhood shattered to pieces, years of pain and rot. Of being completely adrift.
Gone, gone, gone.
Before he realized it, Vergil was standing in the hallway. The air felt heavier, but there were no traces of other demons in the vicinity. Then what...? A current of energy traced a path beneath his skin, as if his body were tearing itself apart to fight something that wasn't even visible. What was he going to fight?
His own fears?
Then, he heard footsteps. Light, soft. Unmistakably human.
Before Vergil could take another step, you appeared, walking barefoot with a sleepy expression and tangled hair.
Ah, he thought, all his instincts silenced by a relief so dense it smothered everything else. There you are.
You stopped the moment you noticed him. Your eyes narrowed in confusion, as if you hadn't expected to see him awake, let alone looking like he was about to kill something.
"Vergil?"
You stepped closer to him. Your gaze, clearer now, immediately caught the tension wrapping around Vergil's tall frame like a rope snapped taut. The tightness in his jaw only showed like that when he was angry or irritated, but you had learned to read his moods. Vergil didn't look angry in the slightest. It took you a long moment to recognize the emotion blanketing his features because you had never seen it before. Not on him. You had never seen fear in Vergil.
The distance between you closed by a couple of steps.
"What's wrong?" you asked.
Nothing, he thought. A superficial, useless answer when he clearly looked as though he were about to lunge forward and trap you. Ridiculous. You were perfectly capable of getting up during the night without a tragedy occurring; he knew that.
But a part of Vergil—a terribly human part—couldn't differentiate between a momentary absence and a permanent loss. Not when there were still times he woke up expecting to find smoke, or waiting to hear his own screams echoing off the walls of a cavern. But now... a vacant bed had been enough for Vergil to imagine the worst, because a door left ajar had been enough to drag him decades back. What kind of weakness was that?
Nothing, he thought again. He didn't grab you only because he remained rooted to the spot, staring at you. Searching for wounds, traces of blood, any sign of danger. There was none. And how sickening it was, the way the pressure in his chest dissipated the moment he realized you were unharmed.
Only then was Vergil able to answer.
"You weren't here."
There was a moment where the words hung suspended in the air. Just that. You weren't in bed. It wasn't a reproach, nor was it an accusation.
You blinked, startled.
All Vergil could hear was the rhythm of your pulse.
You understood, and your heart took a painful plunge in your chest as it clicked.
You knew his nightmares. He had told you about that night and everything that followed. How could you have forgotten? Vergil's nightmares always began like this. He had undoubtedly feared the worst when he didn't see you.
You had seen it before, on the nights he snapped awake with a start and held you tighter, the times he stayed awake staring at the ceiling. You knew where it all came from.
"I just went to the restroom," you said softly, closing the distance between you. His eyes followed your every step, capturing everything from the movement of your body to the cadence of your breathing. Vergil's eyes were honest in a way he himself could never be. A few strands of white hair fell out of place, disrupting his immaculate appearance, you fought the urge to brush them away. "I'm sorry."
Vergil's jaw clenched before he forced himself to relax it.
"You have nothing to apologize for." His shoulders sank just a fraction as your scent replaced the air around him.
You tilted your chin slightly to look him in the face.
"I should have told you," you murmured. "Or made a bit more noise—"
"You are not responsible for my afflictions," he replied in a hushed voice. If anyone else were to hear the tone Vergil used with you, hell would freeze over.
Your expression softened under the bluish glow of his gaze.
"Maybe not." Your hand slowly sought his out. Vergil followed the movement as if it were mesmerizing, as if he didn't comprehend that it was meant for him. Slowly, your fingers laced with his—soft skin slipping against the hand calloused by swordplay and years of training. "But that doesn't mean you have to deal with them entirely alone."
In moments like this, Vergil was grateful you couldn't hear his heartbeat. It wasn't a frantic pulse born of fear or alertness, but it undoubtedly exceeded established boundaries, and it was ridiculous, and he couldn't stop it.
A human making the heart of a half-demon beat for something other than hunger. Perhaps he truly was banished from hell.
For a suspended moment, Vergil didn't answer; he simply stood there, watching you. If only you could see yourself through his eyes.
Finally, his fingers closed around yours, covering them.
"Go back to bed," he said.
For a split second, he almost sounded on the verge of saying please. You couldn't help but smile a little, even as your heart melted inside your chest.
"That sounded suspiciously like a request."
Vergil shot you an unimpressed look, but the corners of his mouth twitched just enough to give him away.
"Do not flatter yourself."
"Was it a request?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Completely."
"Because it felt like a request."
"Your perception is flawed."
You laughed, and the sound did something inside his chest. Something warm and unknown, something that would take him time to accept. Slowly, the nightmares receded. He knew that, at least for tonight, they wouldn't return.
Because you were there.
Because you were smiling at him.
Because tonight was simply a mundane, boring night.
Vergil didn't let go of your hand on the way back to the bedroom. Your fingers unraveled from his when you flopped onto the bed—the exact way you knew made him huff—and opened your arms wide.
Vergil watched you the way one observes something entirely nonsensical.
"What are you doing?"
"Offering hugs."
A cricket could have played a concerto in that silence.
"I do not need them."
You dropped your arms and shrugged, looking more amused than slighted by the rejection. You had long since learned not to take Vergil's defense mechanisms personally, but you pulled the entire blanket over to your side of the bed anyway.
"Your loss," you said, barely hiding your amusement as you cocooned yourself in the fabric.
Vergil sighed. That long, resigned sigh you discovered was reserved exclusively for you. The mattress dipped beside you as he took his place, hogging more than half the space. The bed wasn't built for two people, much less a half-demon.
In the ensuing silence, nothing happened, and you wondered if he was pretending to sleep. You were just about to drift off when a firm arm wrapped around your waist. The heat of his skin bled into yours through your clothes. You smiled against the pillow.
"So you did need them."
"Silence."
"Caught you red-handed."
"Silence."
"Vergil has feelings."
"I am going to let you go."
"No, you won't."
He didn't. You two knew it.
The pause that followed was so long you almost started to chuckle.
Then, a surge of energy filled the room. A warm blue radiance momentarily coated the walls before dimming into a soft illumination. The bed groaned under the sudden shift in weight. The cold instantly vanished, and all you felt was a wall of heat pressing against your back. The arm around your waist grew broader, lined with claws that tickled your skin. The blanket covering you disappeared, and you found yourself face-to-face with... well, Vergil. In his Devil Trigger.
It wasn't the first time you'd seen it, but your jaw dropped nonetheless. The bed was definitely not made to sustain the weight of a demon.
"Seriously?"
"Sleep."
"You're gonna break the bed."
"Irrelevant," he replied, his voice a octave deeper. The hand—claw—at your waist hauled you backward, making the poor bed wail. Your back collided with the solid armor of his chest. "You are speaking too much."
Massive wings unfurled, swallowing up most of the room, but Vergil used them to drape over both of you, creating a barrier. A sanctuary. The most dangerous creature your world knew was shielding you with his wings in an attempt to protect you from that very world. Or perhaps it was just another way for Vergil to harbor himself.
The outside world fell entirely mute. Inside that barrier, it was only the two of you. The beat of that heart—which was as human as it was demonic—became a drum that, of all its lethal purposes, ended up lulling you to sleep.
Slowly your eyelids began to close.
"Goodnight, Vergil," you whispered.
There was a low rumble, a rough sort of purr that vibrated against your back. Vergil pulled you closer.
He felt the moment you fell asleep. This time, when Vergil closed his eyes, there was no darkness, no home swallowed by flames. Only your breathing, and the human fluttering inside your chest. Only your warmth.
Slowly, he closed his eyes, silently letting himself drift away, anchored by the certainty that when he woke up, you would still be there. Right beside him.
Synopsis: After returning to Raccoon City nearly 30 years after its destruction, Leon comes to the rubble of your workplace. Within it, he finds the walking remnants of you, his lover from 28 years ago.
Ship(s): Rookie!Leon & Requiem!Leon x girlfriend! medical student! reader (slight canon divergence, Leon was not late on his first day because of a breakup)
Theme(s): Angst, hurt with NO comfort, story told through several flashbacks, people do dumb things in grief, inspired by "The Love You Left Behind" by Michael Schulte and "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane (blue denotes lyrics to the songs)
Content Warning(s): character death, some violence and potentially intense description of Leon putting down zombies, swearing, one mention of wanting to throw up, long because I'm insane, an unkissed brick, Leon cries again does that count?
Raccoon City didn’t look any smaller than it did 30 years ago. In fact, memory had a bad habit of making everything bigger- the Raccoon City in his mind had wider roads, skyscrapers reaching for the heavens. Now, though, everything had changed. Roads were littered with the rubble of those towering skyscrapers, decrepit and caved in like the roads that had once carried ordinary citizens to and from work, school, other activities of daily life.
The first Raccoon City in his mind had been one of neon and noise- life milling about as it did, a bustling city that he had once upon a time taken an oath to protect. Leon had joined the academy to see the lives of ordinary citizens safe, to ensure that the children in Raccoon City would be able to live lives without fear, without going through what he had in his own youth. But he had never gotten to see that version of the city in his dreams. Instead, his first day- once intended to be an initiation into the city’s police force- was one that would come to haunt his dreams for the foreseeable future. He no longer awoke from his slumber each night drenched in cold sweats, the visions of the B.O.W.s plaguing his dreams until he could no longer rest- those nights were fewer and more far between- but he could never quite erase it entirely from his memory. Quiet reminders of that night always lingered in the back of his mind, feeding the reminders that he couldn’t save anyone- not even himself.
September 30th, 1998. The end of Leon Kennedy’s beginning. Thirty years ago, he had run from this city with blood on his hands and a promise at his back, an understanding that he would never again see the Raccoon City he had been so adamant to protect. Now, it seemed, that promise had come back to collect.
Rubble crunched beneath his feet with every step he took, each footfall kicking up a cloud of dust and ash that burned his nose, filling his every sense with the fallout. As much as he reminded himself to focus on his mission, he couldn’t help but allow his mind to wander the slightest bit as he took in his surroundings. The gun shop in which he had met Mr. Kendo…and his daughter. An Italian restaurant he had once promised his partner that he would take them when they reunited in Raccoon CIty.
His heart ached, and he stopped in his tracks.
His partner.
He had met you when he was in the academy. Still a green, bright-eyed rookie who was all but enthralled by his upcoming assignment as soon as he graduated. You, at the same time, were set to arrive not long before he did, having finally been accepted into a medical school of your dreams and beginning your first clinicals at Raccoon City General.
“It’ll be perfect!” you had joyously exclaimed as you all but threw yourself against him, wrapping your arms around his neck in a hug as soon as you opened that acceptance letter. “I get to go to Raccoon City too! We won’t have to worry about long distance.” You were beaming that day, the elation of being matched into a program you loved and the dissipating worry of potentially having to navigate a long-distance relationship or worse, going your separate ways, had you glowing. He couldn’t take his eyes off of you, absentmindedly nodding along to whatever it was that you had said. His hands had settled around your waist, lifting you off the ground in a hug, face buried in your neck as he inhaled the familiar scent of your perfume, the scent faint yet consuming all of his senses. The scent of home. “Yeah,” he had rasped, holding you tighter. “Yeah, we won’t. I knew you’d get in. If anyone could, it would be my brilliant, brilliant girl.”
He would get to build a home with you. It would be difficult, sure, navigating your respective lives in a new place. Medical school was difficult and sure to occupy a large portion of your time, not to mention your energy. He imagined the first years of your new beginning together would be slow, low-energy dates. Cuddling on the couch, watching the same trash movies you always talked him into watching whenever you were together. Falling asleep tangled in each others’ embrace, your head on his chest and dozing off to the gentle beating of his heart and your soft breathing in a cozy symphony.
He hadn’t thought about you in a while, he realized. At least, not consciously. He would never stop thinking about you, a voice in the back of his head reminded him. Even if his thoughts were not focused on you, as they often were not allowed to be due to the demands of his line of work, he realized that you were often in the back of his mind even in the little ways. Remembering your favorite flower whenever he’d seen one. Humming along to your favorite song as if it were second nature to him.
“Leon!” Your voice danced across his memory, and he turned his shoulders to follow the ghost of you in his mind, the same path you’d always traced through his apartment kitchen. “Come on, dance with me!” It was barely a request, already decided by the young woman in his space that he would be joining you whether he wanted to or not.
The sound of your playlist filled the kitchen quietly, a backdrop to the comfortable silence that had filled the space between you up until then as you cooked dinner together. Carbonara, you had insisted, was the perfect beginner meal to make together.
“I walked across an empty land. I knew the pathway like the back of my hand…”
“I don’t think that’s a good ide–!” You grabbed his hand before he could even finish the thought, spinning into his arms with a laugh as your arms came to drape around his shoulders. “Alright, alright, Princess. The ballroom floor is yours. But if I step on your toes, you can’t be mad at me.” He leaned down to press his forehead against yours, inhaling your presence as his hands settled on the dip of your waist.
There isn’t really space to dance. The kitchen is small, all he could afford reliably on what meager savings he’d put together while he was in the academy, but you made it work. You always did. His other hand found yours, intertwining your fingers together before he begins to sway. The rhythm is uneven at first as he found the rhythm to both the song and you.
“I’ll just… have to turn you into a frog, then!”
Leon laughed, blonde hair falling into his face as he shook his head. The singer’s voice has blended into the background by now, little more than background noise to all of his thoughts consumed by you, of this quiet moment within your own little world with him. Outside, the world continues- traffic rolls, time passes by- but here? Here, there is only this moment. Everything narrowed down to the now. The faint music, the feeling of your soft skin under his hand as his thumb brushed against your wrist the best he could manage without letting you go. His love pressed against his chest as he looked down to meet glimmering eyes he had all but fallen in love with the first time he’d seen them.
“There are worse things to be turned into,” he hummed. “But I could handle being a frog if it meant I still got kisses from you, Princess.” He spun you slowly, hand finding the dip of your spine as he brought you into a dip, his lips ghosting over yours faintly. “Just promise not to let me croak, okay, doc?”
You rolled your eyes, half-heartedly attempting to shove him away from you at his dumb joke. His grip did not falter, though, and he held you steady once again as he straightened you out once again, hands pulling you in once again for a proper kiss this time.
"This could be the end of everything, so why don’t we go somewhere only we know?”
His forehead met yours, eyes closed as he savored the moment with you. Slow dancing in the kitchen was almost a date night tradition for the two of you by now. It wasn’t planned, of course, but it was natural. Somewhere over the course of the night, you would find your way into each other’s arms, circling in the few spare feet of your own personal bubble.
He didn’t notice that the song was already over, too enthralled in appreciating the beauty in his arms, the heavy beating of his heart that grew ever stronger as every second passed with you in his embrace.
“Do you remember when you first heard this song? When you told me you didn’t like it?”
He listened to the lyrics for a few moments before a breathy laugh escaped him when recognition finally came to him.
"Maybe I'm hopeless, but I'm only human..."
“I hope that you know that I’d give it all for a moment with you,” Your voice, singing along to the familiar song brought him back to the present. He didn’t answer your question immediately, letting himself fall into a rhythm of dancing with you once again. He guides you across the floor of the kitchen, careful not to crash you into the dining room table as his movements got ever so bolder.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” His head nudged your own softly as he tucked you back into him. “I told you I didn’t get it.” You had carried this conversation on before the two of you were official, when he was still dancing around the desire to ask you to start going steady. Biweekly coffee dates, late night phone calls, flowers every time he saw you, yet no label. Denial was the label his friends had put on it for him- denial that he was actually developing feelings for a girl he knew that he may eventually have to leave behind if their fated courses were to diverge.
You looked up at him, eyes glimmering with warmth and chin resting on his chest. “And now?”
His lips found your forehead, lingering there for a few moments. “Now? Now, I get it.” He got you.
"These cold hands, this burning heart, will always be hollow without you.”
Holding you in his arms for a few more moments, he let himself simply appreciate the space you filled at his side. You’d picked him up after joining the academy, after the separation from his last partner. You’d been friends at first, but Leon’s hopeless heart had done little to stop the feelings that grew ever present more and more by the day. It wasn’t until you’d found yourself staying over at his place during a storm that those feelings came to light between the two of you.
“I love you,” he murmured in the comfortable silence, as if speaking it too loudly would shatter whatever this was. “Thank you…” His head dipped to bury in your neck.
“Le, what are you thanking me for?” The nickname slipped out so easily now. It filled him with warmth. It was short, simple, and barely a change from his name. But it was wholly, undeniably yours.
“For being here. For not leaving my sorry ass.”
Fingers finding his hair, you tugged on the soft blonde locks to get him to pull back and look at you. “Le, you don’t have to thank me for being your girlfriend. Really, it’s–”
“I mean it.” His hands gripped your waist again, bordering on painful. “I know this isn’t exactly the life fitting of a doctor. One bedroom apartment in the busiest part of the city. I can’t provide everything for you yet, not until I finish with the academy, but…I will. I promise.” He sounded almost like he was on the verge of tears. “I’ll get there. I’ll be able to give you everything you want. A ring, one worthy of the person who lit up my life like the brightest star in the sky. A house to raise our family in. Our future will be bright.”
Your hands found his face, your steps slowing until you stopped, just cradling his cheeks in your hands. “Leon Scott Kennedy-” Gods, hearing his name fall from your lips got him weak at the knees. For a brief moment, he imagined giving that name to you, dancing like this in a different scene. The blue sundress you currently wore longer, and white.
Maybe it was too early to pop that question- it definitely was- but your impending move to Raccoon CIty would be one step closer. You’d agreed to move in with him, sharing an apartment in the city that you would both start anew in together. You’d be going first since your clinical rotation started earlier than his assignment began, meeting the movers and ensuring everything was in place before he joined you about three weeks later.
One day. And he couldn’t wait.
He never made it to that apartment to meet with you. The last time he had seen you in person was the morning he said his temporary goodbye, sending you off with a chaste kiss and the promise to tell you all about his last weeks in the academy, about everything you had missed while you were separated. You had been unable to attend his ceremony, having fought tooth and nail to get an excuse from your clinical shift that week to no avail. You were left to hope that you would eventually see photos, sooner or later.
He wondered where you were these days. Every time he thought about you, fighting back the sharp pain that bloomed in his chest each time, he pictured your escape from the city, getting out and starting anew elsewhere. Had you moved on in the last 30 years? Gotten married, started a family with someone else? He’d always imagined that the two of you would have a daughter together, a miniature version of you that he would get to watch grow up into the same type of intelligent, resilient woman that had raised her. Elena. It was the name that came to mind every time he’d had the thoughts. Bright light, to accompany the nickname he had given you, his Golden Girl. You were his sunlight, the bright warmth that greeted him at the beginning of every day, and the light that shone upon him at the beginning of every dark night he spent weathering through night terrors.
Light streamed through the window of his bedroom, bathing the both of you in a warm gentle light as the sun crested the horizon to greet the world and guide it through a new day.
Rolling over onto his stomach, Leon was lured closer by a familiar weight to his left. Reaching out to wrap an arm around your waist, he pulled you to him, his chest finding your back as he buried his face in your neck. “Good morning,” he mumbled, tucking you securely into his grasp with a sense of finality, closing his eyes again with the full intention of going back to sleep holding you. “Not time to get up yet. Go back to sleep.”
He was successful for a short while, letting himself doze off again when your contented sigh made way for the sound of your rhythmic breathing only a few minutes later. He wondered if you were ever truly lucid, or simply half-awake when he’d slid you closer. You only stayed asleep for another half hour before your eyes fluttered open and the cruel state of consciousness fell upon you.
Groaning lightly, you moved to sit up in bed, only to be stilled by Leon’s arms resolutely holding you in place. A soft laugh escaped you and you settled back into his grasp, slowly turning over to face him. He wasn’t quite awake yet, affording you a few minutes to simply observe his sleeping features. He was so peaceful like this, face relaxed with the soft embrace of slumber. His nose twitched every so often as a strand of his hair brushed against his face, and a smile grew upon your features as you reached out to brush it back to protect his peace.
A larger hand caught your own as Leon pressed your palm to his cheek for a moment before turning his head to press his lips against your palm, eyes still closed. He lingered for a few moments before his attention was on you once again, baby blue eyes meeting your own. He settled his head back into the pillow, but not before leaning forward to press his lips to yours, something he had once promised you would always be the first thing he did in the morning. “Morning, gorgeous,” he greeted, voice low and scratchy from sleep. “Sleep well?”
You propped yourself up on an elbow beside him, your other hand idly moving to begin tracing patterns on his bare shoulder. “I always do when I’m with you,” you hummed. “You want breakfast, or do you want to stay here a little bit longer? You gotta go in today?”
He shook his head. “Nope, not today. Come here, you.” Reaching out as soon as he sat up to lean against the headboard, he pulled you back to his chest until he had your weight against his shoulder. “No plans for today, either. Do I get a day to do nothing but spend time with my golden girl?” His lips pressed against your shoulder where it peeked from the collar of the t-shirt you had stolen from his dresser to sleep in. “Breakfast can wait.”
Tipping your head upward, you observed your boyfriend, warmth growing in your chest. He really had grown into himself more throughout the course of your relationship, namely with showing affection to you. You had to hold back a laugh at the memory of him turning your favorite plushies around before he would even kiss you for the first time.
“They can’t watch that kind of debauchery!” he had exclaimed then, much to your chagrin, before you pulled him into you, his face flushed pink and breathless in the aftermath.
“What are you thinking about?” His lips caught the corner of your mouth, you having failed to hide the smile during your reminiscence, and an inquisitive hum rumbled through him.
“You.” The answer was simple, honest. “Well, us. Where we were and where we’re headed. Raccoon City is where it’s all really going to begin for us, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah it is.” A comfortable silence fell over the two of you, contemplative, as you thought of the future that was fast approaching for you. You had worked so hard to get here already, many sleepless nights during your undergraduate degree to get the credits you needed to graduate early. Day in and day out, you worked and worked, often wondering if the struggle was worth it and worrying about where you would go if you weren’t accepted to the medical schools you had applied to. Would you have to end things with Leon? Would you be happy knowing you had gotten into a school that wasn’t one of your first picks? Would you get in at all?
‘Of course you’ll get in.’ Leon’s voice echoed in the recesses of your mind, just as it had every time you had begun to express these doubts to him. ‘You’re my golden girl, and you’ve got a good head on those shoulders. And if they don’t accept you, I’ll…I’ll find a reason to arrest them for you.” He hadn’t been serious, of course, but it had cheered you up nonetheless.
In the pause that stretched between the two of you, Leon’s hand had found the charm of the necklace that had dipped under your collar, gently twisting the charm between his fingers. He had made it for you, somehow, during a brief stint with interest in crafting. He had wanted to gift you something to show his appreciation for you as his partner, but nothing he could find was quite good enough to suit the image of what he had in mind.
“I tried to make it perfect.” He had looked away when he presented her with the box over breakfast that morning several weeks ago. “But…”
You’d smiled softly at the gesture, lifting the necklace from the box and examining it.
The pendant was small, a dented disk that was hand-engraved with a crude, uneven design. He’d intended for it to be molded into the shape of the sun, if the person looking at it squinted and tilted their head, created while he sat at the kitchen table, fumbling with tools he barely knew how to use.
“I’d rather it be yours. It’s beautiful. Thank you, Leon.” She undid the clasp with skilled hands. “Will you help me put it on?” Nodding energetically, he had done exactly that, fumbling with the clasp for a few minutes before finally succeeding in his endeavor. Brushing your hair out of the way once more, he’d pressed a kiss to the nape of your neck before stepping back from you.
You’d worn it every day since then.
“Are you nervous?” He finally asked, slowing his fidgeting with the charm.
“A little,” you answered honestly on an exhale, breath light before you let an anxious little chuckle escape from you. “But…I’m excited, too. I mean, we’re starting a new life. Why wouldn’t I be? Besides, we won’t be apart for too long.”
“Hey, three weeks is a lot of time for things to happen.” His hand migrated to rub your arm. “The world could end in three weeks, you never know.”
You playfully pushed him away. “Even if it did, you’ll still come back to me, you loser.”
He laughed, pulling you flush against him once again before finally moving to sit up with the intention of getting out of bed. “I’d always come back to you, golden girl.” He kissed you lightly. “Now, come on. Let’s go get breakfast.”
He didn’t realize that he had gone the wrong way until he looked up at the remains of Raccoon City General Hospital. Perhaps part of him had forgotten his mission objective, letting his mind do more than just wander in passing.
It was a source of pride for Raccoon City. Alongside the R.P.D. headquarters, the city hospital featured some of the most ornate exterior decoration, a testament to the history the facility had grown alongside the rest of the population. The inside technology had always been advanced for the times, cutting-edge and attracting patients from even the farthest corners of the large city.
You had always been enthralled by the technological advancements headed by the hospital under the guidance of Umbrella. You’d been proud of working there, even, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the corporation still had you under its employ, wherever you’d found yourself in the aftermath. Did you know what Umbrella had done to the people you wanted nothing more than to protect?
His head craned upwards to look at the remnants of the large facility. It stood ahead of him in a broken silhouette, upper floors sheared over by the blast that had cleaved the top half from the bottom in seconds, its concrete bones and wire ribs exposed to the elements. Wind moved through the upper portion freely now, carrying once-white bedsheets like flags of surrender where they were partially trapped under rubble and debris. Nearly thirty years and it still hadn’t finished falling, instead standing as a cold reminder of the night that changed his entire world nearly three decades ago.
What remained of the facility’s perimeter signage was rusted over the years, the directional signs having faded until they were illegible and any authority eroded alongside them. His gaze traced the outline of the building once more, his current mind attempting to reconcile the signt before him with the one he carried in his memory. There would have been life inside, then, bright lights and people milling about.
He imagined you looking down at him from one of those upper floor windows as he passed by during one of his patrols, waving at him as you leaned against the glass. He swallowed thickly, unable to stop himself as he approached the front doors of the facility. His gun hand hovered over his holster as he broke the barricade away, breaching the doors with one swift kick to the hinges, giving way with a dry metallic groan.
Dust and ash covered the interior of the hospital in a thick blanket, undisturbed over the past years. The air was stale, heavy, and the lobby was barely recognizable now between the caved-in ceiling and broken tiles scattered about like an abandoned puzzle. His gaze found the clock on the far side of the room, long frozen in time at 2 P.M. “Still punctual,” he mumbled to himself. The time you often found yourself calling him on days you weren’t together, having started your lunch break right around that time. “Hope you aren’t mad at me for being late to this one, sweetheart.” He climbed over the reception desk that had been thrown sideways, metal drawers pulled out and long emptied, and ventured further inside.
He moved slowly, gaze catching on fragments of the life that stood frozen in time.
A wheelchair knocked upon its side.
A child’s shoe, dingy and half-charred.
Metal chairs fused to the floor and to each other from the heat.
Had they gotten out?
Your first unit had been on the third floor, that much he remembered. How could he forget? You’d seldom stopped expressing your excitement over getting to work in one of the pediatric units. You were perfect for that part of the job. He had looked forward to seeing the change you brought about in their world.
The climb to the third floor felt much longer than it should have, as if the very building itself resisted the idea of being revisited, and was attempting to keep him away. By the time he reached the unit, the sky was beginning to darken, the whisperings of sunset impending not far off. Muted light spilled through jagged openings in the half-collapsed walls of the rooms where remnants of normal life still clung stubbornly to the notion of normal existence. The horizon spanned wide and indifferent in the distance, not sparing him any more time to reminisce.
“I was late,” he murmured into the dead-silent air around him as he looked around at what could, and would have been. Colorful paint that once colored every wall was muted, peeling and chipping away from the patterns that had had been painstakingly placed there to keep the young patients from being scared in the cold, clinical white walls of the hospital. “I told you I’d come back to you. I guess I couldn’t keep that promise, huh?”
A gust of wind threaded through the broken structure as he looked outside, singing a mournful song to carry forth to him. He refused to turn and chase its voice. There was no point.
Instead, he found the old paper that he’d kept with him on every mission since then. It was old now, yellowed and worn at the edges, creased from the constant folding over the years. It had been taken after your first official date at your insistence, captured in a moment that had no idea what was coming for them down the road. It had rarely left his side when he was sent out on a mission. Sherry had offered to give him a restored version, rendered again with modern technology and breathing new life into the old, lower-quality photograph. He had always refused, wanting to keep you with him in the same form he remembered you since then.
“I’m still looking. Just in case you’re wondering.” He wouldn’t stop, that he had vowed the second he was out of Raccoon City. There would only ever be you, even if it took him 30 more years to find you.
If you had that much time, he thought wryly, fist tightening at the grim reminder of the growing black splotches up the expanse of his arm and neck.
Silence was the only thing that answered him, and the wind with its ongoing, mourning song. “Yeah. I figured as much.”
Turning from the hospital room, accompanied only with his thoughts, he paused at the doors. Opening his mouth as if he wished to speak, he silenced himself with a shake of his head before continuing on his path.
Making way towards the stairwell once again, deciding it was high time to get back to his mission now that he was in his right mind once more, his footsteps faded into the hollow quiet of the hospital.
He had only gotten halfway down the corridor before something slid across the floor behind him. No, not slid. This was soft, carrying a rhythm to it. Something was dragging. Turning around, retrieving his firearm from the holster at his side, he trained his eyes on the junction of the next hallway. Every one of his instincts stood on high alert, decades of training and fighting pulling him still. Sneaking forward closely, he prepared to turn the corner and face the creature that he’d certainly alerted. This was a hospital. If there was one, there was likely more not far behind it.
The sound came again, this time closer. Turning the corner, he pointed his firearm at the B.O.W. at the far end of the corridor, moving between the shadows. The figure moved unsteadily, lumbering forward toward him and catching itself against the wall with a jerking, unnatural gait.
His world narrowed to a single, unbearable point, blue eyes widening in disbelief as they focused on it. Time and decay had taken their share of the body, that was certain. What remained of its hair hung in uneven strands, greyed with dust and ash with each brittle strand. Light pink scrubs, once purchased with the intention of making the wearer more welcoming to the younger population, were torn and fused to char-darkened skin. One arm hung at an angle that would not be seen on a living, breathing human, the other extended straight out with fingers twitching in small, aimless motions.
But when the setting sun glimmered against a dented, circular pendant, he suddenly felt the contents of his stomach threatening to make a reappearance.
“No…”
Thirty years was a long time to think of different endings, and Leon Kennedy had likely come up with dozens of scenarios in his mind on how he would reunite with you. None of them looked like this. Not a single one had prepared him for this, for the way his legs rooted him into the ground as if they suddenly weighed two tons.
“You… You’re not…” He couldn’t find his words. What could he even say? It couldn’t understand him.
You couldn’t understand him.
“Hey.” Despite his more rational brain and better judgement, he found himself trying anyway. Hope foolishly bloomed in his chest for a fleeting moment, unable to be schooled just yet. He knew this was hopeless, he was hopeless, but part of him still could not bring himself to believe that this was the reality he was living.
Pinch him, wake him up. Bring him back to the reality where he got to wake up with you asleep beside him again. Anything but this.
“You remember me?” The plea escaped his mouth before he could pull it back. “It’s me. Hey, it’s Leon. I-”
It lunged. It was erratic and sudden, stumbling. Hunger and instinct were the only things that controlled what had once been you. There had been no recognition that crossed your features despite his reminder. He knew there wouldn’t be. He tried anyway.
It was wrong. This was all wrong. He shouldn’t be finding you here. You shouldn’t be here. You should be outside of the city limits, happy and healthy with the family you had wanted to build, even if it wasn’t with him.
Knowing what he knew now, he should never have let you follow him into Raccoon City, into the clutches of the organization that had taken so many people from him. Even if it meant that you would have been led away from him, into someone else’s arms, or to an entirely different path in which the two of you became little more than strangers, supporting roles in each other’s stories.
His training snapped him back, the instinct to survive driving him to move aside, swiftly grabbing the wrist extended towards him and twisting until he heard a sickening snap as he only worsened what was broken. You stumbled forward, slamming into a nearby wall with heavy impact and a snarl before rounding back on him.
His heart pounded in both fear and sickening recognition as he stepped back, hands returning his gun to the space in front of him as he observed her from downsight. He should shoot, his mind screamed at him. Shoot, before this went too far.
“No,” he repeated, louder this time. Even he wasn’t sure if it was at his thoughts, or at the situation he had found himself in. “No!”
Your hand reached for his chest again.
Turning his head away so he wouldn’t have to watch himself do it, he fired. The sound was deafening, a sharp sequence of cracks that shattered the fragile silence. The recoil of his firearm, the Requiem that sang only for you, jolted up his arm as he aimed true with one, two, three shots.
The sound of the weight hitting the ground as you crumpled was almost cathartic. His stomach still threatened him, as did the burning behind his eyes that still refused to look at the body on the floor, but in his own dark way, Leon almost felt a semblance of peace for you at knowing that you would no longer have to live as something you would hate.
If you had been lucid enough, and still had an ounce of humanity to you, would you have asked him to do the same? To grant you mercy and take you away from the suffering you would undoubtedly face as you turned?
Would he have been able to do it if you had?
His grip faltered at the thought of you in what had been your last moments. Were you alone? Or had you barricaded yourself in with the children on the unit, holding them close and keeping them calm despite your own rising panic? He hoped it was the latter. You had always been the most gentle presence in his life, and if there was anyone who could keep those kids calm even in the face of impending danger, it would be you. Selfishly, he also hoped it meant you hadn’t been alone at the end. The thought of you, alone and forced to sit idly by as those all-too-familiar black splotches bloomed against your skin tore at the very fabric of his being. He had never wanted you to be alone.
Setting his jaw and remaining there unmoving for a few more beats, his arm slowly lowered, slipping the gun back into his holster securely.
And finally, he looked at you. Rather, what had once been you. The version of you in his mind was alive and well, not laying half-decomposed and forgotten in the walls of the hospital you’d thus devoted your time and life to, cursed to wander these corridors until something granted you the kindness of permanent rest.
“I’m sorry.” The words felt inadequate. “I should’ve been there.” Against his wishes, a traitorous tear slid down his face, leaving tracks in the grime settling on his features. Dust stirred around him as he knelt upon one knee at your side. Wind passed through broken walls again, its wail echoing the one he was warring with himself to contain.
A gloved hand brushed back brittle, ash-kissed hair, remembering what it had felt like twenty-eight years ago beneath his fingers, smooth and familiar when he carded through the locks every time you fell asleep against him.
“You wanted to save lives here.” His voice was rough,breaking halfway through the sentence. “And I couldn’t be there to save yours. I’m so sorry.”
His hands were shaking, and his gaze tore from you to stare at them as if they were not his own. They belonged to someone else, surely, and that would explain how they had done what he’d done.
”But all the love you left behind will always…”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Against his better wishes, a sob tore through his throat, sudden and violent, as he all but buckled, curling over the remains of you as twenty-eight years of worry, of wondering where you had disappeared to, came to the surface at the cruel truth that you had been here. And that he would never get to live out any of those visions of your reunion, even if they were too far in the future to rekindle anything at their age. “You were– Fuck, you were looking at me, but it wasn’t you. I… I’m so fucking sorry.”
He stayed there with you until the sun threatened to set on him, casting him into a darkness that would only bring new horrors alongside it. Part of him didn’t care, couldn’t bring himself to care now that he had lost you officially, but the rational part of him reminded him that he not only had Grace to rescue, but the part of him that you remembered. You wouldn’t want him to stay here, to give up and die, after all. He had promised to become a man worthy of you, and that was a promise he fully intended to uphold, especially now.
When he could no longer stay by your side, having no more tears left to cry and leaving himself with only trembling shoulders with each heaving sob, Leon wiped his eyes and slowly schooled his emotions once more. Focus.
Rising to his feet, Leon paused only to remove the sun pendant from your neck. His hands trembled still, fumbling with the clasp just as he did 28 years ago when he had first placed it around your neck. It was old, fragile, and practically melted shut. Finally managing to remove it from your eternally still form, he tucked the pendant into one of the pockets of his harness. It was missing a few of the rays he’d painstakingly crafted all those years ago, having been lost to time and the erosion of nature, but it was so heartbreakingly you.
“I’m sorry I was late. A lot happened in three weeks, but…”
He hesitated again when it came time to say goodbye to you, standing a few paces away and looking back to where he’d left you.
“Your loser came back to you,” he said quietly, turning his back on the past once again as he took his firearm from its holster again to fight his way out of the facility. “Goodnight, my Golden Girl.”
"...Remind me of you"
All dividers by the wonderful @/strangergraphics!
Author's Notes: I had tormented a friend of mine with this idea a while ago and decided it was time to commit to the bit. Big thanks to Enso for sitting with me and making me lock in to finish it! Also... big thanks to Petal for being my first victim in beta...I love you pookie I'm sorry for making you cry even though you don't even go here
Likes, comments in tags and thoughts ALWAYS appreciated! I feed off of knowing y'all like what I write And, as ALWAYS, do not feed any of my works through AI systems of any sort. Keep AI out of creative spaces.
Summary: A mission meant to be routine becomes a race against the clock when you’re bitten, and the only antivirals are destroyed. With the infection spreading and time running out, Leon Kennedy abandons everything except the one objective that matters: getting you back alive.
Warnings/tags: bite injury (reader), infection themes (fever, delirium), mentions of blood/wounds, mission-related violence, guns, angst, protective leon
The hallway smells like antiseptic and old rain, sharp enough to taste at the back of your throat. Emergency lights pulse a slow red, painting everything in the color of a heartbeat that refuses to settle. Somewhere deeper in the facility, something metallic groans, the sound carrying through the walls like the building itself is shifting in its sleep.
Leon moves ahead of you with that familiar economy, every step deliberate, shoulders slightly rounded forward as if he's braced against a wind no one else can feel. Years ago, you would have called it tension. Now you know it's simply how he stands when he's ready to protect something.
You.
He lifts one hand without looking back. Two fingers. Hold. You stop immediately, rifle angled down but ready, covering the rear out of habit. Your breathing slows to match his. In the quiet, you can hear it, the faint rasp of fabric as he adjusts his grip, the tiny click of leather at his wrist. He glances over his shoulder, blue eyes catching red light, and the corner of his mouth tilts.
"Tell me you hear that too," he murmurs.
"Ventilation system struggling to keep up with poor life choices," you whisper back.
His mouth twitches a little more. "Comforting."
"Very."
He turns forward again, advancing with a careful sidestep around a fallen gurney. You follow close, boots landing where his did, stepping into the spaces he clears without thinking. Years of missions have worn this path between you into muscle memory. You could navigate a battlefield blind if he were moving ahead of you.
Sublevel three, quarantine wing. The official report had said that the outbreak was contained. Minimal hostiles. Data retrieval only. You and Leon had both read that and packed extra ammunition.
Something scrapes faintly above you. You both stop again. A wet sound follows, soft but unmistakable, like raw meat dragged across tile. Leon's shoulders go rigid. He tilts his head, listening, then slowly raises his pistol toward the ceiling vent ten feet ahead.
"Don't," you breathe.
Too late. The grate explodes outward in a shower of dust and rusted screws. A shape drops hard onto the floor between you, limbs hitting at angles that don't belong to anything living. The body spasms once, twice, then snaps upright with a sound like tearing cloth. Its eyes are wrong. Its mouth is wrong.
Leon fires twice. The creature barely stutters before lunging. You're already moving. Your rifle cracks, recoil thudding into your shoulder as you pivot left to avoid Leon's line of fire. The rounds chew through rotten muscle, splashing something dark across the wall. The thing keeps coming anyway, a puppet yanked forward by invisible strings.
"Persistent," you mutter.
"Understatement."
It reaches Leon first. He sidesteps, grabs a fistful of its ruined jacket, and uses the momentum to sling it into the wall hard enough to dent the drywall. Before it can recover, he drives a knife up under its jaw with brutal precision. The body convulses, fingers clawing weakly at his sleeve, then goes slack.
For a moment, the only sound is your breathing and the slow drip of something unpleasant onto the tile. Leon exhales through his nose, shoulders lowering a fraction. He wipes the blade on the creature's shirt before sheathing it, movements efficient, practiced, almost weary.
"You okay?" he asks without turning.
"Fine."
He turns anyway, eyes scanning you head to toe, checking for tears in fabric, blood that isn't yours, the small tells you can't hide from him even if you tried. His gaze lingers on your face a second longer than necessary.
"Your heart rate's up."
"So is yours."
"Occupational hazard."
You step closer, bump your shoulder lightly against his arm. "You jumped."
"I did not."
"You absolutely did."
"I adjusted my stance."
You snort. "Sure you did, hero."
His hand comes up automatically, settling at the small of your back as he guides you past the body. The touch is brief, grounding, gone almost before you register it. He does it all the time now, in doorways, on stairs, whenever the path narrows. Years ago he used to keep that kind of contact locked away behind professionalism. Marriage burned that barrier down to ash.
"Remind me why we didn't retire somewhere with a beach," you say quietly.
"You hate sand."
"I could learn."
"You said that last time. Then you threw a shoe at a seagull."
"It started it."
He huffs, a sound that might be the ghost of a laugh. "We're not buying a coastal property just so you can wage war on wildlife."
"Coward."
They're soft words, familiar words, the kind that live comfortably between you, even in places like this. Especially in places like this. If you stop talking, the silence fills up with too many ghosts.
Ahead, the corridor splits. One path descends into deeper shadow. The other ends at a reinforced door marked MEDICAL ISOLATION.
Leon studies it, jaw tightening slightly. "That's our best bet for antiviral storage."
"And our worst bet for everything else."
"Probably."
He reaches for the panel. It flickers, unresponsive.
You lean in, shoulder brushing his. "Stand back."
"I am standing back."
"Further."
He sighs but obeys, stepping aside as you pull a compact breaching charge from your pack and set it against the seam. Your hands move quickly, efficiently, though you can feel his eyes on you the entire time.
"Try not to blow yourself up," he says.
"Try not to worry so loudly."
"I don't worry."
You glance up. "Leon."
"...I worry a normal amount."
You smile despite yourself. "Uh huh."
You trigger the charge and pivot away, grabbing his vest to pull him with you behind the corner. The explosion is sharp, contained, dust puffing into the air like a violent exhale. When the ringing fades, the door hangs crooked on shattered hinges. Leon looks down at where your hand is still gripping his gear. His expression softens in a way that has nothing to do with combat.
"You can let go," he says gently.
You realize you're still holding on and release him, suddenly aware of how solid he feels under your fingers, how warm even through layers of tactical fabric.
"Right," you say, clearing your throat. "Professional."
"Very."
But he brushes your knuckles once before moving past you, so quick it could almost be an accident.
Inside, the medical wing is colder, air conditioning still struggling on backup power. Cabinets hang open, supplies scattered across the floor as if someone had tried to pack in a hurry and failed. A hospital bed sits abandoned in the center of the room, sheets twisted into ropes. You sweep left. Leon sweeps right. The familiar dance resumes. For a few seconds, nothing moves.
Then something thumps weakly from behind the bed. You both pivot, weapons raised. A figure drags itself into view, lab coat smeared dark, face gray with fever. Human. Barely.
"Help," he croaks.
Leon lowers his weapon first, but doesn't relax. "You're infected?"
The man nods frantically, clutching his side. "Bite... hours ago... there's... antivirals... storage fridge... code..."
His hand trembles as he points toward a small sealed unit in the corner. Hope flickers, fragile and dangerous. You step forward. Leon catches your arm immediately.
"Careful," he murmurs.
"I know."
His grip tightens just a fraction before he lets go, thumb brushing your sleeve as if memorizing the texture.
The man coughs wetly, body shaking. "Please... I don't want to... turn..."
Leon's jaw flexes. You can see the calculation in his eyes, the grim understanding of how this story usually ends. You move past him anyway, crouching by the fridge, fingers already working the manual override. The seal pops with a soft hiss. Inside, rows of vials gleam faintly in the emergency light, liquid clear and precious as water in a desert.
"Jackpot," you whisper.
Behind you, the man makes a sound that isn't quite human.
Leon's voice snaps sharply. "Back."
You turn just in time to see the change sweep across the man's face, muscles locking, eyes clouding over like frost creeping across glass. Too fast. Leon fires once. The body collapses before it can lunge.
Silence crashes down, heavy and absolute. Your hands are still wrapped around the cold vial when Leon steps in close, one hand settling at the back of your neck, fingers warm against your skin. He leans his forehead briefly against your temple, a gesture so intimate it almost hurts.
"Hey," he murmurs. "Stay with me."
"I'm here."
"Good."
"Leon," you say, unable to keep the lift out of your voice. "We've got—"
The ceiling tile above the doorway caves in with a thunderous crack. Something drops through in a tangle of limbs and teeth. Leon fires before it even lands.
The room detonates into motion. Another body slams through the door behind it, then another, drawn by noise or scent or whatever twisted instinct drives them now. The first infected hits the floor crawling, jaw snapping, fingers scrabbling for purchase on slick tile.
"Back!" Leon snaps.
You're already moving, grabbing the case and pivoting away from the fridge as gunfire shatters the sterile quiet. Your rifle kicks against your shoulder, rounds punching into torsos that refuse to care. The air fills with the acrid stink of cordite and something fouler underneath.
One lunges for your legs. Leon intercepts it, boot driving into its chest hard enough to send it skidding across the floor. He doesn't even look as he fires downward, ending it with clinical precision.
More are coming. The hallway beyond the ruined door is a writhing mass of shapes pushing over each other, hungry, relentless. The lab equipment rattles as something heavy slams against the wall.
"Too many," you shout.
"Move!"
You sidestep, firing, trying to carve space, trying not to hit Leon as he crosses your line. Your shoulder clips the edge of the bed. The case slips in your grip for half a second.
A larger infected barrels through the doorway, body swollen, movements jerky but powerful. It collides with a rolling cart, sending metal instruments clattering across the floor like thrown knives. Leon pivots to engage, emptying three rounds into its upper chest. The creature staggers backward. Straight into the open refrigerator. Glass explodes.
The sound is high and crystalline, almost delicate beneath the gunfire, like a chandelier being smashed in a ballroom no one will ever dance in again. Vials shatter against metal shelves, against tile, against each other. Clear liquid splashes across the floor, instantly indistinguishable from the spreading mess of everything else. You see it happen in horrible, slow clarity. Hope, reduced to glittering debris.
"Leon!"
He fires again, dropping the brute for good. The body collapses forward, crushing what remains of the storage rack beneath its weight. For one stunned heartbeat, neither of you moves. Then another infected claws over the fallen bulk, and survival yanks you back into motion. You fire. Leon fires. Bodies drop. The noise is deafening, claustrophobic, relentless until at last the hallway falls silent again, littered with unmoving shapes.
Your ears ring. Smoke hangs in the air like a dirty veil. Slowly, cautiously, Leon lowers his weapon. His gaze drifts past the carnage to the refrigerator, to the floor, to the glittering field of broken glass and spilled medication soaking uselessly into grout lines and fabric and things you don't want to identify. He doesn't say anything. Neither do you. The man on the bed has gone very still. His eyes stare at the ceiling, clouded over, whatever fragile thread holding him to himself finally snapped in the chaos. A drop of liquid slides off the shelf edge and hits the tile with a soft, final tick.
Leon exhales, long and controlled, like he's forcing the air out through a space too small for it. "...We'll find more," he says quietly.
He steps closer to you, one hand settling on your shoulder, firm and grounding. His thumb moves once, a brief stroke through dust and sweat, as if confirming you're still solid beneath his palm.
"You hurt?" he asks.
You shake your head, throat tight. "No."
"Good."
His hand lingers a moment longer, then drops. He scans the room again, already shifting back into mission mode, but the tension in his jaw has sharpened, lines around his eyes etched deeper by the red emergency light.
"Storage areas are usually clustered," he says. "If there was one unit, there are probably others."
You nod because he needs you to nod. Because forward is the only direction that exists anymore.
Together, you step around the shattered glass and the ruined promise it once held, boots crunching softly with every movement, and head back into the corridor where the dark waits patiently for you to return.
The corridor beyond the lab is narrower, older, the walls traded from clean hospital white to poured concrete stained by decades of leaks and neglect. Emergency lights hum overhead, casting everything in a tired amber glow that feels less like an alarm and more like a dying sunset that forgot to go away. Your boots echo differently here. Hollow. The sound carries too far.
Leon slows without saying anything, adjusting his pace until you're shoulder to shoulder instead of single file. His arm brushes yours with each step, solid and reassuring in a way that feels deliberate without calling attention to itself. After a minute, you realize he's listening to your breathing.
"You know," you say quietly, "most couples go to dinner."
He huffs under his breath. "We tried that."
"You got a call."
"We both got a call."
"I didn't even get to eat my pasta."
"You ordered something with fourteen ingredients I couldn't pronounce."
"That's not a crime."
"It should be."
You bump his shoulder lightly. "You promised dessert."
"I'll buy you dessert."
"You said that last time."
"I meant it last time, too."
His hand comes up automatically, resting on your back as the corridor narrows, guiding you around a fallen chunk of concrete. The touch lingers just a second longer than necessary.
"When this is over," he adds quietly, "we'll go somewhere that doesn't have reception."
You glance at him. "You're serious."
"Dead serious."
A small smile pulls at your mouth. "You'd last two days."
"I'd last three."
"Two and a half."
He considers it like it's a tactical estimate. "Two and a half."
The next door is heavier than the others, industrial steel with a small wired-glass window clouded by years of grime. A faded placard reads BIO STORAGE B in letters that have peeled into something ghostlike and hard to trust.
Leon raises a hand automatically, stopping you just short of the threshold.
"Hold."
You halt with your boot inches from the seam, rifle angled down but ready. He steps past you, placing himself between you and the door without thinking about it. He always does that. As if the hinge of the world were located somewhere in his spine.
He wipes a sleeve across the glass and peers through, eyes narrowing as he adjusts to the dim interior. "Don't see movement," he murmurs. "Shelving units. Containers. Could be clear."
"Could be."
He glances back at you, reading your face the way other people read weather. "You good?"
"Always."
One eyebrow lifts. Not convinced.
You roll your shoulder where your gear has started to dig in, trying to work out the stiffness before it becomes a problem. "Just cramped."
"Switch packs with me."
"I'm fine."
"That wasn't a suggestion."
"It wasn't an order either."
For a moment, you just look at each other, the quiet argument unfolding in expressions instead of voices. Married diplomacy in a war zone.
Finally, he exhales through his nose, conceding the point without admitting defeat. His hand comes up instead, settling briefly at the side of your neck, thumb brushing the muscle there in a grounding stroke.
"Tension," he says softly.
"Observation skills of a seasoned agent."
"Comes with the badge."
"You don't even carry a badge."
"Metaphorical badge."
You lean into his touch for half a second before you can stop yourself. He notices. His thumb stills, then presses lightly once more before he lets his hand fall away.
"Stay behind me on entry," he says, voice shifting, professional edges sliding back into place.
"I take left. You take right," you counter automatically.
He gives you a look. You give him one right back.
"...Fine," he mutters at last. "But if I say fall back, you fall back."
"Yes, dear."
His mouth twitches despite himself. "Don't 'yes, dear' me in a mission."
"Yes, sir," you salute.
Leon grunts and shakes his head, trying not to smile. You reach past him to test the handle. Locked.
"Stand clear," you say.
He moves aside this time without commentary, covering the door while you pull a compact bypass tool from your vest. The metal is cold against your fingers, humming faintly as it interfaces with the ancient locking mechanism.
For a few seconds, the only sounds are the tool's soft electronic chirp and your breathing. Then the mechanism clicks. You don't open it immediately. Instead, you glance sideways at him. Close enough to see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the tiny scar along his jaw, the exhaustion he carries like a shadow that never quite detaches.
"After this," you say quietly, "we're getting that dessert."
He studies you for a long beat, something unspoken passing through his expression. A deep, stubborn refusal to imagine a future where that doesn't happen.
"Yeah," he says at last, voice low and certain. "We are."
Your hand brushes his wrist as you shift your grip on the handle. He turns his palm just enough to catch your fingers, squeezing once, firm and warm. A promise disguised as reflex. Then he releases you, raises his weapon, and nods.
"On you."
You pull the door open. Cold air spills out, stale and chemical, carrying the faint scent of something spoiled long before anyone stopped coming down here. The room beyond is a maze of tall storage racks and plastic containers, shadows pooling thick between them like standing water.
Leon moves through the doorway first, silent, precise, clearing angles with ruthless efficiency. You follow a half-step behind despite earlier negotiations, covering what he can't see, trusting him to do the same.
All you hear is the hum of failing lights. The soft creak of metal settling. The distant, almost inaudible drip of water somewhere in the dark.
Leon lifts two fingers, signaling pause. You freeze. He tilts his head, listening.
"...Thought I heard something," he whispers.
You hold your breath. The room holds its breath too. Then, very softly, something shifts deep between the shelves. A scrape. Leon's posture tightens, every line of him sharpening toward the sound.
"Stay close," he murmurs.
You move in beside him, shoulder brushing his arm, the warmth of him grounding against the cold air of the room.
"Always do," you whisper back.
The air grows colder the farther you go, heavy with the stale tang of chemicals and something faintly organic beneath it, like fruit left too long in a sealed container. Your flashlight beam skims across plastic bins, sealed crates, labels bleached into illegibility. Dust floats in slow spirals each time you move, disturbed ghosts reluctant to settle again.
Leon advances at a measured pace, weapon steady, shoulders tight enough to telegraph that he hasn't liked this room from the moment the door opened. You mirror him, covering the angles between shelving units, eyes darting through the narrow gaps where shadows knit together into something almost solid. Another scrape, closer this time.
A container shifts on a shelf to your left with a soft plastic thud, tipping just enough to rock in place. Your rifle swings toward it automatically.
"Probably just settling," you whisper.
Leon doesn't answer. He takes one careful step forward, angling to get a better view past the rack. The beam of his light cuts across the gap, illuminating stacked boxes, a collapsed cart, nothing that looks immediately threatening.
Your shoulders start to loosen. That's when the hands shoot out of the darkness. They clamp around your calf, iron strong, nails digging through fabric as something drags itself from beneath the lowest shelf with a wet, hungry sound. You don't even have time to shout before you're yanked off balance.
"Leon—!"
He pivots instantly, dropping his aim to avoid hitting you as you hit the floor hard enough to knock the air from your lungs. The infected is half-crushed, lower body mangled, but its arms work just fine. Its mouth snaps inches from your boot, teeth clacking together with a sound that vibrates up your bones.
You kick, connecting with its face, but it barely registers the impact. Its grip tightens, hauling you closer, closer, jaws opening wide enough to show the slick black of its throat.
Leon moves. He doesn't fire. Too risky. Instead, he lunges forward, grabbing the back of your vest and hauling you backward with brutal force. The infected comes with you, still latched on, dead weight and fury combined.
"Let go!" he snarls, driving his boot into its shoulder.
Bone cracks. The grip loosens just enough for him to wrench you free, dragging you behind him as he finally gets a clear shot. Two rounds. Point-blank.
The body jerks, collapses, and goes still. For a moment, all you can hear is your own ragged breathing and the thunder of your pulse. Leon stays crouched in front of you, one arm braced across your chest like a barricade, gun still trained on the corpse in case it decides death is negotiable.
"Hey," he says, voice low, urgent. "Hey. Look at me."
You blink, vision swimming, lungs finally remembering how to work. "I'm... I'm good."
His eyes scan you anyway, fast and thorough, hands already moving, checking arms, shoulders, gear, the way he always does. Routine. Training. Care disguised as procedure. Then his hand stops at your leg.
The fabric of your pants is torn where the creature grabbed you. Dark spreads through the rip, wet and unmistakable even in the dim light. Leon goes very still. Slowly, carefully, he pulls his glove off with his teeth and tosses it aside. His bare hand is warm when it closes around your ankle, steady but not gentle as he angles your leg into the beam of his flashlight.
You follow his gaze. For a second, your brain refuses to interpret what you're seeing. Just shapes. Color. Shine. Then it resolves. Deep teeth marks on your ankle. Blood wells from the punctures, thick and bright, running down into your boot.
"Oh," you say softly.
Leon doesn't speak. His jaw tightens so hard a muscle jumps along his cheek. His thumb presses near the wound, not enough to hurt, just enough to assess depth, damage, and reality.
"How bad?" you ask, because someone has to.
He inhales slowly through his nose, like he's trying to pull the air all the way down to somewhere that doesn't exist anymore.
"...Through the muscle," he says at last, voice roughened at the edges. "No arterial spray."
You almost laugh. Of course, that's what he notices. Of course, he frames it in survivable terms.
"Good news," you murmur.
His eyes snap to yours, sharp, bright, furious at something that isn't you. "Don't."
The word isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. Silence floods back in, thick as the dust hanging in the air. Carefully, he releases your leg only long enough to tear open a pouch on his vest. Gauze. Compression wrap. His hands move with practiced efficiency, but there's a tremor there now, small and stubborn, like a fault line threatening to split.
"This won't stop it," you say quietly.
"I know."
He presses the gauze down anyway, firm, unyielding, as if pressure alone could force time to behave.
"You didn't get grabbed anywhere else?" he asks without looking up.
"No."
"Scratch? Contact with fluid?"
"No, Leon."
He nods once, wrapping the bandage tight enough to hurt. You don't complain. Pain feels reassuringly human. When he finishes, he doesn't pull away. His hands remain braced on your leg, head bowed slightly, shoulders rising and falling with measured breaths. From this angle, you can see the faint silver threaded through his hair, the lines carved deeper by worry than age. You reach out before you can stop yourself, fingers brushing his jaw. He freezes.
"Hey," you say softly.
His eyes close for one heartbeat, leaning just slightly into your touch, like a man starving who just found water. Then he opens them again, focus snapping back into place with visible effort.
"We're moving," he says, voice low and absolute. "There will be another storage area. Another lab. Something."
You nod because you believe him. Because you have to. Because you don't want this to be the end. Because you don't want Leon to have to go through that. Because you want your dessert.
He rises first, then offers you his hand. When you take it, he pulls you up carefully, keeping his other hand hovering at your waist in case you falter. You put weight on the leg. It holds, though pain flares hot and sharp.
"Can you walk?" he asks.
"Yeah." A lie. A manageable one.
He doesn't call you on it. Instead, his arm slides around your back, anchoring you against his side as you take your first step. Protective. Supportive. Refusing to let distance exist.
"Stay with me," he murmurs.
Your head rests briefly against his shoulder, just for a second.
"Always," you whisper.
Adrenaline still burns hot in your veins, dulling the edges, convincing your body it can outrun consequences if it just keeps moving. Leon keeps his arm locked around you, pace adjusted to match yours without comment. Not slow enough to feel patronizing, not fast enough to make you stumble. Perfect. Infuriatingly perfect.
"You don't have to babysit," you murmur.
"Good," he says quietly. "Because I'm not."
His hand shifts slightly at your side, fingers spreading as if to support more of your weight without making a show of it. The corridor slopes downward. Each step sends a dull shock up your leg, deeper now, heavier, like the pain has roots instead of edges. You grit your teeth and keep going. After a dozen paces, something else creeps in. A warmth. Not the healthy kind. Not exertion. This feels wrong, thick and syrupy, pooling under your skin like fever deciding where to settle. You swallow. Your throat feels dry. Too dry.
"Leon," you start, then stop, because you're not sure what you were going to say.
He glances at you immediately. "What?"
"Nothing. Thought I heard something."
He doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't push. Instead, he shifts you a little closer, your hip brushing his with every step now, a steady rhythm of contact that keeps you oriented.
The lights flicker overhead. For a split second, the world tilts. You blink hard, waiting for it to right itself. It does, but not completely. The edges of your vision feel soft, as if someone smeared petroleum jelly across reality.
"Hey," Leon says quietly.
You realize you've slowed. "I'm fine."
He stops anyway.
"No," he says, voice calm and immovable as bedrock. "You're not."
Before you can argue, a shape lurches from a side passage ahead. Its movements are jerky and uneven, its head twitching like a broken marionette. Leon eases you behind him with one hand, weapon already up. He takes it out, waiting a few seconds to make sure it's down.
When he turns back to you, his focus narrows, shutting out the rest of the world. "Sit," he says.
You shake your head. "We don't have time."
"Sit."
There's no edge in it. No raised volume. Just absolute certainty that this is happening. Your legs decide for you. The moment you stop resisting, they wobble, knees threatening to fold. Leon catches you instantly, one arm wrapping around your back, the other under your uninjured leg, guiding you down against the wall with careful control.
The concrete is cold through your gear. It feels strangely good. He crouches in front of you, close enough that your boots nearly touch his knees. Up close, you can see every tiny tension line in his face, every sleepless hour etched into skin that has forgotten what "rested" means.
His bare hand comes up again, settling against your neck, fingers sliding to your pulse point. You shiver.
His brows draw together. "You're burning up."
"Shock," you say weakly.
"You know that's not true."
His thumb presses lightly, counting. You can feel the rhythm under his skin, your heart hammering like it's trying to break out of your chest.
"Too fast," he murmurs, mostly to himself.
A tremor runs through your hands. Small at first, then stronger, fingers twitching against your thigh as if they belong to someone else and forgot to tell you. You curl them into fists, but it doesn't help. Leon notices. He reaches down slowly, deliberately, and wraps his hand around yours. Not restraining. Anchoring. His grip is warm, solid, impossibly steady compared to the jitter under your skin.
"Look at me," he says softly.
You do. Blue eyes. Tired. Fierce. Terrified in a way he would deny under oath.
"We're going to fix this," he says.
"You don't know that."
"Yes," he says, so simply it almost hurts. "I do."
Your vision blurs. You blink rapidly, trying to clear it, but the edges keep fuzzing out like a badly tuned signal.
"Everything's... weird," you admit. "Like I'm underwater."
His jaw tightens. "Any nausea?"
"No."
"Dizziness?"
"...Maybe."
"Confusion?"
You hesitate.
His expression darkens. "How long?"
"Ten minutes."
He leans forward suddenly, pressing his forehead to yours. The contact is gentle, deliberate, his eyes closing for a brief moment like he's drawing strength from proximity alone.
"You stay with me," he murmurs. "You hear me? No drifting."
"I'm right here."
His hand slides to the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair, holding you there. Making sure you don't slip away. For a few seconds, neither of you moves. Somewhere far off, metal clatters. A distant echo of something collapsing. The facility settling into deeper ruin. You swallow. Your throat feels raw now, like you've been breathing dry air for hours.
"Leon."
"Yeah."
"If I start to..."
He pulls back just enough to look at you, eyes sharp. "Don't."
"You need to be ready."
"I am ready."
"That's not what I mean."
His hand tightens at the back of your neck, just enough to stop you from looking away.
"I'm not leaving you," he says quietly. "Save it."
Your chest aches, and not from the bite. You nod because you don't trust your voice. He studies you another moment, memorizing something only he can see, then exhales slowly and shifts back into motion.
"Okay," he says, tone sharpening into mission focus again. "We move in short intervals. Next sector should have auxiliary storage or research offices. More supplies. Maybe antivirals."
"Maybe," you echo.
He rises, then hesitates, looking down at you like he's recalculating physics.
Without warning, he slips one arm behind your back and the other under your knees.
You blink. "Leon—"
"Save your strength."
"I can walk."
"I know."
And that's the end of the discussion. He lifts you with controlled ease, settling you against his chest. Your head ends up tucked under his chin, close enough to hear his heartbeat, steady and stubborn as a drum calling soldiers back to formation. You don't argue again. Your hand fumbles for his vest, gripping the fabric as another wave of heat rolls through you, deeper this time, almost nauseating in its intensity.
"Still with me?" he murmurs into your hair.
You nod weakly. "Yeah."
"Good."
He adjusts his hold, one hand splayed protectively across your back, and starts down the corridor again, footsteps measured, unhurried, as if he has decided that time itself can wait its turn. The world sways gently with each step. Your eyelids feel heavy.
Leon's voice cuts through the fog, low and insistent. "Stay awake."
"I'm trying."
"Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything."
You think for a long moment, chasing thoughts that scatter like startled birds.
"...Dessert," you mumble finally.
A soft breath leaves him, almost a laugh, almost something else entirely.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "We're still getting that."
You clutch his vest a little tighter, grounding yourself in the solid reality of him.
"Don't let me fall asleep," you whisper.
His arms tighten around you, careful but unyielding.
Leon adjusts his grip as you shift in his arms, not because you're heavy, never that, but because your body no longer anticipates his movement the way it usually does. You used to lean into turns before they happened, tighten your hold when he stepped over debris, and match his rhythm without thinking. Now you lag by half a second behind every motion, like your connection to gravity is buffering. He notices. He notices everything.
Your skin is too hot even through layers of fabric. Heat seeps through his sleeves, through his gloves, into his palms like you're burning from the inside out. Your breath ghosts unevenly against his throat, sometimes shallow, sometimes too deep, like your lungs can't agree on a pattern. Fever, he tells himself. Infection. Not the other thing. Not yet. Your fingers twitch where they clutch his vest, loosening, tightening, loosening again.
"Hey," he murmurs quietly. "Still with me?"
A pause. "...Yeah."
The word is slurred at the edges, dragged through molasses. His jaw tightens. He keeps moving.
The corridor stretches ahead in dim amber light, empty except for the occasional smear on the wall or abandoned equipment pushed aside by people who ran out of time. His footsteps are steady, deliberate, conserving energy, minimizing jostling. He's carried wounded before. Teammates. Civilians. Strangers. None of them felt like this. None of them felt like carrying his own heartbeat outside his body.
Your head shifts, cheek pressing against his collarbone. For a moment you go very still, so still that something cold claws down his spine.
"Talk to me," he says, softer now. "You promised."
A long silence. Then, faintly, "Cold."
He stops. A clean halt, like someone pulled a lever inside him. Cold is wrong. You're burning up. He lowers you carefully to one knee without setting you fully down, keeping one arm wrapped around your back so you don't tip sideways. His other hand comes up to your face, bare fingers brushing your cheek. Your skin is blazing. But you're shivering. Small, violent tremors run through you, teeth chattering softly against each other, lashes fluttering as if your body can't decide whether to wake or sleep.
"Hey," he says, sharper now. "Open your eyes."
You do, slowly, unfocused at first. Your pupils look blown wide in the low light, swallowing what little color remains in your irises.
"It's... dark," you mumble.
His chest tightens. The lights are still on.
"I'm right here," he says. "Look at me."
Your gaze drifts, struggles, and finally locks onto his face. Recognition flickers there, fragile but present.
"...Leon."
Relief hits him so hard it almost feels like pain.
"Yeah," he breathes. "Yeah, it's me."
Your brow furrows faintly, confusion knitting your expression into something painfully vulnerable.
"You look... tired."
He almost laughs. "Occupational hazard," he says quietly.
Your hand lifts weakly, fingers brushing his jaw as if you're mapping terrain you've walked a thousand times but suddenly don't trust your memory of.
"You should sleep," you whisper.
The tenderness in it is what breaks him a little.
"Soon, sweetheart," he says.
Your hand slips, falling back against your chest. Silence stretches. Your breathing grows uneven again.
Then you say, very softly, "Did we make it home?"
The words land like a physical blow. For a second, he can't answer. His throat closes around something sharp and unmanageable.
Home. Not the facility. Not the mission. Not the outbreak. Home. He swallows hard, forcing air back into his lungs.
"Not yet," he says, voice low and steady by sheer force of will. "Working on it."
Your eyes drift past him, unfocused, as if you're looking at something over his shoulder that isn't there.
"...Smells like coffee," you murmur. "Burned it again."
His vision blurs. He blinks hard, refocusing on the concrete wall behind you. You're not smelling coffee. There is no coffee. There hasn't been coffee in hours. Just dust and chemicals and rot. Hallucinations, a cold voice in his mind supplies. Neurological involvement. He hates that voice.
Your lips curve faintly, a sleepy little smile that belongs in a sunlit kitchen, not here. "You always do that," you mumble. "Say you're watching it, then forget..."
Your head tips sideways, resting against his arm. Your eyelids droop. Panic slices through him, clean and immediate.
"Hey," he says sharply, fingers tightening on your shoulder. "No. Stay with me."
You stir weakly. "...'m tired."
"I know."
"So tired."
His thumb presses against your pulse again. Still fast. Too fast.
"You can sleep when we're home," he says, leaning closer, voice dropping to something rough and urgent.
Your eyes open a sliver.
"...Promise?"
The question is so small it barely exists.
He bows his head until his forehead rests against yours, eyes closing for one heartbeat, he allows himself.
"Yeah," he whispers. "I promise."
He doesn't know if he's promising sleep, survival, or something else entirely. It doesn't matter. Your breathing evens out a little, not better, just slower, drifting toward something that looks dangerously like unconsciousness. Not yet, he thinks fiercely.
He slides one arm under your knees again and lifts you back against his chest, more carefully this time, as if you might come apart if handled too roughly. Your head lolls against his shoulder, then settles in the hollow of his neck, breath hot and damp against his skin.
"Stay with me," he murmurs into your hair. "Just a little longer."
Your fingers twitch weakly against his vest, not gripping anymore, just resting there like they forgot their job.
"...Love you," you whisper, so faint he almost thinks he imagined it.
He stops breathing. The entire world narrows to the weight in his arms and the fragile thread of sound still hanging in the air. His hold tightens, protective, desperate, careful all at once.
"I know," he says quietly, voice breaking on the edges despite his best effort. "I know."
He presses his cheek briefly against your hair, eyes closing, grounding himself in the reality of you. The heat. The softness. The terrifying fragility. Then he straightens and starts moving again, steps faster now, less cautious, urgency bleeding through the discipline he's clung to since this began. Somewhere ahead, there has to be another lab. Another storage room. Another chance. There has to be. Because the alternative is unthinkable, and Leon Kennedy has built an entire life on refusing to accept those.
"Hang on," he murmurs. "I've got you."
The corridor opens into what used to be a patient ward, rows of metal-framed beds bolted to the floor, privacy curtains hanging in limp, dusty folds like flags after a lost battle. Most of the mattresses are stripped bare, plastic covers cracked with age, but the room is quiet. No movement. No shuffling breath. Just the low electrical hum that seems to haunt every corner of this place.
Leon slows, scanning automatically, mapping exits, sightlines, choke points. Good visibility. Single main entrance. Minimal clutter. Defensible. More importantly, close.
A reinforced door at the far end bears a faded hazard symbol and the words AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY stenciled beneath it. The hinges are external. The frame is thicker than standard interior construction. Lab access. Or something close to it.
"Okay," he murmurs, mostly to himself. "This'll do."
He crosses to the nearest intact bed and lowers you with painstaking care, one arm supporting your shoulders, the other guiding your legs so the injured one doesn't twist. The mattress sighs softly under your weight, springs complaining but holding. For a second, he doesn't let go. Your head rolls slightly to one side, hair falling across your face. Your eyes are half-open, unfocused, lashes trembling like you're dreaming with your eyes still in the world.
"Hey," he says quietly, brushing the hair back with fingers that are gentler than anything else he's done today. "Stay with me."
Your gaze struggles to find him. "...Hi," you whisper.
"Hi," he echoes, voice rough.
Your hand lifts weakly, searching. He catches it immediately, folding his larger one around yours, grounding you with solid pressure.
"Where are we?" you murmur.
"Almost there," he says. Not a lie. Not quite the truth. "I need to check something."
Your fingers twitch in his grip, barely there. "...Don't go far."
His throat tightens.
"I won't," he says. "You'll be able to hear me the whole time." That seems to satisfy something in you. Your eyes drift closed, not fully unconscious, just sliding along the edge of it.
He gently lowers your hand to rest against your stomach, then hesitates. After a moment, he reaches up and unzips his jacket, shrugging it off despite the chill. He drapes it over you, tucking it around your shoulders, creating a cocoon of familiar warmth and scent. Leon rests his palm against your cheek one last time, thumb brushing your skin in a soft arc.
He forces himself to stand. Every instinct screams not to leave you. To pick you up and run until the world ends, the cure appears, or both. But the door at the end of the room waits, silent and stubborn, and something in his gut tells him that whatever hope exists is behind it.
He moves. Slow at first, reluctant steps that keep him within arm's reach, then a little farther, turning back every few seconds to make sure you're still breathing, still there, still you. Halfway across the ward, a shape shifts behind a curtain. Leon's weapon is up before the fabric finishes swaying.
A figure stumbles out, skeletal, skin pulled tight over bone, eyes reflecting dull amber in the emergency light. Its mouth opens in a soundless snarl as it lurches toward the nearest movement. Leon intercepts it before it gets anywhere. Two suppressed shots. One to the chest, one to the head. The body collapses in a boneless heap, momentum carrying it forward until it skids to a stop across the tile.
Another groan answers from somewhere deeper in the room. He pivots, firing again, dropping a second infected as it claws its way over a bedframe. Efficient. Controlled. No wasted motion. No unnecessary noise. Three heartbeats of silence. He listens, counting breaths. Nothing else rises. Only then does he glance back. You haven't moved. Relief floods through him so sharply his knees almost unlock.
"Still here," he murmurs under his breath, as if confirming it makes it true.
He reaches the reinforced door and tests the handle. Locked. Of course it is.
Up close, the barricade becomes obvious. Heavy shelving units have been shoved against the interior side, metal edges visible through the narrow seam where the door meets the frame. Whoever sealed this room meant to keep something out. Or in.
Leon leans closer, ear to the cold steel. Nothing. No breathing. No scratching. No shifting weight. He steps back and scans the frame. Electronic panel. Dead. Manual override slot intact. Hope stirs, cautious and unwelcome.
He glances over his shoulder again. From here, he can still see you on the bed, small beneath his jacket, chest rising and falling in shallow motions that make his own lungs ache in sympathy.
"Almost there," he says quietly, whether to you or himself, he doesn't know.
From a pouch on his belt, he pulls a compact breaching tool, the metal catching the light as he slots it into the override housing. The device hums softly, vibration traveling up his wrist.
Behind him, the ward remains still.
Then your voice drifts across the room, thin and fragile. "...Leon?"
He spins instantly. Your head has turned toward him, eyes open again, unfocused but searching, panic flickering in the small movement of your hands against his jacket.
"I'm here," he calls, already crossing back toward you. "Right here."
You stare at him as if trying to memorize his face before it disappears. "...Too many," you whisper. "They're everywhere."
"There's nothing here," he says gently. "You're safe."
Your head sinks back into the thin pillow. Consciousness slips away from you like water through open fingers. Leon stays there a second longer than he should, watching your chest rise, fall, rise again. Then he stands and turns back to the barricaded door, something steely settling over him, heavier than anger, sharper than fear.
The tool in his hand whines as it bites into the locking mechanism, sparks spitting in brief, angry bursts. Metal protests. Screws shear. The smell of hot circuitry fills the air.
"Hold on," he murmurs, not looking back this time because he won't stop if he does. "I'm getting us in."
Behind him, the bed creaks softly as you shift in fevered sleep. Ahead, the door shudders as the final bolt gives way. Leon shoves the door inward, the weight of it grinding against the barricade until the gap is wide enough for him to slip through sideways. Inside, a toppled shelving unit leans against the opposite wall, confirming what he already suspected. Whoever sealed this room did it from within and didn't plan on leaving.
The air is colder here. Cleaner. Sterile in that artificial way that smells faintly of alcohol wipes and plastic, like illness reduced to a controlled environment.
Emergency lights glow a sickly green, illuminating rows of lab benches, overturned stools, racks of glassware frozen mid-experiment. Papers lie scattered across the floor, curling at the edges. A monitor flickers weakly on one station, casting a pulsing rectangle of pale light that feels almost alive in the otherwise stagnant room.
Leon clears the space in seconds, weapon sweeping corners, checking behind doors, under desks, anywhere something could hide. Nothing lunges. Nothing breathes. Just abandonment, sudden and absolute, like the people who worked here evaporated mid-sentence.
He lowers the gun a fraction, chest rising and falling a little too fast to be purely tactical.
"Okay," he murmurs, voice rough in the quiet. "Okay."
He moves to the nearest workstation, scanning labels, cabinets, drawers. Chemical reagents. Disposable supplies. Data drives. Everything except what he needs. Another bench. Same story. He opens a refrigerated unit. Empty trays. Frost buildup. Power too low to maintain temperature.
His pulse hammers harder.
Not here. Not here. Not here.
"Come on," he mutters, rifling through containers faster now, less methodical, more desperate. Glass clinks sharply as he shoves aside vials of things that don't matter, powders with long names, syringes sealed in sterile plastic. Nothing labeled antiviral. Nothing labeled serum. Nothing labeled hope. A cold weight settles in his stomach.
He moves to the flickering computer, fingers flying across the keys, waking it from whatever half-dead state it's been trapped in. The screen brightens sluggishly, revealing a login prompt already bypassed, system hanging on by a thread.
"Don't do this to me," he whispers.
Folders populate slowly. Research logs. Incident reports. Containment protocols. He scans titles with ruthless speed, opening anything that looks remotely relevant, eyes burning as line after line of technical jargon scrolls past.
A crash echoes faintly from the ward beyond the door. His head snaps toward the sound. Silence follows. He waits three seconds. Five. Ten. No approach. No impact against the door. No dragging footsteps. Still there, he tells himself. She's still there.
He turns back to the screen, forcing his focus to narrow again. A document catches his eye.
ANTIVIRAL DISPERSION PROTOCOL – EMERGENCY USE
He opens it. Paragraphs of dense instructions spill across the display. Stabilization procedures. Delivery methods. Storage warnings. STORAGE LOCATION: SECURE BIOCONTAINMENT VAULT B-2. His stomach drops. Not here.
Coordinates blink uselessly on the screen, pointing deeper into the facility, farther than he wants to think about, farther than you may be able to survive the trip.
Something inside him finally gives. He grips the edge of the desk, knuckles whitening, shoulders bowing as if someone just added fifty pounds to his back.
"Damn it," he breathes.
The word fractures on the way out, barely more than air. He squeezes his eyes shut, forehead dropping toward his clenched fists, fighting the surge of helpless fury that threatens to tear through discipline, training, every wall he's built over years of surviving the unsurvivable. Not enough time. Not enough distance. Not enough anything.
Out in the ward, you lie alone on a metal bed, burning up, slipping further away with every second he spends standing here empty-handed. His chest tightens until breathing feels optional.
For one dangerous moment, he imagines walking back out there, picking you up, and never stopping. No cure. No mission. Just distance and denial. Just the selfish hope that if he runs fast enough, the virus won't catch you.
He exhales sharply, dragging himself back from the edge. Running never saved anyone.
"Think," he mutters hoarsely. "Think."
His gaze drifts across the lab again, slower this time, less frantic, searching for patterns instead of miracles. That's when he notices it. A sealed medical kit is mounted on the wall near the exit. Standard emergency issue. Bright white casing. Untouched, pristine compared to the chaos everywhere else. Too pristine. He crosses the room and pops it open. Bandages. Burn gel. Basic trauma supplies. Nothing else.
His shoulders slump. Then his eyes catch a thin seam along the back panel, almost invisible unless you're looking directly at it. Not part of the original design. Too clean. Too deliberate. He taps it with his knuckle. Hollow. Hope flares, sharp and painful.
He wedges a knife into the seam and pries. The panel resists for a second, then snaps free with a brittle crack, revealing a narrow cavity hidden behind the kit.
Inside rests a single reinforced container, matte gray and no bigger than a paperback book, sealed with a biometric latch long since disabled. Not government-issue, but research-grade. Whoever put this here didn't have the chance to get it.
Leon's hands shake as he pulls it free. The lid pops open. Nestled in foam are two glass syringes pre-loaded with clear liquid, labels printed in blocky lab script:
ANTIVIRAL SERUM — FINALIZED STRAIN
For a second, he just stares, brain refusing to trust what his eyes are telling it. Air leaves his lungs in a sound that might be a laugh or might be something closer to a sob strangled before it can exist.
He presses his forehead briefly against the cool plastic case, eyes squeezing shut, letting the relief hit him in one violent wave before he can stop it. Shoulders shake once, twice, a tremor he doesn't bother to control because no one is here to see it. No one except the person who needs him most. He straightens abruptly, wiping a hand across his face, composure snapping back into place like a mask he's worn too long to misplace.
"Hang on," he says, already moving for the door, clutching the case like it's made of glass and prayers. "I'm coming back."
Your skin is still hot. That's the first thing he registers when his palm cups your cheek. Heat floods into his hand, fever-bright, but there's a wrongness to it now, a brittle quality, like warmth without life behind it.
"Hey," he says softly. "I'm back."
No response. Your lashes rest against your cheeks, unmoving. Your mouth is slightly open, breath slipping in shallow threads that barely stir the hair at your temple. The shivering from before has stopped. Your body lies too still beneath his jacket, as if it finally decided movement was optional.
A cold spike of terror drives straight through his chest.
"Hey." Louder this time, but still gentle, still careful, as if volume alone might break you. "Come on. Open your eyes for me."
Nothing. He slides his hand to your neck, fingers pressing to your pulse point. It's there. Fast. Thready. Irregular in a way that makes his own heartbeat stumble trying to match it.
"Okay," he breathes, more to himself than to you. "We're okay."
His other hand trembles as he fumbles the case open, snapping it back with a soft plastic crack. The syringes gleam under the emergency lights, their clear liquid looking impossibly calm compared to the storm in his chest. He sets the case on the bed beside you, movements deliberate, controlled, forcing precision where panic wants chaos.
"You're gonna hate this part," he murmurs, fingers working to clear space at your collar, tugging fabric aside so he can reach skin. "But you can yell at me later. I'm counting on it."
Your head lolls slightly with the movement. No protest. No reflexive tension. He swallows hard.
"Hey," he says again, softer now, thumb brushing your jaw in a slow arc. "Stay with me, okay? You don't get to check out early. We still owe each other dessert."
His voice catches on the last word. He pushes through it.
"Remember that place downtown? The one with the ridiculous chocolate cake you said was worth the calories?" A shaky breath. "I figure we'll go there."
He presses his forehead briefly against yours, eyes squeezing shut for a fraction of a second.
"You hear me? We've got plans."
Your breathing hitches faintly, a tiny irregular stutter that might be a coincidence or might be something else. He latches onto it anyway, desperate for anything that looks like a connection.
"That's it," he murmurs. "Right there. Stay with me."
He lifts the syringe, checks it automatically, habit stronger than fear. No air bubbles. Fluid clear. Needle steady despite the tremor in his hand.
"Okay," he whispers. "Here we go."
He slides his arm behind your shoulders, lifting you just enough to support you against his chest, cradling you there so the injection won't jostle too much. Your head falls against him, cheek resting over his heart, breath warm and frighteningly faint through the fabric of his shirt.
"You're doing great," he says softly, even though you're doing nothing at all. "Almost there."
The needle presses into your skin.
He hesitates.
Not because he doubts the serum. Because once this is done, there's nothing left to do but wait, and waiting is the one thing he has never learned to survive gracefully.
"Don't be mad," he murmurs. "I'm not giving you a choice."
He depresses the plunger slowly, watching the liquid disappear into you, as if he can track hope molecule by molecule. His other arm tightens around your back, holding you upright, holding you together.
"All right," he says, voice barely above a breath. "You did good. See? Easy."
He withdraws the needle and sets it aside with mechanical care, as if any sudden movement might undo what he's just done. Then he just holds you.
Seconds crawl past, each one stretching thin as wire. Nothing happens. Your breathing remains shallow. Your pulse, when he checks again, is still fast, still erratic. His chest starts to feel tight, air coming harder, like the room has quietly stolen oxygen while he wasn't looking.
"Okay," he says hoarsely. "Sometimes these things take a minute."
He shifts you slightly, thumb stroking your arm in absent circles, the same motion he uses when you're half asleep on long flights or bad nights. Comfort muscle memory kicks in even when the situation is far beyond comfort.
"You're not allowed to do this," he whispers. "You hear me? Not now. Not like this."
Your hand slips from where it rested against his vest, sliding down between you, fingers loose and unresponsive. He grabs it instantly, folding it back into his palm, pressing it against his chest.
"Come back," he says, the words fraying at the edges.
Another long stretch of nothing. Fear blooms, cold and suffocating, filling every hollow place in him. Too late, a voice in the back of his mind whispers. Too slow. Too far gone.
He shakes his head sharply, jaw clenching.
"No," he mutters. "No, you don't get to do that."
He bows over you, pressing his forehead to your hair, eyes squeezed shut, breathing you in like oxygen.
"You promised," he says roughly. "You don't break your promises."
Your pulse stutters under his fingers. He freezes.
There it is again. A strange hitch, a pause that stretches too long, then a sudden rush, as if your heart forgot the rhythm and is trying to find it again. His own heart stops in sympathetic terror.
"Come on," he whispers. "Come on..."
Your body jerks. A sharp, involuntary spasm that arches you slightly against him before you go slack again. Leon sucks in a breath, half panic, half hope colliding in his chest.
Your brow creases faintly, expression tightening as if pain is finally breaking through the fog. A weak sound escapes you, barely audible, more exhale than voice. His grip on you tightens, careful but fierce.
"I know," he murmurs. "I know, sweetheart. It's okay. You're okay."
Your breathing changes, deepening suddenly, as if you're pulling in air like someone surfacing from underwater. It catches, stutters, then comes again, stronger this time, dragging oxygen into lungs that finally seem interested in using it.
"There you go," he breathes, voice shaking openly now. "That's it. Stay with me."
Your fingers twitch weakly against his chest. He presses his cheek against your hair, eyes closing, holding you like you might still vanish if he loosens his grip.
"I've got you," he whispers. "You're okay. I've got you."
He keeps you cradled against his chest, one arm locked around your back, the other braced across your shoulders, hand splayed as if shielding you from something that no longer exists. His cheek rests against your hair, breath uneven, dragging in through his nose, out through parted lips like he's relearning how to do it.
Your pulse is stronger now beneath his fingers. Still fast, still fragile, but steady enough to count. Steady enough to believe in. Only then does the tension start to bleed out of him. It comes all at once.
His shoulders shudder. Not violently, just a small, contained tremor that he tries to swallow down and can't. A sound escapes him, rough and broken, something halfway between a breath and a sob he never intended to make. He tightens his hold instinctively, pressing his face into your hair as if hiding there makes it less real.
"Okay," he whispers hoarsely. "Okay... you're okay."
Warmth hits your scalp. At first, your fogged mind can't place it. Wetness. A second drop follows, sliding along your temple before disappearing into your hair.
Leon doesn't notice. Or he does and can't stop. He bows over you, forehead pressed to the crown of your head, shoulders shaking in small, uneven pulses he's trying desperately to keep silent. Years of training, years of surviving, years of holding everything inside, finally cracking under the simple fact that you are still here.
"I've got you," he murmurs, voice wrecked, words stumbling over each other. "I've got you, I've got you..."
Your fingers twitch. This time, the movement is stronger, a weak curl against his shirt, fabric bunching slightly in your grasp. The sensation filters through layers of fog, heat, exhaustion, and the lingering echo of pain. Consciousness creeps back in like dawn through heavy curtains.
Your throat burns. Your body feels impossibly heavy, as if gravity doubled while you were away. Every muscle aches with a deep, bone-level fatigue that sleep alone could never fix.
Sound reaches you first. A heartbeat. Loud. Steady. Close enough to be yours, except it isn't. Breath above you, hitching, uneven. Fabric shifting faintly with each inhale.
Someone is holding you. You force your eyes open.
The world swims into view in slow, watery shapes. A blurred patch of green light. A shadow that resolves into the curve of a shoulder. Blond strands of hair brushing your cheek.
Leon.
He doesn't notice you're awake yet. His face is buried against your head, one hand cupping the back of your skull with fierce gentleness, thumb moving in tiny, repetitive strokes like he's soothing a nightmare that hasn't ended for him yet.
Your voice comes out as a rasp. "Leon...?"
He freezes. Absolute stillness, like a statue suddenly unsure whether it's allowed to move. Slowly, he lifts his head. His eyes are red. Not just glassy, not just tired, but openly, unmistakably wet. Tracks of tears cut through the grime on his cheeks, catching the light as he blinks hard, as if blinking might erase evidence before you can register it.
For a second, he just stares at you, something raw and disbelieving cracking across his face, like he expected this moment and still isn't sure it's real.
"You're..." His voice fails. He clears his throat roughly. "Hey."
You try to smile. It feels wobbly, incomplete. "Hi."
Relief hits him so visibly it's almost painful to watch. His shoulders sag, tension draining out of him like someone cut the strings holding him upright.
"Hey," he repeats, softer this time, thumb coming up to brush your cheek in a careful sweep, as if confirming you're solid. "You're back."
"Was I... gone?"
His jaw tightens. "Not allowed."
You attempt a small laugh. It comes out as a weak breath. His hand slides to the side of your neck, fingers resting over your pulse again, counting, grounding, refusing to trust his eyes alone.
"You scared me," he says quietly.
Your gaze drops to his chest, to the wrinkled fabric where you must have been gripping him earlier. "Sorry."
His head snaps slightly. "Don't."
The word is sharp, then softens immediately.
"Don't apologize," he adds, voice rough. "Just... don't."
You nod faintly. Even that feels like work.
For a moment, neither of you speaks. You just lie there in his arms, breathing the same air, sharing the same small pocket of reality after hours of separation that happened without distance. Then you notice how tightly he's still holding you.
"Leon," you murmur, "I can't breathe."
He releases you instantly, horror flashing across his face. "Sorry. Sorry."
He shifts his grip, supporting you more carefully, one arm still behind your shoulders but no longer crushing you to him. His other hand lingers at your jaw, thumb brushing your skin as if he can't quite stop touching you.
"You're okay?" he asks, scanning your face like he's looking for cracks. "Dizzy? Nauseous? Vision?"
"Everything hurts."
He exhales, something that might be relief ghosting through the pain in his expression. "I'll take it."
Your eyes drift past him, taking in the ward, the beds, the dim light. Memory trickles back in jagged pieces. Teeth. Heat. Falling. Darkness.
"...You found it," you whisper.
He nods once. "Yeah, told you we would.
Your mouth twitches, not quite a smile. "Yeah. You did."
You study him more closely now, the red around his eyes, the dampness he hasn't fully wiped away, the way he keeps blinking as if his vision is unreliable.
"You were crying," you say softly.
Immediate denial rises to his lips. You can see it form. Then he looks at you. And whatever excuse he was about to give dissolves.
"...Yeah," he admits, voice low. "Maybe a little."
A tear slips free anyway, tracking down before he can stop it. He doesn't bother hiding it this time. Doesn't look away. Just lets it exist.
"You weren't waking up," he says, as if that explains everything. It does.
Your chest aches in a different way now. You lift your hand slowly, muscles protesting, and touch his face. Your thumb brushes the damp track on his cheek, wiping it away with clumsy tenderness.
"I'm here," you whisper.
He leans into your hand without thinking, eyes closing briefly, relief and exhaustion and something deeper collapsing together inside him.
"Yeah," he murmurs. "You are."
He covers your hand with his, pressing it lightly to his skin as if anchoring himself. After a moment, his gaze sharpens again, mission awareness bleeding back in.
"We need to move," he says gently. "Facility's not stable, and we don't know how long before more of them wander in."
You nod, though the idea of standing feels ambitious at best. He notices the hesitation immediately.
"Hey," he says softly. "I've got you."
He shifts, sliding one arm behind your back again, the other under your knees, lifting you with the same careful strength as before, only this time you help a little, arms coming up weakly around his neck. Your head settles against his shoulder.
"Still getting dessert?" you murmur against his collar.
A real smile breaks through at last, small but bright as sunrise after a storm.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "We're still getting that."
He turns toward the exit, steps steady, protective hold unyielding but gentle now that he knows you're truly there.
Three days later, the world smells like coffee and clean laundry instead of antiseptic and decay.
Sunlight spills through half-closed blinds, laying soft gold across the rumpled bedspread and the tangle of blankets around your legs. The air is warm, carrying the faint hum of city life from outside, tires on pavement, a distant horn, someone laughing somewhere far below.
Leon sits beside you, forearms resting on his thighs, watching with that quiet intensity he hasn't quite learned to turn off yet. He looks cleaner than before, shaved, hair damp as if he showered quickly and came right back, but the exhaustion still clings to him in the set of his shoulders.
"You're staring," you murmur.
"Monitoring," he corrects.
"You blink?"
"Sometimes."
You huff a small laugh, the motion tugging at sore muscles that remind you exactly how recently everything went wrong. His gaze sharpens instantly, concern flaring before you even realize you winced.
"I'm okay," you assure him.
He searches your face a moment longer, then nods, not convinced but willing to accept it for now.
"You hungry?" he asks.
"Always."
He disappears into the kitchen and returns with coffee and a plate of pancakes that look slightly uneven but deeply sincere. You eat, he watches, tension slowly unwinding from him with each bite you take.
When you finish, you lean back, warm and heavy with food, eyelids drooping in content exhaustion.
"So when is our dessert date?" you ask softly.
Leon goes still. Then he stands without a word and leaves the room again.
You hear the soft thud of the door opening, the faint clink of something ceramic, the careful movements of someone handling something fragile. When he returns, he's holding a small white bakery box tied with a thin ribbon, the bow slightly crooked as if it had to survive transport in a large, impatient hand. He sets it on the bedside table with surprising delicacy.
"I didn't make this," he says gruffly. "Figured we've both suffered enough."
Suspicion and curiosity spark together. You pull the ribbon loose, lifting the lid. Inside sits a slice of decadent chocolate cake, glossy frosting catching the sunlight, layers dark, dense, and unapologetically indulgent.
Your chest tightens.
"You remembered," you whisper.
He shrugs, looking suddenly very interested in a spot on the wall. "You seemed pretty sure it was worth surviving for."
You lift the cake plate slightly and notice something tucked beneath the ribbon, partially hidden against the cardboard.
An envelope. Your fingers hesitate, then slide it free. Leon doesn't look at you. He's staring out the window now, jaw set, shoulders a little too rigid, like he's bracing for impact.
Inside the envelope are two plane tickets. Beach destination. Departure in two weeks. Round trip. Vacation time from work. A hotel confirmation tucked behind them.
For a long moment, you can't speak.
"You said somewhere boring," he mutters quietly, still not turning around. "Figured that would be perfect."
"Leon..."
He finally looks back, expression carefully neutral, but there's something vulnerable in his eyes, something that says this mattered more than he wants to admit.
"You don't have to go," he adds quickly. "If you're not up for travel yet, we can postpone, or cancel, or—"
You set the tickets down and reach for him. Your fingers curl into his shirt, pulling him closer until he's standing right at the edge of the bed, close enough that you can see the faint pulse at the base of his throat.
"Thank you," you say softly.
Not just for the vacation. Not just for the cake. He understands anyway. His face softens, tension draining into something warm and quiet and deeply relieved.
"Yeah," he murmurs. "Anytime."
You pick up the fork, take a small bite of cake, then hold it out to him. He leans in, accepting it, eyes never leaving yours. For a second, neither of you pulls back, the space between you charged with something gentler than urgency, heavier than simple affection.
"Worth it?" he asks.
You nod. "Absolutely."
You set the plate aside, your hand finding his again, fingers threading through his with familiar ease. He squeezes back immediately, grounding, protective, like he did in the hallway, only now there's no fear behind it. You both crave this closeness after it was almost ripped away just days before.
You tug lightly, coaxing him down to sit beside you on the bed. He goes without resistance, one arm coming around your shoulders automatically, careful of lingering soreness. Your other hand lifts, brushing his cheek where faint redness still lingers if you look closely enough.
"I love you," you whisper.
His eyes close briefly, leaning into your touch in a way he never would in public. Just here, just now, where it's safe to be human.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "I love you too."
Leon leans in first. The kiss is slow, gentle, nothing desperate or urgent, just warm lips and shared breath and the simple reassurance of contact. He stills for half a heartbeat, like he's afraid you might break, then melts into it, one hand cupping the back of your head. When you pull back, his forehead follows yours, resting lightly against it, eyes still closed.
"Careful," he murmurs. "Doctor said no overexertion."
You smile. "Pretty sure that wasn't what they meant."
"Still."
His arm tightens around you, drawing you closer until your head rests against his shoulder, fitting there like it always has. His chin settles lightly against your hair, breath warm, steady.
Outside, the city moves on. Inside, time slows to match the rhythm of two people who fought hard for the right to sit in a quiet room and eat cake.
"Two weeks," you murmur.
"Yeah."
"You think you can handle boring?"
He huffs softly. "I'll manage."
You laugh, the sound light and real and alive. His chest rises under your cheek, its vibration grounding you in the best possible way. For a long moment, neither of you says anything else. You just sit there, sunlight warming your skin, fingers loosely entwined, the promise of salt air and quiet days waiting ahead like a horizon you can finally see. Sharing cake, and kisses, and being alive, and together in your home.
Dividers by @uzmacchiato <3
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A/N: this was lowkey inspired by THIS by @2yai bc why did I yearn for mom Kennedy? Other than that, I actually have no idea what compelled me to write this apology in advance.
Warnings: angst, pregnancy, slight re9 spoilers, children (lmao) Leon POV, all four Leon eras, (re2,re4,re6, re9) Leon is a workaholic, low-key.
Summary: Leon has spent a lifetime saying goodbyes at doorways, in passing, and over distance, always promising he’d come back. But when the life he’s built finally stands on the edge of being taken from him, he’s forced to confront a truth he’s avoided for too long. Some goodbyes don’t wait for you to be ready.
1998
Leon had already checked the time twice in the last minute, his gaze flicking back to the grandfather clock that sat to the left of the stairs. He still didn’t know how his girlfriend managed to get that massive thing through her front door when the rest of her apartment barely fit two people and a couch, but somehow, she had made it work. It ticked loud enough to fill the whole space, each second landing a little heavier than the last.
Glancing at it a third time might have been excessive, but today wasn’t exactly a normal day. It was his first day. His first real assignment. The first time walking into the station as something more than a name on paperwork.
He adjusted the collar of his uniform in the small mirror by her front door, smoothing it down like it might somehow make him look more put together than he felt. His palms were a little clammy beneath his gloves as he dragged a hand through his hair, trying to convince himself he looked fine, like he belonged in it.
“You’re staring at yourself like you’re about to go on stage," she said from behind him.
Leon huffed out a quiet laugh, glancing over his shoulder. “Feels like it.”
He turned a little more, giving her a half spin like he was showing it off. “What do you think?”
She was still in her pajamas, and it was five in the afternoon. The soft pink shorts barely brushed mid-thigh, one of his button-ups hanging loose like she’d thrown it on without thinking. It clung to her in that effortless way that made it look like it always belonged there. She must have finally dragged herself out of bed after sleeping most of the day glued to him, doing everything she could to keep him from leaving.
If he didn’t have to go, he’d be fused to her instead of those clothes.
Her eyes dragged over him slowly, far more dramatic than necessary.
“I think,” she said, stepping closer, “you’re going to make every other cop there look bad.”
Leon snorted. “That’s the goal.”
Her oversized bunny slippers shuffled softly across the floor as she crossed the room, one hand lifting to scratch absently at the back of her head. She looked half-awake, like she hadn't fully decided to be a person yet. Messy hair. Sleepy eyes, probably still thinking about coffee. It was… distracting, in the best way.
As she reached for him, he turned back toward the mirror, watching her reflection instead. She lifted her hand, adjusting something on his shoulder that didn’t actually need fixing, her fingers lingering against the fabric.
“You’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” he said quickly, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
She raised a brow.
Leon paused.
“... Okay, maybe a little.”
Her smile softened, and for a second the teasing slipped into something quieter.
“You’ll be fine.”
He turned toward her and nodded, because of course he would be. It was just his first day. He’d go in, do his job, come back, and be right here again tomorrow like nothing had changed. Still, he leaned into her touch when she lifted her hand to his face, her thumb brushing lightly across his cheek, giving him that look that made his chest feel just a little too full.
He’d been staying here with her the last few days since her place was closer to the station. His apartment sat halfway across town, and he hadn’t been too eager to spend his last stretch of freedom alone. She hadn’t hesitated when he called, already halfway through listing everything she could cook before he’d even finished asking.
They’d done all of it—dinner, dishes, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch while she made him watch her favorite movie, staying up far too late tangled together in her bed like time didn’t matter. She was a night owl in every sense, completely opposite to the routine the academy had drilled into him. Early morning, coffee, runs, structure. Her messy hair and barely open eyes now told him everything he needed to know about how that usually went.
They’d only been together for a little under a year, and somehow it still felt like this every time. New. Easy. Like he was still learning her, still wanting to. He caught himself thinking about it more than he probably should, whether the job, the hours, or the things that came with it would ever be too much. Not everyone loves cops.
But she never made it feel that way.
If anything, she looked at him like he was something worth holding onto.
His eyes flicked to the clock again, more out of habit than urgency this time, but they didn’t stay there long. They drifted back to her instead, catching on the way her shirt rode up slightly when she shifted the soft line of her thigh where the fabric ended. It was distracting in a way he wasn’t entirely proud of, especially given the fact that he was standing here in uniform, about to walk into his first day like he had everything under control.
He didn’t.
Not really.
Because part of him was still in her bedroom from a few hours ago, half-asleep and tangled in her sheets, her legs hooked around his like she had nowhere else to be. It would have been easy to stay there. Too easy. Call in, make something up, and spend the day exactly the way they had been—lazy, quiet, and wrapped up in each other like the rest of the world could wait.
He could already hear the lecture he’d get for even thinking it.
Still… the thought lingered longer than it should have.
His gaze dropped again, slower this time, like he wasn’t even trying to stop himself anymore. He wondered, briefly, if she was doing it on purpose—walking around like that, looking like that, knowing exactly what it did to him.
Probably.
That alone made him laugh.
He leaned down to kiss her, laughing softly into her lips as his arms slipped around her waist. Without warning, he lifted her a few inches off the ground, catching her completely off guard. She melted into it anyway, wrapping her arms around his neck as he gave her a small twirl before setting her back down, her slippers brushing against the long strip of carpet that led to the front door.
When she pulled away, her hands stayed planted against his chest as she huffed out a laugh, still a little breathless. “What is it?”
Leon tilted his head, his gaze dragging over her like he was trying to memorize something without meaning to. Seeing her like this, hair a mess, barely awake, still wrapped in sleep and warmth, did something to him. It made everything else feel a little less important, like the day waiting for him on the other side of that door could wait a few minutes longer.
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
“I just... love you.”
The second they left his mouth, reality hit him like a truck.
She pulled back just enough to look at him, brows lifting slightly, and Leon felt his stomach drop straight through the floor. They hadn't said it yet—not out loud now he was standing there in full uniform, blurting it out like it hadn't been sitting in his chest for weeks.
He almost physically recoiled from himself.
But then she smiled.
Not just smiled—lit up.
“Leon S. Kennedy, the man you are,” she laughed, shaking her head as she gave his chest a playful shove. “I look like a cave rat and this is when you decide to tell me you love me?”
Leon's brows furrowed immediately, confusion overriding the panic. He thought she looked perfect. Better like this, actually.
"I—"
“I love you too.”
She didn't give him time to recover before she rose onto her toes and kissed him again, soft and certain, and whatever lingering panic he had left dissolved instantly. His arms tightened around her without thinking, pulling her in closer like that alone could keep the movement from slipping away.
Leon barely had time to process the fact that she’d said it back before she pulled away, her hands still resting against his chest as she looked up at him, that smile lingering on her lips.
“I wish you didn’t have to go.”
He let out a quiet breath, something warm settling in his chest as he shook his head slightly, like he couldn’t quite believe how easily that had just happened. For a second, he just looked at her, thumb brushing absent circles against her side before he finally took a small step back, his hand slipping from her waist.
“Hey,” he said, lighter now, that familiar teasing tone slipping back into place as he hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “I’ll be back when I get off. You’re stuck with me, right?”
He said it lightheartedly, carefree.
He’d see her in the morning, and she knew he’d come straight back here.
She smiled right back, not missing a beat. “Right.”
And for a second, that was enough. Leon turned, heading toward the door, already halfway into leaving, already shifting back into the version of himself that has somewhere to be—
“Wait,” she said, her hand catching his wrist before he could make it any further.
He glanced down at her hand, then back up at her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “What?”
She tilted her head slightly, like she was considering something, then tightened her grip just enough to pull him a step closer. “Give me five minutes.”
Leon blinked.
“Five minutes?” he echoed, a quiet laugh slipping through as he glanced instinctively toward the clock again. “I’m already cutting it close."
“Then you better make it count.”
There was no hesitation in her voice, no room for argument, and for a second he just looked at her, caught somewhere between responsibility and the very obvious fact that she was standing in front of him now with that look in her eyes, asking him to stay.
His grip on his own schedule slipped faster than he’d like to admit.
“You’re gonna get me written up on day one,” he muttered, but there was no real protest behind it, not when he was already letting her pull him back, not when the bedroom door clicked shut again behind him like it had never even been opened.
"Worth it,” she said.
Leon let out a breath through his nose, shaking his head as his hands found her again without thinking, settling at her waist like they belonged there. “You’re a terrible influence, you know that?”
“And yet, here you are.”
Yeah.
Here he was.
He told himself it was five minutes. That he could spare five minutes. That nothing was going to fall apart if he showed up a little late, that it wasn’t the end of the world.
It wasn’t like anything important was going to happen today.
His eyes dropped to her again, slower this time, taking her in like he wasn’t even pretending not to. “Five minutes,” he repeated, quieter now, like he was convincing himself more than her.
She didn’t answer.
She just smiled.
And that was enough.
Leon closed the distance himself this time, his hand sliding up her side as he pulled her back into him, already forgetting whatever time the clock was trying to keep as he kissed her again, slower at first, then not at all.
Five minutes wasn’t going to be enough. He knew that the second she melted into him, he just didn’t care.
And so Leon kennedy was late to his first day of work.
2004
Leon noticed the ring before anything else.
He always did.
It caught the light when she moved, subtle and easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, but his eyes found it anyways, watching the way her thumb rolled over the band like it had become second nature. She did it when she was thinking. When she was nervous. When she didn’t want to say something out loud.
He’d learned that.
Seven years had taught him a lot.
The airport buzzed around them in a constant hum of pieces and movement, people coming and going like none of it meant anything, like goodbyes were just another part of the day. Leon stood just slightly behind her, one hand resting at the small of her back, not guiding, not pushing—just there. Grounding. His eyes moved without him thinking about it, scanning the exits, the people, and the space around them before settling back on her like that was the only place they ever really wanted to be.
She turned toward him, still absentmindedly twisting the ring, and he reached for her hand without thinking, stilling the motion with his thumb. It wasn’t a large ring, light on her finger, simple in a way that didn't match how much it meant.
There hadn't been a plan. No drawn-out proposal, no perfect moment. Just a courthouse that smelled like old paper and had heavy fluorescent lighting, a pen that didn’t work the first time he tried to sign his name, and her standing across from him like none of that mattered. Only he did.
He hadn't wanted distance.
That had been the whole point.
After Raccoon city, after everything he’d seen and everything he’d been pushed into, the only thing that had made sense was her. Keeping her close. Making it real in a way no one could take from him. He hadn’t even asked in a way that felt like asking. Just stood there with her hands in his and said it like a fact.
Stay with me. Marry me.
She had... And now he was the one leaving.
His grip on her hand tightened slightly, just enough for her to feel it, and she looked up at him again. There was something softer in her expression than before, something that hadn’t been there years ago when goodbyes still felt temporary.
“You keep doing that,” he said quietly, nodding toward her hand.
Her lips curved just a little. “Doing what?”
He brushed his thumb over her ring again, slower this time. “You’re gonna wear a groove into it.”
She huffed a quiet laugh, but her fingers didn’t stop moving entirely, just slowed under his touch. “Maybe I like reminding myself it’s still there.”
Leon's jaw flexed faintly at that, something unspoken passing through him before he looked away for a second, eyes dragging over the terminal again out of habit more than anything. He didn't like that she needed reminding. Didn’t like that this—standing in an airport, watching him leave—was becoming something she had to get used to.
He’d offered to take her with him once.
No—more than once.
It hadn't been some grand conversation, not planned or thought through. It had slipped out of him the same way everything else with her seemed to, unfiltered and a little too honest for his own good. Come with me. He’d said it like it was simple, like it was something he could just offer her without consequences, like the life he was living was something she could step into without it changing her.
She’d looked at him the way she always did when she was choosing her words carefully, hands wrapped around his like she needed him to stay long enough to hear her.
"Leon... I can’t do that.”
He’d wanted to argue, almost had, but he knew she was right.
He didn’t realize he’d moved closer until his hand was already at her back again, settling there like it belonged. His thumb brushed lightly against the fabric at her side, a slow, absent motion that didn’t need attention drawn to it.
“I won’t be gone long,” he said, the words automatic, practiced.
Safer that way.
He felt her shift closer to him, her hand tightening around him as she looked up, searching his face like she was trying to decide if she believed him or not.
Leon held her gaze, steady and controlled, giving her just enough of what she needed without letting the rest slip through. That part had taken time. Learning how to leave without making it harder than it already was.
He exhaled slowly, his grip on her tightening just a fraction as he looked down at her.
“If something—"
The words stopped before they could fully form.
His jaw shifted, the rest of the sentence dissolving somewhere behind his teeth as he shook his head once, subtly, like he could erase it before she noticed.
“Just… call me if you need anything,” he finished instead. “I’ll call you when I land," he added, quieter.
She softened at that, a small breath leaving her as she shook her head just slightly. “I know you will… it’ll be okay, Leon. I’ll be okay. Okay? Just…come home in one piece."
He watched her as she said it, really watched her, like he was trying to catch whatever she wasn’t letting show. She’d gotten better at this over time, better at smoothing it over, at hiding the worry behind something steadier, something meant more for him than for herself. The fidgeting was still there, the way her fingers twisted at her ring, the small tells he’d learned to read without thinking, but her voice stayed even, calm in a way that didn’t quite match.
It should have reassured him. But it didn’t.
If anything, it made something in his chest pull tighter, knowing she was doing this for him, holding herself together so he wouldn't have to carry it with him when he left.
Leon’s jaw shifted slightly as he stepped closer, his hand finding hers again, stilling the motion of her fingers as his thumb brushed over the band again. “Hey,” he said, quieter now, not correcting her, not arguing. Because the truth was he knew she would be okay.
“Love you," he said, the words low as he hovered just inches from her face. “Distance won’t change that.”
He leaned down, pressing a slow, steady kiss to her lips, his hand tightening around hers as he pulled her gently against his chest. His suitcase sat forgotten just a foot away, abandoned in the middle of the terminal like the rest of the world had been put on pause. For now, he let himself stay here, let himself take what he could from the moment while it was still his to have, memorizing the feel of other lips against his like it might be weeks before he got it again.
When she pulled back slightly, her expression had softened, the tension easing from her face in a way that almost made it look like none of this was real, like she wasn’t about to watch him walk away. Like she already knew he’d come back.
“I love you too, stud,” she said with a small smile, her hand settling against his chest as her fingers moved absently over the fabric of his shirt.
Leon let out a quiet breath at that, his hand covering hers where it rested against him, holding it there for a second longer than needed.
“You missed a spot,” she said suddenly, reaching up without warning.
Leon blinked as her finger brushed just under his jaw, thumb swiping lightly like she was fixing something only she could see. He stilled for it, letting her adjust him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“There,” she murmured, satisfied.
He huffed a quiet breath, the corner of his mouth lifting. “You gonna start checking me over every time I leave now?”
"Someone has to make sure you look presentable.”
He shook his head, but the small smile stayed.
When the woman over the intercom called his flight to Spain, the sound cut through the moment like it didn't belong there. Her brows pulled together instantly, her hand returning to his chest, gripping him a little tighter like she could hold him there just by wanting it hard enough.
This wasn’t like his first day. He couldn't make that mistake again; he couldn't afford it.
Leon glanced over his shoulder toward the gate, watching as the doors slid open and the flight attendant stepped out, already preparing to board. For a second, he just looked at it, like he could delay it by not moving.
Then his attention shifted back to her.
She was already watching him, studying his face the way she always did right before he left, like she was trying to read something he wasn’t saying; the worry had slipped back in, quiet but impossible to miss.
Leon didn't say anything. Instead, he took her hand and brought it to his lips, closing whatever space had formed between them. He kissed her this time with more weight, his hands coming up to frame her face as he pulled her into him, like he could make it last longer if he just held on hard enough.
He couldn't
When he pulled back, his thumb brushed gently beneath her eye, catching the tear that had managed to escape despite everything she’d tried to hold together.
It was always like this. No matter how many times he left. No matter how much they told themselves it would get easier.
His hand lingered against her cheek for a moment as he exhaled quietly, and then he said the same thing he always did, the words familiar, almost practiced.
“You’re stuck with me, remember?”
She let out a small, breathy laugh, even as her eyes welled again, lifting her hands to wipe them away before they could fall. “Yeah…” she said softly, the smile still there even if it trembled a little. “I remember.”
Leon nodded once, like that settled it, like that made it easier, before leaning down to press a quick kiss to her forehead. It lingered just a second longer... Then he stepped back.
He grabbed his bags, the weight of them nothing compared to what he was leaving behind, and turned toward the gate before he gave himself the chance to hesitate.
He didn't look back right away.
Not this time.
2012
He’d gotten the call a few hours ago, an outbreak in Tall oaks, bad enough that they needed him there immediately. No timeline, no estimate, nothing to anchor it. Just go.
That alone had almost been enough to make him say no.
It had been happening more often lately, that hesitation sitting heavier in his chest than it ever used to, pulling him back right at the edge of decision. Especially now. Especially with how things had been at home.
Leon set his bag down by the door, the sound quieter than it should've been, like even that felt too loud in the space they were in. His eyes drifted across the room, landing on her where she sat on the couch, facing away from him, a small pile of freshly washed baby clothes to her left and a neatly folded stack to her right.
She didn’t look back at him and just kept folding.
He watched her for a moment longer than he meant to, taking in the way she moved, slower now, more careful, the weight of the last seven months settling into everything she did. She sat for most things these days, and he couldn't blame her. With only a month left before their daughter arrived, he could only imagine the strain on her back, the constant ache she never complained about as much as she probably could have.
It wasn’t always like this.
There had been days, more than he could count, where he’d come up behind her without a word, sliding his hands around her middle just to take some of the weight off, lifting gently until he felt her relax against him. She'd always let out that quiet breath, the one she always held after a long day, her head tipping back against his shoulder while he stayed there, holding her up while she finished whatever she’d been doing.
Other times it was simpler.
A passing comment about something she wanted, something small, and he was already out the door before she could tell him she didn’t actually need it, coming back with whatever it was in hand like it had been the easiest thing in the world. Like taking care of her wasn’t something he had to think about.
Because it wasn’t. It had become instinct, all of it had.
Watching her change, watching her body shift and grow to carry something that was theirs… it had done something to him, something quiet but permanent. There was a new version of her in front of him now, softer in some ways and stronger in others, and he found himself drawn to it just as much as he had been to every version of her before.
Maybe more.
Still, he could see it now… the way she pressed the fabric a little too firmly when she folded it, in the way each piece was set down with just a bit more force than necessary.
She was upset.
Hell, so was he.
When they’d told him the president's life was in danger, it hadn't even felt like a choice. Obligation came first. It always has. This was what he knew—what he’d been shaped into over years of doing the same thing over and over again until it was second nature. There wasn't really a version of him that walked away from something like that.
But there wasn’t really a version of him that had this before, either. Her. A home. A child on the way.
The thought of it has shifted something in him, deep and quiet, changing the way he looked at everything whether he wanted it to or not.
He moved toward her, slowly, like he was approaching something fragile, his hands settling gently on her shoulders as his thumbs pressed into the tight muscles there, working small, careful circles into the tension he could feel without even trying.
She didn't stop, didn’t lean back into him. Didn't even pause for a second.
She just kept folding, picking up each tiny piece one by one, smoothing it out, and stacking it with the others, like if she kept her hands busy enough, she wouldn’t have to acknowledge anything else.
He'd offered to help earlier, more than once, but she’d shut that down immediately. Something about him not folding them right, about how they wouldn't fit in the drawers if he tried. Normally, he would’ve pushed back, teased her a little, and made a joke out of it.
Tonight, he let her have it.
His hands slowed slightly against her shoulder, thumbs pressing just a little deeper before easing off again, his gaze dropping to the small clothes in her lap. They looked impossibly small. Too small. It still hadn’t quite clicked for him, not fully. Not until moments like this, when it was right in front of him.
A quiet breath left him as his hands stilled for a moment, resting there like he didn't want to let go just yet. “You’re gonna run out of things to fold at this rate,” he said finally, his voice low, softer than usual, like he was testing the space between them instead of filling it.
She didn’t answer right away. Just picked up another onesie, smoothing it out a little harsher than necessary before folding it with practiced precision.
“Then i’ll unfold them and do it again,” she said, not looking up.
Leon huffed quietly under his breath, something almost like a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite everything. Despite him having to go again. So he moved around the couch instead, stepping over a laundry basket into her space until he lowered himself in front of her, his back brushing the glass coffee table in the middle of the floor.
He crouched there, one knee pressing into the floor, close enough that she couldn't keep pretending he wasn’t there anymore.
“Hey,” he said softly, his hand coming up to hers still mid-fold, the small piece of fabric caught between her fingers as he gently pulled it from her grip and set it aside. “Look at me.”
She didn’t at first. Her jaw tightened, eyes fixed stubbornly on the pile beside her, like if she ignored him long enough, he might disappear back to the door, back to the version of the night where none of this was happening.
“Hey,” he repeated, quieter now, his hands sliding up her thighs, his head moving into her line of sight so that she couldn't avoid him anymore.
Her eyes met his.
And there it was. Everything she’d been holding in.
Leon's expression softened instantly, something in his chest pulling tight as one hand moved from her thigh, settling instead at her stomach, his palm flattening gently over the curve of it like he was trying to understand something he still hadn't fully caught up to.
“You’re gonna wear yourself out,” he murmured, his thumb brushing lightly over the fabric of her stretched-out shirt, the words “coming soon” cheesily printed out over where her stomach goes.
She let out a breath that sounded more like it had been forced out of her, her hands finally going still in her lap. “I’m already tired, Leon,” she said, her voice wavering just enough to give her away. “That’s not the problem.”
His gaze flicked up to hers again. He knew. Of course he knew.
“You said you wouldn’t go,” she continued, the words coming a little faster now, like they’d been sitting there waiting. “You said you were going to stay. That you were done for a while. That you were going to be here.”
Each word landed heavier than the last.
Leon swallowed, his hand stilling where it rested against her, his fingers pressing just slightly like he needed something to hold onto. “I know,” he said quietly.
“No, you don’t,” she snapped, her voice breaking as she shook her head, her hands finally pulling away from her lap just to gesture helplessly in front of her. “You don't because if you did, you wouldn't be standing here with a bag by the door like this is just another job.”
“It’s not just another job,” he said, more firmly now, even if his voice stayed low. "It's Ashley’s dad. I don’t get to—"
“And what about us?” she cut in, her eyes glossing over as she leaned forward slightly, her hands hovering over her stomach like she didn’t know where to put them. “What about her?”
The room went quiet.
Leon's gaze dropped instantly, drawn to where her hands rested, where his own still hovered just beneath them.
Like the question had weight. Like it mattered more than anything else she’d said.
“She’s coming in a month,” she said, softer now, but somehow worse. “A month, Leon. What if you're not here? What if something happens and you’re not here? What if I have to—"
Her voice cracked, cutting herself off as she looked away, her hand coming up to press against her mouth like she could stop the rest of it from spilling out.
And that– That killed him. Not the words. Not the fear. He’d heard fear before. Seen it. Lived in it.
But this?
This was hers.
After everything they’d been through to get here.
Getting her out of Raccoon city when the world had already started to fall apart around them. Finding his way back to her after spain, after ashley, after everything that mission had taken out of him. The years that followed, being pulled in and out of operations with chris, disappearing for weeks at a time, or something longer. Every time he left her behind with nothing but a phone call and a promise he couldn't always explain.
And she’s stayed.
She’d been there every time he came back, every time he walked through the door like he hadn't just crawled out of hell again, grounding him in something real when everything else felt like it was slipping.
He thought about her constantly when he was gone. More than he should have. Enough that it got hard to carry.
There had been too many nights where he’d sat alone in some dim hotel room or safehouse, the silence louder than anything he’d faced in the field, and he’d reached for a drink just to take the edge off it. Just to quiet the part of his mind that kept picturing her here, waiting, worrying, living a life that kept getting interrupted by his.
He hated himself for it. Still did.
Because it never actually helped. Especially when Chris started to notice.
It just made the distance feel worse when it wore off.
But this, sitting here now, watching her try to hold it together like this, knowing exactly what it felt like on the other side of it. He couldn't let her carry that. Not like this. Not now.
Leon didn’t let it go any further.
His hand moved fully over her stomach again, covering hers this time, grounding it, steadying it, his thumb brushing slow, careful strokes like he was trying to calm something he couldn't fix.
“I’ll be here,” he said, quieter now.
She let out a small, broken laugh, shaking her head. “You can’t promise that.”
He didn’t answer right away. Because she was right.
Instead, his hand shifted slightly—and then he stilled.
Not in confusion, but recognition.
His fingers pressed just a little more against her stomach, his gaze dropping as he felt it again, that familiar movement beneath his palm, small but strong enough to catch his full attention every time.
“...Hey,” he murmured, softer now, like he always did when this happened, his thumb brushing lightly over the same spot like he could follow it.
She felt it too, her hand settling over his, guiding it without thinking, her breathing still uneven from everything that had just spilled out of her. “She hasn’t done that all day,” she said quietly, The edge of her voice dulled by something else entirely.
Leon huffed a quiet breath through his nose, something shifting in his expression as he kept his hand there, like he didn’t want to miss it this time.
Like he never did.
His thumb moved again, tracing a small path over her stomach as his head dipped slightly, his voice low and almost absentminded as he spoke, more to her than anything else. “She always does this when im here.”
The tension in the room changed.
Not gone, but... Different.
Leon lifted his head, leaning forward slightly, his forehead coming to rest against her, his hand still spread protectively over her stomach, holding both of them there in that small space between everything else.
“I’m coming back,” he said, low and steady, not rushed. “I’m not missing this.”
Her breath hitched again, but this time she didn’t pull away. Didn’t argue.
She just leaned into him, her hands finally settling against him instead of fighting him, gripping his shirt like she needed something solid to hold onto.
“You better not," she whispered.
Something soft broke through the weight of everything as Leon huffed, pulling back just enough to look at her, his thumb brushing once more over her stomach.
“You’re stuck with me,” he said, like so many times before, the faintest hint of that familiar tone slipping back in, quieter now, but still there. “Both of you.”
2028
This goodbye was different from the rest.
It wasn't the kind at the door, a kiss on the cheek with a bag in his hand as he said he’d be back soon. It wasn’t an airport lobby, his hand wrapped around hers while she stressed over the flight. It wasn’t even the kind where he got to hold his family a little longer before turning, taking a job he already knew he’d end up hating.
No.
This time it was different.
"Sherry?”
Victor’s office felt cold. Too cold. Cold enough that Leon’s back straightened from where he leaned over the desk, the computer screen still lit with the reality he hadn't figured out how to process yet.
"Yeah, Leon?”
He took a steady breath, trying to pull his eyes away from the screen long enough to keep himself together. “Can you—" he paused, shutting the computer off before pushing away from the desk completely, his hand dragging briefly across his face as he closed his eyes for a second. “Can you patch me through to my wife?”
There was a pause on the other end. A long one. Then Sherry let out a quiet, sympathetic sigh. “Of course.”
He heard the line connect. One ring. Two. by the third, he was sure he couldn't breathe, the thought of her not answering settling heavy in his chest in a way that felt worse than anything he’d just seen on that screen.
Then—
“Daddy!”
His ears were flooded instantly with the overlapping voices of his daughters, Casey first, loud and excited, and Ellie right behind her, already trying to take over the call. He winced, leaning back against the desk as he crossed his arms, his head tipping slightly as the noise hit him all at once.
Fifteen years ago, he told his wife he’d come back. That he wouldn't miss this.
Now, listening to them fight over who got to talk first, his shoulders felt heavy with the sudden realization that he may not be able to keep his promise this time around.
“I wanna talk to him first, Casey!”
"No, Ellie. He called mom not you.”
"Girls—" he tried, but it didn’t land.
“Girls.”
Casey must have finally gotten control of the phone, because the noise shifted, her voice coming through clearer this time. “Hey Dad. What ya up to?”
Hearing her, both of them, did something to him he hadn't been ready for. It filled something in his chest and twisted it at the same time, the normalcy of it almost painful in contrast to everything else.
They sounded calm. Happy.
“Sweetheart… where's your mom?"
There was a brief shuffle on the other end and muffled voices as she turned away from the phone, probably shoving Ellie back just enough to get a word in.
"Uh—outside, I think. Want me to grab her?”
“Please.”
For a second, just a second, the sound of their voices eased the weight pressing down on him. He listened to them bicker in the background, the familiar rhythm of it pulling at something deep in his chest, memories stacking over each other faster than he could keep up with.
Casey.
The first time he held her, how something in him had shifted instantly, like that was it. That was the moment he was supposed to walk away from all of this. Be done. Be present. Be home.
Ellie.
And then her, years later, smaller, louder, just as stubborn… and somehow that had been the moment he stepped back into it, convincing himself they still needed him out there.
Why?
The question hit harder than it ever had.
Why couldn't he let go?
Years of this, of leaving and coming back, of telling himself it was worth it and now it all felt like it was crashing down on top of him at once. The guilt.
Casey must have handed the phone off again, because the sound shifted, smaller this time.
“Hi daddy.”
It made him smile.
“Hi, baby girl," he said, his voice tightening just slightly as he forced it to stay steady, like this was just another call, another day.
“When are you coming home?” her voice was so small. Softer. Too innocent for the weight behind the question.
He paused. Just for a second. He didn’t want to lie to his little girl. But he had to.
"Soon, baby," He said gently. “I just need to talk to Mommy first, okay? Is your sister getting her?”
There was a quiet pause, like she was looking around, checking, “Mmm…. yeah.”
He heard the front door open and then soon after her voice filtered through. “Elousie anne give me my phone.”
That made him smile again; despite everything, the sound of her moving through the house grounded him in a way nothing else could. He could hear her footsteps across the hardwood, the soft shuffle of movement, a bit of protesting and a bit of shooing as she directed the girls away.
“Please, Ellie, thank you—hey—hey, hon, sorry, I was outside watering the plants. Everything okay?”
He didn't answer right away. He just listened.
The faint creak of the front porch door as it shut behind her. The hollow shift in the sound of her voice as she stepped outside, and the house falling away from the line, replaced by something quieter. Open. He could almost hear the wind brushing past the receiver, the distant hum of cicadas and the soft scrape of her shoe against the wood as she settled in the same spot she always did when she needed a second to herself.
He could see it.
The porch light was casting that warm glow across the railing. The hanging plants sway just slightly, the ones she insisted on keeping alive even when he wasn’t there to help her water them. He’s killed every plant he’s ever had, but at least he had her. Then the chair she always sat in, angled just enough to face the yard.
He could picture her standing there now.
Phone tucked between her ear and shoulder. One hand resting absentmindedly against her hip, the other probably still damp from the hose.
Waiting.
“...Leon?”
Her voice softened as she said his name, just enough that it pulled him back.
“Yeah,” he breathed, quieter now, like the air had been knocked out of him somewhere between hearing her and realizing how far away he actually was. “Yeah, i’m here.”
There was a pause on the other end. Not long. Just enough.
“You don’t call like this unless something’s wrong," she said, and there it was—that steadiness. Not panicked. Not accusing. Just…knowing.
God.
After all these years, she still knew.
Leon closed his eyes, his head tipping back slightly against the wall behind him, the weight of it pressing in all at once. “Yeah,” he admitted, voice rougher now. “Something’s wrong.”
The line went quiet again.
He could hear her shift on the porch, the wood creaking beneath her as she sat down, like she needed something solid under her before he said whatever he was about to say.
"...Are you safe?” she asked finally.
Leon let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, but there was nothing light about it, his hand bracing harder against the desk behind. “I’m… still here.” he said, the words careful, like he was choosing them for her and not for himself.
That wasn’t what she asked. And she knew it.
“Leon.”
Just his name… but it carried everything.
He swallowed, his jaw tightening as he stared at the ceiling for a second, like maybe if he looked anywhere else, he wouldn't have to say it out loud. His free hand dragged slowly down his face, pausing at his mouth as he exhaled through it, steadying himself before he spoke again.
“I’ve been getting worse,” he admitted, quieter now, the truth settling into his voice in a way that made it impossible to take back. “Last couple of days… I thought it was just stress, or bad air, I don’t know…" he shook his head slightly, eyes closing again as the memories lined up clearly now. “It’s not.”
The coughing.
The blood.
He paused, his gaze flicking briefly to his arm, to the faint dark illness beneath his skin that he could feel even if he couldn't fully see it.
“I know what it is now.”
The silence on her end sharpened.
“You’re saying that like you’ve seen it before,” she said, something tight in her tone, something already bracing for impact.
Leon swallowed, his grip tightening slightly as he leaned his weight back into the desk. “I have, it's—" he paused, contemplating giving too much away. “It’s the T-virus," he said simply. “And I know what happens when it takes hold.”
The words didn't shake. He didn’t let them.
“I’m not going to sit here and wait for it to take me,” he added more firmly, like saying it out loud made it real, made something he could push back against. “I’m going to figure this out. There's something here—data, labs, whatever the hell they want from Grace—I just have to find it.”
The porch creaked again.
“Leon…” She breathed, and this time there was no mistaking it. The steadiness she’d been holding onto was slipping, not all at once, but enough that he could hear it.
“If you know what this does to people—"
He didn’t answer. Because he did, of course he knew. But that didn’t matter.
“I’m not them,” he said instead, stubborn in a way that hadn’t left him in all these years. “I’ve walked out of worse.”
“You’ve walked out of lucky," she corrected, her voice breaking just slightly now, the truth pushing through whether she wanted it to or not. “You don’t get to pretend this is the same thing.”
Leon's jaw clenched, his eyes finding the ceiling again, like he could will himself into believing what he was saying. “I’m coming home,” he said, more firmly now. “You hear me? I’m not done yet.”
He was met with silence, heavy and unsure.
And then—
“You don’t know that.”
It was quiet. Too quiet, and Leon's hand tightened against the desk, his fingers curling as he pushed off it, pacing once across the room before stopping again. Like he needed movement to keep himself grounded. “I do,” he said, almost immediately. “I’m not leaving you like this. I’m not leaving them like this.”
Her breath hitched on the other side of the line. He heard it. Felt it, and it hit him harder than anything she’d said so far.
“You think I don’t know what that looks like?” she asked, her voice thinner now, the control finally cracking in a way she couldn't hold back anymore. “You think I haven’t seen what that virus does? What it turns people into?”
The porch creaked faster this time, like she’d started pacing, the same way she always did when she couldn't sit still with something.
“You got me out of raccoon city,” she continued, her voice shaking now, emotion bleeding through every word. “I watched what that place did to people, Leon. I watched what it almost did to you. Don’t stand there and tell me you’re just going to walk it off.”
Leon's chest tightened, something sharp cutting through him as he stopped pacing, his hand coming up to rest against the back of his neck, gripping it like it might keep him steady. “I’m not saying that,” he said, still holding the line. “I’m saying i’m not giving up.”
“You don’t get to decide that!” she snapped, and this time it didn’t hold together, the control finally splintering in a way she couldn't pull back from. “You don’t get to just fight this because you want to. That’s not how it works—”
Her voice just… cracked open.
Leon froze where he stood, the shift in her hitting him harder than anything she’d said so far, his hand tightening at his side as the sound of it carried through the line.
There was a shuffle on her end, hurried and uneven, like she’d turned too fast or lost her footing for a second before catching herself. The porch creaked again, louder this time, and then softer as she sank back down into the chair, the movement small but heavy enough that he could picture it perfectly.
And then—
She cried. Quiet, uneven sobs that she was trying to swallow down and failing, her breath catching in between them like she didn’t want him to hear it but couldn’t stop it either.
It broke him.
Leon’s chest tightened so hard it almost hurt, his hand coming up to press against it like that might steady something that was already slipping out of his control. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just listened, the sound of her trying to hold herself together on the other end of the line cutting deeper than anything else could have.
“You have to come home,” she said finally, the words barely holding together between breaths. “You always come home.”
His jaw clenched.
“You always do,” she repeated, quieter now, like if she said it enough times it would make it true again, like it had every other time.
Leon closed his eyes, his head dipping forward slightly as he fought to keep his own voice steady, but for a second, just a second, he couldn’t find it.
“I can’t lose you,” she whispered, and that one… that one didn’t sound like a fight anymore. It sounded like something she already knew the answer to and didn’t want to say out loud.
“The girls need you,” she added, her voice shaking again as another quiet sob slipped through despite her trying to stop it. “They need you, Leon. I need you.”
God.
He swallowed hard, his throat tight as he dragged a hand down his face again, trying to pull himself back together because if he lost it now, there’d be nothing left to give her.
“I’m coming home,” he said, quieter now, but not weaker—just… heavier. “You hear me? I’m not leaving you like that.”
The words didn’t land the same anymore.
They didn’t fix it.
They just hung there, something he needed to say even if neither of them fully believed it.
He took a step forward, then stopped, his hand bracing against the desk again as he tried to ground himself in something solid, something real. “I’m gonna figure this out,” he added, more firmly this time, like saying it again might give it weight. “I’ve handled worse than this. I just need time.”
A quiet, broken breath left her on the other end, and he could hear it—the way she wanted to argue, wanted to push back, but didn’t have anything left to fight him with.
Because she knew.
That was the worst part.
“I know you’re gonna try,” she said finally, softer now, her voice worn thin from the effort of holding it together. “I know you are.”
A pause. Long.
Heavy.
“But you don’t know if you can win this.”
Leon didn’t answer right away. Because she was right
And for the first time since the call started, he let that sit between them, the truth of it settling into the silence without either of them trying to fix it.
“…No,” he admitted quietly.
Another quiet sob slipped through the line.
And still—
He held onto what he had left.
“But you’re still stuck with me,” he said, softer now, something familiar threading through his voice despite everything, something that had always been there between them. “Until I die.”
There was a small huff of air through the line, but it didn’t feel like the rest of the conversation. It felt full. Too full of everything they weren’t saying, everything they didn’t have time to say… everything that sat between then and now with no clean way through it.
On the other end, her breathing was still uneven, quieter now but not steady, the kind that came after you’d already cried and were trying to convince yourself you were okay when you weren’t. Leon stayed where he was, his fingers digging into his earpiece like letting go of it would take her with it, his other hand braced against the desk just to keep himself grounded in something.
It was right then he understood why this goodbye felt different.
Because it wasn’t one.
Not really.
He wouldn’t let it be.
Not when he could still fight. Not when there was still something left to hold onto. Not when she was on the other end of the line, breathing, listening, still there.
“I didn’t call to say goodbye,” he said finally, his voice low, quieter than before, like the fight in him had settled into something steadier. Something more honest.
A small, broken sound left her on the other end, not quite a laugh, not quite anything else.
“I know,” she whispered.
He swallowed, his throat tight as his gaze dropped to the floor, his fingers curling slightly against the edge of the desk. “I just…” He paused, exhaling slowly, trying to find the words that didn’t make this sound like what it was.
“I needed to hear you,” he said, softer now. “All of you.”
Because that mattered more than anything.
He let the words sit there, not rushing to fill the space after them, letting them carry their weight without trying to soften them into something easier.
“They sounded good,” he added after a moment, quieter now, something fragile threading through his voice. “The girls.”
A pause.
“They’re okay,” she said, her voice still thin, still trying to hold together. “They’re waiting for you.”
That one landed harder than the rest.
Leon closed his eyes for a second, letting it settle somewhere deep in his chest, somewhere he knew he’d carry no matter what happened next.
They would see him again.
He had to believe that.
“Tell them…” he started, then stopped, his jaw tightening slightly as he shook his head. “Tell them I’ll call again,” he corrected quietly, choosing the version of the truth he could live with. “Soon, and that I love them.”
She didn’t argue.
Didn’t correct him.
She just let it sit.
He wasn’t sure what that meant—if she was trying to come to terms with it, or if she was holding onto his determination the same way he was—but she didn’t take it away from him.
“I will,” she said.
The porch creaked again, softer this time, like she’d leaned back into the chair, like she was staring out into the yard the way she always did when she needed to think. He could picture it so clearly it almost felt like he was there, standing just behind her, his hand resting at her shoulder the way it always had.
He wished he was.
“…Leon?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m right here," she said softly.
Not "I love you." Not “come home. ” Just that. Simple...and somehow that hurt more than anything else she could've said.
Leon let out a slow breath. “I know," he said quietly.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It just lingered. Neither of them moved to end it, neither of them willing to be the one to let go first, like staying on the line just a second longer meant something. Like it could hold this movement in place a little longer before everything else caught up to it.
“Call me,” she said after a while, softer now.
“I will.”
Another pause.
“...Okay.”
The line stayed open for just a second longer. Then—
A quiet click.
Leon stayed like that for a moment, standing in the silence left behind by the receiver, the absence of her voice settling heavier than anything else in the room. For a second, it threatened to hollow him out completely, but then something else followed it, slower, steadier. Determination. It crept in quietly, filling the space she’d just left behind, grounding him in a way nothing else could.
He had to push through.
Had to keep going.
For Sherry. For Grace. For Casey and Ellie.
For his home.
For her.
–
When he set his bags down on the front porch and knocked softly against the door, it felt like something had finally lifted off his shoulders.
Not all of it.
But enough.
After the dose of the cure, he felt… different. Clearer. Lighter. Better than he had in longer than he could remember. Coming that close to losing everything had forced something into place inside him, something he wasn’t willing to let slip again.
He wasn’t going to almost lose this.
Not ever again.
The door barely had time to open before his two girls came barreling into him, all momentum and noise, hitting him full force like they always did. He laughed—real, unguarded—as he caught them, lifting both of them halfway off the ground, steadying himself as he stepped back into the house, swaying them slightly like he had when they were smaller.
This.
This was what it meant to live.
All those years he’d spent chasing that feeling, through work, through missions, through places that never felt like home, thinking maybe the next one would give him something he was missing.
And it had been here the whole time.
Standing right in front of him.
His wife stood a few steps back, arms crossed, dressed in casual sweats and a loose tank that hung at her hips, watching them with that same quiet smile she always had when he came home. There was something softer in it now, something that hadn’t been there before. Something that looked a lot like relief.
The second he saw her, everything else faded.
He pressed a quick kiss to each of the girls’ heads before setting them down, barely giving them time to protest before he was already moving, closing the distance between him and her in two strides.
He didn’t stop.
His hands found her waist, pulling her into him as he kissed her, firm and grounding, like he needed to make sure she was really there. His hands moved to her face, holding her there as she melted into him without hesitation, whatever had been left from that phone call, from that night, dissolving into something warmer. Something real.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers for just a second before he drew her in again, softer this time, his arms wrapping around her as he bent slightly, pressing his face into the crook of her neck like he could anchor himself there.
She held him just as tightly, her arms coming up around his neck as she pressed closer, like she wasn’t willing to let him go just yet.
Behind them, the girls groaned loudly, already booing the display, their voices echoing through the house and pulling a quiet laugh from him despite everything.
And in that moment, right there, in the middle of it all, he knew.
He was done with goodbyes.
“I guess I really am stuck with you,” she murmured into his coat, her voice softer now, her grip tightening just slightly.
The breath that left him was shaky, like the last of everything he’d been holding onto finally slipped free.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling back just enough to look at her, his hands coming up to frame her face again, his thumbs brushing lightly over her skin.
Jason Todd's poll, but it's the Joker actually live-streaming the whole thing and asking actual people if he should kill him or not.
Now imagine Batman, weeks later, staring at the recovered footage. Realizing Jason didn’t die because he was too late. He died because the world said he should.
Bruce tracks down every single IP address. Every voter. Every username. Every person who clicked “yes.”
