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leon s. kennedy | stick to me like caramel

MASTERLIST

words: 4.7k warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI. SMUT. DUBCON. SEX POLLEN (both reader and leon infected). ANGST. HURT/COMFORT. synopsis: coming across a strange plant in an old lab greenhouse has dire consequences... for the most part.

You’ve seen a lot of labs in your life, but this one is the strangest yet. Mostly because the usual horrors that come with bioterrorist organisations are nowhere to be found.

Deep underground, the air is stiff and sulfurous, both of your guns poised and ready — but nobody has come to stop you this time. No guards, no military. Not even zombies or creatures designed to destroy. It’s just you, Leon, and the steady, synchronised clicks of your boots on the metal walkway as you head towards what looks to be a greenhouse.

“You think they were expecting us and took off?” you question, gaze gliding over the slabs of muscle at his back. You’ve worked with Leon for a long time and have never seen him without those hunched shoulders and steely apprehension. He’s a weapon himself, honed from years of fighting in the shadows.

He stops, blue-grey eyes scanning over the fogged glass panes, where leaves curl towards you like beckoning fingers. There’s nothing out of the ordinary within, lights turned off like maybe the place was, in fact, abandoned. It’s a first: usually, you’d be knee-deep in bloodshed by now.

“Maybe they wanted to take their green fingers above ground,” he remarks dryly, though his posture doesn’t relax even a little. Like him, you don’t dare lower your guard, just in case.

You find a computer on the desk, screen black. “Power’s out here, too.”

Like everywhere else in the facility. It can’t be right. Bioweapon engineers don’t just disappear, not without leaving a trail of blood behind them.

kennedys-angel

Professor Kennedy wip

fizzalys

stolen moment

chloesimaginationthings

Ada knows just what to say in resident evil 4,,

(Based off this post by @/winterzys)

derpykaichu

Lily Gao (Ada's VA in RE4R) mentions how Ada is not usually emotional even with Leon (but in public) and now I can't stop thinking about how they are privately 🥴

While Leon is just giddy from the attention rofl

annaoi

Just a what if on Ashley and Leon reunion in Requiem setting. This took way too long to finish and it felt too wordy. Special thanks to @loveiscosmicsinand to @theycallmedarling (on Tumblr) for helping me fix my English.

Edit/correction on dialogue: "I was a pain to rescue."

As always I see a lot of mistakes lol. But too lazy to edit or fix them so just gotta leave this here.

theweepingangelofcas

hello! I saw that your request are open and wanted to ask you if you would write about Leon x female dso partner (who are not together but there is something brewing). I have this scene stuck in my head: Leon is riding a motorcycle with reader as a ‘backpack’ and they are after Gideon (or some other b.o.w.). While Leon is busy with riding and not crashing, reader is shooting at enemies and at some point Leon tells her to “climb into his lap” so she can easily shoot behind them (like straddling him🫣). In the heat of the chase, some sort of enemy lunges at them and reader wants to keep Leon safe (so they don’t crash) so she angles her body in a way that she takes the brunt of it (be it a bullet or a bite from a dog- nothing lethal but concerning). After they get to a safe place Leon notices reader is dizzy and in pain and takes care of her…

I really love your Leon stories, you write him so sweet! Hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you❤️

I'm sorry it literally took 4 months to answer this lol. It got lost in my endless inbox tbh. I really hope it lives up to what you were wanting!!! Summary: You get hurt and Leon really isn't happy about it. Masterlist

For the Love of Fuck, Please Sit Down - Leon Kennedy x Reader

Fuck, your side hurts like a bitch.

Taking a claw to your ribs had been a split second decision. It had to be. One moment, you and Leon had been racing through Raccoon City, mutated hounds chasing from all sides. The next, one had lunged. It had been an obvious decision.

Save him.

cumiiibakarr

kkissthesun

Neighborly

Part 2: Home for the Holidays

(RE9 Leon Kennedy x Female Reader)

Summary: It's been five months since he ghosted you. You're home for the holidays hoping to avoid him entirely. Instead, you've got a demolished snowman in your front yard, a newly painted living room, and him sat at your family's table like nothing happened. You're still furious but you're still not over him. And you have no idea which one is going to win.

WC: 6.4k

Warnings: MDNI, mentions of sexting/nudes, angst, age gap, ghosting, fluff, yearning, slow burn

Notes: No smut this part but I promise there will be some in the future!

Link to Part 1

Original post on ao3

Playlist for this part

Taglist: @mskennedy2

The cold air hit you the second the airport doors slid open and you’d almost forgotten how the air out here bit in December. Back east the cold was wet and heavy. Here it was thin, sharp and stung your face like it had something to prove. It was the kind of dry cold that made your eyes water and your breath come out in hard white clouds. You pulled your coat tighter and stood at the curb with your bag while you waited for your mom.

You spent the whole flight trying to not think about Leon ghosting you a few weeks after you went back home and had failed somewhere over the middle of the country.

It was stupid. You knew it was stupid. It had been one afternoon and one night in July. You kept telling yourself that it was just a summer fling, it was just a hookup, and it didn’t mean anything. You were leaving the next day and that was the deal. You said it to Leon in his half-torn-apart living room. Tomorrow. You’d set the terms and you didn’t get to be surprised when they held.

Except. He did text you. That was the part you were caught on. If he’d let you walk out that door and never said another word, you could have forgotten about it. But he didn’t. For almost three weeks after you flew home you messaged each other. It was the same sarcastic back and forth you’d had over beers in your parents’ backyard but it was in your pocket all day. He’d sent you pictures of the kitchen cabinets that were finally hung. You’d said something obnoxious about the backsplash. He’d said something obnoxious back.

There’d been messages, late at night where the banter turned into flirting. Then the flirting turned into something more. It escalated in a way those things do when two people can’t sleep and won’t say why. You sent him nudes first, not knowing what his reaction would be. He didn’t seem like the type. But when you least expected it, he sent you one back and it made your breath catch. You waited for the typing dots with your heart going stupid in your chest. He complimented you and made you feel wanted, instead of just looked at. You fell asleep that night smiling.

And then out of nowhere he just stopped texting you back.

There wasn’t a fight. Just a few messages you’d sent that went unanswered. Then after a few days you decided that following up would’ve looked desperate. Days, weeks and then… Five months went by and now it was just a fact of life that whatever happened that night probably meant nothing to him.

Except it didn’t add up with how tender he’d been. The man who could go five months without a single word was not supposed to be the same man who’d taken his time with you in the dark, who’d cleaned you up after and kissed you like you were something worth being gentle with. Those two men were not supposed to be the same person. And the fact that they were had kept you up more nights than you’d admit to anyone.

You’d stopped trying to solve it after a few months. Mostly.

A familiar car swung up to the curb and your mom leaned across to push the door open. You shoved the emotions and thoughts of Leon down and put on the face you wore for your family.

“There she is.” Your mom walked out from the car and hugged you. “God, you must be frozen, why weren’t you inside? Here, put your bag in the back. How was the flight?”

“It was fine, Mom.”

“Well you look tired.”

You both got into the car and sat down. She pulled out into traffic with the particular fearlessness of a woman who’d driven this same loop for thirty years. “Your sister came in on Tuesday, did I tell you? She’s staying through the week with the kids, so the house is full, I hope you don’t mind the noise. The kids have been asking about you nonstop and I mean, nonstop. Mason had something he wanted to show you, I don’t know what it is, something with cards.”

“Sounds serious.”

“Deadly serious.” She glanced at you, with the warmness that mothers usually do. “It’s good to have you home, sweetheart. It’s been too long.”

“It’s good to be home.”

You meant it, mostly. The small talk carried you out of the airport and onto the highway. Your mom was talking about the sister logistics, who was cooking what for Christmas, the saga of the neighborhood’s collective failure to not shovel the snow off the sidewalks. It was easy and familiar to you. The mountains came up white on the horizon and the light went long and golden the way it only did out here, and something in your chest loosened a notch despite itself.

When you finally turned onto your parents’ street, you saw the house next door and the notch pulled tight again.

You knew it was stupid and impossible but you told yourself you weren’t going to look at his house as much as possible while you were here. But your eyes went to it the way a tongue goes to a sore tooth before you could stop them. The same gray siding and black metal roof looked somewhat different now. There were actual curtains in the front window and a wreath hung on the front door. The whole place had the settled look of somewhere that was lived in.

And in the driveway sat a car you did not expect.

A black Porsche.You knew the car was expensive and it probably cost more than you made in a very good couple years put together. It didn’t look like the kind of vehicle that would be owned by a guy who told you he moved to the suburbs because he wanted normal. It didn’t fit. Normal men who renovated their own kitchens did not have a luxury car sitting out in their driveway.

You didn’t know what he did for work. All he ever said was work moved me a lot in that flat tone. That closed the door you decided not to knock on because you didn’t want to pry. It seemed polite at the time but now it was another piece that didn’t fit the others. And the not-knowing had teeth in the winter that it didn’t have in the summer.

Under the mystery the old hurt crept back up your throat. Because whatever he was, whoever he was, whatever that car meant, he still hadn’t texted you. And now he’s fifteen feet away, all week, and you were going to have to look at that finished house every single time you walked to your own front door.

⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆

When you walked inside it was filled with warmth and chaos. You noticed the christmas tree in the corner of the living room and the smell of food in the kitchen. Your dad got up from his chair to hug you and tell you that you looked thinner, which was probably true. Your sister, Dani, was there with the loudness of someone you didn’t see nearly enough and hugged you. Your niece attached herself to your leg and your nephew appeared with an expression of grave importance. He immediately began explaining a card game with rules that seemed to change as he described them. Everyone was loud but it was good, it was distracting enough.

Your niece pulled you toward the couch to show you one of her toys and that’s when you noticed something was different.

The living room was a different color.

It had been painted beige your whole life. Now it was a soft gray-green. It was a nice color and it made the living room seem brighter. It almost looked like a color you would have picked yourself.

“Hey, mom, when did you repaint the living room?”

“Oh. You noticed!” Your mom was pleased, wiping her hands on a towel in the doorway. “Doesn’t it look nice? We’ve been meaning to do it for I don’t know how many years. Your father kept saying he’d get to it.” She said it fondly, the way she said most things about your father not getting to things. “That nice man next door offered to repaint it a few months ago, he said he had the ladders and drop cloths already from his own place. Wouldn’t take a cent for it. Did the whole room in one day.” She shook her head, still a little amazed by it. “Nicest thing. I made him a plate of dinner but he wouldn’t stay.”

“That was nice of him,” you heard yourself say.

“Very nice man.” Your mom went back toward the kitchen. “Keeps to himself, but very nice.”

You stood in the middle of the living room with the paint job that your parents wanted for years, the room he had painted and you didn’t know what to do with yourself. You were a little confused and it added to the list of things that didn’t fit the story you’d spent the last five months telling yourself.

“It’s a great color, Mom,” you called and you let your niece pull you down onto the couch and show you her toy.

It took you the better part of an hour to peel away and haul your bag up the stairs to your old room.

It was the same as it always was. Your bed was still in the same spot and the same posters on the wall that you picked out in high school. The same window that looked out over the side yard and the corner of his house next door. You dropped your bag and sat on the edge of the bed. The noise of the family muffled through the floor and you were hit with a wave of sleepiness.

You took out your phone and you told yourself you were just checking the time but your thumb was already going to your messages. You tapped on Leon’s name and scrolled up to the kitchen photo and the messages that made your face go warm.

And then you scrolled back down to the bottom, the last message you sent that was still on delivered.

You looked at the date.

July 27.

Then you noticed over the hedge and through your window, a light came on in the house next door. The kitchen light, warm and yellow in the blue dark. You turned your phone face-down on the quilt. You looked at the ceiling and told yourself, again, that it didn’t matter but it was getting harder to believe it.

⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆

You woke up to the weight of your sister landing on the end of your bed and her voice way too loud for whatever time it was.

“Up. Come on. The children have plans for you.”

You cracked one eye open. The light peaking out from your window was gray, the kind of gray that usually meant fresh snow. Your sister was sitting on the foot of your bed already dressed and a cup of coffee in hand. She had a smug look on her face that looked like she had been awake for hours and intended to make it your problem.

“What time is it?”

“Late enough. Mason and Ellie want to build a snowman with you after breakfast. It’s very important. There’s apparently going to be a committee.” She sipped her coffee. “I told them you’d be thrilled.”

“Sooo thrilled,” you said sarcastically into the pillow.

“You sound thrilled.” She stood, then paused at the edge of the bed, and her voice dropped out of the teasing register into something lower. “Hey. You haven’t told Mom and Dad yet, right? About moving back?”

You came a little more awake. “No. Have you?”

“No, God, it’s not my business to tell them. I just didn’t want to walk into it blind if it came up.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re still doing the whole—”

“I want to tell them at Christmas dinner.” You sat up, scrubbing a hand over your face. “I’ve got the whole thing planned. I think it’ll be a good surprise.”

Your sister smiled, softer now. “It is a good surprise,” she agreed. “They’re going to lose it. Mom’s going to cry into the potatoes.” She headed for the door. “Mom said breakfast will be ready in ten. Wear something you don’t mind getting wet, the committee has demands.”

She left, and you sat there in bed with the thought of moving back warm in your chest. The job back east had run its course, and the new one started in March, and it was here. Not this town exactly but about thirty minutes from here. It was close enough to be home for real instead of twice a year. You’d been carrying this around for three weeks and Christmas dinner was going to be the moment you finally let everyone know.

You didn’t in any of your planning, let yourself think about what it meant that “close enough to be home for real” was also close enough to a certain house, his house next door.

You got up out of bed and put on thermals under an old pair of jeans, thick socks, and a chunky sweater you found in your childhood dresser that you’d left behind years ago. Not cute, exactly, but warm.

⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆

Breakfast was laid out with eggs, bacon and your mom’s cinnamon rolls, the good ones she only made when everyone was home. Mason was explaining the snowman to anyone who’d listen. Ellie had syrup in her hair already. Your dad was reading something on his phone and making the small disapproving noises he usually made when watching the news. You were halfway through a cinnamon roll when your mom dropped the words in the middle of the table like it was nothing.

“Oh. I invited the neighbor over for Christmas dinner. The nice man next door. He’s coming Christmas night.”

You put your fork down.

“What?” The words coming out sharper than you meant. “Why?”

Your mom blinked at you, mildly surprised. “Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. He’s over there all by himself, that whole big house, no family that I’ve ever seen come by. And after he did the living room for free, I wasn’t going to just let the man eat a sad dinner alone on Christmas.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, because to her it was. “It seemed lonely. He seemed lonely. So I asked, and he said yes.”

He said yes. Of course he did. He’d say yes to your mother in a heartbeat. He’d paint the walls and come for Christmas, apparently, everything except message you back.

“Well,” you said, aiming for light and landing somewhere short of it, “I’m sure that’s his choice.”

There was a small pause. Your sister glanced at you. Your dad looked up from his phone. Even your mom paused, her head tilting a fraction, and you felt the whole table register that the temperature had shifted a couple of degrees for reasons none of them could see.

"...Right," your mom said slowly. "It is his choice. That's generally how invitations work."

“I just mean it’s nice,” you said, picking your fork back up. “It’s nice of you.”

Your sister was still looking at you but you didn’t look back at her.

Mason, gloriously oblivious, chose that moment to announce that the snowman committee would be convening in the front yard in fifteen minutes and that your attendance was mandatory. The kids moved on from the table and you got up too. But you could still feel your sister filing what you said away and you knew that at some point today you were going to have a conversation you weren’t ready for.

You also knew on Christmas night. Leon would be here, at this table, three days from now and you didn’t know what you were going to do.

But for now there was a snowman that needed to be made, and its demands would not wait.

⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆

The front yard was untouched with a clean sheet of snow. It was about six inches deep and glittering. The whole street was quiet the way it does after it snows. Mason took charge immediately, assigning roles with the authority of a small general: you were on base duty, Ellie was on head, he would supervise and handle “the important parts,” which remained undefined.

You didn’t mind though, you crouched in your mom’s too big coat and showed Mason how to roll the base so it picked up more snow as it went. Ellie was patting a lopsided lump between her mittens with tremendous dedication and no discernible technique. Your breath came out in clouds. Somewhere down the block someone was scraping the ice off the windshield of their car.

The snowman came together into something that was, mostly, snowman-shaped. It leaned slightly to the right. It had two rocks as eyes at slightly different heights, which gave it a permanently skeptical expression, and Ellie insisted on donating her scarf, which she would absolutely want back within the hour. The three of you stood back to admire it and it held and it was genuinely the ugliest snowman you’d ever helped build. You loved it a little bit.

“It needs arms,” Mason said gravely.

“It does need arms. Go find sticks.”

He went, with Ellie following after him because Ellie usually went wherever Mason went. You crouched there for a second alone beside your terrible snowman, hands cold and breath fogging. You let yourself just be in it with the quiet as you watched the kids gather the sticks.

Then you heard a loud bark in the distance.

You recognized that bark before you turned around. You wished you didn’t but some part of your brain had somehow catalogued that exact bark and never let it go. Your stomach dropped a full second before the fluffy tan-and-white blur came running through the snow. You had just enough time to think oh no before the dog hit the snowman at a dead sprint.

It exploded. There was no other word for it. The head fell one way to the ground and the scarf went another and the skeptical rock eyes vanished into the powder. The dog barreled straight through the wreckage and into you. Sixty-some pounds of pure fluff, both front paws in the snow at your feet and his whole back half wagging so hard he could barely keep them there.

Ellie shrieked and Mason shrieked louder, delighted, the snowman instantly forgotten in favor of the vastly superior dog. You were down on one knee in the snow with the dog’s tongue across your jaw, you started laughing despite yourself, hands full of cold fur and your heart doing something complicated.

“Hey,” You said to him with a soft voice. “Hey, buddy. Look at you. You’ve gotten so fluffy.”

He remembered you. He shouldn’t have but he was pressed into you like no time had passed, whining, trying to get close, and you buried your face in the ruff of his neck for a second longer than you needed to. You knew it was easier than looking up because you knew what was coming next.

“Buddy. Hey, hey.”

Leon was jogging toward you, with no coat, gray henley, jeans and boots. He’d clearly shoved on in a hurry. He pulled up short about ten feet away when he saw you, and he just.. Stopped. The dog didn’t care about any of it, if anything, the dog was in heaven. But the two of you looked at each other across ten feet of trampled snow and a demolished snowman, and every easy thing you’d never even got to rehearse went straight out of your head.

Leon looked good. It was unfair and it was the first thing you noticed. A little more gray at the temples than July, maybe, or maybe you’d softened the memory. The same pale blue eyes. The same way of going still and reading a situation before he committed to it. But now you knew that stillness wasn’t calm, and you watched him do the math of you, here, in the snow, in front of him, and arrive somewhere that made his jaw tighten.

“Hi,” he said.

Five months of nothing. And hi.

“Hi,” you said back.

The dog looked between you both, thrilled, certain this was the greatest thing that had ever happened to anyone. Behind you Ellie was already demanding to know the dog’s name, and Mason was informing her that the snowman looked “way better now,” and the cold was getting into your knees where you knelt in the snow.

"He, uh." He gestured at the ruined snowman, at the general catastrophe, and something that wasn't quite a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Sorry about your—"

“Snowman?”

“Yeah. Buddy.” Leon snapped his fingers. “Come.”

“Buddy?” You questioned.

“...Yeah.” There was a hesitation before it, small but there, like the name cost him something to say out loud in front of you. It caught you off guard but you didn’t know why.

And that hesitation, for whatever reason, was the thing that tipped the irritation over in you.

“You know,” you said, and your voice came out cold, “you really should get him a collar if he’s going to keep running out like this. And maybe keep a better eye on him.”

You watched the way he took it and didn’t flinch. He didn’t defend himself either, because he knew as well as you did that you weren’t really talking about the dog.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I should.”

He didn’t argue and that was almost worse. You wanted him to push back, to give you something to actually be angry at and instead he stood there in the snow and agreed with you.

You brushed the snow off your knees and stood.

“You kids want some hot chocolate?”

Your mom’s voice carried across the yard from the front porch completely oblivious. You turned to see her standing in the doorway in her slippers with a dish towel over her shoulder, beaming out at the snow like the whole scene was a Christmas card she’d staged herself. Her eyes landed on Leon and lit up.

“Oh. Leon! I didn’t see you out here. Perfect, come in, I was just about to make some hot chocolate for the kids. You’re coming for Christmas anyway, might as well start now.” She said it the way she did everything, like it was already decided and it utterly irritated you.

You watched him navigate her question. You watched him want to say no. His weight shifted with the polite decline already on the tip of his tongue and you watched him bite it.

Mason and Ellie were gone, thundering past him, Buddy chasing after them playfully into the chaos.

“I don’t want to impose,” Leon said.

“You painted my living room, you’re not imposing.” Your mom was already turning back inside. "Come on, before it gets cold. Bring the dog, the kids'll love him."

Bring the dog, the kids’ll love him. Those were the exact words you’d said to him in July, at his own front door. It landed in your chest like a stone dropped down a well, and when you glanced at Leon he was already looking at you like he remembered it too. For a second neither of you had anywhere but each other to put your eyes and then he looked away.

“Yeah,” he said to your mom. “Okay. Thanks.”

⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆

The kitchen felt stifling hot and you were losing your mind.

Your mom had Leon sitting at the dining room table with a steaming mug of hot chocolate pressed into his hands with the determination of a woman who considered a lonely neighbor a personal project. The kids had gone feral. Mason had claimed the chair beside Leon and wouldn’t stop talking about Buddy exploding the snowman. Ellie had abandoned the table entirely for Buddy on the floor.

“What kind of dog is he?” Mason demanded.

“He’s some kind of shepherd.” Leon said. “The shelter wasn’t sure. Could be a little bit of everything.”

“Can he do tricks?”

“He can sit. When he feels like it. Which isn’t very often.”

“Buddy!” Mason spun in his chair. “Buddy, sit!”

Buddy was sprawled across the kitchen floor on his back with Ellie hugging him. He, of course, did not sit. He thumped his tail against the cabinet and wriggled deeper into the attention, one back leg kicking as Ellie found a good spot behind his ear. He looked like the most content dog in the world.

“He’s not sitting,” Mason reported.

Ellie had both arms around the dog’s neck now, her face buried into his fur. “He’s so soft,” she informed everyone. “He’s the softest dog. I love him. Can we keep him?”

“No sweetie, he’s not ours,” your mom said, delighted. “But I’m sure Leon will let you visit.”

“Buddy can come to my birthday,” Ellie decided. Buddy licked her cheek and shrieked with joy. Mason immediately demanded the dog to lick his cheek too.

“Alright, alright. Buddy.” Leon didn’t raise his voice and snapped his fingers once. “Come here. Sit.”

He got up off the floor, trotted around the table, and sat down at Leon’s feet.

“How did you do that,” Mason said in an amazed tone.

“He likes to make me look good in front of company.” Leon scratched behind the dog's ears. “Don’t get used to it, kid. He’ll be back to ignoring me by dinner.”

Leon watched the kids with that look you remembered. Like a man enjoying the warmth of a fire from just a little further back than everyone else. But this time there was something softer in it, like the distance had shrunk.

And that’s where your brain left the room.

You tried to be normal. But instead you were floating about a foot outside your own body, leaned against the counter with your hot chocolate you haven’t been drinking, watching Leon get along with everyone like he belonged here. The sound of everyone went muffled and far away.

“And you remember Leon, honey, from the Fourth of July, right?”

You were a thousand miles off with the question sailing clean past you.

“Honey.”

You finally perked up.

“Yeah.” You paused. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Leon said back, just as carefully. The two of you performed acquaintances so hard the air went stiff with it.

Across the table your sister’s eyes moved from you, to Leon, and back to you.

Your mom’s brow twitched. “You okay, hon?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure? You seem a little—”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

She glanced at your untouched mug. “Is the hot chocolate bad? I think I might’ve put too much milk—”

“No. It’s fine. It’s good.” You made yourself take a sip to prove it.

Ellie, meanwhile, had gotten up to follow Buddy around the table. She dropped back down beside him to bury her hands in his fur again. She petted him with the intense, wobbling focus of a five-year-old, and then in the way small children have no filter, she looked up at Leon and asked:

“Do you have a wife?”

“Ellie.” Your sister put a hand over her eyes.

But Leon just huffed, unbothered with that quiet almost-laugh. “No,” he said. “No wife.”

“Why not?”

“Ellie. Oh my god.” Your sister reached over and pulled Ellie to her side. “You can’t just — we don’t ask people that.”

“It’s alright.” Leon was still faintly amused, still scratching the dog.

Ellie, apparently done with her interview, reached up to the kitchen table and grabbed a marshmallow out of the open bag. She ran to the other side of Leon to feed it to the dog.

“Ellie, no—” You pushed off the counter, moving toward her. “He can’t have that, that’s not for—”

“He can’t have those,” Leon said at the same moment, reaching for her little fist. “They’re not good for him.”

And your hands met over Ellie’s hand.

It was just a graze. His fingers over the back of yours for a quarter of a second. You pulled your hand back, not in a dramatic way, but you felt it go all the way up your arm and settle hot somewhere behind your ribs. When you glanced up he was already looking at you.

Your sister saw it and you knew it.

“Okay, no marshmallows for the dog,” you said, too briskly, prying the squashed marshmallow out of Ellie’s fingers. “Buddy can’t have those, they’re bad for him.”

“He can have a piece of cookie later,” Leon offered Ellie in a soft tone. “The plain part. No chocolate, chocolate’s bad for dogs. But a little bit of the plain part, that’s okay.”

“Okay,” Ellie agreed and went back to loving the dog with her whole body.

You walked back to the kitchen with the squished marshmallow and threw it away.

Mason, who had been quietly assembling something at the table, slapped a battered deck of cards down in front of Leon.

“Do you know how to play Kessel?”

Leon looked at the cards. “I don’t think so. Is that a real game?”

“It’s my game,” Mason said. “I’ll teach you. It’s easy.” He was already dealing and slapping the cards down in uneven piles. “You have to get three of the same cards but not the same color, unless you have a wild, then it’s four, and you can’t look at the middle ones until someone says go.” He pointed at you without looking up. “You’re playing too. We need three people.”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“You’re playing,” Mason said as authoritatively as a seven-year-old kid can be.

You sat down across from Leon and Mason was sitting next to you. The card game rules seemed to change based on Mason’s needs at any given moment, while Ellie narrated from the floor. Your mom refilled everyone’s cocoa and pretended she wasn’t watching the whole thing like a hawk.

“Okay, go,” Mason announced.

You picked up your cards. You had no idea what you were doing and neither, blessedly, did Leon.

“So I need three that match,” Leon said, slowly, studying his hand, “but not the same color.”

“Unless you have a wild.”

“What do the wilds look like?”

“They’re the ones with the star. Or the moon. Not the sun, the sun ones are worth negative.” Mason said like it was obvious, like Leon was being deliberately slow. “Do you have a moon?”

“I have a —” Leon turned a card around. “Is this a moon?”

“That’s a sun.”

“They look identical, Mason.” You chimed in.

“They do not.” Mason was scandalized and Ellie from the floor told Leon he was “Very bad at this,” and Leon accepted the critique with grace. And you laughed before you could stop yourself.

Leon glanced up at the sound of it. Something a little wistful crossed his face before he looked down at his impossible hand. You felt the laugh die in your throat as you remembered, all over again, that you were supposed to be angry with him.

You picked up another card that was a sun and it was worth negative something. You had, apparently, already lost.

“You’re bad at this too,” Mason informed you.

“Yeah,” You said, smiling at Mason. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

The game wound down with Mason declaring himself the winner and no one argued.

Your mom took the moment to refill Leon’s mug one more time.

“So, Leon. What is it you do? For work, I mean. You’ve got that lovely car, we were all wondering.” She laughed lightly. “You’re not a bank robber, are you?”

It was meant as a joke, an easy question to fill the strange air.

“I, uh.” He turned the mug in his hands. “I worked for the government. For a while.” A beat. “It’s — complicated. Retired now, mostly.”

Government. You filed him saying government next to the Porsche and everything else that didn’t fit. The pile getting taller.

“Well,” Your mom said smiling. “We’re glad you ended up next door.”

Leon didn’t stay much longer after that. He read the room and read you, probably. He finished his cocoa and thanked your mom. Told the kids to take good care of Buddy for him. He was gracious and easy.

Your mom walked him out to the door, chattering about Christmas, told him to not bring anything, just himself. And at the door, Leon paused and his eyes found you across the kitchen. There was something in them, like he wanted to tell you something before deciding not to. All he said was:

“See you Christmas.”

He stepped out to the front porch with Buddy reluctantly following him.

The door shut and the whole house was quiet.

Your mom and sister looked at each other then at you.

“I’m going upstairs,” you announced. You set your mug down in the sink and fled with both of them watching you go the whole way back up.

⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆

You didn’t even get to sit down on your bed before your door opened.

“Okay.” Your sister came in and shut it behind her, hot chocolate still in hand. “What was that.”

“What was what.”

“Oh, come on.” She leaned against the door. “The energy between you and Leon was weird as fuck.” She paused. “You know him.”

“I– it’s complicated.”

“Tell me.” She sat her drink down on your dresser and sat down on the end of your bed, pulling one leg up under her. “Go on.”

So you told her all of it. The dog. The barbecue. The fireworks. How easy he’d been to be around. And the part where you went home with him at the end of the night, and what that turned into.

“Shut up.” Her hand flew up over her mouth. “In July? And you didn’t tell me!”

“I didn’t think it was a whole thing.”

“It clearly is a whole thing.” She was grinning now, delighted, leaning in. “I can’t believe you hooked up with the hot mystery neighbor! I have to say, sis–” she nodded slowly. “I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Hey!” You swatted her arm.

“Ow!” She laughed, rubbing it.

“You’re such a bitch sometimes.”

“I know. But you love me.” She bumped her shoulder into yours.

You looked down at your hands and started picking a loose thread on the quilt. You felt the grin fade off your face.

“I kind of wish we didn’t hook up.” You said, almost whispering.

The laugh went out of her. You felt her shift beside you, turning to actually look at you.

“Wait.” Her voice dropped. “What do you mean?”

“He– we texted for like three weeks after I went back home. Pretty much every day. And then he just—” You hesitated. “He ghosted me.”

“Oh.” A beat. ” Shit. Really?”

“Mhm.” Your throat did something and you swallowed it down. You wound the thread tighter around your finger. “I thought it was going somewhere. Stupid me.”

“Hey. No.” Dani reached over and put a hand on your knee. When you finally glanced up at her, her face had gone soft. She held your eyes for a second. “That’s — okay, that’s weird. That’s not a fun-summer-fling thing.” She frowned. “But men are weird. And he’s older, right?”

“Yeah.” You wiped a tear under your eye with the heel of your hand. ” What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he got in his head about the age gap and freaked out.” She said it gently, offering it to you like it might help.

“Maybe.”

“Look, I’m just guessing, I have no idea what his deal is.” She leaned back on her hands, watching you. ”But I saw the way he looked at you today. He’s still into you. That much I’d put money on.”

“That’s the whole problem.” You gave the thread a final tug and it snapped loose in your fingers. “I’m still mad at him and I still want him, at the same time. I just wish he’d tell me why he stopped.”

“He’ll be here in a couple days.” She reached over and pulled a piece of hair out of your face. “So ask him.” She held your gaze. “And for what it’s worth. I don’t think him ghosting you is what you think it is.”

You looked out the window instead of her.

“It still doesn’t change what he did.”

“No.” She stood, gathering her mug off the dresser. “It doesn’t. But talking to him’s the only way you’ll find out. So talk to him.” Dani smiled and pulled you into a quick hug, then headed for the door. “And you have to tell me everything he says, immediately.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

I don’t think him ghosting you is what you think it is.

You didn’t want to sit in that. And you for sure didn’t want him to be weirded out by the age gap, though at least that would be a reason. A real one, even if it didn’t matter to you in the way it apparently mattered to him. You could live with he thought he was too old. You’d braced yourself for something like this since July. It was almost comforting, in a bleak way, to have your sister hand you an explanation that made him a nervous man and not a cruel one.

But it didn’t make it hurt any less.

You took off your socks and lay back on top of the quilt. The exhaustion from all of the events of the day had worn you out. You thought just for a minute you were going to lie down. But something about the snow falling softly outside and the familiar sounds of your family below made you fall asleep completely.

You slept, and you didn’t know for how long. Long enough that the gray sky outside had gone dark.

Then you felt a hard buzz just inches from your head and the loud ding made you jolt awake, heart going before your eyes were open. Your hand fumbled for the phone. The screen was bright in your dark room and you squinted at the words.

Leon - 1 new message

I love seeing lily gao interacting with her fans despite how horribly she was first treated when the remake of re4 came out. love her to bits

#lily gao #nick apostolides #ada wong #leon kennedy #resident evil 4 #resident evil

c4f3rzb

i (🫀) you

this is my first time drawing ada omg

zawija

This man is hotter than the heat wave here in Europe.

chesue00

Another drawing of my mii Leon<3

mxigo

the light in the darkest of nights | part four

CHAPTER TAGS: canon-typical violence, gross cyber-tech inaccuracies, swearing, descriptions of a panic attach

WORD COUNT: 2.7k

MINORS & AGE-LESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED. YOUR AGE MUST BE SOMEWHERE IN YOUR BIO OR YOUR BYF.

SERIES MATERLIST | NEXT CHAPTER | READ ON AO3

classygumi

“leon!” you shouted from the bedroom, nestled under the covers. your nintendo switch rested in your hands, the screen reflecting in your glasses as you scrutinized your work.

you heard his grunt of response, hulking figure leaned against the bathroom doorframe. his eyes were low, blonde hair tousled and damp, pajama pants hung low on his hips and his shirt absent. you admit, you got distracted before shaking your head and presenting him the switch.

leon neared, settling next to you. he felt your warm face rest against his shoulder as he cradled the device, gunmetal irises analyzing—

himself?

“this the game you told me about?” he mused, using the pink console thumb sticks (a tiny paw print on each one) to twist the mii. “uh-huh! isn’t he cute? i had to draw your hair,” you explained, pointing to each little detail that you did.

leon intercepted your hand, pressing the back of it to his lips with a fond smile, “you’re pretty much asking me if i’m cute. it does look like me though.”

“perfect, what do you want to wear? i have an aviator jacket, a sailor moon dress—“

his gaze landed on the nightstand, where an untouched cup of medicine sat.

“baby,” he directed your face to him, frowning softly at the heat that wafted off your skin, “you didn’t take your medicine.” your eyes jerked to the cup, recognition falling over your features, “oh. i forgot.”

leon grabbed the treacherous cup, looking at you expectantly.

“okay, but do you want the jacket or do you want a t-shirt? i might can draw your gear…” you trailed off when his eyes narrowed in quiet warning, a displeased sigh leaving your lips. you accepted your fate, taking the cup and drinking the horrid liquid. leon rubbed your back comfortingly when you grimaced.

“the jacket is fine, honey. did you make yourself?”

“yeah,” you coughed, “now i just need to make us fall in love. i made claire, too, so…you might have to fight for my affection.”

“just like real-life, huh?” he groaned, gently tugging you back with him. he sat against the headboard, feeling your back press to his chest. you held your switch where you could both see, and he watched fondly as his little mii was deposited on the island.

he listened to you ramble about island layout and future miis, occasionally lifting a hand to check your temperature.

eventually, you’d fallen asleep. leon cautiously took the console, and remembered to save the game before setting it aside. he kept you tucked in his chest as he slid beneath the covers, lips pressing sweetly against your head.

leon hoped you loved him in every universe—even if it’s a nonexistent one.

snapplemadness

Project: Sleeping Beauty

Leon S. Kennedy x Wife!Reader

angst / married Leon / happy ending

I LOVE me some angst hehe, please bear with me as this is my 1st post! All credits go to the original GIF creator, and divider credits to @saradika-graphics

Word count: 8.3k

Summary: You and Leon embark on what seems like a routine mission. When an old enemy appears, what could possibly go wrong?

Warnings?! Syringe mentioned. Guns/Blood/GSWs mentioned. Angst, angst, and more angst. Hospitals. No Y/N mentioned

The facility had been dead for twelve years.

That was what the file said, anyway.

Saint Marrow Research Center — a private biomedical annex buried in the Pennsylvania woods, shut down after a catastrophic fire, multiple ethics violations, and the unexplained disappearance of several senior researchers. The government had seized what was left, locked the gates, redacted the records, and left the property to rot under a tangle of vines and old lies.

Then six weeks ago, power started flickering inside the main building.

Two contractors sent to inspect the grounds vanished.

And a D.S.O. informant died trying to pass along a single phrase before his throat filled with blood:

Project Sleeping Beauty.

That was how you and Leon ended up driving through freezing rain at one in the morning toward a facility that should have stayed dead.

You sat in the passenger seat of the Porsche with the mission file open across your lap, tablet light reflecting off the windshield in pale blue streaks. Outside, the road was a black ribbon through dense pine, branches scraping the sides of the vehicle whenever Leon took a turn too close. Rain glided over the glass in steady sheets. Somewhere under your boot, an empty ammo magazine rolled against the floor mat every time the car curved.

You skimmed the page again, then looked up.

“Okay, I’m just saying,” you said, “if I were a deeply unethical scientist building nightmare drugs in a hidden lab, I’d at least give my project a better name.”

Leon, one hand on the wheel, didn’t look away from the road. “You don’t like Sleeping Beauty?”

“It's a princess story.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“That’s worse.”

His mouth twitched.

The sight of it tugged at something warm in your chest.

Leon’s smiles had always been like that—small, spare things, as if too much visible happiness might tempt fate into snatching it away. It had taken you a long time to learn the difference between the expressions he wore for the world and the ones he only let himself wear with you. To everyone else, Leon S. Kennedy was sharp edges and weary professionalism, a man carved out of old disasters and held together by routine. But alone with you, in the dark hours between missions and debriefings and the weight of everything he carried, there were pieces of him softer than most people would ever believe.

Dry humor. Quiet affection. The habit of reaching for your hand in the car at red lights without even seeming to realize he was doing it.

You’d met him five years ago on a joint D.S.O. operation in Spain. He’d been impossible to read, too handsome for his own good, and carrying enough ghosts behind his eyes to fill a cemetery. You’d decided you didn’t trust him on sight.

Then he’d thrown himself in front of a knife meant for you and bled all over a marble hotel floor, and after that, things had gotten inconveniently serious.

Now he was your husband, your partner, and the person you trusted most in the world to stand between you and the worst things humanity could build.

Which was probably why it was so easy to lean over and steal the coffee out of his cupholder.

Leon noticed immediately.

“You did not just take that.”

“I absolutely did.”

“That’s mine.”

“You’re driving. You have enough to do.”

He huffed a laugh under his breath. “That’s not how ownership works.”

You took a smug sip. “Mmm. Tastes like marriage.”

Leon finally glanced at you, blue eyes cool and unimpressed in that way that had long since stopped fooling you.

“Give it back.”

“No.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

“I’m literally married to you. That’s not a defense.”

“Sounds like a skill issue.”

His hand came off the wheel long enough to catch the side of your jaw and turn your face toward him.

Before you could say another word, he kissed you.

It was quick and warm and infuriatingly effective. The kind of kiss he used when he wanted to shut you up without actually telling you to shut up. When he pulled back, he took the coffee from your hand and put it neatly back into the cupholder.

You stared at him in outrage.

“That was manipulative.”

“It worked.”

“That was evil.”

“You stole my coffee.”

“You escalated.”

“You started it.”

“You’re driving the car.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t start things.”

You narrowed your eyes at him.

Leon smirked—small, fleeting, there and gone.

Then the trees broke apart, and the facility came into view.

Saint Marrow Research Center sat at the end of the road like something dragged out of a nightmare and left to decay. The main structure was a hulking concrete building wrapped in rusted security fencing and overgrown ivy, one wing partially collapsed from old fire damage. Most of the windows were black or broken. Rain slicked the walls silver under the headlights. The front sign had fallen sideways into the mud years ago, half-swallowed by weeds.

No lights.

No movement.

No sign that anyone had been here in over a decade.

Leon parked beneath the skeletal remains of an awning and cut the engine.

Silence rushed in, broken only by rain ticking across the hood.

You looked at the building, then at him. “If anything with too many teeth jumps out at me, I’m blaming you.”

“Fair.”

“If I die, delete my browser history.”

Leon unbuckled his seatbelt. “No.”

You blinked. “No?”

“I’m reading it at your funeral.”

“Leon.”

“Actions have consequences.”

You snorted and reached for your gear bag.

The humor faded as soon as your boots hit the wet pavement.

By the time you reached the side entrance, both of you were all business.

Weapons checked. Flashlights ready. Earpieces in.

Leon pried the old service door open with one gloved hand and stepped aside to let you slip in first, his free hand automatically brushing the small of your back as you passed. It was a fleeting touch—gone almost before it landed—but it grounded you anyway.

Inside, the building smelled like damp concrete, mildew, and old smoke.

Your flashlight beam swept across a long hallway lined with overturned chairs and water-stained walls. Paint peeled in strips from the ceiling. Somewhere deeper in the facility, a pipe dripped with maddening regularity, the sound echoing through the dark in slow hollow beats.

“Cozy,” you murmured.

“Try not to redecorate,” Leon said quietly.

“No promises.”

Your boots crunched over glass as you moved through the first floor. Reception. Intake rooms. Administrative offices. Everything had been abandoned in stages—some rooms stripped bare, others left as if the staff had stood up in the middle of a workday and never returned. Mold bloomed in the corners. Dust covered every flat surface.

But not evenly.

Leon crouched beside an overturned rolling cart near the nurses’ station and ran two fingers over the floor.

You stepped closer.

A clean streak cut through the dust.

Then another.

Boot prints.

Recent.

You felt the shift in the air immediately, that almost imperceptible tightening that came right before a mission stopped being theoretical and became real.

“Not abandoned,” you whispered.

“No,” Leon said. “Not completely.”

The second floor was worse.

Most of the corridor lights were dead, leaving you to move through alternating strips of darkness and weak emergency glow. Old observation windows looked into lab spaces beyond, many shattered, some intact but filmed over with grime. One room held rows of empty hospital beds. Another had restraints bolted to the floor.

“Fuck me,” you muttered.

Leon didn’t answer.

He’d gone still at an office doorway halfway down the hall, head tilted slightly as he scanned the room beyond. You joined him and looked inside.

The office had been used recently.

A portable generator hummed quietly in the corner. An old desktop monitor sat dark on the desk beside stacks of research notes and scattered files. A thermos still half full of coffee rested near the keyboard. Whoever had been here hadn’t left long ago.

You moved to the desk and picked up the top folder.

The title on the first page made your stomach twist.

PROJECT SLEEPING BEAUTY

Below it, in smaller print:

Induced Somnolence Trial — Neurological Preservation Through Forced Stasis

You flipped the page.

Then another.

And another.

The deeper you read, the colder you felt.

It wasn’t a sedative. Not really.

It was something much worse.

An injectable serum engineered to force the brain into a sustained sleep state while keeping the rest of the body alive and stable—heartbeat, breathing, organ function, all maintained while consciousness was effectively shut down. A living suspension. A chemically manufactured curse.

Test subjects remained unconscious for weeks. Months. In one case, nearly a year.

There were notes about memory disruption. Cognitive fragmentation. Failure to identify loved ones immediately upon waking.

At the bottom of one page, underlined twice in red:

NO REVERSAL CURRENTLY EXISTS. WAKEFUL RETURN, IF ACHIEVED, OCCURS SPONTANEOUSLY.

“Leon.”

He stepped up beside you and took the file.

You watched his expression harden line by line.

“What the hell is this?” you whispered.

“Looks like they figured out how to put people away without killing them.”

“That’s not better.”

“No.”

You pointed to another section. “There are date stamps from this month.”

His eyes flicked over it.

Which meant someone had continued the research. Here. Recently.

You both heard the sound at the same time.

A soft metallic click from the hallway.

Like a door latch settling shut.

Leon’s head snapped toward the corridor.

The office lights came on.

Not flickering. Not accidental.

Every fluorescent panel overhead blazed to life at once, flooding the room in harsh white light so sudden it made you flinch.

And from just outside the doorway, a woman’s voice said:

“Well. There you are.”

You and Leon moved together, weapons up, pivoting into the hall.

A woman stood at the end of the corridor as if she had been waiting for the reveal.

She looked to be in her late fifties, maybe early sixties—tall, sharp-featured, with silver threaded through black hair pinned into a severe twist at the base of her skull. Lips the color of fresh blood and bone white teeth. She wore a pristine lab coat over fitted dark clothing, one hand resting lightly in the coat pocket. Wire-rimmed glasses glinted under the fluorescent lights. She looked less like a fugitive scientist in a dead facility and more like a professor about to begin a lecture.

Then Leon stopped breathing.

You felt it before you saw it—the way his body locked beside yours, the way every line of him went rigid with stunned recognition.

The woman smiled.

“Leon Kennedy,” she said, almost fondly. “I was beginning to think you’d never find me.”

You looked at him sharply.

He stared at her like he was seeing a ghost.

“Dr. Marianne Vale,” he said.

The name landed heavy.

Not because you knew it—you didn’t—but because of the way Leon said it. Flat. Disbelieving. Furious underneath.

Vale inclined her head. “I’m touched you remember.”

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

“So many people are.” Her smile widened. “It’s hardly an obstacle anymore.”

Your grip tightened on your weapon. “You know her?”

Leon never took his eyes off Vale. “Former Umbrella subcontractor. Bioweapons neurologist. Ran human trials out of Eastern Europe under at least three shell companies.” His jaw flexed. “I put a bullet through her shoulder and left her in a fire six years ago.”

Vale laughed softly. “And yet here I am. Science is so resilient.”

“You should’ve stayed buried,” Leon said.

“Probably. But then I’d have missed this.”

Her gaze shifted to you.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

The look she gave you was not casual interest. It was surgical. Assessing. Delighted in a way that made your skin crawl.

“And this must be your wife,” she said. “I’ve wanted to meet the woman who convinced Leon Kennedy he was still allowed to have something so precious.”

Leon stepped half in front of you before you even processed the movement.

Vale noticed.

The satisfaction on her face was immediate.

“Oh,” she murmured. “Yes. That’s exactly the expression I was hoping for.”

Your pulse kicked harder.

Something about the way she said it—something too calm, too pleased—made the room feel suddenly airless.

“What is Project Sleeping Beauty?” you asked.

Vale’s smile sharpened.

“My masterpiece.”

“Your psychotic little bedtime story?” you shot back.

Her eyes glittered. “A serum that does what death cannot. It leaves the body intact. The heart beating. The lungs breathing. The subject perfectly alive.” She tilted her head. “And utterly unreachable.”

You felt Leon go still beside you.

“What does it do?” he asked, voice low.

“You will find out soon enough,” Vale smirked.

You thought of the notes. The red underlining. No reversal currently exists.

A sick weight settled in your stomach.

Leon’s gun never wavered. “You’re done here.”

Vale smiled like she’d been waiting for him to say that.

Then she moved.

Her hand came out of the lab coat pocket already holding a syringe.

You saw the glint of the needle and reacted on instinct, jerking backward and bringing your arm up—but Vale moved with unnatural speed. She closed the distance in a burst of motion and grabbed the front of your tactical vest, hauling you toward her with shocking force.

Your shoulder slammed into the hallway wall.

Pain burst hot through your upper arm.

“Hey—!”

Leon lunged.

But Vale had already driven herself into your space, pinning you with one forearm and bringing the syringe up in the other hand.

For one awful second you were all tangled motion and impact—your boot slipping on the slick tile, Leon reaching for you, Vale’s fingers twisted in your vest.

Then the needle hit your neck.

A sharp, burning sting just below your jaw.

Vale laughed.

Not a normal laugh.

A bright, manic, delighted cackle right in your face as she slammed the plunger down.

“Yes,” she hissed. “Let’s see how you survive this one, Leon.”

Leon fired.

The first shot hit her in the shoulder hard enough to wrench her backward, but the serum was already in. The syringe ripped free from your neck as she stumbled. You barely had time to suck in a breath before a freezing heaviness exploded outward from the injection site.

Vale staggered, still laughing, blood blooming across the front of her lab coat.

Leon fired again.

And again.

The second bullet hit just below the first.

The third snapped her backward into the wall.

Her laughter cut off in a wet choking sound.

Then she slid down the wall and hit the floor in a heap, dead before she stopped moving.

You hardly saw it.

The cold was spreading too fast.

It poured down your spine and through your chest, not painful exactly, but wrong in a way that made terror spike through you. Your hands lost strength. Your knees went weak so abruptly it felt like someone had cut your strings.

“Leon—”

The word came out slurred.

Your legs crumpled.

Leon caught you before you hit the ground, but your body was already going boneless in his arms, all your weight dropping at once. He hooked one arm around your waist and tried to keep you upright, but the sudden collapse dragged both of you off balance. Rather than let your head crack against the tile, Leon dropped with you, one knee slamming into the floor as he pulled you into him.

You landed half across his lap.

One of his knees was braced on the tile, the other bent under you as he sat back hard against the floor, dragging you fully into the cradle of his body. Your back hit his chest instead of the ground. One arm locked around your middle to keep you from sliding sideways. His other hand came up immediately to cup your jaw and hold your head steady against his shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, stay with me.”

His voice sounded far away already.

You tried to focus on his face, but the overhead lights were smearing into pale halos. Leon’s features blurred, sharpened, blurred again. You could see the panic in his eyes, though—raw and unguarded and so frighteningly naked that it made your own fear spike higher.

“What did she give you?” he demanded, voice breaking at the edges as his hand moved to the injection mark on your neck. “What do you feel?”

“I’m cold,” you whispered.

Your tongue felt too heavy. Your limbs didn’t feel attached properly anymore. Every breath seemed slower than the last.

Leon keyed his comm with shaking fingers.

“Hunnigan! She’s been injected with something—unknown serum, possible neurotoxin or sedative,—send a med team now!”

Static crackled. Hunnigan’s voice came sharp through the earpiece. “What’s her status?”

“She’s fading.” Leon’s arm tightened around you as your head lolled against his shoulder. “We need extraction now. Full medical. Move!”

You tried to lift your hand.

You wanted to touch him. To reassure him somehow, even though you were the one going under. But your fingers barely twitched against his vest before falling uselessly back to your lap.

Leon caught your hand anyway and pressed it against his cheek.

“I’m here,” he said, leaning down until his forehead almost touched yours. “You hear me? I’m right here.”

“I’m tired.”

“No. No, don’t do that.” His voice cracked fully this time. “Stay awake for me. Come on.”

You wanted to.

But your eyelids were getting so heavy.

The cold had reached your chest now, your throat, the backs of your eyes. Not pain. Just weight. A terrible, sinking weight dragging you downward inch by inch.

“Leon,” you whispered.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Scared.”

His face crumpled.

Only for a second, but it was enough.

He pulled you closer, tucking you tighter into his lap until your cheek rested against the solid warmth of his chest, and his chin brushed your temple.

“I know,” he said, voice shredded. “I know. I’ve got you.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Promise?”

“I swear on my life.” He was shaking now; you could feel it in the arm around your waist, in the hand cradling the back of your head. “I promise. I’m right here. I’m right here.”

Your vision narrowed to slivers.

You could hear his heartbeat under your ear—too fast, too hard.

“Love you,” you breathed.

The words barely made it out.

Leon made a sound that would haunt him later, a broken inhale like the air had been punched out of him.

“I love you too,” he said immediately. “I love you too, sweetheart, come on—stay with me—”

But the darkness won, the world folded inward and disappeared.

Your body went slack against him.

And then you were gone.

Leon

For one terrible second, Leon thought she was dead.

One second.

That was all it took for the world to split open.

Her body went limp in his lap so suddenly it almost didn’t feel real. One moment she was fighting to keep her eyes open, whispering that she was cold and scared and tired, and the next the last thread of tension vanished from her limbs. Her hand slid bonelessly from where he’d pressed it to his cheek. Her head dropped against his shoulder, mouth parted on a breath that was too soft, too faint.

“Hey.”

Leon grabbed her face more firmly, his other arm locking harder around her waist.

“Hey. No. No, look at me.”

Nothing.

He shifted her upright against him, bracing her with one hand behind her neck and the other under her jaw, trying to force himself to think through the white roar of panic in his head.

She was breathing.

Shallow, but there.

Her pulse—he fumbled for it at her throat, fingers slick and clumsy—was still there too, thready and fast beneath the skin.

Alive.

He swallowed a sick, shaking breath and forced his hand away from her neck before he bruised her searching for reassurance that wasn’t going to come.

“Hunnigan,” he snapped into the comm, voice so rough he barely recognized it. “She’s unconscious. Pulse present. ETA?”

“Seven minutes out,” Hunnigan said, and even through the static he could hear the urgency in her voice. “Leon, listen to me—keep her airway clear. Keep monitoring her breathing. Med team is already en route.”

Seven minutes.

Seven minutes might as well have been seven years.

Leon adjusted his hold and gathered her higher against his chest, one arm under her shoulders now, the other hooked under her knees just enough to keep her folded securely in his lap. He didn’t trust the floor. Didn’t trust anything. If he could have climbed inside her ribcage and manually forced her heart to keep beating, he would have done it with his bare hands.

Her skin had gone frighteningly slack under his palms.

“Come on,” he muttered, brushing damp hair back from her face with trembling fingers. “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t do this.”

No response.

He looked at the puncture mark on her neck and wanted to put three more bullets into Marianne Vale’s corpse just for the privilege of killing her twice.

Project Sleeping Beauty.

The phrase hit him like a flashbang.

He looked up—finally, stupidly, too late—toward the open office where the files still lay scattered across the desk. Vale had called it sleep. The notes you’d both skimmed had talked about prolonged unconsciousness, no reversal, spontaneous waking—

Leon went cold.

No.

He carefully lowered you from the crook of his arm just enough to free one hand, never letting your head leave his shoulder, and reached for the nearest folder on the tile where it had fallen during the struggle. His eyes scanned the pages in frantic jerks.

induced somnolence sustained neurological suppression subject remains unconscious for indefinite duration no reliable antidote

His stomach dropped straight through the floor.

“No,” he whispered.

He turned another page. Trial logs. Durations. Thirty-one days. Fifty-eight. One hundred and twelve. Two hundred and three.

His vision blurred.

He looked back at you.

You were limp against him, breathing softly into the collar of his jacket like you were only asleep. Like he could shake you awake in the Porsche after a bad dream. Like the next thing out of your mouth might be some smartass complaint about blinding hospital lights or his driving.

Instead there was only silence.

Leon put the file down with hands that no longer felt steady enough to belong to him.

He touched your cheek.

Still warm.

“Don’t you dare,” he said hoarsely, though he didn’t know whether he was talking to you, the serum, God, or the dead woman cooling six feet away on the hallway floor.

He listened to your breathing.

Counted each inhale.

One. Two. Three.

At four, he thought it had stopped and nearly lost his mind before your chest rose again.

By the time the med team stormed the hallway, Leon was still on the floor with you in his lap, one hand spread between your shoulder blades and the other locked around your wrist to keep feeling your pulse.

The first medic crouched beside him. “Agent Kennedy, we need to take her.”

Leon’s arms tightened instinctively. He wanted to strangle the medic with his bare hands.

It took conscious effort to let them touch you.

“She was injected here,” he said, voice dead flat as he pointed to the mark on your neck. “Unknown serum. We found files—Project Sleeping Beauty. It’s neurological. It keeps the body alive and the subject unconscious. I need those files preserved and transported with us now.”

The medic nodded sharply.

Hands moved in around you—oxygen mask, vitals, IV access. Someone checked your pupils. Someone else slid a gurney into place.

“Agent Kennedy, I need you to let us transfer her.”

Leon stared at the medic for a beat too long.

Then he carefully slid one arm out from under your shoulders and another from beneath your knees, helping them lift you from his lap onto the gurney.

The second your body left his arms, cold terror rushed into the space you’d been occupying.

He followed the gurney all the way to the helicopter.

He never stopped touching you.

A hand on your ankle. Your wrist. The edge of the blanket over your stomach. Anything. Some point of contact to prove you were still here.

On the flight back, he sat strapped into the seat beside your stretcher while the medic monitored your vitals and Hunnigan’s voice crackled updates through his earpiece. Leon heard none of it clearly. He kept his eyes on your face and thought, with detached horror, that you looked peaceful.

Like sleep.

Like this was normal.

Like his entire life hadn’t just been ripped open in a hallway and left bleeding on the floor.

At the medical facility, they took you from him again.

Tests. Bloodwork. Brain activity scans. Emergency consults. Quarantine protocols because no one knew what Vale had actually put in your system.

Leon signed whatever they shoved in front of him without reading it. He stood outside the observation glass with dried blood on his hands and watched doctors move around your bed while machines translated your body into graphs and numbers.

After six hours, one of the neurologists approached him with the file.

“We believe the compound is related to the research recovered on-site,” she said carefully. “It appears to induce a prolonged unconscious state while preserving autonomic function.”

Leon stared at her.

“How long?”

She hesitated.

That was enough to make him want to put his fist through the wall.

“How long?” he repeated.

“We don’t know.”

The hallway went very quiet.

“We’re working from incomplete records,” the doctor continued, “but based on the available data, patients can remain under for weeks or months. In one case, significantly longer. We don’t currently have a reversal agent.”

Leon didn’t say anything.

Couldn’t.

Because if he opened his mouth, something ugly and feral might come out of it.

“She may wake on her own,” the doctor said.

May.

The word hit like shrapnel.

“She may,” Leon repeated.

The doctor’s expression tightened. “I’m sorry.”

He turned away before he did something regrettable.

He sat beside your bed that first night because there was nowhere else to go.

And then the second night.

And the third.

And every night after that.

The first month was a blur of hospital lights and caffeine and denial.

Leon learned the rhythm of your machines before he learned how to sleep again, which was to say he didn’t. He learned which nurse would bring him coffee without being asked and which neurologist actually answered questions instead of dressing uncertainty up in polished language. He learned how to shift you gently when the physical therapists came to move your limbs and prevent stiffness. He learned how to brush your hair out of your face without dislodging any monitors. He learned how to sit still for twelve hours with your hand in his and pretend that the sight of your wedding ring against white hospital sheets wasn’t slowly sawing him open from the inside.

He talked to you even when no one was around.

At first, because the doctors said familiar voices could help.

Later, because the silence was unbearable.

He told you about the weather. About Claire calling every three days to check on him. About the time, Hunnigan came by with actual food and glared until he ate it. About how your houseplants were still alive only because he’d bribed a neighbor to water them.

He told you about the mission report and how the cleanup team had recovered the rest of Vale’s research. About the labs working around the clock to synthesize a reversal agent that kept failing in trial stages. About how every version of the serum was just different enough to make stable antidote development nearly impossible.

He never told you how often he replayed the hallway in his head.

How every night, just as exhaustion dragged him under, he’d see Vale’s hand at your throat again. Hear her laugh. Feel the impossible weight of your body going limp in his arms.

He never told you about the first time he went home and had to walk right back out because your leather jacket was still hanging by the door, and he couldn’t breathe looking at it.

Or how he started sleeping in the chair because the idea of leaving you alone in that room made him feel physically ill.

Or how, around month three, Claire had found him sitting in the hospital chapel with bloodshot eyes and a cup of vending machine coffee gone cold in his hands and said, very quietly, “Leon, you can’t keep punishing yourself for not outrunning a syringe.”

He’d laughed at that.

Not because it was funny.

Because if he didn’t laugh, he might’ve put his head through the stained glass.

Month four brought the first false hope.

A fluctuation in your brain activity. A change in REM patterns. The neurologists grew cautiously optimistic for six days before the readings flattened back to baseline.

Month five brought a potential compound that worked in cell cultures but failed in the lab trials.

Month six brought nothing except winter.

By then, Leon had stopped asking the doctors when.

The question had started to feel cruel.

He measured time in smaller things instead: how often your fingers twitched in your sleep, whether your breathing changed when he read aloud, whether your heart rate shifted at the sound of his voice.

He held your hand and talked to you about stupid things because the important things hurt too much.

He told you about the coffee you stole from him on the drive to Saint Marrow.

About the night you’d tried to assemble IKEA furniture while tipsy and declared the instructions “a hate crime against women.”

About the first time he’d realized he was in love with you—which he had never actually admitted out loud, not even before the serum, because Leon Kennedy was apparently capable of fighting bioengineered monsters but not his own feelings.

That had been in a safehouse in Madrid.

You’d been asleep on the couch with your boots still on, one hand hanging off the cushion, and he’d looked at you and felt something in his chest go frighteningly still and certain.

He told you that, too.

He didn’t know if you heard any of it.

He said it anyway.

By month seven, the doctors had gently started using phrases like long-term care planning.

Leon stopped listening whenever they did.

By month eight, he had memorized every freckle on your hands.

And then one Tuesday morning, while he was half-asleep in the chair beside your bed with a paper cup of coffee going cold on the windowsill, your heart rate changed.

Leon’s eyes snapped open.

You were frowning in your sleep.

Not sleep, his brain corrected with sudden, violent hope. Not sleep.

Your fingers twitched against the blanket.

The cup hit the floor and spilled coffee everywhere.

He was out of the chair so fast it nearly toppled backward.

“Hey,” he said, voice wrecked before the word even finished leaving his mouth. “Hey—come on.”

Your eyelashes fluttered.

Then your eyes opened.

The first thing you saw was white light.

The second was a man at your bedside who looked like he hadn’t slept in years.

Blond hair falling over his forehead. Blue eyes too bright, too wide. Stubble shadowing a face carved with exhaustion. His dark shirt was wrinkled like he’d slept in it, and his left hand was gripping the bedrail so hard the knuckles had gone white.

The second he realized you were awake, something inside him broke open.

“Hey,” he said, voice rough and shaking. “Hey, can you hear me?”

You stared at him.

He looked familiar.

Not in a clear way. Not in a I know your name way. More like a face from a dream you’d had too many times to place.

The monitor beside you sped up.

The man saw it immediately and lifted his free hand, palm open.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Your throat hurt.

“Who…”

His expression changed.

Not dramatically.

But enough.

“Leon,” he said softly. “My name’s Leon.”

Leon.

The name struck something behind your ribs.

A spark. A pull. Not a memory yet—just the feeling of standing outside a locked room and knowing something important was behind it.

But when you looked at him, truly looked, all you could see was a stranger with devastation written all over his face.

Your gaze dropped to his hand on the rail.

A wedding ring.

Then to your own.

Another ring.

Your heart stuttered.

“Why do I have this?”

Leon closed his eyes for one second like the question physically hurt.

When he opened them, they were wet.

“Because,” he said carefully, “you’re married.”

The room went very still.

You looked at him.

“To you?”

His mouth parted.

The pain that crossed his face was so raw it made guilt bloom in your chest even though you had no idea why.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “To me.”

The door opened behind him and medical staff flooded the room, asking questions, checking vitals, shining lights in your eyes. Leon stepped back to make room, but he never took his eyes off you.

You answered what you could. Your name. The year. Basic history.

When the doctor asked if you recognized Leon, you hesitated.

Not because you did.

But because saying no felt wrong in a way you couldn’t explain.

“I…” You frowned at him. “No. I don’t think so.”

Leon went still.

The doctor wrote something down.

But even as the words left your mouth, your eyes stayed snagged on him.

Because there was something there.

Something you couldn’t reach.

A ghost of warmth. A phantom familiarity.

And when one of the nurses accidentally bumped his shoulder as she moved past, Leon automatically said, “Sorry,” under his breath in a tone so achingly familiar that your chest tightened.

You didn’t know why.

You remembered him on the second day.

Not fully.

Not all at once.

But just enough.

The nurses had finally let you sit upright for more than twenty minutes at a time, and Leon was in the chair by the bed pretending to read a mission report he hadn’t turned the page on in ten minutes. You were studying him when he looked up.

“What?”

“You look exhausted.”

“That’s because I am.”

“You should sleep.”

“I did.”

“When?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Last Tuesday.”

You snorted before you could help it.

And just like that, the sound of your own laughter cracked something open.

Rain on a windshield.

A coffee cup stolen from a cupholder.

Leon kissing you just to get it back.

Your breath caught.

The hospital room vanished under a rush of memory so sudden it made your head spin.

The Porsche. The dark road. The Saint Marrow file open on your lap. Leon’s hand on the back of your neck. The warmth of his mouth. The ring on his finger glinting against the steering wheel.

You made a startled noise and grabbed the bedrail.

Leon was on his feet instantly. “What happened?”

“The car,” you whispered. “The drive. I took your coffee.”

He froze.

You stared at him, pulse racing.

“I remember your coffee,” you said, dazed.

For one second Leon just looked at you.

Then he sat down so abruptly the chair wheels squeaked against the floor.

“You remember that?”

“Pieces.” You pressed a hand to your temple. “Not everything. But… you. In the car.”

The relief on his face was so sharp it almost looked painful.

“That’s okay,” he said, voice rough. “Pieces are good.”

And then, because your brain had apparently chosen cruelty, another image hit.

A kitchen at two in the morning.

Leon standing shirtless in sweatpants eating all the lucky charm marshmallows from the box while you laughed at him.

Your home. No—your shared home.

Your husband.

You looked at him and the locked room in your head gave way all at once.

Not every memory. Not the missing months, not the lab, not the needle.

But enough.

Enough to know the man in front of you was yours.

Enough to know you had loved him before your body betrayed you.

Enough to know the grief in his face was there because you had forgotten him, and the thought of that hit you like a truck.

“Leon” you whispered.

Leon went still.

“You’re Leon.”

A watery laugh almost escaped him. “That’s usually how names work, yeah.”

But his eyes were shining.

You stared at him, horrified.

“I forgot my husband.”

Something on his face broke in a softer, sadder way this time.

“You were in a medically induced coma for eight months,” he said quietly. “I think you’re allowed a little confusion.”

Eight months.

The number punched the air out of your lungs.

“What?”

Leon swallowed.

The joking edge vanished completely.

“You were unconscious for eight months.”

Your eyes filled immediately.

Eight months.

Eight months gone. Eight months stolen.

And he had been here.

Looking at the state of him—his wrinkled clothes, his hollow eyes, the exhaustion etched into every line of his face—you suddenly understood in one brutal rush exactly how much of those eight months he had spent right here.

“Oh, Leon.”

That was all it took.

He stood too quickly, like he’d almost decided not to move and then changed his mind at the last second. “Hey—don’t cry, it’s okay—”

“No, it’s not.” Your voice cracked. “I didn’t know you.”

His face folded in on itself with quiet pain.

You reached for him on instinct.

Leon looked at your hand like he didn’t trust it to be real.

Then he crossed the room in two strides and took it.

The second his skin touched yours, more memories flashed—your wedding day, his forehead resting against yours after you’d said your vows, the feel of his hand at the small of your back, the weight of his ring against your mouth when you’d kissed his knuckles once in a car after a bad mission because you hadn’t known how else to say thank you for coming back to me.

Tears spilled down your cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” you sobbed.

“No.” Leon sat on the edge of the bed, still holding your hand. “Don’t apologize.”

“But I looked at you like I didn’t know you.”

“You didn’t do that on purpose.”

“But you were here.”

His jaw tightened.

You could see him trying not to let the last eight months show too much.

Trying to protect you from the full shape of his pain even now.

That made it worse.

“Leon.”

He looked at you.

And then, suddenly, another memory tore through you.

A hallway.

A woman with red lipstick in a lab coat.

The glint of a syringe.

Leon shouting your name.

Her manic laugh.

The cold in your veins.

You gasped.

Leon’s grip on your hand tightened. “What?”

“The lab,” you whispered. “She injected me.”

He went pale.

The next images came jagged and fast—the floor rushing up, Leon catching you, his knee hitting tile, your body across his lap, his hand behind your neck, his voice in your ear begging you not to leave him.

Your breath broke.

“You were holding me,” you said, staring at him. “I remember.”

Leon closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, they were full.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“You were on the floor with me.”

“I know.”

“And I told you I was scared.”

He let out a shaking breath that sounded suspiciously like it hurt.

“You did.”

Tears blurred your vision. “I remember your face.”

That undid him.

Not loudly. Not dramatically.

Leon just bowed his head for a second like he’d taken a physical hit, his hand still wrapped around yours so tightly it almost hurt.

When he looked up again, his eyes were bright.

“I thought I lost you,” he said quietly.

Your chest caved in.

You tugged on his hand.

He came without resistance.

The second Leon leaned close enough, you wrapped your arms around him.

It was clumsy with the IV and the weakness in your body and the hospital bed in the way, but he made a sound like he’d been shot and then gathered you up anyway, one arm around your shoulders, the other bracing carefully around your back as he bent over you.

You buried your face against his neck.

He was warm.

Solid. Real.

Familiar in every place that mattered.

“I’m sorry,” you cried into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

Leon held the back of your head and pressed his face into your hair.

“Stop apologizing,” he murmured, voice wrecked. “Please.”

“I forgot you.”

“You came back.” His grip tightened. “That’s enough.”

You cried harder.

Leon just held you through it, one hand moving slowly up and down your back while your tears soaked into the collar of his shirt. He was trembling too. You could feel it in the arm around you, in the breath he kept taking like his lungs didn’t know what to do with relief.

After a long while, when your breathing had finally evened out a little, you pulled back just enough to look at him.

He looked destroyed.

And beautiful.

And so heartbreakingly relieved that your chest hurt.

“How bad was it?” you asked softly.

Leon went still.

The question hung there between you.

He could’ve lied.

Could’ve given you the cleaned-up version, the one that didn’t put the full weight of those months on your shoulders when you’d only just woken up.

Instead he looked at you, really looked at you, and something in his expression softened with resignation.

“Bad,” he admitted.

Your eyes stung again.

“Did you sleep here?”

A humorless little laugh escaped him.

“Mostly.”

“Leon.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “I went home a few times. Claire and Hunnigan basically forced me to. But… yeah. Mostly here.”

You looked at the chair in the corner.

Then back at him.

“You stayed with me that whole time.”

“Of course I did.”

He said it like there was no universe in which he wouldn’t have.

No alternate timeline where he left you to face any of it alone.

Your mouth trembled.

“I love you,” you whispered.

Leon’s entire face changed.

He reached up and touched your cheek with the back of his fingers, as if he still couldn’t quite believe you were awake enough to say it.

“I love you too.”

You leaned into his hand.

“Can you kiss me?”

His breath caught.

The question seemed to go straight through him.

“Yeah,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Yeah, sweetheart.”

He kissed you like you were something returned to him by miracle and sheer stubbornness.

Slow at first.

Careful.

Like he was afraid too much pressure might make you disappear again.

But the second you kissed him back with recognition instead of confusion, something in him gave. His hand slid into your hair, his forehead pressing to yours for a breath before he kissed you again, deeper this time, with eight months of fear and grief and love tucked into the gentleness of it.

When he finally pulled away, he rested his forehead against yours and just breathed.

“I hated that you didn’t know me,” he admitted softly.

Fresh guilt hit your chest.

Leon must have seen it because he immediately shook his head.

“No, don’t. I’m not saying that to make you feel bad. I just…” His voice frayed. “I waited so long to hear you say my name like that again.”

Tears burned your eyes.

You touched his face with shaking fingers.

“I know you now.”

Leon shut his eyes.

A tear escaped anyway.

When he opened them again, he looked wrecked and grateful and so unbearably soft with you that it nearly broke your heart.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “You do.”

Your memory kept returning in pieces over the next week.

Not all at once, and not kindly.

Sometimes it was something small—Leon asleep on the couch with a file over his chest, you taking a picture because his hair was sticking up in six directions and he’d threatened to divorce you if it ever saw daylight. Sometimes it was bigger—your wedding vows, your first apartment, the first time he’d told you he loved you in the kitchen at one in the morning because he’d almost died on a mission and apparently that had finally convinced him emotional repression was inefficient.

And then, one night, you woke from a nightmare with the rest of Saint Marrow crashing back in full.

Vale’s smirk.

The needle.

The cold.

Leon on the floor holding you like he could physically stop the serum from taking you.

By the time your breathing evened out, Leon was already at your bedside, hair messy from sleep, shirt wrinkled, panic still fresh in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” he said, sitting down carefully on the edge of the bed. “You’re okay.”

“I remember all of it,” you whispered.

He went quiet.

“The whole hallway,” you said. “You caught me before I hit the floor. You were holding me.”

Leon looked down.

“Yeah.”

“You kept telling me not to leave.”

His throat worked.

“I didn’t know what else to say.”

The grief in that sentence nearly killed you.

You reached for him.

This time, he came immediately, climbing onto the hospital bed beside you with none of the hesitation from those first days after you’d woken. He pulled you against his chest and tucked your head under his chin, one hand splayed over your back while the other cradled the back of your skull like he still remembered exactly how it felt to hold you unconscious in a dead hallway and pray your heart wouldn’t stop.

You pressed your face into his neck.

“I’m here,” you whispered.

Leon held you tighter.

“I know.”

But his voice shook like part of him still didn’t believe it.

You stayed like that for a long time, wrapped around each other in the dim hospital room while the machines hummed softly around you.

Eventually Leon leaned back enough to look at you.

“You know,” he said, thumb brushing the corner of your eye, “you scared the hell out of me.”

You gave him a watery smile. “You looked pretty scared.”

“I was terrified.”

“You hid it badly.”

He huffed a laugh. “Good to know.”

You brushed your fingers over his wedding ring.

“I remember this too,” you said quietly. “I remember thinking it was the last thing I wanted to see.”

Leon’s expression softened.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You swallowed around the lump in your throat. “I remember thinking if I had to go under, at least I got to see you first.”

That wrecked him all over again.

He kissed your forehead hard enough to make you laugh through fresh tears, then tucked you back into his chest as if proximity alone could rewrite the last eight months and keep anything like it from ever happening again.

By the time you were discharged weeks later, Leon still looked at you sometimes like he expected you to vanish if he blinked too long.

He slept lighter too.

For a while, any time you woke in the middle of the night and moved too suddenly, he’d jolt awake and reach for you before he was fully conscious, fingers checking your pulse, your breathing, the warmth of your skin.

You never complained.

You just took his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles until his shoulders loosened again.

Recovery was slow. Physical therapy was painful. Some memories returned out of order, some all at once, some not at all. But Leon was there for every ugly piece of it—every trembling step, every nightmare, every frustrated outburst when your body wouldn’t cooperate and your brain felt like a house with missing rooms.

And one rainy night, months later, when the world had finally settled enough that both of you could breathe again, you found him in the kitchen staring blankly into a cup of coffee gone cold.

You walked up behind him and slipped your arms around his waist.

Leon relaxed immediately into your touch.

“You’re stealing my coffee again, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Obviously.”

“Marriage is a scam.”

“You love me.”

He turned in your arms, one hand settling at your waist, the other cupping your cheek.

There was silver moonlight at the window. Rain tapping softly on the glass. The kitchen smelled like coffee and dish soap and home.

Leon kissed you once, slow and certain.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“You remember all of it now?” he asked quietly.

You looked up at him.

The man who had held you on a hospital floor and in a hospital room and through eight impossible months of silence. The man who had waited. The man who had suffered. The man who loved you enough to stay anyway.

“Enough,” you whispered.

His eyes searched yours.

“Enough?”

You smiled and touched the ring on his hand.

“Enough to know that if some psychotic scientist ever tries that again, I’m haunting you on purpose.”

Leon barked out a startled laugh.

“Great. Good to know your first instinct in death is still being annoying.”

“Only to you.”

He kissed you again, smiling this time.

And later, when you fell asleep with your head on his chest and his arms locked around you like a vow he would never stop renewing, Leon lay awake for a long time just listening to your breathing.

Not because he was afraid anymore.

Not entirely.

But because after eight months of silence, every sleepy exhale felt like proof that the dead had not won.

And this time, they never would.

naikitties

what a masterpiece

kkissthesun

Neighborly

(RE9 Leon Kennedy x Female Reader)

Summary: Leon Kennedy just moved in next door to your parents, and you're only home for the week. It's the Fourth Of July. There's a barbecue, a dog that doesn't have a name yet, and the man next door who says he moved to the suburbs because he wanted normal, for once. You've got just one night. Might as well spend it wisely.

WC: 6.5k

Warnings: SMUT, MDNI, protected sex, P in V, consent, older man/younger woman, fluff, age gap, oral (female receiving), soft Leon

Notes: RE9 Leon, set the week of the Fourth. My first fic ever! Hope you enjoy!

Original post on ao3

Playlist I made for this fic

Your mom had a way of filling the house with sound. There was a radio going in the kitchen, the news was murmuring from the living room and her voice echoed through the house as she was making a phone call. After two days of this you’d started inventing reasons to get outside. Today you decided would be the perfect day to go get the mail.

You slid your sandals on and opened the front door. The air outside was arid and hot. It was the kind of heat that sat on your skin instead of soaking into it. The neighborhood baked quietly, sprinklers ticking somewhere down the block, the mountains cut out past the rooftops.

Right as you opened the front of the mailbox a blur of tan and white came barreling around the hedge and then sixty pounds of enthusiasm planted both front paws on your stomach. It knocked the breath out of you. You staggered and caught yourself on the mailbox post. The dog’s whole back half was wagging with its tongue licking across your jaw before you could turn your face.

You laughed. “Okay, okay, hi!” You went down to a crouch, partly to greet it and partly in self-defense. The dog took the opportunity to try and climb into your lap. It was some kind of shepherd mix with one ear that flopped and one that stood up. “Where’d you come from, huh? Where’s your — you got a collar?”

You were feeling for the tag, the dog squirming with delight, when a voice came from the direction of the hedge.

“Sorry. Sorry, he does that.”

You looked up.

The man coming across the neighboring lawn was wiping his hands on a rag, he looked like he was maybe working. There was drywall dust ghosting the front of his t-shirt, a smear of something pale along one forearm, and his hair was dark blonde with streaks of silver that was falling into his eyes. It looked almost flattened like he had been pushing it back all day with the back of his wrist. He was tall and moved like the heat didn’t bother him. He crouched a few feet away and snapped his fingers once.

“Hey. Come here. Leave the —” He glanced at you. “Leave the poor girl alone.”

“Aw, he’s fine.” You scratched behind the flopped ear, and the dog leaned its whole weight into your hand. “He’s so cute. This is the best welcome I’ve gotten all week.”

“He’s supposed to be learning boundaries,” he said. “It’s going great, as you can see.”

You smiled. “Who needs boundaries, when you’re this cute.” You gave the dog one more scratch and then stood up. You brushed the paw-prints off your shorts. Up close the man looked several years older than you but his face was easy to look at in a way that made you not want to be caught looking. His eyes were a very pale blue and he had some stubble across his jaw. He looked at you, then the street behind you before settling back on your face.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” you said.

“Yeah. I just moved in a couple weeks ago.” He gestured vaguely at the house behind him. It was a nice two story suburban home with gray siding and a black metal roof. “Still—” He glances behind him. “Still renovating the kitchen.”

“Looks like you’re renovating more than just a kitchen.” You nodded at the drywall dust. “You gutting the place?”

“Well the bathroom had some water damage too and the owners before had a real commitment to wood paneling.” He said dryly and you laughed. He seemed a little surprised that you did laugh.

“Y/N” you said, and you put out your hand.

"Leon." He took your hand, his grip was warm and careful, the kind that could be firmer but he was deliberately choosing not to be. "My name's Leon—" A beat, like there was a final part he was going to say.

“Nice to meet you, Leon.” You smiled and let go of his hand. You knelt down at the dog between you. “And nice to meet you too…” You give him a pet on the head and smooshed his face between your hands. He licked your hand in response and panted heavily from the summer heat. “What’s his name?”

“Still working on it. He came from a shelter with the name ‘Biscuit.’ and I refuse to yell ‘Biscuit’ across the yard for the next ten years or so,” He shrugged. “He’s temporarily nameless but he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Well, he surely doesn’t look like a Biscuit to me either.” You scratched under the dog’s chin and he leaned into it with his tail wagging. “You’ll figure it out.”

You grinned. There was a beat where neither of you said anything and the sprinklers ticked and the sun sat warm on the back of your neck. You realized you should have gone back inside with your parents but you enjoyed Leon’s company. Something about him was mysterious and unspeakably handsome that made you want to know more about him.

“Hey,” you knew what you were about to say might have been a little bold. “My family is having a whole fourth of July party. It might be a little overboard but we’re gonna have a barbeque and light up fireworks later in the night. If you don’t have plans, we got enough food to feed the whole neighborhood.”

Leon looked at you for a second. Like he was maybe shocked that someone as young as you would want to invite over an older guy like him. Or maybe it was something else entirely that was weighing on him, maybe some old habit of not committing to things.

“I might have plans,” he said.

“Sure, yeah, that’s totally fine.” you said.

“I might not.”

“Also fine.” You bent down again and gave the dog a last scratch, straightening before it could climb into your lap again. Not that you would have minded. “Offer stands either way. We’re right next to you with the big ass flag in the front yard that’s impossible to miss.” You laughed.

That got a smile from him, finally. “That flag is pretty hard to miss,” he agreed.

“My Dad would be thrilled to hear you say that.” You started backing toward the mailbox that you still hadn’t actually opened. “Oh.. Hey. Good luck with the remodeling!”

“Thanks.” He whistled low, and the dog reluctantly peeled itself off the driveway and trotted to his side. Leon lifted a hand, partially waving with the rag still hooked in his fingers and turned back to his house. You watched him walk back a little longer than you needed to before you opened the mailbox.

It was only filled with grocery flyers and a water bill. You figured it would be and you took it back inside anyways. You decided to not tell your mom about the neighbor, though you weren’t sure why.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

The Fourth arrived the way it always had at your parents’ house, it was always way too loud and earlier than it needed to be.

By noon your dad had claimed the grill as sovereign territory and would not be taken over by anybody else. Your aunts had taken over the kitchen. Somewhere in the last twenty-four hours the backyard had sprouted a folding-table archipelago draped in plastic cloths and a small cooler that sat on the patio. It was packed to the brim with ice, cans and glass bottles. Your little cousins, nephews and nieces with two kids you were pretty sure belonged to a neighbor were running around with something that looked like a bubble blower of some sorts. They were shrieking and definitely high on sugar and freedom.

You were mostly useful all morning. You hauled ice, wrangled kids, argued with your uncle about the correct way to arrange a cooler. And around two, standing at the edge of the patio with a sweating glass bottle in your hand, you thought about the guy next door. You looked over the top of his fence and thought about him staring at his drywall. You set the bottle down and told your mom you’d be right back.

“Where are you going?” she called.

“Neighbor,” you said, which was true and explained nothing, and you were out the side gate before she could ask more questions.

You made your way up his driveway and you could hear something from inside the house, a radio and a saw. You knocked on the frame of the screen door and stepped back, suddenly aware that showing up at a near-stranger’s door was probably way too forward than you intended.

The inner door opened. Leon had a pencil behind his ear and a look on his face that shifted from wary to something calmer when he saw it was you. The wariness didn’t fully leave and you noticed.

“Hi,” you said. “So. It’s the Fourth.”

“It is.” He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “I noticed your dad’s flag has a friend now.”

“Oh. God. Yeah he’s really uh.. Patriotic.” You let out a soft laugh almost wincing. “Hey uhm, the offer from the other day. It still stands if you know.. If you still don't have any plans.”

Leon looked at you. The dog appeared behind his legs and saw you. He lost his entire mind and Leon put a hand down absently to keep him from bolting out the door.

“I don’t have plans,” he admitted.

“Okay, good.” You grinned. “Come on. There’s food and a cooler full of all kinds of beer if you want. Buddy here can come too, the kids will love him.”

“Buddy.” He hesitated and looked down at the dog like he was pondering on the new found name.

He then pushed off the door frame. “Let me grab a shirt that doesn’t have plaster on it,” he said. “Leave him here. He’ll eat somebody’s hot dog and start an incident.”

You laughed. “Okay.” You waited on the step while he disappeared inside and when he came back out he’d changed into a clean black t-shirt exposing the lean muscle of his arms. He pulled the door shut behind him and checked it was locked in a way that was more thorough than a suburban door really required.

You walked down his driveway and up your parents lawn. You opened the gate to the backyard where everyone was. You could sense some uneasiness in him with the way his jaw tensed.

Your dad clocked the stranger immediately, abandoned the grill for the first time all day, and shook Leon’s hand with the fervor of a man delighted to have a new audience for his flag. Your mom materialized with a plate before Leon had said ten words. Somewhere in the introductions you handed him a cold one from the cooler. You cracked another one for yourself, and by the time you’d steered him to a quieter corner of the patio he’d already been claimed, fed, and interrogated about his home renovations by three separate relatives.

“That’s my mom and dad who you just met,” nodding to your parents’ general direction. “Grill’s my dad’s whole personality this weekend. My mom is always making sure you have a full plate before you can refuse. The loud one by the cooler is my uncle, he’ll tell you he was almost a professional bowler. He was not. The kids are—” you scanned the shrieking pack currently orbiting the swing set. “Honestly I’ve lost track. Some of them are actually my family and some just showed up. We don’t ask questions.” You chuckled.

Leon took a pull of his beer and watched the chaos with an expression you couldn’t put a finger on.

“It’s a lot,” he said but it didn’t sound like a complaint.

“Yeah, it’s a lot, for sure.” you agreed. “You get used to it, though.”

“I like it.” He said it simply, and then seemed a little caught out by having said it and tried to cover it up by drinking again.

You leaned against the patio rail beside him, close enough that your shoulders were almost touching. You were both slightly apart from the crowd and the barbecue smoke drifted.

“So what’s the story,” you said. “You just moved out west. From where?”

“East, originally. Around, mostly. Work moved me a lot.” He said flatly. “I wanted to come out here. Always wanted to, honestly. For a long time.” He looked out at the mountains past the fence. “Never had the chance to.”

“And now you do?”

“Now I do.”

“Okay, but why the suburbs?” You said it lightly in a teasing way. “You could’ve gone anywhere out here. Mountains, the coast, a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And you picked a random suburb with an HOA.”

The corner of his mouth lifted up but when he answered, the humor had gone somewhere underneath it.

“I wanted normal,” he said. “For once.”

For once.

It was two words that sat there between the both of you. You took another drink. You wondered what he meant by that. Like normal was a thing he’d been priced out of for a long time. Like a boring street, with nosy neighbors and an HOA were a luxury other people took for granted and he was going into it deliberately, with intent, the way you’d buy something you’d wanted since you were a kid. You thought about the locked door he’d checked twice, and you decided it was better to not ask the question those things raised, because it was personal and you’d only known him for a few days.

Instead you said, “Well. You picked a good street for normal. Nothing ever happens here. The most exciting thing all year is whether my uncle is going to blow off a finger with the mortars.”

That surprised a real laugh out of him, short and warm, and you noticed the crinkle in his eyes that made your heart melt.

“I’ll manage my expectations," he said.

“Probably wise.” You knocked your glass bottle lightly against his. “Speaking of which, full disclosure, so you don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t actually live here.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m just home for the week. Visiting. So. I’m not your new neighbor. I’m just the neighbor’s kid who ambushed you and dragged you to a party. I go home tomorrow.” You shrugged, keeping it easy, though you weren’t entirely sure why you felt the need to tell him.

Something flickered across his face, you couldn’t tell if it was disappointment or something else but whatever it was he tucked it away fast.

“Tomorrow.” He repeated.

“Tomorrow.”

“Good to know.” He looked at you a beat longer than the words needed, his pale blue gaze was steady, and then he tipped his beer back and looked away.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

The afternoon continued on with the kids throwing pop its nearby and lighting whatever daytime monstrosities that were allowed. You ate way too much barbeque and so many desserts that you lost count. Poor Leon was roped into a conversation about grill temperatures with your dad and he managed to keep a straight face like he found the whole thing genuinely interesting. You caught him, twice, watching the kids, and once you caught him watching you, and neither of you looked away as fast as strangers should have.

Leon was easy to be around, which surprised you. He didn’t fill silence for the sake of it. When he said something funny it was dry and quiet and arrived when you least expected, so it kept catching you off guard, and you started angling to make him do it again. He drank slow. He was good with your uncle, who was a lot, letting the near-professional-bowler saga wash over him with the patience of a man who had clearly waited out worse. By the time the light started to slant gold and long across the yard you stopped narrating the party to him and started talking. About the drive out west, about the worst apartment you’d ever lived in, about a neighborhood dog he loved to visit as a kid, which was the only piece of his past he offered unprompted all day and which he offered carefully, like it was fragile.

The sky went from gold to amber to the deep blue that means the show’s about to start, and word went around, mostly via the kids, that it was time to move to the front yard.

You smiled at Leon and motioned your head to the front yard.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Everyone in your family migrated to the front yard. Lawn chairs were lined up in the driveway and grass. The cooler was relocated with great ceremony. Your dad set up a white folding utility table with mortars, fountains, sparklers and random little fireworks that you couldn’t quite name. Of course, your uncle appointed himself as co-director in a way your dad clearly resented but had no choice but to tolerate it.

You and Leon found a spot on the grass just by the sidewalk. You dropped down beside him, maybe a little too close to someone you just met. The warmth from his arm was nice against you and he didn’t seem like it bothered him. Your aunt put sparklers in the little kids’ hands, and the front yard filled with wobbling loops of white sparkling light. The kids were bouncing and shrieking as they wrote their names in the air that was too slow to read.

You got up and grabbed three sparklers from the table. “Here.” You lit one off of your nieces. “Write your name!” You swept the sparkler through the air in big looping cursive, and the light trailed behind your hand, the first letters were already fading to smoke by the time you reached the last.

Your niece tried it with her tongue between her teeth. She was still moving too slow with the letters dying before they connected, it was just a scribble of lines that dissolved in the dark. But she didn’t care, she did it again, faster while laughing.

You handed one of the sparklers to Leon. “Here.” He took it hesitantly. “Come on. Don’t tell me you’re too cool for a sparkler.”

“I’m too old for a sparkler.”

“That’s not a real thing. Have some whimsy in your life Leon.”

He gave you a look of confusion. “Whimsy?”

“Yes, whimsy.” You smiled and held the lit end of your sparkler to his. He looked at you again and moved the sparkler through the air in a slow scrawl, and you watched the light trail his hand and burn out before he’d finished, and he said, deadpan, “See, it died before I got to the end. Symbolic.”

“You gotta work on your whimsy-ness, Leon.” You laughed, he almost smiled, and your sparkler fizzled out too and left that sharp burnt-metal smell hanging in the dark.

Then the first mortar went up.

It went with the deep gut-punch thump that you felt before you could hear, there was a beat of silence, and then the street cracked open into gold. The kids screamed. Your dad, out in the street, pumped a fist. Another went up, and another, red and then a strange greenish-white that hung and drifted, and the whole street tipped its face up.

You’d done this every year of your life and it still got to you, that first big one. You glanced sideways to see if it got him too, Leon’s face was turned up to the light, and for just a second, in the flash, he didn’t look careful at all. He just looked like a man watching fireworks. Then the light faded and his careful stare came back, but you saw it just for a moment.

“You want to shoot one off?” you asked.

He looked at you.

“Come on. My uncle is letting anyone who asks.” You were already standing, tugging his sleeve. “You seem like a guy who’s good with —” you gestured vaguely — “things that explode. I don’t know why. Vibe.”

Something in his face did that confused thing again.”Vibe,” he repeated.

You nodded and he let you pull him up.

Out in the street your uncle handed Leon the lighter with the gravity of passing on a sacred trust, and talked him through it at length despite Leon very obviously not needing to be talked through it. Leon crouched by the tube, lit the fuse in one clean motion, and stepped back at exactly the right distance before the thing screamed up and burst into a huge crackling willow of gold that pulled an “ohhh” out of the whole yard. He came back to you with the ghost of a grin he was trying to suppress, and you bumped your shoulder into his.

“You look like you’ve done that before.”

“Maybe once or twice.” He said smiling.

You did one too, mostly so he'd watch you do it, and he did, and you fumbled the lighter and when he caught your wrist to steady the flame it made your heart skip a beat. The mortar went up casting a myriad of sparkles and colors that lit up the street. You came back and sat down in the grass next to him even closer this time, your arm against his arm and neither of you moved away. The finale started building over the street, flashes of light, explosions overlapping the sky. The noise and the light made you extremely aware of every point where his body touched yours.

Leon didn’t know you well. It had been only a few days, one party and a handful of jokes. But he’d laughed more this afternoon than he could remember laughing in a while, and he liked your mouth when you were being a smartass, which was often. He liked that you didn’t ask too many questions or pry at his personal life. You just let him be a normal guy at a barbecue, which was one of the reasons why he moved two thousand miles away. He wasn’t thinking any of that in words. He was mostly aware that you were warm against his side and that you’d be gone tomorrow, and that both of those facts were becoming difficult to ignore.

The finale broke over the street in a kaleidoscope of colors, the sounds echoing and thundering through the suburbs, if it was any other holiday someone might mistake it as a warzone. Everybody was cheering and under the sparkles of light you turned your head and found Leon already looking at you.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

The party started to die down. The kids crashed. A few of the people down the street were popping off the last of their fireworks down the street. Chairs were folded and stowed away. The cooler was much lighter now and got hauled back around the house.

Somewhere in the winding-down you and Leon had drifted to the edge of it. Both of you were loose and easy after you had a couple more beers. The careful thing in him worn down soft by the beer and the night and your company.

“I should let you go,” You said not moving.

“Yeah,” he said and didn’t move either.

You stood there and looked down. You started rubbing circles over the lip of your beer, you really didn’t want to go. You wanted to know more about Leon. You were trying to think of a way to keep him around for the night but nothing came to you.

“Hey,” Leon said. “I could show you what I’ve been working on.”

Something inside you lit up and you looked up to meet his gaze. “Yeah.” a soft smile formed on your face. “I’d like that.”

You both made your way to his house next-door. You were walking down in the dark with him, the smell of gunpowder still hanging over the whole street, and his hand had found the small of your back at some point to steer you around a stray lawn chair. His hand stayed there warm through your shirt and it made your heart flutter.

His porch light was on. The dog lost its mind on the other side of the door and Leon shushed it through the wood and let you both in. The house was dark and half-torn-apart and smelled like sawdust and fresh paint, plastic sheeting hanging in the doorway to the gutted kitchen. He didn’t turn on many lights. He put the dog out in the fenced backyard and came back to find you standing in his half-finished living room among the drop cloths and the stacked tools. For a second you just looked at each other across the dark.

“So, you go back tomorrow,” he said.

“Yeah, tomorrow.” You nodded.

“Tomorrow.” he repeated, his voice was low. He crossed the room to you.

His hand came up to the side of your face, carefully and tenderly. “I know I just met you and you’re leaving but I’ve wanted to kiss you all night.”

You looked up at him meeting his gaze. You looked down at his lips and back up to his eyes. You grabbed at his t-shirt giving him the invitation. The first press of his mouth was soft like he was still questioning it. You hand moved to cup his jaw and pulled him in closer.

He kissed like he did everything else, unhurried and deliberate and then suddenly all the held-back care burned off. His hand slid back into your hair and tilted your head and kissed you deeply. You made a sound against his mouth unintentionally and he groaned softly in response, the sound vibrating into your chest. He backed you a few steps until your back hit the bare stretch of wall between the plastic sheeting and the front window, he crowded in close, one hand braced by your head and the other cupped warm at your jaw like you were something he was being careful of.

“This okay,” he said against your mouth, his voice a little gravely and rough.

“Yes, it’s okay.” You pulled him back into you by his shirt. “Stop being so careful.”

He huffed a laugh into the kiss and kissed you more fervently this time before pulling away again.

“Where are you going?” Leon asked.

“East coast, my job’s there.” You pulled him in again pressing your lips against his and tracing his bottom lip with your tongue. He responded by softly biting your lip and swiping his tongue against yours.

Leon went back kissing you deeply again. His hand left your face and found your hip. He pulled you off the wall and your pelvis was flush against his. You could feel the whole hard line of him, the heat coming off him through his jeans. Your hands went under his shirt to the warm skin of his back and he shuddered at that, involuntarily. He dropped his mouth to your jaw, your throat, he found the spot under your ear that made your breath catch. The sawdust smell, the dark and the far-off pop of somebody’s fireworks outside. Everything started to go a little blurry but in a good way. There was just his mouth and his hands and the low sound he made when you dragged your nails lightly down his spine.

He got the hem of your shirt in his fingers and you lifted your arms and let him take it off you, you were wearing a black lace bra. He looked at you with something dark, warm and unguarded, the same unguarded thing you saw during the fireworks. Heat pooled low in your stomach and you could feel yourself getting slick. You reached for his shirt and he let you pull it over his head. The man looked like a greek god, his abs were perfectly sculpted and you gazed down at the V that followed down to his jeans. You traced it with your fingers in the low light and hooked your finger into the waistband of his jeans.

“You like what you see?” he asked.

You nodded and started peppering kisses along his jaw and down his neck. The smell of him was something musky and cedary, it was intoxicating. You went back up to his lips and pressed harshly and he made a rough sound. He started walking you back toward the hall.

“Bed’s the one room I finished,” he murmured against your mouth. You let out a breathy laugh and let him lead you into the dark.

His bedroom was plain and half-unpacked. There was a bed and a nightstand. He laid you back and followed you down, taking his time now in a different way, the urgency was something slower and more deliberate. He was mapping you with his hands and mouth, learning what made you arch. He was kissing you while his hand trailed up to your breasts, his hand cupped your still clothed breast and you let out a soft breathy moan. His thumb brushed slow circles over the lace, teasing the peak of your nipple until it tightened under his touch. You arched into his palm with a soft, breathy sound, and he swallowed it in with another kiss. He kissed you deeper and slower like he was savoring every second.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you. The dim light from the hallway caught in his eyes, turning them darker and softer. “Still okay?” he asked, voice low and rough at the edges.

You smiled and nodded, fingers sliding into his silver-streaked hair at his temple. “More than okay.” You pulled him down. “If you ask me one more time I’m going home tonight.”

He grinned at you and dipped his head. His lips tracing down your throat, across your collarbone, and lower. He unclasped your bra with one hand, slid the straps down your arms, and let it fall somewhere off the side of the bed. For a moment he just looked at your now bare breasts.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

Then his mouth was on you. It was warm, wet and gentle. He took one nipple between his lips and sucked softly, tongue flicking, while his hand cupped and kneaded the other. You gasped, hips shifting restlessly against the mattress. He took his time, moving between them, learning what made your breath catch, what made your fingers tighten in his hair. Every pull of his mouth sent sparks straight between your legs.

When he finally kissed lower down to the center of your stomach, tongue dipping into your navel. His hands were already at the button of your shorts. He unbuttoned them and hooked his thumbs in the waistband and drew both shorts and panties down in one smooth motion, helping you kick them off the rest of the way. Cool air kissed your bare skin before he settled between your thighs, big hands gentle as he parted them. He looked at you like something religious, like you were to be worshipped.

He then lowered his head.

The first slow drag of his tongue made your whole body jolt. He licked a long slow stripe from your entrance up to your clit, circling a few times before sealing his mouth over you. You moaned, loud in the quiet room, one of your hands flew to his hair. He hummed against you in approval and did it again slower and firmer. He slid two thick fingers inside and curled them just right.

He worked you with patient, focused attention. Tongue flicking and sucking your clit in steady rhythm while his fingers thrust deep and steady, finding that spot that made your thighs start to shake. You could feel how wet you were and you could hear the soft obscene sounds from his mouth and fingers working you. Pleasure coiled tighter and tighter until it snapped like an explosion.

“Leon– oh— fuck—”

Your orgasm hit hard, back arching clean off the bed, a broken cry tearing out of you as your walls fluttered and clenched around his fingers. He didn’t stop, he just gentled everything, soft licks and slow thrusts from his fingers carrying you through it until you were twitching and oversensitive. You were panting his name like a prayer.

He kissed his way back up your body, letting you taste yourself on his tongue when he kissed you again. You reached down between you, found the hard line of him still trapped in his jeans, and palmed him through the denim. He groaned into your mouth, hips pushing into your hand.

You unbuttoned his jeans and shoved them down with his boxers at the same time. His cock sprang free. It was thick and flushed dark at the head with some precum already gathered at the tip. You wrapped your hand around him, stroked him slowly from base to tip, and he dropped his forehead to your shoulder with a rough sound.

“Careful,” he warned, voice strained. “I’ve been thinking about this since you showed up at my door.”

You smiled, stroked him again, firmer. “Then stop thinking.”

He caught your wrist gently, kissed the inside of it, then reached into the nightstand drawer. The condom packet crinkled. He rolled it on with quick practiced hands, then settled back over you, the heavy heat of him resting against your slick entrance.

He rubbed the head of his cock through your folds, coating himself, teasing your clit with every slow pass. His eyes stayed locked on yours the whole time.

His thumb stroked your cheek and you wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him closer. “Fuck me, please.”

He pushed in slow giving you every inch, watching your face for any sign of discomfort. The stretch burned in the best way, filling you completely until his hips were flush against yours. He stayed there for a long moment, forehead pressed to yours, breathing hard.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “You feel… amazing.”

You clenched around him experimentally and he groaned, low and deep in his chest.

He started to move with slow deep thrusts, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in, dragging against every sensitive spot inside you. You met him with the roll of your hips, hands sliding up his back, feeling the flex of muscle under warm skin. He kissed you thoroughly, messy, deep, and sometimes just breathing warm against your mouth.

The rhythm built gradually, still controlled but growing more and more urgent. His hand found yours and laced your fingers together beside your head. The other gripped your hip, angling you just right so every thrust hit deep and perfect. The room filled with the wet sound of him moving inside you, the soft slap of skin, the occasional distant booms from outside and your shared gasps and low moans.

The pressure of his pelvis against your clit and that perfect angle hitting all of the right spots made your orgasm build faster than the first.

“Leon— I’m close—-”

He panted against your neck and slipped his hand between your bodies. His fingers finding your clit and rubbing in tight, steady circles in time with his thrusts.

It pushed you over. You came with a sharp cry, body locking up around him, nails digging into his back as pleasure crashed through you in long, rolling waves. He followed you soon after, his hips stuttering, a rough groan of your name against your shoulder as he buried himself deep and came, cock pulsing inside the condom.

For a long moment neither of you moved, just breathing together, hearts hammering. Then he carefully pulled out, disposed of the condom from the nightstand, and came back with a warm, damp cloth. He cleaned you gently, tenderly, pressing soft kisses to your inner thigh, your hip and your stomach.

When he climbed back into bed he pulled you straight to his chest, one strong arm around your waist, the other stroking slow lines down your spine. He kissed your forehead, your temple, the corner of your eye.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, the same careful tone he’d used all night.

You nodded against his chest, tracing idle patterns over his heart. “Yeah. I’m more than okay.”

He held you closer, tucking your head under his chin. Outside, somewhere down the street, one last firework popped and fizzled. His fingers kept stroking your back in long, soothing passes.

After what felt like an hour cuddling in bed, you got up and grabbed your shorts and bra that were strewn on the floor. You threw them both on.

“You leaving?” Leon asked.

“Yeah, I gotta get up early in the morning. Don’t wanna miss my flight.”

“Ah.” he nodded and looked out the window like he was debating something.

You crawled back into the bed and asked for Leon’s phone. “Here let me put my number in your phone.”

Leon grabbed his phone from the nightstand and handed it to you. You put your number in with your name, you considered putting an emoji next to your name but decided against it.

“So. you’ll be back for Christmas?” He asked.

“Yes, Christmas.” You tried to hold back a smile but failed. "Feel free to text me though. I know it's not the same considering I'll be like two thousand miles away but I'd like to see the progress on the house."

"Oh, and here." You spotted your black lacy panties by the foot of the bed, scooped them up, and pressed them into his hand. "Consider it a housewarming gift."

Leon let out a breathy laugh and closed his palm around them. "Do you need me to walk you home?"

“No.” You shook your head. “I don’t think much will happen from your front door to my parents’. But thank you.”

You slid off the bed again and made your way to the living room. Leon followed you shortly after with only his boxers on. You managed to find your t-shirt on the floor and Leon let the dog back inside. His paws scrambled on the slick hardwood and came tumbling towards you as you put your shirt back on. “Hey! I gotta go, buddy.” You scratched the top of his head and underneath his chin and gave him one final pat. Leon was smiling watching you but there was something behind it that didn't quite match the smile, or maybe he was just tired.

You reached for the front door and opened it. “Bye, Leon.”

“Bye.”

He closed the door behind you.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

He watched you out of the window just to make sure you got home safely. When he saw that you closed the door to your parents house he let out a relieved sigh. He then leaned down to pet the dog that was lying at his feet.

"Hey.." he scratched the top of his head. "How does Buddy sound?"

The dog barked at Leon and rolled over.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "I think Buddy is good too."

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