Wherever you go, I go too - chapter 2 (prequel)
Summary of story : Six years is a long time to mourn someone who isn’t dead. Right after coming back from Spain, Leon is sent to rescue a doctor at a quarantined hospital tied to a new Umbrella virus. The mission turns deadly when he discovers you’re alive, and behind you standas a terrified six-year-old girl who has the same blue eyes he has.
Tags : childhood best friends to lovers, mutual pining, complicated relationships ,exes to lovers , slow burn and i genuinely mean it (after raccoon city) , fluff , angst ,smut / explicit sexual content , blood and violence, abuse of alchohol, emotionally constipated leon, mentions of y/n because i dont like putting oc names .also not proofread so im sorry if there are any grammatical errors, etc pls let me know!
Warnings : explicit sexual content, virginity loss, passionate sex , creampie but reader's on the pill lmao
Notes : ao3 link . this fanfic will explore the entirety of reader and leon's life together as the dates of each chapter go on and throughtout the main games that focus on leon, them being RE2R(prequels), RE4R(main story) and RE9 at the very final chapters.
Reader is Leon's ex gf from RE2 in this btw. This chapter serves as a Prequel . 2/3 before the main story starts
Little did you know how much your life could change since July.
Your new house sat tucked into a fold of the Pennsylvanian hillside like something that had grown there rather than been built, those warm terracotta walls, a roof of curved clay tiles, windows set deep into stucco that glowed amber when the afternoon light hit it just right. Carmen , your mother, had found it through a real estate agent who'd blinked twice when she'd said she wanted it to have a Tuscan architecture , ten minutes from Raccoon City. But she always got what she wanted. That was the thing about becoming Secretary of Health and Human Services under a presidential appointment. That was the thing about her altogether, really, long before the White House ever called.
You'd been in the house for three weeks now. Three weeks of terracotta and wrought-iron light fixtures and a mother who materialized in doorways like she'd been conjured there.
It had started at the end of August. You remembered the call, Carmen's voice on the phone, that particular pitch of excitement she got when something was going to change and she expected you to be excited too. Appointed by the President. She'd said it like she was announcing Christmas. And you'd been proud, genuinely proud, because your mother worked decades for this and she deserved it. But then the moving trucks came. Then the security detail that lingered at the end of the driveway. Then the way your mother looked at you differently, like you'd become something fragile that needed to be kept in a cabinet and taken out only when she decided it was safe.
The divorce between your parents had become final in June. Your father had moved to somewhere in Washington DC. and your mother had moved upward, and you'd been caught somewhere in the middle, a college sophomore who suddenly found her life being orchestrated by someone who now had the resources to orchestrate very thoroughly.
Biology textbooks.A shitton of them. That was what you'd told Leon.
You were sitting on the edge of the bed now, notebook open on your lap, the lamp casting a yellow circle across the pages. The curtains were drawn. The house was quiet in that particular way it got after 9 PM, when your mother had finally retreated to her bedroom with a glass of wine and a stack of policy briefs and you could almost pretend you were alone.
The notebook was open to a diagram of cellular respiration. You'd been staring at it for twenty minutes. The words blurred together, mitochondria, ATP, electron transport chain and you kept thinking about how Leon had looked at you yesterday when you'd told him you couldn't meet for coffee. The way his jaw had tightened, just slightly. The way he'd said okay like he was trying to figure out if it was really okay or if you were pulling away from him on purpose again.
You weren't. That was the thing. You weren't pulling away. You were being pulled.
Carmen's voice drifted up from downstairs,she was on the phone with someone from D.C., with that professional tone of hers. You couldn't make out the words, just the cadence, that authority she'd perfected over the years. It bounced off the terracotta walls and climbed the stairs and settled in your room like a reminder that you were never really out of earshot.
Two months. You and Leon had been together for almost two months now. The academy graduation had been in July,and it was so crowded , the kind of ceremony where everyone's families were packed into folding chairs and the air conditioning couldn't keep up. You'd gone to watch him walk across the stage, to see the moment he became something he'd been working toward since high school. And afterward, afterward, when the crowds had thinned and you finally had gotten to courage to talk to him again
That had been the day. The day everything that had been simmering between you since childhood finally boiled over.
You'd known Leon since you were both kids. Grown up on the same streets, gone to the same schools, danced around the same unspoken feelings for years. He'd been the boy who sat three rows ahead of you in eighth grade science. The one who'd defended you against Tommy Hargrove at the spring dance when Tommy had said something about your dress. The one who'd called you three times after you'd gotten into a car accident senior year, even though you hadn't told anyone about it and you still didn't know how he'd found out.
It had always been there. That tension. That awareness. The way your eyes found each other across a room without either of you meaning to.
But you'd both been too careful. Too scared of ruining whatever it was you already had.
And then graduation day happened.
Two months. It felt like longer and shorter all at once.
The first few weeks had been easy. Leon was still figuring out his upcoming job at the RPD, he'd requested himself to be assigned to the Raccoon City Police Department, which was close enough that he could drive over on his days off. He'd come to the house and your mother would smile at him in that way she had, polite and assessing, and you'd sit on the back patio and talk until the fireflies came out. He'd tell you about the academy, about some other officers, about the strange things that were starting to happen in Raccoon City that people whispered about but nobody would confirm. You'd tell him about your biology program, about the professors who already knew your mother's name, about the pressure of having a parent in the federal government.
It had been good. So good that sometimes you forgot to be scared.
But then Carmen's security protocols had gotten tighter. Her check-ins had gotten more frequent. The questions about where you were going and who you were seeing had started to feel less like concern and more like surveillance. And Leon, Leon had started to notice it all.
You'd seen it in his eyes last week when he'd come over and your mother had insisted on sitting in the living room with you the entire time, reading a book and pretending not to listen. He hadn't said anything wrong. He was polite that way. But you'd felt the weight of it, the way the air in the room had changed, the way his hand had rested on your knee under the blanket and then pulled away when Carmen looked up.
The notebook in your lap. You blinked and the words came back into focus. Cellular respiration. The process by which cells convert glucose into energy. You'd been studying biology since you were sixteen, you were good at it, you loved it even, but right now you couldn't have explained the Krebs cycle if someone put a gun to your head.
Because your mind was somewhere else. It was in the parking lot after graduation. It was in the back of Leon's car when he'd kissed you and you'd felt something break open in your chest. It was in all the nights since then when you'd lain awake in this bed, in this house, and thought about what it would be like to—
The question had been circling you for weeks now. You were twenty years old and you'd never—you'd had that one situation. Brian. If you could even call him a boyfriend. He had gotten pretty close to you during your senior year in highschool , and he'd smiled at you in the library and you'd been so desperate for something that wasn't your mother's constant presence that you'd said yes to coffee, yes to dinner, yes to whatever this was going to be. It had lasted barely four months. He'd kissed you with too much tongue and not enough patience. He'd never asked what you wanted. And when it ended, when you finally told him you couldn't do this anymore, he'd shrugged and said okay in a way that made you realize he'd never really been there in the first place.
So you were still a virgin. Not because you'd been waiting for marriage or because you had some moral objection to sex or because you didn't want it. You wanted it. You thought about it constantly, more in the past few months than you ever had before, your mind making up fantasies that you'd constructed from books and movies and the things your roommate senior year had whispered about in the dark of the dorm room.
But wanting something and knowing how to get it were different things. And every time you tried to imagine how it would happen with Leon, your brain short-circuited.
The front door opened. You heard it from upstairs, the sound of the lock turning, the hinges creaking in that way they always did, the soft thud of it closing again.
Carmen's voice cut off mid-sentence. Then she said something you couldn't quite hear, something about finally and we were expecting you and she's upstairs.
Your heart did something complicated in your chest. A skip. A stutter.
You looked down at your notebook. Mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell. You forced your eyes to stay on the page even as the footsteps got closer, even as the door to your room, which you'd left cracked open because your mother didn't like closed doors, swung wider.
He was standing in the doorway in jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, his hair still damp at the edges like he'd showered before coming over. His jaw had the faint shadow of stubble that always appeared around this time of day. And he was smiling, that particular smile he had, the one that was half hello and half question, like he was asking you how you were without having to say the words.
"Hey," you said back, and your voice came out steadier than you felt. "You're early."
"Traffic was light." He stepped into the room, and the space seemed to shrink around him. "Your mom let me in."
"Did she give you the speech?"
"The one about how I need to focus on my studies and not get distracted."
Leon's mouth twitched. "She might have mentioned something about it."
You groaned and let your head fall back against the headboard. "She's going to drive me insane.God."
"You know,she's probably just worried about you."
"She's suffocating me, Leon."
The words came out sharper than you'd intended, and you saw something flicker in Leon's expression. He didn't say anything for a moment. Just stood there, hands in his pockets, looking at you with those blue eyes that always seemed to see more than you wanted them to.
Then he crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, careful, like he wasn't sure he was allowed to be there.
"Hey.Talk to me," he said.
"About whatever's been going on. You've been—" He paused, choosing his words. "You've been somewhere else lately."
You closed the notebook. The mitochondria could fucking wait by this point.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I know I've been weird. It's just—" You gestured vaguely at the room, the house, everything. "This."
"My mom. The move. The constant—" You searched for the word. "Supervision. I feel like I'm in a fishbowl, Leon. Like I can't do anything without her watching."
"Is she still doing the thing where she checks on you every hour?"
"Every. forty-five. minutes . I literallly fucking timed it."
Leon let out a breath. "That's—"
"Insane. Yes. Thank you."
He reached out and took the notebook from your hands, setting it on the nightstand. Then his hand found yours, his fingers lacing through your own, and something in your chest unclenched just a little.
"Why didn't you tell me it was getting this bad?"
"Because what are you going to do about it? You can't exactly tell the Secretary of Human Services to back off."
You laughed, and it came out a little watery. "Yeah and then you'd be arrested."
He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, that you felt tears prick at the corners of your eyes. You blinked them back before they could fall.
"I just miss you," you said quietly. "I miss being able to see you without having to get permission first. I miss—" You stopped.
Miss being able to touch you without someone watching. Miss being able to kiss you without wondering if my mother is going to walk in on us. Miss the way things were before everything got so complicated.
"Just miss you," you said instead.
Leon's thumb traced a circle on the back of your hand. His skin was warm. He was always warm, you'd noticed that early on—like his body ran a few degrees hotter than everyone else's. In the winter, when you'd been just friends, you'd sit next to him at the diner and feel the heat radiating off him and wonder what it would be like to be wrapped up in it.
"I have an idea," Leon said.
"The kind where I could..come over tomorrow and actually help you with biology instead of just watching you stress about it."
"You've been staring at the same page for ten minutes.Don't lie in my face."
"That's not stress. That's—concentration."
You shoved his shoulder, and he grinned, and for a moment everything felt normal again. The way it used to. The way it was supposed to be.
"Fine," you said. "Tomorrow. You can come over and quiz me on cellular respiration and watch me fail miserably."
"You're not going to fail."
"You have a lot of faith in me."
"I do have a lot of faith in you,actually." Leon said, and the teasing edge dropped out of his voice, and suddenly the room felt very small and very quiet and very much like it was just the two of you in the whole world.
He was still holding your hand.
You looked down at where your fingers were intertwined, his broader and rougher than yours, the knuckles slightly calloused from the academy training. A future cop's hands. It was still strange to think of him that way, as someone who was going to carry a gun and wear a badge and be responsible for other people's safety. He'd always been Leon. Just Leon. The sweet boy who'd shared his lunch with you in third grade when you'd forgotten yours. The teenager who'd taught you how to drive stick shift in the empty parking lot behind the grocery store. The man who'd kissed you on his graduation night and made everything you'd ever felt for him suddenly make sense.
"You should go," you said, even though you didn't want him to. "Before my mom comes up here to make sure we're being 'appropriate.'"
Leon's jaw tightened, but he nodded. He knew the rules. Carmen had made them very clear the first time Leon had come over after the move: doors open at all times, no staying past ten, and if she heard anything that sounded even remotely like, her words—inappropriate activity, the visit would end immediately and Leon wouldn't be welcome back for a month.
It was absurd. You were twenty years old. You were an adult. But your mother had framed it as a condition of you living in the house, and you didn't have the money to move out, and Leon was still waiting on his first real paycheck from the RPD, so you both just, endured it.
"I'll be here tomorrow," Leon said, standing up. "Around noon , okay?"
He hesitated a moment, like he wanted to say something else. Then he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead—quick, chaste, the kind of kiss that would pass Carmen's inspection—and headed for the door.
"Thank you," you said. "For—you know. Putting up with all of this."
His expression softened. "You're worth it."
And then he was gone, his footsteps echoing down the stairs, the front door opening and closing, and you were alone again with your notebook and your mitochondria and the ghost of his hand in yours.
September 4, 1998. Friday.
The coffee had gone cold an hour ago.
You'd made it at eleven-thirty, right before Leon was supposed to arrive, and now it was sitting on your desk in a ceramic mug with a chip in the handle, a thin film forming on the surface. The afternoon light came through the windows in long amber strips, cutting across the hardwood floor, catching the dust motes that floated lazily through the air.
Leon had shown up at noon exactly. You'd heard his Jeep pull into the driveway, heard the front door open and heard your mother's voice greeting him in the entryway. She'd been polite ,she was always polite—but you'd caught the edge underneath, the warning. She's in her room. The door stays open. I'll check in later.
He'd come upstairs with two cups of coffee from the place in town, the one you liked, the one that made the lattes with the little leaf patterns on top. He'd handed you yours and said, "Figured you'd need reinforcements."
And then the studying had begun.
The biology program was so intense. You'd known that when you'd chosen it, known that you were signing up for years of cellular biology and organic chemistry and anatomy and physiology, all of it building toward medical school if you could keep your grades high enough. But knowing something and living it were different things. The textbook on your desk was 1208 pages. The syllabus was fifteen pages long. And you'd been staring at the same chapter on enzymatic reactions for three hours, trying to memorize the function of every enzyme in the glycolytic pathway, and your brain had started to feel like it was made of cotton.
"Okay," Leon said, leaning back in the desk chair he'd pulled up next to your bed. "Hexokinase."
"First step of glycolysis. Phosphorylates glucose to glucose-6-phosphate."
"Good. Phosphofructokinase."
"Regulatory enzyme. Commits the cell to glycolysis. Uses ATP."
"Correct. And what inhibits it?"
"Citrate and ATP. Activated by AMP and fructose-2,6-bisphosphate."
Leon raised an eyebrow. "You actually said that like it made sense."
"To you, maybe. I'm still stuck on how to pronounce 'phospho-fructokinase-?' "
You laughed, and the sound surprised you. It felt rusty, disused, like you hadn't laughed properly in days. Maybe you hadn't.
"Your turn," you said. "Quiz me on the ETC."
"Electron transport chain."
Leon flipped through the textbook with a bemused expression. "You know, when I offered to help you study, I thought we'd be doing ,I don't know, flashcards or something. Not—" He squinted at the page. "Cytochrome C oxidase?"
"I found something, anyway." He set the book down on his knee. "How much more of this do you have to get through?"
Leon let out a low whistle. "That's... a lot."
"You could take a break."
"You're not behind. You've been studying for five hours."
"Four hours and forty-five minutes. I'm counting."
You looked at him, really looked at him, and noticed for the first time how tired he seemed. Not in the obvious way—his eyes were still sharp, his posture still alert—but there was something around the edges, a weariness that settled into his shoulders when he thought you weren't watching.
"How's the RPD- From what you heard?" you asked, closing the textbook.
Leon hesitated. "It's... fine."
"That did not.. sound convincing."
"It's fine," he repeated. "Just—there's been some weird stuff happening lately."
He didn't answer right away. The afternoon light shifted, a cloud passing over the sun and then moving on, and the room dimmed and brightened and dimmed again.
"People going missing," he said finally. "Hikers. Campers. Couple of families on the outskirts of town. Nobody can figure out what's happening."
"Fifteen people in the last month. No bodies. No evidence. Just—gone."
A chill worked its way down your spine. "And the police aren't doing anything?"
"The police are doing everything they can. But whatever this is—" He shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. There's no pattern. No witnesses. It's like they just... vanished."
"Leon, that's terrifying."
"Yeah." He ran a hand through his hair, and you noticed again how it was still slightly damp at the ends, like he'd showered right before coming over. "I know."
"Is that why you've been so—" You paused, searching for the right word.
"I don't know. Distant, I guess. The past few days."
The look he gave you was sharp with surprise and something softer underneath, something that made your stomach flip. "I could say the same about you."
A beat of silence. The clock on your nightstand ticked. Somewhere downstairs, Carmen's footsteps moved from the kitchen to the living room and back again.
"I'm sorry," you both said at almost the same time, and then you both laughed, and the tension that had been coiling between you all week finally started to ease.
"I've been so wrapped up in this," you said, gesturing at the textbooks. "And my mom. And everything. I haven't been—I haven't been very available."
"You don't have to apologize for having a life."
"But I want to be available. For you. I want—" You stopped. The words were right there, on the tip of your tongue, but saying them out loud felt like stepping off a cliff.
"I want to see you more," you said finally. "I want to be able to just—be with you. Without my mother fucking hovering. Without the textbooks. and worrying about everything."
"It's just hard right now."
He reached out and took your hand again, the way he had two days ago, his fingers weaving through yours with an ease that felt practiced and precious all at once. Two months. You'd been together two months, and every time he touched you, it still felt like the first time—that electric jolt, that warmth spreading through your chest, that awareness of every point of contact between his skin and yours.
"We could do something tonight," Leon said. "After you're done studying."
"My mom will never let me leave."
"Who said anything about leaving?"
You turned to look at him, and there was something in his expression now that hadn't been there a moment before. A kind of nervous anticipation, like he was about to suggest something and wasn't sure how you'd react.
"I could stay," he said. "Late. After your mom goes to bed."
"She checks on me at eleven."
"Then I'll be very quiet."
The suggestion hung in the air between you, loaded with everything you'd both been wanting and not saying. Leon staying late. After Carmen was asleep. In your room. With the door closed.
"I don't know if that's a good idea," you said, even though every part of you was screaming yes.
"It's just a bad idea, then."
"If you don't want me to, I won't. But I thought—" He paused, and you saw him weighing his words, choosing them carefully. "I thought maybe we both needed a night where we didn't have to worry about anything. Just us. Like it used to be."
Like it used to be. Before Carmen's appointment. Before the security protocols. Before your life had become something that belonged to everyone except you.
"Alright," you said, and the word came out quieter than you'd intended, almost a whisper. "Thank you,really."
By 07:47 PM , the studying was done.
Leon had made good on his promise to help, quizzing you on enzyme pathways until you could recite them in your sleep, making up mnemonic devices that were so ridiculous you'd never forget them. Pretty Fat Cats Eat Mice for the steps of the citric acid cycle. Cats Are Purring for citrate and ATP. You'd laughed so hard at one point that Carmen had called up the stairs to ask if everything was all right.
The shower afterward had been a relief—hot water beating down on your shoulders, washing away the tension of the day, the steam filling the bathroom until the mirror fogged over and the edges of everything went soft. You'd stood under the spray longer than necessary, letting your mind drift, thinking about what Leon had said.
Just us. Like it used to be.
But it wasn't like it used to be. Not really. Because the thing that had been building between you and Leon since childhood had finally found its release on his graduation day, and now every moment alone together felt charged with possibility. It was there in the way he looked at you across the dinner table. In the way his hand brushed yours when he passed you the salt. In the way your heart beat faster whenever you heard his car pull into the driveway.
You'd thought about it more than you wanted to admit. What it would be like. What he would be like. Whether he'd be patient or intense or some combination of both. Whether he'd be able to read your body the way he seemed to read everything else about you, picking up on the things you couldn't say out loud.
Brian had never learned to read you. Brian had barely tried. But Leon—Leon noticed everything. Leon remembered the way you took your coffee and the name of your favorite childhood book and the exact day your parents' divorce had been finalized. Leon had held your hand at graduation and looked at you like you were the only person in the world.
You turned off the shower and wrapped yourself in a towel. The mirror was still fogged over, obscuring your reflection, and you were glad for it. You didn't want to see yourself right now. Didn't want to see the nervous flush on your cheeks or the way your eyes had gone dark with anticipation.
Dinner was simple, pasta that you'd thrown together while Leon sat at the kitchen island and told you about the academy, about the physical training and the weapons certification and the one instructor who'd made everyone run laps until someone threw up. You'd eaten at the small table in the dining nook, your knees bumping under the table, the conversation easy and familiar.
"Is it everything you thought it would be?" you asked, twirling spaghetti around your fork.
"The academy. The police stuff that's waiting for you. All of it."
Leon considered the question. "It's harder," he said finally. "In ways I wasn't expecting."
"There's a lot of—gray area. Things that aren't as simple as the training manuals make them seem. People who need help but can't ask for it. Situations where the right choice isn't obvious." He set his fork down. "I thought it would be more black and white."
You reached across the table and put your hand over his. "You'll figure it out. You're good at figuring things out."
"You have a lot of faith in me."
"I have a lot of faith in you too," you said, echoing his words from two days ago, and the smile he gave you was so warm it made your chest ache.
Carmen appeared at the bottom of the stairs when dinner was done, her reading glasses perched on her nose, a thick binder tucked under her arm. The Secretary of Human Services, even at eight o'clock on a Friday night, still working.God.
"You two all done?" she asked, her eyes moving between you and Leon.
"For now," you said. "We're going to head upstairs. More studying to do."
Carmen's gaze lingered on Leon a moment longer than necessary. "Remember the rules."
"I remember."You said with a slightly annoyed tone.
"Good." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Leon, you're welcome to stay until ten. After that—"
"I'll be gone by ten," Leon said smoothly. "Promise."
Carmen nodded and retreated back up the stairs, her footsteps fading into the second-floor hallway. You waited until you heard the door to her study close before letting out a breath.
"More studying?" Leon murmured. "I thought we were done with that."
"We are. But she doesn't need to know that."
"Ah. So I'm an accomplice now."
The stairs creaked under your feet as you headed up to your room. The lamp was still on where you'd left it, the yellow light casting the same cozy glow it had all afternoon. Your notebook was still open on the bed. The coffee mugs were still on the desk.
Leon closed the door behind him. Not all the way—just enough that if Carmen came upstairs, she wouldn't immediately notice anything was wrong. But enough that the room felt private, cocooned, separated from the rest of the house in a way that made your pulse quicken.
"I'm going to shower," he said. "If you don't mind."
"Go ahead. Towels are in the cabinet."
He disappeared into the bathroom, and you heard the water start running a moment later. You stood in the middle of the room, suddenly unsure what to do with yourself. Sit on the bed? Wait at the desk? Pretend to keep studying?
You ended up on the bed, propped against the headboard, the textbook open in your lap more for the illusion of productivity than anything else. You could hear Leon moving around in the bathroom, the shower curtain pulling closed, the water splashing against the tile, the faint sound of him humming something you didn't recognize.
He hummed in the shower. Of course he did.
You tried to focus on the textbook. Glycolysis. The Krebs cycle. The electron transport chain. But the words swam in front of your eyes, and all you could think about was that Leon was ten feet away from you, naked, water running down his shoulders, and in a few minutes he was going to walk out of that bathroom and—
Nothing. Nothing because your mother was downstairs and the door was supposed to be open and the rules were clear and nothing was going to happen.
Except you didn't want nothing to happen. You wanted something to happen. Something you'd been thinking about for weeks now, months, maybe longer, maybe since you were sixteen years old and had realized that the way you felt about Leon Kennedy wasn't just friendship.
The bathroom door opened.
Steam rolled out into the bedroom, curling through the lamplight like something alive. And Leon stepped out—towel wrapped low around his hips, hair dripping water onto his shoulders, the muscles of his chest and stomach still glistening from the shower. His skin was flushed from the heat. The mint smell of his shampoo filled the room. He was rubbing the back of his neck with a second towel, not looking at you yet, and you had a moment—a single suspended second—where you could look at him without him knowing.
His shoulders were broader than you remembered. Stronger. The academy had changed him physically, put muscle on his frame, sharpened the lines of his body into something that made your mouth go dry. The towel sat low on his hips, and beneath it, the defined V of his abdomen—a line of soft hair trailing downward that you couldn't help but follow with your eyes until you caught yourself and looked away, heart hammering.
And then he looked up and saw you staring.
"What?" he asked, his voice light, teasing. "Something on my face?"
"No." Your voice came out hoarse, barely recognizable. "You're fine."
You didn't answer. You couldn't. The notebook was still open on your lap, but you weren't seeing it anymore. You were seeing Leon. Leon in a towel. Leon crossing the room toward you. Leon's eyes doing that thing where they flicked down to your mouth and then back up to your eyes, and it was just a glance, just a fraction of a second, but you noticed.
"Still studying?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. The towel shifted. You kept your eyes resolutely on his face.
"You're staring at the same sentence you were staring at an hour ago."
"I’m just- stuck a bit.It's a very interesting sentence."
Leon laughed, and the sound was low and warm and made something flutter in your stomach. "Let me see that."
He reached over and before you could react, he'd plucked the notebook from your hands. You made a sound of protest—hey—and lunged for it, but he held it out of reach, grinning.
"You need to relax," he said, and suddenly the teasing dropped out of his voice. "You've been going nonstop since I got here. The program doesn't start for another few days. You can afford one night off."
"I just want to be prepared."
"You are prepared. You're more prepared than anyone in that program is going to be. You could probably teach the class yourself at this point."
"It is." He set the notebook on the nightstand, out of your reach, and turned back to face you. His expression was earnest now, the joking gone. "You're going to drive yourself into the ground before the semester even starts. And I don't—" He paused. Swallowed. "I don't like seeing you like this."
"Stressed. Exhausted. Like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and you can't put it down."
The words hit you somewhere in the chest, a place that was already tender from weeks of pressure and loneliness and wanting. Something in your face must have changed, because Leon's expression softened, and he shifted closer to you on the bed.
"I'm fine" you said, but it came out weaker than you'd intended.
"You don’t have to be fine all the time."
The room was very quiet now. The lamp hummed softly. Outside, the wind moved through the trees, rustling the leaves against the window. The terracotta walls seemed to hold the light differently now, warmer, more intimate.
And Leon was still sitting there in just a towel, his hair damp, his skin smelling of mint, looking at you with an intensity that made your breath catch.
The conversation died then, naturally, like a wave receding from the shore. Not an awkward silence—something else. Something that felt like anticipation. Like the moment before a storm breaks.
You were wearing a tank top and panties. You hadn't thought about it when you'd gotten dressed after the shower—you always wore this to bed, it was comfortable, it was normal. But now, with Leon sitting three feet away from you, bare-chested and towel-clad, the thin cotton of your tank top suddenly felt almost nonexistent. His eyes didn't drop below your face. He was careful that way. But you could feel the awareness in the air between you, the mutual acknowledgment of how little fabric separated your bodies.
Slowly, without meaning to, you found yourself sinking down against the headboard. Not lying down. Just shifting your weight, letting your spine curve, your shoulders relax against the pillows. Making space. Inviting him closer without saying a word.
His breathing changed—just slightly, a hitch he couldn't quite hide. His hand was resting on the mattress, inches from your thigh. You could feel the heat radiating off his skin, smell the mint and the clean masculine scent underneath it, see the way his pupils had dilated slightly in the dim light.
Closer. He moved closer. Not all at once—an incremental shift, like he was giving you time to stop him, to pull back, to say something. But you didn't stop him. You didn't pull back. You didn't say anything at all.
The mattress dipped again. Leon's weight settled lower on the bed, his body angled toward yours, his face now close enough that you could see the individual droplets of water clinging to his collarbone. The towel had loosened slightly. You tried not to look.
"Y/N" he said, and your name in his mouth was a question.
It was. It was so okay that you were trembling with it, the want so sharp and sudden it almost scared you. But you didn't know how to say that. You'd never known how to say that. So instead you just nodded, your throat too tight for words, and reached out to take his hand where it rested on the mattress.
His fingers were still damp from the shower. Warm. Familiar. They laced through yours without hesitation, his thumb pressing against your knuckles, and the contact sent a ripple of something through you—relief, desire, a kind of recognition that felt as old as your childhood and as new as this moment.
The lamp flickered once. Twice. And then steadied.
Leon's face was very close to yours now. You could see the faint scar on his chin from when he'd fallen off his bike in seventh grade. The way his eyelashes were slightly darker at the roots. The small mole just beneath his left ear that you'd noticed years ago and had secretly thought about ever since.
"You know.." he whispered.
His free hand came up to touch your face. Just his fingertips, grazing the curve of your jaw, trailing along the line of your cheekbone, and then his palm was cupping the side of your face and you were leaning into his touch without meaning to, your eyes fluttering closed.
When you opened them again, he was watching you with an expression that made your heart stutter.
"You're so beautiful," he said, like it was a fact. Like it was just an observation he'd happened to make, out loud, by accident.
And before you could say anything back—before you could deflect or demur or any of the things you usually did when someone paid you a compliment—the hand on your face was tilting your chin upward and Leon was kissing you and the world went very, very still.
It wasn't like the kisses at his graduation. Those had been desperate, starving, years of tension finally finding release. This was slower. More deliberate. His mouth moved against yours with a kind of reverence, a gentleness that made your chest ache, and your hand tightened around his where your fingers were still intertwined.
He tasted like mint. Like toothpaste. Like the coffee from earlier, a faint bitterness at the edges.
Your free hand came up to rest against his chest. His skin was still damp from the shower, warm under your palm, and you could feel his heartbeat, steady, a little faster than normal, but steady. The towel was slipping. You could feel it shifting against your thigh where his hip was pressed to yours.
And then he pulled back, just an inch, his forehead resting against yours, his breath mingling with yours in the small space between your mouths.
"Still okay?" he murmured.
You laughed. It came out breathless and a little shaky. "Yeah.’’
His thumb traced a path along your jaw. Down your neck. Stopping at the hollow of your throat where your pulse was hammering against your skin.
And then his mouth was on your neck, and your head fell back against the pillows, and somewhere in the back of your mind you remembered that the door wasn't fully closed, that your mother was still downstairs, that this was exactly what you'd been told not to do—
But Leon's lips were tracing a line from your throat to your collarbone, and his hand was still tangled with yours on the mattress, and the rest of the world felt very, very far away..
His lips traced a line from the hollow of your throat to the curve of your shoulder, slow and deliberate, and your head had fallen back against the pillows without you deciding to let it. The lamp on the nightstand threw a warm yellow circle across the bed, catching the still-damp ends of his hair, the shine of water droplets on his collarbone, the way the towel had slipped dangerously low on his hips.
Your hand was still tangled with his on the mattress. His thumb moved in small circles against your knuckles, a rhythm that matched the pace of his mouth on your skin, and somewhere in the back of your mind a voice that sounded a lot like your mother's was saying the door isn't closed, she could come up here, she could see—
But Leon's free hand had found your waist, his palm warm through the thin cotton of your tank top, and the voice got quieter and quieter until it was barely a whisper.
You'd been waiting for this. Weeks and weeks of wanting, of lying awake in this bed and imagining what it would feel like, of watching him across the dinner table and feeling the heat rise in your chest. Two months together and you'd barely done more than kiss—stolen moments in his car, quick presses of lips in the hallway when Carmen wasn't looking, the graduation night that had cracked something open between you but hadn't had time to explore what was inside.
And now here he was. Leon Kennedy. The boy who'd shared his lunch with you in third grade. The teenager who'd taught you to drive stick in the grocery store parking lot. The man who'd looked at you at graduation like you were the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.
His mouth moved lower. The strap of your tank top had slipped off your shoulder—had he done that, or had it fallen on its own? You couldn't remember. You couldn't remember anything except the heat of his lips and the weight of his hand on your waist and the way your heart was beating so hard you could feel it in your fingertips.
Leon lifted his head and looked at you.
His eyes were darker than usual, the blue going almost gray in the dim light, and there was a question in them that he didn't need to voice out loud. Is this okay? He'd asked it once already, minutes ago, before the first kiss. But he was asking again now, with his gaze and the slight hesitation in his posture, and you understood that he would keep asking. At every step. At every new threshold. He would keep checking to make sure you were still with him.
The thought made you want to cry.
Because Brian had never asked. Brian had taken what he wanted and left you feeling hollow, used, like your body was a thing that happened to rather than a thing you controlled. But Leon—Leon was looking at you now like your answer mattered more than anything else in the world.
"Yes," you whispered. "I'm okay."
He smiled. That particular smile he had, the one that was half relief and half something deeper, something that made your stomach flip. And then he was kissing you again, and this time it was different. This time the gentleness was still there, but underneath it something hungrier, something that had been restrained for too long and was finally being given permission.
The kiss deepened. His mouth opened against yours, his tongue brushing your lower lip, and you made a sound—a small, surprised sound that came from somewhere in the back of your throat—and your free hand came up to grip his shoulder. His skin was still damp. Still warm. The muscle beneath your fingers tensed and then relaxed, like he was consciously holding himself back.
The towel was barely there anymore. You could feel it shifting every time he moved, the fabric loosening, and your thigh was pressed against his hip and there was so much heat, so much skin, and it was overwhelming in a way that made your head spin.
Leon pulled back. Just an inch. His forehead rested against yours, his breath coming faster now, and his hand had moved from your waist to the curve of your hip, his thumb tracing small circles against the elastic of your panties.
A beat. Two beats. His thumb kept moving, that slow circle, and every nerve ending in your body seemed to be concentrated in that single point of contact.
And then something shifted in his expression. The hunger was still there, but something else was creeping in—concern, maybe, or curiosity. He was looking at you the way he looked at everything, like he was trying to figure out the pieces of a puzzle that hadn't been assembled yet.
"What's on your mind?" he asked.
The question landed in your chest like a stone dropped into still water. Ripples spread outward, disturbing everything they touched.
What was on your mind? How were you supposed to answer that? How were you supposed to say?
Oh, Leon, yeah, I know what sex is from the romance novels I read in high school when I felt so lonely I couldn't breathe, the ones I hid under my mattress and read by flashlight after my parents had gone to bed, the ones with heroines who always seemed to know exactly what to do and how to move and what to say, but in practice, in real life, I feel like I'm standing on the edge of something I've never actually seen up close?
The silence stretched. Leon waited. His hand had stilled on your hip, and his eyes were steady on yours, patient in a way that made your throat tight.
You thought about your father. About the joke he'd made at Christmas two years ago, when you'd been eighteen and hadn't ever brought anyone home, hadn't ever mentioned a boyfriend or a girlfriend, hadn't ever given any indication that you were interested in romance at all. ''Maybe she'll become a nun'', he'd said, laughing, like it was just a funny observation. And you'd laughed too, because what else were you supposed to do, but the words had stayed with you. Had burrowed into some soft part of you and made a home there.
A nun. Because you'd never had a boyfriend. Because your one attempt at a relationship had been Brian, and Brian had barely counted, and you'd never told either of your parents about him because what was there to tell? Hi, Mom and Dad, I'm seeing this guy who kisses me like he's trying to win a race and never asks what I want and makes me feel emptier after he leaves than I did before he arrived.
The memory burned. Here, now, in your bedroom with Leon's bare chest inches from yours and the lamp casting shadows across the terracotta walls, the memory of your father's joke felt like cold water down your spine.
You'd been so lonely. That was the thing. All those years of watching other girls date and flirt and figure things out, while you'd stayed on the sidelines, not because you didn't want it but because you didn't know how to ask. Because your mother's control had started long before the move to Pennsylvania, long before the security protocols, long before the hourly check-ins that made you feel like a prisoner in your own home. Carmen had always been there, watching, managing, shaping your life into something she could understand. And your father had joked about you becoming a nun, and you'd laughed, and neither of them had ever asked if maybe you were just scared.
Scared of wanting. Scared of being wanted. Scared of letting someone close enough to see how much you didn't know.
Leon was still waiting. His hand on your hip, his eyes on your face, his whole body held still like he was afraid that if he moved, he'd spook you.
"I've never—" you started, and then stopped.
The words wouldn't come. They were stuck somewhere between your brain and your mouth, blocked by a lifetime of not saying them. I've never done this. I don't know what I'm doing. I want you so much and I don't know how to show you.
Leon's thumb moved again, just a fraction, a tiny circle against your hip bone. Reassuring.
You swallowed. Tried again.
"I've never... you know. Done that."
The words came out barely above a whisper. Softer than you'd intended. So soft that for a moment you weren't sure he'd heard you.
Something changed in his face. Not surprise—or not just surprise. Something warmer. Something that made the tightness in your chest loosen just slightly. He didn't pull away. He didn't look uncomfortable. He didn't do any of the things you'd feared he might do.
It wasn't the teasing smile from earlier, the one he wore when he was quizzing you on enzyme pathways or stealing your notebook. It was something else entirely. Something tender and private and almost reverent, like you'd just given him a gift he hadn't expected.
"Y/N" he said, and your name in his mouth was soft.
He kissed you. Not the hungry kiss from before—this one was lighter. Briefer. His lips pressed against yours for a single heartbeat and then pulled back, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and steady and certain.
"It's okay," he said. "You don't have to worry about anything. Just follow me."
The words settled over you like a blanket. Just follow me. No pressure. No expectation. Just an invitation to move at your own pace, to let him guide you through the things you didn't know.
The tears that had been threatening since he'd first asked what was on your mind finally spilled over. Just one. Just a single tear slipping down your cheek, catching the lamplight, and Leon reached up to brush it away with his thumb.
"Hey," he murmured. "None of that."
"I'm sorry." The words came out watery. "I just—I wanted to tell you before. I wanted to tell you weeks ago, but I didn't know how."
He kissed you again. Longer this time. Slower. His hand moved from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading through your hair, and when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours and you could feel his breath on your lips.
"I'm on the pill," you said, the words tumbling out before you could stop them. "I've been on it for a while. My doctor prescribed it for—it doesn't matter why. I just. I wanted you to know."
The corner of Leon's mouth twitched. "Okay."
Relief washed through you so intensely that you laughed, a small breathless sound, and Leon laughed too, and for a moment you were just two people in a bedroom, holding onto each other, the tension of the past weeks dissolving into something lighter.
And then his mouth found your neck again.
This time, his hands moved with more purpose. The strap of your tank top slipped off your other shoulder, and this time you knew he'd done it—his fingers tracing the line of the fabric, easing it down, his lips following the path it left behind. Your skin prickled with goosebumps even though the room was warm. Every nerve ending seemed to have woken up at once, hypersensitive, attuned to the slightest pressure.
The tank top came off slowly. Leon's hands found the hem and lifted, and you raised your arms to help him, and then the cool air hit your chest and you had a moment of pure panic, a moment of wanting to cover yourself, because no one had ever seen you like this. Brian hadn't. Brian had barely bothered. But Leon—Leon was looking at you, and his expression made the panic fade almost as quickly as it had come.
"You're so beautiful," he said again, and this time it wasn't an observation. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the same certainty he'd used when telling you about the missing people in Raccoon City. Like he'd assessed the situation and reached a conclusion that wasn't up for debate.
His mouth descended. Kissing the swell of your breast. The curve of your ribcage. The soft skin just below your collarbone. And when his lips closed around your nipple, gentle and warm and so much more than you'd ever imagined, a sound escaped your throat—something between a gasp and a moan—and your back arched off the mattress without your permission.
Leon made a sound in response. Something low and satisfied. His tongue traced a circle and your hand tightened in his hair, and everything that had been theoretical, everything you'd only read about, everything you'd fantasized about in the dark of your dorm room—it was all suddenly real. Happening. Now.
He moved to the other breast, giving it the same attention, the same slow deliberate care, and your eyes fluttered closed. The lamp burned orange through your eyelids. The sheets were rumpled beneath you. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked, and you didn't care, you didn't care about any of it, because Leon's mouth was on your skin and his hand was sliding down your stomach and everything felt like it was happening in slow motion.
His lips trailed lower. Down your sternum. Over your belly. Pausing at the waistband of your panties, where the elastic met your hip. He pressed a kiss there, right above the fabric, his mouth lingering, his breath warm—and you felt the muscles in your stomach contract.
His hands found the waistband. Fingers hooking under the elastic. Pulling slowly, giving you time to stop him, to say something, to change your mind.
The panties slid down your legs. The fabric brushed your thighs, your knees, your ankles. And then they were gone, dropped somewhere off the side of the bed, and you were completely bare under the lamplight and Leon was still half-covered by a towel that had become more symbolic than functional.
He sat back for a moment. Just looking. His eyes traveled the length of your body and you felt exposed in a way that was terrifying and exhilarating and unlike anything you'd ever experienced. But before the fear could take hold, his hand found yours again. Fingers intertwining. Squeezing once.
You hadn't noticed when it happened—maybe when he'd shifted his weight, maybe when he'd reached for your hand—but suddenly it was gone, and Leon was as bare as you were, and your eyes dropped before you could stop them.
He was bigger than you'd expected.
That was your first coherent thought, surfacing through the fog of arousal and nerves. Bigger than the diagrams you'd seen in health class. Bigger than the vague descriptions in the romance novels. The tip was flushed red, and a bead of fluid—precum, the part of your brain supplied, the biology major who could name every step of the Krebs cycle—glistened at the tip.
Your heart was pounding so hard you could hear it in your ears.
Leon moved closer. His hand released yours and found your knee, gently nudging your legs apart, and you let him. The air hit places that had never been exposed like this, and the sensation was strange and vulnerable and so intimate that you had to resist the urge to close your eyes.
Two fingers. He brought them to his mouth, wet them with his tongue, and then lowered them between your legs. When they touched you—when they slid through the wetness that had gathered there, wetness you hadn't even realized was there—you gasped.
It was the second time. The second and final time he'd ask tonight, and you knew somehow that he meant it to be. That he'd asked at the beginning and he was asking now, at the threshold, and that after this, you'd be past the point of questions.
"Yes," you breathed. "Yes."
His fingers moved. Parting you. Exploring. Finding the places that made your hips jerk and your breath catch. And then one finger slid inside—gentle, so gentle, the pace almost agonizingly slow—and your head fell back against the pillows and a sound came out of your mouth that you didn't recognize.
He moved slowly at first. Finding a rhythm. Watching your face, reading your reactions, adjusting when your brow furrowed and continuing when your expression eased. A second finger joined the first, and the stretch was strange but not painful, a kind of fullness you'd never experienced, and his thumb found the sensitive spot above where his fingers were moving and—
Time did something strange.
It stretched. Compressed. Became meaningless.
Your hips were moving now, following the rhythm of his hand, and the pressure was building in a way that felt almost unbearable, a heat spreading outward from where his fingers touched you, and your hand was gripping his shoulder, your nails digging into his skin, and you were making sounds—small sounds, breathless sounds—and your eyes were closed and the lamp was orange through your eyelids and—
The climax hit you like a wave you hadn't seen coming.
Not a metaphor. An actual physical sensation—your body arching off the bed, your muscles clenching around his fingers, a cry tearing from your throat that was louder than you'd intended, louder than you'd ever allowed yourself to be. Leon's name, or something like it, or just a sound that meant yes and there and don't stop all at once.
And then it was over. And you were lying on the bed, breathing hard, staring up at the ceiling, and Leon was withdrawing his fingers, and the world was slowly piecing itself back together.
Your cheeks were wet. You hadn't noticed the tears. They weren't sad tears, though—they were the kind that came when something had been held inside for too long and finally, finally, found release.
"Hey," Leon said softly, and you realized you'd been silent for too long.
Your eyes focused on his face. He was looking at you with an expression that mixed satisfaction and concern and something deeper, something that made your heart ache.
"That was—" you started, and then stopped. There weren't words.
Leon's mouth curved. "Good?"
"Good." You laughed, and the laugh turned into something that was almost a sob. "So good. I didn't know—I didn't know it could be like that."
The words sent a fresh wave of heat through you. More. Of course there was more. His fingers were still glistening with you, and his cock was still hard against his stomach, and this was only the beginning.
A ridiculous thought surfaced. You giggled.
"I just—" You bit your lip, suddenly shy despite everything. "I can't believe I came that fast."
"Still. That was embarrassing."
"It wasn't embarrassing. It was—" He paused, searching for the word. "Beautiful."
And the way he said it, low and sincere and with his eyes holding yours, made you believe him.
A beat of silence. The lamp hummed. The curtains rustled in the breeze from the window.
"So," you said, and your voice came out steadier than you felt, "are you going to—I mean. Do you want to—"
"The real thing?" Leon finished, and there was a hint of the teasing smile back. "Yeah. If you're ready."
You nodded. Swallowed. "I am."
What happened next was a negotiation of bodies. The kind of awkward choreography that the romance novels never described, the shifting of limbs and the adjustment of pillows and the momentary pause when Leon realized his towel was still tangled around one ankle. He kicked it free and you laughed, and he laughed too, and the moment of levity made everything feel less monumental.
And then he was above you. His weight settling over you, his elbows braced on either side of your head, his hips between your thighs. The head of his cock pressed against you, hot and insistent, and you could feel yourself still slick from before, still sensitive, still ready.
Slow. So slow. An inch at a time, giving your body a chance to adjust, and the stretch was more intense than his fingers had been—fuller, deeper—and you bit your lip and gripped his shoulders and remembered to breathe. He stopped when he was fully seated, buried inside you, and for a moment you both just stayed there. Motionless. His forehead pressed to yours. His breath warm on your lips. The sensation of being filled so completely was overwhelming in a way that defied description—not just physical but emotional, a kind of closeness you'd never experienced, like he was touching something inside you that wasn't a body part at all.
"You okay?" Leon breathed.
"Yeah." The word came out shaky. "Yeah. Just—give me a second."
"Take all the time you need."
A few heartbeats passed. Your body adjusted. The initial intensity faded into something more manageable, and you realized that it didn't hurt—not really. Just felt strange. New. But good.
"Okay," you said. "You can move."
The first thrust was shallow and experimental, like he was testing the waters. The second was deeper. By the third, he'd found a rhythm—slow and steady and patient, exactly like he'd been with his fingers, like he'd been with everything tonight. His hips rolled against yours and the sensation built differently this time, less urgent but more profound, a deep pressure that seemed to resonate through your entire body.
He was watching you. Even now, even in the middle of it, he was watching your face, reading your reactions, adjusting his pace when you winced and continuing when your expression softened. And there was something about that—about being seen, about being paid attention to, about having someone care enough to notice the tiny shifts in your face—that made it so much more than just physical.
You wrapped your legs around his waist. The new angle changed something, made the next thrust hit a spot that made your breath catch, and Leon must have noticed because he did it again, and again, and the pressure was building and your hands were on his back and your nails were dragging down his spine and—
"I want to try something," you gasped.
"Let me—" You pushed at his shoulder. "Let me be on top."
It took a moment to arrange. Leon rolled onto his back, settling against the headboard, and you climbed over him with a clumsiness that would have been embarrassing if you'd had the brain space to be embarrassed. But you were past embarrassment now. You were somewhere beyond it, in a place where all that mattered was the heat between your legs and the ache that was building again and the way Leon was looking up at you with something that looked a lot like wonder.
His cock was against his stomach, still slick from being inside you. You positioned yourself over him, your knees on either side of his hips, and for a moment you just looked. Took in the sight of him—his chest rising and falling with quick breaths, his lips slightly parted, his eyes dark and hazy with want.
Then you reached down and took him in your hand.
The skin was hot. Velvety. You could feel the pulse of blood beneath your fingers, and the weight of him was heavier than you'd imagined. You rubbed the tip of him against yourself—slow circles, teasing, watching his jaw tighten and his hands clench in the sheets—and a rush of power went through you that was completely new.
"You're killing me," Leon said through gritted teeth.
"Good," you said, and then you aligned him with your entrance and sank down.
The feeling was different from this angle. Deeper. More intense. You both moaned at the same time, a harmony of sound, and then you started to move.
Rolling your hips. Finding a rhythm. It took a few tries to get it right, to figure out the motion that made the pleasure spike and the angle that made Leon's eyes roll back, but you were a fast learner and Leon's hands had found your hips and he was guiding you, showing you what worked, and the two of you moved together like you'd been doing this for years.
The pressure built faster this time. Faster and sharper and more urgent, coiling low in your belly, spreading outward through your limbs, making your thighs shake and your rhythm falter. Leon's grip on your hips tightened. His hips started thrusting up to meet yours. And you were both breathing hard and the room was full of the sounds you were making—wet and rhythmic and obscene—and somewhere in the back of your mind you remembered that your mother was downstairs, that the door wasn't fully closed, that you were supposed to be quiet—
And then the climax hit and you didn't care about any of it.
It was bigger than the first one. Deeper. Your whole body seized up and you cried out—Leon's name, you thought, or maybe just a sound—and you felt him tense beneath you, felt him thrust up one more time and hold there, felt the hot pulse of his release filling you as he groaned your name against your throat.
The world went soft at the edges.
You collapsed forward onto his chest, your face buried in the curve of his neck, your body still trembling with aftershocks. His arms came up around you. Held you. His heart was pounding against your ribcage, matching the rhythm of your own.
Neither of you spoke for a long time.
The lamp was still on. The curtains were still moving in the breeze. Outside, the Pennsylvania night was quiet and dark and ordinary, completely unaware that everything inside this room had changed.
Leon's hand traced lazy patterns on your back. Up your spine. Down again. His breath had slowed, evening out into something steady and calm.
"Yeah," you agreed, because no other words were necessary.
A few more minutes passed. Your body was still humming, still buzzing with the remnants of pleasure, and there was a mess between your legs that you were going to have to deal with eventually, but you couldn't bring yourself to move. Couldn't bring yourself to break the contact of his skin on yours.
Finally, reluctantly, you shifted. Leon slipped out of you with a soft wet sound, and you both made a noise at the loss of contact. He reached for the towel that had been discarded earlier—his towel, the one he'd worn out of the shower a lifetime ago—and used it to clean you both up with a gentleness that made your throat tight.
When he was done, he pulled you back against his chest. The sheets were tangled around your legs. The pillow had fallen off the bed at some point. Neither of you made any move to fix any of it.
"Thank you," you said, your voice muffled against his shoulder.
"For coming today. For helping me with biology. For—" You paused. The words felt too big, too heavy, but they needed to be said. "For being here. I've been so lonely lately. My mom, and this house, and everything—I feel like I'm disappearing sometimes. Like I'm becoming something that belongs to her instead of something that belongs to me."
Leon's arm tightened around you. "You belong to you."
"I know. I just—" You swallowed. "Sometimes I forget."
The promise was simple and absolute, and it settled into some broken place inside you and started knitting it back together.
Another silence. Comfortable this time. The kind of silence that came when words weren't necessary.
"Mmm?" He sounded half-asleep already.
"Are you excited? About the RPD?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Excited isn't the right word. Ready, maybe. It's what I've been working toward."
"You're going to be good at it."
"Yeah. You're good at taking care of people."
His hand found yours under the sheets. Fingers interlacing. Squeezing once.
"Raccoon City's not that far," you said, the thought surfacing before you'd fully formed it. "Twenty minutes, maybe. If traffic is light."
"So you could visit. Even when you're on duty."
"I'll visit whenever I can."
"And maybe—" You hesitated. The words felt dangerous, like speaking them would make them too real. "Maybe someday things will be different. Maybe I won't be stuck here forever. Who knows—" A pause. A breath. "Who knows, maybe we could move there sometime. Just the two of us."
Leon didn't answer right away.
The silence stretched just long enough that you felt your stomach clench—had you said the wrong thing, pushed too far, assumed too much? It was just a joke, mostly, just a thought thrown out into the dark, but maybe it was too soon, maybe two months wasn't long enough to talk about the future, maybe—
"Yeah," Leon said finally. His voice was quiet, thoughtful. "I'd like that."
And something in the way he said it told you that he meant it. That he'd hesitated not because he didn't want it, but because he was the kind of person who thought about things before he said them. Who weighed his words. Who didn't make promises he couldn't keep.
You pressed a kiss to his chest. Right over his heart.
"Good," you whispered. "Me too."
The lamp on the nightstand flickered once. Twice. And then steadied.
Outside, the wind moved through the trees, rustling the leaves against the window. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. The house creaked, settling into its foundation, and the terracotta walls held the warmth of the day and the quiet of the night and the promise of something that felt, for the first time in weeks, like it might actually be okay.
Leon's breathing evened out. Deepened. The hand that was still tangled with yours went slack with sleep.
You stayed awake a little longer. Listening to his heartbeat. Feeling the rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek. Thinking about the future and the past and the improbable chain of events that had led you here, to this bed, in this house, with this man who'd shared his lunch with you in third grade and taught you to drive stick in a parking lot and made your first time something beautiful instead of something to survive.
Tomorrow, Carmen would wake up. She'd check on you—the door was still not fully closed—and she'd see Leon's car in the driveway and there would be questions, maybe consequences, definitely a lecture about rules and respect and appropriate behavior.
Tonight, there was only this. His heartbeat. His hand in yours. The soft hum of the lamp and the quiet of the house and the feeling of being, for the first time in months, not alone.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, you slept.
annaxmalina
origamiaround
vaporwave
areudirty
snowghoul
izzy806
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
gummygunk