you make it hard to stay good.
RE4!Leon Kennedy x Agent!Reader | ONE SHOT | MDNI
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warnings; sexual adaptation, domination, yearning, restraint, possession, fluff, touch starvation
author notes; had an itch to write something for re4 Leon bc that man has me in a chokehold and I've been writing random shit in one doc and somehow smushed it together and created.. well, this. I wanted a quick burn with yearning, but kinda cute ig. (I say kinda very lightly.)
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He's been watching you for twenty minutes and hasn't said a word.
That's not unusual. Leon doesn't talk just to fill silence — never has. But this quiet is different. This one has weight to it, the kind you feel pressing against your sternum when you breathe in too deep. You've learned to recognize the difference.
The safehouse is small, the kind of cramped that only a government on a budget could justify. Two rooms, peeling wallpaper the color of old teeth, a single overhead light that flickers when the wind blows too hard outside. It smells like damp wood and old coffee.
You're on the couch with your knees pulled up, something mindless on the staticky television. You changed out of your gear an hour ago — sweatshirt, lounge shorts, hair thrown up because you couldn't stand it anymore. The mission is done. Your body is tired. Your guard is down in the specific way it only gets when you feel
safe, even when you probably shouldn't.
Leon is at the table. Not doing anything. Just sitting with a half-empty mug going
cold in front of him, looking at nothing.
No — looking at you.
You catch him in your peripheral vision and don't acknowledge it. A test, maybe. A habit. You've noticed him doing this for the better part of three months now — this
careful, measured look that he shuts down the second he thinks you've seen it. Like he's auditing something. Like he's trying to talk himself out of something.
You've never called him on it.
Not yet.
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The first time you noticed, it was after a bad night in Harvardville — a job that went sideways fast and left both of you running on fumes and adrenaline for six hours straight. You made it back to the extraction point ahead of him. When he came through the door and found you already there, something crossed his face so fast you almost missed it.
Relief. The unguarded, ugly kind. The kind a person doesn't mean to show.
He wiped it clean in less than a second. Nodded. Said, "Good." Just that. Just good, like you'd filed a report correctly.
But you'd seen it.
After that, you started paying attention.
You've built something with him, slow and unintentional the way these things usually go — late nights, close quarters, the specific intimacy of surviving things together. You know how he takes his coffee. You know the silence he gets when he's processing something heavy versus the silence he gets when he's just tired. You know the way he almost smiles — that half-second where the corner of his mouth moves before his discipline catches up and shuts it down.
He knows things about you, too. You've caught the evidence of it. The way he adjusts without being asked. The way he positions himself in rooms. The way he hands you things before you reach for them.
Neither of you has named any of it.
That's the agreement, unspoken and mutual: we don't name it.
But the agreement is getting harder to keep.
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"You should sleep," he says finally.
You don't look up from the television. "So should you."
A pause. "I'm fine."
"You haven't moved in twenty minutes."
Another pause, longer. "I'm thinking."
"About what?"
Nothing. You finally glance over, and he's looking at the table now, jaw set, mug
rotated a half-turn between his hands. There's something working behind his eyes —
something he's chewing on and choosing not to serve up.
"Operational stuff," he says.
That's not what it was.
You both know it.
You turn back to the television and feel the silence resettle, heavier now. The
flicker of the overhead light. The wind outside. The low drone of whatever program
is on.
Don't push it, says the reasonable part of you.
But you were never very good at that.
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"You do that thing," you say, conversationally. Not looking at him.
"What thing?"
"Looking." You gesture vaguely with two fingers. "You think I don't notice. But I notice."
The silence that follows is a different kind. The held-breath kind.
"I don't know what you're talking about." His voice is flat. Controlled. The
professional exterior cranked up to compensate for what's underneath it.
Now you look at him. He's still staring at the table.
"Okay," you say simply. Like you believe him. Like you're going to let it go.
You watch the set of his shoulders shift — something he can't quite help. Tension
bleeding in at the edges where his control doesn't quite reach.
You bite down on the smile that wants to come.
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Twenty more minutes. The program changes. You get up to refill your water, and when
you pass him, you don't move quite far enough out of his orbit. Close enough that
he'd have to make an effort not to be aware of you.
You feel it — that fractional thing, barely a movement. Like he almost turned toward
you before he caught himself.
You go to the kitchen. You take your time.
When you come back, you don't sit. You lean against the back of the couch on the
far side, facing the room, water glass held loosely in your hand. It puts more space
between you. It also means you're standing, which means you can see him clearly, and
he can see you, and neither of you has anywhere to hide in the lamplight.
He doesn't look up right away.
But he's aware of you. You can tell by the way he's gone very still.
"Are you ever going to say it?" you ask, eyes on the television behind him.
"Say what."
"Whatever it is you keep not saying."
The mug hits the table with a quiet, final click. "You're reading into nothing."
"Am I."
"Yeah."
You tilt your head, slow. Look at him directly. He's looking back now, and the
careful blankness he usually wears is stretched thin tonight — fraying at the seams
in ways you've learned to read. The tightness around his jaw. The way his eyes
settle on you and won't move to something else the way they should.
"You're an incredibly bad liar," you tell him. "For someone who does this
professionally."
Something moves in his expression. A warning. Or the thing that comes just before one.
"Drop it." Quiet. Even.
You should.
You've spent three months being smart about this — careful, patient, leaving him room
to be the one who decides when and whether. Because you understand what it costs him
to let his guard down. You understand the weight he carries everywhere. You've never
wanted to be one more thing that's hard for him.
But tonight you're tired, and he's been looking at you for months, and there's
something that feels like being just a little done with the waiting.
"Make me," you say.
Barely above a murmur. Half a dare.
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His body falls motionless.
Not the controlled stillness he usually wears like a second skin — this is different.
This is the stillness of something that has stopped moving because it's deciding. The
last half-second of held breath before the exhale.
You watch his jaw set. Watch his eyes drop to the table, then drag back up to you
like they don't have a choice. That familiar light blue has gone somewhere else
entirely — deeper, darker, swallowed by something that's been sitting behind his
ribs for a long time and is only now clawing its way to the surface.
He breathes out slowly through his nose.
His hands flatten against the table.
He stands.
He doesn't rush. That's the thing that makes your breath catch before he's even
crossed half the distance — the fact that he doesn't rush. He moves toward you the
way he does everything: deliberate, certain, like a man who knows exactly where he's
going and has simply decided to go there. No performance. No hesitation. Just the
quiet, absolute intention of him eating up the space between you one step at a time.
You back up before you mean to.
Not out of fear — nothing about this is fear. It's the specific instinct of something
that recognizes it's about to be caught. One step back. Two. Your shoulders find the
door, solid and final behind you, and there's nowhere left to go.
He stops close enough that you have to tip your chin up to hold his eyes.
Close enough that you can feel the warmth coming off him. Close enough that his
breathing is audible — slower than it should be, controlled in the way that means he’s working at it.
His eyes drop to your mouth.
Come back up.
"You were saying?" he says quietly.
The words land low. His voice has already shifted — that familiar steadiness frayed
at the edges, worn thin by three months and one sentence and six inches of air
between you.
You keep your chin up. Hold his gaze.
"I said," you tell him, steadier this time, "make me."
The silence after that is a specific kind of silence.
His jaw shifts. Something moves behind his eyes — not anger. Sharper than anger.
Quieter than anger. Something that has been sitting in him for a very long time and
has simply decided it's done waiting.
His mouth curves. Just barely. One corner, a fraction, in a way that does not reach
his eyes — his eyes are busy doing something else entirely.
"Watch me," he says.
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His hand comes up first.
Slow — almost careful — fingers finding your jaw, his thumb tracing just below your
cheekbone with a gentleness that shouldn't coexist with the heat behind his eyes.
Like he's making sure you feel every point of contact before he takes the rest.
You breathe.
Then his mouth finds yours, and it's not soft — it was never going to be soft. Three
months of looking and not touching doesn't produce soft, it produces something that
feels like a dam giving way. His lips move against yours with the particular hunger
of a man who has been denying himself something he wants badly, has finally run out
of reasons to keep denying it, and is done being reasonable about it.
He kisses you like you're the argument he's been losing to himself.
Like he's furious about it.
Like he's grateful.
You gasp against his mouth — quiet, involuntary — and feel him pull you closer at
the sound, his hand finding the curve of your waist and eliminating the last of the
air between you. Your fingers twist into the front of his shirt because you need
something to hold onto and there is only him, and you feel the low sound he makes
against your lips more than you hear it. That swallowed, reluctant sound of something
held tightly finally slipping.
He breaks away.
Just enough. A breath of space between you. He looks at your face with an expression
you have never seen on him before — unguarded, hungry, completely uninterested in
pretending otherwise — and you take the opportunity to do the worst possible thing.
"That's it?" you manage, slightly breathless. The smirk in your voice doesn't quite
hide the unsteadiness underneath it.
His eyes darken.
"Careful," he says quietly.
"I just thought—" you begin, and then his hand slides from your waist up the line
of your spine, deliberate and slow, and whatever you were going to say dissolves
somewhere around the middle of your back and never recovers.
"You were saying?" he murmurs.
You swallow. Lift your chin. "Nothing."
The barely-there curve of his mouth.
He kisses you again — harder this time, deeper, with the specific intention of a man
who has just been handed permission and has decided to make use of every inch of it.
His hand finds the nape of your neck and your fingers tighten in his shirt and the
small sound that comes out of you isn't something you planned.
He pulls back at that. Just barely. His forehead drops to yours, both of you
breathing the same small, warm space of air, and you can feel his chest rising and
falling too visibly for a man who prides himself on control.
"Leon—" His name comes out softer than you mean it to. Undone at the edges.
"Yeah," he says. Low. Like he already knows.
Your hands slide from his shirt up to his chest, feeling the unsteady beat under
your palms, and something in you registers — for the first time, really registers —
that he is just as wrecked by this as you are. That underneath all that discipline
and patience and control there is something that has been fighting to get out for
three months, and it is out now, and it is entirely focused on you.
"You've been thinking about this," you say softly. Not a question.
His jaw tightens. "Don't."
"How long?"
"Don't push it."
But your eyes are searching his face, and his eyes are on your mouth, and the hand
at the nape of your neck tightens just slightly, and it tells you everything his
voice won't.
"A while," you breathe. The realization settling in your chest warm and heavy.
"You've been thinking about this for a while."
He exhales slowly through his nose. Something in his expression shifts — past the
warning, past the control — into something raw and simple and honest.
"Yeah," he says. Just that. Just yeah, the way he said good in Harvardville, except
this one he means for you to hear.
Oh.
The last snarky thing you had in you goes quiet.
Your hands slide up to his jaw, fingertips tracing the tension there, and you watch
his eyes drop closed for just a half-second at the touch — this man who never lets
his guard down, letting it down — and when they open again they find yours with an
intensity that makes your breath come unsteady.
"Leon." His name again, softer. Different. Not a challenge this time.
His hands find the backs of your thighs and he lifts you like it costs him nothing,
your legs wrapping around him on instinct, your back meeting the door with a quiet,
certain thud. His forehead drops to yours — grounding, steadying — both hands
moving slow and careful as if now that he's here he doesn't want to rush a single
second of it.
"You're mine," he breathes against the side of your face. Warm. Final. The voice of
a man who's been sitting on that sentence for a very long time and is only now letting
it out. His thumb traces the bare skin at your shoulder where your sweatshirt has
slipped. Once. Deliberate. "And mine only."
"You're unbelievable," you murmur into the curve of his jaw, but there's no heat
left in it. Your fingers curl into the back of his neck. Your eyes have already
closed.
You feel him smile against your temple. Just barely.
"Tell me to stop," he says quietly, lips brushing your ear. A pause. Long enough to
be intentional. "But you're not going to."
He pulls back to look at your face when he says it, and you hate how right he is.
You hate that three months of him watching means he can read every single thing
you're trying not to show. You hate that you're not even trying anymore.
Your chest is rising and falling too fast. Your hands have gone still at the back of
his neck, no longer pushing, no longer pulling, just holding. Your eyes, when they
meet his, are saying every single thing you've spent three months keeping out of them.
And he knows it.
He looks at you the way he did across the safehouse — that long, unhurried, certain
look — except now there's nowhere for either of you to pretend you didn't see it.
His thumb brushes your bottom lip. Once, barely.
"Say it," he says softly.
Not a demand. An invitation. The voice of a man who has all the patience in the
world now that he's already decided, and knows that the waiting is its own kind of
undoing.
You look at him — at the steadiness in his eyes, at the barely-there curve of his
mouth, at the rise and fall of his chest that isn't quite as controlled as he'd like
it to be — and feel the last thread of composure go quietly out.
"Leon," you whisper. His name with nothing attached to it. Just his name, in the
voice of someone who has run out of things to hide.
His expression doesn't change. But something in his eyes does — something that settles, something that arrives, something that looks like a man who's been waiting a very long time for exactly that sound.
The smirk that finds his mouth is slow. Devastating. Sure of itself in the quiet way of someone who was always going to end up here.
He leans in, lips brushing the corner of your jaw, and speaks low enough that the words belong only to the two of you and the dark.
"Hm?" A pause, warm against your skin. His hand tightens at your waist — gentle, possessive, like something that has finally stopped pretending it doesn't want to hold on.
“Maybe–I am yours.”
A sound coddled in his throat, almost a laugh, maybe an agreement without the vocal tone to it. Satisfied.
“You are mine.”
