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leon kennedy / he drags you to a work event & keeps finding his way back to you
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You could smell the floor polish before you even got through the door, and after that it was the chandeliers hung high overhead and the marble and the low hum of too many important people talking to each other in a room designed to make them feel more important. Leon looked like he wanted to leave about forty minutes ago, which was impressive given that you'd only arrived thirty minutes ago. He cleaned up well, though. You'd give him that. The dark suit fit him like someone had actually measured him for it, which meant the agency probably had, because Leon Kennedy left to his own devices would have shown up in tactical gear and called it formal enough. His hair was falling into his eyes again, dirty blonde and impossible, like no amount of occasion could convince it to sit flat, and he'd loosened his tie within the first twenty minutes, one finger hooked under the knot, tugging it down just enough to breathe. And when he caught you watching him do it he held your gaze a little longer than he needed to before someone from the DSO pulled him away to talk logistics.
That was an hour ago. Since then he'd been passed around the room like a handshake with legs. A woman from some European liaison office touched his arm when she laughed and left her hand there too long. A man with too many medals wanted Leon's take on interagency protocol, which Leon delivered in as few words as humanly possible while holding a glass of something he had not once brought to his mouth. And every single time, without fail, he ended up back next to you. The first time he appeared at your elbow while you were standing near the far wall, hands in his pockets, shoulder almost touching yours. "Having fun?" The tone made it clear he wasn't. You said something about the painting nearest to you and he glanced at it for about two seconds. "Sure," he said, and then someone called his name from across the room and he made a sound through his teeth, low and annoyed, and went.
The second time you were at the bar and he was just there, suddenly, ordering something neat, the sleeve of his jacket pressing into your arm when he reached for the glass. A man in a gray suit approached and started talking about something classified enough that Leon angled his body between you and the conversation, automatic, the same way he'd check a sightline. When the man left Leon turned back to you. "Sorry about that." You asked what it was about. "Boring," he said. And leaned his weight against the bar beside you and stayed there, unhurried, for about four minutes before somebody else pulled him into a circle of uniforms near the center of the room.
The third time you'd found a quiet spot near the windows, away from the thickest part of the crowd, and you felt him before you saw him. His arm against yours as he leaned into the space beside you, facing the room, that untouched drink still in his hand.
"You keep coming back," you said.
He took a sip. Actually took one this time, like he needed something to do with his mouth before answering. He looked out over the crowd and you could tell he was clocking every door in the room even now, even here, even standing next to you in a suit that probably cost more than his rent.
"Room's big," he said. "You're the only thing in it I actually want to talk to."
He'd pushed his sleeves up at some point. That was the first thing you noticed when you looked up at him, stupidly, because he'd just said something like that and your brain decided to pay attention to his forearms instead. The dark fabric was folded back to his elbows and you could see old scars there, pale against muscle, running under the cuffs and out of sight. You must have been staring because when you looked up again his mouth was doing something it hadn't been doing all night. Not quite a smile. Close, though.
"That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Don't get used to it."
You asked how much longer you had to stay and he checked his watch, made a show of thinking about it, jaw tilted like it required genuine tactical assessment. "Technically? Another hour." He looked at you sideways and you watched him give up on whatever composure he'd been holding onto all evening, just quietly let go of it, his eyes dropping to your mouth for half a second before coming back up. "You want to get out of here?"
"You said it was mandatory."
"I say a lot of things."
He set his glass on the windowsill and his hand found the small of your back, palm flat, and steered you toward the side door. "Before someone tries to talk to me about interagency protocol again," he said, near your ear, near enough that his breath touched your neck. The hallway beyond was dim and the noise from the reception dropped to nothing behind you and his hand didn't move. His fingers stayed exactly where they were, his palm still pressed to your spine, and when you turned to look at him his face was nearer than you'd expected. His hair falling forward. His eyes on yours with the kind of focus that, in his line of work, usually preceded something trying to kill him. You were not trying to kill him. He didn't seem to care about the distinction.
"You planned this," you said.
"Always plan."
He was smiling. A real one this time, small and crooked, and you lost your train of thought for a second looking at it. Your hand came up to his chest, fingers gripping the lapel of his suit, and you could feel him breathing under your palm.
"Story of my life," he said. Quieter. "Sitting through the mission to get to the good part."
"What's the good part?"
He looked down at where your hand was fisted in his suit, then back at your face, and his grip on your hip tightened. The hallway was empty. The reception was still going behind a closed door and neither of you were in it anymore and Leon, who had done nothing all night except keep finding his way back to you, wasn't leaving now.
"Working on it," he said.
And he leaned in.
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