The Vaults

You’ve dealt with your fair share of speed-boosted infected; limbs windmilling, clawing and careening, all bursting energy and no finesse.

These aren’t blisterheads. They have stamina. They’re keeping up.

You twist and shoot one whose fingers are uncomfortably close to swiping the back of Leon’s shirt. The nearby white paneled wall goes bright, splotchy red.

“Intel’s getting a new one ripped if we make it out of this,” you pant, breath dry and ragged in your throat. Your lungs are burning.

“We’re making it out,” Leon tells you. Conclusive, no room for argument. He dodges left, hand once again grazing your arm to pull you with, but you’re already there, a perfect shadow.

This hall is wider, brightly lit with glass cases set in between the wall panels.

You’ve only got eyes on one thing as you run.

EXIT

It’s a final sprint.

You grit your teeth, breath loud in your ears, arms and legs pumping hard, trying to build a gap that allows for a sudden smack into the double doors, a loss of momentum and reversal of motion to slam the barrier closed.

‘Slam’ turns out to be optimistic. It’s a hydraulic close. Glacially fucking slow.

“Fuck! Force it!”

You almost bash heads with Leon, throwing your combined weight against the doors as the calamitous wall of infected catch up, arms reaching through the diminishing gap, scratching and clawing at you.

With a roar of effort, the doors finally give way under pressure and close with a crunch. An arm, hand, and various fingers fall onto the concrete.

“Bar it! Bar it!” Leon’s braced against both doors, his body a wedge, jarred by the furious thumping from the other side.

There are massive pneumatic rod locks on either side of the door. The control panel is dark.

“There’s no power!”

“You’re armed!”

Oh, right.

BANG T-SHUNK

Smoke curls from the barrel of your gun. The blasted hole in the control panel sparks weakly, fizzes, then goes dark.

Leon pushes away from the secured doors, rubbing at his ear. Your head’s ringing like a struck bell and you’d been back at arm’s length, not parallel with the barrel.

“Say something?”

“Something.”

“Yeah, can’t hear shit.”

"You only look like it.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

He’s flipping you off.

You grab it like a pinky promise, linking middle fingers, and he rolls his eyes.

“Alright. Let’s bounce,” you say.

He pulls you back. Urgent, abrupt. It bumps you against him.

“Wait.”

You’re in a greenhouse.

Rows and rows of lush, overgrown plants stretch unfamiliar leaves towards a glass-paneled sky. The walkways between rows are made of industrial metal grating, a stale funk rising from the darkness underneath.

No breeze is stirring the air. The back of your neck starts prickling; your animal brain tugging on your metaphorical hem and pointing.

The plants are rustling lightly.

Leon half-turns his head towards you, keeping his eyes on the jungle ahead.

“What’s the sitrep on the door?”

It’s still thumping against the locks, battered by the relentless undead. You glance at the panel you’d shot, burst and gutted, the wall above it blackened.

“Fucked.”

“Other doors?”

It’s just wall. Wall, and wall, and wall, smooth and inhospitable.

“Negative.”

“How long can you hold your breath?”

“I don’t think that’s the concern.”

You’re playing back the last hallway. White walls broken by glass panels, streaking by as you run. Behind every glass panel, a bright orange suit, thick like leather.

Bite-proof.

“Fuck.”

“So you tried to bypass it underground.”

“So we tried to bypass it underground,” you confirm. You watch the man nod, taking notes. He’s a leftie.

“Good thinking.”

“Yeah, well. Apparently not.”

The metal grating isn’t light. Thankfully, you and Leon aren’t weak.

The daylight sits like oil on top of water, only greasing weakly off of the reflective metal of more walkways below; descending levels disappearing into the dark.

“Oh, good. Can’t see the bottom.”

“Endless possibilities,” Leon says. “Cover me.”

The first level is an eight foot drop. Leon swings his legs into the gap, scoots forward, and eases himself down slowly, like he’s waiting for something to file a violent complaint. When nothing does, he drops onto the walkway, the metal clanging despite his rubber soles.

He shines his flashlight forward.

“Ugh.”

“What?”

“Love what they’ve done with the space.” He pockets the flashlight, reaching up to you. “It’s a charm you have to see in person.”

His hands are firm on your sides, your shirt riding up a little as he supports you down onto the platform with him. He absently fixes your rucked hem as you shine your flashlight into the gloom.

“Ugh,” you agree.

Roots.

Long, white, spidery roots hang from the ceiling in lengthy clumps and bundles, like massive, cobwebby chandeliers.

Leon’s eyes narrow, scrutinizing.

“Hey. Look.”

He steps forward, reaching into the nearest nest of gauzy filaments. He pulls his hand out, fingers curled around a narrow, dark plastic tube.

You come closer with the flashlight.

The dark color is red.

“It’s warm,” Leon adds, horribly.

The tube snakes off into the darkness below. You point your flashlight down and catch a glint off of something flat, circular, and shiny.

Leon’s separating more tubes from the leggy mass of roots. Only the one is red, but the others don’t look any less… organic.

“God. Which way do you think they run?”

He glances at you. “Three guesses.”

“Plants don’t bleed red.”

“Not typically.”

You share a resigned look, then he brushes past you, face set.

You turn to find him making quick work of the stairs down to the lower levels, hand on his gun.

You check your pistol's chamber and follow.

“A line of tanks.”

“Life support tanks, yes. Dozens.”

“Which way were the tubes running?”

“Both ways.”

“So…”

“The tanks were feeding the plants, and the plants were feeding the tanks.”

“Life support, you said. So there were … humans? Inside the tanks?”

“Yeah,” you say, looking away. “Used to be.”

There’s a thick film of slime on the tank, like growing snot. Your flashlight can’t make out anything coherent inside.

Leon shines his flashlight down the row; cylinder after cylinder, standing like a row of human-sized batteries, all mucky with slime and tickled by the trailing ends of roots from the massive bundles overhead.

Somewhere ahead, a steady dripping, echoing. You don’t appreciate the cliche.

“When was the initial outbreak?” Now that you’re on solid ground, your voice seems to suck right into the floor.

“All the lab logs and entries stop around six months ago.”

“So no one’s been down here for half a year.”

“Yeah.”

Leon shares a long look with you, mouth tight. Then, hesitant, he wipes a window through the muck on the nearest tank.

The beam of his flashlight illuminates the chamber. You can see a vague shadow suspended inside, like a bug in rough, raw amber.

He steps back, jaw tight.

“Dare I even ask?”

He shakes his head. “It’ll put you off soup.”

You shine your flashlight upwards; the root balls catch it and glow, high overhead.

“What was so wrong with good ol’ hydroponics?”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Leon says, heading off down the line of tanks.

“Twist my arm.”

“You didn't see it?”

“It was behind one of the tanks. In the dark.”

“You didn't hear it?”

“It was a little noisy at the time,” you say, annoyed.

Third tank from the last, everything goes spectacularly tits up.

Glass shatters outward, slimy and wet as it ricochets off your defensively raised arms. The body in the tank falls forward and swipes for Leon’s legs.

It’s not like the infected you’re used to, desiccated and dry as jerky.

This one is wet. This one is dissolving, skin sloughing from muscle sloughing from bone. Entrails spill from its body cavity, slippery, spreading across the hoary concrete as the disgusting thing writhes for a claim on your partner’s ankle.

Leon stumbles out of reach, gun aiming at the mucky skull. It explodes like a sixpack in a hot car and you’re shouting, ducking behind your arm again—

That’s when the other thing strikes.

Leon shouts in pain and tries to tear free. The pale, rubbery thing keeps hold of his shoulder like an overexcited dog with a rope toy.

“Leon!”

It’s too close to his head and he’s thrashing, you don’t have a clear shot. Something glints in the shadows behind his hip.

The hatchet. He’s already grabbed it.

A roar, a swing, the song of a sharp blade slicing clean through something organic.

The pale thing hits the ground with a sound like a rotting squash, the vine swinging empty into the darkness behind the tanks.

Leon falls to one knee with a grunt, the hatchet clattering onto the concrete.

“Leon! Leon,” you’re touching his back, crouching down with him. He’s breathing hard through his nose, clutching his shoulder. The fabric is darkening under his hand.

“Let me see. Leon.”

You shove his hand clear, unzipping his collar and yanking it aside.

His skin is patterned with circular rows of bleeding dashes. Lots of them.

“What the fuck.”

The pale, rubbery thing lies flaccid on the floor behind Leon. At first glance, it looks like a starfish collapsed on itself.

At second glance, you start to see the teeth, fine and triangular, in diminishing rows like a shark.

Pink with blood.

“Shit. Hey.”

Leon’s still on one knee, head down. You push his hair back, leaving a bloody streak on his skin, and tip his face up. There’s sweat on his forehead.

It takes him a moment to focus on you.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.”

He grunts. His pupils are a little too big, even for the dim lighting, and they’re not reacting right when you pass your flashlight closer.

You’re trying not to panic.

“Can you get up? Can you walk?”

He lets you haul him to his feet but shoves you off when you go to duck under his arm. You don’t take offense; it’s a good sign. He’s steady enough on his own.

“Grab that,” he tells you, voice rough. He’s holding his shoulder again, pointing down at the beheaded plant. You pick it up by the little stem of vine, grab his hatchet, and follow him close, ascending fast while he calls for extraction.

You don’t wait for your debrief to finish writing.

“What did the labs say?”

“They’re still running tests.”

“What did Medical say?”

“They’re still running tests.”

“What, with a potato? Where's the sense of urgency, here?”

“At last report, Mr. Kennedy was stable,” he says, capping his pen.

“He was half delirious coming off that chopper!”

“They’ve determined he’s in no immediate danger.”

“How can they know if they’re still running fucking tests?”

You get your name in an admonishing tone. You stand up, your chair screeching against the floor.

“I wanna see him.”

“He’s in precautionary isolation.”

“I was exposed to the same bullshit he was. I wanna see him.”

“You weren't bitten.”

“What, you think he’s gonna bite me?”

Your debrief just looks back at you, calm and level, his hands folded prim over the closed folder containing your account of the whole goddamn shit-spackled mission.

“He’s in precautionary isolation,” he repeats.

Your teeth grind, a muscle in your jaw jumping.

“Are we done here?”

“Yes. You are free to go.”

Medical stops you at the door. They aren’t fooled by your purposeful stride, your bored but intent expression. They hook your arm and yank you away like it’s goddamn Looney Tunes.

“We were told you might try that.”

Fucking debrief.

So now you’re sitting at home, dialing the Medical desk every fifteen minutes, certain from the complete non-activity of the past four hours that they’ve filtered your number as spam.

Assholes.

You should go to bed. Medical’s kept you both alive thus far, through hell and high water. Leon’s in good hands. Stable. No immediate danger, they said.

You rotate your phone in your hand, over and over. Upside-down, rightside-up. Staring at nothing.

You call the labs.

Some poor idiot actually picks up.

“I-I-I can’t give you that information,” he stammers, when you demand an update on Leon. On the biting plant. On fucking anything.

“I’m his partner! I was ground zero when it happened!”

“I-I can’t verify that over the phone.”

“Then I’m coming in,” you say, prim. You hang up on more panicked stammering, tossing your phone aside on the couch.

You’ve barely made it to your feet when your phone starts ringing.

Incoming Call Leonnedy

You stub your toe on the couch in your scramble to pick up.

“Leon! Are you okay?”

Immediately you can tell he’s not.

“I need help,” he says. Croaks.

Cold sweat breaks on your skin.

“Where are you? What’s wrong?”

“I’m… I can’t…” He gasps.

You’re a whirl of activity. You’re grabbing your wallet, your keys, pulling a jacket on over your pajamas. There’s no fucking time to change.

“Leon, where are you.”

“Home.”

“What?” You stop cold in your mad dashing, gripping the phone too hard. “They sent you home like this?”

“They said I could take care of it.”

“Take care of what? They won’t tell me fucking anything, Leon–“

He groans through clenched teeth and oh boy, Medical’s gonna find out just how creative you can be when it comes to revenge. You shove your feet ungracefully into some shoes and grab for the door handle.

“The venom,” Leon’s panting in your ear, and then he gets to the zinger. “It’s an aphrodisiac.”

You feel it like lightning, a surge throughout your entire body. Your visual of his situation, based on the noises he’s making, takes a dramatic turn.

“Leon.”

“It’s been six goddamn hours,” he grits out.

“Jesus christ, can’t you just–”

“I’ve tried,” he says. “I’m just goddamn edging myself.”

“Did you call Medical? There’s gotta be something they can–”

“Fucking useless,” Leon says, confirming your hypothesis. “They told me to hire an escort.”

“What?”

“I’m not— fuck— fucking doing that.”

You thump your forehead against your front door, your grip on the doorknob tight enough to crush.

“Leon, if you… there’s no shame. They’re professio–”

“No,” he cuts in. “I don’t…” He breaks off, breath hissing through his teeth, and then fails to elaborate.

That’s alright; you’ve got a pressing question.

“Why’d you call me?”

For a moment, he doesn’t answer. You just have to listen to him breathe like this.

Your vivid imagination is a fucking curse.

"I trust you,” he finally tells you. “I know how this… I don’t have… I trust you.”

You’re partners.

No, you’re coworkers. What he’s asking is… can he ask this? What happens to your partnership in the aftermath? Can you go back to–

“Please,” he breathes in your ear, and tops it with your name.

You wrench the door open.

Before you hang up, he gives you the code for the garage door, and fair warning.

You’re still not prepared.

As partners, you’ve seen each other in various states of undress. Usually partial. Usually because you’re bleeding somehow. Always clinical.

This doesn’t feel like the far end of the same spectrum. This feels like a g-force journey into a different dimension.

Leon’s on his couch, head back, knees wide. Taut like a bowstring.

Completely, stark, buck-ass naked.

His shoulder looks like a bisected watermelon, his skin dewy and pink, dotted with the dark little toothmarks from the venomous plant.

His chest is heaving, his hips restless.

His cock is flushed dark, painfully engorged, thick and pulsing against his stomach. There’s a wet smear on his skin; when his cock lifts, straining, it trails a sticky little string of precum.

“Christ,” you rasp, tossing your jacket aside.

He lifts his head and his eyes can barely focus on you. He looks on the verge of passing out, but he reaches out, reaches for you. You shove a bottle of lube out of the way on the couch cushions and take his outstretched hand.

“I’m here. What do you–“

“Touch,” he pants, barely coherent. “Touch me.”

And here you are in the deep end, no time to brace, no time to breathe. You’re touching him, chamois soft skin, hot and unyielding. His hips jerk on a gasp, a groan dragging from somewhere deep within as he lets his head fall back on the couch.

The hot, swooping sensation in your stomach physically bends you, punches your breath out.

You’ve never handled a dick this hard in your entire life.

You’ve maybe never handled a dick this big in your entire life. He’s long and thick, the head flared, cerise and glistening. You pass your thumb over his slit, smearing through the precum, and his stomach tautens as he pushes up into your hand, his breath rushing out hot, hissing back in. He’s desperate.

He breathes your name. His ass keeps flexing with the helpless motion of his hips and his eyes are closed, forehead knotted.

It’s intense concentration. His world narrowed down, only as wide as the circle of your fist.

Six goddamn hours.

You tighten your grip, trail your other hand up the lightly furred inside of his thigh, teasing his balls before stacking your fists and starting to pump him in a steady rhythm that answers the flex of his body.

His hand lands on your thigh, searing, his fingertips firm on your flesh and pulling. Your knee presses tighter against his leg.

He’s just grappling for a hold on something, for an anchor. His other hand is doing the same thing to the arm of the couch. You just hope he doesn’t move his hand any further to the left on you or he’s gonna find you a little too slippery to hold onto.

Fuck, you’re only goddamn human.

You jerk him faster, his hips starting to meet you in earnest, his body rolling as he chases his disobliging release.

And why couldn’t he get there himself?

What if… what if you can’t get him there, either? You don’t know anything about the venom, they’re still running tests. Maybe this is the result. Maybe he’s just… stuck like this, heightening, exacerbating, until he, what, pops?

What a fucking epitaph that would be.

No, you’re not scripting headstones. That’s not happening.

You start to twist on the upstroke, a flick of the wrist, and Leon moans loud.

“That’s it. Come on, Leon.”

His balls are tightening, drawing up, his forehead beaded with sweat, his mouth open. He’s right on the edge.

“Look at me.”

He opens his eyes, glassy as they are. You make sure he can see you, and then you bend low.

His skin is velvety soft around the firm rounds of his balls. You fit your lips to one of the shapes, touch your tongue to it, tasting the salt of him.

He cries out, thick ropes of cum hitting his chest, his stomach, spurting and spilling down his shaft, smeared by your hand as you milk him through it, relieved.

You can’t stop your breathy laugh, almost lost under his aereous groans. He just keeps going.

“A little pent up?”

He doesn’t quip back. The situation is dire.

His dick gives one last pulse, the final beads of his release dribbling down the head of his cock. You rub it away with your thumb.

There’s a very noticeable issue.

He’s still incredibly hard.

When you meet his eyes, they’re a little clearer. He’s still sunset pink and breathing hard – messy, now, too – but he can track your face better.

“Do you feel any different?”

“Fuck. Barely.”

"What if you're stuck like this?"

“Don't say that," he says. You’re still stroking him, slow, like an afterthought. He drags his hands through his damp hair, hissing when it stretches the scabs on his chewed shoulder.

"It was venom, do you need some sort of antivenom?"

He doesn’t appear to be listening. His hands grip the back of the couch, his hips rolling, cock pushing through your sticky fist.

You grab his hips and force them down.

“Leon.”

He bucks hard against you, bratty.

"You think I know?”

“Don’t give me an attitude.”

“Don’t fuckin tease me,” he snaps, unwisely.

You move fast.

A whump, a gasp, the silence of breath caught in the shadow of a predator.

His breath fans out over your face; slow, tremulous.

“I’m doing you a favor,” you remind him, low, your face inches from his. “I could just leave.”

He’s not moving, trapped under you.

You’re straddling him, your fist tight at the base of his cock.

“What do you say?”

“Fuck.”

“Leon.”

“I love you.”

It rattles you like a gunshot, strikes you and spreads.

It takes your advantage, crumples it up, and throws it in a trash compactor. And then it lights that trash compactor on fire.

“That’s not fair,” you breathe.

“Sorry,” he whispers, and kisses you.

He’s upgraded your permissions. You kiss him back, heated, and let go of your leash.

He breaks from your mouth to gasp when you sit on his hips, his hands catching your waist and gripping.

“Shit.”

“So we’ve learned that I’m not a monk,” you say, a verbal roll of the eyes.

It’s not just a few tepid inches of water in your basement. At this point, your flood’s halfway up the damn walls.

He rocks his hips, rubbing himself against the soaked fabric of your pajama shorts. You keen and pick up the motion on your own.

God, you’re aching.

“You should have said something,” he says, breathless.

“That wasn’t on the invitation.”

“Aren’t you a saint.”

“Yeah. Because when you said ‘I trust you’, I heard ‘take advantage of my compromising situation’.”

“Fair,” he says, then pulls you down to speak in your ear, his scruff a ticklish rasp against your skin. “Fuck me.”

Well don’t you make the perfect pair. He’s hard as granite and you’re wet enough to sink a dinghy.

Taking off your clothes is too much fucking bother. You just shove the wet fabric to the side.

He doesn't watch where you’re taking his cock into your body, the hot, hard length of him sliding in tight past your pussy lips.

He’s watching your face. You don’t know it until you’ve got him in to the hilt, your mouth falling open on a sigh, your forehead smoothing out as you gyrate your hips, a delicious little circle, fully seated on his lap.

"Oh my god, Leon."

He comes.

Your name is somewhere in the long groan sieved through his clenched teeth before his mouth drops open, diced breaths tumbling free as he pulses inside of you, so deep, so hot and thick.

He’s still looking directly at you.

You watch his eyes clear just a little more; sharpening, focusing. Smoke becoming a mist.

“Can I tease you about premature ejaculation.”

“No.” He starts unbuttoning your pajama top. The fabric is wrinkled at your sides where he’d been gripping, almost hard enough to bruise.

“Why, because you’re still hard?” He is, but it’s different. You couldn’t bend steel around him anymore.

“Yeah,” he says simply, and grips your open collar, pulling you down into a kiss.

You arch your back, easing him to just the tip, bottoming him out again, cycling his affected breath through your own lungs. He runs his hands down your chest, grazing your nipples, his tongue reaching into your mouth to taste your sigh.

His hips press up into you, lifting you, a gentle swell. You ride it; start to rock your hips.

The fabric of your shirt whispers down your arms, chased by the skim of Leon’s palms. Goosebumps raise on your skin.

You brace your arms on the back of the couch, riding him faster. He trails his lips down the column of your neck, his scruff a pleasant scratch, his humid breaths printing your skin.

He runs the fan of his fingers over your nipples.

“Leon.”

“Lean back,” he murmurs, his teeth grazing your shoulder. “Let me see you.”

You sit back on his hips, brushing your hands over the caps of his knees. He scratches lightly down the flex of your thighs as you start slapping down on him harder, dropping your head back, gasping.

“Fuck, gorgeous, just like that.”

“God, Leon.”

Your thighs are burning. He starts meeting you, hips snapping, and you look down.

It almost does you in.

Those broad shoulders, that flushed chest. Muscles rolling and bunching under his glistening skin. Hair sticking to his forehead, wet pink lips, blown eyes hooded, watching you, too.

His hands fall to your hips and he growls, fingers bunching in your pajama shorts. Feral. Like he’s going to tear them.

He hooks his arm around your back and surges up, laying you out on the sofa. You whine when he slips out of you, but he’s lifting your hips to yank your shorts and panties down, surprisingly coordinated for the way he’s wound up.

A small part of you expects them to hit the floor with a wet slap. The rest of you is reaching for Leon, impatient, empty.

He brings your knee up, hooks your leg around his hip and pushes back in, one long thrust, his breath a humid narration. You keen, head falling back against the cushions, feeling his lips at your jaw.

He digs his arms under your shoulders, his body rocking you, fluid motions pushing and pulling as he fucks you slow, deep. You grip his back, obsessed with the animal flex of his body.

You can feel every inch of him, stroking your walls. In, out, a steady tide. You arch your back, your stomach pressing to the rippling heat of his abs.

He’s still sticky. You don’t fucking care.

“Score’s two to zero,” he tells you, breath hot against your cheek. “You gonna catch up?”

“I’m not the medical concern.”

He brings your other leg up onto his hip, adjusting. Seeking.

He finds it. You groan loud, raw, and feel him smile against your neck.

“There you are.”

Your jaw hinges open, your vision glazing over as he rubs the head of his cock against the bundle of nerves inside you. He snaps his hips, jolting a gasp out of you, then goes right back to massaging your g-spot.

“You’re not real,” you pant. He nips your skin, sharp.

“River in Egypt, sweetheart.”

You dig your heels into his glutes, pressing in like spurs, urging him faster.

“Come on, cowboy– ah!”

He pushes up onto his hands, skin slapping loud as he starts pounding into you hard and fast. You were already tightening, coil building, and he’s hit your fucking warp drive.

“Fuck, fuck, like that, Leon!”

“Shit, you better hurry,” he says through gritted teeth. His hips are stuttering, rhythm starting to fall apart.

“I told you–“

His thumb circles your clit, just one rotation, and that’s it. The bastard’s got you. Screaming, even.

You come apart beneath him, your foundation shaking, walls clenching around him, wracked by seismic waves. He gasps your name, watching you climax on his dick, then slams in deep and comes with a long, stuttering groan.

The third time, it seems, is the charm.

When his phone starts ringing, you don’t hear it at first. His head is blocking your nearest ear.

“Leon.”

“Mm.”

“Your phone.”

“Mmph.”

You shift like you’re going to try to reach for it yourself, but he’s beautifully heavy on top of you, so you don’t try very hard.

You nuzzle your face into his hair and bring your arms around him instead, closing your eyes. He hums, content.

The ringtone stops, bending to your private moment.

Five seconds later, it starts up again.

“Fuck.”

You grouse when Leon shifts up, but his reach is longer than yours and he doesn’t go far.

“Huh. Medical,” he says.

“Oh,” you say, with mock optimism.

He hits answer, settling back on top of you. You run your hand up and down his back, petting him.

“Kennedy.”

He doesn’t have his volume turned up very high. You get vague shapes of words, spoken quickly, and then Leon’s short responses, felt as much as heard, his voice thrumming through you.

“Yeah. … No. … Don’t need it. … I know. … I know. … No, I’m fine. … Sure. Bye.”

“Fucking useless,” he mutters, his phone clattering onto the coffee table. “Antivenom’s ready.”

You start giggling.

“They want me in for reassessment in the morning.”

It turns into laughter, smothered into his shoulder, and he rolls into the couch crease so he can look at you.

“What?”

“All their overtime hours,” you say. “No match for your partner’s Magical Healing Vagina.”

He laughs, a real one, his hand pulling at your hip to twist you towards him, pressing you against his body. You’re both a fucking mess, and the couch might be a write-off.

It was an emergency.

“Should get you certified,” he says. You make a skeptical noise.

“There’d be a demand.”

His arm tightens around you, minuscule. Almost imperceptible. Might’ve been completely imperceptible, if his arms weren’t so big.

“Mm. We’re sticking to best-kept-secret.”

“How selfish.”

He nuzzles your mouth with his, sharing breath.

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” you mention, to his invading tongue. He retreats and lets you speak. "Did you mean what you said, or was it just self-defense?"

"What I said?"

"Don't be obtuse.”

He brushes his lips against yours, just a snag of soft, moist skin.

"I've never lied to you," he says.

"There's a first time for everything," you say. "You're skirting the question."

He brushes your hair back, studying your face. Content to take forever, it seems.

"If it helps," you say, "I can put you back under duress."

You slide your hand to the front of his hip, laughing when he flinches away.

"Ass," he says, and rolls you onto your back again, dipping to kiss you. "Yeah. I love you."

You stroke his cheek, his stubble rasping against your fingertips. His eyes are completely clear, gaze steady looking back at you.

You don't take forever to say it. The forever you want to take is the one that opens up on the other side of it: four words, a door.

“I love you, too.”

On AO3

Y'all mind if I just give our man a bad good time real quick

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist when I post these fics 🩷

Until you touched him.

Or got near him in any kind of capacity.

Or saw his smile or his little laugh or his smirk or his face.

In which case, you were screwed.

You could still feel his arm beneath your palm. The soft strands of his hair through your fingers. Still hear that stupid little fucking groan he breathed. The one that was playing on repeat. The one that made you fight the urge to strip the rest of his clothes from his body and devour him. Whole. Or maybe in a few bites. Into the side of his neck. His shoulder. His chest. Okay, many bites. You wanted to devour him in many bites. Was that so bad?

YES.

Still, you took his hand when he stretched it down for you, helping you clamber out of the well. The ladder was enough. You weren't the injured one. But he still clasped his hand around yours to help you up.

You nodded in thanks. Keeping things professional.

Sliding the key home into the locked village hall door, your heart did a little jump when it actually opened. Because holy shit, it was impossible to deny now. You were actually making progress. Progress was being made! Thank fuck for that. Hopefully this would all be over in another hour or so, and you could go your separate ways, and you'd never have to think about his ridiculously good-looking face ever again. Well, maybe only when the long nights felt a little too lonely.

Checking his gun, Leon glanced back to where you were standing a respectable distance from him. And he could feel every centimetre. Or rather, not feel it. He wasn't feeling your proximity at all. No hum of anticipation when you were this far from him. It was colder than he was expecting. Colder than the rest of the air around him.

"Ready?" He asked, mainly for an excuse to talk to you. He knew you were ready. It was rare you weren't. And you answered him with a shrug.

"Sure, why not?"

Leon raised his brows. Fair enough.

Pushing open the door, his gun was instantly raised, pointing towards the unknown. He hadn't heard anything coming from inside, but that didn't mean nothing was there. You, too, had your gun in your hand, though you were mainly looking behind you, brows furrowed.

"Something wrong?" Leon's head tilted to the side, his hair swinging slightly. Though you shook your head, your expression didn't change, and your gaze didn't move.

"You ever feel like someone's watchin' you?" You'd felt it for a while now. Like a pair of eyes stalking your every movement. Sharp. Assessing. That prick at the back of your neck felt almost familiar. Or maybe it was just the eyes of the village.

"Think we're being followed?" Leon stepped back to your side, following your line of sight into the trees. He trusted your instincts. More than he probably should. There was just something about you that made him think you were more in tune to your surroundings than he was. Like you would be really good at a spot-the-difference.

"Dunno. Hard to say. It just feels… off."

"This whole place feels off," Leon agreed, though he couldn't spot whatever you were looking at.

"Mm, not wrong there," you murmured, before exhaling a loosening breath. "Nothing. Probably just a crow or something."

Leon wasn't convinced.

"Maybe. Keep an eye on it though, yeah?"

"Yes sir," you grinned, offering him a lazy, two-fingered salute before turning back to step into the hall. "Hooooly shit. Now we know where the budget was blown," you gestured to the mist filtering across the floor, the creepy choice of human skull decor. One huge one caught your eye on the other side of the room. "Looks like some freaky cult rave in here."

"What kinda raves have you been to?" Leon asked in amused accusation, brushing past your shoulder to search for anything that could suggest Ashley was dragged through here deeper in the hall. He could imagine it, actually. You. Loud music. Flashing lights. A grin bright as the sun. Chaos. Just — chaos.

He watched you mentally catalogue everything on the various tables, once again running your fingers along the grime and dust. It was almost… sorrowful. But the look was gone the second he registered it. Like you'd just shut it away. Like you didn't want to entertain it. Fair enough. Compartmentalise. He understood more than most.

"Oh, I didn't mention I'm part of a cult?" You looked over your shoulder to where he'd crouched to open a cupboard, your tone saccharine sweet. "Virgin sacrifices, cannibalism, blood rituals, the works."

"Kinda low-hanging fruit, don'tcha think?" He responded dryly, comparing the herb he'd found in the cupboard with his own, making sure it was the same before pocketing it in the pouch at the back of his belt. "Though—" he stood "—it would make sense."

"I don't— what's that supposed to mean?" You turned fully now, hands on your hips. And framed by the various flickering candles, piles of human skulls and smoke curling around your ankles, you looked like some kind of demonic vision. Maybe you were part of a cult.

Leon shook his head. Whether it was fondly or not, you couldn't tell.

"Just an observation," he noted, shining his flashlight in your direction pointedly before turning away to keep looking.

"Just an observation," you mocked, clicking your tongue in disapproval, stepping through the candle-lit room towards the painting you'd seen back in the Chief's house back atop the hill. Saddler… right? Lord Saddler? Something like that.

Crossing your arms against your chest, you continued to take stock of the room. It felt almost gothic, though that could be more to do with the freaky-cult-rave vibes they had going on. Solid wood structure, support beams; could come down fairly easily with a strike to the load-bearing ones.

You were mid-thought when the earpiece in your ear started to ring, almost scaring the life out of you. Reaching up, you pressed it once, already bracing yourself for Nyx's irritating voice.

"Aye, Alecto, Nyx here!"

Leon turned as he heard you sigh heavily, eyes narrowing at the fingers on your ear.

"Reading you loud n' clear, Nyx, whatcha got for me?" You responded, reaching out to inspect the wooden doors framing the painting, briefly inspecting behind them.

"Soooooo, I did some digging — I know, you're welcome — and found some shit out," he paused, and you pinched the bridge of your nose.

"Yeeees? And?" You prompted, trying your best to keep your shit together whilst Leon smirked at you. You made a face that promised death, turning your back to him deliberately as you waited for Nyx to finish his drink of soda or whatever the fuck he was doing.

"Diva, give me a moment. Sending it over now." You heard the clacking of Nyx's keyboard before the communication unit in your pocket lit up, and you fished it out. Leaning against the support beam next to you, your brows furrowed as you scrolled through the file.

Until you stopped.

Dead.

The blood in your veins turned to ice.

"Nyx, what the fuck is this?" Leon turned back to you again; this time he wasn't smirking. Because that wasn't a smirking tone. That was a 'something is very, very wrong' tone.

"Additional neutralisation target. Apparently this fucker is a real thorn in someone's side. Paid half up front, by the way. Same guy that hired you for this gig," Nyx offered like you'd asked him for outfit choices depending on how cold it was outside.

"And that was?" You tried, though already knowing the answer.

"Nuh-uh. Sorry, babes, no-can-do. You know the rules," he responded, and the sing-song tone made you want to commit several felonies. Taking a moment to settle the bubbling rage in your gut, you waved Leon off as he came into your field of vision, that stupid concern pinching his brows.

"Right. So I'm halfway through a gig an' now he's throwing in extra bullshit?"

"He's already paid—"

"Yeah, half, Nyx. He's paid half. Send it back, I'm not doing it."

"So you don't wanna find them?"

That stopped you. Because how dare he? How dare he bring that up right now?

"You're on thin fucking ice." Your voice dropped dangerously low, a calm-before-the-storm type thing. And Leon subconsciously backed up a step. What the fuck was going on?

"I'm on your side here. I want to find them as much as you do," he defended himself, and you could almost hear the way he sat back in his chair and waved his hand.

"No. You don't. You have no fucking idea, Nyx. Those people — took everything. They took—"

"Meg and Tiss? That was you, Alec. Remember? You started that fire. You took off. You left them to burn."

You stayed silent, biting back every single scathing response with the restraint you barely possessed. Because he was right. He was right. But you also knew some escaped the inferno. Some made it out. And you wouldn't have made it this far without Nyx's help, despite his infuriating personality.

"Look, I've got another lead I'm looking into," Nyx continued. "But we need the cash. Plane tickets aren't cheap, babes." He'd changed his tone into something softer. A tad more understanding. No less sass-filled, but with gentler edges.

"I know. Fuck, I know. Alright, fine. I'll — I'll handle it," you breathed, bracing your face in your hand, pocketing your communication unit once again.

"Alec…"

"I said I'll fucking handle it, Nyx. Keep looking into the lead you got," you paused, throwing your head back to inhale a deep breath. "Oh, and do some diggin' into something called Los Iluminados. Found some kinda weird scripture type thing earlier, that was the title."

"'S like a book or something?" Nyx asked, and for once you didn't hear the crinkling of a crisp packet when you asked him to do something.

"Dunno. That's why I'm asking you to look into it," you managed to spit through gated teeth. You didn't know when you started pacing, but it must have been at some point after Nyx brought up your goal. He knew that would get to you. Asshole.

"A'ight babes, I'll let you get back to it. Toodles!"

Before you could bark at him to stop calling you babes, Nyx disconnected, and you felt like a puppet with its strings cut. Your shoulders sagged, your chest loosened, your arms fell by your sides. There was a moment where you were just happy to be off the call again, basking in the Nyx-less environment.

Before the substance of the conversation bubbled back to the surface, as well as your good friend: rage.

With a furious shout, you sent your foot through the closest barrel to you, letting the satisfying crunch of wood dampen the flames in your chest ever so slightly. But hidden within the splinter of planks was the perturbed hiss of a disturbed snake, yellowish patterns blending in almost seamlessly with the spilt paint on the side of the now broken barrel. You only noticed it when a sharp pain throbbed in your shin, and you looked down to see the fucker's fangs stuck in your leg.

Well… fuck. This was going to be an interesting experiment.

Reaching down, you ripped it from your leg and tossed it aside. And whether the dizziness you suddenly felt was brought on by whatever shit these freaks had put in your blood, the sudden surge of venom in your veins, or something else entirely, it didn't matter when you stumbled slightly, bracing your arm on a shelving unit, your hand flying to the side of your head as it felt like it was splitting.

Flashes of memory carved through your skull. Snakes. Snakes. Hissing. Biting. Fuck. You couldn't do anything. You couldn't run. You couldn't run. Meg and Tiss couldn't run. None of you could run. The table beneath you is cold. Steel. Shiny. Stainless. Snakes. Snakes. You wanted to run. You had to run. You—

"Hey…"

You gasped, entire body jolting when warmth invaded the cool of the steel table in your mind. A hand on your arm. Grounding. Keeping. A voice you found a tether in and used to haul yourself back. An anchor.

Emotional anchor recommended. Sisters advised.

Motherfuckers.

"I'm — I'm okay. I'm fine. I just — I'm good," you tried, shaking your head of the images and hopefully the pain. It was getting difficult to tell what was yours and what wasn't. Were those visuals yours? Or were they whatever you were injected with? "Just — Nyx being an asshole. I'm good," you tried to wave him off. Tried to pull from his grip. But he was having none of it.

"Yeah, not what I'm worried about," Leon breathed, eyes raking over the visible veins beneath your skin. Two-toned. Black and orange. The same orange that he could see in your eyes sometimes. Though what worried him more was the way you leaned into him. Heavily. Leon knew you well enough by now that everything you said, everything you did, was largely with meaning. You did things deliberately. You used humour and flirty comments to deflect. You chose your moments: when to touch him, when to show you were comfortable with him and when to pull back. So when he took most of your weight in his arms, panic flared in his chest. Because this didn't feel like there was a reason behind it. "Okay, okay. Gonna sit you down. There you go, you're okay," he murmured, half guiding, half dragging you to one of the wooden chairs scattered around the room and lowering you into it.

"'m fine," you tried again, bracing your forearms on your knees and leaning forward to focus on your breathing.

"Christ, I really did sound like you didn't I?" Leon huffed, straightening your leg with one hand around your knee and the other below the snake-bite. He clenched his jaw when his hand came away sticky and red. "Need to have a look at it, okay?"

You sat back with an irritated sound, your rifle clattering against the back of the chair.

"No. Not okay. It was a snake, Leon. Not a fucking lion. I'm fine. Venom doesn't work this quickly anyway, if it even was venomous—" it was, but you weren't about to tell him that "—we can't stop every time one of us stubs our toe for fuck's sake. I just needed a minute to get my shit together. And now consider my shit; got," your hiss was almost as snappy as the snake's. At least your vision had stopped swimming again for the time being, which helped as you pulled your leg from his hold and pushed to your feet.

Leon sighed, head falling with a huff of disbelief.

"Just trying to help."

You stopped. Because you knew. You knew that. You were being unfair. But who could blame you? You weren't used to being saved. You weren't used to being looked after like this. You'd just been tasked with an additional target, one you didn't even want to think about right now, and you could feel everything slipping through your fingers. You knew snapping at him wasn't fair.

"I know," you sighed, tension draining. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—fuck. I'm just sorry, okay?" A shit apology, but it was the best you could do. Even if you did sound annoyed that you were even saying it.

Leon exhaled, pushing heavily to his feet.

"It's fine."

For some reason, that just pissed you off again. Maybe it was because he was far more understanding than he had any right to be in his situation. 

"Seriously? Christ, do I need to actually kill a puppy to get a reaction out of you?” You gestured wildly, not caring that your voice had raised in volume. If any more of those fucking Ganados wanted to find you, they were welcome to. You could use the distraction. And rage output. 

Leon just fixed you with a hard stare. 

“First’ve all, you couldn’t, even if you wanted to. You couldn’t even leave that wolf. An' second, why’re you trying to get a reaction out of me?” He asked as if it weren’t obvious. As if your guilt didn’t flicker across your face and twist in your stomach every time he looked at you with anything other than what you were used to. And it pissed you off. Because you didn’t know what to do with that. Disgust you could handle. Hatred. Hunger. Rage. You knew these things. 

“Because you keep looking at me like I’m worth understanding. Like if you just keep trying I’ll crack open and spill all my tragic little secrets. There’s nothing to understand. I’m a mercenary. I’m here for money. I’m not a sad little orphan girl looking for someone to understand her. Ashley is a gig. You are an ally. That’s it.” Your breath heaved through your lungs, chest rising and falling, inhaling mist and dirt and the distinct smell of mildew. And you genuinely thought for a minute you’d finally shut him up. Genuinely thought that he didn’t have an answer for this. Who would? 

Until his eyes narrowed a fraction.

“That’s why you kissed me, yeah? Because I’m an ally?” There was more hurt behind it than he wanted there to be, but he supposed that was to be expected. Two missions. Two mercenaries. Both getting involved for their personal gain. And he watched shock tighten your shoulders and slacken your features, fury bleeding dry.

There were differences. Ones he knew existed but was too focused on what you were saying to remember them. Because you’d just admitted to him everything he was convincing himself wasn’t true. “Here I was thinking there was something more to you. Thinking that it meant something when you told me your name,” he continued, gesturing just as fiercely as you did. ”Do you even trust me?”

This wasn’t a part of your script. When you ignited with fury, people stepped back. People gave in. They stopped pretending they weren’t afraid of you. They didn’t argue back. And they sure as shit didn’t bring up anything you’d said or done in the past to contradict what you were saying now. You were lost.

And your silence spoke volumes. It gave him a moment to compose himself, to remind himself of the underlying tender nature that lay beneath the rage. Beneath the lashing out and the pushing away. But before he could blow out a breath and apologise, he watched you shut down. Watched those walls he'd been so carefully breaking down rebuild brick by brick, until there was nothing in your eyes but cold professionalism. He couldn't even say the first syllable of your name before you interrupted him.

Not with your words. With your actions. With the way you secured your rifle on your shoulder, a certain finality punctuating your movements. The kind of movements that screamed "this conversation is over" without you having to utter a single word. And you were careful not to limp when you pushed past him, though you could now feel the two puncture wounds in your leg. You were no stranger to pushing through pain.

And Leon saw how tightly you were clenching your jaw in the little tremor beneath the scarring. You didn't look at him as you pushed through the door, welcoming the fresh — well, fresher — air from outside. Only to stop cold in your tracks.

"How the fuck…?"

Leon followed you through the doorway, head tilting to the side in mild bafflement. Purple flames, an assortment of gear on a wooden table before him, stood the same merchant from before.

"Oop— break's over, I s'pose," he muttered, standing when he noticed the two of you gawking.

"You've got to be shitting me…" Leon sighed.

Neither of you bothered to ask where the merchant acquired all of this gear. Honestly? Neither of you wanted to know. But the atmosphere was once again frosty. Something Leon was getting increasingly sick of. He liked listening to your odd comments here and there. Liked hearing you hum whatever tune had popped into your head whenever you felt unsteady. He actively enjoyed your company when you weren't, well, like this.

Forging ahead, you hadn't once looked back to make sure he was following. He hadn't once heard you utter or sing or huff an irritated breath. Even those he missed. You were silent. Like he'd been the one to snap at you. Any villagers you'd come across were taken care of without so much as a whisper. Until finally, finally, you'd made it to the church.

The atmosphere was eerie to say the least. The yard was littered with dusk-lit graves, crows picking at whatever carrion they'd found, cawing sporadically into the evening. And atop the hill, proudly overlooking the graveyard stood the church. Like something straight out of a Bram Stoker novel. Not that there was much time to admire the architecture, as before Leon could even take in a breath of relief that he was finally making progress, you'd already pushed your knife into the throat of an unsuspecting Ganados, using the soft ground to muffle your footsteps.

Leon glanced to the little tool shed towards the treeline, and you followed his gaze. But when he looked back for your silent input, you just shrugged. Like you didn't really care whether he investigated or not. Like it wasn't important to you what he did anymore. And for some reason, that hurt a little more than he was expecting it to. But he pushed it down. If he was going to feel that little stab every time you didn't give a fuck about him, this was going to be a long mission.

You stood, deliberately turning away from whatever decision he made. You'd given up all and any hopes of actually being a team about this. Once Ashley was safe, you were more than happy to hand her over to him and leave the both of them in the past. Whatever gig you were specifically hired to do when it came to her was over. You were done with this. Nyx was right. You needed to focus on your goals. And you'd spent the last however many years looking after a fucking college student only to have her kidnapped anyway. Waste of your fucking talents, honestly.

The church only got more imposing as you climbed the hill to it, though you couldn't help being a little relieved you were finally here. And you only knew Leon was following because you heard his footfalls in the leaves. Guess he decided to leave the shed as is. Not that it mattered. And you only knew he'd stopped next to you because you felt your left side tingle with the proximity. Something that kept fucking happening, irritatingly.

You didn't know how to explain yourself to him. Fuck, you didn't even know what needed explaining. Well, you did, but you couldn't wrap your head around it. Didn't know why you react the way you do. Well, you did. Kind of. Your past hadn't exactly shaped you into a family-friendly cuddle monster. A monster, sure. Just a different kind.

"I trust you," was all you could say for the moment. And the moment those words left your mouth, you regretted them. Not because you didn't mean them, but because of the way he looked at you. Like he was the one feeling guilty about the argument. Like he was the one who'd pushed you away. And you fucking hated it. Because he didn't deserve this. From what you could tell, he was a good man. And he was stuck here with you, of all people. You felt bad for the guy.

And Leon's expression softened almost instantly. He shouldn't have weaponised what happened between you. He knew that. He shouldn't have thrown it in your face the way he did. But honestly? He was just glad you were talking to him again.

"Y'know," you continued, now shifting from foot to foot. "You asked. Earlier. Do I even trust you? I do. I just—"

"Don't know how to do this, right?" Leon offered, offering his assistance before quickly covering his tracks. "Working with someone, I mean. I just uh, get the feeling this isn't exactly what you're used to," he gestured vaguely to your shared situation, and you huffed a humourless chuckle.

"What gave me away?" You asked, the slightest smile pulling at the corner of your lips.

Leon flattened you with a look. "You want a list?"

You snorted a laugh. "Yeah, actually you're right, don't answer that."

"I'm right? Can I get that in writing? Gonna hang it on my fridge," he quipped, before leaning to the side slightly when you shoved at him weakly.

"Bite me," you glare had no real heat in it.

A glare that was promptly wiped clean when he responded: "Don't tempt me," with half a grin and a wink.

You blinked for a few moments after as he stepped past you to the gates of the church. Because it was your turn to experience whiplash. Sure, the two of you had flirted every now and then, but not since he'd kissed you. Or you'd kissed him. Still unsure of the details there. And unfortunately, it did nothing to ease the attraction you felt towards him. You'd hoped and prayed it would fade, and it did slightly. Until he said that. And now you wanted to feel him beneath your palms all over again. Mold your lips to his, drag little groans and grunts from his chest. Fuck, you wanted him to bite you. Down the side of your neck, preferably. Wanted to feel his teeth nip lower over your collarbone. Wanted him to latch onto your breast with his mouth, and pinch the other between his fingers. Wanted those fingers inside you, curling and pulsing until he made you scream.

Well shit, now you were worked up. Fuck's sake.

"Fuck's sake…" Leon hissed, and you almost jumped with the fear that he was reading your mind for a moment, until your eyes caught up with your brain and you realised it was because he couldn't open the gate.

Wait, he couldn't open the gate.

"Oh, this is getting real old now…" You huffed, putting your depraved thoughts to one side as the reality of your situation settled. So much for getting Ashley and going. Looks like you had to explore this stupid fucking village a little more. You groaned in frustration, both sexual and otherwise.

And Leon gave you a look. Though in that moment, you really didn't care. Whether he knew what you were thinking or not, you were too annoyed to give it the time of day.

"That bad being stuck with me, huh?" He asked, and though he sounded lighthearted, you could hear the little insecurity threaded through his words. If only he knew.

"That depends, you gonna continue to irritate me?" You asked, placing a hand on your hip. And Leon rolled his eyes with the slightest smile before turning away and placing two fingers to his earpiece. Guess that settled that then.

"Condor One to Roost. The church is sealed up," he reported, and you barely suppressed a snort at his call-sign. Honestly, Condor One? Who came up with these names? Though you guessed Alecto wasn't much better. Most of the time, people thought that was your actual name and that your parents were just super into Greek mythology.

Someone certainly was.

Leon watched as you wandered around the corner to look for another entrance before Hunnigan answered over his coms.

"And Baby Eagle?"

Leon shook his head, despite Hunnigan not being able to see him.

"Negative, nothing yet. But they sure do have this place locked up tight," he answered, knocking on the bars a couple times, as if testing the durability of the iron.

"I see. Well, I can think of one reason why they'd want to do so," Ingrid replied, irony lacing her tone.

And Leon couldn't agree more. "Oh, she's here, that's for sure. I'll find a way in," he glanced back to where you'd disappeared around the corner. "Condor One out."

And not a second later—

"Oi Birdie, come look at this!" From around the same corner you'd disappeared down. Leon fought a smile. Because clearly you were back on good enough terms for you to be calling him stupid nicknames again. He followed the sound of your voice into a side door you'd found, pushing through to see you staring at a map pinned to the wall.

"'Birdie'? Seriously?"

You shrugged, looking over your shoulder with a sharp grin.

"Seems fitting, no? Condor One," you responded pointedly, before Leon's heart sank as he watched a wicked thought cross your mind. "Wait, if you're Condor One, who's Condor Two? And does that mean there's a Condor Three? Who're the other Condors, Leon? What're you hiding?"

He folded his arms across his broad chest, raising a brow. "You wanna talk about hiding things?"

The silence was deafening, dragging on for several long minutes. Several long minutes where Leon was certain you were debating stabbing him in the neck for bringing it up.

"…Touché." you answered, almost impressed he had the nerve, before turning back to the map. "They called you a pest, by the way."

"Say what now?"

You nodded to the map pinned to the board, reading the note aloud in a creepy, awful Spanish accent that had him failing to bite back a smile.

"A pest fro- de outside has -ome for thee -irl. There's letters missing, by the way," you interrupted yourself as Leon joined you by the board, still fighting a smile.

"Yeah, I gathered. Also, drop the accent, it's offensive," he glanced to you out the corner of his eye just in time to see your own roll skywards.

"You're right, we should be respectful to the people trying to kill us at every turn," you nodded in faux solemnity, and he elbowed you lightly. This is what he missed when neither of you were speaking to each other. These little moments. Where the two of you could even be considered friends. Or at the very least, friendly. Deliberately excluding the images that flash in his mind's eye whenever you groan in frustration, like you did earlier by the church. He could have sworn that was not an irritated sound. You sounded like you'd been fucking edged for hours. He had to think of the least sexy things he could conjure because he was not doing the rest of this mission hard. Not only would that be humiliating, but also just fucking inconvenient. Yet sometimes, you really didn't make it easy.

He wondered if you knew how good you looked in those pants…?

Leon concentrated as much as he could on the rest of the note, having to read it a few times over for the contents to actually sink in. The key will be held in the cave on the other side of the lake. The monster will deal with the foolish intruder. Bit rude.

"The lake," Leon wondered aloud. "Let's hope for no more surprises."

"I wouldn't hold your breath…" You responded instantly, examining the map a little closer to memorise the route marked in red ink. Or what you hoped was red ink. "Oh, they also called you foolish."

"Mhm? How'd you know they're talking about me?" Leon asked, taking a step back to look at you properly.

You stared at him for a moment, just about resisting the urge to rake your eyes up and down his frame. Fuck, that stupid fucking compression shirt. Slightly too tight around his arms. Even torn and blood-soaked, it looked fucking good. Or perhaps it was because it was slightly torn and blood-soaked. You didn't particularly want to unpack the psychological implications of finding that attractive.

"Intuition," you shrugged, whirling around with such velocity that your hair shifted with the movement. Leon shook his head, his eyes flinging skyward in a way that could have been perceived as fond. And he opened his mouth to respond before he noticed you'd fallen still, your gaze trained on something on the table he couldn't see from this angle.

Stepping to your side, Leon first saw your face. Saw that stubborn flame of determined hope change shape. The way your brows had pinched slightly, the way you jaw sat a little tighter, the way your eyes flickered with an emotion he knew all too well.

Guilt.

And when he followed your gaze, he saw why. He didn't need to know what Ashley looked like to work out the photograph on the table was of her, her hands bound at the wrists behind her back, lying on her side, unconscious. He didn't think you heartless. Far from it. But he wasn't expecting you to suddenly grind to a halt. And he was sure you wouldn't react like this if the photo was of some random woman.

Or maybe you would.

His fingers twitched by your hand, subconsciously reaching for you. Or maybe even consciously. Because he wanted to. He wanted to reach for you. To put a palm on your shoulder. To interlace his fingers with yours. To run his hands through your hair and tell you that you aren't alone anymore. You didn't have to be. If you would just talk to him. If you would just tell him who you are.

Leon didn't do any of this. Instead, he reached for the photo on the table and picked it up, tilting it away from the lamplight glare to read the writing scrawled on the front. Hopefully the ink was simply red. He didn't like the implications otherwise. Your eyes narrowed as you tilted your head to the side ever so slightly, most likely because you couldn't read the language.

"It's just the same instructions as on the map," he explained softly when he noticed your expression. "'Keep her locked in the church until the appointed time'."

You nodded in response, unable to trust your voice not to shake slightly. Fuck, it hurt so much more than you thought it was going to. Obviously there was going to be a time where you found Ashley, but seeing her like this — not even her, a fucking picture of her, like someone had taken the time to crack out the fucking camera and snap a family photo — genuinely made you sick to the stomach.

You exhaled a breath, failing to keep it steady.

"This is my fault." You weren't even sure why you said it. Weren't even sure why, now of all times, you felt safe enough to bare your soul. And you weren't sure why you didn't want to stop. "I was supposed to protect her. That was my fucking job. For three years. That's what I was employed to do. And I did. Not that she needed much protecting, but — I kept tabs on her, y'know? When her security weren't around. I made sure she made it back home after a night out. I made sure she didn't get into cars with strangers, or went on any blind dates alone. I was supposed to keep her safe—"

Your throat closed up suddenly, and you found yourself unable to speak without the threat of breaking down. Fuck, you honestly thought you didn't care all that much. You thought it would be easy. This would be easy. But fuck. You cared so much more than you thought you did. Or rather, you cared so much more than you let yourself know. The realisation was terrifying.

Something heavy twisted in Leon's chest when you cut yourself off. He'd largely kept his silence, letting you offload whilst he just listened. He guessed this was quite literally what he'd been asking you to do this whole time, and he had the distinct feeling that interrupting you would result in you shutting down once again. But when your voice trembled slightly, and you sucked in an uncomfortable breath, he set the picture back down onto the table and finally gave in to the urge to reach for you.

The contact between his palm and your forearm almost crackled beneath your skin, and it was enough to drag your gaze from the photograph up to his face, confused about what could have possibly led him to touch you. And you were still warm. Even beneath the leather of his glove, he could feel your body heat.

"We're gonna find her," Leon murmured, pouring every ounce of conviction he had into his voice, setting aside his own self-doubts. "We're gonna find her, and she's gonna be just fine. We're gonna get her out of here, 'kay? Just gotta find that stupid fucking key," he tried to drag a smile from you by using your own phrases, but when that failed, he inhaled a breath and tried a different tactic.

"I get it. Trust me, I get it. The whole letting people down thing? I get it. Raccoon City, I—" he paused, swallowing the memories of muted screaming. "I couldn't save anyone. I couldn't even help them. I promised I would, an'—" fuck. It had been a long time since he'd spoken about Raccoon City to anyone. "The point is, dwelling on what you couldn't do isn't gonna help the things you can do. And honestly? Someone who's just here for the money wouldn't have looked at that picture like that."

You tried to protest, shaking your head and moving to pull from his grip. But Leon was getting remarkably good at spotting your tells. And before you could move away, he caught your chin in his hand, forcing you to look at him.

"Deny it if you want," he continued, pushing through your comfort zone. "Tell me I'm seeing things. Lash out at me, shut me out, give me the silent treatment again. I'm just tellin' you what I'm seeing."

You were so close to him now he could feel your trembling breaths fanning his chin. He could taste the mint of the herb on your breath. But you weren't pulling away. A fact Leon was clinging onto for dear life. Your hand gripped his bicep, but you weren't pushing him off. If anything, you were using him to steady yourself.

"And what, exactly, are you seeing?" You asked, your voice barely above a whisper. Those words themselves would have been snarky if it weren't for the fact that he'd never heard you sound so vulnerable, voice unsteady.

And you would replay the way his eyes softened in your head over and over again for years to come.

"Someone trying to make up for a mistake they made. Someone so terrified of caring she'd rather die than admit to it. Someone who'd rather keep everyone at arm's length because she's scared of being hurt again," he didn't care that you'd lashed out at him last time. He needed you to realise he knew you were scared, and it didn't make a lick of difference to him. He didn't see you any differently. "And it's like looking in a damn mirror," he finished, watching you absorb his words and weigh up your reactions. He half expected you to shove him away. Respond how you responded before. But you didn't.

Because you were at a crossroads. You wanted to step back. Pull from his hold. Slam on the brakes. Rebuild the walls. Fuck it, man the barricade! Anything to make him stop looking at you like that. You thought you'd done such a good job at throwing him off the scent. Of confusing him in your whirlwind of moods and emotions. Keeping him guessing at all times, never letting him know what you were ever really thinking. And yet here he was, reading you like a damn book someone left open for so long the sun bleached pages don't even close properly anymore.

And shit, you craved being seen like this. Beneath the walls and the armour and the barbed wire that wrapped your heart, you craved for someone to pull it apart and see who you were beneath it all. But you couldn't let him. You couldn't let him see all of it. All of who you are. Of what you are. Not now. Probably not ever. Because at some point between waking up in his lap and him taking your chin thirty seconds ago, you'd started valuing his thoughts. His opinions. His company. And you'd started wishing. If only.

Yet it seemed like he wasn't about to let this go.

"Tell me I'm wrong," he provoked, shaking his head and guiding your face back to his when you tried to avert your gaze. "No, no, look at me. Tell me I'm wrong."

"Leon—" you tried, though you hadn't really thought about what you were going to say past his name. And he just said yours right back, startling you slightly because every time he said it you'd forgotten you'd told him. And honestly? You liked how it sounded from his lips.

His thumb gently swiped along your chin, an almost encouraging gesture as he held your eyes captive.

"Tell me I'm wrong," about this. About you. About feeling like this. Tell me I'm wrong. Please.

"I can't," you managed after a while, and whether you could hear the subtext in his voice, Leon didn't know. "I can't," do this. Let you in. I want to. I can't. I'm sorry.

His eyes flickered between your own, down to your lips, and back again. Repeating the pattern once. Twice. The hand on your chin shifted to cup your jaw, the minimal space between you almost static, charged with everything neither of you were saying. His heart stuttered when you absently leaned into the touch, like you'd been craving it. It was the push he needed.

"Fuck it," he exhaled, and before you could process what exactly he meant by this, both his hands cupped the sides of your neck, and his lips crashed into yours in a feverish kiss. And you answered instantly. Tilting your head to the side, your hands fed through his hair, pulling at the soft strands in much the same way you had before, only this time it wasn't experimental. This time, when you felt him groan against your tongue, you pulled again, raking blunt nails across his scalp.

Fuck, you still tasted like mint. Mint and eucalyptus and something distinctly smoky he couldn't pinpoint. His eyes rolled back behind closed lids when you tugged on the hair just above the nape of his neck, prompting his hands to slide from the sides of your neck, down your waist, over your hips to your thighs. He crouched slightly before lifting you into his arms like you weighed nothing. Which, to him, you kind of didn't. Like he'd said before, you were much lighter than he thought you would be. Or rather, much lighter than you should have been.

Leon swallowed your pitched gasp of surprise, delighting in the first noise he'd pulled from you, his arms wrapping around your middle as your legs locked around his waist. Fuck, you were so worked up. So worked up from your own imagination and the first kiss you'd shared hours ago. He felt so fucking good, moving beneath you. You could feel the muscles in his torso shift as he crossed the room, your back hitting the wall with force that should have been medically concerning, and absolutely should not have turned you on as much as it did.

But hell, you'd suffer the broken back in exchange for feeling his lips leave yours with a brief, chaste kiss before trailing along your jaw and up to your ear. He shucked the rifle from your shoulder, placing it with surprising delicacy against the wall next to you, before continuing. His hot breaths only fanned the flames of your desire, causing you to grind your hips against his tactical belt, the clasp catching slightly where the crotch of your pants pressed into your cunt.

"Fuck… Leon!" You exhaled when his teeth nipped at your ear. Your legs tightened around him instinctively when his arms stopped supporting you, choosing to instead to undo the knot of your shirt you'd tied at the start of this whole nightmare. The loose strands came free, and somehow Leon still had the mind to be careful with the healing wound at your side when he ran his hands up beneath the black fabric. The scars he remembered tracing with his eyes he now felt beneath his fingertips. Fuck, you were so hot. Both figuratively and literally. He felt you shudder beneath his touch when his lips lightly grazed the scar along your cheek. Odd, for a "burn scar" to be so sensitive, but he didn't dwell. Not when you were grinding so deliciously against his hardening cock.

Pushing his hand beneath the tight elastic of your bralette, you arched your back into his leather-clad palm, hands falling to clasp his shoulders. Lightning danced beneath his touch, your lips pulled thin in a vain attempt to silence your pitched whines when he pinched and squeezed your pebbled nipple.

Honestly? This was starting to feel a little one-sided, something you had every intention of evening up when you almost mimicked his movements, shoving one hand beneath the clinging fabric of his shirt to paw and scratch at the hard muscle of his uninjured shoulder. The other one raked down his front, bypassing the plains and valleys of his abdomen in favour of going straight for the tent in his pants.

Leon bucked into you the moment your hands grazed his cock, exhaling a gravelly groan into the side of your neck as the lightest touch sent shivers down his spine. He nipped at the space below your jaw in retaliation, pinching your now sensitive bud between his fingers at the same time. He wanted to see you. Fuck, he wanted to strip you bare and catalogue every sound he could pull from you. Every whine, every groan, every airy gasp. He wanted a file in his head dedicated to you.

But the moment he tried to pull your turtleneck down for his mouth to explore further, the hand at his shoulder promptly moved to pull him back by his hair. Not rough. Well, not rough enough to actually hurt him. And the hiss that escaped his teeth had nothing to do with pain, and everything to do with the fact that you pulling his hair made him throb in his pants.

Boundary set. Understood. He took a moment to pull back and look at you. Because yes, this is absolutely a 'caught up in the moment and didn't really think about the consequences' kind of decision, but he still wanted you to be on the same page as him. With your bitten lips and heavy-lidded eyes. He wanted to give you the opportunity to say no. To push him off. To stop him.

And you did the exact opposite. You saw what he was doing. It made something in your chest tighten. And instead of confronting that feeling, the hand in his hair shifted to the side of his face, cupping his jaw with a tenderness that seemed to have been absent thus far. He was beautiful. Kind eyes blown dark, still soft in their gaze. Brows threaded in anticipated heat. And when you drew him in again, hesitating just shy of his lips for one teasing second, Leon felt you grinning against his mouth in masked triumph when he was the one who closed the rest of the distance.

Sure, you may be the one pinned to the wall, but he had a sneaking suspicion you were still the one with all the power in this situation. And fuck if that didn't turn him on. Not that he needed much more turning on. You were positively killing him. A death he would have gladly accepted had circumstances been different.

A firm squeeze to his clothed cock brought him back into the present, stealing a cracked gasp from his chest that you devoured with your tongue lapping stroked against his own. And for a moment, he believed your hiss was one of pleasure, a byproduct of his fingers still playing your taut bud beneath the fabric of your bralette.

That was until the hand on his jaw, and the other from his cock flew back to his shoulder, your blunt nails sinking hard into his skin. Hard enough that it finally registered in his pleasure-addled mind that this might not be pleasure at all.

Leon pulled back from you, looking as if you'd just electrocuted him, though it was tricky to notice through the sudden splitting pain pulling through your head and down your back. A lot less hot than the mild thud when he shoved you against the wall. Your eyes screwed tight as a wave of hot agony surged through your blood, and there was no passion in the cry that escaped your gated teeth.

"Shit — shit, look at me," setting you back down, Leon cupped both hands either side of your face as you struggled to open your eyes, once again having to lean into him to hold yourself up. He urged your name, tilting your head back up when it dropped. And when your eyes finally met your through the sliver of lashes, that same burning glow flickered within the expanse of your pupils. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I've got you, I've got you," he repeated, your name delicate on his lips as you rode out the trembling pain, the fires in your blood battling for dominion over your body. His eyes fell to your arms, stomach hollowing at the dark veins pulsing beneath the surface of your skin. Ash and searing orange, flow and counter-flow. What the fuck had they done to you?

"I'm fine," you winced, sucking in a deep, shuddering breath through the last pulse of pressure behind your eyes. "I'm good, I'm good. We're good. Let's keep—"

"Hell no. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not the kinda guy who has sex with a woman when she's in that much pain." The heat from before had been extinguished, replaced by pure concern. It made you want to rip your own heart out and offer it to him.

"Hasn't stopped me before," you managed, trying to get closer to him to continue where you left off before his hands fell from framing your face to gripping both your arms, keeping you at a distance.

"Yeah, well, it's stopping me. Running the risk of making it worse? Hurting you more? Yeah, I'm good." Leon released your arms, taking a step back to smooth down the shoulders of his compression shirt.

"Way to make a girl feel desirable, Kennedy," you muttered, throwing your eyes skyward before exhaling an extremely heavy, defeated sigh, dusting off your own clothes and readjusting your harness. If only to give your hands something to do.

Leon paused, watching your movements carefully before dropping his shoulders and running a hand through his hair.

"I didn't say I don't want to. I'm just saying that there's probably a better time and place. Preferably when you're not in pain, and we're not trying to save the president's daughter," he reasoned, placing a hand on his hip to try and distract from the awkward way he was standing. Which, to be honest, just drew attention to it. "What about any've that screams 'I don't want you', hm?" He asked, gesturing to the wall.

"Maybe the moment you fuckin' stopped?" You grumbled, avoiding his gaze by stooping to pick up your rifle and swinging the strap back around your shoulder before turning back to him."You gonna continue traipsing around this hell hole with a raging hard-on?" You asked flatly, fully expecting him to do a one-eighty and kiss you again now that you'd brought it up, but he simply clicked his tongue, his lips pulling into a flat line.

"Hasn't stopped me before," he parroted, and though you knew he was just playing the game you'd both become familiar with, you couldn't help but snort at the insinuation. "Not my first rodeo with a merc, let's put it that way." Leon continued with that sly, boyish grin that made you want to drop to your knees and suck the soul from him. Nonetheless, you gaped in mock horror.

"Well fuck, here I was thinking I was special! And on missions as well! I have some serious concerns about your HR department." You re-tied the loose strips of your shirt back into the knot you'd made seemingly weeks ago, glancing at him to gauge his reaction. But he was too busy doing literally anything to make even standing more comfortable for himself. You managed to repress a laugh.

Honestly, you hadn't even thought about the things he'd said to you before he'd kissed you. Hadn't really had the capacity to do much but kiss him back. But the conversation was coming back to you now, and it made you want to crawl into the nearest hole and die. How had he read you so fucking easily? Sure, he'd said it was like looking in a mirror, but surely he didn't know enough about you to come to that conclusion. You knew he was government trained, but even that was a bit of a stretch.

Leon sensed the slight shift in you. Watched as you withdrew ever so slightly.

"Are you—"

"Did you—"

You both stopped, waiting for the other to speak first after colliding with your words. It was only when the silence dragged a little bit did he gesture for you to talk. And you chose your words carefully.

"It was your first day, right?"

Leon stilled. Of all the things he's said to you, that's what you wanted to talk about?

You continued. "You said Raccoon City was your first day. As a cop. I just—" you paused, giving yourself time to find what you were looking to say. "You carry a lot of guilt for someone who hadn't even issued his first speeding ticket."

Well. That wasn't what he was expecting. And Leon found himself unable to answer you for a good long time. He had no idea what to say to that. Yes? No? Stop psychoanalysing me? Though, that last one would have been a bit rich coming from him and the things he'd just said to you.

So he just folded his arms across his chest, perhaps a little childishly, and turned his head away from you.

"I'd helped give out a speeding ticket…" he all but pouted, and you barked out a laugh before you could stop yourself, covering your mouth when he shot you a look.

"Well, excuse me, Commissioner Gordon, my mistake." You held your hands up in surrender, an amused smirk playing on your lips. A smirk that Leon had to physically fight himself not to kiss.

"You know that makes you The Joker, right?"

You paused, tilting your head to the side in mock thought.

"Did I miss the issue where Commissioner Gordon and The Joker had sex?"

"Hey, we didn't have sex."

You glanced pointedly to the still evident print in his pants.

"Yeah, I can tell."

Leon once again flattened you with a look, and your shrug was clearly intended to plead innocent. He didn't reward you with an answer to that one; instead, he turned to adjust the strap of his combat harness, much like you had moments ago.

"You know, for someone who grew up in an orphanage, you have a lot of pop culture references." It was another one of his prodding statements he framed like jokes. You'd come to recognise them pretty quickly now, which just meant you knew how to dodge them all the better.

"And for someone who works for the government, you have a sense of humour," you paused again. "Not a very good one, but it's certainly a sense of humour!"

"What's wrong with my sense of humour?!" He asked, brows furrowed in mild offence. Personally, he thought he had a great sense of humour. Even if his one-liners were for the same reason as your humming. They made him feel steadier. Like the situation wasn't as grave as reality was suggesting.

He waved you off when you only responded with a slow raise of your brow. 'You carry a lot of guilt for someone who hadn't even issued their first speeding ticket.' No matter how well you managed to mask the sincerity of your words, he felt them nestle somewhere in his chest. Maybe you were just as used to hearing the words 'it wasn't your fault' yourself, enough to know that they'd lost all meaning by this point. Survivor's guilt doesn't care about petty words. But he appreciated how you'd approached the subject, even if it did make him feel a little like a rookie all over again.

"C'mon, Pretty Boy. We've got a princess to rescue," you announced almost cheerfully, patting his cheek twice when you strode past him to clamber down the trapdoor ladder. Leon blinked a few times, processing what you'd just called him and swiftly dismissing how it did nothing to help the already problematic situation in his pants.

"Pretty Boy?" He asked at the risk of making things worse for himself.

Reaching the base of the ladder, you put your hands on your hips, peering up into the light. The image was achingly similar to when you'd woken up in his lap, the lamplight casting his muddy blonde locks in a golden halo.

And he expected you to have some kind of witty explanation like you usually would. But instead you just peered up at him for a moment, your head tilting to the side ever so slightly, before you nodded in affirmation.

"Yep. Pretty Boy," you shrugged, before decisively turning away to follow the tunnel back out into the open. Leon stayed looking into the dark for far longer than he probably should have done, the smile pulling at the corners of his lips feeling wonderfully disobedient. He won't say he's falling in love. Far from it. There were still way too many unanswered questions clouding your name in his mind, but he didn't regret what just almost happened. He didn't regret kissing you, nor did he regret pinning you against the wall. And he didn't regret stopping, either. Because Leon got the distinct feeling you weren't used to being cared for like that, though perhaps through self-fulfilling prophecy rather than forced situations.

He wasn't falling in love.

Not yet anyway.

"How's your leg, by the way?"

Pushing onwards proved significantly easier than it had thus far. Sure, you'd run into a few Ganados roaming around the scaffolding platforms that made up the path ahead, which did nothing to help your acrophobia because those platforms were high, but you'd disposed of them pretty quickly. You and Leon made a better team than either of you would care to admit.

The air was cooler here; huge quarry stones made up an almost maze-like system for you to navigate down, and you savoured every breeze that lifted through the tall walls. You weren't feeling any worse, but you most definitely weren't getting any better.

"Hm? Oh, yeah s'fine. Guess it wasn't venomous after all." You shook your leg for emphasis, trying to keep your voice light. Because you were lying. But he didn't need to know that. Not about being fine, but about the snake's venom.

"Huh. Coulda sworn it looked like an adder or somethin'," Leon mused, flicking his hair from his face as another gust of wind blew through the tunnel. The movement made you smile a little.

"Probably one've those warning patterns. Like poisonous dart frogs."

Leon paused, because your argument made no sense.

"Okay, but poisonous dart frogs are still poisonous. It's right there in the name…" He pointed out, taking his gun from his holster and checking the magazine compartment. It was more of a habit than for any practical reason, like running his hand through his hair or making stupid jokes.

"Fine, then like a corn snake," you huffed.

"Corn snakes don't have fangs," he countered, and you rolled your eyes so hard Leon was surprised when they didn't get stuck at the back of your head.

You made an exasperated face. "Who are you, David Attenborough?"

"Who?"

Well, that stopped you in your tracks. In one fluid movement, you whirled on him, eyes wide with incredulous shock. It was perfect, you thought absently. A perfect distraction from having to dodge his questions.

"You don't know who David Attenborough is?"

Leon scrunched his nose. "Should I?"

"The nature documentary guy?! You know, he narrates over penguins falling off cliffs and baby turtles doing that death race thing. 'And here we see a wild Leon Kennedy, in his natural habitat, quipping his way through pigshit and—'"

You couldn't get much further in your truly awful British impression because Leon clamped his hand over your mouth, leather palm silencing you. Though his expression was stern, his eyes were alight with mirth.

"One more bad accent out of you, I swear—" he began, though the threat had no heat. Especially not when you'd managed to bite his hand through the leather of his glove. He pulled back like you'd just stung him, shaking his hand violently. "Ow! What the fuck?"

You couldn't have looked more pleased with yourself if you tried.

"Don't try to silence me, Kennedy. I do bite." You grinned with a wink before turning around to continue through the quarry.

"No shit," he muttered, giving his hand one last shake before catching up to walk beside you as the narrow stone hallway opened up. "You got a favourite animal?"

You almost stumbled, snorting a surprised laugh. You'd just bitten him, and now he was asking about your favourite animal?

"If you're that bored, count the steps we're taking."

"Just makin' conversation," he shrugged, and you huffed another laugh.

"That's a bottom of the barrel question," you deflected, doing a double take as you both passed a pickaxe large enough to bring down a whole damn mountain. How the fuck would anyone even use that thing?

"How is it bottom of the barrel?" Leon asked defensively, his gaze lingering on the tool that seemed ten times its usual scale, pushing the sinking feeling he got to one side. Surely if something that big were coming towards you both, you'd hear it.

"It's along the same vein as 'what's your favourite colour?' Like some twenty-questions bullshit." You explained, stooping down to snatch up a decent-sized rock to toss into the middle of a particularly ominous-looking murder of crows gathered in the centre of the quarry clearing. And without you having to say anything, Leon stopped by your side as you waited for the cacophony of perturbed cries to fade into the distance, along with the flapping of wings.

"What is your favourite colour?" He asked, and you glared at him out of your peripheral, choosing to ignore the wicked smirk on his lips when he met your glare.

"Don't have a favourite animal, don't have a favourite colour." You responded bluntly, moving forward to cross the clearing.

"Gonna file that answer under the bullshit column," he retorted, as quick as ever, and you barely managed to resist the urge to smack him. Who the hell did he think he was?! Having a whole bullshit column dedicated to the lies you'd told him. Admittedly, there was enough to have a whole column dedicated to the various shit you'd spit through gritted teeth, but still! Maybe that's why his arms were so big, because where else would he be storing all the audacity?

Though, somewhere else did come to mind…

"And what else do you have under the bullshit column?" You asked, though you don't really know why you did, in all honesty. You didn't particularly want to know everything he thought was a lie. Mainly because you got the feeling that he could see through a lot of what you told him.

"That you stopped a bunch of wine-drunk freshmen from turning their dad's ski lodge into a crime scene; that you actually have more than one sister—"

"Hey, I debunked that one!" You interjected, only for him to hold up the fingers he was counting on to silence you. Which worked more effectively than you would have liked to admit.

"Still in the bullshit column. I don't think those scars are from a burn, and I'm starting to think you didn't grow up in an orphanage," he eyed your reactions to those last two. He hadn't explicitly said that he thought you were lying about your past yet, but since you'd already lied about parts of it, it was a little tricky to take your word for it. And he had been thinking this for a while now.

"Oh yeah?" You goaded, more interested in what he did think, rather than what he didn't believe. "Where'd ya think I grew up?"

He shrugged, trying to think of the absurd. Something that wouldn't be too close to home and make you rebuild that distance. "Some kind of school? Definitely didn't have parents growing up, so maybe some kind of like, orphanage-school hybrid situation. But, I think it was definitely a front of some kind. You blew it up for a reason, right?"

"Interesting. You still believe I blew it up?"

Leon turned to you then, sincerity bleeding through his tone. "I saw the look you gave me when I asked. You started that fire." He nodded without a single doubt in his mind. Though, infuriatingly, you simply shrugged.

"Fair enough. So, you think it was a front?" You continued, once again with your airy, questioning tone. Leon decided to go along with it, and maybe, if he kept a close enough eye on your reactions, he might learn something about you.

"Somethin' like that. Drugs? Trafficking? Arms dealing?"

You held your hands up in surrender, like you weren't the one holding all the answers. "You're the puzzle guy, you figure it out!"

"This 'puzzle guy' is only as good as the clues you give him. Aren't you supposed to answer the questions when playing twenty-questions?" He countered, and you gave him a look.

"What are we? Five?"

Leon folded his arms across his chest, raising a brow. "You were the one who said we barely know each other. I'm just the guy trying to change that."

"By playing a game invented by teenagers for teenagers?"

"By trying to get a straight fucking answer from you about anything." Leon surprised himself with how venomous his tone was when he snapped at you. Clearly you were also caught off guard. He watched you blink a few times, processing what he'd just said. But instead of snapping back at him, your smile dipped a little dangerously.

"Oooh, pretty and insane? Just my type." Jesus, it was so hard to know whether you were messing with him or whether you were moments from slicing his throat open. He'd thought that — in the last four or five hours — you'd come further and further from wanting to kill him, but there were times, like right now, where he really felt like he was walking a knife's edge.

But in the slight lull of conversation — if it could even be called that — something interrupted the charged silence. Something heavy. Like giant wings beating. Or like huge, laboured breaths. You watched Leon open his mouth to respond to you, and launched across the space before you could think better of it, slapping your hand over his mouth. Perhaps a little rougher than what he'd done to you, but honestly? What did he expect?

You watched his eyes widen and brows furrow in indignation, before you placed a finger to your lips, turning your head slightly towards the sound. It was coming from behind the large gate to your left. How had you got so caught up in conversation that you'd missed it when you first entered the quarry floor? The thought was a little scary, and your eyes tracked the realisation dawn on Leon slowly, his brows slackening slightly as he heard the same laboured breathing.

Slowly, he brought your hand down from his mouth with a gentle hold on your wrist. But instead of letting go, he laced his fingers with your own and quietly pulled you away from the gate, walking backwards just to make sure whatever the fuck was on the other side didn't try anything. And only when it became too faint to hear properly did you let yourselves breathe.

"The fuck was that…?" You whispered, still conscious of making too much noise and drawing giant, unwanted attention.

"My guess? They found somethin' big enough to use that pickaxe," Leon looked past you down where he'd just pulled you, as if he could see through walls.

"You clocked that too, huh?" The corner of your mouth lifted in a half smile, and it was enough to bring his gaze back to you.

"Kinda hard to miss…"

You shrugged. Yeah, fair enough.

Neither of you knew where this path would lead. Though the rudimentary map was pretty clear in your mind's eye, it was difficult to draw comparisons to the scenery around you. Still, you'd rather press on further into the unknown than risk waking whatever was sleeping soundly behind the gate.

So you followed the track, the high walls closing in on you once again, feeling a little too tomb-like when they connected overhead for your liking. Until the stone was traded for wooden slats, and you headed down a set of wooden stairs, hearing the lapping of water behind two wooden doors. The lake? Already? You thought it was a little further on.

Leon glanced at you for a split second, gauging your read on the situation and whether you thought that whatever was behind these doors was going to kill you or not. It didn't look too promising, in all honesty. Not with the animal skull hanging above the door like some ominous warning. He sincerely hoped that wasn't a sign of things to come. But when you had no physical reaction beyond a confused, distasteful lift of your lip, he pushed against the wood, the doors swinging wide.

The doors yawned open into an expansive cave system, a wooden dock hidden on the lower level, your footsteps echoing ever so slightly in the space, the lapping of water now ten times louder. Various boxes, crates and barrels had been stacked on top of one another for effective use of the storage space. To your left, another set of stairs leading up. Ahead of you, a ladder heading down to the docks. But both you and Leon stopped in your tracks when you glanced to the right.

The resulting, stunned silence was deafening.

"Ain't no fucking way," you breathed, completely stuck on the scene before you. Because this simply didn't seem possible at this point. Were there secret tunnels around this fuckass village? Were there easier ways of getting places that didn't involve three-hour detours to find stupid keys in ridiculous places?

Because standing before you, surrounded by what looked like an entire armoury's worth of weapons, in the robe and mask you knew so well by this point, was the Merchant.

Even Leon seemed a little dumbstruck.

"Welcome! I was startin' to think you'd got yourselves killed out there," he cackled like a cockney chimney sweep, beckoning you both forward to have a look at his wares.

"How did you…?" you couldn't even finish your question, turning to look back behind you as if you'd missed something. Seriously, how the fuck did he get here before you? How did he get here without either of you noticing?!

"Now, I don't sell 'n tell," you assumed he was grinning beneath the purple mask as he tapped his nose twice. "I've got some new wares that might interest ya. Come 'ave a look." He stretched his arm out to the table before him, where various boxes of ammunition had been laid out.

It was indeed quite the collection. A rudimentary-looking rifle, a shotgun not dissimilar to the one Leon had already procured, some kind of bolt launcher, a fucking RPG. You wondered how useful such a thing would be whilst looking for Ashley. Hopefully you weren't about to run into anything that would warrant the use of a goddamn rocket launcher, but then again, you were watching the dead writhe and spasm before coming back to life. And those breaths you heard behind those gates were fucking deep.

Though you'd admit, the bolt launcher had caught your eye…

"Enough weapons here to get a party going," Leon mused, clearly eyeing the RPG in a much different way. Whereas you were wondering what situations would be useful, he was clearly listing them in his head. You vaguely wondered just what the hell he would exchange a weapon like that for. It couldn't be for the scuffed gems and muddy rocks you'd been finding around the place.

"Well, gun rhymes with fun for a reason, stranger!" The Merchant replied, happy as ever, and you snorted a laugh.

"Man's got a point," you chimed, leaning over the table to get a better look at the ammunition, mainly the white boxes with stags on the front. You hadn't modified your rifle to the point where it wouldn't take standard ammo; you weren't insane.

"Woman after me own heart." The Merchant muttered wistfully, and you looked up to see his eyes glittering with mirth in the lamplight. Or maybe it was the idea of a deal well struck.

"You don't say… hand over that crossbow, and we can see where this goes," you offered sweetly, leaning a little further across the table, though with no desire to look at the spread.

Leon looked between the two of you. The way you were leaning fucking seductively across the table. The way he watched you bat your lashes and push your breasts together despite the fact that you were wearing a turtleneck. His jaw ticked when he noticed you bend your knee, as if you were moments away from crawling across the damn stall. It irritated him. The way you flirted and teased so fucking easily. It pissed him off. He wasn't jealous. After all, he was the one making out with you against the wall. It was his name you gasped all airily into his ear. His cock you were palming through his combats. Not that it mattered. It didn't. It was just the reality of the situation.

"Sorry darlin'. Married to the work."

Your shoulders slumped like a marionette cut from her strings when he bluntly rejected you. Rolling your eyes, you straightened up, folding your arms across your chest. Though you swore you heard Leon exhale a breath from behind you.

"What d'ya want for the stupid bolt thrower thing?" You asked a little savagely, clearly irritated by the lack of reciprocation. Not that you would have done anything. Well, maybe you would. Honestly, it was kinda hard to know. You did have a thing for masks…

"Couple've gems? Anythin' valuable 'n shiny, really." He responded. Straight back to business. Wow, he really was married to the work.

Both you and Leon ended up stocking up on ammunition mostly, considering Leon had pumped most of his shells into those freaky fucking dogs from earlier and you'd used up a lot of your rifle rounds on the Ganados. He also managed to fix up Leon's knife, which had definitely seen better days.

"You really do flirt with everyone, huh?" Leon commented whilst waiting for his knife to be sharpened. You looked over from where you were inspecting the bolt thrower on the shelf, your head tilting to the side.

"Whaddya mean?"

He nodded to where you'd been leaning across the table moments ago, trying to keep his voice light.

"Looked like you were about to launch yourself at the guy," he said carefully, internally wincing at the way he thought he sounded like some kind of obsessive ex. Something you'd caught onto, your lips quirking into a sly smirk.

"You jealous?" Your tone did nothing to quell the knot in his chest. Because he was being ridiculous. He knew he was being ridiculous. He had no claim on you. Had no stake in the matter. He'd kissed you twice, almost had sex with you once. It meant nothing. Well, not nothing, but it clearly wasn't as deep as his head was making it out to be.

"Did I say I was jealous?" he asked, definitely defensively. "Just an observation."

Your hum echoed throughout the cave, bouncing off stone walls and stalagmites as you sauntered over, placing both hands on his shoulder and resting your chin atop them, so you were centimetres away from his face.

"Leon…" you murmured, voice silky smooth against his ear, sending a shiver down his spine and stealing his breath. "You have nothing to be jealous of. Just wanted a free weapon, 's all."

The way you purred against his neck made him clench his jaw, his cock twitching back to life in his pants. Just when he thought he'd dealt with his hard-on from earlier. Fuck's sake.

"Told you. I wasn't jealous," he protested through gated teeth, turning his head to look at you properly, trying and failing to raise a disinterested brow. You with your full lashes and pursed lips. Lips he wanted to capture all over again. Lips he wanted to bite softly. Fuck he wanted to feel you again. Wanted to hear what his name sounded like from those pretty lips when you came on his fingers. His tongue. His cock.

"Mm? Good. Because I don't remember this guy making me moan the way you did," you teased, leaning closer until your lips he'd been fixated on brushed against the shell of his ear. "Leon…"

"Fuck," he hissed, his hand moving to grip your waist to steady himself as his eyes closed involuntarily, a dull throbbing igniting within the confines of his combats. He knew you were doing this deliberately, but for some reason he didn't want you to stop. Maybe if you kept this up he could just cum in his pants and move on from this.

You watched him battle with himself, glad his eyes were closed so he didn't see you clamp your lips at the feeling of his hand gripping your waist. As much as you were enjoying this, you weren't completely unaffected by your own words, and you knew the gusset of your underwear was already soaked. You could feel it pooling between the crease of your thighs. Shit, you wished he hadn't stopped earlier. This constant back and forth edging was going to be the death of you.

"Do you want me to stop, Leon?" You had to stop saying his name like that. Every single time you said it, he wanted to shove you back up against the wall, rip off his glove with his teeth and plunge his fingers into your cunt. And the way you smiled at him when he cracked his eyes open to look at you, all dark and wicked and full of heated promise, was almost enough to undo him there and then.

"If you don't, we're gonna have an audience," he hummed back, finally regaining enough composure to reciprocate your flirting. And he knew you weren't expecting it when you blinked at him a few times, too shocked to school your expression. So he took full advantage. Skirting his hand up from your waist, careful to graze over the bandaged wound at your side, he gently brushed his knuckles along the side of your breast, earning himself one of those gasps he's been playing on repeat in his head. Fuck, you were still sensitive from being so worked up earlier. "Though — I like the acoustics in here. All the better to hear you scream my name."

Leon knew he had you when you didn't respond immediately. Knew you were processing exactly what he'd just said and how much it turned you on. He could see it in the way your pupils dilated, and you swallowed thickly. He flashed a smirk. "Two can play at that game, sweetheart."

Holy shit. Holy shit. Well, if you weren't already wet, you most definitely are now. Jesus Christ. Was he always this good? Or were you just insanely horny? Though who could blame you? Your near miss earlier was still playing on your mind. And your cunt. And you were too busy trying to sort your own thoughts out to notice him raise his other hand and fix a few strands of your hair that had fallen out of place.

Damn him. Damn him for turning something so sweet and tender and intimate into something that had your pussy weeping for him. Tucking your hair back? Who fucking does that? What kind of sick, twisted animal uses that as a flirting technique? And what kind of insane madman makes it work?

"There y'are mate, good as new! Shouldn't cause you much more problems," the Merchant called from the little side room, and you and Leon separated like you were charged from the same sides of a magnet. You stepped from his hold, almost gasping for breath as you turned away to look out into the cave beyond the docks.

Leon was no better, putting his back to you as he fixed his combats again, hoping the flush on his cheeks wasn't too noticeable as he pushed his fingers through his hair. It definitely wasn't this hot in here when you both first arrived. And now he was in the same damn situation as he was before.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

"Right. Yeah. Thanks," Leon nodded a little briskly, taking back his combat knife and sliding it into the sheath at his shoulder with a practised hand. "Couldn't point us in the direction of the lake, could you?" He asked. Anything to drag the attention away from how he was feeling too hot in his own skin right now.

The Merchant pointed to the other double doors to the far side of the cavern. "Through them doors there and you'll be lookin' at it." He said, and Leon watched in mild horror as he seemed to notice you looking in any direction other than the two of them. Shit, had he really wound you up that much?

All's fair in flirt and war, he guessed.

Now feeling a little more prepared for what lay ahead of you, the two of you made your way through the double doors, waving a goodbye to the only friendly face in this whole goddamn village. Though you didn't doubt you'd see him again at some point soon. He seemed to crop up more than humanly possible.

He wasn't lying when he said the lake was right through the doors. You opened them expecting to walk a little before you even caught sight of it, but it was quite literally on the doorstep. The view was pretty spectacular, actually. This beautiful overlook of a serene lake in the swirling pink of sunset. A serene vista, with a castle on one side, forested cliffs on the other. It truly was a vision. There was even a little boat on the water!

Wait—

There was a boat on the water.

Leon stepped up next to you, binoculars already in hand, angled down towards the two pinpricks of people bobbing around on the lake's surface. You squinted, as if that would make your vision any better. Either it worked, and you had built-in binoculars, or your eyes had adjusted to focusing at a distance, but you could have sworn you were watching two people dump something in the lake. And sure enough, thanks to the evening light casting the lake in fire, the dark shape of a body was left floating in the water as the boat sped off back to the lakeside, a crimson cloud saturating the glittering waters.

You felt Leon tense beside you. He'd mentioned briefly about the two cops that drove him up here, and were supposed to be acting as his guides. He watched one burn at the stake when he first got here; the haunted look in his eye told you he'd probably be thinking about that poor cop for years to come.

And when he swore under his breath, you guessed that was the fate of the other officer. You fought the urge to reach for his hand.

An urge that was quickly dispelled by the giant, monstrous jaws of whatever experiment-gone-wrong now resided in the lake surging from the depths. Your eyes flew wide, the sunset glow catching on rows upon rows of huge teeth nestled inside a mouth wide enough to swallow an eighteen-wheeler whole. Whisker-like tendrils coiled and snapped from around that colossal mouth, and you wondered why it even had teeth at all with a jaw that large. The floating corpse was engulfed instantly, before a sleek, oily back descended once again into the lake, leaving the once peaceful lake view vista now haunted by the creature lurking in the depths.

"The hell was that?" Leon breathed, and you were honestly grateful you weren't the only one feeling a little out of your depth, no pun intended. Though you had no answer for him. No witty comment. Nothing that could explain away what you'd just witnessed. You'd already seen what this village was suffering from. You'd seen it affect the people and the dogs, so it stood to reason that the surrounding wildlife would also feel the impact. Not exactly reassuring, but it was an explanation nonetheless.

"So much for no more surprises, huh?" You sighed, knowing full well that not heading to the lake wasn't an option. Self-preservation instincts were a luxury in this field, and though you absolutely felt like the two of you were going to die if you even dipped a toe in the black waters, there was no other way. Because Ashley was the priority, and this was the best lead you had to finding her.

Leon continued scanning the scene, increasing the magnification when the castle blurred into view. It was impressive, he had to admit. The whole image was. Perhaps giant lake monster aside. And the castle was big. Bigger than it looked from where the two of you were standing. Hopefully, it would stay in the distance and he wouldn't have to worry about it. Giving the lake one last sweep, he paused at a little run-down hut on the water's edge.

"Looks like something's over there," he murmured to you, and you followed his line of sight.

"Where?" You asked further, taking a small step behind him to look over his shoulder, hoping to give yourself a better angle at whatever the hell he'd found.

Glancing back at you, Leon handed you the binoculars, moving so he could put both hands on your own shoulders and position you where he was standing. When you didn't make any kind of noise of confirmation, he assumed you still hadn't quite caught what he was looking at. So he stepped up closer to you, his chest pressing against your back, and he brushed his fingers beneath your jaw, taking it lightly in his grasp and tilting it to where he'd spotted the hut.

His eyes fell to the side of your face, and the scars that raked across your skin. Broad. Jagged. Like your cheek had been torn open again and again. And looking at it so closely, it wasn't all one scar. Layers upon layers of thin, mottled tissue; the kind of embossment left behind by a repeatedly erased mistake. He genuinely didn't know how he'd missed it when he first met you. It seemed so obvious now he'd seen it. So much scarring — he would have thought your skin would be almost numb, yet it seemed so sensitive to the touch. Like an exposed nerve or live wire. You reacted the same way to him gently grazing his fingers across it as when he kissed and nipped down the side of your neck.

Turning your head to him, you lowered the binoculars slightly. Your gaze focused on his lips, then the cupid's bow above, up the slope of his nose and finally settling on his storm-blue eyes, almost violet in the way they reflected the sky.

"Blue," you whispered, having to look away from his intense, searching stare.

"What?"

"You asked my favourite colour. Earlier. It's blue," it never used to be. But I like your eyes. I like the shades and the hues and the way they look at me.

Those same eyes lit up, a delighted smile igniting his features.

"Yeah?"

You nodded.

"Yeah. And—" you paused, looking back across the lake briefly. "My favourite animals are birds," you admitted just as quietly, and Leon immediately felt his heart stutter ever so slightly. Because you'd listened. Sure, it had taken you a while to get here, and a whole lot more unnecessary flirting, but you'd listened.

"Birds?" Your answer surprised him too, considering your fear of heights.

"Yeah… they, uh, they're the only animal that have sole dominion of their environment. Y'know — fish share the water with molluscs and mammals'n stuff. All kinds've animals have mastery over land and — most insects share underground with moles and worms. But no other animal has mastery of the skies like birds do. They're free. Some don't even land for months. Have you ever seen a condor?"

Leon didn't realise for a moment that you'd asked him a question, being so caught up in the way you were speaking. The way your eyes glimmered and had grown wistful. As beautiful as a tragedy, you truly were. So it took him a moment before he shook his head a little dumbly, not daring to say anything in case it brought you back to reality.

"They're remarkable. Huge things. Wingspan up to three metres. But they're so effortless in flight. They actually travel in families. Looking out for each other, securing the best feeding spots. Most people think they're ugly, but honestly? I think they're kinda beautiful. The French actually have a word for it. Jolie-laide." There was no bad accent to be seen, just surprisingly flawless pronunciation. "Something that's beautiful but unconventionally so. And they are. Soaring thousands of feet in the sky, they don't give a fuck about what's going on below them. They're just… free. Never alone. Even so far removed from everything else, they're never alone."

There was something about the way you said it that made his chest constrict painfully. Something about the way you looked almost mournful. He knew you didn't want to become a mercenary. That much was obvious when you told him the snippets of your past. You didn't have a lot of choices. It was why his judgment of you had slowly softened. But there was something about hearing you almost yearn for that kind of freedom that really hit home for him.

He understood. He wouldn't be here now, having gone through everything he had, if the fucking government hadn't "asked" him to join as a recruit. If he felt trapped, he could only imagine how you felt.

"Anyway—" the sudden energy in your voice almost startled him, "the fuck're we doing? Standing on a cliffside talking about birds, we've got shit to do," you took a step back from him, sucking in a deep breath, assuming that would be the end of that.

Until his hand clasped your arm, and he pulled you back into his chest, your hand braced against his collarbone in surprise. A shiver rippled across your skin as his hand settled against your bare waist, the breath you'd just taken stolen from you when he leaned down to capture your lips with his own in a searing kiss in the evening glow. Your eyes flared wide, before fluttering closed when you melted into him, gathering enough of your bearings to slide your hand into his hair.

There was purpose behind this. You could feel it. Feel it in the way his tongue swiped across your bottom lip before caressing your own. You could feel it in the way his arm looped and tightened around your waist, the other now bracing the side of your jaw, angling your head to more comfortably meet his own.

And though you didn't know it, Leon was sealing a promise in his own head. You were alone. Trapped. Scared, though you refused to admit it. A feral, wounded thing. Fighting nonetheless. He wanted to help you out of this. He wanted you to be as free as the birds you envy so much. So he kissed you with silent conviction, making that promise. If you both survived this, he wasn't going to abandon you. He wouldn't leave you. Not like he suspected so many others had before.

When he pulled back slightly, you kept your eyes closed for a moment, trying to process what the fuck just happened. Because the first time was curiosity. The second time was lust. What the fuck was this for? You struggled to believe you'd just really turned him on by talking about birds.

And when you opened your eyes, you found him looking down at you. Softly. A little breathless from pouring so much of himself into you. His thumb gently caressed the scar along your cheek, his gaze flickering across your expression when you leaned into the touch, trying desperately to read you. Searching for something, anything that would either confirm or deny his fears. Though honestly? You were just a little dazed.

"What…?" You couldn't even finish the question, still stuck trying to make sense of whatever this was. "Why—"

"You're not alone," he murmured, and you felt your whole world come to a grinding halt. You hoped he thought the tears suddenly lining your eyes were from not blinking for too long, though you had a sneaking suspicion he knew better than that, because when he whispered your name, you had to close them against the surge of emotion you couldn't identify. "You're not alone anymore."

You wanted that to be true. Fuck, you wanted that to be true so badly. But he didn't get it. He didn't understand. How could he, when you'd only told him less than half the story? The thought was almost enough to loosen your tongue. The guilt finally clawing its way from your gut to your vocal cords. You wanted to tell him. For the first time in your life, you were feeling seen, and yet he knew so damn little. And for the first time in your life, you wanted to share who you were.

You withdrew a shaky breath, the truth you live on the tip of your tongue—

Then you opened your eyes. And your teeth clamped together. Because you couldn't face it. The disgust. The rejection. The hatred. Not from him. Not from him.

And Leon watched the battle behind your eyes, and watched you lose again. "Please…" he tried, knowing nothing would come of him just asking. Still, he said your name in that same tone, as if he could gently pull your words from you himself. "Let me help you."

Things were different between the two of you now. He knew because you didn't shut down when he said that. You didn't push him away. Didn't create that distance you'd had for the first few hours. Instead, your fingers drifted through the strands of his hair in front of his face, knuckles brushing against his brow. A bittersweet smile laced your features when you watched his hair fall back, much like how you did before you'd kissed him for the first time.

"You don't want my bullshit, Leon. Trust me," you utter, unable to meet his soft blue gaze as you tried to subtly push him away. Not in the same way as before. You didn't have it in you anymore to keep pulling him in and shoving him back so viciously. You couldn't stand the look on his face nor the guilt in your heart. Guilt. Guilt would always plague you. No matter what you did. No matter what choice you made. Because you were in too deep now. And telling him the truth would risk this.

His features softened painfully, as he could suddenly feel every awful hand you'd been dealt in your life. Like he was sharing the depths of your grief with you. Leon felt you pull away, though there was no real force behind it. He still held you a little tighter. Not punishing. Not possessing. Just demonstrating. Maybe he didn't want your bullshit. Maybe he didn't want whatever had damaged you in your past. But how would he ever know if you didn't let him at least try to hold it? How would you know if you never let him in? If you never let him see the uglier parts of yourself. He wasn't an idiot. You're a mercenary. He knows the type of shit you've done. He's met mercs before. He didn't know why you thought you were so beyond saving, or beyond deserving to be saved. He didn't know, and would likely never understand. Because yes, you were brutal and rude and scary and unstable at the best of times. You looked at him like you could kill him one second and fuck him the next. You flirted when you wanted to get your way, and you constantly took advantage of his attraction towards you. You were terrifying in fights and sometimes your eyes did that weird thing where they looked like they were holding the very molten core of the earth—

But here? Now? Looking at you? Watching you try to make yourself smaller so he wouldn't see through all the walls you'd built; the layers and layers of barbed wire you'd wrapped around your already bleeding heart? He didn't see the stone-cold merc you wanted the rest of the world to see. He just sees you.

"No offence," he began gently, tilting your head to bring your gaze back to his own. A practised movement, at this point. "But I don't think you're in a position to judge what I want."

You tried to pull away again, though it was more performative than anything else. You didn't have the strength in you to fight him on this. Yet still, he guided you back to him like a lighthouse. "And so far, feel like I've dealt with your bullshit pretty damn well."

Huffing a small laugh, you gave up on trying to pull away completely. Because he had a point. You hadn't exactly been the easiest of companions. And yet he was still right here, by your side, doing stupid shit like kissing you in front of evening lakeside vistas and calling you ridiculous nicknames like Holmes and sweetheart. The second one you still weren't really over.

"Okay," you exhaled quietly, leaning into his touch once again when his thumb softly swiped against the scar at your cheek. You'd give him what you could. "You were right —" Leon stilled, "— about the orphanage. And the scars. The orphanage was a front. Weapons development… in a way. Underground projects. Stuff that would make grown men shit themselves if faced with. Posing as an orphanage got them government funding. We were, uh, guinea pigs, I guess. Cheap labour. That's how I got the scarring. Par for the course," you shrugged. It wasn't the straight answer he was looking for. You knew that. You knew he wanted more from you, and you knew you had just raised more questions in his head, but Leon knew better by now than to press you for information. But it wasn't a lie. None of what you had just said was a lie. The bare bones of the truth, perhaps, but the truth nonetheless. A truth stripped bare of context.

Leon stayed silent, taking this in. He'd been right. Fuck. He didn't want to be right. He wanted to err on the side of the ridiculous and unlikely. Slowly, things were starting to click in his head. Because what orphanage just burns down and there's no whisper of it anywhere? Surely that would have at least made national news?

Unless, it did make national news…

Just not American national news.

"Where did you say this orphanage was?" He asked carefully, knowing he was treading on mighty thin ice. And your smile was just as thin as the ice he was treading on.

"I didn't," you paused, and he thought you were going to leave it there for a moment. Before you sucked in a breath. "Abruzzo."

Leon's eyes widened, his head tilting to the side the way it often did when he found something he didn't quite understand.

"Abruzzo as in Italy?"

"Yup."

"You grew up in Italy?"

"Yup."

It was a lot to process in such a short amount of time. You weren't American. Or maybe you were. You sounded American. He supposed if the orphanage was a front, maybe kids were shipped there from all around the world? Some kind of huge trafficking system? Shit, no wonder you found it hard to trust people. Just what the fuck had they done to you? What the fuck had they been working on that made you feel like you had to burn it all to the ground? Condemning your sisters to death.

You could see he had questions. Questions you couldn't answer right at this moment. Of course he did. But you could also see that he was holding them back. You'd given him everything you could for now, so you shifted the subject. "I — I know you have your opinions on people like me. Mercs. Guns for hire. But I — I never took a job that was corrupt. I always did my research; sometimes that was half the gig. Most of my work is investigating whoever the target is. And the people I took out were people nobody would miss. Warlords. Traffickers. Arms dealers. Druglords. I — I never accepted a gig to take an innocent life. That doesn't mean I haven't fucked up before. 'Course I have. But I have never knowingly killed—"

"I know." He interrupted, and the look on your face was adorable. All wide-eyed and disbelieving.

"Wh— how? How could you possibly—"

"Didn't I tell you that lookin' at you was like lookin' in a mirror?" He asked, removing his arm from around your waist to cup both sides of your face, gently attacking both scars on your cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. "Yeah, I have my reservations about mercs. It wouldn't be the first time I've been fucked over by one," Leon admitted, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. You weren't Ada. You didn't deserve that. "But I've just spent the last five hours with you. You tried to convince me Ashley doesn't matter to you, and I saw your face when you found that picture. I don't think you're corrupt. Far from it," he murmured your name, and your brows pinched slightly. "So I'm not asking you to explain this one. Because I already know."

You nodded, not trusting yourself to speak without your voice breaking. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell were you supposed to do with this? This level of patient understanding. This feeling of being so seen. You didn't know how he did it. In all honesty, if the roles had been reversed, you'd have gone your own way a while ago. This would be far too frustrating for you. You were aware of the hypocrisy of that. You'd be the first to hold your hands up and admit you were a hypocrite. And you had the sneaking suspicion Leon would understand that too.

"You would have made a really good cop," you murmured, hearing his breath stutter in his chest. He didn't know he needed to hear that until you said it. He was still mourning his life before Raccoon City, and honestly? He would be for a while. But for some reason, hearing you say that struck a chord deep within him. He often wonders — though he tries not to — what his life would have been like without Umbrella. Without viruses and fucking bioweapons plaguing every minute of every damn day. And though he didn't exactly choose this life either, he was sometimes glad he was in this field. Glad he was the one tasked with saving the world. Because if not him, then who?

"Yeah?"

You smiled again, tracing purple beneath his eye with your thumb before your hand rested against the side of his face in mimicry of his own. "Yeah."

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Leon tilted his head forward to press his brow to yours, a wildly intimate gesture to make with someone he had met only hours ago. This felt more intimate than pinning you against the wall, and yet he felt comfortable enough to do so.

You both stayed like that for a while, simply basking in the unspoken, unacknowledged affection that was slowly blossoming like a waterlily in sunlight. Until you had to pull away from him. Because if you didn't, you would start entering extremely dangerous territory. And right now, you could still gaslight yourself into believing this was nothing but lustful attraction.

Silently mourning the loss of your touch, Leon let you go when he felt you shift in his grip. Far from it for him to be the one to keep your freedom from you. Still, that didn't mean he liked letting you go. If he had things his way, first of all he wouldn't be in this stupid fucking village, and second of all—

He wouldn't let you go.

"Why did you wanna become a cop?" You asked, your voice switching from emotional weight to conversational like a gymnast, taking a few steps down the path and waiting for him to follow.

Moment over, then.

Brushing his hand through his hair, he stepped up beside you as the two of you continued your journey onwards.

"It's uh — kind've a long story," he admitted a little awkwardly, and you rolled your eyes.

"We literally have nothing but time. You wanted to make conversation, here you go. That's my question. And I was just insanely honest with you, giving you two straight answers, so I think—"

"Alright, alright, I get it," he sighed heavily, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of him and emotionally distancing himself from the story he was about to tell. "My parents, basically. They were, well, criminals. Probably the kinds've people you'd be paid to take out, actually," if you noticed how forced the humour was in his voice, you didn't comment. "They were killed in some kind of turf war. I don't really know the details, but an officer saved my life. Don't even know his name, but he's the reason I applied for the academy," Leon paused whilst he hopped down the short drop towards the docks, making his way to the boat bobbing on the water's surface. "I'd heard about the weird unsolved murders in the mountains around Raccoon City and requested a transfer. Got a message telling me to stay away, but then I broke up with my girlfriend at the time and went down anyway. Got drunk as hell the night before, woke up with the worst hangover of my life, and the rest you already know."

Following him down, you landed deftly, straightening up before looking at him a little bewildered.

"You did that whole day hungover?"

Leon nodded with a shrug, and you grimaced. "Yeah, you definitely win worst first day award."

"Yeah, well, my prize was bein' asked to join this government programme." You looked at him when he emphasised the word asked, wondering just what exactly he meant by that. But judging by the way he avoided your gaze, you guessed he was done explaining. It made you feel a little sad. He had such a promising future. Completed his academy training, on his way to his first proper job. If only it hadn't been Raccoon City. You wonder what kind of man he would have become. Hopefully someone not too dissimilar from the man standing before you. Perhaps just less haunted.

Looking towards the little boat tied to the dock, you let your gaze fall to the lake beyond, gut twisting at what you'd seen from the overlook. You really didn't want to get on this water knowing what was lurking beneath the calm waves. So as Leon started down the pier, you ducked into the little side cabin to see what you could find. Maybe a more detailed map of the lake. One that told you the swim patterns of the resident creature, perhaps. Though you knew the likelihood of that happening was about as likely as the two of you crossing said lake unscathed.

And, of course, you found nothing of the sort. Just more shelving stacked with miscellaneous cooking pots and wooden buckets like someone was desperate to make themselves look useful whilst unpacking, throwing absolutely anything anywhere and calling it a day.

"Come on," Leon's frustrated voice drifted from further down the dock, and you poked your head out the doorway to peer at him standing with his hands on his hips like a disappointed dad. "Fill the tank after you're done." He sighed, and you huffed a smile. He looked cute like this. Bloodstains and weapons aside. You really could see him as some suburban dad, maybe standing behind a barbecue with that exact stance and expression when the burgers weren't cooking properly.

Not that you'd had much experience with backyard cookouts — or indeed, dads — but it just felt like an accurate description.

"No fuel?" You called out, and Leon turned to spot your head poking out the door, your hair falling to one side. He bit back a smile, resisting the urge to compare you to a cartoon character.

"No fuel. You found anythin'?" He asked, wandering back up the dock, leaning to the side when his gaze caught on a piece of paper stapled to the wooden wall.

"Well, I know the shack to go to if we ever need to make a soup," you responded, casting one last look to the shelving unit behind you before stepping out, only to be met with Leon's confused face.

"What?"

"Nothin'. What you got there?" You nodded to the paper in his hands, and he held it up for you to read.

"The solution to at least one of our problems."

Your eyes lit up, a theatrical gasp flying from your lips.

"You developed a better sense of humour?!"

Leon's face fell comically, and he snatched the note away from you to instead flick your forehead. Your grin didn't falter, even when you tried halfheartedly bat his hand away.

"So rude," he chastised, and you cackled a wicked little laugh, clearly finding yourself hilarious. "Boat fuel, you — stop laughing it wasn't that funny." It truly didn't matter what he said with his words, because the smile on his face was contradicting everything. Truly, he didn't want you to stop laughing. At his expense or not. As stereotypically evil as it sounded, he couldn't stop himself from huffing a disobedient chuckle alongside you. Fuck, that laugh was infectious.

"Sorry, sorry. God, I'm funny. Anyway, you were saying?" You asked, performatively wiping a tear from your eye that absolutely wasn't there.

"Funny and humble? My pants are already down," he quipped dryly, and you barked another laugh.

"See! That was funny!"

"I am funny!" He argued emphatically, gesturing to the parts of the village you'd already come from as if it would remind you of all his jokes and quips.

"A pity laugh isn't actually a laugh, Pretty Boy," you retorted, and he gaped at you as if you'd just shot his dog.

"That's the meanest thing you've said to me." He wasn't actually hurt. He'd heard you try to suppress laughter at some of the things he said. He knew you found him funny. But he would play your little game.

"I softened it with a Pretty Boy!"

"In the same tone someone would say no offence after saying the most offensive shit ever," he pointed out, and you pursed your lips to stop yourself from laughing again. Leon turned away, stuffing the note into his pocket as he started back up the dock. You darted after him, slowing to match his pace. You didn't look away from his side profile, your grin still shit-eating, and Leon barely glanced at you. "I don't even wanna look at you. If I wore glasses I'd have taken them off by now."

You rolled your eyes playfully, hopping ahead a few steps before turning to walk backwards in front of him. He stubbornly turned his head to the side, still walking.

"You wanna look at me." You provoked.

Leon raised his brows in complete disinterest, as if he'd seen something that required his attention off in the distance. "I really don't."

"Yeeeeeaaaaah you do. Who wouldn't? I'm sexy as fuck."

"You're like a six at best," Leon shrugged, and it was your turn to gape at him in ultimate offence.

"A six?!" You squeaked, and he finally glanced at you out the corner of his eye, that stupid, boyish smirk curling from the corner of his lips. A boyish smirk that widened slightly when he looked past you to the wall you didn't know was there.

"Seven on a good day."

"You have three seconds to take that back before I start biting."

"Mhm?" He seemed completely unfazed, like he'd been waiting for this.

"Three," you began, narrowing your eyes.

Leon just shrugged again.

"Two," you elongated the vowel, as if giving him more time.

He did nothing. Just kept walking.

"One. Don't say I didn't — oomph!" Your back collided with the wall behind you, and Leon took his chance instantly. Closing the distance between you, he rested his arm above your head against the wall behind you, his other hand braced on the stone next to your shoulder, completely caging you in.

Suddenly your mouth went dry as you were drenched in his shadow, his face looming centimetres from yours. Every thought fled your head, your mind falling blissfully silent, your mouth hanging open, eyes wide.

God, you wished you could ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing, but it was like you'd forgotten how to speak or construct sentences. All you could do was stare dumbly up at him, something which would irritate you for hours to come.

"For someone who talks so much," he murmured, voice gravelly as he brushed his knuckles against the underside of your jaw, pushing your mouth close and leaning closer. "You're very easy to silence."

His words shot straight to your core, and you tensed your thighs together in a vain attempt to relieve some of the pressure. You'd have to throw this pair of underwear away after this. Because with how much you'd soaked them, you don't think they'd ever recover. There was something about this more dominant side to him. Sure, you loved it when he was flustered and blushing and visibly affected by your actions and words, but fuck, there was something about the way he commanded the space, the way he could flip so suddenly and easily that had you throbbing.

It took you a moment to recover, and Leon noticed the exact moment your expression shifted, and you raised a sharp brow. His abs tensed when your fingertips danced around the hem of his shirt, skirting around to his waist, keeping your touches feather-light.

"All this because I said you weren't funny?" You murmured, dark eyes scanning his face curiously, lingering on his lips in a way you'd noticed made him feral. Though it didn't have the expected effect. At least, now outwardly.

Leon had learned by now how you played your games. He'd learned the moves you'd make to rile him up, to slip beneath his composure and crack it open from the inside. You were devilish like that. But now he knew the play, he could counter it.

Ducking his head to your ear, he felt you shiver beneath him when he whispered against you. "All this? This is nothing."

Your lashes fluttered slightly at the promise in his breathy voice, your fingers slipping between the hem of his shirt and his tactical belt, feeling the way his skin prickled at your touch.

"Oh really?" You responded in that same silky tone you'd used with him before, pushing the fabric of his compression shirt up slightly as your hands explored the hard plains of his body. "Show me the rest then."

His lips ghosted down the side of your neck, and though his arm remained fixed on the wall above your head, his other hand skittered around your bare waist, his thumb pressing firmly into your hip bone, massaging little circles against your skin. You shivered again, your brows pinching when the soft plush of his lips brushed your ear.

"No."

He was gone from you before you could even process what he'd said, pulling your hands from his shirt by your wrists and pushing off the wall with his arm. The warm shadow of his body looming over yours was replaced by the hollow nothing of his absence in a matter of seconds. And though you couldn't see his face when he turned to climb the ladder next to you, he was smirking something wicked. Holy shit, did it feel good to leave you as high and dry as you often left him.

You didn't know whether you wanted to fuck him or kill him. Probably both. In that order. Pushing off from the wall, you stepped out a little before peering up at the ledge he'd just clambered up, your hands on your hips.

Leon looked back down at you, that sly smirk still dancing across his features. "Something wrong?"

Oh, never mind; you just wanted to kill him.

Clenching your jaw so tight you heard your own teeth grind together, you started up the same ladder, pausing when he offered his hand down to help you up the rest of the way. A large part of you was tempted to tug him off the side, but you didn't particularly want the American Government hunting you down because you killed one of their secret agents.

So you neither took his hand nor pulled him off the side. Instead, you just batted it away from you, and scaled the rest of the ladder yourself. Straightening up at the top, you dusted yourself down and secured your rifle as if giving yourself a little time to compose yourself. Schooling your expression, you raised your eyes to meet his intrigued gaze.

"Well played," you said with a nod of acknowledgement. Because as irritating as he was, it was indeed very well played. Leon's smirk shifted slightly from sly to satisfaction, almost pride.

"Yeah, well. Learned from the best." He shrugged with a vague gesture in your direction.

"Damn right."

A chuckle fluttered from his chest, and Leon sucked in a deep breath, preparing himself. "Look. There's attraction here, right? We'd be idiots if we claimed otherwise," he began, and your head tilted to the side, slightly amused. Where was he going with this? "But I — uh — can't keep this up. This whole rilin' each other up thing," holy shit he was calling it out. Damn, brave guy. "It's — uhm — becoming a problem…" Leon shifted a little awkwardly from foot to foot; a far cry from the same guy that just caged you against the wall and drove you crazy. Your chest eased with a sudden release of tension, your shoulders dropping. Guess it wasn't working out great for you either.

Still, you couldn't help but tease him just a little further.

"Thought this wasn't your first rodeo with a merc? What did you say? 'Hasn't stopped me before'." Your voice dipped into yet another terrible impression, one that you hoped would ease his evident discomfort. And when he blew out a breath with a roll of his eyes, you knew your little ploy had worked.

"That was when I still thought I could control myself," he confessed a little quietly, and your eyes flew wide. Oh. Holy shit. He can't have been raging hard this whole time, right? Could guys even do flying roundhouse kicks with hard-ons? You actually had no idea.

Well now you just felt bad. Even knowing what you were doing. Even deliberately messing with him. It was different now he'd actually brought it up. Because honestly? You didn't think it was that effective.

Leon watched you process this information with dawning horror. "Shit, I don't mean that, y'know, I'm gonna fuckin' force anything on you. Jesus, I'm not — I'm not like that. I'd never—"

"Leon," you interrupted him with his name, something you would rarely say, favouring instead to use whatever ridiculous nickname came to you at the time. "I know. If you were like that, we would have had sex by now," your smile softened at the edges. "But I know you're not. You're — you're a good guy," far too good for me. "So, you don't gotta worry, 'kay?"

He nodded a little heavily, relief dropping his head.

"Yeah, thanks."

You spat in the centre of your palm, holding it out for him to shake. "Truce?"

Looking between your outstretched hand and your expectant gaze, Leon exhaled another heavy breath, repeating the same gesture in the leather covering his own and clasping your hands together.

"Truce." He repeated. "Strictly professional. No riling each other up."

"No dramatically kissing me on the side of cliffs."

Leon fixed you with a look. "No moaning my name in my ear."

You pursed your lips. Yeah, you did do that. "No caging me against walls."

Leon had the good sense to look a little guilty. "No—"

This was starting to feel a little like some kind of celibate vow ceremony.

"Okay yeah got it," you rolled your eyes. "Strictly professional."

Looking satisfied with the arrangement, Leon withdrew his hand from yours, the touch lingering as if it would be the last one. You hoped not. Contrary to the vows and — well, everything about you — you actually liked his hands on your body. This was going to be rough, especially considering the last few hours, but you would also do well to remember you weren't here to flirt and fuck the government agent you happened to be stuck with.

"Where're we off to then, Pretty Boy?" You asked, and Leon turned to you with a long-suffering, withering look.

"Surely that counts in the agreement?"

"Hey, that's not flirty, it's just factual," you shrugged, placing a hand on your hip and waiting patiently for his answer. "So?"

Trust you to push the limits on a deal you struck twenty seconds ago. Leon fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose against the headache that was forming behind his eyes, a different one to the oddly constant thumping he seemed to have developed over the last hour or so.

"Fish farm. Should be some in the processing building," he nodded to the pathway that branched off from the docks down a little tunnel, a brazier blazing bright in the low evening light.

"Lead on, Macduff," you secured your rifle once again, glancing at the weapon almost to make sure it was okay, like one would a child, before turning back to Leon when you noticed he was still staring at you. "What?"

"I'm gonna start making a list."

"A list?"

"Of the references you make." He clarified, heading towards the tunnel with you in tow.

"Mm, Shakespeare. Very niche." You nodded solemnly, ducking a little to avoid the lower ceiling even though you really didn't need to. Not at your height. Leon didn't need to either and he was taller than you. Habits are odd like that.

The further you walked, the quieter the two of you became. Instinct took over from the constant back and forth, because it seemed highly unlikely the fish farm was going to be empty. Especially since you'd watched those two villagers dump that body into the lake and you hadn't seen them since. It stands to reason they were most likely in the fish farm.

As the tunnel opened onto another wooden platform overlooking the little farm, both you and Leon crouched low behind the planks, and you shouldered your rifle into your hands, peering through the scope as Leon removed his handgun from the holster at his thigh, checking the magazine.

What worried you wasn't what you could see. It was what you couldn't. The layout was as you expected for a fish farm. Half submerged in water with little huts and structures dotted about on raised wooden platforms, not dissimilar from the dock behind you. Though you saw very few of the suspected residents. One older woman, pitchfork in hand; clearly one of the village's weapons of choice. That and hatchets. Slowly scanning the area below, you noted another two Ganados just over a bridge from one hut to the next. And one more that had just wandered behind a wooden wall. Not nearly enough for what you were expecting, information you then relayed to Leon.

"There's too much cover. Can barely see anything," you explained further when he gave you a confused look. Looking beyond him and along the platform slightly, you wondered if you could get any more visuals if you simply changed positions. There was more room as well, though no obvious way down. That was fine. You preferred to pop heads from a distance anyway.

It wasn't too high, thank fuck. But surely it was high enough to see more than four shambling villagers? Right?

You didn't get to find out.

Slipping past Leon, the planks groaned beneath you with your first few steps, and you froze instantly. Perhaps this wasn't a good idea after all. And just as you turned to step back, that groan was the only warning you received before the planks gave way completely.

A fraction of a second too late, Leon's arm snapped out to grab you, fingers grazing your shoulder as you fell through, your name tearing from his lips as he could do nothing but watch as you were dropped into the water below, heart catching in his throat.

Because he knew this was the one thing you were afraid of. He'd watched you disappear into your own head before, panic replacing rational thought.