Luis Serra

Leon hums a small acknowledgement. Luis is... someone brilliant, that much he can settle on. He pilots a spacecraft as the only human on board. Somehow well enough to pull off a rescue, one that he hasn't thought to ask about yet.

Maybe because he knows it would have been a lot of trouble. All for him. Some... floppy wet convict, who had dreams of a carnivorous eyeball that he hopes was all in his head. Because the monster fish was not. That apparently happened. The voices, too. He can never prove it, but he doesn't believe he dreamt those up.

It almost feels like he can relax with Luis' reassurances. He was allowed to have his moment of insanity, because his situation had been just that. Insane.

Leon exhales through his nose. He's about to comment something back when he feels Luis press his lips against him. He freezes up a little. Doesn't tense, but certainly doesn't move, nothing but his eyes which snap to the side as if he can see the other man. When Luis begins to pull away, he finally turns his head.

They lock eyes. Luis looks calm. Leon is searching his face, however subtly. He gives a small dip of his head, his thumb worrying up and over the knuckle of his own pointer finger. All the talk about what was just in his head or not, now he's left wondering the meaning behind that small kiss.

Luis is extremely meticulous as he treats and bandages Leon’s back. Everything looks neat, allowing Leon enough freedom of movement without the bandage pulling tight. Everything would be fine. He would recover.

However, Leon’s next question makes Luis chuckle softly.

"Hmm, I don’t know... you can control things, right? I bet you’re a far better pilot than I am. Because... I think Mary soft-locked me out of the controls after I forced the ship into that manoeuvre to save you. I have no idea what to do next, anyway... I still need to examine the samples more closely and experiment with them, since they have an effect on the Astrophages, too. Maybe they cause them to mutate and ensure that they... well, stop dimming the starlight. That would turn this blood into a sort of antiviral agent against humanity’s biggest problem. Maybe this is our solution."

Luis takes a deep breath and leans back once he’s finished his work.

"Ah... lo siento... I guess I need to ask you to... listen?" he says, rubbing the back of his head with an apologetic look. Then, Luis wraps his arms around his knees and gazes down at his socks.

Leon is unaware of the nature of Luis' staring. To be honest he's too selfishly focusing on himself, trying to determine just how much he is mutating with... a fucking tree...

It isn't visible but he does feel a small prickling of panic. Imagines roots intertwining and tangling with his organs in a slow and crushing death. It's dark, but he's not getting any bigger, and trees famously outgrow their 'pots'.

Maybe Leon snaps his head to Luis a little too quickly when he's beckoned. Thankfully there's no smiling or teases on his lips. He follows and sits, hands squeezing over his own knees as he waits. Luis doesn't waste time, he holds up a mirror to show him the patchwork across his back.

"Oh, what the fuck." Leon utters. It's... almost like a healing tattoo? Or something. While in view, he reaches behind himself, tries to feel at his changed skin with his hand. At least he doesn't feel like a tree. Yet? It still feels like skin beneath the pads of his fingers... raised skin, like he has been scarred... he exhales and gives a shake of his head.

What Leon said about his hallucinations… man, he must have endured some truly gruesome body horror. The blood on that moon was cursed. It could cause human mutations. It wasn't far-fetched to think it might short-circuit the brain, too. Especially in moments of fear and panic - and in Leon’s case, exacerbated by his wounds.

"The blood, the pain, and the isolation can take a toll on anyone’s mind… your arms are fine. Well. Blisters, of course. But no scales, I can assure you of that."

Luis slowly sets the mirror aside and scoots closer to sit behind Leon again. His hands run gently over some of the raised scars.

"And don't laugh either… but I think it looks fascinating. Beautiful in its own unique way."

He doesn't know why - perhaps it’s a short-circuit reaction on his part, too - but Luis briefly presses his lips against the scars on Leon’s shoulder. An intimate moment. Far too intimate, considering how little they knew each other. Maybe it was Luis' own battered mind pushing things. Craving a connection that wasn't even there yet. But it is also a sign that Luis isn't shying away from anything regarding Leon or his body.

Then he looks up, trying to read the expression on Leon’s face.

Wesker eyed the tray on the table where the broken vial was. Great, more exposure. He really should have put that away into a sharps disposal. The egg was going to be absolutely miniscule, but luring it out was not a good idea. It was an egg, not a sentient creature that would end up attempting to suckle it's mother's teat.

There may have been two doctors inside this laboratory, but there was only one genius. Luis was not it.

"Expose another biohazard to the air, as well as us, whilst one is already missing...? Not the route I'd take," he noted coolly, lifting his sunglasses up and sitting them onto his head. If he was going to find this damned egg, then he needed to see properly.

He reached over and opened a drawer, searching for one of the small torches that they might have, and found one under a few cards and other pieces of stationary.

While checking under another desk and a drawer, Luis listened to Wesker without sparing him more than a fleeting glance.

He had taken off his sunglasses. That meant things were serious. Usually Wesker always wore them. Always. Without them, he seemed like a completely different person. Strange.

“Hmm… maybe 10 minutes? 15?” Luis speculated, before his brain registered what Albert had actually asked.

His head snapped up immediately - like a shark surfacing between the desks - and he shot Wesker an offended look.

“Hey! It’s not inside me!”

…did he have proof of that? No. Could it be?

Uhm…

Luis clutched the back of his neck, as if he could feel something latching onto his spine right there. Then he shook his head.

“I would’ve noticed! It causes symptoms. Dark veins… especially in the whites of the eyes… slight dizziness… uncontrolled movements…”

Joder.

Luis narrowed his eyes even further as he looked at Wesker again. He hesitated, then sprang up and stepped toward the other man. He really didn’t want the Plagas inside him - and if he did have them, he’d rather notice early so he could simply have them removed.

Leon is sceptical that everything is fine. So much so that he simply gives Luis a flat look that begs the question 'really?' Then he doubles down. With a smile, no less. He's optimistic. He's promising things to him that he cannot actually promise, because the alternative would leave Luis alone on his ship. Again.

He catches the pouch and looks. He doesn't know what he expects. Medicine, maybe. But the sight of cookies get a scoff from him. "You're giving me too much." Leon cautions, though he pulls out the small calorie bomb treats to snack on. "Well, I guess you are giving me fuel so I don't sleep another 18 hours..." He's reasoning his own gluttony. It has been so long since he simply snacked to snack.

He listens and he watches. Luis doesn't seem to think that the hours Leon spent in that blood could drastically change him. The hallucinations sure fucked him up. The burns along his arms were scales in that wild state of mind. He forces himself not to look down. If he sees a scale, or worse, some sprouting leaf, he might just take himself to the airlock and make a fantastic exit.

He only lost his composure when he realized Luis was serious about his back.

Luis watches as the other man undresses and twists and turns - a futile attempt to look at his own back. He… well, maybe he looks a little longer than necessary. Because, aside from the scars and strange markings, Leon has a very fine physique.

So Luis sits there, sipping his drink and watching Leon’s muscles tense and relax for a good minute. Man, saving this guy was definitely worth it. That view definitely was worth four tons of Astrophage fuel. Easily.

But of course, Luis genuinely cares about Leon, too. Eventually, he stands up.

“Oye… come.”, he says, simply grabbing Leon by the wrist and leading him back to the infirmary. “I’ll show you with a mirror.”

He has Leon sit down and keeps Armando at bay for the moment while carefully removing the bandages. The wounds… honestly, they look better. The bruises have changed color; the aggressive dark red has given way to a softer pink. And the scars themselves… well.

The mans face blanched. Unable to find the words. Not when tender wounds were exposed so unexpectedly and soddened with the stinging aftermath that came for men like him . The reflexive urge to drop his hand was inexplicably severed before the neuron could fire and kept the man tethered to the boy.

Sure, Children were intuitive but this didn't register as blind intuition ── The child plucked a raw nerve with a direct prod and conjured a scene Leon didn't want to confront himself, not when the loss was still fresh, and was all the more harder to dismiss when spoken from the voice of a child left behind because of it. But ── what if ? Would he have actually stopped drinking for his own kid ? It wasn't as if he liked it ── however a well adjusted adults ' like ' stopped at one or two glasses, and with a preferred taste. But Leon never stopped at two ── and loose gas station receipts were evidence enough that taste wasn't an obstruction either. Unlike well adjusted adults ── He drank to drown out the culmination of decades of guilt and grief. ❝ Sometimes . . . people carry pain you and I can't see . . . and sometimes it gets too heavy . . . ❞

The boy seemed to be thinking about Leon’s words. About an invisible pain that becomes too heavy to bear. Something like that. It was true; Luis knew it. He knew that feeling himself… well, not exactly at this age. But he would have known it in his later life and traces of that still clung to him as he was now.

“Do you carry a pain like that around with you, too?” he asked, looking up at the adult. Leon seemed to be fighting with himself. That was… good. Luis knew that, too. That was why he was here. To help Leon fight battles he couldn’t face or win on his own.

Give us a little push, eh, Sancho?

An echo from long ago - one that surely now rested atop Leon’s mountain of pain.

Yet Leon tried to comfort him. That made the boy smile - as if Leon’s words were somehow amusing. A slight tug on Leon’s hand as the boy took a small step forward. Good. They were on the right path.

Part of her leans back from his initial response. It almost sounded he was offended, while on the other hand his body language picked up the logic in her questions. A contradiction Grace can't seem to understand in the moment.

And of course she knows the other DSO agent can handle it just fine! Did he think it would be more beneficial to be with her instead in his own risk assessment?

There's a look of dread in her eyes as they avoided Luis's gaze. He chose to be with Grace, to keep her safe and help get her out. But this has played out before. She knows how this will end, and it will be her fault; again.

"But...B-But..." Grace struggled to get her words together as those thoughts filled her head and gripped a part of her shirt. Doesn't he realize that he's practically signed his own death sentence just by choosing to be with her?!

Something was going on in her head that had nothing to do with here. Luis knew that behaviour when he saw hints of it. Something was gnawing at her soul, past experiences, memories that haunted her. He just didn’t know what exactly.

Because from the outside looking in, it seemed like she was overestimating this.

Still, Luis wore an easy smile. To reassure her, to calm her.

“Oye, señorita… you give me that little credit in being able to defend you and myself at once?”

 Though Luis sighed then, looking around to make sure they were safe before he dropped his tone a little.