Krauser ass ˚｡⋆

you gave his mushroom head kitten licks, feeling his cock twitch from the sensation as you continued to run your hands up and down against his shaft exactly how he likes, earning yourself grunts of bliss from him. with every round of your hands, you squeezed his tip, making more and more of his cum leak out of his slit, as you continued licking up his juices, milking him as much as possible. satisfied, you curled your lips around his length, bobbing your head messily as you sucked him off, your tongue wildly lapping all over his girth.

"fuckk, you are amazing.” he weakly grunted, grabbing the back of your head and forcing it down his length, as your hands found their way to rest on his hairy stomach, causing you to instantly gag as his tip kissed the back of your throat. chris knows that’s exactly how you like it, feeling the way his tip bullies you.

tears welled in your eyes as your nose was shoved into the tuffs of his pubes as he repeatedly thrusted your head down his length, balls slapping against your face, leaving you only able to whimper helplessly around him.

you tapped on his stomach and he drew back slowly, cradling your warm face in both palms as he brushed his thumbs over your lips, wiping away the mixture of drool and him, letting you close your eyes and catch your breath as the burn at the back of your throat pulsed. when you met his gaze and gave him a small nod, he guided you back slowly down his length, watching the way your neck imprinted his dick as he pushed further down your throat. he continued this cycle, fucking your face before giving you time to breathe as he reached closer to his pleasure.

“inside as usual? ” chris panted, coming close to his release as you nodded, looking up to him with hazy eyes. you hallowed your cheeks as your tongue swept faster around him, his cock twitching as you worked him up. before long, the familiar warm spurts land inside your mouth, coating your tongue semi white as you swallow every little bit of his release.

as soon as you sensed his warmth fade, you withdrew with a wet pop, using the back of your hand to wipe your lips while embracing his calf like a kitten, gazing up at him in admiration as you gasped for air.

he lifted you from the floor to his lap, positioning your legs over his thighs as he ran his fingers through your hair and wiped your cheeks, comforting you the way he knew you loved.

he pulled a cigarette from the table drawer and lit it, taking a slow drag before passing it to you between his fingers. you accepted it with a small smile, taking a drag before handing it back, his arms then snaking around your plush stomach as he settled you comfortably against him, you pepping the side of his neck with wet kisses.

“you’re taking them to their friend's birthday party tomorrow. ” you mumble hoarsely, throat still burning from his member as you nuzzle into his chest, taking another drag out of the cigarette.

“who?” he asks, genuinely confused, still high from his pleasure.

you pull back, smacking his chest with an unimpressed look. “what do you mean, who? our children chris.”

“oh shit. yeah of course.” his eyes widen, looking almost embarrassed that he’d forgotten.

“the gifts are already packed, the party starts at eleven so make sure you pick them up on time.”

“okay, i’ll keep them over the weekend, I’m not working. you go and enjoy yourself sweetheart.” you hum in response as he kisses the top of your head, feeling butterflies in your stomach from the petname.

because even after everything he still has that effect on you. he knows you love pet names, heck when you two were married he never used to say your name. it was always sweetheart, darling, my love. you’d be lying to yourself if you didn't admit how much you missed those words from your husband.

you spent years assuring yourselves that being separated was for the best. that the divorce had been necessary for both of you. that whatever had existed between you had run its course and there was no spark left.

at first it felt like the right decision, you even moved on and found someone else, tried to fall in love again, tried to get the same giddy feeling you once had but it wasn’t long until you realised he wasn’t chris. and you hated yourself for comparing him to your ex husband.

then months later you accidentally saw chris with another woman, her beaming up to him with the same look you used to have, that’s when you felt you had been shot in the chest. he too ended the relationship quickly once he realised she wasn’t you.

after that, you both stayed single, still in each other’s lives but distant. for a while, you told yourself it was because of the kids. only discussing whatever the children needed, but slowly your anger became softer, conversations became longer until if you had a problem he would be the first one you would call and he would pick up instantly, no matter where in the world he was.

you both never spoke about it but deep down you both knew the divorce may have ended the marriage but the bond and love between you two never went away. it was just buried under all the frustration and miss communication that you two never quite figured out. but you were too ashamed to tell him you made a mistake. that you should never have asked him for a divorce. because even after all this time, your heart still belonged to him. and his heart belonged to you.

and that’s why each time you would always end up in his lap and in his arms.

your fingers trace little shapes along his face, as you stare up at the man you spent madly in love with, the goofy idiot who wouldn’t stop staring at you in the coffee shop you worked at, all those years ago when he was in S.T.A.R.S to the man he is now, face etched with age and scars.

chris raises a brow, clearly amused by the faraway look in your eyes. you shake your head, refusing to answer, before going back to cuddling on his chest as he grips his hold on you tighter like he already knows what you are thinking, kissing the top of your head and resting his chin there.

his hand gradually moved to your damp clothed cunt, pinching it firmly as you gasp, knowing exactly what was coming next. I mean how could you not? you were married to this man for over 8 years. you rolled your eyes at him, hopping off his lap and laying on your back in his bed exactly how he likes you to be.

he smirks, taking one last drag before stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray and settling between your legs, pulling down your lacy underwear that you definitely did not purposely wear for him.

“should never have agreed with you to sign those divorce papers. ” he mumbles, licking his lips as he admires your pussy. you roll your eyes again, kicking his stomach with your feet and throwing his pillow at him as he laughs deeply, causing you to break out into chuckles yourself

“don’t start” you warn, raising your eyebrows at him. he chuckles, leaning down on you and kissing your lips as you moan into his mouth, his hands find your perky nip, putting it between his fingers and rolling, exactly how it pleases you

“the school bus is dropping them in half an hour.” you whimper looking at the wall clock, arching your back as he flicks your buds with his fingers before sucking on them. your hands instantly tugs on his short hair as he laps around your buds with his tongue.

“i-im taking them to the cinema so we will fuckk we will leave quickly from here.” he nods understandably. the school bus drops the kids near chris’s apartment, so they always come to his place and whenever it’s your turn, you always pick them up from here.

“more than enough time sweetheart. he winks, “how many times do you think she can do? three…four?…maybe five?” he smirks cockily, lightly slapping your pussy, making your area tingle as you clench around nothing. his not so funny remark ends up with him getting another kick to the stomach with your foot and a pillow being smacked across his face again.

that’s definitely not the way divorced exes are supposed to act… right?

this is part 1 of my 200+ follower special next one is a leon fic, thank you all for being patient with me 🫶

I hope you enjoyed I tried to mix smut, fluff, angst all in one 🤭

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Some conversations should only ever happen between people who are dating each other and there are exactly three reasons why you should never date a field agent. Fortunately, Leon Kennedy is not your boyfriend.

First, field agents are never home. They are either somewhere they aren’t supposed to be, doing something they aren’t supposed to tell you about, or on their way back from somewhere they definitely aren’t supposed to have been. Leon Kennedy is your agent and the star agent of USSTRATCOM funnily enough, so he does all of these activities. Fortunately, Leon Kennedy is not your boyfriend.

There is a small lamp on the half-table tucked away to the side of the row emitting a dim, mellow light that really only functions as decoration when the blaring overhead lights above you prove plenty in illumination. Today you didn’t sleep enough. The yellowed light makes the corners of your eyes strain with a knowing potential headache happening the second you get out of this room. Leon is already here beside you, hands tucked in the neatly civilized and pliant way a government agent should have while receiving a briefing. Consequently, there’s already a knot forming at the base of your brain and you hate how much of a pain in the ass this is gonna be.

You don’t even know why you’re not sitting in one of the ergonomic office chairs tucked into the oak wood table, all you know is that today is a briefing on something you’ve been dreading for three days that even the sugar you constantly order won’t drown the misery out. In front of you, the briefing officer holds a presentation clicker and a projector displays a PowerPoint titled Undercover Domestic Cover Maintenance in forty-eight point Calibri. Your nails dig into the thin skin of the back of your hand.

“...Kill me,” you murmur, not to anyone in particular but if Leon Kennedy heard you, so be it. So across the table, Leon nods, grimacing at your briefing officers deliberately weighted footsteps.

“Seconded,” at his agreement, another man in a crisp black suit, hair slicked back with enough gel it was almost impressive, and tugging at the lapels of his blazer comes in and gives you both one quick look. You figure this was the behavioral analyst from down the building. The curt smile you give him is in vain; he ignores both of you immediately.

“Congratulations on your marriage,” the briefing officer says. It’s not one for you to deliberately obstruct names from your profiling system but you have effectively tuned out whatever the briefing officer says since the day you got assigned because of how humiliating this is. You’re pretty sure his name is Jacob.

“It was involuntary," you correct.

Leon raises a finger. “I'd like that noted for the record.”

The analyst doesn’t move nor chuckle at Leon’s remark, instead, he just shifts the position on his feet. You have the sneaking suspicion that the man has a small case of scoliosis judging from the slight tilt of his frame. Good thing he’s not a field agent—you shouldn’t be a field agent either but here you are. The man clicks his pen, tapping it on his deep blue, government-issued notebook idly. He clears his throat. “Anniversary."

You and Leon look at each other. Your eyes meet with a very intense unfamiliarity and before you can conjure up a deconstructive response, Leon turns towards the man. Shrugging, he casually guesses, “...June?”

“You guessed?” you furrow your eyebrows at his answer.

“I panicked,” Leon responds, eyes darting out towards the behavioral analyst tucking into a seat neatly at one of the table chairs. His eyes narrow at the small action and you resist the laugh bubbling inside your throat. In the background, you hear the man scribbling down something else.

"You guessed our anniversary,” doubling down, you put on a face of mock disbelief. You turn your body towards him, stepping closely into his space with a frown so performatively deep you almost want to slap yourself for it. Comedy is not in the place of a distinguished conversation about saving the world from a German bioterrorist donator.

“We didn’t have one yesterday,” even as Leon backs away from you, trying to defuse your argument, he counters your point very matter-of-factly, despite him shriveling away like a small puppy who got flicked on the forehead. It works though. You realize he’s right, then you blink, nodding to yourself.

The analyst pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing out of his mouth, jaw locked ever so slightly. “September twelfth.”

"We're assigning anniversaries now?" you question, somehow already knowing he’s not gonna answer. Your gaze momentarily and unintentionally shifts to your watch wrapped tightly around your wrist, counting down to when apparently this briefing—which is not brief contrary to the label, as it ends in still, four hours—will end. Three hours and forty minutes. “How did you meet?"

Leon answers first. “Work.”

The analyst stares. You cannot tell a German billionaire conducting illegal bio-organic weapons research that you met through classified counterterrorism,” he says. Well, you can if you’re convincing and persuasive enough to make the German like you, hypothetically. You don’t bother giving your own answer. You assume he’s gonna make up a story for you instead and have the idle briefing officer tell you where the hell you two met. You’re guessing at a coffee shop. The analyst continues. “Favorite food.”

“She'll eat anything if there's enough sugar in it,” Leon says, yet again, matter-of-factly, pointing at you unceremoniously. You didn’t realize how much Leon Kennedy could talk about you in a slanderous way. You know how much of a sucker he is for terrible, low-ball, deadpan jokes but that’s it.

You point at Leon yourself. “That's defamation.”

“You ate whipped cream for lunch.”

“It was accompanied by coffee,” you click your tongue before you shoot back, tapping your foot on the carpet sluggishly as if that signals any of your disagreement. Your eyes shift to the clock on the wall and the slightly rugged dry patches decorating the paint, then they immediately land back on Leon. Still in a defensive little stance, his shoulders square, crossing his arms. At this, your brows furrow deeper, though mostly in amusement.

Funnily enough, the behavioral analyst immediately switches topics. You find it a bit redundant, but who are you to judge someone’s analyzing behavior? Off to the side, the briefing officer quietly readjusts the crappy HDMI cable plugged from the wall connecting the laptop and the projector. “Coffee order.”

Again Leon answers instantly like a fish being baited by a worm on a hook in the sea. “Vanilla sweet cream cold brew. Three extra shots.”

The room turns quiet. You slowly turn. "...Three?"

"You've started ordering three,” he shrugs. The short second you used to recount all the times you’ve ordered coffee seems to prove him right. But still you’re a little bit shocked that Leon of all people know of your coffee habits. Next time he’s going to start listing how much you drank in high school.

“You count?”

Eventually, Leon gives up on standing and pulls the wheeled chair out for himself to sit, but he doesn’t waste any time, pulling out a chair for you as well. “You complain every time they only give you two."

The analyst, to your dismay, looks exceptionally pleased. “Excellent.” You yourself look horrified, leaning away in your newly sat-on chair, and exchanging a displeased look to Leon. The analyst continues. “His coffee.”

You smile, unconfident in your answer deep in your heart but still saying it anyway. “Black,” you announce confidently. Leon looked offended. You add. “Sugar?”

“No.”

“...You don't even drink coffee,” you murmur, shifting away from Leon’s space in the chair. Eventually after all your thinking and recalling and sorting through all the memories you have of Leon, from his constant injuries and his slightly promiscuous former dating profile until… six months ago, you finally landed. Cold brew with some caramel, sometimes he switches it out with an energy drink—which was arguably your fault for introducing them to him.

Leon replies in a low tone meant only for you and not so much for the behavior analyst trying to see how much disappointment he has in his tone. “I’ve ordered the same drink for four years.”

You hiss. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

And this was the type of conversation you had to have for eight hours a day now. Briefing one in the morning, then briefing two at night, overtime for a hefty salary, but at what cost. Because everything blurred into a list of brainwashing information. Apparently you are [Name] Kennedy, wife of Leon Kennedy of two weeks now and without fake aliases. Leon was also a business magnate and you’re his quant finance wife—originally you had tried to persuade the analysts to make you a fashion designer and your new handler, Agent Hunnigan, even lobbied you on that. It almost worked, if not for the fact that you had no published designs and you vehemently refused to do something tragic like being a failed, delusional fashion designer who thinks her designs are better than Karl Lagerfeld. You also have been thinking of children.y

“So, let me guess,” Jacob says over the phone, very audibly creaking his chair in that way you want to punch him for, “you’re in finance.”

“Can’t disclose that and if I do, I’ll start disclosing more information,” you shake your head, hand coming to clutch at your phone whilst you resist a smile on your face. You press the device closer to your ear. The softest chuckle comes out from the other side and you find yourself seeking out the sound of his own smile, as if that’s something that is hearable anyway.

“Keeping secrets from your boyfriend,” Jacob sighs comically, rustling through whatever papers stacked on top of more papers there are on his constantly messy-by-the-time-it-hits-three-p.m. office desk. Unfortunately, despite not being a field agent, you are never home yourself and can never say whatever it is you’re doing yourself.

“It’s not like that,” you huff indignantly which only earns you a laugh from your boyfriend, “just know I’m pretending that I’m doing your job because I need to catch bad guys despite that not being in my job description.”

“Great,” Jacob hums, “so you’re here until Saturday?” you really want to tell him to change his goddamn chair. It’s been with him since the start of his career there at his firm and it’s practically become where he lives—but you couldn’t say much about that, look at where you practically lived—despite it being in an unlivable state. Jacob is just like that. Clinging onto things too precious for him, somehow even his chair. You hear a sigh from the opposite side of the phone, “I think I’m taking overtime for a week, I don’t know. I’ll try to make it for dinner.”

And it is with absolute clarity that you know that your boyfriend thinks of you as a precious thing. Just that precious means not making it to dinner for the past two weeks. You both have busy schedules, and yours are certainly more busy because government agents are never home. Somehow, you still manage to make it home everyday and schedule dinner dates with him which eventually don’t lead to anything.

You return his sigh, voice dripping with exaggerated complaints, “When do you not take overtime?”

“I’ll try to make it for dinner on Friday, [Name],” he reassures softly, though it doesn't really matter because your petty mood has already made your mind up that he isn’t coming on Friday. And as if he read your mind, he adds, “and I’ll cook breakfast. You like my breakfast.”

Your lip twitches at the bribe. “Fine,” you murmur, looking at your slowly crowding back office as break time comes to an end. “Okay. Make it to Friday. I need to go… love you.”

“Yeah,” Jacob continues, then keeps himself on the line until you hang up first, “I love you too.”

Second, field agents lie to you for a living. Not necessarily maliciously; their entire profession is compartmentalization, cover identities, withholding information, and disappearing with explanations. Field agents are terrible boyfriends because sometimes the most reassuring thing they can tell you is also the thing they are professionally obligated to lie about.

On a chilly Saturday, you’re escorted to a first class plane suite accompanied by staff with hospitality of a smooth wine. The best thing about this mission, which was arguably easy to pick out because you dread this whole situation, was how much effort your higher-ups forced Leon to exert posing as a business magnate. So much so they had him reading Forbes and only Forbes on the plane. The annoyance in your bones had settled into a thinly-veiled coat after your abrupt deployment.

Then came the hotel lobby—Leitstar Hotel, the prized hotel chain of the Hohenzollern group and also, very close to Hohenzollern’s own personal estate—which looked expensive enough to make government accounting cry blood, sweat, mucus, and tears. You’re really not quite sure who paid for this when you file a complaint to Facilities on the broken coffee machine on the floor below you and it took you three more complaints for them to finally fix it. 

Your heels click against the polished cream marble. Large rectangular slabs sorted in very subtle geometric patterns, reflecting the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling enough that everything looks slightly glossy. Not Vegas-shiny. Warm ivory plaster and dark wood paneling around the doorways and reception areas. Certainly no exposed brick or any industrial nonsense. It seemed like your obnoxiously old, typical five-star hotel with property worth more than the net worth of seventeen people combined. Warm light hits your face in soft radiation and the pianist playing Chopin on a Steinway & Sons piano you didn’t want to guess how much it cost.

Leon quietly leans toward you. “We're definitely over budget.”

“No kidding,” you murmur back to him, walking to the receptionist desk. You take one solid second to admire the dark walnut—almost black—reception desk and the thin brass. Your eyes immediately jot back up and shoot the receptionist a warm smile.

The receptionist returns the smile with her own customary one, hands folded neatly against each other and the silk gloves she wore. "Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy."

Neither of you answer. The receptionist had an impeccable English accent—and the next, addresses you in German. The silence lasts long enough for the receptionist to look concerned, smile faltering in a microsecond, but not enough for hostility. Just confusion. You recover first, chuckling softly, making it look entirely for yourself, but deliberately audible for the receptionist to hear. “Thank you.”

Leon coughs. “Thanks.”

Your luggage gets taken immediately and someone offers champagne. Without wasting time, the receptionist steps over to grab at a keycard and slides the plastic card to you. You frown, though you immediately cover it with a curious smile. “One?”

“Of course,” she smiles, “the honeymoon suite.”

For the second time today, silence overcame the two of you and the air that surrounded the dark wood reception hall. Leon’s face contorts into an expression that only said he wanted to call Washington and resign at twenty-six. Leon recovers first this time and with an all-natural motion, his hand cups the small of your back and offers a thankful smile to the receptionist. “Thank you. Have a great night.”

The elevator ride was ten seconds of doomed, knowing silence. You shot Leon a single, displeased look, and he only gave you a woeful nod. You take a moment to look at the manicure of your nails—which a new fashion analyst somehow had convinced you to ditch your usual French tips with well polished, solid-colored cream. The ding of the elevator signaled you to get out, then you walked for not five seconds. You tapped the keycard.

Polished dark hardwood flooring and a large Persian-style rug which you are sure of was authentic underneath the seating area. Still warm cream walls, now with decorative molding Leon thought was somewhat cool. Floor-to-ceiling curtains that might suffocate you if you accidentally tore them off and landed on you; double-layered with sheer white curtains underneath and thick blackouts outside. Walnut writing desk, velvet armchairs, some small marble side table, brass lamps, a full-length mirror, a minibar hidden behind cabinetry. But the central problem was a bed. There was one bed. A very large one.

White linens and heavy upholstered headboard. Four pillows per person because apparently wealthy people require that much support to sleep—you dread kicking them off. You like to sleep with one pillow only. Or maybe a bent arm. But are you even going to be on the bed? You stare. Leon stares. Then both your eyes meet at the velvet couch seated beautifully on the side. It’s decorative.

“...Government budget.”

Leon deadpans. “You literally said this hotel was expensive.”

“Maybe they spent it on the Swarovski chandelier,” you say out of your ass, a heavy, thinking sigh following. Clearly the couch, while it exists, is only one of those gorgeous decorative chaise lounges that looks like it was designed by someone who has never actually had to sleep on furniture. You grab chapstick from your purse, “I'm taking the floor.”

You both keep standing; nobody moves and nobody breathes for about four seconds. Not speaking of anything worthwhile, then you start first, with an awkward huff. “We're adults.

Leon nods. “We’re adults.”

You scan the bedroom again and find all the little hints and bits of what the hotel staff might have been informed of: Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy are newlyweds who are madly in love with each other and smitten. Because everything here screamed of it. Champagne. Roses on the bed, the furniture, which aren’t even your favorite flowers; chocolates in intricate and wasteful wrappers inside premium boxes; folded towels. And when you step closer, you see a little handwritten congratulations card on that stupidly enormous bed.

"So why is this weird?" you ask to yourself as if the question isn’t obviously Leon Kennedy is not your boyfriend.

Before Leon can answer, a crisp, three-beat knock rattled on the heavy wooden door. You shoot Leon a peculiar look but he only shrugs, peeping through the peephole for a split second, then opening the door. One of Hohenzollern’s staff smiles politely. “We simply wished to welcome the newlyweds.”

You immediately slip beside Leon without thinking. Your hand rested lightly on his arm like the stellar image of a kept woman, or maybe just a socialite who’s very territorial. Leon’s own hand found the small of your back once again. Neither of you notice. The staff member definitely notices. “What a lovely couple.”

"Thank you," you smile, reaching your eyes. Purposefully.

Then the door closes. Three seconds. Five. Seven. Then Leon looks down and sees the soft beige-ish cream of your painted nails still softly gripping at his suit-clad bicep. “...You're still holding my arm.”

You look down too, expecting to see your hand already released from its original position. But of course, not. And you see his own arm snugly around your waist, all too natural for your liking, and of course, all too warm for your unliking. His hands feel rough even through the fabric of your dress and your coat. Firm as well. “...You're holding my waist.”

You both let go simultaneously.

Everything from here on was simple. Get close enough to Hohenzollern or impress him enough on the day of the ballroom dance held every Sunday at the hotel and extract whatever information you could get from him. Somehow, you were enjoying this more than you thought. You were a desk person at heart, even if it was a pathetic thing to admit, but still, you could appreciate the high-strung thrill of it all. Maybe also because the white champagne they gave you was superb and they hired a fashion analyst to bring you clothes, and said clothes happened to be high-end designer gowns that you could technically keep after this. Nobody hated free stuff. Especially if said free stuff was Elie Saab that accentuated every good part of your figure.

“Hold still.”

“I am holding still,” you respond. You wince inaudibly as Leon, with a face full of determination and concentration as he stares at your left earlobe and the heavy earring he’s trying to put in. Your hand is already covering his own because if you don’t know how to do this quickly, he sure as hell can’t. The lamp at the dresser flatters your face and contours the chisels of your face accentuated by the makeup. You’re really quite proud of yourself of your makeup skills, Hunnigan even complimented you in your ear, but it’s a pain in the ass to remove the, you suspect, war-proof foundation later.

“You’re moving,” even as he argues, Leon only gently tugs at your ear, fingers surprisingly careful despite the frustrated little crease forming between his eyebrows. You can feel the metal of the earring shift against your skin, and you resist the urge to reach up and fix it yourself because at this point, doing so would only prove him right. You also want him to fix it for you. Still, there is something deeply humiliating about needing help with an earring, particularly when the person helping you is a government agent who has handled firearms with considerably more confidence than he is currently handling a piece of jewelry. 

Instead, you stare at his reflection in the mirror instead, watching the way his face scrunches up and makes him look comically serious. For someone who has infiltrated terrorist compounds, Leon Kennedy is apparently being defeated by a rhinestone. “I’m breathing,” you frown, then wince. “Leon.”

“Fine. Sorry.”

His hands finally still and for a second, you think he has given up entirely. Then he shifts the earring between his fingertips and squints at the clasp; he carefully tries again with the kind of patience you have rarely seen him exercise anywhere outside a mission. You watch his reflection and his mouth pressing into a thin line, attention narrowing entirely onto the small piece of metal at your ear.

The room is otherwise quiet, save for the low hum of the hotel air conditioning. Sound insulation is too good here, you can barely hear a thing outside, not the sound of staff moving beyond the suite. It feels strangely domestic, which is ridiculous, because there is absolutely nothing domestic about being deployed to Germany to infiltrate a billionaire suspected of financing biological weapons research. Yet here you are, sitting at a dresser while your face husband struggles with your jewelry like this is just routine.

“There,” you blink at your reflection, turning your head slightly before the earring catches the light and swings against your neck. It is annoyingly, perfectly positioned, the little stones catching the warm light from the lamp and making it look pricier than it already is. You don’t register it immediately so ultimately you still say what, so Leon adds, “Your earring. I fixed it.”

Leon leans back to inspect his work, his expression shifting from that previous concentration to unadulterated satisfaction from successfully completing a task that should not have required that much effort. You reach up to touch the earring yourself, checking the clasp once.  “…Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he chirps.

“You know, most wives know how to put on earrings,” Leon abruptly jokes. You turn around in your chair, giving him a flat look immediately after while Leon’s mouth twitches at the corners. He has the audacity to still look pleased with himself. There is something irritatingly comfortable about the way he looks at you now but you ignore it and only sigh, turning back towards the mirror.

“Most husbands know when to stop talking.”

There is a beat of silence behind you and you make eye contact with him once. Then Leon gives a quiet, shrugged, resigned hum, and you catch his reflection rolling his eyes. “Fair.”

The ballroom is nonetheless, just as ridiculous as the lobby, the reception, the honeymoon suite. Crystal chandeliers, five of them, which you now have an irrational, intrusive thought of that they’ll fall and hit you. String quartet. Champagne. Rich people discussing charity while funding war crimes they simultaneously both understand far too well of and far too little of—because what matters is that their pockets get filled.

Leon murmurs into the tiny hidden mic, connected to both you and his (well, also your) new handler. You’re only a few feet away from him and you give a small, practiced simper to a man with his wife. Not enough for the wife to glare at you but enough for the man to feel a false sense of flattery. “I forgot how much I hate rich people.”

You smile without looking at him. “You hate poor people too.”

“I don’t,” Leon defends, almost glaring at you. In the distance, a man with a dashing black-tie laughing boisterously with a woman who is definitely not his wife makes eye contact with Leon, and he smiles with a persuasive little charm. You notice the positively not-matching wedding band on the couple.

You finally return his eye and raise an eyebrow, hand unknowingly squeezing his bicep in a moment too natural for either of you to notice. You find yourself your own target, watching a middle-aged woman gossipping lightly with a much younger woman. “You complained about the hotel clerk yesterday.”

“He charged me eighteen euros for sparkling water.”

Immediately, you two separate. Not intentionally, at first you wanted to go with each other but too many people were going alone, not with their smitten partners. It’s just what happens at these galas. Leon gets pulled into a conversation with businessmen. You get cornered by wives with dresses that cost more than a downpayment on a car. One clearly forced herself to fit into her dress because of how illfitting it was at her bosom. You end up profiling them one by one. One is terrified that her husband will leave her for a mistress. Another clearly cheats. Someone’s lying about where they vacation. Someone else has a gambling addiction that she’s been hiding from her husband. And one has sneered at you and called the eggshell, thousand-crystal dress you’re wearing gaudy and told you to stop talking to her husband. You quietly feed Leon information through seemingly innocent conversation.

“Blue tie,” you say, narrowing your eyes at a wolfish gaze from a man who you can’t tell from this distance if he’s married or not.

Leon smiles at the man. “Your daughter still riding horses?”

The man blinks. “…Yes.”

Humorously, instantaneously, the man immediately trusts Leon Kennedy. You see the way his shoulders subtly loosened from the slowly narrowing distance across the hall. You make your way to your fake husband. Funnily, the number one reason you used as a way to justify you not being assigned on this mission completely crumbles. Because Leon gathers, you interpret. Very seamlessly as well.

Then comes the problem that wedges between you and Leon very literally. Your heel abruptly halts when a man, tall, exceedingly handsome in the way a man who has the ability to take care of himself only because his wealth allows is, confident. You figure he’s some younger investor because the tacky color of his suit (which to the untrained eye would seem like a regular color, you only understand this because you work with men in suits too much and you’ve perhaps unfortunately been forced to understand color theory and its relation to wealth) screamed make-it-big new money. You look at the crystal chandelier, then to him, and an exhausted, pristine smile graces your lips with practiced ease.

You do not like him. Partially because you have a husband, a new husband, who is technically not your husband. He’s immediately interested in you and you can’t really guess whether it’s because he thinks you’re attractive or because he finds you interesting and the eye candy is only a booster. Laughing. Talking. Standing just a little too close.

Across the ballroom, Leon notices and gives you a little look which you return with a shrug. The young man keeps talking and so does Leon. He notices again. Keeps talking. Then notices again. Keeps talking; finally, he interrupts.

Without missing a beat, an arm naturally slips around your waist. “Honey.”

You look up. Leon’s eyes reflect light a lot; blue eyes narrowed into relaxed little beads that don’t reveal anything yet. The heels you’re wearing give you a small boost and you’re brought to a more equal eye level, though they had a low heel. “Hm?”

“I need your opinion,” he says, determined, though you know for sure what he needs you for is something stupid. “On wine.”

“You don’t drink wine,” you say factually. Leon Kennedy doesn’t even look like a wine man. Well, maybe with this specific bespoke suit he does, but normally he doesn’t. Leon Kennedy wears leather and rugged-looking biker jackets. And true to his appearance, Leon looks and is the type to drink hard liquor and whiskey as much as he can on a Saturday night but he swears he says he’s functional.

He grins, tightening his grip on your waist and slowly sliding it to your upper back to draw reassuring circles you don’t need. Then his hand comes down to his original spot on your waist. The motion makes the fine hairs on your arm stand up and heat crawling from your chest to your cheek to your ears. “I do now.”

“What a buffoon,” you sneer.

The man laughs joyfully in the face of rejection. “You two are adorable.”

Warmth pours in more rays of light from the crystal chandeliers and the candle-like lamp. Your face briefly contorts into an irked scrunch when you feel the back of your foot scrape against your heel. You didn’t put cotton or anything to wedge between your foot and your heels. “She keeps me alive.”

You answer before thinking. “Someone has to.”

The investor laughs again and turns around to leave, giving you a curt goodbye and although not intentionally, completely disregarding Leon. Once he’s out of your eye line, you lean your body towards Leon, whispering, “Nice save.”

Leon shrugs as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. You believe it is not obvious. Because he was not flirting with you and he was not making any advancements towards you that would warrant Leon to step in just like that. Because Leon Kennedy is not your boyfriend. Not even Jacob stepped into random conversations like that. The man might’ve just wanted to lure you into his multi-level-marketing Ponzi scheme. “He was annoying.”

“You looked annoyed,” you simper mischievously. Leon has been sent on date-esque missions before with other women at the firm but you’ve never seen overtly jealous behavior that isn’t manufactured. He didn’t even get possessive over Jessica during their undercover op together. From the corner of your eye, you see the old, slightly stubbily built German man you and Leon have been eyeing out for the past two hours.

“I wasn’t,” Leon squeezes at your waist once, not harsh, but enough of a jolt for you to slap his upper arm. You look down at your appearance, assessing your own form, then at Leon. Your eyes meet with a unanimous, unannounced thought.

There was a deliberate reason why Leon Kennedy parted his way just slightly differently than normal, why he wore a three-buttoned suit in the colour navy, why you wore warm ivory with earrings that made your neck look slimmer and taller than a giraffe. It is for the simple reason of catching the eye of a man deeply entrenched in aesthetic values and the traditional nuclear family. If you didn’t manage to secure anything today, you’re going to call yourself useless in the shower tonight.

“You interrupted him,” you argue halfheartedly, though your eyes never seem to leave the target nor get off of his constantly scanning gaze. Eventually you end up with a hypothesis. Hohenzollern intentionally keeps couples close. He likes observing them in small spaces. You quietly tell Leon. “He’s watching interactions.”

“So?”

Your eyebrows furrow at the single syllable and the corner of your mouth curls into a disappointed, upset jut. You grab Leon’s hand resting on your waist and throw it back, stepping away from Leon angrily. “You interrupted my conversation.”

“He wanted your number,” Leon seems to catch on quite easily, fake fire and heat coating the tip of his tongue. The schizoid sways of chitter and chatter in the ballroom accompanied with some bossa nova piece played on the piano stays only as background noise. His reply is still hushed.

You scoff, making distance with your fake husband. “He wanted business contacts.”

“He wanted your number,” Leon’s voice raises just enough for the woman beside you, previously holding a flute of champagne between her fingertips, wearing the most strikingly red halter dress that drags at the hem to look at you inquisitively and step back. Not enough people are staring, and yet you don’t want them to stare. Because weirdly enough, despite this being a show, you feel truth in the form of mild annoyance slipping out of your mouth before you can even verbalize it.

“You don’t know that,” scoffing, your hand coming to point at Leon accusingly, you step back into his vicinity searching for his eyes. Your theatrical disapproval catches the attention of several other people, though none openly ogle, just enough for whispers to be heard. There are a few glances over shoulders, the subtle shift of champagne glasses closer to mouths as people pretend not to listen. Somehow, you still feel mildly embarrassed.

You can feel the heat crawling beneath your collarbone at the mortification but Leon looks entirely unbothered, standing there. “I absolutely know that,” he says, his voice dropping into that irritatingly calm register he uses whenever he thinks he’s objectively correct and none the law can prosecute him. He lifts his eyebrows at you, almost challenging you to argue, and when you do, his mouth twitches like he anticipated the sentence.

You fold your arms across your chest and tilt your head, the gesture deliberately exaggerated enough to make it obvious that you are offended. Leon glances briefly towards the man who has now disappeared into another conversation, then looks back at you with the expression of someone who has just caught himself doing something he cannot explain. You, for a fact, notice it immediately. You accuse, narrowing your eyes at him; “You’ve been weird all evening.”

“I’ve been normal,” he replies, almost offended by the suggestion. He straightens the cuff of his sleeve with unnecessary force (and unnecessary precision), then adjusts his watch despite the fact that there is nothing wrong with it. The Casio budges only a little and does not make a visual difference whatsoever.

“…You don’t trust me.”

Leon blinks. “What?” the word comes out genuinely confused, for half a second you wonder whether you’ve misunderstood him yourself. Then his eyebrows draw together, head tilting slightly as he studies your face, and you can practically see the gears turning in his head and see him running through every possible interpretation of the accusation. You gesture vaguely between the two of you.

“You keep stepping in,” you frown meekly, voice quieter now but no less pointed. The glittering crowd continues moving around you as if neither of you is currently having a fake argument that somehow both of you seem to dread for real. The music carries on beneath the conversation, in another situation maybe you’d take Leon’s hand and ask him to twirl you. Then you realize maybe it shouldn’t be him.

“I’m protecting the mission,” Leon answers immediately.

“I’m perfectly capable,” you counter, taking another step toward him, close enough that he has to lower his voice again, and jab one finger lightly angst the center of his chest. Leon’s eyes flick down briefly to the finger against his chest before returning to your face, and the tiny movement makes you pull your hand back as if you’ve suddenly remembered how close the two of you are standing.

Leon’s jaw shifts, eyes downcasted. “I know.”

“Then stop doing it,” you say simply, body shifting to be in his direct eye line. Truly, Leon Kennedy looked like a kicked puppy sometimes, the cutest kicked puppy. He looked especially like that when he was guilty.

He hesitates, and that hesitation is worse than the answer. His gaze slips over your shoulder, toward the crowd, then back to you, and the clever response he had at the back of his throat is completely misplaced between the ridges of his skeleton. One hand moves to his tie, loosening it by half an inch before he realizes he’s doing it and lets it fall back into place. You have to lean into him slightly to hear him. “I just didn’t like him looking at you like that.”

“I mean—” Leon seems to realize what he’s said at exactly the same time you do. His eyes shift away, jaw tightening as he searches for some way to drag the sentence back into the realm of professional concern. You slowly raise your eyebrows, and the corner of your mouth threatens to lift despite yourself. Leon lifts one hand as though he can physically stop the implication from reaching you. “He was distracting you and if you’re distracted, I’m distracted. If we’re both distracted, we compromise the missi—”

“I know what you mean,” you cut in.

“No, you don’t,” you give him a look at that. Leon gives you one back.

For several seconds neither of you says anything and the silence between you becomes strangely conspicuous against the music and laughter surrounding you. Somewhere behind Leon, a waiter passes with a silver tray of champagne glasses, and one of the guests laughs too loudly at something that probably wasn’t funny enough to warrant it. Sycophany. And then because you are possessed, you straighten his tie with two fingers, smoothing the knot back into place.

“There,” you murmur, and Leon’s eyes zoom in carefully at your fingers, then immediately snap back to yours at the second part of your clause, “now you look less jealous.”

“I wasn’t jealous.”

“Of course not,” you agree.

You smile sweetly at him, and somehow that looks more incriminating than if you’d accused him of being jealous outright even though you did just do that a second ago. Leon stares at you for another second before looking away, rubbing his thumb along the edge of his wedding band as though suddenly very interested in the piece of metal on his finger. He’s pretty sure someone from the rich departments loaned this out to you. Like bad agents, neither of you notices the older man standing across the ballroom watching the entire exchange you just had with an amused expression.

Older into the night, you find yourself standing beneath another chandelier that has gotten you particularly interested for after Germany to research European architecture. The ballroom has only grown louder since you arrived, the string quarter having transitioned into something slower and more conversational while champagne continues circulating between clusters of people. Leon stands beside you with one hand loosely settled around the stem of his glass, his other tucked into his trouser pocket—admittedly, you found attractive—looking every bit the American business magnate your government has spent the last three weeks manufacturing.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy.”

You turn towards him with a smile already in place, perfected over the years of pretending to be interested in people you aren’t and some galas because military families had social lives, and the subtle microexpressive shifts they trained you for three weeks. You find yourself staring at a well-groomed man, white hair combed back with a smile reaching his eyes. He is shorter up close, more than you had expected.

Leon inclines his head beside you, his posture shifting imperceptibly into something more formal. Hunnigan doesn’t whisper, and there’s no warning through your earpiece—which was carefully implanted into your earring, even if it made it a hassle to hear and you were constantly on edge that the monitor was leaking. Hohenzollern extends his hand first and Leon takes it with the practiced confidence of someone accustomed to being introduced in rooms like this. You follow a second later, allowing your fingers to rest in his for only as long as etiquette requires.

Leon smiles impeccably. “Mr. Hohenzollern.”

“Lovely couple,” Hohenzollern remarks, his gaze passing between you with an almost amused curiosity. His smile widens as though there is something interesting about the two of you, or maybe you’re just new, though whether that is good or bad remains unclear. Viciously and directly, he questions: “You two have been married for two weeks, yes?”

“Officially,” Leon answers so smoothly that you nearly look at him. Instead, you keep your attention on Hohenzollern, watching the tiny movements of his eyebrows as he absorbs the answer.

“And how long did you know each other beforehand?”

“Three years.”

“Three years is a long time to work together.”

“It is,” Leon says without hesitation, his answer carrying the faintest trace of amusement. You glance toward him briefly, catching the way his eyes remain on Hohenzollern even though you know he is perfectly aware that you’re looking. Three years is a long time. Long enough for him to recognize your coffee order. Long enough, apparently, for Hohenzollern to start wondering how much of this marriage is actually fabricated.

“You work together then?” the old man assumes, watching your eyes and everything from the top to the bottom with a peculiar attentiveness that makes you wonder whether he is studying the contents of your glass or the way Leon’s fingers remain against your back. You nod. “And you find that advantageous?”

Leon looks at you and you look at him. “Most of the time,” you reply, earning a raised, inquisitive brow from Hohenzollern and a light, undetectable sneer from Leon. You remember the many missions you’ve handled for him. So you continue: “He talks too much.”

“I’ve been very quiet tonight,” Leon shoots you an offended look.

“You have been complaining to me about wine for an hour. You have been drinking champagne,” you remark, clicking your tongue. For a moment, Leon glares at you directly in the eye, and you can’t return his gaze without shying away. You hear the clear, rumbling laugh of a man in front of you.

Shaking his head, Hohenzollern smiles, “You remind me of my wife.”

“Is she here tonight?”

“She would have hated this room,” he replies wistfully, yet his tone as if the memory of her was far too precious to be remembered woefully—his smiles become faintly nostalgic. “She preferred smaller gatherings. Fewer people pretending to like one another.”

You glance around the ballroom and without thinking, you caress Leon’s arm. “Then she sounds very sensible.”

“Which is precisely why I married her,” he agrees. Leon’s eyebrows lift slightly, but Hohenzollern merely smiles into his champagne. “I think,” he continues, faux thoughtfulness lacing his voice, the tone you know all too well with business deals or simple pretention, “that you would both appreciate my home more than this.”

Leon straightens. “Your home?”

“My estate is only a short distance from here. I’m hosting a private dinner tomorrow evening,” his eyes settle on the two of you again. From the distance, you see faint whispers behind champagne glasses held up to the lips, eyes trying as discreetly as they can to look at you. Hohenzollern’s attention is a very fickle thing and for someone to make the man laugh with genuine amusement, they must have been wearing a lucky charm. Or be a government agent. “No press; no investors; no tedious speeches about charitable giving.”

You exchange a look with Leon, “Just dinner?”

“Dinner,” Hohenzollern confirms, his smile just tipping at conspiratorial. He reaches for your hand first, leaning down to kiss it and you’re taken by surprise by the gesture, but mostly because of Leon Kennedy’s hand tightening at your waist and its gripping sensation. “And perhaps a few friends.”

Reason number three, field agents are territorial. Field agents develop an irritating sense of ownership over the people they work with, probably because they understand how fickle life could really be. It was an occupational hazard. You’d spent three years watching Leon become visibly annoyed whenever someone interrupted your conversations—when he interrupted yours—stole your candy, or stood too close to your desk. Fortunately, Leon Kennedy is not your boyfriend.

By the time you make it back to your suite, your feet have developed a personal vendetta against you. Manolo Blahniks were gorgeous but it didn’t stop your feet from complaining after standing in them for hours on end. The ballroom itself had been beautiful in the exhausting way only expensive things and persons could be. Crystals and champagnes and people who smiled with their teeth while simultaneously calculating how much you were worth.

You close the door behind you with your shoulder, kick your heels off one at a time, and watch them skid across the polished hardwood in opposite directions. Leon follows behind you, loosening his tie with one hand while the other catches the door before it swings shut. Neither of you say anything for a few seconds and the silence feels strange (and deafening) after six hours of music.

You glance at him over your shoulder. “I’m taking the bathroom first.”

Leon pauses halfway through removing his cufflinks, looking at you with an expression of mild betrayal. “You were in there for twenty minutes yesterday.”

“I was removing government-approved makeup,” you deadpan. Leon considers this with the solemnity of a man reviewing classified family documents like the Koning family, then nods once. You disappear into the bathroom before he can change his mind, and the door clicks behind you.

The mirror is crueler than any enemy you’ve encountered all week. Your lipstick has faded at the center, your eyeliner has migrated approximately two millimeters downward, and one of your earrings has left a faint indentation against your neck. You stare at yourself for a second before sighing and reaching for the cleansing balm. Somewhere beyond the bathroom door, you hear Leon moving around the suite, drawers opening and closing, the soft scrape of a hanger being moved aside. You scrub the last of the foundation from your face and emerge twenty minutes later with your hair tied loosely back, your skin bare, and a government-issued T-shirt hanging from your shoulders. Leon looks up from where he’s sitting at the edge of the bed. He blinks once. “You look different.”

You narrow your eyes. “That’s usually what happens when you remove makeup.”

“No, I mean—” he stops himself, apparently realizing whatever sentence had been forming in his head was not going to survive contact with you. He had already embarrassed himself at a high-end ballroom with ornamental flowers and nitpicky rich people, he is not embarrassing himself in the comfort of their hotel room. “You look tired.” 

You stare at him for a moment before snorting. “That’s considerably less flattering.” 

Leon’s mouth twitches. “I wasn’t trying to flatter you.”

Too tired to return his banter, even if you really did want to, you flop down onto the decorative sofa and hiss at the uncomfortable wooden arms. Leon eventually retreats into the bathroom carrying a change of clothes over one arm. A moment later, the door closes, followed by the hiss of the shower beginning behind it. You sink deeper into the sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling while the sound of running water fills the suite, and only then do you realize how badly you want to talk to someone.

You pull out your phone. Jacob. The name sits on your scene for a few seconds before you press call. The first ring passes. Then the second. By the fourth, you’re already considering hanging up when the line finally connects. You greet softly, a little unstably, “Hey.”

“Hey,” his voice comes through slightly muffled and tired. It’s soft with the unmistakable exhaustion of someone who had been pulled from the edge of sleep. “Sorry, I almost didn’t pick up.”

“You’re okay?” you ask, sitting up slightly.

“Yeah,” he rasps out, throat straining. He almost sounds sick. Jacob always sounds almost sick whenever he’s drowsy. “Just tired. How was Germany?”

“Busy,” you tell him, picking at the edge of your sleeve. Your hand flails around in restlessness, both from not knowing what to talk about and knowing exactly what you want to talk about. “We went to this ridiculous gala tonight. You would’ve hated it.”

“Probably,” you hear the simple answer and the corners of your mouth twitch.

“There was a pianist, champagne,” you list off mindlessly. You had a thing dor listing off the boring parts first, which you actually picked up from Jacob, something you still don’t understand why he does but you’ve not minded. You continue, “this whole ballroom—“ yet you stop yourself, realizing that you aren’t really finding anything from him, “actually, never mind. It’s not important.”

“No, tell me. I’m listening,” Jacob insists, though his voice has already begun to blur at the edges. The slurred speech and a possible yawn he’s trying very hard to suppress, while it makes you sad, also makes you smile reluctantly. 

“You sound like you’re falling asleep,” you remark, shifting down to make yourself at least the littlest bit more comfort amidst the painful position. You pick at the sides of your nails. You’re starting to like the beige color more often—or maybe it is simply because three weeks of being behaviorally trained to be a sad plant artisan and constantly exposed to beige has given you a Stockholm syndrome effect.

“I’m not,” he argued tiredly. 

Sometimes, you used to argue like this with actual smiles because of your pathetic flirtation. “You are.”

“Maybe a little.”

“Jacob…” his name leaves you softer than you intended, and suddenly you’re staring at the carpet instead of the ceiling. The humming murmur from the other end of the phone, despite being the least he could do, makes you simultaneously comforted and completely crushed. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” his apology comes immediately, quiet and sincere, and somehow that makes it worse.

“It’s okay,” you force a little laugh, rubbing your thumb over the edge of your phone. Despite it being unnatural, your cheeks have no fatigue at all. “Really.”

“You should sleep, though,” Jacob tells you gently. “You sound exhausted.”

“Yeah,” you sink further into the sofa, letting your head fall against the backrest fully, neck resting at an awkward position.  “I guess I should.”

“I love you,” his voice softens around the words, familiar enough that you could have predicted exactly how he would say them.

“I love you too,” close your eyes, letting the words sit between you for a moment.

“Call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow,” you nod before remembering he can’t see you, then give a quiet little hum of agreement.

“Good,” he says, and there’s a faint smile in his voice now. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” you wait for the call to disconnect first, staring blankly at the ceiling once the line goes quiet. The call ends, leaving the room strangely quieter than it had been before. You stare at the black screen for a moment longer, thumb resting against the edge of your phone, and tell yourself that there is nothing wrong. Jacob was tired. You were tired. You were both busy. This was what adulthood looked like when two people had careers and responsibilities and no concept of synchronized schedules. Still, the conversation had left you with a peculiar hollowness beneath your ribs and toxins curdling in your guts, funnily as if you’d called him because you wanted someone to make the room feel less empty and somehow managed to feel more alone afterward. You set the phone down beside you and lean your head against the back of the sofa, closing your eyes. Now you wonder if Hohenzollern or his men can hack into your phone and whether calling Jacob was even a good idea.

The bathroom door clicks open several minutes later. Leon steps out with a towel draped around his neck, damp hair pushed messily away from his forehead and the sleeves of his academy shirt rolled loosely above his wrists. The usual sharpness of him has been stripped away with the suit, leaving supreme ordinance beneath it. He stops when he sees you still sitting there, phone resting beside your thigh, and his expression shifts almost imperceptibly. “You okay?” he asks quietly.

You open your eyes and give him the easiest smile you can manage. The irrational itch at the back of your head tells you to not make your night awkward, and to not talk to the government agent-slash-partner you are sharing a room with about your love life—so you stand up as casually as you can. You stand at the foot of the bed, shooting Leon a look. Leon looks at the bed. The bed looks back at both of you, enormous and offensively comfortable beneath its white duvet. You point toward it. “You take it.” 

Leon immediately shakes his head. “No,” he gestures vaguely toward the mattress, all with his Midwestern politeness and Midwestern gruffness. The chocolate and flowers, and the card on the humongous bed had been moved away by you, simply because you needed to jump on the cozy bedding immediately, then realizing it’d be rude and awkward. “You take it.” 

You look at the decorative couch, then back at him. “You’re not sleeping on that thing.”

Leon glances at it too. “Neither are you.”

“Then we’re sleeping on the floor,” you decide, already reaching for one of the pillows. Leon catches your wrist—not hard, just enough to stop the pillow from becoming a weapon—and looks at you with an expression of exhausted disbelief. You wouldn’t mind sleeping on a Persian rug though.

“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” you tug your hand free and raise an eyebrow. Your own disbelieved iteration: a why escapes your throat and he stares at you for a second. “Because you’re going to complain about your back tomorrow.”

You open your mouth, then close it. “I hate that you know that.”

“I’ve known you for three years.”

You murmur snarkily under your breath. “Unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately,” he agrees, and there is something almost too soft about the way he says it.

You stand there for another moment, both of you inexplicably refusing to be the first person to surrender. Finally, you exhale through your nose and sit on the very edge of the mattress. “Fine.” Leon watches you, apparently waiting for a second objection. When none comes, he walks around to the other side and sits down too. There is approximately an entire ocean between your shoulders despite the bed being only a few feet wide. You stare straight ahead. 

“This is ridiculous.” 

“Extremely,” Leon nods. The silence stretches for a solid ten minutes, four of those minutes while the warm light was on illuminating the side of the bed way too brightly for you to get proper rest, and six of those minutes after Leon leaned over to click at the lamp, surrounding both of you with darkness. The silence is only broken by the distant hum of city lights outside the suite’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

You stare up at the ceiling, counting the faint shadows cast by the streetlamps, completely hyper-aware of every single microscopic movement on the other side of the mattress now. Leon hasn’t laid down yet. He’s sitting rigidly against the headboard, one arm resting over his bent knee, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever laid eyes on. You mutter into the dark, “You’re breathing too loudly.”

Leon exhales a scoffing breath that you feel more than you hear. The sound nearly makes you smile from ear to ear, warmth coating the thinnest, outermost layer of your skin, threatening to burn you. “I’m breathing normally.”

“It’s loud and aggressive.”

“Go to sleep.”

You shift aggressively to your side, turning your front to him, pulling the edge of the duvet tighter around your shoulder. “I would if the air in the room wasn’t so loud,” the mattress dips to your front. The subtle, familiar scent of cedarwood, gun oil, and leather suddenly shifts closer. Leon. Every time he breathes, his shoulder blades expand, and suddenly you understand very well that Leon is an exceptionally built man. Your mind refuses to cooperate right now because without your intention, the lines have blurred so badly over the last six hours that you aren't even sure where the mission ends and reality begins.

You shift again, restless, your elbow accidentally grazing his. Leon freezes and unbeknownst to you, goosebumps creep up his arms up to his neck. He doesn't pull away, but you can feel the sudden, abrupt tension lock up every muscle in his spine.

"Stop moving," he murmurs, his voice rougher now, dropping a significantly amount in the quiet room. It sends an entirely unhelpful, traitorous shiver straight down your spine.

"I'm trying to get comfortable," you whisper back fiercely, flipping over but then negating the action by turning your head just enough to glare at the back of his head in the dim light. "Which is difficult when my bedmate insists on acting like a sleeping statue."

"If I move, I'm going to touch you," he says, his voice dangerously low, stripped of all its usual defensive sarcasm. The words hang in the space between you, thick enough to choke on if you don’t swallow properly. Leon seems to have picked up how wrong that sounded and how much innuendo it had so he clarifies. “That came out wrong.”

Nevertheless, your breath hitches. “Please shut up,” you finally rasp out, completely unknowing what to say. Leon is quiet for a long, agonizing moment. You feel the mattress shift again as he moves—not closer, but adjusting his weight, his breathing turning slow and heavy as he forces himself to anchor his restraint.

"Get some sleep," he says finally, his voice a low, rough rasp against the dark. It’s not an order; it’s a plea disguised as one.

You close your eyes, a dull, sweet ache settling deep in your chest as the distance between you remains untouched. You sigh restlessly, and bear defiantly. “Night, Leon."

A beat passes. Then, softer than you've ever heard him speak, breaking every rule of the typical spy romance fake-marriage operation and every toughness point he carries: "Night."

Fortunately, Leon Kennedy is not your boyfriend.

taglist ꩜ @caytopia ， @xx-betteroffaslovers-xx ， @spectranix | typical taglist form

notes ꩜ hi super late update i’m sick i feel like poopoo and i hate chemistry. this is gonna be a four parter now. yipee. whatever. i have a taglist go join it and please read and bootlick me in the comments. byebye

◞ ㅤ© kayuekou, 2026 𖥻 do not copy, reconstruct, or upload on other platform nor feed my works into AI.

that night had come to an end, your shared apartment was now filled with silence. the distant sound of d.c. still awake like yourself. leon was asleep beside you, laying on his back with his head propped up a bit against plush pillows because that helped him sleep better. 

you glanced over at the red numbers of the clock on his nightstand. 2:03 am. just an hour ago the room had been packed with the sounds of leon’s grunting, your moans, and the headboard of the bed slamming up against the wall. and now, nothing.

you sigh, staring up at the dark ceiling. your eyes playing tricks on you, making it seem like the fan above had been turning. you just could not fall asleep. you would have thought that a few drinks and cardio with leon would have made you sleepy.

“what is it?” a voice graveled from exhaustion startled you. looking over to see leon in the same position he’d fallen asleep with his eyes still closed. did you hallucinate that?

you stare at him, waiting for a twitch of movement in his eyes that would tell you if you were going crazy from the lack of sleep already or not. “are you awake? i thought you were asleep,” you whisper.

“just resting my eyes,” leon grumbles, feeling you shifting around on the bed so he opens one eye to see you up and sitting back on your heels staring at him. “you’re creepy.”

“i can’t sleep.”

“i could tell.”

you sigh, rolling your eyes at his smart ass answer. you just couldn’t even relax, your mind was up and running and your body wanted to do the same. leon props himself up on his elbow, the sheet falling to his stomach and showcasing his bare chest. after staring at each other in the dark for a second, he grins with a light huff of laughter.

“what’s funny?” you ask, raising your eyebrow. the fact that you couldn’t even close your eyes didn’t seem like a laughing matter. 

leon’s expression smoothens. he was still a little intimidated by you, quickly realizing his mistake and most definitely not wanting to anger his dear wife this late at night. he shakes his head, his hand coming up to pensively rub the stubble along his jaw. “nothing,” he murmurs.

he raises an eyebrow, trying to diffuse the situation. “you look pretty,” he manages before you groan and throw yourself to his side, your face buried between his side and the matter. he clicked his tongue, reaching down to push you back gently by your shoulder.

“get out of there, woman. you’ll suffocate,” he grunts, having you lay on your back. he uses his fingers to carefully move the hair out of your face, letting his thumb brush over your bottom lip during a second of admiration at your beauty.

“at least i’d be asleep,” you mutter stubborn.

“jesus,” leon sighs. he knows the feeling of not being able to sleep. hell, he spent years getting forgetting what a good rest was like. what it was like to dream and to forget for just eight hours. 

his hand sliding to your hip, he hauls you over to him. “come here, sweetheart. wanna tire yourself out?” being married to leon meant knowing exactly what he meant everything single time he said something. with you, he’d become honest and transparent. walls down and crumbled. 

“yeah,” you whispered, with his support you got on top of him. feeling his skin against yours was almost like a natural melatonin. 

“i’ll help you,” leon said, one rough and calloused hand on your hip, stroking your hipbone with his thumb while the other reached down to wrap already his hard, aching cock. it hadn’t fully relaxed since an hour ago when he fucked you into the mattress. 

leon wraps an arm around your back, bringing you down to press your chests together. he brings the tip of his cock to your already soaked hole, using it to drag the mixed fluids of your arousal and his pre cum all over your pussy. not wanting an inch of you dry.

his big hands grip your ass, taking a moment to squeeze and knead the flesh before you whispering his name in his ear reminds him what he was supposed to be doing.

“sorry, sweetheart,” leon breaths. his hands back to your hips, he gently pushes you back to have you slowly sink back down onto his cock. you gasp, your eyes fluttering closed and your jaw dropping. 

“oh fuck, leon,” you whimper. leon reaches behind you to tug the sheets up and draped it over your shoulder, keeping you warm and to block out anything that would distract him your perfect body.

leon feels how you instantly start moving your hips, a soft groan leaving his mouth. “that’s it, baby. mhm.”

you pushed back, your hands against his chest as you rock yourself at a pace that pleases you. 

“so pretty.” leon sighs, his hands on your cheek to keep your eyes on his. “there you go. get yourself tired, sweet girl. i got you, you know i got you.” 

Personal lives are nonexistent for the poor souls who train at USSTRATCOM; in fact, they’re outright forbidden. But the human will is a stubborn thing, and experiencing constant, extreme conditions makes many recruits willing to do extreme things to fulfill any personal desire at all. Whether it be sneaking a book to their bunk or rubbing one out in the showers, there’s only one rule: don't get caught.

But none are more stubborn than you and Leon Kennedy. It's why you’d each survived the experiences that landed you in military custody in the first place. You’re too stubborn to fail, too hard-headed to die. At least that’s what Krauser always says; that that’s how you both so quickly rose to be his two most-promising recruits

But being on Major Krauser's pedestal came with crippling pressure to keep ahold of his fickle approval. Every trainee lives under his constant scrutiny, and no slip-up is too small to go unnoticed. And his attention, good or bad, isn't something anyone wants to have. 

Krauser stated his goal explicitly on the very first day of training— "I will break you" —and he makes good on that promise every single day. Those who he sees as weak are given extra drills and rounds in the fighting ring until they puke from overexertion, and those he believes in are pushed past their limits, resulting in the exact same end.

So to say that you’re stressed would be a laughable understatement, and you blow off steam in equal measure when you can. And since you’re constantly reduced to nothing but a primal instinct to survive, your vice of choice is somewhat primal as well.

You’re a classic barracks bunny. Sue you for having needs, but there are worse things to be. Besides, all female recruits are on a steady diet of birth control, so the number of risks are relatively few.

Leon, however, didn’t exactly seem to approve. He never brought it up, but you once locked eyes with him as you snuck out of the men’s barracks, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what you’d been doing there at such a late hour. He’d never make you feel bad about it, and you hardly had time to dwell on it in the scarce minutes of the day not spent training or sleeping, but you were sure you caught a sour look of disapproval in his eyes. 

You and Leon were once as close to friends as anyone could be in a hellscape like USSTRATCOM, so if you’re being honest, yeah, you’re a bit embarrassed that he’d caught you like that, and you haven’t been able to fight off the pangs of guilt you feel in his presence now. So although the topic has gone untouched, it's been a little tense between you ever since; just enough to notice but not enough to address. 

Besides, the kind of tension is the only thing that’s new between you and Leon. Tension sprouted within the very first days of group training and had grown ever since, and other people noticed, too. They all chalked it up to being competitive rivals, but it was anything but that. 

You have the fattest, most hopeless crush on him ever. Hell, you’re one bad day or BOW incident away from admitting that you’re in love.

That’s what makes you feel so guilty about the subtle glint of disappointment you keep finding in Leon's gaze now. Wondering what he thinks about you makes you beyond anxious, and you doubt you'll ever have the time or courage to find out.

There’s a reason you sneak off into nearly everyone's barracks but his, after all: you like him far too much to seek him out for a quick and dirty indulgence. Leon means far more to you than a notch on your belt, and you wouldn’t be able to stand it if you put yourself in a position where he categorized you as a hookup and nothing more.

But what cuts the most? Assuming he feels disappointed in you might be wishful thinking. He most likely thinks you’re a whore, that you’re reckless and irresponsible, probably shares all the typical judgments you know get whispered behind your back. 

Honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if he hates you with how he’s been acting cold. 

So despite how much you want him and how often you imagine his face while someone else is balls-deep inside, you’ll never invite yourself into his room, much less admit your feelings for him. Plus, it’s kind of comforting to pretend sleeping around will help you get over your crush.

But your vice of choice has more consequences than those of emotional repression. You have to sacrifice a non-insignificant amount of your already scarce sleep hours to sneak around— and today, the exhaustion has finally caught up to you.

Your aim isn't as sharp, you don't anticipate the most obvious counterattacks, and you’re all-around slower on your feet. Careless mistakes that are totally unlike you, big and small. And no matter how hard you try to muster your strength and focus, dammit, you just can’t stop fucking up.

And none of it got past Major Krauser. That results in him keeping you late for after-hours training, but he isn't one to make a recruit suffer alone. Knowing you’ve dragged someone else into it is a part of the punishment in itself. 

So naturally, being the top two recruits, he chose Leon to join you. Just your fucking luck. 

That's how you find yourself here in the indoor ring somewhere after 23:00 hours, the air pushed from your lungs as you crash back-first onto the floor with a knife against your throat for the umpteenth time in a row. 

Krauser is seriously a sick bastard for making you spar with sharpened weapons, by the way, but that isn't breaking news. Just another "privilege" that comes with being his top recruits.

Leon never goes easy on you, either, but this feels different. Like he really does hate you and is taking his frustrations out with each painful blow to your body. The idea doesn't help you focus, and it isn't long before another miscalculation sends you back against the ground, staring at your tired eyes in the reflection of a knife that would've gouged them out in anyone else's hands. 

"You're tired. It’s pathetic. You think the enemy will care that you didn’t get your beauty sleep?”

“No, sir,” you reply through a wheeze as you try to recover your breathing. 

“Again.”

Despite your screaming muscles and the tiredness clouding your head, you stand up at once. You make yourself small as you shift your weight between your feet, poised to move wherever you’ll need to. As your combat knife shines in the gymnasium lights where you hold it in front of you, raised within your fist, you look Leon dead in the eyes and gear up for yet another fight. 

“Go!”

Leon beats you to the opening move. You dodge to the side. For some reason you put your fucking hand out to block him, and it does nothing to stop his knee from reeling straight into your gut. 

You cough and sputter but remain on your feet, stepping back to create a touch of distance to calculate your next move. But you’re more tired than ever now, and your body can’t keep up with your brain. 

As riled up as Leon is, the late hours are getting to him, too.

In a second, he came at you again with a strong left hook. Too stong for an opening blow, especially with a fist instead of his weapon. At last, you see an opening for attack. 

You use his momentum against him, pulling him through by the wrist. He twists sideways to stay upright, and needing to adjust your own balance, you send a sharp kick onto his back. Your eyes widen with adrenaline as it lands just as harshly as you intended; the upper hand finally seems within your reach. 

Or not. He hooks an arm around the back of your knee while your other leg is still mid-kick, and with nothing more than a shove to your chest, you’re on the ground again, pinned in the exact same position as before. 

“Absolutely disgraceful,” Krauser barks. “You’re distracted, rookie.”

You blink once at Leon who’s looking down at you with a similarly confused expression. Although you both fit the title, ‘rookie’ has long since been exclusively reserved for Leon. But you were the one who was called here tonight to be punished; why was Krauser drilling him?

Your knit brows turn to widened eyes as Leon attempts to rise but is stopped by a boot on his back. 

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, pretty boy?”

It’s clearly a trap question, and the pet name is laced with anything but admiration. Leon purses his lips and opens them as he attempts to think of an acceptable answer, but he’s obviously at a loss. You wonder what sadistic plan Krauser has in store as he awaits Leon’s response, and you grow somewhat fearful for the younger man.

Though he speaks with a sure tone, Leon only manages a single word, like he thinks he can get around it by gathering more information first.

“Sir?”

Krauser adding weight to his stance on Leon’s back is all it takes to know it didn’t work.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No, sir,” you and Leon say in unison. 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Krauser spat in your direction. 

“Then tell me,” Krauser continued, his attention returning solely to Leon, “why you’re face-to-face with what’s distracting you, and you can’t tell me what it is. Do you think I haven’t noticed?” 

You get halfway through the thought of “noticed what?” before Krauser pushes Leon down further, so close that the wispy ends of his bangs brush against your cheekbones. You gulp against the knife that still hovers over your neck, but the sharpened edge doesn’t make you feel nearly as nervous as whatever the fuck is happening right now.

You’re used to being in close proximity with Leon in training, but this is entirely different. It’s intimate. Uncomfortably so. It makes your head spin too fast to think about what Krauser just implied.

Instead, your attention is preoccupied with avoiding Leon’s eyes like you’ve been doing for weeks now, but with him this close-range, he’s everywhere, so close that your eyes threaten to cross. You can see every pore on his nose, the moles that constellate his neck, the lines in his forehead where he’ll have wrinkles in ten or so years. 

God, he even looks good this up close and personal. Every detail makes your heart skip and your ears get hot, even in a nerve-racking situation like this. Even when you look away from his stupidly beautiful face, all you can see are his biceps straining as he holds himself over you, flexing against his shirt as he holds himself up against Krauser’s unyielding boot. 

Your adolescent anguish is cut short by Krauser’s attention returning to you.

“That’s why you’re so tired today, isn’t it? From being in this position?”

Oh. Oh no.

A cold wave shoots through you as you realize what all of this is really about. Of course word got around about your late-night escapades; you just didn’t think it’d find its way to Krauser unless he caught you in the act. You now know what a fool you were for ever thinking that.

Krauser and Leon are by far the last people you're ready to address it with, and Krauser just had to bring it up while he keeps you pinned inches beneath the latter. 

It has to be some kind of divine punishment. This is the absolute worst-case scenario. Far worse than you ever could've imagined. The only place to hide is behind the refuge of your eyelids, so you squeeze them tightly shut.

Krauser keeps on twisting the metaphorical knife with a devious laugh that rumbles in his chest.

“You’re awful quiet, rookie. Not gonna defend your lady’s honor? Or, don’t tell me… are you the only one she hasn’t fucked?” 

Your heartbeat turns into a war drum that threatens to beat through your ribs. You're sure Leon can feel it thrum in the air between you. You pray to god in all his mercy to open the ground and swallow you whole, but no such thing will happen.

Leon, however, is praying to a wrathful god to smite Krauser where he stands. He can’t handle it. The humiliation, the intentional offensiveness. The stunning accuracy. Being confronted with it in such a demeaning way. He could maybe take it on the chin if it'd only been about himself, but Leon has long since become protective of you, and he carries your degradation as if it's his own. It's the perfect setup to make him seethe, and Krauser pushes him further with every syllable.

“I asked you a question. Have you fucked her or not?”

Leon’s chest becomes thick with heat as his rage dials up to a fever pitch, nostrils flaring and knuckles whitening around the combat knife. It's hardly at your neck anymore, but you're keenly aware of it.

You're beyond uneasy, but you can’t do anything. You can’t move except to squirm, you don’t have a white flag to raise, and you don’t dare speak out of turn. Anything you say right now won’t be helpful anyway; you’re ultimately the reason you three are here, and any attempt to deescalate would absolutely be thrown right back in your face.

You scream internally to Leon as you see his anger dial up to ten, hoping he’s close enough that if your thoughts are simply loud enough they’ll be able to reach him.

Don’t put yourself on the line for me, you think over and over. But telepathy doesn’t happen to be a weapon in your arsenal, and Leon seldom possesses the ability to bite his tongue. So however reckless it might be, he tries to change the subject by steering it towards an argument.

“Go fuck yourself, sir.”

You wince as you prepare for Krauser to skin him alive, but to your surprise, he doesn’t take the bait. Leon avoiding the question is answer enough, so Krauser coolly clicks his tongue, and his level-headedness makes the situation all the more terrifying.

“Just as I thought. Is that why you threw all those haymakers? Want to keep pinning her down just to get a taste? You know damn well that won’t work on the field.”

It’s insane, the way Krauser can tie anything back to training, but his words hit right where he aimed them, and it’s Leon’s turn to be unable to face you as he tries to keep his cool. Tough work, since Krauser’s on a roll.

“She’s obviously easy; why haven’t you just asked her, Kennedy?”

Leon’s jaw sets tighter. 

“Afraid that she’d reject you?” 

Krauser hits a bullseye. It’s all too clear now that humiliation is Krauser’s goal, and neither of you can leave without it being shoved down your throats. Watching Leon reel between emotions is giving you secondhand whiplash, but it’s only a few seconds before he grits his teeth and lets go of his dignity. 

“Because I—” he swallows hard, “I like her, sir.”

The confession hits you like a battering ram, and for a moment, the room is so quiet your ears ring. 

He doesn’t hate you. He likes you. A part of you could cry you were so happy, but with the situation at hand, how could you possibly be content? It brings on a wave of emotions that surfaces all the ones you’d been shoving down for months.

Feelings like that are impossible to foster in a hellhole like this. Sleeping around is one thing, but romance? What could even come of it being mutual? For those reasons and many more, you’d accepted it being hopeless a long time ago. And now that Krauser knew— and had apparently set this all up because he’d known for a while— you were now sure that he’d brought you here just to murder your dreams in cold blood. 

So there you and Leon lay on top of each other, no warmth or sweetness about it, faced with each other as symbols of your failures to cope. All you can do is wait for Krauser to rip your hearts out and incinerate them so they’ll never distract you again.

“What a goddamn sweetheart,” Krauser tuts, shaking his head. “You’re too soft. And you’re letting it get in the way instead of taking the clear fucking solution.”

The air goes still as you brace for whatever twisted “solution” he might have in mind, mentally preparing to run drills until sunrise or engage in some sick psychological simulation where you’d come to hate each other. Either would be perfectly up Krauser’s alley.

You were once again a fool to think you could predict him. You never would have expected what happened next. 

He crushes his boot into Leon's lower back until his navel is fixed solidly against your center. Hissing at the sudden contact, Leon swiftly pushes away as much as he can, but it isn’t much; although you aren’t quite face-to-face anymore, the Major’s full bodyweight keeps Leon’s lower half trapped flush against you. 

Startled astonishment washes over your face as you realize what exactly it is you feel pressed against you: at some point during tonight’s training, Leon got hard. You hadn’t noticed, but Krauser apparently did. 

Oh my god you feel like an idiot. You were too distracted by your fucking feelings to notice that he was hard. What the actual fuck.

You’re trying not to panic. You’re exactly where you want to be, but it’s in the least conceivable scenario possible. You scan Leon’s face wildly to find some sort of confidence in him that you can hold onto, a muscle memory of the looks you’ve often exchanged to get through training, but he’s just as frantic as you are as he tries to stay still, to not move an inch against you. 

Leon is very keenly aware of the fact that you didn’t ask for this, haven’t said that it’s okay, and the shame he feels at his exposed arousal sits like a death grip around his neck. He has no reason to think you were even interested in him; you hadn’t said anything since whatever the fuck this is began— and if you didn’t want it, what could you even do about it? It felt like a noose around his neck, and Krauser kept dragging him by it, tightening the rope with each syllable he spoke. 

“Close encounters really do it for you, huh? You like holding a pretty girl down, feeling her struggle against your cock? Maybe you’re not such a boy scout; you’re more like me than you think.”

Any thoughts you had about his statement went in one ear and out the other as Krauser moves his heel to rut Leon back and forth against you, grinding his cock smoothly and firmly against your clothed cunt. You nearly choke at the electric current it sends rushing through your core.

Even though Leon isn’t moving on his own accord, even if the inner war he’s waging against himself is written all over his face, he’s pressed so staunchly against you that you feel every twitch of his cock as it grows harder. 

It shouldn’t send a rush of thrill through you, but it does.

You bite your lip as another ebb of downward pressure increases the friction and makes the feeling too bright to ignore. Just as Leon can’t help his body reacting to yours, you’re resistless to the way you unconsciously arch into him. 

“Don’t be so shy. Look at her, she likes it.”

That makes Leon finally look at you head-on, and your face floods with a blush so hot it burns, because it’s undeniably true. You did like it. It felt good. A mental hell alongside physical heaven, but heaven nonetheless.

His hips grind into your core again—shaky, but this time of his own volition— before he raggedly whispers, "Do you…? Do you want me?”

You struggle to keep the intensity of his gaze, but you know what he’s really asking for: the truth. You try to show as much surety as you can as you nod your head against the padded ground, sharing it like a lifeline.

“Y-yeah. Yes.”

Krauser interjects with an eye roll and his trademark condescension. “You’re still too goddamn soft. You still have a knife in your hand, for god’s sake, that’s all the permission you need.”

Twisted fucking bastard, Leon thinks, his grip tightening around the hilt of the blade where he holds it beside your head. He stares straight into your eyes with an intensity that says he isn’t readying it for you. Your gut churns all the same. 

Luckily for you both, the major moves on from it. His boot leaves Leon’s back and he shudders in relief, exhaling deeply as he’s able to part his body from yours. 

It’s a short-lived reprieve as a broad shadow falls from overhead. Krauser looms from above with menacing casualness, thumbs hooked in his belt loops as he cocks his head in amusement.

"Go on, then. Kiss her."

You freeze in place and watch Leon as you remain stuck under him, breathlessly waiting to see if he takes the opportunity, heart pounding as you wonder if he should. 

Leon hardly pauses. An order is an order, and he’s getting used to that, as unconventional as they may be. He huffs, leans in halfway, and then retracts another inch; knits his brows together and shakes his head, either deciding against it or shaking off his last bits of resistance. You couldn’t tell which, at least not until he suddenly closes the distance.

It's the gentlest kiss you've ever received. His plush and impassioned lips skim lightly over yours as he still struggles to take what he so clearly wants. And god, you want him too, and you lift your chin in an attempt to press your mouths closer together, but it’s no use; he retreats just enough to leave you attached by the cupid's bow and a brushing of noses.

Krauser is less than impressed by the soft display. Gripping Leon by the crown of his hair, he admonishes, "I said kiss her, rookie," and all but crushes his face into yours.

You inhale sharply as Leon's lips fuse together intensely with your own. He twitches in surprise, grinding into you again inadvertently. The friction evokes a needy rasp from him, lips parting from the sound just enough for your tongues to meet— fleetingly at first, then reckless and deep as passion wins out against restraint. 

Leon grinds again, this time with intention as you start to melt into each other, having nowhere to go but further into each other’s bodies. Krauser's hand leaves Leon's scalp as he becomes pleased, finally, with his energy. He circles like a shark as he keeps a watchful eye.

Leon becomes more intense as he gains full room to move on his own, like the levee broke for his desire to surge violently and freely, a desire that’d been held back for months of anguish. 

The knife he’d held became forgotten on the ground as his hands grasped for you without instruction, shakily at first, then fervently all around you. His calloused fingertips run across your jawline and down your neck before roaming to your breast, but he doesn't squeeze, not until you arch to push into him yourself. 

It instantly gives him permission to squeeze your flesh firmly, and every movement suddenly becomes urgent. Your tongues clash sloppily, his stiff bulge ruts back and forth against your core, and you can’t help but clamor for him in turn— your thighs hook tight around his waist to pull him further in, to help you relieve the growing pressure between your legs as your head becomes thick with need. 

You nearly forgot Krauser was there at all until he speaks again with a gruff and low tone you've never heard from him before.

"Good. Keep going.”

You can't deny that someone else being in the room turns your brain somewhat mushy. In fact, it turns you on. You're adventurous, sure, but that's a shocking revelation even for you.

More shocking than that, the third party is your major, and he's telling Leon what to do as if he's giving normal orders. Those are ideas you'd laugh yourself sick at half an hour ago, but now here you are, and you feel your underwear slicken with each directive word and the ache to be permitted more.

But unbeknownst to you, that's the first of many things Krauser will awaken in you tonight. Right now, you don't even know how far he plans to take this. But you've spent months being primed to do whatever insane things he demands, and what you do know is that you'd do just about anything to earn more of the young man on top of you. So ever the good soldier, you let your commander lead you wherever he sees fit, and Leon does just the same.

“Take her top off.”

The cool gymnasium air contrasts with Leon's warm hand as it drags your shirt up your torso, leaving goosebumps in its wake as you shuffle to allow him to lift it over your head, lips parting only as long as they need to. Your top becomes discarded somewhere on the floor, forgotten before it lands. 

You tremble under Leon's touch as he roams the soft curves of your stomach, gliding upward until he traces the top hem of your sports bra. He hooks his fingertips under the hem and pauses with trepidation, resting his forehead against yours as he bucks into you. By the look on his face, his trousers are becoming a painful confinement.

Leon waits for permission or to have the rug pulled from under him and be told this is all a sick joke, until Krauser gives the former. Just not before making him sweat first.

“You wanna fuck her, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Leon shudders while looking down at you, relishing the slightest touch he currently has on your body.

“That’s ‘yes, sir.’ How many times have you jerked off thinking about it?”

Leon gulps before answering, feeling every ounce as humiliated as Krauser intended him to. 

“T-too many to count, sir.”

“Then take it off.”

It crosses your mind that no one’s asked if you’re fine with being stripped in front of an audience of two, but you’re not exactly apt to complain about Leon getting you naked.

Leon fumbles briefly with the tight elastic band before it’s whisked over your head and added to the growing collection of forgotten garments on the floor mat. You turn your head to the side, shying away as Leon takes in a full view of your nipples as they pebble in the cool air. But when you look to the side, your gaze lands on Krauser. 

“Mistake” is your first thought. “Was it?” is the immediate second. All you know is that he’s leaned coolly against the edge of the arena rubbing his thick bulge through his pants as he watches intently. The sight makes you feel like you’ve caught on fire, and you quickly look away.

You have no more time to dwell on it as Leon pinches your nipple between his index finger and his thumb, rolling it between them with a reverent sigh at your reaction, then pulling it up and letting it drop. He repeats it on the other side, and your thighs clench around his hips as the stimulation goes straight to your core. 

You can barely stand the teasing, and your hands find their way underneath Leon’s shirt. The feeling of his taut abs does nothing to quell you, though. It only drives home that the current sensations you’re being afforded aren't anywhere near enough. But right as you feel like you’re going mad, it all comes to a stop.

“Sit up, rookie.”

You whine as Leon does as he’s told, your hands leaving the heat of his stomach as he sits back on his haunches, , still with the exception of the labored rise and fall of his chest, his hands clasped behind his back, and your spit still wet on his lower lip. You’re left deprived of all touch, breathless and exposed, brows twisted up with neediness as you wait.

Krauser’s heavy and measured footsteps towards you are menacing. You don’t dare to look until he comes into view on his own, and from the steep angle up that you have, the large tent in his pants is imposing. It nearly obstructs his face as he stands directly over you. 

“Pretty…” He hums as he appraises the skin that’s been exposed on you so far, and it’s perhaps the first kind thing he’s ever said to you. It sounds foreign in his voice, but then he goes right back to his usual demands. “Strip down, all of it.”

You hesitate for a brief moment before sitting up and unlacing your boots with shaky hands, all too aware of the eyes on you as you discard them and lay back down to fumble with your belt and zipper. It feels all the more exposing to be undressing yourself as opposed to it being done for you somehow, and you try to push away the feeling of awkwardness as you raise your hips and push your bottoms down in one go. You keep your knees together as much as you can as you foot them off of your ankles and kick them away beside you, and rest back down, now totally bare.

The cold air is nothing against the heat of their gazes as you lie there totally bare, awaiting the first touch. It comes from the rubber of Krauser’s boot as he parts your legs with it.

If Leon weren’t already on his knees, he would’ve fallen to them right then and there. He practically salivates as your pussy is revealed before him, and every nervous twitch of yours makes your wetness glisten in the fluorescent lights. His hands flex where they’re clasped behind him, and his throat tightens as his cock becomes painfully hard within his pants. Still fully clothed, he feels hot, far too hot, as the first traces of sweat begin to form on his skin from the sheer effort it takes not to dive into you.

Krauser hums at the sight of you and takes the toe of his boot to the soft crease where thigh meets ass, and lets the rubber press onto your flesh to pull your cunt open to them. You whine as you feel your slick pool out as your opening flutters for touch. 

“Look at that,” Krauser muses. “No wonder everyone wants a taste. A pussy like that is just begging to be ruined. Isn’t it, Kennedy?”

What is Leon supposed to do here? Say he doesn’t want to ruin you for anyone else? It’d be a bold-faced lie, and he’d agree with just about anything Krauser says right now if it lets him get what’s being dangled right in front of him.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Your cock even big enough to ruin her? Or is that why you haven’t gotten with her?” 

For perhaps the first time in Leon’s life, he suddenly feels unsure. He’s never been insecure about his size before, never had a reason to be. He knows he’s well-endowed. But the major always has impossibly high standards. What if this is no different? What will happen if he doesn’t meet them now?

Leon gulps before answering with a shaky breath, although he tries to sound more sure. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s see it then.”

Leon nearly gets cold feet, but seeing you spread before him is enough to throw his modesty to the wind. His fingers are clumsy in their quickness as he undoes his pants just enough to get his cock free, and he hisses at the contact of his fingers pulling it out by the base. He can’t stop himself from pumping it once between his fingers, but it takes nothing more than a disapproving glance from Krauser for him to put his hands back at his sides.

His fists become white-knuckled as his hardness hangs obstinately in the air. It’s framed by his still-on t-shirt falling over his navel, the waistband of his briefs sitting snugly under his balls, and his cock springing free between his parted zipper; not much skin is showing, really, but it’s all the more lewd a sight for it.

“Oh, shit,” is all you manage to breathe out.

Short, dark blond hairs silhouette the base, and his tip is an angry pink as it begins to shine with the emergence of a clear bead of precum. It hangs heavily in the air, jolting up once as he bites his lip in arousal, and you catch sight of the coursing vein that runs up the side. He’s long and so thick in girth, and your toes curl at the thought of him trying to fit it all inside of you.

God, what a fool you’ve been for jumping between barracks for sex that was often unsatisfactory and only a means to an end. All this time, you could’ve had Leon instead.

It’s an undeniably captivating sight, even for Krauser, who inhales through his teeth as he too takes it in with his eyes. But still, he isn’t one to give his praise so easily.

“Not bad. Let’s hope you know how to use it.”

You whine in surprise as Krauser suddenly fixes the toe of his boot into you and slowly circles around your clit, and Leon grimaces as he tastes copper from how hard he bites down on his lip.

“Because if you don’t,” Krauser taunts, “I’ll have to take over.”

Your pulse soars at the prospect, fear and arousal intertangling into one. Whether or not that’d happen lies entirely with Leon, but it could very well be a trap; the same as being told that training could end early if you do well enough, but no one can ever do well enough for Krauser. He gets too much sick pleasure in dangling hope over your head, fully knowing you’ll never reach it and enjoying watching you struggle to anyway, and this situation is no different.

A moan leaves your parted lips as Krauser presses his boot more firmly into your clit and rubs it left to right. He chuckles thinly at your response.

“She really is easy, soaking just from my boot. Fucking filthy.” He glides it up and down to literally rub it in, making your legs twitch as he presses into your clit, then looks at you and nods towards Leon. “You like what you see?”

“Mmhm,” you nod needily through pursed lips as you tremble under the crude ministrations against your pussy your eyes still fixed on Leon’s increasingly leaking cock.

He lands a soft kick to your clit, nowhere near enough to hurt, but enough to feel the threat and a sharp jolt of pleasure up your spine. 

“Yes, sir,” you correct yourself breathlessly.

He spreads your slick a little more, purely playing with it now as he addresses Leon again.

“Don’t let it go to your head. How many cocks have been in here just since training started…? Bet this whore could cum just from my goddamn boot.” 

Krauser finally steps back, leaving you shaking and untouched yet again, your lips pressed into a thin line as you pray the question remains rhetorical. It does, at least for you.

“But you don’t mind, do you, Kennedy? You like her enough that you’re alright with sloppy seconds? Thirds? Twentieths maybe..?”

Leon's chest flares. Your body count has never once factored into his envy. He just wants you— evidently, by any means necessary. And you being degraded like that? It stokes his anger all over again, and he once again fails to bite his tongue, the contempt clear in his tone as he speaks through a snarl. 

“She’s the whore? You’re the one treating your recruits like a harem, sir.”

Krauser seizes Leon by the bangs, making the younger man yelp as he’s yanked forward by the hair until he’s on all fours in front of you, his face inches away from your cunt. Leon hisses as thick fingers pull viciously at his roots and shake his head in front of your center like a cruel owner admonishing a dog.

“Shut your goddamn mouth— put it to good use before I fuck her and make you watch.”

With no precursor at all, Leon is shoved face-first between your legs. You gasp in shock at the suddenness; with no prior warning for him to begin with any sort of finesse, he lands against you with panting, parted lips, his nose is squished down from the position, pressed just beside your clit.

It takes Leon a second to collect himself, though he does so as quickly as possible once he wraps his mind around his position, nose deep in the part of you he’s been starving for the most. 

Krauser continues to hold him there harshly even as he begins to lap frantically. 

“Where’s all that snark now, huh?”

Leon doesn’t answer— Krauser doesn’t pull him back for him to be able to— instead he moans hard at the taste of your cunt.

Your folds wetten with Leon’s spit as his face collects your arousal, and you whine continuously as he sloppily makes out with your cunt. Being constantly pushed into you makes each stroke of his tongue press firmly wherever it lands around and within the whole of your cunt. It drags up and down, drawing quick and sloppy circles around the expanse of your vulva and the soft skin between your lower lips, flicking over your clit at the top and darting fully into your hole at the bottom.

It’s so vulgar and divine, but it’s too intense too suddenly, and your thighs clamp down around Leon’s head. Krauser just presses him in even further and Leon sucks your clit in compliance, flicking his tongue against the bud inside the vacuum of his mouth, and you yelp and tense your legs harder around his face. But Krauser still has one hand free, and he uses it to hold you open by the knee nearest to him, and despite your whining efforts, his grip is far too strong to budge free of.

You groan in relief as Leon moves on from his onslaught of your clit and dig your nails into the padded floor as he assaults the whole of your core instead, all while Krauser keeps your legs spread wide for him.

The wet sounds of his tongue along with frantic moans from you both fill the room as you reel towards your seventh heaven, and Krauser can tell— of course he can. It’d be obvious to anyone that you’re on the brink from the way you increasingly arch against the floor. But the absolute sight of you isn’t the only thing that makes it obvious; you’re finding it increasingly difficult to muzzle yourself and you mumble pathetically between labored breaths.

“I– ah, ahhh, Leon fuck— oh-hh…”

And it’s borderline petulant the way you whine when Leon’s mouth leaves you all at once. Your head shoots up in shock at the loss, looking to see what caused your release to be denied, but nothing had happened except for Krauser’s cruel whim.

You’re equally shocked to see the look on Leon’s face. Still on all fours and held back by his hair, his mouth is swollen, pink, and shining with slick from the bridge of his nose to the cleft of his chin. His moans are light as if he’s breaking fever and his eyes are half-lidded like he’s drunk. His cock hangs neglected between his legs with a thick string of glossy precum connected from the head to where it’s dripped down to the floor. But the most shocking of all is the faint smile that pulls at the corners of his puffy mouth as Krauser pulls his hair a little tighter.

‘How’s she taste, huh?”

“Incredible, sir.”

“Yeah? You taste any cock still in there?”

Leon’s nostrils flare and his mouth opens into a snarl, but before he can spit whatever insult he has in mind, Krauser yanks his head back painfully and growls.

“Better watch that mouth, kid, or you’ll be eating my cum out of her next.”

Krauser sends him back on his knees with a shove to the head and then rises to stand again, jostling his hard-on thickly through his pants as yet another threat. “Or maybe I’ll shut you up another way, eh?”

The silent grimace on Leon’s face is much to Krauser’s amusement as he berates him with a smile, still stroking his bulge.

“That’s what I thought. Fucking ungrateful. I let you eat her out and you’re acting like a damn brat. You think I should let you fuck her? Huh?”

Swallowing his pride, Leon answers. “Please, sir.”

“That’s what I thought. Beg.”

That’s a demand Leon is a touch too stubborn to easily do. He clenches his eyes and grinds his teeth, still reeling from the lack of touch, and twitches restlessly as the words struggle to come.

But Krauser is impatient. He expresses it through a dull backhand to Leon’s cheek.

“That’s an order, Kennedy.”

Although the slap is ultimately harmless (and could even be considered kind compared to the many blows you’ve both received from the major throughout training), a sense of fear shoots through you. You suddenly realize just how badly this could end if it goes south. You’re still keenly aware that this began by sparring with real knives, a testament to how insane your instructor truly is.

But your wires are well and truly crossed, and although you tremble on the floor, it all feels thrilling just the same. You’re just as sick as Krauser, maybe, the way you ache for Leon to submit so he can give you what you need. Luckily for your throbbing heat and unluckily for Leon’s dignity, he complies.

“Please,” he begins through his teeth, “let me fuck her, sir.”

“You can do better than that. You’ve wanted this for how long…? Let her hear it.”

Your breath hitches at the thought that Krauser has seen what you couldn’t all this time. It’s reinforced by the way Leon hangs his head and his brows change from being knit with anger to upturning in a pained plea as he speaks straight into you.

“Please let me fuck her, sir. Wanted to for so damn long, I—” His cock twitches in the air as if to attest to it being true. “Wanna show her why she doesn’t need to sleep around, that I’d treat her better than all of them, that I am better. Tasted so good, she’s so— I just— fuck, I’d do just about anything, major, please.”

Leon looks up to search for a sign it’s good enough while you do a double take at such lewd words coming from his lips.

In a change of tone, Krauser speaks low and deliberately to the young man.

“You’re going to do exactly as I say. And I mean exactly. If not, I'll take over. You won't get to cum and I’ll make sure she never sneaks off into your bed. Understood?”

Leon nods rapidly and whispers the affirmative under his breath. Krauser nods once and turns around as he gives his first command.

“Take your shirt off and pull your pants down enough to do the job.”

As Krauser strides away, you and Leon shoot a look at each other behind his back. It’s perhaps your first unobserved moment of eye contact the entire day, you realize, and the brief moment seems to expand into something big and desperate and warm, like something that’s just yours. Then Krauser’s heavy steps land in the room and urge Leon’s hands to move.

Your eyes float down over his cut figure as his clothing finally joins yours on the floor. You’ve seen him shirtless countless times, sure, but never with the opportunity to stare, and certainly never with his pants around his thighs.

Your knees subconsciously part ever so slightly at the whole of him; his ashen hair unkempt and askew from Krauser’s disrespect to it, the valleys and peaks of each muscle on his whole torso and arms, and the kind of cock you thought only exists in porn you have to pay for—all of it flushed pink with pent-up desire for you and you alone.

The abrasive whir of a zipper steals your attention. Your eyes flick to the side and you see the major lean against the wall at the edge of the combat ring, pulling his own cock free as he settles in to watch. You feel like you see something you shouldn’t have for some reason, even though you hardly see his dick at all— and you yourself are naked and dripping on the floor, how can you still be embarrassed? Still, you immediately look away with your heart hammering in your chest.

“Kneel between her legs. Don’t touch yourself.”

You part your legs to make room and the flush spreads up from Leon’s chest to his cheeks as he shuffles forward on his knees. He winces as the head of his cock grazes hot against your folds, but he doesn’t dare to do anything about it.

“Slap it with your cock.”

Leon shudders as he holds the base and brings his head down onto your plump clit twice, pauses briefly, and then does it again and again at Krauser’s encouragement. Wet plap plap’s fill the room along with the sound of you sputtering at the teasing.

You fight the urge to curl your hips to get him to push it in; you know he won’t and can’t until he’s given the go-ahead. But it’s torture for you both as Krauser gives him no further instruction for minutes. Only when you both strain and cry out like you’ll break does he give his next demand.

“Stop.”

Not the one you want. Leon’s hands claw into his thighs to keep them fixed away from himself, and you feel hot all over as the head of his tip rests heavily on top of your clit.

Tense and restrained, you push your luck and start grinding against it, careful not to move to much to avoid detection. But if nothing else, Leon’s whine gives it away. Krauser doesn’t seem to mind.

“What a cock-whore,” he says through a devilish smile as he strokes himself leisurely. “She’s just dying for it. You still sure you can satisfy her?”

Leon can only moan and nod in response, and for once, the lack of formalities is accepted.

“Put it in. Stop when you bottom out. Let’s see how much she can take.”

As sadistic and unorthodox as Krauser’s methods are, the results of them are undeniable in the way Leon follows his orders at once.

He rests a hand against your thigh, his thumb rubbing up and down on the soft skin soothingly, as his other guides his shaft towards your entrance. You hold your breath as it notches there, and he wastes no time before he steadily sinks in with a hiss.

“Good god, you’re tight,” Leon chokes out as the head slips past your entrance.

You nearly wheeze as it does, your nerves on fire as they’re delivered the feeling they’ve endured all the torturous teasing for. The long shaft of his cock is hot against your walls and heavy as each new inch settles in, his girth burning the tight tissues of your entrance as they try to accommodate it. Despite the struggle, you keen into him, all to eager to take more, totally forgetting that when he gets to the hilt, he’ll stop.

Three long, tempered drags of his cock and he’s finally flush inside of you. His eyes roll back as he stills there, breathing harder than ever as he fights against thrusting instinctually. Your legs twitch as you sit with the feeling of his fat tip flush against your cervix, your walls hardly accommodating the whole of his dick, at least not yet, and Leon squeezes your parted knees with a frayed and empathetic look.

“Oh, oh f-fuck…”

Leon wants—needs— more just as much as you, if not more than, but he tries to focus on enjoying what he's presently afforded, and tries not to so much as think about how close he feels to cumming entirely too early.

“Enough sniveling— fuck her hard.”

Leon feels a pang of regret. He'd thought of this moment so many times before, ran through it like a waking dream on lonely nights spent lying awake in his cot. He’d always imagined starting slow, making you cum on his tongue and fingers before he entered you gently to hear your pretty breathless moans; to cradle you in his arms as he rocks into your perfect cunt, to hold you tight and kiss you all over—

—But that never happened, and while he dreamed of making love to you, you were busy getting railed in another recruit's room. Sometimes within earshot.

It’s an easy command to follow; he'll take what he can get.

Leon withdraws almost entirely before snapping in to the hilt. You cry out as he crashes powerfully against your cervix and fills every sweet spot all at once, acute pain sitting right alongside the overwhelming pleasure as your cunt stretches to its limits around him.

“Oh f-fuck, Leon—"

You cry out as he does it again with even more force this time, crashing into you so brutally that you slide back on the mat, but he just grips your hips to pull you back to him to continue.

With each new punishing thrust his navel smacks loudly against your center, and you desperately grasp at his wrists to hold on as you take it, moaning feverishly until your body adjusts to accommodate the brute impacts he delivers. When you do, it leaves only a fierce and overwhelming pleasure, and you arch off the mat like an animal in heat, writhing into and away from the intensity simultaneously.

He develops a rapid-fire rhythm he grunts in time to. It takes so much effort to take that you quickly become covered in a thin sheen of sweat that has you sliding back on the mat all over again.

“Grab her wrists and pin her down.”

Leon does it instantly, nailing you in place with an iron grip, your wrists fixed on either side of your head. It brings a new angle that has his cock beating mercilessly against your inner sweet spot, and with your ability to move being limited, you moan shamelessly as you take the bombardment.

He can’t keep himself quiet either, though he tries— he babbles through wet lips and grinding teeth as his eyes roll back in his head.

“Oh fuck, baby. Your pussy’s so perfect, god…”

Every time you twist in pleasure he hits a new spot that makes you see stars, and when you push against his hands, the fact that he so easily cages you in makes it all the better. But sweeter than anything, him pinning you down makes you face-to-face with him again.

The faces he makes are plucked straight from euro porn, full of lust as his expression contorts with every wanton moan. His full lips are a plump and rosy pink, occasionally being wetted by his tongue flicking over them mindlessly as he works; his blown pupils making his eyes a darker, oceanic shade of blue that you ache to drown in.

You tip your chin up to try and kiss him. God, how you want to kiss him again. And you're so close together, if you could just—

He looks at your lips and slowly closes the difference, and then—

Krauser barks your name, and you're yanked right out of your immersion.

“Look at me.”

You hesitantly turn your head away from Leon and towards your major. Your throat feels thick as you do, and your mouth goes dry as you see what, in the back of your mind, you knew Krauser has been doing the whole time.

At some point he's taken his shirt off and he stands bare-chested some five feet away, leaning against the edge of the fighting ring with a wide stance, his posture emphasizing the sheer broadness of his build. He's pulled undone his pants enough to pull himself out and nothing more, and now you know that truly every inch of him is imposing as he strokes his large cock with a strong, persistent grip.

Even sheathed in his big hands, it looks fucking huge. Perhaps equal in length to Leon, maybe an inch shorter, but absolutely formidable in girth and decorated in thick, bulging veins. Your breath hitches as you watch him tug hard up the length of it, squeezing out a bead of precum before smearing it slowly back down his length.

Your eyes flit between Krauser’s face and his cock, each one too imposing to settle on. He smirks like he knows the look in your eyes, like many people before have cowered in fear at his size, like he enjoys the terror that flashes in your gaze.

“Tell me what you think,” he tells you, holding his cock up by the base as if he’s arrogantly raising a weapon.

You struggle to speak with Leon holding your jaw tight in his hands and his cock striking the deepest parts of you— I mean jesus, it’s hard to even think coherently with how he’s rearranging your guts. But you don’t want him to be stopped more than you feel queasy, so you attempt it.

“I-I… you’re– oh– uh, ahh, big, and—”

Mercifully, perhaps, Krauser interjects with a ragged chuckle. “Cock-drunk already, huh? Try again. Come on.”

You completely and totally are, and it becomes twice as difficult to speak as Leon puts more weight into his hips, forcing your legs wider and barraging his cock at an even deeper angle in, like fucking you harder is all he can offer to distract you in the event you're watching something you didn’t want to see.

Do you want to see it…? You really don't know. You'd never looked at your instructor through this kind of lens before, and only were now because you were being forced to. 

You try again, blubbering through the drool that trickles down the corner of your mouth and onto Leon’s fingers.

“You’re… it’s… oh—” 

The air is pushed from your lungs as Leon sends his next thrust into you with aggressive force, sending your head tipping back as your eyes roll and a loud, wet smack echoes off the gymnasium walls. 

“So fucking useless…” Krauser grumbles. “Can’t take a little hard fucking without turning stupid? Choke her out, Kennedy; give ‘er a reason she can’t speak.”

With a grunt, Leon wraps a hand around the whole of your neck. Not enough to hurt, just enough to press you into the floor by it. Still, his ragged breath shakes in surprise at his own lack of hesitation. 

He’s even more surprised that he doesn’t hate it and that you don’t seem to either. He tests the waters and squeezes a little tighter, drawing a strangled moan from you that clearly isn’t from pain.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” he hisses in time with each thrust, swearing more at himself than anything. 

He feels like he’s teetering on the edge of something dangerous. He shouldn’t think this is so hot. He could actually hurt you here. 

Your cunt clamps down on him as you gasp, and something new washes over him. He grits his teeth and squeezes hard.

You sputter silently as your airway becomes constricted and something daunting builds in your core. Your pulse pounds in your skull as the oxygen in your brain grows stale and dies, you feel your muscles locking up, and you know you’d be moaning if you could make any noun at all. 

Your vision slowly darkens around the edges, obscuring the vicious look on Leon’s face that sits in your periphery. In the center of the vignette stands the sight of Krauser’s hand working himself faster. Leon’s hold on your throat and the constant torrent against your inner walls are equally violent, and your pleasure grows violently in response. But all you can do is weakly keen into Leon’s cock as your body becomes completely flooded with unadulterated sensation.

“Slap her pretty face,” Krauser grunts.

Leon does. You’re barely cognizant enough to flinch and can hardly move enough to anyway, but it lands dully; not even enough to sting.

“Oh, don’t fucking insult me. Slap her.”

This time, your cheekbone blooms with heat in the wake of the rough calluses of his palm snapping against you.

“Harder.”

His hand crashes into your face and the whole room starts spinning. 

You’ve taken countless blows to the face before, and many from Leon himself; you knew all too well how hard he could hit. Hell, you’d already have bruises tomorrow from the training session that led you here. But that blow landed utterly uniquely from any other you’d endured. No pain had ever caused this kind of disorientation. 

Vision fixed on the voyeur and your cunt skewered on Leon’s cock, decreasing thoughts as your face tingles and your neck aches under a ruthless grip, lungs burning behind your ribs— clit swollen and oversensitive from each smack of Leon’s navel against it. Your eyes are bulging and body’s locking up, making your cunt grip around him tighter, pushing out a new surge of wetness around him—

Your vision darkens until all that’s left is the brute force of how good it all feels. Every ounce of pleasure and pain compounds into blindingly bright sensation, like white-hot lightning running through your every nerve, growing stronger and stronger as your faculties weaken. 

Your face feels hot as you try in vain to gasp for air, hips working sloppily to try to meet Leon’s pace as he thrusts into your sweet spots over and over. Krauser speaks, but you don’t grasp the words until Leon’s free hand frantically connects with your clit.

“Look at that, she fucking loves it. Go on, make her cum on your cock.”

The grip on your neck lessens just enough to seize a rough gasp of new air as your orgasm rallies. Your back arches so acutely, you feel like Leon’s hold is the only thing stopping you from levitating. Krauser’s mumbling between barks of orders as you tear at the seams—

“That’s it, give her what she needs. Keep her eyes on me.”

Leon captures you by the cheeks to turn your face back towards Krauser. You breathe desperately and watch him while your hands reach haplessly for Leon, nails dragging everywhere they land as you steal ragged breaths through the nose. It’s all so good, so much, and god the mindfuck of it all— your eyes glued to Krauser jerking himself off while another man pistons his cock inside of you, like they're both being cucked somehow as your physical and mental attention is divvied between them. 

It’s all just so insane— the fact that Krauser is getting off to you being split in half and manhandled by your opponent, telling him how and when to fuck you— like Krauser is the director and you and Leon are the stars of his own personal brand of violent pornography.

And it’s a role Leon plays well. He’s grown to be barbaric in his own right, a part of him no one including himself knew existed until now. 

Krauser had that effect on his recruits, and apparently this was no exception: he’d made the rookie into exactly what he needed to be to rise to the occasion. And the result is animalistic, further evidenced as Leon licks a flat-tongued stripe up your jugular and bites down before growling into your hair through sharp teeth.

“Fucking feel me.”

His voice pulls the pin on the live grenade of your arousal, and in seconds flat, you combust.

Your orgasm hits you like a devastating blow to the core, tearing through your body as if somewhere within your center an atom had split in half. You writhe like you’re dying, and high-pitched moans flood out of your pursed lips that are still squeezed taut in Leon’s grip. He has to hold you even tighter just to keep you from falling away, and he puts a hand on your stomach with weight that lets you both feel each time he bulges through your stomach. 

The cracking sounds of his hips connecting with your cunt become wetter and more crude as you gush around him with each shockwave of seizing bliss. Leon starts falling apart himself, moaning wildly as you tighten around him like a vice. He looks down to see the base of his cock covered in the creamy white slick of your cum, and that's enough to make him see stars.

“Oh fuck, jesus fucking christ I’m—“

Cruel as ever, Krauser makes his next command.

“Stop.”

Leon is in a full breakdown as he tries to; he lets go of you to claw his nails into the ground, pained sounds ripping from his chest as he struggles to keep still, but he can’t keep his hips from twitching forward to save his life. He was so close to cumming and he has to force himself not to as he keeps himself bottomed out again, a guttingly difficult task as your walls continue to pulse around his cock as you come down from your high. 

The stakes heighten as Krauser approaches with heavy boot steps, and Leon’s whole body strains as he fights to comply before he gets there. Leon swears under his breath as the tendons in his neck clench and small veins begin to pop against his temple, grabbing your weak body by the hips to fix you on his cock instead of fighting the involuntary jolts of his hips.

“Fuckfuckfuck, m’sorry, I’m t-trying, ahh…”

Krauser stands over you again, pumping his sturdy dick in a firm but leisurely grip at the absolute sight of you two. You can only imagine how obscene you must look lying numb and weak on the ground— you’re still panting as you come down from your high, your wild hair sticking to your sweaty neck and forehead, fucked-out and used with Leon’s cock still stuffing you full while you let your major jerk off above you.

But as downright shameful as you look and feel, Krauser takes his sweet time soaking it in, enjoying the unfiltered vulgarity of it as he pumps himself a hair faster. 

You’re grateful for the time to catch your breath, sure, but the longer you’re there, the more his attention burns. As seconds roll by, your sweat cools uncomfortably on your skin, you regain enough feeling in your body to feel a small amount of what it’s been through, but most of all, you become more aware of where you and Leon connect.

Your orgasm made you twice as sensitive, and the lack of motion is as maddening to you as it is for Leon as he throbs inside your walls. You can’t help but to squirm around for relief, and you can’t help but to moan as the movement drags the head of his cock against your g-spot. 

“Jesus, you still want more? Is one cock not enough? Should’ve fucking known,” Krauser tuts, twisting his fist around the wide base of his dick. “You’ve always been tough. Shoulda known you wouldn’t break so easily. Always making me get my hands dirty…”

He pushes Leon to lean back and out of the way for a thick droplet of spit to fall from Krauser’s lips all the way down to your clit. You jolt at the sensation of it landing, but it doesn’t compare to when Krauser drops to one knee and rubs it in with two firm fingertips.

He massages his spit into your clit with rough fingerpads that move in tight and steady circles, building you towards another bout of sensory overload with calculated precision. You look rapidly between Krauser and Leon and your own body through wet lashes, frantically trying and failing to get a grip. 

It’s all too much, but somehow, it isn’t enough. You need Leon to move like you need air to breathe.

“Nnhg, m-major…” you moan hesitantly

“What?” he says dryly, as if he isn’t causing your undoing. You only manage a throaty whine in response, and he chides you by increasing his speed on your clit. “Speak.”

You try, but your words are bracketed by thick heaving breaths. “Hhha, I… oh, ahh…. p-please…”

Krauser leaves his weighty cock to hang in the air as he adds his other hand to your body, staring at you intently as a high pitched shriek gets caught in the back of your throat. He pinches your nipples one by one before flicking them each sharply, matching his rhythm on your clit, stimulating every part of you continuously. He just smirks as your brain melts in your skull, your mouth falling open with nothing comprehensible coming out of it.

“Please what?” 

You squirm in an attempt to lessen the overwhelming feeling, but he doesn’t falter once, only leaving your clit to dip his fingers around either side of Leon’s shaft to gather your wetness to slicken your sore nub. Leon sputters at the brief yet unexpected feeling and he bucks into you so deep you both choke. 

“F-fuck, I… I need… ahhh,” you whine hard, your head flying back on the ground.

“You can take it. If you’re not gonna use your words, then be quiet.”

You really do try and stay quiet at that, biting your lip so hard you think you might taste blood, but you just can’t.

You can still feel Leon pulsating inside of you, can still hear the sweet sounds of his agonized grunts as you’re brought back to the brink. Leon holds your hips tight for his own sake so he doesn’t cum before he’s allowed, his fingers pressing deeply into your soft flesh to keep you from bucking into him more than you already are, and the dull pain where his short fingernails dig in just add to it all. You’re trembling severely, the meat of your thighs shaking uncontrollably, and it all just feels too good.

All at once, Krauser pinches a nipple painfully and strums you so quickly his hand blurs, and you all but fucking scream.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Krauser snarls and removes his touch altogether.

It’s easier to swallow your sounds as the sensation fades, but the damage has already been done. Your vision swims as Krauser grabs the since-forgotten combat knife and tosses it to Leon before kneeling beside your head. 

Leon catches it on pure instinct and stares dumbfoundedly at it in his hands.

Krauser frames your face with his thighs and his cock becomes inches away from your face. Close enough to see every short wheat colored hair on his navel, every vein that courses up his substantial width; close enough to smell the salt on his skin, even. 

He guides it to stroke the length of it overtop your plush, drool-covered lips.

It’s fucking denigrating, the way he does it, dragging his cock over your face with a gruff hum as he holds you in place by the crown of your hair. The shocked face of shame you wear only makes him leak with pre.

Krauser hooks his fingers behind your bottom teeth and pulls your mouth open to slap his tip against your tongue, and you shudder at the sweet taste of his precum. Then he lets go and notches the tip between your puffy lips.

Leon watches with the knife still in his hands, a quiet horrification in his tone as he speaks.

“Sir…”

“Hold it against her neck,” Krauser answers like it’s nothing, “or I’ll do it.”

Krauser plugs your mouth with his cock at the same time that cold steel meets your neck.

Leon watches the sight wide-eyed and disturbed. This is going too far, he thinks— but he’s gone too far to stop himself, too. 

Krauser is clearly getting off to the sight of you being borderline assaulted, and Leon is a partner to it. He’s the one holding the flat of a blade to your jugular while your superior sodomizes you, the one who’s still struggling not to cum and wishing he could fuck you fully again. He’s already an accomplice, or more accurately at this point, a willing participant. 

He thinks now that Krauser might’ve actually been right, that in these ways they’re alike. It horrifies him and shatters his self-image, but his cock aches with need regardless.

You’re mindless to it all as you start to suck Krauser off. Your lips struggle to stretch around his girth, your whines are muffled as you take more and more, and you feel so fucking dirty that you rock into Leon without thinking. 

Fuck, you’re actually enjoying this. A lot. 

‘Maybe I am a whore’, you think as your toes curl against Leon’s calves— but how could you possibly care about that right now? You don’t, and you can’t— all you can think about is making Krauser fit inside your mouth so he’ll let Leon keep going. 

Leon is harder than he’s ever been in his life, another fact that has him dumbstruck with himself. He even envies the man for getting to stuff his fat dick past your pretty lips, for being the one who’s making your face twist up like it is.

But the final nail in his moral coffin? The sight of you slowly being face-fucked, struggling to suck such a big dick with enthusiasm, while he holds a knife to your neck… it brings him right back to the edge of release. Not in spite of it— because of it. 

So when Krauser tells Leon to fuck you again with a reminder not to cum until he’s given permission, he does it without a hint of hesitation.

When he does, you’re no longer on planet earth; you’re floating somewhere above it, your senses more overloaded than ever. It takes focus you barely have to keep Krauser’s girth from hitting your teeth as he picks up speed to roughly fuck your face.

Krauser alternates between striking the back of your throat and holding your chin down to push it against the inside of your cheeks, watching his head bulge out your face before continuing his assault on your throat, using your mouth like exactly the kind of whore he’d made you out to be. All while Leon delivers blunt thrusts, each one thumping against the most electric spots inside your cunt, and each harsh snap of his hips cracks in the room like lightning. 

And every few seconds you feel the flat of the blade bump against your neck, a chilling reminder of the control you’re under.

Krauser truly is a goddamn psychopath. That’s never been more evident than now. But it fills you with a certain thrill to be at the mercy of a certified killing machine and his most promising rookie. Both of them are more than capable of causing you serious injury right now, but all their brawn and might is being utilized to ruin you in a way that feels good, and it’s the best, most exhilarating experience you’ve ever had.

Maybe you’re all psychopaths. Maybe Krauser’s promise on the first day of training held a particular purpose for you and Leon. Perhaps the training broke you long ago, and at some point you couldn’t place, he’d reassembled your bleeding hearts into corrupted, submissive subjects, ones perfectly crafted for him to play with, to even enjoy his sadistic demands.

Tears prick at your eyes as Krauser presses himself as far as he can go into your mouth and you choke around him. He’s too thick to take so deeply, and your throat seizes up in rejection. He slaps your cheek just enough to feel it sting as he forces you to keep trying. 

“That’s it, choke on it, bitch.”

And choke on it you do, with horrible sounds emanating from your throat as he likely bruises it. Your hands grasp for nothing at the overwhelm and Krauser pins the arm nearest to him under his knee, and Leon holds the other down by the bicep before Krauser even looks at him.

“There you go, now you’re fucking behaving,” Krauser pants at you both. “My two most obedient soldiers… hah.”

A thick string of spit connects your lips to Krauser’s tip as he pulls out suddenly, giving you a chance to gasp for air. He slaps its weight against the red welts in the shape of Leon’s hand on your cheek, making the sore skin shine with spit. Your tongue lolls out on its own and he goes right back to skull fucking you, holding you firmly by the sides of your head to keep you at the right angle. 

You moan as his cock vein drags up and down your wet, flat tongue as he thrusts in and out decisively, and your eyes roll back as he starts working your nipples again, catching them in his fingertips as they recoil with Leon’s thrusts.

Leon can’t help it; he can’t stop watching. It brings him closer than ever to breaking. His orgasm has been denied so many times when he’s right there on the edge, and the thought of holding it back again is devastating. So all on his own, he begs.

“Krauser, please, let me… let me cum, sir. I need to, I need—“

And Krauser is all too aware of his staring.

“You like watching me use her mouth that much? Gonna get off to it while you have a knife to her neck? You’re a sick fuck, kid.”

Leon chokes out a sob at the fact and that his plea went totally ignored. But looking between you, Krauser falters too, and he pounds your moaning mouth more wildly.

“Fuck, you’re both crying. You two are so damn dirty.”

Krauser grunts, and nearing his own edge, he makes sure to bring you with him. He reaches over to wedge his hand between you and Leon’s bodies to rub your sopping clit again.

You try to writhe, but you’re too pinned down, and too big of a movement sends your jugular dangerously close to the knife. All you can do is take it, teary eyed and pliant, trembling like an earthquake as you near another peak.

Leon whines as Krauser dips his fingers down to your cunt, but this time, they don’t pass there just to collect your slick. He keeps them fixed around Leon’s cock while he cups your pussy, and each time Leon thrusts, his shaft passes through the tight friction of his fingers. 

He braves a glance down at where you all connect and god, it is dirty, just like Krauser said— and Leon is weak to it. His gut twists as your cunt and the major’s fingers both grip around him, warm and velvety wet and threatening to milk him dry.

Ever the coach, Krauser starts encouraging you both, his steady tone in stark contrast to Leon’s as the younger man starts begging again.

“That’s it, take it. Cum for us so he can get his.”

“Please, oh fuck she’s so tight, m’not gonna make it sir, I—”

“Just a little more, Kennedy, don’t quit on me now. Where’s all that endurance?”

“I can’t sir I can’t, needta cum so bad, oh god it fucking hurts.”

Krauser’s own cracks finally show through, the grumbling under his breath the first sign he has any weakness at all as you suck him off with urgency, trying to catch him up to your contemporary.

“Shit, yeah, suck my cock just like that. Sound so good when you beg for me, rookie, jesus.”

A pathetic sound comes from Leon as his thrusts grow sloppy, and he leans over you on his forearm as his muscles begin to buckle. It makes you feel even more caged in, traps Krauser’s palm against your clit, forces your legs a little farther apart— and suddenly, you snap.

You convulse completely as you cum, and the rough sounds the two men make in response only bring you higher until the pleasure is blinding. Your ears ring and mute the strings of profanities they’re chanting as they feel it soar through you and gush around them, and you’re putty in Krauser’s hands as he pulls out and keeps your slack jaw open.

“That’s it, shit, cum for her, Kennedy, fuck.”

“Where, where—?”

"In her, fill her fucking cunt— ahh, fuck—”

You flinch in surprise at the first hot rope of cum that falls onto your tongue. While Krauser paints your open mouth white, Leon collapses over you, and you thread weak fingers into his sweaty hair as he cries out into the crook of your neck.

His words are only for you.

“Oh god, I’m cumming, I’m– oh, ohh fuck—”

He devolves into a mindless stream of consciousness as he pumps you full of it.

“Shit, you feel s’fucking good, fucking take me.”

And when he remembers the knife in his hand:

“Oh god, I’m so damn sorry.”

You can’t think enough to even wonder what he’s sorry for as you swallow your mouthful of cum, shuddering at the mild tang before suckling the last drops from the head of Krauser’s dick.

All the while, you feel every single drop that Leon buries inside of you, warm in the depths of your cunt and slightly stinging the sore skin at your entrance as tickles escape around his base. It seems like his orgasm will never end; there must be so much of it, and even when you no longer feel new ropes of his cum pooling into you, he ruts it shallowly into your cervix as he shakes with aftershocks. 

It takes a long time for you both to settle, and for lengthy minutes, you just lie there together, eyes closed and adrift. Your whole body is abuzz as you run your hands up and down his back, feeling it rise and fall with his staggered breathing as he lies flush against you, a drunken smile on your face as you come down for good. You sink heavily into the floor, no thoughts whatsoever in your head, and nothing behind your eyes but stars.

Leon too is perfectly exhausted from the way he’s been thoroughly drained, and he’s more than happy to join you in your empty-headed daze. So lie there you do, long enough to be overtaken by fatigue as your blown minds weigh down with sleep, even long enough to forget about what Krauser might be doing. 

Leon rolls off of you, knife clattering to the ground as it slips from his limp fingers, and you open your blurry eyes to see the cause: Krauser’s boot.

Krauser doesn’t look angry at all, more so inconvenienced. He shakes his head at the way Leon’s dead weight falls beside you, too tired to even react to his soft dick slipping out of your sopping cunt.

“Good god…” Krauser mutters under his breath, scoffing at the soft display of you and Leon in a puddle on the ground— an understandably dissonant sight after what you’ve all just done. But it doesn’t cut through your euphoric afterglow at all; Krauser’s disapproval is too familiar to blink twice at even now; if anything, it’s casual coming from him. You even weakly smile until he speaks again with a touch more bitterness in his tone.

“You two look just pathetic.”

Blinking away the stale tears that cling to your eyelashes, Krauser sharpens into view. He’s collected himself completely in the time you’ve been drifting away.

And there you are in stark contrast, completely naked on the floor, your limp limbs in a tangled heap wherever gravity took them, your hair a mess of sweat and frizz— and the most indecent sight of all, the cum drying on the corners of your mouth and leaking out of your swollen folds. 

Leon lies beside you in an equally tragic state: his hair is a disaster, his trousers are loose around his knees, and a final drop of cum leaks from the tip of his sore cock.

No wonder Krauser’s displeased. There’s truly no world where he’d be glad to see his top recruits looking half dead in front of him, especially when he somehow managed to be so unaffected himself.

“Get up before you stain the mat.”

You and Leon are all creaks and groans as you pull yourselves to your knees, not yet daring to try your feet and instead crawling to find your clothes. You fight against your lightheadedness as you sit upright to redress, trying to do it quickly before Leon’s cum spills out of you and onto the floor. You can feel how much there is, and you don’t know if you’ll have the strength to clean it up, which you’d surely be made to if it did.

But in the minutes you have somewhat to yourself, your throat feels tight all over again. You feel like you’re back at the beginning in the exact same predicament as before: How the hell are you supposed to look Leon in the eyes? 

When you’re finally dressed, you stumble to your feet, and you hardly look at him at all before you both shy away. But as you stand in the room on wobbly legs, you find a new predicament, too: What the hell happens now?

You’ve stumbled into completely uncharted territory, and you have only your major to guide you. So on pure routine, you both look to your superior to tell you what to do next. 

It has to be the most hilariously pathetic attempt at standing in formation ever, the way he looks incredulously at the two of you as he shrugs on his olive green overshirt, pausing at the sight.

“You’re both so fucking clueless” he grumbles and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Hit the showers and go to bed.”

You stumble shame-faced through yes sir’s and turn heel to the gymnasium door, and your mouth goes dry with each new step. 

That’s it then..? You have to pretend it never happened without so much as an acknowledgment? You half wish Krauser had shaken you by the shoulders and told you what to think as usual, for him to set right your spinning head.

“Hey,” Krauser calls just before you reach the door. You both look back and wait, your hearts beating in your chest, but he only looks at you. “I don’t like rumors. I better not hear any more. Understood?”

He stares you down sharply with a lift in his brow. You inhale deeply as you catch his drift. “Y-yeah. Understood, sir.”

Krauser calms and nods once, then turns away. You take the opportunity to slip out of the door.

The walk back to the barracks is painfully quiet; neither of you know what to say. Your bootsteps are the only sound echoing in the dim halls, and your heartbeat is the only thing in your ears.

It isn’t a long walk before you reach the fork between the male and female barrack halls. Your steps slow until they reach a halt and Leon lingers behind you. You turn halfway to face him, but nothing comes of it; you both can only stand there with open mouths that don’t say anything.

You stiffly turn away, but then Leon speaks your name quietly and brokenly, and everything unspoken is left in the ellipses. He gulps once and feels his dry tongue cling to the roof of his mouth as he opens it to speak, and a shaky voice comes out that echoes your very same need.

“Tell me it’s okay.”

You turn around and finally manage to look at him, and it cracks your heart wide open. He looks so much like he did when you’d both arrived here, a scared young man who arrived fresh from the horrors he’d witnessed, who’d do anything to keep everything in one piece despite how much he himself needs saving. 

It’s the face you’d first fallen for and fell for all over again as it sharpened into the fierceness he had now. The same face that held you impossibly close just moments ago. 

You fall all over again and crash into his chest at terminal velocity, clinging to him with all the energy you have left in you to give.

“It’s okay.”

You hold each other there in the hall for a long time. Neither of you know what you’ll wake up to in the morning or how the hell you’ll pretend everything is normal, but right now, you don’t need to. You just need to hold each other long enough to know that the other one is there.

When you slowly pull away, your fingertips linger over each other’s before you finally break apart. And with one last breathless look into his blown blue eyes, you head towards the women’s showers.

You squint in the fluorescents and avoid your reflection. You step into the shower while it’s still running cold and let the tension wash away in the water as it grows to a calming steam.

You wash yourself with purpose— it’s well past one in the morning and you don’t have sleep to spare— but your fingers linger between your legs as you clean where you feel the most dirty. Feeling the slick slip of cum against your sore, swollen lips as it commingles with the suds, you smile.

⌖⌖⌖

The next morning, everything seems to scream. The wake alarm. Your muscles. Your head from three fleeting hours of sleep. Your thoughts as you remember the source of your freshly aching body.

The very beginnings of bruises bloom in greens and purples under your skin: on your wrists, your hips, and the distinct shape of fingers on your bicep. Your neck is sore and your cheek is tender, nevermind your throat and between your legs. As nervous as the evidence of last night being visible makes you, there's no cause to worry about the curious glances your comrades give you. It really does just look like you got your ass beat in combat, which is... true enough, you suppose.

Still, you can hardly look anyone in the eyes without your blood feeling hot about the new secret that you're keeping, but you don’t have many chances to.

First formation comes in place of breakfast. You’ve never stood so straight in your life; it wouldn’t be a good day to have Krauser pick on you. Definitely not.

Every time the major’s eyes glance over you, goosebumps prick your skin. You have no idea what he thinks about last night’s events, and so you dread his reprimands more than ever.

And when your eyes catch against Leon's, although you catch a hundred different things in his gaze, disappointment isn't one of them, and it's comforting somehow to know that he's feeling the same dizzying mix of emotions as you without having to ask.

But somehow, despite your cloudy thoughts, your aching body, and the ever-present signs of sleep deprivation, you excel.

And so the day goes on without incident as far as USSTRATCOM goes. You’re well ready for sleep by the time you’re relieved for the night, but you stay awake until you know everyone is asleep.

You take your time standing up from your cot, careful not to make it creak or shuffle the cheap blankets noisily. You watch your bunk mate snore as you tip-toe to the door in your socks. Boots would sound too heavy, and besides, you aren’t going far.

Your heart races as you scamper to the men’s wing and look for the right door, but you can’t seem to find it. Maybe it’s farther down than you thought? You turn back down the hall with knit brows to check the room numbers again. No dice. Maybe you passed it already.

You turn again and freeze as a doors opens and none other than Leon walks out.

There’s still no disappointment in his face, though. This is full-on despair. His face drops and his shoulders sink before he stammers and looks away, ducking back inside his room like he’s the one who shouldn’t be here.

“I’m, uh… sorry, I’ll just—“

“Leon, wait...!"

You cross the distance in seconds flat and catch his wrist just as he’s halfway enveloped back in the dark of his room.

“I… I came here to see you.”

Personal lives are nonexistent for the poor souls who train at USSTRATCOM; in fact, they’re outright forbidden. But the human will is a stubborn thing, and experiencing constant, extreme conditions makes many recruits willing to do extreme things to fulfill any personal desire at all. Whether it be sneaking a book to their bunk or rubbing one out in the showers, there’s only one rule: don't get caught.

But none are more stubborn than you and Leon Kennedy. It's why you’d each survived the experiences that landed you in military custody in the first place. You’re too stubborn to fail, too hard-headed to die. At least that’s what Krauser always says; that that’s how you both so quickly rose to be his two most-promising recruits

But being on Major Krauser's pedestal came with crippling pressure to keep ahold of his fickle approval. Every trainee lives under his constant scrutiny, and no slip-up is too small to go unnoticed. And his attention, good or bad, isn't something anyone wants to have. 

Krauser stated his goal explicitly on the very first day of training— "I will break you" —and he makes good on that promise every single day. Those who he sees as weak are given extra drills and rounds in the fighting ring until they puke from overexertion, and those he believes in are pushed past their limits, resulting in the exact same end.

So to say that you’re stressed would be a laughable understatement, and you blow off steam in equal measure when you can. And since you’re constantly reduced to nothing but a primal instinct to survive, your vice of choice is somewhat primal as well.

You’re a classic barracks bunny. Sue you for having needs, but there are worse things to be. Besides, all female recruits are on a steady diet of birth control, so the number of risks are relatively few.

Leon, however, didn’t exactly seem to approve. He never brought it up, but you once locked eyes with him as you snuck out of the men’s barracks, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what you’d been doing there at such a late hour. He’d never make you feel bad about it, and you hardly had time to dwell on it in the scarce minutes of the day not spent training or sleeping, but you were sure you caught a sour look of disapproval in his eyes. 

You and Leon were once as close to friends as anyone could be in a hellscape like USSTRATCOM, so if you’re being honest, yeah, you’re a bit embarrassed that he’d caught you like that, and you haven’t been able to fight off the pangs of guilt you feel in his presence now. So although the topic has gone untouched, it's been a little tense between you ever since; just enough to notice but not enough to address. 

Besides, the kind of tension is the only thing that’s new between you and Leon. Tension sprouted within the very first days of group training and had grown ever since, and other people noticed, too. They all chalked it up to being competitive rivals, but it was anything but that. 

You have the fattest, most hopeless crush on him ever. Hell, you’re one bad day or BOW incident away from admitting that you’re in love.

That’s what makes you feel so guilty about the subtle glint of disappointment you keep finding in Leon's gaze now. Wondering what he thinks about you makes you beyond anxious, and you doubt you'll ever have the time or courage to find out.

There’s a reason you sneak off into nearly everyone's barracks but his, after all: you like him far too much to seek him out for a quick and dirty indulgence. Leon means far more to you than a notch on your belt, and you wouldn’t be able to stand it if you put yourself in a position where he categorized you as a hookup and nothing more.

But what cuts the most? Assuming he feels disappointed in you might be wishful thinking. He most likely thinks you’re a whore, that you’re reckless and irresponsible, probably shares all the typical judgments you know get whispered behind your back. 

Honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if he hates you with how he’s been acting cold. 

So despite how much you want him and how often you imagine his face while someone else is balls-deep inside, you’ll never invite yourself into his room, much less admit your feelings for him. Plus, it’s kind of comforting to pretend sleeping around will help you get over your crush.

But your vice of choice has more consequences than those of emotional repression. You have to sacrifice a non-insignificant amount of your already scarce sleep hours to sneak around— and today, the exhaustion has finally caught up to you.

Your aim isn't as sharp, you don't anticipate the most obvious counterattacks, and you’re all-around slower on your feet. Careless mistakes that are totally unlike you, big and small. And no matter how hard you try to muster your strength and focus, dammit, you just can’t stop fucking up.

And none of it got past Major Krauser. That results in him keeping you late for after-hours training, but he isn't one to make a recruit suffer alone. Knowing you’ve dragged someone else into it is a part of the punishment in itself. 

So naturally, being the top two recruits, he chose Leon to join you. Just your fucking luck. 

That's how you find yourself here in the indoor ring somewhere after 23:00 hours, the air pushed from your lungs as you crash back-first onto the floor with a knife against your throat for the umpteenth time in a row. 

Krauser is seriously a sick bastard for making you spar with sharpened weapons, by the way, but that isn't breaking news. Just another "privilege" that comes with being his top recruits.

Leon never goes easy on you, either, but this feels different. Like he really does hate you and is taking his frustrations out with each painful blow to your body. The idea doesn't help you focus, and it isn't long before another miscalculation sends you back against the ground, staring at your tired eyes in the reflection of a knife that would've gouged them out in anyone else's hands. 

"You're tired. It’s pathetic. You think the enemy will care that you didn’t get your beauty sleep?”

“No, sir,” you reply through a wheeze as you try to recover your breathing. 

“Again.”

Despite your screaming muscles and the tiredness clouding your head, you stand up at once. You make yourself small as you shift your weight between your feet, poised to move wherever you’ll need to. As your combat knife shines in the gymnasium lights where you hold it in front of you, raised within your fist, you look Leon dead in the eyes and gear up for yet another fight. 

“Go!”

Leon beats you to the opening move. You dodge to the side. For some reason you put your fucking hand out to block him, and it does nothing to stop his knee from reeling straight into your gut. 

You cough and sputter but remain on your feet, stepping back to create a touch of distance to calculate your next move. But you’re more tired than ever now, and your body can’t keep up with your brain. 

As riled up as Leon is, the late hours are getting to him, too.

In a second, he came at you again with a strong left hook. Too stong for an opening blow, especially with a fist instead of his weapon. At last, you see an opening for attack. 

You use his momentum against him, pulling him through by the wrist. He twists sideways to stay upright, and needing to adjust your own balance, you send a sharp kick onto his back. Your eyes widen with adrenaline as it lands just as harshly as you intended; the upper hand finally seems within your reach. 

Or not. He hooks an arm around the back of your knee while your other leg is still mid-kick, and with nothing more than a shove to your chest, you’re on the ground again, pinned in the exact same position as before. 

“Absolutely disgraceful,” Krauser barks. “You’re distracted, rookie.”

You blink once at Leon who’s looking down at you with a similarly confused expression. Although you both fit the title, ‘rookie’ has long since been exclusively reserved for Leon. But you were the one who was called here tonight to be punished; why was Krauser drilling him?

Your knit brows turn to widened eyes as Leon attempts to rise but is stopped by a boot on his back. 

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, pretty boy?”

It’s clearly a trap question, and the pet name is laced with anything but admiration. Leon purses his lips and opens them as he attempts to think of an acceptable answer, but he’s obviously at a loss. You wonder what sadistic plan Krauser has in store as he awaits Leon’s response, and you grow somewhat fearful for the younger man.

Though he speaks with a sure tone, Leon only manages a single word, like he thinks he can get around it by gathering more information first.

“Sir?”

Krauser adding weight to his stance on Leon’s back is all it takes to know it didn’t work.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No, sir,” you and Leon say in unison. 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Krauser spat in your direction. 

“Then tell me,” Krauser continued, his attention returning solely to Leon, “why you’re face-to-face with what’s distracting you, and you can’t tell me what it is. Do you think I haven’t noticed?” 

You get halfway through the thought of “noticed what?” before Krauser pushes Leon down further, so close that the wispy ends of his bangs brush against your cheekbones. You gulp against the knife that still hovers over your neck, but the sharpened edge doesn’t make you feel nearly as nervous as whatever the fuck is happening right now.

You’re used to being in close proximity with Leon in training, but this is entirely different. It’s intimate. Uncomfortably so. It makes your head spin too fast to think about what Krauser just implied.

Instead, your attention is preoccupied with avoiding Leon’s eyes like you’ve been doing for weeks now, but with him this close-range, he’s everywhere, so close that your eyes threaten to cross. You can see every pore on his nose, the moles that constellate his neck, the lines in his forehead where he’ll have wrinkles in ten or so years. 

God, he even looks good this up close and personal. Every detail makes your heart skip and your ears get hot, even in a nerve-racking situation like this. Even when you look away from his stupidly beautiful face, all you can see are his biceps straining as he holds himself over you, flexing against his shirt as he holds himself up against Krauser’s unyielding boot. 

Your adolescent anguish is cut short by Krauser’s attention returning to you.

“That’s why you’re so tired today, isn’t it? From being in this position?”

Oh. Oh no.

A cold wave shoots through you as you realize what all of this is really about. Of course word got around about your late-night escapades; you just didn’t think it’d find its way to Krauser unless he caught you in the act. You now know what a fool you were for ever thinking that.

Krauser and Leon are by far the last people you're ready to address it with, and Krauser just had to bring it up while he keeps you pinned inches beneath the latter. 

It has to be some kind of divine punishment. This is the absolute worst-case scenario. Far worse than you ever could've imagined. The only place to hide is behind the refuge of your eyelids, so you squeeze them tightly shut.

Krauser keeps on twisting the metaphorical knife with a devious laugh that rumbles in his chest.

“You’re awful quiet, rookie. Not gonna defend your lady’s honor? Or, don’t tell me… are you the only one she hasn’t fucked?” 

Your heartbeat turns into a war drum that threatens to beat through your ribs. You're sure Leon can feel it thrum in the air between you. You pray to god in all his mercy to open the ground and swallow you whole, but no such thing will happen.

Leon, however, is praying to a wrathful god to smite Krauser where he stands. He can’t handle it. The humiliation, the intentional offensiveness. The stunning accuracy. Being confronted with it in such a demeaning way. He could maybe take it on the chin if it'd only been about himself, but Leon has long since become protective of you, and he carries your degradation as if it's his own. It's the perfect setup to make him seethe, and Krauser pushes him further with every syllable.

“I asked you a question. Have you fucked her or not?”

Leon’s chest becomes thick with heat as his rage dials up to a fever pitch, nostrils flaring and knuckles whitening around the combat knife. It's hardly at your neck anymore, but you're keenly aware of it.

You're beyond uneasy, but you can’t do anything. You can’t move except to squirm, you don’t have a white flag to raise, and you don’t dare speak out of turn. Anything you say right now won’t be helpful anyway; you’re ultimately the reason you three are here, and any attempt to deescalate would absolutely be thrown right back in your face.

You scream internally to Leon as you see his anger dial up to ten, hoping he’s close enough that if your thoughts are simply loud enough they’ll be able to reach him.

Don’t put yourself on the line for me, you think over and over. But telepathy doesn’t happen to be a weapon in your arsenal, and Leon seldom possesses the ability to bite his tongue. So however reckless it might be, he tries to change the subject by steering it towards an argument.

“Go fuck yourself, sir.”

You wince as you prepare for Krauser to skin him alive, but to your surprise, he doesn’t take the bait. Leon avoiding the question is answer enough, so Krauser coolly clicks his tongue, and his level-headedness makes the situation all the more terrifying.

“Just as I thought. Is that why you threw all those haymakers? Want to keep pinning her down just to get a taste? You know damn well that won’t work on the field.”

It’s insane, the way Krauser can tie anything back to training, but his words hit right where he aimed them, and it’s Leon’s turn to be unable to face you as he tries to keep his cool. Tough work, since Krauser’s on a roll.

“She’s obviously easy; why haven’t you just asked her, Kennedy?”

Leon’s jaw sets tighter. 

“Afraid that she’d reject you?” 

Krauser hits a bullseye. It’s all too clear now that humiliation is Krauser’s goal, and neither of you can leave without it being shoved down your throats. Watching Leon reel between emotions is giving you secondhand whiplash, but it’s only a few seconds before he grits his teeth and lets go of his dignity. 

“Because I—” he swallows hard, “I like her, sir.”

The confession hits you like a battering ram, and for a moment, the room is so quiet your ears ring. 

He doesn’t hate you. He likes you. A part of you could cry you were so happy, but with the situation at hand, how could you possibly be content? It brings on a wave of emotions that surfaces all the ones you’d been shoving down for months.

Feelings like that are impossible to foster in a hellhole like this. Sleeping around is one thing, but romance? What could even come of it being mutual? For those reasons and many more, you’d accepted it being hopeless a long time ago. And now that Krauser knew— and had apparently set this all up because he’d known for a while— you were now sure that he’d brought you here just to murder your dreams in cold blood. 

So there you and Leon lay on top of each other, no warmth or sweetness about it, faced with each other as symbols of your failures to cope. All you can do is wait for Krauser to rip your hearts out and incinerate them so they’ll never distract you again.

“What a goddamn sweetheart,” Krauser tuts, shaking his head. “You’re too soft. And you’re letting it get in the way instead of taking the clear fucking solution.”

The air goes still as you brace for whatever twisted “solution” he might have in mind, mentally preparing to run drills until sunrise or engage in some sick psychological simulation where you’d come to hate each other. Either would be perfectly up Krauser’s alley.

You were once again a fool to think you could predict him. You never would have expected what happened next. 

He crushes his boot into Leon's lower back until his navel is fixed solidly against your center. Hissing at the sudden contact, Leon swiftly pushes away as much as he can, but it isn’t much; although you aren’t quite face-to-face anymore, the Major’s full bodyweight keeps Leon’s lower half trapped flush against you. 

Startled astonishment washes over your face as you realize what exactly it is you feel pressed against you: at some point during tonight’s training, Leon got hard. You hadn’t noticed, but Krauser apparently did. 

Oh my god you feel like an idiot. You were too distracted by your fucking feelings to notice that he was hard. What the actual fuck.

You’re trying not to panic. You’re exactly where you want to be, but it’s in the least conceivable scenario possible. You scan Leon’s face wildly to find some sort of confidence in him that you can hold onto, a muscle memory of the looks you’ve often exchanged to get through training, but he’s just as frantic as you are as he tries to stay still, to not move an inch against you. 

Leon is very keenly aware of the fact that you didn’t ask for this, haven’t said that it’s okay, and the shame he feels at his exposed arousal sits like a death grip around his neck. He has no reason to think you were even interested in him; you hadn’t said anything since whatever the fuck this is began— and if you didn’t want it, what could you even do about it? It felt like a noose around his neck, and Krauser kept dragging him by it, tightening the rope with each syllable he spoke. 

“Close encounters really do it for you, huh? You like holding a pretty girl down, feeling her struggle against your cock? Maybe you’re not such a boy scout; you’re more like me than you think.”

Any thoughts you had about his statement went in one ear and out the other as Krauser moves his heel to rut Leon back and forth against you, grinding his cock smoothly and firmly against your clothed cunt. You nearly choke at the electric current it sends rushing through your core.

Even though Leon isn’t moving on his own accord, even if the inner war he’s waging against himself is written all over his face, he’s pressed so staunchly against you that you feel every twitch of his cock as it grows harder. 

It shouldn’t send a rush of thrill through you, but it does.

You bite your lip as another ebb of downward pressure increases the friction and makes the feeling too bright to ignore. Just as Leon can’t help his body reacting to yours, you’re resistless to the way you unconsciously arch into him. 

“Don’t be so shy. Look at her, she likes it.”

That makes Leon finally look at you head-on, and your face floods with a blush so hot it burns, because it’s undeniably true. You did like it. It felt good. A mental hell alongside physical heaven, but heaven nonetheless.

His hips grind into your core again—shaky, but this time of his own volition— before he raggedly whispers, "Do you…? Do you want me?”

You struggle to keep the intensity of his gaze, but you know what he’s really asking for: the truth. You try to show as much surety as you can as you nod your head against the padded ground, sharing it like a lifeline.

“Y-yeah. Yes.”

Krauser interjects with an eye roll and his trademark condescension. “You’re still too goddamn soft. You still have a knife in your hand, for god’s sake, that’s all the permission you need.”

Twisted fucking bastard, Leon thinks, his grip tightening around the hilt of the blade where he holds it beside your head. He stares straight into your eyes with an intensity that says he isn’t readying it for you. Your gut churns all the same. 

Luckily for you both, the major moves on from it. His boot leaves Leon’s back and he shudders in relief, exhaling deeply as he’s able to part his body from yours. 

It’s a short-lived reprieve as a broad shadow falls from overhead. Krauser looms from above with menacing casualness, thumbs hooked in his belt loops as he cocks his head in amusement.

"Go on, then. Kiss her."

You freeze in place and watch Leon as you remain stuck under him, breathlessly waiting to see if he takes the opportunity, heart pounding as you wonder if he should. 

Leon hardly pauses. An order is an order, and he’s getting used to that, as unconventional as they may be. He huffs, leans in halfway, and then retracts another inch; knits his brows together and shakes his head, either deciding against it or shaking off his last bits of resistance. You couldn’t tell which, at least not until he suddenly closes the distance.

It's the gentlest kiss you've ever received. His plush and impassioned lips skim lightly over yours as he still struggles to take what he so clearly wants. And god, you want him too, and you lift your chin in an attempt to press your mouths closer together, but it’s no use; he retreats just enough to leave you attached by the cupid's bow and a brushing of noses.

Krauser is less than impressed by the soft display. Gripping Leon by the crown of his hair, he admonishes, "I said kiss her, rookie," and all but crushes his face into yours.

You inhale sharply as Leon's lips fuse together intensely with your own. He twitches in surprise, grinding into you again inadvertently. The friction evokes a needy rasp from him, lips parting from the sound just enough for your tongues to meet— fleetingly at first, then reckless and deep as passion wins out against restraint. 

Leon grinds again, this time with intention as you start to melt into each other, having nowhere to go but further into each other’s bodies. Krauser's hand leaves Leon's scalp as he becomes pleased, finally, with his energy. He circles like a shark as he keeps a watchful eye.

Leon becomes more intense as he gains full room to move on his own, like the levee broke for his desire to surge violently and freely, a desire that’d been held back for months of anguish. 

The knife he’d held became forgotten on the ground as his hands grasped for you without instruction, shakily at first, then fervently all around you. His calloused fingertips run across your jawline and down your neck before roaming to your breast, but he doesn't squeeze, not until you arch to push into him yourself. 

It instantly gives him permission to squeeze your flesh firmly, and every movement suddenly becomes urgent. Your tongues clash sloppily, his stiff bulge ruts back and forth against your core, and you can’t help but clamor for him in turn— your thighs hook tight around his waist to pull him further in, to help you relieve the growing pressure between your legs as your head becomes thick with need. 

You nearly forgot Krauser was there at all until he speaks again with a gruff and low tone you've never heard from him before.

"Good. Keep going.”

You can't deny that someone else being in the room turns your brain somewhat mushy. In fact, it turns you on. You're adventurous, sure, but that's a shocking revelation even for you.

More shocking than that, the third party is your major, and he's telling Leon what to do as if he's giving normal orders. Those are ideas you'd laugh yourself sick at half an hour ago, but now here you are, and you feel your underwear slicken with each directive word and the ache to be permitted more.

But unbeknownst to you, that's the first of many things Krauser will awaken in you tonight. Right now, you don't even know how far he plans to take this. But you've spent months being primed to do whatever insane things he demands, and what you do know is that you'd do just about anything to earn more of the young man on top of you. So ever the good soldier, you let your commander lead you wherever he sees fit, and Leon does just the same.

“Take her top off.”

The cool gymnasium air contrasts with Leon's warm hand as it drags your shirt up your torso, leaving goosebumps in its wake as you shuffle to allow him to lift it over your head, lips parting only as long as they need to. Your top becomes discarded somewhere on the floor, forgotten before it lands. 

You tremble under Leon's touch as he roams the soft curves of your stomach, gliding upward until he traces the top hem of your sports bra. He hooks his fingertips under the hem and pauses with trepidation, resting his forehead against yours as he bucks into you. By the look on his face, his trousers are becoming a painful confinement.

Leon waits for permission or to have the rug pulled from under him and be told this is all a sick joke, until Krauser gives the former. Just not before making him sweat first.

“You wanna fuck her, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Leon shudders while looking down at you, relishing the slightest touch he currently has on your body.

“That’s ‘yes, sir.’ How many times have you jerked off thinking about it?”

Leon gulps before answering, feeling every ounce as humiliated as Krauser intended him to. 

“T-too many to count, sir.”

“Then take it off.”

It crosses your mind that no one’s asked if you’re fine with being stripped in front of an audience of two, but you’re not exactly apt to complain about Leon getting you naked.

Leon fumbles briefly with the tight elastic band before it’s whisked over your head and added to the growing collection of forgotten garments on the floor mat. You turn your head to the side, shying away as Leon takes in a full view of your nipples as they pebble in the cool air. But when you look to the side, your gaze lands on Krauser. 

“Mistake” is your first thought. “Was it?” is the immediate second. All you know is that he’s leaned coolly against the edge of the arena rubbing his thick bulge through his pants as he watches intently. The sight makes you feel like you’ve caught on fire, and you quickly look away.

You have no more time to dwell on it as Leon pinches your nipple between his index finger and his thumb, rolling it between them with a reverent sigh at your reaction, then pulling it up and letting it drop. He repeats it on the other side, and your thighs clench around his hips as the stimulation goes straight to your core. 

You can barely stand the teasing, and your hands find their way underneath Leon’s shirt. The feeling of his taut abs does nothing to quell you, though. It only drives home that the current sensations you’re being afforded aren't anywhere near enough. But right as you feel like you’re going mad, it all comes to a stop.

“Sit up, rookie.”

You whine as Leon does as he’s told, your hands leaving the heat of his stomach as he sits back on his haunches, , still with the exception of the labored rise and fall of his chest, his hands clasped behind his back, and your spit still wet on his lower lip. You’re left deprived of all touch, breathless and exposed, brows twisted up with neediness as you wait.

Krauser’s heavy and measured footsteps towards you are menacing. You don’t dare to look until he comes into view on his own, and from the steep angle up that you have, the large tent in his pants is imposing. It nearly obstructs his face as he stands directly over you. 

“Pretty…” He hums as he appraises the skin that’s been exposed on you so far, and it’s perhaps the first kind thing he’s ever said to you. It sounds foreign in his voice, but then he goes right back to his usual demands. “Strip down, all of it.”

You hesitate for a brief moment before sitting up and unlacing your boots with shaky hands, all too aware of the eyes on you as you discard them and lay back down to fumble with your belt and zipper. It feels all the more exposing to be undressing yourself as opposed to it being done for you somehow, and you try to push away the feeling of awkwardness as you raise your hips and push your bottoms down in one go. You keep your knees together as much as you can as you foot them off of your ankles and kick them away beside you, and rest back down, now totally bare.

The cold air is nothing against the heat of their gazes as you lie there totally bare, awaiting the first touch. It comes from the rubber of Krauser’s boot as he parts your legs with it.

If Leon weren’t already on his knees, he would’ve fallen to them right then and there. He practically salivates as your pussy is revealed before him, and every nervous twitch of yours makes your wetness glisten in the fluorescent lights. His hands flex where they’re clasped behind him, and his throat tightens as his cock becomes painfully hard within his pants. Still fully clothed, he feels hot, far too hot, as the first traces of sweat begin to form on his skin from the sheer effort it takes not to dive into you.

Krauser hums at the sight of you and takes the toe of his boot to the soft crease where thigh meets ass, and lets the rubber press onto your flesh to pull your cunt open to them. You whine as you feel your slick pool out as your opening flutters for touch. 

“Look at that,” Krauser muses. “No wonder everyone wants a taste. A pussy like that is just begging to be ruined. Isn’t it, Kennedy?”

What is Leon supposed to do here? Say he doesn’t want to ruin you for anyone else? It’d be a bold-faced lie, and he’d agree with just about anything Krauser says right now if it lets him get what’s being dangled right in front of him.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Your cock even big enough to ruin her? Or is that why you haven’t gotten with her?” 

For perhaps the first time in Leon’s life, he suddenly feels unsure. He’s never been insecure about his size before, never had a reason to be. He knows he’s well-endowed. But the major always has impossibly high standards. What if this is no different? What will happen if he doesn’t meet them now?

Leon gulps before answering with a shaky breath, although he tries to sound more sure. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s see it then.”

Leon nearly gets cold feet, but seeing you spread before him is enough to throw his modesty to the wind. His fingers are clumsy in their quickness as he undoes his pants just enough to get his cock free, and he hisses at the contact of his fingers pulling it out by the base. He can’t stop himself from pumping it once between his fingers, but it takes nothing more than a disapproving glance from Krauser for him to put his hands back at his sides.

His fists become white-knuckled as his hardness hangs obstinately in the air. It’s framed by his still-on t-shirt falling over his navel, the waistband of his briefs sitting snugly under his balls, and his cock springing free between his parted zipper; not much skin is showing, really, but it’s all the more lewd a sight for it.

“Oh, shit,” is all you manage to breathe out.

Short, dark blond hairs silhouette the base, and his tip is an angry pink as it begins to shine with the emergence of a clear bead of precum. It hangs heavily in the air, jolting up once as he bites his lip in arousal, and you catch sight of the coursing vein that runs up the side. He’s long and so thick in girth, and your toes curl at the thought of him trying to fit it all inside of you.

God, what a fool you’ve been for jumping between barracks for sex that was often unsatisfactory and only a means to an end. All this time, you could’ve had Leon instead.

It’s an undeniably captivating sight, even for Krauser, who inhales through his teeth as he too takes it in with his eyes. But still, he isn’t one to give his praise so easily.

“Not bad. Let’s hope you know how to use it.”

You whine in surprise as Krauser suddenly fixes the toe of his boot into you and slowly circles around your clit, and Leon grimaces as he tastes copper from how hard he bites down on his lip.

“Because if you don’t,” Krauser taunts, “I’ll have to take over.”

Your pulse soars at the prospect, fear and arousal intertangling into one. Whether or not that’d happen lies entirely with Leon, but it could very well be a trap; the same as being told that training could end early if you do well enough, but no one can ever do well enough for Krauser. He gets too much sick pleasure in dangling hope over your head, fully knowing you’ll never reach it and enjoying watching you struggle to anyway, and this situation is no different.

A moan leaves your parted lips as Krauser presses his boot more firmly into your clit and rubs it left to right. He chuckles thinly at your response.

“She really is easy, soaking just from my boot. Fucking filthy.” He glides it up and down to literally rub it in, making your legs twitch as he presses into your clit, then looks at you and nods towards Leon. “You like what you see?”

“Mmhm,” you nod needily through pursed lips as you tremble under the crude ministrations against your pussy your eyes still fixed on Leon’s increasingly leaking cock.

He lands a soft kick to your clit, nowhere near enough to hurt, but enough to feel the threat and a sharp jolt of pleasure up your spine. 

“Yes, sir,” you correct yourself breathlessly.

He spreads your slick a little more, purely playing with it now as he addresses Leon again.

“Don’t let it go to your head. How many cocks have been in here just since training started…? Bet this whore could cum just from my goddamn boot.” 

Krauser finally steps back, leaving you shaking and untouched yet again, your lips pressed into a thin line as you pray the question remains rhetorical. It does, at least for you.

“But you don’t mind, do you, Kennedy? You like her enough that you’re alright with sloppy seconds? Thirds? Twentieths maybe..?”

Leon's chest flares. Your body count has never once factored into his envy. He just wants you— evidently, by any means necessary. And you being degraded like that? It stokes his anger all over again, and he once again fails to bite his tongue, the contempt clear in his tone as he speaks through a snarl. 

“She’s the whore? You’re the one treating your recruits like a harem, sir.”

Krauser seizes Leon by the bangs, making the younger man yelp as he’s yanked forward by the hair until he’s on all fours in front of you, his face inches away from your cunt. Leon hisses as thick fingers pull viciously at his roots and shake his head in front of your center like a cruel owner admonishing a dog.

“Shut your goddamn mouth— put it to good use before I fuck her and make you watch.”

With no precursor at all, Leon is shoved face-first between your legs. You gasp in shock at the suddenness; with no prior warning for him to begin with any sort of finesse, he lands against you with panting, parted lips, his nose is squished down from the position, pressed just beside your clit.

It takes Leon a second to collect himself, though he does so as quickly as possible once he wraps his mind around his position, nose deep in the part of you he’s been starving for the most. 

Krauser continues to hold him there harshly even as he begins to lap frantically. 

“Where’s all that snark now, huh?”

Leon doesn’t answer— Krauser doesn’t pull him back for him to be able to— instead he moans hard at the taste of your cunt.

Your folds wetten with Leon’s spit as his face collects your arousal, and you whine continuously as he sloppily makes out with your cunt. Being constantly pushed into you makes each stroke of his tongue press firmly wherever it lands around and within the whole of your cunt. It drags up and down, drawing quick and sloppy circles around the expanse of your vulva and the soft skin between your lower lips, flicking over your clit at the top and darting fully into your hole at the bottom.

It’s so vulgar and divine, but it’s too intense too suddenly, and your thighs clamp down around Leon’s head. Krauser just presses him in even further and Leon sucks your clit in compliance, flicking his tongue against the bud inside the vacuum of his mouth, and you yelp and tense your legs harder around his face. But Krauser still has one hand free, and he uses it to hold you open by the knee nearest to him, and despite your whining efforts, his grip is far too strong to budge free of.

You groan in relief as Leon moves on from his onslaught of your clit and dig your nails into the padded floor as he assaults the whole of your core instead, all while Krauser keeps your legs spread wide for him.

The wet sounds of his tongue along with frantic moans from you both fill the room as you reel towards your seventh heaven, and Krauser can tell— of course he can. It’d be obvious to anyone that you’re on the brink from the way you increasingly arch against the floor. But the absolute sight of you isn’t the only thing that makes it obvious; you’re finding it increasingly difficult to muzzle yourself and you mumble pathetically between labored breaths.

“I– ah, ahhh, Leon fuck— oh-hh…”

And it’s borderline petulant the way you whine when Leon’s mouth leaves you all at once. Your head shoots up in shock at the loss, looking to see what caused your release to be denied, but nothing had happened except for Krauser’s cruel whim.

You’re equally shocked to see the look on Leon’s face. Still on all fours and held back by his hair, his mouth is swollen, pink, and shining with slick from the bridge of his nose to the cleft of his chin. His moans are light as if he’s breaking fever and his eyes are half-lidded like he’s drunk. His cock hangs neglected between his legs with a thick string of glossy precum connected from the head to where it’s dripped down to the floor. But the most shocking of all is the faint smile that pulls at the corners of his puffy mouth as Krauser pulls his hair a little tighter.

‘How’s she taste, huh?”

“Incredible, sir.”

“Yeah? You taste any cock still in there?”

Leon’s nostrils flare and his mouth opens into a snarl, but before he can spit whatever insult he has in mind, Krauser yanks his head back painfully and growls.

“Better watch that mouth, kid, or you’ll be eating my cum out of her next.”

Krauser sends him back on his knees with a shove to the head and then rises to stand again, jostling his hard-on thickly through his pants as yet another threat. “Or maybe I’ll shut you up another way, eh?”

The silent grimace on Leon’s face is much to Krauser’s amusement as he berates him with a smile, still stroking his bulge.

“That’s what I thought. Fucking ungrateful. I let you eat her out and you’re acting like a damn brat. You think I should let you fuck her? Huh?”

Swallowing his pride, Leon answers. “Please, sir.”

“That’s what I thought. Beg.”

That’s a demand Leon is a touch too stubborn to easily do. He clenches his eyes and grinds his teeth, still reeling from the lack of touch, and twitches restlessly as the words struggle to come.

But Krauser is impatient. He expresses it through a dull backhand to Leon’s cheek.

“That’s an order, Kennedy.”

Although the slap is ultimately harmless (and could even be considered kind compared to the many blows you’ve both received from the major throughout training), a sense of fear shoots through you. You suddenly realize just how badly this could end if it goes south. You’re still keenly aware that this began by sparring with real knives, a testament to how insane your instructor truly is.

But your wires are well and truly crossed, and although you tremble on the floor, it all feels thrilling just the same. You’re just as sick as Krauser, maybe, the way you ache for Leon to submit so he can give you what you need. Luckily for your throbbing heat and unluckily for Leon’s dignity, he complies.

“Please,” he begins through his teeth, “let me fuck her, sir.”

“You can do better than that. You’ve wanted this for how long…? Let her hear it.”

Your breath hitches at the thought that Krauser has seen what you couldn’t all this time. It’s reinforced by the way Leon hangs his head and his brows change from being knit with anger to upturning in a pained plea as he speaks straight into you.

“Please let me fuck her, sir. Wanted to for so damn long, I—” His cock twitches in the air as if to attest to it being true. “Wanna show her why she doesn’t need to sleep around, that I’d treat her better than all of them, that I am better. Tasted so good, she’s so— I just— fuck, I’d do just about anything, major, please.”

Leon looks up to search for a sign it’s good enough while you do a double take at such lewd words coming from his lips.

In a change of tone, Krauser speaks low and deliberately to the young man.

“You’re going to do exactly as I say. And I mean exactly. If not, I'll take over. You won't get to cum and I’ll make sure she never sneaks off into your bed. Understood?”

Leon nods rapidly and whispers the affirmative under his breath. Krauser nods once and turns around as he gives his first command.

“Take your shirt off and pull your pants down enough to do the job.”

As Krauser strides away, you and Leon shoot a look at each other behind his back. It’s perhaps your first unobserved moment of eye contact the entire day, you realize, and the brief moment seems to expand into something big and desperate and warm, like something that’s just yours. Then Krauser’s heavy steps land in the room and urge Leon’s hands to move.

Your eyes float down over his cut figure as his clothing finally joins yours on the floor. You’ve seen him shirtless countless times, sure, but never with the opportunity to stare, and certainly never with his pants around his thighs.

Your knees subconsciously part ever so slightly at the whole of him; his ashen hair unkempt and askew from Krauser’s disrespect to it, the valleys and peaks of each muscle on his whole torso and arms, and the kind of cock you thought only exists in porn you have to pay for—all of it flushed pink with pent-up desire for you and you alone.

The abrasive whir of a zipper steals your attention. Your eyes flick to the side and you see the major lean against the wall at the edge of the combat ring, pulling his own cock free as he settles in to watch. You feel like you see something you shouldn’t have for some reason, even though you hardly see his dick at all— and you yourself are naked and dripping on the floor, how can you still be embarrassed? Still, you immediately look away with your heart hammering in your chest.

“Kneel between her legs. Don’t touch yourself.”

You part your legs to make room and the flush spreads up from Leon’s chest to his cheeks as he shuffles forward on his knees. He winces as the head of his cock grazes hot against your folds, but he doesn’t dare to do anything about it.

“Slap it with your cock.”

Leon shudders as he holds the base and brings his head down onto your plump clit twice, pauses briefly, and then does it again and again at Krauser’s encouragement. Wet plap plap’s fill the room along with the sound of you sputtering at the teasing.

You fight the urge to curl your hips to get him to push it in; you know he won’t and can’t until he’s given the go-ahead. But it’s torture for you both as Krauser gives him no further instruction for minutes. Only when you both strain and cry out like you’ll break does he give his next demand.

“Stop.”

Not the one you want. Leon’s hands claw into his thighs to keep them fixed away from himself, and you feel hot all over as the head of his tip rests heavily on top of your clit.

Tense and restrained, you push your luck and start grinding against it, careful not to move to much to avoid detection. But if nothing else, Leon’s whine gives it away. Krauser doesn’t seem to mind.

“What a cock-whore,” he says through a devilish smile as he strokes himself leisurely. “She’s just dying for it. You still sure you can satisfy her?”

Leon can only moan and nod in response, and for once, the lack of formalities is accepted.

“Put it in. Stop when you bottom out. Let’s see how much she can take.”

As sadistic and unorthodox as Krauser’s methods are, the results of them are undeniable in the way Leon follows his orders at once.

He rests a hand against your thigh, his thumb rubbing up and down on the soft skin soothingly, as his other guides his shaft towards your entrance. You hold your breath as it notches there, and he wastes no time before he steadily sinks in with a hiss.

“Good god, you’re tight,” Leon chokes out as the head slips past your entrance.

You nearly wheeze as it does, your nerves on fire as they’re delivered the feeling they’ve endured all the torturous teasing for. The long shaft of his cock is hot against your walls and heavy as each new inch settles in, his girth burning the tight tissues of your entrance as they try to accommodate it. Despite the struggle, you keen into him, all to eager to take more, totally forgetting that when he gets to the hilt, he’ll stop.

Three long, tempered drags of his cock and he’s finally flush inside of you. His eyes roll back as he stills there, breathing harder than ever as he fights against thrusting instinctually. Your legs twitch as you sit with the feeling of his fat tip flush against your cervix, your walls hardly accommodating the whole of his dick, at least not yet, and Leon squeezes your parted knees with a frayed and empathetic look.

“Oh, oh f-fuck…”

Leon wants—needs— more just as much as you, if not more than, but he tries to focus on enjoying what he's presently afforded, and tries not to so much as think about how close he feels to cumming entirely too early.

“Enough sniveling— fuck her hard.”

Leon feels a pang of regret. He'd thought of this moment so many times before, ran through it like a waking dream on lonely nights spent lying awake in his cot. He’d always imagined starting slow, making you cum on his tongue and fingers before he entered you gently to hear your pretty breathless moans; to cradle you in his arms as he rocks into your perfect cunt, to hold you tight and kiss you all over—

—But that never happened, and while he dreamed of making love to you, you were busy getting railed in another recruit's room. Sometimes within earshot.

It’s an easy command to follow; he'll take what he can get.

Leon withdraws almost entirely before snapping in to the hilt. You cry out as he crashes powerfully against your cervix and fills every sweet spot all at once, acute pain sitting right alongside the overwhelming pleasure as your cunt stretches to its limits around him.

“Oh f-fuck, Leon—"

You cry out as he does it again with even more force this time, crashing into you so brutally that you slide back on the mat, but he just grips your hips to pull you back to him to continue.

With each new punishing thrust his navel smacks loudly against your center, and you desperately grasp at his wrists to hold on as you take it, moaning feverishly until your body adjusts to accommodate the brute impacts he delivers. When you do, it leaves only a fierce and overwhelming pleasure, and you arch off the mat like an animal in heat, writhing into and away from the intensity simultaneously.

He develops a rapid-fire rhythm he grunts in time to. It takes so much effort to take that you quickly become covered in a thin sheen of sweat that has you sliding back on the mat all over again.

“Grab her wrists and pin her down.”

Leon does it instantly, nailing you in place with an iron grip, your wrists fixed on either side of your head. It brings a new angle that has his cock beating mercilessly against your inner sweet spot, and with your ability to move being limited, you moan shamelessly as you take the bombardment.

He can’t keep himself quiet either, though he tries— he babbles through wet lips and grinding teeth as his eyes roll back in his head.

“Oh fuck, baby. Your pussy’s so perfect, god…”

Every time you twist in pleasure he hits a new spot that makes you see stars, and when you push against his hands, the fact that he so easily cages you in makes it all the better. But sweeter than anything, him pinning you down makes you face-to-face with him again.

The faces he makes are plucked straight from euro porn, full of lust as his expression contorts with every wanton moan. His full lips are a plump and rosy pink, occasionally being wetted by his tongue flicking over them mindlessly as he works; his blown pupils making his eyes a darker, oceanic shade of blue that you ache to drown in.

You tip your chin up to try and kiss him. God, how you want to kiss him again. And you're so close together, if you could just—

He looks at your lips and slowly closes the difference, and then—

Krauser barks your name, and you're yanked right out of your immersion.

“Look at me.”

You hesitantly turn your head away from Leon and towards your major. Your throat feels thick as you do, and your mouth goes dry as you see what, in the back of your mind, you knew Krauser has been doing the whole time.

At some point he's taken his shirt off and he stands bare-chested some five feet away, leaning against the edge of the fighting ring with a wide stance, his posture emphasizing the sheer broadness of his build. He's pulled undone his pants enough to pull himself out and nothing more, and now you know that truly every inch of him is imposing as he strokes his large cock with a strong, persistent grip.

Even sheathed in his big hands, it looks fucking huge. Perhaps equal in length to Leon, maybe an inch shorter, but absolutely formidable in girth and decorated in thick, bulging veins. Your breath hitches as you watch him tug hard up the length of it, squeezing out a bead of precum before smearing it slowly back down his length.

Your eyes flit between Krauser’s face and his cock, each one too imposing to settle on. He smirks like he knows the look in your eyes, like many people before have cowered in fear at his size, like he enjoys the terror that flashes in your gaze.

“Tell me what you think,” he tells you, holding his cock up by the base as if he’s arrogantly raising a weapon.

You struggle to speak with Leon holding your jaw tight in his hands and his cock striking the deepest parts of you— I mean jesus, it’s hard to even think coherently with how he’s rearranging your guts. But you don’t want him to be stopped more than you feel queasy, so you attempt it.

“I-I… you’re– oh– uh, ahh, big, and—”

Mercifully, perhaps, Krauser interjects with a ragged chuckle. “Cock-drunk already, huh? Try again. Come on.”

You completely and totally are, and it becomes twice as difficult to speak as Leon puts more weight into his hips, forcing your legs wider and barraging his cock at an even deeper angle in, like fucking you harder is all he can offer to distract you in the event you're watching something you didn’t want to see.

Do you want to see it…? You really don't know. You'd never looked at your instructor through this kind of lens before, and only were now because you were being forced to. 

You try again, blubbering through the drool that trickles down the corner of your mouth and onto Leon’s fingers.

“You’re… it’s… oh—” 

The air is pushed from your lungs as Leon sends his next thrust into you with aggressive force, sending your head tipping back as your eyes roll and a loud, wet smack echoes off the gymnasium walls. 

“So fucking useless…” Krauser grumbles. “Can’t take a little hard fucking without turning stupid? Choke her out, Kennedy; give ‘er a reason she can’t speak.”

With a grunt, Leon wraps a hand around the whole of your neck. Not enough to hurt, just enough to press you into the floor by it. Still, his ragged breath shakes in surprise at his own lack of hesitation. 

He’s even more surprised that he doesn’t hate it and that you don’t seem to either. He tests the waters and squeezes a little tighter, drawing a strangled moan from you that clearly isn’t from pain.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” he hisses in time with each thrust, swearing more at himself than anything. 

He feels like he’s teetering on the edge of something dangerous. He shouldn’t think this is so hot. He could actually hurt you here. 

Your cunt clamps down on him as you gasp, and something new washes over him. He grits his teeth and squeezes hard.

You sputter silently as your airway becomes constricted and something daunting builds in your core. Your pulse pounds in your skull as the oxygen in your brain grows stale and dies, you feel your muscles locking up, and you know you’d be moaning if you could make any noun at all. 

Your vision slowly darkens around the edges, obscuring the vicious look on Leon’s face that sits in your periphery. In the center of the vignette stands the sight of Krauser’s hand working himself faster. Leon’s hold on your throat and the constant torrent against your inner walls are equally violent, and your pleasure grows violently in response. But all you can do is weakly keen into Leon’s cock as your body becomes completely flooded with unadulterated sensation.

“Slap her pretty face,” Krauser grunts.

Leon does. You’re barely cognizant enough to flinch and can hardly move enough to anyway, but it lands dully; not even enough to sting.

“Oh, don’t fucking insult me. Slap her.”

This time, your cheekbone blooms with heat in the wake of the rough calluses of his palm snapping against you.

“Harder.”

His hand crashes into your face and the whole room starts spinning. 

You’ve taken countless blows to the face before, and many from Leon himself; you knew all too well how hard he could hit. Hell, you’d already have bruises tomorrow from the training session that led you here. But that blow landed utterly uniquely from any other you’d endured. No pain had ever caused this kind of disorientation. 

Vision fixed on the voyeur and your cunt skewered on Leon’s cock, decreasing thoughts as your face tingles and your neck aches under a ruthless grip, lungs burning behind your ribs— clit swollen and oversensitive from each smack of Leon’s navel against it. Your eyes are bulging and body’s locking up, making your cunt grip around him tighter, pushing out a new surge of wetness around him—

Your vision darkens until all that’s left is the brute force of how good it all feels. Every ounce of pleasure and pain compounds into blindingly bright sensation, like white-hot lightning running through your every nerve, growing stronger and stronger as your faculties weaken. 

Your face feels hot as you try in vain to gasp for air, hips working sloppily to try to meet Leon’s pace as he thrusts into your sweet spots over and over. Krauser speaks, but you don’t grasp the words until Leon’s free hand frantically connects with your clit.

“Look at that, she fucking loves it. Go on, make her cum on your cock.”

The grip on your neck lessens just enough to seize a rough gasp of new air as your orgasm rallies. Your back arches so acutely, you feel like Leon’s hold is the only thing stopping you from levitating. Krauser’s mumbling between barks of orders as you tear at the seams—

“That’s it, give her what she needs. Keep her eyes on me.”

Leon captures you by the cheeks to turn your face back towards Krauser. You breathe desperately and watch him while your hands reach haplessly for Leon, nails dragging everywhere they land as you steal ragged breaths through the nose. It’s all so good, so much, and god the mindfuck of it all— your eyes glued to Krauser jerking himself off while another man pistons his cock inside of you, like they're both being cucked somehow as your physical and mental attention is divvied between them. 

It’s all just so insane— the fact that Krauser is getting off to you being split in half and manhandled by your opponent, telling him how and when to fuck you— like Krauser is the director and you and Leon are the stars of his own personal brand of violent pornography.

And it’s a role Leon plays well. He’s grown to be barbaric in his own right, a part of him no one including himself knew existed until now. 

Krauser had that effect on his recruits, and apparently this was no exception: he’d made the rookie into exactly what he needed to be to rise to the occasion. And the result is animalistic, further evidenced as Leon licks a flat-tongued stripe up your jugular and bites down before growling into your hair through sharp teeth.

“Fucking feel me.”

His voice pulls the pin on the live grenade of your arousal, and in seconds flat, you combust.

Your orgasm hits you like a devastating blow to the core, tearing through your body as if somewhere within your center an atom had split in half. You writhe like you’re dying, and high-pitched moans flood out of your pursed lips that are still squeezed taut in Leon’s grip. He has to hold you even tighter just to keep you from falling away, and he puts a hand on your stomach with weight that lets you both feel each time he bulges through your stomach. 

The cracking sounds of his hips connecting with your cunt become wetter and more crude as you gush around him with each shockwave of seizing bliss. Leon starts falling apart himself, moaning wildly as you tighten around him like a vice. He looks down to see the base of his cock covered in the creamy white slick of your cum, and that's enough to make him see stars.

“Oh fuck, jesus fucking christ I’m—“

Cruel as ever, Krauser makes his next command.

“Stop.”

Leon is in a full breakdown as he tries to; he lets go of you to claw his nails into the ground, pained sounds ripping from his chest as he struggles to keep still, but he can’t keep his hips from twitching forward to save his life. He was so close to cumming and he has to force himself not to as he keeps himself bottomed out again, a guttingly difficult task as your walls continue to pulse around his cock as you come down from your high. 

The stakes heighten as Krauser approaches with heavy boot steps, and Leon’s whole body strains as he fights to comply before he gets there. Leon swears under his breath as the tendons in his neck clench and small veins begin to pop against his temple, grabbing your weak body by the hips to fix you on his cock instead of fighting the involuntary jolts of his hips.

“Fuckfuckfuck, m’sorry, I’m t-trying, ahh…”

Krauser stands over you again, pumping his sturdy dick in a firm but leisurely grip at the absolute sight of you two. You can only imagine how obscene you must look lying numb and weak on the ground— you’re still panting as you come down from your high, your wild hair sticking to your sweaty neck and forehead, fucked-out and used with Leon’s cock still stuffing you full while you let your major jerk off above you.

But as downright shameful as you look and feel, Krauser takes his sweet time soaking it in, enjoying the unfiltered vulgarity of it as he pumps himself a hair faster. 

You’re grateful for the time to catch your breath, sure, but the longer you’re there, the more his attention burns. As seconds roll by, your sweat cools uncomfortably on your skin, you regain enough feeling in your body to feel a small amount of what it’s been through, but most of all, you become more aware of where you and Leon connect.

Your orgasm made you twice as sensitive, and the lack of motion is as maddening to you as it is for Leon as he throbs inside your walls. You can’t help but to squirm around for relief, and you can’t help but to moan as the movement drags the head of his cock against your g-spot. 

“Jesus, you still want more? Is one cock not enough? Should’ve fucking known,” Krauser tuts, twisting his fist around the wide base of his dick. “You’ve always been tough. Shoulda known you wouldn’t break so easily. Always making me get my hands dirty…”

He pushes Leon to lean back and out of the way for a thick droplet of spit to fall from Krauser’s lips all the way down to your clit. You jolt at the sensation of it landing, but it doesn’t compare to when Krauser drops to one knee and rubs it in with two firm fingertips.

He massages his spit into your clit with rough fingerpads that move in tight and steady circles, building you towards another bout of sensory overload with calculated precision. You look rapidly between Krauser and Leon and your own body through wet lashes, frantically trying and failing to get a grip. 

It’s all too much, but somehow, it isn’t enough. You need Leon to move like you need air to breathe.

“Nnhg, m-major…” you moan hesitantly

“What?” he says dryly, as if he isn’t causing your undoing. You only manage a throaty whine in response, and he chides you by increasing his speed on your clit. “Speak.”

You try, but your words are bracketed by thick heaving breaths. “Hhha, I… oh, ahh…. p-please…”

Krauser leaves his weighty cock to hang in the air as he adds his other hand to your body, staring at you intently as a high pitched shriek gets caught in the back of your throat. He pinches your nipples one by one before flicking them each sharply, matching his rhythm on your clit, stimulating every part of you continuously. He just smirks as your brain melts in your skull, your mouth falling open with nothing comprehensible coming out of it.

“Please what?” 

You squirm in an attempt to lessen the overwhelming feeling, but he doesn’t falter once, only leaving your clit to dip his fingers around either side of Leon’s shaft to gather your wetness to slicken your sore nub. Leon sputters at the brief yet unexpected feeling and he bucks into you so deep you both choke. 

“F-fuck, I… I need… ahhh,” you whine hard, your head flying back on the ground.

“You can take it. If you’re not gonna use your words, then be quiet.”

You really do try and stay quiet at that, biting your lip so hard you think you might taste blood, but you just can’t.

You can still feel Leon pulsating inside of you, can still hear the sweet sounds of his agonized grunts as you’re brought back to the brink. Leon holds your hips tight for his own sake so he doesn’t cum before he’s allowed, his fingers pressing deeply into your soft flesh to keep you from bucking into him more than you already are, and the dull pain where his short fingernails dig in just add to it all. You’re trembling severely, the meat of your thighs shaking uncontrollably, and it all just feels too good.

All at once, Krauser pinches a nipple painfully and strums you so quickly his hand blurs, and you all but fucking scream.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Krauser snarls and removes his touch altogether.

It’s easier to swallow your sounds as the sensation fades, but the damage has already been done. Your vision swims as Krauser grabs the since-forgotten combat knife and tosses it to Leon before kneeling beside your head. 

Leon catches it on pure instinct and stares dumbfoundedly at it in his hands.

Krauser frames your face with his thighs and his cock becomes inches away from your face. Close enough to see every short wheat colored hair on his navel, every vein that courses up his substantial width; close enough to smell the salt on his skin, even. 

He guides it to stroke the length of it overtop your plush, drool-covered lips.

It’s fucking denigrating, the way he does it, dragging his cock over your face with a gruff hum as he holds you in place by the crown of your hair. The shocked face of shame you wear only makes him leak with pre.

Krauser hooks his fingers behind your bottom teeth and pulls your mouth open to slap his tip against your tongue, and you shudder at the sweet taste of his precum. Then he lets go and notches the tip between your puffy lips.

Leon watches with the knife still in his hands, a quiet horrification in his tone as he speaks.

“Sir…”

“Hold it against her neck,” Krauser answers like it’s nothing, “or I’ll do it.”

Krauser plugs your mouth with his cock at the same time that cold steel meets your neck.

Leon watches the sight wide-eyed and disturbed. This is going too far, he thinks— but he’s gone too far to stop himself, too. 

Krauser is clearly getting off to the sight of you being borderline assaulted, and Leon is a partner to it. He’s the one holding the flat of a blade to your jugular while your superior sodomizes you, the one who’s still struggling not to cum and wishing he could fuck you fully again. He’s already an accomplice, or more accurately at this point, a willing participant. 

He thinks now that Krauser might’ve actually been right, that in these ways they’re alike. It horrifies him and shatters his self-image, but his cock aches with need regardless.

You’re mindless to it all as you start to suck Krauser off. Your lips struggle to stretch around his girth, your whines are muffled as you take more and more, and you feel so fucking dirty that you rock into Leon without thinking. 

Fuck, you’re actually enjoying this. A lot. 

‘Maybe I am a whore’, you think as your toes curl against Leon’s calves— but how could you possibly care about that right now? You don’t, and you can’t— all you can think about is making Krauser fit inside your mouth so he’ll let Leon keep going. 

Leon is harder than he’s ever been in his life, another fact that has him dumbstruck with himself. He even envies the man for getting to stuff his fat dick past your pretty lips, for being the one who’s making your face twist up like it is.

But the final nail in his moral coffin? The sight of you slowly being face-fucked, struggling to suck such a big dick with enthusiasm, while he holds a knife to your neck… it brings him right back to the edge of release. Not in spite of it— because of it. 

So when Krauser tells Leon to fuck you again with a reminder not to cum until he’s given permission, he does it without a hint of hesitation.

When he does, you’re no longer on planet earth; you’re floating somewhere above it, your senses more overloaded than ever. It takes focus you barely have to keep Krauser’s girth from hitting your teeth as he picks up speed to roughly fuck your face.

Krauser alternates between striking the back of your throat and holding your chin down to push it against the inside of your cheeks, watching his head bulge out your face before continuing his assault on your throat, using your mouth like exactly the kind of whore he’d made you out to be. All while Leon delivers blunt thrusts, each one thumping against the most electric spots inside your cunt, and each harsh snap of his hips cracks in the room like lightning. 

And every few seconds you feel the flat of the blade bump against your neck, a chilling reminder of the control you’re under.

Krauser truly is a goddamn psychopath. That’s never been more evident than now. But it fills you with a certain thrill to be at the mercy of a certified killing machine and his most promising rookie. Both of them are more than capable of causing you serious injury right now, but all their brawn and might is being utilized to ruin you in a way that feels good, and it’s the best, most exhilarating experience you’ve ever had.

Maybe you’re all psychopaths. Maybe Krauser’s promise on the first day of training held a particular purpose for you and Leon. Perhaps the training broke you long ago, and at some point you couldn’t place, he’d reassembled your bleeding hearts into corrupted, submissive subjects, ones perfectly crafted for him to play with, to even enjoy his sadistic demands.

Tears prick at your eyes as Krauser presses himself as far as he can go into your mouth and you choke around him. He’s too thick to take so deeply, and your throat seizes up in rejection. He slaps your cheek just enough to feel it sting as he forces you to keep trying. 

“That’s it, choke on it, bitch.”

And choke on it you do, with horrible sounds emanating from your throat as he likely bruises it. Your hands grasp for nothing at the overwhelm and Krauser pins the arm nearest to him under his knee, and Leon holds the other down by the bicep before Krauser even looks at him.

“There you go, now you’re fucking behaving,” Krauser pants at you both. “My two most obedient soldiers… hah.”

A thick string of spit connects your lips to Krauser’s tip as he pulls out suddenly, giving you a chance to gasp for air. He slaps its weight against the red welts in the shape of Leon’s hand on your cheek, making the sore skin shine with spit. Your tongue lolls out on its own and he goes right back to skull fucking you, holding you firmly by the sides of your head to keep you at the right angle. 

You moan as his cock vein drags up and down your wet, flat tongue as he thrusts in and out decisively, and your eyes roll back as he starts working your nipples again, catching them in his fingertips as they recoil with Leon’s thrusts.

Leon can’t help it; he can’t stop watching. It brings him closer than ever to breaking. His orgasm has been denied so many times when he’s right there on the edge, and the thought of holding it back again is devastating. So all on his own, he begs.

“Krauser, please, let me… let me cum, sir. I need to, I need—“

And Krauser is all too aware of his staring.

“You like watching me use her mouth that much? Gonna get off to it while you have a knife to her neck? You’re a sick fuck, kid.”

Leon chokes out a sob at the fact and that his plea went totally ignored. But looking between you, Krauser falters too, and he pounds your moaning mouth more wildly.

“Fuck, you’re both crying. You two are so damn dirty.”

Krauser grunts, and nearing his own edge, he makes sure to bring you with him. He reaches over to wedge his hand between you and Leon’s bodies to rub your sopping clit again.

You try to writhe, but you’re too pinned down, and too big of a movement sends your jugular dangerously close to the knife. All you can do is take it, teary eyed and pliant, trembling like an earthquake as you near another peak.

Leon whines as Krauser dips his fingers down to your cunt, but this time, they don’t pass there just to collect your slick. He keeps them fixed around Leon’s cock while he cups your pussy, and each time Leon thrusts, his shaft passes through the tight friction of his fingers. 

He braves a glance down at where you all connect and god, it is dirty, just like Krauser said— and Leon is weak to it. His gut twists as your cunt and the major’s fingers both grip around him, warm and velvety wet and threatening to milk him dry.

Ever the coach, Krauser starts encouraging you both, his steady tone in stark contrast to Leon’s as the younger man starts begging again.

“That’s it, take it. Cum for us so he can get his.”

“Please, oh fuck she’s so tight, m’not gonna make it sir, I—”

“Just a little more, Kennedy, don’t quit on me now. Where’s all that endurance?”

“I can’t sir I can’t, needta cum so bad, oh god it fucking hurts.”

Krauser’s own cracks finally show through, the grumbling under his breath the first sign he has any weakness at all as you suck him off with urgency, trying to catch him up to your contemporary.

“Shit, yeah, suck my cock just like that. Sound so good when you beg for me, rookie, jesus.”

A pathetic sound comes from Leon as his thrusts grow sloppy, and he leans over you on his forearm as his muscles begin to buckle. It makes you feel even more caged in, traps Krauser’s palm against your clit, forces your legs a little farther apart— and suddenly, you snap.

You convulse completely as you cum, and the rough sounds the two men make in response only bring you higher until the pleasure is blinding. Your ears ring and mute the strings of profanities they’re chanting as they feel it soar through you and gush around them, and you’re putty in Krauser’s hands as he pulls out and keeps your slack jaw open.

“That’s it, shit, cum for her, Kennedy, fuck.”

“Where, where—?”

"In her, fill her fucking cunt— ahh, fuck—”

You flinch in surprise at the first hot rope of cum that falls onto your tongue. While Krauser paints your open mouth white, Leon collapses over you, and you thread weak fingers into his sweaty hair as he cries out into the crook of your neck.

His words are only for you.

“Oh god, I’m cumming, I’m– oh, ohh fuck—”

He devolves into a mindless stream of consciousness as he pumps you full of it.

“Shit, you feel s’fucking good, fucking take me.”

And when he remembers the knife in his hand:

“Oh god, I’m so damn sorry.”

You can’t think enough to even wonder what he’s sorry for as you swallow your mouthful of cum, shuddering at the mild tang before suckling the last drops from the head of Krauser’s dick.

All the while, you feel every single drop that Leon buries inside of you, warm in the depths of your cunt and slightly stinging the sore skin at your entrance as tickles escape around his base. It seems like his orgasm will never end; there must be so much of it, and even when you no longer feel new ropes of his cum pooling into you, he ruts it shallowly into your cervix as he shakes with aftershocks. 

It takes a long time for you both to settle, and for lengthy minutes, you just lie there together, eyes closed and adrift. Your whole body is abuzz as you run your hands up and down his back, feeling it rise and fall with his staggered breathing as he lies flush against you, a drunken smile on your face as you come down for good. You sink heavily into the floor, no thoughts whatsoever in your head, and nothing behind your eyes but stars.

Leon too is perfectly exhausted from the way he’s been thoroughly drained, and he’s more than happy to join you in your empty-headed daze. So lie there you do, long enough to be overtaken by fatigue as your blown minds weigh down with sleep, even long enough to forget about what Krauser might be doing. 

Leon rolls off of you, knife clattering to the ground as it slips from his limp fingers, and you open your blurry eyes to see the cause: Krauser’s boot.

Krauser doesn’t look angry at all, more so inconvenienced. He shakes his head at the way Leon’s dead weight falls beside you, too tired to even react to his soft dick slipping out of your sopping cunt.

“Good god…” Krauser mutters under his breath, scoffing at the soft display of you and Leon in a puddle on the ground— an understandably dissonant sight after what you’ve all just done. But it doesn’t cut through your euphoric afterglow at all; Krauser’s disapproval is too familiar to blink twice at even now; if anything, it’s casual coming from him. You even weakly smile until he speaks again with a touch more bitterness in his tone.

“You two look just pathetic.”

Blinking away the stale tears that cling to your eyelashes, Krauser sharpens into view. He’s collected himself completely in the time you’ve been drifting away.

And there you are in stark contrast, completely naked on the floor, your limp limbs in a tangled heap wherever gravity took them, your hair a mess of sweat and frizz— and the most indecent sight of all, the cum drying on the corners of your mouth and leaking out of your swollen folds. 

Leon lies beside you in an equally tragic state: his hair is a disaster, his trousers are loose around his knees, and a final drop of cum leaks from the tip of his sore cock.

No wonder Krauser’s displeased. There’s truly no world where he’d be glad to see his top recruits looking half dead in front of him, especially when he somehow managed to be so unaffected himself.

“Get up before you stain the mat.”

You and Leon are all creaks and groans as you pull yourselves to your knees, not yet daring to try your feet and instead crawling to find your clothes. You fight against your lightheadedness as you sit upright to redress, trying to do it quickly before Leon’s cum spills out of you and onto the floor. You can feel how much there is, and you don’t know if you’ll have the strength to clean it up, which you’d surely be made to if it did.

But in the minutes you have somewhat to yourself, your throat feels tight all over again. You feel like you’re back at the beginning in the exact same predicament as before: How the hell are you supposed to look Leon in the eyes? 

When you’re finally dressed, you stumble to your feet, and you hardly look at him at all before you both shy away. But as you stand in the room on wobbly legs, you find a new predicament, too: What the hell happens now?

You’ve stumbled into completely uncharted territory, and you have only your major to guide you. So on pure routine, you both look to your superior to tell you what to do next. 

It has to be the most hilariously pathetic attempt at standing in formation ever, the way he looks incredulously at the two of you as he shrugs on his olive green overshirt, pausing at the sight.

“You’re both so fucking clueless” he grumbles and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Hit the showers and go to bed.”

You stumble shame-faced through yes sir’s and turn heel to the gymnasium door, and your mouth goes dry with each new step. 

That’s it then..? You have to pretend it never happened without so much as an acknowledgment? You half wish Krauser had shaken you by the shoulders and told you what to think as usual, for him to set right your spinning head.

“Hey,” Krauser calls just before you reach the door. You both look back and wait, your hearts beating in your chest, but he only looks at you. “I don’t like rumors. I better not hear any more. Understood?”

He stares you down sharply with a lift in his brow. You inhale deeply as you catch his drift. “Y-yeah. Understood, sir.”

Krauser calms and nods once, then turns away. You take the opportunity to slip out of the door.

The walk back to the barracks is painfully quiet; neither of you know what to say. Your bootsteps are the only sound echoing in the dim halls, and your heartbeat is the only thing in your ears.

It isn’t a long walk before you reach the fork between the male and female barrack halls. Your steps slow until they reach a halt and Leon lingers behind you. You turn halfway to face him, but nothing comes of it; you both can only stand there with open mouths that don’t say anything.

You stiffly turn away, but then Leon speaks your name quietly and brokenly, and everything unspoken is left in the ellipses. He gulps once and feels his dry tongue cling to the roof of his mouth as he opens it to speak, and a shaky voice comes out that echoes your very same need.

“Tell me it’s okay.”

You turn around and finally manage to look at him, and it cracks your heart wide open. He looks so much like he did when you’d both arrived here, a scared young man who arrived fresh from the horrors he’d witnessed, who’d do anything to keep everything in one piece despite how much he himself needs saving. 

It’s the face you’d first fallen for and fell for all over again as it sharpened into the fierceness he had now. The same face that held you impossibly close just moments ago. 

You fall all over again and crash into his chest at terminal velocity, clinging to him with all the energy you have left in you to give.

“It’s okay.”

You hold each other there in the hall for a long time. Neither of you know what you’ll wake up to in the morning or how the hell you’ll pretend everything is normal, but right now, you don’t need to. You just need to hold each other long enough to know that the other one is there.

When you slowly pull away, your fingertips linger over each other’s before you finally break apart. And with one last breathless look into his blown blue eyes, you head towards the women’s showers.

You squint in the fluorescents and avoid your reflection. You step into the shower while it’s still running cold and let the tension wash away in the water as it grows to a calming steam.

You wash yourself with purpose— it’s well past one in the morning and you don’t have sleep to spare— but your fingers linger between your legs as you clean where you feel the most dirty. Feeling the slick slip of cum against your sore, swollen lips as it commingles with the suds, you smile.

⌖⌖⌖

The next morning, everything seems to scream. The wake alarm. Your muscles. Your head from three fleeting hours of sleep. Your thoughts as you remember the source of your freshly aching body.

The very beginnings of bruises bloom in greens and purples under your skin: on your wrists, your hips, and the distinct shape of fingers on your bicep. Your neck is sore and your cheek is tender, nevermind your throat and between your legs. As nervous as the evidence of last night being visible makes you, there's no cause to worry about the curious glances your comrades give you. It really does just look like you got your ass beat in combat, which is... true enough, you suppose.

Still, you can hardly look anyone in the eyes without your blood feeling hot about the new secret that you're keeping, but you don’t have many chances to.

First formation comes in place of breakfast. You’ve never stood so straight in your life; it wouldn’t be a good day to have Krauser pick on you. Definitely not.

Every time the major’s eyes glance over you, goosebumps prick your skin. You have no idea what he thinks about last night’s events, and so you dread his reprimands more than ever.

And when your eyes catch against Leon's, although you catch a hundred different things in his gaze, disappointment isn't one of them, and it's comforting somehow to know that he's feeling the same dizzying mix of emotions as you without having to ask.

But somehow, despite your cloudy thoughts, your aching body, and the ever-present signs of sleep deprivation, you excel.

And so the day goes on without incident as far as USSTRATCOM goes. You’re well ready for sleep by the time you’re relieved for the night, but you stay awake until you know everyone is asleep.

You take your time standing up from your cot, careful not to make it creak or shuffle the cheap blankets noisily. You watch your bunk mate snore as you tip-toe to the door in your socks. Boots would sound too heavy, and besides, you aren’t going far.

Your heart races as you scamper to the men’s wing and look for the right door, but you can’t seem to find it. Maybe it’s farther down than you thought? You turn back down the hall with knit brows to check the room numbers again. No dice. Maybe you passed it already.

You turn again and freeze as a doors opens and none other than Leon walks out.

There’s still no disappointment in his face, though. This is full-on despair. His face drops and his shoulders sink before he stammers and looks away, ducking back inside his room like he’s the one who shouldn’t be here.

“I’m, uh… sorry, I’ll just—“

“Leon, wait...!"

You cross the distance in seconds flat and catch his wrist just as he’s halfway enveloped back in the dark of his room.

“I… I came here to see you.”

Leon is seated on their bed, hair still wet from the shower, sleeves rolled up and arms bare in one of his favourite shirts. His wife is slowly kneading up and down the length of his forearms. He sucks in a sharp inhale of pleasure as her fingers squeeze with firm pressure, tension finally beginning to release from tight muscle. Her palms are warm even through the fresh bandages on him, Leon still feels the comforting weight of a home-cooked dinner in his stomach, and he smells the scent of her shower gel, fresh and clean on his skin. He slips into comfortable drowsiness.

“Leon?”

“Hmm?”

She continues to expertly knead his forearms. “Can I…” Her brows pinch then relax. “Can I ask you about something you said?”

Leon turns to her to see that she has an unusually serious look on her face. He sits up straighter against the headboard. “Yeah. Of course.” 

“You told Sherry that you still think about Raccoon City every single day.”

His wife feels his arms tense beneath her fingers. She doesn’t miss the way he suddenly forgets to breathe. She rests her hand on his chest, trying to ground him in the moment. “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. You can always let me know if it’s too much.”

“No, it’s alright.” Leon shakes his head, trying to slip out of the grip of an intrusive thought. “Yeah. I do.”

They sit in mutual silence for a while, the gentle rustle of fabric the only sound as she continues to rub soothing circles over his chest.

“It’s not just about being unable to save the city, is it?” she observes. Leon watches her take his left hand, her head tilting and eyes glazing as she’s drawn into deep thought. His grip tightens around hers while her thumb brushes their wedding band, turning the silver ring around his finger, a habit she formed over many years of holding his hand.

“You say the cop inside you died that day.” 

“He did.” Leon’s voice is hushed.

“And… you’re still grieving him. That life. Those uncomplicated convictions and beliefs. The state of things before you realised… unspeakable, endless horrors inhabit the same world you do.”

“There’s no going back.”

She looks up at him, eyes soft. She hears what he’s trying to say. She hears Leon shrugging off pain and suffering and sentimentality, the way he always does, because he doesn’t know how to function otherwise. “No. There isn’t.”

She waits for Leon’s breath to slow before she continues. “You don’t like grieving him.”

He shrugs. What’s the point?

“Do you still hope for that life?”

The truth is, Leon doesn’t really know. That life has been lost to him for 28 years, and with every passing moment, the distant daydream of simpler times recedes under the oppressive shadow of a neverending nightmare. Rookie Leon didn’t know anything about the world, after all. What would he have known about leading a peaceful life? Would it ever have existed, even without the outbreak? Maybe that dream was too grand to begin with. It never could’ve survived.

Then she says, “I do, you know. Sometimes.”

“Do what?” Leon asks, surprised by the direction of her thoughts.

“Think. Daydream. About rookie Leon.”

“Huh.” Leon blinks. “You’ve never told me that.”

She gives a small self-conscious huff. “I mean, it’s a bit weird to talk about, isn’t it? ‘Baby, I spent two hours today thinking about past you. Anyway, dinner’s ready.’”

Leon finds himself chuckling despite the sombre conversation. “It is a little strange to hear that you daydream about 21-year-old me.”

She bumps his shoulder. “Oh come on. Not like that.”

“Then like what?”

“I’m not talking about 21-year-old Leon specifically.” 

Leon wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her in closer, feeling the weight in his chest lift slightly as his mind drifts from the ruins of Raccoon City. “22-year-old me then?”

“Ugh, no.” She snorts.

“Wow, ouch.”

“I was thinking about…” She grins, eyes sparkling with mirth. “40-year-old Detective Kennedy.”

Leon looks down at her in disbelief. “What?”

“Picture it. Detective Kennedy works in a small town police department.”

“And where’s this police department?”

“Alice Springs.” She responds, the answer instantaneous.

“Wha—you exiled me to Australia?” Leon gawks at her. “Go easy on me now, sweetheart. That’s cruel and unusual punishment, even for you.”

“Hear me out: it’s very far from the United States.”

“Yeah, and I’d be like a fish out of water.”

“Second: it’s got a population of about 30,000 people. It’s a smaller community: you’ll probably get to know the people around you pretty well. They’ll get to know you as that goody-goody cop who’s actually really good at giving directions, being kind, and de-escalating difficult situations.”

“Hey. I’m not goody-goody.”

“You are. Third: yes, Alice Springs is remote, but it’s still connected to broader society. You’ll get that nice and quiet life, natural scenery, but actually be in civilization rather than in isolation.”

“How remote are we talking again?”

“And finally,” she frowns a little, the words coming out slower this time. “It’s 1,500 kilometres from both Darwin and Adelaide.”

“That’s over… 900 miles, is that right? Why does that matter?”

“Because… that means it’s much more difficult for biohazards to spread and take root there.”

Leon’s hand stops moving up and down her back.

“... Jesus. You’ve really thought about this, huh?” He rubs the back of his neck, finding himself startled at the prospect.

“Of course. Who do you think I am? Anyway,” Her voice turns light again. “Detective Kennedy has two dogs, a very expensive custom bike, and–”

Leon nods. “Okay, that I can manage.”

“– a minivan–”

Leon protests. “Why the minivan?”

“... because he has five children.” She finishes with a serene smile.

“FIVE?” Leon repeats, louder than he intends.

“You seem like the productive sort. You know, good cop in the streets, bad cop in the sheets.”

Leon is too stunned to laugh. “That is… a lot of responsibility to put on my wife. Sweetheart, I didn’t know you had such ambitions–we probably should’ve discussed this before–”

She presses on, unperturbed. “He spends his free time riding that fancy bike, bushwalking, attending his kids’ soccer practices and recitals, and surprising his friends with how ruthless he is at board games.”

For a moment, Leon is rendered utterly speechless. After thirty seconds of recovery, he shakes his head in mock consternation. “I see. This is a joke to you. I thought you were supposed to want better things for me.”

“Oh baby, I do.” She closes her eyes, leans against his shoulder. Leon feels her weight soft and warm against him, and he knows she’s about to slip into a daydream. What he doesn’t expect, however, is her whispered invitation. “Come walk with me. Let’s go back for a bit. Okay?”

“What does that mean?” “Shhh.”

Leon dutifully hushes.

“It’s a warm summer’s day.” She says, in that low, soothing voice of hers. “When you breathe in the balmy summer air, there’s the nectar-sweet perfume of bottlebrush flowers filling your lungs. When you look out at the heat, you see that telltale shimmer over the asphalt. There’s red petals scattered bright and vibrant against the tar-black surface.”

She takes a breath. “But Leon Scott Kennedy is standing in the shade at his favourite coffee place.” 

“I’m a hipster in this one, aren’t I?”

“Leon, behave. He’s leaning against the shop window, enjoying the shade of the black-and-white striped awning. Lets himself take refuge from the heat for a while. He’s found a nice parking spot under a large tree: oh, he got real lucky that day. That’s the prime parking spot outside Beans and Blooms.”

“Christ. It is a hipster place.” Leon groans.

“It’s a cafe and florist concept, okay? Very whimsical. Now are you going to let me get on with it or not?”

“Fine.” He grumbles, tucking her closer to his side anyway.

“The vast canopy of the tree bows gracefully over your car, its boughs weighed down with dense clusters of fine leaves and red pepper berries. The branches drape and caress the glass of your windshield, and the crushed berries emit a mild, spicy fragrance. Outside Beans and Blooms, Leon sips his coffee: it’s so creamy and sweet.”

Her lips quirk in wry amusement. “He doesn’t think drinking black coffee is cool yet.”

“I never thought it was cool.” Leon says quickly.

“The ice cubes rattle in the cup; the plastic is cold against his hand. He presses his palm to the back of his neck and tries to ease the heavy summer heat. It’s lovely and cool and takes his mind off the 95-degree weather. He’s about halfway through his coffee. It’s really, really good today: even the milk seems to taste lighter and sweeter than he remembers. Got that hint of hazelnut syrup too, as a treat. Perhaps Joy was in a great mood today.”

“Joy?”

“She’s one of the two baristas there. You know her by name.”

“I’m a regular there already?”

“Mm-hm. Leon Scott Kennedy is a creature of habit. And his habit is having a morning and afternoon coffee. Also, their coffee prices aren’t too painful on a 21-year-old rookie’s wallet.”

Leon chimes in. “Somehow, I don’t think a hipster place like Beans and Blooms is serving up coffee at rookie-friendly prices.”

“They’re very anti-capitalist.” She grins. “Their dream is to seize the means of coffee production and make caffeine accessible to the masses.”

Leon snorts. “That’s a dream alright.”

“And then: a dog barks as he starts to head towards his car. It bounds up to him, tugging its exasperated owner behind it. You hear its nails clicking on the pavement, hear the way it pants because boy, it’s hot out.”

“What’s the dog’s name?”

She giggles, eyes still closed. “The owner says his name is Pancake.”

Leon mouths the name to himself. Pancake. Silly but sweet, probably like the dog himself.

“Golden retriever. Big and friendly, eager to please. He’s got a gloriously glossy coat: obviously well-brushed, and a tail that’s wagging a mile a minute. He just about jumps on you because he’s intent on licking your face.”

She lets out a happy sigh. “Leon thinks he’ll get one someday.”

Leon does like dogs.

“Leon brushes the pepper berries off his windshield before he pulls the door open and slides into the driver’s seat. The leather is still blissfully cool from the shade and doesn’t scorch the back of his legs. He checks his phone: no work messages or emails.”

“That sounds nice.” Leon mutters under his breath.

“He worked hard today. His coworkers thanked him as he walked out the door. They told him that he did well de-escalating that domestic dispute earlier this afternoon. Everything else can wait until Monday morning. For tonight, he’s going to go home, take a nice, hot shower, change into that cosy hoodie he bought with his first pay check, and have a great, big dinner.”

It occurs to Leon how resolutely mundane her storytelling is.

“Leon cruises along the route he knows by heart. As he approaches his apartment block, he sees someone wave to him.”

“Who is it?” 

“Mr Darwin lives two blocks down. You helped find his son in the park the other day and he’s been very grateful.”

“... oh.” Leon swallows.

“And Mrs Maya says she’ll bring you some fresh-baked bread tomorrow, because you rescued her cat from a tree yesterday morning.” She pauses, chuckles to herself. “You don’t say no. You do like bread.”

“Her daughter giggles when you pass by. She remembers the time you helped her parents fix their broken window. She’s probably whispered about you to her friends. They rolled their eyes at her because they thought she was being corny.”

“Hey. Stop giving me teenage admirers.” Leon gently pokes her temple.

“Leon.” She sighs. He can just hear the eye roll in her tone, even with her eyes closed. “You’re 21. She’s just started her first year in college and she’s home for the summer. Can I continue?”

Leon nods while pressed against her cheek.

“Leon steps into his apartment and straight into the bathroom for that long, hot shower. He changes into his hoodie: it’s navy blue with a skull and wings embroidered on the back. Wonderfully soft and cosy, perfect now that the night is getting cool. He’s going to make dinner.”

“What’s for dinner?” Leon perks up.

“Buttered noodles.”

“Really? I don’t deserve a little protein after working hard?” Leon sighs. 

“We agree you worked hard today. Who even has the energy for cooking? Also it’s comfort food.”

“I suppose rookies aren’t paid well.”

“Leon brings the water to a boil on his stove, salts it generously, drops the entire bag of fettuccine into the pot.”

“Damn. I’m really hungry.”

“Didn’t we say you worked hard?”

“That’s fair.” Leon concedes.

“He sets the cooked pasta aside and melts the butter into the pot. It’s that good butter too: rich, creamy, and smells absolutely sinful. That’s what Leon splurged his grocery money on this week. His stomach rumbles just breathing in that buttery fragrance.”

“The pasta goes back into the pot with some pasta water. And then parmesan falls like snow on his mountain of noodles.” She gestures with her hands to indicate a generous portion. “He finishes with black pepper, maybe a touch of salt. The noodles are piping hot but he eats them right out of the pot, burns his mouth a little. They’re perfectly al dente, of course.”

“Leon slouches on the couch with his hard-earned pot of buttered noodles and thinks about tomorrow.”

“What’s happening tomorrow?” Leon can’t help but ask.

“He’s a bit nervous. He’s pretty excited too, honestly. He asked someone out on a date, you see. She was cute and smiled at him like she thought he was handsome.”

She pauses, smiles wickedly to herself. Her voice is a silky, slightly mischievous murmur as she tips her head up, bringing her lips closer to his ear. “Because he is.”

He coughs, feeling suddenly overheated at the surprise compliment.

“And she looked at him like he was a winning lottery ticket when he asked her out.”

“They’re going out to that Italian place tomorrow: Bella Alice. Leon asked his coworkers at the station for ideas. He’s new, after all. He wants to take her somewhere nice. The food’s supposed to be good. And Leon knows they’re going to have a lovely time. Knows it the way he can count on the sun to rise, red and hot over the MacDonnell Ranges tomorrow.”

“Because he gets the feeling that even if he could only afford to take her to McDonald’s…” she slows her voice even more. “She’d still get excited over the most mid milkshakes ever.”

“Why?”

“Because Leon Kennedy asked her out. She feels like she won at life.”

“Leon doesn’t know she’ll be his wife in two years. Doesn’t know that they’re going to spend a lot of time laughing on park benches and picnic mats, telling bad jokes, cooking in his kitchen, and hanging out in his car every Friday evening, when he pulls off Larapinta Drive, to where the buildings are mercifully low and the sunsets are always beautiful.”

Here, she stops. She doesn’t seem to notice Leon has gone quiet too. Somewhere along the way, those minute details have settled over his shoulders like a warm blanket: strangely familiar yet foreign, hopeful yet melancholic, creating a sharp, lingering pang for a life that exists nowhere but her daydreams. Until now, he hadn’t known it was possible to miss a place you’d never been.

Leon nudges her as he comes back to reality. “Hey. You still here with me?” “Mm.” She nuzzles his shoulder, humming under her breath. “Don’t wanna wake up yet.”

Leon looks down at her, at the way she’s gripped his arm, how she’s rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. He thought, perhaps, that she was only indulging in this idyllic daydream to soothe him. But her eyes are still closed, and Leon realises in that moment: she really does think about this. Perhaps more than she’ll ever tell him. Her eyes move beneath her lids, like she’s seeing him pass her in her dreams, again and again, always crossing paths with her. He realises that whatever she narrated could only have been partial, an imperfect window into her inner world.

“It’s all very mundane, isn’t it?” His voice comes out a tad huskier than he anticipates.

“That it is.” She takes a brief pause before she continues. “But is that so bad?”

“No.” Leon says firmly. “No, it’s not. It’s… a beautiful dream.”

Leon finds himself wondering what exactly she’s seeing, the vivid details of a life she’s rendered in glorious technicolour within the theatre of her own mind. He wonders if, in her head, she’s putting two of their kids to bed while he fusses with the other three. He wonders about what she says to him as they slip into the kitchen, exhausted but laughing, sharing a kiss before he steals a sip from her wineglass. He wonders if she’ll swat at him, pour him another, or share her wine. He hopes she’ll share.

He wonders what else she’s dreamed of for him.

Leon rests his hand behind her head, tucking her into the crook of his neck. “That girl in the daydream. My wife. That’s you, right?”

Her eyes open. She hums, noncommittal. “Who can say?”

“You mean you don’t know? You invested so much into my dream-life.” 

“All I know is that…” She shrugs, wraps her arms around herself. “She makes him really happy. It’s very nice.”

Leon sees the faint shadow of melancholy on her face. Of course it’s you, he thinks. Who else could it be?

surprisingly enough, he doesn’t order those bitter, black coffees like all the other cops do, no. he takes a hazelnut cappuccino with chocolate shavings and whipped cream.

he begged you to keep it a secret one time when a familiar latino cop was with him, and he knew damn well that he’d be teased if they found out he liked a "girl" coffee, which didn’t make sense, so you laughed. leon loved making you laugh at every ridiculous thing he said, his heart fluttered at the sound of your voice each time.

"of course, leon, anything for you." you said sweetly, and his cheeks reddened. "now, ears out, officer kennedy. i’ll call your name when your order’s ready." leon was still there, blushing like an idiot until he snapped out. "ah, yeah. thank you." he smiled back, lower lip wavering, before he sat on one of the cushions.

he’s so finished.

he groaned into his hands. great going, leon. you spaced out in front of the girl you like, he thinks. he just gets so easily nervous, then entranced. it’s the worst combination granted to him from god.

eventually, a few minute passes and he hears your voice again. "leon kennedy!" you yelled softly. he walked up to you to grab his order. "thank you." he smiled, taking the cup from you.

"buddy, you are not slick." your coworker told you, poking your blushing cheeks. "oh my god, tristan. shut up." you told him while grinning hopelessly like you had no future, and he laughed at you as always.

unfortunately, leon could not hear your conversation and became unwillingly jealous. he hated it because he knew that you weren’t his, but he wished otherwise. he sighed and took a sip from his coffee.

suddenly, he was craving a donut. so he went back to the front to order one. sadly, it was the boy you were talking to that came to the cashier instead of you, disappearing to the back. "where’s uh…" he tried to ask, feeling shy. "oh, [name]’s on break. don’t worry." he explained with a smile.

soon, his chocolate glazed donut was ready. it was strange because it usually took less time to bag one donut, but he couldn’t complain. donuts are so good. (gng is this starbucks? probably.)

he took it out of the paper bag and he was just about to throw it away, when he saw something written in sharpie on the bag.

"i know what you are. here’s her number : XXX-XXX-XXXX"

he looked at the barista behind the counter, and all he did was wink and use his thumb to point to the back, clicking his tongue. leon had never felt so embarrassed with his crush being somewhat known, but he never felt happier.

…

"yo." you looked up to tristan, grinning eerily. you looked at him before deadpanning. "…bro, what did you do?" you asked sighing. he was always up to something. if he was up to nothing, then it wasn’t tristan at all. "i gave your guy your number." he told you happily.

you froze.

"what?"

"lol, deal with it. the pining was so fucking painful, i had to do something." he explained. "bitch, you make it sound like an obligation! tristan, you little pube!" you covered your face with your hands, trying not to strangle the boy in front of you.

you wanted to dig a hole up right now, lay there, let tristan cover the hole and rot there for the rest of your days. "hey, he was blushing and shit, and he kept looking at your handwriting like the fucking bible." he said, poorly trying to defend himself.

"well, if you receive a message, thank me." he said all too knowingly.

coincidentally, leon did send a message the exact same time he said that. you never smiled as much as now. "fuck you tristan, thank you."

03.25.26 , 22:40

taglist : @aerisellesuchi

Unfortunately, you agreed to the situation when you were in that psychedelic limbo of life–that age where you can make a stupid mistake and completely justify it one night, then wake up the next morning with a year’s worth of wisdom just plopped into your brain. Perhaps there really is a switch that goes off when you hit a certain age. You can be totally adamant that you know what you want your life to look like and know exactly who you are and want to be, then you blow out the candles on your birthday cake and the smoke singes your nostrils on the way up to your brain and poof! 

Maybe you do want children of your own. Maybe you do want a man in your life who never makes you second-guess his everlasting, undying, patriotic pledge type of love for you. Maybe it was out there if only you had given it another chance and just waited.

But you had one failed relationship and the rest of your life went down the drain with it, or so you thought. One bastard cheats because you were too sad to let him between your legs, you return the ring, you lose your home, and your life is over. The only thing left for you to do is enter a marriage of convenience with a man you hardly know and to take care of a child that isn’t yours.

You love her like she is, though.

“Whatchu thinking about?” 

She’s too astute. Nothing slips under her radar. At four years old, the kid is far too advanced for her own good. Maybe she gets it from her father. Maybe not…

“Could ask you the same thing. You haven’t touched your dinner, missy.” That pasta she begged you to make with the special white sauce she treats like ambrosia of the gods. It comes from a glass canister and is typically on sale at the grocery store. You hope she’s as easy to please when she’s sixteen and wants a car, or when she wants to turn down a full-ride scholarship to go to follow her friends to a different college.

Ella picks up the stem of the fork, just twirling the utensil around the bowl of sauce and soggy wheat. “I’m not hungry.” 

“Would you eat a powdered donut?” 

Her eyes light up, baby blues glistening with joy. She gets that same look in her eyes that her father does whenever he sees her smile. “Yes.” 

“Then that means you’re hungry.” 

You’re sure it doesn’t, and that trick is usually told the other way around with a much healthier alternative like an apple or a protein bar, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. 

“Oh,” she says, dimmed eyes falling to her uneaten dinner.

“Eat up.” 

Ella looks up at you, and you arch a brow back. You had almost convinced her to take a bite when the sound of a lock clicking echoes through the corridor. Her ears prick up and she slides off the barstool, tiny feet carrying her at a superhuman pace out of the kitchen and toward the front door.

“Daddy,” you hear her shout, the twinkling sound followed by Leon’s voice greeting his daughter. After three years of living in this house, being a mother to his child in all but name, being his wife in nothing but, you still aren’t comfortable joining in on their exchanges of affection. Greeting him at the door with a kid between you was probably something he imagined doing with his wife one day, not with you. It seemed intimate of a moment to involve yourself in, already feeling like an intruder. 

The two of you lived separate lives, the only overlap being Ella and the house, which you rarely shared. He was always gone, snatched up by work, sometimes for weeks, other times for months. Even then, your bedrooms were separated by a long hallway, a pair of doors that were always shut, and two sets of locks that were always turned. Romantic. 

Leon didn’t know anything about you when the two of you met that evening. Claire had taken the baby for the night so he could try out the group therapy she had recommended–a session specifically for those that are grieving the loss of loved ones. He knew she wouldn’t let up unless he went. Plus, he fit the bill. 

You did too. A girl whose life had just about crumbled to pieces in the span of a year, losing her parents, her fiancé, the house she was living in, her car. A real mess, he thought, when he first saw you furrowing your brows at the circle of empty chairs in the church basement. Your hair was wild, windswept, and tucked behind your ears, your aflame from the whistling winter chill, your nose dripping from the cold, chin tucked into a scarf wrapped haphazardly around your neck. 

Before you could ask if you were in the right place, expecting to walk into a room full of other dumpster fires, all huddled in a circle sobbing about their grief, the same as him, he told you the fact of the matter. 

“You got the wrong time too, huh?” He was already sitting in one of the chairs, legs spread, elbows on his knees as he watched you approach, the rubber soles of your boots squelching on the lacquered floor. 

“What?” You asked. 

He checked his watch, a chunky black timepiece on his wrist. “It starts at seven-fifteen, not six-thirty.” A tidbit of information he found out after also walking into an empty room, walking back out to double-check the flyer tacked to the door. Sure enough…

You chuckled in disbelief as you fished a pair of mittens out of your coat pockets, sliding the knit accessories back onto your shaky hands. “You’ve got to be kidding.” And maybe you were about to cry. Leon remembers how the whites of your eyes suddenly got glassy and your chin began to tremble.

“I’m kind of known for my jokes, but this unfortunately isn’t one of them.” 

Another laugh. It was a more genuine sound than the other. You took another step toward the circle, approaching an empty chair, your hands finding the back of it as you leaned forward. “You know, this is probably a sign.” 

“How’s that?” He leaned against the metal back of his seat, folding his arms across his chest. 

“I didn’t really want to come to this thing, but my friend said she’d pay me twenty dollars if I showed up. Maybe this is my sign to leave.” You shrugged. “I can tell her I showed up at the wrong time, brain fog, ya’ know?” 

He huffed. 

“But I do need that twenty dollars, I guess.” Your eyes fell to the ground and you smiled, another lifeless chuckle leaving your chest as you attempted to contain it by sinking your teeth into your bottom lip. “What do you think I should do?” 

Leon just shrugged and tilted his head. “How bad do you need that twenty dollars?” 

“A better question is how bad do I need therapy.” 

His gaze faulted to the floor between his boots, then back up to you. “This isn’t therapy.” 

“Then what is it?” 

“Just a place for people to vent and cry and talk about how sad they are and how miserable life is.” 

Your shoulders shuddered as you let out a humored breath. “That’s my cue to leave.” 

You did leave that night, but the next week, at seven o’clock, fifteen minutes before the session that both of you were obviously planning to attend, he ran into you at a coffee shop down the street from the church. The two of you decided to mutually forgo the group-cry, and settled in a booth to converse one-on-one instead. 

He told you about his wife, who passed unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm six weeks after bringing their daughter, Eleanor into the world. How his job is as inconsistent as it is dangerous, and that he’s thankful for the bereavement leave he’s been so graciously (the sarcasm was strong there) given so he can take care of his infant, though he still has no idea what he’s doing. He mentioned something about her waking up every two hours, screaming and thrashing, after a month or two of sleeping peacefully through the entire night, to which you recommended a special trick that never once let you down. You had nannied for a family to put yourself through college and knew all the secrets–a real baby whisperer. 

In turn, you vented to him about your parents’ untimely death, how much of an asshole your fiancé turned out to be, and how stupid you were to live with him and not save up for a rainy day in the case that he found someone else and kicked you out to move her in. Nowhere to live, no family to rely on, and a job that hardly pays enough for groceries but has connected you with friends that have shown you a great amount of kindness in letting you crash on their couch for the time being. 

The two of you were alike in your desperation, among other things. It wasn’t long before you offered to help him take care of his daughter if he gave you a place to stay. He needed help, and wanted his daughter to have a strong mother figure in her life, and you needed a pillow. The marriage was just a formality, to stop questions from being asked. To provide some sort of normalcy to his child’s life. And because of that desire, none was left for either of you. 

And Leon still can’t quite forgive himself for that. 

“Hey.” 

“Hi.”

This is how most of your conversations go, though the two of you have lived together for over three years and you both wear rings on your fingers that presuppose a life of marital bliss, mutual exchanges of comfort, and lifelong affection. You signed up for it, quite literally, scribbling your name on a marriage certificate after outlining the terms and conditions in what seemed more like a brainstorming session in a conference room than a proposal. But perhaps, somewhere in your grief-dumbed mind and beneath the shimmering innocence of your youth, you thought things would change. 

You truly believed being a live-in nanny-slash-stand-in-mother to a man with the emotional vulnerability of a brick wall who wasn’t home for long enough to notice that you changed your hair and painted the living room walls a different color, would fall in love with you. He’d go from touching your elbow–at the most–to exploring every inch of your body while the two of you made sweet, sweaty love in a shared bed. He’d have your picture on his bedside table instead of a depiction of his late wife admired and prayed to nightly like a shrine on an altar. 

“She didn’t eat dinner?” His brows furrow as he catches sight of the untouched bowl on the kitchen island. Ella took off to the play room upstairs, promising to return once she found the thing she wanted to show her dad. You can hear the pitter-patter of her feet above your head as she navigates the room. 

“Nope,” you say, watching as he pulls out a low ball glass and a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard, pouring himself a shot, downing it in one toss before setting the cup in the sink, turning on the faucet to rinse it out. “She said she wasn’t hungry. But to be honest, I think she filled up on the snacks I gave her after her ballet class. Rookie mistake.” 

He chuckles, then glances at you, leaning over the sink, his arms extended, the heels of his palms supporting him on the marble counter. He’s wearing the bead bracelet you helped Ella make for him, a string of multicolored shapes and “Best Dad” spelled out in white blocks with black letters. “You got any plans tonight?”

You almost laugh. When the two of you were setting the parameters of this…arrangement…he made sure you knew you were always free to explore other options outside the marriage for whatever needs you may have. You tried once or twice to pick up men at bars or clubs when you went out with friends, but it never felt right, not when you knew Leon was back at home, despite the fact that he wasn’t waiting up for you. 

So you’re telling me I can see other men?

If that’s what you need, then yeah, I’m not gonna stop you. This won’t be physical, so if you want to get that from someone else, that’s fine. 

And what about you? Will you sleep with other women? 

I’m not sleeping with anyone. 

“No,” you say. You haven’t answered that question positively in almost a year. “You?” 

He hasn’t either.

“No.” Leon shakes his head.

You wonder how much longer he can continue on like this–a grown man, obviously still virile and healthy, without any physical or emotional intimacy. Doesn’t he crave it? Or has he long turned those feelings off, having had and lost them in the same decade?

It happened once, a complete system failure that neither of you have spoken a breath of since. Ella was young, only just having switched from sleeping in the bassinet by your bed to the crib in her room, and you and Leon had just recently exchanged vows at the courthouse. That night, he had come home from an overseas assignment, posture slacking with wounds up and down his back and sides that you tended to with inexpert care, polishing them with salve and bandaging them with gauze and medical tape.  

His arms wrapped around your waist as he hung his head down and cried. 

I can’t do it anymore. 

And he didn’t speak for the rest of the night save for a few muffled grunts and restrained huffs as he thrusted into you with the conviction of someone who is trying not to feel. It was awkward. He was tense the whole time, leaving your bedroom after he cried her name as he finished, never to mention it again. Then, he left for three months for, what you later found out, was an assignment he volunteered for, some sort of self-flagellation to rid his body of the guilt bubbling inside it. 

“You should get out more. I worry about you being cooped up in here all day.” 

You shrug. “I get out plenty.” 

You drive her to and from preschool, run all the errands, take her to all her activities. That’s not ‘getting out’.” 

“No, that’s being a parent,” you say matter-of-factly, folding up a dish cloth to drape over the oven rail. You worry for a moment that calling yourself that would be overstepping in some way, not technically a parent, not even really a step-parent in all capacities. But Leon just nods solemnly, a thin-lipped smirk at the corner of his mouth as his eyes fall to the floor. Then they rise back up to meet your own. 

“And you’re good at it.” He turns around to now lean his seat against the counter, folding his arms. “I’m grateful for what you do and I know it doesn’t leave room for much else. But, I’m worried about you, and I don’t know, maybe you should take some time for yourself this weekend. Get out on the town. Tomorrow’s Saturday, I’m not working. I’ll watch her.” 

“Get out on the town?” You repeat, raising a brow. “To do what?” 

“Whatever you want. Get your nails done, go shopping, go get a…whatever they do at spas. Up to you. I feel bad keeping you here without–” He cuts himself off, voice trailing into nothingness. Without…paying you? That’s one of the many intricacies of this situation. He gives you room and board, leaves you and Ella wanting nothing, providing you two with everything you could need or want. And yet, as satisfying as that would be to a mother taking care of her own child, you’re less of that and more of a nanny that should be paid by the hour. But you never asked to be put on his payroll, nor desire it now. You love Ella as though she’s your own flesh and blood, and compared to how you were living before, Leon’s little house in the suburbs is a palace. 

You tilt your head, rolling the idea around back and forth between the walls of your brain. “No point in getting a manicure…or buying new clothes,” you say as you gesture to the marker stains around your cuticles and the white drips of pancake batter still on your shirt from breakfast this morning. He chuckles. “Plus, I promised Ella we’d go to the park tomorrow morning, and build a pillow fort in the living room. You can come if you want to.” 

“To the park? Or are you just enlisting my help in the construction of your fort?” 

“Both?”

There’s something so revitalizing about a Spring morning. Dewdrops coat the blades of grass that tickle your feet, half-way to bare now that the weather permits sandals. Mornings are bright, not too hot, with just enough warmth from the sun to cut the breeze that turns bitter and biting in the shade. 

It’s Saturday, and the park is bustling with smiles and the twinkling sounds of joyful children, running on the playground, their giddy feet carrying them across mulch and concrete. 

Packing Ella in the car wasn’t difficult, not when she was released from the shackles of school for a couple days, her seatbelt promising fun and whimsy, not the four walls of her classroom. She doesn’t hate school. In fact, she likes it, and does really well, but there’s nothing a kid wants to do less than spend eight hours a day, five days a week, being told what to do, even if they enjoy it.

So, weekends are special. They’re filled with trips to the park, the museum, the science center. And this Saturday is especially wonderful because it’s her father in the front of the car, not just you, driving her to a day of play. 

In the house, she picked out her outfit, dressed herself, attempted to negotiate with you over her bringing a toy to the park, and then calmed herself down when you told her ‘no’. 

“They’ll get dirty,” Leon said as he walked into her bedroom, taking the stuffed animal and doll from her hands and setting them down reverently on the dresser. “Or you’ll lose them, and that won’t be fun for any of us.” He rolled his eyes with you, and you laughed. 

“Are you coming with us?” Ella asked him as you walked her through the steps to tying her shoes. Almost. The bunny looks more like a lopsided elephant with one ear, but those overachieving knots aren’t going anywhere. 

Leon turns his gaze to you. “If that’s alright?” 

“Of course.” 

Ella didn’t stop babbling the entire car ride, talking a big game about how she was going to do the monkey bars all by herself, and go down the big slide that scared all the other kids. Leon just nodded along, feeding her bravery with reassurances. Little did he know, he would be enlisted in going down said slide with her, and be the one to hold her up while she swung from the bars. 

The playground is bustling when the two of you arrive, walking through the gate, immediately finding a place to sit down as Ella bolts toward the see-saw. Leon settles onto the bench beside you, leaning back as he intently tracks his daughter’s form through the tinted lenses of his glasses while she navigates the park. He’s dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a dark gray, v-neck t-shirt, a pair of sunglasses folded on the neckline, pulling down to reveal a patch of skin just below his collarbone. You try not to look, but he catches you. 

At first, Leon makes a comment about the weather, and you politely respond, complimenting the sky in its clarity. Then, the conversation slowly shifts to Ella’s performance in school, how smart she already is even as a preschooler, him owing it all to you and the way you’ve brought her up to be so inquisitive, so curious and creative–his glittering compliments only ceasing when a woman approaches and interrupts. 

She stands in front of you both with her hip jutted, one hand resting above it, and once she gets close enough to take in the details of Leon’s face, and the hard-earned muscles that extend from his shirt, her expression softens, scowl growing into a smile. 

“Oh hi,” she says, not bothering to even glance out of the corner of her eye at you, gaze solely affixed to Leon beside you. She’s beautiful with long, dark hair that cascades down her back in perfectly groomed tendrils, and deliciously bronzed skin. A jealous thought races through your mind, and before you can dwell on it, Leon unfolds his arms and wraps one around your shoulders as casually as he would put his car in park. 

It sends a chill down your spine, cooling you off as the buttery sun warms your face. 

A flat ‘hello’ is all he gives in response. 

“Does the little blonde girl with braids and a pink shirt belong to you?” 

Your heart begins to race, thinking of all the ways she could have gotten hurt on the equipment, expecting to hear of a cracked skull or broken leg.

“Yes,” you and Leon reply in unison, and the woman’s attention is finally dragged to your face for only a fleeting second before she turns it back to your husband. 

“What’s going on?” 

She ignores you, extending a hand to Leon which he hesitantly shakes. “I should introduce myself. My name is Stephanie. My little boy is the one in the green hat over there.” Stephanie points across the mulch to a boy around Ella’s age playing especially viciously with the toy shovels in the sandbox, trying to bend the plastic tool in his hand as he kicks particles into the air. Leon asks her to get to the point in the nicest way possible. “Your daughter punched my son in the face.” 

“What?” 

“Yeah, right in the nose. Just thought I’d come over here to ask for an apology for my son. He’s pretty upset and in our house, we teach our kids to say ‘sorry’ when they hurt others, so it would send the wrong message to him if she didn’t say it.” 

“Did you witness this?” He asks. The woman shakes her head. 

“No, but my son isn’t a liar. He told me that she hit him right in the face.” 

“I’ll go talk to her,” you say to Leon, the two of you exchanging a glance that reads as a storm of both annoyance and undeniable responsibility. The woman seems like a stuck-up cunt, but your kid allegedly punched hers in the face and you’ve been backed into a corner.

Leaving Leon with Stephanie, you stand up from the bench, eyes immediately running across the playground, finally landing on Ella sitting on a swing behind the vast jungle gym. Her eyes are dry but the expression on her face is pure dejection, her sweet rosebud lips puckered into a frown, her blonde brows knit together as she studies the mulch beneath her feet. 

“Miss Eleanor Kennedy,” you croon, approaching with grace. She doesn’t look up from the ground as she listlessly holds onto the rails of the swing. “Would you mind telling me what happened with a certain boy in a green baseball cap?” Crouching down, you hold yourself up with a hand on the metal pole of the swingset, looking up at the face she has tilted toward the earth. 

She just shrugs, looking awfully adorable in her little jeans and sparkly ballet flats for someone with a mean hook (allegedly). 

“Did you hit that boy, Ella?” 

She finally looks at you, her big blue eyes wide. It’s so jarring how much she looks like Leon at this moment. “Yes.”

“Can you tell me why?”

She shakes her head, short, blonde pigtails flopping from side to side against the movement. 

“Well, you can tell me the details later, but right now, we need to go apologize to him.” You reach out a hand for her to grab, rising to standing to walk her over to the sandbox, where the boy and his mother stand. Ella gawks at your hand, her fire returning. 

“No way!” She jumps off the swing and stomps past you toward her father who is now heading to you both. That’s when you see it. A mark in a dotted circle near the nape of her neck, right in the sinew of her shoulder. A red, raw bite mark. 

“Leon, look,” you say, catching up to Ella, holding her still by the balls of her shoulders so you can inspect the mark, hoping that your eyes deceive you. He thins his eyes as he walks to your side, eyes honing in on what you’re now certain is a bite. 

“Little shit,” he hisses under his breath, shaking his head. He crouches down with a slight groan, holding his daughter’s hands in his. “Can you tell us who did this to you?” 

She points to the sandbox at the only boy there, running off any other children with his violent play. “He did.” 

“Did he bite you before or after you hit him?” You ask. She tilts her head up to look at you. 

“He pushed me down,” is all she gives. 

“Should we go talk to his mom about this? Sort this out?” You ask, turning your gaze to Leon. As he stands, he sighs, shoulders rising and falling beneath the breath. 

“No. Neither of us were there to see it, and apparently she wasn’t either, so we can’t know what really happened. Let’s just go home and get this bandaged up.” 

You place two cupped palms over Ella’s ears. “But he took a bite out of her, Leon. He can’t just get away with that. It drew blood.” You cringe looking down at the mark again, a few pieces of broken skin peeling.

He puts a light hand on your arm. “And she apparently hit him in the face.” 

You roll your eyes, crossing your arms. “And he pushed her,” you add in a mumble. 

He chuckles lightly. “Do you really think that woman will be rational about this? Look at her.” You follow his gaze to Stephanie, watching the two of you intently with narrowed eyes as her child kicks sand into her shoes. “If you go over there and try to talk things through, it might get out of hand, and something tells me she’s looking for a fight.” 

You relent with a long blink. “You’re right. Let’s just go.” With Ella in tow, you and Leon walk toward the gate, Leon stepping ahead to open it for you and Ella to pass through, almost to the finish line before a grating voice appears, approaching beside you. 

“Woah, woah, woah. Hey there. Yoo-hoo. Remember me?” 

You stop in your tracks, squeezing Ella’s hand before letting it go so she can walk toward her dad. “How could I forget?” You mutter, looking around for her son who is nowhere to be found, probably terrorizing some other defenseless child.

“Were you just going to walk away and ignore this?” 

“Look,” you start as Leon comes to your side. “Apparently your son both bit and pushed her, so let’s just call this even.” 

She scoffs, her mouth falling open as she puts two dramatic hands on her hips. “I think not. And do you even have any evidence of him ‘pushing’ and ‘biting’ her?” She asks with flamboyant air quotes. 

You could turn Ella around and show Stephanie the wound, but you hold her close instead. 

“Do you have evidence of her punching your son?” Leon asks. She stutters, spitting out a string of incoherent threats. 

“If he told me she punched him, then she punched him.” 

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Leon says, placing a hand on your back. “Let’s go. Have a good day, Stephanie,” he says with a quick lift and lower of his hand, dismissing the crazed loon in front of you as you bring Ella to your hip and start to walk away.

“My son is not a liar,” she shouts.

You glance over your shoulder. “Well neither is my daughter.” 

Leon wasn’t sure he had ever heard you call Ella your daughter, and he contemplated the tectonic shift that happened in his mind as he drove the two of you back home, watching as you picked at your nails and shook your knee until he pulled into the driveway. 

He stood silently in the door of the bathroom as he watched you disinfect the bite mark on her neck, which was a lot more shallow than either of you had expected, thankfully. The way your hands treated her with such care. How you cracked jokes and made her giggle while you swiped a bit of salve over the cut skin. When you pulled her into a bear hug, rocking her back and forth, after you placed a large bandage over the wound and kissed it better. 

He was sure he had been temporarily blinded over the past few years, only now regaining his sight to see you, the woman he took into his home both out of pity and necessity, as something far more than just a mother figure to his child, and a roommate who decorates his house with pretty things. 

Leon felt a latch move into place. A flip of a switch. He had experienced something similar in his twenties, right after the government sunk their nails into him and the second half of his life began, but nothing as strong as this. The complete shift in consciousness was jarring then, and it’s nearly twice as jarring now.

How much time has he wasted? 

“You sleeping in here tonight?” You ask in jest, crawling through the part in the curtains made from blankets, venturing further into the fort. There are still a few dolls and books scattered around the quilt-clad floor, which you move aside to recline on a pillow. 

He’s reclined on a flower-shaped pillow you snagged from Ella’s room, his hands clasped behind his head, the stretch pulling up the hem of his shirt to reveal the thinnest strip of stomach, the light dusting of hair atop it. “I might,” he says with a toothless smile, closing his eyes. “It’s actually pretty cozy.” 

As if to rectify the events of the morning, you and Leon spent all afternoon constructing one hell of a pillow fort for Ella to enjoy for all of fifteen minutes before she went upstairs to play with her dollhouse, wore herself out setting up and acting out a tea party with her dolls, and was too wiped to say ‘no’ to bedtime. She’s been snoozing for half an hour, and you finally were able to rip yourself away from watching the way her nose twitched as she dreamed. 

Instead, you now watch the rise and fall of Leon’s chest as the two of you lie side by side, looking up at the sheet hanging above, the shimmering lights and painted paper stars strung along them.

“Can I ask you a question?” 

You cut your eyes to him, tracing the line of his silhouette before he turns to meet you. “Shoot.”

“Are you…um…seeing anyone? Like, a boyfriend, or something?” 

You part your lips to speak, but instead, your mouth falls open in pure, unadulterated shock. Then, a maniacal cackle that comes straight from your gut. You glance over at Leon, his eyes affixed to you. “Are you serious?” 

He just shrugs, readjusting his head on the pillow, looking up at the ceiling of the fort. “I know we talked about this before and I said I wouldn’t mind if you did. Just thought I’d ask.” 

“No, I’m not seeing anyone, Leon. Are you?” 

“Oh, no, of course not,” he says quickly and then swallows, his gaze flickering around as he pinches his brows and narrows his eyes, searching the cotton walls as if the words he needs to say will be scribbled on them. “Do you want to?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

The room darkens as the sun sets, the candy-colored sky no longer seeping through the windows, and the lantern at the door of the fort glows orange, illuminating the sheet walls.

“Crazy day, huh?” Is all you think to say, to break through the deafening silence between you, immediately cringing as the words leave your mouth. 

“You’re telling me. I’d rather fight BOWs than go through that again.” 

You turn your head to look at him, the acronym as foreign to you as helicopter moms are to him. “What?” 

“Work stuff,” he says with a tilted laugh, waving a dismissive hand. 

“Oh, right.” 

You sigh and another wave of silence rolls through the tent, a cacophony of nondescript sounds happening past the pink cloth: the hum of the dishwasher, the light pitter-patter of rain tapping the window, the faint sound of Ella’s white noise machine upstairs. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

You turn your face to him, blinking yourself awake from what you’re sure was a dream, never having heard those words come from his lips, not certain he even owns them. Perhaps there’s cotton in your ears and you misheard. Perhaps he was speaking another language entirely. 

But before you can so much as inhale before asking him to clarify, he shakes his head, sitting up. “Sorry.” A breathy laugh leaves his chest. “I don’t know why I said that. I think I’m just exhausted.” He rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms, the act making a squeaky sound. “Gonna head upstairs.” And a quick ‘goodnight’.

You reach out to grab his arm, interrupting his movements to leave. “Wait, Leon.” He halts under your touch, pivoting slightly to glance over his shoulder. The poor man is tired–plagued with the kind of exhaustion that saws right through the bone. It’s splashed across his face like paint. There are puffy purple crescents beneath his eyes, lash line red and irritated, the glossy whites speckled with veins. And the creases between his brows, across his forehead, are deeper than they typically are, lending to the stress he’s been under recently. 

You lean forward, a hand raising to his cheek to caress his aging skin with your thumb. You’re positive you’ve never met a more beautiful man in your life, every feature on his face a perfect marriage of softness and masculinity. “Kiss me.” 

He nods, so slightly a tilt you almost miss it, but soon you’re not able to see anything at all, his face eclipsing your entire field of vision. He grabs your cheeks, pressing you deeper into him as he latches onto your lips. The first kiss is deep and slow, one languid movement, your teeth pressed together through flesh. When he pulls away to look at you, all you can see is the storm in his eyes, waves crashing against a rocky cliff within his pelagic irises. 

It’s an expression you’ve yet to see from him, something dark and utterly disastrous–something that promises a point of no return. 

This time it’s you who initiates, returning to his lips in a kiss that is far more frenzied and hungry than the one before. Four years of grief, of misery, of upheaval. Three-and-a-half of knowing Leon, being a part of his family, living in his house while you toe the line between so desperately wanting more and yet wanting to just disappear from his sight altogether. 

His tongue is needy and hot, pulling your own into a passionate tango of wanton desire. He moans into your mouth, his hands grabbing your waist, pulling you onto his lap in one swift movement. 

Instinctively, you begin grinding down on him, your hips moving back and forth, pussy throbbing as his hardened length is dragged against it. You purr in his ear, to which he responds with a grown, instantly flipping you over until your head is once again on a pillow and your back is flush to the floor. 

He kisses up and down your neck, traveling even further toward your collarbone, pulling at the neckline of your shirt to gain more uncharted territory across your skin. His lips soothe the burn from his facial hair, and you quiver under both paradoxical sensations. 

“Leon,” you say, winning his attention. He looks at you, and a silent agreement passes between you both. It’s going to happen and nothing can stop it now. 

He rips your clothes off your body, discarding them among the piles of quilt and blanket, and his hands move to make quick work of his own t-shirt and pants, until he’s in nothing but his briefs. You take a moment to drink up the sheer perfection of his form, and though you’ve seen it on a handful of occasions, there’s no memory that can do the real thing justice. The muscles of his abdomen tense as the cool air hits his skin, and when he comes down to bracket your waist with his fists, his arms flex and you nearly salivate at the bulge of his triceps. 

“Are we doing this?” He verbalizes, though the two of you are sure there’s no other way around the feelings that are finally bubbling to the surface.

“We better be. I’m not stopping now,” you confirm, snaking your hand around the back of his head to pull him into one more kiss. While your mouths meet once again in a union of tooth and tongue, his hand creeps between your bodies to slide into your panties. You gasp into his mouth as his fingers find your clit, pads rubbing the bud in circles, dropping to your seam to gather your arousal before returning. 

Maybe you’re backed up, or maybe he’s just that good, but it takes no time at all for your legs to shake, your core clenching, the rubber band in your belly to snap. Your hips jolt beneath him, begging for more as he slides his boxers down his thighs, freeing his cock, ready to give you just that. It’s prettier than you remember, and he seems far more eager to use it this time around, the head weeping with anticipation, shaft twitching as he takes it in his fist. 

“It’s been a while,” you confess as he gathers more of your arousal on his palm. “I haven’t…not since…” Not since that night between the two of you, and years have passed between then and now. The showerhead and the toys you keep in your night stand couldn’t have prepared you for what’s about to happen.

“Okay, okay,” he says, nodding in understanding as he slides his cock against the moisture on his hand. “We can go slow.” He holds himself above you with his hands on either side of your shoulders as he teases your entrance with his tip, then sliding his entire length up and down your pussy. 

“Thank you.”

“Just breathe.” It’s a soft command, and hardly one at that, but you still obey. 

You inhale deeply, letting the oxygen travel through your nostrils, expanding your lungs, cleansing and detoxifying your body like you took out all your organs and nerves and gave them a bubble bath. 

He watches between your bodies as your hips melt into the mattress. “Like that, yeah. That’s it. Let me in.” You part your legs wider, allowing him full entry into you. And he does it with reverence, sliding in one inch at a time, watching your face for a reaction. “There we go.” 

It’s been a while. And he’s much larger than you remember, only half of his length doing the job of stretching you to your limit. “Leon, you’re–”

“You can take it,” he assures, a hand coming up to cup your cheek. “I know you can. Come on, let me all the way in.” 

The stretch burns, but the pain slowly seeps into pleasure as muscle memory takes over, reminding your body how to relax, how to take it, how to let it bring you pleasure. He douses you with sweet words of praise, the dulcet tone of his voice adding to the gushing sounds of the act happening between your legs. Another climax is on your horizon, your pussy beginning to squeeze and release around his cock.

“You keep doing that and I won’t be able to pull out.” Another clench of your walls and Leon lets out a sound made from the titter of a laugh and the low rumble of a groan. “You want that? You wanna have my baby? Is that it?” 

His words box your ears like a pair of slung fists. They almost don’t register at first, not until you look into his eyes, noticing the complete lucidity inside them, undisturbed by the fog of lust that makes one cry out for gods they don’t believe in, and the mothers they no longer talk to. 

“What? No, I–I don’t know,” you stutter. “I–this is–what are we doing, Leon?” 

He looks down at the movement, since stalled, between your bodies, his cock still buried deep inside you, now unmoving. “We’re having sex.” It sounds more like a question as though the two of you awoke and suddenly were tangled in a twist of limb and tongue. 

You laugh, the muscles of your abdomen tensing as the sound shoots straight from your belly. “Nevermind. Maybe this isn’t the best time to have this conversation.” 

His brows cinch together, the skin between them creasing. He glances up and down your face, soaking in each feature, line, and freckle. Then, as if he’s not currently inside you, the knuckle he brushes against your jaw makes you shudder. It’s too tender–too intimate–of a gesture. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking, sweetheart.” 

You retreat further into the floor, shirking away as if there’s somewhere to go. Nothing but matting and cotton behind your shoulder blades. The pet name is something altogether mystical to your ears, rarely even hearing your first name on his lips. He usually just approaches and starts talking to you or calls out ‘hey’ really loud if he’s trying to reach you from across the house. 

His face contorts slightly, almost like a wince as he pulls out just an inch and trusts back in to keep himself hard. 

“Say it,” he commands softly from above you, his forearms bracketing your head so he can have a closer, more unobstructed view of your face. “Talk to me.” 

“The stuff you were saying, about us–me having your baby? I don’t get it. We…we’re not together.” 

Something like a scoff. “We’re married. I think that’s the most two people can be together.” 

You roll your eyes. “Not really.” 

Definitely a scoff. “Tell that to the IRS.” 

You reach up to swat playfully at his arm “Can you be serious, Leon?” 

“I am,” he says adamantly. “I want this. I want everything with you–all of it. I’m not sure why I didn’t see it before today, just how amazing and beautiful you are, but I don’t want to waste anymore time…living like this. You deserve more and I…I want more, whatever it is.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, really.” He looks down at the union of your bodies, still tethered together. Swaths of dark blonde hair, long streaked by strands of gray, tickle your chest. When he lifts his head the look in his eyes is so genuine, you have no reason not to believe that this is what he wants, finally coming to his senses after so long living as strangers. “Can I keep making love to you now?”

“Yes,” you say, granting him permission to keep plunging into you, the sheer thought of existing as more than just a ring and a piece of paper making it far too easy. “Please do.”

In the throes of his pleasure, Leon begins talking again. You never would have pegged him as being so loose-lipped within the bedroom (or pillow fort).

“I wanna do it all again with you, and I wanna pay attention this time. I wanna keep loving you like this. Make a baby with you.” His words are interrupted by sharp, staccato breaths as he continues to babble while plummeting in and out of you at a determined pace. “You wanna make a baby with me?” 

“Yes, yes,” you gasp out, scratching at his back as his length slides against your front wall. “I want it.” 

“Oh fuck. Okay, really?” He sounds surprised, as if all this talk was merely a way for him to rectify the past few years, to butter you up, to redeem himself as a husband and father. But you nod anyway, confirming that fact that you too crave more. You want what you had within arm’s reach once and was ripped away from you. And you want it with him. “Yeah, okay, let me give you a baby. Keep squeezing me like that. Ah, just like that. Come for me.” 

Whether it’s the dulcet praises pouring from his lips like maple syrup, or the promise of normalcy with a man who has, in his own strangled way, protected and taken care of you for the last few years, you steadily approach your pleasure. It’s not like fireworks on the Fourth of July, erupting in the air, spewing glittering sparks of plasma through the sky. It’s like a wave on an overcast harbor, slowly building in speed and strength before it rolls onto the shore, lapping against the sand and rock. 

He cries out for god, for you, his own climax violently thrashing inside his body, sending electric pulses from his toes to his head, lighting his brain and belly on fire. His fingers dig deeper 

With determination, he finishes inside of you with one last roll of his hips and a rumbling growl of a man that hasn’t found such release in far too long. 

“Try to keep it in,” he says, slowly pulling out of you, pressing your thighs together while he searches for a pillow on the bed to slide beneath your hips. A trick to facilitate conception, you assume, and though your mind is still sparkling, your vision still slightly blurred at the corners, your legs shaky like strawberry preserves, you wonder how he knows to perform such an act. 

It’s difficult to not let your mind wander to thoughts of those days when Leon lived in this house with her, the two of them happily married and wanting to continue their family. Maybe he’s the one that researched the best methods to make it stick. 

You’re not a stranger to this feeling–some thick knot in your stomach, woven with threads of guilt. Guilt for marrying the widow of a woman who wasn’t four months in the ground when you and Leon met at that courthouse on his lunch break. Guilt for encroaching on the family that she could have had–that she dreamed about for ten months, if not longer, as she designated a room in the house for her daughter’s nursery, painted the walls pink, and picked out a name. 

As months passed after your marriage was signed and sealed, and you dusted off framed pictures of her and Leon, placed on the mantle like an altar, you thought about leaving. Ella wasn’t a year old at the time, and probably wouldn’t remember you if you told Leon you couldn’t handle it and left. Guilt crept in when you pondered that too. He was a mess, and his job necessitated that he work, though they gave him time for bereavement, yet he was hardly present even if he was home. And Ella adored you. You couldn’t leave her. And so you didn’t. And so you won’t.