mölsäri

Piers Nivans loved Leon Kennedy. He wasn’t shy about admitting it. Sometimes, when Leon’s nightmares carried into the day and his confidence wavered, Piers wanted to yell it to the stars, convince another BSAA pilot to fly a banner across the sky declaring it, anything to erase that uncertain look from Leon’s blue eyes.

Yes, Piers loved him, even had a ring hidden behind some MREs for when he finally figured out a good way to propose to the other man. Piers could love Leon to the moon and back, live the rest of his life with him, and still want to strangle the man.

“Hi, honey,” Leon wheezed, hands on his knees. At any other time, Piers would have found Leon’s breathless laughter and the brilliant flush painting his cheeks charming. Now?

With a low growl, Piers wiped some of the splashed… something off his cheek. Behind him, he could hear the low snickers of his teammates. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jill Valentine shaking her head and checking out the corpse. At least one of the so-called professionals in the room had some common sense.

His lover certainly didn’t count among them. “Don’t honey me,” Piers gritted out. “You just threw a… a… I don’t even know what it is, but you threw it at me!”

The unrepentant asshole cackled one last time before straightening. Even as Piers grumbled, he took a moment to look Leon over. Leon looked okay, considering Piers thought he was supposed to be wrapping up a mission several thousand miles away. A little bruised, definitely dirty, but Leon always carried filth remarkably well. “Sorry, sorry!” Leon sang out. He was still grinning, color high on his cheeks. “They’re called graspers and they, well, grasp shit. I was trying to get it off my hand. Guess it liked you.”

A gunshot boomed in the room. Piers saw one of the newbies, Thomasson, flinch in the doorway. Jill grunted and stomped the remaining pile of meat under her boot. Piers guessed she didn’t like it. More importantly… “It was still alive when you threw it at me?”

Jill interrupted before Leon could answer. Good thing, too. If Leon joked about throwing a live BOW at Piers’s face, Piers would be a widower before he could even propose. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here, Leon.”

“Wasn’t expecting to be seen,” Leon tossed back. Leon relaxed, settling into himself in a way which always reminded Piers of a loping wolf. Lone wolf indeed. He strolled past Jill, and the pair casually bumped shoulders before Leon stopped beside Piers. The agent was far too professional to actually kiss Piers in the field — not to mention the literal biohazards — but Piers saw how Leon’s gaze fell to his mouth. Leon grinned at him and then leaned a little against Piers’s shoulder. “All classified, of course.”

“Of course,” Jill agreed. And waited.

Leaning a little himself into Leon’s side, Piers scoped out the rest of the room. He listened with half an ear as Leon explained about his flight back to the States being diverted and being sent here to investigate the lab. There was something off about his tone — a little too casual, a little too quick skipping over parts of his story — and his muscles felt too tense against Piers. There was something else which subtly struck Piers as wrong, but he couldn’t place it. Sharing parts of the story, probably more than the US government would like, but undoubtedly leaving out important bits.

It was fine, Piers decided, studying the broken furniture and how the door hung awkwardly on its hinges on the far side of the room. If it was something truly dangerous, Leon would tell them.

“Seems like our goals overlap,” Jill said. Her neutral expression clashed with Leon’s casual grin, but their sharp eyes were eerily similar. “Only makes sense to join forces.”

“Yep,” Leon said easily. With the door cracked like that, Piers could see a little into the next into the next room. Piers raised his rifle and peered down his scope. Low light, no signs of movement…

Piers frowned. Were those vines in the next room? Webs? That had to be the direction Leon came from.

“I haven’t been able to explore the west side of the this floor yet,” Leon continued. His voice was light. Too light. Piers suddenly had a bad feeling about this. “This place is bigger than it looks like from the outside, but still small enough that we can stick together and explore it.”

Piers lowered his rifle and glanced down. Yep. There were webs on Leon’s boots. Torn and stained by the same blood Leon had tracked into this room.

As Jill barked at the soldiers to stop waffling in the doorway and get in here now, Piers pressed more firmly against Leon’s side. “What are we walking into, Leon?”

“Do we need to check your hearing?” Leon teased. Tone identical to before. Laughter-induced flush gone. “I just told you. Pay attention, Piers.”

Pay attention. Piers could do that. He flashed his teeth at Leon and was rewarded with a fierce grin back. “Always do.”

“And that’s why you screamed when the grasper came at your face, right?”

“Keep it up, honey. Someone needs to sleep on the new couch to break it in, anyway.”

Jill caught Piers’s gaze and nodded once. Piers nodded back.

Pay attention. Yeah. They could do that.

As Leon led them back the way he came, Piers abruptly realized what was bothering him. Where was Leon’s radio? What was the communication with FOS?

Stick together. Pay attention. Get his would-be fiancé home in one piece.

“You didn’t have to be so reckless just to prove a fucking point.”

There were few things as hilarious as how Piers Nivans’s face scrunched up when he was pissed. At least, Leon Kennedy thought so. He grinned at Piers and Piers’s scrunched up face and how the air between them practically simmered with Piers’s rising frustration.

Well, he tried to grin at Piers, anyway. His head was unusually heavy on his neck, and it lolled instead of moving in the correct direction. Instead of grinning at Piers, Leon found himself staring at the cracked, filthy ceiling above him.

There were even splashes of blood on the ceiling. Not bad. Leon was reasonably sure they weren’t his.

Piers growled at the same time pain sparked in Leon’s arm. Leon grunted and jolted, grin shifting into something which was definitely not a pout as he turned to Piers. Piers did at least seem semi-apologetic, offering a pat to Leon’s shoulder before finishing up the bandage on Leon’s bicep.

We almost match, Leon thought, but he wasn’t stupid enough — or concussed enough — to say that aloud.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Leon said instead. From this angle, he could only see that filthy ceiling instead of Piers’s adorably pissed face. Dirt and blood and ancient grime. Did these guys waste all of their budget on monsters and none on housekeeping? Or did the monsters just eat the housekeepers?

“Barely. You almost ended up down that thing’s gullet!”

Just like the housekeepers, Leon thought inanely. …okay, he might be concussed. Possibly. The moments between tossing that grenade and ending up under Piers’s not-quite-tender ministrations were a blur.

No time to worry about that now. Or worry about the fate of those nameless housekeepers.

Leon let his head roll on the ground so he could see Piers a little bit. Ah, from this angle he could see Piers a little better, adorable scowl and all. Piers was studying Leon’s side where his armor didn’t fully connect, leaving a vulnerable spot.

There’s too many of those between the two of us, aren’t there? Leon swallowed those words back with the bloody saliva slowly filling his mouth. He wasn’t concussed enough to say that, either.

Piers traced Leon’s cracked armor with his fingers. His human fingers, Leon noted. His prosthetic hand was clenched on the ground, dirty and bloody like the ceiling. Like Leon’s armor. The shadows on his face were shifting from something funny to something terrible and familiar. His scarred mouth twisted, and Leon knew Piers was going to say something he didn’t want to hear.

Snipers were good at pinpoint accuracy, but Leon was better at derailment. With a grin that made his bruised skull ache, Leon pushed himself up. Piers startled, not expecting it. His scarred fingers fell away from Leon’s side. Most importantly, so did whatever words which were gathering between them. “Leon —”

“Have you ever seen housekeepers in these places?” Leon asked. Everything rocked and swayed and his head still felt too heavy, but Leon was an old hand at this. It didn’t matter how much you bled as long as you didn’t flinch. It didn’t matter how many times you fell as long as you got up.

“Housekeepers?” Piers repeated. For the moment, at least, Piers looked too baffled to remember he was angry at Leon or to continue yelling at Leon about Leon’s supposed point.

“You know, to sweep the stairs and shit.” Leon paused and stared in the direction of the stairs. Former stairs. “And to clean up monster guts and torn off limbs… when were you supposed to meet up with your team again?”

Piers growled — hilarious and adorable — and yanked out his radio. As Piers tried to modulate his snapping into something professional, Leon studied him. Or, at least, tried to study Piers and the random duplicates which wavered around him. That was fine. Just more of Piers for Leon to study.

Filthy and bloody, but none of the blood was his. Leon’s dive and Leon’s grenade took care of that. It was Leon’s blood on Piers’s prosthetic hand, dust from the former stairwell which coated Piers’s aging scars. Leon could still feel the faint heat of Piers’s fingers from where the man had bandaged Leon, being so careful despite his anger.

Piers had no idea what Leon’s point was, and Leon didn’t want him to think enough on it to figure it out. Leon made himself look away from Piers before the other man caught him staring. Don’t let Piers’s train get back on track… or something. It was a good thing Piers was a BSAA soldier or Leon’s lack of subtlety might actually get him in trouble.

Leon spotted another door on the far side of the room. It was almost hidden by a desk Big and Ugly had thrown at them earlier. He started walking toward it, not letting himself look back at Piers again. Even snipers had to work to hit a moving target.

“Leon! Hold on, Jill, this idiot is —”

It wasn’t just Piers. Leon didn’t let himself think about his point, either. No more time for any of that now. For stupid points or for old scars or for metal where limbs should be. No more time for his probable concussion and how it made the floor rock under him or for him to care about how his blood mixed so well with the room’s filth.

Whatever. That was a problem for the building’s nonexistent housekeeping.

“Let Jill know that we’re moving the party to a different room,” Leon said. “And that she’s free to join us anytime.”

Leon heard Piers updating Jill between furious curses and scoffed softly. Later when they had parted ways and it was just Leon and his old friends Jack and Jose, he would think about points and vulnerability and the dangerous cracks left by old promises and new devotion. Later. Much later. Now?

“And ask her if she’s ever seen housekeeping in any of these things. I remember one place having a butler but not housekeeping.”