hey

There’s a thin film of grime coating his face. Errant scratches on his biceps and speckles of old blood on his shirt—thankfully, it isn’t his. He appears otherwise unscathed beneath the firelight of the safe room. Performing maintenance on his weapons, jaw tight, focus etched between his brows. 

You study him from your seat across. Arms wound about your legs, chin seated on your knees. His gaze skitters to yours from time to time. A smirk twitches his lips, and a chuckle rumbles his chest as if he’s happy to have an audience.

You feel a smile of your own forming. Want to say something to fill the silence. But it’s comfortable, with the pop and fizz of the campfire and The Merchant humming nearby whilst he mends your gear. So, you carry on this soundless waltz with your partner. An exchange of stolen glances and unspoken words of endearment.

Eventually, your lids grow heavy, the shadows cast by the fire lulling you to sleep. You don’t register when he moves. Just feel a heavy palm burning through the cotton of your shirt on your shoulder and a callused thumb stroking your collarbone. He swaddles you in his warmth as he kneels before you. 

“You should get some rest,” Leon rasps, scanning over your features with eyes the color of steel. Fond. Doting. “I’ll take the first watch.” He always does.

If not for the subtle ache of your bones and the exhaustion lancing through you, you would argue. The insistence of his gaze leaves no room for rebuttals. You nod, slowly unwinding yourself from your curled-up position. Leon helps you to your feet. Always a gentleman. Ventures back to his side by the fire to sharpen his blade whilst you meander towards the back of the safe room, eyeing an inviting stack of hay.

You stop mid-step. Don’t know what compels you to speak. What pushes you to utter something so arbitrary. Shielding yourself behind a wooden beam, half-peeking at your partner, bashfulness leaking into your voice. 

“Leon,” you caution. Feel your heart stutter when he looks at you. As if you’re the only thing to exist in his world. Your mouth quivers, your voice corked in your chest. What a time for cold feet. “You…you don’t seem very happy to see me.”

His brows quirk. He snorts incredulously, as if you’ve said the most absurd of things. He sets his knife down, leaning forward to get a better listen. “What?”

With a shrug of your shoulders and wandering eyes, “Not really.”

How swiftly he moves for someone so big. Stalking towards you with the galaxy swirling in his eyes, his footsteps a dull cadence, contending with the thudding of your heart. Two of your steps back equate to one of his forwards. 

He spills over you like liquid fire. Backs you into the wooden beam, blotting out everything that isn’t him whilst he leans in on his forearm overhead. Your breath abandons you in a gasp as his hand perches on your hip. Feel so very small beneath the might that is Leon Kennedy. Your breaths intermingle for the briefest of seconds, the climate between you rising and making your head spin.

You’ve barely time to make out the contours of his face before he swoops in to claim your lips. Possessive yet gentle as his slant over yours, pouring the deftest sound into your mouth. His thumb kneads soothing circles into your waist as he tests the barrier of your teeth with his tongue. Encourages them open, exploring the warmth of your mouth as you whine so wantonly for him, your wrists crossing behind his neck, drawing him closer. He coaxes your tongue into an ardent dance. Slow and purposeful as he undoes you with his mouth, pouring his feelings into the chasm of your belly. 

Before it evolves into something more sinister, Leon breaks contact with a light smack. Huffs a laugh as you chase his lips in pursuit of another kiss. He searches your eyes with affection lining his, his labored breaths hot and matching your own.

“I am,” he states simply, his mouth hovering above yours. The hand, once on your hip, finds solace in the plushness of your bottom lip, his thumb skating over the sensitive skin. “Now,” Leon husks, his voice rough with desire as he draws back, “Go get some sleep.”

You don’t really know where things are going because he’s made it glaringly obvious in the past that he doesn't mix work with pleasure. However, something’s clearly shifted in your relationship as of late. Yet, you can’t, for the life of you, pinpoint what it is or when it happened. 

Oftentimes, you catch him gazing at you in your peripheral, a fondness inhabiting his eyes like you’ve never seen with the slightest quirk to his lips. That softness remains when a battle-worn thumb swipes blood from your cheek or rubs grime from your jaw. 

Sometimes, he holds your chin between his fingers and tilts your head this way and that—much to your chagrin—to make sure you’re devoid of injuries. Though, you never miss how his irises glitter like the sunset against sea waves, and his lips part a little as he relinquishes the softest, most relieved sigh to the air. And sometimes, you stand like this for eons, confused yet enamored, until the wet garble of a zombie springs you two apart. 

You never miss how a cautious hand finds the small of your back while you’re hunched over paperwork at your desk. How it burns through the thickness of your blazer, causing your heart to work overtime. And Leon beams so boyishly, bowing over to swaddle you in his warmth and cologne as he quips how “you’ve got your work cut out for you.” Yet, as much as he hates filling out reports himself, he stays until the moon sits high in the sky to help you finish. 

He always walks you to your car afterwards, arguing that, shit yeah, you can handle yourself. You suplex the undead for a living. But he’d fling himself off a cliff if his dear partner got snatched up in the parking garage. And he always lingers around a little longer after you pull off, a tender smile cresting across his lips in your rearview mirror. 

But he’s your partner. He’s supposed to do things like that, right? 

Like, he’s supposed to bring you food when you forget to eat—which is quite often. He’s supposed to show up to your apartment to check on you on your days off, promising his company, booze, and terrible romcoms. Supposed to hold you in your bed until you surrender your consciousness to the pretty little girls of slumber. And maybe, just maybe, it’s standard for your partner to kiss you quietly behind your ear and embrace you tighter when you squirm and chuckle and sigh wistfully in your sleep.

Through the wispy haze and the grogginess and the darkness inhabiting your bedroom, you shift to gather his cheeks in your palms—maybe you’re awake. Perhaps you’re still lurking below the shadowy depths of sleep. Who knows—and you kiss him. Cautious, but you kiss him. And though he’s initially thrown off kilter by the suddenness of it all, he relaxes against the suppleness of your lips. And his brows furrow as if he’s waited millennia for this moment. And his throat crackles with a quieted, hoarse sound as his hands perch on your hips, drawing you ever closer until your wrists cross behind his neck, and—

And…

Well, this is totally normal. Right?