only girl you'd ever want in your life

"What are you- what? No, you can't just-"

You paid no mind to Leon's stuttering as you continued shoving your things into the small duffle bag you'd brought to his apartment. It seemed bittersweet, that you had just finished helping him move, fully intending to let your own things collect until you found a new home with him.

The plan was to quietly pack your things while he was at work and throw the bag in your car, then break it off clean when he got home. Instead, he came back almost two hours early, a bottle of wine in a crinkled brown paper bag and a stack of takeout boxes wrapped neatly in a branded plastic bag.

He had all but thrown the food to the side when he realized what you were doing, rushing over just to stand helplessly at you side, reaching out to you but never touching you.

It's not like you didn't love Leon anymore, that wasn't the reason you were leaving, quite the opposite in fact. It was no secret that Leon had reckless tendencies, something you hoped he would soon grow out of. But learning he had all but thrown your concerns out the window and entered the police force amidst a restless society, getting a call that he had died on the job was a reality you weren't ready to accept.

You loved Leon more than anything, and you would rather leave than ever see him get hurt, as selfish as you felt and thought your actions were.

"We can work this out, just tell me what I did wrong, you don't have to leave-"

"Leon, enough," you sighed, feeling the tears stinging in your eyes as you tried to tune out the desperation in his voice.

He was young, he was unsure of himself, but full of passion and searching for his life's purpose. Loss had been no stranger to him, bits and pieces of his family's death revealed after time, the reason behind his intentions of becoming an officer. Though you felt as though you knew Leon plenty, there was an undeniable wall around his heart, one you feared you would never get through.

As you finished zipping up your bag, making sure you had taken at least most of your things, you stood and turned towards the lone doorway that would lead you out of his life for good.

Instead of a peaceful goodbye, a reaction unlike Leon in every way, stubborn and headfast as he was, he stood still in the doorway. His blue eyes pierced yours as you finally met his gaze, and this time, the tears did come. Streams fell from your eyes, warm and sorrowful as you tried to ignore the shimmering of his eyes.

"Just at least tell me why, why are you leaving?"

His voice, low and hurt pierced the silence and echoed in the walls of your head. If only he knew that he was perfect, everything you had ever wanted and more, there was nothing left for him to change.

You just shook your head, letting out a heavy breath. Nothing you could say would ever get through to him.

"I just can't do this Leon. I'm sorry."

Leaving Leon was the hardest thing you ever had to do, passing by the small congratulatory card you had made for him when he told you he'd gotten his new job, unaware to his decision and the complete details. How naive you were, how in love you had been to hold him back from his life pursuits.

This way, he could live his life helping people the way he always dreamed of, and you could be at peace knowing you would never hear of his death.

Now, you wished you had never left him.

Your car was low on gas, though that did not deter you from settling your foot on the gas pedal of the car, swerving around walking corpses starving for living flesh.

And what of Leon?

You had heard the voice through the static of the radio, instructions to head to the police department for safety and medical assistance. When the sirens sounded, he was the first person on your mind.

Dead bodies piled in front of the staircase. It was eerily silent, an air of dread and death filling the air, suffocating you. The chance never came to step inside.

The passenger side window shattered with the force of a body slamming against it, a terrifying inhumane roar sounding throughout the silence. Bloodied hands reached lazily in through the gap, dripping along the pale upholstery of your interior.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.."

The gearshift seemed to move on its own as you threw the car into reverse, speeding your way back towards the city limits.

It was lucky you had packed your necessities.

ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━

Leon was familiar with the premise of fighting to survive. He was an orphan himself, after all. He was not adverse to the brutal reality of persevering through the worst.

Images of you flashed in his vision with every step forward, bloody and torn, screaming as you reached out to him. Only his worst nightmare of losing you could go from a breakup to a zombie apocalypse. He felt like he was just waiting to wake up.

He had made it through the worst of it, he thought.

The police station was searched thoroughly, he'd found the underground Umbrella lab, he'd survived and had been recruited to work for the government, even saving a little girl along the way. Try as he might, he couldn't convince the agents rushing him towards the waiting helicopter to let him comb over the city once more, his eyes frantically roaming the chaos-ridden streets for any sign that you were alive.

He found none.

For the next few years, he was assigned various jobs. Most of them endangered his life, most of them wore down on his resolve. Each time he came across a body that looked a little too much like you he had to force himself to look away and swallow the knot in his throat.

It wouldn't be long until he would be able to resume his search for you.

He hated himself for letting himself get caught up in his grief. Each time he embraced another woman, no matter how stunning, no matter how entranced he had been, his mind always drifted back to you.

Would it be better off if he just moved on? Would the ghost of you stop haunting him, plaguing him with vivid images of the various deaths you could've befallen at this point?

Soon he learned that few survivors aside from himself and Sherry, the little girl he'd found, remained alive from the outbreak in Racoon City.

A hush had fallen over the office the day of, just hours before the nuke was dropped. He remembered the twisting of his chest, like an invisible knife had been thrust inside and turned like a cog, tangling with the flesh of his lungs and filled his esophagus with thick blood. That was before he had even learned of what happened.

That was perhaps the first time Leon had ever become so destructive.

Not only had he barged into conference rooms and yelled at the top of his lungs, he'd broken the old wooden furniture that resided in his hollow apartment, splinters littering the floor. He wept when he thought of you, how you'd scold him for the mess.

He wasn't the same after that day.

Hardened, cold, uninterested. All he was concerned about was saving more people, trying to atone for his sin of letting you slip from his grasp.

Pain consumed him like a fire and a gasoline-dipped match.

Every night was shared with whatever hard liquor he could get his hands on, though the bottle of aged scotch you had gifted him for his twenty-first birthday remained sealed, tucked away in his cabinets.

Spain had given him a breath of fresh air. Grief did not follow him through the rich city, did not drag behind him like a sad dog.

Guilt returned once he retrieved the president's daughter.

What was he doing?

What was the point of anything if you weren't there to experience it with him?

He thought of you, how much you would've loved the city, aside from the danger he regularly indulged in for his paycheck. He thought you might've picked the country for your honeymoon some day.

ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━

Learning of the destruction of Racoon City was detrimental. It had shook you to your very core, leaving you restless most nights, mind endlessly creating scenarios in which Leon must have survived. He was a fighter, he had never been one to give up.

Settling in a small town was the best you could do for yourself over the few years since you had seen him. A lone glove from a pair of his remained in your bedside drawer, alongside a small glass trinket he'd bought for you at a rest stop when the two of you left for Racoon City. A worn and tarnished necklace remained fastened around your neck, his birthstone.

Each day was a fight to continue moving forward, learning where to get resources, how to grow your own food, making connections with your neighbors, learning basic aid, learning to protect yourself with more than the small handgun you had been gifted from Leon. He had been so worried for your safety since he was getting a new job.

You had headed a small search group in the town, along with two men and two women. Each venture beyond the barrier meant potential death.

It was your fourth journey out when you stumbled into a small ruined bunker a few miles outside of Racoon City. Empty, useless, and devoid of all traces of life.

As you did with every outing, you tucked a small embroidered cloth into the gap of an old drawer.

Silly as it felt, you knew Leon would recognize your shoddy handiwork, after all, you hadn't gotten any better since you had seen him last.

ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━

Betrayal took away the pain of you for a short while.

Scorned by a woman who had once again taken his attention from your memory, he had an even stronger resolve to remain faithful to you, even though he had began to believe you really had been killed in the catastrophe long ago.

On the occasion, he found himself free of your memory. Your voice no longer carried along the wind, your scent no longer sweetening the blood and sweat of his own body, your touch no longer warm on his skin. In those moments, it was like you had never existed.

It felt wrong to be happy in those moments.

You had loved him so much, and he had loved you all the same. He knew how worried you were when he first mentioned the idea of becoming a police officer. It wasn't an easy conversation, but it had all but removed the ability to speak about it with you. He still felt guilt for never telling you about the academy, about his interview, until the very moment you began packing for Racoon City.

He remembered the look on your face, the tears that welled in your eyes, your resolve too strong to let them fall. It had almost been the end of your relationship that night, he had just barely convinced you to at least go with him.

With a sigh, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, grimacing lightly at the dirt that dragged along his skin. Searching through cupboards and digging through dusty piles of who-knows-what was getting tiring.

At first, he paid no mind to it.

His main concern was getting out without having to deal with anymore of the infected, gathering whatever nifty weapons, ammunition or supplies along the way. When his eyes drifted over the room, a bitter taste in his mouth he had seemingly wasted his time, a small movement caught his attention.

The wind drifted in through the broken windows in stray paths, barely enough to lift his hair, but enough to ruffle a small white cloth that hung from a drawer he had already checked.

There was no point in looking at it. Since the drawer had already been checked, what would be the point in examining some useless rag?

Still, he sighed and let his boots trudge against the worn wooden floors towards the drawer anyways. A tarnished brass handle, scratches at the legs from a small animal, a dog maybe. It was probably just a handkerchief from the poor souls who had lived there previously.

Like a violent wave crashed over him, he stumbled back. Blinking rapidly, heart stuttering in his chest, his shaking fingers delicately traced over the small red flower embroidered on the corner.

You had been smiling so widely the first time you had tried it, eager to find a way to patch up all the holes Leon had been getting in his jeans. He insisted he could always buy new ones, but you hated to see a tiny rip cause the waste of the nice brand of jeans he always wore.

Back then, you had patched up a small hole, maybe the size of a dime, on his thigh, matching the black denim as closely as you could. On the surface, no one could tell that it was a cute charm you had added.

"Now you can wear me with you wherever you go." you'd said.

His eyes scanned the area once more, frantically. Had you been here just moments ago? Hours, days, weeks, months? Had this been here for years, a call to find him, and he had been preoccupied with god knows what?

Clenching the fabric tightly in his hands, he felt his determination grip him once more.

You were out there, somewhere. You were searching for him all along, just like he had been searching for you. D.O.S. be damned, he was going continue looking for you until you were in his arms once more, flesh or bone.

ᡕᠵデᡁ᠊╾━

Once again, played like a puppet by the strings of fate, Leon was whisked away to another continent.

His frustration grew by the day, tormented by the physical strain he was beginning to notice more as time wore on, a sign of his age surely. His thirties so far had not been kind to him.

This time in his collision with Ada Wong, he was surprised to find her helping the D.S.O and B.S.A.A., making avoiding her more difficult. To his surprise, he had found himself lacking the same attraction towards he had a decade ago, the tension much looser than before.

Perhaps it had been you, perhaps it had been because she was not currently his enemy. Whatever it was, he had been sure to keep it nothing less than professional between them.

She had noticed.

Normally, they would banter back and forth, exchange seductive comments thinly veiled by their distaste towards one another. He had been quieter, more focused, more eager to return to the states.

She did not say anything when they parted ways.

Leon had searched nearly every inch within a fifty mile radius after finding what you had left for him.

In his search, he had uncovered three other pieces of you.

A small charm you had received from your favorite sushi restaurant, a california roll with an exaggerated grin. Next was an empty bottle of his cologne, the bottle he had just bought before his new job started. Most recently was a small pot you had made in a pottery class, uneven around the top and glazed too thickly in some places, but something you cherished anyways.

He had begun leaving his own trinkets, too.

Thus far he had left a shotgun bullet with your initials carved into the side from the tip of his knife, a small wooden cat he had picked up on his travels, and lastly, a handwritten note addressed to you.

It took him hours to put his thoughts onto paper, to choke out the feelings he had long locked away. He spoke of your presence that lingered beside him, the ache in his chest each time he thought of you, the longing that came with knowing you were alive, and he could be just on the other side of a door and he would never know.

Sherry, though still young, had been his closest confidant in his turmoil.

There wasn't exactly a wide dating pool in the D.S.O., but she could tell when he had made himself sick with love, ridden with a type of yearning that he may never fulfill.

Embarrassing as it was for him to open up to her, albeit leaving out most of the details, he took her advised.

He grumbled when he stepped foot into yet another abandoned home, feeling silly even in his solitude. No one would see that he had left this note for you here, but it was possible someone else would come across it. What then?

What would pouring his feelings out in ink mean if your eyes never laid upon the paper he had carefully folded, your name in his scratchy capitals?

Though the moment did not come.

Echoing footsteps raised his alarm, tucking the letter back into his pocket as he pressed himself against the wall, reaching for a gun on his hip.

An unintelligible murmur and hushed conversation carried down the corridor, accompanied by several pairs of soft footfalls and a quiet metal clicking of some kind.

They couldn't have been from any agency he was aware of, otherwise he would've been informed.

When he was sure they wouldn't see him, he peeked out around the corner, eyes narrowed and searching for any sort of threat first and foremost.

Two women and one man followed each other in procession, no gear of any kind adorning their bodies, holding only standard hand guns aside from a rifle strapped to one of the women's backs.

After a few moments of scanning the interior with their guns raised, a woman sighed and tucked her pistol away into a worn holster on her hip.

"This one's empty too. We have to keep searching."

The sound made Leon inhale sharply.

Suddenly, he realized that the stature of that woman was foreign to him, surely changed by time, by a familiar shade of hair, an inflection in her voice, the brown leather holster that had to be at least fifteen years old.

His body locked up before he could think.

He couldn't get his hopes up. There were plenty of women he had encountered over the years, alive, dead, infected and otherwise. Quite a few had a resemblance to you. This woman was no different, and he wasn't yet sure if she was up to no good.

"You two see if there's any other buildings near by, they could have a separate shed for supplies. I'm gonna have another sweep."

As if by fate, Leon and this woman had been left alone in this house.

He had only briefly adjusted to reaffirm his grip on his gun, holding in close to his shoulder as he continued to watch.

Slowly, she exhaled. Leaning her lower back against the top of a lounge chair, her eyes flickered up to the ceiling, closing gently. Still, he could not be certain.

Only when she reached into a small pouch on her side and reached inside did he briefly consider confronting her, lest she lay some sort of trap or dangerous item behind.

Instead, he watched as she carefully handled a small teddy bear. The original material was clearly worn, frayed and patchy, but it was stitched together again and again, covered in small brown flowers he could only catch in the light.

You moved to gently set it atop the chairs cushion, propping it against the back.

A gift from yours and Leon's first date, a stuffed animal he had won from the claw machine at the ripe age of nineteen. As fruitless as it seemed, it felt wrong to leave any place without saying goodbye to a piece of Leon. If anything, you would run out, and you would know for certain.

Heavy boots thudded against the floor, creaking under shifting weight down the hall as you jumped up hand reaching for the small pistol on your hip.

Before you could draw it, the world stilled.

The blonde had darkened over time, shoulders broadened and hands calloused by the horrors of the infected. Blue eyes clouded by years of fatigue, death and plague still shone when they met yours, caught in the sunlight filtering gently through the windows.

It was unbelievable, after all this time, but it was undoubtedly Leon Kennedy.

"Leon.." you breathed, body frozen in place.

He did the moving, long strides placing him in front of you in mere moments. His smell encompassed your senses, the feeling of his being at your side once more bringing a lightness to your chest you had lost so long ago.

His hands were gentle, though urgent as they cupped your cheeks in his hands, bringing himself in to kiss you.

Years of passion could not be conveyed in a single kiss, but if there was anything close to it, it was this moment.

Leon's hands moved to embrace you, pulling you tight against him, holding you as though you might disappear at any given moment.

You were here, you were real, you were alive.

The warmth of your skin radiating under his hands could not be faked, the way your body pressed against his in the way you two fit so perfectly together, like long missing pieces of a puzzle finally reunited. Your hands tangled in his hair, breath fanning across his lips when you parted for air.

Relief and sadness hit you simultaneously.

Tears dribbled down your cheeks, only to be kissed away by Leon as his hands ran up and down the expanse of your back.

He had aged, still as handsome as ever, but he was scarcely the man you once knew. All of the years that had passed had been stolen from you, and trinkets and clues would not give that time back.

Crinkled paper resided in his pocket, still stained with his scratchy handwriting, still flourishing with words he had yet to say to you.

Instead of pulling it out and giving it to you, closest to his original plan of leaving it there, he let the silence settle between the two of you, heart pounding in his chest in a rush of revival. There would be time for him to detail the extent of his feelings for you, he would make sure of it.

You were in his arms once again, and that was more than he could ever ask for.

Retreating out of the explosive-trapped shack, hearing another fuse beginning to burn down from somewhere overhead, and about to be flanked, you and Leon both nodded to each other. 

Enough was enough. 

When the villagers approaching you both ducked under their own tripwire, you were quick to remind them of the drawbacks of such traps. All it took was a bullet to the bundle of dynamite on the wall, and then, tripwire or no, there were two and a half fewer villagers in your path. The one that remained, even missing an arm and part of his torso, still got back up just in time for another stick of dynamite to arc towards you both. This time, you ran forward, moving towards the dismembered man - who Leon promptly knocked back down with a kick. One that snapped vertebrae and make the villager go still. 

Leon couldn’t let his attention linger on the way those red tendrils danced from the massive cavity the explosion had torn free. Not as the explosion at your backs beat heavy against his eardrums, and more residents approached to extend him a bloody welcome. 

But these bastards weren’t the only ones with dynamite. Leon was reminded of that fact all too well when you pulled a stick of it free from your belt - one of the ones you’d salvaged from the trap at the farm. The only trouble was lacking something to light it with, save for-

“How’s your aim?” you called back to him, coming to the same conclusion that he’d found himself. 

Leon almost smiled. “Guess we’ll find out!” 

It must have been a good enough answer for you, because you were tossing the unlit dynamite a moment later, arcing it perfectly towards the villagers approaching through the trees. Leon was ready, his pistol up. His eyes were sharp, his mind making the same grizzly calculations he’d learned to make in a split second, and then he squeezed the trigger. 

Fire. Another boom, and then more adversaries were in pieces. 

He almost missed the way your eyes snapped back to his, the light of your approval shining on him before you refocused . 

It wasn’t much of a fight, after that. The few remaining on the ground were dispatched by bullets and blades both as they tried to rush you. That brutal, beautiful efficiency you’d moved with years ago had sharpened. It was just as terrifying as that first day. Just as impressive. And for a moment, as you fought, Leon allowed himself to be glad that you were fighting with him. He was glad that, despite it all, he had someone on his side, even if the plain clothes and clear words of the villagers still weighed heavy on his conscience. Whatever their reason, bioweapon or not, they would kill you both if you hesitated. So, Leon was all too glad to have your skills on his side. And he demonstrated his own skills again with a shot aimed high, towards the woman that was hurling dynamite at you from above. Once her weapon was blown apart in her own hand, one last attacker stood through the trees, framed by a dock and a cabin at the water’s edge. 

The same cabin that Leon had found the photo of at the hunter’s lodge. The same one that, with any luck, Ashley Graham was being kept in. 

So, once that lone attacker was dealt with - a well-placed shot to his head and a final drive of your knife when his body began to twitch - Leon threw a glance your way. You were smudged with dirt and blood, but you looked resolute all the same. You'd survived another few minutes, and that irrational part of him - the one that couldn't shut up, no matter what his mind said - spoke out again.

“We're popular today.” 

“Unfortunately.” 

“You’d think they’d take the hint.”

Leon didn’t miss the way your eyes sparked as you spoke. Your words were just short of being sharp – a tone that he knew meant teasing more than tension. At least, it had meant teasing once upon a time. “Some people can’t help themselves.” 

Leon snorted. Fair enough. 

As glad as he was of your skills, Leon was more glad that you were talking again. However clipped your words were. However foolish he was for that. But maybe if the cabin by the water’s edge was where the First Daughter and her kidnappers were, then he wouldn’t be acting foolish about you for much longer. 

And then things could return to normal. As normal as his gunmetal grey world could get. 

“This the place?”

“Seems that way,” you agreed, gun at the ready as you approached the weathered structure. “Think we should get ready for a fight.”

“I think if we round a corner around here we should prepare for a fight.” 

The padlock on the door stopped you both, but so too did the sounds coming from inside the house. It sounded like something being slammed into the wall, or the floor, over and over again. Whatever it was, it made Leon glimpse your way with a look of wariness that you shared. There were still too many variables up in the air. Too much that neither of you knew. So, as you picked the lock holding the door closed, Leon readied himself for whatever might be inside. 

The immediate interior, once the two of you were inside, was empty of movement. Like much of the other buildings in the village, it was in some disarray; fishing supplies were strewn about, and pieces of the roof that had caved in were playing bedding to the dust and dirt settling atop them. The wood groaned with the effort of holding itself upright. Flies buzzed over fish carcasses on the table, long-since forgotten about, but there were no signs of Ashley. 

Down the hallway, you disarmed the tripwire this time, but left the dynamite as you pressed onward, drawing closer to whatever was making that banging noise. In a room strewn with dusted and old-fashioned science equipment and a sepia photo of a man and a young boy, that noise grew louder still. Leon recognized a metallic clang to the sound of it. Like a hammer falling on something solid. 

Or a hostage desperately kicking against a bolted door? 

Leon tried not to let his mind wander to hopeful what-ifs. That was always dangerous. Instead, when there was no one in the room you found yourselves in, he turned his attention towards the bookshelf against the wall. One that very poorly covered a gap in the wall. It was easily pushed aside, and Leon readied his gun as he stepped in, letting you cover his six. 

This room, at last, was not empty, but it wasn’t a hostage making that noise. Instead, it was a man, the axe in his hand turned backwards so the flat of the metal could be used as a hammer. He slammed it against the floor, where Leon could see crooked planks of wood were being nailed into place. And beneath those planks? A handle and hinges, marking a trap door. 

Jackpot. 

One man with a hatchet wasn’t much of a threat compared to the whole of the village you’d both fought, but now wasn’t the time for carelessness. Not when things might well be coming to an end soon. So, when the man took note of the two of you, rising to his feet, neither of you waited for him to get close. His warning cry of outsiders died on his lips, and as soon as you were both sure he would not rise again, you moved to the trap door. 

The end of the line, God willing. Of course, years of operations in the field and hard truths had led Leon to believe that, more often than not, God was mostly just willing to make things difficult for him. That was the heaviness that pressed down on him as the two of you reached down, ripping up the planks of wood so you could get to the trap door. 

There was a world where Ashley Graham was underneath it, terrified but alive, and where the two of you could get her out of this place. One where you could solve the mystery of what was going on here and with the traitorous STRATCOM soldiers later, once the First Daughter was safe. 

There was also a world where she wasn’t there at all. Or, if she was, then maybe she was injured. Or worse. The possibility of finding her with the same reddened eyes as the villagers lurked at the back of Leon’s mind, just as many other worse possibilities did. Maybe she’d be there, but so too would the men who kidnapped her. Maybe they would get the drop on you both. Maybe Leon wouldn’t be fast enough. Maybe he would be reminded of why he preferred to work alone, these days. 

But just as it did little to hope for the best, Leon knew he couldn’t let fear of the worst control him. He’d learned long ago to quiet those parts of his mind. At least until the world so often proved them right. 

He could let those darker thoughts say I told you so over a bottle of scotch later, if need be. For now, he just looked up at you as the way was cleared. You, who maybe weren’t as far gone as he once thought. Who, despite your own self-imposed isolation and reputation, had his back. “I’ll go first,” Leon said, keeping his voice down. 

Predictably, you didn’t like his decision. Leon could see that much in the pinch of your brows. Still, after a moment, you nodded. 

Your hand, flecked with dirt and blood, reached for the trap door handle, your other holding your gun. Leon followed suit, feeling the familiar weight of his Silver Ghost in his palm. He readied himself to fire it as, once he gave you an affirmative nod, you threw the trap door open. 

Nothingness greeted him. Nothing he could see, nothing he could hear . . . nothing at all. Even with worry, another old bedfellow, breathing down his neck, there was little choice but to go forward. 

You didn’t seem to like that truth any more than he did, by the expression you gave him; your lips pursed and your eyes shadowed. Still, you didn’t protest as Leon moved forward. The sheer darkness that greeted him made Leon reach for his flashlight, and when he could see nothing but a pathway down below, he took that step over the edge. Weightless for but a moment, as soon as he felt the ground meet his boots, his eyes were forward. There were no government-trained men with guns awaiting him, nor more villagers with pitchforks. Instead, Leon found himself alone in a tunnel, surrounded by cold and the smell of the earth. 

Onward, then. 

“Clear,” he called up to you, stepping forward. A moment later, you dropped down alongside him, clicking your own flashlight on as you took up watch on his six. The two of you took cautious steps forward, the silence of the tunnel a stark contrast to the dynamite that had been going off around you both only moments ago. Leon’s ears still rang from it all - enough that he didn’t hear the rustling of fabric until he rounded the corner ahead. 

There, at the end of the tunnel, amidst burlap sacks and stone, was a person in a bag. At least, Leon had to assume it was a person, with the way the material moved, like someone inside was struggling to be free. As best they could, anyway, with the ropes that were tied around them and the top cinched closed. 

Leon had a high success rate on missions - that was part of why he’d been chosen for this, after all. But he also had grown used to the feeling of being too late. So, seeing movement from within the bag, seeing someone captured but alive, he didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, kneeling and pinning his flashlight between his cheek and shoulder. Undoing the ties at the top of the bag were easy, and as you turned to watch his back, Leon pulled the rough material down . . . 

But it was not the golden hair of the President’s Daughter that greeted him. Instead, it was dark hair, a scruffy jaw and eyes that flashed with surprise as soon as they met Leon’s own. Surprise. Not fear. That alone was interesting, setting aside everything else. Leon had spent hours poring over the photos of Ashely and her kidnappers, and this man, whoever he was, didn’t match a single one of those descriptions. 

So then who the hell was he?

Looking back towards you, Leon found no answers in your expression - your eyes narrowed and fixed on the newly uncovered hostage. That meant answers would have to come from the man himself. 

His was muffled, thanks to the tape over his mouth - which Leon promptly ripped off. A grunt of pain was his reward, prompted no doubt from the tape pulling a few beard hairs loose. The man all but confirmed as much with a rather annoyed look. “That hurts, you know?” 

English. He spoke it with an accent, but he spoke it clearly and his eyes were free of the redness that Leon had seen in the villagers so far. One of the missing people that Castaña had mentioned, then? Not one of the missing hikers, if the beautifully made leather jacket and button-up that the man wore were anything to go on. More layers to the mystery. 

Layers that would hopefully be unraveled soon. So, even as the house above them creaked, Leon went on. “Seemed like you really wanted to talk.” 

“How observant, señor,” the strange man replied, only for you to cut in. 

“We should get moving.” Your voice was tight; your eyes turned towards the tunnel entrance. Like you knew something was coming. 

“I would definitely agree,” the hostage nodded, “although I do have one very important question.” There was a hopefully glint in the man’s eyes, one that let Leon know exactly how important his next words were to him. “Either of you got a smoke?” 

Leon supposed that everyone had their priorities. Still, he didn’t really manage not to scoff. “You know, those things’ll kill you.” 

“Oh. Well, maybe just untie me then?” 

Shifting as best he could, the man - whoever he was - tried to orient himself so the rope’s ties were accessible to-

“Leon!” 

Your voice, accompanied by an immediate gunshot made Leon whirl around. 

And his heart turned to stone when he saw your pistol smacked out of your grip and a massive, pale hand wrap around your throat. 

No-

For a split second, as you were hoisted easily off the ground, your body used like a shield, Leon felt an old fear seize him. He saw the massive stature, the dark sleeve of whoever or whatever was attacking you and had to battle back those long-eclipsed memories of a now-dead city. 

No, God, please-

Then he saw the bearded, severe face of his target, and he was back in the present, firing a perfectly aimed shot over your shoulder when the opportunity arose. 

Not you-

A shot that, predictably, did nothing. Neither did the knife that you stabbed into the man’s chest - at least not enough to stop him from pulling you back-

⧫⧫⧫

And then you were hurtling backwards, sputtering from the pressure the action placed on your throat - and crying out in pain as you slammed into Leon. You both fell backwards, crashing into the wall. The hostage Leon had found, still restrained, cried out something as your vision swam. You heard Leon’s gun firing over your shoulder, felt the movement of the man you’d landed on as you tried to get up, and then when your vision was clear, you saw Leon rising, stepping in front of you. 

Putting himself between you and danger once again. You called his name, reaching desperately for your knife, and were on your feet just in time to see him be thrown in the opposite direction. Wood splintered. His flashlight clattered to the ground . . .

And Leon Kennedy didn’t get back up. 

Horror. Rage. Fragmentation. 

You used all of it as fuel as you reached down, taking up the gun that Leon had dropped. Your hand closed around its grip, the metal still warm, just in time for your attacker to go for your neck once again. You slipped to the side, your mind scrambling to form a plan. A strategy. If you could get this man, this thing, away from Leon-

But there was little room to move. Even if you managed to dodge the first hand, you weren’t fast enough to escape the second. 

A shackle of flesh and bone closed around your forearm, and even as you turned to fire your gun into your attacker’s body, it wasn’t enough. Not to stop you from being spun around and slammed into the opposite wall. Your back protested as it was driven hard against the stones, and again as the man pressed his hand around your neck and dragged you up. For a second time, you kicked and struggled, moving to fire Leon’s gun until that hand too was pinned to the wall. 

You heard the restrained man call out, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. 

Your kicks grew weaker as blood flow was cut off. Your eyes darkened. An animal in a trap, all you could do was bear your teeth, glaring into the eyes of the towering, bearded man who held you. 

A man who spoke with perfect clarity as the barbs of failure dug into you.

“Do not resist, child,” he said, staring you down from under the shadow of his hat. 

And as darkness closed in on you, you found it harder and harder to fight. For years and years, that had been all you’d been doing. All you were good for. Now, faced with the threat of it ending, you found your heart laboring in its panic. As you struggled for breath, for consciousness, your eyes fell once more to Leon. He lay still, slouched amidst the wreckage of the crates he’d been tossed into.

You could only hope that he was still breathing. That he would get up. That, if there was any mercy at all in this world, he would be alright. 

Hopes turned quickly to fears, though, as they so often did. Then, as if he knew your mind, your attacker spoke once more, before you lost your grip on the waking world.

“Be not afraid.”

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter (coming soon!)

Chapter Index

Warnings: this is a fem!reader fic but, the reader is mostly referred to using you/yours throughout the fic; there are no descriptions of the readers looks, including no descriptions of her race, hair colour, body type, etc; the reader’s Hogwarts house is not mentioned, so you can just imagine that it’s yours, whichever one that is; it is mentioned that the reader is the same age as Fred and George and would be in their year at Hogwarts, and would have been childhood friends with them before Hogwarts, growing up nearby The Burrow; discussions of dark themes that occur during Death Hallows - including death, killing, and near-death experiences; mentions of George being taller than the reader (under the assumption that he would be taller than most people); the trope of ‘making up a guy to get mad at’ (reader dated a guy that cheated on her and Fred and George pranked him in revenge, and he’s technically an OC); mentions of blood and the gory details of George’s canon injury; Hinny is implied as a background ship and so is Romione; I think that’s it in terms of warnings, because this is just meant to be fluff.

A/N: This is just a nice little fluff getting together fic in the same vein as Kisses Like Fire Whiskey - the title comes from an Elton John song of the same name, and of course, it's a reference to the 'saint-like' line in the scene, and it's also a reference to the fact that Fred and George are pranksters and they are absolutely not saint-like at all. And it's a reference to the fact that here, George goes through a near-death experience and the reader presses that 'heaven can wait' because she doesn't want to lose him. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this fic, as I always have fun with 'getting together' stories. I hope you guys enjoy it, especially you George girls who are aching for some stuff that is not Fred centric.

...

You had always loved The Burrow.

Growing up so close by, you had always considered it one of your favourite places on earth. A place where all your best friends lived, your second home.

The Weasley family home was always so welcoming, especially thanks to the people inside of it. Charlie and Bill, who were like older brothers to you. Percy, who was always strict, but fair, and lovingly tried his best to keep you out of trouble. Fred and George, who were your very best friends from the time you could walk. And Ron and Ginny, the funny, sweet, sometimes annoying younger siblings that you never asked for but loved all the same, always tagging along on your adventures where you didn't want them. People who you loved as dear friends more and more as time went on.

You felt lucky that you had grown up just a short walk from them, and that your two families had always been so close because of it. You had no blood related siblings, but growing up nearby them was like being a part of the large brood.

In all the times you had been inside the large, somehow overbearingly cozy family home, you had never been so anxious in all your life. The relaxing aura of Molly's hand-knit throw blankets and the baked in scent of tea within the walls was doing nothing to help soothe you on this night.

You were sitting on the front porch, your hands shoved into the pockets of the cardigan you were wearing, fighting against the oddly chilly summer night as you stared up at the starry night sky. You were still amazed by just how many stars could be seen in this picturesque, isolated country. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but it did nothing to ease your tense anxiety as you continued to worry about your dear friends – people you considered to be family after all these years of being so terribly close with them. 

Tonight was the night that The Order was moving Harry from his long term home in Surrey, trying to avoid alerting the Ministry of Magic and therefore, any Death Eaters that could be hiding in their midst. Trying to avoid accidentally tipping off You-Know-Who, who was eager to see Harry exposed and vulnerable, out in the open and ready to be killed. It was an incredibly dangerous operation that involved six other people disguising themselves as Harry using Polyjuice Potion to become potential decoys. Of course, they were hoping that the decoys would mean nothing, because the moving operation would never been seen or discovered. And ultimately, those decoys were risking a lot, seeing as so many people wanted to murder Harry Potter… 

Ultimately, you were thinking about one person in particular. One person that you hated risking his life through all this. You had been sick with worry ever since you had found out that George Weasley had volunteered to be one of the decoys on the mission. He insisted that it was nothing, no big deal, that it was the least he could do to help out. He was completely ignoring any potential risks. Just like he always did. But this wasn't some stupid prank where the worst thing that could happen was a few weeks detention if he ended up getting caught.

This was his life on the line here, and he didn't seem to fully care about that. Or he was too cocky and sure of himself to believe that his life was ever at risk.  

And his stupid, too-sure attitude left you sitting on the stoop like a lost little girl, staring up at the sky, waiting for him to come home. Just like your days back at Hogwarts when he was dumb and reckless – one of you had to be the one to worry about the consequences. One of you had to be the one carrying the anxiety.

“A watched cauldron never brews.” Ginny sighed as she sat down beside you. 

You had been so swept up in your worried thoughts that you hadn’t even heard her coming, and you were slightly startled by her presence. 

“What?” You gaped, confused by her choice of words. 

“They’re not just going to spontaneously appear if you keep staring up there, waiting for them.” She insisted. “You're too wound up.”

You wanted to argue that they were coming toward the house no matter what, and they had to arrive sometime. It was a sure thing. But you landed on different words instead.

“How fast do brooms travel?” You asked, knowing that this was likely a dumb question. 

“Most aren’t made for long distance flights.” She reminded you. “They have a lot of ground to cover from Surrey to here. And you're used to George popping around everywhere anyway. I don’t think he’s used anything but Apparition since he and Fred turned seventeen.” 

Something about her words caught you off guard, causing a nagging knot in your stomach that was a bit more than the anxiety you had already been feeling.

“Why mention George specifically?” You asked. “You must be worried about all of them – Bill, Ron, Fred, Harry especially-” 

“I’ve learned not to be worried about Harry anymore.” She shrugged, sounding far too confident for your liking. “He’s good at getting deep into trouble and not getting killed. I just have to trust that he'll come home.”

You scoffed out a surprised laugh at this, wondering how she could be so calm. 

“I brought up George because I know you’re thinking about him. It wouldn't take a genius to figure that out.” Ginny told you, a certain glint of mischief in her eye that looked all too similar to the twins. “He’s always been your favourite Weasley-” 

“You’re my friend. You’re like a sister to me.” You insisted. “I don’t like you any less.” 

You rushed to combat against her words, hating where the conversation was going.

“Not quite what I meant.” Ginny continued on, a deeply knowing smirk painting across her lips. “I’m just saying, if I was off on the mission, I don’t think you’d be out here, staring at the sky, shaking your legs hard enough to bring down the house.” 

She put a hand on your knee, and it was only then that you realized how roughly you had been bouncing your knee due to the sheer anxiety flowing through you. 

She didn't say the words outright, but both of you knew that she didn't have to. It was more than implied, and she was more than clever enough to have figured it out without you telling her. Damn her and her observant mind.

“Are you ever going to tell him how you feel?” She asked, a natural curiosity seeping through her voice. 

You let out a harsh, defeated sigh.

“Now probably isn’t a good time.” You shrugged, your eyes naturally drifting back to the sky, eagerly hoping to see some trace of movement, hoping to see someone land. “With everything that’s been going on, all the danger-” 

“And what’s that got to do with anything?” Ginny laughed. “Mum is inside right now slaving over a giant gaudy cake because we’re having a wedding despite ‘everything that’s been going on’. If anything, now is exactly the right time to tell him. Don’t wait around for something to happen.” 

“And you expect something to happen?” You bit back, the anxiety snapping to worry as she brought up the one topic that you feared the most – George potentially getting hurt.

“No.” Ginny said confidently, laughing brightly as she shook her head. “But clearly you do, and it'll be worse if something does happen and he doesn't know how you feel.”

Before you could reply, another voice disrupted. 

“Ginny!” Molly called out through the open kitchen window. 

“Yes, Mum?!” Ginny hollered in return. 

“Come and give me a hand with this, dear!” 

“It’s not even my wedding…” Ginny complained under her breath, bitterly annoyed as she stood up and stomped back inside. 

You smiled to yourself as you heard more of Ginny’s complaints through the window, and your eyes drifted out to the boundless, grassy fields that lead from The Burrow to your family home. It was a place where you and the Weasley siblings spent much of your childhood playing and causing trouble. You thought back on one particularly fond memory, realizing that George had always been incredibly special to you. Despite what you had said, he had always been your favourite.

… 

“Promise me this isn’t a trick.” You whined as you walked through the tall, overgrown grass on the edges of the property, following George's lead despite knowing that it likely wasn't a good idea.

It was a place off the well-beaten path between your home and The Burrow, a space filled with long whipping grass that was bound to hold anything from small field mice to nipping garden gnomes to something tricky and explosive that the twins had planted there. Something in your gut told you to run off, but your curiosity was also getting the better of you.

You were the same age as the twins, not off to Hogwarts for another year, so none of you were allowed to use magic freely yet. But those boys got their hands on joke products and other tricky things they could set off, usually fiery or explosive – things they could use to shock and awe while bending the rules around underage magic use. You worried for what life would be like when they officially got their wands. 

“This isn’t a trick.” George sighed, sounding exasperated trying to convince you, seeing as this was the third or fourth time you had nagged him about it during the long, winding walk through the grass. On top of the fact that he had a hard time convincing you to even follow him out this far in the first place.

Truthfully, the only reason you had even begun walking in his steps was because Fred was nowhere in sight. The twins were lethal together, and a bit easier to deal with apart. But still, not entirely safe when standing alone, so you still found yourself using caution as you walked, staring at George's back.

He could feel your weary expression fixated on the back of his head, and he easily added on: 

“Come on, when have I ever been known to play pranks on innocent, unsuspecting victims?” 

He tossed you a wicked smirk over his shoulder, and it was then that you knew you had made a horrible mistake. 

“I’m going home.” You announced, your voice full of regret.

He was quick to grab your wrist, holding you tightly and keeping you from turning around and bailing completely. 

“It’s not a trick this time.” He sighed, sounding entirely defeated. “I promise.” 

You felt a pang in your chest, and oddly enough, you found yourself putting some stake in his promise and the sweet twinkle in his eyes. He was too cute for his own good.  

“Come now, we’re nearly there.” 

He took you to the edge of the woods where the grass turned to taller trees sprouting up, and when he crouched down on his knees, hiding in that tall grass, you followed his lead. You wondered again what the two of you were supposed to be doing here. 

“What-?” 

“Shh.” 

The moment you moved to ask, George hushed you, making a dramatic motion with a finger tight over his lips, and using the other hand, he pointed out into a small clearing between the trees. When you followed his attention, you were amazed by what you saw.

A tall, beautiful creature came creeping into the clearing. It was a furry mammal, almost deer-like – light brown fur, four spindly legs with dainty hooves, but it was so much more magnificent than a common deer. Its head was adorned with sprawling antlers that must have been six feet wide, and those antlers were covered in rich, luscious, living green moss. The moss spread all down its back, even starting to grow beautiful pink and purple flowers in some places. The creature came to a spot in the clear with a set of lush berry bushes and began eating, living its life so gently, so close to your own home.

You sat in amazement, easily understanding why George had brought you here to see this. 

“I think he’s been living here for a while.” George noted in a hushed whisper, obviously afraid to scare the creature away. 

“She has.” You corrected, seeing another, much smaller and paler creature with no antlers begin to stumble through her tall legs, coming out of hiding. “She’s a mother.” 

“Fred owes me a Chocolate Frog.” George announced, grinning in victory. “He said-” 

Just then, there was a loud explosion in the distance, a disturbance that scared the creatures into running off. 

Your head whipped toward the noise, and only a moment later-

“FREDRICK GIDEON WEASLEY! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE-?! Where-?! WHERE IS HE?! WHERE IS YOUR USUAL PARTNER IN CRIME?! GEORGE! GEORGE!” 

George let out a bright chuckle, and then grinned at you. 

“Gotta go.” He said, seemingly entirely amused as he rushed back to his feet and raced back to the house, clearly prepared to share the blame with his 'partner in crime' for whatever plan had gone off while he was out of the house. 

You let out a small chuckle yourself, and moved to go back to your house in the opposite direction. 

… 

Years later, George was still the same. At Hogwarts, he pulled off many similar schemes, and him and Fred quickly became known for their pranks. You easily thought of an incident during your fifth year with them – a time when Fred and George pulled off a particularly epic, satisfying prank in your honour. 

You had been walking toward the Ravenclaw common room, heat in your heels, on your way to give someone a piece of your mind. Tears forming in your eyes as you thought of the way you had been wronged, distracted by the wave of emotions overwhelming you when someone reached out and grabbed your arm. Next thing you knew, you had been pulled into a tight, stuffy broom cupboard. 

You let out a huff, confused and offended, especially when that person put a hand tightly over your mouth to keep you quiet. But you couldn’t stay upset for too long when a familiar voice rang out from above you, making himself known through the darkness, towering over you with his height in the small space. 

“Oi, calm down, I was saving you.” He explained quickly. “You almost walked right into the trap.” 

“Trap?” You gaped in confusion as he pulled his hand away to allow you to speak, and through the oppressive darkness, you saw a brilliant flash of white teeth that you knew had to be a mischievous grin. 

George leaned across you, making you all too aware of just how closely his body was pressed up against yours in the tight space, moving to open the door once again. But he only opened it a small crack, allowing you to turn around in order to get a look out into the corridor you had just been walking through. You tried your best not to pay attention to how warm his body was against yours, pressed tightly up against you as he took a position above you, also eagerly peering out of the crack. You were even more confused when you found yourself looking upon a nearly empty corridor that was one of the many paths leading toward the Ravenclaw Tower, with seemingly nothing of note happening. 

“George, what exactly am I supposed to be seeing?” You asked, your voice slightly annoyed and impatient. 

“Patience, love.” George insisted, the cutesy nickname causing your cheeks to flame with even more heat than the tightness of his presence near you. “Any moment now.” 

You easily knew what he meant when you heard more voices coming down the hall – one of them being Fred’s, and the other being the exact person who had made you upset, the entire reason you had been storming down here in the first place: a fellow fifth year Ravenclaw boy named Daniel Rottman. 

“She’s very torn up about the whole thing, see, and she just wants to talk it out with you-” Fred explained, using a voice that you knew from experience was more faux-sincere and scheming than it was true. 

“Of course, of course, I’d love to explain myself. I was very ill that morning, you see.” 

You scoffed and rolled your eyes at this, and George poked your side, obviously not wanting your sarcastic sounds to give away your position. 

Daniel had been very flirty with you for a while now. You hadn't really known him or paid attention to him, but he had asked to be your partner for a Potions project and you said 'yes' on a whim, and you found working with him to be quite fun, and on top of it, the two of you received top marks. Recently, he had asked you on a date to Hogsmeade, claiming that he had fancied you for a while and he had been working up the courage to finally ask you out.

You didn’t necessarily feel that romantic spark with him (and no, not because you were hung up on a certain redhead…) but you found yourself being talked into accepting the date by your giggling dorm-mates because he was just 'so dreamy' – so you agreed. Only to receive an owl from him on the morning of saying that he couldn’t make it because was under the weather and had to stay in bed. 

So Fred and George invited you to Hogsmeade with them for the usual sort of day – a trip to Zonko’s, a browse around Honeyduke’s for sweets that you didn’t need, and some warm Butterbeer at the The Three Broomsticks to treat you against the cold. And while you were all crammed into a booth inside the busy restaurant, you saw Daniel cozied up in a different booth with a Hufflepuff girl, very much not sick in bed like he told you he was. 

Apparently he had been making rounds with a lot of different girls, and simply using them for help with his homework. He had been telling them all the same story about how he fancied them and he had been too shy to tell them previously, and then dropping them like an icky Gobstone the second he had gotten a good mark in whatever class they had helped him in. Daniel still had a lot of your notes for Potions, and you were beyond pissed about it. Ravenclaws being smart? More like clever enough to scheme to make their way to the top. 

“Yeah.” Fred choked out as they came into view, clearly growing impatient. “I’m sure she would love to hear the details. She’s waiting for you in the courtyard.” 

Of course, they weren’t going to make it to the courtyard. 

You were excited to see whatever it was that Fred and George had planned.

Fred used his long legs to take a few extra strides ahead of Daniel, and when he was sure that their victim was in just the right spot, he took his wand out and fired a spell over his shoulder. 

“Felis decipula!” 

This set off a chain of amazing events. 

A large bucket that had been nestled up in the rafters, hiding, fell down perfectly and covered Daniel in thick, yellow paint, and then, seemingly from nowhere, a plume of bright white feathers appeared to become stuck to the paint, completing his appearance as a horrible, icky, sticky chicken. And then, a wonderful enchantment that Fred and George must have spent hours working on engaged, and Daniel was lifted into the air, his feet hovering high off the ground as he was tossed about in a sickly, dizzying manner, and he began to scream. 

“Weasley! Weasley, you awful prat! I’ll get you for this!” He screamed. “Petrificus Totalus! Densaugeo! Furnunculus!”

He took out his wand and began firing curses, none of which actually landed as he continued to flail in the air, his aim completely thrown off by the horrible, sickening jinx that Fred and George had put on him. Either way, Fred wasn't waiting around for him to get a lucky shot, and he took off running down the corridor, cleanly passing you and George in the broom closet. You were having a very hard time containing your laughter, and George pulled you back inside and fully shut the door once again in order to continue hiding.

“Oh Merlin, that was amazing.” You whispered, holding your stomach tightly as you began to cramp with how harshly you were holding in your laughter – little wheezes and whips making it through your nostrils. “His face was so red – at least what you could see past the bits of paint. How long do you think he’ll be stuck up there?” 

“The charm should wear off in a few hours. If no one comes to get him.” George explained, a wide grin spread across his mouth. “I suspect he’ll kick up quite a fuss until someone does get him down.” 

“What if Peeves finds him?” You thought aloud, knowing that the mischievous poltergeist would likely take advantage of it as an opportunity to taunt someone already in pain. 

George let out a snort, and rushed to cover his mouth, not wanting the noise to cause the two of you to be discovered. 

“We never even thought about that.” He explained, his grin getting even wider somehow. And then he simply shrugged. “Oh well.” 

You rolled your eyes at this. 

“You are so awful.” You sighed, a bright fondness in your voice and your own smile denoting that you didn’t find this to be such a bad thing. 

“Me?” George replied, putting a hand on his chest, faking shock. “You must have me confused with my brother – see, I’m practically a saint.” 

You let out another bright laugh at this stupid joke, shaking your head. 

“Well come on, that’s what he gets for messing with my girl.” He added on, a proud puff in his chest. And then, he rushed to cover up the fond, affectionate, loving words. “Well – my friend. Nobody messes with my best friend. My best… girl… friend.” 

Your heart was pounding in your chest, and you were feeling the intense whiplash of emotions, going from bright and happy to feeling nervous and sweaty as you stared at the outline of him through the darkness. Should you say something? Was now the right time?

George then cleared his throat loudly, clearly feeling awkward. He was willing the moment to pass on, and you let it, swallowing down anything you might have been gearing up to say.

“We... we should go and find Fred.” He added on. “He shouldn’t have to take the heat alone when ole Chicken Boy does get down from there.” 

“Yeah.” You added on easily, nodding. “Right.” 

…

That was just one of many days that George put butterflies in your stomach, that he made you believe you should have told him how you felt a long, long time ago. But something always disrupted the moment or made you lose your nerve. Something greater always made you feel like it just wasn’t the right time, or made you think that if you finally did speak up about how you felt, for some dumb reason, he wouldn’t feel the same. Some small voice in the back of your head was worried that if you told him how you felt, you would just be falling on your face, and it would ruin your amazing, years-long friendship. 

You couldn’t afford to lose George. He was the best friend in the world, and even if you were so, so terribly in love with him… you would always put those feelings aside in favour of being his best friend. 

… 

Naturally, you were drawn from these thoughts when there was some movement in the sky above. The thing you had been so eagerly anticipating was now finally happening – everyone was arriving home safely. You leapt to your feet without even thinking about it, squinting your eyes to see who the figures were. It was a streak through the night that seemed out of control, going far off to the side rather than coming toward the house. Ultimately, whoever it was landed far off in one of the fields, and a short while later, Hagrid and Harry – or rather, a Harry came wandering through the tall grass, soaking wet. They must have landed in the bog on the far side of the property. 

You weren’t surprised when Ginny eagerly shoved you out of the way and ran towards who must have been the true Harry, pulling him into a tight hug. 

Molly hung back by the door, a nervous energy about her as she had yet to see any of her sons or her husband safely arrive yet. She was craning her neck, attempting to look around Hagrid, which was quite a task, as though he was hiding several Weasleys behind his back.

“Thank Merlin, you’re safe.” Ginny commented brightly, sounding entirely relieved, finally letting on how worried she had been about Harry now that he was back in her arms. She hesitantly let him go and held him at arms length, beginning to inspect him for injuries while a terribly haunted look overtook his features.

“The others aren’t back?” Harry gaped, looking around, clearly displeased to see only the three of you waiting to greet them. 

You felt a sickly pinch in your stomach at the tone of his voice and the look on his face. 

Molly shook her head. 

“They must be alright, though...” Molly said, a dusty kind of hope in her voice that clearly she was too tired to believe in.

Hagrid gave a dull grunt, and a barely traceable shake of the head, and you felt your ribs threaten to crush your lungs.

“They were on us, right from the start-” Hagrid began to explain, and your terrible feeling began to worsen. 

The nausea you felt came to a true head when another pair Apparated onto the grass – Lupin, holding onto another Harry who was quickly morphing into someone else. When you saw the terrible sea fresh, bright red blood gush down across the side of his head and over his shoulder, you selfishly hoped that he wasn't yours, but red hair was quickly sprouting on the top of his head – oh, dear god.

“Help!” Lupin yelled. “Over here!” He was struggling, having trouble lugging the dead weight along as the potion wore off and Not-Harry grew taller and weighed more. 

As his nose and eyes and forehead came into shape, that terrible twist in your stomach formed a full knot and you fought not to throw up across the grass due to the intensity of the emotions hitting you all at once. Instead, found yourself shouting out in horror.

“George!” 

It was a terrible, grief-filled cry as you sprinted across the yard as fast as your legs could carry you, even knowing that Lupin was trying to carry him toward the house anyway. 

“George, George, George!” 

You grabbed his other arm without hesitating, in the back of your mind knowing that you probably looked like a sobbing fool, but having no room to care as you were too worried about him. You were blubbering, shaking horrendously trying to help carry him toward the house. You had no clue how you actually managed to get him onto the couch, but you squeezed yourself tightly beside him, collapsing onto his chest in a hug, holding him tight. You let out another shuddering breath of relief when you felt his heart beating under your palm and felt his rattling breath against your cheek.

It was so much blood. You truly thought he had been dying. 

George reached an arm around your shoulders and back and held onto you tight, his grip quivering slightly, from blood loss or his own panic, you weren't sure. But he seemed entirely hesitant to let go of you in return.

Lupin was screaming at Harry for some reason your brain didn't have room to comprehend, and everyone except for Molly – who stayed close, petting along George’s hair, clearly just as worried as you were, shuffled outside when others began to arrive. But George was all you could think of. You couldn't bear to part from him anytime soon.

“‘m fine.” He mumbled out, slurring from his barely conscious state. 

“This is not fine.” You choked back, trying to sound angrier than you were past your tears. “You are not fine. You’re bleeding everywhere-” 

“You’re here.” He insisted, clutching tightly onto your shirt. “That means ‘m fine.” 

You tried not to scold him too heavily for flirting right now, now of all times, because at least it meant that he was feeling like himself. You sat up to further inspect him, a deep ache going through you when you got a good look at the sight of his ear – bits of mangled flesh, blown apart and barely recognizable from what it once was.

“George-” You sighed, the worried tone evident in your voice, and he quickly cut you off.

“Don't tell me how bad it is.” He said. “Your face says it all. And you're a terrible liar.”

“Someone had to keep us honest.” Fred's comment alerted you to the fact that the others had come inside.

There was another terrible sting through your chest when you saw the horrified, hurt look on his face as he shuffled closer, slow and hesitant, as though terrified that he might somehow further hurt George by getting too close.

“He says he’s fine.” You told Fred, reaching up to wipe away the thick trails of tears wetting your cheeks. You weren't sure if you were trying to reassure him or reporting on the lie – perhaps leaving Fred to judge it for himself.

“Yeah?” Fred prodded, a terrible twinge of sadness in his voice that didn't suit him. “No worse than when you broke your leg during the game against Ravenclaw during our fifth year?” 

It was something the three of you remembered well. Daniel Rottman had been a Beater on the Ravenclaw team, out for revenge after the ‘chicken’ incident. And like most people, he couldn’t even tell the twins apart properly, so he had gone after both of them relentlessly for most of the game – it had only been poor luck that George had been on the receiving end of a bratty, poor sportsman swing of his bat right down on George's calf at the end of the game after Ravenclaw had won. Some healing potions and a few nights in the Hospital Wing and George had been right as rain, but you had fussed over him just as much back then, especially because you had felt guilty that Daniel had only been on their radar because of you. 

“That was worse.” George easily lied. 

“You can’t keep getting injured and scaring the pretty girl, Georgie. Despite what our big brother says, that’s not how you get their attention.” Fred told him, grinning through his own wet tears, obviously referring to Bill being attacked the previous year and how much Fleur had fussed over him when he had been in the hospital then. 

“You've foiled me. That was my plan, all along.” George mumbled dully, forcing a small smile.

You shook your head, a dull laughter escaping your throat, knowing that, of course, you would be stuck to George's side attending to his every need for however long it would take him to heal from this.

“How are you feeling, Georgie?” Fred pressed, needing to hear him say it. 

“Saint-like.” George said, a tired grin spreading across his lips. 

“What?” Fred prodded. 

“Holy.” George insisted, using a bloody hand to motion toward his gory, blown apart ear. “Get it? I’m holy. I’m saint-like.” 

Fred let out a tired rasp of a laugh, and you rolled your eyes.

“Honestly? The whole wide world of ear-related humour, and you go with ‘saint-like’?” 

“This is why one needs to avoid getting hit in the head.” You sighed. “It affects your ability to think cleverly.” 

“No kidding.” Fred added on. 

… 

A while later, after the chaos had died down, and after almost everyone had arrived safely and been accounted for, you were sitting on the couch with George. Of course, sticking right by his side, just as you had promised yourself. His ear had received a few healing charms, ones that could do the minimum that could be done, and he had drank a blood-replenishing potion, and he was now sporting a rather cartoonish bandage across his forehead to hold a wad of gauze to the side of his head where his ear used to be. He was looking a lot better, his cheeks a bit pinker with the blood-replenishing potion in his system. But he was concussed, and it was your job to keep him awake at least through the night to ensure that no permanent damage was done. 

You were busying yourself with cleaning the blood off his face and neck, trying to ignore the fact that Fred had helped him out of the Harry sport jacket and shirt and he was now laying there completely shirtless, his beautiful Quidditch built body on display. He was beautiful, even if he was scarier when he was covered in blood.

He was staring at you with discerning, thoughtful eyes while you gently wiped a wet cloth across his skin, doing your best to gently clean off the blood. The blood that had been so frightful and terrifying to you just a short time ago, a sight that made you think he was dying, that he was about to be taken from you. Now you could take care of him, help him heal, and you hoped that this meant you had a lifetime's worth of time left with him.

“How did you know?” He asked, the question so sudden and confusing with a lack of context. He was tired, his voice more than reflecting that, but it was your job to keep him awake, so of course, you had to engage him in the conversation. 

“How did I know what?” You asked, fishing for more context. “I’m gonna need a little more to go on, Georgie.” 

The corner of his mouth rose in a tweak of that telling signature smirk, the one that said he was the only one in on the joke. (Usually, the only one aside from Fred.) If he wasn’t bodily incapacitated, you might have been scared about what was coming next. 

“Sometimes Mum can’t even tell us apart…” He mumbled, almost as if he was thinking aloud to himself. “But I suppose that was the whole point of tonight, wasn’t it?” 

“What are you on about?” You pressed on further. 

“You called my name.” He declared, an intense fondness in his voice. “You called me George, right when you saw me.”

“That's because you are George.” You chuckled, still unsure what his point was.

“Exactly.” He declared firmly. “That's something that's so difficult for so many people, and you were so sure. You always are.”

That struck a cord deep inside you, causing you to freeze. Suddenly, you felt caught.

“You called my name. And that’s how I knew I was home safe. I heard your voice, and you calling out my name… that's how I knew the danger was gone. You were with me. So sure, right beside me, like you always are.”

There was a crack in his voice, and a single tear fled from his eye, rolling down across the side of his face that wasn’t covered in half-cleaned blood, falling down sideways where he was laying down. It was only then that you realized how terrified he had been, scared for his own life, scared that he was going to die out there, surrounded by strangers who were more than hungry to see him die in pain… 

You reached out for his hand and gripped it tightly, and he squeezed it right back. 

“Georgie, you must have been so terrified.” You lamented.

“I'm fine.” He assured you, swallowing down his tears, clearly not wanting to talk about it.

You took a moment to process the words. He was George. He was your George, he always had been. Yes, others, even their own mother sometimes struggled to tell them apart because they were identical twins, and it was a laugh of a gag that they often played into. But something in your heart always looked at him, from a time when you were so young, and you just knew him. You felt him in a way that could never be mistaken. 

“How did you know?” He prompted again, partly curious and partly driven mad looking for the knowledge, wanting to know what set your eyes apart from everyone else’s when you looked at him. 

He had a theory as to why, but even he couldn't be bold enough to assume. He had to hear you say it.

There was only one simple answer to the question. One that you could no longer easily hold back. 

“George, I-” You took in a sharp breath. “Of course I know the man that I’ve been in love with since I was nine years old.” 

George’s firm, serious mouth broke into a blistering, pleased grin. As in sync as the two of you had ever been, he used his free hand on the back of your head to pull you down into a kiss as you leaned into him. You were still weary to hurt him even with a pain-dulling potion in his veins, and you placed your free hand in the middle of his warm chest to support yourself as you finally got to kiss him for the first time. He held you there tightly as he cradled the back of your neck, sighing into your mouth with wonder and need, loving every second of this. You let out a sweet gasp at the taste of his lips, loving the feeling so much. 

“Finally.” 

Ginny’s voice came from behind the two of you, startling both of you apart. 

She was tying up her dressing gown, staring at you with her own knowing, Weasley smirk. 

“I just came to get a glass of water, don’t let me interrupt.” She explained. “Fred owes me a Chocolate Frog, though.” 

“Everything has to be a bet.” You huffed out, rolling your eyes.

George chuckled. “Of course it does.”

“You knew about this?” You gaped.

“No, otherwise I would have been in on it, and I would have kissed you sooner.” He said with a wink. “But there's a pool on when Ron and Hermione will finally wise up and get together-”

“If at all.” Ginny added on sharply as she headed back toward the stairs.

You let out a small laugh.

“You have to say it too.” You reminded George. “Otherwise it doesn't count. Please don’t make me look like a fool-” 

“I love you.” George said promptly. “I’ve been in love with you since we were eight years old, so technically – I win.” 

“Everything is a competition with you Weasleys.” You hissed, picking up the cloth and going back to cleaning up the blood. 

“Which is why you’ll make such a great addition.” George smirked. 

You didn’t say anything, loving the butterflies that fluttered through you with the implication of these words, wondering how George still managed to make you feel like a giggling school girl.

...

A/N: Please keep in mind, this is a oneshot, and there will not be a continuation or a 'part two', so please do not ask for one in the comments.

I personally find it rude and stressful when people ask for a 'part two' immediately after finishing a fic, especially one that I explicitly state is already completed. If you enjoyed this fic and you want to show your enthusiasm, you can do so by reblogging it, or commenting about the existing plot and characters. I love to have discussions about the characters I write about with fellow fans.

And if you really enjoyed my writing and my style and you want something else to read, you can check out my other Harry Potter fics or you can check out all my other works from my other fandoms.

It only takes a moment to reblog or leave a comment, and that kind of thing makes an author's day, and I am always, always appreciative when people do!

Happy Reading,

The rain is a relentless, gray sheet that turns the Washington D.C. outskirts into a blurred watercolor of brake lights and misery.

Inside his Porsche Cayenne, Leon S. Kennedy feels the familiar, hollow hum of a post-mission comedown. His suit is wrinkled, his tie is loosened to the point of uselessness, and the smell of stale coffee and government-issued paperwork seems to have seeped into his very pores.

The debriefing had been a disaster. Four hours of bureaucrats in sterile rooms asking him to quantify the "unquantifiable horrors" he’d seen in a damp basement in Eastern Europe.

They want data; Leon just wants a drink and a decade of sleep.

"Note to self," he mutters, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely carries over the rhythmic thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers. "Next time Hunnigan calls with an 'easy' reconnaissance job, tell her I’ve retired to open a bakery. At least bread doesn't try to grow extra heads."

He’s doing sixty on the slick highway, his grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel light but practiced. His mind is already drifting toward the bottle of aged bourbon sitting on his kitchen counter—his only roommate in an apartment that’s too quiet and too clean.

It’s a dangerous headspace to be in. In his line of work, the moment you start looking forward to the end of the night is the moment something bites you.

Suddenly, the world narrows.

A flash of neon orange darts into the cone of his high beams. It’s small—too small for a deer, too erratic for a trash bag.

"Son of a—!"

Leon reacts before he thinks. It’s a muscle memory honed by years of dodging charging Ganados and careening through Raccoon City in a stolen cruiser.

He slams the brake pedal, the ABS system pulsing violently beneath his boot. The car skids, its tires screaming in a high-pitched protest against the wet asphalt. The back end fish-tails, a graceful but terrifying slide that Leon corrects with a sharp, disciplined jerk of the wheel.

The car lurches to a halt, the engine idling with a low, mechanical pant. Leon’s heart is hammering against his ribs, a frantic rhythm he usually reserves for when a Tyrant is breaking through a drywall.

"Great. Just great," he sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. "If I’ve totaled the suspension for a squirrel, I’m never living this down."

He throws the car into park and steps out. The rain hits him instantly, soaking through his dress shirt and plastering his blonde hair to his forehead. He rounds the front of the car, expecting to find a mess on the road. Instead, he sees a tiny, shivering lump huddled against the front passenger tire.

It’s an orange kitten. It couldn't be more than five weeks old, its fur spiked into pathetic, sodden needles. It looks less like a predator and more like a very angry, very wet dandelion.

Leon stares at it. The kitten stares back with wide, watery eyes, letting out a pathetic, high-pitched mew that sounds like a rusty hinge.

"You’ve got a real sense of timing, kid," Leon says, crouching down. The water is already pooling in his expensive shoes. "Of all the lanes in all the world, you had to walk into mine."

He reaches out, and the tiny creature tries to hiss. It’s a valiant effort, really—a miniature display of bravado that makes Leon’s chest ache with an unexpected, sharp tug of empathy.

He knows what it’s like to be small, cornered, and surrounded by things much larger and meaner than you.

"Easy. I'm not a zombie. Well, not on the weekends, anyway," he murmurs.

He sheds his suit jacket—the one that cost him more than an average paycheck—and scoops the kitten up. The creature is so light it’s terrifying; he can feel every individual rib beneath the soaked fur. It’s vibrating with a bone-deep chill. Without a second thought, he swaddles the kitten in the heavy fabric of his jacket, shielding it from the downpour.

Back inside the Porsche, the heat is blasting, but the kitten is still shaking. Leon sets the bundle on the leather passenger seat, watching as a tiny, pink nose pokes out from the lapel of his jacket.

"Come on, little guy," Leon mutters, his voice softening in a way he hasn't heard in years. "Don't clock out on me yet. I didn't almost wreck my favorite car just for you to quit now."

He taps the GPS on his dashboard with a frantic, wet finger. 24-hour emergency vet.

"Alright, hold on," he says, shifting the car back into gear. He glances at the kitten, who has now curled into a ball inside the jacket, looking exceptionally small against the vastness of the interior.

"I hope you like German engineering, because we’re about to break some speed records."

As he pulls back onto the highway, the bourbon is forgotten. His focus is entirely on the tiny, rhythmic rise and fall of the orange fur beside him. For the first time in a long time, the mission isn't about saving the world or stopping a virus.

It's just about making sure one small thing makes it to tomorrow.

──────•✦•──────

The clock on the wall of the treatment area mocks you. It’s 3:00 AM, the literal witching hour of veterinary medicine, where the cases are either bizarre, tragic, or a headache-inducing combination of both.

You take a sip of coffee that has reached a temperature and consistency best described as "over-brewed sludge," feeling it burn a slow path down your throat. It’s the only thing keeping your eyes open.

"The tulips really did a number on him," you mutter to Sarah, your lead tech, as you both stare down at a sedated domestic shorthair in cage four. "Bloodwork looks like a disaster zone. His liver’s basically thrown in the towel and headed for early retirement."

Sarah sighs, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses. "Are we starting him on the lactulose titration now?"

"Yeah," you say, your fingers dancing across the sticky keyboard of the workstation with a weary, mechanical rhythm. "And hang the fluids. I’ve already typed in the orders. Honestly? I could use a Propofol coma myself right about now. Just ten minutes of medically induced silence. Is that too much to ask of the universe?"

The chime of the front bell rings—a sharp, cheerful ding that feels like a physical blow to your sleep-deprived brain.

"The universe says yes," you grumble, pushing off the counter.

You catch a glimpse of the security monitor. Standing in the lobby is a man who looks like he just crawled out of a shipwreck. He’s soaking wet, broad-shouldered, and wearing a look of such raw, high-octane panic that your professional instincts override your exhaustion.

"Well," you mutter, adjusting your stethoscope around your neck. "This is going to be interesting."

You head out to the lobby, the smell of wet pavement and expensive leather hitting you before you even reach him. He’s striking—harsh jawline, blonde hair plastered to his forehead in messy clumps, and eyes a startling, piercing shade of blue that seem to be vibrating with adrenaline. He’s cradling a high-end suit jacket like it’s made of glass.

"Exam room one," you say, your voice blunt but not unkind. You don't wait for him to move; you lead the way, the squelch of his boots following behind you.

Once the door clicks shut, he gingerly places the jacket on the stainless steel table. "I found him on the highway," the man rasps. His voice is deep, underscored by a slight tremor he’s trying very hard to hide. "He almost... I almost hit him. I think he’s dying."

"Let’s see the damage," you murmur. You carefully peel back the wet fabric, expecting a gore-fest. Instead, you find a tiny, orange scrap of fur that lets out a pathetic, high-pitched squeak.

Your hands, practiced and steady, move over the tiny body. You grab a warm, chlorhexidine-soaked gauze to wipe away the road grime and grease. You check the gums—pale, but pinking up. You listen to the heart—fast, but steady. No broken bones. No internal bleeding. Just a very cold, very hungry little life.

"Good news, sir," you say, looking up at him. "He’s not dying. He’s just a dramatic, malnourished neonate."

"Leon," he corrects instantly, his voice slightly breathless. "Just... Leon."

You blink, then tap your ID badge with a tired, playful smirk. "Okay, Leon. We can do first names. It saves time in an emergency." You go back to drying the kitten with a soft towel. "He’s probably five weeks old. He’s thin, he’s got a bit of a chill, but he’s remarkably intact for someone who took on a car and won."

Leon sags against the counter, his hands shaking as he runs them through his wet hair. The relief on his face is so profound it makes your chest twinge with a rare spark of empathy. Usually, people are just annoyed about the bill. He looks like he just saw a ghost be resurrected.

"So, what happens now?" he asks. "You... you have a shelter? Or a rescue?"

You stop scrubbing and give him a long, grim look. "It’s kitten season, Leon. Every rescue within a three-state radius is currently overflowing. They won't take a bottle-baby right now. If I send him to the city shelter, his chances are... well, they aren't great."

The silence that follows is heavy, thick with the sound of the rain lashing against the exam room window. You watch the conflict play out across his face—a man clearly burdened by a world of "heavy" things, staring at a three-ounce kitten. He rubs his temples, looking at the orange scrap that is currently trying to burrow into his damp shirt.

"I don't know the first thing about cats," he admits, a dry, self-deprecating humor touching his lips. "I'm more of a... tactical entry kind of guy. Not a 'nanny' guy."

"You managed to not squash him with a car," you shrug, reaching into the cabinet to pull out a starter kit. "That’s a passing grade in my book."

He sighs, a long, defeated sound that ends in a nod. "Fine. I’ll take him. What do I do?"

For the next ten minutes, you give him the 'Neonatal 101' crash course. You pack a box with formula, tiny bottles, and a snuggle-safe heating pad. You show him how to hold the kitten—belly down, never on his back—and how to test the temperature of the milk.

"And here’s the best part," you say, a mischievous glint in your tired eyes. You pick up a cotton ball and dip it in warm water. "Since he’s this small, his mom would usually lick him to make him go. Since you are now the mom, you have to stimulate him to go to the bathroom after every meal."

You hand him the cotton ball. Leon stares at it as if you’ve handed him a live grenade with the pin pulled.

"I have to... what?"

"Stimulate," you repeat, suppressing a grin. "Gently. It’s glamorous, I know. Welcome to parenthood, Leon. Try not to get any on the suit."

The moment of levity is shattered when Sarah’s head pops through the door, her expression grim. "Doc, we’ve got a hit-by-car ten minutes out. It’s a Golden Retriever, multiple fractures, looks like he’s in shock. We’re prepping the crash cart."

The shift in your energy is instantaneous. The playful vet vanishes, replaced by the clinical commander. You reach for a pen stuck in your pocket and use it to shove your messy hair up into a makeshift bun, tightening the knot with a sharp tug.

"Copy that. Get the O2 ready and start a warm saline bag," you say, already moving toward the door. You look back at Leon, who is standing there holding a box of formula and a terrified-looking orange kitten.

"Leon, he's stable. Take the kit, go pay the tech at the front desk, and get that cat into a warm bed," you say, your voice now a sharp, professional staccato as the adrenaline begins to flood your system. "I’ve got a real crisis coming through those doors. Good luck. Don't be a stranger if he stops eating."

You don't wait for a goodbye. You're already sprinting toward the treatment area, the "Propofol coma" forgotten.

──────•✦•──────

The apartment is a monument to a man who expects to leave it at a moment’s notice and never return.

It’s located in a quiet corner of D.C., all cold granite countertops, brushed steel, and a sofa so ergonomically perfect and devoid of character it might as well have come with the lease. There are no photos on the walls. No stray mail on the entry table. The air usually smells of nothing but filtered ventilation and the faint, metallic tang of the gun oil he uses to clean his gun.

Now, it smells like kitten formula and desperation.

Leon sits on the edge of his bed, the glow of his phone illuminating the deep grooves of exhaustion etched into his face. He sets an alarm for 02:00. Then 04:00. Then 06:00.

"Great," he mutters, his thumb hovering over the save button. "I've gone from tactical extractions to a scheduled piss-watch for a creature that weighs less than a standard-issue magazine. My career trajectory is really peaking."

He looks down at the shoebox he’s lined with one of his softest, most expensive hoodies. Inside, the orange kitten—whom he has tentatively dubbed 'Cheeto' in a moment of sleep-deprived weakness—is a vibrating ball of fluff.

The 02:00 alarm blares with the subtle grace of a flashbang. Leon is upright in half a second, his hand flying toward the nightstand before his brain registers that he’s not in a trench in Edonia. He’s in a climate-controlled bedroom, and the only 'hostile' is a hungry five-week-old feline.

He stumbles into the kitchen, his movements stiff. The process of heating the formula is an exercise in agonizing precision. He uses a meat thermometer to ensure the liquid is exactly 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit. If it’s 98.4, he’s convinced the kitten will get hypothermia; if it’s 98.8, he fears he’s essentially serving lava.

"Okay, kid. Chow time. Don't make it weird," Leon whispers as he gathers the kitten into his lap.

His hands—hands that have steadied a sniper rifle in high-wind conditions and punched through the reinforced glass of Umbrella laboratories—are shaking slightly. He holds the tiny plastic bottle like it’s a detonator with a frayed wire.

When the kitten finally latches, a frantic, rhythmic tug-tug-tug vibrating through the silicone nipple, Leon finds himself holding his breath.

"Easy there, tiger. It’s a buffet, not a race," he says, a small, lopsided smirk tugging at his mouth. "You eat like a zombie at an all-you-can-eat brain buffet."

The "glamorous" part comes next. Leon stares at the box of cotton balls you had handed him with that knowing, mischievous glint in your eyes. He can still see your face—the way your hair was a mess, the way you didn't even flinch when he walked in looking like a drowned rat.

You had looked at him like he was just a guy, not a government asset, not a survivor. Just a guy with a cat.

"Stimulate," he repeats your words, his voice a flat, dry monotone. "She said it would be fun. She lied. I’m definitely filing a complaint with the veterinary board for emotional distress."

He performs the task with a grimace of intense concentration, murmuring apologies to the kitten the entire time.

By day three, the "sterile" nature of the apartment has surrendered. There are half-washed bottles in the sink. A trail of discarded paper towels leads from the sofa to the trash. A stray sock, mangled by tiny needle-teeth, sits in the middle of the hallway.

Leon should be annoyed. He should be furious that his sanctuary has been breached by an orange chaos-agent. But as he sits on the sofa at 4:30 AM, watching the sun begin to bleed over the D.C. skyline, he realizes his internal monologue has gone quiet. The anger—that low-simmering hum of PTSD that usually keeps him company in the dark—has been drowned out by a tiny, motorized purr.

The kitten crawls up his chest, stumbling over the buttons of his shirt, and tucks its head directly under Leon’s chin. The fur is soft, smelling faintly of the soap you’d used to clean him.

Leon freezes, his arms hovering awkwardly for a moment before he slowly, tentatively, rests a hand over the kitten’s back. He feels the tiny heart beating against his own.

For the first time since the world ended in a rain of missiles over Raccoon City in 1998, the crushing weight in his chest feels... lighter.

"I think the vet might be onto something, Cheeto," Leon breathes into the quiet room, his eyes heavy with a sleep that feels, for once, like it might be dreamless. "But don't tell her I said that. She already thinks I’m a pushover."

He closes his eyes, the minimalist apartment finally feeling like something it has never been before: a home.

──────•✦•──────

The fluorescent lights of the clinic are humming at a frequency that is starting to feel like a drill against your temple.

You’re leaning your lower back against the cabinetry of the pharmacy station, clutching a lukewarm cup of coffee like it’s a holy relic.

"I mean it, Sarah," you mutter, watching your tech draw up meds with terrifying efficiency. "One more pyometra. Just one more emergency spay where the uterus looks like it might burst, and I’m done. I’ll donate my scrubs to a thrift store and start a new life. Maybe I’ll go into accounting. Numbers don't bleed on your shoes or try to bite your face off.'"

"You’d be bored in a week," Sarah chirps, not even looking up. "Besides, you love the drama. Oh, speaking of drama—look who’s back."

The front bell dings. You peer around the corner. It’s Leon.

He looks like he’s been through some shit. The rugged, leading-man handsomeness is still there, but it’s buried under a layer of profound sleep deprivation. He’s got dark, bruised circles under his eyes that rival your own, and his blonde hair is a mess of spikes. But then you look at his hands.

He’s holding that plastic carrier with a level of tenderness that is honestly offensive. It’s like he’s carrying a box of nitroglycerin.

"Room two," you tell Sarah, snapping into a professional mask that is mostly held together by caffeine and sheer stubbornness.

You walk into the exam room and find him standing by the table, looking at the carrier like it’s a bomb he forgot how to disarm.

"Back for more punishment, Leon?" you ask, your voice dropping into that comfortable, blunt cadence. "You look like you’ve been living in a war zone. Which, granted, is a normal Tuesday for a kitten owner."

"He doesn't stop," Leon rasps, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that makes your nerve endings tingle. "I followed the schedule. I monitored the intake. But he just keeps screaming. Is he broken?"

"It’s called meowing, Leon. It’s how they demand your soul." You reach into the carrier and scoop out the orange scrap. He’s already gained weight; his belly is a round, healthy little pear, and his eyes are bright. "Wow. Look at you. You’ve actually kept him alive. I’m impressed. Most guys usually give up by the third bottle feeding."

"I don't like failing assignments," Leon mutters, though there’s a flicker of a lopsided smile on his face as he watches you examine the tiny creature.

You perform the check-up, checking the heart rate and the lungs, all while Leon stands way too close. He smells like woodsmoke and laundry detergent, a combination that is currently frying your brain.

You praise him for the kitten’s hydration levels, and you see his shoulders drop about two inches in relief.

As you move to pack the kitten back into the carrier, Leon starts firing off a string of hyper-specific, borderline neurotic questions.

"The water for the formula—I’ve been using a thermometer to keep it at exactly 98 degrees. Is 98.5 too high? Does it cause thermal shock? And the cotton balls—are the quilted ones too abrasive for his skin?"

You stare at him. This man is currently worried about the abrasive quality of a CVS-brand cotton ball. It’s the most endearing thing you’ve ever seen, and your filter—already weakened by a twelve-hour shift—completely disintegrates.

He’s hot, your brain shrugs. He’s a good dad. And you haven't been on a date in ages. Just do it.

"Leon," you interrupt, putting a hand on his arm to stop the frantic flow of questions. The muscle beneath his sleeve is hard as a rock, and the heat of him makes your palms itch. "Stop. You’re doing great. The cat is thriving. You, however, look like you're about to have a stroke."

He pauses, looking a little sheepish. "I just... I don't want to mess it up."

"You won't." You reach over to the counter, grab a neon-pink sticky note and a pen, and scribble your personal cell number on it. You press the note into his large, calloused palm, your fingers lingering just a second longer than necessary.

"Look," you say, flashing him a playful, slightly crooked smirk. "If you have any more midnight panics about formula ratios or quilted vs. non-quilted cotton, just text me. Strictly for cat questions, of course. My expertise is limited to things with four legs, but I can talk you off a ledge."

Leon stares at the pink paper in his hand like it’s a piece of top-secret intel. He looks up at you, his blue eyes searching yours, and for a second, the sarcastic vet and the stoic man are just two people standing in a cramped room with a tiny cat.

"Strictly for cat questions," he repeats, his voice low and a little amused.

"Obviously," you say, walking him toward the door. "I'm a professional, Leon. Now get out of here and go take a nap before you face-plant in the lobby."

As he walks away, you lean against the doorframe, watching the swing of his shoulders.

"What was that?" Sarah asks, appearing out of nowhere with a smirk.

"Professional consultation," you mutter, taking a final, cold sip of your coffee.

Oh god, what did I just do? If he texts me a picture of his cat's poop at 2:00 AM, I'm never living this down.

──────•✦•──────

Leon is a man who understands protocol. He understands mission parameters, chain of command, and the strict rules of engagement. So, when you handed him that sticky note with your number on it, his brain filed it under a very specific, very restricted category: Emergency Technical Support.

He spends the better part of forty-eight hours staring at the digits, convinced that a woman like you—someone who handles life-and-death crises with a sarcastic quip and a steady hand—has better things to do than talk to a government-sanctioned blunt instrument like him.

You’re light, and full of life, and you probably have a social circle that doesn't involve handler-reports and ballistic testing. In Leon’s mind, you are firmly out of his league, occupying a world that isn't stained by the things he’s seen.

But then, the kitten—Cheeto—starts doing things. Weird things.

His first text is sent at 11:30 PM. He attaches a grainy photo of the kitten standing in the middle of the hallway, arched like a Halloween decoration, scuttling sideways with a chaotic energy that Leon can only describe as "biological anomaly."

Leon: He’s moving at a forty-five-degree angle and his tail looks like a pipe cleaner. Is this a neurological tremor? Do I need to bring him in for an MRI?

Your reply comes three minutes later, and Leon feels a pathetic jolt of electricity at the buzz in his pocket.

You: Leon, he’s just playing. It’s called crab-walking. He’s trying to look big and scary. Is it working?

Leon looks at the kitten, who has just tripped over its own paws and face-planted into the carpet.

Leon: I’m terrified.

By Thursday, the anxiety reaches a fever pitch. Leon is sitting on his bed, watching the kitten knead a fleece blanket with a rhythmic, intense focus. He doesn't text this time. He calls. He needs a professional voice to talk him off the ledge.

"He's vibrating," Leon says the moment you pick up, his voice a deadpan, military monotone that betrays the fact that his eyes are currently dinner-plate wide. "The whole cat. He’s vibrating and poking the blanket with his claws. It’s some kind of repetitive motor reflex. Is he having a seizure? Should I be checking his airway?"

He hears you let out a long, melodic breath on the other end—a laugh you’re trying to stifle.

"Leon," you say, and the way you say his name makes him grip the phone a little tighter. "He's making biscuits. He's purring. It means he's happy. It means he thinks the blanket is his mom."

Leon looks down at the orange fluff currently 'baking' against his thigh. "Making biscuits. Right. So it’s a culinary instinct, not a medical emergency. I’ll cancel the medevac."

"Please do," you chuckle. "Go to sleep, Leon."

But sleep doesn't come easily. The climax of his "cat-dad" neurosis hits at 1:00 AM on Saturday. Cheeto had been particularly enthusiastic about his bottle, guzzling the formula until his stomach was a hard, round little marble. Afterward, the kitten had simply... collapsed.

He’s sprawled out on his back, limbs limp, unresponsive to Leon’s frantic prodding.

Leon’s heart is in his throat. He hits the FaceTime button before he can talk himself out of it.

The screen flickers to life, and suddenly, you are there. You’re in your pajamas—something soft and mismatched—and your hair is a magnificent, messy bird’s nest that tells him he definitely just woke you up. You look soft, blurry around the edges, and devastatingly beautiful in the low light of your bedroom.

"Leon?" you mumble, squinting at the screen. "Is everything okay?"

"He’s unresponsive," Leon says, his voice dropping into a low, intimate rasp of genuine distress. He turns the camera toward the kitten. "He’s just... lying there. I tried poking his paw and he didn't even hiss. I think I broke him."

You lean in closer to the camera, your eyes scanning the image. Then, you smile. It’s a gentle, warm expression that makes Leon’s apartment feel ten degrees warmer.

"Just a milk coma, Leon," you explain softly. "Look at that belly. He’s just full. He’s passed out in a food haze. He’ll be up and terrorizing your curtains in two hours."

Leon sags back against his headboard, the adrenaline draining out of him and leaving a hollow, aching exhaustion in its place. He covers his face with one hand, letting out a jagged sigh.

"I'm a disaster at this," he admits, his voice sounding raw even to his own ears. "I've faced things that—things that shouldn't exist—and I'm losing my mind over a cat that's just... full."

"It's because you care," you say. There’s no mockery in your tone, no punchline. Just a simple statement of fact that cuts right through his armor. "Most people would have just ignored him on that road, Leon. You didn't. You’re a good man. Even if you are a neurotic cat-dad."

Leon lets the words sink in. A good man. He hasn't felt like one in a long time. Usually, he’s just a weapon that the government points at problems.

"A 'cat-dad,'" Leon repeats, a dry, self-deprecating smirk appearing as he looks back at the screen. "Is there a badge for that? Or do I just get a lifetime supply of lint rollers and a permanent coating of orange fur on all my tactical gear?"

You laugh—a real, bright sound that echoes through his quiet bedroom. Leon finds himself staring at the screen, watching the way your eyes crinkle at the corners, the way a stray lock of hair falls over your forehead.

He realizes, with a sudden, jarring clarity, that he’s stopped looking at the kitten. He’s just looking at you.

The silence stretches, becoming something heavy and electric. Leon realizes he’s spent the last forty-eight hours coming up with increasingly flimsy, ridiculous reasons to see your name light up his phone.

He isn't worried about the cat anymore. He’s worried about how much he doesn't want to hang up.

"You look tired," he says softly, his thumb tracing the edge of the phone. "I should let you get back to sleep. Sorry for the... milk coma false alarm."

"It’s okay, Leon," you say, your voice dropping to a sleepy, tender murmur. "Call me anytime. Even if it’s just for biscuits."

As the screen goes black, Leon stares at his own reflection in the glass.

He’s a mess. He’s a DSO agent who just got called a "good man" by a woman who makes him feel like he’s eighteen again, before the world turned into a horror movie.

He looks at the sleeping kitten and then at the phone.

"You've failed miserably, Kennedy," he whispers to the empty room. "You’re definitely flirting now."

──────•✦•──────

The daily text updates from Leon have become the highlight of your grueling, twelve-hour rotations—a digital breadcrumb trail of "cat-dad" neurosis that you’ve come to rely on more than caffeine. What started as a clinical safety net has morphed into a steady stream of orange-furred chaos. You find yourself smiling at your phone in the middle of the surgery prep, looking at a blurry photo of a kitten stuck in a tissue box.

But lately, the digital interaction isn't enough for him.

"He’s back," Sarah, your tech, sings out from the pharmacy area. She leans against the doorframe with a devious, toothy grin. "The hot brooding guy with the orange accessory is in the lobby. Third time this week. What’s the 'emergency' today? A crooked whisker? A suspicious meow?"

"Shut up, Sarah," you mutter, though you can feel the heat crawling up your neck. You instinctively reach up to smooth a stray hair back into your ponytail.

"Oh, please. You’re wearing the 'fancy' scrubs and you actually used mascara today. I see you," she teases, checking the clipboard. "He’s here for... a bag of gastrointestinal kibble. The kind we sell for a 20% markup that he could literally Prime-deliver to his door in four hours."

You roll your eyes, grabbing a clean lab coat. "Maybe he just likes supporting small businesses."

"Maybe he likes supporting your specific business," she retorts, following you toward the lobby. "The girls in the back have a pool going. Twenty bucks says he asks for your number by Friday. Fifty says he’s already got it and he’s just a massive coward."

"I don't think 'coward' is in his vocabulary," you whisper, though your heart is doing a rhythmic thud against your ribs that feels suspiciously like a drumroll.

You push through the double doors and there he is. Leon stands near the display of prescription diets, looking entirely too large and too handsome for a sterile veterinary lobby. He’s wearing a charcoal sweater that hugs his shoulders in a way that should be illegal, his blonde hair perfectly tousled despite the humidity outside.

"Leon," you say, your voice landing in that sweet spot between professional and playful. "Don't tell me. He’s developed a sudden, life-threatening allergy to his own tail?"

Leon turns, and the way his blue eyes light up when they land on you makes your stomach do a slow, dizzying somersault. He clears his throat, shifting his weight. He looks incredibly cool until he opens his mouth, and then that slight, charming awkwardness leaks out.

"He sneezed," Leon says, his voice a serious, low rumble. "Three times in a row. It was... rhythmic. I thought it might be the early stages of a respiratory collapse. Or a dust mite allergy."

You walk over, taking the carrier from him. Your fingers brush against his—just for a second—and you feel the static electricity zip up your arm. You peek inside at the kitten, who is currently busy trying to eat a loose thread on his bedding.

"He looks like he’s on death’s door, truly," you say, your voice dripping with dry sarcasm. "The 'rhythmic sneezing' was likely just him being a cat, Leon. But since you’re here, I suppose I can perform a very expensive, very rigorous five-second nose check."

"I also needed food," he adds quickly, gesturing to the shelf. "The bag I have is... getting low. Maybe."

"You have half a bag left at home, don't you?" you ask, tilting your head, a smirk playing on your lips.

Leon stays silent for a beat too long, his gaze dropping to your name tag before meeting your eyes again. "I like the atmosphere here," he says, a bit of that one-liner bravado returning. "Very... clinical. Good lighting."

"Right. Everyone comes to the vet for the 'ambiance' of barking dogs and the smell of anal glands," you retort. You lead him to the counter, ringing up the overpriced kibble. You’re acutely aware of the techs watching from the window, probably exchanging silent high-fives.

You feel a pang of doubt as you hand him the receipt. A guy like this—rugged, mysterious, probably used to high-octane thrill-seekers—couldn't possibly be interested in you.

You’re a woman who spends her days getting peed on by Chihuahuas and her nights smelling like antiseptic and wet fur. You’re exhausted, your under-eye circles are permanent residents, and your social life is a graveyard.

But then Leon reaches out, his hand hovering over yours for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary as he takes the bag.

"Thanks," he says softly. The way he says it isn't like a client. It’s a low, intimate vibration that makes the bustling clinic fade into the background. "I’ll... let you know if the sneezing returns. Or if he looks at me funny."

"I'm sure you will," you say, your bluntness softened by a gentle, tired smile. "Go home, Leon. Your cat misses you."

As he walks out, his stride confident and his shoulders broad, you lean against the counter and let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.

"Twenty bucks!" Sarah yells from the back. "He’s totally into you, Doc! He’s just waiting for the cat to give him the green light!"

You just shake your head, looking down at the counter where he stood. You find yourself hoping the kitten sneezes again tomorrow. Just once. Just to be safe.

──────•✦•──────

The air in the treatment area is thick with the scent of antiseptic, metallic blood, and the heavy, lingering stillness of the recently departed. You’re standing over the stainless steel prep table, your hands steady despite the tremor of exhaustion in your knees as you pull the heavy plastic of a cadaver bag over a sweet, senior Greyhound who just couldn't fight any longer.

"If the shift keeps up like this, we're going to run out of freezer space," your tech, Marcus, sighs, his voice flat with the kind of gallows humor that keeps hospitals running at 2:00 AM.

"Don’t," you whisper, zipping the bag with a sharp, final schlick. "I hate this part the most. Every time. Packing up someone’s best friend in a glorified trash bag. It’s a hell of a way to say goodbye."

You lean your forehead against the wall for just a second, letting the grief wash over you and then drain away. You have to stay empty. If you let the "sad" stay in your lungs, you’ll drown.

Then, the front bell doesn't just chime—it screams. Someone is leaning on it.

You’re moving before you even think, your clogs squeaking on the linoleum. You burst into the lobby and stop dead.

It’s Leon. But the charming, awkward "cat-dad" who buys too much kibble is gone. In his place is a man who looks like he’s standing in the middle of a war zone. His face is pale, his eyes are blown wide with a jagged, frantic terror, and his chest is heaving.

He isn't holding a carrier. He’s holding the orange kitten against his chest, his large hands trembling so violently you can see the tremors from the doorway.

"Please," Leon chokes out. The sound is raw, a jagged piece of glass in his throat. He thrusts the limp, tiny body toward you. "I can't—don't let him die. Please. Not him too."

The kitten is a wet rag. His breathing is a shallow, agonizing rasp—the "guppy breathing" that makes every vet’s blood run cold.

You swear under your breath and snap into action the internal "vet-mode" slamming into place. You snatch the kitten and sprint back through the swinging doors. "Marcus, get the O2 cage prepped! I need a 24-gauge IV and a dose of dex. Now, move!"

For the next twenty minutes, you are a machine. You slide the needle into a vein thinner than a piece of thread. You listen to the crackle in the tiny lungs—pneumonia. Aspiration, likely. The kitten is tucked into the oxygen-rich plexiglass box, a tiny, fragile heartbeat under a mountain of IV lines and telemetry wires.

You finally step back, wiping a smear of blood off your thumb. You look toward the door. Leon is standing in the entryway of the treatment area, looking utterly lost. He’s hovering in the "no-man's land" between the lobby and the sterile zone, his hands still curled as if he’s holding a ghost.

"He’s in the cage, Leon. Steroids, antibiotics, and oxygen," you say, your voice softening as the adrenaline begins to ebb. "It’s touch-and-go. The next six hours are the decider. You should go home. Get some sleep. I’ll call you the second anything changes."

Leon doesn't move. He just looks at the floor and then slides down the wall, his long legs stretching out across the cold linoleum directly in front of the kennel bank.

"I'm staying," he says. It’s not a request. It’s a directive.

"Leon, I have four other critical patients in here trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not exactly a five-star hotel," you say, trying to inject a bit of your usual dry bite into the air to break the tension.

"I don't care," he mutters, leaning his head back against the cages.

You leave him there because you have to. You spend the next three hours wrestling with a diabetic ketoacidosis cat and a bloated Doberman. Every time you pass the kennel ward, you see him sitting on the floor like a dejected kid, watching the rhythmic puffing of an orange kitten in a plastic box.

Around 5:00 AM, you find a lull. You walk over and nudge his boot with your clog.

"Leon. Seriously. The floor is disgusting, and you look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin. Go home."

He looks up at you, and the sheer weight of the shadows under his eyes hits you. "Sometimes," he says, his voice a low, hollow echo, "I feel like I can't save anyone. Not my teammates. Not the people I’m sent to protect. And now... not even a cat."

You feel the breath hitch in your throat. You slide down the wall next to him, your shoulder brushing his. The warmth of him is startling against the sterile chill of the room.

"You and me both, Leon," you sigh, staring at the rows of monitors. "The 'God complex' they give us in vet school is a lie. Most days, we’re just finger-plugging a leaking dam."

Leon looks at you, his gaze intense. "Sorry. I shouldn't... this has been a hell of a shift for you, hasn't it?"

"They all are," you say, leaning your head back. "Some just have more body bags than others."

──────•✦•──────

Your shift officially ends at 7:00 AM. Your relief vet walks in, and you should leave. You should go home, take a scalding shower, and sleep for a week. But you don't. You go to the break room, grab two lukewarm coffees, and walk back to the floor.

You sit down next to Leon again.

"You're still here," he notes, a ghost of a smile touching his lips.

"I’m a glutton for punishment," you mutter, handing him the cup.

For the next hour, the barriers crumble.

You find yourself telling him about the "soul-crushing" parts—the people who bring in their pets to be euthanized because they’re moving, the neglect cases that make you want to break things. But then you tell him about the good parts—the dog that woke up after three days of a coma, the kitten that beat the odds.

Leon listens with a terrifyingly focused intensity. He doesn't interrupt. He just watches you speak, his blue eyes mesmerized by the way you navigate the darkness of your profession without letting it turn you cold.

"You’re a lot stronger than you look," he says softly.

"I'm not strong, Leon. I'm just stubborn," you retort, nudging him with your shoulder. "But thanks. You’re not a bad listener."

──────•✦•──────

Leon is no stranger to stakeouts.

He’s spent weeks in cramped vans eating lukewarm rations, and he’s spent months in damp trenches waiting for a target to blink. But this? Sitting on a stool that’s three inches too short for his frame, staring into a plexiglass box at a creature that weighs less than his handgun? This is the most grueling mission of his career.

Over the next week, the clinic becomes Leon’s base of operations. He shows up at the start of your night shift and doesn't leave until the sun is high enough to make his eyes ache. He’s become a fixture in the kennel ward—the tall, brooding man in the leather jacket who looks like he could snap a neck but spends four hours straight whispering to a kitten with a congested nose.

You become the highlight of his vigil.

Whenever the clinic settles into that eerie, midnight lull, you find him. You don't just check the charts; you check on him. You start bringing him half of your sandwich—usually something with way too much sprout-to-protein ratio for his liking, but he eats it like it’s a five-star meal because you made it. You sit on the floor next to his stool, your shoulder occasionally brushing his knee, and the contact sends a low-voltage jolt through his system that he’s doing a poor job of ignoring.

"You look like you're trying to intimidate the pneumonia into leaving," you murmur one Tuesday at 3:00 AM, sliding a container of pasta toward him. "I hate to tell you, but bacteria doesn't care about your 'scary agent' eyes."

Leon takes the plastic fork, his thumb grazing yours in the exchange. He lingers for a second too long, his gaze dropping to your lips before he catches himself and looks back at the kitten.

"I’m just providing overwatch," Leon grunts, though his tone is fond.

The conversation drifts, as it always does, into the quiet, heavy things. You talk about the "little miracles"—the paralyzed dog that wagged its tail for the first time today, the elderly cat that finally started eating. You speak with a weary, glowing passion that Leon finds intoxicating.

He realizes he’s spent years surrounded by people who are hollowed out by their work, but you? You’re tired, sure, but your heart is still terrifyingly intact.

The weight of his own secrets starts to feel like a physical burden. He’s used to being a ghost, a name on a redacted file. But sitting here in the dim light of the clinic, with you looking at him like he’s someone worth knowing, the lie feels like a wall he’s tired of leaning against.

"I don't just do 'security,'" he says suddenly. The air in the room shifts. He stares at the oxygen monitor, his voice dropping into that professional, gravelly register. "I work for the DSO Division of Security Operations. Directly under the President."

He waits for the shift in your expression. He’s seen it before—the way people’s eyes go cold when they realize he’s a professional dealer of death, or the way they start prying for gruesome details like he’s a character in a movie. He explains the bio-terrorism, the BOWs, the constant cycle of violence that has defined his life since the night he drove into Raccoon City as a rookie cop.

He braces for the disgust. For you to realize that his hands, the ones that have been helping you bottle-feed a kitten, are stained with things you couldn't imagine.

Instead, you just take a slow bite of your sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. You look at him with a gentle, tired smile that makes his breath hitch.

"So, you fight bio-weapons," you muse, leaning your head back against the cold kennel. "I guess that means we have the same primary skillset."

Leon blinks, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Which is?"

"We both try really hard not to get bitten on the clock."

Leon stares at you. He waits for the punchline, for the horror, but all he sees is your playful, sparking gaze. A laugh bubbles up in his chest—not the dry, sarcastic bark he uses to deflect trauma, but a genuine, soft sound that echoes off the metal cages. It’s a sound he hasn't heard from himself in years.

"That’s... one way to put it," he says, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. The heavy weight he carries every day feels, for a moment, like it’s been halved.

"I'm serious," you say, laughing softly as you nudge his arm. "I've seen the teeth on a grumpy Malamute, Leon. I think I could handle a zombie."

"Don't test that theory," he says, but he’s smiling now—a real, lopsided Kennedy smirk.

He looks at you, and the tension that’s been simmering for weeks suddenly boils over. The ward is quiet, the only sound the hum of the oxygen machine and the soft rain against the window. You’re close—close enough that he can see the gold flecks in your eyes and the way your scrub top dips at your collarbone.

Leon reaches out, his hand hovering near your face before he loses his nerve and settles for tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. His fingers linger on the skin there, warm and soft, and he sees your breath hitch.

"You're a strange woman," he whispers, his voice thick with a sudden, heavy longing.

"And you're a very dramatic cat-dad, Leon," you whisper back, not pulling away.

For a second, the mission, the BOWs, and the world outside don't exist. There’s just the smell of antiseptic, the hum of a kitten’s recovery, and the terrifying realization that he’s falling for you faster than he ever fell into a trap.

──────•✦•──────

The dawn light is a sickly, pale yellow as it bleeds through the clinic’s high windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing over the surgical bays. You feel like a ghost inhabiting a body made of lead and caffeine. Your neck cricks as you stand up from the floor, your joints popping in a rhythmic protest that sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies.

Leon is still there. He’s slumped on that too-small stool, his head bowed, his hands clasped between his knees. He looks like a man waiting for a verdict from a hanging judge.

"Alright," you murmur, your voice sounding like it was dragged over gravel. "Let’s see if the little guy is ready to join the land of the living."

You walk over to the incubator. The hum of the oxygen concentrator has been the soundtrack to your week, a mechanical heartbeat that you’ve grown to loathe. You unlatch the plexiglass door with a soft click.

Inside, the orange scrap of fur is no longer a limp rag. He’s sitting up, his head wobbly, his copper eyes half-open.

"Hey, tough guy," you whisper. You scoop a tiny dollop of calorie-dense recovery mousse onto your finger and hold it to his nose.

For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, a tiny, sandpaper tongue darts out. Then another. He starts to lap at your skin with a desperate, frantic hunger. A weak, high-pitched mew vibrates through his chest—a sound of life, demanding and stubborn.

"He’s eating," you breathe, and the sheer, ridiculous relief of it makes your vision blur for a second. "He’s actually eating. The little bastard made it."

You turn to Leon, a triumphant, sleep-deprived grin plastered on your face. "He’s actually eating. He’s—"

The words die in your throat.

Leon has stood up, his massive frame casting a long shadow across the kennel ward. He’s staring at the kitten, but his face isn't the stoic mask of a government agent. His jaw is trembling, just a fraction, and his eyes—those piercing, icy blue eyes—are brimming with tears that he’s desperately trying not to let fall.

He looks shattered. Not because of the danger, but because of the hope.

Oh, Leon, you think, your heart doing a slow, painful squeeze. You really were ready to lose everything again, weren't you?

You don't think. Thinking is for people who aren't running on thirty minutes of sleep and pure empathy. You are about to do something wildly unprofessional. You don't care.

You step across the linoleum, closing the distance between you and the man who fights monsters, and you wrap your arms around his waist.

Leon goes rigid instantly.

It’s like hugging a statue carved from granite. He stays perfectly still, his breath hitching, his arms hovering uselessly at his sides. He feels like a man who expects a blow to follow the touch—someone whose only experience with physical contact in the last decade has been a struggle for survival or a professional handshake. It’s jarring, feeling the tension radiating off him, a high-voltage wire ready to snap.

"It’s okay," you mumble against his chest, squeezed tight. "He’s okay. You can breathe now."

Slowly, agonizingly so, the statue crumbles.

You feel a shudder rip through him, a deep shift of his shoulders. Then, his weight collapses into you. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, his stubble scratching against your skin, and his arms finally come around you.

They are heavy. They are massive. He wraps them around you with a crushing, desperate strength, as if you’re the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. You can feel his heart thudding against your collarbone—slow, heavy, and raw.

He doesn't say anything, but the way he clings to you tells you everything. He isn't just relieved about the cat. He’s drowning in a decade of loneliness, in the weight of the bodies he couldn't save. He’s so touch-starved it feels like he’s trying to absorb the warmth of your scrub top through his skin.

It’s not just "he’s hot and I’m tired." It’s the feeling of two people who spend their lives in the trenches finally finding a place to put their packs down.

Your hands move up his back, rubbing small, soothing circles into the expensive fabric of his shirt. You feel the dip of his spine, the hard muscle of his shoulders, and the way he lets out a long, shaky exhale into your hair.

"You're okay," you whisper again, your voice softening, losing its sharp, sarcastic edge. "He’s got you."

Leon pulls back just an inch, his hands sliding down to rest on your waist. He doesn't let go. He looks down at you, his lashes wet, his face mere inches from yours. The air between you is thick, charged with the scent of his woodsy cologne and the clinical tang of the ward. His gaze drops to your mouth, and for a second, the world stops spinning.

"I don't... I don't know how to do this," he rasps, his voice a broken low-frequency hum.

"Do what? Hug? You're doing a C-plus job, Kennedy," you tease, though your voice trembles. "A little less 'death-grip' and a little more 'gentle human interaction' next time."

He lets out a watery, huffed laugh, his forehead dropping to rest against yours. "I think I've forgotten what 'gentle' feels like."

"Well," you say, closing your eyes and leaning into him, savoring the solid, terrifying warmth of him. "Stick with me. I’ve got plenty of practice. Usually with Golden Retrievers, but I think I can make an exception."

He squeezes your waist, a silent, grateful pressure. In the quiet of the dawn, with a recovering kitten purring in the background, you realize you’re in a lot of trouble. Because Leon Kennedy isn't just a client anymore—he’s someone you’d fight a world-ending virus just to keep holding onto.

──────•✦•──────

Leon’s smartphone vibrates against the granite countertop with the persistence of a terminal alarm. He doesn't need to look at the ID to know it’s Hunnigan.

The universe has a twisted sense of humor; the moment his life gains a shred of stability—symbolized by an orange kitten currently trying to disembowel a feathered toy—the DSO decides it’s time for him to jump out of a plane.

"Yeah, Ingrid," Leon sighs into the receiver, his eyes tracking the kitten's chaotic movements. "Tell me it's a seminar on file organization. Tell me I’m being sent to Hawaii to count palm trees."

"It's a hot-zone extraction in the Balkan periphery, Leon. Transport leaves in four hours," Hunnigan’s voice is crisp, devoid of the sympathy he’s looking for.

"Four hours. Right. I’ll just tell the cat to order pizza and lock the deadbolt behind me," he mutters, his mind racing.

Panic, cold and sharp, stabs at him. He can’t leave Cheeto. Not after the pneumonia, not after the nights spent on a linoleum floor praying for a meow. The idea of a stranger from a boarding app—some teenager who might forget the water bowl or leave a window cracked—makes his skin crawl. He finds himself dialing your number before he’s even processed the thought.

When you answer, Leon’s cool persona is nowhere to be found. He’s just a man with a cat and a very specialized, very annoying career.

"I have a problem," he says, skipping the pleasantries. "Work called. I'm being... deployed. A week, maybe more. Do you know a medical boarder who doesn't mind a kitten with a God complex and a lingering cough?"

He hears you pause on the other end. "Leon, it’s short notice. Most medical boarding is booked out through the month. Is it somewhere... dangerous?"

"It’s never a spa day," he says dryly. "Look, if I have to, I’ll—"

"I’ll do it."

Leon freezes. "What?"

"I can stay at your place. I'm overqualified and I can keep an eye on his lungs. Besides," you add, your voice taking on that playful, blunt edge he’s grown addicted to, "your apartment probably needs a woman’s touch. Or at least someone to throw away the three-week-old takeout."

"You'd... stay here?" Leon asks, his throat suddenly tight.

──────•✦•──────

An hour later, you’re standing in his foyer. Leon is dressed in his tactical gear—dark, reinforced fabrics and heavy boots—looking every bit the agent he tried to describe to you. He holds out his keychain. The metal is warm from his palm. As he drops the keys into your hand, his fingers linger against your skin.

It feels like a surrender. He’s giving you the keys to his sanctuary, the only place on earth where he doesn't have to look over his shoulder.

"The alarm code is 1998," he says, a flicker of dark, self-deprecating humor in his eyes. "Try not to set it off. The response team is... unfriendly. And if he stops eating, call me. I don't care if I'm in a tunnel. Make them patch you through."

"1998? Creative," you remark, looking at the keys. "Go save the world, Leon. I’ll make sure the kitten doesn't burn the place down."

He lingers at the door, the weight of the mission pulling at him, but the sight of you standing in his living room—framed by his sterile, gray walls—makes him feel like he’s actually leaving something behind for once.

"Don't eat all my cereal," he says, a lopsided smirk appearing. "It's the only thing I have left."

──────•✦•──────

Leon’s apartment is exactly what you expected: a high-end, minimalist cave that screams 'I don't plan on being here for long.'

The furniture is expensive but looks like it’s never been sat on. The fridge contains three bottles of high-end bourbon, a jar of pickles, and enough Gatorade to hydrate an army. It’s a gorgeous space, but it’s inhabited by a ghost who clearly spends his life waiting for the next disaster.

"Alright, Cheeto," you sigh, dropping your bag on the granite island. "Let’s see if we can make this place look like a human actually lives here."

Over the next week, you start a quiet insurrection against Leon’s minimalism. You buy a soft throw blanket to cover the "ergonomic" sofa. You bring over a small succulent that Leon will almost certainly forget to water. You organize the chaos of his mail and make sure the kitten’s toys aren't just limited to "stray socks."

It becomes a semi-regular occurrence. Every time Leon gets the call, you get the keys. You’ve mastered the 1998 alarm code and you know exactly which floorboard creaks near the bathroom. You send him daily updates—photos of the kitten sleeping on his discarded hoodies, or videos of Cheeto "hunting" his toys.

When he’s home, you linger. You’ll stay for an hour after he returns, leaning against his kitchen counter while he tells you—in vague, redacted terms—about where he’s been. You find yourself liking the routine. The way he looks at you when he walks through the door, his eyes scanning you first before they even find the cat.

"You moved the blender," he notes one evening, leaning against the doorframe, looking exhausted but softer than you’ve ever seen him.

"I put it where a normal person would use it, Leon," you retort, not looking up from your phone. "You had it stored like it was a classified weapon."

"It's a high-RPM motor," he deadpans. "It’s practically a turbine."

You laugh, and you see his shoulders drop an inch.

The messages between you two have evolved from 'Is he breathing okay?' to 'Saw this and thought of you' and late-night Facetimes where you talk about nothing and everything. You’re becoming a permanent fixture in a life that was never meant to have any.

──────•✦•──────

The wind in the mountains is a serrated blade, cutting through his tactical layers and biting into his skin. Leon is crouched in a blind, his rifle steady, the world around him a monochrome blur of snow and gray rock. His breath mists in the air, his fingers numb despite the heated gloves.

It’s the kind of environment where his mind usually goes to dark places—to the faces of the people he’s lost, to the smell of burning plastic in Raccoon City, to the weight of the kills he’s had to rack up to keep the world spinning.

But today, his mind wanders somewhere else.

He thinks about you. He thinks about you sitting on his couch, probably wrapped in that fuzzy blanket you "donated" to his living room. He thinks about the way his apartment smells like your shampoo instead of gun oil when you’re there. You are currently three thousand miles away, probably complaining about a difficult client or a dog that wouldn't stop barking, and the thought is his only anchor to reality.

He pulls his phone from a secure pocket, shielding the screen from the wind. He has one bar of satellite signal. A photo from you has managed to crawl through.

It’s a picture of you on his bed—the kitten curled up on your stomach, both of you looking half-asleep. It’s a domestic, quiet image that has no place in his world of bioluminescent horrors and political assassinations.

"Hunnigan’s going to kill me if she sees I’m using secure bandwidth for cat photos," Leon mutters to himself, a tiny, genuine smile cracking his frozen face.

He wouldn't admit it to you—not yet, maybe not ever—but he’s stopped dreading the "end" of the mission. He used to hate coming back to the silence of his flat. Now, he finds himself checking his watch, calculating the hours until he can walk through his door and hear your voice.

He doesn't just have a cat to come home to anymore. He has a presence. He has a reason to stay sharp, to stay fast, to stay alive.

"Target in sight," his comms crackle.

Leon shifts his grip, his eyes focusing. He feels steady. The cold doesn't matter. He has a cat-sitter to get back to.

"Copy that," Leon whispers, his thumb flicking the safety off. "Let’s wrap this up. I’ve got a date with some bad takeout."

──────•✦•──────

The shift didn’t just break you; it ground you down into a fine, bitter powder and scattered you across the linoleum.

It started with a car crash that sent two mangled retrievers into your bay and ended with a client screaming at you that you were a "heartless gold-digger" because you couldn't perform a miracle on a sixteen-year-old cat for the price of a drive-thru burger.

You’d spent four hours in emergency surgery, your hands slick with blood and your back screaming in protest, only for the monitor to flatline anyway. You’d had to tell a ten-year-old boy that his best friend wasn’t coming home, and then you’d been reprimanded by management for the "negative impact on wait times" caused by you taking five minutes to cry in the supply closet.

By the time you let yourself into Leon’s apartment, you’re less of a human and more of a walking bruise. You don't even turn on the lights. You just drop your bag, kick off your clogs, and collapse onto the sofa—the one with the soft throw blanket you bought—and bury your face in your hands.

The kitten, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, trots over and lets out a concerned chirrup. He kneads your thigh, his tiny claws snagging on your scrubs, before curling up against your chest.

"I hate it, Cheeto," you sob into his orange fur, the tears finally bursting the dam. "I hate the people, I hate the blood, and I really, really hate the wait times."

The front door clicks. The 1998 alarm code beeps—one, nine, nine, eight—and then the heavy thud of boots hits the floor. You don't even look up. You’re too deep in the salt and the snot to care that the owner of the house is back early.

Leon freezes in the entryway. Even in the dim light of the city skyline peeking through the window, he looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. His shirt is torn at the shoulder, there’s a nasty, dark bruise blossoming across his cheekbone, and he’s limping slightly. He looks like a man who just survived a war, only to find a different kind of casualty in his living room.

"Hey," he says, his voice a low, startled rumble. "What—is the cat okay? Did something happen?"

"The cat is fine," you choke out, wiping your nose with your sleeve and failing miserably at looking composed. "Everything is fine. I’m just... Go away, Leon. You look like you need a medic and a gallon of ibuprofen."

He doesn't go away. He drops his duffel bag with a heavy thud and walks over, his movements stiff and cautious. He looks wildly out of his depth, his hands hovering at his sides as if he’s trying to remember the manual for 'Human Comforting 101.'

"You’re crying," he notes, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly register.

"Astute observation. They really do pay you for the big brain, don't they?" You let out a jagged, watery laugh. "I just had a shitty day, Leon. A patient died after four hours of me playing God, and then some guy called me a bitch because he had to wait forty minutes for his dog's ear cleaning while I was doing CPR. I’m just... done."

Leon stands there for a beat, the blue of his eyes scanning your face with a terrifying intensity. He’s seen trauma, he’s seen death on a global scale, but seeing you falling apart on his couch seems to rattle him more than a BOW ever could.

"Move over," he says.

"Leon, you’re bleeding on my 'donated' blanket—"

"Move over," he repeats, firmer this time.

You slide over, and Leon sinks onto the sofa next to you. He smells like gunpowder, cold rain, and woodsmoke. He doesn't say anything at first; he just reaches out, his large, scarred hand hesitating before he pulls you tentatively toward him. You collapse against his side, your head landing on his shoulder.

"I've got you," he murmurs.

He wraps an arm around you, pulling you flush against his chest, and starts to stroke your hair. His touch is awkward—clumsy, even—as if he’s afraid he’ll break you, but it’s the most grounding thing you’ve ever felt. You grab the front of his torn shirt and just sob, letting all the bitterness and the exhaustion pour out of you and into his expensive, ruined gear.

"It’s just... so much sometimes," you whisper, your voice cracking. "I try so hard, and it’s never enough. The world just keeps biting."

"I know," Leon says, his voice vibrating against your temple. "Believe me, I know. But you did your job. You showed up. That’s more than most people can say."

He keeps stroking your hair, his calloused fingers snagging slightly on the tangles, but he doesn't stop. He doesn't try to "fix" it with a one-liner or a tactical solution. He just holds you. You realize, as your breathing finally starts to level out, that this is the first time in your life someone has held the weight for you instead of you holding it for everyone else.

"You look like hell, Leon," you mumble against his chest, feeling a flicker of your usual bluntness returning through the haze of grief.

"You should see the other guy," he retorts, a ghost of a smirk in his voice. "Actually, don't. He’s currently a smudge on a highway in Sarajevo."

You let out a tiny, genuine huff of a laugh, and you feel his arm tighten around you.

"See? There she is," he whispers.

You stay like that for a long time—a battered agent and a broken vet, curled up on a minimalist couch with a kitten sleeping between you.

In the quiet of the apartment, the monsters and the body bags feel a million miles away. You’re still tired, and your heart still aches, but as Leon rests his chin on top of your head, you realize that maybe the "ghost" has finally moved out of this apartment.

And for the first time in a long time, you don't feel like you're fighting the dark alone.

──────•✦•──────

The transition from "emergency technical support" to "semi-permanent fixture" happens so gradually that Leon doesn't even see the trap until he’s happily walking into it.

It starts with you dropping by after your shift to "check the kitten's weight," and then somehow you’re staying for a coffee, and then—suddenly—you have your own designated spot on his couch and a spare toothbrush in the guest bath.

Leon finds himself leaning against the kitchen island, watching you move through his kitchen with a grace that is utterly at odds with the clinical chaos of your day job. For years, this kitchen has been a graveyard for styrofoam containers and a shrine to a single bottle of high-end bourbon. His culinary skills are limited to reheating things and not burning the water.

"You know, the FDA suggests that a human being cannot actually survive on a diet of ninety percent spicy tuna rolls and ten percent Scotch," you remark, your back to him as you chop fresh parsley with a rhythmic, practiced speed.

Leon takes a slow sip of water, leaning his hip against the counter. "I’ll have you know I also eat the occasional multivitamin. And once, a piece of fruit that I'm reasonably sure wasn't plastic. I'm practically a health nut."

"You're a disaster," you retort, but the look you throw him over your shoulder is fond, lacking the sharp bite of your usual sarcasm.

You’ve taken over his stove, and for the first time since he moved in, the apartment doesn't smell like filtered air and gun oil. It smells like sautéed garlic, crushed basil, and browning butter. The scent hits Leon with a physical force, dragging up buried memories of a childhood —the sound of heavy pots clanking, the steam on the windows, the feeling of a home that was loud and full.

It’s a sensory overload that makes his chest ache with a sudden, sharp pang of nostalgia he wasn't prepared for.

"Is that... actual garlic?" Leon asks, his voice dropping into a low, slightly dazed register. "I forgot it came in cloves. I thought it was just a powder that lived in the back of the pantry until it turned into a solid brick."

"God, you're pathetic," you laugh, sliding a pan of chicken onto the burner. The sizzle is loud in the quiet room. "Go sit down. You look like you're having a religious experience over a bulb of garlic."

"I might be," he mutters, though he doesn't move.

He likes watching you. He likes the way your hair starts to frizz slightly from the steam and the way you’ve tucked your ID badge into your back pocket.

He realizes, with a dry, self-deprecating twist of his gut, that he’s become addicted to this. To you. The mission-driven part of his brain—the part that usually keeps him scanning for exits and checking his six—has gone completely quiet. He feels safe. Not "perimeter secured" safe, but actually safe.

He walks over, ostensibly to reach for a glass, but he lingers in your space. He’s still a touch awkward with the physical stuff, his hands hovering near your waist before he settles for gently bumping his shoulder against yours.

"Smells better than my grandmother's Sunday gravy," he admits, the honesty feeling like vulnerability. "And she would have hit me with a wooden spoon just for thinking that."

"Well, don't tell her ghost I'm trying to upstage her," you say, nudging him back. Your smile is gentle, and Leon feels the last of his professional walls crumbling. "I just figured since you're busy saving the world, someone should make sure you don't succumb to scurvy."

"It's a noble cause," Leon says, his blue eyes softening as they fix on you.

"Just doing my civic duty, Agent," you tease.

Leon watches you stir the sauce, and he feels a surge of protectiveness so fierce it surprises him. He spends his life in rooms with people who want to tear the world apart, but here, in the dim light of his kitchen, you’re putting things back together. You’re making a home out of a man who thought he was just a weapon.

"You're staying for dinner, right?" he asks, and he hates how much he hopes the answer is yes. "The cat gets lonely if you leave too early. And I... Well, I'm not great at talking to the furniture."

"I'm staying, Leon," you say, reaching out to pat his hand. "Relax. I'm not going anywhere."

Leon breathes out a sigh he feels in his very marrow. He looks at the garlic, the herbs, and the woman currently occupying his heart's center of mass, and he decides that if this is a trap, he never wants to be rescued.

──────•✦•──────

The blue light of the television flickers across the living room, casting long, dancing shadows against the walls. On the screen, some generic action flick is playing at a low volume—something about a heist that Leon has already found sixteen tactical flaws in—but he isn't watching the movie.

He’s watching you.

You are out cold. Your head is tilted back against the cushion at an angle that looks like it’ll require a chiropractor by morning, and your breathing is deep and rhythmic. On top of you, Cheeto—who has graduated from a palm-sized scrap to a lanky, teenage chaos-agent—is sprawled across your stomach like a heavy, orange weighted blanket.

Leon sits in his armchair, a glass of bourbon sweating in his hand, and feels a strange, terrifying tightness in his chest.

He should wake you up. He should tell you that the movie is over and offer to call you an Uber. That would be the professional, just friends thing to do.

"Right," Leon whispers to the empty room, his voice a dry rasp. "Because I’ve always been so great at following the 'sane' path."

He sets his glass down with a soft clink and stands, his joints popping. He gently nudges the cat aside. Cheeto lets out an offended mrrp but settles into the crook of the sofa, watching with wide, glowing eyes as Leon slides one arm under your knees and the other behind your back.

He braces himself, expecting you to be dead weight, but as he lifts, he’s struck by how light you feel—and how perfectly you seem to slot into the space against his chest. You let out a tiny, sleepy sigh, your head rolling naturally into the hollow of his neck, and Leon freezes. His heart kicks against his ribs like a trapped bird.

Don't wake up, don't wake up, don't make this weird, he thinks, his internal monologue screaming in a way it never does during a fire-fight.

He carries you down the short hallway, his boots silent on the hardwood. His bedroom is the inner sanctum—a place that usually feels like a cold, utilitarian bunker. But as he lays you down on the mattress, the room feels different. It feels occupied.

He pulls the heavy duvet over you, tucking the edges in with a focused, military precision. He lingers there for a moment, his hand hovering over your face. He can't help it; his thumb grazes your temple, smoothing away a stray lock of hair, before his knuckles lighty brush the warmth of your cheek. Your skin is soft, a stark contrast to the rough, scarred texture of his own hands.

"Rest up, Doc," he murmurs, his voice barely a breath. "You’ve earned it."

He backs out of the room, closing the door with a click so soft it’s almost silent. When he turns around, Cheeto is standing in the middle of the hallway, tail twitching, staring at him with unblinking, judging eyes.

"What? I’m being a gentleman," Leon grunts, stepping past the cat toward the sofa. He doesn't go back to his chair. Instead, he collapses onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. The cat hops up onto his chest, pinning him down and staring directly into his soul.

"I’m a DSO agent," Leon tells the cat, his voice flat and defensive. "I’m stoic. I’m professional. I’m a guy who deals with world-ending threats and international conspiracies. I definitely don't have a 'crush' on the veterinarian who makes me eat kale salad."

Cheeto blinks slowly, looking entirely unimpressed by the lie.

Leon sighs, rubbing his face with both hands. The lie is thin. It’s paper-thin and tearing at the seams. He lies there in the dark, listening to the silence of the apartment. For years, he’s filled this silence with the burn of cheap whiskey, the hum of a background news cycle, and the crushing weight of old regrets—Raccoon City, Krauser, the faces of people he couldn't pull out of the fire.

But tonight, the silence feels... full.

He thinks about the way you’ve invaded his space. The way you cook him actual meals because you know he’d live on protein bars and spite if left to his own devices. Most of all, he thinks about the night you fell apart on this very sofa, and how holding you felt more important than any mission he’s ever been assigned.

He realizes then, with the terrifying, crystalline clarity of a man staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, that he isn't just "interested."

He is completely, hopelessly, and dangerously gone for you.

It’s a catastrophic tactical error. He’s spent his entire adult life running from attachments because in his world, attachments are liabilities. Attachments get turned into leverage. Attachments get you killed. But as he looks at the closed door of his bedroom, knowing you’re safe inside, he knows the truth.

He’d burn the whole world to the ground—he’d take on an army of Ganados with a pocket knife—just to make sure you wake up tomorrow without a care in the world.

"Great," he mutters, his hand dropping to scratch Cheeto behind the ears. "I’m officially a Hallmark movie protagonist with a body count. Hunnigan is going to have a field day with this."

The cat purrs, finally satisfied, as Leon closes his eyes and accepts his defeat.

──────•✦•──────

The air in Leon’s apartment has changed.

It’s no longer just the scent of high-end bourbon and your lavender shampoo; it’s thick, electric, and heavy with the kind of "will-they-won't-they" energy that usually precedes a season finale. Every time you’re near him, the space between you feels like a magnetic field, pulling you toward him until you can practically hear his heart thudding in sync with your own.

You’re not an idiot. You’ve seen him look at you when he thinks you’re not looking—that soft, guarded yearning that makes your own chest tighten. You’ve felt the way his hand lingers on your waist when you pass him in the kitchen. He’s a DSO agent, a man who survived Raccoon City and global bio-terrorism, but apparently, asking a veterinarian on a date is the one mission that has him completely paralyzed.

And then, there’s the cat.

"You know, I was thinking," Leon starts, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that usually makes your knees feel like they’re made of cotton candy. He’s leaning against the kitchen island, his blue eyes fixed on yours with a terrifying intensity. He takes a step closer, his hand reaching out toward your arm. "I’ve been meaning to ask you—"

CRASH.

You both jump. Cheeto, now a lanky, orange blur of destruction, has successfully swiped a half-full glass of water off the side table. The glass doesn't shatter, but the water spreads across the hardwood in a slow, mocking puddle.

Leon closes his eyes, his hand dropping back to his side. He lets out a long, weary sigh that suggests he’s currently contemplating buying a kennel.

"He’s just expressive, Leon," you say, struggling to keep the smirk off your face. You grab a roll of paper towels, your internal monologue providing a dry commentary. Mission failed, Kennedy. The orange menace has you beat.

Ten minutes later, the puddle is gone, and the tension is back, sweltering and inescapable. You’re sitting on the sofa, and Leon is beside you, closer than usual. The movie on the TV is just background noise now. He turns toward you, his arm draped along the back of the couch, his fingers inches from your neck.

"Anyway," he says, his voice a breathy murmur. "What I was trying to say before we were so rudely interrupted by the feline Special Forces... is that I’ve really appreciated you being here. Not just for the cat. For me."

He begins to lean in. You can feel the heat radiating off him, the faint scent of his woodsy cologne wrapping around you like a promise. Your heart is hammering against your ribs, a frantic thump-thump-thump that screams finally.

"I was wondering if—"

Suddenly, there is a soft fump sound, followed by the sensation of four pounds of orange fur landing directly on Leon’s face.

Cheeto hasn't just jumped; he has launched himself from the top of the bookshelf with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. He is now perched on Leon’s head, his tail flicking rhythmically against Leon’s nose.

"Are you kidding me?" Leon’s muffled voice comes from beneath the cat.

You burst out laughing. You can't help it. The legendary Leon S. Kennedy is currently being used as a landing pad by a cat who still hasn't figured out how to bury his own poop correctly.

"It’s not funny," Leon grumbles, gently detaching the cat and setting him on the floor. Cheeto just looks at him, lets out a smug little mrrp, and starts grooming his shoulder like he didn't just ruin the most romantic moment of the year.

"It’s a little funny, Leon," you wheeze, wiping a tear from your eye. "I think he’s gatekeeping you. He knows you’re about to make a move and he’s not ready for a stepmother."

"I am a professional," Leon says, straightening his shirt, though his ears are a distinct shade of pink. He looks adorable—awkward, frustrated, and so deeply human it makes your breath hitch. "I have survived international conspiracies. I have navigated minefields. I can handle a five-pound orange domestic shorthair."

"Can you, though?" you tease, leaning back and watching him with a playful, expectant look. "Because so far, the score is Cheeto: two, Leon: zero."

Leon looks at the cat, then back at you, a lopsided, determined smirk finally breaking through his frustration.

"The night is young," he says, his voice regaining some of its cocky, one-liner edge. "And eventually, that cat has to sleep."

"Good luck with that," you retort, your heart singing even as your inner skeptic sighs. He’s going to chicken out again. I’m going to have to be the one to do it, aren't I?

You watch him settle back into the couch, his eyes fixed on you with a renewed focus. The tension is still there, humming under the surface, but now it’s tempered with the hilarious reality of your domestic life. You realize you don't mind the interruptions. If anything, they make the quiet, stolen moments feel even more earned.

You just hope the cat doesn't decide to launch a third offensive when things finally get interesting.

──────•✦•──────

The dinner is kind of a disaster.

Leon has spent the last hour trying to act like a normal human being, which is difficult when his heart is trying to beat its way out of his ribcage like an escaping experiment. He’s made pasta—the one dish he can’t screw up—and the table is set, the wine is poured, and you are sitting across from him looking so devastatingly beautiful in the low light that he’s forgotten how to use a fork.

The air between you is thick enough to choke on. Every time your eyes meet his, Leon feels like he’s standing on the edge of a skyscraper with no parachute. He clears his throat, leaning forward, his hands clasped tight.

"So," he begins, his voice dropping into that low, serious register he uses for briefing the President. "I was thinking that maybe—"

Clank.

In one fluid, chaotic motion, the cat—who has apparently developed a taste for expensive Pinot Noir—swipes a paw at the wine bottle. Leon lunges, catching it before it tips, but the moment is shattered. The cat lets out a defiant meow and begins to weave through Leon’s ankles, tripping him as he tries to sit back down.

Leon’s patience, a resource he usually has in abundance when dealing with global catastrophes, officially hits zero.

"That's it," Leon mutters.

He doesn't hesitate. He scoops up the lanky, protesting orange blur with the efficiency of a man clearing a room. He strides to the hallway, ignores the indignant squawk from the feline, and gently but very firmly sets the cat on the other side of the door. He shuts it with a definitive thud and turns the lock.

Silence. Blessed, complete silence.

Leon turns back to you, leaning his back against the door. He’s breathing a little hard, his blonde hair a mess, and his face is flushed with a heat that has nothing to do with the stove. He rubs the back of his neck, the "cool agent" mask finally crumbling into a thousand pieces.

"I face bio-terrorists for a living," he starts, his voice rough and stripped of its usual bravado. He looks at his boots, then finally, desperately, at you. "I’ve survived things that defy the laws of physics and biology. But asking you out is officially the most terrifying thing I've ever done. My heart rate is higher right now than it was when I was being chased by a ten-foot-tall man in a trench coat."

He takes a step toward you, his hands trembling just enough for him to notice. "I don't want to just be the guy with the cat anymore. I don't want to be the guy who only sees you when things are bleeding or when I’m being deployed to some hellhole. I want to be... yours. If you’ll have me."

He braces himself. He’s ready for a "let’s just stay friends," or a polite laugh, or even a tactical retreat. He’s spent his life waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the mission to fail.

But you don't say a word. You just stand up, and the look in your eyes makes Leon’s knees go weak. You cross the kitchen in three purposeful strides, your gaze locked on his.

Scritch. Scritch. MEE-OWW!

From behind the door, the cat begins a frantic, rhythmic assault on the wood, accompanied by a series of yowls that sound like a siren. Leon flinches, his eyes darting toward the hallway.

"Dammit," he curses softly, his shoulders sagging.

He never finishes the sentence. You reach out, your hands snaking up his chest to grab the collar of his shirt. With a strength that catches him entirely off guard, you pull him down toward you.

You can feel the exact moment Leon’s brain goes entirely offline. There is no more DSO. No more missions. No more orange cats trying to sabotage his life. Beneath your hands, his chest seizes with the shock of a man who has finally stopped running and found exactly what he was looking for.

He freezes for a millisecond, his body going completely rigid. He is so utterly unaccustomed to physical contact that doesn't involve violence or a medical triage that he genuinely doesn't know what to do with his hands. But then, a low, fractured groan vibrates from deep in his chest, and the dam breaks.

His hands, clumsy and hesitant at first, suddenly scramble to find purchase at your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. He kisses you back with the terrifying, unbridled hunger of a man who has been starving in the dark for years. It’s a searing, desperate collision that tastes like red wine and the heavy weight of shared secrets.

You can feel the slight tremor in his fingers as they dig into the fabric of your shirt, gripping you like a lifeline. Months of suffocating tension, of late-night FaceTime calls and lingering, aborted touches, all shatter in this frantic, messy connection.

He feels you smile against his mouth, and he forces himself to pull back just an inch, his breathing ragged as he rests his forehead against yours. He’s delightfully dazed, his blue eyes blown wide and glassy, completely stripped of his cool-agent armor.

"Took you long enough," you whisper, your voice breathless and playful, your thumb tracing the line of his jaw. "I’ve been waiting for you to do that since I gave you my number."

Leon blinks, his mind clearly struggling to process the information. A slow, lopsided smirk finally pushes through his shock, accompanied by a faint, boyish flush on his cheeks. "You have? I thought... I thought that was really just for cat questions."

"You are so incredibly clueless," you laugh, grabbing his shirt and pulling him back down by his collar.

"Maybe," Leon breathes, his hands tightening possessively around your waist, completely ignoring the cat that has begun to scream and scratch at the hallway door. "But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it."

He kisses you again, and the second kiss is even better than the first.

Where the first was a desperate, panicked collision, this one is a slow, deliberate exploration. He’s a man carefully mapping out a territory he never thought he’d be allowed to claim. His initial awkwardness melts into a heavy, intoxicating rhythm.

Leon’s hands are surprisingly gentle as they slide up your spine, settling warmly at the small of your back. He pulls you in tighter until you can feel the frantic, heavy thud of his heart against your chest.

He’s so profoundly touch-starved that it aches; he chases your lips when you pull back to catch your breath, his mouth hot and insistent, sliding a hand up to cradle the back of your neck so he can tilt your head exactly how he wants it. His thumbs trace small, rhythmic circles against your skin.

Your inner monologue, usually a sharp-tongued critic, has finally been silenced. About fucking time, you think, your fingers tangling into the soft, blonde hair at the nape of his neck. I was starting to think I’d have to perform a personality transplant to get you to make a move.

The moment is perfect. It’s cinematic. It’s everything a slow-burn romance should be.

And then, there’s the scratching.

Scritch. Scritch. Mrow?

The sound of claws on wood is followed by a heavy thud against the door, as if the cat has decided to use himself as a battering ram. The rhythmic, indignant yowling has escalated into a sound that can only be described as a feline operatic tragedy.

You huff a laugh into Leon’s mouth, the vibration of it making him let out a low, frustrated groan. You reluctantly pull back just an inch, your hands still resting on his broad shoulders. He looks absolutely wrecked—pupils blown wide, lips slightly swollen, and a dazed expression on his face that you’re definitely going to tease him about later.

"He's going to tear through the drywall, Leon," you whisper, your voice breathless and playful.

Leon leans his forehead against yours, his eyes closed. "Let him scream. I’ve survived interrogations in darker rooms than this hallway. I can outlast him."

"He’s a cat, Leon. He has nothing but time and spite."

With a reluctant sigh, you disentangle yourself from his arms—feeling the immediate, cold void where his body heat was—and walk over to the door to pull it open.

Cheeto doesn't even hesitate. He streaks into the kitchen, his tail puffed out to the size of a bottle brush. He doesn't go for the food bowl. He doesn't go for the toy. He marches straight to the space between you and Leon, sits down, and begins to lick his paw with a level of smugness that is almost impressive.

"See?" you say, leaning back against the counter and crossing your arms. "He’s the third wheel we never asked for."

Leon watches the cat, then looks at you. The adrenaline of the confession is still fading, replaced by a soft, domestic glow. He walks over, invading your personal space again, and traps you against the counter with a hand on either side of your hips. He’s smiling now—that lopsided, cocky Kennedy smirk that usually means he’s about to say something incredibly cheesy.

"You know," he says, his voice dropping into a low, teasing rumble. "I just realized something. As a professional, I have to ask... is this even allowed? Isn't it a little unethical to be dating a patient's owner? I feel like there’s a code of conduct for this."

You stare at him, a deadpan expression flat on your face. Oh, here we go. Tactical awkwardness at its finest.

"Leon," you say, your voice dripping with sarcasm. "The 'patient' is currently trying to eat his own tail. And his 'owner' is a man who carries a handgun to the grocery store. I think the ethics board has bigger fish to fry than us."

"I'm just saying," he continues, his blue eyes dancing with mischief as he leans in closer, his nose brushing yours. "I’d hate to be the reason you lose your license. 'Vet caught in scandalous affair with local cat-dad.' The headlines would be brutal."

"You are such a dork," you mutter, though you can feel the stupid, helpless grin breaking through your defenses.

"I have my moments," he murmurs.

"Shut up, Leon," you say softly, the playfulness fading into something warmer, something real. You reach up, grabbing the front of his shirt again to bridge the tiny gap he’s left between you. "And kiss me again. Before the cat decides to jump on the ceiling."

Leon doesn't need to be told twice. He closes the distance, his mouth finding yours with a renewed confidence. This time, there’s no hesitation, no tactical stalling—just the quiet, certain knowledge that the empty apartment isn't empty anymore.

And as the lanky orange cat finally settles on the floor to watch you both, Leon realizes that for the first time in his life, he isn't just surviving a day.

He’s actually living one.

He could be sleeping.  That precious necessity that he only ever gets in small bursts.  Exhaustion has become as familiar as the uniforms he wears every day.  A second skin that serves as a dark cloud to hang over him.  He truly can't remember the last time he'd slept in, let alone gotten a full eight hours. 

The bar is… unpleasant.  It isn’t a bad place per se, but it isn’t somewhere he has any desire to be.  The cleanliness is questionable, the volume is obnoxious, the seats reek of beer, and the only reason he hasn’t walked out yet is the fact that you’re sat right in front of him in the corner booth the squad had claimed.

Not all of the team had come out, and he certainly wishes he’d been one of the handful that stayed home, but he cannot deny that there is an enjoyable factor with your presence.  While the others carry on and yap, you look just as overstimulated as he feels.  You’re quiet—you’ve been for a while now—and you’re still nursing the same beer you’ve been pretending to like since the start.

The others had teased you earlier about how slow you’d been drinking it.  You managed to take it from a quarter of the way empty to half on the spot, which prompted both Barry and Chris to clap for you while Jill patted your shoulder.

He’d been wise to order neat whiskey.  Nobody would give him grief for sipping it slowly.  And, even if they did, he’s still their captain and they still know better.

Beer isn’t quite your thing.  Judging by your standard coffee order, a sweet cocktail would have suited you much better.  But he watched your face while you browsed the drink menu, and even he thinks you’re justified in cringing at the prices.  Eight dollars for a standard margarita was absurd.

“Wesker, we gotta ask.”  Comes Jill’s interruption to his thoughts.  There’s a collection of drink glasses and bottles between her and the other two, and the influence of such has tainted her voice with something far more carefree.

“Yeah, it’s important.”  Chris chimes in.

“What’s with the glasses?”  She asks.  “I mean, we’re in a bar with shitty lighting and you even wear them when we end up with a night assignment.  What gives?”

A glance your way leads him to your curious gaze and mischievous smile.

“What glasses?”  He asks cooly, eyes flicking to you beneath his shades. “I don't wear glasses, do I?”  Wesker asks, nodding at you. 

“Yeah, I don't know what they're talking about.”  You look at him head on, eyes locked with his in that strange way you've always done.  Like you can see past the dark tint anyway.  Well, you've seen him without his glasses a handful of times now.  Perhaps you just know what to look for. 

You’ve always had a knack for that.

He takes in the sight of you as quickly as possible, drinking in the image of your outside-of-work persona like water in the desert.  He’s seen you like this before, obviously.  You’ve come in on your days off, typically saying you were simply ‘in the neighborhood and wanted to see a friendly face.’  He’s sure his isn’t the friendliest, but it never seemed that you were there to talk to anyone else.  In fact, it’s never lost on him that you always arrive with some silly drink in hand for him.  Last time, it was a matcha latte. 

The knock on his door is out of place.  He hadn’t assigned work to anyone that needed to be delivered directly, so there must be a problem.  It does nothing for his already subpar mood.

“Come in.”

“Hey, hey,” comes the voice that has grown to be an almost essential part of every workday.  There are two drink cups in your hands.  “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Aren’t you off?”  He asks pointedly.  Exactly what has you here?  You’ve been running on fumes for the last week.  He was finally starting to feel a little less guilty for how he’s written your schedule now that you’ve had a day, but here you are convincing him that maybe he should’ve just been selfish and scheduled you anyway.

“Yeah, but I was in the neighborhood.”  You gently nudge the door shut with your foot and head toward him.  “Needed to see a friendly face.”

You’re quite a sight in your normal clothes.  There’s a strange feeling in seeing you like this.  Like he’s catching a glimpse of a world he’s not quite meant to know but you’re including him in anyway.  Sure, it’s a standard casual outfit, but it feels almost too intimate to see nonetheless.  This odd dynamic between the two of you has always been confined to work.  On the occasion it leaks beyond, it’s…

Well.

He shouldn’t be thinking such things.

And he shouldn’t be thinking them now, but he is.

In a perfect world, he would be a normal man with a normal job and a normal life.  It wouldn’t be wrong to have these thoughts and it wouldn’t be such a miserable thing to sit across from you knowing that it’s all the closer he’ll ever truly be.  There.  There, the thought has manifested and he’s at least admitted it to himself that he’d much rather be sitting across from you at a table for two or in a shared home and—

Dumb…

“I think he just wants to look cool.”

“Or offputting.”

He hardly hears them, but he hears you.

He sees you.

And he needs to get away from it all.

“I’ll be back,” he says absently, making for the exit where the bouncer has nodded off.  He needs air and he needs a minute to get these damned thoughts out of his head.  He rounds the corner to the side with the empty parking lot.

Wesker leans against the cold brick of the building.  His shades lift as he rubs at his eyes.  What in the world was all that?  He’s kept a lid on those thoughts—a damn tight one at that—and all it took was some little outing for him to let them flood his head.  Stupid, stupid, stupid…

This team isn’t forever.  This game you two play isn’t either, and he knows how this ends.  One day, someone will leave.  That is the only ending.  It’s the only one that can possibly exist in the oldest story there is.

There is so much more in the world than this, but none of it has ever been for him.  How can he sit here and even entertain the idea?  It all stutters into that living, beating thing in his chest that has ached and ached for decades now for everything it’s ever been denied.  This can’t be him right now, can it?  No, there’s something wrong that’s making him feel this way.  Maybe he really is that sleep deprived, or—

What the fuck was in that whiskey?

He sinks to the ground and it’s terribly undignified, but at least he can hear the door open and the footsteps that approach him.

He knows that gait and he knows the scuff of those shoes.  He would even know your shadow, were he not still pinching the inner corners of his eyes to protect the reveal that something wet had gathered there.

Pathetic…

He should’ve just gone to his car.

You stand over him for a time—he can feel your presence like the strongest rays of sunlight—and then you do exactly what he knew you would.  You turn your back to the wall and sink down, sitting beside him, shoulders damn near touching.  Something rattles.

“Peanut?”

It catches him off guard.  Wesker moves his fingers away just enough to see your offering of those subpar complimentary nuts rolling around in the flimsy food boat.

There’s a split second where he catches you looking at him, where he knows you saw the redness that rims his eyes, but he pushes his shades back into place as fast as he can and leaves it completely unacknowledged and reaches for one of your offerings to pop in his mouth.

He hopes you don’t ask.

“Peanut,” he echoes in return like some sort of fool.  Why in the world he said it is beyond him, but he did and it sounded like some ridiculous form of agreement that ah, yes, this is indeed the nut you say it is.

At least he gets to hear that little amused huff through your nose.

“I don’t like it in there,” you say so casually.  “Too loud.  Place stinks.  Drinks suck.”

He hums in agreement.

You lift the nuts to him and he takes another.

“Peanuuut,” you nod, chuckling this time with a big grin on your face.  You lean into him, bumping your shoulder to his.

He doesn’t bother to fight the smile.  What’s the use?

He really wishes he could hate this.  All of it.  It would be so much easier to cast it all aside and call it useless, as if it hasn’t been the sustaining factor that’s kept him from succumbing to the exhaustion of two lives.  As if he doesn’t come to work a little brighter when he knows you’ll be there.  As if he doesn’t head to Umbrella with a spark in his stride if he got to walk out of the RPD with you until you both split for your respective vehicles.  Like those lunches don’t get him through the day or those little moments where you poke your head in don’t—

Ah, he’s doing it again…

You say nothing for a time, and he dwells in his thoughts and relishes the quiet companionship.  Every so often, he takes another peanut.  Sometimes he yawns.

“Tired?”

He nods.

“Mm, I mean, they haven’t come looking for us yet.”  You muse.  “I think we can escape and head home.”

You say that like you’ll be going with him.  Like home is a shared place and not just where he goes occasionally to sleep.  The thought is as poisonous as it is sweet.

“I’d like that.”  There’s a grittiness to his voice that only ever comes with exhaustion, and it’s met with you rising to your feet and extending a hand for him to take.  He does so, and you help tug him to his feet.

The two of you round the corner to your cars—coincidentally parked beside one another.  He’s slow to unlock his, watching instead to make sure you get in safely.  When he finally turns the key in the ignition and reaches for the seatbelt, he finds you smiling and waving to him.  Your passenger-side window is down, and he lowers his driver-side one to match.

“Get some sleep, Al.”  

It strikes him in the chest all over again to hear you call him that.  It’s not often that you do—decorum and all that—but, when you do…

“You too.”  He says.  He wants to say more, but he doesn’t know the words.

You shift into reverse.  The best part of his day is ending.

“Be good,” comes your signature goodbye.

“So why do you always say that to people?”

Jill is as nosey as ever, but he can’t say he doesn’t want to know as well.

“Oh, uh…”  You smile and nod your head from side to side as if to sort through the answers in your head.

It’s something you say to him regularly any time the two of you part ways.  It’s a peculiar thing.  As if he’s going to go ‘be bad,’ or some other ridiculous alternative if you don’t tell him.

“Well, when I was younger, I’d go visit my granddad a lot.”  You say, a fond look in your eye.  “Used to swing by after work at my old table-waiting job and bring him soup or something.”  A very distant fondness, one reserved for the kindest memories the mind has to offer.  “He used to always tell me ‘Be careful!  Be careful!’ before I’d leave.  It was how he would say he loves you, but he’d also just actually tell you he loves you before he said that, so who knows,” you chuckle despite the hint of grief that taints it.  “It turned into me saying for him to be good in return, and then I started saying it kinda regularly and, uh… yeah.  I guess it’s my way of saying I love someone when I’m saying bye.”

Oh…

Wesker watches, still parked in the lot, as you back out and take off.  He waits until you’ve pulled out onto the road, and then he waits some more after that.  Not until he knows you’re far, far away does he even entertain the idea of mouthing the words.  But, still, he says them all the same.

“Be good.”

He never told you he had it printed. He was conflicted at first, bringing you into this space that caused him so much turmoil, that kept you apart more often than not. But the wall had been empty, and he pictured you there whenever he looked up anyway.

Finally, it's a rookie with the courage to ask.

“So, Kennedy, I’ve been curious every time I come in here.”

She points and he follows, a rare smile softening the normally hard lines of his face.

“My wife,” he murmurs, matter-of-fact.

The rookie pauses.

“S-sorry?”

Then she catches herself, hands rising in front of her. “I mean—I didn’t know you were married.”

Leon simply hums his acknowledgment, eyes still fixed on the portrait. Unbearably, uncharacteristically gentle.

“Wouldn’t be here without her.”

Word travels fast, especially at the blip of personal information from the agent normally as open to sharing his private life as a brick wall. Naturally, everyone begins asking. And Leon is suddenly an open book—he can’t help himself.

“She’s crazy. Speaks 4 languages, works in the private sector. Volunteers with kids on weekends. Schedule’s almost as nuts as mine.”

An affectionate laugh at that one—had anyone heard him laugh before?

“She’s got this cackle she does when I catch her off guard. Cracks me up.”

“She works a room like nobody’s business. Intimidating as all hell.”

“You should see her with her plants. She doesn’t let me touch ‘em. There’s this one, a ‘fiddle' something? Supposed to be impossible to care for, but she’s had it going strong for 6 years.”

Like a dam suddenly broken, they never hear the end of it.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

He’s in a meeting when you arrive, a rare break in your schedule allowing you to surprise him for lunch. You rolled the dice on if he would be able to take the time, but you knew somehow, some way, he would try to make it.

What you didn't expect was being led down the fluorescently lit hallway to feel oddly like walking a runway: heads suddenly whipping to you, eyes wide, hushed whispers trailing in your wake. You glance down at your clothes. No spilled coffee, no dirt, no remnants of your rushed breakfast this morning. Perfectly spotless.

Strange.

Someone eyes you just above the divider of their cubicle and you raise your brows, lips pursing in a can I help you expression that has them sinking behind it when they realize you’ve noticed.

It’s fate that his meeting lets out just as you reach his door, and the gaggle of younger agents nearly colliding with you as they exit freezes. They give you a once over—seriously, what is that—and look behind them to an unseen corner of the office. When they turn back to you, mouths parted and brows high in what’s unmistakably realization, they’re smiling, stealing glances at each other as they excuse themselves. You watch them, confusion and amusement written in your creased brow, and one of them giggles as they hurry away.

“Hey, you.”

The familiar timbre of his voice draws you back, and you grin as you take him in where he leans in the doorway, happy surprise tugging at the corners of his lips.

You lift the takeout bags in each hand, giving them a small shake. “I got off the case early. Brought us lunch.”

A half grin and he's pushing the door further open. “Perfect timing. I’ve got some time before my next briefing.”

When you pass through, he stops you with a hand on your waist to plant a kiss on your lips. You hum, smiling into the space where he pulls back just enough for your noses to touch, then pull away and retreat further into the office.

“I snagged that rice dish you like, the one that’s usually sold out? Sushi fo—“

The bags nearly slip through your slackening grip.

You’d seen the picture once on his phone, caught him admiring it way back when. Truly, you couldn’t believe he took it. He’d told you how beautiful you looked; you’d deferred, insisting pictures weren't your thing.

Now, here… you could see it.

Your head whips to him, to where he’s watching you, features gentle, eyes moving from you to the portrait and back.

“Had to put it somewhere else in case my phone takes a shit.”

“Leon,” you hesitate, and your gaze travels back to the portrait, mouth opening and closing helplessly.

You knew he loved you. Never once doubted it. But he was private and always had been. Cracking him in the early days of your relationship had felt akin to scraping stone with a razor, slowly wearing away until you’d reached the precious gem beneath.

But you? He wanted to show this part of his life. To shout it from the rooftops, if he could. And so this was, in his own way.

You can’t help the prickling at the corners of your eyes when you look back at him, and he shrugs, nonchalant, coming up behind you to press a kiss to the delicate pulse point at your throat, stubble brushing where his chin comes to rest.

“So, lunch?”

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

A knock sounds at the door and Leon rises from where he sits next to you on his desk.

“Kennedy? Sorry to interrupt.”

“Can it wait a few minutes?"

He glances back at you, eyes dancing, then opens the door further. “The wife and I are just finishing lunch.”

You peek around Leon from your place in his chair, offering a friendly nod. “Nice to meet you.”

The other agent returns it, slightly dumbstruck, his lips pulling into a knowing smile.

“Likewise, Mrs. Kennedy. I’ve heard all about you.