Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tuesday, September 29th, 1998 - 10:03 pm CST

Chris Redfield hated driving in the rain.

It was one of those minor inconveniences in life–easy to overlook, but deadly if handled improperly. Keeping a car on the road without breaking any traffic laws was no small feat, even for an Air Force brat like him that could pilot a helicopter or plane. But doing it in the rain, and in the dead of night like he was now? Less than ideal, to put it mildly. A millisecond’s break in focus, and his Jeep could crumple like a tin can against a tree, vault a guardrail, kill a deer or, god forbid, a person–

Best not to think about dead people, since lately they had the nasty habit of not staying dead.

Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on the road, the quiet thump-thump of his windshield wipers, and the reasons why he was heading back to Raccoon City after nearly three months away.

His sister and his best friend.

After Chief Irons had disbanded STARS, Chris had been angrier than he could recall ever being before. Wesker’s betrayal was an open wound, festering and painful no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, and Chris and the other surviving members of their elite unit were ignored, ridiculed, or written off as crazy when they told the truth. The system of justice Chris had believed in his entire life until that point was shattered, and unlike Jill, he didn’t stick around to beat his head against a wall, to try to convince a public that didn’t want to listen that their lives were in danger.

Instead, he took the coward’s way out and left. Intitially Chris had plans to hop the next flight to Europe to begin investigating Umbrella under the guise of a vacation… but Jesus, he needed a fucking break . He hadn’t slept well (or at all) since that horrendous night in July, and he feared that if he didn’t do something to get his head on straight, he’d pay for it with his life. 

Visiting Claire had seemed like the perfect vacation idea, a stepping-stone to heading across the pond. She was only about eight hours away, but they hadn’t seen each other since the spring and Chris missed her. His smart, fiercely loyal, and doggedly determined little sister was in her second year of college and absolutely killing it; there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she would make one damn good investigative journalist in the near future.

Of course, that observation was the very thing that put Chris on the road heading back into his own personal hell. He’d made a tactical error, showing up on Claire’s front steps unannounced and allowing her to ply him with greasy pizza and the promise of a so-bad-they’re-good rom-com marathon. All of two beers in, he’d spilled everything about what went down inside the Spencer Mansion’s walls, the horrors he’d endured, and how Irons had dismissed the claims of STARS–and then dismissed them –without a second thought.

Claire had gotten a look on her face after he was done talking, the kind where her forehead wrinkled and her mouth bowed down into a frown. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, and at the time Chris had been too drained to give it a second thought. Instead, he’d settled in to watch a couple movies, checked his email on Claire’s computer–nothing from Jill, Rebecca, or anyone else–and passed out. 

For the first time since Arklay, his sleep was dreamless.

Which probably explained why he woke up to a nightmare.

It’d taken him all of five minutes after his eyes snapped open that morning to realize Claire was gone. It’d taken even less time for him to search her apartment, only to find her red leather jacket and her gun missing. Just when he was about to start freaking out in the way that only a protective older brother could, he spotted the note on her kitchen table:

Chris,

What you told me last night was nightmarish, and it sounds like Umbrella has no plans on stopping at Arklay. Someone needs to put an end to this before it gets any worse. I’m headed to Raccoon City to see if I can make that happen. For you, and for everyone else that’s been hurt by their cruelty. The world deserves to know the truth.

Don’t feel like you have to follow me. I’ll be fine.

Claire

While Chris was busy cursing a blue streak, Claire’s computer had chimed with a notification from his email inbox, still open from the night before. A few clicks had taken a bad situation and made it into something truly terrifying. He had one new email:

FROM: Valentine, Jill <[email protected]>

TO: Redfield, Chris <[email protected]>

Subject:

Cc:

Bcc:

STAY AWAY

Jill Valentine was unequivocally the biggest badass Chris knew. She laughed in the face of pain, misogyny, and all other forms of bullshit, and he was lucky to be on her good side. He knew she’d been struggling in the aftermath of the mansion, but for her to send a message like this… well, it was obvious, wasn’t it?

Something bad was happening in Raccoon City, and Claire was walking straight into it while Jill was already there.

Chris had no choice but to go after both of them.

~***~

And that brought Chris to where he was now, eyeing his gas gauge and wondering if he’d make it to RPD on fumes. As much as he wanted to get there quickly, Chris knew he had to play this smart; reaching Raccoon would only be worth it if he could get back out with Claire and Jill, and depending on what was happening, fuel might be scarce or nonexistent. Better to stop somewhere along the way, like–

That neon-bright Mizoil station, approaching rapidly on his left.

Chris put a gentle foot on the brake and pulled in under the canopy. A haphazardly-parked sheriff’s vehicle stood kitty-corner to the pumps and empty, headlights on and keys still in the ignition. The inside of the convenience store portion of the station is dark, but Chris filled up his tank anyway; if nothing else, he figured he could always slip cash under the door. He put the nozzle back in the cradle, already reaching for his wallet when he glanced down…

… and saw the bloody footprints heading right for the cheerful OPEN sign plastered to the door.

“Shit,” Chris muttered, hand changing direction to draw his gun out from under the back of his leather jacket. He held it down along his thigh, crossing the distance and nudging the door. It opened with no resistance, and a flashlight on the floor cast a weak but steady glow over part of the interior. Picking up the flashlight and taking in a deep breath, Chris barely tamped down a flinch at the stench that greeted him–death. Still, he had to try: “Hello? Anybody there?”

No response.

The bloody footprints continued in a straight line, so Chris hung a left down an aisle, moving cautiously. At first everything looked normal, but then he saw that the door to the back part of the store was open, and a bald man who looked like he was the manager was slumped next to it, clutching his neck. He was surrounded by a thick coating of blood, sprayed over the wall and floor.

“Are you okay?” Chris heard his own voice as if from a great distance, and when the manager only pointed a shaking hand into the back room in response, he fought for some kind of normalcy and said, “Don’t move, I’ll be back for you” even though, deep down, he knew it would be too late.

He was always too goddamn late.

 Things happened fast after that: One back room led to another, and Chris heard the struggle before he saw it. He called out to the deputy, identifying himself, which turned out to be a mistake; as soon as the deputy’s attention was drawn away from the thing trying to kill him, it struck. He died screaming for help that Chris couldn’t give–all he could do was kill the zombie that killed the deputy, and then put three rounds in the deputy’s head for good measure. Then it was a race to get the key, to get out get out get out before–

Just as Chris reached the front door it was kicked inward, and he came face to face with the most gorgeous man he’d ever laid eyes on.

Said gorgeous man also happened to be aiming a gun between his eyes.

“Don’t shoot!” Chris exclaimed, more reflex than anything else. He knew there was a zombie hot on his heels but threw his hands up in supplication.

Gorgeous’s expression softened fractionally before blue eyes caught movement over Chris’s shoulder and hardened again. “Get down!”

Chris dropped to the grimy floor, felt two quick shots pass over his head. He rolled forward at the same time, grateful that Gorgeous had the instinct to back off a step after he fired. It meant that when Chris popped back to his feet, they were close enough for him to take in some details–fair skin, full lips, dark blond hair on the short side but not nearly as regimented as Chris’s. He wasn’t quite as tall as Chris either, and had to tip his head back slightly for their eyes to meet.

“You alright?” Gorgeous asked, and fuck, even his voice was attractive. His gun looked like older police issue, but he had to be a few years younger than Chris–recent academy grad, maybe? With an ancient gun? Hell of a shot, too, and already turning around to scan the area for threats.

“Yeah, I think so,” Chris replied. His heart felt like it was about to jackhammer its way out of his chest, and it had nothing to do with the company. He raised his gun too, kicking the door shut behind him. “Thanks.”

“You can thank me later, when we’re safe.” Gorgeous offered him the tiniest smile, but it flattened out quickly when they both noticed the amount of movement in between the gas pumps. The walking dead were illuminated by the headlights on a Jeep not dissimilar to Chris’s own, which he assumed belonged to his savior.

“Holy shit,” Chris breathed, counting at least a dozen corpses moving toward them, grunting and groaning, with another contingent on the way. He exchanged a glance with Gorgeous, then looked beyond him at the abandoned sheriff’s car. “Come on!”

They moved in unison, breaking into a sprint across the relatively short distance. Gorgeous had to feint out of the way of one zombie, and Chris punched another one in the head to get it out of his way, but they were both still in one piece when they threw themselves into the late sheriff’s abandoned cruiser. It reeked of old sweat and cigarettes, but at that moment it could’ve been covered in shit and Chris doubted either of them would’ve cared. 

Since Chris happened to wind up in the driver’s seat he threw the car into reverse, tires squealing as he applied the gas. “Hold on!”

He executed what he thought was a fairly impressive three-point turn given the circumstances, swerving back out into the road and gunning it past a large, familiar sign:

WELCOME TO 

RACCOON CITY

HOME OF UMBRELLA

~***~

“What the hell was that?” was the first thing Gorgeous wondered as they left the glow of the Mizoil station in their metaphorical dust.

Chris almost threw up, but managed to swallow back the bile at the last second. He knew he was white-knuckling the steering wheel, but couldn’t get his hands to loosen their grip. “I… don’t know,” he replied, hearing the lie in his voice and hating it. He could only hope it wasn’t so blatantly obvious to Gorgeous–and fuck, he really needed to learn the kid’s name. “Hopefully they’ll have some answers at the police station.”

When Chris glanced over, he found those blue eyes studying him intently, and the mouth attached to them asked, “Wait, you’re a cop?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, then hesitated. “Well, I was. Chris Redfield. And you are?”

“Leon S. Kennedy.” Finally, Chris had a name to put to the face. And it suited him, too–Greek for lion . He wasn’t sure why the middle initial was important, but that was the least of his concerns at the moment. “Redfield…” Uh oh. In addition to being a crack shot, lithe as hell, and so pretty it broke Chris’s brain a little, Leon appeared to be smart. “You’re STARS.” A mimicry of Chris’s words, no malice behind them: “Well, you were.”

“Yeah,” Chris said again. He’d never been a sparkling conversationalist, but usually he held his own better than this. “We were disbanded a couple months ago, and–wait.” Paranoia spiked hard up his spine, right hand finally loosening on the wheel in case he had to reach for his gun. “How do you know about that? It never made the papers.”

“Lieutenant Branagh told me,” Leon said, moving toward the door slightly at the obvious tension rolling off Chris. For a split second trepidation flashed over his face, but he covered it quickly. “I’m the Raccoon City Police Department’s latest recruit.”

Something slotted into place in the back of Chris’s brain. He vaguely recalled hearing before the mansion incident, RPD had been in the process of hiring new officers. It didn’t affect STARS, of course, and soon he had bigger fish to fry. But it’d pinged his radar again a couple days before he left to see Claire, something about a rookie and the painstaking construction of a welcome banner.

Chris came back to himself when Leon shifted again, clearly uncomfortable. “Sorry,” he said quickly, trying to communicate that he meant no harm. “It’s, uh, hard for me to know who to trust nowadays.”

Leon relaxed fractionally, offering a tight nod. “I get it,” he told Chris, with a gravity that implied he did–albeit probably not in the same context. Interesting. “From what I understood, it sounded like you and what was left of your unit got fucked by the chief. The lieutenant wouldn’t say much more than that, though.” A head tilt. “Why are you going back?”

Damn, Marvin , Chris thought, touched at the idea that not everyone at RPD had thought he and the others were lunatics. I hope you’re still alive. Out loud, he said, “I’m looking for my sister, Claire, and my STARS partner, Jill Valentine.” He glanced over again. “What about you?”

“Like I said, I’m the rookie.” Leon still had his back against the door, shadows of raindrops casting faux freckles on his face. “My first day was technically yesterday… but I blew it. My bo– girlfriend broke up with me, and I went out and got wasted.” He shook his head with a self-deprecating snort. “Then this morning I realized I had a voicemail from Lieutenant Branagh. He sounded… he told me not to come.”

“And you did anyway,” Chris mused, mustering something close to a smile when Leon raised an eyebrow at him. He politely didn’t acknowledge the slip of Leon’s tongue regarding the gender of his ex. “That’s what a good cop does, rookie. Runs into the flames instead of away from them, so to speak.”

“Thanks… that’s… nice to hear, I guess.” Leon sat normally in his seat once more, not like he was debating ditching Chris and taking his chances, road rash and all. “It’s a good thing we found each other. I don’t know what to expect anymore.”

“Neither do I,” Chris murmured, lying again as they hurtled toward the city, awash in the red-orange glow of burning cars and all-consuming chaos. The words tasted like rot in his mouth, and he had the distinct feeling that Leon didn’t believe him.

Chapter Text

“ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS: DUE TO THE CITYWIDE OUTBREAK, YOU ARE ADVISED TO TAKE SHELTER AT THE RACCOON CITY POLICE STATION”

The emergency message had been on a constant loop since they’d crossed the city limits a few minutes prior. At this point, Leon S. Kennedy had heard the spiel so many times it almost sounded like nonsense, though he was certain he could recite it by heart if prompted.

“FREE FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES WILL BE PROVIDED TO EVERYONE IN NEED”

“Oh my god,” he murmured, mostly to himself, “this is so unreal.” He studied the seemingly never-ending lines of parallel-parked cars on either side of the one-way street Chris had selected to take them to the station. Unlike some other sections of town they’d passed, this road seemed relatively quiet… at least for now.

“The police station isn’t much further,” Chris said. It was hard to tell whether he was trying to convince Leon or himself when he spoke like that; his tone was self-assured, but the tension in his shoulders and the set of his jaw reeked of uncertainty. “They’ll know something.”

Leon chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. He wasn’t… entirely comfortable with Chris, for several reasons–most of which weren’t the other man’s fault. He was big , which wasn’t exactly something he could help, but he was also Chris fucking Redfield from STARS, which made him deadly by default. So far, he hadn’t done or said anything that indicated he was a threat, but if there was one thing Leon knew, it was that people could decide they were sick of him at the drop of a hat. And if that happened now –

He needed to be careful.

“Yeah, but… what if we’re the only ones?” Leon scowled at himself for the fear that bled into his voice, but it seemed like a legitimate concern. When Chris glanced over at him, Leon continued, “What if there’s no survivors–”

“There have to be others,” Chris interjected, not unkindly, but this time his voice matched his body language–he believed what he was saying. “I taught my sister everything I know about weapons and self-defense, and Jill–she’s in a class of her own. I won’t go into this thinking that they’re dead… or worse.” Lower, full of grief, “I can’t . Not after…”

“Sorry,” Leon said quietly, feeling like a dick. Of course Chris needed to keep the faith in order to keep his head–a guy like him had to have something to fight for, or he would fall apart. He wasn’t like Leon, alone in the world and just trying to see if he could make himself useful somehow. But he needed more information if they were both going to make it out of this alive. “You… you’ve seen this before, haven’t you? In the Arklay Mountains?”

For a split second, Chris looked like he was going to lie again, but something on Leon’s face must’ve indicated that wouldn’t be a good idea. “Yes,” he said instead, as they rolled up to a big barricade that was striped like a yellowjacket. Beyond it lay a haphazard pile of dead cars. “I saw this and a whole lot more.” Leon hadn’t seen Chris’s eyes in the right light to tell what color they were, beyond something dark–but fuck if there wasn’t something downright compelling about Chris Redfield when his full attention was turned Leon’s way. “Leon, I–”

A pale, rotting hand slammed against Leon’s window, dragging blood and dead tissue over the glass. He yelped in surprise and flinched away, dimly aware of Chris’s hand fisting in his jacket, like he was preparing to drag Leon to his side of the car in case the window broke–but then there were two infected at Chris’s door, and more on the way.

“Shit!” Leon twisted toward Chris to look him in the face. “Chris, we’ve gotta back up!” Before Chris could respond, high beams approaching from behind made them both turn to look out the rear window of the cruiser. “What the…?”

A semi-truck was hurtling down the slick pavement, running over any zombies in its path. The driver had to be badly wounded or dead, what with the way the huge vehicle was swaying back and forth and slowly but surely continuing to gain speed. The nose of the semi began to bump into the parked cars on either side of it, causing a cacophony of noise.

“Holy shit,” Chris breathed out. Then, louder: “Leon, get out!” He used his grip on Leon’s jacket to shove him back toward his own door. “Get out now !”

They both pushed hard on their respective doors, but the collective weight of the infected pushing down on them was too much to move. Leon’s pulse thundered in his ears, sweat breaking out on his forehead and under his arms. He hated confined spaces for a very good reason, and while riding in cars had never given him a problem, being stuck in one that was about to turn into a fiery coffin was a completely different story and his voice broke when he said, “I can’t!”

The headlights burning into the cruiser wavered slightly, the swaying of the big rig becoming uncontrolled, and Chris yelled, “ Hold on !”

They braced against the dashboard, and Leon had time to suck in one final breath before the truck bounced hard off one row of cars, then the other, metal screeching and crunching as it flipped onto its side, the tanker portion of the semi slamming into the back of their vehicle, which was then pinned to another car. An unexpected advantage was that all the disruption cleared the zombies away from them, however temporarily.

Leon fumbled for his door handle and popped it open, falling to one knee as he got out but scrambling back to his feet an instant later. His ankle throbbed in time with his heart and his ribs, both still painful from–no, now was not the time to think about that . He reached back for Chris without conscious thought, returning the favor and digging his fingers into the fine leather of his jacket. It looked like it was custom made, some kind of design painted on the back. “C’mon, this way.”

“You okay?” Chris grunted as he leveraged himself over the gearshift, no easy feat for a man his size. He grasped Leon’s arm at the elbow, blinking the rain out of his eyes as they began moving in unison away from the car. “I hope it doesn’t–”

The cruiser they had been in only seconds before exploded into a fireball, causing them both to stumble and duck out of the way as pieces of it flew overhead. That was around the time that Leon glanced down, realized his boots were drowning in a couple inches of diesel leaking from the semi-truck, and he had the chance to say “Oh no–”

Then he was being thrown forward into the hard, unforgiving side of a sedan… or he should’ve been, except Chris had used his grip on Leon’s arm to yank him into his chest at the last second, curling around him and taking the brunt of the impact. It still hurt, of course, rattled Leon’s molars in his head and made his ribs scream , but he wouldn’t have another set of bruises to add to his collection.

“Are you crazy ?” Leon rasped out, turning his head to cough from the acrid smoke. He rolled over and pushed to his feet, grabbing Chris’s shoulders and helping him upright too. The other man looked slightly dazed and a little stiff-limbed, but otherwise unharmed. There was a dent in the car’s passenger door where most of their combined weight had landed. “You could’ve–”

“Don’t thank me or anything, rookie.” Chris coughed too, but he was smiling, and oh . In the firelight, Leon could see that his eyes were a deep, rich brown–the kind of eyes that you could drown in if you weren’t careful. His smile faded quickly as he looked beyond Leon at the reemerging horde of zombies, reaching to pull at his arm again. “We gotta move. Come on, the station’s this way.”

~***~

They took off through an alley lit only by a burning body, and Chris had to face facts as they hustled down a couple flights of stairs and back up some more. As the looming ornateness of the RPD came into view over another jumble of cars, he whispered, “Shit… it’s everybody.” His throat constricted with a furious mix of emotions–sadness, grief, rage. “They’ve all turned.”

He almost stopped walking, but Leon wouldn’t let him. The rookie tugged at the front of Chris’s jacket, clearly frightened but determined all the same. “Chris, the station is right there,” he said, maneuvering them around a couple of slow-moving undead, past a burning school bus and closer to the gates. “Just a little further. Don’t quit on me now.”

There was the slightest waver to Leon’s words, and that snapped Chris out of the darkness. “I won’t,” he promised, and they were pushing through the unlocked gates now–a blessing and a curse, because while the RPD would give them shelter, who knew what was lurking inside its walls? “Here, help me with this.” He held the gates still while Leon slid the bar across the middle, locking them inside. The zombies began rattling the metal soon afterward, but it didn’t seem like they’d be able to make any meaningful progress. “Let’s get inside.”

Leon nodded once, letting Chris take the lead without being asked, and they moved as a unit through the front doors. 

The sheer amount of light that greeted them was momentarily blinding, but thankfully Chris didn’t hear any threats as he blinked the spots away from his vision. From what he could tell, the station’s lobby had been turned into some kind of triage area, which made sense given its size and ease of access. There was no one at the desk, and Chris wanted to smack himself upside the head for even having that thought–did he really expect an officer to be manning the phones during a goddamn zombie apocalypse?

“Is anyone here?” he called out, the words echoing oddly off the vaulted ceiling. There was no response, human or otherwise, so he moved behind the desk with Leon. A laptop sat open on a table, a bright red RPD-branded screensaver flashing at them. “Wanna check that out? I’ll watch your back.”

The corner of Leon’s mouth lifted. “Figure the rookie’s gotta be better with technology, old man?” While Chris spluttered indignantly, Leon leaned down to investigate the computer. He tapped a key and brought up a live camera feed from inside the building. “There has to be someone here…” As if on cue, Camera 4 showed what looked to be an officer fending off a zombie with gunshots. “Not good.”

The officer took a moment to call out for other survivors–one of which was Lieutenant Branagh, Chris realized–to tell them he had found a way out, that it was in his notebook… and that split second of distraction was all it took for the zombie to sink its teeth into his neck. He called for reinforcements to the east hallway, and Chris tapped Leon’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “I know where he is.” He pointed to the entrance to the eastern side of the building, which was blocked by a metal shutter and a cardboard sign that read KEEP OUT. “Back by the break room. I’ll go see if I can find him.”

Leon straightened up, frowning at him. Christ, that gaze of his was practically magnetic. “You mean we’ll go see if we can find him. Splitting up is a bad idea.” A pause. “Respectfully. Sir.”

It would’ve taken a much stronger man than Chris to not need to suppress a shudder at the sound of that word coming from that mouth. “No need to start respecting me now, rookie,” he joked, hoping like hell it would cover the highly inappropriate wave of lust he felt. “And you’re right, we should stick together. Splitting up is how everybody dies in horror movies.” He headed for the switch that would roll up the metal shutter and flipped it, raising a curious brow when Leon joined him. “So… come here often?”

Leon snorted. “Only once,” he replied, taking the question seriously as they watched the shutter rise. Neither of them commented on the large pool of blood below it. “I had two phone interviews, and then I drove out here for one in person a couple weeks ago. I’m not familiar with this part of the building, though–the lieutenant and I talked in the west office.” The shutter ground to a halt only maybe a foot off the ground, and Leon sighed. “Looks like we’re splitting up after all. There’s no way you’ll fit through there.”

“Shit.” He was right, of course, but that didn’t mean Chris had to like it. Especially with the blood. Still, he handed the flashlight he’d picked up back at the gas station to Leon, touching his shoulder briefly. “Be careful.”

Leon flashed him a brief but genuine smile. It almost hid the fear in his eyes, but not quite. “Always,” he replied, right before he dropped to the floor and crawled out of Chris’s sight.

~***~

Leon’s footsteps were quiet as he made his way down the darkened corridor, past a fusebox (missing a fuse, which explained the problem with the shutter) and a bank of payphones. He passed an abandoned mail cart, a stack of mismatched chairs, and the glow of a vending machine without making a sound. Moving in utter silence was a skill he’d developed in his childhood, when one creaky floorboard could mean anything from a slap to the back of the head to being lashed with his father’s belt until he bled. Later, it’d come in handy for climbing into bed after Derek was asleep, or for keeping his mouth shut while he cried as–

Nope, not now . He had work to do.

Leon turned a corner past a boarded-up door and whispered You got this to himself under his breath, trying to stay in the present instead of sinking into the mindset of a scared little boy–or his equally frightened self from not so long ago. It was no easy feat, but again, practice had a way of making perfect where he was concerned. He lowered his borrowed flashlight for a moment to move a storage locker that had tipped over and felt his throat close at the totality of the darkness. Thankfully it only lasted for a second and then he was moving again, the torch guiding his path.

Another corner, more vending machines, and then–

“Jesus,” Leon breathed out when he saw the carnage by the windows, bodies and their various parts strewn haphazardly, blood coating the walls and floor.

He only had a second to absorb the carnage in front of him before– “OPEN UP! HURRY! OPEN UP! OPEN THIS GODDAMN DOOR!”

Leon froze mid-step when that last shout reached his ears, one hand extended to push open the door to the watchman’s room. For only an instant, he wasn’t hearing the panicked cries of a police officer in danger, but that thundering roar his father would use when he was either particularly fucking drunk or particularly fucking angry–or both, which was much worse. How he would pound on the door to the bathroom, which was the only one in the house with a lock, until Leon’s mother–

He shook his head hard to clear it and shouldered into the watchman’s room, moving quickly around the desk to another metal shutter. There was no switch visible for this one so Leon bent down, grabbed the handle and yanked as hard as he could. The shutter popped up about a foot, just like the one in the lobby, and instantly a pair of bone-white hands shoved themselves through the gap, one gripping a notebook.

“HELP ME! PLEASE! HELP ME!”

“Gimme your hand!” Leon grasped the officer by his forearm and pulled, feeling some resistance but nothing he couldn’t push through. “Gimme your other hand!” He reached for the man’s other arm as he twisted until he was on his back and then he was screaming in what could only be described as pure agony, blood flying all over the place and Leon heard himself say stupidly, “Hang in there!” like the officer wasn’t dying in front of him–

And then all of a sudden the force on the other side of the shutter–a gaggle of zombies, Leon knew now–was gone, and Leon wound up sitting down hard on his ass and pulling half of the officer’s body free, with shiny viscera trailing after him. Mercifully, he was dead only seconds later, but Leon just stayed crouched over half of a man’s body and fighting for air that just didn’t seem to want to stay in his lungs, the bruises over his ribs still fresh enough to burn like fire.

Something slamming into the shutter broke Leon out of his trance and he grabbed the bloodied notebook up from the floor, sticking it into his pocket. Another slam, then another, and the line between the police station and his childhood home was getting thinner by the second. Bad ankle stinging, Leon exited the watchman’s room to head back the way he came, back to the light of the lobby and Chris –

And almost got grabbed by a uniformed zombie, but managed to shove Matilda in its face and blow off its rotting head at the last second. Leon broke into a sprint, ankle be damned, but had to slow down when he reached the corner where the barred door had been. A pair of zombies emerged from inside, blocking his path, and he exclaimed “Jesus, they’re everywhere!” in a strangled voice before putting them down too.

More running, with squelching footsteps and angry grunts and moans hot on his heels. The glow of the exit sign was right there overhead, all he had to do was make it up some steps and around the corner, and before he could think better of it he screamed Chris’s name and flopped down on his belly, using his arms to pull himself underneath the shutter.

Chris was on him in an instant, big hands grabbing Leon by the shoulders and yanking with enough force to rip his blood-soaked jacket. Something gripped his leg and tried to pull him back into the hall, and Leon could suddenly picture himself being torn in half just like the officer he’d failed to save. But then he was kicking the offending zombie in the face as hard as he could, and Chris was pulling harder and cursing a blue streak in Leon’s ear, and then Leon was free –

He landed hard on top of Chris, who had wound up sprawled on his back with physics being what they were. Distantly Leon was aware that their positioning was awkward, what with him pressed against the other man’s heaving chest and between his legs, but he was more concerned with the infected that was trying to crawl out of the hallway after him.

“Watch out!” A boot slammed down on the lip of the shutter, crushing the zombie’s skull into a pulp. It belonged to none other than Lieutenant Marvin Branagh, who… appeared to have become a chew toy for a zombie, if the wound to his side was anything to go by. He leaned heavily against the shutter while the three of them caught their breath. “Officer Kennedy… I thought I told you not to come here.”

“Yeah… you did.” There was no point in denying it, and besides, Leon was busy trying not to puke as he pushed himself up and off of Chris. His ribs were burning, and while the kick he’d landed on that zombie had saved him from being bit, his ankle was less than thrilled with him. “There was… the officer we saw, Chris, I c-couldn’t–”

“Leon.” Chris’s voice was almost unbearably gentle, and so was the hand he put on Leon’s shoulder. The lack of personal space should’ve felt suffocating, like it did with everyone else, but… instead, Leon felt himself leaning into the touch. “I’m sure you did the best you could.”

“Wasn’t good enough,” Leon muttered, taking the hand up that Marvin offered him and getting to his feet. 

He took one step forward and collapsed–maybe from the adrenaline crash, not getting enough oxygen to his brain, or the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything for well over a day now. He fully expected the pain of hitting the floor, but strong arms wrapped around him instead. The last thing he saw before his eyes rolled back in his head was Chris’s face, pale and drawn as he called Leon’s name.

Chapter Text

When consciousness returned to Leon, the first thing he registered was that he was on a bed. Not a real bed–this was a little flimsier, like it was temporary. Then he remembered where he was, what he was surrounded by, and he sat up like he’d been electrocuted, breathing coming in sharp pants as he looked around the police station lobby with wide, frantic eyes.

“Hey now, take it easy,” Marvin said from a nearby couch, its leather surface shiny with blood. A laptop sat open next to him. “Last thing we need is you keeling over on us again.” A good-natured chuckle, followed quickly by a wince. “You just about gave Redfield a heart attack. Never seen him move that fast before.”

Oh, right–Leon had fainted like some dizzied civilian in front of two of his superior officers. Fantastic.

“He found that uniform for you,” Marvin continued, gesturing at Leon’s person; that was when Leon realized he was no longer in his ruined street clothes, but wearing an RPD uniform complete with tactical gear, a combat knife, and a radio. “Then he said he was going to find some herbs, whatever that means.” He waved around the thin notebook that had previously been in Leon’s pocket. “I’ve been working on this while, and I think I’ve figured out how you two are going to get out of this station. That officer you met earlier, Elliot? He thought this secret passageway might do the trick.”

Leon took the notebook when it was offered to him, ignoring the red fingerprints Marvin left behind on the paper in favor of studying Elliot’s drawing. All in all, it seemed pretty simple: find three medallions at various smaller statues around the station, unlock a secret passageway under the big statue in the lobby that supposedly led to the parking garage, and get the hell out. Thinking about how and where to find the medallions was a much better prospect than lingering on the idea that Chris had seen Leon mostly naked–

Shit . 

Chris had seen him mostly naked , which meant he’d seen his fucking bruised ribs . 

At least most of the scars were on his back.

“This is good news,” Leon managed to say, even as his mind raced a mile per minute. Who was he kidding? Chris wasn’t off getting herbs or whatever Marvin thought–no, he’d taken one look at Leon’s injuries after watching him faint and decided to leave him behind. Not that Leon could blame him, really. It was a smart decision, especially since Chris had people he loved to look for. Desperate for something else, anything else to focus on beyond the gaping emptiness in his chest, he continued, “We can get you to a hospital.”

But Marvin was already shaking his head. “No, no, I am not the priority here.”

Leon frowned and began to protest, but the scuff of footsteps coming from the reception area on the west side had him rolling off the cot and drawing Matilda from the holster strapped to his thigh. He put himself between Marvin and the threat, raising his gun at–

Chris?

Chris, whose face lit up at the sight of Leon but quickly shifted to worry; Chris, who was putting his big hands on Leon’s shoulders and saying… something, but Leon couldn’t parse out what, his hearing dull with shock. He allowed himself to be pushed back to sitting on the cot, for Matilda to be carefully pried from his numb fingers and put in his holster as Chris crouched down to his level.

Fingers snapped in front of his eyes, once, twice. “Leon? Are you okay?”

Leon finally met Chris’s gaze, tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Yeah, I…” He glanced over at Marvin, who looked vaguely amused and a little sad all at once, studying the layout of the station pulled up on his computer. “The lieutenant–”

“Marvin,” the man in question corrected, without moving his eyes from the laptop screen. “I think we can dispense with the pleasantries, given we’re in the middle of the apocalypse.”

“ Marvin told me you left.” Leon looked at his boots, which were the only part of his previous outfit besides his underwear that was still on his body. “I wasn’t sure if…” He huffed out a self-conscious breath and shook his head. “Never mind.”

But Chris wasn’t so easily fooled. “You thought I left, didn’t you?” There was nothing accusatory about his tone, only the barest sliver of hurt. His hand landed on one of Leon’s newly-acquired kneepads, warm even through the plastic. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Evidently not,” Leon said wryly, and when he dared to look Chris in the eye again, the amount of distress he saw there was surprising. He blinked in the face of it, unsure of how to proceed. “I… I mean, it would probably be the smart thing, now that you know–”

“Now that I know what ?” Chris’s voice went sharp, but his anger seemed only momentary. He deflated a second later, reaching into the pocket of his STARS vest and producing a handful of… some kind of plant. “When I saw your bruises, I went to find this. It’s an herb that’s native to the Arklay Mountains–the green ones, like this, have healing properties.” He held the leafy stems out to Leon. “Chew on these, they should help.”

“Thanks,” Leon mumbled, now feeling like he was the asshole of the century. Well, maybe not as big of an asshole as whoever was responsible for everyone turning into zombies, but still. He ripped off a piece of herb with his teeth and grimaced slightly at its bitter taste, but it was far from the worst thing he’d ever had in his mouth. “So, you… aren’t gonna ask me anything?”

Chris let out a sigh, pushing up out of his crouch and taking a seat next to Leon instead. The cot creaked ominously under their combined weight but held together. “That depends,” Chris said slowly, studying Leon’s face with a level of interest that should’ve been uncomfortable. It wasn’t. “Are you gonna tell me the truth if I do?”

Leon swallowed hard, which had the convenient side effect of choking down the herb at the same time. “I… yeah. Okay.”

Chris’s expression twisted with sympathy, and he rapped a knuckle against the front of Leon’s bulletproof vest. “Who did that to you?”

“Someone I thought I trusted,” Leon replied, and that was the truth–he just wasn’t including any pronouns. At least not yet. “That I thought I… loved.” He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Not that I’d really know what that feels like in the first place.” He glanced down at his feet and tapped his boot against the side of Chris’s. Even that little movement hurt like a bitch. “I’ve got a bad ankle too. I’m going to slow you down.”

“I doubt it.” Chris nodded down at the remainder of the herb in Leon’s hand. “Eat the rest of that, and we’ll go.” Raising his voice just a little, he looped Marvin back in: “I’m assuming you two came up with a plan while I was gone?”

“Something vaguely resembling one, anyway,” Marvin said, leaning back against the couch with a hand pressed to his injury; Leon had the impulse to give him the rest of the herb, but the part of him that knew when and how to pick his battles could tell it wasn’t worth it. With an injury like that, the man needed a hospital to have a fighting chance, and even then… “The rookie’s got it all in that notebook there. Figured you’d be able to get him where he’s going easy enough–plus, the first medallion’s right in here, upstairs in the lion statue.”

Chris leaned into Leon’s space to look at the notebook, and a surprisingly tantalizing mixture of gunpowder and smoke invaded his nose. There was also a remnant of aftershave in there, along with a touch of gore, and if he peered closely enough Leon could see the five o’clock shadow coming in on Chris’s jaw. He ran hot, that much was clear–every part of them that touched, from shoulder to Leon’s swollen ankle, was damp from Chris’s sweat. It shouldn’t have been remotely attractive, and yet…

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Chris murmured, and nudged Leon’s shoulder lightly. “We got this, right?”

They were okay, Leon realized. Even though Leon had doubted Chris’s intentions, he was… forgiven? And this was Chris’s way of showing him without telling him, which would call more attention to Leon’s (obvious) issues.

Huh.

“Yeah,” Leon replied, and to his astonishment, he actually meant it. And more importantly, the fucking herbs worked–his ribs felt looser, and when he stood up to try putting some weight on his ankle, it didn’t buckle. Matilda was a cool line along his thigh, and Chris’s large yet astonishingly gentle hand burned like fire against his arm where it steadied him. “We got this.”

~***~

After they gathered the lion medallion and placed it at the feet of the goddess statue, Leon once again let Chris take the lead without complaint as they headed into the western portion of the first floor. He stayed close to Chris’s six while allowing enough clearance to come level with Chris’s shoulder and discharge his weapon if he had to; for that small action, Chris was more grateful than he could properly express. To be honest, the station had always creeped him out a little when he had a late shift and was one of only a few souls around… he couldn’t imagine being alone inside it now.

Claire , Jill , he thought, you better be kicking ass, wherever you are .

A light tap to Chris’s shoulder, followed by Leon’s voice, pitched low: “You hear that? Up ahead.”

Chris forced himself to focus and dropped the beam of his flashlight down until it found the source of the crackling sound; the radio of an RPD officer, slumped against the wall. It was clear the unit wasn’t fully functional, since Chris could only make out snatches of what the person on the other end was saying–something about a helicopter?

“I hope they don’t try landing a chopper here,” he said quietly to Leon as they continued down the hall, avoiding a corpse dangling from the ceiling like a side of beef. “The landing pad on the roof is hard to see on a clear day–let alone on a night like this.”

Leon started to respond, but clamped his mouth shut when a hair-raising noise echoed down the corridor. “What the fuck was that ?” he hissed instead.

“I don’t know,” Chris whispered, eyeing a large set of marks clawed into the drywall. “Stay behind me.”

“Fuck that,” Leon muttered, racking the slide on his gun. “If something screams like that again, we’re both shooting it.”

Chris couldn’t really argue with that logic, now could he?

They kept moving, passing by broken windows and ribbons of yellow crime scene tape. As they neared the press room, the number of undead trying to get in through the windows grew, to the point where it was going to be more of a problem than whatever had let loose that hideous noise. So when they slipped in through the red double doors, they grabbed up whatever looked useful and then hightailed it through one of the broken ventilation windows, near the ceiling.

Chris landed first and grabbed Leon’s vest to steady him when he hit the floor. Other than a single zombie pounding in vain at a nearby vending machine, they seemed to be alone… for the moment. They were also near something that could potentially be very valuable, if they could get to it. “C’mon, this way.” They slipped into the safety deposit room, which still had power, and Chris beelined for the weapons locker at the back and the shotgun it contained. “ Yes , it’s still here. We just need a keycard.” He felt like hitting himself. “Which I would have, if I hadn’t left it in my fucking car.”

“I’m not surprised a piece of plastic wasn’t top of mind while we were running for our lives.” Leon came over to examine the shotgun through the grating, then glanced at Chris. “Any idea where another card might be?”

Chris blew out a breath, thinking. “The STARS office, maybe? That’s more or less right above us. Or… I think there’s an extra in the art room, but that’s on the east side.” When Leon raised an eyebrow, Chris shrugged. “This place used to be a museum, man. It’s weird.”

“Okay, so we’ve got something else to find besides the medallions.” Moving to look into some of the other lockers, Leon let out a low whistle. “There’s some other stuff in here that could be useful.”

“We’d need the extra keycaps to unlock those,” Chris said, following Leon as he made his way over to the keypad, ducking low to examine it. “The two and three are missing.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t be used,” Leon murmured, holstering his gun. That was… huge, Chris realized–while he’d thought Chris had abandoned him earlier, now it seemed as though he trusted him enough to watch his back while he was unarmed. Those blue eyes turned back to him, and Chris had to physically stop himself from swaying toward them. “I saw a door across the hall. Is that the other way into the west office?”

“Good memory,” Chris said, clearing his throat when he heard it crack a little. Jesus. He moved when Leon did, following him out the door and staying close as they slipped into the west office, which was less an office and more of a bullpen with desks in the middle. A uniformed corpse was slumped at one of those desks, but otherwise it was quiet. “What are you looking for?”

“White-Out,” Leon replied, walking slowly past the desks on the left side; Chris was his shadow, keeping an eye out for threats while Leon searched for office supplies. “Or Post-It notes might… work…”

“What’s wrong?” Chris followed Leon’s line of sight to a banner strung up over the desks and sucked in air.

W E L C O M E

L E O N

“That’s so… nice,” Leon whispered, and when Chris chanced a look he was alarmed to see tears in his eyes. They were only there for a second before Leon wiped his face on his sleeve and took a shuddering breath at the same time, letting it out again as something that almost wasn’t a sob. “Fuck. This is so fucking fucked .”

“I know,” Chris murmured, wanting to comfort him somehow but unsure if that would make things worse. “I mean, I didn’t know these officers well–but that doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s fucking awful.” He glanced down at the next open desk and picked up a small white bottle, shaking it. “Hey, found some White-Out.”

Leon tried for a smile. “Good.” He looked down at the only desk with the top closed, held in place by two dial locks. Then he took a silent walk around the room, peering at nameplates and shuffling through papers until he figured out the combinations. When he lifted the top, he revealed an extended magazine that looked like it would fit his gun, along with a shiny new nameplate emblazoned with his name. “They didn’t even know me, and they still…”

“They were good people,” Chris whispered, his chest aching both for the dead officers and the man in front of him. Had no one ever given him a gift before? “They didn’t deserve this. Nobody does.”

Leon dipped his head in acknowledgement, then moved back toward the door. “Bring the White-Out. I can get us into those lockers.”

~***~

A few drops of White-Out on each missing key left to dry for a couple minutes created a lumpy keycap that functioned exactly like a real one. Or two, in this case, and soon Leon had a full load of bullets for Matilda’s new extended mag, along with another hip pouch to carry shit. Chris seemed unreasonably impressed with his DIY skills, but they were still short one keycard and two medallions.

Some more exploring revealed that on the second floor they needed some kind of wheel to shut off the burning steam separating the women’s locker room from the STARS office; Chris mentioned that there was another weapons locker in his old stomping grounds, one that he believed would contain a Magnum. The third floor, however… between all the junk, the blood-slick plastic, and the fucking bricks of C4 taped to the wall of the cage that contained the maiden statue, it was a shitshow. 

At least they got another hip pouch out of it.

“We need a detonator,” Chris declared after studying the explosive, which a note they found informed them had been planted by a disgruntled fellow officer. So if the zombie apocalypse hadn’t started, the RPD probably would’ve wound up the next Oklahoma City. Lovely. “And a battery to power it.” Glancing around, Chris’s eyes lit up when he spotted another door. “Hey, that door goes into the library–and from there, I think we can get to the unicorn medallion.”

“This almost seems too easy,” Leon said warily. Perhaps if he’d been a regular 21-year-old rookie police officer, full of boundless optimism and faith in other people, he would’ve avoided looking a gift horse in the mouth. In another life, maybe. “We should be careful, Chris.”

“Agreed. This isn’t the time to let our guard down.” Chris nudged the door to the library open with his boot, then waved Leon forward. “After you.”

Leon snorted. “Why thank you, sir. Such a gentleman.”

He stepped through and squinted under the lights for a moment, just like he had back in the lobby. There were a few zombies roaming around on the lower level, but it looked like they could be avoided easily enough if they crossed the perimeter of the room up top and took the stairs down and around–

Leon took two steps and crashed through the floor.

Chapter Text

“ Leon !” Chris nearly pitched headfirst over the railing in his effort to see if the rookie was okay. While the fall from the second floor of the library to the first wasn’t the highest, it had also been totally unexpected and Leon had preexisting injuries. Thankfully from what Chris could see it looked like he’d only gotten the wind knocked out of him, but with two infected shuffling toward him and another one waking up– “Hang on!”

Chris put three rounds each in the pair of infected that were upright until they weren’t anymore, but he couldn’t get a bead on the one that was crawling toward Leon. That old-model gun of his had flown out of his hands when he ate shit on the floor, and Chris could see him trying and failing to draw his combat knife with shaking fingers. So he swung over the railing on purpose this time, landing in a crouch and straightening quickly to kick the crawling zombie’s head as hard as he could.

As soon as Chris was sure all the undead were down for the count (again), he moved to Leon’s side–just in time for him to sit up, wincing as he rubbed at the back of his head. “You alright?” Chris asked, holding out a hand to help him up. It wasn’t lost on Chris that his hands were nearly twice the size of Leon’s, and his breath caught when Leon didn’t let go right away after standing. “Leon?”

“Yeah, I’m… m’good.” Leon blinked a few times, muzzy, but when he looked at Chris head-on his focus returned and he dropped Chris’s hand with a huffed laugh. “Just wasn’t expecting to take the quick way down, that’s all.” He glanced around, frowning. “Did you see where Ma–my gun went?”

Chris couldn’t help the slow smile spreading on his face. “Wait… did you name your gun? Like people name cars?”

Leon ducked his head, turning away to search under the rubble his falling body had created. “That depends,” he said slowly. “Are you going to make fun of me if I say yes?”

“Hey, just because I look like a dumb jock that shoves people in lockers for fun doesn’t mean I am one,” Chris joked, making sure to tap Leon’s shoulder on his way to peek under the bookcases. “I won’t make fun of you. Promise.”

He felt Leon’s eyes snap to him after the last word, but resisted the temptation to look up. “Her name’s Matilda,” came out in something close to a whisper, followed by a heavy pause. “I named her after my mom.”

Chris spotted the gun and pulled it out from under a bookcase, wiping down the barrel on his leg since it had skittered through a pool of blood. It would’ve been nice if he’d been able to locate some clothes or a new uniform like the one he found for Leon, but unfortunately Chris was so much bigger than most people that nothing fit him. So khakis and his battered STARS vest were his best friends, even if they were coated in a layer of grime. “Here,” he said, holding the gun out to Leon grip-first. “And for the record, I think that’s… sweet, in an unconventional way.” He paused. “I’m named after my dad. Sometimes it still gets to me, even though our parents have been gone for years now.”

Leon took Matilda back with a tentative smile, and since he seemed more or less okay after his tumble, they kept moving through the library and into the lounge. “What happened to them? Your parents. If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Car crash,” Chris replied, fighting to keep his tone neutral as they approached the unicorn statue so Leon could examine the puzzle. He turned to keep an eye on both doors, Leon’s body a warm line against his back. “They got broadsided by a drunk driver in the middle of an intersection and wound up tumbling down into a ravine. Dead on arrival.”

“I’m sorry,” Leon murmured, soft and genuine even as he started rotating dials. “My… my father was a drunk. A mean one. He–” A click signaled the medallion was loose, and Leon pocketed it as Chris turned to face him again. His blue eyes had a haunted look to them that Chris didn’t like. “Um. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Chris told him, catching the ripple of surprise as it passed over Leon’s expressive face. They were standing close enough together that Chris could make out the faintest tiny freckles scattered across the bridge of Leon’s nose, a small scar on his cheek, the fullness of his lips. It was at that moment Chris realized that what he felt was more than simply attraction–he wanted to know everything about the man in front of him just as much as he wanted to kiss him. It was a dizzying combination. “Leon, I–”

The radio on Leon’s shoulder crackled to life, startling them both.

“Rookie? You and Redfield still alive?” Marvin’s voice asked–and was it Chris’s imagination, or did he sound weaker than he had before. “Come in.”

“We’re here,” Leon replied as soon as he thumbed the button on the radio down, looking up at Chris with a furrow to his brow; clearly he sensed the change in Marvin too. “What do you need?”

“Come back to the lobby.” Marvin paused to shift around, making a low, pained noise. “I got something you need to see.”

“We’ll be right there,” Chris promised, and felt sorry that was the only promise he could make. As far as he knew, there was no way to cure someone once they had been infected, and no amount of herbs or medical spray was going to help. They would aid Marvin in whatever way they could… until they couldn’t anymore. “See you in a minute.”

~***~

Their trek back to the lobby was relatively peaceful, only a couple of zombies in the way. Leon was pleased to discover that his ankle seemed to be holding up well despite his fall in the library, and Matilda seemed no worse for wear either… and Chris… Chris genuinely seemed to like him, which was puzzling and exhilarating at the same time. He was sure it was strictly platonic, of course–a man that looked and acted like Chris wasn’t interested in other men, and even if by some chance he was, Leon was certain he wouldn’t give him more than a passing glance. Either way, this was not the time for Leon to be pining about something he couldn’t have; their survival was the priority.

“There you are,” Marvin said when they approached, after Leon paused to set the unicorn and lion medallions into their places at the goddess’s feet. “Come here, take a look.”

He tapped a key on his laptop and expanded one of the security camera feeds. It wasn’t the clearest picture–it was outside the station, Leon realized, and muddled by rain–but he could make out a woman with a ponytail standing in front of a tall chain link fence with a gate set into the middle. She wore a leather jacket and looked to be relatively unharmed. Beside him, Chris sucked in a sharp breath and grabbed Leon’s shoulder for stability.

“That’s my sister, Claire,” he said in a rush, face a mask of disbelief before he broke into a grin. His hand was warm and heavy where it squeezed Leon’s shoulder. “She made it–I knew she’d make it.” He peered closer at the screen. “That’s the courtyard. We can get there through the second floor, on the east side.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Leon couldn’t help but smile too in the face of Chris’s elation; the man only seemed to feel big feelings, and they were intoxicating. Plus, if he was being honest, he was curious what Claire was like, and at this point meeting any survivor of this shitshow seemed like a win. “Let’s go get her.”

~***~

Thankfully, while Chris might’ve left his keycard in his Jeep, he’d taken his actual keys out of the ignition before he went into the gas station. He only had copies of the spade and club keys on his keyring, but even those two would save them a lot of unnecessary running around. He used the spade key on the corresponding door in the east waiting room and led the way into the darkened corridor beyond.

Right as they turned the corner and came within sight of the door that led to the fire escape, the thunderous whine of an out-of-control helicopter descended on them, blinding white light flashing through the window in the door. A second later the chopper crashed into the building and the whole place shook violently enough that Chris and Leon both bounced off the nearest wall. The fire alarm started ringing in a high-pitched tinny tone, and as much as Chris needed to get to Claire, his sense of duty forced him to check on the downed helicopter.

“Shit,” Leon breathed out as Chris trailed his flashlight beam over the wreck. The body of the chopper was crumpled like a discarded toy, the pilot crushed between the nose and the wall; the stink of jet fuel permeated the air, which made sense seeing as it was leaking everywhere profusely. “What the hell do we do about that?”

“Not much we can do,” Chris said, and together they doubled back to the fire escape. It was still raining, and as they passed the tail of the helicopter, he noted sparks shooting from under the rotor and out of the control panel–that could be a problem. But all thoughts of the chopper flew out of his head when he spotted a familiar flash of red on the other side of the fence. “ Claire !”

“Chris?!” Claire pressed herself up against the fencing, poking her fingers through the holes for him to grab as soon as he was close enough. It was nowhere near the bear hug he wanted to give her, but even that simple touch made his knees weak with relief. She grinned at him, shaking the fence a little. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came after you!” Chris had the passing thought that they both probably should’ve sounded angry, but the circumstances completely canceled out any ire he’d felt at Claire running off on him. “What did you think I was gonna do, sit on my ass and do nothing?”

“Guess I should’ve known better,” Claire said with an airy laugh, her eyes finally leaving Chris to take in Leon. He was hanging back near the gate, letting them have their moment. “Who’s this?”

“This is Leon,” Chris told her, unable to keep the fondness from his voice. He held out the hand that wasn’t holding Claire’s, and once Leon shuffled into grabbing distance he hooked his fingers into his bulletproof vest to bring him closer. “Leon S. Kennedy, this is my sister, Claire.”

“Hi.” Leon raised his eyebrows, glancing between the smoldering helicopter and Claire. In a mockery of Chris’s extremely lame joke from earlier, he added, “Come here often?”

Claire snorted, the corners of her eyes crinkling with mirth; Chris had been told that despite the fact that their eyes were different colors, they made the same face when they were amused. He could sort of see it now as she said, “Oh, I like you.” She took a step back from the fence to try the gate, jiggling the door. “I don’t suppose one of you has a key?”

Chris let go of Leon to flip through his keyring and swore. “I have probably every goddamn key but that one,” he lamented, shoving the keyring back into his pocket in frustration. “Could we–”

An explosion cut him off, the chopper up above them bursting into an inferno just as Chris had feared it would.

“Dammit,” Leon swore, looking out over Claire’s shoulder. “You know what that means.” 

.Claire drew her pistol from the back of her waistband and turned to face the infected that had been disturbed by the blast. It was more than just the few scattered around the courtyard–zombies began slamming themselves up against the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the station’s campus, too. “Dinner time.”

Agony lanced through Chris’s chest, but he forced himself to breathe around it. “Claire,” he said in the firmest tone he could manage, “you need to go, now.”

“Don’t worry about me,” his baby sister replied, flashing him an uneasy smile. To Chris’s surprise, she looked at Leon and tacked on, “Keep him safe for me?”

“You got it.” Leon shifted his weight, uneasy. “Now go.”

“Let’s get through this,” Claire said, turning to leave. “All of us.”

Then she was gone, running off through the shadows and monsters.

She took a piece of Chris’s heart with her.

Chapter Text

“Uh, Marvin?” With Claire out of sight, Leon grabbed Chris by the back of his STARS vest and began moving away from the chain link fence, using his other hand to operate his radio. “We’ve got a situation here… we’re surrounded by zombies!”

No response.

Leon clicked the button on his radio a couple times, dread sitting like a rock in his stomach. “Marvin? Do you copy?” Still nothing. “Dammit!”

“Leon…” Chris spoke slowly, no doubt recovering from the shock of finding his sister and losing her again within the span of five minutes. “Marvin, he… he might not be–”

“I know,” Leon snapped with more ire than he intended, releasing Chris so he could pick up a set of mean-looking bolt cutters. They were placed conveniently next to a chained-up door, so he used them quickly, allowing them to step into the viscera-splattered vestibule next to the watchman’s room. “Just because I’m a rookie doesn’t mean I’m naive, you know. Far fucking from it.”

Chris didn’t say anything for a moment, then held out a box of bullets for Leon’s gun. He must’ve picked them up outside. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Leon muttered, feeling embarrassed by his outburst. He accepted the bullets with a noise of thanks, storing them away for later and blowing out a harsh breath. “It’s just… having a baby face gets old quick. Especially when my life up until now has been a dumpster fire.”

Chris’s mouth twitched in amusement. “So what, you’re telling me this is your typical Tuesday night?”

Leon huffed, and even when he looked away, it was impossible for him not to mirror Chris’s smile. “Maybe not this, but…” He blew out a long breath and debated which metaphorical grenade to pull the pin on. “My dad killed my mom in front of me when I was eight years old. Then he abused me for a couple more years before my grandma found out, and…” He trailed off, shaking his head and keeping his eyes fixed on a poster on the wall. “You don’t want to hear this.”

A big hand touched his shoulder, gently–always so fucking gently . “Stop putting words in my mouth,” Chris said, firm but not unkind; Leon couldn’t bring himself to meet his eye. “I told you back in the lounge, Leon… whatever you have to say, it does matter. You don’t need to second-guess yourself, not with me.”

Leon shivered when Chris’s thumb brushed over his collarbone where it peeked out from under his uniform shirt and vest. It was an innocent touch, of course, but it had been a long damn time since someone had put their hands on him without the intent to hurt. “It’s… quite the story,” he hedged, finally allowing his eyes to roam Chris’s face the way they wanted to. His stomach flipped pleasantly when he found Chris already doing the same to him. They were drifting closer to each other… and that couldn’t be a spark of attraction in Chris’s eyes, could it? “If you really want to hear it, I’ll tell you after we get out of here.”

“Every single word,” Chris promised, and oh , Leon was bad at this sort of thing but he wasn’t stupid . The way Chris was looking at him… after Derek, it should’ve scared him shitless. Instead, it made Leon want to reach out and touch, to sink into the embrace of strong arms and let everything else fall away. “Shit, I just remembered–the keycard for the shotgun is above us.”

“We need to grab it,” Leon declared, the spell around them bent but not broken. Was this what it was like to be able to trust someone to watch his back? To care ? “Then we’ll head back to the lobby and check on Marvin before we go get the shotgun.”

~***~

They did precisely what Leon said.

Chris was surprised that they only ran into a couple of flaming zombies on their way in and out of the art room, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. With the weapons locker keycard tucked safely in his back pocket, they made their way back to the lobby. To his continuing shock, the worst hadn’t happened yet–Marvin was still human, though he had deteriorated enough that he was curled on his side on the leather couch, face a mask of pain.

“Isn’t there something we can do for him?” Leon asked softly, expressive features twisted with sympathy. “Or… or would it just delay the inevitable?”

“There isn’t a cure that I know of,” Chris said, choosing his words with care. From what he’d gleaned so far of Leon’s history, it was clear he knew what the inevitable looked like. “And even if Rebecca or someone else has managed to develop one, we obviously don’t have access to it here.”

Leon sighed through his nose and shut his eyes, shoulders slumping for a moment. “Shit.” He turned away slowly, heading for the shortcut through the west office, and Chris followed his lead. “Who’s Rebecca?”

“Rebecca Chambers. She was part of STARS–a medic.” Chris smiled fondly at the thought of his friend. “She’ll tell you that I saved her, back in the mountains, but really we saved each other. After the mansion, she decided to go back to college to finish her doctorate. She wants to develop a cure, but I don’t know if she’s made any real progress.”

“It’s the Umbrella Corporation that’s behind all this, right?” When Chris stared at Leon incredulously, the rookie merely shrugged, crossing into the safety deposit room. “What? It’s not like there’s another giant pharmaceutical conglomerate around here that has the manpower, the supplies, and the money to slap together a zombie apocalypse. Kinda seems obvious.”

“You’ve got me there.” Chris slid the keycard home and felt a smidgen more at ease when he watched Leon pick up the shotgun, sighting down the barrel before breaking it open to load in shells. “It’s worse than that, though.” Haltingly, Chris told Leon everything he knew, from the mansion being a base for Umbrella’s unending maniacal development of bioweapons under the guise of “research”, to the sickening fate of the Trevor family and Wesker’s betrayal and ultimately, his demise. “Chief Irons has to be in on it too, and there could be others. He muzzled us the way he did for a reason.”

Leon took a moment to absorb everything, slinging the shotgun across his back. “So what you’re saying is, when we make it out of this… the next step is taking down Umbrella?”

“It looks that way,” Chris replied grimly, leaning against the opened locker and contemplating their next move. They still needed the detonator and C4 to get to the maiden statue… speaking of statues, something about that one in the art room was needling in his brain. “I think we need to go back to the library.”

“Feeling studious?” Leon cocked a brow. “Or do you want to watch me fall through that hole again?”

“Neither.” Chris shot him a smile. “Remember that statue we saw in the art room? There’s a book with a red cover that it’s supposed to be holding. That should get it to let go of the scepter, and I’ve seen the jewel that’s in it somewhere else. It belongs in the top of a fancy box, and knowing the paranoia around here, I’d bet that box has something valuable inside it now.” He tilted his head. “Plus, with those bolt cutters of yours, we can unlock the door to the east office–and I’m pretty sure that’s where the crank wheel for that busted water heater in the women’s locker room is.”

“Sounds like as good of a plan as any,” Leon said, motioning toward the door with Matilda. The smile that spread on his face was possibly the most genuine one yet and it made Chris melt on the inside like a box of cheap Valentine’s candy left out in the sun. “I’m on you, Captain.”

Not the way I want you to be , Chris thought but blessedly didn’t say aloud, and off they went.

~***~

Leon should’ve known everything would go to shit.

Not that a bioweapon-powered zombie apocalypse fueled by corporate greed and ruthless egos wasn’t already shit to start with, but rather he should’ve known that things could only get worse. After their little come to Jesus talk in the safety deposit room, they followed Chris’s hunch and hit the library for the red book, then crossed over the lobby from the second floor to retrieve the crank wheel to shut off the damaged water heater from the now unlocked east office. Since the art room was closer they headed there next, and getting the statue to let go of the scepter was frighteningly simple.

But not more frightening than the almighty shriek that sounded over their heads seconds later. It was the same noise from the west hallway only much closer, and when the source of it dropped to the floor behind them, they spun in unison to face it. What they were facing, exactly… Leon had no idea. It took his mind several panicked blips to register that the creature in front of them had been human once. Stripped of skin and flat to the floor, claws at the ends of all four appendages, with an exposed brain that made up the majority of its head save for the mouth, which was inhabited by a long, razor-sharp tongue… it set off some primal survival instinct in Leon that even a horde of zombies couldn’t manage.

“What the fuck?!” Chris shouted, and then the thing was moving , catapulting itself toward him with another one of those nightmare-inducing screams and its tongue lashing out at Chris like a whip with a flurry of claws behind it–

Leon raised the shotgun and fired once, twice, three times, deafening himself and Chris and leaving the licker (really, it was the only name that made sense) in a pulpy heap on the floor.

Unfortunately, he didn’t do it in time to keep Chris from getting hurt.

“ Shit ,” Leon hissed when he saw the blood streaming down Chris’s face like a curtain, the way he’d collapsed back against the statue with a broken-off claw lodged in his bicep. He slung the shotgun over his back again and grabbed Chris’s stupidly huge forearm with both hands to keep him from pulling out the claw. “Stop–you know better than that.” The majority of cops Leon knew had some kind of first aid training, even if it was just the basics. “If that hit an artery–”

“Then I’m dead already, so let’s act like it didn’t,” Chris said, his voice and expression fraught with pain. He slumped forward a little, trusting Leon to take some of his weight. “You… you’ve still got the wheel, right?”

“Yeah?” Leon got Chris’s uninjured arm over his shoulders and suddenly wished he’d spent more time at the gym doing deadlifts. They started moving toward the door, back into the corridor with the screeching fire alarm. “Why is that important right now?”

“Go back across the second floor to the women’s locker room.” Each word sounded like it was difficult for Chris to get out–the side of his face that had been struck by the licker’s tongue was not only bleeding, it was swelling a mottled purple and red. That, and Leon wondered if he’d hit his head. “We’ll… use the wheel to get to the STARS office. There’s first aid supplies there, and we should be safe.”

The for now was left unspoken, but it didn’t matter. Patching Chris up was the most important thing. So Leon took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then got them from one station to the other. He didn’t pause to count the number of zombies he killed along the way or how many bullets and shells he had left; he simply turned his brain off and focused on nothing except the path ahead of him and Chris’s ragged breathing in his ear.

Bursting through the door into the STARS office, Leon was once again forced to squint under the burn of fluorescent lights. He got over it as fast as he could and set Chris down on the floor with his back against the side of a desk–less far to fall than a chair if his body decided to give out on him. Then Leon dragged over the heaviest piece of junk he could find–an empty metal locker–and shoved it up against the door, locking them in.

He didn’t get a chance to think, only moved to the next task, spotting the reassuring green and white of a first aid kit hanging off a nearby wall. He rifled through it and some of his worry ebbed when he found it fully stocked–there was spray, but also a small suture kit, gauze, bandages… he could work with that.

“Rookie?” Chris’s voice, wavering in a way that was less than reassuring. “Think I hit my head back there.”

“I was afraid of that,” Leon admitted, dropping to his knees at Chris’s side with the kit in tow. He hesitated for only a second before taking Chris’s face in his hands, turning his head gently to get a better look at the cut on his cheek. “This is going to scar if I don’t sew it. Tip forward?” His breathing hitched when Chris dropped his forehead against Leon’s chest, allowing him to look at the back of his skull. There was definitely a bump back there, but– “You hit it, yeah, but I don’t think it’s too serious.” He gently tipped Chris’s head back again to look at his eyes. Pupils were larger than they needed to be, but not uneven. “Seems like you’re just stunned.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Chris said in a serious tone, but grinned like a fool when Leon’s brow furrowed with confusion. “You’re stunning. I am stunned.”

Leon felt his cheeks heat and for a second he had no idea what to do with his hands, letting go of Chris but not quite able to grip anything in the first aid kit either. “Maybe I’m wrong, and you have a concussion after all,” he said lightly, thoughts twisting themselves in knots. Chris was joking, right? He didn’t mean that, right? Steeling himself, Leon grabbed up the spray and shook the can. “Close your eyes for me?”

Chris complied, hissing when Leon sprayed the bloodied side of his face. It disinfected the wound while also clearing away the blood, and Leon decided that suturing his cheek could wait until he got a better look at the damage to Chris’s arm. “I’m going to spray this too,” he told him, taking Chris’s bicep in a firm hold. “Try not to hit me, yeah?”

“Wouldn’t,” was all Chris got out before he started cursing when the spray hit him, slapping his free hand against the linoleum floor. “ Ow .”

“Sorry,” Leon murmured, setting down the can and peering more closely at the claw’s positioning. “I don’t think it hit anything vital. I’m going to pull it out and put pressure on it for a while, okay?” When he got an affirmative grunt, Leon did exactly that; he tossed the claw aside in favor of packing gauze over the wound it left behind, which was bleeding steadily but not insanely. “I really am sorry. I know how much this shit hurts.”

Chris’s head rolled toward him, those brown eyes large and wet with unshed tears. “Did you… you fixed yourself up when you got hurt. Didn’t you?”

Leon nodded, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “My mom… she was the one who taught me,” he whispered, both hands wrapped around Chris’s bicep, holding tight to keep his blood where it belonged. “How to clean a wound, to stitch things up, to pull out pieces of broken glass… you know that was what killed her? A piece of glass from a fucking beer bottle.” He felt himself choke on nothing, pulled in a steadying breath. “He broke it against the kitchen counter and it hit her just right. Sliced open her carotid and she was just… gone.”

“God, Leon,” Chris lamented, and Leon startled a little when he felt calloused fingers touch his cheek. Light as a feather, curving around the soft part of his jawline. “I’m so sorry.” The fingers rested over his pulse, which was fluttering as fast as a rabbit’s. “You said something, before… about your grandmother?”

 “She was my mom’s mom,” Leon clarified, amazed he could speak at all with the way Chris was looking at him, like he’d hung the goddamn moon and all the stars too. No trace of pity, just curiosity. “Another Matilda. And when my dad told everyone that my mom took off on us, she didn’t believe him. It took her a while to… to get the evidence she needed for the cops to go after him.” He couldn’t bring himself to say it took her a while for her to figure out where he made me help him bury the body . He just couldn’t, not at that moment. “In the meantime, I became his new punching bag.” He tentatively eased the pressure on Chris’s arm, pleased when nothing squirted out at him. “We have the same name. It’s why I’m so insistent about the initial.”

“I’m sorry,” Chris said again, thumb rubbing gently over the curve of Leon’s ear. His hand was a pleasant weight on the back of Leon’s neck. “Is he dead? He should be dead.”

“Maybe? I haven’t checked in a while.” Leon dug around some more in the first aid kit, pleased to find some of those herbs Chris had given him earlier. If he crushed them up, could he put them into the puncture wound to make it heal faster? Or was it better if Chris ate them? He raised his head, intent on asking–

And a warm, dry pair of lips pressed against his own.

Chapter Text

It was a testament to how badly his head hurt that it took Chris several seconds to puzzle out that the optimal time to kiss the cute, competent, completely traumatized rookie was not right after he got done telling you how he watched his mom die. It took him an equally painfully long moment to figure out that Leon wasn’t kissing him back–in fact, he wasn’t doing anything . It didn’t even seem like he was breathing, motionless like he’d been turned to stone under Chris’s touch.

“Sorry,” Chris gasped out as soon as he pulled away, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and staring at Leon with wide eyes. His face burned so hot with embarrassment he thought it might melt right off. “I’m–god, Leon, I’m so sorry.”

Leon blinked at him once, twice. He raised a hand to his lips and touched them lightly, leaving a smear of Chris’s blood behind in his wake. “You… you kissed me.” To Chris’s relief there was no disgust in his voice, only confusion and something that almost sounded like wonder. “Why?”

“Because I wanted to?” Chris winced when it came out like a question and looked away, biting down on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from reaching out. Now that he’d kissed him once of course he wanted to do it again, but the idea of touching Leon at all without his consent made Chris feel sick. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

Leon was quiet for a moment that felt like years but was in reality probably less than a minute. “Maybe that… wasn’t the best time?” The words were slow and tentative but made Chris’s eyes snap back to him so fast the world tilted sideways. He studied Leon’s expression and found he looked more confident than he had before. “But you don’t need to apologize.” He bit his lower lip, an action that had no right to be as cute as it was on a grown man, albeit a young one. “I thought… I mean, I assumed you were straight.”

Chris wasn’t offended–at this point he was glad Leon was still talking to him at all. “A lot of people do that,” he said, shrugging and immediately regretting it when the motion jostled the wound left behind by that thing’s claw. “ Ow , shit, I forgot about that.”

“Here, let me…” Leon trailed off as he removed the bloodied gauze, exchanging it for some crushed-up herbs followed by a clean bandage on top secured with more gauze. The kid’s instincts were fucking immaculate. “There, that should be better.” He touched Chris’s jaw, adjusting the angle of his head to peer at the cut on his cheek. “Huh, maybe I can butterfly that shut instead of stitching it.”

“I don’t know,” Chris mused, angling for a laugh, “a scar right there might make me look cooler. Like a pirate or something.”

“Or something,” Leon huffed out, one corner of his mouth curving upward. Not as good as a laugh, but given the circumstances Chris would take it. He watched Leon’s deft hands open up a packet of butterfly bandages, shifted so the angle would be slightly less awkward when he had to lean in to place them. “So… if kissing me wasn’t an experiment… then what was it?”

“Does there have to be an ulterior motive?” Chris wondered, hissing in a breath as the ragged skin of his cheek was pinched together by the adhesives. Something about the way Leon was looking at this situation, like it was a problem that needed to be solved, rubbed him the wrong way. “Lapse in judgment. It won’t happen again.”

Leon’s hands paused for a split second and then they were gone. “Right. Of course.” His tone was unfamiliar to Chris’s ears, low and dull–but when Chris looked at him, Leon’s expression was neutral. “Thanks for clearing that up.” He pushed himself to his feet and strode over to peek inside the grating in front of the weapons locker. “Hey, there’s a magnum in here.”

Evidently their previous conversation was over. That… probably wasn’t healthy, but Chris had already apologized–the last thing he wanted to do was make matters worse by prodding at an open wound, so to speak. Besides, a magnum inside the STARS weapons locker? “That’s my Lightning Hawk,” Chris said, stunned once he managed to stand and come over to peer in at the gun in question. “I can’t believe nobody took it.”

Leon moved to investigate the computer next to the door. “They didn’t take it because they couldn’t get in,” he said after a moment of studying the screen. “This locker went on lockdown when the station did, and we need some kind of USB drive for clearance to open it using the computer.”

Chris wanted to smack himself for the second time that evening. “God fucking damn it,” he groaned out, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “There’s a USB drive in the back of my STARS badge–which I left in my fucking Jeep .”

“Well, that’s unfortunate.” Leon’s words were wry but not unkind, and Chris was glad that letting his dick do the thinking for him hadn’t resulted in things being too awkward between them. And if there was something shrewd and slightly more distant in Leon’s eyes when he looked at Chris–well, they could deal with that later, when Chris didn’t feel like his head was going to explode. “But I bet there’s another one around here somewhere. In the meantime, what about the detonator and the battery?”

Chris took an extra moment to think, leaning against the computer desk. “There’s another chained-up door,” he realized aloud. “In the operations room, near where we crawled through that ventilation window–I wonder if the detonator could be in there? And as for a battery…” He glanced around the room, eyes sticking on Wesker’s office. “Let me check something.”

~***~

As soon as Chris was out of sight, Leon started to tremble.

Not for the first time, he cursed Derek for being such a goddamn prick, for fucking him up so badly that his body could barely tell the difference between a kiss and a punch, that he constantly had to question Chris’s motives because there was no way the explanation for that ill-timed brush of lips could be anything as simple as attraction . And now, even if Leon decided that he’d wanted to be kissed, and would very much like to kiss Chris again… he couldn’t, because clearly Chris was angry with him. And really, why wouldn’t he be? Leon was the king of mixed signals, his wires so crossed between genuine emotions and a false front for survival that even he was confused by how he felt more often than not.

Desperate for something to do, Leon busied himself with cleaning up the first aid supplies, pocketing anything that looked like it might be useful for later. Then he took a moment to glance around the different desks, and figured out the one he’d leaned Chris up against when they came in actually belonged to the man. There was another hand-painted leather jacket hung up on the wall, a guitar on a stand, and countless commendations and awards.

Chris was a cop, a real one. A survivor of the Spencer Mansion. An honest to god hero.

The last thing he’d do when he was in his right mind would be kiss someone as damaged and dirtied as Leon S. Kennedy.

That thought hurt , burning its way through Leon’s chest and leaving him breathless.

Thankfully he didn’t have much time to wallow in his own misery, because Chris emerged from the captain’s office with a triumphant expression on his face. His smile only grew when he saw Leon and reached out to grasp one of Leon’s hands in both of his huge ones, pressing something into Leon’s palm. “Ta da.”

Leon looked down and saw the familiar black and copper of a battery. It was agony to meet Chris’s eye and pretend to be fine, but that was exactly what he did. “ Hell yes,” he said, bumping Chris’s fist with his own when he stuck it out there. “Now we just need that detonator.” He caught a whiff of the familiar pungent smell of jet fuel and sighed, pocketing the battery. “ Or maybe we need to put out the helicopter fire first, before it burns the whole place down with us in it. Any idea how we do that?” 

“Normally, yeah–but not right now.” Chris dragged away the locker Leon had placed in front of the door, only moving a touch slower than he normally would’ve. “There’s a shutter down in the hallway by the art room–that’s the way we’d need to go to get to the roof. From there we could drop down to the second floor and use the emergency fire hose to douse the flames, but not with that shutter in the way… so I guess we better hope the rain keeps up until we can find the crank for it. In the meantime, we’ll double back and get that detonator.” He put a hand on the doorknob, then hesitated. “Would you mind taking point? I can give you directions, but I’m not a hundred percent yet.”

“Sure,” Leon murmured, slipping in front of Chris and steadying his hand on Matilda. “On me.”

~***~

Running back to the operations room took longer than it should’ve. Between Chris moving slower with his head injury, another encounter with a licker, and a new pack of zombies to blast through, Leon had his work cut out for him. He handled it like a pro, switching smoothly between Matilda and his shotgun and hardly missing a shot. He never stopped moving, no matter how much blood and brains they got splashed with, and he always made sure Chris was okay bringing up the rear.

Chris thought he might be in love.

He blamed it on the concussion. If their conversation in the STARS office had proved anything, it was that he barely knew anything about Leon beyond the fact that he would’ve made a stellar cop, had he ever gotten the chance to be one. That wasn’t a basis for anything, and it certainly wasn’t an excuse for Chris kissing him after he got done talking about his awful childhood.

So maybe that was why Chris felt compelled to ask as they were trudging up to the storage room, apropos of nothing, “What’s your favorite color?”

“Huh?” Leon glanced back at him, clearly confused. “Uh… blue, I guess. Why?”

Chris tried for a casual shrug. “Just curious.”

Leon hummed an acknowledgement as they ducked into the storage room, producing the battery and the detonator and holding them out to Chris. “You seem like you know more about explosives than I do.” He hesitated. “Why is that?”

Chris hated the way Leon had paused before asking the question, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed, and cussed himself out internally for fucking things up between them. “Before I was a cop, I was in the Air Force,” he replied, studying the detonator for a second before attaching the battery. Debating with himself for a moment, he added, “Flew helicopters and planes, saw some combat. And while it wasn’t in my job description to handle anything that went boom beyond maybe a rocket launcher, I was, uh… friendly with a guy who was a EOD tech.” He secured the detonator to the C4, allowing himself a bittersweet smile. “He showed me a lot of things, and not all of them had to do with ordinance.”

“Oh.” A pause, and even with the shitty lighting, Chris could see Leon’s face flush with realization. “ Oh .”

“You don’t have to say anything else,” Chris told him gently when the rookie seemed lost for words, his (soft, so soft) mouth opening and closing uselessly. He busied himself with setting the timer–ten seconds would be enough time–and motioning for Leon to take cover before he hit the button again. “Just because I–”

“No.” Leon’s interjection was too loud for the room, even from behind a large stack of boxes and crates of god only knew what. He seemed embarrassed when he amended in a lower tone, “I meant… me too. I’ve been… friendly with a guy before.”

Jesus fucking wept.

It was Chris’s turn to say oh like an idiot, and then there wasn’t much else to do besides set the charge, so he did. As soon as the display started counting down he booked it, but the concussion had shot his balance to hell and he tripped over his own feet. Fantastic, he was going to fall on his face two feet from the C4 and be blown to bits after embarrassing the shit out of himself…

… Except he never hit the floor, because Leon’s hands grabbed his jacket and yanked hard, pulling Chris around the stack of junk to safety. All the changes of direction left Chris woozy and he planted his hands on either side of Leon’s head to keep his balance, flinching when the timer hit zero and the noise and rumble of the blast took over his senses. For a fleeting moment it was like he was back overseas, fighting a different kind of monster, good people dying all around him and he was too late, he was always too goddamn late –

Leon’s hands moved from Chris’s shoulders to his face, careful not to touch the butterflied cut on his cheek. “Chris, hey,” he said as the dust settled, voice tight. “Don’t check out on me. I can’t do this without you.”

“You absolutely could,” Chris murmured, shutting his eyes for just a moment. Worrying for Claire, for Jill, for Leon and himself–it was exhausting , and that was before he hit his head. “But you don’t have to.”

“Good, because…” There was a tiny tremor behind Leon’s words, but he powered through. “I don’t want to.” When Chris opened his eyes again, it was to Leon’s hands falling away from him–but it seemed like they were on better footing now than they were before. The other man’s eyes were flinty with determination, and he offered Chris a smile. “Let’s go unlock that secret passageway.”

Chapter Text

Returning to the lobby made Leon a little nauseous, his mind supplying him with all too realistic images of Marvin lurching at him with dead eyes and raised hands. It was a distraction from the tangled mess of thoughts and feelings he had related to Chris, but far from a welcome one. At least the other man’s gait seemed to have improved somewhat on their journey down from the west storage room, which indicated that the herbs were having a positive affect on his concussion as well as the wound on his arm.

“Go on, put it in,” Chris urged when they reached the feet of the goddess, glancing over the medallion apparatus before meeting Leon’s eye. “I’ve got your back.”

Steeling his nerves, Leon extracted the maiden medallion from one of his pouches and set it into the last empty relief. It clicked into place and the final segment of the statue’s base retracted, revealing a wrought-iron door leading to a shadowed room. A secret room no doubt connected to an underground passageway, exactly as Elliot had predicted. When Chris raised his flashlight, they could just make out wooden floors and the bulk of a desk.

“Holy shit,” Leon said, letting out a tiny disbelieving laugh. “That’s it–this is our way out.” He turned around and started for the couch. “Lieutenant Branagh! Marvin! It’s time to go.”

“Leon…” Chris trailed off but followed him, footsteps heavy and familiar by now.

When Marvin didn’t stir, Leon reached down to touch his shoulder–and sprang back immediately when the lieutenant came up swinging. Panic jangled through his brain because Derek used to do that, and before him, Leon’s father did the same thing. Distantly he felt Chris’s fingers hook into the back of his vest, ready to yank him away if he had to. “Marvin?” Leon tried again, watching as he panted and shook. “We need to get you to a hospital right now.”

“No, no… I…” Marvin clutched at his wounded side… and was it a trick of the light, or was his brown skin tinged a sickly shade of green? “Save yourselves.”

To Leon’s surprise, it was Chris who voiced a protest: “Marvin… I know someone, she might be able to–”

“ Go .” Marvin’s tone brokered no argument, genuine anger creeping in now, and Leon hated himself for the way he instinctively started to sweat and look for a place to hide in the face of another man’s rage. When Chris started to speak again, the lieutenant whipped around with his gun in hand. It wasn’t aimed at them precisely, but the blackness of the muzzle still made Leon flinch. “I tried, Redfield… but I couldn’t stop it. We can’t let this thing spread.” A shaky exhale. “It’s on you two now. Just go.”

Before either Leon or Chris could draw breath to respond, Marvin raised his gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

A pained cry ripped its way out of Leon’s throat, his eyes slamming shut an instant too late, the afterimage of the lieutenant's head exploding permanently burned into his retinas. Chris had shouted too, his arm clamping around Leon’s shoulders and pulling him back into his chest. For a second afterward they stood there in an eerie stillness, ears ringing and breath coming in sharp pants from the sudden burst of adrenaline.

“ Fuck .” Chris’s voice was as shaky as Leon’s body, his breath stirring Leon’s hair. “We won’t let you down, Marvin.”

Leon managed to nod against Chris’s shoulder, swallowing down a sob.

They lingered for a few more heartbeats, and then they descended the stairs and left Marvin’s cooling body behind.

~***~

At this point in his life, Chris had seen a lot of nasty shit… but he never expected to watch a man as noble and good as Marvin Branagh be forced to take his own life.

When the lights came on in the secret room, Chris put the flashlight away, his fingers still trembling. The motion caused his shoulder to brush against Leon’s, and he was once again overcome with a sick sense of gratitude that neither of them had to do this alone. The room was shaped like an octagon and done up in wood, reminding Chris vaguely of Chief Irons’s office. There were stacks upon stacks of books, a scale model of the station, some odd statues… and an open doorway that led to an elevator.

“Son of a bitch,” Chris said, amazed. A part of him had been unwilling to believe that there was anything under the goddess statue until he saw it with his own eyes. They grabbed anything that looked useful–a box of shells for the shotgun, a handful of herbs–before stepping into the elevator together. “This is unreal. Although… I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising, considering the age of the building.”

“I think I would’ve been more shocked if it was just a basement.” Leon’s eyes darted around the interior of the elevator before settling on Chris, looking a little wild. “ Shit .” For a moment Chris thought he was still reeling after Marvin’s suicide, but that wouldn’t explain why Leon had suddenly gone as white as a sheet. “I’m… claustrophobic,” he bit out, sounding equal parts on-edge and embarrassed. “Should’ve told you.”

“Ah, jeez.” Chris didn’t think twice before grabbing Leon’s hand and squeezing. The hard plastic knuckles of his gloves dug into Chris’s palm, but he didn’t care. “It’s okay. I think we’re almost–” the elevator jolted to a stop “–there. See? Everything’s fine.”

Leon choked on a laugh, his hand lingering in Chris’s for a moment longer than it had to as they exited the elevator. “Yeah–except for the zombie apocalypse, everything is just peachy.” He kept to Chris’s six as they made their way down a set of stairs, the flashlight cutting a path for them in the darkness. “You got any clue where we are?”

“I think we’re near the machinery room,” Chris replied after he took a second to think. They followed the stairs to the bottom but found nothing but a locked door, an equally locked display case, and a single hand grenade. Going back up, they headed through the open doorway on the first landing. There was enough light to see in this area, so he put the flashlight away; his footfalls on the metal grating were almost comically loud compared to Leon’s, which were all but silent. “Okay, this should take us to–” He cut off abruptly as pained groans reached their ears, followed by heavy, uneven steps on the grating above them. “What the hell?”

“I don’t know,” Leon murmured, rattled. “Be careful.” They emerged onto a catwalk, and it appeared the only way forward was through a small office. There was another one of those heavy metal cabinets blocking the doorway, collapsed at an angle that would make it awkward to lift. Leon dropped to a crouch to peer around it, probably intent on seeing if he could crawl to the other side and help Chris lift it out of the way… but instead he went very still and spoke: “Hey, it’s okay. We won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Startled, Chris took a half-step back to look and saw a girl who couldn’t have been older than twelve staring out at them. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a headband to keep it out of her face, and she wore some kind of uniform that had clearly seen better days. She looked, in a word, terrified–of them as well as the situation in general, most likely. Chris’s heart ached for her, immediately reminded of Claire at that age; thankfully, she didn’t seem to be injured or infected.

“Do you need help?” Leon’s voice was almost painfully kind, and he extended a hand through the gap between the cabinet and the doorframe. “Here, take my hand.” The girl tried and failed to speak, blue eyes wide with fear. “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you–what did you say?”

“You…” Her little voice was breathless. “ You need help.”

Leon started to ask her what she meant but Chris was already turning around, and what he saw had him raising his gun with one hand and grabbing Leon’s shoulder with the other. Behind them was something that had been a man in a lab coat once, but was now mutating into a monster. A gigantic, sickly eyeball resided where his shoulder had once been, and the arm attached to it was a writhing musculature pulsing with veins and infection.

Between one blink and the next that huge arm lashed out, punching through the panel of grating in front of them like it was made from paper, not steel. Everything shook, and to Chris’s horror Leon pushed him backward, stepping in front of him with the shotgun raised. He started to speak again, probably to tell Chris to keep the girl safe, but the creature’s hand shot out to clamp onto his bulletproof vest and tossed him through the hole it had just made to the level below.

~***~

As soon as Leon’s back hit the floor he rolled to his feet, pushing through the fiery pain lancing through his ribs. He’d learned a long time ago that staying down when he got hit hard enough to fall wasn’t a good idea, and neither was sticking too close. He backed up as far as he could, taking quick stock of his surroundings; pipes and furnaces and industrial junk, oh my. The narrow passages in between appeared to roughly form the shape of an H, and if he could get some distance, he might have a fighting chance.

“ Leon !” Chris sounded wrecked, and Leon could only hope that he’d been able to move the cabinet and get to the girl. “Please tell me you’re alive!”

“I’m okay!” Leon called back, volleying a couple shots into the creature’s massive eye. It shrieked in pain, waving around its piece of piping menacingly. Good–it had a weak spot. “Think I’ve gotta play tag with this guy for a minute. Can you find me a way out of here?”

“You got it!” Chris whistled sharply and Leon glanced up in time to see him toss something down. “Here–you need it more than me.”

Leon stuck out a hand and caught the grenade, grinning to himself as he jogged around a corner. All he had to do was time it right… and as soon as he heard the clang of the pipe against metal behind him, Leon pulled the pin on the grenade and rolled it across the floor. It blew huge chunks of shrapnel into the monster, and from there it was relatively easy to bait it into positions where he could pop two or three shots into its eye. After a few rounds of that treatment the thing let out a terrible yell, its non-human features rippling and distorting, pulsing red as it backed up toward a nearby railing. As Leon watched it turned and tipped over the edge, falling with a drawn-out cry to water far, far below in the darkness. 

“Well, that was fun,” Leon said to no one in particular, trying to catch his breath. He turned away from the railing in time to watch Chris drop a ladder from the upper floor and he used it gratefully–only to be surprised when Chris yanked him into a hug when he reached the top. “Chris, what–”

“Don’t fucking do that again.” Chris’s breath gusted hot against Leon’s ear, voice shaking. He held Leon so tightly it was almost painful, compressing his bruised ribs inside his vest. “Jesus Christ, Leon… when that thing threw you, I thought…”

Leon swallowed hard, uncertain of what to do in the face of such concern. “Sorry,” he whispered, because that seemed appropriate. He also allowed himself to hug Chris back, figuring this might be his one and only opportunity to do so. “Had to get him away from the girl.” And you , he thought but didn’t say. Because you have people who need you, and I don’t . “Speaking of which…” He looked over Chris’s shoulder at the girl in question, who still seemed skittish but had at least emerged from the office. “Hi. I’m Leon.”

“I’m Sherry,” she said, looking between them curiously as they hastily broke their embrace. “Are you police officers?”

“We are,” Chris replied. He seemed to be calmer now that Leon was back at his side, which was oddly flattering. “My name is Chris. I don’t suppose you know a way out of here, do you?”

Sherry brightened a little, motioning for them to follow her further down the catwalk. “This way!”

“What the hell is a kid like that doing down here alone?” Leon asked the question in a low voice, and when Chris raised a brow at him, he clarified, “That’s a private school uniform, man. Somebody cares at least a little.”

“I have no idea why she’s here,” Chris told him as they climbed up some more stairs to another little office. “As far as I know, nobody in the department uses a private school.”

They drew up behind Sherry, who had stopped to point at a gangway suspended above a large gap in the catwalk, precisely where they needed to go. There was some kind of control panel with a big lever in the middle that appeared to be stuck. “I tried, but it won’t move.”

“Let me give it a shot,” Leon said, offering her a smile. He had a soft spot for kids, even the ones that were presumably rich and entitled; he knew firsthand precisely how cruel adults could be, and tried to act the opposite. “Good thing I ate my Wheaties today.”

“Crap, don’t talk about food,” Chris grumbled, keeping an eye out as Leon pulled hard on the lever, which resisted initially but gave way, moving the gangway into place. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“Me neither.” Leon allowed Sherry to walk ahead of him slightly, figuring it might make her feel less intimidated. “So, Sherry… where are your parents?”

“I’m looking for my mom… I hope she’s around here somewhere,” Sherry said. “She works at Umbrella.” Leon winced as Chris missed a step behind him but thankfully didn’t say anything crass. “She’s working on an important new medicine.”

“Umbrella?” Leon repeated guilelessly. He wasn’t a particularly good actor, but he could fool a twelve year old. In theory. “That big pharmaceutical company?”

Sherry bobbed her head, fingers twisting together nervously in front of her. “She’s always at work.”

“Well, hopefully you’ll get to see her again soon,” Leon said, risking a glance back at Chris. His expression was nearly as tense as his shoulders. “We’ll help you look for her–in fact, we’re trying to find some people too.” They reached a room that housed a large water heater and a few other odds and ends, including another hip pouch hiding in a locker and some ammo for Chris’s Samurai Edge. “Where’s your dad?”

Sherry faltered. “He, uh… worked with my mom, but he’s… gone.”

“Both of my parents are gone.” Chris spoke up, clearing his throat to get rid of the gravel. He was clearly making an effort not to scare the kid any worse than she was, which Leon appreciated. “It’s just me and my sister. And Leon lost his mom.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Leon said, turning to survey the room. “Guess we’ve all got something in common.” There was a ladder beyond the water heater, and he glanced at Chris. “Thoughts on where that might go?”

Chris’s brow wrinkled. “The parking garage, maybe?”

“Sounds like our ticket out of here,” Leon said, a fragile tendril of hope curling in his chest. He looked at Sherry again. “Would you mind walking in between us? It makes it easier for us to keep you safe.” She wordlessly shuffled until she was standing between them, and Leon felt himself smile. “Thank you, Sherry–Chris, on you?”

“On me,” Chris agreed, holstering his gun as he eyed the ladder. “Let’s climb.”

Chapter Text

The kid’s mother worked for Umbrella. Of course she fucking did.

Sighing to himself, Chris scaled the ladder until he ran up against a manhole cover. He didn’t have to glance down to know that Leon was holding Sherry back from climbing until Chris gave him the all clear–they just clicked like that. It was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure, to gel so well with someone he’d only known for a couple of hours at this point… especially when that someone was as gorgeous and intelligent as Leon.

With a grunt Chris pushed the manhole cover open enough to peer through the gap, and discovered that his guess was right–the ladder led to the parking garage. Headlights from a cruiser shone brightly through the automated gate blocking the exit, illuminating the space… which looked a little like a warzone. There was a huge hole in the wall that separated the parking garage from the station’s holding cells, and the smoldering remains of a SWAT van looked to be the culprit.

He gave it a beat, but there was no movement or sound other than the ticking of slowly-cooling metal, so Chris hauled himself up into the garage and crouched down, ready to help Sherry and Leon. “Hey, you can come up.” Sherry came first, moving spryly up the rungs and into Chris’s waiting hands. He picked her up under the arms and set her aside, then held down a hand for Leon even though he probably didn’t need it. “Something happened up here, but it seems to be over now.”

“Something like wh–oh.” Leon cut off his question when he reached the top of the ladder and caught sight of the wreckage, brow furrowing in puzzlement. He clasped Chris’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet… and if he held on for a couple extra seconds, Chris wasn’t about to point it out. “Huh. Looks like somebody drove that SWAT van right into the wall… but the hole is way bigger than it is. Which means the hole came first, but… what the hell could make a hole like that in a concrete wall?”

“I don’t know,” Chris murmured, frowning. They followed Sherry over to the parking kiosk and he seriously debated the pros and cons of beating his head against the nearest wall. “Shit, it’s locked–we need a keycard.” He let out a gusty sigh. “Which I had , and like everything else important except for my keys, I left it in my Jeep.”

“Is this the only way out?” Leon asked, grasping the gate and pulling upward experimentally–it didn’t move an inch. “Damn.”

“This is the way my mom took me the last time I came here,” Sherry volunteered, and then froze up, her eyes going wide. “Oh no.”

“Sherry?” Chris knew that voice, and the sound of it alone brought acidic resentment bubbling to the surface. He turned around in unison with Leon, coming face to face with Chief Brian Irons strolling out of the shadows. “I’ve been looking everywhere for–” He paused, coming top a stop a few feet away, his amiable expression curdling like sour milk. “Redfield? What the fuck are you doing here? Thought you skipped town.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Chris said in a tone that implied he wasn’t sorry at all, angling his body so he was between Sherry and Irons. “I just couldn’t stay away.”

Irons scowled and raised the derringer he’d had concealed in one of his large hands, aiming it squarely at Chris’s chest. “On the ground, hands behind your head.”

Chris cursed internally, kicking himself for not drawing his gun as soon as he crawled out of the manhole. “You can’t be serious.”

Irons snapped the gun over to Leon and shot him in the right shoulder, the sound deafening as it bounced off the concrete, and it took every ounce of self-control Chris possessed to not rush to his aid when he let out a bitten-off cry and went down hard on his knees, clutching at the wound. He tried to get to his feet again and failed miserably, sagging into a fetal position. “On the ground, now !”

“Okay, okay!” Tasting bile, Chris put his hands over his head and got on his knees too, wincing when he felt Leon’s blood soaking into his jeans. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Irons paid him no mind, tossing some zip-ties at Sherry’s feet. “Sherry, tie their hands.”

Sherry looked stricken. “Why are you doing–”

“Shut up.” Irons aimed the gun at Leon again and Chris wanted to scream. “Tie them up.” When Sherry didn’t move, Irons made an impatient sound and zeroed his aim on Leon’s head. “Okay, fine. Tie them up now, or they die.” A nasty grin. “Pretty boy first.”

Leon froze and went abruptly silent.

“Do it, Sherry,” Chris urged, pulse pounding in his ears as the little girl obeyed reluctantly, zip-tying his hands together so tightly the plastic cut into his skin. He paid it no mind, focusing on his former boss instead. “What’s this all about?”

Irons sneered at him. “Child endangerment, for starters.” While Sherry zip-tied Leon, the chief went to the kiosk and slid his parking garage card inside. The gate clunked and started to roll up, and Irons gestured at Sherry with his pistol. “Sherry, c’mere.”

Chris went cold. “What are you going to do to her?”

“None of your fucking business,” was Irons’s replied, and when Chris opened his mouth to protest further he got a boot to the ribs for his trouble that left him toppled over and gasping. “Sherry, we’re leaving. Now .”

Sherry hesitated again.

Irons grunted as he bent down to grab Leon by his hair, wrenching his head up so he could press the muzzle of the derringer between his eyes. “What’s your name?” No response, so he dug the barrel of the gun into Leon’s wound. “What’s your fucking name ?”

“Leon,” came through gritted teeth, Leon’s voice raw with pain.

“Sherry, come with me now, or say goodbye to Leon,” Irons said, and Chris didn’t miss the lecherous look that passed over the chief’s face as he surveyed Leon’s body… almost like he was sizing him up for something.

It made his blood boil.

“Okay, okay–I’ll go!” Sherry skittered over to the open gate, and Chris couldn’t help but admire her fortitude when she added, “But you better be taking me to my mom!”

“Of course,” Irons said, dropping Leon carelessly to the floor and straightening up.

“Don't listen to him,” Chris told her, “he’s full of shit.”

He was expecting it when Irons turned on his heel and kicked him in the face, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like fuck. Pain exploded through Chris’s mouth and he reeled once again, tasting copper as his teeth cut the inside of his cheek.

“Stop hurting them!” Sherry cried as Irons took her roughly by the arm.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Irons snapped.

A struggle ensued between them and Chris rolled to his back, sitting up and spitting out blood. Irons pushed a screeching Sherry outside and the gate’s sensor tripped, the metal shutter moving downward again. Chris swore and flexed his shoulders and arms, moving them apart as fast and hard as he could, the zip-tie snapping under the pressure from his brute strength. He stumbled to his feet and sprinted for the gate just in time for it to finish closing, catching himself against it with his hands at the last second.

“ Shit !” Chris kicked the grate hard, watching helplessly as Sherry and Irons disappeared around a corner. “I’ll get you, you fucker!”

~***~

Leon was no stranger to pain.

The scars that criss crossed his back and thighs were a testament to that, along with phantom sensations that sometimes accompanied his nightmares. He knew precisely how it felt to have a cigarette stubbed out on his skin, the number of lashes he could take with a belt, what was like to have something too big and too hard shoved somewhere it wasn’t wanted–

But none of those experiences prepared him for being shot.

He’d been tased , of course–that was a standard part of police academy training, and he’d endured it like he had everything else. All in all, once the initial burning faded it hadn’t been too bad. But the feeling of a bullet punching through his flesh and tearing his muscles, that was new and fever-bright and he’d still screamed like a little bitch even though he bit his tongue so hard it bled, why did he always have to howl like the slut he was when Derek would–

“Leon?”

That wasn’t Derek’s voice.

Large hands touched him but they were exceedingly gentle, one running down his uninjured arm and grasping it gently. The other pressed a knife between his wrists and Leon whimpered, he couldn’t help it, knew it would only get him hit again but–

“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” The flat of the blade kissed his skin as the zip-tie around his wrists was cut, releasing the blinding pressure on his wounded shoulder that had made it so hard to think clearly. He was rolled to his back carefully, one of those hands on his face now, stroking his wet cheek with a heart-stopping amount of tenderness. “Leon, please open your eyes.”

How long had he been crying with his eyes closed and didn’t know it? 

How pathetic was he?

“Chris?” Leon blinked his sticky lashes apart and pressed into the hand on his face, desperately seeking comfort he knew he didn’t deserve. “Hurts.”

“I know–god, I know.” Chris took off Leon’s bulletproof vest before cutting away his uniform shirt with the knife, making a sympathetic sound when Leon hissed as the bloodied material peeled away from his ruined skin. “You still have some herbs, right? And the bandages from the STARS office?”

Leon flapped a useless hand above his hip. “Pouch.”

Chris tore open the velcro and dug around until he found what he needed. “I wish we had some spray to clean this, but the herbs will have to do,” he said, crushing the leaves in his fingers and packing them into the hole left behind by the bullet; the pressure caused blood to leak out the back, so at least it was a through-and-through. When Leon whined high in his throat and tried to move away Chris hushed him again, sitting across his thighs so he couldn’t squirm. “I’m sorry, rookie. I don’t want to make it worse, but we can’t stay here forever. Whatever made that hole in the wall might come back.”

“If it does… run.” Leon felt Chris go rigid against him, and not in the fun way. He stared up at the fluorescent glow of the ceiling to avoid looking at his face. “Just… leave me. I’ll only slow you down.”

“I am not –” Chris began bandaging Leon’s shoulder aggressively, looping the gauze around the joint and under his arm as many times as he could “–going to fucking –” he tied it off tightly “–leave you the fuck –” the hands were back on his face, slippery with blood now but oh so cautious where they gripped his jaw, made him meet Chris’s eye and see the fiery determination there “–behind, no matter what. Do you understand me?”

Leon’s lower lip trembled. “No, I… I don’t understand you,” he admitted, feeling the herbs begin to take the edge off his pain as they got to work. It gave him enough awareness to realize Chris was straddling him, heavy where he was seated on Leon’s legs, and the implications of the position would’ve made him blush if he’d had any blood to spare. “You… I don’t get why you–”

A low snarling tore into his words and had them both looking for the source, which was prowling toward them with a low head and milky eyes. A very dead and very hungry dog, and it wasn’t alone–there were three more creeping along behind it, white foam dripping from their unhinged jaws.

Shit.

~***~

“Are you fucking serious ?” was all Chris had time to wonder before the dogs attacked. He yanked the shotgun out from under Leon and fired off four slugs in quick succession, blasting the infected hounds into pieces. Once he was sure they were done for good, he rolled off of Leon and stood. He elected to keep the shotgun for now, slinging it over his shoulder and crouching down to lift Leon to his feet. “Think you can walk?”

“I don’t know.” Leon swayed a little to prove his point, making a soft sound when Chris put his bulletproof vest back on for him. “Chris… I… thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” Chris said quietly, ensuring all the straps were secure. “You helped me when I got hurt–it’s only fair that I return the favor. Plus, it’s the right thing to do.” Something about their interaction with Irons was bothering him beyond the obvious, but the last thing he wanted to do was upset Leon further; they’d be lucky if he avoided going into shock as it was. “We should check around down here for that parking garage keycard. The shooting range, the morgue, and the holding cells are all on this floor.”

“I’m not sure how useful I’ll be, but… I’m with you,” Leon told him, and the way he looked at Chris… it was as if he was taking in a master work of art, or a remnant of an ancient civilization. Something wondrous. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Text

Wednesday, September 30th, 1998 - 1:01 am CST

Leon followed Chris through the bowels of the station in something of a daze, half the blood loss and half the pleasant buzzing sensation that seemed to come along with having the Arklay herbs pushed directly into his gunshot wound. It was only because of the herbs that he was able to raise Matilda and shoot undead humans and Dobermans with any kind of accuracy; left to his own devices, he probably would’ve blown off his own foot by accident. But he sobered up quickly when they cleared the holding cells and found what was left of Ben Bertolucci.

“Fucking hell,” Chris said, examining the gouge in the wall where something had reached through and crushed the journalist’s skull like a rotted watermelon. Most likely, it was the same something that had come through the wall in the parking garage like the Kool-Aid man and subsequently got hit by an exploding SWAT vehicle. “This is… I don’t even know what to say.”

Leon hummed an agreement, stepping inside the unlocked jail cell. He did not look at the body too closely, choosing instead to pick up two objects: a handheld tape recorder and a small notebook. He glanced over the notebook first, and when he comprehended what it said he turned to Chris so fast he got a little dizzy. “Claire wrote this.”

“ What ?” Chris was in his space immediately but Leon didn’t mind, never seemed to when this guy that he met a grand total of three-ish hours ago pressed up against him, all leather and hard muscle. “Let me see.”

Chris and Leon,

BE CAREFUL

There’s this thing roaming around the station. I think it was human once, but it’s not anymore–it killed Ben, and then it almost killed me. Someone helped me out, a woman who says she’s an FBI agent. I don’t know if I believe her, but I also know that she didn’t have to save me. I’m leaving with her now to try and find a way into Umbrella’s secret lab–I owe her a favor now, and we all have the same goal:

Take Umbrella down, no matter what. 

I’m sure I’ll see you there.

Claire

P.S. I haven’t seen Jill. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.

“Your sister’s a badass,” Leon observed, letting Chris keep the notebook once they were done reading. “Like… a huge badass.”

Chris’s smile was proud but pained. “I know.” He nodded toward the tape recorder. “What’s on that? She must’ve left it on purpose so we’d hear it.”

Leon pressed the play button, and they listened to a snippet of an interview Ben the journalist conducted with a Doctor Annette Birkin. In it, he mentioned something about a G-virus, as well as a “big fucking sinkhole in the middle of the city” going straight to an underground lab.

“Well, now that part of the note about finding Umbrella’s secret lab makes sense,” Leon said, noticing how Chris had become tense against him. He peered up into his face, frowning when he saw how pale he’d gotten. “Chris? What’s wrong?”

“This is so much worse than I thought,” Chris whispered, staring at the tape recorder like it was a venomous animal. “Irons, he… he must’ve been taking bribes or something, helping Umbrella cover their tracks. God , did he know that Wesker was a traitor too? Did that son of a bitch let us stroll right into a death trap back in July?”

“I don’t know.” Leon was starting to hate how much he had to say those words. He bit the inside of his cheek before laying a tentative hand on Chris’s chest; he was moving his injured hand and couldn’t reach his shoulder. “But we’ll get Sherry back, and then Irons will get what’s coming to him. Men like him…” He faltered when Chris’s dark eyes lifted to meet his. This close he could see that one of his pupils had a thin gold ring around it. Pretty. “I have a feeling his corruption may be worse than you think.”

“Your gut’s been right so far,” Chris murmured, shifting a little–and his boot hit something metallic, sending it skittering out of the cell. “What was that?”

“Hang on.” Leon forced himself to pull away from Chris’s addictive warmth and followed the sound’s path. He saw something shiny on the floor and picked it up, surprised when it turned out to be two things–a heart-shaped key, and a diamond-shaped one. “They’re the rest of the keys for the station.”

“Claire, you’re a lifesaver,” Chris muttered, taking the keys from Leon and slipping them onto his keyring with the others so they wouldn’t get lost. He took a deep breath and blew it out, staring ahead in thought. “Let’s see if we can get back upstairs somehow. My guess is the chief probably has a spare parking garage keycard in his office.”

“That would make sense,” Leon said, nodding his head. His shoulder hurt, but the blinding pain from before was thankfully numbed by the herbs, at least for the moment. He glanced past Chris at a nearby table and smiled when he saw a red-handled object sitting there innocuously. He had a feeling he knew exactly where it went. “And let’s take this with us.”

~***~

As it turned out, there was an elevator Chris had no idea existed that went straight from the parking garage to the chief’s office. He had originally figured they’d need to take the back stairs up and use the crank to get around, but he wasn’t about to say no to a small convenience in the midst of one gigantic fuckup. And what a fuckup it was–his sister was off looking for Umbrella’s lab with some woman who might or might not be a fed, Jill was god knew where in what shape, and Leon…

Leon was clutching Chris’s arm and looking like he might be sick. Right, he was claustrophobic.

“It’s okay,” Chris told him, because that had more or less worked the last time. He used Leon’s grip on his arm to tug him closer, resting his cheek on top of the rookie’s head and closing his eyes for a second. “Just breathe.”

The elevator jerked to a stop and Leon exhaled raggedly against Chris’s neck, sending a shiver down his spine. They parted and exited the cubicle, only to be assaulted by a deluge of rain–they were on the roof, albeit a portion that Chris had never seen before. It was a short walk to a doorway, which led to an open panel of wall in the chief’s office.

“Holy taxidermy,” Leon muttered, shaking the water off his hair. He eyed the numerous trophy animals scattered around Irons’s office with suspicion, like he expected them to start moving at any second. Considering the number of supposedly dead bodies they’d been attacked by, Chris supposed it wasn’t that bizarre a reaction to have. “If I didn’t think that guy was bad fuckin’ news before, I sure as hell would after seeing this.”

“It’s… a lot,” Chris agreed. His eye caught on a stack of memos sitting on the chief’s desk, and he skimmed through them quickly. Unsurprisingly, they were all about Irons’s betrayal of the department, from someone with the initials W.B. “I am so fucking angry . How can people do such awful shit and think nothing of it? These are crimes against nature, against humanity –and for what? Money? Power?”

Leon cast one final look around the office before he sat down in a leather chair, holstering Matilda and rubbing his face with his good hand. “It was all about power for my father,” he said quietly, and Chris’s ire was snuffed out like a candle as he dropped his ass to the coffee table across from Leon, which creaked in protest but didn’t break. “He needed to… to be in control. He was in Vietnam, I guess–saw some really bad shit that fucked him up. And when he came back, he started drinking and never stopped.”

“Seeing bad shit isn’t an excuse to hurt other people,” Chris pointed out, absently checking the load in his Samurai Edge. He needed to do something with his hands, or he’d do something stupid like put one on Leon’s knee and squeeze reassuringly. “Neither is drinking too much.”

Leon snorted into his hand. “Tell that to my ex.” He swallowed audibly, hand dropping to his lap as he locked eyes with Chris. “This is probably obvious now, but, uh… back when we first met–”

“ So long ago,” Chris deadpanned, hoping to make him laugh; he got a weak but genuine smile instead. “Sorry, go ahead.”

The smile faded and Leon licked his lips, adjusting the edge of his bandages. “I lied to you. Said I had a girlfriend that broke up with me, and that I went out and got drunk after.” He sighed. “I had a boyfriend, not a girlfriend. His name is Derek, and he’s the one who beat the crap out of me.” He let his head fall back against the chair, shutting his eyes. “It wasn’t the first time, far from it, but I just… I couldn’t take it anymore, you know?”

Chris had to focus very hard on taking measured breaths, on setting his gun down and keeping his hands loose in his lap. There was a red tinge to the edges of his vision, and he clenched his teeth together so hard it felt like they might crack. He wanted so badly to explode on Leon’s behalf, to trash Irons’s stupid office, to let the station burn to the fucking ground… but he didn’t do any of that.

Instead, Chris reached out to put his hand on Leon’s knee like he wanted to a minute before. “How long?”

“We met at the police academy,” Leon whispered, blue eyes haunted when they looked at Chris again, wet with unshed tears. “Long story short, he flunked out–couldn’t pass the psychological evaluations. I graduated top of my class in everything.” A cracked laugh. “He… really resented that. Anyway, we were together for a couple of years, until yesterday–or the day before now, I guess.”

“I… I’m out of my depth, here,” Chris admitted, transfixed as always by Leon’s gaze, even if it was full of pain. “I’m sure you had your reasons for staying with him as long as you did. But, Leon… he could’ve killed you.”

This time, Leon’s smile wasn’t a smile at all. “I almost killed myself.”

Something in Chris’s chest twisted painfully. “What?”

“I didn’t get wasted in a bar,” Leon explained, speaking as casually as if they were talking about the weather. Too bad his hands were shaking. “I left our apartment and drove to a little convenience store down the road. I went in and bought the first thing that looked like liquor, and then I drove to a scenic overlook. I drank until I puked, drank some more after that, and then I stuck Matilda in my mouth.”

“ Jesus , Leon.” Chris ran his free hand through his hair, breathing out harshly before he grasped Leon’s trembling hands in both of his own. “I… I’m so sorry.”

Leon blinked wetly. “Why? It’s not your fault.”

Chris made a low sound of distress. “I know that. I mean I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through so much hardship by yourself… that in that moment, you felt like that was the only way out of it.” He swallowed hard. “After our parents died, if I hadn’t had Claire… I might’ve done the same thing. But right about now, I think that bullet would be better spent on your ex.”

Leon’s expression was unreadable, his head tilting to one side as he studied Chris’s face. “Why did you kiss me back in the STARS office?” he asked softly, squeezing Chris’s fingers imploringly. “Please, I… this isn’t an ego thing, I just–”

“I think you’re incredible,” Chris interjected, and couldn’t help but smile a little at the way Leon’s eyes widened. “I’m not ashamed to admit that the first thing I noticed about you were your looks… but pretty much right after that I picked up on how smart you are, and that you’re a damn good shot. Funny, too… and you care , Leon. You cared about me, about Elliot, about Marvin and Claire and Jill, and you didn’t know any of us.” He looked down at their hands, tapped his thumbs against the plastic knuckles of Leon’s gloves. “If things hadn’t gone to hell in a handbasket–if there was no Spencer Mansion, no Umbrella–I would’ve tried to recruit you to STARS in your first week. And then I would’ve asked you out.”

“ Chris .” Leon sounded almost pained, in a way that was completely different from how he’d been in the parking garage. He pulled his hands away, only to use them to frame Chris’s face instead. He had that look to him again, like Chris was a puzzle he couldn’t quite piece together. “Can I kiss you?”

“God yes,” barely made it out of Chris’s mouth before Leon’s lips were on his own.

~***~

Chris tasted like blood and sweat.

There was rainwater mixed in there too, along with the barest hint of cigarettes–not Leon’s favorite flavor by a long shot, but in that moment when he drummed up the courage to make a move, he didn’t give a shit. He was too busy trying to remember how to breathe through his nose, making a truly embarrassing noise when he felt Chris’s fingertips on his jaw, his other hand curling firm and warm around Leon’s hip.

It was an excruciatingly tender kiss, the kind that Derek had never offered even before he flunked out of the police academy. For Chris, it seemed to come naturally; the way he nipped gently at Leon’s lower lip before licking into his mouth, how he seemed completely invested in kissing Leon silly with no ulterior motive. In fact, the bastard was smiling into the kiss, and the expression stayed on his stupidly handsome face when they finally broke apart for oxygen.

“Wow,” Leon mumbled, cheeks flushed and lips buzzing pleasantly. “Should’ve let you do that back at STARS.”

“No–I shouldn’t have kissed you without asking first.” Chris tucked a stray piece of hair behind Leon’s ear; that simple touch alone was enough to make Leon melt on the inside. “And I really shouldn’t have kissed you after you got done telling me about your mom.”

Leon felt an incredulous laugh bubble in his throat. “Chris, trust me–your bad timing is the least of my concerns right now.” He stroked a thumb over Chris’s stubble before making himself pull back. “We should probably figure out where that extra parking garage keycard is.”

Chris nodded reluctantly, pushing to his feet and tugging Leon up with him. “I’ll look through Irons’s desk,” he offered, nodding toward a side door. “I think that’s a closet or something. Check it out?”

Leon gave him a cheeky salute. “Aye aye, Captain.”

Chris snorted. “I’m not that kind of captain, rookie.”

“Thought you said you wanted to be a pirate?” Leon opened the door and was surprised to encounter a winding hallway, albeit a short one. At the end was another door, and when Leon pushed it open he was immediately confronted with even more taxidermied animals. “Jesus Christ, I hate this fuckin’ guy.”

“Same,” Chris said, evidently done with his raid of Irons’s desk; Leon just knew that when he returned to the office he’d see the drawers and their contents ripped out and scattered everywhere. He felt marginally better about all the empty glass eyes staring at him with Chris’s bulk at his back. “Why the hell is there a cell in here?”

“I’m not sure I want to know.” Leon pointed at a lanyard hanging from a coat rack inside the small space, just beyond arm’s reach. “But that’s a parking garage keycard.”

“Okay, so how do we get in?” Chris glanced around, eyes lighting on an electrical panel at the same time Leon’s did. “Another puzzle?”

Leon gave the panel a once-over and smiled. “Not exactly. Claire did the hard work for us–all we have to do is go back down to the holding cells and take a couple parts out of that panel to use here.” His momentary happiness vanished when he once again caught a whiff of burning jet fuel in the air–and worse than that, he could see smoke filtering in around them. “Shit. We’ve gotta put that fire out first, or that keycard won’t be here by the time we get back.”

Chris tweaked the red-handled crank where he had it shoved between his belt and the waist of his jeans, and they started moving. “We can use this to get to the roof–oh, wait.” He paused with the heart key stuck in the door that would take them to the back stairs, shrugging off his jacket and… putting it around Leon’s shoulders? “Your skin feels like ice. You need this more than me.”

Leon couldn’t help but sink into the warmth of the leather, even if one of the sleeves bore a ragged, bloody hole from where the licker’s claw had punctured Chris’s arm. “Are you sure?” he asked, locking his knees so he didn’t do something ridiculous like swoon face-first into Chris’s broad chest. He made the STARS vest and t-shirt combo work pretty well too, Leon had to admit. “It… I can tell it means a lot to you.”

Chris smiled at him as they drew their guns. “I’ve got another one back in the STARS office,” he replied as they stepped back into their own personal hell. “Besides, some things are more important.”

Chapter Text

As Leon followed Chris up to the third floor, out onto the roof, and down a rickety ladder, he couldn’t decide how to feel.

On the one hand, telling Chris about his past was akin to shedding an extra ten pounds that Leon had no idea he’d been carrying. But on the other hand, it was embarrassing to flay himself open like that–it wasn’t something he’d ever done before, not even when things with Derek were okay. He didn’t have friends to talk to, and his grandmother had passed shortly after he turned 18, so in an odd way confessing all that to Chris had been like admitting to himself that it’d actually happened. And that was going to take some time to process, and right then he couldn’t afford to be distracted.

That was to say nothing of the kiss.

Derek had been Leon’s first for everything, and he’d had no idea that kissing another person could feel so intense, like drowning and soaring at the same time. The best part was, Leon had gone into it with his eyes wide open, on his terms, and hadn’t felt pressured or freaked out at all . Chris was a badass, sure, but he was also kind, and gentle, and seemed to be very aware of how intimidating he looked, only using his size to his advantage when necessary.

And speaking of Chris, it was his voice that brought Leon out of his own head: “Christ on a crutch, does everything in this place has to be fucked up?”

He was referring to the broken pipe above the burning helicopter, which Leon assumed had once carried water to the emergency firehose. There was a switch attached to a nearby valve that was closed, but trying to open it did nothing except make it snap shut again. “The pipe breaking must’ve tripped some kind of safety mechanism and shut off the water,” he reasoned, peering around in the rain. At least the flames provided plenty of light to see by. “There must be a central valve somewhere.”

Chris started toward some nearby stairs, picking up an herb and some ammo off the benches along the way. “I think there’s some kind of plumbing-related thing down here,” he said, shaking his head a little. “Never thought the laps I did around this place out of curiosity would pay off for anything beyond finding the best vending machine.”

“Well, I for one am really fucking grateful you took those laps,” Leon told him, pausing the conversation briefly so they could shoot down some zombies stumbling around what looked to be some kind of maintenance shed. Nearby was the central valve, and Leon let Chris deal with the last straggler while he went to flip the switch. “Can you imagine having to stop every five minutes to look at a map in this place?”

Chris snorted. “I can imagine losing my head that way, yeah.” He led the way back up the stairs and gestured with his Samurai Edge toward the valve leading to the broken pipe. The orange glow of the flames accentuated the golden tones in his skin, enhancing the warmth that seemed to be present in his eyes every time he looked at Leon. “Do the honors.”

Leon flipped the switch and sighed in relief when water gushed from the pipe, pouring over the helicopter and dousing the fire. “Finally. Now we head back down for the electronic parts?”

“Sounds good to me,” Chris said, and together they ducked into the hallway near the art room–now that the helicopter wasn’t burning, it would be easy to squeeze around it and come out near Irons’s office. “It’s about time something went our–”

The helicopter groaned and screeched as it was shoved aside.

Leon raised his gun and fired on instinct before his brain had worked out what he was looking at, Chris doing the same beside him. His eyes registered the creature as a man, or at least something that was man-shaped–only problem was that most men weren’t nine feet tall and at least twice as wide as Chris. It wore an honest-to-god fedora on its gray head but looked completely nonplussed when one of Leon’s bullets knocked it away. The rest of its body was concealed by a black leather trench coat, and its face…

Its face was dead, totally void of any emotion.

It didn’t stop coming toward them, no matter how many slugs they put into it.

“Run,” Chris said breathlessly, shoving at Leon’s good shoulder. “Run, now !”

~***~

They ran back to the ladder, and that was when everything went to shit.

Chris started climbing first and Leon followed him as soon as he could. He felt the ladder beginning to come away from the wall before he saw it, and gave Chris a hard shove in the ass to get him safely up on the balcony. Through the pounding rain he heard the steady thump-thump of the mutant’s boots, and Chris was reaching down for him, screaming for Leon to take his hand–

The ladder fell and Leon went with it, twisting in midair to avoid having it land on top of him. As it turned out, that didn’t matter, because the mutant was there to break his fall… with a hand the size of a frying pan wrapped around his throat.

Leon felt the vertabrae in his spine pop like candy as he was caught by his neck, the rest of his body swinging around freely, every joint screaming at the sudden stop. He flailed uselessly for a moment, panic worming its way into his brain as his air was cut off, everything in his throat being crushed together. For a singular, frozen moment, he stared into the monster’s blank face and figured it would be the last thing he saw before his neck was turned to pulp.

Then he heard the roar of a shotgun from somewhere above him, a couple of stray pellets tearing into the already wrecked sleeve of Chris’s jacket but the majority of them hitting the mutant in the head. It let out a grunt of annoyance and the next thing Leon knew he was flying through the air and hitting the roof hard on his already bruised ribs, rolling over and over with the force of the momentum until he wound up on his back, one of his arms and legs hanging over a void.

He tried to breathe and could barely get a trickle of oxygen, rain streaming into his gasping mouth. His throat felt like it was on fire, like he was choking on something even though there was nothing inside. In the next instant Chris was there, frantically grasping at him and pulling him away from the edge, then picking him up like he weighed nothing. The monster was crouched near the ladder, one massive hand cradling its injured skull, and then it was out of sight because Chris was pushing through the door by the art room and booking it back toward Irons’s office.

~***~

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Chris repeated for the tenth time, laying Leon out on the rug in front of Irons’s desk as gently as he could. He stripped off his STARS vest and stuck it under his head as a pillow, then ran back to lock the door and shove a cabinet in front of it. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.” If they were quiet, maybe the Tyrant wouldn’t know where they went–and it was a Tyrant, albeit nothing like the one from the Spencer Mansion. He dropped back to his knees at Leon’s side, touching his chin so he would tilt his head back. “ Fuck .”

Leon’s throat was purple and black with vicious bruising that spread all the way around his neck like the world’s ugliest collar. The whites of his eyes were bright red with burst blood vessels, and his lips were tinged blue from lack of oxygen. Thankfully he seemed to have remembered how to breathe, because he was able to grate out, “How bad?”

“Bad,” Chris told him, not one for sugarcoating shit on a good day. He dug around for some herbs and placed them on the floor, then pushed himself up and hunted through Irons’s discarded desk drawers. He found a bottle of water and returned to Leon’s side, crushing up the herbs and mixing them into the liquid. “I need you to drink this. I’m sure it’s going to hurt like hell, but it’s the only way you’ll get better.” He shifted to lean back against Irons’s desk, spreading his legs so he could tug Leon between them, back to chest. “Here, lean on me.”

With a shaking hand, Leon took the bottle and started to drink. He didn’t make a goddamn sound despite the fact that he had to be in agony, only dug his free fingers into the meat of Chris’s thigh hard enough to leave bruises. They both froze when the distinct tread of the Tyrant reached their ears, but relaxed again when the noise disappeared down the back stairs.

“Thank you,” Leon rasped when he was done drinking the herb mixture. He was slumped against Chris, head lolling back on his shoulder. Every time he pulled in a breath it was followed by a horrible wheezing sound, but the rise and fall of his chest was steady. “If you h-hadn’t…”

The hitch in Leon’s voice made Chris’s own throat tight, and he debated with himself for a moment before slipping his arms around Leon’s middle, holding him in a way he hoped was reassuring. “When it threw you, I thought you were going to roll straight off the roof,” Chris admitted in a whisper, staring ahead at one of Irons’s creepy taxidermies so he wouldn’t cry. “Of all the things I thought I’d see again, a Tyrant wasn’t one of them.”

Leon turned his head a little, breath warm against Chris’s jaw. “What’s a Tyrant?”

“A bio-organic weapon, or a BOW.” Chris glanced down when one of Leon’s hands brushed over his forearm, thumb tracing over a thin scar that just happened to be from the mansion incident. “From what I understand, Umbrella developed them to be the ultimate bioweapon for military usage. Intelligent enough to take commands but brutally strong and practically indestructible.” He grimaced. “Problem is, they never quite got that combination right. The one I fought back at the mansion was not nearly as put together as the one we just saw, but it almost killed me anyway.”

Leon took a moment to digest that… and tentatively adjusted Chris’s arms, so they fit more snugly around his body. “Give me five minutes and we can go,” he said hoarsely, and when Chris glanced down at his face, his eyes were closed. “Clearly we can’t kill that thing, so we’ll just have to outrun it. We should find a way to get that magnum, though–it might be strong enough to stun it in one shot.”

“Magnum, electronic parts, and then we rescue Sherry,” Chris agreed, hoping he sounded more confident in their chances than he felt; if nothing else, he was confident in Leon’s ability to innovate his way out of a problem. He took another gamble and pressed his lips to the top of Leon’s head. “Five minutes. I’m right here.”

Chapter Text

By the time Leon and Chris were back on their feet and reloading their guns, Leon could breathe much more easily. His throat was still killing him, of course–like he’d gargled glass and swung on a noose at the same time–but his situation wasn’t nearly as dire as it had been only a few minutes prior. He was in the midst of filling Matilda’s extended clip when his fingers hit something that wasn’t a bullet–the red gem from the scepter, which he’d forgotten about when Chris was injured by the licker. “Hey–didn’t you say this belonged in some kind of fancy box?”

“Yeah, I did.” Chris took the jewel from Leon’s outstretched palm, examining it in the light. “There’s a bejeweled lockbox around here somewhere–it got confiscated as evidence a long time ago, and some of the officers used to prank each other by hiding things inside of it and then putting the jewel somewhere else.” He shut his eyes briefly, head tilting to the side. “I think the last place I saw it was the observation room next to interrogation.” His eyes snapped open again. “Forrest–one of the STARS members that died at the mansion–he couldn’t find his badge before the team left for Arklay. You think…?”

“I think it’s worth a shot,” Leon replied, handing Chris his STARS vest so he could put it back on. “Those rooms are downstairs from here, right?” When Chris nodded, Leon hesitated. He was growing more concerned for Sherry by the minute, and he had an idea of how they could speed things up, but it went against every shred of common sense he had–and what he’d said to Chris at the beginning of all this. “We could split up. One of us goes to get the STARS badge and the Lightning Hawk, and the other–”

“No way,” Chris interrupted, taking a step forward so he was in Leon’s space. Those big hands framed his face, brushed his hair behind his ear. “We’re both beat to hell, and with that Tyrant stomping around out there… no. I’m not risking it–risking you –just to make this go faster.”

A part of Leon wanted to balk at that, but he could see the naked worry in Chris’s eyes and felt a twinge of sympathy. If Chris had suggested something similar, Leon probably would’ve said the same thing. “Okay. No splitting up.” He straightened the collar of Chris’s vest, and feeling bold, he used his grip to tug the taller man down for a kiss. “But let’s call it not risking each other, yeah? I’m not your damsel.”

“Too bad,” Chris mumbled into his mouth, and he was smiling , the bastard. “You’d look good in a dress. Or out of one.”

Leon felt himself flush and broke away, clearing his abused throat. “Let’s, uh, table that until we get out of here.” It was one thing to be kissed, but another thing entirely to know he was wanted like that… or at least he was right now, because Chris didn’t know about everything . And once he did, he’d probably be disgusted by the thought of laying a hand on Leon again. “Come on, big guy. We’ve got a kid to save.”

~***~

Getting the bejeweled box was more or less a cakewalk, if Chris didn’t count the way he’d almost gotten eviscerated by a licker again .

Shattered glass and splattered brain matter aside, popping open the box revealed a very shiny, very welcome STARS badge, and a flick of a switch on the back made a USB stick pop out of the top. From there all they had to do was jog across the station to STARS, and that was going pretty well until they got hampered by a gaggle of zombies and were forced to open fire. The gunshots attracted the Tyrant, who burst through a nearby doorway and headed for them with single-minded intent.

“Go go go,” Chris urged, shoving Leon forward through the west office door, and from there it was a game of speed and timing. Another licker tried to stop them near the stairs, but a couple of shotgun shells put that problem to rest. “When we get the magnum, I want you to take it.”

“What?” Leon glanced at him as they flew up the stairs and through the women’s locker room. “But I thought it was your gun?”

“It is.” Chris held the door to the STARS office for him, ducking inside just as heavy treads reached the second floor. “But you’re the better shot.”

Leon scoffed, sticking the USB into the computer by the door to the weapons locker. There was some whining and clicking, and then the door popped open. He took the badge back, no doubt intending to use it on that display case they’d found earlier. “Oh yeah? Then why do you have a dozen awards that say otherwise?”

“Awards don’t mean shit in real life,” Chris replied bluntly, retrieving his other leather jacket from the hook near his desk and putting it on. Then he joined Leon inside the locker, stopping short when he saw the rookie holding something that was most definitely not his Lightning Hawk. “Is that… a flamethrower?”

Leon was grinning like a man possessed, his teeth starkly white against a face that was coated in dirt and blood and god knew what else. “It’s totally a flamethrower, and I’m keeping it.”

Chris looked at him for a moment, then laughed and shook his head. “I wouldn’t dream of coming between you two,” he teased, grabbing the magnum and loading in a fresh clip. “Guess I’ll hang on to this after all.”

They trooped back up to Irons’s office and only had to dodge the Tyrant once on the stairs. Oddly enough, it didn’t try to follow them inside, and Chris assumed that was because somewhere in its programming it had been told not to mess with the chief. He and Leon got in the elevator to go back down to the parking garage and Chris didn’t say a word when Leon grasped his hand, just squeezed back reassuringly.

Even more mutated dogs greeted them in the parking garage but they made short work of them, and soon Leon was pulling electronic parts out of the wall near the dead journalist’s cell while Chris kept watch. That done, they took a brief detour to use the STARS badge on the display case, retrieving an extended barrel for Chris’s Lightning Hawk. Then they trekked back to Irons’s private elevator and rode it up again, shouldering their way back into the creepy display room. Leon messed with the electronic parts for a moment, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth as he worked, and Chris had to use every ounce of self-control he had not to stare the whole time.

Finally, Leon made a triumphant sound as the door to the cell snapped open, and they stepped inside together. He grabbed the lanyard that contained the extra parking garage keycard and was about to say something to Chris when a phone rang, shrill and jarring. It wasn’t hard to spot the handset sitting on the console table–and really, the caller could only be one person.

Chris made for the phone but Leon was faster, snatching the receiver and raising it to his ear as their eyes locked. “Hello?”

“Good to see you again, Leon,” Irons said, and Chris ground his molars together at his snide tone. “We’ve got unfinished business.”

Leon’s voice went guileless like it had when he’d questioned Sherry about her mother’s involvement with Umbrella: “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb, you little brat,” Irons practically spat, and Chris was close enough to listen in and feel how stiff Leon went at that last word. “Bring me the pendant, or Sherry dies.”

What pendant? Chris mouthed at Leon, who held up a hand to placate him.

“Pendant?” Leon repeated, and oh, he was good . Not a good liar, precisely, but good at edging around the truth using ignorance. A skill developed after years of abuse, Chris reasoned, and the thought made him sick. “What do you need it for?”

Irons answered with a question of his own, giving nothing away: “Do you want the girl to die?”

Leon huffed. “Fine. Where are you?”

“The orphanage,” Irons replied.

“The orphanage?” There went the repeating again, even as Leon looked at Chris for confirmation that he knew where it was; Chris nodded that he did. “Where’s that?”

“In the neighborhood,” Irons said shortly. Whatever he needed this pendant of Sherry’s for, it was time sensitive. “I’m sure your guard dog can guide you if you get lost.”

“Is Sherry all right?”

“For now.”

“I swear to god, you bastard, if you hurt her–” Leon cut off when Irons hung up, slamming the phone back into the cradle. “ Dammit .”

Chris stated the obvious: “We need to look for that pendant–Sherry must’ve dropped it while she was struggling with Irons.”

“Which means it’s on the floor of the garage somewhere.” Leon removed the parking garage keycard from the lanyard and they booked it back to the elevator. He was clearly nervous, but it didn’t seem to be from the claustrophobia this time; instead, Chris knew Sherry was top of mind. “Be honest with me, Chris–would this fucker hurt a kid?”

“I… I don’t know,” Chris admitted, running a hand through his hair and wincing when he grazed the bump on his head from earlier in the night. “Irons has been involved with the orphanage for a long time. I don’t think he’s the… the molesting type, but I wouldn’t put it past him to hurt a kid, no. But he knows the only way he’ll get us to give him the pendant is if Sherry is alive, so…”

“A lot riding on a piece of jewelry,” Leon muttered as they entered the parking garage once more. He went to slide the keycard into the kiosk while Chris dropped into a crouch, studying the floor in the area where their fight with Irons had taken place. At first he didn’t see anything, but then–something shiny, just barely visible in the coagulating pool of Leon’s blood. “Did you find it?”

“Yeah, I did,” Chris said, a little amazed. He thumbed the blood off the pendant enough to see Sherry’s name engraved on the back, with some convoluted design etched into the front. “Weird thing to give a kid.”

“If her mother works for Umbrella, I doubt she’s wrapped real tight,” Leon pointed out, as the gate separating them from the outside world finally began to rise. “Besides–”

A door behind them slammed open, and Chris knew who their pursuer was without having to look. He tucked Sherry’s pendant away in the pocket of his STARS vest and pushed Leon forward, both of them ducking under the gate before it had risen fully. They jogged up the ramp and out onto the street, and Chris immediately started doing some mental gymnastics, thinking about the best route to the orphanage.

“This way,” Chris broke to the left before they reached the edge of the sinkhole, sights set on a gated alleyway. There were a few zombies shaking the chainlink, but some dead-on shots from Matilda took them out. Then Chris was free to kick the gate down and they mounted some grated steps that led to a catwalk, which ran behind Kendo’s gun shop and weaved in and out through some more buildings. “Think he’s still following us?”

“I don’t hear him,” Leon replied, glancing over his shoulder and then down into the alley below them. Beyond it were some closed stores and a basketball court, plus a street crowded with abandoned vehicles. “I see more dogs, though. Where’s the orphanage?”

“Just beyond that bus.” Chris nodded toward the vehicle in question as they descended the stairs. “Let’s go.”

~***~

At this point, they were old pros at killing dogs, so making their way to the orphanage’s vividly-colored gates wasn’t too difficult. Leon didn’t like the idea of the Tyrant lurking out there waiting to ambush them, but at least barring the gates behind them gave them some kind of security. They pushed through the doors together and he blinked the rain out of his eyes, taking in what appeared to be some kind of playroom.

Chris went for the stairs immediately and Leon followed his lead, asking in a low voice, “Have you been here before?”

“Claire lived here for a few months after our parents died,” Chris explained, just as quietly. “Until I was able to get custody, anyway. Place always gave me the creeps, and she hated it.”

“Can’t say I blame her,” Leon muttered. Clearing his throat–and shit did it still hurt–he called, “Hello? We have the pendant!”

No response.

They pushed into a room that was part office and part daycare, cluttered with furniture and toys. “Sherry?” Leon tried, glancing around but not seeing a trace of the girl. “Are you here?”

Nothing.

After a pit stop in the bathroom to steal some first aid spray, Chris and Leon made their way back downstairs and entered the hallway near the receptionist’s desk.

Leon had just stepped around the corner when Irons came lurching at him, grabbing him by the shoulders, meaty fingers digging into his gunshot wound. He choked on a cry of pain, eyes widening when he realized that not only had half of Irons’s face been burned by something so badly it was paralyzed, he was showing clear signs of infection.

“Your fault!” Irons stumbled when Chris grabbed Leon too, trying to pull him back. “Took too long!”

“Get off me!” Leon shoved him hard in the chest, and watched in horror as the chief fell to his knees, making agonized gurgling sounds until some kind of wriggling, sentient thing burst free from his abdomen in a spray of viscera. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Oh my god,” Chris whispered, hands squeezing Leon’s waist briefly before letting go. “That was… shit .”

Shoulder burning, Leon took a shaky step over Irons’s corpse and let Matilda lead them into the next room. It appeared to be part office and part laboratory, and the first thing he noticed was an overturned pool table that had previously been home to some poor girl’s corpse. Beakers and bottles and instruments suggested that Irons had upped his taxidermy game to a different kind of animal.

“Fucker got off too easy,” Leon said to Chris as they surveyed the room, moving together toward the back, where they found a trap door that led down into darkness. “Great, because a ladder went so well for me the last time.” He opted to go first, feet hitting concrete as Chris clambered down behind him. They were in some kind of basement, one that had steps leading further down into the bowels of the city. “Sherry? Where are you?”

“Leon?” Sherry called back, and the pulse of relief Leon felt was so powerful he could’ve cried. “Chris? You came for me!”

“Of course we did,” Leon said, jogging around some chainlink to get to her. He almost lost his balance when she slammed into him, hugging him around the waist, but Chris’s hand landed between his shoulder blades to steady him. “Are you hurt?”

Sherry pulled back enough to look up at him. “No, I’m–”

There was a loud thud from behind them, followed shortly by heavy footsteps.

“Fuck, we’ve gotta go,” Chris said, pushing at both of them. “Move, move –”

They ran with Sherry in the lead, Leon in the middle, and Chris bringing up the rear, firing the occasional shot at the Tyrant to try and slow it down. More stairs took them lower, and their surroundings changed rapidly into something that Leon figured had to be sewer-adjacent just from the smell alone. Finally they came upon an elevator and crammed inside, doors slamming shut behind them–

Only to be pried open again by massive hands.

“ Fuck !” Leon fired the shotgun right in the Tyrant’s face, but that wasn’t what made it let go of the elevator doors.

A set of huge claws pierced through the Tyrant’s chest, and they belonged to the mutant Leon had fought back when they’d first encountered Sherry. As they watched, the mutant seemed to absorb something of the Tyrant’s being, growing a second head on its shoulders before flinging the Tyrant’s corpse to the side.

“Daddy?” Sherry cried out, as the mutant charged at the elevator right as it started to descend. “Daddy, no !”

The mutant’s huge body sent the elevator careening downward, and the last thing Leon felt was Chris’s huge arms wrapping around him and Sherry protectively before everything went black.

Chapter Text

Leon woke up in his childhood bedroom.

Bedroom was a strong word. It was actually a closet, with rickety shelving overhead that held his meager possessions and a thin mattress on the floor. His blankets were threadbare, and if he stuck his arms out they bent at the elbows when they made contact with the back wall and the door. He always, always, always kept the door closed, and lately had taken to using an unbent wire coat hanger as a makeshift locking mechanism. It wouldn’t keep his father out if he was determined to beat Leon’s ass, but it worked if he was only half in the bag instead of loaded out of his mind.

It didn’t even occur to Leon until he rolled out of the closet and came up with Matilda in his hands that he wasn’t a child anymore, but the same age he was in reality… and there was something important about reality, wasn’t there? Something he needed to get back to, someone –

A creak of linoleum off to his left from the kitchen, shrouded in shadows just like the rest of the apartment. He pivoted quickly, careful not to make a sound, and was both surprised and not to see his father rooting around in their grimey old refrigerator. Instead of muttering curses to himself, he was making a low groaning noise… and as Leon watched him turn, he realized he was staring into the face of a corpse.

He froze.

His father roared and charged at him, arms outstretched and spittle flying from yellowed teeth.

Matilda jerked in Leon’s hands and a bullet pierced Leon Kennedy Senior’s forehead, sending his rotting body crumpling to the floor.

Suddenly everything warped and shifted, and he could’ve sworn he heard a voice calling his name before he was sucked into a different apartment with a different man.

Derek stood across from him now, not a zombie but just as threatening. When they first started seeing each other he’d been handsome, with a chiseled jaw and the build of a football star; the booze and bitterness had made him red-faced and bloated. He took in the picture Leon made and sneered. “What are you gonna do with that, idiot? Look out, you might shoot yourself–oh wait, I forgot, you were too much of a fuckup to even do that right.”

Leon’s throat went tight, trembling hands squeezing Matilda’s worn grip hard. “Shut up,” he commanded hoarsely, but when he tried to pull the trigger this time, his finger wouldn’t move. Even when Derek stalked toward him, huge hands clenched into fists, ready to–

A gunshot from over Leon’s shoulder took Derek down, spraying the kitchen cabinets with brains and bone.

Leon spun around, caution forgotten, and aimed Matilda at… Chris?

It was Chris, all right–down to the leather jacket and the Samurai Edge–but there was something… off about him. It took Leon a few seconds to spot the small tentacles beginning to grow from one of his brown eyes, the sclera bright red with infection. And when he smiled, it wasn’t full of warmth or amusement; instead it was mocking and cruel.

“Couldn’t kill yourself, couldn’t kill either of the guys who beat the shit out of you on the regular… you’ll have to explain to me why I bothered to come back for you, because I’m at a loss.” It was Chris’s voice but not , distorted as more tentacles punched through the corner of his mouth. He was transforming rapidly before Leon’s eyes, turning into a mutant just like the one that Sherry had called Daddy . “Of course, pretty soon it won’t matter. You’ll either get me killed underground, or when this is all over, I’ll leave.” He grinned, teeth loosening from his gums. “Everybody always leaves you, Leon. Remember that.”

Before Leon could scream, Chris raised his gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

~***~

Leon came up swinging and Chris caught his arms before he could land a blow. “Leon! Hey, Leon, calm down,” Chris soothed, relieved when Leon’s eyes locked on his face and his pupils appeared to be the same size; he hadn’t managed to keep Leon from hitting his head, but at least the damage didn’t seem too severe. “You’re okay. You’re fine.”

Leon took in several heaving breaths, and eventually he let Chris hold his hands instead of his wrists. “Where are we?” he asked slowly, glancing around the battered remains of the elevator. A blink, clarity returning. “What happened to that… that thing that attacked us? And where’s Sherry?”

“I’m not sure,” Chris admitted, sighing. “I hit my head too–not as bad as the last time, thankfully–and when I came around, she was gone.” He craned his neck to look at the platform and structure ahead of them, all damp concrete and buzzing fluorescent lights. “I’m guessing she went that way.” He pushed himself up to his feet and pulled Leon with him, both of them slow to step out of the busted-up elevator. “As far as the mutant goes, I think it jumped off while we were falling. Don’t know where it wound up.”

“Terrific.” Leon rubbed a hand over his face, smearing grime everywhere. “We should–”

Chris heard a gun cock behind him and knew without looking that it was pointed at the back of his head. 

“Hands up. Don’t move.” It was a woman’s voice, and once both Chris and Leon reluctantly obeyed her instruction, she circled around them to shine a ridiculously bright penlight in both their faces. “No signs of infection,” she declared, seemingly to herself, and when Chris could see again he took in a manic-looking blonde woman in a white lab coat. “What an impressive display of strength…”

“Who are you?” Leon’s tone was dubious, and Chris saw his fingers twitch like he wanted to reach for a weapon but wasn’t sure if he would be quick enough–Chris knew the feeling. “Have you seen a little girl down here? Her name is Sherry.”

“Sherry’s fine,” the woman said absently, lowering her gun and walking past them to inspect the ruined elevator more closely. Evidently now that she knew they weren’t infected, she didn’t consider them a threat even with the fucking armory they were carrying between them. “We have to assess the situation…”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Chris read the name on the Umbrella ID badge clipped to the woman’s lab coat–DR. ANNETTE BIRKIN–and took in her features again, a sinking feeling in his gut. “Are you Sherry’s mother?”

“Yes,” Annette said blithely, like Chris had asked her whether she liked vanilla ice cream. She was scribbling in a notebook now, the gun shoved into one of her pockets. “You need to tell me what happened to William.”

“William,” Leon repeated, gesturing over at the elevator. “You mean the thing that did this?” When she nodded almost eagerly, a mix of anger and sadness twisted Leon’s expression. “Look, you might not care about your daughter, but we do–tell us where she is.”

Annette huffed and slapped her notebook shut. “I don’t have time to play twenty questions with you,” she sneered, turning on her heel and pushing through the nearest door. “And my daughter is none of your concern.”

With that, she was gone.

~***~

“I can’t believe Sherry’s her daughter,” Leon said to Chris a few minutes later. They were making their way through a series of utilitarian hallways–each of which smelled worse than the last–and had just read a report on something called the G-Virus, the contents of which had left Leon tasting bile and Chris swearing a blue streak. “It’s about as uncanny as me being my father’s son.”

“Don’t worry about Annette, okay? Let’s just–” Chris cut off abruptly, holding out a hand to block Leon from taking another step. After his eyes adjusted to the new level of darkness, Leon could see why–they were about to drop into the sewer. “Careful.”

“Well, I guess this explains the smell,” Leon grumbled, and they hopped down into the slimy water in tandem, filth covering Leon up to his thighs and Chris up to his knees. He was both grateful and nauseated when Chris turned on his flashlight, the beam playing over huge piles of garbage and god knew what else. “Now we’re gonna smell like shit for real.”

They sloshed through the water until they reached a concrete platform, which led them to a door that put them on a set of stairs next to a cable car, of all things. It was branded with the Umbrella logo on all sides, but there was no direct access to it from where they were; instead, they had to climb a ladder to get into some kind of observation room, where they were promptly swarmed by a handful of zombies.

The flamethrower made quick work of them, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it could’ve been–not when worry for Sherry was making Leon’s molars ache. He knew what it felt like to have a parent who loved him so much it got her killed, and another who hated him so much he had no problem tearing the flesh from his back… but for a child to have a parent who was ambivalent about her existence? In some ways, Leon thought that was almost worse than what he’d endured.

They dropped down a couple of floors into a larger room, one that looked like it controlled some type of machinery. There were fixed windows on one side, and they overlooked a huge pit full of garbage–a trash compactor, maybe? Faintly, Leon could just make out the sound of Annette speaking over some kind of intercom system that echoed around the room they were in as well as the next one: “Sherry, I told you I cannot leave here until my work is done.”

“That’s what you always say,” Sherry’s voice replied, and when Leon jogged over to the windows with Chris, her blonde hair was like a beacon against the piles of shit around her. She was standing with her hands clenched into fists at her sides, staring up at the loudspeaker and camera where her mother’s voice was coming from.

“Why didn’t you stay in the house?” Annette demanded. “It was safe there!”

“Sherry!” Leon called, pressing a hand against the plexiglass. No reaction at all–she couldn’t hear him. “ Fuck .”

“I was scared,” Sherry admitted, sounding ashamed. “Those things were everywhere, and–”

“You should’ve called the police!” Annette interjected. “That’s what we taught you.”

Leon choked on a hysterical laugh, and Chris touched his elbow.

“I did , but nobody came and you didn’t answer your phones, so–” Sherry’s voice broke on a sob and she dropped her gaze to her shoes.

A sigh from Annette. “Sherry, I don’t have time for this.”

The connection cut with a crackle of static, and Leon felt a wave of white-hot rage surge within him that was doused by fear when Sherry collapsed to the ground, seemingly unconscious.

“ Shit ,” Chris said, hesitating for a second before turning to explore the room. “We need to find a way in there.”

Leon took one last look at Sherry before he followed Chris’s lead, pointing to a security door at the far end of the room. “That looks promising.” He took in six electrical boxes that appeared to be part of some kind of convoluted locking system based on plugs shaped like chess pieces. “On second thought, who the fuck comes up with this crap? This is insane .”

“This security company, apparently.” Chris had found a user guide and handed it over for Leon to peruse. “Let me guess–it’s missing plugs?”

“Three of them, yeah.” Leon skimmed the user guide, then read a note attached to a nearby corkboard. “Looks like the people who worked here weren’t totally sure how this thing functioned either. We’ll need to find the king, queen, and rook pieces in order to solve the puzzle and get to Sherry.”

“We better do it fast,” Chris murmured, concern tinging his voice; Leon was glad he wasn’t the only one who’d grown attached to Sherry in such a short amount of time. “She doesn’t look good. I hope…”

Leon went still when Chris trailed off. “You think she’s infected?”

Chris sighed. “Maybe? It’s hard to say–I don’t see any visible wounds on her body. But even if she’s not infected, she could have a medical condition we don’t know about… and either way, we have to try and save her. I hardly fucking trust Umbrella, but if there’s any hope for a cure, it’s got to be at wherever that cable car goes.”

Leon nodded his agreement as they headed out the only door that wasn’t locked, which led them to a cavernous space connected by catwalks. The cable car was far off to their left, and Leon spotted another door as well as a safe to their right, but they couldn’t reach any of it without moving the bridge that spanned the treatment pool in the center of the room.

And none of that mattered once he saw Claire sprawled flat in the middle of the bridge, a pool of blood spread around the vivid crimson of her jacket.

Chapter Text

Chris saw his baby sister lying in a pool of her own blood and he swore his heart stopped in his chest.

Thankfully Leon surged into action, yanking down the switch that moved the bridge and jumping to it before it locked in place, sprinting to Claire’s side. The sight of his hands hovering over her for a second before starting to peel back her jacket from the bullet wound to her shoulder was what finally spurred Chris to move, covering the distance in several big strides before collapsing to his knees. Throat tight, he pressed his fingertips to Claire’s pulse… and nearly sobbed with relief when he felt it beating strong under her skin.

“Let’s get her back in the other room,” Leon said after he’d had a chance to peer at her injury. He was steady and calm, exactly what Chris wasn’t at that moment. “It looks worse than it is, I think. Same caliber as the one that got me.”

“Right. Yeah, okay.” Chris got his arms under Claire’s knees and shoulders and picked her up, shushing her when she made a pained sound, eyes fluttering open. “Shh, Claire, it’s okay. I’m here.”

“Chris…?” Claire tried to move her injured arm and hissed, clamping her good hand over the wound. “Oh, that fucking bitch .”

“Let me guess,” Leon started wryly, holding the door for them, “white lab coat, blonde hair, disposition of a wet cracker?”

Claire huffed a laugh. “How’d you know?”

“We ran into her too,” Chris said, setting Claire down on the cleanest patch of floor he could find; he stripped off his leather jacket so she could use it as a pillow. “There’s a little girl trapped in the next room, Sherry Birkin–that’s her mother, Annette.” He held his flashlight above Claire, giving Leon more light to work with. The wound really was almost exactly like Leon’s, right down to the placement. “We were about to head out to look for what we needed to unlock the door to get to her when we found you.”

“Who the hell brings a kid into something like this?” Claire wondered, watching Leon shake up a can of first aid spray. “I knew who she was already–Ada told me about the Birkins right before the shit hit the fan.”

“Ada?” Leon planted a knee on Claire’s elbow before he sprayed the wound, wincing in sympathy when she cussed like hell. “Is that the FBI agent you mentioned in your note?”

“Yeah, I’m not so sure she’s FBI.” Claire’s voice cracked with pain as she blinked away tears, grasping Chris’s hand so tightly he could feel his bones grinding together. “I took this bullet for her… and she left.” A hoarse chuckle as she mercifully released Chris’s fingers. “Of course, in her defense… there was a giant mutated fish chasing her.”

Chris and Leon exchanged a look.

“A giant mutated fish ?” Chris repeated, taking the gauze Leon handed him and wrapping Claire’s shoulder. “That’s new… sort of. There were some sharks mutated by the T-Virus back at the Spencer Mansion, so I guess it tracks.” He couldn’t help how he smiled when Leon shed his borrowed jacket too, spreading it over Claire like a blanket. “Which way did Ada and the fish go?”

“Back down toward the sewers, I think.” Claire brought her good hand up to rub away some dirt on her face when her eyes went wide. “Shit, where’s my–”

Leon held her SLS 60 out butt first, raising his eyebrows. “Missing something?”

“Thank you, Leon.” Claire grinned at him, accepting the weapon and shooting Chris a knowing look–but how could she know anything? She’d only been conscious for five minutes! “Here, help me sit up against that wall.”

Chris knew better than to argue, and the three of them worked together to get Claire into an upright position where she was still supported but could also see the door. “You need to rest for a minute,” he said gently, and when she glowered at him he looked pointedly at Leon. “He got shot almost exactly the way you did. Believe me when I say it’ll take that first aid spray some time to work.”

“He’s not wrong,” Leon said when Claire swiveled her gaze in his direction. Gesturing at his bandaged shoulder, he asked in a completely serious tone, “What? Haven’t you always wanted to have matching scars with some guy you just met?”

Claire stared at him for a moment… and then she snickered. “Congratulations,” she said, dutifully checking the load in her gun, “you’re the first person my brother’s dated that I haven’t hated.”

“ Claire ,” Chris hissed, feeling himself flush. He glanced at Leon, who was red like a tomato, and dragged a hand over his own face. “Okay, let’s, uh, table that for now. I don’t suppose you saw any spark plugs that looked like chess pieces in your adventures with Ada?”

“Actually,” Claire said slowly, squinting at nothing, “I think I did.” She peered around the room. “I don’t suppose there’s anything as quaint as a map down here?”

Leon took a square of paper out of his back pocket and unfolded it. “Took this off the wall on our way back in here,” he explained, and Chris added light fingers to his mental list of Things He Knew About Leon , which was eerily similar to his other list, Things About Leon That Turned Him On . “Where do you think you saw it?”

Claire studied the map for a moment, then pointed at a spot labeled TREATMENT FACILITY . “Here, I think? There was like a little bridge between this room and the main hall. Seems like the fuse might control that.” She let her head drop back against the wall, looking exhausted. “God, Chris, I hate it when you’re right.”

“Good thing it only happens twice a year, then.” Chris stroked the hair away from her face like he used to when she was little and had a nightmare. Then he forced himself up and away, even though it felt like he was leaving a piece of himself on the ground. “We’re gonna go find that spark plug, and then we’ll figure out where the other two are, okay?”

Leon mirrored him on Claire’s other side, hands busy reloading Matilda. “I’ll bring him back in one piece. Promise.”

“You better,” Claire said, and when Leon turned away, she winked at Chris and whispered, “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

~***~

They made it as far as the platform next to the cable car before Leon found himself being pressed against a railing and kissed to within an inch of his life.

The sudden affection was unexpected but not unwelcome, and Leon holstered his gun so he could settle his hands on Chris’s shoulders, breathless with the way Chris nipped at his lower lip before sliding their tongues together. Those hands trailed over Leon’s hips, one gripping his waist while the other rose to touch his jaw, adjusting the angle of the kiss and then cupping the back of his neck.

When they broke apart Leon felt slightly dazed, but not so out of it that he couldn’t enjoy the solid heat of Chris pressed against his front. “What… what was that for?” he managed to ask, licking at his buzzing lips and lost in the comforting dark of Chris’s eyes.

“For caring,” Chris murmured, kissing his chin. “You went right for Claire, no hesitation–hell, you got there before me. You did everything right, and–” He broke off when his voice cracked. “ Shit . For a second I thought I’d lost her.”

Leon only hesitated for a second before pulling Chris into a hug. He rubbed a hand over his back as the larger man curled into him, hiding his face in Leon’s neck. “I don’t know your sister very well, but she seems tougher than that,” he said quietly, chuckling a little. “Probably tougher than both of us put together–and besides, I just did what anyone else would’ve done.”

“Anyone else would’ve been insane by now, with what we’ve been through tonight,” Chris pointed out, his breath hot on Leon’s skin. He… probably wasn’t wrong. “And I don’t care what anyone else would’ve done. You did it. So… thank you, Leon.”

Leon got the distinct sense that this was an argument he wasn’t going to win… and he had to admit, the words made him feel warm on the inside. “You’re welcome, Chris.” He shifted a little against the railing, hip bumping a nearby table; when he glanced over at it, he spotted a T-shaped piece of metal with a red handle, not unlike the crank from back in the station. “Hey, I bet we’re going to need that.”

Chris followed his line of sight. “I bet you’re right,” he murmured, planting a kiss against Leon’s pulse and oh , the whimper that caught against the backs of Leon’s teeth was embarrassing . That didn’t stop Chris from repeating the action, deliberately dragging his lips over Leon’s flushed skin until he could speak into his ear: “When we get out of here… Christ, you’ve got no idea what you do to me.”

“I think I might have an inkling,” Leon choked out, toes curling in his boots. Despite his doubts that Chris would want to touch him once he knew what Derek used to do to him–what he used to let Derek do to him–he was helpless to be anything but painfully aroused thanks to Chris’s… everything. “And I’m on board. Very on board.”

Chris laughed, a tiny, breathy thing, and reluctantly pulled away. It was gratifying to see that he was just as flustered as Leon, and tried to cover for it by taking the T-shaped device and tucking it into his belt. “Let’s, uh, see if we can go find the treatment room? And maybe Ada?”

Leon nodded tightly, drawing Matilda again. “Yep. Let’s do that.”

~***~

Before heading into the belly of the sewers, they checked out the safe that was nearby and discovered the combination was written on the side. A quick spin of the dial got them a stock for the shotgun, which offered increased stability that Chris appreciated. They’d spent a fair amount of time trading off with it, and up until now it’d been his least favorite weapon; the stock made it easier to use, and that meant he could save their limited amount of magnum ammo for their next meeting with William Birkin.

Next, they ducked under a neon EXIT sign and down some stairs, shooting their way through a few zombies that looked like they’d been maintenance workers before everything went to hell. Leon spotted a switch that opened up a passageway through the water, so back into the muck they went–thankfully it was a relatively short journey to a landing where they could use the T-bar, but the room it opened up was appalling.

“Jesus, the smell ,” Chris muttered as they crossed the catwalk, peering down at the islands of garbage and questionable ooze below them. There was a door with a glowing red light above it a ways off, and it looked like the only way to get there would be to navigate through the shit flooding the floor. They came to another small landing, and he snagged a lone key off a set of hooks–it had a red tag on it that read TREATMENT ROOM . “I might throw up soon, but at least this was lucky. Would’ve been a pain in the ass to get all the way there and then not be able to open the damn door.”

“Should we see what’s behind that door?” Leon wondered as Chris stuck the new key on his overburdened keyring. “The map said it was a storage room… could someone have put the other two plugs in there?”

“We’ve seen dumber things today,” Chris remarked, and together they splashed back down into the water. They’d been in the sewers for a grand total of maybe a half-hour and he was already sick of being wet. Ironically, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t have given for a shower –

Ahead of them, something burst free from a corpse propped near an open pipe, and they scrambled up onto an artificial island of crap to avoid its flailing limbs. “What the hell was that?” Leon had Matilda in a white-knuckled grip, sliding into the water again with Chris close behind him. “It looked sort of like the thing that jumped out of Irons, but… not.”

Chris didn’t get a chance to respond, because all of a sudden there was a huge, writhing, roaring creature emerging from the water. It was almost all muscle, one massive appendage groping in their direction as its head split into quadrants, revealing rows of horrible tendrils and teeth. And evidently waking up one had been enough to agitate the rest, because two of its brethren were right behind it, clamoring to get to them.

He and Leon dove apart to avoid being grabbed, and Chris’s brain was working overtime to come up with an effective strategy against the beasts. He recalled something a base commander from his time in the Air Force had liked to say–when in doubt, grenade out–and yanked a frag from his belt, praying Leon would know what he was thinking when he shouted, “ Flamethrower !”

Mercifully, Leon had already been bringing the flamethrower around front, and made a small adjustment to hit the grenade with a chemically-enhanced stream of fire. It made the explosive about twice as powerful and projected the flames in a wider arc, causing all three mutants to shriek and whine as they were cooked alive. The water, disgusting as it was, kept the fire under control, and Chris pushed the corpses aside as soon as they stopped wriggling to check on Leon.

“I’m okay,” Leon told him before he could draw breath to ask, smiling a little. “We make a good team.”

“The best,” Chris agreed, nudging his good shoulder. They passed through the rest of the room and into the next one without incident, but once he got a look at exactly how convoluted it was, he couldn’t hold in a groan. “Jesus. Tell me we’ll get something besides the king and queen plugs out of this.”

“There’s some kind of weapon in there.” Leon nodded toward the room directly below where they stood, looking through the catwalk. “Looks like a taser on steroids.” He used the flashlight to peer around some more, and Chris could practically hear the gears turning in his head. “I can figure this out. Can you cover me from up here?”

“Of course,” Chris said, once again amazed that Leon trusted him like that despite his history. He set his feet and aimed his Samurai Edge into the mess of chain link and electrical boxes below them. “On you.”

Chapter Text

Long story short, Leon now officially hated chess.

But he enjoyed the way it felt to have Chris watch him solve the puzzle that allowed them to recover the queen and king plug–like he was doing something revolutionary, when in reality all he did was open and close a bunch of doors in a certain order. They’d also added the odd-looking electrical weapon–which Chris called a sparkshot after he got a closer look–to their arsenal. They shuffled things around so Leon wound up with Matilda, the flamethrower, and the shotgun, while Chris kept the sparkshot, the magnum, and his handgun. Then they made their way to the area with the treatment room, retrieved the rook plug… and found an elevator that would take them back up to the police station.

“Should we make one last run?” Chris asked, looking down at the roll of film in Leon’s hand. It claimed it would show them some secret hiding places, providing they went back and developed it. “I think we missed a couple of safes. It wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

Leon hated the thought of leaving Sherry and Claire alone for any longer than they needed to, but Chris had a point: the RPD might still have some useful items between its walls, and with the threat of the Tyrant gone it wouldn’t be too hard to clear it. “A half an hour,” he declared, glancing at the watch on Chris’s wrist. He wore it turned inward, so the crystal couldn’t reflect the light–Leon’s father had done something similar, muttering about snipers and spewing racial slurs. “Whatever we can grab in thirty minutes we do, and fuck the rest.”

Chris clapped him on the back as they got into the elevator. “That’s the spirit.” He curled an arm around Leon as they rode upward, both of them tense about being in another death box after what had happened with Birkin. “You know, I’m starting to see why you don’t like these things.”

Leon snorted. “About time,” he said teasingly, letting himself enjoy the heat radiating off Chris and the strangely comforting bulk of him for just a moment. “Dark room first?”

“Dark room first,” Chris agreed. “Let’s get what we can and blow this popsicle stand.”

~***~

Thirty minutes didn’t seem like a long time, but it could drag on forever when you were busy dodging lickers and shooting zombies.

In addition to raiding some safes for more ammo and a muzzle brake for Matilda, Chris was pleased that they were able to gather extra health items; with Sherry and Claire joining their party, they were bound to need them. The roll of film turned out to be useful too, revealing the locations of fuel for Leon’s flamethrower in the press room and an upgrade for the magnum in Wesker’s office.

As they made their way back to the secret room in the lobby, Chris couldn’t help but look at the state of the station with sadness. He knew that no matter what happened next, this would be the last time he would ever set foot in this building–and even in its ruinous state and with the terrors it had dealt, a part of him would miss it.

He thought he shook off his melancholy quickly enough, but was proven wrong once they were back in the elevator and Leon murmured, “You okay?”

“Not really,” Chris admitted, resisting the temptation to hold his breath when Leon initiated contact, pressing up against his side. “I just… it’s silly, but I have to wonder if there’s something I could’ve done differently. Some choice I could’ve made that would’ve avoided all of this.”

“I don’t think that’s silly,” Leon told him, an arm slipping around Chris’s waist. It was a completely innocent touch, but it set Chris’s nerves on fire all the same. “Chris… you were at the epicenter of all this when it started, back at the Spencer Mansion. It makes sense that you’d go over it in your head, wondering whether you could’ve stopped it from spreading here.” He sighed. “It’s not the same, but I did something similar with my relationship with Derek. Trying to figure out if I could’ve made a different choice that would’ve stopped him from becoming who he is now.”

“But you’re not responsible for his actions,” Chris pointed out… and then paused, shaking his head when Leon smiled knowingly. “Just like I’m not responsible for Wesker’s actions, or Umbrella’s. I get it.”

“Smart and good-looking,” Leon teased, with the most confidence Chris had heard from him yet. “You’re really a ten out of ten.” The elevator reached its destination, opening up for them to leave, but neither of them moved right away. Instead, Leon stared up into Chris’s eyes and chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Chris, there’s… something you should probably know about–”

A groan from one of the undead interrupted him, and Chris pressed a quick kiss to his forehead. “Later, okay?”

“Okay,” Leon whispered, and if Chris hadn’t been concerned with killing the nearest infected, he might’ve heard the trepidation in his voice. “Later.”

~***~

Claire greeted them by aiming her gun at their faces when they pushed back into the monitor room. She was back on her feet, which was an excellent sign, and lowered her weapon once she knew it was them. “Hey guys,” she said, offering them a smile. “How’d it go? Did you find all the plugs?”

“We did,” Chris told her, touching Leon’s back briefly as he nudged past him to work on the door puzzle. “We also wound up doing one last run through the police station and found some useful stuff.”

“I’d say the most useful thing you found in that station was Leon.” Claire’s voice was teasing as she put her jacket back on, frowning down at the bullet hole and all the blood. “Damn, I liked this jacket.”

“I’ll buy you another one,” Chris promised, and Leon found the fondness around his words when he spoke to his sister to be familiar–he’d heard it directed at himself more and more as the night wore on. The realization almost made him drop one of the plugs, face hot, and he must’ve sworn a little too loudly because now Chris was asking, “Rookie? You good?”

“Wait, rookie ?” Claire sounded shocked. “Was this your first day?”

“It was supposed to be,” Leon replied, glancing over his shoulder and chuckling when he took in her flabbergasted expression. “Hell of a welcome, huh?”

“You could say that, yeah.” Claire watched as Chris picked up the other two jackets, coming closer to Leon to put the one with the bullet hole around his shoulders. She huffed a laugh. “Nothing like a college student, a rookie cop, and a disgraced special operator trying to take down a corrupt pharmaceutical conglomerate. I feel like there’s a joke there somewhere.”

“Probably something about walking into a bar and not walking out again,” Chris said dryly, shrugging back into his jacket and peering through the window at Sherry. “She hasn’t moved since we left, but she’s still breathing.”

“Good.” Leon inserted the last plug, confident in his arrangement–and the light above the locked door changed from red to green. “Because we can go get her.” They pushed through the door as a unit, with Chris in the lead and Leon only steps behind him, Claire bringing up the rear. Like everything else in this godforsaken city, the path to the garbage room wasn’t nearly as linear as Leon had assumed… and there was another giant locked door between them and Sherry. There was a switch on the wall near the door, but when Chris threw it, nothing happened. “ Shit . It must be powered by a breaker that tripped.” 

“The fusebox would have to be nearby in case of a power outage,” Claire reasoned, looking around for a moment before pointing at a smaller room across the catwalk from the garbage room door. “What about in there?”

They went to investigate, and sure enough, the younger Redfield was right–a fusebox was tucked into the back corner of the room, and Leon only had to fuck with it a little to get the voltage right. Once that was done, they moved to leave–and were immediately blocked by a giant claw punching through the ceiling between them and the door, a familiar ear-splitting roar following a second later.

“ Fuck , he’s back,” Chris lamented as sparks rained down on them from split wiring. Something that Leon had initially presumed was water but turned out to be flammable quickly erupted in a blaze and they retreated, only to almost get their heads taken off by Birkin’s next round of Whack-a-Mole. “Tell me there’s another way out of here!”

“There’s a shutter, but no way to open it from the inside!” Claire reported, the three of them pressing their backs together in an effort to not get separated by the fire or Birkin. “Think he’ll come through that way?”

As if on cue, Birkin must’ve grown tired of trying to kill them from above and began slamming himself into the shutter instead, the metal giving under his bulk only a moment later. He looked even worse than he had before absorbing the Tyrant, if that were possible, and when he lurched forward to try and grab them, they split apart and dodged around him to run down the nearest corridor.

We’re coming, Sherry, Leon promised silently, as they emerged into a portion of the underground facility that seemed to be under construction. It’s just gonna take us a minute.  

This new area was part of the sinkhole in the midst of the city thanks to the collapse, and rain poured down from a distant sky when their path came to an abrupt end at a metal platform, which seemed to have been used as an offloading point for shipping containers. In fact, one was still loaded onto the crane and Leon ran over to hit the button that moved it, giving them more room to square off against Birkin.

“Go for the eye!” Chris exclaimed, no doubt recalling Leon’s earlier scrap with the mutated doctor. “It’s his weak point.”

“Got it!” Claire, as it turned out, was more like Leon than Chris in terms of how she fought; she was small and quick, able to unload several rounds into Birkin and then run or roll out of the way of his flailing limbs. “Not sure we have enough ammo for this, though!”

Leon replayed the arc of the traveling shipping container in his mind’s eye and stepped back toward the controls. “Maybe we don’t need it!” he called, slamming his hand into the button that would swing the container their way once more. “Get clear!”

Chris and Claire both booked it toward him, reaching Leon’s side just as the shipping container returned and hit Birkin with a satisfying splat . He scrabbled at its corrugated side for purchase as the three of them barraged him with their various weapons, and the impact combined with their bullets won, sending Birkin plunging down below them for the second time that night.

“Think he’s figured out we don’t like him?” Chris wondered, smiling when that elicited twin snorts from Claire and Leon. Conveniently, Birkin’s struggle against the shipping container knocked down some scaffolding that acted as a bridge between the platform and a nearby set of stairs. “Now, let’s try this again.”

They blasted up the stairs and through a door that put them next to the oversized garbage room door, and this time when Chris flipped the switch, the big door gave a groan of protest but began to rise. They all ducked underneath it in the same formation they’d used when they exited the monitor room. Compared to the sludge they’d marched through already, the slime and stickiness of this space was almost refreshing, even if it smelled just as foul. And in the middle of it was Sherry’s little body, collapsed on her side and facing away from them.

“Sherry,” Chris called, reaching her first and dropping into a crouch, setting a hand on her arm. “You need to wake up, we–”

What happened next seemed to take place in slow motion before Leon’s horrified eyes.

Sherry rolled over, turning her face toward the light, and it was suddenly undeniable that she was infected. Her left eye was a swollen, angry red, with tendrils beginning to claw their way through the socket. It looked incredibly painful, and maybe the confusion of that pain was what caused her to sink her teeth into Chris’s forearm and rip away a chunk of his flesh.

“ No !” Claire shrieked, gun rising.

Leon felt like he’d been punched in the sternum but had the presence of mind to grab Claire’s wrist, preventing her from shooting Sherry or accidentally hitting her brother.

Her brother… who was now infected too.

Chapter Text

Wednesday, September 30th, 1998 - 3:02 am CST

Chris clamped a hand over the wound to his arm, which was bleeding profusely, and wondered not for the first time if he was living in a nightmare.

Before him, Sherry looked horrified by what she’d done, spitting out the piece of skin and muscle she’d torn from Chris and letting out a gut wrenching sob. “I’m s-sorry!” She tried to sit up but couldn’t, weakened by the virus. “I… I didn’t m-mean to! Please…” She stopped to cough, blood dotting the floor. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Nobody’s going to kill you.” Leon’s voice was shaking badly, but he knelt next to Chris with no hesitation. He was white as a sheet and Chris imagined he didn’t look much better, even though the reality of the situation hadn’t fully sunk in yet. “Let me see,” he murmured, and when Chris lifted his hand from the bite it immediately began bleeding again. “I know an herb won’t stop the infection, but it might help you clot?”

“I… you shouldn’t waste it on me.” Chris heard himself talking from far away, watched the blood that ran down his skin with a strange detachment, like it wasn’t his own. “One of you might need it, and I… I might not…”

“ Shut up ,” Claire commanded, dropping down to the grimy floor with them, already crushing up one of the plants in her hands. “We’re going to find a cure in the Umbrella lab–we have to.” She glanced at Sherry apologetically. “I’m sorry I scared you, Sherry. But I… oh god, you don’t even know who I am, do you?”

“This is Claire,” Leon said, holding Chris’s arm almost tenderly while Claire packed the bite with herbs, then began winding some gauze she dug out of Leon’s hip pouch around it, jacket sleeve and all. “She’s Chris’s sister. Remember how we were looking for her earlier?”

Sherry nodded–and promptly passed out again.

“Shit,” Claire and Leon said in unison.

Chris would have laughed if he didn’t feel like crying.

Above them, the loudspeaker crackled on, followed shortly by Annette’s voice: “What are you doing?”

“Trying to help your daughter!” Leon practically spat, turning to glare up at the camera. His fingers dug into Chris’s arm briefly before loosening their grip again. “And now we have to help Chris too.”

A pause. “Sherry’s been implanted,” Annette admitted, and Chris squeezed his eyes shut, gut rolling with that news. To be depraved or delusional enough to infect your own child… to say the thought disgusted him would’ve been an understatement. “She can’t be saved, and neither can your friend.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Claire demanded through gritted teeth, and that was Chris’s baby sister in a nutshell–sweet as pie on the outside with a viper’s bite underneath. “You’re her mother –get in here!”

“You don’t understand!” Annette cried, voice gone raw as she finally displayed some semblance of remorse. “WIlliam’s still out there, and if I don’t stop him–”

“This conversation is over,” Leon snapped as Claire finished wrapping Chris’s arm. He touched Chris’s cheek gently, and when Chris finally pried his eyes open again, his throat went tight at the naked concern on Leon’s face. “Think you can walk? Or do you need me to carry you?”

Chris exhaled shakily. “I can walk, at least for now,” he replied, and allowed Leon to help him to his feet. The world spun a little bit before steadying again, but Chris didn’t know if that was due to the onset of a fever or blood loss. “Maybe I should lean on you, just to be safe.”

Leon took Chris’s bandaged arm and draped it around his shoulders, slipping his good arm around Chris’s back. “I’ve got you.”

“And I’ve got you, kiddo,” Claire murmured to Sherry, holstering her gun in favor of lifting the girl into a bridal carry. “Good thing I don’t skip arm day.”

They were about to leave the garbage room when Annette’s voice came over the loudspeaker again: “Wait! I can treat them–in my lab. It’s not far away.” Then she seemed to argue with herself when she continued, “There’s… there’s not enough time, millions of lives are at stake.” She broke off around something that could’ve been a sob. “Sherry… Mommy loves you, sweetie. Goodbye.”

With that, the red light on the camera above them blinked out, and they were left alone once more.

~***~

“The cable car is this way,” Leon said, hardly recognizing the sound of his own voice. He thought it had been bad after the Tyrant choked him, but as it turned out, being worried sick over the guy that you met a few hours ago that was now infected with a potentially incurable virus did a number on his vocal chords too. “It’s got Umbrella’s logo stamped all over it, so my guess is it probably goes to the lab Annette was talking about.”

“Ada and I tried getting on it earlier and the door wouldn’t open,” Claire told him, hefting Sherry higher in her arms. The girl was talking in her sleep, mostly asking for her mother. “Said something about access being denied.”

Leon glanced over at her and Sherry, and for the first time noticed a flash of something green on Sherry’s wrist. “Is that a watch?” he wondered aloud.

Claire frowned, tilting her head as she looked down. “No, it looks like some kind of ID bracelet.”

“Probably opens the cable car,” Chris said, voice tight. He was clearly in pain, though whether that was from the start of the infection or his numerous other injuries was hard to tell. His free hand was steady around his Samurai Edge, but thankfully it didn’t seem like he was going to have to use it before they reached their destination. “Bring her up to the door first.”

Claire did as he suggested, and the panel on the side of the cable car that had previously read ACCESS DENIED cleared as the door slid open. The cable car was utilitarian on the inside, constructed almost entirely of metal and clearly not designed for a long ride that required comfort. There was a single bench seat that Claire darted toward to lay Sherry on, stripping off her jacket to cover her up.

“Just hold on, Sherry, okay?” Leon heard Claire say, her thumb ghosting over Sherry’s forehead. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“I’m starting to think you Redfields have the market cornered on reassurance,” Leon muttered to Chris, helping him into a sitting position on the floor of the car with his back against the wall. He crouched down in front of the older man, reaching out to feel his forehead with the back of his hand and breathing in sharply. “You’re hot.”

Chris snorted, leaning into Leon’s touch and letting his eyes fall shut. “And you’re very direct.”

“Dumbass,” Leon whispered, heart clenching painfully in his chest even as he felt himself smile. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

“Yeah, but it made you smile.” Chris hadn’t even opened his eyes, he just… knew . “Leon… if I don’t make it…”

“Stop.” Leon’s own eyes burned and he had to blink rapidly to dispel the tears before they could fall. “ Please stop. We can’t have survived all that shit back at the station just for it to end like this.” He took a deep breath. “Besides… you said if things had been different, if you’d had the chance to recruit me to STARS–you would’ve asked me out.” He let his hand fall away, but only so he could grab one of Chris’s and hold it tight. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you that I would’ve said yes.”

Chris opened his eyes again–and was it Leon’s imagination, or were they starting to look yellow? “Yeah?” He seemed truly surprised, which was ridiculous. “What’s your favorite meal? I’m not a chef, but I make a mean lasagna–just ask Claire.”

“He really does,” Claire agreed, and when Leon glanced over he saw her standing near the cable car’s controls, hand on the switch that looked like it would start it up. Her eyes were full of unshed tears and she had to press her lips together to keep them from trembling. “And he’s going to get the chance to make it again, because he’s not going to fucking die–and I swear to god, Chris, if you keep talking like that I’m going to kill you myself.”

“You might have to,” Chris muttered darkly, holding up his free hand in supplication when they both swore at him. “Sorry, sorry. Can we go?”

Claire nodded, throwing the switch.

THIS TRAM IS BOUND FOR NEST–PLEASE DO NOT EXIT THE TRAM UNTIL THE FINAL DESTINATION

~***~

The minutes felt like hours as they passed, Chris’s perception of time slowing down to molasses.

Leon sat next to him, pressed along his side from ankle to shoulder, their fingers tangled together against Chris’s thigh. Across from them and a little to Chris’s left, Claire sat on the floor near Sherry’s bench, holding the girl’s hand and talking to her in low tones. Despite the fact that she was obviously having a hard time keeping it together herself, Chris had never been more proud of Claire; he might’ve taught her how to use a gun, but her courage and composure was all her own.

“How do you feel?” Leon’s voice was barely a whisper, but his head was resting on Chris’s shoulder, so he could hear him just fine. “Besides the fever?”

“Everything hurts,” Chris admitted, letting his cheek press against Leon’s hair. It was matted with sweat and Christ knew what else, but he didn’t give a shit. He focused instead on the steady rhythm of Leon’s breathing, the way his thumb rubbed unconsciously over Chris’s knuckles. “My mouth’s dry, my eyes are burning, and I’ve never wanted a cigarette so fucking badly in my life… in other words, it’s like the worst hangover ever.”

Leon swallowed audibly. “First thing when we get out of here,” he started, tilting his head back just enough to nuzzle at Chris’s jaw. He didn’t seem to mind the stubble or the blood. “No more cancer sticks. I’ll cover you in nicotine patches instead.”

Chris was struck by the sudden mental image of them naked in bed together, but Leon was sticking nicotine patches on him like a child might decorate an art project. “I guess I wouldn’t mind that,” he said with a chuckle, and was unable to stop himself from asking, “Do I get to cover you in anything?”

Leon paused, breath warm against Chris’s skin. “That depends,” he said hesitantly, and through the haze of the virus Chris was suddenly on alert. “How do you feel about–”

NOW ARRIVING AT NEST

“Here we go,” Claire said, pushing to her feet and hauling Sherry back into her arms again. The cable car began to slow until it eventually stopped completely. She looked Chris and Leon over, her worry like an open wound in her expression. “You guys ready?”

“Ready or not,” Leon muttered, standing up and shouldering Chris’s weight once more, “here we come, Umbrella.”

Chapter Text

They disembarked from the cable car as a unit, with Leon supporting a good bit of Chris’s weight in front and Claire carrying Sherry in back. Some metal stairs led to yet another platform, a tunnel before them narrowing into endless darkness; thankfully their destination was off to the right, in the form of a blast door that unlocked as soon as Sherry’s bracelet was close enough in range.

FOR YOUR SAFETY, STAND CLEAR UNTIL THE DOORS ARE FULLY OPEN

“Fuck that,” Leon muttered, ducking under the first door and waiting impatiently for the second and third to slide up. Beyond them was a room that looked almost like something one might see in a hospital–a sleek, almost futuristic interior, offset with a leather couch and a reception desk, Umbrella’s logo looming large on the wall behind it. “Cozy.”

WELCOME TO NEST–ENJOY YOUR VISIT!

“Again, fuck that.” Leon glanced around quickly and spotted an open door across from the desk, one that led to some kind of security room. It was fairly large and cluttered with crap, but the most important feature was a bed tucked into one corner, along with the only lamp in the place that wasn’t cold and industrial. “Here we go.” He lowered Chris onto the bed as carefully as he could, prying his gun from his hand and setting it down within reach. “Sorry your legs are dangling off the mattress.”

“Should give the bed to Sherry,” Chris murmured, and oh god, his brown eyes were definitely changing colors, looking just as sickly as the one that was beginning to protrude from Sherry’s face. Still, he was aware enough to be surprised when Claire put Sherry on the bed with him and the girl immediately curled into his side, fisting a hand in his STARS vest. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh , dummy,” Claire said, her voice cracking. She had to turn away for a minute, and Leon couldn’t blame her; when she faced them again, she was slightly more composed. “Okay, now what?”

Leon’s eyes darted around the room, eventually alighting on an open laptop. “There’s gotta be something on here,” he declared, going over to read what was on the screen. It was an email generated by Umbrella’s internal emergency response system, telling employees to immediately use an antiviral agent called DEVIL, touting it as the only way to destroy the G-Virus. “Antiviral agent–that’s gotta be it.”

“Then let’s go find it,” Claire said, setting her jaw in a way that was so much like Chris it made Leon’s throat hurt. She bent down and carefully removed Sherry’s security bracelet, securing it around one of her belt loops instead. “Chris, we have to go–but we’ll be back soon, okay? I promise.”

Chris looked like he wanted to protest, even put an arm flat on the mattress like he was going to try and push himself up… but he was too weak to even move Sherry. “ Shit ,” he whispered, and Leon didn’t know it was possible for one word to contain so much despair. He watched as Chris’s lower lip trembled for a split second before he got himself under control again, looking at both of them. “Be careful. Keep each other safe, I–” He cut off, voice dropping low to admit, “I can’t lose either of you.”

“We’ll be fine,” Leon said, lacking the vocabulary to describe how much those words touched him. Before he could second-guess himself he returned to the bed and leaned down to press a kiss to Chris’s unnaturally hot cheek. “You owe me dinner, remember?”

“I remember,” Chris rasped, drinking Leon and Claire in once more with his eyes before he looked away. “Now go, before I decide to come crawling after you.”

~***~

“So… you and Chris, huh?” Claire was in the lead and made their first stop the office behind the reception desk. Turned out there was some ammo hanging around, which spoke volumes about how far the facility had fallen in only a few days. “Can’t say I’m surprised–you’re cute.”

“Uh,” Leon said intelligently. His ears burned, and he cleared his throat. “Thanks. You’re, um… very pretty.” He was gay, sure, but he could still make that judgment. “Just not my type.”

Claire laughed, but not meanly–she seemed genuinely amused, and Leon was beginning to think being unpleasant simply wasn’t possible for a Redfield. “I gathered that, yeah.” She motioned for him to take the lead to their next destination, which was a door that opened to a hallway that led to a cafeteria. There was only emergency power in this section of the facility, plunging them into shadows as soon as the door shut again behind them. “I’m not trying to pry, but… what happened between you two, exactly? Chris is loyal to a fault, but it takes a lot to get under his skin–I’ve never seen him so comfortable around someone before.”

Taking a deep breath (and trying to ignore the cloying scent of blood and ichor in the air), Leon gave Claire the CliffNotes version of his night with Chris, leaving out the details of when they kissed as well as some of his own trauma. They stopped walking as he talked, pausing to observe a couple of zombies shuffling around inside the cafeteria through the window. “And… that’s when we found you bleeding out on that bridge.” He shrugged, wincing when it jostled his wounded shoulder. “I… I like your brother, Claire. A lot. And for some reason, he likes me too. I wouldn’t hurt him–not intentionally.”

“Good.” Claire smiled at him, and there was that flash of Chris again–their eyes were different colors, but they crinkled at the corners the same way. “Because he’s lost enough people, and I’d hate to have to drag you down the highway behind my motorcycle.”

Leon barked a startled laugh. “I think I’d hate that too,” he said, and found himself returning her grin. He eyed the cafeteria door pointedly. “Hungry?”

“Fucking starving.” Claire stepped inside first, knocking down the first two infected she saw with well-timed shots. “Maybe we can find a candy bar or something that’s not covered in ooze.”

~***~

With the cafeteria clear and the Level 2 security chip from the dead doctor’s bracelet in the nap room, Leon was feeling good about their progress. He and Claire worked well together–not quite as effortlessly in sync as him and Chris, but Leon trusted her judgment and her aim. And best of all, they did, in fact, manage to find some prepackaged food and bottled water that seemed edible.

“We got the next chip,” Claire said by way of greeting as they came back into the security room. She ignored the gun Chris had aimed at them and came closer, pushing the weapon aside and touching his forehead. “Christ, you’re burning up.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Chris muttered, setting the gun down and shutting his eyes. Next to him, Sherry was curled up in the fetal position, Claire’s ruined jacket hugged close around her shoulders. “It seems like Sherry’s worse off than I am, though.”

“Annette said something about Sherry being implanted ,” Leon recalled, ripping into a Hershey bar like a starving man. He forced himself to exercise some control, snapping the bar into pieces and giving some to Claire, then to Chris. He skipped Sherry for the moment, figuring Chris could get her to eat something the next time she woke up. “I’m guessing that means she was given the virus a while ago and it’s had time to incubate.”

Claire’s face scrunched up. “Ew. So you think Chris isn’t as sick because he hasn’t been infected for as long as Sherry?”

“That and he’s built like a brick shithouse,” Leon said bluntly, licking chocolate off his fingers and trying not to think about what else he might be ingesting. He felt Chris’s eyes on him and when he glanced over, the naked want he saw in them made his stomach swoop pleasantly. Still, there was something… off about that look paired with Chris’s blank expression and his bloodshot sclera. “Um. Chris? You sure you’re okay?”

Chris blinked and shook his head a little. “Yeah, shit. Sorry, I zoned out for a second.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t feel as horrible as I did when I first got bit. It’s not great, but I can handle it.” He looked up at Claire, all of a sudden determined to avoid Leon’s gaze. “You said you found another security chip? Where does it go?”

“We took a walk to the main shaft–there’s an elevator that we can probably use to get out of here, but it needs a higher clearance.” Claire cracked a bottle of water and took several long slugs, then offered it to Leon, who did the same. At this point, cooties weren’t a big concern. “A Level 3 clearance is needed to get to the place where we think the cure would be, so after this we’re going to go to the east area and hope we can find another chip.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Chris said, reaching out to take the water bottle Leon held out to him–and grabbing Leon’s hand instead. It wasn’t a harsh touch, more like a reflex of some kind, and Chris seemed more disturbed by it than Leon was. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Leon studied him more closely, from his flushed face to his dilated pupils, and all at once recalled something the file on the G-Virus had said about reproduction . Now it was Leon’s turn to blush, cheeks going hot at the implications of what he was thinking–this was not the fucking time, Jesus Christ. “You gonna be okay here with Sherry?”

“We’ll be fine.” Chris still hadn’t let go of his hand, but now he squeezed it gently. “Watch out for each other.”

“Always,” Claire said easily, like she and Leon had known each other for years instead of an hour or two… and from the look in her eye, she’d clocked everything about her brother’s condition that Leon had. He had the distinct feeling he was in for a grilling on their way to the east area. “Let’s bounce.”

Chapter Text

Before his trip into the east area of NEST with Claire, Leon hadn’t had much of an opinion on plants. Trees were shady, roses were pretty, and the weird herbs from the Arklay Mountains had useful properties, but that was where his thoughts ended. 

Now he was pretty sure he’d never so much as look at a dandelion the same way again.

To his surprise, Claire hadn’t called him out on Chris’s behavior or his reaction to it, but he should’ve known they were fucked when they got into the presentation room and immediately came face to face with a dead worker in full hazmat gear. They were plastered to the window by a giant flower that almost looked like it had teeth. The security chip they needed glowed in the dead worker’s hand, and there was no way to get to it without venturing into the greenhouse visible beyond their body.

“This way, I guess?” Claire got near the only other door in the room and raised her gun when it only opened halfway, caught on some of the vines that hung from the ceiling like jellyfish tendrils. “What the fuck?”

“I don’t know,” Leon replied, wondering absently how many times he’d said those exact words over the course of the night. They stepped in, and it became apparent that the vines which had held the door closed temporarily were only the tip of the iceberg. Almost immediately he spotted a body hanging from the ceiling… made entirely of plants. “Claire, look.”

“I see it,” Claire murmured, as they edged carefully around its dangling legs. There was a second one further ahead on the floor, and when they got closer, it wriggled up on its feet and made an awful groaning sound full of clicks and whines. “Jesus.”

Leon changed out Matilda for the flamethrower. “Stand back.” 

She did, and he quickly doused both of the plant monsters in chemical-based fire, ignoring their screeching and booking it into some kind of control room with Claire. He wasn’t sure if the flames would kill them permanently or if they’d regenerate, and he didn’t really want to find out. They both took a moment to catch their breath, cast in the blue glow of the interactive map on one wall.

“So,” Claire said conversationally, and Leon braced himself, “any theories on why Chris looked like he wanted to eat you alive back there, and I don’t mean in the cannibalistic zombie way?” 

Leon sighed, moving to examine the controls in front of the map. It looked like they needed codes to unlock two areas–a ladder in the greenhouse, and a machine in the drug testing lab. “I think it’s a side effect of the virus,” he began, shifting his focus to a nearby machine that contained a dispersal cartridge. Figuring they’d probably need that to hold whatever they made to get rid of the plant overgrowth, Leon hit the button to make the current solution dispense, and it ejected the dispersal cartridge when it was empty. “He, um, already made it pretty clear that he finds me… attractive.” No idea why , a snide little voice that sounded just like Derek whispered, but he ignored it. And once he gets a good look at what’s under your clothes, you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t puke on you. “From what I understand, one of the hallmarks of the G-Virus is that it increases the host’s drive to reproduce.”

“I hate to point out the obvious.” Hands on her hips, Claire watched him tuck the vial away in one of his pouches. “But you don’t have the equipment for that.”

Face heating, Leon studied the interior of the greenhouse through the window. It was spectacularly overgrown, and crawling with at least three of those plant monsters. “I don’t think the practicality of it matters,” he responded, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Just the impulse.”

“Uh-huh,” Claire said slowly, ponytail bobbing when she nodded her head. “And I’m guessing those impulses are only going to get stronger the longer Chris is infected?”

“Probably.” Leon couldn’t deny that the idea made him a little nervous. 

As he’d said to Claire earlier, he liked Chris an awful lot. Enough to want to swallow back the fear of sex that Derek had instilled in him and try… something. He dreaded the thought of Chris being blinded by the G-Virus’s instincts, of him forcing Leon to–no, Chris wouldn’t do that.

He wouldn’t.

Right?

~***~

They did a run through the drug testing lab and found out the vast overgrowth in the greenhouse was due to something called Plant 43.

“Chris mentioned a Plant 42 when he told me about the mansion,” Claire said after they read a file that had been left out on the counter. “He was able to kill that one with regular pesticide–it seems these chuckleheads made the new version a little tougher.”

“Of course they did.” Leon shook his head as they headed back out to look at the ladder. It was locked down tight but he took note of the code on top of it, and a quick trip back to the control panel had it unlocked. They climbed down the ladder into a darkened room, and he was grateful when Claire turned on her flashlight. “This must be the pumps and stuff for the sprinklers.”

Claire hummed an agreement, tugging at his sleeve. “There’s a map on that table.”

They took a moment to study the layout of the east area together, then made their way through the only door, which brought them into a corridor that led to some kind of lounge. Corpses were scattered amongst tables and chairs, and the amount of blood suggested there were probably lickers lurking around somewhere. There was an odd-looking trophy on the only standing table, and when Leon turned it over out of curiosity, he found the other code they needed.

A skittering noise from further down the hall reached their ears, and Leon pulled out his shotgun while Claire readied her grenade launcher. One licker dropped down through a ventilation shaft with a grating screech and was quickly followed by another that chose to stay on the ceiling; at the same time, the bodies in the lounge began to rise.

“Shit!” Claire put her back to Leon’s and faced the lickers, firing off three grenades in quick succession. “I fucking hate these things!”

“Same!” Leon took full advantage of the shotgun’s new power-ups, turning the zombies into Swiss cheese before whirling to fire into the face of the licker that wasn’t quite dead yet and coming for Claire’s throat as she reloaded. “Whew. That was close.”

Claire blinked rapidly, slinging the launcher back over her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said as they carried on down the corridor and into a stairwell, killing the undead as they went. “Guess next time I have to save your ass, huh?”

Leon chuckled. “I’m not keeping score.”

The next room gifted them a signal modulator, and after some trial and error Leon figured out it could be used to restore power. Doing that in the lounge gave them access to the low-temp testing lab, which they would need in order to make the solution capable of killing Plant 43. They didn’t bother going in at that moment, choosing instead to jog back through the basement and up the ladder so they could unlock the machine in the drug testing lab.

“This is such a convoluted system,” Claire observed once they were back in front of the now-unlocked machine, peering at the different containers full of solution. “It’s a good thing you like puzzles, because I don’t have the patience for this shit.”

“That sounds familiar,” Leon said wryly, and found himself missing Chris’s steady presence at his side. He shook it off and got to work, and soon they had a dispersal cartridge full of solution that needed to be chilled. “Back down we go?”

“Hopefully for the last time,” Claire agreed, wiping a stray chunk of brains off her cheek. “My calves can’t take any more ladders.”

~***~

Everything had been going a little too well, and Leon knew their luck would run out at some point–but the way it happened was unexpected.

They made it through the low-temp testing lab without a hitch, freezing the solution and grinning at each other with chattering teeth. The trip back to the control room was relatively uneventful, and when they dispensed the solution and watched Plant 43 begin to die off in real time, they both cheered.

Claire led the charge out across the catwalk to the body of the worker in the hazmat suit, picking up the Level 3 chip and slotting it into the security bracelet. “Fuck yeah,” she said triumphantly. “Let’s get back to–”

A plant monster fell from above them, lashing out with an arm made of vines as it crashed to the floor. The whiplike tip of the vines caught Claire across her face and neck, causing her to shriek in surprise and pain. Blood gushed from the wound immediately, and Leon had no way of knowing if she’d just lost an eye–he was too busy mowing down the other plant monsters that had decided to join the party.

“Come on!” he yelled, grabbing Claire by the arm and pulling her stumbling feet along, amazed that she hadn’t collapsed; his theory about her being tougher than him and Chris combined seemed to be proven right. She lasted as far as the presentation room and then her knees gave out, so Leon scooped her up into his arms. “It’s alright, I’ve got you.”

“Oh my fucking god this hurts,” Claire groaned out, turning her head to the side and spitting blood when it filled her mouth. “Is it bad?”

“It’s not good,” Leon said grimly, though he felt a pulse of relief when he saw both her eyes moving and blinking. “I’ll get you back to the security room. Hopefully Chris can tag in for you… otherwise, I guess I’m on my own.”

Chapter Text

If Chris had to keep seeing Claire covered in her own blood, he was going to die of a heart attack long before the G-Virus had a chance to kill him.

“What the fuck happened?” he demanded, and only when Leon stopped short of the bed with Claire cradled in his arms did Chris realize he had growled the words like an animal. He collected himself quickly, picking up Sherry’s little body and standing so Leon could put Claire down. Then Chris set Sherry in a nearby chair and knelt at his sister’s bedside, placing a hand on Leon’s calf and squeezing. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault she’s hurt.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Claire rasped out, startling Chris a little–he hadn’t realized she was conscious. Her eyes tracked Leon as he dug through a bunch of the shit in the room until he came up with a first aid kit. “In fact, you should be thanking him–he saved my ass.”

“And I already told you, I’m not keeping score,” Leon said mildly, pulling up a hard plastic chair and sitting next to the bed so he could get a better look at Claire’s face. He hadn’t so much as looked at Chris since he’d snapped at him, and that made bile burn the back of Chris’s throat. Still, his profile was beautiful, with that soft jawline and plush lips that would be great for– stop it . “I should stitch this up, or you’re going to have a scar.”

 Claire smiled, which only made the wicked slice that ran from her temple to her lips leak more blood. “It’ll make me look cool. Like a pirate.”

Now Leon looked at Chris, mouth twitching with amusement. “That sounds familiar.” He rustled through the first aid kit, but Claire put a hand on his arm to stop him. “What?”

“We don’t have time for that,” she said, and Chris’s first instinct was to protest… but she wasn’t wrong. Sherry seemed to be looking worse by the minute, and while Chris didn’t feel as weak as he had on the cable car ride, he was still feverish and–having thoughts he shouldn’t have been. “Just give me some butterflies like Chris has. I’ll live with the consequences.”

Leon frowned but relented, nimble fingers opening up a package of butterfly bandages. “If you’re sure.” He grabbed a can of first aid spray and used that first, shielding Claire’s eyes with the side of his hand. He was so capable , Chris thought, so willing to aid others even though he had never been helped himself, and Chris wanted nothing more than to push him to the floor and–

“Chris.” Leon’s tight voice cut through the fog in Chris’s head, and all at once Chris realized he had one hand on Leon’s shoulder and the other one on his thigh, trying to drag him down to Chris’s level without his permission. “Let go of me.”

“ Fuck , oh my god.” Chris jerked back like he’d been burned, shoving his hands between his thighs and pinning them together as he scooted backward. He hated the look on Leon’s face, the way he watched Chris apprehensively. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He felt tears burn his eyes, and Jesus, his emotions were really all over the place, weren’t they? “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Leon’s expression softened as he finished placing the butterflies on Claire’s face, pulling the skin together the best that he could. “It’s the virus,” he said, getting off the chair and offering Chris a hand up. It was tacky with Claire’s drying blood. “Remember that file we found? The one that described how the G-Virus makes the host want to, uh… reproduce?” He gestured around the room vaguely. “Well, Sherry’s a kid, and Claire’s your sister… so I think it’s directing you toward the only option, even though I can’t… do that.”

“What?” Chris blinked at Leon dumbly, and once the words sunk in he grasped Leon’s hand and got to his feet. He started to raise his free hand to touch Leon’s cheek but thought better of it. Instead, he tried to keep his voice measured and calm when he said, “If you think the only reason I’m attracted to you is because I’m infected… you’re wrong. Very wrong.”

Leon hadn’t let go of Chris’s hand, but now his eyes darted off to the side. “Chris, look, there’s… something you don’t know. And if you did know, you wouldn’t…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t want… that with me.”

Chris fought down every inappropriate impulse he had in that moment and pulled Leon into his arms, holding him close but not too tightly. “How about you let me decide that?” he asked against his ear, smiling just a little when Leon hugged him back. “If we can ever get out of this hellhole, I’ll listen to whatever it is you need to tell me… and I’m not going to judge you. Promise.”

From the bed, Claire cleared her throat loudly. “Guys, this is really sweet–like, seriously, I think I might wind up with cavities–but somebody’s gotta get the cure from the west area.”

Leon nodded against Chris’s shoulder and pulled back, taking in a fortifying breath. “You two stay here with Sherry,” he said, and Chris’s poor abused heart clenched in fear at that idea, “I’ll go by–”

“No fucking way,” Chris interrupted, hearing the growl again and trying to get control of it. “We don’t split up, remember? I may be… uh…”

“Super horny?” Claire offered.

“ Shit , never say that in front of me again–but yes.” Rubbing his face, Chris checked the load in his Samurai Edge and met Leon’s eyes. “I may be super horny, but that doesn’t mean I can’t watch your back.”

Leon’s gaze searched his face, and whatever he saw there made him nod once. He took the security bracelet from Claire and strapped it around his wrist, then drew Matilda. “On me?”

“On you,” Chris murmured, keeping his eyes up. He wouldn’t allow whatever fucked up thing the G-Virus was trying to do to him endanger Leon’s life–and if that meant not looking at his ass for the duration, then so be it. “Lead the way.”

~***~

When the door to the west area opened to a darkened hallway and a dead soldier, Leon had to resist the urge to take a step back into Chris’s chest. The stench of blood was stronger than it had been in the greenhouse, and even picking up a stray grenade off the floor wasn’t compensation. After the corpse came a laboratory, one that Leon was able to power with the signal modulator, and they both squinted when the lights flickered on.

“Birkin was losing it,” Chris observed after taking a moment to read some of the harried notes and typed reports pinned to one of the walls. “Umbrella HQ told him to stop working on the G-Virus, and not only did he keep going–he tried to sell it to the US military.” A glance back in the direction of the fallen soldier. “Looks like they came to get the goods, but he used them on himself.”

Leon had taken the time Chris spent reading to do the same–but he was looking at maintenance logs. “If there’s a cure, it has to be in a bioreactor,” he reasoned, glancing up at the sign above a small locker room filled with hazmat suits. “Looks like we’ll have to pass through decontamination.” He looked over at Chris’s yellow and red eyes, frowning. “I’m not sure you’ll make the cut.”

“No splitting up,” Chris reminded, and when he turned his head, Leon could see the veins in his cheek and neck stood out a deep, sickly purple against his skin. “I can deal with some ultraviolet lights.”

To Leon’s relief, they were able to stroll through the decontamination chamber without a problem, though Chris did hiss with discomfort when the spray that came from the walls struck him. Beyond the decontamination chamber was another catwalk leading to a single door, which slid open as soon as Leon was close enough. Then they were in another laboratory, but Leon barely noticed the eyeballs floating in one of the tanks before them or the office to their right–his attention was grabbed by the bioreactor to their left.

“ Shit , it’s locked,” he said as soon as he got close enough, smacking a hand against the outer housing in frustration. Through the tiny window, he could make out a vial of antiviral agent. There was a depression near the base of the bioreactor for some kind of key–one that they didn’t have. “Now what?”

Chris was silent for a moment beside him, studying the depression… and then he almost violently shoved a hand into one of the pockets on his STARS vest. “Try this,” he said, holding out Sherry’s pendant… which looked to be the right size and shape. “If this is what it unlocks, it would explain why Irons wanted it so badly.”

Leon snatched the pendant and placed it into the depression, nearly collapsing in relief when he was able to twist the lock and the bioreactor slid open. He reached in and grabbed the vial instead, tucking it away in a pouch for safekeeping. “You think that’s enough for two people? Sherry’s pretty small… but you’re pretty huge.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Chris said as they headed back to the lab’s entrance. “Right now let’s just focus on getting back to her and Claire.”

~***~

They almost made it.

Just as they were about to pass through the door back through decontamination, the ceiling panels in the room behind them gave an almighty groan and crashed down to the catwalk. Chris turned around in tandem with Leon, just in time to see the horrendous amalgamation of William Birkin and the Tyrant rising from a crouch, every part of its body throbbing and writhing.

“You again ?” Leon practically spat, already raising Matilda. “Why the fuck can’t you just stay dead ?!”

“William!” The door to decontamination opened and out came Annette, limping badly but aiming some kind of miniature grenade launcher at the thing that used to be her husband. She barely gave Leon a passing glance, but her gaze stuck on Chris long enough that he thought she might turn her weapon on him. Ultimately she didn’t, choosing instead to address what was left of William: “This ends now.”

She pulled the trigger and an acid round hit William head-on, causing him to scream and collapse.

“Well, that seems a little too easy,” Chris said, but the three of them approached the mutated man anyway. While he chose to keep his gun aimed at William, he wasn’t surprised when Annette switched her aim to Chris, with Leon aiming his gun at her head an instant later. “Annette… please, don’t.”

“We have the antiviral agent,” Leon told her, his voice gone uncharacteristically flinty. “It’s too late for your husband, but Chris and Sherry can be cured.”

Annette let out a strangled laugh. “You think he can be cured?” she asked incredulously, gesturing at Chris. He hadn’t looked in a mirror, but he knew that something was wrong with his eyes, his face. “You’ve seen him, right? The virus has already bonded with his cells–he wouldn’t be walking and talking if it hadn’t.” Her upper lip curled as she looked Chris over. “Your body accepted the G-Virus. The antiviral agent won’t help you–in fact, using it now might kill you.”

Behind her, Chris watched Leon falter. “You’re lying,” he said, voice shaking. “You have to be–”

William Birkin let out a guttural roar and surged upward, grabbing Annette with a massive clawed hand and squeezing until her ribs snapped like twigs. Then he tossed her aside like a child might a discarded toy, her body slamming into a metal panel and falling limply to the platform below. And as Chris and Leon watched in horror, Birkin only continued to grow, sprouting new limbs and one massive head filled with teeth like knives.

At that moment, Chris knew what he had to do.

He holstered his gun quickly and turned toward Leon, taking his face in his hands to pull him in for a passionate kiss. He tried to convey everything he felt for the younger man in that one gesture and was certain he fell short, even as the feel of Leon’s mouth under his and those clever hands on his body made the virus in Chris’s blood sing. It was over far too soon, and Chris allowed himself one more second to drink in Leon’s features before he planted one hand on his chest and shoved him hard, using the other hand to lower the elevator they had been standing on.

Leon’s confused, slightly dazed expression turned to one of disbelief and terror. “ Chris ! What the fuck are you doing ?!”

“You heard what she said!” Chris replied, practically shouting to be heard over the wailing sirens and Birkin’s rage. “I can’t be cured.” He pulled out the magnum, checked the load, and met Leon’s teary, devastated eyes. “Go save Sherry,” he said, and turned to look death in the face. “I got this.”

Chapter Text

Leon was going to kill Chris if they both survived long enough to see each other again.

He raced back to the security room as fast as he could, cursing under his breath the whole way, and made a beeline for the first aid kit he’d left at Claire’s bedside. She was wide awake and aiming her gun at his head, forcing herself up into a sitting position with a grunt of pain. 

“Did you find the cure?” she asked as Leon dug around for the syringe kit he’d seen earlier. She peered around him and frowned, hissing when making the expression pulled at the wound on her face. “Leon? Where’s Chris?”

“Fighting William Birkin,” Leon replied, extracting the vial of antiviral agent from his pouch and shoving it into Claire’s hands. “Here, hold this.”

“Wait, he’s fighting that freak we hit with the shipping container? Again ?” Claire’s voice rose in volume, incredulous and pissed even as she held the vial steady so Leon could insert the needle. “And you left him alone ?”

“He didn’t give me a choice,” Leon said grimly, drawing up the contents of the vial into the syringe and tapping it to get rid of any bubbles. “And he won’t be alone for long, because we’re going to go help him.” He crouched down in front of Sherry, gently sweeping her hair away from the side of her neck. “Sorry, kiddo,” he murmured, pressing the needle into her jugular and pushing the plunger down. “This is gonna suck.”

“I don’t understand,” Claire said, pushing herself to her feet and wobbling for a second, then regaining her balance. “Did you already give Chris his dose?”

Leon’s throat closed on the next breath he sucked in as he watched the signs of infection begin to recede from Sherry’s face almost instantaneously. She whimpered and grabbed at his arm, clearly in pain, and Leon held her hand while he looked up at Claire and felt a tear roll down his cheek. “Annette showed up to try and kill William, and she told us… Claire, Chris isn’t like Sherry. The G-Virus–it’s bonded with his cells, his body has already accepted it. That’s why his symptoms plateaued when Sherry’s didn’t.” His lower lip trembled and he bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. “The antiviral agent wouldn’t work on him. It’s too late.”

Claire looked like Leon had just punched her in the gut. “That’s why he stayed behind to fight Birkin,” she said hollowly. “Because he thinks he’s a lost cause.”

Leon shook his head as he stood up, tossing the syringe aside and putting his hand on Claire’s good shoulder. “I refuse to believe that,” he said, setting his jaw and using the back of his other hand to wipe the wetness off his face. “Now let’s go save his ass.”

~***~

As far as killing William Birkin went, Chris sincerely hoped that the third time would be the charm.

The elevator had let them off in a sunken area of the facility, the kind with propane tanks and power generators. That gave Birkin a lot to play with as far as projectiles and flames were concerned, but Chris found he could dodge both of those threats fairly easily. In fact, everything about combat felt easier, from aiming to running to taking a hit and popping back up again. He knew it had to be a side effect of the G-Virus, but considering Birkin was now the size of a small building and had four fucking arms , Chris would take whatever help he could get.

The sparkshot turned out to be more useful than Chris had anticipated–charging Birkin up with electricity and following that with bullets or an explosion was effective for staggering the freak, at least temporarily. His constant swaying and shuffling made it difficult to hit the huge eyeball on his shoulder or the ones that had developed on his back and leg, and Chris knew that was the only way to take him down for good.

A lack of ammo was also rapidly becoming a problem. The sparkshot only had so many sets of prongs, and it was slow as hell to reload. He was out of bullets for the Samurai Edge, and the Lightning Hawk only had a few rounds left. A glance up told him Annette hadn’t moved from where she’d fallen after William tossed her aside, so she wouldn’t be any help, and Leon–

Leon jumped down into the makeshift arena, landing with his knees bent and rolling to avoid breaking anything. “They make that look way easier in the movies,” he commented once he was on his feet again, blasting Birkin with the shotgun before side-eyeing Chris’s shocked face and asking, “Did you honestly think that after everything we’ve done tonight, I wouldn’t come back for you?”

“Guess I should’ve known better,” Chris said hoarsely, a pulse of affection for the rookie who had turned out to be so much more than that making his chest feel warm. A glance up told him that Claire was crouched beside Annette with Sherry–and the girl was alive, no trace of infection in sight. “It worked?”

Leon nodded, moving in wordless tandem with Chris to shoot at the eye on Birkin’s back. “Yeah, it did–she’s okay.” He screwed his face up. “Well, not okay –her mom’s dying and her dad’s a monster. But she’ll live, and right now that’s what matters.”

“Agreed,” Chris said, firing off the last bullet from the magnum and debating what the hell to do next. He figured if he left Leon out of another one of his plans he might actually kill him, so: “I’m faster now–stronger, too. I got burned on the side of my head earlier and I can feel it healing already.” He sidestepped one of Birkin’s swinging arms. “I’ve got an idea, but I need you to cover me.”

“You got it, big guy.” Leon was already backing up, still firing the occasional shot at Birkin’s wholly unrecognizable countenance. “Hey, ugly! Come and get me!”

~***~

Whatever Leon had expected Chris to do, it wasn't to scramble up Birkin’s back and punch straight through the jelly of the eyeball that made up the mutant’s shoulder.

“Fucking insane,” Leon said under his breath, popping off rounds at Birkin’s feet to try and keep him distracted. He wasn’t sure whether he was referring to Chris or the situation at large, but the words felt appropriate. While an eyeball, especially one of that size, wasn’t exactly made of stone, the amount of force that had to be behind the punch to make it explode wasn’t human. And as much as that should’ve scared Leon shitless… it didn’t. Despite all his old fears and misgivings, he trusted Chris, and it was clear that the other man was trying to control the virus instead of the reverse. “Maybe I’m fucking insane.”

“Leon!” Chris was yelling over Birkin’s agonized roaring, having just slammed his fist through the eyeball on Birkin’s back. He was swinging down now, dodging Birkin’s flailing claws so he could land a devastating blow to the eyeball sticking out of Birkin’s massive thigh. “Flamethrower!”

“Get clear!” Leon traded Matilda for the flamethrower and opened it up to full blast, turning his face away from the searing blowback. It was impossible to see Birkin clearly through the heatwaves in the air and the flames engulfing his body, but he was doing something , and then Chris was tackling Leon around the waist, the flamethrower was flying out of Leon’s hands and they were rolling as Birkin hurled a huge power generator at them with his dying scream–

Leon put his hands up in a futile attempt to block whatever was about to fall on him… but the impact never came.

Instead, when Leon moved his hands he saw Chris in front of him, holding the power generator up like–well, not like it was nothing , but no ordinary person would’ve been able to lift something so large and heavy. With a grunt of effort he pushed it to the side, where it crashed apart in a cacophony of crunching metal and shattering plastic. Above them, that computerized voice was saying something about a quarantine being lifted, but all Leon could do was stare at the expanse of Chris’s back with something like awe.

When Chris turned to face him his chest heaved as he caught his breath. His eyes were… odd, to say the least, but they grew less off-putting the more Leon looked at them. Same went for the vivid pigment of the veins under his skin. “You okay?”

Leon nodded, taking the hand Chris offered to help him up and feeling just the tiniest bit dizzy when Chris pulled him to his feet. “I’m still pissed at you,” he said, but couldn’t resist the urge to wrap his arms around those broad shoulders in a hug. “ Never do that again.”

“I won’t. I promise.” Chris spoke in his ear like he had back in the security room, only this time he followed the words up with a kiss to Leon’s temple. “But Leon–”

“ No ,” Leon interjected, pulling back enough to look into Chris’s yellow eyes and wipe a stray drop of blood off his cheek with his thumb. “Listen to me, okay? Sherry’s better, which means we can get the fuck out of here–and once we do that, we’re going to find your friend Rebecca and she’ll figure out a way to help you.” He swallowed hard, feeling his own eyes burn with tears for god knew how many times that night. “If I didn’t get to give up, then neither do you. Okay?”

Chris searched his face for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Okay,” he whispered, touching their foreheads together in a brief moment of respite. “Okay… Leon, I–”

ATTENTION: SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED! USE THE CENTRAL ELEVATOR TO EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY TO THE BOTTOM-LEVEL TRAIN PLATFORM!

Chapter Text

Wednesday, September 30th, 1998 - 5:01 am CST

ATTENTION: SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED! USE THE CENTRAL ELEVATOR TO EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY TO THE BOTTOM-LEVEL TRAIN PLATFORM!

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Leon exclaimed in the face of the announcement repeating itself, grabbing Chris by the arm and pulling him toward the elevator. Around them Umbrella’s NEST began to tremble and rock, chunks of concrete and metal coming loose from the walls and falling like particularly shitty rain. “Come on, we need to go.”

“Yeah, I’d say sticking around would be a pretty bad idea,” Chris said wryly, grinning when Leon punched him in the shoulder. “Is it bad that I think you’re cute when you’re mad?”

“I won’t be cute once I start killing zombies again,” Leon muttered, not expecting it when Chris pushed him bodily against the safety railing around the elevator. Hot lips grazed the side of his neck and he gasped, a flare of desire within him from that simple touch. “ Chris –now’s not a good time.”

Chris stilled against him, pressing a more chaste kiss high on Leon’s cheek. “Sorry.” A pause. “But… you’re not saying no?”

When has saying no ever done you any good? that snide little voice that sounded like Derek wondered, and Leon took a deep breath, smelled leather and gunpowder and cigarettes, and remembered exactly who was holding him. “I’m saying not right now ,” he managed to get out, amazed that the words sounded relatively normal. “Not never .”

“ Guys !” Claire was on them as soon as they reached the platform, wrapping them both up in a hug before she pushed Leon aside and smacked her brother upside the head. “I’m so glad you’re both okay but what in the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you ?! Did Mom drop you on your head when you were a baby?”

“It would be hard for me to remember that, since I was a baby and all,” Chris pointed out, blocking the second blow Claire tried to land while sniffling through her unshed tears. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said with that brazen sincerity of his. “Is Annette…?”

“She’s almost gone,” Claire replied, glancing back at Sherry. The little girl was sprawled over her mother's shallowly-moving chest, crying openly. “But she gave me something.” She opened the hand that hadn’t been used to assault Chris, revealing a vial. “She said this was the last sample of the G-Virus in existence, and that we have to destroy it.” She didn’t look up from the vial, her voice cracking a little as she continued to speak: “She also said that Ada’s a mercenary, not an FBI agent. This is what she was looking for, what we were looking for–and I can’t give it to her, can I?”

“No,” Chris said gently, curling Claire’s fingers back up around the vial. “You can’t. But if you hang on to it for a while longer, maybe Rebecca could use it to make a cure for me.”

Leon nodded his agreement absently, slipping past the Redfields to drop to one knee next to Sherry and Annette. “Sherry?” he ventured, putting a careful hand on her shoulder. As he did so, an ominous rumbling began somewhere in the bowels of the facility. “Sherry, you have to say goodbye to your mom.” Only suddenly it wasn’t Annette lying there but Matilda, coated from head to toe in her own blood, and Leon had to talk around the lump in his throat. “We have to go, Sherry. I’m sorry.”

Sherry lifted her head enough to peer at him through watery eyes. “I know,” she whispered, allowing Leon to help her to her feet. “Leon, I’m scared.”

“We all are, kid,” Chris said, touching Leon’s lower back briefly before he extended his arms to Sherry. “Come on, I’ll carry you. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

~***~

Leon made a point of taking the lead on their way to the main shaft, Claire at his side and Chris bringing up the rear with Sherry. She clung to him tightly, arms locked around his neck and her head pillowed on his shoulder, and Leon felt another pang of empathy for this girl whose story was so different from his own or the Redfields’, but no less tragic. She would need a lot of help once they made it back to the real world, and he fully intended to be there for her every step of the way.

They hustled out of the west area and onto the catwalk in the main shaft, but Claire drew up short at the same time Leon spotted a woman using some kind of hacking tool to unlock the elevator controls. She was pretty, with fine-boned features and smartly-bobbed black hair that shone under the lights. Her outfit of a burgundy cocktail dress, tights, and high heels was completely impractical, but somehow she made it work even as she limped toward them, shock and relief flashing in her dark eyes.

“I was just thinking about you,” Claire commented, clicking the puzzle pieces in Leon’s head together–this was Ada Wong, then. He felt her shift next to him, stance changing to something more defensive. Her hand moved, palming the vial that held the sample. “Surprised to see me?”

“Very,” Ada replied. She was reassessing now as she stopped after descending the steps to their catwalk, eyes pinging from Claire to Leon, then to Sherry and Chris–the latter of whom she stared at for several seconds, no doubt working out that he was infected. “I didn’t want to leave you, Claire, but when that thing showed up it didn’t give me much choice.”

“Right,” Claire drawled. “You know, Ada, we made a good team… but I’ve got to ask you something.”

Ada had almost no tells, but Leon caught the slightest twitch of impatience at the corner of her eye. “The way’s clear–we can all leave together. Please tell me you got it.”

“I got it.” Claire’s voice dropped to something hollow. “But I’m not giving it to you, because you’re not FBI.”

Something like regret passed over Ada’s face. “Oh, Claire,” she said, shifting just a little–and with the fluid grace of a trained killer, she had a gun aimed at them. “Why couldn’t this be easy?”

“Because as much as I wanted to trust you–” Claire drew her gun and pointed it at Ada, and Leon caught the ghost of a smile on her face when he joined her without being prompted “–I realized I couldn’t.”

“I really hoped it wouldn’t end up like this.” It sounded like Ada meant that, for whatever it was worth. She eyed Chris again. “Is this your brother? If you give me the sample, I can get him to someone who can cure him.”

Behind them, Chris set Sherry down on her feet and snorted. “Why, so whoever’s paying you can turn around and infect millions of others?” He racked the slide on his Samurai Edge–Leon was intimately familiar with that sound by now–and aimed at her too. “I don’t think so.”

Claire, meanwhile, had gone completely still. “You know, I told you a lot of shit,” she said slowly, anger leeching in around each word. “But I deliberately didn’t tell you about Chris–I just said I was a journalist who was looking for the truth about Umbrella. So who the hell are you working for, and how do they know my brother?”

Ada opened her mouth to speak–and a bullet wound blossomed on her shoulder instead.

At the same time, the catwalk behind them gave way.

When Leon regained his balance and looked back, he saw Annette. She leaned heavily against the wall, white as a sheet with a gun in her hand, and as he watched she collapsed for the final time and went still.

Then the rest of the catwalk started to falter, and Ada lost her balance and fell over the edge.

Despite the betrayal she’d endured, Claire still lunged to help her with a cry of her name. She hit the catwalk hard on her belly as she grabbed Ada’s arm, and Leon felt a rush of horror as the vial of G-Virus was knocked free of her other hand, tumbling into the rapidly-growing rubble below them.

“ No !” He might’ve gone over the edge of the catwalk after it if Chris hadn’t grabbed him around the waist, pulling Leon bodily toward the stairs with Sherry in tow. “Chris, why did you–”

“It’s too late!” Chris shouted, looking stricken but still moving anyway. He dropped Leon and Sherry off by the elevator and ran back for Claire and Ada, the catwalk groaning and shaking ominously. “Claire, we have to–”

Through the haze of dust caused by breaking concrete, Leon just barely made out Ada’s expression in the second before she twisted her arm out of Claire’s grip and fell. The smile she offered Claire was small and genuine as she told her to take care of herself… and then she was gone, lost to the void beneath them.

“God damn it!” Claire shrieked, pounding her fist down on the catwalk even as Chris lifted her up, the twisting of her expression making the slash on her face open up again. “Let me go!”

“Not until we’re in the elevator!” was Chris’s response, not remotely phased when her heel connected with his thigh.

Leon got his body working again and grabbed Sherry under the arms, and the four of them piled onto the circular platform together. It started moving downward almost immediately, and they were treated to a 360-degree view of NEST imploding on itself. None of them bothered looking at it, too busy reloading weapons with trembling hands and checking on their respective injuries.

“Shit,” Chris remarked, and when Leon, Claire, and Sherry all looked at him questioningly, he showed them his arm; where the licker’s claw had punctured it hours before, it was now completely healed. A closer look at his face revealed that the butterflies on his cheek were stuck to a thin scar, not an open cut. “If I start thinking about this too much I’m going to freak out.”

“Well, we’re in an elevator, so I might join you,” Leon joked, and when Claire raised a brow at him he added, “Claustrophobic.”

“I used to think that meant you were afraid of Santa Claus,” Claire admitted, which gave them all a chuckle, including Sherry. “Of course, I was the kid that set traps to try and capture Santa Claus, so…”

The elevator reached the end of the line and the doors opened to some kind of control room, angled like a hallway with big monitors running along the wall.

NINE MINUTES UNTIL DETONATION!

“Fucking delightful!” Leon said to no one in particular as they ran through a door and onto a platform that led to a short stairway and another door. Everything in this area was bare-bones industrial, explosions causing fiery starbursts in the distance. “I am going to leave this place the worst review on Expedia!”

“Get in line!” Chris tossed back, the four of them busting through the door and cramming onto another elevator. He picked up Sherry again when they hit bottom, spotting the wriggling vines amongst the smoke before Leon or Claire did. “What the hell are those things?!”

“A pain in the ass!” Claire popped off with her grenade launcher, which was good because Leon was fresh out of fuel for the flamethrower. “And they don’t fucking die!”

“You guys swear a lot!” Sherry chimed in, pointing out their next destination. “Door!”

They moved as a unit onto yet another platform, and while Leon and Claire chose to climb down the ladder, Chris merely jumped down and left cracks in the floor that lined up with his boots. Evidently someone else had a similar idea, because the next thing Leon knew he was face-to-face with a Tyrant that could’ve been a carbon copy of the first one he and Chris encountered in the RPD.

“Uh… is this a fucking joke?” Leon wondered, voice cracking as he shoved Claire ahead of him. “Go, go!”

They hurtled through another door, dodging around explosions with the Tyrant hot on their heels, and Leon couldn’t have been more relieved when Chris’s heavy footsteps loosened the catwalk beneath them, cutting off the Tyrant’s pursuit and condemning it to a fiery death. More doors and more catwalks eventually brought them to a huge version of the circular elevator they rode earlier, only this one held an entire fucking train car.

The four of them clambered into the train car, and when Chris put Sherry down on the floor he crouched in front of her, hands on her shoulders. “Sherry, listen to me, okay?” Somehow the sincerity in Chris’s eyes was still visible even with their ghastly color change. “We’re going to get this elevator started, and you need to stay in here , no matter what you hear outside–got it?”

Sherry nodded and hunkered down, whispering a soft plea for them to be careful.

~***~

Chris was never going to stop being awed by how smart Leon was.

The rookie had taken one glance at the office next to the train car elevator and knew it would need some kind of power source, and then he managed to locate it inside the train car before they stepped out again. While he went to put it in place and throw the switch, Chris took a moment to study his sister. The gash on her face was bleeding sluggishly once more, and that coupled with her torn clothes made her look like an extra from a slasher movie.

Like she knew what he was thinking–which she usually did–Claire tossed him a wry look. “Hey, not all of us can heal like Superman.”

“I don’t feel like Superman,” Chris admitted, tapping his trigger finger against the side of the Lightning Hawk. “And I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

The lights on the train car flickered to life, and Leon came jogging out of the office with a slightly unhinged grin on his face, carrying–

“Is that a minigun ?” Claire asked incredulously… and enviously. Beneath them, the platform began a slow but steady descent. “Damn, Kennedy. That’s hot.”

“Hey,” Chris protested–weakly, because it was hot, and not doing his fucked up mating drive any favors. “I thought I said not to–”

There was a guttural noise from above them, and a second later none other than William Birkin dropped down onto the top of the train car. He was even more mutated than the last time Chris and Leon had fought him, huge fang-like juts of bone sticking out of writhing muscle and tangled organs. In the middle of his chest was a huge cluster of eyeballs that Chris had the distinct feeling looked a lot like his own at the moment, and as they watched in disbelief Birkin screeched again, out for blood.

“Okay, fuckface, let’s dance,” Leon said, aiming the minigun at Birkin’s disgusting visage. “But this is the last goddamn time.”

Chapter Text

Fighting Birkin on the train elevator involved a lot of disgusting belly flops, countless amounts of ammunition, and more exploding eyeballs than Leon wanted to think about.

Between the three of them it was–well, not easy , but certainly more manageable than it would’ve been to fight the mutant alone. Now that they all had a handle on each others’ approach to combat they moved together like a piece of machinery, calling out warnings and tossing clips of bullets back and forth when necessary. There were a couple of shaky moments, but soon Birkin was collapsing onto the platform in a steaming heap, blood streaming from his horrendous visage.

“Smell you later, bitch,” Claire said, glancing around as the elevator began to slow. They were almost to the bottom, the rest of the train waiting for them on the tracks. “Shit, we better get inside.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Leon dropped the empty minigun and shook out his stiff arms, the bullet wound in his shoulder a constant throbbing nuisance. Still, he reached out to touch Chris’s elbow when he didn’t move, busy staring at what was left of Birkin. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Chris murmured, looking for a second longer before he turned his infected eyes on Leon. “Just… thinking.”

“Not sure that suits you,” Leon quipped, gratified when it earned him a small smile. He tugged at Chris’s jacket, and together they mounted the steps behind Claire and entered the train car. Almost immediately he was hugged around the waist by Sherry, and put a hand on top of her head. “It’s okay, we’re here.”

“And we’re getting the fuck out of here, finally,” Claire added, marching to the front of the train car with purpose. A tunnel lay before them, dark and unknown but already leagues better than anything in Raccoon City. The car vibrated as the rest of its brethren were connected to it, and she looked back at them with her hand on the throttle. “Ready?”

Chris wrapped an arm around Leon, dropping a hand to Sherry’s shoulder. “Punch it.”

She did, and with a triumphant whistle, the train left the station.

~***~

Despite the fact that they were almost home free, Leon was checking the clock in his head for the countdown to detonation. He’d stopped paying attention to the announcements after five minutes, and that had been when they’d toppled Birkin, so there could only be a handful of seconds left. Hopefully they’d get far enough away–the train had definitely picked up a lot of speed–but it was still a concern.

“What’s the first thing you wanna do when we get out of here?” Claire asked Sherry, hands on her hips. “Because I want to take a shower.”

“I wanna see where you live,” Sherry said, looking around at them. “All of you.”

Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I had an apartment in Raccoon City… but we won’t be going there. And Leon was–in between places, which means he’s a bust too.”

Claire looked entirely too pleased with herself. “Then isn’t it a good thing that I rent my own little house about eight hours from here where we can all stay?” She winked at Chris and Leon. “Some of us might have to share a bed, but I think we can make it work.”

“We’ll have to get there first,” Leon pointed out, just as a deep, ominous rumble started up from the rear of the train. “Oh shit–!”

The explosion from NEST shook the whole train so hard Leon feared it would fall off the tracks, throwing the four of them against the nearest wall. His ribs and his shoulder weren’t pleased with that, and from the groan Claire let out her wound weren’t thrilled either. At least Chris had managed to catch Sherry before she could hurt herself, and the train was propelled forward…

Way, way too fast.

“ Hang on !” Leon shouted, right as they flew out of the tunnel and into an open field, the early morning sun so bright it was blinding. 

He only got to see it for a second before they were plowing straight into the ground, the rest of the train cars piling up behind theirs as they derailed, the back portion of their car crumpling like a tin can. A huge arm wrapped around him, crushing him into Chris’s broad chest along with Sherry and Claire. That was around the time they fell to the floor and bounced around the train car a little, physics being what they were, until finally everything went still and silent.

“Is everybody okay?” Claire asked after a beat where they all caught their breath, pushing herself up on her good arm. “Because I feel like my brain just got thrown in a blender.”

“Same,” Leon groaned out, sitting up and looking around. The door they’d used to board the train car was a no-go, pulverized by the crash, so the only way out would be– “We’ve gotta break the windshield.”

“Pretty sure I can handle that,” Chris said, putting Sherry in Leon’s lap and clambering to his feet. Whatever darkness Leon had seen lurking at the edges of his features while he was studying Birkin was thankfully nowhere in sight. “Give me a minute.”

Leon allowed himself a few seconds of admiring the way Chris’s jeans hugged his ass before he looked at Claire curiously. “Did you mean what you said? About…” He hesitated. “I mean, Chris is your brother and Sherry doesn’t have anywhere else to go, but–”

“Leon.” Claire interrupted him with surprising gentleness, smiling as she thumbed away some grime on his forehead. “When I said we could all go to my place, I meant everyone . Including you, dumbass.”

Up front, the glass of the windshield shattered unceremoniously after Chris grabbed an overhead support and used it to swing his feet over the control panel. His momentum carried him outside, where he rolled in the dirt and came up standing, a grin on his face. “Come on–I’ll catch you.”

“Me first!” Sherry exclaimed, no doubt just as relieved to be out of Raccoon City as the rest of them. She scrambled up and out of the train, leaping into Chris’s waiting arms. “Guys, what are you waiting for?”

Leon went next when Claire shoved him forward, falling weightless for a split second before Chris caught him, hands tight around Leon’s waist as he set him on the ground. While Chris repeated that process with Claire, Leon took a moment to scan their surroundings. The train had emerged from the side of a hill, and they were standing in a field that looked like it might’ve been farmland once, but was now unattended. There was a road about fifty yards away, all cracked asphalt and no stripes.

“Wow, what a pleasant area,” Claire commented dryly, squinting at the positioning of the sun before examining the road. “Looks like if we hang a left, we’ll be headed in the right direction.”

“Might be a while before we find civilization,” Chris said, shrugging off the sparkshot and letting it fall to the ground. It was out of ammo, and it wasn’t likely they’d find more for such a specialized weapon. “We should ditch anything we aren’t going to use–less weight to carry around–and we need to hide our other weapons. We can try bumming a ride if we see a car, or maybe stealing one.”

Leon nodded his agreement, divesting himself of the flamethrower. He kept the shotgun but made sure it was under his borrowed jacket instead of over it; Matilda went back in her holster, which blended well enough with his pants that it wasn’t particularly noticeable. He shrugged off his mangled RPD vest too, which left him with only an undershirt, but he figured between the leather over it and a lot of walking he’d be warm enough.

Grumbling to herself, Claire dropped her empty grenade launcher and put away her SLS 60, shrugging her jacket back on when Sherry offered it to help hide the TMP hanging between her shoulder blades; beside her, Chris stuck the magnum in the back of his waistband and made use of his thigh holster for the Samurai Edge. The whole bit would’ve been comical if not for how tired and dirty they were, like they’d just survived a war.

“Guess we better start walking,” Leon said when they were all squared away, taking the first steps toward the road. He felt a warmth in his chest when the others followed, a sense of belonging that he’d never encountered before that was only amplified when Sherry took his hand. “Looks like our long night isn’t over just yet.”

~***~

They were forced to walk for even longer than Chris had anticipated, but at least the monotony was broken up by almost getting run over by a truck driver (a not-so-nice flashback to the beginning of his and Leon’s ordeal) and Sherry’s seemingly endless questions. She reminded him of Claire at that age, curious about everyone and everything, and great at bouncing back after something traumatizing.

“So…” After asking about Claire’s college classes, Leon’s time at the police academy, and Chris’s experience in the Air Force and with STARS–all of which they censored in one way or another–Sherry finally hesitated before finishing a thought. “Are you guys boyfriends?”

Chris tripped on nothing and almost face-planted into the road, which had recently grown striping and looked as though it was paved recently; beside him, Leon turned the approximate color of a tomato, and on Sherry’s other side Claire was snickering, because of course she was.

“Uh,” Leon said, meeting Chris’s gaze and smiling a little sheepishly. It was adorable and sweet, and Chris wanted him so badly it hurt . “We actually just met last night.”

Sherry’s face scrunched up. “Really? ‘Cause you don’t act like it.”

Claire guffawed, slapping a hand over her mouth before agreeing through her fingers, “No, they really don’t.”

“Jesus Christ, there’s two of them,” Chris muttered to himself, but then the sight of something on the horizon saved him. “Is that… a town?”

“It looks like it,” Leon said, glancing around at their group as they all suddenly found a second wind, stepping just a little faster. “If it’s got a motel, we should get a room. Chris doesn’t have his wallet, but I–” he patted his ass, which Chris felt was unnecessary since he’d very deliberately put Leon’s wallet there when he changed his pants for him hours ago “–do.”

“Me too.” Claire pulled said wallet from her belt bag and pulled out some cash. “This should be enough for a night.” She handed it to Leon–they were getting closer now, and incredibly the very first sign coming up on their right belonged to a motel boasting vacancies. “Out of all of us, you look the best.”

“Use a fake name,” Chris told him, and Leon was more than smart enough to know why. They drew level with the sign, with Chris glad to see it was the type of establishment where every room opened onto the parking lot; if they had to make a quick exit for any reason, it would be much easier. Speaking of easy, across the street was a fucking Walmart –it was about time their luck turned around. “And once we’ve got rooms, we can get some supplies.”

Chapter Text

A couple of hours later, Leon stood in an off-white shower cubicle and watched the water swirl red and black down the drain as it sluiced over his battered body.

He’d rented the motel rooms and jogged across the street to the Walmart in something of a daze, finding himself constantly looking over his shoulder, fingers twitching for Matilda’s grips even though there was nothing for him to shoot at. Thankfully the girl behind the desk at the motel was busy sucking down a joint and flipping through a gossip magazine, barely giving him a second glance, and at the store it was early enough that it wasn’t crowded. The elderly woman he’d had as a cashier had looked at him a bit oddly when she saw his assortment of items–everything from food and water to toiletries and clothes–but it was also a Walmart, so she wasn’t paid enough to give a shit.

Their rooms were next to each other and had a connecting door, both outfitted with a queen-sized bed, a television, and not much else. When Leon had walked in with a ridiculous amount of shopping bags, Chris was sitting on the edge of the bed, telephone plastered to his ear and deep in conversation with someone Leon presumed was Rebecca. He’d gestured for Leon to take the bathroom first, and that wasn’t an opportunity he was about to pass up.

It took three rounds with shampoo to get all the grime out of his hair, and a couple of good scrubs with a scratchy washcloth and soap for his skin to look normal. He made sure to rinse out his bullet wound, hissing through his teeth at the sting, but better that than an infection. As usual he didn’t linger too long on his back or his ass, able to feel the scars under his fingertips and hating every second.

Once Leon was completely clean he felt like a different person, at least until he stepped out of the shower and peered into the mirror. The bruising on his neck was livid, and his ribs looked like someone had splashed purple paint on them–his ankle was also making its opposition to the consecutive hours of use known. But it could’ve been a lot worse, all things considered, so he toweled off and wrapped his shoulder in clean bandages, then slipped into his generic t-shirt and sweatpants, shivering a little as he exited the bathroom.

His eyes found Chris immediately, leaning against the connecting door’s jamb as he spoke with Claire: “–so the only way I can spread it is if I bite someone.”

“Shower’s free,” Leon volunteered. He was most definitely not thinking about Chris biting him. Nope. “I take it you talked to Rebecca?”

“Yeah, I did.” Chris turned his body to the side so Leon could join the conversation, Claire looking equally clean and refreshed opposite them; Leon was pleased to see the clothes he’d picked out for her fit nicely. “I gave her the rundown and she says she’ll meet us at Claire’s place–with any luck, we’ll be able to get there tomorrow, but I think we all need some rest.”

“She also told him that if he hasn’t mutated any more since he got bit, he probably won’t,” Claire added. Her wet hair hung around her face, and the cut across her cheek seemed to have stopped bleeding for good. “And like you just heard, she thinks he can only spread the infection through a bite… plus, she said Sherry might be able to help us cure him.”

Leon thought about that for a moment. “I mean, Sherry has the antiviral agent in her blood now, so… that makes sense.” He smiled absently when Chris touched his shoulder and moved toward the shopping bags, asking Claire, “Sleep or food?”

“Sleep, I think,” Claire told him, watching her brother gather up his clothes and toiletries before he went into the bathroom. Then she looked at Leon head-on, her expression turning serious. “I know Chris better than anyone except maybe Jill… and I can tell you that on top of genuinely having the hots for you, he’s hurting.”

“Did he ask Rebecca about that?” Leon cleared his throat awkwardly. “The, uh… mating drive… thing?”

Claire nodded. “She said it was normal, and he should be able to keep it in check, but it’s… painful. Like having an itch you can’t quite scratch.” She sighed. “Look, Chris would never ask you to help him… and I kind of got the vibe that the idea of having sex with him made you uncomfortable.”

“Not… uncomfortable,” Leon hedged, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He wrapped his arms around himself and made a mental note to grab a sweatshirt. “More like… it’s something I want, but last time around I had a… bad experience.” A loaded pause. “The non-consensual kind.”

Claire’s face softened with sympathy. “Oh, Leon. I’m sorry.” She stepped forward and hugged him, speaking quietly near his ear: “Chris would never try to force you into something you didn’t want–you know that, right?”

Leon thought back to every time Chris’s hands had been on his body, before and after he got infected; except for when he’d tried to pull Leon to the floor in the security room, he’d been almost painfully considerate. “I know,” he whispered, because he did –Chris had practically burst into tears the one time he’d accidentally crossed a line. But Chris also didn’t know the full extent of how Derek had fucked Leon up. “It’s not him. It’s me.”

Claire drew back first, keeping a hand on his good shoulder. “Just… talk to him, okay? And if you decide the only thing you wanna do is pass the fuck out for twelve hours, I’m sure he’ll be fine with that, too.”

The lube and condoms stuffed into the bottom of one of the backpacks Leon had purchased suddenly felt radioactive. “Yeah, okay.” He mustered up a smile. “Thanks, Claire. I’m glad I got to meet you, even if it was like this.” He half-turned back toward the room, then paused. “Wanna order pizza later?”

Claire returned the smile, eyes crinkled at the corners. “The feeling’s mutual, Leon. And I will absolutely obliterate a pizza with you once I get my beauty sleep.”

~***~

When Chris came out of the bathroom, he found Leon curled up under the covers in bed, flipping channels on the TV.

“I take it there were no bedbugs?” Chris peeked through the curtains–still a normal-looking parking lot outside.

“Nope, and it actually smells like they do laundry once in a while.” Leon scooted over when Chris approached, effectively putting himself between Leon and the door. It was locked in triplicate with an old, heavy chair pushed in front of it, but if last night taught Chris anything, it was that they couldn’t be too careful. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, I think. Talking to Rebecca helped a little.” Chris leaned back against the headboard, feeling some of the tension bleed from his shoulders. He shut his eyes, debating with himself before adding, “When we finally killed Birkin, and I was looking down at what was left of him, I thought…”

Leon picked up the thread: “You were afraid you’d wind up like him.”

“Yeah.” Chris sighed, turning his head and looking into Leon’s eyes. It soothed something in him, seeing the younger man wrapped up in a too-big sweatshirt and blankets, safe and whole. “And I knew I’d take myself out before I let that happen. Before I let myself hurt you, or Claire or Sherry, or anyone else.”

“Chris…” Leon shifted, their legs touching, and when Chris opened his arms he pressed himself against his side. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said firmly, still-damp hair tickling Chris’s cheek when he put his head on Chris’s shoulder. “You’re not… believe me, I know what people who hurt people just because they can are like. You’re not one of them.”

Chris let out a shuddering breath, touching his lips to Leon’s temple. “That… I–thank you,” he whispered, and while that amplified sense of desire was still lurking in the back of his mind, it was actually easier to ignore when he had Leon close like this. But he had to make sure Leon knew where he stood: “And please don’t feel like you owe me anything, or make yourself uncomfortable just because it seems like it might help me.” The thought alone made him feel physically ill. “I’ve got a handle on it now, I swear.”

He could hear Leon’s heartbeat tick up, the heavy way he swallowed before he spoke. “I meant what I said earlier,” he began, tilting his head back so their noses brushed, those tempting lips right there . “About it being the wrong time and place, not… not that I didn’t want it. Want you , because I do.” He pulled back a little, glancing away. “But I really do need to tell you something first. About me… and Derek.”

~***~

Chris’s fingertips touched Leon’s jaw, stroked his hair behind his ear. “You can tell me anything,” he murmured, gently squeezing the back of Leon’s neck. “Whatever it is… you don’t need to be afraid of how I’m going to react. I’m not going to see you any differently.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Leon muttered, mouth gone dry and stomach rolling with anxiety. Taking a deep breath, he sat back further so he could get his hands between them, unzipping the sweatshirt and slipping it off. “When you changed me into that uniform back at RPD, you saw all the bruises. Did you notice anything else?”

Chris blushed , the veins beneath his eyes standing out red as his skin turned pink. “I was trying not to look too hard,” he admitted, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “Didn’t want to be creepy. I figured it was bad enough that I was changing your clothes without your permission.”

“That’s–” Leon cut himself off, huffing out a laugh as he shook his head in disbelief. “Of course you didn’t look, what was I thinking?” He took another steadying breath and pulled his t-shirt over his head, careful of his gunshot wound. “You have my permission to look now, but you might not like what you see.”

It seemed like Chris wanted to protest, so Leon let his body do the talking and sat up on his knees, turning around so Chris could view his back. He could’ve cut the silence that followed with the knife Marvin gave him, and shoved his hands between his thighs to hide the way they were shaking. 

Leon knew exactly what Chris was seeing, of course, starting up top with the white, circular scars that littered his shoulders like craters on the moon. Those were from his father’s cigarettes, and the elder Kennedy was also responsible for the crosshatching of raised scars over Leon’s back; most were caused by his belt, but there were also a few from his class ring getting a little too enthusiastic over his kidneys. The belt scars continued on his ass and the backs of his thighs, but the pièce de résistance , so to speak, sat directly above his ass like a tramp stamp.

“My father gave me everything except for… that ,” Leon said, knowing that Chris’s eyes had to be focused on the crude carving of DEREK that filled his lower back, each scarred letter deeper and more gnarled than the last. His lower lip trembled and he blinked against involuntary tears, but they slid down his cheeks anyway. “We learned at the academy that one of the biggest reasons domestic abusers get caught is because they leave marks on their victims in visible places… but Derek never wanted me to forget that I was his property.” He practically spat the last word, but his ire was quickly replaced by weariness. “He used a box cutter. It hurt so much I blacked out.”

Chris was quiet for another agonizing moment, and then he asked a question Leon didn’t expect: “Can I touch you?”

Leon nodded, suddenly unable to speak. He pulled in a sharp breath through his nose when Chris pressed up against him from behind, tensing for just a second before going nearly boneless in his arms. He made a soft, surprised noise when Chris kissed the top of his shoulder, lips dragging over the cigarette burns. “You don’t… you’re not…?”

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Chris nuzzled behind his ear, hands hot like brands on Leon’s waist. When Leon made an incredulous, slightly embarrassed sound, Chris pulled back enough to turn him around again, tugging gently until Leon was straddling his thighs. And his eyes might’ve been the wrong color, but they were full of sincerity. “I mean it, Leon. Your scars… it’s not that they don’t matter, because of course they do. But they’re just a part of who you are, like anything else.” A pause. “Although if I ever run into your ex, only one of us will be walking away afterward.”

“About that…” Leon was still somewhat in shock, a shiver rolling through him when Chris’s fingertips rubbed soothing circles into his lower back, right over Derek’s name. “He, uh… he did more than beat me up. I… there were a few times when I m-maybe wasn’t in the mood, or I told him no and he…”

Chris went tense beneath him, yellow eyes flashing with barely-leashed anger. “He raped you?”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Leon hedged, even though he knew better both emotionally and from his time at the police academy. Before he could say anything else to undermine himself, he was wrapped up in Chris’s arms again, firm muscles pressing against him everywhere. “Chris?”

“Leon… god, I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Chris was the one shaking now, his face pressed against the side of Leon’s neck. “I’m trying like hell to keep it together, but all I want to do is go find that motherfucker, rip his head off shoulders, and use it like a basketball.”

Leon’s heart skipped a beat, and before he could think better of it he said, “I’m not sure that’s how we should introduce Sherry to sports.”

There was a split-second pause before Chris laughed, a full-bellied shocked sound that rumbled pleasantly against Leon’s back. Then he pulled away to look him in the eye, and Leon went completely breathless at the affection in his face. “Is it okay if I kiss you?”

Rather than responding with words, Leon closed the meager distance between them and pressed their lips together. His eyes fluttered shut as one of Chris’s hands ran up his spine and into his hair, the other one fitting perfectly into the dip of his waist. He allowed his own hands to wander a little, squeezing Chris’s stupidly huge biceps before framing his jaw, angling their mouths to better deepen the kiss.

When they had to come up for air, Chris shifted to lean back against the headboard again, only this time he had Leon sprawled on his chest. He sifted his fingers through Leon’s hair, the fingers of his other hand back to rubbing slow circles over the offending object that was Derek’s name. “You know,” he started, words a little rough, pupils dilated, “I don’t think I’ve ever liked kissing someone as much as I like kissing you.”

“Me neither,” Leon admitted, and heard himself let out a contented little hum when Chris held him closer, his head resting on the older man’s shoulder. It only took a shift of his leg for Leon to feel that Chris was half-hard, and he frowned. “You don’t want to…?”

“To quote someone much smarter than me–it’s a not now , not a never ,” Chris said, the warmth in his voice rivaling what poured off his body; it was like snuggling up to a furnace, and Leon loved it. It got even better when Chris pulled up the blankets over both of them, lips pressed to the crown of his head. “Let’s get some rest, okay?”

Leon would have responded, but he was already out like a light.

Chapter Text

Wednesday, September 30th, 1998 - 5:22 pm CST

Chris had fully intended to keep watch while Leon slept, but at some point he must’ve nodded off because the next thing he knew, Sherry’s little hand was shaking him.

“Chris, wake up,” she said, and blessedly there was no fear or alarm in her voice, only childlike impatience. “Claire ordered pizzas and if you and Leon don’t come into our room, she says we’ll eat them all ourselves!”

Chris chuckled at that, stretching as much as he could without jostling Leon, who was still passed out on top of him. Thankfully his bare back was hidden under the covers, so he wouldn’t have to answer any uncomfortable questions from Sherry. “Give us five minutes and we’ll be there, okay?” he said, then winked and added in a stage whisper, “Claire can be distracted with mozzarella sticks.”

Sherry’s face lit up. “How’d you know she ordered those?”

“I’m her brother, it’s my job to know things.” Chris couldn’t help but grin when she all but raced out of the room, glad to see the events of the previous night hadn’t damaged her too badly–at least not on the surface. He brought a hand up and carded it through Leon’s hair. “Hey, did you hear that? If we don’t get moving, we might starve.”

Leon made a little sound in the back of his throat and snuggled deeper into Chris’s embrace. “Have I told you I’m not a morning person?”

“No, but it’s also not morning,” Chris pointed out, chuckling again when Leon poked him in the ribs, finally opening his eyes to peer at Chris muzzily. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got tossed around like a crash-test dummy,” Leon grumbled, but he allowed Chris to press their lips together in a chaste kiss. “But I guess that makes up for it.” He pulled away to yawn, which had no right to be as cute as it was. “How about you? Still got the same number of limbs?”

“As far as I know.” Reluctantly, Chris let go of Leon so he could put his layers back on, sitting up and stretching for real. He caught Leon watching him and cocked an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”

The tops of Leon’s cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink. “Um. No. Nothing’s wrong.”

Chris watched him for another moment, then shook his head with a smile as they got off the bed. He may or may not have flexed a little just to watch Leon’s eyes track the movements of his muscles under his clothes. “Turns out you aren’t just cute when you’re angry–it’s all the time.”

Leon turned redder and muttered a halfhearted insult, following him into Claire and Sherry’s room.

~***~

“So I’ve been thinking,” Claire began after the four of them had gorged themselves on pizza, appetizers, and candy from Leon’s Walmart run. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but none of them were currently worried about nutrition. They were sprawled on the floor together in a rough circle, empty greasy boxes between them, and Sherry was still polishing off the last of their Coke. “We’re not gonna be able to rent a car. That requires showing a driver’s license and a credit card, and I have the feeling that’s something we probably want to avoid.”

“For now, yeah.” Chris’s knee pressed into Leon’s thigh, steady and grounding. “Better to play it safe where Umbrella is concerned, and we don’t know who Ada was working for, but she knew enough to make me uncomfortable.”

At the mention of the mercenary, Claire’s expression grew tight. “I feel so stupid,” she admitted, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I never should’ve trusted her.”

“Claire…” Leon leaned forward until he caught her eye. “I didn’t want to trust Chris when we first met, but being stuck in a situation like the one we were all in… you kind of have to trust other people, even if it winds up biting you in the ass later on. Besides, from what you’ve told us her story was pretty convincing, and you had a lot of other shit going on.”

Sherry glanced between them, then asked, “Did you like her, Claire? Like… like like her?”

“I did.” Claire took in a breath and let it out slowly. “But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is keeping you safe and finding a way to help Chris.”

“Speaking of that.” Leon turned his attention to Sherry. “We gave you the only dose of the antiviral agent that we could find in order to cure you. To make more, Chris’s friend Rebecca might need your help. Would you be okay with it if she takes your blood or runs some other tests when we see her?”

Sherry nodded, eyes gone wide. “Do you think she can really do that?” She looked at Chris intently, perceptive as hell for her age. “Make a cure for you?”

“Rebecca’s one of the smartest people I know,” Chris replied. “If anybody can figure out a way to help me, it’s her.” He shook his head a little. “I just wish I knew what happened to Jill. I hate to think that we could’ve left her behind.”

“Jill is so stubborn that I don’t see her doing anything other than surviving,” Claire said, patting Chris on the leg. “She probably got out of Raccoon as soon as shit hit the fan, and that’s why she sent you that email.” She gathered their trash and began cramming it into the room’s tiny wastebasket. “To revisit our earlier conundrum–if we can’t rent a car, how are we going to get to my place? It’s not like we can take a bus, there’s too many cameras and that would leave a paper trail.”

“Like I said before, we’ll steal a car,” Chris said, shrugging when Leon shot him a quizzical look. “What? Criminals do it all the time, right? It can’t be that hard.”

“Probably not,” Leon relented, grunting as he got to his feet and envying the ease with which Sherry and Chris did the same; his body felt like it’d been dragged through a knothole backward and he was sure Claire’s was the same way. “Question is, do we do it now or wait until morning?”

“Well, we already paid for the rest of the night,” Claire pointed out, wiping the last of the grease from her fingers with a paper napkin. “Plus I’m sure we could all use some more rest. Why don’t we set our alarm clocks and take off before first light?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Chris said, waiting for Leon to nod his agreement before he pulled his sister into a hug. “Take some Advil and crash for a few hours, okay?”

“I will if Leon does,” Claire countered, but as soon as Chris let her go she was reaching for the bottle of OTC pain relievers all the same… and Leon got the feeling that she knew what they would probably get up to, and that it had fuck all to do with sleeping. “Goodnight.”

~***~

As soon as the connecting door was closed and locked behind them–it could be broken down if necessary, but the lock would stop Sherry if she got too curious–Leon had Chris crowded up against it, palms flat against the wood on either side of his head as he captured his lips in a kiss.

Chris made a surprised sound but kissed back with enthusiasm, hands landing on Leon’s hips and squeezing. He opened up when Leon licked tentatively at his lower lip, their tongues sliding together as Leon brought a hand down to cup his jaw, thumb running over the new scar on his cheek. He felt Chris shudder against him, and when Leon shifted his stance slightly, the already-growing bulge in Chris’s pants pressed up against his thigh. It felt like it would be proportional to the rest of the gorgeous man in front of him, and while that could’ve been intimidating… once again, it simply wasn’t .

“Bed?” Chris asked, breaking the kiss but keeping Leon close–and when Leon nodded, Chris moved his hands from Leon’s hips to his thighs and picked him up, grinning when it made Leon gasp. “This okay?”

“Yeah,” Leon breathed out, running his fingers through Chris’s short hair and kissing him again, wrapping his legs around Chris’s waist. They fell onto the mattress like that, Chris’s weight pressing down on Leon in a way that could’ve been suffocating but instead only made him feel safe. He sighed when Chris dragged his mouth over his neck, tilting his head to the side to give him better access while he busied himself with rucking up Chris’s shirt in the back. “Off.”

Another grin, this one pressed to Leon’s pulse but quickly replaced by a kiss. “Bossy,” he noted, sitting back once Leon dropped his legs to either side of his hips and yanking his shirt off. The action caused his abs to flex, making Leon’s mouth water. “Guess I should’ve expected that.”

“Screw you,” Leon said fondly, feeling a grin spreading on his own face. He unzipped his sweatshirt but didn’t get further before Chris was batting his hands away. “Hey, I was trying to help you out.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m not gonna pass up the opportunity to open my own present.” Chris had Leon half-naked in record time, pushing him back down to the mattress with another mind-melting kiss. His hips twitched a little when Leon tried nipping at his lower lip, and then he was kissing over Leon’s throat again, dragging a hand down his side. “What do you want, Leon?”

A trembling moan left Leon’s lips when that big hand gave his thigh a squeeze before it came to rest over his crotch–not groping, just… touching, hot and heavy through the thin material of his sweatpants. “You,” he whispered, pinned by the burning yellow of Chris’s eyes. The sheer amount of desire in them left him breathless. “In whatever way I can get you. I’ll tell you if… if it’s too much.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Chris told him, slipping lower to suck a bruise into the soft skin over Leon’s collarbone. “This… it feels good, but it also hurts a little because of the infection. If I lose control–”

“You won’t.” Leon touched Chris’s cheek when he raised his head to look at him again. His mind wandered to those supplies lurking in the bottom of his backpack, and he took in a shaky breath before he added, “I trust you, Chris.”

Chris moved his hand and Leon mourned the loss of contact, even when it proceeded to grope at his ass. “Good,” he murmured, dragging his lips down further, over Leon’s abdomen. “Then… just relax, okay? Let me take care of you.”

Leon bit the inside of lip, then blurted out, “Just so you know, I’m clean. I had to get tested as part of my physical for the RPD.”

Chris smiled up at him. “Me too. Well, except for–” here he gestured toward his eyes “–recent events. And according to Rebecca, it can only be spread through a bite.” A kiss to Leon’s hip. “I won’t be testing that theory.”

“Too bad,” Leon said, just to see the momentary haze of lust that clouded Chris’s features. He pushed himself up on his elbows to watch as Chris reached the waistband of his sweatpants, mouth going dry when Chris splayed one hand on his lower back to lift him up, the other one tugging the offending article of clothing off. His cock sprang free, fully hard and curving toward his bellybutton, and he wound up collapsing again when Chris wasted no time, licking a hot stripe up his length from base to tip. “ Chris .”

“God, I love how you say my name.” Chris wriggled his shoulders under Leon’s knees, splaying his legs wider as he grasped his hips again, kitten-licking at the head of his dick before suckling it into his mouth. He made an amused sound when Leon tried to arch off the bed, fingers twisting into the sheets, and when he pulled off to speak, a thread of saliva connected his lower lip to Leon’s cock. “Still okay?”

Leon groaned, letting himself drop back to the mattress. He was trying to keep quiet, but that wasn’t exactly an easy task. “I swear to god, if you don’t keep going–” He choked off with a whimper as Chris went down on him in earnest, lips forming a perfect ring of heat and tongue flat against his shaft. The grip he had on Leon’s hips kept him from thrusting upward, but he didn’t need to worry about that with the way Chris bobbed his head, occasionally choking himself on Leon’s cock as he set up a steady rhythm. “ Fuck , Chris, oh my god.”

His toes curled as Chris continued his ministrations, occasionally squeezing the base of Leon’s cock or massaging his balls to keep things interesting. Soon Leon was an aching, squirming mess beneath him, one hand clamped over his mouth so he didn’t cry out like he so badly wanted to. Heat was curling tight low in his belly as Chris tongued at his slit, and Leon knew he was close.

“I’m gonna come,” he warned through his fingers, and if he thought that was going to deter Chris, he was very wrong. Instead the other man doubled down, taking him in completely and swallowing around his length. “ Chris –C-Chris, shit –”

Leon’s orgasm started at the base of his spine and bloomed outward, leaving him a whimpering, oversensitive mess as he spent himself in Chris’s mouth. He trembled when he felt Chris drink down everything he had to give before releasing Leon from between his lips, pressing a last sticky kiss to his length before he shrugged off his legs and crawled up to plaster himself along Leon’s side, licking over the hammering pulse in his neck.

“That was…” Words were a lost cause for Leon at the moment, but he managed to get his arm to move enough so he could hook a hand around the back of Chris’s neck and drag him in for a kiss. He tasted himself on Chris’s tongue and moaned with it, spent cock giving a vaillant twitch as he slipped his hand inside Chris’s sweatpants. His fingers closed around a dick that was exactly as big as he thought it was going to be, and the thought of having it inside him made him whine like a bitch in heat. “I want you to fuck me.”

“ Shit .” Chris’s hips hitched into the pressure of Leon’s hand, grinding against his palm. “I… I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasped out, lips pressing against Leon’s temple. So considerate, even when he was gripping Leon’s good shoulder hard enough to bruise. “Next time, okay?”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Leon warned, nipping Chris’s chin and removing his hand from his pants so he could push them off instead. He looked down and groaned low in his chest, wrapping his fingers around Chris’s cock and smearing precome over velvety skin with his thumb. “Jesus, you’re huge.” He’d never been one for dirty talk before, but words were falling out of his mouth and he couldn’t stop them: “You’d feel so fucking good inside me.”

“Leon.” It was hard to tell if Chris meant his name as a warning or a plea, but either way, Leon took that as permission to stroke him. He needed a minute to work out what Chris liked–firm pressure, a twist on the upstroke–and after that he was free to kiss him again, no looking at what he was doing required. “Mhmm… faster, please.”

“So polite,” Leon noted, grinning against Chris’s cheek when he thrust shallowly into Leon’s hold. He had no idea what it was about him speaking that got Chris going, but he was more than happy to indulge him. “You gonna come like this? All over me like a good boy?”

“Oh fuck –” Chris buried his face in Leon’s neck to muffle his moans, hips working in perfect tandem with Leon’s quick strokes, and soon he was crying out Leon’s name against his throat as he spilled over Leon’s fingers, come dripping on both of them. He kept pushing into Leon’s grip, riding out the wave, then went limp on top of Leon, pinning him to the bed again. “Holy fucking hell, rookie,” he rumbled near Leon’s ear, nuzzling and kissing whatever skin he could reach. “This is officially the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Leon laughed at the awe in Chris’s voice, turning his head enough to bump their mouths together. “You won’t get an argument from me on that front.” He glanced down at their collective mess and raised his eyebrows at Chris. “Think there’s a chance we both fit in that shower?”

“I think we should find out.” Chris kissed him again, and the affection Leon felt for him only deepened. “For science.”

Chapter Text

Thursday, October 1st, 1998 - 4:34 am CST

“I wish Jill was here,” Chris muttered to no one in particular, cursing under his breath as he struggled to hotwire the car they’d chosen to steal–a silver Toyota Corolla, about as white-bread American as you could get. “She was always better at lockpicking and shit like this.”

“Here, let me try,” Leon offered, leaning over Chris from the passenger’s seat. The position pushed their shoulders together so tightly it was painful, but thankfully the engine caught on Leon’s third strike with the wires. “There we go. Purring like a kitten.”

“And just in time, too.” They were in the darkest corner of the Walmart parking lot, and Chris waved to Claire; she and Sherry had gone back to the motel for the last of the bags and to leave the keys behind. “Are we still clear?”

“As far as I can tell, yeah,” Claire said as she and Sherry tumbled into the backseat, their meager possessions safely stored away in the trunk. The youngest member of their group looked like she was barely awake, and Chris was pretty sure she’d go right back to sleep as soon as they got moving. “I’ve never been more glad that I listened to you and rented my house under the name of a trust.”

“At the time, I was more concerned about potential stalkers or home invasions,” Chris admitted, throwing the car in gear and guiding them carefully out of the parking lot. He would be obeying every possible rule of the road until they got to their destination, up to and including wearing the dark-lensed pair of aviator sunglasses Leon had picked up for him as soon as it was light enough. Just in case. “Not so much an evil pharmaceutical conglomerate. But I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“It’s about time our luck changed for the better,” Leon said, rifling through the glove compartment and coming up with a travel atlas. He flipped it open and pulled Chris’s flashlight from his inner jacket pocket, clicking it on. “You need directions?”

“Probably not a bad idea, considering I have no idea where I’m going besides west.” Chris huffed a laugh, not for the first time struck by the absurdity of their situation. But again, gift horse, mouth–he wasn’t about to turn down an opportunity to listen to Leon’s voice. “By all means, direct away.”

~***~

About two hours into their drive, they made a pit-stop at a McDonald’s near a shopping center to take turns using the bathroom, and so Leon could go in and buy them breakfast using cash. He walked out of the restaurant with a large paper bag in one hand and a tray of coffees in the other and stopped short of the car when he saw something hurtling through the sky in the distance. He set his bounty down on the pavement, right hand moving toward his holster subconsciously. “Hey, what the fuck is that?”

The others heard him since Chris had the windows cracked so he could smoke–he’d found a half-full pack of Marlboros in his door pocket, the bastard–and they all got out to look in the direction Leon was pointing. The object was moving far too fast to be any sort of aircraft, and it was only when it streaked directly overhead that the shape of it became obvious.

“Holy shit,” Chris said, tossing his cigarette butt aside. “That’s a missile. And it’s heading toward–”

Back the way they’d come, in the distance, the blur of the missile vanished and a mushroom cloud appeared in its place.

“They nuked Raccoon City?” Claire put her hands on top of her head, looking as stunned as Leon felt. “But… what if there were other survivors? Jesus…”

Leon felt Sherry’s hand wrap around his fingers and he squeezed it. When he glanced over at Chris, his face was devoid of emotion, gone pale save for his darkened veins. “Chris–”

“Don’t.” Chris’s tone was hard, and when he took his next breath it almost sounded like a sob. He wasn’t just shocked–Leon could practically see the guilt clawing at him from the inside out. If they had unknowingly left Jill behind and she wasn’t dead before, she certainly was now. “Please… I… I can’t.” 

He got back in the car and the rest of them followed suit, eating their breakfast mechanically. And unless Leon was telling Chris where to change lanes or turn, they didn’t speak a word for the rest of the trip.

~***~

When they got to Claire’s neighborhood, Chris finally forced his vocal chords to work again: “I’m going to do a drive-by first. Tell me if you see anything weird.”

“It’s number eleven,” Claire said for Leon and Sherry’s benefit, already leaning forward to look out her window. “Coming up on the left–green paint, white trim.”

Chris kept one eye on the road and used the other to do a quick scan of Claire’s house. It was a one-story bungalow with a big rhododendron out front, and a single vehicle in the driveway–a beat-up compact that Chris recognized as Rebecca’s. All the curtains were drawn across the windows, but other than that, everything looked normal. It was hard for him to fathom the fact that he had arrived here from Raccoon City just a couple of days ago and told Claire the truth about the RPD and Umbrella–it felt like a lifetime ago.

“Seems like Rebecca’s here,” Leon remarked as they took the U-shaped neighborhood’s curve, glancing in the rearview to see if anything happened after they passed. He didn’t appear to be upset about Chris snapping at him earlier, but Chris made a mental note to apologize anyway–it wasn’t like any of this was Leon’s fault. “Should we go for it?”

“I think so, yeah.” Chris took his foot off the gas and let them coast for a minute, looking around at his passengers. “Once we unload our stuff, we’ll have to ditch this car.”

“I can do that,” Claire volunteered. “There’s a commuter parking lot near campus, I’ll drop it there and walk back.”

“I’ll go with you.” When Claire squinted at him, Leon glanced at Chris and smiled. “We don’t split up. It’s kind of our thing.”

Chris pulled into Claire’s driveway and let the engine die, grasping Leon’s nearest hand briefly in a silent I’m sorry –and he was relieved when Leon squeezed back to say it’s okay . Just that little gesture was enough to make Chris’s heart thump double-time, and that was to say nothing of the way he wanted to pin Leon to the nearest solid surface and have his way with him, especially now that he knew he could .

But now wasn’t the time for that, since they were all clambering out of the car and Claire was striding up to her front door. She stood off to the side, just like Chris had taught her, and rapped her knuckles on the wood; better to knock than to scare the shit out of Rebecca by unlocking the door unannounced and risk getting shot.

Except it wasn’t Rebecca who opened the door.

It was Jill fucking Valentine.

Chapter Text

“ Jill !” As soon as he saw the woman standing in Claire’s doorway Chris was off like a shot, using that newfound speed of his to race up to Jill and gather her in a hug, lifting her straight off her feet in his excitement. It was adorable, Leon thought–sort of like watching a particularly enthusiastic golden retriever greet a visitor, not that he’d ever owned a dog. “I don’t fucking believe it!”

“Come on, Redfield–we both know I don’t go down that easy.” Jill was laughing as she spoke, but winced when Chris squeezed a little too hard. “Ouch, careful with the ribs.” She looked at Claire as Chris set her down again, her eyebrows raised. She was damp from the shower, short brown hair sticking to her forehead, feet bare. “Did you let him have too many protein bars on the way here?”

“It’s a long story,” Claire replied, hugging Jill too. “God, I’m so glad you’re okay.” When she pulled back she looked at Jill’s attire of a Ramones t-shirt and tight jeans with a giggle. “Wait a sec–are you wearing my clothes?”

“Rebecca’s didn’t fit,” Jill grumbled, eyes sweeping behind the Redfields and landing on Leon–and Sherry, who had once again grabbed his hand and taken up a position slightly behind him. “And yours really don’t either, but that doesn’t matter. Who’s this?”

“ This is Leon S. Kennedy,” Chris said, and Leon would never get over how he made a point to introduce him using his middle initial, even if nobody else knew the reason why. He held out a hand that Leon took after a split-second hesitation; from the way Jill barely reacted, he gathered she knew about Chris’s sexuality. “RPD rookie turned zombie-killing badass.” He took off the sunglasses and now Jill’s face moved, her jaw dropping in shock. “Saved my ass more than once yesterday.”

“Holy shit , Chris,” Jill breathed out, reaching up to touch the veins under one of his infected eyes; Leon noticed that she winced with the movement, like her arm hurt. When her sleeve shifted, he saw a bandage wrapped around her bicep. “So wait, you were all in Raccoon City?”

“For better or worse, yeah,” Leon said, squeezing Sherry’s hand when Jill bent slightly so they were at eye level. “This is Sherry. Her parents worked at Umbrella–that’s how she got mixed up in all this.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Sherry.” Jill’s smile was kind, and it got wider when Sherry tentatively took the hand she extended and shook it slowly, like a grown-up would. She straightened up afterwards, hands on her hips. “I’d invite you in, but technically this is Claire’s house, so… let’s go in anyway?”

They shuffled into the living room, which was just big enough for a couch and a couple of chairs to fit comfortably. Another brunette woman–this one shorter in both stature and haircut–shot up from the couch when they entered and went straight for Chris, throwing her arms around his neck in a hug. “Chris! It’s so good to see you.”

“Hi, Rebecca. Thank you for coming.” Chris let go of Leon’s hand to return the embrace, once again doing some quick introductions. There was a towering pile of medical equipment balanced on Claire’s coffee table and when he saw it, he made a surprised sound. “Wow, did you bring your whole laboratory?”

“Everything I could fit in my car,” Rebecca replied, shrugging her shoulders. “I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d need to help you. In fact, I was in the middle of setting up when–”

Jill snorted. “When Carlos and I scared the shit out of you?”

Rebecca huffed a laugh. “Well… yeah.”

“Who’s Carlos?” When Claire saw how Jill flushed the slightest bit, she tipped her head back and groaned. “Oh come on , first Chris finds a hot boyfriend in the zombie apocalypse and now you do too?”

“Thanks for assuming I’m hot,” a man that Leon figured must be Carlos said as he came in from the kitchen, wearing a bathrobe that left little of his impressive physique to the imagination… and he was, indeed, very hot. “ And that supercop here would let me take her on a date.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Anybody want some coffee?”

~***~

As it turned out, Jill and Carlos had endured their own version of the Raccoon City nightmare, one very different from Chris, Leon, Claire, and Sherry’s. The group spent over an hour trading stories around Claire’s kitchen table, which didn’t have enough chairs to seat them all. Leon had felt his face go hot when Chris tugged him down to sit in his lap, but Carlos did the same thing with Jill a few seconds later, so he allowed himself to relax a little.

“And then we got the fuck out of there on the helicopter before the nuke hit,” Jill concluded, taking a sip off her mug and smiling wryly. “Which would’ve been great, except it turns out it was running on fumes.”

“Wound up putting her down hard in a clearing about… ten miles from here, maybe?” Carlos had a muscular forearm slung around Jill’s waist, and he glanced at her once in a while like he couldn’t believe she was still with him after all the shit they’d been through together–Leon empathized with that, knowing he was doing the same thing with Chris. “Jill said you told her to use Claire’s place as a safehouse if she ever needed it, and–well, this seemed like a safehouse situation.”

“We didn’t expect to find Rebecca here, obviously, but she was able to check me over.” Jill used her coffee to gesture at the bandage around her bicep, which Leon now knew concealed a puncture wound that had infected her. “Clean bill of health. Now we’ve just gotta get you better, Chris.”

“I still can’t believe you had a Tyrant stalking you too,” Chris said, shaking his head. “And one that was built just to kill STARS members? Christ.” His hand looked comically huge wrapped around one of Claire’s mugs, and Leon had to resist the very strong urge to just snuggle into his chest and take a nap. He found himself wanting Chris’s friends to like him, and nodding off in the middle of a conversation wouldn’t be the way to achieve that. “This Nikolai guy–any idea who he was working for?”

“Not yet, but I intend to figure it out,” Jill said, looking at Claire and quirking a brow. “I wonder if it’s the same person that hired Ada?”

“That would make sense,” Leon said, tensing when everyone’s attention swung to him at once. He felt Chris give his hip a little squeeze of encouragement and cleared his throat. “I mean, if Ada was hired to retrieve a sample of the G-Virus and Nikolai was hired to burn Umbrella to the ground… that’s two birds with one stone, isn’t it? Whoever the benefactor is gets the G-Virus to themselves, with the knowledge that Umbrella’s been crippled and probably won’t be able to retaliate.”

Carlos let out a low whistle. “Shit, I think the rookie’s onto something.”

“Umbrella may not be able to retaliate, but we sure as hell can.” Claire’s voice was steely, but underneath it Leon could tell she was still mourning the loss of Ada–or rather, who she thought Ada was before she learned the truth. “All we need is a plan.”

~***~

Crafting that plan was going to take some time.

After offloading their belongings from the stolen Corolla, Leon and Claire drove the car to the commuter parking lot Claire had mentioned and abandoned it near the back. Next, they took Rebecca’s car and made another shopping run, this time to Target, where they picked up clothes for Carlos and Jill along with other supplies. Then they both got their injuries assessed by Rebecca after she drew a sample of Chris’s blood to spin down and look at under her microscope. They acquired a matched set of stitches in their shoulders and Claire got some in the meat of her cheek, and once that was over with all Leon wanted to do was collapse into the nearest bed.

Claire had let Sherry pick where she wanted to sleep and she chose to stay with her like she had at the motel; Chris and Leon were assigned the guest bedroom, and Rebecca volunteered to take the couch, which pulled out. That left Jill and Carlos with an air mattress that Claire retrieved from high up in a closet, which Leon gathered had only been used for camping up until now. 

That was around the time he tuned out the conversation, stumbling down the hall and bouncing off Chris, who put his hands on Leon’s sides to steady him. “You okay?” he asked, and when Leon merely grunted in response, Chris chuckled and tugged him into their room. “Come on, I think it’s time for a nap.”

“You just want to get me in bed,” Leon accused in a completely unserious way, making a pleased sound when Chris shut the door behind him and pressed him up against it. “Well this feels familiar.”

Chris hummed an acknowledgement, proceeding to kiss him so gently and sweetly that Leon thought his legs might give out. It didn’t go any further than that, with Chris picking him up effortlessly and carrying him to their bed, settling down against the headboard with Leon in his lap. “Jill likes you,” he murmured, nuzzling at Leon’s cheek and unbuckling his holster, setting Matilda within reach on the nightstand, where his Samurai Edge already sat. “Said the same thing I did, about recruiting you to STARS if…” His breathing hitched. “If things were different.”

Leon leaned back a little to look into Chris’s eyes, cupping his jaw with one hand. “I’m sorry about Brad,” he said, recalling what Carlos had told them of the other STARS member’s fate. “He sounds like he was a good man.” 

“I can’t believe he’s the one that bit Marvin.” Chris leaned into Leon’s touch, eyes falling shut. “And Jesus, if it weren’t for Carlos–for Jill trusting him even though she probably shouldn’t have… she’d be dead.” He let out a sigh, turning his head enough to kiss Leon’s palm. “Do you think Rebecca will be able to make a cure?”

“I don’t know,” Leon replied honestly, because he had no interest in lying to Chris to make him feel better–that wasn’t what either of them needed. “But I think while she works on it, we can figure out what to do next.” He hesitated, remembering something Chris had told him back at the very beginning of their journey. “Are your leads on Umbrella over in Europe still good?”

“Maybe?” Chris’s thumbs rubbed absent circles against the dips of Leon’s hips, and it was horrendously distracting. “Problem is… that’s a one or two person op at most. And not the kind of thing that includes Sherry.”

“People are going to be looking for her,” Leon agreed, running his fingers through Chris’s hair in a way that he hoped was comforting; he got wrapped up in Chris’s arms and held closer, so it seemed like a win. “Umbrella, probably whoever paid Ada and Nikolai, the US government…”

Yellow eyes were open again, studying Leon’s face. “If Jill and I went to Europe,” Chris began, sighing again. “Shit, I hate the idea of splitting up–for all the reasons we’ve gone over before. But that would leave you here with Claire and Sherry… and you could keep an eye on Carlos.”

Leon raised an eyebrow. “You don’t trust him?”

“I trust you more,” Chris replied immediately, temporarily quieting Derek’s whispering in the back of Leon’s brain, telling him he was being left behind again. “He seems like a solid guy, and I have faith in Jill… but he was with Umbrella up until recently.”

Leon nodded slowly, understanding why that would be a sticking point. “Have you brought this up to the others? To Jill?”

“Not yet,” Chris said, pressing his cheek against Leon’s hair when he rested his head against his chest. His heartbeat was steady and strong, its rhythm helping to quell some of Leon’s growing anxiety. “I wanted to talk to you first. Make sure we’re on the same page.”

“We always are.” Despite having similar misgivings as Chris about going their separate ways, Leon saw the sense in it this time–after all, Jill and Chris were the ones who had the training necessary to carry out a mission like infiltrating Umbrella in Europe. Still… he couldn’t help but hold Chris a little bit tighter, wondering if it was the last time he’d get the chance. “Let’s see what everyone else thinks… after that nap.”

Chapter Text

A lot of shit happened over the next couple of weeks, so much that it was hard for Chris to keep up.

First and probably most important, Rebecca was able to devise a cure for his G-Virus affliction, thanks in large part to extracting the antibodies swirling through Sherry’s blood. Within 24 hours of the cure being administered, the veins on Chris’s face settled down, and the whites of his eyes returned to normal. The yellow faded too, for the most part–in certain lights, his brown irises seemed to have a golden glow, but it wasn’t terribly noticeable unless you knew what you were looking for. He stayed pretty horny, but Chris figured that had less to do with mating drive and more to do with Leon’s general presence. The enhanced senses, speed, and strength all remained along with his healing factor, and Rebecca theorized that he would most likely have them for the rest of his life.

Second, they all sat down and talked about tactics. None of them were particularly fond of splitting up, but just as Chris and Leon hadn’t seen a viable alternative, neither did the rest of their group. As it turned out, Carlos had a friend of a friend a couple of states away who was an expert forger, and for a nominal fee was willing to create false identities for all of them–even Sherry. It would make many things easier in the long term, so they opted to fork over the cash with a tip attached to get the job done more quickly; it was decided that Jill and Chris would leave on their hunt for Umbrella as soon as they received their new passports.

Sherry sat with them for every meeting, not speaking often but clearly taking it all in. When they finally had the plan set in stone and word that Carlos’s friend had overnighted their forged documents, she asked a question that made Chris’s heart ache: “You’re gonna come back, right?”

Chris looked at Leon for guidance–he and Sherry had developed quite the bond in their time together–and swallowed hard at the mix of concern and encouragement in those brilliant blue eyes. He reached across the table for Sherry’s hand, which was completely engulfed by his fingers. “I’m not going to make you a promise I might not be able to keep,” he told her, using his free hand to brush some hair behind her ear. “But I can promise you that I’ll try my hardest to come back to you all. Jill too.”

Sherry’s bottom lip trembled for a split second before she threw her arms around Chris’s neck in a tight hug. “I’m gonna miss you,” she whispered near his ear as he carefully returned the embrace. “But I think Leon will miss you more.”

And really, what the hell was Chris supposed to say to that?

~***~

Whatever Leon was expecting for Chris and Jill’s last night at Claire’s, it wasn’t for Chris to make lasagna.

“Are you trying to make me fucking cry?” Claire demanded as she walked into the kitchen a half-step ahead of Leon, socking her brother between his giant shoulder blades before standing on her toes to get a look at the sauce he was making. “Looks like it needs more tomato paste.”

“Bite me,” Chris said sweetly, grunting when she smacked him again. He caught Leon’s eye and smiled, a small, hopeful thing. “You would’ve said yes, remember?”

“I remember.” Leon cleared his throat when the words came out hoarse, blinking to stop the burning of tears in his eyes. He glanced around for a distraction, finding it in the form of flat noodles and browning ground beef. “Do you need help with anything?”

And that was how Claire wound up shuffling the ground beef around in the pan, and Leon put on water to boil because that was the extent of his knowledge when it came to cooking. He learned how to assemble a salad and make garlic butter for bread, and a while later they were joined by Jill and Carlos. They had been out… somewhere , and Leon had a fairly good idea of what they’d been doing judging from the healthy flush to Jill’s cheeks and the way Carlos practically walked into a wall.

Eventually Rebecca and Sherry joined the party too, and they moved it to the living room with the food in tow. There was room to spread things out on the coffee table now that Rebecca was able to put her equipment away, and it was… really nice to be sprawled across Claire’s second hand furniture, getting to know each other like regular people while stuffing themselves with carbs and the illusion of a vegetable.

When they were all done eating, Jill raised her beer bottle in a toast. “Chris and I have a very early flight to catch, so I want to get this out of the way now,” she began, looking around the room. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been through hell and back together, in one way or another. From now on, no matter what happens… we’re a family.” She clinked her bottle against Claire’s as the rest of them lifted their drinks, including Sherry (letting a mature 12 year old have one beer with her dinner was pretty low on the list of inappropriate things they’d done). “To kicking Umbrella’s ass. Together.”

Everybody always leaves you, Leon. Remember that.

“Together,” Leon murmured along with the others, and used the beer to wash down the acid at the back of his throat.

~***~

Later, Chris came up behind Leon while he was unloading the dishwasher.

“Hey,” he said softly, waiting for Leon to turn around to face him before he slipped his arms around him. “Wanna take a drive with me?”

“That depends.” Leon fought for some semblance of normalcy, injecting some teasing into his tone. He allowed his hands to squeeze Chris’s waist, concentrating on the warmth of him and the way he could once again see that pretty ring of gold around one of his pupils, a beacon in the darkness of his eyes. “Are we taking Rebecca’s car, or Claire’s new bike?”

Chris’s face lit up, and he reached into the pocket of his jeans so he could pull out Claire’s keys, jangling them a little. “I don’t fit in Rebecca’s car.”

That got a laugh out of Leon, and for just a second, he was able to pretend that this was any other night, and they were regular people. “Okay, that’s fair.”

“Go grab your backpack,” Chris instructed, kissing Leon’s cheek before he took a step back. “I’ll meet you outside in five.”

They held each other's eyes before Chris ducked out of the room, and Leon finished up with the dishwasher, a mixed bag of tumultuous emotions warring in his chest. He was thrilled at the prospect of spending some time alone with Chris, but also a little nervous because of the implications that came with it; plus there was the countdown to Chris and Jill’s departure, ticking away at the back of his brain.

“Get it together, Kennedy,” he muttered to himself, and headed to their room, tossing some clothes and toiletries into his backpack–which still had the lube and condoms in it from that first trip to Walmart. Now it looked like maybe they were going to get to use them, and the thought made him ache for two very different reasons.

Once he was packed up, Leon went out to the driveway and wasn’t surprised to see Chris already wearing a helmet, sitting astride Claire’s brand-new Ducati Indiana, a tricked out beast with cherry-red paint and shiny chrome. “Can’t believe Claire’s letting you borrow her baby,” Leon remarked, taking the helmet Chris held out and slipping it over his head. He swung a leg over the bike and took his spot behind Chris, holding onto his waist. “So, where are we going?”

 “The nicest hotel I could find on short notice,” Chris replied, starting the Ducati’s engine. He raised his voice to be heard over the dual exhaust: “It’s where Jill and Carlos were earlier!”

“That tracks.” Leon’s stomach lurched as they took off, but evened out a second later; he hadn’t ridden on a motorcycle since before Derek lost his license. “I thought Carlos gave himself a concussion when he came into the kitchen.”

Chris snorted. “I’m not sure Carlos would know subtlety if it bit him in the ass.”

“Neither would you,” Leon pointed out, tugging on the thrifted leather jacket Chris wore instead of his custom one. Both of his painted jackets and Claire’s had been shipped back to the artist for repairs. “It sounds like a fucking parade when you go to the bathroom and back at night!”

They bickered for the rest of the drive, which took them to the parking lot of a Holiday Inn that was close to the downtown area of Claire’s college town. Since Jill and Carlos checked in earlier they bypassed the front desk completely, and when they got into the elevator Chris pressed the button for the top floor, where the suites were. Once they were in the (essentially unremarkable) room, Leon tossed the backpack into the nearest chair and found himself being tugged into Chris’s arms again.

“Just so you know… nothing needs to happen tonight,” he informed Leon, hand flat over his lower back. As always he was painfully sincere, thinking of Leon’s needs and wants before his own–he did that a lot, with everyone. “We can watch a movie or something. As long as I get to spend time with you, I don’t care what we do.”

Leon took his face in his hands and kissed him, slow and tender. He reveled in the feeling of stubble against his palms, the way Chris jolted a little when Leon teased his lower lip with his teeth. He pulled away to look Chris in the eye, knowing that would be the only thing that would convince him. “I think that’s incredibly considerate,” Leon murmured, thumb stroking over Chris’s cheekbone, noting how his eyes had gone practically black with desire from just one little kiss. “But I also think I want you to take me to bed… and I don’t want to watch a movie.”

“I can get on board with that.” Chris moved his hands down to grab Leon under his ass, lifting him until he could wrap his legs around Chris’s waist. It was a familiar position for them at this point, and Chris kissed Leon’s chin and remarked, “Didn’t think you’d be this into being manhandled.”

“Only by you,” Leon admitted, combing his fingers through Chris’s hair as their mouths met again, a little more heated this time. He smiled into it as Chris made a sound low in his throat and tipped Leon back on the mattress, knee-walking them to the middle of it before he settled on top of him. The next noise Chris made was not low and had to do with Leon spreading his legs to accommodate him, hooking an ankle around his calf. “Problem?”

“Fuck no,” Chris denied fervently, trailing kisses over Leon’s jaw, one hand twisted into the sheets near his head. The other had snuck up underneath the front of Leon’s long-sleeved t-shirt, skating over his abs before a thumb rubbed over one of his nipples. “Now, the last time we did this–”

“You mean the first time,” Leon corrected, just to be a shit. He grinned when Chris tossed him a salty look, rucking up his jacket in the back along with his shirt. “Although I guess it could go either way… kind of like you.”

“Hilarious,” Chris deadpanned, but he was clearly amused and trying to hide it. He sat back a little and they both took the opportunity to lose their jackets and shirts; as soon as that was done, he pinned Leon to the mattress again, powerful forearms caging him in the best possible way. “ Anyway , I distinctly recall you waxing philosophical about how much you wanted me to fuck you.” He dropped a kiss against the corner of Leon’s lips. “Is that still the case?”

Leon wanted to blurt out something witty, but instead his mouth went dry. “I… yeah,” he said, hesitating. “Just… slow, okay? Last time was different, because we weren’t–you weren’t–”

Chris sat up for real, and Leon went cold for a split second before he tugged him up too, one of those big hands cupping his cheek. “I have an idea,” he said, free hand grasping one of Leon’s, which were trembling just a little in his lap. “How about instead of you telling me what you like, you show me? And I’ll only touch you if you want me to.”

That sounded… perfect, actually, but Leon scrunched his face up. “What about you, though?”

“I’ll be just fine,” Chris said, and the flush blooming on his cheeks paired with his bashful smile made Leon want to eat him alive, despite his reservations. “Watching you make yourself feel good could probably get me off if I let it.”

“Jesus,” Leon muttered, accepting another kiss before he was left alone on the bed so Chris could dig through the backpack, and– “Wait, you knew ?”

“Had to go in there for a toothbrush a while back,” Chris told him sheepishly, tossing the lube and condoms on the bed before following them. He grasped Leon by the shoulders–mindful of his healing injury–and turned him so he was leaning back against the pillows, then took up a spot next to him, similar to how they were arranged the first time they did this. “Don’t worry, I was flattered.”

“You should be.” Leon leaned into Chris’s warmth and shut his eyes for a moment, drinking in his smell and running a tentative hand down the length of his own body. “I never expected… any of this. Not after…”

A gentle kiss to his temple. “Consider me more than flattered, then.” He sucked in a sharp breath when Leon rested a hand on his own half-card cock through his jeans. He wasn’t even doing anything yet and already seemed to be having some kind of effect on Chris. “I figured you were so far out of my league we were playing different sports.”

That shocked a laugh out of Leon, and he bit the inside of his lip as he gave himself a squeeze. “Seriously? Have you looked in a mirror recently?” He exhaled slowly, opening the button on his pants and drawing the zipper down. “You can touch me for this part, I think.”

“Thank god,” Chris muttered, and helped him remove his jeans, boxer-briefs, and boots. He dragged an appreciative hand up one of Leon’s legs on his way back to his previous spot, grabbing the lube and dropping it on Leon’s chest. “If you want.”

“Like I said, I do , it’s just…” Leon wrapped a hand around himself and stroked, using his thumb to spread a dribble of precome down the shaft. “Handjobs, blowjobs, that’s all fine. But anything else…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Scares me a little. Which feels stupid, seeing as I almost died about twenty times back in Raccoon.”

“If it’s how you feel, then it’s not stupid,” Chris told him, groaning quietly when Leon let go of his dick to grasp Chris’s wrist, guiding his hand to hold him instead. “I could swear I was supposed to be watching.”

“You are,” Leon pointed out, toes curling as he watched the wet head of his cock wink in and out of Chris’s fist. He grasped blindly for the lube and somehow managed to get it open, coating a couple of fingers as he drew his legs up, wriggling into a slightly more comfortable position. “But isn’t the best way to learn supposed to be hands-on?”

“Smartass.” That single word was almost unbearably fond, and when Leon reached down to rub the pads of two fingers against his hole, he felt Chris’s hips push the tiniest bit against him. He was rock hard inside his pants, and knowing he was having that kind of effect on the other man only turned Leon on more. “Christ, you’re flexible. How did I not notice that before?”

Leon snorted, breath hitching as Chris rubbed his calloused thumb over his slit. “Maybe… w-we were too busy running for our lives?” Swallowing hard, he pushed the tip of his trigger finger into his own clenching heat, dropping his forehead against Chris’s shoulder. It’d been a while since he’d done this the right way, and listening to the way Chris’s breathing picked up made him want to go faster. But faster wasn’t what he liked , so he took his time working that first finger inside, the stretch only a fraction of what he would need to take Chris’s impressive girth. “Take your pants off.”

Chris made a little humming sound near his ear, still working Leon over oh-so-slowly, stoking the steadily-growing pleasure in his gut. “If you insist,” he said, trying to be wry but the words came out showing too much desperation. He let Leon go and shucked out of the rest of his clothes, the velvety steel of his cock pressing up tight to Leon’s hip when he resumed his ministrations, tracing the vein on the underside of Leon’s dick with his fingertips. “Better?”

Leon wanted to respond, truly he did, but he was too busy stuffing himself with a second finger to form words. He couldn’t curl them up at the right angle to find his prostate from this position, but he didn’t really have to; he was getting dizzy with arousal, and impatience was starting to take over his desire for comfort. He whined loudly when Chris let go of his cock to grasp his wrist, stopping him from forcing a third finger into his ass before he was ready for it. “What… are you doing?”

“Take it easy,” Chris murmured, swallowing audibly when Leon grabbed blindly for the lube again, shoving it into Chris’s other hand. “You sure?”

Leon nodded, shivering despite the thin sheen of sweat coating his body. He made another somewhat mortifying sound when Chris brought his slicked fingers down between Leon’s legs, a thick finger prodding curiously at his entrance. Then he was being kissed to within an inch of his life as that digit slid inside him, filling him up in exactly the right ways and grazing his prostate on its very first pass.

“Oh fuck .” Leon arched a little, grabbing Chris by the back of his neck and squeezing maybe a little too hard. “Right there.”

“Right here?” Chris’s voice was light, but he was clearly just as gone as Leon was, that finger rubbing over his prostate in a tantalizing rhythm, a second one burning just a little as it joined its friend inside the hot clutch of Leon’s body. “You feel incredible–so tight for me, sweetheart.” He pressed a wicked grin against Leon’s wrist when that made him keen. “Okay?”

“Mhmm.” Leon couldn’t help the way he clenched around Chris’s fingers, sloppy with lube and wanting. He scrabbled for purchase at Chris’s shoulders when he teased a third finger around his puffy rim, moaning wantonly when it breached him too, his neglected cock leaking steadily against his stomach. “Ah– ah , oh god, Chris. Need you.”

Chris faltered for just a second, leaning in for a kiss that was more a mess of tongues and teeth. “You have me,” he whispered, lips ghosting over Leon’s reddened cheek. He pulled his fingers out slowly, hushing Leon when he whined at the sensation of suddenly being so empty, and rocked himself lightly against Leon’s hip in an imitation of what they were about to do. “Condom?”

Leon shook his head, tugging weakly at Chris’s stupidly huge biceps to try and get him closer. “Don’t need it. Just fuck me–shit, please just fuck me.”

Chris displayed a tremendous amount of coordination when he managed to slot himself between Leon’s legs again, looming over him with his arms braced on the bed once more. Again, he hesitated. “This would be easier if you were on your–”

“I have to see your face,” Leon interjected, pulling him in for another kiss and hooking a leg around his waist. “Have to know who I’m with.”

Chris exhaled hard, sliding one arm under Leon’s back and reaching down to line himself up. He felt huge like this, just the head pressing lightly against Leon’s hole enough to make his eyes roll back in his head. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, Chris nuzzled his ear and whispered, equal parts awestruck and possessive: “When I’m done with you, you won’t remember anybody else.”

Leon shuddered and groaned as Chris started to push inside him, slow but inevitable, like he was being skewered and split apart, the breath crushed out of his lungs. His body moved without his consent, his other leg joining the first and pulling Chris in just a little bit faster, his nails dragging over Chris’s spine and leaving quickly-healing welts in their wake. It could’ve been minutes or hours before their hips pressed flush together, overwhelming fullness making his pulse pound and his cock throb.

“Leon… oh –” Chris broke off to moan as Leon clenched around him, forehead pressed to his collarbone. “You’re gonna fucking kill me.”

“Sorry.” Leon’s voice was little more than a rasp, and he buried his fingers in Chris’s hair, his other hand sliding down to grope at his ass. “Move, Chris, you can move.”

Chris moved, tentatively drawing his hips back a little and pushing them forward again. He developed a rhythm like that, the kind with deep, grinding thrusts that had Leon crying out almost constantly, especially as they picked up speed and intensity. He was burning up all over, belly tight with the need to come and the pressure of Chris inside him, rearranging his guts and ruining him for anyone else.

The headboard was slamming into the wall and Leon had the absent thought that the hotel’s other patrons would probably hate them, but then he decided he didn’t give a flying fuck. He had Chris Redfield’s teeth on his neck and cock hammering away at his prostate, and if Leon’s bad feeling turned out to be true and he would really always get left behind no matter what, he damn well was going to enjoy himself.

Soon, Chris’s movements reached a fever pitch, hips thrusting like a well-oiled machine into Leon’s willing body, and once his fingers closed around Leon’s cock it was game over. He came so hard his vision whited out, the lava-hot high of it leaving him breathless and whimpering from overstimulation as Chris chased his own end. Remembering how well it worked the last time, Leon gripped Chris’s hair just a fraction tighter and pressed his lips to his ear, grating out, “C’mon, Chris, just like that. Fuck me, make me yours, come inside me–because you’re such a good boy –”

Chris cried out a broken version of Leon’s name and slammed himself home one last time, spilling warm and sticky inside. A delicious shudder crawled up Leon’s body at the sensation and he wrapped his arms tight around Chris when he collapsed on top of him, utterly spent. For a long moment they just laid there like that, both trying to catch their breath and find higher brain function.

It was Chris who managed to speak first: “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Not in any way I didn’t like,” Leon replied, hissing under his breath as Chris pulled out carefully, feeling come trickle out of his abused hole. “Not sure whether I’ll walk again, though.”

Chris snorted, flopping down on his back next to Leon and reaching for his hand. “Me neither. Give me five minutes and I’ll go run a bath.”

Go.

Run.

Five minutes.

Leon heard the echo of their time together in that one little sentence, and tried to make peace with what was coming next. “Five minutes,” he mumbled, staring up at the ceiling in an attempt to ward off the tumult threatening to drown him. “I’ll be right here.”

Chapter Text

One month later…

They lost contact with Chris and Jill two days after they landed in Europe.

When they hit the thirty day mark, Claire got Leon, Sherry, and Carlos together around the kitchen table–no doubt Rebecca would’ve been there too, but she’d had to return to med school a week earlier. As far as Leon knew, Claire had dropped out of college, or at the very least had deferred the semester; as someone who went straight from high school to the police academy, he wasn’t well-versed in how those things worked.

“We have to do something ,” Claire said, arms folded on the tabletop and face lined with worry. “I can’t sit on my ass anymore waiting for a call that isn’t coming.”

The three of them nodded their agreement, and it was Sherry who asked, “So… what can we do?”

Leon studied Claire and Carlos for a long moment, polar opposites in just about every way but both agonized. He was too, of course, shoulders permanently tensed and gut churning every time he thought about the horrors Chris and Jill could be facing on their own–or worse, the possibility that those horrors had gotten the better of them. He wanted to be at Chris’s side again, wanted to tackle problems and roll around in bed and learn how to cook. He wanted a chance to know the other man, wanted a chance to just be in between the moments when they would inevitably wind up saving the world. He wanted all of those things so badly it hurt , and practically… once again, as much as he hated it, he knew they’d have to split up.

Everybody always leaves you, Leon. Remember that.

“You two go after them,” he heard himself say, digging his fingernails into his palms in his lap to stop himself from shaking. “I’ll stay here with Sherry.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Are you sure ?” Carlos asked, brow drawing down. “I mean, we could–I don’t know, draw straws or something?”

“Leon,” Claire started, and he could tell from her tone that if he let her speak, he’d cry. “I know how much you care about Chris–”

“Which is why I need you to find him,” Leon cut in, looking between them imploringly. Under the table, one of Sherry’s hands covered his, holding on tight. “I need you to find him and bring him back here so I can kick his ass.” His voice cracked, but he was too distraught to feel ashamed. “Please.”

Claire and Carlos exchanged a look.

“I’ll book us a flight for tomorrow,” Claire declared, and that was that.

~***~

Two months later…

Ada Wong almost walked right by the newspaper stand in the train station.

She wasn’t sure what made her stop instead–a flash of a familiar face in the corner of her vision, perhaps? Or maybe it was just her carefully-honed instincts telling her there was something to see, easily missed but no less important. EIther way, she turned on her heel and picked up a newspaper from the shelf, handing over cash to a man who was too busy complaining into a bulky cellphone about his car insurance premium to give a shit.

A glance at the departure board told her that her train was experiencing a ten-minute delay, so she took a seat on an open bench and unfolded the newspaper to get a better look at the subhead:

FORMER RACCOON POLICE DEPT. ROOKIE & YOUNG GIRL KILLED IN HOUSE FIRE

Below it was a picture of the baby-faced young man that had been with Claire in the main shaft of NEST–Leon S. Kennedy’s headshot from the policy academy, judging from the formal pose and blank background. Next to that was a photo of the little girl who’d hung onto his hand while Ada and Claire had their argument. Her eyebrows rose when she read the name Sherry Birkin , belatedly remembering that William and Annette had a daughter who would be the same age.

Ada skimmed the article quickly, clucking her tongue in disappointment when it provided only a skeleton story. Two bodies had been found matching Kennedy and Sherry’s descriptions, and neighbors had reported seeing them in the area for a couple of months at that point. The fire was believed to have been set intentionally by an “acquaintance” of Kennedy’s, and while the author didn’t go as far as calling Derek O’Malley his ex, it certainly seemed to Ada that he might be a jilted lover. He was in jail pending an arraignment. Interestingly, the house wasn’t owned by Kennedy or the Birkins–instead, it was held by something called the Made In Heaven Trust–

Wait.

Claire flashed in Ada’s mind’s eye, with her bright smile, capable hands, and a give-em-hell attitude that had wormed its way under Ada’s skin almost instantly. God, how she’d wanted to kiss that smile, get her hands on the strip of bare skin visible when Claire’s tank top rode up… but that would never happen, especially not now. She was specifically thinking of Claire’s shock of auburn hair, the end of her ponytail dragging against her jacket… that same phrase painted across her shoulders. 

If the house was Claire’s, then Kennedy and Sherry’s presence made a lot more sense… but what had happened to Claire herself, or her brother? Knowing the depth of Claire’s dedication to getting the truth about Umbrella out in the world even if she wasn’t actually a journalist, Ada thought ( feared ) that it was a good bet Claire and Chris had gone overseas to try and rout out Umbrella in Europe.

A commotion pulled Ada’s attention away–her train was on time after all, and her fellow passengers were in a mad scramble to make it to the platform.

“Wherever you are, Claire,” Ada whispered to herself, setting the newspaper down on the bench and striding away, “I hope you’re safe.”

~***~

Three months later…

FROM: UNKNOWN SENDER <address blocked>

TO: Redfield, Chris <[email protected]>

Subject: Claire

Cc:

Bcc:

Chris,

Don’t bother asking who I am or how I know, but your sister needs your help.

Coordinates to follow…