Chapter Text
The break room always smelled faintly of burnt coffee and copier toner—an unholy marriage of caffeine and bureaucracy. You sat at the edge of the round table by the vending machine, legs folded, paper cup in hand, thumb idly rubbing the DSO logo off the side. It was barely drinkable, but caffeine was caffeine, and you’d take your poisons where you could get them.
Around you, the chatter ebbed and flowed like a static radio. The analysts and support staff were mid-rant about someone's failed Tinder date, someone else's eyebrow microblading disaster, and the classic office staple: who might be sleeping with who. You weren’t fully listening. You never really did. The gossip was loud, predictable, and painted in fluorescent lighting. Your job didn’t involve field ops, no gunmetal adrenaline or cinematic horror, just logging reports, managing requisitions, filing redacted nightmares into nice clean folders. There were days you felt like a data janitor, sweeping up behind tragedies you’d never seen firsthand.
“…I’m telling you, he’s way too hot to just be in Communications,” Delaney was saying way too loudly as always. She had that kind of voice that cut through a room like broken glass. “You don’t get a jawline like that without black ops.”
“I bet he’s just using a fake name,” someone else chimed in. Bailey? Maybe. “Like, no one’s called ‘Trent Maddox’ unless they’re either in porn or the witness protection program.”
A few people laughed. You sipped your coffee and stared at the beige wall.
“Oh, come on. If we’re talking hot agents, let’s be real. There’s only one Leon Kennedy.”
You didn’t move, but something in you perked up like a wire had been tripped in your brain, a silent alert flooding your attention. You didn’t even realize your hand had stilled around the cup until the silence echoed inside it.
“Oh my god, yes,” Delaney groaned, practically fanning herself with her lunch napkin. “The man’s like if someone poured sex appeal into tactical gear and gave it a tragic backstory.”
“Tragic?” Bailey scoffed. “It’s epic. He’s like, government Batman. Except blond. And hot. And not a total asshole.”
“I heard he doesn't even officially exist anymore,” muttered James from Tech Support, leaning over his instant ramen like he was spilling state secrets. “He’s like… burned out of the database. A ghost. They say if you try to access his personnel file, you just get a black screen and your computer makes this whhhrrrk noise and dies.”
“That’s because you downloaded malware from hentai sites again,” someone shot back.
Another round of laughter. You forced your lips not to curl. Just a little.
Everyone in this building, hell, probably everyone in every government black site from Langley to Nevada, knew it. Even if you’d never met him, you knew. He was a legend. You’d filed enough reports with his name on them to recognize the pattern: catastrophic outbreak, city in flames, high-value asset retrieved, virus contained, all field agents dead except one.
Leon.
You’d highlighted that name so many times it felt etched into your brain. Kennedy, L.S. Operative. Status: active. Clearance: above your pay grade. Personal file: restricted. Notes: none. Always none. The man had zero debriefs that weren’t blacked out beyond recognition. Zero psychological evals in the system. Zero reprimands, zero commendations. Just field report after field report, soaked in fire and loss, all wrapped around that one signature.
Leon S. Kennedy.
You had no right to be fascinated. He was probably just another over-mythologized government spook with a nice face. But every time someone mentioned his name—even in passing—your curiosity kicked like a reflex. You leaned forward slightly, trying to seem casual as the table kept buzzing.
“I met him once,” Delaney declared, too smug to be trusted. “Two years ago. Outside briefing room 3B. He held the door open for me.”
“Oh shut up.”
“No, I swear. He said, ‘After you,’ and I said ‘Thank you,’ and he smiled. It was like being touched by god.”
“That was probably just sunlight in your eyes.”
“You weren’t there, Bailey!”
The laughter returned again, but your ears stayed sharp. You turned your cup in your hands like it might refill itself. So he had been here. 3B was two floors up. Restricted access. Of course. You’d walked past it every day and never thought much of it. You wondered if he walked the same hallways you did, maybe late at night when things were quiet, security doors hissing open just for him. Maybe he used the same vending machine. Maybe he drank the same garbage coffee and hated it just as much.
Some part of you hoped he didn’t. That he had better. That he lived above it. Legends should.
“You know he’s never been injured,” James said suddenly, voice lower now. “Not officially. Not once. Not even in Raccoon City.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No, seriously. Check the reports. He’s always listed as ‘physically stable.’ The man gets shot at by bioweapons and walks out without a scratch.”
Bailey rolled her eyes. “Or maybe he just doesn’t fill out the proper medical paperwork because he’s a field op junkie with a martyr complex.”
“I’d let him martyr all over me,” Delaney sighed.
That got the biggest laugh yet. You didn’t join it. You were too busy imagining him—face bloodied, maybe, shirt torn, that perfect jaw clenched as he dragged someone to safety. Or maybe it was just the way his eyes looked in photos, calm and quietly furious, like the world had done its worst and he refused to break. Like he’d seen things no one should have seen and come out the other side anyway, burning with it.
Your break was almost over. You stood, emptied your cup in the trash, and gave them a glance as you walked past. They were still talking about him, voices light and teasing, hungry for drama that would never be theirs. But something in you felt restless.
You tried not to think about him.
The stories, the smile Delaney wouldn’t shut up about. It was just breakroom fluff. Office myth. Not your concern. But no matter how many times you shook your head and buried yourself in reports, he kept slinking back into your mind, uninvited and persistent.
You stared at the open file in front of you. BOW incident, minimal exposure, Level-3 contamination, no fatalities. The words blurred like oil on water. You blinked, leaned closer, read the same paragraph again for the third time. Still nothing. Just sanitized horror, compiled into perfect paragraphs and acronyms. Another town. Another cleanup. Another dozen lives swept off the map and filed away under “incident resolved.”
You pursed your lips, jaw resting against your hand as you slumped over your desk, elbow braced just enough to keep your head from dropping entirely. The desk lamp buzzed faintly, casting a pale circle across your paperwork. Everything else was soaked in the low blue of the office fluorescents—ugly, cold, the kind of lighting that made your soul feel like wet cardboard.
You sighed, shifting in your chair and stared at the clock on the far wall.
10:46.
Past your work hours.
You blinked again, slower this time. Let the numbers settle. Then cursed under your breath.
You weren’t done.
Of course you weren’t done.
The files due today weren’t finished, and there wasn’t a single supervisor in the building who’d care that you’d been stuck doing three people’s work since noon. They wanted it on their desk by morning, and you were the lucky little grunt still left logged into the system. No one stayed this late except ops and ghosts, and you weren’t either.
Your groan was low and miserable as you leaned back and pressed both palms to your face, dragging them slowly downward. Your spine was stiff from being hunched in the same position for too long. The last time you’d moved was probably that sad coffee break, and the last real meal? A granola bar at your desk, crumbs still hiding under your keyboard.
The hallway behind you rustled faintly.
You glanced up just as Miriam passed your open office door, messenger bag slung across her shoulder, coat half-on. Her gaze caught yours and softened immediately.
“Oof. Still here?” she asked, tilting her head in sympathy.
You gave her a tight, crooked smile. “Lucky me.”
She smiled back with that same guilty look people always had when they were heading home while you were clearly not. “Don’t work yourself to death. I’m serious. These files won’t love you back.”
“I’ll put that on my tombstone.”
She chuckled gently, lingering for a beat. “Night,” she said, then left.
“’Night,” you mumbled to the empty room, voice barely audible. The office went quiet again. Too quiet.
You stared at the screen a few seconds longer, then pushed yourself up with a tired groan. The chair creaked under you as you stood and stretched, arms high over your head until your back popped. The motion made you sigh out loud–half relief, half resignation. You rolled your shoulders, felt the stiffness settle deep in your spine like silt.
The sunset had started.
You moved slowly toward the windows that lined the far side of the floor, heels dragging just a little, steps muffled against the carpet. The sun was low in the sky, casting the city in warm streaks of orange and crimson. Buildings glinted gold. Streets below moved sluggishly, caught in the amber of early evening traffic. Everything looked quiet from up here. The kind of peace you hadn’t felt all day.
You rubbed your eyes again, dry from too much screen time, and leaned your forehead briefly against the cool glass. You wished you were home. Wished you were wrapped in a blanket on your couch, curled into the corner with a stupid show playing and takeout in your lap. Maybe a candle burning. Something that didn’t smell like recycled air and stress.
Instead, you were here. And you’d be here for hours.
The lights above flickered once, as if mocking you.
You weren’t going to make it through another two hours like this: crouched at your desk, body slowly folding in on itself while your brain dripped out of your ears. No shot. You needed to move, needed something to knock the static loose from your skull and scrape the boredom out of your spine.
A walk.
You made the decision before you even turned away from the window. Not a break. A strategic reboot. A little movement, maybe ten minutes, clear your head, come back fresh. It’d make the last stretch easier. Bearable, even. That’s what you told yourself.
You grabbed your headphones from the drawer, slipped them over your ears, cord trailing down into your phone as you stepped out into the quiet hallway. The door clicked softly behind you, and just like that, your office became someone else’s problem for a little while.
You hit shuffle on your “Don’t Die At Work” playlist—eclectic, moody, borderline unhinged—and the first notes drifted through your ears like a breath of fresh air. You cracked your neck left, then right, and started walking.
The halls were nearly silent at this hour. Fluorescent lights hummed steadily above, motion sensors clicking on ahead of you and fading behind as you walked, shoes soft on carpet, phone warm in your pocket. You let the music pull you, shoulders slowly dropping from their permanent defensive position, breath coming easier.
You passed the same copy room twice, same vending machine with the same stuck pack of gum glaring down from its plastic prison. You circled the coffee station. Glanced at the empty meeting room with the big screen still frozen on some half-scrubbed map. Saw the filing cabinets with the dent in the third drawer from when you dropped a stapler trying to look busy in front of the Director.
It got old fast.
Your floor was a ghost town. Every turn was a memory. Every shadow accounted for.
Boring.
Your eyes drifted toward the far end of the hallway. The elevators were dead at this hour, locked out after nine unless you had higher clearance. But the stairwells worked fine and your badge still pinged for a few extra floors. You weren’t technically restricted from walking them. Not unless someone filed a complaint. And who was here to do that?
You hesitated at the top of the stairwell, then smirked faintly to yourself and descended.
One floor down: HR and Legal. Dead silent. Too many glass walls and motivational posters. Sterile. You didn’t stop.
Two floors down: Advanced Research. Access denied. You tapped your badge just to see it blink red. Figures.
But one floor up was Field Operations. And that, you remembered, was on your list.
Technically.
You scanned your badge at the stairwell door, half-expecting it to screech at you, but it clicked open with a low, satisfying thunk. The hallway beyond was darker than yours. Lights dimmed lower. Motion sensors either lazier or dead entirely. A few amber security LEDs blinked along the floor, tracing a path like breadcrumbs.
You stepped in, curiosity licking just beneath the surface.
You’d filed reports from this floor. Walked the perimeter once, maybe twice. Dropped off hard drives. Picked up case logs. But the cubicles here weren’t like yours. The desks were leaner. Screens blacked out unless someone was logged in. Lockers lined the walls like soldiers at attention, each one coded with a number, not a name. Emergency kits. Trauma bags. Ammunition manifests, all tucked out of sight, but you knew the codes from requisition slips.
This was where the action lived or slept, rather. Now, it was a tomb. The atmosphere was still, but heavy with presence. You could feel it. The air carried a charge here that your floor never did like something waited, always ready to move.
You kept walking down another hall. Past the armory checkpoint. The breakroom here was bigger and nicer (shocker). Someone had left a coffee mug by the sink. A knife sharpener sat on the counter. A wall calendar still marked with red circles from the last training rotation.
You imagined him here.
Kennedy. Not in a spotlight. Not doing something cinematic. Just... standing at the counter, making coffee. Shoulder holster still strapped tight over his shirt, sleeves rolled up, scars peeking out along his forearm, maybe a cut on his jaw that he hadn’t noticed yet. A tired expression marring his features, thinking about something else entirely while the machine sputtered behind him.
The thought hit you harder than it should’ve. You shook your head and turned away, scoffing at yourself.
He wasn’t here. No one was. You were wandering into places you didn’t belong, trying to imagine a ghost. You weren’t some intern with a crush. You just needed air, and maybe, just maybe, the edge of something you didn’t understand to wake yourself the hell up.
Each hallway blurred into the next, soft lit and silent, the occasional green exit sign flickering like a heartbeat in the periphery. You kept walking, even as your phone buzzed once in your pocket, low battery, but you didn’t check it. Your thoughts had settled into a rhythm with your music, footsteps falling quiet on the industrial carpet, eyes catching on little things you’d never seen up close before. A weapons checklist taped to a locker door. A rack of ballistic vests tagged and numbered. A framed photo on someone’s desk—three agents with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, smiling wide.
God, this place was nothing like yours. It felt real. Lived-in. On edge.
The further you went, the more the sterile calm of office life fell away and something grittier took its place. Every door was heavier, reinforced. Labels were vague or absent entirely. You passed one with a keypad and a retinal scanner. Another slightly ajar with light bleeding out in a narrow strip across the floor.
You hesitated. You shouldn’t. You knew you shouldn’t, but you pushed the door open anyway.
It wasn’t a room. Not really. More like a utility alcove, tight, poorly lit, maybe meant for equipment storage. What caught your eye wasn’t the room itself. It was the case files stacked on the table.
You blinked, taking half a step forward.
They weren’t like the ones you handled. These were raw. Handwritten in some places. Blood-stained in others. Photos clipped in. Some not even developed fully, thermal images, grainy black-and-whites, half-legible field reports. One page half-stuck to the table with something that looked an awful lot like dried gore.
You didn’t mean to touch it. You didn’t mean to lean in.
There was a name. Not just one. Multiple. Not civilian casualties, but agents, missing or KIA. One of the photos showed a hallway just like the one you were in, but scorched and covered in–
Shit.
You stepped back fast, breath catching, hands up like you’d just stumbled across a corpse.
You weren’t supposed to be here. Not even close. If anyone found you–
You turned on your heel to leave, ready to make a quiet, panicked retreat, hoping maybe no cameras were working tonight, and slammed directly into something behind you.
You gasped, body jolting backward from the impact, but didn’t fall.
A solid arm wrapped swiftly around your midsection, steadying you, warm and strong under your ribs. Your back hit something firm, or rather, someone. You froze, every muscle locking tight as your scream caught in your throat.
A voice followed, low and smooth, right at your ear.
“You lost?”
Your heartbeat kicked into overdrive, thudding so hard it felt like your ribs might crack from the inside. Every nerve flared awake. You didn’t want to look.
You turned your head just enough to catch his face, which was way too close. You saw the sharp cut of his jaw, the faint crease at his brow, and the glint of pale blue under a sweep of too-long dirty blond hair. He looked like he'd just stepped out of a warzone—faint smudges on his shirt, the collar askew like he’d just stripped out of body armor. His expression wasn’t angry, exactly. Just unreadable.
Leon S. Kennedy.
Right in front of you.
Holding you.
Fuck.
Your mouth opened but no words came out, just a shaky breath, eyes wide, the guilty flush rising from your neck all the way up to your ears.
You were so screwed.
“I-I wasn’t–”
You meant to say I wasn’t snooping, or I got turned around, or I’ll go back to my floor now, thanks. Something believable, but the words tangled in your throat and dropped off a cliff.
Because up close?
Holy shit.
All the gossip, every half-assed coffee break whisper, every dramatic sigh Delaney ever breathed about him—it wasn’t exaggeration. If anything, it had been criminally undersold. You’d seen his ID photo. You’d seen blurry field shots, grainy surveillance stills, but nothing prepared you for this.
Leon Kennedy in person was a walking jawline forged in some vengeful god’s idea of symmetry. Up close, you could see the faint shadows under his eyes, the scrape of a healing cut along the side of his throat, a near-invisible scar at his temple that probably had a story no one would ever know. His shirt was snug where it clung to muscle, the rolled sleeves showing off forearms you shouldn’t be looking at. His voice had that gritty edge to it, like whiskey on bad sleep.
His arm was still around your waist. You were acutely, painfully aware of it. You weren’t even cold, but goosebumps flared up along your skin in a delayed wave.
You pulled away fast, nearly tripping over yourself in the effort to not seem like someone who’d been savoring that hold just a second too long.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to–” you muttered, words tumbling out in a rush as you ducked your head and tried to move around him, cheeks burning.
He stepped in front of you, just one clean pivot of his body, smooth as breath.
You froze again. Your heart skipped, then hammered. Loud enough that you were afraid he might hear it.
He didn’t touch you this time. Didn’t crowd you. Just stood there, blocking your exit, eyes fixed on yours.
You cursed yourself silently. Shit, shit, shit! You were going to be reprimanded. or written up. Or worse—escorted back to your floor by him, which somehow sounded more mortifying than a suspension.
“I wasn’t trying to snoop,” you blurted, then winced at your own voice. It was too high. You sounded like a teenager caught stealing liquor.
He tilted his head slightly, brow lifting just a fraction.
“You always wander into secure zones after hours?” he asked, calm as anything. Not accusing, just... interested.
Your face flared hotter. “No. I mean. Not usually. I mean, never. I was just—taking a walk. Clearing my head. It’s been a long day and I thought maybe a break would help and I didn’t think anyone would be up here at this hour and I wasn’t trying to see anything–”
You clamped your mouth shut before you could keep rambling.
Leon blinked once, slow.
His gaze dragged over you, not in a sleazy way. Not even really in a curious way. More like he was assessing you and deciding what to do with you. You swallowed hard, feet rooted to the floor, silently begging the universe to spare you just this once.
Please don’t let me get written up by the hottest person I’ve ever seen in real life.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter this time. “…Which department are you with?”
Huh. Was he serious?
You almost scoffed, almost let it out through your nose before you caught yourself. In your head, the sarcasm came like a reflex. Of course you don’t know me. Why would you? God forbid anyone outside Field Ops matters to the great Leon S. Kennedy.
Your jaw tensed but you forced yourself to straighten your spine and answer, trying not to sound as bristled as you felt.
“Support. Logistics specifically.” You crossed your arms, not quite defensive, not quite confident. “I handle report intake and data clearance for post-mission documentation. Mostly classified asset coordination. DSO, obviously.”
You didn’t add that unlike some people, I don’t waltz around in tactical gear with a pistol on my thigh and a cool codename. But it hovered there, unspoken.
Leon nodded slowly, but didn’t break eye contact. The weight of his stare made your skin itch.
You weren’t used to this kind of scrutiny. People on your floor barely made eye contact, too busy typing or sipping bad coffee to notice you existed. Leon was different. His gaze didn’t glance off you, it clung, pinned you in place like a tack to corkboard, dissecting each word like it might mean something deeper.
You shifted your weight from one foot to the other, then glanced past him, eyes scanning the hallway for anything to look at besides him. The wall. The door. The floor tiles. The shadow of a bulletin board. Anything.
Your gaze kept tugging back, dragging you into him. No wonder he was a legend.
“Never seen you around before.”
The words weren’t rude, but they stung anyway. Just a little.
“I don’t get invited to the elite corners of the building very often,” you offered, too snippy, then instantly regretted it. You tried to soften it with a shrug. “Most of us aren’t exactly cleared for... whatever this is.”
His lips twitched. Not quite a smile, not quite neutral. It almost looked like amusement, but not in a cruel way, more like he'd finally made a judgment call and found you… tolerable.
You didn’t know whether you wanted him to say something else, or let you go already before you humiliated yourself further.
Just when your lungs started to get tight again from the silence, he shifted his stance, just barely but enough. One foot stepping back, one shoulder turning. An unspoken gesture.
You were free to go.
You gaped at him, heart catching on something bittersweet and stupid. Now that the moment was here, with him stepping aside like the final scene of a dream, you didn’t want to leave. Not really. You wanted to stay here in this strange pocket of time, breathing in the reality of him, cataloguing the slight scuff on his boots, the scent of gun oil and soap still lingering faintly in the air between you.
This was the closest you were ever going to get to him.
You knew that.
Leon S. Kennedy didn’t live in your world, he slipped through it like a shadow, like a story told through glass and whispers. He wasn’t someone you bumped into. Not someone who caught you when you stumbled. This was a glitch in reality, and soon it’d be over.
So you nodded, throat tight, expression as neutral as you could make it.
“Right,” you murmured, already turning for the door, half-expecting him to vanish the moment you looked away.
You reached the threshold, heart a weird mess of nerves and disappointment.
“You sure you work here?”
You stopped.
His voice wasn’t cold anymore. It had a new edge to it. Something sly. The barest flicker of mischief under the gravel.
You turned halfway to look at him, brows twitching, mouth opening.
He raised one brow, just slightly, but you saw it. The subtle pull at the corner of his mouth.
“I mean,” he continued, still maddeningly calm, “last I checked, Logistics doesn’t involve breaking into secure zones. Especially not ones with blood on the paperwork.”
You choked. Actually choked. A small, undignified sound escaped you—half cough, half incredulous laugh—and you stared at him, scandalized.
Was he teasing you?
Your brain stuttered. Leon Kennedy—global virus-slayer and urban legend in tactical boots—had just made a joke at your expense.
If your coworkers ever found out, they’d have you committed. You’d never live it down. Delaney would physically combust.
You stood frozen in the doorway, stunned, your hand still on the frame, the echo of his words hanging in the space between you.
Before you could stop yourself, you shot back. “Kinda funny coming from the guy who probably didn't know what logistics was until two seconds ago.”
The look on his face?
Priceless.
Just for a split second, less than that, you saw it. The slight widening of his eyes. The momentary lapse of composure, the disbelief that someone like you, of all people, would bite back. It wasn’t dramatic, he recovered fast, but you caught it. It lit something warm and excited in your chest.
You smiled, just a little. Satisfied.
He didn’t respond immediately. Just studied you again, that unreadable look returning, but not cold this time. More like interest, or maybe curiosity.
You took a breath and turned again, walking away before you could ruin it.
You could feel his gaze lingering on you like a warm hand at the base of your spine long after you left.