Chapter Text
Twenty-five wasn’t really working out for you. Not that twenty-four or twenty-three had been all that great, either.
Quarter-life crisis was a term you’d been resisting, mostly because the idea that you’d have to do this for another seventy-five or so years was, frankly, exhausting. Maybe it was a morbid thought, but it was an accurate one nonetheless. It felt somehow both like you’d blinked and you were no longer a kid anymore, and that you’d had to claw your way through the last few years at an agonizing pace, all while going nowhere. Friendships had shifted, some closer, most further apart. Romance had sort of died in its crib a few times over. The diploma you’d worked so hard for was now mostly just taking up space on your bookshelf, because displaying it reminded you that you weren’t using it.
At least said bookshelf had a new apartment to rest in. That was something you supposed you could be proud of. Being able to afford your own apartment? In this economy? Even if you’d had to move to a small town to swing it, it was impressive. You’d felt all kinds of bougie when you’d signed the lease (only to fill the place with homemade art or things you paid too much for at a convention).
That was the part that sucked the most, though; you had a good apartment, good friends, good job (even if it wasn’t the one you’d planned to have). Life was supposed to be good too if you had all of those things, right?
That hadn’t stopped the ennui from setting in.
At least you still remembered enough high school buzz words to assign a name to your current semi-depressive state. Smart enough to do that, not smart enough to know that drinking cheap alcohol alone was a one-way ticket to a bad habit. Or just too exhausted from your perfectly adequate existence to care.
Usually, you would be drinking while on a call with your friends, but with everyone busy tonight, you sought entertainment elsewhere. Where better than the story of another early-stage alcoholic? One who had, without a doubt, become your comfort character over the last few confusing years.
Watching Leon S. Kennedy back-flipping away from chainsaws usually made you feel better, after all. And after they just freshly revealed he would be making an appearance in the newest game? Looking like a silver fox who could never let go of his boy-band days? Oh, you were craving some Kennedy.
You’d played Resident Evil 4 Remake a few times over, now. Like, the number of times it would take for you to accrue five-hundred hours in the game. Thank you, Steam, for reminding you every time you launched it. Not that you even needed to be reminded of your love for the game and the franchise it was part of - your new apartment may have been in the process of being decorated, but your merch had already gone up. In fact, your adoration for quite a few different franchises was evident, from Fallout to Star Wars and much in between. Resident Evil, though? Oh, she was your one true love. At least recently. Posters hung on your walls - a much better display than your diploma, in your opinion - of Leon and Raccoon City, replicas of a few different jackets from across the franchise were hidden away in your closet . . . hell, you’d even splurged and bought yourself Krauser’s knife. Like, a genuine, steel knife with the snake engraving and everything.
You had a problem, you knew.
But also, you were an adult and life was kind of shit sometimes, so you would buy all the knick-knacks you wanted. And play all the Resident Evil that you wanted, for that matter.
So, taking another deep drink of your liquor, you did just that.
You’d left it on the Krauser boss fight last time you played, and much to the Major’s chagrin, you knew his every move. Rest in peace to the man who was more obsessed with Leon than even you were. A true kindred spirit. You raised your House Targaryen mug to him as he bid Leon his last farewell. Honoring him with whiskey in a mug seemed like something he would appreciate.
The ending salvo of the game was no challenge, even drunk. Saddler made the mistake of forgetting that the Merchant sold rocket launchers, and before long, Leon and Ashley were riding into the sunset on a jet ski.
Twenty-seven and saving the President’s daughter. You wouldn’t call Leon’s life good, by any means . . . but he was accomplishing things, you’d give him that.
And you were accomplishing getting an S+ on Professional, so there. Aren’t you proud, Mom?
You downed the rest of your mug and started a new game save. Best way to escape that thought black hole.
The village section was easy for you at this point - you’d played it enough times to not fear the revving of the chainsaw or the shouts of the villagers. You weren’t locked in the village square with them, they were locked in there with you.
Every piece of treasure, everything you could loot, every blue medallion was collected or destroyed. The brute that tried to kill Leon near the windmill fell victim to his own explosives, and you made Leon back-flip clear of falling rubble when the villagers tried to set a trap for him.
God, he was goofy. And handsome. And entirely the sort of perfect that could only come from the unattainable.
Handsome and skilled and so, so sad.
You wanted to wrap him in a hug and take him away from all the bioweapons and bullshit. Almost as much as you wanted to fold in on yourself and be anywhere else.
Ah, there it was. The thought that even moving into your own apartment couldn’t help you escape. It didn’t matter how much you decorated your space to suit your own needs. It never helped, playing video games or watching shows or reading books because, at the end of the day, you were still on this Earth where so little that was fantastical ever happened. No magic, no dragons, no heroes. Larger than life wasn’t a concept when that life had to fit into five-hundred square feet and rent was coming up.
You weren’t stupid enough to envy Leon Kennedy of all fictional people. Well . . . not really. You didn’t want his life of forced government work, or fighting monsters day in and day out. That, frankly, sounded like hell.
You just envied that he meant something.
That thought sobered you enough that you had to pour more alcohol. Your brain couldn’t swing at you so hard if it was all fuzzy with liquor, right?
Said everyone with a drinking problem. Leon would be proud.
Still, as you worked your way through the last section of Chapter 1, you couldn’t help yourself from thinking about your life. Your simple, good, but utterly unremarkable life. You had food when you needed it. Company, even if they were all several hours or several cities away, now. Money enough to afford too many trinkets and to live alone.
The trouble with living alone, you were discovering, was that there was precious little to focus on but you. And with how good your life was on paper, you had nothing to complain about, really. No hardships that were actively harming you, nothing going wrong enough that you felt justified to talk to someone about it.
But something was missing, all the same. You could feel it in your bones; the absence was marrow-deep and weighing you down. Making your head hurt more than it should have. Making you more tired than you could fix with a good night’s sleep.
Still, as Leon unceremoniously ripped the tape off of a captive Luis’ mouth, you decided that maybe sleep was worth a shot anyway. You drank the remainder of what you’d poured as you watched Mendez toss Leon like a ragdoll, swallowing and feeling reality sway as the alcohol warmed your cheeks. Leon was infected with the glorious Plaga, the first chapter ended, and with a final save, you closed the game. You sat in your chair for far longer than you intended, your own thoughts wrestling you down, before you finally put your plan of getting sleep into action. You stood with a little stumble to make your way to your bedroom-
Only to stop dead in your tracks when that pain in your head grew sharper still. Sharp like someone had held a knife over a burning gas-top stove and then shoved it right into the base of your skull. You nearly doubled over with the force of it, blinking hard and heavy and wondering if your quarter-life crisis might actually end up being end-of-life. The world well and truly seemed to blur around you, and then . . .
Then everything was fine.
The pain vanished like it had never even been there to begin with. Not that you had much time to be grateful when in the next moment, there was a crash in your kitchen like someone had just driven a car through it. Or, perhaps more accurately, like someone had just fallen face-first into the dishes you’d been too lazy to clean and sent them everywhere.
You weren’t exactly proud of the sound you made in response, yelping and all but jumping out of your skin as adrenaline tore your alcohol-induced haze away from you.
Adrenaline first, and then confusion as, somehow, you saw a pair of boots sticking out from behind your counter.
You blinked once. Twice. Tried to see if the alcohol and the dim lighting you’d gone with for the evening were fooling you. When the sight before you went unchanged, confusion turned to what-the-actual-fucking-shit- in a matter of seconds. Especially as you moved a step closer and saw the pair of legs those boots were attached to, the rest of whoever it was still hidden from sight.
Immediately, your eyes went to your front door. You’d been knee-deep in your game and a depressive spiral, but you were sure you hadn’t heard it open. You would’ve heard it open. Hell, you would’ve seen if anyone came into your apartment, with how small it was. Years of having to watch for cockroaches out of the corner of your eye had trained that instinct all too well. Your windows were shut, and you were on the third floor of your complex, and aside from the now-scattered dishes, nothing else in your apartment was out of place.
So how the hell did an entire person end up in your kitchen?
A person who was lying still, yes, but still very much between you and the exit. A hundred thoughts of what to do crashed into your head, but most of them left too quickly for you to catch them. In the end, you reached for the only weapon close to you; the replica of Krauser’s knife that you kept proudly displayed on your desk. Right next to your Vault-Boy.
The figurine’s smile did little to instill confidence in you as you unsheathed the blade. The room was oppressive in its quiet as you crept forward, each step across the faux hardwood making you tense.
This was how people died in horror movies. Hell, you’d just silently admonished the cop at the beginning of RE4 for going to check something suspicious by himself. Even so, a moth to a flame, you kept moving. It had the advantage of, at least, letting you see more of whoever was now occupying your floor. They were, indeed, lying face-down, letting you see the soles of the boots were caked in mud. The pants they wore were dark, and . . . was that a holster?
It was too familiar. Too entirely and perfectly familiar, but it wasn’t until you saw the fur trim of a bomber jacket that you felt your heart stop.
You could see one of his arms splayed out in front of him, and a good chunk of your kitchenware was scattered on the floor alongside it. His cheek was pressed into the tile, fringe fanning out around him and laying perfectly over his eyes. His jaw was slack, his lips parted, but the side profile was recognizable to you instantly - you’d spent enough time staring at it, after all.
There was no way. No way in all hell.
Even so, your wide eyes didn’t appear to be deceiving you. As if you would be able to mistake Leon S. Kennedy, even lying sprawled in the dark on your kitchen floor.
This had to be a dream. You had to have passed out when you stood and now you were imagining things in your unconscious state. You had to be. And you had to prove it to yourself.
You forgot that you were holding the knife. You forgot that you’d been drinking for the past few hours. Hell, you even forgot the feelings of doubt that you’d started the night with as you moved forward, stepping carefully over him to take a closer look. The softness of your hoodie and sweatpants made moving quietly easy enough, something you were grateful for as you knelt down to the side of a man who shouldn’t be in your home. A man who shouldn’t be at all.
Yet, as you reached out your free hand, laying it on his shoulder, you felt only the soft leather of his jacket, a little cool against your fingertips.
Real. There.
And you had precious little time to process those two world-shattering adjectives before you heard a sharp intake of breath. The feeling of that jacket was gone the very next moment as Leon shot up, and a pair of eyes you’d never thought to behold focused directly on you.