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The conference room had been recast into a bowl meant to hold smiles, laughs, stiff handshakes. It all sat in the potion of smells; coffee, sanitizer, freshly washed suits, pastries. There wasn’t a person in the room that wasn’t wearing a tailored suit or a fit skirt. Everyone always made sure to dress up for the Leon S. Kennedy, especially when their golden boy had completed another successful mission, right after last year. Right after Spain. Right after you. Even the President came and it wasn’t even his daughter at risk this time, just the graze of something possibly getting out of hand that could have affected the United States.
You didn’t blame Leon. He was one hell of an agent. Went through the old tale of Raccoon City. His story was both inspiring and beneficial to global awareness about bioweaponry. But you couldn’t help but remember just how nasty the two inch scar on your neck looked. You couldn’t help but think about it every time you opened your mouth forgetting that no noise would come out. You couldn’t help but think about the fact that anyone could say anything to you and you could sign all you wanted to them but it’d all be silent. Dead. Gone. Therapy told you it meant power, but you didn’t know whether to use that power to feel punished beneath it or to ride the high wave of it and have pride.
Either way, you knew Leon wouldn’t be getting those pats on his back across the room, next to the table of pastries and sweets and coffee if it weren’t for you.
You smiled at someone who greeted you walking past your seated position, before returning your gaze to him. These people saw the cleaned up Leon. They saw him in a buttoned up suit with his hair clean and his skin polished. They saw his smirk in a way that meant security and not risk. Could they smell his faint sandal-wood-scented cologne? Could they smell any trace of metallic red that Leon had been inured to more than he had been inured to living like a normal civilian?
You could. You could easily think back to missions you have had with Kennedy. Spain being the last one. You knew exactly how his skin looked with dirty grime glued to him with his own sweat. You knew exactly how he looked with those same flecks of red splattered on him and on his hands. You’ve seen life get taken away by his own hands and actions. You’ve seen it whilst you did the same. The scent of him and undead viscera was easy to trace back in your mind.
Call it pessimism, but you both felt good and bad about the rest of the room not having even a particle of comprehension of an experience like that.
Your eyes never left him outside of your planned look-arounds. Never stopped observing how he moved, how he was always talking with the next person wanting. Did they know how it felt to take the blow of a throw-knife to the neck? To protect your partner? To feel your body become so light that it was a shock to blink and suddenly be in a hospital bed?
The worst part was? Leon barely talked to you after everything. Two visits to your hospital room. That was it. That was all he could afford for you apparently, in a whole year. And yet, here you were, at one of the planned, dramatically-executed celebrations held in D.C. for Leon after another mission that they didn’t put you on, even after putting in a request. They barely deployed you for those types of missions. In fact, they thought you were better off with strictly surveillance orders or missions. Not intruding on a whole island and taking down a whole masterful cult. Not intruding on a heavily manufactured mass-bioweapon that threatened the whole planet.
You were no longer sent with Leon to foreign countries where you would go from competing, to awkward moments, to being right up against him in a closet within a broken down village home, to taking a knife to the throat.
It had only been your fourth mission, too, after all the training they put you through to be within the president’s operations.
The formal celebration had only begun fifteen minutes ago. Small speeches were given, and anyone within the office was free to come and go to pick up a pastry or refill their coffee. The conference table was used as the table of snacks and drinks. Smaller tables and chairs filled the rest of the room. You? You chose the one farthest away. You chose to blend in with the scenery, to watch and observe and eat whatever you had on your paper plate and drink your drink. Here and there, someone would pass and pat your shoulder. Everybody knew you. You knew everybody.
Only one person in the room pretended like you didn’t even exist.
Handshakes. Pats. Laughs that were a little too dry. You couldn’t tell if you hated it or loved it as the moments passed. As your sights always ended up landing back on Leon. Except, after silently scanning the room, when your eyes landed on him again, he hadn’t been there, where your eyes last left him. You felt wrong. Predatory. Like you were watching and taking notes on something that had nothing to do with you. Or so, you pretended all you wanted that it had nothing to do with you, but the underlying current was too strong of a pull to ignore.
The moon was high. The waves were rough. You felt it. Felt it every time you had to be in a conference or a meeting with him. Felt it every time you two passed and neither of you even looked at each other. Proximity was too dangerous when it was threatened. Proximity was too real when you both had to jab at it. Only because Leon made it that way. Only because you knew the first time you saw him after you got out of the hospital and he made no effort to even glance at you. You never really tried to talk to him after that. Not since then.
But again, your little game of scanning, eating, and then watching was interrupted. Leon wasn’t in the room, and if he had been, he was in the bigger group of people diagonal from you, still across the room. You took that as your sign to break out of your thoughts. They had built a wall that was starting to set a little too hard for your liking, and you did not want the rest of your day ruined by past ghosts and mentions.
You found yourself leaving the room, taking a moment to stand by the door and just take a deep breath. A walk to the restroom and back would be more than enough to clear your mind at least a little bit. Allow you to breathe without feeling your mind being actively poisoned with curiosity decorated in resentment. Without feeling that curling deep within your torso every time you saw that blonde shell of a man.
The hallway down and over had been significantly more quiet. Maybe you walked past one or two people going the way you came from, but that had been it. Most of your coworkers and your higher-ups became a little blurred together. Ties. Egos too big to even gauge. The kind of people you’d expect drink nothing but whiskey. That’s what they were, who they were. There was no room for further judgement than that; the past year had been more than a good enough excuse for you to find comfort on a bar counter and a glass in hand.
When you finally reached the bathroom, you found your way to the sinks and mirrors, grabbing the edge of the ceramic counter and just breathing. Slowly, gently.
It felt cold beneath your hands. But it felt good, in a way that didn’t allow you to sink in it but just experience it. It was as if it recognized that you were there and now its temperature was trying to match yours from where your skin met its surface. Crazy how even a fucking sink could acknowledge you better than your coworkers. Better than the world could ever. Not that you weren’t being treated the way you wanted to, it was just that people didn’t treat you with anything but pity. You could feel it. You smiled and laughed with silent exhales with them when they’d talk at you or greet you, but that was it. You didn’t blame them. It was nobody’s fault.
You could smile and laugh and nod all you wanted. You could use your hands to communicate with people who knew how or could understand your signing all you wanted. But there was always that incursion of why that would hit you. That you’d struggle to confront even with a professional.
You looked up, staring at the glass covered aluminum. Staring back at the face you wore, the scar you carried. Some days were better than others. Some days, you did not know who was looking into your eyes. You hated how pity plagued your mind for yourself and you hated how much your mind felt both comforted and disgusted by it. You hated that you were seen as experienced and brave and fortunate. You didn’t feel fortunate. Fortunate meant being either dead or alive, and anything in between just meant suffering.
You didn’t have to be there. It didn’t make a difference either way; Leon certainly didn’t notice you, and even if he did at those types of events, he pretended you were just another painting on the professional D.C. walls. Just something that was created just to be, and nothing more. But something in you glimmered. Something in you sparked with the need to. The need to see him and observe him and just watch him. If you would have confronted that, maybe you’d know what it meant, but it felt wrong. Secretive. Like he knew it too and it was just a silent type of relationship that had no kindness nor violence.
It wasn’t long before you had the cold water running and you just allowed your hands to stay under the stream. It was numbing and awakening, like the way you liked. Enough to have a clear mind to go back and to at least smile while you sat there instead of sulking. Enough to put on a more content expression and to blend in more with whomever was there at that time.
Vmmmm. You took a paper sheet from the automatic dispenser and cleaned your hands, before grabbing another one. Vmmmm. You always did that – grabbed just one as if that would be enough to catch all the droplets and dampness resting upon your skin.
Perhaps it was the buzz of the dispenser that did not make you think twice about who ever left a stall. Perhaps you were too focused on watching the paper towel become dark and more translucent as you dried your hands clean. But when you turned around? When you were about to return to the sink to put the paper into the garbage? You stuttered.
Of course the second you glanced at the figure washing their hands, they decided to also look at you, and you met Leon’s eyes not longer than half a second before you forced your gaze down directly in front of you, watching as your feet brought you all the way toward the garbage and you quickly shoved down the paper towels.
Vmmm. Vmmm.
You couldn’t see him. You didn’t even want to look at him because you knew if you did, you’d wanna yell at him. Hound him down with questions. But you couldn’t. You didn’t turn around as you walked right back out of the bathroom, taking a couple of steps to the side and just thinking.
You heard the door open and close to your right and slightly behind you, and Leon walked straight forward. Not a glance. Not a touch to the shoulder. Not even a whiff of his cologne or the sound of him walking. It was like he carried the stealth he needed for his past mission even then, in the security of the building. In the security of his own skills and strength. Against himself and against you. Once again you were just another one of his ghosts. Another part of him. Everything was about Leon – the missions, his victories, the fact he always remained untouched even though you fucking knew the toll it had on him mentally, he was just better at pretending it wasn’t there.
You felt tossed. Discarded. It didn’t take long in your incursion of thoughts and feelings that you were quickly walking up behind him. You didn’t think, you didn’t pause, didn’t even look around. You just went up behind him and tapped his shoulder. Just lightly. Because you both knew it was you behind him, and he didn’t have to turn around. He kept walking.
“Drop it.”
Drop it? Drop it? That’s all Leon had to say? The fucking guy has barely spoken to you within the past year after you fucking saved him and he wants you to drop it?
You couldn’t stop yourself. You felt your chest get a little more tight, felt your brows furrow. Just because you couldn’t speak doesn’t mean he can’t at least hear you. You tapped his shoulder more aggressively, using the pads of your fingers with a slight tug near the end. Leon just nudged your hand away. Started walking a little faster.
“Stop it, damn it,” Leon grumbled lowly between clenched teeth.
That did it. You felt the bolts in your demeanor loosen and drop. You felt yourself break internally and you snapped. One more hall up and to the left was his party. Someone could have been in the hall to see you pinning the celebration-boy to the nearest surface, but you were too far gone to even look. To check, both for an audience and for yourself. The desperation and anger that had hit you in that moment was a new virus that sickened your cells.
If someone had been in the hall, they would have seen you grab the back of Leon’s suit. They would have seen you spin him toward you as you walked him back, right up against the janitor closet’s door to both of your rights. They would have seen the way your knuckles looked as you grabbed the front of his collar, the way your eyes were low with a need for Leon to see you. Would they be able to see how your chest rose and fell? Would they be able to understand the way your blood rushed through your body? Would they be able to see you as the one who was attacked just on the site of you getting physical with Leon?
Seconds felt like minutes. Nothing was heard from you except your breathing. Leon kept his lips shut. His glacial gaze was low, his brows knitted in a fixed sternness against you. Leon could have easily pushed you away. Could have easily shoved you back and kept on walking. But he stayed, trapped by your hold, and you? You were trapped by the first acknowledgement he’s given you since you woke up in that damn hospital bed. And god, he looked the same. He still had that coldness to his once soft face. Leon still had that ability to make you freeze and cut off your ability to properly think. Because you had forced him to acknowledge you and now you were stuck in a position you also had put yourself in.
You couldn’t talk. But Leon knew what you wanted to say. What you wanted to ask.
“What do you want me to say? Huh?”
The words were quiet but fuck did they cut deep. It wasn’t as blunt as it should’ve been. It wasn’t as loud as Leon should have made it. Because now all the big emotions that you were feeling that were blunt and loud felt crowded and now you felt slightly humiliated and small. A huff of air escaped you, and you gently pushed your hands against his collar, where they already were.
“Can’t you just take the fucking hint?”
Leon sighed. Just loud enough. And fuck it made you melt in a way that was messy and shameful. You felt like you were in Spain all over again, and the once smooth tension you had with Leon had thickened heavily to the point where even when you both were in the clear, you stayed. Just for a moment longer in that wooden thing. Just long enough for that second to turn into fifteen minutes. Just long for that second to turn into feeling just how sticky his sweat really can be.
But again, proximity was dangerous when it came to you and Leon. It was dangerous because you could feel the lack of distance and feel all of your pent up rage and resentment all at once, merging with the way you wanted to both punch him and kiss him. You hated it. Hated that you yearned for something that didn’t want you. For something that resisted you, repelled itself away from you. It hurt. It fucking hurt.
And Leon clearly saw how your expression changed. Saw how it softened into something more calm. Quiet. Sad. You just wanted an explanation.
Leon scoffed. Quietly. His eyes didn’t soften, not even after he swallowed down. Just looked at you with a lower gaze and said ever so gently, “You can throw a tantrum all you want, but I’m giving you the chance to walk away from me yourself. Take it.”
No. No.
There was no movement, not even a consideration of one. The air clung around the two of you like flies on a trap, and you two accepted the suffocation of it all. You didn’t allow him not to. You felt the rise in your pulse, felt like this was the only chance you were giving him to explain why he had been such a fucking dickhead to you. Why he avoided you like you embarrassed him. Like you weren’t mission partners and you two weren’t becoming closer.
It felt too still. Too gentle. No one had entered or left the hall. The only sounds were you breathing and him breathing. You did not let go of him. And you certainly didn’t when he shook his head, and he broke your gaze. That’s when your brows furrowed deeper, seeing as he looked to the left, right, and then back at you, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“You never listen, do you?”
You chuckled silently. Not out of positive intent, but with a passive current of aggressiveness.
“Fine. You wanna do this here? You want answers? I’ll give you answers.”
Leon’s hand went to your shoulder. Tugged you forward as he moved from in front of you. Now, standing behind you, you saw as he reached forward with his free hand, swinging the janitor closet’s door open quickly, before you were pushed forward.
It happened so fast, but you were able to process it enough for your body to melt into the situation. You turned around as Leon entered after you, closing the door and turning the notch on the handle as you heard a click. It was dark. The only light came from behind Leon from the hall as he immediately started to hustle toward you with fast steps and a look so focused on you that you didn’t need light to feel it. Your senses were stirred and you didn’t fight it. You didn’t think. You felt the adrenaline hit you as Leon was one step away, and at the last second, you took that step and allowed him a head start at grabbing the back of your head and colliding his lips against yours so roughly that your teeth collided.
You weren’t expecting it. You didn’t think that Leon had a string of his own, one that was pulled so tightly that you were the thing that could snap it. But he did, and you had, and now you understood at least why. Leon was resisting you for his own sake and you could feel it with how harsh he grabbed your side, with how harshly he walked you back until your hand-covered head and shoulder plates hit the wall with a thud. He was kissing you like a man starved.
It wasn’t long before his lips lapped and pushed against yours so hard that they began to tingle. It wasn’t kind. It wasn’t gentle or loving. It was desperate. Needy. Rough and aggressive in its own nature. When you were able to subside the shock-induced dizziness from his advances, you brought your own hand up. Went to the back of his head and grabbed onto his hair. The groan he poured into your mouth was all too delicious and dirty for you to not even make sense of how hard you tugged on his hair.
The hand at the back of your head went to your neck. The hand at your side had darted to the front of your pants and fumbled with the button and the inevitable zip sound from your raised front. The flooding warmth that entered and drowned every fiber within your body didn’t allow you to think. You just processed. Accepted. Breathed heavily as you felt your cock twitch as Leon tugged your hips forward by the waistline of your pants, keeping your upper body pinned with his hand at your neck. Not too tight, not flat out choking you or even wrapped around the column of it, just enough to possess.
Leon didn’t back away. His forehead took purchase on yours and he had simply just lifted his lips up from your own as his hand snaked beneath the hem of your pants. Your underwear. Your hips twitched.
“Fuck. You really don’t know, do you?”
Leon knew you couldn’t answer. Knew that all you could do was look at him through the darkness, only giving you enough hallway light from the small window panel in the door to be able to see the outline of his features. But that didn’t matter. You could smell him now. You could feel how warm it was getting already, you could still taste his flesh even when he wasn’t even kissing you. His hand was right there. Right on your pelvis. Only a couple of inches away from the base of your hardness.
His hand skimmed around, beneath your layers, gripping your hip.
“You have any idea how you make me feel?”
Breaths. Heavy breaths. And all you did to earn another deep groan from him was tug on his hair again, and even that wasn’t enough to lift his head away from yours.
“You should hate me. Fuck, I’ve tried so hard.” Tried? Tried? The puzzle in your brain clicked. It wasn’t just a bunch of past colors plastered onto new shapes. It was an actual picture, and now you were making sense of it in the small moment of clarity you’ve had, before Leon was leaning his head into the side of yours, and you felt the smallest brush of his lips against your lobe. His hand was moving. It was going back to your front. Your lips parted more and his thumb hooked under the base of your cock suddenly, forming a gentle grasp right up against your skin.
“Unless you tap my arm, I’m not stopping. You want me, you’re getting me.”
His hand started moving. Up the length of you, and down, gently dragging the skin. Gentle enough for your hips to twitch and for your eyes to shut. It was slow. Too slow. You didn’t know how much you needed this and fuck, if you weren’t so hard you would have tried to convince yourself that you were still angry. That you shouldn’t let him get to experience you like this again, but he wasn’t just doing it for this. He was giving you answers. He was starting to make sense. And you both clung onto that excuse in the moment to finish where you both left off just a year prior.
“You scared me. You scared me so fucking bad.” A confession. Something so quiet yet loud enough for your free hand to grip his waist, to find his forehead with yours again as you started panting, feeling waves of aching pleasure with every slow pull of his hand. There was no room for anything accidental. Realistic. It felt too real, in fact. It felt like the world blurred and you just needed to be the only thing besides Leon in the moment. You’ve spent a year asking why, alone, not even with the last person who heard your voice besides you.
Your hand went around. Went to his lower back, behind his hip, Tugged him forward as your hand adjusted more on the back of his neck rather than fully just in his hair. Pants left you and your hips started to gently move on their own, earning something closer to a gasp when his wrist gently twisted as he reached the tip of your cock.
You couldn’t help it. The hand that had just found its place at his back moved forward, and fumbled with the front of his pants. Leon didn’t move away. Didn’t even comment on it. Just kept his torturous pace on your dick as you struggled with the button at first, and then successfully unzipped him.
It was when you were shakily tugging down his pants and underwear that he tilted his head down, watching as the light hit just right to be able to see your fingers wrap around the base of him and pull him out. The sight of him, tall and proud and leaking angrily had your nerves on fire. You didn’t move your hand yet, just allowed it to stay wrapped around his base. The slow exhale that left you told him enough to understand your need for him as you looked at his face then. His eyes were still low, looking into yours even with how close his face was to yours.
Leon didn’t talk to you for a whole year. All because he got scared, all because he didn’t want to close enough to get scared again. He wanted you to hate him for everything because he felt guilty. You knew he wouldn’t say it out loud, but you could feel it, how he was trying to still be rough in his demeanor with you but looked into your eyes like he was waiting on you to continue the pull.
You glanced back down just with your eyes. You didn’t think twice before the hand at the back of his neck pulled him forward, forcing him to take an awkward step closer to you as the tip of his cock nudged yours as he came forward, now resting alongside it. It was perfect for you to wrap your thumb around the base of your hardness, and when you tightened your grip? When you started to slowly go up in a stroke with both of your cocks now in your hold? You shuddered. Your grip at his neck tightened. You panted.
And Leon? He let out the lowest of “fuck”’s, and moved the hand at your neck to the wall beside your head. The hand he had at your cock moved to your hip now. It tightened so much on its new placement that you knew you’d be feeling it the next day. You felt just how much restraint Leon had held within for the past year and it did nothing but make you chuckle out a huff as your hand went up, gave a small twist at both of your tips, and back down. The feeling of his hardness against yours? The way you could feel the air touch the wettened surface of your tip, and how it spread down each time you stroked?
It made you twitch. Made your fingers at the back of his neck just dig in, just enough to get a new hold on his hair. Made your hand pick up just a couple of beats in your tempo of strokes and it earned you a strained exhale from Leon.
“Pretty fucking boy. Fuck. Just like that. C’mon.”
It was just a whisper. But it made you twitch. Made your throat dry and made your stomach clench as you panted more and more. You missed him. You missed him so fucking bad and it ached to the point where you wanted more but knew you couldn’t.
Your hand kept moving. Kept stroking both of you and it was building something so strong and concentrated that your hand started to stutter.
“Hey. Hey.” Something grabbed hold of your chin, and your hip now felt free. Leon forced you to look into his eyes. Forced you to look at him as you felt his cock rub up against you in a way that made your legs tense. It didn’t help. He wanted you to concentrate on him and yet it made you want to fall even deeper. Deeper into feeling like you weren’t going to last, that this was going to be over when you got him to finish. You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to go back to silence.
“I fucked up. I know. ‘M gonna make it up to you properly.” He swallowed, before his lips parted. “I’m not gonna stop. I’m gonna keep going and we’ll continue this later if you can’t take it all now.”
If you weren’t caught by surprise, you would have fought his hand away from replacing yours. But your chin was free and he was yanking your wrist away from where you both met. Your body became Leon’s the second he began stroking you both so intently and with control that you had to pull his hair. You barely missed his groan when you started feeling his hips move with his own movements, feeling his other hand adjust beside your head as you knew he was struggling to find stability.
At this point, you didn’t know how you were holding back. How you were just touching the line that meant you making a mess all over both of your cocks. Your body was tense, tense to the point where you knew your muscles would feel it later. You felt tingly in a way that was borderline aching. If you hadn’t wrapped your arm around the back of his neck your knees would have buckled. With the way you started to stutter in movement, Leon moaned. Panting on his own.
“I know, baby. C’mon. I know it feels good. Make a mess allll over me.”
Your breath hitched and your cock hardened more and he just had to squeeze in more, “C’mon. Help me make a mess- fuckk.”
The sheer amount of chemicals that flooded your system and caused your body to tense and spasm the way it did was uncontrollable. You felt every muscle contract as your cock pulsated against his, rope after rope erupting from you. You felt each one, felt as Leon worked you through it as if he was milking the two of you. And it was clear that Leon met you halfway, allowing you both to twitch and spasm and pant as your climaxes clashed and then settled into something that remained tingly and staggered and everywhere.
You didn’t think about how long of a moment you both took after the last of your waves. You couldn’t even tell, not until you were blinking out of your hazed state and allowed your head to rest back against the wall, Leon pulling his messy hand away from both of you. You just watched him, saw how his now messy hair looked with your now dark-adjusted site.
And you didn’t even realize you chuckled until Leon shook his head.
“You think they’ve realized I’m gone at my own party?”
You nodded your head, lazily smiling. Leon used his clean hand to graze your jaw. Your cheek, just with his thumb, just enough to crush you on the inside.
“Hey. Reschedule your plans tonight or make room for me. I said I was gonna make it up to you.”