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By the time summer settled over Raccoon City, the rain finally stopped looking like it would last forever. The city still looked sick, even in daylight. Still smelled like burnt rubber on hot pavement, cigarettes, gasoline, and something rotting beneath the surface, but winter had passed, and spring had drowned itself somewhere along the way, and now heat pressed against the R.P.D.’s old stone walls hard enough to make the whole building feel like hell.
A year ago, Leon S. Kennedy had arrived at the station fresh from the academy with a perfect uniform, way too much optimism, and absolutely no understanding of what kind of place Raccoon City really was.
He’d imagined danger, shootouts. Car chases in a cool police car. Heroics and maybe his photo in the newspaper, front page, obviously. Maybe a little something to hang on the wall, maybe a shiny medal.
Instead, the department had sat him behind the reception desk with a dying computer terminal and told him not to get himself killed.
The city handled the rest.
Long nights. Bad coffee. Endless paperwork… endless, truly endless. Rain hammering the windows while static crawled through police radios that barely worked like ghosts trying to communicate. Leon learned quickly that the R.P.D. survived less on professionalism and more on exhaustion, nicotine, and shared misery.
Somewhere inside all of that stale hell, Chris Redfield had simply… appeared. At first it was coffee… Then donuts.
Then nightly conversations while stretched lazily across the reception desk while the station emptied itself into darkness around them.
Chris became routine in the same dangerous way the city itself had. Familiar enough to stop noticing until suddenly Leon couldn’t imagine his shifts without him leaning against his desk smiling softly through tired eyes.
The coffee got sweeter when he learned his order, too. More cream. More whipped topping. Bigger cups.
The donuts multiplied too, and slowly, over months of midnight takeout and movie nights and too many pastries to count, Leon softened around the edges, around the middle, right alongside the rest of his life as Chris filled it with new friends in his new city. Fuller cheeks, bigger waist and uniform shirts and pants replaced one size at a time.
Chris noticed every inch of it.
Leon noticed nothing at all…. Not a single damn thing. That was the real tragedy, by Christmas the entire department knew. Claire Redfield knew. Jill Valentine knew. Half the officers upstairs had started making bets about when Chris would finally lose his mind and confess that he had feelings for Leon. Meanwhile, poor Leon still thought Chris was just friendly. Just kind to the new guy, kind to the guy who didn’t know anyone in town. Just the first person in Raccoon City who’d ever really made the place feel like he had belonged.
That didn’t stop that every night the city grew hotter outside the station windows that every day Chris looked at Leon a little longer than he meant to. Like he was already in love… Like maybe he had been for a while now. Leon still smiled back at him with complete, devastating innocence.
Summer arrived in Raccoon City like an unexpected wave, first cold, then rainy, cold again, a few hot days, then back to cold and suddenly hot again.
The kind of heat that settled into concrete and stayed there long after sunset, rising off the streets in greasy waves that made the whole city smell faintly like cooked garbage baked in alleyways.
The R.P.D. handled it worse than anybody. The station had apparently been built sometime before the invention of functional ventilation, and every year the building responded to summer by just giving the fuck up. Ancient pipes groaned behind the walls and broken ceiling fans pushed warm cigarette smoke around in circles. Half the windows jammed shut from humidity and the paint job someone had done by slathering it on the locks. By noon every day, the station smelled like burnt coffee, sweat, old paper, and overheated wiring, and nobody moved fast unless they absolutely had to.
Officers loosened ties, sleeves rolled upward, detectives wilted openly over paperwork while desk fans rattled uselessly across cluttered offices like dying little insects, but downstairs at reception, Leon S. Kennedy had achieved luxury.
The reception desk technically had two chairs. In theory, another officer was supposed to rotate through there with him, in practice, nobody willingly sat reception unless threatened by management or divine judgment, so Leon had annexed the second half of the desk for survival purposes, which included the fans.
Two little desk fans now sat aimed directly at him from opposite corners like personal heat-bodyguards. Tiny plastic white things with rattling cages and pathetic motor strength, but together they created a faint stream of moving air that felt close enough to heaven.
Leon guarded them fiercely.
“You have two fans now?” one detective muttered bitterly while passing through the lobby.
Leon didn’t even look up from his paperwork, “I earned them.”
The detective pointed accusingly, “This is because you’re a Kennedy.”
“Talk to the union.”
The fans hummed steadily beside him, blowing warm air across his face and stirring the longer blond hair curling damply at the back of his neck from sweat, but even sitting still felt exhausting in weather like this. His uniform shirt clung annoyingly to him now by midday every shift, stretched across his growing stomach and plump chest than it had been last summer. The collar sat unbuttoned today despite regulations, sleeves rolled high while he slumped bonelessly in the chair between the twin fans like a man slowly dying in the desert.
The station lights buzzed overhead… it sounded less annoying in the winter.
Somewhere upstairs, somebody yelled weakly for iced coffee. Nobody answered.
Leon shifted deeper into the chair with a sigh, the poor old chair creaked ominously whenever he moved…Not that Leon seemed particularly aware of it, and a few officers walking through the lobby looked genuinely jealous. One muttered, “He’s living better than the captain.”
Leon ignored them completely.
The second chair beside him now mostly existed to hold snacks, paperwork, and whichever cold drink Chris Redfield had brought him that day; usually a few drinks.
Chris claimed it was ‘hydration.’ Nobody believed him anymore, least of all Claire, who’d walked downstairs earlier, seen Leon half-melted between his little fans sipping an iced coffee piled high with whipped cream, and announced, “Chris has basically turned reception into a terrarium for his favorite blonde!” Leon had laughed. Chris had nearly driven his own forehead through a wall.
Over the past year, fat had settled onto him gradually enough to feel natural. A little extra weight from donuts and takeout became thicker shoulders, bigger arms, a stomach that no longer fit comfortably beneath the desk without pressing against it and having to lean over it a bit.
Then summer arrived, and suddenly everybody realized at once just how big Leon had gotten.
His uniform shirts had surrendered months ago. The new ones, with buttons that strained constantly even now across his chest and stomach, and sleeves hugging thick upper arms while his belt disappeared almost entirely beneath the heavy curve of his middle.
Leon himself treated it all with vague, absent acceptance. Mostly he complained about the heat, when he’d get active on the streets, and nothing else, “This building is trying to kill me,” he muttered one afternoon, slumped between his two tiny desk fans with the defeated posture of a Victorian tuberculosis patient…. The fans just buzzed weakly against his flushed face, and one of them oscillated now because Chris had “upgraded” it. Leon considered this a great romance…. between man and appliance.
Upstairs, wooden furniture scraped loudly against tile, and then footsteps approached the balcony.
“Leon!” Claire called down dramatically, “We need muscles!”
Beside her, Jill Valentine looked equally overheated, short dark hair pulled up with a bandana Claire tied for her while she fanned herself with paperwork.
“We’re moving desks,” Jill explained.
“To the good window,” Claire added solemnly.
Claire, despite not technically working there, had somehow acquired her own desk over the past few months through persistence, charm, being a Redfield, and her vague involvement in community outreach programs nobody entirely understood how to manage but her. She’d shoved her desk right beside Jill’s.
Leon secretly thought it was adorable. The girls acted like an old married couple already; stealing each other’s snacks, arguing over desk space, finishing each other’s sentences while tormenting Chris recreationally.
The Redfields collected best friends the way other people collected bad habits.
Leon smiled up at them, “You two are cute, you know that?”
Claire pointed immediately, “See? He gets it.”
Jill nodded, “…Unlike your brother.”
“Chris understands nothing,” Claire agreed.
Leon laughed softly, not really understanding, and planted both hands against the armrests to stand… Then paused effortfully as the chair groaned beneath him. Leon rocked forward once, momentum carrying his weight upward slowly while the old desk creaked faintly under the pressure of his hands.
Claire’s expression changed first… Then Jill’s. Not judgmental, but realization, because standing now, Leon looked enormous. Fat everywhere. Fattened through the chest, stomach, hips. His weight settled heavily into his wide stance while the stretched uniform fabric clung damply from the heat, then, when he finally straightened fully with a tired little exhale, Claire suddenly thought, ‘Oh my God…’ and beside her, Jill visibly did the math too… Four hundred pounds? Maybe more? Neither of them said it aloud, they weren’t rude and he was a close friend, but Leon, oblivious as always, just grabbed his iced coffee and waddled around the desk toward them.
“You want me to move both desks?”
Claire blinked quickly back to reality, “Uh. Yeah.”
Leon nodded, “Okay,” then he started toward the stairs at a slower pace than he used to move a year ago, or back when he signed up, with one hand briefly resting against the railing while he climbed.
The reception chair creaked mournfully behind him, Claire eyed it, then looked at Jill.
Jill looked back, “You think?”
“…Chris is gonna need to buy him a new chair instead of lunch,” Claire whispered.
“A bigger one,” Jill agreed immediately.
“That thing’s fighting for its life.”
Upstairs, Leon continued climbing with exhausted determination while carrying his giant iced coffee like a lifeline against the heat.
Neither woman missed the way his shirt had ridden up slightly at the back from the movement… how did he even fit his ass in that little chair?Then there was the fact that Chris was going to absolutely lose his mind the second he realized how much bigger Leon had gotten over the summer alone. Claire rubbed both hands down her face… this was going to be an interesting day.
A few weeks later, the heat somehow got worse. Nobody understood how, it was already so awful. Even nighttime offered no relief anymore, only thick humid darkness sitting heavy over the streets, and the R.P.D., morale had collapsed entirely.
Officers wandered around half-dehydrated clutching iced coffee like life support, even the people who claimed to hate it. Somebody had stolen three desk fans from Records. The break room freezer had become sacred ground.
Downstairs at reception, Leon Kennedy finally gave up on long sleeves and looking like Mr. Professional, ready for action. Chris discovered this at approximately nine in the morning and never recovered. He came downstairs carrying two oversized iced coffees sweating condensation down the sides, already halfway through mentally preparing himself for another brutally hot shift.
Then he saw Leon.
…Short sleeves. Fat arms, chubby forearms and thick wrists that weren’t really defined as wrists anymore.
‘Jesus Christ….’
Then there was the fact that the lighter summer uniform already fit too tightly now across Leon’s chest and stomach, pale blue fabric stretched over softened curves the department had spent months collectively pretending not to notice too hard, but it was the arms that killed Chris instantly. Soft upper arms pressed plush against short sleeves already digging slightly into his skin. Forearms thicker now too from weight gained over the year, flushed faintly pink from the heat, a heavy layer of fat from his upper arms swallowing his elbows whole.
Leon looked comfortably soft and snuggly… Absolutely devastating.
Chris stopped walking so abruptly an officer behind him almost crashed directly into his back.
“You good?” the officer asked.
“Uhhh,” Chris answered.
Leon looked up from behind the desk fans and smiled immediately.
‘God. Every time.’
Chris approached slowly like a man nearing a wild animal he hoped wouldn’t notice his heartbeat, “I brought you—” he started, but Leon was even cuter up close, even bigger.
Chris showed up every morning with iced coffee. Then again in the afternoon. Sometimes a third time if paperwork ran late upstairs or if he just happened to “pass by” and notice Leon might be “looking tired” because they didn’t have someone to sit there at night and he was still the rookie no one wanted to be responsible for getting hurt.
The drinks were always the same now; customized exactly the way Leon liked them, so consistent it felt less like ordering and more like being known for a specialty dessert.
Extra cream. Extra whipped topping when available. Just enough coffee beneath it to qualify legally as coffee, maybe a shot of espresso at night, or two.
Leon accepted them with gratitude every time, “Thanks, Chris,” he’d say, like it was nothing, it was normal, like someone didn’t have to learn a person very carefully to get that specific order right.
Chris always answered the same way, “No problem!” Simple.
Now Leon tugged absentmindedly at one sleeve. Chris had lost the rest of his sentence completely when the movement rolled the sleeve higher… Higher. Soft skin exposed further up his fat arm while Leon sighed dramatically and leaned back in his brandnew reinforced reception chair, the new one Chris had quietly ordered after hearing alarming creaking noises for two consecutive weeks and his sister tipping him off. He even tried to make it a romantic gesture with a bow on it… but Leon didn’t even acknowledge it as romantic, just cute and funny.
“This weather is evil,” Leon complained.
Chris stared at him.
Leon continued completely unaware, “I think I’m actually melting,” he lifted the collar of his shirt, fanning warm air dramatically against his flushed, fat neck, “Look at this. I’m dying.”
Chris’s brain blue-screened….
Somewhere upstairs, Claire sensed a disturbance in the universe.
Leon rolled the sleeves up another inch.
Chris physically had to look away, blushing wildly.
“You okay?” Leon asked again.
“Yep.”
The answer sounded strained enough to concern a medical professional.
Leon frowned slightly while taking the iced coffee from him, “You look overheated.”
Jill appeared at the second-floor railing at exactly the wrong moment, she took one look downstairs and saw Chris with flushed cheeks and Leon’s rolled sleeves, fat and wide and sitting between two humming little table fans while Chris stood there visibly fighting for his life.
Then she vanished again immediately. A second later Claire’s scream of laughter echoed from upstairs. Chris closed his eyes briefly…. Traitors everywhere.
Downstairs, Leon stabbed a straw into the coffee happily, “You know what the worst part is?”
Chris braced himself spiritually.
“What?”
“My thighs stick to the reception chair now. This was brand new a few weeks ago and didn’t feel so small. Maybe someone stole mine and replaced it with this one…”
Chris nearly dropped dead on the spot.
Above them came the unmistakable sound of Jill collapsing against a wall. Leon kept talking, blissfully unaware of the destruction surrounding him, “And the short sleeves are still too hot somehow,” he rolled them even higher while complaining, “I don’t know how Barry wears these year-round.”
Chris stared at the ceiling like a man searching desperately for divine strength.
The station lights buzzed overhead, offering literally nothing but the sound and the heat.
One of Leon’s little fans oscillated lazily toward Chris for half a second before turning away again.
Leon took a huge sip of whipped cream-covered iced coffee and sighed in relief, “Man,” he grinned, “I missed summer drinks.”
Chris looked at him again despite knowing better… At the soft fullness settled everywhere now. The flushed cheeks. Damp blond hair curling slightly from humidity. Fat arms and half his belly resting comfortably on the desk while he leaned bonelessly into the fan breeze.
Perfect… Absolutely perfect.
Chris was so deeply doomed it almost circled back around to being impressive.
“You’re staring again,” Leon pointed out casually.
Chris answered without thinking, “Can you blame me?”
Leon blinked…. Then laughed. Actually laughed, because of course he thought Chris was joking, so he did what he always did when he didn’t know what to do with something: he laughed, not because it was funny, just because it felt like the correct social response.
“Uh,” Leon said, twisting the straw into the lid when Chris still stood there, “So… your staring joke?”
Chris blinked, finally, “Uh? What?”
Leon smiled politely, a little more unsure now, “The ‘can you blame me’ thing. I wasn’t sure if that was like… a joke-joke or just you being tired.”
Chris stared at him for half a second, then exhaled through his nose like he was trying not to do something catastrophic, like ask him what he thought he meant when he was trying to flirt, “It was a joke,” he said.
“Right,” Leon nodded immediately, “Cool. I figured.”
A pause, but Chris still didn’t move away from the desk, he was still watching him.
Leon took a sip of iced coffee to fill the silence… Sweet. Cold. Perfectly wrong with too much sugar he loved in a way that somehow made it perfect, and the way Chris put two donut holes on the straw for him. He swallowed and set it down.
“Anyway,” Leon continued, tone shifting into work-mode relief, “do you have anything that needs to be typed up? I finished those parking complaints from earlier a couple officers gave me, so I have some time for something more serious.”
Chris hesitated, just for a fraction too long, then he shook his head, “Not right now. Maybe later?”
“Oh,” Leon said, mildly disappointed but not surprised, “Okay.”
Another pause… The fans hummed between them, stirring warm air across the desk.
Chris finally straightened, “I’ll bring you something later,” he said.
Leon smiled automatically, “Yeah, okay. Thanks!”
Chris turned to leave. Stopped halfway. Looked back once more, like he was checking something he couldn’t quite leave alone.
Leon was already pulling a stack of papers toward him, balancing them on his belly to read while settling into the chair, one hand absently resting near the base of his iced coffee, Chris looked at him for another second… Then left.
Leon, still smiling a little to himself, started typing without ever once wondering why Chris Redfield seemed to look at him like that.
The afternoon dragged the way it always did in summer; slow, sticky, and half-awake now that Chris had gone off to do actual work, and at reception, Leon tried very hard to stay conscious…. It wasn’t going well.
Leon kept typing anyway, one slow report after another, eyes drifting shut between sentences. Still, his mind wandered more than his attention span allowed.
Mostly to Chris… and Claire, and Jill.
Leon frowned slightly at the screen. It was weird, if he thought about it too long, that is, because Claire looked at Jill the same way Chris looked at… well, at him… Or at least Leon thought she did. That attention. The lingering focus. The way Claire’s voice changed just slightly when she was talking to Jill versus anyone else. The way Jill always seemed to stand just a little closer than necessary when they were arguing over desks or paperwork or who stole whose coffee.
Leon leaned back in his chair slowly, squinting toward the ceiling like it might offer him some answers in that droning buzzing sound.
‘Huh. Maybe thats just… a Redfield thing,’ he thinks instead, when the lights give no answer, ‘Some kind of intense, overly committed friendship style. Emotional proximity as a personality trait? Big feelings, no social manual?’ That made sense.
Chris did it too. Just… with coffee instead of playful arguments and playing with hair. Leon nodded to himself once, satisfied with this conclusion, “Redfield behaviour,” he muttered quietly, ‘Case closed!’ He let it go almost immediately after that, the way he always did with things that didn’t directly involve him. Whatever people did with themselves was their business. He had enough trouble keeping up with his own job, his own paperwork… his own slowly melting consciousness. The station clock ticked forward with heavy indifference.
Somewhere upstairs, someone shouted about a missing file cabinet key… but it sounded further away than usual.
Somewhere else, a chair scraped loudly across tile, and that sounded even farther…
Leon typed two more lines into a report before realizing he’d written absolute nonsense. He stared at it for a moment, ‘a dueprut rsponddd nlto reeeeeeee…’ Deleted it… Typed it again correctly this time, ‘2:30 p.m. A deputy responded to a report of a vehicle stopping at mail boxes. It was the mailman.’ this was the fucking city they wouldn’t let him go out on patrol in?
‘ 5:58 p.m. - Umbrella Corporation reports a man, located in a comic book store across the street, that stands at the window for hours watching the building, making employees nervous. Officer Ryman identified the subject as a cardboard cutout of Harrison Ford as Han Solo.’ …but fuck Leon Kennedy and giving him a police cruiser or even a walking patrol, right?
Then, slowly, the annoyance waned and the exhaustion caught up with him in the quietest way possible, with buzzing lights and sounds that seemed so distant and muffled. His shoulders slumped first, then his head tilted slightly to one side.
The hum of the fans turned into something distant, too, and his fingers slowed on the keyboard.
One last half-finished sentence sat blinking on the screen: ‘12:55 p.m. A driver who committed a traffic violation tossed crystal methamphetamine out the window before pulling over, which didn't go unnoticed by Officer Carlsen who...’
Leon blinked back at it… Once, just resting his eyes…. twice… then he stopped blinking entirely. His head drifted forward onto his chest, like gravity had simply won an argument he wasn’t interested in having.
The reception desk creaked softly under his weight, and the station continued existing around him without pause, within minutes, Leon S. Kennedy, not entrusted to take down cardboard, Leon S. Kennedy who couldn’t take on a mailman or a traffic stop, was asleep again; curled into the quiet of the R.P.D., empty coffee of just ice sweating beside him, still completely certain that whatever was happening between Chris, Claire, and Jill was just… a Redfield thing.
Sometime around four in the afternoon, the air conditioning finally died. Not dramatically, there were no sparks, no explosion and no heroic final struggle where ice won over fire. The ancient system simply gave one long metallic groan somewhere deep in the walls of the R.P.D. and quietly surrendered to God.
For a few minutes, nobody noticed.
Then the station changed… The weak current of lukewarm air drifting through the vents vanished completely, and the summer heat rushed inward like it had been waiting like an armed assailant. Within minutes the whole department felt different… Sticky enough that paperwork curled at the corners and uniform collars dampened instantly against skin.
Upstairs, someone swore loudly, “Tell me that wasn’t the fucking AC!”
The station dissolved into misery at record speed.
Officers abandoned all professionalism. Ties disappeared. Sleeves rolled higher. Somebody opened the break room freezer and just stood there staring into it like a religious experience, downstairs at reception, Leon S. Kennedy slept through all of it, spread across the desk like a fallen empire. One moment paperwork. The next unconsciousness. Now he lay half over the reception counter beneath the miserable hum of his tiny desk fan.
The fan tried its best… It accomplished nothing.
Warm air pushed uselessly across Leon’s flushed face and blonde hair while the rest of him remained entirely defeated by the heat. His uniform shirt had ridden up, untucked while he slept, fabric bunched beneath the enormous weight of his stomach resting fully atop the desk now, pressed soft and heavy against scattered paperwork and an abandoned incident report while his arms folded beneath his head like somebody who had simply given up pretending to be awake anymore.
Even asleep, Leon looked overheated. Cheeks pink from the temperature rising around him. Shirt clinging damply across his back and sides. One thick arm hanging, then dropping to the side of the desk while the tiny fan oscillated across him with determination.
The entire scene looked so uncomfortable it almost became peaceful…. Almost.
Chris came inside carrying two iced coffees and several Burger Kong bags just in time to witness it and stopped dead. For a moment he genuinely forgot what building he was standing in. The station lobby buzzed dimly around him, phones ringing somewhere far away, radios crackling through static, officers complaining loudly about the dead AC upstairs, but all of it blurred instantly into background noise.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck….’ Leon was enormous like this. So soft and full everywhere now, soft in ways Chris had spent the last year trying very hard not to think about too much. The reception desk barely contained him anymore with his stomach spread heavily across the surface and his shirt pulled loose from sleep and heat.
One of the little fans turned toward Chris briefly and blew warm useless air against his arm, then turned away again. Chris stared at Leon for several long silent seconds, felt the not-really breeze against his arm muscles and the hair standing upon them.
Somewhere upstairs, Claire noticed his arrival and leaned over the balcony railing, “Oh no,” she whispered immediately. Beside her, Jill looked down toward reception and saw Leon asleep across the desk and Chris standing there motionless holding two sweating iced coffees like his soul had just exited his body, Jill quietly covered her mouth with both hands, “This is unbelievable,” she whispered.
Below them, Leon shifted slightly in his sleep, the desk creaked and his shirt rode up another inch. Chris nearly ascended directly into heaven.
Claire physically grabbed Jill’s shoulder to steady herself, “We need to get him a bigger desk.”
“We need to get Chris medical attention.”
Chris finally moved again when one of the iced coffees started slipping from condensation against his hand.
He caught it automatically, while still staring. The lobby felt ten degrees hotter than it had thirty seconds ago.
Upstairs, Claire Redfield leaned farther over the railing with the delighted focus of someone watching a nature documentary reach its dramatic climax, “Go wake him up!” she yell-whispered.
Chris didn’t look away from Leon, “I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
Beside her, Jill was openly crying laughing now, though silently enough not to wake the sleeping man downstairs, “…You know what kills me?” Jill whispered, “He genuinely thinks Chris is just friendly.”
Claire nodded solemnly, “Nobody thinks he’s friendly.”
Down below, the tiny desk fan rattled against the reception counter with worsening instability, Leon slept right through it, cheek pressed into one folded arm while his stomach rested heavily across scattered paperwork like it had nowhere else to spread out. Somewhere beneath him were probably three unsigned reports and at least one missing parking citation.
Chris approached slowly, like a man nearing a wild animal.
Leon’s skin looked flushed beneath the lobby lights, blonde hair damp, shirt ready to break open. The untucked shirt exposed a sliver of soft stomach at his side every time he breathed.
Chris looked away immediately, then looked back, because apparently suffering built character.
One iced coffee he set carefully beside the desk fan.
The other he kept.
Leon made a soft sleepy noise without waking when Chris nudged the cup closer toward his arm.
“Rookie,” Chris said quietly.
No response.
“Leon.”
Still nothing.
The fan oscillated lazily across them both. Upstairs, Claire had fully sat down on the floor now to avoid being seen, though her laughter still echoed faintly through the railing bars.
Chris sighed, then very carefully rested one hand against Leon’s shoulder, “Hey…”
Leon stirred slowly this time instead of startling awake outright, a sleepy frown crossed his face first, then one eye cracked open, “…m’working,” he mumbled into his arm.
Chris had to physically bite the inside of his cheek to stop smiling too hard, “Sure you are.”
“The reports…”
“You’re crushing them.”
Leon frowned harder, processing this with the speed of a sedated housecat, then he shifted, just a little stretch, and immediately realized his stomach was fully on top of the desk.
“Oh my God,” he groaned weakly, voice muffled by embarrassment and exhaustion, “Did I fall asleep again?”
Chris glanced upward toward the balcony. Claire gave him a thumbs up. Jill looked seconds from death. Chris ignored both of them, “Maybe a little while. I called earlier and you were up.”
Leon slowly pushed himself upright with the exhausted determination of a man climbing from his own grave. The desk creaked in protest beneath the movement while his shirt remained hopelessly untucked around his waist and his stomach plopped back into his lap, where he had to part his legs for it to rest between them, reaching past his knees. The tiny fan blew directly under the fabric for half a second, Leon made a sound of genuine relief, “Ohhh, that’s nice.”
Chris looked away so fast he almost got whiplash. Above them, Jill folded in half laughing silently into Claire’s shoulder.
Leon grabbed the iced coffee beside him immediately, pressing the cold plastic against his cheek with a relieved sigh, “Did the AC die?”
“I heard that a few hours ago.”
“We should evacuate the building.”
“That actually was suggested.”
Leon took a huge sip of coffee before slumping back in the reinforced reception chair again, belly pressing against the edge of the desk.
Chris stayed standing there longer than necessary…. Watching him.
Leon noticed this one, “…You okay?”
Chris answered without thinking, “You’re really pretty.”
Silence.
Complete silence….
Even the upstairs laughter stopped.
Chris froze, “Pretty red.”
Leon blinked his pretty blue eyes at him slowly over the rim of the iced coffee. Then, “Oh,” Leon said, smiling sleepily, waiting for the espresso shot to do its job, “Heatstroke.”
From upstairs came the sound of Claire collapsing fully onto the floor.
Chris stood there in absolute silence while his soul slowly left his body. Across from him, Leon S. Kennedy, cute receptionist and not the epic cardboard cutout fighter, smiled sympathetically over the rim of his iced coffee like a man comforting someone visibly delirious.
“Oh,” Leon repeated gently, nodding to himself, “Yeah, you’re definitely overheating too. You’re so red.”
From upstairs came muffled wheezing sounds as Claire Redfield attempted unsuccessfully not to die laughing on government property.
Chris dragged one hand down his face, “Sure,” he muttered weakly, “Heatstroke here, too.”
Leon brightened immediately at the confirmation, “Thought so,” and just like that, the moment passed right through him untouched.
No suspicion, realization, nothing.
Chris had just called him really pretty to his face, and Leon had… what? Diagnosed him with environmental exhaustion? Jill disappeared from the balcony entirely, probably to scream into a wall somewhere.
Meanwhile Leon happily returned his attention to the iced coffee in his hands…. Calling it coffee at this point required optimism. The thing looked more like a milkshake somebody had briefly wondered what the point of it was with espresso. Extra cream. Whipped topping piled absurdly high. Caramel drizzle Chris pretended was accidental. Somewhere buried beneath all that sweetness lurked that single exhausted shot of espresso trying its best, probably.
Leon loved it instantly.
“Oh man,” he sighed after another long sip, changing the subject back from being too hot, “You made it extra good today.”
Chris stared at him helplessly, still flushed, “You say that every time.”
“Because every time you somehow improve it,” Leon leaned farther back in the reinforced reception chair, visibly happier now with cold sugar entering his bloodstream. The tiny desk fans continued pushing useless warm air across him while his untucked shirt drifted slightly around his stomach.
Chris tried very hard not to look directly at that… Failed immediately.
Then Leon noticed the paper bag on the desk, his eyes widened, “…Is that Burger Kong?”
Chris finally managed to recover enough brain function to answer, “Thought you might be hungry.”
Leon looked genuinely delighted and rubbed his belly, “You’re my favourite person.”
Upstairs, Claire made the sign of the cross dramatically. Chris looked over the full bags, looked at the way he rubbed his stomach and wished he could do the same, then looked before he embarrassed himself permanently, ‘really pretty’ was enough hardship at the moment.
Leon opened it immediately with the focused excitement of a child on Christmas morning. The smell of greasy fries and grilled burgers instantly filled the overheated lobby, “Chris,” Leon breathed, horrified and impressed all at once, “You got me four burgers?”
“You said you skipped lunch on the phone.”
“I was busy.”
“You were asleep when I called and woke you too.”
Leon considered this, “That’s still technically an activity.”
Chris laughed despite himself.
Leon started happily working through the food without another thought in the world. Fries first. Then half a burger gone in alarming time while he made small relieved noises under his breath every few bites.
Chris leaned against the desk beside him again automatically, watching, not just because Leon was beautiful to him now; not that Chris was surviving that particularly well either, but because Leon looked happy and comfortable around him, that realization scared Chris more than the flirting ever had. Leon took another huge sip of iced coffee between bites. Whipped cream stuck faintly to his upper lip.
Chris almost blacked out.
“You know,” Leon said thoughtfully around fries, “I think this is the hottest summer of my life.”
Chris nodded absently, “Mhm.”
“My apartment AC barely works too,” Leon sighed dramatically, “I woke up sweating through the sheets this morning.”
Chris choked on absolutely nothing.
Above them, Claire’s horrified laughter echoed faintly down the stairwell again.
Leon blinked upward, “…Why does she keep laughing at us?”
Chris answered immediately, “Psychological problems.”
“I guess that checks out?” Redfields were kind of weird… Leon shrugged and went back to eating, happily stuffing himself.
The reception desk creaked quietly beneath his weight every time he moved. His belly pressed against the edge while burger wrappers slowly accumulated around him like evidence of a deeply successful evening.
Chris looked at the scene in front of him; the sleepy flushed face, the oversized iced coffee, the soft body half-melted beneath two pathetic desk fans, and felt something else he hadn’t realized; domestic bliss, maybe? That was the terrifying word for it, right? This just didn’t feel like flirting anymore. Leon felt like coming home.
By August, the betting pool had become organized, but not officially.
The R.P.D. would never officially endorse gambling over the emotional collapse of a S.T.A.R.S. officer. Unofficially, however, the second-floor break room now contained a legal pad titled:
‘WHEN WILL CHRIS REDFIELD FINALLY CONFESS?’ which was scribbled in all caps, in bold red letters someone went over a couple times, and underlined too. Underneath it were dates, dollar amounts, and increasingly specific predictions written in different handwriting.
Somebody had drawn little hearts around Chris Redfield’s name at least twice.
He threatened murder every time he saw it.
Nobody took the threats seriously anymore.
“September,” one detective declared, tossing five dollars into the coffee tin Claire had designated as the betting fund, “He was weak last autumn.”
“You’re all insane,” Chris informed them while pouring himself coffee.
“Counterpoint,” Jill replied calmly, “you just bought Leon matching desk fans when his broke down.”
“They were on sale.”
“You monogrammed one.”
Chris froze.
The break room erupted.
“Oh my God,” Barry laughed, “You monogrammed the fan?”
“It was one sticker!”
Claire physically leaned against the counter for support, “You put his initials on climate control equipment. And my fan broke and I didn’t get anything.”
“It was funny at the time.”
“I’ll buy you one,” Jill replied, ignoring him.
Across the room, the newest member of S.T.A.R.S. sat blinking between them in growing confusion. Rebecca Chambers had joined the unit only a few weeks earlier and still carried the general expression of somebody realizing too late that her coworkers were all deeply strange people. Young, brilliant, and unfortunately observant, Rebecca had spent her first month at the R.P.D. quietly absorbing information.
…Including the situation downstairs.
She looked from the betting sheet to Chris, then back again, “…Wait,” she said slowly, “You guys are betting on when he confesses? Confesses what?”
Claire nodded, “When he’ll tell Leon he’s in love with him.”
Rebecca frowned, “But aren’t they already dating?”
Complete silence….
Chris choked on coffee hard enough to alarm medical professionals. Jill slapped both hands over her face immediately. Barry actually wheezed.
Rebecca looked around, bewildered by everyone’s reaction, cute and innocent, “What?”
Claire pointed downstairs dramatically, “They are not dating.”
Rebecca blinked once, not processing things, like they were all wrong and she wasn’t sure, “…The blond receptionist?”
“Leon,” Chris muttered automatically.
“Oh my God,” Jill whispered instantly, “He corrected her like a husband.”
The room dissolved again.
Rebecca stared harder now at Chris, genuine disbelief spreading slowly across her face, “You bring him coffee every day.”
Chris folded his arms defensively, “People need hydration.”
“You buy him food.”
“He forgets lunch.”
“You look at him like he invented happiness.”
Chris opened his mouth… Closed it again, not having any real defense.
Across the room, Barry quietly added twenty dollars to the betting pool.
Rebecca looked horrified now, “You’re not dating?”
“No,” Chris said through gritted teeth.
“…Does he know you’re in love with him?”
“No!!” Chris barked.
The break room exploded so violently somebody downstairs yelled asking what happened.
Claire nearly fell off her chair laughing. Jill had actual tears in her eyes now. Rebecca stared at all of them like she’d accidentally joined a psychiatric study, “But—” she gestured helplessly toward the stairwell, “the way he talks to him—”
“The way Chris talks to him,” Claire corrected.
Rebecca paused, then slowly nodded.
Chris looked ready to run out onto the roof and jump to his death.
Meanwhile downstairs, entirely unaware his romantic life had become a department-wide sport, Leon sat at reception happily drinking his oversized iced coffee.
One of the little desk fans hummed beside him. The other had a tiny sticker reading LSK on the base. Leon thought this was thoughtful. Not romantic, just thoughtful. Wesker had taken his other fan when the other broke.
Upstairs, Rebecca finally leaned toward the betting pool notebook, “…Okay,” she said carefully, “What are the current odds?”
Claire grinned instantly, “You in?”
Rebecca looked downstairs through the balcony railing where Chris now stood watching Leon eat fries with the exhausted tenderness of a man already halfway married in his own head.
“…Absolutely,” Rebecca answered, “Ten bucks says he confesses before Halloween.”
Chris made a sound usually heard from wounded animals.
Jill patted his shoulder sympathetically, “It’s okay. We’re all rooting for you.”
“I hate every single one of you.”
“No you don’t,” Claire said sweetly.
Unfortunately, she was right.