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“Hey, Leon?” your voice breaks, shards of broken words stuck inside your throat.
Blue eyes snap away from scattered files, blonde hair framed by a halo of gold from the lamp behind him. All you can find is immediate concern in Leon’s face, and it makes you feel worse than you already do.
“Angel? You okay?”
Already you know you’ve lost the strength to remain put together—to be so carefully poised that you don’t break. You had only wanted to ask him a question, but the day’s big feelings are too slippery for you to hold back.
You’re shaking your head while Leon stands, feet swift and silent along the carpet as he steps up to you. His hands reach to wrap around your elbows, and you grab onto him like a child, hands fisting his shirt, all but falling into him as the first sob swells inside your chest.
It feels so large that it might split you in half.
Leon grapples you closer to him instantly, gathering you up as you shake. His chest rumbles against your cheek as he shushes you, not because he wants you to be quiet, but because he wants to ease the pain bursting out of you, the feeling almost tangible.
“You’re okay. I’ve got you,” Leon soothes, gravel-voice giving way to softness, and the ache in your stomach worsens. He rocks you side to side softly, arms of coiled muscle holding you to him. He smells like spearmint and copper, a metallic scent sewn into his clothes and his very skin. You wish you could breathe it in deep enough that it stays stuck inside your lungs forever.
“I—I’m so sorry,” you gasp between tears. The air is stuffy and hot against your cheeks, and your wet lashes seal your eyes tightly shut. Leon doesn’t say anything as your grip on him tightens, enough so that he can feel the tremor running through your hands.
“What are you sorry for? Love, talk to me,” Leon murmurs, and he moves to gently grab your arms, pulling you away from his chest with tender hands. You can feel the calluses left behind from rigid gun stocks, but you’re not seeking silk—just something to ground you.
“For crying, and bothering y-you,” you sob.
It’s difficult to speak around the lump in your throat, tongue numb against the words that ail you. You can barely see Leon, a watery film warping his features like he’s hidden behind the surface of a pond—something so seemingly close, but so far away in reality. You wonder if it means something, this miniscule moment where everything is blurry.
Does it mean that he’s not really here—or that he won’t be for long?
You don’t get many good people like Leon, and whatever good makes its way into your life doesn’t stay for long. It’s a cruel visitor that doesn’t pay for its lodgings. It leaves behind a mess you have to clean up. It promises to stay, but the bed is empty and the car is out of the driveway.
And whatever good you thought you had within yourself has been lost, dropped on the way to adulthood, forgotten on the doorstep of your childhood home. That’s why you’re here in the first place, right? You’re searching for something good.
It just happens to be Leon.
“I’m so sorry,” you say again, this time quieter, like the last flicker of a flame before it's finally snuffed out. You sniffle, holding together the parts of you that are crumpling like wet paper. Leon says your name. He says it urgently, softly.
“You need to tell me what’s going on.”
You’d smile if you could. The heart you call a haunted house within you isn’t meant to be known by Leon S. Kennedy—a man so tired already, but it’s like he was designed to search your abandoned halls, eyes cast to dark corners where he might find your secrets, hands ready to pull away crumbling plaster and replace it with something new. Something whole.
It’s all that he’s done since he met you—all the way back in Raccoon City. You remember that night more than you’d like, and you remember the overwhelming flood of crimson staining your shirt, and the way he carried you. You remember when he yelled at Ada—a woman who could’ve had his heart—when she called you as something burdensome.
You don’t remember her exact words, but you remember how safe you felt then, held up by someone with a beating heart encased in living flesh, not death and decay. Even now you can see traces of him from that night—blue eyes creased from worry, skin pale from the cold, fingers flinching for something to find. Something to put back together.
Are you something to put back together? You feel entirely broken, mind riddled with holes and all the hopeless thoughts about yourself that you can’t help but believe.
I’m not like Leon. I’m not someone who is good. I’m not someone who can help. I can barely help myself. I’m only something partial, but don’t I deserve to be?
“I… I feel wrong,” you croak, and Leon’s brows draw tighter together. You would have said nothing at all, but you’ve got one foot in already, bracing to take the plunge and bear yourself plainly to Leon.
You’re starting slowly, but it’s something.
“Are you hurt?” Leon asks immediately, blue eyes combing across your pinched face like he might find what’s causing you pain. You nearly cringe away from it entirely, the worry etched into the lines of his face, the concern falling off his tongue like a second language.
You shake your head, hiccuping on a breath. You say it again, even if it sounds ridiculous out loud, even if the way Leon looks at you makes you feel sick.
“I feel wrong, Leon—like I’m not a… a good person. Or a-anything at all.”
Silence beats between you like a hummingbird’s wings. Something faint, something invisible. Something questionable. The parts of you that are falling apart are screaming, telling you to apologise and walk away—to carry your burdens alone because they’re not Leon’s.
They never have been.
“It’s fine, I’ll—” your breath catches, lips pulling thin as Leon brings a hand to cradle the side of your face, his thumb rubbing a soft crescent beneath your eye. He wipes away the dampness sitting there.
“Look at me,” Leon tilts his chin down, eyes piercing yours. “We’re not stopping there, OK? Talk to me, Angel.”
You wish he wouldn’t look at you like that. It makes you feel like you’re everything—the only thing he orbits around, and that just doesn’t fit.
Leon catches your hesitance, the way your gaze darts to his shoulder and away from him—guilty like a dog caught chewing on someone’s shoe. He taps his forefinger lightly against your cheekbone, bringing you back to him with uncanny ease. You can’t keep your eyes away from him for long. You know this, and maybe he does, too.
“I want you to talk to me,” he assures firmly—kindly.
You know this too—but still, you wait, bracing for the inevitable push, the words that spell it out clearly: this isn’t what I actually want, and your pain is too much to share. I have my own as is. Don’t put this on me—I don’t want it.
But the room continues to hold its breath while Leon stays, his hand stuck to your jaw like a loving barnacle that you can’t shake off—won’t shake off, even if you feel that you should.
When you inhale, your chest shudders. “I feel like there’s something wrong with me.”
“Like what?”
“Like I can’t do anything right,” you continue, choking back the cotton in your mouth. “Like I’ve messed up my life so much that there’s no hope that I’ll make anything good out of it. Like I’m not good—”
“Stop. Stop. Who—the hell—told you this?”
Shame pulls over you like a hot blanket, wrapping around your throat like an uncomfortable scarf.
“No one…” you say quietly, “...I did.”
Leon stares at you—almost incredulously, and it gives you the space to question it all. Will he pull away now? Is he really here for you? Does he truly want to listen to the way your heart breaks inside your ribcage? Does he truly want to kiss you like he might fade away the scars?
Does he honestly love you?
You feel Leon’s fingers slipping from your skin, and panic flares inside your chest.
“It’s stupid—I shouldn’t have—”
“You’re the only good thing I have, y’know?”
Breath stills inside your lungs, or maybe Leon’s whisper—confession—has stolen all the air from you completely. His eyes glisten like chinks of glass, and his fingers had only slipped from your cheek to travel to your neck, thumb pressing against your pulse point like he needs to know you’re flesh and blood. Alive and breathing—here with him.
“What?” you ask, breathless like you’re balancing on a tightrope.
“You’re…” he repeats, his head tilting to the side, “... you’re the only good thing I have. You know that, right?”
Maybe you gape at him for a second too long—maybe there is so much disbelief etched across your face that it sparks something inside his chest. You feel his fingers shift, sliding into your hair—he’s anchored to you, or maybe he’s anchoring you to him.
Somehow, for a reason you know but refuse to name, Leon wants to keep you close. Somehow, for a reason you struggle to believe, Leon doesn’t want to walk away.
“Listen to me,” he says, and he pins you with a look you can’t escape. “You’re the best thing I have in this world—a world that’s damn-near torn apart, and all I see around me when I go out there is how sick humans are and what they do to each other. There’s nothing good out there, but you—” he huffs a weak chuckle, head shaking— “you are so good. You’re all the good I get. And some days I think I’m dreaming. Like I’ll wake up and you won’t be here because of how… how out of place you are. How perfect you are—”
“I’m not,” you cry, tears streaking down your cheeks while your chest splits open. The ache within you burns like a wildfire, violent and screaming. “You don’t mean that—”
“I mean all of it,” Leon corrects, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth with all the quick fondness of someone desperate to fix a shattered window, a leaking dam, a hurting soul.
“I mean it all. You’re good—” a kiss to the slope of your nose. “You’re perfect—” a kiss to the arch of your brow. “Determined even when things are tough—” a kiss to your jaw. “Loving and kind—” two kisses scattered across your cheek. “The opposite of anything bad, you’re like a light in the dark—”
You duck your head to hide into Leon’s chest, a wet laugh bubbling out of you—fragily wrapped inside a quiet sob, a cry that’s as defeated as a sandcastle caught in the tide. Your skin tingles where his lips had pressed, like he’s bruised you in the softest of ways.
Leon’s hand falls from your hair and he snakes his arms around you tightly again. He can feel you shake against him, and he presses his nose into your scalp, swaying you softly.
“I mean it,” he whispers, “there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not bad or a lost cause. Raccoon put your life on hold and I get it… you know I get it. I was there, too.”
“But I haven’t done anything about it, Leon. It’s been three years,” you mumble into his shirt, and you realise it’s the shirt you bought him for his birthday—a vintage tee with a Jurassic Park print—there are traces of your perfume stuck in the fibres.
“Things take time,” Leon says.
“And what if…”
“What if… what?” he prompts, knocking his chin gently against the crown of your head.
You breathe in his scent, feel your courage slip between your fingers despite the way you answer him, “what if you get bored of waiting?”
“Love,” Leon sighs, and your heart braces for the tinge of annoyance in his voice, the impatient remark that follows—but it doesn’t come. Instead, Leon shifts to press his forehead against yours, eyes catching your teary gaze.
“You could take all the time in the world, and I’d still be here,” Leon says, and it’s the second time that he steals away your breath. Leon isn’t conniving like thieves are, nor cunning. His eyes don’t glint with the intent to take, and yet he’s stolen nearly all of you.
Your heart. Your will—not the one that’s meant for you—but the one that hurts you.
With storm-riddled eyes that soften at the sight of you, a voice that doesn’t often raise but always carries, a quiet strength that doesn’t boast, Leon has stolen you away from everything else. Only now, he’s taking you away from your own personal hell, the one you’ve assigned to yourself.
You don’t think you deserve it, but Leon looks at you with both eyes open and a heart with its walls knocked over.
You swallow hard. “You—”
“Mean that?” Leon’s lips pull in what can only be a loving smirk, his words dropped into a gentle and quiet promise. “Hell yeah, Angel.”
Leon pulls you back into him, where spearmint and copper envelop you like a secret. You sink further into him, arms stretched around his waist and fingers curling into the creases of his shirt—navy blue and soft. You let him hold you while he says soft things into your skin.
You let yourself fall into something good.