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The medical bay at the BSAA North American Command Hub smelled aggressively of industrial disinfectant, cold stainless steel, and stale, burned mess-hall coffee.
Leon S. Kennedy sat on the edge of the stainless-steel examination table, his heavy leather combat boots dangling an inch off the sterile linoleum floor. Every shallow breath tasted like raw linen and rubbing alcohol. Every deep exhale brought a sharp, white-hot throb from the left side of his chest, radiating down into his hip and up into his shoulder blade.
It had been a disaster from the second Rebecca and Chris tracked him down. Leon remembered sitting in that dim hotel lobby bar, half a bottle of expensive scotch deep, staring into a glass while trying to drown out the lingering memory of his DSO squad getting wiped out in Washington. He hadn't wanted any part of their mission. He'd told Chris straight to his face that they were just fighting an endless, hopeless loop.
Then Glenn Arias had dragged them all into hell anyway.
He had his jacket and shirt off, draped unceremoniously over a metal stool. His torso looked like an abstract watercolor painting of storm clouds; mottled purples, deep blues, sickly yellowing green edges, and harsh, dark maroon contusions tracing the exact line where his ribs had met a reinforced concrete pillar on the rooftop. Arias had thrown him like a ragdoll, with a speed and raw kinetic violence that human bones simply weren’t designed to absorb.
Across from him, the BSAA senior flight surgeon; Dr. Hollis; clicked her pen with an agonizing, rhythmic regularity that made Leon’s head ache behind his eyes.
"Concussion, mild to moderate. Photophobia and mild nausea noted," Dr. Hollis read aloud off her tablet, her eyebrows drawn together into a severe line above her horn-rimmed glasses. "Lacerations across the left forearm; four stitches required, which I just finished closing. Deep tissue contusions along the lumbar spine, extensive bruising across the pectoral and intercostal muscles... and two cracked ribs. Fifth and sixth on the left."
She lowered the tablet and stared at him over the rim.
"You were thrown through a structural wall and slammed into concrete by an infected monster, Agent Kennedy. When Captain Redfield and Dr. Chambers dragged you into my facility, you could barely stand. I don't care if you're DSO; in my medical bay, you're a patient. I'll be reaching out to your handler."
"The pillar took the worst of it," Leon muttered. His voice was low, rasping slightly from the smoke inhalation he'd swallowed back in Manhattan. He made a subtle attempt to pull his shirt back up over his head, but his left shoulder hitched halfway through the motion.
Dr. Hollis caught his wrist with a gloved hand, her grip ironclad. "Sit down and stop moving, Kennedy. I haven't finished taping the dressing on your forearm."
"Doc, I'm fine," Leon grunted, jaw tightening as he eased his arm back down. "I've walked off worse than this."
"And that attitude is precisely why your medical file reads like a casualty list," she snapped, though her hands were meticulous as she secured the sterile gauze over his stitched skin. "Effective immediately, I am placing you on medical hold. Thirty days mandatory leave. No field assignments, no tactical training, no firing range, no heavy lifting, and absolutely no driving."
"Thirty days?" Leon raised an eyebrow, his usual sardonic composure cracking into genuine irritation. "You're joking. Doc, I'll go out of my mind in three. What the hell am I supposed to do in my apartment in D.C. for a month? Contemplate the cosmos? Stare at the ceiling?"
"You could try sleeping," a low, gravelly voice spoke from the doorway.
Leon glanced up, the sudden neck movement shooting a dull spike of pain down his spine.
Chris Redfield was leaning heavy against the doorframe. He was still wearing his dark BSAA tactical pants and a grey Henley shirt dusted with plaster powder, dry mud, and faint flecks of dried blood from the operation. He looked utterly exhausted; the dark circles beneath his blue eyes were carved deep, his jaw shadowed by two days of coarse stubble. But his eyes were steady, unblinking, watching Leon with a quiet, observant weight.
"Chris," Leon grunted, easing his back slightly against the upright cushion of the examination table. "Tell her I'm fine. Arias is dead, Rebecca synthesized the vaccine, and I've worked through far worse than a couple of hairline rib fractures."
"You looked like a ragdoll when Arias slammed you," Chris said bluntly, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "When I found you in that hotel bar, you were half-dead from a bottle of scotch. By the time we got off that rooftop, you were half-dead from internal bleeding. I heard your ribs crack from thirty feet away. It's a miracle your spine isn't in two pieces, Leon."
"I was catchin' my breath," Leon lied smoothly, though his pale complexion betrayed him.
"You were about two seconds from passing out in the back of the V-22," Chris corrected coldly.
"Traitor," Leon muttered, rolling his eyes and wincing at the pull in his chest muscles.
Dr. Hollis looked between the two veteran agents, her expression softening only marginally. She turned her focus to Chris. "Captain Redfield, talk some sense into him. If I release him back to his personal quarters in Washington on independent status, he's going to skip his physical therapy, order takeout, finish whatever bourbon he has left, and end up back in an emergency room with a punctured lung within a week."
"Hey, my bourbon is higher shelf than that," Leon interjected, though nobody paid him any attention.
"You're entirely right," Chris agreed, taking two slow steps into the room. "He has no baseline for self-care when he's injured. He treats his body like a stolen vehicle."
"I'm thirty-six years old," Leon growled, his voice dipping into that dangerous, flat tone he used when pushed into a corner. "I don't need a handler, Redfield."
"You clearly do," Chris replied evenly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of truck keys, tossing them lightly from his left hand to his right. "The BSAA gave me mandatory downtime to clear the mountain of paperwork from New York and reset before my next rotation. My place in the foothills outside Denver has a spare room, a back porch, and an actual kitchen. No city noise. No handlers calling your secure line every six hours."
Leon stared at him, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he searched Chris's face for the catch, the angle, or the pity. "Denver? Chris, I was miserable company in that bar. On leave, I'm worse. Ask anyone who's ever known me."
"Good thing I'm not looking for a party host," Chris said. He walked right up to the edge of the metal table, picking up Leon’s flannel button-down shirt from the stool. He didn't toss it at him; instead, he held it open with careful, deliberate patience, waiting for Leon to slip his arms in. "Come on, Leon. Let me get you out of my medical wing before Hollis decides to wrap you in bubble wrap and keep you for observation."
Leon looked at the shirt, then up at Chris's face. The captain's expression was calm, solid, and entirely devoid of judgment. It was just an open door.
With a heavy, resigned sigh that made his ribs twinge, Leon carefully reached out his arms and slid them into the sleeves. "If you make me eat granola and go hiking, Redfield, I'm hijacking your truck."
Chris offered a faint, fleeting ghost of a smile; the first genuine warmth Leon had seen on his face since they'd crossed paths in Chicago. "Deal."
xXxXxXxXxXx
The flight to Colorado had been a miserable, pressurized endurance test. Between the vibration of the BSAA transport and the subsequent two-hour drive into the foothills in Chris’s heavy-duty pickup, Leon’s ribs felt like they had been re-broken and fused back together by a blind blacksmith.
By the time the truck finally rumbled up a winding gravel driveway bordered by towering ponderosa pines, Leon was pale, sweating, and leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window.
"Almost there," Chris said, his voice low and devoid of its usual tactical edge. He’d been driving with agonizing care, swerving around every pothole as if he were navigating a minefield.
"I've been 'almost there' for three counties, Chris," Leon rasped, his eyes closed. "Just park the damn truck before I decide to jump out while it's still moving."
Chris didn't bite back. He simply pulled the truck into a wide, dirt-packed turnaround in front of a sturdy, two-story house built of dark timber and river stone. It wasn't a "cabin" in the traditional sense; it was a fortress of a home, tucked into a natural bowl of the mountain that shielded it from the harsh alpine winds.
Chris killed the engine. The silence that followed was absolute; no sirens, no distant hum of a city, just the soft sigh of wind through the needles and the ticking of the cooling engine.
"Welcome to the middle of nowhere," Chris welcomed him, stepping out and moving around to the passenger side before Leon could even reach for the door handle.
Leon wanted to protest when Chris reached in to help him out, but the second he swung his boots onto the dirt, a sharp, white-hot spike of pain shot through his left side, stealing his breath. He instinctively grabbed Chris’s forearm, his fingers digging into the thick muscle of the Captain’s sleeve. Chris caught him by the shoulder, steadying him with a strength that felt like an anchor.
"Easy," Chris murmured. "Deep breaths. Shallow ones, actually. Hollis's orders."
Leon leaned into him for a fraction of a second more than he needed to, the scent of gunpowder and pine that clung to Chris’s jacket strangely grounding. "I hate this," Leon hissed through gritted teeth.
"I know. Come on."
The inside of the house was surprisingly warm. It wasn't filled with tactical gear or weapons racks; instead, it smelled like cedar and old books. There was a large stone fireplace, a deep leather sofa that looked like it had seen better decades, and windows that looked out over a valley that seemed to stretch into eternity.
Chris led him to a guest room on the first floor; sensible, so Leon wouldn't have to navigate stairs. "Bathroom is through that door. I’ll go get your bag."
"Chris," Leon called out as the bigger man turned to leave. Leon was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking small against the massive quilt. "Thanks. For... not leaving me in that bar. Or on that roof."
Chris paused in the doorway, the light from the hallway casting his shadow long across the floor. He didn't look back, but his shoulders relaxed just a fraction. "Get some sleep, Leon. We’ll talk about the grocery list in the morning."
xXxXxXxXxXx
The first three days were a blur of restless, drug-induced naps and Leon staring broodingly out the sliding glass door in the living room. Chris was a ghost of efficiency, moving through the house with a quiet purpose. He spent his mornings on the porch clearing his mountain of BSAA paperwork and his afternoons doing "light" maintenance; which, for Chris Redfield, apparently meant splitting logs with a rhythmic, thunderous thwack that Leon could hear from the sofa.
By day four, the "scotch-haze" from Chicago had fully lifted, replaced by a sharp, itchy restlessness. Leon was bored. He was used to the high-stakes adrenaline of the DSO, not the domestic rhythm of the Rockies.
On the fifth morning, Leon was alone in the living room. Chris had headed into the local town; a thirty-minute trek; to restock the fridge. Leon was nursing a mug of tea (Chris had hidden the bourbon, a move Leon found both insulting and probably life-saving) when he heard a faint, rhythmic scratching at the glass door.
He stiffened, his muscle memory screaming threat, but he didn't have Matilda. He didn't even have a kitchen knife within reach. He stood up slowly, his hand instinctively hovering over his bruised ribs, and moved to the door.
Sitting on the cedar deck was a creature that looked like it had been through a meat grinder and come out with an attitude.
It was a tomcat, scrawny and battle-scarred. Its fur was the color of a wet asphalt road, matted in places and missing in others. One ear was a jagged stump, clearly lost in a territory dispute, and a long, white scar ran across its muzzle. It sat perfectly still, staring at Leon through the glass with unblinking, copper-gold eyes.
Leon slid the door open just a few inches. The cool mountain air rushed in, carrying the scent of damp earth.
"You're a mess," Leon murmured, his voice echoing the one Dr. Hollis had used on him.
The cat didn't hiss. It didn't run. It simply stood up, walked into the house as if it owned the mortgage, and immediately sat on Leon’s foot. It let out a rasping, demanding meow that sounded like gravel in a blender.
Leon looked down at it. The cat looked back, completely unimpressed by the legendary DSO agent.
"I know the feeling," Leon said softly. He limped toward the kitchen, the cat trailing at his heels with a strange, crooked gait. Grabbing a saucer from the cupboard and a tin of tuna from the pantry he made a pile of food for his new friend and set the saucer on the floor.
The cat didn't hesitate, devouring the fish with a violent intensity.
When Chris’s truck rumbled back up the driveway twenty minutes later, he walked into the kitchen to find Leon sitting on a stool, watching the asphalt-grey cat groom itself on the rug.
Chris stopped dead, two bags of groceries in his arms. He looked at the cat, then at Leon.
"Leon," Chris said, his voice flat. "There is a feline in my kitchen."
"I noticed," Leon replied without looking up.
"It looks like it’s been in a blender with a chainsaw."
"He was perimeter scouting," Leon corrected, his tone shifting into the one he used during mission briefings. "He’s a survivor. Look at the ear; that’s a veteran of at least three winters. He’s sharp. He’s low-profile."
Chris set the groceries down on the counter with a heavy thud. "It’s a stray, Leon. Probably has fleas. Or rabies."
"He doesn't have rabies. He has standards," Leon said. He reached down, and to Chris’s absolute shock, the cat leaned into Leon’s hand, purring with a sound like a failing engine. "I’m naming him Guard. He’s the new security asset."
Chris rubbed the bridge of his nose, a sigh escaping him that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. "Guard? Really? You're naming a five-pound cat Guard?"
"He's under-resourced, Chris. We'll build up his caloric intake, get him some vet-grade meds, and he'll be a force multiplier." Leon finally looked up, a small, stubborn spark in his blue eyes. "He stays."
Chris looked at the cat, then at the bruised, battered man who was finally looking like he had a reason to be awake.
"Fine," Chris grunted, turning back to the groceries. "But if Guard pees on my boots, he’s your responsibility."
"Guard is tactical, Chris. He knows better than to soil the gear."
The cat looked at Chris, let out a loud, raspy yawn, and promptly fell asleep on Leon’s foot.
xXxXxXxXxXx
By the middle of the second week, the suffocating stillness of the mountain had metastasized into full-blown, excruciating cabin fever.
Leon S. Kennedy was a man accustomed to crisis. His brain was hardwired for high-speed pursuit, tactical maneuvering, and running on sheer adrenaline fueled by cheap coffee and bad decisions. Being stripped of his sidearm, forbidden from so much as doing a set of push-ups, and forced to abide by Dr. Hollis’s strict regimen of anti-inflammatories was a unique form of psychological torture.
He had resorted to pacing. He paced from the living room to the kitchen, down the short hallway, into the guest room, and back again. Guard, whose scrawny frame was already noticeably filling out thanks to an uninterrupted supply of premium salmon-and-rice wet food, followed two paces behind him like an asymmetrical, four-legged shadow.
"If you wear a groove into my oak floorboards, Kennedy, you're refinishing them yourself," Chris called out from the dining table.
Chris was buried under three different stacks of BSAA after-action reports, a red pen clenched between his teeth, a half-empty mug of black coffee sitting on the table near his elbow. His broad shoulders were hunched, his grey Henley stretching across his back as he scrawled notes in the margins.
Leon paused near the stone hearth, resting his right hand against the mantel while his left arm stayed cradled loosely near his healing ribs. "I need to do something, Chris. Anything. If I read one more generic thriller from your bookshelf, I’m going to throw myself off the back porch."
Chris pulled the pen from his mouth and leaned back in his chair, the heavy wood groaning under his weight. He looked Leon over with a critical, military eye. The ghost-like paleness in Leon's complexion from the hospital was gone, replaced by a touch of color, though the deep bruising along his left side and jaw was still fading into an ugly yellow.
"Hollis said light walking only," Chris reminded him firmly. "Your follow-up scans aren't for another two weeks. You try running or lifting anything heavier than a skillet, and you'll reopen those rib fractures."
"I could clean your truck," Leon offered, a desperate edge in his voice.
"No."
"I could chop wood."
"You can barely swing your left arm without wincing. Absolutely not." Chris sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with a broad palm. He checked his watch. "Look, I need to drive into town anyway. The store got a fresh shipment of supplies, and Guard is running low on those tins you insisted on. You want to ride shotgun?"
Leon didn't hesitate. "Get the keys before I change your mind."
xXxXxXxXxXx
The town of Pine Creek was a sleepy mountain settlement that consisted of a gas station, a post office, a hardware store, and a sprawling general store that sold everything from tractor fan belts to homemade jam.
The air was crisp and smelled of pine resin and woodsmoke. Leon stepped out of the passenger side of the truck, taking a cautious, deep breath that only gave him a mild twinge in his intercostal muscles. Progress.
Inside, the general store was quiet, bathed in the warm glow of overhead lights. Chris grabbed a red plastic basket and headed straight toward the pet aisle, while Leon drifted off toward the back of the store, eager to stretch his legs without a planned objective for once in his life.
Chris was inspecting a box of flea treatments when he realized the silence had lasted a little too long. He turned around, scanning the wide aisles, and found Leon standing in Aisle 4; the craft and home supplies section.
Leon was standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling display of colorful yarn, holding two silver aluminum crochet hooks in one hand and a skein of yarn in the other. He had an expression on his face that Chris usually associated with disarming a bomb: fierce, lethal concentration.
Chris walked up behind him, leaning his arm against the wooden shelf. "What are you doing, Leon?"
"Acquiring a new skill-set," Leon said smoothly, not looking away from the display.
"Crocheting?" Chris raised an eyebrow, a skeptical, highly amused grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. "You; Mr. 'I fire handguns off moving motorcycles'; are taking up yarn work?"
Leon turned slowly, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he held up a skein of yarn that could only be described as offensive: a screaming, fluorescent neon-pink acrylic.
"You think I can't do it?" Leon asked, his voice dropping into a quiet, dangerous challenge.
"I think your hands are built for field-stripping an HK VP9 and steering speedboats, not making lace doilies," Chris chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest. "You don't have the patience for it."
Leon's chin came up instantly. The stubborn, quiet defiance that usually took three shots of whiskey to coax out was now blazing in full force, fueled entirely by petty spite.
"It requires fine motor precision, bilateral coordination, and spatial awareness," Leon stated, tossing the neon-pink yarn straight into Chris’s plastic basket, right on top of Guard’s salmon pate. "And more importantly, Redfield, I know for a fact that watching me do this is going to drive you absolutely insane."
Chris blinked, staring down at the neon-pink wool in his basket, then back at Leon's deadpan face. A low rumble built in Chris's chest, breaking out into a full, loud laugh that echoed down the quiet aisle.
"Alright," Chris said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Alright, Agent Kennedy. Prove me wrong. But if you stab yourself with a hook, I'm not calling Hollis."
"I don't need Hollis," Leon snapped pleasantly, grabbing a second hook and a small booklet titled Crochet for Beginners. "I have tactical precision."
xXxXxXxXxXx
That evening, the living room became a war zone of a completely different kind.
A crackling fire roared in the stone hearth, casting long, orange shadows across the timber walls. Chris sat in his leather armchair, a stack of BSAA personnel files in his lap, though his attention was hopelessly compromised.
On the couch across from him sat Leon. Guard was curled up in a tight, purring ball on Leon's lap, acting as a furry anchor. Leon had a tablet propped up on the coffee table playing a muted video tutorial on slow motion, showing a demonstrator executing a basic single crochet stitch.
For the first two hours, it was an absolute disaster.
Leon’s fingers, hardened by combat and weapon grips, pulled his tension far too tight. The yarn practically fused into concrete-hard knots that resisted every attempt to pull the hook through.
"God damn it," Leon muttered under his breath, his tongue slightly between his teeth as he wrestled with a pink clump.
"Everything okay over there, tactical operator?" Chris called out from his chair, a smug grin plastered across his face as he turned a page of his file.
"Focus on your paperwork, Captain," Leon growled. He pulled a small folding knife from his sweatpants pocket, sliced cleanly through the tangled mess, and started over from scratch.
Chris watched him over the top of his papers. There was something strangely mesmerizing about seeing Leon; a man who carried the heavy shadow of a hundred horrors in his eyes; so completely, fiercely consumed by a piece of cheap pink string. The tension in Leon’s shoulders had shifted from the rigid, defensive posture of a wounded soldier to the sharp focus of a man fighting a very personal, very petty war against a ball of yarn.
Around 11:00 PM, Chris stretched his arms over his head, his shoulder joints popping softly. "I'm calling it a night, Leon. Don't stay up all night fighting the wool."
"Wait," Leon said quietly.
Chris paused near the hallway archway.
Leon stood up carefully, easing Guard off his lap onto a cushion. He held his hands out, presenting his creation. It was roughly four inches by four inches. It was lumpy, noticeably wider on one side than the other, and made of bright, eye-searing neon-pink acrylic. But it was, unquestionably, a solid square of fabric.
Leon tossed it across the small gap between them. Chris caught it on instinct, his large hand completely engulfing the small pink square.
"What is this?" Chris asked, holding it up between two broad fingers.
"A coaster," Leon declared, his chin held high, a faint, smug smirk breaking through his usual stoic mask. "Or a small hat for your thick skull. Put your morning coffee on it."
Chris looked down at the ugly, lumpy piece of craftwork in his palm. The stitches were uneven, born of sheer spite and stubborn willpower. He looked back up at Leon; at the messy blonde hair hanging in his eyes, the subtle flush of triumph on his cheekbones, and the bright, alive spark in his pale eyes that hadn't been there since New York.
Chris’s expression softened, the teasing fading into something low, warm, and entirely genuine.
"Best coaster I've ever seen," Chris said softly.
He walked over to his side table, picked up his heavy ceramic mug, and placed it squarely in the middle of the neon-pink wool.
Leon blinked, caught off guard by the total lack of sarcasm in Chris's voice. The warm, quiet intimacy of the gesture hung in the air between them, sudden and heavy. Leon swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to the floor for a second before he cleared his throat.
"It's... just a prototype," Leon muttered, his voice dropping an octave as a subtle warmth crept up his neck. "The next one will have better structural integrity."
"I look forward to it," Chris replied, his voice a low, steady rumble. "Goodnight, Leon."
"Night, Chris."
As Chris walked down the hallway to his room, Leon sat back down on the sofa, picking up his hook. Guard jumped back up onto his knee, resting his chin near the ball of pink yarn. Leon let out a long, quiet breath, realizing with a sudden, faint panic that the mountain was starting to feel a lot less like a prison.
xXxXxXxXxXx
By the third week, Leon’s rib pain had eased from a sharp, breath-stealing stab into a dull, manageable ache. His mobility was returning, which proved to be a double-edged sword for everyone in the house; especially Chris.
Leon had reached his absolute limit with Chris’s culinary philosophy. For fifteen days, he had quietly consumed plain baked chicken breasts, unseasoned brown rice, and steamed broccoli that looked as defeated as the survivors of a bio-hazard outbreak. Chris cooked like he was fueling a tank: maximum efficiency, zero joy.
"Step away from the stove, Redfield," Leon announced on a rain-slicked Tuesday afternoon, leaning against the kitchen archway in an oversized flannel shirt and sweatpants.
Chris looked up from the cutting board, where he was methodically slicing raw chicken with mechanical precision. "Excuse me?"
"You're relieved of kitchen duty," Leon said, stepping into the space and gently sliding the chef's knife out of Chris's hand. "If I have to eat another piece of boiled poultry, I'm going to turn myself over to the BSAA as a hostage just for better rations."
Chris raised an eyebrow, wiping his hands on a dish towel. "You know how to cook?"
"I lived on my own in D.C. for ten years, Chris," Leon said, rolling his flannel sleeves up past his forearms, revealing the pale, healing red line of stitches on his left arm. "I can handle pasta."
What Leon failed to disclose was that his definition of "handling pasta" usually involved peeling the foil lid off a microwaveable tray or opening a jar of cheap marinara sauce. Inspired by a daytime cooking channel he had watched during his fourth day of mandatory couch rest, Leon had decided to attempt a complex fresh garlic, herb, and white wine butter reduction from scratch.
"There's a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the pantry," Leon instructed, gesturing vaguely toward the wooden shelves. "Open it. And don't watch me; it ruins my process."
Chris chuckled softly, but obliged, leaning his hips against the opposite counter, uncorking the wine, and pouring two glasses. "Your process looks suspiciously like you're guessing."
"It's intuitive," Leon countered smoothly, tossing three whole cloves of garlic and half a stick of butter into a ragingly hot heavy skillet.
That was mistake number one.
Within four minutes, the butter hadn't just melted; it had reached its smoke point and collapsed into a dark, bubbling resin. The garlic cloves browned, blackened, and began emitting a thick, pungent plume of dark grey smoke that immediately drifted toward the ceiling.
From his vantage point on top of the refrigerator, Guard let out a loud, accusatory meow and promptly tucked his tail over his nose.
"Leon," Chris said mildly, watching the cloud expand. "Is the house on fire?"
"It's a reduction," Leon defended frantically, grabbing a wooden spoon and stirring the blackening slop in the pan with ferocious, tactical speed. "It's supposed to reduce. The television said high heat locks in the aromatics."
"The television lied to you," Chris said, stepping forward as the smoke detector in the hallway gave a warning beep. Chris reached up, casually slapping the white plastic casing with his palm to silence it before it could set off the sprinklers. "The garlic is turned to charcoal, Leon."
"It's charred garlic," Leon insisted, his tone dipping into pure, unadulterated stubbornness. He splashed half a glass of white wine into the skillet to extinguish the flames, causing a violent hiss of steam and burnt grease to erupt into the air. "It adds a smoky depth to the flavor profile."
Leon hastily dumped a pot of boiled fettuccine into the black sauce, tossed it around until the noodles looked like they had been dragged through a coal mine, and aggressively plated two portions. He thrust a fork and a plate into Chris’s hands.
"Eat it," Leon demanded, standing with his arms crossed, a smudged streak of grey flour and soot running diagonally across his high cheekbone. "Tell me it's terrible."
Chris looked down at the plate. The fettuccine was coated in a dark, slick sludge that smelled aggressively of scorched garlic, burnt fat, and warm wine. He raised his eyes to Leon, whose pale blue gaze was locked onto him with absolute, terrifying intensity.
Chris didn't flinch. He wound a cluster of black noodles around his fork, brought it to his mouth, and chewed.
His jaw worked methodically. The flavor was an immediate assault; bitter, sharp, intensely acrid, and potent enough to strip the paint off a fighter jet.
"Well?" Leon pressed, taking a half-step closer.
"It's... remarkably bitter," Chris said truthfully, swallowing with a slight strain in his throat. But without missing a beat, he reached down and wound a second forkful onto his plate. "And the garlic could probably act as a secondary bio-hazard deterrent."
"Give me that," Leon sighed, reaching out to snatch the plate back, thoroughly embarrassed. "I'll throw it in the trash and order pizza."
Before Leon’s hand could touch the ceramic, Chris reached out and caught his wrist.
Chris's hand was massive, warm, and calloused from decades of handling heavy weaponry and mountain survival. His grip wasn't tight, but it was absolute. His broad thumb rested directly over the jumping pulse point on the inside of Leon's wrist.
"Hey," Chris said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet register that made the ambient rain outside sound miles away. "I didn't say I wasn't eating it."
Leon froze. The heat of Chris’s palm radiated through his skin, sending a subtle, electric shiver up his arm.
"Chris, it's burnt," Leon murmured, his gaze dropping involuntarily to the faint smudge of dark sauce on Chris's lower lip, then rising back up to meet those steady, storm-grey eyes.
"You made it," Chris said simply, his thumb rubbing a tiny, unconscious circle against Leon's wrist before he slowly let go. "That makes it better than anything I've eaten out of a silver pouch in five years."
Leon swallowed hard, feeling his throat constrict. The kitchen felt suddenly small, warm, and far too quiet. He cleared his throat, taking a step back toward the sink to wash his hands, his fingers trembling just enough that he had to grip the edge of the basin.
"Next time," Leon muttered, his voice raspy, "we follow a manual."
xXxXxXxXxXx
By eight o'clock, the rain had settled into a steady, rhythmic downpour against the timber roof. The dishes; most of which required heavy scraping; were done, and the house was filled with the soft smell of pine and burning birch from the fireplace.
Leon had commandeered the TV remote, selecting a cheesy, mid-1980s slasher movie about an immortal killer stalking teenagers at an isolated summer camp.
They sat on the deep leather couch. Guard had taken up residence in the middle cushion, snoring softly with his head resting on Leon's knee. Chris sat on the far right, a light blanket draped over his legs, a fresh glass of water in his hand.
On screen, a young woman in running shorts burst through a cabin door, looked directly at the masked killer standing ten feet away, screamed at the top of her lungs for five full seconds, and then sprinted straight into a dark closet with no secondary exit.
Leon let out a sharp, genuine laugh, shaking his head as he popped a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
Chris turned to look at him, amused by the sudden sound. "You find that funny?"
"She had a clear vector to the left," Leon pointed out, leaning back against the leather cushions. "She had a heavy iron poker next to the fireplace, three windows behind her, and a straight shot to the woods. Instead, she locked herself in a broom closet."
"She's scared, Leon. Most people don't have tactical training when a guy with a machete shows up."
"It's not tactical training, Chris, it's basic spatial awareness," Leon grinned, the firelight catching the gold tones in his blonde hair. "If B.O.W.s were this slow and predictable, Raccoon City would have been wrapped up before midnight."
"You're completely ruined for cinema, Kennedy," Chris chuckled, leaning his broad arm along the top ridge of the sofa cushions behind Leon’s head.
"I'm a realist," Leon countered smoothly.
He shifted his weight, pulling his socks up onto the edge of the coffee table. As he relaxed, he didn't pull away from Chris’s extended arm. Instead, slowly, deliberately, Leon leaned his head back, letting his shoulder rest against Chris's broad chest and his head settle against the warm curve where Chris's neck met his shoulder.
Chris went rigid for a single, fraction of a second. His breath caught in his throat, his posture freezing as if he’d been hit by a stun grenade.
Leon didn't move. He just rested there, breathing in the quiet scent of cedar wood, rain, and the warm, clean skin of the man holding him up.
Slowly, the tension drained out of Chris’s massive frame. He let out a long, heavy exhale, his arm settling naturally around Leon’s shoulders. His large, scarred hand came to rest softly on Leon's outer hip, hovering just inches above the yellowing bruises on his ribs; protective, solid, and impossibly gentle.
They stayed like that for two hours, watching terrible actors make fatal mistakes on screen, while the rain washed over the mountain outside. For the first time in as long as either of them could remember, there were no sirens, no orders, and no blood to clean up. Just the warmth of the hearth, the weight of a sleeping cat, and two soldiers learning how to rest.
xXxXxXxXxXx
By the fourth week, Leon’s crochet habit had escalated from a petty spite-driven hobby into an organized, military-grade operation.
Having mastered the single stitch and overcome the initial structural failures that had birthed the neon-pink "coaster," Leon moved on to more complex patterns. He claimed it was to maintain fine motor skill rehabilitation for his hands, but Chris knew the truth: Leon was bored out of his mind, and he took immense, silent satisfaction in drenching Chris’s minimalist mountain house in hand-knitted acrylic goods.
The invasion started small.
First, it was a dark blue mug cozy tailored specifically to fit Chris’s heavy ceramic coffee cup; crafted with stitches so tight and dense that Chris could hold boiling liquid without needing a handle.
Then came Guard’s official uniform: a thick, olive-drab collar complete with a small crocheted loop that Leon used to attach a brass bell he’d found at the general store. Guard wore the collar with the solemn, unbothered dignity of a high-ranking officer inspecting his troops.
And finally, Leon produced a pair of bright yellow, misshapen woolen slippers that appeared on Chris’s bedside table early one Tuesday morning.
Chris stood in his bedroom doorway at 6:30 AM, holding up the yellow abominations by their ankles. He walked out into the living room, where Leon was sitting on the sofa in his gray sweatpants, yarn draped across his lap, silver hook moving with smooth, rhythmic precision.
"Leon," Chris said, his morning voice low and gravelly. "What are these?"
"Thermal footwear," Leon replied without breaking his stride or looking up from his loops. "Your hardwood floors drop to forty degrees at night. It’s a heat-retention measure."
Chris raised one slipper to the morning light filtering through the window. "Leon, this one has three toe holes. And one heel is an inch higher than the other."
"It’s tactical ventilation," Leon stated smoothly, pulling a fresh length of charcoal yarn from the skein near his ankle. "It prevents moisture accumulation. Put them on and stop complaining. I spent four hours on the heel turn."
Chris stared at the yellow wool, let out a soft, resigned huff, and pulled them over his bare feet anyway. They were lumpy, wildly uneven, and ridiculously warm.
"You're an absolute nightmare when you're recovering, Kennedy," Chris said, walking into the kitchen with a strange, lurching gait caused by the mismatched soles.
"You're the one who dragged me out of BSAA medical," Leon called after him, a faint, undeniable smirk touching his lips.
As the days blended into one another, a quiet, effortless rhythm established itself within the timber walls of the house.
While Leon worked through his skeins of yarn, Chris spent his mornings outside preparing the property for the rapidly approaching Colorado autumn. From the living room window or the back porch, Leon watched him. He watched the rhythmic, heavy swing of Chris’s splitting maul as he chopped through cords of cedar and oak, the broad muscles of his back straining against his Henleys, sweat glistening at the nape of his neck despite the crisp mountain air.
There was a grounded, unshakeable solidness to Chris Redfield that Leon had never fully appreciated in the field. In a warzone, Chris was a battering ram; a force of nature that moved forward through gunfire and bio-hazards regardless of the cost. But here, chopping wood, fixing porch steps, or carefully pouring milk into Guard’s bowl, Chris moved with a patient, protective gentleness that felt entirely separate from the BSAA commander the world knew.
Around noon on Wednesday, Leon decided it was time for a second attempt at the kitchen.
Determined to redeem himself after the charred-garlic disaster, Leon sat at the dining table with a proper cookbook Chris had bought him in town. He read the instructions for a basic chicken curry three times, translating the culinary terms like he was studying an enemy battle plan.
When Chris walked into the house at five o'clock, carrying an armful of freshly split pine, he froze near the doorway.
The house didn't smell like grey smoke or burnt butter. It smelled incredible; rich turmeric, sweet coconut milk, ginger, garlic, and simmered chicken drifting through the warm timber living room.
Chris set the wood down in the brass box near the fireplace and walked into the kitchen, washing his hands at the sink. "No smoke detectors?" he asked, raising an eyebrow in genuine wonder.
Leon stood near the stove, wearing a clean apron over his shirt, carefully stirring a pot of rich, golden curry with a wooden spoon.
"I followed the manual," Leon said, his chin held at a proud angle. "Every step was executed within specified parameters. Sit down."
The dining table was set. Two bowls of steaming curry rested on woven, dark grey placemats; which Leon had, naturally, crocheted out of heavy cotton yarn earlier that afternoon.
Chris sat down, picking up his spoon. He took a cautious bite, letting the warm, spiced sauce rest on his tongue before swallowing. His blue eyes widened slightly.
"Leon... this is actually really good."
"Of course it's good," Leon said, sitting down across from him and pulling his own bowl closer. "I told you. I follow operational procedures when they aren't written by idiots."
"Could have fooled me during the Arias op," Chris teased gently, taking a larger second bite. "You spent half that rooftop improvising."
Leon’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. The light, humorous atmosphere in the room shifted instantly, the air growing thin and quiet. Leon set his spoon down against the rim of his bowl, his pale eyes dropping to the dark grain of the wooden table.
"New York wasn't a plan, Chris," Leon murmured, his voice dropping into that quiet, haunted register he usually kept hidden. "It was a mess. My whole team died in D.C. before you found me. I was sitting in that bar because I didn't want to carry another body off the field. I was tired."
Chris stopped eating. He looked across the small table at Leon; at the subtle tension in his jaw, the faint shadow that always lurked behind his eyes whenever Raccoon City or his lost squads were brought up.
Slowly, deliberately, Chris reached his broad hand across the table. He didn't grab or demand; he simply laid his palm flat on the table, open, waiting.
Leon looked at Chris's hand for a long second. Then, easing his fingers out of a tight fist, Leon slid his hand across the wood, resting his palm against Chris's.
Chris closed his fingers around Leon's, his large thumb stroking slow, reassuring circles over the back of Leon's knuckles.
"We survived it, Leon," Chris said, his voice low, steady, and heavy as granite. "That's what we do. But you don't have to carry the weight of every dead agent by yourself. Not anymore."
Leon swallowed hard, feeling a tight, painful lump form in his throat. He looked up, his pale blue eyes meeting Chris's storm-grey gaze. There was no pity in Chris's eyes; only a profound, shared understanding born of two decades spent in the same dark corners of the world.
Leon squeezed Chris's hand back, his fingers digging into Chris's skin as if anchoring himself to the earth.
"Next time we go into a zone," Leon whispered, a ghost of a smile breaking through his serious expression, "I'm making you carry the rations."
Chris let out a low, warm laugh that rattled in his chest, his thumb giving Leon’s hand one last gentle press before he released it. "Deal. Now finish your curry before it gets cold."
xXxXxXxXxXx
On the final Saturday before Leon's mandatory thirty-day leave was set to expire, Chris took him up a high ridge trail tucked deep into the private timberland behind the house.
The Colorado afternoon was brilliant and sharp. The air smelled of crushed cedar, dry pine needles, and the crisp promise of early autumn rain drifting off the continental divide. They walked in an easy, unhurried side-by-side rhythm, their heavy boots crunching softly against the dirt path. Guard had been left behind, blissfully unconscious on his custom green yarn bed in front of the hearth, fed and unbothered.
Leon moved smoothly now. The tight, protective hitch in his posture was gone, his breathing deep and even despite the steady incline.
"You're not favoring your left side," Chris observed, keeping his pace matched to Leon’s as they crested a rocky bend in the trail.
"Ribs are fused," Leon replied, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dark jacket. "Doc Hollis ran the secondary scans yesterday morning via the secure relay. Clear radiograph. No bone fragments, no lung compromises. She gave me full clearance for light field duties starting Tuesday."
The news hung in the mountain air between them; cold, sharp, and entirely uninvited.
"Back to D.C.?" Chris asked quietly, his eyes fixed on the distant, snow-capped peaks across the valley.
"Back to the grind," Leon responded. There was no pride in his voice, no familiar swagger. He stopped near a rustic wooden guardrail at the scenic overlook, leaning his forearms against the weathered wood. "Another intelligence briefing. Another bio-weapons syndicate operating out of a secondary port. Another empty hotel room with a deadbolt and a half-full bottle of scotch."
Chris stopped beside him, his massive shoulder brushing against Leon's. He looked down at Leon's profile; the clean line of his jaw, the faint yellowing remains of the bruise from Glenn Arias's fist, the way the late afternoon sunlight caught the lighter strands of his hair.
"It doesn't have to just be that, Leon," Chris said softly.
Leon turned his head, his pale blue eyes searching Chris’s face. "What else is there for guys like us, Chris? We’re weapons. We get pulled out of the crate when something spills, and we get scrubbed down and boxed back up when the clean-up crew arrives."
"I used to think that," Chris said. He turned fully toward Leon, resting one heavy hand on the wooden rail, blocking out the wind. His expression was fierce, steady, and stripped of all military detachment. "When Arias slammed you into that concrete pillar... when I saw you lying in the dust on that roof, not moving... I felt something snap inside me, Leon. I've lost entire squads. I lost my team in Edonia, Piers... You know my history better than anyone alive."
"Chris..." Leon began, his voice barely a breath.
"Let me finish," Chris interrupted, his voice dropping into a deep, quiet rumble. "I thought I was going to lose you too. And having you here for the last month... watching you heal, watching you burn garlic and make terrible yarn slippers for a stray cat... it's the first time in fifteen years I've felt like a human being instead of a BSAA poster boy."
Leon felt his chest constrict; not from broken bone or torn muscle, but from something vast, terrifying, and warm enough to melt the ice he'd kept around his heart since Raccoon City.
"I don't know how to do 'normal', Chris," Leon admitted, his voice rough. He looked down at his gloved hands. "I'm broken. You know what's waiting in my head when the lights go out. You know the nightmares."
"Then we're broken together," Chris said without a second of hesitation.
Chris reached out, his broad, calloused hand moving up to gently cup the side of Leon's neck. His thumb brushed over the smooth line of Leon's jawbone, his palm warm against the cool mountain breeze.
Leon leaned into the touch instinctively, his eyes fluttering shut for a heartbeat as a long, quiet shudder passed through his shoulders. When he opened his eyes again, Chris was looking down at him with an intensity that made the rest of the world fade into white noise.
"Stay a little longer," Chris asked quietly. "Or come back when the DSO lets you off the chain."
Leon reached up, his hand closing over Chris's wrist, feeling the slow, heavy, thunderous pulse beneath the skin.
"Only if you teach me how to cook a proper steak," Leon whispered, a faint, breathless smile breaking through his stoicism. "I'm not letting you eat my charred pasta ever again."
Chris let out a low, husky laugh that sounded like gravel turning in water. He stepped in closer, closing the small distance remaining between them, his free arm coming around Leon’s waist to pull him flush against his chest.
When their lips met, it wasn't frantic or born of desperate battle adrenaline. It was slow, heavy, and profound; carrying the weight of twenty years of shared horrors, survival, unspoken grief, and a deep, quiet affection that had been quietly building in the dark for years.
Chris's hand held Leon firmly by the back of his neck, anchoring him to the mountain, while Leon rested his palm flat against Chris's broad chest, feeling the powerful, steady rhythm of a heart that had fought through hell just to be standing here in the sun.
When they finally parted, Leon didn't step back. He rested his forehead against Chris’s collarbone, closing his eyes, a long, quiet exhale escaping him; the first breath in a month that didn't carry a single trace of pain.
xXxXxXxXxXx
The final seventy-two hours of Leon’s mandatory leave passed with a quiet, bittersweet momentum.
The atmosphere inside the timber house had irrevocably shifted. The heavy, lingering silence that usually hung between two high-tier covert operatives had dissolved into something seamless and comforting. They moved around each other in the small kitchen without needing to speak, Chris automatically leaning out of the way when Leon reached for a coffee mug, Leon casually adjusting the collar of Chris’s Henley as he passed him in the hallway.
Chris learned the quiet quirks Leon usually kept locked behind his DSO armor: that Leon drank his morning coffee black with exactly half a spoonful of brown sugar; that he preferred sleeping on his right side with one arm tucked beneath the pillow; and that he muttered fluent, irritated French in his sleep whenever he was processing a bad briefing.
Guard, meanwhile, had officially abandoned all pretense of being a feral stray. He had taken complete ownership of Chris’s leather armchair, though he still migrated to the foot of Leon’s bed every single night at precisely 10:00 PM, curling into a heavy, purring ball over Leon’s feet.
On the afternoon before Leon was scheduled to catch his military transport back to Washington D.C., Chris walked into the guest room to find Leon standing beside his open duffel bag.
The room was immaculately tidy. On the center of the made bed rested a massive, thick blanket constructed from dozens of crocheted squares in deep slate grey, dark navy blue, and rich olive drab. The stitches were tight, even, and flawless; a far cry from the lumpy, neon-pink coaster Leon had produced three weeks prior.
Chris walked over, resting his broad hand against the soft, heavy wool. "You finished it."
"Eighty-four hours of work," Leon said, zipping his duffel bag shut with a sharp clack and leaning back against the wooden bedpost. "It’s for the living room couch. So you don't freeze when you pass out doing BSAA after-action reports at two in the morning."
Chris looked up from the blanket, meeting Leon’s pale blue eyes. "Come here."
Leon didn't hesitate. He stepped into Chris’s space, and Chris wrapped his massive arms around Leon’s shoulders, pulling him flush against his chest. Leon closed his eyes, resting his cheek against the warm, solid crook of Chris’s neck, breathing in the familiar scent of cedar wood, leather, and rain.
"I talked to my DSO handler this morning," Leon murmured against Chris’s collarbone.
Chris went still, his grip tightening just a fraction. "And?"
"I submitted a request for a regional liaison transfer," Leon said, a faint, subtle smile touching the corners of his mouth. "BSAA Division 9 and the DSO are setting up a joint intelligence hub in Denver. Less frontline field work, more strategic coordination. I’m giving up the apartment in D.C."
Chris pulled back just enough to look at Leon’s face, genuine surprise warming his storm-grey eyes. "You're moving out here?"
"If the guy with the timber house will take me," Leon replied, his voice laced with a gentle, teasing tone. "And Guard, obviously. The cat is non-negotiable."
Chris let out a low, bright laugh that seemed to shake the timber walls of the room, before cupping the back of Leon’s neck and bringing their lips together in a long, deep kiss that tasted of warm coffee and quiet promises.
"I think we can manage the space," Chris whispered against his lips.
Epilogue:
Two months later.
Chris Redfield stepped through the front door of the cabin after a brutal, four-day joint training exercise at the BSAA regional facility in Colorado Springs. His boots were caked in dry trail mud, his neck stiff from hours of tactical debriefs, and his shoulders heavy with fatigue.
He kicked his boots off on the stone entryway mat and set his duffel down with a weary sigh.
The house didn't smell like cold air or empty rooms. It smelled like slow-cooked beef, cracked black pepper, red wine, and roasted root vegetables.
In the living room, Guard; now a sleek, glossy, twelve-pound tomcat with a healthy coat and his official olive-drab crocheted collar; was stretched out in a patch of afternoon sunlight on the rug. He didn't even bother opening his eyes as Chris walked in, merely flicking the tip of his asymmetrical ear in casual greeting.
On the leather sofa lay the navy-and-olive blanket, neatly folded across the back cushions. Sitting square in the center of the coffee table was a new addition: a small, dark brown woolen figure made of tightly crocheted yarn, vaguely resembling a stocky bear wearing a tiny, crude tactical vest complete with a miniature BSAA patch sewn onto the chest.
Chris walked over and picked up the little yarn bear, a helpless, genuine smile spreading across his face.
"Don't say a word, Redfield," a voice called out from the kitchen.
Leon walked out carrying a tasting spoon, wearing a dark grey t-shirt, jeans, and a black apron. His blonde hair was slightly messy, his skin healthy and clear, his movements completely fluid and free of pain. He paused near the kitchen island when he saw Chris inspecting the bear.
"Guard needed a field commander while you were gone," Leon explained with absolute seriousness, crossing his arms over his chest. "It maintains unit cohesion and chain of command."
Chris set the yarn bear down carefully on the table. He crossed the hardwood floor in three long strides, reached out, and pulled the wooden spoon out of Leon's hand, setting it on the counter. Before Leon could utter a word of protest, Chris wrapped his arms around Leon’s waist, lifting him slightly off his feet and pulling him flush into a warm, fierce hug.
"Welcome home, Agent Kennedy," Chris murmured, leaning down to press a firm, warm kiss to Leon’s lips, tasting the rich, savory broth on his tongue.
Leon smiled into the kiss, reaching his arms around Chris’s neck and locking his fingers into the short hair at the nape of Chris's neck, anchoring them both firmly in the sanctuary they had built together.
"It's good to be home, Chris," Leon whispered.