Chapter Text
The injection is quick and Leon hopes he didn’t just make a deadly mistake.
But the effects of the “gift in his blood” are becoming more and more prominent. And he needs to make sure the suppressant from Luis is alright for Ashley to use as well… For a moment, as his body adjusts to a new factor in his blood, his senses go haywire. The damp air of the mines is stifling and the clicking of the lighter Luis is playing with is entirely too loud. The agent is glad he’s sitting down as he swallows down the momentary nausea. Fortunately, it all takes less than a minute, Leon flexes his hand, feeling the influence of the parasite subside alongside the ominous blackened veins. Relief floods him but it’s not only because he now has more of a chance to finish his mission, there’s also the knowledge that Luis delivered – he didn’t lie about the medicine existing and he really brought it to Leon, he didn’t just use it as an excuse to get away.
“Feeling better?” Luis asks and Leon looks up.
“Yeah. Seems like it worked,” he answers, using the opportunity to scan Luis with fresh perspective – both considering his recent actions and the plaga-induced fog clearing away from Leon’s mind.
There’s something about the other man that unfailingly captures Leon’s attention, from the very first time Leon saw him, and he can’t put his finger on the feeling. Initially, he attributed it to being wary of the man, Luis was an unexpected element in this already bizarre mission. Once Hunnigan confirmed that Luis used to be Umbrella, that validated Leon’s vigilance. But the attentiveness didn’t really go away.
Back in that cabin, anytime an infected grabbed Luis, the adrenaline that flooded Leon’s body felt different. It was no longer just his hero complex, it doesn’t feel like the protectiveness over Ashley… Whenever Luis is in danger, the sentinel in him wants to growl and shred the assailants to pieces. There’s something about the man that seems to directly affect his preternatural side – which doesn’t make any sense because Luis is a mundane. It shouldn’t matter that he’s making Leon go a little bit insane with his quips and smiles and the way he moves… He shouldn’t react like this.
Last time he felt like crawling out of his skin like this was back in Raccoon City. With Ada. But she was a fellow preternatural, another sentinel at that. He was very much a mess when his attraction to her mixed with their sentinel natures. He never got to learn what it could lead to.
The only explanation must be the parasite, it’s affecting him in ways he can’t predict. He may no longer be able to rely on his sentinel senses from now on.
“Bad news?” Luis’s voice startles Leon out of his musings. “All I’ve done is buy you some time. The suppressant’s effects will wear off all too soon,” the scientist discloses and well, Leon never gets the easy way out, does he? So the agent just nods in acknowledgement, while grabbing the other suppressant vial for Ashley. “You ready to go?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Leon replies instead of admitting his own aches and muddled sentinel senses. “Ashley is the priority.”
“In that case, we know what we have to do,” Luis accepts the dodgy answer and moves to grab a rusty pipe from the ground, posing it like a weapon. “Let us rescue the Princess Dulcinea!” he announces loudly. Leon gets up to catch up to the scientist who’s already marching on with purpose.
“You’re gonna hurt yourself,” Leon mutters, tearing the pipe from Luis’s hands.
“Hey, that was my lance!”
Leon ignores both Luis’s complaint and the feeling of rightness that washes over him once he’s the one leading and the other man is safely behind him. Fuckin’ parasite.
✧✧✧
As a sentinel trained to be an agent, there are some drills that are now Leon’s second nature. For example, if he has a person to escort, at the first meeting he’d focus his hearing to separate his charge’s heartbeat from the rest of the background noise and learn to differentiate it. So that whenever there’s a fight or any kind of dangerous situation where they could be turned around, he’d automatically follow their heartbeat in order to keep track of them, even without always having them within his sight.
He’d done it already during this mission, Ashley’s heartbeat is recorded to his memory and it served its exact purpose, up until they were separated… He’s still desperately trying to locate it whenever he enters a new location, though without results so far.
He really had no reason to memorize Luis’s heartbeat, he’s not Leon’s charge and the agent isn’t even sure if he can truly count him as an ally.
They’ve just dealt with quite a crowd of infected and blew themselves a way through rubble with some borrowed dynamite, when Leon realizes that he’s been following Luis’s heartbeat. Not just during the fight, but constantly since they’ve reunited by the elevator. He tries to rationalize how that happened, that his muddled senses must be over-alert after losing Ashley. But that doesn’t sound right even to himself. This doesn’t feel like following his training.
It’s almost as if he subconsciously chose it as his white background noise to keep him sane in this village of horrors.
He doesn’t have much more time to consider it as next thing he knows, they’ve got two angry giants on their hands.
✧✧✧
“We’re out of that hellhole!” the scientist exclaims as they leave the elevator and Leon can’t help but agree with the enthusiasm about leaving the mines. Though, it remains to be seen if they're not exchanging one hellhole for another. He doesn’t say it out loud, though, and lets Luis enjoy this for a moment; Leon is starting to get fond of seeing that sly smile and there aren’t many other indulgences around. ”The fresh air is calling our names!”
Luis has been increasingly distracting but somewhere in the background, Leon registers a new but somehow familiar presence around in the space they’ve just entered. As much as he wants to put his whole attention on Luis’s pleasant timbre, Leon throws a broader net with his hearing, trying to assess the danger level of that presence.
“Because if we made it all this way, you know it means—“
The sound of a knife cutting through air is unmistakable.
Experiencing full focus events isn’t something that happens often for sentinels, even for someone like Leon, who had more than enough opportunities to enter that state. A moment in which a sentinel’s senses reach the highest responsiveness possible and create a state in which they can perceive events almost as if in slow motion.
Leon fixates on the knife, can almost taste it slicing the air. He moves as fast as his enhanced muscles allow. Leaping towards Luis. It’s all happening too rapidly and he is too slow still.
He finally grabs the scientist, trying to move him out of the way. Milliseconds later there’s the dreaded sound of a blade entering flesh.
The world comes back to regular speed and Leon frantically takes in the situation. The adrenaline is still pounding in his ears. Both him and Luis are on the ground, the other man groaning in pain. The knife is protruding from Luis’s shoulder – it didn’t hit anything immediately lethal. Leon managed to at least assure that even if it was impossible to move the scientist out of harm’s way altogether.
There’s no breathing room to tend to the wound. Leon and Luis still don’t manage to get back upright when the assailant appears next to them, jumping into their space.
And Leon freezes in shock. A mistake.
”Major Krauser? What the hell!”
Krauser kicks Leon in the chest, making him fall some distance back – separating him from Luis. Leon jumps back to his feet but his former mentor is already yanking the knife out of Luis’s shoulder and using the moment when the scientist convulses in pain to pat him down. Krauser triumphantly grabs something out of Luis’s pocket.
”Long time no see, rookie,” Krauser chuckles and raises the knife, readying himself to stab Luis again. “Gotta kill some rats before I—“ He doesn’t get to finish as Leon jumps him with a growl escaping from somewhere deep in his chest. They both tumble away from the scientist and get back to their feet at the same time. Leon reaches for his gun but then there’s a blade at his throat and he stops in his tracks.
“Didn’t I teach you? Knives are faster.”
There’s a part of Leon that wants to pass over both the firearm and the melee. There’s a part of Leon who wants to taste blood in revenge for hurting Luis. There’s a part of him that wants to sink his teeth into Krauser’s jugular and stop him from ever hurting anyone ever again.
Preternaturals are natural predators. Beside their senses and empathy that respectively give them an aptitude for being hunters and manipulators, both sentinels and guides are physically more durable than mundanes. But in the event of anything hindering their main gifts, they can always fall upon something much more basic: all preternaturals have sharper, slightly elongated canines and premolars compared to mundanes. And in dire situations, appropriate bloodlust may activate, overriding any good sense or reason.
Leon has never felt the bloodlust so sharply as he does now, smelling the heavy scent of Luis’s blood, seeing the rich red staining Krauser’s knife, hearing how much the scientist’s heart is racing. It takes all the restraint trained into him both as a sentinel and as an agent not to fall into it.
He bares his teeth in a snarl but raises his knife instead.
The confrontation with Krauser is punishing. He’s a fellow sentinel and a man who taught Leon a lot of what he knows when it comes to fighting. There’s also something amiss about Krauser that the agent can’t put his finger on in such frantic circumstances. But he smells wrong and his strength is far exceeding what Leon remembers from their training together.
Leon can’t really say if dancing on the edge of falling into the feral state is an advantage or a hindrance for him at the moment, but with every slice and kick, he feels himself stepping closer and closer to the edge–– Until he makes a mistake. The fall to the ground steals the air from his lungs and there’s no time to react. Krauser is walking towards him, flipping the knife in his hand.
The bullet pierces the air with a hiss and hits Krauser’s blade. He has to dodge the next shots and retreat from Leon. The agent turns around, taking his eyes away from the enemy against all logic, to see Luis with his gun aimed at Krauser. His other arm is hanging limply by his side and dripping blood.
“Enough play, rookie,” Krauser says and Leon brings his gaze back to his former mentor. ”You haven’t changed a damn bit,” the man shakes his head as he sheathes his knife. “What a disappointment.”
Krauser withdraws and Leon lets him go. He scrambles to his feet to get to Luis who leans heavily against the nearby crates now that the danger has passed.
“You’ve got rude friends, yanqui, ” Luis comments while Leon is frantically checking him for other injuries he may need to take care of besides the obvious one, but fortunately there’s no other bleeding anywhere.
“Sit down, let me look at your shoulder,” Leon grabs the other man’s elbow and leads him to the ground. “Let’s take this off,” he starts unzipping the now bloody leather jacket.
“Oi Sancho, if you wanted to get me naked, you didn’t have to wait for a madman to stab me,” Luis jokes and Leon hates that, even with the scientist’s blood now staining his hands, the words still get to him, his traitorous mind providing him with other much more pleasant circumstances in which he may be undressing Luis.
Leon really needs a drink.
As Leon tries to ignore the teasing and focus on carefully taking off the jacket and the shirt underneath, a whole different uninvited feeling tugs at him. That painful void in his chest he has taught himself to ignore his whole life, that primal need to find his match, it doubles down to make its presence known. Could he really be losing it that much already, with the plaga in his blood and the pull he feels towards Luis?
If only Luis wasn’t a mundane.
But he is… Knowing Leon’s luck, he’ll never find a compatible guide for himself, no matter how much USSTRATCOM would like him to be bonded and thus more effective as a sentinel. Despite that lack of faith in finding his match, Leon still can’t find it in himself to really commit to anyone mundane; it would feel like leading them on, knowing that there’s supposed to be someone preternatural out there for him.
So Leon ignores that void in his chest, buries his attraction for the cheeky scientist, and occupies himself with tearing the sleeve off of Luis’s shirt to craft a makeshift bandage.
“Hey, I liked that shirt!” Luis protests loudly even though he’s obediently sitting in front of Leon and letting him do his thing.
“I think you’ll like having your blood inside your veins more,” Leon retorts. He uses a bit of the cloth to clean up the wound at least a little bit and then he takes out a can of first aid spray.
“I’m not gonna lie, this is going to sting like a bitch,” he announces but then gives no more warning before applying the spray. Luis thrashes once and then murmurs an impressive litany of Spanish swear words that Leon doesn’t even try to follow. Luis silently sits through Leon wrapping the wound, a thoughtful expression on his face. Once it’s done and Leon moves to withdraw, suddenly the scientist grabs his harness to keep him in place. Leon looks up at him questioningly. Luis’s expression is determined.
”Take it, it’s for my lab,” he explains, pushing a large key into Leon’s hand. “Just in case someone else stabs me anywhere more vital and I don’t manage—“
”Stop saying things like this,” Leon shoves the key back at the scientist but Luis wraps his fingers around the agent’s hand in an iron grip, the key stuck in between their palms.
“You have to remove these damned parasites. You have to help Ashley,” he insists. Then he lets out a hollow chuckle. “I led a pretty shitty life so far, if I’m supposed to die here just when I finally decided to do something good… I have to be sure you’ll at least use my research for his one not-shitty thing.”
Leon squeezes Luis’s hand, still not taking the key for himself.
“You are going to the lab with me,” he says with conviction he wasn’t sure he still is capable of since his life fell apart six years ago. “You will remove the parasite from Ashley yourself and get to be her hero, Don Quixote.”
Luis frowns, a conflict Leon is not privy to troubling his silver eyes. For a long moment, they just stay frozen together like this. Their hands wrapped around the key, their breaths mixing in the damp air, their gazes meeting in a contest that’s not really a contest.
It would be so easy to close the distance and taste that breath directly from Luis’s lips.
Leon moves back so abruptly, Luis’s grip slips and the agent manages to move away, the key staying with its owner.
“Put your clothes back on and we should get moving soon,” Leon says as he gets up, sounding strained even to himself. He busies himself with reloading all of his weapons and checking his mental inventory of the remaining bullets, just to have something to do instead of staring at Luis’s bare chest. Only once he hears the scientist has stood up and zipped his jacket, he allows himself to turn his attention back to the man – as if not looking at him was enough to keep Luis off of his mind, as if he wasn’t constantly following his heartbeat.
“Status?” Leon asks, falling back to his training in an attempt to keep the remains of his sanity.
“Somehow in one piece, handsome as always,” Luis responds, spreading his arms to present himself.
Leon grabs his shotgun and hands it over to the scientist. It’s not effective against everything they’ve encountered and probably against whatever else they will have to fight, but makes the agent feel better to know Luis has something with more firepower than his handgun.
“Here, a bit more effective than a lance.”
✧✧✧
Riding the motorboat with both Luis and Ada is awkward, to say the least. Especially after it turns out that Luis and Ada also know each other. But after a short exchange from which Leon only understood that Luis doesn’t have something Ada wanted, they decide to stop wasting time and cross the water together.
Despite Luis in the back seat, Leon tries to get some closure on Raccoon City from Ada but she is as cryptic as ever. He’s not surprised when she abruptly leaves him without any answers, if a bit disappointed still.
Once they’re on shore and Leon moves towards the nearest buildings to do some recon, there’s a hand on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.
”My lab’s on this island, I know my way around. We can save some time and resources taking a more covert path.”
Leon nods, gesturing for the other man to lead, to which Luis reacts with an excited grin. The enthusiasm reverberates differently now, after that speech about wanting to redeem himself. Luis leads them into a cave that turns out to be an entrance to a tunnel system, which actually does look more inviting compared to the heavily fortified way back on the surface.
“So, la belleza en rojo, how do you know each other?”
Leon smirks, he’d love to see Luis calling Ada a beauty in red to her face and finding out if he’d come out of it in one piece. But his expression sobers once the memories surface.
”We met in Raccoon City, on the day it stopped existing.”
Luis stops in his tracks, shock and fear obvious in the lines of his face. Leon lets out a derisive laugh.
“You see how it was hard to trust you at first, knowing you used to be Umbrella?”
The scientist avoids his gaze, defensively crossing his arms against his chest.
“I left before it all went to shit but some of the horrors they’ve unleashed have been created by my hands,” Luis admits and Leon has already read the file but it feels good to have it in the open between just the two of them. “And now, there’s plaga infecting you…” He looks up, something resigned and broken in his eyes. “It’s like the universe has put you in my way to finally stop me from creating more monsters. And here you are, doing the opposite.”
“Well, you’ve stopped creating monsters on your own,” Leon says sharply, irrationally angry at the implication. “I’ll be glad to simply make sure you don’t relapse now.”
Luis mutters something in Spanish under his breath and Leon politely doesn’t use his enhanced hearing to catch it.
“How do you know Ada?” Leon asks, since they are being honest.
“She was supposed to get me out of here. For a price, of course.”
Leon raises his eyebrows questioningly.
“An amber with a potent plaga specimen in it,” Luis admits and then sighs resignedly. “This is what your stabbing amigo took when he attacked me.”
Another thing to worry about. But he’ll probably have to face Krauser either way.
“Well, now I am getting you out of here,” Leon says in a way that invites no objections.
“What is your price?” Luis queries, his tone turning flirtatious once again.
“I’ll make it cheap for you,” Leon smirks, quoting the man back at him, and turns to keep going.
✧✧✧
The convenient tunnels have to end eventually but they still manage to avoid a lot of infrastructure that would definitely be bothersome to cross with the ever-present lasers and the swarms of infected armed with more than pitchforks.
They don’t spend much time out in the open before entering a promising building and then, finally––
“Ashley! Ashley! Come on! Wake up!” The exhilaration from finding her is quickly replaced with morbid fear. Ashley is out cold, not reacting to Leon’s voice at all. And still out of reach. “Shit!” Leon punches the bars separating him from his charge.
“We’ll get to her soon,” Luis puts a hand on his shoulder and Leon takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes for a second, taking a moment to listen to both Luis’s and Ashley’s heartbeats. The latter much weaker but there. He can do this. He will save them both.
“Hang in there,” Leon says in Ashley’s direction and then nods at Luis. “Let’s go.”
The building is a bit of a labyrinth, but once they enter an area that seems to be a laboratory, Leon turns to Luis with a hopeful expression.
“Are we anywhere close to your lab?”
“No, sorry, Sancho,” Luis shakes his head. “I worked at a different facility, this here is another team…” He frowns, as if remembering something, and then suddenly grabs Leon’s arm, stopping him from progressing further into the corridor. “If this is what I’m thinking it is, we really shouldn’t be here.”
“We have to get to Ashley.”
Luis swallows, panic shadowing his silver eyes.
“You don’t happen to have any weapons with infrared vision, do you?”