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Warm sheets. A flowery candle that’s been burning too long. Golden light dragging lazily across the walls you painted together. The last autumn leaves are falling outside, the chill seeming an entire world away because of the warmth of the man in your arms. The concept of cold had no place here. Not now that you’re both home.
The two of you have hardly left the bed all day, even now as the sun settles into the ground to rest. You’re both content to let the universe shrink into the space of your bedroom, everything else forgotten as, for the first time since those black marks appeared on his skin, you are able to touch. To press skin to skin. Once you’d rested, once he had energy enough, that had been all you’d done all day, relearning each other now that no sickness lingered on him. Now that Leon was back in your arms.
Your body has some aches to it as he sits against you, his head on your naked chest. Neither of you are as young as you once were, after all, but it’s alright. After nearly losing him, you would take all the pains in the world to have this chance; to have him leaning back against you, eyes closed, the worry lines of his brow smoothed as your fingers brush over them. You know for damn sure that the passion you’ve been sharing all day will be back before long, but this moment between it all, this quiet peace . . . you know you’ll be clinging to this moment for a long time.
“You’re missing the sunset,” you tell him gently as you run your fingertips from his brows to his temples, pressure gentle.
Leon doesn’t open his eyes, his bare chest rising before he lets out a lazy sigh. “The sunset’s missing out on this.”
Not one of his best lines, but you huff anyway. He looks younger like this - he has since you returned from Raccoon City. Twenty-eight years of troubles, not gone, but eased; and now he has a moment to just . . . be. To lean against you, his lips wearing a gentle curve, and let you run your fingers through his hair. His body, still scarred and beaten, fully relaxes against yours, and you would give anything for this to be everything for him. But since you couldn’t give him everything, you would give him today.
And as many days after as he wanted.
“Come here,” you command gently, “sit up a little.”
“Mm . . . pretty comfy right here, though.”
“Baby.”
He laughs and then shifts to obey. “Alright, alright.” His body disconnects from yours for just a moment, but it’s quickly remedied as you lean forward, your hands moving instead to his shoulders. Your thumbs dig into the tense muscles, the knots that will never fully go away, but that you know you can help to alleviate. He groans his approval, and a smile curls your lips.
“Glad you moved?” you tease, and he chuckles again, the sweetest sound you’ve heard in your life.
“Getting there.”
You work diligently, soothing where you know he aches, pressing into the muscles along his spine, his shoulder blades, and the back of his neck. You punctuate your work with kisses, lips brushing his back, his shoulders, anywhere you can reach.
“Think you missed your calling, baby,” Leon says as you press into a particularly nasty knot, his noises just short of something sinful.
It makes you smile as it always does. “Maybe I’ll hand in my resignation, then. See if Massage Envy is hiring.”
Leon laughs, soft and easy. “Would that mean I’d have to pay for this treatment?”
You hum, making a show of pondering nothing at all. “I guess you could have the occasional one for free.” You press the heels of your palms into the muscles he’s worked so hard for over the years, feeling them loosen just a bit under your touch. “Just don’t go telling everyone, it’d be bad business.” All the while, your fingertips run over scars, all of them long-since familiar to you. You’ve watched more and more be added to him over the years, a patchwork masterpiece that lets you see all that he’s survived. All that he’s managed to endure in order to keep fighting. To come back to you.
There’s no mark left from his latest brush with death - nothing remaining of the black marks that had decorated his skin only days ago. Still, as you reach that spot on his neck, that place you’d watched for weeks, wondering if it meant you would lose the man you loved, you lean forward.
Leon stills as he feels the kiss you lay there, his head turning a little towards you, eyes opening at last. Your gaze catches his, and you don’t need words to understand the gratitude there. The relief and love.
“Sometimes I don’t know how I got so lucky,” he admits after a moment, and you know he’s not just talking about the fortune of Grace Ashcroft finding the answers to his sickness. You know that, as far as he’s concerned, he’s been on a lucky streak since the day he met you, because you feel exactly the same way.
So, there was really no choice but to kiss his lips, a hand on his stubbled jaw and your chest full of a familiar ache. “I’m the lucky one,” you tell him when you pull away, because it’s true. Your life was all the brighter because Leon Kennedy was in it, and you’d be damned if he didn’t know it.
“How ‘bout we split the difference and say we’ve both got it good?” He smiles, and you give him that smile right back.
“We’ve got it terrible,” you point out. “But it’s okay, long as we’ve got each other.”
The kiss that follows is slower. Deeper. One that you’ve shared a thousand times before, after a hard mission or when you’ve had a rare and nonviolent day or for no reason at all. It’s his beard, now showing a little grey, brushing against your face, the hand that bears the ring you gave him coming up to cup your cheek, and all the years of shared burdens you’ve had together.
It’s home.
The light fades as you go on, exchanging more and more of those kisses, each one lasting a little longer than the last. Your hands move from his back, exploring what you’ve touched a hundred times before, knowing that you could be struck blind and still know the shape of him. Still love each and every imperfection. Still want him in your arms, even after both of your strength has faded and your youth long-since spent.
You pull him back against you, arms wrapping around him to hold him close against you. He fits perfectly there, as he always does. The blankets that he’d pulled up over him begin to slip, and you feel the brush of his tongue against your lips.
He says your name like he just can’t help but enjoy the sound of it, and as he starts to turn in your arms to face you, you hold him fast. “I didn’t say I was done,” you murmur against his lips, and he relents with another chuckle.
“Still so bossy.”
Your hand slides from his shoulder to his jaw, guiding him to lean his head on your shoulder. To expose his throat to you once more. “You say that like you’re complaining,” you tease, lips against his neck while your free hand presses against his chest.
Leon melts into your touch, into your warm breath on his neck as you kiss that spot again, like you can pull the last vestiges of rot from him. Like you’re sealing a promise that it will never, ever touch him again. Not so long as you’re at his side. And Leon . . . he sighs, and smiles, and you know that he believes that silent promise. That you are his safety as much as he is yours. As he leans into you, a hand on one of the thighs he sits between, it’s trust that he gives you.
That trust is worth more than anything in the world, to you. And you will spend it well.
“God, baby,” he sighs as you nibble on his earlobe, your fingers at his nipple like you know he enjoys. Your other hand remains at his jaw, keeping him right where you want him. Right where he wants to be, as your touch eventually drifts lower. Past the scars and muscles on his belly, under the sheets that you picked out together years ago. Even after all this time, even after all you two have done today alone, you’re rewarded with a little groan as you touch him.
Your mouth is against his ear, tongue tracing the shell of it. “Just relax,” you coo. “Lemme take care of you.”
You stop only to lick at your hand, giving yourself more to work with, before you reach back down and take hold of him again. Leon plays along like he is so often content to, letting his eyes fall closed again in the fading golden light. It brings out the blond undertones in his hair, still clinging to life after so many times dyed. Your golden boy, no matter how dark the world gets.
“You’re so beautiful,” you tell him, a word that he might have blushed at years ago, might have insisted didn’t fit. Now, he only chuckles.
“Look who’s- ngh . . . talking.”
As your hand moves against him, around him, you can only savor the feeling of him against your body, his warmth and presence a blessing you’ve learned to treasure. His breathing grows a little heavier as you mouth at his neck, his shoulder, his hips beginning to twitch up into your hand.
“That’s it,” you praise as you move faster. “That’s my man.”
“Baby-” he manages, the tendons in his neck straining, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “Fuck. You gonna let me have a turn?”
He was asking for your sake, you know that well enough by now. Because he wants you to feel good too. Because he’s always, always concerned about that to some degree. You want to tell him that you don’t need a damn thing except him being here right now . . . but god, feeling him hard against your hand again, his body so warm against your own . . .
“Oh, I suppose I can.” The words don’t have quite the play of reluctance that you’d aimed for. Alas. Still, you let go of his jaw, your fingertips brushing down his throat as you do. All too quickly, he’s turning in your arms, facing you, the blankets fully sliding off of him to let you see all of him.
You’re still not sure how the hell he can manage to look more beautiful with each year, but then, you might be biased. You know you are. And you have every right to be as he kisses you hard, pressing you against the headboard.
Tongues don’t so much wrestle each other as they dance, sliding against one another as Leon’s hands trail up your legs, your sides - every inch of you that he can manage. With no infection left, he hasn’t been able to keep away from you, nor you from him. He touches you now like he never wants to let go, one hand quickly slipping between your legs to stoke the fires in you again. To give just as good as he’s been given.
“Look at you,” he smiles, kissing down your neck as he starts to work you over.
“Looking isn’t really what I want you to be doing,” you raise a brow, and he scoffs.
“Can’t blame a man for admiring the view.” Even so, he doesn’t waste much time as he kisses down your body. His head is between your legs before too long, lips and tongue working in tandem with his fingers. After years, he knows exactly what you like. Ever the quick study, he puts it to use as he laps at you, taking his time even at the expense of his own pleasure. But the way his hips grind into the bed . . . you know this isn’t self-sacrifice, because he enjoys this just as much as anything else.
So, you’re sure to let your approval be known, low groans slipping from your lips as your head tips back. “That’s it . . . fuck, Leon, that’s good-” you tug gently at his hair, just like you know he likes, gripping it tighter as he pushes a second finger into you, as he sucks on sensitive flesh. It makes your hips jump, a whine escaping from your lips.
“God . . .” you hear Leon groan, his body adjusting as he redoubles his efforts, tongue moving fast against you. It’s everything you’ve come to treasure over the years, everything you desperately need . . .
But it’s the way he looks up at you in the midst of it all - the way those eyes that have become your sky meet yours - that you treasure above all else. Because he looks at you like you are his stars and moon and the earth keeping him up all at once.
Even if he punctuates that look with one of his stupid smiles.
It’s not long before you’re pulling him upwards towards you, kissing him again. Tasting yourself on his tongue. You both tangle in the sheets, bodies pressing up against each other, seeking friction. Wanting to be wrapped up in one another again and again and again. Until, at last, you end up on your sides, one of his hands hooking beneath your knee, holding you open. You guide him, and before long you are both moving together, teeth clacking and hips pressing against each other. Your names are whispered to each other as he pushes in deeper, your foreheads press against one another when you have to come up for air.
Your nails dig into him, trying to pull him closer, where you know you will never lose him again, and he holds onto you like he might drift away if he doesn’t. He grunts more than he once did, exertion making you both change where you hold on each other, but neither of you stop. Not when you feel that warmth building more and more in your core.
His hand moves down between your bodies as you both pant, hearts pounding and skin growing hotter. He touches you as you move together, making you moan loud into his mouth, and then-
And then you lock a leg around his hip, pulling him deep as you feel it, your body tensing as pleasure rolls over you. “Leon-”
“I’ve got you,” he tells you between grunts, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip as he carries you through it. As he prioritizes you - which you don’t allow for long.
He lets out a surprised little noise as you roll him onto his back, the motion drawing your pleasure out all the more as you sink down onto him. Your hips moved fast, up and down, taking him like you knew he loved, letting him see your body moving atop him. “Come on, Leon,” you urged, trying to prolong what you felt, to share your bliss. “Come for me.” In an effort to heed your command, strong hands grip your hips, guiding you with a desperate strength as you lean down, kissing at his neck. His chest. His lips. And before long, you watch as Leon tips over his own edge. Warmth floods you again, his hips stuttering up into yours, his fingers digging into your skin. A groan in the shape of your name falls from his lips, his head falling back against the pillows, and at last, Leon stills.
“Mm . . . goddamn . . .” he murmurs. His chest rises and falls, just as yours does. You pull back from where your face had been pressed into his neck, kissing him deep and slow. His hands hold your waist, for a moment, but before too long those arms were around you completely, holding you flush against his chest, his lips at the crown of your head. “Still got it, baby.”
“Damn right we do.”
You remain like that for a while longer, before eventually climbing off of him and settling into the crook of his arm. Like ivy you tangled with him, legs intertwined, an arm draped over his chest. His hand rested atop yours, his thumb brushing the ring you wore that matched his own. Simple. Quiet. Loving.
And you had almost lost this.
If anything had happened differently, if you or him had been a moment slower, or if Grace hadn’t been as brilliant as she had been . . .
“You’re thinking pretty loud over there.” Leon’s voice broke you out of your thoughts. The sky had darkened, so when you opened your eyes, the candle still burning on your dresser was what allowed you to see your husband looking down at you. He wore a soft smile, the one that you’d seen too little of these last few weeks.
You’d been so close to losing him. You hate that you thought of it now, after a day that had been so full of bliss. It's hard not to, though, when you were overwhelmed with the feeling of him. Even the possibility of it makes your throat constrict now.
But he is here.
He is here and with you, and you would fight for the two of you to be like this forever, if you had to. So, as Leon looks at you, as he silently conveys that he was here if you needed, you just hold him a little tighter. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
As much as you’d tried to soothe his brow earlier, to help him relax after weeks of stress, you can see now that it’s that admission that does more than even your touches.
Leon leans down, then, his smile as light and gentle as it’s ever been. “Me too, baby,” he nods, pressing his forehead against yours, eyes full of something more valuable than gold: hope. “Me too.”