Chapter Text
Leon hates the morning after; It’s always awkward, unpleasant, and sore. There’s not a single hookup in the world that could ever possibly make him tolerate waking up next to somebody. But Chris has strong biceps.
Strong biceps, a nice ass and a pillowy chest. God, Leon wants to hate this so bad.
From the moment he opens his eyes, he knows that he’s screwed. The guilt hits him like a tidal wave, and only builds from there.
‘I have to get out of here,’ he thinks, ‘Fuck the debrief, I can’t do this shit.’
And for a moment, he’s almost okay with never talking to Chris ever again. But he peels himself away from him, and when he turns to look back, the thought washes away immediately.
Chris looks… peaceful. Leon isn’t sure he’s seen him look peaceful before. Relieved, happy, content—sure, but never peaceful. It’s almost cute seeing a grown man curled up and snoring softly. Considering how hard it is to just be Chris Redfield, it dawns on him that this is a rare moment; it dawns on him that not a lot of people get to stand over him while he sleeps. He’s pretty sure nobody really gets to admire his features like this.
The guilt burns in his chest and he turns away. It corrodes every last bit of drowsiness in his body and replaces it with anxiety. He walks carefully to his suitcase on the floor and quickly picks out whatever looks comfortable enough to get him through the 9-hour flight home.
He makes the mistake of looking back at Chris as he’s getting up, observing how nice the morning light makes him look: his broad chest and shoulders are only emphasised further by the scattered bites and bruises Leon had left, nearly indistinguishable from the ones he accrued over the course of the mission. His cropped hair sticks flat on one side, and there are creases on his arm from Leon’s shirt. The light shining through the curtains softens him even more; it curves around him and highlights every divot and scar on his skin, bringing the heroic myth of him down to just a man. A man in Leon’s hotel bed.
In admiring him, Leon feels the guilt surge up in his chest again, and as he abruptly tears his eyes away to put his pants on, he misses his pant leg and loudly kicks the suitcase on the floor.
“Fuck!” He yelps.
“Leon?” Chris stirs, sitting up and wiping sleep from his eyes with the pads of his palm.
He chooses not to look at Chris, and instead continues to put his pants on while cursing himself for getting distracted by Chris enough to ruin his walk of shame away from his own hotel room. The tense silence between them draws a near-imperceptible shiver out of Leon.
Chris takes him in, swallowing before he speaks, “Were you leaving?” His tone is a practised diplomatic neutral.
The guilt chokes Leon out, forcing a grunt from him as he finally turns to look at Chris, who is hunched forward on the bed, locking his arms around his knees in a defensive stance. It flexes his muscles just right, and Leon can't fucking stand it.
There’s no point in lying to him, “I was going to, yeah.”
Chris stops for a second, straightening his posture slightly as he considers what to say, “Were you gonna skip our debrief?”
Fuck, he worded it so carefully, Leon can't tell if he means the mission’s debrief or their personal morning-after talk.
“I was gonna get a coffee and have Hunnigan call a jet.” He wraps his arms around himself and locks eyes with Chris, almost challenging him.
“Don't you at least wanna talk about it?” There's a slight bit of frustration that seeps into his tone, something that only really comes out when Leon’s around.
He thinks to check his phone for any excuse to avoid eye contact with Chris, “Not really, no.” Leon hates this. There's a reason he never sticks around long enough to talk about it. He hates the morning after.
“Oh.” Chris’s tone stays neutral, but his face betrays him—he looks disappointed.
Leon turns away and glances nervously down at his phone; there are a few new emails, some text messages and the odd debrief notification from the D.S.O. operators, nothing worthy of an excuse to get him out of his room.
“Why?”
He looks up, “Huh?”
“Why don’t you want to talk about it?”
Leon puts his phone away and leans down to close his suitcase, back turned to Chris, “There's nothing to talk about, Chris.”
He hears him scoff from his place on the bed, “You’re not serious.”
In truth, Leon is more than aware that they should probably discuss it. They should probably address all of it head-on, but there’s this tension in his chest that makes it so he can barely even look at Chris, and going through everything that happened the previous night would most likely make it worse.
His pointed lack of response is not what Chris wanted: “Leon, can we please talk about it?” His voice softens this time around, almost pleading.
Leon grunts, rummaging around to find Chris’s discarded tank top from last night for him to wear. He can’t focus like this.
He throws it directly at him, “Just go shower. We can talk about it after the debrief.”
Chris furrows his brows and crosses his arms, “Are you not just gonna run away and avoid me for another 6 months?”
Leon wants to tear his own fucking hair out. “Listen, Redfield, I’ll go to the goddamn debrief, and we can talk about this later. Get up, we’re gonna be late.”
He can feel Chris staring at him as he makes his way to the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see him put on the tank top and start to head towards him. Leon opens the door, peeking outside for just a second before slamming it shut again.
“What?” Chris asks, concerned.
“Nadia is talking to Jill in the hallway.”
“So?”
Leon wipes his hand down his face, “If you leave right now, they're gonna put 2 and 2 together pretty fucking fast.”
Chris cocks his hip, shifting his weight, “So I can't leave without implicating both of us,” He sticks out a finger, as if to count the points of contention in their situation. He raises his second point with a second finger, “And we’re not gonna have time to shower.”
“I’ll just wipe myself down with a washcloth.”
The tension in the room is like a rubber band pulled taught, prone to snapping at any second from sheer stress. What Chris does is deliberately tug on it, stretching it to its limits with his infinite patience, “I should do that too, you did a number on me.”
Leon struggles not to flinch at the direct acknowledgement of his stupid decisions, “Wash your face. There’s a courtesy dental kit by the sink.”
Chris rolls his eyes and heads to the bathroom, “So civil.”
As soon as the door closes, Leon breathes out a sigh of relief. He can feel a headache clawing its way to the space between his brain and his eyes. The stupid team debrief breakfast is really just an excuse to coordinate plans between agency members, the real debrief comes later when he gets a mountain of paperwork to sign and reports to verify. In truth, the D.S.O. and the B.S.A.A. very rarely work together intentionally—when incidents of bioterrorism occur, it’s best to have all hands on deck, which often leads to these somewhat-rivaling agencies to cooperate more often than their higher-ups would like. Leon’s invitation to the B.S.A.A. team breakfast is less officially necessary and more just professionally encouraged, and after all, it’s nice to catch up with their crew.
When he does go, it’s usually for Chris’s sake, and this time isn't an exception. They manage to shuffle out of the hotel room together without being late. Leon checks to be sure the hallway is empty when he ushers Chris toward the elevator. He pretends to not see how Chris frowns at him.
The elevator ride down is painfully slow. Leon had given Chris a plain zip-up hoodie to throw on over his tank top, but the way that it clings to him is criminal. Leon can hardly look away, the silent 60 seconds they spend in that elevator stretch for what feels like hours. He knows he’s making a fool of himself by blatantly checking Chris out, but Chris doesn't say anything until the elevator chimes, signifying the ground floor.
“How long had you been waiting to fuck me like that, Leon?” He says coolly, as if it’s rhetorical.
Leon sputters, and the elevator doors open. Chris walks out immediately, heading towards the private dining area while Leon is left still processing how to respond.
At the B.S.A.A. table, Jill waves Chris over and points at the buffet counter behind her. When she stands to give Chris a short hug, Leon notices the placard with his name has been intentionally placed next to Chris’s. He feels nauseous.
Jill hugs him too, “Man, that tyrant did a number on you, Kennedy.” She jokes amiably, dragging Chris’s chair out for him.
“Yeah, I’m exhausted,” he forces a smile as he sits down.
Chris hands Jill a keycard—that bastard, “Are we waiting on anyone else?” He asks Jill.
She fixes both of them with a weird look that Leon can't quite read, though he’s sure Chris knows exactly what it means from her, “Yeah, I think just D.C.”
“I’m gonna get coffee, Jill, do you want something?” He points between her and Leon.
Jill glances between the two men, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly, “An apple is fine.”
Chris nods and walks away, leaving Jill and Leon alone at the far end of the table. Leon impulsively checks his phone and tries not to care about being overlooked by Chris. He doesn’t owe him anything, besides, he’s probably just being careful about cross-agency relations, or whatever. Leon quickly grows bored of his phone, choosing instead to observe the few other B.S.A.A. agents at the table; he’s only really able to recognise Nadia and a few others from the Silver Dagger division. He doesn’t know any of them personally, and he’s really not in the mood for small talk.
“What’s with you?” Jill asks, interrupting Leon’s very important moping train of thought, “You’re sulking.”
Leon straightens his posture and scowls, “I’m not sulking.”
Jill rolls her eyes, “Yeah, brooding, whatever.” She watches as D.C. takes his seat at the other end of the table. She leans in closer to Leon, as if to tell him a secret, though she doesn't bother with lowering her voice, “Are you and Chris fighting?”
Leon scoffs, “Chris and I-”
A heaping cappuccino is placed in front of him, and he looks up dumbfounded. Chris winks at him and he thinks he might be dying; it’s a split-second interaction that spikes his heart rate and makes his chest tighten. He watches carefully as Chris places the apple in front of Jill and sits down. Leon drags the cup closer to himself.
The focus is shifted towards the debrief: they go over the successful points in the operation, what could have gone better, and how this current threat compares to previous global bioterrorism incidents. Chris is in his element leading the tactical discussion, it’s what he’s spent his entire adult life doing, he has a very real passion even for the boring and terrifying parts of the job. Leon admires that about him because, unlike Chris, every contribution to this conversation is a Sisyphean task to him—he contributes by saying a few words, only to be asked to elaborate when he’s done. It’s like pulling teeth.
By the end of the technical discussion, Leon had begrudgingly finished his cappuccino and taken a few bites from a piece of buttered toast, mostly as an excuse to chew instead of talk. The conversation is moving on to personal topics, team members exchanging banter and debating on weekend plans before everybody flies out to their respective homes or next assignments.
Leon tunes most of it out, tipping his coffee cup to try and get the dregs from it and avoid personal conversation.
“Leon, are you flying back to Washington?” Nadia asks affably, clearly just trying to politely include him.
Under the table, Chris puts his hand on Leon’s knee, startling him so he nearly drops the cup, “No, I, uh,” he clears his throat and sets the cup down carefully, “I mean, yes. Washington, D.C. first and then Jersey.”
He knows the question that’s coming, he knows he’s the odd one out and that Chris’s team does their best to work with him despite all his thorns. Even then, he also knows how he wants to answer.
“So you’re flying back with us?” Coaxes Luciani, smiling at him and gesturing towards the few agents who were presumably flying back to the capital.
He can feel Chris caressing his knee, and contrary to whatever Chris thinks he’s doing, it’s not helping.
He shakes his head and forces an apologetic smile, confessing, “No, no. The D.S.O. already made arrangements and you know how they get about inter-agency relations.” He glances to the side and makes eye contact with Chris.
Chris’s hand abruptly leaves his knee, and when Leon fully turns to look at him, he’s looking away with a carefully neutral expression. Not the right answer, it seems. He watches as Chris steals the rest of his toast and eats it. Leon and Jill exchange a look, and the conversation moves on for just about less than a minute before Chris gets up with some half-assed excuse about needing to shower before the flight.
Leon doesn’t have it in him to wait long enough to not look suspicious, he immediately gets up and chases after him without even justifying it to the team. He can hear Jill say something behind him as he leaves the room.
In the lobby, Chris is standing by the entry, fumbling for something in his pocket.
“What the hell was that?” Leon huffs, putting himself between Chris and the doors as an attempt to box him in despite his smaller frame.
Chris furrows his brows, “You’re being a dickhead, Leon.” He’s barely meeting Leon’s eye, choosing instead to fiddle with his cigarette pack.
Leon’s eyes go wide, “I’m being a dickhead? You’re the one who stormed out in front of your entire squad,” he snaps, “I just wanna go home, Redfield.”
Once again, Leon is hit with the belated realisation that that was not the right thing to say by any means. Chris makes eye contact, his soft brown eyes staring right through Leon, “So you’re gonna run away again? Like a coward?” He takes a cigarette from the pack and puts it to his lips, his expression is still unreadable.
That strikes a nerve. Leon knows that Chris is pushing his buttons intentionally, he knows that Chris is backing him into a corner to force him into some kind of honesty, and goddamn, it’s working. He wants to shove him and make a scene in the middle of the hotel to force Chris to do something, anything. He kind of wants this to continue, to keep arguing until someone throws a punch, “Fuck you! I-”
A hand grabs his arm and he whips around to see Jill holding onto him while Chris shoves past him and goes out the front door. Leon tries to follow, but she pulls him back. He makes eye contact with Chris while the glass door closes and Jill pulls him away into the lobby.
“You’re making a scene,” she cautions, tugging him further away from the door. She’s right, he knows she’s right. Leon opens his mouth to protest and gets cut off again, “Look, I don’t know what’s up with you two, but it’s been weird this entire op. You gotta cut this shit out.”
He rips his arm away and rubs at the spot where her fingers had dug into his elbow, "Nothing is up! We’re just… disagreeing.”
“I don’t care what it is, just don’t fuck this up for him, please.” She takes a step back, “You and I both know that Chris is more emotionally regulated than the two of us combined, so if you did something to piss him off, that’s on you.”
Leon shakes his head, “I think that says more about us than it does him.” Jill rolls her eyes, but lets him go.
Outside, Chris is smoking by a standing ashtray. Leon can tell he was expecting him to chase after him—the thought makes him feel nauseous again.
“Not gonna run away?” Chris taunts, politely blowing smoke away from him. He’s leaning against the wall with his free hand in his pocket, Leon’s zip-up is tied around his waist presumably to avoid the smell of cigarettes clinging to it. He’s considerate even when he’s upset… Leon wants to laugh, because he really can’t say the same for himself.
He keeps a safe distance from Chris, “Keep talking like that and I’ll rethink it,” he shifts his weight, suddenly feeling like his tongue is weighing down each word, “I… Do you want to go somewhere else? To talk?”
Chris raises his eyebrows, surprised that Leon is even doing this willingly in the first place, “You want to talk?” He cocks his hip and takes another drag of his cigarette.
“Not really,” Leon admits, shrugging, “But I’ll do it.”
There’s a thick tension between them that feels suffocating. In the moment, it manifests as burning tobacco and crushing California heat, but there’s much more underneath the metaphysical elements between them. Nearly 20 years of playing cat-and-mouse: jovial banter, stolen glances, life and death hanging in the balance of a relationship so, so fragile. They’re not even supposed to work together as often as they do, but they somehow find their way back to each other over and over again.
Chris smiles for the first time that day and puts out his cigarette, “There’s a café around the corner.” He doesn't wait for an answer before he starts walking.
The anxiety in Leon’s chest builds with every step he takes. He’s not sure how to feel in the moment; he’s still kind of pissed off, he still has more to say, more insults to throw out. But he also can’t get past wanting to touch Chris, he wants to brush their shoulders together, hold his hand, kiss his neck. God, he just needs to be touching him. It’s a less than 3-minute walk and he’s already miserable and clingy.
He mulls it over as they walk in. What is wrong with him? He’s never been like this with any one-night-stand; he’s never wanted more than just sex, and he really shouldn’t even want sex from Chris in the first place, so wanting way more than that feels wrong. Really wrong.
The café is a small local place with a limited menu, it’s foreign and fairly new, having just opened less than a year ago. Chris gives Leon no time to take in the surroundings, he scopes out the place and immediately picks a corner table with a view to the street, right under an air-conditioner. Leon follows, still taking in the environment while Chris covers himself with the zip-up.
“Why were you trying to leave?” Chris presses as he sits down. Big question right off the bat! Thanks, Redfield!
Leon snorts, doing his best to look casual as he crosses his arms, “Didn’t want to deal with the morning after.” Really, it’d be futile to lie to him about it.
Chris makes a face, his furrowed brows crease his forehead. Leon doesn’t miss the way his eye twitches, too. “What do you mean?”
Leon wants to bang his head against the table, “What do you mean ‘What do you mean’? I just don’t like dealing with it.”
“Do you regret it?”
There it is. The question Leon knew he was going to have to answer sooner or later. The question he’s been dreading since he first kissed him, the question that’s been making that vile feeling build in his chest for hours now.
What Chris is really asking, though, is ‘Do you regret me?’
“No.” He answers truthfully, “No, I don’t regret it, I just…” He trails off, locking eyes with a waiter who comes rushing to their table. He’s been spared, for now.
Chris orders some kind of coffee drink that Leon has never even heard of, and French toast for two. Leon should be mad that Chris ordered for him, but the way he looks at Leon to prompt him to order his own drink distracts him long enough to entirely forget what he was even trying to be mad at in the first place.
Leon stares down at his hands as he fiddles with the drawstring on his cargo pants, “I don’t like how it makes me feel.” He looks up to find Chris looking back at him, “I don’t like thinking about it after the fact.”
He’s silent for a second, and Leon really just wants to scream, “What does it make you feel?” Chris presses.
They really should be emotionally more competent than this. Leon has had serious relationships before, he’s had difficult conversations similar to this, but just the fact that Chris has already been in his life for over a decade makes it so much more difficult to push the words out.
“I don’t know,” He leans back again, remembering that he should probably at least look relaxed, “Makes me feel like I should regret it.”
Chris opens his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by the waiter, back with the drinks. Chris reaches over to pick his drink up from Leon’s side of the table, and Leon nearly faints when he sees how the fabric of his hoodie strains against his arm. It’s really not fucking fair.
He takes a moment to sip his coffee, watching the waiter as he disappears back into the kitchen.
“You said you…” He pauses, glancing down at the table before meeting Leon’s eyes again, “You’d wanted to do that for a long time. Why should you regret that?”
To be entirely honest, Leon barely remembers saying that. Between the daze of getting a blowjob and the lack of coherent thoughts while straddling him, he really didn’t think too hard, the words just emerged from his subconscious.
Which… doesn’t really make them any less true.
“I don’t know, I… Like working with you. And I guess I don’t want anything in the way of that.” Yes, good. Work: something they can both talk endlessly about.
By the way Chris frowns at him, he can tell that wasn’t the right thing to say, “Leon, can I be honest with you?”
Never a good thing to hear at a time like this, “Yes.”
Chris closes his hands around his coffee cup, “I don’t want to just work with you. I like having you in my personal life; I like spending time with you; I liked having sex with you, and I like you.”
That really sounds like a confession, doesn’t it? They’re too old for love confessions like that.
“What do you want from me, Leon?”
What a loaded question. What does that even mean? Is he asking to get romantic? Is he asking to get a casual thing going? Is he asking to stay friends?
He sips his drink again, “The fuck does that mean?”
Chris very calmly closes his eyes and sighs, clearly exhausted, “Do you want me?”
‘Do you want me?’
It’s the same thing he asked yesterday. Do you want me?
Fucking of course Leon wants him. Leon wants to reach across the table and pull Chris into a kiss; he wants to drag him back to the hotel room and do it all over again; he wants to wrap his arms around Chris and never let go because, goddamn, it’s been sixteen years of only ever running into him occasionally, and Leon really doesn’t want to let him slip through his fingers anymore.
“Do you want to make this a thing? Because I do.” There’s something he can’t even decipher in Chris’s voice; it’s strained and has a hint of desperation to it.
And that accursed burning is back again, eating him up inside the same as always. He recognises it as the burning he gets when Chris helps him up, or covers his blind spots in a fight, or from when he just fucking smiles at him.
“I do,” He mutters, “I want… to be in your life.”
They’re both grown adults, this should be much easier than it is. There’s no use in playing hard to get, there’s no use in pushing him away, there’s no use in lying to him.
He feels a bit too old to say he wants Chris to be his boyfriend, but it’s been a while since he even had a chance to think about that word. He’s been Chris’s partner for long enough that it’s just what they are when it comes to work, and Leon wants so much more than that for himself.
It feels selfish to want him so much.
Chris kicks his foot under the table, prompting him to look up again. He’s smiling at him.
Whatever dumb thing Leon wanted to say or do gets cut off once more by the waiter with the French toast, and the moment is briefly shattered by the presence of a third party. On one hand, it got a bit too real too fast, and Leon is grateful for the interruption, but on the other… He misses the warmth of Chris’s genuine smile.
He stabs a piece of toast with his fork, not bothering to cut it, “I don’t like that you figured I liked French toast.”
Chris puts his fork down, leaning his chin on his hands, “You said it was your favourite.”
What the fuck? Leon doesn’t remember ever telling Chris that.
“Fucking when did I say that?”
The smile he gets in return does something to the coils in his chest, “I don’t really remember. You still had your short hair, though.”
So, at the very least over 5 years ago? Jesus, this guy has a good memory. This is ridiculous. Leon can barely maintain eye contact without wanting to scream. He takes a bite of his French toast. “So is this a date?” It’s meant to sound sarcastic and teasing, but there’s an underlying authenticity to it.
Chris swipes a raspberry from Leon’s plate, “Depends, are you paying?” He’s looking at him through his eyelashes, the bastard.
Leon laughs, settling into their regular banter for the first time in what feels like days, “Depends on how much your iced coffee costs.”
And this feels nice. That’s what’s terrifying about it. Leon isn’t used to nice, he’s used to pain and grief and a million other things that aren’t nice. Bantering, sharing French toast, poking fun at each other… It’s all too nice for him. He’s not sure he deserves this level of pleasantry.
But Chris does. Chris is the typical action hero archetype; he’s deserving of love and affection and whatever other dick-sucking anyone could ever provide him. It’d be selfish of Leon to keep that for himself, wouldn’t it? It’s not even 10 in the morning and he’s already wallowing in his own self-doubt about something that’s barely a relationship in the first place. But maybe—just maybe—nice things are okay to have.
He ends up paying for their pseudo-date. He pays for Chris’s stupid, overpriced iced coffee with a smile on his face because some part of him thinks that that’s what you do on first dates that take place only after someone sucks your dick.
There’s no verbal agreement on what happens after their “date” so, really, Chris has no business going straight back to Leon’s hotel room instead of his own.
And yet he does.