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Leon steps into the STARS office mostly because it has an easily barricade-able door. He just needs a minute. This whole night so far has been a mess and a nightmare, a rush of adrenaline and terror like nothing he’s ever experienced before. It’s still a bit embarrassing to react like this though. He’s done a fair number of adrenaline-filled activities in his life, but he’s never gotten his wires crossed quite so badly before.
He just needs a minute, just to step out of the direct line of danger for a moment and into a place he can trick himself into thinking is safe—not that he thinks this door could actually stop whatever it was Leon had already watched punch through a brick wall—so he can breathe for a moment. Give himself a little stolen time to get his head on straight.
Embarrassed, he thinks, that he’s damn lucky the awful coveralls that come with the RPD uniform are pretty forgiving in terms of hiding that at some point in the last bit of trying not to die he’d tipped over from the kind of heightened arousal associated with hyper-vigilance and fear to the kind of heightened arousal associated with, well, arousal. He doesn’t want to think that he’s the kind of creep that would get wound up like this just from meeting a—admittedly gorgeous—lady, especially when they’d been in the middle of dealing with zombie dogs and giant murderous strongmen and literally crushed skulls.
It doesn’t make it less of a pressing issue, though, that he just wants to find a quiet corner to breathe in until it goes away—the concept of actually doing something about it seeming almost as bad as having the problem in the first place.
Leon thinks he can remember a horror movie where some jerk died like this, and redoubles his resolve to just try and smother the urge rather than end up suffering some kind of undignified slasher horror death.
He isn’t expecting there to actually be anyone in the STARS office, is the problem.
The man notices him almost immediately, which is also a problem.
Whoever he is, the man is tall—taller than Leon by at least a few inches—and dressed in black tactical gear. The magnum holstered under his arm looks almost comically heavy for a handgun, but something about the man’s gloved hands—large hands, black leather gloves, the forearms bared by the rolled up sleeves of his shirt almost impossibly fine—makes it seem serious and threatening rather than like overcompensation. He’s blond, he’s wearing sunglasses at night, his cheekbones could cut glass, he doesn’t seem particularly worried by Leon’s presence at all….
He’s also been expectantly waiting for Leon to answer him for the last minute, Leon realizes when he finally manages to get his brain kicked into gear—tearing his eyes away from the man’s forearms and hands and trying to internally throttle himself for good measure—stuttering out an apology.
“Ah, sorry—,” Leon says, feeling himself blush and actively hating that he’s been ogling a guy who may or may not be a threat just because his brain decided that it was tired of being scared and wanted to be horny instead.
“It’s no trouble,” the man says, and now that Leon is actually registering his voice—deep, a bit rough, slightly breathy—his problems just get worse, “I asked what you were doing in here, Officer.”
“Just, uhh, seeing if I missed any ammo,” Leon says, trying to casually lean his shoulder against the door frame if just to shift stance enough to give himself a chance in hell of being less obviously turned-on to anyone who looks at him.
“No,” the man’s lip quirks in wry amusement, “You’ve picked over my office quite well.”
“Your office?” Leon echoes, surprised, before his eyes bounce between the man, the pictures on the wall where an extremely conspicuously similar-looking man appears several times, and his own memory of the memorial photographs still prominently displayed on one of the walls of the Raccoon Police Department lobby for the lost members of STARS as the recognition finally clicks together in his brain, “Captain Wesker!I mean—you were reported dead? Sir?”
Leon is so surprised he forgets himself, straightening up to take a few steps into the room, coming up alongside the desk that Wesker is standing behind.
“A misunderstanding,” Wesker says smoothly, “I don’t recognize you, Officer…” his voice trails off expectantly.
“Kennedy, Sir, Leon Kennedy,” Leon introduces himself, but doesn’t try and offer any greeting beyond that, recalling his predicament and turning toward the wall under the guise of studying the photos.
“Leon,” Wesker seems to ruminate over his name, his voice rumbling out the syllables in a way that’s extremely distracting, “...from the banner?”
“Yeah…” Leon says, feeling himself blush hotly all over again, “it’s, uh, it’s my first day.”
Leon can only see him out of the corner of his eye, from where he’s studiously facing the wall, but he thinks he can almost feel the heat of Wesker’s searching look, “You’ve survived admirably.”
There’s something in his words that, at any other time, Leon would take with foreboding, but right now he’s flushed and sweating and so hard he can feel his blood pounding in his ears in time with the throbbing pulse of it in his cock.
“Th-Thanks,” Leon stutters out.
If he were looking at the man, he’d be able to notice the faint flare of Wesker’s nostrils as he inhales; the way his eyes track across Leon’s frame as he steps closer, like a shark scenting blood in the water.
“Is something wrong, Officer?” Wesker asks, his voice like gravel directly into Leon’s ear.
Leon chokes out a noise halfway between a squeak and a moan, an embarrassing, needy little noise of surprise, “Just—” he swallows thickly, “Just stress.”
“Stress?” Wesker says, inflecting the word with something dark and suggestive; something in the roughness of his voice that says Leon hasn’t managed to hide anything from him.
“Stress,” Leon says, “Just stress—” he keeps his eyes riveted on the edge of a picture frame in front of him, feeling more than seeing Wesker take another step into his personal space, “you know, maladaptive response—”
A strong hand takes Leon’s shoulder and tugs, turning him towards Wesker so they’re face to face. He can see a vague reflection of himself in Wesker’s sunglasses: pupils blown and red dusted across his nose and cheekbones.
“I’m familiar with the concept,” Wesker says, and he is laughing at Leon this time, definitely, with the wry curl of his mouth, “I am a Doctor.”
“Oh—” Leon says, intelligently, before a large hand—a very large hand, long-fingered and probably very dextrous—cups Leon’s face, turning it up so Wesker can look at him. The black leather of his glove is buttery soft as it smooths along Leon’s cheek, before Wesker’s thumb traces his bottom lip and Leon—thoughtlessly, automatically—opens his mouth for him.
The glove has a certain taste that Leon associates with especially well-kept leather, and a faint hint of gunpowder and tang of iron; it’s soft on Leon’s tongue, and he can feel Wesker’s hand twitch when he closes his mouth around his thumb and sucks on it, see the fine tremor that runs along the line of Wesker’s body.
The smell and taste of the leather, and the obvious interest on Wesker’s part are a heady combination, but Leon stops himself. He leans back, panting, and lets Wesker’s thumb slip out of his mouth. He feels lightheaded, and he’s never wanted to blow anyone this bad in his entire life, but—Leon tells himself with desperation—this is definitely not the right time.
“It seems like the wrong time for this,” Leon says, trying to convince himself.
“On the contrary,” Wesker says, settling back against the desk, posture relaxed and open; his legs—long and well-proportioned—spreading almost invitingly, “this is a relatively safe position and trying to do anything while you’re in this, ah, state” his voice does something breathy and suggestive as he lets the syllable hang, “is more likely to get you killed than taking the time now.”
Leon shivers in place for a moment. He wants it. He’s aware of the risk, but danger—never as much danger as this, only the mundane dangers and thrills of a normal life—has always made things more appealing rather than less. He swallows and he can still taste the leather of Wesker’s glove on his tongue.
“Do you need permission, Officer?” Wesker’s voice is tinged with an almost mean humor, teasing but not-teasing at the same time.
Leon steps into the space between Wesker’s spread legs and drops to his knees, unable to help himself.
His hands fumble with Wesker’s tac belt and the fly of his fatigues, palming along the firm muscle of his abs for a moment as he slides a hand under the waistband of his underwear before tugging the fabric down and freeing Wesker’s cock.
Even half-hard it was lovely, and Leon thinks he makes some choked-off nonsense noise at the sight of it before greedily taking it in his mouth. There’s a softness to the delicate skin that’s almost like a very fine leather, a musk that Leon practically—pathetically—shoves his face into Wesker’s crotch to breathe in more fully.
Wesker exhales somewhere above him, a groan and a sigh. The desk creaks as Wesker shifts, his hands flexing against the wood with a strength that would be a concern if Leon were in his right mind.
Instead, he draws his mouth off Wesker’s cock as it springs to full erectness, reaches out carelessly to drag one of Wesker’s hands from where they’re braced against the desk and bring it to his head to fist it cruelly in his own hair, and then leans forward again to swallow the whole thing snugly into the back of his throat until he feels himself start to choke on it.
The hand in his hair tightens until his whole scalp is hot and tingly with pain; Wesker’s hips roll forward in a sharp, insistent snap.
Leon digs his nails into Wesker’s thighs so hard he hears the man hiss audibly, his cock twitching and leaking in Leon’s mouth.
The next few minutes pass in a haze of lust. At some point Leon gets a hand into his own pants and fists desperately at his aching cock.
Wesker gives up on all pretenses and leans forward, bracing his heels more firmly against the floor and reaching out to cup his other hand around the back of Leon’s neck, fingers digging into his jaw; taking utter control as he maintains his harsh grip on Leon’s hair to ruthlessly fuck his mouth.
Leon feels barely able to breathe, choking on the girth of Wesker’s cock and lightheaded with it; whining every time Wesker draws back until the man seems to understand and shifts the hand framing Leon’s jaw so his thumb stretches out across Leon’s neck to band like iron across some spot that has Leon’s vision going black as he abruptly loses the sensation of air.
He doesn’t notice the inhuman glow of Wesker’s eyes overcoming the opaque lenses of his sunglasses, as he tips breathless and desperate into an orgasm that sends his whole body convulsing against Wesker’s hands; his eyes fluttering sightlessly open and shut as tears bead along his eyelashes and track glistening down his face.
Wesker’s hand releases his throat a moment before Wesker follows him into orgasm, giving Leon a brief breath of air before spending burning hot into his mouth in a rush Leon does his best to swallow; drawing back to mouth the last drops from the head of Wesker’s cock before tipping sideways to collapse with his head resting against Wesker’s strong thigh.
They sit for a moment in vaguely stunned silence before Wesker moves; shifting against the desk, first to set his clothes to right and then to reach out and pull Leon to his feet and do the same for him.
With an efficiency that Leon admired, the man produces a packet of wet wipes from one of the previously-locked drawers of his desk and helps Leon clean the worst of mess from his hand and the stray spatters that had dripped onto the thighs of his coveralls; the fabric easily coming clean and giving Leon a new-found appreciation for the things.
Leon is still light-headed enough that he takes being manhandled into the desk chair without complaint, swallowing thickly against his now-sore throat.
Wesker seems almost nicer, somehow, although he hadn’t given the impression of being anything more than neutral before; Leon chalks it up to the orgasm and sets the thought aside for later.
“There,” Wesker says, “all better.”
There’s some inside joke in the statement that Leon isn’t privy to, looking blearily up at Wesker through the lingering wetness in his eyes; more stray tears beading in his eyelashes as Leon tries to blink them away.
The man stops, staring down at Leon’s face for a long moment; Leon can almost imagine his eyes tracking the path of the tear that does slip free, following it on its trail down Leon’s cheekbone and then dipping down towards his abused mouth—Leon can feel his lips starting to bruise a bit, and can’t help but set his teeth against the pad of his bottom lip to feel the sparkle of that dull pain, and this time he does see Wesker’s nostrils flare out and his jaw tighten—before finally rolling away down his jaw.
“What are you still doing in this city?” Wesker asks, his voice crushed gravel and crushed velvet all at once, “I’d think anyone would have turned around and left as soon as they saw the bodies.”
“The car got wrecked,” Leon says, “before we could turn around and get out,” he winces a little at the way his voice rasps.
“We?” Wesker asks.
“I ran into a girl at a gas station on my way into the city,” Leon says, thinking back to what was realistically only a few hours ago but felt like ages, “Claire Redfield—she said she was looking for her brother—but the gas station was full of these…zombies….” Leon hesitated over the word, not really wanting to say it but unable to come up with a better term, “we made it out and got to the city, but got separated in the crash,” Leon looks up at Wesker, “we met up again here at the station, and now I’m trying to find a way to get things working so I can help her and Sherry.”
Wesker got more tense throughout Leon’s explanation, and was quiet for a long moment afterwards, before finally breaking his silence to ask, “Sherry? Sherry Birkin?”
“Uh—yeah,” Leon said, surprised, “How did you know—?”
“She’s my goddaughter,” Wesker says in reply, cutting off Leon’s question, “I’m very glad to hear that she’s alive.”
There’s something serious to his tone that wasn’t there before, something personal that Leon was—currently, at least—unwilling to pry into.
“You should help us, then,” Leon finds himself saying, “Sherry’s trying to find her parents—and,” Leon pauses for a moment, wetting his mouth as the thought occurs to him, “there’s another woman, Ada—”
Wesker seems to blink behind his sunglasses, mouth suddenly quirking in amusement, “Ada Wong?”
“I ran into her a little while ago,” Leon said, unable to find it in himself to be surprised that somehow Wesker knew half the people involved, “She’s—,” Leon’s voice pitches up a bit, querulous, “investigating something?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Wesker asks, smirk widening.
Leon frowns at him suspiciously, “She told me a lot of things,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest defensively, “whether any of those things are actually true is something else.”
Wesker actually laughs at that, a beautiful sound that rolls out from deep in his chest.
“I think I will come along and help,” Wesker says, like he’s making another inside joke, his faint smile pulling into a mean smirk as he adds, “and maybe you’ll need help managing your, ah,” his voice does the rough, breathy thing that Leon is beginning to recognize as amusement, “stress responses.”
“That probably won’t happen again.” Leon says, feeling himself blush as he pushes himself abruptly to his feet.
For all his certainty back in the STARS office he’d barely lasted an hour—a horrifying hour of finding out more than he ever wanted to know about Chief Irons, enduring the personal irony that he’d just solved the murders he’d joined the RPD to solve in the first place, and finding out about the new ticking clock of Sherry’s infection—before he’d reached some secret tipping point where the adrenaline overclocked into arousal.
Claire had been surprised and a bit suspicious to see Wesker, but Sherry’s open and nearly painful joy at being reunited with her godfather had apparently been enough to convince her to keep her peace for now. Leon meant to ask her what bothered her about Wesker’s reappearance—beyond the obvious fact that he’d been declared dead in July, been missing for the past several months, and had reappeared in Raccoon now of all times—and whatever suspicions she had, but they’d been forced to split up to find a way to treat Sherry and avoid the monster Claire said had infected her.
Which meant more backtracking, fighting various forms of what Wesker called infected, and avoiding the various barricades and malfunctions that had made traversing the station so difficult. And ending up in a closet so the undeniably suspicious former STARS Captain he was currently working with could helpfully reboot his stupid brain by getting him off as ruthlessly as possible.
His coveralls, which Leon has really come to appreciate, have been unzipped and shucked off down his legs. Wesker is pressed hot and close against his back, his teeth along Leon’s neck setting frissons of sparks shooting down Leon’s spine, one hand over Leon’s mouth, the other mercilessly teasing Leon’s cock, while his own cock was a thick line of burning heat grinding slickly between Leon’s thighs.
Leon breathes out, open-mouthed against Wesker’s broad palm. His tongue sliding against the leather of his glove despite himself as Wesker’s hand stayed clamped firmly over his mouth to muffle the noises that would doubtlessly be spilling out of him otherwise. He thinks, deliriously, that maybe if he was good Wesker would let him suck his fingers. They were such nice gloves.
He grinds his hips back against Wesker’s and is rewarded with the tightening of Wesker’s hand around his cock, a brief moment of teetering on the edge, before Wesker’s hand loosens and slides away to palm and grope at the thick muscle of Leon’s thighs—the man had been preoccupied with them since he’d gotten Leon’s coveralls down to his knees and seen them bared—before coming back to finally, finally, bring Leon that last brilliant distance over the edge into orgasm.
Leon comes dizzily back to reality with Wesker’s spend streaking his thighs and Wesker’s gloved hand finally pulling away from his mouth. The clean-up is just as efficient as the first time—although Leon generously ignores the fact that there was an awful lot of groping involved—both of them hastily straightening their clothes and checking their weapons before venturing back out into the station.
Wesker turns as he goes out the door, catches Leon’s eye, and offers him a lazy smirk that has Leon scowling at him even as he blushes.
This was definitely not happening again.
Getting all the way around the station and seeing a giant of a man—the same one that crushed Ben’s skull—lift the helicopter out of the still-smouldering rubble where it had crashed into the police station was one thing. Having the thing—and it truly was a thing, considering the grey skin and bizarre proportions—come at them with obvious killing intent was another.
Wesker breaking into a burst of speed so intense he seemingly disappeared and reappeared in a smear of shadow and glowing red embers to literally crush the thing’s head from its shoulders, in a move that seemed to take the same amount of effort as a cat batting around a toy, was something else entirely.
Wesker stepping back as the thing’s body collapsed like a ragdoll with more concern for having ruined his gloves than the fact that he’d just twisted a mutant’s head off is so jarringly in-character for the man that Leon’s mind unfreezes from its shock so abruptly he can almost feel a headache starting.
His first thought, in the space his fear once occupied, is that this was probably the hottest fucking thing he’s ever seen in his life.
His second thought, the thing that manages to make it from his brain to his mouth as he watches Wesker assess the spatters of gore covering his hands and running up his arms is, “I think the sink in the east bunkroom is still working?”
Wesker pauses, not exactly startled by Leon’s voice but definitely as though Leon’s being there had slipped to the back of his mind in the presence of the mutant. He gives Leon a searching look, and this time Leon can see the burning embers of his eyes through the opaque lenses of his sunglasses.
Leon does his best to not look judgemental, because really Wesker had probably just saved his life. He also does his best not to look as horny as he feels because the sudden terror of having to fight another weird mutant has transmuted in Leon’s veins to the hot fizzing of arousal; adrenaline redirecting itself to the first outlet it can find. In all likelihood he’s going to need truly incredible amounts of therapy after this is over. He’s also, in the back of his mind, deeply considering the fact that he should really re-evaluate if his taste in men is any good.
Wesker gives an almost theatrical grimace as a wet glob of mutant brain slithers down one of his arms and into his glove, his aloof facade breaking as he tears his gloves off and tosses them—regretfully, Leon thinks, they were such nice gloves—to the floor before flailing his arms in the same general direction to try and fling off any other clinging bits of gore.
He turns back to Leon with a stiff tension in his shoulders that says everything Leon needs to know about the fragile state of the man’s dignity, and rasps out, “The east bunkroom?” before taking off in long ground-eating strides.
They troop back through the looping halls and detours needed to get to the bunkroom, Wesker carelessly swatting any zombies that had risen since they last passed through out of their way without even bothering to disguise his inhuman strength anymore. Which does absolutely nothing to help Leon calm down about any of this, the display of strength lending itself to several guilty fantasies he’d had to content himself with being unable to fulfill since he hit his last growth spurt in college and was suddenly too tall to be easily manhandled.
Aside from some fresh gouges in the ceiling and horrible bloody drag marks on the floor indicating that a Licker or two had been through to feed recently in the hall outside, the bunkroom is untouched since the last time Leon was here.
Wesker makes a beeline to the sink, and Leon follows after him—although not before locking the door and wedging a chair under the handle for a bit more security—helpfully turning the taps on when Wesker hesitates over them for a moment; both his hands covered in even more blood and gore than they’d been when they’d started making their way back to the bunkroom in the first place.
He means to keep watch, the niggling paranoia of every other closed door a zombie had suddenly started banging on motivating him to stay alert, but he ends up hovering around the sink as Wesker starts to scrub the blood from his forearms and hands.
“What was that thing?” Leon asks into the silence that had fallen between them, trying to sound casual.
Wesker seems to sigh a little, his shoulders tensing and relaxing, “It’s called a Tyrant, a type of Bio-Organic Weapon created by Umbrella Corporation.”
“Aha,” Leon says, because Umbrella seems to be at the root of everything wrong right now, “you sure took care of it.”
He feels more than sees Wesker pause, reaching out to turn off the tap—the water had been running clean and clear over his hands for a while now—before reaching past Leon for a towel.
Wesker’s reach brings him fully and deliberately into Leon’s personal space.
Leon is fixedly staring at the wall over Wesker’s shoulder, because watching Wesker’s elegant, long-fingered hands and remembering the sheer force of the blow he’d landed on the Tyrant had combined to make Leon feel like he was going to have to bite through his tongue to stop the surging tide of filth that had been rising in his mind from making it out of his mouth.
“Is there anything else you want to ask about?” Wesker asks, voice a deep rumble; he’s not that much taller than Leon, probably only three or four inches, but his presence is looming and intimidating. Behind his sunglasses points of burning red seem to light in his eyes, the man not bothering to hold back now that Leon had seen his abilities.
Leon’s mind helpfully replays Wesker tearing the Tyrant’s head off: his speed making the motion seem almost lazy; the pivot and turn of his body as he followed through with all of his strength; the flex and brace of his ass and thighs as he held himself upright through the force of the inertia dragging at his body through the sudden deceleration.
His mouth goes suddenly dry and he has to lick his lips to wet them, his throat working as he swallows. The fizzing in his veins turns into a hot prickling on his scalp; a shiver running down his spine; a flush of heat through his entire body. He feels like a snake hypnotized by a mongoose. In the place where his rational mind remained constantly calculating odds and noticing the details of everything around him, Leon is aware that he should reassure Wesker that he’s not interested in the details of his abilities if Wesker doesn’t want to share them; should probably be trying to deescalate the situation, since as he and Claire had noted earlier, Wesker’s entire disappearance and return was incredibly suspicious.
Instead, overcome by the combined rush of adrenaline and arousal that have been sweeping through him since the Tyrant had shown itself and been so immediately dispatched by this man, Leon says, inanely, “Do you think we could both fit on one of those bunks?”
Wesker looms closer, a smirk pulling at the edge of his mouth, “Really?” he asks, almost bemused, understanding where Leon’s mind has gone but still deciding to toy with him, “That’s your only question?”
“It was very sexy the way you ripped that Tyrant’s head off now do you want me to suck your dick about it or do you think the bunks are big enough to fuck on,” Leon says in reply, scowling up at Wesker and not bothering to hide his irritation; as though Wesker hadn’t been benefiting from Leon’s brain short-circuiting into abrupt and unhinged horniness all night.
“Very generous of you to let me choose,” Wesker says, a smirk blooming fully across his mouth and making him seem so punchable and smug that Leon could barely stand the fact that he was this wildly turned on by the guy.
Wesker opens his mouth to say something, but Leon cuts him off by fisting a hand in his collar and dragging him down into a kiss.
Now that Leon is fully aware how strong Wesker is, he knows Wesker could just…refused to be moved at all. But he doesn’t, his neck bends and his mouth is warm and chapped and inviting. It’s a good kiss. A very good kiss; Wesker’s teeth finding the bruised pad of Leon’s lower lip and scraping over it in a deliberate move that has Leon gasping and opening his mouth for more.
Now that Leon is fully aware of how strong Wesker is, he plants his hands on the man’s shoulders and pulls himself up—Wesker not even staggering at suddenly being made to support Leon’s entire body weight—shifting his body in a quick flex to gain momentum before bringing his legs up to wrap firmly around Wesker’s waist. A seamless movement that puts them at equal height and presses their bodies together in one burning line from chest to hips. Wesker’s hands come up almost reflexively to offer support; settling firmly on Leon’s thighs before more thoughtfully sliding upward to palm over his ass.
Wesker pulls back, breaking the kiss; his breathing harder now than it was when he killed the Tyrant, “Where did you even come from? Who sent you?” he asks, part-awe part-suspicion. His voice is like cracked gravel, the broad midwestern accent that had been hiding under his neatly clipped words all night fully exposed.
Leon has a succession of thoughts that flash through his head like images in a flip book, Wesker’s questions answering unasked questions of Leon’s own but raising new ones in their stead: why Wesker had followed him when he doubtless had his own agenda; the caution and watchfulness that had characterized Wesker’s assistance; his insistence on separating Leon off—away from Sherry, who he obviously cared about, and Claire who was at least a somewhat known quantity being the sister of a STARS team member—and keeping an eye on him; and finally, who Wesker might think had sent someone into Raccoon City on the eve of such a disaster that required such careful surveillance.
“No one,” Leon says, “and I moved here from Boulder.”
The tension lines around Wesker’s mouth and on his forehead smooth away in surprise for a moment before returning with a vengeance as Wesker obviously works through his thoughts, but Leon drags him firmly back into another kiss and doesn’t let Wesker break away again until they’re both gasping for air and even Wesker’s prodigious strength has slackened enough that he has to pin Leon against the wall to maintain their position.
After that there’s a blur of fumbling at clothes and stumbling to the nearest bunk. Just as Leon had thought after his cursory look earlier, they’re really too short in every dimension; not long enough for either of them to lie down comfortably, and the clearance of the bottom bunk too low.
Briefly, Leon considers how exactly they’re going to make this work, his grip on Wesker’s waist easing as he decides he might just have to abandon his position when suddenly strong hands seize him around his waist and lift him bodily onto the top bunk.
Wesker’s use of strength is enough to send Leon’s thoughts scattering apart again, forgetting his consideration of how much weight the bunk-bed’s frame might hold in favor of making a sound that to his own ears was somewhere between a surprised squawk and the yowl of a cat in heat.
Even on the top bunk, Wesker is still tall enough that he and Leon are practically eye to eye. His smug little smirk is back again, his head tilted as he observes Leon like some kind of jungle cat getting ready to pounce.
The creak the frame gives when Wesker heaves himself up onto the top bunk as well is ominous, but the frame seems to settle and bear the weight well enough that Leon dismisses his immediate concern. The room’s ceiling is mercifully high enough that while things might be somewhat cramped, they at least had more room than if they’d wedged themselves into the bottom bunk.
Positioning is a challenge, until finally Leon ends up in Wesker’s lap; the man spread out underneath him on his back, his legs bent and feet braced against the bunk’s footrail. They’re both half-clothed, Leon’s horrible jumpsuit shucked off onto the floor along with his underwear, and Wesker’s fatigue pants shoved down his hips; the gun oil he’d had in one of his pockets being put to expedient use slicking his fingers and cock as he methodically began to take Leon apart.
Every time they move too much the bunk’s frame creaks ominously, each warning groan from the metal forcing them into a maddening stop-start of preparation that ends when Leon finally has enough and slaps Wesker’s hands away.
As he sinks agonizingly slowly onto Wesker’s cock he has to reach up and press his hands against the ceiling to have anywhere to brace himself, a guttural moan erupting from his throat at the feeling.
Wesker’s stupid sunglasses have slid up his forehead and into his hair, finally revealing the bright red of his eyes—the slitted pupils somehow less startling than the vivid shade of his irises—and he watches, raptly, as Leon rolls his hips to grind against where Wesker’s cock sits hot and slick inside him.
Leon can feel his face flushing and his thighs starting to ache as he works himself on Wesker’s cock; Wesker’s help amounting to supporting hands at his hips and a few lazily rolling thrusts that send the bunk’s frame creaking so loudly it seems like collapse is imminent.
He feels like he’s losing his mind a little, fucking himself on Wesker’s cock and practically giving him a lapdance at the same time. The man’s hands sliding over his hips to grope at his ass and thighs as they work; ignoring Leon's cock completely to sink his fingers into the muscle in a firm massage that’s somehow even more erotic than if he’d paid it any attention.
By the time Leon feels the hot pooling tension of impending orgasm he’s entirely wrecked himself; the muscle of his thighs twitching each time he flexes them to chase the pressure of Wesker’s cock against his prostate. He’d torn the kevlar off and shucked off his shirt and undershirt when he’d started overheating and he still feels like he’s burning alive.
He knows Wesker is watching him, the palpable weight of the man’s eyes on his body impossible to ignore, but at this point the only thing he cares about is hunting his own pleasure down to the very end.
The hands bracing his hips slipping downward to trace delicate patterns along the skin of his inner thighs, bringing the barest brush of pressure against his cock with the motion is almost enough even before Wesker finally loses his restraint and rolls his hips upward in a devastating thrust that lifts Leon’s entire body—the footrail of the bunk audibly bending in a shriek of metal as he braces his feet against it—and then lets gravity do the work of bringing Leon back down onto his cock with enough force that it has Leon seeing stars.
The bunk’s frame creaks with strain when he thrusts again, but Leon crests over the knife-edge point of orgasm so sharply when he does that the sound is lost in the noise that tears itself out of his throat; Wesker rolling his hips with enough force to shake the bunk’s frame in a sudden squeal of failing supports and bending metal one last time before following.
Leon collapses forward onto Wesker just in time for the frame to give out entirely, listing and sagging underneath them as the frame’s final supports give out and abruptly drop the top bunk’s mattress. They lie there for several minutes, both of them somewhat stunned, before Wesker finally moves; extricating himself from Leon and the bent metal of the failed bedframe. Leon tries to stifle the stupid, needy noise he makes when Wesker pulls out—the feeling of oil and spend abruptly dripping down his thighs both overstimulating and also somewhat disgusting—but fails to bite down on the squeak of surprise he makes when Wesker lifts him bodily off the bed and sets him on his feet on the floor.
Leon decides that, extremely suspicious behavior aside, Wesker is at least not as much of an asshole as he could be when he helps Leon clean up and hunt around for his clothes.
They check their weapons—again—and head out into the horrors of the city—again—and when Wesker gives him that stupid smirk as they go out the door Leon just rolls his eyes at the man and mutters, “Ah, gimme a break,” under his breath.
He’s almost entirely certain this is going to happen again.
Getting shot was kind of terrible, Leon decides, as he collapses.
He hears Wesker yell something, and the scientist—Annette—yell something back, but his pulse is pounding in his ears as the stunning, radiant spike of pain that currently encompasses his shoulder dominates his attention.
Ada, who he’d pushed out of the way of the bullet, looks grim and unhappy as she crouches next to him to examine the wound—which hurts, it hurts so so so badly—her attention half-focused on Wesker and Annette as they argue about something.
When he and Wesker had run into Ada it had almost been funny, like two cats posturing at each other; both of them obviously acquainted, and both of them obviously having some shared agenda from the way they kept giving each other speaking looks and saying cryptic bullshit to each other. But they’d worked well together, the three of them settling into an almost unnervingly easy rhythm as their impromptu fireteam moved through the various sewers, barricades, back alleys, and other obstacles between them and whatever they were looking for.
Leon’s train of thought interrupts itself so his mind can echo with the noise of agony he makes as someone very strong hauls him up off the ground and hefts him over their shoulder. His vision is black….because he’s staring into a field of black fabric, stretched across the back of the person carrying him. Wesker is carrying him?
He can hear the tip-tap of Ada’s high heels against the pavement, and a quieter padding footstep that must be Annette, since Leon can hear her voice saying something.
Finally, mercifully, he passes out.
The good news is, apparently, that the bullet had hit the kevlar and so Leon—while now the proud recipient of probably one of the worst bruises he’s ever had, and his shoulder still aches a bit—wasn’t actually in very much danger from the wound. It had been painful, and he’d been stunned, but he didn’t have an actual bullet hole in him and neither did Ada, so he was willing to count this one as a win.
Whatever facility Annette—who was Sherry’s mother apparently, which, small fucking world—had led them to while he was unconscious was at least well-stocked with what were apparently cutting-edge first aid supplies courtesy of Umbrella’s legitimate research—as opposed to their illegitimate research, which had, as far as Leon’s understood things, somehow managed to get into the water supply and turn everyone in Raccoon City into infected rabid zombie cannibals—and Leon had stripped his coveralls down to his waist, taken off his kevlar, and peeled off his undershirt to reveal the already-blooming bruise forming over his left shoulder and endure Annette poking at it and slathering it with things she claimed would help. Wesker’s help, in the end, amounted to arguing with Annette about what and how much goop to put on while not even trying to be subtle about checking out Leon’s chest.
Ada, who finished casually looting the infirmary of everything that might be useful while Annette and Wesker were busy arguing, has settled down quietly nearby in what Leon would think is a moral support kind of way as he endures the continued prodding and goop-application if he hadn’t also caught her eyes sliding along the lines of his biceps and abs. He watches her because he has nothing better to do but sit here and be worked over, and so he sees the moment her eyes catch the marks on his now-bared neck.
She slides her eyes up to his face, and meets his gaze before raising one shapely eyebrow at him and shifting her gaze over to Wesker.
Leon feels distinctly judged, and can’t help himself from blushing again. Except he’s shirtless, so the flush that spreads down his neck doesn’t just disappear under his clothes but rather blossoms across his collarbones in a rosy and incriminating tide.
Ada’s face goes unnervingly blank as she stares at him for a long moment before she coughs once to clear her throat, and gets up to go rustle around through the infirmary cabinets again.
After Leon is declared healed—his shoulder does actually feel much better—and he’s allowed to put his clothes back on, Annette and Wesker break into another hissed argument that Leon, relegated to waiting by the door with Ada who still has a strange look in her eyes whenever he catches her watching him, only manages to overhear as something about William and Sherry and infection. Through some kind of mutual agreement Annette announces she’s leaving to find Sherry, while Wesker is going to lead them to “NEST” so they can meet up and do ... something. Annette and Wesker had segued into vague statements of intent that only they—and Ada, who was spectating the whole thing like some kind of sporting event—seemed to understand.
Leon is feeling increasingly out of the loop on what the fuck is going on here, aside from the zombie virus outbreak and the illegal bioresearch and the complete destruction of Raccoon City, and the first sparks of annoyance start to kindle in his chest at this state of affairs. He’s an easy going guy, really, but they’ve been in a protracted near-death situation all night and even his patience is starting to wear a little thin.
Tracking through the sewers—again—and killing more awful mutant things that used to be people—again—just sends his stress levels even higher.
The cable car ride, which according to Wesker will take about twenty minutes, already feels like an eternity and they haven't even launched the thing yet.
Ada and Wesker are apparently having some kind of argument. The cryptic bullshit is off the charts.
Leon is tired, stressed, and very self-conscious of the fact that he’s starting to feel pretty warm in here. Trapped in a small cable car with two hot people trying to posture their way through whatever opaque argument they’re having, while the drip-feed of adrenaline that’s been running steadily through his veins all night ticks over from a nervous itching along the back of his neck into a pooling heat low in his belly.
Wesker growls something at Ada that Leon doesn’t even try to catch because the tone of his voice short-circuits Leon’s brain. Ada saying something back in the same irrefutable tone makes Leon actively twitch in his seat.
He has the brief and overwhelming revelation of these fuckers are using their dom voices on each other? because they’re still going and he’s starting to sweat.
Maybe they won’t notice if he just gets up right now and shuffles to the back of the cable car to implode of maladaptive horniness in peace?
Ada’s underwear is silk, and so is the lace that bands the tops of her stockings, the leather of the thigh holster she’s wearing rasping against Leon’s cheek as he turns his head to bury his face between her legs. She has her hands in his hair, one idly playing with it, the other an unyielding fist keeping him exactly where she wants him. The rucked-up hem of her dress brushes against the back of his neck occasionally, another whisper of silk that sends goosebumps rising on his skin.
He had been caught, and whatever argument Ada and Wesker were having was very swiftly shelved in favor of the two of them ganging up on him like sharks scenting blood in the water. He’d been caught trying to escape, and then caught again between the bodies of two very attractive people.
And now remained caught, his stupid coveralls shucked off along with his underwear to gather around his ankles while Wesker knelt on the fabric to pin him in place, and his head trapped between Ada’s thighs.
Caught on all fours, his mouth working hungrily against the wet silk of Ada’s panties, while Wesker’s hands bracket his hips to further trap him in place as Wesker hilts himself ruthlessly; the stretch and glide of him dancing on that bright sparkling edge of painful pleasure that has Leon’s neglected cock achingly hard and weeping.
Leon makes a sound somewhere between a sob and a moan, shivering in their mutual grip. His nose hooks on the edge of Ada’s panties and he finally tastes her bare flesh; tongue mapping the previously-veiled mound of her pubis and labia to lave directly over her clitoris. The fist in his hair and the thighs bracketing his head tighten their grip simultaneously, and he thinks he does cry a little; tears leaking from his eyes to trail down to the mess of slick painting his mouth and chin.
Wesker sets a rhythm as steady as a metronome, as though he’s keeping time with Leon’s body, and his hands are bruising as they keep Leon’s hips still through their abortive bucks and rolls. Half the work Leon’s arms are doing is to hold him up, the other half is stopping Wesker from crushing him against Ada’s seat where it presses into Leon’s chest and collarbones with the sheer force of his thrusts.
Leon doesn’t even have the capacity to be embarrassed when he barely lasts; coming untouched, orgasm wracking his body and forcing a tortured sound from his throat. His shoulders tensing and untensing, his mouth working wordlessly against Ada’s skin, Wesker not even pausing as he readjusts his grip when Leon lists slightly.
He has the presence of mind to not just collapse, but he feels his brain melting out his ears a bit; trying to be good for Ada, while holding up against Wesker’s hammer-strike blows to his prostate.
Ada barely makes a sound when she finishes, a breathy sigh and a tightening of the hand in his hair preceding a full-body shudder that ripples through her frame before she’s pushing Leon away; getting space between them in such a way that he loses the stability the cable car’s seat had provided and dropping him chest-down to the floor. He gets a blurry glimpse of her face—very faintly flushed, her eyes bright and absorbed by the scene he and Wesker are making—and barely has time to see the look of calculation that crosses it before she gracefully lifts a foot and grinds the hard point of her heel into the still-mottled bruising on his shoulder.
Leon chokes on a scream and goes dizzy from how abruptly he gets erect again; the hot rush of pain driving him through the fastest refractory period he’s ever had. More tears gather in his eyelashes, dripping down to the floor under him as he manages to brace himself on his elbows and gets a view of the mess he’s already made of the floor.
Wesker grunts—a deep animal noise—at the change of angle and then tugs on Leon’s hips; dragging him backwards onto his cock in a move that has Leon’s eyes rolling back in his head.
Leon’s arms give out, and he’s left ass-up and completely at Wesker’s mercy; the relentless rhythm of his thrusting hips finally starting to stutter and become disordered.
By the time Wesker finishes—hard deep thrusts taking him over the edge in a staccato rhythm that drags Leon along as well—Leon is actively crying with overstimulation.
It takes him a few moments of laying collapsed on the floor of the cable car with Wesker draped bonelessly over his back to remember how to move again, and by the time Leon can coordinate himself well enough to start trying to get to his feet Wesker has somehow managed to get up and find his way back to being presentable, which seems very unfair currently as Leon registers the chafed imprint of the metal seat-edge banding across his pectorals to go with the scrapes on his knees and elbows.
He must look especially pitiful, because Ada and Wesker both help him up, offering aftercare in the form of assistance with clean-up and help back into his clothes.
Wesker steers him away from the mess on the floor, Leon stumbling along on shaky legs, until they get to another set of seats.
Leon feels like he’s been hit by a truck. He feels like he’s been effectively cured of all horniness forever. He feels the bruise from the seat-edge blooming across his pecs and the vague discomfort of having cleaned up as well as possible but still being viscerally aware he’s let this man hit it raw twice in the past few hours. His jaw hurts in a way that tells him he’d gotten so into trying to eat Ada alive that he’d failed the first law of tongue control. His shoulder aches with a dull sort of pain that isn’t even slightly arousing.
Around him, Wesker and Ada have gone back to their cryptic nonsense; the only difference being that they sit on either side of him now, bracketing him with their bodies leaning against him in an extremely lackluster gesture toward a proper cuddle.
Ada turns, looking up at him coyly despite having just helped to wreck him, and asks, “Did you train in Europe?”
It’s such a random question that Leon has to actually think about it, casting his mind back to try and overcome the combined confusion of post-orgasm haze and fatigue, “No?” Leon finally replies, “I almost went to the Pan American Championships, but I injured my knee and missed it.”
Ada’s face does something that gives the impression she’d just bitten into a lemon and was trying very hard not to let it show, as though Leon had entirely misunderstood the question she was asking.
“Really?” Wesker says from his other side, “How unfortunate, what sport?”
He sounds sincere enough that Leon turns his head, which had somehow come to rest on one of Wesker’s broad shoulders, to at least sort of look at the man when he was speaking to him, “Gymnastics,” he sighs, unable to keep the tragedy of it all out of his voice.
“Gymnastics,” Wesker echoes with faint disbelief.
Leon nods, “Hurt my knee, got benched, had a growth spurt,” he sighs again, “by the time I finished retraining I was a month shy of graduation.”
Ada, still seeming vaguely stunned, reaches out and pats him on the arm—somewhat mechanically, as though she’s not used to comforting someone like this—her voice distant as she says, “That must have been a disappointment.”
“How did you end up deciding to join the RPD?” Wesker asks, sounding genuinely curious but with an undercurrent of some kind of surprise in his voice, as though he keeps expecting Leon to be giving him different answers to these questions than the ones he’s getting.
“You know those murders Chief Irons was doing?” Leon asks in reply, pausing as Wesker nods, “I decided I was going to solve them.”
Wesker is quiet for a long moment, as though he has to take time to digest all of this.
On his other side, Ada seems to be sitting with a similar predicament; as though they’d both been operating under some hypothesis that Leon had just shaken their belief in and weren’t entirely sure what to do about it.
Time seems to be passing like molasses.
Leon asks, “How much longer is this going to last?”
Almost as one, both Wesker and Ada’s attention rivets to him.
“What?” Wesker asks, voice a low growl.
“The cable car,” Leon says, “It feels like it’s been an hour.”
Ada retrieves a charming little watch from someplace and checks the time, before looking out the cable car’s windows, “It’s been fifteen minutes,” she says at last.
“Jesus Christ,” Leon sighs, dropping his head back onto Wesker’s shoulder in a move that makes the man flinch.
Leon isn’t sorry for it, as far as he figured things Wesker owed him some cuddling by now.
“Stop right there,” Ada says, a vague strain of regret in her voice.
He turns, looking back at them: Ada on the catwalk behind him, her gun drawn and her hands steady as she trains it on him; Wesker behind her, still on the platform, his hands both occupied supporting Annette where she’s leaning heavily against his side. Leon is aware enough of Wesker’s abilities by this point—the man’s inhuman strength and speed, demonstrated again when he’d appeared in a blur of shadows to snatch Annette out of the air when the mutant-that-had-been-Birkin had swatted her brutally away from itself—that he’s sure the man could both support Annette and draw down on him at the same time, faster than Leon could hope to react to.
It doesn’t really matter, though, because Ada’s gun is already drawn and aimed, while Leon spent the last of his ammo putting down Birkin for good; the only thing in his hands right now is the test tube containing the G virus sample.
Leon can’t say he’s exactly surprised. They’d split up to traverse the NEST facility, and the time and distance away from them had given Leon a chance to clear his head and start fitting puzzle pieces together: the way both Ada and Wesker had questioned his origins; their appraisal of his skills; the undercurrent of disbelief he’d ignored.
The two of them had come for the G virus, and they’d convinced themselves that Leon was here for the same reason. He considers trying to tell them that he really isn’t working for anyone, that he came here on his own and survived because he couldn’t allow himself to die when someone needed his help. It won’t change anything, they’re both convinced and have been trying to get what they think is the truth out of him all night; his own adrenaline-fueled distractibility not exactly helping to support his story.
That they didn’t simply kill him before he attributes to the fact that they’d—obviously in hindsight—been banking on this exact strategy, of letting him find his way to the G sample and then simply taking it from him once he’d expended his energy and resources on overcoming the obstacles in the way. That they’re hesitating over just killing him now he mostly attributes to the fact that if they do he’s almost guaranteed to lose his grip on the test tube as he falls.
Leon isn’t naive—or at least not so naive as he appears—a steady hand with a gun and the thrill of sex with a would-be rival had convinced them to give him enough rope to hang himself with. As much as he’d like to think they made some connection, he knows that nothing they’ve done or been for each other over the past night is worth more to them than their goal; there’s no appeal he can make at this point that will help things.
Neither Wesker nor Ada particularly care about Umbrella being brought to justice, and viewing Leon through that same jaded perspective they’ll never believe he actually cares about it either.
“Hand over the sample, Leon,” Ada says, into the silence of their standoff.
She’s every bit the professional, poised and calm; her face a bland mask concealing any real feelings.
In truth, Leon doesn’t really need the G virus sample either. He has the tape of Birkin’s death, he has the files he’d scrounged up in the depths of the facility, he has printouts coaxed from faltering laboratory computers. It’s enough, at least, to ensure that someone somewhere takes this seriously.
He’d taken the sample more to prevent anyone else from getting it, an instinct he appreciates now that his nascent suspicions have come to fruition. He’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do with it, considering some of the things he’d found about Birkin’s dealings—one deal, specifically, meant to sell G in exchange for freedom from Umbrella, to the very government that was supposed to be policing the research and production of bioweapons—but he’s even more sure that it being in his hands is keeping it from anyone with intentions to actually use it.
Wesker shifts, Annette groaning softly into his shoulder as he adjusts his grip on her to free one of his hands—an obvious threat of escalation—and says, “Whoever you’re working for isn’t worth your life.”
A heaving rumble shakes the cavern around them. A pre-recorded warning playing over the loudspeakers announcing the facility’s self-destruct sequence and beginning a countdown. Alarms start to sound as hazard lights flicker on around the cavern, some of them sending showers of sparks spraying from tracks and mountings that have already been destroyed.
They don’t have time to be standing here, but they’re all stuck because neither Ada nor Wesker can stop without accomplishing their goal and Leon can’t allow them to have the sample.
A shower of rubble crumbles off one of the lower platforms as another tremor shakes the cavern.
“Leon,” Ada starts, “Give me the sample—“
Another hail of falling rubble drops onto the catwalk, shattering it and sending Ada tumbling forward.
Leon dives after her, tossing the test tube—their precious last ‘pure’ G sample—into the abyss as he lunges to grab her hand. He catches her, barely, and holds.
They hang there for a long moment, Ada’s head still turned from where her eyes followed the G sample, before she looks up at him; her eyes are wide, the perfect mask of composure broken briefly open to reveal not fear but shock, as though she couldn’t believe what had just happened.
Leon doesn’t bother looking over at Wesker—there’s nothing he can do, unless he wants to drop Annette and chance the catwalk being able to support his weight if he leapt—focusing on trying to anchor himself with his legs so he can reach for Ada with his other hand.
Warily, Ada takes it, reaching out herself and clasping their hands together, her fingers locking as tightly around his wrist as his were around hers.
He swings her slightly to get a feel for her weight, and hisses when her nails dig into his arms as her grip tightens even further.
He’s not exactly in an ideal position: on his front with his shoulders hanging off into dead air, legs locked around a metal strut to support them both. He would also prefer none of them die down here, regardless of having just held him at gunpoint.
Leon has never been so glad he bothered with the painstaking months of retraining he’d put in after he’d fucked up his knee, because it gives him the strength to pull Ada up in a bastardized skin-the-cat movement and heave her with all his strength and the force of their gathered momentum toward Wesker.
The edge of the catwalk Leon is balanced on destabilizes at the same time, so he misses the sight of Wesker catching her—the muted oof and thud the only sign Leon has—in favor of following his own momentum to heave himself up and flip backwards in an aerial walkover that lands him on the central platform.
The tableau of Wesker, one arm caught awkwardly around Ada and the other stretched out behind him to keep a grip on Annette, illuminated by the intermittent flashing of the warning lights and punctuated by the alarms, could have been comical at another time.
“If you want your sample so bad,” Leon says, eyes shifting between their vaguely stunned faces, “you can go get it yourself this time.”
And then he turns, breaking into a sprint in the direction of where he hopes there’s really an escape route.
Leon’s still out of ammo, and Claire takes the chain-gun with an amount of zeal that makes him think that letting her riddle Birkin with bullets will be more therapeutic for her than anything else, so he stays with Sherry on the train.
“You’re sure,” Sherry asks, huddled in Claire’s jacket with her eyes welling with tears.
“I’m positive,” Leon says, trying to summon a smile to reassure her, “She was a little hurt but Wesker’s taking care of her.”
Sherry nods, “Mom always said to call Uncle Al if I needed help,” she says, with a child’s conviction in a trusted adult.
Leon thinks about Wesker as he’d come to know him over the night: complicated, dangerous, manipulative, and—a well hidden facet, but still very much a part of him—possessive of the things and people he seemed to care about.
“I think they’re going to get out just fine,” he says, trying to keep Sherry engaged and not looking out the window to see the creature that was her father get turned into so much meat, “Your mom knows how to handle herself, and so does your Uncle Al.”
This seems to reassure Sherry well enough, the little girl scrubbing at her wet eyes with the overlong sleeve of Claire’s jacket.
They make it out, the three of them, out of the city and off the train and down the road away from it all: all of them alive and safe.
Sherry wears out walking after a few miles, which isn’t surprising. She’s a kid and she’s been running around Raccoon alone for the past few days, Leon is honestly a little surprised that she didn’t tire out sooner; but she’s a stubborn, strong-willed kid and had insisted she could walk on her own all the way until she’d been obviously dead on her feet.
She acquiesces gracefully to being piggybacked, and Leon carries her along a few more miles; all of them stopping to rest at increasingly frequent intervals, exhaustion dragging on them.
It’s Claire that spots the trucks first, stepping back out onto the road to try and get a better idea of where they are.
Big military vehicles tearing down the road that have Claire sprinting back under the shade of the stand of trees they’d been resting under.
After everything they’d found with Umbrella, neither of them are keen on trusting that this isn’t some kind of cleanup effort by the company.
They only have a few minutes, but it’s enough time for Leon to decide what’s going to happen; telling Claire to take Sherry and run.
“Come with us,” Claire says, as she lifts Sherry up on her back and starts hustling deeper into the trees.
“If they saw you they know at least one person is here,” Leon replies, the probability already fully calculated in his head, “You need to find your brother, and Annette and Captain Wesker are going to be looking for Sherry,” he drops the volume of his voice, aware that Sherry is half-awake and probably listening, “Do you really want anyone getting ahold of Sherry and forcing Annette to work for them?”
Claire’s eyes go wide for a moment before she nods, mouth flattening into a grim line, “I’m in the phonebook in Denver,” she says, “Please,” her voice wavers, “Let me know you get out okay?”
“I will,” Leon says, “As soon as I can.”
And then Claire shifts Sherry’s weight further up on her back and disappears off into deep shadows cast by the trees.
Leon stands there, second-guessing himself. He considers running after them, but then he can hear the sound of all-terrain tires churning over the cracked asphalt of the two-lane road they’d been following and a voice shouting over a loudspeaker identifying itself as belonging to the National Guard with instructions to come out with his hands up.
It’s enough to settle him on the decision. If this really is the National Guard then he’d have someone to turn his evidence of Umbrella’s wrongdoing in to, if it’s not, then at least he’s made sure Sherry couldn’t be used against Annette—and Wesker, depending on how widely known his connection as Sherry’s godfather was—to induce her to give up her knowledge of the G virus or any of Umbrella’s other illegal research.
He walks casually out from under the trees, hands raised; either they were who they said they were or they weren’t. Bolting into the trees at the last moment would do nothing but prompt them to start a search that would catch Claire and Sherry.
Claire isn’t entirely sure how she manages to make it through the forest, over the foothills rolling down the eastern side of the Arklay range, and all the way to some little resort town.
They’d stopped on the edge of town and she’d done her best to tuck the guns she was still carrying into her jacket and out of sight before taking Sherry’s hand and hobbling her way up to the front desk at the first motel she’d seen.
The desk clerk looks actively shocked to see them, which gives a pretty fair gauge on how terrible they must look, and Claire spins up a truly pathetic story of stopping to help what she thought was a stranded hiker and instead getting her car stolen. The poor lady at the desk practically falls all over herself to help them, refusing Claire’s offer of the small bit of cash she has on her in favor of a free room and the promise that someone in town would give them a lift back to Denver the next day. It makes Claire feel guilty to take advantage of a stranger’s kindness like this, when she and Sherry finally shut themselves into their room with the bundle of snacks and novelty sweatpants and tshirts out of the motel’s small gift shop to change into.
She makes sure Sherry showers first, and the little girl is out like a light the moment her head hits the pillow. Claire, for all her exhaustion, can’t seem to settle down now that they’re supposedly safe.
She wedges a chair under the door handle—despite knowing how little good it will do—before she takes her own shower, and then when she’s clean and exhaustion is weighing every part of her body down as though she’s made of lead she lays down but can’t really find it in herself to sleep.
One moment she’s staring up at the ceiling and fretting about them getting found, and the next she’s startling upright because Sherry is calling her name, with the morning sunlight streaming in through the curtains.
She still feels exhausted, but at least a little less like she’s going to collapse and never move again.
The motel’s clerk—who is also apparently the motel’s owner—made good on her word, finding someone in town on their way to Denver willing to take them along when he went.
They pile into the back of his truck—a friendly local man named Bob, who was happy to talk at length about his ski-making business when Claire got him started—and despite still being so tired she can barely think straight Claire manages to stay awake during the several-hour drive. As a defense mechanism, at first, afraid that if she fell asleep she’d wake up and find that Bob had turned them in to some kind of custody; then, as her fears eased, because talking to a normal person about their normal life was so incredibly restful, after the insanity of Raccoon, that it made Claire feel as though they really had managed to escape.
Bob stops and buys them lunch, and aside from a little awkward and discreet shuffling to make sure the guns were still hidden where Claire had them bundled up in her dirty clothes, nothing eventful happens.
As though they really are just hapless travelers getting some help from a friendly neighbor.
When they finally get to Claire’s apartment—thanking Bob profusely and waving as he pulls away from the curb—Claire hustles them up the stairs and through the door. It seems ridiculous that she’d somehow managed to keep her keyring in her pocket throughout everything she’d been through, one stroke of almost farcical luck; the prospect of having to go and find the building manager to unlock the door to her apartment on top of everything else is almost too much to bear.
If it weren’t for Sherry—who delightedly poked around her apartment, rifled critically through Claire’s collection of VHS tapes, devoured half the pizza Claire ordered, and then fell bonelessly to sleep sprawled across the couch halfway through Highlander—Claire would almost be able to trick herself into believing that Raccoon City really had just been some kind of nightmare.
She wants to hope that Leon made it through okay, but from everything she’s heard from Chris about detainment and processing involved in police work she knows that if she hears from him it won’t be any time soon.
Claire finds herself pacing restless laps around her apartment, then sitting down to try and catch a few spare minutes of the movie as it plays on. Every time she tries to relax again she hears another noise that her brain interprets as zombies just out of sight. For lack of anything better to do, she finally sits on the floor in front of the couch and cleans and organizes the guns she’d carried out of Raccoon; forced to abandon the really flashy stuff on the train for lack of ammo and carrying weight, but still a respectable enough arsenal that it provides some comfort to think she’s not entirely defenseless.
She has Chris’ letter too, folded up in a pouch with all the rest of the papers and files she’d found in Raccoon, but she’s not ready to face it just yet; to try and figure out what he’s really doing in Europe, and what it has to do with Umbrella.
The knocking on her door startles her so badly she fumbles the gun she’s holding and nearly shoots herself in the foot; her first ingrained instinct at hearing the sound completely rewritten by one night in Raccoon to think only that there’s a zombie on the other side.
“Miss Redfield,” a man’s voice calls, accompanied by another knock.
Claire breathes out a slow, deliberate breath. She recognizes the voice, Chris’ old boss Captain Wesker.
She doesn’t trust the man, not one bit. His disappearance and supposed death during the Spencer Mansion incident had triggered whatever it was that sent Chris haring off to Europe, and his reappearance in Raccoon—apparently completely fine, and just as arrogant a jerk as Chris always described when he was annoyed with the man—at the same time as the outbreak that destroyed the city was so suspicious she didn’t understand how Leon could be so calm about accepting the man’s help. She’d done her best to communicate—in the brief time they’d had to talk before they’d had to split up—all the alarm bells raised by Wesker’s being there.
Leon’s ability to believe the best in people had won her willingness to work with Wesker for Sherry’s sake, but now Leon is gone and Wesker is standing in the hall outside her apartment.
Wesker knocks again, insistent, “Miss Redfield,” he calls, deep voice carrying through the door, “Sherry.”
Claire carefully puts the gun down on the coffee table with the rest of her tools and ammo, determined to pretend to not be home, when a shuffling on the couch behind her alerts her to the fact that Sherry has woken up.
The little girl looks blearily around, rubbing her eyes as she sits up on the couch.
“Sherry,” Wesker calls again, and Claire watches as the little girl lights up at the sound of his voice.
“Uncle Al!” Sherry exclaims, loud enough that the man definitely heard, before flinging herself off the couch and running to Claire’s door.
Claire, startling into motion, grabs the throw blanket she’d covered Sherry with off the couch and tosses it over the coffee table to cover the multiple guns and gun parts and spare ammo she’d been fiddling with to keep her hands busy just in time to hide it before Sherry manages the last lock and pulls the door open.
Wesker takes being the sudden target of a little girl physically leaping at him with enough grace that Claire starts to paradoxically tense up again; hefting Sherry up into his arms as though she weighs barely anything to him, and boosting her up into a one-armed carry that allows her to throw her arms around his neck in an adoring hug.
He’s deeply suspicious and also an arrogant jerk, but his goddaughter loves him.
Claire manages to make herself move casually, not running over to try and tear Sherry away from him and not bursting out with any spurious accusations, despite her pulse pounding in her ears. She misses Sherry asking about Annette, and only catches part of Wesker’s response—Annette is fine, but was hurt and couldn’t come retrieve Sherry herself—her thoughts preoccupied with suddenly and abjectly regretting that she hadn’t had the time to ask Leon what happened that caused him to end up following her and Sherry’s escape route instead of whatever one Wesker and Annette had used.
“Miss Redfield,” Wesker says to her, directly, standing in the entryway to her apartment and holding Sherry, “Thank you for looking after Sherry.”
“Of course,” Claire says, the inanity of it all almost overwhelming; as though she’d just been babysitting Sherry and not rescuing her from a city full of zombies, “How did you get out?”
She can’t help but ask, curious and suspicious at the same time.
Wesker gives her an opaque look, made especially so by his sunglasses, “There were certain failsafe exits built into the facility, but not depicted in maps or official blueprints.”
Claire scoots around him to get to the door to her apartment and shuts it behind him, the man turning so he can follow her with his eyes but otherwise remaining calm and aloof.
“Sherry,” Claire says, managing to smile and sound normal, “Why don’t you use the restroom before you leave?”
Sherry squirms in Wesker’s arms until he puts her down, trotting away to the bathroom.
As soon as she’s out of sight—and, hopefully, earshot—Claire rounds on Wesker.
“There’s nothing I can do to stop you from taking her,” Claire says, spelling out what she’s sure they’re both thinking, “but I have some strong concerns about Sherry’s home life.”
“You’re correct,” Wesker says, voice bland but tight in a way that makes her think she’s right, “there is nothing you can do.
“I found her wandering around Raccoon alone in the middle of that mess,” Claire hisses at him furiously, trying to keep her voice down so Sherry doesn’t hear but needing to confront Wesker before she comes back, “and everything she’s told me about her parents makes me think she was at least being serially neglected, and you, her godfather, disappear to god knows where for months when you were apparently the only stable adult in her life with no concern for any of this and you just expect me to say nothing?”
Wesker stares at her for a long moment, the sound of water running in the next room a sign that time has almost run out, “Miss Redfield,” he says, “You are very much like your brother.”
Claire is drawing in an angry breath to ask what the hell he means by that when Sherry returns, smiling at both of them and, without any apparent fear of the man, sidling right up to Wesker to be picked up again.
Claire forces herself to smile, “You’ll stay in touch, right?” she says to Sherry.
The little girl beams at her, “I’ll write you a letter!”
Wesker turns, opening the door and stepping out into the hall.
Claire follows, trying to keep her eyes on them for as long as she can before they’re gone.
Wesker looks at her over Sherry’s head, and says “I’ll bear your concerns in mind.”
Then he sets off down the hall in long, ground-eating strides; Sherry looking back over his shoulder and waving, “Bye, Claire!”
Claire loses sight of them when Wesker turns the corner to the stairwell, standing in the hallway outside her open door for several long moments before finally turning and going back inside.
It’s been more than a month since the Raccoon City Incident, as the T-virus outbreak had become known among the select and highly classified circles to which that information was available.
Ada has observed the global sea-change with a certain reserved wariness. In the weeks leading up to the outbreak her most steady client for industrial espionage and data theft from biotech companies was Wesker himself; and aside from Wesker, the few others dabbling in the field gave her offers more along the lines of lifting new drug formulas and copying clinical trial data. Now, the phone and email she uses for her “business” ventures are overflowing with messages from old contacts and new players alike; all vying for the hot new commodity they’d realized in viral bioweapons.
The genie was quite thoroughly out of the bottle.
Ada is aware there’s nothing that’s going to put it back now that the world has seen BOWs in action.
She’s fielded a few requests, and turned down several others. Her success begets success, and the number of offers has only increased as time has gone on. She doesn’t want to be pigeonholed, but as the weeks have rolled by and she’s watched the offers she turned down be snapped up by lesser operators—and heard of their subsequent failures to deliver, if not outright deaths as the already formidable security guarding what they’re after is increased—the new state of play is starting to reveal itself.
There are very few people in the world as good as she is. One of them she’d met in Raccoon, a man who’d kept pace with herself—and with Wesker, an even more formidable feat—as though they’d been partners for years rather than acquaintances for a few scant hours.
He’d acted the role of a boyishly charming rookie cop to the hilt. He’d thrown away the objective to save her life, and by doing that he’d made things personal.
Which is why Ada feels very little qualms on digging up everything she can find about Leon Kennedy.
What she finds, at first, seems to confirm her suspicions: sealed court records, sealed adoption records, sealed academic records.
It’s become a minor project for her to indulge in, her own curiosity and Wesker’s casual offer of a commission should she dig up anything interesting—hinting at his own curiosity, despite his lack of time to address it, busy as he is with cementing his new place as a research head at HCF while taking Dr. Birkin and his charming goddaughter along with him—combining to offer not only motive but incentive for her more audacious information-gathering. Swinging through New York on the tail end of a heist—not biotech, this time, but rather run-of-the-mill jewels for a rich collector frustrated at being denied a coveted piece—and helping herself to those sealed court records and a copy of his birth certificate. A detour through Denver for those adoption records, and a jaunt through Boulder besides for his police academy file. An entirely purpose-driven stop in Nebraska of all places for a sheaf of academic records.
He’s been missing for a while, not surfacing after Raccoon to take the more lucrative and worthwhile jobs the way she had, which means either he’s dead—unlikely, for someone of his caliber—or something's happened to occupy his attention. She gets a lead from a very unlikely contact, and follows it all the way into a black box facility full of military intelligence profilers for a warm-from-the-printer copy of newly-minted Special Agent Kennedy’s personnel file—which neatly provides her with information she hadn’t even thought to want yet—answering the question of where he’s been; the glossy eight by tens of Leon still in his ragged police uniform obviously in the middle of an interrogation transitioning smoothly to stiffly posed military ID photos and candid shots of him in brand new army fatigues with a mulish look on his face.
At the time, having not particularly stopped to fully review her new wealth of information beyond finding the next clues to hunt for more, Ada laments Leon’s career; it had been known to happen, from time to time, when the better operators were snapped up into government custody and put on a leash.
When she thinks she has the entire picture she goes to ground, holing herself up at a luxurious and discreet safehouse to finally take apart the mystique of Leon Kennedy.
Three days later, having painstakingly and carefully tracked this man’s life from birth to his last known location—currently Fort Benning, having apparently been shipped off to Ranger School as his new handlers tried to figure out what to do with him in a world where Bio-Organic Weapons were suddenly a viable threat and their preeminent (and only surviving) expert had never undergone formal military training—Ada sits back and realizes how wrong she was about the man whose life is currently tacked up across one of the walls of her dining room.
Then she takes it all down, arranges the data into a neat, coherent narrative, and tucks the entire file—a four-inch stack of papers, photos, official documents, and everything else she could get her hands on—into the hidden compartment in her luggage and catches a flight to London for another job. Highly lucrative, naturally, and involved enough to be a distraction as she mulls over what she’s learned.
Wesker offered a commission that she still fully intends to take him up on, but first she wants to get her own thoughts in order.
Leon Kennedy, what a conundrum. The man was no agent, and no operative. He really was a rookie cop, fresh out of the police academy and starting late on his first day at the Racoon Police Department. She idly considers if there might have been ulterior motives for him joining the RPD—perhaps one of the most notoriously corrupt police departments outside of a major metropolis, with how deeply lodged the whole of Raccoon City had been in Umbrella’s pockets—but it’s just an idle thought. She believes him when he says he joined to solve the murders that had been oh-so-ironically perpetrated and then covered up by Irons.
That this is the least surprising revelation the files provide makes Ada feel at least a bit better about having misread the man so badly. A man brilliant and skilled enough to wind up in Raccoon City and make it through alive, encounter both herself and Wesker, be mistaken for another operative, find his way through every obstacle to get the G-virus sample…and then throw it away, to save the life of a woman who he’d have to have known was using him.
The job in London wraps up without her thoughts being any clearer, so she cancels her return flight to New York and changes hotels—no need to draw any attention to the establishments she actually likes after all—before calling Wesker and telling him she’d gotten the data.
She doesn’t know which HCF facility he’d taken control of—yet—having been only briefly in contact to trade information and offer interesting jobs with nice lucrative paychecks since the Incident. If he’s sloppy enough to lead her back to it after their meeting, then of course she’s going to try and tail him; a casual game of hide and seek she likes to play with Wesker, tracking him down and keeping tabs on his locations. The man is wily and good at playing the game—both in terms of information, and the pure feats of skill it took to survive—and always provided a challenge.
She spends the day it takes him to arrive having a bit of fun; a lady has to pamper herself after all her hard work, after all. She spends some idle time shopping—part of it wandering through Savile Row to order a few bespoke items, part of it wandering through Christie’s and helping herself to a few charming pieces of jewelry before they could reach auction—treats herself to high tea, and returns to her hotel room just in time to make one final pass through the suite to ensure only what she wants seen is visible. Taking the file from its hiding place and then tucking the rest of her luggage away.
Then she orders room service, arranges the file on the suite’s charming little coffee table, and settles in to wait for Wesker to arrive.
Wesker has never been able to afford to be careless, but now the stakes are higher than ever.
HCF is the same kind of master that Umbrella was: one that wants results; one that wants efficiency; and one that will destroy him if he doesn’t keep one step ahead of it, both hands tight around the tiger’s tail with momentum carrying him hard enough that it can’t quite manage to turn around and bite him.
His research and the data he’s brought them, the knowledge he’s already begun leveraging to delve into Umbrella’s vulnerable underbelly before the rest of the scavengers realize how unsteady the giant is, have bought him authority and respect within the organization. But none of it will last if he doesn’t continue to deliver.
Choosing the facility best suited to his needs and wants, taking it over from its last—and late, and unlamented, as is the way of such things—head researcher and bringing the place up to his standards has eaten up precious time and funding. Annette has helped, as she can, but she and William were a team for a reason; her brilliance shining in the evaluation of viral symptoms and the management of side-effects—the all-too-critical aspects of actually successfully maintaining a BOW—and more, in puzzling out how and where the virus had pushed the mutation too far for the BOW to be viable. The more pressing projects of stabilizing Sherry’s response to the DEVIL vaccine, and her self-appointed task of helping to build a treatment plan to manage the side effects of his own transformation have eaten most of her time; especially with her work needing to be shrouded in the deepest secrecy.
Wesker has managed to maintain an aura of invincibility so far. To cultivate the image of perfection in his transformation. Betraying the fact that he suffers the ravages of post-viral syndrome just like any other BOW would be a blow to that image he could recover, but that would paint a target on his back for anyone enterprising and intelligent enough to manage to obtain and study a sample of what seems to be the unique lineage of T virus that’s emerged with his mutation.
Part of not being careless is understanding current threats, and Wesker has been pressingly concerned with one in particular: a man who’d arrived from seemingly nowhere in Raccoon; survived against the odds; obtained every objective his employers might have sent him after… and then simply let go.
Leon Kennedy had tossed away the G-virus sample—critically, the last G-virus sample still in its pure form, unchanged via interaction with a host’s DNA—and then managed to engineer Sherry’s escape from the ever-tightening military cordon that had been established around the city.
The sample that Wesker was well aware dedicated Umbrella Security teams and military Special Forces teams had been sent into Raccoon to retrieve, William’s lamentably careless attempt to reach out to any contact he could to bargain for extraction having at least managed to cause enough chaos that none of them had managed to succeed; the private mercenaries Umbrella employed and the government’s own forces either caught up fighting each other or falling to the ravages of T virus, mutating themselves after exposure or torn apart by the infected. Sherry, who would have been kept as leverage over Annette even if her captors hadn’t realized her exposure to G and thrown her into some prison-laboratory to extract every last sample and bit of data that they could from her.
Two extremely valuable prizes, allowed to slip deliberately through his fingers.
In terms of threat it made the man more dangerous than any other player on the board. That there was something in his priorities that made the loss of such things apparently trivial, that whoever had sent him was apparently willing to accept these losses.
For a brief time, when the man had failed to reappear and subtle inquiries had borne no fruit, Wesker had almost been able to convince himself that the man’s employers had, in fact, dispensed with the man for his failures. He’d dismissed the thought, however; Kennedy was too valuable to simply discard, an operative of his caliber—who’d so flawlessly acted his role, who’d survived everything Raccoon could throw at him, who’d managed to keep both Wesker and Ada off-balance enough that they’d never quite managed to eliminate the clear competition, who had, Wesker will admit, quite thoroughly seduced him—was expensive to train, expensive to retain, and expensive to replace.
He doesn’t have time to investigate more himself, but he can’t allow such a dangerous opponent to simply disappear from his radar either. The idle thought of convincing Kennedy to change employers is an attractive one, almost as attractive as the man himself.
Which is why, when Wesker finally receives Ada’s message—that she’s compiled as complete a dossier on Kennedy as anyone could ever hope to have—he reaches their rendezvous point having already formed a certain number of assumptions about what Ada has found; contemplated a certain number of plans beginning to spin themselves out in his mind; developed a certain amount of anticipation to find out which of his deductions about Kennedy were correct and what in the man’s demonstration in Raccoon was merely misdirection.
Ada’s hotel is as luxurious as one would assume, her suite—as he casts an idle glance over the decor while scanning for any unwanted surprises—carefully curated to present the image she wants to promote. The tea tray on the table and her coyly relaxed posture are all part of the game she plays; a lull for anyone foolish enough to fall for it, the sophisticated and delicate gentlewoman spy.
As though Wesker hadn’t seen the grit and steel in her, as though he doesn’t know the masterful operative and ruthless agent that Ada hides behind the thin facade of designer clothes and her lovely face.
They exchange some brief pleasantries, but Wesker barely pauses before he’s snatching up the dossier and beginning to read it.
It’s what he expects, at first; people in this business don’t get into it because they’re particularly well-adjusted, and he freely applies this to himself as well.
By the time he reaches the end of the dossier, however, Wesker sits back feeling almost blank with shock.
He abruptly realizes he has no idea how much time has passed, immersed as he was in reading. A brief glance at the windows shows a darkened sky. A brief glance at Ada shows her knowing face, expression conveying that she’d had the same reaction to the revelations contained in Kennedy’s files.
She genteelly doesn’t bring attention to how distracted he’d been, instead making a production of pouring a cup of tea and sliding it across the low table between them.
Wesker hesitates, taking the cup and saucer but not drinking; it’s not that he doesn’t trust Ada, he does, and becoming so distracted in her presence is as sure a sign of that as anything, but he also doesn’t entirely trust her as well. Since his transformation—his mutation, his metamorphosis—attempts have already been made by lesser opponents to see if he might still be vulnerable to drugs and poisons; the understood fact of his now-superior metabolism and resistance to such things only prompting larger doses and more caustic substances.
Ada watches him intently, both of them well aware of the game she’s playing; the little trust-falls she tries to prompt Wesker to make with her.
He glances down at the dossier again, privately bewildered at how wrong he’d been about Kennedy, before looking across the table into Ada’s eyes and taking a brief drink.
She smiles at him, a brief, secretive thing, and drinks from her own cup to match him.
“Is there any possible chance…” Wesker begins, his mind chasing itself in circles as he remembers the highlights of the files, almost unable to believe them but unwilling to insult Ada so openly as to imply the data she’d gathered was less than genuine.
“No,” Ada says, that secretive smile back again, “I didn’t believe it myself, and re-checked everything to be especially sure.”
“I’ve spent the past months puzzling over what his objective might have been,” Wesker admits cautiously, into the silence hanging between them.
“And it turns out he didn’t have any objective at all,” Ada says, following Wesker’s train of thought, her voice almost fond, “He really is just what he said.”
Wesker has always prided himself on his resilience, on his ability to plan and counter-plan; to get ahead and stay ahead. He’d thought he’d had a fair grasp on who Leon Kennedy might have been, a portrait painted of assumptions made based on the man’s competence and skill.
He was wrong, and now a rival organization—and the military intelligence apparatus that had so neatly snapped up Leon Kennedy into its service was truly nothing more than another rival organization—had not only gained one of the most dangerous players in the game but were hard at work honing his already-brilliant edge. The knowledge Kennedy had of Sherry’s infection and his own presence in Raccoon during the incident were tremendously valuable, to say nothing of the information the man had surely picked up during his foray through NEST.
For a brief moment Wesker thinks of eliminating him. There was very little chance he’d be able to wrest Kennedy away from his current employers in the near future, and once the man was aware of Wesker’s own complicity in the events leading to the Incident he’d be much less inclined to trust him; another assumption, which Wesker is hesitant to make after having been so, so wrong, but one that feels more correct an assessment of Kennedy’s morals than anything he’s considered before. Better to deny anyone else the chance to field such a dangerous agent, than risk the man being sent after them.
He dismisses the thought, both because Kennedy had gone to the pains of ensuring Sherry escaped—which meant something; which allowed for the possibility that the man could be persuaded, could be suborned if he was aware how little difference there was between his new masters and Umbrella—and because for a moment the memory of Kennedy’s face flashes through his mind; sharp eyes and bruised lips, the single tear-track tracing down one well-defined cheekbone.
“Keep an eye on him,” Wesker says, unable to admit that he can’t currently find it within himself to order Leon Kennedy’s death, “His current employers will fumble their grip on his leash soon enough.”
Ada laughs softly, and gives him a look that says she sees right through him, “And when they do, you want to be the one to pick it up?”
Wesker doesn’t say anything, his frustration at having been so wrong bubbling to the surface as he sets down the teacup before he can give in to the temptation to smash it. He can’t articulate what he wants right now, beyond the streak of possessiveness that colors his memories of Kennedy in Raccoon; a possessiveness that Ada shares, he thinks, as he recalls her own attraction and attachment to the man.
“They want a dog,” Wesker says at last, grinding the words out of the mill of his thoughts, “I want the man.”