#after watching: the world was only ever rusting. all angels are liars or broken fools.

[harvocel]

trigun stampede is a good show

[freshneverfrozen]

Running Time

You know how much I know about Resident Evil? Enough to get my ass smacked by a jacked Nick Valentine, that’s how much.

This is horrible, by the way. I started it and barely knew enough about Leon to get through it. This is worst thing I’ve written in 10 years and there’s not even any porn. Can you say porn on tumblr now? Porn. Huh. Porn porn porn. Also, uh, not proofread.

Five Times You Meet Leon Kennedy

1.

The first time you met Leon Kennedy, the world had already ended. The wind through Raccoon City smelled of decay and bodies and you were used to it now. When people realized what was happening, that they were dying or going to die, they swept en masse towards strategic points. The police station was closest to you - but the gates were shut and the doors barricaded before you ever got through. The ones who stayed to beat at the entrance were still there now. They moved slower and smelled of blood and carnage.

You had not stayed; you determined you would wait it out - two weeks - and then you would make your way out of the city. You’re scavenging near the police station when you hear the shots ring out. The place has been dead - literally - for days. Lights out, only the streets around the building breathing with the infected. Those streets pulse and sway as you maneuver through store fronts, your head low, always low. You can’t get into the station, but the nearer you get, the clearer the shots echo.

The front would be suicide, but there’s a gate around the back, one guarded by tall, iron fencing that you have tried before to climb over. You ignore it. You ignore the front. Instead, you climb up a fire escape on the building next door and you stay there until you are positive that someone is alive on the second floor of the station. Once or twice, you think you see a flash from the windows, but the rain comes down harder and in the minutes that follow, darkness screeches below.

And then you see him - his shadow passing smoothly down the second-story hall - and your heart snares in your throat until you can’t breathe or speak. Lightning flashes, frightens the both of you, and he, him, the man in the window, turns by chance to look at the rusted platform across the alley.

He sees you, his silhouette hesitating, and you know he thinks that you’re one of them, that you’re a dead thing.

But you aren’t. And your arms wave frantically through the rain. He sees you because he lunges for the window and forces it open. The beam from a flashlight shines across the way and you wince against it but you don’t avert your eyes.

“You’re alive!”

His voice is young and his words bring a stinging heat to your eyes.

“So are you,” you call back, imagining a smile on that face you can’t quite see.

“What’s your name?” His voice is a kind one, you think, one that sounds like trust. You wonder what he hears in yours when you answer him.

He tells you that he’s Leon and that he’s with the RPD. You want to ask how many survivors there are, but you don’t, because you know the answer already. There’s only him, alone in all that building. The space between you feels like a universe; it’s going to swallow one or both of you in a cataclysm.

“I can’t get to you,” you call to him, and you wish immediately that you had lied, because what you’ve just said is a cruelty the stranger - Leon - with the young voice and the gun doesn’t deserve.

“You’ll have to be careful,” you continue in a voice that is both loud and soft, “Be careful. I - I can’t get to you.”

Leon hesitates. You notice his shadow sway behind the light.

“There’s a gate in the back -”

I know. You do know. You heard it rattle, can hear it rattle.

“ - I can’t unlock it. Don’t try to come that way.” His tone steadies, stronger now, and before the outbreak, you don’t recall recognizing resolve in a stranger’s voice. “I’m going to open the garage. I’ll find a way through.”

He can’t stay there, in the police station, he means.

“Good luck,” you tell him. You mean it.

“If you can get to that side of the street…I’ll find you.”

He sounds like a promise.

2.

The second time you met Leon, he kept his promise. He found you and you want to cry because he looks like an angel with his pale hair and eyes. There’s kindness in his face, even when kindness stopped belonging weeks ago. He hasn’t forgotten your name in the hours since you first saw him.

You cry when he touches your shoulder.

There’s a woman with him who sneers when the tears roll down your cheeks, but Leon feels the relief like you do. The pads of his fingers curl into your shoulder; he’s not trying to calm you, you realize as you swallow down the emotions that are strangling you, he’s steadying himself.

“Do you have a gun?” the woman with Leon asks you.

You don’t, but you have a knife and a heavy metal pipe that has left an ache down one of your arms.

“Where are you going to go?” you ask. You’re talking to Leon and it’s just as well, because the woman has gone to the windows to peer out into the street.

“Following her,” he replies.

That’s the decision then. You’ll follow her too.

3.

The third time you meet Leon, he’s staggering across a scaffold that is going to collapse beneath him. You cry out for him; you reach out but your shoulder has a bullet wound to match his. Ada had put it there and called it a favor when she left you dying on the tram.

But you didn’t die. You clawed and you kicked and followed the gunshots until there was too much blood leaking out of you. Then you had crawled.

“Ada,” your voice cracks, weak, and you’re not sure if Leon can hear you over the fires burning behind him, “Ada, she - “

“Dead,” he breathes down from the ledge above you. He had heard you after all - somehow, by chance, between the explosions and splitting steel.

The ground rocks and spills you onto your knees as Leon clambers down a latter towards you. You find your feet before he can reach you, but his arm goes around you anyway. This time you need it - you think you’ll die without it.

“Want to stay here?” There’s a smile on your lips as your fingers close over the top edge of his vest to keep yourself on your feet. “Enjoy the view and die?”

Blond hair that has gone orange in the firelight falls over one eye as Leon shakes his head. He’s delirious, because he smiles back before dragging you along, one arm snug around your back.

4.

You don’t think there will be a fourth time.

They take Leon and the little girl, Sherry, and you don’t expect to see him again. Your heart breaks over a stranger. Losing a man you’ve known only a few days is like losing an arm or organ - you’re bleeding out slowly in the middle of military tents and a quarantine zone. They tell you they’ll let you go, but you stop believing them after a week.

But Leon…Leon keeps his promise.

He finds you.

With your head tucked over a packet of field rations, he pushes through a passing throng of soldiers and calls your name. You choke on a mouthful of rice and kidney beans and shove the packet to the nearest survivor - there are only a few and they are all hungry - and you run to him.

Your arms wrap around this man you barely know, but he holds you tight, like he’s grateful, and you both rock on your feet there in the middle of camp.

“Where did they take you?” you ask.

“They…wanted to talk to me about Sherry.” His hands are on your bare arms for the first time, hot-palmed on the raw-scrubbed skin beneath the sleeves of your t-shirt. He says, “They may want to talk to you, too.”

Leon on sees the hesitation on your face before even you know it’s there. “Come on,” he smiles, the edges of it broken, “Don’t worry about it now. Let’s take a walk.”

You walk for minutes, tens of them, and every few steps his arm brushes yours.

“They want you to stay with them, don’t they?”

You say it so that he doesn’t have to. He nods, slowly, and your hand finds his. This time, the pair are you aren’t dragging one another out of danger, this time you can squeeze just enough to feel the grooves of Leon’s palm.

He squeezes back.

5.

When Leon finds you for the fifth time, a badge hangs from the lanyard around your neck. Your suit is as black as the 9mm holstered at his thigh. He’s harder now than he was two years ago, healed over and tougher like the scar on your shoulder.

The debriefing hurts you - you watch his face and feel cold when it looks like the others of the men with whom he marched in. One of the suits - one of your people - introduces you to him as another survivor from Raccoon City and you haven’t known fear like you do in that moment for the last two years. Because Leon’s mouth is a straight, firm line and his eyes spark with nothing. He waits until the officers are gone to remember you.

“You stayed,” he says, filling up the doorway to your office like a shadow. His clothes are dark, his arms scarred. His eyes are liars eyes - you see that now as you look up from your desk. They hadn’t given away the truth to the anyone else in the meeting; they had fooled you, too.

Standing from your chair, you move around to his side of the your desk.

“So did you,” you say.

The words sound like accusations - yours and his.

“How…how have you been?”

“Alive,” you reply, “Safe.”

His mouth quirks at one corner and he lifts one arm carelessly in your direction. “Care to share any pointers?”

“Find some rookie cop you can reliably outrun and who shoots better than you.”

Leon smiles, suddenly young like you remember, and you return it. It grows, mutates until it’s too big and laughter interrupts the quiet of the office. When it tapers off, dying like everything inevitably does, you are left nodding.

“I missed you, Leon.”

He laughs a half-breath, glancing at the floor and then back to you.

“Missed you first,” he says, “Nothing’s gone the way -”

“The way it should have? The pretty way?” you supply.

“Yeah,” he seems satisfied, “the pretty way.”

He takes a step closer, more in your office than out of it, and you’re glad the space between you is closing. A mile is better than a universe. Beneath his body armor, his steps are timid, inch by inch, and you meet him halfway.

“You can’t stay, can you?”

You know the answer.

“They won’t let me.”

You knew it.

Two years feel suddenly short as you dip your head forward to rest your forehead beneath his chin. You don’t expect his arms to go around you, don’t need them to, but they do and he presses you to his chest as though he is the one who needs it this time.

Your words are muffled by his nearness.

“Be safe wherever you go, Leon.”

He nods - you feel the rise and fall of his chin against your hair followed by the burn of his lips at your temple. Red-hot, there just long to brand you.

“When I get back,” he says - promises, “I’ll find you.”

[refurbishedgray]

Running Time

You know how much I know about Resident Evil? Enough to get my ass smacked by a jacked Nick Valentine, that’s how much.

This is horrible, by the way. I started it and barely knew enough about Leon to get through it. This is worst thing I’ve written in 10 years and there’s not even any porn. Can you say porn on tumblr now? Porn. Huh. Porn porn porn.

Five Times You Meet Leon Kennedy

1.

The first time you met Leon Kennedy, the world had already ended. The wind through Raccoon City smelled of decay and bodies and you were used to it now. When people realized what was happening, that they were dying or going to die, they swept en masse towards strategic points. The police station was closest to you - but the gates were shut and the doors barricaded before you ever got through. The ones who stayed to beat at the entrance were still there now. They moved slower and smelled of blood and carnage.

You had not stayed; you determined you would wait it out - two weeks - and then you would make your way out of the city. You’re scavenging near the police station when you hear the shots ring out. The place has been dead - literally - for days. Lights out, only the streets around the building breathing with the infected. Those streets pulse and sway as you maneuver through store fronts, your head low, always low. You can’t get into the station, but the nearer you get, the clearer the shots echo.

The front would be suicide, but there’s a gate around the back, one guarded by tall, iron fencing that you have tried before to climb over. You ignore it. You ignore the front. Instead, you climb up a fire escape on the building next door and you stay there until you are positive that someone is alive on the second floor of the station. Once or twice, you think you see a flash from the windows, but the rain comes down harder and in the minutes that follow, darkness screeches below.

And then you see him - his shadow passing smoothly down the second-story hall - and your heart snares in your throat until you can’t breathe or speak. Lightning flashes, frightens the both of you, and he, him, the man in the window, turns by chance to look at the rusted platform across the alley.

He sees you, his silhouette hesitating, and you know he thinks you’re one of them, you’re a dead thing.

But you aren’t. And your arms wave frantically through the rain. He sees you because he lunges for the window and forces it open. The beam from a flashlight shines across the way and you wince against it but you don’t avert your eyes.

“You’re alive!”

His voice is young and his words bring a stinging heat to your eyes.

“So are you,” you call back, imagining a smile on that face you can’t quite see.

“What’s your name?” His voice is a kind one, you think, one that sounds like trust. You wonder what he hears in yours when you answer him.

He tells you that he’s Leon and that he’s with the RPD. You want to ask how many survivors there are, but you don’t, because you know the answer already. There’s only him, alone in all that building. The space between you feels like a universe; it’s going to swallow one or both of you in a cataclysm.

“I can’t get to you,” you call to him, and you wish immediately that you had lied, because what you’ve just said is a cruelty the stranger - Leon - with the young voice and the gun doesn’t deserve.

“You’ll have to be careful,” you continue in a voice that is both loud and soft, “Be careful. I - I can’t get to you.”

Leon hesitates. You notice his shadow sway behind the light.

“There’s a gate in the back -”

I know. You do know. You heard it rattle, can hear it rattle.

“ - I can’t unlock it. Don’t try to come that way.” His voice steadies, stronger now, and before the outbreak, you don’t recall recognizing resolve in a stranger’s voice. “I’m going to open the garage. I’ll find a way through.”

He can’t stay there, in the police station, he means.

“Good luck,” you tell him. You mean it.

“If you can get to that side of the street...I’ll find you.”

That voice sounds like a promise.

2.

The second time you met Leon, he kept his promise. He found you and you want to cry because he looks like an angel with his pale hair and eyes. There’s kindness in his face, even when kindness stopped belonging weeks ago. He hasn’t forgotten your name in the hours since you first saw him.

You cry when he touches your shoulder.

There’s a woman with him who sneers when the tears roll down your cheeks, but Leon feels the relief like you do. The pads of his fingers curl into your shoulder; he’s not trying to calm you, you realize as you swallow down the emotions that are strangling you, he’s steadying himself.

“Do you have a gun?” the woman with Leon asks you.

You don’t, but you have a knife and a heavy metal pipe that has left an ache down one of your arms.

“Where are you going to go?” you ask. You’re talking to Leon and it’s just as well, because the woman has gone to the windows to peer out into the street.

“Following her,” he replies.

That’s the decision then. You’ll follow her too.

3.

The third time you meet Leon, he’s staggering across a scaffold that is going to collapse beneath him. You cry out for him; you reach out but your shoulder has a bullet wound to match his. Ada had put it there and called it a favor when she left you dying on the tram.

But you didn’t die. You clawed and you kicked and followed the gunshots until there was too much blood leaking out of you. Then you had crawled.

“Ada,” your voice cracks, weak, and you’re not sure if Leon can hear you over the fires burning behind him, “Ada, she - “

“Dead,” he breathes down from the ledge above you. He had heard you after all - somehow, by chance, between the explosions and splitting steel.

The ground rocks and spills you onto your knees as Leon clambers down a latter towards you. You find your feet before he can reach you, but his arm goes around you anyway. This time you need it - you think you’ll die without it.

“Want to stay here?” There’s a smile on your lips as your fingers close over the top edge of his vest to keep yourself on your feet. “Enjoy the view and die?”

Blond hair that has gone orange in the firelight falls over one eye as Leon shakes his head. He’s delirious, because he smiles back before dragging you along, one arm snug around your back.

4.

You don’t think there will be a fourth time.

They take Leon and the little girl, Sherry, and you don’t expect to see him again. Your heart breaks over a stranger. Losing a man you’ve known only a few days is like losing an arm or organ - you’re bleeding out slowly in the middle of military tents and a quarantine zone. They tell you they’ll let you go, but you stop believing them after a week.

But Leon...Leon keeps his promise.

He finds you.

With your head tucked over a packet of field rations, he pushes through a passing throng of soldiers and calls your name. You choke on a mouthful of rice and kidney beans and shove the packet to the nearest survivor - there are only a few and they are all hungry - and you run to him.

Your arms wrap around this man you barely know, but he holds you tight, like he’s grateful, and you both rock on your feet there in the middle of camp.

“Where did they take you?” you ask.

“They...wanted to talk to me about Sherry.” His hands are on your bare arms for the first time, hot-palmed on the raw-scrubbed skin beneath the sleeves of your t-shirt. He says, “They may want to talk to you, too.”

Leon on sees the hesitation on your face before even you know it’s there. “Come on,” he smiles, the edges of it broken, “Don’t worry about it now. Let’s take a walk.”

You walk for minutes, tens of them, and every few steps his arm brushes yours.

“They want you to stay with them, don’t they?”

You say it so that he doesn’t have to. He nods, slowly, and your hand finds his. This time, the pair are you aren’t dragging one another out of danger, this time you can squeeze just enough to feel the grooves of Leon’s palm.

He squeezes back.

5.

When Leon finds you for the fifth time, a badge hangs from the lanyard around your neck. Your suit is as black as the 9mm holstered at his thigh. He’s harder now than he was two years ago, healed over and tougher like the scar on your shoulder.

The debriefing hurts you - you watch his face and feel cold when it looks like the others of the men with whom he marched in. One of the suits - one of your people - introduces you to him as another survivor from Raccoon City and you haven’t known fear like you do in that moment for the last two years. Because Leon’s mouth is a straight, firm line and his eyes spark with nothing. He waits until the officers are gone to remember you.

“You stayed,” he says, filling up the doorway to your office like a shadow. His clothes are dark, his arms scarred. His eyes are liars eyes - you see that now as you look up from your desk. They hadn’t given away the truth to the anyone else in the meeting; they had fooled you, too.

Standing from your chair, you move around to his side of the your desk.

“So did you,” you say.

The words sound like accusations - yours and his.

“How...how have you been?”

“Alive,” you reply, “Safe.”

His mouth quirks at one corner and he lifts one arm carelessly in your direction. “Care to share any pointers?”

“Find some rookie cop you can reliably outrun and who shoots better than you.”

Leon smiles, suddenly young like you remember, and you return it. It grows, mutates until it’s too big and laughter interrupts the quiet of the office. When it tapers off, dying like everything inevitably does, you are left nodding.

“I missed you, Leon.”

He laughs a half-breath, glancing at the floor and then back to you.

“Missed you first,” he says, “Nothing’s gone the way -”

“The way it should have? The pretty way?” you supply.

“Yeah,” he seems satisfied, “the pretty way.”

He takes a step closer, more in your office than out of it, and you’re glad the space between you is closing. A mile is better than a universe. Beneath his body armor, his steps are timid, inch by inch, and you meet him halfway.

“You can’t stay, can you?”

You know the answer.

“They won’t let me.”

You knew it.

Two years feel suddenly short as you dip your head forward to rest your forehead beneath his chin. You don’t expect his arms to go around you, don’t need them to, but they do and he presses you to his chest as though he needs it.

Your words are muffled by his nearness.

“Be safe wherever you go, Leon.”

He nods - you feel the rise and fall of his chin against your hair followed by the burn of his lips at your temple. Red-hot, there just long to brand you.

“When I get back,” he says, promises, “I’ll find you.”