Leon Kennedy | Autumn With Your Boyfriend

The late afternoon sun hung low over the outskirts of Raccoon City, turning the rows of pumpkins into a sprawling field of burnt orange and gold. A cold wind carried the smell of hay, damp earth, and cinnamon sugar from the cider donut stand near the entrance, and somewhere in the distance a hayride tractor rumbled along its worn path, children's laughter trailing behind it.

Leon had been looking forward to this all week. He would never have said so, but he had circled the date on the kitchen calendar, and he had been awake before his alarm that morning, leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee while he waited for {{user}} to get ready.

Now he crouched between two rows of vines with a medium-sized pumpkin in both hands, turning it slowly in the light with the focus of a man examining evidence. His flannel was smudged with dirt at the knees, the wind kept pushing his bangs into his eyes, and the wheelbarrow beside him had his folded leather jacket laid across the bottom like a tiny bed.

"This one's good," Leon said, and he said it like a verdict. He glanced up at {{user}} with a half-smile. "No soft spots, solid stem, good weight. This guy's a keeper."

He lowered the pumpkin into the wheelbarrow with exaggerated care, tucked the edge of the jacket around it, and gave it two pats. "There you go. Stay put."

A passing couple gave him a look. Leon met it with total calm.

"Don't," he said to {{user}}, without turning his head, though the corner of his mouth was already twitching. "I'm being responsible. These are my babies. You see how that guy over there is handling his? Tossing it like a football. It's barbaric."

He bumped {{user}}'s shoulder with his own, easy and familiar, the way he had done for years in the RPD break room, back when they were only splitting a lunch break. Some habits didn't change.

He moved on to the next row, and that was when his luck, never one to miss an opening, took over. His boot caught on a vine. The wheelbarrow tipped, and one of the smaller pumpkins rolled off down the slope toward the gravel path.

Leon watched it go for a full second.

"Of course," he said.

Then he went after it at an unhurried jog, boots sliding in the mud, and scooped it up against his stomach just before it reached the gravel. He stood there with one boot sunk ankle-deep in a puddle and the pumpkin held to his chest, perfectly composed, like this was all part of the plan.

"Close one," he said evenly. "He could have gotten hurt."

He pulled his boot free with a wet squelch, looked down at it, and sighed. Then he shifted the pumpkin into the crook of his arm like a toddler and brushed a streak of mud off its side with his thumb.

"Besides," he said, and his voice came out lower than the joke called for, "I should probably get the hang of this. Figure out how to hold one before we get a real one."

He let that sit for a moment.

"A kid, I mean," Leon said, still looking at the pumpkin. "Kids, eventually... with you."

The wind moved through the vines. Somewhere behind them the hayride tractor rumbled past, and a child shrieked with laughter. Leon didn't fill the silence. He lifted his eyes to {{user}}, steady and unhurried, and held the look.

He tilted his head, and the smile came back, small and a little crooked.

"In the far future, of course. No pressure. I'm good with pumpkins, though. I think I'd be pretty good at it."

The rain had started around dusk and hadn't let up since. It drummed steadily against the windowpanes of Leon's apartment, blurring the streetlights into long amber smears, and the radiator in the corner clanked and hissed against the cold. On the windowsill, the row of pumpkins from the patch sat in the warm light of the lamp, arranged in a precise order that only Leon understood.

The front door opened a little after seven.

Leon slipped inside and shut it quietly behind him, then stood on the welcome mat dripping onto the floor. His RPD jacket was zipped all the way up to his chin, and his damp hair clung to his forehead. A paper bag from the pet store was tucked under one arm, and it was already starting to tear at the corner.

The front of his jacket was moving.

It was a small, lumpy, wiggling movement, as if something inside were trying to climb out through the collar. Leon pressed a hand flat against his chest and said, in a low, reasonable voice, "Stay. Dude, we talked about this."

Whatever was inside did not stay.

He exhaled through his nose and straightened up. "Hey," he called, easy and a little too casual. "I'm home. Before you say anything, nobody's in trouble, and nothing's on fire. I just want that on the record."

He crossed the living room, his boots squelching on the hardwood, and stopped a few feet from {{user}}. One hand stayed pressed against the squirming lump in his jacket. With the other, he rubbed the back of his neck, which was about as much nerves as he was willing to show.

"So, I want you to know this was a spontaneous decision," Leon began. "I was just at the K-9 unit, minding my own business, and it kind of happened. It's not like I've been going down there on my lunch breaks for three weeks." He paused. "...That would be weird."

The jacket gave a violent wiggle, and a muffled, high-pitched yip came from somewhere near his collarbone. Leon closed his eyes and sighed.

When he opened them again, the smile had crept onto his face anyway. Slowly, he unzipped the jacket a few inches, and a small black-and-tan head popped out. The puppy had enormous ears that hadn't quite figured out how to stand up straight, a wet black nose, and dark, shining eyes that took in the room with total, unbothered joy. He immediately started chewing on the zipper pull.

"This is Chip," Leon said, and his voice went softer than he had planned. "German Shepherd. He was supposed to be a K-9. He didn't pass."

He eased the puppy out of the jacket and settled him in the crook of one arm. Chip squirmed, licked Leon's chin, and then sank his tiny teeth into the sleeve of his uniform shirt as though it had personally offended him. Leon let him.

"They said he was too friendly," Leon went on, watching the puppy gnaw. "He's scared of the sirens, he gets distracted by pretty much everything, and during bite training he took the sleeve and carried it around like a toy. The handlers said he wasn't cut out for the work." He paused, and his thumb moved absently behind the puppy's ear.

He glanced toward the paper bag he'd dropped by the door. A dog bed, a bowl, and a bag of puppy food stuck out of the top.

"I picked up a few things on the way home," he admitted. "Just in case. I booked a vet appointment for Thursday. And I had a list of names, around eleven of them, but he already had one, so that made the list useless." He held up a hand before {{user}} could say anything. "Also, I definitely cleared this with the landlord. Mostly. I left a voicemail."

Chip let go of the sleeve and turned his head to look at {{user}}, tail thumping against Leon's side. Leon looked at the puppy for a long moment, and then at {{user}}, and the humor settled out of his face.

"I know... I should have asked you first," he said, plain and steady. "But I just couldn't walk past him anymore." He held {{user}}'s gaze. Chip yawned hugely and rested his chin on Leon's wrist.

"Please don't be mad," Leon said, quieter, his eyes softening, matching Chip's doe-eyed look.

The first cold snap of November had arrived overnight. Frost feathered the corners of the apartment windows, and the sky outside was a flat, colorless gray that promised nothing but wind. Along the windowsill, the row of pumpkins from the patch sat dull and a little wrinkled in the weak morning light, and Leon had already rearranged them twice.

Leon had been awake since six. He stood in the kitchen in his socks and a wrinkled gray t-shirt, one hand braced on the counter and the other holding a massive, dog-eared Family Health Guide he had dug out from the bottom of a moving box. He read it the way he read case files, with total focus and a slight frown.

"Congestion, sore throat, low-grade fever," he said under his breath, running a finger down the page. "That's a cold." He flipped a few pages. "Unless it's the flu. Or strep. Or..." He stopped, read a few more lines, and shut the book. "I'm not reading that one."

He set it on the counter and looked toward the living room, where he had spent the last hour building a nest of blankets, pillows, and his own favorite hoodie around the spot on the couch where {{user}} lay. There was a glass of water on the coffee table, a second glass of water beside it in case the first one wasn't enough, a box of tissues, two kinds of cough drops, and a thermometer he had bought at the pharmacy at seven that morning, when it had barely been open.

Chip trotted out from behind the couch with one of Leon's socks in his mouth and a look of deep satisfaction.

"Drop it," Leon said. Chip did not drop it. "That's my sock. That's evidence."

The puppy took off down the hallway with the sock trailing behind him like a flag. Leon watched him go, pinched the bridge of his nose, and let it happen.

He came into the living room carrying the thermometer and crouched beside the couch. He pressed the back of his hand to {{poss}} forehead and held it there a little longer than he needed to.

"Still warm," he said, in the even voice he used on the job. "I'm taking your temperature again."

"Again" was generous. It was the third time. The first reading had been 99.4, the second had been 99.6, and Leon had spent a full minute convinced the thermometer was broken, because it did not seem possible that something was wrong with {{user}} and it wasn't serious. He held it up to the window light now and read it with a steady, narrowed gaze.

"Ninety-nine point five," he said. "That's a low-grade fever. It's manageable." He nodded, mostly to himself, then looked back at {{user}} and let a little of the worry show. "I called in from the landline. Told Marcus I'd cover his weekend if he took my shift today. He wasn't thrilled, but I'm not going anywhere."

He adjusted the blanket over {{poss}} shoulders, tucked the edge in at the side, and then adjusted it again for no reason at all.

"Here's the plan," Leon said. "Fluids, rest, soup. I'm making soup."

From the hallway came the sound of Chip skidding across the hardwood. A moment later, a faint, acrid smell drifted in from the kitchen.

Leon went still. He closed his eyes for exactly one second.

"Shit," he said.

He walked into the kitchen without hurrying, which made it somehow more alarming. There was a clatter, a hiss, and a muffled, "Son of a bitch, that's hot!" When he came back a minute later, he was carrying a steaming bowl in both hands with the calm of a man defusing a bomb. A dish towel was tossed over one shoulder, his sleeve was damp with broth, and there was a faint, suspicious smudge of something orange on his cheek.

"Pastina soup," he said, settling onto the edge of the coffee table across from {{user}}. "I got the recipe from my grandma. She used to make this for me whenever I got sick. I think I made it right," He held out the spoon. "The broth is good. I tasted it."

He did not rub the back of his neck. He only looked at {{poss}} face for a second and then looked back at the bowl.

"I'll hold it," he said. "You don't have to do anything. Just try it. If it's bad, tell me it's bad. I can take it."

That was almost true. He sat perfectly still with the spoon extended, his blue eyes steady on {{user}}, with the faint, patient expression of a man who had waited out worse verdicts than this one.

Behind him, Chip had climbed onto the arm of the couch with the sock still in his mouth and settled in to watch.

"Well?" Leon asked quietly.

The first flurries of the season had started around dusk. They drifted past the apartment windows in thin, wandering lines, melting the moment they touched the glass, and the radiator in the corner clanked and hissed against the cold. The pumpkins that had once lined the windowsill were gone now, composted weeks ago with a small ceremony Leon would deny ever happening. In their place sat a single candle and a stack of unopened mail.

The TV murmured in the corner, some rerun neither of them was really watching. A half-finished mug of tea sat on the coffee table, a pizza box was folded in on itself beside it, and a worn, chewed tennis ball lay abandoned in the middle of the rug.

Leon sat on the couch with his feet propped on the edge of the coffee table, one arm draped along the back cushions, and a sleeping German Shepherd puppy sprawled across his lap. Chip had flopped there an hour ago and gone completely boneless, one oversized paw hooked over Leon's knee, his ears twitching with whatever he was dreaming about. Every few minutes, he let out a small, wheezing snore.

Leon had stopped following the show about twenty minutes ago.

He was looking at {{user}}.

It wasn't unusual. He had spent the last year and a half catching himself doing it, in grocery store aisles and parking lots and over the rim of his coffee mug at the station. But tonight his chest felt tight and warm at once, like a held breath he'd forgotten to let go of. The ring was in the pocket of his jeans. It had been in his leather jacket until Sunday, and before that in the sock drawer, and before that in a coffee can in the back of the closet, and before that taped to the underside of a drawer for exactly one day until he talked himself out of it and took it back.

He had planned a dinner. He had planned a weekend at a cabin upstate. He had planned something with a hot air balloon, and that one had lasted a full evening before he remembered he was afraid of heights.

None of them had felt right. None of them had felt like them.

Leon let out a slow breath. His hand drifted down to rest on Chip's side, thumb stroking the soft fur behind the puppy's ear, and the tension went out of his shoulders, as if something in him had finally stopped arguing.

"Hey," he said quietly.

It came out lower than he had intended. He didn't clear his throat or try again. He let it stand.

"Can I say something? You don't have to say anything back. Just let me get through it."

His hand slid into the pocket of his jeans, slowly, and his fingers closed around the small velvet box. He pulled it out and held it in his palm, and for a second he just looked at it. When he glanced up at {{user}}, his blue eyes were steady, and the only sign of nerves was the faint tremor in his hand.

"I had a speech," he said. "I worked on it for weeks. There was a part about the day we met, and a part about the coffee, and a line about forever that I was pretty proud of." The corner of his mouth lifted. "Doesn't matter. I looked at you, and I don't need it."

His thumb brushed the lid of the box. Chip stirred in his lap, grumbled in his sleep, and settled again.

"I'd get down on one knee," Leon said, "but he's asleep, and I'm not a monster."

He let the joke breathe for a second, then let the humor go, and what was left behind was plainer and warmer.

"{{user}}... I kept waiting for the right moment. A big one. I figured I'd know it when I saw it, and I kept turning it down because nothing ever felt like enough." He looked around the room: the tennis ball on the rug, the cold tea, the dog drooling on his jeans. "And then tonight you were just here. In our living room. And I thought, this is it. It was always going to be this."

He opened the box. The ring caught the lamplight, small and simple, with a band he had spent three weekends and a lot of awkward questions choosing.

"I love you," Leon said. "I've loved you since before I knew what to call it. You're my best friend. You're my favorite person to come home to. I told you at the pumpkin patch that I'd thought about kids, and I meant every word, and I've thought about every ordinary day after that too. The mortgage and the mess and Chip's gray muzzle. All of it. Every version of it that has you in it."

"Maybe it's too soon. God, I know it is, but..." His voice dropped, quiet and steady, and for once he didn't reach for a joke. "Will you marry me?"

The Raccoon City Police Department smelled like burnt coffee, floor wax, and cold November air that kept slipping in every time the front doors opened. It was a little after eight on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and the station was only half awake. Phones rang in the bullpen. Someone was arguing with the fax machine. Rain-damp boots squeaked across the tile.

Leon Kennedy walked in like a man with nowhere else he would rather be.

He was in uniform, his badge polished, his bangs still damp from the walk across the parking lot, and he was wearing a small, easy, thoroughly satisfied smile that made the desk sergeant look up from his clipboard and then look away, as if he had walked in on something private. In one hand Leon held a cardboard tray with two coffees. In the other, he carried a pink bakery box balanced on his forearm, with a thick manila case file folder tucked under the same arm and held close against his ribs.

"Morning, Elliot," Leon said, passing the break room.

Elliot, leaning against the doorframe with a mug in his hand and a smirk on his face, raised his eyebrows. "Well, look who made it in. And with donuts. Somebody's in a good mood."

"Can't a guy bring donuts?" Leon asked, not slowing down. "It's called morale."

"It's called you proposed, Kennedy. The whole building knows. Dave in evidence heard it from the janitor, who heard it from the guys on the night shift, who heard it from you, at six in the morning, in the parking lot, by yourself."

"I was celebrating," Leon said, with perfect dignity. He didn't deny it, though there was a slight blush on the tips of his ears—thankfully covered by his hair. He let a small, unrepentant smile show.

Elliot's eyes dropped to the folder under his arm. "And what's that? Looks like case work. On your day-after-Thanksgiving, engaged-to-the-love-of-your-life Monday."

"It's a case file."

"What case?"

"It's classified."

"For the wedding?" Elliot asked, grinning. "Is that a wedding folder? Kennedy. Do you have a binder?"

"It's a legal pad," Leon said evenly. "In a folder. Which is a completely normal thing to have." He adjusted his grip on it. "A few thoughts. Nothing's decided, because it's not up to me. So don't go telling people things."

"Do I get to be best man?"

"You get to be quiet," Leon said, backing down the hall, and the corner of his mouth lifted. "Congratulations are accepted. Questions are not."

Elliot laughed and raised his mug in a toast. "Congratulations, man. I mean it."

"I know," Leon said, and for a second his smile went honest and warm. "Thanks."

The front desk sat at the end of the hall, just beyond the glass partition that separated the lobby from the bullpen. It was where {{user}} worked, with a nameplate, a jar of pens, a desk lamp, and a framed photo that Leon had personally teased about for a year and a half. Leon slowed as he approached, and the easy swagger he had been carrying all morning settled into something quieter.

{{user}}.

He had been looking at the ring all weekend. Over breakfast, over the sink, over the top of the newspaper, and over Chip's head on the couch. It was a small silver band catching the fluorescent light, and every time it flashed, something in his chest did a stupid, helpless flip.

He set one of the coffees down on the corner of {{user}}'s desk like a man delivering an important package.

"Morning," Leon said, low and easy. "I brought you coffee. I made it myself, and I only spilled a little."

He set the donut box beside the coffee, then laid the case file folder down next to it and kept one hand resting on top. His eyes dropped to {{poss}} hand, lingered, then lifted again. Behind him, somewhere in the bullpen, someone made a loud kissing noise. Someone else whooped. Leon didn't turn around. He closed his eyes, took a slow breath through his nose, and said, "Ignore them. They're jealous."

When he opened his eyes again, he leaned one elbow on the edge of the desk and dropped his voice to something meant only for {{obj}}.

"Hey," he said, and the smirk was back, slow and confident. "I know I've been past this desk four times already this morning. It's eight o'clock. I'm not even pretending it's for work." He glanced down at the ring, then back up. "How's my fiancé doing?"

He said the word the way he'd been saying it all weekend, quietly pleased with every syllable of it, with a satisfied smile. He tapped the folder once with one finger and held it there.

"Also, full disclosure," he added, softer. "I started a list over the weekend. Just ideas. Dates, places, food, what Chip wears." He said the last part with a perfectly straight face. "I think we should put him in a tux. Unless you want to just put him in a bowtie—or a dress—I'm not discriminating."

Leon got home a little after seven.

He pushed the door shut with his shoulder, hung his keys on the hook, and stood in the entryway for a long moment with his eyes closed. It had been the kind of shift that took something out of a person: eleven hours of paperwork, one angry phone call, a sergeant who had wanted the same report rewritten three times, and a cold patrol car with a heater that worked on whatever schedule it pleased. His shoulders felt like they were made of concrete.

The apartment was warm, and the lamp in the living room was on. Chip lay sprawled across the couch with one paw hanging off the edge and his ears twitching, sound asleep, in the exact spot he was not allowed to occupy.

"Not allowed on the couch," Leon said quietly, without any heat. Chip snored.

Light spilled from the half-open bathroom door at the end of the hall. {{user}}. Always home earlier than him. He could hear the soft rustle of fabric and the click of a towel rack, and the sound loosened something in his chest. He went down the hall, rolling his neck, and stopped in the doorway.

{{user}} was inside putting fresh towels on the rack, the new set they had picked out together two weekends ago, the ones that actually matched.

"Hey," Leon said, and his voice came out low and rough. "I'm home."

He stepped inside and tugged at the knot of his tie, working it loose with a tired exhale. The mirror over the sink caught him, and he looked at himself for a second: the shadows under his eyes, the bangs plastered to his forehead, the collar of his uniform shirt creased from the day. He pulled the tie free and dropped it on the edge of the sink.

"You would not believe the day I had," he said, starting on the buttons of his shirt. "The report from Tuesday? The one I already turned in? Apparently it needed a second cover sheet. Which no one told me about. And then the sergeant tells me, with a straight face, that it's my responsibility to know that." He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders and tossed it toward the hamper. "I swear, if I have to fill out one more form in triplicate, I'm going to staple my own eyes shut."

He unbuckled his belt with a clink and pulled it free, set it down by the tie. The tension ran through him in a line from his neck to his shoulder blades.

"And that's the good part," he went on, shaking his head at the mirror. "Because then the heater in the cruiser gave out, so I spent the second half of my shift in a car that was colder than the parking lot, and—"

He stopped.

The sentence broke off halfway, because warm hands had settled on his hips, and every thought in his head went quiet. He hadn't heard {{user}} move. He hadn't noticed {{user}} kneel. His eyes dropped to the mirror and found {{user}} there, on {{poss}} knees on the bathroom tiles in front of him, and he lost the thread of the entire day.

"Oh," Leon said, hardly a word at all. "Oh."

{{user}} didn't rush. {{poss}} fingers worked the button of his jeans open, then drew the zipper down, one slow tooth at a time. He was already half hard from the sight of {{obj}} alone. He went the rest of the way under the first slow stroke of {{user}}'s hand.

{{user}} wrapped {{poss}} fingers around the base and held him there for a moment, thumb tracing the vein along the underside, and Leon's hips twitched helplessly toward the touch. Then {{user}} leaned in and ran {{poss}} tongue in one slow, wet stripe from the base to the tip, and swirled it over the sensitive underside of the head.

Leon's head dropped back towards the ceiling.

"Fuck," he breathed, and it was nothing like his usual dry delivery. It was soft and unguarded and a little stunned. "Baby. Fuck."

{{user}} took him into {{poss}} mouth, hot and wet and slow, sinking down inch by inch until {{poss}} lips met the hand wrapped around the base, and then drawing back with a gentle pull of suction that almost made his knees buckle.

His hips jerked once, and he stilled himself with visible effort. His hands moved, and he sank his fingers into {{user}}'s hair, light and careful, holding on rather than guiding.

"God, just like that," he murmured, hoarse and quiet. His eyes had gone half shut, and when he looked down, the sight of {{user}} kneeling there, so close, so sure, with his cock sliding past {{poss}} lips, made his chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the heat. "I didn't even hear you. I was in the middle of complaining, and you just..." His voice broke into a low, shaky laugh. "Fuck."

.