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Leon Kennedy does not mix business with pleasure. Leon Kennedy does not do a good job at compartmentalizing either, as much as he wants to believe otherwise. Many things are true. He regrets the middle name he picked. His drink is coming up to room temperature. Luis Serra is half an hour late.
He’s not sure why he even agreed to meet. Maybe it was the shock of getting a text from an unknown number that said only this:
Hey sancho panza. Hope u missed me. Red lounge 9pm… see u there?
He never gave Luis his number before leaving Spain, which by process of elimination (and there aren’t many options to go through) can only mean that Luis got his number from their mutual contact. He’s never given Ada his number either. He taps his nail on the counter, bouncing his leg and agitating himself. These people…
Leather shoe soles. The stretch and crinkle of an embellished jacket. “Ey, Leon!” Luis is the type of person you hear before you see.
“You’re late,” Leon says, his voice not yet pointed but coming close.
“Bah, perdón, perdón. Things ran over at the lab. I’ll never get used to you Americans, working so hard, so late.” As he speaks, Luis hooks his foot around the leg of a bar stool and pulls it closer. He gestures at the glass of whiskey in Leon’s hand. “You got started without me.”
“What do you want, Luis?”
“Ey, so cold!” Luis laughs, his voice generous and lively, rolling out in spurts. He flags the bartender for a beer. Turns back to Leon with eyelids narrowing around shameless amusement. “Haven’t seen you since Valdelobos. Just wanted to see if you were still alive.”
“So you asked Ada? About me?”
Luis shrugs. “That girl knows everything.”
Leon stares at him, brow fixed at an angle. Eventually Luis rolls his eyes dramatically and continues, “Oh, I’ve been good, amigo! Glad you asked. I’m all fixed up from when I got stabbed in the spine too! Doctors said I wouldn’t have made it if Ada got me to the mainland one second later.”
He watches the way Leon’s expression shifts from vaguely annoyed to glum, and fights the urge to smile. “What was that? Oh, yeah. The work here is good. Challenging, but I’m glad for it. The chance to make a difference, it’s… it’s everything, you know? After what I’d done.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Luis.” Leon’s voice softens, the edges melting off as he watches Luis’ face in turn. “You saved Ashley’s life, and mine.” He considers telling Luis that this isn’t his first drink since he got here. He also considers excusing himself to go to the bathroom. He reaches along the counter and puts his hand over Luis’. He hadn’t considered doing that so much as he’d simply just done it. The pause that springs up between them is a sudden burst in temperature, sweltering and saline. He thinks about the weight of air underground. Burning walls. Luis shouting over gunmetal heat. He takes his hand off. “You did the right thing when it mattered most.”
Luis stares. Hand. Brows. Mouth. Then he takes a swig of his beer with all the force of desperate necessity. Once he starts smiling he doesn’t stop. “Always the sweet guy, Leon…”
“Okay. Yeah. Whatever.” Quick as a smothered flame, Leon recedes. But smoke lingers. Heat too. He registers the arm’s length distance between their two bodies with the same calculating focus as he does with any threat. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“Jeez, so touchy.” Leon notes the double meaning with a frown. Luis persists. “Bet you’re much more charming with the ladies, ey?”
Leon groans. “Luis, seriously. Did you ask me to meet with you just so you can get on my ass about how I talk to women?”
“Oh. Hmm.” Luis looks reflective. Takes the moment in stride. “What is the meaning, uh… get on your ass?” Then he bites his tongue and grins.
Leon shoves him by the shoulder. “Oh, fuck you.”
Luis laughs, all sway and eye crinkles. “Speaking of… the beer here’s way too expensive. I’ve got a pack in the fridge at mine. Say… we go after this round? Yes?” Innocuous. Still grinning.
“Um, Luis.” Leon scoffs. “No fucking way.”
***
Luis’ apartment is neater than he’d pictured. Though in truth he’s not sure what he was expecting. Luis Serra is an explosion of movie frames spliced together by the clumsy hand of his amygdala: lit cigarettes, the screech of metal, the weightless nausea of a body hurtling through space; when he thinks of Luis he thinks inconsequentially of the miracle of leather, something so simple as dead animal skin being remade into something else that’s beautiful; he thinks of second chances. The images pass through his head without sense or rhythm. He looks around.
The coffee table boasts a neat stack of classics that Leon only glancingly remembers the titles of, and several mugs still half-full with forgotten coffee. There’s a sparse attempt at decorating the walls with Art Nouveau prints, and some plants that need repotting sit in a corner by the window. Several boxes are still unpacked, contents half-strewn out by a hand that’s obviously considered their placements, but not committed.
Luis flits around, going through the gestures of tidying up without actually putting anything away. He shuttles between the kitchen and living room, first offering beers, then snacks, and then at some point they find themselves each with a glass of brandy in hand, slouched across the sofa, recounting their adventures of facing off mutant giants with all the frivolity that a more sober Leon would have chastised Luis for.
“My friend, you thought it was a dog?” Luis laughs, slumping further and further sideways until one leg is kicked up on the sofa back and the other is sprawled across Leon’s lap, who doesn’t seem to notice or mind.
“I. Well. It looked like one. I thought it was a husky,” Leon responds, petulant.
“Aye… too cute.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
He hadn’t considered humoring the taunt so much as he’d simply just done it.
One hand rests against Luis’ thigh, then slides up to his hip, rustling his tucked shirt out of his waistband and sliding underneath, onto bare skin. His fingers follow the ripples of muscles, softened under skin and fat. He curls his other hand into the front of Luis’ shirt. Wrenches him up. Kisses him hard. His lips are numb with the burn of brandy, so he works the feeling back into his mouth insistently, crushing the soft part of his lip against the padded flat of Luis’ teeth, pulling back a fraction, adjusting his weight so it straddles unsteadily across Luis’ waist, pushing in again, crowding the scarce and heated space between their two bodies.
“Leon—” Luis manages in a half-exhale, hands blundering towards Leon’s hips to hold him still.
“I said shut up.”
He’s not sure why his body keeps moving on its own. Reaching between his legs for Luis’ zipper. Sifting through cotton and wrapping around a quickening pulse. Working it impatiently in his palm until it’s stiff and Luis lets out a strangled noise into his mouth. He doesn’t know why he seems to be aching from the pit of his stomach, like there’s this terrible gnawing hunger that can only grow. It’s been growing since Spain. Red and glossy, like a bleeding organ. It’s been growing since Raccoon City.
Leon growls under his breath, undoing his belt, then shifting his hips and pressing Luis into himself. It starts to hurt, a dull sear from the sudden stretch, but the feeling of fullness inside him makes that deep and nauseating hunger disappear for a moment, so he keeps going.
To his credit, Luis is quick to adapt. Confusion yields to muscle memory, and his squirming settles into a gentle rocking rhythm. “Leon, what’s got you so bothered? I mean—” He lets out a gasp when Leon’s sudden and entire weight slaps down against him. “Mierda. I mean, I know I have that effect on people. But I didn’t think you’d—”
He starts to look down. Leon grabs him by the chin and forces his face back up. “Don’t,” Leon breathes out, his jaw clenched. His face contorts, expression sharpening around the edges; he winces as he rolls his hips up and down again and his breath whistles out between his teeth.
“My friend, you look like you’re in some sort of pain.”
“Don’t ‘my friend’ me when you’re inside me, asshole.”
The hunger starts to thrum again. He lurches his body back and forth like he’s trying to create enough friction to burn his skin off. Red and glossy, and spilling, and beating. Like a bloody heart. He pictures the spliced frames of Luis Serra and he sees the backdrop of dawn, an island coming down in pieces. He tries to resist following the memory. Luis’ entire back soaked in blood. Ada packing the wound with calm efficiency, because the situation couldn’t afford the human error of caring too much. Ada in the sky. Ada. Ada.
“Shut up,” Leon grunts, glaring down Luis’ open mouth and predicting the words. It does hurt. He knows he’s writing it all over his face. He’s done this in less optimal conditions. Backs of cars. Military cots. Whenever the hunger would act up again, he’d find a body to help him relieve it. Krauser’s was like being dashed against rocks by salt and waves. Nameless faceless bodies. Some of them he can’t even remember the country they met in.
“Leon, listen,” Luis tries again, tentative this time, but his hands tighten around Leon’s waist in an effort to still him. “Querido, you’ve got to stop for one second. You are making very hurt noises and it’s killing my…” He stalls for the right word. Then decides on: “… passion.”
It does get Leon to stop. His hand goes to fist the front of Luis’ shirt again as he drags his weight off Luis’ length and resettles himself higher up on his navel. “Look, Luis… I…” He looks for the right words. Sorry. We shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have. “I just.” Awkward, his voice starting and stopping as he totters towards the end of the sentence. “I always sound like that. It’s no big deal.” His gaze drifts to the side, suddenly self-conscious. His face starts to color.
He’s not going to address it. He’s not going to address it. He doesn’t have to address it. “Look, if this is about me being a man. Or I guess not being a real man, then I—”
“Hey, Leon, it’s okay.” Luis places a hand on Leon’s thigh, brushing idle strokes over the rumpled fabric. “Me? Women, men, whatever. I don’t care whoever it is, as long as they’re good looking.” He pauses and waits for Leon to react. Gives an angled smile when he gets the embarrassed pout he was looking for. “But hey… you were screwing your face up and sounding like…” His face flickers, his train of thought interrupted by itself. “Well, I guess you make similar sounds when you’re fighting zombies, ey?”
“Luis.”
“Hey, all I’m saying is… you can call me an expert on two things: the human body, and body pleasures. And my friend, it should never be hurting that much. Ah, but…” Luis wheezes, slumping his head back into a cushion. “Leon, I know I wanted to talk, but stopping right in the middle, it’s… not so good for my health either.”
“Right.” Leon huffs and adjusts himself again, sitting on Luis’ groin and pressing Luis’ cock to his entrance. He starts rolling himself against it, moaning softly between breaths. “So what are you… actually saying.”
“You should see a doctor. What’s the word. For the uh… y’know—mph—the doctor for the lady parts.” He catches himself and pats Leon apologetically on the thigh. “Sorry. Just, y’know. For down there.”
“A gynecologist.”
“Right, yes—fuck, Leon, you’re driving me crazy. I’m—close—”
“Hold still,” Leon rasps, rubbing faster, trying to seal his lips but letting out spurts of noise anyway whenever he exhales. “Fuck—”
Milk white jets onto his skin, then trickles back down onto Luis, who gasps and goes slack under him. He moans and slams himself against Luis, squeezing his eyes shut and picturing—dark eyes, boring into his hunger-wound-insides, red and glossy; the smell of saffron swallowed up by smoke—he lets out a hoarse, shaking moan, reaching his own limit. Luis’ hand slides up to cradle the small of his back and he arches into the touch under the pretense of finding balance.
“Leon… wow…” Luis peeks up at him, hiding the flush of his face between the creases of an easy smile. “You’re really good at this.”
“Don’t give it a rating, Dr. Serra.” Leon’s chest heaves between the words. Eventually the inside of his thigh stops trembling. He climbs off Luis.
“Ey, just giving a compliment.” Luis holds up both hands, proclaiming innocence, as he sits up, kicks his trousers off, and crosses the living room. “I’mmm gonna shower. Help yourself to anything.”
“Go ahead.”
“Oh, and uh, I didn’t tell you this and it didn't come from me, alright, but Ada’s number is on a note on the fridge.”
Leon freezes. Spain. Raccoon City. His insides gnaw at him. “What?”
“Y’know, I’m an open-minded guy, so I don’t really mind, but uh… maybe don’t moan that girl’s name when you are having sex with other people next time, si?”
Mortified. “I—no I didn’t. Did—did I?”
Luis just laughs. “Shower time! Ciao, perrito.”
“Luis!”