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[azitine]

[azitine]

she's so cute, the poor thing. what the fuck is he supposed to do with a pretty girl like this? (18+, a little smidge of dark!simon)

she's so dumb. she nods when he talks, says yes, simon, yeah when he asks her if he can take her home. she purrs yes, simon, m-more when he buries his masked face between her thighs as he makes her ride his covered mouth. she sings when he touches her, cries when his gloved fingers fuck her open, and she whines s-so good, simon, please, more, simon when he bottoms out into her soft cunt with all of his clothes still on.

vest strapped, thigh holsters still buckled, cargo pants still around his waist, nothing but his belt buckle open and his zipper down when he fucks you into the cushions of your couch. you're drooling, positively cock-stupid, bouncing with the rough rhythm he keeps. it's salvation, coming home to a pretty girl underneath him, and he wants to hold you hard enough to make you bleed when he grips the meat of your hips and watches your ass push back against him.

so dumb. so stupid. the prettiest girl he has ever seen, and she has no idea what it is that fucks the shape of them into her so that they will know if someone else has been here. she has no idea what the thing on top of her has done, has no idea how deranged and terrible his mind is, she doesn't know.

she never asked how he knew where she lived. she never asked how he knew which button to press in the elevator. she never asked how he knew to turn left instead of right. she never asked where he got that key, or why it worked when he opened up the door of her flat.

all she asks for is for him to fuck, please, simon--m-more!

she's so cute. she'll do just fine.

[azitine]

Am i the only one who imagined the first meet like this?? *swooon*

[azitine]

I see a lot of people clowning on the people of Pelican Town for not repairing the community center themselves or clowning on Lewis for embezzling and. like. Those criticisms aren't entirely unfair. But I think instead of coming at it from a perspective of "why can't the townspeople do this" we should be asking "why and how can the farmer do this?"

Like. Think about it. The farmer arrives in Stardew Valley on the first day of spring. By the first day they're obviously different. By day five the spirits of the forest who haven't been seen by the townsfolk in years or generations are speaking to them. By the second week they've developed a rapport with the wizard that lives outside town.

In the spring they go foraging and find more than even Linus, who's spent so many years learning the ways of the valley. Maybe he knows, when he sees them walking back home. Maybe he looks at them and understands that they're different, chosen somehow.

In the summer they fish in the lakes and the ocean for hours on end, catching fish that even Willy's only ever heard of, fish that he thought were the stuff of legend. They pull up giants from the deep and mutated monstrosities from the sewers.

In the fall, their crops grow incredibly immense; pumpkins twice as tall as a person, big enough that someone could live inside. The farmer cuts it down with an axe without even batting an eye. Does Lewis wonder, when he checks the collection bin that night and finds it full to the brim with pumpkin flesh? What does he think? Does he even leave the money? Does he have the funds to pay the farmer millions of dollars for the massive amounts of wine they sell? Or is it someone--something--else entirely?

In the winter, the farmer delves into the mines. No one in Pelican Town has been down there in decades. No one in living memory has been to the bottom. The farmer gets there within the season. They return to the surface with stories of dwarven ruins and shadow people, stories they only tell to Vincent and Jas, whose retellings will be dismissed by the adults as flights of fancy. People walking by the entrance to the mines sometimes hear the farmer in there, speaking in a language no one can understand. Something speaks back.

The farmer speaks to the the wizard. They speak to the spirit of a bear inside a centuries-old stone. They speak to the shadow people and the dwarves, ancient enemies, and they try to mend the rift. They speak to the Junimos, ancient spirits of the forest and the river and the mountain. They taste the nectar of the stardrops and speak to the valley itself. They change Pelican Town, and they change the valley. Things are waking up.

And what does Evelyn think? She's the oldest person in the valley; she was here when the farmer's grandfather was young. (How old *is* she, anyway? She never seems to age. She doesn't remember the year she was born.) Does she see the farmer and think of their grandfather? Does she try to remember if he was like this too, strange and wild and given the gifts of the forest?

And does their grandfather haunt the valley? He haunts the farm, still there even after his death; his body died somewhere else, but his spirit could never stay away for long. Does Abigail, using her ouija board on a stormy night, almost drop the planchette when she realizes it's moving on its own? Does Shane, walking to work long before anyone else leaves their house, catch glimpses of a wispy figure floating through the town? Does the farmer know their grandfather came back to the place they both love so much?

Mr. Qi takes interest in the farmer. He's different, too; in a different way, maybe, but the principles are the same. They're both exceptional, and no matter what Qi says about it being hard work and dedication, they both know the truth: the world bends around the both of them, changing to fit their needs. Most people aren't visited by fairies or witches. Most people don't have meteorites crash in their yard. Most people couldn't chop down trees all day without a break or speak to bears and mice and frogs.

The farmer is different. The rules of the world don't work for them the way they work for everyone else. The farmer goes fishing and finds the stuff of fairy tales. The farmer goes mining and fights shadow beasts and flying snakes. The farmer looks at paths the townspeople walk every day and finds buried in the dirt relics of lost civilizations.

The farmer is a violent, irrepressible miracle, chosen by the valley and destined to return to it someday. Even if they'd never received the letter, they would've come home.

They always come home eventually.

[azitine]

on my way to marry him one day

[azitine]

more stardew valley baseball cap sketches, this time sebastian and alex

sam and elliott versions 🧢

[azitine]

I just think johnny could convince simon to wear a kilt

[azitine]

'bury all your secrets in my skin'

[azitine]

but this is so him

[azitine]

So I do this thing sometimes when I'm messing around with the freecam where I position the camera inside of the character model's head and literally look out from their eyes -- just to see what they're seeing in this scene/moment.

And Ashley's POV during the pep talk scene sure is... something.

[azitine]

what I see every morning 🥴

[azitine]

(DON'T) FIGHT THE FLESH

chris redfield x gn!reader x leon kennedy // 9.4k words

summary: It starts off as a workplace affair borne from physical necessity. You love the distraction and Chris loves to help people—no emotional strings attached. Until Leon Kennedy shows up, a guard dog with sharp teeth and sad eyes, and things (feelings) get very complicated.

warnings: 18+ ONLY (penetrative sex, blowjobs, deepthroating); heavy themes of alcohol abuse; everyone is traumatized; brief mentions of blood/gore

notes: this is the first part of an eventual poly fic and everyone is dysfunctional right now but it gets better. im so sorry about the word count. set after vendetta

>> read on ao3

There’s blood on your face and the target is dead and the world keeps moving. Soldiers, medics, agents all mill about, preparing body bags, grouping up for post-mission discussions, weaning off the adrenaline. The fight is over. You should be happy.

But it never ends. Next week, another rat will skitter from its hole and you’ll be sent off to another part of the world to face a new set of inevitables. Strife is inevitable. Evil cannot exist without good, but fuck—when was the last time you felt something good?

Back on base, the teams join to break out a fifth of whiskey in equal parts celebration and mourning. Paraphernalia in any other circumstance, but you survived. Spike gave his sacrifice. Everyone deserves it.

A single wall separates the common room from where you reside post-shower, scrubbing fruitlessly at the blood beneath short-clipped nails. Though muffled, you catch whirlwind anecdotes of good times passed, shared with an enthusiasm only drunkenness can perpetuate.

Fifteen minutes into staring at a well of pink sink water, after scrubbing your cuticles raw sans progress, you relent. The blood will stay with you until it doesn’t. Maybe it’s meant to be. A reminder, a lesson, a manifestation of consequence.

Once upon a time, someone told you that the worst thing a person could do is grieve alone. Humanity thrives on connection—a sentiment written in the literal stars overhead, in a time where aliens align more with longing than conspiracy. What a pitiful plight of humanity, always searching for companionship, truth, breakthroughs. Finding love in the strangest places.

Funny then, that you struggle with that final step over the threshold. You lean against the door frame and count your team and come up short, and a surge of nausea leaves you gritting your teeth. In part, you’re to blame for your own spiral. Death happens. It happens as often as sunrise, as flowers wilt, as conception itself. Your leadership isn’t good enough to cheat the inevitable, however badly you wish it to be true, and shouldering that kind of pressure was bound to break you the moment death knocked on your front door.

Outside, you join the other smokers sat in a wonky circle made up of folding chairs and opened beers and cigarettes, and everyone looks smaller without all the gear. Five in total, only two faces you recognize—one being Chris Redfield himself. Icon, legend, hero, but tonight you can’t bring yourself to care. The blood is there. He’s just another man.

Everyone is exhausted, that much is clear. Reads in sunken eyes and slumped shoulders and Lieutenant Reeves even nods off in his seat in the corner. It’s always like this. The aftermath. The weight of leadership.

You take the unoccupied seat beside Chris (servicemen thrive off of routine, and habits form after twenty-one days—you’ve surpassed stone-set by an extra one hundred and eighty-three) and he’s kind enough to offer you a lighter. Not that you need one, but you appreciate his small attempt at support. He gets it. The first time, the first death, is always hard.

He says nothing at first, and neither do you. Not much for small talk, too weighed down by the shackles of grief. It’s a relief. You nibble upon leftovers of another conversation and smoke your cigarette until the filter begins to dissolve with a cloying, bitter smell. Kinda reminds you of burnt hair. A little.

Maybe you’re just imagining things.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, leaned in close enough that you taste metallic rot at the back of your throat. He showered a short while ago, cropped hair still damp, but the stench still coats his skin like an oily film.

Gore probably leaks from your own pores.

When you reply with a simple nod, he sighs through his nose, opaque smoke billowing into the space between you. It dries out your eyes but covers up the smell so you lean into it and, by proxy, him.

“Listen, I get it. I do. But your team needs a leader now more than ever. You can't afford to dwell on it.”

You know. You know. You've seen death at its most peaceful and its most gruesome. Most days you blink and the blackout darkness bleeds red. You've patted Death on the back and brushed shoulders with ghosts and shaken hands with skeletons. You've experienced the end a thousand different ways. But this is different.

You shake your head, not to disagree, but to filter away the thoughts that aren't helping your spiral. “I could've—”

“Stop.” His voice mumbles quiet. More quiet than you've ever heard him. He smells of gunpowder and body wash and tobacco and resignation, and your eyelids flutter. “You know that's bullshit. Can't stop the inevitable.”

He's right. You know he is. And you meet his eye and the air between you shifts like a thunderclap back toward reality.

One minute you’re on the front patio smoking, and the next you’re being fucked (hard, angry, just the way you need it) into the mattress with Chris’s mouth on your neck and your pants caught on your boots. He's a heavy weight against your back, a choking fullness inside you. A travel-sized bottle of lube sits just out of reach and every thrust is slick and noisy, the mattress creaking with each snap of his hips, and you can't help but revel in his selfish hands.

On the field, his touches are simplified down to necessity, a professional on all accounts, a convolution of sharp edges ripe enough to cut. On more than one occasion he's dragged you back to safety by the scruff like a disobedient puppy, and you've seen him manhandle soldiers unconcerned with their own self-preservation.

Here, alone, he takes and he savors and the rasp of his callouses liken to baptism against your waist and back and chest. His teeth seek permanent indentation along the curve of your shoulder, a kind of dying-star desperation that in thirty years his place in your life will forever be fossilized by your reflection in the mirror. The pain is exactly what you need, and he knows that, and such intuition scares you.

But here’s the thing about Chris: he doesn’t do one night stands. This situation—whatever you can call it—is more of a symbiotic relationship months past conception. A situation coincidental to when you became smoking buddies. You need the skinship and he loves to save people. The first week post-mission is hell to spend alone. Sex helps you feel something good. You both get your orgasm then say goodbye then fly off to opposite ends of the world for an indeterminate amount of time. Until the next time you meet again.

And there is a next time, as always. Deadly circumstances, per usual. But there’s a wrench thrown in the routine: a new player. A DSO agent with a name you know well.

Leon S. Kennedy. He keeps that middle initial close to his chest, cups the mystery like a baby bird who lost its nest. A mother that flew too close to the sun. He’s an asshole when you first meet him at the debrief, your judgements proven right (the pre-deployment gossip keeps you occupied and you can’t help but internalize a few common threads), but Chris swears up and down that this isn’t him.

He knows him via his sister who escaped Raccoon City—Ground Zero—by the skin of her teeth, which is where S.T.A.R.S. and Wesker and Jill Valentine and Chris himself come into the picture. A whole clusterfuck of horrible luck and wrong-place-wrong-time coincidences and intersecting relationships, and look. Chris has a history. Leon does, too. Trouble sniffs them out and chases them up trees like it’s the universe’s full-time hound dog job. But you’ve expended too much energy and time and blood into The Cause, and you’re stubborn to a concerning degree, so you refuse to back out now and let everybody else take all the credit.

The bird touches down ten miles from the FOB, a humvee awaiting the transport of your crew. You recognize Nav, a communications expert best known for tracking the shipment of a B.O.W. across three different European countries. Your new stand-in for Spike.

His crooked smile stings. “Glad to be here, boss.”

The FOB is little more than five large tents and a sea of desert. Egg-frying heat. Before you even step onto the sand, sweat pools beneath your gear and stings at your eyes.

Your team is here on surveillance, employed once again by the BSAA. Redfield’s doing, no doubt. He keeps his circle close.

Chris meets you at the gate, a flimsy thing held together by scrap metal and prayer, and the driver waves you off once bags have been collected and taken to the bunkhouse.

“Really giving us the royal treatment out here,” you say, fetching the crushed pack of cigarettes from one of the pockets in your fatigues.

“Being the best means you get the least resources.”

“It's more like your people hate me.”

“Or they know you love low profiles.”

Your team spends the next two days settling in, making friends, playing cards on some rickety fold-out table much too small for the five-to-seven people that crowd around it at any given time.

You stay close to Chris on instinct. A connection borne from an all-work-some-play arrangement and the knowledge of his doggish loyalty aided by how fucking good he is at his job. You trust him with your life—a sentiment held by everyone who's met the man. His reputation precedes him.

Things start out well, and things quickly devolve. You're stuck in the desert with two dozen people who don't know how to sit the fuck down, who would rather die than wrestle a moment of silence with their thoughts. And then, a week in, Leon Kennedy steps out of the humvee looking fresh off the front page of a magazine. Fresh gear, shiny guns, a head of hair not flattened down by grease.

His hiring was an expensive one, and the American government never fails to show off.

Your team looks on in poorly-guised, bitter disbelief. He's groomed, probably had a nice meal, maybe watched a show during his flight, experienced the luxury of air conditioning. You're a little pissed about it, too. Standing and sweating beneath the sun because there are too few fold-outs to seat everybody and Redfield's team stole half of them to play musical chairs (there isn't even any music).

At least you have a stockpile of cigarettes. The one luxury the BSAA left you with, all thanks to Redfield's influence.

Chris moves in close to greet him, and you miss Spike. He would've shaken you by the shoulders, made some silly comment just to see you smile. Always good at that, you suppose: timing. Now, your memory of him is tainted by the sight of a broken, emptied-out skull. You never knew blood could be so red.

You blink and Leon stands before you, Chris at his shoulder. There's a sharp order of be nice written in the squint of his eyes.

From the ground behind you, Taylor snorts. You choose to ignore her.

“Well,” you say. “You are a sight for sore eyes, Agent.”

He leans to the side, just enough to look past you. Blue eyes more stark than you remember, a pinprick sea amongst miles of sand. “I can see why. I wouldn't even let my dog stay here.”

You perk up at that—finally, some common ground. “You have a dog?”

His brows dip and your heart shatters a little. “Figure of speech.”

Suddenly you're back in bootcamp. The days are impossibly long, every muscle in your body retains a perpetual state of exhaustion, your peers fail in their efforts to befriend you. The drill sergeants are harsh, punishing (when it rains, your fingers always itch for a mop after that endless week of thunderstorms and sidewalk punishment).

You've always hated being told what to do, hated the politics that came with military life, and they all but beat the spark out of you within the first six months.

Everybody always asks you why you joined in the first place, and you answer the same exact way: I had some things to escape from. A half-truth. Really, you just wanted somewhere you could belong. A family. You believed the stories about brothers-in-arms and that's the fault of some younger, more idealistic version of you.

But you're tired.

You nod your head as Taylor snorts out a laugh and Chris shifts on his feet. It's humiliating. You're eighteen again and the drill sergeant told you to wipe the stupid fucking smile off your face. You were trying not to cry.

“Right.”

You were never meant to belong.

.

.

.

Chris sits on the balcony of your apartment in a shitty chair almost too small for his bulk, his third cigarette of the hour lit at the end in sunstorm orange, indentations of his teeth scarred into the filter. It's the first time your intimate relationship has ever breached the walls of a military base. An ultimate display of defiance, a rage against the military industrial complex that leaves the teenage version of you cheering somewhere beneath all the dog-teeth brain matter.

He looks different like this, less a legend and more a regular man indulging in post-coital habits. Dressed in nothing but a pair of plaid boxers and the dog tags he forgot to leave at base yesterday (there's something hot about that, though—the lip stain of forbidden fruit). The sweat has yet to dry on his neck, the bridge of his nose, dark curls of chest hair matted to his skin.

He looks up at the flick of your lighter, a gunshot cutting through the silence.

“You're chainsmoking,” you say, shuffling over to the unoccupied chair beside him. You move the plastic ashtray closer to you.

If he notices the way you favor a hip when you sit down, he doesn't comment on it. “I already have a mom. Don’t need another.”

He shuts down like this sometimes. As if the ghosts that plague him, dormant most days, return to torment his psyche. His thoughts make him angry, and he needs somewhere to store all the baggage. You tilt your head and the bites along the curve of your neck sting and you almost purr at the sensation. If your body is his graveyard, you'll swallow the dirt and the bones with pride.

You can't remember a time when you prioritized faith, but the crinkle of his pretty eyes when he grins at you makes you want to believe in some form of God. He sits before you rough-worn and weary, and the smoke from his cigarette curls and bleeds into starshine sky, but his cheeks puff up when his smile deepens and you know. You know.

You're fucked.

.

.

.

After the sweep of an underground facility and the acquisition of fresh new intel, HQ sends you a continent over to delve into salty seas and wade through lush rainforests. There's more waiting ahead, but at least you found a cure for the humidity.

The beach you stumbled upon is small, more pebbled than sandy, but it's quiet enough to hear leaves rustle and birdcall and the voice of your thoughts, and the streak-skied sunset steals your breath as you sink down into the water. A chill that settles deep, spikes your heart rate, tethers you to consciousness—

(what a cruel thing existence can be).

Redfield slips between the trees, boots loud enough against the grass to alert you to his presence. He appears less daunting in casual clothes, yet every bit a Captain—military perfect posture, a severe twist to his brow stamped to permanence years ago. Your spine straightens at the biting call of your name, his voice thick with exhaustion. Habit, second nature, an imperceptible reaction to the dominance of your betters.

Blend in with the locals. Keep a low profile. Find out who Simmons is.

Some parallel-universe, optimistic version of you would consider this a vacation, so if Chris wishes to break your solitude, he'll have to get wet. You swam far enough out that your toes brush plant life, submerged up to the neck.

Be honest: you just want to see him squirm.

“Care for a swim?” you call upon his approach, unphased by the cross of his arms or the glare on his face that warns of a verbal reaming.

Nobody leaves the safehouse past dusk. You're breaking rules by roughly an hour and a half, but the call of water proved too urgent to ignore.

You also like to cause a bit of trouble.

He offers up a shrug, mouth twisting into an echo of a smile (you think he's forgotten how to do it after years of cutting teeth and breaking fingers). “No can do. Forgot my speedo.”

“Would you believe me if I said I was naked under all this water?”

“Not for a second.”

“You are the antithesis of fun.”

“I get that a lot.”

His eyes are black as midnight, and each passing minute bathes more of his silhouette in sharp-edged shadows. A branch overhead bisects his face into two halves, perfectly centered on the bridge of his nose.

“I could write you up for this,” he says, a hint of danger to his tone. Warning. Your stomach burns hot.

“But you won't.”

He steps just out of reach of the incoming tide, marked clear by a sharp line in the sand between wet and dry.

You try again, a hairsbreadth away from desperation. Urgency. “Swim with me.”

As a child, you played games that none of your peers wished to join. You used to beg them—c'mon, please? just for five minutes, it'll be quick—to the point of tears, until resignation finally set in. Nobody wanted to be around you. You played alone and you ate alone and you read books alone.

This isn't like that—at least, it shouldn't be. You're a troublemaker and he's just doing his job. But still, that childish desperation rears its ugly, disfigured head, and you grin at the sound of his caving sigh. Corrupting the straight-laced Captain… like something out of a trashy paperback erotica.

He takes off his boots first and your heart surges into your throat. Sagging realization almost drowns you beneath an incoming wave of water (he would break rules for you), and you swim closer to shore to meet him.

At the tree line, a silhouette appears, human in shape. Chris follows the line of your wide-eyed stare, every muscle in your body tensed up at the first whiff of danger. Until the shape steps forward into the kiss of moonlight, and you aren't sure whether relief of irritation floods your system.

It's Leon Kennedy. Definitely both.

There's a sadness settled deep inside his bones that the rumors never prepared you for. He walks closer, kicking up sand with each step, and the lighting pales him to a ghostly mirage. Back at the FOB he kept to himself. Spoke when spoken to. Occupied the same chair like he paid for it, all crossed arms and scowling at anybody who dared breach the invisible line of his personal bubble. Everyone except for Chris.

There's a history here you fail to pick up on, a thickness that cloys in the air. Words left unsaid, a silent grudge years in the making. But beneath all the rot, therein lies an unshakeable foundation built on trust.

“I thought we had a curfew,” Leon says, looking more hollow than human from where you stand half-submerged.

Still, the blue of the water could never compare to his eyes. You remember their vividness even as they are now, bathed in shadow by his brow.

You wonder for just a moment (Spike’s voice echoes inside your head: you spend too much time in the clouds, Lieutenant) what he looks like when he smiles. How long it's been since the muscles worked.

“I'm a bad influence,” you say, and for a moment, when their eyes meet, you think you've disappeared into the ether. A buoy treading water.

They share in silent conversation before Chris nods toward the direction of the safe house. “Let's head back.”

The glare he gives you holds no room for argument.

You wade back onto the beach and the sand sinks between your toes. If you stood here long enough the beach might just swallow you up, and the thought shouldn't be as comforting as it is.

Nearby, your clothes sit in a pile, half-buried in sand by the wet-hot wind that pools sweat at the base of your neck. The weather is a stifling scorch, made even worse on the walk back by trees that trap in humidity.

Leon falls back to walk beside you, bathing the forest in an uncomfortable silence. You have nothing in common, and he possesses the social prowess of a rabid dog, but maybe that's the thing that draws you in. You have a penchant for picking up strays. Hell, your entire team is a patchwork quilt of sewn-together outcasts too talented to be thrown aside and forgotten. Old dogs can, in fact, learn new tricks. Teaching them how is your specialty.

You get it.

He rubs a palm over the stubble at his jaw, gaze trained on the canopy above. The creatures here are active at night. Noisy. A fluttering insect catches your attention before landing on a nearby branch. Moonlight casts deep shadows upon the terrain, bathes the ground in sharp cuts of jagged shadow. You pass beneath a large leaf and Leon disappears entirely for half a second.

“So,” he says, tone flat as a board, as if he'd rather bloody his fingers clawing on tree bark than speak, “you're the friend I've heard so much about.”

You can't see his features well in the low lighting, but the cut of his gaze sears you. Dark circles—shades of deep blue and faded purple, the color of bruises—a mile deep, rings of blue framed by midnight black and vessels of red. Like he hasn't slept in weeks, like he just came back from an extended bender. It's—

“I guess so,” you say, because you can't ask about the scabs on his knuckles, or the long-healed scar on his cheek, or why his eyes seem so sad.

There are a thousand Leon Kennedys in your line of work. The same story told a thousand different ways. You recognize the signs of epidemic, the symptoms of deadly viruses, and the man before you belongs to a sub-category pockmarked by trauma.

You look at him and see the choke chain pulled tight around his neck, scarring where the skin's grown around each metal prong. Yours probably looks the same.

But it's none of your business, you suppose. You lock your bullshit up tight and tuck it neatly in the back of your brain that grows cobwebs, and then you let it rot. Not your fault if the miasma sometimes leaks through.

Leon exhales a scoffing laugh. “To be honest, I didn't think Chris had friends.”

A grin twitches the corners of your lips, and you glance ahead to spot the broad width of Chris's back before he ducks under a low-hanging branch. A warmth stokes to flame, curls a tender smoke around each of your ribs. “We knew each other before the BSAA. To be honest, he's the only reason I joined. Gave this big speech about saving the world and shit, I couldn't say no.”

He nods and looks at you with softened eyes. “Yeah. He has that affect on people.”

It's the first thing you and Leon Kennedy have in common.

.

.

.

Chris promised Leon a drink.

You find yourself sat at some bar in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, him on one side and Leon on the other. It's packed, and the music is a touch too loud, and the crowd is rowdy.

Nobody says a word. Not when things ended the way this last mission did.

Failure.

The bartender, some grumpy man with a long, greying beard and a permanent scowl on his face, sets a whiskey down before you. The glass sticks to the tabletop when you pick it up, and you can't remember how many drinks you've had but you know that the trip back to the safehouse will be a hazardous one.

A thousand people dead. Too late to stop the bombing of the small village Umbrella pinged as their testing ground. A travesty, a massacre.

The alcohol burns inside your mouth, burns all the way down to your empty belly and leaves behind a wave of nausea. You wonder how packed the bathroom in this place is.

There was a little boy.

You deserve the burn. Deserve for it to consume you, to eat away at your viscera until acid bleeds from you pores.

You killed a little boy.

Someone grabs you rough by the curve of the neck, pulls you back, curls an arm around your shoulders.

“Hey, we're heading back.” Taylor, voice loud to beat out the music, slurring in your ear. “You gonna be alright?”

You've seen dead children before. Dozens of them of all ages, all manner of decomposed. Victims of Umbrella. Collaterals of evil. But you've never been the cause of it. Never been the perpetrator.

It cuts deep. Cuts deeper when you think of Spike. All the people you've failed.

Our lives revolve around death, he had told you one night, sat swaying on a barstool a lot like this one, and one day we're gonna be consumed by it. Can't have your cake and eat it, too, as they say. Gotta exist in one plane or the other.

She shakes your shoulder, grip rough without all your gear, with more alcohol than blood in her veins. “You good?”

You blink in shades of red. “Yeah. Just be careful on the way back.”

When she goes to leave, Chris catches her by the elbow. Says something you can't hear over the music, but she glances at you and nods her head. You don't care enough to find out.

To your right, Leon sweeps a hand through his hair. Leans over to stare at you beneath hooded lids. “You get used to it.”

There it is. The chain around your neck pulls taut, and you choke back the bitter tang of whiskey in your mouth. Might as well choke on your words while you're at it.

He handles his alcohol too well. A worrying observation in any other circumstance, but you'd be a hypocrite to accost him and an asshole to deny him his coping mechanism, however harmful it is.

What good is living a healthy life when you've one foot already in the grave?

Your fingers itch for a cigarette. The pit of your belly craves a dirty mattress and a bottle of lube and the man at your left who keeps nudging his elbow into your arm each time he sets down his drink.

A hypocrite, you'll never be.

So you settle for the cigarette and say nothing when Leon waves the bartender over.

“Been doing this for almost a decade, and I'm still waiting,” you say, head balanced on a sweaty, sticky palm. “Don't think I could ever get used to killing kids.”

Beside you, Leon takes a long few gulps from his drink. “Yeah, that's… different.”

You grow bold from the whiskey sloshing around in your stomach and lean in close, well past the boundary of his personal space. Behind the long-dried sweat and the brandy on his breath, you smell the death that lurks beneath his epidermis. Like a dog that's rolled in a rotting corpse, bits of viscera still trapped in its fur.

“Have you ever killed a kid?”

He glares at you from the corner of his eye, throat bobbing as he swallows. “Too many.” Choking down the memories.

.

.

.

He's pretty and perfect, ruddy at the tip, thick all the way to the base. The perfect size to deepthroat (long enough to choke off your breath without the stretching pain). You tried it once with Chris and the last inch or so made you tap out, and you remember vividly the pinched grimace on his face, almost pitying to the way your eyes leaked with tears as you coughed away the searing burn.

I warned you, he had said, leaned up against the wall of some unused supply closet. The start of your workplace affair.

And now, you find yourself on your knees in some dirty back alley, Leon's cock swallowed all the way to the base. A small, insignificant victory, but the taste of him—salt-musk and skin–washes away the blood that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

You pull away and work him over with a spit-slicked hand, hissing a breath through your teeth. You look up to find his chin dipped toward his chest, pretty eyes glossy and lidded, a deep blush spread thick over his cheeks and nose. Cute. It's cute. He's cute.

Maybe that's the whiskey talking.

(Not like you have a history of fucking your coworkers or anything.)

The thought sobers you a bit, and your hand slows. Your gaze sharpens.

“Good?” you whisper, just loud enough to hear over the rhythmic schlick of your fist.

Your conscience flares in a sharp thump against the part of your brain still functioning, and you wonder what Chris would think if he saw you like this. You can envision him now, all disappointed and frowning, maybe a little hurt in the squint of his eyes. He'd bitch at you for being so irresponsible, because fucking around with him has nothing to do with feelings, but shit. What you wouldn’t give to see him jealous.

Then Leon huffs out a breath, says, “Please,” in such a pitiful voice that—

Well.

You can unpack all this later.

Your focus shift backs to the man before you, smile devilish and wide as his head thumps against the brick. “Please what?”

“Fuck. Don't do this right now.”

You shift on the hard pavement, knees screaming in pain. But you can tolerate it. His mouth falls open, exhales a choked off moan when you circle your tongue over the sensitive nerves of his frenulum, and nothing else matters.

The sight of him flayed open, vulnerable, needy is intoxicating. A sharp contrast to when you first met, how he soured at the sight of you and licked his teeth like he craved to grab hold of your arm and shake.

You take him into your mouth again, hollowing your cheeks around each inch in a slow savor of the weight against your tongue, and you think you might go a little crazy when he cants his hips and curls a hand around the back of your neck.

“Gonna—I need—”

You moan around him, the best invitation you can manage, and he's quick to take it. The pace he sets sends fire licking up your spine, hurried and quick, long pumps that tease at the sheath of your throat but never breach. You steady yourself with a hand on each of his thighs, thumbing at the downy-blond hair covering the skin.

He's nice about face-fucking you, the alcohol half-worn off. Cradles your head like he either loves you or the way you swallow his cock, shoulders pressed flat against the brick wall to steady himself. Generous with his sounds (Chris communicates in heavy breaths and grunts, but Leon gets into it, and you aren't sure which you like best).

There's something wrong in the way you compare the men, as if they aren't the antithesis of each other down to each individual atom, but maybe that's the appeal. The best of both worlds.

He pulls out of your mouth after a heaving sigh, foamy spit spread from root to tip, connecting in a thin string to your bottom lip.

“Sorry. Can never finish when I drink,” he says, breathless, frustration bleeding through each sluggish syllable.

“Don't worry. I can't either.” It's an anticlimactic end to the night when he pulls up his pants and stuffs his still-hard cock back into his underwear. Says, “It'll go away in a minute,” when he catches you staring at the obvious bulge stretching the fabric.

You move to stand, knees almost buckling from being bent for so long. A clear sign of your age, a body composed of weary bones and ground-down joints and nerve damage. The inevitable effects of a dangerous, active career.

When you stumble, he steadies you with a firm grip around your bicep. Quick to pull away when you right yourself.

A pang starts directly behind your eyes. You need a glass of water.

“Do you want me to…” he trails off, nodding to the space between your thighs. No doubt you've leaked through your pants, your own need mostly forgotten to prioritize his.

But that's okay. Your brain shut up as soon as you got your mouth on him and that's all you care about. Mission accomplished. You can just rub one out when you get a private moment (who knows when that'll be).

“Don't worry about it.”

“Oh.”

“Not that I'm not interested, but the others are probably wondering where we are.” And by others, you mean Redfield, still left hunched over at the bar.

There had been a silent agreement with Leon after your conversation. A shared understanding that, yes, this was a very bad idea, but adrenaline and alcohol and drowning memories always ends in poor decisions anyway. The weight of inevitables.

You can't remember who followed who out the door.

The silence that follows is unbelievably awkward. Leon can't go back into the bar just yet, and you don't wish to leave him alone. But you have no idea where to go from here. With Chris, the transition progressed naturally: smoking buddies to confidants to friends to fucking each other after an adrenaline-fueled disaster of a deployment (huh, a common theme). The reasoning makes sense: you both need a good orgasm to stave off the stress every once in a while. The tenderness you harbor for him is an inconvenient side effect.

Regarding Leon, there's no history here. You share in trauma, yank against leashes attached to the same hand, hold a similiar respect for Chris. Nothing but overarching ideals posing as interpersonal commonality.

But you have a soft spot for strays. Especially the feral ones with sharp teeth and a mean streak.

Leon adjusts the crotch of his pants, kicks out a leg, and you exhale a laugh. He's frustratingly, awkwardly endearing.

(it's just the alcohol it's just the alcohol it's just the alcohol)

You clear your throat, a bashful heat creeping up the nape of your neck. “Thanks. For the—ya know, the distraction. I needed it.”

He nods, turns on his heel, and leaves the alley.

When you walk back inside, Chris is already gone.

.

.

.

And then the world floods. A solid week of heavy rain that, as you lean against the railing of your balcony, seeks to swallow the cars down below on the street, already halfway up the wheels. A rogue bike floats down the street. The water is deceptive in its surface-level calmness, but you know what lurks beneath. Step in the way of nature and be swept off your feet. They'd find your body half a mile away, lungs filled with muddy run-off.

You've never been religious, and faith has eluded you since you were young—don't think you've ever believed in anything besides the sanctity of life—but the street flooding below reminds you of the popular Christian tale. Two of each animal, a great ark, the end of times (the first of many).

You turn to Chris, stood just inside the sliding glass door that leads onto the balcony. “Do you believe in God? Any of ‘em?”

The wrinkles on his forehead deepen, and you remember a time when his eyes held life. They still spark, but sometimes you fear his anger setting him ablaze. Much to be angry about these days: injustice, evil, fighting for a dead-end cause.

The dead can still burn. You know that well.

There still exists moments where his face smooths out, like the few hours of rest he steals at night, but the damage is already done. Fine lines permanent, a testament to the long-flooded chasm of his worries.

“Never thought about it, really.”

Water pours off the edge of the balcony above, a light spray misting your face as the wind switches course and blows the rain sideways. Your feet shift inside a shallow puddle, just deep enough to splash. A chill forms beneath your skin, raises gooseflesh along your arms and legs, the weather a mere accomplice to the problem (many at this point, some identifiable and others still stuck in the stage of repression) that took root inside your bones.

“Not much to believe in anymore, is there?”

Behind you, he sniffs. “It's been that way for a long time.”

Then he steps out onto the concrete, shuts the glass door with a dull thump. A lighter flickers, barely intelligible over the noise of the storm. A moment later, the cloying smell of tobacco hits your nose, and a hand comes into view out of the corner of your eye.

An offering. The cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger a sacred gift from a man like him.

“You sound like you need it,” he says, bare chest fitting nice and warm against your back, and you relax into his bulk on instinct.

Always instinct with him.

He's kept his distance since that night with Leon in the alleyway. You know he knows. Tries his best to pretend, to regain the dynamic that changed as soon as you dropped to your knees and unzipped Leon's pants, but there's no going back. And you don't know if you want to. With a life hand-woven by fuck-ups and guilt, you rarely experience the absence of regret, so when you woke up that morning and continued on with your day and Leon crept closer than normal, engaged in muted conversation over the flight back home, you decided you wouldn't change a thing.

Maybe you're too selfish. Too self-serving. Too desperate for a way out of this, but—

Chris's beard rasps over your jaw, lips hot when they press to the skin. A hand slides beneath your shirt to rest flat against your stomach, the muscles there tensing.

—shit, you think you deserve indulgence every once in a while.

But he never escalates past the fluttering kisses along your pulse, a languid savor to the way your heart beats for him. The same way you savor your cigarette. An unusual intimacy that you aren't sure how to cope with. What it all means.

So you ruin it, just as you ruin everything good in your life.

(People like you don't deserve goodness, no matter how hard you grasp for it.)

Fat droplets of pouring rain dissect the thick fog of smoke you exhale. “You saw us, didn't you?”

The fingers on your belly curl inward, almost possessive. Like he wants to burrow elbow-deep inside the cavern of viscera and curl your intestines around his hand—the perfect makeshift leash. You wouldn't mind if it was him.

It's always been this way, hasn't it?

“Of course I did.” A sharp nip to the curve of your shoulder, and your hips twitch forward, a hiss choking off at the back of your throat. “Thought you hated him.”

“Almost dying has a funny way of bringing people together.”

“We know all about that, don't we?”

You hum in agreement as his hand climbs higher, squeezes soft at the curve of your ribcage, fingers protecting each brittle bone. Re-learning your body, testing its limits, searching for… something.

“You said it yourself, Chris. People like us don't get the luxury of romance. Dating, marriage, kids. They're pipe dreams. Gotta stave off the loneliness as best we can, but,” you stamp out your cigarette on the wet metal railing, and it cries out with a hiss as water seeps into the filter, “even the sex is a lie. We know it is.”

A lie you gorge on until your heart swells, bloated and tender to the touch.

His mouth is on you as soon as you sit on the couch, already stripped bare below the waist by two sets of desperate hands. Didn't even have a chance to close the door to the balcony with him shoving you back inside.

The sight of him (an inspiration, a legend, a hero) on his knees never fails to stroke your ego, and he meets your eyes with a grin. Slicks his hand between your legs with a chest-purring hum.

Chris, for all his skill, possesses a one-track mind. He hones in on outcome, completing the mission, point A to point B. As such, he doesn't care for distractions. Takes control—prefers giving to recieving any day of the week. And although the sight of him kissing up your thigh conjures heat at the base of your spine, you have another idea.

“Wait,” you say, already a bit breathless, and he sits back to listen. A good, obedient dog. “Move to the couch. I'll be right back.”

You yank your shirt over your head as if it catalyzed every single problem in your current life and leave for the bedroom. Need lube—a must where his size is concerned.

You return to him lounging on the couch, his bulk sagging its very foundation. An impossibly large, commanding presence, and you're unsure how the very idea of him doesn't collapse your room into a gravity-swallowing blackhole.

He is man. You've seen him bleed, seen him laugh, seen him on the brink of death. And yet the tangibility of his existence awes you even now, after all these years.

The stretch conjures between your legs an impenetrable pressure, made slick by all the lube. And he gazes up at you, seated naked in his lap, with all the reverence of a creation bowed before the altar of its god.

To be perceived is a terrifying ordeal. One you try not to think much about. But here, there's no hiding place brave enough to shelter you from the doggish fealty in his eyes. It's terrifying and wonderful and humiliating, and if you aren't careful, you'll begin to crave the feeling of being wanted.

A dangerous thing, loyalty.

You kiss him—a wet, hurried mess of a thing; tender flesh caught between canine teeth; calloused hands guiding the intensity with a palm against your jaw and the other gripping your waist, fingers sticky with lube. He's as big as you dream about, your insides stretched snug and velvety and slick around him.

He breaks off the kiss with a grunt caged behind grit teeth as you begin to ride him in a slow, grinding rhythm.

“Like this?” you ask, solely for your own amusement (love the way his cheeks get all pink), because you've fucked him well enough to know what he likes.

Still, though. To hear him say it is to be well-fed.

He hums, eyes downcast to the place where your bodies join, both hands a steadfast grip on your hips. Guiding, coaxing, savoring.

The sight of his bottom lip tugged between his teeth almost undoes you. And then he looks up at you with the prettiest, puppy-dog brown eyes, and the world stops. The sun burns and burns and burns until flesh melts from bone.

In the aftermath, cuddled naked and sticky together on the couch, a new star is born, nurtured by the warmth of your bodies. You kiss him, and gravity collapses in on itself.

The rain stops.

.

.

.

A conversation transpires at some hole-in-the-wall bar in Birmingham, Alabama. Why Leon chose this place you'll never know, and why Chris chose you to tag along on this two-person manhunt eludes you even more. Something about needing support, back-up, a friend he could trust. And you said yes. Of course you did.

But he seems to handle the situation just fine.

You lounge in a booth within sight of the bar where the two men sit. Leon slumps over the bartop and Chris rests an arm across his shoulders, both of them leaned in close to keep the conversation private. You feel like you have no right to watch, like the moment was not meant for your eyes. They speak like they've conquered lifetimes together, an intimacy you don't think you could ever fully understand.

You take a sip of your beer and trace your eyes over the sticky woodgrain of the table.

After a few minutes—somewhere between five and thirty, when you've already begun to nod off in your seat—a shadow passes over you, then another.

A large hand claps you on the shoulder. “Let's go.”

You sip on the rest of your beer as you follow behind the men, Leon stumbling over cracks in the pavement, cresting the tumultuous wave of drunkenness. Chris holds him steady by a hand fisted in the back of his leather jacket, and you feel much like a wraith. Intangible, inconsequential, tethered to the earthly realm by the beer bottle that sweats a chill against your palm.

It would be sad if sadness wasn't such a permanent facet of your life.

The motel Leon leads you to is a run-down thing. A few cars scatter around the parking lot, cigarette butts litter the concrete walk that leads to each room, and the lampost nearby blinks in a coincidental mimicry of morse code. As Leon attempts to unlock the door, you stare through the swarm of moths to where the dark-light rhythm spells out

H-E-L-P H-E-L-P H-E-L-P.

You didn't sleep too well on the flight over.

His room fares no better, caught in the sharp-toothed maw of a week-long bender. A red flag, a mental health hazard that leaves Chris sighing as he helps Leon over to the stained, naked mattress he calls a bed. He leaves one leg half-dangling off the side, some trick you learned during the early days of training when every weekend ended in borderline alcohol poisoning and the room wouldn't stop spinning.

A few feet over, you spot a thin sheet and a blanket on the floor, crumpled into a mound of itchy fabric. You choose the blanket to drape over him, wrinkled all to hell, but he doesn't seem to mind. Holds it close to his chest in a loose fist while his other hand grabs your shoulder.

“’m sorry Redfield dragged you into this mess,” he says, eyes bloodshot and unfocused, a certain sway to his words that sends a pang to the deepest part of your chest.

You've been here before, many a time. Can't count the days you wasted sleeping in bushes or heaving over a toilet or so drunk you couldn't even stand, because the alcohol felt good until it didn't, and even now you find something meaningful in the hammering of a morning-after migraine—pain means you're alive, Chris likes to say.

You slip up sometimes (a lot), forget your sober vows when the hardships need a good drowning. The ethanol kills them for a little while, but they always come back. You fool yourself every time into believing the next drink will be different.

It makes sense now. Why Chris chose you to tag along. You stare down at Leon and some parallel-universe mirror image stares back. The beer in your stomach settles like a molten rock.

“You have nothing to apologize for.” A sentence you wish to tell some younger, dumber version of yourself, before you stopped believing in redemption. “Just sleep it off, okay? We'll be here when you wake up.”

You and Chris share the threadbare couch in silence, curled up on either cushion. He twirls one of your shoelaces around a finger, then unravels it, then twirls it again, over and over as the sound of Leon's rhythmic snoring fills the room.

“Thanks for coming,” he says, cheek pressed to the back of the couch as he looks toward a hanging cobweb on the cieling. “It's hard to talk him down when he gets like this.”

“I think you handled it well.”

He exhales a tired laugh through his nose, the shadows under his eyes deeper beneath the pale of moonlight. “Only because I knew I had a backup plan.”

“And what would that have been?”

His lips twitch into a grin. “We drag his ass out of there kicking and screaming.”

“Damn. I'm almost sad the talking angle worked.”

“You would be.”

The comfortable silence stays steadfast for all of twenty seconds before you look over the back of the couch to where Leon lay.

“I hate to see him like this,” you say, wrinkles forming between your brow. “You know those kinds of people, where you can take one look at them and know they've been through hell?”

Chris hums.

“He's definitely one of ‘em.”

He shakes his head after a long moment, brows raised. “You have no idea.”

No. You don't. But it puts his behavior into perspective. Straddles the hair-fine line between excuse and explanation. Hard to develop meaningful, lasting relationships when everyone around you routinely drops like flies.

The night drones on, and on, and on. You should be able to sleep anytime and anywhere at this point, but the two sets of snoring seeks to do your head in. That, and Chris effectively shoved you off the rickety couch in his sleep and stretched out upon the cushions. But that's okay. He needs it.

Night turns to day somewhere between your anxious pacing around the room and your decision to take the floor, and you wake sweaty, a bit addled amidst unrecognizable surroundings.

Until you recognize the voices sounding from the opposite side of the room. Your hip screams when you rise to your feet, and you're dying for a drink of water and the cool breeze from a fan.

“Morning, sunshine,” Leon says, looking no worse for wear after the previous night. Hair a bit tousled, clothes wrinkled, but bright-eyed and aware. It's both infuriating and relieving.

“Definitely not a good one,” you grumble, because it's far too early to be awake and why are you even here in the first place? Chris could've handled it himself.

(God, you need to chug a glass of cold water. Swallow down a few ibuprofen while you're at it because pain makes you a certifiable asshole.)

Even in your youth, you hated mornings. Hated missing out on sleep, stumbling around for the better part of thirty minutes because nothing could get you awake. Hated the anxious, seven a.m. rush of the world.

A shit career you found for yourself, given that fact. Can't remember the last time you slept a full eight hours (your extracurriculars with Chris notwithstanding).

“I’m not a fan of mornings, either,” Leon says. Passes you a half-empty bottle of water from the nightstand, and you would hate to know how long it’s been there.

Long enough to taste earth-bitter and flat, but it hydrates the inside of your mouth to a blissful degree. You down the rest in three big gulps then squish up the plastic in a fist. The lukewarm water shaves down the edges of your teeth that crave something to chew on; a certain kind of clarity that rears its head only when your needs are met.

“Thank you,” you say, capping the bottle and tossing it beside him on the bed.

He nods. “Don't mention it.”

Chris leaves to smoke a cigarette outside as Leon begins packing what few things he brought with him. You plop down on the edge of the bed, unsure of how to breach the topic of his mental stability. But you feel like you should say something.

“So. How are things?” A rough start given the stare he cuts you with. “I just mean… well, you don't have to suffer alone like this. Chris cares about you, and I do, too. We wouldn't be here otherwise.”

Almost dying has a way of bringing people closer together.

He shoves a rolled-up shirt into his bag with a weary sigh. “I can handle it.”

“I know you can. But I know that shit gets heavy to carry around, so—”

“Yeah. I got it.”

You sit in a silence for a moment, the fabric of his jacket rustling as he scoops it off the floor then shakes the dirt off. Maybe you should clean a bit, take some stress off the workers. But Leon pins you with a look when you ask him for a broom. Says, “This is a motel. Nobody gives a shit.”

You sit back down.

Filth has never disturbed you. You've slept in places that weren't fit for human life, drank water swarming with viruses (in your defense, the order hadn't come through yet, and you suffered through half a dozen antidotal injections as punishment), but it's about the overarching intent of Leon being here. Whether a perfect reflection of his ground-through psyche or his self-taught deservedness for suffering, you aren't sure. It makes you sad regardless.

He sets his bag by the door and settles into the shitty couch, and you trail behind him. “Ya know, it took me a really long time before I ever felt like I could open to anybody. But once I did, it just… it felt nice. Can’t tell you how many times Chris saved me from myself.”

He scoffs. “Sounds like him.”

“He’s just trying to help. But you have to want it.”

“I don’t. Obviously.”

You nod. You've spent enough time around broken people to know when to shut up, to stop digging, and there's a blaring red stop sign over his head. “I know. But when you do, we'll be here.”

.

.

.

Chris Redfield is man, and he bleeds, and he flinches away from pain. He hates needles something fierce yet regularly requires them due to the job. One such example of the comedic irony that lives within him.

So you hold his hand while the stern-faced nurse begins an IV. He's pale in the face, grip weak, sweaty on the palms. Lucky to be alive. A mark of his mortality the deep, serrated gash slicing through the front of his thigh. A gnarly thing, makes your stomach drop when you think about it.

The nurse discards the needle and extra gauze then steps out in a rush, closing the door behind her. Beside you, tucked beneath two hospital blankets, comically large in the bed, Chris breathes a sigh of relief.

“So. How do I look?”

“Like shit.”

He winces, shifting his uninjured leg beneath the sheets. “Gonna be here a while, aren't I?”

“Probably not. Longest part'll be the PT.”

He shoots you a stern glare that tells you to shut the fuck up—a very rare showcase of off-the-field command. “It's not that bad.”

“It is that bad. You're lucky you still have a fucking leg.”

The air of the hospital room thickens. You know the unspoken, chain-of-command line you tread, the luxuries afforded to you because of the softness in his heart where you placed your claim. One such example: you can yell at him without reprimand. Best used when he's being a tunnel-vision dumbass.

You blink and the world bleeds red and there you are, back on the field with a roll of gauze in one hand and a tourniquet in the other. Nobody can find the goddamn medic and he'll be bled out by the time they get here. You bark orders to your team as the writhing mass of limbs and teeth begins to drag itself across the bridge, and you think of Spike.

Chris yowls at the last few turns of the rod.

Not again.

The missions grow more dangerous with each deployment. He denies this over and over and over, says the worst spike of bioterrorism was after Raccoon City, when Umbrella threw caution to the wind and stopped caring about cover-ups. When the government did it for them, when technology wasn’t like it is now.

But frequency and impact are two very different things, and you know an inevitable, a fork in the road, is soon to come.

That's always how these things end.

[azitine]

I'm forcing Ghost to talk about his feelings at gunpoint and he's telling me he'd rather I just pull the trigger

[azitine]

Fushiguro Megumi - High School ID Photo 📸

[azitine]

Nanami <3

[azitine]

Luis Serra and his use of false bravado

I'm writing a fic right now that requires a pretty in-depth character analysis of Luis, and I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things about him, which is his use of false bravado to get out of sticky situations, and the expressiveness he displays in the moments in between.

We talk a lot about Leon's micro-expressions when he's trying to hide his feelings, which don't get me wrong, I LOVE to analyze, but Luis has such telling expressions as well, and we should talk about it! (I also saw some gifs of Luis's expressions being modded onto Leon and THAT got attention but... neither here nor there).

To me, it always looks like he's using an almost silly amount of swagger when he interacts with others to portray his confidence, and he barely ever lets that wall down. Unlike Leon and Ada, he's a civilian, but he jokes around and flirts every time he's in front of them, despite being in situations where he really should be behaving more like Ashley, like when he narrowly avoided being tortured to death and he's just like "nice, cigs"

We as the audience are only privy to his mask slips in 3 different types of situations, as far as I can tell:

When he feels like his luck is about to run out: he goes from acting confident to suddenly displaying a lot of fear on his face, while he wildly casts around for something to say to help him out. In both of these instances, he completely regains his bravado once he thinks he's safe again, i.e. when Ada saves him from the torturers, or when he realizes Ada knows who Leon is. This is also just kind of adorable. Watch the way his face falls when he realizes Ada is mad, and then the way he flounders when she points her gun at him.

2. When no one else is looking: This one stood out to me from the very beginning because he's actually still speaking with confidence as he explains that the plaga can be removed, but Leon and Ashley can't see his face, where he's clearly showing his trepidation, his guilt about them being infected, etc. and then notice how he goes right back to smiling and confident when he turns around to face them again.

3. When he feels concern for others: Luis is an extremely caring person, and one of the most common moments where he lets his mask slip is when someone else is in danger. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is his reaction to the medicine being destroyed, but I also want to draw attention to the look on his face when Ada is in danger and she tells him to leave her. And I know I included him looking away from Leon and Mendez in a previous post but here's a higher quality gif so you can really get your heart broken by how scared he looks:

Anyways, I just love the little things that make up characters in this game. I also have analyses about Ada and Ashley that you'll probably get whether you want it or not because I love them, and their characterizations are so interesting.

[azitine]

this filth is brought to you by this post here

cw: dub-con, choking, slight power play, shameless smut

Johnny was always more akin to a dog than a man. That fact never changed. Not even when you had him splayed out on his back so you could bounce yourself along his cock.

Heavy breaths mingled in the space between your lips and his as you worked on splitting yourself open on him. His eyes were drawn to the way your cunt effortlessly drew him in and spat him back out, puffy lips eating him whole like it was the only thing you were good for. A grin had been stuck to his lips for so long you were almost certain his face didn't know how to make any other expression by that point, and he allowed praise after praise to flow from between his pearly whites.

"Look at you, bonnie," he cooed. His fingers wrapped around your wrists as your hands rested against his chest in order to support your movements. "Love takin' my cock, don't you?"

Ignoring him, you continued in your endeavor as you attempted to chase your high with knees aching and thighs burning from the exertion. He couldn't tear his eyes from you as his hands began to wander along your body, caressing every inch of your skin that he could reach. The tips of his fingers dug into the sides of your hips as he reached up, pawing at your breasts, grabbing onto any bits of you that he could. Really, you didn't mind the rough and calloused palms of his hands along your skin. If anything, the pressure felt nice - until it didn't.

"Ow," you hissed.

Johnny's fingers had gotten a little too eager by the time he reached the sensitive skin of your nipples, and he pinched the hardened buds a bit too hard for your liking. Instinctively, your hands shot up to push him away from you, and though you didn't cease in your movements, cunt still swallowing him greedily, you shot him a glare.

"That hurt," you warned.

"I'm sorry," he said, though his tone didn't seem all too apologetic. "Just can't get enough of you. Not when you're bein' so good to me."

Though you had slapped him away, that didn't deter him at all from continuing to explore your body. He started off gentle at first, as if testing the waters after you chastising him, but gentle fondling turned into more pinching, which then turned into scratching, and when you opened your mouth in a painful squeak, you knew you had finally had enough.

In a fit of annoyance, you slammed your hips against Johnny's once more before holding still, and you reached your hand out for him. And you swore you aimed for his jaw. All you wanted to do was grab his chin and force him to look at you, to listen to you, to stop scratching and pawing at you and ruining the mood. But something slipped. Or maybe your aim wasn't as good as you thought it was. Either way, your hand wrapped around his throat instead.

Your first instinct was to take your hand off of him and apologize. You'd never done that before, or even talked about choking or any sort of breath play with him, and you were terrified of crossing a boundary, despite him annoyingly crossing yours. But then you took note of his eyes. How his pupils dilated so much you could hardly make out their beautiful blue hue. His cock twitched inside of you as if begging for more, and you would have been lying if you said you didn't like the way his Adam's apple bobbed underneath your palm.

"Down boy," you warned with a smirk.

Finally behaving, Johnny didn't even bother with a verbal response, and instead nodded his head with his lips slightly parted, utterly fucked out. Once his hands came to rest peacefully against your hips, you began your movements once more, and somehow everything felt better. It was like you could feel every pulse of his cock as you worked at him, and your walls fluttered furiously as you quickly approached your orgasm.

Maybe it was the power you felt flooding through you that made you so much more sensitive. The look of awe in Johnny's eyes, his pulse hammering against your fingertips, his heavy and labored breathing from the lack of blood...

When you next slammed your hips against his, you kept still as your body jolted with searing pleasure. Even though you weren't the one with a hand wrapped around your throat, you panted as if you couldn't get enough air, and your hand slid away from Johnny as you leaned back and let the hormones wash over you. A heavy layer of sweat coated your body thickly, and you chuckled as you wiped some of the moisture off of your chest.

"Didn't realize you were into such naughty things, MacTavish," you teased with a chuckle.

The sentence hardly left your lips before your words were cut off with a squeak. Your vision was sent spinning for a split moment before all the air was pushed out of your chest from the impact of your body falling against your bed. Somehow, Johnny had managed to turn the tables in the blink of an eye, and you found yourself on your back staring up at him instead of the other way around.

A grin obscured your vision as he stared down at you, arms on either side of your head as if he kept you caged. He stayed like that only for a moment before he leaned back in order to get a better look at you, and though his pupils were still blown wide, something else glinted in the depths of his gaze.

One hand reached down to grab himself where he lined his cock up with your soaking entrance, and the other hand snaked up your body. At first he started along your stomach, and then he moved to the dip between your breasts, and then he returned the favor by giving a firm squeeze around your throat. Your breath hitched, but just like Johnny had reacted previously, you were unable to speak. All you could do was lay there and look up at him with wide eyes as he sunk into your needy hole, stretching you out for all you were worth.

"You've no fuckin' idea, bonnie."