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He could feel Leon’s warm breaths against his neck. Could pinpoint the moment when his breath hitched as he crouched to help him sit down against the wall.
When he was settled, Chris forced his gaze away from him to look around at the room they had unceremoniously barged into. It was sparse, that was for sure. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say they’d stumbled upon a safehouse that hadn’t yet been cleared for use. No, more likely it was just an abandoned lodge, likely during the time when the facility Chris and Leon had just escaped from had started to encroach on the surrounding area with their experimentation. Whatever the case, the owners were long gone. Both here and within the lab.
Turning back, he pressed a hand to Leon’s cheek, tapping gently to get his attention. His heart skipped a beat when he didn’t respond. It wasn’t until he nudged him in the shoulder and tapped more firmly, only letting up when Leon groaned lowly and his eyes fluttered open.
“Hey, Leon.” There was only a slight waver to his voice. “I’m going to go look for a medkit for you, okay? Don’t—Stay with me until then.” A whisper of a command from a man who still had everything to lose.
Chris only stuck around long enough for him to see Leon’s smirk, a shadow of his usual sarcasm before he was up on his feet.
He went through the room they were in now since it seemed to be the main living area, but found nothing except dust, moth-eaten cloths, and a few left-behind personal trinkets. He found similar things in the guest bedrooms, and nothing of immediate use in a guest bathroom except for a couple of towels that were relatively clean.
Shit. Where the hell was it?
He yanked open a cupboard in one of the other guest bathrooms when a familiar, but weathered, case greeted him. When he pulled it out and popped the latch open, he had to take in a relieved breath. Most of it was still usable. He figured that whoever had been using the lodge as a makeshift base to observe from last had the wherewithal to keep it stocked. All the better for him and Leon, anyway.
He was quick to return to the living room and to kneel in front of Leon, who obligingly tipped his head back from where it had lolled to the side, and let his eyes and attention rest on him when he called his name. “I’m going to patch you up now. Hold still for me.”
There was a joke to be made about how quickly he stripped Leon of his ruined jacket and torn, bloody shirt. But he couldn’t find it in himself to say it when the man before him was low on energy and trying so very hard to stay quiet despite Chris’s ministrations.
“Easy,” he murmured, heart clenching at another pained noise that was quickly bitten off. “You’re okay.” As much as he wanted to hasten his hands, he needed to keep them as steady as he could. The last thing they needed was for his injuries to reopen or worsen.
When Chris heard Leon breathe just a little bit easier, some of his tension eased. They weren’t quite out of the woods yet, but at least Leon was stable for the moment. Another sliver of tension lightened as he felt fingers lace with his own, above where his hand was lingering on the patch of gauze he had flattened into place.
He glanced up at Leon and found him already staring back. “Hey there,” he started softly, squeezing his hand. “How are you feeling now?”
There was a low huff. “Could be better.”
Could be home, Chris silently filled in and agreed with the sentiment, absently rubbing a thumb across Leon’s raw knuckles. Would it have been a lazy morning, them curled up against one another until it was hard to see where one began and the other ended? Perhaps that would have carried over to being a slow, easy day—with it being Leon’s turn to cook, Chris helping out here and there, and pulling up whatever they wanted to watch to while away the time once they migrated to the couch.
But duty called, as it always did.
He should go secure the perimeter. Who knew what else managed to follow them from the lab? Let alone when whatever form of backup or extraction would come? He still had some ammo left for his handgun if things came to a head.
Just as he started to move, a hand carded through his hair, gently tugging until he bent his head enough to brush up against dry lips. Immediately softening at the unspoken question, he cupped Leon’s jaw with a broad hand and deepened the kiss. It was hard not to hold back the sheer amount of desperation, panic, and terror at how close he had come to losing the man in front of him. He’d been lucky. They both were. His eyes started to sting.
And Leon knew that, knew everything Chris didn’t say and reciprocated for him in turn, for he pressed back just as insistently. His free hand roamed from Chris’s head to the back of his neck and to his shoulder as if trying to make sure he was still breathing, still there, and arguably hale and whole.
“Stay?” Leon asked after they pulled apart, his voice hoarse. His blue eyes were still cloudy with pain, but they were lucid. A finger rubbed against Chris’s cheekbone, wiping away a welling bead of blood from a cut he left untreated.
Chris’s eyes traced over Leon’s features. Despite the exhaustion weighing on him—the both of them, really—to the tightness of his expression and the pain that creased his brow, he still looked gorgeous. Battered, bruised, and bloodied as he was. Though he knew he himself didn’t look much better, also covered in the slimy remnants of the last BOW they had fought.
He didn’t know what sort of expression he had for a corner of Leon’s mouth to tick upwards in a small smile and his eyes to soften further before the man leaned in to peck the edge of his mouth. A comfort. A reassurance.
“Okay,” he whispered, and kissed him again. He could spare a moment to breathe. To count their losses and their small victories.
It was almost like the end of the world. But, for now, they were safe. They were here.