::::DISCLAIMER::::

12/22/2018

I've completely started reworking most of my older stuff. This is no different. I've had a thousand ideas for where I wanted to go with it. So I'm going to do that.

I don't own Resident Evil. I don't own the rights to any of it. I do, however, have my own imagination. And I use it frequently to play in other people's universes. I enjoy it. I enjoy where it takes me. I do it, primarily, to see what Capcom doesn't show us: the human aspect of their one-dimensional character creations. I like to think we fanfiction writers give them a little depth, a little attitude, a little…life.


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In Vino Veritas

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." – Mark Twain


Silver Lake, Montana

Rocking Horse Ranch, 2017


The dim light of morning was the only light in the room. It spread its skillful touch over his skin, gilding it, forcing the sprinkle of hair on his chest to appear to glitter blonde and bright in the rising sun. The fire of the coming day encircled him, casting a halo of red to the once dark gold of his hair. There was little denying that he was nearly perfect in his splendor, the pale prince, the handsome hero, the blonde and blue eyed Adonis that would slay the dragon and save the world.

He'd saved the world; more than once in fact. He'd stood on the precipice of death and spit in her face while he taunted her. He'd gone toe to toe with the devil and emerged the unchallenged victor. He was untouchable, a dubious force of nature that had never known failure and knew no equal. He was a veritable god.

And he was alone.

He was nearly forty, single, and lived by the moment with little more than a thought to what came next. He was often, when not saving the world, half in the bottle erasing the things he'd done, and seen, and lived with the comforting wash of expensive booze. He was a functioning alcoholic, a WASP of substantive breeding, from a long line of distinguished men with a family name that commanded respect and adoration.

And sometimes, long after the world was peacefully sleeping safe once more in her unknowing bed, he would stand a top his tower of gold built on self-sacrifice and dedication and loss and he would despair. He might have liked, once, to have children. He might have liked to have a wife and been the coach of his son's baseball team and driven car pool with other harried parents. What would life look like on the other side of a job he might have had? The once wet behind the ears rookie would have been a detective and then possibly police chief. He would have sat behind a desk and gotten a pot belly and grown gray at the temples and watched his grand kids from his porch.

All those years ago, before Raccoon City, there'd been a girl. A sweet, soft, shy girl he'd loved in high school and thought he'd marry. Maggie. Maggie Summers. He thought of her sometimes as he sat alone on the rooftop of his loft beside his shimmering pool with a bottle of Glen Mckenna beside him. Or others like now, when he lay amongst the sheets of his palatial family estate in the mostly untouched wilds of Montana. Maggie Summers with her beautiful round face and sparkling blue eyes.

He'd been in Virginia visiting his parents the last time he'd seen her. They'd hugged, smiled, and she'd had two little toe headed children with her; happily married to a boy she'd met in college after he'd failed to call her back. She held no grudges. She even regarded him fondly. They'd been kids, after all, and look what life had brought her! He was happy for her. The ache that centered somewhere inside of him had blended with a thousand others until it had become part of the numbness that often pervaded.

For him, there was only two women since Maggie. Not a series of women. It had never been his style to love em and leave em. He bedded only the ones that mattered.

And only two had in the long years since he'd given his virginity to the sweet faced girl who'd been a boy's first love.

In the between, he'd loved one - and craved the other. The first he'd lost to the fight that chased them both. She'd broken his heart and run for the fire like the fighter she was.

The second he'd never done more than covet and get caught in her web through teasing and temptation. Part of him thought, if he ever really fucked her, he'd probably lose his soul with his pride. She was a demon - the thing that haunted him as he slept. He was better off alone than in her clutches.

So he courted no one, dated no one, slept with no one. It was a safer that way, protected, it insulated him from having to bear the truth to someone and have them turn away. It protected him from what came after the truth was exposed. It protected him from the pain that came with the rejection.

He was still a man. He still wanted. He still longed. He still ached with needs. He just used his hard won discipline to survive it, to channel it into other things, to become faster, stronger, smarter. He'd trained in various forms of martial arts, in the ability to control and regulate himself like a machine; he'd fallen, broken, abused, and tortured himself all in the name of the cause. He was as close to a finely tuned machine as one could possibly be.

He shifted, feeling the softness that only Pretasi sheets could provide, and his hand slid over the perfectly taut and honed definition of his stomach. It brushed at the top of his thigh across the springy hair there and skimmed close to the core of his body; a tease. Yet… yet, even this he did not do. He didn't touch himself. He wanted to, often, the price of a denial that was decades long but the pain on the other side of it kept him chaste. For even in the self-release there was pain and emptiness.

The backs of his fingers skimmed the semi-rigged length of himself; he shivered. And in that moment he pictured her. He pictured her face, her body, the heave and shift of her bosom. He pictured her smirk and the red, red, red of her lips.

Her lips.

Her lips.

The flash of memory smashed into him like an unwanted punch. It was vivid and rich and nearly tangible. He didn't just picture it, he felt it, smelled it, and lived it. The torture of it nearly stole his breath.

He yearned…and he remembered.


Yōuhuì, China

Southern Province, 2013


He slept for nearly twenty four hours after they'd fled Tatchi and landed safely back near Shanghai. The debriefing had taken hours and he'd spent countless restless minutes explaining and explaining and regurgitating every single event that had transpired between the death of the president and the spread of the infection in Tatchi. Simmons involvement, the cover up, the importance of the cloning, the significance of Wesker's son, it had all needed rehashed repeatedly until he thought he might go blind from being without sleep for nearly four days.

They'd finally let them go sometime in the middle of the night and dropped he and Helena unceremoniously on the door step of the Mandarin Oriental in Yōuhuì. He'd exited the elevator and entered the penthouse suite afraid he'd drop where he stood, aching, shaking, starving and exhausted. He'd eaten three pieces of fruit in a record ten seconds and another while standing under the blasting, burning, furious jets of the shower. The water and the soap and the scrubbing took away the dirt, he watched it wash down the drain in gray and black rivers. But it couldn't take away the memories.

He couldn't wash away the moment he'd chosen to shoot his commander in chief, the most powerful man in the world, and his longtime friend in head. He couldn't erase the faces of the infected and the smell of death and rot and the screams of the dying. He couldn't erase the taste of fear and bile that rose at the things he'd done, seen, felt.

His fist struck the marbled shower wall and was followed by his forehead that pressed, slid, as the scalding water turned his greasy, matted, black hair blonde once more. His fingers tunneled through it, pushing it back from his face. He inhaled, sharply, and again before he stepped from the shower, washed, but never clean.

He toweled his face dry and tossed it carelessly over the back of a bar stool as he walked naked up the stairs to the bed on the dais in the center of the penthouse. The entire left wall was nothing but windows, showing the glittering, brilliant, unsullied Chinese skyline. He had barely climbed onto the bed and glanced at the clock beside it to register the time: 3:00 am, the witching hour, before he passed unceremoniously into sleep.

He slept dreamlessly the first twelve hours. His body literally shut down and stayed down, rebooting, and repairing itself to a minimal level of functional ability. The next twelve were plagued with occasionally snippets of dreams and snatches of memories. Faces, voices, screams, moans, groans, pants and promises whispered in darkened corridors. Helena…Helena had touched him, touched him, and her eyes had-

It was the shift in the universe that roused him. He was, after all, a well-honed machine and even in sleep he was still formidable. He rolled, even as he roused, and the gun was pointed and securely aimed before he was even fully awake. The face it was aimed at, in the semi darkness, was wryly amused. Those red, red, red lips were pursed in a smirk.

"Don't miss."

Her voice was whisper soft but somehow loud in the silent room. His eyes made sense of the time: 3:00 am, the witching hour. Had he slept at all? Or an entire day? He couldn't remember. It wasn't really relevant when one was staring down the barrel of the Desert Eagle at her.

What surprised both of them was that he hadn't yet lowered the gun.

"What do you want, Ada?"

Ada. Ada Wong. Ada…Wong. He could hear it, say it, feel it a thousand times and it wouldn't change that name. Ada Wong. He hated her. He detested the idea of her. She was his nemesis, his greatest enemy, his greatest weakness. Ada Wong.

He craved her.

Love? He wasn't sure it was love. Love was a soft word. A sweet word. A kind and generous and life long word. Love. It seemed so weak and wimpy for this. This. This…obsession. This horrible, hungry, feral and beast like teeth in soul that she had on him. This…need.

He CRAVED her.

"You could start by lowering the gun."

He met her look squarely. "Start talking."

"I'm not going to hurt you, Leon." Now she sounded amused. "Yet."

Leon remained nearly statue still. "What do you want, Ada?"

With a long suffering sigh, she leaned away from the wall where she'd been patiently perched. Although he wasn't sure perch was the right word, of course, for a woman like Ada. She was tall, especially for someone who was half Chinese, possibly an inch shorter than his own 5'10" when she wasn't wearing heels. She'd left her heels, respectfully, near the door as she'd entered. Or perhaps it was a calculated move to possibly just to avoid the sound she'd have made crossing marble in stilettos. She was tall, willowy, built slim and smooth and strong like a runner with a finely honed physique that was lithe and muscled in all the right places. She was a LADY and built like a siren, taunting him with small and high breasts and lean, lascivious curves.

She wore her signature red, in a long silhouette of dress that sported skimpy little spaghetti strings and a plunging, tasteful, but dangerously suggestive gathered neck. It shifted around her like silk as she moved. He kept the gun on her.

He was fairly sure neither of them quite knew why.

Or hell…maybe they both knew exactly why.

"You stood over me."

He met her face equally now. There was something in her eyes he had never really seen before. He wanted to call it vulnerability. But Ada was never, ever vulnerable. Sly. Smart. Vindictive. But never vulnerable.

"What?"

"You stood over me. You could have let Simmons have me. But you stood over."

She was about four feet away now.

"You could have been rid of me; finally. Why?"

He watched the play of light across her face in the darkness. The only light to join them was that which was cast from the skyline behind the open windows at his back. The shadows shifted with their movements.

And he said nothing for a long moment.

"Why are you here, Ada?"

She was nearly to him now. The barrel of the gun brushed against her shoulder as drew closer, too close. The panic in his gut was very real and almost painful.

"Why did you help me?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do. Say it."

The panic had teeth now. Sharp, ugly, awful little teeth that were chewing up his guts with their mindless gnawing. He shook his head, just slightly. But who or what was he denying? He didn't even know anymore.

"Why did you help me, Leon?"

"I couldn't let you die."

"Why?"

The shadows made her nearly ethereal in her beauty. Her lips moved, curved around each word like she would make love to the language. She tortured him in the semi-darkness with that face. That face that had launched a thousand ships. She was his Helen of Troy; his curse. He'd saved her because of that face and the way it had haunted his dreams for nearly twenty years.

"What you know could save millions of lives. We needed you alive."

She cocked her head to the side, wryly. The ebony of her hair had indigo highlights in the darkness, shimmering like the surface of the water at the darkest, deepest, heart of the ocean. He knew it would feel like silk in his hands and smelled of orchids and jasmine and exotic temptation. He could smell it now, faint, tantalizing, tempting him to gather her to him and take them both into the darkness to drown in each other.

"Liar." The word bled hot and wet between them, a dare, a challenge. Liar, she'd whispered, and she was right. He lied. And they both knew it.

"Simmons is done. The project, his baby, it's done. You have all the information you need, I made sure of that. What's your excuse now?"

"Was it you, Ada, that Chris was after?"

And now she held his gaze, equally, and long. "No. You know that. Not even I can be in two places at once. You know that."

"If you weren't there in Edonia when all of his men died, where were you?"

Ada studied him, they stared at each other in the flickering shadows and he knew and she knew that the answer to that question was dark, deep, and fathomless. So she avoided the question. "The day is saved. The bad guys are gone. You emerge, once more, the victor. Why not do it now? Why not put me down, like a rabid dog, before I do something else I shouldn't?" And her smile was wicked and sexy and taunting in the darkness. "Why not stop me before I'm a bad girl again?"

She shifted in closer and the gun was now pressing against her chest, just between her breasts. She lifted a hand and circled it around the barrel, holding it against her.

"Why can't you just pull the trigger now? End me and save us both."

He could taste his own heart. It beat thick, fast, and full in his throat. It tasted of blood and greed and lust and latent need so hard and fast he thought he might choke and die from it. His voice was low, gravelly, too carefully empty when he answered in nearly a whisper, "From what?"

She jerked on the gun as she rotated, pulling him forward at the same time. Her other hand caught at the back of his neck and pulled him in toward her. Surprise more than anything had him failing to resist as she pushed his arm out, locked the elbow, and divested him of his weapon. And he found himself looking at the other end of his own gun.

It was somewhat mortifying to know he'd just been outwitted by her. But it wouldn't be the last time and it certainly wasn't the first.

He stared at her in surprise for a handful of seconds.

Ada tilted her head, quirked an eyebrow up at him, and lifted a corner of her mouth. "Don't you want it back?"

"I don't have time for these kinds of games, Ada."

She tilted her head again, curious and amused. "Life is nothing but games, Leon. You just think you're too squeaky clean to have to play them. We're playing one right now."

He watched her as they slowly started to circle each other, the cat and the mouse although he'd never be sure which was which. It was a dance they'd begun and continued many times over the years.

"I don't like games. You still haven't told me what you want, Ada. Tell me. And then slip away into the darkness like you always do. We both know you will once you get what you want from me."

She actually seemed somewhat surprised by this response. She stopped circling and met his eyes squarely, "You want me to go?"

"That's the idea."

"You don't want me here?"

"Does it look like I want you here?"

Bad choice of words. Her eyes traveled over his naked body, lingering, appreciative, and almost overtly molesting in nature. They hovered at the very clear, very painful evidence to the contrary.

He refused to be embarrassed by it. He was a man. He got wood sometimes. That's it. That's all the mention it needed.

Ada rolled the gun over in her hand and offered it to him butt first. "Ok. Go ahead. Take it."

He knew this would lead to a grapple between them, knew it because he'd played this particular game with her before. Yet he had to TRY to take the proffered weapon, only a fool leaves the gun in his opponents waiting hands.

Leon reached out a hand for it and she stepped into him as he did. Surprised, he bobbled the exchange and the gun tumbled, forgotten, to the floor with a metallic thump. He lifted his hands to her shoulders to stop her from getting too close and she slid her hand around his throbbing erection. The shock of it echoed down in his back like a lightning bolt and out of his mouth in a gasp. It was like taking the lid off a boiling pot. He felt the wrap of her fingers around him like white hot band bands of desire so painfully bright, hot, and burning that he might die from it.

Her left hand slid around the back of his neck and anchored her thumb beside his ear and she held him to her. Her right hand milked him, skillful, sinful. She rolled his aching flesh in her palm in a dangerous game, tugging almost playfully at his need until it was a roaring, rushing, hungry beast beneath his flesh.

She couldn't have known, really, how long he'd been denied. She couldn't have known that he'd ALWAYS denied her. She couldn't know that he hadn't touched a woman in years. Not since he'd had his heart obliterated in Rome. What would she have said if she'd have known that Leon Kennedy, savior of mankind, the president's right hand, was a eunuch?

His hands dug into her shoulders. He should have shoved her away but he couldn't. He simply couldn't. His breath came fast, frightened; he could feel the panic shift to an almost detrimental degree. The pressure in his loins was unbelievable.

Ada smiled, slyly at whatever was written across his face. "Why did you save me, Leon?"

What? He brain. His brain was a mess. Lost. Confused.

"God." He gritted it out between his teeth. "Ada."

And now Ada laughed, darkly, and leaned in against him until her mouth was nearly on his to whisper, "Yes. We can often be one in the same. Tell me why. Say it."

He thought he might die, might die right there on the spot. His hands shifted and his thumbs brushed those tiny spaghetti strings on her dress. And he couldn't, shouldn't, didn't want to play games anymore. And he didn't know what he might feel later, didn't know what might happen, but he knew one thing: he CRAVED her.

On a ragged breath, he gave her an answer.

But it probably wasn't the one she'd wanted to hear. "Because I think I'm in love with you."

The surprise danced across her face. What had she expected? Likely some great conspiracy. She probably thought he'd been paid to keep her alive for some greater purpose, some grand scheme. She'd spent too long as the right hand of the megalomaniac Albert Wesker. She didn't know how to not be part of some diabolic doomsday plot.

Leon surged against her now, startling them both with it. Her hand slid off of him and landed on his bare hip. He took them both backward until her back bumped against the wall. And her hand slid over that hip and around, landing on his perfectly honed ass. Her nails raked a little and brought his breath in a ragged pant.

He pushed against her until he feel the softness of her body on his throbbing erection and rubbed himself there, like some pervert, like some mindless thing, on the silk of her dress. His mouth brushed over hers, once, twice. "Is that what you wanted, Ada? Is that what you wanted to hear?"

He wouldn't let her look away. Their eyes held, entrapped by each other. He watched a series of things go across her face and had names for none of them. His right hand moved off her should and across her chest, his fingers delved under the plunging neck of her dress and across the pretty mound of her cleavage.

Her voice was soft and smooth. "I don't like liars, Leon"

His tongue traced the line of her satiny lips. "That's funny, Ada. Because you're the greatest liar I've ever met."

She met his eyes, squarely. "Let me go."

His fingers delved lower into her cleavage. His mouth nibbled now at her lips. "You don't want me to let you go." He sounded vaguely like a rapist. It was alarming for a man so carefully bred and in control of himself.

"Yes. I do." She sounded so sure of herself.

He almost let her go…and she shivered. Just slightly. She shivered and his delving fingers slid under the edge of the lacy cup of strapless bra…and found one tight, turgid, pointy little nipple waiting there. He watched her face when his fingers skimmed it, felt her body tighten, heard her sigh and shiver. And he was so well trained, so well in tune to the human response because of it, that he knew…he knew.

He went very, very still for a moment. And then he pressed his mouth to hers and whispered, "Yeah…liar."

He caught her gasp in his mouth as he kissed her. His tongue plunged in, merciless, and hers surged against it like a rabid thing. Her nails raked up his back and snaked into his hair to hold him to her. His shoved at her dress until it pooled at her waist and then stopped, anchored there by the press of his body so tightly against her. He couldn't stop kissing her, didn't want to, wasn't sure how to stop.

When they finally came up for air, his mouth dropped and feasted on the cleavage so beautifully displayed in her fancy black bustier. His hands slid up her back and undid the clasp, freeing the bounty of her breasts to his waiting mouth. Her hands gripped his face, grabbed his shoulders, tried to find something to hold on to while he devoured her.

He left whisker burns and teeth marks all over her delicate skin but it just seemed to spur her forward. She shimmied out of the dress and let it fall between them, a puddle of red silk and sighs. He lifted her, in nothing but tiny black panties, and she curled around him like a monkey as they moved and tumbled together atop the tossled bed.

Leon felt the boil of blood beneath his skin, a dangerous game they'd been playing for so long. A dangerous game that had nearly cost them both their lives more than once and would probably cost them both their sanity. He should stop them, stop this, stop all of it before it cost them both everything they had.

But those red, red, red lips settled on his and he couldn't think of anything but the taste of her. The thrill of her. The greed and need and wanton want that burgeoned and blustered and bled like a burst artery inside of him for her. He rolled her to her back and hook his hands into her panties. They were lacey and tiny and flimsy. If he tore them away there would be nothing anymore to stop him.

He set his teeth against them and her, watched her bow, and gasp and blur. He slid his tongue along the edge of them and slid them to one side to see the heat and heart of her. He traced the moist line of her with his finger and then his tongue and rolled the taste of her across his mouth like an aphrodisiac. He parted her with his thumbs and licked smooth, wet, slow lines across her waiting heat in a torturous tease for them both. The ache in his groin was nearly blinding as he slid one finger into the wet of her and teased her with his mouth at the same time.

He was on autopilot now. He was inside his own filthy fantasy. He simply did the things he'd thought of a thousand times since he'd met her in that dirty parking lot in Raccoon City all those years ago. He'd stood there covered in dark and muck and dinge and wanted her, even then, always since.

He felt her clench, tighten, gasp, and watched the orgasm that over took her. It was wickedly fast and wonderful to see. He felt her body clench around his plunging fingers now and tasted her release on his tongue as she came. Impossibly turned on, he slid her panties back across her body and ground his tossled head against her stomach in frustration.

She rolled shuddered beneath him and shifted, rolling him until she was atop him. Her hands traced, nails raking gently down the muscles of his chest and stomach. He watched the appreciation and lust that sparked in her eyes and craved her even more.

His hands gathered at her hips and he thrust himself against her, feeling the satiny, lacey panties that barred his path. They brushed over his aching cock like a tease, offering but never coming across. He was fifteen again about making out in the back seat of his father's Cadillac.

Ada shifted and lifted, sliding her panties down those long, long, long thighs. He grabbed her hands, shook his head, hard. How could he tell? Should he tell her? Would it matter? Could it matter?

She smiled, beguilingly, likely thinking it was some great game he was playing. Her fingers encircled him, milking his body. He free hand cupping him, rolling his aching glands between those artful fingers. His vision bisected, his body bowed up into her touch. He might have said something, cursed, or muttered, or yelled.

His eyes were closed and the golden edge of the orgasm was so close he could almost taste it. The power of that release, so long unanswered, so long denied would like kill him. It was almost comic. To have survived what he'd survived and die from releasing the worlds longest case of blue balls.

He couldn't, shouldn't, but couldn't stop himself. He rolled her beneath him and thrust himself against her damp panties. Once, twice, three times he rubbed himself over her, over her, desperately, deeply wanted to shove himself inside of her and didn't. The tatters and shreds of her self control were all that kept him from pushing her panties to the side and pounding himself into her with a careless greed that would ruin them both.

He thrust himself against her, a mindless rutting beast, a fool and the shame of his hunger for her penetrated the foggy haze of his desire and doused it in great buckets of ice water. He stilled above her, panting, holding her there beneath him to watch the shift and shiver of that desire still dancing across her beautiful face. And it wasn't a lie, hadn't been a lie, was never a lie: he was desperately in love with her. It wasn't a soft word after all, it was the hardest word of all. And he couldn't do it, he couldn't move those panties and push himself inside of her. Wouldn't. When he knew she'd never feel the same.