A/N: This fic was created mostly as an excuse to make Wesker and Leon act catty to each other. It takes place in some nebulous time period between Resident Evil 4 and 5. Any future canoodling will be fully consensual, but not necessarily romantic. Yes, there is an OC in here. Relax, he only exists to serve as an antagonist and be mocked.
This is for you, everyone who ships this weird rarepair! Yes, all three of you.
Note that this story is also being posted on Archive of our Own under the same name. This version will be slightly censored in later chapters in order to conform to site guidelines, so head over there if you want the full version.
Chapter One: In Which Wesker is Thwarted by Co-op Puzzles
The dying screams of his men crackled over the earpiece, mixed with bursts of static and sharp commands to pull back, falling finally silent with a last crackle of interference. Wesker scowled in irritation. So much for his 'top men'; all that time wasted training and arming his handpicked favorites, and they hadn't even lasted 20 minutes. Good help was so hard to find these days. It seemed he would have to track Angelus down through this twisted fun house all by himself, without hope of backup. He missed Ada already.
Wesker had come to this castle in a remote corner of Europe on one of his rare errands for his current employer—one of them anyway—to put down a researcher that had developed the usual delusions of grandeur and gone rogue. Dr. Angelus Fitzpatrick, a minor genius who barely registered as a background blip on Wesker's radar before now, had made off with a substantial amount of company secrets before holing himself up in his personal fortress. Normally, Wesker would have turned down such a profitless mission, but Angelus also happened to have stolen a piece of research that was important to him.
He went to the nearest window and peered outside at the miles of desolate marsh which stretched out in every direction. Muddy water rippled around the island of firm ground on which the castle stood. The flooded causeway meant no ground access until the waters chose to recede again, which wouldn't have been a problem if Angelus hadn't invested so heavily in anti-aircraft artillery. Such a gem of a location the scientist had chosen for his den, Wesker thought with a sneer. And he had the nerve to call the place 'Arcadia'. Some paradise. The man had a fixation—but then, didn't they always?
Ages ago, some medieval idiot had gotten the bright idea of building a castle in a swamp. Who knew how many attempts had fallen over and sunk beneath the muck before they'd found a spot that worked. Like most buildings on unstable ground, the castle sank a few inches every year, and its successive owners had built on top of it to stay above waterline. The result was some truly dizzying architecture on a patchwork fortress of so many differing styles its seams were visible.
A distant moan shivered through the hall, drawing Wesker from his window-gazing. Angelus had not come here alone, though who these people had been and how they had gotten here, it was no longer possible to tell. One and all had been infected by a new variation of the tyrant virus long before Wesker arrived. So far they had posed him little trouble.
That was no reason to get sloppy. He had his gun at the ready as he made his way down the hall, alert for the lightest shuffle of a footstep in any nearby shadow. The air had cooled considerably now that the sun was down, and chill drafts swept through the halls along with the tormented moans of the infected.
A tile depressed under his foot with a faint click, and Wesker reacted on pure reflex, dashing forward moments before a column of spikes skewered the place he had just been standing. The castle was loaded with booby traps, some so devious and silent in their deployment that they caught even Wesker of guard. Recent additions to the castle, he suspected. Angelus had been planning this for much longer than any of them expected.
At the end of the hall, he came to a room whose sole purpose seemed to be the display of ornamental vases. A very large, very ornate gate barred access to the other exit, of the kind that screamed 'hello, I have a needlessly elaborate locking mechanism." Sure enough, the first step involved standing on a pressure plate, which opened a panel of the opposite wall, revealing a hidden crank. The crank, he assumed, would wind back the gate. Yet the wall shut itself back up if he left the pressure plate, and even his superhuman speed wasn't fast enough for him to reach the crank in time. The hidden alcove was just out of reach, almost as if its architect had known his top speed.
But perhaps he was getting too paranoid.
Frustrated, he seized the gate with his bare hands and wrenched at the bars. No matter how hard he pulled, he could bend it no further than a finger's width. This had clearly been designed with B.O.W.s in mind. Wesker folded his arms across his chest, leaned his back against the gate, and took a minute to glower. The rest of the room's furniture offered no help, the vases too lightweight and their pedestals too firmly secured to the floor. He would have to fetch something heavy.
As he doubled back through the drafty corridor, he was surprised by the racket of gunfire coming from the nearby assembly hall. So, someone was still alive after all. He followed the noise to the hall and slipped out onto the second-floor balcony.
"Your pets are looking pretty ragged, Angelus!" A slightly breathless male voice called from the ground floor. "Think you're not feeding them properly?" The man sounded so familiar, yet Wesker couldn't place a face to the voice. It wasn't any of his men.
"We'll see how mangy they are once they feast on your bones, government lapdog!" Angelus yelled back, his reedy voice as unmistakable as it was irritating. From Wesker's vantage point, he could just make out Angelus running up a staircase before a truly absurd number of spears blocked the path behind him, closing in a circular formation not unlike a lamprey mouth. Several deep, rumbling growls rose in concert down below him.
Wesker stepped forward and looked over the railing. Three B.O.W.s were converging on a lone gunman half their size, a fourth of their number lying motionless some feet away. Though Wesker had never encountered this particular B.O.W. in person, he recognized it from H.C.F.'s files. The SP-78, nicknamed 'Gougers', had been developed as upgraded Hunters. Each was twice the size of a man, and spliced together from a fusion of alligator, insect, and human DNA. They had the same defect many Tyrants did, where the epidermis couldn't cover the enlarged bones and musculature. Their mismatched arms ended in three bony claws, one long and two short. They liked to grasp prey by the head with their short claws and then use the long claw to puncture its skull, hence their nickname.
Angelus had twisted them further by adding malformed, skinless wings which braced against the floor in a bat-like posture, adding nothing to the creatures' combat potential. The B.O.W.s definitely couldn't fly with them. It took all of Wesker's professionalism to keep his eyes from rolling out of his head.
As for the unlucky prey caught between the three, Wesker recognized his face at once and could not contain his smirk. Well well, if it wasn't Ms. Wong's favorite pet. Leon Kennedy had seen better days. Splattered in blood and grime with his shirt ripped, he stood facing down the B.O.W.s with nothing but a pistol and a combat knife. Wesker planted his elbows on the railing and rested his chin on his hands, intent on watching the show.
The two in front shrieked forward, their grasping claws outstretched. Leon rolled to the side, neatly dodging both of them, and came up in time to fire two shells into the head of the third. The gunfire did not faze the Gouger, which screamed but kept on coming. This was the part where ordinary soldiers and survivors distinguished themselves. Wesker had seen it too often over the years: good men getting themselves cut down because they held their ground when they should have run, foolishly expecting a B.O.W. to go down when shot.
Leon had experience. He moved as soon as he finished firing, not waiting to see the impact of his bullets. It was a good call. The third Gouger would have smashed his head into the tile if he had been even a second slower.
As the battle went on, Wesker had to admit to himself that the agent had some skill. His shots were quick and precise, nailing vulnerable spots without fail. He ducked and weaved around the three agile B.O.W.s with practiced ease, occasionally resorting to fancy acrobatics to escape a strike. One Gouger went down, its abdomen ruptured, then a second fell after having too many holes blown through its torso. As he watched Leon shove his combat knife through the last Gouger at the juncture of spine and skull, Wesker began to understand just what Ada saw in this man.
Quiet descended, the final agonized shrieks fading into decaying echoes. Leon ripped his knife out and shook the blood off it, his face twisted with disgust. It occurred to Wesker that if one mechanism within the castle required two people to operate, there might be more. Leon would be more than heavy enough to hold down a pressure plate. He would also be useful in distracting and dispatching B.O.W.s. After all, this man was one of the rare survivors of Raccoon City. Surely he could last longer than half an hour.
"Not bad," Wesker called down.
Leon looked up from reloading with a start. He glanced around for a second before zeroing in on Wesker, and then his handsome face twisted in a sneer.
"Wesker," he spat, half curse, half question.
Wesker inclined his head in acknowledgment. He vaulted over the railing and landed gracefully on the bottom floor, weathering the impact without a flinch. Leon backed up a step and aimed his gun between Wesker's eyes, as if that peashooter could pose any real threat to him.
"So, you're the man who keeps sending all my best agents haywire," Wesker said. "You've caused quite a lot of trouble for me in the past."
"I do my best," Leon replied, eyebrows quirking upward. "What are you here for?"
"The same thing as you, I imagine. Angelus has become an unstable element, and I'm here to remove him." Wesker approached at a steady pace, his arms lax at his sides. It wouldn't do to appear too threatening. He was not eager to repeat the experience of digging bullets out of his face.
"Doing your own dirty work for a change? What, is no one willing to work for you anymore?"
"I have plenty of willing soldiers. The problem is quality. I'm afraid the team I brought has already gotten themselves wiped out." Wesker came to a stop a few feet in front of the agent, hands crossed behind his back. "And you? Do you actually have backup this time?"
Leon's silence was all the answer he needed. Wesker chuckled.
"Perhaps we can help each other."
"You're joking," Leon replied, flat as old champagne. He looked like he would rather eat raw sewage than comply, and Wesker found his mood brightening already.
"Normally it would be no trouble for me to squash an insect like Angelus. However, you may have noticed that some of the quirks of this building's architecture require more than one pair of hands to bypass."
"Yeah. I know what you mean," Leon admitted. "I was thinking of bringing along a friend who can't try to shoot me." He waved a hand at one of the dead B.O.W.s.
"If you're happy dragging that all the way around the castle, then I'll leave you to it," Wesker said, his lips quirking at the mental image.
Leon sighed, his jaw visibly clenched. He dared to take his eyes off Wesker for a moment, sizing up the nearest Gouger corpse. Wesker waited patiently as Leon came to terms with the obvious flaw in his plan.
"I don't want you anywhere near my back," Leon said at last. Almost as an afterthought, his gun dipped towards the ground.
"Don't you trust me, Leon?"
"Like a knife in the back," Leon muttered. "Angelus went that way," he said, pointing with the hilt of his combat knife at the spear barrier blocking off the stairs. "Looks like he cribbed some of his architecture from another rural castle I know."
Wesker examined the barrier and pounded it with a fist experimentally, making Leon jump. The metal did not even dent. Clearly that barrier wouldn't be bypassed until they found the proper keys. There were three suspicious indentations in the surrounding walls which looked like they needed to hold something.
"I see. Then it seems the only option is to continue heading towards the east wing. There's a gate in the way that will require both of us."
"I think I've seen that. On the second floor, right?" At Wesker's nod, Leon pointed to a door on their left. "This way leads to the other stairs."
"If you want to take the long way," Wesker said.
"You know a shortcut?"
Wesker held out his hand, lips twitching up at the corners. Leon looked at his hand, then back up to his eyes, uncomprehending. Wesker just waited for the penny to drop. When it did, Leon visibly recoiled.
"It's—not that far," he said.
"And you have to pass through the hall with the sawblades, if I remember right," Wesker said.
Leon glowered at Wesker's hand. If he chose to reject Wesker's 'shortcut,' it was no skin off his nose. This was only a small test to feel out how much his new partner could be persuaded to trust him.
In fact, Leon surprised him when he set his jaw and came closer, not taking the hand but communicating his assent regardless. Chris would never have agreed, even if the alternative required swimming through a sewer infested with crocodiles. Pleased, Wesker wound an arm around Leon's waist and then lifted the man as if he weighed no more than a toddler. Leon inhaled sharply and seized the cloth of Wesker's shirt. His flesh felt cool under Wesker's fever-hot hand, even through the light barrier of clothing.
Once his grip was secure, Wesker leaped back up to the 2nd floor balcony as easily as he'd jumped down. Leon all but shoved himself out of Wesker's arms as soon as they landed on solid floor, stumbling in his haste. Wesker chuckled.
"This way, then." He opened the door and waved for Leon to proceed him. Leon didn't move. They stood staring at each other for a solid minute, Leon refusing to turn his back to the older man, Wesker testing his patience.
Finally, Leon sighed and said, "Let's just walk side by side."
Wesker smirked and took the lead, sending the very clear message that he did not consider Leon a threat. After a moment of hesitation, Leon's footsteps followed him. Despite having Wesker's exposed back right in front of him, the agent didn't try anything. Wesker was almost disappointed.
"I'll step on the plate. You can get the crank," Leon said once they'd reached the room with the gate.
"Fine," Wesker replied. Was Leon afraid he would step off the plate and let the wall close on his 'partner'? How cute.
The crank turned easily under his hands, the gate stuttering only a little when the bent bars tried to retract into the wall. The mechanism clicked to a halt, and the way was left clear. The room had no other tricks waiting for them.
"Shall we?" Wesker asked.
"After you," Leon said.
The newly exposed doors opened into a circular room with a few antique chairs and a large stone statue of a deer. A body was nailed to the wall behind the statue, dripping blood on blue carpet. Wesker glanced over the corpse for signs it might reanimate and summarily dismissed it. The statue's base had a brief poem inscribed in it, a half-gibberish verse about the sweet inevitability of death. Standard fare, really.
"It's like all these nutcases use the same shitty interior decorator," Leon muttered beside him.
There were a few carriers staggering around the dark corners, green ooze dripping from their exposed brain matter. It was an odd mutation with no practical applications whatsoever, though the processes behind its appearance intrigued Wesker nonetheless. It seemed that carriers infected by the T-Arcadia acquired 'Licker' traits very early. He'd have to check their tongues to be sure. They were somewhat faster than the garden variety zombie, and prone to leaping suddenly across rooms. They still weren't much of a threat, and between Leon and himself they had the area cleared without hassle.
One more long hall full of open windows, billowing curtains, and shuffling carriers later, they came to three doors and a staircase leading downwards.
"I'll check downstairs," Leon said. "You can stay up here."
"So anxious to part ways? Very well." Wesker reached into one of the pockets on his tactical vest and pulled out a spare earpiece. "If you require my assistance, you can contact me with this."
"Fine," Leon said, accepting the earpiece. "And likewise, I guess."
Leon replaced his own ear piece with Wesker's, then jogged down the staircase as quickly as he could without looking like he was outright running away. Wesker smirked once the agent was out of view.
This partnership promised to be entertaining, if nothing else.
End Note: So begins a horrible not-quite-friendship.