- Where have you been all my life?-

Whispering Pines

Jill stepped into the bedroom to her left. There was a pile of his ruined clothes on the floor. This had been where he'd gone to shower and change. She was curious why he hadn't come to her bedroom. And then she saw Ben asleep in the bed.

The little boy was in an oversized red t-shirt and curled up in the mounds of soft white blankets. He had a down comforter tucked over him. He had a fat teddy bear tucked into his arms. Where had the bear come from?

Jill leaned on the door frame, pressing her cheek there to watch him snore. His coppery skin was dark amongst the pale sheets. If she'd had the baby she'd carried, she'd have an eight-year-old child now. Ben was close to five if she was to guess his age. Her hand lowered and pressed against her belly. Flat, smooth, lean, and toned – it was a warrior's belly. Would she trade it all to get back the child she'd lost?

She thought of Chris. She'd come back from Africa a different woman. He'd tried to close the distance between them for a while. But it was too far. The time was too great. The pain was too large. They'd parted best friends. She had no regrets there about saying goodbye to him. He'd focused on the fight and she on her recovery. She'd sidestepped the battles for the administrative role. She took small missions: mostly fetch and carry. But she built an empire while Chris raged against the world. It was how they had ripped the B.S.A.A. from a disgrace to a dynasty.

Best friends against the world.

But sometimes, she thought of the child they'd lost. Sometimes, she wondered what the child would be like. His dark hair, her smile. Would it play piano? Chris was hopeless, of course. Hopeless. But it had always been her first real love. Before boys, before books, before knives and the fight…she'd loved the piano. Her useless father hadn't invested much, but he'd given her that at least. He'd given her the piano.

She turned from watching Ben sleep and moved toward the stairs. She was three steps down when she heard it…the piano. She froze on the stairs. Her hand lifted and spread, settling against her breastbone to feel the rapid thunder of her heart.

Even before turning the corner on the stairs, Jill knew who it would be playing.

And there he was. Shirtless in a pair of gray pajama bottoms, he sat on the bench and stroked the piano like it was his lover. He tickled the keys and coaxed her to give her music flawlessly. Leon touched the piano with such skill, such precise and perfect ability; Jill felt her heart stutter and drop.

She'd known him for three days now.

She'd known him all her life.

The boy and the music were the girl and the music. She stood so close to him...and yearned.

This was what she'd be giving up to get back the life she'd lost with Chris. This man. This moment. The boy up the stairs. She didn't know what that life looked like. But she knew what the last three days had looked like—strength, humor, passion…and love.

At the piano, he poured himself into the refrain of the song. It was lilting and soft. It was haunting and beautiful. It poured from his hands like the grief that permeated his body. Here in this house where Adam had played. Here in this house where Leon had come so many times growing up. It was all that remained of the man who'd been like a father to him. All that remained of the man who'd burned in that city.

How did he let go of that? How did he say goodbye?

Aloud, he whispered, "I'm so sorry. I'll avenge you...I swear to god I will."

She knew he was hurting. It was all over him. She only knew she was going to take the pain from him now. It was time. He'd taken hers without even trying. Now was when they healed each other. Now.

Jill moved down the stairs toward him. The sun had started to rise beyond the trees that were so beautifully exposed in the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the main room. It cast the dampness of his blonde hair with red. He looked strawberry blonde as he roved over the keys and spilled that haunting melody around them. His back was strewn with scars and wounds, and bruises. His face was a little swollen, a little bruised, and a little tired.

The circles under his eyes told the story of a man who'd pushed, fought, and nearly died to get them here. A hero was Leon Kennedy…and a wizard on the piano. His biceps bunched and flexed with each movement of his hands on the delicate keys. He had a tattoo of his R.P.D. badge on his back left shoulder. One day…he'd served on the force for one whole day...and he'd branded the image on his body forever.

Loyal was Leon Kennedy…and a maestro on the piano.

And maybe she'd have stopped and left him alone to his moment and his music...but he closed his eyes while he played, and his beautiful face was etched with grief and regret. It was marked in the lines on his skin and beard growth on his cheeks. It was in his breathing and his moving and his song. The grief was in that melody. Haunting and beautiful and raw. It bled from him like poison from a wound.

And she didn't want him to hurt anymore. Not anymore.

She hadn't realized she was moving toward him. She didn't think he had either until she slid over him and settled on his lap, straddling him. What really amazed her was that he didn't hesitate and didn't stop playing, even as she put her weight on him.

His ear laid against her chest to listen to her heart, but he kept playing with muscle memory, practice, and sheer talent. Another check in the column of things she liked about him. He was unflappable, and so unpredictable, and so immensely diverse. How could she have guessed the depths of him?

She stroked his hair and yearned for him.

Leon thought maybe this was Adam's answer. Perhaps this was how he said goodbye. Maybe it was letting go of what you couldn't control and living for what you could. Perhaps it was saying goodbye even though you weren't ready. And pushing toward what waited beyond the pain. Maybe saying goodbye was just something you couldn't do...alone.

For the first time, he wasn't alone in grieving it.

He turned his face and kissed her over the smooth skin of her breastbone. He kissed her heart, letting the feel of her fill up the sadness and make it just a little easier to breathe.

Jill put her mouth to the side of his neck and licked a wet, smooth line from collarbone to pec. Her nails raked gently through the feathering of hair that decorated him there. She pressed warm, moist kisses over his chest's rigid scope and breadth, delighting in the muscled strength. Her teeth teased at the line of his clavicle and the bundle of scars on one shoulder. She feathered her mouth against the bruises on his neck and nipped at one delicate ear.

She skimmed her hands down the ridged and great planes of his stomach, marveling at the muscles there, plenty to tantalize without being overly defined. He wasn't ripped out like a bodybuilder, even though it would have been easy for his body to lean that way. He was simply muscular, strong, with a suggestion of definition beneath the warm, wonderful skin that turned into goosebumps beneath her teasing nails.

Her mouth turned, kissing smooth and soft, up his neck and jaw. He hadn't shaved in almost a week, and the hair had gone from a shadow to the beginnings of an interesting beard. Not stubbly, it had passed into soft, and it met her lips sweetly as she crossed his jaw to his cheek.

She kissed the tip of his nose, still cool from the outside, and both of his closed eyelids. And her thumbs traced his soft and wonderful mouth. She nuzzled his growing beard with her nose, loving the tickle of the silky hair.

"How long until it's a full beard?"

Her voice was soft in the quiet against the backdrop of music from his still playing hands. Eyes closed, he answered softly, "Won't be much longer. Hasn't taken me longer than a few weeks since I was about fifteen. Doesn't grow in the way you think. More goatee than beard. Why?"

"I think I'd like to see it on you. Will you let it go for me?"

He stopped playing, and his eyes opened. This close, they were startlingly blue, almost the shocking blue of ice and winter sky. They were so close that their noses brushed as he answered.

"Yes."

She brushed her nose against his, once, twice. He didn't move, not a muscle, as she cupped his face; ran her thumbs along his cheeks.

Jill brushed their mouths together, so soft, so smooth. She whispered, "We should get some sleep. We should go upstairs and get some sleep."

His hands picked back up the song; his eyes held hers, unblinking. "We could do that." He craned his head and pressed his mouth to hers. "Will you come to bed with me, Jill Valentine?"

Jesus.

Her fingers twisted into the hair at the base of his neck. "Is there a woman alive that would say no to that?"

He looked so solemn somehow, and his eyes were painfully beautiful. She couldn't and wouldn't understand that the man looking at her was thinking the same exact thing. To the untrained eye, they were two people enraptured with each other.

He murmured, "Probably, yeah."

And Jill whispered, "She's a fucking idiot."

For Leon Kennedy, there was a defining moment when he knew she was what he'd been searching for all along. This woman protected and pushed and survived. This woman who had been used, abused and tortured still knew how to grab on, hold on, and keep fighting. This woman that stole his breath with her kisses and his heart with her laughter. This woman...she was what came after the fight. That day in Tall Oaks, he'd looked up and saw her...and he'd known. This is what came after.

"Jill..." He brought her mouth to him to kiss her. The tender touch of lips smoothed, soothed, and aroused. He scooped her wet hair back from her face to see her. To really see her. The pale skin, the eye like shimmery sea water within the glass, the pink lips of a perfect mouth. She was all that pale blonde hair and high cheekbones with a pert little nose and delicate ears. His hands skimmed the tempting curve of her collarbone and traced along the hollow of her throat. She cupped his face and held it as he slid his palms down to roll the weight of her breasts within them in that little nightgown she wore.

Those eyes of hers blurred, filling with softness and need. And he repeated it against her mouth, "Jill..."

Their lips skimmed, sank together, and blended. She whispered, "Take me to bed, Leon Kennedy. I need you."

It was the right answer.

And the first time in his life, he felt the same for a woman. Ever. He needed her. They needed each other.

The answer to the pain inside of him was in her. The relief from it was in her. And in them.

Before she could do more than blink, he lifted her and carried her to the stairs. Strong, she mused; he didn't even strain under her weight as he carried her up them, clasped around his front like a monkey. Her legs looped at his waist, her hands caught at his face. And she was kissing him now, smooth and wet, and all tongue. It was all tongue as he carried her into the room she'd showered in and spilled her back on the bar beside the door.

She opened her legs wider so he could shift between them to rub his groin on her. Jill made a sound of desperate need. This was nearly painfully slick and smooth. It wasn't fucking. What was it?

But, she knew that answer, of course, she did…it was making love.

His hands slid up the outside of her thighs. The nightgown spilled around him.

For Leon, he only knew one thing. She was it. She was the only goddamn thing that made sense at that moment. The only thing he wanted. She was his Achilles heel, saving grace, and the only hope he had left. He needed her. And her face? It said she needed him too.

Whatever else was true…that was the only truth he needed.

One hand slid up her chest; it curved over the scars from the device she'd worn for so long. He gripped the base of her throat in his hand, so gentle, so desperate. Jill leaned into the touch to take his mouth. She gave him the taste of her tongue for it as he murmured her name there.

She felt him shift, and her eyes flew open at his brush between her thighs.

She whispered, "Oh my god…." And opened for him.

Her body bowed; shock and pleasure speared into her at the first hard thrust, the slap of skin musical, magical, like the notes from the piano before. This was its own kind of music; primitive and pure. She could see their reflection in the mirror beyond; she could watch his body, with his pants still clinging to him as he pushed himself inside her. Her nightgown tangled, her long legs lifting to wrap about him.

The music of their bodies spread from groin to ground; she could see and feel herself as the orgasm built in a red, red rush inside of her. He grabbed her hands and held them above her head, drawing the line of her body out on the bar beneath him. She lifted, meeting each thrust of his body with her own. His free hand shifted, slid, and cupped against her groin. His thumb gave two careless sweeps across the apex of her body, and she burst, her body becoming blood and pleasure and light.

She bucked, bowing upward to the thrill of his touch, even as the first burst split her skin and seared her bones. But she didn't wait, couldn't. She pushed and spilled him backward to sit on the stool. She slapped down on his lap again.

She loved the burst of surprise and pleasure that speared across his face as she took him into her, her thighs lifting and lowering, expertly using him. Jill milked him, now holding his hands behind his back as she did. Thrilled at the power play, Leon tested her strength and was delighted to discover he had to work to get his hands free.

Slim or not, she was no fragile little thing. He freed his hands and cupped her buttocks beneath the nightgown, lifting and lowering her on him faster, faster, even as he surged up to meet the push and pull of her incredible wetness atop him. She grabbed handfuls of his hair, the soft cotton nightgown settling around their merging bodies. The sweats were rough on her thighs, and the material abraded the sweet softness of her as she bounced, as he lifted her.

Undone, Leon looped an arm around her waist and picked her up quickly, without straining. Still inside her, he walked himself out of his pants as he moved; she wrapped her legs around his flanks, still trying to take him in and out of her. He thought he'd die right there from it.

Her back slapped against the mattress of his bed and stole her breath from its force. He braced her there and shifted, pushing her knees farther open. His hand quested down again, traced the moist heat of her even as he pulled back, and then watched himself push inside of her again. Tantalized by the sight of it, he flicked his thumb back and forth over the bud of pleasure at the entrance of her body. It was tight and engorged, hungry for attention; he flicked it in time with his slow, lazy thrusts.

Jill shuddered and tried to force him back into a wild ride, but he held her there with a hand on her groin, teasing her. He nearly pulled out of her and then slid back in, watching her eyes lose focus. Jill felt a slight panic at the look on his face. What was that? But, of course, she knew that answer too.

That was what love looked like.

He pressed into her body and rocked her soul. His thumb delved, slid, and she gasped. Her hands grabbed his face and held it. Her back bowed. He shifted her around and slid the straps of her nightgown down. And then he put his mouth to her needy breasts.

She watched the crown of him there. He suckled, laved, loved...and she was done. She was done for him. She gasped, "Leon…god…."

And it was probably the same anyway.

She came around him. She came for him. She shivered and gasped and spilled. And she knew she'd probably make him pie any god damn time he asked her to.

His eyes were closed as he lifted his head and kept sliding in and out of her milking body. She sucked him in; she gripped his back and grabbed his face. And quivered, clenching, and shaking…she whispered, "Look at me."

And so he did, slowly. There was such pain in those eyes, such sadness. There was a great, dark well of grief and rage in this man. It was so thick, wide, and strong that it threatened to pull, push, prod, and destroy him. She'd known it. She'd seen it. She could relate to it because she had her own. Her own demons to battle. She'd survived it, and so would he. How could she show him that the darkness lied? That it wouldn't be the only thing that waited there for him? How could she show him the way out of it?

But, of course, she knew that answer too.

Her thumbs traced his lips, once, twice. And she pulled him down to her.

And Jill murmured, "I think I'm falling in love with you, Leon."

And the love rolled wet and sweet into his pain, absorbed it, destroyed it, and sent it away on a cresting wave of wonderous warmth.

Her mouth pressed against his, soft. She watched his eyes flutter, hold, and he shuddered above her. He drew back, studied her, and skimmed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. And his biceps bunched as he leaned down in a push-up motion and answered the press of her mouth with his own.

One tiny touch, followed by another, and a third. Jill felt the panic gnaw at her guts and fought against it; she slid her hands up his shoulders to cup the back of his neck. She pulled him down to her, and their mouths met smooth and silky, testing each other, tasting each other. It was explorative, almost chaste, and his flavor was better than anything she'd ever tasted.

He went hilt deep into her needy body once more, rocked them both with it, and spilled there with a groan of sound that shivered softly between them. She clutched him, gasping, shaking, and feeling him in her with each pulse of his completion. Complete was the right word. Here, at this moment, they were complete together.

With a sigh, Jill felt him shift, slide his arm around her shoulders, and roll to the side. The kiss deepened, hardened, and turned wet and needy. She felt the warm weight of his tongue tease and retreat, tempting her to the same fate. The brush of his beard excited her, and she gave in and let his wash fill her.

He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her until he was out of air, and she was swollen from it, her lips damp and happy.

He held her face in his hands and met her eyes. "Jill." He said out loud because he needed to hear her name.

And Jill whispered, "Leon." Because it was almost like listening to his music on that piano.

They didn't sleep there. They lay together, staring at each other in the rising dawn. Their hands traced and curved, their eyes held and merged. They both knew they should talk about what came next. They should speak of Adam and Tall Oaks, Chris and Edonia, the C-Virus, and the fight...they should talk about all of that. But they didn't. They held on, watching each other.

They'd known each other for three days.

They'd been looking for each other all their lives.

Jill said softly, "Where have you been all my life, Leon Kennedy?"

And he didn't crack a joke. He didn't quip an answer. He just said, "I've been looking for you, Jill Valentine. Don't you know that?"

And they shifted together to hold on. Her face in his neck, his on her shoulder. When the sweet softness of it spilled across them and lulled them toward release, they shifted without a word. She righted her nightgown, and he slipped back on his sleeping pants.

They moved into the hallway, and their hands found each other to slide together. He tugged her into him once more to hold her. He just held her for a long moment with their cheeks beside each other and one hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat. And then they climbed into bed.

His hand skimmed her cheek. Hers slid over his bicep. And both of their arms curled and rested over the little boy that lay between them.

They didn't let him sleep alone.

Jill said, "I don't want to sleep. If I sleep, when we wake up...this? This is done."

"Why is it done?"

They were whispering. His face, she thought, was so soft. She'd known him for three days. She was in love with him. She could feel it in her fucking bones.

"We have to fight. We have to fight on. This isn't done. But I want it to be done, Leon. I want it to be done so I can just..."

Their eyes held now. Leon laid his cheek on Ben's head and stole her heart. He finished the thought for her, "So we can just be together. So you can start raising this little boy between us."

Jill nodded quietly, gently. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm starting to think I might be done with the fight. Finally. After this? I think I retire from it."

Leon was nodding. He cupped her face and skimmed her cheek with his thumb. "I was thinking of that when you found me in that cafe, Jill. That maybe I was done. Maybe I was done with the fight. So...maybe that's what happens when we finish this. Maybe I retire too."

She eyed him, breathing low and soft. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. And maybe we raise this kid together."

Her breath caught and held. "Leon...we've known each other three days. Are you sure?"

He laughed a little now, eyes twinkling. "Honey, we've been inches from each other for fifteen years. Three days or not, you're what I want, Jill. This kid right here? He saved my life more than once. He's alone, and he needs a Dad. My Dad? Utter fucking asshat. Stupid. Senator shithead type. I was raised by a nanny. I want to teach this kid right here to ride a bike and throw a ball...and bake a pie."

Jill laughed a little, misty-eyed. "You can't bake."

"Nope. Not even a little. But I can love a woman that does."

She caught her breath a little. "Leon..."

"Yeah. I'm saying it. I love you. It's there. Three days or not. Say yes. And let's do this. People like us, Jill, don't need more time. There's no time but now. This is it. It's all we got. Say yes."

"What am I saying yes to?" She laughed a little and was nuts for him. "You asking me to marry you? After three days?"

"Yeah, I am." No hesitance. Just like that. He lobbed it between them like a grenade. It obliterated her and left her breathless. It was him on the piano, in the cafe, and upside-down kissing her. It was him. Had it always been him? Was that why she'd never found her happiness and kept it before? Was it always going to be him?

Leon laughed a little now, "I said I wasn't the kid type. I said I wasn't the marrying type. I lied. I just hadn't found you yet. Say yes. Let me keep you. You fill me up, Jill, challenge me, and kiss me in the worst possible situations...and you make me laugh when I want to sit down on the floor and cry. Say yes."

Was there any other answer but that? Jill whispered, "Is there a woman alive that would say no to that?"

And now he laughed, feeling hope in his guts that he hadn't felt since the world had caught fire around them. "Probably."

"She's a fucking idiot. And it's her loss. Yes. I love you. I probably loved you the moment we went upside down and dangled there. Three days is more than enough time. The world came into being in seven, they say."

Leon cupped her face. "My world? It came into being in three, apparently."

And that's why he was the one for her. That was why. Puns and humor...and that. What romance swirled in him. What love. Click. Yep. She loved him. It was done. They'd been looking for each other all their lives.

Repleted, content, and thrilled to have each other, they slipped into sleep together now, holding on...and crazy for each other.