With all the hype around RE9 going around, I suddenly decided to get into the RE series. I’m not much of a horror gamer, but the protagonists in these games are so hot I’ll risk it. XD (Jill is very high on my “I’m not really gay, buuut-” list). I finished watching RE2R a couple weeks ago and immediately needed to write this hurt/comfort fic. At the end of one of the playthrough videos I watched, there was an episode of Umbrella Chronicles showing how Ada got out of RC which began with a cutscene explaining that Claire went on looking for Chris, and Leon and Sherry got picked up by the government… but maybe that could be like a day later? And first they can have a rest in a hotel? They deserve it. I don’t think I’ve quite got the characters right, but here is my fluffy offering for the fandom anyway.
Funnily enough, I ship almost everything shippable in the RE series, except no Wesker ships. I’ve watched RE1R, RE2R, RE3, RE3R, RE4R, RE0, and RECV. I did not like RE0, but I would be interested in a CVR; Steve looks like a short un-Scottish version of Reid.
Rated T/M-ish for language and compromising positions. (This isn’t even the spicy version tho)
Eventually they’d been picked up by someone in a pick-up truck who took them to the nearest town, which was a godsend. Claire had had a couple granola bars left in her pockets, and Leon had half a bottle of bottled water, but all three of them were starving and thirsty, walking along that desolate rural road. The car driver looked in amazement at their worn-out state, Leon’s bloodied bandage, Leon and Claire smelling like the sewers, and all three of them covered in dirt and sweat and grime, and said they could ride in the back of his pick-up.
They stopped at the first cheap hotel they saw, because none of them had slept properly in 36 hours and they’d been fighting and running for their lives for at least eight of those hours and they were tired. Claire stepped into their shared room, two queen beds, and finally relaxed. She wanted to just throw herself on the bed and not move for several days, but Sherry needed her to be strong a little longer. “Shower time! Sherry, would you like to go first?” Leon did not relax, going to the window and checking outside, the window frame… tactically analyzing the defensibility of the room. She didn’t blame him.
“Okay!” Sherry said. “Um, but… all I have to wear is just the same clothes, and they’re pretty dirty…”
True, they’d be just putting dirt back on over clean skin. “Maybe we can wash our clothes in the sink and wear towels until they’re dry…”
There was a knock at the door behind them. It was the guy at the reception. “Um, hi, I just wanted to offer you some complimentary bottled water and spare pyjamas… and we can wash your clothes if you like…”
“Oh, would you?” Claire said gratefully. She and Leon both smelled like sewage. The hotel might be run-down-looking, but its manager was kind. “Yes, please.”
“Right, just bring them down to reception when you’ve got your laundry all together,” the guy said. “Oh, and I’ve got toothbrushes and hairbrushes for you.”
“You’re the best,” Claire said.
“Thanks very much,” Leon said.
The guy left the pyjamas with them and after everyone had guzzled a bottle of water each, Claire shooed Sherry into the shower. Leon collapsed on his ass on the floor in the entryway and started getting his boots off.
“How’s your shoulder?” Claire asked quietly, kicking her own boots off and going to help with his second boot. Each of them was moving stiffly and creakily.
Leon allowed himself a wince. “Hurts. I’ll change the bandages while I shower. …I might need some help putting new ones on.”
“For sure,” Claire said. “Just let me know.”
“You didn’t get badly hurt?”
“No,” she said. She’d been lucky, probably insanely so. A few scrapes and bruises from falling off things, rolling across concrete, having to wrench herself free from a few zombies, but she hadn’t been shot. Or bitten. “Who shot you?” None of them had wanted to talk about what happened the night before, and Claire still didn’t want to if Sherry was around, unless Sherry started it. But Sherry was in the shower, humming to herself; she wouldn’t hear.
“Annette Birkin,” he said. “She was shooting at Ada, and I pushed her out of the way.” He flexed his arm and winced again. “Hurts like a bitch… but I needed to, you know, still do things. Shoot my shotgun. Climb ladders. Try to stop Ada from…” He stopped and swallowed hard, blinking fast.
His boots were well off by now, they were just sitting talking on the floor. Claire leaned forward and hugged him. This mysterious woman… had died, and Leon was a wreck over it. And she could believe Annette would shoot at them… she’d been weirdly hostile to Claire until Claire proved that she just wanted to take care of Sherry.
Even with the hug he couldn’t let himself go fully. He held her, and she could feel him trembling, but he was holding himself back. And at that moment, Sherry’s water turned off.
Leon let go of her and turned to unstrapping his body armour. “You should take the next shower.”
“All right,” Claire said, and picked up the next set of pyjamas.
Sherry appeared in the doorway, her hair washed, face scrubbed, looking pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. “Okay, I’m done.”
“Feel better?” Claire said cheerfully. “Good. I’m going next, hope you didn’t use all the hot water.”
“I didn’t!” Sherry said. “I’m kind of hungry, is there anything to eat?”
“Ah… I’ll find something,” Leon said, getting to his feet, dropping his bulletproof vest on the hall table.
By ‘kind of hungry’ Sherry was being polite. They were all ravenous. But Claire hopped in the shower and gratefully let warm water sluice down her body, making generous use of the complimentary soap and shampoo. She could probably take a minute to put bandaids on some of the worse scrapes, too. She’d save the real bandages for Leon. God, the warmth felt so good, soothing the aches in her overworked muscles. She just sat down and cried quietly in the shower for a minute.
She came out of the bathroom, clean, bright, and refreshed, and found the other two wolfing down chicken nuggets and fries from a gigantic take-out bag at the room’s minidesk. “Save any for me?”
Leon pushed a carton at her. “Of course. Enjoy.” He got up, licking his fingers from his last nugget, and grabbed the last set of pyjamas. “Be right back.”
Claire descended on the nuggets like a flesh-addicted zombie… too soon? Anyway, it was perfect, salt and fat and protein, and she needed it NOW. She finished at about the same time as Sherry. “Hey, do you wanna watch some TV?” It was getting dark outside, and although they had closed the curtains and turned on all the lights, she could feel anxiety creeping up inside her. A fun kid’s program would help dispell it long enough for her to sleep later.
“Sure,” Sherry said. “I hope they have Mr. Rogers. I watched a lot of that while my parents were working after school.”
“We’ll see what we can find,” Claire said, and found the TV remote. She plumped herself down on one of the beds and beckoned to Sherry. “C’mere. We’ll watch it together.” Sherry snuggled into her shoulder and together they stared at the TV as Claire flipped through the channels to find the kids’ shows. “I’m sorry for cursing so much, by the way.”
“It’s okay,” Sherry said. “I’ve heard those words before. And, y’know, it kind of makes me feel grown-up, that you don’t hold back around me.” She gave Claire a little grin.
Claire grinned back. “That’s good. If I can’t curse at the zombies, when can I curse?”
“Yeah,” Sherry said. “Fuck the zombies!”
Claire giggled. “Okay but don’t say that in front of strangers, they’ll think I’m a bad influence.”
“Sure,” Sherry said, and turned back to the TV.
Leon’s water turned off, but he didn’t come out, and after a minute, she heard him hesitantly calling her through the closed door. “Claire?”
“I should go see what he needs,” Claire said to Sherry. “Probably needs help with his bandages.”
“Okay,” Sherry said, and scooted to let her off the bed, then wrapped herself in the blanket and hugged a pillow. She was so small…
Claire pushed open the bathroom door and found Leon sitting on the floor, holding fresh gauze over his wound, which was still slowly bleeding. Painkillers were sitting on the counter; he’d been popping them pretty regularly all day, and new bandages were lying neatly beside them. The old bandages, soaked through with filthy blood and grime, were in the trash. “I need… some help.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Claire said. She could see the disinfectant nearby. Also, goddamn he was hot without his shirt on. Except he also was covered in bruises, especially big black ones in the middle of his chest, flaring across his back, circling his neck that she hadn’t seen behind the collar of his uniform shirt. She thought she’d been pretty bruised, but he’d been pummelled and throttled. “Is the bullet still in there? Maybe we should go to the hospital.”
Leon shook his head. He looked exhausted. “Maybe tomorrow. Right now I just want to…” Pretend everything was normal? Fair enough. He might be more comfortable without a bullet in his shoulder, but that was his prerogative and anyway they didn’t have transportation and hospitals were uncomfortable in other ways. She sat down beside him and began to wind the bandages around his arm and shoulder, trying to ignore his pecs and abs. Or the bruises and cuts and scrapes. He’d been through the wringer, that was for sure. The bandages weren’t as neat as his previous set, it wasn’t like she practiced this kind of thing, but it would hold the gauze on and hopefully he wouldn’t bleed through his pyjamas.
When she finished, he began to reach out to her, and hesitated.
“You want another hug?” she asked. He bit his lip and nodded a tiny nod. Carefully, to not jar any of his injuries, she leaned forward to hug him, and his arms went around her waist and pulled her close.
“Thanks for helping me,” he whispered, his voice strained.
“No problem,” she said. He was shaking worse than before, on the verge of snapping. She ran her fingers through his hair, stroking a hand soothingly across his back, and he gave a sob into her neck.
“Sorry, I-”
“Shhh,” she said. “It’s all right. You’re not alone.”
“I couldn’t save… I couldn’t save anyone. Everyone was dead. I joined the police to protect people, but I could barely save myself…”
“You’re just one person,” she said. “Dropped in the middle of this. Almost everyone was already dead before we even got here. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”
“Even so, I…”
“You saved me,” she told him. “Remember? At the gas station. I could have died right at the start of this mess without you.”
He made a little whimper; she couldn’t tell if he was accepting her point or rejecting it. He kissed her neck, shyly at first, and then more roughly, desperately. The next thing she knew she was flat on her back with Leon over her, kissing her mouth passionately, and she tasted tears.
It made her cry again too, and she kissed him back, clutching him close to her, his warm, firm body, his soft lips, taking comfort from him as he took comfort from her. The horrors she’d seen, how close to death she’d been so many times, the outrageous things she’d had to do not because she was brave but because she had lost all sense of proportion and she would die if she didn’t do them, knowing the only way out was through… She had stared her mortality in the face for too long and she needed something alive to counter it. And probably so did he.
And if being alive meant having sex with Leon, a guy she’d known for 24 hours… Well, he was hot, and he was about the same age as her, and if Chris had a problem with her banging one of his coworkers that was his problem. The solace they could find in each other’s bodies well outweighed the concerns. He kissed tears from her cheeks while they fell from his own eyes. His hair was so silky between her fingers. What conditioner did he use? Wait, he’d washed his hair, it was still damp, so this feel must be all-natural!? Not fair.
Oh, but Sherry… They’d have to be very quiet, and very quick, if they did it at all; she didn’t want her to feel like she’d been left alone. “Sherry,” she whispered between kisses.
Leon paused with one hand up the back of her shirt, as she arched her back to let him. His fingers were warm but the skin was rough. “We should go back to her.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to leave her alone too long.” Claire gave him a teary smile. “It’s not you. You’re really hot, and we both made it out, survived something that no one else will understand, and if we were alone…”
Leon’s soft laugh puffed against her cheek. “Yeah. I get it. But she’s been through just as much as we have. You two can take the one bed…”
“We’ll all take the same bed,” Claire said firmly, as he let her up off the floor. “None of us should be alone, and that includes you.” And she’d feel safer if he was within arm’s reach during the night.
“All right,” he said, putting his pyjama shirt on. She helped him pack up the medical supplies, and went back to Sherry, while Leon took their dirty clothes and ran down to the front desk with them.
“Hey,” she said, grabbing all the pillows off the other bed and tossing them onto the bed where Sherry was huddled, watching a cartoon. “We’re all going to be in one bed, is that okay? I don’t want to make you sleep alone, but I’d feel safer if Leon was there too.”
“Oh, sure,” Sherry said, with a grin. She sure wanted them to get together, didn’t she. Claire got on Sherry’s right side, and Leon came back and sat down on Sherry’s left side – so when they lay down together, his injured shoulder would be on top.
They watched together for a bit, but Claire soon found her eyes closing. They hadn’t turned off the lights, and didn’t intend to. Even the thoughts of the huge grey zombie prying open the elevator doors in front of them – and then getting impaled and tossed aside by William – could not keep her from sleep now. She slid down in the bed until she was horizontal, and felt Sherry wriggle to follow her, until she could tuck the little girl under her chin.
She was almost asleep when she heard Leon turn off the TV and felt him lie down next to them, pulling the blankets securely over them all, and then draping his arm over both of them. It was heavy and comforting, and she hoped to goodness that he’d be able to sleep too. She dimly reached out with her arm past Sherry so it would also just touch him.
She was wakened a little later by Sherry crying. She wasn’t making any noise, but she was shaking, and her tears were soaking into Claire’s pyjama arm.
“Bad dreams?” Claire whispered, trying not to wake Leon, who had his eyes closed if nothing else. Goddamn look at those lashes. He certainly looked nicer than her own dreams, which had had an inordinate amount of teeth.
Sherry nodded. “The guy who took me away from you… chasing me…”
Claire shivered. “He was an asshole. He got what was coming to him.”
“Who’s this?” Leon asked, blinking awake. No, he hadn’t actually been sleeping. At least pretending to sleep was restful, she hoped.
“The police chief kidnapped Sherry away from me,” Claire explained. “He wanted her pendant that her mother gave her – some sort of bargaining chip or something.”
“I tried to escape,” Sherry whispered, shaking. “I tried to be brave like you, and sneaky, but he caught me, and I threw something in his face that burned him, and ran away to hide, and he was so angry. I almost got away but then he caught up to me again – and then… Daddy saved me…” She choked a sob. “And then I found that trapdoor before Daddy could attack me, and then you came in a few moments later and we had to run away from the big scary zombie…”
“You were so brave,” Claire said, holding her tighter, feeling tears rise up herself. It wasn’t fair; on top of the zombies and the death, Sherry had had to deal with the darkest of human hearts. “So so brave. You’re the bravest person in the world, Sherry. You did amazing and I’m so proud of you. But even brave people have to cry.” Leon was brave as hell, and he’d cried, in the bathroom, with grief and relief and unwarranted guilt. Claire tried to be as brave as Chris, Redfields were stubborn as hell, but she was definitely crying right now.
“He had a dead lady on a table,” Sherry said, as if it were a nonsensical aside.
“What?” Leon said, horrified. “Like, a zombie?”
Claire made a repulsed face. “He was a trophy hunter and taxidermist in his free time. I found his hunting journal. Hunting animals got boring for him so he started hunting people.”
“Jesus,” Leon swore. And that would have been his boss, if everything was still normal. Just awful. “And you killed him, right?”
“No,” Claire said. “Sherry, you said your dad saved you, right? He got there first.” She’d seen Irons fall at her feet and something rip its way out of him like a chestburster from Alien. Probably worse than getting shot in the face. She decided not to describe that in front of Sherry. “Anyway, he’s dead and he won’t hurt anyone ever again. And you’re right. Your dad saved you.” Though whether he had saved her because of some lingering memory of her, or just because he wanted to turn his closest kin into monsters like him was a matter of academic debate… and not one Claire was going to air.
“Daddy… Mommy…” Sherry hiccoughed.
Claire stroked her narrow shoulders. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for the little girl, to see her father turn into a monster like that, and hunt her down, to have her mother die in her arms… She did not know what William had done to infect Sherry, but it must have been horrible. Her parents had already been terrible at parenting but to lose them in such a way must still leave a deep wound. “We’re here for you, Sherry.” She wasn’t ready to adopt a child, but she’d make sure that she went to a good place and was properly taken care of. They were bonded now.
Sherry seemed to be growing quiet again, which only allowed her to think about her own fears. She sighed and sniffled. “I didn’t even find Chris…”
“Oh, no,” Leon said, his voice just full of sympathy.
“Well, not like that. I found a weird coded message from him, but the gist was that he’s in Europe. For the past month. Without telling me.” And weird joshing about girls? Chris was bi as all get out, but he didn’t talk about girls like that. Or guys. That had to be part of the code, but she didn’t get it. Maybe if she could find Jill or Barry, she’d find out what he was really doing. She hoped they hadn’t been caught in all of this too.
“She told me about him,” Sherry said, twisting in her arms to partly look at Leon. “He’s big and strong, and he taught her how to shoot, how to ride a motorcycle, he gave her that jacket… And he was in… what did you call it? STARS?”
“Yeah, STARS,” Claire said, just trying to breathe. “I mean, the good news is that he missed all this crap. He was safe. I hope.” Zombies weren’t the only danger, especially if he was investigating Umbrella.
“From this, at least,” Leon agreed. “I heard STARS got disbanded pretty recently. Not sure why. Something about interfering with Umbrella a couple months ago, from some notes I picked up in the station. Are you going to keep looking for him?”
“Yeah. I was just planning to come up on my weekend between classes, do a little snooping, and go home again if I hopefully found him, but… h-how can I go back to class now?” How could she just go back and pretend everything was normal? That she hadn’t lived through this traumatic experience? She turned her face into the pillow and stifled a sob. She’d seen so much death. Every zombie had, not long ago, been a normal person, just like her, and now they were bloody, flailing, brainless, shredded flesh puppets. How she was in one piece was beyond miraculous, between the fighting and the falling and the explosions and debris everywhere. But she could have so easily died, and possibly died in fear and agony. And joined the undead. And then Chris would have no way of knowing what happened to her, not after the bomb dropped.
She couldn’t be strong any longer. At the start of that night, she’d just been putting a brave face on; by the end of the night, she’d been too emotionally exhausted and angry to acknowledge her fear and revulsion. During the day, on their walk in the cheerful sun, it had been easy not to think too hard about it. Now her emotional defences collapsed. She didn’t want to cry in front of Sherry, but she couldn’t stop it. She pulled herself up and away from the others, huddling into the corner, hiding her face with her hands and some bedsheet. “S-sorry… I c-can’t…”
Leon and Sherry both scrambled up to hug her. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. We’re both here for you.” Leon murmured in her ear, and she sagged against him, his warm comforting solidity. She wanted someone to take care of her for a bit; she’d been pretty independent since her parents died, but she wanted them now – someone to tell her that they would take care of everything for her.
Of course, she couldn’t put that all on Leon. He was just a guy, a guy she’d just met, only the same age as her. He probably wanted someone like that for himself, too. Deserved it, anyway.
But just for a minute, she’d take it greedily, while she sobbed into their arms, trying not to think about the faces of the corpses that had tried to get her, their slack, gaping, bloodied jaws, their blank staring eyes, their clawing filthy hands with unhuman strength. Sherry was wrapped around her waist, patting her back. She heard the catching in their breath; Sherry was sniffling, but Leon was also breathing like he wanted to cry again.
“It’s okay,” Sherry sniffed. “Brave people can cry too.” Her own words reflected back at her didn’t help her to stop crying, anyway.
“S-sorry,” she wheezed. “I was just… I was also scared, and everything just went more and more crazy, and at first I was just trying to put a good face on everything, but then the crazier things got the crazier I got, until when we got on the train I was just angry at the monsters, and tired, and I just wanted to leave…”
“Yeah, you seemed pretty angry when you stabbed that last monster in the eye,” Leon murmured, and she had to snort a laugh through her snot. “Man, I wish I hadn’t left my Cody Matthew Johnson cassette in my car at the gas station. I wish we could just listen to it at max volume and scream the lyrics until we felt normal again…” Tears had run down his cheeks again, and she reached out to brush them away.
“You must have been the same,” she said. “Whenever we met, you were always on top of everything, you sounded so confident.”
Leon leaned into her hand, swallowing hard. “It wasn’t easy,” he whispered. “Talking to you, whenever I bumped into you, helped me feel better. Knowing there was someone else out there who was alive and okay. But being chased by that big zombie in the black coat…”
“Oh, you saw him too?” Claire shivered. “He chased us a few times too. I thought William killed him.”
“Apparently not, because I ran away from him multiple times. I only killed him right before I got on the train, blew him in half with a rocket launcher that appeared out of nowhere. He’s got a way of making a guy feel real small…”
Claire gave a teary chuckle, but her tears were beginning to slow, spent. “He was ridiculously big, that’s for sure.”
Leon was quiet for a bit. “I had to shoot Lieutenant Marvin.”
“Oh no.”
“He helped me get situated in the police station, but he’d been bitten before I got there. I kept trying to get him to come with me, so I could get him to safety, but he refused every time as he got worse and worse. Pulled his gun on me the last time. I guess he thought… I mean… where would we go? How could we safely get him help, with both the big zombie and William after us? But I…”
He wasn’t really crying yet, but his chest was heaving. Sherry turned around to hug him, and he took it, huddled around her, slumped down so his head was on Claire’s shoulder and she held both of them tight.
“He was a good man, a kind man, and I had to blow his head off before he ripped my throat out,” Leon wheezed out.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said, stroking his hair. “But he did his best to make sure you survived, at least.”
“Yeah. He did.” Leon shuddered again. “Not like…”
He fell silent. “Like?” Claire prodded gently.
“I let her fall,” Leon whispered tragically. “I couldn’t save her.”
“Who?” Sherry asked.
Leon sighed. “Her name was Ada, and she… I don’t know what she was. She was using me, definitely. And yet… I think she genuinely liked me, too. She was… I never quite trusted her. Except to watch my back, for that we could trust each other implicitly.”
“I get it,” Claire said. “Sorry she died.”
“Yeah.” Leon wept silently.
For a few minutes, they just held each other, breathing together. No one had to be ‘strong’; they all took comfort from each other. Sherry looked like she was about to fall asleep again, and that was good. She should get some rest, and cuddled in their warmth sounded like the simplest way to stave off more nightmares. Claire was staring at Leon’s mouth; it wasn’t fair that he had such silky hair and such luscious lips. She’d have to ask about his lip balm too.
“She’s asleep,” he whispered after another minute. “You should sleep too.”
“I’ll try,” Claire said. “And you?”
Leon shook his head softly against her shoulder. “I don’t think I can. Every time I close my eyes I’m expecting to hear shattering glass and screams. Since the sun went down I don’t feel safe.”
“Me either,” Claire admitted. “We saw the bomb drop, over the mountain. The zombies were in Raccoon City, not here. Logically, we are safe. But still…” She wondered if she would ever feel safe again. Just knowing that zombies were real, and that a virus caused it, meant knowing that anywhere she went in the world there was a possibility, however faint, of corpses rising from the dead.
“We just have to make it through the night,” Leon said. “Tomorrow’s another day to figure things out.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I did get a bit of sleep. I could keep watch while you sleep, if you like.”
“Nah… You sleep.”
She kissed him. “Good night, then, Leon.”
A faint smile curved his beautiful mouth. “Good night, Claire.”