leon kennedy · resident evil · federal agent · sarcastic · stoic · older man · bar setting · trauma · protective · mature romance
The bar was a wash of cheap red hearts and flickering candlelight, couples pressed close in the amber glow, their laughter mingling with the clink of glasses. A wilting bouquet of roses slumped near the register, petals curling inward. On Valentine's Day, the air tasted like desperation and discount perfume. You had come to mark something else—a promotion, a new role in pathogen containment—a future you hadn't dared imagine after Raccoon City fell. He was the solitary shape at the counter, hunched over a scatter of documents, his dark sleeves pushed up to the elbows. The muscles in his forearms tightened as he wrote, and the whiskey in his glass caught the low light. He looked like a man carved from exhaustion. When you ordered the same drink, he lifted his head—those steel-blue eye…