untraditional, a resident evil fanfic

disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil, including the various versions of its games and all of its characters. I do own Julian Eltonto and his absurd last name, and I wish I didn't.
notes: Julian Eltonto is a OC -- an insert. He doesn't play much of a role. The fic itself is set after the events of Resident Evil 4. It might work as a multi-chapter (I'm not sure), but currently, it's a stand-alone, a might-be.

untraditional

After the enormous backfiring of security that was Ashley Graham's kidnapping, the President had bulked up security. One of the results of the increase was Julian Eltonto.

Well-built, and quick-witted, and instantly likeable, with his clean background check he'd been a shoo-in for the position. And he'd taken well to the duties of a bodyguard.

He also appeared to imprint like a duckling.

On his first day, he'd attached himself to Leon's side, and he didn't appear to be about to let go any time soon. Not quite so clingy that he verged on desperate, nor so detached that Leon had found any opportunities to lose him, he was in the perfect position to manipulate Leon. And he had.

It explained why Leon was in the lower city after dark: to celebrate Julian's first month as a bodyguard, they'd gone off-shift and headed to "this great place I know, honestly man, it's fantastic."

An hour later, Leon was still holding his second mug of the evening, and Julian was throwing him the look of one who can drink any other man under the table and is finding it impossible to prove this.

"So," he said, leaning his elbows on the bar, "why you in this business, man?" His Spanish accent rang faintly musical across his words. It had taken a month before Leon had stopped reaching for a knife at every foreign syllable. "I mean, I go in this for the ladies. Not that I flirt," he hastened to add, "but my three ex-wives? Ay yay. They want the money. Or my head. So I need a job that pay well enough to pay them off. But you, you're a careful guy. I see that. No ex-wives for you. So why're you in this?"

Leon eyed the stabbed olive that had been planted in his drink. Idly, he stirred the glass. The contents swirled murkily. "It was an assignment," he said. "Then Ashley was kidnapped. When we got back--"

"Ah," Julian winced in sympathy. "The lovely Miss Ashley likes you."

Leon scoffed and looked down. "Sure. If you mean 'likes' as in 'does everything short of throwing herself into actual danger to have an excuse to keep her bodyguards close'."

Julian waved the mug liberally in Leon's direction, as if to say that such meanings were easily confused. "It could be a good thing, you know. She's a very beautiful girl."

"Guarding the President's family pays, but I was looking for something a little more active." Unfortunately, Ashley's adoration had brought him to her father's attention, which had, in turn, placed him securely on bodyguard shift for what might conceivably be the rest of his life. With thought, he had decided that it would be best to wait for the president's interest in him to fade. Better to walk in presidential favor than presidential disfavor.

After all, the mysterious corporation rising in Umbrella's wake had yet to make their move. He had not missed the next step.

Julian roared with laughter. "So the young mister Kennedy wants to be the hero!" He slapped Leon on the back, still roaring, and paused only to pour another beer into the endless pit of his stomach. "Is that why you're in the business, hmm?" Before Leon could manufacture any sort of answer, his companion stilled. "Dios mio," he said under his breath. "And speaking of serious business..."

A hand touched Leon's shoulder. He whirled, reaching by instinct to catch the wrist and pull it back, but stopped as he saw her face. On the seat at his left the lady smiled faintly, her free hand splayed across a butterfly's embroidered wings on her brilliant red dress.

Her eyes, lifted to his, held a dark and inscrutable smile. "Buy a stranger a drink, handsome?"

Leon loosed an unexpected breath. He did not let go of her hand. "Ada," he said.

It seemed as if she had hardly changed at all: the butterfly shone serene and unbloodied on lucent red. Her hair looked as if it had grown a little longer; it grazed her nape with every slight breath, betraying her apparent lack of movement. Light shone semi-translucent through the slippery shine of her dress, showing little patches over which the red shone stark and bold: places, he guessed, where she kept her gun, as usual.

She was at once the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and the most dangerous.

"It figures," Julian said morosely to the bar. "Leon knows all the gorgeous women."

"Ashley is not a woman," Leon said over his shoulder. "And if you make a move on her, our next assignment as bodyguards will probably be you."

"A guy can dream," said Julian, his tone wistful.

"Ashley?" Ada laughed softly, slipping from her seat. Her face tilted up, and she was abruptly very close. "Still on bodyguard duty, Leon?"

"It's only been a month," Leon said. "Since..." His eyes narrowed; Ada's lips curved as she drew away, a clear refusal to answer the unspoken question.

"Who's your friend?" she asked lightly.

Julian tossed off a salute slurred by only slight drunkenness, grinning. "Julian Eltonto at your service, any time, day or night!"

She turned an eye on Leon, raising a brow. "Have you anything to drink?"

"One," said Julian, breaking into Leon's response. He tossed Leon a disgusted look, flicking the bartender the sign for another. "Pussy."

"Hmm." One hand spidered forward as the bartender slid one down. Before Julian could protest, Ada downed his untouched shot. She set it down, and smiled. "Now we're even." She took his arm. "Come on."

Behind the curve of her shoulder, Leon could see Julian making wide flailing movements, thumbs held determinedly up in the universal sign language for: go for it! And come back and tell your good buddy all the details!

But he did not move, unwilling to be pulled dimly along. The government files on Umbrella and the disaster with Los Illuminados had been sealed. If he spoke of them in public without government sanction he might lose his job, presidential favor and all, as well as any chance for any other job in the future. And, from Ada's composed look, she knew it.

He gave in. "What exactly do you want?"

"I was hoping you'd be willing to give me a practice bout," she said. He could not read her eyes. "Guns, knives, anything goes. Minimal damage, of course. See how we do."

"Ay," said Julian from behind them both. "That is not my idea of a date. Leon, tell the beautiful lady about those nice inventions called 'flowers'. And 'chocolates', those are good too. Oh, if you have any extra, bring some back for me!"

Ada tilted her head to a side. "Shall we?"

After a long moment's consideration, he nodded grimly. "I was getting out of practice just standing guard anyway," he said. They left together.

Once in the street, Leon headed instinctively toward one of the open gyms he'd spotted earlier: empty rooms, boxing rings, and battered exercise equipment. So late at night, it was unlikely that any of the gym's regular customers would be chased off by whatever events transpired as a result of Ada's presence. It was one of the safest options he could think of.

But she held back. "Where are you going?"

"Did you have anywhere in mind for this?"

"As a matter of fact, I did." She pulled him down one of the little alleys he'd managed to miss, and he followed her as she moved with unerring precision, turning a corner that transformed the little gutter into a maze. Eventually, they emerged into a darker street, empty of even the few passersby common to a city night.

"There." Ada nodded towards a dusty building with its windows boarded over. Leon's eyes caught on a sign that marked it as abandoned, and snapped towards her. She smiled. "If it manages to get demolished," she said, "we'll only be doing our civic duty, won't we? And it's a lot more practical than something set up specifically for a fight."

She slipped from him before he could form an answer, heading into the building. Without thinking of reasons --without thinking -- Leon followed her.

The room inside was dark: faint beams of the streetlights spilled through the boarded windows to touch parts and corners of the room with harsh light. It seemed like an old bar-room. Light ringed polished glasses set out on a bar, and old bottles faint with dust. Stairs rose to a second floor at the back of the room, and curved alongside in a kind of balcony.

Leon stood still at the door, one hand already reaching for his gun. "When do you want to stop?"

He caught her smile flashing through the darkness. "When one of us can't move any more good enough for you?" Ada waited, long enough to catch his wary nod. Then, she tossed something into the air -- something that flashed. "Begin."

It thudded against the floor and began to beep. A smoke-bomb -- and Leon had only a second to kick a table over and hurl himself behind it before it exploded.

He was prepared for the soft click of stiletto heels behind him and the gun that flashed out of the darkness to his head: he dropped and knocked her feet out from under her, hand moving automatically for a weapon. Close-range would result in too much damage if he shot, and the gun he used was a hair-trigger -- not something he wanted to play with.

He scrabbled for his knife instead, and Ada seized the opportunity to sit up and kick him in the ribs. Leon skidded a little back against the cool stone floor. The impact of his collision knocked over another table.

His hand closed around its leg. He swung it before himself, using it as an impromptu shield, and rolled out of the way as she fired three shots into the table.

A handgun by its sound, Leon thought, standing up, hidden behind a pillar. That meant she had a limited round of shots before she had to refill, since it was unlikely she was hiding a machine gun underneath that slit skirt. She might be carrying a spare and another clip, but it didn't matter; either meant a moment of shattered concentration -- a moment he could take advantage of, if he played his cards carefully.

If he distracted her for long enough...

(She fired another shot at random to test him out, but he did not flinch from his place. He could hear her footsteps falling close, though not yet so close as to be dangerous.)

...he could get the upper hand when she ran out of shots, since Ada favored guns rather than knives. While it didn't mean that she hadn't gathered some of the latter for this bout, he was willing to bet that she hadn't changed her habits. She might still have a nasty surprise or two like the smoke-bomb waiting, but such things were useless in close-range.

So he had to get in close.

Plan secure, Leon looked around and spotted a poker lying on the floor. Silently, he reached for it, weighed it once in his hand, and flung it across the room. In one smoothly unerring motion, Ada whirled and fired blindly at it without seeing what had moved. Leon heard the bullet connect with a sharp metal sound, and the poker clanging to the floor a moment after that.

He might have spared a thought to admire the perfect artistry of her accuracy, but her back was still to him, though she was starting to turn back to look in the direction from which the poker had clearly been thrown. It was a chance unlikely to be offered to him again.

Before she could finish turning, Leon bolted out from behind the pillar. He had a moment to see startlement chase her usual composure from her features before he was on her. One hand twisted the gun away, and they started to fall together.

He caught at the ground with a foot, slowing their descent, and didn't hear any bones crack as they landed against the stones.

But Ada didn't waste time in wincing. She bucked up beneath him, forcing him off-balance and into a roll. Her nails dug into his shoulder as she tried to knee him. He allowed them to turn, but shoved at the ground when she would have pinned him, and she fell back against the stones.

Leaving Ada still wincing against the impact, he planted a knee firmly against her stomach and braced himself, one hand solid beside her head. The other flipped a knife freely through his fingers before dropping to leave the point of the blade a breath away from her exposed throat.

"Ada," Leon panted. He tightened his grip on the hilt as it slid against his fingers, made slick by sweat. Adrenaline sparked in his veins in a dizzying flurry, building through his veins in a rush of dark glory. Unexpectedly, he felt himself start to grin. "Surrender. You're out of options."

Her eyes flashed up to his. "Hm. Not quite," Ada murmured. She flung an arm over his nape and leaned up; their mouths connected.

Out of instinct, before he could remember himself, Leon grew still. The knife in his hand wavered. In that moment, Ada kicked out, knee catching at his stomach. His breath slashed out of his lungs in surprise, but she seemed to breathe it in without thought. As Leon lost his balance again and fell back, she used the motion to propel herself up, pinning him against the floor with her whole weight as her body crashed down on his.

One elbow jarred the blade from his slackened grip while her other hand placed the barrel of a gun securely at his ear.

Only then did the kiss break.

Her eyes fluttered languidly open; she pulled away from him, exquisitely slow. Backlit by the electricity filtering through the building, she looked like something unholy and unreal, all shadows and fleeing promises with a wicked curling smile.

"Next time," Ada told him, "remember not to let your guard down."

Leon laughed, low in his throat. Her weight was not unpleasant, and her body was warm in the evening dark, her face nearly fragile in the streetlights. The tension of the fight was rapidly dissolving between them, becoming something else. "Someone doing that is usually the least of my problems on a mission."

The gun did not move from its position at his ear. After a moment, he remembered to let his hands fall back against the floor.

She got to her feet, one hand tucking the gun neatly into place. "Still," Ada said as she made three casual paces toward the door, "it's always good to be prepared." She glanced over one bare shoulder with half-lidded eyes. "In case it happens again."

He stowed his own knife and gun and stood as well, ignoring the minor burn of bruises on his back. "And is it going to happen again?"

Her mouth twisted, offering no concrete answer. "Thanks for the date, handsome," she said. "Here." She tossed him something. He snatched it out of the air.

It was a glass from one of the tables.

It looked no different from the rest from his quick assessment -- a little dusty, no worse for the wear from its brief flight, and marked with a swooping sign he could not read in the shadows.

There was unbreathed laughter in her voice as she gave him a last look. "See you around." She twisted and darted into the streets.

"Ada!" He raced out of the building after her. She veered onto the abandoned sidewalk and ran, and Leon followed, chasing until the scarlet flash of her dress melted into the darkness. Throwing a hand over his eyes, he looked up into the streetlights and just glimpsed a flicker leaping away, the faint sound of a grapple-gun pulling steady underneath the evening traffic.

As even the impression faded from his eyes, his eyes fell to the glass stem still between his fingers.

The evening started to unravel. The building had been condemned and deserted, but the bar on the first floor had been filled with glasses. The boards had been pried off at strategic angles to allow for light, though there had been no evidence of squatters or thieves. It smelled less like the casual spar Ada had suggested it would be than a set-up, though he still didn't know what it had been for...

Loops of an etched mark flashed beneath glass. Slowly, Leon turned it over to read the insignia at the bottom.

She landed in a crouch on the rooftop. The grapple wound back into the gun in her hand, and she rose against the recoil of the snap, taking one step and another to steady herself. The bones in her spine and shoulders burned throughout the movement, but she ignored them; they would recover soon enough. Ada pulled the phone from the sheath strapped to her leg and flipped it open.

A machine-coded voice crackled out to the night. "Has he taken the bait?"

To be actually speaking to another member of the organization was, she supposed, a piece of proof that their trust in her had escalated. Still, there lingered a strange newness in the familiar old gesture, used so often for talking to Wesker.

She held it away from her ear in the old habit as she looked over the edge. Illuminated by the streetlights to a harsh, spotlit brightness, Leon was examining something in his hand. "It appears so."

"How is he?"

"Not dulled from a month's enforced idleness -- alcohol barely dented his reaction-time at all. Still as observant as ever. Healthy." Her eyes glittered on another thought, but Ada held that one in check. Her fingers brushed absently across her lips.

"Good. How long before we can anticipate discovery?"

He had lifted his head to look at the roofs again. Mortal sight did not reach so high. Even so, Ada stepped away from the edge. "A week," she said.

"You expect much of this Leon Kennedy. Perhaps you overestimate him."

"No." She smiled slightly as she walked away into the darkness. "Never."

feedback: makes me squirm in my seat like a happy child.