A/N: I know, I know, I know. I'm supposed to be working on other stuff. Inclination isn't finished. Well there's a timing issue with the next chapter. Anyone got music that approximates helicopter noises?

I really did intend for "Just Time" to be a one-shot. But Leon didn't see it that way. Nostalgia is high in older people. (Or maybe it's all the RE4 I've been playing.)

2023

Trying to say why he didn't care that he was bleeding would be like asking him to differentiate what part of the entity that was called Leon was him and what part was the scarred, abused body he inhabited. In his arms, the warmth that had drained from him after so many years of struggle was clinging, trying to burrow back into him. He hadn't even realized that was where it was hiding… that it was folded up in Claire.

But it did make sense.

What mission was it? He couldn't quite remember… when had Claire come to find him half passed out in his apartment, bleeding on the floor? How had she managed to get him up, little Claire? All he knew was that he woke up bandaged in bed. Claire had been lying beside him, just like on that horrible, terrible flight from the city, one hand barely touching his chest, the other pillowing her cheek where she was curled up without one.

That was when he got her keys, the first time. He hadn't stayed awake much, too tired… too sore, and he woke, slightly, groggily, to her sitting on the end of the bed staring at him. She'd leaned across him and taken his keys from where they were still clipped to the belt of his pants beside the bed… again he'd had to wonder how Claire managed him when he was unconscious… and held the ring up for him to see while putting another small ring onto them.

He hated to admit it, but his first thought had been that the pink heart keychain was going to make him look like a pansy. He couldn't quite get the energy to speak it aloud, but the look on his face said enough to her.

You can lie about it if you want, she'd said. Tell anyone who asks its to your girlfriend's place.

That hadn't settled quite right. Leon had wanted to protest, but she didn't give him the time.

You'll know whose they are, she'd said. And where to go when you need help.

Sometimes, the things she said were so simple, but they let the sun in through the clouds like morning. She seemed small, sometimes, but she was always bigger than anything else to him.

And she was so warm.

She didn't seem to care that she was pressing her hips against his with a utility light on one side and ammo casing on the other pushing right back, unforgiving against her soft hips. He didn't care either. Strangely, or almost strangely because he just accepted things about Claire when he got them, her trusting press was almost like having a weight removed from his chest. Maybe that was a little backwards, but it was true. Air rushed in and he could breathe. He tightened his grip on her, reveling in the smooth feeling of her skin under his roughened hands.

A lot about Claire could be like an old wooden bat. Trustworthy, brutal… but she was well made, dependable… and breakable if you hit too hard. He'd never tell Claire that. Never hurt her feelings to compare her aloud to a bat, because it would hurt her feelings and he knew that as much as he knew that the way she was pressing against him couldn't be comfortable with the things attached to his belt, no matter how horny she was.

The same way he knew he was too tired to finish it, if they started.

"Shhh," he cooed to her, lips pressing to hers gently though he got enough space between them so that he could get words out. "I can't… not tonight."

But just as he'd silenced her thinking, Claire did the same. Her arms moved, inching up his back, fingers tight against his jacket. Pulling it to keep him in place, she pressed her mouth to his. Her tongue pressed its way into his mouth, and Leon's eyes slid shut.

Like the first good breath after too long underwater, the kiss was a relief. He gripped her, hand against the skin of her back, and pulled her closer, drawing her between his legs and trapping her against his chest. The same relieved feeling turned into greedy gasping for air, needy lips melding to hers in the kiss.

And all the oxygen was waking him up.

She had a way of doing that to him, waking him up. Setting him straight. Egging him on… challenging him.

Claire wasn't the immediate wet dream that some of the women he'd met were. Not to him. His personality got hard over a different kind of woman immediately, but it never let go of someone like Claire.

Tabitha was the kind of woman he got off on instantly. She was indulgent, and she let him get off in her whenever he was around. She was soft, and she was sweet, and she ignored him when she felt like it. She wasn't the support, the confidant that Claire was.

In the years since… Leon's guilt had compounded to monumental levels about the dead woman who'd been carrying his child. He thought about her like that. The dead woman. It wasn't their child, it was his child. Not because Tabitha hadn't wanted the baby, because he hadn't wanted one with her.

She was a warm wet spot. A pair of arms to wrap around him, nails to claw his back, breasts to fondle. Hands to slap him in the face when she was angry. And Tabitha was angry. Angrier than Claire's husband. Unlike David, Tabitha knew she had Leon. She had him by the balls.

He'd warned Claire against losing who she was with a man who doted on her… he'd said those words through a haze of self-hate, that he couldn't be the one to do it.

And, in a way, he hated himself for Tabitha. Not because she hated him, though she probably did in a way, but because she was a replacement. She was a replacement that had threatened to become permanent.

Claire was much better about Tabitha than Leon was about David. She'd invited her to things, even when Leon was away. It was dishonest of both of them… of all of them to play nice like that. And Tabitha always had it out with him when he got back about how his real woman had been showing off again. And then the teasing, with her arms around him.

Tabitha knew how to press Leon's buttons. The tirade would make him angry, and when he was tired, anger could keep him awake. So she would start by making him angry, by sinking that cold knife into his stomach, and then she would put her hands on him. She liked it rough, she could take it, she thought. But Leon was not the sort of person, he knew even if she didn't, that was at his best when he was angry.

She'd thought he was already sleeping more than once when she'd gotten up to get aspirin, sore before the afterglow was even dim. And the look she always cast over her shoulder was scared.

He tried to remind himself to be more gentle, even when she was asking for him to be rough. Tabitha wasn't like he was. Tabitha wasn't like Claire. Tabitha didn't know how fast he could be, how cold… how lethal. Tabitha thought that having him by the balls put her in control like someone's master. She wasn't enough of a prison guard to make that work.

Leon was a professional, government sanctioned killer. His replacement girlfriend didn't seem to understand this about him. It had taken a while, but Tabitha eventually decided that it was easier to just take her clothes off when he got in rather than to try and rile him up first.

Did he take advantage of the period when Tabitha didn't understand how best to come on to him? Yeah. He did. He admonished himself for it, but he did. He let her draw out in him the worst, even knowing she didn't know how to handle it.

Tabitha wasn't the person he wanted to draw out that part of him, if he wanted anyone to draw that out. He didn't want anyone to, but it was worse that Tabitha did it because he didn't care enough about her to try and make that part of him any better. So he didn't trust himself around Tabitha, didn't trust himself with Tabitha.

Not the way… He had forced himself not to admit this before, but before was then and not now. Not the way that he trusted himself with Claire. But for all the amount of concern, kindness, and care… for as much as he wanted Claire, he couldn't be the one to tuck her in at night, be too tolerant about her nightmares and tug her to him when she had them. He knew how it would be, if only…

For years he'd lived on that 'if only'. He'd watched Claire get watered down to pretty red hair, a slender waist, and her paranoia.

David was keeping her alive, making her smile, but he wasn't making her happy. He was like a refrigerator she was stored in.

Claire needed someone to force the gun out of her hand. She needed, after a nightmare, to be held, to be let to cry, and then to be woken up in her body. He knew it, because they were the same. But he had seen David's reactions to her freaking out, seen them on a night when he was in the house but not injured.

Her husband sat and waited for her to let him do things.

Leon did his best not to think David less of a man for it.

He'd let David do what he wanted, because they weren't friends, they weren't brothers. They were in love with the same woman, and Leon felt a little egotistical to think that if he were in David's position, he'd be better at it. But he and Claire both had a drive for something that wouldn't let them be together.

It was stupid, it was easy. So easy to be together.

Lips pressed to one another's, hands clutching, stroking skin through clothes and sliding under them. Scars traced, tongues tangled.

Claire had him pushed against the counter one moment, settled between his legs, pelvis against his, chest arched into his as his hand slid down the back of the pajama shorts, under the hemline of her panties, and he gripped her by the rump. Her hands were up the back of his shirt, bare forearms warm against his skin, and her tongue was stroking his firmly.

In the next moment, Leon turned them, pressing her against the refrigerator, knocking her shoulders against it, and he unclipped the light and the ammo as she threaded a leg between his and lowered her lips to his neck. He didn't even hear them hit the ground as he dropped them.

He reached for her, but she tugged the jacket down off his shoulders, hooked it around his arms, and pulled him against her. Her body felt hot, and everywhere she was touching made his body feel the same.

The heat between them was almost like a fire. If Claire had been watered down before, that was quickly going away. The fire boiled the water off, it seemed, brought back the Claire that was more than a collection of nervous habits.

And she was infinitely more sure of herself, this time.

That night… the night he played over in his brain whenever he couldn't stand it, whenever he wanted to quit his job and go be normal…

Shy was not something he attributed to Claire. But he'd started it. She was staring at him again, staring the way that told him she was undressing him with her eyes, the way she did when he had undressed in her presence… and he could feel it. He could feel her eyes on him, feel the close scrutiny of her gaze. So he'd done just what he'd thought of doing for… for what felt like forever.

Leon had turned to her and kissed her. He meant it to be gentle, to let her know that he knew she was looking at him, but the minute his lips touched hers she'd parted hers, and his reaction was stronger. When she reacted, one of his arms curled around her, and his lips fastened onto hers more firmly. Leaning her back against the bed they'd just been watching nearly muted quiet tv on, he'd pinned her, not worried about anything more than the taste of her lips and the grip she had on the front of his shirt.

He shifted to settle between her legs, mouth occupied, hands stroking her sides and trying to find the hem of her shirt to get it out of her jeans when he felt her shiver, and heard the soft, surprised noise into the kiss.

Forcing himself to pull back, to slow down, to stop, he looked at her. Claire, lips still parted from their kiss, breathing heavily, was blushing. His own breath came in gasps as well. They stared at each other for a long moment. The dusting of pink on her cheeks grew darker, more pronounced. He stilled his hands, as soon as he realized they were still bothering the side seams of her t-shirt, and felt guilty. Guilty because Claire was his friend. Guilty because they weren't alone. Guilty because he wasn't really as guilty as he was pretending to be.

His eyes had shifted to Sherry, to the girl sleeping on the cot on the far side of the room… He straightened up, legs still planted between hers, and made to apologize. Before he could talk, she'd stripped the shirt off over her head, completing the maneuver with the sometimes puzzling agility that she had. That what you wanted? she'd asked, voice hushed and teasing.

Her bravado was interesting, considering when she blushed she blushed all the way down past her collar bone. Her skin wasn't as pale as he'd imagined, as he'd thought it would be, under her clothes. A few scars, here and there (mostly new ones), but otherwise she was smooth, a little pale, and soft. He didn't remember letting his hands find her sides again, but they were there, as soon as the shirt was taken out of the way, and the skin that greeted his questing fingers was warm and smooth and alive.

The sight of her then seduced him. The knowledge that she was willing and he wasn't forcing something that was all in his head onto a friend, (dammit!) blocked out the little girl on the cot. Sherry slept like a rock, nothing quieter than a gunshot could wake her. They'd tried and failed on more than one occasion and had to just carry her to the car. They'd need to be quiet, but not silent.

It would work. His brain had raced ahead of his body, drinking in the sight of her almost exposed body. Dumbly, he nodded, and even though he was twenty-one, he felt like he was sixteen again and Claire was the first woman he was getting to touch without clothes on. He was leaned down against her in an instant, torso flush against hers, soft skin making him shiver. His hands had slid up her sides, fingers stroking greedily, and curled around her to fumble with the clasp of her bra.

He'd offered, as he was doing it, lips against her neck, her cheek, nose buried in her hair as his lips brushed the curve of her ear, to stop. To let go, to apologize and get off.

It was an empty offer. He wouldn't be able to stop without her doing something physical to him… something that would leave a mark.

Don't you dare, Claire had stammered in her low whisper, hands gripping his waist, hips pressing into his. She must not know what she was doing to him. Her blush remained, but as he rid her of the bra, lips smoothing down her neck to take one of those soft mounds between his lips, she curled her legs around his torso.

The same way she was wrapping a leg over his hip now.

She was older, they were both older. They had been in their twenties when they'd claimed each other's bodies on that hotel bed, grunting and moaning lowly to each other. Fevered, hushed demands, pleads for this or that… and it was the work of an evening to satisfy all they'd wanted from each other. Not an entire evening. There wasn't enough energy for a whole night, but as much of an evening as they could manage. And between the two of them, somehow they managed to get something they'd needed from each other.

It had burned into his mind how much more he wanted her to satisfy in him. How much there still was all to be taken and given back and forth.

He wondered if they were going to fuck against the refrigerator, now. But despite the urgency he felt, the feeling that kept him glued to her, stroking her skin… kissing her wherever he could, Leon felt weariness tugging on him.

It was strange, he only felt tired when he was near Claire. Not… worn out tired. Just… relaxed enough to get rest. Everyone else… anyone else was a part of the job, a person to protect or something to get to safety.

"Upstairs," Claire moaned into his ear.

He hadn't even realized his hand was kneading her breast like that, tugging at the fabric of the tank top she had worn to bed, until her hand closed over it. "Claire…" he tried again. He didn't want this to wash out. He didn't want to disappoint them both…

"I don't care if you fall asleep halfway through," Claire's words tripped over themselves as they rushed out of her mouth. She put her foot back to the floor and pushed them off the cool metal of the fridge. Somehow it didn't matter that she was so small in comparison to him, she was strong enough to take his weight and push back. Her breath brushed his nose, and he almost chuckled to think that at three a.m. she had morning breath. "It's cold down here."

Letting her have her way, Leon pulled his jacket off and put it around her shoulders before wrapping an arm around her. "Ok, upstairs."

A relieved little smile curved the corner of her lips, and she leaned into him trustingly until he swatted her rump to send her up the stairs. The back stairs weren't strictly wide enough for two people to get up them side by side. Claire had been picky about that when she'd gotten the house. It made it more defensible if only one thing could get at you on them.

He wondered, as she headed up them in front of him, if she still thought about it like that.

He did this wondering partly to distract himself from the fact that she was in front of him, heading up the stairs, and the only thing that really caught the light was her legs as they moved upwards ahead of him, peaking out from beneath his jacket.

It would be a bit lecherous to describe how often he'd fantasized about Claire's legs. He liked to think of himself as being far more mature than that, than dreaming about a woman he didn't have… but… he was so good about Claire. He was good to her.

And he really didn't think she'd mind.

She had given him those fantasies about them herself. She was the one who'd locked them around his waist, tight and squeezing him like she'd never let go that hushed, guilty night on the crummy hotel bed. If she protested, she'd have to do something about it.

Maybe dull, boring David had known all along that this was lurking. Known that he and Claire were never more than half a minute from throwing each other into bed and working out their every problem between the sheets or on top of the blanket.

Leon didn't bother to stop himself or even hide the fact that he was staring at her ass as she ascended the stairs before him, given those thoughts. He wasn't looking at another man's wife, now. He wasn't looking at a widow. Claire was a widow, but that was more of a title and less a definition anymore.

He'd waited so he wasn't. So she wasn't.

Claire's touches were almost verbal, to him. He knew the difference in them, he'd learned it over the years of knowing her before she ever met her dead husband. He knew what she touched like when she was scared, when she was worried… He was sorry to say he knew what she touched like when she was sad, depressed… He knew how she gripped and stroked when she was aroused… He knew how she smacked shoulders or held hands when she was happy…

It wasn't obsession. Leon wouldn't let it be obsession that had taught him all this about Claire. It was a simple lack of words. They had been through something that had stopped speech, and in its place, there had been action and touch.

Knowing how she spoke her moods through touch, he'd known that it wasn't right before. He'd known that the lingering hug she'd been giving him wasn't a sign for him to go further, it was a desperate need for comfort. She complained of cold, by holding him longer when they met, and he did his best to give her warmth the way she needed it.

Not by pressing himself against her, not by doing early what would only be right if given time… but by being there, eating meals. Calling from the airport and going 'home' when work was done, checking the locks and making laundry for her to deal with. Playing boyfriend while being a boy scout.

At the top of the stairs, she waited for him to join her. He met her, lips finding her cheek, and slid an arm around her. She was just as warm as in the kitchen, but something was different.

She stilled.

He stilled in response, momentarily unsure if he had read wrong what that had been in the kitchen. He leaned back, meeting her eyes, and waited.

He'd do that, for her.

After a few moments she rewarded his waiting with words. "I need to check the door," Claire said in a dejected tone.

And there she was again, the nineteen year old so serious and determined. So willing and eager for him, but unrelenting about safety. Leon started to protest, to do it for her, but as usual, as she always did, she glared at him, and he stopped, just as easy.

"Besides, our guns…"

Leon nodded, with a chuckle.

"You. Bedroom," Claire said, motioning.

"Yes, ma'am."

Claire headed back down the stairs, pale, smooth shoulders descending into the dark mouth of the staircase, and Leon watched her. Long ago, he'd been shocked at how easy it was for him to forget things that he normally did automatically when he came here, when he was in her house. It had always been her house to him, even with the husband as an appendage to it. When he was here, just like she'd intended when she gave him the key all those years ago, he let go. He let her be strong for him, check the things he would normally check and keep their guns handy. It was, now, an effortless thing for him to do, even though it was hard at first. It had since become routine for him. So he couldn't help but watch her, knowing that there was some rest spell cast on him when he was here, in her house.

Even if he had no desire to rest at that moment.

What he wanted made it somewhat strange, her sinking out of sight like that.

She'd be back, though, he knew. And if he wasn't in her bedroom, she'd probably start shoving. Leon turned, headed into her room, and had to stop as he opened the door.

He'd been in it before, he should have known it wouldn't have changed. Claire was living in a clockwork tomb of David, since his death. The bed was still in the colors the man had changed it to when they were married, the thermostat still ran on his timer. It was cold in the upstairs, even in the bedroom. Claire was right when she'd said it was cold.

But despite the physical sameness of the room, the scent was all her.

What was weary in him shrank at that scent, the way it had when she had pressed her lips to his against the fridge downstairs. Closing his eyes, he inhaled a deep breath of it, and stepped in. It got stronger as he crossed the room, sat on the bed, and as he lost the top layer of his clothing, setting his spare in easy reach on the night stand. It nearly overwhelmed him as she came in and locked the door to the bedroom.

There was no shyness in her, then. His eyes found her and she snapped the deadbolt into the locked position before stripping the shirt over her head. Both guns in one hand, she dropped her tank top to the floor as she crossed the room.

Pants halfway down his legs, Leon froze, watching her as she came over to him. One hand found his shoulder, sitting him upright, and Claire threw a leg over his lap just like he was a motorcycle.

"Where were we?" Claire asked, leaning in, lips finding his. Her gun hand shifted, depositing the Browning and his Custom piece beside his spare on the night stand. An idle part of Leon's mind wondered if there would be fumbling between the three guns if they needed to be armed quickly, but the thought was like a leaf in the breeze, it went away easily.

His hands found her waist, pulled her against him, hips to his. This girl… this woman wasn't an immediate hard on… not when they first met, no, not then. Then she'd been written off as a slightly more accomplished girl next door. That was before he'd seen her with a gun, before she'd stumbled, bleeding, from the explosive encounter and kept walking.

No, now she was a constant one. It had taken more self-control than he would ever admit verbally to spend the last two years without doing just what he was doing then.

A moan parted her from the kiss. Claire's head tipped back, an arm winding around his neck. She was warm. The skin against his neck, the softness of her thighs against his… deliciously warm.

The weariness threatened, loomed over him like one of the nightmare creatures clinging to the ceiling and hissing down at them. But she had said she didn't care.

Her hips ground against his, and he found he didn't either.

There was a brief struggle as he got her to her back. It was him against their clothing, but it didn't take much of a fight before he won. She was, after all, helping him.

And then they were naked, and just as before, her skin was hot. His lips found hers, then the hollow of her neck, the underside of her chin. Claire's lips blazed heat on his temple, his cheekbone, where he would let her, where he gave her the moment to return his kisses. Instead, she reciprocated by wrapping her legs around him.

If his mind could think beyond the press of her skin against his… beyond the kiss or the sensation of her breasts pressed into his chest… the heat of her embrace around the stiffness of his need for her, he might have wondered why they were so quiet. But his mind didn't have that kind of multiple focus, not then.

All Leon's focus was on her. On the rush of her breath against his ear, the clench of her legs around him. He was better occupied with the fist that tightened her fingers against his back, the softness of her hair against his cheek, and the smell of her sweat where his face was buried in the curve of her neck. His thoughts were barely able to struggle beyond the sensation of filling her as he was, the desperate, urgent desire for her in competition with the looming, hissing threat of his exhaustion that hung over them.

Breath for breath she matched him, body twisting and shivering into the press of his. Her lips pressed against his neck, and then her teeth sank into him, nails mimicking the act, puncturing the skin of his back, and she clenched around him, her whole body tightening. The one noise she made above a hushed moan was the call of his name that she gasped out then.

He lost himself to that sound, to that heat. Buried in her like she'd wanted… like he'd wanted, the way they both needed.

Locked together in that room, in that embrace, his thoughts sank slowly away from consciousness. And in that release, in that warm, comforting feeling of safety, cradled in her embrace, Leon let the exhaustion win. It was ok, for a little while. The exhaustion didn't really have him, nor did the paranoia or the mission. Claire did.

And that was how Claire had gone from an eventual arousal… something he needed some of the time to something he couldn't get enough of. Work, the fragile world he protected got a lot of him. Time, energy, blood… but Claire kept some of him tucked away from that. Feeling and thought, she had those, had the man that he was and mastery of the body the man inhabited…

Leon let the exhaustion have his waking mind. The only thing it could have. He knew it wouldn't have it long. Now that the time was right, there wasn't anything for anyone else to have.