Chapter Text
It had finally happened. Grace found a cat in the alleyway near her apartment. She had been waiting for this moment ever since people had started to talk about the cat distribution system. She had always wanted a pet, but given how she and Alyssa had moved so much when she was younger, it had never been an option. Now she was in a stable situation and was taking care of Emily, so a pet seemed like the perfect addition.
“Come here, baby,” she cooed. The cat seemed older with sandy colored fur with some grey and black markings, and the prettiest blue eyes. “You have eyes like my friend Leon.” The cat began to purr as she scratched him behind the ears. “H-he’s away right now….” Her voice dropped off as she wondered where Leon was and how he was doing.
The cat butted his head against her chin, and she giggled. He was so lovable, and she couldn’t have been more thrilled with her luck. When she entered the apartment, she called out for Em. The little girl raced around the corner, along with the teenager from down the hall who watched her after school. Both girls stopped when they saw the cat in Grace’s arms.
“Oh!” Emily’s eyes widened, and she carefully stepped closer, not wanting to frighten the cat. “Where did the kitty come from?”
“Found him in the alley right outside,” she told Emily. Megan had stopped behind Emily and cooed over the cat, too. “I don’t know what we’ll name h-him, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”
“Can I hold him?” The young girl asked a bit cautiously. There were still times when she was unsure what was and wasn’t allowed. It made Grace angry at the life Emily had lived in that care center under Gideon’s watchful eye.
Grace handed the cat over, who was more than happy to be put into Emily’s arms. He purred even louder, and when he headbutted her, much like he had with Grace, they were rewarded with her sweet giggles. She immediately started walking the cat around the apartment and showed him where everything was.
“We have some old cat stuff at home,” Megan said to Grace as soon as Emily was down the hall. “I’ll bring it up in a few, and Mrs. Jenkins down the hall has some cat litter she’d probably be more than happy to lend you.”
Grace’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Thanks, Meg.” She gave the teen a smile and asked if she could wait a few minutes while she headed to Mrs. Jenkins for the litter. The teen agreed, and Grace dashed down the hall.
The older woman wanted to talk her ear off about the cat they had suddenly adopted, and only managed to get away by telling her that she really needed to let Megan get home to do her school work. Once relieved of her babysitting duties, Megan headed back to her family’s apartment to get the cat stuff for Grace and Emily.
“Have a good night, Miss Ashcroft,” Megan said as she backed out of the apartment with a wide smile. “I’ll see you three next week at the usual time.”
Alone in the apartment, Grace blew out a breath and got to work on setting up everything for the newest addition to their family. Emily came into the bathroom a few minutes later, where Grace was setting the litterbox up. The cat was no longer in her arms, but following her around dutifully like a guardian. Grace thought she caught the cat eyeing the litterbox skeptically, but shook her head.
“Do you think Leon will like our newest addition when he comes back from his mission?” Emily asked as she watched Grace put the finishing touches on the box.
Leon had become a permanent fixture in their lives since the events of Rhodes Hill and Racoon City. He wasn’t one to let them go without help, and sometimes offered to watch Emily for her if she was going to be busy and didn’t want to ask Megan to do it for her. The crush she had formed on the older man had come from left field.
One day, he had gone from Leon, the guy who saved her from the worst moment of her life, to Leon, the kind and caring man who made her stomach fill with butterflies and her heart race just a little whenever he smiled at her. It had hit her out of the blue, and she had had trouble not blushing around him. She was almost a hundred percent certain that he knew, but was too kind to say anything and embarrass her further.
“I’m sure he will, Em,” Grace assured her. “Now what are we thinking in terms of names?”
They spent the next hour going over names, and Emily wanted to name him Leo after Leon and after a lion. Grace wondered how Leon would feel about sharing a name with a cat, but couldn’t turn Emily down when she turned her puppy dog eyes on her.
Grace scooped Leo up and murmured, “H-hopefully L-leon won’t, uh, mind.” The cat seemed to try to make her feel better by mewing softly and purring up a storm.
He wasn’t exactly sure what the fuck had happened when he had been sprayed with that stuff in the lab, but all he knew was one minute he was fine and the next he was a cat. Getting to Grace’s was a miracle in and of itself, but thankfully, he hadn’t been too far from the city. When she found him, all he could do was relax against her, knowing he was safe until either whatever had been done to him wore off or he could figure out the next steps to let Sherry know he was now a cat.
Him.
Leon S. Kennedy.
A fucking cat.
He wasn’t sure how to control his new kitty urges either. He began purring the moment Grace picked him up, and the head butt had been unplanned but felt right. Then there was Emily cooing over him; he loved that kid. He still felt guilty about shooting her, but thankfully, it seemed she couldn’t remember what had happened after turning into the creature.
He happily let her lead him around the apartment, showing him rooms he had already seen a million times. Then she pushed the door to Grace’s room open. Her scent was strongest here, and he caught whiffs of more than the perfume and bodywash she used. His brain didn’t quite know what it was, but his instincts told him he wanted to roll around on her bed.
Grace’s room was one of the only places in the apartment he hadn’t been. Her door was always firmly shut whenever he came over, and he never pried, not wanting to break her trust or invade her privacy like that.
Leon wasn’t an idiot; he knew Grace had developed feelings for him, but he had, too. The only thing stopping him from telling her was his age. Leon wasn’t in his twenties anymore; hell, he wasn’t even in his thirties. He was pushing fifty, and Grace was twenty years younger than he was. He didn’t want to ruin her chances of finding someone her own age and building a life with them, rather than an agent who went on dangerous missions every other month.
She deserved stability and safety.
When they named him Leo, and Grace muttered how she hoped he didn’t mind, it made him want to laugh. It was sweet that Emily wanted to honor him in some way, and with his mostly sandy colored fur, he didn’t blame her for associating his cat form with a lion.
The next few days, he had to get used to eating cat food and doing cat things. He had urges that his human self never had, like wanting to attack the strings of Grace’s shoes, and scent-marking to let others know Grace and Emily were his humans. At night, he enjoyed curling up with them on the couch while they watched TV together.
He had mainly slept in Emily’s room, wanting to keep an eye on the young girl. But that night, he couldn’t help but wander across the hall to Grace’s room. She was sitting up reading a book; it seemed to be a romance from what he could tell by the cover, but he didn’t know what it was about exactly. She glanced over as he hopped up onto the bed and smiled at him.
“Hey Leo,” she said in her soft voice, reaching out to pet him. “Coming to stay with me, huh?”
He went to lie down beside her when she scooped him up and placed him on her lap. Momentarily stunned, Leon stiffened in her arms before allowing his muscles to relax and get comfortable. He could stay here for a little while… right? That wouldn’t be weird.
With her fingers running through his fur, she managed to lull him to sleep, dreaming of waking up human with Grace in his arms.
Grace was warm, and there was something heavy on her chest. At first, she thought that maybe it was Leo using her as his own personal pillow, but when she blinked open her eyes, she didn’t find her cat there. Leon had wound his body around hers, head on her chest, legs tangled with hers.
She sucked in a breath and wondered how the hell they had gotten into this position because last she checked, Leo the cat had been on her chest and not Leon the human.
Think, Grace, she tried to calm herself so as not to startle Leon. Don’t wake the sleeping agent.
Leon had a key to her apartment for emergencies. Maybe he had been in trouble and came looking for her, only to pass out in bed? Unlikely, Leon was a gentleman. Possibly some weird version of sleepwalking? She had heard of cases of people driving in their sleep, but again probably unlikely.
Leon’s breathing changed, and Grace held her breath as his eyes fluttered open. He looked up at her and smiled, and then, like her, his brain seemed to catch up with the situation. “Shit,” he swore, still not moving from his position. “I’m human again, aren’t I?”
“A-again?” She squeaked out. “W-what… what happened to simply being human?”
He glanced down at himself and relaxed a bit when he realized he was still in the clothes he had been wearing on his mission. He didn’t think he could survive the embarrassment of being naked in her bed. “The lab I was at decided I’d look better as a cat and sprayed me with something.”
“Uh-huh,” she mummbled. “How’d you, uh, end up here?”
“Wasn’t that far and figured I’d be safe with you and Em until I could figure out how to reverse this, or it did it on its own.” He let out a sardonic laugh, “I’m definitely going to have to write a report on this.”
The humor in that last statement went over Grace’s head, but she was still too busy focusing on the fact that Leon had been in her home for days and was still curled against her. She wasn’t complaining, but it was a lot to process.
“Oh my God, we named you Leo,” she gasped out.
A laugh rumbled in his chest, “Yeah, Grace. You guys named me Leo.”
Her cheeks were warming rapidly, and she knew she was probably as red as Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. "I… I don’t even know where to b-begin.”
He went to disentangle himself from her, to give her space to think, but she tightened her hold on him, and he relaxed. “Take your time, sweetheart, I’m right here.”
She lay her head back against her pillow and stared up at the ceiling. She could feel Leon watching her as her mind processed everything. All the weird things she had noticed Leo doing, hesitating with the litterbox, turning his nose up at the food in the beginning, and seeming to hesitate whenever she tried to coax him onto her lap. All of it hadn’t been because he had been a cat living on the street for most of his life, but because he was Leon.
Then she remembered a conversation she had had with Sherry a few days prior, when she had called to see if Grace had heard from Leon.
“I don’t know where he is,” Sherry’s worried tone had Grace’s heart racing. “He hasn’t checked in, and he isn’t answering my calls. This was just a routine search; he shouldn’t have run into any trouble.”
Grace had chewed on her nail as she stared out the window of her bedroom. Her brows were furrowed as she let Sherry’s words turn over in her mind. Leon and missing in the same sentence wasn’t something she had ever wanted to hear. “Could he be at a safehouse waiting out danger?”
“None of the safehouses have been pinged as active. I’ve alerted Chris and Jill; they’re helping look for him.” Sherry blew out a breath. “Grace, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she could feel tears gathering in her eyes, and she swiped at them with the back of her hands. She couldn’t lose Leon; it would crush her. “Is there anything I can do to help with the search?”
“Just keep an ear to the ground, he might try to reach out to you first.”
She sniffled and felt Leo’s head rub against her arm. “I think it’s more l-likely that he’ll go to you, Sherry. He… he’s known you longer.”
“Grace,” Sherry’s voice was full of exasperation. “Leon checks in with you first, always. You’re the first voice he wants to hear after getting back from a mission, good or bad.”
“W-what?” That surprised the hell out of her.
“And I know you have feelings for him too,” Sherry continued. “Listen, he’ll come home. I know he will. I’ll keep you posted.” Then she was gone, and Grace was left to pull herself together while Leo purred in her arms.
“Leon, do you… do you have feelings for me?” Her gaze shifted back to him. “Like Sherry said?”
He drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, I do, and she was right. You are the first person I call after a mission, whether it went well or not. You ground me, Grace. In ways I haven’t had in years.”
She shifted, and he followed her movement until they were both sitting up, staring at one another. She reached up to cup his cheek with her hand, thumb ghosting over the apple of his cheek, feeling the rough stubble under her palm. She searched his face for a moment, seeing the soft expression he was giving her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him at that moment.
And she did.
Out of everyone Leon could have chosen to go to, he had come to her. Had trusted her to take care of him in his vulnerable state.
Grace didn’t hesitate a second longer as she leaned forward and gently brushed her lips against his. They were slightly chapped, but she didn’t care as Leon reached up and dug his fingers into her hair to pull her closer. Her heart thudded against her chest as her mind shut off to sink into the feeling of Leon kissing her like a man starved.
The hand not tangled in her short, ash blonde locks, pulled her onto his lap, and Grace gasped, allowing him to slip his tongue into her mouth. Grace managed to fight back a moan, remembering that Emily was across the hall and could wake at any moment. And as much as she wanted to keep making out with Leon in her bed, she pulled back, breathing heavy.
Their gazes locked, the blue of Leon’s eyes barely visible. “Emily,” she managed to mumble out. “Emily will be awake soon.”
He nodded in understanding and brushed a kiss to her cheek. “I can stay and explain why your new friend Leo is missing before I call Sherry.”
“If you need—”
He cut her off with a shake of his head. “Sherry and the DSO can wait a moment longer. I know I need to go for a checkup, but Grace, I’ve been living off of fucking cat food for the past few days. I want people food. I want a shower.”
Grace began to laugh at that. “All right, I can text her and say that I’ve heard from you.”
“She’ll bust your door down,” Leon warned.
“One hour, Leon,” she said. “You’ve got one hour.”
“I can work with that.” He pressed another kiss to her cheek and gently maneuvered out from under her.
She told him to use her shower and that she still had some spare clothes he had left there that she’d leave on the bed. He thanked her and disappeared into her bathroom, leaving her to let her mind wander over what she had learned.
She lightly brushed her fingers against her lips and smiled at the memory of Leon kissing her. And as she moved through the apartment, she seemed to be in a dream-like trance until Emily’s voice broke the memory that had been on a loop. It was easy to break the news to Emily that their cat wasn’t actually a cat. Grace had been a little afraid that she would be upset that they were losing their pet, but the young girl was happy to have Leon back.
“I prefer the real thing,” Emily had said as she wrapped her arms around Leon’s neck to give him a hug.
As predicted, Sherry arrived not long after Grace contacted her about Leon. She checked him over, scolding him for being so reckless, but happy to have him back. He was going to go with her back to headquarters to get checked out. “It’ll probably be a few days before I can contact you again,” he warned.
“That’s okay,” she murmured as she rose on her toes to kiss his cheek. “You know where to find us.”
He grinned at her before following Sherry out the door with promises to be back soon.