Chapter Text
Leon's hands tremble as he drags himself forward with weakening arms, breathing turned to a series of close, shallow wheezes in his chest from the poison currently snaking its way through his veins. Spiked coffee stains his nailbeds from where he'd spilled it in the collapse, the distance from the conference room to the main office suddenly somehow unimaginably far. He's sweating under his dress shirt and slacks, tie a choking presence at his throat. Dizzily, he wishes he could tear them off to feel the coolness of the air against his feverish skin, but his movements are so jerky and uncoordinated that he doubts it would actually work.
Leon's eyelids flutter as a wave of nausea leaves him dry heaving onto the office's outdated carpet floor, nothing left in his stomach from the first round of convulsions. He can feel his nervous system shutting down in earnest as the toxin burns holes through his major organ groups, the shakiness returning tenfold so that his entire body is forced to quiver endlessly. Every muscle is like rubber, his chest constricting even tighter as he chokes on a whine. Move, damn it. He can't just lie here, as tempting as the flickering darkness is behind his eyelids, or he's going to die of a goddamn coffee poisoning. Of all the ways Leon thought he would go, this sure wasn't one of them.
There's a shout from down the hallway, but Leon's reached the end of his strength, every muscle shivering as his body locks up in its death throes. He can't hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears and the barely-there gasps of air that he barely recognizes as his own breathing. He gags. Spasms. Whimpers.
"--eon," someone is saying. "Just keep breathing, I'm--"
He doesn't catch the rest, distracted by the hands suddenly turning him onto his side and propping him up with a bent knee that rests against the carpet, a familiar brown hand darting into focus to loosen his tie. Leon could almost sob in relief as the restricting garment disappears. The same hand tears open his shirt and presses up against his pulse, a faint, fluttering female voice slowly filtering in. Hunnigan's. He moans involuntarily, the hand slipping upwards to lift his head so that something soft and smelling of Hunnigan's perfume can be propped beneath it. Fabric?
"--hear me?" she's saying, hand cupping his cheek now. His entire body quivers with minute tremors like a suffocating fish left to dry out slowly in the sand, chest shuddering as something metallic fills his mouth and drips sluggishly from his nose. He makes an agonized sound. "Just breathe, Leon, we've got you. EMS is on their way, and--"
Her voice fades away again, and Leon is left with the dying shudders of his pulse for company, choking on nothing but air.