Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On the night of the fundraiser Leon allows himself the rare luxury of being late, fashionably at first, then acceptably, then irresponsibly. He hates crowds just as much as tight hallways and strange villages in the middle of nowhere; and whatever ability to mingle he once possessed, evaporated the moment he turned twenty-five and hasn’t returned since.

So there’s a bit of relief mixed in with the amusement when he spots a familiar figure hanging by the bar. At least this kind of dance is familiar. 

He orders a scotch and the bartender slides the glass to him across the counter. The man besides him makes a sound of recognition and—

“Kennedy!” the man bellows goodnaturedly, and Leon nods in acknowledgement. “Didn’t know you’d be here,” he comments and gestures to his companion, “have you met Annabelle?”

Leon suppresses a snort. “Annabelle?” he asks, and Ada returns his raised eyebrows with a calm smile and an outstretched hand. “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure,” he replies, sliding his hand into hers.

Their mutual acquaintance goes on for a minute, about the venue and the drinks and how nice it is that people are finally recognizing a good cause and though Leon knows it’s rude, he’s still glad when the man is called from across the room and finally excuses himself to tend to someone else, somewhere else. 

“So, Annabelle?” Leon begins. “What is it that you do again?”

Ada rolls her eyes. “Want to meet in ten?” she asks, right to the bone, as usual.

“Geez, could at least offer me a drink first.”

That earns him a smile. “I think you got that covered already,” she responds, clicking her martini glass against his own. 

“Done harvesting corporate intel?”

She smiles cryptically. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

They lock eyes and he can see the rest of his night unfolding in front of him the same way it’s happened a dozen times before. His words appear in this mind like a script he’s memorized; even though the details change every time, the meat of it is the same.

“Room’s 1720,” he says.

Ada nods. “Should I knock three times?” she adds, half jokingly.

He gives her a smile of his own and raises his glass to her. “As you wish.”

---

The elevator doors slide open and Claire is about to step inside when a woman’s quiet chuckle resonates further down the hallway, then a door, sliding shut. She glances back over her shoulder out of habit and blinks, startled, to see Leon walking towards her. He grins down at the floor, hands in his pockets, clearly in his own world.

At first there’s the surprise, her stomach does a somersault and her mouth pulls itself into a smile pretty much automatically. It’s a second before she sees past the details to the entire scene, and all of a sudden, Claire feels something twist in her chest when it finally clicks. The memory of a dark haired woman crossing the hotel lobby a few hours earlier, cast in a different light. 

Then Leon looks up, frozen for a moment when he realizes it’s her standing there. “Claire,” he says.

“Leon,” she replies, using the moment that it takes to step inside the elevator to compose her face into nonchalance. “Going down?”

He nods, the look of surprise still there, in the curve of his eyebrow, the part of his mouth.

They’re both silent for a bit and she takes in the sight of him on the reflection of the elevator doors, hair disheveled, a little longer than the last time she saw him.

“Didn’t think I’d see you,” he says, quickly and it’s awkward enough to draw the shape of months of no contact that hang in between them. Not to mention the fact that she clearly caught him post smash.

“That’s my line,” she responds, mainly because it’s the first thing that comes to her mind; but then he smiles and it makes her feel normal enough to signal to his tie.“You might want to fix that.” She gestures and he takes the undone bow hanging at his neck, looking at it for a second before stuffing it in his pocket. 

He shrugs, eyes on the general direction of her face, but not quite making eye contact. “Thanks.”

He wishes he could see her expression more clearly, and at the same time he doesn’t want to. This reticence is the farthest from what he would associate with her presence and he doesn’t know how to breach it. In all the times Leon’s thought of Claire in the last year, looked up her name in his contacts, it never occurred to him he’d meet her again like this. 

“So,” she begins. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, I’m sor—

“I should have—

They look at each other, Claire smiles, a bit easier now. It’s okay. He’s an adult and my friend; she has no right to feel hurt, especially about obtuse things, like unrequited feelings and holding candles, things he isn’t even aware of in the first place. Even if it is a bit depressing realizing that she hasn’t quite managed to get over those yet.

“Care for a drink?” she asks with as much normalcy as she’s able to produce. He chuckles.

---

They stand just out of sight of the ballroom in a place where the terrace light only mildly reaches. It feels more natural to their history than canapes and champagne anyway.

“So, I haven't heard from you in months and now you come out of nowhere like this?” she admonishes him, though there’s no edge to her voice. His job makes it more likely than one would think, and their friendship has always been more peculiar to emails and texts than face to face meetings. Still, it’s fun to watch him squirm a little.

“I’m gonna start sending you cryptic packages in lieu of communication,” is his response.

“Don’t you dare,” Claire warns him, taking a sip from her glass. “I’ll assume you’ve been kidnapped.”

Leon arches a brow at her. “You didn’t reply to my emails either,” he reminds her and she turns her eyes away. 

“One email,” she corrects and searches her mind for an excuse that doesn’t sound like bullshit. He’s right, she hadn’t written back, which was something that puzzled even her. She’d been glad to receive his message and to read it but when it came time to reply, she didn’t know what to say.

Leon watches her as she glances at the glass doors. He’s always liked the way her eyes crinkle at the corners just before she smiles. Something about it makes it look so easy, like the expression is always bubbling under the surface of her face.

“Maybe we should write letters,” he suggests.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Long letters. I’ll get the fanciest set of stationery Walmart has to offer.”

“Drop a postcard inside too. Wish you were here, or something equally obnoxious.”

She glances at him, suppressing a smile. “I’m looking forward to deciphering your penmanship.”

“Know that I’ll scent the paper with only the finest of Old Spice,” he promises with fake earnestness. 

She laughs quietly. “So what’s new? Are you Leon Kennedy, international man of mystery nowadays?” Claire asks, gesturing to his suit. “You certainly look the part.”

“It’s a rental,” he admits, though the compliment washes over him pleasantly when it comes in her voice. “Yours?” 

She looks down, pinching a bit of her skirt between two fingers, the silky material feels runny to the touch. “This old thing?” she replies in an ow-shucks- type-voice. Leon bumps her shoulder with his.  

His eyes catch, momentarily, on a wisp of hair that brushes her cheekbone in the night breeze. The low light lends it a garnet glint against her skin.

He opens his mouth to speak just as a man he doesn’t recognize appears on the doorway, the guy looks around for a moment, before he spots Claire.

“Miss Redfield,” he says. “It’s five minutes.”

“I’ll be right there,” she responds. 

Leon looks at her curiously. “Five minutes to what?” he asks.

Claire shrugs with one shoulder. “Haven’t you heard? I’m giving a speech,” she says, there’s a different inflection to her voice and he realizes, with a small amount of surprise, that it might be nerves. “To thank all the kind donors that keep our organization running. I guess every job requires at least a little sucking up.”

“That’s great, Claire,” he tells her. “Not the sucking up of course. TerraSave, I mean. It’s great work you’re doing.”

“I guess,” she hums, but smiles gratefully. “We’re still lobbying for the UN to approve this set of accords that’ll make it easier to prosecute bioterrorists, I hope this helps.” Her gaze wanders for a moment, seeking some invisible far off point in the distance, then after a moment she shakes her head, clearing her thoughts. “I had a run-in with our new PR representative before coming here. Do you wanna hear our new slogan?”

Leon nods, fully aware of the glint in her eye.

“TerraSave,” she announces. “Because Terr doesn’t have to end with Orist.”

He bites down the inside of his cheek but snorts anyway.

“Yeah, yeah, sounds awful, don’t you think?,” she concedes and laughs a little herself. She downs the last of her glass and peers at Leon for a bit. “I should go now.”

“You’ll do great,” he says confidently.

“You can’t know that.” 

He shrugs, his smile twisting a bit on his mouth. “Oh, I do.”

Standing with her like this, he finds himself trying to take her in as much as possible. Though not her features as much as other little things he’s found he missed. The tilt of her head, and how she always seems to be about to move, even when she’s standing still.

There’s something, some words hanging on his throat that he wishes he could tell her, but they never come. He thought he might have grown used to them by now, to their weight on his tongue, but he’s surprised by it all over again.

“Thank you,” Claire replies, after his silence stretches a bit. She looks back at the party, and his phone rings in his pocket.

“Go ahead,” he says, fishing it up. “I’ll be right behind you.”

She nods and the man from before holds the door open for her. Claire steals a glance back at Leon, just for a second, before the door closes behind her.

---

He wasn’t. Right behind her that is. The call was from Ingrid and before he knew it, Leon was throwing his clothes back into his duffel bag, along with a little piece of paper with a “See you” scrawled on Ada’s handwriting he found on top of his nightstand.

He wrote his own note to Claire, apologizing for not saying goodbye. And watched her speech belatedly, on the plane. 

In hindsight he should have known she would be there, and maybe he did and had put it out of his mind deliberately. Of course their respective occupations left little time to hang out, but if he was completely honest with himself, he supposes he could have made more of an effort.  

When he thought of Claire the image that came to his mind was almost always of her on the night they had met, or maybe the few days after, before she left for Paris all those years ago, that one especially, was always in his mind. Their conversations felt suspended in time, a place where he could step into and shed the weight of years and memories, he’s always been grateful for that.

But lately, the vision of nineteen-year-old Claire had started dissolving into current Claire in a way that he’d never quite noticed before. It’s almost like she glows sometimes. And though it fills him with both happiness and pride to see what she’s made of herself, there’s always an edge of… loneliness to the emotion.

It's a bit of an understatement to say he doesn’t quite know what to do with it, the tightness in his chest. Detachment has kept him alive this long, and when he’s away it’s almost easy to pretend it works for this too. 

Yet, the more time passes, the harder he finds it. It used to be that his life became a blur, of airports, and backseats, and trailing politicians. The weight of his gun on his side, and the comm in his ear. A woman at a bar, and lipstick on the edge of a glass. A convenient place by which weeks and months passed fast. 

Now he wakes up in the middle of the night, in a plane full of strangers and a sense of listlessness is all that lingers.

Chapter Text

Toothbrush in her mouth, Claire double checks the locks around her apartment, a half-formed thought about old habits drifting through her head, and the quiet sound of a forgotten movie in the background.

She’d planned to have a quiet evening, maybe catch something on the tv, but had found herself nodding off after only a few minutes and admitted she was probably too tired to manage even that. 

Jill had dropped her off earlier as they returned from a hiking trip. They’d never been particularly close before, when Claire was a teen, though they were friendly enough. Maybe if Claire had gone to college in Racoon, she would have developed a sort of little sister thing with her, her brother’s best friend.

But, like everything else, things had changed as the years passed. With the Racoon disaster hanging over their heads, the attention was stifling, and she’d desperately needed someone to talk to who wasn’t a coworker, or Chris. Maybe they wouldn’t be the kind of friends who get together for cocktails and dancing. But their companionable silence was something Claire hadn’t realized that she needed quite so much.

With the lights finally off and the sounds of the city as the sole ambiance, she lays her head on a pillow and is instantly asleep; at least until an hour later when her phone starts buzzing from the nightstand.

Bleary, she blinks at the screen for a second before she can read the caller’s name.

“Leon?” she asks cautiously, bringing the phone to her ear. She hadn’t heard from him since the night of the fundraiser, and even before that, she couldn’t remember the last time they’d spoken on the phone. Their conversations, sparse as they had become, took place mostly over texts and emails.

Silence. A bout of anxiety squeezes her chest for a moment as her mind starts conjuring worrying scenarios out of the air.

“Leon, can you he—

“Claire,” he says and something about his voice gives her pause. “Sorry.”

“Is everything alright?” she asks. 

“Yes. Yeah, just…” There’s a pause, and suddenly she can picture quite clearly the way his brow furrows, creating a small groove between his eyebrows. “What time is it there? Fuck. Did I wake you up?”

“Are you okay?” 

Thousands of miles away, in an alley full of puddles, he blinks, taking the scenery in. It’s quiet and damp, gray walls and the back door of an embassy are the few things he can see in the dark. The mix of guilt and disappointment on his shoulders flares up whenever he looks at the door.

“Right as rain,” he replies, eyeing the droplets falling around him, fully aware that he sounds miserable and suspecting that even if he didn’t, Claire would tell something’s wrong because, well, she’s Claire.

She hums, unconvinced of course but slightly calmer, and pulls the covers of the bed back over her head. “Do you want to talk?” Claire asks, feeling that the question might be a bit redundant but at a loss about what else to say.

She hears him exhale, quietly. “I uh, I saw your speech. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay.”

Claire is silent for a beat; it makes Leon wonder if that sounded as much of a pathetic excuse to her as it did to him. 

“It’s alright,” she tells him. “I hate public appearances.”

He lets out a sound that was probably meant to be a chuckle but seems to her more like the noise equivalent of a wince.

“Leon, you’re really starting to worry me.”

This time his voice sounds a little sturdier, less like he’s bleeding to death in some far away city, while she huddles in bed in New York. And though it’s not enough to put her completely at ease, it helps.

“Please don’t,” he requests. “I’m alright. I just—

A brief silence passes.

“I lost my charge today. That is, the man I was supposed to be protecting. He died on my watch.”

“Oh.”

He doesn’t really want to imagine what she’s thinking, whatever combination of pity and exasperation because really, waking her up for this? Get it together Kennedy, she’s your friend, not your therapist.

“That’s awful, I’m so sorry Leon,” Claire tells him, and it’s both exactly what he wanted to hear, and exactly the opposite. Something he needs but doesn’t really deserve.

They fall silent after that, the only sound on the line being Claire’s distant breath, because what else could he say? I feel like a fuckup? what good would it be for him to say it, just so she can—

“I know what you’re thinking,” she says, interrupting his train of thought. “And it isn’t true.”

If he were feeling like himself, if this was a social call instead, he might tease her for her mind-reading abilities, but it’s not, and he so wants to believe her. 

“I’m sure you did the best you could because I know you,” Claire tells him. “You’re the kind that goes on jumping in front of bullets willingly, to protect people.” 

“Claire—

“Are you going to call me a liar?” she asks, teasing yet deadly serious. “Because if you are, I swear Kennedy, I’ll get on a plane just to smack your pretty face.”

That actually makes him laugh a bit, which somehow makes the tightness around his throat even more obvious. Claire for her part feels that familiar ache somewhere inside her chest and closes her eyes for a moment in embarrassment. Of all times.

“What happened was terrible and I’m really sorry,” she continues in a softer voice. “But that doesn’t make every bad thought you’re having true.” 

Leon exhales, and she hears it muffled, on the other side of the world. She wishes she could somehow put a magical bandaid on his chest and fix whatever hurts. But words don’t work like that and all she can do is speak, and hope he takes some of it in. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

“No problem rookie.”

He huffs a bit, no one has called him that in ages, but it doesn’t sound strange coming from her. The same way it didn’t feel strange to want to hear her voice so much, he barely stopped to consider it before he was dialling her number. Perhaps he should be ashamed, he knows how it looks, never calling unless he needs something from her. The guilt presses low on his stomach. Some friend I am.

I miss you , is what he should say, I miss the way we used to talk. But the words are stuck in his throat. How do people even say that type of thing? 

A moment passes between them, while the sun that has set in her side of the world comes up in his. The gradual lightness of the sky reminds him that he’s been keeping Claire awake when she should be sleeping. 

“I should go now,” Leon says. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

Claire shakes her head a bit, forgetting for a moment that he cannot see her. “It’s fine.”

“I owe you.”

“No you don’t,” she protests.

“Yes I do,” he counters, and before he can go on and drop something else to burden her further, he says, “goodnight Claire.”

“Goodnight Leon.” 

She lies there for a while after the call disconnects, thoughtful. There was a time in their relationship when Leon calling her in the middle of the night wouldn’t have felt strange in the least. But they’ve drifted, and she had fooled herself into thinking it was for the best. 

Now with his tired voice still fresh in her mind Claire wonders if maybe she wasn’t just being selfish. She had been so concerned with her ability to get over whatever complicated feelings she had for him, that she forgot the reason they became friends in the first place was because of the support they can lend one another. 

She knows he’s going to take what happened to that man badly. Knows it because she’s seen it on him before. She just hopes he won’t be too hard on himself.

Chapter Text

In a way, Claire’s almost glad when for the next two weeks her work becomes a series of back-to-back meetings, demanding most of her attention.

Though she and Leon have texted more or less intermittently since he called her, news from his side have been rather vague and she’s started to worry he might be succumbing to self loathing wherever he is.

Rationally, she knows she can’t force him to talk if he doesn’t want to, but also knows that if he were home she would have already dropped in to check on him. Sometime in the last few days it started to feel like something she might do, something she could do, more likely. Claire doesn’t really have an explanation for it. She’s always wondered if there was a limit to the sort of things she might allow herself to do as a friend. As if there was some secret, invisible line she shouldn’t cross, in order to keep her own feelings in check. 

None of that matters, of course, since Leon is all the way across an ocean.

She throws herself into her work instead, deciding that if she can’t help him, she can at least try to do good by someone else. 

While the rising influence of TerraSave as an organization means they’re probably doing something right, it also comes with the unwanted side effect of making Claire herself a public figure, which she’s less than thrilled about. 

Interviews and appearances leave her drained in a way that feels more intense than simple physical labor. She finds that she understands now why Chris has always chosen to stay on the sidelines of the BSAA’s public face. If only she had the same luxury.

At least all the fuss makes for a good distraction. Though her mind does drift to known roads in little moments, in the back of a car, or waiting for a meeting to start. Her thumb hovers sometimes over Leon’s name in her contacts and where before she would have come up with a dozen little excuses not to call, there’s only blankness now.

It makes her feel wretched. She wishes she could see Leon strictly as a friend, the way it was in the beginning. But the dismal truth is that she doesn’t, and no matter how hard she’s tried to change that in the past, she’s never been able to. 

If only she could disentangle their friendship from everything else, she might be able to wonder about his well-being without feeling so bereft . She wouldn’t feel like she’s constantly evaluating whether it hurts more to have him around platonically than not at all. 

“Miss Redfield?” the PR woman calls, interrupting her spiraling thoughts. “It's time.”

---

Leon is in an airport when Claire’s name appears on the news. A picture of her face in the background as the anchor speaks words that don’t make sense in Leon’s head right away. 

The video they show is blurry, hurried, her collapsing frame as she exits a venue for a United Nations event burns into his retina. He is frozen as he watches her get shot before his very eyes.

The people on the channel, the anchor and another man, speculate on what they know. Was the attacker detained? Did they mean to kill her and fail, or was this supposed to be a message of some sort? 

Leon feels his stomach drop. He grows pale as they loop the video back again. 

He doesn’t think, at least not consciously, as he walks to the counter and has his ticket exchanged. His hands tremble slightly when he holds out his passport. 

---

The flight back to the states feels like the longest he’s ever been into. He’d dialled Claire’s number twice before he realized he was wasting time. And by the time he had the idea to call Chris he was already boarding the plane and without a signal for the next eight hours.

He’s always been good at suppressing his own anxiety. He doesn’t think he would have made it this far in his line of work if he wasn’t. But the blurry image of Claire falling to the ground won’t leave his head, and every time he pictures it he feels slightly sick.

There’s a wrongness, some uncanny quality to the situation that he slowly becomes aware of, once his thoughts start to align themself in familiar patterns once again.

The thought of something like this happening to Claire is baffling. She’s supposed to be safe, she isn’t like him, going out of her way to place herself in as dangerous a situation as possible. Aren’t there people supposed to accompany her? Why didn’t anyone do anything? Leon should have been there, he would have— done something, stopped it, prevented it.

The face of the man he was supposed to protect flashes before his eyes, accusatory. Leon’s nails dig into his palms while he remembers the way the man’s mouth had filled with blood and foam. The poisoned teacup sitting on his desk, still.

No, maybe he wouldn’t have done anything. How could he? When he’s not even capable of doing his own job. What good is he to anyone anyway? Certainly not to his charge, definitely not to Claire. 

He drags a hand through his hair, disgusted by his own self pity. The rest of the flight passes by slowly.

Chapter Text

Jill holds Chris’ hand as a doctor informs them that Claire’s stable and that they’re waiting a bit to move her into a room. 

Jill had taken a few calls from people wondering about her well-being, Chris on the other hand, had let them all go to voicemail. He hadn’t even said much since they’d gotten to the hospital, speaking only to ask a couple of questions here and there.

She isn’t too worried about that, Jill has known him long enough to have a pretty good idea of what is going through his head. They’d never talked about it properly, but she knows he would have preferred to keep Claire out of the Umbrella mess, she understands his concern, but doesn’t fool herself into thinking there had ever been a different option. 

Even if Claire had never gone into Racoon City looking for him, there was no escaping the stain of bioterrorism. Not with the way it had become part of their lives, much earlier than any of them had realized. Years would pass, but the shadow of that night their team walked into Spencer’s would follow them down to the end of it. 

And though she is appalled that something like this had happened to her friend, though she wishes they could have prevented it somehow; Jill knows that the work Claire does is necessary, especially in a world where most people only concern themselves with destruction.

She just hadn’t thought they would attack her like this, out in the open.

“We’ll get her a bodyguard,” she tells Chris as they wait for Claire to wake up. 

“We’ll get her ten,” he replies.

His phone chimes and he sets it down without looking at the screen. Jill catches Leon Kennedy’s name on it and arches a brow.

“I think we should probably get that one,” she says.

“Hm?” Chris asks, distracted.

“Give it here,” Jill requests, patting him on the shoulder when he passes her the phone.

---

“Hey, I didn’t know you were back,” is the first thing Claire says when Leon appears on the door to her room. 

The heavy rain outside impedes most daylight coming through the window, and the fluorescent one inside casts shadows under his eyes. His hair is messy, and he blinks slowly. She feels unusually sheepish in her hospital gown, her left shoulder is wrapped in so many bandages that it looks like a little mountain on her periphery. 

They’re still pumping the painkillers straight into her blood, so she doesn’t feel too bad, but she finds she can barely move her left arm, inside the sling they put it on. 

“I just came back,” he says, still standing on the doorway. 

“Oh.”

His eyes move between her face and her shoulder, his mouth is tense. “How are you feeling?” he asks quietly.

Claire tries for a closed lip smile since she can’t shrug. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she tells him. “The bullet barely grazed the bone and they were able to pull it out completely.”

Something flashes across Leon’s face and though she can’t read it very well, dizzy with the drugs still, she is kind of surprised, she’s never known him to be the squeamish type. 

He walks inside slowly, almost timidly, depositing his duffel bag on the corner and pulls out the chair that Chris had vacated not five minutes before. 

“I saw you on the news,” he says, still in that low tone. “I thought you were— 

Claire’s right hand tightens on the sheets. Of course they would be showing it on tv, it shouldn’t be surprising, and yet… A heavy weight settles on her chest. The thought of all those people seeing her like that, in a moment of vulnerability— a bout of anxiety she was too out of her mind to notice earlier squeezes her heart. 

“Fuck,” she says without thinking, hating how weak her voice sounds.

This uneasiness feels beneath her, she’s a Redfield dammit. She’s seen worse, she’s been through worse. And still… There's a difference between finding monsters in the dark and being shot down in broad daylight, turning it into a spectacle for people to analyze and pick apart.

Leon slides his hand into hers, pulling her away from her thoughts. Her own embarrassment settles solid on her gut.

“I’m sorry, I know you hate it,” he tells her, staring at their hands and wishing he had kept his mouth shut.

“I just feel so pathetic,” Claire admits, swallowing. “I know it’s stupid.”

“Not at all,” he assures her, though she remains unconvinced. “Did they get the guy?”

She nods. “Yeah, they tackled him right after. They haven’t told me yet why he did it though, if he was paid to kill me or whatever.” 

A grim expression passes over his eyes, and she recognizes it easily as the same one Chris had been wearing, ever since she woke up. 

“And how are you?” she questions, eyeing the circles under his eyes.

Leon lets out a long breath. “I’m fine, Red,” he replies, though the sleep deprivation is starting to kick in. “You shouldn’t worry about me.”

Claire narrows her eyes at him. The nickname catches her slightly off guard, he hasn’t used it in a long time; the way it tumbles from his lips now makes her wonder whether it was intentional or just a slip. “You always say that.”

“Maybe one day you’ll listen,” Leon responds, though he’s not sure he actually wants that day to come. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles and doesn’t speak for a while. He can almost feel the weight of her eyes on him but can’t quite make himself meet her gaze. 

There are a dozen texts from Hunnigan and more than a couple unanswered calls on his phone, and yet, he’s calmer than he’s been all week. He’ll deal with the consequences later, for now, it’s enough to just sit there, knowing that should anything happen, he won’t be stranded across an ocean, unable to help.

“Hey,” Claire says and he finally looks her in the eye. There’s a bit of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “We’ll have matching scars now.”

It’s ridiculous and exactly the kind of thing he himself would have said, once upon a time. “I see your sense of humor is untouched.”

“What’s that about sticks and stones?” she wonders and a half laugh rattles out of him.

He slips his fingers through hers, carefully, so he doesn’t mess the IV on the back of her hand. The sight of it is like a stone in his stomach. Claire has never seemed fragile to him, quite the opposite, if they’re in combat, she’s the one who has his back. He trusts her with his life. And yet, there’s something delicate around the edges of her smile, behind her eyes. He knows instinctively that her jokes and deflecting are mostly for his own benefit and hates it. If there was ever a time when she felt comfortable enough around him not to put on the brave face, he knows it’s gone now.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she tells him, brow furrowing. “I can handle Chris fussing, but not you.”

Leon doesn’t know how to do as she asks, so he averts his gaze again. 

He traces a line on the side of her pinkie with his thumb, back and forth. “I should let you rest.”

“All I do is rest,” she protests automatically, even though her eyelids feel heavier by the minute.

“Humor me.”

She hates asking, and maybe, if she wasn’t feeling so brittle, she would swallow the words like so much else, but right now she can’t. “Will you stay?”

“Of course,” he says immediately, a wisp of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

It’s then that she decides, it does hurt more not to have him around at all. She squeezes Leon’s hand knowing it means something different to him, and wonders if it’s unfair to keep that knowledge to herself. Probably. But he smiles and as she falls asleep it’s hard not to pretend, for a little bit, that things might be different on his side.

Chapter Text

In the end when he finally calls Ingrid she seems mostly baffled.

“I thought you were dead,” she deadpans. 

“Not yet,” he assures her. “How bad is it?”

She sighs. Luckily for him, Hunnigan hadn’t actually given up and she’d covered for Leon as much as possible. Unluckily for him, she’s quick to inform him they are still expecting him back in Berlin within the day.

“I can’t go back,” he tells her. “Not yet.” 

Claire would probably send him packing if she knew, the same way she’d done to Chris not ten minutes before. So he doesn’t tell her, instead he volunteers to accompany her back to her apartment, when the doctors say she’s fine to go. 

Chris eyes him strangely for a moment, in that serious way of his. Years ago, when he’d first met the man, Leon had taken his curt manner to mean dislike. Nowadays he knows it isn’t personal, though the stare never lost its intensity.

“I’ll be fine,” Claire reassures him when Chris finally relents. He gives her a hug and a gentler expression than Leon’s usually seen on him softens his features. He sounds very solemn when he promises to call as often as possible, however frequently that might be when one’s on the battlefield.

“I’d rather you came home for Christmas,” Claire bargains.

Chris smiles. “You got it, kiddo.”

Her nose scrunches up at the nickname, but a wisp of a smile still plays on her lips before they say goodbye.

The cab ride is mostly silent, with traffic and the rain as the only sounds over the softly playing radio. It gives Leon a chance to think and by the time he and Claire make it to the door of her building he’s got the perfect excuse to keep an eye on her for just a little longer.

He holds his jacket over both of their heads as she fishes out the key and for a second, her hair brushes the inside of his arm. Their eyes meet, and as she opens her mouth he says, “are you really gonna turn me to the streets Red?” 

Claire blinks, judging by the gleam of her eye, she’s fully aware of his intentions. “I don’t need you to babysit me,” she says, in the same tone one would refuse a glass of water.

“Who said anything about that?” Leon asks, perhaps a little theatrically but he’s always been a shit liar. “I just thought I’d catch a break before having to get into another plane.”

It works because it’s true, his own apartment is all the way in Washington and though it’s not a plane back home he means, there’s no need to elaborate.

Her eyes hold his for a moment longer, whatever she sees in him seems to be enough. “Well, you know where the spare bedroom is, I guess.” And so it’s settled. 

They both sleep the rest of the day off, her in her bed and him on the couch. It’s not a conscious decision, but once Claire disappears behind the door to her bedroom, exhaustion descends on him like a tide, and it is all too easy to sink into the sofa and remain dead to the world for a couple of hours.

When his eyes open once again it’s nighttime, and he finds her in the hallway, blinking slowly, her voice is quiet when she says, “hey.”

“Hi,” he replies, matching her tone. “How are you feeling?”

She moves her head in a so-so type manner and he reaches up, hands almost hovering between them, he wants to— what? Reach for her? Can he? Better yet, should he?

“Are you hungry?” he asks in the end.

She nods.

They order food and settle to watch a movie in the living room, without turning on the lights. It reminds them both of the time they went motel hopping after Racoon City, though neither of them mentions it. 

He can tell when the painkillers they had her hooked to in the hospital start to wear off, because of the way her right hand becomes a fist whenever she has to move, knuckles white. Leon gets her a glass of water and the tablets without waiting for her to say anything.

Claire rewinds the movie to where it was before he went to get her medicine, though he’s not really been paying much attention to it.

“Do you want me to go?” he asks, because all jokes aside, he doesn’t want to impose if she really wants to be left alone.

It takes a moment, but she replies, “No,” without taking her eyes off the television. 

“You know,” he begins. “I don’t remember the last time I did something like this.”

Claire glances at him briefly, the beginnings of a smile turning her lips upwards. “Does the life of intrigue not allow for movie nights?”

He suppresses a grin. “You seem to have a very outlandish idea of what I do.”

“So, not intrigue?”

“Not really,” he admits. It’s truly mostly just waiting around, brief moments of action and a lot of hotel rooms. There are the missions, of course, unkind most of the time, but they aren’t as frequent as one would think. He opens his mouth to tell her as much, but finds himself somehow unable. Unsure of what she’ll make of it.

When he looks at Claire, he finds her already watching him. Her eyes seem especially knowing in the darkness and Leon’s own settle back on the tv automatically. He can always tell the quizzical gleam of her gaze; for a moment he feels a slight trepidation about whatever she’s about to say, but when the question comes, there’s a bit of reticence in her tone that catches him by surprise.

“Do you think you would have liked being a cop more?” 

Someone else would have pointed out that he is, indeed, still kind of a cop, but Leon knows what she means. Though he doesn’t usually allow himself to think about what-if scenarios, so he doesn’t have a reply ready made. 

“I don’t know,” he concedes, what would his life have been like had the initial outbreak never happened? Certainly quieter. He tells her so.

Claire half smiles. “Donuts and coffee, huh?” 

“What about you?”

She arches her eyebrows, wondering, remembering plans from years ago. “I wanted to bike around the country, make a road trip out of it.”

The road trip part of that had actually come to pass, though not in the way she had envisioned it when she was nineteen. She can see on his face that he’s probably thinking the same thing.

“Do you think we would have met?” he asks her. “If none of it had happened?”

Claire considers him a moment. “Yeah, of course. I would have gone to visit Chris eventually, and you would have been there, somewhere.”

He hums, pondering what they would have made of each other under normal circumstances. Perhaps she wouldn’t have looked at him twice, or maybe he would have missed her, that police station had been big, if memory serves him right. A kind of nostalgia takes up residence in him at the thought.

“Would have been a shame otherwise,” he comments.

Claire’s smile softens. In the light of the television she can only see him in contrast, but his profile is as familiar to her as her brother’s, or Sherry’s. The usual fondness comes to the surface once again, at the view; but there’s guilt in there too. 

There’s something she’s always wanted to ask him. She used to think an ideal moment would present itself eventually, but years have passed and it’s never come. Maybe it’s the meds, or the fact that he insisted on staying with her, even if he did it in his own meandering way. Whatever it is, the word slips out of her before she can catch it.

“Leon?”

“Claire?” he replies, his attention still on the movie. 

She spends a moment trying to think of how best to phrase it, before deciding that ripping off the bandaid might be the best option after all.

“I know I’m years late, but—” she starts, “the way we parted after Racoon, I’ve always regretted it.” 

His eyes find hers in the dim light. Of all the things he would have expected her to say, that was probably the last. They’d never talked about it, not even mentioned it. There were emails and hurried phone calls, even letters once or twice, after she left for Paris, after she found Chris. That argument had sat on his shoulders for months, it felt too heavy to discuss over the phone, and then too childish to entertain it when he didn’t even know if she was safe. 

By the time they met again too much time had passed. His life had changed, everything had changed. 

Claire’s nails dig into her palm, regret sits on her lips and though his silence does nothing to reassure her, she knows that if she doesn’t get the last part out of her chest now, she might never do it at all. 

“I know what happened to you after too,” she tells him, and feels him grow still beside her. 

Leon blinks, suddenly aware of the meaning of her words. “What?”

“The coercion,” she clarifies, choosing not to sugarcoat it. 

His brow furrows, and he is briefly glad that the darkness of the room masks his expression, at least a little. He’d always assumed— 

“I’m sorry it happened,” she tells him, which is, she realizes, the most honest she can be. She doesn’t regret going after Chris, and wouldn’t say so just to make herself feel better, but it’s more complicated than that. “I feel like if I’d been there, maybe you wouldn’t have had to choose, you could have left this all behind.”

He exhales, a minute passes. What was it that he’d said to her back then? Leave us alone. Just go. He runs a hand through his face. 

“Honestly,” Leon begins, finally putting into words a thought that had been forming in his head for years. “I don’t think that was the kind of mess anyone could have just walked out of.” 

He holds her gaze for a moment, watches the blue light of the screen play over her features.

“Still,” she says. “You should have had the chance.”

Leon smiles with little humor. “I really don’t think it would have made a difference, Claire.” 

He’d said yes to those men, all those years ago, for Sherry, for Claire, and for himself too, if he’s being honest. Because he had been scared, they had watched the entire city blow up right in front of them, sterilized, like nothing. He’d wanted to protect them. 

“It was the only choice.”

“It shouldn’t have been.”

“But it was,” he cuts in, perhaps a little too forcefully.

Claire’s eyes are still on him, he feels too open under her gaze, laid bare. 

“Do you regret it?” she asks, at last the question she’d meant to make earlier, but had been too much of a coward to utter. 

Leon’s eyes search her face, her words poking at something inside himself he’s refused to look at. “Do you want me to?” he counters, almost against his will, an old insecurity bubbling up to the surface. “This is what I’m good at, Claire, I’m not— I can’t do what you do.” He presses his lips in a thin line before continuing, “I’m never gonna regret protecting you, or Sherry. But this is all I know how to do.” 

“That’s not— I was just,” she replies in a whisper. “I guess I just wanted to know if you’re… happy.”

He closes his eyes, breath coming out in a sigh. 

“That came out wrong,” Claire hurries to say, he can almost see her shaking her head in his mind. “I just, I would hate it to know that you’re unhappy because I left—

“Claire.”

“I should ha—

“Claire,” he interrupts her, opening his eyes to find her closer than he’d expected, he can almost see the little freckle on the corner of her mouth. “It’s fine, you don’t need to worry about me.”

She looks at him unhappily, biting the inside of her lower lip. I want to, is what crosses her mind. I want to make it my business, I want to be able to talk about these things with you. But how? That ship sailed years ago, the moment she walked out. 

Leon huffs and says the only thing he has to reassure her. “I don’t blame you, for any of it.” And he knows he’s flying low, because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t dream of speaking the next words, “I tried to, once, right after, but it’s not your fault, it’s not anyone's fault, except maybe Umbrella’s. So don’t feel sorry for me, Claire, I don’t think I can take it.”

She’s still for a moment, eyes searching his face, the expression on it is calm and neutral in a calculated way. Not for the first time, hell, not even for the tenth time, she wishes she could reach behind it, see what’s really going on in his head. But she can’t. The disappointment at the thought, combined with her injury and the memories is enough to squeeze her throat.

“I’m sorry,” Claire says, looking at the ceiling. “I had to know.”

Leon chuckles, though it’s mostly for show. “There goes the movie night,” he comments, not unkindly, as the credits roll, he hadn’t even realized the movie ended.

“Shit.”

They stay silent for a while, her with her back on the couch, him with his elbows on his knees. He feels tired, and for once, it’s not just the jet lag, or the lack of sleep. He’d never thought he’d actually say those things to her, to anyone. He feels like some tension that had his body in a twist has finally let out. 

“What now?” he asks Claire, she’s always been the one to call the shots anyway.

“I think we call it a night,” she murmurs. 

Leon nods. “Alright.”

Chapter Text

Claire sleeps late the next morning, finally opening her eyes to a drowsy feeling she attributes to the medication. Her shoulder throbs whenever she moves and getting out of the bed is difficult enough that she has to hype herself up a little to even attempt it. 

The light from outside is low and bluish, a softer rain than the day before still washes over the windows. The apartment is silent as she slips a cardigan over her shoulders to ward off the chill.

Part of her expects Leon to be gone when she ventures down the hall. Given her choice of conversation, she wouldn’t blame him. She herself has a hard time believing her own awkwardness. Claire can only hope she didn’t offend him by suggesting he isn’t capable of making his own choices, it wasn’t what she meant, but it’s easy to see how it might be interpreted that way.

To be completely honest with herself, she’d have to admit her stomach had dropped when Leon admitted he had resented her, even if only at first. She suspected it, things hadn’t been exactly the same after she came back. There’d been something different in his eyes and in the way he talked to her, a kind of restraint she hadn’t seen before. Perhaps it was foolish of her, not anticipating it, but it couldn’t be helped.

Leon had always been serious, kind and funny too, sure, but reserved. Yet there had been times when his eyes would light up in some sort of defenseless enthusiasm. Even though at the time he’d already survived one hellish night, and proved himself more than capable, the thought of him being coerced and cheated out of his freedom would always weigh on Claire.

He’d obviously hated that though. Even if he hadn’t said it in as many words it would have been plain. So she takes that concern and folds it into the back of her mind, she has to believe he can take care of himself, she owes him that much respect. 

“Red?” she hears him call, scattering her thoughts.

Claire follows his voice and the sizzle of the frying pan down the hallway. She is slightly surprised to find him in the kitchen, in a T-shirt and jeans. 

“They’re a bit burnt,” he warns, not quite turning to her. “But they’re edible.”

He places a plate of pancakes on the counter before her. She examines him curiously while he turns the gas off with a flick of the wrist and sets a similar plate for himself in front of hers.

Leon arches a brow, amused but wary. “I won’t make it weird if you don’t.”

She doesn’t know if he means the breakfast or their conversation last night, but in either case, it’s probably for the best. “Alright,” she replies, taking a seat. The corner of her mouth picks up in a half smile.

“Cool,” he says.

“I didn’t know you cooked,” Claire comments, taking a bite of her plate once he’s seated as well.

He shrugs. “I wanted to do the whole smiley thing, but you’re out of bacon.”

She bites down a smile. “I usually have breakfast at the office,” she tells him, though that generally means a coffee to go and whatever she can find on the way.

Claire looks up at him and his gaze holds hers a little bit too long. The guarded expression is back but it’s not as practiced as she would have expected. A hint of concern hangs on the lines around his eyes.

“How’s your shoulder?”

Claire sighs, she’d tried to put her hair up in the bathroom mirror, but every time her left hand moved, it sent a spark of pain up her shoulder. “I think I'm gonna be useless for a while.”

His mouth twists in a sympathetic line. “Better let it rest.”

“I guess,” she says, taking a sip from her cup. “This is nice, thank you.”

Leon’s eyes shoot down to his plate. “You’re welcome,” he replies. 

They fall silent, comfortably so, and it brings to mind some half forgotten memories of the time where she still lived with Chris, before she went to university. It’s funny, she thinks, though it feels more wistful than amusing, that I only get to appreciate it now.

“You have a picture of Sherry in the hallway,” he says, and then after a moment adds, “she looks so big.”

Claire blinks. “Yeah.” She recalls the picture in question, a polaroid Sherry had taken one day after they went to see an art exhibition. A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth at the memory. “She’s as tall as me now.” 

“I bet.” He nods thoughtfully. 

She knows, without having to ask him, that they haven’t seen much of each other recently. Sherry hadn’t exactly said so the last time she visited but it was there, precisely in the way she didn’t talk about it.

“Does she know?” Leon asks, examining his food. “About what happened after Racoon?”

Claire gets his meaning. “I haven’t told her,” she answers. “But I think she might have figured it out. She’s smart about these things.”

Leon’s lips turn up in a rueful half smile. “She gets that from you.” 

She blinks, slightly taken aback by his comment, though not in any way she feels confident expressing. 

“You know,” she says after a moment. “She’s coming to Chris’ for Christmas. We’re all gonna have dinner and maybe get drunk on eggnog, the usual stuff.”

Leon looks up. She’s always extended the invitation, though he’d only taken it a couple of times. Claire hopes that maybe it’ll provide him with a roundabout way to see Sherry if he wants to. She doesn’t think the reason he hasn’t visited her is out of lack of interest on his part, but out of some other, more obscure Leon-thing she hasn’t yet figured out.

A shadow passes over his face, then it clears just as fast, so quickly Claire wonders if it wasn’t just her imagination. 

“Alright,” he says. 

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You’ll come?” she asks, a bit appalled at her own enthusiasm.

He grins, boyish. “Sure, why not?”

“Great!” she tells him and stuffs another bite of pancake inside her mouth before she says anything she might regret. 

His phone, which he’d left on the counter as well, lights up with a silent call. Leon looks at it but doesn’t answer, and they finish their breakfast in relative silence, with the sounds of the city as their background. 

Claire feels slightly sheepish at having him cook and do the dishes, but he blocks her way to the sink when she tries to do it herself, and protesting suddenly seems like too much work, so she leaves him to it.

Between the painkillers and the restriction of having an arm pinned down she feels very tired all at once. She settles on the couch for a moment, mind already making a list of things she might, could, should be doing. Finishing paperwork, making calls—

“When was the last time you went grocery shopping?” Leon asks, walking into the living room, drying his hands with a paper towel.

She arches a brow at him. “When was the last time you went grocery shopping?”

He cracks a smile. “Not important right now.”

“Glass ceilings, Kennedy,” she reminds him. “If I went to your house right now would I find a full pantry?”

The line of his smile crooks, the way she remembers it does when he’s suppressing a grin. “Irrelevant,” he decides. “We’re not at my house.” 

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Claire counters.

“We do need to eat,” Leon reminds her.

She shrugs, then promptly winces when the motion upsets her injury. “There’s always pizza.”

Leon’s eyes fix on her shoulder, a line of concern forms between his eyebrows. “Will you lock me out if I run to the store right now?”

---

He uses the key she gave him to let himself in once he comes back with the bags. He’d only gone to the deli on the corner and the single key weighed nothing, less than spare change, but he’d felt it in his pocket all the way out and back. 

Funny, he thinks to himself as he carries the bags into the kitchen. The rain had only been getting worse, and with the lights out, the sight of the empty apartment gives him pause. Old habits .

He walks around quietly, out of instinct. The door to Claire’s room stands halfway open. When he peers inside it’s mostly her hair he sees, laying spilled over a pillow. She’s sound asleep. 

He lingers for a moment. A funny feeling takes up place inside his chest when he notices how the comforter rises and falls with her breath. He remembers a time when the sound of her breathing would gently accompany him as he kept watch during the night, still paranoid that the monsters would catch up with them. Is it ridiculous to feel nostalgic over that? Perhaps. If not, then it’s certainly inappropriate, he has no right to want such things from her. The thought is enough to make him tear his eyes away, and go hang his damp jacket by the door. 

His attention catches on little things here and there as he walks around, pictures, books, a bunch of CDs piled over the mantelpiece. Whatever little time Claire has for domestic things nowadays, her apartment is still lived in, there are mementos and trinkets wherever he looks.

Leon’s pretty sure his own place looks almost exactly the same as it did when he bought it. He has his stuff, of course, but he’s always ready to go. The things he keeps close are the ones that fit into his duffel.

His eyes finally land on a picture of himself. He’s standing in the background as Claire blows into her birthday candles. He remembers that one party well. She’d seemed so surprised when Chris had let him in, looked like a lightbulb had been flipped on behind her eyes. 

The sensation in his chest blooms into a full on pang. Even if he was away he always called to wish her a happy birthday. Claire always managed to talk to him too, though it took her several years of prodding and questioning for him to give her the exact date. Leon isn’t obtuse on purpose, not with her at least, but sometimes it feels like there’s this giant maze around himself and he forgets how to navigate it, even when he wants to.

---

Claire finds him dozing on the couch (again) once she gets out of bed. She hadn’t meant to sleep so long, just while he went out, but she’d underestimated her own exhaustion, or perhaps it’s just a side effect of the painkillers.

She squeezes Leon’s upper arm gently, knowing well enough that rude awakenings are generally not preferred once one has seen combat more than a couple of times. 

He blinks slowly, blearily, and for a moment looks so young that she finds it hard not to stare.

“I know you’re aware that there’s a bed in the guest bedroom, you used it last night.” 

Leon’s mouth twists into a familiar half smile. “Maybe I like your couch.”

“Sure, sure.” Her eyes drop from his face to a closed paperback laying over his stomach. “What’s this?” Claire tilts her head, recognizing the book as one of her own, some corny romance novel she bought once at an airport. 

“I’ve been perusing your collection,” Leon informs her, running a hand through his hair as he sits up, his bangs falling back over his eyes.

“Snooping around you mean.”

He turns the book over in his hands. “ Heaven Above sounds pretty enticing,” he tells her. “Do you have a thing for bodice rippers? Tight trousers and corsets really get you going?”

The corner of her mouth curls up in amusement. “As opposed to action scenes and international intrigue?” she asks, refusing to feel embarrassed.

He arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you know all about those?”

“Exactly.”

Mild surprise sets over his features. “Huh.” 

Claire’s eyes drift to the window. The rain outside falls as if there was someone on top of the building emptying buckets. 

“You think it’s a storm?” Leon asks, voicing her thoughts.

“Maybe,” she replies. Rain of this sort has always had an unsettling quality in her opinion. “I haven’t seen the forecast.”

He hums. “Lucky I went out earlier.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, a bit guiltily. “Did you get soaked? I’m probably the worst hostess in the world, making you go out to get food in the rain.”

His brow arches. “I’ve had worse. Plus you’re in no shape to be hosting, I’m just keeping you company.” 

Claire peers back at him. The offhandedness of his remark catches her attention. 

“You can kick me out whenever you want though,” he adds, misinterpreting her expression.

She places the book back on the shelf with the others and moves into the kitchen. “What if I never kick you out?” she questions over her shoulder. Her tone is half teasing, half careful.

Leon follows her, watching as she fills and plugs the electric kettle. “Then I’m afraid you’ll endure my presence until the bitter end.” 

“And it only took a bullet,” Claire says, words tumbling out of her mouth before she has time to consider them, though when she glances back at him he holds her eyes easily. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I know you’re busy.”

Leon shrugs. “It’s okay. I should visit more often.” The smirk he gives her is rueful, but genuine and that almost pleasantly uncomfortable flutter manifests into her stomach again. “Dinner time?”

Claire scrunches up her nose and he chuckles. “I really do feel bad about making you cook and clean.” 

“How do you know I’m not just building credit for when I get injured?” he deflects.

“You don’t need credit for that,” she replies, taking the opportunity to put into words something else that’s been doing the rounds in her head for the last few years. “You just gotta ask.” 

Leon considers her. “And you’ll come running?” She looks at him expecting his expression to be jesting, but finds it watchful instead.

Claire chuckles, turning back to the pantry in order to dissolve whatever tension hangs between them. “I don’t know about running.” 

“What kind of credit would that take?” Something about the tone of his voice has her peering back at him. He’s serious, his eyes feel heavy on her.

Claire stays silent for a bit. “Not credit,” she answers eventually but doesn’t elaborate. The electric kettle interrupts before he can ask again.

She stands at the counter and pours two cups of tea while Leon makes sandwiches for the both of them. It’s amusing and a little endearing to watch him cook, the most domesticity she’s seen from him in a while. Her smile dampens a little though, once she catches herself studying him a little too closely. Dangerous territory , she reminds herself.

She’s not especially prone to romanticization, but does her best to prevent it from happening anyway. If only she could draw a line in the sand and divide friendship from whatever else it is that makes her stomach flip around him— but feelings are never that simple. So it’s better to keep her head on straight just in case.

However else she might feel about him, Leon is her friend, one of her oldest friends in fact, and she has to protect that.

Chapter Text

For the first time in weeks, Leon wakes up from a full night’s sleep. He finds it exhilarating. 

Outside, the rain has subsided though it’s nevertheless still cold and slightly foggy. He’s silent for a moment, watching the clear, morning light cast soft shadows across the ceiling of Claire’s guest bedroom. The comforter feels soft against his skin and he can see the leaves of the tree right outside shift in the wind. 

His phone chirps from the bedside table, reminding him that, despite the calm he feels, there are pressing matters to tend to. 

Hunnigan isn’t happy. Which he expected, but he appeases her by promising to at least finish his paperwork before the end of the week. And for once, like a good little soldier, he gets to it right away. 

He sets himself up on the kitchen counter, typing away while he drinks his coffee. Claire finds him there something like an hour later. 

“Are you writing a novel?” she teases.

He looks up briefly and does a double take. She’s standing on the doorway, wrapped in a bathrobe that’s a little too big, hair slightly damp and cheeks still flushed from the shower. It makes the color of her eyes pop, brilliant blue. 

Claire blinks. “What?”

“What what?” 

“Why are you looking at me funny?” she clarifies.

Leon sets his attention back on the keyboard. Her smile still imprinted on the back of his eyes. “I guess— you just surprised me.”

“Okay.” She rounds the table to peer over his shoulder. Her hair brushes his neck softly when she leans in and Leon grows very still. “Why are you writing reports when you’re on leave?”

He hums, head full of the smell of her shampoo. 

Claire’s brow furrows. “You are on leave, right?”

Leon blurts the first thing that pops in his head. “You sure have a lot of questions this morning, Red.”

She’s standing so close he thinks he can actually see her train of thought behind her eyes, can guess the way she might be replaying how he explained himself back at the hospital. His eyes drop to the little freckle on the corner of her lower lip, it’s just slightly darker than the color of her skin, nearly invisible from afar.

He’s trying to come up with an excuse, or some sort of explanation but Claire doesn’t ask anything further. Leon wonders what she’s seeing on his face, if he looks as exposed to her as he feels under her attention. 

“Alright,” she says after a moment. “What’s for breakfast?”

“That’s it?” he counters, a little surprised, having fully expected her to send him on his way. Or at least inquired as to why he’s decided to stay when he’s needed elsewhere.

“That’s it,” she confirms, narrowing her eyes slightly.

He holds her gaze. The spot on his neck her hair had touched earlier buzzes pleasantly. 

“You’re doing it again,” she says, a mix of surprise and wariness coloring her voice.

“Doing what?” he asks, matching her tone.

The edge of her mouth twists up in a slightly baffled smile. “Looking at me funny.”

He makes a conscious effort to look back at his work and succeeds, even if it takes some concentration to focus on the words. “Well, I can’t help it that I have eyes.”

She laughs and moves away from him, going to pour herself a cup of coffee. Leon goes over the same three lines of nonsense twice, before he gets to typing again.

---

The day passes by quickly, with them relocating to the living room after lunch. Claire had tried to do some work on her laptop too, but had quickly grown frustrated trying to type with only one hand. 

Leon, for his part, had more or less tackled a chunk of paperwork. He only hoped Ingrid wasn’t expecting eloquence; style was a sacrifice he was willing to make in the name of speed.

Every now and then he looks at Claire over the screen of his laptop. The book she’d picked up is discarded and her foot taps against the carpet as she looks out the window.

“Restless much?” he wonders, teasing.

She runs a hand through her hair, pulling it away from her face. A sheepish smile twists her mouth. “It’s not like I can do much of anything.”

He considers her shoulder, still wrapped in bandages, the sling keeping her left arm immobile. “How are you feeling?” 

“I’m fine,” she assures him, even though she looks short of pacing around like she’s under house arrest.

Leon nods, and sets the computer on the coffee table absentmindedly, getting up to stretch his arms over his head. 

Claire’s eyes linger for a minute when his shirt rides up a little, baring the lower part of his stomach, a small extent of taunt, unmarked skin. He yawns and she shakes her head, settling her eyes somewhere else, anywhere else.

He starts rifling through his bag, pulling out the laptop’s charger, oblivious to her attention. A piece of paper flutters down to the floor.

“What’s that?” she asks, looking for a distraction, even if it comes in the form of a receipt.

Her fingers close around it before he replies, unfolding what seems to be a note written on a hotel’s memo pad.

“Oh,” is all she says. The note’s only content, a small “See you” written in a light hand, carves itself into her mind. She has an idea to whom the handwriting may belong to, and though it’s not a certainty, the possibility is enough to sting.

She wants to let go of the little paper as if it is a hot piece of metal, but she manages to hold on to it for a second longer, before offering it back to him with what she hopes is nonchalance.

Leon accepts it, eyes intent on her for a beat. Claire looks away.

“What’s she like?” she asks and a spurt of regret goes through her as soon as the question is out. 

Leon is silent for a moment. She is torn between needing to read his mind and wanting to stay oblivious, wishing she knew whether she should take the question back or change the subject altogether. Maybe he doesn’t remember that she’d noticed him leaving someone’s room on the night of the fundraiser. Maybe she’s got it all wrong.

“Ada?” he asks.

Well, so much for getting it wrong. 

“Yes.”

His expression turns thoughtful. “She’s very… private I guess, hard to pin down.”

Claire glances back at him, suddenly too curious not to try to read his face. The corner of Leon’s mouth is pulled up in something that isn’t quite a smile, but somehow still… fond. It hurts more than she’d anticipated, and the acknowledgement of that hurt sits heavy on her stomach. 

“Sort of unbreakable, the kind of person who’ll never be fazed, no matter what,” he explains. “Does that make any sense?”

Claire nods, not sure about what she wants to say, if anything. “Must be terribly alluring,” she tells him eventually, and hopes, so hard, that it sounds calm and detached and perfectly un-miserable.

She doesn’t know if whatever is going on between the two of them is serious or not, and that at least, is a question she doesn’t want to ask. Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked anything at all, but she can see how it might be better to have some things out in the open, to know for sure.

“Something like that,” Leon confirms, looking down at the piece of paper. He’d forgotten about it and having Claire find it now felt somehow wrong, like trying to put together two repelling magnets. That note, and Ada for all intents and purposes, belong to a part of his life that feels very far right now, in Claire’s living room. 

“Why did you wanna know?” 

Claire gives him a one shoulder shrug. “Curiosity? You obviously care about her, I just… wondered.” A shadow of emotion passes through her face, too fast for him to interpret it, then her features settle into calm neutrality. “I’ve never seen you with anyone in that way,” she adds quietly.

Leon hesitates. “It’s not— We’re not,” he begins, trying to find a way to best explain it. “We meet sometimes, mostly on the field, it’s always been very casual, uncomplicated.” 

“Makes sense,” Claire says.

“Does it?”

She smiles, just barely. “I may be into bodice rippers, but you’re definitely into international intrigue.”

That familiar twist in his chest reappears at her expression. Despite his intentions he doesn’t think he explained himself well, not at all in fact. “I’m not some James Bond type,” he tells her, trying to dispel the lingering feeling.

“Of course not,” she replies, amusement bleeding back into her voice. “James Bond is british.” 

---

After dinner, Claire ropes him into watching the entire first season of The X Files. When he rightly points out that they’re not gonna make it all the way through, she sets out to show him a selection of what she considers to be the best episodes. He is almost surprised at the amusement he feels watching her break out her DVDs, almost.

“I was trash for this when I was in high school,” she informs him.

“I can believe that,” he replies.

He likes the show, more than he would have guessed, but it’s mostly because of her enthusiasm. 

After their conversation there had been something like a cautious edge to her voice, it had him wondering what she made of the entire thing. He’d never really discussed Ada, or anything relating to her with anyone. It had been part of the thrill at first, having this thing that belonged to the two of them only, but as time passed he’d started to question if there really was anything to tell at all.

Realistically, he knows she must be at least a little fond of him by now. Ada has, after all, saved his life on more than one occasion. But he doesn’t fool himself into thinking them having sex on and off means anything more to her than what’s apparent. 

He might never really know Ada, but he knows enough to be sure she would never compromise herself. And he, well, he’s not that naive anymore.

Claire dips her hand into the bowl of chips they’re sharing and it pulls him out of his thoughts. His eyes focus back on the TV, a monster that is clearly just a guy in SFX makeup appears on the screen for a moment, Leon looks back at Claire’s delighted face and finds himself smiling too.

“None of this has soured on you? You know, after…?” he asks.

She arches an eyebrow. “After seeing actual abominations?”

Leon nods.

“Nope,” she says, accentuating the p with a pop of her lips. “Still as sweet as the first time.”

He turns that little piece of information over in his head for a second.

“Plus, it was never about the creatures anyway,” she explains. As she speaks, the two main characters exchange their usual banter on screen.

“I see,” Leon says, looking at her with newly found curiosity. “You’re more of a romantic than I would have pegged you for, Red.”

The tilt of her smile turns sly. “Only in fiction.”

“Still.”

Her response brings to mind a memory from not so long ago, some dinner party he’d attended, where Claire introduced him to a guy who’d walked in with his arm looped through hers. Leon’s mind recoils from the thought almost instantly. At the time he had been… a little uneasy, but also completely aware that he could never act on it. 

He glances at Claire now, sitting close enough that their arms almost brush whenever she gestures. His eyes inevitably find her injured shoulder and he wonders again, about that man. If there are any pictures of him around her place, he hasn’t seen them, and if he ever visited her at the hospital, Leon didn’t run into him. He’s— pleased. The moment the emotion registers, guilt hits him like a wave. 

He could spin it a dozen different ways. He’s protective of her, that is true. Friendly concern, that one’s plausible. The guy didn’t deserve her, most certainly. But if he examines any of those excuses for longer than a second, they ring hollow in a way that is difficult to ignore.

Claire, for her part, misinterprets his expression when something about his previous choice of words catches her attention. “Have creature-features soured on you ?”

“Kinda,” Leon admits with a shrug, content to abandon his current train of thought. If his response comes a little too quick, slightly too relieved, she doesn’t notice. “Haven’t watched much of anything recently anyways.”

“Right, no time for movie nights on your high-octane lifestyle,” she teases.

Their eyes meet. She isn’t smiling outright, but he can see the amusement in her gaze, plain as day, and it coaxes a smile out of him. 

“Small price to pay,” he replies. 

“I guess.” Claire tilts her head slightly. “But look, everybody deserves a day off, don’t they?”

Leon chuckles. It’s a small sound and maybe it shouldn’t be important in the grand scheme of things, but the ease with which the laughter comes out of his mouth surprises him. So much of his life is made of tragedy, he tries to look at the bright side, or to find amusement in the absurd. But that kind of laughter is a brittle thing, a “nothing left to do but” kind of emotion. 

This is different though and it feels almost exotic. It stops him in his tracks. When was the last time he did something just for the pleasure of it? Besides drinking of course. He knows Claire’s teasing when she comments about his work, but it suddenly doesn’t seem too far from the reality of it. 

He looks down at the bowl of chips and an unexpected wistfulness slides into his chest. She deserves so much better than him, a true friend, someone without the tangle of complicated feelings inside. And yet, if he could spend the next year on this couch with her, he— well, he would. He had thought he was keeping Claire company, but perhaps it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s always been.

Chapter Text

The only sound in the waiting room is an inane little piece of generic music that loops over and over and Claire is almost sick of it the minute she first hears it. Though to be honest, that feeling has been lingering ever since she left the apartment.

Having been strictly home for almost a week, she’d only glimpsed the outside from her window pretty much since she was shot. She’d found stepping outside the building was… a little harder than she’d anticipated. It seemed both ridiculous and humiliating, the way she’d frozen for a second when Leon opened the door for her. She’s been injured before, seen combat, etc; she shouldn’t be feeling like this. 

She supposes they’ll assign her a therapist if she mentions it to the doctor, and well, it would be kind of hypocritical to refuse, considering the hundred and one times she’s tried to convince Chris to see one. Unpractical too, since she can’t spend the rest of her life indoors.

Regardless of that, between the music, the fluorescent lights and the sterile smell, Claire’s more on edge than she’d like to admit.

Then, out of nowhere, Leon’s hand slips into hers, scattering her thoughts. Her foot, which had been tapping against the floor, falls still. He doesn’t really look at her, eyes still trained on the magazine he’s been flipping through, but his fingers squeeze hers and Claire knows he’d noticed her restlessness. 

She looks down at their intertwined fingers, unsure. She doesn’t know what to make out of this newly-found closeness, the ease with which he’s been touching her for a while. Stealing a look back at him, it occurs to her that he might not even have noticed it himself.  

Their conversation about Ada still lingers at the back of her mind, in a corner she’s refused to examine very closely. She knows, on an intellectual level, that it’s something she’s going to have to think about at some point, but now is not the time and it might be wrong, but Leon’s hand in hers is a welcome interruption, one she kind of needs right now.

“Distract me?” she requests.

Leon studies her for a moment, eyes calmly lingering over her face. “I can’t believe you still got this,” he says, pinching the collar of her trusty red jacket. “It looks good as new.”

A small smile spreads on her lips. “It is new, or new -ish . Sherry still has the old one. Chris got me this one for my birthday some years ago.”

That little piece of info gives Leon pause for a minute. 

“Should have known,” he replies, mouth twisting into a rueful line.

Claire finds herself watching him in turn, the familiar lines of his face seem a little harder under the fluorescent light, but despite that, there’s a… tranquility to him that strikes her as new. She hadn’t thought to ask him to come to her appointment with her, but when the time to leave her apartment had come, she’d found him already with his jacket on, waiting for her at the door.

Looking back at the last few days, she’s pretty sure she would have succumbed to her own uselessness pretty fast if it wasn’t for him being around, keeping her mind off things. The notion is both comforting and disquieting at the same time. Though it’s been roughly a week, this is one of the longest stretches they’ve spent on such close quarters. Was it always this easy? Back then?

His thumb starts drawing heavy circles on the back of her hand. Whatever internal barrier she had erected between their friendship and everything else, feels flimsier than ever, and she’s not sure what to make of that.

“Miss Redfield?” A woman appears at the entrance of the waiting room, hands into the pockets of her white coat.

“Right,” Claire replies, standing up.

Leon gives her a smile that is equal parts encouraging and playful. This is all a very bad idea, she thinks, but returns the gesture anyway.

“I’ll wait for you,” he tells her.

“Okay,” she says, and follows the doctor down the hallway.

---

His phone rings almost as soon as Claire disappears. Hunnigan’s name on the screen prompts a weary sigh. Leon knows what she’ll say without having to hear it and he doesn’t think he can put it off much longer now.

For the first time in a long while, he’s not itching to go back to the fight. The thrill of it is still swimming around in his brain somewhere. He knows, rationally, that the adrenaline will find him eventually, but he isn’t dying for it.

It… puzzles him a little. Of all the terrible and absurd things he’s seen on the field in the last years, the adrenaline is probably his favorite, there are other perks, sure, but with the blaze of fire behind him and the wind on his face, he’s so, so alive. It had made everything else seem pale and tired in comparison, for a time. In hindsight, it had also made it difficult to tell when the sensation started to fizzle out. 

He’s not really the type to willingly seek out company, but as his eyes find the seat Claire vacated only a moment before, he turns over that notion inside his head. Perhaps it’s not so much about company, as it is about trust. She’s always had his back. It just never occurred to him that the trust would translate so well into domesticity. 

Or maybe it did, once, and he’d just forgotten it. 

Back in the days after Racoon City, everything had been terrible. They had little money, no plans and a little girl that depended on them as reliable adults. And yet, he’d been happy. Amid their improvised dinners, makeshift bandages and terrible motel radio signal. They existed in the moment and unconsciously, Leon had managed to convince himself that it would last forever. 

Something inside him shriveled a little when Claire told him she needed to go. 

He remembers it well, despite himself. She’d waited for Sherry to go to bed before she’d sat on the floor beside him, her back resting against the bed, and told him what had been in her mind for days. Leon hadn’t protested, or even said much come to think of it, but he had seen the hurt on her face at his feigned indifference, even if it was only there to keep her from seeing the hurt on his.

He looks back at the hallway through which Claire disappeared, Hunnigan on his ear, informing him that he’s needed, that she’s sent him the details for the flight back. 

All his life he’d held this heroic notion of what he wanted to do, what kind of man he wanted to become. He had gotten it, the action hero part; survivor, agent, needed, respected. He’d even come to hone that suave-type charm Claire likes to tease him for. So why does he still feel like a walking bruise? 

“We really need you back,” Hunnigan tells him.

“I know,” Leon says, filtering the resignation out of his voice. “I’ll be there. And thank you, Ingrid, I know I put you on a spot.”

“Glad we’re on the same page,” she replies in her usual deadpan now that she knows he’s coming, though there is a little relief in her tone.

As usual, Claire reads the news right off his face when she comes back. Her mountain of bandages has been stripped to a single white patch over the wound, visible under her tank top, and she carries the sling and her jacket in her right hand. 

“Is everything okay?” she asks.

“Yeah.” Leon nods. “I just got off the phone with Hunnigan, I have to go back tonight.” 

“Oh,” she says, her face settling into a wry half smile. “And to think I was about to dust off the second season of The X Files today for your benefit.” 

He snorts, warmth spreading inside his chest. “Rain check?”

“You bet,” she says, a wistful expression passing through her features. “Hey, can you help me put this back on?” She shows him the sling. “I had to take it off in there.”

“Sure.”

Leon takes the sling from her, holding the sleeve gently as she slips her left arm through it. When he brushes her hair aside, his knuckles move over the skin of her back, and the thin strap of her top slides down. Without thinking, he hooks his index under it and returns it to her shoulder, brushing a cluster of freckles near her neck.

Claire stills, and he himself freezes, his fingers still resting gently over her bare skin. He remembers, suddenly, her hands on him as she changed the dressing of a similar wound, a long time ago. There’s another, smaller scar a little lower on her back, a pale sliver of skin and though his fingers itch to touch it, he makes the conscious decision to drop his hands.

She lets out something between a breath and a huff, and murmurs a quick “thanks,” at him. He peers at her, and the rosy flush over her cheekbones makes his stomach do a somersault, though the reason for it is one he’s only starting to acknowledge.

Her eyes seem to him as unreadable as they are blue. A moment passes, but neither of them says anything. Leon knows, somewhere inside, the exact words he would use if this were anyone but Claire. The mix of sly and understated confidence that has gotten him exactly where he wanted on a dozen times. But all of that sounds trite, vapid, and overall the wrong way to approach— whatever this is.

“Should we go?” she asks finally, pulling him from his circling thoughts.

Leon nods.

---

It takes him less than ten minutes to pack everything back into his duffel bag, he’s used to being on the clock after all. 

Claire leans her temple on the doorframe and wordlessly passes him an apple and a water bottle before he zips up the bag. He arches an eyebrow at her. “Really?” He feels like a kid, sent into the woods with a loaf of bread and a block of cheese.

The corner of her mouth curls up slightly. “I can lend you my revolver too, if you want. Though you’ve always struck me more as an auto type of guy.”

He feels his lips stretching into a smile. “Depends on the occasion.”

Her gaze lingers on him, as if she is searching for something and Leon finds himself taking a step, and then another, closing the distance between them just a little more.

“Thank you,” Claire says. “For staying with me.” She has that look about her, the small line between her eyebrows she gets when she’s turning something over in her head. “I would have probably gone mad pacing without you here.”

“It’s nothing, Red.” 

“No, it’s not,” she protests calmly. “I appreciate it and I want you to know it.”

Something about that starts a flutter inside his stomach. “Now don’t get it twisted, I’m just building credit, remember?”

Claire tilts her head, dismissing his reply with a roll of her eyes. “Whatever you say, Kennedy.”

A wisp of hair that’s escaped her bun brushes her cheek, he reaches out and tucks it behind her ear before he can think about it twice. Claire looks at him with surprise, then her free hand comes up and settles on his shoulder, light and warm.

Slowly, she leans into him, Leon’s arms coming up to draw her in near. The only sounds are the ones that come from the outside, and the rustle of clothes as he folds his arms around her. Claire rests her chin on his shoulder and he buries his face in her neck, holding her close. 

She can feel his hot breath on her skin and wills herself not to shiver, focusing instead on the way his hands are splayed on her back, on how when they are this close, she can faintly feel his heart beating inside his chest. It’s probably a bad idea to touch him like this. So much for not romanticizing. But she can’t make herself let go and the longer she stays, the more difficult it seems.

Eventually, she closes her eyes, turning her face into the crook of his neck. Leon’s hands tighten. Claire lets out a small hum and he pulls away, eyes going immediately to the wound on her shoulder.

“Did I hurt you?”

She shakes her head. Leon wonders whether he should be embarrassed by letting himself get carried away, but she’s still so close, her chest just inches from his, temple almost brushing his cheek, he finds that there’s no space for bashfulness inside his chest. 

Her right hand slides down his shoulder and then his arm, and he tangles their fingers together before they slip away from him. 

The expression in Claire’s face is careful. “I’m gonna miss you, aren’t I?” she says, voice full of playful resignation. 

He grins. If it’s stupid to be thrilled by the admission, he doesn’t care. “Hey, you’ll have your bodice rippers and agent Scully to keep you warm till Christmas.”

She snorts softly. There’s something about her face, not embarrassment exactly, but a kind of bafflement that gets his attention. “Right, so you’ll come?” 

“Scouts honor,” he promises. 

Claire peers at him and Leon can tell she is fighting a smile. “I’ll hold you to that.” 

Half an hour later his brain is still full of her, replaying the tilt of her head, the shade of her eyes. As he makes his way through the airport, it feels like his mind is floating a few feet above his body. 

Claire, for her part, tries very hard to push the giddiness away. To frame his actions, the smiles, the hug, under a friendship light. Feeling like any failure of hers to rein in her emotions will result in inevitable heartbreak. And yet, she suspects she might have missed that chance already. She’s hurtling towards something, that’s for sure, she just doesn’t know what.

Chapter Text

Weeks fly by with a haste that is particular to the end of the year and Claire throws herself back into her work. There’s a dozen meetings and a mountain of paperwork, but it’s a somewhat welcome distraction. 

She had jumped at the chance to get back to the office as soon as the doctor cleared her for it, even if it took her a while to be able to leave the house without flinching. The new security team doesn’t make it easier either; one would think their presence to be reassuring, but the truth is that every time Claire catches the bodyguard’s eye she’s reminded of her injury all over again. She knows they mean well, the team, her coworkers, Chris; but if it were up to her, she would rather just forget about it. Or at least, forget about most of it.

She’s only heard so much from Leon in the month since he left, mentions of a delicate operation on his last email and such. She supposes that might be the reason, Occam’s razor and all that jazz.

In truth, it’s as if things have realigned themselves to the usual course between them. That is to say, that the almost-week he spent in her apartment feels now like an outlier, like something she imagined. Perhaps it’s better this way. The conversation she and Leon had about a certain freelancer spy still lingers in her mind at the worst of times. Curiosity killed the cat, they say, and she thinks it might be true.

She’s never met the woman officially, but the bioterrorism circle can be surprisingly small and she’s heard plenty. Of course, most of it might not be true, but still, Claire wasn’t lying when she told Leon she knew the femme fatale angle could be alluring. 

Though at this point she’s mostly given up trying to set boundaries that she knows she won’t be able to keep, she’s found that thoughts of that conversation are better than a bucket of cold water when it comes to putting things in perspective. 

Sitting at her desk, she rubs her eyes with her fingers, trying to physically scrub away her thoughts with no use. She feels… too small when thinking about that conversation, it’s not something she wants to dwell on.

Regardless of personal preference, the sense that she’s on some sort of collision course hasn’t diminished. Claire doesn’t know if she wants Christmas to come faster or not at all. 

Glancing through her office’s windows she can see the decorations on the street, people coming and going, and it almost strikes her as funny. One would think that after so long this sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem anymore. The uncertainty and trepidation of Is this? Does he? Do I? She’s always been pretty straightforward when it came to dating and such; she’d been honest when she told Leon that she’d never cared much for it outside fiction.

So what is it about him specifically that makes it difficult? It puzzles her because of all people, Leon’s the one she’s never had to fit herself to in order to click with. He just… gets it, somehow. And not just in the sense that he understands things she couldn’t possibly explain to someone who hasn’t seen the shit they have. Though that is, admittedly, a part of it. The fact that he’s rather easy on the eyes might have to do with it too, but that is besides the point.

Is that so bad, then? A part of her wonders. It is if he doesn’t feel the same, the other one replies. And well, that is the thing. Claire would rather be around him as a friend than saying anything she will regret the moment the words are out of her mouth.

When did she become such a coward? Suddenly she thinks she can muster a little more sympathy for Chris’ situation. When she remembers how she teased him, she feels a sliver of guilt, it’s unexpectedly sobering. Worse of all, she knows all too well what she’d say if she were the one offering advice. Man up. Put on the big girl pants. What’s the worst that could happen?

The irony isn’t lost on her. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter what she decides, there’s still a couple of days left until she has to drive down to her brother’s and a pile of presents waiting to be wrapped back at her apartment. She might as well get to it tonight. 

With a couple of folders under her arm and the lights of her office turned off behind her, she makes her way down the building and out into the street

---

After the fire breaks out, it occurs to Leon that Hunnigan might have sabotaged the intel herself. Payback for dropping off the face of the earth and all that. Then again, his current situation isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, and he likes to think that if Ingrid really wanted him dead, she would have found a more elegant method. 

Whether it was her or not doesn’t matter right now though, not as the entire building starts collapsing on top of him. 

Who would have known seventeenth century chateaus could be so flammable? 

The way he came from is blocked, and the way up is a death trap, with the staircase almost completely engulfed in flames. That only leaves— He eyes the fireplace warily. The intel said there was a tunnel underneath, but the intel could be wrong, it had been wrong about his target after all.

Still, there’s nowhere else to go and he can hear what once was a man, now a mass of tissue and blood, roaming the hallways, looking for him. There’s smoke in his lungs and only a handful of bullets left. He approaches the fireplace. 

Leon brushes years old ashes aside, all the while watching the orange flames closing in. There’s a removable panel under the stones, he pushes it aside with difficulty to reveal a stone ladder going down, down, down, dark enough that he can’t see the bottom.

Figures . 

The rungs are cold under his hands, the stone damp. The way down stretches on forever with only his flashlight for lighting. When his boot finally meets something it’s only freezing cold water, but the relief at finally finding the bottom almost makes it worth it.

He turns around carefully, directing the beam of light  into the distance, into a tunnel made of rough stone, just as pitch black as the ladder had been. It seems to stretch on indefinitely. He picks up a small pebble from the wall, throwing it as far as he can into the water and it sinks with a small plink. 

No other sound comes back. Nothing at all. He can’t even hear the roaring of that thing upstairs. Regardless, he keeps the magnum close, because if there’s something he’s learned, it’s that one never knows.

He ventures further down, always keeping an eye out, even though after a while, the repetitive glint of the walls and darkness of the place has him wondering whether he’s making any progress at all. Then just when his mind is starting to wander, the floor suddenly gives way and he’s submerged up to his waist. 

“Fuck,” Leon mutters under his breath. He really hopes there’s an exit on the other side. An exit and a warm bath and a place to safely pass out. He hasn’t slept in a couple days, his system is probably running on adrenaline exclusively.

He looks down at his wristwatch, it’s dead, the cracked surface reflects the glare of his flashlight. His comm is silent, probably too deep underground for him to get a signal.

After what feels like an eternity, the tunnel opens into a chamber. His flashlight illuminates dark, semicircular spaces between columns. A crypt. 

Leon catches a glimpse of dark bones and cobwebs. Nothing seems to be moving but he remains alert. He has somewhere to be in twenty-four hours and this whole fiasco has been enough of a delay already. He climbs into the walkway, suppressing a shiver when a faint cold breeze meets his wet clothes. Good, he thinks. A breeze means a current, and a current means an exit of some sort.

He turns off his flashlight for a minute, trying to discern another, far off source of light, but he finds it much closer and smaller than he’d anticipated. 

A small red dot, hanging near the floor on a smaller chamber to his right. A quick inspection reveals a generator, and weirdly enough, what looks like a campsite. There’s a tent, tables and, he notes with uneasiness, lab equipment.

He approaches it carefully. The tent is halfway closed, a foul smell emanating from it. He’s fairly sure that the shadow inside the tent is, or was a person, though all things considered, he doesn’t feel the need nor the inclination to check for a pulse.

His hands find a computer instead, fingers reaching to press a couple of keys. The laptop requires a pin code to unlock. Leon could probably find a way to crack it, if given enough time, but since that is exactly what he lacks he decides to skip it, going over some scattered papers left over the table instead.

Inside a protective case he discovers a cooler box which upon examination yields a pair of glass vials containing samples of some sort. They feel deceptively light in his hands, and fragile. But the box would require both hands to carry, so he places them as safely as possible, inside a pocket of his belt and continues on.

He has a tentative idea of what those vials contain and since he is very interested in getting back home with only two arms and two legs, he reminds himself not to move them around too much, even as he picks up the pace.

His teeth have only just begun to chatter when he reaches the end of the crypt, a circular room, empty but for the tight spiral of a staircase in the center.

He climbs.

Gradually, the pitch black of the walls becomes a dark gray. A faint breeze brushes his hair. The stairs give way into a mausoleum, old and crumbling but flooded with the beginnings of morning light. A rusted iron gate blocks the way out, but it only takes a couple of hard kicks for the hinges to collapse on themselves. 

Disappointment settles on his chest when he notices the chateau, still looming on the horizon. The flames have engulfed it completely and from his point of view it looks like a giant pyre, with flames reaching up at the dawning sky. Down in the flooded tunnel it had seemed to him like he’d walked miles, but distances can be tricky like that.

After a moment he notices that the dry grass around the chateau has also started to catch. He should get moving.

“Hunnigan?” he asks, his comm buzzes, but no voice comes out. “Ingrid?”

No response. Dammit.

He gets to walking, if he hurries he might be able to clear the woods before sundown. 

A leaf creaks behind him. Leon stills. His finger locks on the trigger of the magnum. 

In a second, something that looks like a piece of meat with claws wraps around his ankle. Pain spikes up his leg and as the foreign limb jerks, he falls onto his back, stars exploding inside his head. It’s only years of experience and pure force of will that has him opening his eyes right away. 

He squeezes the trigger, one bullet, five, gone. The monster howls in pain but its hold only tightens. There’s nothing human about it anymore, not a trace of the man from only hours ago. 

Leon digs his knife into the knots of flesh holding him down and the creature finally releases him, only to slam him back down with what once might have been a fist. A horrible sound, like a crack, resonates within his body and a terrible pain spreads over his side, knocking the breath from his lungs.

His vision blurs, there are spots in his eyes and a nauseated feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tries to roll, to avoid the next blow but it comes down too fast and suddenly the entire world goes black.

---

He wakes up two days later in a field hospital outside Bordeaux.

All around him there are other men and women, most of them agents, all of them injured in the chateau’s vicinity. A solemn looking operative comes at midday to inform him that they managed to contain the outbreak before the strain reached any populated areas.

“What happened to the samples?” Leon interrupts him, his face is severe but his heart hammers inside his chest, even though he doubts that they would have let him out in the open if he was infected.

The man hesitates. “They were destroyed,” he replies. “Though we managed to save some glass pieces that have already been shipped for evaluation. You were tested and found clear of infection.”

The anxiety subsides, leaving only another question, to which he can already guess the answer. “What day is it?” he asks. 

The man pauses, probably thinking it’s a test of some sort. “December twenty-fifth.”

Leon’s stomach sinks, his hand runs over his face, upsetting the bruises and cuts there. “Merry Christmas, I guess,” he tells the operative, who looks on, wary, and doesn’t return the sentiment.

They hold onto him for a couple more days, in order to monitor his concussion. Those who were more gravely injured were dispatched to a local hospital right after the incident, the rest were sent back to the states. He himself is part of the last batch that will be picked up in two days time.

Hunnigan confirms that the tainted intel was, indeed, implanted by an outside organization. She assures him measures are already being taken but it strikes Leon as little consolation. 

On the night before his flight home he leaves the mostly empty hospital, unnerved by the liminality of it, and wanders the surrounding village for a couple of hours. Physically, he’s not so bad, or he’s had worse which is similar enough. The weight on his shoulders and bad mood have nothing to do with the bruises.

Ingrid had offered to contact anyone of his choosing in the meantime, since he lost his phone in the fire, but he’d turned her down. It struck Leon as somewhat cowardly letting her phone in to excuse him as one would a little kid. He knows he has a more than valid explanation, but it’s the principle of the thing that bothers him. He wonders whether Claire is mad, or disappointed. He tries imagining what she’ll say when he sees her again, and finds that what unnerves him the most isn’t her being pissed.

“What am I doing?” he asks no one in particular. 

In the years they have known each other he has missed a number of Christmasses, birthday parties, Thanksgivings, all of those. He’s never felt good about it, but he’s never felt this wretched either.

His wandering takes him back around the village square. There’s a modest Christmas tree in the center and a bar that has probably seen better days, but that will suffice for the time being. Leon sighs, buries his hands into the pockets of his military issue jacket, and feels homesickness wrap around him like a blanket. 

Home. What is home these days? Not his empty apartment in Washington. Definitely not his parent's house, which he hasn’t visited since the day he left for Racoon City, so many years ago. He remembers telling Sherry about it once, when she asked him where he lived. He thinks he can count on one hand the number of times he’s talked to anyone about it.

The thought of Sherry carries with itself its own wave of guilt. He’s always tried to keep himself on the sidelines, at a safe distance. Perhaps that was in part why the thing with Ada had worked so well in the beginning. But then, the more time passes, the more he feels like all his careful measures are slipping between his fingers.

It isn’t always unpleasant or alarming, only in retrospect.

The night Claire told him she knew he had been coerced into accepting this job he’d said to her that he couldn’t do what she did, which he still thinks is somewhat true. There’s something about her, a special kind of bravery that allows her to put her heart on the line in order to help. To get emotionally invested. He’s always admired it from afar, content to watch from his place of detachment. He used to think his inability to do it himself came from lived experience, burned one too many times or something of the sort. But when he thinks of her, the tug on his chest tells him that he might have underestimated his own capacity.

Funnily enough, he has a suspicion this whole thing might have been going on for a while, and that he’s just refused to look at it properly. 

He’s always cared about Claire, it’s his theory that it would be nearly impossible not to anyway. But he’s always done it from a distance, not wanting to let go of her completely, while simultaneously being almost unable to reach out to her himself. It wasn’t always like this, of course, but the kind of closeness they had right after the Raccoon disaster didn’t feel like something he could sustain in time. Or at least, that was what he chose to believe.

Leon wonders now if it’s true, if it ever was. He spent a week in her company and now she lingers at the back of his mind, a soft, warm presence, like a hand on his shoulder. He finds it late at night, while waiting for orders, and in every little thing he sees, wishing he could point them out to her. Perhaps the distance he’d maintained wasn’t so much for self-preservation as it was because in some part, he’d known he wouldn’t be able to keep her from crawling right under his skin.

But that’s not right either. It isn’t crawling, she didn’t slip into his heart under the cover of night. No, he might not remember the exact moment it happened, but he has a feeling that it was him who threw the doors wide open and invited her in.

Chapter Text

“Well, don’t you clean up nicely,” Claire teases and the exasperated look Chris tries to give her collapses under a slightly annoyed smile. 

“Now, don’t be a smartass,” he warns her, pulling at the collar of his shirt. 

It’s a small wonder to her how years can pass by and the exact tone of voice he uses when speaking to her remains the same. It used to annoy her as a kid, but after everything they’ve been through, it’s now a comfort, like a hug or a hot cup of tea.

“No can do,” she says, looping her arm through his. “It runs in the family, like sciatica and wonderful taste in women.”

Chris sniggers in a way that has her worrying he’s gonna ruffle her hair. Not tonight, she thinks. She spent a good twenty minutes in front of the mirror putting it up and is more than prepared to break some fingers over it. 

“Cut me some slack okay?” 

“Sure,” she concedes. “But speaking about women, are you—

Then the door opens, cutting her off and revealing a rather dapper looking Barry.

“Redfields! Happy New Year, you old dog, I swear you look five years older every time I look at you,” the older man teases.

Chris and Barry give each other their particular brand of aggressive hug and it makes Claire wonder if absolutely everything that made you roll your eyes as a teen turns to fondness after a few years. Then again, maybe it’s her that’s turning old and mushy instead.

“And Happy New Year to you too, Claire,” Barry tells her. “It’s nice to know the family's good looks only skipped one generation.”

She smiles graciously. “I was told there’d be booze.”

“Coming right away,” Barry replies with a grin.

---

Leon had debated on whether he should show up or not. He isn’t really crashing, there is an invitation in his email that he’d just forgotten to reply to. But despite that, standing on the porch he hesitates for a moment.

There’s an uncomfortable notion lodged inside his head, the feeling of being the odd one out that he’s come to realize he associates with these gatherings. It’d be easier if he was family, or if he had been friends with any of these people before bioterrorism threw them together. That is to say, he wouldn’t feel like he’s imposing.

Come on, it’s just a party. He reminds himself, and runs a hand through his hair before he rings the bell, the cheerful chime contrasting his inner turmoil. If she’s mad, you can just say your piece and get out.

“Leon?” A delighted looking Sherry appears on the doorway. Christ, Claire wasn’t kidding when she’d said the girl had gotten tall.

“Hey kiddo,” he greets her, slightly more at ease.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” she says. “Get in!”

The Burton’s house is a little more crowded than he’d initially expected but Sherry cuts through the meat of it with no hesitation. 

“Your hair is different,” he says, noticing the way it just reaches her jaw. She pushes her bangs out of her eyes with something like sheepishness. “Yeah, I’m not so sure about it.” Her nails are painted a color that might be black or very dark green, for some reason it makes him smile.

“Looks good,” he assures her and Sherry’s grin widens.

“So what happened to you?” she asks, gesturing with her hands.

He shrugs. “Got caught up in France,” Leon explains. “Protective detail went awry, had to contain an outbreak, the usual stuff.”

“Yikes,” she replies, looking both amused and sorry. 

A chuckle rattles out of him. “Yikes,” he agrees. “Sorry I missed Christmas.”

Sherry gives him a one shoulder shrug. “It’s fine, you’re here now.” Then suddenly her eyes light up. “Speaking of which!” She grabs his hand and pulls him down the hall. He’s momentarily surprised by the strength of her grip and laughs, full on, no reservations.

It lasts just until he spots Claire, all the way across the room, caught up in conversation with a couple other people he doesn’t recognize. It’s like he gets tunnel vision, the sight of her so welcome it almost feels like someone has removed a physical weight from his shoulders. 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, people say, but he doesn’t think it’s entirely true. It’s not the absence that makes his heart race, she’s never too far from his thoughts anyway, but something in him recognizes something in her, in a way that he hasn’t experienced with anyone else. It happened that fateful night, all those years ago, and it has happened every time since. It’s the way he can make her laugh almost effortlessly, and how he’s never more at ease than when he’s in her company.

She doesn’t see him immediately, but Sherry marches on and soon enough her eyes lock on his. Her smile falls, giving way to a horrified expression. Leon’s stomach drops to the floor, lower than the floor, lower than the house, right into the center of the earth. 

It takes him a while to remember the bruise that covers his cheekbone, reaching up to his brow. Though most of the little cuts he had on his face have healed, he guesses he must still look like someone used him for a punching bag, if her expression is anything to judge by. 

“Leon?” she asks, he’s not close enough to hear her, but he can read her lips. And it’s wrong to feel it, it must be, but there’s something close to elation filling him in when he sees that little line of concern between her eyebrows. “What happened to you?” she questions when he reaches her, lifting a hand to hover tentatively over the cut on his lower lip.

“Hi, Red,” he says, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Is it okay to feel this kind of relief over someone’s presence? Claire’s eyes are staring right into his and a pleasant buzz seems to wash over him at her attention.

“Hi,” she says quietly. 

“Hi,” he parrots.

“What happened?” 

“I got detained. I wanted to call but I lost my phone and then— I just didn’t want it to sound like an excuse.”

The line between her eyebrows grows slightly deeper. “I thought— 

Her hovering hand comes to rest on his upper arm while Leon’s own hangs near her waist.

“Are you okay?” she asks, again in that quiet tone. Leon leans in, just to hear her better, and then suddenly they’re embracing. Her arms come around him, hands sliding over his back. He tips his face into the curve of her neck, warm and smooth and smelling of that light, sweet perfume she wears. 

“I’m great,” he replies against her skin. Claire grows still, but doesn’t pull away, he feels her fingers curl in on his jacket. 

He doesn’t want to let go, but he’s also aware that they’re in a room full of people and maybe it occurs to her too, because all too soon she’s stepping back. 

“Fuck,” she curses, hands sliding down the collar of his jacket, her mouth twists into an unhappy line. “Why can’t you sell insurance for a living?”

He grins and the motion tugs at the cut on his mouth. “On this economy? Not a chance.”

“God, I feel so bad,” she tells him with a guilty look. “I really thought you’d forgotten.”

Leon laughs. 

“And I mean it,” she protests. “I don’t want to live worrying whether I’ll see you again or not.”

“Maybe you should come with me,” he says, voicing his thoughts without a shade of doubt. “That way you can keep an eye out, make sure I don’t get kidnapped or shot or mauled by a bear.”

Claire’s face twitches into that careful expression she wears sometimes when he teases. “Don’t give me ideas,” she replies after a minute. 

Leon’s not surprised by how much the thought appeals to him. He’s used to working by himself, it’s usually easier and faster, but having her around? That could be fun. 

“I’ve reviewed so many reports in the last two weeks I don’t want to see text on a screen ever again,” she complains.

“See?” he begins. “We could make a good team, Red.”

Her mouth twists into a half smile, pulling at that small freckle on the corner of her lower lip. “Stop it. You’re not gonna poach me.”

“Not for lack of trying, I hope.”

Her mouth opens and closes before any words come out, suddenly taken aback. Something about him is different, and he’s letting it show, though whether intentionally or not, she can’t tell. Despite his bruises he seems lighter, less tired, winsome even.

Leon chuckles and her stomach flips on itself. Claire doesn’t know how to put a stop to it, everything she has tried has failed. After he didn’t show up for Christmas she’d tried to convince herself that it wasn’t a big deal, that it was better even, a chance for her to undo all the knots and twists he puts her in. If only she’d known. She should have known, should have had more faith in him.

“Did you see Sherry?” she asks, the first thing that comes into her head.

“Yeah, she was just here.” He blinks, confused. “Huh.”

She looks around, but Sherry is nowhere to be found. Then all of a sudden Chris appears, making his way amid the people mingling, a distracted expression on his face. 

He greets Leon with a nod of his head.

“Chris,” Leon replies. If it seems weird to Chris that the former looks as if he was just in the middle of a brawl, he doesn’t comment on it.

“Can I borrow you for a moment?” he asks Claire, a strange look in his eyes.

She’s about to ask what’s wrong when someone at the back of the room yells “It’s time!” and chaos erupts.

“Shit,” Chris mutters, frazzled.

“Wha—

Someone turns down the music as the people around them start chanting the countdown. Chris is frozen for a second, then with sudden decisiveness plucks a glass of prosecco from a passing tray and disappears back into the crowd. Claire blinks at his receding back, understanding dawning on her belatedly.

“Here,” Leon says, words almost lost over the chorus as he passes her a glass. 

The flute is cold under her fingertips, the liquid inside sparkling, and as excitement quickly replaces anxiety inside her belly, a smile blooms across her face. Leon catches her eyes, a grin of his own curling his lips up, up, up.

They join the chorus, voices drowning amid everybody else’s. 

“Three, two, one.”

There’s a loud pop and all at once confetti is raining down on them. She can hear the sound of what might be some illegal fireworks going off in the distance, and all around there are loud whoops and cries and people are kissing and embracing. 

Leon’s hand slips around her waist, his palm settling over the small of her back. Her own unoccupied one climbs up his chest onto his shoulder. He leans in, just a little bit, and when Claire exhales his lips part. His eyes meet hers, they’re dim, a silent question in them. Then—

“Oh my god!” 

The yell comes from somewhere behind them. Claire can feel Leon growing alert immediately, shoulders tight under her hands.

“I could have choked!” it continues, she can tell now that it’s Jill. It’s Jill! The thought appears joyfully inside her head . Her voice is so different from her usual composed tone. When Claire looks at her, she sees that the back of her hand is pressed over her mouth, pale blue eyes caught between surprise and something else, something more vulnerable.

“You’re an idiot,” she says, looking at Chris who is biting down a smile.

“Is that a yes?” he asks.

Jill nods and Chris wraps his arms around her, picking her up, careful not to spill the contents of the glass where the ring still is.

“About fucking time,” Claire says, once she’s gotten over her initial surprise. 

There is cheering and clapping and Barry toasting to “about fucking time, indeed,” once things have calmed down a little.

“I can’t believe he didn’t give me a heads up,” Claire protests, though she herself is grinning.

Leon leans in to be heard over the ruckus, his mouth next to her ear. “To be fair, I think he was about to.” His arm is still wrapped around her waist when he clicks his glass against hers. “Happy New Year, Claire.”

“Happy New Year, rookie.” 

---

By the time the fireworks are over and another round of congratulations is through, Claire is exactly on the sweet gap between tipsy and properly drunk. And judging by the ambience, pretty much everyone must be as well.

It’s not so much that they're leaning into frat party territory as it is that everyone seems to be aggressively committed to having a good time. Which isn't surprising, since most of the attendees are the kind of person used to running exclusively on adrenaline the rest of the year.

Chris introduces her to a few of his men who made it to the party. They’re usually strictly polite in a way that matches her brother’s grim that’s-my-sister-you’re-talking-to expression, but not tonight. Tonight he looks brighter than she’s seen him in years and Claire derives endless comfort from it. 

At some point she’s offered a cup of dark pink punch that smells like an uncapped bottle of disinfectant. It burns down her throat and leaves an artificial cherry taste on her tongue when she sips it. She tries to force a natural-looking smile on her face, but her nose scrunches up as she feels it going down like a fireball.

“What’s in this?” she asks, to which Moira lists down an assortment of different liquors in rapid succession.

“You like? It’s a family recipe.”

“It’s lovely,” Claire replies, as Sherry materializes at her elbow. “Hey you,” Claire says, her arm coming up to wrap around the younger woman’s shoulders. “Where did you go?”

Sherry grins. “Oh, I didn’t want to be the third wheel,” she explains, which almost catches Claire off guard. “Anyway, I was going to say we should take a picture, but I can’t find Leon.”

Claire blinks. He had slipped out earlier, roped into some conversation she can’t quite remember, but when she glances around the room, looking for his face, she can’t find him either. 

“I’ll go look for him,” she offers, slipping into the crowd.

The music has gotten a little louder in the last hour and every now and then someone grasps her arm and wishes her a happy New Year. Claire smiles and reciprocates but between the drinks and the noise she isn’t sure anyone is actually listening.

She approaches the kitchen first, then the hallway and second floor landing, and finally the backyard, but when she fails to find Leon in either of those she decides to circle around the house, taking the little stone path that connects the garden to the front lawn. The nighttime air is cold, but the relative quietness feels welcoming.

She spots him finally, sitting on the porch stairs. He turns to her as she closes the garden gate behind her, always alert.

“Hey,” Claire says. “Am I interrupting your brooding? I can come back later.”

A wry smile spreads on his serious face. “Did you come out here just to roast me?”

She grins, climbing into the porch to sit beside him. “Sherry informed me that she wants us to take a picture with her. Also, you should try this,” she adds, offering him the punch cup.

He takes a sip, keeping his face mostly stoic, only his eyes narrow slightly at the taste.

“Did you like it?” she asks.

“Depends,” Leon replies. “As a paint stripper?”

She chuckles, threading her fingers on her lap. “I was thinking more like the thing you take before someone amputates your foot with a rusty saw.”

He takes another gulp of the punch and sets the cup down with a disgusted expression. Claire peers at him curiously, it’s not easy to tell whether he’s buzzed or not, but then again, he’s always been better at holding down his alcohol than she is.

He seems to guess her thoughts. “Are you drunk?” he asks.

“A little,” she admits, bubbly and lighthearted. “You?”

Leon tilts his head, a crooked smile on his lips. “Kinda.”

Between the muffled sounds of the party coming from inside the house and the one light above them, the porch has a strange, underwater quality to it. Claire brings her knees in close and circles them with her arms. 

“I’m glad you came tonight,” she tells him, and it’s true, regardless of whatever complicated feelings she has about him.

Leon glances at her bare arms and shoulders and leans in a little closer, to shield her from the breeze. His gaze wanders off, though he can feel the weight of her eyes on him. He hesitates, unsure of how to say what he wants to, the words feel imprecise and far off reach.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me here,” he says in the end. It feels like such a small thing to admit, petty and unimportant and yet, his heart beats very fast as he waits for her to reply.

“Because of Christmas?” she asks quietly. 

“Among other things,” he adds.

It takes her a moment to respond and when he turns to her, unable to suppress his curiosity, he finds a troubled look in her eyes. 

“I would never— that is, I never not want you around,” Claire explains calmly, turning her eyes away. “Why would I?”

He shrugs, even though he feels palpable relief at her words. “I don’t think I’ve been a very good friend to you, Red.” 

That seems to upset her, he can see as much on the tenseness of her shoulders, the tight line of her mouth. “Why, because we don’t talk all the time?” she wonders. “So what? I still have that creepy little doll you brought me the first time they sent you overseas.”

Despite the heavy regret in his gut he smiles. “I know, I saw it at your place.”

Claire meets his eyes again, serious despite the wistful line of her lips. “I don’t need anything special from you. I mean, a text now and then, to know I don’t need to go avenge your death in some backwater town would be nice,” she tells him. “But I don’t need you to tell me you care, I know you do.”

Despite her intentions, quiet devastation settles inside his chest. Because he should be capable of saying these things, of letting her know that he doesn’t just care, she deserves so much more than that. And, he realizes, because that might not be enough anyway. It doesn’t feel like enough.

He lets out a long breath and forces the words out, even if it scares him shitless, he owes her that at least. “I do Claire, so much; care about you, I mean.” He runs a hand over his face, covering his eyes momentarily.

“I care about you too,” she replies, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Though Leon thinks he can hear— not doubt exactly, but something else in her tone. “Though, I wish you didn’t act like you have to do everything on your own. I don’t mean to pry, I just want to help and I know it’s not just me, but—

“Red,” he says softly. Something about her words makes him want to look away, but he forces himself to meet her eyes. 

She’s lovely, she’s always been and whatever protests he had die on his tongue. “You really scared me back there, for a moment,” Leon admits instead, because why not? He’s come this far. “When I came in and you looked at me like that.”

Claire laughs a little. “To be fair, you look like someone used you as target practice.”

He holds her gaze, still blue, still tilting at the corners with amusement. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he replies, though his voice doesn’t have any bite and he can feel his own lips curling up.

The smile he gives her is soft, softer than Claire had expected and she decides against teasing him again. Her hand comes up instead, to settle as gently as possible over his bruised cheekbone. 

“Does that hurt?” She wants to know.

“No,” Leon says, lips parting slightly.

They’re close, closer than it’s wise, probably, but she’s grown tired with her own hesitance and it might be the alcohol or the party or a hundred other things, but when he leans in, she doesn’t move away.

His nose brushes the side of hers, she can feel his hot breath on her mouth, it lasts for a moment, a second really, and then he’s pressing his lips over hers. 

Claire’s hand slides into his hair. He’s warm and tastes like the cherry from the punch, only better than that ever could. Her mouth opens under his, fingers curling just under his jaw, coaxing him closer. Leon sighs into her, his hand circling her waist, pulling her near.

A part of her, the logical, most rational one, falls completely silent and Claire acts as if under dream-logic, biting his lower lip; a soft gasp escaping her as his knuckles brush her ribs over her dress. He deepens the kiss, tilting his head slightly, groaning when she meets him halfway.

A distant, but familiar sound catches her attention, it takes her a minute to recognize it as her phone, and his, both of them. Claire pulls away, confusion and a preternatural wariness replacing the warmth in her stomach. What are the odds?

Leon’s eyes find hers, still heavy, hair still messy and fishes his phone from his pocket to look at the screen. When their eyes meet again the understanding in his face is as sobering as a bucket full of ice water.

Chapter Text

“They’re asking for you in Washington,” Hunnigan tells him, an uncertain note in her voice that is so foreign to her it puts him on edge. “But Leon, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

His eyes are on the tv, as well as everyone’s that’s still at the Burton’s house. The footage loops again and again but even if they had only shown it once, he thinks it would have been enough to imprint it on his brain. An orchestra performing at a New Year’s party at a politician’s home in France, one of the musicians collapses, convulsing on the ground. His skin starts melting off. Leon closes his eyes and sees it all happening before, in that old chateau outside Bordeaux.

“I booked you the first flight to Paris,” Ingrid explains in his ear. “I can meet you there and tell you the rest, I don’t think we should talk about it over the phone.”

He can’t stop replaying the memory of those glass vials in his hands. He thinks he might be feeling slightly nauseous.

Across from him, on the other side of the room he can see Claire pacing, typing on her phone. He should say goodbye.

“Thank you, I’m on my way,” he tells Hunnigan, before she ends the call.

He slips his new phone into his pocket and his eyes wander back to the television, the stone inside his stomach seems to grow heavier and heavier by the minute. He wonders how fast he can make it to the airport. Then Claire is there and his attention snaps back to her. 

“I have to go, Red,” he tells her.

“Back to the city?” she asks.

Leon hesitates. “Not quite but I can drop you off if you want.”

“Alright,” she agrees without pause. “Chris can take my car back tomorrow.”

“He hasn’t been called in?” Leon wonders, throwing a glance at the man where he stands in conversation with Jill. That’s a first. 

A complicated emotion passes over Claire’s features. “Yeah he was, but he’s staying,” her voice is soft, fond but also a little sad. “Anyway, I’ll say goodbye and then we can go.”

The car ride is silent and at least this once he’s too distracted to notice whether the lack of conversation feels weird. Still, when he looks at Claire, he can’t keep his thoughts from wandering back to that moment with her on the porch, before his phone had started ringing. He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind. He can’t think of that right now. 

Then out of nowhere she looks around, as if momentarily confused. She asks him something, but it doesn’t quite register.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Are you going to the airport right now?” she repeats. He doesn’t tear his eyes from the road, but he doesn’t need to, he can tell from her voice that she’s put everything together. “You’re going to France.”

It occurs to him now, that he’d never told her Bordeaux was where he’d been detained earlier that week. He doesn’t know how much he can say, Hunnigan’s words are still swimming around inside his head; but then again, this is Claire he’s talking to.

“Yes,” he replies. “I’m taking the first plane out.”

He glances back at her, her brow is furrowed, with the familiar line between her eyebrows. Something clicks inside his head. “You too?”

She nods. “Yeah, but not so soon, I need to pick up some stuff from the office first and make a couple of calls.”

Leon turns back to the road. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him. What Ingrid had said about Washington sent a note of dread through him that he still hasn’t been able to shake off. And yet…

“Can you meet me when you get there?” he asks Claire. It’s probably not a good idea, there’s still a chance they’ll send him back into the field, but he can’t keep himself from asking.

“Yes,” she says, though her voice is laced with thoughtfulness. “Yes, I think so.”

He nods, mostly to himself. “I’ll text you an address when I land.”

---

The image of her glancing over her shoulder at the door of her building accompanies him all the way to the airport. A part of him, the one that isn’t fretting, isn’t feeling the dread of guilt, lingers with regret at the back of his mind. He wonders distantly whether he and Claire are destined to always exist on the sidelines of disaster. After all, they’d met on such a night.

He’s tired, sleepless hours are already catching up to him, but still he doesn’t manage to shut his eyes on the plane. Too many thoughts, too many people. It becomes a problem when he lands, feeling like a husk about to collapse from exhaustion.

Ingrid, in her brisk, efficient way, has set up a small team in a hotel room. Her face announces bad news before she even opens her mouth. 

“Let’s talk,” she says, and leads him to the kitchen area.

His shoulders drop inch by inch as she confirms the worst of his suspicions. The incident at the party had apparently been a premeditated attack in order to assassinate a Spanish diplomat. Someone had dosed one of the musicians by spraying the inside of his violin case with a viral agent, the same one from the chateau.

“The clean-up crew didn’t find any more samples at the camp site you discovered,” Hunnigan tells him. Understanding sinks heavy in his gut. “The only reported ones where—

“The ones I was carrying,” Leon finishes. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “The operative who cleared me up?”

Her lips press into a tense line. “Was not found on any record. He must have been with the organization, probably stole the samples himself.”

Disgust and guilt roil inside his stomach. He should have known, he should have seen it, how the fuck didn’t he see it? He’s been doing this for years, he’d have to be an idiot, he is an idiot.

“And I guess they’re pinning it on me,” Leon concludes, voice dead, as emotionless as he can make it.

Hunnigan hesitates. “Not pinning it outright, but the suggestion that you’ve been compromised has been circling around,” she admits.

A humorless chuckle leaves his mouth. “So you didn’t want me in Washington.” Would they have taken him in right away? If not that, then something of the sort. She wouldn’t have gone against orders otherwise. “What can we do?”

She sighs. “As far as we know, they’ve only used one of the samples and there were two,” she explains. “It’s possible the other one was destroyed as the operative claimed but we need to make sure.”

“What if they’ve replicated it?” 

Truly, if there is something he’s learned so far, it's that there’s really no end to greed or malice.

“I was getting there. We’ve gathered some intel that suggests their base of operations is closer than we expected, after all, those samples wouldn’t have made it long out in the wild.”

He perks up at that.

“A team is being prepared to go in, time is of the essence of course, the US government wants to handle it directly, since we’re all already involved it would be extremely bad optics otherwise.”

“Get me on that team,” Leon asks, no hesitation.

Hunnigan frowns, he can see the reticence in her eyes. “Leon—

“Please,” he adds. “I need to make it right. If there’s any favors you can call—

“I don’t think favors will cut it,” she interrupts. “I think our best chance is to help, maybe on the logistics side, wait for it to clear up and then we can prove we had nothing to do with it.”

But we did . I did , he thinks. If he had known, if he’d paid more attention… The images from the news play up inside his head again, the man collapsing, his body turning into a mass of muscle and teeth. Dozens dead.

“Please, Ingrid.” He doesn’t know what she sees in his face, but it gives her pause. “I need to do it.”

She removes her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose, breath coming out in a long sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 ---

He paces, thinks and replays the attack on the tv again and again, before Hunnigan banishes him from the room.

“Go sleep,” she tells him. “If this works out, the team leaves at dawn.”

So he moves his pacing to the next room. Leon knows he should rest, but he can only barely sit still, laying down is not even an option. He takes a shower instead and waits, it’s all he can do.

He hasn’t forgotten Claire, that would be impossible, but he’s forced himself not to look at his phone every five minutes. He almost hopes she’ll message him letting him know that she can’t make it. His skin feels tight, too small to contain him and he’s not sure he wants her to see him like this.

He’s starting to eye the mini bar when the knocking comes and he crosses the room in two strides. Leon knows it’s her because she used the same pattern they’d set up in the days after Racoon. One lone knock and three quick ones after. Under different circumstances it would have made him smile.

He can’t help taking her in when he opens the door. She’s in work attire, of course, a blush colored blouse and a skirt and boots. Her hair is up. The sight of her is bittersweet to say the least.

“Hey,” she greets him. Her eyes trace the lines of his face, and concern squeezes her chest at the view.

Leon moves aside to let her in. The tenseness of his shoulders seems to bleed into the air around them as Claire steps in, unsure of whether she should try to touch him, if he would even welcome it right now. He seems skittish, restless.

He doesn’t meet her eyes when he gestures for her to sit on one of the chairs by the window.

“How was it?” she asks.

Leon hesitates, brow furrowing as he considers how much to tell her. He’s very aware of the dozen NDAs he’s signed over the years, but all things considered, he doesn’t think those matter much right now. He takes the other chair, runs a hand over his eyes and lets it all out. 

Claire is silent for the most part. Some things become clearer now, Leon confirms most of what she’d heard as speculation in her own debriefing, but the more she hears, the more uneasy she becomes. Anger burns bright in the pit of her stomach, despite the numerous tragedies and her own personal experience, the cruelty of these people playing god never fails to amaze her. 

It’s nauseating to consider that this is what it’s come to. BOWs taking the place of bullets and an assassination that left two dozen civilians dead, hundreds injured. Her work, her entire life since she was nineteen feels like such a small thing in comparison.

However, as great as her anger feels, is also the worry underneath. Leon concludes with some of the details Hunnigan had given him about the operation that is to take place come sunrise. It’s not surprising to know he’s going, she’d guessed as much when she’d first realized he was bound for Paris. But there’s a tightness around his eyes, in the way his knuckles turn white, that she doesn’t like.

“Leon?” she asks softly. 

He raises his eyes to hers, she can see something like trepidation passing over his face, like he’s wary of her reaction.

“You couldn’t have known, about the samples I mean,” she tells him and she can see instantly that he doesn’t believe her.

His mouth is a tense, miserable line. “I should have, though.”

“How? There were no records of this man and yet, nobody noticed something was amiss,” she tells him. “If anything, I would say you guys have a security issue.” She might also have a couple harder adjectives about their government’s involvement in the matter, but she’ll save those for a better moment.

Leon doesn’t respond and so Claire gets up, takes a step towards him, closing the distance between the two of them. “Hey,” she calls gently, her fingers brushing his damp hair aside, away from his eyes. “What would you say if it had been me instead of you?”

Leon doesn’t look up at her, leaning his forehead into her stomach instead. “None of this would have happened to you. You would have known.”

“I’m not a psychic.”

“But you’re good with these things. With people, I mean.”

She hums noncommittally, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “You couldn’t have known,” she repeats. “Nobody did, Leon.”

He bites the inside of his mouth. He doesn’t know how she can stand him right now. He’s so angry at himself, at his own negligence. 

“I’m gonna fix this,” he says, to her as much as to himself. “I’ll fix it.” He can’t bring people back from the dead, but he can make sure no one else dies because of this. 

Claire steps away and he stands, following her to the window. 

“What about you?” he asks.

She sighs, eyes on the street below, a thoughtful line between her eyebrows. “As bad as all of this is, the board thinks it might be what we needed to have the remaining countries sign the accords. I told you about those a while back, do you remember?”

Right. Leon nods, recalling her words from the night of the fundraiser. It feels like it happened a hundred years ago.

“I’m supposed to attend a conference in Spain tomorrow morning, to settle the details,” she adds.

“When do you leave?” Leon asks.

“Tonight.”

He nods, taciturn, the circles under his eyes seem even more pronounced as the light of the sun becomes dimmer. Her hand reaches out, but stops shortly after, unsure. The bruise from before still colors his cheekbone, the split lip is still there as well. Something inside her chest twists and twists.

“How do—” he begins quietly. “Do you ever feel like this… thing, is just one tragedy after another? No rhyme nor reason? It’s like whatever we do, it never stops.”

Her eyes drift to the window once more. The way he puts it is not unlike the way she’s heard Chris speak about his work sometimes. “There is no rhyme nor reason. Just greedy assholes gambling with the lives of others,” she tells him. “Someone’s gotta stop it, or try to at least.”

Leon looks at her, at her profile in contrast to the light coming from outside. He’s not new to disillusionment, he doesn’t think anyone can be in this line of work, he just doesn’t usually stop long enough for the sentiment to seep in. It’s different for her, he’s realized, she doesn’t live on the run, doesn’t let herself get distracted. He wonders what kind of resilience it takes to look disaster in the face and still persevere. 

“I’ll come find you when it’s done,” he says. “That is, if you’re not sick of me already.”

Her eyes are a mix of amber and blue when she glances back at him, cast in the early evening light. “It’s been years, rookie, I don’t think the odds of me getting sick of you are too high.”

Leon smiles, a small but nevertheless true smile, the first real one he’s given since his phone started ringing on Barry Burton’s porch. 

“Be careful, okay?” she asks.

“Always.”

Despite his answer the unease on her throat doesn’t subside. It’s not that she doubts him, she doesn’t, but she’s come to learn that nothing is ever certain when it comes to this. “Will you promise?” 

His eyes grow serious, intent, he leans in. “I promise,” he murmurs, and presses a kiss to her mouth, soft.

Claire looks up at him, his lashes cast shadows over his eyes, his hair, still damp, looks darker than usual, lending a severeness to his features that isn’t usually there. She doesn’t know what him kissing her means, and has been actively avoiding turning it over in the last twenty-four hours. They should probably talk about it, but this doesn’t feel like the right time or place.

Despite that, the light shifts in his eyes when she rests her hands over his collarbone, and Claire finds herself leaning in, pressing her lips to his again. Something inside him gives way at that and his hands, which were lightly circling her waist, tighten. There’s a hunger to the way he deepens the kiss, to the small sound at the back of his throat. He seems to throw all caution to the wind, holding her against him with a kind of abandon.

She returns the action with ease, wrapping her arms around his neck, tilting her head slightly, allowing him to kiss her harder. He smells of soap and aftershave, and his hands are warm where they meet her. It’s heady, Claire forgets for a moment where they are and as his fingers curl along the side of her neck, she sighs.

They part, just for a moment, before he presses another, smaller kiss to the corner of her mouth. Leon leans his forehead over hers, his breath and hers mixing between them.

“Claire,” he says in a hush.

His eyes remain closed when she opens hers and she suddenly becomes aware of the lump in her throat. She doesn’t know what to do with it, or the sudden tightness in her chest for that matter, so she tucks her face into the crook of his neck and feels him wrap his arms around her.

They remain quiet for a moment, as the sun sinks in the horizon, the golden light coming from the window becoming dimmer as time passes.

“I have to go now,” she tells him, words almost lost in the folds of the undershirt he’s wearing.

“Alright,” he says. His hold on her loosens, but she doesn’t pull back, not immediately. 

She suddenly recalls what he’d said back at the party, about her accompanying him. Leon was probably only joking, but she has to admit she sees the appeal, even if it’s not possible at the moment. 

She takes a step back, letting her hands fall from his shoulders to his chest as she looks at him. “Try to sleep a little, before you have to leave.”

“Yes ma’am,” Leon replies with a half smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s exhausted, but he doubts he’ll be able to drift off easily.

He takes one last, good look at her when they part at the door, before it closes behind Claire with a soft click.

Chapter Text

By the time the extraction team reaches them, Leon’s pretty sure he’s about to collapse. Exhaustion is his new nickname, and while he watches a team of chemists dismantle the raided lab he ponders on the last three days. 

It occurs to him that the fact the lab had no self-destruct protocol is as good a proof that Umbrella isn’t involved as he’s likely to get. Although whatever reassurance he might have gotten out of that is lost in the lack of explanations he found. He himself read every single piece of paper the team found before the extraction team arrived, and although a couple of documents made obscure references to some high profile names, the entire operation was more than a little vague.

Leon knows that there’s a market for biological weapons; if there wasn’t he would probably be out there somewhere, dispensing speeding tickets. And he knows too that the market’s existence means that what happened on New Year’s will inevitably become more common. But the lack of answers still lingers uncomfortably, like a cloud over his head.

To make it worse, the one man whose face he knew, the one who talked to him back at the hospital, is nowhere to be found. Not among the people arrested, and not amid the ones that were killed. And that, he takes as a personal offense.

Leon does his best to push the thought to the back of his mind, as he straps himself inside the transport helicopter that is to take him and the rest of the team back to civilization. He falls asleep as soon as he closes his eyes.

At debriefing there are assurances, offhanded comments. I knew you were clean Kennedy. Never doubted it. They wash over him, strange and unwanted. While it’s nice to have fixed the mess, as much as possible, the guilt over all of it happening in the first place still sits snug, somewhere inside his stomach. The names of the people he failed to protect add themselves to the unending repertoire that usually finds him late at night.

A physician comes over to take a look at him before he gets clearance, all the usual fuss. He wants nothing more than to sleep for an entire day, which is exactly what happens the moment he’s left alone. 

When he wakes up, the first thing he does is to contact Hunnigan, so she can arrange some time off for him; the second is to roll over his stomach and fall asleep again.

Then, when he finally feels human once more, he goes to find Claire. 

It’s surreal, the buzz that sets under his skin at the thought, a kind of thrill. Leon can’t remember having ever been excited to take a vacation, but she’s waiting for him on the other side, and that alone makes all the difference.

He decides to take the train, instead of folding himself into a pretzel, on whatever economy flight he might catch. And though he does get impatient occasionally, he thinks that the scenery more than makes up for it. Even the lull of the train car feels agreeable, gentle. 

That calmness lasts up until he reaches the station though, and suddenly his foot is tapping on the floor, as the attendants take their time to let the passengers descend. His hand passes over his hair as the cab he hails drives around. His spanish is still shit, but he doesn't care, can’t even think about it when he gives the driver the address.

The car deposits him outside what looks to be a faculty building, the red stone of it seems even warmer in the light of the setting sun. He waits for her there, on the cobblestoned entrance and when she comes out, bundled up in her coat, cheeks flushed by the cold, they just look at each other for a moment. 

As Claire stands there on the stone steps, Leon feels as if he were a puzzle piece, finally sliding into place.

A full smile draws itself upon her lips and he feels his own responding in kind. It’s almost funny, he thinks after a moment, they don’t even say hello. 

He’s never thought of himself as a particularly affectionate person, but wrapping his arms around her suddenly seems like the easiest thing in the world.

“You could have told me you were coming today,” she says quietly, but they’re close enough that he can hear her clearly, even over the noise of the street.

Leon grins. “Now what kind of a surprise would that have been?”

With her face in the crook of his neck and her hair slipping through his fingers the world around him registers slowly, in details. The biting cold air and the softness of her coat, the cars, the lights, the solemn man behind her that isn’t quite looking at them. Leon feels a flash of recognition at his face, despite never having seen it before. A bodyguard. Of course. He himself shifts automatically to cover her left side, the shoulder that doesn’t seem to pain her, but that he reminds himself to be mindful of anyway.

“Is he…?” Leon prompts, after she gives the guy the evening off.

“A precaution,” she answers in a tone that puzzles him slightly.

His hand nudges hers and as she turns her palm toward him his thumb draws a circle on the center of it. Her eyes slip away from him, towards some invisible point but her lips curl into a light smile. 

“Are you hungry?” Claire asks him.

“I could eat,” he replies.

---

It’s very fitting, he thinks, that of all the things he’s done in the last two weeks, sitting across from Claire at a restaurant feels like the strangest. He doesn’t tell her so explicitly, but he thinks she might know, if the wry twist of her mouth is anything to go by.

“So how did it go?” she questions, sipping her glass of wine.

He shrugs. “As well as it could, all things considered.” He summarizes what he can while she studies him, a worried line appearing between her eyebrows. “I had to do it, try to fix it,” he adds at the end.

“I know,” Claire replies. A complex emotion crosses her face and he mentally shrinks from it. He remembers the way she’d spoken to him in Paris, and though the softness of her voice still lingers somewhere in his memory, there’s some guilt accompanying the idea of her worrying over him.

“What happened with you?” he asks, both out of a need to change the subject and genuine curiosity.

She sighs. “It’s done, the accords I mean. I really wish it hadn’t happened this way, but at least one good thing came out of it.” She gives him a tired smile, it’s an expression he’s seen so many times on her, relieved but rueful in its own way. “There’s still some things to iron out, but once that’s done I can go home.”

Home. He thinks of her apartment in New York, two days from his own give or take, and hesitates. “You must be tired.”

Claire eyes him curiously. “Just weary, I think.”

“Must be itching to get back to your romance novels.”

She rolls her eyes and tries to suppress a smile. “You’re never gonna let that go, are you?”

Leon grins. “It’s endearing.”

She kicks him under the table, lightly. “Don’t be patronizing,” she warns with mock severity. 

He bumps his knee against hers in response. They sit like that for a moment, smiling at each other just for the pleasure of it. The familiar flip of her stomach returns when she notices his grin growing softer around the edges.

“Here,” she says and clicks her glass gently against his. “To actually doing something normal for a change.”

“We should ask them to break out the champagne.”

“We should,” she agrees.

“Though, to be fair,” Leon says. “We’ve been doing an awful lot of normal things these last few months, Red.”

Claire shakes her head. “Oh, those don’t count.”

He arches a brow at her. “They don’t?”

“They’re not normal things if we’re only doing them because one of us got shot,” she reasons.

He frowns a little, voice growing serious. “I didn’t stay with you just because you were injured.”

“Oh?”

She watches the jesting drain from his features, his eyes jump between his glass, the bottle of wine and her face. “I wanted to be around,” he says. “You, I mean.”

Claire grows still, studying him under the soft light of the restaurant. When his eyes finally settle back into her own she doesn’t look away. 

It’s similar, though not exactly the same, to what he told her under Barry’s porch on New Year’s, before he kissed her. Her heart buoys through her chest, and through all she feels a kind of relief spreading. Relief that he doesn’t regret it, or at least doesn’t seem to, and that he’s here, with her, still around.

“I’m glad,” she tells him quietly. It’s all she can safely say.

He holds her gaze and the moment stretches on, silent but comfortable. It’s then, looking at him, that she feels some tranquility finally sliding into place inside herself, an ease that allows her to finally, happily, lower her guard.

New Year’s had been easy, in a way; her emotions had bubbled right under her skin, it had taken nothing, less than nothing, to revel in all of it. It’s not so easy now, she isn’t drunk, for one, and she can feel his attention like a living thing. But she finds that there’s something almost pleasurable about the hesitancy, about tittering on the edge of saying too much and not enough.

Her hand slides closer to his over the table, index finger passing gently over his knuckles. He turns his hand over, palm up, and her fingers come to rest on it.

“I missed you,” she says simply, testing the edge.

His smile grows a little wider. “I missed you too.” His fingers brush the inside of her hand. 

“Cool,” she says.

His smile turns into a grin. “Great.”

“Perfect,” Claire adds.

“Super,” he replies, though it comes out as a chuckle.

Eventually their food arrives and the conversation veers elsewhere. She tells him what she’s heard from Chris in the last two weeks; Leon still seems a little surprised at him sitting this one out, but she’s tentatively happy about it. She hopes it means her brother has found enough inner peace to allow himself a better work-life balance, heaven knows it’s been a long time coming.

Somewhere between main course and desert she mentions a morning meeting and Leon perks up.

“I shouldn’t keep you then,” he says, even though it’s only ten.

“Don’t be silly,” she replies, using her spoon to crack the surface of her crèmme brulee. She’s having fun, he seems to be having fun, nothing a cup of coffee can’t fix in the morning.

“Still,” he protests. “Let me be a gentleman, just this once.”

She laughs, and agrees to go once she’s finished her desert.

---

They walk side by side on the way back to her hotel, Leon’s knuckles brushing the back of her hand from time to time. The city lights paint a rather lovely picture in the otherwise cold and dark night. It’s still early enough to pass other people on the street and for a moment Claire forgets the particulars and enjoys the mundanity of it, blending into the background. She wonders what she and Leon would look like to a stranger, perfectly normal, no different from any other pair of people walking back from work, or the theater. Scars and trauma and disappointments secreted away.

She glances at Leon and the illusion dispels. Though he appears relaxed, she can see him glancing this way and the other, alert even when at ease. It’s not something he ever sheds, she thinks. So ingrained by now that it’s become part of him.

“What is it?” he asks, turning his attention towards her. 

She shakes her head, noticing the empty little street they’re standing in. “Just thinking.”

“Good thoughts or bad?” 

A half smile draws upon her lips. “I don’t know.” 

His eyes hold hers easily as his hand brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She hesitates for a second, before deciding to throw caution to the wind. She lays her hands over his chest, feet pushing up slightly and kisses him. 

Leon’s arms come up, circling her waist, pulling her close. Between his jacket and her coat, a couple of sweaters and a scarf there’s something like ten layers of fabric between them and still, he thinks he can feel her, warm against his chest. 

His fingers slip into her unusually loose hair and tilt her head slightly, deepening the kiss. She feels soft in his hands, and sighs into him as he kisses her, hands moving past his shoulders. He’s been thinking about this for a while, perhaps longer than he himself had imagined, but the reality is better than his imagination, better than memory. She bites his lower lip and a shiver runs down his spine like a spark. 

Without thinking, his right hand finds the small of her back, pressing her to him. Claire arches, his chest is solid against her and as he kisses her harder, she lets out a soft gasp. She feels him smile a little over her mouth and it occurs to her she might just climb him like a tree, might throw their layers of clothes off, even though it’s cold. She’s warm all over, like a furnace.

Then someone, somewhere down the street, whistles at them and the kiss breaks. Claire lets out a laugh that is mostly air and Leon finds himself responding in kind. Her eyes look hazy in the winter night, sparkling blue.

“Are you staying with me?” she asks him.

He searches her gaze, seeing his own want mirrored in her. “Do you want me to?”

She feels that edge again, the point of no return laying in the distance. But there is no sense of impending doom, no alarms going off in her head. Claire doesn’t know if that means anything in particular or if it’s just that she’s tired of pretending and thinking and second guessing. She knows he wants her, the certainty of it settles like a hum over her skin and she doesn’t care what might happen, whatever consequences it may bring are worth it. 

“Yes,” she tells him, and his hand slips into hers.

---

He closes the distance between them as soon as the door shuts behind their backs. Her hands find their way under his jacket, his breath is a whisper against her lips. Claire smiles and soon it turns into laughter as he presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Leon grins and for a moment they just revel in the absurdity of the whole thing. Then he pushes her coat off her shoulders and her fingers pull him by the belt loops.

His mouth presses warm and hungry against hers. Claire’s hands move up to his shoulders and he draws back, though only enough to discard his sweater and jacket. His lips quirk up, hovering over hers as one hand curls over her ribs, twisting the fabric of her shirt. “Is this okay?” he asks her in a hush.

Claire nods and his grip tightens slightly, hand slipping under her top, fingers skating over her ribs and up to her breast. She shivers and he kisses her again, slower, rougher. Want pools into her stomach, so warm that it makes her dizzy. She arches into him and a groan leaves his throat. Her fingers move over the collar of his shirt, an implicit question in them, and he replies with a simple “yes,” against her mouth.

She pulls the hem of his t-shirt over his head as he guides her to the bed, tossing her top aside. His hands feel hot and heavy on her bare skin, his body presses solid against her when her back meets the sheets.

Claire’s fingers trace down the lean, hard lines of him, coming to rest gently over a purplish expanse along his side. He notices her hesitancy, eyes coming down to the place her hand hovers.

“Does it hurt?” she asks, barely grazing the bruise.

Leon grins. “Not right now,” he replies and for some reason, it makes her chuckle.

He laughs too, unembarrassed, leaning in to kiss her collarbone. She lets out a soft sound and his fingers drop to her waist, helping her remove her skirt. His eyes catch hers as he presses another kiss to her hip, just above the line of her underwear. With his messy hair and dark eyes she can’t help but just look at him for a moment. 

Claire’s hand settles over his wrist. “Come here,” she says and he climbs back over her.

His left hand slides under her calf and up to the soft skin behind her knee. The fabric of his jeans feels rough against the inside of her thigh and something like a whimper tumbles from Claire’s lips.

“Fuck, I really want you,” she says, eyes closed, just before he kisses her again.

Claire’s fingers slip into his hair, nails lightly grazing his scalp, and a low rumble leaves his throat. 

Leon’s heart beats fast inside his chest, the sight of her like this, flushed, practically naked underneath him, is like a rush. Her hands find the waist of his jeans, thumb brushing over his hip bone, and he leans in closer, so close. A part of him remains unconvinced that this is happening at all, that it’s her mouth on his, her hands all over his bare skin.

“Yes?” Claire asks, bringing him out of his thoughts and back to her.

“God yes,” he replies and she undoes his belt.

The rest of their clothes find their way to the floor eventually. And when he finally takes her, time dissolves into a haze, her voice echoing in his ear, his hips meeting hers. He wants to commit to memory the way his name spills past her lips, her nails on his back, the softness of her skin.

When Leon looks at her, her eyes hold his and that familiar feeling washes over him anew. It’s like she sees past all the layers right into the center of him. He feels exposed, laid bare once again, but this time he doesn’t care if she can read him like a book, he even wants her to. And so he leans his forehead over hers, murmuring her name before her mouth finds his once more.

Pleasure is like a wave, pulling Claire under and when she comes, he follows her in a second, drunk on her body, on her. 

They lay beside each other after, her on her back, him on his stomach, hand tracing idle circles on the valley between her breasts, eyes never leaving her face. His hair is ruffled, disheveled, it’s strangely endearing. Claire smiles.

“What?” he asks, a kind of lazy playfulness on his face.

She shakes her head slightly, reaching out to brush his bangs out of his eyes. 

“Do you remember that night after the whole Harvardville fiasco?” she asks quietly, watching the city lights cast shadows over the skin of Leon’s back.

His index traces a single line down her chest to her belly button. He can recall that particular night rather well, though not fondly. By that point he and Claire hadn’t quite lost contact, but it was obviously, terribly, not what it had been; that night was the first time he’d seen her in person in a long while. He’d felt… out of place somehow, unsure of how to be around her when they weren’t in combat, which was definitely something, considering they were stuck at the premises for a few hours as the clean-up crew worked their magic. 

Claire, for her part, remembers it specifically. Once she was bandaged up and Leon was waiting for instruction, he’d come into the tent that’d been set up for the EMTs and sat beside her, on a crate that doubled as a table. He hadn’t said anything, just passed her a water bottle, but his presence and silence had sharpened something inside her chest.

Up until that point she’d never experienced the feeling of missing someone while being in their presence. It was something she’d eventually end up associating more with Chris at his lowest than anybody else, but she’d felt it then, with Leon, and it had twisted something inside her hard enough to hurt.

She looks at him now, feels his fingers trail down her thigh. One of her legs is still twined between his, his cheek rests on the inside of her palm. His face is still as dear to her as it was back then, she wonders if he knows, if he can tell.

Leon leans forwards and places a careful kiss beside the still red scar on her shoulder. Then he buries his face in her hair, and Claire closes her eyes.

Chapter Text

She wakes up still wrapped in him, arms and legs tangled. His breath feels hot on her neck and a quiver runs down her spine once consciousness settles fully. He’s in bed with her. Leon. In bed with her.

Her fingers slide gently down the bare expanse of his back, along the little bumps of scars that she can’t really see but guesses are there. The last time she’d seen this much of him had been years ago in a dingy motel bathroom, bloody bandages piled on the sink. Different mood entirely.

He hums and she feels him shift, he leans his forehead over hers, eyes still closed. 

“You’re so warm,” she murmurs and he smiles sleepily, before pulling the sheets over their heads. 

“Let’s keep it like that,” he says quietly. 

She laughs a little and he opens his eyes, the curve of his grin growing a little soft around the edges when their eyes meet.

“Good morning.”

He draws back, moving his weight off her, but his hand slides down her arm, twinning their fingers and bringing them close, so he can press a kiss to her wrist. She watches him, even after everything, she hadn’t expected him to touch her quite like this. 

“Morning.”

Leon’s eyes drop to her chest, down her breasts and her stomach, his palm comes over her ribs and runs along her side. Claire shivers, fingers reaching to pull on his neck gently, coaxing him into a kiss. He smiles into her mouth, hand circling her waist, pulling her on top of him.

Her lips drop to his jaw, and lower, to his neck. He sighs. She grins. 

It’s only a little later, when he has her on his lap, hands on her hips, holding her steady as she takes him, that he remembers the meeting she’d mentioned. 

He wonders about it, apparently out loud, against her lips and Claire laughs, resting her forehead over his shoulder. “Shit,” she says breathily, trembling, but doesn’t move away, she runs her hands through his hair instead and he grips her hips, momentarily too lost in just how good she feels as he brings her down to meet him. The sound she makes dissolves any other thoughts in his head.

“Guess I’ll be late,” she says, out of breath, catching his mouth with hers.

---

She isn’t. Claire only clings to him for a moment when they’re done but after a while she gets up and gets dressed, brushes her hair, all in what seems to him like two minutes. Leon watches her with amusement, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the tray they’d ordered.

He offers her to accompany her, but she shakes her head. “I don’t want people to assume anything,” she explains.

Leon arches a brow at her. “Like we’ve been sleeping together?” he asks matter-of-factly.

“Exactly.” 

He blinks. “Are you keeping me a secret, Red?” The prospect is half amusing in its unexpectedness.

Claire chuckles, running her hands through her hair, putting it up. “No,” she responds. “But I do need to be able to look my coworkers in the face.” Her eyes hold that curious, careful expression he’s seen on her before; he opens his mouth to ask about it but then her phone rings and the moment is lost.

“Fuck,” she curses, looking at the time. “I have to run.”

“Come here,” he says. She steps in close and he holds her waist for a minute, taking a good look at her. He’s still shirtless and it suddenly strikes him as a little unfair, considering the way her knee-high boots look on her. It occurs to him that while before he wouldn’t have allowed himself to look at her like that, or at least, would have tried to hide it, there’s no need now. 

“What?” she asks, wary curiosity on her face.

“You’re so pretty,” he tells her honestly, it’s surprisingly freeing. 

Claire blinks, seemingly baffled.

She’s not just pretty , he thinks. She’s smart and brave and probably the best person he knows, the thought gives him pause, he tries to shake the guilt before she can clock it, but he doesn’t think he succeeds. 

“I’ll see you at lunch?” he asks her.

She nods, gives him one questioning smile and takes a croissant from the tray, before she hurries out the door.

---

Leon wanders around for most of the day, decides that maybe he could enjoy Spain now that he's not running for his life. Big crowds are still not his thing, but he finds that blending in is somewhat relaxing, even if he can’t quite shake off the need to look over his shoulder every now and then.

In the middle of all this his mind finds the space to roam as well. There's an uncanny quality to waking up in the same bed as Claire, like he’s suddenly found himself in a parallel reality, one where he’s made all the right choices, hasn’t wasted any precious time. What would it have taken, for them to have had this since the beginning? In his heart of hearts he’d always believed that he had missed his chance. Too much time passed, too little said. But now, the idea that he might not have; it’s something he wants to hold on to with both hands. It’s also a foreign notion, scary in its own right.

It would be simpler, more familiar, if it was just about sex. Sex doesn’t require anything much, not friendship, not even civility, he’s found. But it is not the case; if nothing else, her company, and the idea of losing it have been the reason why he’s decided to keep certain thoughts firmly at the back of his mind all these years.

And now… It had taken roughly a week in her presence to override all of his carefulness. He has to admit it’s at least a little bit funny. 

He knows any therapist would have a field day trying to untangle the mess of attachment issues he most likely has. But the truth is that he never thought Claire would want him back. Even with the flirting, the teasing; he spent years of his life convincing himself that his heart didn’t jump whenever he found her looking at him. Because it shouldn’t, he has no right to that sort of thing. 

It’s that thought, amid the almost ecstatic happiness he feels that settles, uneasy, inside his stomach. An insidious little voice assuring him that the only plausible explanation to waking up with Claire’s arms around him, is that she hasn’t yet realized what a mess he is. The worst thing about it is that it might be true, after all, he’s always tried to keep the jagged edges away from her, the way a person might stuff the mess inside a closet, pushing the junk in and then leaning against the barely closed doors.

And right then and there, as if by some cosmic alignment, his phone buzzes inside his pocket. When he takes it out to read the text, a feeling of deja vu lingers at the back of his mind.

[From: Unknown Number at 12:01]: I think I have something that might interest you.

It’s true that it could be anyone, anonymous tips are not exactly uncommon, but there is no doubt in his mind about who the unknown sender is.

The sense of wrongness that he experienced when Claire asked him about her makes a comeback, although he doubts that there’s any kind of innuendo intended in the message, Ada has always been rather straightforward when it comes to that.

[To: Unknown Number at 12:06]: Pertaining what?

[From: Unknown Number at 12:08]: Work, of course.

[From: Unknown Number at 12:09]: I can’t talk right now, but I left you the details at your hotel.

He is intrigued, of course he is, and he finds himself turning around, retracing his steps back to the hotel. Without looking at the sights, without his mind wandering off, he makes it back in less than half the time; and when the girl at the desk spots him, she gestures at him and then slides a letter-sized paper envelope across the counter.

The usual misgivings about Ada knowing more that she probably should are still present somewhere in his brain when he thanks the girl and takes the envelope from her. He waits to reach the relative privacy of the room before he opens it, but once he does, a familiar face greets him. The operative from the hospital.

Inside the envelope are two pictures and a transcript phone call. One of the photos shows a man exiting a car; the other one has him too, this time walking down the street, his face almost almost lost in the crowd. He doesn’t look conspicuous, or like a person on the run, and Leon wonders if it was just that easy for him. Did he think that because the lab was dismantled and he wasn’t there that he wouldn’t get caught? 

He takes a good look at both photos and then at the transcript, it’s all in French, but the important part, the text at the beginning detailing the location needs no translation. 

Leon sets the papers over a side table and stares at nothing for a moment. He could phone Hunnigan, let someone else take it. He’s on time out after all. But then… This is his mess, it’s on him to fix it. And if he’s being completely honest, he would very much like to hunt the guy himself for some oh-not-so-professional reasons. 

His thoughts about Claire, about what all of this between them means, return, pressing. He can’t involve her in this, not just because it’s out of the blue, but because it would mean showing her a part of himself that he isn’t sure he wants her to see. 

What would she make out of him at his worst? That late night conversation they had in her living room echoes inside his head. If nothing else, her questions are proof that she doesn’t really think of him as the same boy she met in Raccoon all those years ago; but a part of him can’t help wanting to keep the facade intact, to be the best version of himself with her, the bravest, most idealistic. 

This is probably the opposite and he isn’t proud of that. But he has to do it, doesn’t he? 

Leon sighs, directs his gaze at the ceiling for a moment, and looks down at the two pictures that lay before him. He’s made his decision already. There’s no time to waste.

---

When she gets back to the hotel she finds him packing. Claire stands there for a minute, confused, watching as he puts his jacket back on. 

Leon looks up briefly as she unwinds the scarf from around her neck. “Hey,” he greets her, there’s a distracted, frazzled look in his eye.

“Hey,” she parrots, puzzled. “Is everything okay?”

The thought of some emergency occurring springs into her mind. Maybe he got called back in . He’d told her the night before that he was off duty, but this sort of thing happens regardless of personal affairs.

Leon stops for a moment, apparently just noticing her expression. “Yes,” he answers. “Everything is fine.”

Claire stills, waiting for further explanation and after a minute or two he turns back to her.

“Look Red, there’s something I gotta do,” he begins. “It’s not life or death, or anything, but I’d rather get it over quickly.”

She hesitates for a second. “What happened?” 

He runs a hand through his hair and she can see he’s trying to come out with something, he seems to dither in the way he does when he’s contemplating his words. “Well, it’s a little complicated, but you don’t need to worry.” 

Claire blinks.

“I swear.” Leon zips his duffel, eyes flying away from hers and down to his phone, as he turns over whatever thoughts are in his head. “I hope it won’t take long. Can I call you, after?”

At that the entire scene shifts inside Claire’s head. She takes in his semblance, the furrowed set of his brow, the bed that’s still unmade, her things, still strewn where she left them that morning. A new kind of understating settles under her skin like a chill. 

Is he— Is this? How had he put it? It’s always been very casual, uncomplicated. She casts her thoughts back to the morning, to waking up beside him. He’d seemed… relaxed, happy even. But maybe that was it, maybe she’d misinterpreted this entire thing. 

She’s caught right between wanting to know and not wanting to ask. Her ability to face things with her eyes open has always been something she’s taken pride in, and yet, before that New Year’s party she would have sworn to cut her own tongue before making any unrequited declarations to him. Claire finds that she can withstand a lot, but not his pity, never that.

And so she swallows down the questions. This is fine. It has to be. She has to be. 

What’s done is done. They’d kissed, they had sex, she might have misunderstood the situation slightly, but she can’t take it back. Her stomach sinks even as she tells herself that it’s alright, that he’s out of her system now. 

“Okay,” she says, and the next words leave her almost against her will. “Do you want me to come with you?” 

Leon grabs his bag, pulling the strap over his shoulder, he seems to be mulling some thoughts, it takes him a minute to reply. “No, that’s fine,” he tells her. “I’ll call you.”

The way he says it seems to suggest more, but Claire doesn’t know what, and the stubborn part of her reminds her that she might have little pride left, but she has it nonetheless, so she doesn’t ask. 

“Sure,” she says, in the most neutral tone she can muster.

Leon looks her in the eye then, as if he’s searching for something. His free hand lingers in the air near her shoulder for a second. “I’ll—

“Call me, I know,” she finishes.

Watching him leave while there’s still a dozen questions sitting on her lips feels wrong in a way she doesn’t want to articulate at first, but that presses heavy on her chest once the door closes behind him.

Claire takes off her coat, folding it over her good arm. She’s puzzled, troubled— her eyes catch on the sweater she was wearing the day before, forgotten on the floor near the bathroom. An awful feeling clawing up her chest makes her tear her eyes away. 

It’s too close, too much to think of at the moment. On an impulse, she throws the coat back on and grabs her card-key, thinking of an unfinished report back at the temporary office. Yes, that’s better. 

She makes a point of remembering to get a cup of coffee on the way. It’s going to be a long night.

Chapter Text

On the morning she’s supposed to fly back to the states, Claire throws everything back inside her suitcase with little consideration to what gets crushed or bent. 

She double checks the flight details as she makes her way down on the elevator and walks up to the lobby desk to check out. The man at the desk takes her card-key and informs her that the car she requested is about to arrive.

“Thank you,” Claire says, distracted, and smiles briefly when the man asks her if her experience was satisfactory.

As she’s about to head to the door he double checks her room number and looks up quizzically.

“Was everything up to order with the package?” His English is heavily accented, but perfectly conversational.

Claire blinks, puzzled.

“Package?” she questions.

“A woman left an envelope for your friend yesterday, I gave it to the clerk,” he explains kindly. “I was wondering if he received it alright.”

Claire grows still, confused at first, and then her thoughts are brought to a halt. Leon’s words from the day before suddenly replay inside her head. It’s complicated. You don’t need to worry. I’ll call you. 

The man, clearly assuming that he’d somehow committed a mistake looks at her anxiously.

“I am sure it was fine,” Claire says, working through her surprise, and everything else for that matter. “Was the—” she begins to ask, before she thinks better of it. “Never mind. Thank you, again.”

The man nods, still eyeing her wonderingly, and she makes her way outside on autopilot. The driver helps her with her luggage and opens the door for her but she barely registers it past a nod and a quiet “Thanks.”

She knew there had been something strange about Leon when he’d left, but she hadn’t— That is, it didn’t occur to her that— 

Claire frowns as the city passes by the window in a blur, doing her best to suppress the wave of thoughts that’s started to circle her head. Would Leon have told her had she pressed him? Maybe not. He’d been cryptic at best and uncommunicative at worst. She wonders what she would have said had he explained— Explained what? That Ada had contacted him? 

Unbreakable, unfazed Ada, whose own unknowability thrilled Leon in a way Claire had never wanted to understand, but that she had asked about in a moment of foolishness. 

There’s a sting that accompanies the thought, much worse than she’d anticipated, and she mentally recoils from it. It’s visceral, how much she doesn’t want to go down that route. More than anything she refuses to play that role, to be the one that is jealous and attached, the one that gets hurt.

Claire bites the inside of her cheek and reminds herself that she knew exactly what she was getting into, that she’d consciously decided she didn’t care about the consequences. She will grit her teeth if she has to.

It’s okay. It’s fine. This doesn’t change anything.  

It doesn’t stick, not right away but she’ll make it work, she has no choice.

---

In a seedier part of Paris than he would consider visiting for himself, Leon drinks his coffee and waits for the man to appear. His table has a clear view of the pawnshop in front, but there’s enough people coming and going that he hopes he’s not inconspicuous.

He’s not all that used to the man of mystery act, but he isn’t half bad at it either.  

Ada’s tip was precise in her usual way, if Leon had wanted he could have probably taken a cab straight to the guy’s door. But the thing is, and this didn’t occur to him at first, the man knows his face, knows exactly who he is. If he saw him coming, Leon could lose his chance in the blink of an eye.

So he waits. Even though his patience is running thin, even though he wishes he was somewhere.

The irony of it being Paris doesn’t escape him. He’s only ever visited while on duty, and so his experience of it is tinged with the usual brand of alternating boredom and watchfulness. It’s perhaps only the general perception, the collective idea that it’s a beautiful place one should enjoy themselves in, but well; as he sips his coffee he can’t help but to feel a little… disappointed.

He’s given up hoping for the best, just in case he jinxes it, but he wouldn’t mind being done with this already; there are other places he would much rather be.

---

Once the plane deposits her back in New York, Claire feels a nervousness settle over her, like an alarm sounding inside her head, pushing her to move, move, move. She finds herself looking out of a taxi’s window, unable to recall the exact moment she decided to hail one, and then at her building’s door in what seems like the blink of an eye.

Her apartment is a mess, which is unsurprising since she left in a hurry. There are clothes strewn around the bedroom and the bed is unmade. She takes one look at the sheets she probably should have changed before the New Year and gets to work.

Her clothes, along with the contents of her suitcase go in the laundry basket. She vacuums the floor, tidies the kitchen and showers, brushes her hair dry; and when all is said and done she stands on the hallway looking over the living room, considering whether she wants to cook or order something in.

In the end, she grabs her keys, picks up her jacket and heads to Chris’s.

---

Leon follows his target down the street. He feels like he’s in a bad action movie, the kind where the main character wears sunglasses and a hat in order to blend in. 

It’s late, but the streets are still packed, the buildings populated with neon signs and faint club music that leaks into the street every time someone opens a door. Restaurants spill onto the sidewalk, people line up along them to get a table. It’s a good place to disappear, he’ll give the guy that much.

The man steps inside a cheap hotel and Leon lingers across the street. It takes him a while, but eventually he finds a free room on the opposite block he can rent, and from which he can keep an eye on the door of his target’s building.

The room is small and probably not the kind of place he would ever decide to spend a night in otherwise, but it’ll do. He sets his things down and drags an armchair close to the window. 

The night passes by, tedious but uneventful.

---

“To what do I owe this privilege?” Chris asks, jesting, as he steps aside to let Claire in.

She sets her helmet on a nearby table and turns to look at him as she shrugs off her jacket. “Do I need a reason to visit you?” she teases. He smiles in that fondly exasperated way of his, an expression that reads half cut the crap and half I know you like the palm of my hand . “Can I crash here tonight?” she adds.

“Of course,” he says, and that’s that.

They order chinese and watch some inoffensive movie that’s already halfway through by the time they sit in front of the TV. No guns or monsters, or terrorist organizations. When Claire turns to look at him during a commercial break, Chris only sips his beer and returns her glance with a serene one of his own.

At some point he wordlessly pushes the last egg roll into her bowl with his chopsticks. Claire feels her lips curling upwards in response. 

---

In the morning Leon takes a shower in what is probably the bathroom with the lowest water pressure in the world. Afterwards, he takes a look at his face in the mirror and can’t stop himself from asking what the hell he is doing. 

When his eyes drift to the bed in the other room he can’t help but to remember the one he and Claire had shared before he left. There’s a tug in his stomach and a pang in his chest and he misses her and wants her and suddenly he feels like he’s running around aimlessly, wasting time he doesn’t have.

It’s probably not too late to contact Hunnigan. Leon runs a hand through his face. He considers the idea for a moment, but the guilt he’s felt since New Year’s hasn’t disappeared. How can he let anyone else deal with this? It’s his mess.

His mess . It’s the only thing in his mind when he leaves the room, and it’s also probably why he fails to notice that the man has noticed him.

---

Claire is making french toast in the kitchen when her brother comes down for breakfast. The name of the game is “don’t think about it” and the way she’s decided to play it is by drowning her thoughts in food.

“Good morning,” Chris says.

“Morning,” Claire replies with a side smile. “There’s coffee on the pot.”

“Nice.” 

He pours himself a cup and leans into the counter. She can feel his eyes on her and so the question doesn’t surprise her when it finally comes.

“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?” Chris asks casually, as one would about the weather, or lunch plans.

“Nope,” she replies without taking her eyes off the pan.

Claire imagines herself trying to explain it. Hey, remember Leon? Good old Leon. The guy we occasionally shoot zombies with? Well I slept with him, and I think it backfired on me. She allows herself a mental sigh. Yeah, not gonna happen.

Chris, thankfully, doesn’t press her.

---

Leon can tell something is wrong when he suddenly realizes he’s followed his target all the way into an industrial area. Apartment buildings are replaced with warehouses and metal containers. There’s no one around besides a couple of workers that pass him and the moment they’re gone, the man he’d been following makes a break for an open gate at the mouth of an alleyway.

Leon chases him, half alarmed and half relieved that the cat is finally out of the bag. 

Inside it’s dark and as his eyes take a moment to adjust to the light, he distinguishes concrete walls and crates. He hears hurried steps above his head and runs into the direction of the stairs. They lead to an empty corridor, and the man disappears behind a door on the opposite side. 

Before Leon can take two steps in its direction, a whistling sound and the loud crash of broken glass stop him in his tracks. 

In the silence after, he runs and throws the door open only to find the man on the floor, his back pressed to the wall behind him. His right hand clutches the side of his neck, but blood slips through his fingers, quick enough that he knows the bullet must have opened something important.

Leon kneels beside him, mentally calculating how fast he can get him to the nearest hospital, but the man’s face is already pale, his eyes are already dimming. 

He mumbles a single word that comes out in a horrible gurgle, before his eyes become unseeing. “Underneath.”

---

After breakfast, when she starts feeling the thoughts closing in on her, Claire resolves to get out of the house. She slips her sneakers on and walks out the door, pausing only to let Chris know she’s going out for a run over her shoulder. 

The wind is cold on her face, and she should probably be wearing something sturdier than leggings, but she runs as fast as she can, fast enough that her lungs burn and that the trees and houses pass by in a blur. She keeps it going as long as she can, trying hard to empty her head with no use. It’s only when she comes to a stop, panting, with her nails digging into her palms and scar aching on shoulder, that she can admit it was probably not a very good idea in the first place.

Her throat feels tight and she’s biting her lips, and with a humorless, breathless laugh Claire finally relents, gives in to the anger. It’s not easy; to admit that she’s pissed is to admit that she’s hurt, and something more bitter than pride flares at the notion. Isn’t that what she’s been trying to avoid all these years?

Well perhaps that was the problem. She’s bitten her tongue so many times; has let years go by when she should have said something. Yes, it might have turned out exactly the same, with Leon running off to who knows where, but it would have passed. She would have gotten over it, instead of tending to this ball of attachments that squeezes her throat every time she looks at him.

She had wanted things with him to be the way they used to, before she left, before the island, before Harvardville, but that can’t be. She can’t unmake her choices just as she can’t unwind the years that have passed. And it’s— fine, or maybe not fine, but she must learn to be okay with it.

Taking a deep breath, she closes her eyes and waits for a heartbeat. However awful it feels, the hurt and the embarrassment, she’s still in one piece and she’ll remain like this, even if she has to force it out of herself.

“Well, fuck,” she whispers, and sets out running again.

---

The door to the room hangs on its hinges, knob broken. Leon stands in the middle of it, watching over the mess. Clothes and furniture are strewn. The mattress laying against the wall, the bed frame on its side. 

It had crossed his mind, as he lingered beside the unmoving man that whoever had ordered that shot had probably used it as a distraction too, taking the chance to empty out the man’s room. Leon had been too far away to do anything about it.

He hears a quiet, familiar step behind him and turns to see Ada, looking over the room with an unreadable expression in her eyes.

“It wasn’t me,” she tells him, anticipating the question. 

A dozen others pop into his head but he starts with the simplest. “Is that the truth?”

She arches a brow at him. “You can’t tell?” She walks in, and casually turns over an empty drawer with the toe of her boot. 

Leon suddenly remembers the man’s last word and his eyes drop to the square the bed would have occupied had the mattress not been turned over. 

There’s a nearly invisible seam, he would have missed it had he not known where to look, but as he kneels and knocks on it, a hollow sound returns. He removes the piece of floorboard and a shallow opening greets him. Slipping a hand inside, his index catches on something that yields and a small metal rectangle drops into his hand.

Leon turns over the hard drive, there are no labels or any other indication of what it contains, but since it was important enough to assassinate over, he gets the idea. He places it on the inside pocket of his jacket and turns around to see Ada watching him.

“I guess the trip wasn’t a total loss,” she comments. He doesn’t quite know what to reply. “I thought—” Ada begins, looking at him curiously but whatever she was going to say never comes. 

“That we shouldn’t be having this conversation here?” Leon asks, feeling exhaustion seep into his bones.

She smiles in that cryptic way of hers. “I know a place.”

“A place” is a dingy bar a block away, where the patrons lean over their drinks and the counter is permanently stained. It’s not the type Leon would associate with Ada, but it fits his gloomy mood and so he doesn’t comment on it.

“I’m guessing it was one of their own,” he says, taking a stool at the bar and tilting his head in the general direction from which they came. 

Ada nods vaguely. “Most likely.”

“You don’t seem surprised,” he adds. It feels as if he’s reading the words off a script, having the same conversation he’s had with her a dozen times before. Part of him is disappointed, but a larger, admittedly exhausted part just doesn’t want to dwell on it.

“Well, these types of people don’t really like to leave any loose ends.”

Leon nods. It’s true, of course. He has the uncomfortable suspicion that his trailing the guy had only made it easier for them, whoever they are, to take the opportunity to isolate and terminate him.

“Is that why you’re here?” he asks Ada. Despite everything, he doesn’t mean it with hostility.

She blinks placidly, and seems to consider his question for a moment. “I wouldn’t have tipped you in if that were the case.”

Leon frowns. “And why did you? Why make me come here?”

The bartender slides a martini across the counter to her, it looks surprisingly dainty, considering the ambience. “I didn’t ask you to come,” she says, and takes a sip.

“You left me those photographs,” he reminds her, watching the bartender pour his whisky, and deciding he’s much too tired to indulge in their usual talking in circles. 

Ada almost smiles. “I didn’t think you’d show up,” she tells him with a curious look. Leon is about to speak again when she adds, “I thought you would just hand them in, let your friends from Terrasave deal with it.”

“I don’t think that’s in their capacity,” Leon replies, a little thrown off.

“No?” she counters, “isn’t that why you were with—” she trails off at his confused expression, and suddenly considers him a lot more closely than she had before. “Oh.”

Ada blinks, a baffled look crossing her face briefly, before her usual detachment masks it. But Leon knows her, as much as someone like her can be known, and so he doesn’t miss the conflicted glint in her eyes.

She takes another sip from her drink and lays the glass carefully over the napkin. “Is it serious?” she asks.

Leon looks away, and catches their reflection on the faded mirror at the back of the bar. “Is what serious?” he asks.

She arches a brow at him. “Ha. I wouldn’t have taken you for the white picket fence type,” she says conversationally, an edge of… tartness coloring her voice.

His eyes drop to the glass in his hand, mulling over her words. Something about it doesn’t sit right with him, but he can’t manage any irritation so it just lingers, uncomfortable, somewhere inside his chest.

“What’s wrong with those?” he wonders.

The corner of Ada’s mouth pulls up in what might be a smile, but could also be a grimace. “Nothing. For normal people, that is.”

The implication in that feels like the sharp edge of a knife underneath a tablecloth. Leon sips his scotch. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she’s the type either.”

“Maybe so.” 

When he lifts his gaze he finds Ada examining their reflection as well, though what she sees there, he can’t tell.

“Well,” she says, after a moment.

“Well.” he repeats. 

After she leaves he remains sitting for a moment, pondering the last twenty-four hours. He wonders what would have happened had he turned the tip in. The hard drive isn’t heavy, but he’s all too aware of its weight inside the jacket. If he’s completely honest, a part of him wants to obsess over it, to follow the lead down to the end, it’s what he’s used to after all. It’s second nature. 

Second nature. When did it become like that? After Racoon? Or was it before that? Living on the run, never stopping long enough to let anything sink, he used to think it kept him safe, that it made the horrible things he’s seen a little less terrible. 

He downs the rest of his glass. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, the fact of the matter is that as much as he can turn his face away, the horrible things are still there. It’s like Claire said, just greedy assholes gambling with the lives of others. 

He closes his eyes and the curve of Claire’s smile appears in his mind like the sun burnt into his retina. The guilt that accompanies it is a little heavier than he expected and Ada’s comment about picket fences returns with a vengeance. 

Did he mess things up with Claire when he left? In retrospect he’d been too caught up in his own head to explain much of anything. He suddenly remembers the distance in her eyes when they parted, and feels like downing another drink at the thought, perhaps the entire bottle. Leon has to actively stop himself from fishing up his phone and calling her. His fingers curl into his hands. God he wishes she was here, or that he was with her, still in bed, feeling her heart beat every time he kissed her neck. He was so happy there for a moment, did he even tell her?

When is he gonna become a normal human who knows how to communicate, and not a person who lives out of boxes, with a gun on one hand and a glass of scotch on the other? 

His parents had been normal people. Perhaps not exactly the white picket fence type either, but somewhat well adjusted. Did the monsters and crazy pharmaceuticals really fuck him up this badly? Even Chris seems to have been getting better on that front, if the whole getting-married thing is anything to judge by. 

Leon knows it isn’t weakness, no human being can walk away from the things they have and remain entirely sane. He’s noticed even Claire struggles with it sometimes; since her attack she flinches slightly, every time she has to step into the open air— God, what is he even doing here? Drinking and half a world away from her when she’s still recovering? 

He feels strangely embarrassed to just show up to her door now. She’s too good for him and that will probably never change, but he should. He should sort out his shit, fix what’s salvageable, so that when she smiles at him he has more to offer her than cracks and pieces. 

He pulls the hard drive from inside his jacket and looks at it for a moment. The impulse is still there. Find what’s inside, get an explanation. But is there one? Beyond money and power and personal gain? He’s seen the inside of labs and the aftermath of battle too many times, and not once has he found anything different. 

He can’t keep living his life chasing after constantly, it doesn’t serve him anymore. As he places his glass over the counter he realizes that he can, perhaps for the first time, admit that to himself.

Chapter Text

She has a piece of toast between her teeth and is rummaging through Chris’s spare bedroom in search of a forgotten t-shirt or something else clean to wear, when her phone chimes from the bed.

Holding up a faded pink sweatshirt she’d believed lost a couple months ago, Claire checks the text out of the corner of her eye and does a double take almost immediately.

Well, I’ll be damned.

She slips the sweatshirt over her head, pulling her ponytail from under the collar and picks up her phone.

[From: Leon! at 09:02]: Hey Red.

[From: Leon! at 09:05]: I think I need your help with something.

Claire blinks. Of all things . She considers the screen for a moment and his words from that night in her kitchen come back unbidden. And you’ll come running? It seems almost a little cruel all of a sudden, even though she knows he wouldn’t have meant it like that.

Perhaps, if it had been something else, anything else, she would have— Not ignored it outright, but maybe put it off for a while. As it is, she thinks she can count on one hand the number of times Leon has explicitly asked her for help. 

She bites her thumbnail reflexively for a moment, then she goes back to the living room to get her jacket and keys.

---

In hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have taken the bike; she’d bundled up in layers like one’s meant to do but cold wind is still cold wind, even under a jacket. Plus holding her arms in a mostly fixed position for a couple of hours left her still healing shoulder with an ache.

All of that kind of flies out of her head when she reaches the address Leon had texted her. A residential street in the middle of a little town that probably saw its golden years come and go a while ago. The house in question stands among a line of others, all similar in that quaint, suburban way; most of them look aged in the same manner as the town, lived in. The one she came for is the only one that seems neglected. 

It’s not abandoned in the way of haunted houses, there are no broken windows or graffiti. But the way the overgrown lawn brushes up against the faded paint strikes her as particularly lonely somehow. It catches her off guard, slightly. 

She leaves her bike beside the one truck parked under a tree, she guesses it could be Leon’s, perhaps a rental? The manner in which it sits along the curb spikes her curiosity, it looks haphazard, hurried.

Claire glances back at the porch, it’s strewn with dried leaves and grass, she considers approaching the gate that seemingly leads to the backyard when the front door opens with a mighty creak and what looks like years of dust raining down.

“Hey,” Leon greets her, shaking the dirt from his hair.

“Hi,” she replies, still watching the scene unfold. 

He has his sleeves pushed up to his elbows and is himself as covered in dust as the house. He walks down the steps and meets her where she stands, taking the helmet from her hands. 

“You came.” Something of the distant look she remembers from Spain still lingers in his eyes, but his surprise and relief are plain as well. 

Claire glances away from him, back at the house. “You sound surprised,” she tells him, it slips from her mouth before she can second-guess it. When she looks back at him his gaze meets hers with ease; whatever awkwardness she feels is obviously not mutual. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, his hand coming up to scratch at his neck probably, but he stops mid-motion and looks down at his dirt covered fingers. “I- uh, I wanted to…” his words trail off as he looks at her more properly. “What is it?”

It’s dumb, but something about his looseness makes her smile a little bit. “What is this place?” she asks him off the top of her head. 

He hesitates and some unnamed emotion crosses his face, here and gone, too fast for her to catalog. “It’s my parent’s house,” he blurts. 

Claire stills, to his wannabe-cavalier manner as much as to the answer itself. In all the years they’ve known each other she’s heard him mention his family only twice (at least voluntarily) and one of those was in reply to something Sherry had asked him. 

She can practically feel his attention, but she’s a little bit at a loss, unsure of what to reply. “How long has it been since you’ve been here?” she asks in the end. A breeze flows by and she glimpses for a second something that looks like a tire swing hanging from a tree in the backyard.

“A while,” he replies. Her eyes find him again, there’s a cautious, sheepish-like set to his features. He seems to be waiting for her to ask further questions, but Claire doesn’t quite know where to begin. “Wanna come in?” he asks in the end.

---

Inside he moves differently. It startles her a little at first. She’s seen him walk into burning buildings with the ease of a morning stroll, but coming inside his family home is a different story somehow. He walks warily, like a spooked cat.

Almost everything in the house is covered in a thin layer of dust, but besides that there’s no hint of the kind of the disarray that the outside suggests. 

She wanders into the living room almost absentmindedly. Bay windows look out into the street and even though the glass is a little clouded with age, she can still see the outside more or less clearly through the curtains. She notices that Leon has set up camp there when she spots his duffel bag sprawled over an armchair and a couple pillows on the couch. Like the truck outside, the whole setup looks ready to be packed in a minute. 

Her eyes land on the mantel over the fireplace, a few picture frames sit there, among some other knickknacks. As if he can sense her mounting curiosity he steps into her line of vision.

“So…”

“So?” Claire asks. “Why are we here?”

“Well,” he begins. She can see his discomfort as if it were a veil hanging over him. “I— um, it’s gonna sound very stupid.”

Something softens inside her at that. “I’m not gonna laugh.”

He sighs and the corners of his mouth turn up in a small smile. “I know,” he says. “It’s just, I’ve kind of been avoiding coming here for years and well, I had this idea that I would come up now and finally clear out the place and when I got here I just— I don’t know.”

Claire’s eyes move around the room once more, noticing the furniture he’s already pushed against the walls in order to make space in the middle of the living room. A coffee table on its side, a rug rolled up and placed against a corner, the space they once occupied in front of the fireplace now empty.

“When was the last time you were here?” she asks, though the probable answer is already in her head. 

“Before I went to Raccoon.”

“As in, the day before?”

“As in that morning,” he replies.

Oh. It makes sense, in a way. It also prompts another dozen questions but she brushes them aside for later.

“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “I don’t even know where to begin, I think— I thought I could just… wing it I guess.” Then looking back at her he hurries to say, “I mean, I’m not asking you to clear the entire house with me, I know you’re taking time off and—

“Leon.”

“I’m rambling,” he concludes.

“It’s okay.”

She doesn’t quite know what to make of all this, she hadn’t had time to theorize about what he needed help with when she got his text, but even if she had, she couldn’t have come up with this. It’s puzzling, yes, but there’s also a kind of vulnerability in his eyes that softens his features and Claire realizes that in his uncertainty she can almost see him as he was all those years ago, on the night when they first met. Twenty one and fresh out of the academy.

“If you need me to clear out the entire house with you I’ll do it,” she tells him. “Or, if you don’t want to go through all of it, we can also hire some people to do it for us and just take whatever you want to keep.”

He holds her gaze for a moment. “That sounds… great actually.”

She nods. A knitted blanket resting over the arm of the sofa catches her eye, her fingers trace the pattern for a second. During their motel-hopping days she’d asked Leon about his parents once and he’d answered simply and briefly between sips of vending machine soda. She knew they’d passed, and that he wasn’t particularly close with the rest of his family, but she hadn’t wanted to pry. Claire had figured if he’d ever wanted to talk about it he would, but well, time goes by in the blink of an eye and he’d never had, until now. 

She finds his eyes on her hands and the blanket underneath; it’s dust free, he must have cleaned it before she arrived.

“Should we get some boxes?” he asks.

“Sure,” she replies.

---

He leaves Claire peeling off her layers while he goes into the attic looking for empty boxes. His phone's flashlight and a lone window are the only sources of light and it strikes him as an unfortunately familiar scene. What does it say about him that his neglected family home now seems reminiscent of numerous creepy buildings he’s come across during work hours? He tries not to entertain the thought for long.

He’s caught between relief and regret, and he takes his time in the attic, going over boxes of old Christmas decorations while he mulls his thoughts. In truth, he’d been impulsive, so convinced that he’d come and finally deal with this piece of his past, as if it were some symbolic step towards self actualization, and then arriving, only to feel overwhelmed and out of his depth the minute he placed a foot inside the house. He wonders what Claire makes of all this, if he’d seemed as obviously lost to her as he himself feels.

Her presence makes it easier though, as it always has, a smile like reassurance and a glint in her eyes that tells him that it’s okay, that they got this. He’s glad he asked her to come, happier still that she’s here, even if her coming inside the house felt a little surreal. Two different parts of his life meeting for the first time.

He’d been nervous at first, when she’d arrived, torn between wanting to close the distance between them and not wanting to presume. Perhaps if he’d stayed, or if he had asked her to come with him back to Paris when she’d offered, it would be easier to just wrap himself around her like he wants to do. 

Maybe it’s his imagination, or just the setting, but he feels as if they’ve somehow taken a step back from where they were when Claire had kissed him in the middle of the street, like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“Red?” he asks when he comes back down, sending the ladder up into the ceiling once more with an uncomfortable creak.

“In here,” comes her voice from a door much closer than he’d expected. 

Right, he thinks to himself as he pushes the door open with the back of his hand. She’s standing in the middle of what used to be his room. For a brief moment he has this moronic worry about what state he left it in and what she might find in there, before his common sense kicks in, reminding him that it’s been years since he’s been inside his childhood bedroom.

Claire’s wearing this oversized sweatshirt that paired with her ponytail suddenly makes her look so… cute, it’s disarming in its own way. And she’s perusing his shelves, he hopes she won’t judge him too harshly for his teenage reading taste.

“Snooping already?” he teases.

She brushes it off like nothing. “You can’t invite me to your house and not expect me to gather some intel.”

He snorts. 

“Fancy westerns much?” she asks, lifting a brow at a vintage movie poster he’d put up on the wall when he was probably fourteen. Her index finger brushes the dust off the nose of a horse figurine that still sits on his desk.

“Everybody is allowed to have a couple embarrassing interests, don’t you think?” 

Claire tilts her head to the side, a strange smile playing on her lips. “I actually think it’s adorable.” 

He unfolds one of the boxes and places it onto his bed. She puts the horse figurine inside, along with a thin hardcover book that he recognizes as his yearbook. 

“Did you go through that?” he asks curiously, pointing at the book.

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Just so you know, I refrained from going through yours when I stayed over, just out of respect for your privacy.”

She laughs at that, nose scrunching up a little bit and he feels that familiar pang inside his chest, like his heart is a little too big to fit between his ribs. 

“I’ll let you try that one again in a minute,” she tells him.

They go around the house like this for a couple of hours, picking a few things and placing them inside the boxes. Sometimes she holds something up and Leon either nods or shakes his head in response. They don’t talk much, which surprises him a bit, he would have expected her to start peppering him with questions. 

At one point she stops while going down the stairs, gaze settling on a framed picture hanging on the wall. A young couple, standing in the backyard, looks back at them from behind the faded glass.

“Is this them?” she asks.

Leon nods, elaborating a bit when he reminds himself that there’s no reason not to. “Yeah, I think they took that one when they moved in.” 

“Your mom was very pretty,” Claire says and he finds himself smiling at that.

With her help, they take down the pictures one by one and place them in a separate box. 

---

They decide to take a break once the sun goes down, cleaning up and venturing into town to get pizza and something to drink. 

When all is said and done there’s only enough stuff that he’d like to keep to fill a couple of boxes, and most of them are pictures. Still, it’s enough, he thinks. He’s never thought of himself as the sentimental type and the truth is that there is a disconnect between himself and the house. He recognizes everything, but it feels as if it belongs to somebody else.

That foreignness clings to him through the evening, distracting, and it takes him a while to notice that once night falls, the temperature in the house goes down with it.

At a moment, he looks up to find Claire inspecting the fireplace.

“It’s safe,” he assures her and takes it upon himself to tidy up enough for them to eat while she builds a fire.

Later on, when they’re sitting in front of it, with the pizza boxes between them, he passes her a beer and studies her in the low light, the line of her mouth and the shadows her eyelashes cast on her cheekbones.

“What were you like? As a kid,” Claire asks, resting her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee.

He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “In what sense?” 

She arches her eyebrows at him. “In a I-want-to-know-what-baby-Leon-was-like kind of sense.”

He makes a face. “Overconfident I guess,” he replies with a shrug.

“Elaborate.” 

He chuckles. “I don’t know, I just, I guess I had this very stereotypical idea of what kind of person I wanted to be,” he tells her. He ponders for a moment and then surprises himself a bit by continuing. “I was still pretty young when my parents died, it made me very angry for a while.”

He meets her eyes then, she doesn’t say anything, but he can see the understanding in her expression and it helps him along.

“I became convinced that I could fix it somehow, not bring my parents back, of course, but that I could make something good out of this anger. I thought I could fix the world I guess, it all looked pretty much black and white back then.”

Claire hums.

“Does that make any sense?”

She smiles softly. “Yes, I get it,” she replies, and then, “I think, if I hadn’t had Chris when our parents died— God, I was brat to him for a while.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Oh I was, I’m still pretty good at getting on his nerves. He took it like a champ though, most of the time.”

Leon chuckles.

Her eyes land on him again, his bangs brush the top of his cheekbones and Claire finds herself suppressing the impulse to brush them away from his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she tells him.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Still,” she protests. “I don’t like to see you hurt.”

The thought gives Leon pause, he hesitates, an uncomfortable feeling, lodged like a stone inside his chest. “I don’t want you to think of me like that though.”

Claire blinks. “Like what?”

“Hurt, angry.” He is, in some ways. There’s no way not to be after all he’s seen, but he doesn’t want Claire to pity him.

She remains silent for a moment, seemingly turning his answer over in her head. “It’s not that I think about you like that,” she explains. “I care about you and I feel like you’re carrying a lot on your own, I just wish you knew you don’t have to do it all by yourself.” 

Leon grows still. There’s a strange edge to her voice, not unkind, but… a little harder than her usual tone. When he looks at her, her eyes are trained on the rim of the bottle in her hand; her hair looks garnet in the firelight. 

“Thank you,” he says. “For coming here and for everything else.” It’s not enough, not nearly, to cover how he really feels.

Claire smiles, though the emotion doesn’t manage to reach her eyes. “What are friends for?”

He frowns, suddenly remembering the tense line of her smile when she’d arrived. He’d assumed her hesitancy had to do with him asking her to come to the middle of nowhere out of the blue, but perhaps—

“Red?”

Her words come out quietly, her eyes are still set on the bottle, unreadable. “What happened when you left, that day in Spain? Did you come here?”

His lips part, and he considers his words before he responds. “No,” he begins. “Ada had a lead, about who was behind the attack on New Year’s, I went after that.”

Claire’s eye meets his. There’s no surprise in her gaze, just a quizzical gleam and something like resignation. Leon doesn’t know what he expected to see, but as he looks at her he wonders if she somehow knew. It seems a little out there, even for her, he doesn’t actually think her a psychic, but if she does know… If she did, then that casts the entire day in a different light all of a sudden.

Because she’s here. Claire’s here, like she’d told him she would be if he ever needed her. Even though to her it must have seemed like he was fucking off with no explanations at the first instance of Ada contacting him.

“Claire—

It’s minute, so small that if he hadn't known her for years, if he weren’t sitting so close to her he might have missed it, but there it is, hurt, passing over her face.

“Did you find out? Who was behind it?”

“No,” he replies. “I sent what I found to Hunnigan, I— didn’t want to be involved anymore.”

Claire watches him for a moment, a concerned line between her eyebrows. “Why?”

He opens his mouth. Despite having spent every moment on the way here pondering the same question, he doesn’t have a simple answer for her. A tangle of words, too many to utter, still sit on his tongue. But she’s looking at him and the moment is slipping away with every second, so he blurts an answer, and although it’s a true one, it isn’t enough. “I didn’t want to be there anymore, I wanted to be here, with you.”

She adverts her eyes quickly, as if stung. “Is that it?”

He grows still. “What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why be vague about it”

“I didn’t want to get you into that mess,” he replies; and then, before he has the chance to really think about it, he adds, “it’s not like I wanted to go after the guy to give him a hug.”

“I’m already in this mess, bioterrorism, all of it; we both have been for a while,” she reminds him.

Leon shakes his head. “It’s not the same, you’re not—

“What? Angry?” Claire finishes, jaw tight. “Of course I am.”

“Not like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like me,” he blurts curtly, the words leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

When their eyes meet again there’s disbelief and not a small amount of offense in her face. “Why do you always act like you have to protect me from something, Leon? I’m not a kid.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Then why—

“Because you’re you, you’re so—” Leon stops himself, biting the inside of his cheek. “I don’t want you to see me like that,” he repeats; not exactly what he’d said before and not what he really wants to say now.

Claire grows silent, her lips pressing together in an unhappy line. When she speaks, she does it without malice, but her voice is nevertheless still weighed with exhaustion. “It’s not a problem with Ada though, isn’t it?”

“That’s not…” he begins, thrown off, "It's not like that.”

“What is it like then?” she asks. “Because I’ve been— Fuck, Leon. I don’t want to be the runner up. I don’t want you to be with me just because you can’t have the person you really want.”

If you even are with me, she thinks, biting her tongue. If this thing between us is anything at all.

Leon stares at her for a moment, completely at a loss. He’d thought that she knew; that she could read it on his face every time he looked at her. She’s Claire after all, she’s been able to disarm him with a glance since forever. 

“I thought it was obvious.”

“Is it?” she asks. “I don’t know what you’re thinking. I can’t know unless you tell me.”

“I want you,” he says finally, voicing those words that have been stuck inside him so long their contours have started to feel familiar. “I’ve always wanted you. I’m never happier or more calm than when I'm with you. But you’re my friend, you’re the best person I know and I’m a mess.” A part of him is dismayed to be saying it out loud, but now that he’s begun he finds that he can’t stop. “I haven’t had a relationship lasting more than a month in years, I don’t know how to do any of this. But you—” he hesitates, trying to come up with a way to explain it and failing. “You’re Claire. You’re— you’re so good . I’m scared you’re gonna look at me one day and realize you’ve made a mistake.”

Her lips press together tightly and she looks at the fire, blinking. “Don’t talk like that, I’m not a saint, Leon. I don’t need you to be perfect or the bravest, most capable person. I just want you to let me in.” A moment passes, he thinks her words might rub him raw. “Whenever something like this happens I feel like I’m playing chess in my head trying to understand what you’re thinking.”

He runs a hand through his face and tries again to tell her what he’s been trying to say since that night on her couch. “You shouldn’t worry about me.”

It has the opposite effect he intended, as she looks back at him, incensed again. 

“Why not? So what if I worry! I can’t not worry, not when we live like this. But dammit Leon, you can’t just deal with things by yourself to spare everybody else.”

The last part catches him off guard and it takes him a minute to reply. “I don’t… do that.”

“Yes, you do. And it scares the shit out of me.” She meets his eyes then, serious. “I want to help you, and for you to help me. Whatever it is you think I’m gonna find off-putting about you, I promise I won’t. But I can’t be with you and keep cool when you leave me in the dark.”

Leon watches her, still and reeling. “You’re too good for me, Red,” he tells her and watches a frustrated look pass over her eyes, but before she can throw the pizza boxes at his head he adds, “I just want you to be safe, I want everyone to be safe and I feel like this is the one thing I can do to make it so.”

His voice comes out slightly quieter than he’d intended and whatever indignation had lingered in Claire’s eyes dies as she closes them, the line of her mouth softening.

“I know,” she tells him, matching his tone. “But don’t you know that I want the same for you?”

He holds her eyes again, while the light of the fireplace plays over her features. “To be safe?”

“And happy, and lots of other things,” she continues, directing that gaze of hers, blue and lovely and familiar, back at him. “But I’ll settle for this, don’t shut me out. Whatever else we are, let us actually be friends.”

Leon exhales. He’s clung to this way of acting his entire life, he doesn’t know if one can even change such an ingrained habit. The fact that he managed to hurt her even when he actively tried not to is perhaps the most worrying. “I’m gonna fuck this up.”

Claire remains quiet for a bit. “Maybe,” she admits. “Maybe not.”

He huffs, trying not to let his shoulders drop too far down.

“Maybe I will,” she adds. “I’ve heard I can be hot headed and quite mean when I’m angry.”

Leon glances up at her again and finds her expression to be steady, calm. “Who said that? I’ll break their teeth,” he promises.

She tilts her head, that familiar wisp of a smile pulling at the little freckle on the corner of her mouth. “My point is, there’s no way to know for sure, and I don’t want to spend another year pinning, so are you in, Kennedy?”

Despite the heartache, the sound of her voice, the certainty of it, coaxes an unlikely smile from him. “I’ve been in since you pulled out that minigun on the train leaving Raccoon.” 

Claire chuckles, something vulnerable still playing in her eyes. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Leon replies.

They’re silent for a few minutes, just watching each other. Then he reaches out, just to brush that little freckle on her lower lip and she leans in, easy as breathing. 

Chapter Text

They eat a little, and talk some more and all the while his eyes never leave her and finally when Claire pushes up onto her knees and kisses him, cradling his jaw, it’s like he comes alive again, possessed once more by that familiar, insistent tension that springs whenever she touches him.

That night at the hotel had gone by faster than he would have liked; it’d been too much, he had wanted her for too long. He wants more now, more time, the chance to really look at her, to stay with her like this. It’s not easy though.

Claire’s nails brush the side of his ear, she watches his eyes drop to her mouth and she kisses him again, perhaps a little harder than she’d intended to and Leon lets out a groan, it sends a shiver down her body, like a flame. He lifts her sweatshirt up to her ribs and over, pulling it off her; undoes her ponytail, letting her hair fall down around her face.

Her eyes find his, dark and dim, eyelashes casting soft shadows. For a moment they just look at one another. Her left hand comes to rest over his chest, she can feel it rise and fall with every breath. Her fingers curl into the fabric.

“What are you thinking of?” he asks.

Claire tilts her head to the side. “I’m thinking you’re wearing too many clothes.”

Half a chuckle tumbles from his mouth, he lets go of her for a moment, so she can strip him from the waist up. And then his breath is next to hers, parting her lips with no effort. He kisses her slowly, thoroughly, her hands move down his back and when he lays her down his palm skates over her waist and comes to rest over her stomach.

Her fingers dip into his hair, pulling a little and he makes a soft sound, kissing her again, deeper, insistent. She doesn’t know how long they make it before his jeans and her bra join the rest of their clothes on the floor. Before his fingers move up, gentle but firm on the bare inside of her thigh. By the time he’s inside her she feels as if her entire body is about to spontaneously combust. 

Leon kisses her neck and the space under her jaw. Her breath comes out in gasps as he rocks into her hard. Her name spills from his lips, his fingers twining into hers as he pins her right hand over their heads. She hides her face in the crook of his neck as she feels herself coming undone, he follows soon after, his hips meeting hers roughly.

They remain silent for a while save for the sound of their breathing, still so close, as close as physically possible. 

His weight presses down on her pleasantly as she watches the light flicker on the ceiling. Leon kisses her collarbone and murmurs something she can’t quite make out against the skin of her neck. She turns her head, just a little, her cheek brushing his temple, and feels his mouth stretch into a smile over her shoulder.

Claire laughs a little, when she has enough presence of mind to look at the mess of clothes, blanket and pizza boxes around them. Then Leon shifts, and her eyes drop to the pale line on his shoulder that marks that long-ago healed scar. Her index traces it lightly, moving along the uneven, almost invisible dots on the sides. 

“Don’t ever let me sew you up again,” she tells him.

“I’d take you over most field medics any day,” he replies truthfully; of all the things he’d been scared of in those days, Claire was never one of them.

Eventually, they decide to move to the couch, legs tangled, arms around each other; with their clothes back on because despite the fire it’s still cold; and the pretty crocheted blanket she’d seen earlier up to their ears. 

“What do you want to do with it?” she asks in a hushed tone, even though they’re the only two people in the room. “The house I mean.”

It is much too dark to see Leon’s face properly, but his voice seems pensive. “I think I’m gonna sell it.”

Claire hums. Despite seemingly growing more comfortable within the day, there’s still that… alertness to him she’d noticed when she’d arrived. She wants to ask further about it but is still debating internally when he beats her to it.

“It's just,” he begins, “I don’t think I can live here anymore.” His voice is low and she remains still, listening. “It always felt… strange, after they passed. I don’t know. I feel like the part of me that could have had this, the little town and family home, went with them.” 

Her hand finds his in the dark, fingers twinning together.

“And just keeping it like this, empty, feels worse somehow.”

“I get it,” she tells him after a minute. She does, but his admission still twists something hard inside her chest. 

“Is that why you didn’t go back to college, after?” he asks; he doesn’t need to clarify what after means.

She smiles a little ruefully. “Kinda,” she replies, pondering the question for a bit. She’d gotten her degree, years later, but she herself hadn’t gone back. “It felt like such a small thing back then and everything was moving so fast.”

“I know.”

Leon’s chest rumbles when he speaks and with her cheek resting in the crook of his neck her eyes close by themselves. Sleep comes not long after that. 

---

They get up late the next morning. Leon wonders for a moment if it’s a good idea, considering the couch isn’t that big or as soft as he remembered, but Claire is warm, her arm is still around his waist and it’s just so easy to close his eyes and bury his face in her hair.

Around noon she suggests he might want to take one last look around, just to make sure he’s not forgetting anything. He knows there’s really nothing for him to forget but he does as she says anyway, just for the sake of it, and finally, a belated pang of nostalgia takes up residence inside his chest.

He doesn’t mention it to Claire explicitly, but something about the way she holds his gaze has that implicit understanding he loves so much about her.

They load the boxes into the truck and then her bike. She could ride it on the way back, it’s not as cold as the day before and her shoulder isn’t bothering her much, but it doesn’t make sense for them to go separately. So she climbs inside the passenger seat and fiddles around with the radio, in what he’s certain is her own inconspicuous way of giving him space. 

He stands beside the driver’s door for a moment, looking back at the house, the familiar porch and empty windows. He ponders the view for a minute, folding it at the back of his mind like a keepsake, then he gets in the truck and they drive away.

Though it’s cloudy, some sunlight still filters through the trees along the highway, and plays over Claire’s face as she looks out the window. She’s aware of Leon glancing at her every now and then, and bites down a smile as he catches her hand, passing his thumb over her knuckles. She can hear him humming under his breath, along with the song on the radio. It’s mundane and endearing, and she squeezes his fingers when she notices, which makes him chuckle a bit.

They stop at a diner along the road to get a late lunch, once the afternoon light and their stomachs remind them that they skipped breakfast. 

A bell rings when Leon pushes the door open and Claire says something cherry pie related as they walk in. When he looks at her blankly she makes a small, mock sound of dismay.

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen Twin Peaks.”

“Really?” he asks seriously.

“Nope,” she replies, surprise blending into a grin. “Fortunately for you I have extensive pop culture knowledge. I’ll show you.”

“See, that’s what I like about you, Red,” he tells her, sliding into a booth at the back of the place, the one with a clear view of all entrances and exits, “you can make anything sound incredibly ominous.”

“Oh is that what it is?” Claire wonders, teasing, as she looks over the menu.

He grins, letting his eyes roam over her. “I can think of a couple more things too, if you wanna know.”

Her eyes meet his, a playful glint on them. “There are children present, agent Kennedy,” she reminds him. The light that comes in from the window gives her hair a reddish glow that makes her look all the brighter. He holds her gaze for a moment and she doesn’t look away.

“I’ll behave,” he promises. As a waitress comes to take their order, his hand gives Claire’s knee a squeeze under the table.

---

It isn’t quite nighttime yet when they exit the diner, but the sun is going down and the sky is both light purple and golden at the same time. Leon looks up at the neon sign over their heads, announcing twenty-four-hour service. It seems purposely old fashioned and a strong wave of deja vu passes over him. 

He remembers, all of a sudden, a thing he read once in an airport magazine, about time and non-linear perception. He doesn’t think he grasped it then, but as he looks at Claire, walking a little ahead of him with her hands in the pockets of her jacket, he thinks he might understand it now. She turns and smiles, and it seems to him that he’s looking at a dozen different versions of her, from a dozen different moments they’ve shared through the years.

She tilts her head curiously at his expression. “Are you coming, rookie?” she asks.

It occurs to him that her voice is so familiar he could pick it out of a hundred. Then that thought crystallizes into another, so naturally that he doesn’t even realize it at first. I love you. I am in love with you. I think I’ve been for a very long time.

She must know it, he thinks, because she knows him so well. But just in case she doesn’t, he wraps an arm around her waist and whispers it into her temple, just loud enough for her to hear.