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The aftermath of the events in Raccoon City had been a mess, but it wasn’t all bad.
After they’d escaped Raccoon City, Claire and Leon (still accompanied by Sherry, despite the attempts of certain governmental officials to pry the group apart) had been advised to hide out over the border in Canada. It hadn’t been long before they’d heard from Chris―a welcome surprise, but quite a surprise nonetheless. He’d joined them there, and the group had steadily settled into their new life. It was an odd shift for all of them―Chris had spent months on his toes, only to now find himself encouraged to put down his weapons and rest, Claire was most definitely not going back to college (she was still trying to take some classes on the side, though, for lack of much else to do with her time), and Leon was sort of floating around waiting to find out what he’d be doing next with his life, what with the RPD not existing anymore. Chris was more or less in the same situation with regards to his employment, though, and he’d been in contact with the aforementioned certain government officials about getting both of them something to do. Sherry, for her part, seemed to be taking the whole thing pretty well. Having three (3) adoptive parents doting on her while also going to sleep every night with the knowledge that she was safe both from the debauchery and wrath of Chief Irons and from the terror of zombies...that was good for her health.
And, although all of the group―more or less a family now―remained on edge, especially Chris (old habits die hard, just like Lickers and Tyrants), they were allowed some semblance of normalcy in their new lifestyle. This meant movie nights―sometimes at the local theater, more often on the floor of the living room in the flat the four of them called home, curled in a pile of blankets and limbs―and takeout, getting to know all the local businesses and the best places to get each particular kind of food. This meant Claire teaching Leon to ride a motorbike, and then how to maintain one, and then how to repair the engine, and then how to disassemble the entire damn bike (it just went downhill from there; he was like the proverbial kid in a candy store, and it was even funnier juxtaposed with the time Sherry actually did go to a candy store and made just a few perfectly sensible purchases). This also meant socialization. Claire made friends in her classes at the local community college; the three adults got on a first-name basis with the folks who ran the fitness center in town and the folks who ran the local dojo. Chris and Leon went hiking together.
Leon started the whole thing off kind of overwhelmed, to say the least―he’d had the worst first day of work of all time, and his workplace no longer existed a few days after that because it had been blown up , but...things were alright. No. Scratch that. Things were good . He was in a safe place, with people he cared about, and Chris was just as amazing and kind right off the bat as Claire―it must have run in the family, he thought―in gunning to get Leon a job when he really had no obligation to do so. For now, some vague higher-up connection to STARS was paying for everything, and―for now―he could relax.
One late night, the April after Raccoon City, found Leon hunched over on a bar stool in a cute little pub with Claire sitting next to him, the two of them having just finished losing their collective minds over a series of decreasingly comprehensible inside jokes. Meals long finished―and no alcohol for either of them―they’d just been talking for a while, enjoying each other’s company, and of course the topic had turned to Chris after some time. Warm orange lights encompassed the entire space, coupled with the physical warmth provided by the space heater at one end of the row of high-up window seats. The window in front of them, cold to the touch, was fogged up by the chill outside, and the lingering remains of a light rain earlier that night. Since they usually tried to make sure at least one of them was home with Sherry when she wasn’t in school or at any of her various extracurricular activities (she was a huge fan of accompanying them to the dojo, as it turned out), Chris wasn’t with the pair, and it was nice to foster the bond Leon and Claire had begun to develop back at the gas station outside of Raccoon City.
It was also nice, arguably, to talk about Chris when he wasn’t present. For Claire, this entailed regaling Leon with all sorts of wild childhood stories, sometimes emotional but usually just laughable (and occasionally straying into the ‘potential blackmail material’ category), and for Leon, this meant rambling about how much he loved Chris. The winter had been a formative time in many ways, and one of the things that had happened during those hibernal months had been the quick and strong development of Leon and Chris’ relationship. They’d hit it off more or less instantly as soon as Chris let his common sense take over from his usual protectiveness of Claire, and Claire’s good word had helped his opinion somewhat. Leon had liked him immediately, and had liked him even more when he found out that he had quite a worthy opponent in the man―this when it came both to sparring matches and plain old bickering. What with Leon being a hopeless romantic, something Claire never ceased to poke fun at, it had only been a matter of time before he’d fallen head over heels for the man.
There was just one issue, which he was currently describing to Claire with such fervor that an outsider would have thought he was heavily intoxicated (he did not, in fact, have a single drop of alcohol in his body―rather, he was just very sleep-deprived and emotional, a combination which created a similar effect to moderate inebriation): he didn’t know how to tell Chris.
“I keep telling you,” Claire said into her Shirley Temple (with three whole maraschino cherries in it, because she was a lost cause and probably even worse than Sherry), “you just fucking ask him like a normal human being. It’s not that hard.”
Leon made a noise that probably shouldn’t have been possible for a human to make, but which was obviously of the distressed nature. “I can’t just...outright. I’ve got to have some kind of safety net.”
“We have been over this! ” Claire balled one hand into a fist, miming pounding the table in between each word. She was grinning hard, strands of her ponytail hanging loose, just as excited as Leon, but also noticeably exasperated.
“Come on,” she continued, and unclenched her fist to count on her fingers. “You already know he likes guys, and thank fuck I didn’t have to breach his privacy to tell you that, because he trusts you enough that he told you on his own months ago . He knows that you like guys, because you’re a hopeless fucking twink and anyone with functional eyes and half a braincell knows you’re gay. And I’m a nice person, so I’m using my common sense and not, for once, my secret insider information here, but he obviously likes you.”
Leon gestured wildly, making a futile attempt to demonstrate his disagreement, but she made a good point. Three good points, in fact.
“I don’t want to ruin everything if he doesn’t like me, though.”
Claire leaned back. Sighed deeply and perhaps with more melodrama than was strictly necessary. Slung one arm over the back of the chair and looked Leon earnestly and intensely right in the eyes.
“You won’t know if you don’t try.”
Leon stared down at his empty plate. Orange light reflected off the white ceramic. It was chipped slightly on the rim, but the defect made for more of an example of the homey vibe of this place than anything else.
It wasn’t really difficult for him to make up his mind this time.
Claire’s wild sputtering was fantastic payback for the embarrassment she’d just put him through, though, when he grabbed what remained of her Shirley Temple and downed it all in one go―cherries included.
“Fine,” he said, the ice in the now-emptied glass sloshing around dramatically as he placed it down on the table. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Claire whooped loudly enough to garner slightly perturbed looks from some fellow patrons in the pub, but neither of them cared.
Grinning at Claire, who was grinning back with equal fervor, as he plucked the cherry stems out of his mouth and put them on the plate, Leon was unendingly glad that, even though the literal apocalypse had taken everything in his life to shit, he’d ended up with friends like this.
The next morning rolled around to find Leon, having slept like a rock, curled up in a cocoon of blankets in his bed. It was cold outside, refreshingly so, but also cold enough that he didn’t want to make the sprint out of his bed and to the sweatpants and hoodies sitting in a pile across his room. Normally, he’d force himself out, but today was one of the days that Claire left early in the morning and brought Sherry to the dojo with her, leaving Chris and Leon alone until the afternoon.
Much like the prospect of leaving his nice warm bed, the prospect of the day itself was a double-edged sword. On one hand, he’d be telling Chris about his feelings today. On the other hand, he’d be telling Chris about his feelings today.
Unsure how to proceed with either of the issues presently facing him, Leon settled for staring up at the ceiling. Elsewhere in the flat, he could hear a single set of erratic footsteps padding around―Claire, undoubtedly; Leon had gotten to the point sometime over the winter where he could distinguish his three housemates (family members, if he was being honest with himself) by the sound of their footfalls. It wasn’t necessarily a difficult distinction, since none of them sounded alike, but it warmed his heart nonetheless to know that they all mattered enough to him that his subconscious had picked up on little things like this.
As he was considering this, Claire’s footsteps came closer, and a moment later his half-open door opened all the way to reveal her face peeking in.
“You’re hopeless,” she said, but there was a smile just short of loving fondness fighting with a look of pure exasperation for dominance on her face as she crossed the room.
“Morning, asshole,” Leon replied, gaze lazily following Claire. She was already dressed to go out, because of course she was.
Claire picked up a pair of worn sweatpants, regarded them with some unreadable expression bordering on distaste, and then turned to face Leon.
“Are you wearing a shirt?” she asked. “I can’t tell.”
Leon sighed, stretching his arms before crossing them behind his head. “Yes. But no pants, just my boxers.”
Claire wrinkled her nose. “Damn. You’re almost as bad as Chris. That fucking space heater of a man sleeps in his boxers.”
Leon, who had witnessed Chris’ shitty excuse for pajamas firsthand on multiple prior occasions, but who had not prior connected it to the fact that the man was, in fact, basically a human space heater, tried desperately not to think about how nice it would be to cuddle him right now.
Claire must have been able to read it on his face, or she was just fed up with him in general, because it was at that moment that his sweatpants hit him in the face.
“Get dressed and go grow some guts. I didn’t think I ever saw a zombie rip out your intestines in Raccoon City, but I must have been wrong.”
Leon was still smiling when he made it to the kitchen a while later to find Chris sitting alone at the island they used as a table, midway through a bowl of granola cereal mixed with fresh fruit. Leon, feeling like he should probably psych himself up for later, leaned in and snatched half a strawberry from the bowl as he walked by, to which Chris responded with incredulous stuttering and then a sigh of reluctant acceptance.
“Good morning, Leon,” he said.
“Morning.” Leon made for the coffee maker, and began the process of brewing a pot. For reasons unbeknownst to him, both Redfield siblings avoided coffee like the plague. Probably Chris’ health nut tendencies rubbing off on Claire. It was a travesty, if you asked Leon, but he couldn’t complain―after all, it meant more coffee for him.
“These are good strawberries.”
“They’ve been in the freezer for a week. You have low standards.”
Leon wondered if Chris would say the same about his standards for men. The conversation felt slow, stilted, and he knew it was just him projecting his awkwardness, but he wasn’t sure how to get around it. Thankfully, though, the conversation quickly turned to more familiar topics, and they fell into an easy routine soon enough. It was easy to be around Chris, Leon realized at some point part of the way through his own cereal―less protein-laden than Chris’, but mixed with some of the fruit at the other man’s insistence. That wasn’t to say Claire wasn’t easy to be around as well, but she was different.
Chris was...probably even more scarred than Leon. He had every right to be jaded at this point in his life, but he was still so full of joy and wonder and kindness . He respected Leon as a survivor, as a person, as a gay man―that last one could go either way in their line of work. Leon was being redundant here, but sometimes it blew his mind how kind Chris was, to everything around him. Sure, he snapped sometimes, they all did―it was just human nature―but he could hold his tongue better than most without sucking up to injustice, and...just...Leon really was head over heels for him, wasn’t he?
Leon sighed loudly, snapping him back to reality as he realized that Chris was staring at him over the kitchen island.
“You good?”
Leon, quickly becoming flustered, pushed back a grin that, to Chris, would be questionably bright and delighted.
“Yeah! Yeah, just lost in thought. Everything’s fine. Hey―” he turned to look Chris directly in the eyes, ignoring the resulting ball of warmth that lit up in his chest as his brain began to catalogue the details of the other man’s face “―do you want to go for a hike later? It’s such a good day for that.”
Chris’ gaze flitted to the closest window, where the golden morning sun was starting to come through. Despite the cold, it was looking to actually be quite a lovely day, sunny with fresh, clear air, and Leon wasn’t just scrambling for something to do when he suggested a hike.
“Sure!” Chris said, face lighting up. “That sounds great.”
This time, Leon didn’t bother to hide his grin.
The group’s usual haunt for a hike was something out of a dream, ethereal and beautiful. This early in the morning, the sun was filtering unevenly through the trees, yellow and white and gold lighting up patches of moss and tree back dotted with lichen, and the stream that the path followed was beginning to run strong again as the nights got warmer and warmer instead of frosting it over. Today, it was practically rushing with snowmelt, and the same snowmelt dripped idly from pine boughs and budding deciduous trees as the sun’s rays brought life and warmth into everything they touched.
Leon had taken this path a million times before, but never at this point in spring, and it had been a while since he’d taken it just with Chris. It was a whole new experience, and a memorable one at that. Dead leaves from last year, clumped and half decomposed, squished under their feet as the two of them walked, and Leon was glad he had hiking boots. In the summer, maybe, on a dry and well-worn path, his Converse might have sufficed, but right now he wasn’t looking to get his feet soaked.
Well, he might get a bit wet once they reached the waterfall at the end of the path, but that was sort of a given.
The two of them didn’t talk much as they walked, just enjoying the nature around them and each other’s company. Leon had no trouble admitting that it was very, very nice, and it felt like something fresh and new experiencing his new home in the spring. He had barely been here six months and Raccoon City already felt worlds away.
It wasn’t the easiest hike, though not as difficult as some of the hikes Leon had mastered back during his days in the police academy, and certainly nothing compared to whatever Chris might have done. When the path turned rocky, leading them sharply downhill in a fight against slippery rocks and gravity, Leon’s heart began to beat a little stronger with anticipation―and, of course, with exertion. He’d hiked this far out back in the fall, before the snows, and a few times in the winter when there wasn’t any snow on the frozen ground, but never like this.
Never with this pretext, either, he thought as he scaled back up a bit of an incline, breathing hard, Chris at his side.
The waterfall was even more majestic than Leon had imagined, crashing down from a short yet impressive cliff above and into the ravine that Leon and Chris stood on one side of. It was naturally somewhat dangerous, but moreover, it was breathtaking.
Leon turned to Chris, and whatever air had remained in his lungs was instantly stolen away. Sweating a little from the exertion, cheeks reddened from the fresh air, but looking for all the world as if he was more calm and happy than anything else, Chris was beautiful . More beautiful than usual, that was. Leon liked his own hairstyle to the point of emotional attachment, but he had to admit he envied Chris’ short hair, if only because the man didn’t have to suffer through having bangs in his face while climbing (although neither of them had been able to escape the wrath of Sherry with tiny, brightly colored rubber hair ties).
Chris seemed to notice Leon staring at him, and caught his gaze in a smile.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he asked. “Every time we see this place, we’re seeing it like this for the first time. Neither of us has ever lived here before.”
Leon swallowed hard, trying not to think too much about the fact that Raccoon City had been Chris’s and Claire’s home. Sherry, too. Of all of them, he’d taken the loss perhaps the lightest, because it had never been his city. Chris recognized the look on his face, though, and came closer, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry too much about it, Leon. We can’t change the past. All we can do is move forward, and make new memories. Good ones.”
“Hell yeah we can,” Leon said, somewhat less excitedly than he’d wanted to, but Chris’ resulting smile told him it was enough as the other man squeezed his shoulder a little tighter.
“That’s the spirit.”
They both turned to watch the waterfall, chunks of snow falling with the icy water, the rising morning sun beginning to strike the water where it shone in perpendicular to the ravine. With the waterfall, and with everything, they were making new memories, new associations, new lives .
After a moment, Leon lowered himself to the ground and sat on the cold stone, one leg crossed and one dangling over the edge. It wasn’t a long fall down, but he didn’t really worry about falling in the first place. Chris, still standing, briefly stretched his arms and spine, and Leon let himself appreciate the man’s physical beauty, his toned muscles and the veins in his arms; the way the sunlight hit his skin, highlighting every mole and hair, all the stubble where he must have shaved earlier that morning.
Chris sat next to him.
They watched the waterfall in silence, in dual solitude. Without any way of keeping time, save for the Nokia somewhere in Leon’s bag and the sat phone in Chris’―he insisted on overpreparing for even the lightest hikes―Leon didn’t know how long they just sat there. He could guess by the angle of the sun, but he didn’t really care much to do so. It was nice to just... be , for once. Unbound by problems beyond the mundane, the insignificant.
“Hey,” Leon said after a while, looking sidelong at Chris. The other man had his eyes closed, face upturned, smiling into the sunlight and breeze.
“Yeah?” Chris asked, voice laced with a softness Leon hadn’t often heard from him for the first few months they’d known each other. It was more common now, and Leon was glad for this―for both of their sakes. He didn’t open his eyes.
“I, uh, I’m not really sure how to say this, but I figured I might as well just get it out one way or another. Even with all the wild shit, or really because of it, if I’m being honest, these last few months have been some of the best of my life.”
Chris let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Yeah. Same.”
“I―” Leon buried his head in his hands, then, back rising and falling in sudden, uncontrollable laughter at his own awkwardness.
Chris was looking right at him, now, when he finally regained his composure.
“Actually,” he began, “I’ve been meaning to―”
The words were already out of Leon’s mouth before he could process the fact that Chris was talking. “I like you a lot, Chris. In a... not just friends way.”
Chris blinked at him, and Leon had less than a second to consider whether he’d made a grave mistake before the other man burst out laughing too, his eyes lighting up in a warm smile.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you pretty much the same thing for a while now, actually,” he said, and Leon took a hand to his face again, his other hand finding Chris’ next to him on the rock. Their fingers intertwining, they were both laughing, because even with all their maturity and worldly experience, they were both so ridiculously awkward when it came to romance. When the laughter passed, the two were still holding hands, and Leon’s head had found Chris’ shoulder, glad for the close contact. Claire had been right―Chris was like a space heater.
“We don’t need to take it too fast or anything,” Leon said, voicing what he was sure Chris already knew, but wanted to emphasize nonetheless, and Chris wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
“Sounds good. I think we know each other’s pacing, in general.”
“Probably. Surviving an apocalyptic disaster and then living together for six months will do that to you.”
Chris’ resulting laugh was booming and all-encompassing, making his entire body shake, and Leon could swear his own skin was buzzing with electricity where they touched.
When they kissed, later that day, Leon’s heart might as well have been warmer than all the sunlight in the whole damn world.