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You find them ravaging the supermarket roast chicken without utensils when you return from your shower. A somewhat gruesome sight, two giant, dirty men tearing off pieces of meat, beer in hand. A gruesome sight that warms your heart straight to the core, usually. Maybe if the mission had gone better, it would have.
You’d bought that chicken for this very kind of situation; the three of you exhausted and starving, the reality of the last month setting in sharp. And although you’d had the privilege of sleeping in your own (empty) bed, there was no time for anything else. That showed. The apartment is a mess, dirty laundry strewn about and empty packaging piling out of the bin. You barely even eat from plates; just more dishes to do. Roast chicken has become a staple in your fridge for that reason too.
Being a buoy is more tiring work than you’d imagined. Perhaps even more stressful than being in the field, the unknown that hangs in the air- it’s suffocating. You’re not there , can’t help by doing what you do best, watching their backs, protecting with artillery and fists and quick thinking. You’re subjected to computer screens and satellite communication now. Know all too well how badly your calling for intel annoys them, disrupts their mission-
Leon eyes Chris carefully. You know he’s angry, rightfully so, and you can assume Leon’s gotten the full load of it earlier. He’s honest to a fault, Chris, nitpicky even. Doesn’t realize he’s yelling when he does so. It comes from ambition, pride, in your case often also love. And although it scared you at first, made you tremble until he apologized, it's something you’ve grown from. It’s good advice, after all. Stuff you can actually use to improve, earn that prideful look in his eyes. Your skin feels raw under it.
But he’s quiet now, avoids your frame like the plague. You know why. One of his men fell. A good one too. Throat ripped out by a new mutation, doesn't even have a name yet and already you know it's one of the worst. The chopper came 30 seconds too late, a thing you’re in charge of, couldn’t get one off the ground in time, and you failed him when he assigned you this position against your will. If you’d been on the field… it would have been different. Lobo wouldn't be dead. But then maybe it’d be you, bled out in a morgue, a blur of guts and torn skin. A good man dead because he wanted you to live, to protect his own kin. You can see that conflict in him, it always settles in his skin somehow.
You know he won’t yell at you this time. But something in you wants him to. You want to be angry too. Scream at him until he relents, letting you go back to something more… familiar at least. The coldness in him has haunted you since his last transmission, kept you up until the transport landed, his kiss was freezing and surprising, really. you weren't expecting one to begin with. You figure it’s his futile attempt at returning back to normal.
Chris takes loss harshly, isn’t as used to losing loved ones as Leon is. The latter has his own… twisted strategy of sorts. Don’t get attached and if you do- substance abuse until you forget about it. It works, as much as you despise him for it. He wouldn't have lived to be this age if it hadn't.
But Chris doesn't do morphine. He does do revenge, but in this case it would be a case of suicide and thats one thing he can’t afford. So now he’s trying his hardest to suppress it, go back to normal, but how when he makes himself feel it to the bone; will always blame himself? You’ll suffer under it for the time being, but you’ll have to. You’re in no position to deny him this.
It still hurts, though, doesn't it? Especially when he moves to garner his own shower without acknowledging you. Something he usually likes to incorporate you in, one way or another, but now he’s locked the door. A metaphor, surely. You’ll just have to wait and see when he’ll return from that frigid solitude. Or maybe he’ll take it to the extreme; rent a cabin in the woods to act out his grief by cutting down trees, leaving you and Leon grieving in your own kind of way. It wouldn't be the first time.
Leon sees it in you now too, the exhaust. You’ve been running low on fuel for far too long now, affection starved and deserted by military operational guidelines. Chris brings it home with him, the place you want it least. But Leon knows that. Wraps his arms around you and carries you to the bedroom -absurdly furnished, your bed takes up the entire room- and shuts the curtains how you like it. He lets you cry, for a long time, and when you look up you see red eyes matching your own. Two of you always grieve for your other half, somehow. You’ve been in similar spots like this with Chris, when Leon got stuck in bottles and bars and lashed out harsher than he had to. He’s not a mean drunk anymore, thankfully, but he used to be.
Sometimes you think they've probably been together like this, grieving you, when you lose your head in the game of violent tug of war. When you don’t return for days, bloodied and gross, and you won’t speak about it. Sit quietly in the tub with hollow eyes that haunt the both of them, still.
And maybe that’s why it works. You’re all fucked up enough to be equal, twisted as is. A love triangle built on trauma and a desperate need for safety. A situation that works but is not always comforting.
But it will be alright, eventually. It’s something you promised each other, even when it takes its time. So when your breathing slows and Leon’s clutching hands go limp and the haze of sleep sets in, you’re not surprised when that familiar heavy weight settles next to you and takes your hand.
It’s a cold hand, but still. He holds it with the stubbornness of a man who wants you, loves you, who’s struggling to remember how to do that through what he's going through. But he’s trying, nonetheless.
And Chris is not one to give up.