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For once, her bed is not cold.
Ada would consider herself above petty trivialities, but she was always…cold. She preferred warmer clothes – or at least tighter ones– in the hopes that her body heat would be conserved. Not that it made much of a difference at night, of course, because she was always cold.
But not tonight, it seemed. She blinks her eyes open to discover the culprit: a quietly-snoring Leon S. Kennedy in all his shirtless glory, and the arm that’s curled tightly around her waist to keep her nestled into his side.
A wayward glance at the clock reveals that it’s 4 in the morning. She could get up, make herself a cup of something warm, sit around and wait for the intruder in her bed to wake up. She decides against it in fear of waking him up.
It’s been so long since she’s seen Leon like this. Quiet, vulnerable. How long had it been since he’d gotten a peaceful night’s sleep?
The moonlight spilling in through the curtains gives her just enough light to see how his hair turns silver, still in the same shaggy haircut even after all those years. The firm slope of his nose, the sharper angles that ate away at his face after Raccoon City, his lips that seemed to be perpetually pressed in a disappointed expression when she was around. The pad of her finger reverently sweeps against the hollow of his throat, fingers skittering over a pulsepoint that thrums a beat that reassures her he’s alive.
Her fingers map the way down to his collarbone, then his shoulder–the one that was wounded when they met so many years ago. His shoulder, her leg, and yet they’d limped through the entire thing and managed to make it out alive. She’d turned on him, and yet she still remembered the anguish in his voice when she slipped out of his hands.
Her fingers skitter over the scar, raised and jagged and ugly. Probably the result of hasty stitching. She leans down and presses a soft kiss to the scar, a little fluttering of her lips against his skin. They were common in their field of work, and she had her own collection adorning her body, but a part of her can’t help but think that Leon wasn’t quite meant for this life, especially not when they met. Her fingers trace the other scars on his torso, a forlorn sigh escaping lips.
“It’s not nice to ogle someone in their sleep.” A soft, husky voice from beside her pulls her away from her reverie. She hadn’t even realized he’d woken up, her mind must have been more distracted for her to be ignoring that.
“Well, based on how you were awake, it doesn’t seem like there was much sleeping going on.” She retorts, without any bite. Her voice is quiet, preserving the stillness of the too-early morning. Her head turns to look at him, and she’s gifted the soft, sleepy expression of a Leon, when his lips are curving up at her and his eyes are gentle.
“I only woke up a few moments ago.” He murmurs.
“Ah.” She’s not quite sure what to say. They’ve done far worse to be embarrassed by something like this, but there’s a heavy sentiment hanging in the air that they haven’t had the courage to broach yet.
Luckily, Leon never seems to push. At least, not when it comes to this. He pulls her down to lie down again, guiding her head to rest on his arm. She goes, pliant, as he curls her closer to him. His thumb sweeps up and down her arm, and he looks down at her. She holds his gaze for a heartbeat before dropping it, pressing another soft kiss to the shoulder scar.
“You did that before.” He comments, casual.
“So I did.” She responds.
“Why?”
The temptation to say something annoyingly vague lingers, but for once, she actually gives an answer, plucked from the recesses of her brain. “It’s mine. You got it because of me.” He’d tucked her close, protected her in that standoff and earned the injury. And she’d turned on him in kind.
His finger hooks under her chin and tugs her head up, making her look directly at him. “For you.” He corrects, voice still raspy from the hours of disuse, but even she can hear the sincerity. That was just like him, to turn something like this into something so sacrificial, so affectionate. She’s at a loss. It’s at times like this that she’d usually fall back on something that would distance them again, keep them apart for his safety, but she finds that she can’t say anything hurtful or sarcastic or witty in the face of his clear intentions. Instead, she settles for leaning up and pressing a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. There is no cable car this time, no world ending around him, no betrayal. Just him, the warmth of him, and them in bed. He responds in kind, moving his lips with hers, and when she pulls back, he tugs her closer, rejoining their lips in a soft kiss. They break apart only for air, and she can’t quite hide the smirk that graces her features when she sees the dusting of pink on the apples of his cheeks.
“Not a word.” He grumbles as he pulls her to sprawl on top of him. His fingers stroke the short locks of her hair, fiddling with a silky strand. Her face nestles into his throat, where she can smell the faint hints of his body wash. His other warm hand rubs up and down against the slope of her spine, and against her better judgement, she allows herself to see it for what it really is: soothing her back to sleep.
It’s much too early by now, and there is always work to be done, but for tonight, she allows herself to hold him tightly, and slumber peacefully in his arms. She presses one last kiss to the side of his neck, a silent thanks.
She supposes the soft press of lips against her forehead is his understanding.