Work Text:
It's surreal.
If Leon thought things would be easier after the three of them talked—which was a lofty goal in and of itself, or so he thought, because getting Chris Redfield to talk about emotions? Forget about it. But no, somehow, Chris got his shit together, and they talked, and now things were…good. Things were really good. But not easier.
No, because now Rose smiles at him in the mornings when they gather downstairs for breakfast and hugs him, sleepily burying her head in his chest and nuzzling against his collarbone. Now Chris chuckles and ruffles her hair as he hands Leon a hot cup of coffee. Now Ethan smiles fondly at them from the stove, leaning over to set Leon's plate in front of him with a little extra bacon on the side because he knows that's his favorite part. Or he'll stumble downstairs in the middle of the day and Ethan will look up from his work on the couch and hold out an arm, inviting him to come put his head on his shoulder and doze until he feels a little more like a human, or Chris will take one look at him and steer him back to bed, sitting with him until he can fall back asleep. Or Rose will knock on his door later in the night and ask if he wants to come down for dinner and a movie—she'll bring a plate up for him if he doesn't want to. Or Ethan will be the one wandering downstairs with bleary eyes and he'll cuddle up to Leon's side like he's cold, pressing an absentminded kiss to his shoulder.
God, if he thought it would be easier now that he can touch Ethan…
The man is sunshine. He's goddamn sunshine. He burns bright and warm and fierce if he gets pissed off and sometimes it's hard to look at him because of it. And yeah, maybe part of Leon got used to being able to fluster him with a soft word here and there but now that Ethan knows he can fluster back? He's pretty sure Ethan's not even doing it on purpose, all the time, but sometimes he's just…bringing Leon a snack while he's doing paperwork, or he's sitting next to him on the couch with his head on his shoulder, or he's reaching over while they're all watching a movie to check if Leon's doing okay, or he's smiling a little sheepishly as he kisses Leon's cheek and Leon…
Is angry.
So goddamn angry.
Because this? This domestic bliss that he finds himself in? Isn't his. Has never been his. He doesn't get to enjoy this sort of thing. His life isn't one of peace and ease or whatever the fuck this has turned into, and every time he thinks he has a chance at it, it gets ripped away. Sherry. Claire. Even the passing thought that he might be able to find something with someone…never. Never his, no matter how hard he's fought for it.
It's stupid. He knows it's stupid. One of the very stupid emotions humans are capable of having is this cold, petty, all-consuming rage when you see someone getting help for a thing that you never received help for. And now here he is, in the middle of a family that got its chance, that has this now, and he wants to scream.
To make them understand what it's like for him, to hurt them before someone else can because it's from a place of love, don't you see? I'm hurting you now before the world can because I don't want you to be hurt, I want you to understand that they hurt me and I don't want that for you so I'm going to do it myself.
He hates himself more than the ones who hurt him in these moments.
Because the worst part is that he knows that's not fair. To say that Rose hasn't fought for something a child should never have had to fight for? To say that Rose doesn't know what it's like to have her family taken from her? To say that Chris doesn't deserve this, this peace, that Chris hasn't fought hard enough, bled enough, hurt enough for something like this? To say Ethan doesn't?
But he can't help it. He looks at Chris sometimes and he wants to scream why didn't you help me like this? Why didn't you fight for me like this? Wasn't I worth it too? Were me and my bioweapon child not a righteous enough cause for you? He wants to call Claire sometimes and scream at her why didn't we do this? Did I have the bad luck to meet the wrong Redfield that day? Would you not help me? Look, look, it's possible, we could have done it, why didn't you stick around to help me? Was our family not enough for you that you had to go chasing your fucking brother?
He looks at Rose sometimes and thinks you are not my daughter. My daughter is all grown up now and she's fine but I'll never see that little girl again and no matter what you do, you will never replace her. He looks at Ethan sometimes and thinks you don't get to do this. You don't get to go through life and stay this happy. You don't get to be this sweet, this soft, this gentle, this kind. You don't get to keep your humanity after all that you've been through. That's not how it works. This isn't fair.
But he can't do that to them because he knows it's not fair. He loves them. He loves them. He loves Rose, loves her spunk and her stubbornness and her cleverness and her heart and he loves Chris, loves his steadfastness and his determination and his stupid jokes and his heart and he loves Ethan, loves his goofiness and his loyalty and his strength and his heart and he can't do that to them, not when he knows they deserve this, they've earned this, they need this, they get to have this, he just—
He just can't.
He thought it would be easier.
He doesn't even realize he's pulling away at first. Doesn't realize that he's starting to duck out the way of Rose's hugs, or avoiding Chris's eyes, or grunting when Ethan tries to talk to him. What else is he supposed to do, though, when there's this anger in him that just threatens to boil over when they smile at him and what sort of asshole would he be, if he brought his anger here? That's not what he's here for, that's not why he's allowed to be part of this. So he turns that anger back in on himself and gets the fuck out of dodge before it has a chance to blow up at them. And then, well…then he realizes he's doing it, and he can't make himself stop.
Because Ethan was right: he can't get drunk in the house with Rose. He can't. He won't. Not when he still has memories of breath soaked in whisky and muffled thumps and silent tears. He knows what it's like to have a drunk man in his house as a child and he will not do that to Rose. No matter how angry he is at himself, he won't. But it sings to him sometimes. Low and crooning in the back of his mind, just there, just out of sight.
He can't.
He won't.
But that means he has to find something else to keep it quiet. So sometimes that means literally keeping it quiet by getting away and sitting by himself until it shuts the fuck up. Or it's driving to the base in the middle of the night for target practice, or going for a walk in the cold until he can't feel his hands anymore and he can stumble back to bed and think only about getting warm. Sometimes it's throwing himself into being there for them to make up for the times when he can't be, sometimes it's hiding in his room all day with his ghosts.
The problem, of course, comes when he remembers that he's not sharing this house with people that will just let him disappear.
Rose sits down next to him on the couch hard enough to make them bounce. He huffs a surprised laugh as she hands him a cup of tea. "Any reason for the sudden bounce house?"
"You're not okay."
He blinks at her bluntness. She stares at him with a blank expression, shifting to stare at him properly. "Rose, I—"
"Please don't try to lie about it. Dad and Chris are worried about you but they won't say anything because they don't wanna push you about it."
Guilt washes around his mouth and he takes a sip to drown it. It tastes like nothing. "This isn't your problem, Rose, I promise."
"It could be."
"You're a kid," he says, trying for gentle and he's pretty sure he lands on gruff, "you shouldn't be worrying about shit like this."
Rose levels him with an unimpressed look. "You're forgetting that I grew up with Chris as the closest thing to a parental figure."
"Okay, that's fair."
She nods, like that settles everything, and lets them sit in silence for a few more seconds before she pokes him. "You're having big feelings about something, aren't you?"
"Yeah," he says with a sigh, "yeah, I am. They're…really big."
"You should let us help you. Or let Dad and Chris help you." And he just has to look at her for a moment, because how is he so awful that he's forcing this kid who's already been through so much to help him with his bullshit because he can't separate his own stupid regrets from her happiness— "that. Stop doing that."
"I'm not doing anything."
Rose scowls at him. "You're doing the stupid thing where you sit and spiral about something when someone offers to help you because you don't think you deserve it or something else dumb."
He blinks. And blinks. And blinks again.
"Again: I grew up with Chris. Also, you two make the same face."
"What face?"
"The pinched 'I'm-too-manly-to-feel-things-so-I'm-just-going-to-grunt-and-hope-they-go-away' face. You're doing it right now."
He smooths a hand over his face subconsciously. "Anyone ever tell you you're too smart for your own good?"
"All the time." She pokes him again. "So stop making the face."
"Stop poking me."
"Stop making the face and I'll stop poking you."
"Alright, alright, there's no face. Face is gone." He shakes his head, sitting back against the couch. "I'm sorry, Rose. Really. Not all of us are blessed with you and your dad's emotional intelligence."
Rose is quiet for a moment, then she leans against him, pressing her shoulder to his. "I really like having you here, Leon. You…you know that right?"
"Yeah, Rose, I know. I…I like being here too."
"Do you? Like, really?" She toys with the handle of her mug. "'Cause I know it's pretty boring—"
"Rose, stop," he interrupts, "I do. I do like being here. I want to be here for you and Ethan and Chris, I do. I wouldn't trade it for anything."
"Really?" She glances at him. "Not anything? At all?"
Caught. Chris was fucking right, she is Ethan's daughter, sniper senses and all. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face again. "I…I think sometimes, I…I wish I could've had this with someone else."
"Sherry?"
"Yeah."
Rose shuffles a little closer on the couch. "Will you tell me about her?"
"You know I was in Raccoon City the day it fell," he says quietly, and Rose nods, "I was there because it was supposed to be my first day as a police officer. In another world, I would've worked with Chris and Jill there. Well, maybe not with them directly, but we all would've been there at the same time. Instead, I got—"
"Zombie apocalypse."
He chuckles. "Right. I met Claire on my way into the city and we got separated trying to help her find Chris. She's the one who found Sherry, the daughter of one of the Umbrella scientists. She was infected with the G Virus and we had to get her treatment before the city fell."
"Were you there when the bomb went off too?"
"No, we were out of there by then. It was a close thing, though, I think we only made it out of the blast radius by a hair." He shakes his head. "But we—Claire, Sherry and I, we made it to a safe house. We stayed there for a while, before Claire left to keep looking for Chris. Sherry and I, we…tried."
Rose is quiet for a long moment. "They took her from you, didn't they?"
He swallows pain, rage, and guilt. "Yeah. They did."
The clock in the living room ticks. The fridge turns on. A bird outside chirps.
"She's fine now," he manages, a little hoarse, "she's all grown up and she's fine."
Rose doesn't say anything. She just presses herself against his side and through it all, he finds himself just a little bit grateful that she didn't accept his platitudes like everyone else. He looks over at her, at her blond head nestled against his shoulder, and he slowly reaches up and puts his arm around her. She tucks even closer, under his chin, half draped across his lap, and he lets out a shakier breath than he'd like to admit. Her hair is soft, slightly sweet from her shampoo. He can feel her breaths on his arm. He's sure she can hear his heart pounding against his ribs.
If he closes his eyes, he thinks he could imagine it. He thinks he could see it, even if it's only for a moment, and his heart breaks at the thought of this kid, this poor kid, trying to give him a moment of closure with the daughter he never got to raise.
His eyes flutter shut and he brushes his lips against the crown of her head, then he opens them and hauls her into a proper cuddle. Rose makes a brief noise of surprise before settling into the hug, her arms around his neck.
"You're such a good kid, Rose," he mumbles, "don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise, okay? 'M here for you."
"We're here for you too. You just have to let us."
"I know. It's hard."
"It's hard for me too. Sometimes I think I'm gonna wake up in that awful room back on base and all of this will be some fantastic dream and Chris will hate me again."
"Chris doesn't hate you. He never hated you."
"Yeah." She huddles a little closer to him. "But sometimes it didn't feel like that."
And, well, he knows what that feels like. So he pulls Rose into his lap and holds her close and the two of them just…sit there, for a long while.
Ethan comes downstairs eventually, and he's pretty sure the only reason it took him so long is because Rose was doing their mold thing to tell him not to bother them for a little. He pauses at the base of the stairs and whatever Leon expected to see, it wasn't the soft, fond smile that makes his stomach and chest do weird flips. He swallows and slowly holds out his hand. Ethan pads over and takes it, sitting down on the couch and resting his other hand on Rose's back.
"Cuddles without me?"
"Get in here, then," Rose mumbles from her place in the crook of Leon's neck. Ethan just chuckles and wraps his arms around both of them. "See?"
Leon closes his eyes again as the two of them start talking about nothing in particular. The cocktail of anger and regret and shame subsides, only slightly, and he rests his head against Ethan's.
It helps.
The world shifts a little bit after that. The anger is still there, but it's dormant. Lurking under his skin, sliding around like the worst sort of trash in a sewer. Where it was, an emptiness forms. It's a sickly and grey sort of emptiness, one that he doesn't know what to do with. It's not the sadness that drove him to the bottom of so many bottles, nor is it the sort of bleak things that had his handlers and fellow agents worrying about him outside of the bland beige of a mandatory counseling office. It's just sort of…there. Like he could stop doing everything and just…sit. And stare. And not.
He thinks that might be what Ethan's doing sometimes, and then, well, then he feels like shit for comparing what he's going through with a man who is mostly made of mold who died several times and clawed his way back to the land of the living for his daughter.
He thinks Chris might actually drag him off to the base to go sit with Dr. O'Shaughnessy—which, he does have some questions if all of them are going to the same therapist, there's gotta be some kind of conflict of interest in there somewhere, but it seems like it's working out so far—when he pulls him out on the porch one evening.
"Jeez, Chris, what?"
Chris doesn't say anything for a long moment, just holds him at arm's length with a hand on each shoulder. Then he reels him in and just hugs him. Really tight. So tight he has to wheeze out a protest about ribs and oxygen and normal-people bones and then Chris lets him go.
"What the hell was that for?"
"You're not okay," Chris says, like that explains why he just throttled Leon with a hug, "I…want to help."
"Ah, sheesh, Chris, I'm fine. Really, I am." Chris just gives him a look and he sighs. "Look, I'm not about to go buy a bunch of whisky, or anything, I just—"
"I know, Leon," Chris says, and sometimes—very rarely, but sometimes—he resents the Chris that went to therapy and actually got practice in talking about emotions, it's so much harder to hide— "but you're spiraling again."
He blows out a breath. It turns into a faint cloud that blows away in the next gust of wind. "Yeah."
Neither of them says anything for the rest of the night but he can feel Chris's eyes on him for the following days. Doesn't help that Rose is still coming to sit next to him every once in a while too, her head on his shoulder, his nose in her hair. He catches Ethan and Chris watching them one night, before Rose sits up and asks if Ethan will braid her hair.
"What do you think they're talking about this time?" he asks when Chris takes Rose's place.
"Dunno." He nudges Leon with an elbow. "Maybe about you jumping off the same platform three times to your death."
"I was looking at the wrong half of the screen!"
"Sure, Kennedy."
Then, three days later, Ethan—Ethan fucking Winters—catches him.
It's late. The sort of late that doesn't feel like late until you look at a clock and you think wow, that's not a time most people are awake, I shouldn't be either, probably. And then you can't move until you look at the clock again and you think wow, it's much alter than the last time I looked at the clock.
That sort of late.
He's on the couch, downstairs, cradling a mug. The mug is empty. He's pretty sure it had been empty two look-at-the-clocks ago, but he's not totally sure. He hears something, at least he's pretty sure he does, and he turns his head to see Ethan standing there, at the other end of the couch, his eyes glowing gold.
"Hey, buddy," he says quietly, "you doing okay?"
Leon swallows through a paper-dry throat and huffs. "Would you believe me if I said 'yes?'"
Ethan chuckles. "Probably not. Come on, let's get you up and off this couch."
Leon lets Ethan take the mug from his hands, putting it on the coffee table. He lets himself be pulled up, wobbling slightly when his legs protest their sudden movement, leaning on Ethan until he remembers that Ethan isn't Chris and probably won't be able to take all of his weight like that.
"Sorry."
"It's okay. Would you believe me if I said I got used to handling Chris when he's like this too?"
Leon can feel Ethan's knees wobbling already and huffs. "Nope."
"That's fair. Think you can manage some stairs?"
"Let's see."
He does, in fact, manage the stairs. He's not quite sure how, and he's not entirely sure Ethan knows how either, but they manage it. He braces himself on the wall to stop the dizziness, before readying himself to making the final trek to his room alone, but then, oh, then Ethan's hand cards through his greasy hair and a wounded noise escapes his throat before he can stop it.
"Sorry," he rasps as Ethan's hand around his arm gets just a little tighter, "haven't, uh, haven't been up for showering recently."
"Do you wanna have one now?"
He shakes his head. "Can't."
"Why not? If you're worried about waking the others, you won't—"
"Not that." The hand on the wall turns to a fist. "Can't…can't really look at myself right now."
Ethan makes a noise of understanding. His hand is still in his hair. "What if I washed it for you?"
"What?"
"Can I wash your hair for you, Leon?" And fuck, he can't deal with Ethan giving him those big eyes, not when there's still a little bit of gold around them. "You won't have to do anything, promise."
"…feels wrong to say 'buy me dinner first,' but…"
And Ethan immediately backs off, hand coming out of his hair, already saying things like it's okay, we're not there yet, I mean—that's not—we don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with, and Leon just reaches out and takes his hand.
"Sorry. That was my fault. Yeah. Uh, I'd…yeah, Ethan."
"Yeah?"
"Mhm."
"Okay. Come on, then. Bathroom's not that far."
He's sitting on the floor, his back against the side of the tub. Ethan's put a towel down so his head doesn't have to rest on the uncomfortably cold porcelain. Ethan's kneeling next to him, holding the shower head and carefully, carefully wetting his hair without getting any on his face or shoulders. He pauses for just a moment to grab the bottle of shampoo from the corner before his hands are back in his hair and Leon would be embarrassed about the indecent groan that leaves his lips but—but—
But Ethan's hands are sure and gentle as they scratch lightly over his scalp. He can smell the shampoo, smell the slight rain that sort of clings to Ethan's skin, feel the brush of his knee against his side and he—he—
"Fuck," he manages through a sob, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, "sorry, I—"
"Shh," Ethan murmurs, "you're okay. It's okay. You can cry."
The water's rinsing the shampoo out and Ethan reaches up and grabs a conditioner and works it through his hair and then he's sitting there with his head resting on the edge of the tub as Ethan takes another soft washcloth and gets it damp and starts to gently wipe his face clean, and he's just staring up at Ethan. Ethan looks down at him with the tip of his tongue poking through his lips, then he glances down and smiles at him and he tilts his head and he leans down and kisses his forehead and—
"Fuck," he gasps, "what—what's—"
"Shh, shh—hang on one sec, okay?" Ethan grabs the shower head and rinses out the conditioner, working as quickly and carefully as possible. "We're almost there, it's alright—"
Leon grabs the hand that isn't holding the shower head and pulls it to his mouth. He closes his eyes and just holds it there. Ethan's hand twitches slightly, his thumb brushing the curve of his jaw.
"I'm right here, okay? I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
He nods, still holding his hand. There's a clunk as Ethan puts the shower head back and then he's cradling his head with a towel, squeezing his hair dry, and Leon's just sitting there, letting Ethan take care of him, and he's…he's…
"I got you, sweetheart," he murmurs, lips brushing his temple, "you're okay. I'm right here. Let me take care of you."
"Fuck, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
"You're okay," Ethan says, smiling slightly as he lifts his head, still clutching his hand, "hey, there you are, is everything—"
"Fuck, Ethan, I—I'm—you're too goddamn good for this, you know?" He scrubs his hand over his eyes. "You're so sweet."
Ethan scoots a little closer, nearly cuddling him against the side of the tub. "You can't say I'm being sweet for washing your hair when you're the one who's helping me do everything around here. No, no—don't argue with me, you gave up your life to be here."
"You're so sweet." He can't stop saying it. "How are you still so sweet?"
Ethan smiles again, and it's a little sadder and Leon can feel his chest aching a little less. "I don't know. I…I think I just choose to be."
Despite everything, he chokes on a wet laugh. "And damned be anyone who try and tell Ethan Winters different, huh?"
Ethan laughs a little at that too, smoothing his thumb over a damp cheekbone. "That means you should let me take care of you more. I think we both need it."
It's surreal. It's surreal.
Leon's only a man. If Ethan Winters is gonna hold him like he's precious and tell him to let himself be taken care of, he's damn well gonna do as the man says.