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For the first time ever, Leon’s body wasn’t wracked with aches and pains as he pushed open the door to his apartment. Typically, returning home from missions meant that he was suffering from whatever beating he had gotten while he was away, too tired to tend to anything that wasn’t life-threatening before hitting the bed or couch.
The D.S.O. used to hold him for a few days while he licked his wounds, for the sake of ensuring he’d be in good enough condition to be deployed as soon as possible rather than for his own wellbeing, until they learned Leon preferred to handle his wounds himself. He would much rather be at home in pain than locked in some sterile hospital room and in pain.
He figured he had Elpis to thank for his condition, he hadn’t felt this good–injured or otherwise–in years.
Leon creaked open the door, trying his best to stay quiet. The interior was completely dark, with only the ambient noises of the night keeping it from being totally silent. With more ease than usual, he slid off his shoes and hung his jacket up on the hook by the front door. He took note of the red coat hanging next to where he had put his, one that hadn’t been there when he’d left days earlier.
“Back from a mission?” A voice rang out from the doorway of the bedroom, belonging to the very woman who owned the coat he had just noticed.
Ada leaned against the frame of the bedroom door, clad in an oversized shirt that she undoubtedly had stolen from him; hair loose and wavy and face free of the makeup she always put on. She had clearly been asleep, but Leon should’ve known better than to assume that she would be able to sleep through the sound of him coming home.
One thing they had in common was their inability to sleep peacefully, jolted awake by even the smallest of sounds. They both had their employers to thank for that.
“Yeah.” Leon answered, making his way toward her. His palms found her waist, pulling her flush against him, and she didn’t hesitate to lean up and catch his lips with hers. Like most of their kisses had become as of late, it was soft but sure. No longer did they feel the need to take each other in as much as they could while they could, they had all the time in the world.
“When did you get back in?” Leon broke the kiss to ask, not straying far as he kept their foreheads pressed together with noses brushing and breaths mingled. When Leon had left for his mission, Ada had been away overseas dealing with her own affairs.
They didn’t talk about work, it was the one foundational rule they had when they decided to give their relationship a real try. They were both aware of what the other did, where their loyalties lay, and decided to create space between their private and professional lives. It was easier now that Ada had more control over the jobs she took, decreasing the chances of them crossing paths while on the payroll.
It didn’t bother Leon, he didn’t need the thrill of the chase that he once craved with Ada. Back then, the promise of Ada pressing her gun to his head was the only thing that made him feel alive, that gave him a sense of routine and something to look forward to.
Now, the matching rings on their left hands were a promise of something more. Gone were their days of playing cat and mouse, they had long ago grown too old for those games anyway. They were trying their best to be two normal people, a husband and a wife living a happy and comfortable life together.
“Last night.” Ada answered, taking his cheeks into her hands as she dutifully inspected him for injuries, just as she always did whenever he got home from being on the field. It was another reason he no longer had any need for D.S.O. doctors; he had his own doting nurse waiting for him at home. “I saw your stuff was gone and figured you’d left.”
“Yeah, sorry. They called me at the last minute.” Leon leaned down to press his lips against his wife’s shoulder apologetically, where his too-large shirt was falling down her arm to expose her bare skin. He unconsciously relaxed at the sight of her neck, completely clear of any sign of the T-Virus.
He hadn’t suspected that she had come down with it, as the signs would’ve been there the last time he saw her, but he still lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckle; admiring the glint of her wedding band and the lack of blackened skin on her palm.
“The mission they called you in for wouldn’t happen to be connected to headlines I’ve been seeing about an underground lab unearthed in Raccoon City, would it?”
Clearly, their rule about no work discussion didn’t apply to this situation. But that made sense, Raccoon City held just as much significance to Ada as it did to Leon himself.
He nodded, pressing his chin to the crown of Ada’s head as he continued to cradle her close. She had once told him that he gets clingy when returning home from missions, which he was never able to deny and seemed to be just as true now. Especially after he had his closest brush with death to date, faced with the prospect of leaving Ada alone in a world without him for the first time since they’d gotten serious with each other.
Laying in that open hallway inside of ARK, mere breaths away from death, she had been the one thing in his mind. He thought of the wedding band in his back pocket, the one he had taken off for the sake of protecting it from his infection, and the woman with the matching ring that he was terrified to leave just after their life together had begun. He briefly recalled even quoting her when Grace shook him awake as he faded, reminded of the reversed roles when they had been in China over a decade prior.
“Sherry and I came down with an infection, a dormant strand of the T-Virus. Long story short, Raccoon City is where I found the cure. Exposing corruption was just a bonus.”
“T-Virus?” Ada pulled away, eyes wide. “Leon–”
“I’m fine, Ada. I promise.” He took her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I made it back, didn’t I?”
She rolled her eyes, but seemed comforted by his words. “I swear, Agent Kennedy, you’re determined to send me to an early grave with the stress you cause me.” He melted at the familiar nickname, grinning dopily in a way that he knew Helena would give him shit for if she were there as a witness.
“I sure hope not. I’d like to keep my beautiful wife around for as long as possible.” Even years into their marriage at this point, Leon never got tired of calling her that. He’d spent so long thinking he’d never get the chance to live a normal life, much less one with Ada by his side, that sometimes it still didn’t feel real.
“Then you’d better keep coming home to me in one piece.” Ada demanded, with Leon offering a short, “Yes, ma’am.” in reply. She reached up to rub at his stubble, eyes scanning and scrutinizing him in a way that made him unable to tell whether she was analyzing him or checking him out.
“You look good.”
“Well, I sure hope so. You did marry me, after all.” He yelped as she smacked at his shoulder, smiling exasperatedly.
“Not like that.” Ada corrected, running her manicured fingers over the exposed skin of his biceps. She picked at the dirt and blood–not his own–littered along his arm and continued, “I mean you don’t look like you got beaten within an inch of your life. Typically, you come home with every manner of injury. You actually look like you could’ve come back from a regular job, save for all the grime.”
“Oh trust me,” Leon laughed, pressing a hand against his spine, “I definitely got a few cracked ribs and permanent scoliosis caused by blunt force injury. But I think the antiviral had an extra healing factor, because I feel great.”
He shifted, and the feeling of something in his pocket reminded him of what he’d been the most excited to show her. “Oh yeah, I have something for you.”
He pulled the cute bear keychain out, dangling it in between him and Ada as the latter’s eyes widened in awe, gently taking the little bear into her hands. “Would you believe me if I told you I found it in the same place we first met?”
Ada’s smile was one that Leon wished he could bottle up and hold onto forever. It was the small but oh-so real smile that only he was ever lucky enough to elicit from her. He felt like he was falling in love all over again and had to fight the urge to kiss her senseless. “The parking garage?”
“Yeah. Despite everything, somehow, I found this little guy laying in the rubble.”
To him, it had felt like a promise of hope. Despite the infection and the trauma competing to tear him apart from the inside, the little bear keychain identical to the one Ada had given him back in Spain felt representative of the hope that she gave him that day in Raccoon City, and had continued to give him since. In a way, it was Leon’s way of keeping Ada with him when he couldn’t keep his ring on.
“How cute.” She mused, delicately running her fingers along the bear’s stitching. “We can put it in the drawer next to the one I gave you.”
They had collected a drawer of trinkets together throughout the years: little things that they gifted each other or that Ada left behind, such as the old bear keychain and the compact mirror of hers that Helena gave him. Now, another item could join the collection.
“Thank you, love.” Ada murmured, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. Leon chased her lips with his, trying to pull her back in, and he whined when she stepped out of his hold. “As much as I love you, Leon, you stink.” Any complaint died on his lips as the sway of his wife’s hips as she made her way back into their bedroom drew his eyes.
“Take a shower and then you can join me in bed.”
Later, when Leon was clean and settled into the sheets of their bed, he took comfort in the way Ada curled against him, their legs intertwined and her head tucked in the crook of his neck. His own arm was thrown around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head with all the care in the world.
When they used to fall asleep together, it was always temporary. Leon knew that he’d wake up to an empty bed and, if he was lucky enough, a note from Ada thanking him for a good time.
Oh, if only that version of Leon could see himself now. Falling asleep with Ada, his wife, in his arms; in the home they shared with the life they’d built together.
Revisiting Raccoon City had felt insurmountable, faced with reminders of everything he’d overcome that had shaped him into the person he was today. But maybe now, he could put the ghosts of his past to rest. Leon saved Grace, he hadn’t failed like he did on September 30th, 1998.
He could look forward–maybe even start to believe he was deserving of the life he was now living–and leave everything back in the rubble of that city where it belonged.
Leon pressed a reverent kiss to the crown of Ada’s head and fell into a peaceful sleep.