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"Fuck, I've missed you."
Together with Leon, the sentence stumbles through the door the moment Chris opens it; he catches them both before they fall, grabs Leon by the shoulders and looks him over before pulling him into a crushing hug.
Without hesitation, Leon's arms wrap around the shape of Chris' ribs, knuckles brushing over the bow of his spine before his hands settle, flat, on sinew and shoulder blades. Tension seeps from him and drips down to the floor, and finally, with a trembling exhale, Leon allows himself to relax, and he sinks into the body in front of him.
Chris, face buried in the straw colored mess of Leon's hair, these days spiderwebbed with grey (and don't ask about how emotional that makes him), inhales deep: Leon still smells of gunpowder, vaguely of wound disinfectant and bandaging, and there is the faintest trace of rust.
But what really digs its claws into Chris' tear ducts and makes them water is the absence of something else: that sickly-sweet, earthen-metallic smell that had defined Leon for the past months, the virus burrowing deeper and deeper into his failing immune system, carving out his body like consumption despite his most heroic effort to eat well and keep his strength.
And now - no more of that. No more.
Chris barely holds the sob in that wants to wrench itself free from his lungs - instead, his arms tighten with the burst of emotion and Leon huffs and somehow presses even closer, their ribs melting together with each expanding breath.
Leon is solid, so solid as Chris holds him, an overwhelming physicality to him - and he's warm, so warm, like his very blood prickling in his veins wants to sing the sanguine proof that he's alive, that he's here, like his very heart beating slow and steady engraves it into Chris' palms and fingertips: an overwhelming, vibrant knowledge of who he is, who he was, who he always will be. Chris' heart replies to every beat, beat, beat, the twin pulse weaving them together again where they had come unraveled, darning back together what had been apart for too long and was now, finally, reunited.
"C'mere." It's spoken so low the vibrations of the words directly spill into Leon's ear, rumble through his ribcage and only translate to meaning when gesture and movement is added: Chris hands slide down his back, settle lower, and he steadies his legs and then lifts Leon up.
"Show-off." The muffled laugh with which Leon sing-songs the words right into the shell of Chris' ear is quiet, but the joy in them is unbridled, and Leon only goes too willingly: there's safety, familiarity in the way Chris knits his arms together around him, in the way he makes space and allows Leon to climb into the expanse of his ribs, in the way he holds all of his weight like it's the easiest thing in the world.