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Leon is not the person who comes to anyone’s mind when you think of declarations of love or words of affirmation in general. Conveying his love through words is not something he is naturally good at; he feels utterly vulnerable exposing his heart that way. He already felt like this long before Ada did a splendid job of trying to shatter his trust in the world.
Of course, he has told both Claire and Lottie that he loves them numerous times. The fact that most of those times Claire was already fast asleep in his arms and he whispered it into her hair is something he blatantly overlooks, yes, but unless something big prompts it, Claire would probably find it suspicious to be told over and over that she is loved out of the blue and for no apparent reason.
To his credit, Leon has managed to tell Claire he loves her three times to her face. The first time, he had been half‑drunk; Claire and he had been teetering for months on that line where everything was deeper than a friends‑with‑benefits situation, but in their new reality, when everything felt like it could crumble into pieces at any moment, neither of them wanted to say anything, afraid of losing that small ember they had.
He had returned from one of his first missions, the memories etched behind his eyelids, what had once been a sleepy town now a shell of itself, the smell of charred flesh as Krauser ordered them to dispose of every single body to prevent rats or other small animals from feeding on the rotting flesh of the now‑dead‑for‑good zombies and starting a new cycle of infection elsewhere.
He had been looking in the cheap beer for something to silence his mind with, but without the burning sting that whiskey left in its wake, not wanting to be reminded of the fire they had to guard until only bones were left, when Claire knocked on his door.
Her hair was in her usual ponytail, and she was wearing an old Mötley Crüe t‑shirt that, by the way it hung off her shoulders, made it obvious she had stolen it from Chris a while ago, along with a simple pair of jeans and black boots. There was a grease stain on her cheek, and her eyes were sparkling with mirth.
She had just finished repairing her new bike. She had bought it nearly three months prior for a cheap price, as it was almost considered junk, or at least it looked like junk to the rest of the world. To Claire, it looked like untapped potential, and she was getting tired of depending on others to move around, since her old bike was like his old jeep inside the exclusion zone near Raccoon City.
She had ridden all the way from the tiny box apartment she lived in to his, to show him the final product, that she had, in a way, recovered her wings. Maybe it was the alcohol in his blood, the way her eyes were shining as she talked about all her hard work finally paying off, the way she kept tugging his hand to urge him to move, or that stupid grease stain highlighting her cheekbones, but Leon could swear that at that moment Claire was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes on.
Leon whistled in admiration when his eyes landed on the bike, and Claire beamed at him proudly. It had been a tough job, but it was worth it to her, and it felt even sweeter since Leon, like her brother, never tried to discourage her from her passion for mechanics under the pretense that it wasn’t a very feminine hobby to have in the first place.
Claire was in the middle of a detailed explanation about how she had changed the old carburetor when Leon was hit with the revelation that he was utterly in love with her, and without asking for his brain’s blessing, his lips uttered it out loud for her too. Needless to say, thirty seconds later a very red‑faced Leon let Claire’s lips do what the alcohol had been trying to do all evening: make him forget everything except how good his name sounded in her voice.
The second time, they had been lying on an air mattress in their new bedroom. Claire was six months pregnant, and while Lottie hadn’t been planned, she had been cherished from the moment Claire found out.
An unplanned baby came with a lot of questions they hadn’t asked themselves yet, like whether they wanted to get married or not, how long it would take Sherry to realize they weren’t pranking her, how the hell you raise a tiny person when your Tuesdays come with a discount on apocalypse, and whether they should move in together at Claire’s or Leon’s apartment.
They settled on no wedding for the moment; it felt like a big decision they needed to make because they wanted it for themselves, rather than because society demanded it to find a baby acceptable. Sherry took nearly five minutes, and a laughing fit, to realize there was no prank.
They were and they are still trying to figure out, day by day, how to raise Lottie in a world like theirs, and finally agreed that the better idea wasn’t to move into a space one of them already had full ownership of, but into a new place they could call theirs.
Emptying two apartments, selling furniture they didn’t need, and balancing missions, jobs, and a pregnancy had gone relatively smoothly for them until their new bed got delayed, which had both of them angry, but especially Claire, since sleeping on an air mattress until the bed arrived was less comfortable and less safe for her, with the added bonus that each day it became a little bit harder for her to get up on her own.
Claire’s cheeks were red with anger; she was waving her hands in front of her face as she kept talking, ranting about how they had the gall to keep her waiting on standby for ten minutes as if she didn’t have anything better to do with her time before someone finally provided her with the delivery date.
Leon had no problem listening to her rant all she wanted; listening to her was the bare minimum he could do. But seeing her start to get so worked up made him worry about how it could affect both her and the baby. The I love you came to his lips, and it took her by surprise for a couple of seconds. She huffed, rolled her eyes, and kissed him, a success if you asked him, or Lottie, who kicked above where he had placed his hand afterwards.
The third and final time was when Lottie was born. He dashed in a hurry through the hospital corridors, having just arrived from a mission. Claire had been in labor for three hours at that point; it would take another four before they finally met their daughter.
Claire was covered in sweat; someone had tried to put her hair in a bun, but it had come half‑undone and was sticking to her forehead. Again, her cheeks were pink, but this time from the effort. She was nothing but gorgeous.
At some point, a nurse told her that maybe she should try pushing harder. Claire barked that the nurse could push on her behalf in that case, and Leon would have laughed if he hadn’t been holding her hand while she squeezed it with all her strength. He didn’t dare complain, it was even harder for her.
Finally, after seven hours, Charlotte Kennedy‑Redfield was born, eight pounds and six ounces; one foot and eight inches tall, with a full head of thin peach‑fuzz hair and already a very loud opinion of the world, judging by how hard she was crying.
Up to that moment, Leon hadn’t known you could look at someone and be filled with awe and terror at the same time. Their baby was perfect, but how dared they bring her into this terrible world? He felt dazed, incredibly happy, and scared out of his mind all at once, because there were a thousand million ways he could fail her.
His throat felt dry, his face paled, and with wide eyes he looked at Claire, for help? For forgiveness? Because of how inadequate he felt in that second to love them right? He isn’t sure. But while he was lost trying to process all of his feelings, Lottie had already been cleaned, and the nurse was handing her to Claire.
Claire, with her still uneven breathing and her tired, sweat‑covered face, had eyes that shone in a way he had never seen. She held Lottie tightly to her chest, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and whispered to the tiny baby, sometimes Daddy malfunctions, and we love him despite that.
That snapped him out of his trance. He wasn’t any less scared, but he suddenly had one more reason to be brave. Hugging Claire’s shoulders with one arm, he greeted Lottie with a quiet hey, princess. And just like the first time, his lips uttered the I love you on their own, because how could he not love Claire when she had given him so much?
Saying to Lottie that he loved her was easier for Leon; it felt less like baring a piece of himself for someone else to do as they pleased and more like stating a universal fact.
Yet Leon isn’t the kind of person whose love language is words, but rather acts of service, like when he took all the night feedings and diaper duties so Claire could sleep through the night, or when, without blinking, he sacrificed his freedom to keep Sherry from being experimented on like a lab rat.
Or like when he reassured Claire that it was fine for her to go have dinner with her friends after a long and shitty week at work. He could handle being left alone with his daughter for a few more hours, and after his return from Spain, Leon felt like he needed to compensate Claire for how he left. Besides, President Graham had personally placed him on a month of leave anyway.
Leon had been bathing his daughter, kneeling in their bathroom, her small baby bath placed in the middle of the bigger one. She was half sitting, half lying on the tiny hammock that came with the bath, her little feet dangling and splashing in the water, her cute face lighting up at the sound. She cooed, as if trying to tell him she was enjoying it.
Then Leon opened the bottle of the baby gel they used on her. A string of bubbles escaped from the cap, and a mesmerized Lottie raised her arms, trying to reach for them. His heart soared with love, and only when the last bubble disappeared did a confused Lottie look at him.
Leon spent the next five minutes trying to create more bubbles for her, and another ten filling the bathroom with them, his efforts rewarded with a set of giggles. In the end, fearing that the water was starting to get too cold, he rushed through the rest of the bath.
Lottie scrunched her nose in a gesture that reminded him of Claire so much that he almost felt the need to apologize for his actions, but he opted instead to tell her how much Daddy loves her.
A couple of hours later, Claire found them on the couch, Lottie dressed in her giraffe pajamas on top of Leon’s chest, his blue shirt stained with a bit of formula, both of them fast asleep with Some Like It Hot running in the background.