Chapter Text
“This looks like shit.”
Leon thought it with the grim resignation of a man who had spent the better part of an hour attempting to convince several disagreeable pieces of wood that they belonged together, only to discover that they appeared to have reached a unanimous decision to make his life miserable instead.
The screwdriver was wedged between his fingers, the handle already beginning to leave a faint indentation in his palm, while the other hand held one of the table’s unfinished supports in place. He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes at the joint as though staring at it hard enough might somehow correct the slight but unmistakable misalignment.
It didn’t.
“Goddammit.”
He tightened the screw anyway.
The dressing table was, technically, a work in progress. Calling it a dressing table at this stage, however, felt generous. At present it looked more like a collection of wooden planks that had suffered some kind of unfortunate industrial accident. The surface was uneven, one of the legs was fractionally shorter than the others, and Leon was fairly certain he had attached one of the brackets backwards.
He stared at it for several seconds.
Then he looked at the instruction sheet lying crumpled on the floor beside him.
Then back at the table.
“...Shit.”
He had never been particularly good at assembling furniture.
Guns, explosives, surveillance equipment, tactical gear—those things made sense to him. There were instructions, mechanisms, consequences. If something was assembled incorrectly, it usually became immediately apparent when it failed to perform its intended function. Furniture, apparently, operated according to an entirely different philosophy. It could look perfectly reasonable while simultaneously being catastrophically wrong.
Still, he was going to finish it.
He had to.
Because Ada had complained.
Not even seriously, either.
That was the ridiculous part.
She had merely made an offhand remark several weeks ago, something so insignificant that Leon had initially dismissed it. Yet somehow it had lodged itself in the back of his mind and refused to leave.
He could still picture her standing in front of the bathroom mirror.
Ada had been leaning toward the glass, one hand braced against the edge of the sink while the other held her eyeliner with the concentration of someone performing delicate surgery. Her face had been illuminated by the harsh overhead light and she had repeatedly squinted at her reflection as she tried to draw a clean line.
The bathroom mirror was too high.
The lighting was terrible.
The sink was inconveniently positioned beneath it.
And, most importantly, there was nowhere for her to put anything.
Her makeup had been scattered haphazardly across the counter, little bottles and brushes and compacts competing for whatever scraps of space remained between Leon’s shaving equipment and various toiletries he had never imagined would be displaced by a woman.
Ada had attempted to ignore the inconvenience for several minutes.
Eventually, she gave up.
She leaned closer to the mirror, her fingertips grazing the glass as though she could physically pull her reflection nearer.
“This truly is the worst place to do my eyeliner.”
Leon had been standing behind her, leaning against the bathroom doorway.
He remembered the irritated little grunt she had made immediately afterward.
“I’d have better luck at my vanity.”
He had looked at her reflection through the mirror.
“A vanity?”
“Yes, Leon. A vanity.”
“You don't have one here.”
“I noticed.”
There had been a faint, almost imperceptible accusation in the way she said it.
Leon had stared at her.
Ada had stared back through the mirror.
And that had been that.
She hadn't asked him to buy one.
She hadn't even suggested that he should.
She had simply complained.
Somehow, that had been enough to send him into a hardware store two days later, standing in an aisle surrounded by wood, screws and instruction manuals, trying to decide whether he was capable of constructing one himself.
Apparently, he was not.
But he was going to learn.
Because the alternative was buying one already assembled, and Leon couldn't bring himself to do that.
He wanted to make it for her.
There was something strangely satisfying about the thought of Ada sitting in front of something he had built with his own hands. Something that belonged to her, inside his apartment, in his bedroom.
And perhaps—though he would never admit it aloud—the real reason he was doing it had very little to do with eyeliner.
Ada had been spending more and more time at his apartment recently.
At first, the place had barely qualified as somewhere a person could comfortably live. It had been dingy, impersonal and painfully sparse, furnished with the sort of practical, cheap pieces that suggested the occupant had never expected to remain anywhere for very long.
Leon had never cared.
He had spent enough time sleeping in safehouses, hotels and unfamiliar rooms that the concept of making a place feel like home had gradually become meaningless.
Then Ada started coming over.
And, somehow, his apartment had begun changing.
It happened slowly enough that Leon hadn't noticed at first.
A decorative cushion appeared on the sofa.
Then another.
A small vase appeared on the kitchen counter, containing flowers that Leon was almost certain he hadn't purchased.
The curtains changed.
The old, ugly lamp in the corner disappeared and was replaced with something considerably more elegant.
There were candles now, although Leon had no idea when they had arrived.
One of his shelves had been rearranged because Ada had apparently decided that the way he organised his books was “depressing.”
She had brought in a few framed photographs, although none of them contained anything particularly sentimental. She simply seemed to believe that bare walls were unacceptable.
Even the bedroom had changed.
The once-neutral space had gradually acquired traces of her presence until Leon could no longer look around without finding some indication that Ada had been there.
A silk scarf draped carelessly over the back of a chair.
A pair of earrings abandoned beside his bedside lamp.
A perfume bottle sitting on his dresser.
Her clothes occupying a small but steadily increasing portion of his wardrobe.
It should have bothered him.
Instead, Leon found himself quietly pleased by every new intrusion.
Because every object she left behind meant that she had spent time there.
And every time she spent time there, there was a chance she might stay a little longer.
That was the part he didn't say.
He wanted her around.
More than he probably should.
Ada had begun coming to his apartment between missions, sometimes without warning. She would appear at his door with that familiar, unreadable expression and casually inform him that she was staying for the night.
Sometimes she stayed for days.
Leon never complained.
In fact, he had started making sure there was always food she liked in the refrigerator.
He'd bought another toothbrush.
He'd cleared a drawer for her.
He'd even stopped pretending that the empty half of his wardrobe was still technically his.
And now there was going to be a dressing table.
His dressing table.
For her.
Leon tightened another screw with unnecessary aggression.
The wood creaked.
“Don't you dare.”
He released the screwdriver and leaned back on his heels, staring at his creation.
It looked slightly less terrible than it had ten minutes ago.
Progress.
He reached for another piece.
If Ada was going to spend this much time here, then he wanted her to be comfortable.
That was the reasonable explanation.
The less reasonable one was that he liked the idea of giving her something that would make his apartment feel even more like somewhere she belonged.
Somewhere she could sit in the mornings.
Somewhere she could do her makeup while he watched her through the mirror.
Somewhere her things could accumulate.
Somewhere that, little by little, stopped being merely his apartment and became theirs.
Leon immediately dismissed the thought.
“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath, reaching for the hammer. “Definitely not thinking about that.”
He lifted the hammer.
Paused.
Looked at the table again.
“This still looks like shit.”
And then he kept working.
Leon returned to the hardware store three days later with the expression of a man who had been personally betrayed by carpentry.
He carried the broken remains of one of the wooden panels under his arm, its jagged edge making it painfully obvious that whatever had happened to it had not been an accident of gentle persuasion. There were also two screws missing from his original set, a cracked drill bit in his pocket, and a growing conviction that furniture was considerably more dangerous than any weapon he had handled in the field.
He approached the same counter as before.
The cashier looked up.
Then looked at the wood.
Then looked back at Leon.
There was a brief silence.
“Again?”
Leon placed the ruined panel on the counter.
“I need another one.”
The cashier stared at it.
“What happened?”
“I broke it.”
“I can see that.”
Leon gave him a flat look.
The cashier picked up the panel, examining the splintered edge with barely concealed amusement. “How many pieces have you broken now?”
“Not that many.”
The cashier raised an eyebrow.
Leon reconsidered.
“Seven.”
“Seven?”
“Eight.”
The cashier laughed.
Leon sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Look, I'm not here for commentary.”
“You've been here three times this week.”
“I know.”
“And every time you come back, you're buying more wood.”
“I know.”
“So I'm just trying to understand what you're building.”
“A dressing table.”
The cashier looked at him for a moment, and something in his expression changed.
“For your girlfriend?”
Leon hesitated.
There was something oddly satisfying about saying it.
“My lady.”
The cashier grinned.
“Ah. Your lady.”
Leon nodded, reaching into his pocket for his phone so he could show him the measurements he'd written down. “She needs a vanity.”
“Needs?”
“She says she does.”
“That's different.”
Leon ignored that.
The cashier started gathering the replacement pieces. “Is it for the pretty lady I saw you with at that restaurant the other day?”
Leon glanced up.
He knew immediately who he meant.
“Yeah.”
The answer came without hesitation.
The cashier gave a knowing little smile.
“Thought so.”
Leon looked down at the measurements again, but his mind had already wandered elsewhere.
Ada.
She was away right now.
Somewhere he couldn't follow.
Somewhere he couldn't reach her.
He didn't know exactly when she would be back. With Ada, plans had a habit of changing without warning, and Leon had learned long ago not to expect certainty from her. She could disappear for days, sometimes longer, leaving behind nothing but a vague promise that she'd return when she could.
He hated it.
Not because he didn't understand what she did. He understood better than most.
He simply hated the waiting.
The uncertainty.
The empty apartment.
The silence that seemed to become considerably louder whenever she wasn't there.
His eyes settled on the replacement piece of wood.
He wanted the vanity finished before she returned.
He wanted to surprise her.
He could already picture it.
Ada walking into the bedroom, stopping when she saw it.
That small moment of genuine surprise she rarely allowed herself.
Her eyes softening.
That beautiful smile appearing across her face.
Maybe she'd run her fingers over the surface and ask him if he'd really made it himself.
And Leon would tell her it had been easy.
He'd lie.
She'd know he was lying.
She'd probably laugh at him.
He wanted that.
God, he wanted that.
He wanted to see her smile because of something he'd done.
Not because she'd successfully completed a mission. Not because she'd outsmarted someone or escaped another impossible situation. Not because she'd won.
Just because he'd made something for her.
Because he'd thought about her while he made it.
Because he loved her.
The thought settled heavily in his chest.
He loved her more than he knew how to explain.
He loved the way she moved through his apartment as though she'd always belonged there.
He loved finding her things scattered around.
He loved waking up and discovering she'd somehow stolen most of the blankets.
He loved the sound of her voice when she was half-asleep.
He loved the rare moments when she let her guard fall completely.
And, perhaps most embarrassingly of all, he loved making things for her.
Even when he was terrible at it.
The cashier slid the replacement wood across the counter.
“Good luck.”
Leon gathered everything under his arm.
“Thanks.”
The cashier looked at the pile.
“You're going to need it.”
Leon gave him a tired glare.
“I'll finish it.”
“You sure?”
Leon glanced toward the door.
He thought of Ada.
Then he smiled faintly.
“Yeah.”
He was going to finish it.
He wanted it waiting for her when she came home.
And if he had to destroy another twenty pieces of wood to make it happen, so be it.
He'd simply buy twenty-one.