For Tatsueli. <3
For the life of him, Leon Kennedy couldn’t figure out why these assholes always chose castles. For that matter, where were they finding them? Was there a specific realty site online where they shopped? A type of black market where, instead of shopping for weapons, they shopped for castles? Occasionally, Leon asked his husband about it. When Chris Redfield put that wedding ring on his finger, he signed up for sickness and health, possible zombification and 3am questions. Unfortunately, Chris usually disagreed with the latter and always told him to please, please, try to sleep, and if he needed help getting tired out, Chris would help him, showing absolutely no interest in the castle realty market.
Still, Leon would argue forever that he had a point. He sat in the window -- if they were in a castle and didn’t include glass, were they still windows? -- looking at the carnage below. For once, he could only claim partial responsibility for the destruction. He enjoyed the position of lowly DSO consultant, occasionally blowing things up and subtly information-gathering as the BSAA waged war on everything they found in this sad castle. Chris liked to make comments about Leon’s history of destruction, but Leon saw how much his husband single-handedly destroyed. Including the tower opposite Leon’s perch.
It must have been beautiful once, before these latest dicks -- sponsored by Simmons’s Family, if Leon’s information was correct -- took it over and the BSAA finished it off. Now it was nothing but ruins, smoke rising from the stone, fools who had willingly turned themselves into monsters for their precious cause dead in the rubble.
Their leader was a former American soldier. Righteous fury had burned in his eyes before Leon Leon permanently put it out. For too long, Leon stood over the man’s monstrous corpse, studying how the latest virus had shredded human flesh and turned it into something unnatural, before he had been able to move on.
Beyond the basics, he hadn’t looked like Krauser at all. Hell, this wasn’t even the first time since Spain that Leon had encountered other traitorous soldiers in destroyed castles, burnt out and betrayed and idealistic and perfect pawns for power-mad beasts.
It was the castle, Leon guessed. He watched the BSAA soldiers below start cleaning up. Or celebrating. Or both. He was never sure with them. He didn’t really care, thoughts drifting along with the smoke. It was this broken castle and that broken soldier and watching yet more people lose themselves in others’ insanity.
More reminders of all the people he had lost to this madness. More reminders of how he -- and Chris, really -- was getting too old for this shit.
Jack, Leon thought, looking at the soldiers below and seeing another soldier entirely, I’ll never understand what you were thinking.
There wasn’t shit he could do about castles, but for years, Leon swore off soldiers, too many flashbacks a calloused touch away. Then Chris Redfield approached him after New York with a fucking bouquet of flowers of all things, apologized for interrupting his vacation, and asked him out for dinner. Leon still had glass in his hair and Chris was still in his bloodied uniform.
What could Leon do but say yes?
Leon shook his head and stretched. The only aches and pains were from effort, not from some ten-foot monster throwing him into a wall. Overall, it was a good mission and he hated traveling down memory lane, anyway. Too many traps and landmines. He needed to go find Chris, wrap this shit up, and see if he could convince Chris to leave his team long enough to join Leon in his DSO hotel room to celebrate this successful mission.
Hmm. Leon cocked his head and listened. Or perhaps his lover would come find him. Chris was always the more impatient one between them.
The door on the far side of the broken room creaked. It couldn’t be too hard to open. Leon kicked it in earlier before taking out the three BOWs in the room. It was how he knew this room and its window would give him such a good view of everything. “Come here,” Leon called, watching a certain group far below. If he let himself falter, then he would only see all the wrong corpses and Chris would get upset because he couldn’t fix what was upsetting Leon. There was no reason for all that. “Piers is yelling at his team for being idiots. When are you going to promote him, anyway?”
He heard Chris’s heavy, familiar steps stop in the middle of the room. Confused but still smiling a little, Leon twisted on his stone seat to see Chris staring at him like he was looking at a ghost. Leon’s smile faltered. “Chris?”
Chris visibly swallowed. When he began walking again, his steps were light, careful, like he was afraid of the floor breaking under his feet. “Leon. Babe. Please get away from the window.”
What? Now it was Leon’s turn to be careful as he examined the area around him. The corpses were on the far side of the room and Leon had made sure they would never move again. Some vines curling through the stone wall, but -- shockingly enough considering the circumstances -- Leon was pretty sure they were only vines. The only movement came from far below, from the soldiers and the crackling fires and the smoke still silently rising. “Chris, what’s wrong?” His hand slid to his knife, just to be on the safe side. “Is everything okay?”
Chris kept his slow, almost delicate pace as he approached Leon. Confused, Leon watched his husband. He looked well. No injuries. His short hair didn’t even look mussed. His uniform was dirty but showed no damage. No indication of viruses, either, despite his unusual pallor. Eyes not quite as clear as Leon would like, but his hands were steady as he reached out to Leon. To Leon’s surprise, Chris gently grabbed his waist and picked him up, moving Leon until Leon was away from the windowsill and in Chris’s arms.
That had been another point which had made Leon hesitant at the beginning of their relationship. Leon wasn’t a small man, not by any standards. Even before the government’s vigorous training, he had been strong, regularly working out, determined to show everyone that he could not only make it but excel. Jack was the first man to be able to grab him, make him self-conscious of his size and the size of his lover.
Chris was the second. He didn’t think he had ever told Chris that.
“Chris,” Leon said calmly, “if there’s a threat in the room, I need to know what it is. Talk to me.”
If there was a threat, Leon was sure it wasn’t physical. Didn’t exist outside of the shadows in his husband’s eyes. Still, Chris managed a smile for him, hands rubbing up down Leon’s sides as if Leon was the one who needed soothed. “Sorry. The windows don’t even look alike, but ever since the Spencer Estate…” Chris shrugged one shoulder. He looked sheepish but apparently didn’t feel embarrassed enough to let Leon go.
That was fine. If nothing else, this job taught them how to deal with nightmares: their own and others’. Leon had comforted Chris a hundred times before and would comfort him a hundred times more. Yet his own memories lingered, a soft cloud over him. Strangely enough, thoughts of Krauser didn’t make him grieve. They left him nostalgic, thoughtful, and as Leon wrapped his arms around Chris’s thick neck -- so similar but still so different from Krauser’s -- he found himself asking, “Was it hard? Killing Wesker? Considering…”
Chris’s hands moved to the small of Leon’s back, gently pulling Leon closer. If he looked surprised by Leon’s questions, it didn’t show on his face. He only tilted his head so his forehead rested against Leon’s. Their bodies swayed together like they were at home in their living room, dancing to one of Chris’s playlists, instead of in a destroyed castle with three BOW corpses in the corner.
“The man I thought I loved was nothing but an illusion,” Chris said. “Realizing that hurt more than killing him did.” He nudged Leon’s nose with his own. “Claire tried to set me up with you for years. Did you know that?”
It was starting to get noisy outside the window, but the wind carrying away the sound made it easy to ignore. Everything was pretty much done. If there was an explosion, they could respond quickly enough. For now, Leon let himself sway with Chris, not even caring that Chris’s gear was pressing against his own bulletproof vest, making the edges dig into his chest. “I didn’t. I know she was getting aggravated that I was never free when you were free.”
“Yeah. She thought you would be a great match for me. She also thought your taste was awful.”
Leon closed his eyes and laughed softly. Even with the scent of rot and smoke lingering in the air, it was easy to relax here, Chris pressed so close and his hands solid against Leon’s back. It had taken a while, not months but years into their friendship, but eventually Leon realized Chris’s large, scarred hands meant safety and not threat. He still wasn’t sure when that happened. Sometime between China and New York was all he knew. “Yeah, well, I’ve seen her taste.”
“Heh. Yeah. Still. I never thought you were a bad person. Not even in the beginning. I know you helped save her life, and I owed you for that. But…”
“There’s a big leap between that and trusting someone,” Leon agreed. After Spain, he had thought he was good and done. Too much blood, too many shadows. Now he wondered how much Claire had known.
“Yeah.” Leon could feel Chris’s hands moving but the vest interfered with knowing exactly what he was doing. “I tried to look you up.”
Leon grinned and twisted his head so he could press his nose where Chris’s jaw met his neck. More smoke but also the familiar scent of Chris’s sweat and musk. “How did that go for you?”
“Terribly,” Chris admitted freely. “I was pulled aside and read the riot act for investigating an American federal agent.”
Leon bet. “So when did everything change?”
They needed to get going. Leon knew they needed to get going. Yet Leon didn’t move, instead letting Chris pull him impossibly closer.
“I thought it was when Jill tackled Wesker out that window,” Chris said, his voice softening, “I didn’t give a damn about Wesker dying. I only gave a damn about Jill. Wesker and his betrayal seemed buried long before he actually died. And you were always just a phone call away, always helping out no matter what was going on. Still took years to ask you out, but when you stepped up and helped in New York? I knew I could trust you. Otherwise never occurred to me in that bar or on the roof with Arias. I knew we could do it, that we could be good together. I was confident the past was good and gone behind me. There was just me, you, and our future.” He huffed and hugged Leon a little closer. Ignoring their gear and awkwardness of it, Leon tightened his own grip around Chris and held on. “At least, until I saw you in that window.”
“Well,” Leon said lightly, “that’s what you’re here for, right?”
Chris stilled. Then he pulled away enough to throw his head back and laugh. It boomed through the room, and the final shadows faded away. The memory of Krauser’s large hands and Krauser’s body still on the cracked stones slipped away like smoke in the breeze. “Any time, babe.”
Something exploded out of the window. Leon rolled his eyes. With a quick kiss to Chris’s mouth, he pulled completely away. “Don’t call me that when we’re working. C’mon, before they decide to blow this tower up while we’re in it.”
Chris laughed and walked beside him. “They wouldn’t actually do that… I think.”
The cracked door closed with a comfortingly final thud behind them, leaving both of their ghosts behind. If Chris reached out and grabbed Leon’s hand as they walked through the shattered building, Leon was willing to ignore the unprofessionalism of it. For once.
He even silently squeezed it back, his wedding ring warm and solid as it pressed against Chris’s strong hand.