Chapter Text
Right away, Helena thinks that it’s a terrible idea.
Leon brings it up during their lunch break. Hoping that his partner is distracted by her cannelloni, he drops the bomb while fetching them both a Bud Light from the mini-fridge in the breakroom. It’ll fly over quickly, he thinks. Helena’s known to be bad at handling multiple tasks at once, and right now, with her nose buried in her food, there’s no way her mouth and ears can both focus.
“Ada and I are moving in together.”
Unfortunately for Leon, Helena’s brain doubles in size when it comes to his relationship problems.
She looks up from her tupperware with yellow lips and fiery eyes.
“You what?”
Leon hands her a napkin with a pointed look.
“We’re moving in together,” he repeats. Helena wipes her face and he takes these few seconds where he’s not being glared at to carefully adjust tactics. “It’s temporary. She’s in trouble, she needs to lay low for a while, and I’ve got a spare room.”
Helena’s eyebrows furrow.
“What kind of trouble?” she slowly asks, as suspicious as Leon should be.
He pops open his own food. “Hell if I know.”
“And she can’t lay low anywhere else, she’s gotta lay low… with you?”
Telling her is starting to feel like a mistake. “Helena, I came up with the idea.”
“And it’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“It’s not,” Leon scoffs, almost offended. “I gave it a lot of thought and it actually makes sense. You know that old saying? ‘Keep your friends close’...” He raises his brows in an attempt at looking self-assured, and concludes with a cocky: “I know what I’m doing.”
The corner of Helena’s lips are still yellow; and yet she’s never looked more menacing.
She leans forward, forcing Leon to lean back in turn so his personal space remains safe and sound. “But she’s not a friend,” she growls. “She’s much more, and much less than that. You know that.”
“You don’t know the other half of the saying?” he asks, deadpan.
“...and your enemies closer, yes, agent Kennedy, of course I do. But you and I both know she’s never been an enemy either.”
“I’m not talking about us, here, I’m talking about them,” and he makes a point to wave in the vague direction of the breakroom’s exit leading to the D.S.O. offices. Helena stares blankly at Leon’s hand. There’s a joke here about the moon and the fool, so it’s Leon’s time to breach in her personal space and say, in a hushed voice: “Hunnigan reported that the last official rumor is Ada’s out of the country. No one’ll ever expect her to be hiding right under their nose.”
Helena drops her fork in her tupperware with a disbelieving shake of the head. “I already knew you were ready to give up your life for her, but Leon, this was on the job. You’re fucked in more ways than I thought.”
“Helena,” Leon warns gently.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying,” she says, non-apologetic as her chewing competes with the microwave’s roar, “I’ve gotten in trouble for treason before, there’s no way you’d be able to get away with something even worse. And if they don’t catch on to your felony, then you still got her to deal with, and I’m pretty sure that you can’t casually live with Ada without being constantly reminded that you have feelings for her. Sooner or later, reality will catch up to you and she’ll bring up one of her assignments, or she’ll bring home a man, and you’re gonna try and reason with her and things are gonna go south and you’ll end up having to split up again and it’s gonna be hellish to work every day with you, because God you’re emo when you’re going through a breakup.”
Brown eyes squint into Leon as he considers this.
Finally, he straightens, opens his beer can, and brings it to his lips.
“You’re wrong, Helena,” he says with utmost confidence. “Everything’s gonna be just fine.”
Leon has never lived with anyone before. Or at least, not anyone like Ada.
Way back in 95’, when he was a fresh-faced high school graduate, he’d been living in a 50 square foot room in the gigantic dorm of Harrisburg’s police academy. His roommate’s presence was as exciting as a ghost’s, only making itself known when he brought home a girl and chucked Leon outー who was nothing less than grateful to be spared from the noises, thank you very much. He used to run laps around the campus with his walkman at his belt, mulling over his latest disastrous attempt at romancing a lady. While his roomie was probably having the time of his life… Leon was constantly wondering when his own life would start.
Then, after Raccoon City, the special forces had taken him in. The sleeping quarters there were shared between men and women alike, in a storage building that was home in name only. In reality, it was a training center, made to keep them on their toes every second of every day, and it allowed very little room for self-expression, much less comfort. To the future agents, luxury took the form of a single bedside table. On his own, Leon’s only reminder of the outside life had been a friendship bracelet that Sherry Birkin made for him during her time in isolation. Other trainees owned more personal objects: a wedding ring here, perfumed love letters there, posters of their favorite movies and bands and comic books taped to the wall behind the bed frame. Leon’s covers were of a bare gray. Agent Pérez, who used to sleep in the bed closest to his, liked to change his sheets a different color every week; and under his pillow he used to hide a teddy bear.
Now, Leon has not moved house ever since being taken on at the D.S.O. His apartment is a large place located at the top floor of an already absurdly tall building in the busy Washington D.C. midtown. Driven by the hope of starting a future family, he had bought it as soon as he was released from the program, when his paycheck allowed him. With the years, the dream has waned, the spare rooms catching dust.
Leon had forgotten just how lonely the empty space had been until Ada showed up on his doorstep a few days later, with the clear intention of making him play real estate agent.
He stands behind her and tries really hard not to feel like his whole self is under trial for bad taste.
“It’s bright,” Ada says, her critical eye visiting the living room. “Are we facing south?”
“South-east”, he corrects. “Do you want anything?”
“South-east is doable. What do you have?”
“Beer and vodka. I can make a vodka and coke.”
“Please and thank you. Are your toilets still down the hall?”
“Nothing has moved since the last time you were here, Ada,” he replies, fishing for the coke in his almost empty fridge.
God, he doesn’t even have food. She’s got to wonder if he even lives here.
He hears the door of the toilet open, then silence, before it closes again.
“Nothing’s changed, Ada,” he calls out begrudgingly before she can say anything. He accidentally pours a little too much vodka in a tall glass and mixes the coke in with a spoon. “And my room’s still next to the bathroom, by the way.”
“I know your room,” she says, and the next second she’s at his side, accepting his awful cocktail with a smile. The sniff she gives the brown liquid makes Leon feel uneasy. “Oh. That’s rough-and-ready.”
“Shit. Well.”
“Easy, soldier. It’s nice of you.”
Leon cracks his neck and works his jaw. “I haven’t had the chance to make a cocktail in a few years, so I’m obviously gonna be rusty.”
“I said ‘easy’,” Ada replies calmly, giving the drink a sip. She makes a point to look him in the eye and there is no grimace as she swallows, nothing at all to indicate that he’s messed up in the alcohol calculation, or worse, that he hasn’t even calculated at all, even though it’s crystal clear that he has. Leon tries to relax his shoulders. “Care to show me the rest?”
The ten next minutes are allocated to the apartment tour. First he shows her the spare bedroom. It’s an empty space with bare walls and a few lonely cardboard boxes that he’s never bothered to unpack ever since he’s moved in. A broken lamp looks sad in the corner, an empty plant pot is turned upside down alongside it, and the queen size bed is disemboweled, naked wooden frames sans mattress exposing its mournful insides.
It’s an inhospitable place, Leon thinks sourly, all gray and white and soulless.
Stepping into the middle, Ada regards her surroundings with great interest.
It hits him in the chest, at that moment, that she’s the most colorful thing that his home has ever seen.
Ada nods to herself. “That’s good. Facing south-east, you said? There’ll be plenty of sun coming in through this window, so blinds will have to be bought. Wood ones would do great with the wood bed and the white walls. But this floor has got to go. I’m thinking two carpets, one under the bed and another under the vanity, that I would put here. Of course, a ceiling light would have to be installed, and a few house plants here and there would help the room breathe. It’s a large room, so there’ll be plenty of space for a closet. Now, where would I put a mirror…”
Too enthralled by her imagination, Leon takes a few seconds to understand that she’s expecting an idea from him. “I don’t know,” is his eloquent answer. “A vanity has a mirror, right?”
But her fingers are already giving a victorious snap. “Of course, the closet! Leon, picture this: a large closet here on the whole length of this wall, opposite the bed. It has sliding doors and a mirror on every one of them. Come to think of it, another carpet wouldn’t go amiss here…”
Leon pushes down on the lump of emotion that has settled in his throat.
He shows her the last bedroom, smaller than the two others but just as bare. Ada has plans for it as well, and it’s to turn it into a study. Leon doesn’t even think about asking her why she wants to remodel a second room when she doesn’t even own the place.
She already knows the kitchen, so the tour there is quick, the only comment she makes is about the empty fridge and cupboards. The underfloor heating seems to excite her when she learns about it, and the balcony in her bedroom that he’s forgotten to mention earlier brings out the smile lines at the corner of her eyes. Finally, after she’s finished her vodka and coke and Leon his beer, they sit down at the dinner table he rarely ever uses.
It feels very official, and very intimidating, when Ada slides an envelope his way.
“You are your own landlord, aren’t you?” she says after he eyes her quizzically. “This is my lease. Along with my share.”
“Ada, you don’t have to.”
“I already have to stoop so low as to ask for help, the least I can do is pay you back.”
Leon doesn’t think she’s stooped, neither does he think she should ever pay him for anything, but he also knows that this is a fight he’s already lost. He takes the envelope with the intention to give it back to her one way or another.
“This is blood money,” he comments sardonically, patting the envelope in his pocket. “I want you to know I don’t condone it.”
“And I don’t condone landlords,” Ada says with a bitten smile, “so just take the damn check.”
It ends up stashed away in a drawer in his bedroom desk. Untouched, unseen, along with his worries and his doubtsー it’s going to be fine.
He’s just helping out.
Ada moves in the week after. Her most personal belongings along with a brand new mattress are immediately stocked in the room that’s now hers. Leon doesn’t even dare enter now that he knows it’s inhabited. Two days later, as Leon comes home from work, he finds a truck parked on the sidewalk in front of his building’s main doors, as well as two movers carrying box after box to the elevator.
Ada is in front of his apartment, clipboard in hand, seriousness on her face. She lights up like a Christmas tree when she sees him lower his briefcase next to the pile of boxes on the welcome mat, and sends a warm ‘hello, handsome’ his way.
Leon doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so relaxed.
“Can I lend a hand?” is the first thing he asks.
Her nod is grateful, her eyes following him even as he disappears inside with the first box he sees, marked ‘fine china’.
Little by little, so fast Leon thinks he’s got whiplash, the movers are gone and all the boxes have been opened. Overnight, from white and gray, empty cupboards and dusty silence, the apartment is filled to the brim with so much life that Leon has trouble not stepping on it. There’s two rolled up carpets by her bedroom door, six gigantic boxes of clothes that have yet to be opened in the living room, and a myriad of tiny things laying a bit all over their place. They contrast worse than an explosion against the stark dull of Leon’s walls.
It takes them the entire Saturday morning to lay the new floor. In a dark red tee and jean overalls, Ada’s in working mode, her hair tucked behind her ears. She’s kneeling barefoot by the side of the room where they’ll set up the closet while Leon sets the floating floor on the opposite side. When he turns around, to check where she’s at, to check on her, he always finds her hammer in hand and smirk on her mouth.
“Worry about your own side,” she says at one point when his eyes linger for too long.
Her ass is round in the overalls. Her bare biceps are toned in the morning light that casts a golden glow through the window. Ada was right. It’s lacking blinds.
As his most trusted partner, of course Helena jumps on the occasion to remind him how stupid this situation is.
“This is stupid,” she reminds him. “All you’re gonna have in mind now that you guys are living together, is the fact that you’re not together. Which, by the way, why the hell not? ”
From an outsider’s perspective, she makes total sense and Leon is in fact in denial of his own feelings, which are: he has been in love with Ada for the past seventeen years and will remain in love with her until he dies. But from Leon’s own viewpoint, this can’t be more wrong. He’s not in denial. He knows that he loves her. He’s battled against his own desires before, he’s painfully lost, and he’s made peace with them. No, Leon Kennedy loves Ada Wong in the way a dove loves the sky, freely, eternally, unconditionally, and with the strong belief that there’s always a high you can’t come back from.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he replies, standing on the other side of the door they’re tasked with guarding. “It’s complicated.”
From her position on his left, Helena groans. “When isn’t it with you and her. I mean, sleeping with the enemy is one thing. But living with it?”
“Quiet,” he grunts, glaring at the patrol that walks by them. The men salute them as by protocol, and he gives a dry nod back. “We’re not sleeping together,” he retorts once they’ve disappeared around the corner.
“Oh, because living with her is so much better. I’m not saying this to be the asshole, you know, I genuinely care about the two of you. I’m the first person to tell you to chase her.” There’s a smile in her voice that disappears at her next sentence. It’s replaced by a quiver, hidden but obvious to those who know her: “But for the love of God, there’s a line there. A deadly one. I can’t have either of you die, Leon.”
There’s a shadow on Helena’s face when he turns his head to look at her. It’s made out of shattered vows and deathless shames. He’s known what she’s known far too well.
“Easy, soldier,” he softly echoes in a joking tone. He hopes the smile he gives can wipe the shadows off of her face, even just a little. “I’m protecting her. It’s what I’ve been doing best all this time. It’s almost tradition.”
Helena shakes her head. “But why? It’s like showing a dog a bone and never actually giving it the bone, why do this to yourself? It’s so… needlessly cruel.”
Leon turns away from her and stares into the deep hall that stretches in front of them. They’re guarding a crossroad, and in the back of his head he senses the great irony of that.
“I know what it’s like to love and be loved,” he says, “but I’ve never had to live and love at the same time.”
Helena sighs. “Jesus, Kennedy.”
“No, it’s true.” His shrug is meant to be evasive, but his own jaw betrays him. “Fighting monsters with her was easy. Hell, sleeping with her was easy. Living with her’s something else.” He swallows. “Helena, I don’t think I know how to do everything at the same time, and the last thing I want is to fuck it all up while trying.”
Helena’s brown eyes dig a hole on the side of his cheek. “So… Your mind’s made up. You’re really gonna go through with it.”
He appreciates that she doesn’t try to console him. Helena’s always been shit at sympathy and the last thing he needs is an half-assed attempt at being Claire Redfield. If Claire knew what he was up to, she’d probably beat his ass back to healthy life choices; but Helena’s got the betrayal of the United States President on her curriculum vitae.
“I am,” is his confident reply.
Leaving him to breathe in his regrets, her eyes leave his temple.
“Okay,” she says, brows furrowed in concentration. “Then we better come up with a plan.”
He only has the time to open his mouth with the objective to throw her a clever quip, but what leaves his mouth is an unintelligible “huh?” before two knocks rap on the door behind them. Muscle memory forces his spine to lengthen as the Secretary of the Interior leaves the room, flanked by his flock of advisors. All it takes is a brisk twist of the heel for the two agents to follow suit.
Today’s assignment is so formidably boring that it makes Leon miss desk duty. Thankfully, there is no time for boredom when agent Harper has her canines biting down on a juicy steak. Unfortunately, the juicy steak is currently Leon’s comedy of a life choice.
As they tail the Secretary in their assigned black SUV, Helena drums on the wheel and reveals what she’s been using those brain cells for.
“Let’s say you guys live together for a year. It’s a year, right?”
“It’s a year,” Leon nods, as tense as he is focused. “At least that’s what she told me.”
“So much can happen during a year, but okay,” Helena sighs. “You live together for a year, which means the things you thought were only yours are now split 50/50 with her. Food, shower, sleep habits, whether or not you take a trip around your place in the nude… everything you’re used to doing on your own, she’ll see it, she’ll witness it, she’ll have to bear through it, and vice versa. Your intention is to keep things professional, right? Avoid intimacy?” Leon nods again. “Then there’s gotta be a master planー there’s gotta be rules.”
“Rules, huh?” he parrots with a scoff. “That’s basically my life’s story.”
“And yet here you are giving yourself more stupid rules because of a stupid made-up mindset,” Helena barks back. “You want my help, agent Kennedy? Or you wanna face your fears?”
“I need your help,” concedes Leon, whose number one most hated activity is therapy. “You’re the best drinking buddy out there and I wouldn’t trade you for anything.”
“Damn right.” Helena’s hands go back to drumming on the steering wheel as she falls into an intense reflection. “First rule, don’t flirt with her.”
“I don’t flirt with her, she flirts with me,” is Leon’s immediate answer.
Helena tsks. “Then don’t answer to her flirting, goddamnit! Have some self control! Jot that down. No flirting, no responding to flirting, and no looking .”
Rolling his eyes, Leon yields and pulls out the tiny notebook that he always keeps in the inner pocket of his suit. One day, he’ll really need to have a word with the Fates about why his path always leads him to such bossy ladies.
“She wants it,” he casually mumbles while scribbling on the paper.
Helena’s head snaps to him so fast he suddenly fears that she’s going to take his title of worst driver in D.C. and run an innocent pedestrian over.
“Say that again?”
“Not in that wayー Helena, watch the damn road!” The wheels screech and smoke when the vehicle gets back on the right lane. After throwing a glance to the Minister’s car ahead, they can conclude that its occupants remain perfectly oblivious. Leon returns to his scribbling with the exasperated habit of one who is used to such drama. “There’s a specific look that she has,” he adds without managing to erase the regret from his tone. “A look that says she knows what she’s doing. You know, she almost put her ass to my face once.”
“I didn’t know that,” admits Helena. She scrunches up her nose. “But I’ve seen enough eye fucking to get a good idea as to how she acts when it’s only you two. Which brings us to our most important rule: no sex.”
Pen in hand, Leon pauses. The misery that is reflected back to him when he catches a glimpse of his eye in the side mirror makes him feel sorry for himself.
“We haven’t had sex in years anyway,” he says.
Helena looks surprised at this. “What? Why?”
“I couldn’t bear it anymore.”
“Having sex with her? It couldn’t have been that bad, could it?”
“No. I just couldn’t bear not being with her.”
“So… hold on. You couldn’t bear not being with her, so you stopped sleeping with her, and now that you’re with her, you can’t sleep with her?”
“Whー you’re the one who made up the no sex ruleー and we’re not fucking together, Helena!”
“Clearly you’re not!”
Leon smacks the notebook closed and sinks into the leather seat. “Telling you was a mistake.”
“Yes,” she says smugly, “which brings us to another rule: don’t tell her you love her.”
If Leon could disappear into the seat, he would. “She knows.”
“Of course she knows, it’s plastered all over your face. Which is what you’ve gotta stop doing.”
Leon’s brows furrow. In his head, he twists and turns the moments in Helena’s presence where he could have physically shown his attraction to Ada. There couldn’t have been many, could there? He’d tried to keep it quiet as they were fighting Helena’s transformed sister. Perhaps she’d seen it earlier, given his reaction to the video tape? Or perhaps it had been after, in Langshiang, as they fought a mutated Simmons together? He knows he wears his heart on his sleeve, alright, but his heart on his face is a bit much!
But now, come to think, it might’ve been the tape that had alerted Helena. He’s never managed to roll his tongue back into his mouth quickly enough when it comes to Ada’s naked form.
“What the hell?”
Leon flinches back into action, checking the windows and mirrors for whatever’s made Helena shout. The Secretary's car is still safely driving in front of them. No signs of pursuers in the rearview either. He snaps his head back to Helena with adrenaline in his system.
“What again?”
“You,” Helena yells disbelievingly. “You need to take that off your face!”
“Take what off?”
“That! You’ve got these… eyes.”
“That’s such a clever observation, agent Harper,” Leon says. “I’ve got eyes. I hope it’s just the right amount, otherwise it’s concerning.”
“Ah ah,” Helena chides, barely cracking a smile. “You know what I’m talking about. That loverboy thing you’ve got going on, it’s gotta go if you wanna stick to the plan.”
“What can I say, it’s in the genes,” Leon says wryly, slowly reappearing from the depths of the seat, “love is the original Kennedy flaw.”
“Whatever that means,” Helena says, unrelenting. “Wait, where were we at?”
“No sex,” Leon croaks out as though they’re his last words before the gallows.
She seems strangely pleased. “I won’t be alone in my forced celibacy, then, that’s good to know.”
“One day I’ll match you with a woman as impossible as you are, that’s a promise.”
“Good luck finding her. I amend my rule, anyway. You’re not forbidden from having sex, you just can’t have sex with Ada.”
His stomach flipping as though their car is swerving into the nearest tree, Leon stares blankly at the road.
“What,” he honks.
“Those genes you were talking about? Use them. Go out. Live a little. Bang the frustration out. I’ve witnessed you flirt with others and I’ve personally been a victim of it once, so I know you’ve got it in you.”
“What. I was bored.”
“You were bored.”
“People have habits,” he reasons with an infallible logic, “some like to golf and others like picnics, much good may it do them. I prefer to drown out the voices in whiskey and charm.”
True to her dubious morals, Helena points an excited finger at him. “Exactly! Do that. Sleep with multiple women if it helps. Anything to get you to stop crying over her.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“Your hair still hasn’t recovered from the black dye.”
“It’s already back to normal!”
“That’s denial! It’s never been the same and you know it.”
Defeated, Leon glares at his reflection in the side mirror and silently asks God why He made him a blonde.
“Next,” he groans out.
“Well… I don’t know.” Helena makes a left after the Secretary’s car. “What’s already happened on the field that you’d consider off limits?”
Everything, he thinks. Ada’s mere existence is off limits. Whether she shakes her ass at his face or riddles Saddler with bullets, the simple fact that they’re sharing the same breath is an act of treason.
Treason has always tasted sweet.
“No talking about work,” he lets out half-heartedly. “Because if we do, then I’ll remember we’re working for different teams, and that no matter what I’ll still be cheering for mine to win. Well,” he adds in an afterthought that’s muttered in his collar, “mostly.”
“That’s a ground rule,” assents Helena with a grave nod. “To be honest, Leon, I don’t know how you haven’t cut ties the moment you realized she was working for the wrong people. You’re a stronger person than I am.”
“Believe me,” Leon says bitterly, “I tried. Turns out the heart wants what the heart wants. It doesn’t mean I don’t care what she does anymore, it just means that I understand why she does it.”
“Fair enough. In conclusion: no flirting, no being flirted with, no looking…”
“No sex,” Leon adds, flipping to a blank page of the notebook with gritted teeth.
“No sex, no love confession, and no talking about work. Am I missing anything here?”
He pushes the pen against the paper dejectedly. “I’m guessing any kind of petting is a given.”
“Isn’t that in the flirting section?”
“Could be. Do you count kissing as flirting?”
“Do you kiss without flirting, agent Kennedy?”
“That’s classified.”
Helena laughs.
“I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to be your partner through hell and back, but I really don’t think you’re gonna survive this one.”
In the back of his head, the defeated voice agrees; but Leon’s already in way too deep to start listening to it now. So, instead, he squares his shoulders, puts on an indifferent face, and goes with the plan.
“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“You know I’ve got your back.”
Ada’s room is finally finished at the end of the month. February knocks coldly, distributing freeze and sparse rain whenever Leon dares to open the window to aerate the apartment. With Ada's presence has come the unknown feeling of embarrassment, and the last thing he needs is her look of judgment if he so happens to cook something that smells bad, or if he happens to smell bad himself. Leon vacuums, wipes the floor and the counters, and dusts their shared space more than he ever did in the last ten years combined.
The embarrassment is nothing more than a ghost whispering at the back of his head, because Ada doesn’t look at him oddly a single time. It’s only once, when he’s busy wiping wet plates in the kitchen, that she hides her smile as she goes to fetch a glass. But other than that, there is not a one comment from her.
“It’s nice,” is the actual first thing she says about it, one evening where they’re unusually both in the apartment at the same time.
Sat on the couch, Leon looks up from his work notes. Ada is standing in the warm light of the floor lamp. His breath catches in his throat when he takes in the night shorts and the simple tank top, and he looks down when the bareness of her face, devoid of makeup, surprises him enough for it to burn. Below, barefoot, she wriggles her toes on the floor.
“You weren’t kidding about the underfloor heating.”
Leon has an amused chuckle. “So you finally discovered the best thing about living here.”
“I’m starting to take a liking to this place, indeed,” Ada says softly. “The only downside is the number of floors. A full minute is a long time in the elevator, and there isn’t even music to keep me busy.”
“You can always come in through the window,” he replies. She tilts her head to the side questioningly, and he doesn’t know why, but he forces himself to add, a little bit bitterly, a little bit homesick: “It hasn’t stopped you before.”
While looking at him in the eye, she lowers to his height, arm brushing against his, grabs the glass of whiskey he’s poured himself and downs it in one go. A single touch, a long stare, a hard taunt shouldn’t be so damn exhilarating. But they are. Leon holds the gaze and closes his hand in a fist near his thigh.
“I live here now,” she says with no palpable emotion. Her lips purse around the taste. They’re still a little pink from the stain of the lipstick she wore during the day. “There’s no reason to act like a robber anymore.”
“Touché,” he says, low, as she puts the glass down right where it was. “I’m… glad you appreciate the floor heating.”
The tension in the air dissipates, and Ada starts to smile again. “As well as the live-in maid. I had no idea you were so compulsive about cleaning.”
“I’m not,” Leon says defensively.
“What gives? Is my presence forcing you to do double the work?”
“That’s my way to apologize for being a shit landlord,” he tries.
Her smile widens. “You’re cute. Don’t worry, you’ve been doing a good job so far. Actually…” Ada sits on the couch at his side, the space between them kept comfortably large, and the rules that remain at the back of Leon’s head cheer silently while he mopes mournfully. “I should be the one doing the most around here. Tell me, what chores do you hate?”
Dumbfounded, Leon stares at her blankly for what seems like minutes. He’s in his home, in his element, yet is so in over his head; while she’s in his home, out of her element, yet he’s never seen her more at ease. Some part of him, the part that has seen the real her through her many masks all the way back in Raccoon City, jubilates. The other part, the one that’s been growing over his skin and that’s shielded his heart from more aches, blares a code red. Surely it has to be a trick, because why else would Ada play nice?
Leon licks his lips, and as he looks down to his notebook to think, he misses the nanosecond it takes for Ada’s eyes to venture to his mouth.
“I don’t mind,” she pushes on. “Really.”
“The laundry, then,” Leon says, defeated but also exultant. He looks back to her, shaking his head with a stunned smile. “If I were in charge of banning chores, it’d be the laundry.”
Ada raises high a pleased brow. “Well, that explains the many creases in your shirts.”
“Yeah, the ironing too. Does nothing get past your keen senses?”
“Nothing,” Ada replies smugly. “Alright. I’ll do the laundry. But don’t expect me to pick up your dirty underwear, just put it in the hamper where it belongs. And I’ll take it from there.”
As she gets up, Leon has the urge to stop her from leaving again. Which is impossible, because she isn’t leaving. After all, this is her home now.
“It was one time, Ada,” he calls out, “you know I’m a quick learner.”
She twirls around with the grace of a ballerina and the pretension of a prima. “I know. Be prepared to hide your silly boxers, Leon, because I’m going to see everything.”
“Oh, come on,” he complains as he bites down his own growing smirk, “at least I have trunks. Some crazy bastard is probably walking in the street right now, dick out in his pants. You should be thankful I’m not that guy.”
He is taunted by Ada’s shorts when she crosses the threshold to the hall. “You have no idea what you unleashed when you gave me this chore. Oh, well. Your funeral.”
“It takes more than that to do me in,” he says, and her eyes flash him sparks of knowing mischief before she’s disappearing in the hallway to her room. “Hey. Have a good night?”
“Good night, Leon,” he hears above her chuckle, and then a door closes, and he is alone again, feeling desperate, frustrated, and happy all the same.
It’s not often that they have evenings like this. As per his obligations, Leon routinely has to spend the entire day if not the whole night at work. She is not usually here when he comes home to throw his legs on the coffee table and pop open a beer, and if she is, her door is always closed, and he never goes inside. He has too much respect for her to rummage through her privacy. That, and he’s scared that he wouldn’t like what he would find.
Sometimes, in the mornings, it’s rare, but they cross paths in the bathroom. Something magical happens then. She’s in her tank top, he’s in his pajama pants, and their reflections stand side by side in the mirror as they brush their teeth together. When she smiles, the blue foam in her mouth makes bubbles. It makes Leon laugh. He always smiles back, watching as she ducks her head to spit, watching as she wipes on her towel and watching as she leaves.
No looking is evidently one of the many rules. But there’s no universe in which he and Ada exist alongside each other where he won’t follow and try to figure out what she’s up to. Leon just can’t not look when she’s the closest she’s ever been, especially when she’s the furthest he could ever reach.
At least when they weren’t living together, their reunions were always passionate. He doesn’t even have anyone but himself to blame for that now.
This opinion is apparently not shared.
One morning, Leon is forced out of his slumber by the deafening noise of curtains being pulled open and by the blinding glare of the morning sun. The cause of such a betrayal stands confidently in front of the cruel windows, and even if Leon can barely make out the shape of her body under the tears (blue eyes be damned!), he knows that he has an excellent view of Ada’s cleavage when she leans forward to gently shake his shoulder.
“Rise and shine, handsome. That’s enough beauty sleep for your already pretty face.”
Leon is not a morning person. He finds himself perfectly within his rights to shield his eyes with his forearm and let out the loudest groan imaginable.
“It’s my off day...”
“Exactly,” she says. “Up.”
His arm is pulled away from his face and he groans again before finally popping open one eye and instantly being faced with Ada’s neckline.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“I said: up. We have places to be.”
“...hell does that mean?”
His arm is dropped. It lazily bounces on the sheets.
“I need you in the living room in thirty. It should be more than enough time to style your hair.”
On that, Ada escapes the way she came, and Leon is left to squint at the sun and panic about his cowlicks until he rolls out of bed to go check for himself.
In the end, it’s salvageable. He wets it a little just to straighten it and brushes where it’s curling at the back of his neck. His stubble is starting to come together in a short beard, and he runs his hands through it before deciding that thirty minutes is time better spent eating a big breakfast than shaving.
He finds Ada in the kitchen, humming along to a tune on the radio. The smell of hot bread is in the air. Peanut butter, jelly and bacon are already waiting on the dinner table, and the roar of the coffee machine promises some more miracles. Right on cue, Leon’s stomach growls.
Ada turns around with hot toast stacked on one of the fine china plates she’d brought with her arrival. “Leon! Looking sharp.”
He dumbly looks down at himself. He’s grabbed the first things he found in his drawers: blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, so he really doubts that he’s at his peak here. Ada, on the other hand, is as usual dressed to kill in leather pants, a leather jacket and a red turtleneck. The boob window continues to stare at Leon right in the face when she brushes past him to put the plate on the table, and he tries not to stagger when she sits.
They look at each other for a moment. Strangely, it seems to make Ada self-conscious. She swallows a bit too thickly and her eyes avert his once or twice.
“I made breakfast,” she finally says.
“I can see that,” Leon replies. He takes a hesitant step forward and frowns at the table. “Why did you make breakfast?”
“Take a seat,” is all she says in response.
Leon quits frowning at the table to frown at her instead. “What did you do?”
Ada scoffs. “Don’t be so paranoid. I can do nice things.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to?”
“That a question?”
“I want to,” she corrects exasperatedly, “now would you please take a seat.”
Leon complies, not without losing the frown. Ada gleefully grabs a piece of toast and spreads a great amount of jelly on it.
“We’re on a schedule,” she says out of nowhere. “There’s a grocery run to complete before noon, and after that I want to check out this sandwich shop that just opened.”
Leon comforts himself in the knowledge that there’s bound to be things he’ll never understand about her.
“You wanna go grocery shopping together?”
“Sure,” she says, and she hands him her toast that he takes mechanically. “I’ll get the coffee.”
Leon doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the coffee is burnt when she pours him a cup, neither can he tell her that he doesn’t like peach jelly. She looks simply too happy with her own plan.
“Aren’t you on the run?” he asks while soaking Ada’s toast in the coffee and trying a bite一 huge mistake, as it turns out that adding two bad things together doesn’t equal zero. “Yuck.”
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m good,” Leon quickly says, almost tearing up. “It’s just… it’s nice of you to… uh. Breakfast.” He picks up the wet bread with two fingers and tries to shake out the coffee on the plate, then grunts out: “A toast to a beautiful day, am I right?”
“You’re welcome,” Ada says warmly. “To answer your question… yes, I am on the run. But it would take a great amount of bad luck to be found here. As far as my opposants know, I’m fighting my way through the jungles of Cameroon.”
“What are you doing in Cameroon?”
She stops and stares at him. “Leon. I am not in Cameroon.”
“Geez, I could’ve sworn you were in Cameroon. I’m talking hypothetically. What would you do in Cameroon?”
“It’s a cover. They can believe in whatever they want to believe, I am not in Cameroon. I have nothing to do in Cameroon. I’ve never been in Cameroon.”
“I have.” He dips his toast in the coffee again and instantly regrets it, but still continues to eat out of politeness. “Only for a few hours, though. My plane made a stop there, they needed my expertise to confirm the Alomar report.”
That is the wrong thing to say.
Ada’s face becomes a mask of impassibility. “You mean, to confirm Albert Wesker’s death.”
No talking about work , remember? comes Helena’s voice, gritty and irritating and thus in spite of his affection for her. For a second, he entertains the idea of mentally flipping the bird to the rules, before the reality of doing such a thing reaches inside his veins and makes his blood freeze.
Leon drops the burnt toast into the burnt coffee.
“Goddamnit. Fuck. How’d you sleep?”
The whiplash makes Ada look him up and down in confusion. “I… slept well. Thank you.”
“Me too. What do you…” He struggles soundlessly, fingers wet and brown from fishing out the toast that is now disgustingly soggy. He regrets his entire life in a matter of seconds. And Ada is absolutely no help at all. She watches him with curiosity, her head tilted to the side like a cat looks at a future prey. He feels bitten. He feels twenty-one.
“What do you have in mind for the groceries?” Leon finally settles on saying after a long back and forth with himself. No, he isn’t twenty-one with a crush, no, he isn’t twenty-eight with a hook-up, and no, he isn’t thirty-four in an illegal situationship with a lawless mercenary.
“I actually left that part to you,” Ada replies softly. “I figured that you’d take pleasure in leading.”
I’m thirty-nine with a roommate who also happens to be my ex who also happens to be an enemy of the state, he thinks with so much bitterness that there’s no way Ada can’t taste it in the undertones of her own coffee.
A list is made. It’s split into two: musts on one side, little treats on the other. Ada watches intently over his shoulder as he fills it in his notebook, putting in her two pennies when she feels like he’s missing something. Leon’s got to give it to her, she has ideas.
Very expensive ideas, because where exactly is he supposed to find Beluga caviar and also where does it come in the recipe for the spinach pie?
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Ada replies cryptically before abandoning him at the supermarket’s poultry aisle.
Leon finds her a few minutes later, enthralled by jewelry. He stills the cart in the middle of the path.
Here, in the incredible normalcy of the ordinary store, she shines sublime. It’s not really because of her attire, too fashionable for the everyday, nor is it because of her posture, all elegance and grace; amid the common folk who only look to see to their shopping, Ada’s body could easily be an object of attention. But the shine persists independently from her carefully-carved silhouette. It’d be the same if she was wearing rags, he thinks, because Ada remains Ada no matter how she presents herself. But here… it’s not exactly Ada he sees, or at least, not the way he’s ever seen her.
As she puts her hand on the glass case and leans in in front of a necklace, Leon wonders what’s different. It hits him then, when the harsh white lights of the store illuminate her face and bring out her smile lines, yet do nothing to erase her glow of gold: it’s happiness.
Happiness.
Happiness.
That’s the shine. The splendid shine that the mundane is too wowed to graze. But that’s not exactly it, is it. She doesn’t glow in spite of the mundane. It’s because of the mundane that she glows.
It takes a loud complaint from an annoyed elderly for Leon to apologize and move out of the way; but the harm has been done, and Ada sees Leon, and while the magic of the moment is broken, the glow refuses to go. She brushes past him to drop in the cart the detergent that she’s been holding.
“Let’s move,” she says briskly. “I don’t have any shampoo left.”
Behind her back, Leon buys the necklace. It’s gold, with a tiny sapphire jewel that hangs like a droplet.
The sandwich shop that Ada has had her eye on is nothing more than a high-end bakery that thinks it’s revolutionized the industry. They both agree to the conceitedness of the concept while munching on the baguette bread.
“I’ve eaten better in France.”
“Actually, me too. You think the owner’s really European?”
“Twice removed, maybe,” Ada says with a judging brow, “because this has nothing of the crunch of Eric Kayser’s bread.”
“Who?”
“Eric Kayser,” she repeats helpfully as though Leon can read her thoughts. She sinks her teeth in the sandwich, munches for a few seconds with a critical pout. “He’s a French baker.”
“Ada, I don’t think we’re on the same level of culture here.”
Swallowing her smile, she throws a glare at the insides of her sandwich. “These imbeciles didn’t even add onion.”
Leon can’t help himself. Ada’s own voice comes out of him, higher-pitched and mocking: “These imbeciles didn’t even add onion.”
Affronted, Ada puts the sandwich down on their table. “Really. That’s how it is?”
His struggle against a laugh is fruitless. “I needed you to get off your high horse. I mean, come on . It’s onion.”
“It’s my taste buds, my sandwich,” she fights back like she loves it. “How about you don’t police what I want in my food.”
“Okay, how about this: onion is overrated.”
“No, onion is undervalued.”
“I’m gonna need you to provide proof.”
“The proof is that I don’t have onion in my sandwich, and it’s a known fact that only a madmanー or worse, a bad chef, would forget to add onion in a tomato and salad sandwich. Have you ever had onion pie? You would understand me if you have.”
“It sounds terrible for the intestine,” he replies, deadpan.
Ada looks at him exasperatedly with a hint of fondness. “Leon, are you trying to make a fart joke?”
“I didn’t even have to try to have you say ‘fart’.”
Behind a napkin, Leon conceals the fact that he loves it and that he loves her.
Oh, shit.
That thought, which came as easy as breathing, brings the icy terror back in his veins.
“God,” Ada mumbles, unaware of his mental struggle as she dramatically brings her hands and her sandwich to her forehead. “I can’t believe that I’ve forgotten how immature men can be.”
Leon swallows. He’s got to find something, quick.
“Not true,” he replies. “I mean, men, sure. But me, I think I’ve done some growing, over the years. I’m not… for one, I’m not afraid of asking the awkward questions.”
Ada opens a careful eye behind her food. “That you haven’t. You’re basically a factory of intruding questions.”
“Right,” he says, looking at her, her shine, her joy: “like why bother inviting me out today instead of just exchanging hellos in the hallway like we always do?”
The shine fades. Her smile drops. Her nostrils flare, but it’s not out of anger or exasperation; it’s a sigh she’s holding back. As though she’s disappointed.
Underneath the bravado, Leon’s undying empathy is horrified by the way he treats her unusual kindness; still the question has been forced out, whether he likes it or not.
“Can’t I just want to get to know my roommate?” says Ada dejectedly.
Leon tries to force the guilt out of his voice. “I like to think we already know each other, what else is there to know.”
“Really?” Her scoff breaks his heart. “You don’t think we should have plans together?”
There is a plan, Leon doesn’t say, but the plan involves you staying out of it. He feels like the biggest asshole.
“I didn’t say that,” he rectifies carefully, but firmly. “I’m just saying that I’m tired of being used, and that after all this time, I’m owed some answers. Like for one thing: why today?”
The sandwich is released from Ada’s grip. Under the table, her legs cross, and in front of Leon, her spine straightens, her chin raising with fake pride. She stares at him for a moment, her black gaze darting from eye to eye, her lips pursed into a thin line; the déjà-vu is striking. It’s what she used to do when she felt like she was losing control.
Her skin may have turned into iron, but her next words are as honest as water.
“Truth is, I felt bad. You were working long hours until late at night and I was caught up in my own situation. Using you and your home as a mere springboard is unkind. I thought of a way to pay you back other than the rent I owe you, and… I came up with today. That, and,” she picks at a bit of salad in her sandwich, “I’ve missed you.”
It’s not fair, he thinks. How bare she can suddenly be when his only choice is to bury himself alive.
To reestablish the distance between them, Leon tries one last thing.
“We live together. You can’t miss me.”
Her black eyes impossibly sad, Ada shakes her head, and the truth is so obvious that it doesn’t need repeating.
So, what does Leon do?
He finishes his sandwich, thanks her for this morning, and sticks to the plan.
When they each go their own way, Ada doesn’t stop him.
It takes them a day to fall back into old habits; Leon working later and later, Ada skipping town to wherever it is she goes. However, it also takes Ada less than a week to decide on a mandatory “roommate night”, as she calls it. A complete 180° like this would be odd in a different context, because the red spy is not usually one to forgive and forget, but here, Leon chalks it up to Ada wanting their relations to remain at least cordial if they really are to live together for ten more months. He can’t say he disagrees. After all, it’s simple logic. A good home atmosphere equals an equally good work atmosphere.
The fear may hold him back from apologizing, but Ada’s absence in the mirror, blue toothpaste slipping past her lips with her smile, has been excruciating.
He hears her bare feet shuffling his way and drowns the butterflies of his stomach into the cooking pot.
“You have video tapes and no video tape player,” Ada states as though not a day has gone by. He’s grateful for that.
Leon simply stares at the Die Hard cassette in her hand and adds more salt in tonight’s soup. With a little bit of luck, she won’t notice the contained smirk that threatens to overtake his lips.
“Yeah, it broke three years ago.”
“How have you been watching movies? I don’t see a disk player anywhere.”
“I… I haven’t,” Leon admits sheepishly. “No time for it anyways.”
Ada grins devilishly. “So, you’re a piracy virgin, then. Lucky me.”
Because he’s got the reputation of an ex-cop to maintain, Leon tries to persuade her against it, without managing to completely erase his interest. None of his half-assed complaints can stop her from showing off the hard drive on which she’s been saving a full library of films. She scrolls proudly through it, biting on her lower lip with a cocky eye. She makes it look so easy, she makes it look so right, to be on the wrong side of history. Leon can’t look away.
Screw you, Helena. And screw that one rule in particular. Like it was going to work, anyways.
That’s how Leon and Ada end up falling into a routine every Friday night.
“All you know are buddy-cop films,” she says as she walks over to the couch, her arms carrying at least three heavy blankets that she unceremoniously drops on his lap. “While some are good… there is a big hole in your cinematographic culture that we need to fill. And you’ll need plenty of filling.”
Ignoring the innuendo otherwise he might just try to slip his hand under her skirt, Leon throws his head back with a groan. “I don’t want anything serious. Don’t make me watch anything serious.”
“Pity, I was thinking of Se7en.”
“I think I’ve heard of it. Seven?”
“Se7en. With a 7.”
“I’m just hearing the same word twice here, and no amount of tone change is gonna change that.”
“Smartass.” His thigh is gently punched. He pretends that her hand didn’t brush against his crotch. “It’s a buddy-cop movie.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Kind of.” When she takes her hand back to the laptop, Leon immediately misses her warmth. “If you want it to be.”
“Ada. What’s it about.”
“A few murders here and there, nothing too dramatic. I promise it’s good.”
“I don’t trust you, I don’t trust this, I don’t wanna watch Seven.”
“Se7en.”
“What I said. I wanna watch… shit. I wanna go to bed with sleeping pills in my bloodstream.”
“Is it the piracy that bothers you?”
He rolls his eyes at the paint on the ceiling. “If the piracy bothered me, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Correct.”
Ada looks the smuggest she’s ever looked when she plugs the HDMI cable into the TV. He tries not to think about how it makes him feel when she buries herself under the blankets, her black hair and her black eyes the only thing visible. In another time, she would have let her head fall against his shoulder and peppered his neck with kisses. She would have squeezed him tight. His head would have fallen on her thighs, and her long slim fingers would have brushed the hair out of his face, with the kind of delicacy and care that she reserves for him only.
Leon thinks about the was and the maybes as the space between their bodies neither grows nor shrinks. He thinks about a universe in which he and Ada can live normal lives with normal jobs. A universe in which she can love him for more than one tireless night; a universe in which she remains at his side when he rouses. Leon is so scared of waking up alone.
On the screen, Brad Pitt discovers the body of the last of John Doe’s victims. Leon can’t erase the content look on Ada’s face from his mind in spite of the gruesome scenario.
“Pitt looks like you,” she suddenly says, unprompted.
Leon squints at the actor who’s currently ugly sobbing on screen. “You mean I’m the handsome version.”
“Of course,” she replies contentedly. “You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.”
Leon, for one, wouldn’t let his pregnant wife die the way she does at the end of the film. Sucks to be Brad, really.
When the credits roll, Ada kisses his cheek before bringing her three blankets back to her room.
“Same time next week,” she tells him. When he looks up after recovering from the burn, the hint of an ass cheek under her short skirt flashes him playfully. “It’ll be a lighter movie then.”
Her absence leaves him cold and hot at the same time.
Like most of the time.
Though, more often than not, Ada leaves Leon hot.
He tries, alright? But it isn’t like it’s easy to pretend to not be attracted to her. Ultimately, it’s for both their sake, he tells himself. Because deep down, he can’t shake off the feeling that she would never want the same white-picket-fence life he’s longed for as an impressionable kid. Not to say that he does want that kind of life now. If the world had been in a better place, and if he’d been a better person, perhaps the American dream would still be his goal. However, in the world they live in, Leon thinks that the only way he can know true peace is by living as ordinarily as possible.
Perhaps that’s why he sees the mundane suiting Ada so well. He knows what she looks like in a life or death situation, her ins and her outs, her strengths as well as her weaknesses. He knows her to be deadly with a sniper as well as he fears the spring of her leg.
They’d learned each other’s quirks during baptisms of fire and blood, but never as old pop rock plays on the radio.
Around Ada, every day is a discovery. Exhibit number one: Leon had no idea how well she danced.
A glass of wine in her hand, Ada’s free hand swirls above her head, her fingers twisting and turning in a complicated choreography. Her back faces Leon from her spot in the common room. By all accounts, Ada hasn’t noticed his presence. Yet…
“Leon!” she calls out without even bothering to turn. Hypnotic, her hips sway with the rhythm. “How was your day?”
It has to be a radar she stuck on him one day, hasn’t it? She must have done it in his sleep years ago. That would explain how she always knows where he is, how he feels, what he thinks. That, or it’s another thing that Leon doesn’t dare define.
His throat is dry. It’s due to a miracle that he manages to clear it.
“Fine,” he replies, a little strangled. “Had a little hiccup at work, but it’s nothing that couldn’t be handled.”
She turns around then, shining a bright grin to him. “I’d love to hear more.”
An impossible smile pulls at Leon’s lips. With his foot, he pushes his briefcase against the coat rack in the entry and unbuttons his jacket, lets it hang.
“That The Turtles?” he asks, stepping closer to the radio. “Oh, yeah. That’s some fine tune you found us.”
Ada’s eyes brighten. “Come here, you connoisseur.”
How to resist her when she stretches a hand out to him? She’s wearing her favorite pajamas, the one with the short shorts and the tank top, and once more Leon blesses his underfloor heating that allows her to swivel barefoot in his living room. There’s nothing quite like seeing Ada in her barest self.
She wraps her arm around his neck while taking a sip of her wine. Leon can’t help but move his hips in parallel to hers. From up close, he can see every pore of her face, every bit of makeup badly wiped off. The red stain on her lips. That eyeliner wing that hides in her crease. One of her brows is more filled than the other, and, tentatively, Leon licks his thumb to carefully brush away the brown paint.
Dark and wide, Ada’s eyes settle on his. He doesn’t avoid them. He keeps looking even as he slowly wipes his thumb on his shirt. There’s just so much to seek within her. Questions, once upon a time, so many that would never get an answer. But most recently, Leon just looks for the sake of looking. Out of curiosity. Out of necessity. Because he wants to.
It's one of the rules that he believes is the most safe to cross out.
“So?” Ada asks. She who cannot be read reads him like a book. “You were about to tell me about the big bad you fought today.”
Leon chuckles and places his hand in the crease above her hip. “A monster like no other. Thievery.”
“Mmmh,” Ada says with a pout, glancing back at the wine glass that she holds behind his shoulder. “Quality work for the D.S.O.’s best agent.”
“Believe it or not, it was related to bioterrorism. Though I admit, it was on a smaller scale. I can’t complain about tiny cases.”
Ada brings the wine to her lips. “What was stolen?” she asks casually, taking a sip.
Her cheeks are slightly pink. It heats up Leon’s core, to know that she’s comfortable enough with him to get tipsy in his presence. It wasn’t long ago that he’d have never dreamed of seeing her out of control. Maybe she’s not so unreadable after all.
He holds her tighter to let her know he’s got her, and sways side to side along Happy Together’s chorus.
“Some papers from a Senator,” he replies, feeling her leaning into his touch. “The man kinda had it coming, he wasn’t even supposed to own those papers in the first place. Remember Langshiang?”
“How can I not?” she chimes in, smirking into her glass.
He nods. “Yeah. Well, the Senator had the list of all the Langshiang survivors, which was supposed to be in the hands of the B.S.A.A.ー anyway, someone raided his house and found them, and now the Senator’s facing charges for omission and theft.” He shakes his head. “I can’t say I feel sorry for the guy. Man’s an idiot anyway.”
“Mmmh,” Ada says again while retracting from the glass, her lip trapped between her front teeth. The gaze she sends him almost propulses him to his knees. “I like it when you’re being judgy.”
Leon swallows and bites his smile. “Call me a bitch, why don’t you.”
“Sure,” she says without skipping a beat and leans in, close enough that he can smell the wine on her mouth: “Leon Scott Kennedy, you’re a bitch.”
The snort that escapes him is inhuman. He has to let go of her hip to wipe his nose. “Jesus fuck, Adaー”
Her grin shines mightily. “Someone needed to get you off your high horse,” she comments simply, and Leon has another snort strengthened by her pettiness. God, she’s good.
He watches as her eyes become suddenly softer. He’s about to worry, blame it on the wine, the tardiness, hell, even his daily dryness; he knows how mean he can become when he pretends unattachment.
“I hope you’ll catch the criminal,” she says, instead of anything else he thought she’d say.
That catches him off guard. He regards her for a few seconds, searches for truth and lies, openness and masks. Any of the two would ease him right about now.
The binary is something Leon basks in. The white and the black have always been the easiest colors to paint, and it’s no wonder why they’re the ones that cover most of his home’s walls. So when a little red seeps in, along with uncertainty, along with maybes instead of the rare yes and the usual no… Leon doesn’t know where to put himself.
“Me too,” he answers then. “It’s only a matter of time.”
On the radio, Happy Together gives way to The Chain, and with it comes Leon’s new escape.
“You ever danced to Fleetwood Mac?”
Her reply is quick and witty. “You ever danced at all?”
“You know I have.”
“Not that kind of dancing, Mister Cool.” She gracefully detaches herself from him to put her glass down on the coffee table. “That kind of dancing.”
He expects her to come back into his arms, but instead she does something that he thought he’d never see her do. Ada, calculated spy, canny merc, professional assassin, starts to bounce.
The sheer absurdity of the sight acts as a literal gut punch. Ada’s hair has a life of its own. When she lands to her feet, her head bopping with the beat, it skips on the tip of her shoulders and hides her eyes for a short second, leaving her grinning mouth bare for the world to see. But when she jumps back up, twirling on herself for good measure, as though life is a show and she’s the play’s eponym hero一 Ada becomes aerial.
His jaw dropped to the floor, Leon watches with wide eyes. Then, an uncontrollable fit of laughter seizes at his chest and bends him over.
“Ada, what…!”
“I can still hear you saying, we would never break the chain,” is Ada’s sole, singing reply.
Tears spring from Leon’s eyes.
“There’s nothing in this song that warrants this…!” he hiccups.
Ada’s arms stretch above her head. “Spoken like someone who has forgotten the next verse,” she says teasingly. Her fingers tap the invisible notes that are spread in the thin air. “I’m planning ahead! You should too.”
Feeling himself give in to her energy, Leon bops his head.
“I could get into this,” he admits.
Sparks almost fly from Ada’s eyes. “Never break the chain! ” she sings with the chorus. “C’mon, handsome. Move your hips for me!” With a disbelieving snort, he forcibly starts shuffling. “You and I both know you can do better, baby.” There’s another snort, a louder one, at the nickname. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand to conceal his laughter and brings his hands up in surrender.
“Okay, sure.”
“There you are,” Ada says gleefully.
It’s not choreographed at all, and to be honest, it’s even a little awkward, but Leon actually dances. He even mouths the lyrics when the last chorus explodes, face flushed and skin overrun with tingles. As she finally spins to a standstill, Ada’s chest quickly rises and falls. She looks and stares at the cracked up man before her.
“I have a request,” he hears above his own erratic heartbeat.
Catching his breath, Leon stares back.
“Sure,” he replies.
“You still owe me from the last time,” Ada chuckles fondly.
“Sure,” Leon says again, his growing confusion unable to force his joy to withdraw. “Lay it on me.”
“Would you be my plus-one?” she asks, hope in her eye. “Not for now. For later. If it all goes well, I’ll need a dance partner for one last job.”
“One last?” he notes with a small frown.
“Who knows?” is Ada’s cryptic reply. She runs her hand through her hair to tame the strands turned wild, and Leon admires how pink she is, life in all its splendor rousing her body as it is meant to be.
This is an Ada he can get used to, Leon decides, one who madly dances to 70s songs, who wears the most underdressed of garments, and still manages to outshine herself every passing day. If it all goes according to plan, it’s an everyday life that would oddly suit them until her eventual departure come the end of the year.
“By the way,” Ada says the same evening as Leon’s on the sofa, bent over a new recruit’s file, “I’m expecting a lot of unfortunate overtime the upcoming month. Don’t worry too much. Or I’ll have to make you try yet another bad restaurant as an apology.”
That makes Leon smile. He underlines the recruit’s skills with a stroke of the pencil. “I might just hold you up to that.”
Ada’s glow is contagious.
This April, Washington D.C. undergoes particularly stormy weather.
The hood of his coat as his sole protection, Leon oftentimes has to run to work and back home under a shower of rain. When he arrives at the D.S.O.’s offices, he’s followed by yet another shower一 of gibes, this time. Helena calls him a ‘wet dog’, Hunnigan asks him to ‘work on his lateness and appearance more’, and Muhamad the new recruit kindly asks him if “you need a tissue, sir?”. No, he’s not gonna cut his hair; no, he’s not gonna start changing his habits now for a job he dislikes; yes, please and thank you.
Muhamad is a kind kid. He always brings Leon coffee without Leon even asking for it, and organizes his reports on a neat pile on his desk. He stares a lot, though, when he thinks Leon doesn’t see it.
“So, what’s up with agent Bakir?” Sherry asks him in front of the whiteboard filled with notes and photos of suspects. Prepped for her departure this afternoon, she’s already in gear for her mission. It breaks Leon’s heart to see the gun holsters at her sides and the heavy bulletproof vest caging her chest. If it were up to him, she’d never be forced to stay in the same prison he’s in一 but the deal’s been made seventeen years ago and it’s not one Leon can come back from.
“He’s just excited for his first mission, I guess,” he says, the last of the raindrops from his morning run slipping into his back. Guess he could kiss his meticulously executed blow-dry goodbye.
“No, he’s blushing…” Sherry says, nearly bursting a vein in her eye in order to inconspicuously spy on Muhamad behind them. “He’s looking at… oh, shit!” She turns back to the board with crimson on her cheeks.
Leon takes a look behind him. The newbie jumps as though he got tazed when Leon gives him a wave.
“Hey, Muhamad. Doing good over there?”
The reply is too quick to not be embarrassed. “Yes, agent Kennedy, sir. I’m just, uh… preparing for the mission with agent Birkin. Making sure everything’s in order.”
“Don’t fret,” Leon says with humor. “You’re gonna do just fine.”
“Yes, sir.” Muhamad’s chest puffs up. “I’ll make you proud, sir.”
Leon turns back to the board. “I said don’t fret, Muhamad. And don’t call me sir.”
Later in the break room, Sherry leans to him with conspiration in her voice. “Leon, he was staring at your butt.” That makes Leon snort so loud that a few heads turn their way. “Really! I think he has a crush on you.”
Lowering to get a drink in the mini-fridge, Leon rolls his eyes. “Focus on the mission, Sherry.”
He’s ignored. “What are you gonna do about it?” she continues to ask.
Under all the body armor she wears, Leon finds that Sherry always reverts back to her kid self when they’re around each other. It’s endearing. There’s comfort in knowing that his simple presence can be a safe room.
“Not a damn thing,” Leon replies, closing the fridge’s door after wrapping his hand on a water bottle.
Sherry considers him with a sudden seriousness in her baby blue eyes.
“Muhamad was talking to me earlier about the great Leon Kennedy’s exploits on the field. He was hoping to match your talent and your expectations, you know.” Brows knitted together in reflection, Sherry shakes her head. “I don’t think you realize what people would do for you to see them.”
A week later, agent Birkin’s report is sent in to the D.S.O.. Hunnigan relays the copy she received to Leon.
Agent Muhamad Bakir has died in battle, in a tragic siege against bio-organic weapons
during which he was trying to protect civilians. Agent Birkin has managed to put most of
the civilians to safety before the infected area was bombed. Agent Bakir’s body is irretrievable.
This April’s storms don’t cease, and it’s been three weeks since Leon’s seen Ada.
Muhamad’s death tears a hole in his heart. He thought the stitches would hold longer, he thought he’d learnt how to protect himself more; he thought he’d managed to heal his relationship with his line of work. The cause is just, the oath is right. Why aren’t the losses worth the fight?
Leon drinks and passes out.
When Ada raps her knuckles against his bedroom door, he had stopped expecting her. It’s dark out, windy, rainy. He hasn’t heard the front door. He rips himself off his bed, swaying to the door, and swings it open.
Ada is soaked.
The long black coat she wears is saggy and heavy on her, as though it’s absorbed most of the water. The mud on her heels is forming a puddle under her. Striped with black mascara, her cheeks are caked in blood.
“Holy shit, Ada,” Leon breathes out.
The alcohol in his blood is instantaneously boiled away. He tears Ada’s coat off of her. The wet slosh as it drops confirms its weight, and her fingers, cold and shaky, wrap around her naked arms where goosebumps pepper the skin. She wasn’t wearing much under the coat, only a thin-strapped silk top and business pants, both equally dripping wet.
Her voice strained, Ada speaks. “I need your help.”
Leon doesn’t skip a beat to reply. “You have it,” and he kneels by her legs to take off her shoes.
She aids him by raising her foot when he slips the heel off, and almost shyly lets it down on the floor as though Leon would be bothered by something as unimportant as dirt.
“I’m injured,” she lets out then, at the same time as Leon takes the second shoe off.
It drops with a clank near the coat.
“Where?” he brutally asks.
“My back. A few bullets grazed me. It doesn’t hurt much.”
“Turn around.”
“I told you, it doesn’t…”
“Ada.”
There’s a sigh when she complies, mixed in a gasp of pain. Leon splays his hand on the pearly white skin of her shoulder blades, murdering with his eye the dark ridges there. It’s not too deep. The bleeding’s already stopped on its own. Still, Leon scowls.
“How’s the other guy looking?” he asks, low.
“They’re dead,” Ada simply replies, to which Leon nods appreciatively. “How’s it looking back there?”
Leon’s already rummaging through his drawers.
“You’re gonna need to take your top off,” he says.
“So that’s what it takes, huh?” Ada replies. Her chuckle can’t mask the obvious tiredness in her voice. With a sore slowness, she slides the straps off her shoulders. “I have to get into that kind of situation more often.”
“Should I ask about the situation?” he grunts, finally putting his hand on a medkit.
“I’d rather you don’t,” she softly replies.
His vision is still blurry with too many beers, but he doesn’t stagger when he motions for her to come over. She follows him to the bed, on which she uncomfortably sits on the edge. He pats the covers. With a huff, Ada is forced to sit further in.
“I’m soaking your sheets,” she complains.
“I don’t care. Here.”
She takes the clean towel he hands her and sluggishly wipes her face with it, before turning away from him and removing her shirt.
It takes a while to come off. She has trouble raising her arms, and the dried blood on the fabric sticks to her wounds, tearing them open anew. With a muffled cry, it’s finally wrenched from her. Leon immediately presses the gauze against her skin to absorb most of the blood that runs bright red.
“I see your night hasn’t been going so well either,” he hears Ada murmur.
She’s continuously shaking, every inch of her naked skin riddled with goosebumps, but there’s no more pained gasp as Leon carefully dries the tears in her flesh with the spray.
“What makes you think so?” he asks, softer than he was when he first saw her at his doorstep. Heal a man’s soul by healing his woman’s wounds.
Ada’s side profile tilts in the direction of his bedside table. Leon doesn’t have to look to know what’s there. Cleaning up the dead bottles is the last of his priorities right about now.
“You’ve been drinking,” she comments.
Brow furrowed in concentration, Leon stabilizes her by placing a hand on her shoulder while his other softly brushes on the side of her wounds with the gauze, cleansing them of any remaining blood.
“You should get yourself some water,” she continues. “Or next morning will be one hell of a wake-up call.”
“I’ll stitch you up first,” he replies. “Then we can argue about my own health.”
He hears Ada’s smile in the way her mouth crinkles. “Should I ask about the situation?” she echoes humorously.
Leon has a split smirk. “I’d rather you don’t.”
Her scoff makes the skin of her back stretch. A bit of blood leaks out; Leon tenderly lets the gauze absorb it.
“Right,” she says. “Why fix what’s not broken.”
Leon pauses for a few seconds after grabbing the needle. Blinking forcefully, he forces his hand to calm and his brain to stop seeing double, and makes the thread pass in the needle’s eye in one swift motion.
Once more, he leans to Ada’s back.
“A new guy died at work,” he says then in a breath. “He was no older than twenty four.”
The raw skin is pierced by the needle’s tip. It has a ripple, a tiny shockwave that he stifles with the palm of his hand by simply stroking her shoulder blade with his fingers. The effect is instantaneous, and the spasms have ceased when the needle exits her flesh. Nevertheless, his fingers continue to brush against her with an infinite care.
“My condolences,” Ada softly says.
He sews her up quickly and cuts the thread with his teeth when it’s done. While not beautiful, his work has the merits of being practical. The stitches won’t break even if Ada moves.
He realizes his hand is still on her shoulder, and that his fingers are still gently caressing her. The part of him that’s under the influence refuses to let go.
“You’re freezing,” he notices hazily.
Ada’s voice, too, seems far away. “Umbrellas went out of style, didn’t you know?”
“Next time, just use a hood,” he quips before pulling his own sweatshirt over his head. “Put it on.”
She regards him from sweatpants to hair with an arched brow, and wordlessly takes the shirt. It’s oversized on her, the long sleeves covering her arms and falling on her thighs. When she turns to him, he can see his university’s logo imprinted on her chest, and this little, simple thing suddenly reminds him of the possibilities that another life could have offered them. Still, there’s something so comforting about the now and then.
Yes, in another life, they could have been dorm mates. Without a care in the world, they could have walked the campus hand in hand, sent each other flying papers in the lecture hall, and lost each other in the club until five A.M. rang and they had to stagger back to their dorm only to be caught by the scornful security guard and their blinding flashlight. They could have had studying sessions. Leon would have taught her how to play football, and she’d have kicked his ass at gymnastics. They could have raised hell together, he thinks, in their dangerous and inexperienced youth.
But in this one life, amid all the horror and deaths, they've still somehow found each other.
Mind swirling with the buzz of the odds, Leon grabs the empty bottles on his bedside table.
“Don’t forget the water,” Ada says, winking tiredly.
“Yeah,” he replies, breathing in and out to steady himself. Arms filled, he has a nod in her vague direction. “You can leave your pants on the floor, I’ll take care of it in the morning.”
“It's kind of you,” he hears her whisper before he’s out the door.
The dead bottles are left in the entrance so he can chuck them out when he has the time. Opening the cupboard in the kitchen, he feels around in the dark for a glass that he fills until it overflows. It’s quickly downed, and immediately followed by another. The drainrack welcomes the glass. The borders of the sink, Leon’s shaking hands.
He stays there until the world stops being a blur, until the cold of his apartment pricks at his bare torso with discomfort. The rain that hits the kitchen’s window turns into rivulets on the transparent surface. They reflect onto his hands. They flow down on him, untouchable currents, washing stream.
Leon still feels heavy, but at least his head is lighter.
Rolling his tense shoulders, he makes his way to the thermostat and turns on the boiler. In his mind state, he’d neglected to make his apartment a hospitable place. Now, Ada is home, and he can’t have her be cold.
When he returns to his room, Ada is curled up into a small side of his bed, as though she’s tried to take the least amount of space possible. Her damp pants are on a pile at the bed’s feet along with her top and her coat. She opens her eyes as he tiptoes around it, and pushes herself to a sitting position.
“I’ve exceeded my stay, I一”
Plopping down at her feet, Leon cuts her off by weakly raising a hand.
“You had a shit day, right?” he asks, too exhausted to put up a frown.
Ada’s shoulders sag. “I’ve had better ones.”
Leon tumbles next to her. “C’mere.”
She doesn’t need to be asked twice. With droopy eyes, Ada slowly lies down on her side and stretches her legs under the covers. Bringing them up to their chins, Leon makes sure she’s covered whole, and closes his eyes to the swirling ocean of his stupor.
The funeral is this Saturday. Muhamad’s parents and his siblings are there. The entire D.S.O. too. At his left, Sherry silently cries. At his right, Helena remains severe. Stuck in the middle, Leon keeps his rifle on his bad shoulder. Even though it fights against the wind, the US flag has lost a little more of its meaning.
“Shit day?” Ada asks him as Leon heads for his room with the intention of sleeping off the need to drink.
She’s been making him tea. The sweet smell reaches his nose as she carefully puts the cup on his bedside table. Chamomile. He tentatively reaches for it, his stomach filling with warmth.
“Shit day,” he sighs.
Ada is still standing above him from his sitting position on the bed. Her words are few.
“Wanna come here?”
Those are the only ones that matter anyway.
MASTER PLAN
1) don’t flirt
2) don’t answer to her flirting
3) don’t look
4) don’t kiss her
5) don’t have sex with her
6) don’t tell her you love her
7) don’t talk about work
There’s no rule here about sleeping with Ada.
With a satisfied nod, Leon closes the notebook and buries it in his desk’s drawer.
April’s rains are slightly easier to tolerate when it’s with people he loves. Plus, the restaurant that Ada takes him to is so damn terrible that they return to it a second time just so they can jeer at the sushiー and that makes Leon feel a whole lot better.
He doesn’t exactly know when that happens, but Ada steals his old blue university sweatshirt. He notices it one day because it’s not in its usual spot in his drawers, and because Ada’s the only possible culprit. Who else other than the renowned sample thief to rob Leon of his clothes? He should have had a feeling about it sooner; after he’d lent her his shirt during the night of the storm, Ada’s sleep had been suspiciously too deep.
“I’ve never seen it,” she replies when he asks her, lashes fluttering with honesty.
She just so happens to come out of the shower a few days after with aforesaid sweatshirt as sole garment.
“You’ve never seen it?” Leon jeers openly, watching Ada’s feet leave cute little water prints on the floor, that he feels the indescribable urge to lick off.
“I swear!” she sings. “You’d have never made it as a detective, anyway.”
Leon laughs when Ada turns around to wink. She’s right, obviously. He has the nasty tendency of letting his suspects go.
Back when Leon lived alone一 five months seem like a lifetime ago一 he had zero remorse ordering takeout five days a week. As money was far from a problem, it used to be an easy solution for his after-work lethargy. Cracking open a beer and dissociating in front of Adult Swim until the delivery guy's arrival brought him back to life had been effortless. As had been tearing open the plastic bag and diving into the Chinese/Italian/or Korean of the night. The knowledge that there wouldn’t even be dishes to do comforted him in the same cycle.
But Leon cannot do this anymore. Leon is forced to get his ass up into the kitchen, open his fridge, examine its insides and figure out a plan on what to make for dinner out of what’s left, because Leon’s got a roommate at home that can’t prepare a decent meal for the life of her.
Plus, there’s no way he’d let Ada bear witness to the depressing mess he leaves on the coffee table every time he gets too lazy to throw out the takeout. She's already seen the dead bottles by his bed once, and that's one time too many.
In their little basket on the counter, the onions attract Leon’s attention.
Two choices are offered to him. One is humiliating, but rewarding. This one sounds quite good. The other is humiliating, and humiliating. This one sounds awful.
With a groan of defeat, Leon ransacks his room for his swimming pool equipment, fishes his diving goggles, a kitchen knife and a cutting board, and gets to work.
That’s how Ada unfortunately finds him ten minutes later.
“Hello,” she says. As if her roommate doesn’t look like a complete idiot right now.
Leon’s reaction is immediate. He spins around, knife forward, shoulders squared, stopping only when his opponent seizes his wrist and prevents him from accidentally murdering the woman of his dreams.
“Christ,” he swears, eyes crazed behind the ridiculous goggles, “Ada, what the fuck?”
Not looking particularly unsettled, Ada instead looks like she's stifling a fit of laughter. “Are those swimming glasses on your head?”
Mortified, Leon snatches the knife away from her. “I was cutting onions. Did you come through the damn window again?”
Her lack of answer is basically an answer in itself. She moves around him to study the insides of his pan, all grace and poise, and he notices that she’s still in working clothes. He looks her up and down with a frown, from her turtleneck sweater to her knee-length combat boots. At her underarms, the empty gun holsters sway. He tries not to think about how hot she looks in spite of the very little skin she shows and focuses on the fact that she’s probably coming back from a very illegal, very immoral mercenary mission.
Not that it matters— he'd been forced to accept her way of life the second they slept together for the first time. Damn. Sex, in retrospect, should be the last thing on his mind right about now. Leon is supposed to be content in his dry spell.
And he is.
"What are you making?” Ada asks curiously, bent over the pan. “It smells good.”
Leon tears the goggles off his forehead and rubs at where it’s left crimson red marks. “Onions. For an onion pie.”
“Oh.”
He feels her eye on him as he busies himself with the spatula; looking back is a death sentence, especially when she looks like that. Leon’s always been a particularly bad actor. He can’t pretend he hasn’t seen her perfectly applied red lipstick that marries her cupid’s bow with a cutting precision; or the skintight leather pants that make the curve of her ass obscenely pop. Shit, what Leon wouldn’t give to cup his hands around that.
He is content in his dry spell.
“You remembered,” he hears Ada say softly.
Leon peeks behind his shoulder, meets her gaze, all rounds and smiles. He clears his throat.
“Yeah, I mean… Passing through.” Ada moves out of the way when he reaches for the fridge. He pulls out the dough and carefully rolls it out on the counter. “Last time you tried cooking, we had to put out the fire. So I figured I’d do something this time. It can’t get any worse, anyway.”
Ada watches every single one of his movements as Leon flattens the dough with a roller. She looks captivated. Also, her cheeks are a little pink, but he chalks it up to the fact that she was out in the cold air twenty stories above ground a minute ago.
“To be fair, I didn’t know filet steak would be so complicated,” she replies with a pout. “I don’t usually cook for myself. It’s way too much trouble.”
His arms focused on the dough, Leon looks up at her beneath his lashes. “Me neither. Why bother cooking when you’re all alone, right?”
“Right.”
There’s a pause between them, punctuated by the slap of the roller against the dough, and by Ada’s fingers drumming on the counter. The energy in the air reminds Leon of a time where they’d been younger. Where they’d been stupid. But also happier.
Shit, now he's getting nostalgic.
Leon clears his throat again.
“Mind if you get the pan? Put the dough in?”
Looking like she’s been brutally brought back to earth, Ada looks up from his arms and nods.
“Are you not scared I’ll set fire to the pie?” she asks while bending to open the bottom drawer, the lengthy arrow of her leg pointing straight up to the roundness of her asscheeks. Oh he's nostalgic alright.
Leon’s reply comes a little strangled. “No. I think you can handle it.”
“Oh, I can handle it. Does that need to be greased?”
“Yeah, just add butter and smear it.” He gets a bowl, takes four eggs, a fork, and gets into an energetic whisking. “Pull up the sides of the dough, they need to come out of the plate so the onions don’t fall out. Just a little, though. Yeah, like that. You’re doing good.”
“You don’t need to coach my every step, Leon.”
“Don’t lie now,” he retorts with amusement. “Look how you’re buttering that.”
“My buttering is fine .”
Leon chuckles. “God, this is the messiest shit I’ve ever seen…! It’s not even even, what the hell? Why is there a big splat there and nothing on that side?”
With a tsk, Ada reaches forward and flicks some butter on his cheek. “Focus on your whisking, Mr. Know-It-All. You should’ve worn an apron.”
“You wish.” She’s right, though, because when Leon looks down to his shirt, he can see the grease and water stains. Whatever, he doesn’t even like that shirt. Leon pulls on it with two fingers and shrugs. “You’re the one that’s on laundry duty anyway.”
“Oh, because I’m being punished, now? First dirty underwear, now greasy shirts?”
“Hey, I’m the one who cleans the toothpaste when you splutter all over the mirror. We’re basically even.”
Ada shakes her head. “Not in the slightest. Unless you pick up my dirty laundry, you don’t know what true evil looks like.”
“First off, you offered to do the laundry,” he enumerates, dropping the fork to raise one finger, then another, “second, I’m not touching your panties with a ten foot pole.”
“Exactly.” A sly smirk on her lips, Ada leans forward over the counter, her breasts dangerously close to leaving an imprint on the flat dough. Leon’s eyes dart back up to her face. “You won’t ever pick up my dirty laundry, because there is no dirty laundry to pick up. My panties are always squeaky clean.”
He snorts. “Mine aren’t bad. You’re exaggerating.”
“What do you call sweat stains, then?”
“Exactly what they are: sweat stains. Work can get exhausting, but I still know how to wash my ass, thanks.”
“I know,” she trills, smiling like she’s got a secret. “My complaints were never about the state of your ass.”
“Then what the hell are you complaining about then?” Leon gives the eggs a last stir. “All good for the dough?”
“All good.” She slides the pan with the dough in it closer to him and goes right back to drumming on the counter, leaning forward to catch her chin with her other hand. “Complaining is a hobby.”
“Mmph. I heard knitting’s getting popular.” Leon investigates the dough and concludes that she’s rectified her buttering mistakes. “Nice work.”
“Thank you. It was very hard,” Ada sasses.
The eggs now properly whisked, Leon adds in milk and cream, whisks some more, then concludes with shredded cheese. The result is a pleasingly lumpy liquid that he mixes in with the onions after they’ve all been evenly slipped into Ada’s pan.
“It smells so good,” Ada repeats with a look of pure ecstasy.
Leon hums in response. It’s not often that he’s satisfied with his cooking, but this recipe seems to be the one. Using a towel, he carefully slides the pan into the pre-heated oven. When he turns around, slapping the towel on his shoulder with an air of cocky satisfaction, the sudden focus on Ada’s face has him flinch.
“You know, Leon… in spite of the years… you keep on surprising me.”
His shrug is forced to be nonchalant. “I dunno what’s surprising. The recipe’s not hard to follow.”
“Maybe,” she murmurs. Her eyes roam his face, brush over his lips, caress the towel and the grease stains; then travel back up to the stunned crease of his brows. “But I’m allowed to be impressed. It’s not every day that a handsome man cooks for you one of your favorite meals.” She sees his mouth open and close around a comeback that never comes, and smiles. “I’ll go freshen up. In the meantime, throw that shirt in the hamper. I’ll take care of it later.”
His heart beating wildly in his chest, Leon swallows.
“Okay,” he says, still pretty immobile. “Dinner’ll be ready in thirty.”
Her hips undulate when she leaves the kitchen. A moment later, a door opens to close again, then Leon hears the water turn on and decides that he can finally breathe.
See, Helena? he thinks, stumbling into his bedroom to fetch himself a new shirt. I told you she does all the flirting for me. His hand brushes over his cheek when he slips his head into the collar. On instinct, he licks the yellow cream that’s stained the side of his palm. Butter, from when Ada flicked it at him. Lovely.
He makes time pass by hunching over his laptop. From the emails Hunnigan has sent him, things are going south on the Japan-USA laboratory collaboration. She asks him to study more about the ongoing conflict and to prepare for a possible escalation. Helena’s also sent him a few messages. One is a forwarded copy of Hunnigan’s mail, asking him if he’s seen it; another is screenshots of Tinder matches that she wants his opinion about; and the last is the continuation of that second message, with the added comment that he better have stuck with the plan or else she’ll personally come over and beat his ass. Leon doesn’t doubt it.
He replies “Ok” with a single thumbs up to Hunnigan’s message, and is just about to tell Helena that he thinks she should just eenie meenie miney mo her matches when he hears his name being called.
Cautiously, he exits his room and raps on the bathroom’s door.
“Ada?” he says uncertainly. “You called?”
“Yes! Come in.”
The water is still running. Leon’s cheeks warm up.
“Do you need new stitches?” he asks.
“No, I'm almost fully healed.”
“So what is it?”
He’s giving her the chance to back away. Ada does not take it.
“Just come on in,” he hears her say again, so Leon slips past the door and keeps his eyes firm on the fogged-up mirror. “I forgot my razor in my room, do you mind getting it?”
“Yeah,” he croaks out. “Where?”
“Upper right drawer, right next to the lingerie. Thank you.”
“Sure.”
Leon doesn’t really look inside her room when he rummages through the drawer. It’s just a quick in-and-out where he pretends not having seen her Victoria’s Secret underwear, the thirty different pairs of shoes sorted by color through the open door of the closet, and the tube of lube on the bedside table; he’s right back in the bathroom in half a second.
“I got it,” he announces. “Where do I put it?”
Behind the shower’s curtain, wreaths of mist stick out come her stretched hand.
“Here.”
Her tone is amused. Leon does not find it amusing at all. She pulls the curtain further aside so that her head and shoulders are visible; her black stare halts him.
Water beading down her eyelashes, Ada flows, her wet hair slicked back. Some of it defiantly curls on her cheek. Some of it lovingly caresses her neck. Her mouth, lipstick red dotted with drops, is not spared from the falls. During the parting of her lips, the steam that escapes to the ceiling is sucked in. Tiny beads land on her pink tongue when it darts out, leading them inside her. Ada swallows. Leon follows the movement of her throat. He follows the water down. To her clavicle. To the start of her ribs. On the pearly white skin that points him to one round brown nipple.
Fuck me.
“Leon,” comes asked under a veil much thicker than the shower curtain. “Leon, the razor.”
“Yeah,” he replies like on autopilot.
The razor is left in her open hand. Leon leaves promptly once it has retracted back behind the curtain.
His legs take him to the oven. He checks the timer (twenty more minutes), then walks back to his room and kicks the door shut.
Sat on his desk chair, Leon silently jerks off. He thinks about her mouth and her ass and her breasts pressed up against the shower wall. From there, she grinds against him, back deliciously curved as he pushes into her. He licks her throat and the water that runs there. She turns her head to kiss his brow. She arches further.
The orgasm is quick. It’s hidden into a tissue that’s shoved into the depths of the waste-paper basket at his feet.
His laptop had remained open on Helena’s last message. With his clean hand, Leon sends her a simple ‘mind your business.’
Her reply is almost immediate: ‘ No.’.
Snorting humorlessly, Leon leans back into his chair and listens to the water run.
Maybe Helena was right. Maybe he does need to get laid.
He does, eventually.
It’s quick to start and quick to finish. Afterwards, the woman locks herself into the bathroom to clean up. Even dead drunk Leon can recognize a hint when he sees one, so he quietly packs his stuff. She’s called Solen… so he thinks. They met at one of Ashley’s after-work parties. She saw him from across the roomー "looking all lost in the crowd", is what she'd whispered in his ear before their clothes were off; “in need of guidance and a good time”. Leon's needed a good time. More like a passtime. They'd slipped away barely an hour after the party’s start, and at that point Leon had already been pretty wasted on Ashley’s free-for-all cocktail bar (thank God for daddy's money), so he had zero problem getting in her car, letting her take charge, having her hand touch his crotch instead of the gear every so often.
He leaves Solen’s place still half drunk and exhausted, catches the last subway and stumbles inside his apartment along with a noisy jingling of keys. His trip to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water is cut short by a spot of red in the blurry boring gray of the living room.
Because of course she’s here.
Out of everyone else in the world, she is the first person he wants to see and the last person he wants to see him like this.
Seated under the dim light of the lamp, all that’s missing is a cat on Ada’s lap to complete the Bond villain look. The feline is replaced by a book, its cover in a language Leon doesn’t know. The reading glasses on her nose surprise him so much that he almost takes a step back.
“You came back fast,” Ada says.
Shaking off his initial shock, Leon goes to get himself a glass from the cabinet. It takes him a few more seconds than usual to properly reach it, and usually he’d be proud of how well he’s holding his liquor, but Ada’s always seen right through him.
“A party?” she continues, so detached it’s becoming scary. “What was her name?”
He turns on the faucet, lets the glass overfill before downing it.
“Is it that obvious?” he finally says behind a hiccup.
She twirls a bookmark in-between her fingers and sticks it at the page she’s at. “You’ve got a bite mark on your neck,” she replies, voice all cream and sugary honey.
Then she rises and she leaves.
The door doesn’t slam behind her. He wishes it did. Any outburst, any explosion, any proof that she cares is better than the silent treatment he’s about to get.
Leon isn’t yet properly sober, but he can already recognize his giant fuck-up; but also hasn’t it been the plan all along? To push Ada away the closer she gets? It’s for both of their sake that he's doing this, he convinces himself as he downs another glass. It’s so the fall hurts less when they inevitably split apart, to see each other in one, three, ten years; if they ever meet up again at all. At this rate, they’ll be old people, retired and brittled, still circling each other like first-time lovers.
Leon passes out on the couch, and he is not surprised when Ada isn't home come morning.
He is, however, surprised to see her there the next evening, and more than that: accompanied.
The noise that his briefcase makes when it drops to the floor is gonna get him a noise complaint from his downstairs neighbors.
Even as she turns around to say hi, Ada's annoyingly high-pitched laugh still rings in the air.
"Leon! Glad to see you've finished your day early. How's the hangover?"
Teeth gritted into a scowl, Leon stares at the man who's only idea of an introduction is a grin and a wave.
"This is Paul," Ada says nicely.
"Hi, I'm Paul," Paul says amicably.
"Who's Paul?" Leon says rudely, forgetting any semblance of etiquette he had.
"A friend," Ada replies while pointedly staring at Leon with that annoying smileー that he knows for a fact is the fakest she's ever had! "Who was about to leave. Right, Paul?"
Paul looks between the two of them; Leon, rooted in the entry, and Ada, arms crossed and head high.
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm goin'." He dusts his pants as he gets up, which makes Leon somehow even more irascible than when he waved. "It was nice meeting you, Michelle."
"Likewise," Ada says.
Paul is slightly taller than Leon, but there's a great satisfaction in watching him shrink when he has to squeeze himself against the wall to get past him and cross the door. Leon's sideways glare follows his every movement up until he's exceeded the threshold; then he slams the door behind the man.
Leon can explode.
"Michelle?!"
Ada's reaction is immediate. It’s as though she's too been waiting to burst.
"Do you really think I'd give a total stranger my alias?"
"Oh, so he's a stranger now?” he shouts, forgetting forced apathy for misplaced anger. “What happened to friend?"
"Use your head,” Ada spits. “I don’t do friends. I do, however, do partnerships.”
Leon’s laugh is so acidic that his stomach twists and churns. “Because a partner is so much better than a friend. Jesus. Under my goddamn roof too.”
Deep down, he knows that it’s mean, unjust, and really fucking immature for his soon-to-be-40 grown age. But backing away now means letting her know what he really wants, and Leon can’t let what oasis of serenity they have break. Not again.
He lets her walk up to him, right under his chin, without moving so much as an inch. It sends a chill down his spine, how Ada’s voice suddenly lowers. He makes his jaw work in return.
“Don’t you dare try and tell me this isn’t as much my home as it is yours,” she says icily. “I pay to live here. I pay you, when you yourself told me I didn’t even have to. I play nice, and I play fair, even though I am not even here as much as I’d like toー so I believe that I am allowed to bring whoever I want home, Leon. Unless,” and she tilts her head to the side, raising her brows in a question that she knows damn well isn’t one, “you give me one good reason that I can’t?”
Leon’s fists open and close uselessly.
“You can do whatever you want,” he replies on the exact same tone. “I just don’t want a man I don’t know a thing about here.”
“Or you just don’t want to see me bring a man.”
Blue eyes thundering, he too lowers. “Ada. Don’t twist my words.”
“But they’re so easy to twist. You never mean what you say, Leon. I don’t follow a lady’s lead, I don’t condone blood money, you can’t miss me… you keep going on about my lies, but your own plate is full. What else are you lying about?”
“Nothing.”
Her hand, like a claw, closes in on his suit’s lapel. It pulls. Any other time, the pressure would make Leon’s back bend. But now, in spite of the black spell of Ada’s eyes, he remains stiff and straight, able to withstand the call by sheer force of stubbornness alone.
Fear is an excellent motivator.
One second, it leads him into surviving the greatest biological disaster that the Earth has ever known; and the next, it convinces him to forego his dreams.
Reality always catches up to Leon. That’s a fact. If he follows the squad that escorts them out of the city, it ends up taking Sherry from him. If he allows his army major into his life, it is Ashley Graham who’s victim. And if he lets Ada into his home with the intention of letting his heart go dry, well…
“Lies,” Leon echoes in a murmur, the rope around his heart coiling. “They’ve always been your thing.”
Ada’s semblance of a smile comes like a flash. “How the tables have turned.”
The word is barely out before she lurches upwards and crushes his lips against hers, pushing forcefully as Leon tumbles backwards against the closed door. He hits his head against it, a little bit hard. His nose is askew under her force. His mouth aches. It’s nudged wider with her tongue.
His reply comes as brutally as her query came. He seizes the sides of her face between his hands, and they almost engulf her head whole when he twists them to bring her in closer.
Being with Ada has always been an instinct. Following her, obeying her, saving her; it all was nature. Kissing her? Now, Leon was made for that.
But while her tongue licks into his mouth and scrapes against his teeth, shakingly, desperately, while her whole being arches up and her breasts grind against his chest, and while the pleasure, and the satisfaction, and the homesickness overwhelm him all at once, Leon also remembers the fear.
“Ada,” he groans into her, while her wanting hands search his shirt and reach his skin. “Ada, stop.”
Reality always catches up eventually.
Her back is arched and her nails are digging into his chest but as soon as the fatidic word leaves his mouth, Ada releases him so fast that Leon almost gets whiplash.
“Leon,” she only says. Her voice is little and frail. Pleading.
She barely meets his eye. She looks terrified.
Oh, no.
Lips aching, Leon fumbles for an excuse. “We can’t do this,” is what he replies, and a single glance tells him that it’s worse than whatever else he could have came up with. “We can’t… I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry, Ada.”
“You’re lying again.”
He is, he is, he is, to the world, to her and to himself; but he’s been burying himself for so long that at that point it’s better to dig further than to try and see the light again.
So, again, Leon lies.
“I’m not.”
Head dropped in shame, Ada takes a step back.
“I’ll be working late,” she says. “Don’t expect me until a few days.”
“Ada, waitー”
“No. I’m done waiting.”
Her stride has a superfluous pride to it when she walks to her room and closes her door. From his spot in the living-room, Leon can hear her balcony open. The familiar noise of her grappling gun squeaks. He just stands there for a few seconds before making a run for it.
The living-room’s window is swung open just in time for Leon to see her shadow pass by it, so fast it’s a blur.
Ada remains visible in the dark spots of his closed eyes long after he’s drunk himself to sleep.