Neighborly
Part 3: 'Tis the Damn Season
(RE9 Leon Kennedy x Female Reader)
Summary: One new message with a photo of the dog in a new collar and one word. Leon Kennedy can salt a driveway. He can buy a collar, paint a living room, pick out a bracelet. Everything except the one thing. It's finally Christmas and you're done waiting for him to say it.
WC: 7k
Warnings: MDNI, angst, age gap, alcohol, crying, minor injury, canon-typical references to violence and past trauma, comfort and soft ending, I promise.
Notes: Still no smut again in this part but I promise you - I've got something up my sleeve for new year's eve!
Links to Part 1, Part 2
Original post on ao3
Playlist for this part
Taglist: @mskennedy2 @villain-in-the-dark @leonlover17 @ghostieistiredd @hanscheesecakeuh @lanadelreyylover @frogtape @pinkcatnight @defvia @lysa1201-saucy @aabbssmm @kennedyblues @welcominglychaotic @ang3l-x @naikitties @katluckybear @mandarinaaaas
You didn’t know how long you’d been staring at it.
Leon - 1 new message
Five months. Five months and now his name was sitting on your lock screen.
And of course you opened it.
Hey
You kept staring at it like there might be more underneath.
Your thumb was still hovering when you heard another ding. A second message popped up but this time it was a picture. It was Buddy sitting with a dark-brown leather collar and a silver name tag with Buddy engraved in it. Behind him, soft and out of focus, was Leon’s kitchen you’d last seen with that stupid backsplash.
You sat all the way up. You couldn’t believe Leon actually went out and got the dog a damn collar. I mean, maybe he already had the collar and just put it on. There’s no way he would’ve gotten in that ridiculous car, driven to the pet store and got the nametag engraved in a span of a few hours.
Either way, none of that mattered, it really would have cost him nothing to type. I'm sorry.
You stared at the photo until the screen dimmed and you had to tap it awake again.
You typed: are you serious
Deleted it.
Five months of ignoring me and THIS is what you send me?
You deleted that one too.
You typed:
Why
You thought about just sending something like:
Cute dog.
But that wasn’t enough. You thought that was too easy and didn’t show how angry you truly were.
Then it occurred to you, if he was paying attention, he could see those three little dots. Appearing and disappearing over and over again.
You heard two soft knocks on the door, you placed your phone face-down into the quilt.
“You alive in there?” said your dad, his voice muffled through the door.
“Yeah,” you said more cheerily than you meant.
You waited for him to leave and walk back downstairs but he didn’t.
Your door opened a few inches with the hall light cutting a wedge across your bed.
“Hey, dinner’s almost ready, just thought I’d wake you up.”
“I’ll be down in a few.”
Your dad stepped away like he was going to leave but then walked back towards your door.
“Honey.”
“Yeah.”
“You alright?”
“Mhm.” You nodded but you knew that wasn’t the truth.
“You slept all afternoon,” he said matter-of-factly. “Your mother thinks it’s the travel.” He paused.
“I don’t.”
“I’m fine, Dad. Really,” you said.
He stepped into your room and the bed dipped when he sat on the side of it next to you.
“I think I know what it is,” he said.
Your throat went tight.
“It’s your mother.” He shook his head slowly. “She’s been a nut-case all week. Woke me up at five this morning. Five, honey. Because one bulb was out on the roof lights. One bulb. I couldn’t even find the thing up there. Had to call her from the roof so she could stand in the yard and point to where it was.”
The laugh came out of you uncontrollably. It was more relief than humor though.
“It’s not Mom, Dad.”
“No?”
You stopped there. You didn’t really want to tell your dad the whole Fourth of July saga and how you fucked a man that was pretty much twice your age. So, you waited for him to ask.
He sat there in the dark room with you, hands on his knees.
“Anybody do something I need to know about?” he said calmly but with a concerned look on his face.
“No, Dad.” You almost smiled at what he was offering.
“Mm,” he said.
Downstairs you could hear a chair scrape and Mason shrieking about something.
“You talk to your sister?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He nodded.
He got quiet and you thought he was building up to leave, instead, he looked out the window.
“Your mother didn’t talk to me for a month once,” he said. “Before we were married.”
You looked at him. “What did you do?”
“Put new brakes on her mother’s Buick.”
“No — what did you do. To make her stop talking to you.”
“That’s between me and the Buick.”
He rubbed his knee. “I spent a few hours in her mother’s driveway fixing them.” He shook his head at the memory. “I didn’t know how to say sorry out loud.” He paused. “I liked her mother fine. But I wasn’t out there for her mother. I was out there for your mom.”
He scratched his jaw. “Came back the next week and offered to change her wiper fluid and then the week after that, an oil change.”
“So, what’s your point?” You said.
“My point is, whoever it is,” He said gently “Some men can’t say what they’re feeling out loud. So. They do things instead.”
You breathed in and stared at your dad. There was no way he could know it was Leon. Was there?
“Honey, I know I seem like a guy who doesn’t pay attention. But I see things. And I see you’ve been walking around all sad and depressed since you got back.”
Tears pricked hot behind your eyes and your throat was aching.
He reached over and squeezed your shoulder.
“I’m not asking you to tell me everything,” he said. “You’re old enough. You don’t owe me that. But if someone’s got you twisted up like this… you don’t have to carry it alone. That’s all I’m saying.”
Downstairs your mom shouted. “Dinner’s getting cold!”
Your dad huffed and shook his head. He stood up slowly, the bed creaking as his weight lifted.
“Come down when you’re ready.” He said calmly.
He paused at the door, one hand on the frame.
“If you ever want to talk about it… I’m here.”
The door clicked shut behind him. You sat in silence with your heart hammering and the tears finally slipping free.
You picked your phone up from the quilt and looked at the messages from Leon again. Maybe. Maybe if he could have said anything, anything, about how he was feeling. You would have considered his text an apology. Instead, you put your phone face-down on the nightstand and went down to dinner.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
It was the next day on Christmas Eve, and at nine in the morning your mother discovered she was short a bag of brown sugar, two cans of evaporated milk, and butter. She announced this the way other people announce a house fire. And since you were the only one in the family who wasn’t busy, you offered to go get the groceries.
The store was chaotic. You could barely walk down any of the aisles without bumping into someone. When you finally grabbed everything, you stood in the self-checkout line that reached all the way back into the seasonal aisle. You were behind a man buying a cart full of food, and your brain trailed off to last night. Leon hadn’t sent you another message since and you still had him on read.
You finally after what felt like forever, checked out and bagged up two bags of groceries. The roads thankfully were scraped and cleared off but you still drove home carefully keeping your distance from cars in front of you.
You pulled up into the driveway and grabbed the bags from the passenger seat. You took the direct line to the front door and because it was cold you were not in the mood to be careful.
A patch of ice took your boot out from under you before you could regain any balance. Your hip hit first and your elbow was second before you landed completely on your back. The bags went everywhere. Somewhere behind you, a can of evaporated milk was rolling down the driveway.
You lay there with the cold seeping up through your coat, staring up at the flat gray sky, and thought bitterly. Of course.
Then you heard a car door shut.
You turned your head. You saw Leon’s Porsche in the driveway and then Leon walking towards you.
Fuck.
He was in a dark overcoat you had never seen before and a black collared shirt. For a second you didn’t recognize him. He was moving quickly, his eyes went across your parents’ house before landing on you. He saw you on the ground and everything in him changed gears all at once.
“Hey — hey.” He was already crossing the yard of snow between your driveway and his. “You okay?”
You were still too dazed and furious to answer.
He stopped a few feet away from you, taking in your situation. He looked at the bags, the groceries splayed out the driveway and to you flat on your back in the middle of it all. Buddy was barking his head off somewhere inside his house, muffled and hysterical.
Leon looked above you and tipped his head slightly.
“Nice landing.” He said.
You rolled your eyes. “Really?”
“Just a thought.”
You managed to get your elbow under you and pushed up but the ice took your boot out from under you again. You were going down for the second time and then his hand closed around your arm.
He caught you like you weighed nothing. One hand gripped around your forearm, the other one at your elbow, and hauled you up. You came up into him closer than either of you had planned, close enough that you could feel his cloudy breath on your face. So close you could see the crinkles around his eyes and the small white line of an old scar you had once, in July, in the dark traced your finger on.
Neither of you moved.
His hand stayed where it was on your arm and his eyes went over your face like he found something before looking away.
“You can let go now,” you said.
And he did let go.
You bent down for the nearest bag and so did he.
“Don’t,” you said. “I got it.”
But he didn’t stop, he was already crouched in your driveway, picking up the cans of evaporated milk.
“I said don’t. I don’t need your help.”
His hands stopped and he crouched there for a second, holding the brown sugar.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
He picked up one of the now wet grocery bags in the driveway and threw everything back in it. He stood and held it out to you.
You snatched it out of his hand harder than you needed to and turned away to the front door. Your hip was screaming and your eyes were welling up. You tried not to look back but you did anyway.
He was still standing in your driveway with the snow starting to fall looking at you like he was working out how to fix it. But all he said was.
“Watch the ice.”
You could feel yourself about to say something but you choked it down. You turned away and shut the door behind you.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
Most of the day you were wrapping presents on the floor of your parents bedroom with the door shut so the kids didn’t see. Then your mother called you down to peel potatoes and set the table. The house filled up with Christmas music and chatter from your family.
You spent the later part of the afternoon in the kitchen with your mother, baking cookies for the kids to leave out for Santa. You both decided it was best to make simple sugar cookies since Mason was so eager to decorate them himself and of course Ellie just wanted to eat the frosting.
The kitchen was warm from all of the cooking. It smelled sweet too, that thick buttery and vanilla air that you loved. The oven ticked and the window over the sink fogged at the corners. In the living room the Grinch was on with your sister and the kids were propped up on the couch.
You rolled, cut and placed the cookies on baking sheets. Your mother was rambling about tonight's turkey and gravy and how she was stressed out she was going to mess it up. You kept assuring her it was going to taste delicious. She also started worrying about dinner tomorrow. She kept saying things like, I hope Leon likes ham, is six-o-clock too early or too late for him, I hope he doesn’t think we’re weird.
To which, you kept replying, “I don’t know.” or “I’m sure it’s fine.”
Your dad came into the kitchen with a beanie and coat on.
“I went to salt the driveway again but it looks like someone already did it.”
He looked at your mom and then at you.
“Oh, that’s nice honey.” Said your mom.
“Yeah,” he slipped his gloves off. “How’s the hip?”
“It's better. I took some Tylenol a while ago.” You said.
“Good.” Your dad nodded and went to hang his coat back up.
You slid the sheet of cookies into the oven and shut it. You had flour to the elbows and managed to get some in your hair too.
“Hey, I’m gonna go clean up a bit before dinner’s ready.”
“Mm,” your mother said, cleaning a bowl in the sink.
Upstairs, you grabbed a pair of jeans out of your dresser and a burgundy sweater from your closet. You carried them into the bathroom, and when you shut the door behind you everything was quiet for the first time today.
You turned the shower on and looked at yourself in the mirror. Flour on your cheekbone. Hair a complete mess. You looked like a walking disaster.
The water was hot against your skin. You stood under it with the water trailing down the back of your head.
You looked down at the bruise coming up on your hip, blooming under the heat. It was a deep ugly plum color with a jagged shape to it. It was sore but you touched it anyway. Then your elbow too that you turned to rinse. The whole left side was evidence of all of the events this morning whether you wanted it or not.
You put your face up to the stream and then turned the water off.
The bathroom was clouded with steam. You wrapped a towel around yourself and another around your hair while you stood there dripping.
Then your phone buzzed on the counter and dinged.
You wiped the condensation off the screen with the corner of the towel.
Leon - 1 new message
You opened it.
Leon: you okay?
Your thumb hovered over the keyboard.
You typed: no
You deleted it even though it was the truest thing you’d typed all day.
You set the phone back down on the counter and went to change back into your burgundy sweater. And put on the jeans with your hair still damp. When you came back to the bathroom to brush it out the phone was still there. You looked at Leon’s message again and left it unanswered.
You picked it up and took it downstairs with you anyway.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
Your mother’s turkey was perfect, which didn’t stop her spending the first ten minutes of the meal apologizing for it being bad. While everyone around ate and said otherwise with their mouths full.
The kids got up from the table after dessert demanding to put the cookies out for Santa.
Mason decorated the cookies himself that afternoon, and they really had no discernible designs and were covered in a mountain of sprinkles. One was frosted in such a bright neon green color that even Santa would be afraid to eat it. He carefully placed five cookies on a red plate. Ellie poured the milk herself and filled the glass to the absolute brim somehow without spilling.
“He needs carrots,” Mason announced. “For the reindeer.”
“Honey, can you grab some carrots from the fridge,” Your dad called to your mother.
“They need carrots.” Mason said again.
Your mother grabbed a handful of baby carrots from the bag in the fridge, because in this house, apparently, even the reindeer got a full spread.
The plate was set out on the living room coffee table. The kids stood back and looked at it smiling.
“Okay, time for bed now,” said Dani. “Santa won’t come if you’re awake.”
The kids of course protested and insisted on staying up for a little while longer. But Dani said no. She herded them upstairs and tucked them in for bed.
You spent the rest of the night watching Elf with your family. At around eleven everyone brought in the Christmas gifts from your parents’ bedroom.
Your dad handled the evidence. He ate a bite out of each cookie, even Mason’s green one, he winced at that one. He bit off the ends of some of the baby carrots. And “For realism,” he said. Your mother drank half of the milk.
You stood back when it was all done. The tree, the pile of presents, the bitten cookies, and the half glass of milk.
Next Christmas, you thought, you won’t be flying in for this. You’ll just be here.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
You couldn’t sleep. You lay there running tomorrow on a loop. Leon at the dinner table. Whether he’d speak to you. Whether you’d speak first. And the announcement. You were going to tell your sister before dinner to wait on the whole thing. You decided you didn’t want Leon to know.
And just as you were finally dozing off another ding came from your phone. You looked at the lockscreen and, of course, it was Leon.
Leon - you don’t have to respond
“No,” you whispered in the dark. “I don’t.”
Even if there was a part of you that wanted to. You put the phone on your nightstand and closed your eyes. You didn’t sleep much.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
Christmas morning arrived way too early with the kids shrieking.
Ellie and Mason both were thundering down the hall past your door, and by the time you made it downstairs the living room was already destroyed. Paper and ribbon trailed off the couch and Ellie was sitting by a pile of dolls and stuffed animals.
Mason was standing at the coffee table holding up a bitten cookie like a fossil.
“He ate the green one,” he reported, with awe. “He ate it.”
“Brave guy, that Santa,” your dad said, from behind his cup of coffee.
You sat on the couch with your own coffee and let the morning wash over you. You tried once, between the chaos, to catch Dani’s eye. “Hey, can I—”
“Mom!” Mason was holding a toy red truck up in a box. “It needs batteries!”
By noon your mom started cooking. She had entered a state somewhere beyond stress. She vacuumed rooms nobody was going to enter. She straightened towels. The good tablecloth came out, and two bottles of champagne went into the garage fridge to chill.
“Is Buddy coming?” Ellie asked.
“We are not having a dog at Christmas dinner.” Your mother said sternly.
Ellie whined.
You found Dani in the kitchen after lunch, but she was elbow-deep in making the cranberry sauce. Your mother was two feet away narrating her fears about the rolls, and you knew this still wasn’t a good time to talk about the announcement for tomorrow.
Later, you told yourself. There was still time in the day.
At four you went up to get ready. You’d packed a cute red dress that you brought along on a whim. You curled your hair and put on earrings. You looked at yourself in the tall mirror in the corner of your bedroom. You weren’t dressing up for him; you told yourself that while you fixed your hair and then once more when you did your makeup.
Your phone sat on the dresser the whole time.
It had been silent all day. No merry christmas. Nothing. You’d noticed the silence all morning and afternoon and you hated that you noticed.
At twenty to six you almost got Dani alone. She was coming down the stairs with her hair half done.
“Hey— about tonight—”
“GIRLS.” Your mother shouted from the kitchen. “One of you. Napkins.”
“Hold that thought,” Dani said, and she was gone.
At ten to six you were setting water glasses around the table. You had just put one down at the empty place your mother had set for him when you looked up through the dining room window and saw his front door open.
He came out of his house with a bottle of wine in one hand, blocking Buddy at the door with his leg. You watched Leon’s mouth move, with the dog's nose in the gap of the door and the door shut. Then he came down his driveway and along the sidewalk. He was wearing a dark button down shirt with an open leather jacket.
He passed out of the window’s view, toward the front porch and you stood there holding the last water glass.
You put it down and the doorbell rang.
Your mother beat everyone to it and flung the door open. “Leon! Merry Christmas — come in, come in, oh you didn’t have to—” She grabbed the wine out of his hand and Leon hung his coat up on the coat hanger by the door.
Ellie sprinted toward him. “Where’s buddy?”
“Home,” Leon said. “He’s grounded.”
Ellie looked scandalized. Somewhere behind you Mason was already explaining what Santa ate.
And then, over your mother’s shoulder, across the noise of the entryway, his eyes found you.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
Your mother had him by the arm in an instant, towing him toward the living room, showing him the tree and pointing to an old ornament you made when you were six. Dani walked up next to you, already holding a glass of champagne.
“He cleans up nice,” she said.
“Dani—”
“What? He does.” She took a sip.
“Dani, I need—”
“Mom! Look at my truck!” Mason tugged at her arm and pulled her away before you could say the thing you’d been trying to say all day.
You walked back into the kitchen, grabbed a glass and poured yourself a glass of champagne too. You pulled out your phone and typed a message to your sister.
dont bring up the announcement tonight. i’ll explain later
You hit send hoping she would see it.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
Dinner was ready on the table. You sat at the end of the table, facing your dad at the other end, with Dani and the kids down the right side. Ellie had begged to sit next to Leon and was overruled, so she settled for staring at him across the table instead. Your mother took the left side and put Leon next to her, which left one empty chair between him and you.
The ham was perfect with Leon announcing, “best ham I’ve had in years,” with sincerity, and your mother lit up. She stopped apologizing and for a second you almost forgave him just for that.
“Honey, pass Leon the gravy.”
You picked up the boat and reached across and he reached to meet it.
“Thanks,” he said.
You nodded at your plate.
Dinner carried on with Ellie asking more questions about Buddy.
“Did he get presents?”
“He got a bone.” He said.
“Just a bone?” she asked.
Mason kept talking about all of his new toys, while your mother kept everyone’s plate full. Your dad said very little, which was normal and just watched. And tonight you knew what he was watching.
Dani, somehow, was on her third glass of champagne.
She kept getting louder and louder as dinner went on. She got funnier and sloppier. She was telling a story about airport security and under the table you checked your phone against your thigh.
Your message was still on delivered, not read.
Then Dani picked up her spoon.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
“Oh! Y/N—” She held her glass up, cheeks pink, beaming down the table at you. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to tell everyone?!”
Everyone turned toward you all at once.
You gave her the smallest shake of your head – no, not now – and watched it sail right past her.
For a second you tried to think of something, anything and nothing would come up. You wanted to say It’s nothing but Dani would push and tell the truth anyway.
In the corner of your eye, you could see Leon go still.
Your mother had already put her fork down, lit up and waited for you to say something. Ellie was looking around to see what she’d missed. At the far end, your dad had stopped chewing.
There was nowhere to go.
“Um.” You didn’t smile. You scratched at the back of your head. “I– yeah. I got a new job.”
“Oh — that’s great, honey!” Your mother’s hand went to her chest.
“You gotta tell them where!” Your sister exclaimed, slurring her words a bit.
The words sat in your mouth for a second.
“Here.” You said it to your plate, and then made yourself look up. “About thirty minutes away.”
While everyone around ate your mother recalculated everything.
“You’re coming home?!”
“Yeah,” you nodded. Not smiling.
Your mother shot up out of her chair and went around the corner of the table with her arms open. Your dad stood slower and hugged you with one arm when it was his turn, and said, quietly, into the top of your head, “Good.” Ellie attached herself to your leg. Mason demanded to know what was happening.
Everyone was up. Everyone but two people.
Dani was still in her seat, glass half-raised, and you watched the delight drain out of her face as she looked at you. You being hugged and not smiling, it was the first sober look she’d had all night.
And Leon.
Over your mother’s shoulder, through the crowd of your own family, you found him. He hadn’t moved. His hand was resting on his glass of wine and he was looking at you.
Then he looked away.
A knock on the door interrupted everything.
It was your brother-in-law, Josh, who walked in with a large garbage bag slung over his shoulder.
“Merry Christmas, everyone!”
Everyone’s attention switched over to him in an instant. The kids hit him at a dead run and he dropped the bag just in time. Dani was up and across the room with your mother exclaiming, and your dad was already reaching for the bag. Somewhere in the pile of it you caught flight landed early and didn’t want to say anything in case.
After everyone got their hugs in they quickly migrated into the living room with the large black bag of gifts.
Everyone but you and Leon.
You sighed, picked up your champagne glass, and walked to the kitchen.
The party came through the wall as happy muffled shrieks. You could hear the crinkle of the bag and your mother shouting. You stood at the counter and drank what was left in your glass in one go.
It wasn’t enough.
Leon’s wine was sitting by the fridge where your mother had abandoned it, still corked. You went at it with the corkscrew, the cork fought you, but you fought back with a grip that had nothing to do with wine. You had just gotten it loose when you heard him come in behind you.
You poured his wine into your champagne glass about halfway.
“What is this, cabernet?”
“Zinfandel.”
You nodded and took a sip.
“It tastes like shit.”
“Guy at the store said it was good,” Leon said.
You pictured him standing in some grocery store aisle, asking a stranger for help, because your mother had invited him. You drowned the thought in another sip of wine that did, in fact, taste like shit.
Behind you, you heard him shift.
“Congratulations,” he said. “On the job.”
“Thanks.”
The party swelled through the wall. Somebody had found something in the bag and Ellie was screaming about it. In the kitchen it was just the two of you and the hum of the refrigerator, alone together for the first time since July, and you were about to say something to end that — I should get back — when you turned around and he was holding a box.
It was a small, blue and rectangular box.
“What is this?” you said.
He didn’t answer. He just held it out and you took it.
You opened it.
A bracelet. A thin chain, delicate, with one small pale stone that caught the kitchen light.
“Leon—”
“Here.” He held out his hand for it.
You should have said no but instead you handed the bracelet back to him, and then you put your arm up with your wrist out.
He was careful with it and he bent his head over your wrist and worked the tiny clasp with steady hands. He rested his fingertips on the inside of your wrist, right where your pulse was. He could probably feel how fast it was beating.
He held his hand there and looked up.
You were going to say something — thank you, maybe, something small but it died.
He was looking at you the way he had never once looked at you. Not the dry cover. Not the deflection. It was something open like he was saying, sorry, aimed directly at you.
He didn’t look away.
For the first time since July, he didn’t look away and he always looked away first.
But you did. You looked down at the bracelet, his apology sitting on your pulse and saying everything he wouldn’t. You were not going to cry in your mother’s kitchen with your whole family in the next room.
“I—” you said. “Excuse me.”
You put the glass down and walked away.
Through the doorway, past the living room. There was a wall of noise, wrapping paper crinkling, nobody’s head turning, only Dani’s eyes catching you over her husband’s shoulder. At the front door, you jammed your feet into your black boots and didn’t grab a coat on your way out.
The cold hit you like a wall but you walked into it anyway. You went down the steps, down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. You didn’t know where you were going but away was good enough for you.
Behind you, the front door opened.
“Y/N.”
You kept walking. The footing was sure under your boots, all the way down the sidewalk. It was salted every inch of it.
“Y/N—”
You tried to walk faster but his hand closed around your elbow.
You pulled it out of his grip and turned to him.
You both were in the cold, breath fogging between you, the street quiet and strung out with everyone else’s lights. You looked at your parents’ window glowing warm and gold, full of your entire family.
You realized you were standing in front of his house.
You stared at him.
“Was the wine really that bad?” Leon said. “Are you fucking serious.” You say turning away again.
He grabbed your arm again.
“Y/N, okay, okay, please don’t go.” Leon pleaded.
“Why!” You turned back around to face him.
“I— don’t want you to go—”
“Oh! So now you don’t want me to go!” You were already sniffling and shivering.
He didn’t say anything. “You want me to stay but you never say anything!”
“y/n, please.”
“Please, what.” You bit back.
“Please just come inside.” He looked up at his house.
“And why would I do that?”
“I can explain,” he said. “And you’re shivering.”
You looked at the house to the right of you, it was dark except for the light he’d left on for the dog.
Your teeth had started chattering. You hated that they’d taken his side.
“Ten minutes,” you said.
His shoulders came down slightly.
“And if you say ‘it’s complicated’ even once, I’m gone.”
“Okay,” he said softly.
He turned and walked toward the door with you following behind him.
Buddy hit the door like a cannonball the second it opened and the silver tag on his new collar caught in the porch light. He shoved his head under your frozen hands like the five months never happened.
“Buddy.” Leon’s voice was quiet. “Off. Sit.”
And Buddy sat.
You looked around at the warm and finished house. It smelled clean and faintly of coffee. Leon grabbed a folded blue blanket off the back of the couch and held it out to you. You took it because you were still shivering and your teeth were still chattering.
Then your eyes trailed over to the kitchen.
The same kitchen that when you were here last, was unfinished. The same kitchen that you saw completed in the photo Leon sent you. That stupid backsplash was real now. You were standing inside the picture and you hated it a little less.
Then your eyes moved over to the living room which you hadn’t seen completed yet. The walls were white, he had a dark espresso brown leather couch and a fireplace with a TV above it. You noticed the unopened Christmas tree box right beside the couch.
You pulled the blanket around your shoulders and turned to face him.
“So explain.”
He stood on the other side of the kitchen island like it was a cover. For a long moment he didn’t say anything. You were about to turn and walk right back out into the cold when he said:
“You were leaving.”
You waited.
“In July. You told me you had a job back east, a whole life, two thousand miles away from here.” His jaw tightened. “And I did the math.”
“The math.”
“Yeah.”
“You did the math. On me.”
“On what it would cost you,” he said. “Flying back and forth. Waiting around for—” he gestured at himself. “You’d have gotten tired of it. Eventually. Better it stopped before it started costing you anything.”
“Better for who?”
He didn’t answer that.
“What else,” you said. “That can’t be the only reason you didn’t respond to me for five months.”
His eyes came up.
“You’re young,” he said, quieter. “You’ve got — everything’s still in front of you. I’m pushing fifty.” A breath. “You’d have woken up one day next to an old man and wondered what the hell you did with your—”
“Did you ask me?”
He stopped.
“Did you ever, one time, ask me what I thought about any of that?” Your voice was shaking now. “The distance. The age thing. Did you ask? Or did you just sit here and decide for me? Because that’s the part, Leon. That’s the part I can’t—” Your throat closed but you pushed away the tears. “You don’t get to assume things for me. You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”
“I know.”
“You don’t KNOW—”
“You’re right.” It came out low and fast. This was the most words he’d ever given you at once. “You’re right. I decided. I haven’t been able to decide anything for myself my whole life. This was the only—”
You stood there breathing at each other across his kitchen island.
“The only what Leon?”
“It’s compl—”
He stopped himself. Mid-word. You watched him swallow it and he looked genuinely lost. Like his only door had just been bricked over.
Then he pushed off the island. “Come with me.”
He led you up the stairs, down the hall and past a door that stood open. You looked straight ahead to the last door on the left.
It had a deadbolt. On the inside of the house.
He took out a key in his pocket like he just kept that around in his everyday life. And while he worked the lock you crossed your arms and said:
“I hope you’re not planning on kidnapping me. The mysterious locked room isn’t helping your case.”
“I’m usually on the other end of those,” he said.
You scrunched your eyebrows at that statement.
The lock turned and he pushed the door open. He reached over to the light switch and flicked it on.
It was the one room in the house he hadn’t touched. No new paint, the old carpet and the old wallpaper seam peeling in one corner. There were boxes, stacked and labeled in neat handwriting. Hard black cases along one wall, also labeled, with what seemed to be names of guns. A shelf. And leaning against the wall were framed pictures not hung up yet.
You stepped in behind him.
You crouched down and the first frame was a photograph of what looked like Leon, in his early twenties maybe, in a police uniform. He was smiling. It took you a few seconds to understand you were looking at Leon.
Next to it, framed, a newspaper.
RACCOON CITY DESTROYED. With the date October 1st, 1998, and photograph of a mushroom of smoke where a skyline should have been.
“I was there,” Leon said next to you. “Raccoon City.” A pause. “It was my first day.”
You looked back at the young man in the police uniform. He looked so full of life.
You wanted to say something but you couldn’t.
There were more pictures. Another photo of him where he looked older. He was standing in the oval office, shaking hands with a President of the United States, a young blonde woman beside them with her arm around Leon like he was something she’d won. Another photo, candid, Leon with his arm around a dark auburn haired woman, a huge dark-haired man on his other side laughing at someone outside the frame. People and a whole life, decades of it, boxed and labeled and shut behind a locked door in a house on a random suburban street.
“The government job,” you said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yeah.”
You turned all the way around. Took in the cases of guns along the wall, the size of them and the smell in the room.
“This is why,” he said.
You turned to face him.
“The distance was real. The age—” his mouth pulled, “that’s real too. But this.” His eyes went over the room. “Almost thirty years of this. Everybody who ever stood close to me ended up in it. And five months ago you were—” he stopped and his voice softened. “You were the first thing in a long time that had nothing to do with any of it. And I wanted to keep it that way more than anything—”
“So you disappeared,” you said. “To keep me safe?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you were retired?” you asked.
“Mostly,” he said, looking at the cases along the wall.
You reached down and picked up the photo of him in the RPD uniform. You smiled.
“How old were you here?’
“Twenty-one”
“You were cute.” When you said it you could’ve sworn he blushed.
“Were,” he huffed with a smirk tugging at his lips.
You laughed and then set the photo back where it had been leaning and grabbed the photo of him with the president and the blonde girl.
“I can’t believe you met the president.” Your finger traced the wooden frame.
“Wasn’t exactly a meet-and-greet. His daughter was kidnapped and I got her back.” He said.
“Should you be telling me any of this?” You looked up at him.
“No,” Leon said.
You set the photo back down and walked toward the door. Leon followed you, switching off the light, and locked the door.
You walked down the stairs and Buddy was waiting patiently at the bottom of the steps. You crouched down and he shoved his head into your hands. You scratched his ears. The new collar was stiff under your fingers and the little silver tag flipped over against your knuckle.
You turned it face-up.
BUDDY
“Leon.”
“Yeah.”
“You named him Buddy.”
You stood up and he was standing by the dining room table.
“You did,” he said, looking at you.
“I did?” You questioned, furrowing your eyebrows.
“Yeah.” He scratched his head. “You called him that the morning you left. I thought it suited him.”
You looked at him in disbelief. “Of course you did.”
“Y/N,” he said, almost whispering.
“What.”
“I’m sorry.”
You told yourself once that those two words would have cost him nothing. Here he was saying them and you finally saw the price.
“I know,” you said.
Something that was almost a smile crossed his face and then was gone.
You had to go home. You understood with total clarity that if you stayed in this house one more minute you were never going to leave it.
“I should go,” you said. “Before my family sends a search party.”
Leon nodded. “Yeah.”
He walked you to the door with Buddy trying to follow you out. For a second time the three of you were crowded in his doorway.
“Merry Christmas, Leon.”
“Merry Christmas,” he said quietly.
You went down his steps and across the driveway. The salt crunched beneath your boots, with his bracelet cold on your wrist and your breath white in the lit up neighborhood. You didn’t have to look back to know he was standing by the window watching you, making sure you got home safely.
⋆꙳·❅*‧ ‧*❆ ₊⋆
You stepped back inside and the house was quiet besides the Christmas movie playing on the tv. Everyone was huddled up on the couch, including the kids who were up past their bedtime. You slipped behind them without anybody noticing and walked up the stairs to your room.
You sat down on your bed and there were three missed texts from Dani.
I’m sorry I didn’t see this until now. I hope you aren’t mad at me.
Saw you leave with Leon.
Tomorrow. Details. ALL of them.
You opened Leon’s messages and typed.
Made it home
And hit send.
His reply came back before the screen had dimmed.
I know
You set the phone down and you slept.
