𝐀 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬...⋆.˚♡
summary: after returning home from a mission, Leon seems a little different When you find out Ada was involved, old insecurities start creeping back in, and you try to become the perfect wife before he can realize you were never enough... but Leon notices everything.
warnings: re9!Leon x reader, no use of y/n, age gap relationship, younger wife!reader, mentions of Ada Wong, insecurity, jealousy, emotional hurt/comfort, reader comparing herself to Ada, fear of abandonment, Leon being emotionally constipated but deeply in love, marriage, established relationship, no Ada hate, soft angst, comfort, fluff, kissing, implied intimacy but no explicit smut, english is not the writers first language.
author’s note: this is kind of the reversed version of “Hold me where it hurts”, requested by my dear anon 🤎, where instead of Leon being the one who breaks down, reader is the one quietly falling apart and trying to prove she’s enough for him. I loved the idea of exploring Ada without turning it into hate. I wanted to try to also write more about the background reader and Leon have.
The first time Leon saw you, you were behind the counter of a small restaurant you worked at back then, moving between tables with that effortless kind of grace you had. It wasn’t a particularly fancy place, nor one of those spots where people dressed up as if they had something to prove, but it had warm lighting at night, low music, dark wooden tables, and a quiet atmosphere.
Leon had gone there because Sherry had recommended it.
Truthfully, she had been insisting for weeks that he needed to get out of the house, even if it was just to have a decent dinner and pretend, for an hour, that he was a normal person. He had told her he didn’t have time, that he was tired, that anything would do as long as he could eat in silence and leave without having to talk much to anyone. Sherry, as always, ignored half of his excuses and sent him the address anyway.
“Just go,” she had told him over the phone. “Don’t act like you’re about to get married. You just have to eat dinner.”
Leon had no idea then how ironic that would end up sounding.
He arrived late, wearing a dark jacket and the kind of exhaustion on his face that already seemed to be part of him. He sat at a table near the wall, not too far from the entrance, and glanced around out of pure instinct.
You didn’t do anything special. There was no movie-like moment, no sudden silence, none of that. You simply walked over with a small notepad in your hand and a kind smile. Something strange happened in Leon’s chest, something so quiet he could almost pretend it had been nothing.
You were young, much younger than him, and maybe that was why, at first, he tried to look away too quickly. Not because he saw you as a girl, not at all. You were a grown woman, sure in the way you moved, with the kind of beauty that needed no explanation. You had that sort of attractiveness that didn’t depend only on your body or your face, even though both would have been more than enough to make anyone turn their head. It was also the way you carried yourself. The soft fall of your hair, the way your uniform suited you far better than it was probably meant to, the pretty glow the lamps gave your skin, the sweet curve of your mouth when you smiled without forcing it.
There were beautiful women everywhere. Leon knew that. He had spent half his life walking in and out of cities, airports, government offices, hotels, missions where beauty was sometimes a mask and other times a threat. But there was something different about you. You were one of those people who seemed to fill the space around them without trying. Soft, feminine, warm, a clean kind of presence.
“Good evening,” you said, with a voice that stayed tucked somewhere in his memory before he even knew your name. “Do you know what you’d like to drink?”
Leon took a second to answer.
“Water is fine,” he replied, lowering his gaze to the menu as if there was anything on it more interesting than you. “Thank you.”
You smiled a little, as if his seriousness amused you, and walked back toward the counter without giving it much importance. But Leon did. He stayed there, staring at the menu without reading it, listening to your voice in the background as you spoke to other customers, the soft little laugh that slipped out when you were talking with your coworkers, the patience in the way you repeated things to people who weren’t listening properly. You weren’t only kind because it was your job. There was a real sweetness in you, a lovely sort of politeness, a way of treating people that didn’t seem rehearsed.
When he left the restaurant that night, he left a tip far too generous and told himself he wouldn’t come back.
He came back three days later.
Then again the following week.
And then on a Friday, when he wasn’t even hungry.
At first, you thought of him as just another customer. An attractive man, yes, the kind you remembered even after serving thirty people in one night, but also too reserved for you to think there could be anything behind it. Leon didn’t speak much, almost always ordered the same thing, and never made uncomfortable comments. He never looked at you in that dirty way some men did, confusing being served with being entitled to something more.
As the weeks passed, you started recognizing him before he had fully stepped inside. The dark jacket, the slightly messy blond hair, the tired eyes… You smiled at him with a little more confidence each time, and Leon, who had survived things others couldn’t even imagine, started feeling ridiculously weak at something as simple as seeing you brighten a little when you saw him.
“The usual?” you asked him one night, resting a hand on the back of the chair across from him.
“Am I already that predictable?”
“A little,” you admitted, and your smile widened just enough to make his heart stumble. “But I don’t mean it as a bad thing.”
He let out a low laugh, brief and almost rusty, as if he didn’t use it much.
From there, everything began moving forward with a beautiful kind of slowness. Leon wasn’t an impulsive man when it came to good things. With you, he was clumsy in a quiet way, careful to the point of seeming distant, as if every step toward you had to be measured twice so he wouldn’t scare you, hurt you, or drag you into a life he didn’t always know how to endure himself.
You, on the other hand, had a different kind of courage. You weren’t naive. Leon understood that quickly. You were sweet, yes, and there was a tenderness in you that felt almost unfamiliar to him, but you weren’t fragile in the way people often imagined beautiful women to be. You had character. You knew how to keep smiling in the middle of an awful shift, how to answer politely when someone tried to be too clever, how to get home late and wake up early the next day without turning it into a tragedy. There was a maturity in you that had nothing to do with age, and maybe that was what finally brought him down.
One night, when you were closing up and the restaurant had emptied out, Leon offered to walk you to your car.
He didn’t say it in a strange way. He was just standing there by the door, hands in the pockets of his jacket, wearing that calm expression that always seemed to be hiding too many things.
“It’s late,” he said, blushing a little. “I can wait until you’re out.”
You looked at him with a mix of amusement and curiosity.
“Is that something you do with all waitresses or just with me?”
Leon lowered his eyes for a second, and it was the first time you saw him truly uncomfortable.
“Then you can wait,” you murmured. “But don’t make that serious face. You look like you’re here to arrest me.”
He laughed again, and that time it lasted a little longer.
That was how it all began. With small conversations by the restaurant door, walks to your car, Leon asking whether you had gotten home safely and you replying with a ridiculous photo of your bedroom ceiling just to make him smile, with the first time you saw him outside that place and realized he was even more handsome when he wasn’t trying to hide behind a table and a glass of water.
Leon took his time before kissing you, much longer than you expected.
Not because he didn’t want to. You could tell by the way he looked at you when he thought you were distracted, by the care with which he opened the car door for you, by the way he stayed close without touching you too much, as if he was always about to break some rule he had made for himself. But Leon was like that. There was something in him that held back even when he wanted you. A part of him that seemed to repeat that you were too young, too beautiful, too clean for him, that he had no right to step into your life just because, for the first time in years, he had found someone who made him want to stay.
You were the one who finally broke that distance.
It had been a cold night, one of those nights where you had left the restaurant with flushed cheeks and your coat half-buttoned. Leon had walked you to your car like he had so many times before, and you had stayed there, standing in front of him, pretending to look for your keys in your bag even though you had them in your hand.
“Leon,” you said at last, lifting your eyes to his, “are you ever going to kiss me, or do I need to make an appointment?”
The expression on his face would have been funny if it hadn’t made your heart ache so much.
For a second, he seemed not to know what to do with his hands, with his mouth, with that whole body so used to reacting to danger but not to a woman looking at him like she wanted him. Then he let out a slow breath, took a step toward you, and touched your face with a gentleness that almost undid you before the kiss.
“I’ve been trying not to,” he confessed, smiling faintly.
It wasn’t a perfect movie kiss. It was better. Slow, restrained at first, as if he was still giving himself one last chance to stop. But when your fingers closed around the front of his jacket and you leaned a little closer, something in him gave way. He kissed you deeper, with a quiet need he had been keeping under his skin for weeks, and you felt the whole world shrink around the two of you: the cold, the car, the empty street, everything disappearing under the warm weight of his mouth against yours.
After that, Leon tried to take things slowly, but it didn’t always work. Because Leon, no matter how much he insisted you should take your time, had started looking at you as if he had found a home in a person, and you, who at first had kept telling yourself that this man was too old, too serious, too complicated, began to love every part of him. The beautiful ones and the difficult ones.
With time, he told you more, though not all at once. First, he talked about his job in a vague way, with measured explanations and silences in between. Then came names, missions, losses. Raccoon City appeared in his mouth one night like an old wound that had never fully closed. You didn’t say anything at first. You only took his hand under the table and let him speak as far as he could.
He expected fear, maybe judgment, or that uncomfortable look people wore when they didn’t know what to do with someone else’s pain. But you looked at him with bright eyes and a strange calm.
“I’m so sorry you had to live through that,” you whispered.
Leon swallowed. He squeezed your hand carefully.
Because no one stayed with Leon easily. People came in and out of his life, pushed by orders, missions, accidents, tragedies. Some stayed in his memory, others in his guilt, but you stayed in a different way. You stayed by making him dinner when he came home exhausted, by learning not to touch him suddenly when he was too deeply asleep, by making him laugh on days when he thought nothing could make him feel better.
And Leon fell in love with you with an intensity that scared him.
He told you for the first time in his apartment, on an ordinary night, while the two of you were in the kitchen. You were wearing one of his shirts, your hair down, your bare feet against the cold floor. You were tasting a sauce with a spoon and turned around to ask him whether it needed salt, completely unaware of the way he had been staring at you.
“What?” you asked, smiling. “Is it bad?”
Leon slowly shook his head.
“I love you,” he murmured, looking you in the eyes.
The spoon stayed suspended in your hand.
“You’re telling me this now? While I’m making a horrible sauce?” you said, offended by the fact that he had chosen to confess while you were in a very unflattering outfit.
“It’s not horrible,” he said, laughing at the weight you had lifted from his shoulders, though his eyes were still serious. “I love you,” he repeated.
And that time, you crossed the kitchen to kiss him with sauce on your hands and your heart beating so hard that he had to hold you against his chest to calm you down.
The age difference had always been there, though Leon never used it to make you feel small. In fact, it was almost the opposite. Sometimes it worried him too much. There were moments when you noticed him watching you with that shadow in his eyes, especially when you went out with people your age or when someone made a clumsy comment about how young you were compared to him. You usually brushed it off, telling him you weren’t a child, that you knew exactly who you were with, that you didn’t need anyone deciding what kind of life you were allowed to choose.
But there was a part of you that felt that difference too.
Leon cared for you with a quiet devotion: he listened to you, respected you, wanted you in a way that made you feel beautiful without ever turning you into an object. But sometimes, in the middle of a dinner with his acquaintances or when you heard names that belonged to his past, you realized there were entire years of Leon’s life you had never known, people who had marked him long before you walked into that restaurant with a smile.
And among all those names, Ada Wong had always held a strange place.
Leon never hid her from you. The first time he mentioned her, you still didn’t know what to do with that name. Sherry was at your house that afternoon, sitting cross-legged on the couch while you served her coffee. By then, Sherry and you had already become friends in a natural way, as if you had known each other your whole lives. She loved you because you were good for Leon, because you made him more human, more present, less closed off inside himself. You loved her because there was a strong kind of sweetness in her, a way of understanding him without judging him that made you feel less alone when he left on missions and the house became too big.
It was Sherry who let the name slip almost without meaning to.
She didn’t say anything bad, only a reference to the past, to a situation you didn’t fully understand and that Leon cut short with a quick look. Not angry, but uncomfortable.
That night, after Sherry left and the house went quiet, you asked him who she was. Leon stayed still for a moment, as if deciding how much he could say without hurting you.
“Someone from my past,” he answered, dry and clipped.
“That could mean a lot of things,” you said, a knot growing in your stomach.
He sighed, resting his elbows on his knees. He told you enough for you to understand that Ada wasn’t an ex in the normal sense of the word, nor just a simple partner, nor a clean enemy. It was something much more complicated: a dangerous woman, impossible to read completely. Someone who had appeared and disappeared from his life at moments when everything else was falling apart too. Someone he had shared things with that couldn’t be reduced to an easy label.
“Did you love her?” you asked, your voice lower than you meant it to be, the words leaving your throat as if they were made of needles.
Leon took a while to answer.
“I thought I did,” he said at last. “Or maybe I wanted to believe I did. For a long time, Ada was… complicated.”
You nodded, looking down at your hands. Leon turned toward you as soon as he saw your face change.
You did, though it was hard.
It was a simple sentence, but it didn’t fully calm you. Because “before you” didn’t always mean “less important than you.” Sometimes the past had deeper roots precisely because it had survived time, distance, and wounds. And you, with all your youth, your pretty skin, your desired body, and your ability to make Leon smile in the kitchen, suddenly felt small beside a woman who seemed to belong to some legendary part of his life.
Ada Wong wasn’t a waitress he had met by chance.
Ada had been there in the middle of horror, danger, and impossible decisions. She knew the Leon who held guns, the Leon who bled. You, however, knew the Leon who left his keys in the same bowl when he came home, the one who fell asleep on the couch with the TV still on, the one who kissed your forehead in the morning before leaving. And even though that intimacy was beautiful, your cruel mind sometimes tried to convince you it was less exciting.
Leon, of course, tried to reassure you.
“I’m not with her,” he said. “I’m with you.”
“I know,” you replied, your tone bitter.
“No, you don’t,” he murmured, moving closer. “If you did, you wouldn’t be looking at me like that.”
You didn’t think about it every day. You didn’t go through life distrusting him or imagining betrayals where there were none. Leon made you feel loved in a real, steady, mature way. But Ada was an elegant shadow in the corner of your mind, a doubt that appeared at the worst moments. When Leon received a call and grew serious, or when Sherry mentioned something from the past and you smiled as if you didn’t care, even though inside you were trying to fit pieces together from a story you hadn’t been part of.
Still, the relationship kept growing.
Leon proposed almost two years after that first kiss by your car. It wasn’t a dramatic proposal. He did it at home, on a rainy morning, while you were sitting in bed with a mug between your hands and your hair messy over your shoulders. You had been talking about the future for days.
He appeared in the bedroom doorway with an expression far too serious.
“What did you do?” you asked, because Leon, with that face, always looked like he was about to confess he had broken something or had to leave the country.
“That’s exactly what someone who did something bad would say,” you said, raising one eyebrow.
Leon slowly walked over and sat beside you. For a moment, he said nothing. He only looked at you in that way you already knew, as if he was still surprised to find you there, in his bed, in his life, in a place where no one was forcing you to stay.
Then he took a small box out of his pocket.
“You don’t have to answer now,” he said quickly, and the nervous rush in his voice broke your heart a little. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. I know this is a lot. I know my life isn’t simple, and neither am I. There are things I can’t promise you, and I hate that. I hate that I can’t give you a normal life every day. But I love you. I love you in a way I didn’t know I could still love someone. And if one day you decide you want to build a life with me, really, with everything that means, I want you to know I already want that life with you.”
You brought a hand to your mouth.
Leon opened the box. The ring was beautiful, delicate, clearly chosen with care. It wasn’t showy, but it was special.
And you cried, nodding while wiping away your tears. Leon let out a choked laugh when he saw you nod before you could even speak, and when you finally said yes, he kissed you as if something he had believed lost for years had been handed back to him.
Sherry cried more than she wanted to admit, and some of Leon’s friends attended with an almost solemn kind of discretion, aware that for him, this was much more than getting married. It was allowing himself to have something good without constantly preparing to lose it.
Leon knew it before he even saw you walking toward him. He knew it from the way everyone turned, from the soft silence that fell over the room, from the expression on Sherry’s face as she brought a hand to her chest. But when he saw you, really saw you, he went still.
You wore a simple dress that was perfect for you, one that shaped your figure with a delicacy that didn’t need to exaggerate anything. Your hair fell the way you liked it, your skin was glowing, your eyes bright with nerves and emotion. You smelled like that perfume of yours Leon would recognize anywhere, soft and feminine, the same one that sometimes lingered on the pillow when you got up before him. You looked young, yes, younger than him, and maybe anyone could have thought about the difference between you when seeing you together. But Leon only thought you were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
When you reached his side, you saw him swallow.
“You’re shaking,” you whispered, barely moving your lips.
He lowered his gaze to your hands for a second.
That made you smile, and that smile was nearly enough to undo him.
During the vows, Leon didn’t promise impossible things. He promised to come back whenever he could, to choose you even on difficult days, to not make you feel alone on purpose. He promised to love you with everything he had, even if sometimes he didn’t know how to do it perfectly.
When you kissed him at the end of the ceremony, with applause in the background and his hands holding your waist as if he still couldn’t believe he had the right to touch you like that in front of everyone, you thought that maybe this was happiness.
The first months of marriage were peaceful in a way Leon wasn’t used to.
He liked coming home and finding you there, seeing your things mixed with his, your creams in the bathroom, your books on the nightstand, your shoes by the entrance, your clothes folded with a care he had never had for his own. He liked hearing you move around the house, singing softly when you thought he couldn’t hear you, complaining about the cold while stealing one of his sweatshirts, falling asleep on his chest with the absolute trust of someone who knew they were safe.
But the insecurity didn’t disappear just because Leon had put a ring on your finger.
Sometimes it became even quieter, harder to admit, because how were you supposed to say you felt threatened by a woman from the past when you were his wife? How were you supposed to confess that there were days when you looked at yourself in the mirror, young, pretty, desired, and still felt like it wasn’t enough? How could you explain that it wasn’t a lack of trust in him, but fear that some part of his soul might still be looking toward a story you could never compete with?
Leon didn’t know everything that went through your head. He suspected things, of course. He was too good at reading small changes. He noticed when you went quiet after hearing certain names, when you suddenly became too affectionate, when you tried to make up for a sadness you hadn’t explained. But you always managed to steer the topic away with a kiss, a joke, a caress at the back of his neck.
Until Leon came back from one of his missions with a different attitude than usual.
It wasn’t exactly sadness. Not guilt either. It was a kind of intermittent distance, as if at times Leon slipped back to some point in the mission without meaning to. You tried not to overthink it. He had come back from a mission; of course he would be strange. Leon wasn’t a machine who could walk through the door and leave everything else outside.
But the next day, Sherry came over.
She hugged Leon tightly, called him an idiot for scaring her again, and then sat with you in the kitchen while he took a call in another room.
At first, you talked about normal things. How little he had slept, how unbearable it was to wait for news, how Leon pretended to be fine even when he had the face of someone who needed twelve hours of sleep and three years of therapy. You laughed with her, tired but happy.
Until Sherry mentioned Ada.
She didn’t do it with bad intentions. She never would have. In fact, it slipped out almost like a worried observation, spoken too quickly, trusting the friendship you already had.
“I guess seeing her again must’ve stirred something up too,” she said, stirring her coffee. “No wonder he’s been weird.”
Your hand froze over your mug.
Sherry looked up, and the moment she saw your face, she knew Leon hadn’t told you.
That “oh” was enough to make your chest go cold.
You didn’t need her to add anything else to understand. But she did, carefully, trying not to cause more damage than she already had. She explained that Ada had appeared during the mission, that there had been an encounter, and that Leon probably hadn’t hidden it from you out of malice, but because sometimes he was an emotional idiot who preferred swallowing things down rather than worrying the people he loved.
You nodded several times.
“Of course,” you said. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Sherry looked at you with pity.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, stroking your knee with regret. “Really. Leon loves you.”
But knowing something didn’t always stop you from feeling the opposite.
The image formed in your head on its own: Ada appearing in front of him, beautiful, calm, wrapped in that mystery you would never have, and Leon seeing her, returning to a past where you didn’t exist.
Suddenly, everything fell into place in the worst possible way.
He wasn’t distant because of the mission.
He was distant because of her.
When Leon came back into the kitchen, he noticed something was wrong.
“Yeah,” you answered quickly. “Of course.”
Sherry looked at you with concern, but said nothing.
From that day on, you started acting differently.
It wasn’t dramatic at first. You didn’t grow cold or start a fight. Quite the opposite. You became more attentive.
You made his favorite meals even when you were tired. You laid out his clothes, insisted that he rest, that he shouldn’t worry about anything, that you could handle everything. You started getting ready more at home, not in an obvious way, but with that quiet care of someone trying to always look desirable without admitting she was afraid she wasn’t enough. You wore the perfume you knew he liked, put on a little makeup even when you weren’t going anywhere, wore prettier nightgowns, softer clothes, things you used to save for special occasions.
At first, Leon thought you were simply happy to have him home.
But you were terrified the charm would break. Terrified that he had come back and, seeing you in your kitchen, in your house, with your simple life and domestic gestures, would realize you couldn’t compete with the kind of woman who appeared in the middle of danger and disappeared before anyone could reach her.
So you tried to be perfect.
If Leon went quiet, you didn’t ask. You stroked his hair and told him to rest. If you saw him looking at his phone, you swallowed the question and offered him coffee. If at night you felt him distant, you moved closer with soft kisses and careful hands, trying to remind him with your body and your tenderness that you were there, that you were his wife, that you could give him peace, love, desire, anything he needed.
It took Leon a few days to truly worry.
Not because he wasn’t observant, but because a selfish, tired part of him wanted to accept your care without analyzing it. But Leon knew the difference between being loved and being appeased out of anxiety.
He saw it one night in particular.
You had made dinner, cleaned the kitchen before he could get up, insisted that he sit down, that he do nothing, that you could handle it all. You were wearing a comfortable but pretty dress, your hair done, your lips touched with a soft gloss. You looked beautiful, in a way Leon couldn’t fully enjoy because there was something tense underneath it.
When he came up behind you to help with the dishes, you turned around immediately.
“No, leave it. I’ll do it.”
“Baby, I can wash a plate,” he replied.
Leon rested a hand on the counter, gently blocking your way without trapping you.
Leon watched you in silence. You looked away toward the sink, toward your wet hands, toward anything that wasn’t his eyes.
He didn’t say it angrily. That was worse. He said it with a soft, tired certainty, as if it hurt him to point out something you were trying so desperately to hide.
“Leon, really, I don’t want to talk about anything weird. You just got back. I just want to take care of you.”
“You already do,” he answered, sighing. “You’ve been acting for days like you have to earn your place in this house.”
The sentence hit you so hard you could barely breathe, and Leon saw the way your jaw tightened and your eyes filled before you could stop it.
“I’m not doing that,” you whispered.
“Yes, sweetheart. You are.”
The pet name, said with so much tenderness, finally broke you.
You tried to turn back toward the sink, but Leon carefully took your wrist.
“If it’s hurting you, then it isn’t stupid,” he said, searching your face for answers.
“You saw her,” you blurted out. “Ada.”
“Sherry told me by accident,” you added quickly, as if you needed to defend her. “It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t mean to hurt me. She just… mentioned it. And I didn’t know.”
Leon let go of your wrist very slowly.
“I was going to tell you.”
“No, Leon, you don’t have to. It’s your life and your past. I don’t want to be that person who demands explanations for everything. I don’t want to seem insecure or ridiculous or—”
His voice was low but firm.
Leon took a step closer. His face was serious.
“You’re not ridiculous. You’ve been trying to be perfect for me for days, and every time you do something for me, it looks like you’re waiting for me to decide if it was enough.”
The first tear fell before you could turn away. Leon wiped it with his thumb.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” you murmured. “I know I shouldn’t feel like this. Ada isn’t to blame for anything, and I don’t hate her. I don’t even really know her. It’s just… it’s just that she belongs to a part of you I’ll never understand,” you confessed. “And every time her name comes up, I feel like there’s something between you two that can’t be touched. And I know I’m your wife, but sometimes that doesn’t make me feel safer. Sometimes it makes me feel like I have more to lose.”
Leon swallowed, guilt crossing his face immediately.
“And I know I’m younger,” you continued, unable to stop now. “I know people sometimes look at it strangely, that even you have been scared of that. And I try not to think about it, but then someone like her appears, someone who was with you when I didn’t even know who you were, someone who understands that life, and I feel stupid. I feel like I’m just the pretty girl waiting for you at home.”
Leon looked at you as if that sentence had physically hurt him.
“You’re not ‘the pretty girl waiting for me at home.’ God, look at me.”
He held your face between his hands, gently forcing you to lift your gaze.
“You’re my wife. The person I want to come back to when everything else goes to hell. You’re the one who knows me when I’m not bleeding, when I’m not armed, when I’m not trying to survive. Do you have any idea how important that is to me?”
“With her, there were many things that were never simple,” he interrupted. “There were lies. There were moments when I wanted to believe I could understand her, and others when I knew I shouldn’t even try. Ada is part of my past. I’m not going to disrespect you by lying about that.”
Leon brought his forehead a little closer to yours.
“But you’re not a second choice.”
“You never have been,” he continued. “I didn’t choose you because I couldn’t have something else. I didn’t marry you because I needed a quiet life to cover up what came before. I chose you because I love you. Because you walked into my life and, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to be ready to lose everything. And when I’m away, all I want is to come back to the smell of your perfume in our room and hear you complain that I left my boots where I shouldn’t.”
A tearful laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. Leon smiled faintly too, though his eyes were bright. You covered your face for a second, embarrassed and overwhelmed, and Leon hugged you.
“I should’ve told you sooner,” he murmured against your hair. “Not because anything happened that threatened this, but because I knew it could hurt you to hear it from someone else. I’m sorry.”
He touched your ring with his thumb, slowly.
“I have something real now, and I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Your eyes filled with tears again.
“I was scared seeing her would make you realize you still loved her.”
“Seeing her made me realize I’m not the man who gets stuck in that anymore.”
He hugged you again, tighter this time, one hand on the back of your neck and the other on your waist.
“I don’t need to be convinced to love you,” he said against your ear. “You don’t have to earn a place that’s already yours.”
That was when you truly broke down, your face against his chest, your hands clutching at him as if all the fear you had been carrying for days had finally come loose. Leon held you without moving, taking in every tremble.
When you finally lifted your head, your eyes were swollen.
Leon turned off the water in the sink, took a towel, dried your hands as if it were the most important thing in the world, and then guided you to the living room. He didn’t let you keep cleaning. He sat down with you on the couch, settled you sideways on his lap, and wrapped a blanket around you even though it wasn’t that cold. Leon stroked your arm under the blanket.
“Tomorrow, I’m ordering food. You’re choosing a terrible movie, and I’ll complain for the first ten minutes and then watch the whole thing with you.”
A small smile appeared on your lips.
“Because your movies are bad,” he replied.
You lifted your head to look at him, pretending to be offended.
Leon smiled in that soft way he only gave you. You tried to keep a straight face, but you couldn’t. You laughed quietly, and Leon took the chance to kiss you. It was a slow kiss, unhurried, without the sad desperation with which you had been seeking him out these past few days.
When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against yours.
“Don’t try to compete with a ghost again,” he whispered.
You stayed there for a moment, breathing with him, feeling the warmth of his body, the weight of his hands, the quiet safety of the house around you. For the first time since Sherry had said that name in the kitchen, Ada stopped feeling like an enormous, unbeatable threat. She was still part of his story. That wasn’t going to change. But maybe you didn’t need to erase that part to be important.
“Leon,” you murmured. “Do you really not regret it?”
He pulled back just enough to look at you properly.
Then he kissed you again, softer this time.
“When I came back from the mission and saw you running toward me,” he said quietly, “I thought there was nothing in this world I wanted more than that.”
So you only turned in his arms, hid your face in his neck, and held him with all your strength. Leon closed his eyes at the feeling of you, feeling the love of his life finally resting beside him after so many difficult days.
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