✦ — leon s. kennedy x wife!reader | what does it feel like when resentment is so intense that it lasts longer than a marriage? ; around 3.1k words, part two here
You realized that something was wrong from the very moment you noticed that the ring had been left on the nightstand. It wasn’t something extremely unusual, especially considering the price he had paid years earlier to buy it, but at the same time it was strange to see that glint far too close, and not around his ring finger.
It certainly wasn’t news that Leon cared about your wedding ring, after all, he had often come up that he himself considered it probably his favorite object in the world. Ironically, you always said that wasn’t true — that in any universe he would have chosen a gun over that little piece of jewelry — but deep down in your heart you knew the truth behind his words. You simply liked to joke whenever the topic came up, to be ironic about something you knew weighed so deeply in his chest. A bit like sugarcoating the pill — avoiding talking directly about what really lay behind the career he had been carrying on his shoulders.
Irony had always played a fundamental role in your lives, both when you were individuals and later as an actual married couple. It was better to laugh than to realize that it was more common to see a gun in the house than a bouquet of flowers.
Irony, always and only irony.
Even when it spilled into the worst of your arguments, the ones that lasted for hours and perhaps stressed him more than his entire days away — too far away from that tiny bit of normalcy he had imposed on his life.
Not that you liked arguing with your husband, but you were all too aware that your reaction to an argument was very different from his. If for you it was just a simple disagreement, for him it was carrying the awareness that it could be your last conversation at any moment before being sent to the other side of the globe. Perhaps this was what made you a bad person — being aware of this possibility, yet still starting an argument that had left you both completely drained last night.
And this morning, at 05:47, Leon had left the house after receiving a call less than twenty minutes earlier. Less than three hours after having spat venom at each other, forgetting the real reason you had argued in the first place.
You sigh, getting out of bed and picking up his ring. You place it on the marble countertop while brushing your teeth, move it onto the bed while changing your clothes, and watch it from a distance as you sip the first coffee of the day. It feels strange to see it close by, after everything that happened last night. It almost feels like a reminder of how much of a terrible person you actually are with the man who is, theoretically, your husband and the one you love most.
After your cat obviously, but you don’t think it’s the right moment to use your usual irony, not when he can’t laugh at your words.
You don’t even realize you’ve woken from this thought until the static noise starts on the other end, with the cold screen pressed against your ear. You place the coffee on the table, stand up, and begin pacing nervously around the room, occasionally glancing at the glint.
Is he not answering the call because of a zombi or simply for the sheer pleasure of not wanting to hear your voice? You don’t know if you honestly want to find out, either answer would be terrible.
“Is something wrong?” you hear on the other end, snapping you awake once again from thoughts that might be making things worse than they actually are. You startle and clear your throat, trying to analyze his tone — one you unfortunately didn’t catch the first time. You stammer something without really speaking, perhaps still focused on analyzing something that’s actually irrelevant “Hey” you finally say, yet you remain fixated on his tone, which — irreverent as it may be at the moment — can tell you whether you’ll spend the next few hours apart from him with solvable anxieties or or full blown panic attacks.
For a few seconds, the silence stretches for decades — longer than the years you’ve spent without him than with him “Umh… Yes. So?” you hear again from the other side, and it’s precisely in his absent irony that you realize he clearly hasn’t shaken off the problems from a few hours ago. A nervous smile appears on your lips, and you’re thankful it’s a phone call and not a face-to-face meeting — otherwise, you’d have burst into tears at his confused look “Yeah. Did you get to the place you were assigned?” you ask, unable to shake off the confirmed feeling that he’s still angry with you. You hear a sigh on the other end, one so heavy that it usually only comes when you’ve teased him too much or when he’s genuinely annoyed “Yes. I got here, I think… about half an hour ago? I guess. It’s going to take a while here” he says, and you don’t really know how to keep the conversation going.
“I understand. Did you take everything? Are you sure you didn’t forget anything? I could send the stuff to headquarters and they’d forward it to you and then-” you start letting your words flow a little, but you’re cut off “I didn’t forget anything. I think I need to go, the patrol is being assigned”
You’re taken aback when the call ends abruptly. The static noise fills your ears and then the entire room. You don’t know how long you stay there with the phone still pressed to your ear, but you realize the coffee has become as cold as the South Pole, even though it had been as warm as a late July day. It’s not the first time the line has been cut off in the middle of one of your calls — often it’s even the anti-tracking restrictions that make them end so abruptly — but something deep in your heart tells you that this time, it has nothing to do with that. You would almost prefer that he had hung up because of an approaching zombie rather than a simple irritation in his heart.
Maybe not exactly, but the fact remains that the first panic attack of the day is probably not far off.
You sigh louder than you really should, placing the phone next to the ring on the table, only to pick it up again a few seconds later. Your fingers fly over the keyboard, as if the zombie were truly close to him and if you had zero time. You stare at the screen for a moment before hitting send, then place the phone back on the table, face down.
✉️ from you — “I love you. Don’t make me worry, and stay safe. Call me when you have a few free minutes, okay?”
You hate that he didn’t even tell you which remote and dangerous location he’s in right now, but you can’t blame his behavior. You’d probably carry annoyance and resentment too after finding your life partner angry just after returning from an exhausting day. You can’t judge him for giving you a taste of the same medicine, even if admitting it probably hurts more than the punishment itself.
You stay in the kitchen for a few more minutes, completely abandoning the coffee to itself. You only return to the room hours later, when the morning sun has given way to the amber light filtering through the window above the sink. Not that you spent the hours outside the house pretending to be completely calm — but having constant panic attacks on your bed is better than having them on the shiny kitchen floor. Ignoring the phone and keeping it away is easier than having it constantly nearby, with the anxiety of checking whether he has read the message.
With a few tears still at the corners of your eyes, you notice that the message was actually read just a few minutes after you sent it — almost half a day ago by now. You involuntarily tighten your grip on the phone, but at that very moment you notice an unusual notification. Usually you never really have many notifications on your phone, probably because of a setting that moves them all to “read later” as soon as they arrive. Yet this one is marked as “urgent” and you know for certain that only one app on your phone has this specific type of notification. You jolt when the realization hits you, while your hands become almost like butter just when you really need to hurry.
The only app with this type of notification is a specific app for the distant families of D.S.O. members. Its sole function is to create a communication bridge between agents and their families when the situation has already become worse than originally expected. If a notification comes from there, the chances that something serious has happened are practically confirmed.
If earlier the panic attacks had already filled your day with shit, the feeling you’re experiencing now is only a small part of the previous hours. You immediately open the app, only to notice the notification that arrived less than a few seconds ago — seconds that now feel like the last calm ones before something you really don’t want to discover. In the messages section you find only a preset message, one of those that, if you press it, automatically calls the special agent.
“Shit” you mutter to yourself, hastily pressing the function, putting the phone to your ear and stomping your foot more than necessary on the floor out of anxiety. With the static noise in the background, you wonder if it was really worth arguing so bitterly a few hours ago — you know for certain you wouldn’t have done it if you had known about this situation beforehand. Leon has never had to use this function in all these years, and if he’s using it right now — he who has survived practically everything — then something horrible has happened. Bad as shit, probably.
The breath caught in your throat only returns when the static noise is replaced by something quieter but strangely more human. You hear only a faint breath in the background, low enough to set off all your worst fears “Leon? Leon?” you ask, but there’s no answer “Leon? Leon? Leon?!” you say, raising your voice as if he were actually there, just as you truly wish he were “Leon?!”
“I hear you” you hear from the other side, and just his voice is enough to make you break down in tears. Hearing him speak gives you the certainty that he’s alive, and if he’s alive, then all the worries of the last moments are just fears born from the terrible situation you’re in. Your hand goes to your face, trying to cover your mouth to control and mask the sobs. “I thought something had happened… you’ve never contacted me like this before…” you say, but unfortunately you know your sobbing breath does not go unnoticed.
You hear someone speaking faintly in the background on the other side, followed by a movement and the sound of footsteps continuing for a few seconds. You cover your mouth completely, sit down on the chair, and wait. It doesn’t even cross your mind to worry or probably get angry that he didn’t hesitate to hear you crying — you can’t compare your situations right now. You try to muster your strength, because you know that at this moment the ice is far too thin and could break again at any moment.
“I can talk now. I was leaving the tower” you hear on the other side, and immediately your nerves tighten again “Okay. Did something happen?” you ask, keeping it vague — partly because you really want to know what happened, and partly because asking about the ignored message isn’t the best idea right now. You hear a slight commotion, which gradually fades with each passing second “They’ve cut the line on many phones. We’re communicating through the disposable ones they provided. There was an attack that we neutralized, but for the moment we have to wait until the radiation levels drop”
“I understand. Do you know how long you’ll have to stay put?” you ask, and once again the commotion in the background appears and fades “I’m not certain, it could take a few hours or a few days. They’re still updating the databases to actually understand how much they attacked and how much they lost” he says, using technical language that would normally make you laugh, but now it leaves only a bitterness at the back of your throat. You remain silent, nodding as if he could see you. “… I understand. Alright” you say.
It’s precisely in the silence that follows, in the words that seem to leave your mouth but for some unknown reason get stuck, that you wonder how much you really love your husband. If you loved him as you say you do, you probably wouldn’t be like this — kilometres away, without the certainty of being able to tell yourself that you miss him. Or rather, the certainty is there, but not the kind that would confirm that Leon misses you too. How can you miss someone who shatters your boundaries? What if that person is your wife?
“Are you okay?” you ask in a faint voice, hoping your words reach his heart the way he reached yours years ago. A slight grunt is heard, loud enough to echo faintly “I’m okay”
The corners of your mouth lift slightly, enough to give you a softer expression “Okay… alright. I’m glad you’re okay, Leon. I’m really glad”
“Look” you hear on the other side, and it’s precisely in the moment when the conversation strangely seems to continue that you realize you might need to pay attention to what he’s about to say. You perk up your ears, your hand slightly trembling “Yes?” you say, a little uncertainly. The noise grows louder again “The message. I read it. I actually used this function just to call you. You’re aware that… we’re not okay, right?”
You knew it, but hearing it said and admitted by the person himself hurts more than all the venom you’ve spat and received over the past hours “I know. I know” you say, pressing your lips together and holding back a sigh that might only make things worse — a gesture of irritation that is really just worry “I know you’re aware, you’re not stupid. Listen, right now I really don’t have the strength or the will to argue…” he says, then pauses “But trust me when I say I’m pissed as hell. It feels like at the center of your world is only the goal of being my source of stress, even when I’m just trying to breathe, as Leon and not as a damn agent” he says, and as much as you’re aware that he’s right, at the same time you feel the need to tell him how you’ve perceived it “I know, Leon. It’s just that… fuck, every time you’re home you have nothing to say to me. Like I’m the doll you keep on the shelf, the one you use when you don’t want to kill yourself with alcohol, thinking I’m not watching. With this doll you just want to fuck or even create, I don’t know, the dream you’ve been telling me you want for years?” you say, and silence falls again.
“Don’t you dare. You speak as if you know the shit I’ve carried since I was just supposed to be a young adult, thrown into something I knew I could never fully handle” he responds coldly, almost making your blood boil again “You know perfectly well that you could have stepped away the moment something didn’t respect your limits” you immediately retort, gripping the phone tighter than necessary “Why are you acting like this, my limits? Do you even know my limits?” he asks, and though the background noise is loud, it’s just a whisper compared to his voice “I’d know if only you would talk to me!”
Can resentment really turn something sincere into pure, toxic bitterness? You genuinely ask this yourself, because you know that you probably wouldn’t be like this if only both of you could turn this bitterness into common ground. For years, you’ve done it for even bigger and more serious things, yet right now it feels almost like climbing a peak with your bare hands. When was the moment you started walking on two separate paths instead of a single one?
You don’t remember, because maybe it never really happened. Perhaps the daily habit of arguing without ever truly clearing things up has led you here, to a point where you don’t really know how this relationship can survive without first learning to breathe again. Maybe the moment could be today, today when he left his wedding ring on the nightstand. Yet you would rather endure everything he’s been living through for years than let him go and admit that the two of you no longer work. You’re far too stubborn and in love with your husband to let yourselves become like those couples who live under the same roof but exist in two completely parallel dimensions.
Right now, silence serves the same role as tears. The longer it stretches, the more you see it distort into something that could resemble a future where you truly can no longer live with Leon, but only survive with what remains of him.
“When will you be home?” you ask, your lips tight and pale, your mind already on the other side of the house, perhaps in front of the framed photo of your wedding. The silence continues and weighs heavily, probably more than a call filled with rivers of tears “When it’s needed” he says, and even though his words are deliberately harsh, you catch a trace of fear in them. You swallow, uncertain how to speak without breaking other untouchable walls at the moment “There’s always a need for you in our home, Leon” you say, just before hearing the tone that signals the end of the call.
Because no matter how bastard life is, you would always choose the option that would lead you to carry a minimum of the weight that Leon carries. It’s just that often the weight, even if minimal as it may be seem, can make an entire system falter.