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Leon’s apartment always used to feel so lonely when he came back from a field mission. Glad as he was to shut out the world that could be so violent and ugly, his private space felt isolated when he had nowhere he needed to go, no one he wanted to see after he’d taken the necessary time to rest and recover.
Today, his mind was drawn back outside these walls even as he pulled the door shut and locked it behind him. It was 10:32, Friday morning, so that meant Ashley was halfway through her last class of the week. In his mind, Leon saw her at a lecture hall desk, a soft furrow of concentration on her brow as her pen traveled over her notebook page. Despite her media image as a lighthearted young woman whose main interests were fashion and her sorority social life, Leon knew she was a hard-working student who enjoyed her classes and was proud of her academic achievements. Indeed, she had a perfectionistic streak when it came to her grades: it had been hard for her to be contented with B’s a year ago, after her semester had been interrupted by an unexpected trip to Spain.
Leon didn’t bother with turning on lights in the kitchen or living area, but headed straight to the bedroom at the back of the apartment. There he dropped his duffle on the floor and drew his cell phone from a pocket. Sinking to the edge of the bed, he clicked through Ashley’s unread text messages that he’d been saving since he got off the plane and turned on his personal phone four hours ago.
ASHLEY 10/01/2005 9:17 AM
Rainy day today. I hope it’s better weather where you are. Do they ever send you anywhere sunny and warm?
10/04/2005 1:55 PM
Just got my grade back from that crazy hard Greek translation test. Guess what? A-! Dr. Jackson said I took a few creative liberties but overall I have good instincts. :D
10/06/2005 11:02 PM
I figured out the perfect couples Halloween costumes for the SGP party: Evie and Rick from The Mummy. Pleeeeease? You’d make a great Rick, and I’m pretty sure you have the entire outfit already.
10/11/2005 4:23 PM
I think Winston misses you. He just jumped off my CLEARLY inferior lap after like 30 seconds. Silly cat. I used to be his favorite.
4:31 PM
Seriously, Winston is sulking. I think you need to come visit.
4:32 PM
I miss you, too. Maybe even a little more than Winston does.
He laughed softly at the final trio of messages. While he’d always been more of a dog person, he was beginning to suspect that cats somehow intuited this fact about him and found it irresistible: it would explain why he could ignore them and they still wound up in his lap. Or maybe Winston just liked him because Ashley did, in which case Leon could return the compliment.
He pressed the button for “Reply.”
LEON 10/14/2005 10:37 AM
Tell Winston I miss him, too.
10:38 AM
They sent me home a couple days early. Call you later? Unless you have cult activities planned. Don’t want to interfere with any super secret bug worshipping.
Ashley’s brother had been the first one to tease that the sorority was actually a cult, back when she had joined Sigma Gamma Phi, but after Spain, she and Leon had turned it into their own private joke.
Setting the phone down, Leon went into the bathroom to wash his face. Then he took off his shirt and bent an arm up behind his back to reach for the bandage stuck just inside his right shoulder blade. For a moment, he felt the double impact again: a monstrous corded arm striking him across the chest, then his teeth rattling as he slammed into a ruined wall. Yet it wasn’t the rubble left by an RPG and a rampaging bioweapon that had sliced through his body armor. As he’d dragged himself to his feet, he glimpsed the mangled claw of another BOW, reaching up through shattered concrete and twisted rebar . . .
On the third attempt, he caught the corner of the bandage and peeled it off. Peering over his shoulder at the mirror, he saw that the scab had hardened. Good. He wouldn’t have to bend himself into a pretzel to put a new dressing on. Sure, he could have had the staff medic rebandage it before he’d left StratCom headquarters this morning, but he was tired, every one of his senses worn down, and the idea of submitting to the medic’s impersonal touch felt like as much of an affront as the attack that had given him the wound in the first place. And even if the cut did open up again— Well, he’d picked navy bedding because the color hid bloodstains.
Once he’d changed into boxers and a faded tee, he returned to the bedroom. On the nightstand, his phone lit up with an incoming text.
ASHLEY 10:51 AM
Haha, it’s OK, bugs are on Saturdays. ;)
Is 6:30 good?
He laughed softly. He wasn’t planning on anything but sleeping for the rest of the day, so he would be free whenever she was.
LEON 10:52 AM
Perfect. Talk to you then!
She’d clearly been waiting for his response; her reply was almost instant.
ASHLEY 10:52 AM
<3
Leon smiled. Even long distance, he could sense the warm energy of her affection. Flicking the watch from his wrist, he set an alarm that left him enough time to shower before Ashley called tonight, then placed the watch on the nightstand beside his phone. He retrieved his combat knife from the duffle and returned to the bed, tucked the blade under his pillow as he lay down. Drawing in a slow breath, he closed his eyes.
When an electronic ringing dragged Leon awake, he reached for his watch, but several button presses failed to silence the alarm. “God dammit,” he muttered before recognizing the noise as his ringtone. He grabbed the phone.
5:52, Ashley, the LCD screen said. Leon flicked the phone open and held it to his ear. “Hello.”
Her voice was distant, as if her phone mic wasn’t aimed right. “Leon, hi!” There was a muffled rustle.
“Ash, is everything all right?”
“Yeah, the trip was quicker than I thought,” she said, voice clearer now. Leon heard a thud, and then Ashley giggled. “Can you come help me with your elevator? The code you gave me didn’t work, and now it’s asking for a key card.”
“What?” He dragged hair back from his face, perplexed by her unexpected question. “I changed it. Wait, Ashley, where are you?”
“I’m in the lobby. Hurry up!” More laughter. “Your security guy is giving me a weird look. I’m not sure he’s fooled by my disguise.”
“Okay, I’m coming,” he told her, rolling over and planting his feet on the floor as he spoke. “Just hold tight.”
He snapped the phone shut, then bounded to the closet and shoved on the first pair of shoes within reach before jogging out his apartment door and down the hall. He didn’t think Ashley was in any physical danger but he knew she didn’t want to talk to the security clerk.
When the elevator reached the lobby, the doors opened on a figure in a tan trench coat and oversized dark sunglasses. For a moment, Leon thought of another woman, her bobbed hair black, not golden blonde. Once, that memory would have pained him, but today he only stifled a smile.
Ashley stepped towards the elevator door, but Leon blocked her path. “I’m sorry,” he said with mock sternness. “I can’t grant you elevator access till you identify yourself, Secret Agent . . .” He trailed off expectantly.
Ashley slid down her sunglasses and eyed him over the top, both amused and exasperated. “Leon!” she hissed.
“Oh, it’s you, Baby Eagle,” he said as if surprised. Glancing past her, he noted the security clerk rising from his desk in the lobby. The man’s expression was merely curious, but Leon wasn’t interested in having his visitor recognized. His relationship with Ashley was hardly a secret, but still, he preferred to keep it private when he could.
“You better come with me,” he said, scooping up the pair of brown paper bags on the ground beside her. Leon stepped back into the elevator, and Ashley tumbled in after him. He jabbed a button to close the door.
As the elevator began moving, Ashley tipped her glasses atop her head and leaned against the wall. From the deliberate way she crossed her arms, he knew she was restraining the impulse to throw herself on him in a hug while they were still in view of security cameras. Her gaze drifted down from his face, taking in his boxers and running shoes without socks; when she met his eyes again, she was smirking.
“I would’ve put on pants,” he said, “but you sounded like you were in trouble.”
“Help! Leon, save me!” she sang, pitching her voice higher in a parody of herself.
“Yep, sounded just like that.”
Ashley laughed, a sound that had changed Leon’s life since he’d first heard it in a dreary, rain-drenched village.
He said, “I thought you were in Boston.”
“I’ve got a private jet, you know.”
“You flew here,” he affirmed, touched that she’d braved it alone. Since her abduction, airplanes made her anxious. She’d spent the first half hour of the flight from Spain clutching his hand.
“Mm, I can manage if it gets me to you.”
Leon smiled. He’d watched her find a lot of unexpected courage since they’d met, and while he wouldn’t take credit for any of it, he felt honored knowing he had inspired her to discover her own strength.
The elevator chimed, and the door slid open on Leon’s floor. As he followed Ashley into the hall, he gestured with one of the paper bags.
“What’s in here?”
“Dinner. Is roast salmon okay?”
“That sounds great.” Really, there probably wasn’t anything she could offer to make that wouldn’t be good. Cooking was one of her hobbies, and the few times she had made a meal for Leon were enough to prove her skills were far ahead of his own.
Once they were inside his apartment and the door was closed, Ashley wrapped her arms around Leon’s neck and draped herself against him. “I missed you,” she said softly before her lips met his.
He kissed her until her sunglasses fell off her head and clattered on the floor. “Missed you, too, sweetheart. I’m glad you came.”
She smiled, clearly pleased.
Leon kissed her once more on the cheek, then stooped to pick up her glasses. “Does this stuff need to go in the fridge?” He gestured at the grocery bags.
“Just the cream, for dessert. But I was going to start cooking, so the rest can stay out.”
He took her coat, then carried the bags into the kitchen and started unpacking them on the countertop as Ashley washed her hands. “You need any help?” he asked.
“Nah, I got this. You go get dressed. Unless you want to eat dinner in your underwear.” She gave him a teasing, indulgent smile. “I’ll allow it.”
Leon laughed. “I’ll shower and get dressed. I’m told I clean up nicely.”
“You do.” She reached up and mussed his hair so that it fell into his eyes. “I like you even when you’re a mess, though.”
He grinned at her, resisting the urge to shake bangs out of his face. “I know you do.”
When he returned, showered, shaved, and dressed, Ashley was in the living area, inspecting the leafy red and green plant by the window. In her high-waisted skirt of russet velvet and a moss-green turtleneck sweater, she looked festively autumnal, and Leon briefly wondered if he should have chosen something a little nicer than jeans and a plain gray tee after all.
“Your plants seem fine,” Ashley pronounced, turning.
“Hunnigan said she watered them on Wednesday.”
She smiled, satisfied. “Good.”
On her way back to the kitchen, Ashley paused to look at a framed photo on the bookshelf. Like the plants, it had been a gift from Leon’s sister, a candid shot from her wedding showing him with the bride and groom. He loved it, even when the memory was bittersweet: that image of them laughing, joking, happy represented the last moment Leon had felt that way for a long time afterwards.
“I thought you said Val got married after you joined the military,” Ashley mused.
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s not a military haircut.”
“Nope.” He laughed, made self-conscious by the memories her observation had dragged up. “I never did have to cut my hair.”
“Really?” She regarded him with eyes wide. “I thought that was, like, required.”
“Normally it is. I joined training a few weeks late, so I missed all the standard initiation procedures. I was still angry about not having a real choice in being there, so I decided I wasn’t going to do anything about my hair till someone made me. And they never did.”
“What?” Astonishment fluttered in her voice.
“I found out later that one of the commanding officers had protested against admitting me late in the training, but he’d been ordered to take me, quote, ‘exactly as I was.’ He was a stubborn son of a bitch, so maybe not enforcing that rule was his way of getting back at me. Probably thought I’d get sick of the mockery and decide to cut it on my own.” He smirked at her, a little self-deprecating now. “But I can be a stubborn son of a bitch, too.”
“Leon!” she protested, laughter in her tone.
“I hated being called a pretty boy, but I hated giving in even more. It would have felt like losing the last part of myself that was still mine.” He saw Ashley’s eyes tense as he spoke; he knew she didn’t like thinking about the things that had hurt him. “I proved I deserved to be there, and they stopped teasing eventually,” he assured her.
“Oh. That’s good,” she said, though her brows still didn’t relax.
“It wasn’t an easy time,” Leon acknowledged. “But it’s over now. You don’t have to feel bad.” He was touched by her sympathy, but she was one of the reasons his life was better now. He didn’t want her to make herself sad by dwelling on his past.
“Okay,” she said, and the trust in her eyes warmed and reassured him. A year ago when they’d begun this relationship, Leon had wondered if she could really bear the uncertainty that came with his job or whether her love and concern for him would crush her. But, like in Spain, she always tried to trust him over her own fears.
She came to him and kissed his cheek. “Do you want to open that bottle of wine?” she asked, glancing to the kitchen counter.
“Sure thing.”
He was digging for the corkscrew at the back of the silverware drawer when Ashley said, “You’re bleeding.”
“Damn.” Leon slid a hand down the back of his shirt collar. His skin was sticky, and when he drew his hand back, his fingertips were red. “I thought that had closed up.”
“Let me help.” Ashley’s eager look shaded into something almost bashful. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”
He gave her an appreciative smile. “Thanks.”
Gathering bandage and alcohol wipes, he laid them on the kitchen table.
“No sewing kit this time?” Ashley teased.
“Nah, just peel and stick.”
Leon seated himself sideways on a chair and reached for the hem of his shirt, but Ashley was already tugging it up, her fingertips barely skimming him. Then her palms flattened on his back, and she pushed her hands up to his shoulder blades. “This’ll have to come off,” she said when her wrists caught in bunched fabric. There was the faintest awkward hitch in her voice; surely she’d never undressed someone in any context before.
Leon pulled the shirt over his head, grateful that she wasn’t able to see his face, which was suddenly burning.
As Ashley dabbed an alcohol wipe against him, he grunted softly, but Ashley didn’t freeze or apologize, just kept working.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” she pronounced in a moment. “You must’ve washed the scab off. Does it hurt?”
“Not really,” he returned, glad he could say so truthfully. During the mission in Spain, he hadn’t always been honest about how badly he was hurt. It had been the right thing then: Ashley didn’t need to add his wellbeing to the weight of her fears. But now, he knew her too well to hide things. And if she really wanted to be in his life, she deserved the truth.
She centered the bandage and smoothed it into place, then laid her open palm over it and pressed firmly.
“It should stop bleeding in a minute,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Mm-hm.” She sighed, her warm breath brushing his skin moments before her fingertips traced out a pattern there. “You’ve got them on your back, too,” she said, her tone musing.
“Ash, I’ve got scars everywhere.”
“No, I mean your moles.”
He laughed softly. “Oh, yeah, I guess so.” He’d never given them much thought, but he knew she liked those little imperfections on his skin. Six months ago, after several rounds of birthday cocktails (most of which he had finished for her), she had left him smudged in lipstick after kissing all the moles she could find on his face and neck.
Today, she leaned close and kissed the top of his shoulder, and he knew her lips were on the scar left by one of the countless monsters he’d faced in Raccoon City.
“I cried in the shower when I found my scar from the plaga,” she said, her fingers mapping another mark along the back of his triceps. “I think that was when I realized none of this was just going to go away like it had never happened.”
He sighed, aching at his own memory of a similar moment. “I’m sorry, Ashley.”
She came around to face him.
“I hid my scar because people were already asking enough questions, but I’ve decided I don’t care anymore. It’s proof that you saved me, and I’m not sorry about that.” Leon didn’t need to see her sweet expression to know that Ashley’s feelings about what he had done for her went far beyond simply being “not sorry.”
Reaching out a hand, she traced her index finger down his matching scar. Her touch was light, not with shyness now, but almost with reverence, as if she touched something sacred.
“I’ve always liked thinking that you have the same scar, and so—” Her cheeks pinked. “—no matter what, we’ll always be connected.”
“Yeah?” He smiled at this admission that she wanted them to belong together. “We’re connected by more than that.” He laid his right hand on her cheek, and she nestled into it, closing her eyes.
“Do they bother you? Your scars,” she whispered.
“Sometimes.”
Ashley stooped to his shoulder, her lips plucking gently at his old bullet wound.
“Not right now,” he said. No one had ever touched him like this before. Her manner was adoring, as if his scars were more than just the proof that he was damaged.
“Good.” Straightening, she swept back his bangs and pressed her lips to his hairline, on the scar that still bore the faint marks of her stitches. “I don’t mind them. I mean, I don’t like seeing you hurt, but . . .” Her hands slipped down his face, tilted his chin up so their eyes met. “I’ve always thought they’re beautiful.”
“Oh?”
She stared at him, lips parted as she searched for words. Then clasping his hand between her own, she slid to her knees. Hands folded, head bowed, she might have been praying. Her lips skimmed his knuckles, then she looked up at him, smiling softly. “The first time I saw them all, back in that castle—”
Leon’s memory flashed with an image of her staring at him as bloodied, shirtless, he leaned over a basin of water.
“—I knew your scars were sacrifices you had made for other people. Like you were making for me.” She opened her hands and pressed her mouth to the scar she herself had laid across his palm. “I looked at you, and I thought—”
The blood flared in her face. She swallowed, closed her eyes. Then planting one hand on his thigh, she clasped the other behind his neck and rose up till her lips met the jagged mark above his heart where she’d once purged a demon and saved his life.
“I thought you have a holy body,” she murmured, words vulnerable and intimate as a confession against his skin.
“Ashley,” he whispered. The man he’d been before Spain would have protested that he didn’t deserve such worship, didn’t deserve her, but he wouldn’t question it now. If she said he was holy, then it must be true. To believe otherwise would be to profane her faith.
Leon put a hand to her head, fingers weaving through her hair as he held her snug against him. “What would I do without you?”
She made an indistinct noise. “I could ask the same thing.”
He lifted her head, fingers still in her hair, and kissed her mouth. “I love you.”
Ashley gazed up at him, eyes as radiantly dewy as they’d been that morning on a Spanish beach when he’d promised he wasn’t going to disappear from her life. “My Leon.”
“Yours,” he agreed before yielding to the pressure of her hands and leaning into another kiss.