Chapter Text
For the third time in twenty minutes, Leon looked at his watch.
2257
Looking at his watch wasn't going to make the time go by any faster, he knew. But there was some small part of him that hoped that he may have just fallen out of space and time for a bit, lost within his own thoughts, and that time in the outside world had gone by much faster than it seemed.
That never turned out to be true.
He should've been home by now. In fact, he should've been home over an hour ago. His impromptu intel meeting at the White House had ended about an hour and a half ago, but as he'd approached his car with the intention of turning in for the night, he'd found a handwritten note very conspicuously sticking out from underneath his drivers' side windshield wiper.
Rose Garden 11:00
That was all that it'd said. The writing itself was decidedly feminine, but he was certain he'd never seen it before. The approach was completely alien to him, too. He'd come out to find people waiting for him at his car before with the intention of pulling him aside for some unofficial-official this or that, but never a note. Never like this.
The only thing that he could do at the time was wordlessly tuck it away in a pants pocket, toss his suit jacket onto the front seat of his car, and then turn around and head back to the House.
That was ultimately how he'd found himself waiting out in the Rose Garden in the dead of night with his tie slightly loosened, the top button of his shirt undone, and his sleeves rolled up just above his elbows. He was still here on business, he supposed, but he also wanted whoever this was to know that they were keeping him after hours. Whatever this was had better be damn important.
Sighing, Leon placed a hand on his hip and looked up towards the sky. The lights from the city all but blotted out the stars, but both Venus and Mars remained stubbornly visible amidst the inky blackness. Some part of that was still vaguely poetic in its own right, especially since the New Moon left a void in its noticeable absence.
All around him, the balmy air of late August clung to his skin and blanketed the area. Tiny insects in the form of indistinct specks buzzed aimlessly around the yellow glow from the few lamps and lanterns throughout the garden, as the light struggled for as much purchase as it could get beneath the oppressive dark.
Truthfully, Leon had never been out here at night before. In fact, he'd only been out here a handful of times at all — and never for very long. If he hadn't been so annoyed about being held late after a meeting he hadn't anticipated going to in the first place, he probably would've found the backdrop peaceful, if not outwardly comfortable. It made sense to him now — intellectually, at least — why presidents of all generations would come out here for a minute to themselves.
"Hey," a suspiciously familiar voice called from behind him, snapping him out of his own thoughts. "I hope you weren't waiting here super long."
Leon was slow to turn around to face the owner of the voice, and even slower to recognize her. Standing where she was, this woman's face was half-draped in shadow, but he could see that she stood almost a full head shorter than him. Her build was equal parts slender and curvy, with long legs, wide hips, a tiny waist, and a chest that he needed to make sure that he didn't stare at. She wore a black dress with a dangerously low-scoop neckline that was tight around her torso and ¾ of the way down her arms, but which flared out and fell loosely just above her knees. Her seemingly dark hair framed her face perfectly, eventually ending in very loose ringlets that settled across her collarbone.
Her silhouette was familiar to him, but little else. Her silhouette and her eyes, that was — her left one just barely caught the light at the right angle, flashing emerald green at him and with a determination that he definitely recognized. Leon felt his forehead wrinkle and his brows knit together in confusion as he wracked his brain for a match for the body shape, eye color, and voice somewhere in his memory —
— but it wasn't until she shifted her weight slightly to lean further into the light that he was able to catch sight of an extremely familiar scar on her chest, and it all clicked into place for him. It was large, spanning out at least five to six inches across her sternum, with the top end hugging the inside curve of her left breast, and the bottom end disappearing into the neckline of her dress. It left her skin distressed and discolored just enough to stick out as obvious. He'd recognize that scar anywhere.
Because he had the exact same one.
"Ashley?" he asked cautiously.
A genuine smile split her face, and she reached up to nervously tuck her hair behind her right ear.
"You're the one who left that note?" he followed up.
"Guilty," she said. "Surprised? The way you were looking at me, I was worried that you'd forgotten who I was."
Leon shook his head, suddenly feeling dizzy. It'd been years since the last time he'd seen or spoken to her, but not a single day had gone by since they'd parted that he hadn't thought of her. He'd been too nervous to ask — too afraid that he'd be overstepping the bounds of professionalism — too worried about showing his hand and revealing a weakness that he didn't want to be seen by anyone, not even the president.
He'd heard whisperings about her. That she'd gone back to school, that she'd graduated, that she was volunteering her time to help out at shelters for troubled and runaway youths as she waited for her father's term in office to end, not wanting to step out into the professional world until it'd be less of a strange conflict of interest. He'd heard all of these things, but they never revealed to him how she was, if she'd taken to re-integrating to society well, if she had nightmares, if she was okay, if she really was committed to living her life free of the horrible yoke of bioterrorism, if she —
— if she thought about him anywhere near as often as he thought about her.
Steeling his gaze, Leon straightened his posture.
"You know, you were blonde the last time I saw you," he said flippantly.
"So were you," she was quick to shoot back.
Unconsciously, he turned his eyes upwards towards the small bit of hair he could see at his right temple. He reached up and idly combed his fingers through it, pulling it closer into his view before dropping his hand to his side again.
"I guess I was," he said. "I lost a bet, back then. This is my natural color."
"What was the bet?" she asked.
He opened his mouth to answer her, but then ultimately decided against it. It had been some incredibly nerdy movie thing he'd gotten into with a Senate intern, and it would take more time to explain than was worth it. What came out instead was a sigh and a slight shake of his head.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "I lost. That's all you really need to know."
She looked like she wanted to press the matter further, but in the end she pursed her lips and reached up to finger the pendant of her necklace. A nervous tic, perhaps. On closer inspection, Leon realized that he recognized the necklace, too — she'd been wearing it back when they'd first met, on one of the simultaneously best and worst nights of his life.
"Just as mysterious as ever," she mused. "It won't kill you to give a straight answer every once in a while, you know."
He hesitated. He'd been called a lot of things over the course of his life, but "mysterious" had never been one of them. Quiet, maybe. Private, sometimes. Weird, definitely. But "mysterious" would've implied that there was something about him to uncover that was actually interesting, and he was absolutely certain there wasn't. He lived a pretty bland life locked away from most people, and not at all by choice. That bet with that intern had easily been the most socially exciting thing to happen to him in the last five years.
Before he could push the question out of his throat, though, Ashley was already moving. She took a step towards him and took his left arm in both hands, hooking one around his bicep and the other around his forearm as she turned him to stand side-by-side with her.
"Whatever," she said. "Come on, walk with me."
He cocked his head to the side, brows furrowed, as he stared down at her with false incredulity while she hung on his arm like a rich date.
"Bossy," he insincerely complained.
"Uh huh," she responded. "Don't act like you don't like it."
"Who is this girl?" he asked, his tone still light.
"A monster of your own making," she said.
She turned her head up to look at him, a closed-lipped smile touching at her lips and a strange blend of mischief and sincerity shining behind her eyes. It was all he could do to smirk back at her, shaking his head the tiniest bit. He wasn't sure what to make of her, but she also wasn't wrong — he didn't dis like it.
Back when they'd first met, she'd been little more than a trembling mass of raw nerves — like an abused animal backed into a corner, and he was worried that she'd snap at him if he dared to get too close. Not that he was much better. Those first few hours together were uncomfortable at best and tense at worst as they all but ignored each other in favor of focusing on the singular goal of escape.
By the time the sun had come up over the Spanish horizon, they'd both changed. Ashley had found a spark of hope that she'd kept determinedly burning behind her eyes, and Leon felt the most like himself that he had in over six years. But, even then, she had been reserved — she was still holding back something that he had never stuck around long enough to see.
He was seeing it now. Over the past three and a half years, Ashley really seemed to have spread her wings. She wasn't the same meek girl who was still finding her feet. The Ashley that was currently clinging to his arm was a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to go after it.
His heart swelled in his chest. He was so proud of her.
And, in that moment, he felt so incredibly stupid for having spent so long wringing his hands and worrying about her.
The walk was done in comfortable silence, broken up only by the sounds of Ashley's stiletto heels clicking against the cobblestones beneath them. Leon found himself lost in the feeling of her body pressed against his tricep and the faint smell of her apple-scented shampoo. A forbidden part of his brain couldn't help but imagine what it'd be like to have her curves pressed up against him more completely while he buried his face in her hair. He was just as quick to shut that line of thought down, instead wondering to himself when the last time was that he'd had a pretty girl hanging on his arm like this.
High school, probably. And here he'd just turned thirty-one earlier in the year. The thought of it made him want to stab his eyes out.
She led him over to a far corner of the garden, just out of the view of any of the windows of the White House. This late at night, there was no one else out there but the two of them — though he was sure that there was at least one Secret Service agent hiding somewhere in the shadows, just out of sight.
"So," she said as she disengaged from his arm and turned to face him. "Sorry for dragging you out here like this. You probably were expecting something a little more important."
"Don't worry about it," he said. "I mean — I was, but this is way better."
She smiled at him again, nervously this time, and wrapped her arms around herself, her forearms crossing just beneath her breasts.
"I wanted to talk to you sooner," she said, "but it always felt too soon, somehow, or like — like it was wrong for me to want to, or something."
"I get it," he said solemnly. "I've been the same way."
Her perfectly-shaped eyebrows twitched slightly, her red-stained lips parted only barely, and she looked at him with an expression that he couldn't immediately identify. There was something openly vulnerable etched beneath the unspoken question that lined every single one of her features.
"Glad it wasn't just me, then," she breathed almost as a murmur. She collected herself before continuing: "So, well. With my dad's term being up at the end of the year, I realized that if I didn't do this now, I might not ever get another chance."
The implication of that hit him square in the chest. He decidedly ignored it.
"Well, we're here now," he said. "What's on your mind?"
Ashley opened her mouth as though to answer, but no words came out. Leon watched her struggle with her own words in real time, each of them skirting across her mind too quickly to be pinned down. She turned her head to the side and let out a frustrated exhale, relaxing her shoulders as she did. When she looked at him again, she was equal parts listless and irritated.
"It's funny," she said. "I spent so long trying to psych myself up to do this, and now that you're here, I don't know what to say."
"There must be some reason why you wanted to talk to me," he offered in assistance.
"I just…" she struggled. "I didn't want my last memory of you to be…"
She trailed off, shaking her head. Ashley turned her eyes downcast and nervously began to fiddle with the two rings on her right hand, squeezing and plucking at them with the forefinger and thumb of her left. Leon squared his shoulders and looked at her quizzically, trying to not seem defensive or accusatory.
"To be what?" he asked.
"You probably don't even remember this," she said, "but the look on your face when the Secret Service separated us, when we got back home, it…"
He remembered. He remembered balling his hands into fists and clenching his jaw so tight that his temples started to ache. He remembered the way that she looked back over her shoulder at him, uncertain and scared to be separated from him by the same team of people who'd allowed her to get kidnapped in the first place. He remembered taking deep breaths through his nose to keep himself steady, telling himself that he couldn't snap here; he couldn't lose it — for her sake.
He remembered the white-hot anger in his chest as his brain kept drawing parallels to the way that Sherry had been taken from him six years earlier, even if he knew intellectually that it wasn't remotely the same. He remembered the screaming, violent fit he threw the second he was able to get behind a closed door by himself. He remembered the following day, when he should have been in bed nursing his bruised ribs and recovering from the way the radiation from Luis's procedure had weakened his immune system; he remembered approaching the agent in charge of Ashley's security detail and slamming him against the wall by his throat, promising the man that he would find himself begging for death if she so much as received a scratch ever again.
He remembered it all. He was just surprised to learn that she did, too.
"You just looked so angry and hopeless," she finished, "and it's bothered me ever since. Maybe I was just seeing things or reading too much into it, and I probably sound crazy just saying that, but…"
"You're not crazy," he assured her while still refusing to admit to anything. "I probably wouldn't want that to be my last memory of me, either."
"So I just," she went on, "I really wanted to thank you."
That caught him off guard. Leon felt his own confusion twist itself onto his face, and he took an unthinking step forward.
"You've already thanked me, Ashley," he said. "You don't have to —"
"No, not about that," she cut him off. "Leon, I'm…"
She hesitated then, seeming to search for the right words to say. A half-formed syllable escaped from the back of her throat, followed by another, seemingly unrelated one. After a moment, she collected herself, took a deep breath, and leveled her gaze at him.
"I learned so much about myself because of you," she said. "My whole life, I've been catered to and waited on. I never had to work for anything, really. So, when I went off to college, and I was really on my own for the first time, I was so scared. I was so lost. And when what happened to me happened, I blamed myself. I was sure that it was because I wasn't smart enough, because I didn't know better.
"And then you came barreling into my life. And you believed in me more than I distrusted myself. And I learned that I was capable of so much . Everything I've accomplished since then — it's because you taught me that I could. I'm a better person for having known you, and I just — I couldn't stand the thought of never telling you that."
The glands in his throat swelled, threatening to cut off his airflow all together. Even then, Leon found himself holding his breath, paralyzed by her words.
All this time, he'd been terrified that Ashley was off living her life as a ghost, just going through the motions while the trauma and horror and misery ate at her from the inside out — because that was exactly what had happened to him. In his darkest, quietest moments, he just hoped that she would find the strength to keep going to see the next day. The thought that she could've come out of that whole situation better off than she went in hadn't even crossed his mind.
"So, what I want to say," she concluded. "What I really want to say is… If the world ever starts to look really dark, and you feel like nothing you do matters, and you can't see the point of it all anymore… know that there's a girl somewhere out there in the world who thinks the world of you — whose life you changed forever."
When Leon finally remembered to exhale, it came out shallow and stuttered. The corners of his vision blurred, and disbelief stung at his eyes. He almost couldn't process the enormity of what she was saying to him. Her words pressed down on his chest as a crushing, leaden weight, twisting his heart into knots beneath his rib cage. He couldn't tell if what he was feeling was guilt or gratitude or incredulity or some mixture of all three.
It wasn't real. It couldn't have been real.
What she was saying — that wasn't him. She was attributing something to him that she had done on her own. He couldn't, in good conscience, take credit for her own inner strength.
"Ashley, I…"
That was all he managed to get out before the rest of his words got caught and mangled in the center of his throat. The only sound that he was able to utter out as a follow-up was a strangled kkhh.
Belatedly, he realized that that stinging at his eyes had been unshed tears, and two of them managed to escape the next time he blinked. Leon clapped a hand over his mouth and tensely shook his head before he angrily swiped his palm across his cheek, brusquely streaking away the tear that had already made it halfway down his face.
"Fuck."
Ashley's reaction was near-immediate. She shuffled forward the two steps required to close the distance between them, already reaching for him before her feet were fixed in place. Her right hand fell to his left arm, and her left landed on his right shoulder — as though she was trying to hold him steady.
"Oh god," she stammered. "Oh, Leon, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to —"
"It's okay," he choked out. "It's okay. Really, it's fine."
There was no way to salvage this, he realized — no way to slip out of her grasp gracefully without looking like a petulant child — no way to remove her hands from him without seeming pissy and ungrateful. Feeling trapped, Leon leaned his head back to look up at the starless sky and took a deep, quieting breath in an attempt to regain his composure. His chest trembled on exhale, but he was able to stop himself from breaking down into full-blown sobbing.
It was strange. Now that he was in this situation, he couldn't remember the last time it was that he'd actually cried — over anything. Most of his emotional outbursts manifested as anger or rage these days, because at least anger could be useful in the right circumstances; it could be harnessed and weaponized against a fixed target.
Leon wondered when it was, exactly, that he started to think of everything in his life in violent terms.
When he finally looked back down at Ashley, he noticed for the first time just how incredibly close she was. They probably could've been mistaken as slow dancing, if anyone were to come around the corner and see them. Something about that was comforting in its own way; even though her hands weren't actually keeping him standing upright, he felt stronger having them on him. Ashley had always had something of a calming presence, but never quite to the level she was at right now.
She forced an uncertain half-smile at him and lifted her hand from his shoulder in order to gingerly wipe away the single tear that remained on his face. Her skin was soft, and her motions deliberate. Despite himself, Leon found himself leaning the slightest bit into her palm, as though desperate for the succor it provided, and he took another slow, shaky breath.
The next thing he knew, both of Ashley's hands were on either side of his neck, and he had leaned down the slightest bit so that his forehead pressed against hers. It was almost too much — almost a sensory overload, between her heartfelt words, his sudden tears, and her unexpected physical closeness. This was the most intimate he'd been with anyone in…
He refused to finish that thought. Instead, he raised his hands to rest on her back, just beneath her shoulder blades. He cradled her like that with only the lightest touch, afraid that she'd get spooked and run away if he made any sudden movements.
"Thank you, Ashley," he whispered to her softly.
The faintest and briefest of smiles touched at her lips, and her touch traveled the tiniest bit from the sides of his neck up to the line of his jaw. She pressed her thumbs against the spots right before his ears, and her fingers fanned into his hair at the base of his skull. A tiny thrill coursed through him, starting at the center of his chest and fluttering upwards until he felt it at the back of his throat.
In response, his body moved almost on its own. His head craned slightly to the side, and he leaned down into her until he could feel the faint breeze of her breath roll across his cheek. With slitted eyes, he stared down the length of his nose in order to track his gaze across the gentle curves of her lips — stained red and parted ever-so-slightly, as though in invitation.
Leon could feel and hear his heart pounding between his ears. The tips of his fingers went numb. He could have stopped himself, then. By all rights, he should have.
But Ashley was warm and real and here — fitted in his arms as though she belonged there. Her very presence brought with it not just the rush of nostalgia — but the return of an emotion so far gone that he'd almost forgotten it entirely. The feeling of her body beneath the pads of his fingers unearthed a longing he hadn't felt for anyone since the last time he'd held her in her arms, in the most dire of situations out in the heart of the Spanish countryside so many years ago.
And so he didn't try to stop himself at all.
Closing his eyes, Leon followed through and caught Ashley's lips with his own in a kiss.
She returned it immediately, as though she'd been anticipating it this whole time. It was a gentle, delicate little thing — the most fragile of intimate connections between two people, and Leon spent the moment half-terrified that he might break it. Ashley graciously continued to hold his head in place so that the moment could live to see its natural end — and she held him still even when it did.
The world slowed, and the moment hung heavy in the air. It wasn't too late. He could still pull away from her, apologize, make excuses, and try to laugh it off as a funny thing that'd just happened out of nowhere. It was wrong for him to have done this at all -- and, by all rights, he should've known better. No one was going to accept the explanation that he'd simply gotten caught up in the moment -- that it was an honest mistake that'd led him to stepping out of line and kissing the president's daughter.
But, at the same time, it was baffling to think that he was having to consciously remind himself of that fact at all. Prior to this, they'd known each other for a grand total of twenty-six hours. The escalation of events as they'd just played out made no real, logical sense. It wasn't like Ashley was an old friend that Leon had just been so overcome with emotion to see again.
And yet, in some respects, she was.
Their lips hovered barely an inch from one another. The scantest movement caused the tips of their noses to brush together. Leon could feel his blood racing; his head was light, and all the world seemed at a distance. Against his better judgment, he opened his eyes in hopes of finding the answers as to what to do next etched somewhere on her face.
As though right on cue, she did the same.
Their eyes met, and the silence between them reached a crescendo. An unspoken agreement passed between them, and Leon's heart skipped a beat in his chest.
When he closed his eyes and kissed her again, she was — just as last time — right there to meet him. This time, it was open-mouthed and wanting — warm and tender in a way it had no real right to be. He kissed her slowly and deliberately, drawing out every little moment that he could before going back in for a second round. Ashley let out a contented breath through her nose that rolled across Leon's cheek and only served to encourage him further. His hands traveled along the curve of her back, drawing her deeper into his arms until her chest was pressed flush against his.
As the world around them faded into white noise that faded into nothing, Leon could almost convince himself that the quiet little sounds of kissing being passed back and forth between them mattered to more than just him — that Ashley felt the connection between them as deeply and profoundly as he did. He could almost pretend that she saw in him what he saw in her: something that was equal parts precious and beautiful — something that this kiss was meant to reach for and experience first-hand, even to the tiniest degree.
It was with some reluctance that they broke away from each other a second time, but Ashley seemed loath to relinquish the moment so easily. Her hands traveled down the length of his neck, over his clavicle, and across his chest until they settled on his back, holding him just as he held her. Her head came to rest on his shoulder, the curve of her brow settling in nicely at the nape of his neck.
There, they stayed — content to linger in each other's arms as the darkness of the night crept back in around them. Leon opened his eyes and briefly rolled his tongue along his bottom lip. He could still feel the pressure of her kiss against his mouth as a dull ache that could only be sated by the return of her lips on his. He did his best to ignore it and keep himself held here in the moment with her.
For years, he'd tried to ignore it — to ignore the way she'd made him feel during the one horror show of a night they'd spent together. There was just something about Ashley that'd managed to break through years of intense training and isolation — something that reached in and touched at his heart and made him feel comfortable enough to be a person again. Every little touch to her skin that he'd indulged himself with — every time that he held her, regardless of the circumstance — all served to feed a part of him that had been neglected for so, so long.
Ashley had reminded him what it was like to feel seen and heard and desired, and he'd wanted nothing more than to fall into her and give her the world in return.
The surreal nature of the moment wasn't lost on him, though. There was still one part of his brain that had one foot in the door of reality -- that knew that every decision he'd made in the past five minutes was inappropriate and actionable. To him, the moment had played out according to its natural course. One event led to the other, which then, in turn, led to the next.
But the objective truth of it all was that he had just kissed the First Daughter and was now holding her in his arms like a long lost lover. It was insane, when he thought of it in those terms.
"I don't want tonight to end," she lamented softly, snapping him out of his reverie. "I feel so safe with you."
Leon's heart leaped into his throat.
A woman had only said this to him one other time in his life and, thankfully, had been nice enough to explain it to him afterwards. She wasn't referring to his role as her hero or protector. This was something far more personal — far more intimate and vulnerable. She felt safe to be herself with him; felt safe with him in the sense that she believed down to the deepest core of her being that he would never hurt her. She felt safe with him the way that one felt safe in their own home.
To say that he was honored or humbled would be an understatement.
"You really want to see me cry, huh?" he asked.
Ashley let loose a crack of laughter that cut through the night. It was only then that she finally slipped out of his arms, taking a full step back. Her smile lingered on her face and touched at her eyes, and Leon couldn't help but find himself smiling back.
"Will you walk me back to my room, at least?" she asked.
Wordlessly, he offered her his arm. She took it almost eagerly, wrapping both hands around it just as she'd done a few moments prior.
"Honestly," he said as they started to walk, "I was going to be a little insulted if you didn't ask me that. After… you know."
"It'd be like the kiss version of pumping and dumping," she continued from his train of thought. "Like, 'thanks for the make-outs, bye!'"
A low, quiet chuckle bubbled up from the center of Leon's chest and a slight flush crept up the sides of his neck. It was damn hard to get him to laugh out loud these days, and even harder still to embarrass him. But there was just something about the way that Ashley said it so candidly that took him by surprise.
Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. Maybe he was just more out of touch with women in general than he realized.
"Exactly," he said. "At least let me stay the night."
"Oh," she said. "Are you offering?"
That slight flush immediately spread out up to his cheekbones and to the rims of his ears as a pressing, insistent, full-blown heat.
"I —" he started. "No. Not —"
He let the thought drop with a sigh that may have been just slightly overdramatic.
"You know, it's going to take me a bit to adjust to the new Ashley," he concluded. "The old one at least tried to not let me make a fool of myself."
She tightened her grip around his arm, and though he couldn't see from this angle, he swore that he could feel her smiling.
"Well, I don't move out until January," she said. "So we still have a little bit more time."
That, at least, gave him cause to hope.