Work Text:
Ding......ding......
Ashley's emerald eyes watched the number indicator between the elevators tick up and up to her floor as she finished smoothing out the front of her skirt with one hand, the other holding on to her clutch and a black document portfolio emblazoned with TerraSave's logo. The meeting with the congressman that she had been fighting to get, his time she was hoping to use to win him over to her cause, had not gone well, and the frustration was settling in, her thoughts wandering as she stood out in the hallway, waiting for her ride down. She had known for a long time, rather intimately, how difficult it could be to find time in a politician's busy schedule to make room for nearly anything. When she was a girl, it was her father, elected to represent Texas, struggling to attend her gymnastics competitions and swim meets. When she was a student of higher education, it remained her father, then the president of the United States, barely able to do anything more than eat dinner with his family on a semi-regular basis. She'd elected to live in student housing on campus during his second term and, even if she would get to see all of her family members less than she was accustomed to, her constant security detail at least reminded her at all times that she would be watched over in their stead. Well, at least until late 2004. After Spain, she lived in the White House until the end of her father's presidency, leaving behind the college dorm that she was just starting to settle into, the friends that she was just getting acquainted with, or re-acquainted with.
Still, despite being accustomed to schedule flexibility thanks to her organizational position with TerraSave, despite having experienced the disappoint of her father being unable to attend her recital, of the struggle when she tried to spend more than a few minutes on the phone with her older brother, nevermind getting together for lunch or putting a family get-together in place, it didn't make the experience of dealing with it any less irritating. When it all came to nothing, that irritation only grew.
She looked at the ornate, golden casing of the sliding elevator doors, reflecting herself back at her. Her blonde hair, which fell passed her shoulders, was pulled up into a bun with a braid going up one side, the clip holding it all together decorated in an array of small stones in a pattern reminiscent of ivy leaves. He reached up to cover one of her ears, still struggling with feeling self-conscious about them. She'd gotten them pierced to try and bolster wanting to pull her hair back, something she's very rarely done since being teased in middle school, and, on some days, it even worked. She walked into the meeting earlier that morning, her head held high, the sapphire stones adorning her ears jostling with each firm click of her high-heels. Now, her posture was weakened, her shoulders slumped a little. She hadn't been able to secure anything for TerraSave today beyond a promised block of time on a calendar and bored, hurried expressions. None of it felt due to her plea, her cause, or her organization, despite their being framed years ago for a bioterror attack which some people still clung to as an excuse for easy dismissal; she was half-convinced that she'd only been granted an audience out of acknowledgment of who her father was, but that "courtesy" would only extend to the minutes in an initial meeting and nothing else.
This wasn't the first time she'd have to struggle to gain her own merit apart from her father, along with her maternal uncle and eldest brother, who were also up and coming politicians. Since the cover up of what had happened in Spain, spun as a hiking vacation gone awry where she had gotten herself lost and injured, along with her shared name and lineage with former President Graham, the President that had to contend with 9/11, the President that spear-headed the War on Terror, all proved to hinder her more than it helped her. When it came to President Graham's only daughter attempting humanitarian aid, sometimes in the same nations where his efforts displaced tens of thousands of people and killed so, so many, any progress she wanted to make felt like she was staring up at the peak of Mt Everest from the base with no guide. Her station was more like an anchor stuck in the rocky trench of her father's long, controversial career. She wanted to help people, settlements, nations that needed it; she wanted to use the relationships and ties that she'd made by the luck and advantage of being the First Daughter to do it. Getting her foot in the door was, it turned out, about all her advantages could give her.
You've proven you can handle yourself.
The frown on her painted lips deepened as the words of encouragement came back to her, her eyebrows pinching above the smooth slope of her nose. So much of her memories of that horrible day in Spain had been obscured throughout the years, with therapy, anxiety medication, and time eroding away the sharp unpleasant smell of the village, the gleam of madness in the eyes of her captors, the taste of the horrid, inky-black ichor they forced down her throat. But, along with forgetting those awful things, she was forgetting others. The warmth of Luis's fingers gently taking her hand, the broad, strong shape of Leon's back as he lead her through death trap after death trap, the feeling of his arms catching her fall. She remembered as much as she could, but her memories were on a tape reel, and the more she played it back, the worse its condition became. The fewer times her paranoia gripped her so profoundly that she could barely breathe, the less she woke up in the middle of the night after having scratched at her sternum until she bled, the more her memory of his tired, sun-soaked smile faded from her mind. The more consecutive days she could go without thinking of Spain at all, the less she could remember how his voice sounded.
You don't need me.
Ding.
Her hard, brooding gaze into the etched, shimmering finish of the elevators was broken by the pleasant, old bell signalling her car's arrival. The twirling, nouveau lines on the elevator doors jerked before smoothly collapsing into each other, opening up for its lone, awaiting passenger. After straightening herself up, Ashley's white heels clicked from the tile floor, over the metal bracing between the floor and elevator car, and onto the stone tile inside. Mirrors were situated on the three opposing walls of the elevator, bracketed all around with dark, wood paneling and a set of four, round, dim lights fixed behind a thin grate in the ceiling. She turned away from her disillusioned reflection and hit the button for the lobby, the button depressing in a satisfying way that older elevators do, the warm lamp illuminating behind it when her hand withdrew. After a few seconds, the bell sounded again and the doors slid shut. Then it began to descend, hauling its precious cargo to safety.
Ding......ding......
New elevators don't make nearly this much noise, but it was barely anything that Leon registered as he stared down into the screen of his phone, his lips pinched into a frustrated line across his face as he read the incoming text message. He was relieved, of course, to finally hear from Claire. Although she could barely talk about what she dealt with over the phone, it eased a familiar anxious knot in his chest to always get a response from her after a long silence, even if it amounted to 'I'm safe' or 'Next time I'm in your neck of the woods, let's hit that diner again!'. He'd tried to get in contact with Sherry a little while ago, too, with no luck, and had asked Claire if she'd known anything. It'd taken days for her to get back to him, but with no inside information as to what the other girl had been up to, only a 'Sorry, big guy. Simmons says she's okay, though!'. He supposed he was worrying too much. Sherry wasn't a girl anymore, she was a young woman now. She could take care of herself.
He sighed, a little dejected and offended at the idea of time passing around him, making him feel old. He lived in the moment as much as he could. He was either on a mission, mobile, or off mission. He was drunk, hungover, or stone-cold sober. He was awake, asleep, or, more frequently than he probably ought to be, feeling like he was in some half-way point between dreaming and wakefulness. The more he remembered when he was (October 15th, 2012), where he was (Washington D.C., Eisenhower Executive Office Building) and what he was doing (going home after a briefing with the Secretary of State for an upcoming sweep mission at Holigrad to follow up on his work from last year), the more stable he should feel. The few times he ever tried therapy, it was one of the only things that stuck, yet all grounding techniques seemed to hand him lately were reminders that time, America, and the people in it were moving along whether he did or not.
Sherry was grown up now, able to drive and live as much of her life as her restrictive government detail allowed, not like he ever spent enough time being a part of her life to feel left behind.
Manuela was still being kept under heavy guard and, regardless of his attempts to weasel himself into her situation and help her, like he farcically thought he could do with Sherry over a decade ago, the department stonewalled him over and over yet again. Two young women whose freedom he'd failed to acquire.
President Graham had moved back to Texas with his family and, while he called Leon every now and then to chat, their friendship had always been more of a working one more than anything else. President Benford was far closer to being a real friend to him, but Benford didn't have a daughter, one that Leon always wanted to ask after but stopped himself before he could.
Sherry, Manuela, Ashley. Three people that wouldn't be alive, wouldn't be living, if not for his help. Two of the three he couldn't protect from the consequences that others forced them into, that which fate cruelly subjected them to, marking them like a collar around their necks, connected to government leashes.
He knew what always kept him from asking about the remaining woman. Her contact information, a direct line of communication, and an indirect one through her father, was always available to him, had always been available since 2004. He could pick his phone up right now and ask about her if he wanted.
No, he'd rather workout until he collapsed, or drink until he collapsed and then work out until he collapsed, because if he didn't exhaust himself before his mind slipped fully into the world of unconsciousness and dreaming, he risked seeing her again, sometimes dead or dying as a result of his failure, sometimes alive, very much alive, warm and soft under his hands, and he'd wake up with the foul feeling of regret on the back of his tongue. Even Ada didn't make him feel that way, not anymore. There was nothing to regret in their weird, twisted relationship. Navigating Ada was like navigating an Escher drawing. Ashley was...
His frown tugged at his mouth when he realized that he actually didn't know. The entire point was that he ought not to.
Ding
He glanced up as the elevator doors opened to his left and he turned to walk toward it, flicking his messaging app off to the side to clear it from his screen. The car looked empty before he caught a peak of a burgundy skirt move out of the way to let him in, so his eyes immediately fell back to his phone as he crossed the threshold into the car. He didn't really want to talk to anyone, small talk or otherwise. Skirt or no, he wasn't really in the mood for his private joke about asking any cute girl near him out to see what creative way she could come up with to turn him down. The rejections rolled off his back, sure, but he was in a bad mood right now; he wouldn't exactly be giving it his best.
Ashley blinked as another passenger came on to the elevator to join her. A tall dark-haired man in a slate-gray suit and no tie walked right in, his attention buried deep into his phone as he turned away from her to the elevator controls. He didn't even look when he hit the button for the parking garage before taking up space in the back corner, the farthest spot away from her. She frowned at him, his hair partially obscuring his face, and a needing feeling of consternation tapped against her neck like fingernails.
Who was that? He didn't look like any politician that she was familiar with, and he wasn't exactly dressed like one either, with no tie and no pin. He had a designation tag clipped on to his belt, hanging down over his other hand, shoved in to his dress pants pocket as he pressed back against the corner like he wanted to melt into the mirrors.
Ding.
The elevator door rolled shut and Ashley's neutral frown pinched a little, watching him tap away at his phone, the needling feeling against her neck getting stronger. She reached up to rub there, under the collar of her shirt. It was eerie, really, why this person felt familiar, and it didn't help that she could barely see his face. She looked at his pass again on his belt, but the front was facing out. All printed names and information would be on the reverse side. It was an employee badge. Was he an assistant, or a legal consultant or something?
God, she knew that she knew him! Should she ask? He didn't look like he was in a good mood, but this feeling of familiarity was going to drive her crazy!
Then he grimaced a little and rolled his left shoulder, pulling his neck to the side as he did with a soft groan under his breath, and her own breath caught in her throat. A vivid memory enveloped her brain like a tidal wave: standing in the barbican of the castle after crossing a short drawbridge, the wet smell of stone and mud as she moved up the steps toward the ramparts, torch light shimmering off the soaked surfaces around her, the man in front of her rolling his shoulder and stretching out his neck to loosen the muscle.
"Are you okay? Did the fire burn you?"
"Nah, just an old wound. No sweat."
She took a breath again, the smell of petrichor in her sinuses rushing away, replaced with the neutral smell of the inside of the elevator with a hint of an earthy cologne mixed in.
"Leon??"
Ding.
Hearing his name, Leon immediately looked up from scrolling through nearby bars, a jolt of familiarity in the voice that said it. He blinked and focused, his blue eyes meeting green ones, and the world shuddered to a stand-still for a moment, the rolling feeling of the cables moving the car disappearing from his back, his feet. His posture went ramrod straight as he gazed at her, standing there looking back at him, older now than any memory he had of her, older than the last time he caught a glimpse of her in a news reel about her father leaving the presidency. She'd been smiling then as she'd helped usher their family dog, a spotted pitbull mix, out on to the yard for a fluff piece, and he'd watched the reel until it ended. Now, she was... The warm purple of her chiffon top and matching skirt, a decorative belt to break up the outfit whose white color matched her strapped heels. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a cute up-do, and her eyes, her skin, the curves of her body, the neutral shine on her lips...
Looking again at Ashley Graham was like looking at a mermaid over the side of a ship during a voyage so long that he could barely remember what the coastline looked like. He felt delirious, staring at her, like he was overcome with a fever and had begun hallucinating from drinking too much seawater. She was beckoning him down just by being there, tugging harshly at the pit of self-imposed loneliness inside him, and he didn't know, if he jumped off the bow, whether he could swim or not.
Ashley's eyes roamed over him, taking in his dress and his form properly, with recognition this time. He'd lost weight, muscle weight, she realized. It was in his arms, his chest, his face. Maybe not a lot, she couldn't really be sure unless she touched him, maybe, or he touched her, but the Italian-cut suit accentuated all the right parts of him regardless. He wasn't blonde anymore, that really threw her, and she didn't really know what to make of it, nor his stubble. No...no she did know what to make of it, and the fact that old, buried feelings were thrumming through her veins again after so long made her head spin. Her fingers tingled with the imagined idea of what his face felt like. She suddenly felt out of reality in this tiny little elevator, chugging down to the lobby, to the parking deck.
Looking again at Leon Kennedy was like watching dawn break over the horizon after spending years in darkness, a glimpse of bright warmth that she didn't even realize she'd been missing. Bright warmth that could flicker out the moment the elevator door opened again, the draft snuffing out that fire and dunking her back into the howling void, into a void that would leave her colder than it had found her.
Without realizing it, her eyes pulled away from Leon, flicking over to the elevator controls, looking at the lit floor buttons, one right on top of the other.
Ding.
Leon took two steps over to the control panel, flipped open the door under the call buttons to reveal the rotary dial and the red emergency switch. Without a second thought, or a first one, he hooked his fingers around the switch and pulled it out. The car halted as he looked back at Ashley, still frazzled, watching her sway just a moment before planting her weight back on her feet as her eyes looked up to his face again. She shuddered, overcome entirely with seeing him again, and Leon could feel it too, feel the yearning bubble up in him after all this time. They were right here, in the same space, at the same time, and he wanted to reach out and grasp it firmly with his hands before it could slip away from him, all his efforts to keep her away from him and out of his world barely hanging on between his fingers. If he wanted to touch her, he had to let go, and it would be such an easy thing.
Ashley held her breath as she looked back at Leon's face again, at his blue eyes, even in the dim light. She knew him best in dim light, after all. He'd stopped the elevator just on a glance from her, like he was reading her mind, like he wanted to stop time, too, just as much as her. He looked at her like he'd just walked into a mirage and found her there, looked at her in a way she only ever dreamed of before, in the days and months since that day, dreams that waned as his face and his voice slowly began to erode from her memories like footprints under the uncaring tide of time and healing.
She dropped her clutch and her portfolio. Leon took two steps toward her, like he was going to help grab her things, and she put out her hands instead, her arms open, reaching for him, and he knew exactly what possessed him when, and he didn't want to ruminate on it, he instantly succumbed to the siren call and dove straight into her open arms. He leaned down and kissed her, his aim striking true as he pressed his seeking mouth against her soft, warm one. She surged up into his embrace, wrapping her arms tight around his neck, intent on returning his affection. The still air in the elevator quickly filled with the sounds of their breathing, desperate and wanting, and Leon inhaled sharply as he turned his head to kiss her again, pulling her close, her shape molding tightly with his. He opened up for her and Ashley immediately followed suit as she pressed her fingers through his hair, sealing their mouths together. She whined around his tongue when it pressed alongside hers, her back arching to work around the railing on the side of the elevator. Leon reached down to grab it and adjusted his stance to keep it from digging into her lower back.
Ashley's own seeking hands didn't stay in Leon's hair very long, uncurling and curling again as she drug them down out of his hair before her nails gently scraped along the skin on the back of his neck, fingers flattening as she reached his shoulders, drawing along the line of them toward his arms before lingering on his biceps and squeezing, making him flex back against her grip. His hand that lingered on her back had drawn up between her shoulder blades to cup the back of her neck as he leaned over her, kissing the life out of her, like if he didn't taste every molecule in her mouth he was going to die. His warm, calloused palm against her neck set her brain alight. She remembered his skin, slick from rain and sweat, the texture imperfect from mud, a wound or two, and grime, but the warm feeling underneath had given her reassurance when she needed it. When he caught her when she fell, pulled her over a ledge so she didn't fall behind, grabbed her hands to help her when the ground gave way beneath them. His hands, his hands.
She wound her own hands under his arms to lay them flat on his back, finding purchase on his suit jacket as she clung on to him. Leon groaned when she closed her lips around his tongue and sucked, and he shifted his knee between her legs to press his thigh at her apex there. She let go of his tongue and shut her mouth, trying to contain the mewl he elicited with a small amount of success. His lips lingered against her mouth as a smirk flickered over them, feeling her hips rock forward, pressing her sex against the top of his leg. He mouthed at her lower lip to get her to loosen back up so he could kiss her again.
"Ashley..."
Obeying, her lips relaxed to kiss him back, humming against his mouth as she shivered against him. She bent her lower back and tilted her hips as she rubbed against his leg again.
"Touch me, Leon," she whispered.
His second hand returned to her in a flash from the railing and groped at her ass outside her skirt, making her gasp. She kissed him hungrily as he squeezed, moving her own leg forward between his and delighted at the evidence of his arousal against the bare skin of her thigh.
Leon fondled her a moment longer, his palm marring the perfect lay of her skirt, before pressing his fingers underneath, and his cock got harder when he felt the lacy material arching over her ass, the wet spot growing between her legs. His touch made her buck her hips back, forcing his hand further forward. The evidence of her arousal made him hiss, breaking their kiss again, and she sucked at his lower lip. He wanted her, holy shit he wanted her, and she wanted him.
She pressed a little harder against the firm tint at the front of his pants, arching her lower back as his fingers dragged up and down the soaked gusset of her panties, wet enough to make the material form to the shape underneath. He let out a shuddering, short grown as he broke the kiss to swallow. His fingertips drew further down, over toward her front and back again before pressing under the material and touching her without the linen barrier between them.
He felt her gasp against his mouth the moment before he kissed here again, her hands clawing up his back to grab at his shoulders for purchase as he marveled over how wet she was, how hot she felt, and he was pressing a finger inside before it even occurred to him to do it.
Ashley's body instantly picked up with what he was doing, her legs spreading a little as she rolled her hips back and forth over his leg, against the finger slipping in and out of her. She whined against his mouth, the noise amplifying shortly as he broke the kiss to drag his teeth over her lower lip just as a second finger joined his first.
"L-Leon...!" she moaned, the muscles inside her pushing pleasantly back against his ministrations, having thought about him touching her like this. She'd felt ashamed once she was back in the safety of the White House, how recontextualizing the atrocities she'd borne witness to into erotic rendezvous with her rescuer in her mind had been able to take the edge off of some of her anxiety, defanging some of the nightmare. She used up the energy by touching herself when she thought about Leon's mouth, his strength and endurance, and what he might feel like pushing and pulling inside her; it could keep some of the nausea at bay for a while, could force the tension out of her, if the regret of using her memory of him like that didn't make it all worse the moment the hormones washed out of her blood stream. Never in any of her imaginations that took place outside of Spain did she ever think of something like this, and it had been years since she'd had any at all.
One of her hands along his back loosened, slithering down his broad back and around to the front of his pants, shifting her thigh away to make just enough room to wedge her hand in between and cup at his erection. His mouth had pressed against her jaw along her neck before his whole body stopped, for less than a breath, before she felt teeth on her skin, his body moving to increase the pressure between his cock and her hand, and she smiled.
The pressure against his aching dick was so good, and the feeling of Ashley's narrow fingers wedging under the fly of his pants to touch the zipper filled him with a crazed jolt of lust he hadn't felt in a long, long time. He was swimming in the feelings he'd sealed away and kept in the basement of his mind and, maybe later, he'll feel humiliated at how little it took for him to take an axe to the barrel and smash it open. But now? There wasn't a speck of embarrassment as he used his fingers to stir her up. She was so wet now that every outward stroke of his fingers made a mild sucking sound, and the pressure around his cock was suddenly loose and--oh!
"Ah!" he gritted out between his teeth as her fingers wrapped around him and squeezed, his erection hot against her fingers. His fingers increased their pace to fight against the distraction, his arm moving to wrap around her torso above her hips and the sucking sound got louder.
Ashley's breathing turned swiftly to panting against his assault, the feeling of his hard cock in her hand as he grabbed her to keep her more or less in place. She couldn't even pull back to look down at it, her chin perched on his shoulder as his forehead pressed against the crook of her neck. She changed her grip, stroking her palm from the base all the way to the tip, feeling it bump just a little against her stomach and she bit her lip. Oh God...God he was...! She squeezed around him again and started to jerk him off. Her fingers barely overlapped around him...!
A desperate sound came out of Leon, his hips thrusting through her grip. "Oh...Ashley...!" he groaned, breathy, and Ashley felt her insides clench up a little bit.
Dammit dammit she wanted him inside her but...! She was...!
She inhaled sharply, a little difficult with how her throat was angled. "Leon!" she moaned, "I'm gon--!"
She barely heard a holy shit from Leon before he answered by tightening his hold above her hips and angling his fingers, making spots shoot up in her vision as her eyes widened. She turned her head and glanced at the back-most mirror, seeing herself reflected back, her skirt hiked up and her white underwear barely visible over her hip, Leon's body curled around her as he fingered her open. She could see the wet spot she made on his pant leg. She wished she could see his face.
No, she needed to get this out. She needed to say it! Trying again, focusing all her mental faculties into language and speech, she swallowed and said, "Leon...! Put it in when I come and don't--don't stop...!"
He took a sharp breath at her words, already the phantom imagination of her quivering insides squeezing him coming to his mind. His cock moved in her grip as he maintained his pace with his wrist, higher thought rushing out of his brain like her words were a spell that banished his humanity from him, leaving only the primal need to bury himself inside and stir her up so high that she came again in his lap.
"Ashley...Ashley," he gasped, his voice throaty as he made his promise to her, "I'm going to fuck you."
A few seconds later, her pussy clamped down around his fingers and she cried out, her throat working against his shoulder as he felt the lighting shoot through her, the muscles along her back stiffening suddenly as she came. He was torn for a brief moment between breaking his promise, drawing it out with just his fingers before getting to his knees and savoring every drop he pulled out of her and making her ride his lips and his tongue. But, a promise was a promise, and his cock was in complete agreement with doing the gentlemanly thing, so he pulled his fingers out of her and grabbed under her thighs with both hands, and he hauled her against the side of the elevator, over the railing. Ashley's grip stayed around him and it helped angle him so he could trust straight into her.
Ashley could barely see through her orgasm as she felt the side of the elevator flatten her upper back just in time for Leon to slam into her, and her lower back arched suddenly against his harsh intrusion. He hit her cervix and she cried out, both of her hands scrambling to grab at his shoulders and his arms, her brain overcome with an aching, overwhelming pleasure that made tears fall from her eyes as Leon started to sheath himself in and out of her, over and over with gusto, following her promise exactly as she'd asked. Her brain was totally blank besides chasing the pleasure being given to her, sinking her teeth like an animal into the overwhelming fire he stoked inside her belly, a pleasure that had its foot over the line into pain.
She called his name over and over, tears falling down her face as her body bucked down against him, her hips angling her sex just so as he speared into her over and over, and she heard him let out a guttural noise beside her ear. He sounded just as animal as she felt, the two of them once again reduced to baser needs, but this time it was in the pursuit of unadulterated pleasure in one another, and not the peaky, numbing feeling of survival they'd endured for hours and hours together in Spain. Now, as the two of them rutted inside a public elevator in a government building, filling the car with the wet sounds of grunts and sex, it reminded her of all the things that she had been working, for years, to forget, but it also reminded her that through all her struggling to get her life back together, that the lingering feeling of emptiness that she'd carried with her hadn't been anything that she could actually fix. It was a hole left behind inside her in Spain, a vacant spot in her chest that never got filled back up again, and for so long she thought it was trauma, fear, a gnawing sense that something was wrong that she thought everyone had, neglecting that she'd never had it before then. She'd wanted to shovel whatever she could inside it at first, whatever worked to numb her would do, but over time she'd tarped over it instead with a good job that kept her busy, the sense of purpose it gave her, a routine of work and family visits and dinner with coworkers, even the rare boyfriend.
Leon was the only one who knew that hole was there, could rip away that tarp with just a look, and she loved him for it. Loved that he knew more about her than anyone else ever could, knew a version of her that she still harbored inside her that no one else would ever see.
As Ashley's nails dug into his shoulders, Leon continued to fuck her, listening to Ashley's pathetic, mewling noises as his cock prolonged her orgasm to the point that he was almost certain she might never stop. The shivering of her slick walls began to ease, but her body didn't stop shaking, and he couldn't get over how simultaneously wet and tight she was, how sweet she smelled as she gripped on to him for dear life. Fucking her blew open the vault he'd kept his feelings behind like it was a rickety old barn under the mercy of a Category 5 tornado, how fiercely protective of her he'd been in Spain beyond the reasonable requirement for his mission, how slowly, over the course of that evening and night, he'd stopped feeling like an agent with his charge and more like he was escorting a trusted friend to safety, how trauma bonding with Ashley over the course of eight or ten hours hadn't felt at all like trauma bonding with Claire or Sherry when, by all accounts, it should have felt relatively similar. Once the traumatic event was over, Claire remained a distant if personal friend, once they were actually able to contact each other again through their hectic schedules for the remaining 90s and the beginning to the millenium. Leaving quarantine after Spain, and leaving Ashley, left a gap inside him that he thought he knew how to overcome, convinced it was similar to any gap he had when he had to part with someone he helped, rescued, or fought alongside that had meshed particularly well with him.
Ashley was supposed to be a surrogate for all the people he couldn't save in Raccoon City, a surrogate for what he couldn't do for Sherry and Manuela, a surrogate that would get to live a normal life without him in it, not because he was powerless to help, but because he hadn't been.
Now as he fucked her toward her second orgasm, he glanced to the mirror beside them. Ashley's back was curved perfectly to allow for him to go inside her and slam into the deepest parts of her. Her eyes were closed, her eye make up blurred from her tears as she panted, lipstick smudged into a blur that was similar to the one transferred on to his own face. She jostled with every thrust he made, one hand gripping his hair at the back of his head while they other grabbed at his back, his jacket riding up, his pants around his ankles as the wet stain from her juices darkened the front of his boxer briefs as her body gobbled him up and drooled around him like it had hungered from him just as much as his had.
He watched as a drop of her slick, splattered all over her skin under her skirt, dripped from the flesh of her ass to the elevator floor.
Turning away from their reflection, Leon adjusted his hold on her thighs, grabbing her ass and drilling her harder, grunting at the exertion.
Ashley's gasp was strangled, "L-Leonn!" She choked on a pathetic sound as her thighs tightened around his torso, her knees squeezing against his ribs. "I wanna--I'm--I'm gonna come around your cock, Leon!"
Leon huffed and fucked her harder, putting everything he could muster into slamming deep inside her, hitting her cervix over and over, rattling the elevator car against the walls of the shaft they were suspended inside of.
"Fuck! Ashley... Me too, you're pussy is so--I'm so close...!" His voice was gruff with the effort of keeping her against the wall at just the perfect spot, and he felt her tighten around him just as his groin started to tighten up similarly.
Ashley sobbed as her hips moved, shoving her hips down when his pushed up, moving her hips like she was riding him, and her face was red with the desperation to come again and the exertion and the thrill of what they were doing. "Don't pull out!" she demand.
For a second, Leon's prefrontal cortex lit back up after being dormant, as quick and as short as the snap of a rubber band, even as his body didn't let up. "Ashley!" he exclaimed, turned on by her command and terrified by it.
"Please!" she begged, shoving down on his cock, "Please please please please, Leon!"
He was powerless against her begging, the pretty pitch of her voice saying his name, and the warning in his brain ceased as his hips snapped up into her and flooded the searing hot cavity inside her.
Ashley nearly bucked off his cock as she came right after he did, the heat of being filled up with his cum something she liked far, far more than she thought she would. Her second orgasm slammed into her and she clamped her legs around Leon, her hips twisting up and down as she road out her orgasm. His head was against her chest now, tucked close to her jaw, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling his hot breath waft along the cleft of her cleavage through the thin material of her blouse. The noise in the elevator died down to just their breathing as she finally slowed to a stop, their bodies still as her butt tried to take her weight on the safety railing and was just barely going to manage it for a few seconds.
She started to slip and immediately unhooked one of her legs, pressing her foot down toward the floor to catch herself. "Leon--!" she wheezed, but he immediately caught on. He shifted his hand to help distribute her weight, easing her other leg down as he pulled out of her with a shiver. He pulled away from her a bit as she settled both feet back on the floor, her legs shaking as she kept hold of his arms and, suddenly very unsure and timid, looked up.
The pink smeared over his lips was from her mouth, and even with the stubble and the brown hair that was unfamiliar, his face and his blue eyes were just as she remembered. Maybe a little more tired, a little older, but eight years and who knows what horrible things hadn't done a thing to this man. He looked down at her for a long moment before clearing his throat and looking away a little.
Despite his bashful glance away from her face, both his hands were still very much under her skirt and against her hips. She smiled and wiggled her hips under his touch. "Do you...want to help fix me up?"
The awkward tension was broken, mostly, and Leon smiled, the trepidation that came in the wake of pulling out of her as his brain came back online was smoothed over with just a cute little question. His hands on her hips moved to the lacy edge of her underwear, feeling under the elastic before following it down and pulling with one hand to fix the thoroughly soaked linens back in place. Her lower lips flinched away from his touch as he moved them down, oversensitive, so he looked over her shoulder at the mirror behind her and pulled away from him and toward it, closer to her ass this time, to get the rest unstuck. As he withdrew his hands, she let her skirt drop and reached for the front of his pants.
"Which side?" she asked nonchalantly, batting his hands away as he reached to do it for her. He winced a little as she handled him, the skin of his dick tacky against her hand, the other wedging her fingers into the v-slit in the front of his underwear.
"Left," he told her, watching her immediately follow his answer and do her best to tuck him back in how he ought to be. It was close, but he stuck to his own skin.
"There," she said, maybe a little more cheery than she needed to be, and pulled her hands back.
"Thanks," he quipped back, reaching to adjust himself just a little before stooping down to grab his pants and pull them back up. As he rose back to his full height, he looked at Ashley, some of her hair loosened now as she checked her face in the mirror.
"Sorry about that," he said, not sorry at all, well, okay, a little sorry, pulling his zipper back up and fixing his belt. The wet spot on his leg was conspicuous, but hopefully the accumulation on his boxer briefs wouldn't soak through the front of his pants for a little while.
She shot him a laughing smile through the mirror. "You better not be!"
He huffed a breath of a laugh before reality started to come back to him. They were in a manually stuck elevator in the EEOB. They'd need to make a mad dash for it before anyone else got in because there was no way this car didn't reek of sex. With a small spike of fear, he glanced around at the mirrors and up at the corners, hoping there wasn't a camera stashed anywhere besides the control panel. It was too late now.
Ashley had already retrieved her bag and portfolio from the floor, already wiping at her mouth with a make-up remover wipe when he looked back at her. "So..."
She visibly frowned, and he could see it even if her lips and skin were being pulled around by the wipe. "So," she echoed, watching her confidence from a moment ago wane.
As the girl he'd rescued almost ten years ago handed him her set of wipes and he took one, looking at the mirror to fix his own face, glancing at her as she fixed hers, Leon knew that he didn't have the strength to let her go a second time. Even if they hadn't gone batshit crazy in this elevator, if he'd just seen her and let her walk out into the lobby and out of his life again, he felt sure it would crush him more than it did the first time. He had been in denial for years after Spain before he realized how he'd felt about her, and immediately justified the distance and pretended like it had been something else with as much willful lying and self-deception as he could muster. But as she ran her lipstick over her lips again, as she stood there with his cum inside her, he couldn't do that again. No lie would ever be enough, and no absence would ever feel worse.
"Ashley," he began.
Fearful for the repercussions, the inevitable, awkward conversation that had initially spurred her to joke as soon as she felt the cloud hanging overhead, made Ashley's posture tighten up. As soon as they lapsed back into silence, it had been threatening to swallow Ashley up, that the horizon of the doors opening would take the sun back away from her again. He'd never contacted her even though he could for all these years, and, sure she hadn't either, but that had mostly been out of respect, and besides...
As he called her name, she looked up to meet his eyes in the mirror, putting her lipstick back in her clutch. Her eyes were wary, but she was trying to act cool about it.
He cleared his throat and reached up to fix his hair. "You, uh..." he started, a smirk pulling at his face as he remembered his private joke, and Ashley's heart leapt into her throat, "You wanna go eat somewhere sometime?"
Her big green eyes stared back at him, dumbfounded, before she wheeled around to look at him properly, an overjoyed smile on her face, and Leon knew that he was completely and utterly done for. Leon Kennedy, the agent with a near perfect record had been given the final blow from the sparkling, honey-sweet smile of Ashley Graham.
She bit her lip to suppress her smile before glancing at her watch, pressing her lips together. "Do you, um...do you have lunch plans?"
Leon turned and walked back over to the elevator panel and pushed the emergency switch back in. He quickly shut the emergency door and held down the button for the parking garage and both elevator door buttons so they could skip the lobby and go straight to where his motorcycle was waiting for him. He smiled back at her, a genuine smile that echoed the tired one he'd given her in the early morning, exhausted and winded, out on the sea as water rained down around them.
"I do now."
Ding......ding......