Camouflage
Author: Oro
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Sorkin created these characters, not I.
Notes: Secret Santa fic for Becky.
The skies were
awesome and grey the day Leo came back from war.
You could practically see the blood on his hands when he hugged you, see the
red all over his military jacket, you fucking pacifist. You smiled, and his
eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. "Hard day?" you asked.
"Like you wouldn't believe." His smile was tired and older than his years, your
youth reflected back from eyes more mature than yours. This gap between you was
so suddenly so painfully obvious and tangible, for just a moment. You looked
down at his military boots and back up before you started walking towards your
car.
He didn't say much on the ride home. The front passenger seat was left empty as
he sat in the back. You saw red, before, as you stared at his fingernails –
underneath, a thin line of struggle, death, hurt; you were still hurt, and all
of his letters from Korea were locked shut inside a wooden cupboard in your
den. Abbey had never seen them, had never asked if he wrote, so you'd just
never mentioned it. There were bumps on the road, and the clouds were
gathering, preparing for a storm, a dangerous dark setting the shade of their
shadows.
"How's Abbey?" he asked at one point, face in hands, elbows on knees, his weary
gaze turned to the window next to him, taking in the grey sights outside. Still
thinking of war, you assumed; of different scenes, different landscapes, coming
straight towards him, suffocating. Too familiar to allow for him to sit in the
front next to you, another remnant of his seemingly previous life, which you
began to feel like more and more with his letters and his military experience
and his soldier brotherhood.
"She's good, good," you replied. "She can't wait to meet you." (Liar, liar,
liar, liar, did she not ask you that very morning why he had to come?)
Lying through your teeth got you all the way to Notre Dame, got you to Oxford
and back, got you to Abbey, an engagement ring on her finger. As far away from
Leo as you could, fast as you could, and here he was, in the back of your car with
his hands propped on his fucking knees.
"I can't wait to meet her," his reflection in the car mirror spat the words in
a fake, sugary tone. The cold weather had chapped his lips, made them dry, made
his voice crackle like autumn leaves, and you couldn't stop seeing the murderer
in him like you knew he saw you as a cheater.
It wasn't like he'd never left, but you shouldn't have expected it to be any
different. The car radio was dodgy so you turned it off and let in a silence
that penetrated every hidden corner. You pulled into the driveway, where Abbey
was already waiting with a fake grin and a bottle of wine to celebrate Leo's
return and the long-awaited end of war.
*