RE: Inclination

A/N: One more chapter in this part of the story.

March 2006
Arlington, VA

They were waiting for the frozen entrée to cook in the oven when Claire finally took a moment for Leon. Everything about him from the day registered with her. How tired he sounded when he answered, how relieved he sounded when he recognized it was her … and the bandage on his cheek. He had just closed the oven and was setting the timer when she leaned against his back. Her eyes slid closed and she felt warm. She felt, for a moment, safe and untroubled. Relaxing, she noticed only absently when he turned and put his arms around her. "You smell like… what is that?" she asked softly as she rested her head on his collar bone.

"Let me keep some secrets," Leon said. He stroked her back, pulling her a little closer, and rested his temple against her hair. It was comfortable. How long had it been since this feeling had washed over her? After Umbrella, surely, but… her graduation. March 29, 2003. Leon had hugged her like this when he congratulated her. He'd had someone take a picture of them. It was silly, but she had enjoyed it. Leon's arms were warm and soothing.

Why wasn't anyone else this comfortable to hold her? Claire sighed and leaned into him. "Ok, so you smell like you," she said softly.

"Let's sit down and have some of that cheap wine, huh?" Leon asked, though he made no move to disengage from the embrace.

"Mm," Claire said.

They stood there in the kitchen for a while, in silence, holding on to one another. It wasn't something they had done previously, but it seemed amazingly normal to Claire, as though there was no reason they hadn't done this in three years. In the background, her phone rang. Claire made a face, and moved to retrieve it, but Leon held her still.

"What-?"

"Don't answer it," he suggested.

Claire looked up at Leon in curious surprise. She started to ask a question, and then the warmth of the oven and the entire day came back to her. They had come to Leon's apartment so they could talk. There was no reason to answer the phone. She had a day of rest tomorrow. Saturday was free because their flight left so early on Sunday morning. It wouldn't be anyone she couldn't call back. Unless Chris was deploying somewhere, which was possible… but her brother owed her a night's peace after the elephant he'd given her with Robert.

This was… probably considered cheating on him. Claire thought about that. She couldn't really bring herself to find a problem with it. Leon's arms were warm, and he had promised her food. More than enough to win her over from the stony silence and the annoyed glaring from her so-called boyfriend. Actually, Claire was rather happy to be right where she was just then.

Bother the damn phone.

"You got it," Claire said, leaning back in to rest her face against his neck.

Leon shifted, putting an arm around her shoulders and guiding her against his side before guiding her into the living room. When he'd said his apartment was rather bare, she hadn't quite doubted him so much as she just hadn't thought about it. He hadn't been lying. She could see why a girlfriend type would be upset by it, but…

She had to admit it mirrored her own place, if a bit more expensive. The Arlington Metro location was ideal given his job across the river in the capital, and the apartment itself fit what she expected of Leon's taste – it was clean and modernly functional – but there was a little too much of the new. She wondered how much time Leon spent in his apartment. The floors looked freshly sealed, no scuff marks. The cabinets in the kitchen looked like he'd never opened them, a notion reinforced by how long it had taken him to find the baking sheet that the entrée was cooking on. There were a few more photographs hanging or on the various surfaces that had come pre-installed in the unit than in her place. There was little in the way of added furniture, of course, though there was a little bit more in the way of color than in Claire's apartment, but not many more things than what was in Leon's apartment.

He had been lying about not having a couch though. It was there that he steered her with a single, strong hand on her shoulder, and Claire sank onto it. In a moment, Leon joined her, reaching to the coffee table for the bottle of wine she had, true to her word, purchased at the store. There were two glasses that he'd taken the short detour to collect, but they were normal half sized drinking glasses. He poured them each some wine and handed one to her. She took a slow sip and watched him.

Leon sniffed the glass before tasting a little.

"Oh come on, it can't be too terrible."

"This from the woman working on health food standards," Leon said, glancing at her. There was something rye about his comment, and she smiled at it. "So, in an effort to keep from disappointing my guest, dinner is being prepared. And the alcohol has been opened…"

"Usually I don't let guys cook me dinner until-" Claire caught herself and pressed her lips together.

"I'm not much of a cook-for-others type… normally. Anyway," Leon said, choosing to ignore what she did not wish to tell him. He was good about that. "So you'll have to settle for this until you do let me cook you dinner."

"Prior planning, Leon?" Claire was glad he let her go with that one. They'd known each other, what, eight years now? It wasn't as though he didn't know she'd dated before. It wasn't like there ways any reason for her to be embarrassed to admit to him she'd dated other men. That she was used to certain things when she was dating them.

But something about the entire situation felt so much like a date… that it made her feel a little nervous.

Her phone rang again, and she turned her head towards it. "I should turn it off," Claire said.

"Well that wouldn't be entirely fair, as mine is only on vibrate."

Claire looked at Leon, surprised. "You're not answering yours either?"

"You thought this was a one-way requirement?" Leon asked. His lips tilted in a little smile and he shook his head, sipping more wine from his glass and reclining against the back of the couch a bit. "With you at least, I try to always be fair." He knocked back the end of his first glass of wine.

"You're unfair with other people?" Claire felt a little confused. That little smile had made her heart hiccup. What was going on tonight?

"It's been accused," Leon replied. He sighed, leaning forward to pour himself some more wine. He leaned back again after that, tipping his head on the back of the sofa and just cradling the glass in his hand.

Leon was silent a while. Claire thought to ask, but couldn't quite bring herself to mention another woman. She knew who it was this time, and that annoyed her. She knew, and she hated the thought of it. Not necessarily because it was Angela, though the woman's actions were a little misguided at times, and she tended to lose her head in… certain situations… But rather because it was another woman, and just then there was nothing between them. No phones, no miles, no people. She needed contact with someone familiar like this. It really wasn't cheating, though a part of her wished for it to be almost desperately.

"So tell me," Leon said softly.

"Tell you… what?" Claire asked.

"About what you started to say in the truck," Leon said. He didn't look at her for a moment, as though giving her the option to look away before he turned his eyes towards her.

Oh, right, she thought. That was why they were here, alone. The feeling in the air had been so relaxing that she had forgotten that part. Claire almost took the opportunity he left open, but forced herself not to. She met Leon's eyes, and let the question in them strike her. She needed to know what he thought about the entire thing, good or bad, and he was rarely as vocal as he was expressive.

There was no accusation in his eyes as he looked at her, only quiet and willing. The willing was strange, she never thought about people looking willing. But he did.

The words tumbled from her lips about Robert, and she couldn't quite stop them. Once, only, Leon lifted a hand for her to wait, to pause, and he rose to take the frozen entrée from the oven. He returned, sitting quietly at her side, and poured her some more wine before gesturing wordlessly for her to continue.

It was good that he was so quiet. She might not have been able to get it all out if he had spoken. If he had interjected or if he'd changed his expression. All he did was refill her wine glass when it was empty, and listen. At first she started to skip how they met, but Leon's patience was… seductive. She told him that, and she told him every moment between it and that evening at Washington. Even the parts that felt awkward, and the ones she was embarrassed to be telling him on what felt so much like a date to her. He listened to it, and if she thought his eyes narrowed slightly or that his jaw tensed, it was nothing she was thinking about as she poured out everything about Robert to the best person she knew.

She didn't notice that she drank over half the bottle of wine with his refills, or that he somehow brought out plates of the entrée that she ate but didn't taste. She did notice that as she was finishing he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her over against him. She noticed that his hand, warm and strong, undid her ponytail and stroked fingers through her hair. She noticed that she liked it.

"It might just be time for me to think about getting you back to the hotel," Leon said softly. His actions and his words were two different things. He didn't stir from where he reclined with her wrapped in his arm and held against him.

"No it's not," Claire said.

"Your partner will be upset at you if you stay," Leon said. His voice was soft. He was stroking her arm gently through her shirt, several fingers curled in her hair still.

"He's already upset," Claire said, sighing. "But you're right anyway. This was nice, Leon," she said. It was not a shock to her that it was true, it felt… comfortable. It even felt comfortable to admit it to him. "We should do it again."

There was an expression on his face that was, for a moment, unreadable. Leon swirled the end of the wine in his glass. It must be warm, after how long he'd been holding it in the hand that wasn't holding her. His eyes focused on the glass. Claire's heart hiccuped insistently, wondering if she'd been too open that evening, too honest about things one normally kept quiet on a date. She waited, a breathless moment, before he lifted his eyes to hers.

Through the fall of her bangs, a tumble that seemed gentle because of the way he brushed aside the hair from her temple with the hand holding his glass, she saw his face. For a moment she was distracted by the cool of the glass as it ghosted across her brow before it moved and she could see his eyes.

Leon's expression was calm. It soothed her restless heartbeat. She knew where the lines in his face for annoyance would show. She had seen them before. He was smiling slightly, and looking fondly down at her in a way she had never seen him do before. Her heart hiccuped again and she fought a blush. He could probably feel that, holding her close against his side as he was.

His lips descended on her brow, and he stayed there a long moment, inhaling the scent of her hair in a way that seemed almost too intimate for the casual evening they'd shared. Had it been casual? No, she thought, not quite. "Let's be sure to," he said, squeezing the arm around her shoulders for a moment. Then he straightened some, and his arm slid away from her as he rose to find his shoes.

Claire found she didn't like the loss of that feeling. As he followed her into the hallway outside his door, keys in hand to lock up behind them, she took his hand.

The whole drive back to the hotel they were quiet.

Leon's hand never left her grip.