Ashley Graham shifted her stance, propping a hip against the back of the oak and leather chair outside her father's private office. She'd been lying in wait here for nearly half an hour as the president concluded a meeting with one of his elite agents. Thankfully, the voices on the other side of the door had finally arrived at that particular cadence that indicated the conversation was ending.
After another minute, the doorknob clicked at last, and Ashley straightened as Leon Kennedy stepped out into the hall.
With his tailored dark suit and his hair combed back from his face, he looked more like just another Secret Service agent than the action hero she'd first met in the field. Only the faint scar on his right cheekbone indicated that he ever did anything more adventurous than haunt the carpeted hallways of the White House.
"Hey, Leon!"
He glanced up, surprise and pleasure on his face as she leapt towards him.
"Look." Ashley thrust a piece of crisp printer paper into his hands. She watched eagerly as his look of perplexed curiosity turned to recognition.
"Your grades for this semester?" Leon asked.
"Uh-huh. Look at my Virgil translation grade." That Latin course had been her favorite this term and the only class in which she'd allowed herself to keep her usual obsessively high standards.
"A+." He looked up to offer her a congratulatory smile. "That's fantastic."
"I wanted you to be the first to see." His encouragement and support had been her rock during a semester when, for once, academic rigor had been the least of her challenges.
His expression warmed. "Sweetheart, I'm really proud of you."
Ashley felt her pulse flutter out of rhythm. "What did you call me?"
His look was somehow both embarrassed and self-satisfied. "You heard me." He glanced down to study the paper again, brows pursed. "A 3.2 GPA. Eminently respectable."
She giggled. "I never thought I'd be so thrilled to get Bs." In the past, she would have been dissatisfied with anything short of a perfect 4.0. Even now, the concession to circumstances nettled her just a little, though she knew it was perfectly reasonable and healthy to allow herself some grace after the unexpected interruption to her semester earlier this fall.
Leon regarded her, ice-blue eyes soft with fondness. "Grades aren't everything." He waved the printout. "You're more than just what it says on paper."
"Yeah, I know." She smiled. "So are you." Rising up on her toes, she pressed a single kiss to his cheek.
Leon flushed, so that his scar stood out stark against his flaming skin. He ran a hand through his hair, dislodging perfectly styled bangs, and handed back the paper, as if it could somehow communicate what he was failing to.
She grinned. God, he was adorable when he was flustered, all the swaggering confidence he'd displayed in Spain entirely melted just because she'd answered his understated declaration.
"Are you doing anything tonight?" he asked, watching her behind the safety of fallen hair. "At, say, five thirty?"
"No." Ashley laughed. "I mean, I am now."
"Great." There was the cocky smile she remembered. "See you then. Sweetheart." And jamming his hands in his pockets, he turned and strode away down the hall.
Author's note:
Here's a little OG 4 Leon for y'all.
The idea of Ashley as a nerdy Classics major amuses me.
This little fic is not connected to any of my other RE4 Leon/Ashley stories. It's just a fun little one-off written for Leshley Week 2023, Day 1 Prompt: Confession.