Sleepover

Homelander watched his bathroom door until Ashley emerged, wearing a white T-shirt with the band logo for some group called the Plimsouls that hit just past the tops of her thighs. Her legs and feet were bare, and he smelled the mint of her toothpaste and the mixed scents of her nighttime skin care products. "People think we're fucking," she observed as he held the covers back and she crawled into his bed.

"Didn't they always?" he asked.

"Just when you originally hired me back after Madelyn fired me. I was in a stall in the executive washroom once and some girl from Accounting said I didn't look like the type who could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, but you must be a better judge of that."

"Did you tell her that all the chrome is still on my hitch?"

"Nope. I have to be above that. If I engage with it, everyone's going to think it's true, so I just have to ignore it. It's not that bad anymore, though. Everybody knows you just get with beautiful women, not like me."

He felt some irritation at that. "Don't say things like that about yourself. You're—"

"Cute, in the right light, with the right makeup and right hairstyle."

"Ashley…"

"Okay, okay. I'll stop it." He put an arm around her and tried to draw her close, but she balked. "Are you wearing your pajama pants?"

He let out a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Ashley, I'm all covered up like a perfect gentleman." When she found out that he normally slept naked, she'd refused to share his bed unless he wore some kind of pajamas. He'd barely managed to talk her out of making him wear the pajama top, and he suspected he'd won that argument because she wanted to feel his skin. It was something he could take hope from.

"Good." She let him pull her against his body, her back to his front, and wrap an arm around her waist. Her long red wig perched on a faceless Styrofoam head on his dresser. Homelander rested his cheek against the side of her head, enjoying the soft prickling of her real hair. And he had almost lost her; if it had been only him at Godolkin University, Ashley would have died at the helicopter. The teenage supe charging it would have ripped the chopper door off, killed the woman sitting there, and then lunged past her corpse to Ashley. He would have torn her apart, left her bleeding and mangled and dead like all the other bodies that he'd seen from the air before he landed.

"Too tight, too tight," she murmured, and he realized he'd strengthened his grip on her in response to the turn of his thoughts.

"I'm sorry." Homelander relaxed his hold and she wriggled a little, which his lower body took notice of. "I was just thinking—"

"About Godolkin? I knew you were in your memories."

"Could it be anything else? That's the whole reason I asked you to start sleeping over." Admitting that he had nightmares about the massacre, bad enough to bring him out of sleep, bursting with adrenalin, ready to kill, had been humiliating to tell her, but he'd been rewarded for making himself vulnerable by her agreeing to sleep over a few times a week, and when she was there next to him, the nightmares stayed away. When she was warm and sleepy and alive next to him…

"I remember." Ashley ran her hand over his forearm, caressing him in an absent manner that he'd learned meant she was thinking. "Does it help?"

"Yes. When you're here, I don't have bad dreams." In fact, he had started having some much better dreams involving her, which resulted in some interesting interactions during which she pretended to be asleep while he took care of his morning wood in the bathroom. They were immersive enough that sometimes when he awakened he resented losing the dreamworld where Ashley crawled all over him and satisfied every desire he'd ever had. But he couldn't push her. It had taken weeks for her to agree to share his bed as an experiment to see if it helped with his nightmares; he didn't want to frighten her away, leaving him alone in the dark with his visions of her mangled corpse.

"That's good. I'm glad it's working for you."

He pressed a brief kiss to her temple, hoping it seemed casual enough not to scare her. "As long as I know you're with me, not murdered at Godolkin, my subconscious must suppress them."

"Or maybe they're afraid of me and just don't want a fight." Sleepiness and humor had equal parts in her voice.

Homelander chuckled. "They know they're no match for you."

Ashley made a noise and fell asleep. It surprised him; he hadn't realized she was that tired, but it gave him a chance to drop his guard, hold her and listen to her breathing, her heart, so calm and relaxing. For most of the time he'd known her, her heart and breathing had been wildly elevated in his presence due to her fear of him. If he'd known how much he would enjoy sleeping next to her, he would have made sure she had no reason to be afraid of him. He would have made sure she would want to share a bed with him.

He didn't know how long they'd been lying there, except that he hadn't gone to sleep yet, when her heart and breathing sped up, and he smelled the pepper-musk of her fear. When she made a tiny whine and he felt her begin to tremble, he shook her a little. "Ashley? Wake up. Wake up, Ashley," he repeated when she didn't respond.

Her eyes came open and she jolted with an indrawn breath that turned into a rapid faint gasping. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to apologize for, Ashley. What just happened?"

She rubbed at her eyes. "You aren't the only one in this bed who has nightmares."

That surprised him. He thought she'd come through the experience of the massacre with flying colors and very little trauma. "You never said anything. What was the nightmare about?"

"Same as usual." Ashley turned over so that she and Homelander faced each other. "Godolkin, the chopper, the rampaging supes, getting ripped to pieces and feeling every moment of it because I'm still alive. In this one, Adam threw me at the teenage supe and took off running."

Homelander tried to keep the anger off his face, to keep her calm. "I've been meaning to have a discussion with him about why you were between him and the danger."

"If the supe had been approaching from the other direction he would have been. Just the luck of the draw. No reason to scare the piss out of him."

"Other than the sheer joy of it."

"No, none but that." Ashley smiled a little, and it made him feel better. "You know there's nothing there between us anymore, right?"

"I know the two of you are finished. I'm not sure he does."

"Oh, he does. I made it clear after the massacre. Not because I would have blocked the supe's shot at him, but because he slut-shamed me in front of some of the Admin people at Godolkin. He never thought I was anything but a dirty joke. So fuck him. He's a shit."

"I'm still not sure he—"

"If he bothers me again, I've made it clear he can kiss the VCU movies goodbye, along with any connection to Vought whatsoever. I think he'll keep a more than respectable distance." The distaste in her voice made something inside him relax.

"He never was good enough for you, Ashley."

"That's sweet of you to say."

"It's true. You could do much better for yourself if you tried."

Ashley shrugged. "I just…don't have a taste for it after what happened. After everything that's happened to me since I rejoined Vought. Never thought I would have been in two massacres perpetrated by supes. At least this time I didn't get splattered with blood and brains."

Homelander pulled her against his chest and she let him. "I don't want that to happen again."

"Not much you can do about it, but appreciated."

"I can do—"

She put her hand at the back of his neck and drew his head down to her, placing a delicate kiss on his mouth. "I know you can, but I need to get up at six tomorrow. Let's go to sleep." And he was too shocked by her action to say anything else, but that didn't mean he hadn't started scheming, making plans, and when he carried out those plans Ashley wouldn't be sleeping over three or four times a week. He would have her there every night, and the nightmares would stay away from both of them.