Ashley Graham was a girl who was used to getting her own way. You would think that the experience of being kidknapped by a cult, nearly mauled to death several times over, infected with Christ alone knew what and then escaping an exploding island by the skin of her teeth on a jetski might have humbled her a little, but if there was one person who knew better, it was Leon S Kennedy.

In her own naïve little way, little Ashley was more self assured than even Ada Wong herself. It had been this sense of entitlement, this utterly pervading righteous indignation in the face of even the most horrifying sights, which had kept the kid alive and fighting when any other girl of her age, and from her obscenely sheltered background would have curled up and died. He couldn't think of many women who would have had the ability to stay cool enough to reprimand a guy for looking up her skirt when she was being chased down by hordes of the damned. Yeah, Luis Seras had been right, the kid had ballistics. But not just in the way that the Spaniard had been talking about.

He'd been a little taken aback when she'd propositioned him like that. Usually when he rescued young women from almost certain death (and let's face it, that had become the Kennedy signature move over the years), they tended to collapse in a heap of pathetically grateful tears, not pinch his ass from behind and make some blatant suggestion about doing “overtime”. And usually he was the one making sleazy innuendo at chicks, and getting shot down in the process.

And Christ, if it had been a decade or so previously, before the ultimate cocktease came pouting and strutting into his life in the form of Ada Wong, then he'd have been all over that one like a rash. But, like a frustrated fisherman harking back to his glory days, Leon could safely say that the Chinese spy would always be “the one that got away”.

It wasn't that he hadn't had a fair bit of success with the ladies. In fact, over the last ten years he'd gone from wide eyed rookie cop to a regular James Bond, conquests and all. And unlike his fellow survivors he'd even managed to do it all without making laying a finger on the steroids or making any psychotic mortal enemies, not to name any names. He had the secret agent status, a list of conquests as long as his...arm....and all in all, he'd done alright for himself since he escaped the clutches of William Birkin by the skin of his teeth, with the memory of Ada's dying words still ringing in his ears, and decided, like all the others, that he was going to take down Umbrella for good.

But over the years he'd become just that little bit more jaded, just that little bit more cynical. It hadn't done him any harm; at least the ladies seemed to like it, even if he wasn't always entirely comfortable in his own skin.

The problem was Ada. The problem always had been Ada. Her “death” had been the reason he'd become suddenly petrified of any relationship that lasted past sunrise of the next morning. Then he'd learned that perhaps she wasn't quite as dead as she'd seemed.

And when she'd showed up in Spain, all high heels and chanel perfume and exploding sunglasses, all Hell had broken loose. It wasn't that she was an enigma, no...Leon reckoned he had her “bad girl with a shred of a conscience deep down” thing all figured out by now. He'd come to terms with that. He knew how she operated, and had a rough idea of what made her tick. She was a consummate professional who occasionally allowed herself to have feelings. He could relate to that.

No, with Ada, his dilemma was much, much more simple. He wanted something that he could never have. And for once, it wasn't sex. From the second he'd clapped eyes on her and followed her about the RPD like a lovesick puppy, right up until the moment he'd watched her plummet to what he'd thought was certain death, he'd been filled with this bizarre, illogical need to rescue her from something that, objectively, she didn't need saving from. And he'd felt that same way when he'd seen her, semi conscious and suspended from that rig, his heart in his mouth and every single inch of him screaming out to play the hero, to rescue the damsel in distress.

The damsel in distress that Ada would simply never be for him.

But Ashley...she had all of Ada's attitude and more, that monstrous confidence that seemed to draw him to a woman, but she also had that dependency, that need for a strong man to take care of her that Leon knew would make him feel in some way validated. He'd felt the same way about Angela too, hadn't looked twice at her until she'd needed him to save her and make him feel like a man.

That was the problem with Ada. She didn't need him to rescue her, had never needed that. And that was what drove him up the wall. Even if he'd told himself a hundred times over that clingy girls didn't do it for him...

“LEEEEEEON!” He winced at the sound of Ashley taking a shrill high-pitched cheesegrater to his name, and he was roused from his thoughts as he sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes dazedly.

“What?” he mumbled sleepily.

“Do you know where my panties ended up?” she asked him, wrinkling her nose with a mischievous little smile, as she wrapped herself up in the bedsheet and dragged it with her, leaving him shivering for a moment in the cool morning air.

“You showed up not wearing any,” he reminded her, with a bemused little sigh.

He leaned back in his bed and looked at the ceiling, and he knew that she wouldn't be perceptive enough to see the chagrin in his expression.

Yeah, he told himself, in the end, Ashley really was the smart choice.

And if he repeated it enough times, maybe he'd even believe it.

AN: I like Leon. ^_^