Field Operations: Roost

four (ish) headcanons I am making up about our characters

She did actually give him her number after the end of the Valdelobos mission. They did actually go on a date and had a nice time. For a while they kind of crossed workplace boundaries, but were ALSO the only two people in their branch of STRATCOM that were even close to the same age. Them hooking up didn't actually change their workplace relationship. Nobody else knew about this either. Nobody else STILL knows about this.

Hunnigan and Leon have seen every Star Wars movie in theaters as they have released, when they can. It's a tradition for them both.

Her parents legitimately thought they were dating because she had him come to their house. Ingrid gave Leon's number to her mom as an emergency contact and her mother calls him sometimes. And sometimes her mother calls HIM at work and Helena picks up the phone LMAO.

Leon brings Hunnigan souvenirs from his travels and it's usually weird stuff.

Leon travels with Hunnigan sometimes to go and do different things. The last one they managed was a concert they got to sit in the balcony of and it was extremely cool.

And of course, here he was disturbing her mental peace tenfold. At the very least, he disturbed it with a semi peace offering in the form of warm food. She could stash the rest for leftovers and it would buy him a couple of days, he thinks. Leon set the bag of rich smelling food down and unlaced his boots, stepping out of them.

"Hi. I... can explain the last couple of days."

The last time they'd seen each other, he'd been getting sick, and they'd both been quietly moved by the Director to take their ever growing pile of days off that they never had the luxury of cashing in. Malicious compliance on his end with an administration that didn't really see the value in continuing the DSO as strongly as before, looked like figuring out exactly why.

"Sorry I didn't call. I got caught up in- he gestured vaguely to the direction of the hotel television screen. No doubt she'd seen the report brought forth by one Grace Ashcroft. Anybody who was connected in any way had heard something about the story.

"Well, I'm sure you can figure that out. Got some evidence for you to pick through, and a list of names of high ranking officials we're gonna have to clean up."

Of course.

"Why am I not surprised," she says dryly.

There was a part that wanted to be angry at being left out of the loop- but everything she was given and everything that she had heard pointed to this being the result of a spontaneous decision. Unsurprising- it was how most of their operations went.

No matter what the operational intelligence was, ground truth took precedent, and they both had to adapt to the ever shifting situations.

He was here, now. And looking like he was carrying some old ghosts with him, as much as Hunnigan was.

She took her glasses off to pinch at the bridge of her nose, and work out the seams left by the plastic guards as she sighed and gestured to the table to sort out the food that he'd brought as an obvious peace offering.

"Yeah, I wanted to come back over here and check on things. It's a little funny. I wasn't really expecting to see the name 'Ashcroft' come my way again."

Not in the present-tense, at least.

Not the first time he's shown up uninvited. Wasn't going to be the last.

Her decision to head back to Lake Superior wasn't surprising. She wasn't a field agent, and that was the one time that she was. It was a little different working up close with infected than working in the shadows. She never said anything about it afterwards, although he was nosy enough to collect details on his own time from Helena. Ingrid had returned home with a serious stab wound, and the guy who stabbed her. Go figure.

Leon was slumped in place, the bags that had parked themselves under his eyes hollowing his face out. The Fitz was one of those gimmick hotels, full of ghost ships lost at sea and specters in the constant fogs. A decade and some change back, they had some actual living dead in the place, and since then, it had undergone a facelift. The parking lot was new and mostly filled to capacity. There were still people idling on the top levels on balconies.

The late-night fog rolled in from the inland sea, and Leon cut the engine of his bike to sit idle on his phone. He had brought her food as a buffer between uncomfortable conversations about self, memory, and the current crosshairs they found themselves in, or... at least, what felt like crosshairs.

"Sitrep is: shredded pork, garlic potatoes, vegetables, stew, and bread."

She hadn't been anticipating guests, and while her arrangements weren't exactly 'sloppy' she preferred to make sure the space was up to her standards before anyone else came in.

Her clothes were already neatly folded, her jackets were hung up in the closet. Ingrid kicked her shoes further back in with the ironing board and closed the door to inspect the mirror outside of it.

Her own appearance was decent enough. She hadn't bothered tying back her curls, letting them fall around her shoulder. Hunnigan was already dressed for bed, wearing an oversized lilac purple t-shirt and fleece pajama pants in a plaid pattern.

She pushed the chairs in by the tables, and closed her laptop to make space for the food that Leon was bringing as a kind of offering.

When the knock came, she carefully walked to the peephole to make sure that it was Leon at the door, before undoing the latch lock and opening up to let him in.