Presented without real comment, Cleon fluff. Set in headcanon land not long after they get married at 45 and 43. Leon's not the only one getting shipped off to dangerous places. Secretly they're both inconsolable when the other one is gone in the field. It's just how it goes.
I'm pretty brain dead today but heyyy I did produce SOMETHING. Enjoy!
<em>I’m home.</em>
It was about 8:15 AM; Leon hadn’t been in DC horribly long. His day was just beginning, and back at the house, Claire’s was ending. They’d probably passed each other to and from DC, on the road at the same time—Leon heading to the DSO offices, Claire driving from Dulles. She’d been gone nine days, in Sudan on an aid mission with other agencies. As was customary when she was sent out, Leon had spent nine days worrying quietly and incessantly. Just two months ago three Doctors Without Borders volunteers had been kidnapped by an Islamist splinter group and beheaded, the grainy, jumpy video evidence of their murders uploaded to the internet. People trying to help were not always welcome, and Leon often worried that Claire’s big heart and her chosen line of work was going to put her in harm’s way. He knew she preferred the traveling and being out in the field over sitting behind her desk in the office at the house or being chored around DC, but Leon did not, and he never had. If he had his way, she would have been saddled to the desk and Stateside for all of eternity.
<em>Welcome back,</em> Leon texted back. <em>I’ll be home tonight, God willing. Can’t wait to see you.</em>
<em>I’m going to become horizontal and pass out for a while,</em> Claire replied. <em>I missed you.</em>
<em>I missed you too, baby. So glad you’re home,</em> Leon texted.
“Someone just tell you we’ve achieved peace in our time?” Sherry asked, from beyond his phone in his hand. “Or maybe the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup?”
“We’re a ways away from Cup season,” Leon said, tucking his phone back in his slacks. “Claire’s home.”
“Ah,” Sherry said knowingly. “You were looking at your phone like the weight of the world was off you,” she added with a smile.
“It is,” Leon replied. “I don’t like it when she’s out there.”
Sherry’s face softened a little from behind the desk she sat at, her smile growing effusive. “She doesn’t like it when you’re out there, either,” she informed him. “If you’re gone long enough she texts me asking for evidence that you’re alright.”
Leon shifted some, shrugging with his eyebrows. “I’m armed when I’m out there. Claire’s in dangerous places, and TerraSave’s hoping goodwill and care packages will endear their people to the local population, or somehow protect them from shit like explosions and sectarian violence.”
Sherry tilted her head, still smiling. “I worry too. She’s never going to stop. She’s not always told to go, you know. Sometimes she volunteers.”
Leon sighed. “Trust me, I know. Pseudo-arguments have been had about this. I tell her to go only if she has to. She says there’s only so much desk work she can take.”
Sherry leaned back at the desk, letting out a gust. “Somedays the desk <em>does</em> feel imprisoning,” she related. Leon looked at her, sitting there in her emerald green blouse; it matched the emerald earrings she was wearing that Jake had bought for her. Sherry’s time in the field had been brief and too eventful for Leon’s liking; it was more to his liking that she herself was now saddled to an office 24/7. “You know the feeling. You start getting surly if you’re around here in a suit too long.”
“I don’t long for the field, either,” Leon said. “All of it makes me surly, Sherry. I wasn’t meant for this.”
Sherry looked sympathetic. “I know. Someday you’ll be free to spend all your time in the garage, making rocking chairs and chests and tables.” She smiled. “Someday.”
Leon had his doubts as to the veracity of her statement; while it was nice to hope and imagine that one day he’d be retired from service like any other person aging out of their career, he did not find it likely. Sherry was ever a fount of hope and dreams—Leon did not know how she managed to stay so cheerful and hopeful in the face of the fact that she was essentially government property, just like he was. “Yeah, someday,” he said, instead of whatever he wanted to say. Sherry’s persistent habit of looking at the glass as half full sometimes made it difficult to shower her with his negative, dark, pessimistic bullshit.
Sherry leaned back forward at the desk, her fingers dancing over the keyboard in front of her. “You should stop and buy Claire flowers on the way home,” she said, her eyes intent on the array of computer screens in front of her. “She really likes ranunculus but I think they’re out of season at this point.”
Leon arched an eyebrow at Sherry. “Sherry, kid, I don’t know what the hell a ranunculus is,” he said. “Like most men, I am familiar with approximately one kind of flower—roses.”
Sherry tutted a bit. “Roses are so…basic. What about peonies? Alstroemerias?”
“Sure,” Leon said dryly. “I’ll stop on my way home and raid someone’s front garden. Surely there’s a variety out there.”
Sherry smiled and rolled her eyes some, still gazing at the screens in front of her. “Oh stop,” she said with a chuckle. “You would. I can just picture you out there in a suit in someone’s flower bed, ripping stuff out of the ground.”
“Hey, maybe I’d get extra points for the flowers being handpicked,” Leon said with a shrug. “Issues with trespassing aside.”
…………………………………………………………….
Leon pulled into the driveway at home, cutting the Porsche’s engine and reaching over onto the passenger seat to grab the bouquet he had in fact stopped on the way home to buy. With Sherry’s words echoing in his ears, he’d forewent the familiar experience of roses and bought an explosion of flowers he could not name and did not recognize; there were a few sunflowers in there, that was about the extent of Leon’s knowledge.
He made his way up the driveway, past his old Jeep, and to the front door. He stuck his key in the lock in the early evening gloom and turned, popping the door open; the porch light was not on and as the door swung open, the house itself was absent of lights and quiet. Leon came in, shutting the door behind him and absently flipping the exterior light on. He entered the darkened living room and abandoned his keys and the flowers on an end table, and then headed for the other side of the house and the bedroom, where he was willing to wager Claire was posted up.
He entered the bedroom, and it was dark in there too; he walked over to the bathroom door and reached inside, flipping on the light. In the shaft of light cast across the room from the open door he saw Claire’s form on the bed. She was laying on her side, facing away from him, her hair unbound and rumpled down her back. She was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of underwear, the generous curve of her ass drawing his attention for a moment before he crossed the room and climbed onto the bed, sliding over to her. He put his hand on her hip and curled up to her, pressing his face against hers. Claire took in a short little breath, shifting slightly, her eyes fluttering open.
“Hey,” Leon said lowly, his lips finding her cheek once, twice. “Hi.”
Claire loosed a soft noise, and turned her head some to look at him. “Hi,” she replied sleepily, her hand finding his at her hip. “Mm. You just get home?”
“Yeah.” Gently he began to urge her over, towards him. “C’mere. I missed you.”
Claire rolled and came to face him, her hands coming to his suited chest; her wedding rings were back on, a sight that comforted Leon. It’d only been five months since he’d put them on her. She took them off to go into the field, just like he did with his; the sight of the rings laying on the bedside table next to her side of the bed somehow always made him more acutely aware she was gone, that he was alone in the house. The fact that they were not on her hand made him somehow uneasy, but he knew she was right in that it was not practical or safe to wear carats worth of diamonds into impoverished, periodically war-torn third-world situations. He kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips briefly. His hand slid along the exposed skin of her leg, her thigh; he let it drift along her ass in the panties.
She’d been gone nine days. She was home, and safe, and Leon was presciently aware of the fact that he wanted her somewhat desperately. He forced himself not to be a grasping animal that thought of one thing; she was tired, maybe she needed more sleep, it was the dinner hour. She probably had basic needs that needed to be met before he could think about her body against him in the way he wanted.
Claire let out a gust through her nose as his hands wandered over her, reassuring himself of her presence. “What time is it?” she asked.
“About seven, I think,” Leon said. “You been asleep all day?”
“Most of it,” she said. “I was dead when I got back this morning.”
“How was it?” Leon asked.
“Hot,” Claire said simply. “I saw some hyrax.”
Leon furrowed his brow a little. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Cute, weird little guys with big teeth,” Claire replied. “I’ll show you a picture. I kind of wanted to steal one and stuff it in my bag.”
Leon let out a small chuckle. “You feel that way about a lot of animals.”
“Mm, yeah, maybe,” Claire murmured. “These guys are <em>really</em> cute.” She cuddled against him and stretched a little, her lithe body tensing and releasing next to him. Leon held her against him and buried his face into her hair, savoring the feel of her in his arms. He hoped it was some time before she was sent somewhere again, or she ignored his repeated admonishments and pleas to stop doing so and volunteered to be shipped out.
“Mmm, I’m glad you’re home,” he said to her. “I don’t like it around here without you.”
A soft ghost of a laugh escaped her in his arms. “You’re just saying that because you were probably out of leftovers on day three,” she countered.
“Day two,” Leon corrected. “Questionable food decisions aside. I don’t like it when you’re gone.”
“I know.” She angled her head to look up at him. “I’m back, though.”
Leon looked down at her and hummed, then brought his lips to hers. She sighed a little and opened her mouth to his, and Leon kissed her tenderly, longingly, until he knew if he kept this up he was not going to make good on his intentions to see to it that her basic needs were met before he started stripping her clothes off her, and after long moments he drew back from her.
“I should probably see about dinner,” she said with a gust.
“Forget it,” he said. “Let’s go out. You just got back today. You don’t need to be in the kitchen trying to make something.” He looked at her quiet in his arms, her face mulling this over. “That okay? You feel like going somewhere? I can bring food back if not.”
Claire was a silent a moment longer, contemplating. “I would absolutely murder a steak right now,” she said finally. “There’s only so many dehydrated and rehydrated meals you can eat before you start missing real food.”
“Food in the field is definitely an experience,” Leon agreed. “You want steak? We can go up to Leesburg and get it.”
“Mm, yeah, okay. Acceptable. I don’t want to haul all the way back into DC or close to it,” Claire said, stretching again. “Ugh. Steak means making myself presentable.”
“Wear whatever you want,” Leon said. “Fuck ‘em. Doesn’t bother me to slum it in a fancy place.”
Claire smiled at him. “You say that, but you are ever insistent on dragging me to places I have to dress up for.”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not tonight. I don’t give a shit. I’ll take you to get steak in your pajamas. It’s other people’s problem if they don’t like it.”
“I’m not wearing my pajamas,” Claire said, rolling her eyes a little. “I’ll put on pants. I’m not going for the gusto, though. I’m like two more nights of good sleep away from a dress experience.”
He arched his eyebrow at her. “Can I hold you to that?”
“No,” Claire replied, dryly. She plucked a little at the unbuttoned collar of his dress shirt. “You wanna change? Or are you going to try to pick up the class where I’m dropping it?”
“Hell no,” Leon said. “The sooner I can get out of this suit, the better. I was momentarily more concerned with crawling into bed with you and smothering you.”
She laughed quietly. “Alright, well…let’s get a move on before I change my mind and have sleep for dinner.”
“A poor substitute for a steak,” Leon said, dropping one last kiss on her forehead before untangling himself from her, and pushing himself to the edge of the bed. He began to take off his suit coat, and behind him Claire moved around on the bed and produced a noise that defied explanation.
“Okay,” she said, as he laid the coat on the bed, “alright. Getting up. I can do this.”
Leon looked over his shoulder as he started to unbutton his dress shirt, watching Claire push herself to the other side of the bed. “Just think. Loaded baked potato,” he said to her.
“Can we go to the place I can get a crab cake, too?” Claire asked, standing and turning on the lamp on her bedside table.
“Sweetheart, I will buy you all the crab cakes you want,” he said with a smile, watching as she somewhat drowsily and haltingly made her way around the bed, destined for the closet attached to the bathroom.
“Mmm,” she said, standing there for a moment, running her hand through her unruly hair. “This is what dreams are made of.”
“Hey, guess what,” he said, pulling his shirt out of his slacks and peeling it off, “I bought you flowers, too.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, a corner of her mouth pulled up. “Unlimited crab cakes <em>and</em> flowers?” she asked. “You must’ve really missed me.”
“Counting down the minutes until you returned, like always,” he said, bending over to untie his dress shoes.
Claire continued on into the bathroom, hanging a left to go into the closet. “I’m sure. How panicked were you when you ran out of leftovers?”
“On day five Sherry asked me what I was eating at home and we went to dinner,” he replied, pulling off one of his shoes.
“I notice the supply of beer was depleted and replenished,” she said from inside the closet.
“Yeah, there is that,” he said, standing to undo his belt. “Not being able to cook is one thing. Letting myself run out of beer is another.”
Claire emerged from the closet holding a slightly less ratty t-shirt in her hand, smiling. “What do you <em>do</em> when I am gone?”
“Worry non-stop,” he said, dropping his slacks. “Fail at taking care of myself. Be miserable.”
She just gazed at him for a long moment and then shook her head some, still smiling, and walked off for her dresser. Leon watched her go, and let out a breath.
She was home, and in one piece. He could relax. Things felt more worthwhile when she was around, and it wasn’t just because she produced food for him, something above his skill level. The idea that she was now his wife thanks to a wild idea he’d had outside a courthouse was still sinking in to him, five months on. In her absence he longed for her presence, and genuinely did go to bed every night counting down the days until her return.
“Can I get <em>two</em> crab cakes?” she asked from across the room, buttoning up a pair of short, high-waisted shorts.
Leon smiled, looking at her getting dressed. “Yeah. I missed you enough to spring for two crab cakes.”
Claire returned his smile and pulled her sleep shirt over her head, and Leon turned to head off for the closet himself.
happy Tuesday! times are super weird! brain is kind of mush! anxiety is riding at like a level 4-6 and steady!
so have some soft, RC Syndrome Leon and Claire sharing a sweet, sad, tender moment one night. A slight role reversal: Leon mostly wants to protect Claire and Sherry, but he has an awareness to want to protect the world.
Claire only wants to protect him.
Raccoon City.
Claire Redfield.
These two things are inextricably linked in Leon’s mind.
Hell.
The angel that saved him from it.
And now she’s paying the price.
They all are—him, Sherry, Claire—and countless strangers. He’s found himself checking for inky black veins on the backs of the hands of those he passes by, tracing their necks for tracks that try to hide behind ties and collars.
So far, no one else he’s come across shares in the destruction.
But, he knows, swallowing back only the idea of shame since his is long gone, his concern for them would always come in much farther down the line anyway.
Whatever he does is for Claire and for Sherry. His family. Everyone else he damned.
The idea of going back there makes him sick. It makes his vision blur, and wakes him up in the middle of the night doused in sweat.
Claire’s still right next to him, saving him from it all over again.
“You don’t have to,” she whispers, her throat dry in the night air. “We’ll—we can make do with what we have left. That would be okay.”
He can see even in the dark that her eyes are tired, blue skewing gray, and he cups her jaw to brush his thumb over her cheekbone. A gnarled black scar has grown steadily from behind her ear and now curls up to her nose, its edges ridged. His heart twists into a knot in his chest.
“I’ve never heard you give in before, Red,” he whispers, smiling when she offers him a small one and rolls her eyes.
“I’m not,” she counters. “I’m… managing our options. Mitigating risk. I’d rather—“ the cough hits her hard and quick, and her body curls into his as she braces herself on his chest. “I don’t want to lose you to that city… not anymore than we already have. I want you by my side.”
Her words land like tears and he has to clear his throat to keep his from spilling. His breath is hot against her forehead, a truth in his promise he can feel pulse in his veins far stronger than any virus.
“I’m going to stop this, Claire. I’ll find a way. Or a cure. Something.”
Giving him a tired smile, she moves a hand to cradle his face. Her thumb brushes over the lines under his eyes, and it’s hard to look at her but he can’t look away.
She deserved so much more. She does. So does Sherry.
Maybe even him.
“Okay. You’re not allowed to die out there.” She says without a blink. The corner of his mouth quirks up, a tiny nod. He takes her wrist and flattens her palm with his thumb, kissing her fingers.
“Understood.”
“Good.” She whispers, curling her fingers into his. “Then go back to sleep. I’ll keep watch for now.”
Sooo getting blown the fuck out at the Whores show, driving to and from Kansas City, and not falling asleep until after 3 AM basically did me in today. Productivity? At an all time low. Motivation? Never heard of her. I'm sitting here in my cool new shirt counting down the minutes until we go eat German food for dinner. Heal me, spaetzel!! Restore me, currywurst!!
Anyway. Brain too fried to work on novella-length Cleon projects today. But I wanted some fluff. So I made fluff.
Please enjoy Cleon fluff. In their 40s here, maybe in the pre-marriage headcanon timeline.
In the pocket of his slacks, Leon’s phone buzzed. About an hour ago he’d texted Claire asking for proof of life, and when a response was not immediate, he imagined she may have been sleeping. She’d returned from an aid trip two days ago, practically crawling across the threshold into the house. She was dead tired, mildly sunburned, her hands were one big blister from manual labor in an aid camp, and she’d come down with some kind of <em>something</em>. Flu, pneumonia, something—Leon was no doctor and he’d been unsuccessful in cajoling Claire to go to one. He’d bandaged up her damaged hands, rubbed aloe into her sunburn, and put her to bed, which is where she’d been more or less continuously since she’d dragged ass back into the house two days ago.
He fished his phone out and unlocked it, and sure enough Claire had finally replied. There was a photo of her in the dimness of the bedroom, face smashed into a pillow, hair unruly, looking genuinely miserable and then a text: <em>I coughed so hard I threw up</em>. Leon let out a gust from his nose and stuck his phone back in the pocket of his slacks, then pushed himself up out of the chair he’d been sitting in. He looked at his watch; nearly 3 PM.
Leon made his way through the offices, stalking with purpose; a crowd of interns giggling in a hallway scattered in fear when he came through. He made his way through the maze of hallways, equipment rooms, training facilities, and cubicles, until he reached Ingrid Hunnigan’s door. He didn’t knock. He never did.
Inside the office she was gathering up paperwork on her desk, her satchel bag open on the chair behind her. “Yes?” she asked, expectantly.
“I’m leaving,” Leon said.
“The hell you are,” Hunnigan replied. “You can’t just take off whenever you want.”
Leon shrugged. “You shipping me somewhere? You desperate for my company? Claire’s sick. I’m going home.”
Hunnigan looked up at him, adjusting her glasses on her face. “You <em>are</em> being shipped somewhere next week, and tomorrow morning bright and early you’re getting details on that.”
Leon sighed mightily. “Great. That’s next week, not today.”
“It’s a Presidential detail,” Hunnigan went on. “You were requested. Secret Service will loop you in tomorrow. Some summit in Switzerland.”
“Perfect,” Leon said. “I can go spin around on a mountaintop like Julie Andrews. I’m leaving.”
She stopped what she was doing, and looked at him pointedly. “Since when do you just <em>inform</em> me of what you’re going to do? I think you’ve got it back-asswards.”
Leon stuck his hand in his pocket. “What do you care? Looks like you’re leaving too.”
“I’ve got a meeting at 4 at the Pentagon,” Hunnigan replied.
“Oh joy,” Leon returned. “Anyway, I’m taking off. Bye.”
“Leon, I didn’t fucking say you could leave,” she snapped. “You’re here until 5 or later as needed.”
“Not today,” Leon said, turning around and facing the door. “What’re you gonna do, physically stop me?”
“Watch yourself,” she said from behind him. “You think being bigger than me is going to keep you safe. I assure you it will not.”
“Sure,” Leon returned casually. “I’m out of here.”
“Leon—“ Hunnigan began in consternation.
“Ingrid,” he returned, looking over his shoulder at her. “Call out the National Guard. Threaten me. Ship me to Leavenworth. I’m leaving.”
She sighed, and looked tired. “I kind of miss when you were a sad, pathetic single loser. You listened to everything I said. You were pliable. Now that there’s a woman at home you don’t listen for shit.”
“I was usually still drunk in the mornings when I was sad, pathetic, and single,” Leon said. “Made following orders easy.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hunnigan said. “Fine. Fine. Leave. Keep your phone close. Sick Claire or no sick Claire, if we need you back up here, you better be here with bells on.”
“Sure,” Leon said. “I’ll keep my jester uniform at the ready. Have fun at the Pentagon.”
“Bucket of fucking yuks,” she said dryly. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”
…………………………………………………….
Leon arrived home shortly after 4; rush hour traffic wasn’t into its full swing yet. He came in the front door and made a beeline for the bedroom, and the sight hadn’t changed much from that morning—curtains drawn, bed a rumpled mess, a vaguely Claire-shaped lump under the covers, the detritus of the sick on her bedside table. He stuck his keys in the pocket of his slacks and went over to the bed, climbing in and reaching over for the Claire-lump. She made a little noise when his hands alit on her, and groggily she rolled to face him. “What time is it?” she croaked.
“About 4,” he said. “You sound terrible. C’mere.”
“4?” she asked, allowing herself to be pulled towards him, limply. “Shouldn’t you be in DC?”
“I left,” he said, drawing her close, putting his arms around her. “They’re sending me to Switzerland next week.”
Claire made a noncommittal noise and laid against him bonelessly. “You are going to get sick,” she said after a moment. “You won’t stay out of my business and you’re going to catch this.”
“Nah,” he said. “I haven’t been sick in like ten years.” He looked down at her; her hair was a sleep-mussed tangle, her hands had gauze and tape on them, and her face was between fading sunburn and resultant multiplying freckles. “You are like the most pathetic creature on earth right now,” he informed her.
She made a defiant whine and stirred minutely in his arms. “Don’t make fun of me,” she said petulantly.
“I’m not. That was a statement. You’re giving orphan children or the sad animals on the ASPCA commercials a run for their money,” he said, and then kissed her forehead. “You can’t expect to text me about coughing so hard you blow chunks and not have me concerned.”
“I don’t know what anyone is going to do for me,” Claire returned dully.
“A doctor would probably help,” he said.
Claire made another whiny, skeptical noise. “I can’t even get out of bed,” she said. “Let alone go to a doctor.”
“I could probably <em>take</em> you to a doctor,” Leon said. “Nobody said you had to get yourself there.”
“This is just…I don’t know, the flu or something,” Claire mumbled. “Doctor’s just gonna tell me to rest.”
Leon hummed, lying there in bed with her still in his suit and dress shoes. “Well, I’m home,” he said. “Set me to chorin’. What do you want? What do you need? Do you want to take a bath?” He brought his hand up, and smoothed it over her hair. “I hate to break it to you, but your hair’s kind of starting to turn into an unwashed mess. Want me to wash your hair?”
“That all sounds like so much effort,” Claire said. “I can’t do it. I can just be greasy.”
“When was the last time we fed you?” he said. “You eaten anything today?”
“No,” Claire sighed.
Leon laid there for a moment, contemplating options. Producing her something nutritive and homemade was beyond his capabilities. “Shit, I dunno,” he said, with a gust. “You want me to microwave you a Hot Pocket?”
There was silence for a moment, and then a weak chuckle escaped Claire. “You’re hopeless,” she murmured. “What have <em>you</em> been eating?”
“It’s not pretty,” Leon replied. “But I’m surviving. I think you ate all the Hot Pockets anyway.”
“Ham and cheese,” Claire said, in dazed appreciation.
“You do like the ham and cheese,” Leon agreed, rubbing his hand up and down her back through the blanket. “You want me to go get you something? Cooking something is beyond me but I’ll drive all the way back into DC if you want something.”
Claire began to say something but then was interrupted by a fairly severe coughing fit, her body curling inward some, and Leon looked down at her with his brow furrowed, rubbing at her back.
“That sounds terrible, baby,” Leon informed her, once the fit passed and she was once again lying there slack in his arms.
“Ugh,” Claire said dispassionately, then laid there for a moment. “Indian food?” she said, hesitantly prompting. “I somehow feel like a spicy chutney would heal me.”
“Sure,” he said, holding her. “I’ll go get Indian food. You want the one place?”
“With the pakora,” Claire said. “I want pakora.”
He kissed her forehead again. “Got it. When was the last time you drank a fluid?”
“I hung my head under the bathroom sink after I hurled,” Claire said lacklusterly.
“Nope, that’s not gonna fly,” Leon said. “Let me get you some water. You want tea?”
“Maybe later,” Claire murmured. “I somehow feel like if I drank a bunch of hot liquid right now I might die.”
Leon nodded. “I’ll put the kettle on the stove. Just in case you change your mind. When was the last time you took something that passed as medicine?”
“I dunno,” Claire said.
“Alright, so cold medicine or whatever,” Leon said. He pressed his face into her hair. “You really haven’t been out of bed today at all, have you?”
“Just to hurl,” Claire said.
“Most pathetic baby animal with big eyes, wet cat, starving orphan ever,” he said to her, a corner of his mouth pulling up. “What did you do when you lived alone?”
“I once laid on my bathroom floor with blankets for like three days,” Claire said.
A short chuckle escaped him. “You tell <em>me<em> I’m bad at taking care of myself,” he said. “Let me get to gettin’. It’s gonna take me a minute to go get the food.” He gently began to disengage himself from her, and she produced a muted little noise and limply came to rest on the bed, flat on her stomach, cheek pressed into a pillow. He righted himself next to the bed, and looked around the room. “Do you want, like…a book? Music? TV?”
“TV’s in the living room,” Claire mumbled against the pillow. “Don’t have brain power for book.”
“TV doesn’t have to be in the living room,” Leon said. “I can unhook it and bring it in here. You only ever watch it when life succeeds in wrangling you to a stop, anyway.”
“Ugh, maybe later,” she said, moving slightly under the blankets. “Calvin said there’s a penguin show on Netflix.”
“Oh, penguins,” Leon said, standing there with his hands on his hips. “I’ve never known a penguin to not put a smile on your face.”
“Heal me, penguins,” Claire croaked.
“You’re the only person I know over age 6 who was especially excited about World Penguin Day,” Leon said, smiling faintly. “Alright. Water. Medicine.” In front of him Claire merely burrowed deeper into the blankets, resuming lump form. “You want anything else while I’m out?”
“No,” Claire returned weakly.
He looked at her for a moment. “Hey. You gonna live, baby?”
Claire worked one of her arms out from under the blanket and gave a lackluster thumbs up, and Leon chuckled.
“A ringing endorsement,” he said. “Alright. Let me get to tending to you, sad wet cat woman.”
“I love you,” Claire mumbled.
“I love you too, my little mass of sunburned, bandaged germs,” Leon said, his smile growing.
“Quit making fun of me,” she moaned, and rolled over ungracefully with a small huff.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Leon replied. “Be right back. Prepare yourself to sit up and drink water. You need some. You’re going to get dehydrated.”
Claire merely groaned softly in reply, and Leon let his hands drop off his hips and turned to leave the bedroom, intent on the kitchen.
I managed to polish off this blurb I started yesterday before I have to leave for KC. Huzzah!
Leon reflects on honor and morality, and the difference between men and boys. The idea came to me from an experience I had with some coworkers of my own at around age 23; man I read those boys the riot act. Newsflash--showing random people nudes someone has sent you has to be probably one of the scummiest things you can do, and I headcanon Leon working with a bunch of cocky, ruthless, kind of scummy people. C'mon. They're elite handpicked agents. The egos have to be huge. The big dick swinging and pissing contests have to be endless. If some 20-something dude was willing to angle a phone at me and show me nudes at a commonplace workplace, it could happen anywhere.
This one's a little all over the place, but somehow I feel like it's valuable insight into the Leon that exists in my head. Anyway! Have blurb!
Typically, Leon did not care what his fellow agents were up to. Were he not forced to associate with half of them by virtue of the DSO, he would not have. They were <em>all</em> kind of fucked up, Leon himself not without guilt, but a lot of them were morally bereft cocky blowhards Leon generally found irredeemable. They all gave each other shit, they one-upped each other, they were generally maladjusted assholes to one another. It all boiled down to a bunch of purile dick jokes and pissing contests. As a younger man, Leon had generally been pretty mild and unaggressive and found he didn’t participate in such things, even if it’d gotten him called a pussy on numerous occasions. As he got older, the sarcastic, aloof asshole act was just one part of the armor he put on himself—it kept the dicks he shared the field with at arm’s length, and it enabled him to blend.
So when McDaniels and Reynoso were posted up in a corner of the locker room, muttering to each other and snickering, Leon generally didn’t care. He was standing there in front of his locker, having just returned from punishing himself in the gym, contemplating a shower and dreading putting his suit back on. The two younger agents’ chortling continued in the corner, and Leon let out a sigh and looked up into his locker. Fine. He’d bite.
“The fuck are you two over there giggling about like schoolgirls?” Leon asked without looking their way, rubbing a towel over his head.
“Here,” Reynoso said, coming over to where Leon was standing, sweaty and tired. He stopped next to him and brought his phone up, grinning. “Look at <em>that</em>.”
Reynoso’s phone was operating less as a phone at that moment and more as a digital porno mag as the screen was currently covered with an image of a youngish woman, bare ass naked, laying there with her legs spread. She’d evidently taken the photo herself, and Leon furrowed his brow and pointedly moved the phone out of his line of sight. “It’s fucking 1:30 on a Wednesday, Reynoso,” Leon said, gruffly. “I don’t need to be looking at strange pussy on government time.”
“<em>I</em> do,” Reynoso countered smugly. “She can keep ‘em coming.”
“News flash, she might not if she knows you’re running around showing them to everyone and the Pope,” Leon countered. “I’m 47 years old. The last thing I need to see is some poor 25 year old girl’s sexts to you.”
“Jesus, liven up, you old man,” McDaniels said from across the room. “What, did you turn 40 and your dick quit working?”
“Works just fine,” Leon replied, pulling off his shirt. “Wife doesn’t complain.”
“Yeah, well, the rest of us are out here playing the field,” Reynoso said over his shoulder, as he turned away.
“And you’re going to fucking do so forever unless you learn a little respect,” Leon countered.
“Here it comes, the lecture,” McDaniels said dryly.
“What, did you and your wife wait until marriage or something?” Reynoso asked in amusement. “Did you never get pussy texted to you on a Wednesday?”
Leon sighed into space; that was neither here nor there, and he would fall off the side of a mountain and be run over a semi-truck before he ever even <em>mentioned</em> Claire in a sexual light to another man, let alone flaunt her naked body around. It wasn’t what you did. That kind of shit was between precisely two people—the naked party and the recipient of the text. It wasn’t meant for your coworker, or your buddies. The fact that Claire had come off her lofty cloud and one day decided to reveal her naked body to him was a privilege, not a right. Leon’s hackles raised when other men merely smiled too largely at her in public. The idea of willingly showing her naked form to other men was beyond the pale.
Women were people, not things. Leon suspected this fact went right over Reynoso and McDaniels’ heads, because they were not decent people. At least twice a week he longed to rearrange their faces. Sometimes if he could lure them into spar, he got an excuse to.
“Reynoso,” Leon began, “if you think for one second I’d even <em>allude</em> to my wife as anything other than an asexual being to you, you’re wrong.”
Reynoso shrugged, phone in his hand. “Your wife’s hot. Sorry for you if she’s an uptight prude, too.”
Leon should have just let it drop. For some reason, he didn’t. He turned to look at all 27 years of Reynoso, and McDaniels’ 28 chuckling years across the room. “That’s the thing,” Leon said evenly. “It’s my job to ensure that’s what everyone thinks of her. You think I’m gonna come to work and sit around with you assholes and run my mouth about what my wife and I get up to?” he went on. “I’m lucky enough she agreed to be my wife. The last thing on earth I’d <em>ever</em> do is show anyone <em>anything</em> she ever sent me.”
“C’mon, Kennedy, lighten up,” McDaniels said with an eye roll. “Reynoso’s not marrying this girl. There’s, like, three of them texting him. You’re kind of fucking weird about this shit.”
“Never once have you agreed to go to the strip club,” Reynoso tacked on knowingly.
“I have a beautiful woman at home who for some reason agreed to share her life with me and fucks me, and I don’t even need to give her dollar bills,” Leon replied flatly. “I’m 47 years old. I don’t need some half-naked 21 year old with issues sticking her ass in my face while I pay her to do it.”
The two younger men were regarding him like he’d grown another head. “Are you—are you fucking <em>religious</em>?” McDaniels asked, mystified. “Are you secretly gay? Do you just not appreciate pussy?”
Leon shrugged some. “I <em>was</em> religious. Gave that up a long time ago. Last time I checked, other dicks don’t make my dick hard. And yeah, I do appreciate pussy. The one I’ve been with since age 28. The one I agreed to marry.”
“Jesus, alright Kemosabe,” Reynoso said. “Sorry we’re not living up to your, like, samurai code of honor.”
Leon shrugged again, looking blithe. “You’re not. And you’re gonna keep running your stupid game on women until you’re too old for it to be cute, and they’re all married with kids, and one day you’re standing there alone with your dick in your hand and it’s not working anymore. Grow the fuck up. Quit showing your girlfriend’s tits and ass to anyone who’ll look. Have some fucking decorum.”
Reynoso and McDaniels were merely gaping back at him blankly, and Leon turned back to his locker, stripping out of his shorts, then standing there in just his boxer briefs. “Alright, you fucking Puritan, any other life lessons you want to impart?” Reynoso asked, finally.
“Yeah,” Leon said. “Learn how to treat a woman. They’re people, not your fucking sex toys. Learn to block a left hook. You leave yourself open every single time and it’s why you go down like a fucking sack of potatoes when I swing on you with my left hand. Your trigger discipline is shit. That’s like first day of the academy rookie shit. Keep your finger off the fucking trigger unless you’re gonna pull it.” Leon turned and looked at him coolly. “If you’re gonna wear a tie, learn how to fucking knot it. Yours looks like you did it in the dark with your fucking feet.”
Reynoso was staring at him silently and blankly, and then looked down at his tie and back up at Leon. McDaniels was standing in the background grinning savagely.
“And you wipe that fucking look off your face,” Leon said to McDaniels, around Reynoso. “You ain’t special. You’re just as much of a fuckup.”
“I’m kind of amazed your wife fucks you, too,” Reynoso finally said. “You’re a joyless bastard.”
Leon screwed his face up incredulously and condescendingly at the younger agent. “You think I go home and act like this with her?” he asked. “I reserve that for you wastes of space. Furthermore, you think not wanting to stare at some college student’s spread pussy without her knowledge makes me joyless? There’s a lot more to life, man. Figure it the fuck out.”
For a long moment there was just gazes across the room at each other; McDaniels and Reynoso kind of mystified, Leon brow lowered and unamused.
“You’re a fucking weirdo, Kennedy,” McDaniels informed him, finally.
“I’ve got morals,” Leon replied bluntly, before stripping out of his underwear to head to the shower. “Come at me when you two boys finally figure out how a man’s supposed to behave.” In some ways Leon regretted letting himself become embroiled in this as he knew nothing he said or did was going to cause the majority of the slimeballs he worked with to reconsider and shape up, but at this point in his life he wasn’t great about keeping his mouth shut, even when it caused him problems. That’s all Reynoso and McDaniels were; stupid, arrogant little boys with bad manners and a lack of conscience. It was none of Leon’s business that their parents hadn’t raised them right, or somewhere between then and now they’d just shed every life lesson ever taught to them and decided to be morally-reprehensible creeps.
Wordlessly Leon stalked off for the showers and the hell of government-issued soap, leaving the two junior agents to look after him in bland confusion, and then look at each other with nonchalant shrugs and arm flops.
…………………………………………………………………..
Leon found his mood had been foul the rest of the day; it hadn’t been amazing the moment he’d turned up at the offices, but that was par for the course. As Leon had figured, his words had gone in one ear and out the other when it came to Reynoso; the younger man spent a good portion of the afternoon showing half the DSO some unsuspecting girl’s naked pictures. Leon had silently absented himself and gone off to engage in a pastime that made him less likely to punch someone in the gut, bothering Hunnigan.
“Who pissed in your cornflakes?” she’d asked him from behind her tablet, busily tapping away at things.
“Life,” Leon replied. “The government. Men, even though I am a man.”
“Can’t blame you,” Ingrid returned. “My day generally takes a turn for the worse when a man darkens my doorstep.”
Leon had skulked around the offices with a frown until he hadn’t been shipped anywhere and was permitted to leave, and even then it wasn’t like he had skipped out the door, because then it was time to fight with DC traffic to make it home, which he generally regarded as torture tantamount to one of the circles of Hell. The conversation with McDaniels and Reynoso stuck in his craw as he crept along in traffic. Normally Leon was fairly good at writing off his fellow operatives as annoyances he was forced to endure, but for some reason today he was having a harder time letting go.
Of course over the years he’d been the recipient of varying not-fit-for-public-consumption texts from Claire, and he imagined he was just as jacked as any man to receive photos designed to make one’s dick hard. There was shit that got him off in the bedroom just the same as anyone, and there was shit that got Claire off. Generally they were pretty open with each other about this stuff; this far in they knew each other like the back of each other’s hands. Leon enjoyed having the upper hand and Claire let him have it, and behind closed doors they got up to the horny and degenerate acts that made them happy.
But that was just the thing—behind closed doors. Claire wasn’t sending a group text when she sent him a picture of her ass in some lingerie. This shit was between them; Claire trusted him enough to send him pictures of her naked body and let him in between her legs and let him make her come but he knew Claire would burst into flames if anyone were to know the finer details of these things. She did these things solely for Leon, and she trusted him to keep them to himself. To the rest of the world, Claire was a tough, take-no-shit hard worker who was helpful and reliable. She trusted Leon enough to be vulnerable with him, and seductive and submissive, and the mere thought of any other man on the planet knowing anything about this made Leon vaguely murderous. And deep inside, he felt like that was how it should be, the natural order of things—no man should have a desire to show off what he was privy to in the bedroom, or to want another man to think of his partner in a sexual light. It just wasn’t how it worked. You were supposed to defend your partner’s honor. You were lucky enough that said partner let you get near her with your hard dick. Women were someone’s daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, all of it. Leon realized what got him off in the bedroom could be construed as vaguely disrespectful at times, or weird, or maybe plainly not feminist or whatever, but he <em>respected</em> Claire. He loved her. She was the most important thing in his world, and if she trusted him enough to let him see her naked, he was more or less honor-bound to protect this and keep it between them with his life.
He thought of seeing way more of some unknown twenty-something than he’d wanted to see that day as Reynoso held his phone in front of him. She was probably a nice girl, probably entirely too good for Reynoso, which wasn’t a difficult feat in and of itself. She probably had no idea a photo of herself she’d taken intended for the guy she was talking to was being practically plastered around a government office, damaged asshole men looking at her naked form and providing dry commentary on her tits and other aspects of her.
She was someone’s daughter.
Men probably needed to be rounded up and imprisoned. Leon <em>was</em> a man and half the time he figured he needed to be rounded up with all the rest and locked away. He tried, but occasionally he was part and parcel to all the same things that made men awful. He knew better than to run around flaunting naked pictures of his wife, and he never would, but periodically even he caught himself acting like some kind of jackass around Claire and he figured he was deserving of her pulling one of the cast-irons out of the cabinet and walloping him with it.
Leon thought back to age 15 or so, and one night at the dinner table where his father had direly informed him he was a shit-for-brains. Leon had taken this in stride; he’d long been told by varying members of his family he was not the sharpest tool in the shed. His father had however gone on, and then pointed at his two brothers and indicated they were also shit-for-brains, and then Joseph Kennedy had pointed at himself and indicated he was <em>also</em> a shit-for-brains.
“All men are shit-for-brains,” his father had said. “Every day God permits men to continue being on this earth is a blessing.”
At 47 Leon found he still relatively agreed with his father. He figured men were in constant need of trying hard to continue earning the privilege of existence. Some men like Reynoso were really fucking it up for everyone.
Leon stewed all the way home; he stewed on honor and duty and doing right by women and having decency, he contemplated beating Reynoso’s ass because he deserved it, he kind of wondered why his horny pervert ass was deserving of a woman as decent as Claire, and furthermore how lucky he was she humored him. She could have hauled off and decked him the first time he’d hovered over her with a hard dick and started running his mouth at her. She hadn’t. She was magnanimous enough to let him be a weird degenerate, and what was more, she encouraged it. Maybe Leon needed someone to beat his ass too. Maybe that someone was Claire.
By the time he got home, it took him a minute of standing there on the other side of the front door to try to force his resident curmudgeon down and try to whip himself into something presentable to show to Claire. Reynoso made him want to insert a sharp object into his eyes around the offices; he’d be absolutely face-fucked before he let the worthless asshole occupy real estate in his head at home.
For long years Leon had felt like being in DC and working for the government exposed you to the worst of humanity. His opinion had not changed.
Leon stood there for a long moment, keys in hand, looking down at his dress shoes at the end of his slacks, and then he blew out a gust and unlocked the front door, stepping in. The house smelled like appetizing food of <em>some</em> kind; Leon’s nose wasn’t trained enough to know what it was he was smelling, but he felt like he’d probably have three helpings of it.
“Leon?” Claire called, from within the house.
“Yeah,” he returned, exiting the entryway and coming out into the living room. Claire was on the couch with her legs tucked under her, glasses on, hair in a high messy knot, old TerraSave hoodie on. She looked over at him for a moment and then went back to the project in her lap, knitting needles and string, and the ball of yarn rolled up next to her. For some time she’d been bound and determined to produce a sweater, and it was slow going, but even Leon could see she was perhaps starting to encroach on something that may have resembled a sweater. He rounded the couch and came and sat down next to her, letting his keys set on his lap, his be-slacked legs spread next to Claire.
“How was it?” Claire asked mildly.
“Every day I don’t shoot up the workplace is another miracle,” Leon said dryly.
“Hmm,” Claire returned. “So about the usual.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, and angled his head towards the kitchen. “What did you make that smells so good?”
“Lasagna,” Claire said. “Started the sauce this morning and went back and forth between the office and the kitchen today assembling it. It’s warm in the oven.”
“Can’t wait to eat enough of it to make me sick,” Leon said, and Claire looked over at him in mild amused reproach. She straightened the work in her lap, and Leon realized it was a sleeve. She’d finished sleeves, or was gaining on it. “Hey, that looks mostly like a disassembled sweater.”
“Yeah,” Claire said, bright. “I’m getting close. Here, hold up your arm,” she said. Leon held his arm out in front of him and Claire picked up one of the sleeves, holding it up against his arm. “Think that’s long enough,” she said, letting it drop back into her lap. “I’m telling you, if I finish this and it just goes into a corner of your closet never to be worn, I will be so—“
“I’ll wear it,” Leon said, reassuringly. “What, you think I think I’m too cool for a sweater? I’d wear it even if you’d knit, like, reindeer into it.”
Claire chortled a little. “I dunno. You were pretty adamant on me picking <em>the</em> drabbest color known to man when I started this.”
“I mean you asked,” Leon said benignly. “You gave me a choice. I’d like to avoid, like, hot pink if I can.”
“Not hot pink,” Claire said dryly. “I could never emasculate you like that.”
Leon reached out and let his hand rub along her shoulders, up to the back of her neck as she sat there in mild amusement. “I’m largely uncaring enough about my appearance that I probably <em>would</em> have worn it if you made it hot pink,” he told her. “My dick’s not gonna fall off.”
“You say that, but you’ve been wearing the same rotation of black or blue suits with a white dress shirt since, like, eternity,” Claire countered. “Your half of the closet is a sea of shadow interspersed by the errant bright red Red Wings shirt. I was kind of starting to wonder if your dick <em>would</em> fall off if you tried a color.”
Leon looked over at her and her smiling face, sweater sleeve held in her hand. Claire was amazing. She was a treasure. She was a perfect angel woman who probably could have been doing just about anything on earth she wanted to, and yet she deigned to give him the time of day. She was beautiful and upright and good and often Leon felt like some kind of grunting, skulking goblin creature compared to her. He did not deserve her, and yet somehow she still stuck around and seemed like she may have even been enjoying it.
“Men are fucking stupid,” he said to her, and a corner of her mouth pulled up further. “We are. Drooling animals with zero thoughts in their head that probably need someone telling them what to do. Repellent, vile creatures running around making messes of everything.”
“You spend a lot of time around Ingrid today?” Claire asked. “This sounds word for word like things that could come out of her mouth.”
“A bit,” Leon acknowledged. “No, I just… Every day I am surrounded by a sea of unbridled testosterone and shit decisions and fuck, I guess sometimes it even gets to me. We’re not killing it. Men, I mean.”
“I’m generally inclined to agree with you,” Claire said. “Sitting there squished into a ball on the Metro because I’m surrounded by men in suits manspreading as wide as they can because somehow they think they deserve all the room, talking loudly into their cell phones. It’s enough to make you want to snap.”
Leon looked over into her face for a long moment, then out into the living room, and then down near his feet. His eyes alit on his legs. He’d sat down right next to her and proceeded to manspread as wide as he could. “Jesus, I’m doing it right now,” he said, indicating his legs.
“Self-awareness is the first step,” Claire said in amusement, reaching out and squeezing his knee. “You want dinner? It’s ready to go,” she said, shuffling knitting around in her lap, moving to get up.
“Sure,” he gusted, running a hand over his head. “Let me change out of this suit.” Claire was pushing herself forward on the couch, getting her feet onto the ground, and Leon reached out and grasped at her arm gently. “Hey.”
“Mmm?” she hummed, turning her head to look at him.
“I love you,” he said. “You’re amazing. I think the world would be a better place if you ran it.”
Claire laughed a little, rolling her eyes some. “Jesus, regular life’s hard enough to manage sometimes. I don’t think I’m cut out to be an overlord. I’ll let everyone live, just this one time.” She leaned back for a moment and gave him a genial little smooch, and then resumed pushing herself off the couch. “I love you, too. Work must’ve been rough. Your fount of male guilt is particularly deep today.”
“Men are beyond redemption,” Leon said as she stood.
“On the whole? Maybe,” Claire acknowledged. “In the confines of this house? I’d say you do alright.”
“Constant, conscious effort,” Leon replied.
“Alright, well, hold it together and go get changed,” Claire said, starting off for the kitchen. “Let me put a full quarter of this lasagna on a plate for you.”
“Thank you,” Leon called after her, then pushed himself to the edge of the couch and stood.
Men did not deserve women. Leon didn’t know what men deserved, but he suspected it was tantamount to a swift kick in the ass and being banished for all of eternity. He <em>was</em> a man, and occasionally the casual sleaze and lack of consideration out of fellow men made his skin crawl and set his teeth on edge. He hadn’t been raised that way. He’d been raised to believe women were glowing, perfect creatures who needed the men in their lives to be decent and upright and industrious and make sure that the women never had a problem larger than what to cook for dinner on their plates.
Maybe he was old fashioned. Maybe he was so old fashioned it in and of itself was a vaguely overbearing, vile male thing. He knew periodically his views on things caused Claire to huff and roll her eyes, and walk off mumbling things to herself. He was not perfect, but he tried. The alternative was not great.
Leon was just a man, but every day he realized largely he was surrounded by boys; ill-behaved, damaged, conniving little boys. There was a big difference between a man and a boy, and while Leon figured he may not have learned much in life, but at least he’d learned the difference between being a man and a boy.
Claire appreciates the unusual about Leon, and he's baffled because he thought all women wanted washboard abs and like a strong jawline. They're of an unknown age here; maybe late 20s situationship, maybe in their 30s, maybe in their 40s. I didn't really focus on that. I just wanted a cute and fluffy exchange in between working on novella length things that kind of make me want to pull my hair out.
Anyway. Leon's hands are basically a callous of sandpaper at this point and Claire likes it! Leon is probably secretly a leash kid at heart. Does ranch belong in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?
Lying back in the bed, Claire furrowed her brow when Leon pulled his shirt off, and he had a few gauze squares taped onto his shoulder blade with medical tape. Leon with injuries or things that turned into scars wasn’t unusual, but the gauze was in such odd spots she found herself confused.
“What happened to your back?” she asked as he laid back in the bed, settling in.
“I had my annual two hour long poke and prod by DSO doctors,” Leon said, putting his arm behind his head, “and some of these moles you love so much decided to try to kill me. Doctors didn’t like the way a few of them looked, so I told them to just get to the point and cut them out.”
“Oh,” Claire said, brow still furrowed. “Everything else okay?”
“I’m vitamin D deficient,” Leon replied. “My triglycerides are high.”
Claire turned her head to look at him. “Vitamin D deficient? I feel like you get plenty of sun.”
Leon shrugged a little. “Who knows. Don’t ask me. I have some nine million milligram vitamin D supplements I have to take. They warned me about the triglycerides, but I genuinely don’t know what I am supposed to do about that.”
Claire arched her eyebrow at him. “Stop eating 6 eggs in a sitting.”
“I really run a pretty tight ship, all things considered,” Leon said. “And I like eggs. Not my fault my body’s bad with fat or whatever.”
Claire looked up at the ceiling. “Sure. But everything else was okay?”
“Yeah,” Leon replied benignly. “Healthy as a horse. About as bright as one too. I’ve just been told to watch the moles. I need your help, mole appreciator. Tell me if any of them start looking murderous.”
Claire smiled a little. “Sure,” she replied. “I appreciate other things about you than your moles.”
“Genuinely confusing, but sure,” Leon replied casually, as she rolled and curled along his side. “Like what?”
“Oh,” Claire began with a gust, “lots. Your moles. I like your nose. I really appreciate your Adam’s apple.” She let her hand idly trace patterns on his chest. “I enjoy your hairy legs. I think your crooked big toe’s cute.”
Leon made a sardonic little noise and angled his head to look down at her, a corner of his mouth pulled up. “No offense, but that’s all a little batshit, sweetheart. Don’t women appreciate normal things? Like, I thought women cared about someone being in shape and all of that.”
Claire shrugged some. “I mean, yeah, I guess. But it’s not the be-all-end-all. I appreciate you’re in shape, but I’d also appreciate you if you had a Dad bod. Women look at different stuff, sometimes, I think.”
“Clearly,” Leon replied in amusement. “My—my crooked <em>toe</em>?”
“I also really appreciate your hands, if that makes you feel any better,” Claire said. “Twice the size of mine and in desperate need of moisturization. Perfect. No notes.”
“Okay, well, I was always told it was important to, like…have nice eyes,” Leon said dryly.
“I mean, it is,” Claire said. “And you do have nice eyes. But there’s more than just the obvious stuff on you. Men are obtuse,” she went on. “You guys operate on a surface level, when you look at women.” She looked up at him, eyebrow again arched. “What do you appreciate about me?” she asked. Leon looked back at her and opened his mouth, and she cut in. “<em>Aside</em> from the obvious stuff, like my tits or ass.”
Leon closed his mouth and looked back at her for a moment, and she chortled some in the face of his silence and momentary blank look. “I mean it <em>is</em> a banner ass,” he informed her mildly, and she rolled her eyes some and let her head drop. “What?” he asked, still mild. “I appreciate other things about you.”
“If you say my tits next you’re really not batting 1000, here,” Claire said from his shoulder.
“Nah,” Leon said. “I like your hair. I like that it’s red and that you keep it long. I wish you’d wear it down more often. I like your freckles. I like that they’re everywhere. I think they’re cute.”
“As long as the sun is in the sky, they’ll never stop multiplying,” Claire replied.
“I like <em>you</em>, in general,” Leon went on. “Your personality’s just as good as your looks. You’re not mean. You’re not cranky. You’re accepting. You’re an exceptionally nice person, and that’s rare.”
“I save it all up for my road rage,” Claire said. “Everything I’ve ever been pissed about, I’m unleashing it in the driver’s seat at other drivers.”
“I know,” Leon said dryly. “It’s kind of scary.” He laid there in silence for a moment. “What in the hell can possibly be so noteworthy about my <em>Adam’s apple</em>?” he asked, in mystification.
“It’s kind of big,” Claire replied. “It sticks out in your throat, and it always has. I dunno. I just like it, is all.”
Leon laughed some. “I’ve got a knot in my neck and it gets you going. Sure. Great.”
“I also find the way you sweat kind of attractive,” Claire informed him blithely.
“Alright that one’s just gross,” Leon said. “The slightest of exertion makes me drip buckets and you <em>like</em> that?”
“Manly stuff,” Claire returned. “Women don’t sweat, they glisten or whatever.”
“I’m a freak,” he said. “And you’re a freak for liking it.”
Claire smiled some, snuggling her head into his shoulder. “Let your freak flag fly,” she said. “What, are you upset I don’t consider, like, your six-pack the best thing on you?”
“I just thought that was what women considered when they decided what to find attractive about a man,” Leon said.
“Sure, maybe. But I thought you looked alright as a 21 year old string bean, and I’d still think you’d look alright if you just let go and gained like 50 pounds,” Claire informed him.
“Well, that’s not happening anytime soon,” Leon said. “Government won’t let it. Michaels started getting kind of a beer gut and they pulled him from duty and essentially ran him back through a boot camp to make him lose it.”
Claire was still smiling. “I’ve seen the way you look longingly at my late night burritos.”
“Yeah, there is that,” Leon said with a gust, the arm not behind his head wrapping around her. “At 18 I just ate it all. I have to rein myself in a little more, these days. It’s already bad enough I drink so much beer. I can’t be housing three late night burritos about it if I want to stay in this kind of shape.”
“Joyless,” Claire countered. “Life’s too short.”
“You’re saying that to the man who was just informed about 24 hours ago his arteries may or may not be clogging,” Leon replied. “It’s probably time to tighten my belt even more.”
“I’ll eat my chicken nuggets and think of you,” Claire said in amusement. “With extra sweet and sour sauce.”
Leon hummed a little. “No way. Ranch is the only way to fly.”
“You’d put ranch on anything,” Claire said. “Your food pyramid includes it.”
“It’s in the other pyramid, too,” Leon said. “Y’know—the other one. What’s it called? The one about, like, basic survival and—“
“Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?” Claire asked incredulously, laughing. “Where’s ranch fit into that?”
“I dunno,” Leon said. “Maybe a basic need. Like everyone deserves access to ranch. Maybe it’s one of the higher ones, like fulfillment or whatever.”
“Zen and the bottle of Hidden Valley,” Claire said, still laughing. “How do you even <em>know</em> about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?”
“Some class in community college a million years ago prior the academy,” Leon said. “I <em>kind</em> of paid attention.”
Claire was grinning, her hand on his chest. “You’re a himbo,” she said. “Just a pretty face.”
“I’m relying on you to be the smart one,” Leon said. “I probably need a leash. Like one of those leashes parents used to put on their kids in the 80s. You can take me for walks and I’ll roll in dead stuff like a dog.”
“Jesus,” Claire said, snickering.
“Hey, it’s whatever,” Leon said. “I notice my brain was not among the list of things you liked about me.”
Claire tutted. “I do so appreciate it,” she said. “I think you’re plenty smart. Maybe averse to a traditional educational experience, but you’re not stupid.” She looked up at him. “I don’t really think you’re a himbo.”
“I called a guy bro in the gym last week,” Leon replied, smiling.
“Ope, take it back,” Claire said seriously. “Absolute himbo. A himbo with cool moles and a nice Adam’s apple or whatever, but…”
“Hell yeah,” Leon said. “It’s me and this prominent Adam’s apple against the world.”
Claire just smiled back at him, rolling her eyes some, and then she laid her head back down, cuddling up. There was plenty of traditional things worth appreciating on Leon, like his jawline or his cleft chin, or sure, his flawless body. But Claire had ever found smaller, more mundane things noteworthy on men; the fact that Leon’s hands looked like he’d started manually laboring at age 6 and never stopped was exciting to her, she appreciated watching him toil in the yard and wiping sweat from his brow. She liked all his skin imperfections, and the fact that his Adam’s apple stuck out was noteworthy to her. She lifted her hand and again let her fingers trace along the skin of his chest, moving idly from mole to mole.
“You’re looking at them, aren’t you, you weirdo?” Leon asked from above her in amusement.
Claire grinned a little, her fingers mapping from mole to mole. “Maybe,” she replied enigmatically.
So Capcom dropped an arcade version of the Re2 remake called Dead Shot which re-tells Re2 as a first person shooter, it's currently being tested in a Uk location, but the best part? LEON AND CLAIRE STICK TOGETHER THIS IS LITERALLY DARKSIDE CHRONICLES REMADE BOOM SHAKALAKA YES GAWD THANK YOU FOR THE CRUMBS HERE ARE MY FAVE MOMENTS
The hands next to each other in the last shot hello??
THE INTRODUCTION ARGH
Good bf Leon always checking on his girl (if you die as Claire he says "stay with me Claire, c'mon, get up!" 😭)
And lastly shoutout to Leon asking the pilot of the helicopter that fucking exploded on impact and is on fire if he's okay 💀 God i need this to come to a dave & busters near me I BEG
(i took all these screenshots from this video by toby7ten)
@streakyglasses had an idea earlier tonight and I said sure man what the fuck I can do that, I've had four hours of sleep and I'm missing work at the bar because of it, I've got time to write fic. So I stuffed my oven pizza into my face and retreated to the basement to do my thing.
I KNOW it's not Capcom canon, but in my head Leon, Claire, and Sherry were together for a few months after Raccoon. Just go with it. I needed them to spend more time together for primo angst and fic reasons.
@streakyglasses wanted them eating s'mores. I fear this may be a little light on the outright jubilation and laughter, my headcanons of them being kind of weary and stressed out are too strong. There is smiling, and joking around, and the mention of the beans song. I hope you still like it, dude!
Anyway. Enjoy our favorite little post-apocalyptic family making s'mores over a gas stove burner. It's a little headcanon heavy. Just go with it. Let my delusions be your delusions. It's more fun that way.
Claire heard the side door in the kitchen creak open, the rickety old wooden screen door snapping shut a second later. Sherry looked over at her, and Claire smiled some; this far in, they weren’t all reduced to outright paranoia when one of them came and went through a door. Claire knew it was Leon; he’d left about two hours ago to walk into town to go to the store. He still stubbornly insisted she and Sherry stay in the house—it was like he was determined to be the only one who had any contact with the outside world. In one of their late night kitchen arguments, Leon had defended his decision, saying it was better if the outside world or anyone who may happen to take notice thought he was alone in the house.
Claire had never been good at following a man’s directions, so she and Sherry made forays out into the world every once in a while to go to the thrift store, to hunt for books. After all, <em>she</em> controlled the money—maybe Leon’s family was old fashioned, maybe part of his brain was stuck in some ideal version of 1950. He got paid every Friday, and he immediately came home and handed the money to Claire.
He didn’t need to know she’d been consistently funneling funds off for her eventual escape to Europe to find Chris. She found ways to stretch the budget to obfuscate 40 dollars disappearing here, 50 dollars there.
Sherry pushed herself up off the floor, away from the notebook she and Claire had been huddled around. For lack of things to do, Claire had been teaching Sherry French. It was a poor substitute for being enrolled in school, but Claire tried to keep her daily conversations with Sherry educational and informative. Being an honors student was coming in handy in the damndest ways for Claire. Sherry was running off for the kitchen, and Claire stood up too, hiking up her too-big jeans. It wasn’t always possible to find things at thrift that fit <em>just</em> like you wanted them to—Claire felt like her clothes were always too big, finding things long enough for Leon’s long legs and arms was hard. Sherry was easy—she was a kid, and she didn’t seem to care about whatever Claire told her to put on.
Claire sauntered into the kitchen behind Sherry, and Leon was standing there, bags on the counter in front of him. He reached into his back pocket and fished out some loose bills and a receipt, and handed them over to Claire, who took them and stuck them in her own pocket.
“What’d you get?” Sherry asked, prying into bags. “If Claire makes ham and beans one more time I’m going to die.”
Leon managed a quirk of his lips. “What, you don’t like beans?”
“More like they don’t like me,” Sherry groused.
“Beans make everyone fart, Sherry,” Claire said in amusement.
“Yeah, you never heard the beans song?” Leon asked, and Sherry looked at him skeptically. This far in they had learned that Sherry’s childhood so far had been relatively antiseptic—apparently two scientists consumed by their work absently raising a child between them were not as irreverent or as freewheeling as a teenager and a guy barely old enough to drink. Drink they did, sometimes; sometimes Leon’s store purchases included a bottle of something he and Claire beat up until they were either jovial or lost in their own thoughts.
“The beans song?” Sherry asked, face scrunched up.
“Beans, beans, the magical fruit,” Leon began, and his smile had grown. “The more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel—“
“So let’s have beans for every meal,” Claire finished, and Sherry pulled a face. Claire laughed.
“Gross,” Sherry proclaimed. “I’m tired of farting. I’m tired of beans.”
“Well, bad news,” Leon said brightly, opening one of the bags. “Beans are cheap. And they yield. So Claire’s gonna continue to make ham and beans.”
Sherry groaned, and Claire reached over and put her hand on top of the girl’s head, wobbling it back and forth some. “Beggars can’t be choosers, Sher,” Claire said. “Plus, what do you think I am, a Michelin chef? Ham and beans is one of the things I know how to reliably cook.”
“What’s a Michelin chef?” Sherry asked.
“Hot shit,” Claire replied, and Leon, as he always did, kind of cut his eye at Claire about her language. Leon reserved his swearing for when it counted, when he and Claire had their heated discussions while Sherry slept. “A <em>fancy</em> chef. Someone who makes like French food and stuff.”
“Oh,” Sherry said. She was back to peering in the bags. “Did you get anything <em>good</em>?” she asked, reaching into the bag and pulling out bar soap.
“Yeah, if you consider keeping your butt clean good,” Leon said, looking at the soap in her hand. Sherry was exasperated. “<em>Yes</em>, I did get something good.”
“Like what?” Sherry asked.
Leon looked at her, the smile finally making it all the way to his eyes. His baby-face was not as rounded as it had been; both he and Claire had lost weight. They foisted extra food onto Sherry’s plate, and her face was just as round as it had ever been. “S’mores,” he said, and Claire looked over at him.
“How are we gonna make s’mores?” Claire asked. “You’re not lighting a fire, are you? Do we even have any wood? We can’t just, like, light a fire in the front yard—“
“I’ve never had a s’more,” Sherry said, and both Leon and Claire looked at her in a shock they still perpetually had this far in when Sherry casually admitted she was ignorant to some key part of a normal childhood.
“How is that possible?” Leon asked, and it was Claire’s turn to cut her eye at him. Questions of this nature occasionally got a supremely depressing answer out of Sherry, and it felt like there were hurt feelings involved.
“I dunno,” Sherry said, petulantly. “I thought it was something you did when you were camping. I’ve never been camping. Or in Girl Scouts. I think Girl Scouts did it on their trips.”
“Leon,” Claire tried again, “how are we going to—“
“Stove,” Leon said. “Gas stove. I’m not swinging an axe to split wood. I swing enough during the week.” And it was true; he did, swinging hammers while framing houses for under-the-table cash. Part of Claire’s duties had switched from managing his gunshot wound to digging splinters out of his hands under a bright light, and rubbing the bullet-afflicted shoulder when it caused him problems.
Claire blinked. She cooked with the stove enough; she hadn’t even thought of that. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I guess that works.”
He looked over at her. “Help me put this stuff away,” he said. “I don’t know where you want things in here.” That’s right; the kitchen was her domain.
Sometimes it really felt like they’d stepped back to 1950. Life in hiding was strange.
……………………………………………………………
Dinner was grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup; Claire felt like it wasn’t a very substantive meal but they ate it a lot. Claire stood over the stove, the sleeves on her too-big sweater rolled up to her elbows, making grilled cheese sandwiches. In the relatively barren living room, Leon had convinced Sherry to walk on his back. It happened once or twice a week, Leon maintained his back hurt and Sherry was the perfect size to step all over him and pop it. Sherry always laughed while she did it, hands out to the sides, wobbling some as she tried to balance and Leon let her crush him flat.
They ate without fanfare, sitting around on the kitchen floor. Leon was done before everyone, as per usual; Claire suspected he lived his life these days in a perpetual state of half-hunger. He never said anything, but in Claire’s experience, college-aged guys were bottomless pits, able to put away two and three helpings of food. She suspected Leon was no different and was just too upright to say anything.
“Do you want another sandwich?” Claire asked, watching him stand up. “I mean, you bought more bread. We have plenty. I can make you another sandwich.”
“Nah,” Leon said. “Save the bread. It’s not easy to hike back and forth from the store with fifty bags all the time. The less often I have to go the better.”
Claire looked up at him from the floor. His hair was getting so long. When she’d first met him it had been kind of boy-band; now it was surfer. “<em>I</em> could go to the store,” she said.
“No,” Leon replied simply, and Claire turned back to her food, not wanting to duke it out with him in front of Sherry, and she felt like that’s what would happen if she pressed. “You two eat so <em>slow</em>,” he said, but his tone was not ill-natured. “How are we supposed to eat s’mores if it takes you guys an hour to eat a grilled cheese sandwich?”
Sherry looked up at him and took a gargantuan bite of her sandwich, ripping half of it into her mouth. Claire chortled some, and Leon looked at her like maybe he shouldn’t have said anything.
“Take it easy,” Claire said. “You can’t eat a s’more if you’re dead because you choked on half a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“I’m not—“ Sherry began, orally encumbered with the world’s biggest bite of grilled cheese.
“<em>Okay</em>, Sherry,” Claire said in amusement. “I don’t need to <em>see</em> your food.”
Sherry shut her mouth, chewing largely, her brows lowered.
Claire and Sherry sat there and finished their food, and Leon wandered off to some other area of the house. It wasn’t as if it was full of things to do; getting lost in your own thoughts was one of their chief diversions. They had a radio; on Monday nights Leon listened to a metal program broadcast by a college station that came in. Claire listened to classic rock or country, sometimes, while she was cooking. Sherry professed ignorance to most music of any kind except the classical station at the very end of the dial; apparently the Birkin household had been relatively short on music, too.
Claire was collecting plates and bowls when Sherry ran off out of the kitchen. “Leon!” she called, from the hallway to the stairs. “How do I make a s’more?”
Claire was washing dishes when Leon reappeared, Sherry in tow behind him. He grabbed the bag of jumbo marshmallows, the box of graham crackers, and the chocolate. Sherry looked on expectantly, and Leon turned the knob for a burner on the stove. It clicked and lit, and he adjusted the flame height. Claire was laying the bowls and plates on the towel on the counter, and Leon was rifling through a drawer.
“Guess a fork’ll work,” Leon said, pulling one out of the drawer. Sherry watched him and then yanked open the drawer herself, producing another fork.
“Hey, don’t start this party without me,” Claire said, jovial. She walked over and moved Leon out of the way gently with her hands on his arms, and reached down to tear open the box of graham crackers. “Jeez, get yourself set up first,” she chided. “You’re going to end up with a melted marshmallow with nothing to stick it on.”
Leon looked over, chewing on one of his fingers; a splinter, then. Claire anticipated she’d be hovering over his hands with the tweezers and her knife later tonight, under the lamp. Claire ripped open one of the sleeves of graham crackers, and peeled open the chocolate. She stuck her thumb into the plastic of the marshmallow bag, stretching it and ripping it open.
“Alright, is everything to your exacting standards, now?” Leon asked.
“You had no plan,” Claire said, bemused. She rummaged in the drawer for her own fork, then dug a marshmallow out of the bag and handed it to Sherry, who regarded it seriously.
“What do I do?” Sherry asked.
“You toast the shit out of a marshmallow over fire,” Claire said, grabbing one for herself. Leon rummaged in the bag after her. “Or however much you want. Chris likes his, like, charbroiled. Me, not so much.”
“You’ve got to have <em>some</em> crispiness,” Leon maintained.
Claire stuck her marshmallow on the end of her fork and showed it to Sherry, smiling. Sherry stuck her own marshmallow on the end of her fork, and then they stood there over the burner, holding the marshmallows into the flame.
“Scoot over,” Leon said, nudging Claire some. “I need space to properly burn this thing.”
Claire bumped him back. “So you like yours like a charcoal briquette, too.”
“Just shy of that,” Leon said.
“Does it taste gross if it gets burned?” Sherry asked, holding her marshmallow a hesitant distance from the flame of the burner.
“No,” Leon replied.
“Maybe, kind of,” Claire said.
Sherry looked at them as if they were no help. Claire supposed maybe they were not; occasionally they issued Sherry contradictory commands, which led to Sherry looking at them in confusion and Leon and Claire sizing each other up. Claire thought Leon liked to think he ran the show. Claire’d been through too much shit to suddenly be made into someone’s homemaker circa 1950. The outcome depended on how up to fighting Claire felt.
Claire reached over and dug graham crackers out of the sleeve, trying to break them in half with one hand.
“Claire, be careful,” Leon said. “You’re going to catch your sleeve on fire.”
“I am not,” Claire said. “Now the real question here is do you melt your chocolate, too?”
“Do I?” Sherry asked.
“Do you?” Leon asked in confusion. “I just put the marshmallow and chocolate on the cracker and eat it.”
“You gotta melt the chocolate,” Claire said, “just a little.”
“You’re going to make a huge mess,” Leon said.
“I clean the kitchen,” Claire said calmly. “I’ll live.”
They all stood there, toasting their marshmallows, and Claire pulled hers back, looking at it. It was browned. Perfect. She picked up one of the broken graham crackers and smashed the marshmallow onto it, then reached over and broke off some chocolate. She balanced it on the fork over the fire and Leon looked at her skeptically. She looked back at him, unbothered.
“Wait, is mine done too?” Sherry asked, looking at her marshmallow in concern.
“I mean, if you want it to be,” Claire said. “It’s kind of brown. Leon’s evidently carbonizing his.”
“You guys are amateurs,” Leon said.
Sherry hurriedly pulled her marshmallow away from the flame and moved over to the other side of Leon, grabbing a graham cracker. She smooshed her marshmallow onto it, and then she too broke off a piece of chocolate and balanced it on her fork, holding it over the burner.
“I see,” Leon said. “You’ve decided Claire’s way is superior.”
“Because it is,” Claire said, carefully forking the slightly melted chocolate onto her marshmallow-graham cracker combo in her other hand. She dropped the fork on the stove and reached around Leon to grab a graham cracker lid for her s’more.
Sherry watched Claire and for a moment was frantically torn between holding her chocolate over the flame, and grabbing her own graham cracker lid. “Claire, help,” she said. “I can’t reach over there.”
Claire retrieved a graham cracker for Sherry and handed it to her, and Sherry kind of messily and inexpertly constructed her s’more in the same fashion Claire had. Claire took a bite of hers, bringing her hand up to catch any falling debris as she bit. Leon was still toasting his marshmallow, and it looked decidedly charred.
“Get that thing off the fire before it starts smoking,” Claire joked.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Leon replied absently, but there was no fire in it. He pulled his marshmallow away from the flame and inspected it, then reached down and turned the burner off, reaching for his own graham crackers and chocolate.
Claire sauntered over and sat back down on the kitchen floor, and Sherry joined her, chewing her own s’more. Sherry’s chocolate had gotten more melted than Claire’s; Claire noted that Sherry was going to have one hell of a mess in her hand.
“Well,” Leon began, turning around from the counter, “what do you think?” he asked of Sherry, taking a bite of his own s’more. He crossed the space between them and likewise sat down on the floor, completing their circle.
“It’s good!” Sherry said, smiling. “Um—it’s kind of messy,” she said, licking her hand.
“Yeah, blame Claire and her turbo-genius melted chocolate idea for that,” Leon said, chewing, offering Sherry a smile back.
“Listen,” Claire said coolly, looking at the s’more in front of her, “I’m a wellspring of good ideas.”
“Sure,” Leon said, skeptically amused.
Sherry took another bite, struggling to keep gooey contents inside the graham crackers. “They’re kind of hard to eat.”
“Again,” Leon said, “blame Claire.”
“If you don’t stop I’ll brain you,” Claire returned.
“What’s braining?” Sherry asked.
“It means I’m going to take him out back and beat him within an inch of his life,” Claire said, taking another bite. Leon looked over at her in the same skeptical amusement, and then looked back down at the food in his hand.
“Thanks, Leon,” Sherry said, chewing. “This is good. I guess I don’t need to go camping, now.”
“Nah,” Claire said. “You should still go camping. It’s fun.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Leon said. “I’ve never been camping either.”
“Aren’t you from Michigan?” Claire asked, mystified. “Isn’t that supposed to be, like, <em>primo</em> camping?”
“I’m a city boy,” Leon replied.
“Me too,” Sherry said. “I’m a city girl.”
Claire looked between them with her eyebrow arched, and shrugged a little. “City slickers,” she said, knowingly.
Sherry looked at the size of the remainder of the s’more in her hand, and before Claire could open her mouth and say anything, Sherry fit the entirety of it into her own mouth kind of largely. Claire’s eyebrow stayed arched, watching Sherry chew like she was going to win an award for it.
“Thanks, Leon,” Sherry said again, with a mouth full of food, and leaned over and quickly kissed Leon on the cheek. Leon looked over at her slightly, smiling, but otherwise did not react. Claire looked over at him and had one of her moments where she felt less like rebelling against his insistence on being the man of the house circa 1950, and more like being thankful that he even stuck around and put up with her and Sherry and made the financials of this life on the run work.
Claire likewise leaned over and kissed his cheek, the barest brush of her lips against him. “Thanks, Leon,” she murmured, and then leaned back. Leon looked over at her more fully than he’d looked at Sherry, and his face was less smiling and more questioning.
Claire looked down at her s’more and took another bite, pointedly not meeting his gaze. Nevermind kissing his cheek; it was now more frequently Claire waking up tangled up with Leon and not with Sherry when they all occupied a bed together. Unless Sherry specifically asked Claire to hold her, Claire would wake up tangled in Leon’s arms, Sherry curled along her back. They still went round and round in the kitchen late at night in hissing tones, but Claire found her moments of rebellion against Leon trying to run their life in hiding fewer and further between. More and more she accepted it, and in some regards she wondered when she’d become so <em>domesticated</em>.
“Take a picture,” Claire said to Leon and his gaze. “It’ll last longer.” Leon looked away from her quickly and Sherry giggled some, much like she did sometimes when she woke up and discovered Claire was definitely favoring one occupant of the bed over the other.
“Can I make another one?” Sherry asked, relatively pleading.
“Sure,” Claire said, and Sherry jumped up to rush to the counter. Leon looked up and over at her, and Claire looked over at him. She chortled, and Leon looked down at her.
“Sherry got chocolate on your cheek,” she said, reaching out and rubbing at his cheek. “Sherry, you’re gonna need to wash your face and hands after this.”
“Oh,” Leon said, and he was <em>looking</em> at Claire again. She popped the last bite of her s’more into her mouth, and brushed her hands against her jeans, trying not to feel some kind of way with his preternaturally blue eyes boring into her.
“C’mon,” she said around her last bite. “I saw you chewing at your fingers. I just know they’re full of splinters. Come into my operating theatre,” Claire said, standing. Leon looked up at her, and stood as well.
“Don’t make a mess, Sher,” Claire said. “Don’t burn the house down.” She sauntered out of the kitchen, her too big jeans dragging on the floor under her feet, Leon following her like a silently obedient shadow.
I write a lot of the late 20s degenerate situationship. In House of Self-Undoing, over at AO3, I explore Leon's thoughts on how he loves Claire but is terrified of her, terrified of letting her in too close, terrified of her wounding him so badly he won't recover. (She DOES wound him later in my headcanon, but he had it coming, and he does in fact spend a few years absolutely not recovering from it and carrying a torch for her the whole time.) In fics here and there I throw some of Claire's thoughts in about it, mostly just that she loves him so much she doesn't know what to do about it but she's terrified to open her mouth because she's scared it's going to make Leon hit the old and dusty.
Anyway. I decided to explore that a little today. Leon's doing his usual of trying to love Claire without saying it by doing for her and trying to ensure every single problem she has is just taken care of. Claire's trying to be independent and hard-headed on a meager salary, and it touches off some thoughts about what exactly they find themselves embroiled in and what the fuck they're doing.
Or: Leon forces a new AC unit on Claire and it causes her to spiral and wonder why he persists in doing all this shit for her if he DOESN'T love her, but if he does why is he so incapable of saying it?
You guys have read my fics. You know they get it together later in life and are healthy and well-adjusted. They're kind of not, at this stage in their lives, and for one hot semi-confrontational moment Claire has thoughts about it.
Anyway. ANGST! and maybe some cute fluffiness while ANGST!!! and some comedic moments too I suppose.
At around 8:45 Friday night, the familiar knock came at Claire’s door. She didn’t know why he persisted in knocking; this arrangement had been going on long enough and he had a key, he could have just let himself in. She pushed herself off the couch with a sigh, moving slowly and thickly in the heat.
The heat. Her AC was out. She’d come home from work that night to discover this delightful fact. Leon had sure picked the wrong weekend to come visit. Claire supposed she was not surprised her AC had eventually died; the unit was about 500 years old and even Chris had suspiciously eyed it when they looked at the house.
“That thing’s not long for this world, Claire Babbie,” he’d said to her, but the house was one of the few things they’d looked at that hadn’t been astronomically out of her range so she’d brushed off the ancient AC and forged ahead.
Claire made her way over to the front door and pulled it open, and Leon stood there with his bag. For one second he looked into her face evenly, and then he began to chuckle lowly.
“Jesus, don’t look so enthusiastic,” he commented.
“Get in here and tell me again how I’m supposed to look,” Claire said tiredly, stepping back. Leon entered and stood there for a second, and then looked down at her.
“Any particular reason it’s 90 degrees in here?” he asked.
“AC’s dead,” she replied, shutting the door. “I’ve got all the windows open and the fans on but it’s not doing much good.”
“Oh joy,” Leon returned, letting his bag slide off his shoulder. “You do anything about this development or is this just the way it is now?”
“I called a HVAC company when I got home from work and discovered my AC had given up the ghost,” Claire said, putting her hands on her hips. “Someone will be out tomorrow around 10. I was informed for someone to come out tonight it’d be an emergency call and there’d be a service charge.”
Leon shrugged. “Call ‘em back. I’m here with my wallet.”
“No,” Claire said emphatically. “Keep your wallet to yourself. I’ve got this.”
“Sure,” Leon replied, benignly. “We’re just going to sweat and die until the HVAC guy shows up tomorrow. Reasonable.” He let out a sigh. “You got a flashlight? I can go out and look at it.”
Claire arched an eyebrow at him. “You know anything about ancient AC units?”
“Not a thing,” Leon replied. “But it’s got parts, and generally most things with parts I can figure out if I look at them long enough.”
Claire let her hands drop off her hips. “I mean, flashlight’s in the junk drawer in the kitchen, but there’s probably not a point. AC unit’s older than dirt. Chris warned me when we looked at this place it was probably going to die at some point. Basically every summer I turn the AC on and cross my fingers. The whole thing’s probably dead, knowing my luck.”
Leon accepted this news evenly, then stepped past her, heading for the kitchen and the junk drawer. “It’s going to make me feel better to look at it,” Leon said, from the other room. “Plus, I think it may actually be nicer outside than in here.”
“There is that,” Claire returned. She heard the junk drawer being rifled through, then Leon’s footfalls and the door to the backyard pulling open. She let out a sigh and went back to the couch, sitting down heavily. She picked up her beer and took a drink, and then settled back into the couch, waiting on Leon to fulfill his manly duty of looking at broken shit. A few minutes later her back door opened again, and Claire turned her head towards her shoulder. “What’s the verdict?” she called.
“Beats me,” Leon said. “Nothing appears visibly broken. You weren’t kidding, though, I think that thing was ordered from Sears Roebuck back when they still had a mail order catalog circa 1900. I’m surprised it hasn’t given you problems before now.” He reappeared in the living room, and put his hands on his hips, looking out into the room. He let out a sigh. “You’re <em>sure</em> you’re okay waiting until 10 AM.”
“What choice do I have?” Claire replied, and before he could open his mouth, she cut in. “<em>If</em> me and my meager bank account are taking care of this, as the owner of this hovel. Are you going to live? Are you missing DC already?”
Leon furrowed his brow, still looking out into space. “I mean, I’m routinely subjected to shitty temperatures in the field. I’m just not used to them in my downtime, indoors, and you look kind of like you’re going to melt.”
“I’m from Alabama,” Claire said. “I’m used to the heat. This sucks balls, but I will live.”
“Fine,” Leon returned, and then abruptly began to pull his shirt over his head, tossing it off onto a portion of the couch Claire wasn’t occupying. He reached down to his belt, and began to unbuckle it, and Claire made a little noise.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, picking up her beer.
“Getting naked,” Leon replied calmly. “I’m not sitting around fully clothed in these temperatures indoors.” He unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped them, and then looked down at his feet, at his boots. He stooped to untie his laces.
“Uh, the windows are open,” Claire countered, arching an eyebrow. “Maybe you shouldn’t just be walking around in here naked unless you want to traumatize one of my neighbors.”
“I’m inside,” Leon said. “If they look in here and see me, that’s their problem. Shouldn’t be looking in peoples’ windows anyway,” he said, pulling off a boot and a sock.
“I don’t think that’s how that works, but okay,” Claire said in amusement, as Leon shed his other shoe and sock.
“That’s totally how it works,” Leon said, standing and pushing his jeans down, stepping out of them. “As the resident naked guy, I know these things.” He pushed his boxer briefs down, and then gathered up the pile of clothes he’d shed, and likewise tossed them onto the couch. He was then standing in the middle of her illuminated living room naked as the day he was born, windows open, and Claire still regarded him with skeptical amusement. He was entirely unperturbed that anyone in the neighborhood could look in and see his bare naked ass, and he walked off to the kitchen again, and Claire heard the fridge door pull open. He returned a moment later with a can of Busch that he’d probably complain about, and sat down next to her on the couch. Leon cracked the beer open and looked at her blithely. “You’d probably be more comfortable if you were naked too,” he informed her.
“You just want me naked,” she retorted.
“I figure you probably want me to keep my hands to myself until AC is restored unless you want to be covered in a gallon of my sweat,” he said, taking a drink of his beer. “I would not complain about the sight afforded but you’d definitely be more comfortable.”
“And let the entire neighborhood see my nakey booty?” Claire asked, and Leon chuckled some. “No way. I’m a little less casual about the potential for my next door neighbor seeing my entire situation.”
“Yeah, true, you’ve gotta live here,” Leon said. “And you’re unfairly hot. Probably give the neighbor bad ideas.”
“My one neighbor is like 85,” Claire said.
“Maybe it still works,” Leon said calmly. “I’m sure the sight of naked you would lead to him finding out.”
Claire rolled her eyes some. “Gross. I’ll keep my clothes on until later. I’m not as unbothered by just being naked.”
“Spend so long in military-type situations you don’t care anymore,” Leon said. “I’m pretty sure everyone at STRATCOM saw me naked at some point, and I saw all of them. DSO’s no different. Everyone’s seen my dick, I’ve seen everyone else’s.”
“Yeah, well, at TerraSave we generally keep our clothes on,” Claire said with a small laugh. “I’m not trying to see all that. At this point in my life I’m not trying to see any more strange dicks.”
“I guess mine’s familiar at this point but I’m still surprised half the time you don’t tell me to put it away,” Leon said.
“The thought crosses my mind from time to time,” Claire countered with a smile. “It does seem like it’s out a lot.”
“I am crazy, but I am free,” Leon said evenly.
“No shit,” Claire returned, taking a drink of her beer.
………………………………………………………………..
They’d survived the night. Claire knew her sleep had been fitful; Leon seemed to be surviving there next to her, on top of the covers. It was hot enough they forewent the usual snuggling that happened in the presence of AC; Claire had also shed her clothes once the lights were out and the ability for someone in the neighborhood to look in the windows and see her naked was gone. For a while they’d just laid there next to each other, naked, feeling the ceiling fan blowing hot air onto them.
“This genuinely sucks dicks,” Claire had said to the ceiling in the dark.
“I tried,” Leon said. “You could have had it fixed tonight but you’re determined to do this your way.”
Claire had merely sighed in reply, both cursing herself for her stubborn nature and feeling determined to see things through herself.
In the morning Leon just got out of bed and stretched, making no moves to get dressed. Evidently he was determined to stay naked as long as the AC was absent. Claire rifled through her closet and found a gauzy sundress, and pulled it over her naked form. It was the lowest effort form of dressed she could be, and potentially the coolest. She emerged from the bedroom to find Leon standing near the entrance to the kitchen, drinking a glass of water.
“I’d offer to cook you breakfast,” she said, “but I am <em>not</em> turning on the stove.”
“Fair,” Leon returned. “Got any cereal?”
“There’s…Trix in there, I think,” Claire said.
“A nutritious and wholesome breakfast,” Leon returned with a smile, before continuing to drink the glass of water.
“I like sugar cereal,” Claire said. “So sue me. I think I also have instant oatmeal, but that’s all of the sugary variety too.”
Leon made a little noise, drinking water. “Like the Quaker instant stuff? Man, I haven’t had that since I was a kid. What kind do you have?”
“The best kind,” Claire replied knowingly. “The fruit and cream variety pack.”
“Fuck yeah,” Leon said, evenly. “I’d house several packets of peaches and cream for the nostalgia.” He drained the glass of water and turned back to the kitchen, and Claire heard cabinets opening.
“Hey, the AC guy is going to be here at 10 or around then,” she said. “At some point you have to put on clothes.”
“It’s 8,” Leon replied from inside the kitchen. “I’m gonna make this oatmeal and go sit outside where maybe there’s a breeze and eat it.”
Claire furrowed her brow. “Uh, are you going to put on clothes before you do that?”
“Your backyard has a privacy fence,” he said, nonplussed. “No. Nobody can see me on the back patio.”
“Jesus Christ,” Claire said with a heavy sigh. “Someone is 100% going to see your dick and call the cops about it and you’re gonna end up on a registry.”
“I am not,” Leon said. “I had no idea you were such a prude.”
“I am not,” Claire fired back, echoing his words. “I’m just not trying to have my house flagged as creepy-guy-with-his-dick-out-sex-offender-central.”
“Worry not,” Leon said. “There’s only two packets of peaches and cream left. How weird do you think it’d be if I mixed them with the packets of strawberries and cream?”
“Probably fine,” she said. “How many packets are you eating?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Leon returned, and Claire rolled her eyes and went off to the bathroom to make sense of her hair.
……………………………………………………………….
At around 9:30 Claire successfully browbeat Leon into at least putting on pants, which was good as the AC guy showed up approximately 15 minutes later and Claire looked at Leon knowingly while he looked pointedly unruffled and oblivious. Claire let the AC guy go through the house to the backyard, and she showed him where the gate to the front was in case he needed to go back and forth between his work van.
Claire returned indoors, which was about the same temperature as outside without the benefit of actual airflow, and found Leon sitting on the couch. She came and sat down next to him and looked over at him, putting her hand on his leg.
“These jeans are a prison,” Leon informed her.
“Take it easy, nature boy,” Claire said. “With any luck here after a while AC will be restored and you can stop being a nudist in my house.”
They laid around dispassionately for some time while the AC guy did his thing, and Claire contemplated at around what time she could crack a cold beer without being a total miscreant. After about 30 or 40 minutes, the back door cracked open.
“Ma’am?” the AC guy called into the house.
“Yeah, coming,” Claire called back, pushing herself off the couch and heading across the house. When she entered the kitchen she saw the AC guy with his head stuck in the door, mildly sweaty himself, and Claire approached the door, stepping outside with him.
“I hate to break it to you, but I have bad news,” he said to her, and Claire let out a suffering sigh, putting her hand on her hip through her dress. She took note of the patch on the front of his uniform shirt that indicated that his name was Dan.
“Alright, Dan, lay it on me,” she said tiredly.
“That unit is about 30 years old,” Dan informed her, “and the compressor’s dead. Not to mention it’s old enough to where it runs on Freon, which isn’t even legal to use anymore.” He beckoned her over to the unit, and Claire stepped out of the cover of the overhang over her back porch into the sun. “You’ve got two options, one of which may or may not be viable. This thing is so old it may not be possible to find parts, but I can go to one of our warehouses and dig. Maybe, just maybe, somewhere there’s a compressor that would work.”
“Okay,” Claire said evenly, looking down at the offending AC unit. This was genuinely just her luck. A second later the back door swung open, spitting out Leon, and Claire took in a breath through her nose and let it out in a gust. That was the other luck shoe dropping—Leon was going to come out here and probably be a problem about this. “Say you find a compressor. What’s that run?”
“Not cheap,” Dan said. “<em>If</em> I can find one. Replacing a compressor’s like half the cost of the unit, or more. Your other option is total replacement, which honestly may be the smarter way to go. If I do have a compressor for a unit this old, eventually something else is going to go, and you’re going to have dumped all this money into this old thing for no good reason.”
Claire stood there, gazing into space, tongue working behind her teeth. Leon was now at her side.
“What’s it’s problem?” Leon asked.
“Fried compressor,” Dan replied.
“Oh this thing’s fucked out,” Leon said, then looked down at Claire. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m thinking,” Claire replied. More like she was running circles in her brain trying to figure out how she was going to come up with the money for this. Was no AC an option? Could she run her house on swamp coolers and fans? It’d been hot back home, she could deal with the heat. It would fucking suck, but technically she did not need AC to live. Her only other real option was to cave and call Chris, which she hated doing, but in this situation she genuinely did not know what else to do. She had about 500 dollars to her name, and that was probably not enough to fix this problem.
“What are her options?” Leon asked of Dan.
“Hope I have a compressor for something this old at the warehouse,” he said, “or total replacement.”
“Replace it,” Leon said, and Claire looked over at him tartly.
“Don’t spend my money before I’ve made up my mind,” she said to him.
“Not spending your money,” Leon replied evenly. “Spending mine. Can you get a new unit in today?”
“Yeah, I—“ Dan began.
“Leon, hold on a fucking second,” Claire snapped. “Nobody asked you to—“
“Would you give us a minute?” Leon asked of Dan, who looked between them and shrugged mildly and wandered off to a point in the center of the yard. “Look, Claire—“
“I am fucking thinking about it,” Claire said, “and you just blow in and—“
“You are thinking about it way too long,” Leon said, “which indicates to me this is a problem that maybe you’re not equipped to solve. Am I wrong?”
She just stared back at him flatly, hands on her hips.
“Am I wrong, Claire?” he repeated himself.
“I didn’t expect my AC to die, no,” Claire replied. “But I’m the homeowner here, and—“
“You’re the homeowner who struggles to make the mortgage payment and replacing an AC unit would probably absolutely break you, if you even have the money to do it,” Leon cut in matter of factly, staring back into her face just as resolutely. “What’re you gonna do? Go without AC?”
“Well, I mean, back home, we just—“ Claire began and Leon shook his head some, holding up his hand.
“No. No, Claire. You’re not just going to live without AC. This is not the frontier. This is not an aid camp. It’s 95 degrees outside and you need air conditioning. A new compressor’s probably a couple grand and honestly probably not smart considering how decrepit this thing is. You need a new one. I’m getting you a new one. That’s it. End of discussion.”
“This is a discussion?” Claire asked, incredulously. “Seems an awful lot like you’re just telling me how it’s going to go.”
Leon shrugged at her, his face still pointed. “Sorry. I’m not watching you try to figure out how to afford this, because I know you can’t.”
Claire just stared back at him. He was right, and she had no retort. She hated situations like this.
He looked back at her, and his face softened minutely. “Just…let me take care of this. It’s not a big deal. You need a new AC. That’s fine. I’ve got it.”
Claire continued staring, her brain warring. It was true this was a problem she was not able to solve on her own. Leon’s continual offers to pay off her house, to manage her student debt, to wipe out her car payment echoed in her head. It was either him, or Chris. She was wholly reliant on someone else in this situation, and it killed her.
Some big adult she was. Not for the first time she wondered why she hadn’t become some kind of high powered attorney or a politician or something like Daddy had thought she would. Oh yeah. Raccoon. Rockfort. Life breaking. The overwhelming and desperate desire to try to do some good in the world. Turned out doing good didn’t pay well. Claire wondered what <em>did</em> pay well, but she already knew the answer. Being a morally bereft asshole, or being property of the US government and getting jerked around like Leon.
“Claire,” Leon said to her silence, his tone softening to match his face. “It’s fine. I’ve got it. You gonna throw me out, or what?”
“No,” she sighed. “No, I—it’s just—alright. Fine. Call Dan back over here before he thinks we’re having a domestic dispute.”
Leon looked at her a second more, and then looked over his shoulder. “Alright,” he called to Dan the AC guy, “yeah. Replace it. You said you can do that today?”
“Yeah,” Dan returned, starting back towards them from his spot in the yard. “I can get one in today. So, I mean, there’s options—you may want to call the shop and discuss with them—“
“Just whatever’s reliable,” Leon said. “Something with a warranty. Something that’s gonna blow cold for a good long while. Money’s not a thing. You know more about these things than me. Give us something that doesn’t suck,” Leon said, a hint of joviality coming back to his voice.
“Well, I mean, generally something like Trane or Lennox is going to be the best equipment for your money,” Dan said.
“Sure. Sign me up. Tell me where to sign. Just install it so I can stop having to be butt ass naked indoors to survive,” Leon said, and Dan laughed some while Claire stood there feeling vaguely sulky.
“Yeah, it is pretty hot out, I don’t blame you,” Dan returned. “Alright—well, uh, let me head back to the shop and the warehouse, and pick something up—the shop will probably call to discuss prices,” he said, looking over at Claire.
“Yeah, sure,” she said distantly. “I’ve got my phone.”
“Alright. I can, uh, get out through over here?” Dan asked, pointing at the gate.
“Yeah,” Claire replied.
“Okay. Be back after a bit,” Dan said, stooping to gather up his tools. Claire looked over at Leon, and he looked back at her.
“C’mon,” Leon said to her, and they headed for the back door. Once they were inside, and the door was shut, Claire turned around to face him.
“This is not, like, a thing,” she said. “It’s not like I constantly just need help.”
“I’m aware of that,” Leon replied. “You’re very adamant about doing everything yourself. But you’ve run up against something you cannot handle yourself.” He spread his hands. “What fucking good am I if I’m not helping? If I’m just some guy who blows into town every once in a while and eats all your food and drinks your beer?”
“You do more than that,” Claire returned tiredly. “I just—it’s not easy for me to swallow that bam, you’re just going to spend several thousand dollars and I’m sitting here with my thumb up my ass incapable of doing for myself.”
Leon looked at her. “Why are you okay with certain things and not with others? You’ll let me mow your yard and shovel your snow and change your oil and buy you beers, but when I try to do something that would really matter to you, you fight me off.”
Claire stood there in silence; they were treading dangerously close to a Real Conversation About Them, which for the most part seemed to be something they danced around endlessly. Claire knew to contemplate this too much was to end up beating her head against a wall, or pulling her hair out—Leon came into town or summoned her to DC, and he’d fuck her brains out and tell her she belonged to him, that no one would ever treat her the way he treated her, and she’d agree. He’d kiss her forehead and hold her after nightmares and take her to dinner and periodically offer to drop untold sums of money to make her life easier. He drove them around and he fixed things around her house and he joked around with her and he called her <em>sweetheart</em> and <em>baby</em> and infinite other pet names. He was generally tender with her and accommodating and concerned and Claire was wholly, utterly, in love with him.
Not that she’d ever uttered those words. Not that he had either. She wasn’t sure <em>how</em> he felt about her. Sometimes she felt like she had an inkling, but she was too nervous to press it. She was too nervous to open her own mouth and have Leon look at her blankly and disappear into the night.
She couldn’t let him do all the things he wanted to do because she was stubborn, and hard-headed, and deep inside some small part of her whispered <em>somehow he wants to do all this shit but the potential of saying I love you is beyond him—that’s fucked up</em>.
And she realized she was standing in front of him silently, her brain a turbulent mess, while he stood in front of her expectantly. Evidently he wanted an answer to his question. Claire figured she should furnish one that didn’t entail <em>what the fuck are we and what the fuck are we doing?</em>
“Because,” she said finally, “because I was raised not to take other people’s charity. Because it just about killed Daddy to have to be on food stamps. Because I’m 28 years old and I’m supposed to be able to handle shit on my own, at this point.” It was mostly the truth, and she was omitting the <em>because if I let you do that shit for me there’s no looking back and I’m in over my head</em> aspect of it.
“I’m just trying to help,” he said. “Sometimes I think you need it. I think you deserve it. You’ve been through enough. Somebody probably should come along and clean half the shit off your plate.”
Claire’s brain was in overdrive. How was he so determined to ease every problem she ever had and she couldn’t even figure out if he held deeper feelings for her outside of perhaps effusive fondness? He’d been so much easier to read at 21—everything had been right there on his face, in his eyes—he’d been an open book. Over the years he’d gotten harder and harder to interpret, and now she was left with a man standing in front of her telling her she deserved things and he wanted to provide them but more than half of her was convinced if she were to suddenly blurt out <em>I love you</em> he’d look at her like she’d grown another head and this would be over.
“Are you that somebody?” she asked, in spite of whatever she wanted to say, and even that felt like too much—too direct.
“I would be, if you’d let me,” he replied, and for a moment they just looked at each other. Claire didn’t know what to make of his statement. It was no <em>I love you</em>, but there he was yet again somehow trying to be a central fixture in her life that took her problems and wiped them away.
Claire realized she was standing there in silence again, and Leon let out a gust and began to move, crossing the space between them. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent down and kissed her forehead, and then he rubbed her arms lightly and stepped around her, moving to exit the kitchen.
Claire stood there for a long second, frustrated and confused in a sundress, and part of her told her to make this air conditioning unit issue into a <em>genuine</em> issue and go out and put the spurs to Leon and make him say something that meant something for once.
The other part of her was too scared to do it, because him there in her life was better than no him at all because she made it weird by trying to force him to admit he loved her—maybe he didn’t. What the fuck did she know? Not much, and half the time that included whatever she was doing.
It was easier when she didn’t think about it. It was easier when she was just blithe and accepting and let Leon do whatever he was going to do, because after this long with him in her life in this capacity, she realized she’d be crushed if it went away.
Claire let out a breath and tried to rally herself and get her conflicted thoughts under control. She pushed her hand up on her forehead, into her bangs. “Leon,” she called.
“Yeah,” he called back from the other room.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he returned.
Claire tried to get herself fit for situationship consumption and headed to exit the kitchen.
………………………………………………………….
At around 7 PM the house was finally coming down to a temperature that was comfortable for human life indoors. Dan the AC guy had gotten the new unit in by about 2, and Leon had remained pseudo-clothed long enough to not scare the hired help and to sign paperwork and give card information over the phone. Claire had felt relatively off all day; she hated that this was happening, and she felt the weirdness from their conversation that morning hanging around her head. If Leon was bothered by anything, the absolute last thing on earth he was going to do was let on in any way—all of this just seemed like any old day for him.
“Hey,” Leon said from the couch. “C’mere.”
“You wanna eat food tonight or not, Cochise?” Claire called back from in front of her fridge.
“Not particularly concerned about it at the moment,” Leon replied. “C’mon. C’mere.”
Claire shut the fridge door and walked out to the living room, following the beckoning of Leon’s hand. She sat down on the edge of the couch next to where he was laying, still in just jeans, and he reached up and started easing her into a laying position. Claire allowed herself to be eased, and she laid down next to him, her head on his shoulder, and he let his hand drift up and down her back through her dress. “Now that I’m able to be next to you without bursting into flames,” he said, and he turned his head and kissed her forehead once, twice.
“Not really.” He looked down at her. “Are you going to live about today or are you going to continue walking around being weird?”
“I am not being weird,” Claire countered.
“You’re walking around like you are no longer the owner of this house,” Leon said. “Like I swiped it right out from under you.”
Claire let out a gust, bringing her hand up to rest on his chest. “I’m still smarting over you spending five grand today.”
“I’m not,” Leon replied. “Why are you?”
“Because,” she replied. “And that’s that. My Daddy is looking on from the ether shaking his head.”
“He is not,” Leon returned. “I think he’d probably want you to have air conditioning.”
“Maybe,” Claire said. “I was raised to be pretty tough.”
“I’m aware,” Leon said. “Let it drop for a second. I bought you an air conditioning unit. I didn’t try to insult you as an independent woman.”
Claire laid there, in silence, and realized they could talk this in circles forever. She realized she didn’t want to spend the remainder of the weekend until he left Sunday at 7 PM doing so. “What do you want to do for dinner?” she asked instead. “I’ve got—“
“Do you want to cook?” he cut in. “We did spend most of the day generally melting. Is cooking in you?”
Claire was silent for a moment. “No. No, I really don’t.” She furrowed her brow. “I’m also not feeling like going anywhere. But you’re here, and I can’t just pull sleep for dinner.”
“Do you want to have something delivered?” Leon asked.
“I mean—“ She pushed her head up. “Do <em>you</em>?” she asked. “I think you’ve spent enough today. I should probably foot the bill for food.”
Leon looked back at her, face unreadable, and shrugged. “Sure. If it’s going to make you feel better.”
“It is,” she returned evenly. “Do you want…pizza?”
“Is there a polite way to say at this juncture I would eat my own arm?” Leon asked.
“I thought you said you weren’t concerned with food at this moment,” Claire countered.
“I lied,” he said. “To get you to leave the kitchen.” A corner of his mouth pulled up at her. “C’mere.” He urged her closer to him and he kissed her, the hand not on her back coming up to her face as his tongue delved deep into her mouth. For a moment they were entangled with each other, and then he drew back. “Pizza is fine.”
“Alright, well, let me up so I can go summon food so you don’t die,” Claire said, trying to push herself up some. Leon’s arm tightened around her back.
“In a second,” he said. “It’s been too hot to touch you since I got here last night. Let me tell you, laying in bed with you naked and not touching you is a Herculean effort.”
Claire managed a small smile, and rolled her eyes some. “I am sure you’re very tortured.”
“Dying, in fact,” he returned blithely. “That little dress hasn’t made things any easier.”
“That’s it,” Claire said in amusement, once again starting to push herself up. “Release me. Before you get ideas and no one eats. C’mon,” she said, fighting against him. He groaned and moved his arm, and she pushed herself into a sitting position. His hand drifted up and down her back through the gauzy material of her dress, and she reached over on the coffee table for her phone. “What kind of pizza do you want?” she asked.
“A normal kind,” Leon replied. “While you’re at it, crank the AC to like 65. I want you really clinging to me tonight. To make up for last night.”
Claire looked over her shoulder at him with another small smile, and then turned back to her phone in her hand, scrolling through her contacts for the usual pizza place she ordered from.
It was easier if she just accepted it, and didn’t think about it. This was just how it was, and she loved him too much to consider the alternative.
She held her phone up to her ear as Leon idly traced patterns on her back with his hand.
Alright well baking this strawberry cake today gave me a cute scene idea. So down to the basement I skedaddled. This is literally two pages y'all. I don't really have time today to launch into the works of the masters. Maybe it's an imagine your own ending. Does Claire beat Leon to death or do they end up on a kitchen counter fucking? YOU BE THE JUDGE
Anyway. Leon may or may not be a giant child deep inside and Claire's concerned about frosting a cake. I picture them as like 38 and 40 here, not long after they buy the house in Virginia and move in together.
Anyway enjoy a VERY short fluffy scene.
Claire was standing at the sink, rinsing off spatulas, electric mixer paddles, and bowls when the door to the garage opened and shut. She turned her head some, hands soapy under the running water, and a moment later Leon appeared. He stopped and looked around the kitchen, apparently taking stock of what she’d decided to get up to on a Sunday. He’d been out in the garage for hours, probably driving himself up a wall with a new woodworking project and his never-ending sense of perfectionism.
“What’s going on in here?” he asked, sounding sly. He was evidently taking note of the bowls still left on the counter, and walked over to them.
“Making a cake,” Claire replied, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She’d worn it down for once today, a rare occasion, but she had tied a bandanna over it to keep it somewhat under control. She turned back to the sink, rinsing things and putting them on the dish mat, and when she turned around again to say something, she was witness to Leon with the cake batter bowl in his arm, determinedly swiping his finger through the remaining batter and eating it. “Hey. Hey! Leon, there’s raw eggs in that!”
“Never killed me as a kid,” Leon said without concern, swiping his finger back into the bowl. “Mmm, holy shit. Strawberry?”
Claire turned off the water and dried her hands, turning to face him. “Leon, for real, stop. You’re going to get salmonella or something. I don’t want to be bringing you cake in the ER.” Leon was not listening, and she tossed the towel she’d been drying her hands with onto the counter, and walked across the kitchen to him. “Hey. Selective Hearing Man. I said stop.”
“I’m almost done,” Leon said blithely, and Claire rolled her eyes and reached out and snatched the bowl from him with a considerable amount of effort. He looked at her in a mix between consternation and alarm.
“Eat the cake when it’s done,” she said with her eyebrow arched high, and she turned and headed for the sink with the batter bowl.
“Fine,” Leon said, coolly. “What’s this, the frosting?” Claire stopped in her tracks and opened her mouth, and when she whirled Leon already had the bowl in his arm and was eating a literal heaping spoonful of frosting. “Holy shit,” he said, orally encumbered. “This tastes like strawberry ice cream.”
“Leon—fucking—“ She abandoned the batter bowl on the counter and went over to him, and he turned away from her quickly, protectively cradling the bowl of strawberry cream cheese frosting. “If you eat all of that I am going to kill you.”
He was taking in another heaping spoonful of frosting. “Shouldn’t have made it so good,” he said, mouth full.
Claire made a noise and grabbed for the bowl, and Leon quickly angled away, defying her at every attempt. She looked over onto the counter and grabbed the wooden spoon she’d used to mix the dry ingredients together, and she slapped Leon on the back with it. It left a white flour-dusty print on his dark navy t-shirt. He was unmoved, still eating frosting. “Leon stop!” she said seriously, then began to slap at him with the spoon in earnest.
“You’re gonna have to really smack,” Leon said. “Ma used to be able to leave bruises and welts with her wooden spoons.”
“Give me that bowl or I’m going to—“ She abandoned the spoon and grabbed at him, and a mini-fairly-serious battle was waged over the bowl. Claire almost succeeded in getting it away from him but then he reached out and pinched her hip where her tank top had ridden up from her cut off shorts, and she made a sharp noise of dismay. “No pinching!” she said emphatically, punching his arm.
“You are actively beating me,” Leon replied. “Everything’s fair!”
“Give me that bowl!” she fired back, pummeling him.
“Y’know what,” Leon said decisively. He quite suddenly and abruptly abandoned the bowl on the counter and Claire let out a gust, opening her mouth to say something, but then he whirled on her and without warning she was no longer on the ground. Leon sacked her over his shoulder like a bag of laundry and headed out of the kitchen with purposeful strides.
“Leon—you asshole, put me down—“ she said from behind him, thumping his back. He headed into the living room and stopped near the back of the couch, reaching up and giving the back of her thigh a tremendous smack. “Ow! Leon—“ Just as abruptly as he’d picked her up, he sacked her down onto the couch and she landed with a breathless bounce, trying to orient herself. She looked up and over and Leon was standing there, grinning at her, and then he ran--<em>ran</em>--back towards the kitchen, disappearing around the corner. Claire laid there for a second then furrowed her brow. “Leon!” she screeched. “Get out of that frosting or I am going to beat you within an inch of your life,” she added, scrambling to get up, putting her bare feet down on the ground.
“I’d like to see you try,” Leon countered from the kitchen, undoubtedly back into the frosting or the batter bowl or <em>something</em>.
“You have until the count of three,” Claire vowed, pushing off the couch and beginning to stalk across the living room. “One. Two. Three—“ she finished, rounding the corner back into the kitchen.
Leon looked at her benignly as he slowly withdrew the spoon from his mouth, undoubtedly eating another huge heap of frosting, bowl back in his arm.
“Oh that is it,” she said, hands on her hips. “You’re dead—“
Today I contemplated getting older, and womanhood, and generally just putting up with stupid bullshit. I didn't have a lot of spark today but I've written about Leon getting older and feeling older et cetera, so I decided to turn the gaze on Claire for a second.
Really I just wanted an excuse to showcase the unhinged family chat.
Claire's in her late 40s and her body is pulling no punches as she approaches The Change. This is super short; mostly I just wanted family group chat and maybe Leon and Claire being cute and reflecting on getting older in a very brief way. Anyway. This is super short. Again, I don't have a ton of energy today and I too must come up with something to eat for dinner. I do Not Want To.
Womanhood, am I right?
Claire was lying on the couch with a heating pad over her lower stomach and her arm slung over her face when her phone vibrated on the coffee table next to her, and she sighed mightily and just laid there for a moment. It seemed genuinely unfair that periods had been little more than a monthly inconvenience she brushed off through most of her teens, 20s, 30s, and a good portion of her 40s, but now that she was moving into her late 40s and probably rapidly gaining on menopause or whatever the periods were <em>violent</em>. They were becoming slightly irregular as a prelude to going away entirely, but each one she had felt like it was trying to kill her. She felt like someone was kicking her in the uterus. Her head hurt. She felt bloated to busted can of biscuits status. Her mood was generally abysmal. It was like her reproductive system was trying to go out with a bang. Aside from all that, periodically she was too hot, periodically she was too cold. Generally she considered whatever her hormones were going through to be bullshit.
With a grunt, she rolled over and grabbed her phone, holding the heating pad to her stomach, and resettled onto the couch. She unlocked her phone and saw there was a new text from Grace in the family group chat. Claire opened it, peering at her screen from behind her glasses.
<em>Claire, do you have that recipe for that beef and lentil thing with the fried onions?</em> Grace was asking. <em>I’m going to try to make it.</em>
<em>Sure,</em> Claire replied. <em>I’m just laying here on the couch dying. Let me find it.</em> Claire hunted through her phone bookmarks for a minute or two, and then dropped the link in the group chat. <em>There you go. It’s pretty easy.</em>
<em>Why are you dying???</em> Sherry texted. <em>Are you okay?</em>
<em>My womanly time of the month is trying to kill me,</em> Claire texted back. <em>I feel swollen to three times my size and it feels like someone’s twisting my innards.</em>
<em>Oh nooooo,</em> Sherry replied.
<em>Big oof,</em> Grace chimed in.
The chat fell silent for a moment and Claire let her phone drop, going back to lying there listlessly. She’d been at her desk that morning helping some of her young coworkers get their visa things in order for an aid trip, but about an hour and a half in she’d begged off for the day. Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked at it again.
Her husband had made a pseudo-rare appearance in the chat by sending a GIF of a figure of Jesus slowly peeking out from behind a tree. Normally this would cause her to laugh, but today she felt like hell. <em>Get home so I can yell at you,</em> Claire dropped in the chat.
Leon simply replied with a sad frowny face emoji, to which Grace replied with some crying laughing emojis.
<em>Go home and let Claire beat you,</em> Grace texted.
<em>I’m still sore from the last beating,</em> Leon replied.
<em>I’m fucking in here, you know,</em> Chris fired off suddenly, a yet rarer appearance in the chat. <em>I don’t want to know about whatever your body is doing.</em>
<em>I will bleed all over your shit, Chris,</em> Claire fired back.
<em>Can’t wait until you have to explain the magical time of the month to Rose,</em> Leon texted.
<em>I’m so glad I was included in this chat,</em> Chris said.
<em>Deal with it,</em> Claire replied to her brother.
<em>You’re still having periods?</em> Grace texted. <em>You haven’t hit…y’know, the Change or whatever?</em>
<em>Can you guys like sidebar this or something???</em> Chris texted.
<em>I’m getting there, I think,</em> Claire replied to Grace.
<em>Hunnigan just asked what I was doing and I told her trying to be helpful to my wife and she told me I could stop being a shit for brains for one,</em> Leon chimed in.
<em>You ARE a shit for brains,</em> Chris texted.
<em>Leon, are you by the equipment rooms?</em> Sherry texted.
<em>I’m hiding under a desk trying not to be perceived,</em> Leon replied.
Sherry sent the eye roll emoji, and Claire began typing out a message. <em>I’m officially dying too hard to continue participating in this chat,</em> she fired off. <em>Good luck and Godspeed to all of you, or whatever.</em>
<em>Leon, I’m serious,</em> Sherry tried again.
<em>I’m in a dark place and it’s scary,</em> Leon replied.
Claire rolled her eyes and let out a sigh, and then set her phone aside again. It buzzed a few more times on the coffee table, but she settled back into the couch, re-securing the heating pad, putting her arm back over her forehead. Her mood was too sour to be cheerful and unhinged in the group chat. At some point she was going to have to haul herself off this couch and figure out dinner. She wondered what the leftover state was, or the frozen food state. Maybe she could just leave Leon to figure it out on his own, which usually resulted in sandwiches or him housing an entire frozen pizza. Aside from figuring out dinner, Claire contemplated home surgery to remove her reproductive organs.
Womanhood. If it wasn’t one thing, it was something else. It was all kind of bullshit, Claire surmised.
……………………………………………………….
At about 6:45, Claire heard the front door swinging open, and the jingle of keys. She turned her head on the couch, once again back on the piece of furniture after a brief flurry of activity about an hour ago.
“I’m home,” Leon said loudly. “Let the beatings and yelling commence. My body is ready.”
“Get in here and make yourself available,” she called back. “I’m not getting off the couch.”
“Hang on,” Leon replied from within the house, and Claire rolled her head back to look up at the ceiling. A moment later Leon appeared, walking into the living room in his suit. It appeared he’d managed the once weekly-face shave that morning while she slept, which she maintained made him look younger. He maintained stubble or no stubble he still scared children. He walked over and sat down on the couch, near her feet, and looked over at her. “There’s a pile of bacon in the kitchen.”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “There’s also a sliced tomato and some lettuce. It’s make-it-your-fucking-self-BLT night.”
He chuckled some. “That bad, huh?” he asked.
“I feel like my internal organs are in a vice grip,” she replied. “If my body doesn’t hurry up and change and make me an old crone with a quickness I’m going to commit crimes.”
He was still smiling faintly at her, but his brows furrowed. “I never remember your periods being this bad when you were in your twenties, or thirties. What gives?”
“Fucking tell me about it, sister,” Leon said, lightly slapping his thigh. “Remember when we used to get shipped all around the world every other week to clean up viral bullshit or distribute food and we did it on like three hours of sleep and 15 beers and four hour marathon sex sessions?”
Claire groaned dramatically. “Please. I caught myself reading articles about lace-making the other day. Like, my ass was really sitting there contemplating learning to hand make lace.”
“I came pre-loaded with the old man hobby,” Leon said in amusement, leaning back into the couch, letting his hand come to rest on her leg. “I feel like every fellow woodworker I have ever met has been like 85 years old.”
“Are we old?” Claire asked.
“I hate to say it but we sure as fuck ain’t 25 anymore,” Leon commented dryly.
Claire sighed and adjusted the heating pad on her lower abdomen. She wished it had a surface-of-the-sun setting. “Ugh,” she commented, dispassionately.
“Do you need anything?” Leon asked.
“Can you take me in the shop and perform a hysterectomy?” Claire said flatly.
Leon shrugged a little. “I’m sure there’s a step by step on Reddit. I stopped on the way home. I got you ice cream and chocolate.”
Claire raised her eyebrows. “I mean, I should probably eat a BLT first, but right now I feel like I am blown up to five times my size. I feel like the Stay Puft marshmallow man. What kind of ice cream?”
“That fancy shit you like that’s kind of too weird for me,” he replied. “Jeni’s or whatever.”
Claire’s eyebrows raised further, as if considering. “Hmm. What flavors?”
“Uh,” Leon said, furrowing his brow, “the weird cheesecake one you like that I think tastes like soap, and…goat cheese? With cherries?”
Claire made a little face that seemed to suggest <em>is that so</em>. “The bay leaf cheesecake one is good,” she said. “Never tried the goat cheese one. I’ll give it a shot.”
“Too weird for me,” Leon reaffirmed. “Give me, like…cookie dough.”
“You are so pedestrian,” Claire said.
“Is that a big word for awesome husband who stopped on the way home and bought you sugar?” he asked, looking over at her.
“Sure,” she replied, half a smile gracing her face for perhaps the first time that day. “Yeah.”
His hand rubbed over her leg. “I’m gonna change and put a dent in that pile of bacon,” Leon said. “You want a BLT?”
“Yes, please,” she said as he stood. “Take it easy on the mayo. Whenever you make me a sandwich you put, like…half a cup of mayo on it.”
“That’s what makes it good,” Leon said. “BLTs need <em>extra</em> mayo.”
“Sure, within reason,” Claire said, looking up at him. “Maybe not half a cup worth.”
“Coward,” Leon commented blithely, and then began to move, stepping over the heating pad cord. “Get in the group chat. Grace was fumbling through cooking your meal last I saw.”
“Oh Lord,” Claire sighed, rolling for her phone. “She’s probably making it ten times harder than it needs to be.”
“And panicking the whole while,” Leon said as he headed for the other side of the house. “That’s kind of what Grace does.”
Claire unlocked her phone and opened the chat, and true to Leon’s word the last three texts in the chat were from Grace and just read <em>Claire? Claaaaaaireee? Heeeeelllpppp</em>, while Sherry heart reacted each text.
Today I had young Leon, Claire, and Sherry on the brain. I have mentioned multiple times I headcanon them as being together for a while after Raccoon, before Claire tore off for Europe...and with RE:V coming out at some point, this headcanon is either going to be allowed to stand or it'll have to be reformed. It may be allowed to stand, given we've been told RE:V takes place in December. Anyway IDK. We'll see. I'm still running with the three of them cooped up in a shitty house while Leon works under the table jobs to provide for them.
I wanted them being young, and wistful, and reminiscing about life before it went off the rails and they went into hiding. Complete uncanon fabricated nonsense? SURE! Do I give a shit? NO!
Anyway, enjoy the three of them reminiscing about food, both fast and real, Claire trying to keep a child occupied while half plotting her escape to Europe, and burger and beer night courtesy of a generous foreman.
"Claire?”
“Hmm?” Claire was on her back, in the bed between Leon and Sherry, the room bright with the light from the full moon through the window.
“I miss ice cream,” Sherry murmured wistfully, and Claire let out a sigh. Evidently it was going to be one of Sherry’s talking nights, which wasn’t usually a deal when it was just Claire and Sherry in bed, but when they were in with Leon he had to actually attempt to sleep as he had to get up in the morning.
“Sher—“ Claire began.
“Me too,” Leon cut in, from Claire’s other side. “I’d murder a half-gallon of butter pecan right now.”
Sherry rolled next to Claire, towards Leon on the other side of her. “I never had that one. I like strawberry.”
“A good choice,” Leon replied.
“Frozen fruit’s kind of weird,” Claire said, if they were having this conversation.
“Mom and Dad said ice cream was only a once in a while thing,” Sherry went on. “They said the sugar was bad for your teeth. They used to make me brush my teeth after I ate it.”
In the night-brightness of the room, Claire was aware of Leon rolling his head toward her to look at her with a look on his face that begged Sherry’s finest pardon. Occasionally the girl told them things about her childhood that had both Leon and Claire looking at each other with dual looks of brain-blank what-the-hell. “Did you like have to carry a toothbrush around with you?” Leon asked, in confusion.
“No,” Sherry said blithely. “I just had to brush my teeth, like, as soon as I could.”
“Dental hygiene’s important, I guess,” Claire said, looking up at the ceiling.
“You know what <em>I</em> miss?” Leon asked. “Taco Bell. I could house about ten of those tacos right now.”
Claire smiled a little at the ceiling. Dinner had been cost-effective and pedestrian as usual; chili without meat and some cornbread. It was a far cry from Taco Bell. “Just the tacos?” Claire asked.
“That’s all I ever got,” Leon said. “I ate like fifteen in one sitting, once.”
Claire laughed a little. “Jesus,” she said. “I miss Chicken Nuggets.”
“Oh, like McDonald’s?” Leon asked.
“Yeah. But before they changed them and made them lame. I liked it when they had dark meat ones. Then they came out and were, like, ‘now with all white meat’! I was so pissed. I <em>liked</em> the dark meat ones,” Claire said.
“Weirdo,” Leon replied, and Claire laughed a little again.
“Mom and Dad said places like McDonald’s were bad for you,” Sherry said. “I did have a Happy Meal once, on a school trip.”
“<em>Once</em>?” Leon asked incredulously in the darkness. “Do you not know the joy of a Taco Bell taco?”
“No,” Sherry said, longingly. “I saw the commercials on TV.”
“What about KFC?” Leon prompted. “I would do unreal things to a bucket of chicken right now.”
Claire furrowed her brow. “KFC’s not great. Back home people made better fried chicken than that. When I tried KFC I was like, this is it? Even the coleslaw sucks. I think Daddy could make better coleslaw than that and he could barely cook.”
Leon made a noise. “Alright, what about Burger King? Don’t tell me you have anything bad to say about a Whopper.”
“Nah, a Whopper’s alright,” Claire agreed.
“A Whopper is a burger, right?” Sherry asked.
“Dear God, kid, were they feeding you, like, rabbit food?” Leon asked.
Sherry tittered on the other side of Claire, and Claire rolled her head towards Leon with her eyebrow arched. “Conversely, did you do <em>nothing</em> but eat fast food?” she countered. “Fast food was like…a rare treat when I was growing up.”
“Well, I mean, Ma cooked for us,” Leon said, “but I started making my own money at around 13 and then I could make my own food decisions in my spare time.”
“So just junk food all the time, got it,” Claire said in amusement.
“Yeah, basically,” Leon replied blithely. “What about White Castle? You ever had that?”
“No,” Claire said. “That’s not an Alabama thing. We had Krystal.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Leon said. “Man I miss White Castle.”
“Did you ever get root beer floats?” Sherry asked, again sounding longing.
“Oh yeah,” Leon said. “You ever had a Coke float?”
“No,” Sherry said.
“Same thing, just with Coke,” Leon said. “Coke,” he added, with his own longing.
“We need to stop,” Claire said. “I’m getting hungry.”
“I’m always hungry,” Leon said.
“No shit,” Claire returned dryly. “I miss, like…actual <em>food</em>. Fried green tomatoes. Barbecue. Hoppin’ John.”
“When Mom was home, sometimes she made lasagna,” Sherry said. “It was really good lasagna. I always ate a lot. So did Dad.”
“I mean I miss that stuff too,” Leon said. “There’s a lot of stuff Ma cooked I would kill to eat again. Like sometimes I wonder what my parents are eating for dinner, and I…” Leon trailed off. “I do miss the food,” he rallied, after a pause.
“Mom and Dad were gone all the time,” Sherry said, “but I miss the food, too.”
Silence reigned for a moment, the three of them caught in their own memories of the past, and Claire realized this could get pretty depressing fast. “What, is my food not good enough?” Claire asked, in mock offense.
“It’s okay,” Sherry replied, in typical child honesty.
“Oh just okay?” Claire asked in amusement, turning her head to look at Sherry.
“It’s fine food,” Leon said, “but you’re handicapped by the fact that we have, like, no money. Sometimes you miss stuff like meat.”
“I’m also handicapped by being, like, not that great of a cook,” Claire said.
“I mean we haven’t died yet,” Leon said with a shrug next to her.
“I miss ribs,” Claire declared, and Leon made a pained noise.
“Oh my God stop,” he groaned. “The way I could starch a rack of ribs.”
“Sometimes we had to go to dinner with people from Mom and Dad’s work,” Sherry began, “and we’d go to this fancy place. Mom said children should be seen and not heard. We’d always order shrimp cocktail and it was <em>so good</em>. The shrimp were so big! I always wanted more but we had to share.”
“Hell yeah shrimp cocktail,” Leon said. “One year Ma got a platter of it to put out at Christmas and I just pulled up a chair and started eating it all and she came along and smacked me and told me to get out of it.”
“Mm,” Claire said. “Fried shrimp po boy. Fried <em>oyster</em> po boy.”
“Aren’t oysters all weird and slimy?” Leon asked. “You can <em>fry them</em>?”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “They’re good.”
“I’ve never had one,” Leon said.
“Me either,” Sherry said. “I’ve seen them before. They looked…kind of scary. And slimy.”
“I’ve only had one fried,” Claire said. “I dunno about just…eating one. That’s rich people shit.”
“Well, I mean, you’ve had one,” Leon said. “More than me. What about—“
“Don’t you need to sleep?” Claire cut in, amused. “Like, you have to work in the morning. The foreman’s gonna come to get you and you’re going to be braindead.”
“Yeah, sure,” Leon said. “I’m just starving now. It’s fine.”
“I think we should get some ice cream,” Sherry piped up.
“Maybe,” Leon returned. “Let’s see how it all shakes out at the end of the week.” He sighed. “Sure, go to sleep. With like visions of ribs and Taco Bell in my head.”
Claire chortled. “Good luck,” she said, and then rolled over towards Sherry, putting her arm around the girl. “That means quiet, Sherry. No babbling, or we need to go back to our room.”
“No,” Sherry said quickly, “I’ll be quiet. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Claire said, settling in. “Just be quiet.”
“Okay,” Sherry said.
Silence fell over the room, the three of them lying there lost in their thoughts until sleep claimed them.
…………………………………………………………
Claire was hovering in the kitchen, muddling her way through preparing something to eat for dinner that she hoped wouldn’t kill them, or that would be edible. At a genuine loss, she was pulling a page from Daddy’s cookbook and just mixing pantry staples together, opening cans and tossing stuff in. She wouldn’t call what she’d prepared a tuna noodle casserole, per se; but it did have noodles and tuna. She looked at the pot in front of her and let out a huff.
Jesus, what the fuck did she know, anyway? They had to eat, and this was as good as anything.
It’d been a fairly typical day so far—Claire had gotten up in the morning when Leon got up to make sure he had something to take with him to work to eat, and then she’d dragged herself back up the rickety stairs to go back to bed with Sherry once Leon disappeared out the door to wait for the work truck to pick him up. Once she and Sherry had gotten up, they’d knocked around the house for a while—Sherry was re-reading one of her thrift store books for what had to be easily the third time, and Claire turned on the radio. It was still on the college indie station from the last time Leon listened to the Monday evening metal program, and Claire listened for about twenty minutes before deciding the music was too weird for her and she dial-surfed to the classic rock station. Eventually Sherry had gotten tired of reading so then she’d yapped at Claire for about an hour as Claire sewed a button back on a coat, and did her best to repair a rip in the seat of one of Sherry’s few pairs of pants. It wasn’t like they had a lot to wear, so what they did have Claire was fairly dedicated to repairing.
They’d then gone outside and kind of ambled around the property aimlessly in lieu of better things to do, Sherry prattling on about the changing leaves and various birds and squirrels. Sherry seemed to know more about birds than the average kid, and she yet again made her case for the reason they should have a parrot. At some point in the past Sherry had revealed she’d once gone to a carnival or a state fair or something and seen a live show with trained parrots that could do all kinds of things, and apparently that had solidified the desire for a pet parrot in her 12 year old mind.
Lacking better things to do, they got out a puzzle they’d actually already solved once before and put up; it too had been picked up at thrift for 50 cents and Claire remembered looking at the note written in masking tape across the top of the box that says <em>has all its pieces!</em> and she remembered thinking it fucking better or she was going to be pissed if they got all the way to the end and realized they were missing pieces. It did in fact have all its pieces, and when completed it was an image of kittens in teacups.
Claire surmised it was high time she and Sherry again broke the rules and snuck out of the house for the day to walk and make a trip to the thrift store. They were going to lose their minds if they didn’t get some new shit to do soon, and Leon could just die mad about it, which he probably would, just like every time Claire defied him and she and Sherry left the house to go out into the world. Once the infection had cleared in his shoulder all that time ago and he’d gone back to being injured but somewhat capable, Leon had been insistent that he was the only one to have any contact with the outside world. Claire and Sherry were supposed to hide themselves away like they were hiding from Nazis. Claire didn’t always obey, and one day she’d be off so far into the world she’d be visible to everyone, when she finally did go after Chris.
This led to her putting together a puzzle with one half of her brain on the pieces in front of her, and the other half of her brain spiraling out over plans, schemes; how much more money she’d need to squirrel away secretly from Leon’s earnings to get herself overseas somehow, where she’d start looking, how she was going to get herself around in Europe, what she was going to do when she found Chris—all of it. Sherry went on cheerfully as they worked the puzzle, oblivious to the fact that Claire’s brain was half present with her, and half a world away in the unknown streets of Europe.
Eventually it’d been time to cobble together some kind of something that passed as dinner, so Claire hauled herself off to the kitchen while Sherry stayed behind and pored over the puzzle. They’d managed to construct one whole orange kitten in a pink teacup.
And there Claire was, in the kitchen, repeatedly pushing up the sleeves of her too-big from thrift sweater, fumbling over some cans and a pot. The sweater had a reindeer motif on it. Sometimes Leon wore it; it actually fit him. Claire stuck a spoon in the concoction she’d made with the aid of canned goods and Cream of Chicken and tasted it—it was edible. Was it exciting? No. Was it a cohesive, well-thought out meal? Also no.
What did she know? She was 19; she had not expected to have to become Laura Ingalls Wilder to adapt to life in hiding; mending clothes, making food, doing laundry in a bathtub, and going on nature walks.
The side door to the kitchen opened suddenly, and Claire jumped slightly and looked over, and Leon was coming in, the rickety wooden screen door snapping to behind him. Claire looked at him for a second and then opened her mouth, brow furrowed. “Leon,” she said, as he came in, “what—“
“Foreman gave us an extra hundred bucks with our pay today,” Leon said. “He also went through the Carl’s Jr drive through on the way home.” Leon was laden with not only a medium-sized brown paper bag, he also had a thirty pack of Coors. Leon smiled a little. “I figured it was time to splurge since I hadn’t expected an extra hundred dollars anyway.”
“What’s Carl’s Jr?” Claire asked in confusion.
“Hardee’s,” Leon said. “Just west of the Mississippi, or whatever. All the same stuff.” He looked at her, prompting. “Burgers. Burgers for dinner.”
Claire let out a gust. “Fuck it,” she said. “Probably better than what I came up with, which is…edible but confusing,” she said.
Leon set the case of beer down on the counter and came over to peer into the pot, and when he was standing next to her he smelled like sweat, in spite of it being a cold fall day. “I’ll eat it. But not tonight. Tonight we eat 6 Dollar Burgers.”
“Sure, chief,” Claire said. “Look out. Let me get into this beer. I’m practically shaking with anticipation.”
“Grab me one too,” Leon said, walking over to the entrance to the kitchen. “Sherry?” he called. “Hey, c’mon. I brought a surprise for dinner.”
“Is it ice cream?” Sherry said excitedly, bounding in from the other room.
“No,” Leon replied, “even better. Giant burgers. C’mon. You’re dying for some fast food in your life.”
“Okay,” Sherry said, and Leon set the bag down and shrugged out of his coat, and when he did, he smelled even more strongly of sweat.
“Yuck,” Claire said, making a face as she handed him a beer and cracked open her own. It’d been some time since they’d had alcohol, and Claire found she was more than ready to drink her fair share of it and forget about the realities of life for a while. “You reek. It’s only like 40 degrees out. What were you doing all day to smell like that?”
“Framing a roof,” Leon replied, cracking open his own beer and draining easily half of it in a few gulps. “Holy shit beer,” he commented appreciatively, as Sherry wandered over to the paper bag on the counter and peered inside.
“French fries!” she exclaimed. “Did you get ketchup?”
“There better be some in there,” Leon said, likewise coming over to the bag and rifling through it. Sherry herself pulled a bit of a face at standing next to him.
“Ew, Leon, you <em>are</em> smelly,” she informed him, and Leon unconcernedly drank more of his beer.
“I’ll shower after we eat,” he said. “Sorry. You guys can just deal with me being smelly for a minute. It’s burger time.” He grabbed the bag and they all went over to sit in their customary arrangement in a circle on the floor; they didn’t have a kitchen table or anything that would pass as one. “Alright,” he said, reaching in the bag, “here you go,” he said, handing a wrapper burger to Sherry. “Here you go,” he said, handing one to Claire. He looked in the bag. “Fries kind of exploded in here.” He pulled out his own burger and then just kind of ripped the bag open, setting it down in the center of them, revealing a pile of fries mostly out of their caddies, and ketchup packets. Sherry made a noise of excitement and began to grab ketchup packets.
“I need a plate, Claire,” Sherry said with her hand full of ketchup packets.
“Just unwrap your burger and put the ketchup on the wrapper,” Claire said, beginning to unwrap her own burger. “Man, you really <em>are</em> a fast food novice, aren’t you?”
Meanwhile across from them Leon had already gotten his burger open and had taken a huge bite. “Oh my God that’s good,” he commented, mouth full of food. “<em>Man</em> I missed Hardee’s.”
“Why’s it called Carl’s Jr out here?” Claire asked, taking a bite of her own burger. It did, in fact, taste like huge greasy burger heaven.
“Hell if I know,” Leon said, swallowing. He picked up his beer and brought it to his mouth, tilting it back and draining it. Sherry was still fiddling with ketchup packets, tearing them open and squeezing them out onto her wrapper. “Hey. Sherry. I’m trying to open your eyes to the joy of fast food. Get into your burger before I finish mine and eat yours too.”
“Okay, hang on,” Sherry said, squeezing out a little glob of ketchup. “I need ketchup.”
“Leon is going to eat everything and you’re still going to be squeezing ketchup,” Claire remarked around a mouthful of food. “Get into it, Sher.”
“Okay, okay, jeez,” Sherry said, abandoning her ketchup packet along with the rest and picking up the burger. It was kind of a lot of burger for a 12 year old, but she gamely took a bite. “Mmm!” she enthused, chewing. “That’s good!”
Claire reached out and grabbed a fry from the pile in the center of them, and popped it in her mouth. “You got the rest of your pay or did you find stuff to blow that on, too?”
“I’ve got it,” Leon said. “I’ll give it to you after I eat.” He took another bite of the burger. “Jesus I feel like I could eat three of these things.”
“We’re still going to have to eat whatever bullshit I concocted tomorrow,” Claire said, warningly.
“That’s fine,” Leon replied. “I’ll house that too.” He grabbed approximately five French fries and fit them into his mouth.
“I feel like I haven’t had a burger since…since…since like I was a little kid,” Sherry said, regarding her burger. “Not like this.”
Claire took a drink of her beer. “Yeah, it’s been a minute. I guess I missed burgers.”
“Me too,” Sherry said, taking a large bite of her burger.
“It’s not ice cream,” Leon said, looking over at Sherry. “Sorry. No stops were made where ice cream was obtainable.”
“This is okay too,” Sherry said, chewing. “I like French fries.” She grabbed some from the torn bag and laid them on her burger wrapper, swiping one into the ketchup. She sat there with it in her hand, waiting until she was done chewing her bite of burger.
“This is like the best day in a long while,” Leon remarked. “Extra hundred bucks, beer, a burger.”
Claire smiled over at him, chewing. “You are <em>so</em> incredibly simple.”
“Yup,” Leon said uncaringly, picking up his empty beer and rattling it some in his hand forlornly, then peering over at the open 30 pack on the counter. “Damnit. Beer’s all the way over there.”
“Are you gonna die?” Claire asked, taking a bite of her burger.
“I might,” he returned. “What’d you guys do today?”
“Big fat lot of nothing,” Claire replied, blithely.
“We went outside,” Sherry said. “We saw a downy woodpecker!”
“Huh,” Leon said, with a mouthful of food. “Not sure I know what that is.”
“Oh Sherry knows,” Claire said in amusement.
“And like a lot of squirrels, but they’re always around,” Sherry said. “We’re doing the puzzle again. We need a new puzzle. Or, like—Claire, I need new books.”
“I know,” Claire returned. “We’ll get some.”
“Not by yourselves,” Leon interjected.
Claire kept her mouth shut to avoid causing a squabble; she wasn’t trying to foul up burger and beer night by fighting with Leon over being a virtual prisoner in the house. That or she and Sherry would just go do whatever they were going to do some day while he was at work and she’d deal with it in the aftermath. “Sure,” she returned mildly.
Silence fell as they ate, and as per usual Leon was the first one done with his burger. He balled the wrapper up in his hands and stood to go collect another beer, shifting the 30 pack from the counter to their relatively empty fridge. “Wanna work on the puzzle with us?” Sherry asked of him, as he cracked open his second beer and returned to the circle on the floor to begin laying waste to fries.
“Sure,” he said. “After I shower, maybe. I suck at puzzles, though. Just warning you.”
“It’s okay, I’m really good at them,” Sherry said. “You can just find me pieces and I’ll find where they go.”
“Sure,” Leon said, mouthful of fries. “I do think I’m gonna drink about six beers about it.”
“Just six?” Claire asked.
“The night is young,” Leon said, “and I don’t have to work in the morning.”
“Can we wrestle?” Sherry asked, innocently. Evidently the memory of the last time alcohol had been present in the house was fresh in her mind, as Leon and Claire had consumed enough of it to turn into unruly teenagers who not only wrestled each other but Sherry too.
“Uh,” Leon said, maybe recalling the same night but most assuredly more dimly, “I dunno? Maybe?”
Claire polished off her burger and sat there chewing, looking at Leon across from her, and then Sherry at her side, slowly but surely making headway on her food. Maybe Leon was right; maybe this was a banner day. With some beer and fast food in the house, things almost felt vaguely normal, like they were any other people, like they weren’t currently living a life that didn’t exist, the shadow of some nefarious global company hanging over them.
“Remember, Sherry,” Claire said, looking over at Sherry evenly. “Leon’s ticklish.”
“Hey, so are you,” Leon countered. “So’s she, for that matter,” he said, pointing at Sherry.
“If you tickle me I will scream,” Sherry replied.
“Good thing there’s nobody to hear you scream,” Leon countered, pushing himself up from the circle and the fries. “I need to go shower before I cause plants around me to wilt and paint to peel.”
“Good,” Claire said. “The smell’s gonna make me lose this dinner.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leon groused as he headed off out of the kitchen, Claire looking after him smiling faintly. She looked over at Sherry, who likewise smiled back at her.
Hi. I Martha Stewarted too hard yesterday and as a result today I didn't feel like doing shit, so I really didn't. I drank coffee, worked on this loose little collection of 4th of July scenes that popped into my head, went to the pool, and then came home and finished the scenes up.
This is very boring. I just wanted some happy found family slices of life. Grace and Emily go to Virginia for the 4th. Unclear at what point in the future this is; maybe Leon and Claire are in their 50s? I gave them Spud, so he's running around. Maybe I'm overthinking it. It's just some 4th of July scenes.
Definitely not the most exciting things I have ever written, but I am glad I did them. The scenes popped into my head yesterday and tormented me but I had no time to write them yesterday.
Anyway. 4th of July at the Kennedy-Redfield homestead!
Shout out to @grandscreechingdeer for putting the idea of Leon in a too small inflatable pool in my mind.
Update: in proofing AFTER posting I have caught some typos, and maybe a case of the mysterious disappearing sparklers. They're there one moment, the next they're not. I am too lazy to fix this. 😅
Grace quieted for a moment, hearing a noise from the front of the house, and Claire too paused in what she was doing at the kitchen counter, listening.
“Are you home?” Claire called experimentally, adjusting her glasses.
“Yeah,” came Leon’s voice from near the front door, and Claire resumed seasoning the chicken in front of her. Grace had been up since an unreasonably early time, thanks to Emily, and she’d been up early enough to see Leon grumpily appear in a suit, telling her he had been summoned to DC for something. When Grace asked what time he’d be home—it was the 4th of July, after all—he just grumbled and said he didn’t know, and out the door he’d gone.
Grace looked at her watch; it was close to one PM. She’d been hovering near the kitchen all morning, watching Claire commit to the housewife of the year bit by preparing every summer cookout food Grace could imagine; macaroni salad, potato salad, baked beans. Claire had already gone through two jars of mayo. Grace usually tried to eat fairly healthily; well-balanced meals and organic this and that. Claire was preparing a good, old fashioned, American 4th of July heart attack of a spread.
Emily was sitting at the kitchen table, Coke in front of her, nose deep in Grace’s old Nintendo 3DS. Spud, the corgi, vacillated between going over to sit near Emily and following Claire around the kitchen hopefully, waiting for a morsel. Claire kept shooing him away, relating that Leon and his constant feeding of human food and table scraps had turned Spud into a circling shark dog.
Leon appeared in the entrance to the kitchen, in his suit, some plastic bags in his hand. “What’s going on in here?” he asked.
“Me making every food your Midwestern ass has ever dreamed of,” Claire replied, “while Grace watches.”
“The amount of mayo used has been unreal,” Grace added.
“Excellent. I’ve earned some artery clogging.” Leon stepped into the kitchen and set the bags down on the counter near where Claire was busy with her chicken, and turned to the fridge. He pulled it open and grabbed a bottle of beer—Claire and Leon differed on their beer preferences, Grace knew—but what did she <em>really</em> know since it all tasted like pond water to her? He cracked the top off with his teeth and spit the lid into the sink as Claire looked at him in reproach.
“Are these <em>fireworks</em>?” Claire asked in surprise, hesitantly pulling at the edge of a plastic bag with her chicken-hands.
“Yeah,” Leon said, after taking a drink of beer. “Not like Virginia allows the exciting ones, but yeah.”
“You? Bought fireworks?” Claire asked, further.
“There’s a child here,” Leon said. “I can’t be an entire curmudgeon today. Kids like fireworks.” He sighed. “Hell I used to like them too. We used to run around and shoot Roman candles at each other when I was a kid. James got me once. I still have the scar.”
“4th of July in Missouri is like…a warzone,” Grace said. “I swear every household spends 1k at the fireworks stands. And then all the trash is everywhere for a week.”
“Sounds about right,” Leon said, coming over to stand near Grace. “Hey,” he said suddenly, in amusement, and reached out to pinch above her hip, “where’s the rest of your shirt?”
Grace squirmed and swatted his hand away; she was wearing a gauzy cotton button down that bore her midriff, and some wide-leg jeans. Grace was not much of a shorts person, but in general she didn’t mind crop tops. “Don’t pinch me,” she replied.
“That’s the style, Leon,” Claire said, in amusement. “Crop tops and big jeans. It’s kind of like the 90s all over again.”
“What do I know,” Leon said, taking another drink of his beer. “I’ve been dressing exactly the same for like 35 years at this point.”
“Are you done for the day?” Grace asked, looking over at him.
“Yeah. Happy 4th of July,” he said. “Fuck the government,” he added dryly.
“Amen, comrade,” Claire replied, moving to the sink to wash her hands.
Grace managed a patient little look out into nothing, and then looked down at the counter and Claire’s handiwork. She’d <em>watched</em> Claire mix up the two bowls of mayo-based…whatever, but Grace had no idea what it was. A marinade? “Claire, what’s the white stuff?” she asked.
“That’s the barbecue sauce,” Leon replied as Claire washed her hands. Claire looked over her shoulder and smiled.
“<em>That’s</em> the barbecue sauce?” Grace asked in confusion. “Uh. I mean, like, I’ve eaten a lot of barbecue in Kansas City. The sauce is never…white.”
“Alabama style,” Leon said, as Claire turned off the faucet and grabbed a towel.
Grace furrowed her brow. “I mean, that’s a choice. Why Alabama?”
“Because Claire’s from Alabama,” Leon said.
Grace furrowed her brow further. “You are?” she asked of Claire.
“Yeah,” Claire replied, drying her hands. “North Carolina does vinegar-based. South Carolina does mustard-based. Texas does whatever abominations they do. Kansas City’s not bad. Alabama does white sauce.” She tossed the towel onto the counter. “It’s good, I promise. As long as you like spicy?”
“I can handle spice,” Grace replied. “Oh. Um. What about Le—“
“Leon’s is basically mayo and vinegar because we all know he would die if he ate horseradish or cayenne pepper,” Claire replied. “I make two batches.”
“I didn’t know you were from Alabama,” Grace said.
“Yeah. Outside Talladega. Little Podunk town in the middle of nowhere,” Claire said. “Real redneck shit.”
“Like…you don’t <em>sound</em> like most people I’ve met from the Deep South,” Grace said. “I thought you were from…I dunno. Somewhere neutral, without accents. Like Arizona or New Mexico or something.”
“She hides it,” Leon said from Grace’s side. “She’s been hiding it since she was a teenager. I think it’s cute. I wish she wouldn’t.”
Claire looked at him with patient, beatific skepticism. “I hide it for me. I realized early on that sounding like a shoeless redneck was not going to get me far in this world. Fair or not, people do not equate Southern accents with intelligence, and as a woman I already have to fight hard enough to get people to take me seriously. Rolling up sounding like I just escaped the trailer park was not going to help my cause.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “Yeah, I guess. But, like…how do you hide it?”
“Constant, conscious effort,” Claire said with a smile. “Thinking about how everyone else sounds. No different than pretending to have a British accent or something, or like an actor assuming a role.”
“Entirely too much,” Leon said. “Just let it go. Let loose. Sound like my beautiful trailer park princess.”
Claire cocked her eyebrow at him, and picked up her own can of beer and took a drink. “Not a chance. I don’t ask you to run around sounding like a Michigander.”
“I can’t,” Leon replied. “Accent faded over the years. Now I just sound like everyone else.”
Claire’s face was knowing. “Say ‘bag’.”
Grace looked over at Leon. “Bag,” he said, but the vowel in the middle wasn’t right—it sounded like he was saying <em>beg</em>. His face was unflappable, as if there was nothing different about how he had said it.
“Great Northern Vowel Shift,” Claire said in amusement. “Learned about it in my linguistics classes. What do you call the night before Halloween?” she went on.
“Alright, I’m onto you,” Leon said. “Devil’s Night.”
“Pretty sure I broke you of this one because it’s ridiculous, but what do you call a sliding glass door?” Claire asked with a grin.
Leon sighed. “A doorwall,” he said. “I’m telling you it’s common in Detroit.”
Grace blinked. “D-doorwall?” she asked. “That’s…that sounds like a four year old came up with that.”
“Accurate description of your common Detroiter,” Leon said in amusement. “Alright, what’s the plan?”
“Make yourself useful and go put this tray of chicken in the outside fridge,” Claire said. “The rub needs to sit on it. Then I need you to dig out the air compressor from wherever in your mountains of shit in the shop it’s hiding and blow up the pool. Emily was promised a pool.”
Vague noises of excitement came from Emily at the kitchen table, and Grace looked back at her to see her still gazing at the DS but swinging her legs back and forth.
Leon took a drink of his beer. “Good news. I bought a bigger pool in anticipation of this visit.”
Claire made a little noise of appreciation, and stooped down to grab Spud as he ambled back into the kitchen. Grace looked at Leon.
“Bigger pool?” she asked.
“Yeah. The first one was for like two year olds, bought in a fit of heat stroke when it was like 100 out,” he said. “I didn’t fit in it. My arms and legs hung out. I just kind of flopped in it and drank beer and quietly melted.”
“He looked ridiculous. It was very white trash,” Claire said, petting Spud.
“It was big enough for me and the dog,” Leon said with a shrug. “Kind of.”
“You guys should just get a real pool,” Grace pointed out. “You have the space.” Grace noticed Claire looked knowing and suffering, and Leon’s face hardened.
“No,” he said firmly. “No pool. There’s enough to maintain around here without the added bullshit of a pool. Sherry’s condo has a pool. We go there.”
Claire let out a tremendous sigh, but kept her mouth shut for a moment. “Speaking of Sherry, you see her?” she asked. “I texted earlier but got no reply.”
“She’s stuck in the offices,” Leon said. “I did see her. I told her to make it out here if she ever got released. She said she would.”
Claire let out another sigh. “Happy 4th of July,” she said. “Fuck the government,” she added, echoing Leon’s earlier statement.
“Em,” Grace said, turning back to the girl sitting at the kitchen table, “maybe it’s time to put the DS up. Do you want to get in the pool?”
“Yeeeeeeeees,” Emily replied, looking up with a crazed child look on her face.
“Alright, well, I gotta blow it up and fill it first,” Leon said with a gust. “Continue blowing stuff up or farming or whatever it is you’re doing in that game.”
“I’m playing LEGO Star Wars,” Emily replied.
“Hell yeah Star Wars,” Leon said. “Alright, let me—first things first, let me get out of this suit before I commit a violent crime.”
“Hey,” Claire said, releasing Spud and pushing the tray of chicken at him, “put this away first.”
“Yes ma’am,” Leon replied, reaching out and grabbing the tray with one hand, beer in the other.
“I think I need to sit down for a minute,” Claire said, putting her hand on her forehead. “I’ve seen so much of the inside of the kitchen I’m starting to feel like I’m on Chopped.”
Grace smiled some. “That show is kind of, like, fascinating. People come up with the craziest stuff.”
“Leon and I watch it a few beers deep and provide color commentary,” Claire said. “Leon really gets excited when people fight over the ice cream machine. A common blunder.” She picked up her can of Busch in its koozie that had a picture of the Great Lakes on it, and began to exit the kitchen. “C’mon. Let’s go sit on the back deck.”
Grace turned to follow Claire, and looked over at Emily. “Em? C’mon,” she said, and Emily made a noise and slid out of her chair, Coke and DS in hands.
……………………………………………
The pool was perhaps bigger than a pool for two year olds, but it was still an inflatable pool, and the most a full-sized adult could really do was just sit in it. Emily was sliding around on her stomach, splashing around in the water. “Grace, get in,” she cajoled, rolling over onto her back.
“You sure?” Grace asked. “If too many people get in there you’re not going to be able to roll around in it like a wild person.” Spud zoomed past, intent on something further out into the yard.
“It’s nice,” Emily replied. “It’s hot.”
“It is hot,” Grace agreed. Emily made a large splash and Grace stepped back some, but the leg of her jeans still got wet. “Em, watch it.”
“Oops,” Emily said. “Can I have another Coke?”
Grace sighed; it was typical for Emily to ingest more soda than Grace would have ever normally allowed on their visits to Virginia. Grace knew if she denied her one, Leon or Claire would happily be handing her one out of the fridge at the barest of prompting. “Sure,” Grace replied. “But you have to get out to drink it. You can’t be spilling Coke in the pool.”
“’Kay,” Emily replied, pushing herself up.
Grace turned and walked across the grass barefoot, back up to the back deck where Leon was sitting at the table with his beer and Claire was at the grill combo smoker, poking at meat. Grace was always slightly amused at the sight; in her lifetime she’d always experienced grilling or smoking being a distinctly male thing; in the Kennedy household, if something was going to be eaten, Claire was preparing it. Grace headed into the house and to the fridge, and pulled out a can of Coke, then returned to the back deck, setting it down on the table and sitting down at the table in the shade, waiting for Emily to remove herself from the pool and come retrieve it.
“You’re not going to try to grill master it up?” Grace asked of Leon, who shook his head.
“Fuck no,” he replied. “You want the food to be edible, right?”
“You’re hopeless,” Grace said in amusement, taking a drink of her glass of water.
“Years ago,” Leon said, “when I was like…29, maybe, I called Claire and she related to me she’d had a loaded baked potato for dinner. I was languishing around my shitty apartment in DC and I said I would house a loaded baked potato if I had one in that moment. Claire was like, so have one. And I said preparing one was beyond me, and she informed me that I was an idiot and to make a baked potato you wrapped a potato in foil and stuck it in the oven for about an hour at 400 and that was that. I told her I had to go. I went to the store immediately. From then on I kept emergency spuds around the place because it was one of the like three things I could prepare without burning the place down.”
Grace laughed some. “Emergency spuds?”
“Yeah. That’s what I called them. Just some lone potatoes in my fridge. God knows there wasn’t much else in there aside from beer,” Leon said.
“I’d open the fridge and there’d be 50 beers, a tub of sour cream, and two potatoes,” Claire said from the smoker.
“How have you not died?” Grace asked in bemusement. “I don’t know how you can, like, be master of the world out in the field and then you come home and you’re a total mess.” Emily appeared on the deck, dripping wet and reaching for the can of Coke that was already starting to sweat in the heat.
“I dunno,” Leon replied. “I managed to get good at the one thing that was required of me. All other bets were off.”
Claire closed the smoker and turned away with the bag of wood chips in her hands. “Your mother ruined you guys,” she said knowingly. “She did <em>everything</em> for you.” Claire began to make her way to the back door, and as she passed by Leon’s chair he reached out with a lunging swipe and swatted at her ass in its cut-off shorts. “<em>Hey</em>,” she said in disapproval. “Do not be getting blind drunk and handsy. We have guests.” Leon merely looked out into the yard with a smirk that suggested he was inordinately pleased with himself.
“Is anyone going to get in with me?” Emily asked, standing there dripping with her Coke in her hands.
“Sure,” Leon said, sitting up some. “I’ll get in there. What else am I doing? Aiming to be three sheets to the wind by 4 PM.”
Twenty minutes later Grace and Claire looked on from the shade of the back deck, Spud splooted near them panting, as Leon laid on his back in the pool and bench pressed Emily over his head. Grace thought he still looked entirely too big for the inflatable pool, but fun was being had, so she kept her mouth shut.
…………………………………………………………
Grace felt like she may never eat again. Eventually at around 5:30 the food was all done, and they sat and ate. Sherry showed up halfway through, harried in a sundress, explaining she’d raced home, changed, and then raced out to the house. Claire fixed her a plate and she sat down and ate with them, Leon already on his second plate of food at that point.
Grace was so full of mayonnaise in varying forms she swore she could hear her arteries clogging as she stood there on the driveway in the gathering gloom. Emily clung to her arm, swinging back and forth some.
“Alright,” Leon said, barefoot and shirtless in the driveway, “these are not exciting fireworks. The state of Virginia forbids the kind that go up in the air and go boom.”
“Probably good,” Claire said from near Grace’s side, beer in hand. “You’ve had like 15 beers, Cochise. We don’t need anyone blowing a hand off.”
“Did you get any sparklers?” Sherry asked, peering over into the bag. “That’s like all my parents let me have as a kid. They insisted fireworks were dangerous.”
“Maybe? I dunno. I just kind of grabbed a bunch of shit and got out of there. It was hot and I was in a suit.” Leon rifled through the bags, pulling boxes out and setting them on the driveway. “Damnit. Did I manage to get any punks?”
Sherry was rifling through another bag, and she made a pleased noise. “Sparklers! Em, you want a sparkler?”
“Okay,” Emily said, going over to Sherry. “What’s a sparkler?”
“They’re kind of boring, I guess,” Sherry said with a smile, handing one of the long sticks down to Emily. “I had fun as a kid, anyway. Leon, do you have a lighter?”
Leon rummaged in the pocket of his shorts and handed Sherry a lighter, and she unwrapped the pack of sparklers. “They make cute pictures, anyway,” Sherry went on. “Claire? Grace? You want one?”
“I’m good, Sher,” Claire said. “I’m just here to make sure no one needs an ER visit.”
“Will you relax?” Leon asked. “Nobody is blowing themselves up with a fountain.”
“Sure, I’ll have one,” Grace said, taking the offered sparkler from Sherry. Sherry set the pack down on the ground and lit hers, then bent over and lit Emily’s.
“Ooh!” Emily exclaimed, as the sparkler began to pop and spark in her hand. She looked back at Grace with her trademark jacked-kid look on her face. Sherry handed the lighter to Grace, who lit her own sparkler and stood there with it, then handed the lighter back to Leon.
Claire dug her phone out of her back pocket. “Alright, blonde girls, picture time,” she said, holding it up. “Go crowd together and look cute.” Sherry, Grace, and Emily got next to each other and Claire snapped some photos, smiling. “Okay, great.” Emily stepped off a few feet and began to violently wave her sparkler around, making little noises of exertion.
“Em, be careful,” Grace warned.
“You guys are <em>all</em> nervous Nellies,” Leon said, looking on with his hands on his hips. “When I was like six my sister held me down and tried to shoot a Roman candle directly into my shirt. None of you would have survived.”
“I swear every story from your childhood is one of you absolutely trying to murder another one of you,” Claire said. “Daddy would have ended Chris if he ever tried to do anything to me.”
“Yeah, well,” Leon said, “we were demon children, in spite of Jesus being forced onto us constantly. I’m surprised Ma’s hair stayed as black as it was for as long as it did.”
“I was a quiet kid,” Grace said, and Leon looked up at her with amused, theatrical shock.
“You? <em>No</em>,” he said dryly.
“So was I,” Sherry said, sympathetically. “Mom and Dad were always so busy. I was alone a lot.”
“Me too,” Grace said.
“You were definitely a chatterbox by 12,” Claire said, looking at Sherry with a smile. “Or maybe you just thought we would listen, I dunno. You used to talk my ear off, all day.”
“Yeah,” Sherry said, thoughtfully. “I guess maybe I thought it was fun, living with you guys. It felt like a big sleepover, sometimes, even though sometimes it didn’t.”
Leon was rifling through the bags and found what he was looking for, a punk. He lit the end of it with the lighter and looked over at Emily aggressively waving her sparkler around. “You there. Child. Behold. I bought these fireworks for you.” It took Emily a second but she realized Leon was talking to her, and she stopped waving her arm around and stood there, looking on. Leon bent over and lit the fuse on one of the boxes of fireworks, and stepped back a bit, and a few seconds later it began to shoot sparkling fountains of green and pink. Emily was fairly entranced, and looked over at Grace with a look that suggested <em>are you seeing this?</em> A few larger pops and explosions shot out of the box.
“Ooh, aah,” Claire hummed in amusement, snapping a photo of Leon standing near the fireworks.
“Claire, will you text me the picture of me with Grace and Emily so I can send it to Jake?” Sherry asked.
“I’ll just put them all in the group chat, you can nab them from there,” Claire said.
After a few seconds the jets from the box stopped, and it was quiet and smoking there on the driveway. Leon looked over at Emily, who was standing there with her sparkler in her hand.
“Do another one!” she hollered, and Grace laughed a little and shushed her some.
“Alright,” Leon replied, stepping over and lighting the fuse on another box. A few seconds later it too began to shoot fountains of color, this time orange and purple. Emily stood there in her bathing suit top and shorts and stared, engrossed. When the sparking and popping stopped, Leon looked at Emily with a smile.
“You wanna light one?” he asked, holding the punk out at her. Emily rushed forward immediately, and Grace tutted.
“Is that a good idea?” she asked, brow furrowed.
“Grace, I assure you it is fine,” Leon replied. “Here. Right there. Light it and then back up some,” Leon said, pointing at the fuse with his finger. Sparkler in one hand, punk in the other, Emily lit the fuse and comically sprinted away immediately with a wide-eyed look on her face. Leon merely stepped back a little. Emily whirled around a distance up the driveway, looking on raptly as the eruption of color started.
“You get any of those little snappy ones?” Claire asked of her husband. “Y’know, like the kids used to throw in school?”
“I think, maybe,” Leon said, rifling through a bag. “Oh here, Emily. Before it gets too dark. Smoke bombs,” he said, pulling out a package and ripping it open. “C’mere.”
Emily obediently trotted over at the box of fireworks slowly stopped fountaining and popping, and Leon offered her one of the multicolored little balls. “Here, just set that down on the driveway over there,” Leon said of her sparkler. Emily walked a few feet away and laid the stick down on the driveway, and Leon put the colored ball in her hand. “Light it and throw it.”
Emily carefully touched the end of the punk to the smoke bomb’s fuse and then hurriedly tossed it like she was expecting the mother of all explosions. It landed harmlessly on the driveway about ten feet away and after a second began to emit a dense cloud of purple smoke. Emily looked enthusiastic.
“Is this what ninjas use?” she asked.
“Ninjas and maybe government operatives in a pinch,” Leon replied in amusement,
“Purple smoke?” Claire asked. “Maybe if Prince was a ninja.”
“Who’s Prince?” Emily asked.
“A musician,” Grace replied.
“A super weird dude who oddly enough kind of shredded,” Leon added. “Here. Do this one. It’s pink.”
“A softer, more feminine ninja, maybe,” Sherry said in amusement.
“Hey, if I had smoke bombs, they’d be pink,” Claire agreed.
“They’d be red,” Leon corrected. “Your half of the closet is a sea of red.”
“Mm, yeah, good point,” Claire said, walking over to him. “You got the poppy things or not?”
“You just want to be loud, as usual,” Leon returned. “Dig around in that bag, probably.”
“When I was ten a kid blew up one of the toilets at school with a firecracker,” Sherry said. “I remember the bathroom was closed for like five days and we all kept trying to sneak over there to see.”
“I made a huge explosion at the science fair in 8th grade,” Grace said. “Totally on accident. I wanted to win the prize. I made a volcano, but like the traditional baking soda and vinegar wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted it to <em>explode</em>, because I thought that would like win me the award.”
“Oh no,” Claire laughed a little, digging through one of the bags.
“So I used Draino, and, like, little pieces of—“
“You made a Draino bomb,” Leon cut in, in amusement. “Oh trust me, I know all about them. We were the bane of mailboxes everywhere. <em>You</em> made a Draino bomb.”
“It made this huge bang and they like, evacuated the gym,” Grace went on, rubbing at her head. “They called my Mom. I think she was half amused, half <em>what the hell were you thinking</em>?”
“Did you win first prize?” Sherry asked, grinning.
“No,” Grace said with a gust. “Nearly got the bomb squad called out and some kid with flowers in multicolored water won. Showing how water travels through plants, or whatever. I was kinda pissed.”
“Ah!” Claire said, pulling a pack out of the bag. “Poppy things.”
“Hey, will you go get me a beer?” Leon asked of her, and she looked at him archly from behind her glasses. “What? Please? I’m supervising legal firework extravaganza so Emily doesn’t blow herself up.”
“I’ll get it,” Grace offered, seeking détente. “Make sure my child does not injure herself.”
“I am giving you an injury-free guarantee,” Leon said, holding his hand up in the air.
Grace nodded and turned to head up the driveway, towards the open garage. Behind her she could hear Claire and Sherry chattering, and she snuck her way into the garage between all of Leon’s woodworking equipment and Claire’s truck, the sides splattered with mud. She went up the two steps to the door to the house and opened it, emerging in the laundry room. Into the kitchen she went, and Spud came running up to her, looking excited.
“Sorry buddy,” Grace said to the dog. “Claire says you have to stay inside for fireworks.” She headed to the fridge and pulled it open; it was considerably lighter on beer than it had been earlier in the day. She grabbed one of the bottles of stuff Leon had been drinking and looked at the front of it—Grace didn’t know what constituted a <em>hazy IPA</em>, but she bet it tasted like ass. She closed the fridge, and for a moment looked over the kitchen counters—they were a riot of food Claire had yet to put away, that Sherry assured she’d help with. Grace made her way back into the garage and headed for the open door, loud pops filling her ears.
She stopped for a moment at the open garage door and watched. Emily was standing close to Leon, who stood there with his hands on his hips as Claire repeatedly lit something in her hand and tossed it, producing a little flash and a loud <em>pop</em> on the driveway. Sherry was looking on, phone in her hand, taking a video.
Grace thought of 4th of Julys in the past; her Mom was always working, so it was usually a day without fanfare. Grace drove past the endless firework stands at this time of year, and most of the time as an adult she spent the 4th holed up with a computer game, ruing the pops and bangs outside until like 2 in the morning.
She looked at the group on the driveway; maybe it was a holiday to be spent with family. Leon and Claire were sure no great patriots, and Grace didn’t know how Sherry felt, but it still seemed like a nice day everyone had enjoyed once the working was done, even if no one was waving a flag and singing God Bless America.
“Hey,” Leon said loudly, snapping Grace out of her reverie. She let her eyes focus, and Leon was looking at her over his shoulder, brow furrowed. “You okay?” he asked.
“Y-yeah,” Grace replied, moving her feet again. “Just—just thinking for a sec,” she said, drawing up and handing Leon his beer. This time instead of cracking it with his teeth, he drew yet another lighter out of his pocket and somehow used that to pop the top off.
Sherry had joined Claire in tossing the popping fireworks, and Grace stood there for a moment, her eyes unfocusing out into space. A moment later she felt a weight on her shoulders, and it was Leon’s arm around her, and he looked down at her, beer in hand.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked,
“Yeah. Just thinking. I’m fine,” Grace assured again.
“Sure,” Leon returned neutrally. He jostled her a little with his arm around her. “We’ll have to come to Missouri next year. Get some of the real fireworks. That’ll really blow Em’s mind.”
Grace nodded a little, a faint smile on her face. “Yeah, sure.” Emily wandered over to Grace, and Grace reached down and put her hands on Emily’s shoulders.
Grace surmised the 4th maybe wasn’t all that bad, when you had people to spend it with.
So the other day @grandscreechingdeer asked if there was anything Leon, the commensurate pervert, would shy away from doing with Claire and I responded probably anything that forced him to behold or otherwise appreciate himself, since his ass is bereft of self-worth. She then suggested something like a handjob in front of a mirror and then told me I should write it.
So I took a stab. I did in fact just not long ago post a fic about Claire using sexual wiles to try to urge Leon into having an iota of regard for himself; she's back at it here, and for once he's listening to HER and keeping his mouth shut, even if she's a lot less forceful and foul-mouthed than he is when he pops off at the mouth and holds the sexual reins in his hands. I hope this is decent. I dunno. They're still in the late 20s degenerate situationship so they're at the point where they're too scared shitless to say I love you, so it's not like Claire can just grab him and shake him and shout I LOVE YOU, YOU IMPOSSIBLE IDIOT and have him consider it.
So she yet again tries to convince him he's worth half a shit with her hands and her mouth, and she forces him to spectate it.
Anyway. Enjoy trying to condition someone to have self-worth through sexual means!
Claire looked over and stopped for a moment, getting dressed momentarily forgotten. Leon was standing in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her bedroom door, not a stitch on, gazing involvedly at his arm. She tossed her underwear onto the bed and wandered over, coming to stand next to him. She looked at their reflections in the mirror, both naked, both with morning hair that didn’t make much sense. “What’re you doing? Admiring your form?” she asked, and Leon made a short noise that she figured passed as a laugh.
“Looking at this,” he said, gesturing at the long, stitched shut gash along the back of his forearm. “Yet another scar.”
Claire nodded some, still looking at their reflections. “Yeah, that’s quite a rip. How’d you manage that?”
“Close quarters,” he said, looking up. “Trying to fit myself somewhere I didn’t fit. Jagged edges. Bled like a motherfucker.”
“Hmm.” Claire stood next to him and pressed her face against his arm, looking over his muscular, scarred form in the mirror. “What’s this one from?” she asked, reaching over to point at a faded, silvery scar along his lower abdomen that would have been just above his pants, had he any on. “You’ve had it for as long as I can remember, even that first night I pulled your shirt off to look at your bullet wound.”
Leon looked down at the scar. “Appendix ruptured when I was 15,” he said. “It was a relative emergency. They sliced me open to do what they had to do.” He looked back up. “I was out of school for a week and Ma babied me. I kind of wished some of my other organs would explode.”
“Huh,” Claire said. “I think they do it laproscopically now, like when they yanked my gallbladder out of me. The scars are pretty tiny.”
“Maybe,” Leon returned. “I mean, my appendix was an exploded mess inside me. I think maybe they had to get me open wider to clean it all out.”
Claire wrinkled her nose. “Ew.” They stood there for a moment, looking at their reflections, and Leon let out a long sigh.
“At some point in my life, I’m going to just be one big scar,” he said. “Outside of military situations, people stare. It’s not doing me any favors.”
Claire arched an eyebrow at him, wrapping her arms around his arm. “You are like inhumanly ripped and attractive,” she said. “People could also be staring because of that.”
Leon rolled his eyes. “I think it’s got more to do with stuff like this,” he said, pointing up at the scar from his bullet wound. It’d been infected, and with only 19 year old Claire and supplies from the drug store to tend to it, it had not healed well. The scar was garish and dark, and almost looked like the lingering evidence of some kind of illness rather than a wound. “In public people are alarmed when they see shit like this.”
“I’m not alarmed,” Claire said. “They’re just kind of a part of you. I wish you wouldn’t bring back new ones all the time, but they are what they are.” She looked at them in the mirror thoughtfully, the stark paleness of her skin in comparison to the more tanned nature of his.
“You’re an exception, not the rule,” Leon said, looking down at her. “You’ve faced down things several feet tall with more eyes than they should have. I didn’t expect some scars would bother you.”
“I suppose so,” she acknowledged, letting her hand drift over his stomach. “Scars or no scars, I like the way you look. You’ve always been kind of vaguely pretty, even when you had fewer scars.”
“You’re a madwoman, but sure,” he said, and Claire scoffed some and jostled him a little, looking back to the mirror.
“What? Leon, look in this mirror and tell me one thing that’s wrong with you,” she said.
“Where do you want me to start?” he said, dryly.
“You are <em>fine</em>,” she assured, in exasperation. “Physically, there’s not a thing wrong with you. The average American would kill to look like this. You’re kind of flawless and you’re entertaining and enjoyable to boot. I see this stuff when I look at you. Why don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I never have. I’ve had 29 long years on this planet to get used to this form, but I don’t necessarily enjoy looking at it.”
Claire furrowed her brow. “Were you made fun of growing up, or something?”
“Not necessarily,” Leon said. “I mean my older siblings ripped me mercilessly and held me down and beat me up, but that’s a fairly common experience. Nobody made fun of me in school. I just kind of bumbled along and was friendly to people, and they were friendly back.”
“So at what point did you decide you didn’t like the way you looked, or anything about you?” she asked. “I can’t compliment the way you look, I can’t compliment the way you behave. You won’t accept any of it.”
“Not sure,” he said. “Lifelong experience. Maybe all the Catholic guilt and constant, enforced humility, repentance, and warnings against pride got to me.”
She let out a sigh. “Yet another reason to think religion’s bullshit. Not sure what good deconstructing yourself to nothing is to some imaginary God, but what do I know?” Claire turned her head and kissed his arm, wrapping her own arms around him. “You are an attractive person. You are a worthwhile person. There’s some genuine wastes of soulless space out there, and you’re not one of them.”
Leon looked down at her, and let out a heavy gust through his nose. “I think you see what you want to see.”
“No. I see what’s in front of me,” she countered, looking up at him. “Even if you don’t. And I’m not going to shut up about it. You’re not Catholic anymore. Time to shed the guilt and the penance and develop an ego.”
“The shadow of the Church looms long,” Leon countered. “It’s not as simple as waking up one day and saying ‘holy shit I’m free’.”
“My co-worker told me lapsed Catholics were some of his favorite people,” she said. “That you were all fucked up in surprising and entertaining ways.”
Leon lifted his eyebrows at her. “He’s onto something.”
“Do we have to sign you up for, like, cult deprogramming?” Claire asked.
“No,” Leon said. “The religion’s just one part of it. I’ve always thought I was a hopeless goon.”
She looked up at him patiently. “You are kind of a goon. But you’re also sexy, and thoughtful, and capable, and smart, and a lot of other things too.”
Leon’s face was kind of flat and tired. “Claire, I’m not sure—“
“Stop,” she said in reply, again jostling him. “Just stop. For once in your life don’t spit a compliment out. Come here,” she said, beckoning him down. He bent his head and she pressed her lips against his, bringing her hand up to his face. They kissed fairly simply a few times, and then Claire insinuated her mouth against his, slipping her tongue into his mouth, deepening the kisses. Her hand drifted from his face down to his chest, and she stood there for long moments kissing him, and then her hand thought better of things and moved lower, along the front of him, down to his cock. She took it in her hand and began to slowly and firmly stroke, and he made a little noise into her mouth. They finally separated, faces close to one another, and she swallowed. “I want you to see what I see,” she murmured, peering up at him. “What I think is worthwhile.”
“I don’t think I have the eyes to do it,” he replied.
“Stop,” she murmured further, his cock stiffening in her hand. She turned her head to the mirror, her body standing next to his, her hand slowly bringing him to full arousal. “Look,” she commanded softly.
“Claire,” he said back to her, and his tone almost held a hint of warning.
“You are constantly telling me to look at myself,” she said towards the mirror, while he looked down at her. “You are constantly telling me I’m beautiful and amazing and all of this shit and I think all the same of you.” She tightened her grip on his cock, then fully hard. “Look, Leon.” On several occasions he’d had opportunity to fuck her in front of a mirror, and on some of those occasions he’d all but forced her to look at herself as he thrust in and out of her, telling her to look at how pretty she looked while he undid her. She did not see how what she was doing was any different.
Leon let out a long sigh, and eventually angled his head towards the mirror, Claire’s hand deliberate and slow on him. His face looked almost pained. Claire stood there next to him, her face pillowed against his arm, and stroked him. “I want you to see what I see,” she murmured, gazing into his face via the mirror. “I think it’s just as hot when I do it to you as when you do it to me.”
His face spoke of being torn between being resigned and interested in what her hand was doing to him. She allowed her hand to speed up, twisting slightly near the head of his cock, and his brows drew together some. For once he had no reply, no retort, no comeback—he just stood there and looked into the mirror, slightly as if someone was doing something to him. She <em>was</em> doing something to him, but the look in his eyes spoke somewhat of nails on a chalkboard.
Maybe this was why he didn’t let her be in control often, she surmised, because being forced to consider himself in the situation was anathema to him. She gazed into the mirror, cuddling her head against him. “I like looking at you,” she went on. “I find you just as attractive as you find me. I like looking at you like this.”
Leon’s eyes skipped down to her hand, and what she was doing to him, and that momentarily seemed to entrance him. She hummed a little, stroking faster. “I think you are so sexy,” she said, turning her head, speaking into his skin. “I like touching you. I like being close to you.”
“You’re too nice to me,” he replied, sounding strained. His face still spoke as if some sort of Herculean struggle was taking place inside him; was he supposed to enjoy what she was doing to him or was he supposed to deny everything and turn away?
“You deserve someone being nice to you,” she replied. “You’re worthy of attention too.” She looked back at the mirror, and made a little noise. “Look at me,” she said softly. “Look here.”
Leon lifted his eyes and looked back in the mirror and Claire felt like she couldn’t tell if she was torturing him or getting him off. Jesus, what had made him like this? Claire could not understand how a man as capable, upright, decent, and attractive as Leon could have not a scrap of self-worth to himself. She felt like every time she looked at him her heart swelled; the three words she constantly bit back were always there, threatening to tumble out. Her stomach flipped inside her when he would look at her across the center console of her vehicle, smiling; her heart raced when he looked down at her, eyes lidded, as his hands ran over her; she felt like she could stare at him sleeping for hours. She found him so remarkable and special and unique and he was standing there acting like the fact that she found him violently arousing and beautiful was some kind of punishment.
She placed one last kiss to his arm and stepped around in front of him, and she could not help but feel like his blue eyes showed a modicum of relief once she did and her smaller body partially blocked his in the mirror. She leaned up and urged him down for a kiss, her hand stroking his cock between them, her mouth eager against his. “Someone needs to be nice to you,” she reiterated when their mouths separated. “I like taking care of you. I like making you feel good.”
“You do make me feel good,” Leon said in an undertone.
“Good,” she said. “Keep looking. I want you to see what I see.” She sank down to her knees without preamble, her hand on his cock, and he let out a breath and his hand came to the side of her face, sliding into her loose, rumpled hair. Gently she sucked his balls into her mouth one by one, and he loosed a noise and groaned a little, his hand tightening against her.
“Fuck, Claire,” he murmured, and she hummed in response.
“Don’t look at me,” she murmured back. “Keep looking at you.”
He again sighed as if the weight of the world was upon him and she took his cock into her mouth, slowly bobbing her head back and forth. She gazed up at him to find him still staring at her raptly as she began to suck his cock, and he let out another sigh and angled his eyes back up at the mirror as she knelt in front of him, pleasuring him. She let her hand come up to his hip, and she peered up at the kind of helpless way his eyes fixed on the mirror at her back.
She closed her eyes and let her mouth work, her hand on the base of his cock, her mouth getting wetter the more she sucked. He liked it when she made a mess. She let her mouth and tongue focus on the head, and he made a noise of pleasure and his hips flexed and bucked minutely under her hand. She resumed bobbing her head, trailing her tongue along his length, and she again peered up to make sure he was following her direction. For the moment, he was; his mouth open slightly, hand tangled in her hair.
Claire pressed her head forward until she gagged on his length, and he groaned, and she drew back, lips pillowed around his cock. He was preternaturally silent, devoid of direction or any other commentary—it was like forcing him to consider himself in the equation had rendered him speechless. She hummed along his length and continued to suck, feeling the way his hand guided her head back and forth.
On she went for long moments, and when she peered back up at him this time he was looking at her, and she made a noise of disapproval with his cock in her mouth, her brows drawing together. “You’re worth looking at,” he said to her, and she drew back and let his cock out of her mouth with a wet pop, stroking it with her hand.
“So are you,” she replied. “Look at the mirror.” She fed his cock back into her mouth and began to bob her head with vigor, taking in as much as she could with a gag and shudder. She sucked pointedly and forcefully, and felt his hips start to make the stunted little thrusts they did whenever she did this; she wished she could give the average porn star a run for their money and let him fuck her face like he was desperately holding himself back from doing. Time and time again he assured her she was perfect at this, that it was mindblowing, that he didn’t need to get his cock all the way down her throat for him to dream of her doing this to him.
Sometimes the three words she was scared to say were close, so close. Sometimes she felt like they were there knocking at the back of her teeth and only locking her jaw kept them inside.
“Jesus, Claire,” he managed, looking down at her. She again made a disapproving noise even as she forced her head forward to the point where she gagged, her mouth working over him quickly. He gazed at her dazedly for a moment, and then wordlessly, obediently turned his eyes back up at the mirror. She drew her head back and again paid special attention to the head of his cock, suckling at it firmly, her tongue swirling, and he groaned above her.
“Fuck I’m gonna come,” he said, labored. “Fuck, Claire—“
On she sucked until the jerking of his hips under her hand was tense, his body taut with restraint, and she hummed, peering up at him. His hand gripped her hair and guided her forward one last time and then held her there, and he let loose a long, low sound, his cock pulsing in her mouth. Slowly, she bobbed her head back and forth, watching him all the while, watching him look dazedly into the mirror. She watched him as hot spurts of his come filled her mouth; he’d made her watch herself come in a mirror, her face desperate and unmade as he filled her from behind, bent over a sink or a counter. If he could do it to her, she could do it to him.
She languidly sucked him until she felt his spend stop, and then she drew her head back one last time, releasing his cock with a pop. Finally he angled his head down to look at her, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and she gazed up at him evenly before opening her mouth to let him see his load in her mouth; he liked to see it. He made a low, appreciative noise, his hand cupping her face, and she closed her mouth and swallowed.
Claire began to push herself up and Leon leaned down and got his hands on her arms and assisted, and then she was standing in front of him as he wrapped his arms around her and their mouths met, the kiss deep and unhurried.
“Is the enforced appreciating myself over?” he asked of her, his hand drifting up and down her back.
“I suppose,” she said, regarding him somewhat suspiciously. “I notice you not only lived but managed to come, so hopefully some appreciation was had.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “I have a lawn to mow,” he said, skirting the topic.
“Fine,” she said with a gust. “Change the subject all you want. I think you’re hot and worthwhile, and I’m never going to stop telling you so.”
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” Leon said back to her. “Matthew 11:15.”
Claire just looked at him tiredly. “One of these days, Leon. One of these days we’re going to undo the knot of shit 20-someodd years of life has put into your head.”
“Good luck, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m still trying.” He released her, intent on his pile of clothes near the bed. “In the meantime, the jungle that is your backyard calls.”
She watched him, and let out a sigh, moving for her own clothes. “I’ve got stuff for burgers, and a bag of charcoal,” she said. “Does your mass-of-complexes self want a burger for lunch or dinner?”
“Hell yeah,” Leon replied, pulling on his boxer briefs. “Once your backyard’s mowed, it’ll be possible for me to be out there without wanting to beat my head against a wall.”
She smiled faintly, putting on her own underwear. “Sure. We want to avoid that at all costs.”
He looked over at her, and a corner of his mouth pulled up at her, and as per usual her heart skipped. She felt like maybe she hadn’t gotten through to him necessarily, but for once he’d kept his mouth shut and let her hold the reins of power. Behind Leon’s capability, his endless insistence on helping, his dry sarcasm, and his tight control perhaps he was much the same as he’d been at 21—a kind of quiet, insecure person who seemed like he was constantly waiting for someone to show up and yell at him and tell him he was a shit for brains. Claire did not know what had made him this way, and maybe she never would.
All she could do was keep loving him without saying she loved him, and hope that one day it’d be enough. She couldn’t make him see himself like she saw him, but she could try every chance she got.
Boys I fear 🅱️rain Machine 🅱️ roke today. I was so eager to write this afternoon but uhhhhhhh yeah man it's one of those days. I have plenty of ideas, but my brain is having a hard time stringing together sentences. I cannot work on anything in a meaningful way. Great works are beyond me today.
But still one tiny idea flitted across my brain. I mostly just wanted an excuse for young Leon to have his face in Claire's lap. Set in the early days of their being on the run after Raccoon; think like three days or so. I am about 100% positive I combined the Leon and Claire scenarios of RE2make in my head. It's been so long since I played it. Leon getting tossed around like a ragdoll by Mr. X and Birkin ripping Mr. X in half together! I dunno man I'm tired and my brain is for shit. Anyway. This was all I could manage today. Enjoy Leon feeling he's failing as a man and Claire smooshing his face into her lap about it.
Leon awoke with a jolt and a strangled noise, and the jolt immediately caused an adverse reaction. He curled inward, wincing, pressing his lips together to muffle his second noise. His shoulder throbbed with pain, and the pain radiated. For the last three days, Claire had worriedly changed his bandages twice a day, dousing him with rubbing alcohol that burned like the fires of hell. The edges of the bullet wound were puffy and red, hot to the touch, and Claire patted gently at the discharge the wound had started to put off. She lamented they did not have access to antibiotics.
It was infected. Leon supposed he was not surprised, after everything he’d been through in Raccoon; all the filth, all the gore. His fucking shoulder was infected and it was keeping them in place—Leon figured they needed to leave this motel behind and get further down the road, but while he alternated between burning up and shivering Claire was adamant they not move. Leon felt useless and worthless as he laid in the motel bed, sweat dotting his forehead and upper lip, and watched Sherry in front of the TV, consumed by cartoons. Claire seemed like a nervous, caged animal; she did a lot of staring into space, she did a lot of aimlessly moving around, to Leon’s great dismay and against his wishes she left the motel room frequently to bring back the supplies needed to keep them there longer, the supplies needed to tend to his wound.
He was holding them up. He was keeping them in a place where the shit they’d left behind in Raccoon could find them. He didn’t figure a nefarious company hell-bent on producing shit that could end the world was going to take lightly to two barely legal upstarts coming in, killing their creations, and blowing up their state of the art subterranean lab.
Leon didn’t know what to think anymore. It just didn’t feel like they could go back to civilization. Claire’s brother had gone off to try to chase down loose ends, and from the sounds of it the man had disappeared. They’d tangled with Umbrella, and now Leon was fairly convinced Umbrella would want to exact their pound of flesh in retribution.
He laid there in the dark, his heart pounding, his face sweaty. He’d dreamed of—of—that fucking <em>thing</em>, that thing in the trenchcoat that just never stopped coming. The thing that had picked him up by his neck and tossed him around like a ragdoll, leaving the deep purple bruises on his neck and chin that seemed to be darkening before they faded. Claire told him she’d encountered the thing, too, and that it had cornered her and Sherry. She’d thought they were fucked, that it was going to kill them—and then the <em>other</em> thing, the thing that used to be Sherry’s dad burst onto the scene and ripped it in half, leaving Claire and Sherry cowering and clinging to each other in horror.
In the dream, no matter how fast Leon had run, no matter which way he had turned, the thing was gaining, a dull glint in its dead eyes. Bullets didn’t stop it, and it came no matter what, and in the dream Leon didn’t know how much longer he could keep running.
He laid there, shoulder throbbing, various other aches and pains accosting his body. He didn’t know what time it was. He didn’t want to roll over to look. Time had kind of lost meaning as he laid in the motel room, hemmed in by its walls, infection burning through his body. He was the one holding them up. He was the reason they were dead in the water. He contemplated telling Claire to just take Sherry and go. He felt like a dead weight. He felt like he hadn’t done much for anyone in the city itself but be a gullible, useless sap, and now on the other side of things he sat there dully as Claire tended to him with worry on her face. Some fucking man he was. Some fucking cop—
He felt something at his back and he jolted again, startled half out of his skin at the presence of something behind him. His shoulder again shot white hot pain down his arm, down his torso, up his neck to his very teeth, and he gritted said teeth and looked behind him in the darkness of the motel room. Claire was standing there, her fingers on the bare skin of his back, her face a mess of shadow in the darkness.
“Just me,” she whispered. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he whispered back, throat dry. His wound felt tight and itchy under its coverings. “I’m fine.”
Claire stood there for a second. “You sure?” she whispered.
“Just a nightmare,” he replied. “I’m fine.” Claire’s hand left his back, and in the darkness he perceived her form moving, and then the foot of the bed he’d been sleeping in dipped as she climbed up onto it. He felt like Claire was pulled between him and Sherry; if one of them wasn’t having problems, the other one was. If it wasn’t Leon’s infected wound, it was Sherry crying about her parents, crying about being alone. If Sherry wasn’t having a nightmare, it was him. He wondered what ran through Claire’s mind, as she sat there and stared into space in the motel room, her eyes a million miles away and her face blank but vaguely troubled.
Claire crawled up towards the center of the bed, where he’d come to rest fitfully in sleep, his head flat again the mattress. She crawled up and knelt, her feet under her ass, sitting there in an oversized shirt picked up at thrift. The first night they hadn’t seen each other naked, but they’d all seen each other in their underwear, as filthy clothes were stripped off—with help, in his case—and they took turns getting in the shower to clean themselves. Everyone had needed to get pretty comfortable pretty quick—Leon didn’t think Claire probably would have been hanging out around a dude she barely knew in nothing but an oversized t-shirt, if she could have helped it. Sherry, a child but a child on the edge of pre-adolescence, blushed furiously every time Claire corralled her off to strip her into her underwear.
Leon supposed he was too numb to be embarrassed. Claire was a pretty girl, and he was aware of this as if it was an idea floating a few thousand feet above his head. She was all business when she tended to him, whether he was in a pair of boxers or thrifted clothes. The idea to be embarrassed about being nearly naked in front of each other had probably been abandoned somewhere between that gas station and watching a thing that was all mouth and rows of teeth eating a train car.
Leon laid there dispassionately on the bed, feeling hot, feeling sweaty, trying not to move much. He felt Claire’s hand come to his head, to his hair. For a moment it just sat there, and then she gently began to stroke, almost hesitantly—as if she was afraid he was going to tell her to knock it off. “Do you need anything?” she murmured.
He let out a gust. “No. For my shoulder to stop being infected,” he replied.
“Yeah,” she replied quietly, probably hyperconscious of Sherry sleeping in the other bed. “We’ll look at it in the morning.” Her hand smoothed over his head, and Leon laid there pressed against the bed, blinking at the fold of her legs, her white skin mottled here and there with dark bruises. She adjusted herself somewhat, crossing her ankles beneath her. “Hey,” she whispered. “Come here.”
Leon laid there for a moment, unmoving. Slowly he pushed himself up some, and Claire gently guided his head over until it was on her thigh, his cheek pressed against her skin. She felt cool under his flushed face, and he settled hesitantly, reluctant to put his full weight on her. She pressed her hand against his back some, as if to encourage him, and then her hand came back to his head, smoothing over his hair.
“What’d you dream about?” she asked.
“Thing in the trenchcoat,” Leon mumbled against her leg.
“Mr. X,” Claire said softly. “That’s what Sherry called him.”
“Mr. X,” Leon echoed in a breath. “Good riddance.”
“Yeah.” Her hand stilled on him. “You’re burning up.”
“I know.” He laid there, his cheek mashed against her thigh. “I’ve got to get over this soon. We can’t stay here.”
“What are we gonna do if it gets worse?” she asked. “I think—like, you need a—“
“I can’t go to the hospital,” he said. “We just have to keep cleaning it. I’ll fight it off.”
“Where are we gonna go?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know. Further down the road. On the day before Raccoon I had about 3k between checking and savings,” Leon said. “And a credit card.”
Claire was quiet. “I don’t have hardly anything,” she said. “Not like it matters. I lost my shit, somewhere.”
“I managed to hang onto my wallet, somehow,” Leon said. “We’ve got to keep going. There’s security footage of us in that lab. Somebody is going to be looking for us.”
“I think they’ll want Sherry,” Claire murmured. “There’s…something in her. I think they’ll want to take her.”
“All the more reason to get out of here.”
“You can’t travel.”
Leon let out a sigh. “I probably could.”
“You’re not going to get any better pushing yourself to exhaustion,” Claire said. “They may think—they may think we—“
“That train left that place,” Leon said. “Surely they’re going to be aware someone left. I dunno. I don’t think we’re safe here.”
Claire made a noise, her hand in his hair. “What’re we gonna do?” she asked, quietly.
“I don’t know,” Leon replied. He didn’t. His brain was blank. 3k and a credit card with a two thousand dollar limit would not sustain them indefinitely. He had no doubt to people that cared, they were probably dead. His family probably thought he was dead. Claire’s school was probably wondering to do with her stuff. Sherry, for all intents and purposes, had no one to miss her. To people who had an axe to grind over them coming in and wrecking their setup, they were alive. They’d made it out. Leon could not shake the feeling that at that very moment, someone was probably looking for them. He wished they had a vehicle. He wondered if his Jeep was still viable, outside Raccoon—the keys had made it through the city with him, in his pocket. Trying to get to it meant skirting Raccoon, or what was left of it, on foot.
He was supposedly the man in this situation. He needed to pull his head out of his ass and get to figuring it out. He needed his body to stop being weak and fallible and get with the program.
Claire’s hand stilled in his hair, cradling his head closer to her thigh, and he gave in and let his full weight rest on her, cheek smooshed into her skin. He blinked into the darkness, his brain spooling.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Claire said softly, her hand smoothing over his head.
Leon laid there and felt hot and useless, and wondered how in the hell he was going to hide not only himself but Claire and Sherry as well. They’d need a place to stay, they’d need income, they’d need to stay out of sight. His brain turned over on itself.
They’d survived. Now they needed to figure out how to live.
Today an idea came to me, so I wrote it. Now I really want to write a follow up piece where Leon and Claire DO go to dinner at Ashley and her husband's house, and eventually Claire snaps and her and Ashley's husband get into it and Ashley and Leon are in the background, like, hauling their spouses away from each other, hurriedly saying apologies to each other. I want Ashley to invite Leon and Claire to dinner and Claire comes out of the bedroom in cut-off shorts and a shirt that says EAT THE RICH and a big IWW pin fastened to the shirt and Leon looks at her and is like "Claire. Baby. No. >:|"
Anyway. Leon and Claire go to a function in DC. Leon runs into Ashley Graham. Ashley's married to a landlord-investment-douchebag bro. Claire fumes in righteous revolutionary indignation. Leon promises Taco Bell as consolation.
“Leon?”
Leon resisted the urge to produce a groan or a noise of apprehension, standing there with his back turned to the voice, whisky in hand. He put in appearances at these things because he was required to, but he didn’t generally go out of his way to have conversations unless cornered. Off-handedly, he wondered where Claire was. She griped about going to these things just as much as him, but she sure seemed more able to put on a friendly mask and socialize.
Leon turned around slowly, and his face relaxed some the moment his eyes alit on the speaker of the voice. “Ashley,” he said genially, smiling some. “Hey. How are you?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, letting her arms flop against her sides a little, in her expensive-looking and tailored dress, “good! Things are going okay, I can’t complain. What about you?”
“I think if I drink enough, I may eventually get to a point where I have some kind of semblance of a good time,” he said dryly, and Ashley laughed a little. The necklace around her neck looked like it was probably several carats worth of diamonds. Evidently she was doing well for herself; not that she’d ever been doing bad, per se; Graham had been a wealthy man before he assumed public office. “Other than that, I’m surviving.”
“I guess you being here means you’re still up to your old tricks,” she said, “unless you’ve changed careers and you’re now running a super PAC or something.”
“Nah,” Leon said. “They still send me out to get shot at or otherwise beat up every other week. Probably will until I’m too old to do it anymore.” He took a drink of his whisky. “What’re <em>you</em> doing here?”
“Oh, I still get invited to these things every once in a while,” she said with a smile. “Husband’s also got his fingers in some pies. Dad gets invited to a lot of them too, but he’s kind of become a recluse these days. He likes to sit around by his fireplace with his dogs at the house in Connecticut and read.”
Leon shrugged. “Smart man. There were times where your dad seemed like the last thing on earth he wanted to be doing was being President. He’d talk to me like he wanted to sneak off to the bar and drink beer and be normal for a second.” He raised his eyebrow at her. “Husband? You manage to club some dude over the head and drag him home?”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “Yeah, a long while back. It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. What’s it been? Ten…ten years?”
“Maybe? I can’t keep track of this stuff the older I get,” Leon said. “I’m a recluse too. Spotting me in the wild is a rare event. Treasure it.”
“I’m sure,” Ashley said in amusement. Her hairstyle was remarkably similar to what it had been all those years ago, when she was a college student with a Secret Service detail. Leon had run into her more often when her dad sat in the White House, and then after that, he thought he’d crossed paths with her once or twice, but he couldn’t be sure. Differing paths—she’d gone back off to her normal life, and he’d just been the armed jackass sent in to storm the castle and rescue her. “I even managed to have some <em>kids</em> with the husband I clubbed over the head and dragged home.”
Leon raised his eyebrows at her. “I’ll be damned. Kids? You’re an adult now.”
“Yeah,” Ashley said, bringing up the little clutch in her hand and unfastening it, “let me get my phone.” She extracted her phone from the clutch and angled it over at him; her lock screen was two blonde little boys, one taller than the other. “Andrew’s 7 and Kyler’s 5,” she said. “They’re mostly alright kids. There was an unfortunate incident with putting slime in the washing machine last month.”
“That’s the age,” Leon said.
“I think it took our housekeeper two whole days to get slime out of everything,” Ashley said, stowing her phone back away. So they had a housekeeper; evidently she <em>was</em> doing well for herself. “What about you? Have you inflicted any mini-yous on the world yet?”
“No,” Leon said with a gust, “the world wouldn’t stand a chance if I did. Plus, always out in the field. Hard to be a dad when you’re saddled to DC for long hours or overseas all the time.” He shrugged. “I did manage to club someone over the head and drag them home, myself. That’s about all that civilizes me, these days.”
Ashley looked amusedly shocked. “Oh? You found someone to sign onto your detail? I’m glad. I feel like every time I saw you at the White House or out at one of these things you looked like you’d rather crawl into a potted plant.”
“Yeah.” Leon held up his hand with his wedding band, smiling. “Like…eight or nine months ago. Still fairly fresh. Just got used to the ring, I feel like.”
Ashley nodded. “I’m trying hard to picture you having a wedding and the image…does not compute,” she joked.
“It was in a courthouse in Leesburg, Virginia, and it took all of five minutes,” Leon replied. “Very on brand for me. I think I would have gotten married by mail if I could.”
Ashley rolled her eyes with a smile. “<em>That</em> sounds more like it. Is she here?”
“Somewhere, yes,” Leon said. “What about yours? Your husband play well at these kinds of events?”
“Yes,” Ashley said. “Probably off talking business or brokering some kind of deal or something. I have to forcibly remove his phone from his hand and like unplug the computer and tell him if he keeps looking at stock tickers or financial reports or whatever his brain is going to leak out his ears. I practically have to drag him to the dinner table by his collar, when he’s not off on business.”
Leon shrugged with his eyebrows. “I imagine he’s got to stay a pretty busy dude if he’s gonna hang you in diamonds like that,” he said, vaguely gesturing at her necklace around his drink.
Ashley looked tired. “Maybe. Sometimes it feels like the gifts are consolation prizes for him always being on the phone or in a board meeting or jetting off somewhere. Periodically I remind him our kids are only going to be young once, and when’s he going to slow down and pay attention to them? When they’re 30 and out of the house?”
Leon nodded at her. “I imagine my wife feels the same way, sometimes, with me gone all the time. She’s pretty self-sufficient, and we don’t have any kids. She’s gone a lot too, for work, but I <em>do</em> think sometimes she gets lonely. She’s halfway too tough to let on about it, though.”
Ashley looked at him, her face prompting. “Well? So? Take a walk with me and let’s go find this wife. Maybe we’ll run into Lucas too.”
“Sure,” Leon said, offering her his arm. “Lucas the husband?”
“Yep,” Ashley replied, linking her arm in his.
“Last I saw my wife, she was hovering around where the free alcohol and food is,” Leon said in amusement. “I generally have to promise her bottomless drinks and food to get her to agree to come to these things with me. There’s these lemony shrimp things tonight. I think we both ate about 50 of them.”
Ashley laughed as they slowly made their way through the crowd. “I guess not much has changed, at least with you,” she said. “What’s your wife’s excuse?”
“She’s from rural Alabama and she’d rather be at home drinking canned beer and frying chicken,” Leon said. “To be fair, I’d rather be at home drinking canned beer and eating the fried chicken.”
“I remember watching you at some dinner, years ago, when Dad was in office,” Ashley began, “and it was a full dinner service, and you were looking at all the silverware in front of you, and you looked like you were about to just start eating with your hands.”
Leon laughed a little. “Four spoons or whatever is just excessive. Especially when you can just pick up the bowl and drink from it.”
Ashley looked up and over at him skeptically. “I had <em>finishing school</em>, when I was a little girl. The woman who taught it would have hit you on the head if she’d heard such a thing.”
“I grew up in a fairly beat up old house in Detroit, Ashley,” Leon replied. “My siblings and I used to roll around on the floor and <em>fight</em> over food. We would have caused some finishing school lady to keel over and die.”
Ashley was laughing, her head thrown back. “Dad hired an <em>interior decorator</em> for my dorm at college,” she said. “Different lived experiences.”
“Yeah, well, you saw me eat raw snake,” Leon said, looking over at her. “Different strokes for different folks.”
“I was so horrified,” Ashley said, shaking her head with a smile. “Part of me was so glad you were there to rescue me, and the other part was deeply, girlishly <em>eeeewww</em> over the whole experience.”
“They didn’t ask me if I knew which spoon to use before they shipped me out,” Leon said. “They just told me to grab some guns and get going.” The crowd in front of them parted a bit, and Leon caught a glimpse of Claire’s dark green, satiny dress. He didn’t know how she did it, but she managed to find thrifted vintage dresses to wear to most of these things—it was rare she actually trekked into DC to visit a place to buy something new. Tonight’s dress had little sleeves, and a low-cut square neck, and a skirt that flared out. It kind of made her look like she was about to pose in a compromising situation for a wall calendar circa 1952. It was so typically Claire to refuse to buy something to wear at full price. “Claire,” Leon called, somewhat muted. “Over here. Claire.”
Claire looked around for a moment, and then turned her head and saw Leon approaching with Ashley, and she smiled, ever-present flute of champagne in her hand. Leon wondered how many she’d had. “Hey,” she said brightly, as they made their way over to her. “And hey, Leon’s friend,” she added, as they stopped in front of her.
“Claire, this is Ashley,” Leon said, and as he could have predicted, Claire stuck her hand out for a handshake, a thing that it did not dawn on most women to do. Ashley stuck her hand out and gave Claire a more feminine kind of over the top of the hand grasp, and Claire shook vigorously. “She’s former President Graham’s daughter.”
“Leon rescued me from cultists,” Ashley said. “Worst overseas trip of my life.”
“Ah, yeah. He <em>did</em> do that. Cultists generally ruin any day, yeah,” Claire said. She looked over at Leon. “I hope he didn’t drive you insane with his dad-humor while he did it.”
Ashley laughed. “There were one or two moments. Mostly he was just really reassuring. Being a sheltered college student in a life or death kidnapping situation coupled with parasites didn’t leave me with most of my wits.”
“Mm, yeah,” Claire said. “He does manage to be relatively comforting when he wants to, when <em>he’s</em> not the one causing the heart attack.” She looked from Leon to Ashley with a big smile.
“I like your dress,” Ashley said, genially. “It’s beautiful.”
“Oh, uh, thanks,” Claire said, spreading her arms some and looking down at herself. “Vintage Balmain. I actually think it’s a wedding dress, and someone dyed it. I’m forever looking for things someone last wore in 1950 to go to these things.”
“It’s unique,” Ashley said. “I wish I had the patience for thrift. I just go out and buy stuff. I don’t have the patience to scour for something.”
“Oh, that’s when you find the good stuff,” Claire said. “I have a really impressive collection of relatively unhinged vintage t-shirts. I’d rather dig through racks than buy something out of the front window.”
“She means she generally doesn’t want to spend money, ever,” Leon corrected, looking over at Ashley. Claire took a drink from her champagne flute, and made a noise of dismay.
“I’ll have you know this dress was not cheap,” she said to him. “High end designers are still high end designers, even if the dress is 60 years old,” she said. “A small dent was put in your checking account the day I bought this.”
“Oh <em>my</em> checking account,” Leon said in amused reproach.
“Yeah. You told me I had to come to this, you were footing the bill for the evening wear,” Claire replied plainly. “Quit leaving your wallet around the house.”
Ashley chuckled. “A universal dynamic. I don’t think any of the cards I carry even have my own name on them—they’re all Lucas’s.”
Claire looked over at her. “Oh I have my own cards. There’s just usually about 20 bucks in those accounts,” she said. “I keep threatening to show up to one of these things in shorts and flip flops, but I guess we have to be <em>kind</em> of civilized.”
Ashley grinned. “After two kids, it’s more about finding something I don’t feel like a busted can of biscuits in, which is rough. I feel like I’d show up in leggings and a sweater if I could.”
Claire shrugged. “I’m not seeing the busted can of biscuits. You look pretty fit for someone who’s brought kids into this world.”
“Thanks,” Ashley said with a gust. “Thanks to the hours of pushing a stroller around the neighborhood I did, and the hours with a personal trainer. I looked kind of like an overfed chipmunk after Kyler. The second pregnancy was not kind to me.”
“What, were you eating pickles dipped in ice cream and bananas coated in ranch?” Leon asked. “My one sister-in-law got the most diabolical cravings with every one of her pregnancies. She ate things that boggled the mind.”
“No,” Ashley said, straightening her dress some, “I just ate <em>everything</em>. I think I was having six square meals a day. I gained like 50 pounds. I was pregnant, and hormonal, and hungry, and every time I looked at myself in the mirror I basically cried. I think Lucas didn’t know what to do with me. First pregnancy was a breeze. Kyler really put me through the ringer.”
“It do be like that, sometimes,” Claire said casually, “from what I’ve heard second-hand. I don’t have any kids, so I don’t really know.” She shrugged, taking another drink from her champagne. “What do you do, Ashley?”
“Oh,” she said, with a sigh, “I’m a glorified soccer mom. Make sure my kids don’t get into things or kill each other. Shuttle them to soccer practice and ooh and aah over their drawings and put them on the fridge.”
Leon looked over at Ashley. A glorified soccer mom with a housekeeper and a husband constantly working deals. It sounded like the height of yuppiedom, and probably something Ashley had been destined for her whole life.
“We’re still in the DC area,” Ashley went on. “Dad left office and went back to Connecticut, but I kind of lingered. Lucas travels for work all the time, and in the winter we spend a good amount of time at the house in the Keys, if we can get away.”
Claire’s eyebrows were raised. “Sounds nice. In the winter I’m looking out the window at this guy shoveling snow,” she said, jerking her thumb at Leon. “Where in DC are you?”
“Spring Valley,” Ashley replied, and Claire looked blank while Leon whistled low and appreciatively.
“Oh you guys are <em>rich</em> rich,” he said, looking at Ashley with a smirk. “I’m bringing home a goodly amount from the government every year but I’m not affording most real estate in Spring Valley.”
Ashley shrugged. “Where are <em>you</em> guys?”
“Middleburg,” Leon replied.
Ashley looked between them in confusion. “Are you horse people?” she asked. “That’s all I can think of out that way, is horse stables and farms.”
“Fuck no. There are a lot of those out there,” Leon said. “But no, we’re not. This one just told me if she had to live in a city she was going to become a terrorist,” he said, indicating Claire.
“Oh I did not,” Claire said, chagrined. She looked over at Ashley. “I grew up rurally. I lived outside New York City for a long time. I was tired of all of the traffic and noise and everything of a city.”
“Understandable,” Ashley said. “Spring Valley’s nice because it’s in DC proper, but it really feels quiet. Secluded. It’s—“ On the other side of her, a man in a tux appeared, reaching to wrap his arm around her. “Oh! Where were you?” Ashley asked, looking up at him.
“Me? Where were <em>you</em>?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes.”
“Well, you were embroiled in some kind of conversation about real estate or something, and my eyes started to glaze, so I wandered off,” Ashley said primly. “Lucas, this is Leon Kennedy and his wife Claire. I’ve known Leon a long time. He used to provide security to Dad, and he’s the one who showed up in Spain to haul me home.”
Lucas looked impressed, and reached out to shake Leon’s hand. Claire likewise stuck her hand out, and for a moment he seemed a little caught off guard that Claire expected to shake his hand too, but then he rallied and shook hers as well. “I’ve heard all I need to hear about Ashley’s unfortunate tour of the Iberian peninsula,” Lucas said. “The government still sending you out to save people?”
“Among other things,” Leon said. “Until I’m old and grey and ready for a home.”
“Better you than me,” Lucas replied. “I suppose thank you for your service. Thanks for making sure I had a woman to marry.”
Leon shrugged. “Nah. All in a day’s work.”
He looked over at Claire. “You affiliated with the government, too?”
“Oh, no,” Claire said, her eyes wide. “I’m an aid worker. TerraSave. I get run around DC on errrands. I go around the world, dig holes, make sure people don’t die of communicable diseases, and get sent in when the bombs are done blowing up. Usually. They’re usually done blowing up. Sometimes there’s still armed men in the streets when we show up.”
“Again, better you than me,” Lucas said. “I suppose this is work that needs doing, but I’m not the man to do it.”
“Sometimes it takes a woman,” Claire replied with a pull of her lips.
“Maybe,” Lucas said as Ashley gazed at him. “Maybe one with bigger cajones than me. If I need a hole dug, I get a gardener to do it.”
Claire was smiling widely at him. “Sure. Hole still gets dug.”
Leon looked over at the younger man. “What do <em>you</em> do, Lucas?”
“A little of this, a little of that,” he said. “I started in real estate. I own a few properties up and down the East Coast. A few buildings in New York, stuff like that.”
Leon glanced over at Claire, who was still smiling widely, but her eyes glinted. A landlord. One of Claire’s least favorite things, something she considered a useless leech on the lifeblood of most Americans. She just kept smiling, frozen in place some.
“I make campaign contributions, which is why I think I keep getting invited to these things,” Lucas went on. “Aside from being married to a former White House resident. Really I guess I do a little of everything. Real estate, stocks, investments. Really, the hot new thing has been the growth of AI. I’ve got my fingers in some pies in that realm as well.”
Claire looked like she was internally screaming behind her eyes, Leon recognized that frozen smile anywhere. She thought investment bankers and stock speculators needed to be rounded up and tossed into prison; she found most people of that ilk to be enemies of the working class, or whatever it was she would say. Like a cranky curmudgeon she’d been railing against the growing presence of AI in everything, and she went on at length about AI’s ruinous effects on the environment, all so someone could have an AI generated image. She groaned and cursed whenever she discovered an AI feature had been built into yet one more thing she had to be around in her day to day. If he had a dime for every time Claire had plainly informed him capitalism ruined everything, he’d have a swelling bank account.
“Oh,” Claire finally said, her face persisting in its unnatural smile. “Sure. AI.”
Leon shrugged. “I would go back to a landline if I could,” he said. “I think things like AI are lost on me. I leave the investments to the guy I pay every year to manage them for me. I am a simple man.”
“I mean, it’s all over my head too, the AI stuff,” Lucas said. “I’m just financing things. These data centers aren’t cheap, and they don’t build themselves. Not to mention trying to find somewhere to put them. Someone’s got the rural populations of this country in a tizzy about a data center being built near them, when really it’s growth and development in their area. Yet still there’s angry town council meetings, and farmers with picket signs, and who knows what else. I suppose the local yokels kind of don’t know any better.”
Leon was neutral; he’d met a million vaguely cut-throat and self-interested men like this at events of this kind in DC, and given the trajectory of her life, Leon was not surprised Ashley Graham had ended up married to some kind of finance bro with few moral compulsions about what he was putting his money into. Near him Claire was practically vibrating; she was trying <em>so</em> hard not to pop off at the mouth, he could tell.
“I mean,” Claire began after a moment, “the average farmer in America has a lot to worry about, without a data center coming in and using up all the water.”
“Sure, maybe,” Lucas said, “but the taxpayer subsidizes them to hell and back so I really can’t see how bad they can really have it when they’re getting government handouts every year.”
Claire looked like she was trapped in a Hell she could not escape from, her face frozen in its smile. “Oh. Sure,” she replied.
“I mean, AI’s the wave of the future,” Lucas said. “It’s coming, whether people want it or not, so people may as well put down the picket signs and get on board. I personally find it incredibly useful. It compiles reports, it makes predictions, it fires off emails for me to the HOAs and residents’ councils and tenants and city officials and all of it. Saves me time. Saves me energy. Gets me home sooner so I can watch my wife chase the kids around the house,” he went on, smiling down at Ashley, who smiled back.
“Mmm,” Claire hummed, and to Leon her tone sounded strained. “I like doing things the old fashioned way. I’m not sure I’m ready to lay down my picket sign.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with AI if it bit me in the ass,” Leon added. “I leave the picket signs to her, but I’m not sure I need my life cluttered up with a bunch of stuff I don’t understand how to use.”
Lucas shrugged. “Try it. Try opening up ChatGPT and see all the shit it can do for you. It’s a life changer. I don’t mind some data centers going in in the middle of nowhere Nebraska or North Dakota or whatever for convenience. The real estate is cheap, and these are flyover states. It’s not like anyone can complain about it being an eyesore, or anything.”
“We drove through North Dakota last year and I thought Lucas was going to throw himself from the vehicle,” Ashley joked.
“I’m from a middle of nowhere place,” Claire said, her tone finally starting to betray a little strain. “I think people have every right to complain.”
“What were you doing driving through North Dakota?” Leon asked, perhaps trying to shift topics to something that wasn’t going to cause his wife to rip a man’s throat out with her teeth.
“Heading to the oil fields,” Lucas said. “Meeting with some execs there. Yet another thing I’m investing in. A lot of those little Podunk places you can’t get into with a jet. You’ve got no choice but to drive.”
“Ah,” Leon replied, and Claire’s eyes spoke violent, slow, painful murder.
“We went to Jackson Hole after,” Ashley said. “So the trip had a nice end. The kids had fun, anyway.”
“That’s nice,” Claire said, her voice high and tight.
“Anyway,” Lucas said, giving Ashley a squeeze, “I hate to steal her, but I need to drag Ashley over here to meet a business partner. Better she meets him now, before we meet up with them in Saint Kitts in a few weeks.”
“Godspeed,” Leon said. “Saint Kitts an island?”
“Yes,” Ashley replied. “We’re taking the boat down there.”
“What do I know?” Leon asked with a shrug. “It must be nice if I haven’t been sent there with a gun yet.”
“The boat,” Claire managed, sounding somewhat shell shocked. “That’s nice,” she repeated. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you both too,” Lucas said, smiling. “C’mon,” he said to Ashley.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Ashley said to Leon, as her husband was starting to lead her away. “You’re right outside DC. I <em>know</em> you know how to get ahold of me. Come over for dinner sometime, you two.”
Lucas was still smiling. “The new chef’s a lot better than the old one. I’m not ashamed to have people over for dinner anymore.”
“Oh,” Claire said.
“Sure. We’ll do that,” Leon said to Ashley as she was slowly led away. “Good to see you, Ashley.”
“You too!” she said. “And nice to meet you!” she called over her shoulder as her husband pulled her through the crowd. A moment passed after they disappeared, and Leon looked over at Claire with his eyebrows raised, and she was busy draining her champagne.
“<em>Do</em> you know how to get ahold of her?” Claire asked, pointedly.
“Sure,” Leon replied.
“Good. You need to tell her to leave that shitheel in the dust,” Claire went on. “Text her five times every day until it’s done. She needs to pack her shit and her kids and run like her life depends on it.” She looked at Leon direly. “Men like that are a cancer on society and I personally hope when the guillotines get dragged out he’s first in line. Genuine bloated worthless morally bankrupt capitalist scum.”
“Ouch,” Leon said with a laugh, arching his eyebrow at her. “These things are full of men like him, Claire. You’re gonna have to be thicker skinned than that.”
“A landlord,” Claire said acidly. “A landlord financing AI ruining the environment and fucking over the rural populations of this country, a landlord financing the environment being ruined by sticking fucking oil wells in it every five feet, a landlord probably high-grossing his tenants and putting them out on the street for the smallest of infractions.” She scoffed. “Acting like farmers are the ones being a drain on fucking society. The average American small farmer has been getting absolutely <em>fucked</em> by corporate farms and the—“
“Okay, okay, he’s gone,” Leon said, reaching out and putting his arm around her. “Calm down, comrade. You can’t start the revolution now. I’m not properly attired. I’m not armed.”
“Fuck I just wanted to punch him in the face,” Claire said, rolling her shoulders some under Leon’s arm. “She seems like a relatively normal person. What would she possibly see in—“
“Ashley has had a silver spoon in her mouth most of her life,” Leon said to Claire gently but firmly. “Private schools. Horseback lessons. Finishing school. Big black cars that chauffeured her around everywhere, and country clubs. You think they’re going to that island on a Glastron or a pontoon boat? I’d say we’re looking at a yacht situation here.” He peered into her face. “Ashley married exactly who she was destined to marry. I don’t know if she has the wherewithal or the class consciousness or whatever to be upset about it. She sits at home with her housekeeper and her chef and she probably shows up to children’s soccer games in five thousand dollar sweaters and that’s her life. So she’s married to a slimeball. I don’t think she ever knew any better.”
Claire let out a gust, and looked desperately troubled. “Men like this are making all the decisions,” she said. “Men like this are running the country. Men like this—“
“Yes,” Leon said, gently shaking her some. “It’s been that way for a long, long time. You flying into a blind rage in the middle of a gala in DC isn’t going to change things. That guy walked off and probably immediately forgot your name. Don’t let him occupy so much real estate in your head.”
Claire’s brows were still pulled together. “I hate it here,” she said forlornly.
“Me too,” Leon said, blithely. “And I have for a long time. C’mon. We need more to drink to make it through this. Would it help if I promise to take you through a Taco Bell drive through after this? You usually seem pretty happy when you’re housing a Crunchwrap Supreme.”
“Sure,” Claire gusted, looking at her empty champagne flute in her hands. “I think I need to switch to something stronger than champagne. I don’t think I’ll make it otherwise.”
“Sure. C’mon. Let’s get you into the hard liquor,” Leon said, guiding her along. “Then let’s go post up in a corner and make fun of people. T-minus about two hours before you can be getting shredded lettuce and Fire sauce packets all over my passenger seat.”
“How do I let you talk me into these things?” Claire asked, as they moved through the crowd.
“Really putting the for better or worse part of marriage vows to the test,” Leon said. “I’m no longer obligated to suffer on my own. C’mon, how can I make it up to you? You want a Baja Blast, too?”
“Brother I would shotgun a Baja Blast right now,” Claire said as they approached the bar.
“That’s the spirit,” Leon said, giving her a squeeze with a smile. “Just gotta survive until you make it to the fast food and neon green drink portion of the evening.”
“There are no amount of Cruchwrap Supremes that can make me feel better about scum like him ruining life for everyone,” Claire said despairingly.
“I can buy you the Crunchwrap Supreme,” Leon said. “I can’t prevent men like him from existing and thriving. There’s only so much I can do, sweetheart.”
“Would you still love me if I became an armed revolutionary?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Sure,” he said genially. “Nothing I love more than a hot principled woman with a gun. C’mon. Let’s get you a drink.”
Was talking to the girlies in the Discord tonight and this scene (and many others like it I have written) came up. I wrote this back in...2005? 2006? In my canon Leon and Claire were together for a WHILE after Raccoon and RE2. They lived life like people in the witness protection program with Sherry between them, and Leon worked shitty under the table manual labor jobs to sustain them...and eventually Claire squirreled away enough money to run off to Europe, and the government caught up to Leon and Sherry, and we all know the rest.
I KNOW that is not Capcom canon but fuck it we ball, I literally require this to be the situation for maximum character angst, PTSD, emotional duress, and repressed sexual urges.
I wrote a lot of scenes like this, in unfinished fics. Anyway. Claire's leaving for Europe, Leon tries to be the Big Man in Charge, someone gets slapped. Guilt and angst. Also featuring headcanon!Leon's crucifix necklace.
“You’d leave just like that.”
Claire froze on the porch, her backpack over her shoulder, her body stiff.
“You wouldn’t even tell me. You wouldn’t even tell Sherry.” His voice was coming from the darkness, behind her—somehow, he’d known, and somehow, he’d hidden himself outside, waiting for her. He was a good fifteen feet away from her, but the lack of sound bouncing off the Maine snow made it sound like he was right behind her, right at her back. “Jesus, Claire, I can deal with you not telling me. But it’s just plain fucking wrong of you to leave her inside, sleeping, thinking she’s going to wake up next to you and find nothing.”
Claire looked up at the sky, biting her lip, crunching her eyes closed against the tears that threatened to fall. Did he think this was pleasant? Did he think that it was easy for her, like flipping a switch between Leon/Sherry and Chris? “You don’t understand,” she said, lowly, her eyes still pressed closed.
“Yeah, I don’t.” His voice was hard, flinty. “I’m sure she won’t, either.”
“Look, would you stop bringing her up?” Claire said, whirling towards the voice in the darkness, throwing her hands out to her sides.
“For someone who claims that kid is their earth and sky, you’re sure hesitant to man up when it comes to the responsibility.” Leon emerged from the shadows, his arms over his chest, his face severe. “C’mon, Claire, this isn’t a fucking movie. You think I was just going to let you sneak out in the night like a fucking shadow?”
“I have to go,” Claire said, her voice breaking. “Look, you may have some giant, big old family you’re itching to get back to some day, and a hometown and old girlfriends and friends and all that, but I have nothing. I have a brother. And if I lose him, I lose everything.”
Leon merely stared at her for a moment, half-illuminated by the moon. “Everything. You lose everything. What about Sherry?” he asked, shrugging. “Or is the fact that her whole world revolves around you not enough?” He frowned. “No, it’s not. Because for you, the whole world revolves around Claire.”
She scoffed and let loose a short, humourless laugh through tears, slapping her hand on her thigh. “Oh, fucking come on,” she snapped, looking out at the landscape. “Like everything doesn’t revolve around you and what you think, and your time to be alone and be a dick, your time to sit around and think about Ada and all the time you spend whining about your family and how nothing’s how it should be?” She laughed again, humourless, and it sounded like a sob. “Don’t pin this all on me, Leon.”
“You’re the one leaving!” he snapped back, his voice rising. He looked around him, mindful of the time and the silence, the lack of echo because of the January snow muting and amplifying their voices, and seemed to collect himself, forcing his anger back into check.
“I have to!” Claire’s voice rose on a hysterical note, her face contorting. “It’s not like I want to.”
“Then why are you?” Leon asked pointedly.
“Because…” Claire found herself at a loss for words, shaking her head. “I can’t explain it. I need Chris. He’s like the other half of me. I can’t just let him be out there, on his own, in danger, needing my help. I’ve got to do this.”
“And what,” Leon said, coming down the steps into the moonlight, “are you going to do? Run off to Europe, half-cocked like he did? Run off with no money and no plan and nothing and hope everything will turn out for the best?” He looked at her sternly in the dim, pale light, his jaw set. “For Christ’s sake, Claire, you barely even know how to work a gas pump. You’re going to disappear just like he did.”
“He didn’t disappear!” Claire said vehemently, wiping at her eyes. “He’s out there. I know it. I’m going to find him. And look, I’m either going to leave with your blessing or I’m not. That’s how it’s going to be, Leon.”
“And Sherry?”
“I trust you,” Claire said, looking at him gravely. “You know what to do.”
“I seem to sense a whole lot of someone fobbing their responsibilities off on me,” Leon told her, cocking his head at her. “And you’re not getting my blessing.” His face hardened. “So fucking deal with it.”
Claire looked at him wordlessly, shaking her head, the tears falling. “Fuck you,” she said, flatly. Once again the humourless laugh came, and she shook her head again, walking backwards while still looking at him. “Fuck you. You fucking self-important prick.” She raised her middle finger high, puckering her mouth at him. How fucking <em>dare</em> he—what else did he want her to do? Didn’t he see that she <em>had</em> to do this?
She spun and started to walk away, briskly, wiping the tears from her eyes fiercely—on some level, she was angry at herself for crying, on another, she was angry that she couldn’t stay with Sherry, that Leon wouldn’t understand, that life wouldn’t just be normal. She heard his footsteps crunching in the snow behind her before she turned and saw him, and she rolled her eyes skywards and shook her head. “Stay the fuck away from me.” His footsteps did not cease. “I said stay the fuck away from me, Leon.”
“Look—“ he began, grabbing her arm.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, jerking her arm away, not looking back.
“No, listen!” he said, reaching out and grabbing her arm again, jerking her towards him. She struggled against him for a moment, succeeding in slapping him in the face soundly before he grabbed both her arms and held them down at her sides, giving her a pointed shake that did nothing but serve to make her angry.
If she’d really wanted to hurt him, she could have. Claire wondered why she hadn’t. Looking at him right then, she wanted to. She wondered why she hadn’t punched him and just been done with it.
“Listen,” he said in a quieter tone, wrapping his arms around her forcedly lowered ones and pulling her to him in a hug. “You’re not getting my blessing. I don’t want you to go. I don’t think you should go. But I…Jesus, Claire, I can’t just let it end like that.”
“Suited you fine two minutes ago,” she snarled, jerking against him, startled into silence by the reasserting firmness of his grip. The hell was this kid’s problem? Did he think suddenly going noble savage on her <em>now</em> was going to make everything okay?
“I’m sorry,” he said, into her hair. “I was angry. I am angry. But Claire, I’m not just going to let you walk away forever and let that be it.” He sighed. “Sherry and I can take care of ourselves, if that’s what you want to hear. You don’t want to hear anything else, so <em>whatever</em>. That being said, I still don’t think what you’re doing is right.”
“You’ve already given me the lecture,” Claire snapped, “many times. Say something new or let go of me.”
“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Leon said suddenly, with vehemence, shaking her some again. It rattled her into silence. “I don’t want to not be able to see you getting hurt. Do you understand that, Claire? That it’s not just all my selfish bullshit for not wanting you to go? Unless you wanna drop Sherry off at an orphanage and leave her to be picked up by Umbrella, I can’t go with you. And that’s not what life’s been like for the last few months.”
Somehow, she knew it was right. The man in front of her might not have suddenly become her best friend or anything, but for months they’d been all the other had known, and despite whatever he might have been thinking, this whole situation was <em>not</em> pleasant for her. Claire was still crying, but it had changed tack somewhat; now she was closing her eyes and squinting against Leon’s chest, pressing her lips together to avoid letting out a sob. “I know you can’t. But I still have to go. Nothing’s going to stop me.”
“Claire…” Leon sighed, squeezing her. “This will not end well. I’ve got a feeling in my gut. This is going to end in fucking sorrow if you walk away right now.” He chuckled, bitterly. “And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of that in my life. I’m fucking sick of it.”
“I can’t go on your gut feeling,” Claire said resolutely, even if she was sniffling and crying. “I’m going.” She couldn’t. Part of her snapped that he was just trying to get her to stay because he didn’t want to shoulder the burden, but the other part of her snapped <em>what right of yours is it to shove that burden on him?</em>
“Fine. Fine.” For a moment it sounded like he would be angry again, instead, he just held her tighter and pressed his face into her hair. After a moment, her arms came up around him and hugged back, a tiny whimper escaping her. It was all she would let through. She couldn’t crack. She couldn’t let him know how badly this was affecting her—she didn’t want to show a chink in the armor that could be exploited, any more than she’d already displayed. “You find me. If you need me, if you need anything—you find me. Listen, Claire, I’m going to get a PO box.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding.
“I’ve already gotten it, actually.” He sighed. “I had the wackiest suspicion that something like this was going to happen. S.L. Moriarty, PO Box 95458.” He looked down at her. “Bar Harbor. You know the rest. I will help you, Claire. You find me. You stay in touch. I don’t care what you do. Just don’t disappear.”
“Like you think Chris did,” she breathed (albeit a bit sourly), nodding. “Okay. Yeah. I will. 95458. Scott, Leon, Moriarty. Your mom’s maiden name. Got it.”
“Claire. Be safe. Please. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Yeah. I won’t.” Noncommittal. She was <em>not</em> going to let him trick her into feeling like she owed him more than she’d already given. He was a big boy; this was where their lives split for now.
“Listen, Claire—“ Leon reached into the neck of his shirt, behind his head, and fiddled with something, bringing his hands out in front of him again. Claire shook her head, mumbling negatives. “No, listen. Take this. Look, don’t get all I-don’t-believe-in-God on me, damnit. Just fucking take it. Okay? For my sake of mind?”
Claire eyed the cross that Leon wore every day—she’d never seen him take it off, never seen him without it. “What,” she said, slowly, “if it doesn’t get back to you?”
“It will,” he said, reaching forward to fasten it around her neck. “It will, if you take it. Just take it, okay?” The cross thumped against her chest and she nodded, reaching up to tuck it inside of her shirt, where it hung between her breasts, an unfamiliar cold weight.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. Damnit, why did she feel like she needed to apologize?
“I am too.” His words were ambiguous, and Claire never asked him to clarify them. “Just go.”
Claire, nodding, turned on her heel and walked towards the gate. Against her better judgment, she turned once to look back, and saw only Leon’s back.
Years ago, maybe like 2005, in my elaborate headcanon post RE2/RE:CV world, I started writing a fic. I never finished it. It's Claire staying with Leon in DC after being released from the hospital post Antarctica; Chris is busy trying to get his life set up so Claire can come with him and in the meantime, Leon puts up the moneyless, ID-less, identity-less Claire. In my headcanon, Claire went FERAL in Europe. She killed people. She tortured people. There was no one around to temper her urges for revenge and justice and she went off the fucking rails. Leon went into US STRATCOM, readjusting to a normal life, receiving reports of shit happening in Europe, and Claire was squatting in hostels, associating with Bad People for guns, and pulling out fingernails.
The fic kind of just explores Leon and Claire's relationship now that the threat is "gone" and they're expected to lead psuedo-normal lives. They're not yet in love with each other, Claire's a traumatized mess trying to take Leon's head off every ten minutes, and Leon's just trying to be a good friend and help her. They platonically end up in bed or on the couch together every night because Claire is incapable of making it through a night of sleep without nightmares, without the aid of medication.
And that's where these next scenes come from; Leon finally convinces Claire to let him drag her to a government shrink; Claire's unhinged with him, too. I really liked this fic; it's about 65 pages long as it stands and I never finished it, and I don't know why. It's not exactly canon compliant; I played fast and loose with timelines, and other things. I guess even then I just wanted excuses for angst and torment.
Anyway. Here you go. Here's a small snippet of the 65 pages. Tumblr's gonna steal my italics, so sorry about that.
“I don’t want to go back,” Claire said sourly, walking ahead of Leon to the Jeep. She had her prescription, as far as she was concerned, that was that. Leon uncharacteristically was behind her. He made a noise of disbelief.
“Why are you running from me?” he asked in exasperation at her speedy march to the Jeep. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”
“I’m not cut out for that shit,” she said plainly, reaching the Jeep and standing with her hand on the door handle. Leon caught up to her and gazed at her evenly, and Claire felt her ire—her hysteria—her something rising.
“I don’t think you’re giving it much of a chance,” he said, not unlocking her door.
She frowned. “Once is enough. I don’t see the point. I got my meds. I’m done.” Leon remained standing there, staring at her, and she felt her emotions inside her, ready to boil over into some kind of incident. “Are you going to unlock this fucking door or are we just gonna stand here all day?” she snapped, and Leon sighed and stuck his key into the door’s lock, popping it open for her. She climbed in, jerking the seatbelt from its resting place behind her.
Leon got in on the other side and stuck his key into the ignition, the Jeep roaring to life. He reached for his own seatbelt, and then stopped, looking over at her. “The meds are gonna make you sleep. What happens when the meds are out and the problems are still there?”
“I’m not going back,” Claire practically screeched, feeling out of control. She felt like one big, raw, open wound.
“You don’t have to scream,” he said. “I think you’re making a mistake.”
Claire whipped her head around. “I don’t give a fuck what you think. Or him.”
Leon looked over at her, his face impassive. “You’ve never given a fuck what I think.”
The dam broke open in Claire. Her mouth moved faster than her brain. “Oh boo hoo,” she spat. “I don’t need you telling me what to do every five minutes. I’m sick of it.”
“Somebody ought to be telling you what to do,” Leon countered, his tone clipped. “Me, Chris, someone. You’re not exactly killing it on your own.”
“Big Leon the government man,” Claire said, putting her hand up in the air. “All my problems are solved!”
Leon looked at her for a long moment, his jaw working. Claire stared back at him, daring him, pushing him. He let out long breath through his nose, his eyebrows relaxing some. “I’m just trying to help you,” he said finally, his tone less clipped. Claire frowned.
“I’ve made it this far,” she said. “I don’t need help.”
“Sure,” Leon replied, resigned. “Sure, Claire.” He released the e-brake.
“What?” she rounded on him, her voice loud. “Got something to say?”
“No,” he replied firmly, not looking at her. She recognized the jut of his jaw; it spoke of verbal violence he was holding inside. “I’m not going to fight with you.”
“Fine,” she said acidly, folding her arms over her chest. She looked out the window as Leon shifted into reverse. “Just fine.” The Jeep felt very small, and she wished she was somewhere far away.
……………………………………………
Claire seethed on the couch the remainder of the day. Leon, for his part, absented himself in the computer room. In stages, she cooled off, and the internal chewing process began. She didn’t want to go back to Dr. Addison. She had the distinct feeling someone would force her to do it, whether that was Leon or Chris. Leon, she felt like she could argue into submission. Her brother would probably actually drag her in there by her hair.
She was acutely aware of how much of her life was actually at the whim of other people. Claire felt like a child.
Eventually her rage and the blackness inside her receded to a point where she felt the gaping maw of guilt at her. She thought of Leon holding her every night while she slept, and she thought of the verbal equivalent of spitting in his face that day. It was a vicious cycle; Leon chasing her around trying to help her, her repeatedly kicking him in the face. Chris put up with her because she was his sister. Claire didn’t know what Leon’s excuse was.
She stewed until the sun started to go down; she realized the apartment had been entirely silent since they’d returned from the pharmacy, and there’d been silence between them even before that. Claire thought of Leon dutifully paying for her medication at the pharmacy, and she’d stalked off without even a thanks.
Claire wondered exactly how long she’d been such a piece of shit.
She waited until the sun was almost below the horizon and she stood off the couch, coughing. Walking down the hallway, she pushed open the slightly ajar door to the spare room. Leon looked over at her from the computer. His face was unreadable, but he looked somewhat wary. Claire felt like an idiot.
“What do you want to do about dinner?” she asked, her tone small.
Leon rubbed at his eye, and leaned back in his chair. “I’m not much of a cook. Neither are you,” he said. “I dunno. I mean I do have some stuff here I can cook, but most of the time I don’t.”
Claire put her hands on her hips. “You’re the man with the plan, here,” she said, but still felt like she was talking in an undertone. She felt drained.
Leon looked out at some point above her head, his eyes distant. “If it’s left up to me, I’m probably going to order pizza.”
“I’d eat pizza,” Claire said.
“Easy enough,” he said, turning back to the computer.
Claire stood there for a long second, looking at him. “You’re just gonna let me off the hook so easily?” she asked. “I did scream at you today.”
“You did,” he acknowledged, without looking away from the computer.
“So?” she asked expectantly.
“I know what you’re like when you’re not screaming,” Leon replied, “and that keeps me going.”
“I don’t think I’m any real treat then, either,” Claire pointed out.
“That’s for me to decide,” Leon said. “I’ll be done here soon,” he said, indicating the computer.
……………………………………….
Claire stood at the end of the lighted hallway, gazing at the form of Leon on the couch. She tittered some. “Are you sleeping out here tonight?” she asked, feeling like an asshole and a half.
“I had figured you wanted me out here,” he replied from the darkness. “Plus, you got your meds.”
Claire worried her hands in front of her a bit. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “You don’t have to sleep out here. You can come back.”
Leon sighed some and she saw him moving in the half-light, putting his feet on the floor, standing up. He walked across the living room and towards her, and she turned and headed for the bedroom, Leon clicking off the hallway light as he went. They both entered the bedroom, and Claire got under the blankets, and on his side of the bed Leon did the same.
She stared out at the wall, sitting upright, not relaxing. Better get it over with. “Leon, I’m sorry,” she began, quietly. “I don’t know why you haven’t told me to fuck off. I don’t know why you won’t.”
“I’m not going to,” he replied. “Claire, you need help.”
“Understatement of the year,” she managed.
“I know you’re going to blow up at me. I’m trying to deal with that. I came pretty close to losing my temper today, and I’m sorry. I’m really trying not to. But I expect it out of you.”
“What does that say about me,” she began, “that you just expect me to explode on you all the time?”
“We’ve got problems,” Leon said. “I’m months ahead of you in dealing with mine. I don’t expect you to be caught up yet. A few weeks ago you were still in the thick of it.”
“It doesn’t feel real,” Claire acknowledged, narrowing her eyes at the wall. “I still don’t feel like I’m here.”
“Well, you are,” he said.
“And I’m making it everyone’s problem.”
“You need to go back to the doctor. Every week. I know you don’t wanna hear it, but I’m not going to let it drop. You can’t just hold all that shit inside of you inside. You haven’t even said anything to me about it, aside from I killed people, and I know that. It’s going to eat you alive to hold it all in there.”
“You can read my file,” she replied, absently.
“I have read it,” he said. “We got reports of shit happening while you were over there. I had a sinking feeling you were behind it. Or your brother. I suspected a Redfield somewhere,” Leon said. “I’d rather hear it from you.”
“They didn’t guard their houses very well,” Claire continued, still absent. “You’d figure they’d snap to, once people started turning up dead.” She blinked. “I went to Hungary. There was a VP there. His name had come up in some other stuff. I found references to my brother.”
“How did you get armed over there?” Leon asked.
“I met some people in France,” she said, staring at the wall. “I had barely any money, mostly just what I’d squirreled away from your earnings. I ran packages for them once or twice. I don’t know if they were drugs or more guns or what. I got guns for it.”
Leon was silent. Claire forged on.
“This guy in Hungary, he had like two guards. I knew from past experience if they saw me, they were gonna shoot at me, report me, the shit would hit the fan. I stabbed them,” she said, her hands in her lap. She could feel Leon looking at her. “I learned about that, too. I got covered in blood once and it was a mess. I knew I couldn’t be seen looking like that. I went into his house. It was a great big old chateau place. Old guy was just sitting in there by himself, enjoying his evening or whatever. Until I showed up. I wanted to know what he knew about my brother. About Raccoon City. He was obstinate. He didn’t want to talk. I think he kept thinking someone was going to come in and stop me, but I’d killed his guards. I told him that and he still stonewalled me.”
“So you tried to get it out of him,” Leon said.
“I did. You probably know that. I had a kit I carried with me. I taped him to the chair. I pulled out his fingernails. I pulled out some of his teeth. I was about to start beating on him or sawing things off and he finally decided to talk. He gave me access codes. He gave me the password to his computer. He talked for a good long while, then. I don’t know if he didn’t think I was serious or what, but once the teeth started coming out I guess he realized I was serious.”
She looked back at Leon, who was staring back at her evenly.
“I didn’t want him to be able to describe me, or explain anything about why I’d been there,” Claire said. “So when I was done I cut his throat.” She looked down at her hands. “Then I snooped through all his shit, got on his computer, looked at his files. I was there for hours. Then I left.”
Leon shifted some. “I don’t know what it says about me,” he said, “but I was…am…jealous. I had all this rage after Raccoon. Like someone needed to pay. I saw the reports we got and I would think good. Fucking good. They deserved it.”
Claire cocked her head some. “It hasn’t made me feel very good. I felt…nothing at the time. It was a means to an end. And I did it four, five times in different places. I thought I’d feel better. I don’t. I feel fucked up.” She sighed. Tears threatened her eyes. “It fucked me up. And I have no one to blame but myself.”
“Did you say any of this to the doctor today?” Leon asked.
“No,” Claire said. “I mostly just snapped at him. After Europe…that was standard issue shit. Infected, mutated things. Crazy people. Raccoon prepared me for that. I have no problem shooting something trying to rip me limb from limb. Dealing with what I did is harder. I thought Raccoon was the worst it could get. I thought I’d never stop dreaming of that. Now it’s everything. I think I was the biggest monster all along.” Claire felt tears drop from her eyes. She closed them briefly, feeling frustrated. She just wanted to make it through several days in a row without crying.
“I don’t know what to say,” Leon said after a moment. “And I’m not sure how good of a sounding board I am, given that I wish it had been me cutting throats.”
“You’re too good,” Claire said. “I don’t think you would have done it. You’re…saner than me.”
“I feel very not sane a lot,” Leon said. “I feel like I don’t want to deal with this the government’s way. Maybe your way was better.”
“It wasn’t,” Claire said, sniffling. “I’m glad it wasn’t you. I guess that leaves me.”
“Are you crying?” Leon asked.
“Do I do anything else these days?” she asked tiredly, closing her eyes.
“Hey, come on,” he said. “C’mere.” Claire laid back and let herself be enfolded into his arms. She sniffled, feeling the tears rolling off her nose. “So you killed people and I wish I had,” he said, holding her. “This is why we need the doctor.”
“I thought you believed in God,” she said. “I thought God frowned on shit like that.”
Leon sighed. “I don’t think I’ve exactly been very Christian in a long while. Too angry.” His chin rested on her head. “My parents tell me to go to Mass. To what end? To be told I need to turn the other cheek? I’m not willing to hear it yet, and I’m not willing to have some Father tell me what I need to do for me to be good and right.”
“You still wear the cross,” Claire pointed out.
“I do,” Leon said. “Mostly because I have every day since I was twelve. Not sure taking it off would be some big act of rebellion on my part.”
“At least you believe in something,” Claire said. “I’m just out here not making any sense of the world.”
“It isn’t helping me, either,” Leon said. “Mostly I’m just angry. I’m so fucking angry, day in and day out. I go through the motions, I put on my stupid suit, I do whatever I’m going to do but mostly I just want to put my fist through a wall. I want to drink until I fall out of a chair. Not sure I can believe in a loving and all powerful and good God when we turned out this way.”
Claire sniffled some. “I never could.”
“You’re too smart,” Leon replied. “I think religion is for simple minded people like me. I never knew any better.”
“I don’t wanna go back to the doctor,” Claire said.
“You’ve got to. Tell him what you told me. Exactly like this but to him.”
“I’m talking to you,” she said. “For some reason I go in there and I just get…pissed. I feel enraged. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I did too,” Leon said. “I’m sure I swiped at him multiple times. I know I did. I think he’s used to it.”
They fell silent for long moments, and eventually the tears stopped coming out of Claire’s eyes. She lifted her head somewhat and wiped at Leon’s shoulder, swiping the wetness away, and then laid her head back down. She yawned.
“The meds are gonna knock you out,” he informed her. “He gave you the same thing he gave me. You’re gonna be dead to the world.”
“We’ll see,” Claire murmured. “Never doubt the awesome power of my brain to put me through shit.”
“Get the light and we’ll find out,” Leon said, and Claire sat up some, pulling away from him, and turned out the light. She resumed her spot with her head on his shoulder, felt his arms around her again.
“Goodnight,” she whispered.
“Good night,” Leon returned, his voice quiet. “Enjoy the sleep.
