“Mrs. Bob Leckie. Will you marry me?”
Her lovely face twists and gains a wrinkle. “Yes, I have. And if I somehow haven’t, then I will.”
bob and vera leckie have been married for seven years. no warnings, 1.5k, fic under the cut and linked at top.
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“Seven year itch.” Bob says with a chuckle. In their master bathroom, he goes down on one knee and pops open a velvet ring box. “I’m thinking about asking the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood to run away with me.”
He’s being stupid and it’s freeing. His wife, Vera, looks confused. Confused and worried that her husband means something he couldn’t.
“Marry me, Vera. Just us. It doesn’t even have to count, I just-” Bob isn’t discouraged by the look on her face. Making her upset makes him ashamed, but that’s a feeling he wants, badly, so, his face falls and he lowers his head. He wants to be here and he wants to sell the house. He’s staring at her shins and wondering how he ever got in the habit of letting her do all the shopping. “I don’t like the man you married.”
“Bob…”
“He’s a good man and you are the greatest woman in the world for giving him a chance but-“
“Bob, I love you. I love you.”
He looks up at her and she looks uncomfortable—like she feels undeserving of how he’s looking at her. He knows it’s not fair to look at someone—someone who is normal—like that. (Because he’s been told off.) Every savior Bob has ever had had saved him when he was at his new lowest, his strongest showing of his worst. He’s done with pretending he’s not sick and deficient when she loves him and could keep loving him forever.
“I already love you. You don’t have to prove yourself. You already have proved yourself.”
“Well, I feel bad about it. Not -! I didn’t mean to say that I felt bad about marrying you,” he pauses to wriggle his eyebrows meaningfully, “Mrs. Bob Leckie. Will you marry me?”
Her lovely face twists and gains a wrinkle. “Yes, I have. And if I somehow haven’t, then I will.” If you tricked me.
“You married me.” He confirms. He turns his stare on the bathroom rug she stands on. “I don’t know how to explain myself.”
. . . . . .
Vera kneels in the garden. He’s always envied her tools and how easily she puts them back in their proper places. She has a cloth-rag to wipe the dirt off and she cleans that rag when it needs it.
He watches as she picks a slug off one of her plants and flicks it into a jar. It looks meditative or like it could be. He asks what she’s thinking and she starts talking about the garden or what their neighbor said. Bob thinks it might be like writing for her, but he doesn’t get how it could possibly come close.
He meets her at the back door. “What’s with all the kneeling?”
“What?”
“In gardening. I can’t get you a stool or a mat or something?”
She grins as she brushes past him inside. “Don’t spoil me. Lugging something like that around would just be more work.”
“Which is it? More work or more spoiled?”
. . Clothes. He’s always wearing nice clothes around her. She removes the stains. She mends the frays. She learns his taste. She buys him clothes. She buys her own, and the childrens’. Gifts appear on important dates under his name. When she unwraps some cashmere-blend, out comes a twinkle in her eye along with the scarf as if this is some marvelous trick she’s pulled on him. Oh, he’s tricked. Tricked into telling her it looks good on her with a sly wink. He is never in trouble and he has nothing to apologize for.
. . Letters. He writes for work, he writes for himself. He writes, writes, writes. Reality makes a great story—his reality. He marries his childhood sweetheart. Good story, good ending. Gets his sweetheart, gets her pregnant. He marries his childhood and makes her his mother—but attentive to him this time. It’s too self-conscious and she would wrinkle her nose. Well, he’s a writer. He knows she knows because one of them told the other: writing is good for him. Nothing better for him.
. . Churchgoing folk. The lace she uses to cover her hair is almost pink. It’s flowers or something like flowers. Some mysterious delicate thing made indecipherable pattern. He doesn’t get distracted. Eyes on the cross. He has found God again and believes in Him. But what fucking pattern is his wife’s church veil? He never touches it.
Bob goes to their front door. It’s his house and he can leave if he wants to. That wife of his can’t do that. She has the kids. This seems really fucking unfair, so he kneels in front the door, his hands clasped around the knob like its one, big rosary bead.
“Now, what to pray for?” He asks God quietly.
God is in everything: the chilled air coming through under the door; the ticking clocks—kitchen, study, bedrooms; the sound of his wife’s garden tousled by a breeze; his breath condensing on his hands.
The sounds Vera makes as she opens their bedroom door and descends the stairs are all her. God is in her, too, of course. But that’s what free will is—getting out of a warm bed to bother your husband when he’s trying to feel sorry for himself.
Her hand lands gently on his shoulder.
“Another star in your crown.” He informs her.
“I never know what to say to that,” she says.
“Tell me to come to bed.”
“Come to bed.” She doesn’t say it too quickly or without feeling. She’s perfect.
“Who am I? Do you need me?”
“Um, I need you.” In bed, she means, because she’s thinking about sleep. He can hear her shy smile.
“I woke you up. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Bob.”
He loves how her hand stays on him as he stands up. When he turns around, her hand moves to his shoulder again and she’s made it so easy for him to pretend that they came down here to dance. So easy to surprise her with a dance in the moonlight. He used to annoy so many people. All his friends were angry at him. His parents didn’t want to be around him, didn’t want to think about him when he was gone. “Vera, Vera. My beautiful wife, Vera.” He sings at her gently and she smiles. The second lyric to his song is, “What am I going to do with you?” and the third is “So beautiful,” and then it repeats.
It’s a slow song, but doesn’t have to be. It can be wild enough for some spins and twirls—but overall is quiet because they can’t play loud music while their babies sleep.
“Bob, Bob.” Vera sings softly. She’s too tired to finish the verse.
“You can call me beautiful if you want.” He says, kissing the top of her head.
She giggles, half-asleep in his arms.
. . . . . .
Bob looks up again at his wife, Vera. “I don’t know how to explain myself,” he tries again, “but I want you to marry a man who is going to try to be awful. A man who doesn’t care anymore if he’s a good man or a good husband because he just-“ His eyes are pleading, now, as he looks at her. “He asks you too many questions when you’re too busy to talk. He spends too much money on you and never buys vegetables. I want to kiss you in front of the children and hold you tight to my side in public. I want to do that in church! I want to never complain to you about work and then come home fired because I got so frustrated I called McAdams a cross-eyed sleeveen in front of his mother—who shouldn’t be dropping off his lunch everyday anyway.”
Vera snorts and starts giggling. “What does sleeveen mean?”
“Trickster. Saboteur who coerced me into writing the birth announcements when it was supposed to be his turn.”
“You’re so childish.”
“I am!” Bob holds the velvet box aloft anew. “Marry me. Marry this childish asshole who dared propose to you in a bathroom.”
“Oh, oh, fine.”
“She accepts!” He begins by taking off her old ring like he hates it (he had spent a long time picking it out) and then he looks so, so nervous as he slides her new one on. It fits her perfectly and she had forgotten what that felt like.
“What are you doing with that ring?” She asks. Her diamond sparkles on the bathroom sink.
“The kids from your first marriage can figure it out.” Bob decides dismissively. “Hey, old lady, when can we start making our own?”
“Oh, you’re terrible.”
“Good!”
“Be quiet.” Vera says (because their kids are sleeping) but she is smiling. Looking at her, he thinks she’s feeling, too, the first flush of love that had once been stifled by the pressure of coming home.
vera being such a hugely important figure in leckies life.... his whole life is about writing and being a writer snd the first time he mentions writing in any capacity it's to say that he'll write to her!! that's the majority of the time we see him writing throughout the show!!
and the less we see him write, the less himself he becomes. the less central of a figure vera becomes to him, the more he loses himself. and even when he gets back home, he struggles and is frustrated with his writing because his identity as a writer has been (literally!!) erased by the war (via his letters)
and it's not until he actually gets to know HER that he not only gets to claim that role again but gets to redefine it and come back to himself in an entirely new context (especially in the historical context of vera owning the same typewriter he lost on the elliot and being his editor)
at the end of the day leckie COULD not know himself until he knew vera which is a crazy punch to pack into 4 total scenes of interaction
yes bee we can go back to talking about bob leckie where would you like to start 😊
how about how he wanted to be a writer his whole life but the second he touched down in a war zone he lost his typewriter to sea, but then found the exact same typewriter in vera's house. and then let's walk into the ocean.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pacific (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Vera Keller/Robert Leckie
Summary:
The record that he had spent good money on, wasted. A pressing problem for Robert Leckie at the tail end of 1941.
Now it seemed so insignificant. The least of his problems. Robert Leckie in 1945 could hardly imagine why it had ever seemed so important.
There were things that needed done. He needed to go get his job back. He needed to write. He needed a purpose. Because at this exact moment he had no purpose. His life felt like this broken record. That’s what the war had felt like at least.
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Robert Leckie makes it home from the war. He tries to make sense of the changes.
