Frea O'Scanlin

Leon held up his wrist, his movements almost drunken as he pointed to his watch. “I made it in time.”

“With a whole twenty minutes to spare, even. Want to come in and sit down?”

A nod, which listed to the side. Claire held open the door. The second he actually did sit down, she figured he’d be out like a light. Why he’d decided to go to her place instead of his remained a mystery, but she could ask later. After she got fluid and some food into him, and he was in less danger of crashing to the ground. She could only hope he’d done the sensible thing and taken a cab.

She closed the door behind him and latched it. When she turned back to guide him to a chair, though, Leon went down. Roughly. He landed on one knee and grunted.

“Leon!”

“M’fine.” He waved a hand at her as she raced over. “Meant to do that.”

“Of course you did.” She reached down to haul him back to his feet, but he batted her hands away. Baffled, she stepped back. “Okay, fine. But if you pass out like that, I’m leaving you there. I’ll get you a blanket, but that’s it.”

He snickered and wobbled, still kneeling. “Always taking care of me.”

“The bare minimum of it, yes,” Claire agreed, amused.

She started to crouch, the better to brace him if he fell over, but Leon gently pushed her away again. He held out a fist toward her. His head wobbled like he was on the deck of a stormy ship. “Let me do this right.”

“What on earth…what is going on with you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Leon, balance still precarious, seemed to risk it all to wrap his other hand around her wrist. He dropped something into her palm. “Trying to propose.”

Claire’s mind absolutely went blank.

“We made it to forty and we’re still alive,” Leon went on. “A deal’s a deal. Happy birthday. Marry me.”

And he passed out.

Leaving Claire standing in her foyer holding an engagement ring.

What the fuck?

He fully expected to wake up on cold tiles, so the mattress was a pleasant surprise. As were the pillows, the lack of his own stench, and the fresh bandage around his shoulder. His nose itched; he could live without that. But he felt way too comfortable and warm to do anything about it. And he could hear breathing, as welcome and familiar as his own, nearby.

“Thought you said you were going to leave me on the floor,” he mumbled into the pillow.

He heard a snort. “Your back is messed up enough as it is. I did make you take a shower first.”

“I appreciate that.”

“So do the sheets that I just washed two days ago.”

“Mm. They smell nice.” He shifted to get more comfortable and realized belatedly what was tickling his nose. Claire’s hair also smelled like roses. Opening one eye confirmed that while he wasn’t wrapped around her or anything, she was right next to him. Sharing the same pillow. Hers, he realized, as he was the one spread diagonally across the mattress, boxing her in against the edge. One of his knees brushed against the back of her thigh. “Do you need me to move?”

“I’ve already shoved you back three times.” Claire sounded more amused than resigned. “I gave up. Good thing I’m not particularly claustrophobic.”

Leon took a few seconds to ponder what she’d said. “So was that a yes?”

“Might as well stay put. At least you’re warm.”

“It feels unfair. Hold on.” He glanced over his shoulder, wincing as that tugged at the bandage, then scooted back. He pulled the pillow toward him and wrapped his other arm around Claire, who made a noise in protest as he dragged her back, too. He let her go, reluctantly. “Was a little scared you were going to fall off.”

“Sure, now you worry about it,” she grumbled. She squirmed until she was on her back. In the pre-dawn gloom, her eyes were practically the only feature he could see. “How are you feeling?”

Leon groaned. Too much thinking. He just wanted to sleep.

“Got it. And just how much head trauma have you suffered in the past twenty-four hours?”

“None.”

“At all?”

“Head’s fine.”

“So the proposing to me was, what? A joke?”

Oh, right. That finally got through the fog. Maybe he had hit his head. It wouldn’t be the first time. The thing was, he could remember holding the ring out toward her. He even kind of remembered asking. But he didn’t remember if she’d said yes.

He opened his eyes, reached over, and picked up her left hand. No ring. Leon’s head thumped back into the pillow. “Right,” he said.

“Right, it was a joke, or right, something else?”

“Not a joke. A deal. Forty. Married.” He might not have done any damage to his skull lately, but his head did hurt. More importantly, he really wanted to get back to sleep. “Seemed appropriate.”

“Appropriate? I don’t even think I was old enough to drink when we made that deal, and deals that involve an entire handle of bad tequila aren’t exactly ones you keep.”

“I’m a man of my word. My word was that if we were both single when you hit forty, we get married.” Leon set Claire’s hand down and patted it. Distantly, he knew there was a problem, but up close he decided the problem could be handled when he was rested up. He tried to burrow into his pillow—only to come up sputtering when Claire grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head up. He squinted against the assault of her phone flashlight in his face. “Ow! What gives?”

“Checking for a concussion, which I should have done earlier.” She leaned over him, giving him an excellent view down the front of her tank top. “Something is very wrong with you.”

“Because I want to marry you? That’s not a concussion, that’s just a fact.”

“Your pupils seem fine,” she said, but she sounded doubtful. She let go of his hair and smoothed it back down, which felt nice. Leon wanted to lean into it, but instead he put his head back down. “You know what? The faster you go back to sleep, the sooner you can be lucid, and then we can get to the bottom of this.”

“Get to the bottom of what? It’s simple,” Leon said, closing his eyes and shifting to get more comfortable. “If we both made it to forty, which neither of us was ever going to do but we still somehow did, we agreed to get married. That time has come. You pick the venue. I already got the ring. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

And he drifted off to sleep, wondering vaguely what the thumping noise was.

Banging her head against the headboard did not magically reset the day and solve this utter weirdness that had invaded her life, Claire discovered with some disappointment. She sighed to herself and checked her bedside clock—still over an hour before her alarm clock would have gone off, had she set it. Circumstances being what they were, she’d called off for the day. Her coworkers would probably suspect it of being a post-fortieth birthday bash hangover. She didn’t want to explain that the truth was much weirder: she’d spent the night being aggressively cuddled by the man who’d proposed to her out of the blue because one time when they were young and stupid and drunk, they’d made some kind of pact.

Any depression she’d been feeling about this milestone had withered away in the face of whatever the hell this was. Mostly she was just baffled. It felt like a practical joke, but Leon seemed dead serious about all of it.

You pick the venue. I already got the ring.

What the hell, Leon?

She could hear his breathing steadying again, so sleep had once again claimed him. Not a snorer, so a point in his favor. Major bed-hog, a point against. It didn’t seem to be about taking up real estate for him: he simply needed to be right up against wherever she was. She suspected she could be in the center of the bed and he would happily squeeze himself to one side, just as long as she was nearby. He’d only seemed to crowd her because she’d tried to get away from him earlier.

Even now, he began to inch toward her, one hand reaching for her hip. She could have pushed him back, but what was the point? She laid back down and pulled Leon’s arm across her. If he was going to be there, he might as well be useful and keep her warm. He settled in with a sigh and Claire very considerately did not flick his nose, though she thought about it.

She should let him come back to his senses—she didn’t exactly believe him about the head trauma—and tell him she’d booked them a flight to Vegas. It would serve him right for whatever this prank was. She could play relationship chicken with the best of them.

It was probably why she was still single at forty.

Why Leon was still single should have been a mystery…but sadly, it wasn’t. Handsome beyond measure, he still had all of his hair, insanely clever, bleeding heart, protective—all the good qualities in spades. But Claire had watched him strike out with women for decades. It was almost like he was cursed. In an emergency, you could have nobody better at your back. The second flirting was required, he transformed into a blithering idiot. Being stuck in the “good friend” category had at least exempted her from experiencing that firsthand.

Until now. When he’d proposed in her foyer and passed out from fatigue. As opening moves went, it made a statement.

Since she wasn’t going to sleep anyway, not with every single nerve-ending in her body hyper-aware of Leon pressing against her, Claire settled in and tried to recall exactly what she’d said to Leon twenty years before that had led to this disaster. She hadn’t been kidding about the tequila—it had been as disgusting as it had been cheap. Leon hadn’t known anything about alcohol yet, she’d had no money, and therefore they’d only been able to get their hands on what his government paycheck could cover. Bad vodka, worse tequila, and frozen orange juice from concentrate in a cracked pitcher, accompanied by greasy microwave dinners. He’d been drinking because training was stressful, she’d been drinking to forget everything that had happened in Europe.

Now, twenty years later, Claire’s thumb trailed over the silvered scar that crept above her clavicle.

“It’s not that noticeable,” Leon had insisted as he’d poured himself another screwdriver—heavier on the vodka than the orange juice. Claire had just looked at him. The scar from the Rockfort Island prison collar had been livid and red and she couldn’t even hide it with a turtleneck because she hated things on her neck. “What? It’s not. I only noticed because you keep messing with it. No other guy is gonna pay attention to it at all. It’s barely there.”

“It’s hideous,” Claire had said.

Leon shrugged and yanked off his T-shirt. Weeks of training had given him more definition across his chest and upper arms than Claire had remembered. And he knew it, too. He pointed enthusiastically at the gross purple mess left from his bullet wound. “This is way worse.”

“It is not. Put your shirt back on.”

“It’s really bad, Claire,” Leon insisted. “Look at it. No woman is going to take me seriously. I’m going to have to keep my shirt on around women forever.”

“Are you sure? Because you’ve taken it off three times in front of me already tonight, and I still count as ‘women.’”

“Yeah, but you’re Claire.”

Claire had rolled her eyes. “Hey, stand still.”

“What? Why?”

Claire had punched him in the abdomen—which hurt her fist more than it had hurt him. Even though she hadn’t done it very hard. Leon had barely flinched. “See this? You have a six-pack, dumbass. Women are going to be way more interested in that than whatever’s going on up there.”

“And you’ve got…” Leon waved his hand in front of his face. “…all of that going on. Nobody’s gonna notice a piddly little scar.”

“That sounded like a compliment.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t even need to punch you to get my point across.” Leon downed half of his drink and pointed at her in vindication. “What are you even scared of? I figure you’d have dudes lined up out the door already.”

“I wish. I’m way too much of a headcase for that.”

“Aw.” Leon had dropped onto the couch next to her, still shirtless. “Worried you won’t find the future Mr. Claire Redfield?”

“Of course not.”

Two decades later, she could still remember feeling affronted at the very idea. She’d been twenty, a college dropout and already on terrorist watchlists due to her actions at the Parisian Umbrella facility. Finding Mr. Right had not been a priority. Figuring out how to live with the waking nightmares and constant flashes of terror and ever-present sense of doom had been far more important. Years of therapy and self-work had made the latter less pressing these days, but still. Back then it had terrified her.

“What about you?” she remembered asking him, a little viciously. “Worried you’re going to die alone, too?”

His face had turned abruptly sad. “They’re sending me in to fight zombies. Of course I’m going to die alone.”

“You will not.” She’d rolled her eyes because dealing with big feelings like that wasn’t fun. And it had mirrored her own sense of doom, which felt uncomfortable and like it should be confronted, but she’d been purposely way too drunk for that. “You’ll find somebody.”

“Soon?” He’d looked hopeful.

“No offense, but I doubt it. When would you even have time? I’ve been in town for over a month and this is the first time I’ve seen you.”

“Before I’m forty, then?”

She’d snorted. “According to you, neither of us is making it to forty. We’ll be in a full zombie apocalypse by then.”

“True.” He’d swallowed the rest of his drink in one gulp, then looked morose. “Hey, you know what? You’re ‘women.’”

“You just noticed?” Claire had asked. He’d stopped making sense three mostly-vodka-screwdrivers before. She’d taken a long pull of tequila—mistake—and made a face at him. “What does that have to do with the price of eggs?”

“I’ll be the Mr. Claire Redfield of your dreams, and you can be my ‘women.’ Well, woman.”

“Ew.”

But Leon had attached himself to some idea, and there was no stopping that train on its tracks. “Obviously this is only if we make it to forty—both of us, so I’ll be like forty-two, but that’s fine, you’re worth waiting for—without finding anybody. I’ll marry you. I’ll do it. Then neither of us has to die alone. Provided we’re not already dead, of course.”

Maybe it had been the tequila. Maybe it had been the miserable six months she’d had. Maybe it had been because Leon’s idea was hilarious. Maybe it had been a sense of nihilism: they were both going to die young and pretty, and that was pretty obvious from their life choices in the past half-year. But Claire had laughed and picked up Leon’s cup to pour him a new drink.

“Sure,” she’d said as she’d walked into his tiny kitchen. “Why the fuck not? If we’re both single when I hit forty, I’ll marry you.”

Twenty years later, the question had become Why the fuck didn’t I say no?

Either time.

She was still trying to puzzle that out, and avoid the very obvious answer staring her in the face, when the warmth and comfort of Leon wrapped around her finally overwhelmed her defenses, and she drifted off to sleep.

She stirred awake when she felt Leon stumble out of bed, disappearing down the hall toward the bathroom. Claire sat up and stretched, grimacing at the mirror across the room. Of course her hair was a mess, tangled about her face, and she figured if she didn’t get coffee soon, innocent victims might suffer her wrath. This is forty, she thought, studying the lines in her face before forcing herself to stop. First thing in the morning was never a good time for anybody’s vanity.

She yawned and stumbled out to the coffee maker, pouring in extra water. She assumed Leon would stick around, though maybe he’d flee like a coward when he was fully cognizant of what he’d done.

The first drips of coffee were just hitting the glass when he strolled in, remarkably more awake than her. He flashed her a smile, eyes slightly sleepy but definitely clear. “Good morning.”

“Nuh-uh, not a good morning. Explain.”

Instead of faking innocent, though, his smile grew. He did wisely step back out of range. “Explain what?”

A thousand questions bubbled up. Claire started with the easiest. “Did you plan this? Did you just have some twisted little countdown with a fake engagement ring so you could say ‘gotcha’ and laugh in my face?”

She’d spent nearly half an hour trying not to stare at the ring, now back in the box she’d found in the side pocket of Leon’s pants.

It was a stunning ring. Perfect for her, really. Which made this whole thing worse.

Leon looked gobsmacked. Good. There was a lot of that going around. “What?” he asked. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Then why the hell did you do it?”

“You forgot, huh? You said if you’re still single at forty, would I marry you, and I said yes. I don’t break promises, so here I am. The ring is very real.”

Claire blinked at him. “What? No, that’s now how it—no, I remember this very well, and I remember clearly that this was your idea.”

“Been thinking about this a lot, have you?” Leon asked.

“I don’t know, something happened very recently to bring it to mind!”

“I don’t think you’re remembering right. But you were about 56 percent tequila by volume at that point, so maybe it’s to be expected.”

Claire threaded her fingers through her hair and let out a groan of frustration, feeling like she was losing her mind. In the background, the coffeemaker continued to bubble away. “You kept talking about dying alone and I definitely remember that you specifically asked me. Because I’m ‘women’ or something.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense—we were both drunk!”

“So maybe neither of us remember it accurately. But we agree a promise was made.” He went over to the cabinet and pulled down mugs for both of them.

“A crazy promise that only crazy people would follow through on. I’m pretty sure you were shirtless at the time, too, which undercuts the validity of said promise.”

His smile remained deceptively bland, but she knew him: he was laughing at her. Silently, but he was. “That memory’s crystal clear, huh?”

“And not an unusual one for that time period, I should point out.” She wanted to throttle him a little—or start laughing herself. But that would only egg him on, so she wrinkled her nose at him as she took the coffee from him. She didn’t step back. “I was worried you were overheating all the time, what with your propensity for taking your shirt off.”

“The six-pack was a novelty, that’s all. I keep my shirt on more these days.” But his lips twitched with amusement.

“You just traded that particular vanity in for tighter shirts. I see you.” She reached out and squeezed his bicep, which of course felt hard as a rock. And then realized she’d been a little crass. He was not a slab of beef, after all. “Sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry about? You’re marrying the full package. Might as well test it out.”

Claire stared. “When the hell did you learn how to flirt?”

He looked surprised. “This is flirting?”

“Of course it—never mind.”

It was amazing she didn’t have a headache. The past twelve hours had taken what she’d felt to be a comfortable and wonderful lifelong friendship and had dumped everything on its head. Even when they’d been fighting, they’d always had a camaraderie that transcended everything else—likely as a result of their mirrored experiences surviving one of the most horrible nights on the planet. She’d always just figured he was a solid anchor in her life, and she was the storm that tried to ruffle him and had never managed to do so.

He opened the fridge and peered inside. “So now that you know it’s not a prank, what exactly are your objections to all of this?”

“Besides the fact that it’s crazy?”

“Besides that.”

“Well…” She could think of a million things, Claire supposed. Or she should have been able to do that. Her mind had grown frustratingly blank. It’s not how things are done felt silly when neither of them had exactly ever had a normal life. She watched him pull out the creamer—something she kept on hand for him and Chris, as she’d never liked it—and splash it into his mug before adding coffee to both of theirs. She ran a hand over her face. “We don’t even know if we’re sexually compatible, so there’s that.”

Leon spilled creamer on the counter and muttered under his breath. He set the carton down.

“What?” she asked him.

“Sorry. I said, ‘there’s an easy way to find out.’” He grabbed a paper towel and raised an eyebrow, tilting his head in the direction of her bedroom, then returned to cleaning up the mess.

Maybe she could blame the lack of sleep and a tiny bit of a hangover for the fact that it took a full ten seconds for her brain to process what he meant. And even then, she stared.

Well, huh.

Not something she’d actively considered, even in all the years knowing him. Not that she saw him like a brother—anything but, actually, which was why it had infuriated her for the years he’d attempted to treat her like an annoying kid sister. And sure, there had been a fair few dreams over the years, but those were an occupational hazard with attractive friends. Maybe a bit of idle wondering on top of that, nothing extraordinary. Hell, most of it stemmed from being amazed that he was so bad with women when he had both that face and a careful attention to detail.

But she’d never deliberately given it much thought. Like she was right now. She eyed the same tight shirt she’d teased him about. Thanks to a full night of being the little spoon, she knew exactly what musculature lay underneath (not that the shirt left much to the imagination anyway). Excitement began to thrum through her, a little baffling in its intensity. She watched the play of light on his forearms as he put away the creamer.

The sane part of her interjected. Focus.

“I’ll keep that in mind for later,” she said. “Right now, I’d rather be rational.”

“Less fun, but sure,” Leon said, taking a sip of his coffee. His eyes stayed on hers, absolutely amused. The jerk was enjoying himself. “Give me a pros and cons list, since you love those so much. What other objections are there? Somebody else in the picture?”

Claire jerked her gaze away and stared instead at her coffee, her thumb flicking over the top of the mug handle.

“Wait, is there?” Leon asked. “Uh, is anybody about to come beat my ass because I slept in your bed last night?”

“No, there’s nobody. Having two sort-of-boyfriends in a row mutate into horrifying monsters tends to kill potential romantic feelings. And wasn’t that a few fun years in therapy for me.” With a sigh, Claire moved over to the dining room table and sat down. She suddenly wasn’t hungry any more, in any sense of the word.

She could see Leon doing the calculations in his head as he walked over to join her. He’d known about Neil because he’d listened to her rant in those interminably boring months of recuperation after escaping from the penal colony. To this day, she wasn’t sure how much he’d retained, as he’d spent most of those hours trying and failing to balance a pencil on his nose and driving her absolutely crazy.

“Two?” he finally asked now.

“I had a fling with Piers Nivans. Never telling Chris about that one.” She took a long sip of coffee. “Nice guy. Not sure it would’ve worked out, but never got the chance to find that out for myself.”

“Sorry to hear that. But if you think about it, not really something you should worry about happening a third time. I’ve had years and countless opportunities to mutate into a horrifying monster,” Leon said. He waved a hand in front of his face. “But look at this handsome mug. Completely unchanged. Excellent marriage candidate.”

It startled a genuine laugh out of her. “Is this some kind of midlife crisis on your part?”

“A Porsche is a midlife crisis,” Leon said. “And I already checked off that box. Try again.”

“Then what is this?”

“I don’t know how many ways there are to say ‘we had a deal and I’m holding up my end of the bargain,’ Redfield,” Leon said in a patient tone. But he glanced away, just for an instant, something indecipherable in his expression.

Well, it might have indecipherable to somebody else. But Claire had known him for over twenty years. He’d seen her at his worst, she’d seen him at his best, and even though their orbits had dragged them in and out of each other’s lives in unpredictable ways, she still knew him.

She gasped.

“What?” Leon asked, head jerking up.

“You want to marry me,” she said.

He looked at the ceiling, as though praying for patience. “I’ve said so, repeatedly. Multiple times in the past ten minutes even. I even got you a ring, I don’t know why you would think I wasn’t serious.”

“No, no,” Claire said, still reeling from the epiphany. “You got me a ring that was perfect for me. This is more than some drunken deal we made. That’s just the smokescreen, isn’t it? You’ve been waiting for this. You planned ahead. Did you have a countdown?”

It unfolded before her like a map. Not just the past twelve hours, but months before that, too, all lined up. Leon casually swinging by after missions, dropping off-handed comments about having no food in his place until Claire asked him if he just wanted to stay for dinner. She’d gone along with him as a plus one to several work events, ostensibly because it also gave her an opportunity to see Sherry. He’d even brought her flowers once, though he’d said they were leftovers from an office wedding shower event.

Leon opened his mouth to defend himself now, then stopped. He closed his mouth. And looked guilty.

“What even was your plan?” Claire asked.

Leon folded his arms across his chest and stared at the table. He muttered something.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘treat you really well and hope you just like being married to me so much that you decide it’d be too much paperwork to get out of it after I piss you off the first time,’” Leon said. He tilted back in his chair until it was balanced precariously on two legs, only his foot hooked around the table leg preventing him from crashing over. “I’ll admit, maybe I’ve had better ideas. You’re actually scary good at paperwork.”

“Thank you.” She said it primly because it was either that or start laughing. “But that’s a terrible plan.”

“Treating you well is a terrible plan?”

Claire ignored the obvious bait. “Just exactly how long have you felt this way?”

Leon, still balancing, only raised his eyebrows at her. Even torture wasn’t getting this one out of him. Which told her everything she needed to know.

“Why not tell me any of this at any point? Why wait and stick to the stupid deal we made all those years ago, if you felt like this?”

A spontaneous grin lit up his whole face. “Because it’s funnier this way.”

Groaning, Claire rose to her feet and moved around the table. When she would have passed Leon’s chair, though, she stopped. He continued to lean back in his seat, perilously close to tipping over, eyes laughing as he looked up at her. The years had carved away the boyishness, etching lines into the features, but the steadiness remained. As did the hard-won humor.

“I’m not going to say yes and marry you because of a deal we had when we were young and stupid, Leon,” she said.

Disappointment flickered and vanished just as quickly. He held out his arms to help keep his balance, wobbling a little in the chair. “I figured.”

“But—” She struck lightning fast, grabbing the front of his shirt and kissing him before she lost her nerve. He tasted like coffee. She felt his lips curve up in a smile before he leaned in, fingers threading into her hair. She broke off before she could lose every thought in her head. “Ask me again sometime. In a few months, maybe. At least buy me dinner first.”

She stepped back, pleased to have the last word.

Leon blinked at her rapidly, his face a mix of shock and happiness—before he abruptly crashed to the ground, apparently having forgotten what he’d been doing.

“Holy shit,” Claire said, kneeling next to him. “Are you okay?”

“Never better.” He coughed and rolled onto his side, then surprised her by smirking. “Look at that. I’m already falling for you.”

This time her groan was genuine. “Do those lines ever really work?”

“I don’t know. Bet I’ll find out in a few months, though.” He moved, and grimaced. “Ow. These knees are not as young as they used to be. Help me up, will you?”