leon’s

Your therapist takes in the way you both sit on her couch over the rims of her glasses. Your legs and arms are crossed and you don’t dare look in his direction, lest he thinks he’s not in the doghouse. The first fifteen minutes of this session have been an awkward, stilted silence.

Leon’s legs are spread, his arms folded as he sneaks glances at you from the corners of his eyes. His mouth is downturned at the corners, contrasting the thin line yours is pressed into.

Not to stereotype or anything, but she can definitely see which one dragged the other to marriage therapy. She’s just surprised it’s the man wanting to fix something.

Okay. Since neither of you want to speak, she’ll go first. “Would either of you like to tell me why we’re here this week?” She asks, writing the date in the top left corner of the legal pad’s page. 11 - 18 - 24

She watches you scoff and shift where you sit, balancing your temple on two fingers. “You’re a marriage counselor, aren’t you?” You don’t even look at her as you speak, words ground out from your teeth. “Why else does a couple come to you?”

Alright, not a good start. She watches Leon reach over before he stops himself, a hand returning to his lap. Instead, he says your name softly, begging you to look over at him with those big blue eyes.

You don’t look over.

He changes tactics, head lifting. “Be nice.” He says softly, body shifting to face you as he looks over, drinking you in.

You don’t respond, staring angrily into a space over the therapist’s shoulder.

Leon sucks in a breath through his teeth as he leans back, his hand midway between you two on the ugly upholstery.

Your therapist clears her throat, eyes flicking between the two of you. “Why are you two here?”

Leon takes the lead, his eyes sliding over to you. “We’re having… problems.”

You scoff immediately. “Understatement.” You mutter under your breath, arms folding tightly again.

Leon’s mouth presses into a line as he restrains himself from giving into your baiting before he says, “I’ll lay my cards out on the table.”

You bristle, eyes flicking over at him. Your face is stonily neutral, the slight knot of your brows betraying your frustration.

Wife and husband in habit of needling one another.

“I drank. A lot.” Leon leans back, crossing an ankle over his opposite knee. “And she did a lot to try and keep our marriage afloat before I got my head out of my ass.”

Your therapist notes this on her legal pad. “How long ago was this?”

“Three-ish years.” Leon offers, lacing his fingers together. His wedding band glints in the light—yours is conspicuously absent. His eyes land on you, the second time he’s spoken directly to you. “And I’m forever grateful.”

“Mhm.” Therapist writes that husband is apologetic and open, attempting to bridge the gap. Wife is unreceptive. “And how long have you both been married?”

Shit. That’s a better question for you, you have the dates straight, somehow. Your first time, the date you two got married, the day you two met, your first daughter’s birthday, your first son’s birthday, your second daughter and son’s birthday.

He used to tease you about your calendar brain early on. You’d look a little sheepish and he’d kiss it right off you.

Leon sneaks a glance at you like a drowning man looks at a float. “Um…” He can feel his face warming up, a pretty flush spreading across his cheeks.

You shift, sighing through your nose and picking at the seam of your jeans. “Sixteen years.”

Right. Wife seems to defrost when asked how long they’ve been together—sixteen years.

“And how did you meet?” Just so she has the dates straight.

“College.” Your face heats the longer Leon stares holes into your cheek. Wife seems nostalgic of the early days of relationship. “I worked at the campus dining hall.”

A small, helpless smile spreads across Leon’s face. “I came over to the sandwich and pasta stations as much as I could.”

Husband holds affection for wife still.

You don’t look up at him and your therapist can watch the heartache bloom in his eyes before he looks away.

“What’s your perspective, Mrs. Kennedy?” The therapist asks you, crossing her legs.

You stay silent for so long that the therapist wonders whether you heard her before you say emotionlessly, “He did drink.” Your eyes fall to your fingers. “And mope, and feel bad for himself.”

“I went through a lot of things.” Leon says quietly. Your therapist opens her mouth to hush him, but you beat him to the punch.

“Nobody’s saying you didn’t.” You look up at him for the first time. “If you’d let me finish, you’d understand what I’m saying.”

Your therapist holds up her hands before this can devolve into a full-on argument. “Excuse me.” Two pairs of eyes settle on her. “Let’s not interrupt one another, please. And let’s keep the hostility to the minimum.”

“I’m not being hostile.” You retort, brows furrowing in the middle.

“You’re not exactly being gentle, either.” Leon mutters, raising a brow when you look at him with a frown on your face.

Husband and wife have habit of speaking over one another. “Please.” Your therapist says a little louder. “Mrs. Kennedy, continue.” Wife is on defense.

You take a steadying breath and let it out slowly. Wife employs self-soothing mechanisms. “I was going to say that the previous drinking isn’t the issue to me.” You uncross and recross your legs, bouncing the one on top. “The drinking, frankly, wasn’t a surprise.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Your lips part, eyes flicking over to Leon as you attempt to figure out the best way to talk without breaking his confidentiality.

Leon doesn’t look at you, head balanced on two fingers.

“I…” You take another deep breath. “It’s his job. It’s… it’s a tedious and stressful job. And he’d—“ you cut yourself off, glancing at him again.

“You can say it, it’s fine.” Leon says, sounding particularly weary.

You look particularly conflicted when he says that, mouth turning down at the corners. “He’d got the job from a big incident in ninety-eight. He wasn’t supposed to have this job.”

Wife employing vagaries to protect husband.

“Mhm.” Your therapist looks vaguely uneasy at the omission, but lets you go on.

“He hadn’t started drinking heavily until he was working for the President.” You chew on your cheek, eyes on your husband. “Then after that, he tried to go away to Colorado for a week, leaving me pregnant with three kids.”

Leon’s mouth pulls into a line. “So that’s what this is about.”

Husband and wife hold vague resentment for husband’s job.

Your therapist refrains from rolling her eyes, clearing her throat and waiting for you to go on.

“And then,” you say pointedly, eyebrows raising, “you didn’t have a vacation at all because your job called you in. That’s what I was getting at.”

“More like it found me, but close enough.” Leon replies flippantly, crossing his legs.

You squeeze your eyes shut, measuring your breaths. Your therapist is almost tempted to write that husband has a bad attitude, but holds back.

You look away, one hand moving to twiddle your wedding band out of habit before you register that your finger is empty. You pull your hand away. “He sobered up after the Colorado thing.” You say quietly.

Husband’s work takes him away from the wife and kids fairly often.

Your therapist nods, looking between you two. Wife was angry at beginning of session, now looks downcast, switching role with husband who was earlier downcast, now is irritated. “And how many children do you share with one another?”

“Four.” Leon fills in, hand twitching for his phone as if to show pictures. “Two boys, two girls.”

Four children, two boys and two girls.

“And how has this break—“ When she asks, Leon flinches and you look guilty. “in your relationship impacted your children?”

You glance at one another in tandem. Wife and husband still look for support in one another when asked questions pertaining to them as a family unit. Leon looks away first, cheeks turning red.

You sigh, reaching up and rubbing the back of your neck. “Our eldest girl started acting out in school. She’s defiant, she’s antisocial. She…”

Leon waits as you trail off, then picks up. “She’s an extrovert, like her mom. Which is why it raised alarm bells when her teachers told us that she’d been angry about having to do group work because she wanted to be left alone. She had to be taken home one day because she got in a physical fight with some kids who just wanted to play with her.”

“And your other children?” Her eyes flick between the two of you.

“Our youngest two aren’t in school yet.” You inform her, shifting a little and fiddling with your nails. “Our eldest boy—he’s six—had begun isolating himself from everyone. He wouldn’t even sit at his desk, he just wanted to sit in the library area and do his work—which is completely fine and I don’t see why the teacher threw a fit about it, frankly—but he’d also refused to play with other children. He would just watch other kids at recess—and he’s a very energetic kid.”

Your therapist nods slowly. “I see.”

Leon’s mouth pulls into a small smile at all the information you throw at the therapist. That’s his girl, always motormouthing and talking about anything and everything. Though, you could start an argument with your echo, so maybe there’s a drawback to your ability to talk about anything.

Parental relationship affecting children in household.

“Our youngest two don’t really understand why mommy and daddy are fighting.” Leon muses, watching you play with your fingers. He has half a mind to reach over and hold your hand so you stop fidgeting, but refrains.

“How old are your children?”

“Eight, six, four, and two.” You sneakily reference a tattoo on your forearm of the kid’s birthdates with their initials—he knew you were cheating when it came to remembering their birthdates.

Your therapist glances at her watch, jotting down a few more notes before she closes the legal pad, marking it as Mr. & Mrs. Kennedy. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have this week. If you both are willing to come back, my receptionist out front will schedule you for another session next week.”

Leon watches his cum swirl down the drain miserably, leaning his forehead against the shower tile. What a waste.

That session last week could’ve gone worse, admittedly. It could’ve had you two throwing shit at one another and both of you getting arrested.

The silence during the drive home was excruciating. In the early days, you could fill up the whole fucking car just talking about anything: your coursework, which kid in your class you think is autistic, this new show you watched, anything.

Leon’s a quiet guy, he doesn’t have the capacity to talk about nothing and everything for an hour and you’re his favorite little chatterbox in the world.

He turns off the faucet and shakes his hair out like a dog, raking the curtain aside and grabbing his towel, mopping his face and hair before he dries off his body.

He wraps the towel around himself and steps out of the shower, slicking his hair back and wiping a streak in the foggy mirror so he can somewhat see where he needs to shave.

For good measure, he opens the window and leans forward to the mirror, inspecting his face.

You knock on the door thrice. “Can I come in?”

He turns around, one hand on the knot holding his towel up and the other unlocking the door and pulling it open. You step inside without so much as a glance at him, pausing when you see the streak on the mirror. “I hate when you do that.” you mutter, pulling open the cabinet and rooting around for some disinfectant.

“You hate when I do anything.” Leon mutters back, retrieving the trimmer from the cabinet and being careful not to whack you in the head with it. He jams the plug in the wall, undoing his towel both to dab his cheeks and jaw dry with a corner of it, but also to see if he can get a reaction from you.

You give none, coming back with some rubbing alcohol and cotton pads from the cabinet. Somebody must’ve scraped their knee. You bonk the back of your head on the way out. “Motherfucker!”

Leon puts down the trimmer with a stifled laugh, leaning down and stroking the back of your head gently. “Jesus. You okay?”

You swat at his covered thigh, sitting down on the tile. “It’s not funny.”

“Did you hear me laugh?” Maybe you did. His bad, he should’ve been quieter. He strokes the back of your head one last time before pulling his hand away.

“No, but I know you want to.” You grouse, getting up from the floor and picking up the rubbing alcohol and the cotton pads. Safe, just like a guy stealing a base at the last second.

You walk away without anything further and Leon feels stupidly self-conscious as he watches your ass. Is it the hair? No, you said you liked the body hair. Is it the body? Is he out of shape? Well, he’s not far outside the realm of dad bod. Besides, you told him a couple years ago that you liked seeing the give to his tummy, means he’s eating well.

He shakes his head, leaning into the mirror and picking up the trimmer as he buzzes his stubble down a little more. Your four year old runs into the bathroom with a smile and he pauses, face half-shaven to give some love to one of his three girls, plopping her on the counter as she talks his ear off and he continues shaving.

After a while, he helps her down so she can go run around with her siblings and so he can get changed, hanging his towel up when she’s gone and changing into a pair of boxers. He comes into his bedroom and heads over to his dresser, pulling out a shirt and some sweatpants.

He comes downstairs fully dressed to utter chaos.

Your kids are too busy running around the living room and body slamming one another to listen to you. You stand there frustratedly as you try to configure a game plan, one temple aching. You don’t like raising your voice at them, your voice goes too high and at a certain point, kids tune it out.

“Hey!” Leon, on the other hand, has no qualms about raising his voice. He doesn’t have to do much, he has a lot of diaphragm support.

The kids pause, immediately looking guilty.

Wordlessly, he points out to the back door and they scramble away, shouting and ordering each other around and back to playing with one another.

Leon goes over and shuts the door with a sigh. “They get that energy from you, you know.” He muses, heading over to the kitchen to get himself a snack.

“I know.” You sit down on your humongous couch, rubbing a temple. In the corner is your pillow, your blanket hung over the back of the couch. Leon’s heart dully aches when he sees that setup, he’s not sure it ever won’t. God, he misses cuddling you and his babies.

Your therapist holds up a hand in the last ten minutes of your session after having found a good place to cut you off. “So.” She says after letting out a quiet sigh, looking over her notes.

11 - 25 - 24

Making some headway in conversations about the other’s intentions. Husband and wife very similar: hardheaded, hate to lose, want their voices to be heard. Neither want their children to be in a broken home.

Wife sleeps on couch, lacks wedding ring for second session in a row. Husband longing for connection with her but wants her to give the signal that she’s ready.

She looks up. “I’m going to give you both some homework.” She watches your eyebrow raise and Leon smirk. “First, no matter what either of you is doing, when you first see each other for the day, I want you to hug for at least twenty seconds.”

You frown, Leon’s expression lightening. Amateur advice, or so you think.

“Second, I want you both to start keeping journals of your fights.”

Nevermind.

“Journals of our fights?” You repeat, crossing your legs at the ankle.

“I’m not finished.” The therapist reprimands gently, watching you frown. Wife has issues with authority. “These journals should take place over a week’s time. I want you to write down what the fight was about, what was said, how you both reacted. At the end of every week—Sunday, we’ll say—you’ll exchange the journals and read from the other’s point of view.”

Damn, that’s actually really good.

“Third,” The therapist pins you in place with a look. “I want you to wear your wedding band again.“

She watches the embarrassment cross your face, eyes cutting over to Leon when he looks too smug. “Don’t look so smug, Mr. Kennedy. I want you to recite five things you like about her—“

“That’s easy.” Leon says, meaning every word.

She gives him a look. “When you’re in an argument. Mentally, not out loud. Speaking of, you both need a code word for when the argument is getting to be too much and you need to walk away from it.”

She stands up, putting the legal pad in the folder in the Kennedy file. “I’ll see you both next week.”

After the third session, you move right back into the bedroom, after waking up to Leon laying on top of you on the couch.

Leon’s brushing his teeth as you change into pajamas, leaning over and spitting into the sink before he brushes his tongue. He rinses the bristles and puts the brush back in the holder, coming out and helping you ready the bed before your six year old son comes in, saying his tummy’s upset.

“I’ve got it.” Leon comes over and presses a hand to his son’s forehead. Warm. Five out of the six of the Kennedys tend to run warm, which isn’t a worry. “Let’s get you some Pepto, buddy.”

He takes his son’s hand and leads him downstairs, giving him a dose and taking him back up, laying him back in his bed. “Goodnight. Mommy and daddy love you.” He whispers, going over and kissing his three other children goodnight.

He comes back to your room to find you in bed reading, lights dimmed. Instinctively, he comes over to your side and adjusts the lamp so you’re not straining your eyes to read. He comes back around to his side and turns off his light, lying on his right side and facing you.

When you decide it’s time to sleep, you lean over and turn off the light, putting your book on your nightstand and slipping beneath the covers.

It’s silent for a while before Leon whispers, “Sometimes, I wonder if we should have another baby.”

Your head snaps over to his. “What?”

“Not—“ He scoots a little closer, almost reaching out to take your hand. “not, like, a bandage baby or anything. I don’t think a baby can fix this.” A pause before he gestures in the dark. “Us, I mean.”

You snort despite yourself. “I hope not.”

Leon scoffs, coming a little closer. “You know me. That’s not fair to a little baby. And you said four’s your limit.”

Your heart warms. Maybe you shouldn’t be so surprised he remembered.

“I love you, you know.” Leon murmurs, hesitantly and loosely taking your hand. Even in the dark, you can see him coming.

Your chest aches. “I know.”

Another long pause.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” When your head turns, he’s there, inches from your face.

“That it took me so long to pull my head from my ass. You are… my anchor in this crazy-ass world.” He squeezes your hand, hoping you’ll let him hold it for a while longer. “And I hurt you. You’re the sweetest woman I’ve ever met, and I love you, and I hurt you.”

Your burning eyes scrunch shut as you press your forehead to his.

“I just hope you forgive me—I hope one day, that I’m good enough for you to forgive me.” He whispers, voice wavering. “I want this to work. I want you. God, I miss you.”

Maybe that’s what you needed, you needed to hear him render his heart open.

You come closer, pressing your front to his.

“And even my job—“ He curses, pressing a kiss to your forehead, then the spot between your eyebrows. “I’ll quit.” When you giggle, he huffs. “I’m serious. Give me the word and I’ll quit.”

The tension in his chest eases when you tuck your head beneath his chin. “God, no, don’t do that. At least one of us needs an income.” You mutter, throwing an arm around his waist.

You neatly sweep the vegetables into the Hello Kitty bento box and give your attention-hungry husband a kiss to tide him over, but it’s not quite enough to satiate. Octopus sausages stare back at him with pointy sesame seed eyes, and Leon grows more unsettled by the minute.

He’s done playing nice; gives your hip a pinch. “Come on, you’re killing me here. What’s with all the arts and crafts?”

“Now, before you say anything,” your voice is soft and placating and giving him all the more reason to worry, "‘Becca came by to visit me the other day and said she really liked what I made you for lunch last week.”

“So this is for her?” Leon breathes a sigh of relief. He was starting to thin-

“No, this is for you, silly!”

And you laugh like it’s funny.

“I thought I should start putting in some more effort into your food. You’re away for work so often, and I don’t get to make you nice things as much as I want to.”

Leon chokes a little and looks back down at Hello Kitty’s gleaming metal face. “This is…what I’m taking to work?”

Your face falls. “What, you don’t like it?”

“No, doll, it looks delicious but…you really didn’t have to go all out. Your sandwiches are just fine. I don’t wanna give you the trouble, y’know?” 

“No trouble at all, baby,” you practically sing the words as you twirl to add your knife to a precarious tower of dishes in the sink, “you just say the word, and I can make you bento boxes every week.”

Every week?

You cup a soapy palm to Leon’s cheek as his gaze descends into a thousand-yard stare to rival Hello Kitty’s. “I think your friends might even be excited about your lunch now!”

Oh, absolutely. Chris was going to have a field day.

Chris completely loses his shit as predicted.

“Oh, Leon, it’s adorable,” Rebecca chimes in hopefully as Chris coughs into his fist, “you should have seen how excited she was when I gave her the box!”

The frustrated ceramic click of Leon’s teeth is somehow audible over Chris’ uncivilized howling. “So this was your idea?”

She gives him a sheepish chuckle.

“Rebecca, I thought we were friends,” he pleads as he picks up his metal fork. The team hovers over Leon’s shoulders like vultures to eye what his wife’s made him for lunch. 

To your credit, it’s a mealtime Michelangelo. There are Sanrio-themed rice balls of both the brown and white variety, vegetables neatly cut and festooned with animal picks, a beautifully folded omelet, and the ever omniscient octopus sausages. Hello Kitty’s metal face guards the entire hoard like a gargoyle. It’s enough to make Leon lose his lunch, but he’d have to have some first to cough it up.

He gives the octopus a tentative poke.

“Seriously, Leon, just man up and eat the damn thing.” Jill takes no nonsense as usual, plucking a carrot from the bed of lettuce and tossing it into her mouth. “Chris is just salty he’s having his fifth protein shake lunch of the week.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

It’s never quiet with those two around, but Rebecca gives him an encouraging smile as he gives the octopus a chew. It’s not bad, really. It’s just something about eating something with ey-

Rapid alarm beeps in the main compound snap the team’s attention away from the bento box affair and towards the map in the middle. Rebecca shoots off in her rolling chair to pull up what’s alerting the alarm system, and Hunnigan’s business voice projects into Leon’s earpiece.

“I hope you’ve had a satisfying lunch.” 

He wonders if Hunnigan ever eats as he shoves his bento box into the breast pocket of his leather jacket. 

She, however, is unconcerned. “You’re going to need the energy for the incident we’ve just gotten wind of downtown.”

The situation was supposed to be minor. There were rumors of King Tut’s Curse swirling amongst the museum staff after a rare shipment of Egyptian artifacts, but nobody had taken anything seriously until a janitor walked into the storage room and came back out more dead than alive. Things escalated after the infected janitor wandered into the World War II exhibit and bitten the cleaning team there. The staff was horrified, the media was unhelpfully broadcasting the entire thing on live TV, and the DSO had blessedly quieted the whole thing down on that end before directing the case to Leon’s team as a classic T-virus takedown operation.

Easy as pie. Except the undead cleaning crew had gotten ahold of loaded World War II guns, you know, for historical accuracy. 

It’s a cinch for the most part to evacuate the visitors from the museum. Leon ushers terrified middle schoolers out of the exhibits as fast as he can while the rest of his team rounds up the infected, and it’s a routine sweep. He just feels bad for the kiddos.

“But what about the gift sho- AHH!! ” Leon whirls around to see an Infected point a knife bayonet into a terrified sixth-grader’s face. The zombie’s finger pulls back the trigger almost cinematically, and Leon’s not stupid. He’s going to be too late.

The gun fires.

It fires a round directly into his left shoulder as he shoves the kid to safety.

Leon collapses on the ground after shooting the zombie’s head to bits, but his shoulder aches something fierce. Oh God, not again, this time he hasn’t even got Ada to patch him up. He gingerly presses two fingers to the wound and pulls them away to inspect the warm spill of blood, but surprisingly, his fingers come away clean. 

Jill comes running up as he stumbles to his feet. The last of the Infected have been wiped out, she explains frantically, pulling out a roll of gauze, and everything’s secure, but suddenly she stops to peer at his spotless bullet wound.

So it’s not just him. There was definitely a shot, and his shoulder definitely hurts like a bitch. 

But where was the bullet?

You’re chewing your nails down to the quick when Leon walks into the living room later that evening. The quiet shuffle of his shoes falling onto the stand prompts you to smother in him a warm, bakery-scented hug and take him by surprise, but he squeezes you back as much as his shoulder allows.

You sniffle into his leather-clad chest. “I’m so sorry, baby, I just- I saw the news before they stopped the broadcast and I can’t believe they sent you to deal with the riot!”

So that’s what Hunnigan fed the press this time. Practical as always.

“I can’t believe I made you go to work with that stupid lunch,” you carry on, gasping as you spot the bandage peeking through his jacket, “you didn’t like it and you could have died, I’m never-”

“I’m alright, no biggie.” Leon kisses the top of your head, taking you by the arms and sitting you down next to him on the couch. You furiously wipe a tear off your face.

“It’s not alright, I’m never making you anything you don’t like ever again. That bento box is bad juju. I’m telling Rebecca never to buy anything from that shop from now on.”

Okay, so you finally admit the box is creepy. Leon bites back a laugh. 

“Woah, doll, not so fast. You think it’s the box’s fault I got hurt?”

“What else would it be? Today’s the first time you take it to work, and then you get shot on a regular patrol.” You frown as he pulls the Hello Kitty bento out from inside his jacket. “You brought that thing home?”

He chuckles. “Take a look at it. I’ve got you to thank for saving my life.”

You squint at the tin and realize with a startle that a bullet round is lodged smack dab in the middle of Hello Kitty’s yellow nose. Like a goddamn bullseye.

The lunchbox had taken the brunt of the hit, leaving Leon unscathed.

“Incredible.” you breathe out. 

And he’s inclined to agree.

“So, doll,” Leon grins, “got any leftovers for tomorrow? Chris is a really big fan of the octopus things.”

psst, find more of my work here!