A little warm up writing over the last week… I’m gonna throw up.
“Tell me you didn’t do it.”
Claire’s stomach drops. “Hi to you too.”
“Tell me,” he snaps.
She folds her arms automatically, defensive before she even means to be. “I don’t know what dramatic little story you’ve built up in your head—”
“The warehouse.”
Her mouth shuts.
That’s all the confirmation he needs.
Leon laughs once, ugly and humorless, then pushes past her into the apartment before she can stop him. He paces straight into the living room like he’s been here a hundred times. Maybe he has. Maybe that’s part of why this feels so bad.
“You followed me?”
“I was helping.”
“You were snooping.”
“Oh my God, Leon, excuse me for caring when you disappear for three days and won’t answer a single—”
“You could have died.”
The force behind it silences the room.
Claire stares at him.
Leon turns away immediately after he says it, hand dragging over his mouth. He’s trying to get control back and failing miserably.
Rain taps against the windows. The foster dog retreats behind the couch.
Claire feels her own temper rise now, hot and fast. “You don’t get to come in here acting like this because I checked on you.”
“Checked on me?” He swings back around so fast it almost startles her. “You walked into an active federal operation with a fake badge and a burner gun, Claire.”
“I didn’t walk into—”
“You were ten feet away from a fucking buy.”
She opens her mouth again but he keeps going, voice climbing for the first time since he got here.
“Do you have any idea what happens if they clock you? You think those people take prisoners? You think they care who your fucking brother is? I saw a body get dumped in the river tonight because somebody asked the wrong question.”
The words hit harder because Leon almost never raises his voice.
Not at her.
He’s pacing again now, running entirely on adrenaline and fear and fury. His hands keep flexing at his sides like he wants to hit something and hates himself for it.
“I had it handled.”
“You always have it handled.”
“I DID.”
Claire flinches.
Leon freezes too.
The silence afterward feels horrible.
His chest rises hard beneath the damp black shirt. He looks exhausted suddenly. Older than he should. She can practically see the moment the anger starts curdling into something uglier.
Fear always looks terrible on him.
“You think I can do this job,” he says quietly, “if I’m wondering whether they grabbed you?”
Claire’s throat tightens.
He laughs again under his breath, smaller this time. Shaky.
“Jesus Christ.”
Then he finally looks at her.
And Claire realizes his eyes are red.
Not dramatic movie tears. Worse. The kind somebody fights with everything they have. Wetness trapped along the lower lid because they’re too angry to let it fall.
Leon notices her noticing, and immediately he looks away.
That hurts more than the yelling.
He turns toward the kitchen island, bracing both hands against it, head bowed for a second like he’s trying to survive his own heartbeat.
“When I saw your car outside that building…” His voice roughens badly. “I thought I was too late.”
Claire doesn’t move, she doesn’t joke. Doesn’t defend herself.
Because suddenly she can see it exactly how he must have.
Her empty car parked outside a trafficking front. Leon walking into a bloodbath already halfway convinced he was about to find her there.
He swallows hard and wipes at his face angrily before anything can actually fall.
“I can deal with getting shot,” he mutters. “I can deal with operations going bad. I can deal with being hated. Fine. Whatever.” He shakes his head once. “But you do not get to make me identify your body in some fucking warehouse because you couldn’t stay out of it for one night.”
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Listen I know Chris and Claire are capable of being loving and tender. I just hardly ever write them that way. If they're not giving each other a rash of shit they're not living. Really what it all boils down to is NOTHING is good enough for Claire, in Chris's eyes. No job will ever be good enough, no decision she makes, no man she loves, etc. Chris is bound and determined for her to have the BEST and he feels capable of steering her life that way, maybe single-handedly.
And he's going to give her a rash of shit while he does it.
Anyway enjoy some sibling sparring.
“Quit fucking smoking!” Claire punctuated each of her words with a slap to her brother, and he half-heartedly tried to deflect her, cigarette in the other hand. She let out a huff and walked around to the other side of the patio table, plunking down in a chair and looking across the table at him flatly. “For fucking real, Chris. It’s not cute anymore. You’re not a twenty-something in a bomber jacket with pomade in your hair and a pack rolled up in your sleeve, anymore. You’re over 50. It killed Daddy, it’s gonna fucking kill you.”
“Something’s gonna get me,” Chris said. “I’d like it to at least be something I enjoy.”
Claire glared at him over her glasses, and then pushed them up on her nose. “Why’s something gotta get you? Why can’t you just live a long and fulfilling life and die in your sleep at age 95 or something?”
“That’d be something, wouldn’t it,” Chris said, off-handedly.
Claire cracked open her can of beer and looked at her watch, with a sigh. It was a deeply unserious watch, Chris noted; it appeared to be made of neon orange rubber and had a blue face. “I don’t know what time Leon will make it home. All he said a few hours ago was he was otherwise detained. I never know what that means. He may come home, he may not.”
Chris nodded, taking a drag off his smoke. “Duty calls. I know how it goes. How <em>is</em> Kennedy, these days?”
“Upset about turning 50,” Claire replied. “Unreasonably so. Like we’re not all hurtling towards old age.”
Chris let out a short laugh. “He’s always been a mass of neuroses. A hot mess. I don’t know why you’re surprised.”
Claire looked at him evenly. “He’s not <em>that</em> bad. I give you that he’s given to stewing more than the average person, but he’s not a mass of neuroses.”
Chris laughed again. “I think,” he said, ashing, “Leon’s always put on a mask for you. I think he thinks it doesn’t work if he’s not halfway capable around you. I saw him in the years you didn’t. I watched him having his neurotic spiral-outs and moral dilemmas and watched him swim around in the bottom of a bottle, in your absence. He’s always been a hot mess. I think deep down he’s too sensitive for this shit.”
Claire took a drink of her beer and put her feet up on the patio table. “I think he’s more human than the average government operative,” she said. “But what do I know? I’m just married to him. You sound like you’ve worked up an entire psychological profile.”
Chris grinned. “What kind of brother would I be if I didn’t relentlessly dissect my sister’s choice of husband?” he asked.
“I dunno, you could try just accepting him,” Claire said, casually defiant. “He’s here for good, neuroses and all. Nothing’s changing. If things ever didn’t work out between us I’d just make good on my life plan to move to a shack in the woods.”
“I do accept him,” Chris offered benignly. “I think he’s a goofy motherfucker but I do accept him. I’m baffled by your choice, but it is your choice. On the outside Kennedy may be a near flawless government weapon but inside it’s like he never progressed past age 22. He never hardened his heart. He asks why, too much, and agonizes over the answers. I don’t think he ever accepted that his old life was dead.”
Across the table, Claire gazed at Chris evenly. “I don’t <em>want</em> him to harden his heart. I like that he asks why. I don’t want to be in a relationship with the flawless government weapon. I want to be in a relationship with a man who still has emotions. And he has every right to grieve his old life.” She inclined her head towards Chris some. “<em>You</em> hardened your heart, and I hate it. Sometimes you seem like some kind of enigmatic spectre that pops into my life every few months, or when you decide you need to intervene. I miss the Chris who’d put back a beer or ten and give me noogies. I miss the Chris I’d go shoot pool with.” She sighed. “You don’t seem as bothered by letting the old Chris die.”
“I made decisions for my own sanity,” Chris said, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the Virginia summer night, looking around at the riot of potted plants his sister covered her porch in. “Maybe your husband <em>enjoys</em> feeling tormented, or constantly yearning for the past, or feeling like he’s dumping salt in his wounds all the time. I dunno. That’s your guys’ deal, not mine. I don’t enjoy feeling like that, and I can’t make decisions and run men and keep them alive if I’m having a morality-based breakdown every time I go into the field. I have to stay calm. I have to stay in control. You ever wonder why this far in Leon’s still taking orders from other people and not giving them?”
Claire tilted her head some. “The DSO’s structure is different. They operate as single entities. Leon doesn’t give commands to anyone because it’s always just him.” She looked out into the darkness of the yard for a moment, then took another drink of her beer. “You went too far,” she said after a spell. “Now it feels like you’re calm and in control to the detriment of everything else. I feel like I witness you have a genuine emotion once a year. It wasn’t always that way. I <em>remember</em> the old you. I remember the excited, jack-off you who walked me around the STARS office when I was 17. I remember the you that played practical jokes.”
“I grew up, Claire,” Chris said. “Something you’ve been fighting against doing your whole life.”
“Oh come on,” Claire sighed.
“In a lot of ways you’re still acting like you’re 21,” Chris said. “You don’t look before you leap. You don’t take things seriously unless you absolutely have to.”
“That’s called not being beaten down by life,” Claire said. “That’s called being spontaneous. Why the fuck should everything have to be life or death, all the time? I get enough of that, and I have my whole life. <em>Nobody</em> should take things seriously unless they absolutely have to. Not everything in life is meant to be taken seriously.”
“Claire, you’re 48 years old and last time I called you on the phone you were so high you couldn’t stop laughing,” Chris said tiredly.
“It’s <em>legal</em>,” Claire said. “It’s not like I’m breaking the law. What I do in my own house is my right as an adult.” She looked at him tiredly, just as tiredly as he was looking at her. “You gonna get on my case about the beer, too? I <em>am</em> an adult. I’m not 21 anymore. I don’t need you trying to mother hen me like you always did.”
“I just worry about you, is all,” Chris said.
“You worry about me?” she asked, incredulously. “My life is great. I’m happy. It took me a long time to get here. Shit was supremely fucked up along the way, but I’m still here. Somehow, I’m still kicking. I worry about <em>you</em>, and you becoming more and more of some kind of detached asset every time I look at you.”
“You married one,” Chris said. “You should be used to it.”
“If you think Leon comes home and acts like Agent Kennedy with me, I’ve got news for you,” Claire said with a humorless chuckle. “He learned his lesson about that years ago. He sheds that the moment he walks in the door, whatever neuroses you think he has aside. You don’t seem to shut it off. You’re always looking for an…angle, on things. Not everything’s an objective.”
Chris knocked the cherry off his cigarette and leaned back in his chair, placing the butt on the table. “There usually is an angle,” Chris said. “I’ve been trying to safeguard you against peoples’ angles since we were kids.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be safeguarded,” Claire said. “Maybe I want a friend. My brother, the one who used to joke around with me, and drink beer with me, and show off my report cards and call me The Smartest Kid in Alabama.”
“I am your friend,” Chris said evenly. “I also have a vested interest in making sure your life gets to stay as great as you say it is, even if I don’t always agree with your decisions.”
“I feel like you’ve never agreed with my decisions,” Claire said. “I haven’t always agreed with yours. I still don’t.”
“You’re the kid sister,” Chris said. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“I’m 48,” Claire groused. “If you’re not gonna take input from me, I don’t know who the fuck you’re gonna take it from. And you should take it from someone.”
For a long moment they just leveled stares at each other, brown eyes meeting blue, the humid summer air heavy between them. The back door to the house swung open suddenly and the moment was broken. Claire looked towards the back door and Chris fished another cigarette out of his pack, sticking it in his mouth.
“You made it,” Claire said, as Leon stepped out onto the deck in a suit. He looked tired.
“Eventually,” he said. He looked between the siblings for a minute. “Why do I feel like I just interrupted the shootout at the OK Corral?”
“My sister, in her infinite wisdom, is trying to tell me how to live my life,” Chris said, lighting his cigarette.
“It doesn’t hurt to listen,” Leon offered, mildly. “I probably need constant guidance.”
Chris chortled, spitting out smoke, and gave his sister a knowing look. She gazed back at him coolly. “Maybe,” Chris said. “Is the world coming down around our ears yet, or what? You got to come home and didn’t get marching orders, so I’m guessing the crisis has been averted.”
“Yeah.” Leon hovered near the door as if he was unsure if he should approach the table or not. “We all get to live another day.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “If I have to be an asshole in a suit for one more minute <em>I</em> may become the crisis.”
Chris’s knowing look at Claire did not fade, and Claire rolled her eyes mildly and looked over towards her husband. “Well, go change,” she said. “Are you hungry? We already ate but I saved you a plate.”
“I’ll find it,” Leon said. “Go back to giving each other grief, or whatever I interrupted.”
“Well, then, ignore the sounds of me beating him to death out here,” Claire said. “He’s had it coming.”
“Sure,” Leon said, with a gust. “Clean up the blood when you’re done, and dig your own hole to put him in. I’ve done enough today.”
“No problem,” Claire said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Great. Good talk,” Leon commented dryly, and then turned back to the door, opening it. “It’s good to see you, Chris, before she kills you.”
“Yeah, same,” Chris said. “How’s 50, old man?”
“Fucking swell,” Leon replied flatly, and then stepped into the house and shut the door behind him. Chris looked over at his sister and began to laugh, low and constant.
“You provoke him,” Claire accused.
“He’s easily riled,” Chris replied. “Asking for it.”
Claire took a long drink of her beer. “Guess there’s one thing about you that hasn’t changed—you <em>love</em> pushing buttons.”
“What, you don’t also have fond, core memories of me teasing you about your crush on Alan Alda in MASH until I thought you were going to cry?” Chris asked, still laughing.
“Being an asshole is not an acceptable substitute for a personality and emotions,” Claire said, arching her eyebrow at him.
“No wonder Kennedy’s a coddled mess,” Chris said. “This is like the third time in this conversation you’ve brought up emotions. Is it like a group therapy session around here or what?”
“I give up,” Claire said loudly, throwing the hand not holding her beer into the air. “Fine. You win. Keep treating us all like we’re 25 year old guys under your command. Throw a dick joke or two in there. The rest of us will be living healthy, in-touch, <em>emotional</em> lives. No big.”
“Good for you,” Chris said, exhaling smoke. “Live your best life. Would you punch me in the face if I told you I loved you?”
“I love you too,” Claire said, “but keep it up. I’ll make you dig your <em>own</em> hole in the yard before I kill you.”
“All talk, no action,” Chris accused, flicking his cigarette. “You wouldn’t know what to do without me. Who would clean up your messes? Who would clean up your husband’s messes?”
Claire looked exasperated. “You act like it’s every week. It’s every once in a while, and you <em>gloat</em> about it endlessly.”
“You guys are <em>both</em> children,” Chris said. “Disasters. And you always have been.”
“Y’know, maybe I like it that way,” Claire said dismissively, waving her hand, and uncrossing and re-crossing her ankles on the table. “Give me all of it. I’d rather be an emotional disaster than whatever you’re trying to turn into.”
“An adult,” Chris said with a grin.
“Sure,” Claire said, still dismissive. She shifted in her chair and brought her feet down to the ground, and cut her eye at him. “I’m going inside. When you’re done, join me. If we just sit out here all night you’re going to make the very adult decision to smoke that entire pack.”
“And what beer are you on?” Chris asked knowingly. “Four? Five? I stopped keeping track after three.”
Claire narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m in my own home. Keep it up and <em>you</em> won’t be. I’ll put your ass on the front step.”
“I’ll do a burnout in front of your house,” Chris said, still grinning, taking a drag. “I’ll trench your perfect front yard.”
“That’s it,” Claire said declaratively, standing up. “I’m going inside. Be glad for Leon. He’s going to tell me to let it roll off my back and that all big brothers are like this. He’s going to save your life.”
“About time he returned the fucking favor,” Chris said.
Claire cast a suffering look at Chris, and headed for the door to the house. She pulled it open and stepped inside. “<em>Leon</em>,” she hollered loudly, “please convince me not to kill Chris.” She shut the door behind her and Chris looked at the closed door, managing one last chuckle.
His sister was a slightly immature mess. He thought her husband was a barely-masked jumble of complexes.
But fuck him if he wasn’t going to do everything in his power to make sure they got to continue on that way, unbothered.
Hi. I ran errands today and several HYPER-SPECIFIC scenes came into my head, and I had no choice but to write them. This all started with Grace having a panic attack because she doesn't know how to parallel park and it went from there.
We're told Grace works at a field office somewhere in the Midwest, so I've just kind of headcanonly stuck her in Missouri, outside KC. Years ago I headcanoned Raccoon City was in the mountains in the northeast somewhere, because even though Capcom has always insisted it was in the Midwest I'm like hello you guys you gave it mountains and forest. My very Kansan ass is calling bullshit on it being in the Midwest. These days I think Colorado is more likely. It's fun to imagine Leon having to haul supreme ass in the Porsche across the state of Kansas during RE9 to get to Raccoon. Is that what happened? I dunno, you tell me.
Anyway, please enjoy these disjointed scenes. The overall concept is Leon and Claire go on vacation to Missouri to see Grace and Emily. Grace suggests an event for them to go to. Typical feral behavior ensues.
Grace had been driving in what felt like to her increasingly desperate huge circles, around and around, and her anxiety was at an all-time high. She <em>knew</em> this street festival thing was going to be packed. Still her dumb ass had suggested they go, and now she was at the helm of her Subaru, aimlessly driving around, trying to ignore her sweating hands and pounding heart. There was nowhere to park. Nowhere she <em>could</em> park, anyway, and she felt like every single car in the world was on the road today.
Claire and Emily were chattering genially in the backseat and Leon sat steely-faced behind some Wayfarers in the passenger seat as Grace took them on a tour of every side street in the greater KCMO area. Finally, Grace became aware of Leon looking over at her in her peripheral as she white-knuckled her steering wheel.
“Grace,” he began, with the tone he had when he was intensely confused or frustrated by something she was doing but trying to be cool about it, “what are you doing?”
“There’s nowhere to park,” she replied, stressed.
“There’s tons of parking. You’ve passed about 50 places to park,” Leon informed her. “Why are we going in circles?”
“Because I was looking for like a lot or something,” Grace replied tensely.
“A lot is gonna cost you 50 bucks for the day,” Leon said. “Just put it in on one of these side streets. You’ve driven past a million places to park. Just park it.”
“I <em>can’t</em>,” Grace said emphatically, feeling her anxiety spark even further.
Leon’s face was inscrutable behind his sunglasses. “Grace,” he said, “do you not know how to parallel park?”
“No,” she admitted miserably. “And plus there’s like eight million cars behind me every time I turn and—“
“Do you want to learn how to parallel park?” Leon said, calmly.
“<em>Now</em>?” Grace said, her voice high. “No way. There’s—there’s too many cars. No way. I’ll just find a lot—“
“Do you want me to do it?” Claire piped up helpfully from the backseat. “I cut my teeth on street parking in NYC.”
“And yet somehow you still can’t do it,” Leon said, looking back at his wife. “Your idea of parallel parking is getting three-quarters of the ass-end of your truck up on the sidewalk and you look at it and say ship-fucking-shape and walk away.”
Grace was too stressed to admonish Leon for the hundredth time about his language around Emily. It wasn’t just him, it was Claire too. They were great with kids, if you ignored the fact that they cursed like sailors.
“Oh ho,” Claire returned haughtily. “Parked is parked. It’s out of the way. I can cram this little Subaru in somewhere,” she said. “Grace—“
“No, Claire. You’ll annihilate her rims,” Leon cut in.
“I will not. Just because you—“ Claire started, indignantly.
“Guys now is not the time,” Grace said, a touch hysterically. “If I have to listen to you two have an argument about parking I may hyperventilate.”
Claire leaned back into her seat, and Leon looked back over at Grace. “Grace, get out. Trade me places. I will park.”
“There’s a million cars behind me,” Grace fretted. “We’re in the way. People are like—“
“They can blow it out their ass,” Leon said. “It’s not going to kill them to wait. C’mon. Put your hazards on and get out.”
“If someone honks at us I am going to start crying,” Grace informed him, pushing the button for her hazards and unbuckling her seat belt. Leon likewise unbuckled his restraint and pushed open his door, and they crossed in front of the vehicle. Leon got in the driver’s seat and Grace climbed in on the passenger side, heart in her throat, and Leon immediately began to adjust the seat so his knees were not knocking the steering column.
“Alright,” he said, turning off the hazards and pulling down the road. He drove past several cars and then noted an empty space on the side of the road between a Camry and a Yukon. “There. Perfect.” Leon went to throw it into reverse and looked into his rear view, frowning. “Alright, well, this dude needs to not be on my ass for me to do this.”
Grace felt like the potential to be honked at was never higher. She kind of wished she’d never suggested they leave the house.
“Are we gonna be there soon?” Emily asked from the backseat.
“Yes, Em,” Grace replied absently.
Leon rolled his window down and waved the guy behind him around, and after a moment the guy <em>did</em> go around them, with excessive speed and a chirping of tires. Grace wished she was invisible. Leon merely flipped the bird, hard and proud, up the street in front of them. He then resumed parking. With a calmness and assurance Grace could not manage at that point, he angled the Subaru back into the space between cars, then cranked the wheel and pulled forward, and lo and behold her vehicle was perfectly nestled in between the Yukon and the Camry. Leon turned the Crosstrek off and handed Grace the key fob, looking at her evenly. “You need to learn how to parallel park,” he informed her. “It’ll make your life so much easier.”
“Yeah, sure,” Grace said dully, reaching for her little cross-body bag and pulling it on. She was trying to decide if this situation warranted an Ativan.
“Alright, well,” Claire said brightly, unbuckling her seatbelt, “crisis averted. Leon saves the day. Let’s go. I need to inhale some food from a cart or truck.”
They all got out of the car into the very slight chill of the early autumn day, and Emily wandered up next to Grace and put her hand in hers. “It probably is about time to eat, yeah,” Leon said.
“I hope I can find edibles,” Claire said, rubbing her hands together like an excited prospector. Leon looked faintly amused.
“This is Missouri,” Grace said, somewhat tiredly, feeling like the experience of looking for parking on a busy Saturday mid-day in KCMO had aged her. “There’ll probably be nine million edibles. It’s recreationally legal here. There are probably people actively walking around smoking weed.”
“Excellent,” Claire said brightly. “C’mon. Let’s go find something deep fried and some THC cookies.”
The group set off down the sidewalk.
………………………………………………………………….
Grace was draining the remnants of her key lime pie kombucha, one eye on Emily’s slight form next to them, when Claire rejoined them, bag in hand. She looked inordinately pleased with herself.
“Hey Emily,” Leon said. “Do you want a cookie ice cream sandwich?”
Emily immediately perked up and began stomping her feet up and down and nodded emphatically at Grace, who looked down at Emily a bit hesitantly. “Leon, we haven’t even really had anything that passes as real food,” Grace said.
“She ate some corn,” Leon said, benignly.
“Elote,” Claire informed him, off-handedly. “I’m telling you, you would have loved it. Corn and mayo and cheese. You should have gotten some.”
“There was some red stuff sprinkled on there,” Leon returned. “Probably spicy. No thanks.”
Emily had grabbed Grace’s hand and was working it up and down excitedly, her face pleading. “Alright, fine,” Grace sighed. “Cookie ice cream sandwich. But then we need to find you something, that is like—“
“Grace, you are not going to find something healthy here,” Leon cut in, in amusement.
“Maybe,” Grace said, letting Emily begin to drag her, “maybe not.” The group started ambling for the trailer selling all kinds of ice cream treats Grace was willing to believe children dreamed of. Claire was rifling in her bag, and she triumphantly produced what looked like a saran-wrapped brownie with caramel and marshmallows.
“Wow,” Grace said, peering at it as Claire began to unwrap it. “That’s—that’s an edible? Like, that’s got weed in it? That looks like something you’d buy at a bakery.”
“Hey,” Leon said, looking behind him, “are you getting into that <em>now</em>?”
“Hell yeah, brother,” Claire returned cheerfully, unwrapping the saran-wrap enough to free a corner of the brownie. She took a bite and hummed emphatically. “Oh my God that’s so good.”
“Do not eat that whole thing,” Leon said adamantly. “How many milligrams is that?”
“200,” Claire replied, chewing. “I’m not gonna eat the whole thing. I’d be insensate.”
“Yeah, well, last time you had some kind of THC whatever baked into a brownie I had to carry you to bed,” Leon said dryly. “I ain’t carrying you around here. Keep it to a dull roar.”
Claire did not reply, and took another bite of the brownie, chewing appreciatively.
“Oh, Em,” Leon said as they got in line for the ice cream trailer, “they have cookie ice cream sandwiches <em>and</em> some kind of thing with Fruity Pebbles.”
“I want the cookie,” Emily said, making a dramatic crazed child face up at Leon.
Grace watched a family walking away with the same mentioned cookie ice cream sandwiches in hand. They were <em>massive</em>. Emily was going to either experience a sugar high to end all sugar highs by the end of the day or she was going to be sick from eating so much junk. “Em, those things are huge,” Grace said, gently. “I don’t know if you can eat a whole one. Maybe they have, like—“
“I can eat a whole one I swear!” Emily replied pleadingly, having spotted the sandwiches herself. “<em>Pllllllleeeeeaaaaaaseeeee</em>, Grace.”
“Since when could a child not finish ice cream?” Leon asked incredulously. “I’m getting that Fruity Pebbles thing.”
Grace sighed, as Emily vibrated next to her and they waited in line. Grace loved when Leon came to visit, or when Leon and Claire came to visit, but in some ways it <em>was</em> high stress. They were barely controlled chaos at times, bound and determined to blow into town and pointedly undo all the rational, healthy, and gentle parenting Grace did. Grace had once caught Leon permitting Emily to just dump spoonfuls of sprinkles into her mouth at an ice cream parlor. Claire assured Grace children had to learn at some point and expand their palates after feeding Emily a jalapeno popper, as Emily dramatically waved her hand at her lolling tongue and kicked her feet back and forth. Grace had once caught Leon bouncing Emily so high on a trampoline she was practically above the neighborhood roofline, as Grace looked on in horror picturing broken bones and missing teeth.
“Claire, quit eating that,” Leon admonished firmly as Claire was still taking tiny nibbles of the brownie
“I’m done,” she huffed. “Just a nibble. It’s so good.”
Leon gazed at his wife with a stern face from behind his sunglasses, and Emily ran tight little circles around Grace as they stood there in line.
………………………………………………………………….
“Oh—ooh, produce,” Claire was gushing dazedly, ambling close to a farmer’s stand, piled high with the last fresh produce of the season. At some point she’d produced a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses and put them on her face. She seemed very relaxed and unperturbed by anything and kind of seemed to be operating in a smooth slow motion.
Grace looked on, noting. Claire seemed like something could burst into flames in front of her at that moment and she would just calmly blink at it. Maybe there was something to weed, after all. Not that Grace would know, as she had never tried it. She couldn’t really do so, because of her job, but noting the calming effect the brownie had on normally mile-a-minute Claire, Grace was kind of jealous. Oh, to be so calm.
Grace let out a gust. Knowing her luck she’d try an edible and freak out. It just seemed like something she would do.
“Ooh, look at those tomatoes,” Claire gushed further. “Green zebras. Delicious.”
“Hey,” Leon said, grabbing her and gently steering her, “what’re you gonna do with tomatoes? We’re only here two more days and then we’ve got the long haul trip from hell to get home.”
“I mean, do you guys <em>have</em> to do the drive in one day?” Grace asked, furrowing her brow.
“A bit, kind of,” Leon said tiredly. “I’ve got to be back in DC. It’s about 15 hours, and no matter what I say about her driving we shave about two hours off our time when Claire’s behind the wheel.”
“I could make dinner,” Claire said, still absently ogling the produce as Leon steered her away.
“No,” Leon said. “We’re going to dinner. I’m taking us to dinner. This is vacation. Step away from the kitchen. You spend half your life in ours at home.”
Emily looked up at Leon, grabbing at his shirt. She began jumping against him somewhat and Leon sighed and lowered himself to the ground. Emily climbed up onto his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he stood, hooking his arms around her legs. “Where are we going to dinner?” Emily asked.
“I dunno, what do you want?” Leon said.
“Em, do not say—“ Grace started.
“McDonald’s,” Emily said assuredly, and Grace looked put upon.
“I never should have introduced you to a Chicken Nugget,” Grace said.
“I mean don’t get me wrong, I can put away a double Quarter Pounder with Cheese,” Leon said, “but I think we should probably go somewhere fancier.”
Claire was yet again straying from the group slowly. “Holy shit fried pickles,” she said reverently.
“Claire, where are you going,” Leon said, looking over at his meandering, high wife.
“Fried pickles,” she replied over her bare shoulder emphatically. She had on a loose, wide-necked sweater-like top; the neck hung down her shoulder and arm, exposing her freckles and what looked like a relatively severe slash of a scar to Grace.
“What’s a fried pickle?” Emily asked.
“What are you feeding this child?” Leon asked of Grace. “Nothing but organic cardboard? Do you like pickles?” he asked, angling his head towards Emily.
“Yeah,” Emily replied.
Claire sauntered back over to them, and stuck her hand up in the air in front of Leon, making grabby motions. “Wallet,” she said. “We need fried pickles stat.”
“It’s in my back pocket,” Leon returned. “I’m carrying a child, here.”
“With all this junk is anyone even going to want to <em>eat</em> dinner?” Grace asked in wonder.
“Oh absolutely,” Leon replied calmly. “I’m hungry right now.”
“You have had like eighteen things,” Grace said incredulously.
“So?” Leon asked. “Hey—would you <em>stop</em> pinching my ass?” he said over his shoulder, to where Claire lurked behind him, cackling softly to herself. “Just get my wallet and quit trying to leave welts on me.”
Claire stepped out from behind Leon, wallet in hand, and she looked at Grace. “Grace, are you gonna have fried pickles?” Claire asked brightly.
“Oh, what the hell,” Grace said, throwing her hand up in the air. “Sure. Why not.”
“I better get the biggest size,” Claire said. “This one here,” she said, jerking her thumb back at Leon, “unhinges his jaw and absolutely houses some fried pickles, especially if ranch is involved.” Claire made her way over to the line for fried pickles, and Leon stood there stoically with Emily on his back, gazing into the distance behind his sunglasses.
“How,” Grace began, looking over at him, “are you like super ripped and so in shape and yet I feel like every time I see you, you are eating garbage?”
“My stomach hit age 18 and never moved past it,” Leon said evenly, still staring into the distance. “Plus I’m from the Midwest. Claire puts healthy food in me at home. Left to my own devices, I don’t fare well. Cut me some slack. I’m on vacation. I’ll pay for it in the gym when we get home.”
“You should probably have, like, vegetables for dinner,” Grace said knowingly.
“No can do chief,” Leon replied cheerfully. “I haven’t had my red meat allowance for the week. I’ve been saving it. I feel like we should really try some of the barbecue around here. Isn’t that supposed to be Kansas City’s thing?”
“It is,” Grace replied, then furrowed her brow some. “Barbecue sauce kind of gives me heartburn.”
“Kid you are impossible,” Leon said, looking over at her. “I need to just put you in a bubble. You weren’t meant for this world.”
Grace put her hand on her hip. “Listen, just because barbecue sauce gives me heartburn doesn’t mean I need to become a bubble child.”
“No?” Leon asked. “How about the hand-wringing over parking? The constant mother-henning over the amount of sugar Emily is eating?”
Grace had no good response, and for a moment, she put aside her own rules about language. “Leon, shut the fuck up,” she replied, and he kind of grinned at her a little, hiking Emily up his back.
“There we go,” he said appreciatively. “I’ll have you drinking 100-year-old scotch and flipping the bird in traffic before you know it.”
“I think not,” Grace returned, looking at her watch. “We should probably start heading for home soon.”
“Have you ever been on the Real Bees Fake Top Hats subreddit?” Leon asked, abruptly.
Grace had introduced Leon to Reddit and periodically she regretted it. The more time he spent on Reddit, the more Grace started to think Claire might have needed to install parental controls on their devices. Grace had introduced Leon S. Kennedy to Reddit and now he was on there and <em>everyone’s</em> problem. “No, I haven’t,” Grace said. “What is it?”
“Pictures of bees with top hats photoshopped onto them,” Leon said plainly. “It’s great.”
“Did you watch that YouTube I sent you of the guys eating the, like, 100 year old MREs?” Grace asked, hand still on her hip. “I feel like it would be very relevant to your interests.”
“Does anyone hurl?” Leon asked.
“No, I don’t know how though,” Grace said. “It looked pretty gross.”
“Hmm. Yeah, I’ll watch it,” Leon said.
Claire returned with a paper boat of fried pickles that looked like it weighed three pounds. “They’re so good,” she informed them, with casual adamancy.
“Is that ranch I see?” Leon inquired, with barely controlled excitement.
“Yes,” Claire said. “I got extra because I know you be drinkin’ it when you’re eating these pickles.” She held the boat out. “Dig in, everyone.”
“Oh, put me down,” Emily said, squirming. “I need a pickle.”
Leon let her down onto the ground, and Claire handed his wallet back to him. Emily came up and grabbed a pickle, then dunked it in some ranch and stuck it into her mouth. “<em>Mmm</em>!” she enthused loudly, looking at Grace as she chewed.
Grace reached out and took a pickle, dipping it lightly in the ranch and then putting it in her mouth. “Alright,” she acquiesced, “they’re pretty damn good.”
“Everyone take what you want before I upend that thing in my mouth and eat them all,” Leon said.
“No way,” Claire said, pulling the pickles away from him. “Share. If you starch this whole basket and we only get like four a piece I’ll murder you.”
The group began to slowly meander through the loose crowd, eating pickles. After a while, Emily fell back and stuck her hand back in Grace’s, and they walked along behind Leon and Claire, who were munching fried pickles like someone was paying them to do it.
Grace smiled a little. She hoped whatever barbecue place they decided to go to that night had a parking lot, and not street parking.
Welp I know I already reblogged this, this morning, but this piece of art spoke to me SO MUCH about my headcanon of Leon and Claire in their late 20s situationship that I wrote a blurb about it. I also went to the creator’s Patreon and joined, which brings me up to like 6 Cleon creators I am following. (Maybe someone needs to reign me in on Patreon???? no, no, I am fine. It is others who are wrong.)
Anyway, here’s a little blurb I came up with picturing my headcanon Leon and Claire at Claire’s house on Long Island during one of Leon’s visits from DC.
Big thanks to @inheaven-mad for creating this masterpiece that immediately set my brain to frothing, chomping, and chasing its own tail.
@grandscreechingdeer and I were going back and forth this morning, inspired by the wet cat in a bath post reblogged this morning, and we were talking all things Cleon. We agreed the disgruntled, despairing wet kitten was very Leon-coded, desperately needing love and affection but protesting with everything he was. Her headcanons are different than mine, but an image came to me of Claire taking care of Leon post-RE4, compliant with her headcanon and her version of Leon and Claire and their yearning.
So I wrote someone else's headcanon!
This is post-RE4. A very broken and battered and lost Leon reaches out in a haze to the one person he wants. I know RE4make does away with the knife-fight wound to his face, but I brought it back here for pure angst and plot device. Claire finally gets to see what's behind Leon's constant, frequent assurances that he's fine and she doesn't need to worry about him.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy, @grandscreechingdeer ! I tried!
For everyone else, if you ever dreamed of Claire bathing a traumatized and broken Leon, here you go!
The sound of his voice, low, broken, and detached had caused her to drop everything to book the first flight to DC. If she was honest with herself, she could not afford this; she’d winced at the prices of the last-minute, next-flight-out-of-LaGuardia price and dug her credit card out with a heavy sigh.
She had not heard him sound like that for some years, harkening back to their time post-Raccoon when he would awaken in the night in a sweat, voice strangled in his throat, subject to the nightmares that came for all of them. Since then, after getting sucked into the government, pointed nonchalance was the name of Leon’s game. Even detachment. Determined assurances of <em>I’m fine</em> and <em>don’t worry about me, Claire</em>.
He’d sounded lost on the phone. Despaired. Hollow.
Claire landed at Dulles, heart in her throat, bag slung over her shoulder, and she set about trying to wrangle a taxi to his apartment. It’d been a long time since she’d been there, but she knew the address—periodically when he was on operations of a decidedly less military slant, something like a presidential security detail, he’d send postcards. He always wrote his home address as the return, crammed into a corner of the postcard. The postcards were dry and sarcastic, and usually he’d complain about the weather or the food or something of that nature.
She was terse and somewhat on edge in the taxi, wishing the cheerful driver would stop trying to make conversation with her. He was from Cuba, as evidenced by the flag hanging from his rear view along with a rosary, and under normal circumstances Claire would have chatted with him. She was wholeheartedly not in the mood today. The sky threatened rain. Quietly Claire willed him to drive faster to Leon’s Spartan, hole-in-the-wall apartment stacked above a business. He told her the business had changed twice in the time he’d lived there. She wondered what it was now.
The taxi pulled up to the curb outside the weathered, narrow brick building. The driver offered to carry her bag; Claire hoisted it over her shoulder and politely declined. The business on the ground floor was now a tax preparation service. Claire spotted Leon’s weathered Jeep sandwiched in between two newer cars a little further down the block. She got out of the taxi and walked to the back of the building, to the staircase that went up to Leon’s door. She glanced up at the violent clouds above, and knocked firmly, then waited.
There was no response. The Jeep was here, he was here. She shifted on her booted feet and reached down for the beat-up door knob, and twisted. The door popped open an inch. It was unlocked. She stepped into the darkness of the apartment, and closed the door behind her.
“Leon?” she tried, her voice moderately loud and concerned. She let her bag drop near the door, and she narrowed her eyes into the gloom. “Leon, it’s me,” she tried again.
“Hmmph,” came a noise from the general vicinity of the small living room.
Cautiously she walked in, and tried to avoid running into anything. She fumblingly made her way into the apartment, and her outstretched hand alit on the arm of the couch, and she reached out further, gropingly. Her hand alit on hair that felt gritty and grimy.
“Leon,” she said, in mild relief. “Are you asleep?”
“Mmph,” was the mumbled noise of reply.
“Leon,” she began, “I’m going to turn on a light. I can’t see shit.” She turned from him, moving her hand, and she began to fumble around looking for a light switch, a lamp, anything. Her seeking hands found a light switch on the wall and experimentally she flipped it, and a lamp in the corner of the room flared to life with a yellow glow. She turned back to the room in front of her and for a moment her heart sank into her stomach somewhere, but she forced her face to steel itself and her gut to behave. The sight in front of her was moderately heartbreaking and concerning, but she figured she should have expected some emotional damage from the tone of his voice on his call. She was here to be support. She was here to try to help. At 25 years old, discombobulatedly bumbling through her own life, she was here to be the <em>adult</em>.
The worn coffee table in his living room was crowded with empty and half-full bottles. Claire counted easily 20 empty beer bottles, and there was a bottle of whisky with about a quarter of its volume left, next to one that had been drained. Cigarette butts were snubbed out in an ashtray; Claire had long suspected Leon was hiding a casual smoking habit from her, but he was always pointedly avoidant about it in the face of her disgruntled adamancy that smoking was bad for you and only idiots smoked, her brother chief among them. A small collection of prescription bottles were clustered amongst the empty bottles.
She was not going to panic. She was not going to freak out. She was not going to berate. She’d always never really bought his nonchalant assurances he was fine, that she shouldn’t worry; the assurances never quite made it to his eyes, which were distant, despaired, and haunted.
“Leon,” she began, coming over to the couch. He was laying on it, head semi-buried, and he looked like he was mostly in gear from wherever he’d been last that had caused him to sound like a ghost on the phone. He was dirty, and he had scrapes and bruises visible on him. “Hey. Can you sit up?” she asked.
He made a noise. She let out a sigh, and lowered herself to the couch, sitting on the edge of a cushion next to his pseudo-unresponsive form. Gently she moved the pillow from its haphazard position on his head, and he squinted mightily, brow furrowed. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week and his face was mildly grimy, like the rest of him.
“C’mon, Leon,” she urged softly. “I’m here. Let’s get you up.”
Heavily he rolled onto his back and looked at her squintingly, as if his brain was not processing the scene in front of him. He had a rather deep, dramatic cut high on his cheek. “Claire?” he managed after a moment, his voice low and rough.
“Yeah,” she said. “You called me. I’m here. Do you remember calling me?” she prompted, gently.
The answering silence and the continued squinting look he was giving her suggested he probably did not. It was no wonder, with all the drained booze on the table and whatever the mystery prescriptions were.
“C’mon,” she said, taking hold of his arms and pulling slightly. “Up. Up and at ‘em.” Clumsily he sat up, his body heavy against her pull, and he produced a grunt that suggested pain. His hair was a mess and he had a moderate five o’clock shadow. “Alright,” she said, once he was sitting, “first things first. Have you eaten anything?”
“No,” he ground out, after a moment.
“You’re a mess,” she said, looking him over. “Grimy. Beat up. You just get back from somewhere?”
“Spain,” he sat flatly.
Claire had been to Spain; she’d gone to an aid conference in Barcelona and then spent her spare time partying way too hard, avoiding pickpockets. From the looks of it, Leon’s experience in Spain had been moderately different. “Okay,” she began slowly. “Let’s—let’s—first things first, let’s get you clean and get you changed,” she said, looking him over. “You wanna go get in the shower?”
He merely kind of grunted, and began to slowly sink back towards the couch.
“Hey, hey, nonono,” Claire said, catching his arms. She looked over at the mess on the coffee table. “Leon, did you take those pills with this alcohol?” she asked.
“Some,” he replied.
<em>Oh boy</em>, Claire thought to herself in moderate panic. She loosed her grip on one of his arms and reached over to the coffee table, picking up the bottles. Hydrocodone. Two medications she’d never heard of, couldn’t really pronounce, and didn’t know the purpose of. She left the bottles and reached back over to him. “Okay,” she said, almost to herself. “No more pills with alcohol,” she said to him, unsure if it was reaching him. “Is this…is this all the alcohol? Is there more?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “Leon—c’mon. We’ve got to get you clean.” She was looking at him, and the inevitable conclusion of this situation was dawning on her. If she wanted him clean, he was likely not capable of handling it himself, between the booze and pills. She was going to have to help. Everyone was going to have to be okay with things getting real familiar, real quick. “C’mon,” she said, mutedly bright. “Can you get up?” she asked.
Leon grunted and unsteadily began to shift, but once he got to a certain point he kind of froze, incapable of moving further.
“Okay,” she said lowly, lullingly, “okay. C’mon. Here.” She worked her arm around him and began to half-pull, half-urge him off the couch. She strained a little; he was a lot bigger than her and heavy. “Okay—okay—I got you, come on—“ She got him to his feet. It was a struggle, and for a moment he went wobbly and threatened to bring them both down, his knee bumping against the coffee table spectacularly, causing bottles to fall over and one or two to roll onto the hardwood floor, thankfully remaining intact. “Oh—nonono—c’mon, let’s not do that, let’s not fall down,” Claire said hurriedly, tightening her grip on him. “Okay. C’mon, Leon. Let’s go.”
She half-dragged, half-guided his heavy, stumbling form down the hallway, to the small bathroom. She reached over and hurriedly flipped on the light, and the blank white walls and empty surfaces of the bathroom flared to life. She caught their reflection in the mirror; Leon halfway collapsed on her much smaller form, face dazed; her face suggested mild panic she was trying really hard to squelch down. “Alright,” she said, breathlessly, “okay. Can you—can you stand up on your own?” She pushed on him some, getting him unslouched and upright, and hesitantly she began to withdraw her arms from him, hands held out, as if she expected to catch him at a moment’s notice.
Leon wavered back and forth somewhat dramatically, but he held his feet. One of his hands reached out for the bathroom counter. Claire let out a gust.
“Okay,” she began, “I’m going to take your clothes off,” she informed him, for his own benefit and to steel herself. She reached down for the bottom of his compression shirt, pulling it up, trying to ease it up his torso. “You have to let go of the counter for a second,” she said. As she shirt came up, it exposed garish bruises and more scrapes.
Leon let go and wavered again, but he clumsily and heavily lifted his arms up and Claire pulled the shirt off him, trying not to be alarmed at his damaged state. The ever-present cross and saints’ medallions hung around his neck, just as they had since she’d met him at age 21. “Okay, great,” she said. She looked down at his feet, at his boots. “Okay, you can hold onto the counter again,” she said, and Leon’s hand reached back out for the counter as she sank down to untie and loosen the laces of his boots. “Alright, foot up,” she said, and unsteadily Leon lifted a foot and she pulled one of his boots off, and then quickly his sock. She repeated the action and command for the other foot, and then she stood.
Here they went. “Alright,” she said, reaching down to his belt, sliding it through the loops and buckle. “You okay?” she asked, undoing the belt, reaching for the button of his jeans.
“Yeah,” he replied, distantly.
Claire held her breath for a moment and pulled the zipper of his jeans down, easing the material over the angular jut of his hips. “Okay,” she said, pushing the fabric down further, until it hit the floor. “Alright, step out,” she said, and haltingly Leon did so. “Wait here a sec,” she said to him, then moved around him to the shower-tub unit. A shower was going to be a logistical nightmare. He was unsteady on his feet and she didn’t know if she could keep him upright without stripping down herself and getting in with him. A bath it was. She knelt down and located the rubber stopper for the tub, and turned on the faucet, adjusting knobs, putting her hand in the water to feel for temperature. Once it was a pleasant kind of warm, she put the stopper in and stood, turning back to Leon.
He was blankly and obediently standing there in his boxer briefs, as docile as a child. Claire regarded his bruised and damaged form, and then stepped over back in front of him, looking up at him.
This was fine. This was normal. She could do this. It was just him naked. It wasn’t like she’d thought about it ever or anything, not at all. Her cheeks turned pink. She needed to stuff the nervous teenage girl feelings down and put on her big girl pants. Leon was there in front of her, damaged, guileless, and distant, and he needed her help.
She’d seen dicks before in her life. Plenty of them, in fact. But none of them had ever been Leon’s. None of them had ever been one she’d idly and yearningly thought about from time to time.
Jesus she needed to pull it together. Big girl pants. Leon was currently a shell in front of her. Now was not the time for it.
“Okay, Leon,” she said calmly, directed to him but herself as well. “Here,” she said, hooking her fingers in the waistband of his boxer briefs and beginning to push down. The cut of his lower torso came into view, the beginning of the patch of hair that the trail that led from his belly button went down to. She swallowed a little, pushing the briefs down all the way, until they landed on the floor at his feet. Her face was still pink, she could feel it, and she pointedly tried to avoid looking down. “Alright, step,” she said, and he did so compliantly, out of the underwear, and she put her hands on his bare shoulders, turning him gently so his front was away from her. She let out a breath; the sight of his chiseled ass similarly wanted to drive her to distraction, but this was not the time for it. “Okay, c’mon, let’s get in the bath,” she said cajolingly. He took an unsteady step forward. “There you go. Okay.” She guided him towards the tub, and helped steady him when he lifted a foot up and set it down into the water in the tub with a loud, large splash. He got his other foot in, and Claire reached up to his shoulders, gently pushing down. “Okay. Okay, big guy. Sit down.”
Leon complied, heavily dropping into the water, and some of it splashed up over the lip of the tub onto the floor. He sat there limply for a long moment while Claire knelt and leaned over to check the temperature of the flowing faucet, and dirt began to swirl off of him into the water. The tub was filling slowly, and Claire let her eyes alight on the firmness of his thighs, paler than the rest of him, and locked there.
Okay. This was okay. They were doing this. She looked around the shower stall, spotted the soap, the shampoo, various sundries.
“Claire?” his voice issued forth, groggily.
“Yeah,” she said, looking down and over into his face. He was looking at her like he’d just noticed her for the first time, as if he’d just become aware of her presence.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His face suggested misery and maybe a minute moment of self-awareness.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she said hurriedly, soothingly, rubbing her hand up and down his arm. “You’re fine. I’m here to help. You called.” He looked at her blankly, and in that moment she knew for sure he 100% did not remember the phone call. “Um, just sit here for a second—let me go get a cup or a glass or something, so I can rinse you,” she said, and pushed herself up.
She exited the bathroom and went back down the hallway, trying not to look at the evidence of unraveling and despair on the coffee table, and went into the kitchen. She realized with a dull kind of sadness and emptiness that a lot of his cabinets were empty, or mostly empty as she searched for a glass. It was like he lived here but didn’t. He’d been here a long time, now; he’d moved in at 21. The cabinets should have been fuller than this. They were not.
She located a pint glass and took it back to the bathroom with her, Leon dazedly sitting where she’d left him in the filling tub. The water was decidedly dirt-tinged at that point, and Claire tried to keep her eyes in non-lascivious places. She knelt and dipped the pint glass into the water, pouring some over his shoulders. “Alright,” she said, again mostly to herself, as she began to douse him. “How long have you been back?” she asked.
“Two days,” he said.
“How long were you gone?”
“Not long.”
“What happened?” she asked, pouring water over him.
“Rescue mission,” he said. Claire didn’t know if it was the water, or the being naked, or what, but his faculties seemed to have returned to him a bit.
“Okay,” she said. She poured some water over the back of his neck.
“I was infected,” he said, and Claire froze and looked at him.
“Infected with what?” she asked, haltingly.
“A parasite,” he said. “I could hear it in my head. Constantly.” He swallowed. “It’s gone now.”
Claire was frozen for a moment more, and then she willed movement back to her limbs. She scooped up another glass of water and reached up to ease his head forward. “Lean forward,” she said quietly, and compliantly he dipped his head, and she poured water over his dirty hair. “Did you—did you immediately set into the drinking and pills when you got home?”
He was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” he said finally.
“There’s no more alcohol?” she asked. God knew she was guilty of periodically drinking too much to quiet the demons of her past. She knew she couldn’t judge Leon.
“No,” he said.
Claire resumed wetting him down in silence, and then reached over to shut off the faucet. She stretched upward, for the bottle of shampoo, and clicked it open, squeezing some into her hand. It smelled like sandalwood. It was nice. At least he permitted himself some kind of creature comfort other than alcohol in this barren apartment. “Okay, close your eyes,” she said, rubbing the shampoo between her hands. “I don’t want to get this in your eye.” She reached out and worked her fingers into the thickness of his hair; she’d always marveled at how thick his hair was, and how much of it he had. She began to scrub lightly, his head moving with her movements on a loose neck. She worked up a lather and let her fingers and fingernails massage gently into his scalp, and after a few moments his head was hung forward limply, eyes closed. His shoulders loosened and slumped, and he seemed to droop in the tub.
He was enjoying it. Claire washed his hair for far longer than it took to get it clean.
She reached over for the pint glass and poured water over his head, rinsing out the lather, using her other hand to shield his eyes on his drooped head like a mother would do to a child. She poured water over him until his hair rinsed clear, and she eased him back some, pushing his wet hair off his face. “Okay,” she said, with a gust. “Clean hair. Okay.” She reached up and grabbed the bar of soap and dipped it in the grey water, rubbing it between her hands. It too smelled faintly woody. Claire enjoyed the smell. She held her breath and reached out with the bar of soap, sliding it along his shoulders. “There we go,” she said, beginning to lather him up.
He compliantly let her wash him, body limp and disarmed, and Claire’s cheeks burned fervently as she washed in areas she had no business touching but had often thought about. Leon was silent and unruffled. She tried to be gentle and soft over his bruises and scrapes, and she worked up lather between her hands to carefully clean his face. He winced somewhat when the soap got into the gash on his face. Claire wondered what it was from. It was probably going to leave a scar on a face that had, up until that point, remained blessedly pure, unmarked, and defiantly pretty. She put the soap back in its dish and used the pint glass to rinse him down, the water in the tub at that point an unsettlingly opaque color from grime and soap residue.
“Okay,” she said quietly, reaching down to pull the stopper. “I’m—I’m going to go in your room. I’m going to try to find you something comfortable to wear. Just…wait here.” She stood and left the bathroom, going into the darkness of his room. It was similarly blank-walled and relatively bare, but she noted at least his bed looked comfortable and large. She walked over to the closet and pulled the chain to turn on the light; suits hung within, shirts. She turned the light off and walked over to a dresser, pulling open drawers. Jeans. Socks. Underwear. She finally pulled open a drawer that looked like it housed what she would term comfortable clothes, and she rooted around, pulling out a pair of basketball shorts. She reopened the underwear and socks drawer and pulled out a fresh pair of boxer briefs. Claire returned to the bathroom, clothes in hand, and set them down on the bathroom counter. She pulled the bath towel off its rack and took it in her hands. “Okay, up. Can you get up?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, and haltingly pushed himself up in stages, until he was standing in front of her, taller than her, wet, and naked as the day he was born. Claire had made it this far without bursting into flames. The end was in sight. She reached up and tenderly toweled his wet hair, and then began to rub the towel down over his shoulders, his arms. Leon still in some ways moderately seemed like he was on another planet.
“Claire,” he said, emptily.
“Yeah,” she said, drying him and trying to maintain a straight and composed face while doing it. Her cheeks were hot again.
“I don’t remember calling you,” he said, finally confirming what she’d suspected.
“That’s okay,” she said. “You did. You sounded…bad. Like you were having a bad time.” She rubbed the towel over his hip. “Like you needed a friend.” Friends did not casually think about each other’s naked bodies, Claire realized, but she was forcing herself to be neutral and detached.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For calling.”
“Hey, no,” she said quickly, quietly. “It’s okay. I’m not upset.” She finished drying him, as well as she could without making it painfully awkward, and she stepped back. “Okay,” she said. “C’mon out. I’ve got some clothes here for you.” Leon stepped forward, looking around blankly. “Um—do you need help putting them on?”
“I—“ Leon stopped, and then finally looked down at the clothes. “I can do it,” he said. He reached for the underwear, almost in slow motion.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay. Um—“ She turned to hang up the towel and Leon was stiffly and uncertainly getting the underwear onto himself, his limbs seeming somewhat unresponsive. “You got it?” she asked, with an inquiring lilt.
“Yeah,” he said, stepping into the boxer briefs, and pulling them up. He was covered again, and Claire let out a breath. They’d done it. They’d survived. It’d been awkward, and maybe more intimate than they’d ever been—which was saying a lot, because they’d tended each other’s wounds and occasionally shared a bed, sometimes with or without Sherry there too in the days after Raccoon. She pushed her nervous, spiraling thoughts out of her mind as Leon clumsily and heavily stepped into the basketball shorts.
“Okay,” she said, watching him pull them up, “let’s…let’s go lay down. I think you need to drink some water and eat some food. C’mon. Let’s go get you in bed.” She took him by the arm and began to guide him out of the bathroom. “I think we need to restore you a little bit and dry you out before you take any more of those pills. Are you supposed to be taking the pills?”
“Yeah,” he said, letting her guide him to the bedroom. “Some of them are for the infection. After the parasite. Doctors said so.”
Claire felt out of her depth. What had <em>happened</em> to him? What were the medications she could not pronounce meant to treat? What kind of parasite was he talking about? It was all a big nebulous blank, and he was clearly still in no shape to give her a full tale of the tape. “Okay, sure,” she said, guiding him to the bed. “Lay down,” she urged, and he flopped on the bed, long limbs kind of akimbo. She reached down and again pushed his damp hair off his face, her hand trailing down his neck, to his shoulder. His gunshot wound from Raccoon was as garish as ever, and she noted new scars she’d been too nervous and jittery to notice in the light of the bathroom as he stood in front of her nude.
“Claire,” he said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Mmhmm?” she said, adjusting the pillow behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Stop,” she said back to him. “Quit apologizing. It’s—it’s okay. You call, I come. You’d do the same for me. I’ve got you.” She leaned back and put her hands on her hips. “Why don’t you…why don’t you try to sleep? I’m going to go get you some water and try to rustle up some kind of food.”
“Okay,” he said meekly, and she left the bedroom. She went back into the kitchen and grabbed a second pint glass out of the cabinet, filling it with water from the kitchen sink. When she returned to the bedroom, Leon had rolled over onto his side and into a loose ball, his bruised back exposed to her. Quietly she set the glass of water down at the bedside, and slipped out of the room.
Now that she wasn’t wrestling with her out of control, girlish, yearning thoughts in front of a naked, shell-shocked man, she set to work. She found the trash can and hauled the bag out of it, noting it was already moderately full of empty booze bottles, and she began to clean up the coffee table. She looked at the bottle of whisky that still had liquid in it. Part of her, her own nerves on edge and unsettled by Leon’s state, wanted to twist it open and take some swigs. She forced herself to pour it down the sink instead, throwing the empty bottle in the trash bag with the rest. This led to her determinedly scouring the apartment for further booze; with a sad twinge she realized either Leon had lied to her or he was so out of it he thought he <em>had</em> drank it all, but she located more half full bottles. Without stopping to think about whether or not a Leon with his faculties would be pissed off about it, she poured them down the sink too. She crossed the small living room and pulled open the blinds covering the windows, letting light from the stormy day into the room for perhaps the first time ever. In the light of day, the apartment seemed even smaller and bleaker than it was in the darkness.
His cabinets were bereft of anything that would pass as food, and his fridge and freezer looked like he didn’t think they existed, aside from the errant photos on the front of it. Claire gazed at them a moment; the people that bore enough of a resemblance to Leon that she pegged them as parents, siblings. Smiling children looked at her from school photos, remnants of the life the government had forced him from returning to after Raccoon. There was an empty beer box in the fridge, and she hauled it out, broke it down, and stuffed it into the burgeoning trash bag. She didn’t have anything she could cook him, and even if she did, Leon’s kitchen was so poorly stocked she’d likely have nothing to cook it <em>in</em>. She began to hunt around for a phone book; began to shuffle through the stacks of paper dotting surfaces in the apartment here and there. She located a well-worn menu for an Indian place; take-out or delivery in a 15 mile radius. Leon didn’t like spicy food, Claire remembered. She drew her phone out of her back pocket and flipped it open, and dialed the number for the restaurant. They informed her she was in fact in the 15 mile radius and that they delivered to this address all the time, and Claire placed an order, urging them to make everything as mild as possible.
She didn’t know what the balance of her bank account was, and when they told her the total of the order, she sighed at the potential for further damage to her credit card.
It was fine. It was necessary. Leon was always the spender; he never let her pay for anything, always bought Sherry whatever she wanted. It was Claire’s turn. Leon was incapable of caring for himself at that moment, endless supply of money or no.
Apartment tided and de-boozified, with food on the way, Claire stood in the middle of the living room, looking around her. For a moment she felt at a loss, and then she walked down the hallway, peering into Leon’s bedroom from the open door. He was laying limply in the gloom, unmoving. She gazed at him for a moment, her hand on the doorframe, and then she started to turn away.
“Claire,” his voice came from inside the room.
“Yeah?” she asked, turning back to the darkness.
“Come here,” he said, and she let loose of the door frame and stepped inside the room, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Here. Come here,” he urged further, and Claire froze for a moment, hesitating. She eventually climbed up onto the bed and next to him, and lowered her body down, lying next to him with a space of a few inches between them. She worked her head into the pillow, and gazed at his face in front of hers. He was again looking at her like he was maybe just seeing her for the first time.
“Lay here with me,” he said, quietly.
“Okay,” she said. “Um—food’ll be here soon. I ordered from the Indian place. They said they deliver to this address all the time.”
“Yeah,” he said, distantly. “Just…lay here.”
“Sure,” she said gently, hands held loosely against her chest in front of her.
They laid there, time stretching on in silence. They laid there and Leon’s gaze into her face did not falter, and Claire made herself look back into his glance; his was somehow stripped bare, raw, and pleading. His pupils were large, suggesting he was still under the influence of how ever many pills he had eaten. She could smell the faint smell of booze on him being that close. She loosed one of her hands from against her chest and reached out, hesitantly, to smooth her hand over his damp hair.
He closed his eyes and dipped his head, as if inviting her to continue.
They laid there in the darkness, in silence, one of them broken and the other trying to figure out where all the pieces had gone when the break happened.
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Hi. I ran errands today and several HYPER-SPECIFIC scenes came into my head, and I had no choice but to write them. This all started with Grace having a panic attack because she doesn't know how to parallel park and it went from there.
We're told Grace works at a field office somewhere in the Midwest, so I've just kind of headcanonly stuck her in Missouri, outside KC. Years ago I headcanoned Raccoon City was in the mountains in the northeast somewhere, because even though Capcom has always insisted it was in the Midwest I'm like hello you guys you gave it mountains and forest. My very Kansan ass is calling bullshit on it being in the Midwest. These days I think Colorado is more likely. It's fun to imagine Leon having to haul supreme ass in the Porsche across the state of Kansas during RE9 to get to Raccoon. Is that what happened? I dunno, you tell me.
Anyway, please enjoy these disjointed scenes. The overall concept is Leon and Claire go on vacation to Missouri to see Grace and Emily. Grace suggests an event for them to go to. Typical feral behavior ensues.
Grace had been driving in what felt like to her increasingly desperate huge circles, around and around, and her anxiety was at an all-time high. She <em>knew</em> this street festival thing was going to be packed. Still her dumb ass had suggested they go, and now she was at the helm of her Subaru, aimlessly driving around, trying to ignore her sweating hands and pounding heart. There was nowhere to park. Nowhere she <em>could</em> park, anyway, and she felt like every single car in the world was on the road today.
Claire and Emily were chattering genially in the backseat and Leon sat steely-faced behind some Wayfarers in the passenger seat as Grace took them on a tour of every side street in the greater KCMO area. Finally, Grace became aware of Leon looking over at her in her peripheral as she white-knuckled her steering wheel.
“Grace,” he began, with the tone he had when he was intensely confused or frustrated by something she was doing but trying to be cool about it, “what are you doing?”
“There’s nowhere to park,” she replied, stressed.
“There’s tons of parking. You’ve passed about 50 places to park,” Leon informed her. “Why are we going in circles?”
“Because I was looking for like a lot or something,” Grace replied tensely.
“A lot is gonna cost you 50 bucks for the day,” Leon said. “Just put it in on one of these side streets. You’ve driven past a million places to park. Just park it.”
“I <em>can’t</em>,” Grace said emphatically, feeling her anxiety spark even further.
Leon’s face was inscrutable behind his sunglasses. “Grace,” he said, “do you not know how to parallel park?”
“No,” she admitted miserably. “And plus there’s like eight million cars behind me every time I turn and—“
“Do you want to learn how to parallel park?” Leon said, calmly.
“<em>Now</em>?” Grace said, her voice high. “No way. There’s—there’s too many cars. No way. I’ll just find a lot—“
“Do you want me to do it?” Claire piped up helpfully from the backseat. “I cut my teeth on street parking in NYC.”
“And yet somehow you still can’t do it,” Leon said, looking back at his wife. “Your idea of parallel parking is getting three-quarters of the ass-end of your truck up on the sidewalk and you look at it and say ship-fucking-shape and walk away.”
Grace was too stressed to admonish Leon for the hundredth time about his language around Emily. It wasn’t just him, it was Claire too. They were great with kids, if you ignored the fact that they cursed like sailors.
“Oh ho,” Claire returned haughtily. “Parked is parked. It’s out of the way. I can cram this little Subaru in somewhere,” she said. “Grace—“
“No, Claire. You’ll annihilate her rims,” Leon cut in.
“I will not. Just because you—“ Claire started, indignantly.
“Guys now is not the time,” Grace said, a touch hysterically. “If I have to listen to you two have an argument about parking I may hyperventilate.”
Claire leaned back into her seat, and Leon looked back over at Grace. “Grace, get out. Trade me places. I will park.”
“There’s a million cars behind me,” Grace fretted. “We’re in the way. People are like—“
“They can blow it out their ass,” Leon said. “It’s not going to kill them to wait. C’mon. Put your hazards on and get out.”
“If someone honks at us I am going to start crying,” Grace informed him, pushing the button for her hazards and unbuckling her seat belt. Leon likewise unbuckled his restraint and pushed open his door, and they crossed in front of the vehicle. Leon got in the driver’s seat and Grace climbed in on the passenger side, heart in her throat, and Leon immediately began to adjust the seat so his knees were not knocking the steering column.
“Alright,” he said, turning off the hazards and pulling down the road. He drove past several cars and then noted an empty space on the side of the road between a Camry and a Yukon. “There. Perfect.” Leon went to throw it into reverse and looked into his rear view, frowning. “Alright, well, this dude needs to not be on my ass for me to do this.”
Grace felt like the potential to be honked at was never higher. She kind of wished she’d never suggested they leave the house.
“Are we gonna be there soon?” Emily asked from the backseat.
“Yes, Em,” Grace replied absently.
Leon rolled his window down and waved the guy behind him around, and after a moment the guy <em>did</em> go around them, with excessive speed and a chirping of tires. Grace wished she was invisible. Leon merely flipped the bird, hard and proud, up the street in front of them. He then resumed parking. With a calmness and assurance Grace could not manage at that point, he angled the Subaru back into the space between cars, then cranked the wheel and pulled forward, and lo and behold her vehicle was perfectly nestled in between the Yukon and the Camry. Leon turned the Crosstrek off and handed Grace the key fob, looking at her evenly. “You need to learn how to parallel park,” he informed her. “It’ll make your life so much easier.”
“Yeah, sure,” Grace said dully, reaching for her little cross-body bag and pulling it on. She was trying to decide if this situation warranted an Ativan.
“Alright, well,” Claire said brightly, unbuckling her seatbelt, “crisis averted. Leon saves the day. Let’s go. I need to inhale some food from a cart or truck.”
They all got out of the car into the very slight chill of the early autumn day, and Emily wandered up next to Grace and put her hand in hers. “It probably is about time to eat, yeah,” Leon said.
“I hope I can find edibles,” Claire said, rubbing her hands together like an excited prospector. Leon looked faintly amused.
“This is Missouri,” Grace said, somewhat tiredly, feeling like the experience of looking for parking on a busy Saturday mid-day in KCMO had aged her. “There’ll probably be nine million edibles. It’s recreationally legal here. There are probably people actively walking around smoking weed.”
“Excellent,” Claire said brightly. “C’mon. Let’s go find something deep fried and some THC cookies.”
The group set off down the sidewalk.
………………………………………………………………….
Grace was draining the remnants of her key lime pie kombucha, one eye on Emily’s slight form next to them, when Claire rejoined them, bag in hand. She looked inordinately pleased with herself.
“Hey Emily,” Leon said. “Do you want a cookie ice cream sandwich?”
Emily immediately perked up and began stomping her feet up and down and nodded emphatically at Grace, who looked down at Emily a bit hesitantly. “Leon, we haven’t even really had anything that passes as real food,” Grace said.
“She ate some corn,” Leon said, benignly.
“Elote,” Claire informed him, off-handedly. “I’m telling you, you would have loved it. Corn and mayo and cheese. You should have gotten some.”
“There was some red stuff sprinkled on there,” Leon returned. “Probably spicy. No thanks.”
Emily had grabbed Grace’s hand and was working it up and down excitedly, her face pleading. “Alright, fine,” Grace sighed. “Cookie ice cream sandwich. But then we need to find you something, that is like—“
“Grace, you are not going to find something healthy here,” Leon cut in, in amusement.
“Maybe,” Grace said, letting Emily begin to drag her, “maybe not.” The group started ambling for the trailer selling all kinds of ice cream treats Grace was willing to believe children dreamed of. Claire was rifling in her bag, and she triumphantly produced what looked like a saran-wrapped brownie with caramel and marshmallows.
“Wow,” Grace said, peering at it as Claire began to unwrap it. “That’s—that’s an edible? Like, that’s got weed in it? That looks like something you’d buy at a bakery.”
“Hey,” Leon said, looking behind him, “are you getting into that <em>now</em>?”
“Hell yeah, brother,” Claire returned cheerfully, unwrapping the saran-wrap enough to free a corner of the brownie. She took a bite and hummed emphatically. “Oh my God that’s so good.”
“Do not eat that whole thing,” Leon said adamantly. “How many milligrams is that?”
“200,” Claire replied, chewing. “I’m not gonna eat the whole thing. I’d be insensate.”
“Yeah, well, last time you had some kind of THC whatever baked into a brownie I had to carry you to bed,” Leon said dryly. “I ain’t carrying you around here. Keep it to a dull roar.”
Claire did not reply, and took another bite of the brownie, chewing appreciatively.
“Oh, Em,” Leon said as they got in line for the ice cream trailer, “they have cookie ice cream sandwiches <em>and</em> some kind of thing with Fruity Pebbles.”
“I want the cookie,” Emily said, making a dramatic crazed child face up at Leon.
Grace watched a family walking away with the same mentioned cookie ice cream sandwiches in hand. They were <em>massive</em>. Emily was going to either experience a sugar high to end all sugar highs by the end of the day or she was going to be sick from eating so much junk. “Em, those things are huge,” Grace said, gently. “I don’t know if you can eat a whole one. Maybe they have, like—“
“I can eat a whole one I swear!” Emily replied pleadingly, having spotted the sandwiches herself. “<em>Pllllllleeeeeaaaaaaseeeee</em>, Grace.”
“Since when could a child not finish ice cream?” Leon asked incredulously. “I’m getting that Fruity Pebbles thing.”
Grace sighed, as Emily vibrated next to her and they waited in line. Grace loved when Leon came to visit, or when Leon and Claire came to visit, but in some ways it <em>was</em> high stress. They were barely controlled chaos at times, bound and determined to blow into town and pointedly undo all the rational, healthy, and gentle parenting Grace did. Grace had once caught Leon permitting Emily to just dump spoonfuls of sprinkles into her mouth at an ice cream parlor. Claire assured Grace children had to learn at some point and expand their palates after feeding Emily a jalapeno popper, as Emily dramatically waved her hand at her lolling tongue and kicked her feet back and forth. Grace had once caught Leon bouncing Emily so high on a trampoline she was practically above the neighborhood roofline, as Grace looked on in horror picturing broken bones and missing teeth.
“Claire, quit eating that,” Leon admonished firmly as Claire was still taking tiny nibbles of the brownie
“I’m done,” she huffed. “Just a nibble. It’s so good.”
Leon gazed at his wife with a stern face from behind his sunglasses, and Emily ran tight little circles around Grace as they stood there in line.
………………………………………………………………….
“Oh—ooh, produce,” Claire was gushing dazedly, ambling close to a farmer’s stand, piled high with the last fresh produce of the season. At some point she’d produced a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses and put them on her face. She seemed very relaxed and unperturbed by anything and kind of seemed to be operating in a smooth slow motion.
Grace looked on, noting. Claire seemed like something could burst into flames in front of her at that moment and she would just calmly blink at it. Maybe there was something to weed, after all. Not that Grace would know, as she had never tried it. She couldn’t really do so, because of her job, but noting the calming effect the brownie had on normally mile-a-minute Claire, Grace was kind of jealous. Oh, to be so calm.
Grace let out a gust. Knowing her luck she’d try an edible and freak out. It just seemed like something she would do.
“Ooh, look at those tomatoes,” Claire gushed further. “Green zebras. Delicious.”
“Hey,” Leon said, grabbing her and gently steering her, “what’re you gonna do with tomatoes? We’re only here two more days and then we’ve got the long haul trip from hell to get home.”
“I mean, do you guys <em>have</em> to do the drive in one day?” Grace asked, furrowing her brow.
“A bit, kind of,” Leon said tiredly. “I’ve got to be back in DC. It’s about 15 hours, and no matter what I say about her driving we shave about two hours off our time when Claire’s behind the wheel.”
“I could make dinner,” Claire said, still absently ogling the produce as Leon steered her away.
“No,” Leon said. “We’re going to dinner. I’m taking us to dinner. This is vacation. Step away from the kitchen. You spend half your life in ours at home.”
Emily looked up at Leon, grabbing at his shirt. She began jumping against him somewhat and Leon sighed and lowered himself to the ground. Emily climbed up onto his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he stood, hooking his arms around her legs. “Where are we going to dinner?” Emily asked.
“I dunno, what do you want?” Leon said.
“Em, do not say—“ Grace started.
“McDonald’s,” Emily said assuredly, and Grace looked put upon.
“I never should have introduced you to a Chicken Nugget,” Grace said.
“I mean don’t get me wrong, I can put away a double Quarter Pounder with Cheese,” Leon said, “but I think we should probably go somewhere fancier.”
Claire was yet again straying from the group slowly. “Holy shit fried pickles,” she said reverently.
“Claire, where are you going,” Leon said, looking over at his meandering, high wife.
“Fried pickles,” she replied over her bare shoulder emphatically. She had on a loose, wide-necked sweater-like top; the neck hung down her shoulder and arm, exposing her freckles and what looked like a relatively severe slash of a scar to Grace.
“What’s a fried pickle?” Emily asked.
“What are you feeding this child?” Leon asked of Grace. “Nothing but organic cardboard? Do you like pickles?” he asked, angling his head towards Emily.
“Yeah,” Emily replied.
Claire sauntered back over to them, and stuck her hand up in the air in front of Leon, making grabby motions. “Wallet,” she said. “We need fried pickles stat.”
“It’s in my back pocket,” Leon returned. “I’m carrying a child, here.”
“With all this junk is anyone even going to want to <em>eat</em> dinner?” Grace asked in wonder.
“Oh absolutely,” Leon replied calmly. “I’m hungry right now.”
“You have had like eighteen things,” Grace said incredulously.
“So?” Leon asked. “Hey—would you <em>stop</em> pinching my ass?” he said over his shoulder, to where Claire lurked behind him, cackling softly to herself. “Just get my wallet and quit trying to leave welts on me.”
Claire stepped out from behind Leon, wallet in hand, and she looked at Grace. “Grace, are you gonna have fried pickles?” Claire asked brightly.
“Oh, what the hell,” Grace said, throwing her hand up in the air. “Sure. Why not.”
“I better get the biggest size,” Claire said. “This one here,” she said, jerking her thumb back at Leon, “unhinges his jaw and absolutely houses some fried pickles, especially if ranch is involved.” Claire made her way over to the line for fried pickles, and Leon stood there stoically with Emily on his back, gazing into the distance behind his sunglasses.
“How,” Grace began, looking over at him, “are you like super ripped and so in shape and yet I feel like every time I see you, you are eating garbage?”
“My stomach hit age 18 and never moved past it,” Leon said evenly, still staring into the distance. “Plus I’m from the Midwest. Claire puts healthy food in me at home. Left to my own devices, I don’t fare well. Cut me some slack. I’m on vacation. I’ll pay for it in the gym when we get home.”
“You should probably have, like, vegetables for dinner,” Grace said knowingly.
“No can do chief,” Leon replied cheerfully. “I haven’t had my red meat allowance for the week. I’ve been saving it. I feel like we should really try some of the barbecue around here. Isn’t that supposed to be Kansas City’s thing?”
“It is,” Grace replied, then furrowed her brow some. “Barbecue sauce kind of gives me heartburn.”
“Kid you are impossible,” Leon said, looking over at her. “I need to just put you in a bubble. You weren’t meant for this world.”
Grace put her hand on her hip. “Listen, just because barbecue sauce gives me heartburn doesn’t mean I need to become a bubble child.”
“No?” Leon asked. “How about the hand-wringing over parking? The constant mother-henning over the amount of sugar Emily is eating?”
Grace had no good response, and for a moment, she put aside her own rules about language. “Leon, shut the fuck up,” she replied, and he kind of grinned at her a little, hiking Emily up his back.
“There we go,” he said appreciatively. “I’ll have you drinking 100-year-old scotch and flipping the bird in traffic before you know it.”
“I think not,” Grace returned, looking at her watch. “We should probably start heading for home soon.”
“Have you ever been on the Real Bees Fake Top Hats subreddit?” Leon asked, abruptly.
Grace had introduced Leon to Reddit and periodically she regretted it. The more time he spent on Reddit, the more Grace started to think Claire might have needed to install parental controls on their devices. Grace had introduced Leon S. Kennedy to Reddit and now he was on there and <em>everyone’s</em> problem. “No, I haven’t,” Grace said. “What is it?”
“Pictures of bees with top hats photoshopped onto them,” Leon said plainly. “It’s great.”
“Did you watch that YouTube I sent you of the guys eating the, like, 100 year old MREs?” Grace asked, hand still on her hip. “I feel like it would be very relevant to your interests.”
“Does anyone hurl?” Leon asked.
“No, I don’t know how though,” Grace said. “It looked pretty gross.”
“Hmm. Yeah, I’ll watch it,” Leon said.
Claire returned with a paper boat of fried pickles that looked like it weighed three pounds. “They’re so good,” she informed them, with casual adamancy.
“Is that ranch I see?” Leon inquired, with barely controlled excitement.
“Yes,” Claire said. “I got extra because I know you be drinkin’ it when you’re eating these pickles.” She held the boat out. “Dig in, everyone.”
“Oh, put me down,” Emily said, squirming. “I need a pickle.”
Leon let her down onto the ground, and Claire handed his wallet back to him. Emily came up and grabbed a pickle, then dunked it in some ranch and stuck it into her mouth. “<em>Mmm</em>!” she enthused loudly, looking at Grace as she chewed.
Grace reached out and took a pickle, dipping it lightly in the ranch and then putting it in her mouth. “Alright,” she acquiesced, “they’re pretty damn good.”
“Everyone take what you want before I upend that thing in my mouth and eat them all,” Leon said.
“No way,” Claire said, pulling the pickles away from him. “Share. If you starch this whole basket and we only get like four a piece I’ll murder you.”
The group began to slowly meander through the loose crowd, eating pickles. After a while, Emily fell back and stuck her hand back in Grace’s, and they walked along behind Leon and Claire, who were munching fried pickles like someone was paying them to do it.
Grace smiled a little. She hoped whatever barbecue place they decided to go to that night had a parking lot, and not street parking.
Hey guys, the voices tormented me enough. For a long time I considered this fic complete and perfect. 10/10. Probably one of the best things I'd ever written.
But then I had more ideas and I realized I wasn't done with Leon having his end-of-the-world-everyone-almost-died freak out.
So I added to it. Just a little more.
It's been a long time since I posted the first part, so you may want to read that to refresh yourself, or read it for the first time if you never did.
Hi. The idea for some smut was bandied about. The idea took root, and grew from there. It expanded, to include biting, headlocks, the public pool, and an ice cream truck. It's late 20s degenerate situationship Claire and Leon, because I love writing them feral and unhinged and probably in sore need of an adult or shock collars, or something. I realize when I write them bumpin' uglies as married 40-somethings, they seem slightly more composed. Maybe age mellowed them. Not in those early years where they couldn't tell each other they loved each other and lived apart. It was all bad decisions and trying not to get caught at shit--by the time they got back together in their late 30s, maybe they were a little more adult and civilized. That was the time for them to consider making their long-distance situationship legitimate, and things like buying houses and putting someone on your health insurance. Late 20s Claire and Leon were busy pounding beers and each other.
ANYWAY. I digress. Prime degenerate Leon and Claire activities. They...well, I guess you'll just have to read to see. I feel like this is both horny and kind of comedic and silly. I quieted the voices in my head by writing this. Huzzah!
It'll go up at AO3 at some point, but right now ain't nobody got time to format all this shit.
Enjoy!!
Claire heard her back door creak open, and the rickety old screen snap shut behind it. She listened more closely and she didn’t hear the mower anymore; she was busy sorting through a pile of shit she’d hauled out of her computer desk drawers. She supposed if Leon was going to make himself busy, she would too, but it was late June and hotter than hell and she was loath to do outdoor chores.
Hence the reason she’d let her backyard grow to a height that Leon merely looked out the back door at and sighed mightily upon beholding when he’d arrived in Long Island yesterday.
“What?” Claire said, innocently. “I mowed the front.”
“And the back yard fence hides your ongoing sins of sloth when it comes to home ownership?” Leon had asked.
“<em>Listen</em>,” Claire said to him pointedly, but she really had no good excuses or arguments, so she hadn’t said anything else and instead had just kind of wandered off, leaving him to look after her in amusement.
She put the Sharpies in her hand down—she’d found about 50 of them, in varying colors—why did she own so many Sharpies?—and walked over to her kitchen, where she could see the door to the back yard. Leon had come into the house, sweaty beyond description, and he was pulling the fridge door open.
“Gross,” Claire commented coolly, leaning against the entrance to the kitchen with her shoulder. “You look like you swam out there.”
He looked over at her incredulously. “News flash—the mower is ten thousand times easier to push when you don’t let the grass grow to eight inches tall,” he said plainly. “I was fighting for my life out there. It’s probably why you hate mowing so much, because you let it get to such a state that it’s like a leg of a triathlon when you finally do get out there to mow.”
“Alright, task master,” Claire said in amusement, watching him lean back over to the fridge. He reached inside and pulled out one of the ever-present cans of Busch, cracked it, and began to slam it. “You should probably drink some water. It’s like 80% humidity out there today.”
Leon paused in slamming the Busch. “The beer you drink <em>is</em> water,” he countered, dryly. “I’m achieving all the hydration I need from this Busch.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s how it works, but okay,” Claire replied, pushing off the wall. Leon finished slamming the can of beer and crunched it in his hand, tossing it off toward her recycling bin. He then grabbed his t-shirt along the back and began to pull it over his head, working his arms out of the sleeves. “You should probably go pop through the shower. You’re going to smell terrible.”
“And whose fault is that?” Leon asked, looking over at her with his shirt in his hands. “Not like I dream of coming to Long Island to do yard work.”
Claire shrugged. “So stop. Never once in all this time have I asked you to do a single thing. Your inherent, like, crochety-dad-with-tools-on-a-Sunday attitude compels you into doing it.”
He sighed, and looked over at her evenly. “I guess if you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself,” he said, and then balled his shirt up and tossed it at her. It landed half on her shoulder and face and she produced a high-pitched noise of dismay.
“<em>Gross</em>, Leon,” she whined, hurriedly tossing the drenched shirt off behind her. “That thing is sopping in sweat. What are you, 16? Don’t throw your sweaty clothes on me.”
He just looked at her and laughed some, then walked past her, running his hands through his sweat-dampened hair. “Alright. Rinsing off. I fear I already smell, there’s no needing to wait for that.”
Claire looked over at him, folding her arms over her chest and arching an eyebrow at him. Leon was generally relatively polite and for the most part collected, but occasionally she was reminded he really was just a guy, party to all the things that made guys gross like smelling bad and made women turn their noses up at them. Claire had long years of it with an older brother in the house; she periodically rolled her eyes at her male coworkers and told them to stop being so disgusting. Leon seemed better at holding it in than the average guy—even during their time in hiding when he was 21, he’d seemed too well-mannered to really let it all hang out—but these days, periodically, perhaps due to the proximity and letting down of walls regarding things such as swapping spit, Leon felt free to be as gross as he wanted to be. She watched him head off to the bedroom, presumably to rifle through his bag, and then he appeared again a moment later, dry clothing in hand, heading for the bathroom.
Claire headed back over to her desk, and the endless piles of shit she’d pulled out of the drawers. Why was she saving expired bank cards? She spotted her weed pipe—didn’t want to lose that. Were these loose papers parts of last year’s taxes? Upon closer inspection she realized they were parts of maybe the last three years of taxes. Digging through all this junk for minutes on end and gazing at things in confusion before she tossed them into the waiting trash can or set them off to the side to hang onto made her wish she was a more organized adult. As a teenager, she remembered the cluttered mess her room at her uncle’s had been, and she remembered going over to her childhood friend Daisy’s house, whose room was perfect and pristine and kind of pink and ruffly.
Being disorganized had been a life-long problem of Claire’s. She could manage to pull it together when it counted, but she thought of going from the single-male-run-household clutter of her Daddy’s house to the absolutely hoarded nightmare of her uncle’s, and she realized maybe her life absent of maternal female role models had led to her being a little bit of a gross male herself. Her house wasn’t <em>gross</em>; she kept things clean and scrubbed and wiped down, but it <em>was</em> a cluttery mess. She didn’t usually see this kind of mess in the houses of her female co-workers; it was more conspicuous in the homes of her male co-workers.
Leon emerged from the bathroom clean, with wet hair, and in a pair of basketball shorts, and briefly spectated her shuffling through her clutter with a perplexed look on her face. “Why were there about six koozies in your desk?” he asked, in amusement.
“I dunno,” Claire replied. “Never know when you need to keep a beverage cold,” she added, blithely.
He picked up a pair of spare shoelaces she’d found in one of the drawers. They were rainbow-colored and he looked at them in continued amusement then tossed them back down onto the pile of junk on the desk. “Give that a break and c’mere,” he said.
“Well, which is it?” Claire asked with a smile, putting her hand on her shorts-clad hip. “You’re constantly extolling me to be more productive. Now I’m actually doing something and you’re telling me to stop?”
“You and I both know this shit is going to end up in a new pile somewhere,” he said, grinning at her.
She looked at him indignantly, picking up the trash can and showing it to him. “Nuh-uh. Look! I’m throwing things away,” she said. “All this stuff is just stuff I don’t really know what to do with yet.”
“Sure,” he said, slyly disbelieving. “C’mon. Give it a rest for minute.”
Claire set the trash can down with a sigh, and followed him over to the couch. He laid down on it, perhaps slightly too big for it, and Claire came and sat down in front of him. She looked down at him gazing up at her and she made a little face like a lightbulb had gone off. “We should go to the pool,” she said.
“The pool?” Leon asked. “Like the public pool? You live within a short drive of beaches and the ocean and you’re opting for a public pool?”
Claire shrugged some. “The beach is a pain in my ass and always has been. The pool is less stress.”
He again looked amused. “I mean, we went to the public pool as kids,” he said. “But that’s because we were 15 and devoid of planning, money, and wherewithal to go further. How is the beach a pain in your ass? You go and lay there and get in the water. It’s the least stressful thing there is.”
“Parking,” Claire said. “Getting out there. Finding a spot far away from douchebags, of which there is a never-ending supply. Sand.” She looked at him. “We used to go out there when I was in college, when I was like 21. Day trip from the city. It was just every dude-bro Guido known to man hitting on us while I tried to, like, be high and look for shells.”
Leon stared at her for a minute and then laughed some. “How does that seem so typically you? 21, hotter than hell, high and oblivious, looking for sand dollars while men on the beach stare at your ass.”
Claire made a persecuted face. “I never found an intact one, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying,” she said. “Those were my Long Island beach experiences. Trying to hide alcohol from the cops, listening to other people’s shitty music, trying to find cool shells, dealing with some dude with gel in his hair at the beach for some reason following me around trying to talk to me.”
Leon was laughing again. “Oh, you’re so put upon,” he said. “The beach sounds like an ordeal. C’mere.”
“C’mon,” Claire cajoled, pulling away from his hands pulling on her. “Get up. Let’s go to the pool.”
“I don’t have swim trunks,” he replied, attempting to pull her the other direction.
“You’ve got those shorts,” she said. “That works. I don’t think anyone cares what you wear as long as you’re not naked.”
“What, there’s no nudist beaches on Long Island?” he asked with a grin, pulling on her struggling form. “Hey. Quit squirming. Get over here. I’m not even sweaty anymore.”
Claire was struggling, trying to dissuade his grip, pushing at his hands. “I would rather walk on hot coals than go to a nude beach,” she said. “Seems like prime stalking territory for dudes on a sex offender registry.”
“That’s probably all it is,” Leon said, fighting to get her defiant hands and arms under control. “Just a bunch of horny, naked men standing around wondering where all the women are.” He pulled on her and she lurched forward, and he reached up and got his arm around her, pulling her down the rest of the way.
“Hey—Leon—“ Claire wriggled and tried to rotate in his arms like a rotisserie chicken, finding that the new position put her at a disadvantage as her looped his arm around her neck and hooked one of his legs around hers. “Okay you’ve got me in like a wrestling hold,” she said breathlessly, grabbing onto his arm. “You’ve got me in a headlock.”
“You wouldn’t comply,” Leon informed her. “You needed to be subdued. If you’d—hey. Are you <em>biting</em> me, you crazy feral person?”
Claire had in fact grabbed hold of his arm with both hands and tucked her head down some, sinking her teeth into his bicep. “Hmmm,” she replied, laying there trapped with her teeth sunk into his arm. Leon let out a sigh and settled back into the couch some, his arm and leg not moving. Claire made an adamant noise and sunk her teeth into the solid muscle of his bicep with more force.
“I had multiple older siblings,” Leon said in bemusement. “And about 100 cousins between the States and Ireland. You’re going to have to bite harder than that. I’m no stranger to being bitten.”
Claire made another noise and complied, her teeth latched onto him, and Leon produced a noise in return. “Your teeth are <em>sharp</em>,” he said. “You file those things down or what?”
She hung there for a moment with his arm in her teeth like she was some kind of misbehaving, bitey toddler at daycare, and when he did not move she released her tooth hold on him. “Release me or I’ll keep biting,” she said.
“Joke’s on you,” Leon said, calmly. “I <em>like</em> the biting, with your pointy little puppy teeth and all.”
“Alright, c’mon,” Claire said with determination, beginning to struggle. “That’s <em>it</em>--“ She writhed around in his arms and succeeded in turning herself back towards him, and he tightened his arms around her, attempting to prevent her from fleeing. This went on for a few long moments, until Claire stopped struggling with a huff, half on top of Leon.
“Hey, alright,” he said cheerfully, pulling her over some, more squarely on top of him.
“You are <em>forever</em> telling me in a vaguely paternal way to do shit around my house,” Claire said, struggling to push herself upright. “And I’m finally doing it and you want to practice WWE moves on me on the couch.”
“I don’t come to Long Island to watch you clean your house,” Leon said.
“Don’t come to do yard work, don’t come to watch me clean,” she said, breezily. “What <em>do</em> you come to do?”
He merely stared back at her, a growing grin spreading across the lower half of his face. One of his hands moved down her back, to her ass, gripping it firmly and pulling her against him.
“Oh, I see,” she said knowingly, as he gripped her ass. “We could be going to the pool right now.”
“I don’t want to go to the pool,” he replied simply, kneading the flesh of her ass. He pressed up against her.
“I do,” Claire returned defiantly, even though the grip of his hand on her and him pulling their bodies together kind of had her brain starting to head off in another direction.
“We can go to the pool later,” he said to her, his voice taking on a lower timbre. “What’s next? You want ice cream from the ice cream truck?”
“If he makes it through the neighborhood today, yeah,” Claire replied sassily. “I will absolutely fuck up one of those strawberry shortcake bars.” She gazed back at him, her face lazy and indolent. “What, you mean to tell me you’re turning down ice cream from the ice cream truck?”
He pulled her against him more firmly. “I was known to fuck up a banana fudge pop in my time,” he said, sounding gravelly. “Quit running your mouth and c’mere.”
Claire sighed mightily, as if she was supremely taxed, and leaned forward. His mouth covered hers instantly, tongue sliding in deep; the hand not holding her ass moved up to the back of her head, angling her head to him. Claire kissed him back, just as adamantly, until it felt like a fight for supremacy, their mouths separating momentarily only to fuse again, hotly. His other hand controlled her ass and hips, pulling her against him as he rutted up against her. Claire moaned a little, the public pool, her desk mess, and the ice cream truck momentarily forgotten, letting her hips roll against his.
“Mmm, that’s it,” he murmured to her, in the breathless space between kisses. “You gonna be a good girl for me?”
“Yes,” she murmured back, and then their mouths were fused again, her fingers clutching at his bare shoulders. After a moment Claire broke her mouth away, it hung open and her eyes drifted closed at his lips moving to her jaw, her ear, her neck.
“Been thinking about fucking your tight pussy since last night,” he uttered against her neck, both of his hands coming down to her ass to encourage her writhing against him. “Good and hard and fast. Make you fucking scream. Make you claw my back up. You wanna get fucked, sweetheart?” His tongue traced along her skin and his teeth found her neck, biting lightly.
He <em>had</em> come into town last night and kept fairly to himself; she’d fed him dinner and they’d gone to bed curled up together as per usual, but she should have suspected he wouldn’t keep his hands to himself the whole time he was in town—not that she necessarily wanted him to, anyway. “Yeah,” she breathed.
“I wanna hear you beg for it, like a good girl,” he said, nuzzling against her neck. “What do you say, sweetheart?”
Claire swallowed, eyes closed, her brow knitting together somewhat. “Please,” she said. “I want it. As hard as you can. I want—“ Her teeth bit into her lip and she loosed a moan, feeling his hard length grind against her.
“Mm, that’s how you always want it,” he uttered in her ear. “You wanna get railed like the dirty little slut you are, don’t you? You wanna get fucking pounded, don’t you?”
Claire chewed on her lip; inside her panties was a wet mess and she’d totally forgotten anything she’d been about 10 minutes prior. All that mattered now was getting him to quit doing mouth-running of his own and make good on his promises. “Yeah,” she moaned. “Please,” she added.
He loosened one of his hands to slap her ass through her shorts firmly, loosing a satisfied hum at the way she reared up and gasped. “C’mon, then,” he said, nipping at her ear. “Get to the bedroom, if you want it so bad.” His hands and arms loosened on her somewhat, allowing her to push herself up. Claire righted herself and slid off him, missing the crush of his body against hers, and she got to her feet, watching him push himself into a sitting position on the couch.
Claire turned and headed for the bedroom through the brightness of her noon-time lit house, her feet quick on the aged hardwood, Leon’s heavier footfalls behind her. She nudged the half-closed door open and entered the relative darkness of her bedroom; she kept heavier curtains on the windows in here, anything to keep her room from being lit up like the surface of the sun in the mornings. Leon caught up behind her as she entered, his hands coming to her hips, pulling her back against him next to the bed. His hands ran up the front of her, under the stretchy cotton of her tank top and over the skin of her stomach, up to her tits in their bra. He took hold of them, pushing them upward, kneading them in his hands, as she leaned back against him and panted, her arms coming up to wind their way around his neck. He leaned his head down near her shoulder, humming in her ear, watching her body undulate slightly as she chased the rhythmic grip of his hands on her tits.
“Mmm, look at you,” he said lowly as she angled her face towards his, her bare feet worrying each other on the floor below them. “You <em>do</em> want it bad, don’t you? 15 minutes ago you wanted to go to the pool. You change your mind?” Before she could reply he fit his mouth over hers again, kissing her with such force it almost caused her to bend, and she whimpered into his mouth and he moaned in return. He tore his mouth away from hers, their breath shortened and mingling, one of his hands slipping down into the loose, low-riding waist of her cut-off shorts. His fingers slid down under the fabric of her panties, and sought down to her pussy, then very wet and ready for him to do whatever he wanted to do to it as hard as he could. “Bet you’re not thinking of the pool,” he continued, lowly, as his fingers worked between her folds, into the wetness. “What are you thinking about?”
“I—“ His fingers found her clit, circling it firmly, and she let out a mewl, her hand gripping at his neck above her. “You,” she breathed. “You inside me.”
“Yeah?” he murmured. Her legs were starting to tremble minutely at the attention to her clit. “You thinking about this big cock inside you?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “I want it.”
“Your little pussy practically dripping, thinking about having this cock inside you, fucking you until you scream?” he goaded further, fingers never stopping in their pressure to her clit.
“Oh—“ She let her head rock back against him. “Give it to me,” she said. “I want it. Please.”
“When you ask so nicely,” he said, his tone just the tiniest bit amused, or smug, or something that under normal circumstances may have perhaps made her want to throttle him. “Bend over,” he said firmly, drawing his hand out of her shorts, taking his hand away from her chest. She whimpered in disappointment at the sudden lack of manhandling, and instead loosened her arms from around him. She bent forward, hands on the bed, and she felt his hands sneaking under her to undo the button of her shorts, pulling the zipper down. He pushed her shorts and her panties down and they landed around her feet in a small pile of fabric, and his hands smoothed up the inside of her thighs, around to the back of them, up over her ass. “I don’t hear you using your words to ask for what you want,” he prompted, pulling her hips back some with his hand around her hipbone.
“I want it,” she began immediately. “I want you to fuck me. Please,” she said, and she moaned and arched her back when she felt his fingers near her opening, and then further, the warm and thick head of his cock, trailing through her wetness. “Oh,” she gasped. “Mmm. Please. Yes.” She angled her hips, pressing backwards, craving the feeling of him driving in firmly and quickly, filling her up in one stroke. “Oh God,” she murmured, feeling him move his cock up and down against her wet pussy.
“Oh, you’re excited now,” he said in reply, still sounding amused. “Bet that pussy’s begging. Bet you can’t wait for this cock to be inside you.”
“Please,” she said, and his hand tightened on her hip momentarily, then slid around to the skin of her ass, coming down in a little slap. She hummed, throatily, and then his hand moved again, back around the front of her, to her clit. She gasped when his fingers found it again, but then she whined a little as she felt his cock moving away from her. Claire’s hands clutched tightly into the mussed bedclothes under her hands, and she let out a long, quiet keen when she felt one of his fingers sliding into her from behind, his other hand occupied with rubbing her clit firmly.
“I like watching you fuck my hand,” he said to her, pumping the finger in and out, her hips torn between moving back against the finger inside her or moving forward against the fingers at her clit. “Like watching you desperate for more. You always want more, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, teeth biting into her lip again. “Oh—oh—“
“I like watching you writhe like the horny little slut you are,” he said, a second finger sliding into her alongside the first. “I like listening to you beg for cock until you don’t know what to do.” Her hips were moving, frustrated, seeking. “Huh, Claire? Is that good?”
“More,” she panted, letting her head hang. She could feel release starting to build in her, the walls of her pussy clutching at the fingers inside of her.
“So needy,” he uttered back, tormenting her in two places at once at a measured pace. “You get so desperate to come you cry. You want this cock so bad sometimes you can’t even talk.”
“Please,” she said, “Oh Leon—mmm—I need—“
“I know what you need,” he cut in. “Keep being a good girl and maybe you’ll get it.”
“Yes,” she sighed, her toes curling into the hardwood. “I wanna come,” she pleaded.
“Oh?” he asked. “I never would have guessed with you fucking my fingers like this.” Claire moaned, her face flushing; evidently he was in one of his moods where he was going to flaunt her mindless arousal in her face. “C’mon. Don’t be shy. Really fuck ‘em. I can tell you want to.”
“Oh,” Claire breathed, working her hips back against his thrusting fingers more intently. The hand at the front of her followed her motion, fixing itself to her pussy and clit with continued pressure. Release was gaining on her in increments, the feeling building. “Oh God—more, please—“
“That’s it,” he encouraged as her hips rocked back and forth. “Not so shy now, are you? You’d do anything to come, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” she moaned.
“Bet you’d lose your mind if I stopped,” he said. “You’re desperate for that pussy to be filled.”
She froze a little, her brain spooling—it was not unusual for him to stop, to lead her halfway to orgasm and suddenly stop touching her, to make her take her begging to a new level of fervency. “Leon—“ she managed frantically, “no—please don’t—I want to come—“
The two fingers inside of her were suddenly three, the fingers of his opposite hand at her clit insistently. “You’re being such a good girl for me,” he said. “I’ll let you come. I know you’d cry and whine if I didn’t.”
Her face felt hot; he was right, she’d be rendered a whiny mess if he were to suddenly stop what he was doing, if she lost the circling of his fingers at her front and the stretch of his fingers from behind. Sometimes it didn’t stop him—he <em>liked</em> the whining, he seemed to thrive on it. His will wasn’t entirely made of iron, she knew, but sometimes in moments of empty desperation as she begged him for something it sure seemed like it was. “Oh—oh fuck.”
“Well, get to it,” he prompted, almost cheerfully. “You gonna come for me or what?”
“Mmm, yes,” she murmured, lifting her head, her body chasing his fingers wantonly. “More,” she said. “Harder.”
He made a noise. “Put your back into it,” he said. “Fuck my hand harder if you want it harder.”
Claire tightened her grip on the bedclothes, pushing her body back repeatedly against the fingers inside her, forward against the fingers at her clit. She loosed a high pitched gasp; she could feel the crescendo of orgasm building in her. “Oh fuck,” she said, helplessly.
“There you go,” he said lowly, encouragingly. “Fuck my hand like a good girl if you want to come.”
“I’m—oh, mmm,” she moaned, pressing her lips together and rolling them. “Oh I’m gonna come,” she panted, eyes squeezed shut as his hands pushed her to distraction. “I’m gonna—“
“Whole lotta talking,” he said. “You better shut that pretty little mouth and keep fucking until you come for me.” His fingers pinched at her clit and she whined, her hips jerking towards the stimulus. “C’mon. Give it to me.”
Her breathing was growing increasingly erratic, harsh; torn between his two hands, the fingers inside of her and the fingers pressing her clit, she writhed. Her mouth fell open, her brows drawn together, her arms shaking underneath her. She teetered on the precipice, momentarily breathless, and then it all came out of her in a gust with a long croon as she came, her knees knocking together, the upper half of her body dropping down some as her arms failed to stay locked and supportive. Frantically she still pushed herself back against his fingers as she vocalized high and helplessly.
“That’s a good girl,” he said to her. “Mmm, look at you. You can’t even stand up and I haven’t even put my cock in you yet.”
Claire was still languidly moving her hips, the aftershocks of her orgasm periodically shooting through her like sparks, her pussy fluttering around the fingers inside of her. His hand slipped from around the front of her, and he slowly withdrew his fingers from inside her. Claire looked over at him as he moved to her side; she looked at his cock hard and proud and felt the ache inside her, and almost as a casual afterthought as opposed to deliberate arousal, he put the fingers that had been inside of her up to his mouth and sucked them clean. Claire whimpered.
“I kind of like it when you do the work,” he informed her, as he got onto the bed and she tried to will power back into her limbs. He laid back on the bed and took his cock in his hand, stroking it lightly. “Get up here. We’re not done, baby. Ride this cock.”
Claire pushed herself up, stepping out of the puddle of fabric at her feet, and she climbed up onto the bed. His free hand reached for the bottom of her tank top, pulling up on it, and she reached down and pulled it over her head, complying with his wordless directive to shed it. She unhooked her bra and let it drop onto the ground, and she shuffled over to him, swinging a leg over his hips. She put her hands on his chest and let him line his hard cock up with her opening, and once she felt the thick head in place, she began to slowly sink down, moaning.
She started slowly, riding him with a gentle grind, her fingers tight into the skin of his chest. He pushed back in deep with every stroke, and Claire hummed, letting her body find a rhythm. He gazed up at her like he always did, his face somehow both awed and steely, and his hands found her hips, gripping tight.
“Nuh-uh, sweetheart,” he said. “Fuck like I know you know how to fuck. Ride it like you mean it. C’mon.” He slapped her ass and she jerked, involuntarily. “Give it to me. Fuck me.”
Claire braced herself and tensed her legs and drew up off him, rocking back down onto him pointedly, the bed squeaking under them. She did it again, and again, the muscles in her legs flexing as she bounced and his cock hit home inside her every time. She pushed herself up straighter, riding him so hard her tits bounded and the bed complained.
“Mmm, that’s it,” he said throatily, watching her. “Fuck that cock. Bounce. Go.”
Bounce she did, her legs tensing and releasing, her hips and ass impacting against him every time his cock was buried all the way inside her. His hands came up to her tits, taking them in his hands and squeezing; lip in her teeth, she put her hands over his and encouraged him, leaning her head back as he pinched and teased her nipples. She was moaning, her body pounding down against his. She reached up and grabbed one of his hands, bringing it up to her mouth; she was so fucked out and mindless that she wanted everything, all at once—she wanted every part of him all over her, every part of her all over him. She brought his fingers up to her mouth and sucked them inside, tongue swirling around the digits. Leon groaned at her animal instinct to be closer, to have him in her mouth somehow.
“Harder,” he said. “Fuck me, Claire.”
Claire rode him so hard she started to sweat with the exertion of it, the muscles in her legs burning, the head of his cock so deep inside her and impactful it felt like it would bruise. “Oh fuck,” she keened. “Oh my God—“
“Yeah,” he growled, holding onto her, watching her with lidded eyes. “Fuck that cock, baby. Give it to me, little girl. C’mon.”
Claire bounced mindlessly, her mouth slack. “Oh fuck it feels good,” she gusted, her breath short. “Oh—“
“You like fucking this cock?” he asked, fingers tight into her ass.
“Yeah,” she moaned back, long and high.
“It’s all yours, baby,” he said, sounding labored. “Ride me.”
Claire fucked with such force she felt like if someone slipped now or something unexpected happened it was going to be a career-ending injury. Her face was hot, she was sweating, her legs were begging her to give it a rest, and yet she kept going. Leon was looking at her like she was the only thing in the room, perhaps on earth. And it <em>did</em> feel good, she couldn’t deny that having all of him inside her that hard, deep, and forcefully felt like heaven. He was right—she did always want more. She leaned forward some, bracing her hands on him, still bouncing her ass up and down for all it was worth. Leon set his jaw, grabbed onto her ass, and beneath her he squared himself up abruptly, and on her next downstroke she was met by his hips snapping up into her. Their skin met with a loud, impactful slap, and now as she fucked down onto him he fucked up into her, the pace feral, the depth punishing, the bed creaking pitifully.
“Oh <em>fuck</em>,” she whined, a long warbly croon hiccupped by the impact of their bodies together. “Oh <em>Leon</em>.”
“You’re not the only one who always wants more,” he growled through clenched teeth, thrusting up into her bouncing body. “<em>Fuck</em> you make me crazy—“
“Fuck me,” she keened. “Harder—oh—give it to me—“
“I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna feel it for a week,” he ground out. “I’m gonna fucking ruin you. I’m gonna fuck you until you can’t take it—“
“Yeah,” she moaned throatily, one of her hands slipping up to her own breast, squeezing it, worrying it. “Fuck me.”
“C’mon, baby,” he said, labored, mouth slack. “Give me everything you’ve got. Jesus, fuck me—“
There were no niceties about this. There was just them fucking like animals, giving up logic and reason to pound away at each other like they hadn’t a single other thought in their head. Claire was sweating, Leon was sweating, anyone who came within 25 feet of her house was probably going to hear the noises from within, turn red, and hurry away. She rode him until she felt like her legs weren’t going to work for 24 hours, and he fucked up into her so hard it punched the air out of her lungs and the sounds she made were hoarse, drawn out, and erratic.
He grabbed hold of her sides and made an animal noise, forcibly flipping her off him. A startled gasp escaped Claire as she suddenly found herself flat on her back, dazed—Leon rolled, got up, and got between her legs roughly. He grabbed the backs of her thighs and pressed her legs up, folding her, and thrust back into her so deep and hard the headboard knocked the wall with a loud thud. Claire rocked her head back, a guttural moan coming out of her. He began to thrust into her forcefully, jolting her body up the bed somewhat every time his hips met hers, her hands clutching into the bedclothes around her head for something to anchor herself.
“You like that?” he asked, strained, fucking into her so hard that perhaps the average person may have found it abusive. Claire was not the average person, and occasionally they were so far outside the bounds of average that she wondered if they weren’t pushing into deviant territory.
“Yeah,” she uttered back, gazing up at him helplessly. He released one of her legs and brought his hand up to grab hold of her face, fingers digging into the plump of her cheeks, forcing her to continue looking up at him.
“You like getting pounded like the little slut you are?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” she managed back, whimpering every time one of his powerful thrusts caused her body to jerk. His fingers tightened on her face, and then he thought better of it, shifting his hand to put his thumb into her open mouth. She hummed mindlessly and closed her mouth around the digit, sucking, and he was looking at her like he’d fucked his brain away several long moments ago, if it had ever been there at all.
The room was filled with the wet sounds of his cock moving in and out of her, their feral noises, the gasping for breath, the loud slap of their bodies against each other, and the loud, repeated thud of the headboard against the wall. Eventually Leon fucking into her like he intended to split her in half pushed her far enough up the bed to where for a few thrusts the top of her head knocked against the headboard like it knocked against the wall; Leon’s hand reached up to the top of her head to shield it from repeatedly slamming against the headboard. After a moment he rethought his plan and just grabbed onto her body, hauling her backwards, moving backwards on the bed himself. Claire let herself be dragged limply, and he was right back inside her, just as deep and powerful as before, leaning over her. They were both ragged, sweaty messes at that point, and Claire reached up to grab onto his back, pulling him closer. Her fingers splayed against his skin and then they curled, her uneven nails digging into the firmness of his muscles. She moaned wantonly, the only thing occupying her brain at that moment was what his cock felt like so deep inside of her, the desperate, animal sounds he produced. She let her nails rake down his back, fingertips tight into the skin the whole time, and he leaned down and kissed her. It was a frantic clash of teeth and tongue, of panting breath and dripping sweat.
“Fuck yes,” he growled into her face. “Claw me up, baby. Fucking give it to me.”
Claire was nearly hoarse at that point, her body bouncing under his, nails digging into him like she meant to wound, like she was fighting for her life. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d clawed him raw; in lucid moments Claire figured it couldn’t have felt pleasant, but he always seemed good natured about it and joked with her slyly about it. He hadn’t been lying—she was going to feel this tomorrow, and maybe the day after, and maybe for a few days. She always welcomed the warm soreness between her legs—maybe there <em>was</em> something wrong with her, but she often craved the feeling.
Leon angled his face away from hers for a moment, looking down to where they were joined, and he groaned. “Look at that, Claire,” he commanded, reaching up to grab her face roughly, angle it downward. “Look at you taking it all like a good girl. <em>Fuck</em>.”
The sight of his cock moving in and out of her always set her to desperate moaning, her face burning, and she gazed helplessly at it, holding onto him like a cat with its claws out. “Oh <em>God</em>,” she panted in total surrender, feeling him thrust into her like this was the last point he was ever going to make. “Oh—mmm—“
He reached down, working his fingers between them, finding her clit yet again. He began to rub at it firmly and insistently, his face looking back into hers. “Come for me,” he urged. “Come on this cock.”
“Oh,” Claire breathed, one of her hands performing a long, slow rake down his back. “Ooh—yeah—“
His hips collided with hers, a bead of sweat dripping off of him onto her chest. His hand on her clit knew one purpose, and his fingers were devastating in their accuracy. She writhed, captive under him, her body spread out to his ministrations. He fucked her like he wanted it to be the last thing she ever remembered in this lifetime. “Take this cock like a good girl and come for me,” he uttered to her, his eyes boring into hers. His pupils were blown wide; he looked like he was either having the fuck of his life or he’d taken way too much. Claire imagined her face didn’t make much more sense gazing up at him; she felt mind-blown and perhaps like the secret to life was his cock inside her.
Her nerve endings were singing and she sucked her lower lip into her teeth, again looking down to where they were joined, at his hand on her. “Oh fuck,” she gusted. “Oh don’t stop,” she added, pleading. He hummed, righting his body some, away from the repeated clawing of her nails, using the new angle to drive himself into her with renewed purpose, the headboard beating out a bass rhythm against the wall. Claire’s hand moved to his forearm, latching on again with the pressure of nails. The bite of her nails into his skin was not a distraction to him; his fingers rubbed the same pointed, devastating tight circles on her clit. Her voice was growing in volume and pitch, becoming a high, thready thing.
Orgasm broke in her like the mercury rising in a thermometer; it started slow and grew in intensity, her head thrown back, her mouth open, her pussy constricting around him in pulses. He made an appreciative noise as she spiraled and panted and mewled, sweat-slicked and fucked out.
“Good girl,” he ground out, as she dazedly angled her head back towards him, her body welcoming him back in with every pound of his hips against hers, the wet sound their union made obscene.
Leon thrust into her, her body jolting, and then for the next approximately two seconds things happened so fast she didn’t process them. She felt the pleasure of him hitting home inside her, the stretch, the pressure; there was a terrific sound, and that was followed by an equally terrific thud and lurch and when Claire blinked, her brain trying to figure out what in the fuck had just happened, she was blinking from a new position—she was lower to the ground, the ceiling further away.
Leon froze, his face hanging over hers, and for a second all they did was stare at each other, wide-eyed, halted in perplexity.
“Did we—“ Claire loosed a noise. “Leon, <em>we broke the fucking bed</em>,” she said, astounded, irate, confused, and knowing all at the same time. “Jesus <em>Christ</em>,” she gusted, angling her head up and towards the wall. The bed and box springs were now flat on the floor, detached from the headboard.
Leon was looking at her, face somehow <em>caught</em>, still inside her, and then abruptly he began to laugh. He was really laughing, with his whole chest; Leon didn’t often genuinely laugh at things. He’d spare a chuckle, or a dry noise, or he’d smirk in amusement. A genuine fit of laughter was so rare out of him it was almost disconcerting every time. His face crinkled with the effort of it, his head dropping down to hang some. Claire’s face grew adamant back at him, and she frowned. Normally she appreciated the ability to make him laugh like he meant it; it was probably good for him. She didn’t necessarily know if this situation warranted the gut-busting.
“Leon, it’s not fucking funny,” she said shortly. “We <em>broke my bed</em>.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I can fix it,” he assured through laughter, his shoulders shaking. “I’ll fix it. This—“
“It’s always something,” she said loudly, looking up at the ceiling. “Are other peoples’ lives this much of a clusterfuck, or is it just us?”
“It’s us,” Leon assured her in mirth. “Combined we inflict damage on most things we encounter. I’ll fix it, Claire. Don’t worry.” He was calming down some, the laughter subsiding.
“Alright, well…” She trailed off, letting out a sigh, looking up at the ceiling. Sure, her bed was second-hand, and maybe about 15 years old, but she never once in a million years contemplating fucking so hard it broke. She and Leon probably needed adult supervision. They needed someone or something to enforce structure on them. Together, they were full-speed-ahead hedonism and perhaps bad decisions. Claire laid there for a second, contemplating how most adults she knew who reported to be adults were probably not horny trainwrecks with no impulse control who fucked beds to death.
And then her train of thought was cut off by Leon thrusting into her evenly, pointedly. She gasped and furrowed her brow and made a noise of dismay. “Leon the bed is <em>broken</em>,” she informed him. “We are actively on the floor.”
He was moving in and out of her again, purposeful against her body. “It ain’t gonna stop being broken,” he informed her. “We already broke it. Damage’s done.”
“You—“ She tutted some and furrowed her brow, torn between matronly disapproval and pleasure at the feeling of his thick and still very hard cock moving inside her. “Did it fucking put a hole in the drywall?” she asked breathlessly.
“Not the hole I am concerned with filling at the moment,” he replied in casual but labored off-handedness, thrusting into her.
“Oh my <em>God</em>,” Claire half-groaned, half-gasped; part of her was cringing at his ever-present bad, opportunistic humor, and the other saw no fault with his logic—the man had just been in the act of fucking her so hard it sent a bed to the afterlife, he was probably fairly concerned with coming at that point. And who was she to deny him? The damage was, after all, done—they’d already broken the bed, it was going to stay broken until someone did something about it, which probably didn’t necessarily need to happen right at that moment especially given that one of them had experienced orgasm twice and the other not at all.
His hands once again came to her thighs, pushing her legs up, effectively folding her again, and he exchanged the deep, mean, powerful thrusts for rapid ones, his hips jackhammering against hers. Part of Claire’s brain felt derailed by the fact that they were now on a mattress and box springs on the floor, like she was in college all over again, but she could not necessarily maintain a hardline, serious approach with him fucking her like that. It took him a second to distract her, but distract her he did, drawing her attention back to the sensation of the way his cock felt moving in and out of her soaked pussy. She was less concerned with the fact her bed was broken and more concerned with having a record-breaking, awe-inspiring fuck.
He fucked her like a man possessed, with the skill of his age and the stamina of an 18 year old with a stack of porn and too much free time. Claire sounded grateful pleasure over and over again, her hands once again knotted in the destroyed bed clothing around her head, and Leon fucked her until they <em>both</em> needed to get back in the shower, their bodies drenched.
He let his hips collide with hers one last time, fingers tight into the meat of her thighs, and he was coming, rutting into her with a groan, his cock pulsing inside her. Claire laid there, throat dry, sweat-dampened, and watched him fill her with his spend in exhausted, blissed-out awe.
The exhausted, blissed-out awe lasted for a moment, but around the time he was pulling out of her and flopping over on his back next to her, letting out a breath, his hands in the air uselessly supported by his elbows, she was back to realizing her bed was broken.
“Jesus Christ,” Leon announced, sounding astounded and fried at the same time.
Claire laid there limply next to him, her heart still pounding, as they both gazed up at the ceiling.
“Well, banner day for me,” he went on, cheerfully, sounding winded. “I’ve never fucked a bed out of existence.”
Claire tiredly forced herself over onto her side, looking at him flatly. “Pat yourself on the back later. This is a problem.”
“Fuck, I kinda feel like I deserve some sort of medal for this,” Leon said, looking up at the ceiling, sweat running off him in rivulets.
“You broke my bed,” Claire replied, petulantly.
“<em>I</em> did?” he asked, mildly incredulously. “I think you helped, sweetheart. I wasn’t on this bed fucking <em>myself</em> to oblivion.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Semantics. The bed is on the floor. It wasn’t earlier.”
Leon let out another gust, then angled his head up behind him, looking at the headboard. His hands were still up in the air at the end of his propped forearms, as if he was surrendering. He rolled, with a grunt, over to the edge of the bed, and looked down at the frame below them, on the floor, and then back up at the headboard. “Yeah, I can fix this,” he said, almost to himself, off-handedly. “No problem. Just need a trip to the local Ace or wherever for some wood and hardware.”
Claire laid there and tried to maintain a business-like face in spite of the fact that she could feel his come leaking between her thighs, and watched him roll back over onto his back, rubbing his face.
“I think I need another one of those water beers,” he said.
She looked at him skeptically, and let out a sigh, her face softening. “Yeah, maybe me too,” she admitted. He looked over at her, sweaty and benign.
“Let me lay here and recover and then you can take me to Ace Hardware,” he said. “Or wherever. I’ll fix it. I promise.”
“I somehow feel like we’re failing to pass as adults,” Claire said, gazing at him.
“I’ll take bed-breaking,” Leon replied, his head turned towards her. “I’m forced to be pretty buttoned up and adult most of the time. My free time is for bad decisions and insanity.”
“No shortage of those around here,” Claire said, rolling back over onto her back, looking up at the ceiling.
They laid there for long moments, letting their heart rates return to normal, the slow turn of the ceiling fan above them cooling the sweat on their skin. Eventually Claire pushed herself up with a sigh, and made a noise. “I need to clean myself up,” she said.
“Do you still want to go to the pool?” Leon asked, looking up at her. “I’m debating on whether or not this sweat situation needs to be solved by yet another shower or if I can jump in a pool about it.”
Claire looked over her shoulder at him. “I dunno,” she returned. “Pool closes at 6. Are we going to have <em>time</em> for the pool?”
Leon looked at his watch on his arm, appraisingly. “Yeah. Sure. This won’t take me long to fix and reinforce. All the time in the world for the pool.”
Claire lightly slapped the back of her hand against his naked thigh. “Alright, well, up and at ‘em, chief. We have errands, now.” She scooted to the edge of the mattress and pushed herself up off the floor, as opposed to stepping down from it. She meandered off to the bathroom to clean up the mess between her legs, but not before she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and just kind of stared in mute wonder for a moment. Her hair had been fucked into the biggest rat’s nest she’d ever seen, her hair tie long gone, and it took her a few minutes and careful detangling with the brush to make it sensible again. She unwound another hair tie from around the handle of the brush and pulled her hair up into a sloppy knot, affixing it with the hair tie.
She returned to the bedroom, and almost collided with Leon in the doorway; he was back in the basketball shorts and a t-shirt, looking for all the world just like any other American guy on an errand-filled Saturday, maybe more sweaty. She managed a little <em>ope</em> and moved past him into the room, reaching down for her panties and shorts, pulling them on. She was in the process of hooking her bra around her when she heard the noise from outside, and paused.
In the distance, the unmistakable tinny sound of the ice cream truck’s music was heard. It was in the vicinity, and Claire hurriedly pulled her bra up, sliding the straps up her arms. “Leon,” she called, turning her tank top right-side out, “you hear that?”
“Hear what?” he called back.
“Gimme your wallet,” she called back. “It’s the ice cream truck.”
“Huh?” he called back, and she rolled her eyes a bit and stepped out of her bedroom, coming down the hallway. She stood there in the living room, hand on her hip, the other one held out in front of her.
“It’s the ice cream truck,” she repeated. “Let me see that wallet.”
He looked over at her blankly for a moment, and then his mouth pulled up. “I see you’re taking me up on my earlier offer,” he said in amusement.
“You broke my bed,” she countered evenly, then open and closed her outstretched hand. “Wallet.”
“Again, I was not in there fucking myself so hard a bed broke,” Leon said, his face knowing and sly, “and it takes two to tango.” He reached into the pocket of his basketball shorts, rummaging, and drew his wallet out and slapped it into her hand. “Guess it’s a banner day for you too. Ice cream <em>and</em> the pool.”
“I also came twice, which makes it a little more mature, even with the ice cream and the pool,” she said, and he chuckled some, rubbing his hand along his jaw. “Anyway. I’m going to go find this guy.” She closed her hand around his wallet and walked to her front door, pulling it open and stepping out into the bright light of the day, the humid air immediately pressing in around her. She pulled the door to behind her and made her way off her front porch, barefoot, walking across her small front yard, looking up and down the street for the ice cream truck. At the end of the street it rounded the corner, and Claire began to walk down towards it with Leon’s wallet in hand, deciding to stick mostly to the grass of people’s front yards to spare her feet from the hot sidewalk. The truck parked, and as she walked, a small group of kids began to gather at the truck, coming out of surrounding houses.
Claire sighed a little to herself. Nothing said full-fledged adult like standing among a group of 5 to 12 year olds at an ice cream truck. She’d lost control of today. She’d try again tomorrow.
She was walking towards the truck, when she heard her name, loud and deep from behind her. She looked back over her shoulder, and Leon was walking along in long strides, trying to catch up with her. He joined her at her side, and held out his hand. “Here, lemme see that thing,” he said, indicating his wallet. Claire handed it back over to him, and they approached the truck.
The man working the truck slid the large service window at the side open, and he looked like air conditioning was an advancement in ice cream truck science he’d welcome, but he managed to look mildly cheerful for the kids and maybe a bit confused at Claire and Leon’s presence. A small child and a minutely bigger child stepped forward to the window, standing close together; they seemed like a unit, siblings, maybe. One of the children had a ten dollar bill in her hand. Leon flipped his wallet open and thumbed through it, squinting against the bright midday sun.
“Here,” he said loudly, stepping forward, and the small group of gathered kids looked back at him, perhaps similarly surprised by the presence of adults. “Here, man.” He drew a stack of bills out of his wallet and handed them up to the ice cream truck driver. “Give these kids whatever they want. Give the rest of the kids in the neighborhood whatever they want. If there’s anything left, keep it.”
The ice cream truck driver accepted the stack of bills from Leon and folded it into his hand, looking at it. “You sure?” he asked, in a strong Long Island accent.
“Yeah, man.” Leon looked back at the group of kids. “Hey, you guys, put your money away. I got it. Just get whatever you want.”
“Thank you,” one of the kids uttered, small. He was in dire need of a haircut, missing a tooth, and wearing a Spiderman shirt.
“Yeah, thank you sir,” the bigger half of the probable sibling unit that’d just been ready to buy ice cream said, grabbing the ten dollar bill from her sibling.
“Sure,” Leon said, then walked back over to Claire, who looked over at him with a knowing but fond smile.
“Mr. Big Spender,” she said, in amusement. “It wasn’t enough to just buy me my strawberry shortcake bar.”
“Fuck it,” Leon said in an undertone, perhaps mindful of the presence of children. “Let the kids cart the tens back in to their parents or stick ‘em back in their piggy banks or whatever.”
“Sure,” she said, still smiling. This seemed very typically Leon—an enigmatic, unreadable bundle of occasional hedonistic abandon with a heart of gold. Bed-breaking aside, acts like this were why she thought of him in her spare time, why he’d grown to be a little more to her than the fellow survivor who occasionally blew into town to get up to no good with her.
Not that she let on that she was maybe any fonder than he thought she was. It just wouldn’t do to open her mouth and complicate things. Claire would accept the yard-mowing, the bed-breaking, and the free ice cream and keep the three little words to herself, even if sometimes she yearned with everything she was to grab his face in her hands and say them right at him, with conviction.
The crowd of kids eventually ambled back towards respective houses on the street, bomb pops and ice cream sandwiches in hand, and Leon and Claire stepped up.
“Oh, you actually want some ice cream too?” the ice cream man asked, his strong accent amused. A Long Island lifer, not a transplant like Claire. “I thought maybe you were attached to one of those kids.”
“If I’m attached to any kids anywhere, nobody’s informed me yet,” Leon returned dryly, and the guy laughed at him, his eyes crinkling. “What do you want?” Leon prompted, looking over at Claire.
“Strawberry shortcake bar, please,” Claire said in amusement.
“Sure thing,” the ice cream man returned, pulling open a cooler. “You want anything, man, or you just Daddy Warbucks today?”
“Oh,” Leon said with a gust, looking out into the distance, “fuck it, sure. You got any banana fudge pops?”
“That I do,” the man said, pulling open a different cooler. “Here you guys go,” he said, handing the plastic-wrapped ice creams down to them. “Enjoy. Have a good one, you two.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Leon said, “you too, man.” He and Claire turned to head back across the few yards to hers, and her front porch. Claire tore open the opaque plastic containing her strawberry shortcake bar on its stick, and took a bite.
“Mmm,” she said, emphatically. “Just as good as I remember. Probably haven’t had one of these things since I was like 15 or 16.”
“They sell ‘em at gas stations,” Leon said, looking over at her as he tore open his own ice cream. “At least around DC they do. In the ice cream cooler. You could have one every other day if you wanted to.” He looked at the banana fudge pop. “Now <em>these</em> things…maybe not so much. Never seen one off an ice cream truck.”
Claire hummed, taking another bite of her ice cream as they walked. “Niche ice cream,” she said. “Rare and unobtainable.”
“Yeah,” Leon said, and took a bite. “I genuinely think maybe I was sub-15 last time I had one of these things.”
“And?” Claire asked, lightly.
“Still tastes like fake banana and chocolate,” he replied. “Just like I remember. Divisive ice cream. Not for the banana haters.”
“A real banana doesn’t taste like that,” Claire said. “Not like Laffy Taffy, or Runts, or whatever.”
“Sure,” Leon said, and then looked over at her with a smile. “Wanna know something?”
“Lay it on me,” she said, as they approached her porch.
“I think real bananas are kind of disgusting,” he said. “I think I only like the artificial candy flavor. Eating a banana’s kind of the absolute last thing I want to do, unless it’s in the form of banana bread.”
Claire looked over at him with a smile, her eyebrow arched. “Bananas are good for you,” she said. “I think they lose that the moment they’re turned into bread, or distilled down to become a candy flavor.”
Leon chortled some. “Honey, I think artificial banana flavor is probably 100% chemicals, and like usual, in spite of my best intentions, I’m predisposed to love shit that is bad for me.”
They climbed the three steps to her porch, and Claire paused, nibbling at her ice cream. “Hardware store and then pool?” she asked, looking at him gamely, with her eyebrows raised.
“If I must, I suppose,” Leon said. “Your bed’s not gonna fix itself and I could probably impress some kids by doing a backflip off the diving board.”
Claire smiled at him, fond. “Sure,” she said, pulling her front door open. “It’s your day to impress, I guess.”
Leon chuckled some, coming into the house behind her, pulling the door shut.
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And since we're posting snippets, here's a short little blurb of a scene that popped into my head while writing my post-Infinite Darkness arc. It didn't grow into anything more than what it is but I'm a sucker for writing Chris and Claire interacting, in many different forms. Since I'm not doing anything further with it, I guess you guys can read it!
Claire didn’t get to spend enough time with her brother. He lived in Richmond, because he could not tolerate being in DC, and more often than not was out on assignment for work. It’d been a rocky road; Chris, being Chris, and a Redfield, generally chafed under the yoke of someone telling him what to do, even if it was the government. He had a habit of periodically disappearing for several weeks, and while he was fairly open with her, he also hid a lot from her too.
Once a year he tried to orchestrate some kind of sibling vacation. Chris paid, Claire came, they went. Last year she hadn’t been able to get away from work for very long, so they’d just gone to upstate New York for a week, hanging out in the woods, hunting and fishing. This year, as if to make up for last year, Chris told her he wanted to go to Hawaii. He’d never been, and neither had she. Claire was not going to turn down a free trip to Hawaii. If that was where Chris wanted to go, that was where they were going.
Which brought her to the current moment, laying in a lounge chair next to her brother, sipping away at something that tasted like a fruit cocktail but probably contained enough alcohol to kill her. Chris was already starting to take on color from their brief time there; every morning Claire slathered herself in SPF of the highest degree to keep herself from burning to a crisp, her freckles multiplying. As if reading her thoughts, Chris looked over at her from behind his mirrored aviators. Claire gazed back at him, at her own pale reflection.
“When was the last time you put on sunscreen?” he asked.
“A while ago,” Claire replied. “I’m probably due again.” She sat up and rooted around in the beach bag, searching for the bottle. Chris was still gazing at her.
“Where’d the necklace come from?” he asked. Claire did not pause in her digging, but her brain skipped. She was still wearing Leon’s necklace; she was surprised it had taken Chris this long to comment on it, as neither of them were raised with religion.
“It belongs to the guy I’m seeing,” Claire replied. Chris was still looking at her but his attitude changed.
“You’re seeing someone?” he asked, his tone shifting minutely. “You found someone you can’t run off?”
Claire smiled some. “So far, yes,” she replied.
Chris sat up some. “For how long? Where’d you meet him?” Claire could sense Chris’s overwhelming desire for her to just be <em>normal</em> and <em>okay</em>, and she had a feeling she was about to crush his hopes.
“A while now,” she said, pulling the bottle of sunscreen out of the bag. “You actually know him.”
Chris’s face furrowed in confusion, behind his sunglasses. “Is it one of the guys you work with? I’ve met some of them,” he said.
Claire opened the bottle of sunscreen, squeezing some out into her hand. “No.” She paused for a moment. “It’s Leon Kennedy. I’m seeing him.”
Chris was silent for a long moment while she applied sunscreen. “Claire,” he began tiredly, “seriously? What’s wrong with meeting someone at work or in a bar or <em>anywhere</em> like a normal person?”
Claire shrugged. “I dunno. We reconnected. It’s working.”
“I don’t know if I approve,” Chris said, turning away from her some, looking out at the beach. Claire knew he wouldn’t.
“I don’t know that I need you to approve,” Claire said, although she said it mildly. “I’m an adult.”
“I think,” Chris said, after a moment, “if you knew half the shit the government had Kennedy running around doing, you’d think twice about letting him in your bed.”
Claire thought of Leon, and his absolute unwillingness—inability—perhaps both—to let her know most anything about his work. She knew people died; he made enough off-handed references to such for her to glean that he was not always standing around in an office or the White House. She knew his work did not agree with him. She knew he resigned himself to it. “Maybe,” she said, finally.
“I don’t always know if his head is screwed on right,” Chris went on. “I think he’s probably more of a mess than he’s letting on to you.” Chris sighed. “But you’re acting like you’ve made up your mind.”
“I kind of have,” Claire said. “None of us are saints. He’s good to me.”
“None of us are saints, but some of us are really asking for it,” Chris said, knowingly. “I’m sure he’s probably good to you. You’d make some man—particularly a tough-skinned one—really happy, Claire. Government service makes living a life hard.”
“I’ve become patently aware of that,” Claire said dryly. “It’s not easy having a relationship with someone who lives several states away from you and is essentially a government asset.”
Chris scratched at his head, ruffling his hair. “Yeah. It’s not great. I think you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. I wish you’d change your mind.”
Claire was unbothered. “I’m not going to.” She held the bottle of sunscreen out at Chris. “Get my back, would you?”
Chris took the bottle from her and sat up, turning in his chair as Claire did likewise. Chris began to smooth sunscreen on to her back, like he had since they were children. “You’re an adult,” Chris said as he worked. “But I don’t feel like this is headed anywhere good. I know too much about Kennedy. You deserve a <em>normal</em> person, Claire Babbie. A normal life.”
She blinked out into space, her eyes unfocused. “I’m happy, Chris.”
Chris sighed, yet again. “Then I’m happy for you. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.”
“I am,” Claire replied. Her mind strayed to Leon, and what he did when the government sent him places.
<em>Nothing good</em>, was Leon’s standard description of it. She thought of him fixing her car, kissing her forehead, holding her as she slept. Maybe she was bending her morality for comfort, she didn’t know. In a lot of ways, it felt too good to stop. She was this far in, and deep inside she knew she was ass over tits for Leon, something she didn’t dare say out loud but was always at the tip of her tongue.
“Well,” Chris said, as he finished smoothing sunscreen on her and tapped her on the shoulder with the bottle, “tell the crazy bastard I said hello. He hasn’t always been overjoyed to see me, but maybe he’ll change his tune since he’s trying to keep you happy and along for the ride.”
“Sure,” Claire said. “I’ll tell him.”
…………………………………………………………
Claire was in her hotel room, poking through the motions of getting ready. Chris had said he wanted to take a nap; these days her brother was like an old man who napped once a day in his downtime, when he had it. She didn’t know when he’d be up, so she was getting ready for dinner and that night, but she wasn’t in a hurry.
<em>I told my brother about you, today.</em> She’d texted Leon about ten minutes ago; the time difference was vast, she didn’t know if he was necessarily paying attention to his phone at that hour or even still awake.
She was brushing her hair out, wet from a shower, when her phone buzzed.
<em>I’m sure that went over great,</em> Leon replied. <em>Your brother’s a smart guy. I’m sure he’s less than enthused.</em>
<em>He’s going to accept whatever makes me happy,</em> Claire replied.
<em>I think if you knew more of the tale of the tape, I don’t know how happy you’d be.</em>
Claire frowned at her phone. <em>Not you too. It’s one thing for my brother to tell me to stay away from a man, it’s another thing for the man himself to try to cloud up and rain all over my parade.</em>
Her phone buzzed a moment later. <em>I’m around for as long as you permit me to be.</em>
<em>Someone’s gotta keep me in line,</em> she replied.
<em>Maybe. I am continually amazed you have chosen me for the task.</em>
Moments like this had Claire’s fingers and brain in a knot. She fucking <em>loved</em> him; his unreadable eyes, his self-deprecating air, his insistence on doing things for her, his off-kilter banter, the way he handled her in bed. She didn’t know if she was a novelty in his life because she spread her legs for him and was less complicated than an op, or if he had feelings for her too. He was too good at being concerned but somehow detached; in moments of idleness, Claire’s brain ran circles around itself trying to figure out what the fuck they were doing. She didn’t let herself question much because everything felt too good, but the questions <em>were</em> starting to crop up, the longer they were at it. Claire couldn’t figure out if Leon would take one look at her and disappear if she were to blurt out that she was mad fucking in love with him, or if he would just accept it in his aloof, resigned way and tell her in typical fashion she should aim higher. She stared at her phone for long moments, paralyzed, unsure what to say back.
<em>I should be asleep,</em> Leon texted to her, effectively ending her dilemma. <em>Not all of us can be in Hawaii. Some of us have to work tomorrow.</em>
<em>I’m only here on Chris’s dollar,</em> she replied. <em>Otherwise I’d be heading to work, too.</em>
<em>He’s a good older brother,</em> Leon replied. <em>He cares about you. I’ve got to sack out. Have fun.</em>
<em>Goodnight,</em> Claire texted back, and set her phone aside. She stared at herself in the mirror for long moments, her face blank. She thought of everyone, Leon included, trying to tell her to question what she was doing. She thought of how she hadn’t questioned much, just gave in. She looked at the necklace around her neck, at the cross and saints, and her brain turned over on itself.
She was this far in. Her heart left her no choice but to keep going.
So I wasn't writing any EPICS today because cleaning frenzy and family obligations, but a short scene popped into my head and I just had to pop down to my CLEAN office to bang it out.
Post RE9. Grace has a Dad on speed dial for when stuff breaks.
"Grace?” Emily was standing in the doorway, wrapped up in her snuggie towel that made her look like a duck. Grace looked over from her computer, her brows drawn together. Emily took ridiculously long baths—Grace thought she’d have a minute to game. It hadn’t even been ten minutes.
“Yeah?” Grace asked. “What are you doing out of the bath?”
“Water’s cold,” Emily said.
Grace furrowed her brow further and stood up from her desk, then walked over to the doorway. She gathered Emily and they went down the hallway to the bathroom, where Grace could hear the bathtub running. She pushed open the door and went over to the tub, full of lavender-scented bubbles, sticking her hand into the water flowing from the faucet.
It was ice cold. It’d been piping hot when Grace had turned it on. She heaved a sigh and turned the faucet off. Great. Just great. She’d left behind apartment life approximately two weeks ago and become the proud owner of a townhome, and now there was no maintenance to come fix things for her. Just her, a scant smattering of tools she didn’t really know how to use, and YouTube and Reddit.
Or spending hundreds of dollars on calling a professional out to look at something.
Grace frowned at the faucet. She was a strong, independent woman. A girlboss, or whatever. She could probably figure this out. Plus, she didn’t want to set fire to her bank account to call a plumber or whoever. This was adulthood, this was home-ownership.
“Okay, Em,” Grace said, “hang on. Let me see if I can figure this out.” Emily looked up at her in her duck towel and Grace exited the bathroom, headed down the hallway, and went to the stairs. Grace didn’t know much, but she knew her hot water heater was in the garage. Grace crossed the dining room and went to the door to the garage, flipping on the light and looking at the water heater.
It looked like it always did in the beams of her headlights as she pulled into the garage. It wasn’t, like, exploded or hissing or smoking or giving any indicator anything was wrong with it. So why didn’t they have hot water?
Grace had options. There was Reddit. There was calling a professional.
She fished her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans, unlocking it. There was a third option. She scrolled through her contacts and tapped the screen, holding the phone up to her ear. The door to the garage pulled open and Emily stood there, still in her duck towel, looking on curiously.
“Hey,” Leon’s voice rang into Grace’s ear a few seconds later. “How’s it going, kid?”
“Not great,” Grace said. “We don’t have any hot water.”
“That’s a problem,” Leon said, evenly. “Check your hot water heater yet?”
“I’m looking at it right now,” Grace said. “It seems…fine?”
Leon made a noise. “Is there a puddle of water underneath it?”
Grace looked. “No.”
“Does it appear to be leaking anywhere, anything like that?” Leon asked.
“Uh…no,” Grace said, giving the appliance a once over.
“Your pilot’s probably out,” Leon said. “How old’s your water heater?”
“Uh…” Grace looked the barrel over, looked at the stickers on the front of it, looked around for any indicators. “…I dunno? It doesn’t look too old.”
“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” Leon said. “Water heaters have a pretty short lifespan these days. But if it hasn’t rusted out, it’s probably just your pilot light.”
Grace nodded. “Okay, what do I do?”
“Look down towards the bottom,” Leon said. “You should see a knob. It should have settings. One of them should say pilot.”
Grace knelt, phone cradled against her shoulder, and looked for a knob. “Okay, I think I found it,” she said. “Words are kinda worn off, but I think…”
“You don’t smell gas, do you?” Leon asked.
“No, I don’t. Now what?” Grace said.
“Okay, so—Claire if you don’t get off this guy’s ass <em>I’m</em> going to brake check you,” Leon said, abruptly, sounding slightly distant from the phone.
“He is in the left lane!” Grace heard Claire proclaim in the background.
“You are trying to go a hundred miles a fucking hour,” Leon fired back. “Just slow down and get off his ass.”
“The left lane is for passing, Leon,” Grace heard Claire say. “Not for camping at 65 miles per hour.”
“We are going to <em>Tractor Supply</em>,” Leon said in exasperation. “Why do we need to break the sound barrier to get there?”
“Leon?” Grace asked, trying to prompt him back to the matter at hand. She was knelt in front of her water heater, listening to Leon snipe at his wife about her driving. They didn’t snipe at each other about much, but driving styles seemed to be a bone of contention between them. Grace had ridden in Claire’s truck. It’d been a harrowing experience. Truth be told, Grace found riding with both Claire <em>and</em> Leon harrowing. Grace drove like a self-proclaimed grandma and had purchased a vehicle based on safety ratings. She had a bumper sticker that said <em>Bestie, Let Me Merge Before I Cry</em>. Claire drove like she was in a Formula One race, weaving her large truck in and out of traffic like it was a Miata. Leon may have done the speed limit but he’d never heard of slowing down through turns and he also apparently <em>really</em> trusted the brakes on his Porsche because he always braked at the absolute last second, causing Grace to want to grab the door handle and brace her legs against the floor.
“Yeah,” Leon said, coming back to the phone fully, still sounding a bit distracted. “Anyway. Do you see a flame down there? Should be a little hole where you can see if your pilot’s lit.”
Grace leaned down further and peered around, looking to see if she could see a flame anywhere. “I don’t think it’s—“
“Claire I am going to make you pull over and let me drive,” Leon spouted off suddenly.
“<em>What</em>?” Claire asked in the background, incredulously.
“What do you mean, <em>what</em>? You’re—“
Grace tittered. “Leon,” she tried, “we don’t have any hot water. Em was trying to take a bath. If this isn’t a good time, I can get on Reddit or something and—“
“No, no,” Leon said, sounding halfway distracted. “No pilot light?”
“I don’t see one,” Grace said. “Is…is this knob supposed to say things other than ‘pilot’? It’s kind of worn down. I can’t really tell what <em>anything</em> says.”
“Facetime me,” Leon said. “Let me see this thing. I guess I also want to lay eyes on you one last time before Claire kills us both in a spectacular fireball.”
“Leon, I’ll make you walk,” Claire said in the background.
“Are you two gonna make it?” Grace asked, gazing into space, adjusting her glasses. “Is your marriage going to end over a trip to Tractor Supply?”
“This is a normal Sunday,” Leon said, with a sigh. “Facetime me. I’ll get your pilot relit in two minutes.”
Hi! Have you ever wanted to read a fic about dry humping to completion? Boy do I have news for you!
So in my headcanon Leon, Claire, and Sherry were together for a while in hiding after RE2. YES I KNOW technically that's not how it went but what the fuck man we insane writer types need a window in which to work. (How am I supposed to write angst and torment if they weren't together for a long while??) ANYWAY in my headcanon they did NOT hook up, Leon and Claire. They were too fucking traumatized and tired and raising Sherry and fighting over whether or not Claire was gonna hit the old and dusty to go find Chris.
BUT THEN when you're helplessly fangirling with the homies and the idea of a young, traumatized, scared shitless YET horny Leon and Claire dry humping each other comes into the conversation...
...you imagine a scene outside your own headcanon. An AU AU, if you will.
So enjoy! 21 year old Leon and 19 year old Claire, condomless, birth control-less, taking matters into their own hands in an awkward and kind of desperate way! Could they have just gotten out of their clothes and sucked on each other and put fingers places and alla that? Yeah! BUT THIS IS A FIC ABOUT DRY HUMPING. about helpless grinding. About being so desperate you blow your load in your pants like a 15 year old making out with someone for the first time.
Anyway. I'm gonna shut up. Long live dry humping, and awkwardly trying to figure out what in the fuck in the aftermath (this is 21 year old rookie Leon and 19 year old college student Claire. Don't expect complex conversations about emotions. Expect Claire fumbling over words and Leon frantically counting moments until he can find condoms).
He supposed he should be used to it by now, after several weeks.
He had a feeling nightmares were going to be a part of his life for a good long while.
Leon was sitting upright in bed, feeling the sweat in his hairline and down the back of his neck, rubbing at his face in a manner that was both fervent and tired. It was amazing to him to think that at one point in his life he had just gone to sleep; or his nightmares had been childish and normal. He’d dreamt of being late for school, of embarrassing himself, of doing things that got him in trouble with his family or his ex-girlfriend.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. It felt like years. It’d only been weeks.
He was sitting there trying to compose himself when the bedroom door creaked open in the darkness and he jumped mildly; in the back of his mind he <em>knew</em> it was Claire or Sherry, or maybe both of them together, coming to cram into the bed like they did sometimes. He peered over in the darkness and saw Claire in the gloom. Her face was unreadable in the lack of light.
“You okay?” she said in an undertone.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Fine.”
“You shouted.” She padded over to the bed, her bare feet sounding hollow on the floor. Leon was aware; his own loud, short noise had kind of served to wake him up fully as well. Claire reached the edge of the bed and looked at him sitting there.
“Sorry. Were you asleep?” he asked.
“No. Sherry is, though. But you know her. Once she’s out, she’s out. It may take her all night to get there, but that kid sleeps like the dead once she’s asleep.” Claire let out a breath and then climbed up onto the bed, coming to sit at his side, back against the wall. Leon sat there for another long moment, elbows on his knees under the blanket, and he stared into space. Eventually he allowed himself to scoot back some, next to Claire, his back against the wall as well.
“You need some water, or anything?” she asked, and Leon shook his head in the darkness.
“No,” he said. “Just need to make it through a night without dreaming about something ripping my jugular out.”
Claire sighed. “That’d be the name of the game, wouldn’t it?” she said, her tone rhetorical and wistful.
“What time is it?” Leon asked.
“I dunno,” Claire said. “2? 3? Middle of the night, I guess.”
“Perfect,” Leon said dryly. “My favorite time to be awake.”
“Yeah.” Claire looked over at him, her hair hanging around her face. “What was it about?”
“Not making it to the PD,” he said. “Being overrun, and short on ammo. Not like things were much better once I made it to the PD, but I guess I <em>did</em> make it there. I wasn’t ripped to shreds on the streets.”
Claire nodded. “I dream about the gas station, a lot. Like if you hadn’t been there.”
“Yeah.” Leon gazed into space for a moment. “End of the world. Enter two idiots, stage left.”
“I have always been told I have good timing,” Claire said. “Really fucking impeccable that night.”
“Couldn’t have been better,” Leon said. They sat there in silence for long moments, Leon feeling his heart rate return to normal, feeling the sweat cool on his body. Claire shifted and leaned her head against his shoulder, and he looked over at down at her, then back out into space in front of them.
“One day,” she said, “one day I have to believe it’ll be better.”
“Your timing or us?” he asked, looking down at her.
“Maybe both,” she replied. “Us, I hope. I don’t want to live like this forever. Unable to sleep.”
“Me either,” Leon said. “Kinda wanna be normal again. Back when I, like, dreamt about being late for school or work or something.” He let out a gust. “I think that might be gone.”
“Yeah.” Claire sat next to him, her head on his shoulder. During the day they seemed to maintain a careful two feet of space between each other at all times, but at night all bets were off. They’d hug, they’d tangle up in bed together, they’d seek solace in each other’s presence. Leon reached down and put his hand over hers, and she turned it over, clasping his lightly.
“What about you? Why can’t you sleep?” he asked.
“Can’t shut my brain off,” she said. “Sherry took a long time to fall asleep. She lays there and whispers forever when she can’t sleep. I don’t remember having that much to talk about when I was 12.”
A corner of Leon’s mouth pulled up. “She is a chatterbox when she wants to be.”
“<em>So</em> many questions,” Claire said. “I feel like her parents never talked to her. Or were too busy. She’s catching up, now.”
“I think I was a pretty annoying kid,” Leon said. “Ma used to ask me if I was writing a book.”
“Sherry’s writing an encyclopedia,” Claire said.
They sat there for more long moments, silently. Leon turned his head to look down at her. “You going back to Sherry or are you staying here?” he asked.
Claire shrugged a little. “Dunno. You want me to stay here?”
“What if Sherry wakes up?” he asked.
“She’ll come in here,” Claire said. “I feel like we all always find our way in here.”
“My room does seem to be sleepless party central,” Leon said, but he felt like the joke fell flat. “It’s up to you. You can stay, you can go.”
“I’ll stay.” Claire shifted some. “Sherry’s asleep. You’re awake. Maybe I’m needed more in one place than the other.”
Leon considered it. They did seem to need a lot out of Claire. He needed her to take care of his wound when it was fresh, he needed her to mind Sherry, he needed her to maintain the house and do all the things he’d always relied on a woman for, whether that was fair or not. Sherry needed someone to answer her endless questions, and be her stand-in mom. When they all ended up in the bed together, Claire was always in the middle, both Sherry and himself curling up to her.
And she wanted to leave. She wanted to go find her brother. Leon pushed the thought out of his mind and kept his mouth shut; to bring it up now would result in them trading barbs there in the darkness, pissing each other off. He did kind of need Claire. He wasn’t sure how it was going to work without her.
Claire lifted her head and looked over and up at him. “You okay?” she asked.
He looked down at her. “I think. Sweaty, but I’ll live.”
“Good,” Claire said. “We need you.” Evidently he wasn’t the only one considering roles and responsibilities in their fucked up little home. She blinked up at him, her eyes big, and she leaned up and kissed his cheek. Leon’s heart suddenly hammered loud in his chest, and his cheeks felt a little hot. She drew back and continued looking up at him there in the barest of lighting; he could barely make out the features of her face, but in the low light he could see the shining of her eyes. Her hand was still in his.
Leon leaned down and likewise kissed her cheek, and then for a moment they just kind of hovered there, their faces near each other, her hand in his, his heart trying to escape his ribcage. He wasn’t really sure what the fuck they were doing; evidently without the presence of a child in the bed with them their methods of comforting each other grew bolder. Briefly, he considered what he was doing, or what he was trying to do—had this been lurking in him for a while, or was he making a snap decision? Leon found he could not accurately answer that question. Claire turned her head minutely and her lips found his cheek again, and Leon angled his face and pressed his lips against hers, firm but somehow hesitant. Part of him expected her to haul off and snap at him, like she did when they had their arguments in the kitchen about her leaving, or when he tried to assume the reigns of control about their life and over her too much. Her hand tightened some in his, and she pillowed her lips and pressed back against his.
Leon felt vaguely like they were crossing some kind of threshold maybe neither of them had considered crossing. It felt somehow criminal, but somehow right. She hadn’t hauled off and slapped him. He wasn’t currently being flayed by the cutting insults she knew how to manage so well. He relaxed a little, all while being on keyed up edge.
They kissed each other gently, lips meeting each other repeatedly, until Claire drew back a hair’s breadth and opened her mouth slightly, and Leon followed her immediately, fitting his mouth over hers. Her tongue flicked against his teasingly, and she worked her hand out from his to place it on the side of his face.
They sat in the dark, shoulder to shoulder, making out like they were in the backseat at a drive-in movie. Leon was not 16 anymore; he knew how these things went, if they followed their natural progression. Sitting there in bed kissing in the darkness at their ages usually led to shedding of clothes, of being inside someone, of moaning and clutching at each other.
They’d survived a viral apocalypse. Leon hadn’t precisely ever thought to stock himself up on condoms, and if Claire had been on birth control, that had effectively stopped as soon as she went into hiding and lost access to a doctor and a pharmacy. Her tongue searched further into his mouth, sliding against his own, and Leon had reason to think of all of these things and rue his situation because he was currently getting hard in his sleep pants, and much like it had been when he was 16, his lizard brain was begging him to find something to stick it in.
Maybe Claire didn’t want any of that, anyway. He didn’t know what she wanted, but her hand was sliding to the back of his head, holding him to her, her mouth alive and adamant against his.
There was also a child sleeping in the bedroom next to them. Leon was halfway kicking himself; he probably should have just kept his hands to himself. She’d kissed his cheek. It’d been fairly innocent. He could have just laid down. He could have tried to go the fuck to sleep. He was the one who’d immediately taken the inch she’d given him and gone a mile, and in his infinite wisdom he had not considered what to do when he ran out of road, half hard in his pants and with his tongue in her mouth.
He’d considered himself a real mouth-breather at 16, and apparently at 21 things had not changed.
Claire was making out with him, but he was hesitant to touch her otherwise—somehow he still expected her sharp, acid tongue if he were to reach out and touch her in any other way, shape, or form, even though he was desperate to. His hands longed to wander; he wanted to feel the curve of her hip, he wanted to take her breasts into his hands. 16 forever—a girl started making out with him and he immediately wanted to cop a feel. He felt like several weeks ago his life had been altered forever in Raccoon City; he felt changed, he felt damaged, he felt different. He didn’t know if he was upset with himself or somewhat comforted that the dark recesses of his brain were much as they ever were, easily cranked up and helplessly following along once a girl got her hands on him.
Claire hummed against his mouth and she shifted, pulling her legs up, rising to her knees next to him. She did not break contact with his mouth once, determined to continue the makeout session that still had the power to render him brainless at this point in his life. Her hands went to his shoulders and she shifted again, getting a leg over him. She straddled him and settled into his lap, and Leon was done for. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew unprotected sex was off the table—life in hiding was difficult enough without adding teenaged pregnancy to the mix, but evidently Claire had designs, and he was probably fully subject to her whims at that point. She was going to do to him what she wanted to do to him, and he was eagerly going to let her.
Her legs flexed and she pressed the apex of her thighs down against him, grinding gently, and Leon could not help the groan that traveled from his mouth to hers. He was fully hard at that point and wholly unable to control his reactions at the feeling of her pressing down against him. Slowly, hesitantly, her hips set up a rhythm. Leon couldn’t help it; his hands found her hips, clutching desperately, his fingers tight into her flesh through the fabric of her sleep pants.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she broke away from his mouth. She hovered close, her forehead against his, her hips working. “We can’t have sex,” she murmured.
“I know,” Leon replied. “Holy shit, Claire.”
Her breath fanned hot on his face, her fingers curling into his shoulders. He knew she could feel the cock she was grinding up against; she seemed to take a special point in pressing against it, her hips rolling. She was getting less hesitant. She moaned a little. “God I really wish we <em>could</em> have sex,” she said, her breath short.
His brain had vacated the premises a few minutes prior, but part of it roared back to life at the thought of being inside her, of what it would feel like, of hot, wet tightness on his aching cock. “Jesus, Claire,” he said, holding her hips, half trying to control her, half urging her. She loosed her hold on his shoulders and grabbed his face, her mouth hovering above his. He leaned up and kissed her and she responded in kind, their mouths desperate and animal against each other. He slid his hands from her hips to the pliant flesh of her ass, tightening his grip. Claire moaned against his mouth, her hips working fervently.
“You’re so hard,” she whispered.
“God I want to fuck you,” he whispered back. She gasped. “Jesus, Claire.”
Her breath was coming shorter, her lip in her teeth. She leaned forward, her breasts crushing against him through her shirt. Leon allowed one of his hands to let loose of her ass and moved it around to the front of her, inside her shirt, up to one of her breasts. It was firm and warm in his hand; not too big, not too small, and it felt perfect. He squeezed it, helplessly, and his fingers found her nipple, pinching it, stroking it. They fucked each other through clothes in the darkness, clutching at each other.
“Oh,” she breathed, her hips moving with a mind of their own. “Leon—“
He was sweating again; this time the reason was sheer excitement, feeling overheated, feeling like his heart was about to burst out of his chest. Claire was making soft noises, her breaths more of gasps at that point. Leon would have given anything in the world to be inside her. He wanted to be inside her so bad it was practically painful, his cock throbbing. He was so aroused he couldn’t think straight, helplessly following the movement of her hips, hanging on every one of her high-pitched gasps.
She was going to make him come. Like a horny kid, he was going to come in his pants. Part of him wanted to stop her and part of him ground against her hips, brain blank, craving release.
Her nails were digging into his neck, and she quickly slotted her mouth over his again, her tongue searching and pointed against his. They separated, panting against each other, mouths slack, bodies desperate.
“I’m gonna come, Claire,” he groaned. “Jesus you’re gonna make me come—“
“Me too,” she breathed. “Oh God,” she moaned.
“Shh,” he hushed her, feeling her ride him. “Sherry—“ His warning about the girl sleeping in the next room died in his throat, his cock running the show. He tried to imagine what it would feel like if he was inside her, buried to the hilt. She was riding him like he’d never been ridden before, the friction maddening. This was the kind of riding you saw in porn, the kind of riding you imagined and jerked off to. His clothes felt like an oppressive weight. He wanted to come inside Claire Redfield so badly he wanted to cry. He shuddered, clinging to her writhing form. “Fuck Claire—don’t stop—don’t stop—“
“Oh, I want it,” she gasped, and Leon had never wanted to give it to anyone so badly in all his life. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna come,” she whined. She was absolutely using him at that point, her clothed pussy rutting against his cock so hard it was nearly torture. She was so unbelievably, mind-searingly hot, her body riding his into submission, her breath out of control. She was gripping him so tight it felt like her nails were breaking his skin. He could have made this go differently—they couldn’t have sex but she could have put her hands on him, she could have put him in her mouth. He was desperate for her touch but too invested in what was happening, and would have lost his mind had she stopped. Leon did not know how he was supposed to be normal after this. He did not know how he was supposed to look at her in the morning like he still had a brain in his head as Sherry ran around and prattled on like the excited kid she was. He did not know how he was supposed to platonically share a bed with her and Sherry. He did not know how he was going to keep his hands off her. He vowed to buy condoms.
He wanted it. He wanted to know what being inside Claire Redfield felt like. He felt like his soul would not rest until he knew.
His face was in her neck, damp against her skin, and she strained against him, chasing release. He opened his mouth, tongue against her skin, biting at her gently, his hands guiding her, forcing her down onto him.
“Oh <em>fuck</em>,” she managed, her breath catching. She grabbed his face and angled it to hers, putting her mouth over his, loosing long, muffled moans into him. Her hips slowed down, less aroused panic and more fluid release, a shudder working its way through her. She was coming. Leon wanted to follow so badly he could feel his nerves burning. He took her ass back in his hands and urged her to take up her former pace, riding back up against her.
“Don’t stop,” he panted, against her lips. “Fuck, keep going—I’m gonna—I’m gonna come,” he managed. Forming coherent thought was hard; he was so close, and he imagined being inside her when she came, imagined what it would feel like on his cock. He imagined Claire beneath him on the bed, hair spilled out on the pillow behind her, moaning as he thrust into her, her breasts bouncing with every stroke. He imagined what her mouth would feel like on him, warm and wet, sucking him, her head bobbing up and down. He wanted to put his fingers inside her. He wanted to put his face between her legs. He wanted to know what her naked skin felt like against his.
Gasping, she resumed grinding against him firmly, her hands back on his shoulders, her body intentional. Leon clung to her like a drowning man, thrusting up against her, his brain half in the moment and half in a steady stream of imagined situations. He was 21 years old and there he was, dry humping like a 14 year old, desperate to blow his load. Claire leaned forward and put her mouth on his ear, sucking the lobe into her mouth. Leon groaned helplessly, and she sucked and nibbled at his ear, fucking him through clothes, and he lost it.
A long, low noise escaped him, and he was coming; he could feel it, hot and thick in his pants, his hands assuming control of her hips, forcing her to slow down. His breath was harsh, his heart a racing riot. Just like he had when he woke up from the nightmare, he felt the sweat on his scalp, along his skin. He slowly guided her hips to a stop as he finished and they hung there, somewhat frozen, breath short, faces hovering near each other.
Leon’s brain was blank. Jesus, what had they just done? Part of him felt something akin to embarrassment, and the other part of him was wondering how fast he could get out of the house once the sun was up to find somewhere to buy condoms. Maybe she didn’t want that, though. Maybe she was sitting there on top of him regretting every bit of what she’d just done. It did feel kind of like they’d temporarily lost their minds. Leon thought of benignly watching Claire brush out Sherry’s hair before bed, a mere hours earlier. How had he gone from neutrally treating her like the other adult in the house to mindlessly thrusting his cock against her?
“Did—did you—“ she began, haltingly.
“Yeah,” he said back, his voice low and wrecked. He felt like he was tingling.
“Okay,” Claire said, and it sounded kind of like she was unsure of what to say.
Leon was suddenly desperate for her to not feel like this had been a mistake, wanting her to not feel like he was something she needed to regret. He leaned up and kissed her abruptly, and she made a soft, surprised noise. She kissed him back, and Leon wrapped his arms around her.
“We should probably—we probably need to go to bed,” she murmured, her hand on his face. “Sherry’s gonna get up in the morning, and—“
“Yeah,” he said. “I need to, uh—I need to go try and clean up,” he said.
“Oh. Yeah,” she said, and she began to adjust, clambering off his lap, his arms releasing from around her. “Do you, um, want me to stay, or should I go back to—“
“You can stay,” he cut in, watching her draw back to his side in the darkness. “Let me just—I’m just gonna—“
“Sure,” Claire said, as he scooted towards the edge of the bed. “I’ll, um, be here.” She shifted and laid down, curling up onto her side.
Leon nodded in the darkness and headed for the bedroom door, into the darkness of the hallway, intent on the bathroom. He turned on the light, wincing, and stood there for a second with conflicting emotions inside of him. He supposed that was maybe only natural when you were standing there with a mess of come in your pants and you’d just dry-humped the only other adult in the house. Sighing, he grabbed a wad of toilet paper and pulled down his sleep pants, never feeling more like an out of control, horny teenager than he had at that moment. He cleaned up the mess the best he had motivation for at that unknown hour, and then tossed the toilet paper into the toilet, flushing it.
He turned out the light and left the bathroom, blindly heading back to the bedroom, back to Claire. He entered and she was still laying there on her side. He climbed back into bed and laid on his back, looking up at the ceiling, his heart still preternaturally accelerated in his chest.
“Are…are you okay?” she asked, her tone small.
“Yeah,” he replied, quickly. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re not…you don’t feel like we just made a big mistake?”
Leon turned his head towards her in the darkness. “I mean…no. Do you?”
“Um,” she began, and Leon’s heart was in his throat, “no, I guess not.” She let out a gust. “I guess I probably should have, like, <em>asked</em> or something before I went ahead and…” She trailed off.
“This may shock you,” he said, “but my answer probably would have been yes.”
Claire let out a soft laugh. “Sure. I guess I just went with it.”
They laid there for a second, quiet in the dark.
“You can come over here,” Leon said. “You don’t…you don’t have to be all the way over there.”
“Oh. Okay,” Claire said, scooting across the bed, closing the space between them. She settled in against him, her hand coming to his chest. “We are so fucking lucky Sherry didn’t wake up,” she said, after a moment.
“Yeah,” Leon gusted, “she probably doesn’t need any more trauma. Or to have any more questions. I’m not old enough to give the birds and bees talk.”
“You’re older than me,” Claire said. “Plus, you’re, like, the man of the house now. You’d have to do it.”
“What?” Leon asked lowly, but incredulously. “No way. She follows you around like a shadow. You’re a woman. <em>You’d</em> have to do it.”
Claire made a noise. “Let’s just… let’s just not have to do that,” she said. Her head burrowed against his shoulder.
“You want blankets?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m kind of cold.”
Leon sat up and regathered the discarded blanket and pulled it up over them, and laid back down. Claire regathered herself against him, and he tried to ignore the tightness in his shoulder. He also tried to just shut the fuck up and let things be what they were, but as ever, he felt like he didn’t know when to shut his big fucking mouth. Curiosity killed the cat, his father told him more often than he probably should have had to.
“Claire?” he asked. She hummed. “Do you—do you <em>want</em> me to get condoms? I mean, we can’t—we couldn’t, tonight, but do you…”
She seemed frozen for a second. “Um,” she began, “sure. Yeah. We can, um…”
“Okay,” he said, and forcibly considered the matter closed—he needed to stop thinking about it or he was going to get hard again. He’d buy condoms, and then he supposed they were going to have to figure out how to use them while sharing a house with a child that was preternaturally attached to them.
Silence reigned.
“I’m gonna try to go to sleep,” she murmured. “I’m going to be dead in the morning.”
“Yeah, me too,” Leon said. “Goodnight.”
She shifted next to him. “Goodnight.”
Leon laid there and tried to get his out of control brain to shut the hell up. It was hard. Thoughts of Claire over him, riding him like her life depended on it kept popping into his head. She wanted to leave. She wanted to leave them behind and find her brother. Leon had a hundred reasons she shouldn’t go, some of them very practical and adult, and now he had reason one hundred and one.
Life in hiding felt like it had just gotten infinitely more complicated, yet somehow more worthwhile.
Blurb popped into head. I wanted Chris being a protective older brother who probably thinks Leon's way too fucked up to be with his sister, but is willing to accept it because Claire's happy and Chris forever sees his sister as a pig-tailed little girl in overalls who is to be protected and she deserves the WORLD and Chris finds himself caving when Claire's pulls her "but Daddy, I love him!" with Chris about Leon.
(I did post a short blurb on here a few months ago about Claire TELLING Chris she was seeing Leon, on a sibling vacation to Hawaii. If need be I can post it again, because I feel kind of like it's the sister blurb to this blurb.)
Anyway. Here you go. Leon feels like a snob in a suit, Chris thinks Leon's probably a fucking mess in private, Leon thinks Chris eats illegal steroids for breakfast, Chris issues mild warnings, everyone agrees Claire's happiness is important, cigarettes are had.
Leon was walking down the hallway when he had to stop short because a door in front of him opened and immediately began to vomit people moving with purpose into the hallway. He stood there, file folder in his hand, waiting for the interruption to pass. He noted the various people coming out of the doorway; he spotted a BSAA patch on a sleeve.
Huh. Wonder what the DSO wanted with them.
One of the last people to be vomited out of the door looked down the hallway one way, and then turned and looked Leon’s direction, and froze. Leon likewise froze, finding himself staring into the broad and five-o-clock shadowed face of Chris Redfield. Chris looked like he’d rolled out of bed and just went with it, and he still looked like he ate Anadrol and pre-workout for breakfast, chased by either black coffee or straight whisky. Leon was not a small man, and yet when he looked at Chris he felt like Chris could probably pick him up and throw him across a room.
He thought of the fact that the sheer hulk of a man in front of him was related to small, lithe Claire. They didn’t look much alike. Chris had the faintest of freckles on his face, and maybe there was something to the slant of their eyes that looked similar. Claire had once told him her and Chris got mistaken for a couple all the time together in public (<em>gross</em>, she’d tacked on).
“Surprise surprise,” Chris said gruffly, and he sounded neither surprised nor much of anything good.
“You <em>are</em> in my home base,” Leon returned. “What’s the BSAA doing here?”
“Some such shit or another,” Chris replied. “Running recon for you guys or something. Getting sent into the field to snoop around.”
“Ah,” Leon said. Silence fell. He bore no animosity towards Chris, but he had the distinct feeling Chris looked at him and considered him <em>off</em>, somehow. He felt like Chris had judged him and found him wanting, but with Claire between them Chris kept his feelings to himself.
“How’s my sister?” Chris asked.
“Fine,” Leon replied. “You haven’t talked to her?”
“Two days ago,” Chris said, plainly. “I wanted to hear your answer.”
“She’s fine,” Leon reiterated. “Busy as usual, hating New York.”
Chris made a noise that was kind of like a chuckle. “I <em>told</em> her not to buy a house there,” he said. “She wouldn’t listen. She was up my ass about refusing to live in an apartment. Up my ass about helping with a down payment. And now all she does is complain about Long Island, the city.”
Leon nodded, a corner of his mouth pulling up. “I guess I’m not the only one she vents to about it.”
“My sister will vent to anyone who will listen,” Chris said. “She’s got opinions, and you’re going to hear them.”
“That’s true,” Leon said, still smirking lopsidedly. “I guess I’m not special.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Chris said. “Walk with me. Guide me out of this fucking labyrinth. I thought the Pentagon was bad.”
Leon nodded. “You get used to it. I know every room in this place, by now.” He stepped forward and Chris turned, and they started off down the hallway. Chris looked over at him; Leon felt more like a suited dick than usual, faced with Chris’s military casual clothes.
“When’d you last see my sister?” Chris asked as they walked.
“Oh…about three weeks ago.” Leon pushed open a door in front of them. “My requests for time off are more oft than not shot down. It’s easier to get her down here, sometimes, but I prefer to go there.”
“Oh yeah?” Chris asked.
“My apartment leaves a lot to be desired,” Leon said. “Feel however she may about her house, it’s a house. It looks like a home and less like a staging area for getting shipped off to wherever the fuck to do whatever the fuck.”
Chris let out another short, dry chuckle. “I know the feeling. She told me my place looked like a barracks.”
“She told me mine looked like no one lived there,” Leon replied, in amusement. “She’s got opinions, and you’re going to hear them.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Chris said. “I’ve been hearing them since she was old enough to talk.”
“Thank you for your service,” Leon said dryly.
“Yeah.” Chris looked over at him. “She seems happy.”
“I hope so,” Leon said. “I’m no prize but I’m trying.”
“None of us are,” Chris said. He looked back over at Leon. “Spare her that shit. If you’re having trouble holding your guts in emotionally or mentally after an op…she doesn’t need to hear it.” Chris sighed. “She worries enough about people all over the world, her endless quest for equality and world peace. She doesn’t need damaged men like us on her plate too.”
“You’re her brother,” Leon noted, evenly. “I assume you guys talk.”
“Not about that shit,” Chris said. “As far as Claire’s concerned, I’m right as rain all of the time. I’ve never seen or done anything that made me think twice. She can come to me with her problems. I can keep mine to myself.”
“Well, it’s good to know I’ve been following a protocol I didn’t know was established,” Leon said, looking over at Chris. “She doesn’t need to know about my work.”
“Good,” Chris said. “Because <em>I</em> do know about it, and I feel like there’s a lot of ugly hiding under that suit. It’s not for Claire. She deals with enough.”
Leon contemplated the realities of Chris asking him to keep his mouth shut about the fact that he came home with blood on his hands; he contemplated the realities of Chris hiding his own secrets from Claire. It seemed like maybe none of the men in her life close to her were being honest with her, all in the name of keeping her somehow safe and insulated from the harsh realities of what a life with the government was like. “The government shrinks pass me with flying colors,” Leon said. “I don’t have anything to tell her.”
“Sure,” Chris said knowingly. “<em>Sure</em>. If you <em>do</em> ever feel inclined to share, go visit one of the government shrinks. We’re a special kind of fucked up. Claire doesn’t need that.”
Leon wondered what Chris thought Claire <em>did</em> need. Probably a normal guy with a 9 to 5 job, a marriage, and 2.5 kids. White picket fence, the American dream. Instead he had to deal with his sister in a long distance <em>whatever the fuck</em> with Leon, who hadn’t needed Chris to tell him to hide himself from Claire. Leon was already doing it, and feeling fucked up for doing it. Chris was Claire’s brother; he could probably unburden himself to her and she’d stay by his side. Leon shared Claire’s bed; if he unburdened himself to her it was likely her morals would tell her to look for someone else to share her bed.
“I get my head right before I go see her,” Leon said. “I get the ugly back under the suit before I come at her.”
“Sure,” Chris said. “I told her I didn’t think this was a good idea, and now I’ve told you. But she got all big doe-eyed on me and told me she was happy, and that she was gonna do what she was gonna do, and I let it be.” Chris looked over at him again as they walked. “Don’t fuck it up.”
“Trying not to,” Leon said, and from Chris’s grunt, Leon knew the other man had hoped for a more ringing endorsement but was probably not surprised to not get one. Leon couldn’t manage to tell <em>Claire</em> that he loved her; he was certainly not going to let it slip to her brother. “I’m glad she’s happy. I work at it as hard as I can, what with being several hundred miles away and off being shot at half the time.”
“Keep working at it,” Chris said. “Claire deserves to be happy. I suppose if that’s with you, then I’ve got to be alright with that.”
“Trust me,” Leon said, pushing open another door, “I kind of think she deserves some mild mannered desk jockey from Middle America or one of her coworkers as well, but that’s just not the way it worked out.”
“Sure,” Chris said. “I’m sure you fought hard to talk her out of it.” His tone was sarcastic, but accepting. “Regardless, she seems content so I guess that’s good enough for me.”
“Great,” Leon replied. Even if Chris had told him to fuck off and to get away from Claire, nothing about what Leon was doing would have changed. He loved Claire, he needed her—she made all the shit the government shrinks somehow kept rubber stamping away quieter, made life seem like a life and worthwhile. Without Claire it was drinking in the wee hours of the morning in his apartment, sleeping to pass the time, and going through life like he was cosmically missing the point and that he earned every bit of the misery he experienced. Claire was the balm on his wounded sense of self. He could not tell Chris he was practically clinging to his sister at this point because he was scared of facing the reality of his life without her.
They were crossing the lobby then, daylight visible outside the front doors. They crossed the tiled floor and went to the front door, Leon pushing it open, Chris stepping out behind him. Chris immediately began to reach into a pocket of his utility pants, producing a pack of Camel Wides.
“You smoke?” Chris asked.
“I used to,” Leon said. “Your sister told me she’d slap me if she saw me smoking.”
“She’s not here,” Chris said, a corner of his mouth pulling up. “She’s been threatening to haul off and pop me one for smoking since time immemorial but she hasn’t done it yet.”
“Fine,” Leon said. “Give me one of those things.”
“Sure,” Chris said with a smile, opening the pack and pulling out two cigarettes. He stuck his in his mouth and handed Leon’s to him, then produced a Zippo from one of his pockets. He lit his own cigarette and then handed the still lit lighter to Leon, who lit his and snapped the lighter closed, handing it back to Chris. Leon took a drag, blowing smoke out above Chris’s head.
“I smoked Reds, when I smoked,” Leon said. “Marlboros. It seemed to be what everyone else at STRATCOM was smoking.”
“I’ve downgraded,” Chris said. “I smoked unfiltered Camels for years. I heard it from everyone about cancer, about dying, all of it. I switched to filters. It seemed healthier.”
Leon chuckled some, spurting smoke into the air. “Sure. The filter’s doing a lot for you.”
“I’m all about my health,” Chris joked, cigarette dangling from his lips. “Something’ll get me one of these days, but I’m gonna be smoking when it does.”
Leon stood there, file folder in one hand, cigarette in the other, looking at Chris. He recalled Claire telling him when she’d found her Daddy dead in his chair, from a heart attack, the ashtray was overflowing next to him. Like father, like son, then. “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em,” Leon said.
“Exactly,” Chris said, blowing smoke. “Listen, I’ve gotta hit the bricks. Take care of yourself. You’re no good to my sister all shot full of holes.”
“The less full of holes I am, the better,” Leon said.
“Amen to that,” Chris said. “Take care. Be good,” he said, turning and starting to saunter off.
“Same to you,” Leon replied, watching Chris walk away. He looked at the cigarette between his thumb and his middle finger and brought it up to his mouth, taking a healthy drag.
What Claire didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. It was almost like a mantra, at this point, a way of life; a way of keeping her oblivious and happy. Leon didn’t know if he felt <em>better</em> about the fact that he was hiding shit from Claire because Chris was too, but he’d been given a directive. He’d already been on the directive on his own, but the fact that someone else was sanctioning it now made him feel a little less fucked up, in his own way that <em>was</em> fucked up.
So I was struck with an idea today, and it was more scenes that popped into my head--I don't even know if I consider it part of my own official more-canon-compliant headcanon or not, but I started writing it anyway. Summer, 2001, Leon and Claire visit 15 year old Sherry. Claire's been visiting Sherry all along, but Sherry wants them TOGETHER. They play nice for the day and then explode on each other spectacularly about past decisions, in a government Tahoe. I think in this iteration of their lives, Claire's still pissed off and bitter at Leon's decision to go with the government, and Leon's probably already caught feelings for Claire and just doesn't realize it yet. I think my Leon ALWAYS had feelings for Claire, he was just too dense and hand-to-mouth for a long while to realize it.
Anyway, I wanted to post an excerpt because I don't know if this is worth half a shit or if it'll just go to my hard drive to die. I really should have worked on the AU today (particularly because that persists in being the only thing I CAN actually post to AO3, and still no word from support), but instead I cranked out like 21 disjointed pages of this.
Anyway, here's a chunk of it. Remember, in my headcanon Leon, Claire, and Sherry were together for a WHILE post Raccoon. That helps some of their memories they talk about make sense.
Claire put her feet up on the dash of the Tahoe, and Leon looked over to notice she was leaving shoeprints on the dash.
“Claire, get your feet down,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. “It’s not like it’s yours. It’s not like you have to clean it.”
“Still,” he said. “It’s government property. I have to take care of it.”
“How often you get to roll around in one of these bad boys that probably costs more than what I make in a year?” Claire asked, and her feet did not move.
“As little as possible,” Leon replied. “I don’t like them. They’re a nightmare to park and they make me feel like I’m about to roll up to someone’s house and ask them if they are now or have ever been a Communist.” He looked over at her. “Sherry said you finished college. Congratulations.”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “Chris forced me into it. Said Daddy’d turn in his grave unless I did it.”
“Are we gonna see Chris?” Sherry piped up from the backseat.
“Not today,” Claire said. “I tried. He told me he was too busy.”
“Oh,” Sherry said, sinking back in her seat.
“So what <em>are</em> you doing now, to where a government Tahoe’s out of your budget?” Leon asked of Claire.
“Aid work,” Claire said. “Organization that started up in the aftermath of Raccoon. They were going to take me without the degree, but Chris told me to finish or he’d kill me.”
Leon nodded. It was still weird to hear her reference the brother that had been absent for so long. Hell, Leon had <em>met</em> the brother that had been absent, in the past.
“What’re they called?” Leon asked. “You have to be in New York, for this?”
“Yeah,” Claire said with a sigh. “I fucking hate it there. Organization’s called TerraSave. I get shipped to exotic places to witness human suffering. Chris told me I should have been a school teacher. Oops.”
Sherry leaned forward again. “You’d be a good teacher, Claire. You taught me a lot when we lived together. Mr. Simmons said I wasn’t too far behind when I started school again.”
“Oh, Mr. Simmons said that, did he?” Claire asked, and it sounded like she was chewing on something bitter. “Guess I’ll take the roundabout compliment.”
“I’m taking calculus,” Sherry said.
“Calculus, huh?” Claire asked. “I didn’t manage that until my junior year. You’re ahead of me.”
“I didn’t make it that far,” Leon said, in amusement. “I had to retake geometry in summer school.”
Claire furrowed her brow. “You’re handy. You know how to like…build stuff. How’d you fail geometry?”
“I didn’t do any of the work,” Leon said. “I sat around in class and daydreamed and stuffed the homework into my backpack, never to be seen again.”
“You were a slack ass,” Claire said, knowingly.
“Not all of us are turbo geniuses like you and Sherry,” he replied.
“Not all of us are cruising around in 80,000 dollar vehicles,” Claire countered, arching her eyebrow at him.
“Does this car really cost 80,000 dollars?” Sherry asked.
“I don’t know how much it costs,” Leon said. “I just drive them sometimes.”
“I can hear taxpayers screaming in pain,” Claire said dryly, looking out the window.
Leon had forgotten that it was occasionally an assault to be with Claire and Sherry in the same space; Sherry and her never-ending questions, Claire’s snappy attitude. Leon sometimes felt like he was walking a tightrope, and being pulled on either side. “Taxpayers aside,” Leon said, evenly, “Sherry, what kind of food do you want? We’ve got to pick a destination, here, or I’ll be driving around in this taxpayer burden all day.”
“Choose well,” Claire said. “I’ve had the institutional food they give you at that place. This is your chance for something real.”
“Um…” Sherry trailed off in the backseat, and Leon looked at the rear view mirror, to see Sherry kind of stereotypically and comically lost in thought, hand on her chin. “What do <em>you</em> guys want?” she asked.
“I’m just in charge of driving,” Leon said. “I’m not in charge of picking food.”
“This is your day, Sherry,” Claire said. “You pick. Not us.”
“Ugh, I dunno!” Sherry burst out. “What is there?”
“This is DC,” Leon said. “Every ethnic group in the world has a restaurant here. You can get anything you want.”
Sherry was quiet, thinking. Claire turned around in the seat and looked at her. “Don’t stare at me!” Sherry said. “I can’t think with you staring at me.”
“I’m not <em>that</em> intimidating,” Claire said in amusement, turning back around in her seat. She pulled her tank top down some, it’d ridden up when she turned around.
“What about pizza?” Sherry asked. “I barely remember pizza.”
“You want pizza?” Leon asked. “I do know several places to get pizza.”
“That figures,” Claire said in amusement. “If it hadn’t been for my barely there cooking skills we all would have died.”
“I hate to break it to you but I still haven’t made any advancements on that front,” Leon said, pulling up to a stop light.
“Remember how much ham and beans we ate?” Sherry asked. “I <em>still</em> won’t eat beans.”
“Because you’re like, horrified by the functions of your own body,” Claire laughed, turning to look at Sherry. “Girls fart too, kid.”
Sherry rolled her eyes and looked put out in the rear view mirror. “I also just got tired of beans,” Sherry said, petulantly. “We ate them too much.”
“I mean, we did,” Claire acknowledged. “Come to think of it, I’ve been decidedly bean-avoidant since then, too.”
“I see beans in my dreams,” Sherry said dramatically.
“Oh you do not,” Claire said, twisting further in her seat. Her tank top rode up again, exposing her hips and midriff, and Leon alarmingly found he had a hard time keeping his eyes on the road. “I see badly fitting clothes,” she said. “I can’t tell you what a joy it is to have clothes that didn’t come from thrift because we had no other choice, clothes that <em>fit</em>.”
Leon wondered how well her clothing genuinely fit her with the amount of skin she was exposing. Sherry shrugged. “My clothes always fit me,” Sherry said.
“Because you were a kid and you were easy,” Claire said. “You didn’t have a butt. You didn’t have boobs. You didn’t have Leon’s long ass arms and legs.”
“Hey, I have to wear a bra now,” Sherry declared. “I have boobs <em>now</em>.”
“<em>Alright</em>,” Leon groused, good-naturedly. “This is not girls’ hour. I’m in the vehicle.”
“What, are you gonna burst into flames if you hear the word <em>boobs</em>?” Claire asked, looking over at him. “I figured your job was all-consuming, but not <em>that</em> all-consuming.”
“All-consuming or not,” Leon said, “I don’t need to hear you guys talking about your bras and boobs and whatever else.”
“Boy scout,” Claire accused, and turned back around in her seat, hiking her tank top down.
Leon was quietly thankful.
…………………………………………………………..
Sherry was on her fifth Coke at the restaurant, and they were not small glasses. Leon himself was generally a Coke fiend, but Sherry was outpacing him dramatically. The waitress appeared astounded every time she had to refill Sherry’s red plastic cup. Leon himself had only needed one refill.
Sherry was busily on her way to emptying another cup, sucking Coke through her straw like it was the essence of life itself. “Sherry,” Claire said, looking over, “take it easy. You’re not going to sleep for a week.”
“It’s so good,” Sherry said. “I don’t get soda at home—“ She caught Claire’s lowered brow. “—back at base. Just juice. I miss soda.”
Claire took a drink of her beer. Leon envied her; he had to drive a government vehicle and return it to the depot at the end of the day. He could not be drinking beer. “Fine,” Claire said. “Drink up. I <em>hope</em> you’re bouncing off the fucking walls. I hope Simmons doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“I have video games,” Sherry said. “I got a Playstation 2. I play them <em>all the time</em>.”
Claire did not look pacified. “Poor substitute for being outside, and having, y’know, friends and stuff.”
“They let me put it in my room,” Sherry said. “Sometimes I stay up way too late playing it.”
“After this much Coke you’re going to be awake for three days playing it,” Leon commented dryly.
“I like the role-playing games,” Sherry said. “Like Final Fantasy. I like the stories.”
“We raised a D&D nerd,” Claire said in off-handed amusement to Leon, hand on her beer. “I don’t know shit about video games.”
“Me either, really,” Leon said. “I was always too busy with other stuff to play them.”
“It just kind of wasn’t a thing, for me,” Claire said. “I guess you don’t have much else to do,” she said to Sherry.
“If I do well I get more video games,” Sherry said. “I have a <em>lot</em>.”
Claire looked minutely perturbed. “Cool,” she said, “if you like them.”
“I do,” Sherry said, sucking back more Coke. She looked at Claire. “What’s beer taste like?”
“Try it,” Claire said, pushing her pint glass towards Sherry.
“Jesus, Claire,” Leon said, tiredly. “Don’t give her beer.”
“I’m not buying her a whole beer,” Claire said, calmly. “She’s not going to die if she takes a sip.”
Sherry reached out and took the pint glass in both hands and took a swig, Leon looking on disapprovingly. Sherry’s face contorted and Claire laughed, and Sherry hurriedly set the pint down and pushed it away from herself. “That’s so gross,” Sherry said, her face still contorted. “The soldiers talk all week about going out on the weekend for beer. That’s gross.”
“I think you grow into it,” Claire said, taking her beer back. “I <em>like</em> beer.”
“Do <em>you</em> like beer?” Sherry asked of Leon.
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, sometimes we had beer around, back then,” he reminded Sherry. “I bought it every once in a while, for Claire and I to drink.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Sherry said. “I remember when you bought the other stuff and we all wrestled.”
Leon laughed some. “The Jim Beam night,” he said to Claire. Claire looked minutely perturbed again.
“That night was a lot of fun,” Claire said. “The next day…was not.”
“Yeah,” Leon acknowledged. “Being up in the frame of a house swinging a hammer hit differently the next day.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t fall out of it,” Claire said knowingly, taking a drink of her beer.
“Remember when I used to walk on your back?” Sherry asked Leon. He nodded.
“Yes. I think you’re too big, now. You’d crush me,” he said.
“How do you pop your back now?” Claire asked in amusement. “Who rubs your shoulders and pulls splinters out of your hands?”
“Nobody,” Leon said. “I just suffer alone, in my bare apartment. It’s very depressing.”
“You had it good,” Claire said. “You were taken care of, back then.”
“Yeah, and then someone left,” Leon said, and a split second later regretted it. God knew he and Claire had been round and round about her going to Europe; he’d been there briefly in the aftermath to try to help pick up the pieces. He didn’t want to fight with her, today of all days. He didn’t want to drag up the bad aspects of the past. Him and his stupid fucking mouth.
“Yeah,” Claire gusted, and her voice lacked ire. “And then someone left.” She didn’t rise to the occasion, finger in his face, accusing him right back. Leon supposed he was thankful. Claire’s temper was like a match flare; hot, sulfurous, and sudden. He’d found himself on the receiving end of it many a time. He’d been no angel back then, either. His own temper had gotten the best of him, at times.
It felt like so long ago. Life before Raccoon was two lifetimes ago. Life after Raccoon was a lifetime ago. Leon didn’t know what to make of his current life, but he couldn’t undo his decisions.
“And then the government came,” Sherry added, innocently.
“And then the government came,” Claire echoed, in that same distant tone.
<em>And I fucking signed Sherry and I’s lives away like a trusting moron,</em> Leon thought. He wouldn’t give voice to it, though. He couldn’t let it get that morose. “Alright, enough of that,” Leon said. “We’re all here, aren’t we?”
“At what cost?” Claire asked, looking over at him knowingly.
“Claire,” Leon said once, a toothless warning. She looked away from him and took a drink of her beer.
Sherry looked between them, her face wary. Leon was certain she could sense whatever was brewing between them. She’d always been able to. Leon felt fairly certain Sherry had been used to picking up on acrimony between a man and a woman in a house with her for many years before they’d met her. “How much longer do you think the pizza will be?” Sherry asked.
“Oh, I dunno,” Leon said, taking Sherry’s out. “I have a feeling you and I will probably battle each other in terms of how much we can eat.”
“I did always suspect you were halfway starving to death, back then,” Claire said.
“Yeah,” Leon acknowledged, “I kind of was. I’m capable of eating a whole pizza by myself.”
Sherry looked shocked. “How big is it? Should we have gotten two?”
“I’ll get us another one if we need it,” Leon said. “We’re not in a hurry. We can eat pizza all day if we want.”
“I better pace myself on the beer, then,” Claire said.
“You’re not driving,” Leon said, absently. “Get hammered. I don’t care. Everybody do whatever they want.”
Claire looked over at him. “Where is Leon and what have you done with him?”
“I don’t often get days without an agenda,” Leon said. “Short of committing crimes I don’t care what we do.”
Claire nodded. “Okay, that sounds a <em>little</em> more like you.”
“Let’s rob a bank,” Sherry giggled.
“Fuckin’ A,” Claire said, appreciatively. “I could use the money.”
“We’re not robbing a bank,” Leon said dismissively.
“You’re no fun,” Claire groused.
“I’d go to Hawaii,” Sherry said.
“<em>Hell</em> yeah,” Claire said. “You’ve got the right idea. I say we get the keys from Leon and go commit this heist.”
“Good luck getting the keys from me,” Leon said.
“I’m scrappy,” Claire said. “I bet I could do it.”
“Maybe three years ago,” Leon said. “I don’t think so, these days.”
“Leon’s all buff now,” Sherry announced.
“Are you?” Claire asked, sitting up some. “The suit is hiding it.” She reached out and grabbed Leon’s bicep and squeezed. “Holy shit you <em>are</em> buff now. What gives?”
“I can’t be sent into the field at 180 pounds soaking wet,” Leon replied, feeling self-conscious.
“Suited you just fine for being a cop,” Claire said.
“This is slightly more involved,” Leon replied. “They wanted me bigger. I got bigger.”
“I’m not trying to get broken in half,” Claire said, sinking back into the circular booth. “I know when to let sleeping dogs lie. You could probably twist my head off.”
“We should wrestle again,” Sherry piped up.
“No way,” Claire said, taking another drink of her beer. “Beef McLargeHuge here would cast us into the sun. I’m not trying to die.”
“I’m not <em>that</em> big,” Leon said, chagrined.
Sherry was giggling. “You guys should arm wrestle!”
“<em>You</em> guys should arm wrestle,” Claire said. “See how that goes for you.”
“I’m not arm wrestling <em>anyone</em>,” Leon said, hurriedly. “Jesus.”
………………………………………………………………
They had needed a second pizza. Sherry had been able to put away amazing amounts of it, in spite of Claire warning her she was going to eat so much she was going to be sick. Leon didn’t blame her; God only knew when the last time Sherry Birkin had been able to eat pizza was. He suspected it was pre-Raccoon. It was no way for a 15 year old to live life.
Claire was on her fifth beer. Her face was kind of pink, making her freckles pop. She’d apparently taken Leon’s <em>get hammered</em> comment to heart. He didn’t care. He felt surprisingly free, even in the suit with the monitored Tahoe; and he didn’t get many opportunities to feel free those days.
“Can we go get ice cream?” Sherry asked, eyes big.
“Jesus, Sher, you’re going to hurl,” Claire said. “How do you even have room for ice cream?”
“Clearly she has a multi-compartment stomach, like me,” Leon said.
“Like a cow,” Claire pointed out with a laugh.
“What, do they not give you ice cream, either?” Leon asked of Sherry.
“It’s always the same kind,” Sherry said. “The strawberry, vanilla, chocolate kind. It gets boring. I want, like…sprinkles, and stuff I used to get when I was a kid.”
Claire huffed some, looking at her beer. “Y’all are crazy. I don’t think I have room for ice cream. I think I’m drinking my dessert.”
“There’s always room for ice cream,” Leon maintained. “If you promise not to hurl in the Tahoe I will take you to get ice cream,” he said to Sherry.
“I’m not gonna hurl,” Sherry said. “I feel great. I feel full of energy.”
“That’s the 16 Cokes talking,” Claire said dryly.
“Can I take the leftovers?” Sherry asked, looking at the remnants of the second pizza.
“You sure they’re going to let you bring such contraband into your enclosure?” Claire asked, still dry.
“I dunno,” Sherry said. “I don’t have a fridge. It’ll be okay left out, right?”
“I once ate pizza that had been on a counter for three days,” Leon said. “I didn’t die.”
“Gross,” Claire said, arching her eyebrow at him. “I dunno, pizza isn’t like…real food. It could probably be left out a while and still be fine. <em>Not</em> three days.”
“I said I didn’t die,” Leon said.
“You’re here being unhinged, so clearly,” Claire replied.
“I need a box,” Sherry said.
“I think you can ask for one at the front,” Claire said, waving her hand towards the counter.
Sherry momentarily looked between the table and the front of the restaurant as if she was considering whether or not she was allowed to do such a thing on her own, then steeled herself and slid out of the booth, trotting off for the front counter.
“The government is fucking her up,” Claire said to Leon, when they were alone.
“The government fucks everyone up,” Leon said, looking over at her.
“Why’d you do it?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know what other fucking choice I had,” Leon said, tiredly. “It’s not like I could call you and ask for input. ‘Hey Claire, should I tell this government guy to go fuck himself’?”
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Claire said.
“It wasn’t that simple,” Leon said. “You know that.”
“What do I know?” Claire asked, gazing at him. “I know going to Fort fucking Knox to visit Sherry in her fucking rattrap enclosure.”
“Claire, this isn’t the time for this,” Leon said. “We’re hanging out with Sherry and you’re half-cocked.”
Claire said nothing in reply, just continued to gaze into his face. She was free, and she always had been. The most tied down she’d ever been was when she’d been with Leon and Sherry. Leon had done what he’d did to keep her that way, free. And Fort fucking Knox or no, Sherry was <em>safe</em>. She wasn’t being pursued like a thing on various black markets for what lived inside her.
His life was what it was. Job had suffered, too, his mother reminded him.
“How do I fold this thing?” Sherry asked suddenly from their side, cutting into their staring match. She had an unfolded pizza box in her hands, and was looking at it, puzzled.
“Here,” Claire said, reaching across the table for it. “Let me see it.” She began to fold and crease the cardboard, flipping the box around. Sherry slid back into the booth, watching Claire.
“There,” Claire said, handing the assembled box back to Sherry, who began to load pizza into it. “At least you don’t have anyone to share with, back at the base,” she said.
“Mr. Simmons eats with me, sometimes,” Sherry said, loading pizza.
“Sure,” Claire said, and for the fourth or fifth time that day the words seemed bitter in her mouth.
“That’s nice,” Leon said, and he felt his true feelings on the matter were probably closer to Claire’s, and Claire was just worse at hiding then. Simmons had never given him any <em>real</em> cause to hate him, but Leon found he chafed at Sherry being treated more as a specimen than a girl. Claire had pulled no punches when Leon had talked to her on the phone, before her trip. She’d called him a <em>fucking government crony</em> and a <em>snake oil salesman</em>, and she’d told Leon she was too smart to buy what he was selling.
Leon felt like telling Claire all government officials were vaguely like that. <em>Everything</em> felt slimy.
“C’mon,” Leon said, looking at them. “Let’s pay and get out of here. We have ice cream to eat.”
Sherry shut the pizza box and Claire picked up her beer and tilted her head back, draining it quickly.
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So a new trailer came out today. Oh Leon maladjusted little honeybun I feel like they're really gonna put you through it. I guess at least you've got Sherry there to talk you through it.
ANYWAY IN STICKING MY HEAD IN THE SAND NEWS I had an idea for a SOLITARY very headcanony scene and so I wrote it so my head would shut the fuck up. Leon's 39. He's tired of being an asshole bachelor in DC. He asks Claire to move in with him.
After all, isn't it more fun to imagine 49 year old Leon going out on his insane, infected whatever the fuck return to Raccoon City mission with Claire at home waiting for him?
Again, this is super headcanony and mostly written for my own benefit to get my loud fucking ideas to shut up.
Leon was laying in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling, Claire in the crook of his arm.
He’d spent many a night this way on Long Island; then had come the years of her absence, of their separation. Then had come Alcatraz and the aftermath; being honest, promising to change, trying not to fuck things up, and Claire was back in his life.
It’d been several months. It still felt surreal. He still felt like the luckiest fuck alive. He was still trying his hardest to be honest and decent and not to do anything that upset her, in any way. He felt like he was probably going to spend the rest of his life trying to make things up to her. He didn’t know what life he was on; he didn’t know how many he had left, so he was trying to make this one count. Every moment he was around her felt like some kind of blessing he was somehow allowed to have.
He was 39. And he’d been thinking.
“Claire,” he said into the darkness, and she stirred minutely and made a muffled little <em>mmph</em> noise. They’d turned out the light about 20 minutes ago; he supposed he was not surprised about her probably being less than enthusiastic about a conversation. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. “We should live together.”
She stirred some more, and her head popped up in the darkness. “What?” she asked, in groggy confusion.
“We should live together,” he repeated. “You should move in with me.”
Claire made a little noise. “In your shitbox apartment?” she asked in skeptical confusion.
“No. It’s a shitbox and I don’t know if even I wanted to ever live there,” Leon said. “In a house. I’ll buy a house.”
She made another noise that suggested she may have been somewhat baffled and unready for this conversation at this hour. Leon figured he sure knew when to let his thoughts out. “Leon—“ she began, lifting her head further. “--<em>where</em>? Here? There? I already own a house.”
“I know,” he said. “You could sell it. You could keep it and rent it out. I can’t be this far away. I have to be in the DC area. It’s required. I have to be able to be there if they need me.”
“I…don’t know that I want to live in DC,” Claire said. “I don’t even want to live <em>here</em>. I want to be in the woods somewhere.”
“There are rural areas outside DC,” Leon said. “I can drive. It’s fine. I don’t mind a commute. You’re working from home most of the time now anyway. See if TerraSave would let you go to Virginia, or Maryland.”
Claire was silent for a long moment in the darkness. “Did you hit your head tonight?” she finally asked, mystified. “Aloof, solitary Leon Scott Kennedy, government property, is telling me he wants to buy a house and move me in.”
“I’ve been less aloof and solitary in recent months,” he said. “I’m 39. You’re 37. We’re not getting any younger. Are we just going to fly back and forth forever?”
“Well, I mean…” Claire trailed off. “The flying is less than ideal. Are you sure you want to move a woman in with you? Maybe half my novelty is the brevity of time you spend with me.”
“I lived with a woman, in another life,” he said. “A million years ago. My first girlfriend, from ages 18 to 21, back in Detroit. Before Raccoon.” He shifted some, gazing at the ceiling. “The brevity is frustrating. It feels like we’re living two completely different lives. It feels like we’re too old for that. It was different, when we were in our twenties.”
Claire was again silent, contemplating this. “I can’t afford DC,” she said. “I can barely afford here. This mortgage is like a chloroformed rag over my face every month.”
“That’s not an issue,” Leon said. “I didn’t say you were buying a house. I said <em>I</em> was buying a house.”
“Leon—“ She moved around some, rolling over, and he heard her fumbling around next to the bed. A moment later the bedside lamp clicked on, and she looked at him squintingly, and he looked back at her relatively evenly. “I’m…not opposed. <em>If</em>,” she said, “<em>if</em> TerraSave lets me go. Long Island is one thing, packing up and moving to Virginia is another.” She looked at him, her face questioning. “I’m also not sure how I genuinely feel about you just <em>buying a house</em> and I just move in.”
“Forever I tried to pay this one off,” he said. “Forever I tried to pay off your vehicles and your student loans and everything else. You wouldn’t let me. I can buy a house.”
“I <em>know</em> you can,” she said. “I’m acutely aware of the disparity in our incomes. Part of me chafes at thinking of moving into a house I didn’t pay for and can’t afford.”
Leon knew in his heart of hearts this was going to be part of her answer. He knew she was just stubborn enough to refuse to have something handed to her. She’d always rejected his more grandiose offers of help; sure, she’d let him pay for dinner, but when it came to the big stuff, she was determined to do it her way, even if she was drowning. He was relatively determined for this to come to fruition. He wanted her to live with him. She was going to have to come around to the idea of him financing some shit. He was going to have to convince her.
“I love you,” he said plainly. “I want to live with you. I am tired of you living in New York.”
Her face softened some. “I love you, too. And believe me, I am tired of New York.” She let out a sigh. “Is DC really any better?”
“Outside DC,” Leon said. “I’ll drive two hours if I have to. I don’t give a shit. I’ll buy a fucking farm. You can be out there making moonshine and milking cows and baling hay or whatever you want to do outside a city.”
Claire let out a little laugh. “Careful. Don’t tell me you’ll buy a farm. You’ll be up to your ears in chickens and goats.”
“I don’t give a shit,” he reiterated. “I will <em>buy</em> you chickens and goats.”
“Driving two hours?” she asked skeptically, even if she was still smiling. “I was under the impression you hated your day to day enough, in DC. You really think tacking the commute from hell onto it is going to make you any more joyful?”
Leon did not know how to stress to her that he did not give a shit. He wanted her to live with him. He could endure things that made him a bitter asshole if she was happy. He was tired of being alone in his non-existence of a life in DC; as ever, things seemed brighter and more worthwhile when she was around. He’d been acutely aware of this, in the long absence of her in his life. Now that she was back, he was tired of fucking around. He was tired of long periods of misery interspersed with brief happiness in her presence. He was 39. He wanted to come home to her. He wanted her in his bed every night. The novelty was wearing off a long-distance relationship. He felt like he should legitimize things. He would endure most things if it meant her in his life with more frequency. A long commute was the least of his problems. He was a man owned by the government. He wanted to make his life into something halfway recognizable as a life.
“You really think me lurking around in my shitbox alone is making me any more joyful?” he asked her. “It’s not. I’m 39. I’ve been a maladjusted, solitary bachelor for too long. I <em>need</em> a woman to sign onto this detail, before I lose my mind. Before the government wins and I just turn into a well-conditioned robot.”
“I have a lot of shit,” Claire said.
“I like your shit,” Leon said.
“TerraSave may tell me no,” she went on.
“I sincerely hope they do not,” Leon said. “But if they do, that’s that, I guess. I’m not going to ask you to quit your job. I know you wouldn’t. I think you’d lose your mind as a stay-at-home anything. But you haven’t even asked. Remind them you’ll be close to DC. Remind them you can harass elected officials whenever they want.”
Claire groaned a little, but she was still smiling faintly. “I don’t know that I want to tell them that. I hate DC. I hate elected officials. I want to play with goats and chickens and milk cows.”
“You can’t do that on Long Island,” he said. “You can do that if you let me buy a house and you move in.”
“How…” she began, brow furrowed. “How would we even pull this <em>off</em>?” she asked. “Are you just gonna go buy a house?”
“No,” he said. “You have to look at the house too. Fuck, don’t leave it up to me. You saw what I picked as an apartment at 275,000 dollars a year.”
“You were 21,” Claire said in amusement. “You’d just been living in a shitbox with me and Sherry, and then Sherry. I think the shitbox was ingrained in you.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m over the shitbox. You did a good job picking this place out. Find us something that doesn’t suck.”
“Wait,” Claire said, narrowing her eyes, “<em>me</em> find us something? I don’t know jack shit about the DC area. You’ve been living there for like 20 years. I’m not just going to throw a dart at a map. <em>You’re</em> the one that knows what’s within your range.”
“I generally favor Virginia over Maryland,” Leon said. “But if you want Maryland I’d go there.”
She laughed. “The fuck do I know about Maryland? I’ve never been there,” she said. “Is this the hair-brained shit you think up while I’m asleep, or falling asleep?”
“Yeah,” Leon replied. “I have most of my really deep thoughts at obscure times. You need to come to DC. We need to get a realtor. We need to find a house.”
“Okay, rocket skates,” Claire said in amusement, “I have to go to work tomorrow, and <em>ask</em> if I can move before we get a realtor and I come to DC and you start trying to turn me into a kept woman.”
“You’ll still be working,” Leon said. “You’re not kept.”
“How much do houses in Virginia cost?” Claire asked, tiredly amused.
“If I tell you you’re going to stay on Long Island forever,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Look at it this way, it’d probably improve my mental health to be out of my shitbox apartment.”
Claire arched her eyebrow at him. “If so, you could have bought a house already. Why have you stayed in the shitbox so long?”
Leon shrugged. “Creature of habit. Too depressed to give a shit. Nobody to share said house with me.”
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?” she asked.
“I would move in with you tomorrow,” he replied. “I’m not always in the field. I spend a surprising amount of time lurking around DC in a suit, being an asshole. I could come home to you and be less of an asshole.”
She chortled. “I sincerely hope for <em>no</em> asshole. I don’t want to live with an asshole.”
“I can turn it off and on,” he assured her. “I’m good at it at this point.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, her blue-grey eyes flicking back and forth over his face. “This is insane,” she said. “You are insane. And I am going to have to pack all of the shit in this house up and I’m going to show up with it all and you’re going to ask yourself what you have done.”
“I will not,” Leon said. “I love you. I love your shit. We are too old for this to keep going on this way. I’m surprised to hear this come out of my own mouth, but we should be adults.”
“I hate to break it to you but I don’t know that shacking up with you is going to make me any more adult,” Claire joked. “I have always been a piss poor excuse for an adult.”
“Probably me too,” Leon said. “At least not an adult anyone wants to grow up to be.” He ran his hand over the top of her head, and let it rest on the back of her neck, looking at her. “Talk to your job. See what they say. We’ll go from there.”
“Alright,” Claire said. “Can I turn the light back out or do you have any other life-altering ideas you’ve been stewing on you want to throw out there?”
“I think we should go to the Indian place tomorrow,” he replied. “For many years I have thought I probably need a different haircut but I’m too chickenshit to do it.”
“Okay, turning out the light,” Claire said in amusement, and she scooted over and reached for the lamp, clicking it off, plunging them back into darkness. She curled back against him, in the crook of his arm, and settled in.
Leon looked back up at the ceiling. That had been easier than he’d thought.
He was 39. He loved her. For a long time, he’d lost her. He still acutely felt that his life was relatively pointless and bare without her. He wanted to get this fucking show on the road.
