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The sun is hot and the bleachers are hard, but Claude has a cool can of soda in his hand and an arm around the love of his life. Black wayfarers shield his eyes and their mischievous gleam when his fingers dip a little too close to the waistband of his husband’s trousers; the only tell comes from the twitch of Lorenz’s feet, where his ankles cross demurely before them. Well, that and—
“Sissy, dear,” Lorenz says suddenly. “Come sit next to daddy.”
Their eldest, eight years old and precociously well-mannered, leans forward to peer across Claude. Her mary janes hang over the bleachers where they can’t quite reach the bottom. Despite the scalding heat and dusty field, both her blouse and skirt are pristine as they were when Lorenz had set them out this morning. “I want to sit next to Baba,” she protests quietly, and inches closer to Claude’s sweaty forearm.
“You can still sit next to Baba. You’ll just be on the other side.”
“But daddy,” she says. That moment is all Claude needs to curl his finger into Lorenz’s trousers and snap the elastic of the silky underwear he’s shamelessly sought out.
“Cicero,” Lorenz insists with a squeak. “Please.” No one notices the way he squirms in his seat; his displeasure is hard to miss.
But whether from his husband or the sun, Claude is impervious to glares and smiles, close-mouthed and smug.
Their daughter, however, is not as hardy— nor does she find his same humor in opposing Lorenz. No, to Claude’s chagrin, Cicero slides from the bench to shuffle between her parents. Lorenz stands as well, shifting over and making room. Claude’s wandering hand falls regretfully to the wayside as Lorenz smoothes the wrinkles from his attire and settles into his new spot, a much more respectable distance away. Claude sighs and looks down at his darling girl, the fruit of his loins, cruelly weaponized against him.
She’s miles away in her own head, oblivious to the undercurrent. A gentle frown tugs her mouth this way and that like troubled tides, more attention on her own neatly folded hands than Farshad’s softball game. That won’t do.
“Chin up, chickpea,” he says, wrapping her in his newly available arm. She scrunches her nose and shoves at the thick band of his bicep, but he is a determined and unrepentant jailor. When he noses at her cheek, scratching her with his close-cut whiskers, she finally succumbs to giggles. “The game’s almost over. Daddy’s gonna get you ice cream.”
“Is he, now?” Lorenz murmurs with an arch brow, riveted on the field: two outs, and bases loaded.
“Of course he is,” Claude says, lobbing a grin his way. “He owes Baba a treat, too.” It’s an easy catch, and he knows it. Lorenz’s gaze flicks to him, the barest hint of a curve to his mouth. His trousers wrinkle again as he crosses his legs fully, squeezing his thighs together. Claude watches the movement, practically devouring his own lip as he pretends not to notice.
Alas, Lorenz is pulled back to the game quicker than Claude can properly capture his attention or his ardor. With a dramatic sigh, he lowers his sunglasses to share a conspiratorial look with his kid. She looks at Lorenz and back, her frown from before all too eagerly returning. So serious, his sweet little Cicero. He reaches out to smooth away a ruffle in her soft lavender hair, tousled from the breeze. She leans into the touch, momentarily appeased— a mirror image of her father on her other side.
The tinny crack of the ball against the bat splits through the surrounding cacophony of fizzing sodas, fluttering napkins, and frivolous conversation. Claude leans back again to join in watching the game, leaving his daughter to her visible internal debate between curling up into him and getting his sticky, stinky sweat all over her pretty blouse.
“I got it!” yells Fay from the outfield, short but sprightly as they dart across the grass. Claude lifts his soda for a sip and blinks a second too long— the next thing he knows, a collective, sympathetic gasp ripples across the bleachers and Lorenz is flying from his seat.
On the field, Fay scowls, belly-first in the dirt. Their chin, speckled red from a scrape, juts out with the same attitude they wore when Lorenz said no pets on the bed. Ethelind towers over them, the ball nestled neatly in her glove.
“That is a penalty!” Lorenz cries as Fay pushes themself onto their knees.
Farshad has always been impossibly forward and quick to fight— the opposite of Cicero, who will bow to force no matter how petulantly. Claude would laugh at the murderous look on their face if he weren’t certain Lorenz would match it in his direction if he dared to try.
He’s long since learned not to question Lorenz’s fretting over every trip and scrape. Having spent most of his own childhood enabled by his parents, he doesn’t mind when his own kids get their hands dirty. Of course, Sissy is much more particular about such things, and loathes any strenuous activity that would muss her appearance. Fay, on the other hand, has been almost single-handedly responsible for Lorenz’s anxiety medication prescription since birth. If Lorenz could calm his protective instincts for five minutes, he’d see that there’s nothing wrong with Fay except for fresh dirt stains on their shirt and smeared on their cheek— and Fay has never minded that.
“Sit your ass down, Gloucester,” the umpire says. “They’re on the same team.”
“Ingrid!” chastises Leonie, one of the coaches. Ingrid doesn’t so much as balk, her very muscled arms crossed at the front of the bleachers. Claude isn’t ashamed to admit that he’s a little intimidated.
Lorenz, however, admits to no such thing. As always when it comes to their kids, he abandons his good sense and does that thing with his shoulders like he’s a lone soldier marching into battle, eyes narrowed and posture perfect. He grips the chain link fence with both hands to address Ingrid directly through them. Claude feels heat that has nothing to do with the heavy sun overhead creep up his neck. “If that is the case,” Lorenz says so icily that the words practically rise with steam from the heat, “then why is that little saboteur taking the ball from my child?”
Because he either has a death wish, or more likely, finds Lorenz as intimidating as an ornate doily, Hubert answers from where he’s reclined with his hand in Ferdinand’s. “She caught it, as follows the rules.”
Lorenz’s spine stiffens as he slowly turns on Hubert, the slow rotation of fan blades before they cleave those foolish enough to draw near in half. “Oh? Where in the rules does it suggest tripping your teammate to steal the glory for yourself?”
Under his breath, Claude mutters, “It’s peewee softball. There wasn’t much glory to begin with.”
Cicero claps her hand over her mouth loudly, darting between Lorenz—who blessedly hadn’t heard—and Claude, who tries to look appropriately contrite. Hubert steals the incriminating spotlight from Claude as he, too, gets to his feet.
Meanwhile, Fay has dragged themself up as well, a little banged up but otherwise fine. The real concern is the tiny clenched fists at their sides and the smug little smile on Ethel’s face that matches the slim one on Hubert’s, sat on the other side of Ferdinand next to Lorenz.
Ferdinand’s hand falls from Hubert’s skeletal thigh. “Darling,” he says warningly, but Hubert is paying as much attention to him as Lorenz is to Claude— which is to say, none at all.
The chatter around them dims to a simmer. The loudest noise is the crunching of popcorn behind Claude, where Ingrid’s wife, Dorothea, is enjoying herself a little too much. Though, Claude can’t really judge, because he loves when Lorenz gets himself all riled up.
“Are you making insinuations about my daughter’s character?” Hubert asks quietly, menacingly, arms crossed. He is obviously trying to loom, and failing spectacularly, given that Lorenz is his equal in height. Briefly, Claude wishes he hadn’t convinced Lorenz to change out of his fancy Manolos— the fit he would have thrown about them being ruined by the dusty dirt of the field would’ve been worth the extra three inches they could have given him right at this moment.
“Insinuations?” Lorenz repeats with a laugh, one manicured hand on his cocked hip as he nonchalantly examines the other. His eyes then cut to Hubert’s like arrows to a target. “Heavens, no. Her wicked actions speak for themselves. I’m merely stating facts.”
“Lorenz!” Ferdinand gasps in displeasure, and Claude takes a long sip of soda to try and keep himself from laughing outright. You get ‘em, baby.
It’s like Hubert can sense Claude’s glee, because his demonic visage cracks into something truly hellish that perhaps makes Claude feel the tiniest bit of fear when it settles, for a singular moment, on him. Claude has no intention of perishing under the hot Blue Sea Moon sun, surrounded by dandelion weeds and frying hot dogs. He feigns innocence and Hubert squints, but Lorenz blessedly continues, either nobly deflecting for his husband’s sake, or too pretentiously pissed to care that he’s poking an actual spawn of hell.
“Really,” Lorenz continues, only a touch more sharply, but the effect is felt. “It shouldn’t be surprising, considering you are her father.”
At this Ferdinand leaps up, and Claude grimaces, setting down his soda. If Ferdinand is getting involved, then Claude has to do his duty and also provide backup. “Hold this, chickpea?” he instructs his daughter, and when she takes the can seriously in both hands, he lifts her from under her arms and plops her down on his other side once more, away from the potential brawl brewing— not that Lorenz would ever deign to participate in something so degrading.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, dear Hubert,” Lorenz says mockingly. “I think you know exactly what it means.”
Hubert bares his teeth in a cruel, coffee-stained smirk. Claude meets Ferdinand’s helpless gaze and tries not to roll his eyes. “Spare us your posturing, Gloucester,” Hubert says, as if he’s one to talk. “It’s not Ethel’s fault that being a disappointment runs in your family.”
Ferdinand gasps. Even Claude is taken aback.
“If I had my gloves I would slap you with one right now!” Lorenz snarls.
“Do it anyway,” Hubert dares, voice low.
Shoving between them, Ferdinand tries to push them away from each other with a firm anchor on either of their chests. “Now, see here—”
“ALRIGHT,” Claude says loudly, only to be shoved out of the way by Fay’s broad-shouldered coach— their former schoolmate, Leonie Pinelli. Claude stumbles into the chain-link fence barrier and Lorenz turns, aghast. “Darling, are you—” he begins, only to be cut off with a squawk as Leonie tosses him over her shoulder by the knees. She tromps across the bleachers as Dorothea boos her for taking away the crowd’s entertainment. Claude and Ferdinand gape at each other before leaping into action.
“Now, this is hardly necessary,” Ferdinand insists, trailing behind as Lorenz tries and fails to push at Leonie’s unrelenting grip.
“Come on, put him down,” Claude says, shoulder bumping against Ferdinand’s.
“Daddy!” wails Cicero, dropping the soda to clutch at her cheeks. It puddles at her feet, smearing the shine of her pretty shoes. “Please don’t hurt my daddy!”
Lorenz freezes in his displeasure to lock eyes with Claude, horrified. “Daddy’s just fine, chickpea,” Claude says, doubling back to swoop her up into his arms and dry her tears.
Hubert slinks back to his seat like a smug shadow, and Claude narrows his eyes at him while Sissy hides her face in his shoulder. “Gonna back up your man, Vestra?” he says, entirely too casual. Claude is no less devious than the man before him, but he prefers a more deft approach when it comes to retaliation, one that relinquishes him of both the dramatics and the blame.
The specter takes a long sip from the artisan to-go coffee cup in his hand. “Much like my daughter, he can handle himself.”
A high-pitched scream comes from the field, and Hubert sprays the expensive brew in surprise. Jumping to his feet, he throws himself into the chainlink fence at the forefront of the bleachers, clinging to the wire.
Claude swings around, Cicero weeping softly into his shirt, and takes in the latest crime scene: Ethelind, on her back in the dirt, bright red curls falling from the two buns atop her head, and Fay, triumphantly sticking their tongue out at her, recovered ball in hand.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Claude says easily, brushing past Hubert to collect his husband from Leonie’s clutches. “As you said— she can handle herself.”
He whistles, and Fay perks up to rush over, only pausing to blow another raspberry at Ethel.
“Come on, kiddo,” Claude says, ruffling Fay’s short hair with his free hand. “Let’s go rescue daddy.”
—
Lorenz sits in the passenger seat of their SUV, arms crossed and windows up. Ferdinand waves at him half-heartedly, only to get a terse two finger raise in return.
“Same time next week?” Claude says, slamming the trunk on Fay’s duffle bag.
“Twelve-thirty sharp,” Ferdinand sighs, unlocking his and Hubert’s own mini-van with a beep.
Claude slides into the car, checking the rear view mirror to confirm both Cicero and Farshad are buckled in. Instead of turning the key in the ignition, he sits with both hands on the wheel. “So,” he says, glancing at Lorenz.
“So,” Lorenz replies tensely.
“So…” Claude repeats, eyes connecting with Fay’s in the backseat.
“So?” Fay grumbles.
“What do you two have to say for yourselves? Are we really gonna do this every week?”
“Only if that little demon’s antics continue.”
Fay blinks innocently. “What he said.”
“As long as we’re all in agreement,” says Claude. Cicero doesn’t look fully convinced. “Ice cream?” he suggests, and Lorenz sighs good-humoredly, resting his head on his hand, elbow braced on the passenger-side door.
“Ice cream!” Fay shouts, and Cicero slaps her hands over her ears as Claude starts the car.