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Looking at the courthouse in front of him, the gears in Leon’s head were turning. This was not always a good thing; sometimes some of the worst ideas he’d ever had, or perversion, or things that nearly got him killed issued forth when the gears turned. He was a simple man, and so were his thoughts, sometimes.
He didn’t feel like this was a bad idea, or that it would get him killed. Maybe it was partially borne of perversion, among other more wholesome thoughts and emotions.
“Hey,” he called to Claire, who was several feet in front of him, engrossed in a pamphlet. She managed a distracted noise in return. “We should get married.”
For a moment she did not move, and then she turned around to him slowly, pushing her glasses up on her head. She needed them to see 24/7 these days, but taking them off her face when she needed focus was an old habit that died hard, even if it left the world blurry to her. She squinted against the noonday sun at him. “What?” she asked, bewildered.
“There’s a courthouse, right there,” he said, indicating the building in front of them. “We should get married.”
“Leon,” Claire said, “this is a historic courthouse. It’s basically a state park. It doesn’t function as a courthouse anymore.”
Oh. The fuck did he know? His knowledge of the Civil War was fuzzy by virtue of being told about it years ago against his will in school, and even then he’d been a teenager and not paying much attention. It’d been news to him that the Civil War ended in Virginia an hour and a half away from their house until Claire had told him and then dragged him to Appomattox on a Saturday where somehow, magically, the DSO was not requiring anything of him. These kinds of trips bored Leon to tears, but he endured them for Claire. “Well, I’m sure there’s an actual, functional courthouse around here somewhere.”
Claire remained frozen in place for a long moment, and then walked over to him, historical pamphlet forgotten at her side. “Leon,” she said, drawing up in front of him, “you’re talking about getting married. We’re—I don’t know if—have you thought about this for longer than about ten seconds?”
He shrugged. Sure he had. He was 45. It seemed kind of silly they weren’t married, after all the years and everything they’d been through. They owned property together. They owned a house. In the event of his untimely death, she inherited it all and more. “Baby, I love you so much I want to get the government involved,” he joked.
“More than they already are?” Claire asked, tiredly. “Are you serious right now?”
“Yeah,” Leon said. “What, you don’t want to get married?”
“No,” Claire said. “It’s not that. It’s just—I was not expecting you to have a life-altering idea at the courthouse at Appomattox,” she finished.
“Me either, until I had it,” Leon said. “I’m sure there’s a regular courthouse around here somewhere we can get married in.”
Claire’s mouth hung open and evidently she remembered she needed to see, because she put her glasses back on her face. “You need witnesses.”
“I’m sure we can find some bystanders.”
“Your family is going to kill you,” she went on. “If you exclude them from this you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“They’ve given up on me,” Leon said. “Besides, I’m not Catholic anymore. I’m not having a big church wedding. Maybe when I was 21. Not now. I can’t be assed.”
“We don’t have rings,” Claire pointed out.
“Yeah,” Leon acknowledged. “We’re going about this back-asswards, like we do most things. We can find some rings this week. You’re coming up with an awful lot of excuses. You want to get married or what?” In his over-confidence, Leon had pictured Claire just saying sure and going along with his idea. Maybe she didn’t want to get married. Maybe she was just fine sharing paperwork and deeds to shit with him. Maybe she didn’t want the government involved. Maybe this had been one of his stupider ideas he’d opened his mouth about and made real.
Claire looked exasperated. “Well, yes,” she said. “Of course. But this is—I expected to come see where Lee capitulated to Grant. I didn’t expect to change my last name. I mean—getting married, Leon.”
Leon felt a little better now that she’d voiced agreement and again felt confident enough to forge ahead. “I mean, you don’t need to change your last name if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m sure Chris would probably keel over and die if you gave up Redfield.”
“I might keel over and die if I gave up Redfield,” Claire said. “It was Daddy’s name, and that’s good enough for me.”
“Sure,” Leon said. “Keep Redfield. That’s fine. Let’s go find the actual courthouse.”
“You would do anything to avoid an educational experience,” Claire said, dryly. “Including get married. You looked like you’d rather swallow a tack this morning when I told you I wanted to come here.”
“War’s over,” Leon said. “South lost. I’m sure I’d get shot in the face in your hometown for breaking the news to them like that, but here we are.”
“Yeah,” Claire gusted, “I think there’s parts of Alabama that haven’t quite received the news yet.” She looked up at him. “This is insane. We’re just going to get married.”
“We’re not getting any younger,” Leon said. “I probably should have had this bright idea in our twenties.”
“I don’t think either of us were having bright ideas in our twenties,” Claire said. “More like nothing but bad decisions. We were full of them.”
Not to mention there’d been a while where they weren’t in each other’s lives, Leon surmised. Had to be in a relationship with the woman and convince her to stick around to get married to her. “C’mon. Let’s go find the courthouse.”
“Jesus, alright,” Claire said. “You’re nuts. This is nuts. Chris is going to shit a brick. Sherry’s gonna shit a brick.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” Leon said as they turned and began to walk for the Porsche. Claire was trailing behind him a bit like she was still coping with understanding that he’d made the split second decision to get married. She’d said yes, though, so maybe shock and awe had been the way to go.
………………………………………………………
Leon was staring at the mild-mannered, somewhat homely civil servant in front of him and pointedly ignoring Claire’s mutedly smug look at his side.
“So you’re telling me I can’t get married today,” Leon said.
“I appreciate you’re in a hurry,” the woman behind the counter said, “but no. That’s not how it works. We’re kind of technically not even open today. The magistrate can marry you, but not if you don’t have a marriage license.”
“Alright, well, I need a marriage license,” Leon said.
“That’s not how it works either in most states,” the woman said in amusement. “You have to file for one at a courthouse or online, and it can take up to two weeks to receive. You bring that to a courthouse, and you can go through with the civil ceremony. But I do not have the ability to just cut you a marriage license, here and now. That has to come from the state.”
Leon blinked. The fuck did he know? He’d never been married before. Apparently even getting married at a courthouse was complicated.
“I told you this was hair-brained,” Claire murmured from next to him, and Leon stood there, the gears turning.
“Alright, so apply for a marriage license,” Leon said. “Then show up at a courthouse?”
“It’d probably be prudent to make an appointment at a courthouse,” the woman said, in continued amusement. “If you just show up with a marriage license they may be booked that day and then you’d get turned away again, even with a license.”
“We’re not big on planning,” Claire said. “Can you tell?”
“It’s usually 18 year olds showing up here trying to get married same day,” the woman said. “You two look old enough to know better.”
“Bold of you to assume that,” Leon said. “I’ve never tried to get married before.”
“Well, it sounds like we’ve got two weeks to try to do this right,” Claire said, looking up at him.
Leon continued to stare at the courthouse employee like if he stared long enough the answer would change. “Alright, well, what do I know?” he said finally, breaking eye contact. “Thank you,” he said to her as an aside, and they turned to leave, the woman gazing after them with a smile.
“If you have to wait two weeks are you still going to want to get married?” Claire asked, as they walked out. “Or are you going to rethink this stellar idea of yours?”
“Sure I will,” Leon replied. “It is a stellar idea. I just didn’t realize I couldn’t act on it immediately.”
“You’re the one that wanted to get the government involved,” Claire said. “Since when is anything with the government immediate?”
“Good point,” Leon said, as they walked out the front door.
“Well, great,” Claire said cheerfully. “Your effort to get out of an educational experience has been shot down. Back to the courthouse,” she said. “The other one. We better still be able to get a tour.”
“Fine,” Leon said. “But if I fall asleep standing up you can’t get mad at me.”
“You better not,” Claire said, drawing up to the passenger side of the Porsche.
……………………………………………………………………
They had, in fact, been able to get a tour, and Leon felt transported back to age 16, trying hard to pay attention but mostly kind of failing. He’d never been one for book learning, and most museum-like experiences caused his mind to wander. Claire looked like she was absorbing every last minutiae of information, and Leon was not surprised. She dreamed of experiences like this. Having an 80 year old tour guide explain in excruciating detail the ins and outs of the end of the Civil War was all Claire could have dreamed of.
Leon tried not to look at his watch too much lest he get the stink eye from Claire.
Finally the tour was over, and they packed back out to the Porsche, Leon feeling like he needed caffeine or a swift kick in the ass or something to bring him back to reality. He had a feeling if he asked Claire would happily deliver the kick.
Leon started the vehicle and Claire looked over at him, pulling her seatbelt on. “Well,” she said, “you survived. Thanks for going to Appomattox with me even though I’m sure you would have rather had your toenails pulled out.”
“I’m used to suffering,” Leon said. “I’m good at enduring it.”
“Well good,” Claire said, brightly. “Because when we get home we better start calling people and informing them we made the sudden decision to get married.”
Leon looked over at her. “I don’t have to do that. I can just inform them after the fact. You can too.”
“No, Leon,” she said with a gust, “I’m not committed to being an elusive mystery in peoples’ lives. You wonder why your family grills you every time you talk to them. It’s because you call them once every six months and you give them absolutely no heads up on anything you’re doing. The only time they know what’s happening is when I tell them.”
“I agreed to become knowable and honest to you,” Leon countered, backing the Porsche out. “I tell you things. I interact with you. I don’t have the bandwidth for more.”
Claire looked over at him with an eyebrow arched. “I think your family is just desperate to hear from you. At one point in your life, you were so enmeshed with them they knew everything about you.”
Leon nodded. “Things changed. They don’t want to hear it. Every time I talk to them, it’s just grief. I don’t go to church, I don’t believe in God, I need to change careers, I’m different. Like I’m not aware of all of this shit. I think they wanted to be related to 18 year old me, not 45 year old me as I am now.”
“They’re worried about you. And you always take that worry and try to brush it off,” Claire said. “I practically have to hold you down and smother you before you’ll take me seriously. You have a way of pretending nothing is serious that is, at times, concerning.”
“I can’t change what’s happened,” he said. “I can’t change me. I think my family won’t let go of what I used to be and won’t accept what I am now.”
“Maybe,” Claire acknowledged. “But I do know calling them once a year probably isn’t helping things. I know your parents are generally dedicated to giving you a rash of shit, but maybe your brothers are more approachable? It would not kill you to call James or Riley and say ‘hey, I’m getting married’. They’ll probably disseminate the information to the rest of the family.”
“And they’re going to be upset,” Leon said tiredly. “Because it’s not what they want. Because I’m not having some big Catholic wedding. Because I’m 45 years old, tired, and I don’t believe in God anymore.”
Claire hummed. “Well, I don’t want some big Catholic wedding either,” she said. “Blame it on me. Tell them this is my doing. I have no obligations. I’m not going to experience guilt under the weight of their expectations. I’ll be the bad guy.”
“I guess that’s one of the benefits of growing up with next to no family,” he said, looking over at her at a stop sign. “You don’t experience guilt about anything. You’re blessedly unmoved by familial expectations.”
She looked back over at him, a corner of her mouth pulled up. “I’m a hellraiser,” she corrected. “You, I think, still feel some deep-set obligation to be a good and dutiful son when you talk to your family. My obligation to be the perfect daughter ended the moment Daddy went into the ground.”
“Something like that,” Leon sighed, pulling out onto the street. “Fine. I’ll call Riley. You deal with Chris and Sherry.”
“Sure,” Claire said. “You gonna get online when we get home and find out what it takes to get a marriage license?”
“I’ll do it,” Leon said. “This was a lot more fun when I thought I could make it happen in ten minutes.”
“You’ve always been about instant gratification,” Claire said. “You have no impulse control.”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing,” Leon replied.
…………………………………………………………
Upon returning home, Claire ambled around in the kitchen for a while, looking through the fridge and freezer, trying to make decisions about dinner. Leon retreated to the office and fired up his laptop, looking over at the riot of clutter on the other half of the office that constituted Claire’s workspace. Leon looked around on varying Loudoun county pages, trying to figure out where in the fuck he could apply for a marriage license. He eventually found the clerk of the circuit court’s website, and after reading for about two minutes he realized not only had the clerk in Appomattox been kind of shirty with him, she’d given him wrong information. Leon rubbed his hands over his face and groaned.
“Fuck,” he said loudly, in annoyance. This utterance prompted Claire to appear a moment later in the doorway, beer in hand.
“You alright?” she asked, mildly.
“We could have gotten married today,” he said, looking over at her tiredly. “You don’t fucking apply for a marriage license online. That woman didn’t know what she was talking about. You apply in person at the courthouse. We both have to be there. We both have to present ID. They issue you a marriage license and you pay thirty bucks in cash.”
Claire raised her eyebrows, nodding. “She took one look at you and was like, ‘this guy doesn’t need to get married today’.”
“I’ve got half a mind to call up there and chew her ass,” Leon said. “Jesus fuck this is getting more complicated by the minute. I’m just trying to make a snap decision and make an honest woman of you. Now we both have to go back to a courthouse and I’ve got to call my family and this is a clusterfuck.”
“Alright, well…” Claire trailed off, taking a drink of her beer. “It’s not going to kill us for this to be more thought out. It means our witnesses can be people we actually know, like Sherry, or Chris or something.”
“Can’t I just be full of bad decisions and mystery and just do shit in my life?” Leon asked, rhetorically.
“No,” Claire replied. “You’re being forced to be a member of society and do things halfway properly. Can you manage to avoid work for a minute this week so we can go to the courthouse and get a marriage license?”
“I don’t know,” Leon sighed. “Maybe. That’s up to the government.”
“You are absolutely dying, aren’t you?” Claire asked in amusement. “This is requiring more of you than you thought and you look like you’re about to say fuck it and forget the whole thing.”
“We’re getting fucking married,” Leon said, looking over at her pointedly. “I’m going to cloud up and rain all over the parade of some Virginia state employee if we don’t figure this out.”
“Do you want a beer?” Claire asked. “You look like you need a beer.”
“Get the whisky out of the cabinet,” Leon said. “We’ve progressed beyond beer.”
“Uh oh,” Claire said with a laugh, turning to leave the office.
………………………………………………………………
Leon looked out the back windows at Claire sitting on the deck, phone to her ear, talking with someone. Chris, or Sherry, or maybe her childhood friend Daisy. She was holding up her end of the bargain, informing people the lunatic she shared a bed with had a revelation today and decided they should get married. Now it was his turn and he was dreading it. Claire was right; she was often right, and he had to admit it. He needed to call his family. He probably owed it to them to tell them he’d decided to get married, and if he called after the fact, their reactions would be apoplectic.
He sat down on the couch, setting his drink down. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and let out a gust. Riley, then. His eldest brother was probably the most even-keeled and willing to accept Leon at face value and not give him a load of grief over the particulars of his decision. Leon scrolled through the contacts in his phone until he got to Riley and tapped the screen to call him.
After a few rings, the other line picked up. “Hell’s frozen over,” his brother’s distinctly Michigan-accented voice drifted through the earpiece. “You’re calling me.”
“Yeah, it’s cold here,” Leon joked. “Better than the alternative.”
“To what do I owe the honor?” Riley asked. “Claire put you up to this, didn’t she?”
“She may have,” Leon acknowledged. “She is as ever the voice of reason around here. It’s not coming from me.”
“That seems a constant,” Riley said. “For us, anyway. All of us found women to manage us. It’s fine. Kennedy family tradition.”
Leon nodded. “Yeah, speaking of that, I tried to marry her today.”
There was silence for a moment. “Tried?” Riley asked, in halting confusion. “First off, you decided to get married, and secondly, someone or something prevented that?”
“Yeah,” Leon said, settling into the couch. “Bureaucracy prevented it. The woman at the courthouse in Appomattox not knowing what the fuck she was talking about prevented it. I stood there in front of a courthouse today and decided to get married.”
Riley chortled. “Well, it sounds like Claire agreed to this and didn’t tell you to go fuck yourself, which may have been the smart and responsible answer.”
“Yeah, amazingly enough, she looked at me saying ‘let’s get married’ and said sure,” Leon joked. “I tried to get it done in ten minutes but I was foiled. So here we are. Now she made me call you and tell you I was going to get married.”
“Well, I appreciate it,” Riley said, “because we both know otherwise you would have just gotten married and informed us like a year from now. So I guess you’re opting for the courthouse route.”
Leon nodded. “Yeah. I’m old and tired, Riley. I’m not orchestrating a whole fucking to do. Claire doesn’t want that, anyway.”
Riley laughed. “Did you even ask her or did you just bulldoze right ahead with your bullshit? Y’know, when I asked Izzy to marry me, I actually took a knee and did the whole thing.”
“I asked, kind of,” Leon said. “More like suggested it. You were 18 years old when you asked Izzy to marry you. I think we still had romantic gestures in us, at that point.”
“Let me guess,” Riley said, “you’re relying on me to tell the family.”
“Bingo,” Leon said. “Ma and Da are just going to release a torrent of upset crying I’m denying myself a sacrament by not getting married in the Church.”
“I suppose they should just be glad they’re getting to see you finally get married sometime before they go into their graves,” Riley said dryly. “I was starting to wonder myself.”
“I’m a late bloomer,” Leon said, leaning forward to pick up his whisky. He took a drink. “It took me a while, but I got there eventually.”
“When is this happening?” Riley asked.
“I don’t know,” Leon said. “Claire’s all bound and determined to actually tell people at this point. My element of surprise is ruined.”
“I hear Virginia’s lovely this time of year,” Riley said. “Can you manage to avoid dragging her to a courthouse by her hair for long enough for me to find a plane ticket?”
Leon blinked, somewhat startled. “I mean, I guess so. It’s going to take ten minutes, I think. There’s no need to fly all the way out here for that.”
“I suppose I am also motivated by potentially laying eyes on my little brother,” Riley said. “I feel like it’s been a long time since you were here. I feel like someone in this family should witness you doing this.”
Leon let out a sigh, running his hand over his head. “I guess. I dunno. It’s kind of a letdown, much like me.”
“Hey, you said it, not me,” Riley said. “Last time I flew to DC was years ago. You still lived in that rat trap little apartment. At least your couch was comfortable. I suppose I ought to see what life is now that you are in a committed relationship that exists within the confines of the same state, the same house.”
“Fine,” Leon said. “Get out here quick. I tried to do this thing today. I’m going to try to do it again as soon as the opportunity presents itself.”
“Let me talk to Izzy,” Riley said. “I can probably be there this coming weekend. Hold off on your headlong rush into marriage until I can get off a plane.”
“Claire will probably have to get you from the airport,” Leon said. “I apologize in advance for her driving. She’s going to take years off your life.”
“I have children,” Riley retorted. “They already did that with their driving. It’ll be a breeze.”
“You say that,” Leon said, “until you’re in a Tundra going speeds a truck that big has no business going.”
“I lived a good life,” Riley said. “Well, that’s settled. You’re getting married and I’m going to get to witness it.”
“Great,” Leon said. Mission accomplished. He’d informed his family. Claire could be proud.
“What else is going on with you?” Riley asked, and Leon groaned internally.
That’s right; family generally wanted to talk to you when you called them. He wasn’t off the hook just yet.
……………………………………………………………
Claire was sitting in the bed next to him, looking at something on her phone, her brow furrowed behind her glasses. Leon laid there watching her, and eventually reached over and slid his arm across her legs under the blankets.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“I’m trying to stress to my boss that I probably shouldn’t be sent anywhere for a week or two,” she said, “given that Riley is coming out here and we’re attempting to get married. It’s bad enough you have no latitude over potentially getting sent somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Leon said. “Let’s hope the world can hold it the fuck together for a while and I’m not needed to clean up messes.”
“My boss is going through the five stages right now,” Claire joked. “I think he thinks I’m kidding. He keeps asking me if this is real. I think nobody ever expected me to get married.”
“Well, probably same,” Leon said. “Guys in my line of work don’t get married. Or they try it about five times and leave a string of ex-wives and children they never see in their wakes.”
Claire looked over at him, her face a bit tired. “Sharing a man with the government isn’t for everyone,” she said. “I don’t think most women would put up with it.”
“They don’t,” Leon said. “I don’t know why you do.”
“It’s you or the shack in the woods in West Virginia,” Claire said. “I’d just be alone, if not for you. I don’t have the patience for dating in the modern world. I hear about it from my younger coworkers and I’d kill someone. It’s not worth it. You know what is worth it? Solitude and acreage in the woods.”
Leon smiled some. “Well, thanks for choosing me over being a hill person,” he said.
“Sure,” Claire said, off-handedly. “There are benefits.”
He looked at her in silence for a moment, tapping away at her phone. “Are you actually gonna let me buy you a ring or is it going to be like when we bought this house? You digging your heels in, kicking and screaming, and me trying to make things happen?”
She looked over from her phone, and the look on her face was inscrutable. “Don’t be you about it,” she said. “You’re going to haul off and try to buy me some five carat monstrosity. I know it. I’m not 25 anymore. No one is chasing me at this age. I don’t need a mountain on my finger to discourage lookers.”
Leon raised his eyebrow at her. “People still look. Maybe they’re not chasing you down the street anymore, but they still look. I think that kid last week at the restaurant was trying to figure out subtle ways to land himself in a relationship with an older woman.”
Claire laughed some. “Jesus, that’s just what I need. Some twenty-something. You were enough as a twenty-something. I barely survived that.”
Leon looked offended. “You also actively tried to kill me. You egged me on.”
“Maybe,” Claire said enigmatically. “But yes, I will let you buy me a ring. Just let me get what I want. Don’t be you about it. Don’t insist on overproviding.”
Leon looked skeptical. “You’re going to pick out something that costs nothing. You still clip coupons. You’re not going to get what you want, you’re going to get what you think is financially prudent.”
“Is that so bad?” Claire asked, once again tapping away at her phone. “You want me to cost you a lot of money?”
“I don’t know,” Leon said. “Every time I try to spend it on you, you practically kick me in the balls.”
Claire sighed and finally set her phone down next to the bed, and pushed her glasses up to rub at her eyes. “Because you’re insane and the way you spend money when you set out to spend it makes me uncomfortable.” She took her hands away from her eyes and adjusted her glasses on her face. “I’ll pick out something nice. It’s probably going to disappoint you, but I’m the one who has to wear this thing. Just let me do what I’m going to do. If you want to spend money on something,” she went on, turning to him slightly in the bed, “you can put the lift on my truck I’ve been asking for forever.”
Leon frowned. “No. I told you that’s off limits. You’re enough of a menace in that thing. Your attitude or your driving would not improve if you were suddenly two feet higher off the ground. Plus, I don’t think it would fit in the garage with a lift on it. You want to be the menace of Loudoun County in a truck with a lift, you’re paying for it yourself. And I know you never will, so that settles it.”
Claire looked tired, but she was smiling. “When did you get old?” she asked.
“I’ve been on you about your driving since time immemorial,” he said. “I’ll buy you anything you want, but I’m not enabling you.”
She was silent for a moment, contemplative. “Will you buy me a stand mixer?” she asked, finally.
“I’m not even really sure I know what the fuck that is, but sure,” Leon said. “Text me a link.”
“I’m tired of baking the old fashioned way,” Claire said. “A stand mixer will make things easier.”
“Sign me up,” Leon said. “There’s a woeful lack of cookies in this house.”
Claire smiled at him, and took her glasses off, folding them in on themselves, and setting them next to the bed. “I’m turning out the light,” she said.
“Do it before I get any more ideas or agree to anything else,” Leon said.
“Not like the light being out has ever stopped you before, but sure,” she said, turning towards the lamp, clicking it off.
…………………………………………………………
It was Wednesday, and Leon had managed to convince the powers that be that less of him in a suit was needed in DC, and that he had more pressing matters to attend to back home. It was the second time this week he’d had to convince them of that; Monday it’d been time to go get the marriage license. It hadn’t been easy today, either, because as per usual Leon was trying to let on as little about his personal life as possible and then he’d had a relatively frustrating commute back towards Loudoun County. The final fuck you to Uncle Sam had been Leon petitioning all the way up to the sitting President for a few days off over the weekend into next week because his brother was going to be there.
It probably wouldn’t have mattered a single shit to the powers that be if Leon said I have to leave because I need to go buy a wedding ring, and then he’d be peppered with questions about said marriage, so he just insisted he needed to leave, that he had pressing matters to attend to.
After an hour and a half he finally made it to Leesburg, where the jeweler was, and once he pulled up and parked he looked over to see Claire climbing out of her truck. He got out of the Porsche and walked over to her, noting her typical casual Claire-fare of a ratty old t-shirt and some cut-off shorts and flip-flops. Leon imagined people in public never knew what to make of them; the man in the expensive suit driving a Porsche, the woman in thrift store clothes driving a truck that had last been washed about a year ago. Claire cleaned up when she needed to, but if she was not absolutely forced to, you got the shirt from the 70s and the shorts fraying into nothing.
“Sorry,” he said, coming up next to her. “Traffic was bad.”
“When’s it not bad?” Claire asked, rhetorically. “I figured I’d be waiting a minute given I was only 25 minutes away.”
“There is that,” Leon said as they walked up to the building. Claire pulled her glasses off her face and wiped the lenses on her shirt, held them back up in front of her face inspectingly, then slipped them back on her face. Leon pulled open the door and Claire stepped in, and he came in behind her.
“Hi,” said a young woman from behind a counter. “How are you today?”
“Fair to middlin’,” Claire replied.
“Fine,” Leon said.
“What can I do for you?” the young woman said, rounding the edge of the counter and coming towards them.
“I called earlier this week,” Claire said. “We’re looking to buy wedding rings.”
“Okay! Well, we’ve got plenty,” the young woman said. “Looking for anything in particular?”
“I’m going to be very easy and boring in that I want a plain gold band,” Leon said. “No bells, no whistles. The less I have to damage the better. A plain ring.”
The girl looked at him, silent for a beat. “Okay, are you doing—are you doing a lot of manual labor, things with your hands?” she asked.
“At times, yes,” Leon replied.
“Well, gold is soft,” she said. “We have plenty of plain no frills rings, but you’d probably want to consider a harder metal, like platinum. It’s relatively resistant to wear and tear.”
“Sold,” Leon said. “That was easy.”
Claire looked at him in amusement. “You’ll have to excuse him,” she said to the girl. “He’s generally avoidant of anything he has to think about for longer than ten seconds.”
The girl laughed a little. “I think that’s the typical experience when a couple comes in. And for good reason! Women have a lot more to consider.”
Claire smiled back. “I’m picky. It’s going to take me longer.”
“That’s fine,” the employee said, and then turned back to Leon with her million watt smile splitting her young face. Leon noted the gold cross hanging from around her neck. She seemed helpful and cheerful, like he’d been a million years ago, drilled into him by religion and the constant advice of his parents. “Let’s get you settled up first, and she can look while we deal with that. Do you know your ring size?”
“Haven’t the faintest,” Leon said.
Leon allowed the helpful shop girl to lead him off and size his finger, and then looked at a volume of rings that were all essentially the same thing in varying thicknesses, while Claire ambled around looking into cases. Leon had a feeling he’d take it off, when he was working; he never knew what kind of shit he would get into in the field and what kind of damage it could do to a ring on his finger. But he still did plenty with his hands in the civilian world, and he figured the more indestructible the metal he could get and the thicker the ring, probably the better. It still didn’t take him very long, and he’d picked out a platinum ring of a thickness he felt like even he’d have to try hard to damage. The shop girl worked on boxing the ring and filling out some paperwork, and Leon walked over to Claire, who was gazing into a case.
“Find anything?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” Claire said, putting her hand on his arm. “Over here.” She led him over to one of the other cases and pointed with her index finger into it. “This is nice.”
Leon looked at the three diamond ring in the case and blinked, asking for patience. He knew she was going to be like this. She was going to pick something out based on her own budget. He was going to have to fight her tooth and nail to get something of substance. “Claire,” he began, “that’s tiny.”
She looked up at him. “You said you weren’t going to do this. You said you were going to let me pick.”
“You can go bigger than that, sweetheart,” he said. “We’re not twenty. You don’t have to pick out a ring like we’re living paycheck to paycheck.” He looked down at her, cajoling. “C’mon. Get something bigger than that.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks, fixing her with his eyes. “Let me do this right. Let me get you something nice.”
Claire sighed a little. “I don’t want the Hope diamond, Leon,” she said in an undertone.
“You don’t have to get the Hope diamond,” he said. “But you should get something that’s noticeable.”
She sighed again, and the shop girl came over to them, standing behind the case. “See anything you like?” she asked, brightly.
“Yes,” Claire began, “but he’s insistent it’s not big enough.”
“A happy problem to have,” the girl enthused, and Claire looked skeptical. “So we do have larger settings, for some things in the case. What’s in the case is just what’s on display. We may have something with larger stones, if you show me what you like.”
Claire still looked supremely skeptical. “I like that,” she said, pointing into the case at the ring.
“Oh that’s a fairly common design,” the girl said. “We have plenty in larger carat weights. Hang on,” she said, bending over to reach under the case.
“Do you want a common design?” Leon asked of Claire.
“You’re lucky I don’t just want a plain band too,” she said. “I’ve never owned a diamond. Something too big is going to make me nervous. I’m scared I’ll damage it, or lose it, or something.”
“We do offer warranties,” the girl piped up from behind the counter. “And depending on the size of the ring, you could always insure it, as well.”
“I don’t want anything big enough to have to buy insurance on,” Claire said, looking agog. “Jesus. At that point I’d just leave it locked in a safety deposit box all the time.”
“You have to get something moderately impressive or Chris is going to be on our cases,” Leon said. “I can hear him invoking your Daddy now.”
Claire looked chagrined. “That is the go to,” she acknowledged. The girl popped up from behind the counter with an elongated box in her hands, and she set it down on the counter and lifted the lid off of it.
“So we have varying carat weights,” she said, “all the way from 1/8th to 2 carats. I think what’s in the case is 1/4th carat.”
“You,” Claire said, turning to look at Leon with the rings in front of them, “keep your mouth shut. I already know which one you’re looking at, and I’m not doing it.”
Leon looked out into space for a moment, tongue between his teeth. “Alright, so, go with the happy medium. You could tolerate a carat.”
“Which one’s that one?” Claire asked, tiredly.
“This is a carat,” the girl said helpfully, extracting the ring from the box.
“Leon, that’s still huge,” Claire said, chagrined.
“It’s not that one,” Leon supplied helpfully, pointing at the ring with the two carat stones. “Happy medium. You get what you want, I get what I want.” He looked at the girl. “What’s the clarity on those?”
“I’d have to get out the paperwork,” the girl said. “But typically the jeweler tries not to create anything using less than a VVS2, or very very slightly included. If you’re concerned about clarity, I can show you rings based on clarity.”
“Jesus no,” Claire cut in. “I can practically taste his urge to set fire to a pile of money and it doesn’t matter to me. They’re diamonds. They’re all sparkly. I don’t care if it’s included or very very slightly included or excluded or whatever any of that means.” She looked at the shop girl and looked over and up at Leon. “Stop,” she said to him, in an undertone. “You said you’d let me pick.”
“If I don’t steer you,” Leon said back to her, “you’re going to get something like we’re worried about making our rent. We’re not.” He let out a gust from his nose, looking at her. “You have been putting up with me for far longer than you should have. Get something nice, Claire.”
She gazed back at him, her face uncertain behind her glasses. It was always this way; she’d jokingly ask him to buy her ice cream or dinner or to pay the car insurance but when it came to really trying to do something for her, she acted like she was going to be bankrupting the IMF. He would have bought her any size ring she wanted. Only Claire, among women, was going to fight tooth and nail for her right to have something so small it was barely noticeable.
“Claire,” he reiterated, “it’s fine. We can afford it. You don’t have to worry about it. Get something visible. I’m trying to marry you, here.”
She gazed at him for another moment longer, then opened her mouth and let out a tremendous sigh. She turned back to the shop girl, who’d been silently looking on this whole time. Leon suspected she was probably witness to all kinds of disputes between couples, but maybe not the kind of dispute Leon and Claire were having.
“So that’s a carat, huh?” Claire asked of the girl.
“Yes,” she said. “Each one of the stones is a carat.”
“Sold,” Claire said, tiredly. “I’m not going any bigger and he’s not going to accept any smaller.”
“Okay,” the shop girl said, her smile a bit hesitant, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of Claire’s attitude. “Do you know your ring size?”
“No,” Claire said. “I don’t usually wear them.”
“Let’s get you sized, too,” she said, and then looked between them, her smile still hesitant. “Are you also needing a band, for her? Most traditional women’s sets are two rings, the engagement ring and the wedding band.”
“Sure,” Leon said benignly, and Claire cut her eye up at him. “Bands are simple, Claire. You can get away with something small and I’m not going to fight you.”
“You told me you wouldn’t fight me about this and here we are,” Claire countered, her tone forcibly breezy.
She had him, there. He’d mostly promised to be inoffensive to get her to agree to going to pick out a ring. He’d secretly known all along he was going to give her hell; he’d known she was going to try to do something he couldn’t abide by. He was not perfect, and he was probably lucky she even wanted to marry his ass in the first place. “One of my nieces has a very simple set,” Leon said to the shop girl. “It’s basically two plain, skinny bands with some diamonds in them. You got anything like that?”
“Of course!” the shop girl chirped. “It doesn’t have to be flashy at all,” she said to Claire, who looked like she was contemplating going home and beating Leon with one of the cast iron pans. “In this case over here I have plenty of things like that,” she said, moving slowly behind the case, indicating Leon and Claire should follow her. Leon put his hand on Claire’s back and guided her hesitant form over to the next case.
…………………………………………………………
Friday night Leon didn’t make it home until close to 9 PM. He’d been waylaid in the offices, pouring over surveillance, halfway involved in monitoring the progress of Day, another agent in the field. He was trapped; and at around 6 PM he started to wonder if he was going to be able to leave at all, government sanctioned time off or no.
“Try not to look so enthused,” Hunnigan had said to him.
“If I’m still here at midnight I’m walking the fuck out,” Leon told her. “My time off was approved by the President, for Christ’s sake.”
She’d just looked back at him with a lopsided grin, shrugging a little.
He’d gotten lucky, he’d been able to get out of there before midnight. By virtue of leaving DC so late, he missed most of the worst of rush hour traffic as well. It was a small boon to what was a relatively shitty situation in which he went to work in the morning and never really knew if he would get to go home, or if he’d just end up getting shipped out into the field with no notice.
Pulling up at home, he walked up to the front door and hoped Claire had been able to entertain Riley for hours. His brother had landed at around noon; Claire was used to interacting with Leon’s family in Leon’s presence, during their infrequent trips to Michigan. Asking her to entertain a man she knew solely through Leon was a big ask.
Leon unlocked the front door and stepped in, and a moment later Claire appeared in the entryway. “There you are,” she said. “I was starting to wonder what gives.”
“Oh, you know,” Leon sighed. “They weren’t going to let me go without a fight. Someone’s having a hard time in the field and suddenly it’s all of our problem.” He stepped over to her. “Riley here?”
“Yeah, we’re in the living room,” she said, and they headed towards the aforementioned room. Leon walked in and stopped short, taking sight of his oldest brother on the couch. Riley looked at him appraisingly from behind his glasses and stood, setting a beer down.
Riley’s eyes had been bad for twenty years, necessitating glasses, and in recent years he was like Leon in that he did not shave his face every day. Leon noted his hair was longer than it was the last time he’d seen him, and at that point it appeared to be half grey. He was an inch or so shorter than Leon and had always been heavier set than Leon, at least until Leon got with the government’s program and bulked up for field work. Riley looked like he was settling heavily into Dad-Bod-dom at 50, and Leon supposed he could not blame him; Riley was, after all, a dad to six kids.
“You’re getting fat, old man,” Leon said, looking at his brother.
Riley laughed. “My wife is still packing my lunch like she’s got kids in grade school,” he said. “Chips, granola bars, and baggies of Oreos. You think you’re gonna be ripped forever? It’ll happen to you one day too.” He began forward, arms open. “C’mere.”
Leon and his brother hugged, clapping each other’s backs. “You’re right,” Riley said in an undertone, into Leon’s ear. “I saw the end of my life and it was in that Tundra with your to-be wife as the driver.” Leon managed a laugh and Riley drew back, looking at him. “You’re starting to look old, Lee.”
“I am old,” Leon said. “And this job is grinding me into dust.”
“So stop,” Riley said, stepping back.
“You act like I have a choice,” Leon said. “I stop when they say I stop.”
“Yeah, yeah, your indentured servitude,” Riley said, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. “I always forget about that.”
“I don’t,” Leon said tiredly. “You haven’t traumatized her, have you?” he asked, indicating Claire.
“I told her the story about you blowing up the neighbor’s mailbox with two M80s,” Riley said with a grin. “I told her about Da smacking you into next week and grounding you for a month, and making you build the neighbors a new mailbox.”
“I was 12,” Leon said. “I’m lucky I didn’t blow my fucking hands off.”
“Well, at least you weren’t building pipe bombs,” Claire said. “My uncle seemed to think that at age 14 the knowledge his dead brother’s daughter really needed was how to make a pipe bomb.”
“We would have been domestic terrorists if we’d had pipe bombs,” Riley said, sitting back down on the couch. “Some knowledge needed to remain forbidden to us.”
“Well,” Claire said, looking over at Leon, “we already ate. I cooked. We couldn’t wait any longer. Your brother was going to waste away. There’s leftover pork chops and sides.”
“I’ll find my way,” Leon said, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m glad we don’t have to be over to the courthouse tomorrow until 3.”
“I figured an early bedtime was probably not in the picture,” Claire said. “Between not knowing when you’re ever going to get home and Riley being here, I thought maybe it’d be a late night.”
“Go eat,” Riley said. “Get a beer and get back in here.”
Leon let out a gust. “Let me get out of this fucking suit first,” he said.
“What happened to your tie?” Riley asked in amusement. “Already shed that?”
“I gave up on ties about 20 years ago,” Leon said. “I felt like I was still in fucking high school, uniform and all.”
Riley chortled. “You never unknotted your uniform tie. Just loosened it and hung it on the back of your door. I don’t think you would have known how to retie it if it’d ever come undone.”
“It’s bad enough they made us be Catholic,” Leon said. “It was another thing entirely to force us to wear a uniform every day.”
Riley was grinning, but he arched his eyebrow at Leon. “Watch it. One of us is still Catholic.”
“Let’s not start religious World War III,” Claire said, waving her hands at Leon. “Go change and eat, and keep your lapsed thoughts to yourself.”
“Sure,” Leon said, heading off for the bedroom.
……………………………………………………………
“How’d Ma and Da take it when you told them?” Leon asked, looking at Riley. “That I was getting married, I mean.”
Riley let out a breath and tapped his beer against his leg. “Mixed emotions. Relief. Happiness. Caterwauling that you weren’t having a Church wedding. Upset you’ve cut that out of your life. Upset you didn’t call to tell them yourself.”
Leon nodded, staring into space for a minute, taking a drink of his beer. “That’s why I didn’t call them. They were just going to read me the riot act. Tell me to find God again. Go to Confession. Something.”
Riley shrugged. “I don’t pretend to understand why you gave it up, either, but I suppose I don’t worry about the condition of your mortal soul like parents would.”
“I’ve told you,” Leon said, looking at Riley across the patio table. They were on the back deck; the night sounds of crickets and the errant frog in the background. “It was driven out of me. I held onto religion as long as this life permitted me to. You can’t see the kind of shit I’ve seen and hold onto God forever. It’s not possible.”
Riley looked at him evenly. “I don’t know about that. People hold onto religion through all kinds of shit. I think you were done with it.”
“Maybe I was,” Leon said. “I dunno. It wasn’t making me feel any better, about myself or the world. Most of the time I was just pissed off. I gave up.”
“You’re perpetually pissed, these days,” Riley said. “You smile about once a day. I don’t know how Claire puts up with your ass.”
“You think I’m like that with her?” Leon asked, arching his eyebrow. “No. Agent Kennedy stays in DC. I lost her once. I had to learn how to be a human, very quickly.”
Riley shrugged. “I think you’re still in there, but the only person who gets to see that you is Claire.”
“Maybe so,” Leon said, taking a drink of his beer. Claire had gone to bed 30 minutes ago; she’d maintained it was late and she didn’t want to stay up drinking beer and feel like shit on her wedding day, even if it was just a courthouse wedding. “I couldn’t be 20 and wide-eyed at the world forever.”
“I kind of miss that guy,” Riley said, looking at him pointedly. “I miss the 20 year old Leon who couldn’t wait to tell me shit, who came crying to me every time his shitty, controlling, overbearing girlfriend came down on him. I didn’t even know you and Claire were in a relationship, back in the day, until like a year into it. And even then you never brought her home, just saying things were weird and you were long-distance. And then I didn’t even know she’d kicked your ass to the curb until I called you one night and you were blackout drunk in your apartment. And then,” Riley went on, in the face of Leon’s tired look, “you again took like a year to inform me she’d agreed to let you back into her life and at that point you’d already bought a fucking house with her.”
“Most of the time there’s nothing to report,” Leon said. “And it’s been that way since about age 22. Just the government squeezing the life out of me and me making endless strings of questionable decisions. I can’t call home and say ‘hey, life’s killing me and I’m a fucking wreck’.”
“Yeah you can,” Riley said. “Sure you can. You always could. But then you’d have to actually talk to someone about what you were thinking and feeling and you seem absolutely resistant to doing that, in the last 20 years. You don’t even call when shit is going good. If Claire hadn’t told you to call me and tell me you were getting married, you absolutely would not have. Would you?” he asked, pointedly.
Leon looked at his brother, evenly, and Riley did not flinch from his gaze. It was evident he expected an answer. “No,” Leon said finally, “I suppose not. I’d planned on not telling anyone. I thought I could do it right then and there. Claire wasn’t going to have a chance to tell anyone, either.”
“I don’t know why you insist on being such a fucking enigma,” Riley groused, drinking from his beer. “Clearly it hasn’t helped you in your life, so I don’t know why you persist on doing it.”
“Because,” Leon said, with a gust, “it’s the only way I know how to be, anymore. It took years of Claire’s absence for me to accept I had to come at her differently. Christ, it took me years to finally tell her I loved her. To actually say the words.”
“You only learned because she made you learn,” Riley said. “She motivated you with loss and even then it took you years to learn the lesson. We don’t have that option,” he went on. “We can’t kick you to the curb and let you figure it out. You’re a brother, a son, an uncle. We’re stuck with you.”
Leon let out a short, dry laugh. “Plenty of people cut their family members off.”
“Maybe,” Riley said, “but not Kennedys. You got us, like it or not. Pick up a fucking phone every once in a while.”
“Funny,” Leon said. “Claire says the same thing about her brother. The government ate him up, too, after everything. She says he’s more and more of a distant enigma every time she turns around.”
“Is he?” Riley asked.
“Yeah,” Leon said. “He’s always been inscrutable to me, kind of. Then again, half the time I think he’s wishing his sister would get with the program and pick someone else. Maybe I’m not the best judge.”
Riley sighed, running his hand over his hair, leaning back in his chair. He gazed out into the darkness of the yard for a long moment. “You know, I always considered myself a relatively patriotic person,” he began. “Support the troops, go America, all that. Ma and Da are patriotic. They love Ireland, but they love it here too, even if they did complain that America was ruining us when we would fuck up as teenagers. I fly a flag outside my house.” He looked over at Leon. “But these days, sometimes when I think of America, when I think of the government, I’m bitter. I’m bitter because it took my goofy, upright baby brother and turned him into some fucking jaded shell of a man.”
“You’ll notice no flag on my house,” Leon said. “I know this government too well to be proud of it. It’s never enough. And they don’t give a fuck. Private first class enlisted grunt all the way up to me, some asshole who reports to the President. We’re all expendable, to the government.”
“You could try harder,” Riley said. “You gave in. You let yourself be changed.”
“What fucking choice did I have?” Leon asked incredulously. “I was not going to survive long as the goofy, upright kid from Detroit. They wanted a weapon. They got one.”
“What do we get?” Riley asked.
“I don’t know,” Leon said. “And I’m sorry. This, whatever this is. This is what’s left,” he said, gazing off into space, taking a drink of his beer.
Riley gazed at him for a long moment. “You figured it out with Claire,” he said. “You were probably the closest to being scared straight you’ve ever been. Put in some effort with us, too. We deserve it. We deserve to be let in, too.”
“Sure,” Leon said, non-committal. “Don’t tell me every time I call I’m different. Don’t wheedle me to be what I was. Life happened. I’m not the same. I’m not 18 and wet behind the ears. For better or worse, this is what I am.”
“Having kids is life happening,” Riley said. “Losing a job, or buying a house is life happening. What you have been through is fundamentally different. It’s…fucking catastrophic. Trauma-inducing. Mind-altering. I’m not surprised you’re different,” he went on. “But I did not expect to be cut out, either. You’d think things like that would bind you closer to your family. You went the opposite direction. You pushed us away. You pushed everyone away.”
“I feel like a fucking failure every time I talk to Ma and Da,” Leon said. “All because I don’t believe in God. It’s all they want to talk to me about. They browbeat me. Ma cries. They beg me to accept something I can’t anymore. I’d rather spare myself the experience. I could call them and tell them I was getting married and Claire was having four kids and I was retiring to a desert island and it still wouldn’t be enough for them because my ass isn’t in a pew once a week.”
“Fine,” Riley said. “I don’t know what to tell you about them. They’re stubborn. They’re devout. They’ll never change. You and James try to kill each other every chance you get and Mal’s dead. I know you were closest with her, but she’s been gone a long time now, Lee. I’m not going to judge you. I don’t care if your ass is in a pew or not. I fucking flew to watch you make an honest man of yourself at a county courthouse. It matters to me. You matter to me. Call, every once in a while. I miss having a brother I don’t want to throttle, and that’s what James is to both of us.”
Leon managed a laugh. “Yeah, he sure got fucking shorted the day they were handing out personalities, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Riley sighed. “His attitude or the fact that his head is thicker than a brick wall.”
“We couldn’t all be winners,” Leon said, smiling.
“Maybe not,” Riley said. “James is so far from the finish line I don’t even know if he’s still in the race.”
Leon looked into Riley’s exasperated face and began to laugh, low and continuously. He couldn’t stop. He may have been unrecognizable to his family, they may not have understood him or his life, they may have thought his mortal soul was in danger, but some things never changed. Everyone could agree that his brother James was a shit for brains, a cocky blowhard who generally made messes of most things he touched and occasionally couldn’t remember what bed his pants belonged next to. It’d been over 20 years and Da still wouldn’t relinquish control of the family shop to James and finally retire because he knew James would fuck it up.
“Oh, fuck,” Leon said, still laughing. “Things could be worse. I could be James. You could be sitting here trying to talk sense into James.”
Riley leaned back in the chair, tiredly. “You’re both good for nothings, just in different ways. I miss Mal. She’d just beat sense into both of you.”
……………………………………………………………
Even though he’d stayed up later than Claire and drank way more beers while bullshitting and wading through emotional minefields with his brother, Leon was out of bed before Claire in the morning. This was a relatively common occurrence; Leon was more or less conditioned to wake up at the asscrack of dawn at that point in his life, and Claire was notoriously not a morning person.
Leon stood there in the bathroom, squinting. Maybe he’d had too many beers while bullshitting and navigating emotional minefields. Too many beers with your brother definitely hit differently at 45 than it did at 21. Leon had managed things more life-threatening than getting married while hung over; he would survive.
He made it downstairs and in Claire’s hostess-with-the-mostest-unless-she-was-required-to-get-up-early absence he rooted around in the cabinets for the coffee maker. Neither of them drank it, but he knew Riley relied on it like the elixir of life to get through his days. The coffee maker lived in the cabinet for guests. Sherry was also preternaturally attached to coffee, which always led to Leon making jokes about it stunting her growth, even though she was decently tall. Leon paused in his rifling through cabinets to knock back a glass of water and take some ibuprofen. He eventually located where Claire had stashed the coffee pot away, and then began to hunt high and low through her semi-cluttered systems of organization in the kitchen for where she’d put coffee. He knew she’d bought some; he’d asked her to. Now he just had to make sense of her very Claire way of storing things in the cabinets and pantry, which was not always an easy task.
In exasperation he’d begun to look through the fridge and freezer and had discovered that Claire had put the coffee in the freezer, which baffled Leon, but it was her kitchen and he was not going to question her.
About fifteen minutes later, Riley appeared in the kitchen, also looking like maybe he regretted the amount of beer he’d ingested at age 50. The coffee was brewing, and Leon looked over at Riley, who was wiping his glasses on his shirt, squinting out into the room sightlessly.
“Do you feel like shit too?” Leon asked.
“Yup,” Riley replied. “Old enough to know better.”
“If I haven’t learned at this point, I’m not going to,” Leon said. “There’s some ibuprofen in the cabinet there.”
“Great,” Riley said. “I need about ten.”
“You didn’t have to get up so early,” Leon said, watching Riley open the odds and ends cabinet to look for the bottle of ibuprofen.
“I’m conditioned,” Riley said. “Years of getting up early to make furniture and swing hammers and make sure kids were out of bed have ruined me.” He turned around, bottle in hand. “These days I get up to make sure the kids I have working under me are in one piece and reporting for duty. I may not swing the hammer much anymore, but I don’t get paid if the people I pay aren’t swinging the hammer.”
“Yeah,” Leon said, having flashbacks to his father dragging teenaged him out of bed to go to the shop, of his father banging on the door to the apartment he shared with his first girlfriend, trying to get him out the door to go to work. “How’s business, anyway?”
Riley was filling a glass of water at the sink. “Great,” he said. “I’ve got two crews now. It was more work than one group of guys could handle. They’re mostly not fuckups. I’ve got one or two guys who barely speak English. Being married to a Puerto Rican girl who insisted I learn Spanish came in handy, after all.”
“That and you and Izzy can talk about all of us without us knowing,” Leon joked.
“She insisted she wasn’t going to raise no sabo kids,” Riley said. “She said she wasn’t dealing with a no sabo husband either. I was able to have conversations with people when we went on vacation to Spain. It’s useful.”
Leon chortled some. “Sure wish I would have known some Spanish when I went to Spain. I don’t think it would have made the locals any less intent on murdering me, but at least I would have understood their death threats.”
“You would have just been a smart ass to them,” Riley said, knowingly. “You would have enraged them further. I know you.” He threw the ibuprofen into his mouth and took several healthy swigs of water. “Why do you own a coffee pot? You two don’t drink it.”
“I shacked up with a Southerner,” Leon said. “In her own haphazard way she’s trying to be the hostess with the mostest.”
“Dinner was good last night,” Riley said. “I did have to kind of lean on her a bit, though. I really do think she was gonna wait until you got home. I wasn’t going to make it.”
Leon nodded. “Yeah, she does that. I tell her not to. She still does.”
“It’s different, when you have kids,” Riley said, leaning against the counter. “Some nights I got home and there was no dinner left. Everybody ate it all and I was left to make myself sandwiches.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have had an army,” Leon joked. “Nobody said you had to have six kids. We told you to get off her for years.”
“Once you start, you can’t stop,” Riley said. “Every time I thought it was over, Izzy was in my ear saying just one more, just one more baby and next thing you knew I was adding on to my house and trying to figure out a vehicle large enough to transport all of us.”
“Yeah, problems I don’t have,” Leon said. “I would have just been a ghost in some kid’s life. It would have been three years before a kid learned to say ‘Da’ or recognized me as their father.”
Riley looked at him, seriously. “You guys never thought about having kids? Even when you were together in your twenties, before shit went sideways?”
“How?” Leon asked, in amusement. “I lived in DC, she lived in New York. If I wasn’t gone, she was. I know Claire would have been a competent mother but it also would have benched her. I don’t think she was willing to be benched.”
“When you were younger,” Riley began, “and you were with Annemarie, you used to go on about kids. I think you having them with her would have been a nightmare, but I’ve always been shocked you didn’t find time to have one or two in your life.”
“That was an eon ago,” Leon said. “Back when my life still entailed a relatively normal 9 to 5 trajectory. Before everything. Things changed. I wouldn’t have cut and run if a kid had happened to me but I wasn’t actively engaged in trying to have one.”
“It’s a loss,” Riley said. “You may be a maladjusted, mysterious fuck but I think you would have pulled it together to be a dad.”
“I have Sherry,” Leon said. “That’s good enough.”
Riley looked over Leon’s shoulder at something, straightening up, and Leon turned around to find Claire standing in the entrance to the kitchen, looking half awake and potentially a little disgruntled. “What are you doing up so early?” he asked, genuinely shocked to see her out of bed before 8 AM.
“Well, apparently it’s Kennedy Bellow About Your Life hour,” she said, “so I got woken up. I’m glad you guys are talking but I don’t know if you need to do it at a Mach Q level.”
“We’re not being that loud, are we?” Leon asked in confusion, and Claire just looked at him.
“Sorry,” Riley said. “My whole household was always up by 6:30. I never had to consider waking anyone up.”
She looked at Leon, long and hard, and then she looked over at Riley, similarly scrutinizing. “Are you two hung over?” she asked.
“Yes,” Riley said.
“No,” Leon said simultaneously. Claire persisted in looking at Leon. “I may have drank too much beer, yes,” he amended.
She let out a sigh, appraising him. Leon shrugged some. “I’ve accomplished more difficult things than signing some papers while in worse shape,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.”
“You need to shave your face,” she said to Leon, stepping fully into the kitchen in her pajamas. “You too,” she said, casting a glance at Riley. “You guys both look kind of rough. The days of stubble aren’t lending anything to the cause.”
“Sure,” Riley said. “I’ll liven up once I get some coffee in me. I’ll drag a razor across my face. We’re adults. We’ll be fine.”
“That’s why I went to bed early,” Claire said. “I would have stayed right up with you two, drinking beer, and I’m not as good at pulling it together. I would have called the whole thing off and spent the day in my pajamas.”
Leon chuckled some. Claire was a despairing and dramatic hung over; she laid around and moaned and generally did not accomplish much if she could avoid it. Leon had years of falling into the bottom of a bottle while still having obligations under his belt. He tried to keep it to a dull roar these days; after all, he wasn’t alone and miserable in an apartment to necessitate drinking abusively. Still, sometimes he still went too far, and paid for it the next day. The difference was he’d still haul himself out of bed and begrudgingly go through the motions of a day; Claire acted like a wilting flower and became one with a piece of furniture. Leon figured they both may have drank a little too much, but at this point they seemed entrenched in their habits and he didn’t know what other vices they were supposed to have. He figured after what they’d been through in their lives, they needed some kind of coping mechanism, and sometimes just talking about your feelings didn’t cut it. He also considered he may have just been granting them a pass to drink too much, but it didn’t result in hurt feelings or any kind of arguments so at this point he was willing to let sleeping dogs lie and let Claire have her Busch and him have his whatever-he-settled-on-to-drink.
“Not Kennedys,” Riley said. “We still roll out of bed and do whatever we need to do. I still remember Da yelling at me when I was 15 or so telling me he didn’t care how much I’d drank the night before, I was still obligated to get up and go to work or to school or whatever because being hung over was not an excuse.”
“I had many a Saturday in the shop so hung over I was throwing up every hour in between trying to sand and finish wood,” Leon added.
“Alright, well,” Claire said, turning around to look at them with her hand on her hip, “I’m a woman and no such standards of blue collar masculine breadwinning were ever forced upon me. I drink too much, I fall on my fainting couch and have the vapors.” Both Leon and Riley chuckled at this. “Do you guys want breakfast?”
“We woke you up,” Riley said. “Are you offering, or are we asking too much of you on your wedding day?”
Claire shrugged. “Food in your stomach would probably help with the fact you drank too much beer. You’re a guest, so I don’t expect you to wrangle your own food. Leon can’t cook. That leaves me.”
“I’d probably just crawl under the house and die if not for you,” Leon said.
“Probably,” Claire said. “Let me go get my glasses. Everything’s a blur unless it’s six inches from my face and I probably shouldn’t get that close to popping bacon.” She sauntered out of the kitchen. Leon watched her go.
“Mugs?” Riley asked, looking around at cabinets.
“Behind you, to the right,” Leon said. “Whole pot’s yours. Drink up.”
“Oh I will,” Riley said. “I’ll drink the whole thing.”
……………………………………………………………………
At this juncture, since family was involved, Claire had perhaps realized she wasn’t going to be able to slouch into the justice of the peace in a faded University of Alabama t-shirt and Daisy Dukes. Leon would not have put it past her, and quite frankly he would not have cared. She groused that Sherry had been particularly adamant that everyone look nice, because she wanted to take pictures.
“Are you telling me I have to wear a suit in my civilian time?” Leon asked.
“You better, unless you never want to hear the end of it from Sherry,” Claire said, rifling through her half of the closet. “Remember, this was your idea.”
“It was your idea to call everyone,” Leon fired back, benignly. “We could have gotten married in our pajamas if you hadn’t told everyone what we were up to.”
She looked over her shoulder at him and then turned back to the clothes hanging in front of her, sorting through them. “Hindsight’s 20/20,” Claire said.
Leon watched her for a minute and then left the bedroom, walking down the hallway. He walked past the spare room, Riley inside digging through his small suitcase. “Hey,” Riley called, after Leon had already walked past.
“Yeah?” Leon said.
“You have an iron? Clothes didn’t exactly make it here wrinkle free,” Riley said.
“Yeah, somewhere,” Leon said. “I don’t know where Claire does her ironing. Laundry room, maybe?”
A bark of a laugh issued from the spare room. “You don’t iron your own shit?” Riley asked, incredulously.
“I used to,” Leon said. “Claire took over when we moved in together.”
“Izzy would beat my ass if I asked her to iron something for me,” Riley said.
Leon frowned into space in the hallway. “I didn’t ask her to do my ironing. She just started doing it.”
“What do you do around here?” Riley asked.
“Yard work,” Leon replied. “Claire isn’t going to get out there and do it. You should have seen the state of things at her house in New York, until I showed up and did stuff. I fix shit. I kill bugs. I open jars.”
“What’s going on out here?” Claire said, walking out of the master bedroom doorway and standing in the hallway, with a floral dress of some kind over her arm.
“Nothing,” Leon replied. “Riley needs an iron.”
“Do you need me to iron something for you?” Claire called.
“Jesus, no,” Riley called back. “I can do my own ironing. You’re getting married in two hours. Worry about getting ready. Where’s the iron?”
“In the laundry room,” Claire said. “Are you sure you don’t want me—“
“No,” Riley replied emphatically. “My wife would reach through the phone and throttle me if she knew I was letting some woman iron my shit on her wedding day.”
“Alright, fine,” Claire said. “Do you need anything ironed?” she asked, looking at Leon.
“He can iron his own shit,” Riley said, appearing in the doorway to the spare room with a shirt in his hand.
Leon looked back at Claire and shrugged largely, then turned and wandered off down the hallway.
“Good talk,” Claire said behind him, dryly.
………………………………………………………………
“Sherry’s on the way there,” Leon said, stepping into the bathroom. Claire looked at him in the mirror, a curling iron held in position in a lock of her hair.
“Traffic might not be so bad, given it’s the weekend,” Claire said, pulling the curling iron out of her hair and moving the curled lock of hair out of the way.
“Where’s Chris coming from?” Leon asked.
“I don’t know,” Claire said. “Typical. I don’t know where he was when I talked to him and I don’t know where he is now. He said he’d be there by 3.” She wrapped another lock of hair around the curling iron.
Leon looked at her for a moment, standing there barefoot in a floral print dress that ended just below her knees. It looked like something a housewife would have worn circa 1955, which seemed to be one of the two modes Claire had when she dressed up. She either looked like she was going to be pulling a roast out of an oven in a kitchen during the Cold War or she was in something so tight and short that male eyes followed her wherever she went. She either looked wholesome or she was trying to ensure you had something to skin your dick about later. There was no in-between, and it had always been that way.
“What?” she asked, again looking at him in the mirror.
“You look nice,” he said. “You’re really going for the gusto.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I guess I should give half a shit. I’m getting married. Daddy’d probably turn in his grave if I didn’t try to look halfway presentable.”
“He took one look at who you were marrying and he’s rotating like a rotisserie chicken in there,” Leon joked. Claire laughed a little.
“I don’t think he would have been happy with some local yokel either,” Claire said, pulling the curling iron out of her hair. “Remember, I think he expected I was going to be ruling the world by the time I was 21. I think he expected me to get married to the Sultan of Brunei, or a crown prince, or something.”
“Just some idiot from Detroit who failed upward fairly spectacularly,” Leon said. “Hopefully that’s good enough.”
“Hopefully,” Claire said. “You are a Yankee. You’d have to work pretty hard to overcome that.”
“Damn Carpetbaggers swooping in and stealing all the women,” Leon said.
“I’m surprised you know what a Carpetbagger is,” she countered.
“You made me watch Gone With The Wind and gave me like a 20 minute explanation of Reconstruction,” Leon said. “I think I learned more than I did in four years of high school.”
Claire smiled. “I’m surprised you were paying attention.”
“I was having a particularly lucid day,” Leon said. “All five of my brain cells were awake and alert.”
“Rare,” Claire said in amusement. “Go find a suit that doesn’t look like you’re going to a funeral and get out of here.”
“They all kind of look funeral-worthy but okay,” Leon said, stepping out of the bathroom.
…………………………………………………
“How much did this thing cost you?” Riley asked from the backseat, indicating the interior of the Porsche, and Leon looked at him in the rearview mirror.
“I can’t say because every time I do Claire tries to kick me in the balls,” Leon replied.
“Too much,” Claire replied, looking out the window. “Easily the stupidest purchase he’s ever made.”
Leon looked over at her. “You were on my ass to replace the Jeep. You said it was falling apart. You said it was ridiculous I was driving around in something that looked like it belonged in a pick-a-part.”
“I expected you to…I don’t know, buy another Jeep,” she said. “Something reasonable. You came home with this thing.”
Riley chortled. “I mean, fuck, it’s nice. If I had some undisclosed sum of money laying around I’d probably buy one too.”
“I’m sure Izzy would probably kick you in the balls, too,” Claire said, turning her head to look into the backseat.
“Maybe,” Riley said. “Maybe not if I let her drive it most of the time. Poor woman’s been driving E-series vans and Excursions for most of her adult life. We had to have enough room for everyone.”
Leon chuckled. “I remember her old Ford Tempo, when I was a kid. I remember being in the backseat of that thing getting rides home from school with you guys.”
Riley smiled. “Yeah. That thing was a giant piece of shit. Easily one of the worst cars ever made.”
“Not one of Ford’s finest creations,” Leon acknowledged.
“I didn’t even own a vehicle until I was like 24,” Claire said. “It was motorcycles and public transportation until then.”
Riley looked over at her. “I figured you’d have a bike. Weren’t you into them?”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “Adult life got in the way. Expenses. I had to be practical, for once. I still miss it.”
“I told you I would buy you a bike,” Leon said. “Not a sport bike. You’d end up a smear on the asphalt at 160 miles an hour. But something like you used to have.”
“No,” Claire said. “A decent bike’s not cheap, these days. I can’t deal with you rolling out and dropping who knows what on something.” She sighed. “If my old Harley hadn’t gone up with Raccoon, I would have had it forever. I’d still be riding it.”
“Alright, so find something used,” Leon said. “Get on Craigslist. I know for a fucking fact you’re not walking into a dealership with me but you could probably find something worthwhile used for relative pocket change. You know how to work on ‘em. It doesn’t even have to be running.”
“And where would I work on it?” Claire asked in amusement. “You’ve got the garage so packed full of your shop shit I can barely fit the Tundra in there.”
“It does look a bit like Da’s shop 2.0, Lee,” Riley said from the backseat.
“I’d make room for you,” Leon said. “We’ve got an acre. I ought to just have an outbuilding built. An actual shop.”
“There you go again,” Claire said knowingly. “How much would that cost?”
Leon looked over at her. “Claire, what am I supposed to do with this money? Just sit on it until I die, like I did for years? What good is it to us if we don’t spend it while we’re above ground?”
She looked back at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “What do I know? I’m not used to it and I’m never going to be. I grew up on food stamps. Government cheese. Large amounts of money scare me.”
“I’ve never met someone more resistant to having money spent on them,” Leon said.
“You want to trade places?” Riley asked. “I’m pretty sure Izzy would turn me upside down and shake me until the change fell out of my pockets if she could.”
“You inflicted six kids on her,” Leon said. “You probably need to buy her shit.”
“She asked for those kids,” Riley said. “After the first one, anyway, which was a total Catholic teenaged fuckup. It was like clockwork. The moment one turned about two she’d be back over my shoulder saying we should have one more kid. I didn’t inflict shit on her.”
Claire laughed some. “I dunno, that’s still a lot. Maybe you should buy her a Porsche.”
Riley looked over at Leon. “Sure. Can I have a loan, Lee?”
“I dunno, ask her,” Leon said, gesturing at Claire. “I’m not trying to get kicked in the balls again.”
…………………………………………………………………
They arrived at the courthouse, and Leon felt like he should be more nervous than he was. It was a random Saturday in May and he was about to look at Claire and agree to be her husband. It felt surprisingly commonplace. Maybe it helped that he was 45, and not 21, and he was about to stand in a courtroom chamber as opposed to in a packed church. He reached in his pocket and felt for the ring boxes as they walked, and he found he had done that about five times, as if he kept expecting he would find they were not there. He still wished he’d been able to pop this off in 15 minutes the week prior with no one the wiser.
As they drew closer to the courthouse, he spotted Sherry and Chris standing there outside. Sherry beamed and waved as she saw them approach, and Chris merely looked on evenly. Leon figured Sherry was probably over the moon about this; Chris was a tougher read. Half the time Leon couldn’t figure out if Chris wanted to shake his hand or take him out back and beat him within an inch of his life.
“Hi!” Sherry enthused, as they drew within earshot. Chris finally managed half of a smile. Claire drew up and put her arm around her brother, and looked at him knowingly.
“Are you going to lecture me before, or after?” she asked of him, and Chris looked at her.
“I’m not going to lecture you about shit,” Chris said. “Why, do you want me to?”
“No,” Claire replied. “Keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“Sherry,” Leon said, “this is my brother Riley. That’s Chris, Claire’s older brother,” he went on, indicating Chris to Riley. Chris stuck out his hammer of a hand and shook Riley’s hand, and Sherry stepped forward and hugged Riley lightly.
“You guys kind of look alike,” Sherry said, looking between Leon and his brother.
“Yeah, if Leon was five years older, had shit eyesight, and really let himself go physically,” Riley joked.
“Whose bright idea was this?” Chris asked, looking at Claire, and then over at Leon. “I kind of figured by the time Claire Babbie hit about 25 and she’d really matured into full harpydom that no man was ever going to be insane enough to marry her.”
Claire smiled but she did reach up and smack the back of Chris’s head, which he accepted without flinching.
“It was my bright idea,” Leon said. “Hatched somewhere in between the drive to Appomattox and taking the most boring tour I’ve ever been on in my life.”
“Appomattox?” Chris asked, looking at Claire. “You go see where Lee surrendered?”
“Yeah,” Claire replied. “I thought it was interesting, anyway.”
“I went not long after I wound up in Virginia, years ago,” Chris said. “Figured it would’ve been the kind of thing Daddy would have been interested in.”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “I did think of him while we were on the tour.”
Sherry looked at her watch. “It’s almost three,” she said. “Should we go inside?”
“You’re more excited about this than we are,” Leon said in amusement. “I anticipate it’ll take about ten minutes.”
“My parents are finally getting married,” Sherry said with a smile. “It’s like 12 year old me’s dreams finally came true. I still want that puppy, and that parrot.”
Leon smiled back at her. Sometimes, looking at her in her mid-thirties, it was still easy to see the round-faced 12 year old.
“If this is really gonna take 10 minutes,” Chris said, “and I came all the way here for this, what are we doing afterward? You should let me buy you dinner or some drinks or something. I guess I have to fulfill some kind of Redfield patriarchal duty here.”
Leon shrugged. “My money spends just as good as yours but sure, I’m sure we can find somewhere to go.”
“Watch out, you’re gonna get kicked in the balls,” Riley said, and Leon chuckled. Chris gave them an odd look but said nothing, fishing in the pocket of his slacks. Leon noted Chris had managed to dress up, and look less paramilitary than he usually did.
“Do we have time for me to smoke before we go in?” Chris asked and Claire looked exasperated.
“No,” she said. “We don’t have time for you to smoke, fucking ever. Where’s Jill? I thought she might see fit to accompany you here.”
Chris looked torn between somehow caught and apologetic. Leon had long ago stopped trying to figure out what the fuck was happening between Chris and Jill. They acted like fellow soldiers, occasionally they acted like a commander and a subordinate, and from time to time, according to Claire, they shared a bed. Leon had at one point in his life lived in a glass house, he knew he could not throw stones. “She couldn’t make it,” Chris said. “She’s off…busy. I talked to her. She said she’s here in spirit.”
“Are you two in a fight?” Claire asked, knowingly.
“No,” Chris said, sounding rushed. “She’s just…she’s busy, kid.”
“Understandable,” Claire said, her face even. “She’d fall over dead at the sight of you here in some slacks and a shirt I presume you had to iron.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chris gusted. “If you’re not going to let me smoke let’s get this show on the road so I can come back out here to smoke,” he said. Claire rolled her eyes.
“It is almost three,” Sherry said.
“Fine. Let me hurry up and marry her so Chris can have his nicotine fix,” Leon said bemusedly, and the group began to head for the doors of the courthouse. They walked in, and were confronted with a silent, echoing building.
“Are they open?” Sherry asked, in an undertone. “Are you sure it’s today?”
“I think the courthouse is closed for official business but you were able to schedule with a justice of the peace on Saturday so they better be here,” Claire said, her brow lowered. “If we came all the way up here for nothing I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Someone forced Claire to dress up and she’s going to make it everyone’s problem,” Leon joked as they crossed the foyer. Claire walked ahead, her strappy, wedge-heeled shoes loud on the polished floors. She looked down a hallway one way, and then down it the other. She looked back at them.
“C’mon,” she said. “There’s a sign down here.”
The group made their way down the hallway to where a sign indicating the justice of the peace was, and they went into the small courtroom through the open door. There were a handful of people in the spectator benches in the courtroom, and from where the judge would sit a mild-mannered middle aged man looked up at them.
Fuck, Leon was middle-aged. He supposed he had to stop considering other people as thus if he wasn’t willing to consider himself so.
“Hello,” the man said, and flipped through a packet. “3 PM? Kennedy? Redfield?”
“That’s us,” Leon said.
The man smiled. “I’m ready if you are.”
“Do I have time to change my mind?” Leon asked.
“Shut the fuck up, Kennedy,” Chris groused in an undertone, as he took his seat.
“Tough crowd,” Leon said, unflinching.
Sherry, Riley, and Chris loaded into a bench, and Leon and Claire stood there.
“C’mon up,” the man said, beckoning. Leon followed Claire through the swinging wooden partition to up in front of the judge’s bench, and for a moment, they just kind of looked at each other.
The man at the bench folded his hands on the table in front of him and looked down. “Do you have your marriage license?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Leon said. “Riley, I need the—“
“Oh,” Riley said, fishing the folded marriage license out of his back pocket. “He almost forgot it,” he said to Chris and Sherry as an aside as Leon drew up to take the piece of paper out of his brother’s hand, and Chris looked knowing while Sherry smiled. “I grabbed it off the counter.”
Leon returned to the front of the room and handed the marriage license to the justice of the peace, who looked it over for a minute and then set it aside. “Alright, are you ready?” he asked.
“Sure,” Leon said.
“Yeah,” Claire said. “Do we just—stand right here, or—“
“Sure,” the man said, smiling some. “I assume you’d probably like to face each other but you can stand on your heads for all I care.”
Leon laughed a little. Claire nodded and pivoted to face Leon, and he did the same. He noted she did look as if she may have been a hair nervous. There weren’t many people in the room, but Leon knew Claire would have preferred there was no one at all. She’d never liked being in front of people, when it counted. She’d cut up in public no problem, but the moment she had to stand in front of people and be serious she reported feeling like she was going to puke.
“Alright,” the justice of the peace said, and angled the microphone behind the judge’s bench down some. “Friends and family, we are here today to witness the marriage of Leon Scott Kennedy and Claire Babbie Redfield,” he said, and then he looked down at them. “Have you prepared vows?”
The gears in Leon’s head turned. Fuck. He knew there’d probably been more he needed to think about. This had all seemed easier when he thought he could waltz into a place and make it happen in casual clothes before being droned on to about the end of the Civil War. Claire looked similarly blank and caught, gazing at him from behind her glasses. “Uh, was I supposed to have?” he asked.
From the gallery Leon heard a short noise escape Chris. It might have been a laugh, it might have been frustration. Daddy Beau Redfield was looking on from the ether, loading a shotgun.
“I don’t have anything either,” Claire said hesitantly, as if she’d been caught having not done her homework.
“It’s not necessary,” the justice said, smiling at them. “You can say whatever you want, or nothing at all.”
Leon looked back over at Claire, his brain spooling for a second. Maybe as a younger man he could have been more sentimental and emotional about this. God knew at varying times in the last several years he’d really opened up and let it all pour out to Claire, starting with the night he’d convinced her to let him back in her life. He was acutely aware of the fact that he should say something, but he was also similarly struck with the fact that they were not alone and there were eyes on them and perhaps, yes, in that moment he felt nerves. Claire gazed back at him, her mouth slightly open, her face also a quandary. Leon reached forward and grabbed Claire’s hands. “I love you and I promise not to screw this up,” Leon said. “Thank you for putting up with me. I’ll make this worth your while.”
Claire nodded some, her hands in his. “I love you, too. I’ll try not to screw up either,” she said. They stared at each other for another long moment, and then Claire looked up at the justice.
“We’re not wordsmiths,” she said. “I think that’s all we’ve got.”
“Alright,” the man said. “Moving on, then. Do you, Leon, take Claire to be your lawfully wedded spouse, to live together in marriage?”
“I do,” Leon said. It kind of dawned on him in that moment that holy fuck, he was getting married. He’d mostly abandoned the idea by about age 25 or so, assuming that both he and his life were so fucked up that it was not in the cards for him any longer. At age 18, his head had been full of all of the thoughts of a normal life, of marriage and kids and a normal career. Life had ground that out of him, but maybe there were second chances. Here he was, 45, about five seconds away from hearing the woman across from him that he’d wanted desperately for most of his life agreeing to be his wife.
It felt very surreal. The nerves he hadn’t felt about fifteen minutes ago were now present in force.
“Do you, Claire, take Leon to be your lawfully wedded spouse, to live together in marriage?” the justice asked, turning to Claire.
“I do,” she said.
“Do you have rings to exchange?” the justice asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Leon said, fishing in the pocket of his coat after extracting his hands from Claire’s. “Just a sec.” He pulled out the boxes and checked them, then handed the one with his ring to Claire, who took it with both hands as if she was afraid she was going to drop it and it would be swallowed up into a hole in the earth. Claire opened the box and pulled the ring out, and for a moment they just kind of stood there wondering what order to do this in, and then she reached out and took his hand and got the ring on his finger. He opened the box containing her rings and felt distinctly like they were so small in his fingers that if he did drop them they would be swallowed up forever, and Claire stuck her hand out and let him put the rings on her finger. Her hand had a slight tremor to it.
They’d fought for their lives. They’d survived horrors that would break lesser people. Here they were, in a courtroom in Leesburg, fumbling through a simple marriage ceremony like nervous teenagers.
Rings on fingers, they both looked over at the justice. He smiled and them and shrugged a little. “Alright,” he said, “by the authority vested in me by the state of Virginia, I now pronounce you man and wife.” He looked down at them. “Hard part’s over, folks. You made it. You may kiss your bride, if you so wish.”
Leon looked over at Claire, who’d abruptly taken on a slight pink hue, and they stepped closer together. Leon leaned down and Claire leaned up and they shared a fairly innocent kiss, her hand on his arm. Leon leaned back and looked down at her and despite the fact that he just felt like he’d climbed the rope in gym class, he managed a grin at her. It took her a second, her eyes a bit wide, but she smiled back at him and her face relaxed some.
“Witnesses, please come forward,” the justice said. “We need your signatures.” He reached out from behind the bench with a pen, and the license in hand. “You two, as well. Go ahead and sign.”
Leon took the pen and the license, and looked back at Riley, Sherry, and Chris. There appeared to be a momentary debate going on between which two would function as witnesses, and finally Chris and Riley stood, making their way to the front of the room.
Leon was signing the license when Chris drew up next to him. “Kennedy, that was the most awkward thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said in an undertone.
“Shut up,” Claire whispered from the other side of Leon, and accepted the pen from him. She bent over to sign the license, and Riley clapped Leon on the back and kept whatever thoughts he may have had about how the ceremony had gone to himself. Chris managed one potent, unreadable look over at his sister before he signed the license, and finally Riley signed. Leon went to hand the license and the pen back to the justice, who took them and signed the license himself.
“I’ll file this with the county clerk on Monday,” he said. “That’s it. You’re done. Any questions for me?”
“No,” Claire said.
“Nope,” Leon said.
“Well, then, have a nice day,” the justice said. “And congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Claire said.
The four of them walked back over to the gallery and Sherry, who stood up, smoothing her skirt out, beaming. They began to head for the door, and behind them the justice was on the microphone again.
“3:30? Michaels? McCormick? You can come up now,” he said, as they made their way out of the courtroom.
“Congratulations,” one of the bystanders in the gallery murmured to them as they walked past, and Leon smiled and nodded his head at the man.
“Are you two thirteen?” Chris asked, as they headed into the hallway. “You didn’t even write any vows?”
“I didn’t even think about it,” Claire snapped back at her brother. “I didn’t figure you’d need them for a courthouse wedding. How was I supposed to know he was going to ask me if I wanted to bare my soul in a courtroom in Leesburg?”
“Nobody wants to hear what I have to say, anyway,” Leon maintained, evenly.
“It was fine,” Riley said. “The legality’s the important part. I sure didn’t expect Lee to get up there and recite the Declaration of Independence.”
“It was perfect,” Sherry gushed. “Let me see your ring, Claire,” she said, grabbing Claire’s hand as they walked. “Oh that’s so pretty. Oh my God, you guys are married!”
“Well, I’m not sure what I expected,” Chris began, “but if—“
“Chris if you say one word about Daddy I’m gonna give you a fat fucking lip,” Claire cut in.
“I told you,” Leon said, looking over at Claire. “Turning like a rotisserie chicken, in that grave.”
“Ain’t that a fact,” Chris groused.
“If anyone has any disparaging thoughts,” Claire said, importantly, “keep them to yourself. Catching these hands is free and easy. I’ll swing on anyone. Try me. How was I supposed to know they expect something of you at a civil ceremony? This is, in fact, my first rodeo.”
They stepped out the front doors of the courthouse, and Leon looked at his watch. It was 3:12. The whole thing had taken about five minutes. The most important moment in his life, in less time than it took to eat a meal. He supposed he preferred it that way. After all, he’d tried to do this in Appomattox with no one knowing. That was that. He was married. He kind of felt like he’d slipped into an alternate universe.
Chris dug in the pocket of his slacks, producing his pack of cigarettes. He fished one out and stuck it in his mouth, and then offered out the open pack. “Anyone?” he asked. “It’s not a cigar but I suppose you can have a celebratory smoke on me.”
Riley shrugged and accepted a cigarette out of the pack, and Claire caught Leon looking perhaps a bit too long. “Don’t even think about it,” she said to him. “I’ll march back in there and have this thing annulled.”
“Not for me,” Leon said, even if he felt the pull of the secret and forbidden once-in-a-while cigarette like a siren’s call. Chris shrugged and closed the pack, sticking it back into his pocket.
“Alright, where to?” Chris asked. He lit his cigarette. “My baby sister just got married. This calls for me probably spending money.” He handed the lighter to Riley and beckoned Claire towards him. “Get over here and hug me, Claire Babbie.”
“When you’re done smoking,” Claire said. “I don’t want a face full of smoke.”
“You’ve got a heart of stone,” Chris said.
“Maybe, but my lungs are blessedly unblemished,” Claire said blithely. “I dunno, what’s around here? I’m not in Leesburg often.”
“Wait,” Sherry said, waving her hand. “Before we all pack into cars and drive away we need to take some pictures. Come on,” she said, putting her hands on Claire’s back and pushing her back towards the courthouse steps. “Come on, Leon, go stand over there with your wife.”
“Let me take off my glasses,” Claire said, haltingly, being pushed along by Sherry. “I look like a turbo nerd in these things. I don’t want them in pictures.”
“Hand them here,” Sherry said, holding out her hand. “Can you even see without them?”
“Do I need to see to take a picture?” Claire asked.
Leon came up and stood next to Claire, and Claire placed her glasses in Sherry’s hand. “Okay, look more excited than that,” Sherry said, backing up.
“Jesus, you’re not even taking the picture yet,” Leon said. “I wasn’t aware I had to go through life just looking permanently excited.” He put his arm around Claire, and she leaned into him, putting her hand on his chest.
“I mean you did just get married. It’s okay to be excited. Okay, perfect!” Sherry said, holding up her phone, looking at them. “Now smile—real smiles, Leon, none of this smirking stuff.”
“You’re killing me,” Leon said through a smile.
Sherry stood there for a moment, and Leon figured she was taking about a million photos. “Okay, Riley, go over there and stand with them,” she said, and then tutted a bit. “Uncle Chris, hold his cigarette.” Chris dutifully reached out and accepted the lit cigarette from Riley, who went over and stood on the other side of Claire. Sherry took some more photos. “Okay, trade places,” she said to Chris, who waited for Riley to return and handed both cigarettes to him.
“My face hurts,” Leon said.
“Oh stop,” Sherry fired back. Chris stepped up onto the other side of Claire and put his hand on her back, standing close. “Great!” Sherry bubbled, taking photos.
“Are you taking eight hundred pictures?” Riley asked in amusement, from behind her. “Text me some, would you?”
“Sure,” Sherry said. “Okay,” she said, looking around her. “Uncle Chris, come down here and take a picture of me with them.”
“Coming,” Chris said, heading down the steps. He retrieved his cigarette from Riley and stuck it in his mouth, puffing away, accepting Sherry’s phone from her. Sherry trotted up the steps and Claire split from Leon.
“Come on, you’re in the middle,” Claire said. “You’re the kid.” Sherry stood in between Leon and Claire, and Leon noted with amusement that Sherry may have been the kid but she’d long ago surpassed Claire in height. They stood there for a moment while Chris pointed the phone at them and took some pictures, squinting against the smoke issuing forth from the cigarette in his lips.
“Alright, that’s probably enough,” Chris said, lowering the phone, and Sherry trotted back down the stairs, excitedly retrieving the device from him. She peered at it for long moments, presumably swiping through photos.
“Let me give you my number,” Riley said. “I have to send photographic evidence back to Michigan.”
“Sure,” Sherry said.
Claire sauntered down the steps, Leon in tow, and came over to Sherry. “Okay, Sher, let me have my glasses back before I break my ankle.” Sherry off-handedly gave Claire her glasses back and Claire slipped them onto her face.
“Alright. What’s fancy around here?” Chris asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Leon said. “It’s not like we live here.”
“Well get on the magic thing finder you probably have in your pocket and find somewhere for me to blow money,” Chris said, gesticulating at Leon with his cigarette.
“Chris, calm down,” Claire said. “It doesn’t have to be fancy.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” Chris said. “You just got married. Fatten my lip, but I gotta do right by Daddy and take you somewhere nice.”
“I could probably be persuaded to go half on this fancy place,” Riley said to Chris. “You’re not the only one with a baby sibling that got married.”
“Hang on, let me text these pictures to Jake and I’ll look for somewhere,” Sherry said, engrossed in her phone. Leon looked on; much like he had no idea what in the fuck was going on between Chris and Jill, he was also similarly baffled by Sherry’s dogged devotion to the attitude-laden, globe-trotting asshole he’d met in China. Sure, they hadn’t met under great circumstances. Sherry insisted to Leon that Jake was different when she talked to him. Her face lit up when she mentioned him. Sherry occasionally took her own leaves of absence from the government to go off and have what parts of a life she could.
Again, Leon had spent most of his life dwelling in a glass house and he’d be a fool to throw stones.
“Oh, Jake,” Claire teased, wrapping her arm around Sherry. “God forbid something happens and Jake doesn’t know.”
Sherry turned slightly pink. “Alright,” she said after a moment, looking up from her phone. “Fancy in Leesburg. Does it matter what kind of food?”
“No, but Claire may die if there’s no Busch Light,” Leon said, and Claire rolled her eyes even if she did smile.
“I may die if there is Busch Light, after having about twelve of them last night,” Riley said plainly. Claire looked over at him.
“Hey, did you drink all my beer?” she asked, in amusement.
“We can get you more,” Leon said.
“We need to go to the kind of place that’s got scotch so old it practically fought in the Revolutionary War,” Chris said. “Find that kind of place.”
“I’m not gonna argue,” Leon said, raising his eyebrows in a shrug.
“Looks like there’s a place called…Tuscarora Mill?” Sherry said, looking at her phone. “It has a wine cellar. The lamb costs 54 dollars. Uh…” Her fingers moved around her phone. “It has an entirely separate scotch menu with like fifty things on it.”
“Hell yeah. That’s what I’m talking about,” Chris said. “Sold. Lead the way.”
“Let me get directions,” Sherry said. “Everyone want to just follow me?”
“Sure,” Leon said. “Finish that thing,” he said to Riley. “You’re not smoking in the Porsche.”
“Ride with me and I’ll give you another one,” Chris said.
“Y’know…” Riley said. “That dog’ll hunt. Where are you parked?” he said to Chris.
“Jesus, we’re all going to be smokers by the end of this,” Claire said, throwing her hand up in the air. “Let’s get out of here.”
…………………………………………………………………
They arrived at the restaurant, which was in fact fancy, and Leon hoped Chris found it sufficiently fancy for his purposes. Leon was under the impression Chris spent most of his time in dives with his men, so he figured Chris figured if he was forced to put on a pair of pants that had been pressed and didn’t have cargo pockets he was going to make the most of it.
It was also Saturday, and it was busy even early. They were going to have to wait to be seated, and the host shuttled them off to the bar area to have drinks and wait. They did not, in fact, have Busch. He was not surprised Claire asked. Leon would have expected no less.
The ring felt weird on his finger. It felt foreign. Leon found himself twisting it around on his finger, with his hand at his side. Chris foisted a scotch menu into his face and Leon blinked.
“That one’s 175 bucks,” Chris said, pointing. “Get that.”
“Jesus, Chris,” Leon said. “Is it even any good?”
“Hell if I know,” Chris said. “It’s the most expensive one. Get that.”
“Chris,” Claire said, from her brother’s elbow. “Just because it’s the most expensive doesn’t mean it’s any good. Let’s not be backwater Alabamans with money burning a hole in our pocket. Let him get something he’s had.”
“No,” Chris said plainly. “That’s what I’m getting. Say yes or I’ll just order three of them and you won’t have a choice.”
“Wait, don’t include me in your bad financial decisions,” Riley said, leaning over to peer at the menu. “175 bucks is a lot.”
“Fuck it,” Chris said, and stepped away from them and up to the bar. Claire looked after him in exasperation.
“Alright, well,” Leon said, gazing off into space, “good talk.”
“Sherry, honey,” Claire said, looking over at the blonde girl—woman, Leon corrected himself, mentally. It was, after all, easy to look into her face and see the excited 12 year old. Or maybe Leon was still sentimental after all these years, in spite of life trying furiously to beat it out of him. “I know you don’t normally drink but do you want something?”
“Oh,” Sherry said, brow furrowed, looking at a cocktail menu, “sure. I don’t know. Something that doesn’t taste like alcohol.”
“Let me see this,” Claire said, taking it from her and squinting at it from behind her glasses in the atmospheric lighting. “I swear to God, the fancier the place, the more they light it like a fucking cave. I’m going to need a new eye exam after this.”
“You could be a supremely old person and use the flashlight on someone’s phone,” Leon joked, smirking at her.
“I’m not there,” Claire said. “I’m not ready for AARP status yet.” She studied the menu. “Sher, a lot of these cocktails sound pretty fruity. You want me to just order you something?”
“Sure,” Sherry said. “We’ll see if I can even drink the whole thing.”
“Alright,” Claire said off-handedly, and then walked over to the bar, nudging in next to her brother, elbowing him. Sherry followed her.
Leon looked over at his brother, who looked at him.
“Is it always like this?” Riley asked.
“What?” Leon asked.
“Feels like barely controlled chaos?” Riley asked, with a laugh.
“Hey man,” Leon said tiredly, “I visited your house when all of those kids were still under your roof. That was a shitshow and a half.”
“Of a different kind, but sure,” Riley said. “I offered to split the bill with Chris on the way over here but if he’s going to go buck wild Izzy’s gonna look at the banking app and fucking murder me.”
Leon shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. There’s no controlling Chris. If he blows this thing sky high I’ll pay the other half of it.”
“Seems kind of shitty on your wedding day,” Riley said, rubbing at his freshly-shaven-as-of-that-morning face.
“Seems kind of shitty to let my brother spend more money than he can afford because Claire’s brother’s trying to swagger us all out of the building,” Leon countered. “Don’t worry about it. Just drink your 175 dollar scotch on Chris’s dime.”
Speaking of 175 dollar scotch, Chris was drawing back to them, three glasses balanced in his anvils of hands. “Here,” Chris said, offering one to Leon. “Drink up. Don’t say I never did anything for you.” Leon took the glass from him, and Chris handed one to Riley. “You too. You have the unfortunate luck to be related to this asshole. Drink up.”
“Thanks, Chris,” Leon said. He twisted the ring around his finger again. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No, you don’t,” Riley affirmed.
“Sure I do,” Chris said calmly, taking a sip of the scotch. “Fuck that’s good. Tastes like 175 bucks.”
Leon chortled. “I don’t know if I have enough class to be drinking this.”
“Class up, fast,” Chris said. “It’s in your hand.”
“Come Tuesday morning I’ll be back to supervising crews, writing quotes, and making supply runs to Home Depot,” Riley said, looking at the glass. “Back to Bud Light in my armchair, eating asopao.” He raised the glass and took a sip. “I don’t know what 175 bucks tastes like, but I suppose that’s it.”
Chris was looking at Leon expectantly and Leon sighed and took a drink of the scotch. “It’s pretty good,” he acknowledged.
“The hell is asa—aso—“ Chris began, looking at Riley.
“Asopao,” Riley said. “It’s a stew. My wife is Puerto Rican.”
“Huh,” Chris said. “How’s that work out for you?”
“I had to learn Spanish,” Riley said. “I had to learn to salsa dance. My entire family assaults me with reggaeton and Bad Bunny. If I don’t pay for her to get her nails done every two weeks she threatens violence.”
Leon laughed. Chris looked gruff but accepting. “A cultural voyage for a white guy with Irish heritage,” Leon said.
“It’s been something,” Riley said, looking off into space evenly.
Claire and Sherry reappeared. Claire had an Old Fashioned in her hand, which was her standard go to if she was having what she deemed a fancy cocktail. Leon didn’t know what Sherry had, but it was pink. “Alright, we’ve got liquor,” Claire said. “Let the truly bad decisions begin.”
“You already made them,” Leon said. “You looked at me standing in front of you and said I do.”
“There is that,” Claire said. “You also looked at me while stone cold sober and said you’d willingly be stuck with me the rest of your life.”
Leon cocked his head some. “I think I got the winning deal, here,” he said.
“I think you both got a winning deal,” Sherry said. “I wish it would have happened years ago. I wish you two had come to your senses at like 23 and 21 and just made this happen.”
Claire rolled her eyes over at Sherry, smiling. “Sher, at 21 I was wreaking havoc in NYC while I was in college the second time around. I would have laughed in someone’s face if they’d tried to marry me. I was too busy shotgunning beers to escape trauma, much to my therapist’s chagrin, and pulling all-nighters fueled by food from food carts.”
“I had to spend most of my life being solitary and maladjusted before I got with the program,” Leon said, looking at Sherry. “I had to find rock bottom before I willingly accepted I wasn’t killing it on my own with everyone at arm’s length.”
“That’s not a joke,” Chris said, looking at Sherry. “When he tells you something, believe it.”
Leon shrugged. “All’s well that ends well,” he said, taking another drink of his scotch.
“For years,” Riley said, putting his arm around Leon, “I’d watch this shit come home once every so often and drink beer in my kitchen and let my children climb all over him. And when I would ask how he was, I’d just get a shrug. I think I can finally relax now knowing there’s at least someone making sure he eats and doesn’t go off the deep end.”
“I think I went off the deep end a long time ago, but sure,” Leon said. He noticed Claire likewise fidgeting with her rings. So it didn’t feel strange to just him.
“I’m probably not some great anchor to sanity,” Claire said. “Putting up with me is no easy feat. There’s a reason I was alone most of my life too.”
“Well, I think you’re both great,” Sherry cut in, eyebrows raised. “All I ever could have asked for. Holding my hand through everything. I’m so grateful for you. I’m so lucky.”
“Sher,” Claire said, wrapping her arm around Sherry. “Stop. I’m not wearing any makeup but I still don’t want to ugly cry in a place so fancy I can barely make out the menu.”
“You’re so remarkably in touch with your feelings,” Leon noted. “You most definitely did not get that from me.” Chris made a short noise that Leon figured passed as a laugh.
“I remember when you were young and kind of squishy,” Sherry said, smiling.
“You have an emotion, every once in a while,” Claire said, looking over at him, her hand smoothing up and down Sherry’s arm. “I think you’d rather you don’t, but you do.”
“Don’t let it leave this room,” Leon said.
Claire took a drink of her Old Fashioned. “Sure. Your secret’s safe with us.”
…………………………………………………………………..
Leon had to fight Chris at the end of dinner for half of the bill. Leon had taken one look at it and he was not letting Riley fall on that grenade only to go home to face the fierce ire of his wife. Leon also didn’t feel particularly right letting Chris blow a small fortune on them because they’d finally gotten their act together and spent five minutes in a courtroom. Chris doggedly insisted no. Leon doggedly insisted yes. Claire, a few Old Fashioneds deep and sufficiently lubed up, told them to quit fighting or she was going to get up and walk out or scream or do something that would embarrass everyone. Sherry innocently offered to chip in and was resoundingly told to back off by everyone at the table.
Chris, perhaps finally cowed by Claire glaring glassy-eyed daggers at him across the table, acquiesced and let Leon pay half the bill.
They left, and in the parking lot Claire huffed and jutted her hip out, looking at her watch. “It’s only just after 7,” she said. “Is that it? Is everyone leaving now?”
Leon looked over at her. She was lubed up and not ready for the night to end. She got this way sometimes when she drank. Chris stopped in his tracks and looked back at her.
“What’ve you got in mind?” Chris said. “I bet Busch is involved.”
“If we keep drinking we’re going to have to figure out transportation,” Leon said.
“I can drive,” Sherry piped up, helpfully.
“All of us?” Chris asked, skeptically. “In whose vehicle?”
“We can ride in the bed of your truck,” Claire laughed. “Just like old times, back home.”
“We’re 25 minutes from home, Claire,” Leon said. “And in multiple vehicles. Sherry’s got to go back to DC and Chris is…” Leon looked over at Chris. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Chris replied enigmatically. “Look at you. You’re full of bad ideas. You’re gonna end up dancing on a bar, just like you did in New Orleans,” Chris went on, looking at his sister.
“I am not,” Claire said. “I don’t know,” she burst out, feeling everyone looking at her, waiting on her to reveal her grand plan. “Everyone just come over to the house.”
“Oh Jesus, I feel like I’m not ready for round two,” Riley said. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”
Leon sensed the potential for Claire being on her fainting couch with the vapors the next day was high. He didn’t feel compelled to stop her; it’d been some time since she’d seen Chris, Sherry more often than not was tied up at the DSO like he was, and after all, Leon didn’t often see his own brother much either. What the hell. You only got married once. Maybe. Some people attempted it multiple times. Leon was not going to be one of those people.
“Chris, you can sleep on the couch,” Claire said. “Everyone can stay. Just come over. It’s only 7 o’clock. Seems kind of dumb for everyone to just…leave.”
“I have to be in the offices in the morning,” Sherry said, apologetically. “I can’t stay. But I’ll come over.”
“Did you drink all my beer?” Claire again asked of Riley.
“We’ll get more,” Leon said.
“I’m gonna stop and buy cigars,” Chris said. “Should’ve thought to do that earlier but better later than never.”
“Gross,” Claire declared.
“Stop whining and come with me,” Chris said, looking at Claire. “I need to talk to you. Ride in the truck with me.”
“That’s it, you’re just stealing my wife?” Leon asked, looking over with his hands spread.
“Yup,” Chris replied. “C’mon, Claire. Get over here.”
Claire rolled her eyes and sighed, but dutifully walked over towards her brother and together they began to head for Chris’s truck, a diesel Chevy monstrosity with precisely the kind of lift Claire futilely tried to convince Leon to put on her own truck. They’d reek of cigarette smoke by the time they made it back to Middleburg and the house. Leon pictured Claire grousing the whole time.
“Well, I guess you’ve been promoted to front seat,” Leon said to Riley. “Chris is apparently going to try to talk Claire out of the decision she made today.”
Riley laughed. “Maybe. I hope they’re able to make it back to the house without killing each other.”
“See you there?” Sherry asked.
“Yeah. Gotta stop first,” Leon said. “If you beat us there you know the code to the garage. Just let yourself in, Sherry.”
“Okay,” Sherry said, turning off to head for her car.
“Let’s go,” Leon said to Riley. “I don’t think Claire has her key and she never remembers the code to the garage, even after like six years.”
……………………………………………………………………
For the second night in a row, Leon had potentially had more to drink than he should have. He was not the only one. Sherry was the lone non-drinker. In recent years Chris leaned more towards giving Leon and Claire shit for always having beers in their hands. Leon knew Chris was not without fault; he’d had his own periods of boozing it in the name of questionable motives in the past. This night, Chris was giving no one shit for drinking, and appeared to be tying one on himself. It did in fact seem he was going to be on their couch. Leon sure as fuck wasn’t letting him climb into the Peterbilt he called a truck and drive away. Leon hoped he relinquished his keys easily. He did not want to end his wedding night fighting with Chris Redfield over a set of keys, partially because he figured it was poor form and partially because he suspected Chris could probably beat him into submission.
The creeping whisper that they potentially drank too much was in the back of Leon’s head, but he ignored it and took a drink of his whisky, spinning his ring around his finger. Everyone was having a good time. Leon was not going to rain on that parade.
“Bullshit,” Claire said, drawing Leon out of his reverie. He looked over at her sitting on the loveseat, beer in hand. Her rings glinted in the light. Leon still wished he’d been able to convince her to get something bigger. “We went to every single one of your football games. All of them, Chris. I wouldn’t forget that.”
“I swear you guys weren’t there the year we won Homecoming, my junior year,” Chris said.
“Oh we were there,” Claire said. “Every single one of them, unless it was an away game. Daddy was determined. I had a cold once and he still dragged me along, sneezing and coughing. He absolutely was not going to let us miss one of your games.”
“What position did you play?” Riley asked.
“Right tackle,” Chris said. “I was small back then. But I was fast.”
“Believe it or not,” Claire said, leaning back in the loveseat next to Sherry and crossing her legs, her bare foot bouncing up and down, “Chris didn’t always look like the Hulk. He didn’t start getting bigger until later in life.”
“I remember when Uncle Chris was skinny,” Sherry said. “Just like I remember when Leon was skinny.”
“I remember that too,” Riley said, looking over at Leon. “I used to be able to hold him down in the hallway and beat the hell out of him. I think I’d die trying these days.”
“I’d go easy on you,” Leon said.
“Not on James,” Riley noted in amusement.
“No, not on him,” Leon said with a gust. “Because he’s a shit for brains and he still comes at me like I’m 18, like he could still take me. I’m not holding back. He deserves it.”
“Grown ass adults and still trying to kill each other in the kitchen,” Riley said, laughing.
“He deserves it,” Leon reiterated. “I do it for his wife. Someone ought to beat him up for her. She ought to do it.”
“I think the same could probably be said of you,” Chris said, drinking from his beer. “Why’s your brother deserve it?”
“Because he occasionally forgets who he’s married to,” Leon said.
“His eye wanders,” Riley affirmed.
“Don’t ever let me catch wind of that happening over here,” Chris said. “I’ll fucking break you in half, Kennedy. I’ll rip your head off and punt it into the next county.”
“Alright already,” Claire groused. “We just got married, like, today.”
“I can barely manage one woman, let alone another,” Leon said, looking over at Chris. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Who said I need you to rip his head off and kick it into the next county?” Claire asked of Chris, archly. “I’m more than capable.”
Sherry laughed. “The way you two used to fight,” she said, looking at Claire. “You guys thought I was asleep. I could hear you from the stairs, in that crummy old house. And then the next day it was like…nothing had happened at all. Everyone was fine.”
“Well, yeah,” Claire said. “I may have been 19 but I knew I didn’t want you feeling like you lived in a broken home, or something.”
“I lose my temper and regret it basically immediately afterwards,” Leon said. “Oh, not Claire. She’ll carry a grudge for days. Staring at me like she could laser a fucking hole into my stupid 21 year old head. Made me feel like I was in school again, getting yelled at by the Sisters.”
“That’s a Redfield thing,” Chris said. “I love carrying a grudge. I fucking live for it. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on, and your granddaddy, and your kids too. All of you.”
Riley chortled. “I think Kennedys are easier going than that. I couldn’t even bring myself to spank my kids.”
“You need someone to do it?” Chris asked, looking over at him. “I’ll put a kid over my knee.”
“They’re old enough to fight back at this point and probably take my old ass,” Riley said in amusement. “But thanks for the offer.”
“Someone should’ve put you over a knee,” Claire accused, pointing at Chris around her beer. “Probably me too. Daddy was too soft.”
“We got popped,” Leon said. “And Da regretted it right afterward. Not soft enough to avoid popping us, but soft enough to apologize to us afterwards.”
“I think prevailing logic these days is that popping,” Sherry said, making air quotes, “your kids is bad.”
“What do I know,” Leon said. “It’s not like I have any.”
“Me,” Sherry said. “You never popped me.”
“You want some?” Riley asked. “I’ve only had to help pay for two weddings so far and I’m already done. There’s four more who are going to come along with a catering bill in hand one day.”
“Nah,” Leon said. “Costs 30 bucks to get married, if you’re not a coward. If you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. I spent 30 bucks on a marriage license and look, there she is,” he said, waving his hand at Claire. “My wife.” Claire looked over at him with a wry smile.
Chris chortled. “What I witnessed happen today was the sorriest excuse for a marriage ceremony I have ever been to.”
“Chris,” Claire snapped, looking over to her brother. “Honestly, fuck off. That’s about what I had the bandwidth for. I’m 43 years old and I’m not religious. What do I need some big overblown affair for?”
“It worked,” Leon said. “I said some shit and now I’m married. Good enough for me.”
“I think it was nice,” Sherry said.
“Would you be okay with your wedding going like that?” Chris asked of Sherry, in grinning disbelief.
“I don’t plan on getting married anytime soon,” Sherry returned.
“What, Jake hasn’t popped the question yet?” Leon asked dryly, taking a swig of his whisky.
“Leon, stop,” Claire said, chiding. Sherry looked distinctly pink again.
“Good luck,” Chris said with a gust, looking at Sherry. “That kid’s a menace.”
Claire looked over at Chris coolly. “You did kill his father.”
“Jesus, the conversations you guys have,” Riley said, eyes wide. “Pretty sure I’ve never been casually accused of killing someone over drinks.”
“Yeah,” Claire said lightly, looking into space absently. “It’s…something else. Nobody said it was going to be normal.”
“Do you want to be?” Chris asked, looking over at Riley with his elbows on his knees. “We can make your brother disappear. Tonight. My sister becomes a very rich woman.”
“I’m sitting right the fuck here,” Leon said in amusement, into his glass.
“The ink’s not even dry, Chris,” Claire said. “Let him offend me somehow before we start plotting a murder.”
“Great,” Leon said in deadpan. “Glad we’re all on the same page.”
Chris slapped his knee. “Where’s that tequila? It’s shot time,” he said. “Then we’re gonna go outside and smoke these cigars.”
“Great,” Claire said. “Everyone’s about to be blind drunk and smelly.”
“Be quiet, Ms. Four Old Fashioneds,” Chris said. “We die like men. Drunk and smoking cigars.”
“Why does everyone keep talking about death so much?” Leon asked. “I feel very attached to my life right now. Dare I say it seems halfway worth living.”
“That’s the most optimism I’ve heard you express in years,” Riley said.
“Tequila’s in the kitchen,” Claire said, standing. “C’mon. It’s only a real shot if we link arms while we drink it.”
“Sure,” Chris said, standing to follow Claire.
“Claire,” Sherry said, tapping away at her phone—probably Jake—“do you have any tea?”
“A scad of it,” Claire called from the kitchen. “C’mon in here and pick something out. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“You don’t want a shot?” Chris asked. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Just what every young woman needs,” Riley joked.
…………………………………………………………………
“Why did we let Sherry leave?” Claire asked, sighing. “We needed someone to supervise us.”
“A kid?” Riley asked, in disbelief.
“She’s 35, nigh on 36,” Claire said. “Old enough to be involved in some kind of long distance situationship whatever the fuck I don’t ask questions about.”
“I’m gonna rip your arm off,” Chris said, looking at Leon. They were both sitting on the edge of their chairs at the patio table, dress shirt sleeves rolled up, hands clasped, elbows on the table.
Chris insisted they arm wrestle. Leon had drank just enough to not really be able to formulate any arguments why they shouldn’t. Leon figured Chris, considerably larger than him, genuinely would rip his arm off. He knew how this was going to go but Chris was not going to shut up until they did it. Chris had, perhaps, spent too long in military-type situations.
“What’s wrong with long distance situationships?” Leon asked, looking away from Chris to Claire. “That’s where we had our humble beginnings.”
Claire shrugged. “Maybe when we weren’t around each other I was spared stupid shit like this.”
“Nah,” Leon said. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“Are you ready or are we just gonna sit here holding hands all night?” Chris groused, and Leon looked back over at him evenly.
“I’ve really been looking for excuses to gaze into your eyes all night,” Leon said, and Chris scoffed and looked away for a second like he momentarily considered throttling Leon instead. This where they really diverged; Chris was generally willing to beat most things into a pulp with his hands, whereas Leon’s first line of defense was mouthing off so much he hoped the other party would just get pissed and fuck off. It didn’t always work. Sometimes he had to follow the mouthing off with beating things into a pulp.
“This is so fucking stupid,” Claire said. “Chris, this isn’t a barracks.”
“Get off my case, woman,” Chris said. “Count us down. Watch me hand your husband the ass-beating of a lifetime.”
“Chris, what’s your steroid regimen?” Leon asked, calmly. “Are you snorting Anadrol at this point? Sprinkling Anavar on your food?”
“This is all natural,” Chris said. “You’re gonna find out.”
“Alright, nature boy,” Claire said dismissively, and stood there looking between them. “Genuinely the stupidest pissing contest I have ever seen. 3—2—1—go,” she said, and Chris and Leon immediately set to trying to force each other’s arm down onto the table.
Leon wasn’t stupid. He could best most people he ran across in random feats of strength. He was unrecognizable compared to the lanky 21 year old he’d been. Most people were not Chris Redfield, who looked like he could crush someone’s skull in between his bicep and forearm. Leon would not be surprised to learn Chris could punch through a pile of concrete. Leon was giving it all he had and Chris’s arm was barely budging.
“Having regrets?” Chris growled in amusement.
“Your eyes are so beautiful,” Leon said back, arm straining, “how could I regret this?”
Claire stood there to the side of them, hand on her hip. “I need another beer,” she said, tiredly. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”
“C’mon, Kennedy, I’m not even trying, here,” Chris said.
“The longer this goes on, the longer I get to hold your hand,” Leon retorted. “This is the stuff dreams are made of.”
Riley started laughing suddenly. “You ever seen Predator?” he asked.
“Sure,” Claire said.
“Who hasn’t seen 1987’s cinematic masterpiece, Predator?” Leon asked, gritting his teeth.
“This reminds me of the scene where Schwarzenegger walks over and locks up with Carl Weathers and then they stand there and strain against each other in a way that could be potentially homoerotic,” Riley said, still laughing. “We just need to oil these two up and bam, same scene.”
Claire began to chortle. “Chris has too much chest hair to oil. He’d just look like…a greasy otter.”
“I bet the boys would love that,” Leon said, feeling his arm shake.
“What, am I supposed to look like you?” Chris asked of Leon. Chris’s arm felt like the legendary immoveable object, and Leon was rapidly losing his ability to be an unstoppable force. “Like a hairless 16 year old?”
“I’m sleek,” Leon said, labored. “Water resistant. Aerodynamic. I don’t clog drains.”
Riley was still laughing. “Dillon, you son of a bitch,” he said through his laughter, in a surprisingly passable Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation. Claire looked over at him and began to giggle, and Leon loosed an interesting noise that was part grunt, part exertion, part stifled chuckle, his face wobbling.
“Get to the choppa,” Riley added, again assuming the impersonation, and Claire began to laugh. Leon could feel his face contorting and then he lost it and began to laugh too, and Chris slammed his arm down onto the table with perhaps more force than was absolutely necessary. Chris stuck his other arm up in the air and let out a whoop.
“Chris,” Claire said through her laughter, “shut up. People are trying to sleep.”
“Your nearest neighbor’s like half a mile away,” Chris said dismissively.
“Is your arm broken?” Riley asked, watching Leon stretch his arm out, opening and closing his hand into a fist.
“No, I think I’ll live,” Leon said.
“Are you happy now?” Claire asked of Chris, who did look pretty genuinely happy with himself. Leon had known what the outcome would be; he supposed he couldn’t be too upset.
“Pleased as punch,” Chris said. “Hit the gym, Kennedy. What’re you benching now, anyway?”
“What are you benching?” Leon asked. “A school bus full of kids? The Queen Mary?”
Claire came over and perched herself on Leon’s leg, and leaned against him, putting her arms around him. “He’s strong enough for me,” she said. “I don’t have to lift anything heavy, he opens the pickles, and I’m easily manhandled. I’m content.”
“What, you don’t want me to get in touch with Chris’s steroid hookup?” Leon asked, looking over into her face.
“I don’t want to think about you being manhandled,” Chris said with a shudder. “Keep that to yourself.”
“Last time I tried to lift something for Izzy I practically threw my back out,” Riley said in amusement. “I’m about at the age and the physical shape where I call my able-bodied kids, instead.”
“Old age sucks,” Chris acknowledged, rubbing at his stubbled face.
“I’m gonna be young forever,” Leon said.
“Kennedy, you’ve got lines on your face you could sow crops in,” Chris countered. “Young forever my ass.”
“I’m putting you all in a home when the time comes,” Claire said.
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Riley offered, incredulously.
“Too bad. The home for you too,” Claire said, brightly. “Everyone in a home. I’ll be in the woods in my shack. Peaceful. No pissing contests.”
…………………………………………………………
At some point, perhaps jointly, they realized they were not in their twenties anymore and they should go to bed. Claire was getting handsy and she couldn’t stop laughing. She’d slapped Leon’s ass as hard as she could and run away giggling. Riley had called Izzy at a perhaps obscene hour to tell her he loved her and gotten half an ear of abuse over his drunken state. Chris had been caught drinking straight out of the bottle of Patron. Leon couldn’t stop staring at Claire’s tits. Claire threw Chris’s keys on top of the fridge. Riley began insulting people in Spanish. Leon contemplated trying to sneak a cigarette from Chris without Claire’s knowledge.
They were a mess, and they probably all needed to go try to sleep it off. Leon anticipated it was going to be a very quiet and miserable day around the house tomorrow.
“Hey, I need a blanket,” Chris called from the couch.
“Hang on, Jesus,” Claire huffed, digging through the linen closet. She pulled a blanket off a shelf and turned down the hallway, blanket in her arms. Leon noted at this point her hips were doing most of the walking; either that or he’d drank his filters away and was having a hard time keeping his thoughts appropriate. Claire made a noise from the living room. “Well if you didn’t have to be half naked on my couch maybe you wouldn’t need a blanket,” she said. “Don’t take anything else off, this isn’t a barracks. If I wake up in the morning and have to see you naked I’m gonna throw up.”
“I’m not fucking sleeping in slacks,” Chris fired back. Leon walked to the end of the hallway and spectated Claire, for all her fire, snapping the blanket out and laying it over her brother. “C’mere,” Chris said from the couch, and Claire dutifully bent over and then disappeared from sight as Chris grabbed her.
“Hey—Chris—“ Claire loosed a noise as she was presumably squeezed half to death in her brother’s embrace. “You’re gonna break my ribs,” she wheezed.
“Goodnight,” Chris said. “I love you. I’m proud of you.”
“I love you too,” she said. “But I can’t breathe.”
A grunt issued forth from Chris on the couch and a moment later Claire reappeared, getting herself back to a standing position.
“Goodnight,” Riley called from the doorway to the spare bedroom. “If I live to see morning.”
“Hey,” Chris said suddenly and loudly from the couch, “no loud sex. If I have to listen to you two in there—“
“Jesus Christ, Chris,” Claire said tiredly, lifting her foot to scratch at her leg. She wobbled a bit with only one leg under her, like a flamingo.
“This is my house,” Leon said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I second the no loud sex thing,” Riley called.
“Like I didn’t spend my formative years listening to you and Izzy roll around like horny teenagers in Ma and Da’s house?” Leon called over his shoulder, incredulously.
“You turned out alright,” Riley said.
“Debatable,” Leon returned.
“Everyone just go the fuck to bed,” Claire said in exasperation, rounding the couch.
“I’m serious,” Chris said. “Keep it to a dull roar. I’ll go sleep in my truck.”
“I’m putting the headboard through the wall,” Leon said, and Claire swatted fiercely at him as she walked past, her face adamant.
“I’m going to go sleep in my truck,” she groused, walking down the hallway for the master bedroom.
Leon turned out the light to the living room and turned to follow Claire back to the master bedroom. He entered and shut the door behind him and found Claire standing there with her hair swiped over her shoulder, arms contorted behind her, fighting to find the zipper of her dress.
“You could ask, you know,” Leon said in amusement, watching her.
“I got into it, somehow,” Claire said, and Leon walked over to her and took the tiny zipper in his fingers and pulled it down, exposing the pale expanse of her back, the clasp of her bra. “Thanks.” Claire pulled her arms out of the dress and let it drop into a puddle on the floor, then stepped out of it in her bra and underwear and walked over to the bathroom. Leon watched her go, unbuttoning his shirt.
He considered it kind of bullshit he couldn’t put the headboard through the wall on his own wedding night, but he supposed in the interest of being polite he would spare the brothers in the house from sex-related trauma. He pulled his shirt out of his slacks, and let it drop to the floor. In the bathroom, he heard Claire brushing her teeth. Leon walked over to the bathroom and was confronted with the sight of Claire bent over, fervently brushing her teeth, dripping foam into the sink. She’d always been this way; she brushed her teeth like they owed her something. She wore out toothbrushes in record time. Leon was surprised her gums didn’t bleed.
He walked into the bathroom and grabbed his own toothbrush, claiming some of the real estate at the sink. Claire persisted in trying to scrub the enamel off her teeth for a while longer, then rinsed her toothbrush off and spit, rinsing her mouth out. She looked over at Leon.
“We’re not putting the headboard through the wall,” she said, and Leon merely raised his eyebrows at her, brushing his teeth. She smiled at him, and went around him to exit the bathroom. Leon finished brushing his teeth and exited the bathroom himself, turning out the light behind him. When he re-entered the bedroom, Claire’s bra and underwear had joined the growing collection of clothes on the floor and she was in bed, pulling her glasses off her face, setting them next to the bed. Leon finished stripping himself and got into the bed, reaching out for Claire, feeling the warmth of her bare skin under his hands and arms.
“Should have put some pajamas on if you didn’t want me to try to put the headboard through the wall,” he said, his hands roaming over her. She rolled in his arms and smiled up at him, her legs rubbing against his.
“Take it easy,” she said in an undertone. “We have guests. We’ll never have guests again if you get your way.”
“Hey,” he said, “you married me, today.”
“I did,” Claire acknowledged. “It feels very strange.”
“It kind of does. Ring feel weird on your finger, too?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Claire said. “It’ll take a while to get used to.”
“What’d Chris have to say to you when he stole you tonight?” Leon asked.
Claire let out a sigh. “Oh, y’know. You’re not the only one afraid to have an emotion in public. In between chain smoking like ten cigarettes he told me he hoped I was happy, that I deserved a nice life, that he loved me, that he thought you were a nutjob but he hoped it was everything I dreamed of.”
Leon looked out into the room, processing this. “I guess that’s about all I could hope for out of him.”
“I think he’s a nutjob, but he’s my brother,” Claire said.
Leon smiled down at her, looking at her smile up at him. “Can you even see me or is everything a blur?” he asked.
“If I’m close enough to you I can see you,” she said. “I can see you now. Across the room, all bets are off.”
“Good thing I’m not across the room,” Leon said, and kissed her. Claire’s mouth yielded under his and she made a soft noise, her hands coming to his face. His hand came to the back of her neck, holding her to him.
“I love you,” he said to her in a murmur, his forehead against hers. “You’re the most important thing in my life, Claire. It’s not worth it without you.”
“I love you,” she breathed back, and then loosed a gentle chuckle. “Why were we incapable of saying any of this today?”
“I’m not good at presenting in front of the class,” Leon said. “I agreed to become knowable and honest to you. Everyone else gets what they get. Fuck ‘em.”
Claire hummed and pressed her lips against his again, and Leon deepened the kiss, his hands firm on her. Claire clung to him, her mouth adamant against his. Leon pressed forward and rolled her onto her back, her hands coming to his hair. “I’ll be good to you, Claire,” he said. “I won’t let you regret this.”
“You are good to me,” she whispered. “There’s nothing to regret.”
He moved to her jaw, her neck, his lips skipping across her skin. Her breath was starting to catch, her hands tight in his hair. He moved down her body, kissing as he went, and took one of her nipples into his mouth, flicking his tongue against the raised bud of flesh. Claire shifted some, a quiet noise escaping her, her back arching up off the bed slightly to press herself closer to him. Leon loved her breasts; he loved how excited she got when he paid attention to them. He suckled at her, and his fingers came up to pinch and tease at her other nipple, and Claire was squirming gently, her body alive under him.
She’d asked him once, a few years ago, if he wished her tits were bigger.
He’d told her absolutely not and he hoped they were the only tits he got to see for the rest of his life. There wasn’t a thing he’d change about her body; since about age 23 or so when he’d become aware of the fact that he was violently attracted to his fellow survivor, her body had always had the ability to render him dumb. He remembered being young and stupid in a suit in the early days of the government, when Claire would blow into DC all big sunglasses, short shorts, and sass to visit Sherry. He remembered trying to keep his eyes in appropriate places on her. He remembered her joking around with him, treating him like a neutral buddy, punching him on the shoulder and making fun of his tie with Sherry between them, and he’d go home later that night to his apartment and jerk off desperately, wondering what Claire Redfield’s body would feel like under his. For years he’d sat on his attraction to her, hovering over her life like some kind of all-seeing government entity, until the night he hadn’t been able to take it anymore.
For a full half of his life he’d yearned after her; thought about her helplessly, been unable to keep his hands off her, violently mourned her absence in his life, tried harder than he’d ever tried at anything to keep her satisfied and content once he’d gotten her back.
And today she’d stood across from him a courtroom and agreed to be his wife, and she was currently under him, whimpering, writhing at the ministrations of his mouth on her. His hands held onto her like she’d disappear if he let go. Every quiet noise she made felt like an absolution. His heart was pounding.
He released her nipple with a wet pop, his mouth moving down her body, pressing kisses against her skin as he went. Claire’s legs began to part instinctually beneath him, and his hands slid to her thighs, gently pressing them open further. Sometimes he teased her. Sometimes he made her beg for this, her voice high and desperate as he withheld himself from her. Sometimes it was about control, and him being in it. He wasn’t interested in doing that tonight. He wanted to taste her. He wanted to make her come. He wanted to feel her hands knotted in his hair. Leon opened his mouth over her pussy and ran his tongue straight up the core of her, finding her clit and lapping at it. A muted, high pitched noise escaped her and she seemed to settle, her fingers splayed on the back of his head, her hips nudging closer to him, her own head rocked back on the pillow.
His mouth worked over her like he had no other purpose in life. He slid his tongue inside her, then back up to the bundle of nerves at the top, teasing and sucking at it. Her body worked against him, her hips rolling under his hands, her torso arcing as she bowed off the bed, her breath in gasps.
Leon, in that moment, sorely wished they were alone in the house. He longed to hear the full spectrum of her reactions like he usually could, the long, throaty moans and the high-pitched keens she loosed when his mouth was on her. Her lip was in her teeth; she was trying so hard to be quiet. He didn’t stop. His mouth kept at her as he watched her climb the precipice, his tongue pointed and intent.
“I’m gonna come,” she panted softly, her fingers taut against the back of his head. “Oh Leon—I’m—oh Jesus--“ Her body tensed, her thighs shaking under his hands. Her head rocked back, eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open in a soundless O, her breath caught.
He’d never seen anything more gratifying, or arousing. And he thought that every single time. She found her breath again, sucking in a trembling gasp, a long humming noise issuing forth from her that she muffled by pressing her lips together. Leon pushed her through it, his tongue deliberate against her, until the shaking of her thighs was helpless and pronounced, and her quiet noises were frantic. He moved back up her body and kissed her, and her mouth was grateful and animated under his, her breath short.
He fitted himself between her legs, taking his hard cock in his hand and rubbing it between her wet lips, intent. She gazed up at him dazedly, her hands on his arms, her face somewhere between blown-out pleasure and anticipation. He began to slide inside her and she let out a long breath, her fingers curling into his biceps. He bottomed out, his hips against hers, and he kissed her again.
“I love you, Claire,” he whispered. “I want you forever. Don’t ever go. Stay with me.” The words were spilling out of him, aided by alcohol and the effusive feeling in his chest.
“I’m yours,” she breathed back. “I always have been.”
He began to thrust into her, slowly, deeply; her arms wrapped around him and she clung to him, soft noises escaping her every time he pushed deep inside her. Every time this rendered him animal and dumb; he could only think of the hot, tight wetness on his cock, the way she sounded, the helpless and enthralled look on her face when she gazed up at him. It’d knocked him on his ass in his twenties; at 45 he was still incapable of any rational thought when inside her.
“God,” she said, half sigh, half moan. “I love you.”
“I’ve got you, baby,” he said. “I’m never going to let anything happen to you. Trust me, Claire—I’ve got you—“
“It’s always been you,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to do without you—“
They looked into each other’s faces, their breath mingling, the words tumbling out of them in hushed tones, everything that had been too difficult to say while standing in the fluorescent lighting of a courtroom with eyes on them. Leon had agreed many years ago to become knowable and honest to her, and he intended on holding up his end of the bargain. He’d long ago learned he could not hide from her; there were things she needed to hear out of him, she deserved to hear out of him. It was easier to hold up his end of the bargain when it was just the two of them. He was not one for an audience, and she really wasn’t either.
Leon, at that point in his life, did not give one flying fuck what he was to most anyone on earth, save Claire. It was important he be decent to her. It was important she trusted him. It was important she felt like she could turn to him. He’d happily be a snide asshole to most anyone he encountered, if he felt like it. Not Claire. He wanted her to love him like he loved her, like everything he did was for her.
She made life worth living. Without her, there wasn’t a point. Without her, it was emptiness and violence, and it had taken him many years to realize he was not in fact strong enough to endure it on his own.
He moved in and out of her, her hips welcoming him back every time, her body rolling with his. She’d told him once it felt like home. She’d told him she felt safe. Leon didn’t know if anything more poignant had ever been said to him.
“Oh God, Leon,” she gasped. “Please—“ Sometimes he didn’t know what she was begging him for. Maybe she didn’t know, either. He only knew it made him rapt, made him want to do anything for her. Claire didn’t need things out of most people she met. She was capable, and more oft than not, people needed things out of her. Leon wanted to give her anything she wanted. He felt compelled to.
He leaned down and kissed her, then wrapped his arms around her and rolled, coming to rest on his back, her seated atop him. It took her a moment to adjust and then her hips were working fluidly, her hands on his chest, her head thrown back, rising up and down on his cock. “Oh fuck,” she breathed, angling her head back down, lip in her teeth. “God—I don’t want to stop—it feels so good—“
She was so beautiful it physically pained him. His chest felt tight. “Go, baby,” he uttered, his hands coming to her hips. “Fuck that’s good—“
The noises were coming out of her helplessly at that point; quieter than she normally would have been, but audible and rapturous. Her hands latched onto his, her breasts bouncing. “Leon—please—oh—“ It was stream of consciousness at this point; if her brain felt anything like his, stringing together words coherently felt out of the question. Leon lived for this, and part of his brain, permanently stuck in his early twenties, still looked at Claire atop him writhing in pleasure and was mindblown that it was happening, that he produced such a reaction out of her, that she even gave him the time of day. It was precisely the kind of thing he went home and fantasized about at age 23 or so, and part of him would never stop being amazed that he actually got to experience it.
Claire Redfield could have had any man in the world. She still could. Men still watched her, and he watched them watch her. Somehow she’d picked Leon. It didn’t make any sense to him, and it likely never would. Her Daddy had expected her to marry the Sultan of Brunei. Leon expected she could have gotten him.
“That’s it,” he encouraged, one of his hands slipping up her body to her face, cupping her cheek. “C’mon, Claire—fuck, sweetheart—“
“I need you,” she moaned. “Please—Leon—“
He grasped her hips and thrust up into her and she rocked down onto him, her mouth open. Her hands found their way back to his chest, and she met him stroke for stroke, opening her eyes to stare into his. Her eyes were both wild and filled with emotion.
“Yes—please—oh—“ She leaned forward abruptly, kissing him eagerly, her body still moving against his. “I love you,” she breathed against his mouth. “Never leave me—I need you—“
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m yours, Claire. I’m not going anywhere.”
She pushed herself back up, riding him with determination. She was beautiful, she was perfect, she was all he’d ever wanted, even before he’d met her. She was the kind of woman any man would be lucky to come home to. She was the best person he’d ever met.
And she’d looked him in the face and agreed to spend the rest of her life with him.
Leon’s mind was a turbulent mix of arousal and raw emotion and still she rode him and still he thrust up into her, and he was not going to last long. She rocked her hips down onto him hard enough to make him stop his actions, as if she was telling him to shut the fuck up and just listen; and she ground against him in the sinuous, mind-altering way she’d always been so good at. When she did this, it was like she had no bones—her body was just one fluid motion over his, tight and wet on his cock, her fingers curling into his chest. His hands held onto her hips almost helplessly, and he stared at her, his face slack. In moments like this, she owned him, body and soul.
He groaned, long and low, and he was coming, his fingers tight into the flesh of her hips. Claire made a noise like a coo, her mouth falling open, and her hips worked over his through every moment of it, until he was spent and blank and had no more to give. For a long moment she sat there, her hands rising and falling on his chest, and she gazed at him. One of her hands slid up his neck to his face, caressing, and then she slowly leaned forward and laid herself against him, cuddling up.
Leon wrapped his arms around her and held onto her tightly, turning his face into her hair. “You alright?” he murmured into her hair.
“Yes,” she murmured back.
He pressed his mouth against her. “I love you. I’m never going to stop loving you.”
She turned her head towards him. “Good,” she breathed.
“I love you,” he said, taking in a breath, “and I know tomorrow we’re all going to be worthless. We need to go to bed.”
“Okay,” Claire said. “I don’t want to move,” she added a moment later.
“A preview of tomorrow,” Leon said lowly, the ability to produce wit slowly coming back to him with the rest of his faculties. “Here. C’mon, sweetheart.” He put his hands on her and gently urged her to move off of him, and over to the side. Haltingly Claire complied, loosing a little noise as his cock slid out of her. She laid down next to him, and Leon leaned and stretched to turn off the lamp next to the bed, plunging them into darkness. As she had a million nights before, she curled up in the crook of his arm, her hand on his chest, a sigh escaping her. Leon brought his hand down to hers, and felt the cool and hard unfamiliarity of her rings against his palm.
Claire was out quickly, her breath evening in sleep. Leon’s mind was still racing, a bit. It was a lot. He was no stranger to laying there in bed with his thoughts. Today especially seemed like something to think about. He laid there and stared into the darkness, waiting for sleep to take him.
…………………………………………………………………
At 6:30 AM, Leon was experiencing duality. One the one hand, there were the warm and welcome curves of Claire against him; the security and sensuality provided by feeling her naked body against his.
On the other hand, his head felt like he’d stuck it into a hydraulic press and he felt like his body was absent of even one molecule of moisture.
He grunted a little, looking around the room with a wince. Things could be worse. He could be forced to get up and put on a suit feeling like this, driving into DC. He probably owed the President a thank you for permitting him time off to not only get married but to experience the post-wedding day hangover in the security of his own home. Even though they hadn’t had a traditional wedding by any means, Leon supposed this was par for the course. Drinking too much after a wedding just seemed to be what you did, unless you were a teetotaler. Leon couldn’t think of a time he’d ever gone to a wedding, including his own, where he didn’t feel like dog shit the next day.
He probably drank too much. It was too late; the damage was done, yet again. One of these days, he figured, he should probably do something about that. Today was likely not that day.
He knew his brother would be awakening at some point in the not too distant future, if he wasn’t awake already, probably feeling much like Leon did. He knew Claire, who usually took her hostess duties fairly seriously, was not going to give one flying fuck today. He’d watched her knock back shots with her brother. He knew what she was going to feel like.
At some point Chris Redfield was going to awaken on his couch and probably try to make it someone’s problem.
Leon grunted again and began to carefully extract himself from the warm presence of Claire, who produced a little noise that suggested pain and suffering. Once he was away from her she rolled over heavily, groaning, and then became an unmoving lump under the blankets. She was definitely going to have the vapors, today.
Leon stood there for a second next to the bed, naked as the day he was born, feeling kind of like it was in fact his first day on earth. He rubbed at his face deeply and forcefully, and then turned to try to find clothes to make himself decent. Had the house been empty, he would have walked across it naked as a jaybird to drink a gallon of water and eat ibuprofen, then climbed back into bed with Claire to join her in mutual suffering.
Day one of living in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, and Leon was responsible for the household today.
He pulled on some basketball shorts and an old Michigan State t-shirt and exited the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He made his way down the hallway, past the sleeping form of Chris on the couch, and over to the kitchen. The coffee maker was still on the counter, and he figured it was going to get plenty of use today. He began to go through the motions of filling the coffee maker with water and putting grounds into it.
Leon hoped nobody was hungry, or that they were more of a master of his kitchen than he was. Without Claire, it was essentially a room in his house he went into from time to time and marveled at.
Leon was busy slamming his third glass of water when he became aware of a presence in the room, and he turned to find Riley standing there, shirtless and squinting behind his glasses.
“You better never get married ever the fuck again,” Riley groused. “I won’t survive. I killed half my liver last night.”
“I’m gonna take it further and say no Kennedy is ever allowed to get married,” Leon said. “Because this seems to happen to me any time anyone I share a last name with says I do.”
“Good point,” Riley said. Without his shirt on, Leon could affirm that his brother had settled solidly into Dad Bod territory. “Is Claire alive?”
“To an extent,” Leon said.
“Fuck I wish I weren’t,” Chris’s voice rang out from the other room. “You two forget how to use inside voices or what? Wasn’t aware we had to shout to be heard this early.”
“Sorry, princess,” Leon called. He watched Riley open the cabinet to grab his own glass for water, and then immediately go for the odds and ends cabinet to find the ibuprofen. Leon refilled his glass of water and walked over to the living room to find Chris Redfield sitting on the edge of his couch in his boxer briefs, scratching at his chest.
“Make yourself at home,” Leon cracked dryly.
“I wasn’t fucking sleeping in slacks,” Chris said, an echo of his statement from the night before. He blinked dramatically, looking around the room. Lifting his arm, he looked at his watch. “Shit. I need to get on the road.”
Leon raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s 6:30 on a Sunday morning and if you feel anything like I do, you’re barely alive.”
“Duty calls,” Chris said. “Not all of us have glorified desk jobs.”
Leon shrugged. “They send me out just enough to be shot at or otherwise chased around to keep it spicy.”
“Where’s my sister?” Chris asked, rubbing at the back of his neck and wincing.
“In bed, where she deserves to be,” Leon replied.
Chris heaved a heavy sigh and stood, looking towards the hallway.
“Unless you want to see her as God made her,” Leon began, looking at Chris, “you’d better sit back down and let me go see if I can get her presentable and up.”
Chris sat back down on the couch heavily. “Go put some clothes on her and get her out here to say bye.”
“No promises,” Leon said, then slammed his glass of water. He set the empty glass down on the coffee table and headed back down the hallway, feeling like there was a crack in the top of his head that threatened to run straight down the center of him and split him in half. He pushed open the bedroom door and Claire was still in the exact same position he’d left her in, her auburn hair a rumple above the blankets. Leon carefully got onto the bed and scooted up behind Claire, gently brushing her hair away from her face. She made a noise like a whine and squeezed her eyes shut tighter.
“Hey, baby. Your brother has to leave,” Leon murmured. “He wants you to come out there and say bye.” He continued to brush gently at her hair. “You want me to tell him to fuck off?”
Claire loosed a long, low, pained noise. “What time is it?” she croaked.
“Too early,” Leon replied. “You don’t have to get up if you don’t want to.”
“Fuck,” she moaned a moment later, and rolled over to face him. Her eyes cracked open and she also looked like this could be her first day on earth. “Can’t he wait?”
“He halfway looked like he was going to come back here himself until I told him he was going to see your bare ass, so maybe not,” Leon said. Claire groaned and pressed her face into the front of his shirt. “You don’t have to get up. I’ll run interference. Stay back here if you want.”
“Jesus Christ,” Claire said in exasperation, her arm suddenly flopping blankets away from her body. “I’ll never hear the end of it. Ugh.” She succeeded in baring herself to the waist and then laid there, unmoving, dispassionate. “I’m dying.”
“We all are,” Leon affirmed in an undertone, stroking her head. “Mistakes were made.”
She stared into the front of his shirt for a long moment. “Will you get me my robe?” she asked, her voice small.
“Sure,” Leon said, and scooted back off the bed. He grabbed her robe from where it hung on the back of the bathroom door, and when he returned she was sitting up in the bed, her hair a riot down her back, her face blank.
“I never want to see another Busch Light ever again,” she said, dully. “Or shot of Patron.”
“Reasonable,” Leon said. He walked over and handed her the robe, and she took it and held it in her lap, unmoving. “I’ll tell him you’ll be out in a minute. You can come right back here afterward. Riley and I will survive.”
Claire made a soft noise in acknowledgement, and Leon left the bedroom. When he returned to the living room, Chris was pulling on his slacks, his shirt already on but unbuttoned.
“Give her a minute,” Leon said to Chris as he walked past, swiping his empty glass from the coffee table. “She’s coming.” Chris grunted in response, buttoning his slacks, and Leon returned to the kitchen to find Riley hanging over the sink. “Don’t throw up in my sink,” Leon said, half-warning. “I’m not fucking cleaning it up.”
“Fuck me,” Riley said. “I’m too old for this.”
“We all are,” Leon said. He looked over at the bottle of Patron on the counter that Claire never wanted to see again; she and Chris had put a hurting on it. “Chris, do you want coffee?” Leon called.
“Will you quit yelling?” Chris called back. “Jesus. Did you go back there and shout Claire Babbie out of bed?”
“No,” Leon replied.
For a few minutes silence reigned in the house. Riley poured himself a cup of coffee and despite the fact that it was probably the temperature of the surface of the sun, he began to drink it like he was compelled to. Leon drank water until he felt vaguely like he was going to throw up in the sink.
“Chris, don’t squeeze me,” Claire’s despondent voice came from the living room suddenly. “I’ll probably throw up.” Leon set his glass down and went back to the living room to find Claire standing there in her robe, looking a bit limp. Chris stood off the couch, and stood in front of her.
“Toughen up, kid,” he said.
“No,” Claire said, simply. Chris walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her, and to Leon it did look a gentler hug than Chris usually inflicted on her. Claire’s arms came up around her brother. “When will I see you?” she asked, muffled into Chris’s chest.
“Oh, I dunno,” Chris said. “I’ll be around.” He drew back to look at her, and Claire was hidden to Leon’s eyes behind her brother’s bulk. “What’d you do with my keys?”
There was silence for a second. “I did something with them?” Claire asked, in tired confusion.
“You threw them on top of the fridge,” Leon said. “Hang on.” He walked back into the kitchen and over to the fridge, peering onto the top of it and grabbing Chris’s keys from where they’d landed near the back of the appliance. “Here,” Leon said, re-entering the living room, keys held out in front of him. Chris took them from him and patted himself down, checking pockets, looking like some kind of rumpled salaryman who’d had way too wild of a night and lost his coat along the way.
“Chris I need to go lay down or I’m going to die,” Claire said plainly. “Are you leaving now?”
“In a second,” Chris said. He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “You have been dramatic since you were about three years old.”
“Sure,” Claire acquiesced, uncaringly. “I love you. Drive safe. Call me. I’m going back to bed.”
Chris chortled. “You’re getting soft, Claire Babbie.”
“I don’t care,” Claire said, turning away and shuffling back for the hallway and the bedroom. “I’m in my own house. Bye, Chris.” She disappeared down the hallway and Chris turned to look at Leon.
“Where’s that coffee?” he asked.
“In the kitchen unless Riley just upended the pot into his mouth,” Leon said.
Chris began to head for the kitchen, and Leon watched him go and then followed him. Chris stood in front of the coffee pot and reached into his slacks for a moment, pulling his pack of cigarettes out. He opened it to reveal an empty pack, and he looked up at the ceiling as if asking for strength from God.
“Holy fuck that’s a crisis,” Leon noted in amusement.
“I’ve got a carton in the truck,” Chris said. He stuck the empty pack back in his pocket. “Find me a mug you’re okay with losing.”
“I don’t know about that,” Leon said. “This is Claire’s domain. Don’t blame me if she calls you yelling about a mug.” He opened the cabinet and pulled out a coffee mug. It was from the San Diego Zoo. Leon hoped Claire wasn’t sentimentally attached to it. He handed it to Chris, who poured coffee into it, and then turned around to face him and Riley with an appraising look on his face.
“Well, Kennedys, it’s been real,” Chris said. “I’m still sorry you’re related to him,” he said to Riley. “Make sure my sister doesn’t shrivel up and die,” he said to Leon. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Sure,” Leon said. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“Don’t say that,” Chris said. “I’ll breathe down your neck, if you want me to.” He reached his hand out, and Leon looked at it for a second before sticking his own out, and he was treated to a fairly standard hand-crushing Chris Redfield handshake. Chris stared at Leon seriously for a moment like he was trying to wordlessly impart some kind of warning, and then he turned to Riley and likewise offered his hand, shaking Riley’s. “Back to reality.”
“Good luck and Godspeed,” Leon said dryly. Chris took a drink of the coffee, winced, and strode out of the kitchen without another word. A moment later, Leon heard his front door opening and shutting.
“What’s he do, again?” Riley asked.
“Nothing good,” Leon said. “Complete with military-grade weapons and a crew of young guys that take orders from him.”
“Neat,” Riley said nonchalantly. “Your life is so normal.”
“I dunno, Riley,” Leon said. “Being violently hung over on a Sunday is pretty normal.”
“That may be the only normal thing going on,” Riley said, taking a big swig of coffee. “I need food. My stomach is turning in on itself.”
“Good luck,” Leon said with a gust. “I’m not Claire. You’re not getting a cooked meal out of me.”
“Probably me either,” Riley said. There was silence for a moment. “We are 45 and 50 years old,” he went on. “How in the fuck have we made it this far in life not knowing how to cook?”
“Ma ruined us,” Leon said. “She never made us learn. She cooked everything. We immediately shacked up or temporarily shacked up with women who did it for us.”
“Annemarie forcibly unshacked you at age 21, before you went off to have the time of your life in Raccoon City,” Riley said. “What did you do for all those years?”
“Ate out,” Leon said.
The brothers looked at each other across the kitchen, hung over and blank.
“I’m going to drink that whole pot of coffee,” Riley said, “and then we’re getting in your expensive mistake of a vehicle and we’re going to find food.”
“There’s a place in town that does a buffet,” Leon said, rubbing his hands over his face.
“Sold,” Riley said.
“Great,” Leon said. “Let’s hope my blood alcohol level has come down since last night or I’m getting a DUI at 7 AM.” He sighed. “Let me go see if Claire wants food and then I’m going to become one with a piece of furniture until it’s time to go.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Riley said, taking another swallow of coffee.
Leon pushed himself off the kitchen counter and walked across the house again, to the master bedroom door. Quietly he pushed it open and was confronted with the sight of Claire’s back. She was on her side in the bed in her robe, unmoving. He again went to the bed and carefully slid up behind her, putting his hand on her hip. She made a noise of discontent.
“What now?” she moaned. “I’m trying to die in peace.”
“We’re gonna go eat, after a while,” he murmured into her hair. “You want some food?”
“I don’t know,” Claire replied. “I don’t know if my body will accept food or if that’s going to be what pushes me over the edge.”
He pressed a kiss to her ear. “You may feel better if you eat something. How about I bring you food and it’s there if you want it?”
“Alright,” she gusted, and wriggled back against him. He let his arm wrap around her middle.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Common sense,” she said. “To understand I’m not 21 anymore.”
“Can’t help,” he said. “I’m lacking that too.”
“To be taken out back and put out of my misery,” she tried again.
“No. I just married you. We exist in misery together,” Leon said quietly.
Claire let out a heavy sigh, putting her arm on top of his. “Will you bring me a Coke? I feel like my blood sugar has been destroyed. And a glass of water, and the ibuprofen?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Anything else?”
She thought about it for a second. “No,” she replied.
“Okay.” Leon kissed her cheek, then her temple, then withdrew from her. “You want blankets?” he asked, looking at her laying there uncovered.
“Yeah,” she said, and Leon grabbed the blankets and pulled them up over her, tucking them around her shoulders. He climbed back off the bed and headed for the door, intent on retrieving what Claire had asked for even though he felt mildly like he was dying, as well.
Day one and they were already wading right into the thick of the in sickness and in health, for better or for worse part of marriage. Sure, it was just hangovers, but Leon felt distinctly like he was fulfilling a marriage-related duty, and already not doing too bad at proving himself a pretty competent husband.
Who knew marriage was occasionally simple enough you could do it even when you felt like you’d been run over by an 18-wheeler? Leon figured maybe he shouldn’t have waited until he was 45 to have this brilliant idea. It’d probably be difficult at some point, but that day was not today. Knowing their lives, at some point, they’d really be wading in the shit and maybe they’d get to know just how difficult it could be. For today, it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He was the man. He’d try to make sure life kept on the rails while suffering if it meant Claire could lie around like an amoeba and not have to exert herself in any way, shape, or form.
“She gonna live?” Riley asked from the couch as Leon walked past.
“Yeah. Just gotta bring her half the kitchen,” Leon said.
“Look at you,” Riley said. “Husband of the year already.”
“She tells me to do stuff, I do it,” Leon said, heading into the kitchen.
“Good. Keep that attitude. It’s how I’ve stayed happily married for 31 years,” Riley called.
Leon pulled open the fridge. 31 years was a long time. He and Claire’s path had been less traditional, right from the get. Not many people could recount viral outbreaks, adoptive parenthood, life in hiding, vigilante justice, government service, long distance relationships, traumatic separations, and second chances in their relationships. It’d been a long strange trip, and they’d arrived at this marriage thing late, probably thanks to him and his issues.
Leon had a lot of catching up to do. Claire deserved nothing less than every bit of effort he could expend. He would make it his life’s work.