A Matter of Muffins

" He liked her; it was as simple as that."

― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

Silver Lake Montana -Fall -2017

The winter said a big fuck you to late fall and came hard and brutal and early.

It snowed and buried the ranch in white from lake to larder. It left the hands with plenty of winterization undone and a surprisingly heavy blanket of white on Thanksgiving morning. Unexpected, they spent a good portion of the holiday morning undigging from the mess it had made.

The fall was lost under the promise of a nasty winter.

Rebecca spent the morning in the barn settling the horses and prepping the area for the early arrival of the massive cold front.

She wondered what kind of Thanksgiving would really be occurring in a foot of snow.

Amused, she knocked off her boots as she came back in the house.

Claire was feeding Faith.

She was in her highchair and learning to eat rice. She was eight months old and learning her way in the world. She was cruising by crawling, cruising by grabbing things to pull herself up and around. She could find her favorite toys and fling her most hated across the room while she laughed.

Rebecca figured she'd be walking soon enough.

And then?

God help them all.

Claire had come up to stay for a few weeks on a break from work. She was enjoyable, as always, and a master of making things easier on everyone around her. She was effortless with the baby, a natural nurturer in her bones. Rebecca wondered if it came from having a brother who'd sung to her and taken up the charge of raising her after their parents had died.

One thing was true, Claire Redfield had been loved.

It was evident in her demeanor. She was a woman who knew her place in the world. She was content there. Maybe it was lonely, as Claire was still unmarried, but she didn't seem lonely.

She seemed happy.

They were rolling the ball with Faith in the living and Rebecca remarked, quietly, "Did you spend much time here with him?"

Claire smiled gently, rolling the bright pink musical ball back to Faith who chortled with glee to catch it. "Plenty. He was good here. The rare times you could catch him off work and free of it all. He was happy here. I'm glad you stayed, Bec. I am. He would have wanted that."

Rebecca watched her face, curious. "You loved him."

"I did. He was hard to hold but easy to love." Claire smiled again, but there wasn't pain there, just peace, "He was so lost before you found him, Rebecca. Whatever he needed? You offered it to him. For the first time in a long time, he was content."

Rebecca rolled the ball to Faith. She giggled and babbled.

And Rebecca said, quietly, "I miss him."

Claire's smile cracked, just a little. She made a small sound like a wet laugh and wiped a hand at her nose. Both women laughed, misty-eyed. And Claire replied, "That won't change. I think it's just part of loving Leon Kennedy. You'll miss him forever. The only thing we can hope? Is that it gets just a little easier to live with it."

"Any idea of what makes it easier?"

The baby laughed brightly.

Rebecca rolled her head to see why.

And Chris was coming in from the cold.

Maybe that was one way it was a little easier.

She forgot, for spaces of time, to grieve when he was there. It was hard to grieve when he was making you laugh. He was good at that. He'd been good at it in captivity. Never a man that dwelled, he didn't let you dwell either. He wasn't built that way.

He played the guitar and sang for the baby. He kept the music in her life like Rebecca had asked. He was good at that too: doing exactly as she asked.

Rebecca was surprised to find sometimes she wished he'd play for her too.

He was VERY careful to avoid touching her.

He went out of his way to be sure they barely brushed. She hadn't even glimpsed him shirtless since that night. Her brain tried to do the math.

Two months.

It had been two months since that night.

Five total since she'd moved into the house and taken over the ranch.

And how long since she'd held Leon Kennedy in her arms? Over a year now. Easily. She'd missed him long before he'd died.

Time was flying.

She turned her head to see if Leon Kennedy was still sitting on her shoulder. He was there. He was always there. She missed him.

She didn't want to see him anymore.

Sometimes, at night, she'd wander around the big house and down to the lake. She'd ride one of his horses through the fields. She'd ride over to the training ground that stood empty.

She could feel him. Everywhere.

Anywhere.

He was in the walls and the wind and the water.

He wasn't anywhere.

Somedays, she couldn't feel him at all. And she panicked. She chased his ghost-like she'd catch him. As if she'd ever caught him alive.

As if in death she'd finally hold on to him.

Chris knelt to take a slobbery blabbery kiss from the baby. Faith grabbed his ears and slobbered all over his face while she blah blahed at him nonsensically.

Claire shifted, watching them.

What was this?

Curious, she studied her brother as he picked the baby up in his arms. She cooed and kissed him, giggling and smooching. Whatever else was weird in his house, this wasn't. This was love. It was in every wet plop of baby lips and every laugh of her big, angry, boulder punching brother.

But he wasn't angry here.

He was…what?

Claire considered him.

He was what?

Content?

He was something. The baby loved him. And he loved the baby. That was as obvious as the pain on Rebecca Chambers. There was no hiding it.

Claire smiled, happy to see him with the baby. He'd lost his chance to have children. He was forty-one and considered himself passed his prime in that regard. He wasn't. But he'd never, ever, been interested in having children.

But she watched him with that baby.

And she amended that statement.

Maybe he'd just never, ever thought seriously about having any of them.

A dedicated man – the fight had risen in Raccoon City when he'd been barely twenty-five. He'd been fighting ever since. What time was there in any of their lives for babies?

She glanced at Rebecca and lifted her brows.

Because the girl scientist was watching him.

Watching was the wrong word here. What was the right one?

Claire did the math in her head and knew Rebecca was at least seven years younger. It didn't matter anymore at their ages. But it had in Raccoon City. She and Rebecca were of an age after all. She remembered Rebecca gushing with a girl crush on her brother all those years ago.

Harmless.

Normal.

And lost in the sands of time.

Or maybe not.

Rebecca rolled to the side to clean up toys.

Chris shifted his attention from the baby for just a moment. Just a second. Claire watched his face.

And he looked at Rebecca while she wasn't looking at him.

Just a handful of seconds.

But she'd been looking at her brother for thirty-five years. She knew what flashed on it before he glanced back at the baby.

Chris had the hots for the former medic.

Like Sherlock, Claire watched them the rest of the afternoon. Neither did anything overt. There was nothing even to the naked eye.

Just Rebecca watching him while he did mundane tasks like bail hay or lift boxes. Just Rebecca watching his arms and his face and his butt.

Oh, yeah, Claire mused. She was butt watching. Not bird watching, uh-uh, the girl scientist wasn't keeping a rapt eye on the blue-throated swallow…nope. She was oogling Chris Redfield's tail feathers.

Delighted and amused, figuring the world's greatest flirt Leon Kennedy was somewhere amused himself, Claire waited until Rebecca took the baby upstairs for her nap and to take a bath.

And she said, tongue in cheek, "Hey, bro. How's the rancher's life?"

Chris laughed, plucking a beer from the fridge, "Somehow I'm more tired now than I was chasing Majini through the African desert. Explain that to me."

Claire smirked a little, "The scenery helps, I'm sure."

"Yeah. It's pretty here. Better than a dirty fucking city, anyway. Kennedy had an eye for a good piece of land, that's for sure."

Amused, eyes twinkling, Claire grinned, "Yeah, he did. Leon liked a nice piece."

"You talking about his fucking gun room? You been in there? Dude had like…fifty pistols. Insane."

Claire rolled her lips a little. "Hmm. He had good taste in clothes. In guns. In land…"

Chris nodded, kicking up his bare feet after taking off his boots with a sigh of relief.

And Claire added, "…in women. Piece of clothing, piece of land, a nice piece, a piece of ass…he had a good eye for all of it."

Chris paused with his beer to his mouth, brow lifted, "Your point?"

"You eyeballin his baby mama?"

The beer hesitated, Chris finally snorted and took a long pull. "No."

That was it.

One word.

He rose and slapped her boots off the table so her chair wobbled and nearly went over. She grinned, unaffected.

And Chris said, "Go to sleep, CB. Seriously. Before you start matchmaking in that pretty head of yours. I'll see you in the morning."

He left the kitchen.

And Claire remained at the table, chuckling, and convinced her brother was a big fat liar. She glanced at the window that was frosted with snow.

What would Leon want here?

Easy enough to answer that. He'd always, always, always been so desperately searching for happiness. He'd want Rebecca to find it.

With Chris? A curious question.

Claire sat at the table with the leftover turkey, twirling her keys...and matchmaking in her pretty head.

Aloud, she said, "Leon Kennedy, you clever, mother fucking genius. You know what you were doing...I fucking miss you. You asshole."

He didn't answer. But he was there.

She never went a day without him anyway.

Chris was lying in his bed, staring up the shadows above it. He was shirtless and scratching his belly. He was pretty sure he was going to be sticking his hand in his pants and rubbing one out in a minute.

He was a guy. He understood and addressed his needs when they arose.

He'd been feeding himself, breathing, farting and shitting and fucking for forty years. He knew how to address what his body wanted. Usually, when his nuts decided they wanted to get off on a willing woman, he was in a place to do that though.

Here, he was surrounded by women.

One was his sister.

One was a baby.

One was Leon Kennedy's.

So…there wasn't any hope for a willing woman in this house.

His hand slid down to take care of the need and he heard the sounds from the other bedroom.

Listening, pausing, he heard the low cursing. Rebecca – cursing like a sailor in her little voice. His brows winged up. Somehow, she managed to make "piss ass shithole fuck nuts", sound cute.

Only her.

Amused, Chris rolled to his feet and peeped across the hall.

Her door was cracked. He could just make out her pacing beyond it.

He threw on a ribbed undershirt and crossed the hall to knock. He heard her curse, mutter, and pull open the door.

She was in a gray t-shirt and little blue bootie shorts. The gray shirt was V-neck, looked soft, and was so snug it was stretched across her breasts like an obscene wet dream. You could, essentially, see her nipples through the thin cloth.

He focused, hard, on her face to be sure he didn't look.

But he looked enough to know she wasn't wearing a bra.

And he queried, "Everything ok?"

Rebecca sighed dramatically and opened the door to let him in. She stalked away and missed the whoosh of relieved air that escaped his lungs. He'd, literally, been holding his breath while she'd been standing there that close to him.

"Not really. I'm fine I guess. Just…" She shifted and spread her arms to show the clothes tossed all over the bed and floor.

Chris lifted a brow at her.

She laughed, mirthlessly, "I'm fat."

And both brows winged up now.

She laughed again, "I'm fat. I am. Still. They said breastfeeding would get the weight off. But I'm still holding on to twenty pounds, easily. I'm so fat I can't get in my pants."

She gestured, looking frustrated. "I know I've been lazy. I haven't really been exercising or anything. I guess I hoped the weight would fall off with the breastfeeding. But I got on the scale this morning?"

She sighed and kicked a pair of pants on the floor angrily, "One seventeen."

Horrified, she met his eyes, "One seventeen, Chris. I haven't weighed more than ninety-five pounds in thirty plus years. I can't get rid of the weight! I'm trying to put on my pants right? I can't. I'm too fat!"

His mouth twitched.

He lifted his hand to brush it over his mouth to hide the smile. He coughed a little. "One seventeen huh?"

"I know." She sighed, kicking the pile of shirts, "I can't even put on my size zero pants. I tried. MUFFIN TOP!"

She shouted it and had him jumping.

He blinked.

And she squeaked, "Muffin top! Can you believe that shit!?"

"...is that a band or something?"

She blinked at him.

He added, "...or a dessert? Like burnt ends on ribs right?"

She narrowed her eyes to see if he was joking. He was so deadpan.

"It means blubber gut, Redfield. It means the fat that spills over your pants when you latch them."

He coughed again, face droll, "Hmm. This is a real thing? Like "the thigh gap" or something? Or is it like...metrosexual men? You know, made up words for guys who can't admit to being gay."

"...do you know any girls at all?"

Chris laughed now, bulletproof, "Not generally the kind that worries about muffin butt. Hard to care ass deep in bullets and blood, B. I could ask Nadia when I see her next. But I don't think she has muffin butt, B. She works out like...eight days a week. That girl is more muscled than I am."

"...it's Muffin TOP, Chris Redfield!" She pointed at him now, "Don't you stand there being charming, good sir! You know what it is!"

She sounded adorable saying shit in that tone. He tried not to be charmed. He did. But he failed.

He could not stop teasing her, "Sorry, Becs. I don't. Muffinstop sounds like a gas station...that I would probably go to every morning. Or is it one of those Shopkins? Somebody's kid had some at the office one day. Tiny little food things? I think one was a muffin...maybe. Or a cupcake? I can't remember."

Her voice was exasperated but her eyes were twinkling at him, "...muffin TOP, you big goof! Muffin TOP!"

She lifted the gray t-shirt. Her shorts were…well…she was right about the tight part. But not in a bad way. Nope. They were snug in all the right ways. There was no muffin top, he mused, there were just her soft but flat little belly and a teeny little roll of skin.

She looked so distraught.

He didn't want to laugh at her.

He was trying SO HARD.

She waved her hands around a little. "I'm being stupid right? Because some girls can't ever lose it. And that's just the way it is. And I'm being shallow and dumb. I have a healthy baby. I don't really have any stretch marks…I don't think!"

She shouted again and had him jumping.

"Maybe I do, ya know? How do I KNOW!? No one has checked my butt. I heard you get them on your BUTT. Can you believe that?"

He was kinda afraid she was going to drop her pants and show him her butt to check it. He did NOT think he'd survive that.

Rebecca mused, "You think I'm fat too huh? It's why you're so quiet."

Tongue in cheek, he answered, "Do I?"

"You do! What do you weigh? Like one-eighty? All corrugated muscle and tight skin. What do you know?"

She was a scientist. She couldn't be that bad with math. Curious, he arched a brow. She arched it back. They studied each other.

One-eighty...what a goof she was. Kennedy, before he'd lost it all, had probably maybe weighed one-eighty...and that was doubtful since he'd been skinny even before the rehab.

Shrugging, finally, Chris moved to her little scale on the floor of her bathroom.

He stepped on it, waiting.

It beeped happily.

Rebecca's brows winged up. "Wow."

"Yep."

"Shit. I wouldn't have guessed."

"B – at my height, with my muscle mass, if I weighed one-eighty, I'd look like a stick." He stepped off the scale with a shrug, "Your body? It's feeding a baby. It's got extra fat on it to make milk. You don't look fat. You look beautiful. You look like a mother. You're a mother, B. It looks good on you. Stop trying to be a skinny little lab mouse, and just be a mother."

Rebecca was still confounded a little, "Two-twenty huh?"

"On a good day. I have a tendency to push higher when I up the protein. But go easy on yourself, ok? I got a hundred pounds on you, easily."

He patted her little butt as he walked by her to leave the room.

He hadn't really meant to. It was a habit. Like comforting a teammate or something.

Pat, pat, pat.

Thoughtless.

He kinda froze. She kinda did too.

And she whispered, softly, "You don't think I'm fat?"

Quiet, a little strained, "….no." Firm.

It was firm.

So was he.

He was firm.

Rebecca said, "Thanks, Chris. Sorry, I woke you up."

"…nope. No problem."

It would have been ok, probably. No harm, no foul. But she hugged him.

He tried to stop her. He grabbed her arms and said, "Wait wait wait…"

Too late. She hugged him.

And, well, he was firm.

He was also a foot taller than her. So he poked her right in her "fat" belly as she hugged him. Lord.

The blood in his face made him dizzy. The silence spilled around them.

And he whispered, gruffly, "…sorry. I tried to warn you."

Rebecca let go of him. He let go of her arms.

Without a word, he left the room.

When he was gone, Rebecca looked at her face in the mirror of her vanity. She wasn't flushed. A curious thing. He had been. Embarrassed. Guilty. Shameful.

He was all three.

It was curious that she wasn't.

She ran her fingers over the strings on the guitar by the chair. It tinkled musically.

And she breathed, softly, "You were only waiting…for this moment to arise…"

Well, his "moment" had arisen alright. She brushed her fingers against Excalibur again, sighing.

Oh, she was a little shivery in her belly.

She opened her bedroom door. She went to his and knocked.

But she needn't have bothered. He wasn't in there anyway.

She heard the Jeep fire up.

Leon's Jeep.

Her heart hammered, her breath caught. She ran to the window. And there was Chris Redfield surging off through the snow in Leon's Jeep.

Where was he going?

But she knew that too.

He was going to the training ground. He was going to fight his demons like Leon had done so many times before. He was going to punish himself for his "moment". For theirs.

She glanced at the photo on her dresser. A good one. It was Leon curled in his chair, Leon with his guitar, Leon with his Magnum sitting on the floor beside him.

Leon...laughing.

A good photo.

She brushed her finger over his face. She closed her eyes.

She couldn't hear him.

But he was still there, on her shoulder, watching her.

While Chris Redfield battled his regret in the training ground he'd left behind.

She sat in the shadows, smoking.

She sat in the shadows, watching.

She'd watched Leon battle his demons there. She knew it was cathartic. It was a way to purge the urge.

What was the urge?

The urge to what?

Let go?

Or hold on?

And how did they find their way to the answer?

She didn't know. She didn't know anything.

So she sat in the shadows, watching Chris Redfield fight his demons.

And hers continued to gather around her, waiting.