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Sometimes you gotta bleed to know
That you’re alive and have a soul
But it takes someone to come around
To show you how
“You look like shit.”
Leon risked a glance at Claire in the passenger seat of the rental car, her head resting against the back, turned to face him. He forced his gaze back to the road, not wanting to crash because he got distracted by her. The words struck a weird chord in him, hurtful, but ultimately true. Words nobody else would dare say to him.
“Why are you smiling at that?”
Thankful for stop lights, he turned more fully to her, an incredulous smile tugging at her lips. “It’s just such an incredibly you thing to say.” That outfit doesn’t suit you. Those words bounced around his head for months, years honestly. She saw him for five minutes and struck at the very core of his being. Dismantling everything he’d been trying to convince himself was okay.
He couldn’t read whatever was going through her head, a flash of something crossing her face before reforming into a smirk. “The light’s green.”
The blaring of a horn behind him emphasized her point, and he returned to the task at hand, sparing a glance at the asshole flipping him off in his rearview mirror. A not-uncomfortable silence filled the car as he got onto the highway, the only sound, the engine and Claire’s soft hum to the radio.
“So enlighten me,” Leon spoke up after several miles.
“What?”
“How do I look like shit?” Leon asked, poking the hornet’s nest. He needed to know what she saw when she looked at him. What wisdom she could impart on him about how far he’d fallen. To mask some of the intensity, he added, “Most women don’t seem to mind.”
Claire scoffed, and he didn’t even need to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes. “You look fine, Leon.”
“No, no, no, you can’t back out now.” He wanted to look at her so badly, his peripherals not enough as he buckled under the weight of her scrutiny, his skin pricking with her gaze. Risking the glance at 70mph, he found her blue eyes locked on his, an overly sincere expression on her face, making it hard to look at. Thankfully, he really needed to look back at the road.
“When was the last time you slept more than a few hours?”
“Last night. I’m great at sleeping.” It wasn’t a lie. A bottle of whisky did wonders for his sleep. Vodka worked too.
“When was the last time you woke up, not hungover?” She asked, attacking a different angle.
“Can’t be hungover if you never sober up,” Leon said, successfully achieving a nonchalant, borderline humorous tone.
“Maybe letting you drive was a bad idea,” Claire joked, playing along. “I don’t know, Leon. You just don’t seem okay.”
“I’m fine, darling,” Leon drawled, shooting her a winning smile that she weakly returned, letting him pull her into his shenanigans for now.
X
Songs on the radio are okay
My taste in music is your face
But it takes a song to come around
To show you how
Claire hit tune on the radio a thousand times, complaining about every station in every city they passed. The rock stations were too new, the classic stations too soft, and the country stations... too country? Leon nearly put a stop to it there, questioning why she didn’t just plug her damn phone in if she was going to be so picky when she came across a station that played a bit of everything.
Somehow, Claire had found the radio station destined for her. She knew every song and nearly every word. Ranging from the songs everybody knew to songs Leon would have never in a million years heard of. She knew them all. Thankfully for Leon, not knowing most of the songs meant Claire wasn’t able to draw him into singing with her. Music had never been his thing. He liked music and had his own taste, of course, but he was below average when it came to knowing anything about it.
His luck ran out though, as the opening chords to Don’t Stop Believing came through the radio, Claire already reaching for the volume knob. “Oh! You can’t not sing to this.”
“Watch me.”
The opening line sang out, and while he’d expected Claire to obnoxiously sing at the top of her lungs, coaxing him in to join her, instead she was quiet, letting Steve Perry sing by himself. Leon glanced at her and found her pouting, arms crossed, sunk into her seat and everything. “Really?”
“You can’t sing it by yourself, Leon. That’s just sad.”
All of Leon’s instincts fought each other as the song reached the chorus, the desire to not embarrass himself clashing with his need to see Claire smile. He hated that she knew exactly how to get what she wanted out of him, a trait others had used for literal terror, but she just did it to get him to sing with her.
Workin’ hard to get my fill
Leon sighed; he couldn’t let her not sing the song. “Everybody wants a thrill.”
Claire didn’t miss a beat, joining in the next line. Her cheerful voice and laughter when he fell flat on all the high notes made everything worth it.
X
You fell asleep in my car, I drove the whole time
But that’s okay, I’ll just avoid the holes so you sleep fine
I’m driving, here I sit, cursing my government
For not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement
It wasn’t long after a meal of crappy fast-food tacos that Claire fell asleep, her head resting against the glass of the window. He tensed up at every bump and turn, not wanting her to knock her head against the window. The peace on her face as she slept was something he would do anything to protect. Even if it meant driving through the night without ever trading drivers, something Claire kept saying she was going to do but had conveniently avoided.
He did his best to stay awake, and to stop as little as possible, only stopping when the gas light flashed at him, signaling that he was out of time. He pulled into the next gas station.
“Where are we?” Claire mumbled, bleary eyes blinking open.
“Just getting gas,” Leon said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “You can go back to sleep.”
“M’kay.” Her eyes closed before she even said the word, leaning into his hand still by her ear. He ran a thumb across her cheekbone as he took his hand away, the longing to kiss her hitting him like a brick. Forcing the thought away, he returned to the task at hand: get gas, get coffee, get out.
X
My heart is my armor
She’s the tear in my heart
She’s a carver
She’s a butcher with a smile
“I can’t believe you let me sleep the whole night,” Claire complained, stretching her arms out above her head.
“Women,” Leon grumbled, putting the gas pump in the car. “Can’t fucking please them.”
“We were supposed to take turns,” she said, leaning against the car. “I can take the last leg, at least.”
“Last leg,” Leon scoffed. “The last hour of a 16-hour drive.”
“Sounds fair to me,” she grinned, leaning into his space. “Plus, you can’t get mad when you voluntarily drove through the night.”
He considered arguing, a dozen options springing to mind, but he forced them down. The memory of her peacefully asleep in the car was one he would cherish for a long time. The sacrifice was 100 percent worth it.
“What?” she asked, a light blush blooming across her cheeks.
“It was worth it,” he said, joining her in leaning against the car, propping an elbow against the door, giving him leverage to lean further into her space. “I’d do anything to make you happy.”
Claire’s soft blue eyes met his, searching his face for something. Anxiety crept in, worried he’d crossed an unspoken boundary. She looked away from him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “I just want you to be okay.”
He should’ve known she was just working on her next attack. The spear right through the armor around his heart. “I am-”
“You look like shit.”
Once upon a time, he’d been a sweet, easy-going kid. She barely had to reach out to break past the thin glass barrier. While it cut them both, it’d been comforting allowing somebody in so easily, letting somebody know him. But he’d spent the years building up the armor around his heart. Armor built on blood, sweat, and tears. Where he got tougher, though, she got sharper, capable of piercing through no matter what he did.
That look doesn’t suit you.
You look like shit.
And finally, I just want you to be okay.
Except this one time, she was wrong. Her attack still aimed true, striking right through the core of him, but it didn’t change that she was wrong. “I am okay,” he repeated, reaching out to tuck a stray hair behind her ear like he’d done the night before, letting his hand linger.
She looked up at him through her long lashes, leaning in. The pair almost met, nearly there, when the gas pump clicked, reminding them of their setting. Leon sighed, the moment fading away as they jumped apart. “Look, I’m sorry...”
“God fucking dammit,” Claire cursed, grabbing at his jacket to pull him to her, her lips on his before he could process what was happening. By the time his brain kicked in, she was pulling away, so he pulled her back, grasping at her hip, his other hand cradling her cheek. Her tongue probed his mouth, the kiss getting steamier than he’d typically do in public, but he didn’t care. He was kissing Claire, and that was all that mattered.
A loud honk and a string of expletives drew them out of their make-out session. A midwestern man in a truck screaming out his open window, a middle finger front and center for them.
“Some things never change, huh?” Leon joked.
Claire laughed, pecking his lips once more before taking the keys and sliding into the driver’s seat while he returned to the gas pump. “I thought you’d never get the hint,” she said when he got back in the car.
“What?” Leon asked. Had there been hints?
“I asked you to be my date to my brother’s wedding,” Claire said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“No, you asked me to be the plus one at your brother’s wedding,” Leon corrected her. Pretty sure he’d even gotten the hint if she’d said date.
“Same thing.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I asked you to make it a road trip instead of just flying.”
“So we could spend more time together! That’s not inherently romantic.”
“I only got one hotel room.”
“I assumed with double beds.”
“God, you’re making me rethink my choices.”
Leon kissed her, bracing himself against the middle console. “Please don’t.”
The honking resumed this time by a middle-aged woman in a minivan full of kids. “You’re lucky you’re cute, and that Midwesterners are impatient.” She pulled out of the gas station, flipping off both the minivan lady and the truck guy as she went.
“The luckiest,” Leon grinned.
Claire was terrifying. There was no hiding from her, no matter how badly he wanted to sometimes. He’d grown so used to being numb that being around her was overwhelming, but even if it hurt, and he figured it would; the chance to feel alive for once was worth the risk.