the dare (the mighty ducks)

chapter twenty-nine

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chapter twenty-nine: a country club christmas

a/n:

jesus christ this chapter is 5k words long i'm so sorry

tw(s) -- a lot of family drama, underage drinking, tom is a dick about what rick eats and rick might have body issues, rick is hopelessly in love with mindy, and many more. good luck.

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"Oh, would you just sit still?" Louise huffs at her older brother, holding his jaw in an attempt at an iron grip as the car jostles them around.

Rick grits his teeth and sticks an arm out to brace against the headrest of the driver's seat; he glares down his nose at her with a petty evil only a sibling could muster. She simply smiles at him sneeringly and turns around to James with her hand out, ignoring the way that he rolls his eyes and hands the stick of concealer back to her.

Just like they do every year, the Riley family attended a late Christmas Eve mass at their local church and pretended they were a wholesome, Christian family. However, due to an unforeseen prank that ended in the school dormitories being fumigated for the week of break, their eldest son was littered with glaringly red bug bites this year. To preserve their shiny image, Jess took it upon herself to completely smother Rick with full coverage makeup before he was even allowed to think about leaving the house. It'd seemed like an ingenious plan, even if he spent the whole time squirming away from her and whining, but she hadn't thought about one thing: the church. The small building was full of nearly a hundred patrons and had very, very powerful heaters for such an ancient building.

So, Rick had simply sweat all of their mother's hard work off in the hours they were there...

Which brings them to this - rushed touch-ups in the backseat of their father's vintage Chevrolet.

"Lou- would you- you're beating the hell out of my face." Rick grabs her wrist, that familiar muscle in his jaw ticking.

She shifts in her seat and tries to wrench her arm out of his grip. "It's not my fault that you sweat like a pig."

"Your ass is on me-" James huffs from the other side of her, lightly shoving her away from him. "Mom, Lou's sitting on me."

"I am not! My ass isn't on you."

"Would you two quit it?!" Jess snaps from the passenger seat, reaching around to slap both of her youngest children on the thigh. They both cry out indignantly and move away. "It is Christmas Eve! You both just received the holy sacrament! Can you believe them? Cursing after church."

Tom isn't really listening to anything his wife is saying, though. Louise notes, as she rubs her thigh with a frown on her face, that she's pretty sure he checked out halfway through the service and has been mentally playing golf for the past hour or two. (It is, after all, how he spent the majority of her childhood - sitting in that chair in the den with a glass of alcohol in hand, pretending that he was anywhere but in the household he'd built with the woman he married.) His eyes have that familiar hazy look to them when they glance up into the rearview mirror to check behind the car.

Jess picks up on her husband's mental distance, too, and she clenches her jaw in the way that Rick does. "Tom! Tom!"

"What?!" He barks eventually, Louise flinching at his volume. "What more could you bloody want from me, you insufferable woman?!"