Weapons of War

Riley was sitting on the back deck with a cup of tea in her hands while Dug ran around the yard when Shea got home with groceries. He put things away as quickly but quietly as he could before he slid the patio door open and Riley glanced over her shoulder as he closed it again. He dropped into the chair beside hers and they sat in silence, watching Dug.

Finally Shea commented, "House is quiet."

He didn't want to outright ask how Noah's day was, not if it had been bad. She was stressed enough. He was surprised when she told him, "He's finally starting to feel better."

"Good." Shea stated before he looked at her and asked, "And you?"

"I'm okay."

He called her bluff, "No you're not."

She sighed, picked at her finger nails and stared at her lap before she told him, "I talked to Christina last week."

"You did?" He was genuinely surprised by her confession. That was the last thing he expected to come out of his wifes mouth.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. Honestly I didn't know how, so I thought just not mentioning it was better." When she said this she was reminded of the time he had reprimanded her for not telling him that she thought she was pregnant while in Kelowna a few years ago and she chuckled. When Shea raised his eyebrow at her laughter Riley flushed and told him, "I'm still working on this whole not keeping things I think are little from you."

Shea smiled, and ignoring the fact that he knew he probably should be upset with her for not telling him he asked, "What did she want?"

"Mostly we talked about Noah. I think she finally gets that there's no repairing things between us but she wants the chance to make up for it with him. I told her no way, I wasn't gonna set him up for getting hurt the way I was." Riley explained to him but the way her words tapered off and she looked down at her lap again he knew there was more.

So he asked, "But?"

"But then I started thinking about it." She admitted and when she turned to him she was surprised to find that he didn't look shocked. So she continued, "There's absolutely no fixing things between she and I but… Shea am I being selfish to keep him away from the only grandmother he has just because I have issues with her?"

Shea sighed and admitted to her, "I don't know."

"Eventually he's gonna start asking, maybe not any time soon but once he realizes that everyone else has grandparents, plural, he's gonna ask. And what do I say to him? How do I explain that I purposely kept him away from her?" Riley asked him, unloading all of her frustrations and questions about the whole Christina situation to him.

"Do you think you can trust her with him?" Shea asked her curiously.

Riley looked over at him and asked, "Do you think we should?"

"Ry, I'm gonna support whatever decision you want to make about this. You know more about her than I do." Shea told her honestly.

"Barely." Riley stated, making a face of mild annoyance.

He smiled gently and told her, "Whatever direction you want to go I'm on board. If you want to go forward with this and let her meet him that's fine, but if you decide to leave it as it is and tell her no that's fine too."

"What if we do this and she disappears again?" When she asked this he didn't have an answer for her so she sighed and continued, "I know how that feels, what kind of parent would I be if I let him go through that? Sure it's been almost twenty five years but how do I trust that anything is different this time around? She left me and then went and made a whole new family, how am I supposed to blindly trust that history isn't going to repeat itself?"

"I think that, maybe, you just answered your own question." Shea told her softly and she sighed. She tucked her curly hair behind her ears and Shea grabbed her hand in his and told her, "Maybe we revisit this conversation in a few months, when things have settled down here."

Riley sent him a small smile, but her words were full of amusement as she asked him, "Add it to the list of other things we've put on hold lately?"

Shea chuckled and nodded, "What's one more thing to deal with next year?"

"You're very good at the pep talks." Riley told him with a smile.

"Well yeah, they didn't make me captain for my good looks you know." He told her with a grin.

"I beg to differ." She stated and when he raised his eyebrow she explained, "The face of the team should at least have a moderately appealing face of his own."

"I don't think I'm the face of the team Ry. Hardly." Shea told her.

She rolled her eyes, "You're far too modest sometimes. Where is the arrogant Weber I fell in love with? He's disappeared."

"I was arrogant?" Shea asked her in surprise and she let out a laugh.

"Moderately. But in a really good way. In a way that you should be." When he quirked an eyebrow at her Riley explained to him, "Everyone needs to be a little arrogant Shea. You know how good you are, it's not a bad thing to make sure everyone else knows it from time to time."

"Who's giving who a pep talk now?" He asked in amusement.

"Whom." Again he raised his eyebrow and she asked him, "Sometimes I wonder how you passed high school English."

"Because someone else used to do my homework." He told her with a grin.

As she got up from her chair, whistled for the dog and opened the patio door she told him, "She must have been very smart then."

"The smartest." He told her with a smile as he followed her inside. He pulled open the fridge door and started pulling things out and he asked, "Is my beautiful, very smart wife okay with me cooking dinner tonight?"

"Very much so." Riley told him, but before he could do anything further she wrapped her arms around his waist, pulled herself tight against him and leaned up to kiss him softly.

When they pulled apart Shea started dinner while Riley snuck upstairs to check on Noah quickly. He was still sound asleep, as he had been since three that afternoon, and pre-treatment Riley would have been worried he would be up all night after going to bed that early, but she knew he would sleep right through the night.

As she came back downstairs she walked into the kitchen and leaned against the island counter and watched Shea cook. He turned his head over his shoulder to look at her and raised his eyebrow and joked, "See something you like?"

She shrugged her shoulders and told him, "Yeah, a moderately good looking guy in my kitchen."

"Your kitchen huh? Who built this kitchen?" Shea fired back with a grin.

"A contractor." She said with a shrug of her shoulders and a hint if amusement in her voice. When Shea chuckled she told him, "You know, it's really too bad you don't cook naked anymore."

"Well seeing as I only ever did that for breakfast and we have a little ruggrat that likes to wake us up and ungodly hours of the morning…" Shea told her, and she let out a small giggle. With a raised eyebrow and an amused expression on his face Shea asked, "Did you just giggle?"

"Guilty." She told him, and she laughed as he reached out to grab her hand and pulled her quickly across the floor and into his side.

He wrapped one arm tightly around her middle while the other tucked her hair back behind her ear and he told her, "I could cook naked right now if you wanted."

She looked up at him and smiled, "I'm hungry, don't distract me from food."

He let out a loud laugh and then told her, "I'm so glad I married you."

"You'd crash and burn without me bub." Riley told him, patting his chest gently.

Shea nodded his head and told her, "True."

As they stood in the kitchen, Shea's arms wrapped around her and Riley with one arm around his back and her other hand clasped around Shea's she looked up at him and told him, "We have a pretty great life."

"We really do."

Hours later, after dinner and cuddling on the couch watching a movie Riley walked into the bedroom to find it empty. She followed the sound of running water to the bathroom, gently pushed the door open and found Shea sitting in the tub, the water half full. She raised her eyebrow at him, "What's this? My bubble bath?"

His eyes flickered over to the bottle of coconut frosting bubble bath and he smiled as he looked back at Riley and informed her, "You've got way too much clothing on."

"Is that a fact?" She asked him in amusement. When he nodded she let out a dramatic sigh and pulled her long sleeve off and dropped it onto the floor and as she was unbuttoning her jeans she asked, "What brought this on?"

"Well it's still early, and I got to thinking earlier and I was thinking about the second night we spent in this house." Shea told her with a lazy smirk.

Once she got into the tub, sitting opposite of him and facing him. He grabbed her feet under the water and Riley asked, "When they hadn't installed the ac yet?"

"And so we thought a cool down in the tub would be a good idea." Shea said with a small smile.

Riley nodded her head and reached up long enough to tie her hair up out of her face and she said, "But really it just got even hotter."

"We have a lot of memories in this house." Shea said, thinking out loud.

"That's why we're never moving." Riley stated with a nod of her head.

Shea raised his eyebrow, "No?"

"Nope. I mean when you retire yeah, but while we're in Nashville this is our home." Riley told him and when he nodded his head she informed him, "And you're not retiring for at least another six years."

"Oh no?" He asked in amusement.

"Nope. At least 6 more years or a Stanley Cup. Whichever comes first." Riley told him and when he opened his mouth, to disagree no doubt, she cut him off with, "Jagr did it. I'm expecting the same out of you Mr."

"Yes ma'am."

- - -

When Riley woke up the next morning Shea was still beside her, but he was already awake. He sent her a smile as she stretched in bed before settling into his side and running her index finger up and down his chest. She smiled gently at him, "Morning."

"Morning." He mimicked, his voice low and coated in sleep.

She glanced over his shoulder and jumped up onto her elbow, "Oh my god its nine thirty!"

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down to his level again before he told her, "I was up earlier. He's been checked on, fed and is currently either watching cartoons or sleeping again."

"You got up and did all that already?" Riley asked him softly, a little bit surprised. She was so grateful, in moments like this, to have Shea. She knew so many guys around the league who were so content with letting their wife take care of their home, children included, even when they were home and she was so glad that Shea wasn't one of those guys. Even before Noah had gotten sick he was as hands on as he could be, even when he didn't know what to do or how to do things he still tried. He didn't give himself nearly enough credit.

"Yeah I was up figured I'd give you an extra couple hours of sleep." She shot him a smile when he said that. He raised his eyebrow, "What?"

"Nothing. I just love you." Riley told him with a smile.

"I love you too." Shea told her and when she rolled her eyes his brow raised and he asked, "What was the eye roll for?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Riley said, giving him her best look of innocence.

He shot her a look, "Riley Monroe Weber."

"Ooh full name so scared." She said, and he let out a loud laugh at her statement. Curiously she asked him, "What are you laughing at you weirdo?"

His laughter got louder for a moment before it slowly came to a stop and then he told her, "I just… how did I get so lucky? That I get to wake up and have these conversations with you almost every morning."

With a grin she joked, "You should hear the conversations I have with myself in the morning when you're on the road."

His brow raised, "Oh yeah?"

She nodded, "Mhm. We talk about all the things you did wrong in the game the night before, and about how cute you look in your jersey, but mostly we daydream about how hot you look when you get into fights."

"God I love you." Shea told her and when Riley's brow raised in confusion to his question he explained to her with a small smile on his face, "I hear some of the guys talking about their wives and girlfriends and how they lose their shit over them getting into fights and it reminds me of how much I love that you don't."

"I love when you fight. You should totally do it more often." Riley told him with a grin.

"You think so?"

She nodded, "You might get laid more."

"Done. I'll be sure to get into a fight tonight." Shea told her with a wide grin.

Riley wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him on top of her, she kissed him quickly before with a near smirk she said, "Oh captain, my captain."