“That was intentional,” Leon muttered, knowing that no one was going to believe him Who: Leon and Qrow, ft. Dan Smith What: Meeting at the bar When: November Where: The Double Tap Rating/Warning: Low/none. Language Status: Complete
There was not a bar in Orange County that Qrow had not been to at least once. Most of them he’d been to multiple times. He had his favorites, sure, but where he decided to drink on any given evening depended largely on his mood. Was he in the mood for a trendy setting, a theme bar, or a dive? This evening he was in the mood for a dive bar. The alcohol was cheap, the other patrons mostly kept to themselves and the music was tolerable and played at a tolerable level. Plus at this particular bar, the Double Tap, he could smoke. The bartender/owner didn’t seem to give two fucks about what city or state ordinances said.
So, that was where Qrow was that night, seated at the bar, hunched over his whiskey on the rocks (the third to have been added to his tab for the night) smoking a cigarette and lost in his own thoughts about the Dreams, his nieces, their friends, his students…
The bartender/owner was attentive, but not intrusive. Qrow had been to the place a few times and knew the guy’s name was Dan Smith. It kind of made him smirk how generic a name it was, especially considering Smith was anything but generic. It was his weird accent that had caught Qrow’s attention immediately. A strange mix of Detroit and Irish that Qrow had heard only one other time – a sometimes client of his spoke with a very similar accent. Qrow at first thought the two men to be one in the same, but quickly decided that the gun for hire he knew as The Hellion wouldn’t be in Orange County tending bar.
Then again…
Ezio had claimed to not only know The Hellion, but be his friend. He’d also said that he had a friend who owned a dive bar in town. Could it really be that this bar tender with the button-down shirt and loose fitting tie was really the same person? Qrow frowned. Ezio knew a lot of people…but how many of them talked as though they’d stumbled off the boat?
He was so lost in his thoughts and watching Dan Smith talk with a few of his regulars he didn’t notice the other man sit down at the bar next to him.
Leon was not Dreaming. He may have accepted that some people could heal their wounds with fucking magic, and that other people could teleport - sorry, “spatially compress” - into his apartment, but he was drawing the line at viewing an alternate universe in his sleep.
His first dream really hadn’t been so bad. He’d been assigned the case of some washed up celebrity who’d been found dead in his apartment with some never discovered lizard that this creepy petshop owner insisted was a Medusa that had, at one point, looked like a woman and had killed the actor after they’d fallen in love (gross). But his second dream had been worse. It still featured the creepy petshop owner, but this time he’d sold a couple a man eating, asexually reproducing rabbit. Leon had seen some grizzly things in his six years on the force, but nothing compared to watching a fullsized man being devoured by bunnies. And nothing had given him the same sense of dread as realizing that nothing would be able to stop them until they had overrun the entire continent.
On top of that, bodies kept showing up at work. Three Sunday nights in a row had resulted in another death. There was clearly a serial killer on the loose, but Leon hadn’t even been able to figure out what the murder weapon was.
All in all, what Leon needed was a drink. Normally, he headed to McNally’s, the local cop bar. But frankly, he had no desire to see anyone from work. He was sick of fielding questions about this case, especially since he hadn’t been able to come up with very many answers yet. He’d never come to the Double Tap before, though he was sure he’d heard of it somewhere. Maybe Liv had mentioned it at some point.
He sat down at the bar, and glanced over at the guy next to him who was clearly smoking. For a minute, he considered telling him that smoking indoors was illegal. Then he realized just how much he wanted to smoke himself. He pulled his pack out of his pocket, and then turned to the black-haired fellow beside him. “Got a light?” he asked.
“Hm?” The question drew Qrow out of his thoughts and towards the blond man who had taken the seat next to him. Looking at him it became apparent that Qrow wasn’t the only person with a lot on his mind tonight. Then again, who didn’t have a lot weighing them down these days? That was the whole point in coming to places like this. To drink until you forgot what troubled you.
“Yeah,” Qrow placed his cigarette between his lips and produced a cheap black bic lighter from his pocket which he handed to the other man. “Here.”
It was another moment before Smith made his way down the bar to them. “Evenin’,” he greeted the newcomer casually as he slung a bar rag over his shoulder and positioned the ashtray that had been in front of Qrow so that it was now between Qrow and the blond man. “What kin I get fer ye?”
“Thanks,” Leon said, taking the lighter. After a couple of flicks, he managed to light the cigarette. He took a deep inhale and then exhaled through his nose. There was something that was really nice about smoking indoors. It was one of the things Leon missed most now that Chris had moved in with him.
“Yeah,” he said, glancing over at the bartender. “Whiskey, neat.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Make it a double.”
Smith nodded his head. “Aye, then.” He didn’t have any top shelf liquor in his bar, but he did have mid and bottom shelf, which was mostly what his regulars wanted anyway. Or whatever was on tap,which Smith had a fairly good variety, if cheap.
While Smith poured the blond man his drink, Qrow put his lighter away. His attention was momentarily moved from the bar top when he heard the sound of the glass hitting the floor and breaking. The noise was quickly followed by the sound of Smith cursing mildly under his breath.
A few moments later Smith placed a new not-broken glass in front of his new customer with a muttered apology for the spill and that he’d open a tab for him. Then he made his way down the bar to clean off the sleeve of his shirt which was now soaked with alcohol.
Qrow sighed and flicked the ash from his cigarette. “Rough day?” He asked the man next to him. “You could say that,” Leon said, swallowing about half the whiskey in a single gulp. “Work’s been rough and I haven’t been sleeping much.” Which was probably too much information for a total stranger, now that he thought about it. “Just needed a place away from the usual bar to sit and unwind. What about you? Drink here often?”
Qrow raised a brow. The response of having a rough time at work wasn’t unusual, but someone remarking to a random stranger that they weren’t sleeping was a little more personal.
“Sorry to hear that,” Qrow answered because there wasn’t exactly anything he could do about it. He did feel for the guy though. Even when he hadn’t been a part of the network, back when he’d only experienced the oddness of Orange County as a bystander, when he’d just accepted whatever story was spun, it had still affected his life in some way. And in a way, even though the recent bleedovers hadn’t come from his dreams directly, he did feel a little responsible. “It’s been a rough coupla weeks.”
He drained what was in his glass and slid it away to signal Smith that he was ready for another refill. “I come here often enough,” he said next before taking a drag on his cigarette. “When I’m in the mood. No top shelf liquor, but it’s cheap.”
“Who can afford the top shelf shit anyway?” He definitely couldn’t, not on his salary. “That’s only for special occasions or when someone else is buying. This bar seems alright though. Cheap booze and clean glasses. Being able to smoke’s a nice touch too.” He took a drag of his own cigarette. “Even if it’s not entirely legal.” Well, he was off duty anyway. Why should he care?
“Exactly,” Qrow agreed. He flicked the ash from his own cigarette into the ashtray. He looked at the man next to him critically. There had been a time in his life in which he would have been able to spot a cop in plainclothes at 50 yards. These days that talent had rusted over somewhat, but there was something about this guy that was making him a little twitchy.
“It’s not legal at all,” Smith stated before Qrow could question the other man. “But I ‘ave issue with California tellin’ me what I can an’ can’t poison meself with. I can drink until my liver fails but I cannea give myself cancer? What sense is that?” He refilled Qrow’s glass and offered to top off Leon’s as well.
“You’re not afraid of some regulatory body shutting you down?” Qrow asked with a brow raised and a glance towards the man seated next to him that was slightly ringing the cop bell in his head.
“Not really,” Dan shrugged. “Orange County’s got a lot more t’ worry about than my little dive.” “California has no problem with you giving yourself cancer. They just want you to do it outside so you don’t give everyone else cancer,” Leon said, bristling a little. He wasn’t very fond of this particular law himself, but still, his whole job was defending the law. Even if he was clearly flying in the face of it right now.
“But you’ve got that right. There’s enough going on without worrying about some hole-in-the-wall. Goddamn fucking useless-” he reached for his drink, but instead of grabbing it he managed to knock the newly filled glass off the counter, and he finished his thought with “Shit.” He reached for it before it hit the ground, but leaned in just the right way to send his stool toppling after it. He flushed from where he was now seated on the floor. “That was intentional,” he muttered, knowing that no one was going to believe him.
And no one did.
“Ya alright?” Dan called after him, leaning over the bar to see if his customer had somehow managed to seriously injure himself. The look on his face was one of utter shock that somehow the other man had somehow knocked his glass over and catapulted himself off of his stool.
Qrow gave an inward sigh and slid off his stool to help up the man currently sitting on the floor. Sometimes there was no way to really tell when things like this happened if it was his semblance at work or not. He was almost always inclined to think that it was. In order to keep the other man’s pride intact, Qrow didn’t mention the graceless fall. Instead he just righted the barstool. “What were you saying about something being useless?” He prompted.
Leon let Qrow help him up, blushing furiously. “I’m fine,” he said to the bar keep, wiping off his ass. He had, at least, managed to catch the glass before they hit the ground, though he hadn’t been able to save any of the alcohol. “I’ll get another,” he muttered. Normally he’d wonder if he hadn’t had more than enough after a tumble like that, but that had been his first drink of the day, not counting his usual breakfast beer.
He had to force his thoughts back to whatever it was he’d been thinking of before. They’d been talking about the police having their hands too full to bother with a dive like this. “People,” he finished, thinking back to the witnesses he’d been interviewing lately. “If people weren’t so goddamn useless, cops might actually be able to do their job.”
Dan nodded and prepared another drink for the poor man, giving him a new glass. He didn’t mention the fall from the stool again, but he would admit that the fact that the man had managed to grab hold of the glass and keep it from breaking on the floor was greatly appreciated. Sweeping up broken glass was a pain in the ass.
Once the man was on his feet again, Qrow retook his seat, this time leaving a stool between the two of them. “Put it on my tab,” Qrow told the bartender. Then he glanced back towards the other man’s direction a little startled at the declaration.
“So yer a cop,” Dan nodded as he put another whiskey down in front of Leon before leaning against the bar. “Not an easy line o’ work. Ye have to witness the absolute worst humanity has t’ offer on a daily basis. The terrible things we do to each other an’ the things we do t’ ourselves. It can make ye think there’s no goodness left in the world, that maybe there was no goodness in it t’ begin with.”
This was pretty deep for the normally charismatic and upbeat bartender, which drew Qrow’s attention from Leon towards him, now both brows raised curiously.
“Me da was a cop,” Dan explained with a shrug. “He walked the beat fer twenty years.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Leon said, flushing a little. After all, he was the idiot who had fallen out of his stool by reaching for his drink. He was still a little flabbergasted about how he managed to pull that off. At least there wasn’t much chance of this getting back to anyone he knew.
“Detective,” Leon confirmed. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep quiet about you bending the rules.” Or, well, breaking them. Whatever. He pulled another cigarette out of his pack. “But I got my little bro. Kid’s gone through some shit, but he’s still this ray of sunshine. It’s hard to let work get me down when he’s around. My old man was a cop too and he’d always say that mom kept him grounded. Your dad work around here?” Leon wasn’t much of a people person, but at least he had that much.
Detective. That made Qrow twitch a little. Officially he walked the straight and narrow and had for years. Technically the only illegal thing Qrow did these days was trade information in the criminal underworld, which he justified by working for Natasha Romanoff on contract. Still, old habits die hard. When he’d been young – when most of his peers were being taught that police officers were your friends – he was being taught to avoid them as though they had the plague. Everyone in the world was a mark, but cops were your enemy.
Qrow lit up another cigarette and motioned for another drink.
“No,” Dan the Bartender was telling the detective now with a shake of his head. “He walked the beat in Detroit. He died in the line of duty ‘bout five years ago now.” He reached to refill Qrow’s glass. “I’d been a detective in vice fer only ‘bout a year when it happened.”
Qrow frowned slightly. Not only was the guy seated next to him a cop, but the fucking bartender was too. Christ. Was everyone in the bar today a cop?
Qrow reminded himself that he had no reason to be nervy. “Thanks for not squealing on us. Shame to lose the only bar in the county that lets anyone smoke anymore. Does your brother live with you?” Qrow asked the detective next to him.
“Sorry to hear that, man,” he said. His own father had been killed in the line of duty too, though that had been before Leon had even gone to police college. He wondered how a vice detective from Detroit had ended up tending bar in California, but then, being a police officer wasn’t for everyone. Especially not once they’d had a parent die on the force.
“Well, I’ll probably need it once it starts snowing,” Leon grinned cheekily. There was nothing worse than standing outside in the cold smoking. “Yeah, he’s living with me. I’m taking care of him until he’s ready to take care of himself.” Which probably wouldn’t be for another ten years at least, though Leon found he didn’t mind the wait nearly as much as he had thought he would.
Qrow was a little curious how a detective from Detroit ended up tending a seedy bar in southern California and bucking smoking ordinances to boot. Not that it was any of his business. Actually, that Dan Smith was even here worked to Qrow’s benefit, if for nothing else giving him a place to drink where he wasn’t apt to run into any of his students.
“We’re all going to need it once the snow starts,” Qrow agreed. He’d only been on the Network for a few months, but he’d been living in Orange County long enough to have witnessed the bizarre snowfall that had started happening every year. He glanced at the detective seated next to him and wondered a moment if Leon had any idea what was truly happening in the county. Then he shook his head. Not everyone he met had to be a part of the Network...even if it seemed as though that was exactly what was happening.