Liv Moore is an alabaster badass (livmoore) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-01-16 18:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, dan smith, olivia moore |
Who: Dan and Liv
What: Liv learns what Dan really does
When: Recent
Where: Beach picnic
Rating/Warnings: Fairly low. Talk of murder.
Status: Complete!
Dates.
Dan and Liv had been going on quite a few of those now that they were back to no sex. It helped keep them distracted. At least it helped keep Liv distracted. Tonight was a sunset picnic on the beach, Liv had planned it. Somehow she had gotten Dan to agree. She had prepared the food. Spicy chicken sandwiches, well chicken for Dan, hers was a mix of chicken and brains. spicy pasta salad, and spicy marinated tomatoes, with some chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Mostly for Dan. They weren’t spicy enough for her. Despite the fact that it took some convincing it was still one of the romantic dates of her life.
However, as stuck on romance as Liv seemed to be lately, she wasn’t blind to reality. She knew there were some things Dan was keeping from her. Like what exactly he did when he wasn’t bartending. How he knew just what to do when she had murdered that man. If they were going to make this work, she needed to get to know the real Dan.
“Alright,” Liv said setting her sandwich down and taking a deep breath to give herself the confidence boost she needed. “Can you tell me what you really do when you’re not bartending? I know you’re not a PI.” The lie he told her when he showed up at her morgue that first time. Along with the lie about his name. But Liv was past that now, she just wanted more answers about the man she loved.
The last time Dan had been on anything that could have been considered a date he’d been in high school. Even then, the type of crowd he ran with (a bunch of hooligans, according to his father) and the type of girls that crowd attracted, these “dates” mostly consisted of underaged drinking and necking in the back seat of a car, or in a park after dark. As an adult and a respected member of the Detroit Police Department, he’d met a few women for dinner here and there, but nothing serious ever came of those meetings. And after that? Well, making a living as a gun for hire (among other things) didn’t exactly lend itself to anything other than one night stands – Dan’s current Vegas marriage notwithstanding.
So a romantic sunset dinner on the beach? Before Liv, Dan had never even considered it as an option. But here they were. And actually? It wasn’t bad. Well, that is until Liv casually put her sandwich down and asked him about what he did for a living. Right out of the blue making Dan choke a moment on his own sandwich.
He recovered quickly enough, though. He looked at her carefully trying to gauge if she really wanted to know, or if she was asking because she felt she had to. It was obvious by the way she was looking at him that she really did want to know.
Dan was quiet a moment as he considered what to say. Ultimately he decided that she had shared a big secret with him, he may as well share one of his own. Besides, it’d have been a dick move to keep his other life private from her if they were going to try to make their relationship work.
He set down his own sandwich and reached for his glass. He’d sort of (but not really) told her the night she patched him up in her morgue. He was not entirely sure what, aside from killing someone, Liv actually remembered of that night, however. In fact, Dan wouldn’t have been surprised if that was the event that dominated her memory. “My da was a beat cop for the Detroit PD,” he started. “He walked the beat for 25 years. He was a good man and a good cop. The people in our neighborhood and the neighborhood he walked liked him. Admired him. All he wanted to do was help people and keep them safe. Then one evenin’ he was mowed down by a punk in his daddy’s car.
“I’d been a detective for the vice department just under a year when it happened,” Dan continued. “Everyone knew who did it. There’d been a witness. A shop owner had seen the whole thing. Even gave the officer on the scene the plate number. The car belonged to a crime boss in Chicago. It was his son who had run me da down. And that is where things started to go wrong. The entire investigation stopped there. That shop owner who saw what happened? He suddenly claimed he hadn’t seen anything. Then a week later, he closed up shop and disappeared. The license plate information ‘disappeared’ too. Ye see, there are bad cops in every department, Liv. Donnea matter where. They’re there. I pushed fer justice fer me da, but I was stonewalled. I was told to leave it. I was told to let it go. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I knew what was good fer me, I’d mind me own business.
“But I couldn’t.” Dan sighed. “Finally the Chief o’ D’s himself pulled me in his office and told me ‘Smith, yer under a lot o’ pressure here. We all understand. Yer father, he was a good man. We’re all sorry for what happened. But it’s affecting you. Affecting your work. Why don’t ye take some time off. Git yer head on straight.”
Dan leaned back on his hands and looked out towards the incoming waves. “He was pleasant enough about it, but what really happened was I was put on suspension. Made to turn in me badge and gun and everything. That’s when I knew if I wanted justice for my father, I’d have to get it on my own.” He looked back at Liv. “So I did.” His voice took on a somewhat darker quality. “I drowned that son of a bitch in his father’s pool.”
Liv knew there was a reason Dan hadn’t told her what he did. Part of her had a feeling it was because she wouldn’t like it. Maybe that was why she had taken so long to ask. But if they were going to make this work she needed to know. He couldn’t just keep part of his life secret from her.
She furrowed her brow when he began his explanation. She wasn’t sure what his dad had to do with what he did. Liv knew he died a long time ago. Still this was Dan’s story to tell. She would let him tell her however he wanted to. Needed to. As long as he got to the part where he told her what he actually did.
Her eyes remained on him the whole time he explained, lips turning down into a frown as he described the investigation, or rather lack there of. It wasn’t right. His father deserved justice.
However, Liv wasn’t entirely sure about Dan taking justice into his own hands. That seemed like crossing the line to her. But then she hadn’t exactly dealt with corrupt cops. Well except for in her dreams and even he did the right thing in the end.
She wasn’t sure how to respond to what Dan did to the man. As much as the guy that got away with killing Dan’s father deserved it, was killing really the answer?
“I’m sorry,” Liv finally said, her voice soft.
“Ye needn’t be sorry,” Dan answered with a small shrug. “And ye needn’t be worried about whether or not ye agree with what I did.” His attention was back out over the ocean, again watching the waves as they crashed on the beach. “If it were me hearing a story like that, I wouldn’t have agreed with what I did. At least...the man I was wouldnnea.” He glanced back at her with a small brief smile, “though, the sympathy is appreciated.”
Dan shifted his position on the blanket, drawing his stretched out legs up and folding them so he could rest his arms on them as he continued. “The man I am now, though, is different than the man I used to be. When I was a cop I had utter faith in the system. People did bad things, I used evidence to track down those people. Once they were found they stood trial. If found guilty they went to jail. It’s not a perfect system, even back then I knew that, but I had faith in it. It kept me world in order. The problem is the system has to be able to withstand corruption. And sadly, it doesn’t. The man I am now understands that. The man I am now bucks the system every chance he gets.
“Murdering the mob boss’s son was supposed to be the end of it,” Dan sighed. “Problem was I didnnea know what I was supposed to do once it was done. Revenge has this real nasty way of eatin’ at you and eatin’ at you until you satisfy it. And I can’t lie, I was satisfied. But all that eating away at your insides leaves a vacancy that’s really, really hard to fill. For me, I’d ended my life in Detroit. There wasn’t anything left there for me to go back to. I certainly could never be a cop again. I couldn’t stay in Chicago either. For a while I just kinda wandered around and kept me head down. Then...this…job fell into me lap. Similar situation, only the person who was looking for justice couldn’t bring themselves to pull the trigger. I’d already done it once and I’d done a damn good job. So I took this on as well. After that another job came along an’ then another an’ another. Finally after a coupla years, it just became what I did.”
Dan shifted his position again, this time so that he could look Liv straight on. “Ye wanted to know what it is I do when I not be tendin’ bar. The answer, in short, is that I do bad things. Not all o’ it is murder. Fact is, very little of it involves actually havin’ to kill someone. Most of the time I’m bribin’ someone or extortin’ them. I spy. I sabotage. I steal. I lie. I’m what is referred to in the criminal underworld as a ‘handyman’.
“Not all of it is even as bad as that,” he went on with a slight movement of his hand, “the day ye caught me in yer morgue? The real reason I was there was because the widow o’ that poor guy didnnea want her husband to be buried without his wedding band. The asshole cheated on her pretty much every day from the moment they were married, but she wanted the last laugh. That laugh bein’, o’ course, her late husband bein’ put to eternal rest eternally married to her.”
Liv listened intently as Dan went on, a mix of emotions washing over her. For one, she was part of the system that Dan no longer believed in. The one that he bucked every chance he got. Yes, Liv knew it didn’t always work, but was that really a reason to take things into your own hands? As Dan went on it didn’t sound like that was all he was doing either. Sure it may have started out that way, but continuing to murder others, sabotaging people, stealing, lying, extorting. But most importantly murdering. Was it even about justice anymore? Or was it about the money? Because if it was about justice still how did Dan know his clients were in the right? How did he know they weren’t lying? That the other person deserved to be killed? Not that anyone deserved to be killed. No matter what they did. Although Liv could understand why Dan killed the man that killed his father, it didn’t mean she believed it was the right thing to do.
Yes, the story about the way they met, the job he was hired for wasn’t so bad. But still Liv couldn’t bring herself to get past the murder. She looked away from Dan, focussing on the waves as she tried to process everything he just told her. “So you kill people, for money,” Liv said eyes watching as the waves crashed on the shore. “Is it only bad guys? Or is it just whoever pays you?”
Dan would have liked to have told her that he only went after the bad guys and that he was a vigilante, much like she was. But it would have been a lie. He shook his head. “Nah, darlin’. I don’t. I take whatever job pays, so long as it doesn’t involve kids or pregnant women. Sounds like I’m in it fer the money, but that’s not really true either. It’s that hole I mentioned before. That aching hole revenge leaves behind. It’s all I know now.”
The way she was looking at him, all those emotions playing across her features, Dan knew his story changed everything. What did she think of him now? Could she still love him knowing who and what he was? He hoped that she would, but he certainly wouldn’t have blamed her if she found that she couldn’t.
Liv didn’t know how she felt about everything Dan was telling her. She still loved him, she knew that much. But he killed people for a living, among other criminal things. How was she supposed to take that? How could she accept that when it went against everything she believed in? Would the hole that revenge left behind ever be filled? Would Dan ever be able to stop? There were so many questions. Liv didn’t even know where to start.
She chose not to ask those questions right now. She couldn’t. She wasn’t ready to hear the answers. Because if Dan went on living this way she wasn’t sure she could stay with him. Which might just be for the best given they could never be truly intimate again. But she wasn’t ready to let go of that hope just yet.
Instead Liv focused on the history Dan had told her. About his life before, what happened to his dad and the man that killed him. “Wait,” Liv said eyes falling back on him. “What happened to the dad of the guy you killed? Wouldn’t he want revenge too? Especially if he was a mob boss.”
That was the other thing about revenge: the end of one vendetta was normally the rise of another. Dan nodded. “Aye, he did. That man that attacked us after dinner was in his employ. And before that, another man had been sent to kill me. He almost succeeded.” He patted the bullet scar on his abdomen under his shirt. “I knew it was an eventuality. One o’ the reasons I kept moving before. But then I got to Orange County and this place, it kind of just sucks you in.” He did not mention that he believed his marriage to Carolina, or rather the background check run due to Carolina’s clearance, that had given Victor Montoya a heads up about where he was.
He shifted his position again. If Liv didn’t like what he did for a living she really wouldn’t like this. “I didn’t want you to be put in the same position you were in the night we were attacked. A few weeks later I went to Chicago and confronted Montoya.” He took a breath. “And I killed him.”
Liv knew exactly what Dan was referring to when he patted his shirt. She had seen the wound, many times. The thought that he could have succeeded made Liv’s heart sink. She couldn’t imagine her life without Dan. It was that thought, that realization that settled it. If Dan could accept her for what she was, she could accept his past. Hopefully it would be his past.
But then he was admitting to what he did to the mob boss. Dan killed him. Because of Liv. Because she had killed his minion or whatever you wanted to call the guy. It was her fault not one, but two people were dead. Even if it was oddly romantic that Dan wanted to protect her.
Ugh, did she really have to find everything romantic.
“You can’t do that,” Liv replied shifting her position so she was completely facing him. Waves forgotten. “You can’t kill people to protect me.” He shouldn’t be killing people at all. “I can take care of myself.”
“Aye, darlin’, I know you can,” Dan said with another brief smile. “It just wasn’t to protect you. I knew Montoya wouldn’t stop chasin’ me until one of us was dead. I didnnea want to run anymore. For the first time since me da died, I’d found a place I could call home, with friends, people I love. I wasn’t about to just pack everythin’ up and take off again. So I went to him and ended it.”
Could Liv understand that? In a way Dan wasn’t sure if he really wanted her to. Understanding meant she was deeper in the world of revenge, organized crime and murder than he would ever want her to be. She still had faith in the system. Everyone needed to have faith in something. Dan knew all too well what it was to have that ripped from you and left with nothing but a hollow queasy emptiness. He did not want that for anyone, especially for Liv.
“And now that it’s done?” Liv asked. There was no way she would ever condone murder. No matter the circumstances. But she truly loved Dan. Although she wouldn’t fault him for his past she knew she couldn’t be with someone whose job is was to kill. She solved murders. Got justice for the victims. It didn’t matter what kind of person they were. Everyone deserved justice. “Are you still going to kill?”
Would Dan be able to give it up? Liv wasn’t about ultimatums. He could do as he pleased. But if he couldn’t give it up. Well she was going to have her own choice to make.
This had been the decision Dan had been wrestling with for a few months now and a decision he had been putting off. He’d said once that he could never “retire”, that this was the only thing he knew. That was before Liv. Problem was that he still believed that to be true. Part of him did anyway. The other part? Well, it didn’t have any blessed idea if he could do anything else. There was his bar. He could possibly survive off of that. Maybe not as comfortably. If you wanted to call the way he lived “comfortable.” But would he miss it? Would that hole just continue to grow without anything to fill it with -- even temporarily -- until it swallowed him up?
Both parts loved Liv. Both parts wanted to be better for her. Whatever that may have meant. Dan’s decision was made. “No, darlin’,” he shook his head. “I’m done.”
And just like that, Dan Smith -- The Hellion -- was retired.
He was done. Thank goodness. Liv didn’t have to think about what she would do if he continued to murder. He wasn’t going to do it anymore and she trusted him. While Liv had some pretty strong morals, she knew the world wasn’t black and white. Everything that happened in Dan’s past, it made him who he was today. And Liv loved that man. He hadn’t turned his back on her when he found out what she was. She wasn’t going to turn her back on him now. He was done, and Liv could live with that.
“Okay,” she replied finally returning his smile. “I love you,” she added. Because well he might just need to hear it, need to know she still did, even after everything she just learned.