Who: Revy and Leon What: Revy finds Leon in a bar with Steve the rat. When: Before the Shattered Sight Plot Where: Some divebar Warnings/Status: Language, references to dream!rape Status: Complete when posted
The worst part about the days leading up to payday was the lack of money. It was always those last couple days of trying to stretch every last dollar that involved Leon going to some of the most diviest dive bars out there so he could squeeze out a couple more beers per dollar, drinking the worst fucking excuse for microbrew beer he could imagine. Still, he had managed, somehow, to acquire the taste for it and while it would never be his first choice, at least it was a choice.
And on the bright side, pizza was a little like sex. Even when it was bad it was good. The crust might have tasted like soggy cardboard, and there was probably enough grease in the thing to give an elephant a heart attack, it still tasted fine. He’d bought a large so that he could bring some home to Chris later, and he had just been starting his second piece and seventh beer when the man had come up and asked if he could join Leon for a slice.
He had some of the worst buckteeth Leon had ever seen, and he was pretty sure even braces would never fix them. A large, pointed nose. Ears the size of Dumbo. He was definitely one of the ugliest people Leon had seen in a very long time, and very obviously homeless, but he seemed friendly enough if not a little nervous. It would probably be better if he had a few anyway, since Leon couldn’t imagine Chris eating too much of this particular pizza would be very good or his brother.
Conversation with the stranger was easy though. The man was clever and pretty funny, but shortly after Leon started talking to the guy, he noticed people giving them stares and avoiding their table. Talk about rude. The guy was homeless, not a leper.
“So the dumbass attempts to jump over this fence to get away from me, and caught his foot going over. Slammed face first into the concrete. It was fucking awful; we had to take him to the hospital to get stitches before we could bring him in for questioning,” Leon was telling the man.
Shitty places in this hipster-filled shithole were her only saving grace around these goddamn parts. It’s what she was used to; Revy was never treated to anything classy, she was born and raised in gutter filth, closed off from the garden of roses that was the rest of the world. And she’d been especially fucking cranky from what her dreams dished out - a paralleled history with some of the worst twists (that goddamn bloody pillow nearly gave her a heart attack), raped and beaten too young. Disgust rippled against her skin, that unladylike scowl felt like a more permanent face feature nowadays. Shooting some asshead and getting a pretty penny for it didn’t even fix it, didn’t rid herself of that mesh of dread that pooled in her gut.
She’d been at the bar for awhile. Kept to herself, really - the occasional asshole that though they had a chance to weasel their way into her denim shorts were all scared the fuck away and quick. Revy was in that drunk, hazy phase of the night - and while it usually made her a bit violent, all she felt was apathy. Depression.
Down the hatch went another shot of rum.
“Some guy’s talking to a fucking rat,” said some idiot a couple stools down from her, laughing it up with his friend, both with meth-rotted teeth. “Look at him! What a fucking loser, what kind of shit do you think he shot up with?”
Bleary eyes blinked, and she cleared them more with a rub of her first. Curious, she peered around to where the dipshits were practically pointing at and laughing and -
There it was.
A rat sitting on a plate and Leon just chatting up a fucking storm. Holy. Shit. For a second she almost fell off her chair from stretching out so much to even fucking watch, then gathered the coordination to stand on her feet kinda wobble over, and rudely decided to squish Leon against the wall of the booth as she slid in. “Dude. What the fuck are you doing? Are you high?”
Let her see them pupils, Leon! No one sober would be talking to a goddamn rat.
The man tensed and looked as though he was ready to bolt when someone walked up to the table, and that was all the warning Leon had before Revy sat herself down in next to Leon.
“Uh, no?” Leon answered, turning to look at her. He might not have been sober, but he definitely wasn’t high. “I don’t do drugs, Revy. Cop, remember? Where the fuck did that come from?” He paused. “For that matter, where the fuck did you come from? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a conversation?” He wasn’t entirely sure why he was surprised that Revy was rude enough to interrupt a conversation, since he really shouldn’t have been.
“Sorry about that, man,” he said, turning back to the man.
“Who’s she?” the man asked him, not taking his eyes off of Revy even as he took another bite of the pizza.
“She’s some woman that I know. Manners of a fucking barbarian.” And, well, if he was going to scold her for manners, he might as well introduce the two. “Her name’s Revy. Revy, this is, uh. Shit man, I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Steve,” the man responded, rolling his eyes, and Leon wasn’t entirely sure if he was being sarcastic or just really enjoying that mouthful of pizza.
“Revy, this is Steve.” As if she couldn’t hear the guy herself.
“Being a cop doesn’t automatically excuse you for doing shitty things, jackass,” scowled the barbarian by his definition, and really - she’d liked to retaliate by snatching his pizza (Revy loved the fuck out of some pizza) but, uh, there was the whole...rat situation. “You know you’re in the middle of a conversation with a fucking rodent, right?”
It was kinda cute, actually. Rats were supposed to be smart motherfuckers but they were also riddled with disease in the wild, so who knows what Steve had. Shoulders shrugging, she whipped out her crumpled box of cigarettes and lit one up, and then exhaled smoke ever-so kindly in Leon’s face. “Seriously, the hell is wrong with you? You having a nervous breakdown? Everyone’s talking shit about you.”
“The cops who believe in their job aren’t going to go around breaking the law, obviously.” And Leon did care about his job, sometimes to the point where even his fellow cops thought he took it too seriously.
At her rodent comment he rose his eyebrows. He looked to Steve, who responded with “She’s not wrong, you know,” around the pizza in his mouth, but he didn’t look that nervous anymore. Though Leon remembered how Steve tensing when Revy first showed up. Then he turned back to Revy. “Look, I don’t know what kind of history you and Steve got, but you’d better not try anything.” She had to have history if she was calling him names, right? Maybe he was the guy who got her locked up. He scowled when Revy blew smoke in his face and waved it away (even if he did chain-smoke, secondhand smoke was rarely pleasant) “A guy can’t be nice and share his pizza with someone who needs it without having a nervous breakdown?”
Revy didn’t know whether to be ticked off or actually genuinely concerned for the lack of sanity her friend-but-not-really-friend-yet-sometimes-friend was showing, because what the hell? Golden brown eyes went between Steve, then Leon, then Steve, and then Leon again.
A slow puff of her cigarette, and then a slow exhaled of the smoke, this time away from Leon’s face.
“Leon,” she began, saying his name with a tone that seemed odd for Revy - like she was actually willing to reason with him. “Look at me.” Her fingers grabbed his chin so he’d actually look at her, and then straightened his head so he’d look back at Steve. “He’s a rat. I’m not talking in the bullshit metaphorical sense. He’s got four legs, a long tail, beady little eyes and whiskers, and he’s on your table eating the shit out of your pizza. People are looking at you because you’re literally talking to a fucking animal.”
If that didn’t get her point across, nothing would. But she balanced the cancer stick in her mouth and reached a cautious hand over the table, holding a palm out to Steve so he could sniff her hand and see how he’d react.
Leon had just taken a bite of pizza when Revy had taken his chin in her hand. The touch was so totally unexpected that he didn’t jerk away, though he was ready to roll his eyes and make some sarcastic comment when she was going on about what a rat Steve was. And then he saw it. Steve the Rat, sitting on his pizza tray, nibbling on a piece of pizza, and staring at the two of them.
Leon’s first thought was “oh, that explains why the guy always seemed to have pizza in his mouth and yet we haven’t run out of pizza yet.” And then Leon seemed to realize that it was a rat, eating his pizza, and the pizza he had in his mouth turned to slime. Gross, plague and flea ridden slime. For a homicide detective, Leon had a surprisingly weak stomach, and he spat the pizza out into a napkin, more than a little horrified.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he muttered, first to his mouth, and he watched Steve take a couple of tentative sniffs of Revy’s fingers before going to scurry up her arm.
“Awwwwww,” Revy cooed quietly and, yes, sometimes she could smooth those horrendously rough edges to her and handle something without a scowl or pointed glare, fuckyouverymuch. Better reaction than getting bit, anyway, and she scooped Steve up onto her hands and gave him a look over. “Well, glad you snapped the fuck out of it. You sure you ain’t high? No one slipped anything into your drink, did they?”
All this spoken while Steve the Rat had most of her attention, and she went to tentatively stroke the rodent between his ears, opening her mouth to let a few puffs of smoke out. Multi-tasking at it’s finest. Everyone probably looked at them like they were insane and she’d probably shoot someone in the face if they came over and started shit.
“I’m not fucking high,” Leon snapped, still looking as though he was going to be sick. “Drunk, maybe, but definitely not high.” At least, he didn’t feel high. Leon had never actually been high in his life before, but he had always been under the impression that he’d be able to tell. A couple moments later and the urge to hurl finally passed, and he chugged back the rest of his nearly full beer.
“I like this broad. She doesn’t have cats, does she?” asked Steve the Rat, and Leon jumped so high he banged his thighs on the table, looking over and seeing the man sitting behind Revy, arms draped across her shoulders and chin resting on her shoulder.
“I don’t know if she fucking has-” Leon started, practically yelling, although he cut himself off. Maybe Steve looked like a person, and sounded like a person, but he was definitely a rat and Leon really didn’t need to be talking to rats. If anyone on the force found out about this he had no doubt that he’d be sent for a psyche evaluation (or, at the very least, endless ribbing), though he was beginning to wonder if he didn’t actually need it. Maybe he was high.
“Is this what losing your mind feels like?” he asked, trying very hard to focus on Revy’s face and not the man/rat who was hovering there.
Oh, hell. This fuzzy thing actually wasn’t too bad! “Think it’s gotta do with your creepy petshop dreams?” Or maybe he was losing his mind, the poor bastard. Revy smothered the last of her cigarette until it was nothing but ashes and let Steve just settle on her shoulder. As long as he didn’t bite, piss or shit on her, they were on good terms.
Then Leon got startled and she clapped a hand on his shoulder to help him simmer his sorry ass down. Considering he was the dipstick that sat around having a grand conversation with a damn rodent, they didn’t need anymore attention. “What the fuck does a rat say, anyway? He’s not talking shit about me, is he?” Best respect the shoulder you’re currently on, Steve, she will snap your spine.
Leon glanced at Revy’s hand, almost suspiciously, but didn’t move to brush it away. At least the hand was real, and he that was something that he could appreciate right now. “I can’t talk to animals in my dreams,” Leon said, rolling his eyes (and ignoring Steve’s ever so helpful “You sure about that, bub?”). But D could. What were the chances of Count Freaky rubbing off on him? He couldn’t imagine it was very high, and he hadn’t heard of other people getting other people’s abilities from the dreams. Though he was suddenly reminded of the time he had shown up at D’s pet store, more than a little drunk, and got to hang out on the couch with bunch of incredibly good looking women who had been there even though D had been out. There was no way he had been flirting with fucking pets the entire night, was there?
“Not talking shit, no,” Leon sighed. “He says he likes you, which I guess goes to show you that rats have terrible taste. Was wondering if you have cats.”
“You say this little shit has terrible taste but you’re the one that had a full blown conversation with him, and who you shared your pizza with, dipshit,” she scowled, clearly the epitome of grace and femininity, and she let Leon’s shoulder go to sort of shove him. It wasn’t outright harsh, maybe borderline playful, but still with that undercurrent of go fuck yourself. “And fuck no, I don’t have any cats.”
Revy crossed her arms, leaned against the booth and sighed. She’d need another drink, stat, to keep her buzz on the road it was on. Hazy and pleasant, and she wouldn’t mind passing out shitfaced in a gutter tonight. A hand waved down the bartender, a snap of her fingers and an angry point at their table signified a round of drinks. Now. Before she shot up the bar and had Leon twist his damn panties over it.
“Well, something’s the fuck wrong with you.” Revy watched him from the corner of her eye, cautious. “Unless you lost your shit and suddenly became a rat whisperer.”
“Just because someone can have terrible taste with some things doesn’t mean they have terrible taste with everything else you know,” Leon huffed when he got shoved. He practically scowled at the pizza though. It was cheap pizza, but it wasn’t like Leon was exactly made of money, and he didn’t really want to buy another one. He probably would at some time though.
He wasn’t about to argue with more drinks though. He had just had a conversation with a fucking rat who he could still see, looking as human as Leon or Revy, hanging out. Maybe getting completely hammered hadn’t been his plan earlier, but it had jumped to the top of his priority list.
“No cats, hm? You know, it’s awfully cold living out on the streets.” Steve the Rat started, and Leon very pointedly ignored him. “Scavenging for food.” Leon may have adopted a very slight, very annoyed eyebrow twitch. “So cold and lonely.”
“Do you want a fucking tiny violin to lament your sorrows with?” Leon hissed.
“No, but you could ask the lady if she’d a pet rat,” Steve said, and the little shit was obviously pleased to have gotten a reaction out of Leon.
“You ask her,” Leon snapped, and realized what a stupid thing to say that was even before the amused ‘I’m talking to a complete idiot’ look crossed Steve’s face. “Rat whisperer isn’t really a career I’d look forward to. If they’re all like this fucker I’d probably be much better as an exterminator,” he said to Revy.
“You know Leon, we used to be friends. Remember that time you shared your pizza with me? You’ve really changed, man.”
The bartender already knew Revy’s poison of choice: rum, gold rum, molasses and caramel overtones in flavor. He hadn’t a clue what the fuck Leon wanted but he mimicked her order. Double shots in each glass, he may have passed them a look of both disgust and judgment. In return she saluted him with her middle finger with tentative plans to have his tip be a pile of rat turds.
“And there you go, having another exchange with a rat.” A little brush of her fingertip against Steve’s cute pink little nose. “Going to guess he wants to come home with me? Fuck yeah, I’ll take this thing as a pet. I’ll have to invite you over so you can guys can do the buddy thing and catch up,” Revy sneered, eyes squinting deviously, and she brought her drink up to her mouth for a sip. “The hell are you doing out here anyway? You got a reason to get shitfaced aside from talking to a rodent?”
She came here to angrily simmer about her damn dream events. It was horseshit, all of it, but fuck, at least she got a damn good set of guns as retribution for that emotional nightmare.
Leon didn’t hate rum. It was rarely his first choice of drink, preferring a nice dry whiskey to the overly sweet rum, but he’d drink it when offered without complaint. Alcohol was alcohol, after all, and he
“That’s just what I always wanted, to be buddy-buddy with a rat and an ex-con,” Leon said, a touch of sarcasm in his voice. He wouldn’t say no though, since drinking with Revy really wasn’t the most awful experience he could think of. The rat was pretty obnoxious though, still chatting away while Leon attempted to ignore him, though it occurred to him that Steve the Rat hadn’t been nearly as chatty before Leon had found out he was a rat. The little shit was probably trying to get on his nerves. “You’re right though, he did say he wanted to go home with you.”
At Revy’s question, Leon raised his eyebrows. “Well I’m here because paydays still a couple days away and I can’t afford anywhere else. But I just came for a couple of after work beers and some pizza. I went to the funeral of one of my vics today.” He had just got the young woman’s case a few days ago. Some of the guys on the force thought it was weird when Leon attended the funerals of the vics, but Leon always found it a good place to suss out potential subjects, learn a little more about the vic, and to pay his respects. He never spoke to anyone, usually just hanging around quietly in the back, but it was a custom of his that he’d picked up from his very first case as a detective, and one that he had followed through with almost religiously until the vampire murders in May when he actually just couldn’t find the time to go to all of them. “What about you? Any reason for coming here, or did you just come for the five-star service?”
“You’re coming home with me, loser,” she told Steve, and even though all she saw was a furry little rodent that needed a bath, she raised her glass to him before downing its liquid contents. Revy needed to keep the buzz going, needed to step over the line of ‘drunk’ and go numb.
At first she thought she’d rather do it alone, but Leon’s company was...eh. It was alright. “And...dream shit. Lots of shit.” Fingers went to flip back her bangs, and then she outright undid her ponytail and let that dark hair flow loose. Shiny, soft, probably one of her more girly qualities. “Ever woke up feeling sick to your stomach, and gross, and no matter how much you fucking scrub in the shower it still doesn’t make you feel clean?”
Hah! Probably not, what the fuck did he know, unless he was bent over and spread eagle? Revy snorted and shook her head, and waved the asshole bartender down again. Keep the service coming, fuckbag.
“Match made in Heaven,” Leon said. “Or hell,” he amended after a moment. Both Steve and Revy annoyed the fuck out of them, and he certainly wasn’t fond of either of them, but, well, they seemed like they’d be good together and he felt something that could be described as ‘pleased’ that he had managed to fit them together. He vaguely wondered if D ever felt the same way when he made a good pairing (excluding the ones that resulted in people’s deaths).
He frowned at her question, because he’d heard similar questions from women in the last eight years of being a cop, and it never meant anything good. He was actually a little pissed off - more than a little, if he was honest - on Revy’s behalf, but it wasn’t like he could do much to help if it really was dream stuff. It wasn’t like he could walk into her head and arrest whatever fuckwit it was for her. “Nothing like that, no. I understand dream feelings carrying over though.” The most emotional thing he had to deal with in his Dreams so far was Chris coming to stay with him and getting to talk to his deceased mother in a dream that also felt real within his Dream (he’d been shot once or twice too, but that was something that he had expected when he signed up for being a cop, and if he spent too much time dwelling on it it was only going to sour his attitude toward his job), but he spent an awful lot of time thinking about a man he had never met before. “Next couple rounds are on me.”
Ever the chain smoker, she was in the middle of lighting up another one before Leon decided to fucking sass her - so she flicked ashes in his direction, scowling. “One day my fist is gonna be jammed down so far you throat you’ll finally shut up,” Revy scoffed, but she didn’t say it with as much conviction as she usually did. More exhaustion than anything, but it could be the effect of liquor buzzing through her veins like a depressant. Those golden brown eyes of hers looked tired, though. Aged. One thing to see too much shit here, another was to see it there - a more fucked up childhood unfolding right before her eyes and she couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop the dirty cops coming at her, couldn’t stop the fact that she lost it and shot her own father in the face, the bloody pillow that had carried over as evidence.
“I can buy my own drinks, Orcot,” she retorted, exasperated, and then sighed out an impressive cloud of smoke before surrendering. “But, yeah, fine. I’ll be cheap so there’s no hole in your pocket before payday.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Leon said, scowling as he brushed the ashes off his shirt, though his tone was almost playful. (“I wouldn’t mind seeing that myself,” Steve commented, though Leon ignored him) With Revy lighting up her second smoke since she sat down, Leon figured he might as well join her. Management didn’t really seem to give a shit, and it sure as hell beat actually going outside, so he pulled out his pack of smokes and lit his own.
“Leon,” Leon corrected her. There were a couple of the guys on the force who called him Orcot, but for the most part everyone called him Leon and he prefered it that way. Orcot was his father. And then, a little awkwardly because he really wasn’t exactly sure what kind of relationship he and Revy had (he definitely didn’t like her, but he didn’t dislike her either and he enjoyed her company more than he did most people), he asked “Did you wanna talk about it?”
Obviously Revy knew his name but she’d been aiming for something impersonal. He was a cop, she an ex-con, the two drinking at a bar (with a rat chilling on her shoulder) didn’t seem like the most likely scenario, but it was tonight. Passing him a cautious stare, she really didn’t know if she even wanted to talk about it - and should she?
Technically it wasn’t her childhood. Not here. Similar, sure, but not as fucked up.
“Dreams started kinda the same way they did in this life. Chinatown still was a rancid hellhole and pops still drank a fuckton, but…” Revy’s nose crinkled, and it coulda been from the wisps of smoke in the air. “It was the 1970s or something, and I was outside, actually buying - not stealing - a bag of donuts when some cops decided fuck with me. Took me in an alley, beat me the fuck up, ripped my clothes off…” Well, she didn’t think she needed to elaborate on the rest. “Then after they were done with me they spit on me and took my food. Went home, bleeding all over the place, and the first thing pops asks me is to get him a beer. We had a gun in the house. And I shot him in the face.”
That part was probably what shook her up the most. Her first murder being her own father, and Revy wanted to argue that he deserved it, but -
All she could see were those feathers floating, covered in blood. It was fuckin’ weird.
“Then life went downhill and I ended up becoming a modern pirate, so, whatever.”
Leon was a little surprised at the amount of anger he felt listening to Revy’s dreams. There was the anger that he usually felt whenever he heard news articles about cops being worse than the people they arrested. It always set his teeth on edge, because he just couldn’t understand in his gut why anyone would choose to get into a profession that was built to protect people when all they wanted to do was spit in their face. He understood, logically, that being an officer gave someone a little more power than the average joe, a little more leeway in the eyes of law, but it rattled his chain that those people existed. There were douchebags even in Irvine who rankled him - it was those kinds of bastards that had made Sharon quit the force in the first place - but he more or less got along with them because you had to have your fellow officers backs - he’d have their backs if they ever got into a messy position and he’d hoped they’d have his - but if he ever found out they did anything like that, he wouldn’t rest until he kicked their asses and threw them behind bars, locked away with all the pissed off inmates they had put away.
But there was something else too. Something about picturing Revy sitting there and taking it instead of being the lippy bitch who’d just threatened to ram her fist down his throat. It wasn’t her - no more than Leon was a mullet-sporting, crop-top wearing cop in the nineties, at least - and so he wouldn’t make any comment other than raising his eyebrows slightly when she said she killed her father, but it still pissed him off that that had happened to dream her enough that he was white-knuckling the glass of rum as he knocked it back.
“Shit Rev, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice sympathetic, with an undercurrent of tightly reined rage. “These dreams can be so fucked up. No one deserves that shit.”
Her knee knocked against his with a scoff, shaking her head. “Don’t,” she grumbled, and nursed their next round with a sip. Up until thought ‘fuck it’ and knocked it back too. It didn’t even burn all the way down, not the way she was expecting - instead she got what she wanted, that numbing feeling that did away with those nerves set ablaze. “Don’t want a pity party, Leon.” No nickname, not even referencing his last name. Progress. Sort of.
Here she thought she was a bit damaged, sure - her father had been physically abusive, but she hadn’t gotten the nads to kill him. Though there was also the fact that she hadn’t endured a brutal rape and beating at a young age that drove her over the edge, and somewhere out there, still probably in the shithole apartment they lived in all the way in New York, Mr. Lee was contributing to his grotesque as fuck beer belly by pounding them away, bottle by bottle, can by can.
He hadn’t even tried to visit her in prison but hey, that was obviously asking for way too fucking much.
“Look,” she drawled, elbows propped against the table. “We can agree that this shit is all shades of fucked up and leave it at that. But dude, can we just fucking drink until our faces fall off? Let’s make bets on who passes the fuck out first, got it?”
“No pity party here,” Leon said, holding up his hands in a ‘swear to God’ kind of way. “That sort of shit just pisses me off. Part of the reason I became a cop in the first place.” He wasn’t an idiot, he knew the general perception of cops even among law abiding citizens. He was a little rough around the edges, and had roughed up a couple of perps maybe a little more than was strictly necessary (nothing that could be considered police brutality, but he wasn’t gentle), but he didn’t want people thinking he was the same as… well, the kind of cops Revy apparently dreamed about.
It wasn’t pity, but he couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to dream of killing your own parent, even if they deserved to lick scum off the bottom of a lake. His parents had been good to him, his mother always kind, loving and gentle, and while his father had been angry and incredibly strict, he had been a good father.
“Drinking you under the table is something I absolutely can do.” He grinned at her. “I’d feel bad for taking your money though.”
Look at him, trying to be a beacon that all cops could look up to. Revy could dig it if he wasn’t so pretentious about it sometimes but whatever, he could be worse. A lot worse. She’d met good ones and bad ones all through the years and there were nothing special about ‘em - just people. Regular people with all sorts of intentions and agendas, just like the rest of the world, except with a damn bit more power.
That’s what tipped the scales for a lot of them.
“Dream the fuck on, asshole.” A wolfish grin broke across her face and there it was - the fired up conviction, that rough sass, ignited again. Because sure, she probably needed to tell someone about all the shit she was dreaming but she also didn’t want a fucking pity party or to be babied. Wasn’t her style, and she knew in the dreams that no one knew about it. It’d eaten that version of her inside out, left her hollow and raw and angry, and the Revy that she dreamed of being there was…
Well, more of a psychotic bitch than she was here and that was saying a lot.
“Hey! Fuckwad!” A wave to the bartender who looked fed up with them now. “Your cheapest drinks! Like, give us...I dunno, six?” Three each? Revy glanced at Leon briefly, and then back. “Yeah, six. HURRY UP.”