Leon Orcot (under_arrest) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-03-10 13:41:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, leon orcot, stefan salvatore |
Who: Stefan and Leon
When: Early February
Where: Bar
What: Random Encounter
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete
The Dreams had changed. It was the same fuckery, but a different version now… which was better than the drowning all night every night locked in a fucking safe at the bottom of a fucking lake. Stefan was celebrating. Sort of. He was in the bar, bottle in front of him, slowly plowing his way through it. The pale man was disinterested in the people around him, and had ignored two women who’d sidled up next to him and offered to let him buy them a drink. This was surely a sign of a deranged lunatic. Right?
Being back at work wasn't as great as Leon had thought it would be. For one, he couldn't walk without the help of his crutches, which meant he was stuck on desk duty. For another, it hurt to move sometimes, and he was also trying to cover that little fact up so he didn't get sent home, which made him far more irritable than normal. With a few exceptions, most people at work had been giving him wide berth lest he (verbally) ripped someone's head off. Which meant an after work pint or ten was definitely in his near future.
“If he won't, I’d be happy to buy you ladies a drink,” Leon said, sidling up to the bar (or attempting to, at least. It was really more of a lurch). The girls took a quick look at Leon - long blond hair, a fresh scar, shiny and red, along his hairline above his left eye, arms covered in white bandages and the hint of yet more bandages peaking out from under his shirt collar, and balancing on a pair of crutches - before they very quickly vacated their seats with some hurried excuse.
Leon looked after them and sighed heavily, before he slipped into the now vacated seat, glad to be off his feet. He signaled to the bartender to bring him a beer, and then turned to the man sitting next to him. “So much for the sympathy date, eh?”
It was very much a good thing that Leon’s bandages weren’t seeping with blood. Stefan wasn’t sure he could handle something like that today--as it was, the smell was pretty fresh. Thankfully, Stefan was most of the way through his bottle, and was intoxicated enough that he wasn’t going to lose control. He was pretty sturdy and steadfast at the moment, even with the alcohol loosening him up just slightly.
“Too bad,” Stefan said, turning his eyes to the man on the crutches, then following after the girls who were retreating to the other side of the bar. “I thought surely you had it in the bag.”
“Right?” Leon said, once again turning behind them to see if he could see them in the crowd. It looked like they had moved over to some other handsome guy, and Leon scowled. “I thought chicks were supposed to dig scars.” Not that his wounds were scars yet, but scars had to start somewhere.
His beer in front of him, Leon took a long swig. “What brings you here? Waiting for someone?”
“Drinking away my sorrows.” Stefan replied in a playfully dramatic way. He lifted the glass, swirled the amber liquid around in it for a moment, then pulled it up for another sip. “Like so many others in a dive like this one.” The place wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t exactly a high quality establishment either.
“Looking for that pity date, are you?” Stefan added, finally turning to glance over at the other.
“Why, you offering?” Leon asked, grinning. After a moment, he added, “not really. Here for the same reason as you, I guess. Heard there’s a great pity party here.” Being mauled by his dreams, for decisions he technically had no say in making, seemed like as good a reason as any for getting shitfaced.
“There seem to be a lot of pity parties going around in Orange County,” Stefan commented, turning to glance at the man beside him at the bar. He’d been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t given much thought to what the other man might be going through. Was this even a Dreamer? Or was he just a guy down on his luck? “You seem a bit banged up. Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Leon said, waving his hand as if it was totally normal to be covered in bandages and walking with a cane. “Animal attack,” he added vaguely. It was technically true, even if the animals had been like none he’d ever seen before and it had happened in his sleep. “Got some time off work, and figured it would pass faster if I was drunk. What about you? Broken heart?” That seemed to be the main reason why people tended to drink alone at the bar. Leon had done it himself multiple times.
Animal attack meant something completely different to Stefan than it probably meant to almost anyone else. Animal attack meant Vampire attack, but Stefan was fairly confident that this had nothing to do with vampires. At least, he certainly hoped so.
“It probably would.” Stefan nodded, then lifted his pint to take a sip. “I wish I could say it was,” he added. That would be a lot easier than dealing with stupid Dreams. “Would you believe me if I said it’s lack of sleep?”
Leon eyed the guy for a moment, trying to take stock of him. Lack of sleep could mean anything. Leon wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept even before he started dreaming - being a cop wasn’t exactly conducive to a good sleep schedule. But, of course, now anytime anyone said something about it, Leon’s thoughts jumped immediately to ‘Dreamer.’
“I would,” Leon said carefully. “I get my fair share of bad dreams myself,” he said. Slight emphasis on the word ‘dreams’ that probably wouldn’t be picked up by anyone who wasn’t listening for it.
Stefan nodded. In just a few words, the pair had communicated something really interesting. They were both Dreamers. There was a certain level of trust that came automatically from being a part of that somewhat exclusive club.
“I spent the last month drowning, reviving, and drowning again locked in a safe at the bottom of a lake.” Technically it was a ravine? But whatever. The point should come across; his dreams were piss.
“Shit,” Leon breathed, leaning back in his chair a little bit. “Just the same dream every night? That’s bullshit.” For the most part, Leon’s dreams really weren’t so bad. He certainly never had to do anything traumatizing like drown every night for a month.
Stefan paused for a moment, staring at his glass. “...I’m not sure it was the same dream every night.” It was strange to admit it. He’d talked a little bit about his Dreams, and the drowning, but not a whole lot. Somehow talking about it made it feel more real. “It felt like months worth. I spent a good portion of the time hallucinating, dreaming up things within my Dream, having conversations with people who weren’t there in the mere moments I had before my body would drown again.” He could feel the pressure in his chest just talking about it.
Leon leaned back on his bar stool, though not far enough that he felt unstable on it even with all his injuries. “So in your dreams, you kept drowning and coming back to life?” he asked, frowning. He eyed Stefan, a hint of suspicion in his eyes. But his gut didn’t say Stefan was someone he should be worried about. “Are you… human? In your dreams?”
Stefan shook his head, staring down into his glass. He was worried any moment he might start coughing up water, so his breathing came slow and labored. Lifting his glass he considered his next words carefully. “I was human. Civil War era.” He said, and lowered his glass after a sip. “What about you?”
Leon’s frown deepened at the ‘was.’ “Definitely human,” Leon said. In fact, for the majority of his dreams, Leon had been convinced that the supernatural didn’t exist in his dreams. He knew better now. “In LA in the 90s. Civil War though, huh? Where abouts?”
“Virginia.” Stefan replied. “My father shot me in the chest when I had vampire blood in my system, so I was turned into one. My brother went, too. We were in love with the same woman, a woman who turned us both into vampires.” He paused for a moment, then turned to glance at the other man. “Don’t worry, though. I spent most of my vampire life in the Dreams as a vegetarian.”
It was a good thing that Stefan had added the last, because at the mention of being a vampire, Leon tensed, prepared to fight. He still remembered the vampire attack that had struck the OC last year, and the culprits hadn’t been arrested.
“That’s… a helluva way to go,” Leon said, still wary and tense, but at least he wasn’t reaching for his gun. He couldn’t imagine getting shot by his own father. Sure, he and his father had had their differences, but that just because his father was strict and Leon had been a teenager when he’d been killed. “So what, you’re like Bunnicula?”
Stefan chuckled. “No. Not like Bunnicula. More like…” He cringed at the comparison… but it was something that most people were familiar with. “More like those Twilight vampires? Louis and Lestat? Living off the blood of animals.”
Leon had never been very interested in Interview with a Vampire and even less interested in the sparkly vampires that appeared in Twilight, but living off the blood of animals… that he could at least sort of understand. Assuming Stefan was telling the truth, at least. Leon didn’t get the impression that he was lying to him at all though.
“Well, I guess that’s alright,” he said after a moment, mulling over everything in his head. “So long as you’re not actually hurting people, I guess. You’re able to find lots of game around here?”
This guy must have been through a lot. Stefan hadn’t confessed that his vampirism bled over from the Dreams into this world, yet the guy jumped to that conclusion. Astute of him, Stefan thought, but also very telling. So many people in Orange County had been through so many insane things that something like vampirism bleeding through from dreams had become the norm.
“Not currently hurting people, no.” Stefan still couldn’t get over the guilt he felt every time he saw the scar on Anna’s neck. “Mostly I head up into the foothills.”
The ‘currently’ in the sentence gave Leon pause. He knew he had to cut some breaks here and there because of the nature of the county, and he’d even loosened up a little in his ‘by the book’ lifestyle. Hell, he’d even managed to make a complaint against Revy and Henry ‘disappear,’ which still made him feel a little dirty even if he did think it was the right thing to do. But seeing the scores of bodies during the vampire attack all those months ago wasn’t something he could let slide.
“Yeah?” he asked. “My old man used to take hunting up there when I was a kid,” Leon said. It was a lie, but Stefan didn’t need to know that. “How long have you been hunting there?”
Stefan could tell the other man was fishing. He didn’t mind it--Stefan didn’t have many secrets to hide. Besides, a quick Valarnet search would tell this guy everything he seemed to want to know, anyway. With a gentle shrug of his shoulders, Stefan replied, “it’s been a few months. Almost since my honorable discharge.”
“Oh, you served?” Leon asked, looking surprised. Part of him almost started to warm toward the other guy at the bar and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Leon had spent the last several months firmly convinced that all vampires were blood-sucking murderers, that would have done a lot toward putting him in Leon’s good books. “I can’t say I’ve ever thought about vampires in the military before.”
“I Dreamed about my life in Mystic Falls after I returned to Orange County from my service.” Stefan explained. There was something about the other guy that he thought he could befriend. But so far their interaction was very tentative, very guarded. It was obvious to Stefan that this other guy didn’t much care for vampires. “Woke up as a vampire after that.”
“After May then?” He asked. The vampire attacks had taken place then, but if Stefan hadn’t even turned by then, then there was probably no way that he had been responsible.
Stefan nodded. “After May. October first, to be exact.” It was the day that he moved in with Anna, Lexi and Caroline. The day he attacked Anna in the morning, but, thankfully, she was on vervain. He hadn’t tasted human blood since.
There was a chance that Stefan was lying. Leon wasn’t an idiot, and he’d look into the matter with a little more depth later. But if a cop couldn’t trust his gut, what could he trust? Leon didn’t get the feeling that Stefan was lying, so he relaxed a little, and even gave a bit of a smile. “Well, you keep eating animals, and I don’t think you and me are going to have much of a problem, Stefan,” Leon said, and lifted his glass for a friendly cheeers.
“Can do, pal.” Stefan lifted his own glass in a cheers, and gulped from it. Hopefully this was one less cop he’d have to worry about putting a bullet in him.