Leon Orcot (under_arrest) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-08 13:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, leon orcot, logan echolls |
Who: Leon Orcot and Logan Echolls
What: Leon has a serious discussion with Logan about his future with the Irvine Police Department
Where: Leon's apartment
When: End of August
Rating/Warning: Low. Language, talk about breaking the law
Status: Complete!
Leon hadn’t been quite himself since he’d come home from New York. He knew it, and given how the Captain had chewed him out for slacking off that morning, his boss knew it. Hell, probably the whole precinct knew it by now. If they didn’t know that he was missing obvious evidence, screwing up his paperwork, and straight up skipping out in the middle of his shift as he had when he discovered Liv in the morgue snacking on brains, they certainly knew that he’d been screamed at for forty-five minutes when he got to work, even if it was difficult to make out any actual words through the Captain’s office door.
Which meant drinks and cards with Logan after his shift was a welcome relief. No poker today, but cribbage, which was kind of a nice change. Especially since math actually took some concentration, albeit not much, and it was giving him a chance to avoid the topic of work, which he knew was likely to come up sooner or later. If Logan didn’t bring it up, well, there was probably a good chance Leon would in a few drinks. “So, how’s things with Veronica been?” Leon asked conversationally. “Planning a break-up soon?” He grinned teasingly. He knew that Logan and Veronica weren’t on-again-off-again here like they were in their dreams (if they were, well, Leon doubted he’d want to spend much time with either of them. There was nothing worse than hanging out with a couple that was perpetually stuck either breaking up or getting back together), but it was fun to tease them about the dreams precisely because of that.
“Every other week,” Logan grinned, shuffling cards, looking at the cribbage board. These hands were not going his way. He’d gotten six to ten points from the last few hands, but definitely nothing special. He hadn’t been able to put together more than four out of the last two cribs, which left him needed something good. “You know, we gotta keep it interesting somehow.”
He looked at the six cards in his hand and frowned. He knew Leon was having problems at work, and pressing him before he was ready really wouldn’t have worked at all, so this was his opening. Honestly, Logan had jumped to his defense more than once, and had continued to do so. Even if he didn’t know what was going on, that was his best friend. “How about you? What’s up?” He tossed two cards into the crib and waited.
Leon frowned at his hand, thinking more about his answer than his hand. It was his crib so the obvious choice was to throw a pair in there and be done with it. He knew Logan’s question wasn't just a ‘hey buddy, what's new with you,’ but dammit if he couldn’t pretend. He grinned.
“Well, I guess somehow managed to get myself involved with someone,” he said. “Leon Orcot’s officially off the market.”
“What?” Logan had not seen that coming. His friend wasn’t known for long term relationships, unless you count friends and family. How long had it been since Leon hooked up with anyone? “Since when, and why don’t I know this?”
The bigger question was why Leon looked more like a man going to a funeral than one who was dating someone knew. The card on top of the deck was flipped up. A four. Logan turned over his hand of two Jacks, a five, and a three - nine points total. It wasn’t good, but it could be worse. “What did the Captain want?” It was more than just Leon coming in late after a long night with a new lady.
“Not long,” Leon said. “I guess it kind of happened in New York.” It was probably a long time coming though. “And I guess it just hasn’t come up yet.” Not that he couldn’t have brought it up himself. But Revy was different than the other girls Leon dated (Peggy excluded). She wasn’t glamorous, with golden hair that was always perfectly done up, with long manicured nails, expensive Prada purses and the occasional nose job. He didn’t need to parade her around on his arm to prove that he had her, or to show off how hot she was to the guys. She was more personal than the other girls he’d dated, and Leon tended to keep his personal life close to his breast. “I haven’t really mentioned it to other people yet. Which reminds me, don’t tell Sharon. She’ll be pissed if I don’t tell her myself.”
He frowned deeply at Logan’s question. He played his next hand as he thought over his answer, and pegged the board - only seven points. There really was no way to not sound incompetent, but then, Leon had always been one to own up to his own mistakes. “I’ve been leaving uh… early, lately.” Very early, sometimes. “And I misfiled some evidence the other day. He says I might have thrown the case if we can’t fix it.”
Logan stared at his next hand. Luckily enough, it didn’t require much thought. He had 4, 5, 6, 6, and he’d keep those. It was a no brainer, leaving him to consider his friend for a minute. Leon did tend to play things close to the vest and he and Logan had dated similar types. He dated the model types. He and Leon had pictures of double dates. There were a pair of sisters in there once. “Is she someone Veronica would like?” Veronica was a different sort. She was tough, but she also had a soft side. She was small and blonde, and could pull off quite a few looks, but she wasn’t a princess. It all worked.
However, what was going on at the station was troubling. It left him thinking of the last weeks since the warehouse. Maybe it was a little after that. Leon hadn’t been around as much. Leaving early would explain that, maybe for the girl, but screwing up cases? If they brought someone in, it was sticking. They didn’t get sloppy like that. “Sounds like there is something behind that? You don’t just screw up, even if you are getting some regularly now.”
Leon thought about it. Honestly, the thought of Veronica and Revy in the same room made him nervous. “They’d either get along really well, and we’d be in trouble, or they’d fucking hate each other. In which case we’d still be in trouble.” Still, he knew he’d probably have to introduce Revy to his friends eventually. “I don’t know. Maybe if we get them drunk enough, we’ll be safe.”
Part of it maybe had been that the victim in this case was a sleazeball. It hadn’t been self-defense, not even remotely, but the victim had a list of sexual assault charges as long as Leon’s arm, and the suspect in question claimed that the man had victimized his sister. Leon might have done the same had it been Chris. He frowned. “You ever need to turn a blind eye to crimes because of these fucking dreams?”
“I don’t know. I’m definitely smarter than my dream self. I want to take him and slap him most of the time.” That was the truth. Logan did some stupid things in the dreams. Age interfered in his ability to make a bad situation worse, the way his dream counterpart did, not that he was the most mature.
So the victim was an asshole. That was what Logan gathered. That was a tough one. He had done things to get to his father because his father was an asshole. Yes, maybe someone should have looked the other way for him. That would have been nice, but at the same time, he understood where Leon was coming from. Sometimes the victim wasn’t innocent. “So you don’t mind if the perp wins. Fair. You could get in a lot of trouble though.” From the sound of it, he already was.
“You are my brother, you know. I don’t want to see you ruin a career, and lose yourself in a world of shit.” Friends protected each other, period. “How can I help?” Friends also joined in when they could.
“The whole mishandling evidence thing, I didn’t do that on purpose,” Leon averred. “I had a lot of shit on my mind and I wasn’t as careful as I probably would have been if I thought he deserved to go to jail. It’s other stuff. Friends of mine breaking the law because they need to because of their dreams. Like, a few months ago, a friend of mine shot up a door because one of her friends got locked in his apartment because of his dreams, and she asked me to make it disappear.” Or like Liv, who spent her days in the city morgue eating the brains of the poor bastards who got brought in. And the big one, being present while the New York Triad hid a body and keeping mum, just because it was Revy who’d done the killing.
He frowned, leaning back in his chair, his hand temporarily forgotten. “I don’t know if you can help. I don’t know if I can be the kind of cop I want to be if I have to ignore or cover something up because of a friend’s dreams.”
“Ah, the dreams.” Leon was covering for friends, for the crimes. There were vampires and werewolves and even things less savory. The dreams created them, and some seemed to use that as an excuse to bend the rules. “I might do that to protect Veronica, or Sharon, or you.” Leon was definitely in that.
“You were gonna take the sergeant’s exam and come play with me,” he said, making a face. “Here’s a question. What are those friends doing for you? Do they care about your job?” It seemed like a small question, but it really wasn’t. Favors went both ways. Leon was a good guy. Maybe he was too good.
“Yeah, well, now I’m not even sure I should keep the job I have,” Leon said, pinching the bridge of his nose. How much exactly did his friends supersede the law? Apparently enough to commit murder, even if it was justified. Unconsciously, his hand moved to the scar on his chest, feeling the slight indent through his shirt. The wound had closed and the stitches were gone, but it was still a little sensitive to the touch.
“Yeah, they do. They help me do better.” Liv used her psychic - her zombie powers to help him solve crimes with the brains she ate. Revy had been the one who’d put the idea of taking sergeant's exam into his head in the first place. “I probably wouldn’t even be around having this conversation if they didn’t.”
“Then don’t quit. It doesn’t mean you have to cover stuff up. Put them on a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of thing.” Logan was not willing to lose his friend at work, and Leon was a damn good cop. “The dreams are fucked up, but you have to manage it, and still be you. They need to respect that too.”
“What else would you do?” Logan asked, testing those waters to see how much Leon was thinking about it. Logan could imagine possibilities, but he wasn’t going to plant those seeds in his friend’s head.
Leon frowned to himself. Don’t ask, don’t tell. It made sense really. But for someone who’d always lived in a world of black and white, of legal and illegal, it was a tough pill to swallow that there might be shades of grey. That sometimes, crimes were acceptable. And compared to the alternative, maybe even preferable. “But how’s that any different than being dirty? Only minus the fancy house and pool,” he asked earnestly. He stared at his hand for a moment, trying to make sense of them, but gave up after a couple of moments and placed them face down on the table, replacing them with his beer.
He shrugged at Logan’s next question. “I don’t even know. I knew I was going to be a cop since I was three. I guess I could be, I don’t know, a security guard or something.”
“Yeah, I can just see you walking through a shopping mall with a rent-a-cop gun and fake badge. No.” That wasn’t Leon, and it definitely wasn’t Logan. Leon was born for this, and it was easy to see how much he really liked it.
“The dreams are a twist, but do you feel like you were wrong?” Logan had grown up with a Hollywood dad with lots of skeletons rattling in his closets. He knew about how to cover things up, or how to accentuate one thing to deflect the press from discovering something else. There wasn’t one version of right or wrong, but gray area all around. “It’s not like we are in a normal situation, all things considered.” He picked up the deck of cards and shuffled, but he didn’t deal yet.
“Maybe a museum? Maybe sitting in front of a bunch of monitors with my feet kicked up would be a nice change of pace.” And maybe it wouldn’t be as mind-numbingly boring as he was picturing it in his head. At the very least, at least he probably wouldn’t get shot anymore.
Leon finished off his beer and stood, heading to the fridge to get himself another one. “You want one?” he asked Logan as he walked. He knew what he’d done was wrong. Especially since the whole situation with Revy had only involved the dreams indirectly. But he didn’t feel like it was wrong. That was part of the problem, wasn’t it?
Unless it wasn’t. “So you don’t think that this is an issue?” Leon asked.
Logan nodded and held out a hand for another beer. Of course he would take that. It also gave him a minute to think of a good answer. “I guess it comes down to what you can live with. I trust you. If you and I are out there, I don’t think you’re dirty, and I’d rather have you with me than anyone else.” Logan would hope that was mutual.
“Nothing is always pure black or white. You have to use your judgement and know where the line is. Friends have to respect that line.” He shrugged, hoping that he was making some sense. Age had made him wiser than he was in his earlier years. “If you give this up, you are going to be miserable.”
Leon cracked a nearly bashful smile at Logan’s words. He knew that he and Logan made a good team, but it was good to hear the words coming straight from the horse’s mouth. “I feel the same way, buddy,” he said.
For years, Leon had never needed to see the shades of grey between the black and the white. If they were there, he obstinately ignored them. But his eyes were being pried open lately, especially after falling for an ex-con. “You’re right,” Leon said. “Of course you are. I’ll just need to figure out a way to make this work.”
“You really do,” Logan nodded. Of course, there could always be a PI business with both of them. Veronica would want in, of course. Logan wasn’t quite ready to leave the career that he established, but if his friend needed him, he would find a way. That was what friends did for each other. “I’m not about to lose my best friend. I can help you too, especially when those situations come up. We can work it out.”
He pushed the cards over to Leon. “Deal so I can finish kicking your ass.”
Leon attempted to poorly hide his smile by swiping at his nose, but it was still there when his hand reached instead for the deck of cards and started to shuffle like he was a casino dealer. “Thanks man. It’s good knowing you’ve got my back, man.”