Leon Orcot (under_arrest) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-09-23 00:26:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, leon orcot, sharon carter |
Who: Sharon, Leon, and NPC!Chris
When: Shortly after Sharon returns
Where: Sharon’s hotel room
What: Sharon meets Chris, some brotherly bonding happens
Rating/Warnings: Low/None, some talk of deceased parents
Status: Complete
Leon was glad that Sharon was finally back. He’d missed her while she was gone, especially once his entire life had been turned upside-down by the sudden and unexpected death of his aunt and uncle. He’d given her a day to settle in after returning home, and then he headed to her place, a case of beer in one hand and Chris’ hand in the other. He rang her doorbell with his elbow.
Sharon had subleased out her condo while she was in England with her family, and so she was in temporary housing (motel, with kitchenette) for a week or so after returning to Orange County. She’d told Leon, Logan and Veronica, and Cindy where she was staying, so they could get ahold of her. Hopefully the tenant would be out after the weekend, and Sharon could move be back into her own home.
In any case, she wasn’t expecting the visit. Sharon was in her pajamas, settled in for the afternoon/evening as she headed to the door and pulled it open. She was pleasantly surprised to see Leon standing there… with a little kid? “Hey!” She said, and pulled the door open. “What’s up? Come on in!”
“Hey,” he said, stepping into the room and looking around. “Nice place. A real step up from your old one,” he said, the teasing note almost hidden in his voice. “This is Chris. Chris, this is Sharon. She’s the friend I was telling you about.”
Sharon snorted. “A real upgrade. The kitchen’s attached to the bedroom. Saves me hundreds of steps.” Her apartment was beautiful and lovely, and she couldn’t wait to go home. But then her attention was distracted by Chris, and the friend I was telling you about. Both her eyebrows raised.
“Hello, Chris.” She said, giving him a smile and holding out her hand for him to shake. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Chris hesitated, then shyly placed his small hand in Sharon’s. Leon was already making himself at home in the motel, putting the beer in the fridge before first removing two bottles. “How long you expecting to stay in here?” he asked her.
Sharon shook Chris's hand tenderly, then turned to follow Leon into the motel living room area. She shrugged her shoulders. “Another six days,” she replied, then gave Chris a smirk. “But who's counting?”
“We’ll have to come and visit once you completely settle in. Here,” he said, handing the beer bottle to Sharon. “So, why don’t you tell us all about England? I hear they drink their beer warm over there. And that they’ve never heard of peanut butter.” The last, he directed toward Chris as if such a thing was unheard of.
“Yes! You definitely will.” Sharon grinned between the two boys, noticing the similarities between them. It was interesting, her curiosity was peaked. “I think they do. And I hear the young folk drink wine with Coca Cola.” She responded to his quip about beer, then stuck out her tongue for Chris’s benefit. Not that Chris would know what wine and coca cola tasted like. “But the peanut butter part is absolutely true.”
“Wine with Coke?” Leon asked, raising an eyebrow. “That sounds godawful.” Possibly worse than warm beer. Intriguing enough that he wouldn’t turn it down if someone offered it to him, but he was already pretty sure that he wouldn’t like it. “Why ruin a perfectly good Coke, eh Chris?”
Chris nodded, his expression not changing, and Leon had no idea if he had an opinion on the matter or not. Taking care of his brother would be so much easier if he could know what he was thinking.
Sharon didn’t have a whole lot of experience with small children… and this kid was pretty small. Early elementary school, she guessed. He must have been pretty young. But he seemed like a smart enough kid, so far. Sharon poked her head into the kitchen area of the motel room and dug into the fridge for a soda to offer Chris. Root beer? Kids liked root beer, and Sharon had a couple cans leftover from a float craving she’d had when she first got back.
“So, What did I miss while I was gone?” She asked Leon, offering Chris the soda.
Chris took the can, and slightly clumsily managed to push in the tab, though his expression still didn’t change. Leon offered Sharon one of the bottles he’d removed from the fridge before he cracked open his own beer and took a swallow. “Well,” he said, glancing at Chris. “I solved a couple of cases. Had to replace the brakes on my car. Oh, and my little brother came to live with me. Though, I guess you probably already figured that one out.”
Sharon accepted the beer, opened it, and tossed the bottlecap into a nearby trash bin. She’d lifted it for a sip, but then paused. His brother? She didn’t know he had a brother. “Why, Leon Orcot, are you hiding things from me on purpose? Keeping the more handsome sibling out of my view?” Sharon asked, teasing a little, to cover her surprise. So that’s why they looked so alike!
“No, not on purpose,” Leon said sheepishly. He rubbed the side of his head. “Actually, he was adopted by my aunt and uncle when he was a baby, and has been living with them in New York. After their funeral I decided to take him in.” He still wasn’t sure if that had been a good idea. His cousin couldn’t keep him, not when she was only eighteen and taking care of her younger sister now. Her younger sister who blamed Chris for the accident and was the one who told him that he had killed his birth mother. And he couldn’t let Chris go into foster care. But he worked way too much to care for a kid. “I’ve had him for a few days now. I think it’s going well, don’t you, bud?”
Chris looked up at him, then nodded his head once. Leon couldn’t help but wonder if Chris kind of hated it with him.
“I’m sure it’s going well. Probably a bit of a learning curve on both ends,” Sharon was studying the young boy with his soda, wondering what on Earth was going on in his head. He was so little, Sharon couldn’t imagine losing his adopted parents and having to fly cross country to live with his estranged brother? She turned her eyes back to Leon. “I’m sure he’ll settle in very soon. You’re in a pretty good school district, aren’t you?”
Leon shrugged. “Honestly, I haven’t checked,” he said. “There’s this school in LA that specializes in kids with psychological problems,” he said. Chris looked up at Leon, wide eyed. Leon knew he probably should have talked to Chris about this earlier, but he had wanted to wait until everything was finalized before he brought it up. It didn’t do a kid any good to have their guardian changing their mind every five minutes. He turned to Chris. “It’s a really good school though. And I bet your dorm room would be bigger than my entire apartment.”
His words didn’t seem to be making things better though. Chris’ eyes took on a liquid sheen as if he was about to start crying, and then went running to the door. Before Leon even realized what was happening, Chris had pulled it open and was already running out the door. “Chris? Chris! Stop!”
Woe. Psychological problems? Sharon hadn’t realized that--
Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. That was definitely a bad thing. A very, very bad thing. C’mon, Leon! Use your head! Sharon was up on her feet a moment after Chris fled the coop, and started toward it. “Chris!” She called out. “Chris, come back!” Thankfully he left the door open, but by the time Sharon was on her front doorstep Chris had pretty much disappeared.
“Where’d he go?” She asked Leon, turning to look to the stairs.
If there was anything that Leon had learned as a cop, it was how to keep his cool in stressful situations like this. And yet, despite having done the job for the last six years, there was a part of him that struggled to breathe at this moment. He knew that the chances of a kid being snatched off the street by some stranger were pretty low, but the chance was still there. More than that, what if Chris ran into the middle of traffic and was hit by a car? Or fell through an open manhole and was lying in the sewers with broken legs? Even if he just got lost, it wasn’t like he could ask people for directions back home. Leon had tried to drill his address and his phone number into Chris’s head, but it wasn’t like the kid had been with him for long. What if he forgot them, and there was no way anyone would ever be able to bring him back?
He shook his head and moved back from the railing that he’d been gripping with white knuckles, trying to see if he could see Chris anywhere. He hadn’t, and it was time to get a grip and actually do something instead of standing around worrying like some kind of… worry wart or something.
“We should split up,” Leon said, taking on the tone he used to talk to uniforms when he was lead detective. “I’ll check the parking lot first and then head north. You go south. Call me as soon as you find him and I’ll do the same.”
After all, they were both skilled cops. The idea of neither of them being able to find a scared six-year-old… well, Leon didn’t want to think about what would happen if they couldn’t.
If Sharon was anything, she was really good at taking orders. A good soldier first and foremost, an excellent spy second, a great detective third. She could do this. Whatever he needed from her, she could do. She nodded. “I’ll go south.” Luckily, Sharon had left the apartment with her cell phone in her pocket.
She didn’t waste any more time--these first few minutes were precious, and if they were going to catch up with Chris--to find him, really--they had to move. She turned and booked it along the hallway/balcony down to the southern stairs, and jogged down them. “Chris?!” She called out, eyes peeled for the young boy.
Leon took the stares down three at a time, nearly stumbling a couple of times but always managing to find his balance before he face planted. He ran alongside the cars, wondering if Chris would have tried to hide underneath one. If that was the case, Leon would have to lie right down on the tarmac to see him.
Luckily, it didn’t come to that. He found Chris behind the last car in the lot, his small back leaning up against the passenger side door, knees pulled up to his chest, crying. Leon felt his heart tug. He really should have sat down and talked to Chris about his decision beforehand, but…
He shook his head, pulled out his phone, and sent Sharon Got him.. She wouldn’t have made it far at this point, and she should be able to find them easy enough. Hopefully she could help him smooth things over.
“Chris, you can’t go running off like that,” Leon said, sharper than he’d intended, but his heart was still hammering against his rib cage. Chris’s head whipped over to Leon, and gave him a look that somehow managed to convey hurt, uncertainty, and regret. Leon let out a heavy sigh, and lit a cigarette. He sat downwind to Chris, one leg spread out in front of him and the other bent at the knee so he could rest his forearm on it. “You just scared the shit out of me and Sharon. Why’d you run off like that?”
Sharon’s phone buzzed. It was in her hand, so she simply turned it over and swiped her thumb across the screen to read the message. She responded. On my way. She didn’t have to know exactly where he was, she just jogged north toward the building, across it, and into the parking lot. She figured she’d see them, and if she didn’t see them right away, she might send another text and head back to her apartment. He could bring Chris back there. The boy was probably super upset. This was all new territory for Sharon (as she assumed it was for Leon, too). She had no idea what to do.
“Leon?” Sharon asked, before spotting them against the car nearby. “You guys okay?”
Leon waved her over when he heard her name. “Yeah, we’re fine. Right Chris?” he asked. Chris gave a not entirely convincing nod and a much more convincing sob.
Leon sighed, and ran his free hand through his hair. He shot a helpless look at Sharon, not entirely sure what to do. When he was catching criminals, he tried to think like they did, so, with a furrowed brow, that's exactly what he tried to do.
The answer came to him like a sledgehammer. “Hey, you know I'm not trying to get rid of you, right?” he asked, and Chris’ tearsteaked face turned toward him. “I'm not mad at you, and I don't blame you for Mom’s death. It's just something that happened. Aunt Sandy and Uncle Derek weren't your fault either. Sometimes people just die. All I want is what's best for you.”
Sharon wasn’t sure that was the best tactic, but she didn’t have any better ideas. She moved slowly over to the car to sit down next to Leon. Maybe the kid just needed some company? Maybe he just needed someone to tell him he wasn’t alone and that everything was going to be okay.
After a couple moments of silence, she turned to Chris. “You wanna go back upstairs?” Sharon asked, glancing between the brothers. “We could put on the tv, or play cards or something.” She didn’t have a lot of entertainment in the hotel, but they could find something fun to do.
Chris’s sobbing started to taper off until just the occasional hiccup passed his lips. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and then he turned to Leon and Sharon beside him and managed a weak smile at the both of them. He nodded, and Leon let out a heavy sigh of relief.
Leon stood up and wiped the dirt from the seat of his jeans. As he started to head back to the hotel room, Chris tentatively slipped his hand into Leon’s. Leon was surprised, but with a smile, he squeezed Chris’ hand.