Leon Orcot (under_arrest) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-06-07 16:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, dan smith, leon orcot |
Who: Leon and Dan
What: Catching up
When: March, not long after Dan's death and resurrection
Where: The Double Tap
Ratings/Warnings: Fairly lowish
Status: Complete
Leon wasn’t exactly sure when he’d started spending more time at the Double Tap than he did at McNally’s, but it was a good change-up. The booze was cheap, he could smoke inside, and somewhere along the line he’d actually grown to enjoy Dan’s company. At first it had just been because he was Liv’s boyfriend, but now Leon kind of considered him a friend in his own right. And the best kind of friend. The one who would ply him with booze. Leon had already been sitting at the bar for a while, and was starting to get a nice buzz going on.
“So, how’re things going with you and Liv?” he asked.
Leon was turning out to be a pretty good friend in Dan’s eyes a well. They shared the brotherhood of the police force, despite Dan having been retired from the force with no hope or chance of ever rejoining. They also shared an appreciation for smoking indoors in bars and cheap, but good, booze. Leon was a kindred spirit in some ways.
“Things be goin’ well,” Dan smiled. It had been over a month since Dan and Liv had officially gotten together and honestly, Dan had never been happier in his life, and not because he hadn’t become a zombie. Liv made him very happy and he was thankful every day for the chance they’d been given.
He refilled Leon’s glass. Like Liv, Leon was able to get away with not necessarily having to pay for his drinks. A kind of consolation for the Mistletoe debacle that’d happened in December. “What about you? Catch any interestin’ perps t’day?”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Leon said. Of course, he’d heard the same thing from Liv, though depending on what brain she was on, her grip on reality wasn’t always very firm. “I don’t know how you do it though. Even I get whiplash from those mood swings. And not being able to… you know. That’d suck.” He didn’t think he could be in a relationship where he wasn’t getting laid. That seemed more like a friendship than anything, but who was he to judge?
Leon shook his head. “Nothing too interesting. Just the same old scumbag perps. Though I guess when you work in homicide, the less interesting the better.”
“I wouldn’t really call’em ‘mood swings’.” Dan said pensively, “More like...a change in quirks…” though mood swings definitely defined some of the more aggressive influences the brains she ate had on her. The Teenager Brain, the Jealousy/Stalker Brain, the Pious Brain. It was always something new. “Took a while to get used to,” he went on. “Not to say that I’m used to it, I just kind of expect it now. She’s still Liv and always will be Liv.” And Dan loved her.
The issue of not being able to have sex had been a hard one. Even though they loved each other, not being able to share that intimacy had torn them apart. It had been very painful for both of them. “Aye, it did suck.” Dan nodded. “It was something she wanted that I couldn’t give her. But now…” he trailed a little and looked at Leon carefully. Poor Leon. All the detective wanted was a shred of normalcy in his life, so much so that his mind seemed to refuse to accept or acknowledge all the particularly strange things that surrounded him. That his M.E. was a zombie who survived on eating brains of the dead, and his bartender and friend had literally risen from the dead. “Normal” It really wasn’t so much to ask, and just by being a homicide detective alone “normal” was hard to come by. “Well, now it’s not so much of an issue. She’s happy an’ I’m happy. That’s what matters.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. She’s always Liv, just with varying levels of annoying.” Though, she definitely excelled in the ‘annoying’ department with almost all of her brains. Maybe it was just that most people who got themselves murdered probably had a reason why they got murdered.
Leon wondered if that meant that Dan and Liv had been intimate, of it just meant that after Dan had, well, died (something Leon still had a bit of trouble processing), they had decided that they didn’t need that. He peered suspiciously at Dan, but his hair wasn’t platinum and his skin wasn’t ivory, so Leon wasn’t entirely sure. “You’re not a zombie, are you?” he asked bluntly. One was bad enough. They didn’t need to go spreading it around and causing some kind of mood-swing zombie apocalypse.
“Oy, mate, that be me girlfriend yer talkin’ about,” Dan warned with a teasing smirk. He took no real offense to Leon’s words. At the end of the day Leon was actually a pretty good sport about everything. He may not want to verbally (or even mentally) acknowledge some of the more stranger things that happened, but at least he hadn’t run screaming for the hills when he had found out about Liv. That was to be admired.
He couldn’t help but laugh at Leon’s next question. “Nah, mate, I’m not a zombie,” he assured him. What he was exactly, Dan wasn’t sure, but for now it didn’t really matter. He wasn’t a mere persona subject to someone else’s whims or agenda (so far as he knew), and for now that was enough.
“Hey, I’m only saying the truth,” Leon said back, grinning a little to show that he was mostly joking. Kind of. He couldn’t help the look of relief that crossed his face when Dan said he wasn’t a zombie though. No offense to Liv, but he didn’t know how many peace-loving zombies the city morgue could feed, and he had no intention of finding out the hard way. “I’m glad to hear it though. You never know though, what with the rising from the dead.”
Dan raised a brow. So it was ok to talk about his miraculous return from death. Huh. Maybe Leon was a little more accepting of all this supernatural stuff than Dan had given him credit for. Good for him. Still, maybe talking about things like rising from the dead and zombies in the middle of the bar was not such a great idea. Dan cast a look towards the far end where one of his regulars usually parked herself.
Agatha had walked in the day Dan had opened, took a seat at the far end of the bar ordered a whiskey sour and then told him that he was “a vast improvement over the last guy.” She had been in his bar every evening he was open since. She was an older woman, probably in her late 60’s,she smoked like a chimney and swore like a sailor. She also had no problems advertising that she thought Dan was a “handsome young thing” and patting his rear every time he had to pass by her to step out into the bar’s seating area. She was harmless though, most of the time when the bar was slow she sat on her stool, smoked her cigarette and sipped her whiskey while she stared off into the distance. That was what she was doing now. A thin line of smoke trailing up from her cigarette, her eyes focused far away, though Dan wasn’t sure that she wasn’t maybe listening in to the conversations he had with the Dreamers who wandered in here.
If she did, though, she never said anything. She didn’t even flinch when Leon mentioned zombies and rising from the dead. What does she think about when she stares off like that?
Dan turned his attention back to Leon. When he spoke next, his voice was lower, just in case. “Ye never know,” he agreed, “but my diet hasn’t changed any, so I think we’re in the clear. Truth be told, I’m not sure what I am these days.”
There had come a point where Leon had realized that if he didn’t allow himself to believe at least some of the weird shit that was going on, he would have actually lost his damn mind. It was easier now to just accept that sometimes weird things happened. Like his zombie medical examiner’s boyfriend raising from the dead.
Leon followed Dan’s gaze to the woman staring vacantly in front of her. Honestly, Leon couldn’t see the point in keeping all this under wraps. Quite the opposite. If he had his way, everyone would know about the dangers of living in the OC so they could protect themselves. It seemed like he was outvoted on the matter, however, and he wasn’t about to get himself committed to the looney bin for being the only person to speak out on the matter, so he lowered his voice to match Dan’s.
“As crazy as the rest of us, no doubt,” Leon grumbled good-naturedly, and knocked back the rest of his drink. “Fill ‘er up.”
Dan obliged Leon’s request and poured him another drink. “Ye think we all be crazy, Leon?” He asked in a semi-serious voice. “Maybe we are. I dunno. It’s possible, I suppose. It doesn’t seem sane choosin’ to stay here, what with all that goes on, does it. On the other ‘and, doesn’t seem right t’ go, either.”
For all the weird shit that went on, Leon had never really considered packing his bags and leaving. Never seriously, at least, though he sometimes grumbled about doing just that. Maybe that was insane. It would definitely make mo, but when I saw itre sense to move out of state, except that he had only ever lived in Irvine and didn’t have much of a desire to live anywhere else. Maybe LA. He lived in LA in his dreams, but that had been in the 90s.
“No, it doesn’t,” Leon agreed, to both of Dan’s points. “There’s just something about this place that makes it hard to leave. God knows why.”
Dan shrugged. “Dunno.” He admitted. “I wonder ‘bout what that something is, sometimes. At first I thought it was this place.” He tapped his knuckles against the bar. “Never owned a bar before. Originally I’d planned to just fix it up and sell it again.”
Leon glanced around the bar. At the booths, even at Agatha sitting at the end of the bar. He hadn’t been coming here for long, at least compared to how long he’d drank at McNally’s, but it had quickly become his go-to bar. Being able to smoke at the bar played a part of it, but he was pretty sure the bigger part of it was Dan the barman. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. “And I sure hope you don’t for a long time to come.”