Leon Orcot (under_arrest) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-08-23 11:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, henry townshend, leon orcot |
Who: Leon and Henry
What: Meeting up for drinks
When: Late July
Where: A bar
Rating/Warnings: Low/some references to Leon being shot, and deceased parents/parental figures.
Status: Complete
Leon generally wasn’t the kind of guy to reach out to anyone who wasn’t already a friend, but it had been hard to get Henry out his thoughts since their strange run-in at the grocery store. Despite how strange the OC was, it wasn’t every day that Leon ran into a guy with a ghost sticking out of his back, and he wanted to make sure he was okay.
He’d meant to call him earlier, but then he’d dreamed of being shot and getting together with Henry had taken the backseat. Still, it was hard to completely forget him, so once Leon felt good enough to make it to the bar, he’d called Henry and asked if he’d like to join him.
When he saw Henry walk in through the door, he raised his glass. “Hey.”
In the time since Henry had met Leon, running into ghosts had become something of a regular thing. It didn’t happen all the time – he wasn’t constantly running away from something – but it happened often enough. At least once a day. Eventually he’d gotten to the point where he just expected to look up and see a ghost nearby. So long as he kept his distance, he was usually fine.
He was surprised when he’d gotten a call from Leon Orcot. He honestly hadn’t expected to ever hear from him again after what had happened at the grocery store. He’d read online that he’d suffered a gunshot via his Dreams and he’d thought about reaching out to the detective to check in on him, but having no idea really what to say, had stopped himself. Truth be told, he was sort of relieved to hear from him.
“Hi, Leon,” Henry greeted in return as he came up to the bar beside the other man. He smiled a little sheepishly, “sorry I’m late. I got a little lost.” He slid onto the empty bar stool. “I heard about what happened. How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better,” Leon admitted. “But I can’t complain. At least now I can actually sit at a bar.” And get there himself, no less. Doing anything for long periods of time was exhausting, but he didn’t think sitting for a drink or five would be too tiring. So long as no ghosts tried butting their way in. “How about you? Have anymore issues with you know what?”
Henry ordered a rum and coke and once the bartender had left them alone, he could answer Leon’s question. “Kind of,” he said before taking a drink. “I see ghosts every day now. Not, like, constantly or anything. There aren’t any here…” Henry trailed and quickly scanned the bar, just to check. So far as he could tell everyone inside was among the living. “Nope, none here.” His attention went back to his drink and Leon. “I’ve gotten ok at avoiding them, though sometimes they come after me. A couple of days ago I was trying to get away from one and I sort of maybe ran into this street painter.” He paused and furrowed his brows. “Uhm, you know…someone who sets up an easel and paints people walking by. Street…painter…?” Henry frowned slightly a moment then shook his head. “Her name is Feyer, and apparently she’s on the network too.
Leon barely managed to repress a shudder. So long as there weren’t any ghosts floating around here, that would be fine. But the last thing he wanted to do was relive the experience in the grocery store. Part of him wondered why he even asked Henry out for drinks if that was going to be a common experience with him, but it wasn’t like Henry had asked for ghosts to stick their hands in him either. He probably enjoyed the whole thing less than Leon did, when it came down to it.
“Oh yeah? I think I had a chat with her,” Leon said. He’d definitely talked to someone who’d mentioned seeing ghosts despite not dreaming of them. “You’re going to haunt up the whole county at this rate, man.”
“I think the county is already haunted up,” Henry said. “They just get attracted to me. I’m not sure what it is about me that they like so much. I’ve never seen them be attracted to anyone else. Maybe it’s because I can see them?” Though Henry had his doubts about that. Besides, the way Leon had sort of shuddered, maybe it was best to move on to another subject. “Maybe we should talk about something else?”
There was a lot about the ghosts that Leon wanted to know, but maybe it was better that the move on. Just thinking about them gave him the creeps. “Yeah, maybe,” he admitted, clearing his throat. “So, what is it you do, Henry?”
Oh, yeah. They’d never gotten the chance to talk when they’d first met. Henry knew Leon was a cop only because he’d told the store clerks he was. “I’m a photographer,” he said happily, then he looked a little sheepish. “Or, at least I’m trying to be. I’ve been working on my portfolio and I’ve gotten a couple of gigs since moving out here, but I’m not able to support myself on it yet. In the meantime I’m working for a friend of my grandfather’s. He owns a photography store here in town.”
“Photography, huh?” Leon asked. He had to admit, it wasn’t what he was expecting. “There still a market for that, now that everyone has a smartphone?”
Henry nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Even though it’s really easy for people to take their own photos, when they want something professionally done, they go to a photographer. It’s kinda like...well, with Youtube and everything, anyone can learn how to change the oil in their car, but most would still rather go to a mechanic, right? Same thing. Kind of.”
Leon had never understood the mechanic thing. He’d been changing his oil since his dad had taught him on his first car, along with basic engine repairs. More complicated things required a mechanic, but he saved a lot of money learning to do these things himself.
But at least he understood the use for professional photos. He and his mom had gone for professional family photos when she’d been pregnant with Chris, and he still kept one, framed, next to his bed. “Yeah, I guess I can understand that. You do the school picture days too?”
“Schools usually have contracts with professional studios for school pictures,” Henry explained. “I’m, well, right now I’m kinda freelance. But I hope to own my own studio sometime. Though, I did take our senior class picture for our yearbook.” Something he was particularly proud of since a lot of parents that year had mistaken his photo for professional work. “They were going to give me a contract to take the next year’s class photo and the club and sports teams photos for the year book, but then my grandparents passed away and…” Henry shrugged and turned his attention to his drink. “I was the only one left to handle their affairs. Both of my parents died when I was a little kid. My grandmother has a niece in Florida, but I haven’t seen her since I was like eight or nine. I ended up having to pass on the contract so I could focus on getting everything straightened out.”
“Shit man, I’m sorry to hear that,” Leon said. Losing parents was hard no matter what age you were, but he could tell from Chris that it was a lot harder when you were a kid. Leon, at least, had been old enough to take care of himself when his parents had died. “Taking care of the estate can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. That why you moved out here?”
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it) Henry had been so young when his parents died that he didn’t have any memories of them that were anything other than vague notions of what they’d been like. Everything he knew about them he’d learned through stories his grandparents had told him. Mostly his father as they were his parents. His mother hadn’t grown up in Londonderry. In fact, no one really seemed to know where she had come from originally, and there were conflicting stories about where she had met Henry’s father. The only thing that anyone in town could seem to agree on was that they had died tragically in a car accident on their way home from Boston. At least that was the story Henry had always heard.
His grandparents had been the ones who had raised him and their deaths had a much bigger impact on him. He nodded slowly as he took a drink. “They left me with the house and a little bit of money, but unfortunately they had a lot of outstanding medical debts and of course there were the funerals. I ended up having to sell the house to pay for it all. A friend of my grandfather’s helped me sort a lot of it out and when it was over, he offered for me to come out here and work for him. And here I am.”
Leon smiled wryly. “Yeah, same thing happened with me,” he said. The house, his parent’s inheritance, his dad’s pension. Most of it had gone toward paying for his mom’s medical bills, and while he’d tried to save what was left, all of it had been spent in one way or another over the intervening years.
Henry took a little solace in hearing that Leon had been through something similar, though it was bitter solace knowing anyone had gone through not only losing one’s parents (or parental figures in Henry’s case), but that they had been left alone to pick up the pieces afterwards. “I’m sorry to hear about that,” he said solemnly. “Are you doing alright now?”
“Oh yeah,” Leon said. “Being a cop doesn’t pay well, but it pays good enough to get by. And my boyfriend just moved in which’ll make things easier too.” Not that he expected Alex to contribute too much to the rent. He had school to pay for and concentrate on, and Leon had paid for his new two bedroom apartment without too much trouble these last few months on his own. It wasn’t as easy as the small bachelor pad he’d lived in before Chris had come to stay with him, but he had to admit it was nicer.
Henry wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to congratulate someone when they recently moved in with their significant other, but it seemed like it was. “Congratulations,” he said with an easy and genuine smile. “That’s a big step.” Henry had wondered who Chris had been in relation to Leon. He looked a little old to be Leon’s son, but maybe he was the boyfriend’s kid? “How is Chris doing? I’m sorry, I should’ve asked earlier. The whole…thing…at the supermarket…it didn’t upset him too much, did it? Then with you getting shot…”
“Thanks,” Leon said, obviously pleased. Though when Henry asked after Chris, his smile faded a little. “No, the supermarket thing was fine,” Leon said. “He deals with all this weird shit better than I do most of the time.” Chris had taken Leon’s shooting harder. Leon had thought that they had made a lot of progress, but Chris seemed to back to how he was when he’d first come home with Leon, completely closed in upon himself. He’d smiled a little when Alex had moved in, but other than that…He gave the side of his head a frustrated rub. “You don’t know anything about kids, do you?”
Henry’s smile faded and he slowly shook his head. It didn’t appear as though Chris was doing well, and he felt bad about that. “Not really,” he said apologetically. “I’m an only child and there weren’t a lot of kids in my area growing up.” He turned his glass around in his hands a few times as he thought.
After a moment of thought he started speaking carefully, his words aimed at his glass, but were meant for Leon. “You know, when I was Chris’s age I was a real quiet kid. Wicked shy. People scared me.” He chuckled a little sheepishly. “To be fair, they still kinda do. But my grandfather helped me get over it a little. He gave me my first camera and showed me how to use it and how to develop my own pictures. He let me take the camera to school with me. When the other kids saw me with it, they wanted to ask questions and have their pictures taken and stuff and I realized it was a lot easier to talk to them when I was talking about photography.”
He looked up at Leon and smiled a little sheepishly. “I dunno, I guess maybe because I loved it so much it helped me open up a little more to people around me. Long story short, maybe that’s something Chris needs. Something you can teach him about or help him learn about that he really likes and will give him a little confidence boost.”
Leon swirled his drink and took a swallow, thinking about Henry’s advice. It was true that Chris wasn’t really involved in anything, but then, he’d never seemed to have much interest in getting involved in anything. He did like to draw pretty frequently though. Maybe Leon could sign him up for art classes. Or, at the very least, he could buy the kid a bunch of art supplies and encourage him to do more of that sort of thing.
Or… “Maybe I’ll give his sisters a call. See what he was into before the accident,” he muttered to himself, not even thinking about the fact that Henry would have no idea what he was talking about. He did seem to realize, belatedly, that family advice wasn’t really the kind of thing you should ask a near stranger the first time that you actually spent time with them.
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m still pretty new at this kinda thing and it’s a bit overwhelming sometimes.”
Henry didn’t believe he and Leon were strangers. You couldn’t really consider someone who had yanked a ghost out of you a stranger. Though he understood that may have not been a mutual feeling. “It’s alright,” Henry told him. He was starting to put a few pieces together regarding Leon and Chris. It was obvious to him now that Chris wasn’t the boyfriend’s son. To Henry, an orphan himself (twice over now), “accident” meant only one thing. “I’d like to help if I can. I mean...you helped me. It only seems right.”
“Ghosts are a lot easier than kids,” Leon laughed. Out of all the things that he thought he’d ever say, that was not high up on the list. “But I’m not going to say no to help.” He took a sip of beer and frowned thoughtfully to himself. It probably required some explanation. He’d learned the hard way with Caroline about throwing someone at him who had no idea about his experiences.
“Our mom died in childbirth; she was already pretty old to be having another kid and she was sick too. So my aunt and uncle adopted him, and raise them as his own on the East coast. I don’t know if they were planning on telling him at some point or not, but my youngest cousin, Sam, got to it first.
“They got into a fight while his parents were driving. The whole deal, that he was adopted and that he’d ‘killed’ his real mom. I guess my aunt and uncle tried to break it up and ended up getting into a wreck. They were both killed, though the kids were okay, physically at least. Chris hasn’t said a word since. My older cousin, Josie, is only eighteen, and it’s hard enough needing to raise her sister at that age, especially when Sam blames him for their parent’s death too, so he came to stay with me instead.”
He ran his hand through his head. “Problem is, I don’t know the first thing about kids in general, let alone ones with anxiety problems. And it’s not like my job is exactly kid-friendly.” He gave a bit of an ironic laugh. “I think I’m in over my head here.”
Now everything made sense. Henry nodded along as he listened to Leon’s explanation. He understood where Chris was coming from. He didn’t have very many cousins and the ones he did have (or at least knew about) were all considerably older than he was. He didn’t remember how he found out how his parents had died. He’d just always known. Maybe because the incident itself had been a topic of gossip in Londenderry for years. But it hadn’t made growing up without them any easier. He could still vividly remember a girl in third grade once telling him he couldn’t make Mother’s Day cards with the rest of the class because he didn’t have a mother. ”Your mother’s dead, Henry. She killed your dad and then she died too.” Hm. Maybe that was why people scared him so much.
“Kids can be mean,” he said after another moment of thoughtful silence. “And maybe you are in over your head, but I think you’re doing the right thing, and you’re doing the best you can. My grandparents didn’t ask to raise a kid all over again when they were in their 60’s. My grandfather was supposed to retire at 65, but ended up having to work well into his 70’s just to support me. But they both did what they could. I don’t think anyone’s really prepared for situations like that.” He finished off what remained in his glass and pushed it aside for the bartender to collect. “That you’re worried about him shows how much you care.”
Leon couldn’t deny that, as far as he was concerned, kids were the biggest assholes he knew. Other than Chris, of course. He hadn’t realized just how much he had needed to hear someone tell him that he was doing the best that he could until Henry said as much. “Thanks, man,” he said, the gratitude thick in his voice. “You’re right; I guess no one really knows what they’re doing when it comes to taking care of kids. Your grandparents sound like they were good people. You’re lucky to have had them.”
Henry smiled a little. “I was lucky,” he said. He couldn’t imagine having grown up with any of his aunts or uncles. His father’d had two older brothers, much older brothers with children nearly in their teens by the time Henry had been born. He’d met them all, of course. They used to come to visit over Christmas until the cousins had gone away to college. They were alright people, but none of them seemed to really know what to do with Henry. He didn’t know anyone on his mother’s side of the family. No one did. No one seemed to know where she’d come from or how she’d met Henry’s father. There was a lot of gossip around town about that too.
“Gram and Grampa were really good people,” Henry agreed. “And you’re a good person too, Leon.”
Leon blushed, abashed. “I don’t know about that,” he said with an embarrassed laugh, rubbing the back of his head, and chugged back the rest of his beer in a poor attempt to hide his embarrassment. “But thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.” He liked to think he had a pretty good sense of people, and Henry, well, he seemed like one of the good ones.