Alex the Great (dunkirkalex) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-03-01 07:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | alex, leon orcot |
WHO: Leon and Alex
WHAT: Hello again
WHERE: Grocery store
WHEN: Friday evening
RATING: PGish
Status: Fin
It had been a long god damned day. Alex couldn’t complain much about the job itself, it was at least rewarding, but today was Sniffles Day at the ER where he was serving his internship residency. He knew that people were generally disgusting from his experience as a paramedic, but he didn’t think he could ever get used to being snotted all over by someone’s toddler.
Thank God it was Friday and Alex had been given his weekly allowance from the school. So he walked into the grocery store, still in his scrubs, his hair now long enough to be tied back. He might have been studying and interning to be a doctor, but he wasn’t about to give up his Friday night Lucky Charms feast. In his basket, he also had some Ramen noodles, some store brand Oreos, and a few cans of vegetables (Leon had taught him to do at least something good for his diet).
After he grabbed his milk, he went down the cereal aisle and found the Lucky Charms. “Fuck,” he grunted when he saw there was only one box and it was crushed all to shit. Hoping to find more in the back of the shelf, Alex knelt down and moved the crushed box to feel around behind other cereal boxes for those damned hearts, stars, and horse shoes.
Try as he might, Leon hadn’t been able to break Chris of the eating-nothing-but-sugar-and-milk habit into after living with Alex. Leon had tried healthier cereals, but Chris didn’t really enjoy them, and frankly, Chris probably deserved it. Which meant that picking up a box of sugary garbage was part of Leon’s shopping routine these days.
When he turned the into the aisle, Leon’s breath caught in his throat. The set of the man’s shoulders, the brown of his hair, it all reminded Leon of Alex. He shook his head. He’d been seeing Alex everywhere for the last couple of months, but he knew this guy couldn’t be him. Alex had left, and it had seemed pretty obvious he wasn’t coming back. Anyway, this guy’s hair was too long. So, Leon took a deep breath and steadied himself.
“Excuse me,” he muttered, reaching above the man for a box of Fruity Pebbles.
It was the voice that struck Alex. It not only struck him, it startled him, setting off a domino effect. First, Alex jumped a little, then hit his head on the edge of one of the shelf above him. Alex swore and braced the back of his head with his palm as he stood, his ears ringing and his hands miserably Lucky Charmsless.
A big part of him hoped in that second it took to get a minor concussion that the voice didn’t belong to Leon, that someone just sounded similar to gruff, grumpy timbre that Alex had grown so familiar with. But the voice did, in fact, belong to Leon and Alex cursed what a small fucking world it was that he’d have to run into Leon while he had Ramen in his trolly. Now he was caught when he hadn’t wanted to be caught. He turned dizzily to his basket to lean a little against it as his head pounded and reeled. Even though he could hardly bear it, he forced himself to look at Leon, guilty and stupid. “Fuck,” he finally said, just to break the silence.
It felt like Leon’s entire world fell out from under his feet, like he was suspended in space. For a second, he was numb, unable to do anything but stare down dumbly at Alex, mouth slightly agape, hand suspended in mid-air reaching for the Fruity Pebbles. Because what he was seeing didn’t make sense. Not in any sense of the word. Alex wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be in the damn county, let alone in the cereal aisle. In Leon’s grocery store. At the same time as Leon was.
And then Alex spoke, and it all became too real. Leon turned away from him, jaw set, and if they were capable of it, the Fruity Pebbles would have withered at the glare that Leon gave them. “Nice to see you, too,” Leon said. Because what else was ‘fuck’ supposed to mean, if it wasn’t that Alex hadn’t really planned on leaving the OC and instead had just planned on ghosting him?
Suddenly, Alex wasn’t so hungry. He knew he’d have to face Leon one day, but he’d thought he’d have a little more time before that happened and, shit, if Leon never saw him again, it would probably be better.
A few boxes had taken a fall from the shelf when Alex hit his head. Alex moved to pick them up which took a little more effort than he’d thought, but it was at least something to do that wasn’t just standing there looking at his ex’s angry quarter profile. As he slid the boxes back on their respective shelves, he searched himself for something to say that wasn’t just another curse word or some stupid explanation for what a shit he was. More than vaguely, he wondered how much he’d lost of himself after he’d left for the other school, how much of that selfish, cocky brat he was managing to shed with Leon had returned.
“What version do ya want?” he asked as he slid the last box home. “The one where I came down with a mystery illness and I’m dyin’? The one where I ran away with the circus and we’re in town for the weekend? Or the one where Seattle is a shithole and Irvine offered me a better internship?” He shrugged. “Don’t matter, all of ‘em are shit.” And Leon probably hated him anyway so, really, what did it matter? He hoped Leon would just grab what he came for and let them both be because it hurt to be right in front of him and be forced to confront it when he wasn’t ready.
That was too much. Leon rounded on Alex, with poor Fred’s head collapsing under Leon’s clenched fist. “How about the truth, Alex,” he barked, only vaguely aware that he was yelling. “Or is that too much to ask?”
Before he could stop it, Alex was practically against a shelf full of sugar cereals, none of which he was apparently going to take home tonight. Leon was bigger and stronger than he was and part of him was a little scared, even though the more sane part of him thought that maybe Leon wouldn’t punch him in the jaw. Maybe.
“I told you the fuckin’ truth already,” he growled back. At least he thought he had. It was all a blur now. He’d said he was going to school further North, that he had to get away from California and everything there. All the zombies and all the nightmares. He was twenty one years old and felt like he was already married on top of it all and that was mostly his own damn fault and if his heart wasn’t racing with Leon this close, he would have thought it was stupid. It hadn’t been and he didn’t regret it, but he had to go and it hadn’t turned out the way he’d thought it would. Not knowing what else to say, Alex waited for Leon to back off or take his swing.
The red faded from Leon’s eyes, and he was vaguely aware that he and Alex weren’t the only two people in this grocery store and that some of the other people were now staring at them, likely wondering if they should intervene. Leon took a step back, and unceremoniously hurled the box of cereal into his shopping cart.
“This doesn’t look like a school up north, Alex,” Leon muttered, feeling overwhelmingly defeated. “If you wanted to dump me, you should have just said so.”
Poor ole Fred had seen better days. He could only imagine the conversation Leon would have with Chris or whether or not it would even involve Alex at all. For his part, Alex grabbed a box of the generic Unlucky Charms with unicorns and something vaguely resembling the state of Wyoming for marshmallows. He put it into his trolly and looked at an old lady who was still staring. “What you want? A picture?” he snapped, sending her marching angrily off. Alex hoped she wouldn’t get security.
“Yeah, well,” he started, tugging at the tie in his now loosened hair. He wished it was in a better state than it currently was. He hadn’t washed it since...well now he couldn’t remember and it was a stringy mess that he promptly gathered back up to tie again. “School up North was a bunch of pretentious left wing idiots who think they know more than anyone else because they took a semester of womens studies.” With his hair now tied back again, Alex went on. “I don’t know if I wanted to dump you so much as this whole place makes everything all fucked up. I guess I just had to go see if everywhere else was an everyday zombie apocalypse. They just had different types of zombies and I prefer the sort who are more upfront about trying to eat your brains.”
Leon’s shoulders slumped, and try as he might to keep a hold of it, his anger melted away. How the hell could he get angry at someone for trying to leave this place? He couldn’t get angry at Alex when he’d left either. He’d been attacked by rabbits, attacked by zombies, thrown in prison… It was easy to be angry when Leon thought Alex hadn’t left at all. But leaving and coming back… Alex looked like shit, and for a brief moment Leon wondered if he was getting enough to eat. He shook the thought out of his head. That wasn’t his problem anymore.
Leon wanted to yell at Alex. He wanted to tell him how badly Chris had taken his sudden departure. How much it had killed Leon. How many nights he’d laid awake envisioning Alex returning and every possible scenario - except, apparently, this one - of what Leon would do if that happened. But more than anything, he wanted a drink. A drink and half a pack of cigarettes. He wondered if it would be Dan or Sara working at the Double Tap today. He hoped it was Dan.
“Try not to let them succeed,” Leon muttered, and turned on his heel to leave, abandoning the nearly full cart of groceries in the aisle.
Of course Leon was taking off. Why wouldn’t he? Alex should have been thankful that Leon hadn’t beaten the tar out of him right then and there and that there wasn’t a mess of cereal all over the floor. He wanted to yell to Leon, say That’s it, huh? but Alex was much more guilty than Leon was.
So Alex let Leon go, only giving a dismayed sort of weird sound in his throat that he couldn’t help and when Leon was enough out of his sight, Alex abandoned his own trolly and left quickly, suddenly needing air before he could throw up. Somehow, he managed to keep the nothing (water, he’d had water at some point today) down and he fished for his bus pass and went to the stop to wait for it, pacing restlessly. He had some coffee at his apartment, but he wouldn’t need any of it tonight. He was just relieved to see the bus’s headlights come into view.