Unless your name is Leon, this isn’t your coffee, now is it Who: Leon Kennedy and Leon Orcot (Leon Kennedy is referred to as "Kennedy" in the log) What: Confusion over names leads to an interesting conversation When: Backdated to Mid-June Where: Local coffee shop Rating/Warning: Some language, reference to serial killers (dreams), but otherwise pretty tame Status: Complete!
Leon normally woke up fairly early so that he could read the paper and work out before work, but this morning he’d woken up hungover. He’d had a nip of the hair of the dog, which he kept on the windowsill next to his bed, and had managed to make it to the coffee shop in time to grab some tea and a bagel, which he was happy enough about, even if he lamented having time to shave his scruff. His father had always drilled into him that, no matter how tied up in work or life he got, it was important for him to make sure he was presentable on the job. No one wanted to talk to a detective with four days worth of unkempt facial hair and stained t-shirts.
He grabbed one of the spare newspapers on the counter, and started skimming through the headlines, and when he heard his name being called for his tea. He grabbed it without looking, and took a swig, immediately choking on it. It wasn’t that he disliked black coffee - in fact, it was how he preferred his coffee. But he’d been expecting tea, something he’d grown a taste for in his dreams.
“Oi,” he growled at the barista. “I ordered a tea, not coffee.”
-
Leon Kennedy stared as another man grabbed his cup of coffee just as he was reaching for it. He didn’t even have time to get out a “hey, asshole” before the other man had taken a liberal drink, which lead him to practically choking on it and then berating the poor barista behind the counter, who looked about as stunned as Leon himself.
”I ordered coffee, asshole,” Leon bit back at the man before the barista could recover himself.
-
Leon rolled his eyes before he turned to the other man. It was way too early for all of this bullshit. He just wanted to get his tea and leave, was that too much to ask for? “Yeah, well, unless your name is Leon, this isn’t your coffee, now is it?” Leon snapped.
-
Leon deadpanned at the other man. “My name is Leon,” he answered cooly. He really wasn’t in the mood for this guy’s bullshit. To prove the point he dug out his wallet and held up his Colorado driver’s license (maybe it was time to get that updated if he planned on staying in California for the long term), for the other man to see his name: Leon Scott Kennedy.
-
Well, that was.... Unexpected. Leon blinked in surprise, and just to be sure, he took the man’s drivers license. Leon had never actually met another Leon before. He’d met Leos, and Leonards, and he knew that there were other Leons out there somewhere in the world, but he’d actually never come across one before.
“Oh,” he said sheepishly, handing back the license and then holding out the coffee out for the other Leon. He remembered a little belatedly that he’d already drank from the cup, and said, “I’ll uh… buy you another coffee.”
-
It was something of a first for (Leon) Kennedy as well. He’d gone his entire life up to this point being the only Leon he knew. It figured it would be in Orange County where he’d have a run in with someone else who shared the name. Though, as far as that went, this was the most benign complication the county had thrown at him yet.
“Uh huh,” he muttered, taking the coffee cup and giving it a look. A perfectly good cup of coffee wasted. It was blasphemous to throw it out, but Kennedy didn’t want to be drinking some stranger’s backwash.
He set the cup down and put away his license, glancing up when the other man offered to buy him a new cup. Well, now that was more like it. “Sure,” he said with a shrug.
It was at about this time that the barista cleared his throat. He was holding a cup with the string to a tea bag hanging over the side. He looked nervously between the two men. “Leon?” He asked, eyes darting between the two men.
“Thanks,” Leon said, taking the tea. “You mind making another one of those coffees?” he asked. Maybe he was skipping the line, but it wasn’t like coffee was especially hard to make and he didn’t especially want to make this other Leon wait around because of his screw up. The barista nodded, and then turned to remake the coffee.
“I might as well take that coffee,” Leon said to Leon. “Maybe my partner will want the tea.” He didn’t really know if Laurel liked tea or not, but there was no harm in trying.
“Its best if it doesn’t go to waste,” Kennedy admitted, handing the cup back to the other man as the barista vanished to go pour another cup. The term “partner” perked his ears. It could have literally meant anything from business interests to romantic relationships, but it made Kennedy think of his days with the Denver PD. “Partner, huh?” He asked as the barista brought him a new cup of piping hot coffee. “You a cop?”
“Detective,” Leon confirmed, putting the money for the coffee plus a generous tip onto the counter. “Good guess.”
Kennedy shrugged. “Maybe? I was on the force back in Denver. So, I hear the word ‘partner’, and I automatically think cop.”
“No shit,” Leon said. “Same name, same job once upon a time. Next you’ll be telling me we have the same girlfriend,” he said, and punctuated it with a laugh. Not that Leon had a girlfriend, or really, anyone that he was terribly interested in. There was Alex, of course, but despite the fact that there was obviously still something between the two of them, Leon was trying to avoid going back to him, and was definitely avoiding bringing up their occasional rendezvous with his friends.
The fact that this random stranger shared both Kennedy’s name and former job was a little weird, and given what Orange County was shaping up to be, Kennedy was glad the coincidences stopped there. “No, thank God,” he agreed. “That’d be really awkward. I got enough weird shit on my plate as it is.”
“You and me both, brother,” Leon said. There was way too much weird in this place, and Leon was, frankly, kind of sick of it. “Frankly, I’m just glad that today’s dose of weird is kind of normal.” In a strange coincidence kind of way.
The comment gave Kennedy a moment of pause. He knew what he meant when he said ‘weird shit’ but what did this other guy mean? It almost sounded as though they were talking about the same kind of thing. Kennedy’s brows furrowed slightly. Was there some kind of code to determine if they were talking about the same thing? “Uh...yeah, me too.” A slight moment hesitation before he decided to just come out with it. “What….kind of weird shit do you normally deal with?”
“You know, normal cop things,” Leon said, shrugging. “Drunks and weirdos.” He frowned a little, wondering if he should get into the really weird things with a complete stranger, and then decided that, worst case scenario, he’d probably never see the guy. “The occasional man-eating rabbit or zombie invasion.” It was just too bad the occasional zombie invasion couldn’t involve more zombies like Liv.
“Yes! Zombies!” It was such a relief to know that he wasn’t the only one having to deal with the zombie apocalypse night after night that Kennedy completely forgot the fact that they were standing in a crowded coffee shop. Remembering just a moment too late, he threw a glance over at the barrista (who was giving him a weird look) before pulling Leon off to the side. “You dream about them too?” He asked. “Zombies, I mean?”
“Walking Dead sure is great, isn’t it?” Leon said, a little unconvincingly, to the barista, before he let himself be dragged off to the side by the other Leon. “Me? No,” Leon said. “I dream of some psychopath who’s into drug dealing, human trafficking, murdering people with animals and eating way too much fucking cake.” Man, D really got under his skin. “But I know some people who do dream of zombies. Sometimes their dreams cross over here too, so I still get to deal with them though.”
Kennedy blinked a couple of times. “Oh…” He shouldn’t have felt disappointed. Wanting someone else to dream about the same things he did was all kinds of fucked up. Besides, he shared enough with Leon Orcot as it was. “Right.” Pause for a moment while the rest of what Leon had said sunk in. “Wait.” Kennedy held up a hand. “You dream of a nut job who kills people with animals? How? Like with lions and tigers gladiator style?”
“No, not gladiator style. That would be easier to catch.” Leon grumbled. “I’m pretty sure the guy can talk to animals.” Not that D ever tried to hide that particular aspect about himself, though his dream counterpart was reluctant to believe it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Not that Leon could believe him. If Leon didn’t live in the Orange County and had seen all the other weird shit, he might not buy it either. “He runs a pet shop, and he sells these pets to people. Makes them sign a contract too saying that he and his shop aren’t responsible for anything that happens once these freaky-ass animals are out of his shop too, so I haven’t been able to get anything solid on him yet.” Leon was no contract lawyer, but somehow he suspected that a document like that wouldn’t exactly hold up in the real world. “He’s charmed the pants off the entire fucking PD too, so they think I’m nuts.”
“Jesus, and I thought my dreams were messed up,” Kennedy said. As screwed as Raccoon City currently was in his dream world, at least it was straight forward. See zombie? Shoot zombie. Of course the why surrounding the whole ordeal was another matter Leon hadn’t quite figured out yet, and would only lead him down a rabbit hole of conspiracy and terrorism. At this point, though all Kennedy really wanted to do was make sure he and Claire survived the whole ordeal. In a fucked up way, he almost wished Claire was with him now. At least he’d have someone to talk to about these dreams, rather than bumbling through them on his own.
“He has his customers sign waivers?” Kennedy asked next with a raised brow. “Sounds to me that he knows exactly what he’s doing and is covering his ass. Have you seen one of these things actually kill someone?”
“I’ll take D over zombies any day,” Leon said. Zombies made Leon’s skin crawl. Well, traditional zombies, at least. Liv only made Leon’s skin crawl when he let himself think about what the cubes of meat in her salad actually were, and he’d been getting better with that concept over the last couple of years.
“I haven’t seen then in the act, but I’ve seen the aftermath,” Leon said, his face sobering. Sometimes, it was seemingly innocent, like the ‘medusa’ or ‘basilisk’ or whatever it was that had killed a man with its gaze before looking in a mirror and joining its owner in death. That could have almost been passed off as a natural death. But the man who had thought some weird, shark-eel thing that D had called a mermaid was his wife and had been ripped to shreds by her… well, Leon didn’t think he’d ever forget the horror of walking into that pool house in his dreams or in real life. “I guess I saw a pack of rabbits try to tear a woman apart once, but they died before they managed to do more than take a finger or two. Her husband wasn’t so lucky, but I didn’t have to actually see that.”
It was weird, how, until this conversation, Leon had almost forgotten the horrible end almost all of D’s customers had met in the early dreams. Lately, Leon would be hard-pressed to think up any customers who had actually died, even when they’d taken D hostage like the child-assassin and the Peruvian terrorists; there was just one ballerina who had gone missing mid-performance.
“Killer rabbits.” Kennedy said. The idea conjured up that scene from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail in which a “bunny” (a puppet of course, so obvious that it actually made the scene funnier) mauled half the questing party in comical over-the-top gore. Hearing Leon talk about how an actual rabbit had taken the fingers of one person and had torn apart her husband put the entire scene into a new perspective.
The gruesome thought of bunnies tearing apart human beings aside (way, way aside), Kennedy knew exactly how frustrating it was to know someone was guilty and not being able to do anything about it. He frowned darkly. At least Leon still had his job. “Do you think he’s paying off the rest of your department?” He asked. “Or has he just charmed the pants off of’em?”
“No,” Leon said, scowling. He’d never had the impression that D had been paying anyone off, and he knew some of them - Jill, in particular - enough to know that if he’d tried they’d be singing a completely different tune about him. “He just flashes that slimy smile of his and offers them cake and they’re like putty in his hands.” He had no idea how D did it, but it was infuriating. “You know the chief is even a customer of his? Apparently D sold him a fucking hamster at some point.”
Please don’t let the hamster turn out to be blood thirsty… “And your chief is still alive?” Kennedy asked and then shook his head. Obviously the chief was still alive, however, considering what Leon had said about this serial killer, it was kind of surprising. “Sounds like he’s got everyone wrapped around his finger except you.”
“Yeah,” Leon said. “Luckily he hasn’t killed any actual cops.” Yet. No one Leon knew, at least. “And that’s why it’s up to me to get some proof that I can finally use to lock him up for good. Hopefully if I spend enough time with him, he’ll eventually slip.”
“You think that’ll work?” Kennedy asked. “I mean, the guy seems ballsy enough to just walk into the police station all smiles and pastries. Either he’s way too cocky and arrogant for his own good or he really has his shit figured out.” Kennedy was leaning towards the latter. Just based on what Leon had said so far, it sounded like this insane pet shop owner knew exactly what he was doing and was skilled enough to pull off these murders in such a way that he couldn’t legally be connected with them. Kennedy frowned, “what makes you think you won’t end up with some killer pet?”
“It’s definitely both,” Leon growled. Stupid smug, cocky, shit-figured-out D. He shrugged at the other Leon’s question though. It just wasn’t something that had ever crossed his mind. Dying on the job wasn’t something he spent much time on - either he would or he wouldn’t, there was nothing he could do about it either way - but D doing him in was never even a question. “I mean, I’ve been going by his shop nearly every day in the dreams for about a year and a half now,” Leon said after a moment. “If he wanted to, he probably would’ve done it by now, but I don’t think he wants to. Especially now that my little brother is living with him at the shop.”
Kennedy nearly choked on his coffee. “Wait, your brother is living with him? At the shop?” The hell?! “Why?”
“Because he didn’t think my apartment was an ‘appropriate environment to raise a child,’” Leon said, complete with air quotes, which showed how much he thought about the statement, and then muttered under his breath “just because he doesn’t approve of my posters or my cleaning habits. Pfft.” He shook his head. “My dream self decided Chris would make a good undercover guy, and I don’t think D would ever actually hurt him. My gut’s pretty spot on about this sort of thing.”
It felt as though that suddenly they were having a completely different conversation and somehow Kennedy had missed the transition. As Leon commented about how a vicious serial killer disproved of his living environment with all the annoyance one would have regarding an in-law butting in where they didn’t belong, all Kennedy could do was stare at him. It was a full beat and a half before he could reboot his brain enough to respond.
“The version of you in the dreams decided that your brother – a child – would make a good undercover agent.” Why wasn’t Leon more concerned about this? Kennedy felt as though he’d been taking crazy pills all of a sudden. Had something been slipped into his coffee?! Kennedy looked down into his cup as if it’d hold any answers.
Not that he really had any right to judge Leon, here. There was a little kid in Kennedy’s dreams too running around on her own during the zombie freaking apocalypse and his dream-self didn’t seem all that worried. Well, not worried enough to help Claire look for her, at least. Not that Claire had stuck around long enough to let him try! That was an annoying theme in his dreams: people taking off on him without listening to reason.
He groaned and rubbed at his forehead. “Christ,” he muttered. “It’s a miracle we’re not all batshit crazy.”
“Well, I didn’t say anything about good.” Leon had been hoping that he would be, but Chris really wasn’t very good at it. He’d yet to see a single suspicious thing. Even when D had been hiding some royal cat in his shop, Chris had had no idea. “But detective work is in our blood, so maybe he’ll figure it out.” Maybe not. It didn’t matter too much either way. Chris seemed happy in the shop, and that was all that really mattered.
Leon’s lips quirked wryly. “For all we know, we are all batshit crazy and just haven’t realized it yet.”
Kennedy eyed Leon wearily. He wasn’t entirely convinced that the other man wasn’t crazy. Maybe that was just the effect that dreaming had on people: making them completely nonchalant towards the weirdest shit. Kennedy wondered if there would be a point in which conversations like this wouldn’t cause him to bat an eye. Hell, maybe he’d be the one talking about serial killers as though they were merely an annoyance.
He hoped not.
“I gotta get going,” he said, motioning with his cup towards the door. “I’ll see you around?”
“Oh, probably,” Leon said. “The county gets a whole lot smaller when you’re a dreamer.” There weren’t many of them, but somehow Leon just kept running into them. “I should get going too. You take care of yourself, Leon.” Nope, that was definitely weird to say.