WHO: Leon Orcot and Count D WHAT: A visit WHERE: The Pet Shop WHEN: Thursday, July 25th RATING: References to a shooting STATUS: Complete upon posting
T-Chan was the first to notice the Detective’s arrival. As per, D was trying to sit and enjoy a new tea he’d bought when T-Chan began to snarl toward the parlor. Not two seconds later, the bell chimed overhead. The Count sighed. Customers could sometimes be an inconvenience to his quality alone time.
But this was no regular customer. For a few days, or perhaps even longer, the shop had been joyfully empty of one Detective Orcot. Well. It wasn’t as if D missed him or anything. In fact, it had been quite pleasant not having the Detective snooping about and breathing his warm breath over D’s shoulder, taking photos of his customers and drunkenly pestering the animals. D knew it was Detective Orcot simply by the boots on the floor. The Detective walked with a purpose, and sometimes, he stumbled. Today, he seemed slower. Hungover? Tea would fix that.
“Detective Orcot,” the Count greeted without leaving his sitting area. “Lovely to see you again. Come have some tea.” T-Chan didn’t seem to find it so lovely. D patted him on the head and shooed him to the sofa.
Leon had been surprised the first time he’d come into the shop and had seen T-Chan and Pon-Chan there, but the surprise had passed soon and just served to make the shop even more familiar too Leon. It did mean that D had probably started dreaming, but D hadn’t said anything about it and that made Leon a little nervous. Who knew what D was dreaming about. Was he dreaming of Leon like Leon dreamed of him?
But now, that was the furthest thing on his mind. Right now, he couldn’t think about the Dreams. He hadn’t been able to think of anything other than Harry or Laurel; even his dreams had been plagued by Harry instead of D for once, and he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since the shooting two days ago.
T-Chan snarled at him again. “Not today,” Leon muttered at the creature, not even bothering to look at him as he took a seat on one of D’s chairs. He didn’t say anything at all to D. D would probably get him that tea and some disgustingly sweet cake or something whether Leon said something or not.
Oh.
Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Worry swept briefly over the Count’s features. Silently, he served up tea along with the predictable sweet, this one a lovely purple Taro bun, fresh from the steamer. Along with it, however, he added a small bowl of warm egg drop soup.
Long fingers slipped smoothly into the Detective’s ridiculous bangs, an almost sweet gesture that was more an invitation to speak, but not a request. For his part, D settled onto the sofa and gave Rat-Chan part of a bun while he sat with his own soup, bun, and tea. D himself was looking a little pale; not eating enough was suddenly starting to be a small problem for him. The Detective seemed to have bigger ones tonight, but D only sat in silence with him because he thought it was needed.
Leon closed his eyes when D's fingers brushed against his hair, taking a small amount of comfort in the act. He did need the silence, and he listlessly chewed at the taro bun, not even commenting on it's bizarre colour. There was something calming about the pet shop that Leon couldn't quite put his finger on. Maybe it was the smell of incense and tea that covered up the smell of the animals, or the chattering of animals on the peripherals of his hearing.
The silence was comforting too, not the awkward silence that sometimes happened, and when Leon finally emptied his teacup and spoke almost half an hour after sitting down, it wasn't because he felt like he should speak to break the silence, but because he felt like he could. "I nearly killed two people this week. I did kill one of them," Leon said, giving D a dark smile while he watched for D's reaction.
In the short time they’d known one another, D’s Dear Detective had been a foul-mouthed, entirely too loud, annoying thorn in the side of creation. Now, D wanted nothing more than to hear him yell or say something offensive. Even the hedgehog was edging his way over, a worried paw to Leon’s lap.
The expression on the Detective’s face didn’t bring much of a reaction from D, who sat in continued, easy silence, allowing the man his room to speak more if he chose. T-Chan sat nearby on the floor, rolling his eyes while Pon-Chan sat cross legged next to him, listening intently to the Detective as if it were story time at the library.
But D’s only change was to gently lower his chin, his eyes falling shut momentarily, then opening again. Go on, Detective, it all said. For whatever reason the Detective was telling him, D was listening.
A wave of deja vu washed over Leon, and he swallowed, a little overcome. He cleared his throat, and then reached for his cigarettes and lighter, not sure if D would let him smoke in this world - it wasn't the 90s anymore - but deciding to risk it anyway.
"The worst part is, I saw it coming. I knew what was going to happen, and I still didn't do anything to stop it." He couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger that would have saved Laurel by putting down Harry. Hell, he could have shot Harry non-lethally and maybe saved them both, but he hadn't even thought of that. He curled his hand, the one not holding the cigarette, into a tight, white-knuckle fist.
Disgusting as the habit was, D let the Detective smoke, affording him the little comfort; D himself would recover.
He sat silently, fingers of both hands wrapped around his cup of tea as he sipped at it. His gaze fixed on a slight scar at the Detective’s face and he tried to imagine the cop ever doing anything that was actively egregious. Nothing. There was nothing. Not so far anyway, beyond the little annoyances the Detective provided.
“Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect, Officer Orcot?” he asked, still looking at that scar.
Leon looked at D, confused. “You mean the Ashton Kutcher movie?” he asked, frowning. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” What it had to do with anything, Leon had no idea. He didn’t even know that D watched movies. As far as he was concerned, D had never looked at anything with a screen in his life.
“Who?” D asked, a little confused. “No, no movies.” D almost wanted to roll his eyes, but it was sort of….charming how randomly stupid the Detective could be. Instead of getting annoyed by it, the Count stood up to sit next to the Detective. He rolled the sleeve up his kimono up. Underneath, stitched into the delicate satin lining was a butterfly. “It is said that the simple act of a butterfly flapping its wings can change the course of fate,” he explained, the tip of a nail tracing the design.
“When it flaps, you might even be able to change things,” he continued, “and live without the regrets of this life. The only trouble is, you will live with the regrets of another one, and it will go on, until the butterfly is exhausted and so, too, are you.” The Count rolled his sleeves down again and stared back at the scar that ran neatly along the Detective’s cheek. Because he couldn’t not, because he was drawn and it felt necessary to do so, D touched it and drew his nail down it, a perfect little fit. “Would you change it, even if you could?” he asked.
Shivers ran down Leon's spine at D's touch like electricity, enough to make his toes curl, and his mouth go dry, and he turned his face toward D. God. He was such a creep. No one else made Leon's skin crawl like this. He swallowed and licked his lips, trying to find his tongue again.
"I wish it was me," he got out, a little to his surprise. He hadn't known what he was going to say, but that hadn't been it. "I wish it had been me instead of Harry. I mean, I know- I had this dream, where we did trade places. So I know that that's not how things are supposed to be. But I still…"
What was he doing? He shouldn't be here, telling this to D. He shouldn't be telling this to anyone, but especially not D. He hadn't seen Alex or Laurel since the hospital the day it had happened, and yet here he was, sitting next to D and spilling his guts? It made no damn sense.
"Sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here. This has nothing to do with you," Leon muttered suddenly, moving to get up.
Without stopping the Detective, the Count stood as well, Pon-Chan watching curiously. He’d seen the shiver and the way the Detective deflected the mention of a dream, but it was as if they’d been here before. That wasn’t entirely impossible, if the butterfly effect was to be believed, so D asked no more of the Detective.
Except-
“If you dream,” his hand touched the Detective’s bicep, just soft and lightly pleading, “Then dream well, my Darling Detective.” A pause as he removed his hand. “I do not wish it was you.” Not that it counted for much, not here.
It did count for something, which was more than Leon expected. He felt a little calmer, a little more himself, and while he'd known, logically and from his dream within a Dream, that this was the way things should have happened if they had to happen at all, he hadn't actually believed it. In fact, up until now, he'd felt guilty for even thinking that it had to have been Harry.
"Yeah, you too," Leon said, giving D a bit of a smile and putting his hands in his pockets so he didn't do something stupid like giving D a friendly pat on the shoulder or something. "You have a good night, D," he said, and headed out of the pet shop.