ᴡɪᴛᴄʜ ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ (arcane) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-10-05 20:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, petshop of horrors: leon orcot, ₴ inactive: james barlow |
WHO: Leon & James
WHAT: James brings Leon takeout after an ass-chomping and then blue screens him
WHERE: Morningside
WHEN: Backdated to the Mimic plot
WARNINGS: Nothing too terrible
STATUS: Complete
Leon couldn’t be sure that he was having the worst week imaginable, but he was pretty sure that he was, the one exception being that Saturday night with James had actually been kind of nice. First, there was Thursday, when David had turned into a cat and got stuck in a tree, which was hilarious, really, and for the most part, Leon had had a lot of fun with the Rose cats that day. Right up until David had turned human while Leon was trying to rescue him from said tree and they’d both fallen unceremoniously out of the tree. Then, he’d fallen out of another tree on Monday, trying to catch yet another cat - this one was actually a cat, not a human that kept turning into a cat - and while he’d managed to eventually catch the cat, a little worse for wear with the scratches, and managed to get a nice paycheque from the old lady who’d lost her, he was pretty sure it was what had kicked off (pun not intended) the trouble in his leg. And then today, Wednesday, he’d not only been eaten alive, he’d also accidentally wandered into a birthday party for someone who could probably, technically, be considered his boss (even if they didn’t seem that formal about that sort of thing here) without actually knowing it was his birthday or a party, and that had been a special kind of humiliating. He’d made his escape, not before having a couple drinks, had come home, had another shower (he was pretty sure his hair still smelled like mimic slime, which is what he was going to continue to think of it as because he did not want to think about what it actually was), and then settled onto his couch, right leg propped up on the coffee table, an ice pack resting on his thigh, and Judas Priest playing over his Spotify. His apartment was hardly what one might consider “neat.” It wasn’t as bad as it got in LA - for one, Leon owned a lot less things, for two, he didn’t smoke inside his apartment anymore so there weren’t overflowing ashtrays in every room, and for three, he had tossed most of his dirty clothes in his bedroom after James had mentioned he was coming over, but his sink was still filled with dirty dishes and there were a lot of empty bottles and cans littered about on counter tops and the coffee table. He glanced around the apartment, musing about the fact that he should probably at least try to hide the dishes or toss the empties into a recycling bag, but he was beat and now that he was on the couch, he didn’t want to get up. He wasn’t even sure if he could get up. When the knock came at his door, he let out a resigned sigh, and then called out, “It’s unlocked!” Unlocked, right then. James - who was behind Door #1 and laden down with a bag of takeout food - entered the domicile, unsure of what he was expecting. He hadn’t been to Morningside very often, if at all, and wasn’t very familiar with the decor. Though once he got an introductory glimpse around Leon’s place, he was going to hazard a guess that most apartments didn’t come with the empty bottles and cans design - upcycling, maybe? The dishes in the sink were just a nice bonus. “Alright, now was this an unfortunate water park accident? Or is it something else?” he asked by way of greeting, referring to the clearly injured leg and the application of an ice pack. “And if you don’t like chicken and lamb over rice, I can order something different.” It certainly smelled good though. Plenty of flavor explosions to be had - this place always did halal food right too, a little dive place, walls plastered with fun photographs and murals, but with hearty portions and perfect spices. He had the aforementioned chicken and lamb over rice, plus some naan, all stuffed into overflowing containers. James set the bag down, and he supposed he didn’t need to grab utensils or plates or anything (plastic utensils were provided and they could be heathens and eat out of the containers) but his fingers itched to clear a space so he may have tossed a bottle or two into the recycling bin. Because reasons. Leon grimaced when James tossed a few bottles into the recycling. He really should have just sucked it up and spent the time to get this place at least halfway presentable. "Sorry, I work a lot," he muttered. Which wasn't necessarily a lie. He had the defense job, and the Rose job, and tended to get hired by rich people looking for their pets, and what free time he had, he mostly spent trying to figure out the black market, which was going about as well as he figured it would have, him being one guy with zero police sources behind him. By the time he came home, all he wanted to do was eat something, have a couple drinks, and pass out watching something on TV. It had been the same in LA, really. Some guys, when they were done work, just went home to spend time with family and loved ones, but Leon had taken all the overtime he could get away with, and then even when he wasn't getting paid, he still did his work. It was why he'd had one of the best arrest records in his precinct. He removed his foot from the table with a grunt, and leaned forward to help start unloading the bag. "Something else," he answered. "It's an old injury. I usually stay on top of it," he paused, frowning, and muttered, "Pun not intended," before continuing, "but I guess this week's been too much for it. It's why I thought sitting on that fucking bench would be a good idea in the first place. But once I let it rest and do some light exercises, it'll be right as rain." And Adora had mentioned magical healing. That hadn't been a possibility Leon had ever considered, but wouldn't that be something. "This all smells great, by the way. What do I owe you?" James chuckled warmly, waving off the apology - and the idea that Leon owed him. He didn’t, and the apartment wasn’t that bad - there were no roaches crawling around and it smelled fine (James wasn’t about to pass out, anyway). Besides, he wasn’t Leon’s mother or Mary Poppins so he wasn’t about to spit-spot the room and get the brooms dancing in some kind of Fantasia move. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said, popping open one of those containers. Drinks, however - they’d need those. The spice level definitely called for such things. “Might just grab a glass of water though, if that’s alright? There are a bunch of skilled healers in Silniara, by the way,” he added, as he headed into the kitchen. “Their apothecary in the city is one of the best. Rumor has it they can even regrow limbs - so if you’re open to it, they may have something for that leg?” "Then I'll get dinner next time," Leon said, a little awkwardly, wondering if he should get up, head James off, and get their drinks himself like an actual host. Since Leon's luck this week suggested that he'd pitch himself face first into a counter if he made the attempt, he decided to stay put. "There's beer and Coke in the fridge if you want any. You can grab me one too, if you want." His fridge, at least, contained some actual food among the beer and takeout containers, so he had nothing to be embarrassed by in there. A fridge filled with condiments and alcohol was acceptable in his 20s, but not now that he was creeping up on his late 30s. "Whiskey on the counter if you wanted to mix yourself something." The plus side of having David drag him bodily out of a tree was getting an entire case of whiskey out of the deal. "Adora - she's the coordinator on my Defense Team - she said she'd look into something for me. It would be nice though. It's been ten years I've been dealing with this thing, and like, I'm used to it at this point, I guess. But I miss never needing to worry about whether or not I'm doing too much with it." Hmm, whiskey? That sounded like a decent plan - derailing from water in that case, then. It had been a long day and sometimes he liked to wind down with an adult beverage after ‘the grind’ of it all too. Thus, James grabbed a beer for Leon and a Coke for himself - adding whiskey would just bring out something molasses-like in terms of flavor, so he mixed the two together in a glass and returned to the living room. “There’s plenty of options here, yes - some people aren’t as open to letting magic heal them, even locally. It’s always been a point of contention in the hospitals too,” James said, settling near Leon and handing him that beer (though he’d plinked the top off, at least - because the gods forbid he watch Leon do it with his teeth or something. Oh my cracked veneers). “But if you’re willing, why not? That way you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I’ll come along with and hold your hand if you’d like.” “I could see why. Practically everything I knew about magic told me there’s always a steep price to to pay. Like, fix my leg and now someone else has a wonky leg or someone’s dead or, you know, demons. Of course, pretty much all my magic knowledge came from horror movies, so...” He shrugged. “I’ve been trying this new thing where I try to be a little more open-minded than I used to be.” The more he worked on it, the easier it became, really. It took a certain level of maintained open-mindedness to keep Seeing animals how he did. James’ offer seemed to come a little too close to implying actual friendship for Leon, who planned to pointedly ignore whatever splitting take-out in his apartment after a garbage day implied. He had the sudden image of D sitting next to his hospital bed after the first time he’d nearly died, slicing apple bunnies for him. And so he snorted, and waved a hand dismissively. “I’m a big boy: I can probably handle someone wiggling their fingers at my leg and shouting ‘abra kadabra’ at me, no hand-holding required.” He grabbed one of the pieces of naan and started piling some of the delicious-smelling rice mixture, making himself naan taco. “How was your day, by the way? Didn’t have too much trouble with these mimic things, I hope?” Asking him how his day was, now wasn’t that sweet. Or at least James thought so - not many people did ask that question, anyway, so it was a pleasant switch. “So far I’ve managed to evade them - it’s the first time I’ve heard of something like that here but the more Outlanders that pop up from other worlds, it seems like the greater the chance for them to bring something with them at some point,” he chuckled ruefully. And he didn’t go for the naan taco, though that was a good idea. Respect for the food-eating game, at least; James just mixed everything together in the container so the fiery hot sauce merged with the white sauce and he could scoop some of it up with the flatbread pieces he broke off. “Things like this don’t usually last too long though. I just hope that people don’t get too injured.” It was kind of disheartening to see an uptick of injuries whenever Vallo’s unique brand of world-balancing magic got shifted off balance, and something proceeded to happen - when they were all sailors caught in a powerful storm. To Leon’s credit, he actually swallowed the food that was in his mouth before he considered speaking. He took another moment to frown at his naan-co, and then turned to James. “It’s gotta piss you off sometimes, right? Having all these people just showing up out of nowhere and messing up your world?” He tried to think of what it would be like if suddenly, one day, shit like mimics just started showing up in LA, and realized, belatedly, that that was more or less exactly what happened when D moved his shop to LA and started selling his weird pets. It had pissed Leon off, knowing D was out there murdering people in a way that was impossible to prove, but it was a trade-off: D had been doing it intentionally, which was undoubtedly worse, but he was also only one man, so the destruction was limited, and he actually belonged to Leon’s world. He wasn’t just some interloper that suddenly started showing up in droves, messing up the magic and carting along monsters. Well, that was a good question - James was only now just starting to integrate with Outlanders, though he’d been observing the goings-on for awhile, ever since there was an uptick in appearances (and disappearances). “Does it piss me off? No, not really - it’s not like you all asked to be here,” he mused, sipping the whiskey-and-soda. It went down easily, smooth as a nap taken poolside. “I think that, when it comes down to it, those who have a deeper connection with Vallo itself, as its own magical entity, are still kind of baffled about the sudden appearances too and why there’s been such a deluge.” Some of the locals found it to be exhausting (granted, everyone found Vallo’s inherent bullshit to be exhausting) but for the most part, their resentment didn’t latch itself to the Outlanders - there were always exceptions, of course, but it wasn’t the norm. “We’re all just trying to get by, you know?” He sloshed the liquid in his glass, glancing at Leon. “Besides, meeting you was a positive - so even if you loathe it here, I’m glad you showed up out of nowhere.” Leon frowned. That made sense, he guessed. When he was a younger man, any time he’d get confused he’d also get angry. Maybe sometimes he still did, but he’d also accepted somewhere down the line that not everything fit into the box he’d once put the world in, which meant that he didn’t get as angry when things didn’t fit how he expected or wanted them to. Maybe growing up in a weird-ass place like Vallo meant that most people here didn’t have that initial urge to cram everything neatly into a box. Maybe that was why everyone was so unexpectedly welcoming to the people who popped up bringing all their world’s problems to their doorstop. He was lost enough in his thoughts about it that he almost didn’t hear James’ next comment, but when it finally sunk in he turned a rather vibrant shade of red, the scar that ran around his hairline more visible with the contrast, and took a bite of his naan-co. He muttered something around the lamb and naan that might have sounded a little like, “I guess you’re not so bad either.” There may have been the slightest twinkle of amusement in James’s eyes, a definite warmth to the blowtorch blue. “Well, isn’t that the nicest compliment,” he smirked, scooping more rice atop a piece of the catcher’s mitt flatbread. “I’ll take it.” Though that sort of opened up a couple different avenues for other questions, at least for him. “Does that make us friends?” he asked. “Because I’ve got to admit, I sort of like watching you turn the most fascinating shade of red on occasion.” Like right now, for instance. Though he supposed it could be argued that you didn’t always enjoy making your friends blush - but he was still trying to feel out a lot of that. He didn’t think Leon was so heterosexual he actually enjoyed ‘hint of lime’ chips and crossfit as the ultimate in exercise routines but James could be wrong. Leon might have turned an even more fascinating shade of red at that, if it wasn't for the lurch in his stomach before that. He swallowed. "James I can't -" he said to what remained of his naan-co, and then he put it down, wiped his fingers on his jeans, and turned to James. "I can't stay here. It's probably better if you don't get too attached." Not like Jill and her e-mails. It was probably more like he didn’t want to stay here - but James wouldn’t make the distinction. Because Leon wasn’t going anywhere, not unless Vallo decided otherwise - likely he knew that but accepting it was a whole other sort of thing. “I’ll take the risk,” he decided (using a paper napkin from the takeout bag instead of his jeans, when it came to wiping off his fingers - but there was a certain charm to using clothing too, he thought). “Provided you don’t mind, of course.” He wouldn’t hover or anything - or otherwise hang around where he wasn’t wanted. That wasn’t exactly James’s style. Leon probably should have known that 'I'll be leaving as soon as I can' wouldn't have been a good deterrent for someone who lived on a place where nearly weekly texts about 'disappearances' went out, even if he suspected that the locals probably didn't go missing the same as the Outlanders. Which meant that Leon was forced to face the fact that he didn't want to get attached to anything here. When he'd left LA, he really hadn't had to leave that much behind. Chris, back in New York with his real family, was better off without him and wouldn't have missed him. He couldn't be a good cop anymore, both because of his injuries, which hadn't fully healed by the time he left, and because of the nagging thought that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if D managed to wipe out humanity; how could he protect people properly if he thought the world might be better off without some of them? Even Jill, once Leon convinced her with hard proof that D was alive and hadn't died in the explosion, had encouraged him to chase after D. She'd been all romantic about it, go chase after your true love and all that other garbage, but she'd still helped him plan. Neither of them, at the time, thought it would take very long. But Vallo was, dare he say it, kind of nice. His work with the defenses teams was fulfilling, sort of, even if he did get eaten sometimes, and his once-a-week work at Rose Apothecary was kind of fun and he liked the Roses, and his apartment was the nicest place he'd lived in in close to twenty years: even the bachelor suite he'd rented in LA was a third of the size, noisy, poorly maintained, and didn't have a freaking pool on the roof. The absolute last thing he needed was to add an actual friend to the mix. When he left Vallo - and he would leave Vallo, at this point he didn't have a choice without throwing away the last ten years of his life - he didn't want to regret it. By all rights, he should have told James Yeah, I mind, get lost, except he couldn't make himself do it. All he could manage was to turn away from James and glare at what remained of his naan-co, while over his speakers, Rob Halford sang: The years are flyin' by and it's time I got high / Took a sample of the good things in life Admittedly, getting attached to someone was kind of new for James too - he had grown up in a coven where it was all about the family, and forming outside relationships wasn’t exactly the norm. He had known, ever since he was small (maybe elementary school - second grade or so) that his family wasn’t like other families anyway; childhood innocence faded like broken stars, and coming out of all of that sort of meant that he was learning what it meant to be close to someone on his own terms. He didn’t really anticipate it’d be one of the Outlanders - he had hoped to make friends with some of them, sure, but well. Leon and his glares were a class unto their own, so James would just go with it. See what happened, as long as he remained. And he’d remain here for now too - he could wait. He could be patient. Leon had more than half expected James to just leave. It seemed like what most people would when they asked someone if they were friends and got sullen silence in return. Leon wasn’t sure what he would do if James did leave. Let him, he liked to think, but he wasn’t so sure. Except no, James just sat there, which made Leon feel even more awkward about the entire situation. “I left home ten years ago,” Leon found himself saying, which he hadn’t intended to do, but hell, here he was. It wasn’t like Leon had any special aversion to talking about it. He grabbed his beer and took a long swallow. “I mean, there wasn’t much to leave behind anyway, so it wasn’t a big loss or anything, and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t really expecting to be gone for so long. I’ve been looking for someone: Count D. He was this guy I was investigating back when I was a cop. “Anyway, when you spend ten years travelling the world, you don’t really, you know, make a lot of friends. Kinda hard to make any when you’re only staying in a place for a couple months until you get your next lead, and, you know, it’s just better if you don’t bother. Keeps things simple. Keeps you on task. And it’s not like I really did the whole friend thing in LA either. So I’m about twenty years out of practice and you’re probably better off finding another tree to bark up.” He was pretty sure he’d managed to muck up the last bit of that sentence, but he hadn’t noticed until it was too late to change it, and so he’d just had to suffer through it to the end. Aha, there we go - James figured Leon would start talking eventually. And he did plan to wait it out - he wasn’t going to push for anything, wasn’t going to reach in and pull the words out. No, not at all - because he figured his presence was enough to give a bit of a nudge; he promised he wouldn’t do any mindreading (and he’d put the block in to trigger anyway) and he meant that. “Well, I’m glad you told me - but things do change,” he said, setting down his empty glass - he was feeling warm from the buzz of whiskey, the way it slithered through his veins. And it was true, things did change - they changed like the skies struck with unpredictable thunderstorms sometimes. “Do you really still think it’s better not to bother?” “I still think it’s easier,” Leon said. He sat on that for a moment longer, and then let out a frustrated sigh, leaning back into the couch and resting his head against the backrest. “I just don’t want to make it any harder to leave than it’s already going to be, with the whole ‘needing magic’ to get out thing, you know? Vallo’s maybe not the worst place in the world, but I can’t stay here. This isn’t where I belong.” He closed the basically-empty container, chicken and lamb and rice all obliterated. Serious conversation time, alright - food time over. “Tell me where you believe you belong, then,” he suggested, though not unkindly. “Because do you really not think that much of yourself?” James wanted to know, and though he meant for it to be a rhetorical question he was curious. “Like all you’re meant for, and all you deserve - is chasing a ghost?” Ten years was a really long time to go after someone who kept slipping through your fingers like sand - it seemed to be so much effort, trying to hold something that couldn’t be held and just kept fading away, morning fog or the last embers of a fire. It didn’t have to be that way here - of course, sometimes it was a little difficult to accept something like that too. To want something better for yourself - he’d struggled that too, on his end. That may be why he just didn’t walk away from Vorerra, not before the breaking point. “I belong with --” Leon started sharply, and then bit off his words, because he was about to say that he belonged with D, and that… well, that wasn’t something he’d ever let himself think about before. He’d thought a thousand times about what it would be like when he finally found D and gave him back what he forgot. He’d daydreamed about D’s look of surprise when Leon finally barged into the shop, and the look he’d have on his face when Leon gave him the drawing - maybe he’d even cry - and then maybe D would invite him for tea, but he never thought about what would happen after that. In the early days, he’d thought he’d just go home again, after he gave D the drawing, and maybe D would come with him. Except there wasn’t really anything to go home to, not after a decade. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized there was a part of him that always assumed that when he finally found D, he’d just… stay with him. They’d board that flying ship of his, and instead of D pushing him off, telling him that humans hadn’t yet earned the right to board the ark, D would smile at him and tell him, “You have earned the right to board the ark,” and they’d fly off, clouds parting before the bow, to wherever it was that D was going to set up shop. Or maybe D would give up the ‘revenge on all humans’ business altogether, and they could just live on the ship with the animals and not worry about the rest of humanity. But he guessed there was an equally likely chance he’d end up like Agent Howell, who’d finally found D’s old man after 22 years of searching, and they’d both wound up dead. That would be one way of ending up forever with D, but not a way he was particularly looking forward to. Besides, he didn’t think D would ever actually hurt him. “It’s not that I think badly about myself, really. No more than most people, anyway. And I’m not chasing ghosts. I’m…” But he couldn’t finish that thought, because there was nothing to follow up with. He’d been relying on his mouth just finishing whatever thought he’d been trying to come up with - it was a tactic that Leon relied on often - but it hadn’t worked out that way. “I’ll figure out where I belong after I find D and give him back what he left behind,” he finished, stubbornly. Stubborn indeed. James lifted an eyebrow - but he wasn’t about to go full throttle with the diagnoses over here. It was starting to click in his head that this wasn’t just your average cat-and-mouse game with Leon and whoever ‘D’ actually was - it had become a part of Leon, probably a part of them both, and it was ingrained in him as if it was some kind of involuntary action, like breathing. Like the chase was a circle, growth rings of a tree, and it wasn’t really going anywhere - maybe other experiences could stack on top of it though, so it wouldn’t remain quite at the forefront. Maybe that had to happen gradually. “I hope that this pot you’re chasing at the end of the rainbow is truly all you hope it will be, all you’ve built it up to be,” he said sincerely. Oh, it probably wouldn’t turn out that way - but sometimes you just couldn’t see the forest for the trees regardless, could you? Then he shifted closer, watching carefully with that blue gaze, a chemical shade of phthalo and angling through dark lashes. “If you’re going to leave anyway though, may as well have some fun before you go?” Leon snorted. “I’m used to disappointment, remember?” he said, smiling wryly right up until the moment when he looked at James and caught the full blast of that look, and then it turned into a confused frown. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but didn’t quite succeed. Christ, were his eyes ever blue. “I guess a little fun never killed anyone,” he said, wondering, vaguely, if James was flirting with him, and then decided that no, Leon must have been reading things wrong. “I mean, except for thrill killers, I guess. And people who decide to jump out of planes or whatever other idiotic things people do for fun.” “I promise the fun I have in mind won’t kill you,” James assured. Alright, now he was certain he wasn’t barking up the wrong tree - in terms of climbing trees, that is. And what everything associated with that entailed. But still, maybe he shouldn’t push it on this particular day - Leon seemed like a very ‘baby steps’ kind of fellow, when it came to new experiences. Like he couldn’t be pulled in any direction until he was ready; some people were like that. They dug their heels in. “Though you might need both legs to be functioning correctly.” Leon’s eyes flicked, almost quick enough to not be noticed, to James’ lips, and then he had to wrestle his line of thinking onto an entirely different tract all together, because that was definitely not what was happening here. Even if James had wanted to have that kind of fun before, which Leon doubted, there was no way he’d want to after hearing ‘I’ve been chasing another man around the globe for a decade.’ Not that Leon had meant to imply that he was in love with D or anything, because he was not. And anyway, Leon reminded himself, that sort of thing was off the table entirely. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone. “Like… Like hiking?” Leon asked, feeling a little like an idiot. What? Hiking? James actually laughed, a low and smooth sound - fresh oil poured right into an engine. “No, not quite. Though I’m sure a fellow like you - capable of astute observations - would be able to parse out the true meaning,” he said, managing to somehow pull back a little and remember what it felt like for logic to assert itself. Or at least, that’s what he was going for. Who knew if it would work or not. Developing a thing for an Outlander who could literally disappear tomorrow, and would in theory go back to his world where he was friendless and laser-focused on chasing some potential criminal he absolutely did want to catch (sure) was not exactly logical, but here they were. “I should go,” he added, fully planning to collect some of the takeout rubbish here and be a polite guest, throwing it all into the appropriate trash receptacle. “No need to walk me out though, so don’t get up.” Well, now Leon really did feel like an idiot, and his cheeks turned a nice shade of pink. Especially since now his mind was stuck on the other tract, despite the fact that he was pretty sure that there was absolutely no way. He also found that he didn’t really want James to leave, but he couldn’t really think of an excuse to make him stay, so he nodded. “Dinner’s my treat next time,” Leon reminded him, hesitated, and then said, “I’m sorry about, you know, getting all maudlin there for a bit.” “Next time,” James agreed, folding the takeout bag neatly into the trash - he even rinsed his glass at the sink, wasn’t he so polite? “And you don’t need to apologize for anything - at least not for anything recent,” he smirked, coming back around into the living room where Leon was camped out with the bad leg. Hopefully he’d take someone up on that healing thing, rather than suffer - James himself would offer, but that type of healing wasn’t in his bag of tricks. Before he scooted all the way out though, he returned to where Leon was and, perhaps with a sudden shot of adrenaline or ‘fuck it’-ism granted by whiskey, leaned in and slotted their mouths together. Made his heart go like a racehorse, and there was a mangled burr of a sound at the back of his throat because everything tasted of spice and alcohol; it was a good thing though, caused a roar of an eruption in those pleasure centers in the brain, like they'd been overloaded with nitrous oxide. “Try not to get chomped on,” he added, before finally heading for the door. Or at least, try not to get chomped on by anything besides him. Leon’s apartment was enough of a mess that he wouldn’t have minded if James had just left everything where it was, and he uttered some half-hearted protests when he started to clean up. Even if he felt awkward about it, or a little like maybe James was pitying him because of his leg, he still knew it was better to have it done now than whenever it was that Leon got around to it. If James had ever wanted to see what it looked like when someone blue screened, he’d managed to achieve it. Leon’s heart was in his throat, eyes wide, and he stared as James headed to and through the door. It wasn’t until James was gone that Leon managed to regain his ability to speak, and a little after that when he was finally able to think of anything other than the taste of James’ lips and how warm they’d been. He would spend the rest of the night, and the early hours of the morning - when he finally managed to fall asleep - using all his vast cognitive skills trying to make some kinda sense of it. |