Leon Orcot (motherofdragon) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-10-24 09:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: james barlow, ₴ inactive: leon orcot |
Who: Leon Orcot and James Barlow
What: The aftermath of Thursday evening
When: This evening
Where: James' house
Warnings: Angst and smooches
Leon had taken Wen Qing’s suggestion for a liquid diet quite seriously, though maybe not in the vein she had meant it, and had spent the last few days either drunk or hungover. The liquor probably didn’t really help with the physical healing of the throat, though that was probably counteracted by her medicine and the fact that he avoided talking to much of anyone when he didn't have to - but the drinking sure helped with the mental shit. Or at least quieted it enough that he didn’t have to think too hard about it.
Because it was a lot. He couldn’t sleep without nightmares, of watching Harry die, a gunshot to the head, of watching himself shoot D’s father, who’d looked exactly like D in life, except that his hair hung down to his thighs, but in the dream it was the same chin-length hair D had always sported, of shooting James, somehow all three of them blended together so that it was always Leon pulling the trigger and it was always a headshot. Sometimes, he felt the memory of pain, of Mathis in his head plucking the neurons that had left him screaming, of how completely and utterly helpless he’d been while Mathis and his good squad had torn his mind apart.
And then there was the knowledge that there was no going home anymore. He could keep looking, but what was the point? If there was a way, the price to pay it wouldn’t be worth it. He was never going to see D again. Everything he’d worked for for the last ten years, everything he’d sacrificed to find D again, all if it was for nothing. He’d wasted ten years of his life chasing something he was never going to catch.
So yeah, as far as Leon was concerned, drinking was the best way to handle this. Drinking, and watching TV, and working out until it felt like his limbs were going to fall off. He’d shown up for his one patrol shift hungover, and then Adora had sent him to Darla, so he hadn’t even had a chance to take his mind off all this with work (though, getting some food in him had helped, a little).
He’d been waiting for James’ call, but when it finally came that morning, he’d almost sent it to voicemail. He agreed to come by that night, resigning himself to a full day of being sober instead of the half-day he’d planned; he knew better than to get on the ice drunk. His hockey game had been better at distracting him than anything else over the last few days, though his hangover had left him, by-and-large, fairly useless, and he was thankful that he’d spent most of the game on the bench. By the time he finally showed up on James’ doorstop that evening, wearing a plain, black turtleneck sweater (the bruises he’d gotten from whatever spell James’ sister had cast were pale but still noticeable) and a pair of jeans, his headache was only a dull ache and he thought he’d at least be able to go over his meeting with Mathis. He was, after all, practically a professional when it came to compartmentalizing, and right now he could at least pretend he was here in a professional capacity.
There was no way James could go to work and stand for sixteen hours a day on a healing leg - so he didn’t. He called in, arranging to work from home for about a week (give or take) - and it was convenient, because while much of the medical profession involved paperwork it seemed like psychiatry involved paperwork. Loads of it. Treatment plans and diagnoses, evaluations, patient histories, follow-up notes - he was able to focus on all of that and also schedule video consultations from his home office so he wouldn’t have to go into the psychiatric floor at the hospital.
It was a bit difficult to concentrate, but he didn’t want to fall too behind - so he dove in, worked on what he could, and tried not to think about Leon. And yet that stubborn mule of a man occupied his thoughts regardless.
In some kind of way, James actually sort of was in awe of that stubbornness - he’d never heard of an Outlander who tried so hard to leave. Maybe Leon went a little too far (Vorerra was always too far), but he was a person who wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he had to give up. That brand of fire was something that burned bright as an active volcano.
When he heard Leon approach, he limped to the door (slowly, carefully) and showed him inside. “I made coffee, if you want any,” he offered. “It’s still in the pot. Though I may insist on water.” He knew what those hangovers felt like - the weight of a million boulders. But likely still merely a pleasant massage compared to whatever Vorerra did to him.
“Come sit by me?” He’d just hobble to the couch, leaving room there.
“God, I’d -” kill for some coffee, Leon had started, but stumbled, because wow, what a poor choice of words. “I could go for some coffee,” he finished instead. He’d considered refusing altogether, but nothing went with hangover better than a strong coffee, and the idea of having this entire conversation without having anything to do with his hands was hard to think of himself. “Can I get you anything?” he asked as he went to pour himself a cup.
He tried not to think too hard of how their positions were reversed from when James had come over after Leon had mangled his own leg, or how James had kissed him afterward. This wasn’t a social call, and James hadn’t shot him, so the situations were different entirely. He just needed to tell James what he knew, and then he’d get out of his hair for good.
When he was finished in the kitchen, he came back, and hesitated only for a moment before he sat down on the couch, leaving a healthy distance between himself and James, and he suddenly didn’t know what he was supposed to say, because there were a hundred things that needed to be said. He finally settled on, “How are you doing?”
James shook his head. “I don’t need anything,” he insisted, attempting to make himself comfortable on the couch. He knew he was lucky, that the bullet hadn’t shattered his femur or severed the all-important femoral artery - so it was just a matter of recovering and following healer’s orders now.
His eyes were very blue, skies in July, as he watched Leon sit on the couch near him. There was a certain intensity to James’s gaze and perhaps a certain amount of guilt too. “I’m alright though,” he assured. “And...I’m sorry. For what they did to you.” James didn’t know exactly what that was, but he knew that it was mind control - before that though, he wasn’t privy to what happened.
All he knew was that Leon had likely walked into one of Vorerra’s hotels and they’d done the same fucked up shit they usually did - because they had a bone to pick with James, and they brought someone else into it.
Leon gaped, for the moment certain that he’d misheard. “You’re sor - Christ, man, how hard did I hit you?” Had Wen Qing checked him for a concussion? Leon suddenly wished that he’d asked her to check him for a concussion, because he’d obviously knocked something loose. “You didn’t shoot me. Hell, you tried to warn me away from Vorerra, but instead of listening, like any reasonable person would have, I just assumed I knew best and I went charging in half-cocked like a fucking idiot, and I let them...” he grimaced, that memory of pain again, of laying on the floor while they made him scream, of him aiming the gun at James’ head and only a last minute twitch of a muscle preventing the bullet from ending him forever. When he continued, his voice had lost its heat. “I let them make me hurt you. I’m… I’m sorry, James. I should have listened to you.”
So much for professional detachment.
James’s eyes tightened. He didn’t flip through Leon’s memories, a reel of unpleasant images - because that would be a violation, and also he didn’t need to. He already knew that there were these shadowy places where smoky whispers invaded, nooks and crannies of the mind that we tried to forget actual held space - but they did hold space.
And within that space, there lived ghosts haunting their territory.
“Maybe you should have heeded the warning but please don’t think that you let them. They made the choice, this was what they wanted - “ And by this he meant his general state of injury, as he gestured randomly to the leg. Vorerra probably knew James wouldn’t actually die (though granted it was a hell of a gamble to take), but as he told Wen Qing - they liked to send messages, and pain along with those messages. “You wanted to go home and back to everything you’ve built. And how could I blame you for that? For not thinking anything here is enough to build off of?”
They weren’t. He wasn’t. Maybe he should just accept it.
“I haven’t built anything at home,” Leon said, a little bitterly. No, he’d spent the last ten years giving up everything just so he could chase D. Chase a ghost, as James had called it. “I don’t have anything there. Everyone I’ve ever cared about back home is either dead or has left me, and the people who left me probably had the right idea, given the fact that I’ve killed, or tried to kill, or killed the identical twin father of every man I’ve ever developed feelings for. I don't have a job, I don't have a home.”
He put his coffee cup on the coffee table and ran both his hands down his face. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to talk about any of this. It’s not your problem. I wanted to talk to you about Mathis Abimbola.”
If he was surprised to hear Leon take that twist and turn onto a new path, well, he didn’t show it. Though James had a feeling all of that was the case, deep down - Leon was chasing something and perhaps he very much wanted to find it or perhaps he didn’t, but no matter what, it seemed like it gave him purpose. Everyone needed a purpose, didn’t they?
It was just that mind control and violence sort of caused you to step back and reassess things, at least a little.
The part about feelings though. It rattled James - not in a bad way. And not in a way that meant pity necessarily, but he knew what it was like to feel that alone and to want to avoid feeling that alone; he wanted Leon to know that he wasn’t alone. Do you have feelings for me, he also wanted to ask but he would - though the mention of Mathis caused James to blink a little, shifting focus. Mathis was, in James’s view, the worst of the Vorerra triumvirate - though they were all cold as the multitude of corpses they’d left in their wake, with Avelina thawed only slightly because of her connection to James.
“What about him?”
Leon let out a breath, relieved, because this, he thought, he could handle right now. This is what he'd been preparing for, not all the rest of it.
He breathed in and, detached, staring straight ahead and not at James, told him what he knew and what he thought. About how Vorerra, or at least Mathis, was watching him, how they'd had photos of them together at the party. How he couldn't be sure, but his gut told him that Mathis might have been working alone, without the approval of the rest of the council, and his theory that he'd used Leon for two reasons: because James would have let him inside, and because using an Outlander to kill a well-respected local doctor would have gone a long way in stirring up anti-Outlander sentiments around the rest of the population, whereas everyone who needed to be reminded of what Vorerra did go those that tried to leave would know what actually happened.
"I don't know if he'll try again. It's not every day that the pig just walks right into the oven and lays down with the apple already in its mouth. Shit, for all I know, I probably gave him the idea in the first place when I was trying so hard to make contact." He took a sip of his coffee. "You say I didn't let them do anything," he said, a little softer. "But you're wrong. I had the chance to kill him, and I couldn't take it. I shouldn't have walked in there at all, knowing there was a chance they'd use me against you, but the only person I was thinking of was myself." Himself and D.
The idea of someone just walking in (an Outlander, of all people) and killing Mathis was - well, James didn’t think Vorerra would be that sloppy. Not after everything they had built, their empire standing on blood-soaked ground and a graveyard of bones. All of this was simply them toying with whomever they felt like toying with - and so Leon shouldn’t blame himself for missed chances.
James was also praying to whatever deity existed that Vorerra went ahead and backed off - they made their point, so they could slink into the shadows for awhile yet. Leon was probably right though - Mathis did this without the approval of Avelina and Catalina, and he was going to catch some heat for that too. It was one positive, and hopefully that would be enough to let things settle.
“In a way I sort of admire your resolve,” he finally replied, a bit wryly amused. “It’s not - we shouldn’t expect every Outlander to just be okay with giving up everything they’ve ever known. Maybe for some it’s a break they want to take advantage of but for others maybe it isn’t. And so you made a shit decision but everyone makes them at some point - and I think we’re all more than our shit decisions anyway.” He extended his hand, since it felt like there was a country mile between them on the couch. “Come closer, please.”
Leon's mouth went dry, but he put down his coffee again. "You're obviously owe me a punch to the face, but you could probably get more power behind it if you waited until you were on your feet again," he said, his tone a little lighter than it had been all evening. He was only half joking, really.
Even still, he shifted closer to James on the couch, not touching him, but close enough that it wouldn't take much shifting on either of their parts to bring their thighs together.
"I'm done with all that, by the way," he said, looking into those incredibly blue eyes, and what was he doing? He'd literally just explained that everyone he'd ever cared about ended up six feet under if they cut and run when they had the chance. "The trying to get home thing, I mean. If there is a way home, I don't know if it'd be worth the price."
James made a sound of confirmation, a thoughtful hum. “I thought about trying to tell you that - but I wasn’t sure if you’d listen,” he smirked, scooting in as much as he could to gently grasp the collar of Leon’s turtleneck sweater. A person sometimes had to be in the right frame of mind to listen, he knew that. “And you’re not alone, by the way. I’m not going anywhere.” Not just because he couldn’t really walk well on the recovering leg, but that was implied.
And yes, this was hard - it was currently hard and it was going to be hard. Vallo was a tough world to make a life in on its best days (or at least, it had been that way for the past couple of years as more Outlanders set the magic careening off balance) and now a ton of other baggage with a ‘mind control’ stamp had just been added on top of it all - you didn’t just get over that, not right away. James wanted to be there though. He wasn’t Leon’s therapist (or his psychiatrist) but he was still a part of his support system.
“So I suppose if I’m not going anywhere despite how everyone close to you meets their maker and you’re not going anywhere despite how my family is literally the worst - maybe we should do something about that.”
“Your sister seems alright,” Leon said. He was pretty sure she’d try to murder him if they were ever left alone in the same room together, but as far as Leon was concerned, that just meant that she was the only one who’d been there that night who had any goddamn sense.
He should leave, he knew. He’d told James what he needed to say - sorry, he was right, Mathis is a fucking dickhead - and it was time to clear out and leave James alone forever. Except as bad as Leon could be at picking up signals, he was pretty sure that James was not telling him to get out right now. And James’ hand on his collar, and the feeling of his leg pressed against Leon’s was making it hard to think properly, to really focus on what he should be doing - leaving, getting far, far away - instead of what he was actually doing, which was, apparently, leaning forward.
“You’ve got fucking terrible taste, just so you know,” he said, and closed the distance, bringing up his hand to cup the ininjured side of James’ face.
James rubbed his cheek, bristly with the prickle of black five o’clock shadow, against Leon’s hand - like he was some kind of cat (like Cheeto, who by the way had hid throughout all of this bullshit even if he was very good at comforting James in the aftermath). “You’re really one to talk,” he teased lightly, since he knew that getting involved with the likes of him - tons and tons of dysfunctional family baggage that was ugly as sin - was probably a gamble; a lesser person probably wouldn’t have bothered. Actually, he knew for a fact that they wouldn’t - he’d lost out on plenty of relationships that way.
But Leon had been right there in the thick of it all - he’d seen Vorerra’s darkness and their own brand of ugliness up close and personal. Not many could claim that and live to tell the tale. Not many would have even come over to talk, if James had asked them to. Leon had already shown that he wasn’t like most people though.
It didn’t take much to close the final bit of distance. James kissed him, wanting a dash of that fizzy champagne bubble feeling. The tickled-by-cattail-plant feeling, all that fuzziness - and after the tough part of this conversation, it was all quite welcomed.
If Leon was willing to admit that he had feelings for D - which he wasn’t quite sure if he was yet, earlier statement aside - it would mean that both the previous guys that Leon had had feelings for had turned out to be murderers, so if James’ only problem was that he was related to some potential murderers, then that was probably a step up. Unless Leon was batting three-for-three, which… was probably a question he didn’t want to think about right now.
In fact, he didn’t want to think of much of anything right now, and it turned out that kissing James was excellent for wiping out any thoughts that didn’t directly relate to kissing James. The scruff was new, but it wasn’t bad. It was actually kind of nice, and he ran his thumb over it. He’d known he was interested in men since he was fourteen, when he’d realized he loved Harry as more than just a best friend, but he’d grown up as a jock in the 80s in America and it had been easier to just stick with women.
The first couple seconds of tentative feeling out done, Leon deepened the kiss, snaking his other arm around James’ back.
James made a rather pleased sound in the back of his throat, the sawing of a bow across cello strings. He smiled into that kiss and his fingers curled in Leon’s shirt, scrunching the material of that turtleneck (James knew he’d chosen this one to hide the bruises on his neck but still thought it suited him - very almost scholarly), and he didn’t break away until he had to actually take a breath.
Didn’t mean he necessarily wanted to stop though, or that anything had cooled - you could adjust the flare of a blowtorch and that would lessen the blue glow to the flame but wouldn’t lessen the actual core temperature.
“You know, I had planned to get plenty of work done today but if you want to stay a bit longer - “ And not make out and dash, like James had done before. “I’m certainly open to that idea.”
Oh, that was a nice sound. It had been a long, long time since the last time Leon has made anyone make anything like it, and even when James broke away Leon didn't, still placing kisses along James' jawline. No, the scruff wasn't bad at all he decided, definitively.
He ran his hand from James' back to his stomach, and then lightly, very lightly, fingertips against the fabric of his pants, down his leg until his hand was resting on his knee. "Well, you might need two functioning legs," he murmured against James' skin, his mouth working faster than his brain, but then his brain caught up and he broke away, stricken.
"Shit, I'm sorry," Leon said, glancing at the leg in question. He'd meant it as a joke, a callback to when James had made the same comment to him, just before he'd kissed him the first time, except James hadn't been the one to mess up his leg in the first place.
Leon didn’t need to worry - it wasn’t like James was offended. He just laughed a little, a sarcastic little snort of one, because he remembered the delightful quip he’d made when he was in Leon’s apartment and their situations were sort of reversed. “Take your foot out of your mouth - I’ve got plenty of other, better uses for it,” he said, fingers coming up to loop under Leon’s chin - which he held in a gentle grip, as if he was focused on studying the edges and shape of his facial features and wanted to appreciate them all.
Which he very well did. “Maybe a rain check on the activities where I’ll need two functioning legs but - you’ll stay anyway?” he asked. They could order food (James usually cooked but did he feel like doing it now? Negative) and just not have to worry about all that other stuff; he knew from his own life experience that nightmares didn’t automatically go away after a traumatic experience but it helped. Having someone there.
“I’ll have you know foot-in-mouth syndrome is a very serious medical condition,” Leon muttered, though he didn’t say much more than that, because suddenly James was looking at him in an intense kind of way that made his heart leap into his throat, all those edges and facial features turning red.
It made him want to run. To stammer out some excuse (something about an oven being on, maybe) and run out the door until his heart stopped hammering like it was. He managed to resist the impulse, maybe because he could still feel James’ stubble on his lips, or maybe because being here with him like this shut up all the rest of the noise in his head.
He nodded, then swallowed, and then leaned forward to brush his lips against James’ again. “I’ll stay. I’m pretty sure I owe you dinner, anyway.”
“You do,” James agreed around a couple more kisses, his fingers carding through Leon’s hair. He was a lot different than James’s usual type (then again, he didn’t really have a type - while he was very open about gender, it had never made a difference to him one way or another, dating was kind of a foreign thing) but James liked him regardless and wanted to see where this went. “I bet you’re great at ordering pizza.”
They’d probably fuck up sometimes, but everyone did - no relationship or burgeoning relationship was perfect; not to mention all the roadblocks Vallo threw at people whenever it went on the fritz could also add complications.
Those sorts of complications he was willing to deal with, however. His family less so - but they were both all in and that was what mattered. The rest, they’d take it as it comes.
"That supposed to be some sort of crack about my cooking abilities?" Leon growled, but he was almost smiling. "I mean, you're right, because I can order a mean pizza, but I do actually know how to cook."
Leon hadn't actually dated in over eleven years, since just before he'd been shot the first time, and other than a cheerleader he'd dated for nearly a year in high school, he'd never had a relationship last longer than a month. All his girlfriends had been new to LA, wannabe actresses and models, who'd all dumped him when a better offer had come along, and the last girl he'd dated had dumped him with a "Sorry Leon, I'd rather date a third-class businessman than a third-rate detective," which had been especially brutal.
Except, he remembered James saying he wasn't really looking for a relationship right now, and while Leon was pretty sure that making out with the guy who'd been sent by your family to kill you, and declarations of how no one was going anywhere, was probably not how casual hookups usually started, for all he knew, this kind of thing was the norm here in Vallo. He'd seen James flirting in the network,and it had stung, but it wasn't like Leon had had any claim on him.
So now it was Leon's turn to study James' face, hand cupping his cheek again, searching for something, though Leon couldn't say what it was. Maybe he found it, because he leaned in, stopping an inch or two from James' lips, and said, "I don't want to have to share you."
He thought he would, if he had to, but he wouldn't like it much.
“In that case, by all means - show off your cooking prowess. I’m sure I have plenty to work with here,” James replied in amusement, though he silenced himself when Leon grew more serious, and the cage of his lashes fluttered closed for a moment. He was just soaking in the moment, really, and when he opened his eyes the blue was practically on fire, broken bits of lightning or a dragon fly’s wings - an intense sort of look. Because I don’t want to have to share you was an intense thing to say. It gave him a shiver, in a good way.
His hand fell to rest on Leon’s knee, thumb brushing in circles. “You won’t have to,” he assured. “I’m not allergic to monogamy, I promise. I just thought that - wasn’t what you wanted, exactly.”
Considering Leon told him he didn’t date or what have you - so it was probably a good thing they were having this conversation now, to define exactly what they were and what they were looking for.
“It wasn’t, but…” But he’d never told Harry how he felt, and he’d never be able to now. And he’d been chasing D for ten years, for, apparently, absolutely nothing. A decade of his life, wasted. And he’d almost killed James, had almost had to see him die too.
He didn’t need any more missed opportunities to lay awake thinking about. And if he was going to be stuck in Vallo for the rest of his life (which seemed possible, given the fact how many future, fully-grown children had shown up over the last week), then he should start trying to carve out something that resembled a life.
“But it is now. Though if you’re expecting me to get off this couch to make you dinner tonight, you’ve got another thing coming.” His hand on Leon’s knee was making it hard for him to think again, which was just fine by Leon’s book, and the idea of getting up away from all this nice body heat wasn’t something Leon thought he was capable of. “Pizza’s be fine. I’ll make you one of my famous Orcot burgers some other time.”
Famous Orcot burgers - that made James grin because, well, what could he say? He liked meat (no cracks from the peanut gallery). In the meantime, he was more than fine with the proposed plan - and not getting up off of the couch; seemed pretty amiable to him and it was what he needed right now anyway. Everything had turned him into a complete ball of stress lately, and he just wanted off this hellish carousel and onto something a bit more stable (like a relationship? The beginnings of one? Open relationships also worked for some people but they, admittedly, didn’t work for James).
Also stability was kind of like a blink-and-you’d miss-it type of thing in Vallo, but that didn’t mean they shouldn’t try. So try they would.
“Okay, deal,” he agreed. Pizza now, meat later. “That better include cheese too, Orcot.”
"'Better include cheese,' he says," Leon snorted. "Of course it has cheese, Barlow, I'm not a barbarian. Lots of bacon, too."
This was good. This was very good, Leon decided, pulling James in for another kiss, filling every one of his senses with the man. He'd have thought that being around James would just remind him of what he'd done, but it really was just the opposite. And so long as Leon kept himself busy, made sure he had no time to think or dwell on any of it (maybe he could try getting another job somewhere), he was pretty sure things would be just fine.
Yeah, things would be great.