Leon Orcot (motherofdragon) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-11-01 11:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, petshop of horrors: leon orcot, she-ra: adora, she-ra: catra, ~plot: timeslip |
Who: Leon and Adora and then Leon and Catra + a little Finn
What: Leon shows up for patrol hungover and Adora grounds him sends him to Darla to become Catra's problem
When: October 23rd
Where: Darla, mostly
Warnings: Leon's questionable fashion choices, trauma and some talk of mind control, Leon gets sick at one point
There had once been a time in Leon’s life when he could drink all night and still wake up with the sun, fresh as a daisy and ready to go on his morning run, and then head into work an hour early to put in some time at the precinct gym, and then work all day and drink all night and do the same thing the next day.
Those days were long behind him. They’d been behind him even before he’d left the LAPD, but at least the hangovers then had been the sort where he could still wake up early, make himself do a run, and then make it to work in time to shower.
This hangover was not like that at all. Maybe it was the fact that he was creeping up to his late 30s, or maybe it was the fact that on Thursday night, he’d gone home and drank until he passed out, and then woke up on Friday, started drinking again, and spent the entire day up to his eyes in the sauce, watching Vallo’s version of Jeopardy (he got pretty much none of the answers right, since he’d never paid much attention to Vallo before, sure as he had been that it was just one more temporary stop in his quest to find D). It had been the only way he’d been able to quiet his head, making everything that had happened Thursday dull to just a mild, annoying buzz in the back of his mind, like a fly that he could almost ignore. Anyway, Wen Qing had told him to stick to a liquid diet for at least a day, and that was advice he’d followed, even if it wasn’t in the spirit she’d originally intended.
Today, when his alarm had gone off at six, he’d nearly thrown his phone through the window, and it was ten to nine by the time he finally managed to roll out of bed. He swallowed a couple of extra strength Advil, managed a quick five minute shower (absolutely necessary), grabbed a pair of sunglasses and the first sweater he touched and his leather jacket, with no thought to the fact that he probably should have grabbed something with a higher collar, and managed to make it to patrol only 15 minutes late. Which could have been worse, really. Maybe he’d get a pass since he normally showed up fifteen minutes early.
“Shit, Adora,” he said, grimacing at the sound of his own voice. “I’m sorry I’m late. I slept through my alarm.”
Adora didn’t typically have to wait on anyone when she was going off on patrol. She and Catra had gotten onto the same team in the early days, so they’d naturally partnered up and just stayed that way. And in her capacity as her team’s coordinator, she never hovered over any of them or pushed them unless it was absolutely necessary. Most of them had been here longer than her, they could handle themselves without her constant oversight.
It was a good exercise in self-control for her, too, frankly. She tended to be a control freak and wanted to make sure everything went her way. Having to let go of that unless something necessitated it was good for her.
Since the timeslip started happening, however, she and Catra had basically been trading Leon back and forth. Adora didn’t feel right abandoning Defense, as much as she wanted to, especially if it meant getting more time with Finn and immersing herself in their wildness. But, for the most part, they’d been taking up for each other at work while the other stayed back to keep track of their kid.
Today was Adora’s shift, and she was frowning at the clock on her phone when Leon finally popped up at her side. He was usually so timely that she couldn’t contain her surprise, and when she got a good look at him, her eyebrows shot up. This wasn’t the first time she’d noticed he made some weird fashion choices — she had no room to judge, but she could still recognize when something was kind of odd. But today, not only did his sweater look like something she’d have picked up at one of the quirkier boutiques around here, but there were very visible red marks wrapped around his neck.
“What happened to you?” she questioned, his late arrival completely swept out of her mind in favor of pointing at his neck. She looked at him a little closer. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“What-” Leon started, blinking blearily behind his sunglasses, trying to figure out what she was talking about. His hand came up to his throat, wondering, for a minute, what she was pointing at, and then it hit him. He swore. He should have been paying more attention when he’d gotten dressed. “Don’t worry about this,” he tried to assure her. “It doesn’t really hurt and anyway, I earned it.”
“What do you mean, ‘don’t worry about this’?” Adora demanded incredulously. It was pretty clear to her that someone had hurt him. Those weren’t marks you came by accidentally, and when he said he’s earned it? Seriously, what?
Eyes narrowed, she stepped closer to him, and the odor that hit her made it very clear why Leon was so off his game. It wasn’t strong, but Adora had always had a weird nose for alcohol. Part of why she didn’t drink it, aside from being possibly the lightest lightweight around, was that she hated the smell. She couldn’t bear to drink something that smelled that awful.
“Have you been drinking?”
“I mean don’t…” He gave an exasperated sigh. The one and only good thing about having buildings demolished in your skull was that it really drowned out anything else that was going to be going on in his head, but it wasn’t going to work if Adora kept bringing it up. “I did something stupid a couple days ago, and I paid the price, alright? And no, I haven’t been drinking.”
He paused, and frowned, and then added, “This morning,” because he couldn’t claim that he hadn’t been drinking the night before, and Adora wasn’t likely to believe him if he tried. “Listen, can we just… not talk today? My head feels like it’s going to split open and this isn’t helping.”
She gave him a scrutinizing look, arms crossing over her chest. She’d give him points for admitting it, at least, but that put her in a bad position. Being hungover was minimally better than being drunk, but it was a bad idea for patrol. That was taking too much of a chance, with gods-knew-what out there that could come after them, and she couldn’t get behind him being in the midst of it all like this.
“You’ve gotta go home, Leon,” she sighed. “Or, actually, go to Darla, hang out with Catra. I don’t think you should be alone, but you can’t patrol hungover. It’s just not okay.”
Leon blinked, at first not quite understanding what Adora was saying, because she couldn’t be sending him home over a little hangover, could she?
Except, no, that’s exactly what was happening.
“What? No, come on. You can’t... I need… Listen, I can work fine hungover, really. I used to do it all the time, back in LA. I mean, not all the time, I wasn’t out getting drunk every night, but…” he pinched the bridge of his nose, because this wasn’t helping either. He should have taken some more Advil. “I gotta work, Adora.”
“This isn’t LA, and I’m not putting you at risk like that,” Adora insisted. She was sure he could work hungover. She’d seen a lot of American movies and TV shows where that happened and, granted, those weren’t necessarily reality. But maybe in Leon’s case they were, she didn’t know. Either way, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it here.
“Listen, I’m not mad, it’s fine. Whatever happened, I’m— I know you have your reasons, okay, but it just isn’t a smart idea to go out there like…” She gestured to him vaguely; he was obviously still a little bit off and not in the right place for this, that was easy to see. “Seriously, go to Darla, Catra made breakfast for Finn and I’ll have her save you some. If you feel better later, call me and we can meet back up.”
Leon opened his mouth to argue some more, because he needed to work. He needed to do something, anything to keep him occupied, and the fact that he’d had the whole day to himself yesterday was why he was like this now in the first place. Frankly, he’d have been happy to have patrol every day.
Except he could see her point too. If they did come across something, he’d just be a liability and might wind up getting Adora hurt. And now that she’s mentioned breakfast, he realized that at least part of his queasiness came from the fact that he hadn’t eaten much of anything in the last two days, other than breakfast on Thursday and a bowl of soup he’d made yesterday afternoon. His shoulders slumped.
“You shouldn’t be going out there alone either,” he tried, as a last ditch effort, though without much conviction.
Adora almost laughed. She knew what he was saying, but she also knew an attempt to keep himself in the game when she saw it. She’d pulled the same thing throughout the war quite a few times. Eventually, she’d been practically shoved into a tent and ordered to try to sleep because she was so exhausted. This was a little different.
She held up her left arm, where the sword in the form of her usual bracer was wrapped around her forearm. “I think I’ll be fine.” With her right hand, she reached back into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out her cell phone, meeting his eyes with her sternest gaze. “Go,” she commanded. “I’ll check in later.”
With that said, she pulled up her messages to Catra and shot off a new text.
» Sending Leon your way. Feed him, please?
» Love you.
Leon could recognize defeat, albeit reluctantly. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and turned back to the Waypoint.
"Just don't go getting yourself hurt out there," he muttered. He knew Adora - She-Ra - could take care of herself most of the time, but most of the time wasn't all of the time. If she got hurt while he was nursing a hangover…
He sighed, put his hand to the Waypoint, and was in short order outside of Darla, hands crammed into his jean pockets, looking for all the world like a kid who'd just been sent to his room for a time-out.
» the fuck am i, your housewife?
Catra had zero context to what was going on but, y’know what - she’d go with it. Not like she had a lot of time to poke and prod through messages with Finn being around. They weren’t distracting in a high maintenance sort of way but this Trial to Parenthood had awoken the hover mom (that she didn’t even know existed) inside of her and if Finn could stop bonking their head on everything that’d be super great.
“Let me see!” she huffed, reaching over to brush the messy blonde hair from their forehead except she was met with fussy protest.
Finn was whining and flailing. “M’fine!”
“Why did you even jump off the chair??”
“I wanted to see if I could fly,” they grumbled and crossed their arms with the cutest pout in existence. “Mama has magic. I wanna see if I have some too.”
“Mama can’t fly.”
“Well she should!!!”
Darla made a beep with an official announcement of Leon Orcot is waiting at the ramp, and Catra let out a tired sigh. Finn was scooped up into her arms and there was thankfully little defiance when it came to that. “C’mon, let’s go get Leon. Apparently I’m supposed to feed him.”
“But - why?”
“Literally what I’d like to know,” she mumbled in response and stole a kiss to that spot on their forehead she knew hit the hard ground of the kitchen. Finn mrrped and clung to her the entire journey to the sliding front doors (Darla was a small ship but still big by residential house standards). The sight of Leon greeted her with a lot of confusion.
So did the smell.
Catra looked him over with scrutinizing eyes and a raised eyebrow. Finn was mirroring the same exact look and boy were the two of them clearly related. “I have so many questions.”
"Yeah, well, you can save 'em," Leon said, without much hope. He was pretty sure that the only thing that might save him from the third degree was the presence of Finn, and even that he wasn't a hundred percent sure about. In fact, now that he thought about it, trying to nurse a hangover on a ship with an excitable five-year-old catkid had probably been a mistake, and now he was wondering if this hadn't been some sort of insidious punishment that Adora had planned.
He headed up the ramp, reaching to ruffle Finn's long hair with a "Hey buddy," and started making his way to where he was pretty sure the kitchen was. He'd been on Darla a couple of times now, but he still wasn't entirely sure of the layout.
“Hi Leon,” Finn greeted cheerily despite the initial look of judgment - their nose wasn’t as good as their mommy’s but it was good enough. “You smell funny.”
“That’s adult juice for you,” Catra smirked. Jokes aside clearly something happened, and whatever it was caused Adora to send his merry ass her way and the sight of his neck didn’t go unnoticed one bit. But for now she’d save the questions because whatever did happen wasn’t anything Finn should hear about. “Alrighty, dingus - follow me.”
The kitchen wasn’t on this level but a quick elevator trip up the decks (they had emergency stairs too, of course) brought them to the proper space. Breakfast was a smell that was still fresh in the air, and she had saved a plate already - scrambled eggs and bacon since the kid’s had enough sugar between cinnamon rolls and pancakes. Finn was set down, and she walked over towards the fridge to dig into something. “That over there’s your plate - butter and jam is available. Do you want orange or blue?”
That question had to do with the two gatorade-thing drinks in her hands. Adora read up on electrolytes one day and got obsessed into buying them. Turns out they were handy for hangovers which Catra learned herself one day (the hard way).
“Gee, thanks,” Leon said flatly to Finn, but he managed, somehow, to shoot the kid a small smile. Just because he felt like something that could be found on the bottom of someone’s shoe didn’t mean that he had to let them in on it.
He didn’t bother removing his sunglasses as he headed in - maybe Darla wasn’t full on sunlight burning into his retinas, but the ship’s lights were still pretty freaking bright.
He stared at the Gatorade blankly for a moment, and grabbed the orange one. At least it almost tasted like a flavour he could recognize. And then he went and sat at the table, staring warily at the food as his stomach rolled. He should eat, he knew. He’d probably feel better if he ate. But he wasn’t sure if he trusted his stomach not to rebel if he tried.
“Thanks,” he said again, though this time he sounded like he actually meant it. He picked up a piece of bread - dry, thanks, he was going to try playing this safe - and took a tentative nibble from the corner. Then, after a moment’s contemplation, he took a bigger bite.
And then he spent the next ten minutes eating with the grim determination of a nauseated man who hadn't had a proper meal in two days. It was amazing how he pretty much instantly felt about fifty times better. He still felt like trash, not just from the hangover, but at least he thought he was almost functional again. He washed the last bite down by guzzling a third of the Gatorade bottle, and leaned back in the chair, hands on his stomach, offering up a silent prayer to whoever was listening to let him keep it down.
“That was great. Thanks, Catra,” he said.
Yikes. What a way to shovel food down the gullet. Catra was pretty decent in the kitchen (food was always a weird experiment for her after living that ration bar life) but she figured that his enthusiasm wasn’t a testament to her skills - more like he’d had a shitty time and this was the first thing he’s stuffed into his mouth in a while.
There was a brush against Leon’s hand, something at first unseen but seconds later there was this ripple of magic in the air. With a shimmer of blue appeared Melog, trotting around in their panther-sized form. Catra set Finn down, and the two instantly gravitated towards one another with Finn squealing as the alien-cat bumped their head into them, nuzzling and purring.
Melog loved on Finn a lot. Had to do with the fact that they were both fond of them and that Melog did Catra a favor sometimes by expressing every feeling she tried to stomp down six-feet-under.
“Play with Melog, okay?” she instructed softly, fingers tickling the back of Finn’s ears. They didn’t seem to have an issue with it, and Melog was already ahead of the game by gently pushing them towards the living space area. They’d both be slow by but not caught up in the conversation she was planning to have with Leon. Plus - cartoons. Those were always in the background, Finn would probably lay on Melog and watch.
Now it was mostly adults only. “So.” Catra crossed her arms but let a hand hang free to point a claw at him. “Ordinarily I’d ask you to explain your fashion choices but you look like crap for other reasons that don’t involve your shirt. What happened to you?”
When something brushed against his hand, Leon yelped and nearly toppled out of his chair. Was it his proudest moment? No. But he’d not expected there to be an invisible… alien… panther thing prowling around the ship either, so it wasn’t like anyone could blame him.
Still, watching it with Finn was kind of cute, and he watched them leave the room with only a little bit of dread, because Finn, at least, had been a shield against any questions he really, really didn’t want to have to answer.
“My shirt’s great, thanks,” Leon said, glancing down at said shirt with a bit of a frown. Maybe not something he should have worn to work of all places, but it was one of those things that he’d seen in the shop and instantly knew he had to have it.
He ran a hand through his hair, taking another gulp of the Gatorade to give him some more time to think, which was kind of a struggle right now. “I fucked up, Catra,” he finally said. “I fucked up, and I hurt people I -” care about, except no, it was probably better to not think about that. James hadn’t wanted anything to do with him even before Leon had barged into his house and tried to murder him. It was better to not think about that. “And I hurt someone.”
Catra had an inkling that whatever happened was serious but this sounded really serious, and she tossed a glance over at Finn and Melog to make sure they were properly distracted (and safe) before switching her focus back to Leon. The chair legs made a short screech against the hard flooring as she pulled the seat out and sat across from him.
“I’m queen of fucking up,” she said coolly, shrugging her shoulders. “And hurting people. But from the looks of it someone hurt you too so this story must be complicated.” Besides, she didn’t know Leon like they were oh gosh total besties or anything but she knew enough and knew in her bones that he didn’t mean whatever happened. “Start from the beginning? If you want to.”
“I had it coming,” Leon said, giving a weak gesture in the general direction of his neck. He wasn’t going to hold Julia trying to protect her brother against him.
He didn’t especially want to tell it, not starting from the beginning or starting from the end. Except refusing to talk about it wasn’t going to help anything. Talking about it probably wouldn’t help much either, except sometimes, when he talked to D about this kinda shit it had helped him sort things out, even if D never said anything back.
He didn’t think he’d be able to get through it without a cigarette or a drink though, and it was only the fact that the reason he wasn’t working right now was because he’d been drinking the night before that stopped him from asking if there was any booze on this ship.
“You alright if we step outside for a bit? I could use a smoke.” And it seemed less likely that Finn would come sneaking up to eavesdrop.
If Catra didn’t have some sentient shapeshifting alien she could somehow communicate with watching the kid, the answer would have been hell no. But it seemed like Melog was a suitable babysitter for their fuzzy little spawn, and she looked at their direction so the two could make eye contact. “You okay with that?”
Melog audibly didn’t say anything. Merely tilted a head, let out a small trill and went back to nosing the blankets they pushed around Finn. Something about making a blanket pile to get comfortable for movie-watching. Whatever their answer had been, Catra was satisfied with it. “We’re good then,” she announced and patted the table as a signal for Leon to rise. “Let’s go.”
Outside wasn’t far. All they had to do was retrace the steps through the ship, take the elevator down to the lower deck and wait for the doors to hiss open to reveal the ramp down. It kind of occurred to her that they didn’t have, like, outdoor stuff (people had yards with furniture, that was wild) but maybe they should change that at some point. Sitting on the ramp would be fine though. “Why do you smoke those anyway?” Catra asked, settling down with her legs folded. Her tail was curled up at the tip - it meant something subtle, like she was comfortable in his presence. “I hear those can kill you.”
Leon followed Catra outside, and was already frowning at the half-empty pack in his hands when he sat down. It meant he'd smoked a pack and a half the day before, which wasn't something he'd done since those three days in D's shop, waiting for D to come home before everything with Daddy D happened, and D had flown off into the clouds in his flying ark.
Ah well, he decided, clutching one of the smokes between his lips. It has been a rough few days.
"Yeah, well, so can a lot of things, and I doubt the cigarettes are gonna be what finally does me in." The fact that he wasn't dead yet was practically a miracle, as the doctors had loudly exclaimed when he’d woken up after being shot the first time (he still didn’t think they were supposed to do that. It had been more than a little unnerving). He had enough scars and near-death experiences to consider himself lucky if he made it long enough for the cigarettes to actually become a problem. “I’ve been smoking since I was thirteen. It helps calm me down, I guess.”
Or he got more antsy when he couldn’t smoke. A chicken-or-egg type of situation, maybe. After more than 20 years of smoking, he guessed it was all the same, in the end.
“I tried to quit for a bit when I first, you know, took off after D. But travelling around the world without any money is stressful enough, so it didn’t last long.”
Catra’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t get it. Cigarettes reeked. The smell never went away - it clung heavily to his clothes, followed him like a ghost. They didn’t have this stuff back on Etheria but she’d been exposed to enough media to understand that the nicotine thing was bad and messed up your lungs and why pay money for something that did that?
“Seems like a dumb way to calm down,” she shrugged but wouldn’t push it now. Whatever. She wasn’t here to lecture him on it (even if part of her wanted to??). “Anyway, spill it.” Her elbow jabbed him impatiently. “What happened, and do Adora and I need to beat someone up for you?”
They would. Probably. Catra had been working on expressing herself less aggressively but she also didn’t take kindly to people who hurt the ones she kinda liked.
“No!” Leon exclaimed, half-panicked. “You and Adora need to stay out of it. I’m serious.” The idea of Mathis doing to them what he’d done to Leon was enough to make him feel like he really was going to bring up breakfast again, especially the knowledge that if it did happen to them, it would all be Leon’s fault. He felt it again, the memory of pain, like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was nothing he tried to remind himself. He hadn’t been hurt, not really. There hadn’t been a mark on him, in the end, nothing lasting. It had all been in his head; none of it had been real. Nothing except for what he’d done to James.
He reached out to grab Catra’s arm. “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise me you’re not going to get involved.”
That reaction caused her brows to skyrocket into her hairline. Catra blinked owlishly and looked at the hand grabbing her - usually she’d yank her arm away, not all a fan of being touched much by others (abrupt touches made her reflexes think oh, is it time for violence) but she didn’t do anything about this. Probably because she knew the source wasn’t anything malicious, and Leon seemed panicked in a way that made the simmering worry about whatever happened increase almost tenfold.
“Okay,” she replied calmly. Her eyes narrowed again, not in anger but in scrutiny and suspicion and that worry that had etched itself into her face. “I won’t.” No promises. “Just talk to me, dude. I’ll behave.”
Leon stared at Catra for a moment longer, and then released her arm, using that hand to slip under his sunglasses and cover his eyes instead, trying to get himself grounded again, trying to get his heart rate back under control. He could feel it hammering in his chest, and in his throat, but if he could just focus on his breathing, on the cool metal of the ramp under him…
He could really use a drink, he thought, but he settled on a deep drag of his cigarette. And now that he had himself under control again, he had to think of a way to explain all this without giving up too much about James. He doubted he wanted his personal business spread all over the place. He tried to think if he’d ever seen Catra or Adora chatting with James or Julia on the Network, but he didn’t think he had. Not that he’d ever looked very hard before. They still might have seen his introduction post.
Fuck it, he’d just have to hope for the best.
“I thought I found a way home,” Leon said at last, with several degrees of separation. If there was one thing Leon had learned as a detective, it was compartmentalization. How to detach from himself when dealing with this kind of thing. And so his voice was calm and flat, and he was staring straight ahead, all his attention on a blade of grass swaying in the wind. “I was a fucking idiot and I wouldn’t listen to anyone who said there was no getting home.” That included Catra, who’d been the first to tell him. “I just figured no one had tried hard enough, and that people had just avoided certain avenues, so that’s where I’d start. A few days ago, I managed to get myself an interview with one of the heads of a coven.”
He took a moment to pull out another cigarette and to light it with the dying embers of the one he’d already nearly smoked to the filter. He snuffed out the butt, and tossed it into his pocket ashtray.
“He told me that he could get me home, but I had to do a favour for him. He wanted me to take out someone. Someone he knew I was...Someone I’d hung out with before. He’d been watching them and saw me with them, and then I just walked into a meeting with him, like a cow barging into a slaughterhouse to demand better feed or something. I let him into my head, and I let him send me to this person’s house, and I shot them. If there hadn’t been someone else there, who could do this,” he gestured at his neck, “then I probably would have killed him. And then, I’m sure that this guy, the one that was in my head, would have used me to stir up all sorts of anti-Outlander sentiment. I’d have killed a well-respected local and then…”
He hadn’t thought much about what might have happened if Julia hadn't been there. If he'd killed James, and had gone back to Mathis. He did now. Would he have gone to prison right away? Or would Mathis have made him do more to really show the locals how dangerous these Outlanders could be. Would he have sent him on a killing spree? Or would he have kept him in his back pocket to "take care" of anyone Mathis wanted out of the way? Would he have made him hurt again?
The blood rushed from his face and his stomach lurched. Between the hangover, and the chain smoking, and sheer horror of the idea that he could still be under Mathis' thumb right now, he thought for sure he was going to be sick. He covered his mouth and, somehow, was able to keep it down.
Right at the start of his explanation she was already internally groaning, muttering an exasperated oh no because of course he went down that path. Of course Leon tried to see if there was another way out, as if the people stuck here before them hadn’t made an attempt (she definitely hadn’t - at the time of her arrival she was convinced she had nothing to go back home to). Catra kept the comments to herself though, and listened.
It wasn’t a story she was unfamiliar with.
Once upon a time she’d been there a pawn in a game, a weak spot meant to hurt an intended target. Catra knew what it was like to have her brain scrambled and controlled, and it made her bristle knowing that it was something someone else here could do to another person so easily here. Usually, she chalked up all the dark fuckery thrown their way to Vallo being ‘in a mood’ but this was a reminder that there were dangers already lurking here too, all within the very locals that helped build this place.
“Hey, are you -” Catra winced, bracing herself from what she thought was inevitable vomit but when it didn’t come up (how could it not, look at his face), she sat on her knees. Shifted around a bit too, going behind him to rub circles against his back. “Barf if you gotta. But let me clear something up for you - you didn’t let this guy walk right into your mind, Leon. You didn’t let him control you. What happened wasn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself when someone saw you as an easy target and used you.”
That was about all the coaxing it took for Leon to lean over the side of the ramp and empty his stomach. He took a mouthful of the Gatorade he'd brought outside with him, swirled it around his mouth, and spit it out before he sat down again, burying his face in his hands.
"I made myself an easy target," he muttered, but he wasn't going to argue with Catra about whether or not it was his fault. It was, simple as that. The blame was all his, on every front. All arguing about it was going to do was give Catra more chances to convince him it wasn't, and even if she did, privately, think he was at fault, she probably wasn't going to say so. Not when he just threw up all over her front yard.
"There's no going home, is there?" he asked instead. He'd started to realize it there, when he'd tried to refuse Mathis, but that had been yet another thing he'd been trying to drown out with whiskey the day before. Now he was sober and miserable and had nothing - no work or working out or even Vallo Jeopardy - to distract him.
A man vomiting wasn’t the grossest thing to witness. Catra stayed where she was, the circles she’d been kneading into his back slowing down but not stopping quite yet. She wasn’t a touchy person with anyone outside of Adora (and Finn, obviously) but this seemed to kind of warrant some physical comfort - whatever she could make herself offer.
There was also no point in arguing back with Leon about the guilt. Not right now, anyway. Everything was fresh and he was allowed to wallow, but if he got to deep in it she was going to yank him the fuck out of that pit by the metaphorical collar. Mark her words.
“There’s not,” Catra replied with a heavy exhale. “Honestly? I’ve never looked into it. When I first arrived, I was -” Sleep deprived, banged up, kind of crazy, isolated everyone that cared and was ready to die. “I wasn’t upset about it. I know other people have tried. Like the ones with crazy powers and magic. None of them succeeded. Vallo lets you leave when Vallo wants you to leave. You can either try other routes and fail or…” Her shoulders shrugged. “You make the most of it.”
Leon hadn't had much in the way of physical anything with anyone in a long time, if one didn't count the strays that would curl up with him sometimes, or being crammed into a subway car like a bunch of sardines, and it was kind of nice. It reminded him, a little, of how his mom would rub his back when he got sick as a kid. He closed his eyes and, for a moment, just let himself focus on that, and on how to breathe like a normal human being.
"I've been looking for D for ten years," he said at last, subdued but sounding a little more like himself. "Ten years, and thirty-three countries, and then I wind up stuck in some weird-ass little pocket dimension with absolutely jack shit to show for it. If it wasn't for everyone else, I'd think D was behind this himself, but no, I guess it's just my shit luck." He exhaled and straightened his back, turning toward Catra. "You and Adora seem to have made the best of it. That's a cute kid you guys have got." A beat. "Are going to get. Whatever. I'm too hungover for this shit."
Catra let her arm drop, easing off Leon to allow him breathing space. He - sounded kind of better? Obviously he needed time to come to terms with all of this but there was no rush. He was either going to have plenty of time around here to sort it out or, hell, he could just get sent home and the problem solved for him.
Selfishly she wished that wouldn’t be the case. She liked him. She’d been lucky to have most of the friends she made still stick around (although she’d lost JJ and Simon and Baz) and would prefer that streak to continue steadily, thanks.
“They’re fucking amazing,” Catra smirked. Parental bias talking, probably, but she didn’t care and despite knowing Finn for only a week she'd do something dramatic like destroy the world for them or whatever. Don’t think she won’t. “But I promise this place isn’t the worst. It’s easy to get attached after a while. I mean, yeah, I’ve got Adora but I’ve got others here too that mean a lot.”
She got better here. Away from Etheria and what had happened with Prime and Shadow Weaver - she and Adora were able to figure shit out without the interference of people that wanted to tear them apart. There was no world-ending pressure here. It was… home.
It was easy to get attached. Ridiculously easy to get attached. Leon had no idea how he’d managed to spend ten years travelling the world and not getting attached to a single person or thing, but he’d spent two-months here and had already managed to form relationships with people. He could say Adora and Catra were just coworkers and that David was just his boss and that James was… Well, whatever. But he liked this place, and his great fucking apartment (seriously, it the best apartment he’d ever lived in, including the tiny bachelor he’d lived in in LA), and everything else.
Which was why Leon had been in such a rush to leave. Why he’d just gone barging in without thinking things through, and why he’d nearly fucked things up for everyone. If this place wasn’t so weirdly great, even with the whatever-the-hell occurrences that seemed to happen all the time, he could’ve taken his time. He still wasn’t sure what any of that meant. He tried not to wonder if that was part of the reason why D kept running away from him.
“I should go,” he said after a moment. “Thanks for breakfast and for… I shouldn’t have unloaded all that on you.”
“Look,” Catra sighed, mildly exasperatedly - moreso about the fact that he was so ready to dismiss himself and fuck off elsewhere, which she didn’t want him to. “I won’t go into it now but - when it comes to get your head invaded, and your body pulled around like you’re some sort of puppet? Especially to hurt someone you care about?” Her hand patted his shoulder and she used him as a crutch to rise up to her feet. “Been there, done that. I get it. Feeling like shit about it doesn’t go away for a while.”
Sometimes she still struggled with it, because Prime really put her through the ringer. Others on Etheria got chipped too but he’d taken his time with her, stripped her down until there was very little fight left and went through every single one of her memories with Adora - just to remind her of all the hurt he could take away. To this day she still wasn’t sure how long the process with Prime had taken, and part of her didn’t really want to know the exact amount of days.
It felt like a lot. So she assumed it was a lot.
Her hand went to tug on his hair playfully - gently, because he was hungover and Leon didn’t need her to be cruel about it. “Just stay here with us. Get distracted by cartoons, pass out on the couch, I don’t care. It’ll keep you from getting stuck in your own weird thoughts.”
And she’d keep a bucket by him too in case his stomach felt like revolting.
Leon frowned up at Catra as she stood, hating that she, apparently, had been made to do something similar (especially given the fact that she was so much younger than him. He wasn't handling this well, exactly, but he was pretty sure he'd be handling it worse if he was fifteen years younger), and hating that there was some small part of him that wasn't comforted, exactly, but that sat a little easier knowing that he wasn't the only person who'd been made to do something like that. It would have been better if he was the only one, but he guessed humans were inherently selfish like that. The Ds would probably take it as yet more proof of why human beings were beyond saving.
He batted at Catra's hand, less with any intent to make her stop than so he could at least claim that he'd tried, and managed to struggle to his feet. He glanced in the direction of the Waypoint, and then sighed, butted out his cigarette - he was going to need a break from the smokes for at least a couple hours - and returned the unsmoked half to his cigarette pack.
"Yeah, alright," he said after a moment. He wanted to go home and get stuck in his own weird thoughts with a bottle of whiskey, but he knew that staying here with Catra and Finn was the wiser choice. He'd seen plenty of men in LA who'd destroyed themselves over a screw up, and it wasn't good for anyone. "Finn had better have good taste in cartoons."
Not that Leon would know, given the fact that he was absolutely going to pass out on the couch nearly as soon as he let himself lay down on it.