WHAT: Leon brings Julia pie and they have an awkwardly serious chat WHERE: Imperial WHEN: Early November, before the Strange Supreme madness WARNINGS: Language and Leon basically gives Julia permission to kill him if he acts out, NBD STATUS: Complete
Apples might not have been anyone’s favourite fruit (well, maybe there was someone out there that really, really liked apples, but Leon had never met them), but in the same vein, they weren’t anyone’s least favourite fruit. He’d never met anyone who hated apples. He’d also never really met anyone who disliked pie. Even Leon, who didn’t really like sweets would usually eat pie (of course, Leon would usually eat any dessert that was handed to him, even if he griped about it first. He would never admit this to anyone, however, least of all himself).
Which meant that an apple hand pie was probably a safe bet for trying to make nice with Julia. He probably could have just asked James what sorts of foods Julia liked, but then, that would involve telling James that he intended to meet up with Julia, and if it went badly then he didn’t want James to know. There was always the chance that Julia would tell him, but that would be her choice.
Leon didn’t especially want Julia’s forgiveness. It wasn’t that he disliked Julia. In fact, it was the opposite. He liked that she was the only one who was holding him to any sort of account. Wen Qing had healed him, no questions asked. That probably stemmed more from a doctor thing than a forgiveness thing, and her not getting him arrested was probably more for the sake of not airing all of James’ dirty laundry than his own, but it still didn’t feel right. Catra had tried to tell him that mind control wasn’t his fault, even when he’d tried to tell her that it sort of was if he’d basically walked up to Baddie McEvil and asked for it. James was dating him, which Leon couldn’t really wrap his head around at all because wow, that was bad judgement that nearly rivaled Leon’s own (which might have been one of the reasons they seemed to work).
Julia, really, was the only one who had any sort of sense about all of this. Leon had put himself in that situation, and Leon had pulled the trigger, and Leon absolutely did not deserve any kind of forgiveness. From anyone.
But he liked James. He liked James a lot. He was trying to do better by him, like doing the therapy thing even though Leon definitely didn’t need therapy and certainly didn’t want it. If James was going to forgive him for trying to murder him, then Leon was going to do his damnedest to at least deserve that forgiveness. And if there was one thing he knew about James, it was that he loved his sister. Julia was really the only member of James’ family that he could count on, and if Leon wanted things to work with James - which he very much did - then he had to at least make nice with Julia. He wasn’t expecting them to be friends, or even for her to like him that much. But he wanted them to at least get to a point where they could spend time in the same room together without it being weird.
It wasn’t especially busy tonight, which would have suited Leon fine if it hadn’t meant that he was very obviously and visibly there on his own, which apparently meant that people thought he was open to talk to. This guy had been talking to (or at) Leon since Leon had taken a seat at the bar and had ordered himself a whiskey. Leon couldn’t say what he was talking at him about - Leon was uh huhing and nodding whenever there was a pause in his diatribe, but he hadn’t really been paying attention. He’d been too busy watching the bartenders, looking for some sign of Julia.
He had a vague recollection of the guy asking if he could buy Leon a drink after Leon had emptied his whiskey, but he was still surprised when he was suddenly being offered some sort of fruity cocktail, right when he finally spotted Julia. Leon took the glass, emptied it in a single go, and handed it back to the guy. “Thanks,” he said, and bee-lined toward Julia’s section of the bar.
“Hey, Julia,” Leon called, and realized, far too late, that he probably should have maybe put some thought into how he was going to approach this. The last time he’d talked to Julia, they’d both been covered in James’ blood. He raised the box. “I brought you pie.”
Good enough, probably.
Julia was, slowly but surely, working her way back to some new sense of normalcy.
Using magic wasn’t fun for her. She supposed it could have been, in another life, but in this life - nope, very bad. Because she had done very bad things with that magic and put herself in a position to be used as the executioner (quite literally, sometimes) for the meanest guys around. And it had taken her far too long to dredge up any emotion about that and realize living in a state of constant detachment and hurting people without any qualms wasn’t something she should be doing. It wasn’t something she could do for the rest of her life. They had ripped the humanity right out of her as best as they could, but eventually, her soft heart had broken through and ever since then, regrets.
Lots and lots of regrets.
But she didn’t regret what she’d done during the whole Mind-Controlled Leon Incident. Well, she did because it hadn’t been the exact right move, but her off-the-top-of-her-head spell had saved James’s life. She knew, deep in what little soul she had left, that her brother would have been dead if she hadn’t pulled out her magical choking trick. She hated that he’d still been injured, but he’d healed right up, so - it was fine. She was fine and dealing.
Now, James was joining Asetenarra and Julia had gone back to her form of magical celibacy - and sexual celibacy, too, because she just was not in the right headspace for anything. She was flirty at work for tips, but more off on her own outside of the club. She’d started spending her time looking for a space of her own to get away from her annoying, constantly-fucking roommate, and she was overall trying to be a responsible adult for once. It was a new look for her.
The last person she’d expected to hear calling her name about forty-five seconds after she’d clocked in at work and stepped behind the bar was Leon. Her brother’s boyfriend and shooter and someone she’d promised to play nice with to the best of her abilities. It wasn’t going to be easy - she was still mad at him for what he’d done, even if she did understand to an extent. But she took a deep breath, flipped a bar towel over her shoulder, and approached him with a smile.
“I do like pie,” she acknowledged, stepping up to him and taking the box from his hands. She glanced in through the little plastic window to see the telltale chunks of baked apple. “Thanks, Leon.”
If there was only one thing his time with D had taught him, it was that bringing people desserts was pretty much the quickest and easiest way to get your foot in the door when it came to getting people to talk to you. No matter how angry or annoyed D had been at Leon, a nice custard tart or a fancy chocolate pudding was always a surefire way to make sure he’d be invited in for tea. Of course, most people probably wouldn't sell their soul for a slice of chocolate torte, but neither would most of them slam the door in his face and tell him to fuck off after they took his pie.
Even still, he was a little taken aback by the smile and how easy this whole thing was so far. He’d expected at least a little resistance. A scowl maybe, or an eyeroll. He warred, briefly, between relief and suspicion and decided to settle on relief.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said, sliding onto a bar stool. “I was hoping we could chat? I know work probably isn’t the best place, but it seemed better than showing up on your doorstop.” And less likely to get him choked out again.
Julia slid the pie under the bar for safekeeping. She was allowed to have her own food around, but management generally frowned upon them eating in front of customers. Granted, it was a weekday and there was, like, next to no one here, but she actually liked her job and made good tips — a lot of wealthier folks stopped in here to fulfill whatever shady desires they wanted. She wasn’t going to put that at risk over pie.
She bit her lip at his request to talk, more because she was afraid she’d say something shitty than anything else. She didn’t hate him, but she was still a little wary of him and that shone through pretty clearly in that moment. She wasn’t entirely sure he’d learned his lesson or that her former coven wouldn’t decide to use him as a plaything again. It was hard to be anything but nervous in these weird-ass circumstances of theirs.
But what the hell. It was a weekday, the crowd was thin, and again — brother’s boyfriend. It would be kind of her to hear him out, right? She could do that.
“Sure,” she agreed, grabbing a couple of shot glasses. “Have a drink so it looks like I’m doing my job, though, yeah?”
Leon glanced at his watch, frowning to himself. He’d already had two drinks, but, “Oh, what the hell. There’s still a few hours before I’ve gotta go to work tonight anyway. Double rye and coke.”
He shifted uneasily in his seat while she made his drink. “Look, I just wanted to clear the air. I know we didn’t really…” He rubbed the side of his head. Yeah. He definitely should have planned something out beyond ‘pie.’ “I guess I probably didn’t make the best first impression?” To put it mildly. “Definitely not my best ‘meeting the family’ experience. Though, I don’t know if it was the worst.” He laughed, a little hollowly, and then grimaced because wow, that was probably not the right thing to say, even if it was technically kind of true. D’s dad had drugged and then tried to murder Leon the first time they’d met, and then Leon had shot him in the head when he’d threatened to wipe out humanity. And then there was the whole explosion and the jumping out of the top floor of a skyscraper thing…
Maybe that was a little better than getting mind-controlled and trying to murder the actual guy you had feelings for, though.
“Anyway, I never really got a chance to properly thank you for what you did.”
The shot glasses were for her — Julia grabbed a bottle of good whiskey and filled them both up before switching over to fill Leon’s order. She pushed his request across the bar to him and wrapped her fingers around the rim of her shot glass while she listened to what he had to say. She definitely tensed at his joke, but she could tell he immediately regretted it. Which she appreciated because yeah, tremendously stupid thing to say.
What she hadn’t expected was for him to thank her. That was enough for her to finally lift up that first shot glass and down it. When she’d finished, thumping the glass back down on the bar, she fixed him with an incredulous look. “You want to thank me? For choking you out? What kind of kinky shit are you into, bro?”
“Not the kind of shit that involves my boyfriend’s little sister,” Leon snapped. Christ. Maybe she hadn’t offered him the second shot glass, but he grabbed it anyway and shot it back because obviously he was going to need it. “No, for not letting me murder your brother, obviously. If you hadn’t been there…”
If she hadn’t been there, James would be dead, and Leon would be doing who-the-fuck-knew what. Either locked up after being used as an example to why the locals shouldn’t be trusting the Outlanders, or still under Mathis’ thumb.
Julia bristled right back and rolled her eyes, but when he made it clear where he’d really been going with this conversation, she softened. She knew exactly what would have happened if she hadn’t been there because James was too trusting. James wanted to think he could have gotten through and broken the thrall, but it was much more likely James would be dead, and Leon — well, she wasn’t sure what path he’d have ended up on but nothing good. That was something she could be sure of.
“Well, you’re welcome, I guess,” she replied with a sigh. “I wish you hadn’t done something that fucking dumb to put all of us in the position, but yeah, it worked out kind of ideally in the end, didn’t it?” No one was dead, Leon wasn’t mind-controlled, and Vorerra was out of James’s life. So far, at least.
“No one wishes that more than I do,” Leon muttered. “And I don’t know if ideally is the word I’d use. Ideally wouldn’t have involved… any of that shit, really.”
Leon rotated the shot glass between his fingers, staring at it, and then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, looking Julia in the face. “Look, this is a shitty thing to put on anyone, but if something like that ever happens again… If I’m going to hurt James or anyone else, really… Whatever you gotta do to stop me, I’m not going to hold it against you.”
He didn’t know Julia, and he didn’t know anything about what she had done in Vorerra - not really, anyway; he’d never asked James and he suspected if he did James wouldn’t answer, though he’d dealt with crime families enough in his career that he had his suspicions - but he knew that she hadn’t hesitated to use potentially lethal force on him to protect her brother. He didn’t doubt that she’d do the same again. But if she had a conscience - and Leon figured she must, if James trusted her - then maybe that would ease it a little if worse came to worst.
Well, yeah, obviously the truly ideal circumstances would have involved none of this ever happening. Not just for her sake, but for both Leon’s and James’s sakes as well. But this was the situation they’d ended up in, and there was no turning back time. For what it was, she stood by that — it had turned out as ideally as it possibly could. James was fine and had even started dating Leon, so everyone should be happy.
She wasn’t completely thrilled herself, but she’d get over it. If her brother was good, she would be good, too. That was how it had always been and probably always would be.
Again, though, Leon was smacking her in the face with these weird, unexpected things he was saying. Before she could really react to any of it, she pulled out that same bottle of whiskey and refilled both of their shot glasses. She raised hers in a (sarcastic) toast to him before knocking it back, dropping the glass, and pressing both hands to her forehead.
“Dude, do you have a death wish?” she questioned, letting out a baffled sound that was, like, half a laugh before lifting her head to meet his eyes again. “Don’t do anything stupid and put me in that situation, alright? Because you may think that gets both of us off scot-free, but I bet my brother will think differently if that ever comes to pass.”
Leon raised his shot glass to the toast and knocked it back. Shit. Less than a month into the new job and he was probably going to show up half-cut, so that was about to become a fun new experience. At least it didn’t involve anything harder than watching some security cameras and walking around the museum every now and then.
Watch tonight be the night when someone decided to try to rob the place though.
“Of course I don’t have a death wish. And I’m not planning on doing anything stupid. I’m not going to go looking for them again, and I’m done trying to find a way out of this place. But shit happens that’s out of your control sometimes. I know James has that whole ‘always look for the best in things’ schtick going on, and I wouldn’t change that for anything, but that’s not how things work in the real world so…”
He scowled, sure that he was making a mess of things. “Look, I’ll do my damnedest not to put you and James in that position again.”
Alright, Julia was trying to just brush this whole thing off, but that clearly wasn’t the right tactic to take. She got what Leon was saying and why he was asking and she even…appreciated it, in a way? He was trying to make sure he didn’t cause any more issues for James or hurt anyone against his will. That wasn’t a bad thing. It was just an awkward thing to ask, especially given her issues. But he didn’t know about that, and right now wasn’t the time she was going to open up all her baggage for him to see.
“Okay,” she agreed with a sigh, blue eyes focusing on him. She gave him a small nod and flattened her palm against the rim of her shot glass to have some sort of sensation grounding her. “I’ve never had someone volunteer to be magically killed, but - yeah. If it comes down to it, I’ll do what I have to do. I’d definitely prefer it if you tried to avoid it, though. Just in general.”
“I mean, I’m not chomping at the bit or anything, so, you know, that doesn’t have to be your first resort,” Leon muttered, a little awkwardly. “Christ, I’m sorry. This isn’t what I… I didn’t come here to ambush you with that.”
He hadn’t, really, but thinking of it stressed him out. Made him worry about what would happen if it happened again, about whether or not there was still some part of Mathis lurking around in his subconscious, biding his time. If that was a possibility, James probably would’ve mentioned it, but it didn’t stop Leon from worrying about it.
“But I promise that on my list of shit that I’m trying to avoid, anything involving Vorerra ranks at the top of my list.”
Poor Leon. Maybe she was being a little too rough on him with the sarcasm. He seemed to mean well, she could see that. She could reel it in and give him a little sincerity so she wouldn’t stress him out so damn much. She’d have plenty of time to give him shit if he was planning to keep seeing her brother, after all. And this conversation called for a modicum of seriousness.
“Good. Better stay that way,” she said, narrowing her gaze at him. “And thanks for the pie, by the way. Makes the ambush a little less ambush-y.”
“It’s from Bitty’s Bakes. Rumour has it he makes the best pies in Vallo.” Leon could believe it too. He’d managed to develop something of a talent for picking out good desserts when he was living in LA. “I should probably get out of your hair, but…” He rubbed the side of his head. “Look, if there’s anything you ever want to say to me when your brother’s not around, it won’t get back to him.”
That had been Leon’s original intention for coming here, after all. Trying to clear the air, giving Julia a chance to get anything she needed to get off her chest, instead of the maudlin direction it had wound up taking instead.
“That’s a correct rumor,” Julia confirmed with raised brows, suddenly feeling a much more urgent need to sneak into the back and cut herself a slice of that pie. Bitty’s Bakes had quickly become legendary around here, and she had indulged in her share of his mini pies while he was selling out of the Apothecary.
She eyed Leon for a moment before shaking her head. “We’re good. I’m not saying I trust you yet, but I know you’re into my brother and you feel bad. Just don’t fuck up again.” She couldn’t guarantee she would be as well-behaved if it happened again, but he knew that now, and she would give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.