InsaneJournal

The past several weeks had been… kind of a lot, if Catra were to be honest. Glimmer, Adora’s parents, Scorpia, Perfuma–all gone, the blows were back to back with a handful of days in between to recover so they could handle the hit from the next one. Life hadn’t stopped afterwards. It went on like always. Things to do. Places to be. Responsibilities, like work. She had hobbies. She did them. She hadn’t stopped. For someone who had always been dubbed as the laziest of the two when it came to the package of Catra & Adora, she’d been busy; always active, often on her feet, sometimes forgetting to not push through things.

Her hips were beginning to protest that now. Prenatal pole fitness was supposed to help keep her in shape to battle the soreness pregnancy could bring, not amplify it. But Leon had a couch she could sit on, and she had agreed to bring him lunch so they could hang out because it’s been a minute and she found herself literally kicking at his door while her arms were full of takeout bags. It was healthy stuff, like wraps and baked hot wings (no frying!) and stupid green juice.

Did she want a coke icee instead? Hell yeah she did, but her stomach was beginning to take more of that soccer-ball size and she was generally determined to stick to a nutritional diet most days.

“Let,” kick, but gently for the most part, “me in!”

Leon hadn’t been avoiding Catra and Adora. Not really; not entirely intentionally. But he knew that they didn’t approve of his drinking – he’d cut back a little since Revy’d dragged herself back to Vallo, but it was still more than what they’d think was acceptable, probably – and Leon still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of all these new memories he had sticking around in his head, and between the baby and everything else, Leon hadn’t want them to stress out. Especially not Catra, who should probably be doing her best to avoid stress at all costs, given the whole pregnancy thing.

Not that that had stopped Vallo from shitting all over them. The disappearances had been a lot even by Vallo’s fucked up standards. He should have reached out earlier, he knew, and had meant to, but then he’d just kept putting it off and putting it off, and now Catra was coming over with lunch.

He’d done a whirlwind cleaning job, and while his apartment wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny, it was passable. The trash was in the trash, the cans were in the recycling, and his socks were not in the kitchen sink.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called from the couch when he heard Catra knocking, and flung open the door. And then stared in dismay.

“Give me those,” he said, snatching the take-out bags from her. “What are you doing, carrying all these? Christ, you should’ve called, I’d have met you downstairs.” Or at the restaurant. Or something.

“It’s like, a whole pound you moron,” Catra shot back, mildly exasperated but the words were heatless–she’d missed him, and it was good to be in the presence of Leon’s personal brand of ridiculousness. Having her arms not be so overcrowded was nice, and it gave her the opportunity to tighten her ponytail as she stepped inside.

There was a brief survey of the digs (maybe she was trying to spot an abandoned bottle somewhere to gauge his drinking; that was a usual indicator of his mood) before she looked at him, grinning toothily. “I’ve never seen this place so clean before. You know I’m not Adora, right?” Oh, look, Leon’s couch. With a swish of her tail, she sauntered towards it to carefully plop down. “She’d be so proud.”

“Aw, shaddup,” Leon said, a little embarrassed, though it wasn’t like Catra was entirely unjustified. He followed Catra into the living room, put the food out on the table, and started busying himself with unpacking it, right up until he came to the first container of the hot wings.

He hesitated, took a sniff, and then frowned. “You sure you should be eating this stuff?” he asked after a moment. “It smells pretty spicy.”

“Wasn’t ever really into hot wings until I got like this,” Catra explained with a shrug. “But I’m balancing it out with some really shitty kale-spinach juice, so - don’t judge me and gimme.”

Her hand swiped it out of his grasp almost aggressively. The other stuff was fine, she guessed, but in the end this is what her heart - and kid, apparently - wanted. Hot wings. There were some wet wipes that came with the bag that she was definitely going to need later. “Anyway,” she began, pulling the bones apart on an actual wing to loosen up the meat and make it easier to stuff in her face, “Adora tells me you’ve been doing patrols with your alternative-universe girlfriend? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages and I fucking hate it. Talk to me.”

Leon frowned after the hot wing, but he wasn’t going to push it. Instead, he grabbed a wing for himself.

“With Revy, yeah,” Leon said, and grimaced. “You guys have been dealing with a lot lately. I didn’t wanna,” he waved a hand, as if somehow he’d managed to pull the words out of the air. He came up empty. Everything sounded either pathetic, whiny, or both. “I’m sorry, I should’ve been around more. I saw Adora’s folks were here for a while, bet that was nice.”

“It was really nice,” Catra confirmed, sighing about it. It also sucked to lose them so quickly, too. That had hit Adam and Adora hard. She missed them, too. Everything on Darla had been literally chaos, yeah, but they had embraced her too and helped soothe the ‘black sheep’ feelings she’d been having. “It’s like Vallo gave her a Christmas present just to take it away. But they were around for her actual birthday with Adam–and there’s loads of pictures, and her mother is the only reason why I’ll ever wear buttflap pajamas.”

Why was that even a thing.

Leon laughed, hard enough to choke on his chicken. He coughed a couple of times, punching himself in the chest, and once he’d managed to dislodge it, he laughed again. There was something too amusing about Catra in butt-flap pyjamas, maybe one corner hanging open like in the old cartoons.

He wiped a tear from his eye. “You’d think they’d be more comfortable, on account of the whole tail situation,” he said, grinning at her. And then, “I think my aunt and uncle had Chris in a set for a while when has little.”

Catra rolled her eyes. Har-har, laugh it up. If it weren’t for the easy access to the ass, they would be fine pajamas on their own. “Finn’s got their own pair for their first Christmas, the grandparents made sure of that,” she snorted, then stuffed a whole wing in her mouth–moved it around a little–and with the sharpness of her fangs, she tore off all the meat.

What she pulled out was nothing but bone.

To the next one. “So. Patrols, Leon. Go on.”

“I’m sure they’ll be adorable,” Leon said, grin softening into a smile which disappeared at the question of patrols. He reached for a beer, realized he didn’t have one, and then got up and headed to the kitchen. The fridge was stocked with beer, but after a moment’s hesitation and a glance at Catra from the corner of his eyes, he grabbed a can of coke instead.

“Patrols are patrols,” he said, after he’d cracked the can and made his way back to the couch. “Things were… are? Kind of weird with Revy, but not as bad as it used to be.” He picked up his chicken wing and gnawed thoughtfully on a moment before he asked, “You hear much about people getting… I don’t know, memory updates, I guess, but from a different parallel universe?”

Whilst dutifully tearing up some wings, Catra tracked his movement to the kitchen - didn’t say anything, didn’t judge - and tracked his way back over. Another bone stripped of meat came out of her mouth, all part of her plan to destroy them, and she added it to the pile.

“I’ve heard it mentioned but it’s not crazy common,” she said after a moment, forcing herself to put in the effort to lean over and grab her dumb green juice drink. Gods, this tasted like liquid ass but that was nutrition for you, she guessed. “Did that…?”

Catra paused mid-sip, squinting at him.

“You have memories of being her boyfriend, don’t you.”

Leon flushed and attempted to hide his expression by gnawing into one of the chicken wings. “Yeah,” he admitted, likely needlessly: there wasn’t much chance of Catra missing the expression. “Yeah, I remember the whole fucking thing.”

“Huh,” Catra breathed out in wonder, blinking at him several times. That was… well, she didn’t really know what to say. Was this a good thing? A bad thing? Probably more of a complicated thing, if she had to guess. Leon looked bashful, though, so maybe it wasn’t a totally terrible kind of complicated. “Alright, so your brain must be feeling weird. What do you think about other you and all of that?”

Shit, she sounded like a therapist.

“He doesn’t seem so bad,” Leon said. “He’s… I don’t know if I want to say he’s got his shit together more than I do… or did, at that age, anyway. He’s got his own shit that I managed to avoid stepping in. But he’s better at…” he waved a hand. “He’s better at connecting with people than I am, I guess. And keeping those connections up. Stays close to family, you know, didn’t cut off all his connections to go sleep under bridges all over the world for a decade. That sort of stuff. He’s done some things I find questionable. Or maybe, I don’t know, I can’t blame him for the shit he did, just that he kept his job as a police officer afterward and that he went and got himself promoted to boot, but…” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I can’t really hold that against him either.”

Catra thought about it.

“A decade,” she echoed, fangs chewing into her straw before she pulled the drink away. “That means you weren’t chasing your crazy dude around the world. Well – yeah, I can see where that might improve your overall well-being.” It was kind of a joke, and she flashed him a sheepish grin. “But you do end up with someone who’s certifiably trigger happy?”

Damn, the people Leon attracts.

“Were you happy?”

“Yeah,” Leon said. He didn’t need to think about it. That was something he was absolutely sure about. “We moved to New York, me and Revy. To get away from all the weird shit that was happening in California, and to be closer to Chris. We had this shitty little apartment.” Well, shitty compared to this apartment, at least. It hadn’t been much worse than his apartment in Irvine. “And New York’s fucking cold in the winter. But I was happy there.”

Probably happier than he’d ever been in this life. His time with James had been nice, but it hadn’t lasted, had never been certain. In that life, he’d had Chris close at hand, even if his aunt and uncle didn’t let Chris see him as much as he would have liked to have seen him. But he’d had Revy there, too, and there was a certain kind of contentedness that came when you know you’d found your ride or die. When he knew that no matter what happened, this obnoxious, foul-mouthed, violent woman was going to be by his side.

Wow. Catra blinked. That was a quick response, and Leon sounded so… confident about it. Leon sounded confident about a bunch of dumb shit a lot of the time but this was the kind of certainty she didn’t see in him often. “Okay,” she said, blinking more. “That sounds nice.”

It did. Sometimes the places you lived in could be shit but if you lived in them with the right person, it made the difference.

“So, uhhh.” She sat up and let the box of wings settle into lap instead of the watermelon her stomach was gradually becoming. “That doesn’t exactly change anything, does it? You’ve got his memories but you’re not him.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Leon said, and grimaced at the resignation in his voice. He was fine with it. He was. “I’m not him, even if I remember his life, and I’m not going to, I don’t know, force Revy to start acting like I am him, you know? Besides, I’m older than him.” A lot could happen in ten years, and he was pretty sure he showed his age. “I don’t plan on stealing her away from him or anything like that.”

It didn’t matter if these memories just made feelings for her that he was pretty sure were developing before she’d been kidnapped by cultists even stronger. He could ignore them. If Leon was good at anything, it was pretending feelings he had didn’t actually exist.

Usually he was better at just not noticing them at all, but like Catra said. It didn’t change anything.

Catra had never been the most emotionally mature person. She spent most of her life stunted in that department - for several reasons - and there was a lot she had to learn the hard way. Being someone who gave advice or actively talked people through problems wasn’t a role she thought she’d slip into.

But, she tried. For her friends. Because the power of friendship was kind of real, and ridiculous, and Vallo had given her the chance to actually not be a complete fuck up of a person. Leon seemed to be going through it, and that explained the lack of consistent contact over the past few months.

“Okay – be honest. Do you feel something for her?” she asked, brows pinched together. “Because something tells me you do want things to change, and I’m not going to tell you not to go for it. But you also need to figure out if whatever feelings you might have for her are real ones and not confused ones just because you have another set of memories shoved in your head.”

Leon shot Catra nearly a pleading look. He didn’t want to admit it, and his look begged her not to make him.

But there was no getting around it, not really.

“I’m not confused. Not like that,” he admitted. “These memories decided to shove their way into my head while she was missing, and I think whatever it is I’m feeling started… before that.”

Not that he’d have ever admitted it before the memories showed up. Revy made his blood boil, and not just in a bad way. She got him worked up and annoyed, and when he thought she’d gone back home he’d felt beyond shitty about it.

“But I’m not going to… I don’t fucking know. Cuckold myself.” Was it cheating if you were trapped in another dimension? Trapped in another dimension for months, with no sign that you were going home? What about if when you did go home, if you did go home, you wouldn’t even remember it? He didn’t think that he’d be pissed off or hurt about it if his and the other Leon’s positions were reversed, but how much were they actually alike?

“And that doesn’t matter anyway, because Revy’s feelings would bound to be confused,” he said. “I’d always wonder if she was into me or this other version of me. I think it would be better for both of us if I keep this to myself. I don’t think she thinks of me that way anyway.”

Oof. This was complicated. Catra winced, wishing she had a drink, but there was this whole pregnancy thing she was enduring so - back to sip on this nutrient-rich green juice she hated yet endured for the sake of vitamins. Her fingers danced along the curve of her stomach as she thought.

“I mean, I would think she’s confused already,” she sighed, twisting her nose up. “You get kidnapped from your world into this one – and left behind is someone you love, and here is another version of that same someone. Even if you and Other Leon went down different paths, aren’t you the same person to the core? Hell, I’m pretty sure I’d love any version of Adora by default that came my way. Something along those lines is probably why she hangs around.”

That was her guess, anyway.

“And I think it’s cute that you had some feelings before all of this.” Catra smirked. “If that Leon’s into her, and you’re into her - I don’t think you’re really that different. You guys just went down other paths.”

Catra wasn’t the only one who wished she had a drink. His fingers itched to pour himself one, but he settled for his Coke. It was fine. He could get through one awkward conversation with Catra without a drink.

“It’s not cute, it’s obnoxious,” Leon grumbled, and scowled at her for a moment before focusing again on his Coke. “So you think I should… make a move? Ask her on a date?” He asked, awkwardly. And then, “What if she thinks I’m too old?”

“Make a move,” Catra concurred with a sage nod, and then retracted that about an inch. “Not a date, exactly – figure out the date part later. I think this is the kind of thing you’ll have to take pretty slow? How about you just talk about whatever the fuck you two are feeling just to get it out there, let her know that you’re invested, and… go from there.”

Then she slapped him on the back of his head.

“You’re also not old, you drama queen.”

Maybe Catra was right. Maybe he should talk to Revy, clear the air, tell her how he’d been feeling.

But then, he’d pretty much told her how he felt anyway when they’d cleared the air about their friendship on patrol, so what would that accomplish. Maybe he should take her out for cheap steak instead. She’d know what that meant.

“I’m ten years older than her Leon,” Leon pointed out. “But I’ll think about it.” Probably, at least. So long as he could stop talking about it now.

“How’s the pregnancy going?” he asked, and the question brought worried lines to his forehead. “Everything… going alright there?”

“Oh, you know. I’m fat.” Catra gestured at the obvious protrusion of her stomach here. “I pee every twenty minutes and my organs are beginning to be some solid punching bags. Sometimes I get this pain that shoots up from the base of my foot all the way up to just one butt cheek, and it’s the worst.” Or maybe it was the other way around? Either way, it sucked.

Her claws pulled apart the bones of the next wing, freeing the meat to stuff into her mouth like a savage. “The other day I cried because Spirit and Adora looked cute napping together and I want a fucking trashbag of mashed potatoes to bury my face in. But it’s fine! The kid’s fine. I might take a nap on your couch.”

Well.

“No, you can nap on my bed if you want,” Leon said. He was pretty sure pregnant women shouldn’t sleep on couches. He always woke up hurting when he passed out on the couch and he wasn’t carrying around a whole-ass other human around in his stomach.

“You sure that butt-pain is alright though?” he asked after a minute, cocking his head. “Is that something you should be worried about?”

“Has something to do with all this growth and adding pressure to some nerve,” she sighed. “It’s normal.” They recommended stretches and exercise – which she was fucking doing – but that didn’t always work. “And, listen, I just need twenty minutes to shut my eyes after I eat. Food coma. Then I’ll get out of your hair, but…”

Give her a minute to, attractively, slurp up the meat clean off a bone and toss it into the pile. “Don’t hole yourself in here when things get weird, okay? Adora misses you.”

Catra did too but she was being a shit, and Leon likely knew what she meant anyway.

“Sciatic nerve,” Leon muttered, trying not to think of every way that could go wrong. He was being paranoid, he knew. If nothing else, Finn’s semi-frequent visits from the future proved that. They would have definitely said something if something went really wrong, wouldn’t they?

He smiled at Catra. “Thanks. I’ll try. I’m not used to…” he rubbed the side of his head and grimaced. “I’ll do better. And I’ll make plans with Adora to go running soon, I promise.”

“Take however much time you need,” Leon said, waving her off. “I wasn’t planning on doing much else this afternoon other than catching up on some reading.” He’d found an interesting book the other day about the Outlanders and what their arrival – and the frequent arrivals of their houses and bank accounts – might mean for the long-term economics of Vallo, and he hadn’t had the time to sit down with it yet. “Holler if you need anything.”