Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction ❯ Unwilling Sleep ❯ Rich and Strange ( Chapter 3 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

See the Prologue for summaries, disclaimers, warnings, etc.

Unwilling Sleep, Part Three: Rich and Strange

Leon's sleep was restless, filled with strange, phantomesque dreams that he didn't like. He might have hoped for better, especially now that he'd caught D at last -- or rather, now that D had turned himself in, or whatever the hell he was doing. But his dreams were as tumultuous as they had been for the past three months. And then came the dream of the forest, as he might have expected, only this time he was standing alone in front of the woods and D was nowhere to be found. Leon's heart tripped into panic. "D!" he called into the shadows of the trees. "D!"

But he was too late. D was nowhere in sight, and somehow, Leon knew he'd already gone inside the deadly forest. He'd been too late…there was no stopping anything now…

When he woke up, shivering and moaning quietly to himself on the floor, sweating coldly, it took him a few minutes to distinguish between dream and reality. He looked around the guest bedroom for signs of foliage, still mumbling "D" under his breath. Then he remembered where he was, and what had happened, and propped himself up on one elbow so he could crane his neck and look up on the bed.

In the pale-lit gloom, two mismatched eyes glittered down at him.

Leon's heart stopped and his mouth dropped open. Next thing he knew he was stumbling to his feet, swaying from the sudden use of exhausted limbs, and collapsing down on the bed beside D with a thump. He was too tired, too discombobulated to form coherent speech, but his muscle memory was as good as ever. He reached out and seized D by the lapels of the satiny pajama top he was wearing -- Leon thought it must be Eileen's -- and shook hard, once. Twice. D flopped back and forth for a moment, before reaching out and touching Leon's face with both hands, whispering, "Detective. Please stop."

Leon stopped, and they sat on the bed and looked at each other, exhausted and terrified. Leon couldn't make his fingers let go, and he didn't even mind that D's hands had fallen from his face to touch his shoulders. He'd spoken to him. He'd seen him. Now he had him.

It was true. He was here.

"Don't go again," he blurted, before he could stop himself. Shit. Well, he couldn't be held responsible for anything he said on -- he squinted at the small analog clock by the bed -- two hours' worth of sleep. Which was good, because he was still talking. "I thought you'd left for good. On your boat. Was that a dream? Am I going crazy?"

"No," D whispered, and he was trembling under Leon's hands. "No. I'm going crazy. Not you."

Going crazy -- Leon's sleep-fogged brain remembered what Phil had said in the car. "D, what's the matter?" He grabbed D's chin and forced his head up, squinting to see him in the low light. "You're different. What's happened to you? Where have you been?"

"Looking for you," D whispered. "And you…Chris said that you were looking for me." His hands dropped to rest on Leon's arms now. His face was as open, as truthful, as Leon had ever seen it.

"So…" Leon couldn't help a rough, half-hysterical laugh. "So, what, for the past three months we've been looking for each other all over the place? That is crazy -- "

"Not exactly. You have been looking for three months. I have been looking for six days." D tried to look away, but Leon held his chin, wouldn't let him. "I left the ship," D whispered. "Time passed more slowly there…I returned to the Earth. It was no dream, Detective."

No.

No, there was no way this was making sense on two hours of sleep. Although Leon had a hunch it might make even less sense to a fully-functional mind than it did to a sleep-deprived one. He also realized that everybody else in the house was asleep and this would be the first, maybe the only chance they had to speak in complete privacy.

God, he wanted a cup of coffee.

"You -- you left the ship," he repeated, releasing D and rubbing his hands over his eyes. D slowly let go of his arms, though his eyes never left Leon's face. "You came back here…so what does that mean? Are you -- you gonna re-open the petshop?" With all those crazy not-really-animals…all those deaths, mysterious occurances, it was all going to start again, and now Leon would know what was happening…could he handle it? Could he take responsibility for knowing that truth?

Then he realized D was shaking his head. "No, Detective," he whispered. "I will never open that petshop again."

Leon took a good, hard look at his face. Yeah, something was different there all right…but he wasn't sure he was ready to hear what it was. Not exactly, not yet. He remembered something else D had said. "Time passed differently there?" It made sense. He'd been on the boat for what, less than five minutes? And he'd woken up in the hospital days later.

D nodded slowly. "I remained on the ship for perhaps an hour after you had…gone." After you shoved my ass off, Leon thought uncharitably, but didn't say it out loud. "During that hour, three months seem to have passed on Earth. And then I left the ship and returned to Los Angeles."

"L.A.? And nobody told you where I'd gone?"

"Nobody knew. Miss Jill was not in the office that week, and many of the officers seemed unhappy with me. They seemed to blame me for your leaving the force. They told me to leave, and would not let me speak with the Chief." D looked directly at Leon. "You left the force to look for me," he said plainly. "Why?"

Leon felt his face flush hot. That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it? And it was one he had no idea how to answer, no matter what his gut knew. He tried to retaliate with a question of his own. "Well, why have you been looking for me?" Why did you leave the ship? Was he ready to ask that? Or was it all the same question?

D did not reply. He only looked up at Leon, and for the first time Leon noticed the dark rings under his eyes, the paleness of his skin that went beyond normal into unhealthy. D looked as if he hadn't slept or eaten properly for days. "How did you look for me?" Leon asked, deciding that maybe he wasn't ready to ask either of those other questions after all. "Where did you go?"

"First I went to your apartment," D whispered, sounding mechanical, as if he was reciting a grocery list. "Someone else was living there. She was quite rude. Then I went to the station. After that, I did not know where else to look. I came here, to your family's house."

"You -- flew?" Leon asked, remembering what Eileen had said about D looking like a 'vagrant.' Even as awful as the Count looked right now, it still wasn't an image Leon could fix in his mind. "Or…or you took that limo of yours…right?"

Then he looked over at the armchair in the corner, and noticed a very familiar garment laid over it. It was one of D's many cheongsams -- the last one Leon had ever seen him wearing, in fact, with the elaborate braiding and the brooch at the collar. But now the silken hem was ripped and muddied, and one of the sleeves was torn. D -- who, in all the time Leon had known him, had never worn the same outfit twice -- had apparently been wearing that thing for six days. It made what he said next seem like much less of a shock.

D closed his eyes, and his expression took on the closest thing to despair Leon had ever seen on his face. "Detective. I have no money. I have left my shop, my home -- such as it was -- my family. I have nothing. Do you understand this? That is why it took me six days to get here. I -- what do you call it -- I hitched rides. Usually with trucks. They thought I was a woman. I did not disabuse them, and I avoided the ones I knew would be dangerous. I rode with three. The last one brought me as far as Queens. And all day yesterday, I walked, until I found the correct address."

Leon stared at him, and then his shoulders hunched in an unwilling laugh. "So -- so you got nothing. And I got nothing. And we're stuck here together in my fucking uncle's fucking house until I work out what the hell we're gonna do."

"Language, Mr. Orcot," D said softly.

Leon wasn't sure how it happened then, but next thing he knew he'd reached out and crushed D into his arms. He didn't hug guys unless he was related to them, or really good pals with them, or drunk, and even then it always involved a lot of back-pounding and keeping hips well apart. But now he was sitting on a bed with D, practically pulling him into his lap, holding him as tightly to himself as possible, feeling D burrow his face down into the curve of his neck and not minding at all. Reveling in it, in fact.

Because…because…

Oh, hell. He knew why. Even if it would take a lot of getting used to, and many, many panic attacks, he knew why.

"It's all right," he whispered into D's hair, taking time to feel how soft the strands were on his lips, taking time to remember how good it had felt to hear D scold him for swearing. "It's all right."

It was very far from all right.

D's pets had always taken advantage of his person, paying him their adoration, caressing him, climbing on him. Humans were a different matter; he did not embrace them, as a rule. Not anymore. But he'd often held Chris's hand, and he had not hesitated to protect him with his body when it became necessary. And -- it was true -- he had once thrown himself at Leon as a ruse, as a means of fooling a vampire.

It was nothing like this. None of it.

When Chris had sat on his lap today, when D had held him so close he'd known he was making it difficult for the boy to breathe, he'd sought some sort of foundation. Something solid to which he could cling. He knew this child. He loved this child. The feel of his small, trusting hands, his smell, his knobby knees and elbows, all were familiar to D. If he had not had something like that, in that moment where everything else was wrong and strange and out of place, he might have gone mad. Chris was safety.

This man, Leon Orcot, was not safety. For all that they held each other as tightly, for all that D had thought of nothing but finding him for the last week -- for all that his entire sad existence had been leading up to this moment -- he found no comfort in it. Only terror.

But he had always known it would be like this, hadn't he?

D could not let Leon go. He would stop breathing if he did.

Leon had no intention of letting D go. He didn't care how gay it looked to sleep in the same bed as another guy, holding onto him. He didn't care what Phil might think. He just held on to D tight, and lay back down, bringing D with him and letting his smaller frame settle in. D's heart was beating quite fast. Not believing himself, not at all sure where this heart-splitting well of tenderness was coming from, Leon reached up and petted D's hair.

"Do you want me to stay?" D asked, his voice broken.

"Yes," Leon said without hesitation. "I don't know what else I want, but I want that. But you gotta be straight with me, D." No pun intended. "What's going on here? Do you have any plans? What do you want?"

"I wish to stay with you as well," D whispered. "If you will allow it. But as I said -- I have nothing. I cannot help you. I do not wish to weigh you down, if you are already in…in some trouble."

Leon tightened his arm around D, noting that D was still under the covers while Leon was lying comfortably on top of them. Well, that was proper enough, right? "Forget my trouble," he said roughly. "I'm putting in a call to the Chief in L.A. tomorrow. I bet I can get my old job back. Then stuff'll fall into place."

He felt D go a little still next to him. "I am not entirely certain it would be wise for me to return to Los Angeles right now," he said softly. "However…if that is what you truly wish, then of course I will go with you."

What was that supposed to mean, 'not wise'? D had already mentioned that the LAPD had been pissed at him -- Leon supposed it would be better to talk to the Chief tomorrow. He'd sure as hell get more out of his old boss than he ever would out of D. He huffed out a breath of air. "Fine," he said. "I'll call him anyway. I can probably get transferred to any homicide department in the country. I guess we could always stay…here." But, God, living in New York, did they have to -- something occurred to him. "You want to stay near Chris, don't you?"

D said nothing, but Leon was looking at him, and the way he shifted his eyes to the side was answer enough. Oh, hell. Well, it wasn't like Leon had any real objections to keeping an eye on the brat -- it was his brother after all. "Well, NYPD can always use more homicide detectives," he said in resignation. "We're getting the hell out of this house as soon as we can, though. Jesus. You know what it's gonna cost us, living in New York? I mean, not like L.A. was cheap, but…shit, maybe if I wasn't already in hock. I'll think of something. I guess if you don't mind living in a rathole, I don't."

Again, there was no answer. Leon looked back down at D, who was gazing at him, eyes wide. "I will never understand you, Detective," he murmured after a moment -- and was that a faint, rueful smile on his lips? It was gone before Leon could decide for sure. "You are confused; you still do not understand what has happened; your life has been turned upside-down; and you are still able to leap immediately to practicalities. You seem not even to question that you and I -- you seem not even to question the situation."

There was no real response to that, other than, 'Yeah, you're right,' so Leon just said, "Well, I figure we can try living here for a couple of months. And if we hate it we can try somewhere else. Philly, maybe. Or Boston. 'Course, all of 'em'll be cold as a witch's tit in winter." He cupped D's face again. "I got lots of questions for you, D. But not for right now. I just need to know that you're here to stay, you're not gonna do the boat thing again, and you're here to stay with me."

"Yes, De…Leon," D said, his voice very quiet and solemn. "I have come here to be with you, if you will allow it. Yes."

"Then that's all I need to know. For now."

"I will find some means of employment. I will help you."

"Damn straight," Leon muttered, letting his eyes close, his exhaustion catching up with him again. "I ain't just letting you sit around the house eating bonbons and watching soap operas." But D's remark had raised some serious questions. The Count -- if he was still a count -- wasn't human. (Was he? No. No, Leon didn't want to answer that yet.) That meant he had no birth certificate, no Social Security card, no identification -- unless they were forged, and if that was the case, they'd likely disappeared with the petshop. They might not even have a way to prove he was an American citizen. It seemed even less likely that D would be able to produce any kind of educational evidence. Leon was positive the Count knew more about…well, everything, than any Ph.D. in the country, but that didn't mean shit if he didn't have it on paper. Before D could even think about looking for a job -- at least, the kind of job that Leon, as a cop, could ethically let him consider -- they'd have a lot of crap to take care of. Maybe he could talk to Jill about that. She had a lot of friends in Records.

But that was for tomorrow. He had a family to placate, and an ex-employer to call, and in the middle of all of it, a possibly-immortal being to fit back into his life. It'd be a long day. Sleep would be just the thing.

"Night, D," he yawned, reaching over and pulling the blanket from the floor, but staying on top of the bedcovers. "We'll work it out tomorrow. Sweet dreams."

He felt D hesitantly lay his head on his shoulder. Leon made no effort to shrug it off. As he drifted away, hopefully to sweeter dreams himself, he heard D murmur, in a wondering voice, "Good night…Leon."

Comments and criticism welcome.