Down the rabbit hole
Disclaimer:
Pet Shop Of Horrors, the characters (with the exception of my made up OC's) and neither the manga do belong to me in any way or form! They belong to their rightful owners by law and the artist. I make no money from it and neither plan to do so in any kind of the future!
Chapter two,
This time he dreamed of nothing he could remember and when he woke up, he felt strangely relieved and depressed at the same time. Grunting in pain, he got out of his bed and washed up since he could not shower. He ate a light breakfast and went a bit unsteady out to his car. The entire way to the shop, he thought about his weird dreams until he had to concentrate on the drive safely.
He ended up ramming a car by accident on the street to Chinatown.
The driver had lost his control over his wheel for all Leon could figure, because the car had suddenly moved into his way like that. Luckily, he had not used his usual speed. Getting out of his car, he realized it that the other driver looked a bit spooked and still sat behind his wheel like spellbound. Leon, not feeling well himself, bit back his anger and kneeled next to the driver, only to discover surprised that it was D?
No, his mind supplied, not his D, but the father. The hair was much longer; he felt a shudder run down his back and groaned inwardly.
Maybe his dreams were not simple dreams at all? The prospect scared Leon but he showed his thoughts into the back of his mind and helped the other D instead out of his car over to his to then go and park the limousine, to then drive the two of them to D's pet shop. Next to him the man came slowly too and when he saw where Leon had brought him he went chalk white. Even tried to escape when Leon helped him out of the car under the protest of his cracked rips.
Something told Leon that it was necessary for him to bring D's father in here and so he did.
"Hey, D! I accidentally got nearly run over from your brother or whatever family relative to you this guy is! At least he looks like a carbon copy of you with longer hair. Come out and help me with him already, damnit, this isn't a fucking joke!" D's pale face told Leon volumes about what he did to the both of them, because the older one was just as white faced as his son. Still, Leon let not go on him and forced him down the steps.
One hour later saw the two D's have a fight inside the backroom of the shop.
While an amused Leon found himself back in the front room. Selling a pair a fish as a substitute of D. How Leon had ended up doing that, was still beyond him but somehow he figured that to interrupt the two hissing at each other incensed in Chinese in the other room, was a very dumb thing to do. When the couple had stumbled in, he had simply done it. He laid the money on the counter and looked down at T-Chan and Chris.
"Think that the two will stop to fight anytime in the near future?"
He asked the Totetsu bemused. The goat creature shook its head, feeling as exasperated as Leon did. *He says, no and that he doesn't think so, Leon.* His little brother helpfully told Leon who smiled at that. He nodded and when a man came in he gave the beast a secret smirk. "Then you better tell Chris how much what in here costs or if I better go and kick a customer out because I fear I am otherwise selling something I shouldn't, ok?" He whispered to the stunned looking tiger sheep before he went to the man, who looked confused at the two fighting twins of hell behind Leon and the other two.
Behind him, Tetsu eyed Leon shortly oddly before he gave him a nod and trotted after Leon, while Chris helpfully begun a running commentary inside of their minds for Tetsu and Leon.
The fourth customer after that man who bought a bird, soon turned out to want something different as a normal pet. When he entered the shop, Leon felt the hairs on his neck stand up and he saw Tetsu stiffen at the same moment. It told Leon volumes and he shrugged at the goat. "I think this time D has to do this alone, huh? Do me a favor and get one of them out here?" He whispered and Tetsu nodded vehemently. Already was half running off to the back room of the front shop where the two still argued in Chinese with each other.
Leon heard a snort behind him and then an exclamation of surprise in Chinese before a swoosh of silk warned him that one of them came over.
The one coming out wasn't Leon's D, it was the father and he stalked over to the haughty looking businessperson and wife with such a dangerous smile that Leon wisely went out of his way. Walking over to the counter, he leaned around it to look after the other D. He found him behind the curtain right next to the counter, staring oddly at Leon.
The detective shrugged at his confused look.
"You two seemed to need to catch up and argue something important out." He told the stunned D calmly. "Besides that, I originally wanted to tell you about my weird dreams last night, I remembered you telling me that your family hates hospitals and so I brought that guy here instead." He shrugged again watching D's father vanish with the couple in the back rooms of the shop. Next to him, D gave Leon confused and bewildered stares.
"What weird dreams, detective?"
Leon nodded. Pointing down at Chris, Leon mumbled a, later to the other. Before D could ask for more, his father came back with the couple and what looked like a hyena to the stunned Leon. He gave the intent at him staring D a short look. "Do I even want to know why your shop has a hyena in the back?" He murmured questionably to D, still watching the couple sign a contract. D shook his head with a small smile.
"I don't believe you would want to know that, detective."
He whispered back in the same manner and turned to the couches again. Leon watched him with a lopsided smirk before he felt someone stare at him and turned to the older D who seems to look at him with a fully befuddled expression. As if, he could make no sense of Leon's actions and neither of Leon himself.
"You sold a man a parrot?" He suddenly asked Leon who nodded calmly. "Yeah, you two were busy so we figured to leave you alone for a short while?" The father of D looked now even more confused at Leon that still stood casually leaned at the counter.
"And a hamster to a father and son." Leon nodded again.
"And a fish to a man." Again, Leon nodded. "Are you feeling alright?" Leon asked D's father, concerned when he noted the older D blanch more and more. The other shook his head surprised at Leon. "You… you are really concerned!" He told the amused and confused Leon across of him who slowly felt that it would be better for the older D to sit down soon.
Nodding his blond head, Leon took the man by the hand and did lead him over to where D looked concerned over to the two of them. In the meanwhile, his father still babbled on.
"But you can't be concerned and you can't go and sell animals while we are squabbling!" He told Leon in a bewildered child's voice while the man brought him to the couch of D and helped him sit down softly and carefully.
Chris darted over to their D; the other man slightly worried the boy.
"And why is that?" Leon asked calmly while he too sat down and handed D's father his cup of tea. The Chinese man looked down at his tea befuddled and then back at Leon. "Howell never did such!" He stated almost outraged and Leon found his suspicions confirmed. He calmly took the cup D did offer him and nodded at the older D's words.
"So, basically because your Howell would have never done this, everyone else should also never do it?"
He serenely asked the obviously badly bewildered father of D who looked suddenly thoughtful at the question. Visibly calming down a bit. Then he nodded and took a sip. "Actually that's what I have always thought. Obviously you are not like him in that respect." He told Leon who smelled trouble brewing and gave Chris a glance.
"Hey little brother, why don't you and T-Chan and Pon-Chan go and get us the cake I still have stored in my car and bring it in here, hmm? Would you do that for your injured bro?" He asked the youth with a smile while giving the beast a nod with his chin into the direction of the door to the shop. Tetsu nodded back and took the hem of Chris shirt in his mouth to steer the boy out. *Sure!* Chris mind voice told them all and gone the three were.
Leon turned around again to give D's father an unruffled look.
"I am not him, you know and neither is every one other the same either. That's the way it is. Do I remind you so much on that guy?" Beside Leon, the man nodded first, then he shook his head again. "Yes, and no, detective Orcrot, was it?" Leon gave a short nod and took a sip of his tea this time. The other watched him like a cat would a do mouse… a rather extraordinary mouse.
Leon chuckled seeing it what made both looks alike in the room arch a brow at him.
"What is so funny?" His D asked suddenly getting curios of why Leon had not exploded by now, still kept calm and oh wonder of wonders, seem to even manage his precarious father at the same time. Leon shrugged once more. "Your eyebrows." He told them cryptically and sipped anew from his still hot tea.
His answer seems to befuddle both.
"Why is he not behaving like the others?!" The father suddenly asked D a bit irritated. D shrugged this time, not knowing either and feeling just as mystified as his father. The latter huffed and went back to give Leon baffled looks. Out of the blue, he pouted at Leon and his son.
"That's not fair! He does not play by the rules. He should look confused at us both but instead he looks like he knows why we look the same! Do you know that, detective Orcrot?" His eyes had taken on a dangerous quality that strangely enough, did not really faze Leon.
He gave the older of the two D's a calm nod.
"You are related? I mean, you could be brothers, twins even. It is just…" Leon shrugged at their avid gazes. "Just, what, Leon?" His D asked suddenly alerted. Knowing from past experience that Leon was sometimes too insightful for his own good. Leon raised his hands in a manner that told the two others that he did not exactly know either. "It is just that I think somehow that you aren't? That he," He pointed at the D that his dreams had shown him to be the father of his D, "somehow gives me the feeling that he is older as you? And now I sound so weird!"
Leon scowled; both D's looked utterly perplexed.
All three shrugged in eerily unison and went back to drink their tea.
"You mentioned strange dreams, detective san, have they to do with this?" His D suddenly asked Leon. The other D stared at his son and then at Leon who this time scowled at his teacup in his own befuddlement. "I don't know the fuck either, D! They were a whole load of bull and confused the shit out of me, damnit!" He exploded unsuspected what earned him a twin voiced, "Language, detective!" From both D's next to him.
He gave both a scowl and then ducked his head in the end at the twin glares of the two others.
"Sorry. It was really weird and I think the d… I mean those weird painkillers must have done something to my brain, you know." He sheepishly shrugged what had the odd effect of having both D's give him a strangely amused and concerned look now. To be honest, the two scared him a little with that.
Leon chose to not mention that and helped Chris instead to put the cake box onto the low table all sat at.
"Hey, what's your name anyways? Can't go and call you second D, now can I?" He addressed D's father, something seem to tell him to not give too many information's away to them now and so Leon did. The father shrugged amused. "You may call me Doc, detective Orcrot. Since we both are named D."
His eyes were positively gleeful; Leon ignored it stubbornly and nodded amicably instead.
"Alright, Doc it is then. And why do I have to tell each new one of your family that I meet that I have a name and not only a position, D!? Its Leon, use it please? This is ridiculous, really." He grumbled under his breath at both D's next to him what had both arch a brow at him again and look at each other amused and slightly confused again.
The bat bunny watched this all from the back of the couch across of all three. Clearly as befuddled as the two on the couch.
Inwardly Leon laughed his head off at the look from the tiny creature directed at them all that in his dreams had turned into a third of these strange people. He did take an offered plate, piled the strawberries of his cake onto it, put it over in reach of the beast before he went on, and ate his cake under the now utterly mystified looks of all three creatures in the room, plus the many animals.
No one could make a head or tail of Leon today and it vexed them all.
He gave them all a confused look. "What?! I thought you told me to be nice to him and that he loves those berries, D!" The spoken to D shook his head with a rueful smile at Leon. "Sorry, my de… Leon san, you are correct, that I did. I just never thought you had heard me, I apologize for that." Leon gave him a murderous glare but chose to ignore this too, along many other things before today and ate his cake instead.
Across from him, Q-Chan looked a moment like fainting before the bat bunny caught himself and hopped down to ate his strawberries happily.
Next to Leon, Chris beamed at him while he let T-Chan drink from his carefully held cup of tea with too much cream inside. Leon scowled at the tea but ignored that today too. He slowly got very good in ignoring, he realized with an inward shrug. When he took another slice, Leon struck out his tongue at an peeved D before he went and put his strawberries again on Q-Chan's plate and then insolently ate his cake with a wide grin.
Next to him, D sputtered at his childish act but chose not to comment it for once.
Huffing and glaring holes into Leon's skull, he took his own next slice and munched angrily around on it in the end. The one called Doc looked with odd amusement at Leon and D and laughed into his cup of tea after a while madly. After a while, Leon apologized himself and Chris and went back to his apartment.
Under the speculative looks of two D's and one bat bunny.
The damn goat did not move from Chris side and in the end, Leon gave it up, took him by the scruff of his neck, and simply handed him to his bro. telling D that he would take him too since the cursed beast had grown so attached to his little brother and out of the doors they were. Before D could even utter a complain.
What befuddled and amused D immensely.
His detective had gotten rather insolent in of late but somehow he could not find the energy to feel mad about it. He sipped from his tea and faced his father fro a new round of arguments to find him gone and staring out of the windows after Leon instead. He walked over to him with a sigh and steeled himself for a long night of debates with his father about his unusual human pet.
Leon knew nothing of this; he drove them all to a diner and ordered a take out from a clearly frightened waitress.
Somehow he remembered to only have taken Tetsu with him… so why then had that one animal multiplied while he wasn't looking? When he had looked into the backseat at Chris to ask for his wishes he had suddenly found a snake, the raccoon/badger, the goat and the many-tailed fox next to his bro too. Together with a small Pekinese at Chris feet, a small bird on his shoulder and two cats of unknown origin perched onto the rims of the seats. Sighing Leon choose to use his newfound ability to ignore almost everything until it came and bit him in the ass and simple went and ordered a lot more as had been the original plan.
Their food was rather fast done and Leon chose to ignore that too and paid quickly to get the menagerie home before a colleague stopped him on the way.
Back home he gave the entire group a stern look.
"I am soo not the one here that will explain it to D why you guy's went AWOL on him tonight, got that?!" Every single head of the odd group including that of Chris, nodded swiftly at his gruff words and run quickly inside the apartment to hide from the miffed cop on sick leave. Leon stood in the door for a short moment longer. Looking at the ceiling as if he expected wondrous help from above.
When had his life become so fucking complicated?!
Then he went and put the food onto plates for each including a few sunflower seeds that he had for feeding the doves in the park of his office and went to phone D to tell him that he had a few more pets over as planed. In the end, Leon slept peacefully and without weird dreams this night. Inside a bed, filled with various animals, his brother next to him and the window open to let air in.
The bat bunny watched the odd sleeping arrangement with wide eyes from the windowsill.
The snake had wound around Leon's left ankle, the two cats a tom and a queen lay on each side of his head on the pillows, Tetsu had scored the place in Chris arms and Pon had settled in Chris back. The Pekinese slept peacefully on Leon's stomach while the fox had curled up to Chris feet.
The bird had taken refuge on Leon's head.
Shaking his little head at the odd scenery, the bat bunny flew home again after a longer while. Whatever was going on with the man, it could not figure it out in the moment and simple put: this all was confusing it a tad too much. Since when had Leon become so responsible? Calm even? The bat bunny shook its head anew and tittered on his way home in its befuddlement.
Suddenly the creature turned mid-air and zoomed back to the open apartment window.
Once inside it eyed the painkillers oddly with a speculative glance and took one finally with it to bring it to D. Maybe there was something with that stupid human medicine that was working oddly on Leon? The tablet did not smell any other as the bat bunny thought it should, still: trusting was one thing and making sure another.
One could never know for sure and it had somewhat grown fond of the brash man.
An hour later could see three beings stare confused at the message of a computer in a lap hidden inside a building. The one known as Doc shook his head, there was nothing weird inside the pills, he was sure. "Maybe he is simply allergic to a part of its ingredients?" He quizzed, yes quizzed, since he had no other explanation for the human's odd behavior the last evening.
Leon Orcrot was a riddle for the father of the current youngest Count.
The D next to him shook his head firmly. "No. I saw him take them before without that effect!" He told his father equally mystified of his Leon in off late as the older one. He still couldn't wrap his mind around it that Leon had sold a few of his animals the last evening and had calmed even down his capricious father!
The bat bunny scratched its head and squeaked baffled. If it wasn't the stupid pills, then what had made the man suddenly become a miracle to all of them?
The following weeks went on like that strange day.
Leon tried his hardest not to let anything slip of what he knew and do the right things at the same time while two D's tried to wretch his secrets from the poor cop. While the bat bunny watched them all, make fools out of themselves. It simply did not get what was going on; much like the two caretakers of the animals too did not.
It was mind wrecking!
Oddly, Leon kept on with his weird insights and more often than not, shocked all three into stupor with odd reactions to events or them in general. One time he made the one called Doc laugh that madly at something he had said that his son feared he had to call a healer to calm him down again!
Leon, being his confusing straightforward self as always nowadays, had just asked Doc if he should go and spank that Howell person for him.
D's father needed days to stop laughing every time the poor detective was around. He was now suspiciously often in the shop. Watching D and Leon interact, Chris, and the animals play with each other. The two Orcrot brothers seem to mystify him greatly. As they did confuse the bat bunny too, from the looks of it. Whatever he said to drive Leon crazy, the cop just thought over it and then gave him often an answer that shut the father up, too stunned to wisecrack back a retort for the most times.
D could not understand anything at all anymore.
When Samantha showed up with Josie one day, he was there too and watched the boy surprised hide behind him with T-Chan in his hold. The youth had gotten used to the father of D and knew instinctually that the longhaired one of the two was not fond of people who hurt others. As Chris had thought it, the mere look of the elder of the two D's made Sam nearly recoil out of the shop again.
Doc had an aura around him that made other humans as Chris and Leon nervous to be around the sometimes-insane D.
When he heard the entire story of Sam telling Chris that he had killed his mother when he had just been born, the father of D grew strangely silent. Crossing his arms at the two girls, he stared them nearly down to tears in their seats across him on the couches. Looking down at the frightened and sadly to him clinging Chris, the older D finally scowled at the two girls. "So… you want to take him home, yes?" The older one gulped and nodded slowly, this D gave her the creeps.
"Does Leon san know it why you are here?"
Doc asked them all too sweetly and Josie knew the same moment he spoke this that the man across of Sam and her was not giving them Chris out before she had Leon's ok. She gulped again, suddenly feeling rather uncomfortable under the low growling and hissing sounds of the animals of the shop. They seem to want to hurt her and Sam out of the sudden.
The Chinese man smiled a cold snake like smile at the two girls while he patted Chris comfortingly on the shivering golden haired head. The boy currently leaned against D's side and clutched Tetsu to him. Sam had prior tried to apologize for her childish behavior back then but Chris only reaction had been to hide inside of Tetsu's fur who had snarled at the girl nastily.
From all the animals in the shop, Doc had seen the Tao Tie bond the most to the silent boy.
Only, what Samantha saw as a, at her snarling tiger-goat-dog mix, Doc saw as a young red haired male with ram horns and claw like nails that he obviously wanted to swipe across the girls neck. He never thought, left his place in front of Chris who still hid in his back from his stepsisters. Next to both, Pon sat perched onto the cushion if daring them to try to sit here, her claws too were unsheathed.
Doc had to laugh silently at the possessiveness the animals showed towards the boy child.
This moment chose Leon to walk in; suddenly feeling like Chris could be gone otherwise. Slightly out of breath, he glared at Josie who cowered away from his look in shock. She had never before seen her cousin that angry! The two blue eyes spit literally fire at them both as her mother had told her that they had at her father and her at Christmas last year and she suddenly got the odd feeling that Chris would never again come home to them in the future.
Unknown to Leon, the stone glowed faintly when he strode over to the two girls after looking at Chris to ask them some really uncomfortable questions.
Doc also failed to see the soft glow since he sat with his back to the advancing man. He watched the following drama unfold with mirth and an odd sense of smugness. Somehow over the last weeks, he had grown fond of Chris and the loud detective that was so unlike any human he had ever meet or been told about.
The man was a force unlike any other he had ever seen when set on teaching someone a lecture as he currently did to the two cousins of him and Chris.
He made them apologize to D in the end for barging into the shop as they had done to demand Chris from him. Once the two were gone, Leon excused himself after checking on his still shaking brother and went outside to phone his lawyer. He had already set in motion to have the custody of his brother and even a good chance to get it.
In the last months Leon had settled over into stable work hours, had made tests to verifies that he was not drinking and smoking anymore. The latter had made Doc's son so happy that he had practically cooed at the confused looking Leon when finding out. Leon had gone and changed his housing to a small but comfortable flat, right next to a school known for taking on special cases like Chris, had demanded a raise that had been due and had talked with the agency that did deal with problems like his brothers and his.
Leon had in short, turned around himself to get Chris live permanently with him here in LA.
So far, he was rapidly succeeding and stunned the D's, plus one bat bunny, majorly with that. Leon seemed not to notice that, he sorely focused on his brother in the late. In between, he had helped Doc in his apartment with moving boxes without to bash a lid at the strange animals the man housed with him there, had stunned his chief and partner with working up nearly all the overdue cases of their office and writing himself into the university for studying up on other offers of his carrier.
None of the D's had known that Leon was actually literate and that he had good grades in his school times.
D tittered at that revelation for weeks. Doc knew that his son had planned to send Chris back but he had his doubts that this would have worked out as wished. Even his father had been surprisingly silent when he had stalled the plan with waiting for Leon. The bat bunny Count had stared at the girls with a strange look, that doc did not like to see. The one that the old Count normally used in the past for his customers of the special kind.
He watched the man come back and get Chris home with him, apologizing again for his imposing family and gone both were.
Again, to Doc's utter amusement, with many animals in tow as lately it had become a habit.
Suryallee