Ficlet: Apple Pie (Petshop of Horrors)

[anactoria]

Title: Apple Pie
Author: anactoria
Characters: Leon, D
Rating: PG-13
Written for stagesoflove Week 1. Prompt: Pie


"Apple pie, Detective? How very American."

D's voice is rich and cold as cream, and he's smirking. Well, that's nothing new. When is he not smirking? And normally Leon would be starting to get pissed around now, but he's just gotten off after a fourteen-hour day, and okay, he's used to looking at dead chicks by now but most of them aren't eleven fucking years old, and he doesn't have the energy for a shouting match or the presence of mind for a snarky retort, so he just scrubs at his eyes and nods. "Guess so."

"You must have gone out of your way," D goes on, raising a manicured eyebrow. "The bakeries at this end of Chinatown tend towards the more... upmarket end of the scale. They don't specialize in traditional home-cooking. I wonder why that is?"

He picks up a gleaming silver cake-slice, and the pastry crunches softly as he cuts into it.

Leon's mom made apple pie, sometimes. Sunday afternoons, usually, about the only time she didn't have to work. And sure, he didn't exactly have the apple-pie kind of childhood-- she was always slaving away, ten hour shifts at some shitty, underpaid job just to make ends meet, and his dad was never there, and somehow she never did manage to find a guy who didn't screw her around-- but she tried, dammit, and that had to be worth something, right?

Of course, he's not gonna come out and say any of that to D, and the inevitable needling he knows is going to come next makes him contemplate just cutting out right now and going home. But maybe some of it is showing on his face, because for once D doesn't push his luck. He just smiles, with what might actually be a trace of sympathy, and adds, "It's very kind of you, of course. Pie, Detective?"

So Leon just shrugs, settles back onto the couch, and says, "Sure. Why not?"


Week 2: Icecream