SNIPPET TIME
here you go this one is from 'hold him down - part 2' (which follows hold him down - part 1) when leo is handed back to the department post-parker. if you'd rather wait until the semi-polished entire thing is ready, skip this one! this piece is like half complete but snippets have been requested and i do love a good very-poorly-tuned snippet dump:
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“It’s difficult to speak with him when he’s like this,” she says, her attention shifting abruptly to the handler who stands by the door.
She’s not speaking to Leo, though, so Leo draws his gaze back to the water, weighing the odds that he can take a sip without spilling it. His throat is on fire. To help occupy his mind, he shifts his focus to the wall behind Rachel Tippin, LSW, at all the certificates that hang there. He wonders briefly if she saw herself in this type of position, if she dreamt of this type of work as a kid. He thinks about how, when he was a kid, he dreamt of becoming a cop so that he could show the cops that he was important and that he could do good and that his family was harmless, and in the deepest recesses of his seven-year-old mind, he prayed that if he impressed the right people, they would give him back his dad–
The stray thought comes out of nowhere and Leo slams that door shut, forcing his mind to the blank, quiet place that he sometimes holds onto because, he thinks, if he has another outburst today, he may not survive it.
“Ask me what you want to know, then,” Leo can hear Handler Grey saying.
Leo drags his eyes over to the handler and tries to smile at him. In response, Handler Grey’s eyes narrow, just for a second, and Leo shrinks back in on himself, mumbling an apology that he can’t quite place the source of. The look the handler gives him is scathing, and he locks his jaw. He needs to focus, and he knows that, but he also knows that he’s been drugged out of his mind and how is he supposed to focus? Handler Grey can see what medicine he’s been given to calm him down, and has to know the limits of what he can push through.