justsookie | breathed so deep i thought i'd drown; it feels better biting down

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breathed so deep i thought i'd drown; it feels better biting down

She should have known that it would only be a matter of time until someone noticed. It was easier to watch out for herself shortly after first arriving, a pocketknife buried deep in her purse and nightly practice sessions for holding that light between her hands, the fae's warmth thrumming against her fingertips. But day after day, nothing happened. The daytime is all hers to play with, roaming the city, searching for clothing outlets, boutiques, bakeries and coffee shops. And in the evening, she's free to smile more while under the protection of women and men who know what they're doing, strength and cunning plentiful among all of them. She sleeps soundly, knowing that Lafayette's only some flights of stairs away.

Complacency becomes the theme long before she realizes it.

So when she heads home one evening and notices a series of steps clipping fast behind her, she assumes that it's just another drunken asshole, someone who probably thinks that leaving a generous tip entitles him to a little extra something later. Sookie picks up her pace, not yet casting a look over her shoulder as she holds her purse closer to her chest. Her apartment is only a couple of blocks away, it won't be hard to make it back.

Until she suddenly feels a rush of air all around her, shoes slipping off and heels dragging against concrete, the wind knocked out of her as a pair of darkly blown eyes rake over her body and press her up against a wall.

"You make one more move and I'll scream," she warns, a soft thrumming energy building by her fingertips, but it doesn't linger long before Sookie feels her arm wrenched up high above her head. Letting out a cry of pain, she struggles against the hold, but the man is much larger, much taller, and she can't get the leverage she needs when all her limbs are stretched.

"I think I'd like that," the man breathes, grinning before his fangs suddenly slot into place, long and sharp. "No one's going to hear you in this part of town, sweetheart."

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"Ara," comes a voice from nearby, too bright for the time of night and for the situation, and altogether a little too saccharine to be sincere. "Demo, atashi wa 'nobody' ja nai desu." The owner holds a canvas bag full of last minute groceries in hand, the other holds a small LED flashlight on a keychain, which illuminates a small portion of the alley that they've all been neatly tucked into.

It's just happenstance that Kisuke was in the neighborhood. It's not that he found his way over to the exact spot so quickly. For all that he so often talked about the minding of his own business, he did so little of it. And when help was required of him, he found it difficult to ignore.

"That's no way to treat a lady, you know. People with no manners usually find it pretty difficult to get what they like."

Edited 2013-11-17 03:48 (UTC)

"Oh, jesus fuck," Sookie breathes to herself when yet another man steps into the alley, not letting herself feel relief upon seeing that bright smile plastered on his face, a little too reminiscent of the Cheshire cat. It doesn't help that he's speaking some other language to begin with, and much as Sookie doesn't want to generalize, she can't even place it beyond Chinese or Japanese or something-or-other Asian, though his blond hair makes her reconsider.

"The hell are you?" her captor grunts, squinting through the light.

Squirming uncomfortably, Sookie only allows herself a moment of surprise when the man suddenly flips over to her language of choice, but rather than rely on his help, she takes the moment's distraction and slips one leg free, ramming it heavily between the man's thighs. With a cry, he releases his hold on her, and Sookie crumples to the ground for a moment before quickly trying to run in the direction of the street.

But before she manages to get out of range, her head suddenly snaps back, seeing grimy fingers wrap around her ponytail. "You bitch," he growls, reaching for her shoulder with his opposite hand.

"Little help here?" Sookie asks, squeezing her eyes shut against the tear-inducing pain.

"Hold on," he asks her calmly, and not unkindly, as he squints across the darkness at whatever it is that has her hair in a stranglehold. There is only one thing that Kisuke is looking for, one single deal-breaker, and he can't sense that he needs to worry about it. In another moment, he steps forward, reeling back his arm before thrusting it with a flat-palmed blow against the underside of the man's jaw. His head isn't on his shoulders for much longer. Though Kisuke doesn't get long to be relieved that he doesn't have to retrieve it when it seems to splatter like a water balloon. The body soon follows, covering the young lady on one side nearly from head to toe. He fares little better.

"Well, that's one for the record books," he says, slightly dazed, before dropping his stiff kata position and adjusting the angle of the hat on his head. The groceries in his bag get a grim look, before he turns it on her, forcefully apologetic. "Scary, scary stuff. Are you okay?"

Catching the approach of the Cheshire man in her peripheral vision, Sookie only just has sense and reflex enough to close her eyes and mouth as he draws closer, and sure enough, seconds later she's rewarded with an entire body covered in sticky, slimy vampire viscera. Scrunching her nose, Sookie lets herself get lost in a shudder, barely catching her head in time with the palm of her head, preventing it from scraping against the ground. Fortunately, having been facing away from the vampire, most of the guts have missed her face, and she squints as she turns around and onto her behind, gasping for breath.

By the looks of the man's face, this is something he didn't quite anticipate, and Sookie finds herself glad for the slight advantage where knowledge is concerned.

"I'm fine," Sookie says with a hard look, pushing some of the gunk off of her arms before slowly getting to her feet, wincing at the hardness of the ground, apparent even through her socks. "In need of a shower, but there are worse things. Thanks for, uh... comin' to my rescue there." She glances up, wincing slightly. "Oh goodness, I'll pay for your dry cleaning. And your groceries."

"You seem startlingly disaffected by that," he says, finally moving from the spot he'd been rooted to to help her off the ground, though she's already managed to pull herself up. To save a little face, he plucks a long string of dark grainy red something off her shoulder and tosses it into the nearby pile with an unconcealed look of displeasure. "It's almost like you were expecting that. I certainly wasn't. So I'd really like to know more about what I just witnessed."

"More importantly." He gives a shake of his head and a nervous look out of the mouth of the alley. "It'll be a pain if we don't get out of here quickly. My place is really close. The Bramford Building. And I know the quickest way to get there."

Edited 2013-11-17 05:16 (UTC)

Blinking bemusedly at the man as he reaches out to pick a piece of vampire from her hair, Sookie lets out a short exhale, shrugging her shoulder. "Oh, that's right, I guess I should really try to look more surprised when that happens," she says, too late to turn back on her reaction, so she doesn't bother turning up the panic. By now, it just feels like... same old, same old. She's honestly kind of glad that she's not like Ginger, yelling every time a vampire gets staked. Or every time a vampire's in the room.

"It's not my first time at the rodeo, and judgin' by how easily you took his head off, it's not yours either," she adds, plucking another piece of stringy blood off of her sleeve before she wonders what she should be doing with her coat. She'd prefer to toss it in the dumpster, but the chance of something identifying of hers being on the clothing seems too high, so she simply shrugs it off and turns it inside out, balling it up to hide most of the gore from view.

Though it doesn't help her hair.

"You sure you wanna spend all of tonight talking about vampires? 'Cause it could take a while," Sookie points out, though she does take a step in the direction he's indicated. If nothing else, she has no desire to stick around that alley.

"A vampire?" he returns, sounding a little too pleased about that piece of new information. "Is that what he was? I was really wondering ... " Reaching out, he gives her shoulder a soft poke before taking them down a shortcut. It isn't actually much shorter, but it's not populated, so they can more easily pick up pace without worrying anyone. Which he does, sound of his sandals echoing off of narrow alley walls.

"I'm absolutely sure that I would like nothing better than to spend the rest of my night listening to you explain."

Only after they round a couple of corners does Sookie bother taking her phone out, firing a quick text to Lafayette and letting him know that she might be a little late heading home and not to worry, or at least to put off any worries until morning. She slips it back into her pocket, still watching her company warily, and every single bone in her body seems to be warning her of the dangers that could befall her while following a stranger back to an unfamiliar building. It's not one of the three residential buildings she knows well.

"A vampire, yes. Though there are different types of vampire in Darrow, or so I've heard," she says, quickly shaking her head. "Okay, you got a question, so — why do you wanna know? Actually, no, scratch that. You're not... a normal human, right?"

She holds her balled up jacket close to her chest, eyes bright even in the dark of the alley.

"Anou ... " he starts with, sliding her a look out of the corner of dark eyes at her change of the question. It's a difficult decision, how to answer. Truthfully, untruthfully, vaguely. Each is an option, and none of which are more desireable to him on face value. Truth was relative, and when it wasn't, often irrelevant. Truths didn't work. He'd learned that long ago.

But he no longer had anything to hide, and he had, essentially, no valid reason to rell this woman, or anyone, less than truths about himself. Karakura had been a place he'd needed to keep himself cloaked. Darrow was, simply put, a different animal.

"Not entirely, no," he agrees at length. "I'm a spirit of a sort, honestly. This body is an automaton. But a very convenient and accurate one."

It's not the answer she expected, though now confronted with this truth, Sookie's not sure what she did. Everything seems to fall under a different light now that she's aware that he's a spirit in a well-dressed suit, and her eyes dart from that still pale blond of his hair to the impossible details like the chap of his lips. Her heart continues to rush from the near brush she had, but her countenance is calm, fingers reaching out to briefly and awkwardly skate down his cheek. She startles at the warmth.

"Yeah, okay," she says, slightly overwhelmed but letting curiosity get the better of her. "And when you say spirit, are we talkin'... dead spirit, poltergeist, or like a god-like spirit? Not that I really know the difference between any of those." She shivers, more from the cold than from unease, eyes narrowing and fingers reaching out to brush against his stubble.

Apparently being saved by a vampire is enough to encourage Sookie to break his personal bubble.

"Those categories aren't mutually exclusive," Kisuke points out, starting a little when she reaches out to brush against his chin, the rough, short hair there noisy against the smooth skin of her palm. He laughs, but it's a softer laugh than his normal raucous, noisy one, and he does his best to ignore the way his cheeks color a little. Her intent curiosity is oddly endearing, and incredibly hard to meet with cynicism. No matter how much crow Kisuke's eaten in his time.

"Anything can become kami. I just happen to a dead soul made kami," he explains with amused patience, before looking down at his haori. Most of the mess managed to end up on the center of his chest and on his bare feet, and it feels awful, but at least the jacket is mostly clean. He peels it off to hand it over to her, the silk warm from being worn.

"It's an extremely lifelike automaton," he adds, to settle her curiosity if only a little. "For all intents and purposes, a body, but one that only 'lives' when the psyche is connected to the oma."

Sookie lets out a small breath when the robe settles around her shoulders, letting the cleaner of her hands reach out to grab onto either side of the silk to wrap it more tightly around her body. It's heavier than it looks, but Sookie finds the weight comforting, and tries not to feel too self-conscious about so readily accepting his generous gesture.

"You... just said a whole lot that flew over my head," she tells him honestly, though seh pauses a moment longer, trying to piece as much together as she can. "Though I think I got the gist. You've passed away, you're in a very realistic body but not actually the one you were born in, and you became somethin' a little greater than your average ghost."

She huffs, almost a laugh, her smile turned towards the ground as they round another corner. "So, does this mean I'm special, or was I just lucky that you were nearby?"

"Correct on all counts. Normally," he explains, slipping his hands into the pockets of his short robe, despite the groceries in one and the gunk still clingng to the other. It won't be the first or last time that he's covered in something barely identifiable. It was practically de rigeur for any shinigami, although he was not actually an active one.

"A living person does not have any reiryoku to speak of. Only the smallest amount. But some individuals do have some. When their souls are in danger, it reacts to that danger. Someone in my position can sense that. Formerly, I was a shinigami. A god of death."

He lifts his chin to nod toward the Bramford Building as they approach, an older apartment building, in need of a coat of paint and a lot of repair. "That's me. Appropriate, yeah?"

Sookie's eyes briefly slide to a close at the title he uses. A god of death. Poetic when described with so many words, though Sookie suspects that this encounter of hers is not quite like all the others. Unlike vampires, she doesn't sense anything hungry or malicious lurking under the man's skin. Just a quaint curiosity and a comfort while lurking in shadows.

"Appropriate," she agrees, smiling faintly up at the building and marveling at how it feels a hell of a lot more comfortable than a perfectly maintained estate ever would.

"So... a god of death sounds an awful lot like a reaper," she murmurs, tilting her head. Only now does she feel that slight itch across her skin, like she'd barely grazed something hot and flickering like fire. "You sure you were supposed to save me back there?

"Or does being lapsed mean that you get to pick and choose?"

"A reaper is a way to put it. Actually, the way to put it for most people who are English-speakers. But I don't think that describes the job very well for those who still elect to do it, here or anywhere else. Calling a shinigami a soul reaper ignores that they don't only reap. They sow and they shepherd, amongst other things. The most true term would be," he says, coming up on the property of Bramford with a familiar, fond smile. It's as close to home as he has in Darrow, and he's just a homebody at the end of the day. Some of his groceries may even have survived this time.

He holds the door open for her as they reach it.

"Balancers. Balancers, maintaining order and ensuring flow, from one life to the other. It isn't just a one-way street, at least, where I come from."

She bows briefly in thanks when he opens the door for her, holding his robe a little more tightly around herself as she lingers by the foot of the stairs. It's strangely quiet for a residential building, no soft and muted noises coming from busy families. It's not late enough, Sookie thinks, for everyone to be asleep.

Which makes her wonder.

"It feels pretty one-way, where I'm from, although I guess I've never really been on the other side to know. I think... the only thing is that people get caught a lot in the middle. Vampires being the best example. Technically, they've all died, and there are a lot of things they can't do that living people can, but they're still walkin' around with the rest of us. They're definitely not spirits." She smiles faintly, determinedly staring at the ground for a brief moment. "I did get to see my gran once after she passed away. She sounded pretty settled on the other side. Sounded happy. That left me a little more hopeful about what's eventually to come."

"That man wasn't really alive at all," Kisuke agrees, voice mildly bothered by how little he really knows for certain about everything in Darrow. "In any sense. I didn't sense any kind of human soul in him anymore, living or dead. It wasn't simply that it was a stubbornly possessed corpse. I've dealt with those before a lot of times. It was purely a being without a soul." Baffling in the extreme, only because everything had a soul, however small. He licks at his dry lips before leading her to the stairwell with a soft bump of his hip against her side.

"Elevators go on the blink in the building a lot. Better to take the stairs, even though I'm really just so lazy most of the time I'd rather not. It's better than being stuck in the elevator before we get showered. It'll start to stink, and who knows what they'll say when they finally find us in there. You saw your grandmother's spirit?" he asks suddenly. "Is that something that you can do a lot?"

Edited 2013-11-17 08:08 (UTC)

"The way it used to be explained to me... humans have usually got a lot of energy flowing through them," Sookie chimes in, though with a fair amount of hesitation. She doesn't seem to understand anything with the level of depth that this man does, but then again he'd never known vampires in the first place, so maybe even layman's terms are a start. "It's that movement that makes people alive. For vampires, it's all at a standstill. They don't make waves, so to speak. They're just kinda... stuck, even though they're still walking, and that's why they need to feed on the energy of other people to keep alive."

She startles at the bump to her hip, glancing up to try and get a read on whether or not it's just a death god thing, but his eyes are too well hidden under the shadow of his hat. After a moment's hesitation, Sookie follows anyway. Might as well see where the rabbit hole goes.

"I don't usually see spirits, no. I don't usually hear them, either, though I know that some people can. That time I saw my gran was just because my gran... well, she got a brief opportunity to come back, mostly to save my clumsy ass. In case it's not clear, I really do mean it when I say it's not my first time getting attacked like that. Not even my tenth."

"So they need to consume a part of your soul to stay alive," Kisuke murmurs, more to himself than anything. In that respect, he supposed, a vampire was like a Hollow, except that Hollow were souls. They would live without feeding on others, but in excruciating pain, gnawing hunger, emptiness. A Hollow was a soul struggling to become a void. A vampire, then, was perhaps something a bit even past that. A complete void of a soul.

It's interesting. And, he supposes, something to look into. Although he's already been made aware that there are plenty of people in the city - via Rukia - who are capable of taking care of problems not strictly related to the care of souls.

Taking the stairs two at a time on legs really longer than absolutely necessary, he waits at the landing for his floor with the squealing, creaky door held open for her. The lights give a flicker, and he sighs.

"Like hot baths?" he asks, chasing the disgust away with a growing smile, teasing and a little confectionary.

"I don't know if I'd call it my soul, but... somethin' like that," Sookie says, feeling strange now that the reaper's described it in that way. It makes it all sound a lot more insidious than it'd felt at the time — though given everything that's happened with Warlow and even Bill, Sookie wonders if it might be kind of an accurate statement after all.

They really do seem to suck the life out of her, sometimes.

Rushing to catch up with him and suppressing a snort at the clomping that echoes down the multiple flights of stairs, Sookie tucks some errant curls behind her ear as she squints through the rather unfortunately dilapidated surroundings. But he doesn't give her much time to linger on the thought.

"I — yes, I guess I do... and I appreciate your offer to let me clean myself up, I." Pressing her lips closed, Sookie gives a slight shake of her head, hands moving to her hips with a soft, disbelieving laugh. "Mister Reaper, you know, I don't think I even know your name."

"Well, it's not Nobody," he answers, a bright light of humor in his eyes as he finally makes it to the door that belongs to him. He juggles the things in his deep pockets around for a second before securing his room keys, and slipping them into the lock. "And it isn't Mr. Reaper. Urahara Kisuke," he says.

"And what's the name of the young lady with the hair like sunshine who isn't afraid of a vampire? Or following home a god of death?"

Pressing the door open, he quickly sheds his heavy shoes on the boot tray siting near the door before moving toward the bathroom. The nice thing about his apartment in comparison to Rukia's, he thinks, is that his comes with an old-fashioned, quite large, claw-foot bath and shower.

Edited 2013-11-17 08:51 (UTC)

It should have become trite by now, Sookie thinks to herself, but she can't help the smile that spreads across her face at the mention of her hair. "I'm guessin' my hair doesn't look quite like sunshine right now, but that's sweet of you." She pauses, pretty sure that she remembers something about a family name coming first with a lot of Asian languages. "And it's very nice to meet you, Kisuke. My name is Sookie Stackhouse. I guess it's easier to follow a god of death home when they're as friendly as you are."

Her cheeks flood over, pink and rosy, as she mimics Kisuke's actions, toeing off her tennis shoes and following Kisuke further into the apartment. She contemplates reading his mind, just to check and see if his type of death is different than hers back home, but the idea of a god feeling someone prying around his brain is a little too intimidating for her to try just yet.

Stuck in her thoughts, she only then realizes that she's trailed right after Kisuke into a bathroom, large and ornately furnished, if a little worn from time.

"Is this the first stop of the grand tour?" she jokes, wondering if he plans on going as far as drawing the bath for her.

"What kind of a host would I be, Ms. Stackhouse, if I didn't anticipate what you needed and take care of your needs in that order," he says from over his shoulder as he pulls a large, plush towel from a cabinet in the bathroom corner, setting it down on the chair in front of the large mirror over the counter. Holding up a finger, he disappears from the bathroom for half a minute to come back with a simple white robe and a pair of boxer shorts. She has the distinction of being the first woman in his apartment, Rukia included, and everything in it is still chiefly Kisuke's own.

"You can shower first," he says, pointing to the scented soap and shampoo by the tub. They might be more suited, honestly, to a woman than a bachelor living on his own, but he prefers a bath to be a little more than perfunctory. "And then I'll draw a bath for you. Do you want a little help?" he asks, slipping the hat finally off of his head to set it on the counter. "I really don't mind, for such a graceful young lady."

With the way Kisuke runs about busying himself with every last detail, Sookie can't help but wonder if reapers have some type of fascination with the living, or if some part of his senses might be picking up on the fact that she's a little different. Something about her ray-whatever that he'd mentioned earlier. But it's only when he offers to help, a large hand easing his hat off and revealing a pale, relatively earnest face, that Sookie finds herself unable to sit idly.

"Okay, if you're going to offer to strip down and hop into the shower with me, I've gotta at least... come here," Sookie insists, not wanting to go fully into the details of what she's about to do, wincing slightly before reaching out and curling her hands around the back of his neck and meeting his gaze. It strikes her how similarly strengthening her telepathy is to glamouring a person, as her fingers subtly ease around the fine hairs at the nape of his neck as she tries to find any noticeable vein of a thought.

He's certainly not expecting this as a reaction, though he knew that such an offer could have gone anywhere. Some women didn't like that kind of forward behavior, though the ones that Kisuke was most familiar frowned on anything less than forward. The woman he kept always at his side more than any other.

He turns pink to the face as she moves in, right upon him, as if she were going to touch their faces together. Her fingers at the soft skin at the base of his neck, carding through the thick-textured hair there, are oddly startling, though he doesn't find it at all intrusive. Whatever she is doing, he can feel a swell of the strange reiatsu that she possesses. It's warm, reminds him a little of a lazy picnic on a warm autumn day. If he had to liken it to anyone's, he would say that it reminds him a little of Inoue-san, but only very little.

He's not going to ask her what she is. It simply is out of the question. It isn't the sort of thing a man like him deserves to demand of others; quite the opposite.

"Ms. Stackhouse?" he asks, unsure if this is a yes or a no.

Edited 2013-11-17 09:32 (UTC)

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