Mauvaise Chance Apartments - Early, Early, God Awful Early Saturday Morning

[hatesparadise]

It had been a normal, peaceful morning that was so early it was practically the night before still. If one wanted to be specific. Or if they were still constrained by the tyrant of time.

Then a piercing noise sounded throughout the building as a fire alarm went off.

Because why get a good night's sleep when you could be dragged out of bed to wait on the tiny, under-worked Fandom Fire Department to come make sure everything was fine?

[Open! Make those threads messy!]

Comments

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse let out a little awkward laugh. "No," she said. "I'm definitely also a night shift girl. But that gets you a lot further in big cities that don't sleep than small towns."

[sake_shinigami]

That response made Shunsui grin a little more, though not as much as the fact that it came with a laugh, awkward and little as it may have been. "So you're also a city girl, neh, Jesse-chan ♥?" he asked.

[weirderthanthou]

"I'm actually from a small town called Ordinary," Jesse said ruefully. "But I left for the cities when I got the chance. They suit me better." Easier to get lost in. Easier to stay lost in.

"Though big is relative. I lived in Cheyenne before I came here."

[sake_shinigami]

"You'll have to forgive me, Jesse-chan," said Shunsui, with a conciliatory bow of his head and a self-effacing sort of chuckle, "I can't say I'm familiar with that place. One of the drawbacks, I suppose, of not being from...around here ♥."

[weirderthanthou]

"Sorry," Jesse said, curt and serious. "It's the capital of Wyoming? It's got maybe just over a couple tens of thousands of people. I was on my way to move to New York City when I got stuck here. That's got 8.6 million people. So... magnitudes."

[sake_shinigami]

The serious turn of the answer was an interesting thing to note, but if it put any damper on Shunsui's admittedly sleepy cheer, there was little sign of it.

"And here," Shunsui noted, "you're lucky to get a couple tens, full stop," and most of them seemed to be out here with this fire drill at that!, "so yes, quite relative ♥. Though this place, for its size, makes up for it in..."

Cue the withering look toward the building and the blaring alarm.

"...charms ♥."

He could barely say it with a straight face, though, especially not when his eyes roamed back to her and what he did genuinely consider to be one of this place's actual charms.

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse had been a paranoid woman on the run for... a very long time, and then she'd suddenly become Director of a house under siege, and now she was mayor, and it had all happened so fast-- serious was her safe place. Anything other than serious was a brief incursion into a realm she was still at odds with right now.

Much like the flirting. Or the roaming eyes. She was used to enough strange behavior that she could kind of... flit past it, ignore it, assume he was a friendly face whose name she knew and who didn't seem to wish her harm.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining," she said. "It's just... a different kind of scenery than I'm used to."

[sake_shinigami]

And serious was an oddly familiar and comfortable foil for Shunsui as well, even if it did leave him slightly feeling like all these serious young women he seemed to encounter needed a nice pair of glasses to be testily pushing up on their adorable noses.

"Ahhh, well ♥," he mused, in almost a singsong sort of rumble, "that is at least something most of us here manage to find in common...for all our differences ♥."

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse's mouth curved into a thin smile, but her serious eyes were curious, this time.

"So where did you use to hang your hat?" she asked. "Since it's not around here."

[sake_shinigami]

The softness of Shunsui's small laugh might have been lost in the noise, but his expression made up for it.

"A place called the Seireitei," he offered, "which is in a place called the Soul Society, which you may know more colloquially as the afterlife." His grin tilted. "Bit more people there than in Fandom or Cheyenne, too ♥."

[weirderthanthou]

"You're from the afterlife," Jesse echoed slowly. Well... there's one I haven't heard before. "So you're-- a ghost?"

He seemed solid enough.

[sake_shinigami]

"We prefer the term Souls," Shunsui offered lightly, with another alarm-buried chuckle, "and, technically, I'm Shinigami, but essentially, yes, a ghost ♥."

He seemed to be particularly amused by the quaint ness of the notion.

He leaned an a little, as if imparting to her now some private little secret, which was entirely for effect over any actual clandestine purpose.

"I possess what's called a gigai," he offered, "which is a temporary corporeal body for the human world since I don't actually have one. But I assure you, Jesse-chan, it is every bit as versatile and capable as any other body."

Quite a bit more so, actually, generally speaking.

"I'd be more than happy to show you sometime ♥."

Aaaaand...there it was. A statement that might have maybe, in a stretch, be taken as innocent if you just blatantly ignored...everything.

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse was going to... blow right past that like how she'd blown through every slightly-more-subtle pass so far, though her face was a little red now, something she was just going to hide by...

... being more serious.

"So did they just give that to you when you died, or...?"

Jesse, you weirdo, just leave the conversation.

[sake_shinigami]

"What, the gigai?" asked Shunsui, sounding incredibly amused, looking almost smug, and punctuation it all with a laugh. "Oh, no ♥. Technically speaking, they are quite illegal except in the most extenuating of circumstances ♥ I'm not even supposed to have one ♥."

Shunsui's elicit romps around the human world were currently one of the Seireitei's worst kept secrets, but, luckily for him, Old Man Yamamoto learned a long time ago how to best pick those battles.

[weirderthanthou]

"So you stole it?"

Okay, she could afford to let a little dry amusement slip back into her voice.

(Not that she could afford to judge. She'd gotten her other job through breaking and entering a government building.)

[sake_shinigami]

"Tsch ♥," Shunsui, grinning, clicked his tongue, feigned the most surface offence imaginable. "What sort of rogue do you take me for ♥?"

A moment, to truly drive his injury home with a hand to his chest, before he offered, "I worked out a deal with a fellow who makes them, or, at least, has the best techniques for allowing one to manifest their own reitsu, or spiritual energy, into a physical form rather than merely handing you a glorified meat sack."

[weirderthanthou]

"Your world sounds interesting," Jesse said, after another moment of contemplation about whether or not she should be exiting this conversation before he got the chance to hit on her again. "So there's a real difference between a gigai and any other body?"

Foiled by video game protagonist dialogue syndrome again.

[sake_shinigami]

Interesting got a small chuckle out of Shunsui, since he felt the shoddy business of gigai hardly even started to cover it, but he supposed he could understand his own bias there. And, he had to admit, it was the shoddy business of gigai that he reaped very immediate and tangible benefits from...

"If well done," he offered, "I doubt there's hardly any discernable different for most humans, though another Soul would be able to easily recognize the reitsu. There are ways of cloaking that, though..."

Since no one here really could read reitsu, as far as he could tell, he never really bothered with the effort. Not unless it was Parents Weekend, and Nanao-chan had brought papers.

"Though, really, Jesse-chan, perhaps you should just see for yourself ♥."

The obvious current of suggestion there, in his tone and his grin, was undercut slightly by the otherwise innocent-seeming offering out of his arm for tactile verification, if she so desired.

[weirderthanthou]

I wonder if you and I put off strange reitsu, whatever it is, exactly.

Polaris's resonance pulsed genty through her consciousness. It didn't seem alarmed, and Jesse shook off the thought, and smiled wryly. "No, I believe you," she said.

[sake_shinigami]

"Now, there's something I don't hear very often ♥," Shunsui laughed, looking almost a bit proud of that fact, and admiring her a little for not taking the incredibly obvious bait as he casually settled his arm back underneath the folds of the flowery pink haori. "But should you have doubts, Jesse-chan," he flashed her another grin, "you just let me know ♥."