InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Metempsychosis ❯ Insomnia ( Chapter 23 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Ashur handed Jessa a glass of wine as she fiddled with the stereo panel on the nightstand.  "Just one," he said, cocking an eyebrow at her as he set his glass aside to roll up his sleeves.

"Don't want to get me drunk so you can try to take advantage of me?" she quipped, sipping the wine, settling on a jazz station and turning up the volume just enough to add background sound in the quiet room.

"Not even remotely amusing, Jessa O'Shea," he pointed out.  "I'm old enough to be your . . . great-great-great grandfather at least."

She smiled, leaning down to unbuckle her shoes.  "Are you one of those people who is stuck on ages?"

"A little," he confessed.  Then he sighed.  "Sometimes it's damn hard to remember how old you are—or aren't."

She snorted, reaching into one of the shopping bags for a change of clothes.  "Funny.  You weren't complaining when we were watching fireworks," she reminded him in an almost sullen tone of voice.

She didn't see the half-smile that quirked his lips.  "I was caught up in the moment," he replied.

The narrow-eyed look that he got for that comment was almost enough to make him laugh outright.  "There you go: ruining my almost favorable impression of you."

He sat on the end of the bed to kick off his shoes.  "And if I said that I have another surprise for you tomorrow?"

She paused with her hand on the bathroom doorknob.  "What kind of surprise?"

He made a face that she didn't catch.  "One that wasn't my idea at all," he said dryly.

Tapping her claws against the bathroom door, she sighed.  "You're not going to tell me what it is, are you?"

"Nope."

She heaved a very melodramatic sigh.  "That's what I thought."

He chuckled as she slipped into the bathroom to change—until he remembered that he hadn't actually bought a thing to wear for sleeping in, and that kind of figured.

Strange, how he felt somehow lighter since he'd kissed her under the light of the fireworks display.  It wasn't a carefree feeling, no, but he couldn't deny the slight lifting of his spirits that was hard to reconcile.

'Maybe she's magic,' his youkai-voice quipped.

Snorting indelicately, Ashur slowly shook his head.  'Maybe you're the dumbest youkai-voice, ever.'

The voice laughed.  'Okay, okay, there's no such thing as magic, but if there were, that girl . . . She'd have it.'

He almost smiled as he started to unbutton his shirt.  'She . . . She probably would.'

The bathroom door opened with a soft squeak, and he turned to glance over his shoulder at her, only to do a double take.  She'd let her hair down.  It spilled around her in a tangle of loose curls that caught the dull lamplight and held it, bathing her in a fiery glow like the sunset, framing her face, darkening her gaze . . .

She carefully shook out the dress, moving across the room, her feet whispering against the carpet, the dress, rustling against the plastic garment bag as she hung it up, meticulously stowing it and the shoes inside.

That done, she retrieved her glass of wine and shuffled over to the bed, crawling up on it as the scooped neckline of the pink satin nightgown, barely brushing the tops of her knees and was little more than a bit of fabric held up by thin strands of ribbon, fell open just enough to allow him a momentary view that made him grind his teeth together hard as he turned his face away for his own salvation.

'Oh, damn . . . Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn . . .'

He nodded slightly.  He couldn't have said that better himself . . .

She flipped the television on with the remote and shut off the radio, shuffling through the channels, completely oblivious to what should have been his very obvious preoccupation.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" she asked, breaking the silence as she brought up the television menu.

"You . . . aren't tired yet?" he asked after clearing his throat a few times.

"Not really," she replied, sounding a bit distracted.  "Oh, we could watch Morning of the Demon Dead."

"That doesn't really sound like a very good movie," he pointed out, grabbing his wine glass and heading out of the room to refill it.

"That's what's fun about it," she called after him.  "You only watch movies like this so you can laugh about them and make off-color commentary during it."

He sloshed wine into his glass and turned to go back, but changed his mind and grabbed the bottle before striding back into the bedroom once more.  She was sitting on the white lace coverlet, her legs folded together and bent to the side demurely.  Still, he could see her curves well enough, and he sighed.  The next time he decided to be spontaneous, he could only hope that he'd have enough foresight to shop better—and to make sure that that girl had a bathrobe . . .

A blood-curdling scream made him jump slightly, and he shot her a bored sort of look as he slipped onto the bed beside her.

"Did that really scare you?" she scoffed, pinning him with a disbelieving look.

"No," he said.  "Unexpected screams, however, are enough to startle me."

She nodded slowly, but didn't look like she was entirely convinced.  "Those kids there decided to spend the night in that graveyard and pray to the headstones of two people, rumored to have been demons, but they had to do it exactly as the sun came up, and it should have bound the demons to the kids to do their bidding, but they were a few seconds late, so now the demons are free," she explained.

"They prayed?  To a headstone?" he echoed flatly.

She laughed.  "No . . . They prayed to two of them."

He slowly nodded.  "If they were rumored to have been demons, why are they buried in with the general population, and why would they have headstones, to begin with?  And—"

"Because they needed the headstones to pray to or the entire movie would have just not happened," she replied, eyes wide, glued on the television.

"Good God, you're enjoying this crap," he blurted.

She waved a hand at him to shut him up.  "Oh, that lad's toast," she predicted.  A minute later, the demons jumped out from behind a door—a damn door—and ripped the boy's head off.  "I was right!  Where's a pad of paper?  I need to keep score . . ."

"Score?"

She nodded, twisting to the side, opening the nightstand to look for a tablet of paper and a pen.  "Uh huh . . . You have to make predictions as you watch, and then you get a point for every prediction that comes true."

He chuckled despite himself.  "You have a very odd way to watch movies, Jessa."

She shrugged as she made two columns on the paper: one for him and one for her.

"That one's going to die next," she said, gesturing at the television with the pencil.

"She's not going to die.  She's the main character," he pointed out.

"They kill off main characters all the time," she scoffed.  "Don't you ever watch serials?"

"Not if I can help it," he muttered, sipping the wine as she handed him her glass without looking away from the television.  He rolled his eyes, but refilled it for her before handing it back.

"Oh!  They're cuing the creepy music," she said, sitting up a little straighter.  "You know, I like her hair . . . I've always wondered how I'd look if I had blonde hair . . ."

Ashur snorted.  "What's wrong with your hair?  I mean, aside from the obvious, that you can't wear most shades of red . . ."

"I didn't choose my hair," she grumbled.  "If I could have, I'd have had Ma's hair—long, straight golden hair."

"At least you stand out in a crowd," he added for good measure.

She snorted.  "You're such an ass," she muttered.

He chuckled again when she tried to scoot farther away, catching her around the waist and pulling her over against his side.  "I happen to like your hair," he told her.  "I was just teasing you."

She pushed against him, but he only tightened his arm around her, enjoying the way the heat of her body permeated the fabric under his hand, resting on her hip.  "I'll just go sleep on the sofa so my offensive hair is as far away from you as it can be," she pouted.

He squeezed her hip, which effectively stilled her objections—and made her suck in her breath, too.  "Oh, look, the nerdy boy just got killed.  Why are they eating his brain?  They're not zombies . . ."

"Kind of like zombies," she countered, resting her cheek against his chest.  "I mean, they were raised from the dead . . ."

He snorted.  "So, they're not only demons, but they're zombies, too.  The writers of this one should have studied their supernatural lore better.  One or the other . . ."

She rolled her eyes.  "And why can't they be zombies, I ask you?"

"Because everyone knows that hell-demons are spirits used to possess the living while zombies are dead bodies that have been re-animated, and that the zombies require brains in order to keep their own from decomposing to the point that they cannot function on the basest of levels."

She turned to scowl at him.  "You've studied this, I take it?"

He shrugged.  "Nope.  It's basic common sense.   So, you see?  There's no possible way to have a demon that is also a zombie, too."

"See, this is the problem with watching movies with someone who is too entirely based in reality," she complained.  He started to say something else, but she reached up, covering his mouth with her hand.  "Quiet!  It's getting to the good part."

He pulled her hand away when the demons rather grotesquely opted to gut someone from lips to navel.  "This is disgusting," he grumbled.

"What's the matter, Ashur?  Are you going to have nightmares?" she teased.

"I only have nightmares about real life," he said, frowning, hating the truth in his words.  He didn't have them often anymore, but three years ago, they'd been a frequent enough occurrence.  They were always the same, too: laying there on the floor, helpless, unable to do anything at all as he'd watched his mother being ripped to shreds . . .

"What kind of nightmares?" she asked, her tone a little too cautiously casual.

He sighed.  "Just . . . things," he remarked.  "Things that . . . that I know in my head that I couldn't do anything about, but . . . but I can't ever shake the feeling that I . . . I should have . . ."

She sat up, turned to face him, her hands still resting on his chest, on his shoulder.  "Sometimes I think that, if I'd have just gone with Ma . . . I mean, it doesn't make sense.  If I had been . . . well . . ." She shook her head.  "I suppose I just think that maybe it . . . it wouldn't have happened . . ."

"If you had been with her, it still would have happened," he told her.  "The only difference would be that I . . . I wouldn't have met you."

She winced.  "Does that mean that if she'd lived, I wouldn't have met you then?"

Her question dug at him with a harsh accuracy.  "Maybe I would have," he told her.  "If you're meant to meet someone, then you will, right?  That's the kind of thing they say, anyway . . ."

Shifting her gaze upward, she scrunched up her features thoughtfully, squeezing one eye closed a she considered his statement.  "Well, I do like Kells . . ." she allowed.

"Just Kells?"

She laughed.  "You're . . . tolerable."

He rolled his eyes and shot her a very chagrined look that she summarily ignored.  "I think I'll go to sleep now," he grumbled, scooting down on the bed and yanking his arm out from around her as he flopped over onto his side, set to ignore her for the duration.

'Good God, you're pouting . . .'

'I'm not pouting,' he argued.  'I'm tolerable.'

'You are pouting!  You realize just how pathetic you are, don't you?  I mean, she was joking.  You could tell from her tone that she was joking . . .'

Jessa giggled, grasping his arm and trying to tug him over onto his back.  "Okay," she relented, giving his arm yet another tug, "I like you, too—when you're not being a jerk, that is."

He heaved a longsuffering sigh designed to let her know exactly how put-upon he was as he rolled back over.  "Well, Kells is a lot cuter than I am, I guess," he allowed.

She nodded, her smile widening.  Suddenly, though, she sighed, too.  "I miss him," she admitted quietly.

"Kells?"

She nodded again.  "He rather grows on you . . ."

He shrugged.  "Kind of like a fungus, you mean?"

She gasped and quickly covered her mouth.  "No!" she insisted, casting him a chagrined sort of look.  "He's so sweet . . . and you're so mean."

Reaching out, catching a long lock of her hair, he idly twisted it around his finger.  "That's the problem," he remarked, watching as he wrapped the strand, only to let it spring back before repeating the process again.  "That child knows he's adorable, and he knows that most people let him get away with bloody murder because of it.  It's all just part of his diabolical plot to take over the world.  He's a little dictator-in-training."

She rolled her eyes as she leaned over him to snag the bottle of wine off his nightstand.  "Ah, but he's your little dictator . . . so, what does that make you?"

"It's my job to be immune to his trickery," he said, stifling a sigh and trying to fight off the bemusement caused by her leaning over him.  "He's been practicing his evil hoodoo since Day One, when he'd cry, just to sucker me into picking him up and holding him for hours at a time."

She giggled, setting the wine bottle aside as she brought her glass to her lips.  "Is that how they do it?"

He nodded.  "It's all a giant game of manipulation."  Sparing her a sidelong glance as another horror film queued on the television, he narrowed his eyes in silent speculation.  "You were probably worse than Kells, come to think of it."

"Me?" she echoed, eyebrows raising in surprise.  "Why me?"

He almost smiled—almost.  "Because you're much prettier than Kells will ever be, so I imagine that means that you must have been a fairly beautiful child, too—and that means that you probably got away with ridiculous amounts of manipulations, all levied against your unsuspecting parents . . . I'm right, aren't I?"

She snapped her mouth closed, rolled her eyes, but her giggle undermined the chagrined expression on her face.  Then she scooted off the bed, retrieving the leather knapsack that she'd arrived with.  Pulling out the photo album that she'd showed him before, she leafed through it until she found the image she wanted.  "There," she said, handing it over for his inspection.  "I was about Kells' age in that picture."

He leaned up on an elbow and studied the image.  Unmistakably her, he supposed—crazy-wild hair that spilled around her in those glossy, loose curls . . . The tiny girl with the frank and candid expression on her cherubic little face, skin as white and smooth as alabaster, Cupid's bow mouth a startlingly deep cherry red, and even that young, she already had those long, long eyelashes—eyelashes so lush, so thick and dark that it only added to the illusion that she was some kind of porcelain doll, somehow magically brought to life . . .

"Yep, nothing but trouble, even as a child," he muttered.

She laughed and stifled a yawn with the back of her hand, set her empty glass aside so that she could scoot down, curling up on her side, hands tucked beneath her cheek like a little girl.  "Ashur?"

"Hmm?" he intoned without looking away from the picture.

"Thank you," she said.

He glanced at her with a confused little frown.  "What for?"

She smiled slowly, her eyelids drooping as sleep closed in on her.  "Today was one of the best days of my life," she told him.

He leaned in, kissed her forehead.  "Go to sleep, Jessa . . . and you're welcome."