reaperoftears - Tumblr blog

[reaperoftears]

Kay took a long, hard look at the door he’d gestured to, as if it had become more suspicious just because of his invitation, then at Metatron, then at Delilah.

“Yes,” she said after a moment, her face closed off and her voice controlled, and looked back at Metatron again. “Do drop by sometime. I’m sure we have a lot to talk about.”

Resisting the urge to glance again at either of them, she folded her coat and strode past him and to the door, slowly enough that it couldn’t be called fleeing. She turned the handle and stepped out into the light.

Outside, she walked off briskly, feeling the prickle of the Archangel’s aura at her back every step of the way.

She’d walked three whole blocks before she realised she’d never told him where she lived, and what it meant that he hadn’t pointed it out.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay gritted her teeth, face carefully blank as she looked between the two of them, caught flat-footed by the fact that a human and a bloody angel, of all things, seemed to be ganging up on her - and she hadn’t missed the way he’d glanced at the escape routes, either. She wondered if he’d actually stop her if she tried to leave, but then she already knew the answer to that, didn’t she? Even if he wouldn’t, he certainly felt entitled to reminding her that he could, and hiding behind mock saccharine cheer, no less.. It filled her with an powerless, familiar anger, the way the higher-ups would even hint at throwing their weight around and expect everything to be on their terms, but she could hardly fault him for it. She’d do the same, after all.

Let him be under no illusion that she was obliged to answer him, however. He was the one who’d barged in, she didn’t owe him one second of her time.

Instead, she took her eyes off the Metatron completely for the first time since he’d entered, and turned to Delilah with a polite smile. “I don’t expect so, no. Not really my part of town. Though if you’ve got anything to talk about - exchange experiences, that sort of thing - I guess I wouldn’t mind finding the time.” She shrugged, and made a vague gesture. “Or not, if you’d prefer - I mean, we only know each other in the first place because of that one time I really needed a drink. It’s not like we share a bunch of hobbies.” There. Now he couldn’t fault her for not answering his question.

It didn’t matter if Delilah would take her up on it or not - she had every intention of doing a very thorough background check on her indeed, even if she had no doubt the angel would make it his mission to be difficult. It was kind of what they did.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay wrinkled her nose at the endearments passed between the two, and raised an eyebrow at Metatron. “Talk to me later and I’ll tell you.“ She glanced down to where she’d dropped her bottle of whatever the human had brought her, reached down to pick it up, then placed it on the table. “Suddenly I’m not looking for a drink after all,” she said with a brittle smile at Delilah, then glanced at Metatron again. “I’d tell you two to get a room, but it’d be more efficient if I removed myself from the situation, wouldn’t it?”

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay blinked at the look he gave her, following his glance to Delilah, then  connected the dots she’d lost track of when he’d shown up. Of course he assumed she ahd something to do with Delilah being like that. Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

Snorting, her expression turning exasperated, she looked back at him defiantly. “Don’t flatter yourself, I’m not quite that desperate anymore. Besides, you already seem to be getting plenty of attention, I’d hate to intrude,” she said sarcastically, slowly picking up her coat from where it had been folded over her chair, and speculatively eying the door.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay fixed Metatron with a look of absolute disgust, amazed and horrified that he’d be that shameless about his proclivities for hitting on things not of his own size. “Pass me a bucket while you’re at it,” she shot at the (probably) human, and glared at Met again. “Looks like I might just need it. Honestly, with your rank, I would have expected a bit more restraint. But I can already see I got a lot of wrong impressions back when I met you.”

She looked around, still standing awkwardly a few feet from the stools, and flinched when something brushed at her legs. Looking down, she relaxed a little as the poodle trotted past her, towards her mistress. At least it looked like the most immediate danger she was in was being exposed to public indecency, and that was helping her heart rate calm down a little.

She still made no move to sit. Thinking on it, she didn’t need to sit, and it might just be best to leave as soon as possible. Glancing suspiciously at Metatron again, she wondered if he’d let her.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Unable to glare witheringly at both of them at once, Kay settled for a quick, exasperated look at Delilah but didn’t want to take her eyes off the angel for long. Her heart was still racing, and the dangerous iciness in his smile hadn’t gone away. Distractedly, she wondered if she ought to call for backup, but she’d be damned again if she kept running to Raph every time she ran into someone unexpected. She could handle things, for now, unpleasant as it was to suddenly be such a center of attention.

“I remember you too,” she shot back at Metatron, trying to metaphorically puff up her feathers without being too obvious about it - something about the way he described her rattled the long-dormant part of her that had more Pride than brains. Higher-ups were all the same, dammit. “I see you’re actually dressed this time,” she added snidely, as if with enough bluster she could blind herself to the fact that she was being nasty at the person who’d possibly saved her hide back then. “Surprising, really. I wouldn’t have figured,” she said casually, jerking her head with just the barest hint of suggestion in Delilah’s direction.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

She’d known something was coming but some part of her, perhaps a little too accustomed to the ways of humans for her own good, had assumed it would be using the door, and was caught completely unprepared by the shockwave that rocked through her as a massive, burning presence stabbed and crashed into the space next to hers. That was the first thing she noticed, and the second thing she noticed was the briny tang of holiness suffusing the air like a chain smoker’s aftershave, her body jump-starting into full-blown alarm mode.

“What the FUCK!” she all but squawked, flinching out of her stool, the bottle swept to the floor in a frantic movement of her arm but not breaking. It took her a moment to realise she knew this angel, and another to see he seemed content so far to sit on the neighbouring stool with a sparkling too-wide smile on his face. Kay blinked, willed her posture into something that looked more in control than she was (and forced her hair to keep still, hoping the flurry of reflexive motion had gone unnoticed in the midst of her full-body jump), and glared at the bloody King of Angels with all the fury she could get her painfully racing heart to get behind. “What are- who the fuck invited you?!” she demanded, staring back at him as defiantly as was possible on such short notice.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

The moment she headed to the fridge, Kay exhaled softly and steeled herself, shaping and reshaping her power the way it needed to be for a task as slippery and slimy as getting into someone’s head.

“Thanks,” she she said, mechanically closing her fingers around the bottle, relieved when the human turned away again. She’d done this before, and after only a moment of prodding, she was in.

It was... overwhelming, having someone else’s mind so close to hers, and that reminded her to keep herself at a distance, shining a light and observing but not touching. Everything was... tangled, the way something looks when it’s orderly on some level that’s only visible to one select person, and before she was ready for it, the other’s emotions were reaching up at her like the splash of a murky swamp.

Past the slippery chill of it, it felt.... almost familiar, the same cocktail of  apprehension and carefully suppressed panic-fear-pain that seemed to lick right at her old scabs. She almost flinched away, but caught sight of a speck of something more structured - knowledge, thoughts, something she could use, and was about to lean in and sniff at it some more-

If not for the startling, niggling sense that something was off, and that she was missing something important. Blinking, Kay swallowed and whipped her focus to her physical surroundings again, fingers half-clenched and her hair flicking out of her face.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

“Right, right,” Kay said for lack of anything else to say, chewing absently on her lip. Ironically, there was a simple enough way to settle this. It’d been ages since she’d used it on a human deliberately - at some point or another, she’d realised actually knowing what people thought of her made them more difficult for her to deal with than not - but this was a situation that warranted it. If Delilah wasn’t human, the chances that her mind would feel like a human’s, if it was accessible to her at all, were slim to none. And this time around, she was at least sober enough not to mess it up.

“Actually, is that offer of a drink still good? Maybe a beer or something,” she offered cautiously, offering Delilah a hesitant smile while carefully spreading out her aura like a fine silken scarf around the two of them, prodding at the other’s mundane defenses for a weak spot. She’d be easier to handle if she was distracted, after all.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay made an embarrassed little coughing sound, holding up her hands. “Um, no, I mean- I was just curious,” she said, a little defensively. “So- so you trained her yourself, if I got that right? That’s- that’s really sweet, I guess- personalised dog right for your needs, I mean,” Kay finished stiffly, wishing she could drop through the floor- no, wishing she was bold enough to drop through the floor and not worry about the consequences.

As a lull in the conversation set in, she kept watching Delilah surreptitiously, trying to get a handle on her. It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? If Delilah was one of them. It didn’t have to mean she was malevolent - after all, she was pretty sure that thing that had caught them all in a collective dream hadn’t hurt anybody (that she knew of) - but it didn’t mean she was harmless, either. They could make their auras feel like anything they wanted them to feel, she already knew that much. Hell, it could even explain Metatron’s odd interest in her - the servant of Chaos she knew had certainly caught Lucifer’s eye in a very strange way, as much as even skirting that thought made her want to barf.

It would make a chilling kind of sense, really - send one agent after the ruler of Hell, and another to get under the skin of the King of Angels. Kay swallowed slowly, her thoughts at odds with the fact that she was sitting here peacefully sharing a bar with the maybe-Horror.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

“That’s pretty cool,” Kay commented distractedly, eying the dog and her owner alike in vague mistrust, the gears of her mind still spinning, oiled with apprehension. Even so, after a moment Delilah’s words sank in on her, and she felt a stab of... longing? Wistfulness? She couldn’t deny that dogs were charming, and now she couldn’t help but wonder why she’d never thought to get one when... well, in general. There was Socks and whatever was going on with him and Nona, but she kind of doubted he’d grow up into the sensitive psychiatric help kind of canine.

“...Is it hard to get a hold of one of those?” she asked hesitantly, oddly sheepish about the question. “Like, from what I’ve heard there’s... waiting lists, and stuff. Or did you train her yourself, and get her certified after?”

Delilah still wasn’t off the hook, nor was her dog (Greek mythology had dogs, didn’t it?), but it seemed that this topic of conversation, at least, wouldn’t be leading anywhere dangerous.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay raised an eyebrow slowly, unnerved that the way Delilah looked when she was trying to dig up human trivia was very similar to the way she looked when she tried to dig up human trivia. “Maybe,” she said. “You know, I’m pretty sure some people just pick a name because they like the sound of it,” she said with worried amusement. Delilah had still made no attempt to go back to the whole ‘mind-reading’ subject, but why? What did she have planned?

She spent a few moments in silence, struggling to think of something to talk about, and her eyes drifted to the poodle again. “Is  that an, um,” Kay began, nodding to the dog, “specially trained dog, or something?” she asked, hesitant to allude to earlier more clearly. “It kind of looked like it for a moment.”

Even as she waited for an answer, it struck her painfully, suddenly, what situation she was in - if this was one of Chaos’s servants, she was in danger, but somehow her senses had failed to catch up with that. She swallowed harshly, adrenaline flooding her body and her heart skipping a beat at the sudden unwelcome thought - what if it was that thing?

The possibility left her sinking her fingers into the back of her stool hard enough to bruise the plastic, and her jaw tensed - she wasn’t ready to fight just now, she’d spent months thinking he could appear any moment but she wasn’t ready. It took her a moment to suppress the surge of panic and for rationality to set in - if she knew one thing about that creature, it was that it would not have had the patience to toy with her for this long - but the physical reaction was more difficult to shake. And besides, even if it wasn’t him, it didn’t mean it wasn’t something else.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay laughed uncertainly, rolling her shoulders in a half-shrug. “So that’s how ti is,” she said. “Still, I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ve probably had enough coffee for now, and I’m not feeling up to anything stronger.” She really didn’t want any refills until she was more sure about who she was dealing with.

Her thoughts were racing, but Delilah’s next question made them stumble and pause. “Actually, they... kind of were. Religious. My mom, at least. Or- well, she is. I don’t really get along with her, though. Haven’t seen her in ages and ages, and never really met my dad,” she said with another careless shrug, bitterness turning the words more serious than they were meant to be. It felt odd - she’d given cover stories before, but it had been a while since she’d had to last, and she’d gone for something more straightforward than she’d meant to.

Leaning back in her stool in a deceptively casual posture, she kept her eyes on Delilah, the poodle, and the surroundings, and bit her lip, thinking furiously while watching her unwaveringly. If Delilah was one of them, she needed to be on her guard - and it would certainly explain a great deal, wouldn’t it?

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay blinked with dull surprise for a moment, still chewing as she was over the previous question. “Oh,” she sad, secretly relieved at a question she was miles more practised in lying at than the name of her ‘boyfriend’. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself properly when I came in. It’s Ruth. Pleased to meet you, I guess,” she said awkwardly. There was no telling if the question had been sincere, and that bothered her - the human was oddly hard to read right now - at least with conventional methods, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to try anything else right now, for multiple reasons.

“So wait, I give you a freakout and you want to pay for my refill? How does that figure?” she asked, eyes calculating as she watched her face. The way Delilah’s smile had stumbled when she’d offered the refill set off all sorts of unpleasant alarm bells in her gut and had her surreptitiously glancing towards the bottles and containers on the other side of the bar. She didn’t look like the sort of human who’d keep a pitcher of holy water on hand just in case, but looks could certainly be deceiving.

If she wasn’t human, what was she? It took Kay a moment to admit she already knew the answer to that, and the realisation had her own heart plummeting and her fingers tightening on the back of the stool where they were perched.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Chewing on her lip in suspicion, Kay slowly slid onto the stool again, even if the distance between them felt too small for how little she trusted the situation right now. Now that things had quieted down again - or seemed like it - she could let her thoughts run on in the background. It wasn’t difficult to see the turn of the conversation as manipulative - Delilah, if that was her name, could have used an emotional outburst to cajole a confession out of her, forcing a tiny but decisive step forward, and now that they’d put the previous level of deception behind them, she was taking her time. But she’d bring it up again, of that Kay had no doubt.

“...Isra,” she said again, reaching for the abandoned remains of her coffee again and idly stirring it with the spoon. “Got named after.... some saint or other, I think, I’m not really an expert on those things. I don’t really use the name, myself.”

She eyed the human speculatively for a moment, relieved, at least, that she no longer seemed to be breaking down, then carefully asked, “How’d you get saddled with your name, anyway? I’m sure you get that a lot, but I have to ask.”

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Kay raised an eyebrow slightly, not sure what to make of her reaction. Embarrassed by what she’d just witnessed, she shrugged loosely, making no move to sit again just yet. “Um, what sort of thing are we talking about, exactly? And don’t worry,” she added awkwardly, “It, um... happens. The past catching up with you in... unpleasant, sudden ways, I mean,” she said even more stiffly, aware she was going for a casual tone and failing miserably.

Glancing at the human again, then at the dog, then at the chairs, where her coat was still hanging messily off the back of the stool she’d occupied. Sighting the distraction she needed, she picked it up and began folding it more neatly while keeping an eye on Delilah. She still wasn’t sure how exactly the human had interpreted her words, but either way, she seemed calmer now, and that was a massive improvement.

She hadn’t reacted to the cautious way Kay had reached out with her aura to test her, either. She was either human, and genuine in her distress, or an actress skilled enough to make the rest of the human and occult world alike pack up and go home.

Trail of Liquor

[reaperoftears]

Gears turning, Kay watched her, a very faint sense of relief flooding through her just from the fact that the options had narrowed and the cards been laid bare. So that’s what happened - according to the human, anyway. That was... embarrassing, to say the least - keeping your thoughts to yourself and others’ thoughts to others unless you wanted it differently was Blending In 101, but given how drunk she’d been. .. perhaps unsurprising. She’d wanted to get stupidly hammered, and she’d paid for it with stupidity. The question was what to do now, True or not, the human seemed awfully insistent about getting an answer from her about it.

Could she do that? Pretend she was in on it with someone else, then turn tail and run? Blending 101 would deem it the better option, she wouldn’t be blowing her cover at the very least , but... Kay narrowed her eyes slightly, watching the human’s shaky figure with a stab of sympathy she couldn’t quite parry. It wouldn’t be hard to feign such distress - she’d done it herself, she knew - but, and this made her resolve loosen and crumble into uncertainty, she also recalled countless times she was painfully, keenly glad to have been taken seriously when she’d meant it. She wasn’t sure why she should care about that now, by all means she knew better than to buy into cosmic karma or repaying like with like.

She swallowed, shifting awkwardly (she wasn’t sure when she’d slipped to her feet, but she was standing now) as her hand fidgeted over the back of the stool.

“...Um, I can definitely tell you I didn’t read your mind on purpose or anything,” Kay said after a moment, cringing at the way it sounded. Baby steps, she tried to reassure herself, baby steps. She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell the whole truth, anyway, she reasoned, watching the human’s tense shoulders as she surreptitiously reached out with her power, aura unfolding and flexing and shifting very carefully against the human’s, just to make sure it was a human, eyes peeled on her for any reaction. “We can definitely drop the subject if it’s, um... a bad thing to talk about,” she offered cagily, swaying in place a little as she was torn between approaching reassuringly and getting the Hell out of there.

Trail of Liquor