Chapter Text
The apartment complex was rather nice, all in all; rather tall with many windows, painted a simple slate grey. Kobeni smoothed her rumpled suit blazer down, grimaced at the stain on the left cuff. She sniffed it.
Strawberry.
The trek up the stairs was long and by the time Kobeni reached the top, she felt all worn out. There was a window in the hallway that she entered, pushing the stairway door open with a groan. She stopped for a moment, looked outside as her shoulders heaved and sweat made the back of her shirt stick to her skin.
Other buildings reached for the sky, a luminous blue up above with a few clouds wisping by. People walked by on the streets below, some crowded into groups while other stragglers ducked into buildings, waited at bus stops. There was a beautiful monotony in life being lived.
Then Kobeni heard a yelp come from an apartment with a familiar number, and remembered that she really didn't have enough time for that.
She really thought she would have more time, but her hand was already knocking on the door to Aki's apartment, her body flinching back at the suddenness at which it opened. Kobeni's mouth was forming a pathetic smile while Power's face was a confused stare, a cat bundled up in her arms.
"Hello." Kobeni bit her tongue hard enough to taste blood, lips quivering as she desperately tried to keep the smile on her face.
Power squinted at her, the cat looking relatively disgruntled in her arms as she squeezed them to her chest. "Why are you here?" She asked rudely. Her hair was a mess and her clothes were very casual; a shirt that fell to her mid thighs under which Kobeni couldn't tell if there were shorts. Kobeni didn't even know why she was looking.
"Public Safety- they don't want you to be alone," Kobeni stuttered, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. "Can I come in?"
The cat yowled, apparently at the end of their rope from being squeezed, and scratched Power's arms until she dropped them. With an unimpressed look it turned and padded into the apartment, upon which Power looked back at Kobeni and crossed her arms.
"I am not alone," She said, with an upturned chin. "I have Meowy."
Kobeni breathed in deep through her nose and forcefully from her mouth, a long suffering sigh. "That doesn't count."
"Tis you who doesn't count," Power said with a jab of her finger to Kobeni's chest, teeth bared, and she shut the door on her.
There were birds outside, cooing, and cars were going down the street, and people were talking, and Kobeni wished that she could be outside with them instead of inside with the most exasperating fiend she had ever known.
But surprisingly, the door slowly opened again. The cat, which Kobeni assumed to be Meowy, was once again bundled up in Power's arms, still not looking happy about it. The door opened further, Power stepping back, and gesturing Kobeni in with a jerk of her head. "Come on," She grumbled, and walked off without looking behind her.
This time, Kobeni followed.
- - -
The television was blaring something, an ad for some kind of sugary cereal. Power let it play, not even sparing it a glance as she plopped down at the low table in the main room. Meowy settled down on her lap, head resting on her knee. Already, her attention was caught by the television, leaving Kobeni standing in the hallway awkwardly.
It took her a full minute to gather up the confidence to sit down with Power, knees tucked primly under her, hands balled atop her thighs. Her shirt had dried, thankfully, but now was almost stiff in its dirty state. Power blinked, nose crinkled as she sniffed at the air, then turned to look at Kobeni, whose cheeks immediately flared bright red.
"Sorry," Kobeni murmured, head hung low with her nails digging into her thighs. She'd assumed that since this was an assignment she was to wear her suit, which hadn't been washed since she and Power had killed the devil the day before. Now Power, whose opinion Kobeni really shouldn't think that much of but still, would think of her as some kind of slob and would never talk to her again and Kobeni would have to leave the goddamn country to find someone who wouldn't associate her with vomit and smelling of old blood, because who doesn't wash their dirtied clothes; a sicko, that's-
"I have decided," Power said, head turned back towards the television. Occasionally, her nose would twitch, but otherwise it seemed as if she was trying to ignore Kobeni's smell as best she could. To spare Kobeni's dignity? Which was already in shambles? "You can stay the night."
The latter half of the sentence caught Kobeni so off guard, she was caught halfway through getting up to leave in a walk of shame, to call Public Safety with the news that she couldn't watch over a fiend for one day, to lose the sorely needed bonus pay. Kobeni went back down on her knees, hard, crying out at the shock that was sent up her legs.
Somehow, in her stupor, Kobeni found herself much too close to Power, the fiend having shuffled over to fumble with the buttons on her shirt until Kobeni pushed her off.
"What are you doing?" Kobeni asked, somewhat hysterically, arms brought up to protect her chest. Her flush spread down to her neck, a warm prickling.
"Use the washing machine," Power responded in lieu of an answer, still sitting facing Kobeni, the television once again forgotten, object impermanence when said object didn't matter to her anymore.
Kobeni blinked, swallowed, licked her dry lips with an even drier tongue, because her mouth felt like a desert as something slithered through her skin and gripped her ribs, pressing in until she felt like she could barely breathe, until she found herself counting Power's eyelashes to calm down again, eye running down the not-special, but rather proportional curve of Power's cheekbone.
She found herself breathing normally, hands barely even shaking as she shrugged her suit blazer off and folded it off to the side, unbuttoning the top few buttons of her shirt before she caught Power's eye, lip bitten between her teeth.
"Can you look away?" Kobeni asked, embarrassed, the surge of confidence fading away rapidly like ice in the sun, under Power's piercing gaze.
"Why?" Power tilted her head to the side, a very animalistic mannerism she seemed to have. "You're pretty."
And she said it so matter-of-factly that Kobeni couldn't help but believe her, even when the fiend shrugged and turned away.
- - -
Power had taken all her clothes and dumped them into the apartment complex's washing machine, turning it on without even adding the detergent so Kobeni had to run back down the flights of stairs to pause it and add it in. The sweatpants she wore were comfy, along with a simple long sleeve shirt; both of which were too large for her, and also which she was sure she had seen Aki wear before. When she questioned Power about it, the fiend pointed at Aki's bedroom, where his clothing drawers had clearly been ransacked, their contents strewn over the floor, and Kobeni had to clean that up too.
While she was doing that, she realized that all the shirts were rather similar to Power's own casual wear, and then she realized that Power and Denji basically stole all their clothes from Aki. It made her bark out a laugh, hair tie clipped onto her borrowed shirt's collar, hair tumbling down her shoulders. She caught Power staring from the doorway, before she looked away quickly like she had been caught doing something she shouldn't have been.
But in the end she was sitting with Power at the table, a steaming cup of instant ramen for both of them because Kobeni was too scared to dirty the kitchen and she didn't trust Power to cook at all. It was rather late, time having flown while Kobeni had cleaned Power's mess up, along with other things in the apartment as a pseudo-apology for staying over.
Even in her tiredness wrought of hard work, Kobeni noticed several things. The shirt she was wearing had a specific detergent smell, which she now knew to be Aki's, but which she had previously associated with Power alone. Second, Power was an incredibly obnoxious television watcher, slurping up noodles before speaking with a full mouth about how stupid the scene was, how she could clearly do better with killing that guy, it looked so easy.
Somehow, Kobeni was enjoying herself, barely having to talk and instead humming at the correct times as Power blathered on, the stupid show somehow made bearable by Power's inane commentary, making it more of a comedy than a violent montage.
"Aki and Denji won't be back for a bit," Power said out of the blue. Somebody died on screen, horrifically, and neither Kobeni nor Power batted an eye.
"Okay," Kobeni said, stabbing her chopsticks at the bottom of her empty cup, tapping them together as she had nothing else to do, and Power's stare was frightfully intense.
Power leaned closer, smirk revealing sharp canines, not unlike Meowy's, who was now curled up in the corner of the room watching everything happen with a baleful stare. "I have graced you with my presence," Power said haughtily. "Be honored."
Kobeni's jaw tensed, a warm belly and sore muscles only slightly soothing the bubble of irritation that settled in her throat. "Okay." She made eye contact with Power, somehow.
A finger poked Kobeni's cheek, though more gentle than what she was used to, as Power said; "Tis foolish of you to not take this as the privilege this is." She said the word wrong, with a strange accent on the wrong vowel, and Kobeni found herself rolling back, no longer in her polite posture and seating, laughing up towards the ceiling and no doubt irritating the neighbours.
Then there was a hand on her knee, and a wet mouth on her own, rather long nails digging in slightly as Power moved in closer. For some reason, this time Kobeni didn't push her off, instead leaned back a little, breathing heavily in the small space between their faces.
Taking Kobeni's silence for shock, Power explained, "The movies say that's what you do with a pretty person." There was an innocent earnestness on her face, and Kobeni didn't have the heart to argue that she wasn't pretty at all, honestly rather bland, but the glint in Power's eyes and the puffy pink of her lips had her leaning forward to kiss Power again.
It was a mess of a kiss, not perfect in any way, which made sense because neither of them had kissed anybody before each other. Power was too pushy, and it was too wet and loud, and Kobeni did not know what to do with her hands at all, Power's fangs snagging on her lip once or twice and threatening to split the tender skin.
Slowly, carefully, Kobeni reached up and tangled a hand in Power's hair, then both because her hair was so nice and the weak sound the fiend made into her mouth at an accidental light tug had something in Kobeni's internal organs doing a weak shiver. There was a bony elbow in Kobeni's side but she didn't care at all, knees on either side of Power's hips, pressing her down into the floor. She sighed, Power's nails scratching at the nape of her neck as she purred into Kobeni's mouth, letting Kobeni guide the kiss until it was just heat and happiness and Kobeni's mouth sliding down Power's cheek to reach her neck, where she nuzzled in and smelled iron and milk, cat fur, and she somehow fell asleep on the floor with Power wrapped up in her arms, lips swollen and curled in a smile.