[closed post]

[lightaffinity]

Sunshine is literally never leaving work via the kitchen door again. She's pretty sure it's cursed - last time she'd done it, she'd found herself here. This time, well, this time she's less than a block from the café when she stumbles across an active crime scene. And not just any active crime scene, either; no, she's walked into a murder investigation.

She knows it's a murder investigation because the cops haven't bothered to cover the body yet, and - fuck. She thinks she's probably going to be sick. It's probably illegal to throw up on a crime scene, too, so she's kind of busy trying not to be sick, and that's why it takes her a while to realize what's wrong with the body.

It's actually kind of surprising, given the shitshow that is her life recently, but she's never seen a dead body in person before. The vampires she's killed, they don't fall over dead (re-dead?) like humans do, because that would be not horribly and entirely awful and gods know she can't have that. And while people got killed in Old Town every once in a while, the cops always showed up and roped the area off before anyone could get close. Not that she'd have wanted to get close. She didn't want to get close this time, either, but see above about never having nice things. So anyway, she's never seen a body in person, but she knows, in kind of an abstract way, what they're supposed to look like, and she knows in a significantly-less-abstract way what they're supposed to look like when the reason they're bodies and not people is because vampires got involved, and the body she's looking at now? That is definitely a dry guy.

Sunshine runs through a mental list of every single curse she knows, and then runs through it again, just for emphasis. This isn't like it was the last time, she knows that, Bo isn't here, and it's not like they followed her to Darrow. Except the only Others she's run into have been people like Luke and Agatha, people who aren't here by choice, and she did enough research to know that the city either doesn't know about or doesn't want to advertise their existence. Maybe they did follow her here.

Get a grip, Sunshine. She can freak out about this later, in the privacy of her apartment, but right now one of the official-looking people on the other side of the yellow tape is looking at her like maybe she knows something about all this, and she really, really needs to be somewhere else.

Comments

[youfeelluckypunk]

The only evidence Reid has that she's lying is instinct, but he doesn't want to push the matter when he can't be sure that what she does know has anything to do with this. He's met quite a few people now who are familiar with vampires, whether that's because they've come from a world where vampires exist themselves or they've just been here long enough to already have come across their fair share.

Asking more on the subject would likely only feel Rae like she's under interrogation for something she's likely had nothing to do with, because as much as her body language is of the considerably shifty variety, the hint of relief that'd overcome her after being told it's been a couple months since the attacks had started makes Reid believe that this body's the first vampire victim she's seen in Darrow.

"Okay, so you don't know anything," he says, nodding like he's perfectly willing to accept that, "and you want to get out of here, I completely understand."

Reid pauses, glancing over his shoulder at the crime scene before looking back at Rae. He knows he shouldn't do what he's about to do, but he knows what's waiting behind him. Reid knows the M.O., he knows what the wounds will look like, and he knows that unless he digs deeper, he won't learn anything new. Maybe with Rae, he can.

"Listen, I know that seeing something like this can be disturbing. There's a small coffee shop not far from here, you probably pass it on your way to work all the time. Can I get you a cup?"

[lightaffinity]

Sunshine eyes him suspiciously, because despite what people tend to assume, she's not actually stupid, thank you very much, she knows perfectly well what he's doing. And she kind of just wants to go home. The only sane option here is to say "no, thank you," walk back to her apartment as fast as she can, and shove a couch in front of her door, just in case.

And yet.

Under the dark in a hundred years, they'd said, and she'd hoped Darrow might be different but maybe it's not. She'd killed a master vampire and done all sorts of things that would have gotten her locked up forever just because she didn't want to die, and she didn't want Con to die, and if she could do all that, she thinks, she can have a drink with a policeman and think about telling him about vampires. Think being the operative term here, because she really doesn't want to get thrown in the loony bin. She's going to have to play this one by ear. She hates doing that.

"Sure," she says. "I don't actually drink coffee, but tea would be really good right about now."

[youfeelluckypunk]

For a moment, Reid is certain she's going to decline the invitation, which he wouldn't be offended by or even think is unfair but in the end, she agrees. "Tea it is," he says, stopping to wave a hand at one of the officers to indicate that he's leaving before offering Rae a smile as he starts walking toward the cafe. He isn't sure whether this outing is going to accomplish anything in terms of learning anything to solve the case, but it's not the only reason he'd made the offer. She'd been afraid of something, at least bothered by something, and Reid doesn't expect her to tell him all the details of her life story but at the very least, maybe they can come out of this with a slightly better understanding of each other.

"I tried to stop drinking coffee once," he admits, unsure of why he's bringing it up but it's done now so he has no choice but to carry on. "I drink it way too often, I've even had other doctors give me what they think are subtle warnings about it, but I was having these terrible migraines so I tried to cut back and replace my coffee intake with tea." It hadn't worked for the headaches, nothing had until what Maeve had recommended, and once they'd stopped, he'd fallen right back into the coffee habit. "It didn't work, obviously, but I have downgrade to maybe three or four cups a day, which is much better than my previous track record."