Sharon and Jess

[xp_alias]

Another surprise awaits Jessica.


Laundry day had always been nice. Her mother let her come with her to the basement to manage the loads, and when everything was fresh and clean she'd been allowed to snuggle into the warm linens while her mother carried the basket back to their apartment. It had been months since she'd last smelled fabric softener, and the sense memory had tugged her towards a certain door and onto a certain bed. The clothing wasn't warm anymore, alas, but the scent was right.

Probably this room belonged to someone, but the door had been unlocked and the laundry was laid out -- not only laid out, but laid out across a bed. That was as good as an invitation to someone who had been told the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and promptly edited it to suit her personal philosophy. Sharon did as fate demanded and made herself at home.

Jess had gone for a recommended - and very slow - walk around the mansion, ending with finding an unguarded pot of coffee in the kitchen. Coffee was not the whiskey she had prayed for daily since waking up, but it was certainly better than nothing. She made it back to the suite she'd been assigned, clutching her coffee cup, and looked again around the room - suspiciously nice, by her standards, but bare of almost anything resembling personal effects. In fact, the only thing in there other than a stack of borrowed books was the pile of sweats on the bed, and the purple thing sleeping on top of -

The coffee cup shattered on the floor as Jess backed up against a coffee table. "Jesus fucking Christ."

That would be the alleged owner of the room. Supposing the nap had been long enough, Sharon rolled onto her back in the pile and stretched long. Her disconcertingly human fingers threaded together over her head before she deigned to turn her attention to Jessica. She looked pointedly at the broken mug and rapidly spreading puddle of coffee.

"You should clean that up," the cat remarked.

"What the actual fuck," Jessica said, her heart still pounding in her ears - a fact that irritated her. It wasn't attacking her, sure, but it was still there. "You clean it up," she added irrelevantly, her brain still stuttering behind the wave of adrenaline.

"You dropped it." Sharon licked her hands and lazily began to scrub at her face. Her fur now smelled like fabric softener. Especially the parts of it that were now stuck to Jessica's formerly clean laundry.

"Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you?" Were demons real? Was Jess having the total mind collapse she thought she'd avoided? Had the coffee been laced with acid against theft?

Sharon stopped cleaning her face and wriggled against Jessica's sheets. It wasn't as if the bed had been made anyway. She gave the woman a look made exceptionally unreadable coming from reflective yellow eyes and a muzzle. "Asking what I am is very racist."

"It's not racist, it's fucking sensible." Jess felt instinctively that at least this wasn't a hallucination, because her own hallucinations would definitely be more - less - well, they wouldn't accuse her of being racist. This was probably a demon. An incredibly annoying demon. "What would you do if something just showed up in your bed? And started licking itself?"

"Easy. Help clean them." Sharon finally stopped desecrating Jess' sheets and rolled onto her side, allowing her tail to dangle from the side of the bed. She was well aware this particular posture would not have looked out of place on an African savannah. She studied the pale, dark-haired woman vibrating in the doorway and came to a conclusion. "I don't want you to lick me. I don't know you."

"I don't want to lick you!" Jessica could not believe she had just said those words, but they had indeed come out of her mouth. She stared at Sharon, deeply perplexed, wondering if she could get to the painkillers in the bedside table and deciding that it was probably not going to happen. "What is this, demonic bed possession? Why are you here?" Her voice came out plaintive.

"I felt like it." The look on Jessica's face seemed to indicate more was required. Sharon huffed. "I'm not a demon. I live here now. My name is Sharon." She gave Jessica an imperious look that was eminently suitable for a cat's face. "You are very rude. I thought other mutants weren't supposed to be so judgemental."

That was - probably not exactly what a demon would say, Jess had to admit. Now that her heart rate had calmed down, though, irritation came in to replace the panic. "I'm allowed to be as rude as I want to someone who decided to take a nap on my actual bed," she snapped. That was definitely a rule somewhere. "Didn't they give you your own room?"

Sharon chose to ignore that question as irrelevant. "Who are you?" she asked, turning her attention from Jessica to the room. "This place doesn't smell much of you."

Jess regarded Sharon dubiously; that didn't sound like a compliment. She crossed her arms over her stomach defensively. "I'm Jess," she said, lacking any further explanation for or of herself. "I just got here - I mean, I just moved up here."

"Jess," Sharon repeated gravely. "So you have not yet settled in. Which means I could challenge you for territory rights, and then this could be my room."

Jess stared at her, deeply pained. "Why would you want to," she asked, plaintive again, not sure if she was being hazed or whether there was one truly insane person for every normal one in this place. "Every room is the same. Except I think some people have . . . things they own."

The cat's searching yellow eyes were still scanning the room. "Not me," she noted. "Not you." Her eyes fell on the leather jacket tossed over the side of a chair. She closed her eyes and sniffed to confirm her suspicions. "Except that, maybe. Are you homeless also?"

"I am not - " Jess had to stop short, ire cut off when she realized that, actually, she was. It didn't make her less annoyed, but she did say, grudgingly, "I guess I am, but - " What could she even say? "But it's definitely more rude to call someone homeless than to ask if they're a demon." This conversation, like so many of them lately, was not actually going great for her. She could tell, she just couldn't change course.

"Nothing wrong with being unhoused. I had a home, then I didn't. I have a new one now, maybe. It is under consideration." Sharon finally jumped off Jessica's bed and started to pace the room, nose to the air and whiskers quivering. There wasn't much to explore, but she enjoyed the effect it was having on the other woman. It turned out other people were very entertaining.

Jess edged further in, keeping her distance, deeply unnerved. She was annoyed to find she'd forgotten about the coffee and stepped in it. "Finding anything in here?" she asked flatly, sarcastic. The room, to her eye, was painfully bare, but Sharon certainly seemed to be interested, which boded poorly for Jessica's mental health.

"Maybe," was the ominous reply. Privately, Sharon was parsing the older woman's reactions. There was something brittle about her that Sharon couldn't quite put her finger on. Wounded, almost.

"You're hurt," Sharon said abruptly. "You wince when you turn too quickly. When you breathe too deep your breath hitches. What happened?"

Jess started; she hadn't thought she had been obvious, had in fact been trying not to be obvious. She sighed. Not answering Sharon's questions seemed like a lot of work. "I - well - I hit a wall. And then it fell on me."

Sharon made a soft chorting noise of annoyance. The fun had been taken out of the previous interaction. Moving purposefully, the cat shouldered past Jessica and disappeared into the kitchen, only to return with two dish towels in her mouth. It didn't smell of anything yet, indicating someone else had probably laid them out for the benefit of a resident who found them mostly decorative. Sharon dropped them onto the spilled coffee and began to blot.

"Apology," Sharon said as she pressed the cloth against the hardwood. "I didn't realize. Not fair to tease the injured. I torment only the healthy."

Jessica's mouth dropped open. "And why is it fair to torment the healthy!?" she demanded, refusing to be grateful that Sharon was cleaning up the coffee. It was her fault. And she was doing a better job than Jess would have done by dropping some paper towels down there and scrubbing them around with a foot.

"Because then it is a fair fight." Sharon unfolded one of the damp towels and used it as a repository for the broken shards. Some of the smaller ones gave her claws a bit of trouble. She began to pinch them from the floorboards with fastidious concentration.

Jess scrubbed a hand over her face. "Try not to cut yourself," she said, just in case that would put them back into 'fair fight' territory. "So you're not going to fight me for the room?"

"Why would I do that? Every room is the same."

"I - you - that's what I just said." Jess didn't howl, exactly, but there was certainly a note of hysteria in her voice.

"You were correct." Sharon folded the towel neatly around the broken shards. She picked up the bundle in her mouth and trotted it over to the nearest trash can, where it landed with a wet little thud. The big cat turned to regard Jessica with unnerving yellow eyes. "We will fight later, Jess who just got here."

"Why," Jess said, even though everything she had said so far had driven this conversation in unexpected and mostly unwanted directions. She sat down on the bed, finally, giving up.

Sharon looked at her gravely. "Why indeed," she intoned, and slipped from the room.

Jessica sat there for a while after, mouth open, wondering what in the actual hell had just happened. When she realized she should get up and lock the door against further intrusion, she happened to look down at the sweatpants she was sitting on.

"She fucking sheds?"