exsiliumlogs | (no subject)

Date & Time: May 28, late at night
Location: Housing Unit 1006
Characters: Sango and Nikolai
Summary: Someone else is living in Sango's apartment, and hasn't seen fit to introduce himself yet. She means to rectify that.
Warnings: Nothing unless somebody draws a blade for some reason. Maybe language?

With all the hectic life going on around Sango when she had first moved into the new housing, she had barely noticed the signs of life accompanying her own in the little apartment. There were words on the nameplate by the door, of course; they meant little and less to a teenage girl who grew up in a small warrior village in medieval Japan and thus they provided no clues. But there was another room in this apartment and things were scattered about it that had not been present on the first day, and sometimes such things moved.

By the time Sango noticed and gave herself a scolding for not noticing sooner, she decided that whoever was coming and going wasn't going to kill her in her sleep; and Kirara hadn't seen fit to tackle them yet, anyway. She gave it a little while to see if her roommate was going to be keen on showing himself in the near future.

And then she decided that she had waited long enough.

So she waited it out one night, nursing a cup of tea, perched comfortably on the foot of the bed in the disturbed room with Kirara curled up by her legs and the lights off. She was confident that she had spent long enough observing the patterns of her absentee roommate to know that he would drop by tonight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nikolai didn't like having a fixed place. It went against all of the instincts bred into him after over three decades of living like he did; a fixed place meant habits, meant predictability, meant vulnerabilities. He didn't like it, and he liked even less that if he made any enemies here, they would be able to find him-- and his roommate. That there was someone else who might be in danger because of who he was, what he was, and what he did and would keep doing.

That was why he always came to the apartment at night. It was a good place to store his things, that was all. And he mastered the skill of turning the key in the lock in silence long ago.

When he came in that night, he could feel someone was in the room he placed his things (not his room). And Nikolai shifted his wrist, sliding one knife out of his sleeve, and he had it aimed forward even as he pressed the light switch.

It wasn't that he didn't expect to see the girl. But he raised his eyebrow nonetheless, cocking his head to the side.

"What are you doing here?"

The kind of secretive comings and goings meant that Sango wasn't exactly surprised to see the knife; her eyes found it first, but stayed there only briefly before curiously examining this person.

She had been expecting a man, perhaps, but had little idea other than that he was good at being quiet. A tall, middle-aged knife-wielding tattoed Russian was not exactly her first guess, though.

"Well, I do sort of live here," she replied calmly, not moving from her seat. Kirara lying beside her had woken immediately at Nikolai's entrance and now eyed him warily with her bright red eyes. "And I've noticed you do too, so I figured that maybe we could introduce ourselves."

A giant cat-like creature with red eyes. Nikolai wasn't surprised at anything he found in this city anymore. He met that gaze for a long moment, ignoring Sango in favour of the far greater threat in the room, before he snorted to himself. The knife in his hand disappeared once more in his sleeve, and he turned back to Sango.

"I don't live here," he said dryly before he lifted his shoulders up in a casual shrug. "I put things here. There is difference between two." Because it wasn't a good idea to have Nikolai officially living here.

"No need to introduce ourselves," he said, and smirked slightly. "I know your name already."

She raised an eyebrow. She wasn't too fond of the attitude at the moment, but then, with his stealth behavior she hadn't expected much else.. Kirara remained at her side, watching.

"Just because you know my name doesn't mean we've been introduced. I may as well know who it is that's using part of my living area as a storage space, especially if they're going to steal in and out like a thief."

He kept his eyes on the lion, and when he replied, his tone was distracted. "Not your living area. Shared." He lifted his shoulders, shrugging. "You have your own room. This place, not yours."

Lifting his eyes slightly, Nikolai's lips quirked upwards. "You are trespassing."

"Perhaps, but I've left your things alone for this long, and I haven't sent my dear friend here at you yet, so I think it's safe to say that it's friendly trespassing."

Sango sighed, dragging her finger around the edge of her cup. "Look. I don't intend to disturb your things or attack you or even trespass for much longer, if that's what you prefer. Your patterns are yours and I'm sure you have a reason for them." A pause, and then a shrug. "I just don't think it's a crime for me to want to know who it is that's coming and going in the middle of the night."