Cell Block Tango by Rachel
Pop
A/N: I’m back again, with an attempt at r0o’s October GM challenge...Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything citrus-y! I apologize if this is nothing but an epic fail – there’s a lot of stiff (ha.ha.ha) competition out there!
I own nothing of Inuyasha or the musical “Chicago” and am making no money off of this ficlet or anything else written on this site.
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Cell Block Tango
Night rounds. It was either the worst form of torture concocted by man and executed by women, or the most enjoyable way to spend his nights, considering he never slept in the first place. Sesshoumaru Taisho was the night guard of the Tokyo Women’s Detention Center, and had been for nearly ten years. He’d seen every kind of woman come through there, along with every kind of crime: theft, extortion, prostitution, blackmail, and murder. Especially murder.
This batch of murderesses brought nothing new to the history books, really. Six women in one cellblock, away for life or waiting for death for killing her lover or husband, and in one particular case, a woman had killed her three sisters. This batch of murderesses wasn’t much different than any other, Sesshoumaru thought to himself as he adjusted his leather belt around his narrow waist, the sound of his gun rattling around in its holster a comforting din; but that didn’t mean that some batches were a little...hotter than others.
These six women were both beautiful and boiling mad, as if doing the murder had done nothing to abate their anger towards their victims. It made the confident, strong, unflappable Sesshoumaru, their night guard, a little bit nervous, especially the later, darker, and quieter it got in that cellblock at night. He had nothing to worry about, of course – the women were rarely let out of their cells, and if they were, it was individually for only moments at a time. And their guard was not dumb, nor was he weak. He held all the power over them, his demon blood making him too quick to be caught by surprise, too strong to be overpowered, and too smart to fall prey to their whiles. Sesshoumaru was the perfect guard, overall. It was just too bad that even he had his faults.
He was decked head to toe in his dark blue guard’s uniform – the itchy, constraining, awful thing – ready for another night on the job. He was not allowed to carry any loose metal: no knives, no badges, and no pens – nothing that could be used by those crafty women as a weapon. Small hands and lithe wrists fit easily through prison bars. Sesshoumaru adjusted his hat, making sure not to cover his ears with it. Those murderesses knew him well enough to notice those little slip-ups, if he ever made them. He had to be alert and aware at all times in case they decided to try something stupid. Any desperate animal will do so when cornered, but no animal more so than a fierce female.
()()()()()()()
“Evening, Taisho,” waved the matron from her office. Sesshoumaru paused outside her open door, looking inside. The woman behind the desk, Kaede, was old, but as sharp as the prisoners she held domain over, if not more so. The night guard nodded back at her.
“Good evening, Kaede. How are they behaving?”
The old woman didn’t need to ask just whom he was asking about – The Six were the only women Sesshoumaru were appointed to for night duty anymore, since they required just about all of his attention at all times, leaving him no chance to attend to the other cellblocks. Kaede sighed, placing a black pen on the desk before her and pushing her chair away to allow herself to stand. The old woman’s leather eye patch shone in the dull lamplight – a gift from a prior inmate who didn’t like Kaede’s manhandling. That murderess only had had to make her bed once.
“Something’s getting them riled up, and I can’t figure out what.”
Kaede walked Sesshoumaru to the gate, the portal that would lead him into Hell. She saved him the trouble of trying to find the right key on his ring and opened the iron monstrosity herself, patting him on the arm for good mea sure.
“Be on your toes tonight, Sesshoumaru. They nearly clawed the cook to death this afternoon during lunch, and you know Manten doesn’t go down easy.”
Sesshoumaru nodded and stepped through the doorway, and immediately he could feel the weight of his responsibility bearing down on his broad shoulders. He heard Kaede’s second sigh but didn’t acknowledge it – he simply waited for her to leave before he moved toward his appointed cellblock. He was chosen for this job, for these six women, because the matron knew he could handle them. But sometimes, like right now, when their combined auras raged and poured out from their cells like a poisonous gas, Sesshoumaru wondered if even he had the strength to withstand them.
“Deranged females...” He muttered to himself in disdain. Sesshoumaru straightened up, tucking a thumb behind his belt, and strode forward, only to again be stopped by Kaede’s voice.
“Oh, Sesshoumaru!” She called. The guard turned around and was met with Kaede’s apprehensive glance. Now he knew he was in trouble – the matron was never nervous. About anything.
“What is it, Kaede?”
“There’s a new murdere – inmate in the cellblock.”
“Which cell?”
“Number Five.”
Sesshoumaru actually gave a sigh of relief. He was glad to be rid of Tsubaki, the crazy wench. No one could possibly be worse than that woman could...
“Who has replaced her?” He asked. Kaede’s eye shone with that same nervousness from before. Apparently, Sesshoumaru was still in for a long night.
“Higurashi. Kagome Higurashi.”
...Except her.
()()()()()()()
The reaction he got from the murderesses was instantaneous, arising the moment he stepped onto the landing, the narrow granite overhang in front of each of their cell doors. There was a cry of excitement all the way down the block, combined with sighs and breathy coos of his name.
“Sesshoumaru!”
“Oh, Sesshoumaru!”
“Sesshou, Sesshou!”
The night guard smashed his fist against Number One’s door, the clanging iron din shocking the women into abrupt silence.
“That’s enough out of you!” Sesshoumaru shouted, allowing his voice to carry all the way down the cellblock. “Tonight’s going to be no different than any other night, ladies,” he said, not moving from his position in front of Number One’s cell, “You’re going to keep quiet, go to sleep, and stay that way for the entire night. No talking, no singing, no writing. That means you, Number Six!”
A conniving giggle floated up the block to Sesshoumaru’s ears, but he shook it off with an unaffected blink. Finished with his orders, the guard removed his hand from Number One’s door, letting the appendage fall to his side with a rush of air. He turned his gaze to the woman inside cell one, who was sitting on her bed, humming breezily while running her fingers through her fiery red hair. She pretended not to notice Sesshoumaru’s flat, steady gaze, reacting only when she felt it suited her own penchant for theatrics. Ayame Ookami finally met the guard’s gaze and gasped, offering the stoic man a blush, as if it would clear herself of her deeds in his eyes.
“Oh, Sesshoumaru! I didn’t realize you were still standing there...” The wolf-woman got to her feet and sashayed up to her barred door, never breaking eye contact with the guard. “Was there something you wanted, koi?” She tried to slip a deft hand out to stroke the man’s impressive chest with a finger, but Sesshoumaru barred her attempt by stepping away from the door completely.
“How is your mate, Mrs. Ookami?” Sesshoumaru asked cordially, but without inflection. It was his custom to ask this question of every jailbird, mostly because she got a kick out of it. They thought he was funny. Ayame, green eyes flickering with a deadly light that meant both humor and hatred, smiled evenly, a fang poking out over her bottom lip.
“Oh, Koga? Why, he’s six feet under, thank you for asking!” She said it like someone would mention the quality of the weather. It was unnerving.
Sesshoumaru already knew the ins and outs of Ayame Ookami’s story. There would be no saving this woman: her husband, the unfortunately deceased, had been shot twice in the head with a double-barrel shotgun. Ayame’s defense was that it had been a robber who was after their money. The reality was that Koga Ookami was an inattentive husband who liked to chew bones like a dog, and Ayame had had enough of it when he’d sucked up the last of their cash to purchase a bison femur for his birthday. Sesshoumaru recalled the night when he’d overheard Ayame speaking in whispers to her neighbor, telling her the real story.
“He brought it home, slung over his shoulder like it was dinner for five. I asked him where he’d got it, and he said he’d paid a friend to get it for him. ‘How much?’ I asked him. Koga, well...he shrugged it off and said ‘You better cut down on your shopping, babe.’ Well, I wasn’t going to cut down on anything, the selfish bastard!”
The redhead standing before Sesshoumaru grinned wickedly, slipping her hand back into her cage. He watched as she turned her back on him, swinging her hips to an invisible tune, running a clawed finger down her side in a blatant attempt to seduce the guard.
“Remember, honey, anytime you want to come over and uh, talk, well, you just come up and see me.”
Sesshoumaru glared at the back of the wolf’s head, turning on his heel and leaving the delusional female to her own imagination. Many of his colleagues in the prison system, other guards and policemen, thought he was the luckiest sonofabitch for getting to keep watch over the most gorgeous wrong-doers of Tokyo. In reality, he hated the attention he got from these women – and even if he was interested in them, one move in any direction on his part and they would eat him alive, and not in the good way. They were beautiful women, dangerously beautiful, which was precisely why he had to keep as much distance between his parts and their tricky fingers as possible.
But then Sesshoumaru remembered that there was a new cellmate a ways down the block, and suddenly he was faced with a horrid problem: what if there was a cunning jailbird under his guard whom he didn’t want to keep his parts away from?
“Sesshoumaru!”
“Ooh, Sesshy!!!”
“Come talk to me, Sesshou – I’d kill to hear your voice...”
It was going to be a long, long night.
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That’s the first chapter! Don’t worry, it gets juicy as we go along...;)