Hollywood Whore

Chapter 11: Going Down in Flames

Inuyasha hiccupped as he finished his sake. “Another,” he demanded.

“So it wasn’t awkward or anything then?” Miroku Houshi asked leaning against Inuyasha’s apartment wall as he yawned.

The hanyou spared Miroku a look as he took another drink. His friends had come over to his apartment to help put it back together after Sesshoumaru had left hour earlier (actually Inuyasha had thrown a tantrum, saying that if they didn’t fix the mess they’d made of his apartment that he’d quit the band). Now done with the work, they sat on his floor drinking plum sake Kouga and Miroku jacked form their hotel room as he recounted his time with the inuyoukai.

“Overall, no. Did find out he has the hots for me though,” Inuyasha said slowly, not sure how his friends would take the rather startling news.

“About time you figured it out,” Kouga Mikuni guffawed from his side.

“Yeah,” Miroku agreed, nodding as he poked around Inuyasha’s belongings.

“What do you mean ‘about time’?!” Inuyasha grouched, hiccupping again as he swayed in his seat.

“Just that we knew he had a thing for you ever since we first ran into him at that press conference. It was painfully obvious,” Miroku said simply, snorting about it with Kouga.

“You fuckers! You coulda told me!” the half-demon yelled launching a pillow attack on his friends before giving up and flinging himself backwards to lie down and stare at the ceiling as the world started spinning.

“Anyway, we have a concert to do Saturday, we expect you to be there,” Kouga mentioned offhandedly then.

Inuyasha rolled his eyes. Just like them to spring it on him last minute. “I can’t go you know, I’ve got school-”

Kouga growled, slamming his drink down. “Fuck school! You haven’t found your dad yet, one day off’s not gonna kill you or your search.”

“Tch, says you. And I’m still not going-”

“Why don’t you bring Sesshoumaru? Or invite him as...” Miroku trailed off as he watched the hanyou sit up and take another shot. “Seriously, Inuyasha, slow down. If your mom knew you were drinking… you’d be dead ten times over by now,” the drummer said, violet eyes flickering to Inuyasha’s side and darting back again.

Kouga rolled his eyes. “Shove it, you lush, here have some more, inukoro,” the ookami said, filling up his cup again.

At Miroku’s words, Inuyasha froze, pushing the sake just handed to him as far away as possible before his eyes followed his friend’s line of sight. A picture of his mother was smiling at him. He gulped as he slowly tipped the frame face down upon the table before turning his attention back to his friends. “Anyway, I can’t bring... hiccup… him! I told you already, he has the HOTS for me. Not only that but he knows ‘Inuzumi Aiko’ knows this, not me!”

“Mm, true enough. It would be rather out of nowhere if Inuyasha suddenly invited Sesshoumaru to the concert as himself, regardless that he’s already made the distinction that he and ‘Aiko’ are acquaintances,” Miroku rationalized, rubbing his chin.

“SEE! Exactly. Thank you,” Inuyasha yelled out in relief.

Kouga rolled his eyes, clipping the hanyou behind the head as he turned to Miroku. “That’s enough reason for him to invite Sesshoumaru as himself. I mean, the guy would probably think he was doing it because of the... ‘relationship’ he’s in with inukoro’s girl self.”

“We don’t have a relationship!” Inuyasha hissed. “He just sorta tolerates me now. Probably because I’m friends with… myself,” the half-demon said, brows creasing at how confusing this whole thing was becoming... especially now that there were two Kouga’s... whoa...

“Please,” Kouga exasperated, making a face. “You’d have a ‘In Relationship’ status with him if you had a MyPage account.”

Inuyasha’s ears plastered to his head as he glared at the ookami. “No, we’d have a ‘It’s Complicated and Really Fucking Messed up’ status, but that’s NOT the point!”

“Then what IS the point, inukoro, because as far as I can see you’re just making up excuses to get out of going. Just invite the guy, pick him up on your way and we can all hang out backstage after.”

“I can't hang out with him as myself! He'll think it's a MAN DATE! And then he'll wanna have MAN DINNER and then go back to my place to make MAN LOVE!! I'm not ready for that!” he said desperately, waving his hands around in the air as he swayed back and forth in his sitting position. “And then he’ll wanna become BOYFRIENDS and move in together and do whatever  it is boyfriends do and-”

“Whoa, whoa, slow DOWN, inukoro! So he likes you, so what?”

“So WHAT?! What the fuck do you mean so WHAT, he-!”

“You don’t think he’s hot? Hell, he’s not my type at all and I think he’s hot. What about you?” the ookami nodded over at Miroku.

“Mhm, I’d hit that,” he said offhandedly as he flipped through a magazine he found in the back of the hanyou’s closet.

Inuyasha rolled his eyes. “Stop going through my stuff, asshole!” the hanyou grumped at Miroku.

Geez, fat lot of help they were. Weren’t friends supposed to empathize with him in situations like these?

“See, we’d both do him, what’ve you got against a body like that?” Kouga sighed, shaking his head.

Inuyasha glared hard as he conspiratorially whisper-hissed between clenched teeth, “I’d climb him like a fucking tree, but that’s not the problem here, asshole!”

Kouga sighed heavily, willing himself to not strangle his friend. “Inukoro. I think going around cosplaying as a girl is starting to kill your brain cells... Look, you can either bring him along as your date-”

“I don’t know him like that when I’m ME!”

Kouga and Miroku both blinked, confused. “...Damnit, inukoro, now you’re confusing me!” the ookami yelled.

“Look, I can’t ask him to come as myself! It’d be out of NOWHERE! And then-”

“For fuck’s sake. FINE. Then... come as your girl self,” Kouga said slowly, the wheels in his head turning as he started to grin.

Inuyasha’s mouth snapped shut as a look of ‘I can’t brain today I have the dumb’ crossed his face. “...Come again?”

Kouga shrugged, leaning back and stretching his arms behind his neck. “Might as well, the Media already knows you’re MIA for some reason here in Japan, so they don’t expect you to be there. Besides, Miroku and I already set up the couple songs we were going to perform; we can easily get one of the backup guitarists to play your part.”

Miroku perked up. “Not to mention, the more Aiko makes a connection with us when with him, the more he’ll have a connection to us, and thus, to you... Uh, the real BOY you. Then you can do more stuff as yourself with him, maybe become friends, mess around-”

Miroku sputtered as Inuyasha smacked him upside the head. “Fucking pervert. You think about this shit too much. And in any case...I still refuse.”

Kouga’s smile turned dark and sinister. “Oh, you’ll do it. Or I’ll show up at your school tomorrow and rat your ass out!”

“You fucker, you wouldn’t dare!”

“Oh, I dare. And we all know how things turn out when you DARE me, inukoro,” the wolf threatened.

Inuyasha continued locked in a heated staring contest with his friend before he broke the silence in defeat, knowing how things would turn out if he even tried refusing again.

“I hate you both!” he said in angrily as he hobbled over to his bed. “Now get the fuck out!”

Kouga and Miroku snickered, high fiving one another as they donned their old geezer disguises before leaving.

- - -

Sesshoumaru yawed as he walked into the school building the next day, wondering idly if Inuzumi Aiko was here already. Considering the time it was he doubted it, surprised himself that he was even here this early, what with the fitful sleep he’d had last night after returning home from the girl’s house.

And he meant “fitful sleep” in all respects. And all thanks to what he’d done while waiting for the girl to finish making tea... He cringed at the memory as it flooded his thoughts once more.

“I said, what brought you to Japan?” he asked nonchalantly as he looked around the now Hollywood Whoreless apartment dejectedly.

“I’m... looking for my birth father,” the girl said hesitantly.

“Oh?”

“Yeah...”

That’s the moment he saw... it.

There, sitting as inconspicuously as it could be, was a Polaroid someone close to the Hollywood Whore rockstar must have taken... especially for the hanyou to be smiling so... genuinely like that...

Before he even thought about what he was doing- long before he consciously granted himself permission to fall so low- the demon leaned over from his sitting position, strewn across the carpet as he stretched for the picture under a table.

He coughed suddenly, remembering they’d been having a conversation about... what? Her... father? “I assume by your statement that you’ve yet to locate him then,” he said, still trying to move his body as little as possible lest he make a sound that would otherwise alert the girl to what he was doing.

“Yeah, so far, no luck.”

“If you tell me his name, I could probably look him up for you,” the demon said, hoping to offer some form assistance if it kept her from coming out of that kitchen anytime soon.

If he were to be honest at this point, he’d stopped fully listening... too hard-pressed to get that damn picture into his grasp. It was a stupid thing to do but he went into autopilot where answering the hanyou’s statements was concerned, banking mostly on luck at this point. Though he’d done it enough when his mother would nag that he was surely a black belt in it by now.

“Did they divorce?”

“No, he... doesn’t actually know I exist.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but what do you expect to accomplish then?”

“I don’t... I’m not entirely sure, I guess. I just know my mom never married, and never wanted to marry a man that wasn’t him. But she...” the girl continued to drone on until she finished and became silent.

“I see,” Sesshoumaru said, nearly sweating as he finally managed to snag the picture from under the bedside table and snap into his seated position the moment Inuzumi Aiko walked into the room with the tea, not at all sure what he had told her he understood but hoping it was the right answer all the same.

As she poured the drink he slipped the memorabilia- or maybe it was a personal photo that belonged to Inuzumi Aiko?- into his pocket.

He shook his head at that idea, feigning cooling his tea before sipping it. He’d have to believe it was memorabilia and that it’s very existence was in danger of the girl destroying it like she did everything else that’d been present when they first arrived to the apartment, or stealing it wouldn’t sit well with him at all.

So “memorabilia” it was.

If that moment hadn’t been embarrassing enough, later that night as the demon had settled on his bed at home he took the candid picture out of his pocket and set it on his bedside table, a rush of butterflies filling his stomach at the sight of the smiling figure it featured. Absently he pulled out a box that held other random things he’d collected over the years and set them up as well on the table. It took him a moment before he was winded with one very concerning thought.

I have a Takahashi Inuyasha-san love shrine! Before he promptly pushed all of the memorabilia he’d saved over the years back into its container and shoved it fiercely under his bed red-faced. The hell he was going to have one of those depraved... shrines! Only the crazed females did things like that after all.

He sighed as he fell back down onto his futon and looked over at the picture he’d intentionally left out.

“I can’t believe I’ve stooped this low...” he said to himself as he turned off the light and fell asleep with a headache.

Sesshoumaru shuddered, eyes refocusing from the events that occurred the night before, chills rolling over his body as he turned into his classroom and took a seat with a defeated sigh. He wondered idly if the trepidation of what he’d done would ever leave him...

A loud CRACK shot through the room then as someone dropped their books rather harshly onto their desk, making Sesshoumaru involuntarily jump. He threw a glare over at Takehiro on the other side of the room, the underclassman glaring right back at him bravely.

Sesshoumaru’s brows pinched at the rather hostile look the other held. What the hell is his problem? he thought as he turned back to his open text, gazing at it sightlessly as the rest of the class poured into the room.

A cough sounded in the background as he turned to gaze out into the school yard, relenting to the fact that his anxiousness probably wouldn’t leave him as long as he felt guilty about stealing the photo. And in the end there wasn’t much he could really even do to rectify it. Even if he were to somehow be invited back to Inuzumi Aiko’s home... would he even be able to part with the picture?

The image of Takahashi Inuyasha-san’s earnest smile came to mind then and he had his answer.

The coughing in the background increased to a throaty, hacking scratch before the demon was poked in the back with the end of a book. Hard.

Sesshoumaru blinked before growling, throwing a narrowed gaze at the person behind him before it promptly morphed into surprise.

There behind him was none other than a red-faced Inuzumi Aiko.

“What?” he asked as she seemed to still want his attention despite looking away, looking rather put off.

“They’re... having some kind of event... Saturday... at Edo Opera House... and... was wondering if...” she mumbled lowly before trailing off awkwardly as she noticed the demon staring at her, waiting for an answer.

“I don’t have all day, Inuzumi...-san,” Sesshoumaru said, trying to hold on to what little patience he had left.

The girl’s eyes snapped to him in surprise. Whether it was due to him using an honorific with her last name or the tone he used, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that she colored right up again and looked away as she began muttering almost angrily.

“Y-You see... I got... tickets to it, so...”

“Inuzumi-san,” Sesshoumaru said as he took a breath, hoping she’d somehow clarify. “What are you referring to.”

“What the hell do you mean ‘what am I –’!” she exploded, a little louder than she’d meant to when she noticed the rest of the class staring over at them. Granted, they weren’t staring at them because of her outburst. They were staring because it was Musashi Sesshoumaru and Inuzumi Aiko. Talking. To one another. “Stop listening, you bunch of eavesdroppers!”

Sesshoumaru rolled his eyes heavenward before he made to turn around in his seat. Something caught his shoulder and he looked back over at the dark-haired hanyou stubbornly holding him in place. “What.”

Inuzumi-san glared suspiciously at their classmates before leaning in to whisper so low no one but the two of them could decipher her words. “Hollywood Whore. The guys are having a... concert or something at Edo Opera House Saturday. I got tickets... was... was wondering if you were free... by chance...”

Sesshoumaru could only stare, wide-eyed, completely speechless. She wanted to invite him to... after all the things he’d put her through up until recently?

“Well?” the girl pressed after a few more moments of awkward silence. Impatiently, she narrowed her eyes. “You got ten seconds to accept or I’m dropping the offer!” she said irritably, sitting back in her seat.

“I-...” he trailed off before nodding in acceptance of the offer, still somewhat taken aback.

“I’ll meet you there then at 6pm. Saturday,” she said definitively, picking up a book and shoving her face in it.

Sesshoumaru turned back around in his seat, still reeling.

I’ll get to see Takahashi Inuyasha-san again...

As class started he didn’t realize he was smiling to himself.

 

 

 

 

Author’s Note: See. If you're patient things are explained xD Anyway. So, as I keep writing on this fic, the estimated number of chapters I’d originally thought it would have keep multiplying xD As of now it’ll at least go to Chapter 16 or 17. For now anyway lol. Drunk Inuyasha always gets super extra cracky. Please lemme know what you thought!