Sesshoumaru Wept

:::Chapter 3: Dog In The Night-Time:::

"He saw me, you know."

"Hn," was all he could muster in return.

He was warm. Safe. And the large hand of his sire was petting his hair. The two full mokomoko wound around his aching, beaten flesh, lending their heat to his overworked body-even if that body was astral and not physical. He wasn't asleep, but it was the best rest he'd had since... well, since the last time he knelt in front of his father with head in lap and arms wrapped around the other inu's torso. The dark blues of the shadow world surrounded them, the colors a balm to Sesshoumaru's strained eyes. He had no idea how long he'd been here this time, protected by his father, as time flowed differently in this realm. He had but to go back into his body (which lay just over the hill in a hut in Kaede's village) to return to the terrestrial world. However, he couldn't bring himself to go back into the pain-wracked prison of said body. Not yet, anyway. The pain and emotional distress always seemed to lessen when he was with his sire.

"Sesshoumaru?" Touga asked, looking at his pup's aged face. On the terrestrial plane, the boy could hide his condition well. However, he was always himself in front of his father, his sole support. "You're awfully quiet tonight."

"Indeed," the younger Western Lord replied. He sighed once more. "I find myself more tired than usual. I am uncertain how much longer I can continue."

Touga's hand froze in Sesshoumaru's hair, trembling slightly.

"My lord father, are you disappointed in me?"

"Never!" Touga replied vehemently, taking Sesshoumaru's much older-looking face in his hands. "It is not possible for me to be disappointed in you, pup."

He picked up the ailing inu and wrapped his arms and moko around him. "Quite the opposite-" his voice broke "-I am so very proud of you, my son. You will always be the embodiment of perfection to me. You kill perfectly, and you love just as perfectly. My damnable pride caused this! Not you. Never you, child."

"I couldn't let him go," Sesshoumaru said into his sire's neck. "I regret nothing. I would do it again, if only to offer a chance of survival to your son."

Touga held him more tightly. "I know. I just don't want to lose you in the process. You are as precious to me as InuYasha is."

Sesshoumaru soaked in his father's warmth, dozing lightly until Touga stood, still carrying him. "You must return. It has been two days, and your mate is very worried about you."

"Do I have to?" he asked, sounding very much like a young child.

"If you do not, soon you won't be able to return at all."

Touga was impressed he could sound strong, even as the tears rolled down his face to soak into Sesshoumaru's kimono. He knew the younger male could smell them and was grateful the boy was silent. He felt the resignation (or was it sheer exhaustion?) in his son but continued to his bedside in the terrestrial realm. It hurt Touga to return him knowing he hadn't reached even half-strength, but the other option wasn't acceptable. If he didn't go back, he would be trapped in shadow until his soul burned itself out, and Sesshoumaru would exist no more on any plane. He would die a very real, very permanent spiritual death. And Touga would not allow that to happen.

As they passed an insubstantial Jakken, Touga knelt down and whispered: "Jakken, ready Sesshoumaru's pipe."

The ephemeral toad didn't audibly respond but dropped what he was doing and rushed away. Touga walked slowly, knowing it would take him a bit of time to prepare the pain-stealing drug Sesshoumaru discovered on one of their journeys to the middle kingdom. They were momentarily disoriented as Touga walked through the wall of the terrestrial Japanese home and InuYasha, who was sitting with his back to the wooden wall. A fire was burning in the firepit in the center of the only room, washing the body of the Western Lord in a flood of much-needed heat. The physical Sesshoumaru was barely breathing and shaking violently; his moko was protruding from under a mountain of furs and strangely inert. The intensity of the stare InuYasha was leveling at his body was astonishing to Sesshoumaru.

"He does feel the connection between the two of you, pup," Touga said, smiling.

Sesshoumaru smirked when he passed a finger through InuYasha's white ear and it flicked back. The dog-eared boy turned his head and looked directly at Sesshoumaru, his face twisted in confusion and head cocked. The door suddenly sliding open distracted InuYasha. Jakken entered the house carrying a jade smoking pipe carved with intricate designs down its stem, and Touga nearly laughed when InuYasha yelled at Jakken to keep the noise down.

"My Most Honored Lord Sesshoumaru is about to wake up, half-breed!" Jakken snapped back. "So move out of my way that I may attend to him!"

"Keh, whatever," InuYasha muttered but moved, giving the toad a suspicious glare in the process.

"Are you ready?" Touga asked. Sesshoumaru steeled himself against the onslaught he knew was coming and nodded.


Two days ago he watched the Lord of the West collapse at the edge of a nature-reclaimed castle. Two days ago he brought his brother into the midst of the human village he protected. Two days ago he laid the slight form of one of the most powerful demons under his own winter furs. And two days ago he began to watch for signs that the coma and unnaturally low body temperature would abate. The only thing indicating his brother remained in the land of the living was the violent shaking that racked his frigid body. InuYasha himself hadn't slept in those hours, convinced he was holding a death vigil. The bleeding never completely subsided. He would dab at his brother's nose and eyes cleaning the worst of it, but it continued pooling.

Kagome had been in and out of the house, doing her best to convince him to shut his eyes. The scant few hours of sleep he got before Sesshoumaru appeared was not nearly enough to hold him, and he found himself nodding off and on. A cold breeze blew from behind an ear and it flicked annoyingly. He swung around, thinking Kagome was entering, but caught the slightest shape of a clawed hand disappearing. However, he was jolted from his investigation when Jakken burst into the room holding a pipe with a sickly sweet smell and a small flickering lamp, proclaiming that Lord Stick-In-Ass was about to come out of his sleep. InuYasha highly doubted the toad's cognitive abilities but graciously moved out of the way. Several heartbeats later, InuYasha heard the change in Sesshoumaru's breathing pattern. Golden eyes opened to the room, and he saw something he didn't think Sesshoumaru was capable of: disorientation. It was quickly replaced by a deep tightening of the skin around his eyes and a pained sigh escaped before the lord could prevent it. Jakken offered the pipe to Sesshoumaru as he lit the end. He took a deep drag of the smoke, holding his breath, and his eyes shut, body going slack on the make-shift futon.

InuYasha watched the scene in amazement. Had someone told him there was something that could knock his bastard brother flat out, he would have called the person a liar! His mind wandered to the possibility of obtaining this... this... miraculous stuff and sending it to Naraku. If Sesshoumaru was that affected by it, surely Naraku might even die from it! InuYasha took a step toward Jakken to ask him about it when a tendril of the smoke coiled around and up into his nose. His pupils enlarged, swallowing the gold of his irises, and eyes rolled into the back of his head as he fell forward with a loud thud. Jakken put the lamp out with a scoffing "foolish half-breed." Kagome rushed in, thinking the brothers were fighting, only to find Sesshoumaru asleep and InuYasha on the floor, ass in the air with his arms snaking out between his legs. She glanced at Jakken as he passed, and she had taken two steps when her brain finally registered what the short retainer was holding.

"Jakken, wait!" she whispered, grabbing him by the back of his haori. "Does that belong to Sesshoumaru?"

"What? This old thing?" he squawked nervously, holding the pipe and lamp closer to his chest. "It is just a... ahhh an... an incense burner! Lord Sesshoumaru likes to... um... to um... to go to sleep with-"

"I know it's not an incense burner, you lying little weasel!" she hissed back at him.

Kagome and Jakken both started at a loud, wet snore coming from where InuYasha lay on the floor in a puddle of drool. To keep from waking either inu, she dragged the toad outside to continue her questioning.

"That," she said, pointing to it, "is an opium pipe. Sesshoumaru doesn't come across as a junkie to me, so why does he have it?"

Jakken stared at the crazy girl. "Jun-ki? What is a jun-ki?"

Kagome shook her head impatiently.

"Nevermind. Jakken, is Sesshoumaru in pain?" she asked, kneeling to get at Jakken's eye level.

He gulped and tried heroically to look anywhere but at her. "Um... he uhh..."

"He is, isn't he?"

"Please don't tell him I failed to keep his secret! He might kill me!" Jakken said and-oddly-grew pale. "Or worse, dismiss me!"

Kagome snorted and stood. "You didn't fail. I would have purified you if you refused to answer."


Sesshoumaru lay silent, listening to the soft voice of his brother's bitch as she interrogated his ordinarily tight-beaked minion; the opium no longer put him to sleep for great lengths of time, and he was thankful for that fact as he overheard their conversation. He was impressed she had figured out his secret, even if Jakken all but blurted it out. But why did she want to know? He knew the girl wasn't a malicious being-he would have been able to recognize it in her, considering he had more experience with malicious beings to last three demonic lifetimes. He was also surprised she even knew what opium was, much less that he smoked it to rid himself of the agonizing pain he lived in. Where had she learned such a thing? Sesshoumaru sighed. He would have to wait on her for his curiosity to be satisfied, and that was certainly not a prospect he enjoyed by any means.

His attention turned to InuYasha still out cold on the floor. A half-smile graced his lips as he leaned forward and ever so gently stroked his ears. They reminded him of petting his sire's ears as a small pup. The boy groaned in his sleep and curled in on himself as Sesshoumaru's hand froze above his head. He settled and continued to snore. The lord had an impulse to gather the young pup into his arms and give him what they both desperately needed-pack and bonding. He reached out for the boy but he wavered, thoughts crossing his mind about what would happen when InuYasha awoke. He huffed to himself: consequences be damned! He easily lifted his much smaller brother onto the futon next to him and wrapped his long limbs and moko around the pup, tucking his nose into InuYasha's hair at the nape of his neck. Sesshoumaru winced internally at the price he would pay on the morrow... but he was going to be selfish this once.


His mind was sluggish and unable to comprehend why he felt safe. He could count on one hand the number of times he had felt safe in his life, and something was nagging at him, telling him he really shouldn't be feeling this way. In spite of this, he couldn't resist the urge to stay in the cocoon of warmth and remain floating. He heard a strong, steady heart beating near his ear, and he turned his face into the chest that housed it, whining softly. A clawed hand sifted through the fine silver hairs of his head, scratching his scalp lightly as it passed. His body slowly relaxed, and he was close to unconscious again when the scent of his brother registered in his mind. He knew Sesshoumaru knew he was awake because he couldn't help himself from tensing.

"Open your eyes, little brother."

He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. The strong hand brushed over his cheek.

"Are you afraid, pup?" the liquid voice inquired. He nodded.

"Why?"

InuYasha spoke into his kimono but Sesshoumaru was having none of it. His chin was forced up. "You are mumbling."

"Because I don't want to wake up. I don't want this to be a dream," InuYasha said quietly.

"Hn," he replied, and InuYasha felt the mokomoko snake up his legs, sneaking under his haori. "It would be good to take advantage of the time we have."

"What?" the boy asked, eyes flying open as Sesshoumaru ran his lips over the smaller male's jaw line.

"But-" he began again only to be cut off by a deep kiss, and suddenly understanding the situation was far less important than being in the moment.

For the longest time, all InuYasha could feel were the gentle touches of Sesshoumaru's lips to his own and the wandering hand roving over his chest and back. It was a slow and sensual assault on his untrained, inexperienced body, and it began fanning the smoldering ember in the pit of his stomach. He panted as the deadly hand of his brother stroked over his chest to his arm and swept down the thin, muscular appendage, taking the sleeve with it. Acute sensation shot across his chest and dove straight down into his cock as Sesshoumaru latched on to a nipple, suckling as a newborn pup. InuYasha threw his head back and cried out, beginning to thrust against Sesshoumaru's leg. His member was throbbing painfully and as he sought to alleviate the delicious ache, he found his wrist captured, pressed to the furs. Sesshoumaru's other hand glided over his hip and under his hakama, teasing the silver fuzz of his leg. He drew in a ragged breath as the fingerpads of the hand began to massage the large muscle it rested upon, mirroring the motion that would bring relief to his weeping, uncut dick.

"Please! Oh gods, please!" he moaned, clinging to Sesshoumaru's broad shoulders.

"What do you want, little brother?"

"Touch me, please!" he ground out through the intensifying inferno raging in his veins.

"Oh but I am touching you..."

He attempted a growl, but it tapered off into a breathy whine of need. "Y-you know wh-what I mean!"

Sesshoumaru knew very well what the boy wanted and decided he'd been tortured enough. Carefully, as if he were handling the most precious of vases he'd retrieved from the middle kingdom, he turned InuYasha over and fit him snugly back to chest. Sesshoumaru tasted the flesh of his neck as his hand slithered over his still-naked chest and down into the red hakama hanging lowly on his hip. InuYasha gasped as warm skin met his most sensitive surface of his body, wrapping his cock in its pleasure-giving heat. True to this bout of lovemaking, the fisted hand established a slow, almost painful rhythm and would periodically stop to allow InuYasha's body to come down before starting the process over. InuYasha couldn't hear or feel anything beyond the rush of blood between his legs.

By the time his balls began to clench in preparation for orgasm, he was on his hands and knees with Sesshoumaru grinding his own stiff cock between his ass cheeks, two layers of hakama between them. In a blinding moment, both cried out, and InuYasha's seed splattered on the fur beneath him in milky pools. He could feel the saturated silk of Sesshoumaru's kimono and had an overwhelming desire to pull his brother's cock out and lick it clean. Both collapsed on the furs, InuYasha's stomach warmly wet. Sesshoumaru put them back to front once more, and they lay, getting control over their breathing. InuYasha's emotions were running in many different directions. He was confused by his brother's behavior, scared that what just happened wasn't real, so very in love with the elder inu, though it was not something he had ever or would ever voice out loud... the emotions continued to pile on, until he broke the pregnant silence.

"Sesshoumaru, what was that?"

"Masturbation, dear brother. Have you never-"

"Of course I've masturbated!" InuYasha huffed, turning over onto his other side so he could better see Sesshoumaru's subtle facial changes. His breath caught at the fire in the lord's usually ice-cold eyes, and the telltale signs of his being relaxed. Is this a turning point? he thought, reaching out hesitantly to touch Sesshoumaru's lips. The magenta-crested hand held the fingers to his lips, and slowly licked over each one, starting the cycle of arousal over. Then it stopped.

"Young one, go to sleep," Sesshoumaru said and moved InuYasha back to his original position. He wrapped an arm and his moko around the dumbstruck boy.

"But Sesshoumaru, I need to know-"

"Shh," the elder stated firmly. "Sleep. We both need it."

Exhausted from their lovemaking and the last week, InuYasha found that at the moment he was content to let his eyelids drop. He let himself bask in the warmth and acceptance he'd always wanted from Sesshoumaru and drifted off.


The dunes of the Nubian Desert spread before Ma'at like finely nippled skin. The heat of the midday sun warmed the vulture flying eastward, and she couldn't help but let out a cry of joy to stretch her wings once more in this manner. She rarely had the opportunity to leave the depths of her rooms in Re's Great Hall, and when permission was granted, she couldn't help but take the form of her avatar-the African vulture. Moonlight-kissed feathers with black tips covered her body, ruffling delicately in the wind currents. She picked up her speed, wanting to arrive at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal so she could complete her self-appointed task and return to her eternal surveillance.

Across the Red Sea and the great desert expanse of Saudi Arabia, and the blue of the Arabian Sea sped by. Cities in India sprawled under her, stone spires reaching for the clouds, as the barest tip of the Himalayans punctured the skyline. She banked left, beat her wings and shot upward into a northerly air current in order to conserve her energy. Shakyamuni himself was a lover of peace and unity, but there were others in India who would see Ma'at's downfall, so she remained high in the sky until she was deep in the revered mountain range. When in every direction she looked were towering rocky cliffs, she began her search for the entrance to the Buddha's abode: a swirling, colorful void neatly hidden against the side of one of the mountains. Humans and demons could not utilize it as a proper gateway, but they could sense it-a phenomenon the modern beings of the future would call a "vortex."

She pulled her wings in and plummeted downward after locating the whirlpool of color. As the ground drew closer, she unfurled her wings a bit to slow her descent. The center of the vortex opened like a yawning maw, allowing her to glide into the Indus Plane. It closed after her, leaving the bitter wind to blow across the barren landscape.


Immediately upon entrance to the otherworldly plane, Ma'at changed to her humanoid form and shook her wings out to prevent cramping. She smiled at the beauty of Shakyamuni's oasis. Trees with a girth that would dwarf even the Lord of the West's true form were scattered across the garden's terrain, complete with large capped mushrooms that could support the weight of many beings growing from between the furrows in the bark. Mushrooms and plants of varying sizes and shapes exploded in rainbows of color from the oasis' floor, and the calls of numerous birds, insects and animals were a harmonious blend of noises akin to the lightest, most peaceful of music. A doe calmly walked out from the underbrush onto the path on which Ma'at stood. She lifted her hands in gasshou and bowed slightly.

"Peace to you," she said. "Please take me to Shakyamuni."

The doe turned, took a few steps and looked back at the goddess, encouraging her to follow. She trailed after the deer as they went deeper and deeper into the ancient garden, and as she passed, the wildlife grew quiet in acknowledgement of her calling as Balance and Justice. Over streams and through briar patches they walked together in companionable silence until they reached what Ma'at assumed to be the middle of the oasis. On a small mound was a tall, white lotus bud-easily as tall as Anubis, she thought-and the aura it gave off was of love, peace, and hope. She bowed once more to the retreating doe, and whispered her gratitude.

The lines of the lotus began to glow faintly and a burst of energy shot up and out from its roots. In a dreamy, drowsy way the slender petals began to open, peeling downward from the top, releasing what seemed to be bioluminescent balls of pollen. The pinks, greens, blues, and purples spilled out as a waterfall and carried the pollen past her in a river of molten iridescence. When the petals had finished blooming, a mist arose from its center, congealing into the form of a monk in formal robes. He turned to her with a large smile gracing his mouth, crow's feet crinkling happily at the corners of his eyes, indicating his propensity for frequent and joyful expressions on his well-worn face. He blinked and light flickered. He possessed no human eyes; they had long since been replaced with silver mirrors with which to reflect a person's soul and intentions back to him or her. He walked to her with a meditative gate, and when he was close enough, they embraced.