Fire and Rain
folder
InuYasha AU/AR › Het - Male/Female
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
13
Views:
3,174
Reviews:
2
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
InuYasha AU/AR › Het - Male/Female
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
13
Views:
3,174
Reviews:
2
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Inuyasha, nor do I own the characters from the series. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Such a Fool
Chapter Six: Such a Fool
(I’m a Fool to Want You by Billie Holiday)
Raining hairspray down on her head, Kagome coughed and attempted to keep her eyes open as she fluffed her hair with a comb. She had always had better hair than Kikyo and she felt compelled to remind her sister that she was not superior to her in every single way. Her make-up already done expertly by Sango, she slipped her hands into her strapless bra that she had bought specifically for the dark purple strapless maxi dress she wore that clung to her thighs and outlined them just so, readjusting her breasts to her satisfaction. Smirking at her reflection, eyes on her full C-cups, Kagome took a moment to just appreciate the fact that she was no longer a slave to padded push-up bras. She had considered going without a bra, but that would just make Kikyo roll her eyes and she didn’t even want to think about how Inuyasha would react to something like that. Practicing her best little sister/vapid beauty pageant contestant smile, she told herself for the thousandth time that it was just dinner with her sister and her brother-in-law and everything was fine, everything was cool.
“You done?” Sango asked, popping her head in. Her brown eyes went wide and she gasped. “Oh my freaking god, Kagome, you have turned me gay.”
She laughed and pushed past her friend. Inuyasha had been waiting outside the apartment for quite some time, forced to dwell on the doorstep or listen to Sango’s annoying pop music. Slipping on some high-heeled sandals, she wobbled as fast as she could to the door, hoping she hadn’t kept him waiting for too long and that he hadn’t decided to leave and cancel dinner. She knew the fear was irrational, but that didn’t stop her from having it.
“Bye, Sango!” she called out, not turning around as she opened the door.
Inuyasha was right there, and they were nose to nose, his dark eyes holding hers and taking her breath away before he backed up and they raked down her body, making her shiver.
“You’re cold,” he said, taking off his jacket and putting it over her shoulders.
Dumbly, she clasped it to her, wondering what it was that made her want him so badly so suddenly. She had been determined to mostly ignore him, but he just seemed so, well, delicious. It was possible that it had something to do with not seeing him for a week after he promised to try and get Kikyo to agree to dinner. They had talked a lot, though, and he had updated her on everything. Inuyasha had spent all his free time softening Kikyo with gifts, such as trips to an expensive spa, flowers, movie nights in, expensive foreign chocolates that sounded kind of gross but in a pretty way. She wondered if he told her all those details because he was oblivious or because he wanted her to be jealous, to see the life she could have. If the latter was his intention, it had certainly worked, not that she’d ever admit it to anyone.
All the same, she wasn’t going to go rushing into his arms. This dinner was about her and Kikyo reconnecting, about her showing Kikyo that she was no longer a little girl so easily dismissed and detested. Kagome was a woman now, making a living herself and everything. They had another chance at being a family, a real one. They could get to know each other. Yeah, it would be weird, considering they had both loved Inuyasha, but that was not the point. The point was that they were both alive.
They were in the car, driving the nostalgic route to the Shrine, when Inuyasha broke her trance. “I’m going to apologize ahead of time for Kikyo’s mood. I wasn’t able to mellow her out all the way, only enough to get her to agree to see you.”
“Oh,” Kagome said quietly, still let down even though she had been expecting something of that sort. She didn’t allow herself to get her hopes up about anything anymore. “You tried your best, Inuyasha. Thank you.”
His eyes glanced away from the road and he flashed her a grin, reaching out a hand to clasp her sweaty ones that were folded tightly on her lap. “Everything I did would be worth it if you would just smile like you used to instead of some weird sort of clown mannequin.”
She laughed, her posture which had been gradually stiffening relaxing under his small touch. “Is she really, really mad?”
Inuyasha sighed. “Honestly? I don’t understand her anymore. I don’t think I ever did.”
The ride was silent after that, and it was only a few minutes before he pulled up in front of her childhood home. Her hands shook as she opened the door, the stairs seeming to go on forever. She had never even really noticed before. It had certainly been a while since she had been used to going up and down at least twice a day. Hopefully she wouldn’t embarrass herself and have to stop to rest her legs or just breathe.
“Worrying about the stairs? You shouldn’t. You did gain weight, but not a lot. It looks good on you.”
Kagome glared at him, intending to slap him until she saw the look in his eyes. It was the same one he had given her that night after he punched out Hojo and they were in the car and he kissed her. It made her feel a little sick, but mostly like crying. What did he want from her? What did he think he could get?
“I was just wondering how you managed to carry Kikyo over the threshold. Or did she carry you?”
He scowled at her and she smirked. Inuyasha had been a little small growing up, but that was okay because she had always been small as well. In the year before her accident, he had grown in leaps and bounds, astounding everyone. His previous stature had always been a sore point for him from that time on, a sore point Kagome was glad to see he still possessed. All his new confidence had been close to overwhelming.
“Race you to the top?” he said, something in his voice reminding her of when they were young. She used to say the same thing to him every time they’d play, but he would always beat her, even his very first time visiting.
She was already running, and he grabbed the hem of her skirt, both of them laughing as he did so. Somehow, they were grasping hands, and racing not each other but time instead. Kagome could almost see the miniature versions of themselves racing alongside them, so happy and innocent, unknowing of the future. She wanted to cry for the child she had been, the children that they had been. So many lost years. But maybe they would have just broken up anyway, she mused to herself. It had seemed impossible to her at the time, but it was always that way with one’s first romance. Even still, Kagome knew she would have always loved him. No one else would ever come close.
“Woo!” he yelled once they had gotten to the top. She was panting and sweaty, the only reason she had reached the top at the same time he did being that he had dragged her most of the way. They were both smiling and she knew her hair and make-up were a mess, but he didn’t seem to care. She didn’t either. His hands grasped both her upper arms, holding her upright and close to him. “Welcome home, Kagome.”
Those words almost did her in and she wanted to cry, but she didn’t see the sense in further ruining the job Sango had done on her face. Inuyasha was looking at her with those eyes, his murky, glorious eyes, and she knew he was going to kiss her and she was going to let him. She just didn’t have a choice when it came to him. She could allow the one small sign of affection, of love. His face came closer to hers and her eyelids drifted halfway shut, feeling like their lips were magnets.
“You’re back.”
The voice sent her eyes flying wide open, Inuyasha’s as well. Quickly, they separated, knowing that it would make them look even guiltier but unable to stop themselves.
Kikyo was dressed beautifully in a casual white dress that fit like it was made for her. Even so, Kagome got the feeling that she had not dressed for the occasion like she had. Kikyo was just always dressed like that. Suddenly, she felt very drab. She could just picture how she looked to the older girl: smudged eyeliner and mascara, foundation rubbed away to reveal her perpetually reddish nose, hair that was flat in some places and full in others, a cheap dress that kept falling down and pinching her armpits in a weird way, throwing herself at her brother-in-law right in front of her older sister.
Disgusting and shameful.
“Come inside, then. The weather’s not right for a patio party,” Kikyo said in her smooth, quiet voice that she had tried her hardest to emulate when she was a child.
Kagome wanted to cry for possibly the thousandth time in ten minutes. If her mother had been there, she would have made Kikyo be nice to her. She would have hugged her and never let her go for the rest of the night, not even to say hello to her grandfather, who would tease her and then promptly fall asleep in his chair for the rest of the evening. But they were dead. She had grieved in the hospital and then resolved to forget about it and move on until she reached a point in her life where she could take the time to stop and just cry whenever she wanted to without worrying whether someone would talk to her, try to console her and only end up making it worse. It wasn’t that time yet.
“H-hey, Kikyo,” she said lamely, wishing she had brought Sango or even Kōga or Hojo, anyone so she didn’t feel so completely alone.
“Dinner has been on the table for ten minutes,” she said sternly, directing her words at Inuyasha.
“Uh, alright. Let’s go, Kagome,” he said nervously, not looking at her.
The interior of the house was as unchanged as the exterior, apart from the not-so-small detail that all the pictures of them as a family had been replaced by paintings of flowers that looked better suited to a dentist’s office than a centuries-old Shrine. She wanted to ask Kikyo where the old pictures were but decided to take care of that later. Maybe she’d loosen up after the meal, and then she could ask her questions and make a hasty departure.
“Nice paintings!” she chirped, trying to sound like an appreciative house guest.
“They’re dreadful,” Kikyo muttered.
“My mother painted them,” Inuyasha explained, flashing her an apologetic smile.
Thinking it best to keep her mouth shut as much as possible for the remainder of her visit, she simply nodded and sat at the table in what had used to be her chair. That seemed to be alright, as Inuyasha took his place at the head and Kikyo across from her. “Dinner” consisted of a large salad with no dressing, some brown bread with large grains and seeds in it, and paella. Kagome groaned internally. If there was one thing she hated, it was paella. Her mother used to make it for birthdays, all but Kagome’s. She didn’t exactly know why she disliked it so much, but she knew that Kikyo knew she hated it. Instead of the rush of anger she had been expecting, she simply felt very, very sad. Without intending to, she sighed out loud. Sad was so much worse than angry.
“Wine?” Inuyasha asked, pouring her a full glass without her assent.
Red wine. She liked red wine. At least there was something at the table she enjoyed. She took a sip, watching Inuyasha and Kikyo serve themselves. He didn’t seem too keen on the choice of fare either, and he put only bread and a small spoonful of the vile paella on his plate. Kikyo’s portions were equally small, but she had salad. Kagome got the feeling that she enjoyed the food but was very much into retaining her figure, which she was only just now realizing was TV actress-sized, somewhere around two. Even smaller than she had been in high school. She wondered if Inuyasha could encircle her waist with both hands. Had he tried?
“Are you waiting for someone to serve you?” Kikyo asked, looking directly at her for the first time. “Things don’t work that way around here anymore.”
“N-no, I’m just—“
Her blushing stammering was interrupted by the sudden appearance of salad and a small piece of bread on her plate. Inuyasha had stood up and was spooning food onto her plate, his jaw clenched but the rest of him deceptively calm. His wife glared at him before going back to her meal, her fork screeching angrily against the surface of the porcelain plate.
“How’s work?” he asked cheerfully once he sat back in his seat.
“Pretty good,” Kagome answered, assuming he had been speaking to her since he had told her Kikyo did not have a job. “My boss has been really great.”
“Does he know about your condition?” Kikyo asked, not sounding the least bit interested.
“Well, I don’t have any sort of ‘condition’,” Kagome explained, treading carefully so as not to upset her sister. “And I’m going to tell him, just not now. I want him to get to know me first.”
“I would think that would be something you’d be required to tell an employer.”
“I haven’t had any long-term effects, so I don’t see why. Um, has Inuyasha told you what I do?”
“He told me you work in retail,” she said lazily, a hint of a mocking smile on her face.
“Well, it’s a children’s bookstore and publishing house. It’s really neat, actually, and everyone’s so nice and—“
“Good. And how much are you making? Minimum wage?”
“A few dollars above. I know it isn’t much, but it’s really all I need right now.”
“You’re living with your little friend from before, correct? The loud mouth.”
“Sango, yes.” Kagome was beginning to sweat, feeling like she was being grilled by an old-timey detective or something. She took another gulp of wine, surprised to see her glass was empty. Before she could even ask, Inuyasha gave her a refill. She smiled at him gratefully. “Um, so how have you been these past six years?”
Kikyo shrugged. “I graduated college early. Got my Bachelor’s in political science. Married Inuyasha. That’s about it.”
“Oh. Where’d you go to college?” she asked, feeling ridiculous and desperate. Was she really going to be the only one attempting a conversation?
“State.”
Kagome nodded and took a bite of salad, fighting the urge to spit it right back up onto her plate. It was gross! Did they eat like this every day or was Kikyo seriously that dedicated to making sure she didn’t ever want to come back?
“What about you, Inuyasha?”
“Nothing interesting.” Kikyo glared at him, something he missed. “Just started working at the company. Still there. Making my way up. I’ve been progressing steadily. I’m only two positions away from the top.”
“That’s great!” Kagome said with a smile, holding her glass out for another serving. It was the only even remotely palatable thing at the table, and even though she hadn’t tried the bread yet, she had no desire to, not being one who relished chipping a tooth in the name of health and fiber.
“It would be great for someone who didn’t own the company,” Kikyo said, resentment in her voice.
Inuyasha rolled his eyes wearily, and Kagome could tell this was something they had fought about many times before.
“Again, really? I do not own the entire company. My father did. I have to work just like everybody else.”
“So you’re just a normal employee?” Kagome asked, genuinely curious.
“W-well, not exactly,” he said hesitantly, and she smiled softly at him obviously trying to show off for her. “I mean, I own a good amount of shares, but profits aren’t like they used to be and this isn’t TV or anything. I didn’t automatically inherit his position, just the shares. So yeah, I’ve got some money, but I had to sell a lot of shares over the years so I don’t have the power. I want the power. The guys at the top are dad’s old friends, and they’re gunning for me, they want that for me too.”
Kikyo sniffed moodily. “I told you not to sell your shares. We could be on an island right now and you’d be working from your laptop once every Monday instead of this hell we’re going through now.”
“It’s not that kind of work, Kikyo,” he said, exasperated.
“I’m still not very clear on what kind of work it is!”
“Finance!”
“This wine is very good,” Kagome interrupted, trying to stop the fight before it happened.
“You shouldn’t be drinking that,” Kikyo said. “You’re not used to it.”
“It was my mom’s favorite kind.” Inuyasha ignored his wife and instead poured her another glass. “You’ve got good taste.”
“At least water it down,” Kikyo protested.
“It’s okay!” Kagome said, quick to reassure her, not wanting another fight. “I haven’t had that much.”
“I have a headache,” Kikyo muttered. “You bought the wrong light bulbs.”
“You always say that,” Inuyasha said, stuffing bread into his mouth.
Kagome drank her wine nervously. Maybe Kikyo had been right. She was starting to feel very warm and her head was going all floaty. “I don’t feel good, either,” she said, enunciating each word, knowing that if she didn’t she’d just end up lisping and stuttering.
“Take her home, Inuyasha.”
“It’s late. Let her spend the night.”
“It’s okay, guysh, I can call Sango and she’ll—“
“No!” Inuyasha said loudly, surprising everyone, himself included. “You’re our family. You stay here tonight.”
“Inuyasha,” Kikyo pleaded, her eyes going big and watery. “I thought we would finally spend some time together tonight. Alone.”
Kagome felt even worse. She just wanted to lie down and sleep.
“It’s Kagome’s home, too,” he said firmly. “She can stay in her old room.”
“Fine.” Kikyo stood up and left the room, her posture telling everyone that it most certainly was not fine.
“You okay?” he asked once they heard a door shut around the corner and down the hall. She opened her mouth to answer, but then the loud noise of an infomercial began to blare and she just stared at him. “Kikyo always does that. I usually wait an hour or two and then go in to check if she’s sleeping.”
“She hates me,” Kagome whispered mournfully before taking another sip of wine. She hadn’t meant to say that, but now that she had she didn’t regret it.
“Do you remember when I first met you?” he asked, his eyes softening the longer he looked at her.
“Yeah. At school. You were in love with Kikyo and you wanted me to introduce you to her,” she grumbled, glaring weakly at him.
He laughed and leaned back in his chair, his powerfully built body making the wood creak. “I was one of many, baby, don’t take it personally. A bunch of other guys dared me to go up to you and ask for her name and number, and I did it because it was middle school and the fuckin’ peer pressure got to me.” Kagome leaned her elbows on the table, resting her head on a hand. She had never heard his version of events before. “Anyway, I lost my nerve when I went up to you because I hadn’t realized that you were pretty too until I was right in your face. So I asked to eat lunch with you and then I freaked out because I’d be eating lunch with you, this girl whose name I didn’t even know, this girl I suddenly had a crush on.”
She grinned and blushed, this time not due to the alcohol. “You were completely quiet the entire time. I thought you hated me. How come you’ve never told me this before?”
“I could never hate you,” he said sincerely, reaching out his hand and grasping one of hers. “There were so many things I wanted to tell you while you were sleeping, things I never thought to tell you before. Now we have time.”
“I always liked you. Even when we were in different classes and never talked, I liked you. Not in a crush way, I just… liked you,” she finished with a shrug, the wine having successfully impeded her ability to properly express herself.
“I wish I noticed you sooner. Six years sooner, to make up for the time we lost.”
“We would have been in kindergarten,” she said with a smile. “You would have pulled my hair and I would have screamed and hit you and that would have set the tune for our entire relationship.”
“So, when did you first start to, you know, like me like me?” he asked with a smile, his fingers leaving her hand for her thigh. Thankfully, he stayed over her clothes.
“Like a month after we started hanging out and Sango asked me who my secret boyfriend was. I immediately thought of you, and my heart started pounding. How about you?”
“The first time I went over to your house.” Kagome nodded. It was the Friday of the week they had first begun to talk. Knowing that he had liked her in that way first gave her all sorts of tingly feelings inside. “You went to the bathroom and I got bored and started going through your stuff, and I found your underwear drawer. I started imagining you wearing them and I had my first wet dream that night,” he said, watching her reaction with amusement on his face.
“You pervert!” she said in an outraged whisper. “I was eleven years old!”
“I was only a year older. Not exactly wrong,” he said dismissively. “What’s wrong is that I took a pair and I still have ‘em.”
Kagome gasped, horrified. “That’s so gross!”
Inuyasha shook his head. “Nope. It’s not gross because I don’t picture sixth grade Kagome when I close my eyes at night, I picture you the way you are now. You wanna see something?”
“I swear to god, Inuyasha, if you whip out your dick, I will scream.”
He laughed. “Not that.” His eyes were serious again and he took her hand. “It’s in the backyard, come on.”
Inuyasha shoved open the sliding glass door with his foot and flicked on a light switch, bathing the backyard that was much more well-manicured than she remembered. It was chilly out, and she wished she still had his jacket. Her thoughts stopped, however, when at the same time her eyes landed on a monument and his arm went around her shoulders.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah,” he whispered, kissing her cheekbone softly. “I had special permission to get their ashes placed in the backyard. Do you wanna see? We can go back inside if you’re not ready.”
She shook her head. “No, I want to see.”
Holding onto him for strength, Kagome stepped forward until she was directly in front of the marble structure that housed the precious mortal remains of her loved ones. On the left was her grandfather’s side, which included a picture of him in his youth on his first date with the woman he would later marry, the grandmother she had never known. Below that was a picture of him in his old age seated with Kagome on his lap, just a baby swaddled in a pink and white blanket, toddler Kikyo to his right looking uncomfortably impatient, and their mother and father standing behind them beaming. Her father would go on to die a mere few months later in a plane crash.
It was harder for her to look at her mother’s side, but she managed. It showed her mother’s wedding picture, when she was a young bride with nothing but love and dreams. Beneath it was a different family photo, her mother’s favorite. Kagome had been only seven and had just finished performing her part in the school play. Her mother thought it was the greatest thing ever and had bragged to all her friends about how her daughter was chosen to play the main character. Technically, Kagome was a main character, but she only had about two lines since she was the princess who was kidnapped at the beginning of the play and rescued at the end, absent for a huge chunk of time in between. Still, her mother had taken upwards of a hundred photos. In the one that decorated her resting place, Kagome, still in costume, and her mother were both facing the camera, with her mother hugging her from behind and looking incredibly happy. Her grandfather was next to them, looking bored out of his mind. Kikyo had taken the picture, like she usually did.
“D-did she really… Did she really kill herself?” Her voice was just a breath, a tiny high-pitched whisper when she actually wanted to scream.
“She had a lot of problems, Kagome. She had money problems and was losing the Shrine. Your grandfather died a few months after your accident. Kikyo and I were already married and living across town, and they fought a lot so they hardly ever saw one another. She spent all her days with you in the hospital and all her nights watching TV or your old home movies. She just… She couldn’t take it anymore, baby.” His voice had a pleading quality to it, begging her not to cry, not to hurt.
“How?” she said with a sniff, drying the few tears that had escaped.
Inuyasha sighed, not wanting to tell her, but when he saw the determined dimpling of her chin, he gave in, as he always had and always would. “She had some prescriptions. She couldn’t sleep. She told me that she just kept seeing you, over and over, hearing the car hit you. Well, last spring she bought a bottle of bourbon, took the entire bottle of pills and just kept drinking until she passed out. She never woke up.”
“Did you find her?”
“Kikyo and I both did. We were supposed to take her out for Mother’s Day.”
“Where? Where did she die? In bed?”
“Right here,” he said, pointedly looking at where the remains were. “That’s why I had it put in the backyard. Was there anything special about this particular place? I always got the feeling that there was, but Kikyo said no.”
“Before Sango, I didn’t really have friends,” she said in quiet voice. “She was my only friend. Mama. We used to camp out here when I had a bad day at school. We’d look out at the stars and she’d tell me that the rest of the kids were just like them, but I was special. I was the sun, the greatest star.”
They both looked up at the same time, their hands having found each other.
“You know,” he started, his voice caressing her ears, “we’ve replaced starlight with neon. Sunlight with fluorescents. But the sun and stars last. You don’t have to change them every couple of years, and they’re always beautiful, no matter how long they’re around. Neon comes in pretty colors, and fluorescent is practical, but they give you a headache after a while.” Kagome just stared at him, wondering how much wine he had consumed to make him ramble on like that. “What I’m trying to say is that you are my star, my moon, my sun. Kikyo’s just fluorescent neon.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, squeezing his hand. “Inuyasha? I don’t think I can walk.” Her knees were trembling and her feet felt weird. She no longer felt hot and headachey, she felt all sorts of floaty and a little sluggish.
“Let me carry you over the threshold,” he said smoothly, flashing her one of his charming grins that, however beautiful they were, did not compare to his sincere smiles that always caught the both of them off guard. “Kikyo and I took your mom’s old room on the first floor. I cleared the stuff she stored in your room. It’s just your bed and desk in there now. I put some clean sheets and blankets on.” Without further ado, he swept her up in his strong arms. It took her a few seconds to notice, but when she did, she began to giggle like crazy.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, reaching up to cup his face. “So good and handsome.”
Then they were in her room, and he lowered her gently to her bed, which was comfortable even though it didn’t have her old blankets and sheets since they were now on her new bed at Sango’s apartment.
“I remember how your mom would never let me stay over, not even when I lied and told her my mom and dad let me,” he said with a smile, his face very close to hers.
“She thought you were trouble,” she whispered, her eyes crossing slightly before focusing again. “You can stay over now, though.”
“A-are you sure?” he whispered, his eyes darting around. “What about Kikyo?”
“What about her?” Kagome said, her voice cracking with hurt. “She’s got the TV on super loud, and you said that you usually wait a while before going into bed.” He looked like he was going to refuse, but she grabbed his hand. It was suddenly of the utmost importance that he stay with her. “We’ll lock the door, okay? It’ll be fine. I love you, Inuyasha.”
His eyes went from being filled with caution to moist with feeling. “Okay, but we’ll have to keep it down, baby. No giggling like at regular sleepovers.”
She nodded eagerly, and he went up to lock the door, hurrying back to her side and crawling in next to her. Immediately, before he could even get himself settled, she rolled over onto him and attached her lips to his. He tasted a little like paella, but mostly like wine, so it wasn’t that bad. Inuyasha tried to protest, but she persisted, and eventually he was breathing hard, his hands all over her body. She was gasping into his mouth, grinding herself into his thigh, wanting to feel what he had made her feel what seemed like far too long ago.
“I’ve always dreamed of this,” he whispered, breaking apart from her. “For ten years, Kagome. An entire decade of my life, half my life, where you have been all I care about.”
His hands went to the bodice of her dress and he yanked down, exploring her breasts in the room lit only by the street lamps outside. Inuyasha’s hands were large and rough on her skin, but so warm. She sighed, feeling every muscle tremble. His hands went to her ribs, and she rose to her knees, still leaning over him, somehow knowing what he wanted her to do without him telling her. Her breasts now dangling over his face, they made eye contact for a split second before he hugged her to him, his mouth going directly to an already straining nipple. She cried out, unprepared for the sensations, and he stopped to glare at her. Looking at him in apology, she covered her mouth and he went back to work, a devilish glint in his eyes. He sucked harder and licked up and down and around with his tongue, teasing the nipple, eventually plucking with his lips. She felt herself soak down below and she hummed against her hand, wanting him there like she had never wanted anything.
Inuyasha seemed as attuned to her as she was to him, and he pulled her dress down further before reality hit Kagome with a painful jolt. Her scars. She couldn’t allow him to see her scars or even feel them.
“No!” she yelped, yanking herself back from him.
His expression went from surprise, to hurt, to anger. “What the fuck do you mean ‘no’?! I’ve been telling you how I feel and you jump on top of me and just—“
“I-it’s not like that!” she protested softly, pulling her dress up so that it covered the scars on her back but still left her breasts exposed. “I just want tonight to be about you. Please?”
He stared at her and then nodded, his negative mood fading with each kiss she gave him. She started with his mouth, moved to his jaw and neck, then to his chest. His t-shirt got in the way so she pulled it off, running her hands down his bared flesh. He had become so much more beautiful. Realizing that she had never seen him completely nude before, she suddenly wanted to. With his help, she removed his pants, taking his underwear off with it. His cock stood tall and proud, and she gulped. Was she really prepared to do anything at all with him? They had been apart for years, and he had certainly grown in more than a few ways. Closing her eyes to will away the sudden spurt of dizziness, she opened them again and tried to study the penis in front of her objectively, desperately trying not to think of spit and buttholes and disgusting pornos. She had always thought dicks to be sort of ugly, but Inuyasha’s was actually nice. It was like a model penis, perfect in every way. Not so large as to be frightening, but not small and sad-looking either.
She could totally do this.
“I love you so much, Inuyasha,” she said, her lips moving against the head of his cock. “So much.”
She felt his muscles clench as she took him into her mouth, and then it was his turn to muffle his cries, his turn to feel helpless. Kagome tried her best, recalling everything from bits of the porno Sango had shown her to stuff she had heard about way back in high school. It seemed to be good enough for Inuyasha, who was panting and sweating, naked on her sheets, his muscles rippling in the dim light. Tentatively, she brought her hand down and fondled his sack, growing bolder and playing with it when he choked on a gasp and moaned, almost taking his hand off his mouth. She bobbed her head and twirled her tongue as best she could, trying to make it feel good for him with all her limited experience. Just when she was sure her jaw would never recover, he grunted into his palm and came in her mouth. She swallowed even though she really, really, really didn’t want to because she remembered hearing somewhere that guys totally liked that sort of thing for some incomprehensible reason. Kagome didn’t understand how force feeding someone something so vile was at all sexy, but she was willing to do it for him.
Exhausted, she crawled back to the pillow and flopped down on it, wondering why Inuyasha was having such a hard time recovering when she was the one doing all the work.
“Thank you, Kagome, that was— Fuck, I love you,” he breathed, smiling like an idiot.
Happy that he was happy, she fell asleep, her last thoughts ones of mouthwash.
O/o/O
Kagome woke in the morning to a pounding head and a room filled with the gray light of early morning. Brushing her hair out of her face and mouth, where it had somehow migrated in her sleep, she looked around. Inuyasha was gone. It was what she had expected, but it still made her sad. A wave of nausea overtook her and she stumbled out of bed, half running, half dragging herself to the bathroom. There was steam coming out from under the door, but if she didn’t make it in, she was going to puke everywhere, and she really didn’t feel like embarrassing herself much more. She didn’t even care who was in there, if it was Kikyo who’d yell at her or Inuyasha who’d laugh, tease her, and try to entice her into joining him even though they both knew that was not possible.
Throwing open the door, she stopped only one step inside. Instead of one person in the shower, there were two. She could see them clearly through the glass door. Inuyasha and Kikyo, sharing the tiny space and happily washing each other, like a real couple. A married couple. The real, married couple that they were.
Unable to control herself anymore, she vomited a stream of red and yellow all over the floor, droplets falling on her dress. She wiped her mouth with the hem of her dress, feeling numb inside and outside. The guilt and heartbreak pulsed inside of her like another organ, expanding and expanding in between breaths until she feared it would break open her ribcage and show the world how truly rotten inside she had become.
The shower door was open and Kikyo was screaming something at her. Inuyasha was staring at her in shock from behind her sister, his wife, his wife of three entire years, half the time she had been sleeping. And they had been together since her accident. What was she doing here, at their home?
“Kagome!” Inuyasha said, maneuvering around Kikyo and exiting the shower. She didn’t want to, didn’t mean to, but she stared at the defining part of his anatomy. Seeing it now brought tears to her eyes. What was last night? What had that been to him? She had done something she had no right to, touched something that had never and would never belong to her. Inuyasha stumbled coming out of the shower, one foot near her puddle of grossness. Thinking fast, he grabbed a towel from the rack and flung it down over the mess right before he was about to step in it.
“Not the goddamn guest towels, Inuyasha!” Kikyo screeched, outraged. “That is it! Get the hell out of my house, Kagome!”
Concentrating on keeping the tears in her eyes and not on her face, Kagome backed away, her legs feeling incredibly weak.
“Kagome, wait!” Inuyasha yelled, which was completely unnecessary since they were only a couple feet from each other. “I have to drive you, remember?!”
Seeing that she would not wait like he had asked, he grabbed another towel and wrapped it around his waist, securing it. It was lilac and made him look ridiculous. Kagome began to cry at how crazy everything was and ran out of her former home and down the steep steps, Inuyasha running wildly behind her. It was a miracle in itself that neither of them slipped. When she reached the car, she tugged on the handle frantically, just wanting to curl up and sleep, but it was locked. She felt like screaming. The car beeped and she hurried inside, sparing a brief thought as to how Inuyasha had managed to remember his keys after such a scene. Just remembering it made her open the door so she could puke again, which she did with great, heaving gasps and painful gagging.
By the time she was done, Inuyasha was in the car and had started it. She didn’t even want to look at him, didn’t want to see his face, the expression he was wearing. If he pitied her, that was bad. If he didn’t, that was worse. After a while, he got the hint and began to drive, considerately rolling the window down for her.
“You threw up my cum back there.”
“I wish you slipped in it.”
He sighed. “Kikyo and I always shower together. We weren’t doing anything. If I don’t keep showering with her, she’ll know something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up. Not anymore. So keep on showering with your wife and stick your dick down her throat from now on,” she said in an angry whisper, her own words making her feel sick again.
Inuyasha hit the steering wheel, the sound affecting her like a physical blow and making her flinch. “Fuck, Kagome! I’m really trying to make this work without having everything in our lives go to hell. If I fuck this up and make her mad, then I could lose my job and the Shrine and end up paying fuckin’ alimony for the rest of forever. I love you, but I don’t think you’d be very happy with me if you had to support the both of us on your salary.”
She said nothing for a while, just appreciated the cool breeze in her hair and the warm sun on her skin. Why couldn’t everything feel as good and simple and right as that?
“I’ll always love you no matter what, Inuyasha,” she said, her voice now quiet and gentle. “It seems as though I can’t help it, even when it comes to things like last night and I know even in the very moment that if I show you I love you, I’ll lose my soul. I can’t not love you.”
“Then wait. And be patient.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he hissed, his hands clenching the wheel.
“I’m going to give Kōga a chance.”
“The fuck you are!” he yelled. She had never heard him sound so angry. Did he not understand that this was breaking her heart as well? “That lousy bastard’s a complete creep.”
“You’ve never even met him,” she said, feeling very drained. “He told me he loves me. Well, he said he thinks he’s falling in love with me.”
Inuyasha laughed, the sound harsh and cruel. “And you fuckin’ believed him? Wow, maybe you are brain damaged.”
“I do believe him. He’s doing well for himself. He’s a great guy and he loves me and he’s not married to my sister or anyone else.”
Inuyasha braked, ignoring the sounds of the screeching horns and angry yells of the commuters around them. They were about a mile away from her apartment.
“Get out,” he growled, his tone dangerous, telling her that what she had said was unforgivable. “If that’s how you want it, then get the fuck out.”
“Alright.”
Kagome tried not to cry, tried not to hate him and everything about him, tried not to keep loving him. Her feet hurt from having worn shoes the entire night, her dress was splattered with vomit, she was tired and sore and there was no sidewalk for another half a mile.
“I’m such a fucking idiot,” she murmured to herself, allowing a few tears to fall. “An idiot.”
(I’m a Fool to Want You by Billie Holiday)
Raining hairspray down on her head, Kagome coughed and attempted to keep her eyes open as she fluffed her hair with a comb. She had always had better hair than Kikyo and she felt compelled to remind her sister that she was not superior to her in every single way. Her make-up already done expertly by Sango, she slipped her hands into her strapless bra that she had bought specifically for the dark purple strapless maxi dress she wore that clung to her thighs and outlined them just so, readjusting her breasts to her satisfaction. Smirking at her reflection, eyes on her full C-cups, Kagome took a moment to just appreciate the fact that she was no longer a slave to padded push-up bras. She had considered going without a bra, but that would just make Kikyo roll her eyes and she didn’t even want to think about how Inuyasha would react to something like that. Practicing her best little sister/vapid beauty pageant contestant smile, she told herself for the thousandth time that it was just dinner with her sister and her brother-in-law and everything was fine, everything was cool.
“You done?” Sango asked, popping her head in. Her brown eyes went wide and she gasped. “Oh my freaking god, Kagome, you have turned me gay.”
She laughed and pushed past her friend. Inuyasha had been waiting outside the apartment for quite some time, forced to dwell on the doorstep or listen to Sango’s annoying pop music. Slipping on some high-heeled sandals, she wobbled as fast as she could to the door, hoping she hadn’t kept him waiting for too long and that he hadn’t decided to leave and cancel dinner. She knew the fear was irrational, but that didn’t stop her from having it.
“Bye, Sango!” she called out, not turning around as she opened the door.
Inuyasha was right there, and they were nose to nose, his dark eyes holding hers and taking her breath away before he backed up and they raked down her body, making her shiver.
“You’re cold,” he said, taking off his jacket and putting it over her shoulders.
Dumbly, she clasped it to her, wondering what it was that made her want him so badly so suddenly. She had been determined to mostly ignore him, but he just seemed so, well, delicious. It was possible that it had something to do with not seeing him for a week after he promised to try and get Kikyo to agree to dinner. They had talked a lot, though, and he had updated her on everything. Inuyasha had spent all his free time softening Kikyo with gifts, such as trips to an expensive spa, flowers, movie nights in, expensive foreign chocolates that sounded kind of gross but in a pretty way. She wondered if he told her all those details because he was oblivious or because he wanted her to be jealous, to see the life she could have. If the latter was his intention, it had certainly worked, not that she’d ever admit it to anyone.
All the same, she wasn’t going to go rushing into his arms. This dinner was about her and Kikyo reconnecting, about her showing Kikyo that she was no longer a little girl so easily dismissed and detested. Kagome was a woman now, making a living herself and everything. They had another chance at being a family, a real one. They could get to know each other. Yeah, it would be weird, considering they had both loved Inuyasha, but that was not the point. The point was that they were both alive.
They were in the car, driving the nostalgic route to the Shrine, when Inuyasha broke her trance. “I’m going to apologize ahead of time for Kikyo’s mood. I wasn’t able to mellow her out all the way, only enough to get her to agree to see you.”
“Oh,” Kagome said quietly, still let down even though she had been expecting something of that sort. She didn’t allow herself to get her hopes up about anything anymore. “You tried your best, Inuyasha. Thank you.”
His eyes glanced away from the road and he flashed her a grin, reaching out a hand to clasp her sweaty ones that were folded tightly on her lap. “Everything I did would be worth it if you would just smile like you used to instead of some weird sort of clown mannequin.”
She laughed, her posture which had been gradually stiffening relaxing under his small touch. “Is she really, really mad?”
Inuyasha sighed. “Honestly? I don’t understand her anymore. I don’t think I ever did.”
The ride was silent after that, and it was only a few minutes before he pulled up in front of her childhood home. Her hands shook as she opened the door, the stairs seeming to go on forever. She had never even really noticed before. It had certainly been a while since she had been used to going up and down at least twice a day. Hopefully she wouldn’t embarrass herself and have to stop to rest her legs or just breathe.
“Worrying about the stairs? You shouldn’t. You did gain weight, but not a lot. It looks good on you.”
Kagome glared at him, intending to slap him until she saw the look in his eyes. It was the same one he had given her that night after he punched out Hojo and they were in the car and he kissed her. It made her feel a little sick, but mostly like crying. What did he want from her? What did he think he could get?
“I was just wondering how you managed to carry Kikyo over the threshold. Or did she carry you?”
He scowled at her and she smirked. Inuyasha had been a little small growing up, but that was okay because she had always been small as well. In the year before her accident, he had grown in leaps and bounds, astounding everyone. His previous stature had always been a sore point for him from that time on, a sore point Kagome was glad to see he still possessed. All his new confidence had been close to overwhelming.
“Race you to the top?” he said, something in his voice reminding her of when they were young. She used to say the same thing to him every time they’d play, but he would always beat her, even his very first time visiting.
She was already running, and he grabbed the hem of her skirt, both of them laughing as he did so. Somehow, they were grasping hands, and racing not each other but time instead. Kagome could almost see the miniature versions of themselves racing alongside them, so happy and innocent, unknowing of the future. She wanted to cry for the child she had been, the children that they had been. So many lost years. But maybe they would have just broken up anyway, she mused to herself. It had seemed impossible to her at the time, but it was always that way with one’s first romance. Even still, Kagome knew she would have always loved him. No one else would ever come close.
“Woo!” he yelled once they had gotten to the top. She was panting and sweaty, the only reason she had reached the top at the same time he did being that he had dragged her most of the way. They were both smiling and she knew her hair and make-up were a mess, but he didn’t seem to care. She didn’t either. His hands grasped both her upper arms, holding her upright and close to him. “Welcome home, Kagome.”
Those words almost did her in and she wanted to cry, but she didn’t see the sense in further ruining the job Sango had done on her face. Inuyasha was looking at her with those eyes, his murky, glorious eyes, and she knew he was going to kiss her and she was going to let him. She just didn’t have a choice when it came to him. She could allow the one small sign of affection, of love. His face came closer to hers and her eyelids drifted halfway shut, feeling like their lips were magnets.
“You’re back.”
The voice sent her eyes flying wide open, Inuyasha’s as well. Quickly, they separated, knowing that it would make them look even guiltier but unable to stop themselves.
Kikyo was dressed beautifully in a casual white dress that fit like it was made for her. Even so, Kagome got the feeling that she had not dressed for the occasion like she had. Kikyo was just always dressed like that. Suddenly, she felt very drab. She could just picture how she looked to the older girl: smudged eyeliner and mascara, foundation rubbed away to reveal her perpetually reddish nose, hair that was flat in some places and full in others, a cheap dress that kept falling down and pinching her armpits in a weird way, throwing herself at her brother-in-law right in front of her older sister.
Disgusting and shameful.
“Come inside, then. The weather’s not right for a patio party,” Kikyo said in her smooth, quiet voice that she had tried her hardest to emulate when she was a child.
Kagome wanted to cry for possibly the thousandth time in ten minutes. If her mother had been there, she would have made Kikyo be nice to her. She would have hugged her and never let her go for the rest of the night, not even to say hello to her grandfather, who would tease her and then promptly fall asleep in his chair for the rest of the evening. But they were dead. She had grieved in the hospital and then resolved to forget about it and move on until she reached a point in her life where she could take the time to stop and just cry whenever she wanted to without worrying whether someone would talk to her, try to console her and only end up making it worse. It wasn’t that time yet.
“H-hey, Kikyo,” she said lamely, wishing she had brought Sango or even Kōga or Hojo, anyone so she didn’t feel so completely alone.
“Dinner has been on the table for ten minutes,” she said sternly, directing her words at Inuyasha.
“Uh, alright. Let’s go, Kagome,” he said nervously, not looking at her.
The interior of the house was as unchanged as the exterior, apart from the not-so-small detail that all the pictures of them as a family had been replaced by paintings of flowers that looked better suited to a dentist’s office than a centuries-old Shrine. She wanted to ask Kikyo where the old pictures were but decided to take care of that later. Maybe she’d loosen up after the meal, and then she could ask her questions and make a hasty departure.
“Nice paintings!” she chirped, trying to sound like an appreciative house guest.
“They’re dreadful,” Kikyo muttered.
“My mother painted them,” Inuyasha explained, flashing her an apologetic smile.
Thinking it best to keep her mouth shut as much as possible for the remainder of her visit, she simply nodded and sat at the table in what had used to be her chair. That seemed to be alright, as Inuyasha took his place at the head and Kikyo across from her. “Dinner” consisted of a large salad with no dressing, some brown bread with large grains and seeds in it, and paella. Kagome groaned internally. If there was one thing she hated, it was paella. Her mother used to make it for birthdays, all but Kagome’s. She didn’t exactly know why she disliked it so much, but she knew that Kikyo knew she hated it. Instead of the rush of anger she had been expecting, she simply felt very, very sad. Without intending to, she sighed out loud. Sad was so much worse than angry.
“Wine?” Inuyasha asked, pouring her a full glass without her assent.
Red wine. She liked red wine. At least there was something at the table she enjoyed. She took a sip, watching Inuyasha and Kikyo serve themselves. He didn’t seem too keen on the choice of fare either, and he put only bread and a small spoonful of the vile paella on his plate. Kikyo’s portions were equally small, but she had salad. Kagome got the feeling that she enjoyed the food but was very much into retaining her figure, which she was only just now realizing was TV actress-sized, somewhere around two. Even smaller than she had been in high school. She wondered if Inuyasha could encircle her waist with both hands. Had he tried?
“Are you waiting for someone to serve you?” Kikyo asked, looking directly at her for the first time. “Things don’t work that way around here anymore.”
“N-no, I’m just—“
Her blushing stammering was interrupted by the sudden appearance of salad and a small piece of bread on her plate. Inuyasha had stood up and was spooning food onto her plate, his jaw clenched but the rest of him deceptively calm. His wife glared at him before going back to her meal, her fork screeching angrily against the surface of the porcelain plate.
“How’s work?” he asked cheerfully once he sat back in his seat.
“Pretty good,” Kagome answered, assuming he had been speaking to her since he had told her Kikyo did not have a job. “My boss has been really great.”
“Does he know about your condition?” Kikyo asked, not sounding the least bit interested.
“Well, I don’t have any sort of ‘condition’,” Kagome explained, treading carefully so as not to upset her sister. “And I’m going to tell him, just not now. I want him to get to know me first.”
“I would think that would be something you’d be required to tell an employer.”
“I haven’t had any long-term effects, so I don’t see why. Um, has Inuyasha told you what I do?”
“He told me you work in retail,” she said lazily, a hint of a mocking smile on her face.
“Well, it’s a children’s bookstore and publishing house. It’s really neat, actually, and everyone’s so nice and—“
“Good. And how much are you making? Minimum wage?”
“A few dollars above. I know it isn’t much, but it’s really all I need right now.”
“You’re living with your little friend from before, correct? The loud mouth.”
“Sango, yes.” Kagome was beginning to sweat, feeling like she was being grilled by an old-timey detective or something. She took another gulp of wine, surprised to see her glass was empty. Before she could even ask, Inuyasha gave her a refill. She smiled at him gratefully. “Um, so how have you been these past six years?”
Kikyo shrugged. “I graduated college early. Got my Bachelor’s in political science. Married Inuyasha. That’s about it.”
“Oh. Where’d you go to college?” she asked, feeling ridiculous and desperate. Was she really going to be the only one attempting a conversation?
“State.”
Kagome nodded and took a bite of salad, fighting the urge to spit it right back up onto her plate. It was gross! Did they eat like this every day or was Kikyo seriously that dedicated to making sure she didn’t ever want to come back?
“What about you, Inuyasha?”
“Nothing interesting.” Kikyo glared at him, something he missed. “Just started working at the company. Still there. Making my way up. I’ve been progressing steadily. I’m only two positions away from the top.”
“That’s great!” Kagome said with a smile, holding her glass out for another serving. It was the only even remotely palatable thing at the table, and even though she hadn’t tried the bread yet, she had no desire to, not being one who relished chipping a tooth in the name of health and fiber.
“It would be great for someone who didn’t own the company,” Kikyo said, resentment in her voice.
Inuyasha rolled his eyes wearily, and Kagome could tell this was something they had fought about many times before.
“Again, really? I do not own the entire company. My father did. I have to work just like everybody else.”
“So you’re just a normal employee?” Kagome asked, genuinely curious.
“W-well, not exactly,” he said hesitantly, and she smiled softly at him obviously trying to show off for her. “I mean, I own a good amount of shares, but profits aren’t like they used to be and this isn’t TV or anything. I didn’t automatically inherit his position, just the shares. So yeah, I’ve got some money, but I had to sell a lot of shares over the years so I don’t have the power. I want the power. The guys at the top are dad’s old friends, and they’re gunning for me, they want that for me too.”
Kikyo sniffed moodily. “I told you not to sell your shares. We could be on an island right now and you’d be working from your laptop once every Monday instead of this hell we’re going through now.”
“It’s not that kind of work, Kikyo,” he said, exasperated.
“I’m still not very clear on what kind of work it is!”
“Finance!”
“This wine is very good,” Kagome interrupted, trying to stop the fight before it happened.
“You shouldn’t be drinking that,” Kikyo said. “You’re not used to it.”
“It was my mom’s favorite kind.” Inuyasha ignored his wife and instead poured her another glass. “You’ve got good taste.”
“At least water it down,” Kikyo protested.
“It’s okay!” Kagome said, quick to reassure her, not wanting another fight. “I haven’t had that much.”
“I have a headache,” Kikyo muttered. “You bought the wrong light bulbs.”
“You always say that,” Inuyasha said, stuffing bread into his mouth.
Kagome drank her wine nervously. Maybe Kikyo had been right. She was starting to feel very warm and her head was going all floaty. “I don’t feel good, either,” she said, enunciating each word, knowing that if she didn’t she’d just end up lisping and stuttering.
“Take her home, Inuyasha.”
“It’s late. Let her spend the night.”
“It’s okay, guysh, I can call Sango and she’ll—“
“No!” Inuyasha said loudly, surprising everyone, himself included. “You’re our family. You stay here tonight.”
“Inuyasha,” Kikyo pleaded, her eyes going big and watery. “I thought we would finally spend some time together tonight. Alone.”
Kagome felt even worse. She just wanted to lie down and sleep.
“It’s Kagome’s home, too,” he said firmly. “She can stay in her old room.”
“Fine.” Kikyo stood up and left the room, her posture telling everyone that it most certainly was not fine.
“You okay?” he asked once they heard a door shut around the corner and down the hall. She opened her mouth to answer, but then the loud noise of an infomercial began to blare and she just stared at him. “Kikyo always does that. I usually wait an hour or two and then go in to check if she’s sleeping.”
“She hates me,” Kagome whispered mournfully before taking another sip of wine. She hadn’t meant to say that, but now that she had she didn’t regret it.
“Do you remember when I first met you?” he asked, his eyes softening the longer he looked at her.
“Yeah. At school. You were in love with Kikyo and you wanted me to introduce you to her,” she grumbled, glaring weakly at him.
He laughed and leaned back in his chair, his powerfully built body making the wood creak. “I was one of many, baby, don’t take it personally. A bunch of other guys dared me to go up to you and ask for her name and number, and I did it because it was middle school and the fuckin’ peer pressure got to me.” Kagome leaned her elbows on the table, resting her head on a hand. She had never heard his version of events before. “Anyway, I lost my nerve when I went up to you because I hadn’t realized that you were pretty too until I was right in your face. So I asked to eat lunch with you and then I freaked out because I’d be eating lunch with you, this girl whose name I didn’t even know, this girl I suddenly had a crush on.”
She grinned and blushed, this time not due to the alcohol. “You were completely quiet the entire time. I thought you hated me. How come you’ve never told me this before?”
“I could never hate you,” he said sincerely, reaching out his hand and grasping one of hers. “There were so many things I wanted to tell you while you were sleeping, things I never thought to tell you before. Now we have time.”
“I always liked you. Even when we were in different classes and never talked, I liked you. Not in a crush way, I just… liked you,” she finished with a shrug, the wine having successfully impeded her ability to properly express herself.
“I wish I noticed you sooner. Six years sooner, to make up for the time we lost.”
“We would have been in kindergarten,” she said with a smile. “You would have pulled my hair and I would have screamed and hit you and that would have set the tune for our entire relationship.”
“So, when did you first start to, you know, like me like me?” he asked with a smile, his fingers leaving her hand for her thigh. Thankfully, he stayed over her clothes.
“Like a month after we started hanging out and Sango asked me who my secret boyfriend was. I immediately thought of you, and my heart started pounding. How about you?”
“The first time I went over to your house.” Kagome nodded. It was the Friday of the week they had first begun to talk. Knowing that he had liked her in that way first gave her all sorts of tingly feelings inside. “You went to the bathroom and I got bored and started going through your stuff, and I found your underwear drawer. I started imagining you wearing them and I had my first wet dream that night,” he said, watching her reaction with amusement on his face.
“You pervert!” she said in an outraged whisper. “I was eleven years old!”
“I was only a year older. Not exactly wrong,” he said dismissively. “What’s wrong is that I took a pair and I still have ‘em.”
Kagome gasped, horrified. “That’s so gross!”
Inuyasha shook his head. “Nope. It’s not gross because I don’t picture sixth grade Kagome when I close my eyes at night, I picture you the way you are now. You wanna see something?”
“I swear to god, Inuyasha, if you whip out your dick, I will scream.”
He laughed. “Not that.” His eyes were serious again and he took her hand. “It’s in the backyard, come on.”
Inuyasha shoved open the sliding glass door with his foot and flicked on a light switch, bathing the backyard that was much more well-manicured than she remembered. It was chilly out, and she wished she still had his jacket. Her thoughts stopped, however, when at the same time her eyes landed on a monument and his arm went around her shoulders.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah,” he whispered, kissing her cheekbone softly. “I had special permission to get their ashes placed in the backyard. Do you wanna see? We can go back inside if you’re not ready.”
She shook her head. “No, I want to see.”
Holding onto him for strength, Kagome stepped forward until she was directly in front of the marble structure that housed the precious mortal remains of her loved ones. On the left was her grandfather’s side, which included a picture of him in his youth on his first date with the woman he would later marry, the grandmother she had never known. Below that was a picture of him in his old age seated with Kagome on his lap, just a baby swaddled in a pink and white blanket, toddler Kikyo to his right looking uncomfortably impatient, and their mother and father standing behind them beaming. Her father would go on to die a mere few months later in a plane crash.
It was harder for her to look at her mother’s side, but she managed. It showed her mother’s wedding picture, when she was a young bride with nothing but love and dreams. Beneath it was a different family photo, her mother’s favorite. Kagome had been only seven and had just finished performing her part in the school play. Her mother thought it was the greatest thing ever and had bragged to all her friends about how her daughter was chosen to play the main character. Technically, Kagome was a main character, but she only had about two lines since she was the princess who was kidnapped at the beginning of the play and rescued at the end, absent for a huge chunk of time in between. Still, her mother had taken upwards of a hundred photos. In the one that decorated her resting place, Kagome, still in costume, and her mother were both facing the camera, with her mother hugging her from behind and looking incredibly happy. Her grandfather was next to them, looking bored out of his mind. Kikyo had taken the picture, like she usually did.
“D-did she really… Did she really kill herself?” Her voice was just a breath, a tiny high-pitched whisper when she actually wanted to scream.
“She had a lot of problems, Kagome. She had money problems and was losing the Shrine. Your grandfather died a few months after your accident. Kikyo and I were already married and living across town, and they fought a lot so they hardly ever saw one another. She spent all her days with you in the hospital and all her nights watching TV or your old home movies. She just… She couldn’t take it anymore, baby.” His voice had a pleading quality to it, begging her not to cry, not to hurt.
“How?” she said with a sniff, drying the few tears that had escaped.
Inuyasha sighed, not wanting to tell her, but when he saw the determined dimpling of her chin, he gave in, as he always had and always would. “She had some prescriptions. She couldn’t sleep. She told me that she just kept seeing you, over and over, hearing the car hit you. Well, last spring she bought a bottle of bourbon, took the entire bottle of pills and just kept drinking until she passed out. She never woke up.”
“Did you find her?”
“Kikyo and I both did. We were supposed to take her out for Mother’s Day.”
“Where? Where did she die? In bed?”
“Right here,” he said, pointedly looking at where the remains were. “That’s why I had it put in the backyard. Was there anything special about this particular place? I always got the feeling that there was, but Kikyo said no.”
“Before Sango, I didn’t really have friends,” she said in quiet voice. “She was my only friend. Mama. We used to camp out here when I had a bad day at school. We’d look out at the stars and she’d tell me that the rest of the kids were just like them, but I was special. I was the sun, the greatest star.”
They both looked up at the same time, their hands having found each other.
“You know,” he started, his voice caressing her ears, “we’ve replaced starlight with neon. Sunlight with fluorescents. But the sun and stars last. You don’t have to change them every couple of years, and they’re always beautiful, no matter how long they’re around. Neon comes in pretty colors, and fluorescent is practical, but they give you a headache after a while.” Kagome just stared at him, wondering how much wine he had consumed to make him ramble on like that. “What I’m trying to say is that you are my star, my moon, my sun. Kikyo’s just fluorescent neon.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, squeezing his hand. “Inuyasha? I don’t think I can walk.” Her knees were trembling and her feet felt weird. She no longer felt hot and headachey, she felt all sorts of floaty and a little sluggish.
“Let me carry you over the threshold,” he said smoothly, flashing her one of his charming grins that, however beautiful they were, did not compare to his sincere smiles that always caught the both of them off guard. “Kikyo and I took your mom’s old room on the first floor. I cleared the stuff she stored in your room. It’s just your bed and desk in there now. I put some clean sheets and blankets on.” Without further ado, he swept her up in his strong arms. It took her a few seconds to notice, but when she did, she began to giggle like crazy.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, reaching up to cup his face. “So good and handsome.”
Then they were in her room, and he lowered her gently to her bed, which was comfortable even though it didn’t have her old blankets and sheets since they were now on her new bed at Sango’s apartment.
“I remember how your mom would never let me stay over, not even when I lied and told her my mom and dad let me,” he said with a smile, his face very close to hers.
“She thought you were trouble,” she whispered, her eyes crossing slightly before focusing again. “You can stay over now, though.”
“A-are you sure?” he whispered, his eyes darting around. “What about Kikyo?”
“What about her?” Kagome said, her voice cracking with hurt. “She’s got the TV on super loud, and you said that you usually wait a while before going into bed.” He looked like he was going to refuse, but she grabbed his hand. It was suddenly of the utmost importance that he stay with her. “We’ll lock the door, okay? It’ll be fine. I love you, Inuyasha.”
His eyes went from being filled with caution to moist with feeling. “Okay, but we’ll have to keep it down, baby. No giggling like at regular sleepovers.”
She nodded eagerly, and he went up to lock the door, hurrying back to her side and crawling in next to her. Immediately, before he could even get himself settled, she rolled over onto him and attached her lips to his. He tasted a little like paella, but mostly like wine, so it wasn’t that bad. Inuyasha tried to protest, but she persisted, and eventually he was breathing hard, his hands all over her body. She was gasping into his mouth, grinding herself into his thigh, wanting to feel what he had made her feel what seemed like far too long ago.
“I’ve always dreamed of this,” he whispered, breaking apart from her. “For ten years, Kagome. An entire decade of my life, half my life, where you have been all I care about.”
His hands went to the bodice of her dress and he yanked down, exploring her breasts in the room lit only by the street lamps outside. Inuyasha’s hands were large and rough on her skin, but so warm. She sighed, feeling every muscle tremble. His hands went to her ribs, and she rose to her knees, still leaning over him, somehow knowing what he wanted her to do without him telling her. Her breasts now dangling over his face, they made eye contact for a split second before he hugged her to him, his mouth going directly to an already straining nipple. She cried out, unprepared for the sensations, and he stopped to glare at her. Looking at him in apology, she covered her mouth and he went back to work, a devilish glint in his eyes. He sucked harder and licked up and down and around with his tongue, teasing the nipple, eventually plucking with his lips. She felt herself soak down below and she hummed against her hand, wanting him there like she had never wanted anything.
Inuyasha seemed as attuned to her as she was to him, and he pulled her dress down further before reality hit Kagome with a painful jolt. Her scars. She couldn’t allow him to see her scars or even feel them.
“No!” she yelped, yanking herself back from him.
His expression went from surprise, to hurt, to anger. “What the fuck do you mean ‘no’?! I’ve been telling you how I feel and you jump on top of me and just—“
“I-it’s not like that!” she protested softly, pulling her dress up so that it covered the scars on her back but still left her breasts exposed. “I just want tonight to be about you. Please?”
He stared at her and then nodded, his negative mood fading with each kiss she gave him. She started with his mouth, moved to his jaw and neck, then to his chest. His t-shirt got in the way so she pulled it off, running her hands down his bared flesh. He had become so much more beautiful. Realizing that she had never seen him completely nude before, she suddenly wanted to. With his help, she removed his pants, taking his underwear off with it. His cock stood tall and proud, and she gulped. Was she really prepared to do anything at all with him? They had been apart for years, and he had certainly grown in more than a few ways. Closing her eyes to will away the sudden spurt of dizziness, she opened them again and tried to study the penis in front of her objectively, desperately trying not to think of spit and buttholes and disgusting pornos. She had always thought dicks to be sort of ugly, but Inuyasha’s was actually nice. It was like a model penis, perfect in every way. Not so large as to be frightening, but not small and sad-looking either.
She could totally do this.
“I love you so much, Inuyasha,” she said, her lips moving against the head of his cock. “So much.”
She felt his muscles clench as she took him into her mouth, and then it was his turn to muffle his cries, his turn to feel helpless. Kagome tried her best, recalling everything from bits of the porno Sango had shown her to stuff she had heard about way back in high school. It seemed to be good enough for Inuyasha, who was panting and sweating, naked on her sheets, his muscles rippling in the dim light. Tentatively, she brought her hand down and fondled his sack, growing bolder and playing with it when he choked on a gasp and moaned, almost taking his hand off his mouth. She bobbed her head and twirled her tongue as best she could, trying to make it feel good for him with all her limited experience. Just when she was sure her jaw would never recover, he grunted into his palm and came in her mouth. She swallowed even though she really, really, really didn’t want to because she remembered hearing somewhere that guys totally liked that sort of thing for some incomprehensible reason. Kagome didn’t understand how force feeding someone something so vile was at all sexy, but she was willing to do it for him.
Exhausted, she crawled back to the pillow and flopped down on it, wondering why Inuyasha was having such a hard time recovering when she was the one doing all the work.
“Thank you, Kagome, that was— Fuck, I love you,” he breathed, smiling like an idiot.
Happy that he was happy, she fell asleep, her last thoughts ones of mouthwash.
O/o/O
Kagome woke in the morning to a pounding head and a room filled with the gray light of early morning. Brushing her hair out of her face and mouth, where it had somehow migrated in her sleep, she looked around. Inuyasha was gone. It was what she had expected, but it still made her sad. A wave of nausea overtook her and she stumbled out of bed, half running, half dragging herself to the bathroom. There was steam coming out from under the door, but if she didn’t make it in, she was going to puke everywhere, and she really didn’t feel like embarrassing herself much more. She didn’t even care who was in there, if it was Kikyo who’d yell at her or Inuyasha who’d laugh, tease her, and try to entice her into joining him even though they both knew that was not possible.
Throwing open the door, she stopped only one step inside. Instead of one person in the shower, there were two. She could see them clearly through the glass door. Inuyasha and Kikyo, sharing the tiny space and happily washing each other, like a real couple. A married couple. The real, married couple that they were.
Unable to control herself anymore, she vomited a stream of red and yellow all over the floor, droplets falling on her dress. She wiped her mouth with the hem of her dress, feeling numb inside and outside. The guilt and heartbreak pulsed inside of her like another organ, expanding and expanding in between breaths until she feared it would break open her ribcage and show the world how truly rotten inside she had become.
The shower door was open and Kikyo was screaming something at her. Inuyasha was staring at her in shock from behind her sister, his wife, his wife of three entire years, half the time she had been sleeping. And they had been together since her accident. What was she doing here, at their home?
“Kagome!” Inuyasha said, maneuvering around Kikyo and exiting the shower. She didn’t want to, didn’t mean to, but she stared at the defining part of his anatomy. Seeing it now brought tears to her eyes. What was last night? What had that been to him? She had done something she had no right to, touched something that had never and would never belong to her. Inuyasha stumbled coming out of the shower, one foot near her puddle of grossness. Thinking fast, he grabbed a towel from the rack and flung it down over the mess right before he was about to step in it.
“Not the goddamn guest towels, Inuyasha!” Kikyo screeched, outraged. “That is it! Get the hell out of my house, Kagome!”
Concentrating on keeping the tears in her eyes and not on her face, Kagome backed away, her legs feeling incredibly weak.
“Kagome, wait!” Inuyasha yelled, which was completely unnecessary since they were only a couple feet from each other. “I have to drive you, remember?!”
Seeing that she would not wait like he had asked, he grabbed another towel and wrapped it around his waist, securing it. It was lilac and made him look ridiculous. Kagome began to cry at how crazy everything was and ran out of her former home and down the steep steps, Inuyasha running wildly behind her. It was a miracle in itself that neither of them slipped. When she reached the car, she tugged on the handle frantically, just wanting to curl up and sleep, but it was locked. She felt like screaming. The car beeped and she hurried inside, sparing a brief thought as to how Inuyasha had managed to remember his keys after such a scene. Just remembering it made her open the door so she could puke again, which she did with great, heaving gasps and painful gagging.
By the time she was done, Inuyasha was in the car and had started it. She didn’t even want to look at him, didn’t want to see his face, the expression he was wearing. If he pitied her, that was bad. If he didn’t, that was worse. After a while, he got the hint and began to drive, considerately rolling the window down for her.
“You threw up my cum back there.”
“I wish you slipped in it.”
He sighed. “Kikyo and I always shower together. We weren’t doing anything. If I don’t keep showering with her, she’ll know something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up. Not anymore. So keep on showering with your wife and stick your dick down her throat from now on,” she said in an angry whisper, her own words making her feel sick again.
Inuyasha hit the steering wheel, the sound affecting her like a physical blow and making her flinch. “Fuck, Kagome! I’m really trying to make this work without having everything in our lives go to hell. If I fuck this up and make her mad, then I could lose my job and the Shrine and end up paying fuckin’ alimony for the rest of forever. I love you, but I don’t think you’d be very happy with me if you had to support the both of us on your salary.”
She said nothing for a while, just appreciated the cool breeze in her hair and the warm sun on her skin. Why couldn’t everything feel as good and simple and right as that?
“I’ll always love you no matter what, Inuyasha,” she said, her voice now quiet and gentle. “It seems as though I can’t help it, even when it comes to things like last night and I know even in the very moment that if I show you I love you, I’ll lose my soul. I can’t not love you.”
“Then wait. And be patient.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he hissed, his hands clenching the wheel.
“I’m going to give Kōga a chance.”
“The fuck you are!” he yelled. She had never heard him sound so angry. Did he not understand that this was breaking her heart as well? “That lousy bastard’s a complete creep.”
“You’ve never even met him,” she said, feeling very drained. “He told me he loves me. Well, he said he thinks he’s falling in love with me.”
Inuyasha laughed, the sound harsh and cruel. “And you fuckin’ believed him? Wow, maybe you are brain damaged.”
“I do believe him. He’s doing well for himself. He’s a great guy and he loves me and he’s not married to my sister or anyone else.”
Inuyasha braked, ignoring the sounds of the screeching horns and angry yells of the commuters around them. They were about a mile away from her apartment.
“Get out,” he growled, his tone dangerous, telling her that what she had said was unforgivable. “If that’s how you want it, then get the fuck out.”
“Alright.”
Kagome tried not to cry, tried not to hate him and everything about him, tried not to keep loving him. Her feet hurt from having worn shoes the entire night, her dress was splattered with vomit, she was tired and sore and there was no sidewalk for another half a mile.
“I’m such a fucking idiot,” she murmured to herself, allowing a few tears to fall. “An idiot.”