S A I L
"I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail."
-Inuyasha probably
"You'll never get the mast up that way."
Kagome twisted around with an arched eyebrow, surveying the area for the location of the voice. But there was nothing but the gentle crash of waves on the dock, and the black beady eyes of a seagull staring back at her as he stood in wait for scraps on a stained wooden beam. (Which, joke's on him because she didn't have money for any snacks today.)
"Over here."
She moved her head to the right and sure enough there was a man; looking at her with a mix of confusion and…disdain? She blinked twice and then righted herself, trying to place if she knew him or not, (trying to not be distracted by the tanned sleeveless arms crossing his chest).
No certainly not, she'd recognize that silvery white hair (and impressive frown) anywhere for sure if that were the case. There's no way she'd forget him so easily.
"I'm sorry do I know you from…?" She hedged, waiting for the man to confirm they were strangers. But then his expression evolved quickly into unexpected disappointment and she worried her bottom lip, second guessing herself.
"No, guess not." He shrugged almost like he had given up on a very daunting task, then pivoted on his foot to start briskly walking towards a tiny slop of a bar at the end of the boardwalk. Kagome tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, only to have it fall back into her eyes.
"Wait, what were you trying to say?"
He stopped and glanced back with pricked ears.
"About um," she reached down to grapple with the heavy material of her sailboat's mast, "this?"
"You were putting it up wrong."
"Do you ah…happen to know how to put it up right?" She flashed him her most pleading grin, rubbed the back of her head, and peered at him with her best attempt at 'sparkling innocence'.
He didn't look like he was buying it, if that permanent scowl was indicative of anything. She scratched the back of her bare leg with the opposite limb, and decided to switch tactics. She sighed and placed fists on each hip. "I was supposed to have someone else come help me this morning, but the jerk- who by the way demanded to be paid up front- never showed up and now I have to do it myself or else I won't be ready to sail off by dusk." She blew strands of hair from her face and her expression pinched into a look of petulance when they fell back into their preferred spot of origin, pilling on top of her eyelashes. "So now I've got no funds, got no idea how to put this thing up-"
"You said afternoon."
Kagome rooted her lips in a pout and shook her head, carrying on, "No that's the worst part, I told him, multiple times, before noon-"
"Afternoon." He snapped back at her, this time stepping onto her boat from the dock (when had he even gotten that close?), and making loud stomping sounds as his boots echoed against the maple of her boat's floor.
"Well how would you know?" Kagome shot back, staring him down with a guarded look.
The man rolled his eyes and kneeled down to where the sailboat's mast was tangled into a heavy dry knot. "Because I was there."
"What?"
He gave her a pointed look and a bolt of awareness struck straight through her.
"Inuyasha!"
"Kagome."
She stepped back in shock, although it was quickly overtaken by rage. "I have been expecting you since Nine AM this morning!"
He growled low in his throat as he continued to detangle the mess she had made of the sail. "I don't see why'd ya'd do that when ya told me to be here after noon."
Kagome let a simmering sound break from her mouth as she rose fingers to rub her temples, hoping to massage away the arrogance in his tone and the fury in her bones. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Five?" At the molten hot lava that shot through both eyes towards him, Inuyasha stumbled around his words uncharacteristically and amended with, "-ish?"
"It is Five-Forty-five."
"So…" He held one free corner of the mast and walked to the other end of the boat where he got to work hoisting it up. "Afternoon, basically."
"Give me back my money."
He placed a tool in between his teeth and the words came out muddled. "Can't do that, lady."
"Oh yes you can." Kagome saw he was having trouble tugging a part of the sail towards him, snagged on a splinter in the wood. A hole really, from when she tried to ignore the price to get her boat mite treated and then suffered the cost. She helped unlatch it but didn't let go of her glare's hold on him.
"Literally can't." Inuyasha ignored her assistance and turned his back to her as he buckled in another corner of the mast. "Used it all."
"You-you…" Kagome tried to wrap her head around his statement but had to take a seat and put her gaze on the line of the horizon to even begin to understand. "All that money…" Weeks of groceries. Months of rent. "Three thousand…"
"Yup."
She bundled her hands into fists and suppressed a scream. Where was her pillow when she needed it?
"I just wired that to you not even twenty-four hours ago…where could anyone even spend that much…"
He was facing her now, almost completely finished with his quick work of hastening the mast, and glanced meaningfully past her shoulder at the bar he was walking towards beforehand.
Kagome looked behind her, spotted it, and turned to him with a look that could have killed a small animal.
"Didn't you think being an alcoholic was something you could have mentioned when I conducted the interview?"
"Wasn't on the application."
Inuyasha wound his way up the spreader of the ship, reminding Kagome of a spider monkey, while he tied the last of the adjustments. When he finished, he jumped down neatly and Kagome looked at him in amazement for a second, watching those same distracting arms from before flex as he crossed them across his chest again.
"And you tried to walk away earlier." Kagome addressed him coldly, connecting the dots faster this time and recalling his retreating back from earlier. "You looked straight at me, knew who I was, and tried to leave!"
He granted her the acute satisfaction of looking ashamed for a second, before replacing it with a shrug and a bored uninterested expression. "I can't say I was sure it was you."
"Oh, there's other young women trying unsuccessfully to man a sailboat all by themselves in the afternoon at 402 Shelby?"
"Young?" He had the gall to twitch his lips into a shit-eating smirk and all Kagome wanted was to watch his face plant to the ground.
She tapped her foot to release the tension that had built from her shoulders to her toes. "How long until we can take off? I have a deadline to meet or I'll lose the pod."
Inuyasha stopped what he was doing and watched her carefully, "We?" He stood from his half bent position where he was fiddling with the boat's tiller. "What do you mean, we?"
The sound of glass shattering all around her rung in Kagome's ears like a siren. "Do you think…do you think I paid you all that money so you can put up my mast?"
Inuyasha had look relaxed before, too relaxed, and made his way around her sailboat like he knew it better than the back of his hand; like he belonged there- but now he looked uncomfortable, moving towards her with an air of superiority that oozed from his skin like smoke. "You never said anything about me joining you on this trip in search of fish."
"Whales."
"Fish."
Kagome stood into his space with a glare to match his own and pursed her lips, "I specifically said I would need a navigator." She spread her arms, gesturing the the ocean all around them, "How are you supposed to navigate without being out there with me?!"
To be honest, Inuyasha vaguely remembered the conversation over the phone he had with her yesterday. He had picked up a call for him from the bar and pulled the receiving end of the handset away from his face as she babbled on loudly at a million miles per minute. He had caught the tail-end of what she was saying and she that she was offering Two-thousand dollars for his services, he didn't even care what those services entailed. His well had run dry, and he had been looking for work to refill it. Which is also why he bumped the deal up another thousand.
Now that she mentioned "navigator", the conversation started to piece together better in his mind, and a sense of dread came over him. She was a marine biologist, of that much he could gather from the bits he had caught from what she said over the phone, and if she needed a navigator, and there was something about a pod involved, she was expecting him to embark with her on a long-winded oceanic journey. Of which he had no privy to do.
"Listen lady," he looked down at her with dark overcast stare. "I don't care what you thought you had said, or what you seem to think I'm doing here, but I just repair and set boats. I don't travel."
"But-but-but," the spell of determination and resolve flushed from her and left nothing but confusion and worry in its' place. Kagome felt like she had shrunken into a small dried out fish fillet. "You…I paid you!"
"And I thank you." Inuyasha replied lamely, stepping around her towards the ramp to disembark.
Kagome couldn't help the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness as it squeezed her eyes shut and started marking salt water lines down her cheeks. Without a navigator she wouldn't reach the pod. Without the pod she couldn't do her research. Her research was her life's work, and her Master's program and survival depended on submitting the data for exchange in currency.
The flip flop between being frustrated that this brute was who she was stuck with, and then finding out he had no plan to commit to what she had initially paid him for, felt like a head on collision with a train. She felt like she had been dumped into a hot spring and then the artic sea.
"Please."
Inuyasha stood very still and looked up into the sky, praying lightning would come down and strike him.
"Please, at least point me in the right direction."
He felt himself deflate, and turned back around, fully expecting another round of tears and frustration to face him, but all that was left was the small retreating back of the short girl, reaching for the nautical map discarded on the deck.
"I've got some things labeled out, but if you can at least tell me where we are on the map, maybe I can find my way to the coordinates."
He noticed she was holding the map upside down and wanted to smash his head into the nearest wall.
He wasn't going to do this. He wasn't going to help her. He couldn't. It wasn't happening.
"I think this way is North." Kagome pointed south and Inuyasha felt a twitch begin to quiver on his right eye.
What was the worst that would happen? She gets lost? The guard saves her. She gets lost…doesn't know how to mayday for the guard…she crashes. She swims to shore. She doesn't…she drowns. She dies.
Okay.
"How long is this trip supposed to take?" He led warily.
Kagome wiped away a tear from the corner of her eyes, and Inuyasha gnashed his jaw together. "Maybe a month. No more than two."
"Do you even have supplies to last that long?" He eyed her quizzically.
"I've got supplies for two weeks, then I'm scheduled to meet up with my academic program, turn in what I have, and exchange the data for more supplies." Kagome twirled a piece of hair that came loose around her ears and cocked her head. "At least if I can get there in time. I guess I'll just…starve if I don't."
Inuyasha closed his eyes behind her and groaned quietly from the top of his stomach to low in his throat; like the oncoming of a disastrous fate.
The small sound of Kagome's sniffling grated against his ears like nails on a chalkboard, and the unfamiliar sting of salt in the air brushed against his nostrils like a toxin.
"God, stop your cryin'!"
"Wh-what?" Kagome turned halfway and stopped suddenly when she realized she was much closer in proximity to him than she had been aware of. A faint pink flush spread from her nose to her ears.
"I'm sayin' I'll go with you, just…" He sighed. "Stop your crying."
"You-you…" Kagome swiped the under of her nose with a pointer finger and blinked away a new set of tears. "You will?"
Inuyasha looked at her then. Really looked at her. Took in her messy hair, the gray stormy color of her eyes, and the slight breath that heaved from her chest in-between her nude colored lips. She gazed at him with the most open vulnerable expression anyone had ever entrusted him with. He felt responsible for everything that had and would happen to her. He was hexed; enchanted. And he knew it was unreasonable, but for just a second he could not focus on why he had ever tried to abandon her in the first place.
"Great!" Kagome clasped her hands and the sound of them coming together woke Inuyasha from the spell. "Let's get going then, don't want to lose the daylight while we can! And besides, I only paid rent on this pier for up to six 'o clock, so if anyone catches me still out here, they'll fine me and quite honestly I'm broke and I do not wanna get arrested."
And then in that moment, Inuyasha was able to focus on the why quite well.
A/N: I promise I'm working on my two other projects. This was just sitting in my drafts so I had to polish and post.