Tonight

by Winter Ashby

She watches him as his wind tunnel bows under the weight of his guilt and is fragmented because she wants to know if it hurts. In the wake of a battle, they share a fate that will live on, even if they won't. [Miroku & Kagome]

Title: Tonight
Author: Winter Ashby (rosweldrmr)
Disclaimer: InuYasha is the property of Rumiko Takahashi-sama.
Rating: T
Summary: She watches him as his wind tunnel bows under the weight of his guilt and is fragmented because she wants to know if it hurts. In the wake of a battle, they share a fate that will live on, even if they won't. Miroku & Kagome
Authors Notes: I didn't used to ship this way, but I just finished Chasing Methuselah by Sandra E (id: 1284104) and I just couldn't help myself. This was just an idea that I had bouncing around in my head for a few days and now that it's out and finished, and uploaded, I feel so much better. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I've been wanting to post this even before I wrote it. I now fully support this pairing and all the angst that I can extract from it. Yay for me and all the Miroku & Kagome shippers out there! Give it a shot.

---

Kagome once asked him if it hurt.

Does it hurt?

His cool blue eyes met hers as strange kind of fascination twisted through his features.

Do you want it to?

He asked her why she wanted to know.

Doshde, Kagome-sama?

She grinned.

---

"Mirok-sama." Her breathy voice drifted through the heated air and settled like a blanket over their shadowed outlines.

"Hai, Kagome-sama?" His voice was deep and rich like flowing, melted chocolate dripping from ripe strawberries.

"It hurts."

---

The dreams were haunting, and Kagome breathed deeply in the crisp morning air. She spared one glance over her shoulder where he sat, deep in meditation, back to a tree, and breathing slow and even. She wondered what he saw when his eyes closed. For a moment, she wished it was her.

---

The haze of the morning dew in the air weighed heavy on his clouded mind at the dawn of yet another restless night. Her presence was being to become a distraction and all because she had to ask. He could feel her eyes traveling over his arms and resting on his gloved hands and beads. There was a shifting wave of fear that clutched at his heart.

---

What-if's floated weightlessly through the shallow hole in her heart as she breathed deep in the morning air and wished she could see through his steeled blue eyes to the pain that gripped his heart. She knew it was there, and she kneeled in the presence of his unwavering dedication because she couldn't stop her eyes from watering, or the tears she spilling into empty hot springs for his sake.

---

She was more distant, and yet at the same time, he knew that she watched him more and more. With each new sun, and every battle he could feel her eyes on him. Her purifying arrows seemed to have taken a sickening turn in the recent past. They appeared to pierce his adversaries before he could even use his curse. She was protecting him. But she wasn't fast enough this time, and his hand itched to be free and in control of the void that dwelled in him.

---

She watches him now, examines him closely as he grips the beads in his strong hand and hesitates for just a moment before he let's his curse release. His voice is thick and troubled as he screams his attack. She waivers at the edge of indecision and complete devastation because she can't keep her eyes from him; it's almost as if his wind tunnel is pulling her in as well. She is terrified to find her feet inching forward, but relieved to find that it isn't because of his winds, but merely her curiosity. She can't look away, and is punished for it. There is a crippling fear that radiates through her body as he drops to his knees, clutching his fisted, re-newly gloved hand and breathes heavily. She can see the strain in his face because he squeezes his eyes closed and for a moment she can hear what he's thinking.

Did it close?

Because he knows, as well as she does, that one day it won't close. And he will die, just as his father and grandfather before him did. And all that will be left to remember him by will be a gaping crater in the ground and the resounding echo of a failed mission. She watches him as he rises on shaking legs and faces the devastation he wields. She is drawn to him now, in the dead of night, in the wake of a battle, in the subtle glow of the full-moon light.

---

He can feel her behind him, inching ever closer to an imaginary threshold of her self-imposed curiosity. And he knows she's teetering at the edge of the precipice that holds him and her. They are alone on this mission, separated from her demon has his youkai taiji-ya because they are the weaker. So he allows her to pull closer and ball the course fabric of his hatori in her shaking, tiny hands and remains impassive as her face buries deep into the gap between his shoulder blades as she weeps for him. She won't allow him to see her cry for him, because she knows he's strong and proud but so very alone. So he let's her cry for him, because he knows that he never will. The tears soak through his clothes and dry on his aching skin. And if he closes his eyes and listens hard enough, he can almost make out what she's saying between muted sobs.

I won't mourn you yet.

He laughs, because it's just so tragic. He can see her, alone in her vigil for his return somewhere in the not-so-distant future but he won't return and he knows that it will kill her. In his death, he will be a murder, because he will drag her down with him. So he holds her now, spins in place and swallows her in the wide expanse of his arms and let her cry for the fear that should be his burden. He places a slow, tentative kiss on her furrowed forehead while she wept for him. She folds into him, and molds that enticing curves of her virgin body with his as the poison spreads and his knees give way.

---

She tumbles in his arms to the ground and meets the damp grass with a strangled sob of effervescent pain. She twists her useless, powerless fingers in his tie and frantically pulls at the offending material as the black spreads up his arm and snakes its way across his chest.

---

Cold tears hit his newly bare chest, and he's sure that the same ghostly look she wears now will haunt him even after he's been reincarnated. Idly, he wonders if he could find her in the next life, in five hundred years in the future. Maybe then, things would be different. Maybe then he could love her like he knows she deserves. But not now, not tonight – tonight isn't love and they both know it.

---

Because tonight is just tonight, so he gives her the comfort of his arms and the sweet reprieve of his heated kisses on the cold, exposed skin of her naked neck. So she leans into him, devastatingly, painfully, horribly loyal – trusting. He is sure that he will die tomorrow, so he makes the most of this night and her sweet lips. Because he is a man, and she is a perfect woman. And it has been so very long since his last encounter with orgasmic pleasure. She smiles in the circle of his arms in the dead of night and he says his silent farewell, because he knows that with the rising sun, her hazy eyes will met his back as he takes to the wilderness and fades into the obscurity of ancient fairytales in her future history books. He says goodbye the only way he ever knew how, with his lips and hips grinding against her in a heated, instinctual dance that he teaches her. He will have plenty of time to feel guilty for corrupting her in his next life, but tonight he just enjoys the sound of his name slipping from her lips and the dark desire that sweeps through her blazing blue eyes.