vigilante
a/n: I've been watching and rewatching a lot of the punisher, so sue me ;p I posted this in 3 parts on my tumblr (sankontesu), but I decided to combine them to make the first chapter of this story! Don't worry I haven't given up my other projects, I'm just crazy.
He made a habit of climbing through her window in the middle of the night, and Kagome despite her warnings and threats, never kicked him to the curb or called the police. Not that it would have mattered- he was so damn stealthy that she never found out he had made it into her apartment until she woke up in the morning and saw his boot imprints shadowed into the carpet when she groggily wandered into her small kitchen for her first (of many) rounds of coffee.
So she left him notes.
'Take off the boots at the window, don't trek dirt in here'
'The blanket on the sofa is for you'
'Coffee might be cold, but you' can have some of it'
'Left some gauze and Neosporin on the table for you'
'You are welcome to stay the day…you don't have to leave so fast'
That last one took her a lot of will power, but her courage had grown without his golden glare boring into the back of her head. It was much easier to be brave when holding a pen to paper. Still, he never did stay. He'd always be gone by the time she opened her eyes and tried to sneak into the living room to catch him intruding. They had encountered a handful of times outside his nightly escapades, but she still wished he'd stay long enough into the morning for some chit-chat. A sigh would leave her mouth and she'd linger in his scent on the couch for a minute before getting ready for work.
She'd walk into her small cubicle office, sit down on her green worn squeaky chair, and pull up the news homepage, finding his signature written all over the top featured article.
'Vigilante Half-Demon takes out members of Yakuza; leaves no live bodies behind.'
Kagome would wince, thinking of what he must have looked like climbing in through her window for a few seconds of shut eye before hopping back into the fray and barely escaping with his life. She'd tap on her mouse and minimize the window, pulling up her assignment for the week, and pretend she was entirely focused on work (instead of what she was actually entirely focused on).
Her thoughts strayed to when she first found him; barely alive and conscious in the alleyway of her apartment complex, mingling with the trash like he was a part of it.
He had growled at her the second she came too close, and she felt something in her gut clench, like she had walked upon a wild animal with an appetite for women. But he was a mess of cuts and bruises, not yet turned purple, and still freshly welted into his skin. He was all bark, she decided; he couldn't move to attack her even if he wanted to. He was hanging onto life with nothing but his claws.
The smart thing to have done was call the police.
So naturally, she did the opposite and called her mother.
"What do you mean you let a strange man into your living room and you need help patching him up?"
"Mom! Help! Please! I don't want a dead strange man in my living room."
After a pause, Mrs. Higurashi instructed her daughter to find some latex gloves, and began to list supplies and how to administer a simple wrap.
"Does he look dangerous?"
Kagome eyed the deep gash over his eyebrow, his labored breathing beneath a mangled cut up shirt, and the white dog ears telling of his heritage atop his head.
"N-nope."
Of course, only to find out- she was wrong.
Inuyasha, she had quickly dug up through the gift of an online search engine, was extremely dangerous. And armed. And known for killing a lot of gangsters and mafia members over the course of the last few months- with no goal other than to make sure they go down and stay down. The news outlets had labeled him a madman, a demon without cause, and a cold-blooded outlaw, straying far from the lines of morality.
With a volatile mouth, Kagome thought to herself.
"What the fuck- what is- where the fuck am I?" He had jumped up after a few hours, and all his wounds looked almost completely healed; the blood turning a rusted color and peeling away from his skin in flakes.
Kagome displayed her palms facing him in a non-threatening gesture, and took a deep breath, before letting all the words jumbled up in her mouth spill out into the air like milk rushing off the side of a table- "You're in my home, I found you on the street, I thought you were dying so I brought you in-"
"I wasn't dying," he interrupted flatly, glaring with an anger infused scowl. "I was fine."
"Sure." Kagome used air quotes, "Fine…"
"Who are you?" He demanded, shuffling into the corner of her apartment like an injured animal, gaze scanning the room for exit points. "Why did you bring me here?"
"I'm Kagome, and like I said…I thought you were dying." She placed pointed emphasis on the 'thought' just to avoid another altercation with the truth; seeing as he was bent on denying it. "What's your name?"
"It's best you probably don't know."
"Well, I'm asking out of politeness, I already know you're Inuyasha."
He gave her blank deadpanned stare, and she flashed him a wan smile back.
"Google," she offered to his silent question. "All I had to put in was 'half-demon with white dog ears', and you were the first thing to pull up." She tapped her hip three times with her fingers and then turned her back on him to get a pot of coffee started. She hadn't slept, and the little energy she had, she had used to patch up the now healed cuts she had found along his arm and chest.
"Then why haven't you called the cops?" He called out to her suspiciously, wandering out a little farther into her living room and watching her disappear behind a wall to the kitchen.
"I don't know," she admitted plainly, pouring grounds into a basin of her brewer, and shut the lid. And she truly didn't. Kagome was a cautious person by nature, the type of girl that studied weeks before a test, and had at least four safety schools picked out even though she knew she was basically guaranteed admission into her university of choice. She wore a helmet every time she hopped onto a bike, and if she ever needed to be somewhere, she was five minutes early- always.
Yet there she stood, making coffee for a wanted criminal in her apartment.
Inuyasha blinked, trying to process the information, although it was hard to do since he had a blinding headache weighing on him like a sitting elephant. It was probably when one of his assailants bashed his head into the warehouse wall where they were keeping their supply of heroin, and then slammed the butt of their gun into his temple, hoping it would black him out.
It didn't, and he killed the man for it, but it left a mark.
"You should sit down," Kagome mentioned softly. "You may look more healed up now than a few hours ago, but even a half-demon's gotta rest sometimes I'm sure."
"I'm fine." He dismissed even as he took a seat on her white loveseat. "I just need a minute."
He hadn't noticed her proximity before, just assuming she would keep her distance, but suddenly he was staring at the red lip of a mug, steaming with freshly brewed caffeine, attached to a hand that was extending out to him in offering.
"Coffee?"
He looked at it and then her, confusion splattered on his face like spray paint. He took it from her and grimaced, crushing eyebrows together to form a frown.
"Thank you?"
"No problem," she sat down in front of him on a lounge chair and huddled her own cup of coffee close to her. "You're welcome to stay."
"Stay?"
"Here," she cocked her head from side to side in gesture of their surroundings. "My apartment, for the night. I'm guessing you have places to be tomorrow. You can have the couch."
He looked passed comprehension and decided he had somehow been lucky enough to be found by the single craziest women in the world.
"Do you know what they would do to you if law enforcement found out you housed me, even for the night?"
Kagome shrugged, half-way done with her coffee and feeling her veins sing with the buzz that flourished within them like a car running on empty being filled up after a long trip, "You won't tell them right?"
"No," he said without falter.
She shrugged again, "I won't either."
It was probably the strangest night in both their lives, sitting across from each other, two complete strangers holding mugs of coffee at 4 AM in the morning. One fresh from a fire-fight, the other fresh from playing nurse.
Though they soon learn, it was only one of many.
Because tonight, when Kagome heard a slight knocking at her door, she half-expected it to be a neighbor's guest lost and looking for someone else on her floor. It wouldn't be the first time, and it would make perfect sense- especially since her only other visitor besides her mom, came through an unlatched window sill.
But when she opened it: for the very first time, Inuyasha all but crashed to the floor of her apartment entrance, struggling to hold himself up with numerous stab wounds; so many that instead of distinct red gashes on his clothing, there was a giant swell of accumulated blood at the center of his stomach.
Kagome gathered him and pulled him away from the door with enough time to shut it before anyone could glimpse in through the entryway. She skimmed his body critically, the corner of her eyes pooling with tears as she accessed the damage.
"Who did this to you?" She whispered gravely, already moving to rip off his shirt and start administering gauze.
Inuyasha spit out a glob of blood from his mouth and chuckled darkly.
He answered just before his consciousness fell from him and he blacked out into the sweet and welcoming embrace of nothingness.
"My brother."
"Mom, he's not healing!" Kagome wailed desperately, watching and waiting for the half-demon that was bleeding out on her tiled kitchen floor to wake up and announce haughtily that he was 'fine' again. The bullet holes littering his person, didn't look too bad, although they were pretty nasty to observe, but the glaring issue was the gouge in the middle of his stomach- probably large enough to kill an ordinary man.
"What do you mean he's not- Kagome is a demon in your apartment? Is that the strange man that you mentioned last month?"
"Mom!" Kagome frantically ran her fingers through her hair to comb it back, trying to regain some semblance of normality. "Dying man! In my kitchen!"
This had become a pattern.
She heard a hospital intercom echo out in the background of her mom's receiver. 'Higurashi needed in room 125.'
"If he's a demon that isn't healing, then it's possible he's a half-"
"He is." Kagome interrupted, while flinching every time her eyes grazed over Inuyasha's injuries.
"Then maybe tonight is his human night."
"What does that mean then?"
"That the Neosporin isn't going to be enough. Run a hot bath for him and get him cleaned up. Do you have any rubbing alcohol?"
Kagome eyed the half-empty bottle of vodka on-top of her fridge. "Sure."
"Make sure that he's clotting well and then scrub some of that into his wounds so that there won't be any infection. Clean him up and then just hope he makes it through the night until his demon transformation."
Kagome could hear her moving quickly, her breath beginning to pant a little with every syllable.
"I have to go, but I'll call you when I'm out of this surgery."
"Thanks, Mom." Kagome said sincerely. They shared goodbyes and I love yous, and then Kagome let her phone clatter to floor where her knees were bent. She tried to regain control of her frantically beating heart and mentally cataloged what she had to get done within the next few minutes in order to save someone's life.
"Run the bath." Kagome murmured as she spun the dial of her tub to the hottest degree.
"Rubbing alcohol." She listed solemnly as she reached up on her tippy-toes to grasp the neck of the bottle. It was bought (and used) in case of emergencies- the kind that paired well with chocolate and Netflix. She set it down in the bathroom next to three clean towels, and checked the tub to make sure it was full enough to cut the water off.
"Clean him up…" She stared at the unmoving body on the floor and wondered if it was too late to ditch her efforts of being a good samaritan, just throw her hands up and call the ambulance- which would inevitably lead to the police, and then inevitably land them both in jail.
Dragging an unconscious half-demon who more than likely weighed twice her weight to the bathroom (while trying desperately not to damage him any further), was no simple feat. But Kagome Higurashi wasn't the type to leave a project half-finished, so she sucked in a gulp of air, and pushed through until they were all the way down the hall- onto the smaller checkered tile of her turquoise painted bathroom.
When she set him down, she tried to be careful about it, but her arm finally gave out and instead of letting him gently kiss the floor, he tumbled thumped like a rock. And he groaned.
"Sorry," she whispered softly. She checked his pulse, something she didn't need to ask her mother how to do, because thankfully growing up with a nurse in the house did teach her a thing or two.
He was breathing, shallow and even, but breathing.
She had managed to cut open his shirt enough to get a wrap around his middle, but now she had to undo the gauze in order to rub some vodka onto it. She tore off what was left of the shirt and slowly, slowly, slowly, lifted the cloth strip from his belly.
"Inuyasha," she hissed through her teeth, watching the wound regain a life of its own as it begun to dribble out streams of blood again. "What happened to you?" His face was beat to hell and back; his nose swollen and crusted with hours-old blood. Both his eyes looked like matching dark blue contusions, and a gash reached from his cheek to his lip, splitting it open.
She moved quickly to undo his pants, unbuckling his belt and shimmying each leg until he was almost completely naked- save black boxer briefs. She even took off his socks, and she only had a second to admire the claws on his toes before they shrunk right in front of her eyes; the telling presentation of his human transformation.
There was a wet pile of his laundry and rags in a corner of the bathroom, and it was then that she began to realize that not all the blood was entirely his. The areas that were most soaked with bodily fluids were the areas that he didn't have any injuries- excluding the one at the center of his body.
Kagome felt a chill run down her spine, but she pushed the fear aside, reaching for the sitting vodka and towels. She had never done this kind of first-aid before, the most she had ever helped with previous to when she found him in the alley, was a bird that had fallen from her childhood home's God tree.
Although somehow, she found the bird more fragile. Inuyasha was a mass of power and muscle, and something told her that he'd be back to disappearing through her window in the morning.
She just had to keep him breathing through the night.
She knelt and poured a generous amount of vodka onto one of the towels. She counted to three, steeled herself, and pressed it into his stomach.
Lavender-once-golden eyes popped open, and Kagome's amazement at the conversion was drowned out by the awful choking noise he made, a mixture of strain and agony. His body jerked as he tried to put eyes on his surroundings, finally landing on Kagome and looking at her wildly, spitting up another glob of dark blood from his mouth.
"Inuyasha, it's me," she started calmly, trying to put a hand on a part of him that wasn't covered in welts.
"Kagome." Her name fell from his mouth like shattered glass, almost as if the mere ability to speak was a challenge. She knew she had expected him to recognize her, but the shock of hearing her name from his voice jolted her. Then his gaze fell to his naked body and she could almost see the panic begin to radiate from his skin.
"You came here, through my front door," she offered quickly, trying to explain his environment, "with a hole in your stomach. I'm trying to put you in the tub."
He grunted and winced, letting himself fall back onto the floor after trying and failing to keep himself half-up.
"I'm human," he moaned hopelessly.
"I noticed." Kagome dabbed his wound again with the alcohol infused cloth and closed her eyes when he made another gargled sound of pain. "I'm sorry!"
"S'kay," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm bleeding all over your mats so I guess we're even."
"No, you still owe me some new ones."
"Keh," he coughed, little specks of blood falling from his lips as he groaned again.
"I'm going to try and put you in the water to get you clean, but you have to help me, okay?" She circled him and heaved her arms under his armpits.
He hummed in lame agreement, and she took it as a cue to begin trying to lift. She could tell he was honing all the little strength he had left to meet her half-way, but it still wasn't enough to get him standing straight.
"This will have to do," she said exasperated as she inched and staggered to the nearby tub.
He sloshed into it, all his body weight becoming dead in the water, and he cried out in a twisted version of relief and anguish as the warmness enveloped him, seeping into his pores and wounds.
Kagome sat just outside and next to him, so far past the point of caring that when the water fell over the lip of the tub and soaked her legs, she ignored it.
"What happened?" She asked- this time expecting an answer.
He took in a breath and rested his neck over the edge behind him. "Found where they were keeping a ring of humans in a warehouse, forcing the poor bastards to package cocaine and ship it overseas."
Kagome swallowed, vaguely remembering about those illegal operations because it was on the news-
"I thought that was yesterday."
"Yeah," Inuyasha replied slowly, looking bleakly into the popcorn ceiling. "Today I tried ambushing the boss and finishing the job once and for all. So that they couldn't just restart their shit somewhere else."
Kagome rested her chin onto her arms as she gave him a moment to finish.
"But I ran into my brother. And he wasn't thrilled to see me." He gestured to his body; almost drunkenly as if the loss of blood was causing him to slur his words.
"He uh…follows the same line of work as you?" She asked carefully, pretending that she even fully understood his 'line of work'.
"No," he said sourly. "Not even close."
"Did he know you turn human tonight?"
"No one knows." He shifted defensively, glaring at nothing, and when his eyes landed on her concerned ones they immediately melted before turning stone again. "No one." He repeated severely.
"I won't tell anyone." Kagome responded to his silent plea. "But if you knew you were going to be human tonight, why not just check into a hospital? No one would recognize you. I can barely help you here…"
"Hospitals? Cops." Inuyasha's voice was wavering and he shook his head as if water had lodged into his ears, his consciousness beginning to slip from him again. "You were the first person I thought of." His eyes closed.
"Hey, hey, hey," Kagome lurched forward and softly slapped at his uninjured cheek to keep him awake. "Stay with me. You're bleeding out, so I need you to not go unconscious again."
"M'fine." He leaned a tad into the warmth of her wet hand and took in a whiff of the smell on her skin as her finger grazed the bottom of his nose. "Safe," he mumbled almost indistinctly.
Kagome's stern voice demanding him to keep his eyes open was the last thing he heard as he drifted back into the blackness.
When Inuyasha awoke, the first thing that hit him was the calming trace of lemon and coconut oil, the aromas interwoven like a braid and soothing his soul down to the bone. He knew naturally that the fragrance was not his own, but belonged to the pillow underneath his head. Consequently it made him nuzzle the side of his uninjured face deeper into it- chasing the way it surrounded his sensibilities.
The stench of dirty laundry crumpled in the corner of the bathroom came second, reeking of blood and sweat and other indistinct pieces of dead flesh. They were his clothes, and therefore undoubtedly his fault that the scent that now leaked from the bathroom into whatever area he occupied, was curling into his nostrils and invading its reassuring predecessor. The awareness of another smell overriding the one on the pillow pulled a groan from deep within his chest.
He never really had a plan when he went on his criminal rampages- mostly because by design Inuyasha couldn't follow an arrow if it pointed somewhere, no less an actual mapped out plan- but also because he saw it as a waste of effort.
This time however, he sure did wish he had wasted the effort.
Because almost dying and crawling his way to Kagome's apartment would've distinctly never been on it.
Kagome
He almost jumped from his spot on the soft surface below him, all his wits and motor capabilities springing to life. His chest heaved with the effort to regain control of his irregular breathing, and that's when he noticed that his shirt had been shed. The memories of the previous night jabbed into his brain, wedging themselves into the front of his mind like a gloating rival.
She had taken off his clothes. She had hauled him into the bath. She had covered his wounds. Spoken in worried soft tones and let him snuffle his cheek into her hand-
He cursed, instinct forcing him to take inventory of his surroundings.
The sun had just poked his obnoxiously bright bald head through the curtains, peeking in and dragging a line of gold from his forehead to his stomach where he was bent.
This wasn't the first time that Inuyasha woke up in Kagome's apartment without much warning for it, but this was the first time he woke up in her bedroom. Once he steadied his breathing, it was like plugging one hole of leaking water and then having another spit out from a different opening, because his heart rapidly caught up with where his mind was going and-
He was in her bed.
His ears pricked as they caught the subtle breathing of a body next to his and there was no hope for the regulation of his heartbeat, it was driving off the tracks, catching fire and burning down as it fell out of his chest and into the narrow space between his body and hers.
Kagome lay abandon to the world, arrested by the chains of exhaustion and late night impromptu nursing. The dark circles under her eyes were the first things he noticed, undoubtedly due to how late she had stayed up trying to make sure that his life wouldn't slip away in the dead of the night. He remembered the bathtub, he didn't remember the bedroom, so the knowledge that she had somehow dragged him from the bathroom, dried him, and tucked him into bed, unfurled a guilt so tightly coiled into his belly that tears threatened to prick at the corner of his eyes. His gaze swept from the black knotted hair fanned out behind her, the arc of her eyelashes, cheeks still flecked with dots of dried blood, to her exposed navel- inching out from a pajama shirt with an imprinted cat on the front. His scrutiny lowered even still to an expanse of bare leg, molded over the fold of the comforter. He swallowed and held back a thickly growing desire to touch her. She sighed in her sleep and the leg he had been fixed on kneed upwards, brushing against his thigh, encouraging him, persuading him.
He knew staring at her could easily be mistaken for leering, but he couldn't force himself to look away. This woman had saved his life. She barely knew him, and she lost sleep over making him comfortable.
She was warm, and he didn't have to touch her to gain the confirmation. Regardless, his hand lifted on its own accord, finding the soft curve of her cheek and timidly brushing the stain of his misconduct from her skin, tenderly rubbing a thumb over the red blot. It didn't give way though; when he removed his finger the stubborn blemish remained. His hand had as well, cradling the side of her face, unsure of the reason, only knowing that something raw and incomplete within the apex of his soul compelled him to do it.
She was a literal fucking angel.
And he was a demon in her bed.
The admission caused a chill to run through his body, a horrendous wave of reality crashing over him like being thrown into a cold cold ocean of shame.
His hand snapped back to the side of his body, like a magnet finding it's polar opposite.
He shook his head of any lingering fantasies, and they evaporated like cotton candy on his tongue, fleeting and sugar-coated with regret.
His feet kissed the icy wooden floor at the side of the bed- and something else. Something papery and folded.
Inuyasha immediately recognized Kagome's handwriting as he examined the note, reaching to pick it up and silently read what it said.
'Hey Mr. Vigilante, I'm probably asleep
I left you a clean set of clothes on the chair by the window
You don't have to leave, if you stay I'll take you to my favorite breakfast spot. Pancakes?'
If he could have made a sound and not wake up Kagome, it would've been a hoarse one, throaty and defeated. He folded the note back to its initial state and left it quietly on the nightstand.
It wasn't as if he hadn't met her outside her apartment before, after their first 'encounter' he felt almost obligated to keep her safe. Whenever he wasn't busy investigating drug trade spots, or tracing a child trafficking gig to an unidentified warehouse by the port, he would make sure to seek her out and check up on her.
It was never established meetings, it was always him stealing a seat across from her at a café she frequented, without preamble or discretion. She always looked relieved to see him and she'd coax him into pleasant conversation, goading him with one- maybe three- cups of coffee. And at times, a blueberry muffin.
They'd never planned to meet up anywhere- definitely not for breakfast, over pancakes.
Inuyasha didn't know what she wanted from him, but he knew that whatever their affiliation with each other was- it had amounted to putting her in danger, completely messing up her apartment by streaking her floors, her mats, her home, with his indiscretions, and interrupting her sleep, interrupting her life…
And it had to end.
It had to end.
He changed into the bright red just-barely-large-enough hoodie and sweatpants she had picked out for him (obviously she had done so a while ago, and the idea of her sorting through a store and buying something for him unleashed an army of butterflies to pick at his belly), plucked his bundle of soiled laundry from the floor, and slipped out the window without another look back into the bedroom.
When Kagome woke up, she tried not to let the disappointment of his disappearance ruin her morning, but there was a crushing acute ache in her stomach. As if she had been the one with a hole in it not too long ago.
After a prolonged hour of moping in her bed, she rose to action, mentally marking a catalog of duties she had to accomplish before the weekend ended tomorrow.
She reached for a pen and lazily rallied by her nightstand for a spare piece of notebook paper that she could write on to make a list with. If there wasn't a list, she would forget something.
The note she had written Inuyasha last night came into her grasp and a streak of pettiness and anger caused her to chuck it at the wired trash bin in the corner of the room.
She missed and caught the rim of it, the crushed paper unfurling and revealing an added detail that she hadn't noticed before.
Kagome jumped so quickly from the bed that her foot caught in the tangle of bed sheets and she tumbled to the floor with a yelp.
On her hands and knees she crawled to the discarded note, dragging her comforter behind her.
'This place better have blueberry pancakes
See ya tomorrow at 10
-Mr. Vigilante'