Title: Fruit Salad
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: Yu Yu Hakusho and Inuyasha belong to their rightful owners. This story is the product of a lack of KuwabaraKagome fanfiction. Flames will not be tolerated.

Fruit Salad

Kagome raced down the street, trying to hold her hat on her head. Why, oh why, had she decided to cook? In the end all she ended up with was a very burnt casserole and no time to stop at the store to get something for back up. So she had taken a large bowl and dumped all her cans of fruit into it, spiked it with a diabetic's worst enemy, and pretended she had made it from scratch.

But with trying to hold her hat on, and running while holding a sloshing fruit salad toward work and the pot-luck, she was quickly finding that the day was not at all for her. Every light was against her, so she had to wait until the walk signal came up, and then race across the street because it wasn't up for very long.

She was going to be late, and she knew it. It didn't help to know that her boss was a stingy old pooper who just wanted a good looker and begged Kagome to dress up like some sort of smutty woman when she came to work. Ho boy, did she miss the days when she well-hopped with no worries about a job.

Of course, those wonderful days were over! Yipee. No more Kouga, Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku, Shippou, or anyone else. No more Oh-my-god-I'm-about-to-be-murdered-by-a-psychopath-thoughts because Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha's brother, had decided that she was in the way of his path to the Tetsusaiga.

Ah, yes, the tense life of living on her own in a giant city because she had outgrown the shrine and being around it just lost it's oomph as she came to realize the well wouldn't unseal and she would never again time-travel. But those days had been quite the experience. She still had scars on her forearm from firing the bow wrong.

But fifteen years away from all that had done Kagome some good. She was in the peak of her life, age thirty-three, no boyfriend, no kids, done with college, an apartment of her own, and expecting a nice fat promotion soon, so long as her fruit salad wasn't deadly to her boss, that is.

--

Kuwabara huffed slightly, glaring at his fellow teammates. Even the stoic (and mentally unstable, Kuwabara was sure) Hiei had begun to add his two cents into the teasing. No, Kuwabara thought, Hiei doesn't even have two cents! It's more like… like one and a half.

The retort in his mind was lame and he knew it, but he couldn't help it. They wouldn't shut up! "The one time you actually provide to the team, it was all an accident!" Yusuke belted, cackling further.

"Shuddup or I'll knock your teeth in, Urameshi!" Kuwabara warned, but the boy just continued to laugh. Hiei continued to chuckle. Kurama continued to hide a smile. Kuwabara was fed up with their behavior. He jammed his hands in his pockets before taking off down a back alley, away from those who laughed at him.

How dare they be so callous? He had just unintentionally saved their rears hadn't he? Sure, it really was unintentional. He had tripped and only the gods knew how he landed on their enemy, completely knocking the other out. It just wasn't natural, and since then everyone had been laughing at him.

There he was, Kazuma Kuwabara, age thirty-four with basically nothing to offer a woman, a dangerous job that would make any girl cringe in fear—heck sometimes he cringed, a sister who wouldn't let him move out, and a wonderful set of friends who were mean to him and called him dumb when he wasn't that stupid!

As Kuwabara exited the alleyway, a woman came crashing into him and both of them tumbled to the ground in a mass pile of jumbled limbs. He heard a smashing sound, but didn't pay attention to it much as he tried to save the woman from painfully connecting with the ground.

As they both righted themselves, he saw her massaging her wrist. "Are you okay?" he asked her, hoping she wasn't hurt.

"Yeah, thanks. But my fruit salad isn't. Sorry I ran into you." She apologized.

"No, it's my fault; I should have watched where I was going." Kuwabara told her, taking the blame upon himself. No girl should ever have to deal with guilt! "I'm Kazuma, by the way. If you'll let me, I'll buy you a new fruit salad…"

Kagome smiled, "I'm Kagome. You don't have to do that, but thanks."

The two bent down to try to pick up the pieces of the broken bowl. She shouldn't have chosen a glass dish, but it was too late for wishing. "You're right," Kuwabara said, crest-fallen. Women didn't like guys like him. He wasn't exactly a looker like the others. "I—"

"But if you wanted, you could help me pick out a new salad." Kagome said suddenly. Maybe, just maybe, this had brought her a good thing. She always hated to go to her work's pot-luck without accompaniment, and maybe this man would join her? It was worth a shot… She could clearly tell from the jeers coming from what she supposed were his friends in the alley that he wasn't taken. "And if you wouldn't mind, I'd enjoy company to my work's pot-luck…"

Kuwabara ignored Yusuke, Hiei, and Kurama after that. He agreed to go. And on Kagome's part, she thought it was nice that he had offered to replace her salad in the first place. And apart from that, he had rescued her from a painful fall by instead taking the contact with the cement himself. "Really?" Kuwabara asked. "I know a good fruit salad at a deli nearby."

--

Yusuke, Hiei, and Kurama all watched as Kuwabara and the woman he had run into walked down the street, both of them dumping the glass into a garbage that was nearby before continuing on down. They blinked, seven eyelids going down in unison. Yusuke scratched his head in confusion. Kurama cocked his head curiously.

Hiei said what they were all thinking. "Did Kuwabara just walk down the street with a beautiful woman?"

……No one answered……


End.