Sweet and Sour
by Scribe Figaro
Shippou knew what it was to taste. There was fruit, fruit was bitter at first, when green, but ripened, it became sweet, and sweeter still, and at some point you could just about let it rot and it was sweetest of all, the skin breaking, juice spilling, and his hands would be sticky for hours, and he would just let the dirt and sand stick to fingers and palms and long lines down his forearms, all the way to his elbows. There was no one to tell him to stop eating. No one to tell him to wash his face.
That was sweet.
Then there was Kagome.
Kagome knew sweet things. The things she knew were beyond his imagination. Beyond his dreams. Chocolate. What did Earth give Heaven to purchase such a thing? Silky smooth, rolling around his mouth, the hard candy beneath it, his saliva thin for hours afterward, the taste never quite leaving his tongue.
Kagome knew hard candies, the crunching things, the tasty things. Kagome knew lollipops and fruit drops that rattled in metal boxes.
Kagome knew crinkling bags filled with fried foods, salty things, tasty things, crunchy things.
Lying on the grass, hands behind his head, with a lollipop in his mouth, twirling it with his tongue, it occurred to Shippou that Kagome was human, and even if she stayed here with him for the rest of her life, that would be only fifty years or so, and Shippou would barely even be an adult by then.
Shippou decided that he must find a good time to ask Kagome for a history of candy over the next five hundred years. He would mark down important dates, and even count down the years, decades, and centuries until chocolate would be invented.
Until that day, even after all his candies were gone, Shippou would remember what it was to taste.
Miroku knew what it was to touch, and he knew Sango-touching was the best touching of all.
Other women were soft, and he had caressed and tasted painted lips and powdered faces, had run fingers through intricately-arranged hair and had traced lines along the soft skin of women who made their livings being pretty and desirable and perfect. Women who interested him because he paid them to be interesting. Women who drank with him because they were told to do so, women who listened to him because they were supposed to, women who met his stares and caresses with waning offense, and eventual acceptance, because he knew clearly the things his entertainers would accept and the things they would not. He loved them, loved them for hours at a time, and then made himself forget so that he could go to the next.
Sango was lovely without intending to be so. Sango made him desire her without even trying. Sango kept him at arm's length, and dutifully charged a meager beating for each caress, and even without touching her, he loved her for hours, until those hours became days, became weeks, became months, and stretched so far, forward and backward, that he could not remember a love before her, and could not imagine a love after her.
Sango's lips were not painted, and her skin was not powdered, but there was a smoothness and roughness to her that enticed him. He could trace fingers along her arms and feel the hard forearms of a swordfighter, the calloused palm, the strong shoulders, and what amazed him was how much her mood defined her body, for she was at once burly and crass, and then, without effort, dainty and shy. She was hard and strong at all times, but in his arms she was soft and polite, and Miroku slowly learned the ways to make her want to stay this way. He sometimes spoke to her, and sometimes whispered stories, and sometimes snaked his hands inside her clothes, and she would respond, and she would laugh, and she call him call him a pervert and grab his offending hand, sometimes guiding him away, sometimes guiding him somewhere else.
Sango knew discipline. She disciplined him only half as well as she disciplined herself. As Naraku's death came ever closer, as Kohaku's life-or-death came ever more assured, as their future came ever more realizable, she kissed his lips and said soon and forever and help me. He kissed her back and said almost and forever and show me where it hurts.
Miroku knew what it was to touch, to press his hand to her skin, to be guided by not there and it itches here and cold here and hot here and things which were not words, and Miroku found himself exploring a strange land, a new land, untouched, beautiful, and accepting.
The rain caressed the land, nourished the land, and fell upon rivers and mountains, forests and valleys, smooth stone, soft fields, and when the rain continued long enough, it formed rivulets that made their way to the low spots, to dark and hidden places, and so did he.
She kissed him, kissed him with her entire body, and said soon and god and there.
They lay beneath the stars only briefly, and then covered themselves in koromo and yukata and pretense, and they returned to the world of Kagome and Inuyasha and Shikon shards and solemn duty, and Miroku remembered what it was to touch.
Author's note: I felt like writing some quick and dirty not-angst almost-drabble.
I like commas.