Heres the second chapter!hope you like it!im gonna cut the crap and leave you to your reading!PLEASE REVIEW!

Chapter One: Dinner

Mitsumi and Kotomi had been –thank heaven- perfectly safe. When we found them, they were playing with the cat while Kagome's mother baked cookies for them. Sango hugged them and kissed them and laughed, miroku was part of that hug, he'd kissed his wife right on her lips and she'd blushed. It was Kagome's mom enjoyed having them around so much that we went to visit at least twice a week. It wasn't until around the third week that I stopped worrying if the well would close or not. By then, Miroku, Sango and their kids were completely comfortable in the present day era.

Kagome had been making plans for us. She said she wanted to take us to the beach in one of those fancy buildings she called hotels. At first the slayer was a little reluctant since they'd never stayed overnight in Kagome's time period. But seeing her husband so enthused with the idea, she just had to say yes.

"Kagome-sama," Sango asked for the zillionth time, "Are you sure it's safe?"

"I've told you about a million times: it's perfectly safe." Kagome looked cuter when she was annoyed. I wanted to laugh; it came out as a giggle. "What's funny Inuyasha?"

"What are you talking about? Nothing is funny" I pretended to be just as annoyed as she was, and used as a shield so she wouldn't notice that I had been gawking like an idiot at her. "Will you please just hurry? It doesn't take this long to walk to the well."

She smiled in my direction. Why did she smile like that? It made my skin prickle all over. "You have to remember that Sango is carrying a baby in her arms. And the twins can't run as fast as you."

"Well, if they would just let me carry them all the way there, we wouldn't be taking breaks every ten paces." I grumbled, more to myself, really.

"Inuyasha!" she sounded unhappy, but I still loved hearing her say my name aloud. it made my heart beat harder. "Osuwari!"

My sacred beads started to glow, and my face hit the ground. I guess i should've seen it coming. I got up in my defensive stance. "Now what did I do?" I practically growled at her, totally overreacting like a fucking jerk.

"Nothing." she said casually. "You might want to hurry if you want to catch up, though."

I finally noticed that they were already ahead of me. I caught up in three strides, scowling to myself the whole way there.

"Dadda! I want to go with Tomi-chan!" Mitsumi insisted on jumping in with Kotomi.

I want to go with Sumi-chan!" Kotomi said at the same time.

He agreed to let them jump into the well together only if they waited for him to jump before everyone else. He was carrying his staff as if we might run into some yokai or something. I rolled my eyes at him as he jump in. I could see he missed all of the action as much as his wife.

Miroku was a good father. Everything he did was for his family. I envyed him for that. He had two daughters and a son, not me. Of course he was older than me, but not by that much. Okay so he's like 22 and I'm over 200, I thought, but i don't feel 200. I feel and look and act like a 19 year old! It bothered me because I had known Kagome for a lot longer than he'd known the demon slayer.

The twins held hands and counted to three. When they jumped, the girls did a flip in the air at the exact same time. Sango didn't see that, she was cradling the baby, fixing him in her arms. And after a flash of light, she –carefully- stepped in, too. She didn't realize that her little girls would someday be a miko and a slayer. They would probably go around exorcizing old houses like Miroku and I.

"Come on, Inuyasha!" Kagome seemed giddy; probably exited to see our reaction to her surprise.

But there was also something more. There was a very unnoticeable blush on her face. If I didn't know her, I might not even have noticed the light pink coloring her cheeks.

But I knew her.
I knew what made her smile, what made her sad.
I knew every single reaction she ever had.
I knew the speed of her heart and the depth of her breaths.
I knew that every night, when she thought everyone was asleep, she'd go to the sacred tree.
I even knew that when the moon has full, she'd go and swim naked in the river, an event I hardly ever missed.
Yeah, it was wrong, but i couldn't help it.
She looked so beautiful in the moonlight, but I only watched from a distance, so it wasn't like I saw her very clearly.
I had to hide in the trees so she wouldn't sense my demonic aura.
I knew that something was going on, she just wasn't ready to tell me what it was.

There was a strange sound coming from the sky, it distracted my inner babbling.

"Is that…Shippo?" Kagome asked as she stared up at the hovering figure.

The floating thing seemed to have heard her. It shifted into a different shape and started to fall down. "Yeah, that's Shippo alright." I said as I registered the familiar scent.

Kagome caught the young fox yokai before he fell and broke something. We actually hadn't invited Shippo since he spent most of his time training in that school of his. Kagome didn't want to bother him with trips to the other era.

"Hey, Kagome-sama!" the kid said. He stared around and then asked, "you're not going to leave are you?"

"Umm actually," Kagome hesitated, not sure if she should speak. "We're going on a vacation to my time period. "We didn't tell you because you were in school but you're definitely invited." She smiled like she always did, but I noticed in was a little stained, it didn't reach her eyes.

"Great!" the boy said, and jumped in ahead of us.

Shippo was growing -a lot. I remembered when we first saw him; he'd been just a child. Now he was seriously maturing. Soon he'd be a grown yokai. He was already 12 and since Kagome returned, he's had a growth spurt. He'd been gaining easily over an inch every week. He'd also been growing in many other aspects. He was doing really great in his training and he no longer insisted on bathing with the girls -thankfully, because that had seriously pissed me and the monk off. But now he was really taking things seriously. Hopefully he'd be smart enough to not bother me for the next two days.

"Come on!" she urged. She looked so cute when she was impatient.

It bothered me that she waited for me to jump with her. It made me think she wanted to always be near me, as if the fire was calling out to me. Then it made me ponder on the reason why she would want me near. Kagome made all the thoughts in my head a jumbled mess. Why did she do that? Was she actually trying to drive me insane? My heart thumped loudly in my rib cage as if to prove that she literally was making me mad.

"Alright, let's just go and get this over with." I thought I said in my head.

As if my words had been an invitation, she jumped on my back. It made me wonder how many of my thoughts escaped from my tongue when I was sure I hadn't spoken. I didn't say anything though. I didn't want her to think that this bothered me. I actually loved it.

"Hold on." I said quietly. I jumped into the well with her as if it were the most casual thing in the world. To her, it probably was.

The way to the other side was all purple and glowing, it was all too familiar. Kagome rested her chin on my shoulder, looking so comfortable, it made my heart swell. It almost hurt, as if my chest wasn't big enough to hold my swollen heart. Strangely, it felt good. It took me two seconds to realize what that emotion was. It was happiness. It had taken me too long to learn to be happy when I awoke from Kikyo's sacred arrow, which made it hard for me to recognize what joy felt like even after more than three years.

I felt ground underneath my feet, and a cloud of familiar scents flew toward us. Kagome's mom was fixing us some dinner.

"Is that pork?" Kagome asked, still clinging to my back.

"Smells like it." I sniffed the air again. Yup, it was pork.

Kagome was getting better at smelling different scents. I wanted to believe that it was because of all the time she spent with me, that she was getting familiar with smells that only I could detect from a distance. But then again, there were many things that I wanted to believe.

"Let's go see!" she bounced as I held her.

I didn't even hesitate to leap from the well to the door of the temple. Jumping was my specialty. Kagome giggled as I set her down on her feet. "What?" I asked.

"Show off." She accused, showing me the most breathtaking smile that I loved.

"There you are!" Miroku called to us from the house. "Souta-kun insisted on waiting for you two."

We ran together to the house. Sitting at the table were Sango and her girls. Souta and his mother were fixing dinner while Kagome's grandfather chattered on and on with the monk about modern time medicine versus sengoku era treatments. Shippo was chasing the cat all around the small kitchen.

"Souta! What are you doing here? Don't you have school?" Kagome put her hands on her hips. Did I already say how cute she looked annoyed?

"Kagome." Her mother soothed her, "It's Saturday, remember?"

"Huh. I suppose we really don't keep much track of the days back in our era." She seemed to let it go. "Let's eat so we can go to the hotel. It's an hour drive to the beach."

I was preoccupied on obsessing over the way she said "our era" instead of just "the past era". Like I said, obsessing, which is really not healthy.

She sat in her place at the now crowded table and saved me a seat next to her. She was all happy, prctically glowing, reminding me yet again about fire. She made me feel wanted and important, two words that had never fit well with me. Was she just being nice? Or did she do all that for a reason? She really didn't see how every little thing she did affected me. Every small gesture had me all but choking with hope. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, she feels the same way about me...