Disclaimer: Inuyasha and the others are borrowed for the time being. They originally belong to Rumiko. I will return them...eventually....
"Kagome," Shippo whined as he fell on top of her knee dramatically. "I'm bored."
Kagome, sitting cross-legged inside Kaede's hut, smiled and continued batting Inuyasha's hands away from the ramen cups that sat innocently in front of her.
"Damnit, Inuyasha, they've got two minutes left! Can you not wait that long?" Kagome fumed lightly.
"Shut up. I'm hungry," Inuyasha turned his attentions to her bag, scrounging inside for chips.
Sango chuckled a bit, amused at her friend's predicament. She brought a rag up to her boomerang bone and began cleaning off all the dust that had accumulated from leaning against the hut all day.
"Sango," Miroku's voice whined next to her. "I'm bored."
"Entertain yourself," Sango replied tightly. Her body snapped up as she felt Miroku's head fall atop her knee, much like Shippo.
Huffing, she shoved his head off her knee and forced it to the ground.
"Kagome-chan, is evening meal ready yet?" She asked, keeping one hand on the monk's head to keep him from trying anything more.
"Mou! Not you too, Sango!" Kagome turned her head around to see Miroku, face down on the floor, head deep in cleaning rags. "Er...Sango? I don't think he can breathe like that."
"Keh," Inuyasha's hand reached out and grabbed a cup of ramen before Kagome could stop him. "Two minutes are up, bitch."
Sighing, Kagome distributed the cups around the group, and was received with thanks. Especially from a blue-faced Miroku, who seemed a little oxygen deprived.
Their little group soon settled into a comfortable silence, each eating their meal in peace. Or, in Inyasha's case, slurping their meal loudly.
Sango broke the slurping noises first. "Kagome-chan?"
"Hm?" Kagome looked up from her meal to meet Sango's inquisitive stare.
"Why is it you didn't stay for longer in your time? You could have, you know, we wouldn't mind," Sango added assuredly.
"There are no rumors or the shikon shards anyway," Miroku added, nodding. "You really should take some time off."
Kagome turned to her friends. "Is it not okay that I'm here?" She asked, confused.
"No! No, of course not," Sango assured her. "We were just wondering-,"
"Why it is you're here when it's obvious that every chance you get, you go prancing back to your own time," Inuyasha bit out before slurping up the rest of his Ramen.
Kagome's eyebrow twitched. "Sit."
"Aagh!"
Kagome turned back to Miroku and Sango. "My friends weren't at school, and I had most of my exams over with, so I saw no point in staying there."
"What about staying with your family?" Miroku inquired. "Surely you miss spending time with them."
Kagome paused. How could she explain that? If she went home, her mother would expect her to go to school. Normally, she would be the one pushing herself to go, but...
After today, she wasn't so sure anymore. She felt Taka's eyes on her all day, and it wasn't the pleasant stare that Ayumi thought it was. It was downright creepy. And if that wasn't enough, he brushed up against her twice.
It had to have been deliberate. There was more than enough room to walk past her desk without touching her at all. But when Taka stood to solve a problem on the board, per the instructor's request, he brushed up against her in a slow, deliberate way that made her skin crawl.
Coming back to his seat, Kagome moved away slightly in the opposite direction, hoping to get out of his range. And yet, he seemed to lean...and still managed to brush up against her.
Kagome shuddered slightly from the memory.
"Oi," Inuyasha's voice brought her back to the present.
"My family understands that I want to be here," Kagome replied to Miroku.
Sango and Miroku nodded, both pleased with her answer.
A silent hanyou on her right was not.
"Oi!"
Kagome froze in the middle of undressing, both arms struggling to hold up her bra before it could fall.
"Sit!" She yelled, satisfied when she heard Inuyasha yelp and hit the ground five feet behind her. "I told you I was taking a bath."
"I know that! I just wanted to talk to you apart from the others!" Inuyasha shouted before pulling himself out of his new crater. He caught sight of her bare back and swallowed. "I thought I could catch up to you before you started undressing," he explained as a way of apologizing.
Kagome turned her head slightly to see him turn his head to the side, a faint redness settling itself across his nose. "Turn around," she ordered.
"You're not going to sit me again?" Inuyasha's ears perked.
"As long as you keep your back turned, you can talk to me," Kagome replied. "But keep in mind if you do peek, I'm going to 'it' you into the next life."
Inuyasha nodded, turning around. He waited until the rustling of clothing spotted and a slight splash broke the silence. "Oi, you listening?"
"Hang on," Kagome protested, dunking herself in the spring once more before reaching over for her shampoo. "Ok, what's on your mind?"
"You lied."
Kagome blinked. "Care to be more specific?"
"To Sango and Miroku."
Kagome forced a nervous laugh. "My scent again?"
Inuyasha nodded.
"Gotta figure out how to put a stop on that," she muttered to herself. "Maybe heavy perfume would work."
"Why? So you can smell all day?" Inuyasha snorted. "All it does is make me want to hurl. I can still smell everything else, anyway."
Kagome frowned. "What 'everything else'?"
"Keh!" Inuyasha felt his face heat up again. There was no way he was going to answer that...not to her. She 'sits' him enough already, he'd only make it worse if he told her he could smell the phases of her monthly cycle. "Why'd you lie?" He settled for changing the subject.
Kagome sighed. "I didn't want them to think...that I was, well, paranoid."
"Eh?" Inuyasha's ears perked in curiosity. "Paranoid?"
"Aa," She nodded. "You see...there's this new boy at our school."
At the mention of another male around Kagome's school, Inuyasha growled. "What? More?"
"One more," Kagome nodded, trying to appease him. She knew he was already in a fit about her school after he overheard there were boys there, too.
"What does this have to do with anything?" Inuyasha bit out.
"His name is Taka, and-,"
"You got close enough to him to learn his name?!" Inuyasha yelled at her. "No wonder you smell bad today, you've got his scent all over you!"
Kagome felt her eyebrow twitch. "Sit!"
"Arghhh!"
"I knew I shouldn't have said anything," She groused as she lathered up her hair with shampoo.
Inuyasha took a deep breath and picked himself up from the ground, re-arranging his clothes back into place without thinking too much about it, and sat back down, arms crossed. "Go on."
Surprised, Kagome stared at his back for a moment, watching his ears twitch and swivel in her direction. "Hang on," she replied after a pause.
Inuyasha heard her head go under and waited not-so-patiently as she washed off her 'shampoo'.
By the time she had re-emerged, Kagome had collected her thoughts. "This guy Taka...I don't like him."
Now that surprised Inuyasha. Kagome liked everybody, didn't she? She was always going on about how great some people were, even though he knew the truth: they were all shit.
Miroku was an excellent example. The lecherous monk had kidnapped her, took the shikon fragments, groped her, asked her to bear his child, and to top it all off, tried to suck him into his fucking wind-tunnel for crying out loud.
And yet she took a gamble with her own life, to prove that he really was a good person.
"You don't...like him?" Inuyasha pressed on.
"He...bothers me," Kagome reluctantly admitted.
"Bothers you how?" Inuyasha growled. If that fucking human laid one hand on his Kagome...
"I don't know. I caught him staring at me during class." Kagome shivered. "Maybe it was nothing, but still...it wasn't pleasant."
"Keh," Inuyasha shrugged, slight annoyance coursing through him. The thought of a weak human staring at what was his annoyed him.
Argh! Not mine! He argued with himself. Would you shut up?
His demon side snarled at him viciously in his head.
"Well, either way...if I'm not there as often, maybe he'll lose interest in me and decide that Yuka's way better looking." Kagome watched his back carefully as she hopped out of the spring and wrapped a towel around her body.
"Why didn't you just tell Sango and Miroku?" Inuyasha inquired.
Kagome shrugged. "Like I said before...I didn't want to seem paranoid."
"But you told me," he pointed out.
Kagome felt a heat spread across her face. "That's different."
"How?"
"I...," Kagome trailed off, uncertain. "I'm not sure."
"Keh!" Inuyasha replied with usual tact. A sense of pride did make his chest puff up a bit. Kagome trusted in him, and that was all the explanation he needed. "Hurry up and get changed."
Kagome blinked. "You're going to wait for me?"
"Fuck, you think I'm going to let some youkai just walk up and steal my tama detector?"
Kagome felt a definite twitch in her eyebrow. "SIT!"
Crash!
A/N: Tee hee! Now you must all pleaseeee review. distributes cookies I'll have the next chapter up as soon as possible. Turns around and takes a nap
