Summary: When his friend begged him to help her send a text to her newly acquainted foreign boyfriend-to-be, he had thought it was a one-time thing. Obviously it wasn't. Curiosity quickly sprouted, but at the end of the day, who was really doing the talking?

Dirl

by sherlocks.

dirl—(v.) to thrill, to vibrate, to penetrate; to tremble or quiver

'Feisty', was the decisive word that Sesshomaru's oh-so eloquent mind provided to describe the man who would become the first and only personal secretary he'd ever have the (dis)pleasure of retaining.

He had deliberately eluded Sango after his return to Japan because the woman was an appalling worry wart. Indeed, Sesshomaru had been proud of his hard-won peace, unprecedented as it was. Those two glorious months had tempered Sesshomaru so well, in fact, that he didn't even bat an eyelash when his dear (sarcasm is lathered thickly here) college friend suggested that he hire a personal secretary to help him with his transition back into the country. No less offended, mind you, simply unsurprised.

Apparently he was 'the reigning king of all workaholics' and needed to 'learn how to chill'. Whatever the hell that meant. He had deigned his nosy friend with a snort encompassing all his disdain and fiercely refused the very idea of an assistant. Sango, overbearing as she was, had had none of it. What a horrid woman.

So it was on a fateful evening that Sesshomaru decided to entertain his friend's whims and tag along with her to a hotel restaurant that had, quite frankly, the utmost hideous upholstery he'd ever seen. And he'd been in over 68 countries.

Still—however disconcert the idea of a personal secretary was, Sesshomaru was a man, one who had learned never to enter a deal without due expectations. Although he had no intentions of acquiring an assistant in the near future, he did have plans to take home an attractive, voluptuous woman, dressed to impress and preferably with more brains than the typical lot that orbited around him, like tedious insects would a decaying piece of flesh. Not unlike, perhaps, a certain vixen that'd been commandeering the bulk of his attention in the last few weeks…

All of that was blown fantastically up to smithereens when he found instead, a short, quick-tempered, baby-faced pipsqueak staring back at him with a ridiculous pair of googly eyes. The internal cringing had reached extraordinary levels, then, and a personal vendetta was firmly established without prior notice. The kid looked to be fresh out of college, for goodness' sake; it was all so underwhelming that Sesshomaru felt it just to act like an indignant brat himself.

He does not bother to learn the boy's name. In hindsight, it was perhaps the first time that he'd had ever been pulled into someone else's pace. Sesshomaru would later recognize this incidence as an exceptional feat in itself and think himself a right fool.

As it were, Sesshomaru spends the better half of the dinner ignoring the juvenile, who thought himself fancy because he could speak in more than one language. Sango had lost her touch, it seemed, but the charade did not fool Sesshomaru. As amusing as it all was, he made little effort to disguise his disgust at the boy's wily behaviour. There were many things Sesshomaru did not care for, but he appreciated brownnosing least of all.

Pathetic was, justifiably, the first label he had adhered to the boy.

It did not take long for the performance to lose what little luster it had; Sesshomaru had seen it all before. Surely, he thought, the boy knew that playing hard to get was an overly used farce?

The boy may have been just short of fetching, but his blatant disrespect towards Sango – playing on her sincerity and using her as a vehicle towards wealth and fame – could not be dismissed. Sesshomaru tells his blind friend as much, only to have his conversation rudely interrupted by said impudent urchin. He reprimands the child, expecting to see him shrink away to ashes like all those before him, and is disappointed when the boy robs him of the satisfaction.

But the sentiment does not linger.

Sesshomaru's opinion of the man takes a dramatic turn when he enters his theatrical soliloquy, all hot and buoyant, face redder than a woman's lipstick, and pearly tusks stabbing down on his lower lip in an unrelenting, absurd pout. His shoulders sharpen then, all prominent edges and hard bone that Sesshomaru thinks he could sink his teeth into. The man doesn't notice that his shirt has ridden up in his vibrant rage and exposed a slight expanse of his speckled navel, but Sesshomaru does. He thinks the skin there could be made redder still, moist with perspiration and quivering in want, under his careful ministrations. What the tongue hollers is piercing and unforgiving, the cheeky brat, and Sesshomaru imagines all the delightful things he could do to destroy that vulgar mouth.

Sesshomaru is staring vacantly at the man, words lost and thoughts distant, his attention returning only when the door of the hall slams closed and Sesshomaru nearly recoils. He doesn't.

He looks towards the exit instead, wondering what else he could have possibly missed. The underlying professional etiquette, for one, if one was to squint. The audacity to argue a point like nobody's business, for another—an admirable trait, some employers would say. The wit, however, would garner the greatest pity. Rarely did Sesshomaru find a man with whom he could contend with equivalent retaliation.

He swiftly downs the rest of his wine, the taste of regret burning an acerbic trail down his throat.

Sango had given him an exasperated earful afterwards, most of which he had ignored because he'd been too busy making a decision, but he does remember to email her a week later to request for another copy of the man's resume and apologize for 'accidentally' deleting the first. 'Innocent until proven guilty', as they say.

The resume was a formality in truth; he'd merely wanted to learn his soon-to-be assistant's full name (he could deign to remember that much) and then pass on the file to Human Resources to be put on record. To learn that the man had graduated from his alma mater of Oxford had been a pleasant surprise. What he did not anticipate, however, was to find a familiar contact number next to Inuyasha's name.

Sesshomaru is by no means short-sighted, but it would have been a welcome consolation in that stagnant moment he was made to realize that the woman that he'd been unhealthily infatuated with since landing back on Japanese soil was in fact, a male.

A male who was suddenly and utterly within his reach.

How convenient.