Ch 9 I'm Listening
"What on earth do you think you're doing Dad?" Akiko asked, with some slight alarm at the huge crate of sutras Jii-chan had pulled out.
He gave her a look that clearly displayed his shock and disapproval of her ignorance. "What else? I'm going to go defend my granddaughter's honor of course!"
Akiko raised an eyebrow, but knew her father too well to be truly surprised.
"Her honor. Right. And what exactly are you defending it from? The effects of your first sutra?"
He spluttered in angry denial.
"I know, I know, 'the sutra's effect was to bring them together spiritually, not physically,' but honestly, with the way they reacted to it, do you expect them to go so far in so short a span of time? They need time to adjust to all of this; that's probably their second, maybe even first kiss ever! Do you really think they'd just start having sex immediately?"
It seemed that there were no words to even begin to explain his fury; the spluttering continued, now accompanied by an increasingly reddened face. After about a minute of Akiko's dry, slightly bemused stare and raised eyebrow, he managed a trembling, shaking gesticulation at the ceiling.
Akiko rolled her eyes. "Yes, what we saw just now I call kissing, nothing more. I know it was a bit much for you, but I'm happy for them; they've endured suffering and grief most people can only imagine, they deserve some happiness I think." Akiko's look was firm, commanding, as she attempted to send the message to her overexcitable father that she was not going to let him interfere any more.
Seeing that he was still of a mind to march up and 'save' his granddaughter from the 'evil, lustful demon' in all his priestly might, she added: "Don't you think your granddaughter at least deserves to be happy? If something made her happy that was not harming her, and rather good for her, in short and long term, wouldn't you stay out of it?" The last few words were uttered with clenched teeth and furrowed, threatening brows.
He held her gaze for at least three minutes straight, neither blinking, neither backing down.
"Well Souta, it's been quiet for a while; why don't we go back, ne?" Mrs. Higurashi smiled kindly at her son.
"I-I guess..." He was still somewhat shaken by events, still somewhat fearful of the infamous ire of the house's occupants.
"Come on, I'll make lunch. How does teriyaki chicken sound?"
Souta paused, thinking it over. It didn't take long.
"Ok, let's go! It's not like they can be still fighting now, right?" His hunger had won out; it was half past 1, after all.
The staring contest was abruptly broken as a bustling Mama Higurashi and eager Souta entered the room, chatting about lunch.
"Onee-chan, where have you been?" Akiko asked with not a little relief. She'd never admit it, but Jii-chan had been on the brink of winning the impromtu staring contest.
"Oh, just sweeping the steps with Souta. What have you been up to?"
"The usual; damage control, after a certain someone decided to add his own mumbo-jumbo and ended up ruining everything I'd worked so hard to achieve..." She sent a pointed look at Jii-chan, effectively preventing him from stealing away to add more 'helpful' sutras to Kagome's poor bedroom door.
"Weren't you able to do anything for them?" Mrs. Higurashi asked with a worried frown as she began cooking the chicken.
"Well, wouldn't you know it, I managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat yet again." Akiko answered smugly, her face glowing with its smirk.
"So you were able to help them after all?" Mrs. Higurashi's whole face lit up with hope, just as her daughter's could.
"Of course I was." The smirk only grew.
Jii-chan had been on the verge of making his escape (Akiko now distracted by her ego), but his own ego couldn't take her getting all the credit.
"Impudent girl. It was my sutra that brought them together, mark my words!"
Mrs. Higurashi knew better than to argue with him, as Akiko seemed raring to do; she avoided the confrontation tactfully by saying: "Well, if you were able to help them Jii-chan, why are you leaving with those sutras? Isn't your work over?"
Akiko frowned, but said nothing, waiting for his response. She was willing to sacrifice her ego if it meant an end to the old man's antics.
"Well...You see...I underestimated the power of my own sutra...and, and..."
"When we went to check in on them they were snogging like there was no tomorrow." Akiko took mercy on him.
"That's wonderful!" Mrs. Higurashi exclaimed, clapping her hands together in delight. "Here, Jii-chan, let me take out that new jug of sake for you to celebrate!"
Flustered by the attention, but pleased all the same, it only took a few sips for Jii-chan to forget his intentions entirely. He was so absorbed in his preening, he didn't even notice the room's collective sigh of relief.
"Oi, do you smell that?" His hushed voice woke her from the happy doze she'd engaged in after their interruption.
Kagome slowly lifted her head from his lap, and sniffed delicately.
She smiled a little. "Seems Mama decided to make teriyaki chicken for lunch. You want some?"
"Keh. In a little bit. For once I'm hungrier for something else." He ran his claws tenderly through her hair.
She lay her head down again, facing upwards. The look in his eyes...it made her breath catch in her throat.
"W-what's that?" she managed to gasp.
"What kind of stupid question is that? You of course."
He lowered his head, took her lips, half-lidded eyes watching her ever second, every achingly slow and drunken second...
"Ewww! Akiko-chan was right! I can't believe you're actually kissing like that!" Souta squealed from the cracked door.
It's funny how fast one little thing like can break your reverie, no matter how deep it is, Kagome mused later.
For that moment however, musings were not exactly options. Pummeling, shredding, screaming abuse...those were more appropriate.
"Souta! I am going to kill you, you know that?! Get back here you little twerp! I'm not helping you with your romance problems ever again, you hear me? Ever again! If you say even a word to Mama about this-"
Inuyasha watched in bemused silence as the delightfully soft and sweet girl of a moment before turned fierce, screaming Amazon, racing after her brother with murderous intent. As for himself, he was still too pleased with events to care much; it wasn't like her family wasn't going to find out sooner or later, and he preferred sooner. They'd already given their approval, hadn't they?
Sighing, he got off the bed, grabbed his haori from the floor where it had flown from Kagome's speeding frame, put it back on, and padded away, following the delicious odor of Higurashi cooking.
Might as well eat, seeing as he wasn't going to be tasting her lips for a while.
"So tell me, really, how did you manage to turn it around for them?" Mrs. Higurashi asked in a hushed whisper of her sister.
"Honestly? I just told him that the sutra wasn't real and told him to be honest about it all. He did the rest himself." Akiko answered in kind; sure, there was plenty of noise to cover the discussion up from Mama Higurashi's cooking and Akiko's setting the table, but you couldn't be too careful with a father as conniving as theirs, even when he was blissfully drunk with sake.
"Really? That's all? Then it seems he's either learned something from your discussion, or he had it in him all along or-well, whatever the reason, I'm happy for them." Mrs. Higurashi chuckled in relief.
Akiko smiled back at her. "Me too...It's funny, these two have to be some of my most difficult patients, but they were also the quickest to understand my message..."
"Well, it makes a difference when you live lives like theirs, so intense every moment; they're used to having to adapt to huge changes that come at the blink of an eye." Mrs. Higurashi gestured with the chopsticks she used to arrange the chicken slices on the plate.
"I suppose...But if they do start having problems again, call me, ne? It probably won't be as bad, but every relationship has issues, and it's not like I actually fixed them; I just gave them a different way of viewing them..." Akiko nibbled on her lower lip in apprehension, grabbing the cups from the cabinet.
"Doubting your success already? I'm still impressed that you did so well with Inuyasha-kun; I know he's not exactly in the age group you're used to." Mrs. Higurashi added slices of cucumber in a circle around the chicken.
"Huh? What do you mean by that? Aren't they both teenagers?" Akiko asked, perplexed, pausing as she set the chopsticks next to each place at the table.
"Didn't you know? I mean, for a hanyou Inuyasha-kun is still fairly young, but in our years he told me he was about 200 or so. That's right, isn't it, Inuyasha-kun?" she added the last bit with another smile as the (slightly disheveled, but fully clothed) young man sat down at the table.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah, something like that. Don't really remember exactly...When's the food going to be ready?"
He raised an eyebrow at Akiko's stunned face (forgetting how she'd last seen him), but said nothing more, focusing entirely on the food as Mama Higurashi laid it on the table. He didn't wait to dig in.
"B-but you act and look like a teenager..about the same age as Kagome..." Akiko protested weakly.
"Well, I was stuck to a tree for fifty years, if that makes a difference. If you don't count that, it's more like 150." He managed to explain between bites, though it was clear his attention was elsewhere.
Mrs. Higurashi took advantage of Akiko's momentary lapse of cognition to ask after her daughter.
The boy shrugged, and gave a casual, noncommittal explanation: "She's off chasing her brother around the Goshinboku. Said something about killing him. Don't think she's serious though."
"Ah. I wondered at the screams." It seems his fears were justified after all...she thought to herself.
Akiko had to sit down. It was all too much...her niece and nephew running and raving like lunatics about the family's pride, a holy tree; a patient who acted the complete teenager who was actually older than her by more than a century; her father, now tipsy as anything, sifting through his sutras with alarming determination...
Her niece, now complete in her mission to drag her brother about half the yard, waltzing in, blushing at the 200yr old youth vacuuming up lunch and smirking at the same time, and in yet another fit of righteous fury, seizing the entire crate of sutras and defenestrating them, glaring all the while at her inebriated Jii-chan, daring him to interfere...then sticking her nose in the air as the poor old man lunged for the papers, staggering after them as the wind danced them just out of reach.
Finally ready to eat (having accomplished, more or less, all her necessary acts of revenge), Kagome primly drew back a chair next to her hanyou and set to fighting him for the meager remainder of the food.
Mrs. Higurashi, noticing the shock on her sister's face, sat down beside her, a familiar comforting smile gracing her features.
"Here Akiko-chan, have some of the cucumbers before they're all gone, I bet you'll like them..."
Shaking her head, and ignoring (or perhaps not hearing) the suggestion, Akiko managed to splutter: "Is it always like this? How do you deal with it?"
Mrs. Higurashi laughed. "I don't really worry about it all that much. When things go well, I just accept them and thank Kami for it; don't question what doesn't do any harm, ne?"
Akiko managed to crack a smile. "I suppose..."
Akiko cast her eyes about the room, from the grumbling but swiftly eating Souta, to the whimpering but well-meaning Jii-chan, and focussed on the happily bickering couple. Inuyasha had the last piece of chicken in his chopsticks, and was holding it high above Kagome's head, taunting her, chuckling like a maniac at her adorable pout and flailing limbs (and smirking and ogling not a little her now jiggling and bouncing form).
"And things are going well, aren't they?"
After a few minutes of failed attempts, Kagome's eyes acquired a devilish glint, and, lunging for his ears, she caught the hanyou off guard; in a moment he had dropped the chicken onto her waiting plate, and she snapped it up at once, smiling her own mischievous smirk as well.
Mrs. Higurashi, finally looking away from their antics, smiled as well (though more sweetly, and less like a smug child with a stolen sweet).
"Yes. Things are going better than they have in a long, long time...since my husband died, I think," Higurashi-san trailed off.
Akiko raised an eyebrow in expectation.
"I'm listening..."
A/N: I'm terrible with endings, you know that? Simply terrible. But here it is anyway. There will be an epilogue set in the feudal era, for all that are interested, but it will be short and for humor more than anything else.
For any interested in more of my writing, I have more stories coming out soon enough:
Waiting; this is my own version of what happens when the well closes and Inuyasha is forced to bear through the centuries. There will be much depression, history, psychology, romance, and a few dashes of humor throughout, with a delicious ending. Rated M for language, some violence, possible lemon. Not sure on that yet.
The Mailman Blues; this is a fic I am writing in collaboration with phlawere, under our collective profile of maniacalaughter on this site. It is a romantic comedy, of course. Of epic proportions. This is the delightful summary we've cooked up (mostly written by her):
Seven guys. One girl. Friends and family who are out to get them. A wolf in the past and the present? What's a hanyou and a miko to do? This is the testimony of the lonely mailman who witnessed it all...
I am also planning a murder mystery AU, but I have not come up with an appropriately awesome title yet.
So...check them out!
And now that I'm done debasing myself with this shameless pandering and advertising...
Hope you liked I'm Listening
