Chapter 10: Obviously He's Going to Peek

Author's Note: I'm currently on vacation at the beach and I'm challenging myself to post at least one chapter a day! So keep checking back. We should be catching up with Sesshoumaru soon, and Kagome just might find her way into this fic...can't let Rin and Inuyasha have all the fun, can we? Also, I had to change the summary of this fic because it no longer made sense. Originally I had planned on writing a fic where Rin fell for Inuyasha first. However, as the fic developed, the Rin I created simply wasn't interested ( at least not yet) while it's pretty clear that the hanyou is falling hard and fast. How is he going to convince her? Keep reading! Reviews are appreciated, too.

Warning: This chapter is a little steamier, and not just because of the hotspring.

Inuyasha woke with a headache, and without the warm scent that he had enjoyed the night before. Judging by the sunlight filtering through the trees he hadn't been out for very long, maybe an hour. He swore violently and sat up, crawling to all fours and shaking the dirt and twigs out of his silver mane. Rin was gone, of course, but he could already catch her scent trail. As he set out to follow the trail, his stomach grumbled and he cursed his haste. Perhaps he should have stopped for long enough to gather some supplies.

It only took Inuyasha about another hour to locate Rin. He would have found her faster, but she'd obviously done something to try to confuse her scent. When her scent mingled with the sulphurous smell of a hot spring Inuyasha slowed down. When he heard distant splashing, he slowed to a slight crawl, and lay low to the ground.

The hot spring was hidden well in dense foliage, but Inuyasha found it easily. Creeping as quietly as possible, he parted the branches and leaves, telling himself he was just making sure she was okay. The sight that greeted him made his jaw drop nearly to the forest floor.

Rin's skin was dappled in the filtered sunlight as she shed her layers and dropped the clothing to the ground next to her. She toed the water before sliding in, and Inuyasha ducked when she turned around as she began scrubbing caked mud from her face and arms. When he dared to peek again, she was rinsing out her hair, but had missed a large spot of mud running down the side of her neck. His instincts growled again at him to go and remedy that, just as they had urged him to comfort her last night. Swallowing heavily, Inuyasha turned away slightly when he noticed Rin clamoring up out of the water. He'd peeked at Kagome and Sango enough times to know what he was missing (but not as often as Miroku had peeked), but that version of himself seemed far away right now. While he waited for Rin to become decent again, he couldn't stop himself from dwelling on the slender girl in the green skirt who'd climbed through the well and stolen his heart thirteen years ago. Sure, he'd never really told her how he felt and she'd never really asked. He'd only begun to admit it to himself when he lost her. Inuyasha grimaced slightly as he remembered the searing pain of regret, how he had felt like he was walking around with a hole in his heart. He'd torn the wooden structure of the well to pieces after it had sealed, then meekly allowed Miroku to help him rebuild it.

Where was Kagome now? What had happened to her? She'd be older, he reasoned. Probably married to some moron and raising a pack of brats. Pups. He thought. They should have been my pups. But he'd not claimed her when he had a chance, and when he found he might have wanted to claim her she was gone, across time. Five hundred years away.

Inuyasha had contemplated waiting for her, but he'd been to her time. He didn't exist in her time, no yukai did. At some point in the next five hundred years his whole existence, and that of anyone like him, would be that of a fairy tale. It was a morose thought that Inuyasha had not shared with anyone, and tried not to dwell on himself. But how could he wait for her? If he had waited for her, wouldn't he have run into...himself? On the other side?

I die. He thought again to himself. Shippo, me, Sesshoumaru, Kirara...none of us make it to her time. If they had, he would have known. He would have sensed it. The glimpses of the future had been wondrous at the time, but he felt now like he'd just been looking into his grave.

Inuyasha perked his ears up, wanting to shake himself free of the mood he was in. It was then that he realized that he didn't hear Rin getting dressed anymore. Heart hammering in alarm, he turned and peered around the bushes and was greeted with a sight that had him swallowing a lurid curse.

Rin apparently had decided to take a few minutes to warm herself in the sun on a flat rock near the hot spring, before putting any of her clothes back on.

Inuyasha's mouth spread to a fangy grin. He'd tried to be a gentleman, hadn't he? But this was just too much temptation. He was half dog yukai, for crying out loud...so he crept forward imperceptively to improve his view. Rin stretched languorously, her mane of dark hair stretched out behind her on the rock. She reached behind her head as though scratching her scalp and Inuyasha stared for all he was worth at the fabulous things the posture did for her body—

One sharp sting in his arm alerted him to his folly. His last sight before the darkness took him was a naked Rin crouching over him to pull the razor-thin knife from his arm. His last thought before the darkness took him was that it might have been worth it...