He should not let the child do this. No ningen should ever be allowed to . . . handle a youkai lord. But her hands were clean and he didn't care to do it himself. Sesshomaru sat in absolute stillness as Rin ran her fingers through his long silver hair, untangling it with gentle and persistent care. The girl smelled of lye and some kind of floral fragrance from the bath that Kagome gave her at the nearby hot springs. No doubt some kind of soap she brought with her from the other side of the well. Kagome bathed often and the others of her pack had taken it up as well. Sesshomaru pondered the idea of having found himself among the cleanest group of ningen in the whole of Japan. He felt a bit grateful for that. To not be subjected to the offensive stink of the unwashed.
His eyes closed in appreciation as Rin started to work loose the knot that had pulled at his scalp all day. He stifled a wince as she got hung up on a snag. A whiff of the miko's scent approaching made him crack open his eyes again to see her crouch down next to Rin. She had in her hands another strange invention of her era, no doubt. It resembled a paddle with many spines jutting out of one side, like porcupine quills. All of a uniform length.
Asking her permission with a look, he held out a hand. She put the paddle into it. Sesshomaru examined it, with a thoroughness that rivaled that of when he checked over his weapons for damage. The handle felt worn and smooth, made of some material that didn't smell like wood, though someone had painted tiny stripes in it like they meant it to appear as such. The bristles felt stiff, but smooth under one questing finger. Some sort of animal hair. Boar, maybe. Or horse. He handed it back to her with a small frown.
She smiled and said, gesturing toward his hair, "May I?"
Sesshomaru nodded and settled into his stoic trance once more.
At the first swipe of that device through his locks, he wanted to melt into the ground in pleasure. Its bristles scratched at his scalp with the perfect amount of friction to make tingles shoot up and down his back. With half an ear, he heard Rin ask, "What shall Rin do now?"
"There's a comb in my pack. Front pocket, the zippered one." When the girl came back, Kagome said, "You get the left side and I'll get the right."
"Oi! How come you never brush my hair?" Inuyasha called from where he rested against a tree.
Kagome replied, "We tried that once, remember? You couldn't hold still and it ended up even more tangled than ever."
The hanyou scratched his chin and yawned, "Oh yeah. You had to cut the brush out. I still have a bald spot there. Good thing it was at the nape."
Sesshomaru tried not to feel alarmed at this. He did not want anyone to shear away his hair. There didn't seem to be a danger of that, though and the long strokes felt so very soothing. "Is this Sesshomaru's stillness of acceptable levels?"
The miko giggled. "Can you be any more still? I swear, sometimes, you're like a statue. I have to watch real close to tell whether or not you're still breathing."
He couldn't resist teasing. "Do you watch this Sesshomaru that closely often?"
The brush paused in its strokes, as did the comb. He heard his ward climb to her feet and say, "Rin will go play with Shippo now. Before Kagome-chan reads the animal stories."
That left him alone with the miko in a situation that seemed to grow more and more intimate by the second. Every moment that went by made him increasingly nervous. The taiyoukai wondered how to break the tension without betraying himself and felt a rush of relief when she did it for him.
"There's still dried blood in here from earlier. How can you stand to just leave it?" Her voice held a note of fussy recrimination in it that almost made him smile.
"Battle tends to be messy. This Sesshomaru knew that Kagome would want to camp at the nearby springs for the night. I will wash it once it is untangled." A not so subtle hint that she should keep brushing it. He sighed when the strokes resumed. That really did feel wonderful. Enough to make the dog in him want to roll over and beg for a belly scratch. Not that he would ever do such a demeaning thing. But still . . ..
"You haven't yet? But there's no sweat on you."
"Youkai do not perspire unless they have a sickness or when-" he cut himself of before finishing that sentence. He didn't dare hope she'd forgotten that there had been a moment when he had sweat. When they had sweat. His memory fed him an image of entwining limbs and the taste of her. He resisted the urge to clear his throat as he deflected, "It was not a hard fight."
Just her hands on him made the small hairs on his arms prickle and his heart race.
Then she stood away with a whispered, "Done."
All good things must come to an end, he supposed. The taiyoukai stood in one smooth motion and glanced at her over his shoulder. "This Sesshomaru is grateful, Kagome."
With that, he headed to the spring to bathe. And calm his rushing blood.
The evening went as most did. He completed his ablutions and sat back at camp to hear and listen to them as they conversed and did other comforting familiar things around him. He realized then that he'd missed it. But as always, midnight found him alone, awake and out in the forest thinking. He smiled as Kagome found him as he'd an inkling she might and turned to welcome back her company. Another thing he'd felt the lack of.
She seemed a tad skittish as she sidled up to him. Awkward with some hidden emotion, she said, "Nice night."
"Hmm."
"What was that?" she said, with creased brow and a half-smile.
He arched a brow at her.
"That sound. 'Hmm.' I haven't heard that one yet. Usually, it's just a 'hn.'" The short grunt he used to condescend sounded strange coming from the miko out of context.
"I was agreeing. It is a 'nice' night." He clasped both hands behind his back and marveled at how it still felt strange to be able to do so. "A very . . . nice night."
She chuckled at his attempt to stick to harmless pleasantries when there happened to be this huge thing between them that neither wanted to bring up. But be she ever so brave, Kagome dove in headfirst with enviable lack of fear. "You know, it's not generally considered polite to do that to a girl. Take her virginity, then ditch her alone in some field."
"I agree. It was unconscionably rude." His dry words stoked the fire in her eyes. Before she could blow up, Sesshomaru stepped closer and bent down to look her in the eye. "This Sesshomaru never meant to cause you distress. He never meant to find beauty in the ningen girl from the future. He never meant to come to care for her."
"And does he? Care for her, I mean?" Her eyes threatened to swallow him whole. He felt like that might not be so bad, should it come to pass. For then, he could dwell forever in their ocean.
"You read the haiku. Did you read them all?"
Her breath hitched in her throat. In a very small voice, she said, "Yes."
"I wrote another." He longed to breathe deep of her scent, as it tantalized his senses with in teasing tendrils. Sesshomaru took her hand and lifted it palm side up. In it, he set a paper crane. "Would you like to read it?"
With fingers that shook, she unmade the little bird and read aloud-
"What is this feeling?
Did I breathe before we met?
Or learn how to since?'"
Sesshomaru drank in her flushed cheeks, quivering lips and shining eyes. He found it hard to breathe all of a sudden as he waited for her to speak. To say something, anything.
Kagome held the paper to her chest and dabbed at her eyes. Then she swiped her bangs aside in a violent motion and peered up at him. "How do I know you won't just run off again? Once you've come to your senses?"
He frowned. "Once I've 'come to my senses'? Onna, do you believe there's something about you that should deter me?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe that you're a demon and I'm just a silly human girl?" She threw her hands up in the air and cast her gaze at different bits of ground at their feet.
"I believe we resolved the 'girl' part when last we met under the night sky." His attempt to make light rewarded him with one of her light laughs. Then, he took her chin in his hand and made her turn her face back to him. "This Sesshomaru won't lie. It is hard for him to accept this thing he once thought aberrant and perverse."
"Smooth. Puts it right up there on par with beastiality. That makes me feel soooo much better." Her mouth did a wry twist that made him hurt to see. A bitterness that he must be part responsible for that shouldn't exist at all.
"Kagome, calm yourself and let me make myself clear." Sesshomaru leaned even closer and put his lips right to her ear. "I am done with happy accidents. Anything this Sesshomaru chooses to do from now on, he does with deliberation and intent. And this, I choose to do."
She seemed stunned as he leaned away. Then he took a step back to let her breathe. Kagome blinked and looked away for a moment, staring out over the misty landscape with its shadowy trees.
He startled her again by saying, "Your story was wrong."
Distracted, she shot him a puzzled frown and said, "What?"
"The one you told the kit and Rin. The one about the kitsune and the grapes."
"Oh! One of Aesop's fables. Wait, what do you mean wrong?"
"Yes, Aisopos. My father, the Inu No Taisho, he knew that ningen. He told me many stories of the aged human's crafting." He sat on a fallen log and invited her to do the same. "Would you like to hear the version he told me?"
Kagome smiled and nodded.
The lord composed himself and began, "In a faraway land, where men of reason do battle against unreason, there lived a kitsune of arrogant and brash demeanor. He hungered, but for what he did not know until an old trickster named Amanojaku, upon meeting at a crossroads, told him about the existence of a pound of flesh, so rich and red that it is said to slake one's hunger for a thousand years.
"This kitsune demanded the location of such a morsel, saying, 'No one is more deserving than I.' Shown the way by the all too helpful Amanojaku, the fox soon espied it, hanging from a tree of all things. He thought to himself, well, whoever put it up there surely must not want it and also, no one is more deserving than this kitsune.
"He leapt, but some villainous agency pulled it just out of reach. Only then did he see that old trickster who helped him hiding in the upper branches, dangling the flesh from a fishing pole. Amanojaku laughed to see the kitsune leap thus and dipped the meat temptingly before the fox's nose many times just to see him dance. The fox whined and begged and pleaded for just a bite of that rarity that dripped fat, juicy drops of delicious blood onto his snout. Amanojaku jeered and said to the fool, 'Say you are lower than worms. Say that you are less than offal and this Amanojaku will give you your treat.'
"But ever prideful, the kitsune could do anything but that and though his belly yearned and shrieked for him to give in, he slunk away and said," Sesshomaru leaned in close to Kagome, whose entranced eyes followed him and widened as he revealed his hunger to her. He felt rather than heard her pulse pick up and thunder in the space between them. It ran counterpoint to his own mad heartbeat as he concluded, voice dripping with want, "I do not want that rich, red meat. I will never want that rich, red meat."
She took a shaky breath. He watched the tendons in her slender white neck flex and writhe. How he wanted to bury his mouth there and lick a path down between her breasts and further. Kagome slid her hand up to cup his face, he leaned into it and licked her wrist. Voice high and breathy, she said, "Slow, this time, yes? You overwhelm me."
With regret, he sat upright again and took a steadying breath himself. "That would be . . . wise. I would have you know, though, Kagome, I will never let pride stand in the way of what I want again."
