Whole Playlist. Room of Angels.

My updates are so random now woah what the heck. I was gonna go and post this up on Tuesday since I went camping (thus missing Wednesday), but then decided against it because I'm cruel and bitter that way. Really I just didn't want the stupid nagging in the back of my head to go check hits and reviews when I was miles away from the nearest signal.

But here we are on the 25th chapter! I can say that I've been making good progress on a later portion of TC, although that had to be set aside for the camping trip. I'm also still hoping to start updating TMTR again by the end of August. Now, back to your regularly scheduled drama!

If I hadn't writen the first part of this chapter, I wasn't going to write at all. I'm very glad I wrote it.

Taking Care

Ad Nauseum

"More, please- just a little more..."

She shouldn't be here, the bastard said he was driving her home but now she's here instead. He has her pinned again, because he likes it a little rough like that, and she can't convince herself that this is a bad thing. Kagura's face is down in the soft pillows that smell like him, her insides tight as she can feel his hand under her chest and stomach. Her shirt is half undone down her front but Kagura can't pick herself up far enough off the bed to help him along. He could just rip the damn thing off for all she cares- but he's not like that.

The man breathing over her ear and forcing her down likes to be a little rough, but he's so proper about it at the same time that it just makes her heart beat and her insides twist. He won't rip her clothes or pull her hair- well, not too tightly, but he'll take his time working every button loose and shimmying her pants bit-by-bit down her thighs. He likes hearing her pant before they've even started, and she doesn't know what he does behind her ear but she feels it travel all the way down her spine, or sometimes run across her front.

"Only a little more?"

"Just keep going, I-" She's liberated of her shirt and his breath is so hot down her back, his tongue darting out between her shoulder-blades just so he can breathe and blow over the skin. Hot and cold, fast and slow, he's teasing because he knows she'll beg if he waits long enough. He loves that control, the bastard, but even if she knew how to make him beg and strain for her, right now Kagura couldn't put it into practice if she tried. His fingers just play with the straps of her bra but won't undo the clasp behind her back, he doesn't want to strip her right away; he likes to save some things for after.

"Sesshoumaru-"

"Shh..." He shifts and her pants are far enough down her legs that he kicks them the rest of the way off, Kagura's eyes shut as his hips press down on hers from behind. That- it's not what she's used to but sure- fine, go ahead: she'll try anything once if it's with him. But he's still only teasing, he just pushes and grinds but doesn't do anything, his hands grope and squeeze her- one from behind, the other kneading her breast through her bra. His grasp is hard and twisting enough that it's almost painful, but she just groans into the pillow, her spine bending and knees struggling to try and push herself up.

How much more encouragement does he need? She can feel his mouth attacking the base of her skull now, teeth grazing her skin at just the right time in just the right way to make her tense and whimper under him. She can smell whatever that is on his skin- his cologne, his aftershave, she's never asked. She forces her arms to stretch up over her head, searching for the edge of the mattress, maybe even the top of the headboard- anything she can grab and hoist herself up with. If she can turn around then maybe she can force his hand, or if he doesn't want her running away then maybe he'll just get to the point and-

"Kagura..." Yes? Oh please, let him be ready to- "Kagura, what's wrong?" Nothing's wrong, he's just taking too long! "Kagura." What!

"Kagura, wake up." Oh fuck.

'No, no it's not a dream...' It was a dream. 'No, come back-' Nu-uh, he hadn't even been there to begin with.

Kagura groaned again, but this time it was with a distinct sense of loss and frustration. She also discovered why her mouth was open over her thread-bare pillow, and why the quilt twisted around her body felt so hot and sweaty.

"Are you sick?" Kagura couldn't sit up, she just barely managed to turn her face away from her pillow so she could see where Hakudoshi was standing over her. He was fully dressed and ready for school, which was probably why he'd woken her up: Kagura was usually the first one up in the morning. Her sinuses felt stuffed full of cotton balls; her cheeks swollen and tender, nose completely blocked off and her throat dry from breathing through her mouth all night. Lifting her head up too high caused a dull ache to start at the base of her skull- cursed that damned, sensitive spot! and creep all the way up along her scalp until the pain pierced her behind the eyes.

"No..."

"Will you buy a better jacket now?" That... fucking rainstorm last night. Oh, Kagura could have just strangled that bus-driver for being so late to pick them up at their stop. They needed a car... Kagura needed to learn how to drive...Properly. She'd picked up the basics with-

"Go to school." Hakudoshi left her bedside and walked off, but Kagura didn't hear the door open and a moment later her brother was back again.

"We don't have any cough medicine." Don't say that! She didn't wanna go to the pharmacy! "I'll drop Kanna off then bring you back something."

"No. Go to school." She repeated into her pillow, tempted to throw the firm cushion at him, but that would be far too much movement right now. Her head was like a stone weight. "I'll make tea." And she'd go to the pharmacy. It was Friday, Kagura didn't have to leave for work until, like, eight tonight.

Finally she heard her brother give up, Kagura's eyes shut against the pounding headache in her skull as Hakudoshi and Kanna got their shoes on and left. Haku knew to lock the door behind him, and he'd drop his sister off at school on his way to class: they knew the buses and trains well enough that even the small detour for the older boy didn't take more than ten minutes out of his time.

'Fever, chills, headache, stuffed nose...' Cold, lonely, and completely unsatisfied after that dream.

Kagura almost wanted to cry a little as she picked up her quilt and wrapped it around her shoulders, making her way into the kitchen. Turning on the stove was beyond her though, and as she busied around searching blindly for the tea (turns out it was right there on the counter, damn it), Kagura decided she really didn't want to bother with hot water right now.

She fed the baby- since he didn't go to daycare on Fridays or Mondays, and tried to feel better under a hot shower, but in the end just dumped her baby-brother's blocks on the floor next to the couch and dropped herself onto her fold-out bed again.

She pretended to sleep for an hour, maybe two, so she was aware of Hakudoshi coming back to the apartment (stupid kid...) and setting down a bag from the pharmacy for her. He also put down something else, but even after he took a few seconds to talk to the baby and stack up some of the red and yellow blocks for him, Kagura didn't have the strength to move or speak.

When she finally managed to sit up again, half an hour later, Kagura found herself staring at a bottle of cough medicine and an open eviction notice.

Numb. That was a good word to describe how Hakudoshi felt on his way to school. He'd ignored Kagura's demand that he skip the errand to bring her medicine and just head to class, so now he was going to be a good hour late, but that didn't really matter. On the train, walking the ten minutes to the next station, and on the other train that stopped a block from the middle school, Hakudoshi was completely numb.

He hadn't seen the envelope on their door when he and Kanna left, but they'd been on the other doors on their floor. Large, heavy envelopes with a big red label on the front, taped over the peep-holes of each suite. He'd ignored them and just taken Kanna to school like he was supposed to, the two of them agreeing that, no, Kagura was not going to work tonight. If it came down to it they'd just sit on her to keep her in bed.

So he'd picked up a bottle of the thick red syrup that made his little sister's skin crawl and gone back home. Then he'd seen the envelope taped to their door, and curiosity finally got the best of him and he'd pulled it off, opening it up with his nails and sticking the tape on the wall when he couldn't get his fingers free of the industrial tact.

He should have just left it on the door.

Evicted. They were being evicted. He didn't get all of the terminology, but he read through it a few times and Hakudoshi understood what it was saying. The entire building was going to be demolished, or gutted, or just left there to fall apart as far as he could tell. But the specifics didn't matter, because before that could happen his family was being evicted. They had thirty days to pack their stuff and get out or they'd be kicked out by whoever had gone and bought the building.

Money had nothing to do with it, and at the same time it had everything to do with it. It didn't matter if they could afford a higher rent or not, Kagura wasn't being told that she either had to make x-amount of money or lose the apartment, she was being told the apartment was already being taken away. They were already, essentially, homeless.

'We can't go back there.' No, not completely homeless. There was the house. There was that empty shell they'd run away from with its bloody den and eerie kitchen. They couldn't go back to that place. Hakudoshi would never sleep in that room again, he'd never let his sister near the closet where she'd hidden so many times. He was never going back into that kitchen, he was never going to have to look down on the place where his mother-

"You're late, Onigumo!" And numb, which was why he noticed but didn't react to the stares as he came into his classroom a good hour and a half after school had started. He'd missed his stop. Twice. On both trains. Hakudoshi just sort of mumbled something that was probably an apology or maybe just a brush-off before he took his seat in the middle of the room.

The lesson was a loud, blaring mess of intonation and gestures. The words came at him out of order, like the feedback on a warped recording, a broken echo. He didn't even open his exercise book all class, just sat there and... just tried not to let the reality sink in. If the real world came and forced itself on him then he'd lose it in the middle of class, and he didn't want to do that. He just had to wait until lunch.

If he waited until lunch then he could address the queasiness in his gut, that nauseous feeling that made the room lilt and twist around him. The teacher's voice gave him a headache that turned into a migraine, pain wreathing his temples as the words kept overlapping and droning over one another, stabbing and dragging as they combed through his hair and clawed their way in through the back of his skull.

How long had it taken Kagura to find the apartment they were living in right now? A few weeks? A month? She had three weeks to find them a new place and what would happen if that wasn't enough time? What would they do if they had to go back to that house? That place with the blood and the screaming- all the broken glass still stuck in the carpet from that night, the kitchen still with that smell of blood where his arm had stained the cabinets and the floor. They couldn't go back to that. Hakudoshi couldn't go back to that.

There was some sort of weight pressing down hard on his shoulders, his hands white and numb as he found himself rubbing his arm through the sleeve of his uniform. After several minutes he was still rubbing, and the skin was growing red and sore, but it didn't hurt the way he remembered. He wasn't bleeding the way he remembered, his arm hadn't been split open by the rough teeth of a knife and he couldn't hear the screaming and the crying. No one was screaming, no one was crying, he couldn't breathe but the only thing he could almost hear was the teacher's voice, and Hakudoshi couldn't make sense of that anyways, so he was okay.

He just had to stay in his seat and remain completely quiet, rubbing his arm until it began to hurt badly enough that he brought his hand up and wiped it over his forehead instead. Why was he sweating? He hadn't picked up whatever had made Kagura sick, had he?

'We can't both get sick, that can't happen.' The last time Kagura had gotten sick she'd lost one of her jobs. Kagura had quit working at the coffee shop once Hakudoshi started working at WacDonalds- what if she lost her job because she couldn't dance this weekend?

What if Kagura had no job, and they had no place to live, and that guy from social services came to check on them?

"Sir! I think Hakudoshi is sick!"

"Onigumo, what's wrong?"

Everything. Everything was wrong.

"Alright, someone help take him down to the nurse's."

He couldn't stand up on his own, he could barely walk once someone got their arms under his and made him move. He couldn't go back to that house. He couldn't go back to the place where she had died. He couldn't let Kagura do everything and then have it all fall apart in front of her. He couldn't let Kanna be taken away or the baby be put in some foster home. He couldn't stop his mind from escaping down that slippery slope of doom and worst-case scenarios, but right now he couldn't stop anything else either.

Hakudoshi wasn't numb anymore, and the instant that realization struck all the queasiness and nausea came surging up like a wave. He just barely got himself free of the classmates carrying him down the hall, stumbled several uneasy, frantic steps away from them, then shoved the top off the garbage can in front of him and retched into the plastic. Before he had the chance to finish his insides twisted and he did it again, someone coming close enough to set a hand on his back, a voice he couldn't hear speaking words he didn't understand. Someone else was shouting, running off to find the nurse.

Girls. The classmates had been girls. He only realized this when he recognized the shouting voice: that was Karan. And the one standing behind him kept her hand on his shoulder, but then there was the sound of paper ripping before Rin held a wet square out to him, he couldn't smell it but it was moist. His hand was shaking and his mouth felt raw with sour bile and his half-digested breakfast, but he took the wipe and rubbed over his forehead and eye first, then his nose. The thin, papery cloth picked up hot fluid from his eyes and upper lip, and he still wasn't breathing properly as he coughed and spat into the garbage again.

"Hakudoshi?" He wasn't crying, but his eyes kept burning and he couldn't make it stop as his knees shook. He didn't want to but he felt his legs start to fold, hands still gripping the garbage can as he had to either let himself sink down to the floor, or tough it out until he fell in a graceless heap. So he folded instead, Rin holding on tight to his left arm, but it wasn't enough to keep him up. "You're still sweating..." And shaking.

He couldn't stop the shaking anymore than he could make himself stand up, his legs still trembling even as he came down to rest on his knees, weight on his hands where they were pressed down against the hall floor. A door slid open and someone, someone who wasn't Rin or their teacher poked their head out and asked something- they probably wanted to know what the commotion was, and Hakudoshi couldn't hear what Rin said. He just stared at the floor, willing the voices away.

He couldn't be sick now. Right now, he wasn't allowed to be sick. If he and Kagura were both ill then who would take Kanna to and from school? She was twelve but her school was too far away from their apartment- and if he was sick then who would watch Kanna and the baby while Kagura tried finding another place for them to live?

And if he was sick today then Kagura would have to come and get him, schools got weird about things like that: if you were sick then you weren't allowed to just leave. He could just go it alone, but then the school would tell the child services guy. Hakudoshi was fifteen, but he was still a child; the law didn't care about the rest of that stuff, that Hojo guy would just say that Kagura wasn't taking proper care of him.

If Kagura couldn't take care of the fifteen-year-old, then how could they expect her to take care of the fourteen-month-old? So he couldn't be sick. Not today. Please, not today.

"Don't-" His insides were still twisting, his arms weak and legs trembling. Even his back wasn't strong enough to keep him straight, that weight was just pressing down and crushing him. "Rin- don't..."

"Don't what?" She was still holding his arm, one of hers wrapped around the limb while her other hand was pressed down over his. The teacher had gone away, back into his classroom where he was either teaching again or on his phone. "I think they're calling an ambulance for you-"

"No!" No! No ambulance! He couldn't go to the hospital, how would Kagura come pick him up if he was off surrounded by doctors and nurses? They wouldn't let her within spitting distance of him if she was sick and with the baby! Who would look after Kanna if he was stuck in some room with paper sheets and his sister had to waste time arguing with nurses? "No, send me to the nurse- I'm fine."

"But you just-" Rin always wore her hair with that short little pig-tail on the side, it looked dumb but sometimes you almost thought it wilted when she wasn't happy, like it was really a flower growing out of her head instead of just brown hair. "-you look reallysick, you need to see a doctor!"

"I don't need a doctor- I need to go home!" He wrenched his arm away from her, but instead of jumping up and willing his legs to carry him off towards the head office, Hakudoshi saw the hurt look on her face instead and all he could do was sit there on the floor. "I just-" He didn't... know. He didn't know what he could do, and it was the worst feeling in the world, being powerless.

So he just sat there, quiet and shaking inside his too-young, too-weak body to do anything else. And when Karan and the nurse came at last and helped him down to the office on the first floor, Hakudoshi just kept his eyes down and did his best not to say anything. And when Ms. Taijiya came into the dim little room with the cot where he was laid down, he didn't tell the counsellor anything either. He just asked them to call his sister, even though he knew Kagura couldn't come, and he didn't want to wake her if she was sleeping, and he didn't want any of this to be happening.

So he just stayed like that. Shaking.

"Yeah, of course I..." Kagura didn't know how to make herself sound less sick and stuffed up and tired as she gasped into her cellphone. Being heavily medicated and sick didn't make her very good conversation, and considering the numbers she'd been crunching before the initial call from the school, Kagura felt her control over the situation wearing dangerously thin. "Can I talk to him?"

Oh wow, he couldn't even walk to the secretary's desk? Kagura chose not to tell the school that she had no car.

"I... as soon as I can, I'll be there." It was raining outside, she could see and hear it hitting the living room window. "I'll call again when I'm close." She hung up the phone and gave in to a coughing fit, standing up slowly with her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders as she crossed sluggishly from the kitchen over to that window. Outside was that cold sleet from last night, the stuff that went straight through jackets and sweaters and whatever other layers Kagura could hope to pull on over herself.

But the school had called her, so if she didn't go then they might begin to panic. If Hakudoshi was as bad as the nurse said then they might call in an ambulance, and if they did that then Kagura was obviously not a fit care-giver...

'This... in one day this is too much.'Much too much. She slumped down on the couch and thumbed through her contacts, found Kanna's school and called.

"Miss Onigumo in 3-H? No, her teacher hasn't said anything."

"I just got a call about her brother so I wanted to check in. Thanks." At least someone wasn't sick. The baby would have to sleep in Kanna's room for the next few days then. She wanted to stand up after making the call, but couldn't manage it; her head just pulsed and her eyes went hazy just trying to get back up and into the kitchen.

Papers, lots of papers, were scattered over the kitchen counters. Numbers and estimates and guesses, invoices and receipts and pay-stubs. The government forms regarding her support money for the infant and Kanna, how much money she made and how much she spent on rent, how much wiggle-room was in that budget.

She'd only had one newspaper, but had pulled out the real-estate section anyways, and the classifieds, and anything else that might help her find a place to move in with a teenager, a young girl, and a baby. Someplace that would let them in, close to transit because they didn't have a car, something she could afford and that they would all fit inside.

Today, at least, there was almost nothing. Even if she sacrificed bus-stops and train stations, two phone calls had already crossed the day's most likely finds off her list. People didn't like renting out to single 'parents'with infants.

'I can... I can try.' And she did. She tried getting dressed, tried putting on as many layers as might protect her from the rain before she found herself already over-heating with her fever, her tee-shirt wet before she managed to get the layers off again. She tried pulling on her boots for the rain and almost tipped right over- leaning against the wall with her shoulder to keep from breaking her neck. It was a helpless, horrible feeling, she couldn't even try getting the stroller out of the closet. She couldn't even put together the bag she'd have to carry on her back to make sure there were enough baby supplies for what would be, at least, two hours of her day.

Kagura tried. But she found herself in frustrated tears too many times, looking at the clock and seeing a half-hour already spent between the school's call about Hakudoshi and her promise to go pick him up. He should never have read that notice, he was fifteen and had dealt with enough shit; money was Kagura's problem, not his, he should never have found out. She shouldn't have let him leave without talking to him first.

She shouldn't have gotten sick.

'I can't...

' It was okay until she got sick. Or it was okay until they were told to get out of their too-small apartment. Kagura could take one blow or the other, but this? No, this she couldn't do. 'I can't...' Not alone. 'Help...' This time, now, she needed help. She sank down to the floor in the hall outside their tiny kitchen, out of the infant's line of sight where he was babbling at the TV and playing with his blocks. She leaned her back on the wall, wearing that same jean jacket from last night and able to feel the damp denim drawing the heat out of her body, leaving her flushed skin clammy and cold.

'Just this once, I need help...' She was still crying but the tears were silent, just that constant flow of wetness from her eyes and down her cheeks, a stream that wouldn't taper off and didn't care whether she blinked her red eyes or not. Kagura had her cell-phone in her hand and flipped the silver device open, her thumb moving through the familiar pattern of worn buttons and old screens.

Menu, contacts, sort- S., select... confirm?

'I need help...' She had to call him. She needed help, she wanted him to help her. He wasn't supposed to get her out of this whole mess, just the small one, the one right now. Because he had a car and he knew not to ask questions, and Hakudoshi was too sick on his back to put up a fight if the one-armed bastard he hated so much showed up outside Hitomiko Middle School with Kagura's verbal permission to pick him up.

He'd get it. If she explained it then he'd understand, it'd make sense and he'd at least, if nothing else, pick up her brother and bring him back to the apartment. And if he wanted to know more then she'd tell him, because right now she needed help, and the only person she could call was resting at her fingertips, and he-

"I... have to put him back to bed."

And he... he failedher the last time... when she might have needed help. When she... almost relied on him.

"Right."

He'd walked away, that- that was what he'd done. He'd seen a situation, peered into it, not even had enough of a glimpse to get the whole picture... and he'd just walked away. He didn't get it... Or if he did, he just hadn't wanted it... So how the hell could she ask him now? Because he gave her a ride home after she screamed at his soon-to-be sister-in-law? He hadn't said a single thing to her the entire time, he'd called her cell as if making fun of the fact that he hadn't called her before then for anything, not even for the time of day or just a fake 'Hi how are you?'.

Not even a formal break-up.

Kagura swore and tossed down the phone, the curse rushing past her lips as a frustrated grunt, her face twisting and eyes weeping as she ran her hands up and down her face, fingers reaching up and tangling with her hair as she dropped her head down and cried in silence. If she was too loud then the infant would hear her, and if he heard her he would start to cry, and then she'd have no more hope.

Get up and do it herself. That was her only option, and after several more minutes of wallowing in illness and anger, Kagura shoved her hand in her pockets and... what was that? Her fingers closed around something folded and damp, plastic. A small bag holding a crinkled business card unfolded as she dragged it out of the wet denim.

'That... bastard.' He'd left it on Kikyo's grave, because he was oh-so-noble. Kagura didn't even know what the gesture meant, but she read the number, a new one, a combination she didn't know and hadn't seen before. She read it and grabbed her phone up off the carpet, her fingers numb and shaking as she punched in the numbers and froze with her thumb over the call button.

This was... such a huge mistake.

She hit confirm. She almost hung up when she felt the line connect and heard the first ring, actually pulled her hand away when it buzzed again, and if it got to three and she was sent to voice-mail then-

"Hello?" Kagura froze, she didn't- "...Kagura?"Hang up, hang up! Hang up the damn phone right now she'd rather go it alone than-

"This is..." Between tears and congestion she couldn't get it out in one go, lifting her wrist to her nose as she tried to breathe without wheezing or sobbing. She failed miserably at both. "This is the onlychance I'm going to give you."

Quiet. The line was almost deathly silent for a few moments, she had no idea where he was right now, he could have been at home in bed, or driving around Tokyo doing errands, or trapped behind a desk for all Kagura knew of his work hours. Then:

"What do you need?"

"I..." Words never hurt so much. "I need help."

Poor Haku~ But c'mon, the kid's got a stack of reasons why he should be so freaked out. Evictions like this also do happen, as I know its caused a lot of grief in and around the Vancouver Area. Usually it means the building's been sold.

I also don't know why FF keeps screwing with my spaces. I check the word document and I don't see typos that appear in the FF preview. Strange... I also still can't put a ! and ? right next to one another, I really hope they change that eventually so I don't have to space all funny-like.

Read and review! See you guys on Monday!