Kagome stood guard in front of her masterpiece, holding out a card for the first section.
"If you destroy this again I will suffer a psychotic break," she warned him, "if your case title doesn't begin with a vowel -a -i -u -e -o- then it's not over here."
"Then where is it?"
"Maybe one of your monstrous piles? The sooner you stop tearing these shelves apart the sooner I can organize everything else."
He seemed to be eyeing a row behind her with malicious intent.
"What if you're wrong and the exact piece I need is right-," he was working on the Matsuhi Reina case. Ma. MA. She managed to rebuff him, only just managing to grab his hand as he lunged for one of her A cases.
"Ma is not A, it's not here. I double and triple checked to ensure that nothing got mixed up." She turned him around and pushed him -gently- towards one of the piles he hadn't yet agitated.
He seemed to itch to turn back around.
"It's time for me to go," Kagome warned, "if I come back tomorrow and you've gone all Tasmanian Devil on this wall-."
InuYasha flushed, brilliant and boyish and she had to remind herself that the last time she crushed on her boss she cut her hair, gained twenty pounds, and nearly lost her best friend.
"Stay out of my drawers."
"I was looking for the missing piece to the Ichigo file. You left half a crumpled up report under your week old lunch."
He grunted at her and moved towards the pile she directed him towards, "I thought you were leaving." His ears twitched as he hunkered down on the floor, grumbling to himself about nosey assistants and the inability to find 'good help' nowadays.
"I am." She lingered at the door, watching him shift through the mess half heartedly, "don't touch that wall."
She wasn't fully down the hall when she heard crashing and -it was for that reason- that she didn't bother trying to redirect Sesshomaru when she saw him slip into InuYasha's office.
His cries of 'fucking hell' were cut off by the closing elevator.
It didn't take long to walk home, for all of their first day trauma the location was outstanding.
Kagome flung the front door open, kicking off her shoes without a second thought.
"Bitch, please tell me you chilled…" her words died on her lips as she remembered -albeit too late- that Sesshomaru's daughter was sitting in their apartment.
She wore one of Sango's orange-cream tee shirts, munching on curry as her caretaker argued with someone over the phone.
"I'm not arguing with you about your daughter's underwear, man. She needed a bath. I gave her one-," she fumed when something -undoubtedly- ignorant was said, "just remember to tell her to change her underwear when you get home. I'm not even asking you to parent at this point. This is basic. Bare minimum."
Then her face went puce and her arm fell limp at her side, "that bastard hung up on me."
Rin was the picture of innocence when she said, "Papa says he doesn't talk to women when they get emotional." She paused, as if remembering that speaking with her mouthful was ill mannered, and swallowed the food in her mouth. "He says they're annoying."
That girl sure knew how to sign a man's death certificate.
"Annoying, huh?"
Kagome thrust the chilled bottle into her friend's hand before she could blow the blood vessel that twitched dangerously at her forehead.
"Don't worry about him," Kagome insisted, "we can use the company card to buy her some essentials for the next time she's over. It's no big deal."
"He shouldn't have a kid if reminding her to change her undies is 'beneath him'."
She wasn't saying she didn't agree, but there was no sense in getting Sango all fired up when the power was still so unbalanced. Neither of them could afford to be fired and the figurative smoke coming from Sango's ears wasn't a good sign for anyone.
"Can we watch a movie?" Rin asked, sly about something Kagome wasn't privy to, "a Disney one? But in Japanese this time? Papa says I need to be fluent in English if I'm going to take over the world, but everyone else has seen the Japanese versions."
"What about Beauty and the Beast?" If anything would calm the rage that burned through Sango like a gas fire, it would be that.
As expected, Sango ceased her pacing. They worked in tandem to get ready for the movie, both loading bowls with curry and wedging sweets between the cushions of their couch.
Naturally, the movie was only half over when two fast knocks sounded at the door.
He refused to come in and Sango shoved Rin's backpack into his chest like it offended her. "Her uniform and shoes are all packed inside so -if it doesn't offend his highness- you'll have to carry her."
"I see you've not overcome your insanity."
Sango snorted, crossing her arms over her chest in a standard show of defiance, "you seem to be under the false impression that I will not stab you."
"And when no one can find your body afterwards? Surely your parents would like to at least bury you."
"Big talk for a man with a manicure."
Kagome shoved between the two of them, not sure what to do about their homicidal declarations, "we're all tired," she tried, but Sango loudly assured her that she would never be too tired to kick his ass.
"Your confidence will dissolve to nothing." He assured her, "but if you'd like to try your luck…just don't quit when I destroy you."
Sango was certainly willing to test it and Kagome grabbed the girl from the floor and backed up. There was no point in getting everyone hurt just because they were morons.
She kicked him in the stomach, smirking in satisfaction when he flinched a bit.
"Just don't fire me when you get your ass kicked."
Kagome watched from the kitchen as Sesshomaru tripped and pinned her beneath his socked foot. The thunk of her head of the hardwood had made Kagome rub her own hair in search of a bump.
Sango brought her foot up between his legs and-
It seemed impolite to watch him crumble. His face went red and the only audible sign that he was in pain was the long, shaky breath that hissed between his teeth.
"You bitch."
His eyes blazed when Sango ruffled his hair and reminded him, with a devilish grin, "don't you dare fire me." She and Rin returned to their movie without a second thought, leaving Kagome to offer him an ice pack.
"Sango can be a bit violent," she said by way of apology. She wouldn't point out that he'd baited her- his place on the floor seemed humiliating enough. "It's best that you don't antagonize her."
"Are you kidding me?" His expression was startling- ecstatic, pained… Sango had knocked something loose when she'd kicked him and now Kagome was the only one bearing witness to his descent into madness. "I seek nothing more than to battle the most powerful beings alive and I've found my newest opponent."
xXx
Friday couldn't have come any slower. With the week's end came the end of her daily torment- aka restacking InuYasha's shelves.
"Are you coming to tonight's nomikai?" InuYasha was currently taking a break from wreaking havoc on her life. He'd found God at the bottom of a styrofoam cup of instant ramen and was doing his due diligence to free him.
Free booze was one thing. Blacking out as a group was another.
"I don't know if Sango would want to," she said diplomatically, "we usually go out on Fridays and spend Saturday recovering from going out on Fridays." It was a tradition at this point.
He sucked his teeth, pushing his thick hair behind his shoulder as he dug into his second late lunch, "damn. I was hoping you'd come, break up the monotony." And who was she to argue with that?
Everything in her tried to remind her that InuYasha was being friendly. Honestly, what kind of boss would he be if he didn't try and make her feel welcome? She repeated that sentiment a hundred times, but it didn't stop her from turning away from him and smacking her warming cheeks.
"I'll check on her and see."
She could feel his eyes on her and that only made it worse.
It made it so much worse.
"Alright."
She heard the cup crash into the trash can and then he was padding away, completely ignorant to the pitter patter of her traitorous heart.
Hunting her down was easy enough. She was carrying a convenience store bag up to the eleventh floor, grumbling about her boss' insufferability.
"Make my appointments, he says, organize my life, he moans." She was truly in her own world, "but if he truly meant any of that then he wouldn't still hanging out with his three o clock at fucking five."
"Sango?"
"It's like he has no regard for anyone else's time. And who gets to deal with his pissy, conceited, self aggrandizing clientele?"
"Sangooo."
"Me. Obviously. Because he's locked up in that fucking office, heehee-ing and hawhawing with fucking 'Ookami sama' while I go on fucking sandwich runs!"
Kagome tapped her friend, spluttering when the woman spun around in a tizzy.
"Where'd you come from?"
"Sesshomaru being annoying again?"
"Is my hair brown?"
They walked side by side as Kagome tried to figure out how to broach the subject of spending their evening with the very man that was driving her up the wall.
"Don't you think," she twirled a loose curl around her index finger, "that we are at least lucky enough to be employed by handsome men?"
The look she gave was priceless.
"You can't be serious."
But she was. Oh so serious.
"The eyes? The ears?"
"I'm going to level with you, Kagome. Get help."
Sango wasn't being the least bit cooperative and that wasn't going to work for her.
"Those brother's have jawlines that could cut glass," and eyes the color of sunlight, "stop lying to me."
They hovered outside of Sesshomaru's office, while Sango actively attempted to make his sandwich as warm and as mushed as she possibly could.
"As much as I delight in your delusion, I've got a boss to feed."
"I had a point." Kagome assured her, "my point is that my very cute boss wants us to come to the nomikai tonight and I can't go without you."
She shuddered, "even if I did want to do something that involved him- Mr. I-Own-You hasn't let me go home before ten once so far."
"But if he's also going…?"
"Then I'd like to avoid him."
"Sango, you are my best friend. My favorite person. But if you try and abandon me here I will put Nair in your shampoo."
She groaned -long and low and petulant.
"If I go to jail for strangling him- I fully expect you to bail me out."