AN: Let the fluff commence!

Chapter 4: Information Gathering

Unlike when she was awake, Rin was a quiet sleeper. She did not snore, nor did she move much. As such, Sesshoumaru was able to doze for hours—never fully asleep but not entirely awake either.

However, during the middle of the night, when it was coldest out and the chill had well seeped into the tent, he woke up to the sound of Rin's sleeping bag rustling. Despite the fact that hardly any light shone through the tent, he could see just fine. He looked over and found her face screwed up in discomfort. She tossed and turned, as if trying to get comfortable, and with every movement, she shifted closer and closer to him until her back met his side. She turned over one last time, her head scooching off her pillow and nuzzling against the fabric of his coat sleeve. Finally, she stopped moving.

Sesshoumaru gaped in amazement at this sudden development, wondering how she could not possibly have awoken during such acrobatics. He was tempted to shove her away, but she wasn't doing any harm, and he was too exhausted to really care, so he resigned himself to a few hours of having her against him.

Given their newfound proximity, however, he decided to try to learn what he could about her just from looking.

Her hair was black from root to tip, lacking both any chemical stench from dye and the rough texture that came from too much treatment. (He was well acquainted with both, alas.) So in that regard, she was unlike most female humans today, who were constantly trying out new colors just for the fun of it.

He knew she had the brown eyes common to this land, but her eyelashes were long and thick enough that she did not need to use mascara, if she did indeed use it. Now that he looked again, he did not detect any makeup on her face. Granted, a woman who planned to camp alone in the woods likely had no need for it at that point, but she didn't have the drier skin or clogged pores that usually accompanied frequent makeup wearers. His eyes moved down to her lips— lips that seemed to be in constant motion unless she was sleeping. He scented the use of lip balm, but it appeared to be untinted.

Then he looked over the hands curled up near her head. No rings adorned them. So she was unattached. It made sense, if she had come on this vacation alone. No human he knew that had a significant other took vacations without his or her beloved.

So, she was a single nurse who did not care to primp and enjoyed the outdoors enough to go camping alone. Nothing about this woman seemed dangerous. Had it really just been some great coincidence and accident that she ended up in the sanctuary?

Which brought up the question: why was this woman alone? She said she had a sister, but did she have no other friends or family who would vacation with her? While Sesshoumaru himself preferred to travel alone (and often did), his servant, Jaken, had stayed by his side for centuries, and in rare moments, Sesshoumaru could admit that there was something to be said for having even just a little company.

He dozed off again for a few hours, only to awaken when he heard a small gasp. He opened his eyes to find himself looking right into her startled chocolate ones.

"Oh my goodness!" she cried out, jumping up so quickly that she got tangled in her sleeping bag and flopped right back down. After wrestling with it, she broke free and turned away, though he hadn't missed the red creeping across her cheeks like the dawn. "I'm so sorry. I…I must have moved in my sleep. I didn't mean—"

"I know."

That shut off the flow of her words. As the silence dragged on between them, she finally started to shiver, the early morning air still not warmed yet by the sun. She rooted through her backpack, keeping her back to him.

"I'm just going to go…wash my face and brush up," she murmured, scurrying out of the tent without looking at him.

He watched her leave in mild interest. He had thought nothing could fluster this girl. After all, she had stripped him nearly naked the previous day. But waking up with her head against his arm prompted such shyness?

This was a weakness he could use.

A smirk crossed his lips, his pride responding to this unusual turn of events. He was no stranger to female reactions to him. He was, after all, one of the most power demons to have lived—and still live. Several demon women (and unknowing human women as well) across the centuries had practically thrown themselves at him for a chance to seduce him. In a human's eyes, he knew he was considered handsome; demons had a different scale of judgment, given their varied shapes and forms, but with the annihilation of the most animalistic brutes, their standard for beauty had started to align more with that of the humans'. However, the extent to which that mattered to demons was up for debate. As far as he could tell, most demon women sought power over beauty—the latter was simply an added bonus. The ones who had come after him coveted his prestige and the protection he could provide.

But this girl was different. She wanted nothing from him. She was not playing a game (in vain) to try to elicit feelings of pity or protectiveness from him. Her reactions were genuine. Under that nurse's mask she always wore, she had no doubt stifled some of her surprise at finding a demon yesterday, but at the same time, he was sure she had seen so much in her medical life that many things no longer shocked her.

So for such a simple interaction to rock her morning, well…he wondered if he could use that. He still had information to gain from her, after all.

He thought back to how the women who had come after him had acted. He wouldn't need to go quite so far, but he would certainly have to tone down the animosity and acquiesce to—even initiate—some forms of physical contact. All of which would require him to reign in his utter distaste for humans and keep it from showing.

That…would likely be much harder than he thought.

When Rin returned, all hint of embarrassment was gone, and her usual smile was back in place. "My apologies. In my haste, I forgot to ask how you're feeling this morning." She knelt down next to him. "Perhaps it's just the morning light, but you're not looking quite so scuffed up now."

Sesshoumaru then realized the first step to getting her to open up would be to engage in discussion with her. He fought hard against the impulse to remain silent and forced out the words, "The smallest of injuries will have healed."

"That's remarkable," she answered, moving to unbutton his coat.

Reflex had him grabbing her wrist and snapping at her before he could stop himself. "What are you doing?"

He mentally cursed. Not two minutes into his plan, and he was already failing.

Though her heart stuttered once when he made contact, it quickly resumed its normal beat. "I need to check on your arm to make sure there's no bleeding. I did have to stitch it half in the dark, after all. It's possible I missed something."

He permitted it, but she needn't have worried, because there was no residue on the bandages. Still, she unwrapped his arm to examine the stitches now that there was full light.

"It's still red and a little puffy, but that's to be expected from such a wound. I'll disinfect it again to make sure."

He had not been awake yesterday while she tended his arm, so her light, cool-fingered touches against his bare skin as she applied the disinfectant were…strange. Every move of hers was clinical, and yet the feelings left what he would almost swear were goosebumps on his arm.

But he didn't get goosebumps—he inspired them in others. So he dismissed the thought.

Still…of the women who had dared to (or been allowed to) grasp his arm before, none of them had felt like this. Their fingers clutched at him either in desperation or like a leash, trying to hold him under their power, or slid across him, trying to arouse him. None of it worked, because he knew their game.

But there was no game here, so he wasn't sure how to feel. Apparently, his body didn't either.

And the fact that she touched him without hesitation, despite knowing what he was….

"Why aren't you afraid of me?" he suddenly asked, not having calculated the question before it slipped out.

She glanced over his wounded body, obviously biting back an amused smirk from her face. "Should I be?"

If this girl had any idea who I was—

"I've never met a demon before. Certainly, I've heard the stories. But they are the stories the Demon Slayer Corps feeds us and the legends that have been passed down for generations. For such a large threat, your kind is almost treated like aliens: with conspiracy theories and the utmost government secrecy. Any news coverage that comes on is veiled in 'potential sightings' and 'what-ifs.' Honestly, demons have been more myth to me than reality, despite what the Demon Slayer Corps would have me believe. And now that I've finally met one, I find a man who looks very much like a human; who does not like to eat humans, by his own admission; and who has not harmed me once since I found him."

"I could have snapped your wrist multiple times."

"But you didn't. And you were only reacting to an invasion of your personal space. If you think that's the only time I've been grabbed by a patient who doesn't want me to touch them or a patient in so much pain, they cut off the blood flow to my hand, you would be mistaken."

He gritted his teeth, unsure of why he was trying so hard to convince her of what a threat he was when his goal was to learn more about her. "You should not take the Demon Slayers' warnings lightly."

"Perhaps not. But you have not given me any reason yet to fear you, ah…sir. I see that I still don't know your name."

"And you will not."

"I understand. You want to keep your identity a secret. I suppose I haven't earned your trust yet. I know from experience that earning trust is…difficult."

He didn't answer, sensing by now that she would tell him what she wanted to say, regardless if he wanted to hear it or not.

She did. "You asked why I do not fear you or demons. The truth is, more than some supposed creature I have never seen—until now—I have found many humans to be far crueler than demons. Of course, any nurse who has worked in the ER might tell you the same…but I don't just mean that.

"You see, when I was four years old, my parents and my twin older brothers died in a car accident. They were on their way to pick me up from preschool, and we were supposed to go on a trip for Golden Week. They never arrived. I can't remember much from my childhood with them. I hate to say it, but I can't really even remember their faces anymore. When I think of them, I see images from photos I was allowed to keep. However, that day I remember very, very clearly.

"As it got later and later, I kept crying because they weren't showing up, and like any child who is told to expect something to happen, I was upset that the day wasn't playing out like I thought it would. The teacher called our home phone over and over, trying to get in contact with them. Eventually, the police answered. My teacher had to take me home and stayed with my while the police showed me pictures of my parents and brothers to have me identify them and while they brought in welfare officers and tried to find my next of kin. But my parents were both only children, and my grandparents had all passed on, so there was no one to take care of me. I was put into the foster care system, shuffled from one family to the next, waiting to see if one of them would decide to adopt me.

"Of course, I soon learned the good things in life never last. The families that I was happiest with always gave me up. They were usually the larger ones that took in children for a short time out of the goodness of their hearts. But financially, they could not sustain it over the long term. Then there were the families that were only in it for the money the government gave to them for taking care of me. Some were worse than others, but...suffice to say, the money they received didn't get used for me. There were days I went hungry, months where I wore clothing I had outgrown, and corporal punishments I received for not doing chores correctly or not doing what I apparently should have anticipated my foster parents wanted. After ping-ponging back and forth so much between happiness and sadness, I finally stopped setting any sort of expectations but the lowest. I even stopped talking for a time, I was so miserable."

She was silent for several seconds as her eyes stopped seeing him, even as she continued working on his arm. He knew the cruelty of humans—demons were by no means the only ones who had cornered that market—but as he looked at this woman's kind face, he wondered how any human could want to mistreat her.

She seemed to snap back out of it after a moment and popped her professional smile back on. "I'm not telling you this to garner any pity, you understand. Only to illustrate my point."

He wanted to ask how long this had gone on. How recent were these injuries? She did not appear to be much older than a college graduate. Had even a decade passed since this abuse?

He was spared the urge to ask when she continued. "But you know what? All that changed when I was nine years old and a new family took me in. They treated me with such love and kindness that it shone down like a light on my heart, and a seedling of hope began to sprout. Sure enough, they decided to adopt me. Finally, I had parents, siblings, and even a grandfather again.

"Of course, as I said, the good things never last, and it felt like no sooner had I been adopted than my foster father died. I was so scared they would let go of me after that. He had been our sole provider, and as the newest addition, I felt I was just another mouth to feed. Yet, even in her grief, my mother noticed that I was clamming back up, and she reassured me that what I feared would never happen. 'We're family,' she said, 'and it's at times like these that we have to stick together more than ever.'

"We ended up moving in with my grandfather at his shrine, and my mother was able to take on some extra jobs to help pay the bills. I always admired her for that, you know? She went from a married homemaker to a single mother of three in the blink of an eye, and she never let it show to us how much she must have struggled in those early days as her life was turned on its head."

Rin turned a full, genuine smile on Sesshoumaru—not the professional one he was getting accustomed to, but one that rose from the bottom of her heart, and the beauty of it shocked him so much, he could only stare.

Rin patted his hand. "But I've been talking your ear off for a while now, and we haven't had breakfast yet, so…." As she got up and went to her backpack, he realized he had been so engrossed in her story that he hadn't noticed she finished re-bandaging his arm.

Rin pulled out some snack bars. "They aren't the greatest, but they have the nutrients we need. I'll scope out the area and go foraging after this while you rest."

Rin wandered through the forest after having made sure that the demon was comfortable enough to relax. She was supposed to be gathering food—mushrooms, berries and anything else edible she could find—but her mind kept wandering from the task at hand.

Why was this demon so easy to talk to? She never mentioned her childhood traumas if she could help it. She had learned early on that it changed the way people thought of her. So if the topic of her family came up, she usually just left it at, "I was adopted as a child."

Was it because he was a stranger? People said it was easier to talk with strangers about difficult subjects, since they held no preconceived notions of who you were and you never had to worry about seeing them again.

Or was it because he was so silent? She was no stranger to silence, of course, but ever since the Higurashis had opened their hearts and home to her, she had grown to detest silence, since it reminded her of those dark times in her life. It was why she was so talkative now—she had a need to fill that silence.

Of course, there was another reason she recognized for why she just couldn't shut up around him.

She was totally babbling…because this demon was gorgeous.

She had thought before that she knew her type, but this demon blew all her previous notions away. Admittedly, she had always been attracted to Caucasians, especially the light-haired ones, but his pale skin and silver hair just made him look ethereal, even as bandaged up as he was.

And while she had never really been a fan of tattoos—happy to admire the art but put off by their permanent nature and what she knew on a medical level that they did to the skin—she was so intrigued by the markings on his body. Was he born with them? Did they hold any meaning? Or were they like zebra stripes—just a part of him? If he hadn't woken up when he did while she was pulling out his contacts, she might have started tracing them.

Speaking of contacts…those eyes. Gods, she had never seen so many facets of gold. His oblong pupils really did make him look like a predator—rounded and relaxed when he was and constricting to slits when he was angry. They reminded her of wolf eyes.

But if she was being completely honest, the part of him that fascinated her the most were his pointed ears. Her love of Celtic music had spawned a deep dive into Celtic lore and history. That culture had one of the richest mythologies, with such fascinating tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and there were so many artistic renderings of them. With his strange ears, markings, and hair, he looked like he could have walked among that tricky flock, a being to be both feared and respected.

Now that I think about it…I wonder if the Tuatha Dé Danann are the Irish equivalent of Japanese demons. Do they actually exist…and are they in hiding too?

She had never considered that possibility before.

I wonder if he knows. I should ask him. Then again, he probably wouldn't answer. Still, she would keep trying to get him to open up.

There came a certain desperation with age that a young woman had when confronted by an attractive, hopefully single young man: the need to speak to him at all costs (i.e. learn more about him and find out if he was indeed single) and see if there was any chemistry.

Rin knew it was ridiculous—he was a demon, after all, and he had shown absolutely no interest in her. Rather, he appeared to want nothing to do with her. But the spark of attraction had already kindled a small fire of hope in her heart.

Yes, she knew this was the ultimate act of desperation. But…what if? As the saying went, you never knew if you didn't try. The fact that he hadn't ripped her to pieces yet for disturbing him or finding out part of his identity was at least a start.

But as when she had been a child, she tried to smother those feelings of hope and expectation. In two weeks, you'll be back at the medical center, and life will go on as usual. Just watch. Despite the odd start to this vacation, nothing about your day-to-day life is going to change in the end.

Vacation indeed. She could just hear Kagome now: Of course you would end up taking a vacation where all you did was work!

Certainly, she had not meant to spend her hard-earned time off caring for an injured demon, but she couldn't just leave him, accelerated recovery or no. Still, she was going to have to find a way to get him back to the resort, assuming that's where he had come from. She would have to ask.

They would probably have to call in a helicopter to come and airlift him—

Wait. There could be no helicopter. He was a demon. He couldn't go to a hospital.

So how did demons get their wounds treated? Would he even tell her? There was so much she didn't know, and she wanted to do what was best for him, but if the stubborn man wouldn't tell her, then what could she do beyond what she was already doing?

In her distracted state, she wasn't totally watching where she put her feet, and when her foot ended up descending further than she expected it, she cried out as she tumbled into a depression. She sat up and looked around at the crushed and muddy plant life around her—not her doing. "What the…?" She stood up and noticed that the spot she had fallen into was very clearly defined—completely unnatural. A fallen tree lay nearby, so she stepped out of the depression and climbed onto the tree trunk, looking down from the higher vantage point. She gasped.

She had fallen into a giant, canine paw print, easily a meter longer than she was. She looked around where she was, noting the broken trees. That was when she noticed something else. She had thought all these trees were broken—but upon closer inspect, some of them looked melted.

She ran over to investigate a fallen bough next to its still miraculously upright tree. Indeed, where the bough would have connected to the tree didn't end in jagged splinters; rather, it was much smoother, as if it had been eaten away by acid.

Was this the giant beast that had left her demon in such a sorry state? No wonder his arm had been nearly torn off. She wondered if he would tell her now that she knew.

Distracted as she was by investigating the scene of the fight for clues (in the very likely case that her demon did not tell her what had occurred), it took her hours to forage for food and find her way back to the campsite. When she returned and poked her head back into the tent, the demon met her eyes. She smiled and held out the plastic bags she had used to collect the food. "I'm back! And I brought goodies. Want some hickory nuts?"

That seemed to pique his interest, if the minute rise of his eyelids was any indication. Her smile widened. "I'll peel them!"

Rin prided herself on her ability to read people. It was part of her job as a nurse, after all. In college, she had learned a fascinating statistic: in 1971, one Dr. Albert Mehrabian theorized that communication is 7% verbal and 93% non-verbal. Her professor taught that as a way to reinforce that patients were not always forthcoming with their pains, for various reasons. It was up to nurses to be able to spot what patients weren't telling them.

She was starting to learn that this demon was more like 2% verbal and 98% nonverbal, so she was going to have to watch his every movement to learn what she could about him.

As she sat down and started peeling the nuts, she casually glanced over at him and said, "So…while I was walking around, I came across some giant paw prints. I'm talking bigger than me. Did you fight some sort of beast demon lurking around here?"

He stared at her, his face unreadable.

Dang it, he was really good at hiding his emotions. I'll just have to work extra hard. She chewed her lip, wondering how she could get him to answer. "I…only ask because I'm afraid it might…come back. You might be a demon, but you're in no condition to fight, and it apparently got the better of you the last time. I certainly wouldn't stand a chance."

"You need not fear. It will not be coming back."

Nailed it! "Oh? How do you know?"

He didn't say anything more, but what he had revealed was enough. If he had killed it, she would have seen a corpse. If he had mortally wounded it, he probably would have told her out of pride, right? So what wasn't he saying?

Maybe she should try another line of questioning.

She cleared her throat. "Anyway, I was wondering…. Demons don't just reside in Japan, right?" No answer. "I mean…every culture has legends about supernatural beings. I know the ones about Ireland specifically—ones concerning the Tuatha Dé Danann. Have you heard of them?"

"…Yes."

An answer! Score! She couldn't help but smile as she put the pile of peeled nuts on the bag between them. "Have you…ever met them?"

The way his eyes flew to hers, pinning her with an intense stare rather than one of confusion, only made her smile grow in triumph. "So they are demons! I knew it! Can they really do everything the legends say they can? Like control the elements or transform into animals or—" She froze, looking down at him just then. He watched her with a wary stare. "Wait…can you transform into, say…a giant animal?"

He broke eye contact, turning his head away from her. "Don't be ridiculous."

But Rin did a little jig in her seat. She hadn't yet spent a day with him, but she already knew that tell of his. He only looked away from her when he wanted to hide something.

Like the truth.

"You can, can't you? So that's why you were so sure that demon wouldn't come back! It's you, isn't it? What are you? Maybe a wolf demon?"

The demon whipped his head back around and bared his teeth. "I would never be something so mangy as that."

Rin nodded. "Okay." But he had basically just confirmed he was something. And based on that paw print, he had to be some sort of canine. She gasped. "Oh, are you maybe a nine-tailed fox? No, wait, that can't be—you don't like eating humans, and they eat human livers."

"Do you believe every legend about demons is true?" he scoffed, reaching out and grabbing some hickory nuts. Since he was looking this way, she did a small victory dance in her head instead of out in the open when he ate them. She resolved then to find more hickory nuts and perhaps a variety of others to see what he responded to.

"Well, considering that I've now learned that other countries' legends are in part true, there must be a grain of truth in all of these. Wouldn't you say?" Again, no answer. "So…I'm guessing you're not a fox…or maybe you're just a really picky fox?"

I wonder if he eats berries? She pulled some out and put them next to the nuts. He ate those too.

"You are free to believe what you want," he answered. But no matter what type of animal she asked about next, he refused to give her a clear answer.

Eventually, she moved onto other topics, not wanting to end the tenuous sense of camaraderie they had established. (In her mind, she equated camaraderie with this demon as him not telling her to shut up or get lost.) She talked about some of the most interesting cases she had seen during her clinicals and her time in the maternity ward.

Although she knew he would give few answers, she still couldn't dampen all of her curiosity, so she still peppered him with questions.

Was that his natural hair color?

Yes.

Was he often mistaken for a foreigner?

Always.

Had he ever lived outside of Japan?

Temporarily.

Did he like it?

Yes.

Did he enjoy travel?

Yes. (She inwardly rejoiced at hearing that answer, for it meant they had a shared interest!)

Each one-word answer was a challenge to her. Could she get two words of elaboration? How many more questions would he answer?

There were some details he refused to tell her, of course. How old he was. If he had any family. What had led to his fight in the forest and with whom.

That train of thought led her back to the question she had had earlier while foraging. "How do demons get medical care? I assume you can't just walk into a hospital," she asked.

"We have the facilities we need," he answered.

"Is there someone I should contact for you? If you feel you'd be comfortable enough here for a few hours, I could hike back to my car and go to the resort to get help."

"There is no need."

"But you need better treatment than this emergency field dressing I did."

He looked her in the eye and said, "You've done a fine job on your own. It will heal."

The unexpected compliment dried up her arguments, and she didn't bring it up again.

The next day passed in much the same manner, although the demon was able to raise himself into a seated position by then. He had also removed many of the band-aids while she was sleeping, and to her surprise, the only marks left were faint scars, as if several days had passed and not just two.

Now that he could sit and scooch himself with his right arm, she helped him out of the tent so that he could breathe in the fresh air and bask in the ambiance of the forest rather than stay cooped up.

At one point, she brought back the broken halves of the sword she had found. "Is this yours?"

He opened his eyes and glanced at it before closing them again. "You may cast that back where you found it. I have no use for a broken sword."

Rin looked down at it. "I don't know much about sword-smithing, but can't you have it mended? It seems a shame to leave such a valuable thing in the forest."

"If it cannot defend me, it has no value."

"If you say so." She went back to the trail and laid the sword on the edge of it. Maybe someone else would find it and wish to fix it.

That night after dinner, they were sitting around the campfire. While Rin was staring at the play of flames, the demon's gaze was turned up towards the gap in the canopy created by the newly felled trees. When he had stayed so preternaturally still, gazing like that for some time, she finally looked up with him. She blinked as she tried to get the burn of firelight out of her eyes. After a minute, some of the stars came into focus.

"Oh…that's beautiful." She hadn't had much time the past couple nights to really appreciate the night sky, busy as she had been caring for him.

"It would be better if there were no light," he said.

The words weren't a total admonishment, but she understood the cue. However, the fire was at the height of its blaze now, so she waited for it to die down on its own, relishing the warmth while she could. When it had shrunk to small licks of flame and embers, she doused it in dirt and then moved over and sat beside him. She craned her neck up to look at the sky.

"Wow, you're right—I see so many more now. You can't see the sky like this in Tokyo. I only know a few constellations, but…oh, there's Cassiopeia!" She reached up and pointed.

He grunted in acknowledgement. "Below it is Andromeda."

"Where?" she asked.

He took her arm and adjusted the angle, using her finger to trace the sky. "There. Can you see her figure?" he asked.

"Oh…I think so. Yes…now I see it!" Her skin tingled under her clothes where he touched, and the shiver raced up her arm to her back and crawled along it. However, instead of chilling her, it kindled a blaze in her chest, and she found she no longer missed their campfire's heat. Her face started to burn, and she was so glad it was dark. "Do you know any more?"

"Yes."

She lay back on the grass. "Will you teach me?"

He relented and lay back with her, pointing out the constellations that were visible in their patch of sky.

She didn't speak while he showed her—partially because her throat was choked up from the tears that sprang to her eyes as his soothing, low voice recited the names of the stars. She didn't trust herself not to give her emotions away.

This was the most romantic thing she had ever done in her life. And at my age, how pathetic is that?

She couldn't help it: that ember of hope had grown into a finger of flame.

His grip on her arm, which was already feather-light to begin with as he helped her trace constellations, lightened even further. "Am I hurting you?"

"W-What? No. Why would you say that?" she asked through a thick throat, trying to sound as normal as possible.

"You're crying."

He could tell? How? Egads, could he see in the dark? Or smell the salt in her tears? If he really was part canine, he probably could. Well, the truth was out, so she just had to muddle through it.

She sniffed and took her arm away from him, using it to wipe her eyes. "No, you're not hurting me. The…the night sky is just so beautiful…it makes me want to cry. Haven't you ever seen something so beautiful it moves you to tears?"

He didn't answer, but when she opened her eyes, he was looking right at her. Her heart lurched, and knowing what she knew about his senses now, she was sure he heard it, so she sucked up her courage and placed her arm back in his grasp. "Now, which constellation were we looking at again?"

While the demon was able to move more easily the next day, he still spent the majority of it resting. As Rin went out to gather food, she noticed a patch of spider lilies and whipped out her phone to take pictures. Her family and friends often made fun of her for having more flower pictures on her phone than human ones, but what could she say? Each flower was a unique vision in breathtaking beauty. Her foraging mission turned into a flower-finding mission, and she ended up photographing a wealth of flora.

When she returned and they were eating her pickings, she showed him the picture of the spider lilies.

"This was my surprise find of the day!" she announced with a giant grin. "You know that feeling you get when you see the spider lilies in bloom and think, 'Ah, so it's that time of year'? I felt that. Did you know it's also called the 'resurrection lily' in some places? I've always found it sad that we associate this flower with death and loss, because the idea of resurrection is such a beautiful one…."

She showed him the other flower photos on her phone, describing the names and attributes of each. Pink chrysanthemums for longevity. Queen Anne's Lace for complexity and sanctuary. Chinese bellflowers for unchanging love and honesty.

Her arm started to cramp from holding it up at an awkward angle in front of him, so she lay down next to him and held up the phone while resting her arm against her stomach. She even showed him pictures of her plant babies, which she cultivated in her apartment—everything from bonsai to succulent dishes.

He did not make many remarks during the time, but his attention never wavered from her phone or her face as she spoke. Of course, lying there, Rin found herself getting sleepy, and at one point, she rested her phone on her stomach and laid her head back just to close her eyes for a second.

When she woke up, the light had decreased dramatically. She glanced over and found the demon had his eyes closed as well, his head tilted slightly towards her. She stared at his sleeping face—a rare thing for her, as he always seemed to be awake whenever she was.

He was such an enigma, but she was starting to figure him out. She had discovered some of his food preferences: natural, uncooked items, such as nuts and berries. (The exception seemed to be mushrooms, which he would not touch, so Rin happily grilled those for herself.) He also didn't like foods with an overpowering scent. When she had brought back wild onions earlier, his nose had scrunched in distaste.

He always reacted to the slightest noise, which meant he had enhanced sight, smell, and hearing—all of which went in line with her theory that he was a canine demon.

He had an interest in astronomy and enough in nature to comment on certain plants she had shown him.

He was not prone to speaking more than he had to, and it took all of Rin's abilities in reading body language to guess at his true feelings. She wondered how much of that was him and how much of it was from years of hiding who he was. In that way, they were complete opposites, but instead of finding his silence oppressing, she found it fit him. Even bruised, bandaged, and half naked, there was still this regal air about him that she couldn't explain, and the silence only added to that.

It was a soothing silence—not a deafening one.

She didn't think she had ever seen his face so at ease, however, that she just knew she had to capture it. Very carefully, aware that he would wake up if she made the slightest sound, she unlocked her phone, thankful for once that she had turned off all the little unlocking and photo clicks that accompanied the functions. She opened the camera app and turned it into selfie mode. Then she held it up in front of them, making sure to fit both their heads in the frame. She tilted her head to make sure that he was still asleep, and when she glanced back, she noticed the shutter function flash across the screen. Her finger must have slipped on the button. She took another one, this time looking at the camera with a full-blown smile.

AN: So much for not letting Rin find out anything, huh, Sesshoumaru? XD Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think!