A/N: For Drosselmeyer's prompt: Friends to lovers. Post-canon

They started off as enemies, with Sesshomaru intending to kill her.

After Naraku's defeat and her return to the feudal era, they shifted into an uneasy tolerance of one another. They rarely spoke at all, at first, until the day he'd found her lounging in the grass, playing a makeshift Go game with Miroku, using rocks.

Sesshomaru had been intrigued. Evidently he'd loved the game of Go and he was good at it.

Since Kagome had beaten Miroku on both games Sesshomaru had observed, he'd demanded to play her.

Sesshomaru was as good as he'd claimed. Kagome's games with Miroku were often short and quick—unless they were distracted by conversation—but her game with Sesshomaru took over forty-five minutes where she'd felt more like his prey than a true combatant. He was ruthless, chasing her pieces across the board until he'd conquered her last piece.

Kagome stared at the board. "Huh," she muttered to herself, still surprised that she'd lost. "You're a good player, Sesshomaru."

He huffed, though his eyes glinted with delight. "This one has been playing for almost three hundred years. It is hardly surprising that a human of your years would lose, priestess."

She snorted, more to mask her annoyance at his words than anything else. "Well, then I'm surprised it took you so long to win," she taunted. "Seems like we're more evenly matched than anything to me."

He raised his brow at that. "Very well," he said, reseting the 'board' Kagome and Miroku had etched into a piece of dried wood. "Perhaps another game will make you aware of your failings as a player."

"Or remind you of yours." She lifted her chin, refusing to back down.

To her surprise, there was a slight grin at his lips as he inclined his head just before she made her first move.

He ended up beating her again, though she played better that round, she thought. She'd insisted on a third, which she won, but only just, and that had made Sesshomaru demand a fourth. To her irritation, he'd won the fourth, a fact he was clearly smug about.

Before she could insist on a fifth round, Miroku interrupted to remind Kagome that Sango and Rin had dinner waiting, stressing the fact that the sun was setting.

"Another day, perhaps," Sesshomaru offered, a balm to her pride at the thought of beating him another day.

"Another day," Kagome agreed, knowing that what Sesshomaru said, he meant.

As his cloud formed beneath him, he remarked offhand, "You are a better player than this one had expected."

And Kagome, to her embarrassment, blushed.

After that, their relationship shifted from uneasy acquaintances to friends, though she suspected that he'd never admit that himself. Whenever he would arrive at the little village to visit Rin, he would invariably seek out Kagome for several games of Go, stopping only when Miroku came to remind her of dinner.

The routine went on for several months before it began to change.

Kagome couldn't quite put her finger on what it was but both their gameplay and his overall demeanor began to change, so minutely that she couldn't even pinpoint exactly when it had become.

Perhaps, she reflected to herself as she waited for him to finish catching up with Rin one afternoon, it had been when he'd showed up one day with a new and proper Go board, one that she'd known instantly had been very expensive. She'd tried to refuse the gift for its sheer wealth but he'd refused, insisting that he wouldn't continue to play on a poorly constructed board. Of course, she'd have to keep the game for him—after all, where would he keep it—and his argument had been so practical that it had seemed rude to refuse him.

So, she'd kept the game, telling herself that she did it as a favor for him.

But the Go board had been joined by other gifts over the last two months—all, ostensibly, for his own benefit. The thick haori and blanket he'd brought her as the weather began to cool was simply so that her frail human body couldn't distract her from the game. The ornate, jewel-encrusted comb was because her hair had been disheveled last time he'd seen her—she'd spent the morning helping Kaede deliver a baby that had gotten wrapped up in the umbilical cord and it had gotten messy as they'd worked to save his life—and he didn't wish to be distracted from the game by such a view.

Most recently he'd shown up with a bag of bitter tea leaves that he'd claimed would help alleviate the pain of her menstrual cramps that had been plaguing her and keeping her in too much pain to play. She hadn't asked where he'd gotten the herbs but to her surprise, they'd worked, and he'd declared offhand, as though it was nothing, that he would bring her more next time.

She finally understood that morning when InuYasha, back from his patrol of the village and its surrounding land, had commented offhand on the oddity of the gifts, though he hadn't show as much interest when he'd learned they came from Sesshomaru. He'd just huffed and commented that she was dense.

That had provoked her into bringing up the gifts to Sango, still nursing her young son. Sango hadn't been surprised about anything except that Kagome had taken so long to ask about what was obviously courting gifts.

Evidently, Sango had expected Sesshomaru to mention what they were.

Kagome suspected that he hadn't because she'd been so quick to reject the first one without understanding its purpose.

She smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle on the haori he'd given her as Sesshomaru came into view. "This is a courting gift," she blurted.

He stopped and considered her for a moment. "Hnn." He inclined his head.

"You've been bringing me courting gifts," she repeated, unable to believe it.

"And you have accepted them," he remarked, running a hand idly through a strand of silvery hair.

"Well, yes," she admitted, "but I didn't know what they were for!"

"You did not ask."

She stared at him, trying to read his expression. It softened as she stared but still, she wanted to make sure. "Why?"

He stiffened. "It should be obvious." He then sighed as she looked at him pleadingly. "This one desires to be with you, Kagome. Do you not feel the same?"

She brightened. "Of course I do. I just wanted to hear it. It's a human thing."

"Hnn." At her amused grin, he relaxed, his expression softening again. "It is a good thing that this one cares not if his wife is a terrible Go player."

She raised her brow. "Terrible? I'll have you know I've beaten you twelve times—"

"In nearly seven months. It is not a great record," he said, his lips twitching as he teased her. "But you will find that your soon-to-be husband is gentleman enough not to remind you of his many wins."

Kagome decided he wasn't going to be the sole winner this time. She stepped up to him, grabbed the sides of his armor, and used it to pull herself up so she could kiss him. His surprise only lasted for a moment before he took control, deepening the kiss with a challenging air that made her want to try and seduce him in turn.

Later, she would claim she won, but the smug look on his face would always remind her of who, exactly, had been the one to scream that night.