Dying to Live
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi, but as always, I do claim all the unique plot and original characters as mine alone. ;)
As she lay in bed beside the sleeping Inuyasha, her hand hovered millimeters from his warm, bare skin, memorizing every hill and valley in his well-sculpted form as he dreamed. Kagome hadn't ever imagined that it was possible to be in love with someone this much.
Her palm moved across his smooth, recently sun-tanned chest and paused right above his heart. It was a first for Kagome to see Inuyasha's naked body so evenly tanned nearly all over. She found it deliciously sexy, and over the past few days, she'd unabashedly let him know it over and over; in exchange, he'd more than appropriately worshipped the sum of all her Okinawan-sun-kissed parts.
Gently, Kagome laid her hand over Inuyasha's heart-spot. Her hand rose and fell with his rhythmic breathing.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump, said his heart to her hand. The blood beat as strongly beneath her fingertips as if their veins were connected. Automatically, she recalled the feel of him pulsating in the heat between her legs. A blush instantly covered Kagome's whole body, her breath hitching in her throat. The urge to have him again was almost painful. And she knew if she woke him, he definitely wouldn't have said "no". But her husband looked so peaceful now that she didn't have the heart to rouse him.
Instead, she squirmed out from under his arm where it was wrapped hotly around her back and shoulders and rolled away from him. Breathing a little heavier than she should've been she struggled to change her focus to the calming sound of the rise and fall of the ocean waves below the condo's open window. Oh my—Kagome, you're turning into such a sex maniac! She admonished herself with a guilty shiver, as she began to feel her body—now that it was away from his— gradually cooling down.
She hazarded a glance back in his direction. His lips were slightly parted, and his chest continued in the same calm, steady rise and fall that almost perfectly matched the motion of the dark waves below. Her eyes followed the even line of his jaw, where light stubble had sprung up overnight.
The fact that in mortal form he could now grow a beard had proven an unwelcome surprise to him, although Kagome hadn't said much about it when she'd noticed it coming in for the first time. Actually, she had found it kind of sexy, even though the scratch of it occasionally burned her skin when they kissed.
When it became obvious that his ability to produce facial hair would far exceed that of most Japanese men, Souta had kindly taken upon himself the semi-suicidal task of tutoring his then future brother-in-law in the daily nuisance of shaving.
"And you're telling me I have to do this EVERY DAY?" she had heard Inuyasha's aggravated voice carry down the hallway from the bathroom.
"Well yeah, unless you wanna look like a werewolf…" Souta answered more calmly, although Kagome could recognize a hint of irritation creeping into his voice.
"A 'where'-wha—! Geez!" Inuyasha had spluttered and then growled more lowly, "I don't know what 'where' you're talking about, but I ain't gonna look like any mangy wolf!"
Even now, lying next to him in the dark, she feared she might shake the bed holding in her giggles at the memory. She didn't want to wake him though, so slowly she forced her sense of humor to settle and turned her thoughts elsewhere.
With as a little movement as possible, she reached over to the bedside table and picked up the wrist watch she'd given Inuyasha before their rehearsal dinner. It had been the night before their wedding. She'd told him to close his eyes, and she'd slipped it on his wrist. After inspecting it for a moment he'd said he liked it, but she knew well that he probably wouldn't wear it often without being reminded. She'd had to tell him to put it on before they'd left the house for the airport.
Now, she angled the watch's metallic, dark navy face— the part she'd liked the best about it in the store— into the moonlight flooding through the huge windows that surrounded the head of the bed. It was almost three o'clock in the morning. To the right of the hands, the analog date display read "16".
February 16th. They had been married for exactly fourteen days today, Kagome realized, staring up at the ceiling. An all-too-familiar melancholy crept over her under the now chilly-feeling moonshine.
And that meant, she thought, it was only a couple nights ago, on February 14th, Valentine's Day, that they had arrived in Okinawa for their honeymoon.
So it also followed that it had taken twelve whole days and nights after their wedding for them to consummate their marriage a second time. Before that, she had begun to think that they would have gone on even longer like that, even once they'd reached Okinawa. The flight to the island had been truly awful: she had tragically discovered Inuyasha suffered acute flight anxiety. In the midst of hyperventilation and motion sickness, she had felt sure he wouldn't ever touch her again, punishment for putting him through such torture.
Understandably, Inuyasha did in fact collapse on the couch for about two hours after they'd arrived, feeling far too late the effects of the mega-dose of Dramamine the flight attendants had given him. Kagome cringed involuntarily remembering the extraordinarily long three-and-a-half hour flight. At one point, the extremely awkward, embarrassed looks on the perfectly made-up, gaunt faces of the super-skinny hostesses had made it obvious that they were concerned that he would begin to scare the other passengers. As it was, they had used up all the paper-sick bags in the seats around them. She pushed off her mounting dread about the return flight, since it was still a few days away.
During his nap, Kagome had explored the various amenities of Uncle Ken's super-beautiful, ultra-modern condo. She flipped on and off switches to well-placed, discreet accent lighting. In the kitchen and bathrooms, behind cabinet doors finished in pure, clean looking shades of white and soft grey, she found appliances and linens galore in the same relaxed hues. However, she'd barely noticed the luxuriousness of everything then: she'd been too busy frightening herself over whether the traumatic flight to Okinawa would actually mark the demise of their already poorly-doing, short-lived nuptials.
But then, Inuyasha had woken up. Miraculously, it was like someone had flipped a switch on him too, and he'd become a different man. He was almost immediately charming and agreeable and, most-notably, once again strongly physically attracted to her. At once, he was like the man she had been missing from before their wedding.
Slightly confused and thrown by his transformation of mood that was almost as stark as when he changed from man to full-fledged daiyoukai, Kagome chose not to question it at the time.
From then on, it hadn't taken long for him to sit her down on the long, plush charcoal grey sofa. Once he began giving her back and shoulders a deeply arousing massage through her travel-worn clothes, for a moment she felt embarrassed to have him coming on to her so quickly and after so long. She hadn't even had time to take a shower after the flight. But he'd ignored her steadily weaker complaints. The last of her resolve melted away when he growled softly into her ear, "I need to make up right now for how difficult I made things for you during the flight."
Any effort to resist him on Kagome's part was completely destroyed after that: they'd made hot, passionate love long into their first night on the island. To Kagome's ecstatic surprise, Inuyasha had even worked extra hard to pleasure her multiple times – and in more humbling ways than she could've imagined her too-proud husband would be so quickly inclined. Of course she'd reciprocated a bit that night, but not nearly as much. He simply hadn't given her enough time to focus on him alone for very long.
Kagome had found in that night and the following days an extremely compelling argument for totally forgetting how desolate the first twelve days of their married life had been.
Prior to the wedding and ever since that first night in the condo, Inuyasha had been so extremely good. By day, they relaxed and played on the beach. By night, they dined, drank, and even danced in all the best restaurants and lounges along the beachfront. On top of that, they enjoyed VIP status wherever they went, thanks to Uncle Ken's mysteriously, wide-spread reputation there. (Kagome started to think the people in Naha City who didn't owe Higurashi Ken a favor would be fewer than those who did…)
Really, she had never seen Inuyasha so relaxed and so open to new things. She couldn't have imagined it would be possible for him to embrace so much of her world so quickly, so fully… He had, of course recovered quickly enough after she'd released him from being nailed to a tree for 50 years. So why wouldn't this be possible now? She asked herself.
Still, she couldn't help but be simultaneously excited and unnerved by his progress. It reminded her of being behind the wheel of a race car that just kept going faster and faster. It made her feel worried that eventually the engine might burn out…
That also made her remember just where they were. They were in Okinawa, a perfectly controlled idyllic paradise, playing house in her uncle's stunningly outfitted condominium, complete with a cleaner who showed up every other day. They were far away from everything that now threatened to fill the space between them. That looming chasm had reopened between her and Inuyasha, starting with the full revelation of Sesshomaru's problems on their wedding day.
The figurative crack in the earth had started with Inuyasha's deepening silence after the climax of Sesshomaru's attack. Barely a half an hour after Souta had clobbered Sesshomaru with the radio, she and Inuyasha had rejoined their guests at the reception to keep up appearances. They couldn't very well disappear from their own party, and so for hours they trudged on until the last guests left the house. Even those who had been staying with them they managed to relocate to a hotel downtown with Uncle Ken's help. After that, there was the clean-up of Souta's room, explanations to give about what happened, Rin's apologies to hear…
Too tired and too surrounded by people for hours, they never had a chance to talk to each about what had happened. It was only hours later that Kagome really recognized that something about her husband's demeanor had hardened noticeably. Despite the jumbled mess of feelings she herself felt at the end of that day, she found it in the familiar way Inuyasha's heavy brows pinched closer together and in the more clipped, gruff way he spoke the later it got.
After everything at the house was all finished, it was nearly 5 A.M. when they finally called their limousine to whisk them away to the Gate Hotel downtown; however, they no longer went there out of any particularly festive spirit. Rather, all the bedrooms were full in the house, and it would've been too cold to sleep in the living room with the back door broken in early February. With the frozen silver light of the winter sun barely rising in the East, they'd rode toward Asakusa district. The exhausted silence between them had been further augmented by the sleepy city and the expensive, sound-cancelling interior of the car.
Once inside their hotel suite, they'd both collapsed on the huge king-sized mattress, side-by-side. Wishing she had energy to do more, Kagome had used the last of her power to rest her cheek on Inuyasha's shoulder. Soon after, though, she felt his warm hands and arms rolling her over and surrounding her.
Kagome supposed they must have spooned for a while; yet, when she woke up barely five hours later, she found herself still dressed and alone under the white coverlet. Disoriented, she wondered where he could've gone. Then, on the other side of the bedroom wall, she heard the water moving through the pipes followed by the muffled spray of the shower. She understood that he still didn't really enjoy bathing, but she knew he did it as one of the many things he knew was necessary to stay with her on her side of the Well.
For a fleeting moment, Kagome had thought about joining him in the shower then. A moment later, though, she sat up and looked straight into the giant mirror on the wall across from the foot of the bed, and she nearly scared herself with her bedhead and smeared make-up. So instead she settled on inspecting the dried-out, day-old rose petals that still covered part of the comforter and floor. Next she went to the window, and parting the sheer curtains, she made out the glistening form of the Tokyo Skytree towering impressively over the rest of the city. Finally, she was looking sadly at the wet label on a warm bottle of uncorked champagne (it was still sitting in a silver ice-bucket on a coffee table by the sofa), when her husband stepped out of the bathroom.
Their eyes only met for a moment before Inuyasha's gaze dropped toward the floor. Still, feeling only half-awake, she had dreamily watched the way the morning light played off of his bare, wet chest.
Inuyasha reached for his clothes on the bed as he spoke. "I think we need to go back to the house soon," he had told her. "We'll come back here later, if I don't need to go back to my time right away." When she didn't move, he urged her to shower. After that, they went home and found everyone from the Feudal era gone, except Sango.
Without much to do except talk about where everyone went and plan their next move, they'd returned to the Gate Hotel before nightfall. Once again, they'd found the bed and bathroom scattered with fresh rose petals. This time, Kagome also noticed fresh roses in matching bud vases on the small, bedside tables. A cold bottle of champagne had replaced the warm one along with a colorful fruit basket. She wondered whether her mother might have called and asked for the room to be made up specially again.
Still, the air of the night remained somber, the split between Miroku and Sango and the damage to the house and Kagome's friends weighing more heavily on their minds a day later. They'd managed to uncork and pour the wine, but Inuyasha admitted it wasn't his favorite. At a loss for what to do next, they ordered room service and watched a special on a local television station on the production of tatami mats in tsunami-stricken cities. Then, feeling barely more energetic than the night before, Kagome decided to take a hot bath.
When she came back out of the bathroom wrapped in her damp towel, it was about eight o'clock, and she found the lights dimmed and the bed covers turned back. In only his boxers, Inuyasha stood up from the edge of the bed. When she drew closer to him in the low light, she found that he wore the same sad, somewhat lost expression as she knew she did.
Almost mechanically, they'd kissed. Shyly, Inuyasha unwrapped and dropped her towel and laid her back on the bed. They kissed again as she shakily slid his shorts down toward his knees where they pressed into the mattress on either side of her hips.
Once the boxers were totally gone, Kagome saw him at full-length only for a moment before he lifted her against him. Following a bit of apparently fairly skilled maneuvering on his part, she miraculously felt herself grow to fit him. All of a sudden a gasp rose in her throat, as she felt him completely there within her. Then, he'd cupped her backside in one strong hand, and holding himself over her with the other, he began to rock her back and forth, clearly going carefully at first until he was certain she would be fine with the motion.
Looking back on it now, as she lay in the condo bed, Kagome thought, it hadn't really been that bad. The fact that she knew, to the very core of her being, how much he loved her made her feel shallow as she analyzed it. And everything had been fantastic since then, so what did it matter? Still, something about their first time—her first time—was somehow inconsistent and made her feel uncomfortable. It had been… sad and not special.
But why? There was no doubt in her mind that Inuyasha had been gentle with her. It hadn't really hurt or anything. It wasn't like she had checked a clock or anything, but it felt like it had gone on long enough too. Maybe it was something she'd done, but she didn't think so… She now knew for sure that she hadn't come that first time, but she'd read enough Cosmopolitan magazine articles to know that wasn't uncommon. She really couldn't complain. They'd only done it once, and it had been fine… but soulless.
After he was finished he'd held her for a while. They didn't speak much apart from when he asked if everything had been okay, which she'd affirmed. Then, they'd slept, and the next day he'd left for nearly two weeks to the Sengoku era to check on Miroku's party and find Totosai and pull together the plan and items needed for new demonic armor he required. He came back the day before they left for Okinawa.
Kagome supposed it should have been fine. They'd agreed. They'd agreed that if Miroku was going to lead the search for Sesshomaru's soul at first, at the very least Inuyasha needed to visit with him; he had to assume some responsibility for their friends and the promise he'd made to his father in regard to Sesshomaru.
To help her family defray the cost of their wedding and now the damage to the house, Kagome had decided that she would keep working at the book shop at least until they went to Okinawa. After that, she could try to look for something else that might allow her more time to go to the Feudal era with him (though she seriously doubted any realistic job might allow for such a thing…)
That was the plan. But that meant that they would be apart a lot. And she was beginning to feel like a lot of things were getting left unsaid about the daily pressure of what it was like for him to have to catch his brother's attacker and for her to keep uplifting her pregnant friend's spirits through the devastation of both their husbands' extended absence.
How bad was it going to get? Not to mention, how many friends were they going to lose from all the chaos and misunderstandings that would arise from the hundreds of years that lay between Kagome and Inuyasha from the very beginning? Even just considering more recently that she could have no true clue of how many women, human or demon, he'd had in his nearly two hundred years of life bothered her (besides Kikyo, of course… and Kagome had accepted the fact that the extent of that relationship would almost definitely remain undiscussed). She hadn't considered it before because for so long he had seemed so stand-offish about anything romantic or very personal; unfortunately, his outstanding performance now felt like a double-edged sword that left her feeling both deeply satiated and paranoid.
Would they really be able to keep it together across all the differences, things, and people coming between them? Just how wide and deep could that rift get? The young Mrs. Inuyasha Hirai tried not to let her fears overwhelm her in the moonlit darkness.
Absentmindedly, she stroked the smooth face of the watch again with her thumb and turned it over. There on the back, before she returned the watch to the table, she saw the words she'd had engraved there in delicate sweeping, brush-like strokes:
犬と籠-「時代を越える想い」
Inu and Kago – "Affections touching across Time".
Kagome closed her eyes and listened to the constant, steady crash of the tide. She breathed a prayer that their love would go the distance. Then as if he knew that she was thinking of him, half-asleep, Inuyasha mumbled her name, and she couldn't help but feel a certain allure. For now, at least, she would do her best just to enjoy what was before her.
"I'm here," she whispered and rolled back toward him, closing the gap between them in bed.
:::
Note: Omg, there it is – this chapter is done. This one actually grew as I realized how complicated Kagome's emotions were becoming. While this is a SessRin driven story, I'm glad that I tagged InuKag too. I'm finding that I've set up a lot of feelings and issues to explore with them, much of which provides a good forerunner for whatever future might be possible between Sesshomaru and Rin down the road.
Well, read and review, dear readers. I'll try to update a little sooner next time, but unfortunately we all know how real life has a way of getting in the way, lol. To all my fans out there, thanks for your loyalty – Origamikungfu.