Chapter 17: Wedding Night Jitters
"You told them WHAT??" she stared at him incredulously, as if he had just sprouted a third arm. While she had been busy finishing her meal, Nakago had been making arrangements for them to spend the night at the inn.
"I told them you were my wife," he repeated matter-of-factly. He said it the same way other people might talk about the weather…with that unflappable calmness which made his announcement seem like the most normal thing in the world.
She turned scarlet, whether from anger or embarrassment, he couldn't tell. Mostly the latter and probably a great deal of the former.
"Why?" she spluttered, not knowing how to respond to his statement. This has GOT to be a joke…and a really bad one at that. Look, it's not even funny and I'm not laughing…
The corners of his lips twitched in amusement, "Purely for your benefit, Suzaku no Miko. You seem to attracted some rather undesirable attention. Had I not said that, chances are that you would be down there 'serving' those customers right now. Didn't you notice the way the proprietor was looking at you?" He did not mention the lascivious looks various male patrons had directed at her. The short uniform skirt she was wearing had only served to compound the problem.
"H…Hai," she turned an even darker red.
The arrogant jerk! He's enjoying this! However, whether she liked it or not, Nakago had a point. The inn's greasy-looking proprietor and his equally slimy-looking wife had been staring at her with the kind of gaze which could only be described as that of vultures eyeing a carcass…And Miaka would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to have noticed all the hentai stares some of the male patrons had given her.
"Couldn't you have said that I was your sister?" she asked weakly.
"Do you think that would have stopped them?" he smirked, "Besides, how am I supposed to explain why we look so different?"
"Different mothers?" she whispered in a tiny voice, wishing that the ground would just open up under her feet and swallow her.
Her former enemy stared at her with an expression that was as close to surprise as she'd ever seen on him and then…
Nakago, don't you even DARE…she thought darkly.
…he started laughing.
He had not found anything so funny since…well, since never. It was strange how the Suzaku no Miko could provoke genuine amusement in him without even meaning to. Aware that she was glaring daggers of death at him lethal enough to leave him on the floor minus a heartbeat, he schooled his features back into his usual unperturbed expression.
Lifting his eyebrows at her, "I didn't know you had it in you, Suzaku no Miko," he commented dryly, exerting a tremendous amount of control just to keep his facial muscles from twitching.
She stamped her foot, not caring if it made her look childish. Her delicate features took on a mulish cast, "YOU!" She resisted the urge to show him an obscene gesture involving her third finger, and settled for jabbing her index finger at him, "DON'T LAUGH AT ME!!"
She had been surprised by his uncharacteristic outburst. It was undoubtedly the most emotion she had ever seen him display. Although she pretended to be angry to keep up appearances and to cover her own embarrassment, she was actually glad she had been able to make him laugh, unintentional as it may have been.
True, the laughter had sounded strange…rusty and unused, as if he had almost forgotten how to laugh. How long has it been…since he last truly laughed at anything?
Watching him laugh, she had noticed something odd. For one brief moment, his eyes had changed colour. Instead of the flinty, glacial silver-blue she had grown accustomed to, they had been an intensely clear sapphire blue…like the sky on a cloudless summer day. She blinked, and it was gone, making her wonder if she had imagined it all.
Must have been a trick of light, she decided and dismissed it.
"Fine! Have fun at my expense. See if I care," Miaka grumbled as she moved past him to enter the room assigned to them.
He shot her one of his patented smirks before executing a perfect half bow with a flourish. The exaggerated formality of the gesture served to mock her, earning him another venomous look from her as he had known it would.
"After you, dear wife."
They had a problem. A really BIG problem.
"NO WAY!!" She shook her head violently for emphasis, "There is NO WAY I'm sharing a bed with YOU!" she made a face at him. "YOU are going to sleep somewhere else!"
Nakago folded his arms across his chest and regarded her with mild amusement, "I'm not going anywhere, Suzaku no Miko. You forget, I paid for this room AND the bed. Besides," he directed a slow predatory smile at her, "You are supposed to be my wife…and it is not like we haven't slept together before."
She promptly turned six different shades of red, each one more bright than the last. "Don't say that, you hentai!" she hissed, "And as for paying for the room, the money didn't belong to you!" Miaka would be damned if she let him forget that she still wholly disapproved of his earlier actions.
"Can't you just be a gentleman for once and…HENTAIIII!!"
While she had been talking, he'd completely ignored her and had started to take off his shirt. Tossing it carelessly over a nearby chair, he spared her one last sidelong glance full of arrogant disregard and climbed into the bed.
Miaka took one look at his sculpted, nakedchest and hastily turned her back. OH MY GOD! HE IS TRYING TO GIVE ME A CORONARY! It galled her to admit it, but anyone with eyes could see that Nakago, jerk extraordinaire, was exceedingly handsome, and anything that was vaguely female would swoon over him…
Probably some things that WEREN"T female as well…she thought nastily. Not that she could really blame them actually, anyone would drool over Nakago's--
URGH!! WHAT AM I THINKING?? Miaka mentally screeched at herself, utterly horrified at the direction her thoughts had been taking her. Think other thoughts. ANY other thoughts! She told herself, fighting down hysteria. Er…let's see…YUI!! That's it, think of Yui! I wonder how she is. Hope she's all right…She should be, Oniichan and Tetsuya will take care of her…Erm…ENTRANCE EXAM! I really need to study if I'm gonna pass! Studying! Chiriko was good at studying! Nuriko, Tasuki, HotohoriTamahomeChichiriMitsukakeTamahomeTamahomeTamahomeTAMAHOME…
She chanted Tamahome's name, repeating it over and over in her mind like a mantra to keep any unhealthy thoughts of the insufferably smug handsome blonde shogun at bay. Scowling even more fiercely, she marched to the table in the centre of the room and proceeded to violently seat herself on one of the hard chairs with so much force that it jarred every bone in her body.
Damn the conceited jerk for corrupting my mind like this! She sat stiffly on the chair, fuming silently.
"Are you going to sit there all night and sulk?" he asked airily, interrupting her train of thought.
"Yes!"
"Suit yourself."
She heard him stretch languorously and settle back against the soft mattress. She gritted her teeth and imagined closing her hands around his throat and squeezing until he turned the same colour as his eyes. She began formulating a slightly modified riddle in her mind, cackling evilly at the morbid humour.
How do you kill a blue elephant?
Answer: You shoot it with a blue elephant gun.
How do you kill Nakago?
Answer: You wrap your hands around his throat until he turns blue and then shoot him with a blue elephant gun…It'll hurt a lot more than a normal gun…
"Jerk," she muttered, "I hope the bakemono under the bed gets you!"
"Good night to you too, dear wife," his mocking voice floated to her from the bed.
She jerked awake with a start, her mouth open, ready to scream bloody murder when a hand closed around her arm. However, before she could even utter a squeak, another hand clamped over her mouth.
"Be quiet, Suzaku no Miko," a familiar voice warned.
She subsided, and when it became clear that she wasn't going to scream the house down, he withdrew his hands. Glaring at him through bleary eyes, "What do you want? You just took three years off my life by scaring me like that!!" she snapped in a furious whisper. She needed her sleep, and she did not take kindly to people waking her up at an ungodly hour in the middle of the night…least of all egoistic blonde men who had no sense of chivalry whatsoever.
In the flickering light of the single lamp, she noticed that his eyebrows were drawn together in a slight frown. He's worried? Anything that could actually make the blonde shogun worried had to be serious.
"Someone's coming," he informed her in a low voice.
She gave him a look of mute confusion.
Without warning, he muttered something which sounded suspiciously like a growl. It was low, guttural and it wasn't in any language she recognised. However, she did not need to actually understand what he said to figure out the basic meaning behind the words...Swearing sounded remarkably the same in every language.
"Huh? Wha-"
Her words were cut off as he abruptly yanked her across the room to the bed and unceremoniously dumped her onto the mattress…
…right before he flung himself on top of her.
She was crushed under the weight of his body, too stunned by the entire turn of events to do anything. They were plastered together like paint to a wall. The realisation that this was Nakago whom she was plastered against snapped her back to reality.
She tried to push him off her, but he would not budge. To her horror, she discovered that all she had succeeded in doing was to increase the intimate contact between them as her hands were now splayed across the smooth expanse of naked skin on his chest.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she hissed in panic, even as her mind kicked into overdrive. This had to be a really twisted nightmare where she was being pinned down on a bed by her half-naked former worst enemy. Nooooooo…This is NOT happening! Nakago is NOT lying on top of me! OH MY GOD, OHMYGOD…! Her heart pounded in her ears.
Nakago looked down at her, their faces an inch apart.
"I don't think they believed me," he murmured cryptically, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was about to have a heart attack.
"They? They who?" She stared up at him as if he'd lost his mind. She had managed to get her leg free, but the movement only made the hem of her already short skirt ride up even higher. Miaka gasped as the sensitive skin of her bare thigh brushed against his hip.
"The proprietor and his wife," a corner of his mouth curled up in a lopsided smirk, "They're coming to check if we're really married." It was hard to miss the wry amusement in his voice at the predicament they had suddenly found themselves caught in.
Her eyes widened until they were impossibly huge. It was only then that she heard the telltale creak of the floorboards outside the door. Someone was definitely snooping around outside.
"Oh Crap! What are we gonna do?" she whispered urgently, momentarily forgetting that she was pinned under him in a very compromising position. She looked up at him in apprehension, but her blonde arch-nemesis didn't seem overly concerned about the situation. What made her even more nervous was the strange, wicked gleam in his eyes…
"Convince them," he said softly before he swiftly, but firmly brought his lips down to claim hers in a searing kiss.
Notes:
1) BWAHAHAHAHA...the evil fanfic writer strikes again. Bet all you people reading this are either staring at your computer screens going "OH. MY. GOD..." or else you've fallen off your chair and are currently on the floor twitching in shock...
2) To all those Miaka/Tamahome-or-anyone-else-except-the-evil-blonde-guy fans who are getting ready to flame me...Erm...Sorry? I swear it wasn't my fault! It was my muse!
