Bit by bit – the Week of Peace
Sango was waiting for Inu-yasha, with whom she had been partnered in Chemistry to do a project. She had been waiting for quite a while now and was starting to become more than a little irritated, as well as restless.
'No better way to pass the time than to listen to some good music,' she decided. She popped a disc into the MD-player hanging from her belt, smiling when the music filled her earphones. Ooh, she loved this song.
"Ceeeelia, you're breaking my heart..."
*************
Koga, didn't bother to knock, he never did. Why should he? (Ooh, rebel.) Thus as he opened the door he saw for the first time Sango as she really was, free from whatever mask she might wear in the outside world among other people. She was dancing with her eyes closed, moving to the music. She was singing...
"You're shaking my confidence daily, oh Ceciiilia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please to come home..."
He realized with a start that she was beautiful. The thought shocked him. He had never thought about her like that before. She wasn't really his type – he'd always preferred, well, weaker girls. That sounded terrible and a little bit sexist, he knew that, but that was the way he worked and he couldn't help it, alright? He liked girlier girls, girls more like Kagome, more innocent and less... er... bitchy.
So how come his heart was suddenly thumping?
With a last "Ceciiilia!" Sango opened her eyes, saw Koga, gave a small squeak and blushed and then fixed him with her death stare.
"What are you doing here?" she spat, her cheeks an angry red.
"Inu-yasha sent me down with some science files," Koga answered innocently, fighting down the urge to reply sarcastically. Be nice, he decided. "He's coming down later, but had something to do first. He said get started."
"Fine, thanks." She grabbed the files from him and stared pointedly at the door. Koga laughed.
"I was planning to stay and see what you were doing. The part about sulphuric acid sounded pretty interesting. But as you're clearly so unwilling to have me here..." He made as if to walk out of the door, then paused and looked at her.
"Well?" she asked coldly. "What are you waiting for?"
"That was supposed to be the part where you say, "no, sorry, you don't have to go"."
"I didn't."
"I noticed."
"I won't, either."
"Fine, fine, I get the point." He threw his hands in the air with a defeated look and walked out of the door. She watched him go with a feeling she could not quite understand. He'd actually been kind of...nice.
She shook her head briefly and was just about to get down to her work when Koga stuck his head back around the doorframe.
"Cute dance, by the way."
A test tube narrowly missed his face as it went flying, smashing against the side of the door. Laughing gaily, Koga ran off down the corridor before Sango decided to throw something else at him.
Unknown to both of them, from that day on something had changed.
*************
About two weeks later Sango was sitting with Inu-yasha, braiding his hair. It was before the P.E. lesson, and as Inu-yasha stubbornly refused to cut his hair he had to wear it in a braid or pony tail those particular lessons so it wouldn't get in the way. Kagome had once tried to make him wear pigtails, but it hadn't gone down too well.
They were chatting aimlessly about anything and everything, but suddenly Inu-yasha said something that made her start in surprise.
"I'm glad you aren't after Koga's head anymore. It made him so unhappy when you were."
"Say what?" said Sango, accidentally yanking on his hair and making him wince. "Oops, sorry."
"No prob. But you know Sango, no one can hurt Koga like you can. Somehow you always manage to hit all his weak points when you fight. Haven't you noticed how crushed he looks after you've said one of those really cutting remarks? That's why I'm glad you're friends now. It wasn't nice to see him so unhappy."
"Since when are we friends," snorted Sango. "I stand his company, that's all."
"Is that really all?"
There was something in his amber eyes she didn't like when he said that last remark. Jesus, he was just as bad as Kagome.
"Of course that's all. What else would there be? You're not expecting us to become best friends all of a sudden, are you? And why are you so worried about him anyway? I thought you hated his guts!"
"Well I did..." said Inu-yasha slowly. "Or actually, I didn't, not really. He was being a right idiot about Kagome, but all that fighting we did, it was almost like a game, seeing how far we could go. Lately, anyway. It was pretty serious in the beginning... But he's still my oldest buddy, you know, and I don't like to see him get hurt."
Sango shrugged and tied the end of his braid with a piece of string.
"Also... I know he likes you."
"WHAT??!" Sango exclaimed, turning very red in the face. Inu-yasha looked mildly surprised.
"What's so weird about that?" he asked innocently. "He thinks you're a cool chick. And when you're not at each other's throat he thinks you're really funny to be with."
"Oh." Sango cursed her inclination to blush. It was so embarrassing. But the way Inu-yasha had said that... it had sounded as if Koga liked her as more than just a "cool chick"... as more than just a friend... and that was why she had blushed? God, she really needed to get a grip on herself.
"Yo, Koga!" yelled Inu-yasha, making Sango jump a foot into the air. "How's it hanging?"
"It sucks," answered Koga, sitting down beside Sango on the bench she had occupied and putting his arms behind his head. Inu-yasha didn't rise from the floor where he had been sitting while Sango fixed his hair, but turned around to face them both and looked curiously at Koga, who sighed and made an irritated gesture with his hands. "I mean, I come all the way into school for P.E. and when I'm here what do I find? There is no damn P.E. today!"
"There isn't?" asked Sango, her face falling. She had been looking forward to today's lesson. They were going to try archery, which she hadn't done since she was little.
"Nah, Sesshoumaru is home with his adopted kid, you know the small one with a grin on her face all the time? Rin or whatever she's called. Apparently she has the flu. So I'm going to go for a coffee now instead. You two wanna join me?" asked Koga casually. "I know a good place not too far from here."
They both accepted. With two hours of free period to kill, what better way than to sit in a nice, cosy café? All the rest of their P.E. group were somewhere else, nowhere to be found, so it was just the three of them who a few minutes later walked out of the school, heading for the café.
"Shit!" said Inu-yasha suddenly. "I just remembered something I have to do with Miroku. But you two go on, I'll see you at the next lesson!" He ran off, back towards the school, but not before giving Sango a small wink, which puzzled her.
'How odd.'
Well at the café they ordered a coffee each and sat down at a small table. And suddenly realized that none of them had any idea of what to say.
"Well, this was weird," said Koga after an embarrassing silence, with a lopsided grin that somehow made him look adorable. "Don't we have anything to say to each other except insults?"
"I can start with the insults if you like," said Sango lightly. "Got a whole stack of 'em ready, just for you."
"Oh, thank you. But I like you much better when you're smiling."
"And I – what?" His comment caught her off guard. She had been ready with a sarcastic reply – that was how their conversations usually went, with them lacing their comments with more and more venom until one of them finally cracked. So what was Koga doing?
'Diverting tactics?' she thought, but no. He had seemed honest.
"I really like arguing with you," he went on, "because I don't know anyone who can argue half as well as you can. But I'd like to be able to talk to you normally too, you know. You're great friends with Inu-yasha and Kagome and Miroku, but we two always fight. And that's kind of stupid, seeing as we hang out together all the time, courtesy of Kagome Higurashi. It's getting kind of boring to think up new comebacks all the time, don't you think?"
"You know, you're right," she said, feigning enlightenment and tapping her chin thoughtfully. "I think it was just yesterday I was lying awake, panicking because I couldn't think up an insult I hadn't yet used. I actually considered staying home from school, but then I remembered that I haven't called you "inbred mongrel" already this week." She stared mockingly at him and smirked when he growled in reply. Then her face softened and she smiled. "Just kidding. Truth to be told, I'm getting pretty tired of fighting with you all the time too. But I guess I'm just used to yelling at you. Don't know if I'd manage without the daily "I hate you, bastard"-dose."
"How about this," said Koga, grinning. "We make it a week without any fights. If we're both insane at the end of this week, then we'll go back to hating each other. Otherwise we'll stay friends. Does it sound any good?"
"Alright."
Koga spat in his hand and held it out. Sango regarded it doubtfully.
"This is how you want to start our week of peace?"
"Jeez, don't you know anything, bright girl?" asked Koga, but without the usual rancour. "It's a way to seal a deal, right?"
"I think I prefer a normal handshake," said Sango, holding out a serviette to him and smiling. Then they shook to their new agreement.
"I just have one question," said Sango. "Before we start our week of peace, because if you answer this question incorrectly I won't be able to be very nice to you. Are you really as sexist as you seem?"
Koga looked at her in puzzlement for a long while, then his face cleared up in a sunny smile.
"Oh, you're still thinking about that conversation at the "Yay, Sango's Been Here For One Month"-party, right? The one about sexism? I was just kidding you! Jeez, did you really think I stood for all I said?! I just wanted to see what you'd have to say to some of the stronger arguments I had against feminism. Of course," he added, "you went around the problem by not listening to what I was saying."
Sango was feeling confused. It felt as if a lot she had been thinking about Koga suddenly didn't fit in anymore. It was a very disturbing feeling. But at the same time she felt happy. He was a much better guy than she had thought.
'Maybe I could really be friends with him,' she thought.
They spent several hours in the café, hours filled with talk about sports and swimming. They found out that they actually had lots of common interest, most to do with physical exercise, and that they also, surprisingly, had a very similar taste in music. They made plans to go and raid the nearest music store the very next day. And Sango felt that although he might not be the most well-behaved boy she had ever met, she might just consider being friends with him after all.
"So did you have a good time?" smirked Inu-yasha as he met Sango in the Religion class the day after. "I mean, you even skipped a lesson to stay with Koga."
"Yeah, we sort of lost track of time," said Sango brightly, not noticing the undertone in his words. "He's actually a very nice guy when you get to know him. I never would have believed it." She then noticed Inu-yasha was sniggering. "What?"
"Oh, nothing…" said Inu-yasha lightly, starting to clean his finger nails with that big knife of his. A sure sign that he was avoiding something. He always took out his knife when he was trying to look innocent. How he presumed to look innocent with a ten-inch knife was something that Sango had never understood. She squinted at him suspiciously, but decided to let it pass.
The lesson went on its way without any particular incidents, if you didn't count the class deciding that they wanted to skip the Hinduism education and go on a lecture about it at the university instead. The teacher looked kind of helpless as some of the students rushed out of the room, off to call up the university and book seats at the lecture. Somehow, Sango didn't think that she'd ever get completely used to Sunset High.
At lunch she got the explanation for Inu-yasha's smug behavior when Miroku gathered her in a hug, asking how her date had gone.
"My date…?"
"Yes, with Koga!" Miroku sparkled. "Inu-yasha told me all about it!"
Throwing her so-called friend a murderous glance, Sango carefully pried herself from out of Miroku's grasp.
"I haven't been on any goddamn date," she said, frowning. "We just went out for a coffee because there wasn't any P.E. lesson. Inu-yasha would have come himself too, but he had something to do with you…"
"No he didn't," said Miroku, looking puzzled. "I wasn't at the school yesterday, I helped Mark out with the café, 'cos one of the waitresses was sick. Although I didn't really fit in her uniform," he added as an afterthought.
Sango graced Inu-yasha with an – if possible – even more murderous look. He had the nerve to start whistling.
"What are you trying to do?" asked Sango angrily, grabbing a lock of his hair and yanking his head upwards, forcing him to look at her.
"What? Oh, nothing. Does it seem like we're trying to do something?" There was no one like Inu-yasha when it came to looking innocent. However, he didn't fool Sango. Snorting huffily, she turned on her heel to go in search of Shippou. She wanted to spend the lunch hour with someone sane, for once. She wondered briefly where her life had taken such a turn that she was now considering someone who handed in his essays as comics because he didn't know how to write as sane. Then she spun around again, struck by something Inu-yasha had said.
"You said "we're trying to do something". Kagome is in this too, isn't she?"
There was also no one like Inu-yasha when it came to looking guilty.
*************
The "week of peace" passed happily, and Sango found that she liked considering Koga a friend instead of her nemesis. What she didn't like, however, was that Inu-yasha and Kagome had somehow teamed up to try and make her fall in love with him.
They were not succeeding.
No, of course not.
Absolutely not.
The idea was ridiculous.
"I think the experiment passed off rather well, don't you?" grinned Koga that Friday. "Why can't we keep it this way?"
"You know we'll start fighting again," smiled Sango. Oh, the times she had felt like hitting him this week, and only stopped herself because of their agreement.
"Well, of course. But we don't have to make it the aim of the day to annoy the shit out of each other, right?"
"Good idea."
"Hey peacemakers, what do you say we go for a cup in the Rainbow Café?" asked Miroku, interrupting their conversation. "I want to see Mark, and I think we could all do with a reward after getting that English essay back. Or, in Koga's case, with a bit of consoling."
"Shut up," said Koga pleasantly, but agreed.
Sango had met Miroku's boyfriend before, at a party and one time out on the town. He was funny, intelligent, charming, kind and good-looking and he matched Miroku perfectly. But she hated his name.
'I mean, Mark and Miroku. It sounds really stupid.'
She had long ago gotten over her infatuation with Miroku. It hurt to see him and his boyfriend together the first time, but she had accepted fate. And realized that there might not be two people in the rest of the world who fit so well together. They both enjoyed flirting with girls immensely, and both would have been equally shocked if someone had asked whether they were serious about it. They both had that sparkle that made girls as well as boys look twice after them, and they were both as oblivious to the effect they had on others. And they were both very much in love with each other.
She wondered sometimes about how accepted their relationship was. She knew that Mark had once been beaten up by a gang of boys at his old school, before he graduated. Did Miroku have to go through that kind of prejudice, too?
"Hey Miroku," she said as they walked along. "Do you have to take any shit from people who are prejudiced against homosexuals? Just wondering."
"It's funny," smiled Miroku, "you ask me all these questions now, but you never mentioned my sexuality when you first came here. You didn't have to be so shy about it, you know."
"Oh, it wasn't that," grinned Inu-yasha. "It was just that Sango thought – "
"Never mind," said Kagome, after having applied her elbow to Inu-yasha's midsection, rather hard. "Go on, Miroku."
"Well, in the beginning there was a spot of trouble with Koga here," Miroku said, throwing an arm around his friend's shoulders amiably. "He wasn't too keen on sharing the showers with me after P. E. …"
"Well, sorry," huffed Koga, as Sango gave him an accusing look. "I mean, would you be willing to take a shower with a guy you hardly knew? It was the same for me."
"Then he found out I wasn't about to jump on him and ravish him then and there," Miroku continued. "And then it was alright by him. It's been OK for me, I've got good friends. Even though they tend to make perverted jokes." He glared at Kagome in particular, who had the grace to look embarrassed.
"Remind me again why I hang out with you," said Sango, feeling that she couldn't have picked a stranger group of people if she had tried.
"Because we're just so damn cool," said Koga, in the tone of someone laying down an indisputable argument. "Oh look, we're here!"
And Koga was, Sango reflected, entirely right.
*************
Long chapter, right? (This is where you start applauding.) Thank you, thank you, I know I'm awesome. I so totally rock, I know. Oh, but there's really no need to kiss my shoes... really, you don't have to... oh, alright then, if you insist. Watch the polish though. DON'T LICK THEM, YOU IDIOT, I SAID WATCH THE POLISH!!!
...OK, I'm not being entirely serious here, if you didn't figure that out already. Thank you, all reviewers – you make my life worth living. (My sister thinks I sound depressive when I say that. This is not the case. I just like getting reviews.) It's great to know I still have an audience, even though I tend to do some... unorthodox things. (Am talking about Miroku's sexuality here.)
The ending to this chapter was kind of... bland. But don't worry, the pace is going to pick up. Sort of. Although I'm afraid the next chapters are going to be much shorter than this one.
References: The song Sango is singing in the beginning of this chapter is "Cecilia", by Simon and Garfunkel. I like S&G, therefore Sango likes them too. Also, I was listening to that song while writing this chapter, so it felt pretty natural to use it.
While I'm still writing, here's a thank you to my sister: Thank you. *big kiss on the cheek and bone-breaking hug* My sister, people, is the one who came up with the title for this story. Try as I might, I suck at making up titles. (Although I have made up almost all of the chapter titles myself, so there!) She has also helped me with inspiration whenever I'm stuck and, of course, she regularly boosts my ego by telling me what a wonderful writer I am. (She's quite an accomplished liar.) A big tip to all the other writers out there: get yourself a little sister. I have one you can rent for a tidy little sum, but the best thing is to have one of your own. Ask your parents, they know how to get one.
