Murphy strikes
"Yo, Koga! How are you doing?"
Sango received a look that she was sure made the temperature drop several degrees in return. She recoiled involuntarily, for some weird reason afraid of his teeth. He looked about ready to bite her, that much was clear.
"Hey, how are you feeling, man?" asked Miroku worriedly. "You're looking kind of out of it."
"Growl," said Koga, managing to imitate a wolf rather well. Impressive.
'How could I ever have thought she could like someone like me,' he thought bitterly as he stomped past his surprised friends. 'Of course, Snap-the-disgustingly-perfect is more her type. Aargh, I was stupid enough to listen to Inu-yasha. If only I hadn't talked to him I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Damn them all to hell.'
He was acting stupidly and he knew it, but right now he wanted nothing more than to curl up under a blanket with a cup of nice hot coffee and feel sorry for himself. But of course he had Maths today, which meant he had to go to school. However lax Koga might be when it came to his studies, he didn't want to be kept back another year.
He had whined to Hawk about his misery last night over the phone, not really telling him any important details, but giving him the general idea. Heartbreak.
"Life doesn't end here, though," had been Hawk's only advice, the great pillock.
"I don't fucking care if it ends or not," Koga had snarled. "It feels as if it will, that's bad enough."
He had worked out a strategy though: he'd still go to the party on Friday, he'd get spectacularly drunk and he'd forget about it all.
'Gotta drown my sorrows.'
**************
"What's with him?" whispered Kagome, as Koga passed them without a second glance during the lunch hour the day after. "He always sits with us usually nowadays! Why is he being so grumpy? Sango, did you do something?"
"Like what?" Sango snorted. "I guess the bubble just had to pop some day. He hasn't really changed at all since I first met him. He's still a useless, stupid, bloody moron!" She yelled the last words, making them reach Koga's ears and smiling grimly when he stiffened but walked on as if nothing had happened. Standing up abruptly, she slung her bag over her shoulder and marched off in the opposite direction to Koga, ignoring her friends calling after her.
'Bloody idiot, what does he think he's doing?' she asked herself. She felt hurt, in a way. They had been friends and then yesterday, hey presto! Suddenly he was giving her the cold shoulder and acting even worse than before they got to know each other. She had tried to talk to him but he had just ignored her. He was being so goddamn rude!
Well, she didn't care about him anymore if he was going to be that way. She had other friends, it was not as if she depended on him or anything. She had known this friendship was too good – and too weird – to last. And she didn't care that she had been spending weeks finding him the perfect birthday present. She didn't care that she had searched the town, going through all his favourite stores to find something he'd like. She didn't care that she'd been desperately asking Snap for help, meeting up with him in the weirdest places – behind the sports hall, for example – just so that Koga wouldn't overhear them.
Awful lot of trouble to go through for a birthday present, now that she thought about it.
……
Damn it all, she really liked him, didn't she.
As in really, really liked.
Damn that Murphy. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, that is Murphy's Law and it was sure as hell ruling her life right now. Just when she realized how much she cared for Koga, he turned weird and seemed to hate her.
'Not fair!' thought Sango hopelessly.
*************
Koga found that each time he filled his glass up, it duplicated.
'Hey, that's weird…' thought the part of his brain whose cells hadn't already been knocked out by the massive intake of alcohol. The fact that his mind actually registered that there were currently eight glasses where there had from the beginning only been one was impressive, however the fact that he didn't think of this as terribly odd was a sign that he was pretty far gone already.
"Hi," said a seductive voice, gliding into his befuddled senses as smoothly as the girl who it belonged to glided into the chair next to him. "You look a bit alone."
Koga took one look behind himself, then one look on his right and one on his left. All the chairs were found to be empty, even if some of them seemed to be sprouting ears or grinning at him. He was pretty sure this was not supposed to be so, and dispelled it as hallucinations.
"'Sright," he said, whapping his hand on the table. "I'm all alooone, there'shh no one here beshiiiide me…"
"Quite," said the girl, smiling slightly. "And that's a nice singing voice you've got there. But you're not alone anymore, right? Because I just came to keep you company."
Koga looked at her for a long while with the shrewd smile of someone who is not quite at his senses and who is trying to figure out if the person opposite is pulling his leg. Trying to be clever. This is not a good thing to try and be after having soaked up alcohol like a sponge for the last two hours.
"'Sright!" he exclaimed after several minutes of hard thinking. "You've got an eye fer detail, y'know that?"
The girl raised an elegant eyebrow.
"You…are Koga, aren't you?" she asked, frowning slightly as if disappointed over something.
Koga thought for a couple of minutes more. Then his face cracked in a grin.
"Aw, you can' pull tha' one on me! I know I'm Koga!" He smiled broadly, apparently very pleased with himself. The girl sighed and looked at his beer glass.
"How much have you been drinking?"
"Gotta drown m'shorrows!" said Koga cheerfully, by way of answering.
"Oh, jeez. Well, I'm Kagura, and do you want to come with me for a while? Up to the second floor? For a more…private chat." She smiled at him again, a curious, feline smile, and somehow in his foggy state of mind Koga saw and recognized one thing: she wanted him.
'Stuff Sango.'
"Yeah, shhore."
And every person at the party watched them go.
