"The air was crisp
Like sunny late winter days
A springtime yawning high in the haze
And I felt like I belonged"

– "Hell is Chrome," Wilco

Candy From Strangers

Carmel was a very un-large town beachside of California. It was a place for old people to retire and work on their hobbies, where everybody and his brother owned an art gallery or a craft and souvenir shop. Touga owned quite a few of them himself. Touga owned a lot of things.

And Inuyasha just didn't care, except that it gave him a very un-small trust fund, which was useless to him for a while because he couldn't touch it until he was eighteen.

Apartments and temporary homes of the sort he was looking for appeared virtually non-existent here, in this verdant tourist haven. And if they weren't, he had no means of finding them.

He spent the first day at the condo, watching the beach, which Touga could section off if he wanted to, and the people who visited it when he didn't. When that grew dull, however, Inuyasha was just bored and restless, filled with the futile, manic energy of a caged rat.

As he had predicted, his father left him generally on his own. The only thing that showed any type of promise was the gallery opening. There would be real people there, and they would bring opportunity to him. Or if they didn't, he was capable of escaping to the city and finding it himself. But for now he would wait.

Inuyasha stretched out in a white rubber deck chair on the balcony. The chair was one notch from fully reclined, so there was nothing to see of the beach but a vague, impressionistic image of it through the glass blocks in the balcony wall.

He stared at the gray, blanketed sky, sipped a young Micante experimentally from the good crystal, and thanked whatever gods there were that Touga had hid the keys to the liqueur cabinet in such an unimaginative place. Really, the sock drawer? How amateur.

Inuyasha set down the glass, and his head lolled to the side lazily. For no reason his eyes went to the line of window in the concrete. The gray and brown beach colors swarmed together or apart in the little hills and valleys of the glass, and he contemplated a small piece of black and green moving slowly from one pane to the next.

Oh. Oooooh. That was a person, walking. Inuyasha sat up to get a better look.

The dark smudge of hair made the person easy to pick out, and there was no one else on the beach that day because the sky was teasingly threatening rain. It was a girl in an electric green t-shirt. She was watching her feet take long, elaborate steps in the sand, and periodically looking up to scan the horizon. A small duffel bounced against her back.

There was a cliff out there where the waves crashed, and she walked to the edge of it, and just stood in the spray. Inuyasha watched her.

He imagined she might be very pretty up close. Of course, he wasn't going to go down there just to find that out.

The t-shirt girl turned around and walked back in the way of the condo. She looked straight at him suddenly, and he was close enough to tell two things.

One, she was surprised, as if she had not noticed him before. Maybe she hadn't. Stupid girl. Two, she was quite pretty, unless she had some minute defect that wasn't visible from the balcony.

T-shirt girl waved at him with her small, pale hand. Inuyasha didn't wave back.

She walked down the beach in a different direction just as he considered shouting to ask her if she had her own place. He saw her become part of the distance.

That was just as well because he didn't really want to make a fool of himself by yelling.

Inuyasha returned to the consoling arms of the deck chair, and his eyes sought out the sky. A large drop exploded on impact above his eye, then another on his cheek, and two plunked into his wine glass.

He wondered what t-shirt girl would do now. Probably nothing.

Soon it began to rain in earnest, and, feeling stupid, he opened his mouth to taste it.

''''

The condo became a different place for the party. It was made up with pictures from the gallery, perfumed with alcohol and cigarette smoke. Strangers wandered with little plates of food from the buffet table or mixed drinks in their hands and joined their voices in the hum of conversation.

Inuyasha could think of worse wastes of time. He nipped drinks from the bar, and chatted with people who he didn't know and who didn't know him. Told them impulsively that he was an actor, a musician, an author.

And he was always watching, always searching for a match to the profile in his mind, and that afforded him an amount of detachment from the whole thing. It wasn't great. It wasn't terrible.

But he was anxious with the thought that he had to move and he had to move fast. Inuyasha panned through the guests with his eyes, hating the lot of them for their frivolity and at the same time lusting after their freedom.

Part-way through the party, Touga approached him, towing his older son behind him.

"Inuyasha, I'm sorry we haven't spent much time together," Touga said. Inuyasha discreetly hid his mixer on an end table in back of him. He wasn't old enough to drink. "It's been busy. You know."

Yeah. Yeah, of course. It was always busy.

"I'm sure he doesn't," put in Sesshomaru, managing to be all blandness and no condescension.

Sesshomaru had probably spent a great deal more time with Touga in the past few days than Inuyasha had in his entire life. But Sesshomaru was Touga's business protégé, after all.

Served him right for being the legitimate one.

"Well, I'm sorry, anyway," Touga lied.

And Inuyasha knew it was a lie because if Touga had really wanted to spend time with him he would have found a way to do it.

If Inuyhasha knew one thing it was the cardinal rule of the universe, which went like this: If you were rich enough (and Touga was) then you could find a way to do whatever you wanted.

Inuyasha's shoulders jumped casually.

"I'm fine," he said. Although it was more a general statement than a response to the apology, and really had nothing to do with anything, nobody seemed to notice.

"Glad to hear it."

All words fell on deaf ears after that.

Inuyasha's attention had zeroed down to one point. That point was a face in the crowd that was pinching and tickling at his memory, and suddenly his mind supplied him with a name, and he was so surprised and fixated that he knew he had to talk to her, as if this second sighting had cemented a connection between them.

Well, that and he now had a plausible trap door out of this conversation.

"Excuse me," said Inuyasha, into the middle of Sesshomaru's sentence, "I see someone." He glanced at Sesshomaru's drink. "Haven't you had enough?" he asked, and reproachfully took the cocktail from the limp hand of its owner as he walked away.

Because he had seen t-shirt girl, and now he had to find her. But sometime in the moments after he had looked away she had disappeared. Inuyasha sifted through the people with his eyes, and found nothing.

"Hey," he prodded a man in square glasses who had been standing nearby. "Did you see a girl here a minute ago? Black hair? Dressed in black and white?"

The stranger's answer was written on his empty, uncomprehending face.

"I saw her," said a woman who had been listening. "Went outside, just now."

He left without thanking her.

When Inuyasha opened the sliding door he found the balcony empty, but there were a few people on the beach, and he went down the stairs that led to it. The sand raked his good shoes, left them dirty and scuffed and stripped of their luster.

The girl was a short distance off, hugging herself against the wind in her clean white blouse, and staring out at the point where the cliff dropped down into the sea. She shuffled her feet, and her black dress slacks rustled. A pair of spike heeled sandals dangled by glossy black straps in one hand.

"Hey," Inuyasha called when he was close enough for his voice to carry.

She looked at him, and then away as if he didn't exist. Well. If the wench thought he was going to be deterred by a little thing like that, she had another thing coming.

"You're that t-shirt girl," he persisted, coming up next to her. "From yesterday."

"Um..." she said, and then a little reluctantly, "Yeah." She laughed. Finally she let him see her face and she looked embarrassed. "And you're that balcony kid."

"Mm-hm," he said. "So...uh, who are you?"

"Oh." Her feet made tiny basins in the sand, then made avalanches to fill them in. "I'm nobody."

"That's stupid," said Inuyasha mildly. "You can't be nobody."

Her mouth did a funny thing; it stretched and tightened, made dimples in her cheeks, but didn't smile. Her eyes swept to the side.

"You can if you're here with the caterers," she told him, and gave a humorless laugh.

"Oh."

She looked at him sharply.

"I mean, that's not important," he continued, scratching the spot below the curve of his skull. His hair was about an inch long now. Inch and a half, maybe.

Faster, he told it, grow faster. But nothing happened immediately.

Disheartened, Inuyasha remembered he was still holding onto the cocktail he had stolen from his half-brother. He took a swallow, and recoiled.

"Ugh," he commented. "Baccio punch."

His spit followed the plastic cup down to the ground.

"Hey!" the girl cried out suddenly. Her eyes bit into him. They were nice eyes. Blue, or gray, the color of the sky above the ocean on a cold day. "Hey, don't litter."

"It's just a cup..."

"Well, then, pick it up," she said boldly.

Inuyasha was caught in the middle ground of amused and affronted. "No," he said, and waited to see what she would do.

"Why not?"

He repeated, "It's just a damn cup."

"But what if it – if it kills some poor animal or something!" she said, and then her voice lowered. "I knew you would be a jerk."

She gave him a quick startled look, like a rabbit caught in the brush. Her hand crept to her mouth and touched it in disbelief as if she were touching a traitor.

Inuyasha had been growing irritated, but now he was morbidly curious. "What?" he asked, and then in quick succession, "Why?"

A short puff of breath left the girl's mouth.

"Well, for one, you didn't wave back at me yesterday. Two, you're probably filthy rich and spoiled, if you live here. And three – you didn't wave back at me!"

Inuyasha contemplated her strangely fierce expression.

"But I see you're not taking that personally," he said. "That's good."

She blushed, and her shyness seemed to win out over indignation. "Sorry," she murmured, tucking a snake of hair behind one ear. "I just... it was rude, you know."

"No, no, it's no problem. I'll make sure to acknowledge all the strangers I stare at from now on," said Inuyasha, a little caustically. He hurried on before she could retort. "So, what's your name?"

She looked at him, and then out at the sky. "It's Kagome. Kagome Higurashi."

"I'm Inuyasha Arato."

Kagome cracked a smile but wouldn't look at him. "That's not what I heard you say earlier. Mr. Watanabe, aspiring actor?"

"Oh, that. Well... you see... You see... I just like to mess with their heads," he told her finally.

"How do I know you're not messing with my head?"

"I'm not," he said. He imagined she was a little bit charmed. Good, good, good. "I swear. My dad owns this place, he's inside, and so is my – my half brother."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, Touga's the one throwing this party. I could show you..." he offered.

"No, I believe you. You look like him." When she stared at him, it was as if she was staring into him and searching. "So...Touga Arato is your father. He owns a lot of art galleries, doesn't he?"

"Are you an artist?"

"I'm just a student..." Her flushed face was as good as an answer.

Huh. Interesting...

"Do you have your own place?" he asked.

"Why?" Kagome returned cautiously, quickly becoming tense and guarded.

Inuyasha hesitated. No, he decided, no, telling her all of it would be a bad move.

"You're lucky, if you do. I've always wanted to get away, out on my own," he said confidentially.

Kagome's eyes went to the condo and back to him.

"Why?" she repeated incredulously.

"I have my reasons."

She looked unimpressed.

He sighed. "You don't know what it's like."

"Well, that's the truth."

"Listen," Inuyasha pressed on, "I'm going to be in Carmel for a while. Can you recommend a place to stay?"

"Oh, I couldn't tell you. I live in Monterey."

Just as well. He didn't have enough money for a hotel long term, and he didn't plan on staying in one if he could help it.

"On your own?" asked Inuyasha.

Kagome eyed him sideways. "Back to that again, huh?"

"Just asking," he said, in what he hoped was a disarming tone. It seemed to work.

"I live with my cousin until I'm eighteen," she admitted, and seemed to catch herself. "But I guess I shouldn't have told you that."

"I'm no stalker."

"So you say." And she smiled a smile that seemed all for herself.

A voice traveled down to them from the balcony, interrupting the quiet rhythm of their voices like a discordant note. Inuyasha felt strangely indignant.

"Kagome!" the voice called.

A boy trotted down the stairs, his black shoes drumming the wooden panels, crunching the white sand. He was the slightest bit shorter than Inuyasha, but his hair was longer and ruffled youthfully in the wind.

Inuyasha disliked him immediately.

"What are you doing out here, Kagome?" the stranger asked guilelessly. "We have work to do."

"Just getting some air," said Kagome, with a tight smile.

"Oh. Well, we need you back inside..."

"I'll be right in, Hojo. You go ahead. It'll take me a minute to get my shoes back on."

"I can wait for you," said 'Hojo' brightly.

Inuyasha was starting to feel a little bit neglected, but remained silent.

"No, I'll manage," Kagome told him. Her voice had hardened just slightly.

"But –"

"I'll be right in, Hojo," said Kagome, sounding suddenly like steel put to words.

"Well...okay..." The boy knew when to leave apparently, but he looked doubtfully back over his shoulder until he disappeared into the house.

Little shit, thought Inuyasha, without knowing why.

The wind filled the short silence that followed with a simpering howl, drowning out the rest of the world and folding them intimately in a pocket of space all their own. Almost as quickly as it had come, the moment broke around them like an eggshell and was gone.

"He's nice," Kagome said as if to herself, "but sometimes..." She seemed to remember him, then. "Um, anyway, I ought to get back to work... It was nice talking to you."

As she walked away slowly, Inuyasha felt a tug somewhere within him as surely as if she had sunk a hook into his belly. No, she couldn't leave. She was the one, he was sure of it now. It could be no one else. There was no one else.

And on top of that he had spent too much time being polite to let her go now.

"Wait," said Inuyasha, catching her by the crook of her arm.

Kagome watched him expectantly. He realized he hadn't let go and withdrew his hand reflexively, as if he had been burned.

"What if..." He licked his lips, hating himself. "What if I want to talk to you again?"

"Oh!" Her eyes grew wide, then dropped abruptly to the ground. Her face was so red it was almost luminous. Something occured to Inuyasha.

She thought he... liked her... And that thought was quickly chased by another. Maybe he did, a little.

But she was also bloody irritating.

Inuyasha bit his tongue on a remark that would disillusion her about his intentions. Anything he said now would just come out as offensive. He had spent enough time around stuffy upper class brats to know that – not that it stopped him most of the time. This was important, on," she said finally, and led him back into the condo. They maneuvered through the crowd to the buffet table, where Kagome snatched a small paper napkin from beside a plate of canapés, and paused.

"Do you have a pen?" she asked. He began to pat his pockets. "Wait, never mind." She pulled a tiny black make-up case from her pocket. Out came a miniature pencil eyeliner, and she scratched something down on the napkin, and handed it to him.

"I have to go work now, but maybe I'll see you," she said shyly, and hurried away before she could change her mind.

But as she was leaving she turned around and waved at him with her small, pale hand. Inuyasha deliberately felt the bottoms of his pockets with his fingers.

Eventually the party slowed down and was over. And Kagome climbed into the catering truck that took her away into the sunset, wondering what she had just done. So ended the first adventure of t-shirt girl and the balcony kid.

''''

A/N: Inuyasha and Kagome... getting along?? OOC-ness, anyone? To all you kids at home, don't give your phone number to strangers like Kagome just did. Even strangers who look like Inuyasha. So... Like it? Luuurve it? Want to trick it into eating a steak full of jagged metal so it will slowly bleed to death from the inside? Speak up! Don't be shy, dearies... (cackle)

Muchos Gracias to everyone who reviewed – I love you guys! And to clear up any confusion, everyone is human in this fic. Just to make it clear.