"Where do we go nobody knows?
I've gotta say I'm on my way down
God give me style and give me grace
God put a smile upon my face"
- "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face," Coldplay
It Was the First Time
On his first morning in the apartment, Inuyasha woke blearily from sleep. The cat had somehow ended up in the general vicinity of his head. He tossed the animal off his pillow, spitting out cat hairs. He didn't want to know how those got there. Lord. What had he been thinking when he let that thing near him?
Looking at the clock on the VCR, Inuyasha noted that it was disgustingly early and curled back up beneath his borrowed blanket. But too late. The ominous rummaging sounds that had been emanating from the kitchen silenced abruptly, footsteps drifted into the room, and he knew instinctively that it wasn't Miroku.
"Are you awake?" asked Kagome, around the piece of toast that was dangling from her mouth.
"Mm," he replied noncommittally, not moving.
"Well, I'm leaving. I've got to get to school now," she said. By the sound of her voice she was already moving towards the door.
Leaving?
"Leaving?" Inuyasha echoed, somewhat belatedly. He sat up and looked at her. "Why?"
Kagome stopped struggling into her jacket to quirk her eyebrows at him. "If you'll refer back to the statement I made two seconds ago... I'm going to school."
"You can't leave," he said abruptly and without pausing to consider it. His mouth felt strangely disconnected from his mind.
"You... don't want me to leave?" asked Kagome, with an odd, indefinable look on her face.
"Well," said Inuyasha, making a serious, if groggy, effort to think. "I'll have nothing to do if you're not here. I won't know what to do."
"Oh," she said shortly. "Is that all."
"Um... I guess so, yeah. What else would it be?"
Kagome made a small noise of irritation and walked out, heels clicking sharply on the wood floor. The door rattled in its frame after she was gone.
Inuyasha frowned at the doorway.
"What's she mad about?" he asked aloud, just as Miroku came into the room.
"Hey, no slam – oh," Miroku cut himself off upon seeing only Inuyasha. "It was Kagome."
"Yeah," said Inuyasha distractedly. He saw that Miroku was already dressed, and was in the process of tucking his black button-down shirt into the waistband of his matching slacks.
"Well, well. You work fast," said Miroku. "Pissed her off already, huh? Let me offer you some advice: You'll never get anywhere that way."
Kagome had warned him that Miroku had an astonishingly one-track mind, but Inuyasha was still affronted.
"What makes you think I would want to get anywhere with her?" he said.
"You mean you haven't noticed?" Miroku inquired curiously. "Even I can see that Kagome is a very beautiful young woman..."
"Keh."
"Hm," said Miroku, thoughtfully. Suddenly he clapped his hands together. "Well. I'm off to work."
Inuyasha was unimpressed. "You work?" he asked, raising an eyebrow dubiously.
"Have to pay the bills somehow," replied Miroku, unphased.
"Where?" asked Inuyasha, still a little disbelievingly.
"The playhouse a few blocks over. I'm management," he added. Inuyasha couldn't tell if it was meant to sound self-abasing.
"Oh..." said Inuyasha. "Well, what is there to do, then?"
"What do you mean?"
"Around here, what is there to do? I was trying to ask Kagome, but she left already."
"Oh, I see," said Miroku sagely. "She rejected you."
Inuyasha glowered, but Miroku seemed miraculously unaffected.
"Ah, amore," he sighed theatrically. "Returning to your question, though, this place is one big tourist trap. There are thousands of things, just go walk around. Which reminds me..."
Miroku disappeared for a moment down the hall, and returned shortly. He placed a small object on the coffee table in front of the television.
"Spare key," he explained. "You'll need it to get back in."
"Oh. Thanks."
In much the same way that Kagome had earlier, Miroku crossed the room and struggled into his jacket.
"Duty calls," he said, as he left.
Ultimately, Inuyasha ended up taking Miroku's advice. After sleeping for another hour or two.
''''
Not ten minutes after Miroku returned home to an empty apartment that afternoon, a knock sounded at the door. First one hesitant tap, then two sharp stronger ones.
He almost stumbled as he ran to answer it, then paused to smooth his hair and compose himself in general before reaching for the handle. Calmly, he opened the door.
"I'm still mad at you," said Sango briskly, before he'd even had a chance to feign surprise.
Miroku swallowed. "Of course," he said, as smoothly as he could.
"But I'm willing to listen to your idea. Don't ask me why." Didn't they both know already?
"Okay."
"And I'm not going to stick around if it sucks." But, of course, she would anyway.
"You have every right."
"And I want to be completely informed from now on."
"Okay."
They stared at each other, Sango slightly defiant, Miroku trying to appear unruffled.
"Okay," said Sango, exhaling.
"You... want to come in?" he asked haltingly.
"Alright... But I'm still mad at you."
"Yes," said Miroku. As he closed the door behind them, he nearly sagged with relief. "Yes, of course."
''''
Inuyasha had spent the day meandering about through what felt like a thousand different stores. He had passed an hour or so at one of the myriad historical sites, but it had so thoroughly failed at capturing his interest that he could not remember what had been historical about it, except that the floors had creaked something awful.
He came home before the sun hit the horizon, and found Miroku and the girl from the other day – Sango? – conversing in the front room. They didn't even look up when he walked in, so Inuyasha skirted them carefully and retreated to the kitchen. Kagome was there, fiddling with the microwave.
She, at least, noticed his entrance, but Inuyasha suddenly recalled the way she had left that morning and paused in the doorway.
"Erm..."
But Kagome seemed to have let it go because she offered him a generous smile.
"Oh, hi, Inuyasha. How was your day?"
Well, he decided, no need to tip-toe if she wasn't angry.
"Boring," he said bluntly. "No thanks to you."
Kagome snorted above the hum of the mini-oven. "What am I, your personal entertainer?"
"You said it first," Inuyasha replied. He slid past Kagome and hopped up onto the dryer, leaning back against the wall. There were a couple chairs in the room, but they looked incredibly uncomfortable, all flat and straight-backed.
"You have a funny way of showing gratitude," said Kagome ironically, as she pulled a plastic tray out of the microwave, stirred it up, and stuck it back in for another two minutes.
Inuyasha watched her pop the fork into her mouth, cleaning off the sauce. Her eyes flickered towards him and caught him staring.
"What?" she asked.
It would have been wiser, perhaps, to just let it go, but Inuyasha couldn't resist asking. He was nothing, if not difficult.
"What was that about, this morning?"
Caught off guard, Kagome deliberately turned her face away from him.
"Oh, that – that was nothing," she said. "I was... just being stupid."
He stared hard at her.
"Are you sure that's all?"
"Of course that's all!" she said, flinging the microwave open. She prodded at the steaming meal with her fork. "What else would there be?"
Was it his imagination, or had her face turned unnaturally red?
"Nothing," said Inuyasha. He looked at the microwave meal. "What's that?"
Kagome lifted a box from the counter as she moved to sit down cross-legged on the machine adjacent to his, which was the washer.
"Chicken Florentine," she began in a monotone. "Roasted chicken tenderloins and spiraled rotini pasta covered in a delicate sauce, etcetera, etcetera..."
"Yum."
"You bet," said Kagome, taking a large bite. She glanced at him from beneath lowered brows. "Want a bite?"
Inuyasha took the proffered fork cautiously and speared the smallest piece of chicken he could find. He chewed slowly, contemplatively.
"This," he said, after a moment, "is without a doubt, the most unappetizing thing I have ever tasted."
"Fine, then," Kagome replied, unperturbed. "More for me."
"I didn't say it was bad." He grabbed for the fork. Kagome managed to steal another mouthful without toppling off the washing machine, before Inuyasha successfully took the meal from her and allowed himself a more generous portion.
She made a face, snatching back the tray.
"You're weird," she noted, almost carelessly, as she raised another piece of the meal to her mouth.
"That doesn't mean much coming from you," he scoffed.
"Really?" asked Kagome, lips turning up at the corners. She seemed genuinely intrigued rather than offended and leaned closer to him in interest. "You think I'm weird?"
Inuyasha gulped and instinctively avoided her nearness. "Well... You're not even eighteen –"
"But I'm close."
"– And you live thousands of miles away from your family. That's weird. Don't your parents care, or anything?"
She tapped her lip pensively with her index finger. "My mom was always very supportive of anything I wanted to do, even if it took me away from her."
"What about your dad?"
She shrugged, absently studying the top of the washing machine. "Dead."
Inuyasha felt distinctly uncomfortable. "Oh. Um..."
"Don't worry about it," Kagome sighed.
"My mom is dead," he offered after a moment of tense silence. This was a piece of information that rarely met with fresh air, but somehow it was okay to tell Kagome. More than that, he felt obligated to reveal it to her.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He lifted an eyebrow. "Don't worry about it."
That earned him an empty half-chuckle. She poked her fork around inside the plastic tray.
Suddenly, she looked up at him. "But your dad is still...?"
"Oh. Yeah. He's still alive." But for how much longer? She didn't need to know everything, he thought, abruptly angry at himself for revealing anything at all.
"We could do a 'parent trap,'" she laughed.
"No. My dad's married."
"He remarried? That's terrible."
Inuyasha eyed her sideways. He couldn't stand those sympathizing eyes on his face, hated her for even thinking she could understand.
"I'm a bastard," he said evenly. He made his voice hard, so the last word came out like a block of stone.
Kagome faltered, but barely missed a beat. "That must be rough," she remarked mildly.
Inuyasha brought his hand to his bowed forehead. He had wanted irrationally to crush her, and she had deflected it, like water off a duck's back.
"Shut up," he said sullenly, without looking at her.
Kagome's sigh was so suffused with exasperation that she must have been rolling her eyes as well. She pushed the microwave meal toward him, as if making an offering.
"Here. Have some chicken. You'll feel better."
And he did.
''''
A/N: Doe this chapter seem entirely random? Well, I suppose it sort of is, but things pick up next time, if all goes according to plan. Hehehe... Although its been so long since I updated that I honestly expect this story to have been thoroughly forgotten about...