"Temporary Muse"

Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha, or any of the characters from the series.

A NarakuxKikyou fanfic. AU.

A/N: Nn. I'm thinking this'll be part of a series of really short one shots that make up a larger story.. Mostly NarakuxKikyou based, with a few other pairings inbetween and an uncertain plot written by "Sing for Absolution" on instant repeat, lack of sleep, and my suffocating love for this particular couple. Oh, and some parts of this particular fic are accompanied by Muse lyrics. D

Read and review, plzkthnx I'll love you for eternity.

He brought her over to the house again today.

I don't know why; maybe because he knows I hate it and he loves to torment me, to see me wince

when cheerful, girlish giggling floats up from those perfectly kissable, perpetually smiling, glossy

cigarette lips of hers, because I have a headache and the sound of her voice destroys my precious

atmosphere. That's probably why he does it. He's not generally spiteful but he holds grudges for eternities, and I'm at fault, he didn't let me forget it, telling me with shattered passion and tears in his eyes holding pieces of my face in them, pieces of us, his whole world, broken down. Destruction. My fault. It's my fault that he and I are nothing, and it is my fault that he is now with Kagome, who he brought over to the house again today.

I brought this stupid brat's visits upon myself, I guess. He lets himself in with the extra key I so willingly gave him, never thinking I'd be laying on the couch reading the same two lines in a novel and not seeing the words, smoking, of course, on the verge of sleep, never thinking he'd strut in like he owns the place in his ridiculous red t-shirt and soiled jeans that he wears every single waking moment of his life, her on his arm, a pretty schoolgirl wearing a short skirt and a huge smile. Always. And then they come over to talk to me; have a seat, yeah, whatever, how are you? They're always perfectly fine.

Touching. Holding hands, caressing, leaning against each other while I subconsciously scoot farther and farther away with this unexplained rage inside me growing and mounting like the background music in some cheap horror film right before someone gets eaten by the inevitable monster. I really hate that they're always touching, always happy. Her smile is killing me.

I think he knows that.

And I'm almost positive he likes it.

And I can't bring myself to say 'no'. Not once. No 'get out', or 'I'm busy', because as they can see for themselves I'm not really busy and I have no life now.. because InuYasha was my world.

And now she's his. And I'm stuck in this gray, cluttered apartment with nothing left to look forward to but endless conversations with no point or destination or sincerity and these constant visits that will surely be the end of my sanity; not a dream or a hope left in my empty little head. Nothing. I'm bitter, drained, dead on the inside, there's nothing in here. I wonder why I'm alive, sometimes. Nothing's fueling me. Nothing's pushing me on.

That's how I got into drugs. Or why, rather.

It was a summer night, and for the first time in weeks I'd removed myself from the couch I'd been almost surgically attached to since the breakup, each deadweight limb sending slivers of pain and protest throughout my now-mobile body, the empty one, to do something more than get a bottle of water and immediately slip back into my comatose state. Kagome and InuYasha had taken their leave hours ago; better things to do, no doubt. She left her magazine on the coffee table. Maybe she thought it was a good deed-- leaving me a little treat so the next time she came I could be flipping through it with enthusiasm, a devious smirk written all over my lips, a little girl-to-girl secret that didn't make much sense at all.

I sneered at the thought of even such petty bonding before closing the door and meandering the halls, for a while, getting used to movement again, and real breathing; air, not leftover cigarette smoke that never quite died out. The inky blackness of the sky was a welcome sight indeed when I hit those city streets again, sidewalks lit up like a miniature Milky Way.

It was. . . a nightclub, where I began my downward spiral and met the second 'love of my life'.

I stood outside in a pool of multicolored lights, staring up at the well-lit letters above played out for all to see. "The Underworld". Cliché. Then again, thinking back to its inhabitants, the obscene devil's spawn wannabe children, clad in black leather, dancers with skin whiter than my own, black lipstick making for obsidian kisses and bruises that look like smudges in the lighting, girls with green hair and chains from ear to ear. "The Underworld" was really quite fitting.

I don't want to know what they thought of me when I entered.

In fact, I'd like to think they didn't at all, that I just floated by them like a nameless, shapeless shadow; but they had to. The way they looked at me with eyes like deep ravines of haunted memories or opposite black voids-- I was a whole new species to the Underworld crowd.

Just like Naraku was absolutely alien to me.

I was lost, and I didn't want to dance.

I just blended in with the bright paint on the wall, chipping away and adorned lavishly with posters advertising this band or that, this new club or a different one, some of the new ones torn away to reveal older posters. He and his group were talking over in the opposite corner, and I watched out of sheer boredom-- palms around my lips and eyes downcast in seductive blunt disregard, with black hair enshrouding a porcelain not-quite-Underworld face, unmarred with the liquid ebony paint this bunch called makeup. Our eyes met.

If two infernos have ever spilled over into each other to create a more noxious blaze, then it was at that very moment, his mouth frozen in mid-speech and I, indifferent, returning the look.

Shock quickly morphed into ugly, beautiful confidence that lit his pouting cupid lips with a canine smirk, and he approached me, the questioning gazes of his friends following his every move like he was their lifeblood and their Jesus Christ, god forbid he move an inch without giving them at least a head's up.

Yeah, but he was. He was a nightclub Messiah.

Naraku.