Author: Balancing two fics is pretty difficult. Oh well, it's a lot more fun than just having one. Thank you to all of you who have been reviewing, it really makes my day.
Chapter 16:
It didn't take long for Kouga to reach the outskirts of the village, and from there he could smell Inuyasha as if he was right in front of him. Morning sun rays combed through the plant life of the area and the smell of plants and spring water was close by. Kouga followed the scent of the hanyou until it took him on a small path made by none other than travel. The rode was made of dirt and both thin and course, the trees grew thickly around it as he entered the forest area.
At the end of the path he came upon a large spring. It was only a spring because of the thin layer of steam that rose above the water because it was really the size of a lake. At the near edge of the spring sat Inuyasha, his left arm hanging on the bank, and his eyes closed as if focused.
A smirk crossed Kouga's face.
"At it again dog boy?"
Inuyasha made no reply, he knew Kouga was there long before he entered the clearing since the wind was nice about delivering the wolf's scent to him. He sighed lightly before changing the subject.
"I see your not licking your wounds anymore"
"They were all just knicks and scratches, after all, you gave them to me. You expected me to be out any longer from a fight with you?"
Inuyasha's right hand came out of the water and he turned his gaze to Kouga, a bit of a devious grin on his face, but it was partially masked by the steam.
"They looked like a bit more than knicks and scratches when I was carting your unconscious body back to the village."
Kouga muttered "Shut up" so that the hanyou had to strain to hear it, a grin of pride on his face as he turned back to the lake.
"So what exactly are you here for now? I thought you would be hounding after that woman that has such undying love for you." He snickered a bit.
Kouga thought up a clever come back revolving around Inuyasha wacking off in a spring instead of being with Kagome, but since he was supposed to be telling him something about this bath, it really wasn't a good idea to piss him off. But when he finally courted Lilian...that's when the no insults barred rule came into play.
"I'm here to take a bath." Kouga walked over and placed the red sack down that Kagome had given him down on the ground.
"Oh, you guys have started bathing now? That's good" Inuyasha contained a laugh.
"We've always bathed." Kouga said in his defense. He dropped the bed cover he had been wearing and walked over to the spring holding the green sack in his hand.
"Didn't smell like it to me last time I went over there."
"Have I ever told you you were an idiot?" Kouga set the green sack down on the bank of the spring before hesitantly stepping in, fully prepared to jump out if anything more solid than water touched his foot on the way down.
The water was warm, much warmer than the few springs up on the mountain. His tail winced slightly due to it's sensitivity, but soon adjusted.
He found himself a few feet from Inuyasha.
"Kagome said you would help me out with this."
Inuyasha looked back at the wolf in disbelief, hoping that he had just misunderstood what the wolf was asking. Kouga saw the look of confused horror on the hanyou's face before registering what had just been said, and how it might have sounded to one with sex on the brain.
"I mean with this." Kouga pulled the sack off the bank and held it above the spring. "She said you would know what to do with all this stuff." He set it back down on the bank, feeling much better when Inuyasha's face washed over with understanding.
He undid the little knot made from the four corners of the sack and revealed a flurry of variously shaped bottles, an odd smelling bar, a tube, a stick with fur on one end, and a little white box with a red twist-off cap.
"What the hell?"
Kouga picked up the bar, it was light green like all most of the other things in the sack. He brought it up to his nose and gave it a long sniff. The bar smelled oddly of some kind of melon, other than that, there were no poisons that he was familiar with. Instinct number two kicked in.
He opened his mouth wide, ignoring the snickering of a really unhelpful hanyou.
He put the bar in his mouth and was prepared to chew through it when the most awful taste he ever experienced murdered his taste buds. His eyes went wide at the strong bitterness of the bar and he spit it out, into the spring, coughing and gagging for a few minutes, and once again ignoring the uncontrollable laughter of a very unhelpful hanyou.
He dunked his head under the water and washed his mouth out, sure, pond stuff tasted pretty bad, but there was no way that bar was natural, no way at all. He pulled his head out of the spring, his hair completely soaked and clutching his body. He pulled the band out that had been holding it in the pony tail, allowing it to fall and then shook his head furiously to get it out of his face.
He turned an almost murderous gaze to Inuyasha who was trying to suppress a laugh at the wolf's expense.
"What the hell was that?" He tried to keep his voice down.
"It's called soap. I suggest you find it, because your gonna need it."
The laughter became easier to control and Inuyasha was able to pull his hand away from his mouth. Kouga rolled his eyes, sighed, and began to search blindly through the immediate area of the spring for the lost soap.
Sensing that the moment could become much more awkward very easily, Inuyasha slowly put some distance between himself and Kouga, who was now deeply involved in the search and had not noticed that he was closing the distance.
After a few moments of searching through the water, Kouga's hand emerged clenching tightly to the bar of soap.
"You might not want to hold it so tight."
"Why not?" Just as the bar slipped out of his hand. Kouga spent the next few moments almost juggling the bar above the water between hands, trying to keep it from going back in the water. After finally clasping the bar firmly in two hands and moving it over bank, he turned back to the hanyou who was once again convulsing in laughter.
"It's not that funny you know"
"Yeah it is" He clasped his hands over his mouth trying to quell the laughter.
Kouga growled under his breath in annoyance.
"So what do I need to do with this?"
Inuyasha spent the next few minutes instructing Kouga on how to use a bar of soap, every so often laughing at the times when Kouga did everything from get suds in his eyes to having it slip out of his hands and into the center of the spring. Memories of when he had done the same things when Kagome had taken him through it all dotted his mind.
He spent the next half hour putting Kouga through the rest of everything that Kagome had put in the sack. Shampoo, conditioner, Toothbrush with toothpaste out of the way, there was one thing left for them to cover. Kouga picked up the little white box and read the label.
"...Oxy...pads? What are these?"
"To be honest...I don't know. Kagome uses them and I used to...but I never really figured out what they were for. She said something about pores or something I think."
"Pores?" Kouga was really confused, his look of confusion was matched only by the hanyou he was talking to.
Inuyasha shrugged his shoulders.
"Do you remember how to use them?" Kouga asked as he finally managed to unscrew the cap. A strong scent that almost burned at his nose came from the small box.
"No, can't say that I do."
"Great..." Kouga was very un-amused. "Well, maybe I should..."
Kouga trailed off into an inaudible talk with himself as he lifted one of the pads out of the box. Slowly he brought it over his eye against both his better judgment, and the almost aching warning in the back of his skull.
He brought the pad over his closed left eye and held it there for a second. There was a slight burning sensation, but these things that Kagome had given him didn't quite hit him as pleasant items...the soap incident still fresh in his mind.
"Hey, this isn't so..."
Kouga screamed, then followed the scream with a flurry of swear words that he had learned from none other than Inuyasha (who was yet again convulsing in laughter), as he tore the pad away from his eye and flung it into the spring. When he finally turned back to Inuyasha, his eye was completely red, at first Inuyasha was on guard, then he realized that the fumes from the pad had reddened the wolf's eye. He snickered some more.
Kouga took this opportunity to "hmph" before stepping out onto the back. He jumped into the air and spun wildly, sending water everywhere before returning to the ground nearly dry.
"You know" Inuyasha said, pulling the hand he had used as a shield down. "The sack she wrapped that stuff in doubles as a towel."
"A what?" Kouga asked over his shoulder, his back to Inuyasha and an almost bored look on his face.
"Never mind." Inuyasha pulled himself out of the water and reached for a large piece of blue cloth. He quickly dried himself off with it before wrapping it around his waist.
Now it was Kouga's turn to laugh.
"Wow, now you look full human"
"Don't knock it until you try it, it's kinda comfy..." Inuyasha stopped, realizing what he had just said, and to who he had just said it to. His voice returned to it's loud, almost angry version that Kouga hadn't heard in years. "Hey, it uses less energy, and its more effective. It just means that I'll have energy to spare for the next time i pound you, mutt."
"I'm a mutt?" Kouga challenged playfully, he saw the opportunity to push Inuyasha's buttons, but this time he just couldn't refuse. "I'm all wolf, remember?"
"All wolf alright, but with all those wolves up there, it leads you to wonder. Just how many of them were there that night?"
"Doesn't matter, at least they stayed within their own species."
"Your one to talk, if you haven't forgotten about your assassin, the one that you're trying to court."
"Yes, but that assassin doesn't have me whipped with a single word." Kouga walked over to where he had put the red sack.
"Trust me, that'll change once you've been together for a while." Inuyasha walked over to a spot not far from Kouga where his clothes had been hung on a tree.
"Please tell me your joking about that..." A tone of seriousness replaced his previously jovial one. The thought of Inuyasha doing anything Kagome commanded of him was a bit unnerving, seeing how Inuyasha was still half youkai.
"Of course I am."
Kouga sighed in relief then laughed again.
He turned his attention back to the red sack, the material was smoother he realized for the first time, much softer in his hands. He undid the knot and let the corners of the package fall to the ground. He saw neatly folded cloth, both golden yellow, and black.
He picked up the top piece of the material, and let it unfold. It was a goldenrod gi shirt with no sleeves, the entire shirt was the same color, and it had a bit of weight to it. He slung it over one arm and inspected it with the other, the material was thickly sewn and very padded along the chest and back.
He put it on, sliding his arms effortlessly into the gi, leaving it open for now. He turned his attention back to the next item.
He pulled it up to unfold into a pair of black pants, seemingly sewn the same way. The padding went all the way down to the ankles with the exception of a small hole in the back. He stood up and slipped them on, fitting his tail out the back hole. They fit nicely, the waist hugged him lightly along at the hips but was layered with soft material so that it was comfortable. The legs had little room at the hips but widened out as they went closer to his ankles before shrinking suddenly to a tightly sewn piece of fabric that clung tightly to the bones of his ankles.
He looked down, seeing that the majority of the sacks contents were now on him.
The next thing was a black belt made of a slightly courser material. He closed the shirt and wrapped the belt around the waist of the pants, leaving about an inch or so of the gi shirt below the belt.
Next there was a headband, made of the same material as the belt but it was the same goldenrod color of as the shirt. He slid it on, sliding a few locks of his hair underneath it so that they fell close to his eyes.
He plucked out a strand of his thick hair, and tied the rest back into a ponytail using the strand to keep it in place.
He looked down to the last item in the bag.
Goldenrod bandages to wrap around his feet like the ones she had taken off of him, except they were new looking and much thicker.
He sat down and began wrapping his feet and ankles when Inuyasha strolled over, sliding Tetsusaiga and it's sheathe under his belt.
"So she gave you that outfit huh?"
"Yeah I guess so"
"Consider yourself lucky, that's one of the best ones she's made."
"Really?"
"Yeah, she started sewing a while ago because she was bored. She got pretty good at it too, learned form some of the best seamstresses in the village. That outfit she made to be almost like casual armor, she padded it or something so that the outfit would absorb a lot of the shock. I think she even blessed it so it wouldn't tear so easily. She dyed all the material herself too."
"Really then" He finished off his first foot. "If its so special, why didn't you wear it?"
"Didn't fit me. She must've guessed it would fit you though, I think she made the headband and foot bandages just yesterday."
"Well it does. Its nice to wear something other than armor for a change, and its nice to not have that sword hitting against my legs." He finished up the other foot, then stood up evenly, he jumped a bit then threw a kick to no one in general. "I like it, I can fight in it, but at the same time, I don't look like I'm ready for war."
"Good then. I think it's time we head back."
"Alright"
Kouga gathered up the bathing supplies in the green sack, and went back over to Inuyasha. The two made their way back to the village joking and laughing as if they had been friends for years.
Author: So, what do you think of Kouga's new look? I think it's better than the armor, and for once, I actually feel confident in this chapter...[grins].
Anyway, there may be a lit of lemon-y ness in chapters to come, definitely won't be yaoi though...because that's just a mite creepy. If (and I mean if) I do, I'll let you know to find it at my live journal and I'll put the link in my bio.
Chapter 16:
It didn't take long for Kouga to reach the outskirts of the village, and from there he could smell Inuyasha as if he was right in front of him. Morning sun rays combed through the plant life of the area and the smell of plants and spring water was close by. Kouga followed the scent of the hanyou until it took him on a small path made by none other than travel. The rode was made of dirt and both thin and course, the trees grew thickly around it as he entered the forest area.
At the end of the path he came upon a large spring. It was only a spring because of the thin layer of steam that rose above the water because it was really the size of a lake. At the near edge of the spring sat Inuyasha, his left arm hanging on the bank, and his eyes closed as if focused.
A smirk crossed Kouga's face.
"At it again dog boy?"
Inuyasha made no reply, he knew Kouga was there long before he entered the clearing since the wind was nice about delivering the wolf's scent to him. He sighed lightly before changing the subject.
"I see your not licking your wounds anymore"
"They were all just knicks and scratches, after all, you gave them to me. You expected me to be out any longer from a fight with you?"
Inuyasha's right hand came out of the water and he turned his gaze to Kouga, a bit of a devious grin on his face, but it was partially masked by the steam.
"They looked like a bit more than knicks and scratches when I was carting your unconscious body back to the village."
Kouga muttered "Shut up" so that the hanyou had to strain to hear it, a grin of pride on his face as he turned back to the lake.
"So what exactly are you here for now? I thought you would be hounding after that woman that has such undying love for you." He snickered a bit.
Kouga thought up a clever come back revolving around Inuyasha wacking off in a spring instead of being with Kagome, but since he was supposed to be telling him something about this bath, it really wasn't a good idea to piss him off. But when he finally courted Lilian...that's when the no insults barred rule came into play.
"I'm here to take a bath." Kouga walked over and placed the red sack down that Kagome had given him down on the ground.
"Oh, you guys have started bathing now? That's good" Inuyasha contained a laugh.
"We've always bathed." Kouga said in his defense. He dropped the bed cover he had been wearing and walked over to the spring holding the green sack in his hand.
"Didn't smell like it to me last time I went over there."
"Have I ever told you you were an idiot?" Kouga set the green sack down on the bank of the spring before hesitantly stepping in, fully prepared to jump out if anything more solid than water touched his foot on the way down.
The water was warm, much warmer than the few springs up on the mountain. His tail winced slightly due to it's sensitivity, but soon adjusted.
He found himself a few feet from Inuyasha.
"Kagome said you would help me out with this."
Inuyasha looked back at the wolf in disbelief, hoping that he had just misunderstood what the wolf was asking. Kouga saw the look of confused horror on the hanyou's face before registering what had just been said, and how it might have sounded to one with sex on the brain.
"I mean with this." Kouga pulled the sack off the bank and held it above the spring. "She said you would know what to do with all this stuff." He set it back down on the bank, feeling much better when Inuyasha's face washed over with understanding.
He undid the little knot made from the four corners of the sack and revealed a flurry of variously shaped bottles, an odd smelling bar, a tube, a stick with fur on one end, and a little white box with a red twist-off cap.
"What the hell?"
Kouga picked up the bar, it was light green like all most of the other things in the sack. He brought it up to his nose and gave it a long sniff. The bar smelled oddly of some kind of melon, other than that, there were no poisons that he was familiar with. Instinct number two kicked in.
He opened his mouth wide, ignoring the snickering of a really unhelpful hanyou.
He put the bar in his mouth and was prepared to chew through it when the most awful taste he ever experienced murdered his taste buds. His eyes went wide at the strong bitterness of the bar and he spit it out, into the spring, coughing and gagging for a few minutes, and once again ignoring the uncontrollable laughter of a very unhelpful hanyou.
He dunked his head under the water and washed his mouth out, sure, pond stuff tasted pretty bad, but there was no way that bar was natural, no way at all. He pulled his head out of the spring, his hair completely soaked and clutching his body. He pulled the band out that had been holding it in the pony tail, allowing it to fall and then shook his head furiously to get it out of his face.
He turned an almost murderous gaze to Inuyasha who was trying to suppress a laugh at the wolf's expense.
"What the hell was that?" He tried to keep his voice down.
"It's called soap. I suggest you find it, because your gonna need it."
The laughter became easier to control and Inuyasha was able to pull his hand away from his mouth. Kouga rolled his eyes, sighed, and began to search blindly through the immediate area of the spring for the lost soap.
Sensing that the moment could become much more awkward very easily, Inuyasha slowly put some distance between himself and Kouga, who was now deeply involved in the search and had not noticed that he was closing the distance.
After a few moments of searching through the water, Kouga's hand emerged clenching tightly to the bar of soap.
"You might not want to hold it so tight."
"Why not?" Just as the bar slipped out of his hand. Kouga spent the next few moments almost juggling the bar above the water between hands, trying to keep it from going back in the water. After finally clasping the bar firmly in two hands and moving it over bank, he turned back to the hanyou who was once again convulsing in laughter.
"It's not that funny you know"
"Yeah it is" He clasped his hands over his mouth trying to quell the laughter.
Kouga growled under his breath in annoyance.
"So what do I need to do with this?"
Inuyasha spent the next few minutes instructing Kouga on how to use a bar of soap, every so often laughing at the times when Kouga did everything from get suds in his eyes to having it slip out of his hands and into the center of the spring. Memories of when he had done the same things when Kagome had taken him through it all dotted his mind.
He spent the next half hour putting Kouga through the rest of everything that Kagome had put in the sack. Shampoo, conditioner, Toothbrush with toothpaste out of the way, there was one thing left for them to cover. Kouga picked up the little white box and read the label.
"...Oxy...pads? What are these?"
"To be honest...I don't know. Kagome uses them and I used to...but I never really figured out what they were for. She said something about pores or something I think."
"Pores?" Kouga was really confused, his look of confusion was matched only by the hanyou he was talking to.
Inuyasha shrugged his shoulders.
"Do you remember how to use them?" Kouga asked as he finally managed to unscrew the cap. A strong scent that almost burned at his nose came from the small box.
"No, can't say that I do."
"Great..." Kouga was very un-amused. "Well, maybe I should..."
Kouga trailed off into an inaudible talk with himself as he lifted one of the pads out of the box. Slowly he brought it over his eye against both his better judgment, and the almost aching warning in the back of his skull.
He brought the pad over his closed left eye and held it there for a second. There was a slight burning sensation, but these things that Kagome had given him didn't quite hit him as pleasant items...the soap incident still fresh in his mind.
"Hey, this isn't so..."
Kouga screamed, then followed the scream with a flurry of swear words that he had learned from none other than Inuyasha (who was yet again convulsing in laughter), as he tore the pad away from his eye and flung it into the spring. When he finally turned back to Inuyasha, his eye was completely red, at first Inuyasha was on guard, then he realized that the fumes from the pad had reddened the wolf's eye. He snickered some more.
Kouga took this opportunity to "hmph" before stepping out onto the back. He jumped into the air and spun wildly, sending water everywhere before returning to the ground nearly dry.
"You know" Inuyasha said, pulling the hand he had used as a shield down. "The sack she wrapped that stuff in doubles as a towel."
"A what?" Kouga asked over his shoulder, his back to Inuyasha and an almost bored look on his face.
"Never mind." Inuyasha pulled himself out of the water and reached for a large piece of blue cloth. He quickly dried himself off with it before wrapping it around his waist.
Now it was Kouga's turn to laugh.
"Wow, now you look full human"
"Don't knock it until you try it, it's kinda comfy..." Inuyasha stopped, realizing what he had just said, and to who he had just said it to. His voice returned to it's loud, almost angry version that Kouga hadn't heard in years. "Hey, it uses less energy, and its more effective. It just means that I'll have energy to spare for the next time i pound you, mutt."
"I'm a mutt?" Kouga challenged playfully, he saw the opportunity to push Inuyasha's buttons, but this time he just couldn't refuse. "I'm all wolf, remember?"
"All wolf alright, but with all those wolves up there, it leads you to wonder. Just how many of them were there that night?"
"Doesn't matter, at least they stayed within their own species."
"Your one to talk, if you haven't forgotten about your assassin, the one that you're trying to court."
"Yes, but that assassin doesn't have me whipped with a single word." Kouga walked over to where he had put the red sack.
"Trust me, that'll change once you've been together for a while." Inuyasha walked over to a spot not far from Kouga where his clothes had been hung on a tree.
"Please tell me your joking about that..." A tone of seriousness replaced his previously jovial one. The thought of Inuyasha doing anything Kagome commanded of him was a bit unnerving, seeing how Inuyasha was still half youkai.
"Of course I am."
Kouga sighed in relief then laughed again.
He turned his attention back to the red sack, the material was smoother he realized for the first time, much softer in his hands. He undid the knot and let the corners of the package fall to the ground. He saw neatly folded cloth, both golden yellow, and black.
He picked up the top piece of the material, and let it unfold. It was a goldenrod gi shirt with no sleeves, the entire shirt was the same color, and it had a bit of weight to it. He slung it over one arm and inspected it with the other, the material was thickly sewn and very padded along the chest and back.
He put it on, sliding his arms effortlessly into the gi, leaving it open for now. He turned his attention back to the next item.
He pulled it up to unfold into a pair of black pants, seemingly sewn the same way. The padding went all the way down to the ankles with the exception of a small hole in the back. He stood up and slipped them on, fitting his tail out the back hole. They fit nicely, the waist hugged him lightly along at the hips but was layered with soft material so that it was comfortable. The legs had little room at the hips but widened out as they went closer to his ankles before shrinking suddenly to a tightly sewn piece of fabric that clung tightly to the bones of his ankles.
He looked down, seeing that the majority of the sacks contents were now on him.
The next thing was a black belt made of a slightly courser material. He closed the shirt and wrapped the belt around the waist of the pants, leaving about an inch or so of the gi shirt below the belt.
Next there was a headband, made of the same material as the belt but it was the same goldenrod color of as the shirt. He slid it on, sliding a few locks of his hair underneath it so that they fell close to his eyes.
He plucked out a strand of his thick hair, and tied the rest back into a ponytail using the strand to keep it in place.
He looked down to the last item in the bag.
Goldenrod bandages to wrap around his feet like the ones she had taken off of him, except they were new looking and much thicker.
He sat down and began wrapping his feet and ankles when Inuyasha strolled over, sliding Tetsusaiga and it's sheathe under his belt.
"So she gave you that outfit huh?"
"Yeah I guess so"
"Consider yourself lucky, that's one of the best ones she's made."
"Really?"
"Yeah, she started sewing a while ago because she was bored. She got pretty good at it too, learned form some of the best seamstresses in the village. That outfit she made to be almost like casual armor, she padded it or something so that the outfit would absorb a lot of the shock. I think she even blessed it so it wouldn't tear so easily. She dyed all the material herself too."
"Really then" He finished off his first foot. "If its so special, why didn't you wear it?"
"Didn't fit me. She must've guessed it would fit you though, I think she made the headband and foot bandages just yesterday."
"Well it does. Its nice to wear something other than armor for a change, and its nice to not have that sword hitting against my legs." He finished up the other foot, then stood up evenly, he jumped a bit then threw a kick to no one in general. "I like it, I can fight in it, but at the same time, I don't look like I'm ready for war."
"Good then. I think it's time we head back."
"Alright"
Kouga gathered up the bathing supplies in the green sack, and went back over to Inuyasha. The two made their way back to the village joking and laughing as if they had been friends for years.
Author: So, what do you think of Kouga's new look? I think it's better than the armor, and for once, I actually feel confident in this chapter...[grins].
Anyway, there may be a lit of lemon-y ness in chapters to come, definitely won't be yaoi though...because that's just a mite creepy. If (and I mean if) I do, I'll let you know to find it at my live journal and I'll put the link in my bio.