Disclaimer: Nope still don't own em, not mine.

Author's note: Hey! Thanks to those that reviewed...I thought that Inu's mom was named Izayoi, I'd seen it around before but wasn't sure...usually my littler sister tells me this sort of thing but we haven't seen the third movie yet...grr...there was something else I wanted to say here...oh yea! Duh! This chapter explains where Inuyasha and Kagome and the gang were the previous evening to last chapter, "Sesshomaru's Return." From here you can guess what might happen later...Ah! And I haven't forgotten! Saffire Kiss--good guess...not gonna tell you if you're right but good thinking...thanks to angelfrumhell78 too for reviewing! Hope you enjoy...

Damn The New Moon

"Feh." Inuyasha huffed, scowling and looking away from the annoying schoolgirl.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome warned, tapping her foot, "What's your problem? Why won't you just accept the fact that we're not going to catch up with the others tonight! Do you really want to be out traveling when we're not only separated from Sango, Shippo and Miroku, but also you're about to lose your powers?!"

"Don't lecture me on the new moon Kagome! That's my problem! I've been dealing with it for years—alone." The half-demon snarled at her, curling his lips in disgust. Why did she always act as if she knew everything? It irritated the hell out of him!

"But Inuyasha! You're so stupid sometimes! The sun's setting fast and the next village isn't for a long walk. Unless you plan to run the whole way we'll never make it before the sun sets..." Kagome threw a worried look at the horizon to the west, nervous about their time. As if to emphasize her fears a wind rustled through the grasses and the trees lining the side of the road. It whistled ominously in Kagome's ears and she frowned, dark thoughts spinning in her skull.

"I don't care what you say Kagome!" Inuyasha growled, if he'd had fur it would've bristled for sure, "I will not stay in that shack!"

It was the day before the new moon and already Inuyasha's powers were fading. He wouldn't have admitted it but he knew that even if he'd tried to carry Kagome on his back to make it to the nearest village he'd run out of strength. Admitting this weakness was the last thing Inuyasha wanted to do, but he did have to face it as fact. He and Kagome would be spending the night of the new moon under the stars with no protection and only the two of them. The prospect was frightening him for more than just the fact that he'd be lacking his demon-powers.

Currently they had a choice to make that Kagome saw as incredibly simple and Inuyasha saw as incredibly stupid. While walking they'd come across a small abandoned hut along the road. Seeing it immediately made Kagome think that it was the perfect place to spend the night, as hidden as possible, while Inuyasha was transformed and fully human. Yet Inuyasha, despite his approaching time of weakness, refused to accept the little hut as shelter. This confused and frustrated Kagome because it seemed to make no sense. The shack was far from pretty or alluring it was true, but it was shelter, abandoned shelter. There might be a few drafts, yes, but it wasn't as if Inuyasha couldn't handle that, even as a human, right? And surely Inuyasha wasn't pampered in the least; he'd slept far dirtier places than the abandoned hut! Any port in a storm, Kagome thought, and this qualifies as a pretty decent port.

On Inuyasha's end things were far less concrete as far as logic went, but nonetheless he felt the way he did about the shack for a reason. There was something wrong with it. Coming across the place, on their way to reunite with Sango, Miroku and Shippo in a nearby village, it'd given Inuyasha the creeps. It didn't look particularly frightening, or welcoming in any one way or another, but there was something about the place...a cloud of gloom and approaching doom seemed to hang over it. That and Inuyasha could scent his brother's recent visit to the spot. Not a day ago his brother, the two-headed dragon, and the toady demon Jaken had passed by, perhaps stopping a short ways back to fish from the river.

Inuyasha didn't want to admit that his brother intimidated him, and generally the brothers left each other alone, even when they happened to pass within scent distance of each other. Sesshomaru wasn't likely to waste time on his half-demon little brother unless there was some scheme involved, like stealing his sword, or robbing their father's tomb, or any other little thing that tickled his brother's warped mind. Yet those, though annoying, were far and few in between, and usually his brother only came to play with him, like a cat teasing a mouse it's caught by the tail with its paw.

Besides those things Inuyasha was just simply uncomfortable spending the new moon with Kagome—alone. As a human he tended to lose a little control over himself, tended to feel emotions more strongly, and to be more spontaneous. If given the opportunity—like sleeping the night in a small drafty shack in the middle of nowhere alone with her on a chilly night—who knew what he'd do? His human side was weak and unpredictable and Inuyasha didn't like the thought of waking the next morning having hurt Kagome in some way...

"Inuyasha, you're impossible! The way you behave I'm surprised that you didn't die on one of the new moons years ago!"

Torn out of his worries and back into the battle Inuyasha felt his ears fall back against his skull, dangerously. He was suddenly filled with the urge to scream something really nasty at her, something really cruel. Perhaps he should tell her the truth? Kagome I don't want to spend the night alone with you. He could make it sound like an insult! But as soon as the thought entered his brain Inuyasha shook his head, scowling, closing his amber eyes in frustration. To Kagome, who was watching him carefully and reading his expressions, it simply appeared to be anger.

"You stupid jerk! I'm just trying to help you, ya know!" she screeched, and when Inuyasha looked her in the eye sharply he felt sure that a "sit," was coming.

"Well I don't need your help wench!"

Kagome's hands clenched at her sides, her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed, turning white, her body shook...

Oh no...now she's going to "sit" me for sure! He squinted his eyes shut in anticipation of the inevitable.

"Sit boy!" Kagome yelled and Inuyasha's face went careening for the ground. Though he huffed and cursed it was only half hearted, considering that he knew, as stubborn as he was, that they were running out of options...the hut or keep traveling while he was human. Mortals tired so easily, they needed steady sleep or they ceased to function. In general Inuyasha had always followed the policy of lying low in his periods of weakness.

When the ground no longer acted as a magnet to that damned necklace she'd forced on him so long ago, Inuyasha got to his feet and regarded the fuming girl, his eyes bright and angry but his mind sharp now with an answer. "All right Kagome," he snarled her name snidely, still unwilling to admit defeat or even explain his genuine reasons for being difficult, "We'll sleep here...but I'm not going to sleep with you..."

Kagome looked angry at the start of his words and then abruptly confused before she snorted and squirmed a little, alarmed by his unconscious word choice, "What?"

At about the same time she asked the question Inuyasha finally understood that his words had come out the wrong way...quickly he strove to correct the mistake, "No, no," he shifted uneasily, and shook his head, ears flicking, embarrassed, "I'm not going to sleep in that stupid shack. You can sleep there...alone."

Kagome looked almost hurt by this. For a moment she stuttered, uncertain, "But what if something happens? What if you—"

Inuyasha snorted, "Kagome, nothing's gonna happen."

The anger between them had melted abruptly and now Kagome regarded him with some emotion Inuyasha couldn't read. Worry, perhaps. "Are you sure, Inuyasha?"

After a moment he nodded, "Yes." But that was a lie...

A few hours later the sun had set and despite Inuyasha's strange, instinctual foreboding of the ugly shack, he found himself sitting inside it with Kagome, trying to keep himself in check. He never knew what that strange, weaker side of him would do if given half the chance...For fear of attack, especially at such a time as the new moon, the two had chosen not to build a fire. Thus the smoke couldn't attract unwanted humans or demons. It would be just the two of them, all night.

When the darkness had settled in, shrouding the inside of the shack, Inuyasha and Kagome sat on the old, dirty wooden floor, their backs against one side of the wall, waiting the long hours awake as long as possible. It'd grown colder outside with the loss of the sunlight and it wasn't long before Inuyasha could hear Kagome's shivering start up. To compensate he gave her the over shirt of his fire rat haori to cover up with and sat side-by-side with her to share body heat.

The hours of the night crawled by...

Inuyasha shook his head, frowning. He should've left the hut, and Kagome with it, long ago to climb some tree and watch over her from nearby. Well, that was what he should've done, but he had yet to move. He was, much to his own embarrassment, a tad reluctant to leave the girl's body heat. And that was only the excuse he told himself, there were many, many others that made him flush as red as his haori in the gloom. He'd also found that while human he was less likely to want to be alone, more often he'd crave attention, feel loneliness.

Inuyasha frowned in the darkness and forced his mind to wander over some other topic.

His senses had diminished dramatically. He always managed to forget how weak the humans' senses were. Yet every new moon he tasted their deafness, numbness, blindness, and scentless world anew, and could never grow comfortable with it. How did they manage? How could they be as confident as they were? To his weakened, mortal eyes, the darkness of the hut seemed impenetrable, never ending. It almost frightened him.

But at the same time there was Kagome. While human, and only while he was human it seemed; she had the ability to bewitch him. Inuyasha couldn't understand how it was possible, but something about her while he was human was different. He suspected that it was a human sense of some sort that he didn't possess as a half-demon, some human instinct that had to do with choosing mates...

He grunted through the dark, silent world, frowned again, and thought, Bad thoughts...bad, bad...

"Inuyasha?" Kagome's small voice broke his thoughts, snapping him to attention. His now fully human large brown eyes blinked confusedly as he turned them on her.

"What?" he asked, quietly, too quietly. He turned his face from her quickly and grimaced, unsatisfied...too weak! Too weak!

"I'm tired..."

"Go to sleep then."

She sighed, as if he'd failed her somehow, and Inuyasha grimaced again in the dark and squirmed, uncomfortably...it was time to leave...

He heard her shift in the shadows, moving to the corner where she'd laid out her sleeping bag. The zipper, a strange little invention of her time, growled through the night, tickling his ears, even without his usual Inuyoukai sensitivity. He listened attentively as she slid into the sleeping bag, her skin and the fabric brushing together in friction, the sigh she gave as she settled into it, the "thunk" sounds her body made as she adjusted her position.

Something inside him tickled, teased...damn her! He missed her heat next to him...

Before he could stop himself he'd sighed, regretfully, and Kagome, sharp as a tack, sat up in her sleeping bag and asked, "What is it Inuyasha?"

"Nothing." He shot back, too fast and too sharply for it to be believable in any way shape or form.

Kagome didn't challenge his answer with words, merely sighed again, loudly, just as she had when he'd told her to go to sleep, just as if he'd failed her, again. She knew full well that he was lying, but failed to understand him or his motives completely. Kagome! He screamed inwardly, Don't tempt me please!

He had to get out of the hut, had to leave her alone, no matter how much he missed her warmth, or her presence, or the sound of her breathing right next to his. Inuyasha rose to his feet, with an unusual clumsiness due to his abrupt status as a mortal. Damn this clumsiness! He huffed internally.

Fumbling goofily in the dark, like a blind pup for its mother's teat, Inuyasha found the door and opened it. He'd hoped that the starlight from outside would illuminate the world for him, but much to his disappointment it didn't look any brighter out there than it was in the hut.

From in her corner Kagome stirred and whispered his name, "Inuyasha?"

"What?" he snapped, irritated at her for not letting him leave, letting him run away from her and everything he loved about her...Dammit! I'm so stupid! I should just leave now; I can't stop thinking about her!

His gruffness with her seemed to have no effect, "You can sleep in here if you want, it'd make me feel safer Inuyasha. You don't have to leave."

Damn her! How much longer could he hold out? He'd been committed to avoiding close proximity with her while he was weak as a human. Yet he'd never imagined it'd be so hard!

Though he was raging inside Inuyasha found, much to his own surprise, that when he answered her he wasn't mean or rough, in fact his voice was quiet and calm, and it didn't sound like it usually did! Even his voice had become human! Damn the new moon! "Kagome...I have to go..."

"No, Inuyasha, stay here, it's safer in here!"

Inuyasha stood on the threshold, caught between inside and outside the hut, between the protection and warmth Kagome promised and the security and aloofness sleeping amongst the trees assured. Each choice also had its downfalls. If he stayed inside the shack his weak human side might do something stupid. Maybe he'd try to kiss her, or, worse still, he'd touch her inappropriately like that stupid hentai Miroku. Either way morning would come and he'd be ruined as far as Kagome was concerned. At any rate the only downfall to staying outside was that it was cold.

And he'd be lonely. And he might fall out of the tree he chose to sleep in because he was merely human tonight. And he could break his back, or his neck...and it'd still be cold! Damn the cold!

"Kagome..." Inuyasha sighed, still ravaged by indecision. Damn my weak human emotions! "I can't stay."

"Don't make me say it, Inuyasha."

He blinked, too wrapped in his own raging emotions to understand what she was talking about, "What? Say what?" he asked.

Perhaps if he'd had his demon powers, Kagome mused in her corner of the hut, shrouded in her sleeping bag, he'd have seen the huge smile that swept across her face like an avalanche down a mountainside. "The word? Oh, you know..."

"SIT!"

Endnote: ack...how'd it get so long? I'm sorry...review please! (if you haven't gone blind from eyestrain)...the next chapter will be up soon...sorry for Inu's mouth by the way...I just felt I needed to show his frustration and his fondness of that naughty word...that and it made a good chapter title...