DISCLAIMER: Inuyasha and co. do not belong to me. I wish they did. But they don't.
SUMMARY: AU. Sesshoumaru/Kagome. Inspired by Inuyasha, the fanfic Yakuza, and various other stories.
With the death of Kagome's father, the Higurashi family found themselves quite tight with money. Souta, in his teenaged attempt to help, lies to go to Tokyo and gambles. However, he finds himself in trouble with a prominent underground figure in both human and youkai society. Kagome gets Souta out of the mess by promising to work the money back with Sesshoumaru... who is not nearly as nice or reasonable as Kagome considered humans to be. Maybe that's because he's not human.
WARNINGS: I'm going to make it simple: Don't read the story if you don't like it.
Author's Notes: Thanks so much for the wonderful reviews of the last chapter... unfortunately, Sesshoumaru isn't a nice a fuzzy (to be differentiated from 'fluffy'), so I can't have that many fluffy scenes... But maybe I can't put them in chapter seventeen (which is as yet unwritten)?
Still, perhaps this chapter isn't all that boring either.
Also, thanks to Animefreak242 and emubadger for pointing out some of the mistakes that I have made in previous chapters. I have corrected them, but am too lazy to update the internet version... I'll do it when I finish the entire fic... and who knows how that will take?
by Ethidda
Written 11/7/04
Chapter Five
The sunlight felt warm on Kagome's face, but Kagome's room faced the west, and she never felt the warmth of the morning sun from her room. Unless it was already past morning and well into the afternoon.
Or, if she was not in her room, as Kagome quickly found out. The thing that she held onto that she had thought was a pillow was in fact an arm. And the warm and fluffy blanket was not a blanket at all but Sesshoumaru's boa.
At the thought of sleeping with Sesshoumaru, Kagome's face lit up in an embarrassed shade of red.
She sat up in the bed--after quietly ascertaining that she was indeed still clothed--and looked toward the man lying in bed with her. Silver strands of his long hair flowed over the pillows and with his eyes closed, Sesshoumaru looked so much less forbidding.
And he was lying beside her in her bed. Her face slowly turned from the embarrassed red to an angry crimson.
"What the hell are you doing on my bed?" she yelled.
Sesshoumaru flinched visibly at her loud voice, but at least he was awake. The moment he opened his gold eyes, though, his visage somehow became more set, more rigid, and more frozen.
Without answering her verbally, he simply raised an eyebrow.
Kagome tried to think. She was a usually light sleeper and she couldn't imagine how Sesshoumaru would have climbed beside her into her bed without her noticing.
Or why he would.
Then, it all came back in a flash; She had almost been... by those jackasses, no less. And it had been Sesshoumaru who had saved her.
And been kind enough to stay with her.
And she had just yelled at him.
Embarrassed again, Kagome turned away from him. "Um, sorry," she tried to apologize. "And, uh, thanks."
Sesshoumaru grunted his acknowledgment because she wouldn't see his normal curt nod, turned away from him.
"And I'd like to take a shower," she added.
"Jaken," Sesshoumaru's voice rang out.
A few moments later, the servant that Kagome had saw upon her first visit to Sesshoumaru's office showed up in what Kagome could only conclude was an apartment in the upper floors of the club. It made sense that he would live near where he worked, although it didn't make sense as to why he would own a night club in the first place.
Without further ado, Sesshoumaru instructed Jaken to instruct the servants to draw a bath for Kagome.
Quietly, Kagome followed Jaken to the bathroom, complete with a hot tub, a jet bath, and a three-headed shower. Now she understood why the servants were needed.
When they were finished setting everything up and explaining everything to her, they left Kagome alone in the blissful bath of hot water and massage air jets to wash away the feeling of dirtiness and grime that were still left on her skin.
Kagome paused as she stepped outside the building of the nightclub onto the quiet street. In sharp contrast to the blaring lights and the deafening sound at night, she could only here the twitting of the birds and the occasional car that drove by. The sun shone softly onto the street and it was surprisingly tranquil.
Sesshoumaru had informed her that she would still need to perform her duties as his personal maid, and in a way, Kagome was thankful. She didn't want to be treated special--not now, or she might actually have a breakdown. She wanted to have sometime for the memory to become less sharp and less distinct before she analyzed it.
The feeling to be out on the street in the bright of the day was wonderful. The only problem was, she had no idea how to walk to the cafe that Sesshoumaru had mentioned to get him the specific tea he wanted.
Kagome knew that the upper crust had very distinct tastes, but to order what he did... well, he wrote a veritable essay on the tea that he wanted.
Kagome hesitated, looking about. Then, she heard a familiar voice demand, "What the hell have you done with Sesshoumaru?"
"Nothing," she yelled back in reflex. She hadn't expected to see Inuyasha in Tokyo. "What are you thinking of anyway?"
"Keh," Inuyasha turned his face up disdainfully. "You reek of him." When Kagome sniffed at herself suspiciously--she shouldn't reek of anything, she had just taken a shower--Inuyasha added, "You can't smell it, but I've a keen sense of smell."
"Well," Kagome replied thoughtfully. "I did sleep with him."
Souta asked, "You slept with him?" His eyes were wide.
At the same time, Inuyasha cursed. "You slept with that bastard?"
"He's very nice," Kagome defended Sesshoumaru a bit uncomfortably. "And both of you, get your heads out of the gutter. I didn't sleep with him in that way."
Inuyasha still sniffed suspiciously. "You mean you actually slept next to him without... you know...?"
"Look, I don't want to go into the details," Kagome replied defensively. She could almost swear that Inuyasha was blushing at having to even talk about it. "But Sesshoumaru is in fact a very nice and kind and considerate person and he stayed with me last night since I was afraid of having nightmares."
Inuyasha still looked suspicious, but thankfully, Souta was supportive. Sort of. Souta said, "Wow, I couldn't have told that from the way he looked."
"Keh," Inuyasha snorted. "In all my life of knowing him, I have never heard him described a kind." In Inuyasha's abstinence, he had conveniently forgotten Rin.
In a sudden movement, Inuyasha grabbed both of Kagome's shoulders and buried his nose in her neck, sniffing loudly.
From the cafe across the street, Kikyou kept quiet and even appeared nonchalant, as she watched the scene in front of the night club.
It was disgusting.
She even knew of the girl, dressed in vulgar clothing: Kagome Higurashi, her distant cousin who had also inherited the miko powers from their great-great-grandmother.
If it weren't for Kagome Higurashi, Kikyou would have inherited the Higurashi Shrine with her miko powers. But Kagome Higurashi ahd been more a more direct descendent. She was supposedly more pure in blood.
Kikyou curled her upper lip in disgust.
If it weren't for Kagome Higurashi, she would have had a place in the world.
And in addition to taking Kikyou's place and Kikyou's family, Kagome was even now taking Inuyasha, who had sworn eternal love to Kikyou.
Kikyou refused to give him up.
She picked up her bag from the chair next to her and was just about to confront the thief when another figure joined the scene: Sesshoumaru.
Kikyou detested Sesshoumaru; She loathed him with a passion that could be compared with nothing except, perhaps, her love for Inuyasha. But the memory of her last confrontation with him still burned in her mind and she had no intention of repeating that experience anytime soon.
Kikyou sneered with malicious glee as Sesshoumaru slipped an obviously proprietary arm around Kagome's waist. He wasn't going to let Kagome stay with Inuyasha either, although for a quite different reason that he hadn't let Kikyou together with Inuyasha.
As Inuyasha sniffed Kagome's neck, she waited awkwardly but patiently, not quite sure what he was trying to accomplish. As a dog-youkai, he would have a keen olfactory sense, which was precisely why she didn't understand his actions; He would be able to smell anything from three hundred feet off.
A quiet snarl from the shadows of the door way behind Kagome started her out of her patient waiting.
Inuyasha growled quietly before he pulled back, seeming to understand something in Sesshoumaru's snarl deeper than Sesshoumaru's simple discontent.
As soon as Inuyasha withdrew, Kagome felt Sesshoumaru's firm arm snake around her waist. Inuyasha noticed this too and gave her a pointed look. Then, Kagome, remembering their earlier conversation, felt her face heat up.
She took a peek up at Sesshoumaru's face to see if he somehow knew what she was guilty of thinking and saying, although even she wasn't quite sure what it was she was guilty of. But his profile retained its usual cold and hard implacability and she could guess nothing.
The arm around her waist, though, was gently supporting, and strangely, Kagome felt a part of her relaxing as Sesshoumaru was with her again.
She supposed it was because he had come and saved her at her most desperate when nobody else had.
"Inuyasha," Kagome started introducing. "This is--"
"Sesshoumaru," Inuyasha finished for her in a guttural growl. "We know each other."
"Wow," Souta exclaimed. "You mean I could've just told Moon that I knew you and he would've let me off the hook?"
"No," Sesshoumaru's deep baritone cut in succinctly.
Inuyasha added, as if in explanation, "He's a cold bastard."
On hearing this, Kagome threatened Inuyasha with a warning glare. "Inuyasha, s..."
"Alright, alright." Inuyasha conceded quickly. "I won't say it anymore." He brought his hands up in front of him in a gesture of his capitulation.
When Inuyasha had been first brought to the Higurashi Shrine by Souta, Kagome's grandfather had identified him as youkai, almost correctly.
Inuyasha was a half-youkai and it was one of his sore spots. It was also the reason that Kagome's grandfather's spell had gone so completely awry. What had originally been a spell of obedience for twenty-four hours had become an indefinitely long spell during which he falls down 'splat' everytime Kagome says "sit" with a certain intonation.
He would 'splat' differently with different intonations and there were very few ways for Kagome to say "sit" without him falling 'splat'.
Needless to say, Inuyasha did not enjoy going 'splat', but they have yet to find the counterspell. Still, Inuyasha had his pride. So, after Kagome's temper seemed to have cooled slightly, he added, "Aloud."
Kagome leveled him a glare.
Sesshoumaru directed his reply to Kagome. "I am sorry that you have had to contend with the acquaintance of Inuyasha. I am more sorry to say that he does not get better upon further acquaintance."
"Why, you..." Inuyasha seethed at Sesshoumaru.
Souta cut in curiously, "Just how did you guys get to know each other anyway?"
It was Sesshoumaru spat out the answer. "We share the same father."
"Oh," Kagome said in revelation. "That's why you... You're brothers!"
"Half-brothers," both of them corrected at the same time, Sesshoumaru's ice cold while Inuyasha's filled with the heat of despite.
At this synchronized answer, both Kagome and Souta burst out laughing.
At the moment, Naraku wished that Kagura had indeed died from the toxins from Moon.
The woman was so... easily getting off-track. She was supposed to watch for any possible weaknesses of Moon.
Although, from what she had said, Kagura had, indeed, front Moon's weakness: the human woman that Moon had recently acquired.
Naraku admitted to himself that he was more than a little curious as to what kind of human woman would draw Moon's attention. He had never known Moon to be interested in a human female in any capacity. Even Rin had been merely a legal obligation that as the head of so successful a corporation, he wouldn't have been able to rid himself of without losing face.
Naraku wondered if this human woman could be as enticing as Kikyou, but he doubted that any human woman could be as enticing as Kikyou.
Which was why he needed Moon gone and Inuyasha put into the spotlight for Naraku to attack. Then, he would be able to have the Shikon no Tama and Kikyou by his side.
It seemed that he would have to adjust his plan. Again. Too bad the actors would never follow his script.
Kouga sauntered near his haunt. He had had more than a few fights today and he was actually a little impatient to return to the safety of his sanctuary. As the leader of a pack of what he would like to call traditional wolves--wolves who hunted and killed and lived off of the land--he still needed to arrange his affairs from time to time by simple virtue of living among civilization.
But he couldn't wait to return to the pack and share the deer that he had brought back from one of the freshest butcher shops around the neighborhood. They hadn't had rare meat like that in a long time.
As he opened the door, though, an overwhelming smell of blood washed over him and he felt apprehension gathering in him. Dragging the deer carelessly behind him, he sprinted down the steps to the basement.
One of the wolves had died.
Had become nothing but a dark splotch against the floor and parts of the walls.
Kouga seethed in fury and indignation. They were his pack, under his protection, and yet somebody had disregarded the truce between the youkai and made an attack on his pack, in his territory.
Suddenly, Kouga remembered the weak youkai who had met on the way back to his haunt. The youkai had appeared human and had long, black hair in ringlets.
"Beware of Moon," the stranger had warned and disappeared quite mysteriously before Kouga could ask anymore.
Kouga knew who Moon was--the most feared being in all of the underworld. Not only did he hold enough property to make bankrupt anybody he wished, Sesshoumaru was also a formidable youkai of one of the oldest bloodlines.
Older, Kouga was loath to admit, than even his own.
Kouga had never liked Sesshoumaru, but he had also been careful that he never offended the youkai. But now, Kouga's pack had been attacked and he certainly did not plan to sit and wait cowardly for further attacks.
He was out for vengeance.
"Who was it?" He asked the still quivering members of the pack, on the slight chance that his assumptions had been wrong.
After a long, fearful pause, one of the wolves answered, "A youkai."
"Tall... strong," another added.
"With poisonous claws," said a third. "And silver hair."
That decided Kouga. He muttered forcefully under his breath, "I'm going to kill him."
It was then that Ginta stepped up with the intention to give a full explanation to Kouga. "My prince, there is a reason--"
"I don't care what the reason is," Kouga cut off Ginta harshly. Ginta was Kouga's right hand and normally, Kouga took care to listen to Ginta's advice because Kouga knew he was a bit reckless at times. But this was certainly not one of them. He explained with perfect clarity, "He imposed on my territory and harmed and killed my man."
"But--" Ginta tried to add, but only a cloud of dust was left where Kouga had been. Kouga had certainly put his legendary running speed to work.
Did I say that Kikyou was going to meet Inuyasha? Well... she sort of did... Hey, it's my story!
And while I was writing this chapter, I almost made it winter... when it's only been days (busy, busy days) after Souta's summer camp finished. This is why I have trouble writing.
Tell me how I did... R/R