Innocent Kisses in the Rain
Sesshoumaru's house, Aug 14, 2004 (Tokyo Japan)
"No! It's your turn to paint! I wanna play on the computer!" Kagome protested, sagging against a dry wall in an attempt to catch her breath.
"I will mercilessly kill you if you lay a single finger on this keyboard." Sesshoumaru warned with an edge of amusement in his otherwise deadly serious voice. Kagome 'humphed' and considered whacking him in the head.
"I will mercilessly kill you if you lay a single finger on me." He added, as if reading her mind, as she seethed and picked up her paint brush full of sage green paint.
"I will not only mercilessly kill you, I will chase you through the afterlife if that paint brush comes even a centimeter closer to my head."
Kagome groaned and wiped her hand across her face, unintentionally leaving a trail of pale green paint across her cheek.
Sesshoumaru continued typing, an occasional smirk lighting his face.
Kagome crept over to look over his shoulder, knowing that he probably heard her, but couldn't resist the temptation of sneaking…
She mentally sighed heavily, for she knew that he would mercilessly kill her if she dared even wipe paint in his hair. Dear God, that would be serious…
"A chat board?" She asked incredulously, her eyes scanning over the array of letters and smiley faces that adorned the screen.
"Yes." He confirmed, typing in a quick sentence and pressing 'enter'.
"That is so boring." Kagome commented, looking at the heading. He sent a mock glare at her and smirked.
"And what website would you recommend?" Sesshoumaru challenged, watching her eyes twinkle.
"Try going to the homepage for 'Nostalgia." Kagome suggested.
"That children's site?" He argued.
"Yeah. I haven't seen it in years." Kagome said.
Sesshoumaru visibly sighed, before typing in the website address.
Both of them blinked when music came blaring out of his speakers, a tune that would have sounded better on "Dragon Tales". Kagome tumbled over laughing as a dull thud was heard from across the hall.
"What is that?!" Inuyasha busted in, staring incredulously, then to look at Sesshoumaru's pain-struck face.
He began to laugh.
"Out of my room." Sesshoumaru finally managed weakly before making a dive for the volume control.
Inuyasha happily complied, bent over laughing cruelly.
"Your face… was so funny!" Kagome gasped as Sesshoumaru panted, staring at the little animation: two yellow unicorns bounding across the pink polka dotted screen.
"It's not like I was planning that!" Kagome defended, watching the city flicker by through the tinted window…
"Treacherous woman, don't deny it." He huffed, staring ahead with as much feigned calm as he could… She only laughed at his remark though, earning a trauma-filled glare.
Kagome suspected that he wouldn't forget that incident for a while; he had probably acquired Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or something…
He'd think twice before he abandoned her to do the paint to play on the computer!
She was giggling so madly now that he turned up the radio and tried, instead, to concentrate on driving. Her laughter was a sweet undertone to the music though… He shook his head to try and clear that thought.
"In an awkward embrace, you looked into my eyes… 'Believe…' now entrust to me…"
The song sounded strangely familiar.
"Hey! This is that song I sung for my birthday!" Kagome declared proudly, answering his thoughts.
"Ah." He agreed, remembering it now.
"I love this song!" Kagome said dreamily, leaning up on the dashboard with a contented smile.
"I'm sure you would." He said teasingly.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Kagome cried, snapping back up to challenge him. He chuckled softly at her expression but remained silent.
His thoughts were as clear as daylight: 'First unicorns and polka dots, then you sappy music…'
Of course, the esteemed Sesshoumaru would never reduce himself to such thoughts, but on the other hand, Kagome was definitely prone to human assumption.
"You are such a jerk!" She cried out, "You should get over it and move on! You don't have to remember every stupid thing I do! Sesshoumaru!" She would have attacked his head had they not been in a moving car at the time…
"I love ice cream…" Kagome sighed in ecstasy. Sesshoumaru raised a delicate eyebrow as she stared, with stars in her eyes, at the heaped ice cream cone.
"Remind me why we came here?" He asked irritably.
"Because I finished painting your room today." Kagome said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "And since you didn't keep your promise that you would help… This is definitely the best penalty in the world…"
Sesshoumaru suppressed a resolved sigh as he gave himself to the cup of rocky road. He was not so audacious as to eat out of a cone. How undignified.
As Sesshoumaru was not the type to start a conversation, Kagome did instead.
"Hey Sesshoumaru? You remember that time when the house disappeared?" She asked loudly, drawing a few stares.
He almost cast his eyes to the heavens when the attention was drawn to them: 'Give me strength…' He begged. Who knew how long he could hold out against this outgoing, ever happy girl?
"Yes." He said softly, firmly.
"Well, not like my house disappeared, but I think there's some weird voodoo going around in this world." She confessed, catching a drip of melted white on its way down the waffle.
Sesshoumaru tried to arrange himself to look like a stranger to such an insane girl, but it was rather difficult sitting across from her…
"Yes?" He questioned.
"I think my well house was glowing yesterday." She said.
"Imagination." Was his first response.
She glared.
"Don't write it off so easily!" She cried out, leaning forward a bit. "What if it's magic?"
"Kagome has a magical well. That's interesting." His lips curled up and amusement flickered in his eyes, not out of cruelty, but because he couldn't resist the urge to tease her.
"Oh Sesshoumaru. You're no help at all." She sighed in resolve, casting her eyes to the heavens: 'Give me strength…' She begged. Who knew how long she could hold out against this teasing, annoyingly quiet guy?
"You think fate is inserting magical events in your life to prepare you for something extraordinary in your future?" He asked finally, smiling to himself.
"Yes! Exactly! I knew you weren't stupid!" She cried out, once more throwing herself forward and raising her voice.
He was caught between rubbing away a burning headache and laughing at her crazy antics.
Finally, he settled for both. Now the entire population of the ice cream place (quite large on a Saturday night) would think him crazy as well. Lovely.
Kagome growled in warning when she saw that he had only been kidding around.
"Sesshoumaru!" She cried out in rage, finally giving into the instinct that had been buzzing all day, and jumping him.
"That was smart." He commented, humor somewhere in the deep confines of his voice despite his wry expression.
"You deserved it, you arrogant jerk." She huffed, turning her face away and raising her chin.
"I remember a time when I was young and still believed in fairy stories…" He taunted, watching her face contort into something akin to murderous anger. He almost smiled.
"Don't make me hit you again." She warned, sending a slit chocolate glare at him.
"Kagome, you never did hit me. You put on a show." He said, deftly dodging her foot which had veered to step heavily upon his own - meeting only concrete.
With a snort, his eyes flashed to hers briefly and a feral, playful grin lit his face for an instant.
"I can't believe you got us kicked out of an ice cream shop smaller than my room…" Sesshoumaru laughed, his vaguely merry gaze contrasting deeply to her seething glare… He knew what was coming…
"Sesshoumaru!!" He caught her when she flew into him, suppressing another laugh as he trapped her in a playful embrace, enduring her kicking and yells, and the nervous glances everybody was sending them before hurrying away.
As usual, Sesshoumaru did not give her the proper farewell that she never expected from him, instead only giving her a suggestive look and taking off before she could act on the friendly but deadly anger that burned directly below the circles of her irises.
After he was out of eyesight, she smiled triumphantly, for no reason, turned, and marched all the way home.
"That jerk!" She cried out, grinning despite herself as she remembered his dark amber eyes below torrents of platinum locks.
A dreamy look entered her eye as she pictured his face once more…
"It's not fair that he's prettier than me!" She cried out quite suddenly, scaling the shrine steps before bursting into her house as the sun set again.
She ignored for a moment the magnetic pull of the well house, tried to ignore the concise flicker of bluish light before she disappeared before the strong wooden door of her own home.
'Fate indeed.' She tried to assure herself, abandoning her shoes and walking innocently into the dining room where her mother was just finishing setting up the table.
"Did you have a good time?" Her mother greeted warmly.
"Yeah." She said cheerfully, deciding there were just a few details of her good time that she should leave out… Including her 'early desert', she realized, as she smelt the warm cakes scent drift into the room, gently teasing her senses.
"It smells so good!" She exclaimed, smiling at her mother as they both took their places at the low table.
Kagome sat in her room and did her homework, concentrating unwaveringly on the paper before her.
"Four… times…Twelve… plus sixteen… divided by twenty-nine… squared… minus six plus four… equals… WHAT?! This is so confusing!!" Kagome yelled in frustrations as she wondered at the wisdom of chucking her math book across the room.
"I'm gonna do history instead!" She exclaimed, finally settling with just placing the offending book out of her direct sight.
'Powerful… leaders of Japan… Hierarchy… The Lord was the strongest member in the household… His vassal the second most important…' Kagome then saw at the edge of her peripheral vision a pulsing of white light.
"Oh no… Gods." Kagome thought as she rose to her feet and walked to the window, adjusting the curtain to look cautiously out.
The light blinked from blue to silver to crimson, great beacons of neon glow surrounding the small structure periodically.
Couldn't Mama see it? Kagome thought desperately, watching, entranced and enchanted as the well house performed its show.
"Bright… like fireworks…" Kagome thought, another voice seeming to urge her to spring from her window and meet the inviting warm light.
Was the well alive?
And then a voice…
She can see lights that no one else can…
Fate readying you for something extraordinary…
Kagome yelled as she was assaulted, once again, by strange and varying voices, but by then it had stopped.
A mewl startled her out of her dazed reverie as she spun to defend herself from the intruder.
Buyo stood innocently behind her, looking up with dramatically huge, bright green eyes. He seemed to be waiting for something…
Kagome sighed as she kneeled on the balls of her feet to pet the cat, who purred accordingly, while she spoke to herself…
"That's soooo weird. Is there some kind of disease where you can see weird lights all the time?" She asked the clueless cat…
He looked up and seemed to smile secretively.
'Not all the time. The well.' His eyes screamed.
"You don't know that… But it… is the well I guess." She said, resigned to satisfying the cat's endless request.
'Are you afraid of it?' He seemed to ask. She jumped to the defensive automatically.
"No way! I'm not afraid of an inanimate object like the well!" She cried.
He seemed to laugh at her.
Then he left.
"Traitor." She said, but he had seemed to help.
"Are you okay Kagome?" There was a knock on her opened door.
"Yeah…" Then she wondered if her mom was referring to the lights… But looking at her eyes, no. They weren't awestruck or flabbergasted, only typically concerned.
"Is your homework done?" She asked.
"No… I'm on history." Kagome confessed.
"Please get it finished Kagome. I don't mind letting you stay with Sesshoumaru for most of the day, he's really sweet… But you need to maintain your grades too, please." She requested, smiling.
"Okay Mama." Kagome said, valiantly trying for a cheerful smile.
Her mother smiled back and looked ready to leave when…
"Are you having trouble with your math homework?" Mrs. Higurashi asked.
"Only a little bit… I'll get it done." Kagome answered. She was never good at lying, but then she was never good at worrying anybody either.
Her mother smiled…
"Maybe you could see if Sesshoumaru would help you as kindly as Inuyasha did." She offered. Kagome nodded. Her mother departed.
Kagome giggled as she remembered the look on Inuyasha's face after spending an hour trying to explain a single problem…
How long would Sesshoumaru's face hold?