Chapter XIV
Fourteenth Session
The lights surrounded the street beneath his feet. The silence and solitude were his only company, and it wasn't strange, as it was early morning already. He had left Kagome's apartment in the middle of an inner confusion he couldn't even begin to explain. In any other moment he would have sought the warmth of a female companion to vent his own rage, loneliness and even grief. However, today he couldn't, as all of his yearning and desire had been left between her legs, arms and kisses.
"Crap" He muttered in the middle of the empty street, and although it had been under his breath, his voice echoed in the silence of a night which was threatening to be far too long.
He barely felt the Autumn's cold, and that was one of those damn peculiarities that came with good sex. One of those things that didn't allow you to leave the moment behind.
He began walking faster, he wanted to reach his apartment soon, and drink a glass of that liqueur he kept for when his ghosts pursued him and his life became way too complicated.
Kagome's gaze remained fixed on the door for a couple of long minutes after InuYasha left. She wanted to think there was not a shred of care within her, and that the cold she was now feeling had nothing to do with the loneliness nesting now in the room. Nobody before him had come to the place she lived, and although it had been only a few hours, Kagome had the sensation he filled every corner of the place with his presence. She couldn't stop looking at the door, as if his figure was still right beside it, and she felt stupidly afraid of turning around and being attacked by her own mind, showing her every movement they had shared on the futon while he was there.
Finally, she decided to take a shower in a strange act of courage, as she had to traverse the space that just an instant ago had been a refuge for the sensation both of them shared. Her apartment was small, and she had chosen it so, as a part of her felt it reflected the space within her heart for any emotion close to love. And through the same comparison, it was empty.
The water, barely warm, helped her get some of her really needed temperance back. She knew she had done the right thing by drawing a line. Her life was relatively normal and she shouldn't create more inconveniences for herself. She sighed, still below the falling water, and allowed it to hit her neck longer than usual. Then, she closed the tap, because although she didn't believe that taking a shower two-minutes shorter would do anything to stop climate change, she didn't want to had that too weighting on her conscience. She dried her hair a bit with a towel as she looked herself in the mirror, which was now beginning to clear, and her gaze caught sight of how red her skin was around her nipples. A warm wave of excitement ran through her, and she felt uncomfortable before the way her mind was still connected to all the sensations InuYasha and she had shared. For the same reason, she didn't dare drying her body, between her thighs. So, she enveloped herself in the towel and decided to drink some tea, something that might help her calm her head, and allowed her to sleep the hours she had left to her usual waking time.
She stared through the window while she waited for the water to boil. There was no one to be seen on the streets, and the silence was only interrupted, every now and then, by a car or bike.
InuYasha was probably already at his apartment.
She heard the vibration of a phone, and tried to recall where was hers. Her first thought went towards InuYasha, and the second reminded her that they hadn't exchanged numbers. Only in that moment she actually bothered searching and lifting the purse off the ground and off that corner in which it had landed, a few steps away from the entrance. The vibration was heard a second time, they appeared to be messages, however they didn't come from her purse, nor her phone. She looked in the direction the sound was coming, and found a phone hidden between the penumbra and the entrance's wall.
InuYasha opened the door leading inside his apartment, and let his key fall on the ceramic bowl he had at the entrance as he took his shoes off. He didn't bother turning the entrance's light on, as the ones coming from the street through his curtains was enough to traverse the space between him and the small kitchen, where he kept the whisky one of his coworkers had gifted him for his birthday, a few months ago. The bottle was still sealed, he wasn't one to drink too much, maybe a beer every now and then, or sake. However, today his needs require something that could burn his throat, and maybe with that the bitterness in his mouth and the sensation of failure, would go away.
He took the bottle out of the box, and placed his hands on the top to uncork it. He halted his action, and remained there with the gesture in mid-motion, as he pondered about what would come next: a glass, maybe two, and if his mood didn't improve, there would be probably a third, and although for a few hours everything would seem to be completely irrelevant, tomorrow he'd have to wake up again. He huffed, and a part of him cursed his own measure, and the way his mind looked ahead, to the future. And so, he left the bottle inside its box, and then stored it inside the furniture it came from.
He turned around and began to walk towards the bathroom, as he took his shirt off and then his hands began with his pants. The best would be to take a shower and go to sleep, tomorrow he had work, and the day and the week would go back to normal. He was an adult, and that had to meant something when having to deal with his emotions. He wanted to curse when he comprehended that what was annoying him would remain there, in his chest, no matter how rationally he pretended to be. Kagome had removed things in him he didn't want to feel.
He let the water run and waited just about enough for it to get warm. Then, he slipped inside and noticed how his body ached in various sides, taking his hands to his upper back and glutes, assuming the cause of the irritation. He sighed, and his mind relaxed just about enough time for a memory to slip through the barrier he had erected on the way there. He recalled, clearly, Kagome's breast rising towards him and brushing the skin on his chest in a hot and exciting caress, as her voice became undone in pleas. He noticed how his body shook in answer to that memory, and decided it was time to put his head under the artificial fall and let it turn cold.
It took him less than ten minutes to be ready, his hands deftly drying his body as he approached the bed. He had a narrow mirror, body-sized, on a wall at the entrance, in which he had just looked at the scratches he had on his back, hip and some around his glutes, which confirmed that his aching came from those marks Kagome had left on him; aside from a clear bite on his shoulder which would surely turn into a bruise. It was incredible to remember every moment in which she had acted, and the way he didn't react with pain to any of it; right now, he could only recall the pleasure. He had given up on trying to forget it, when the memories attacked him a third time while being under the shower. The truth was that Kagome had not only marked his skin, as he had the sensation she had reached deeper. He sat at the edge of the bed and began to squeeze his hair with the towel in order to dry it. He then laid mouth up between the blankets of a bed he hadn't extended today, and remained there thinking about the last kiss they had shared.
The flavor of Kagome's lips wasn't something he could describe; it was strange for him to think about the flavor of something known and trying to assign it to the shape of a kiss. Kisses tasted like sensations, memories, things you loved... and such was Kagome's mouth. When their lips came together, he recalled the sensation of being at peace and at the same time his chest hurt due to the deep fear of feeling anything that wasn't purely physical; And what he had experienced with her not so long ago, would constantly assure him he shouldn't let her reach even deeper within him.
He sighed again, the number long lost that night. He didn't know the hour, but it was probably quite late, so he should look for his phone and place an alarm for tomorrow.
His hands looked for it in all of that small space; the clothes in one corner, the furniture, and couldn't find anything. There were only two possibilities: Or he had lost his phone on the streets, or he had left it in Kagome's apartment. He could bet it was the latter.
It had been two hours and three cups of coffee since she arrived at work. Today, the little office of the editorial she worked for, was full and the muttering of her coworkers could be heard in the background, everyone in their own cubicle. Doing the corrections at home was an option, although they only allowed her a number of days each month to do that kind of work and she was already out of them. Regardless of it, Kagome felt that doing it at the office helped her on her work, as if changing her physical environment aided her focus. However, that Monday she just couldn't find anything slightly resembling focus. She had gone to sleep too late; she had barely been able to rest about five hours and her head was being hammered as if she had gone to party, and let's not mention what her body was making her recall, with each movement, about what kind of action she had dedicated to last night. And also, there was the matter of the phone.
The messages it received last night, when she discovered it, were from a woman and Kagome could only access to see them through the notifications: Kaguya. Even her name annoyed her. Who was she? Why was she talking to InuYasha with such familiarity?
She already knew the answers, even if they were not precisely true, she knew she could only get the details wrong; it was most probably his girl for the other days, the days in which she didn't exist. She had tried to unlock the phone, but after her second attempt she stopped, as probably the figure InuYasha drew on the screen wasn't something she could easily imagine. Yet she could imagine the tone of Kaguya's messages. The little she had been able to read was a: "I've bought new lingerie." "Let me call you..."
She had to admit the situation had her anxiety through the roof; that, or her lack of sleep.
"Kagome." She heard her name and made her gaze leave the screen of a phone, which the only thing that showed her was a blocking image of a constellation; and she didn't even know which. She looked at her female coworker.
"Tell me." The woman smiled with a certain air of circumstances.
"Kōga called me. It was so you could talk to him. He says he's left you a number of messages." Which was true, she had some on her phone, the firsts quite hot, then some others in which he seemed to be offended. That, without counting the ones he left on their work platform, and although their relationship was professional in part, he would never use it to talk to her.
"Thank you, Ayame, I'll do it now." She smiled at her, but more than anything to dissimulate her lack of interest. She knew she was edging on obsession and that it couldn't be good.
She decided the best would be to go to the bathroom an instant, and refresh her face a bit so that her ideas were allowed to flow with more clarity. She stood up and had the impulse of grabbing InuYasha's phone and take it with her. For some reason that device had become a sort of link between them and if she was one of those who believed in witchcraft, she'd bet she had cast some love spell with it, one of those you see in ads on the internet. She lifted her hand, a few centimeters over the phone and closed it in a fist, as a physical gesture of resistance; She had to retain some air of dignity in all of this, after all.
She took a few steps in the direction she had set to herself until the sound of a new notification reached her, and she became aware of the way her back tensed. She had to put all of her willpower in action in order not to turn back and grab the device.
Everything had happened late for him this day. He had woken up when the Sun was already on his face, which was a problem in itself, as the autumn Sun didn't enter through his window before nine in the morning. All being said, that mishap gifted him seven hours of sleep, and as his mother always said "We can always find a good thing in a bad thing."
Arriving late to his morning shift hadn't precisely been one of the best things of the day. He wasn't bad at apologizing in practice, but on the inside, it felt like a bitch. He didn't like to fail and doing so felt like a kick in the gut, a thing like that could ruin his day entirely; however, he didn't have time for that.
He resigned himself of not being able to get his phone back until Thursday, depending if Kagome would actually show up for the therapy that day. He didn't want to seek her first, as he felt enough humiliation when she threw him off her apartment like the plague, and that thought managed to keep him, and obsess him, in one of his breaks that morning in a back alley behind the coffee shop he worked at.
That day, in particular, he dedicated himself to create a new recipe for a three milk dessert with a layer of caramel and cinnamon. Personally, he considered it came out quite well, and although it wasn't his best test, it served him to get a couple of hours in which his mind was focused in something else than Kagome and the scratches she had left on his skin.
That day in the afternoon, around seven, he found a place in front of his building, far enough so she couldn't see him if he arrived or left, and given the height and his apartment's orientation, he doubted she could actually see him.
"Can someone be more pathetic?" That thought alone managed to get him out of that place in which he had been about an hour, and direct him back to his apartment; On the way, he bought an alarm clock.
A/N
It could be said this chapter lacks emotion; however time has taught me there are no transition chapter (as we call them), but rather bridges, decantations, moments in which everything settles and acquires strength.
I hope this chapter keeps in you the sensation of being before the lives of two persons who only seek to feel complete, and that sometimes need the reaffirmation of someone who loves them.
A kiss!
Anyara
This text is possible thanks to the translation of: Dezart
