A/N: It's been a while, hasn't it? Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy the read!

Sesshōmaru rammed through a loud group of goofing high school boys on his way from the foodcourt, and glared menacingly when they yelled in retaliation.

Already he had snapped a few cellphones in half, and he'd be lying to himself if he wasn't readily looking for any excuse to keep at it.

The large styrofoam soda cup in his hand remained steady as he stepped on the small digital camera one of them had dropped, and swiftly kicked the broken pieces aside.

"Ya! If you don't want us looking maybe keep better track of your girlfriend next time!", the owner wailed, throwing himself on his knees as his friends crowded around him.

"Man, your mom's gonna kill you!"

Sesshōmaru spared him no attention, only continued walking.

"Here", he spoke, deftly placing the massive cup in front of Kagome when he reached her table, "drink it"

"Oh, ah…", the blue eyed girl mumbled, reaching forward to pull the drink towards her for lack of a better reaction.

She hadn't really expected him to bring her back anything when he had briefly excused himself out of nowhere.

"Thanks?"

The silver haired boy shrugged in response and took the seat in front of her.

Using the straw to stir her drink, Kagome snorted at his nonchalance.

'Typical', she rolled her eyes.

That didn't evoke a reaction from him either.

As Sesshōmaru casually tapped the tabletop with his finger to pass the time, It didn't take very long for him to feel the weight of Kagome's gaze settle over him after a while, and the more he tried to ignore it—going as far as to turn his head away from her all together—the heavier, and heavier it got.

In truth, he had brought her there in the hopes that taking a small break and drinking a soda would cool her down long enough to keep her calm and collected, which did seem to work.

He hadn't taken into account, however, the stifling silence that inevitably surrounded them whenever Inuyasha wasn't around to suck the air out of the room.

The seventeen year old mentally sighed, it had all turned out so well in his head, yet he hadn't taken into account how awkward it would actually be in practice.

He hated awkward situations, they were always painfully uncomfortable, and then there was his own pathetic inability to dissipate the tension, which bothered him to no end.

Thus, for lack of anything better to do, he began fumbling with the saltshaker that had been resting on the tabletop alongside an old napkin holder, right by the rather limited collection of half empty sauces.

He then eyed the watery content inside one of the glass containers—you know, just to spice things up a bit—and briefly wondered at just how long that ketchup bottle had to have been sitting there.

"Mmm!"

Widened gold eyes ripped away from the condiments, taken aback by the sudden moan.

The cold and refreshing taste of coca-cola hitting her tastebuds made Kagome sigh in comfort despite herself, even as she giggled at his reaction, completely unable to stop the happy smile sprouting from her lips.

Back then, when he was still alive, whenever she was down in the dumps, her dad always made an effort to stop what he was doing no matter what, just to take her out for a nice cold coke and a heartfelt talk.

Sometimes they'd skip the talks all together, and go and watch a movie instead, only to spend most of it quietly wrestling over a large popcorn bucket.

They were some of her most fondest memories.

The fifteen year old looked up at her companion to say so, only to be caught off guard by the expectant look spilling out of his otherwise aloof gaze.

She bit her lip.

"So…", Kagome spoke at last, effectively breaking the long silence that had evoked over them, with a small, ice-rattling shake of her cup, "the soda's good"

Suddenly feeling a bit awkward herself, she couldn't help the light blush on her cheeks from darkening even further.

This was definitely a first for them.

"What you did was stupid", Sesshōmaru replied instead, tearing away his razor like stare in favor of glaring at a piece of trash under the table besides them.

"Not to mention, embarrassing."

Well, Kagome blinked, that was certainly another way to break the ice.

The dark haired girl sighed and turned her head away as well, choosing to focus her own gaze at a nearby sandwich stand.

She liked sandwiches, her mind wandered.

—Anything really, to keep her thoughts from going back and replaying the incident from earlier.

Kagome groaned, rubbing desperately at the skin on her face—her mother would kill her if she ever found out.

Sesshōmaru was right, she reasoned, it was embarrassing.

She was embarrassing.

"I'm sorry…", the younger girl breathed at last, her stormy blue eyes still facing anywhere other than Inuyasha's older brother's direction.

"Hn", the third year meagerly grunted in response, his own eyes still quite firmly averted as he adamantly continued messing with the saltshaker.

'Why is this so awkward!', his mind reeled.

Sesshōmaru never thought himself capable of being in this kind of position—and never once before had he so much to say, yet no way of how to actually go on about saying it!

Why was it that Kagome Higurashi, of all people, suddenly could be the absolute only person who could ever do that to him?

She always did it these days, always made him feel so…awkward!

It infuriated the older boy to no end.

She was just Higurashi, for crying out loud—Inuyasha's annoying best friend since daycare.

The same brat who had gone over his house so many times it qualified her as a permanent fixture.

She'd eaten at his table for years, not to mention stayed over countless of times—and at one point even shared baths with his insufferable brother.

Hell, hadn't they all slept together in the same tent those few couple of times his father had taken them camping?

She had always been the same person then—the same kid from before!

The seventeen year old sighed, sucking his teeth in annoyance as he gave a rather blissfully oblivious Kagome a brief once over.

Only now she wasn't really a kid anymore, now was she? He admitted.

None of them were.

Not even Inuyasha, despite popular belief—and certainly not himself.

But, when exactly had he cared to notice?

Only just recently, somehow—someway—Sesshōmaru had realized he had subconsciously stopped looking at her as her annoying soul-sucking little brother's equally annoying best friend, but rather simply as…

Kagome.

Not so annoying, and not quite so soul-sucking.

Silently he damned his teenage hormones to hell, but not anymore than he damned her highly unnatural, and ungodly accelerated puberty.

—No, seriously, when had that even happened?

What the hell is she eating?

"Care to explain yourself?", he demanded, mindlessly cutting through the suffocating silence that just wouldn't go away.

For a millisecond, Sesshōmaru's eyes widened, unable to process the words before they had just spewed out of his mouth, like some kind of hot putrid vomit.

There was a beat. Just the one, but to him it felt like an eternity.

Though Kagome, for her part, only frowned.

"What is there to explain?", she responded with a snort, taking a big sip from her straw, "you saw what happened."

The older boy resisted the urge to let out a relieved sigh—finally coming to his senses, at last.

'Ah, yes', he reminded himself, there had, in fact, been a fight here at some point after all.

Then he gritted his teeth.

Had he seriously just forgotten that? What the fuck was wrong with him?

Composing himself at a much slower pace than he normally would have liked, Sesshōmaru shrugged, "then, why did it happen?"

The dark haired girl scoffed, looking at him as if he had just sprouted fangs and a second head out of nowhere—which in hind site, could be true for all he knew—he was pretty much willing to believe anything at this point.

"We don't like each other, Kikyō and I", she replied.

"Why?"

He didn't really need to ask, everyone knew the story, but by this point, Sesshōmaru just didn't want to be engulfed by that strained silence, at least not now that it had finally ceased.

—The last thing he wanted was to give himself leave to start thinking again.

"We just don't", Kagome muttered, giving him another one of those baffled looks, "don't you know?"

She opened her mouth again only to immediately snap it shut, bringing her hands up to cover her lips in shock, while sporting yet another blush.

'Why would he know?', she quickly chastised herself, biting her tongue punishingly at her presumption.

'As if Sesshōmaru, of all people, would care enough to keep track of some feud between two female underclassmen'

In contrast, golden eyes rolled all the way up to the ceiling at her reaction.

Did girls ever get tired of being so dramatic? The third year wondered.

"you both physically attack each other—in a public mall, of all places—because of one petty incident that happened back in middle school?", he drawled.

'Hey! I just got out of middle school, you know!', the fifteen year old wanted to retort, but was much too astonished at the fact that he actually did know, to feel the least bit defensive.

"You wouldn't understand…", she mumbled instead.

"Of course I wouldn't", Sesshōmaru scoffed, waving her words away with a small flick of his large, yet still elegant hand, "I'm not brainless enough to bother caring about such things."

As he spoke, Kagome choked a little just as she was taking another sip of her drink.

'Yet Inuyasha steps on your shoes one time and you hang him off the last pagoda in Sensōji temple?'

The girl gritted her teeth, glaring at him while pointedly grabbing a couple of napkins to wipe off her spittle, digressing.

"It's not brainless!", she hissed, slamming the soda cup back down on the table with a loud plop, "everywhere I go, she's always there to bother me—or taunt me! It's so frustrating!"

"Ignore her, then."

"It's not that easy, Sesshōmaru!", Kagome glowered, "I've never disliked someone so much in my entire life. Kikyō doesn't even have to say anything for me to lose my patience around her like that—do you even have any idea just how that feels?"

An image of Inuyasha immediately grand-slammed itself into Sesshōmaru's mind, but he wisely opted against saying anything.

"I never did anything to her. I had never even seen her, or known of her, my entire life—yet she just hated me from the get go—right from the very first moment she laid eyes on me. And even at this point, I still don't know what she has against me!"

Kagome cheeks were no longer blushing, at this moment she was simply red with anger and outrage, and taking a deep breath for some semblance of control, she closed her watery eyes.

"But I don't care", she admitted, and she meant it.

Kagome was more than done with trying to make sense of it, and certainly past attempting to understand where Kikyō was coming from.

"I'm just sick and tired of taking her abuse!"

"Alright", Sesshōmaru muttered, subdued and regretful despite himself, "alright".

So much for calming her down, he berated himself, warily eyeing her abandoned drink for a minute before slowly pushing it back towards her.

"You're upset. I understand"

Once again Kagome felt her blush deepen—either that, or her blood pressure was severely up the roof.

She touched her forehead, it did feel kind of warm.

"I'm…I'm sorry…", she apologized, "It's just really frustrating"

As per usual, the third year waved it off.

Kagome sighed again, "…I—she…", her voice quivered as she struggled to express herself, a large, merciless knot bunching at the top of her throat "I know that what I did today was really stupid, Sesshōmaru…"

When the older boy opened his mouth to respond, she quickly leaned forward to grasp at his hand in an attempt to stop him.

"I know that it was pointless, and completely avoidable—I know that", she urged, pressing her palm over his long, cold fingers almost desperately, "I get it. But when she just called my mom that…so easily, and so simply, like she didn't deserve any better…I just couldn't take it."

Sesshōmaru could only nod in agreement, remaining deathly still and silent, despite the very uncomfortable and overwhelmingly sudden urge to rip his hand away from hers.

Secretly hidden behind his long silver hair, the tips of his ears burned pink.

"…I snapped", Kagome softly admitted, and his treacherous eyes followed the contours of her slightly bruised, swollen lips—at some point during her fight she must have bit them, he blandly reasoned, noticing the small bit of dried blood on her teethmarks.

Subconsciously, the older boy licked his own lips.

"It was like something had exploded from inside me, and all my anger and frustration just came out of me in that one moment", he vaguely heard her reason.

"…It's okay…", he muttered lamely, momentarily unaware if she had stopped talking or not.

"I don't care what she calls me, or what she does to me", Kagome added, "I'll sit there and take anything else, but I won't ever let her insult my mother."

Sesshōmaru nodded in agreement, still almost exclusively enraptured in the shape of her mouth, up until her words finally broke through his muddled brain.

'what—

He had missed most of what happened due to his late entry during the whole ordeal, so he was more than a little bit lost at the moment—and not only because she was admittedly too pretty.

But he'd let her finish her spiel, and ask Inuyasha later, for the sake of her actually opening up, and therefore finally calming down.

This was what he had wanted after all, wasn't it?

The last thing he needed was for Higurashi to go home a wreck, and risk his father finding out about the brief women's WWE match going on under his oldest's fully responsible nose.

But honestly, he sneered at the thought, even he couldn't begrudge someone squaring up in defense of their mother.

The woman who birthed him was an absolute heartless, money leeching wreck, and he'd still smoke some dude for trying it, no questions asked.

"Higurashi—

"Mama is really important to me", The younger girl cut him off again, a different kind of fire taking over her eyes, "she's been through a lot, and even if she'd be disappointed in me for fighting—even if she'd ground me 'till December—I still wouldn't regret what I did."

Kagome paused to let go of his hand, in favor of reaching down to flick her straw in thought before continuing.

"Look, Sesshōmaru—even if I'm an embarrassment to all of you, and myself…I still don't want to hang my head low for this"

Her face was still bashful and riddled with dejection, but in her eyes, the third year couldn't help but notice, in her mesmerizing sky colored eyes, something gleamed with an unabashed determination.

And maybe—just maybe—he figured there might be a little bit more to Kagome Higurashi, other than being Inuyasha's best friend, after all.

Somehow in that moment, deep inside him, perhaps in the deepest, most obscure pit of his being, Sesshōmaru might have even actually felt proud of her.

It was a rather unexplainable feeling—a can of worms he was not interested, nor willing to open up—definitely not if he could help it.

And yet…

The tips of his fingers tingled nonetheless, with the sudden urge to reach up and touch one of her smooth cheeks reassuringly.

Clenching his jaw, the teen lowered his hand and formed a fist, willing to crush that itch with his very might if he had to.

"I respect your sentiment", he spoke at last, the muscles in his slack tongue finally tensing up.

'Oh thank god.', he breathed.

"But even so, you shouldn't let her get to you", he suggested, and then, quickly proceeded to mentally smacked himself for offering such a lame response.

"You could get hurt, and she's certainly not worth it."

The tip of Kagome's nose crinkled as she grinned, and it left Sesshōmaru wondering if it always did that.

"I know", she replied, "…thank you"

"What for?", the older boy questioned, once again busying himself with his reliable and old trusted friend, the saltshaker.

It was getting harder and harder to look at her when she smiled so effortlessly like that.

'What's there to grin about, idiot girl', he should have said, 'are you really that proud of yourself?'

But Sesshōmaru found that the words just wouldn't form past his tongue.

Normally he never had any issues keeping his cool, in fact, he liked to think of himself as a relatively levelheaded individual most of the time.

And usually most things bored him too much to care anyway.

But then there were these new rare moments, instances really, where his body just choses to betrayed him despite his better judgment.

He didn't understand it at all.

The now familiar feel of Kagome's soft, cool fingers over the back of his hand made him flinch, and for the second time today he was left baffled at her easy, carefree forwardness.

Lifting his eyes to meet hers, he was greeted with genuine warmth.

"For the soda, silly", she beamed, moving her hand away, "thanks"

"No problem", Sesshōmaru mumbled, fighting to keep the surprise off his face, "are you ready to go?"

"Yep", the younger girl nodded, as they made to stand, "I didn't get to finish my drink though", she chuckle, emphasizing her point by gently shaking the mostly full cup, "there's so much in here still, it'll be a shame to throw it away"

Sesshōmaru sighed, but nodded in agreement anyway, "bring it with you", he decided with a shrug, while they headed out to find the first exist.

Kagome stopped in her tracks, fake gasping so dramatically it made the older boy once again roll his eyes.

"The Taisho Sesshōmaru, letting someone bring a drink inside his beloved car?", she teased, cheekily balancing the soda on one of her palms, "Unheard of! Blasphemy!"

The seventeen year old snorted, "Don't get used to it."

"Wait—are you actually being serious?", Kagome gaped, almost tripping over her own two feet if it hadn't been for the hand that grabbed her by the back of her blouse to hold her steady.

"Only if you don't do that again", Sesshōmaru warned, taking the cup from her hands so that it could at least get the chance to make the journey past the parking lot.

"And sit at the front", he added, "I refuse to give your idiot friends any opportunity to spill it—so don't pass it around."

Those assholes could expire from dehydration, for all he cared.

That really caught Kagome off guard, so much so that she forgot to thank him when he held the heavy mall entrance door open for her.

Sesshōmaru never, ever, lets anyone ride on his passenger seat—not even his own father!

This really, actually was a first.

—A double whammy at that, if you may.

The older boy smirked, he found that he much rather preferred this stupid look on her face.

"By the way, Higurashi?", he spoke again after a while, interrupting the now pleasant silence between them as they trudged to his car.

"Hm?"

"You owe me a new tuner."

Kagome snorted, amused despite her earlier shock, "tuner for what?"

Sesshōmaru shrugged, pointedly ignoring how the other kept snickering up at him.

"I'll send you the bill", he sufficed.

"What are you trying to tune exactly, your bad attitude?", the younger girl pestered him good naturally, knowing full well he would never actually send her anything.

"It's not too late to let you walk all the way home, you know."

"Fine, fine!", Kagome promised, clapping her palms together pleadingly, "I'll be as quiet as a mouse—see", she mimed a zipper over her mouth energetically.

"Hn", her companion scoffed, "I'll believed it when I see it"

Though the first year did make good on her promise, at least for a few lingering minutes.

"Why the music club?", Sesshōmaru spoke anyway, graciously putting her out of her misery just to satisfy a curiosity he had been sitting on for a while now, "and that music class?"

The girl walking besides him frowned, puzzled, "what do you mean?"

"There is a dance club—at the school", the third year emphasized, when she kept staring up at him blankly, "the same teacher who runs it, is also offering a ballet class. I hear he was world renown, and has had an impressive career behind him. There's a waitlist and everything"

Kagome grinned, though he noticed it didn't quite reach her eyes for once, "what about it?"

Now it was Sesshōmaru's turn to frown, somewhat bewildered at such a sudden change in her demeanor.

In his opinion, Kagome had always been one of the easiest people to read, the type that kept their bleeding heart on their sleeve for anyone to see—no games, no pretense.

It was the one thing he both liked and disliked about her personality.

In truth, not having to sit there while trying to guess at what someone was actually thinking was always surprisingly…refreshing.

So it was curious that she'd make the effort to attempt misleading him now.

"Are you really never going to dance again?"

"Wow, okay", the now tense first year laughed, nudging him with her elbow, "so that just came right out of left field"

Though she made a point of avoiding his gaze, she did seem genuinely amused, "I gotta admit Sesshōmaru, you were the last person I expected to ask me that"

The crease in the older boy's pale brow deepened.

That was not the answer he was looking for, and though—yes—it was true that he had never once particularly cared before, he still found himself wanting to know anyway.

—And also, why was she suddenly acting like ballet was some dark, mysterious secret of hers?

She'd been formally training at it for years, before suddenly dropping it faster than Inuyasha did Kendo.

"Well?", he prompted.

"Yeah", Kagome replied, this time smiling a smidge too hard, and Sesshōmaru for his part, found her blatant insincerity a startling contrast to her earlier much brighter, and easy going self.

"I'm done dancing."

There it was again—the older boy grimaced in response—an outright lie.

Said entirely too effortlessly.

Had he not maintained confidence in knowing what he did, Sesshōmaru would never even have had any reason to question it—let alone not believe her.

Was this even the same person as five minutes ago?

He let out a small, unimpressed sigh, shaking his head as he brought the cup in his hands up to his lips for a quick sip, just as they approached his vehicle.

—what did he care anyway?

"Here", he drawled cooly, passing it back to a still, somewhat stiff Kagome, "don't drop it."