Title: Beautifully Imperfect
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: I do not own either.

Chapter five: What comes with alcohol

Kali looked at the two boys for a long moment before reigning in her power again. At the hint of the power they got back up from their fight and sat back down in front of her desk. She wouldn't have her office torn apart because of some sibling feud. She had to deal with that enough over the rest of the house because of her own children. "Now, tell me about this Kagome character."

Kali did not assume it was her daughter because 'Kagome' was a common enough name. There were two other girls named Kagome in Inuyasha's grade besides 'Kagome Higurashi'. Inuyasha scratched the back of his neck and moved his chair farther away from his brother before answering. Sesshoumaru appeared not to have heard the question at all, staring with cold eyes at Kali's armoire as though if he looked long enough, it would get up and do a jig. It didn't, Kali noticed, and wondered if he would be disappointed with wry irony.

"Yeah, sure, Kagome's hot," Inuyasha started in his description, "but she's the complete opposite of Sesshoumaru. She's like... imperfection! They'd never work out, except one night last Summer he went to the Rave and met her there. They got drunk and went back to Haru's house—I think you can guess the rest."

Kali wasn't one to miss the fact that Inuyasha had said Haru instead of father, or dad. Sesshoumaru seemed really uncomfortable with the subject they were currently on, so Kali decided a change was needed. She would eventually learn more about Kagome. "When you say 'Haru' don't you mean 'father'?"

"No!" Inuyasha all but spat, lines of anger etched into his face. "That cold bastard can rot in hell for all I care!" Kali realized something about what Inuyasha had said. If it was true that the girl, Kagome, was in Inuyasha's grade that left only three options of which Kagome it was. Kali knew personally each of those girls would have been between the ages of sixteen and seventeen last summer, and in turn that also led to Sesshoumaru being twenty-three at the youngest last summer.

No wonder he was uncomfortable with the particular subject at hand...

Kagome had heard her mother walking away from her before she bothered to turn around. She felt really bad because she had undoubtedly made her mother feel bad. She found her feet carrying her towards Karei's room unbidden, though it wasn't exactly her best interest to go there. She knew that at least a warning for Karei was necessary, even if she didn't like her cousin at all.

When she made it there, she raised her hand as though to knock, but it stilled in the air at the sound of more than one person within the room. Instead of knocking, she placed her hand on the doorknob, turning slowly to see if it was locked—it was—and got her house key-ring which, more often than not, resided on her hip. Souta often snatched the car keys from her and since they only had one set amongst the two of them, neither kept their house keys with the car key.

She winced at the thought of the car. She'd have to call Miroku and let him know she had to cancel the Rave that night, or he would be looking and waiting for her to show up. Miroku was one of her friends from school, a tall boy with black hair that he generally kept in a perfect dragon tail at the nape of his neck. His brown eyes were often alight with either mischief or perverted thoughts, but he was a good guy at heart.

Miroku didn't have much money and so had to rely on other people for rides to and from places, or else walk. With eight other brothers and no father to help support them all, he and his mother often worked their rears off just trying to make ends meet. Miroku didn't go to the private school with Souta and Kagome; instead he had gone to the public school. After graduation, he took up a full-time job at Soh-A-Tech, the main job force in their town, and worked hard to help his mother and brothers make it through.

Shaking her head slightly, she sighed again and pushed the master key into the lock. There were benefits to having a master key for all the rooms in the house. No one could lock her out of a room if she wanted to get in. Inside the room she heard a slight shuffle before she had it unlocked and removed the key from the lock.

Throwing open the door carelessly, it slammed into a stand near the door and tipped the weak legged thing over. She looked at her cousin and the silver haired man who sat looking a little ruffled around the edges. A mischievous grin alighted on her face and she teased, "Sesshoumaru, I see you haven't changed at all."

Of course she had known her cousin was dating Sesshoumaru. She had known this for three years when they started dating and Karei had brought her boyfriend to dinner with Kagome's mother. Now her cousin was twenty-four and in college to major in dance at the Shile's Dance Academy in the next city over, and Sesshoumaru was twenty-five, going to Sunset University to be a doctor.

Kagome nearly scowled at the thought. It would have been more accurate to say that Sesshoumaru had practically graduated already. With nothing to do but study, he had apparently just paid for what seemed a ridiculous amount of classes to take and completed them. She'd bet that Sesshoumaru would get to go with her mother because of his good marks if he wanted to.

But no, Kagome was left home alone. Still, as unfair as it seemed, she supposed there was nothing she could do about it and so tried her best to just put it out of her mind. She saw Sesshoumaru's eyes become as expressionless as his face was and gave him an equal half-lidded stare. She would take no guff from him!

But it was rather amusing for her at least to know that he could be less-than-perfection in his appearance. Or perhaps it was only Karei that managed to get that out of him? Kagome certainly never managed that in all the years she had known him and his brother. Kagome had grown up with his brother, gone to the same private school as him and his brother, though Sesshoumaru had been many years older than her, seven to be exact.

Karei was perfect for Sesshoumaru, Kagome thought suddenly. She liked perfection. He liked perfection. She looked like she could be a goddess walking the earth. He most certainly could be a god walking the earth even on his worst day, like at that moment, for instance? Sesshoumaru's voice was a perfect sensual baritone. Karei's was a perfect sensual soprano.

They were perfect for each other! Okay, so why did Kagome come in here again? To analyze the pair on the bed? She was thinking too much lately, she was sure of that. Looking at Sesshoumaru and Karei, their equally impassive expressions told her that they were both perfectly annoyed with her for the interruption. Perfect timing.

"I thought you were going to the Rave, dearest cousin?" Kagome asked Karei, who leveled cold emerald eyes at her before flipping her curly blond hair back over her shoulder where it fell into place perfectly. The room was filled with perfection to a suffocating amount and it was slowly eating away at Kagome the longer she stayed. She was going to have a great deal of trouble keeping in arguments that wanted to arise if she stayed much longer, such a bowl of imperfection she was.

Karei calmly stated, as though there had never even been an interruption earlier of embarrassing proportions, "I will. What do you want, Kagome?"

"Remember where you are, Karei." Kagome told her cousin, feeling the hair rise on the back of her neck at the tone her cousin was using. "This is my family's shrine, not your play-gym." At least Karei then had the decency to blush lightly, but Kagome wanted to strangle Karei for it because even then Karei looked so pretty with a light sprinkling of pink covering her cheeks.

When Kagome blushed, she just looked like a strangely colored tomato. As revenge, Kagome decided not to warn Karei—cruel though it would be. Karei would probably lock the door anyway and so Kagome's father wouldn't realize in his drunken stupor that Karei was visiting. She turned and left the room suddenly, walking back down the hall.

She heard the door close again and the lock clicked. Slowly she was able to breathe again as she took in the shrine. The dark, slightly dingy walls were a comfort to her. They didn't radiate the beauty of possible immortality. The paintings that were on the walls every twenty feet were dusty, in need of cleaning. The outsides of the windows that she passed were mostly covered in vines, keeping out the outside light and casting a darker glow on the halls.

She was sure that if she heard Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu, she would jump out of her skin, freaked out by the house she had lived in since she was a little girl. Before she knew it, she had reached the door that led to the stairs going up into the third story, or the attic. The door was littered with signs that warned people away. If she had to give the door a name, she would call it the door to hell, just because of how freaky it looked.

The door was taller than most of the regular doors around the shrine. At the top, instead of being flat, it arched like a rounded triangle and the handle, once made of shining iron, looked like it was hundreds of years old, even if it wasn't. The handle had once been made to resemble an angel's wing, but now looked like a devil's horn instead.

Kagome went through that door, unperturbed by how foreboding it looked. It closed behind her, slamming her into complete and utter darkness as she walked up the stairs and down the hall, feeling her way along the wall for the handle to her door. Normally she would have had light to guide her way but earlier that week the bulb in the hall had burned out and she hadn't gotten around to changing it.

She swore when her hand came into a harsh contact with the door handle. Her door was on one side of the hallway and Souta's was on the other. If she continued going straight, she would have reached the bathroom that she and Souta shared. Instead, she turned the handle of her door and entered her room, flicking on the light switch.

She closed her eyes at the sudden onslaught of light that she had subjected herself to, tripping over a box of fallen marbles that suddenly seemed so sinister. Strong arms gripped her, steadying her from what would have been a painful landing. She allowed herself to relax in those familiar arms as her eyes adjusted to the light, her arms snaking up around the friendly and warm neck.

End.