Loud music on Sunday morning was a bad omen if Kagome had ever heard one. While she was normally on board with deep cleaning, Sango's brand of cleaning was more of a workout than it was advertised to be. She wanted to push around furniture and rearrange the cabinets, beat the dust out of carpets and other such nonsense.
And Kagome wasn't physically or emotionally strong enough to put up with the inevitable mess that Sango's 'cleaning' would create. She contemplated locking her door but knew Sango would sooner kick it in than take no for an answer. Kagome had hardly worked herself fully free of her expertly wrapped blankets when she made out the sounds of shouting beyond the music.
"…you can't just—." The music shut off, and the full force of Sango's explosive rage made her consider curling back up beneath the blankets. "You can't just leave her here! Where do you get off thinking you can dump your kid on me? Monday through Friday, I'm your slave, but you do not get to infringe on my personal time as well!"
Kagome opened her door, watching Sango yell down the phone at someone who probably hung up a few minutes ago.
The subject of their disagreement stood at Sango's side, promising to be agreeable and silent with her fists balled up in the fabric of Sango's short shorts, but the only evidence that Sango heard her at all was a hand upon her head.
"If you'd asked me, you'd know I had plans tonight—."
Sesshomaru really did bring out the worst in Sango. The person Kagome knew, the spit fire with too much confidence and a kind heart, devolved into a something more sinister when she and Sesshomaru interacted. The way she screamed now wasn't hot-headedness—it wasn't her inherent willfulness. When Sango interacted with Sesshomaru, Sango seemed to become a demon.
"I understand. Call it a favor."
Sango gaped at her phone, her mouth opening and closing as if she were gasping for air, and then, after a moment, sighed in defeat. "Why should I?"
"You have a great deal of downtime after hours. I suppose there's no reason you should have to sit and stare at the wall in that time."
"So there was no reason I had to sit there; you just wanted to be cruel."
Kagome imagined that a big chunk of his pride eroded away when he admitted he'd been being mean for the sake of it.
"How long does she need to stay here with me?"
"A few days."
"I don't have a bed for her, you know! The couch is way too uncomfortable for her to sleep on for days at a time."
"I know. This should not happen again. I will handle it."
Sango acquiesced after a few more well-aimed barbs and shoved her phone into her pocket when it was all said and done.
"This isn't Papa's fault," Rin insisted after a moment. She dug through her bag, pulling out a handful of colored pencils and a princess themed coloring book. "Miss. Yuna is such a bitch. Papa used one of my pictures as his phone background, and she threw the whole thing against the wall."
Her hands shook as she tried to color the dark hair of her princess.
"It's my fault. I thought the picture of me and Miss. Sango was nice . I didn't know Miss. Yuna would get so angry."
Sango settled in next to her, accepting the coloring page Rin ripped out of her booklet with such gentle care. "Nothing is your fault."
"I took the pictures." Rin insisted again. "If there were pictures of another woman in his phone, they were because Papa and me share a cloud account. It's because I took them."
The pencil stilled as those words settled onto her little shoulders, and by the time Kagome thought to argue, her mind was made up, and she wouldn't say another word.
On the bright side, Sango forgot about her plans to rearrange their home. The day dissolved into a desperate attempt to bring back that brilliant smile Rin had worn not even a week ago. They braided her hair and painted her nails, and by the time they had her all tucked in on the couch, she seemed to have forgotten all about the abuse she thought was her fault.
xXx
Kagome got to work on Monday and thought about quitting on the spot.
She'd spent all last week organizing his shelves. A through U had been pristine by the time she'd dragged herself down to the lobby two hours after InuYasha had already left for the day. The plan was to start on Ka through Ku this morning; she'd even grabbed a latte to celebrate her small steps towards a more orderly workplace.
Not even the spirited kitsune playing tricks outside of the 7/11 near her home could ruin her day, and so when she opened the door and saw things in a state far worse than they'd been on Friday, the only warning to her impending meltdown was the muffled giggling of her best friend.
"InuYasha, sir. " Trying to maintain some semblance of respect for the man who employed her was like trying to swallow nails as she took in the reformed stacks. "What happened?"
He looked up from his desk, his mouth stuffed full of something that he'd shoved so far into his face it made the farthest most pocket of his cheek look round. "Couldn't find the Maisaki case. I needed to reference it."
Scalding hot milk spilled over onto her hands, and she cast the crumpled up cup into the trash bin, heedless of the mess it made. What was the point is aiming for cleanliness when the likes of InuYasha would undoubtedly find a way to muck that up too.
"I told you Friday that you would not find anything that wasn't A through U on this shelf." He opened his mouth with an excuse, but she bulldozed forward, completely unwilling to hear another word. "I labeled this wall. If you won't let me do my job then there is no point in me even being here ."
InuYasha's ears seemed to flatten against his head as he regarded her, and somehow, when her tirade ended, she was left feeling like the monster.
"Be more careful." She bit out at the end of it all.
They worked in uncomfortable silence until lunch. "You know, when you yell at me like that, you almost sound like Kikyo." He hadn't expanded on that, and she was left thinking that for all the fondness in his tone, he shouldn't have sounded so small. But it wasn't her business!
With a little girl living in her house and a roommate that warred with the idea of quitting every day, Kagome didn't need something new to worry about. Especially when that something was her boss.
Kagome spent the better half of the week trying to forget the way InuYasha's ears flattened against his head. It wasn't unusual for half-demons to be born with defects— little quirks that made her wonder how their parents could be so cruel as to procreate while knowing the risks— but his ears were more than quirks. They were an inside look into the emotions that his face didn't display.
She tried to let it go, to focus on reorganizing the kitchen or animating, but she couldn't . No matter what she tried, his drooping ears plagued her. So when she saw him on Friday morning, and he still hadn't touched her mostly completed wall, she knew she'd have to apologize.
"I'm not asking you to cancel your plans—. My god." His frustration came as more of a growl than anything and Kagome found herself forcing herself to seem occupied as he continued. "I planned this with you in mind. You swore you'd be there."
The person on the other line either said nothing, or he was speaking over them. "Gods— I get it. You don't believe in Akemi, but this festival is important to me. That should be enough of a reason—. I am not manipulating you. I— you know what? Fine. Fuck it. I'll see if… Rin wants to go."
His silence stretched on for so long it almost felt endless.
"Yeah, I get it. Tell Kagura happy birthday."
Kagome hesitated to breach his office doors after that, and the longer she waited, the more guilty she felt. There was no winning, and when he ripped the door open and came storming out, she found herself knocking over her next stack in a desperate attempt to seem like she wasn't eavesdropping.
"Sorry." Her words sounded wooden and clunky. "By the way. I shouldn't have yelled at you Monday."
"Don't worry about it." InuYasha grumbled.
She hated being brushed off, hated the way his gaze drifted down and settled on the ground. His mind was too far away, and she could only imagine that his earlier conversation was making it harder for the both of them.
"If there's anything I can do…"
"Not unless you have a yukata and want to spend this Saturday at a festival."
She didn't want to, not really, but her animation was stalling—to put it gently— and she knew it really would mean the world to him. "I'm not doing anything. Where should I meet you?"
xXx
Sango called it a date. Right before she shoved Rin and Kagome outside into the hall of their apartment building, she laughed into a can of beer that a festival that his friend 'conveniently' could not attend one on one with a beautiful woman sounded too much like a romcom to ignore, and by the time Kagome got downstairs, Rin's hand firmly in her own, she was all worked up. If he'd wanted her to wear a yukata to fulfill some stupid fantasy, then–
"Uncle InuYasha is engaged," Rin told her cheerfully, effectively cutting her thoughts short. "So you don't have to be nervous. Besides, Uncle isn't a sneaky person. He wouldn't lie to you. Papa says he's 'too honest'."
They took the bus across town to the shrine hosting this event, and Kagome was left to listen intently as Rin chatted endlessly about whatever flitted before her gaze. She told Kagome about how much she loved butterflies because her auntie Kagura loved them too, and then she commented on how much she disliked construction— because her Papa sometimes said he missed the old world. From tourists to puppies, there was nothing too mundane for her notice. And Kagome was her captive audience. She hummed and oohed where appropriate, nodding enthusiastically when Rin told her about the water cycle and gasping dramatically when she explained the type of clouds.
When they finally got off the bus, Rin darted across the street—ignoring Kagome's cries to wait patiently for the light to turn—and threw herself against the legs of the man she spoke endlessly about.
He became her next captive, listening intently as she told him about her time with them.
Kagome left them to it, pocketing a thick envelope with a bow of her head before she began weaving through the dense crowd, following a voice she'd come to know so well. She'd never admit it, but there was something about that deep, rocky tone that painted his words and intentions in wool that she found soothing– or maybe it was simply familiar, like a favorite blanket or a worn stuffy. Either way, she knew it, and –even though she knew she shouldn't– she liked that she knew it. Kagome could see his white hair through the cracks in the crowd, but then someone was ushering her forwards–rushing her almost–and she found herself about to panic when InuYasha came to her rescue. He flung the other man backwards, and his knitted eyebrows made hard lines at the top of his pert nose.
"Keep your filthy fucking hands off her, mangy fucking wolf."
No matter what she said about him having a nice voice, she hadn't missed his potty mouth. The wolf in question found a new target in InuYasha, and they were scuffling, nipping and struggling until a third man–a human this time– pulled them apart. It was no easy feat, and he got bitten a few times as they went head to head, but the moment they were separated, their sparring became verbal. They argued endlessly about who won, and for the first time Kagome saw the 'mutt' in him.
His own brother was always griping about his mixed heritage, calling him things like 'mutt' and 'half breed' and once going so far as to call him the last moldy drips in the ice cream machine, and Kagome had found it unnecessary if not crass, but she could kind of see it now. It took the human man between them knocking them over the head to shut them up once and for all.
"Both of you should watch your mouth in the presence of a lady." The human hummed. He oozed something sickly sweet when he wasn't marching down to their level, and his expression was candy-coated, so she didn't back away when his arm was around her shoulder. There was strength in numbers, after all. "You have to forgive them. InuYasha and Koga are crude."
She tore her eyes away from his, trying not to get too lost in eyes too much like the ocean to simply ignore. "He's not so bad." Kagome insisted after a moment. His proximity was hard to fathom, hard to ignore. What was once an uncomfortable chore to rid herself of guilt was now turning into something more promising than she imagined.
There was no diamond she would not trade to have Sango there to help her interpret this conversation. Was he just being nice? Should she flip her hair? Should she ask for his number? There were too many ways to play this game, and he smelled nice. He smelled nice, and Kagome felt stupid and giddy and stupid again.
Then he was talking again. "You'll be in the front row when we play, won't you?"
"Play?" Kagome found herself nodding along before he answered the question and didn't take offense when he dropped his arm and simply…didn't answer the question. That should have irked her. If he was any less stunning, it would have irked her.
"See you out there then." His lips brushed her knuckles, and then he was sauntering away, dragging one of the two growling dogs along with him.
She wondered if she was doing a good enough job hiding her fluttering heart.
"Miroku." InuYasha grunted. It would seem that he was done sneering after the other man for the moment. "Really? That's your type?" He glared at the crowd that long since swallowed the duo whole. "I took you for the kinda girl to go for the gentlemanly type."
"He was a perfect gentleman," Kagome argued. He'd been the only one with the decency to care about how their roughhousing could have possibly affected her. Of course, she was used to being used as a wrestling dummy, her best friend loved using her to practice new moves, but it was the thought that counted there.
"Yeah, this time ." He grabbed her upper arm, not bothering to ask permission.
"What do you mean 'this time'?" But InuYasha was leading her away. Brute.
"You can hang out with my parents while I perform."
She sputtered, trying to yank away, but only managing it when he noticed and set her free. "You're ditching me?"
InuYasha snorted. "They only booked us for a few feel-good songs, I'll be back." He all but shoved her closer to a cluster of white-heads. "They're over there with Sesshomaru. Just don't let dad get started about the old days. That bastard gets long-winded quick ."
Kagome couldn't imagine saying more than three words to that white-haired stranger, but when she got over there, she found she wouldn't have to say a word. Rin was in her father's arms, resting against his shoulder as a man maybe ten years older than Sesshomaru told her a story.
"—and then Lady Akemi sealed the beast within a pearl and cast it into the ocean so that it would never be found again."
Rin had long since proven herself to be merciless with her questions, and Kagome was happy to no longer be her victim. "Why would she throw the beast in the ocean? What if you ever need him?"
"It is a metaphor."
"A metaphor?" Rin is the real reason he keeps talking; that much is clear to Kagome from the sideline. She'd ask a question, curious and wide eyed, and no matter how tired of talking he may have been, the other man would wet his lips and dig up an answer.
"By casting the pearl into the ocean, Lady Akemi gave youkai kind the right to choose their own paths. The metaphor is that she didn't cast a pearl into the ocean. She actually cast a spell that granted youkai sapience."
"What's sapience?" He explained the delicate concept of human consciousness, having to stop and reword when her nose scrunched in confusion, and she cast a questioning finger in the air. And she wasn't letting up. The last of his explanation had hardly left his lips when she was throwing another one his way. "So you weren't always this way?"
The pale haired woman at Sesshomaru's side groaned loudly, rolling serpentine eyes, before dramatically covering her ears. Both Rin and her teacher ignored her with stunning grace. "I was— well. Do you know the western story of Adam and Eve?"
"Touga, my love. Our sons will perform soon. We should make our way over to the stage, don't you think?" The dark-haired woman who spoke, another person who didn't look a day over forty, took Rin from Sesshomaru's arms, finally freeing him from the conversation. "Last year, I didn't get a very good seat."
He was putty in her hands. There was not so much as a moment between her putting her hand upon his jaw and him leading the way.
"Touga is a slave to Izayoi."
Kagome nearly jumped out of her skin at the soft voice that curled along the inside of her ear with the same chill as the cold underbelly of a snake. "He cannot deny her anything."
The woman behind her was as beautiful as ice, and Kagome felt inadequate when under her scrutiny. She was also dangerous. Kagome didn't need to be a rocket scientist to know that one wrong move, one errant thought, would get her eaten alive.
"She seems very kind."
The woman's gaze was unwavering and Kagome found herself picking at the sleeve of her yukata, trying desperately to not look like a scolded child. There was no way of knowing if Kagome had somehow offended her? The mounting silence was making her nervous. They were in public. Technically, it was impractical to try anything funny, but when Kagome was surrounded by unfamiliar demons, there was no situation too unlikely to masquerade as possibility in her mind.
When she finally spoke, Kagome felt like a weight was temporarily lifted from her shoulders. "She is wonderful. Izayoi is the love of our lives." There was another long, painful silence, and that was when Kagome realized that this woman was Sesshomaru's mother. They shared the same sharp eyes and uninviting aura. "That does not mean she is not spoiled."
"If I am spoiled, it is only because you've spoiled me, Kimi!"
That glare broke as Izayoi came to sweep her up in their pursuit for a good seat, and she left Kagome with a single, cryptic piece of advice: Be more aware of your surroundings.
"But grandfather—." Rin was on her own two feet now but clinging to his leg as she went. "I still don't understand why we celebrate Lady Akemi." Watching her vying for attention the way she was, made Kagome want to grind her teeth. It was clear she had needs they couldn't fulfill.
"We praise Lady Akemi because she gave us something they can't take away, pup."
"But doesn't the seal take away your youki?"
"The seal seals away my youki," Touga explained. "But it cannot take away what makes me a youkai."