"I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."
—Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
Kagome let out a frustrated sound and dropped her hands into her lap as she whipped her head around to glare at her dearly beloved husband. Sitting nearby, Inuyasha returned her glare with a side-eye, the claw that had been tapping against Tessaiga frozen suspended in midair above the sheath of his sword. He was irritated because he was bored and it was hot outside and she was irritated because Inuyasha was insufferable when he was bored. She loved him, she really, really did, and she would not change her life for all of the money in the world, but some days…
"Inuyasha," she started, voice simmering primly as she did her best to remain the adult in this situation, "I'm trying to work, can you please try to be quiet?" He let out a ginormous sigh that probably ruffled the grass around them.
"Kagome, can't we at least go inside?" He grouched, one ear on top of his head flicking back and forth as a fly buzzed around it trying to land. She turned back to the herbs she had laid out in front of her, continuing the process of sorting like-with-like and tying a string around their bunches to hang and dry later.
"You are more than welcome to go inside," she told him, tying a knot and adding the bundle to her pile. "I need the light to be able to see better." She heard him grumble under his breath but he didn't leave. Normally, she would love any excuse to have her husband spend quality time with her, and even now she could help the small smile that grew on her face as she glanced over at him again with a much softer tone. "We can go in when I'm done." She promised and he met her gaze once again, all of the fight from earlier gone and replaced by that smooth amber. He opened his mouth to retort but stopped when a breeze blew past them, lifting his head to the sky and looking around.
"Sesshomaru's here." He explained, standing up, slipping his sword back at his waist. Kagome craned her head back to look at the sky as well and saw nothing, squinting into the sun.
"Well, Rin isn't," Kagome reminded him, blinking against the spots in her vision and grabbing a new bundle of herbs. "Wasn't he just here?" She asked thoughtfully, frowning, and trying to remember. His visits were usually more spaced out, but Kagome realized that he had been here not even three weeks ago. Inuyasha made a vague noise and she turned to look at him and saw that he was looking forward. She cranked her head around and followed his gaze to see Sesshomaru and Jaken approaching the hut. Kagome waved to the two of them and Inuyasha crossed his arms.
It was still odd to her to see Sesshomaru walking through the village, and Kagome had a feeling that it would not ever feel normal. He was just...too big for this space. He looked out of place, so clean and bright against everything. The village people were nervous of him, and so he only ever came as far as Kaede's hut and no further. Something told Kagome that he wasn't too broken up about that. Jaken tsked at her as they approached, squinting pointedly at the way she remained sitting. Kagome ignored him, which was some advice that Rin had given her very early on and had always served her well, and smiled up at Sesshomaru politely.
"Rin isn't home," she told him, putting down her bundle. When she spoke, he turned his attention from Kaede's door to her and Kagome did her best to not sweat under his scrutiny. Talking to him always reminded her of when she had to give presentations in school, that same feeling of being put on the spot and struggling to remember what you were saying. "She went to go get some more herbs for Kaede and me…" she stopped her explanation when she noticed his attention was no longer on her, his head tilted to the wind. He slowly rose from the ground and went off in, what she assumed, was Rin's direction.
Kagome looked down at Jaken who remained in the road, a familiar bundle of cloth in his little arms as he watched his Lord fly away. The three of them sat in silence for a moment and, in a very odd moment of solidarity, they all gave each other very telling looks before Jaken walked into Kaede's hut, Inuyasha sat back down and Kagome went back to sorting through her herbs.
Across the fields, standing up to her knees in water and blissfully unaware of everything going on in the village, Rin put her hands against her lower back and stretched. On the bank of the stream, her little basket of goodies rested next to her shoes. She had finished up getting the different supplies Kaede had been asking for and had been so miserably hot and sweaty that she had decided that it might not be a terrible idea to wade in the water for a bit. It wasn't like she was in a hurry, anyway.
Rin scooped her hair up into her hands, wrapping it up into a make-shift bun so that she could run her wet hand over the back of her neck. When the cold water touched her overheated skin she closed her eyes and let a stream of air out of her lips, shivering a bit when water droplets slipped down the back of her kimono and followed the length of her spine. Her hand was gritty with the salt from her sweat when she dropped it back down and bent over the stream, rubbing the water along her forearms to rid herself of the dirt there doing the same with her face, splashing as delicately as she could to try and keep her clothes somewhat dry.
With a sigh, she stood straight, wiping wayward droplets out of her eyes and turning back to dry land hoping that her trudge the rest of the way home would at least be tolerable now. She debated for a moment if she could get away with walking back with her kimono still all hiked up around her thighs and sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, but decided she didn't want a sunburn on every part of her body. She tsked, scowling at a bug bite on her arm that she knew was going to drive her nuts later, and when she looked up towards her shoes, she saw Lord Sesshomaru standing there watching her.
Time froze.
He was just standing there, and that in and of itself was not anything horrible. What was horrible was that she was sweaty and gross and she probably stunk to high heaven and she was still parsing her way through the way their interaction had ended last time the two of them had been alone together. Just looking at him had memories rushing over her and she was suddenly self-conscious. She went to rub her hands down the sides of her kimono to dry them only to feel the bunched up fabric that reminded her that most of her legs were out. She sucked in a gasp when she remembered, blushing, eyes darting up to look at him, as guilty as if he had walked in on her in the middle of committing murder.
She wasn't sure what she expected, but never in a million years would she have thought that he would be looking at her the way he was. His eyes were slowly making their way up her body and it was...it was not something she had been on the receiving end of before. Where his gaze touched she felt him. She felt him on her thighs, on her arms, on her neck. It made her throat go dry, it made her knees feel weak, it made her feel a sense of anticipation but she didn't know what for. Then his eyes met hers, his eyebrows furrowed when he noticed her watching him, and it was done, it was over. It all happened so quickly, less than a second, that she was left wondering if she had imagined it all.
With a shaky breath, she waded through the water towards him, forcing a big smile on her face when she realized she hadn't said anything yet. "My Lord," she greeted, feeling a little out of breath. Probably from walking through the water. "I didn't know you were coming! I'm sorry you caught me...ah," she blushed again as she looked down at her wet legs glistening in the sun. Fumbling quickly, she untucked her kimono and let it fall down again, doing her best to laugh it off even though her face felt hot. "Were you waiting long?" She probed, hoping he hadn't seen her all bent over splashing around like some incredibly sweaty, deranged gremlin.
As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, his eyes slid back to where she had been standing in the water, before darting back to her face. She noticed, and it was so slight that she could have missed it, that he took a very slow, deep breath. "I was not here long," he answered, voice even, yet she caught the way his eyes drifted over to follow her fingers rolling down her sleeves almost like he saw something there. She looked over, expecting to see a bug or something, but saw nothing. A glance back at him rewarded her with his side profile as he looked off into the distance. With a sheepish smile, still feeling warm, she bent down to gather her basket and tucked it onto her hip.
"Would you walk with me back to the village?" Rin asked, the initial shock of seeing him fading and being replaced with that happy, satisfied feeling she had when she was with him. She may be having a personal crisis, but she wouldn't let that spoil the times that she got to see him. He turned back to her and upon seeing that she had her shoes on and was ready to leave, his face relaxed into its neutral state and he walked up beside her. With a sincere smile splitting across her face, she fell into step with him, switching hips so that her basket didn't bonk into him while they walked.
She glanced up at him, looking at the face that haunted her dreams. Since that night a few weeks ago when she had come to a small realization that she may have deeper feelings for him than she had originally thought, she had gone over all of her memories with him trying to pinpoint exactly when things had changed. She found she couldn't put a pin on a specific time, more the feeling. That slow evolving of her heart. When it had changed from being happy to see him to feeling peace when she saw him. There was a part of herself who was happy to have solved the mystery that had been bothering her for months, but another part of her almost felt worse that now she was going into their interactions with this new awareness that made her hyperconscious of everything she said and did. What am I going to do with myself? She wondered, laughing at her own horrible fate.
His eyes met hers when she laughed and she brought her fingers to her lips guiltily when she realized it had slipped out. "Sorry," she smiled, shaking her head to clear it of her secrets. She felt his question on the air and she shrugged, quickly grasping for some excuse. "Just thinking about the time you had to pull Jaken and me out of the river and how much of a mess that was."
Even mentioning it now all these years later had snickers slipping out of her. It had been scary at the time, because she had been small and the current had swept her up and when Jaken had tried to get her he, also, had been taken away. Lord Sesshomaru had had to come in and get them, and it had not been an easy feat for someone with only one arm to wrangle two fast-moving little creatures. Of course, he had done it, but it was a memory that she looked back on with great fondness.
"Hm," was his very nostalgic answer, eyes drifting forward again. Rin laughed again, the giggles spilling from her in earnest as she found this bland answer only to add to the hilariousness of the situation.
"I'm very grateful that you fished me out of that little river," she assured him, voice still twinkling with the happiness she couldn't restrain. Sesshomaru slid a glance her way, the ghost of a smile in his eyes.
"A river was the least of our worries," he answered, voice low and thoughtful, and Rin nodded emphatically, remembering all too clearly the different dangers of the wilderness. She tucked a loose piece of her hair behind her ear and waved at a neighbor in his field as he called out to her, the village in sight.
She sighed when she saw it, her smile losing a bit of its life, realizing that the closer they got the sooner he would leave. Come to think of it, she thought cocking her head to the side thoughtfully as her hand lingered in her hair, holding it out of her face, wasn't he just here not too long ago? Thinking back, she realized that he had been because she had been sleeping poorly since their encounter in the forest and while she was exhausted, it had only been a handful of sleeps ago. Why is he back so fast? She blinked, a confused frown crossing her face, the question bubbling to her lips as her hand dropped back down to her side.
On its journey to rest back at her side, her fingers brushed along the back of his hand and the most interesting thing happened.
His hand jerked just as she gasped and pulled her hand away, apologies on her lips. He blinked, one slow movement, before he looked over at her and then down at the hand she kept clutched up by her chin. Her fingers tingled from where they had touched the smooth skin of his hand and she clenched them closed, pulling them down against her chest. "S-sorry, My Lord," she laughed, trying to joke it away, "It was an accident."
He turned his eyes back on her, looking for all the world as if she had just begun speaking in tongues in front of him. His expression was...surprised? She couldn't put a name to it because she hadn't seen it before. At his side, she saw the hand she had touched clench and unclench in one fluid motion before his expression evened itself out again and he looked at her with his usual demeanor. She watched him warily, having seen more emotion from him in the last five seconds than in the last five years.
Rin laughed again, the sound nervous in her ears, and gestured towards the village slowly stepping towards it as if her movement would jumpstart his. "We're almost there," she told him, tone encouraging, and she looked down, sifting her hands through her slowly wilting herbs. "I need to hurry and get these to Kaede before the heat completely ruins them." He followed her, long strides catching up in no time, and she filled the rest of their time together with chatter about nothing. All the while, she watched him carefully to see if he would give her anything else, but he remained his normal, impassive self.
When they said goodbye at the edge of the village, she waved happily and cheerfully bade him return soon. Jaken reminded her that they were very busy, doing lord knows what, and that they would come back when it was most convenient for them. Rin nodded and found herself hungrily taking in Lord Sesshomaru's face, every detail of it, before a whispered goodbye slipped from her and she walked back to her home. When she turned to watch him leave over her shoulder, she saw that he was still there watching her walk away.
Thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!