Disclaimer: This story was largely inspired by anonymous573's brilliant story, "Big Brother". Also, I owe deep appreciation to Rumiko Takahashi, for her manga, Inuyasha, which provides the characters of this story.
When Inuyasha passed the motorcycle test in January, she didn't even need to beg for him to order her to get dressed and come outside one Saturday afternoon. Grinning at herself in her bedroom mirror, Kagome smoothed the miniskirt she picked from her closet and rechecked her tights for holes before skipping out the door and slipping on her boots in the foyer. Her leather-clad feet crunched heavily over the stones in the courtyard, the cold glare of the winter sun causing her to squint and raise a hand over her eyes. Turning to close the outer gate behind her, she missed the appreciative dark eyes raking over her form from behind the tinted shield of a motorcycle helmet.
"Well, what the fuck's the hold up? You comin' or what?"
Briefly startled by his gruff voice, Kagome spun around and raced to where Inuyasha straddled the purring engine of his deep red motorcycle. Gingerly lifting one leg to get into her place behind her big brother, Kagome barely had enough time to grasp the back of Inuyasha's bike jacket before they jumped forward, curving sharply in the parking area before speeding off down the steep slope of the mountain road. They zoomed in silence towards Outsu City, where Inuyasha had promised Kagome they could ride along the shore of Biwa Lake and possibly stop for something to eat.
After her initial fear wore off, Kagome's excitement continued to build until the hands once fisted in the material of his jacket unclenched, sliding around his torso to mimic the muscles of her inner thighs tightly squeezing him from behind. Inuyasha suppressed a shudder at the sensation, shrugging it off as a muscle twitch before readjusting his hands on the bars in front of him.
Kagome, on the other hand, was so lost in her elation that she hardly noticed the material of her once slightly risqué skirt now sitting directly on the junction of her hips and thighs. A wolfish whistle from a couple of fishermen by the roadside alerted her to her predicament and she gasped, poking her brother in the side to get his attention before attempting to yell over the wind.
"Yasha?"
Not one to respond well to nicknames, he gave no sign that he had heard her, instead revving his engine and maintaining his speed along the shoreline of the glistening lake. Jabbing him harder this time, Kagome placed her head right next to where his ear should be, screaming as loud as she could over the wind.
"INUYASHA, fuck!"
She could feel his back quiver as he laughed heartily, hearing his cute little sister cursing so colorfully. Squeezing her thighs around his hips even tighter in an attempt to stave off his humor, Kagome shifted uncomfortably and pressed herself closer to his back.
"My skirt's riding up!"
More fishermen offering loud wolf whistles lined the roadway, sharing lunch near the docks and enjoying the view of tantalizing young meat on the back of a shiny red bike.
"Come on, at least stop for a sec', those guys are eyeballin' me!"
Inuyasha laughed harder, imagining his little sister's crimson face at the drooling sneers on the faces of the harmless old men in fishermen's sweaters. Instead of complying with her screeched-out wish, he stepped on the gas, pushing his new toy twenty kilometers per hour faster and relishing in the wealth of sensations afforded by this impromptu trip with his step-sister. By the time they finally stopped in town next to a pier Kagome's discomfort had increased as her hair had now tangled beyond relief. While Inuyasha secretly thought wind-tousled Kagome was even sexier than ever, he thought it was even funnier to get her mad so he could see the fire in her eyes and the red flash across her enraged cheeks as her lips trembled with anger.
Kagome stopped tugging her skirt down and attempting to smooth down her hair just long enough to see the telltale shaking of her stepbrother's shoulders and knew he was just seconds from laughing outright in her face. Setting her jaw into her angriest scowl, she glared up into the amused, grinning face in front of her. She crossed her arms, both in annoyance and as a reaction to the realization that winter's chill had yet to fully fade despite the brightly shining sun beaming down on the two of them. Noticing that his stepsister's quivering no longer signaled her anger, but rather her body's reaction to the cold, Inuyasha shrugged out of his motorcycle jacket and let it land with a thump across her thin shoulders.
"Come on, let's get somethin' to eat. I got a favorite place down there on the pier."
Her irritated grimace remained in place, fading slowly as she snuggled into the oversized jacket around her. Looking up at his back as he led the way down to their destination, she marveled at the muscles visible beneath his long-sleeved t-shirt, eyes widening in surprise when his long black ponytail swung to the side, revealing a small, dark tattoo on the back of his neck. Before she realized it, they arrived in front of what looked like a rarely frequented bait shop of some kind, the old fishing nets and boat parts that hung from the entrance giving off the faint smell of wood rot and fish. Inuyasha went first, pushing aside a large net that hung across an open doorway to make his way inside where an old man with overly large eyes sat behind a surprisingly clean counter.
"Ahh there y'are young'n! Been awhile since these old eyes seen ya last."
"What's up, Jiijii?"
"Yer lookin' at her, boy. And who's this pretty'n? Yer dad go out and get 'imself another lady?"
"Yea, yea, look we just want two of my regular and some tea. And make it quick, 'cause we're freezin'."
Kagome came back to herself at that comment, and she felt somewhat chagrined as she realized Inuyasha must be freezing his ass off just because she hadn't thought to put on a sturdy enough jacket for their outing. Quickly, blushing only slightly, she shrugged out of the motorcycle jacket and held it out to Inuyasha, clearing her throat to indicate her actions. Dark eyebrows furrowed as he looked over at the object she held out, and he sneered somewhat before huffing and crossing his arms.
"Eh, keep it. It's not like I need it that bad anyways. You shoulda thought to wear somewhat more practical clothing today though; you knew we were riding all the way down here."
"I'm sorry, I must not have been thinking that much about it."
"Oh well, next time just wear something warm and tie your hair up, it'll take ages to comb out that mess."
In about fifteen minutes the old man with the bulging eyes reemerged from behind a wooden partition holding steaming dishes filled to the brim with noodles, vegetables, and all sorts of fish and eels. He returned in another minute with two stoneware mugs and a teapot, setting them down heavily before nodding to two of them and trudging back to the kitchen while chewing absently on some unknown substance.
The food was absolutely delicious, and the tea warmed her all the way down to her bones. She kept her eyes closed the majority of the time, subconsciously emitting little sounds of satisfaction that made Inuyasha smirk around his mouthfuls of noodles. They spoke seldom during their meal, and when they were finished Inuyasha threw down some bills on the counter yelling, "Thanks Jiijii! See ya 'round!"
"Okay, boy, tell yer dad this ol' bag says 'hi'."
Inuyasha raised a hand in response, shouldering his motorcycle jacket and tucking his helmet under his arm before nodding his head at Kagome to indicate their departure. Kagome waved goodbye and bowed to the old man, whose name she still did not know, before scooting quickly after the disappearing form of her older stepbrother.
Once they were out on the pier again and she was still warmed by the recent meal they shared, Kagome got a chance to gaze out onto the gently lapping waves of the gigantic inland lake. Thick white clouds hung low over the horizon, a breeze somewhere in the heavens pushing them slowly over the black water before traveling to wind lazily through the hanging strands of her hair. She glanced up briefly to catch the corner of her brother's eye staring in her direction before he too averted them to the water and the sky in front of them.
"Ne, Inuyasha."
"What?"
"Who was that old guy? A friend of your dad's? How?"
"Uh, yea. My dad used to be an airman with that guy in the Self-Defense Forces. I guess they just kept in touch. Old man's name is Totosai, but I've only ever heard my dad call him that. Hell, even Sesshoumaru calls him Jiijii."
Sesshoumaru. The name rang a bell and Kagome wracked her brain in an attempt to figure out where she'd heard it before. It couldn't have been the name of one of her brother's friends, because the level of disgust that came through when Inuyasha said his name was too palpable to belong to someone Inuyasha held any sort of fondness for.
"Who's Sesshoumaru?"
"Oh, that pretty fag. He's my older half brother. Don't expect you'll see him around though; he's lived in Korea for the last five years running that branch of my dad's company. A real 'shining star' in the Takagawa family."
The last sentence was uttered with dripping sarcasm, and the sneer that came across Inuyasha's face matched the feeling of ultimate disdain Kagome felt directed towards his older brother. The only sibling Inuyasha ever had with any real blood ties, as he emphasized the term 'half' rather than 'step' before 'brother'.
An image of orderly shoe boxes with a line of names on the top flashed through her mind, and she remembered a pair of exquisite deep blue silk house slippers underneath the heading 'Sesshoumaru'. Shaking her head to dispel the distracting image, Kagome stepped forward and surprised her now surly stepbrother by lacing her arm through his and gently pulling him along towards the end of the pier.
She nudged him until they reached the end, pushing him with a bit of force until he bent his knees and leaned back against the barrels they found stacked and bound with lengths of rope. Crouching next to him with her boots tucked under her thighs, she shifted over and rested her head against his shoulder as they looked out on the rapidly approaching sunset together.
Orange and pink spread like spilled paint across the sky, coating the aimlessly floating puffy clouds with a wealth of warm colors. The fat, slowly burning sun rippled across the water, turning red as it dipped below the water's surface, its reflection long and brilliant and almost reaching the pier where the two sat huddled together against the encroaching cold of a winter's night.
After an hour or so, a mournful moon beamed down from the opposite end of the sky, the vapor from their exhaled breaths combining thickly in the frigid air, and Inuyasha looked down at his shoulder to find his newest little stepsister fast asleep and slumped against him. He paused a second to take in the peace written across her face before wiping a gloved hand over her forehead, successfully waking her so that they could go home.
"Come on, sleepyhead. We gotta get goin'."
The ride back was dreamlike, and Kagome's eyes struggled against the wind as they tried to take in the dancing moonlight playing across the forest floor in between bare winter trees, their branches gnarled and reaching desperately upwards. Pieces of Inuyasha's silky black hair slipped below the back of his helmet, mixing with her own locks as she moved closer to his warmth and rested her head against the back of his neck.
By the time they reached the mansion on the mountain, Inuyasha parked his bike and sat there for a moment, the two of them resting on the back of the bike and staring out together at the moon as it shone down on the bustling metropolis below. Eventually, as the cold seeped into their clothes and they realized how late it had gotten, they detached themselves and quietly made their way into the quiet house, their parents asleep and unconcerned with the whereabouts of the two children who spent the day in each others' company.
They had an understanding between them now. Every Sunday, the two of them took off on Inuyasha's bike to the same pier in Outsu City, eating noodles and chatting with Totosai before watching the sunset and riding back in silence to Kyoto. The days got progressively warmer, but by now Kagome knew enough to wear jeans and a substantial jacket on each of their trips, choosing to limit her cuteness in order to avoid either of them catching pneumonia because of her vanity. The conversations they had now were more varied, addressing everything from family to politics, and Kagome was surprised and pleased to learn how intelligent her big brother was, despite all evidence to the contrary. She told him of her dream to be a lawyer, defending the defenseless, and even though he scoffed a bit, he inwardly respected his little sister for not being such an airhead as he originally thought.
She was making better friends in school now, too, apart from the girls who originally befriended her because of her bubbly attitude and 'new student' status. Two girls in particular, Sango and Rin, became the two best friends she had aside from her secretly deep relationship with her older brother. The two girls, once her partners in gym class, now hung with her everywhere in school and sometimes afterward. Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi, her first acquaintances at her new school, were still friendly with her, but she did little more than say hi to them in the halls or talk on the phone when they had trouble with their homework.
It was Friday again. Rin and Sango were planning on buying some beers from a machine on the street and watching old Zatoichi movies back at the apartment Sango shared with her younger brother, Kohaku. As always, Kagome's weekly allowance of 2,000 yen was expected to foot the bill for the booze, while the other girls would make food and download the movies for their little party. Rin's foster family rarely gave her any money other than paying for the part of her tuition the government allotment failed to cover, and Sango's part time job barely left her enough for rent and food for her and her brother, but the three managed to have a good time every weekend they got together.
Excited about the plans in store for tonight, Kagome made her way towards her shoe locker to switch out her shoes before heading to the train station that would get her to Sango's downtown apartment. Always one of the last to leave, she was used to silence in the halls and absence of all other people, and was therefore surprised to see a classroom door open at the end of the hall with faint noises whispering through.
As quietly as possible, she edged her way down the row of shoe lockers towards the open door, her socks muffling the sound of her feet on the floor as she peeked through the opening.
A curtain of black hair fell over the back of white male uniform shirt, shielding the boys face from view, even as the noises of lips smacking and very feminine moans met her ears. The boy's head shifted to the left, the strands of black hair falling over his shoulder to reveal a very familiar tattoo on the back of his neck. Her small white hand concealed a sudden gasp as she fell back behind the door, hoping the passion of the two within the room would blind them to her presence. After watching her brother making out with the unknown girl for a few more seconds, Kagome decided she had enough and made her way back to her shoe locker silently, trading her shoes out before making her way to the train station.
She bought twice the normal amount of alcohol that night, getting all three of them very drunk as she demanded to know if either of the others knew about her brother's new 'girlfriend.' Both shook their heads fervently as they solemnly slurred vows of ignorance to their distraught friend. Groaning and slumping back onto the back of the couch, Kagome picked up another beer and glared blearily at Zatoichi Meets the One Armed Swordsman as she contemplated the unfairness of her current situation.
Inuyasha didn't pick her up for a motorcycle ride that Sunday.
After her sixteenth birthday in early March, things went steadily downhill for the relationship between Kagome and Inuyasha. They no longer rode in the limo together, and Kagome opted more and more for going over to Sango's house after school to give Inuyasha and his new girlfriend, Kikyo, all the time and space they wanted in his room across the hall. Oblivious as always, her mother bought her excuses about extra coursework easily, allowing her to stay at Sango's house as much as she wanted, where she could drink a little in hopes of forgetting about the no longer existent relationship she shared with her older brother. For Inuyasha's part, aside from unabashedly exhibiting his hickeys by tucking his ponytail into his school uniform, he made few attempts to talk to or maintain any sort of relationship with his stepsister.
The exhibitionist couple's four month anniversary was one she unfortunately had to spend at home, as she had an exam the next day and couldn't afford to spend the night out instead of studying. She could see the gaudy platform heels in one of the shoe boxes in the foyer, a pair of guest's house shoes missing merely another signal that an unwanted guest had arrived. Moving stealthily up the stairs, Kagome could hear the sounds of feminine pleasure vibrating through the door to her older brother's room, as well as the masculine grunts that could only have been Inuyasha's. She stood out in the hall in a daze for what seemed like an hour before shaking her head abruptly, shuffling backwards through her own doorway only to slump to the floor and look longingly at the green motorcycle helmet her brother had bought her after their first bike ride together.
Cries of ecstasy pierced the night as she tried to sleep, devouring her dreams and turning them into nightmares starring someone who looked like her, but was not.
He ignored her now on their rides to school, in the hallways at school, and anywhere the two might run into each other. He came home on the days she spent at home late at night, reeking of alcohol again. He made out with Kikyo every chance he got: in the hall, in the library, at lunch, on the roof, behind the bleachers, on the back of his bike after they came back from a ride.
Kagome hung out with her friends more and more, going to parties they invited her to, buying drinks to hang out on the weekends, finding excuses just to avoid spending any length of time in her shared home.
One weekend, when she knew Inuyasha and his dad had flown to Korea to visit with Sesshoumaru and talk business about their overseas operations, she saw Kikyo at a party.
One of Rin's foster siblings, Kagura, was taking advantage of their foster parents' weekend absence to throw a huge party in the house they lived in at the outskirts of town. People Kagome never met before lined the hallways of the cramped little home, no one even bothering to take off their shoes as they tramped through the living room and kitchen holding beers and liquor drinks and challenging each other to drinking contests. Kagome had just gone shot for shot with a guy she knew from her algebra class, downing more alcohol than she usually consumed in an entire week, and got up to stumble to the bathroom with Sango's help. After ridding herself of about half of what she drank, she decided not to drink anymore, and they both shuffled down the hallway towards Rin's room where they had agreed to spend the night that night.
Rin's bedroom was at the end of the hall, away from the noise of the party, with a lock on the door that only the three of them had keys to open. On the way, the doors of some of the other rooms that had been open when the party started had been tightly sealed, though they shook slightly in their frames from the activity within. One door, right next to Rin's, had been left cracked open, and the moans erupting from the doorway sounded oddly familiar to Kagome. Peeking around the corner of the wooden entrance, Kagome's eyes widened as she saw Kikyo, half dressed and perched atop Kagura's friend, Naraku, rubbing her breasts and grinding lasciviously on a man who wasn't Inuyasha. Backing off slowly, Kagome made her way into Rin's room where she collapsed and slept it off until the next day.
She tried to corner him on the way to school on Monday. While they were in the limo and he couldn't escape her, she looked at him seriously in the eye and said, "We need to talk."
He let out a quiet "Keh" at her, lazily lighting a cigarette and rolling down the window while pretending to ignore her. She began by asking him how his trip went, how his father and brother were doing, and how he liked Korea. When all she received were mumbled grunts in response, she tried a different tack.
"I saw Kikyo on Friday, Inuyasha."
Although he looked in her direction with a bored expression, he let no words escape to indicate his thoughts on her comment. He shrugged his shoulder nonchalantly and turned towards the window again. Feeling frustrated, Kagome edged closer, nudging him to gain his attention and opening her mouth when he turned to face her again.
"She was at a party I went to at Rin's. Uh-I sorta saw her with Naraku that night."
No apparent surprise crossed his face, though his eyes turned stony and cold before he looked away again, shoving her forcefully back towards the opposite window.
"Did you hear me, I said I saw her with another guy, Inuyasha."
Again, he ignored her, and this time he neither glanced in her direction nor grunted at her for the remainder of the ride to school. When she made to follow him from the car in to class, he turned to her with fire in his eyes.
"Fuck. Off. Bitch."
Though her heart sank with those three words, she hung back as he stomped off towards the school building, following only when he was well out of sight. Her friends asked her all day what was wrong with her.
She stopped going over to Sango's everyday of the week, opting only to go on Wednesdays and Fridays, when she knew Inuyasha wouldn't be home anyway. The nights she was home, she stayed up until she heard him stumble up the stairs, leaving a bedside lamp on and her door unlocked, just in case he came to his senses and wanted to talk.
After about a month of this, Inuyasha had been hanging out with his friends more and more after school, and she hadn't seen or heard from Kikyo in about as much time. She left her room open again that night, the first breezes of summer making their way leisurely through her open window and leaving a fresh scent on her pillow. A crash from downstairs alerted her to her brother's arrival, and she tracked his movements by sound as he made his way up the stairs and around the corner through the door to his room. She could hear a series of thumps coming from his closed door, the obvious pop of a beer can tab reverberating across the hall as she listened on. Feeling a little nervous, she closed her door, though she left the lamp on and the window open out of a mixture of habit and hope.
Dozing lightly under the light of the early summer moon, Kagome woke with a start when she felt hands on her breast and thigh over her thin blanket. Heavy breaths fell against her right cheek, large hands squeezing and groping as her stepbrother moaned drunkenly in her ear.
"You're so hot, you know that. So fucking hot."
He made to push the blanket off, pulling the tank top she fell asleep in down with it. Still delirious with sleep, she didn't catch on to what he was trying to do until her left nipple met the chilly open air. A softly mumbled "Kikyoooooh" reverberated in her ear, sealing the deal and sparking her inner rage to explosive proportions.
Punching him squarely in the side on the head, she let out an angry screech, shoving him as hard as she could until she was satisfied with the loud bam his body made as it connected with the tatami mats beside her bed.
"Get the FUCK out, Inuyasha!"
Kicking him lightly, Kagome attempted to nudge him towards the door as Inuyasha grumbled and said "C'mon baby...c'mon."
She locked the door and kept the light off after that, and things continued through June the way they had been, but Kikyo no longer came over to the house and they were content to make out in the classroom Kagome first saw them in after school.
The first term of Kagome's second year in high school ended with the announcement of Kikyo's pregnancy. As she and Inuyasha had never actually had sex, the only other choice for the father was the guy she was spotted with at Kagura's party: Naraku. Inuyasha was understandably floored.
Instead of going out to cure his depression with alcohol, like she had expected, however, he merely smoked blunts in his room all day every day, getting high as he played video games and listened to angry rock music. For the first two weeks of their summer vacation Kagome looked into his room from the hallway, hoping in vain that he would turn and look her way, perhaps invite her in so they could battle each other again as they did so long ago. Every time she peeked through his doorway, the muscles underneath the bare skin of his back rippled alluringly, teasing her as she tried to keep her distance out of respect for her hurting older stepbrother.
Eventually, she, Sango, and Rin began to hang out with other kids that were stuck in town for the summer, going to parties and out to the lake any chance they got. Inuyasha still refused to ask her to go on Sunday rides out to Outsu City, so she got the chance to attend numerous beach bonfires throughout July. A couple guys they didn't usually chill with before started hanging out with their crowd, coming to the parties and sometimes even Sango's house when the weather was bad. One of the ones she recognized was the guy with the wild blue eyes who caught her as she fell during her first few weeks of school.
Kouga was hot, dangerous, had a fast car, and lots of money. He was obviously experienced sexually, and constantly tried to get her to do things when they were alone that she had never done before. He was really affectionate, gave her rides everywhere, paid for everything, and bought her lots of presents, but she still felt like something was missing with him. The smug smile plastered to his face every time they went out made her feel like he thought of her as an arm decoration or something.
Sango and Rin had started dating that summer too, so they had less time to hang out as vacation proceeded. One of Inuyasha's friends, Miroku, who was a known pervert and orphan, started working at the same martial arts studio as Sango and impressed her one day when he bravely withstood her full-on assault. After wrapping his broken hand and nose with gauze and bandages, Sango commended his courage and agreed to go to the movies with him. They became inseparable.
Rin, on the other hand, with her quiet demeanor and cute personality, was avidly pursued on all sides. Though she rarely agreed to date any of her avid admirers, her attractive qualities and humility continued to draw them like moths to a flame. Until Sesshoumaru came home that is. Deciding that he needed a break from Korea during the summer business lull, Inuyasha's older brother ventured home and had been living in the house with the four of them.
One day, when Rin and Sango were over enjoying the pool and cool forest at Kagome's mountain home, Rin went to get a soda from the kitchen and never came back. When Kagome went to see what was going on, she rounded the corner to the kitchen only to see Sesshoumaru, his arms wrapped tightly around Rin, set her friend gently on the counter and move in to kiss her deeply. Seems the two knew each other long before Kagome ever transferred to her new high school.
Inuyasha came out of his room once a day, reeking of blunts, to scrounge for food and get into the occasional argument with his uptight older brother. He maintained distance from Kagome, though, avoiding even eye contact should they bump into each other in the kitchen or bathroom. She began to wonder if the slight blush visible on his cheeks every time he saw her was evidence of shame for his actions the one night he accosted her in her room. Every time this thought entered her head, though, she shook it off as wishful thinking, instead ascribing the light pink flush as an indication of lingering, burning rage at her for speaking up about Kikyou.
Kouga picked her up every day around noon, laughing loudly and making lusty comments about her body as he guided her into his car, glancing up at the angry figure staring down on him from an upstairs window with a smirk before speeding off down the driveway.
One day, Kagome wasn't quite ready when Kouga arrived, and she instructed him to wait in the kitchen and get a drink while she touched up her hair and makeup. She was lining the lower lid of her left eye when she heard growling shouts and breaking glass from downstairs.
Running as fast as she could, she skidded into the kitchen in time to see her older brother on top of Kouga, one bloody fist wrapped around the front of the other boy's shirt as the other smashed into the right side of his face. A drink glass lay shattered on the ground underneath Kouga's left shoulder, and bits of glass stuck out of his arm at odd angles. Kagome screeched and launched herself at her stepbrother, pushing him off of Kouga as hard as she could before turning to pull her boyfriend up off the ground. Inuyasha hit the island in the center of the kitchen with a grunt, shaking his head and getting up before he had to hear it from Kagome.
After making sure he was conscious, if not okay, Kagome's expression of concern shifted to annoyance as she took in the haughty expression on Kouga's bloody face.
"What the hell was that about, huh?"
"Aw babe, can't you see a guy's hurt? Gimme a hand will ya?"
Sighing, Kagome acquiesced, holding her hand out for Kouga to grab and hoist himself to a standing position before examining the glass bits in the back of his left arm. Pulling them out as if they were mere slivers, Kouga tossed the shards on the floor and put a thumb to his lower lip, smearing the clotting blood pooling from the corner of his mouth. Kagome looked on in surprise for a second before grabbing the dustpan from under the sink to clean up the mess on the floor.
It took another fifteen minutes for Kouga to reemerge from the bathroom, his face clean if bruised and his arm neatly bandaged.
"Seriously, what the fuck, Kouga?"
"Don't worry about it babe, the guy just can't handle a little harmless teasin's all."
Kagome was still pissed, but let the subject drop as she knew both the boys were okay, even if they were both complete idiots.
Deep down, she knew she shouldn't have let the obvious animosity between her stepbrother and boyfriend go so easily, and the gnawing worry she pushed to the back of her brain continued to peak at times when Inuyasha stomped angrily up the stairs in the afternoon, slamming his bedroom door behind him and turning his most violent music up to maximum volume. For Kouga's part, he continued to pretend like nothing was going on, content to fondle her in his car on warm afternoons and drag her to parties with his group of friends, which consisted mainly of guys she wouldn't have felt comfortable with alone. With Rin and Sango occupied more and more of the time as summer progressed, Kagome ignored any worries she had and forced herself to be content with being beach arm-candy for Kouga as long as she got free drinks and a chance to play in the ocean out of it.
August wore down, the warm days getting shorter and shorter and warning Kagome that her second year of high school was approaching fast. On a Saturday after a rare Friday night spent at home, Kagome woke up around two in the afternoon and wandered down to eat a late breakfast before taking a leisurely dip in the pool, choosing to forego calling Kouga as she didn't really feel like seeing him that day. She was enjoying the long rays of brilliant sunlight, feeling them soak into the skin of her face and stomach, when she heard a car door opening and closing in the car parking area in front of the house. Knowing that both Touga and Sesshoumaru worked until around six in the evening, even in the summer, and that her mom was away on a spa trip with friends until the next Wednesday, she figured that only left her angry older stepbrother as the likely noisemaker.
When loud music didn't pour from the cracked window of his bedroom for over forty minutes, Kagome began to get curious, wondering if maybe his friends had dropped him off still drunk enough from the night before that he passed out before making his way up the stairs to collapse in his room. Taking off her sunglasses and wrapping a sarong around her waist, she stepped into the flip-flops she brought outside and made her way through the back door and into the living room on the main floor, treading lightly so as not to disturb Inuyasha if her original suspicions proved correct. Only once she scoured the whole of the downstairs and found no trace of him did she open the door to the genkan to check for evidence of his shoes, hoping to verify that he was, in fact, home. He was still not there, and neither were his shoes.
Shaking her head in confusion, she turned to go back inside when she heard a muffled moan coming from the courtyard beyond the outer door to the genkan. Moving slowly, Kagome carefully opened the outer door and peered around the edge, breathing deep to prepare herself for what lay outside.
Apparently, even a deep breath wasn't enough to halt the gasp of horror that fled her mouth when she saw the bloody, bruised form of her stepbrother curled over in the stones next to the pathway through the courtyard. Rushing over on loudly crunching feet, Kagome knelt in the gravel and thrust her palm under his nose, reassuring herself that he was still breathing before reaching two shaking fingers to the pulse point on his neck, attempting to ascertain from his heartbeat just how bad off he was. When his heartbeat thrummed through her fingers slow but strong she knew he would be okay, as long as she could get him to stand long enough to get him into the house to treat his wounds and get him into bed.
With an unladylike groan at the effort, she yanked his least injured arm as gently as she could, pulling him to sitting before tapping the sides of his cheeks lightly to get him to open his eyes. Bluish-red lids slid upwards slowly, one lagging behind the other as the enlarged pupils shrunk rapidly to accommodate the bright sunlight of the summer afternoon playing over Kagome's shoulder.
"Inuyasha, hey, can you hear me?"
"Eh…w-wha-a…wh-t t-th fu-uck, K'gome?"
"Hey, you think you can put your arm around my shoulder and use me to stand up, huh?"
"Uuuuuugh…fuck."
"Yea, I know. Just stand up slowly, that's it. Okay, now we're gonna go inside and I'm gonna try to clean you up, k?"
Inuyasha winced as she pulled up as slowly as she could while still maintaining balance, straining every muscle in her thighs and back as she tried to lift what essentially amounted to almost all of her stepbrother's dead weight. Soft grunts escaped his lips as she shuffled them up onto the porch and into the house, but a low groan and several discernible expletives spewed forth once they reached the stairs that would lead them to his room. Kagome pulled him along firmly, knowing the sooner they reached his room, the sooner she could figure out what the damage really was and clean him up before anyone else came home and saw the state he was in. It took them about fifteen minutes to make the trek upstairs, slipping and stumbling against one another as they leaned heavily against the banister for support and moved slowly, one step at a time.
He landed with a thud on the messy black sheets on his bed, sinking into the wall she sat him against while she ran to get water, towels and bandages from the bathroom down the hall. A wry smile cracked the torn skin on his lips open again, causing blood to pool at the corner of his mouth and slide down to his chin, drawing a thick red trail he didn't bother to wipe off with his equally bloody hand. An unknown number of minutes passed before a cool glass of water bumped against his lips, pressing downward and tilting until his jaws were forced apart to accept the flood of liquid relief that gushed quickly down his burning throat. After he had drained half the glass in three leisurely gulps, Kagome removed the glass and got to work mopping the blood off his face and out of his hair.
By the time she had cut his shirt off and bandaged the wounds on his head, neck, face, torso, arms and hands, Inuyasha had fallen back asleep and she found she wasn't quite ballsy enough to remove his pants to check for more wounds there. His breathing had evened out, his heartbeat gaining strength and the formerly contorted muscles in his jaw and neck relaxed as his body was apparently relieved of some of its distress. She left him to sleep it off and determined to nag the answer out of him tomorrow on pain of her revealing this recent weakness to his father, or worse yet, Sesshoumaru.
He slept for the whole night and through the morning before feeling well enough to draw her to his room with familiar strains of blasting video game noise and rock music around noon. Still wearing her summer pajamas, Kagome peeked her head into his room, feeling foolish even though she had done much more to invade his personal space as she was stripping the clothes from his body in order to clean and bandage his body in his sleep. Dark eyes glanced her way with aloof coolness before returning to his television screen, his white-wrapped hands squeezing the controller and jamming buttons to make his character shoot an automatic weapon at several approaching zombies.
Kagome moved to sit next to him on the bed, turning with a look of concern before softly venturing a, "He-hey Inuyasha, how're you feeling?"
With a visible shrug, Inuyasha grunted out a barely audible, "eh," before returning to his game.
"I-I mean, you were pretty messed up yesterday, are you sure you're feeling up to this?"
"What do you want again?"
His callousness pried its way underneath the calm layers of her concern, prickling her irritation enough that she pushed his shoulder and ignored his brief wince, hmphing angrily and growling out, "Well, what happened? You get into another fight or something? You get bored and decide to go pick on some yakuza downtown? You try to see if your motorcycle has flight capabilities? What was it?"
The bristly glare that met hers at the end of her tirade confirmed that her brother was well enough to argue with, so she didn't feel too badly about laying into him like that, especially if it meant he was finally talking to her again. She was so caught up in her thoughts of trying to persuade him to hang out with her again that she missed his muttered reply and had to get him to repeat himself.
"I said, your fuckin' pretty boy toy and his friends caught me outside the train station last night. Fuckers."
She really should have been surprised, but she wasn't. Kouga acted tough, and granted he could take a punch and pull glass out of his shoulder like a champ, but he obviously couldn't get back at the much more skilled fighter in Inuyasha without a troupe of testosterone-driven lackeys willing to beat up on one guy just to save their leader's macho pride.
"He isn't my boy toy anymore. C'mon, get your lazy ass up and let's go get some ice cream. We can get Toadface to drive us to that one place in Outsu you like so much."
Author's Note: Hey guys, this is going to be a short story, probably with only one or two longish chapters left, but this is the last one that I've finished writing and editing so far, so I'll have to wait to update after this chapter until I've finished my exams. The upside is as soon as I finish my exams I will be done with undergrad and officially moving into the "real world" stage of my life, so wish me luck and thanks for reading!