Shard # 2 Juggling

Title: Circus Act

Pairing: Sesshoumaru/Kagome

Rating: PG13?R?

Squicks: Just a little bit of physical contact

Summary: Kagome has to deal with the fact that even after everything ended, she still has to juggle the truth around.

In her eyes, the universe owed her one big huge favor. And how did it repay her? With a life still filled with subterfuge, trickery, and a big cosmic voice taunting her with 'A normal life? That was never yours to begin with! Ha ha ha HA ha ha.'

That mischievous laughter from the heavens just would not leave her alone.

She had been certain that when the Shikon no Tama was whole and Naraku defeated, her life of lying to her friends, lying to her school, and putting aside the life she left in the future, would all end completely. Instead, when she returned to the future, that tall, generally silent taiyoukai whose ward she had befriended and adored was waiting for her in the well house. It seemed that loyalty, as well as a good dose of over-protectiveness, was a genuine tried and true behavior passed to Inu no Taisho's sons.

After two months of Sesshoumaru's constant shadowing of her movements around modern Tokyo, she began to wish that the dog demon's father was still alive. Still alive so that she could wring his neck and cut off the family heirlooms in protest of the procreation that had resulted in offspring engendered with an anxiety on par with that of a mother hen. Even her friends had begun to be suspicious of the silver-haired man who seemed to appear everywhere she went with them. Especially when the group met with boys like poor Houjou, who often approached her, the taiyoukai became quite the interceptor of possible suitors. Which usually meant he stared down the human male bold enough to come close to a family pet.

She was sure that was what she was. A pet. Just like little Rin must have been. As much as it made Kagome's kind heart shudder in disgust at her own thinking, maybe making friends with the little girl hadn't been quite such a good idea. But the look in Sesshoumaru's eyes had convinced her that at least he had cared for the human child, so maybe it wasn't quite as bad as her imagination made it out to be.

This day had began well, but it had quickly turned into one where she wanted to jump into the well again and hope it spit her out in Inu no Taisho's lifetime so she could perform the castration idea she entertained. Sesshoumaru had decided to enter her room the exact same way Inuyasha often had: through the window. Only he, in his eternal male divine beauty, was a bit more graceful and less of a noise. In essence, she stood in her underwear, meeting his eyes in the mirror on the back of her door.

The fact that he was noiseless was a blessing. It meant that no one else had heard him. However, after the scream that issued forth from her throat in surprise at the intrusion, that blessing went to waste. She groaned as footsteps scrambled up the stairs. Why he had chosen to visit on a day her friends were over, she couldn't fathom.

Her blood temperature began rising. He refused to depart the way he came.

After reassuring her friends through the door that she was fine, it was then that the muscles started twitching at the corner of her eye. She wondered idly if she might need therapy as a result of all this.

"I told them there was nothing wrong, I thought I saw a mouse, blah blah blah. I can't just sashay down the stairs now with a taiyoukai in tow! So LEAVE!"

She might have had déjàvu, if it had been a hanyou dog demon in red fire-rat hakama, but instead she just had a strange sense of irony that where Inuyasha once stood, now stood a khaki-pant wearing, still a pain-in-the-ass, yuppie Sesshoumaru. The irony, unfortunately, did not stop there and he would probably like to maim, if not flat-out kill her, if he knew she added the "yuppie" adjective to her description of him.

"That is not my problem. It is yours for not imparting the actual turn of events. They are familiar with me."

"It does not matter that they know you, Sesshoumaru!" her voice a harsh whisper, "What matters is they do not, nor will they ever, EVER, know of what happened through that DAMN well. And they know you as Inuyasha's brother."

"Half-brother, and I am that."

She wanted to squeal again, this time in exasperation.

"No, no, they think I dated Inuyasha and urged me to break up with him - and now it will appear as if I'm dating YOU, which throws in a whole other can of worms!"

When he took a step toward her, it didn't quite dawn on her yet that she was still clothed in just her underwear. Frustration was currently occupying her consciousness as she struggled to find a way of solving the problem She wanted to avoid any further lectures on her choice of relations by her friends. One possible action was to think of a way to convince the thick-headed youkai (another thing that ran rampant in that 'family') to leave the way he came. The other was to try and make her friends believe that this wasn't the way it seemed. She was completely oblivious at this point to the movement that brought him closer, step-by-step, as she went over possible scenarios in her head.

"No, no, that will just appear as if I'm loose and attracted to dangerous guys, which they already think is true, especially with what I accidentally told them about Kouga." She completely missed the intake of jealous breath as she muttered aloud her thoughts on one possible solution. "And there's the matter of YOU appearing EVERYWHERE I am," she motioned towards him, still unaware of how close he had gotten to her. "It gives them the wrong idea and I don't care if it is the right idea, they don't need to know the REAL idea."

She sighed, completely missing the burning eyes that caught the motion of her lightly clad chest.

"And I thought I was done with this juggling of the truth! Why did you have to be at the well? Why do you follow me around?" She pouted, "What am I going to do?"

She focused her attention now upon the youkai across the room, only to find his gaze a bit closer than she remembered. And of course it was now that she recalled the other ironic thing about this new setup. If there was one thing that made up for a lot, okay, most of the trouble she had to go through with a youkai following her, it was the absolutely gorgeous male form he just happened to inhabit. Even when he was single armed he was stunning, but with the other arm returned to its former usefulness, he filled out everything so very nicely. Traditional clothing or modern day business suit, Sesshoumaru was a man who stood tall and elegant in anything he wore. He looked great in just about anything at all. Or maybe nothing at all, the tiny voice at the back of her brain whispered.

Her body warmth skyrocketed as her eyes widened at that image a fraction before her back bumped up against the wall beside the closed door of her bedroom. The coldness of the wall with her flushed skin pressed against it awakened that part of her that remembered her lack of dress.

He continued to move closer to her, the look in his gaze hungry and dangerous.

"Um, what are you doing?" She watched as the his nose flared near her skin, a tendril of his silver hair falling off his shoulder to brush against the breast above her brassiere. The gasp it caused pulled the taiyoukai closer by invisible strings of desire.

The proximity of that much attractive maleness caused her head to become all fuzzy, and in the quiet of her mind a single voice kept whispering "Yes" over and over. When his lips pressed to the sensitive skin on the top of her shoulder, control of her body escaped her tenuous grasp and her hands lifted themselves to the chest of the man who was touching her. As he moved his way up the line of her shoulder to the base of her neck, a tiny shudder shook her, starting in her throat down to the cleft of her legs and back up, forcing her to breathe in his scent. She was now tingling, her whole world pared down to this single moment, every second an eternity, a lifetime. She closed her eyes.

His breath tickled the curve of her ear as he brushed his striped cheek along hers, his hand reaching up and tangled itself in the hair at the back of her neck. Her palms itched and she began moving them in the direction they desired. Up and over the curve of his pectorals hidden under the cool fabric of his button-up linen shirt, engraving in her hands the memory of his muscled shoulders to the base of his neck.

When he met her parted lips with his, her hands curved into claws, tightening onto his solid strength, her body rising towards his as his other arm slid along the bare waist to pull her flush with his body. Then his tongue invaded to crash into hers and the embers glowing in her lower body burst into burning waves of lust. The lone part of her brain still working tried to silence the sound that thrummed up her throat, but the body won its voice and she moaned into Sesshoumaru's mouth.

The knock on the door hit her like a bucket full of cold water. "Kagome?"

She was panting now, eyes wide open again, body fighting the effects of the rude interruption. Sesshoumaru, who had released her in surprise, still stood close to her, the heat of his body affecting her brain function.

"Umm."

"Yes."

"I'm going to put some clothes on," she whispered.

"All right."

The world widened suddenly to include the situation and how she was still going to have to deal with it.

"Kagome?"

Her attention turned to the person on the other side of the door while her eyes met his.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be down in a minute."

A sigh, and then Eri spoke again, "Is someone in there with you?"

"I said I'll be down in a moment!" She was a little shocked to hear the slightly annoyed tone to her own voice.

His eyebrow raising wasn't helping at all.

"Uh, okay. But there'll be some explaining to do." Footsteps receded down the steps.

"Back into the circus ring, Kagome." His eyes glittered with amusement.

In response to his jibe, her blood pressure began to shoot up to deadly levels as he leaned in, stole another quick kiss before reaching for the door knob to go downstairs.

Aggravated, and suddenly without care for the thoughts of those waiting below, she lost control of those truths she had tried to keep up in the air. "SESSHOUMARU!"

She was certain he had a smirk painted arrogantly across his face. At least with Inuyasha she could yell something more effective. Damn.