Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha one bit. Well, it's not like I'd want to any way… (sobs maniacally)
Welcome to 'Of Men and Their Demons, Part Four!
-Naw! Just kidding!
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Chapter 11: Giving In
Five days into Shikon-Jewel house arrest and Kagome had finally given in to the idea of playing Monopoly with Rin, to the girl's amusement. The two had been playing for two and a half hours now in the living room, Rin laying flat on the floor, swinging her legs in the air while Kagome sat Indian style.
It was Kagome's turn, so she rolled the die and moved ten paces, obeying the board and taking a chance card to read out loud. Her eyes widened at the realization of her move. "Advance token to boardwalk." Damn. That was in Rin's domain.
"All right! Wahoo!" Rin waved her hands in the air; she couldn't be a happier millionaire.
"Stupid die! I can't believe it! That's the fourth time I've had to land on that thing!" Kagome pouted, threw the card down, and crossed her arms.
"Haha! But now I have the hotel! So that's..." Rin sat up and did a mini drum roll with her forefingers on her inner thighs. "Two thousand dollars, baby!"
Kagome groaned and fell on her back. "Damn you, Parker Brothers!"
"Cough it up, Kags!" Rin said, closing her eyes and shoving her palm toward Kagome. Kagome sighed and gave her the remaining money she had.
"I swear, you cheat, Rin." Rin laughed. She was better at Kagome in any and every game they had ever played, to her friend's disappointment.
Rin traded the money for even more hotels, bringing her count up to seventeen. She was owner of every railroad and color in the game, except the two cheapest ones which Kagome owned. But not for long…
Inuyasha growled. "How long does that game take, any way!" The girls looked up to him, who was currently tapping his bare foot impatiently, laid atop the couch's highest point like a cat would, held up by his right arm.
Kagome answered him like she would to a new colleague in a cell. "For ever, if need be." That was the third time he'd ask that question. At first, though he tried not to show it, the girls noticed he was curious to what they were playing when they brought the board game out to the living room, asking what everything meant whenever they landed on a space or took out a little green house. The biggest news to him was when they told him that the colored paper they held was supposed to be money. Now that was just crazy!
But the hanyou was getting bored, especially since he understood squat about the game. "If you ask me, this whole thing is just a waste of time when you could be training to use the Sacred Jewel properly," he added bluntly, still tapping his foot, but closing his eyes now and wiggling his right ear.
Kagome looked away, wanting to tell him to stop bugging her all the time about the Jewel, but said nothing, in case he decided to swing at her or something of the sort.
"Are you always this cranky?" she dared say instead, her pride getting in the way of the little voice inside her head that screamed at her to shut up.
The hanoyu snapped his eyes open. He wasn't expecting a smart remark from her. Then again, he'd noticed that was just who she was by now. "Cranky? You want cranky? I've almost been killed, turned into a dog, thrown five hundred years into the future and stuck with you. It could have been anyone at all, but no, I had to be stuck with you. Of course I'm pissed!"
There he went again. He always used that excuse whenever asked a question. But then again the girls couldn't blame him. He was kind of right.
Sesshomaru turned to face his brother from the corner that was recently named as his, for all the time he spent there. "Shut up, half breed," he said with clenched teeth. Boy was his brother annoying! Get over it, already!
Inuyasha bared his fangs and snarled at his sibling.
"I'm going to make dinner, Rin. We'll leave the game for now." Kagome had to change the subject in an attempt to keep the two hot-heads from breaking something else invaluable in the house.
Rin got up and stretched. "Okay. But that doesn't mean that your getting away with getting your butt kicked later on!" she laughed. The guys stared at her. Were women really this violent hundreds of years from when they lived? How could the males have let it come to this? The world sure was bizarre.
While Kagome began looking through the cabinets and drawers for ingredients and utensils, Inuyasha popped back down on the couch and moved the sofa so it would face Kagome while she cooked. The wonderful world of cable hadn't been presented to them yet, and staring at Sesshomaru all afternoon wasn't what he'd call entertaining.
Kagome noticed him watching at her intently with his arms tucked in his sleeves, wondering just how she could have put up with all this for almost a week now. As she started to heat a pot, Rin came into the kitchen, dancing.
"In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came! Ba bum! That voice which calls to me, and speaks my name! Bad dum!"
Inuyasha's ears jerked to the sides as the rock music played in Rin's ears, thanks to the magic of the iPod. His face was contorted, and he resembled more of a scared puppy by what he saw.
Sesshomaru arched a brow, curious himself to hear and see this madness. Where was the noise coming from? And why did it make this human jump around and scream like that so much? Surely humans took on demonic characters in the future—either that, or they all must have been descendents of brainless half breeds. The devils.
Kagome watched as her usual annoying friend danced around in her shorts to one of her favorite songs, sung by the group Blink 182 in the style of rock. She shook her head; not even the fact that they were still held 'hostage' with these two monstrous beings held her back from being her regular, crazy self. Well, at least she had convinced her to wear something more than just her undies, though; Rin was famous for her underwear model-like poses.
Kagome could hear the music too well from their immense volume.
"And do I dream again? For now I find!" Rin did another twist and pointed an invisible microphone toward her girlfriend, not waiting for her reaction to keep singing. "The Phantom of the Opera is there…inside my mind!" She played the invisible electric bass hard, scaring the boys a little—even Sesshomaru, though he didn't and wouldn't show it.
They weren't priestess. They were witches!
"Rin, you're scaring them…" unbelievably Rin heard Kagome's comment and took her headphones off.
"Really?" Both looked over at the boys to see Inuyasha's cute, innocent, somewhat sacred look (which he hid horribly), and at Sesshomaru's unreadable expression on his face. He had shifted from his sitting position a bit while his claw was inches away from Tokijin, apparently being startled by the alien-like customs of this world.
"Oh." Rin walked over to Inuyasha who willingly backed away just a bit into the cushions of the couch before he climbed over it and later stood behind it, never taking his eyes off the technology in her hands. His claws gripped the furniture pretty tight.
He gulped silently before asking, rather shakily, I might add, "W-what is that thing?" He sounded just like a toddler getting ready to get a flu shot at the doctor's.
Rin tried to hold back a chuckle. "It's an iPod," she said naturally. She took another step toward the couch and Inuyasha took another step back. This time Rin couldn't help but laugh a little. "Don't be afraid; it won't hurt you."
Between all the hanyou's snickering, complaints and bad manners, Kagome hadn't realized the true depth of their situation.
It would be like dealing with two year-olds for the rest of their time being here. Inuyasha was actually afraid of the foreign machinery in Rin's hands. Technology might as well be monsters to them.
"Rin," she said, "come help me with dinner." She knew then that the two demons in her home were, apparently, more afraid of them than they were of the demons. That and this new, alien world they'd been launched into. She didn't like the thought of them staying for too long in her home, but if this Jewel thing didn't work, she'd have to show the guys how to cope with this new life. Just in case they were to ever roam the streets, someday, and not catch attention—much.
"Okay," Rin replied a little let down. She hated when someone didn't like her, and Inuyasha backing away from her made her feel like getting rejected. Still, she turned the music off and helped the best she could in the kitchen.
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Seven minutes later Kagome had had enough, and Rin was let out of the kitchen in a hurry. Classy words for getting kicked out, supposedly. Kagome opened the trashcan lid and let burnt pasta fall into it, reluctantly. Damn. Good food gone to waste, again. She should have known better than to let Rin in the kitchen with her.
Rin looked around the room, looking for something to do.
There was her Sesshy still sitting in a corner, looking at particularly nothing at all. She swore she'd never met someone who apparently never got bored from doing absolutely nothing. Inuyasha had sat back down on the couch again, and had been lifting his head up and sniffing the air for a while. Food. The girls had gotten used to both their dog-habits by now, considering they were dogs, in a way. But the sight never stopped being amusingly sweet.
Inuyasha scrunched his nose more this time, smelling something unfamiliar to him yet again. "What are you making?"
Kagome looked at him while stirring some contents in a new pot sparingly. "Um…Lasagna." Conversation was getting easier every day and more at ease for everyone.
Inuyasha quirked a brow up for a second, confused, and asked again, "Luhsawna?"
Kagome smiled. She was beginning to like her new, curies puppy already. "No, lasagna. It's a recipe made from ingredients from a different culture." She added the extra information to start the boy's education off.
"Wow. It smells…nice." Inuyasha's ears twitched a little, and Kagome's smile broadened. Yup. She wasn't minding the two siblings so much anymore. Well, with the exception of Sesshomaru, the antisocial cross-dresser, of course. Oh, and Myoga, too, wherever he was. Bugs were just so icky…
"Kagome always makes the most wonderful meals!" Rin proclaimed, suck-up written all over her face. Though she had meant it, really.
Kagome shook her head amusingly at her witty roommate and continued stirring, when a thought came to her mind. "Inuyasha…would you like some lasagna? It's really good stuff." Truth was he hadn't eaten anything yet, not that she'd known of, anyway. And five days of starvation was a horrible way to go. Neither had Sesshomaru, but he was a tougher nut to crack.
"Who? Me?" The hanyou pointed a claw at himself innocently, as if he'd wanted her to say that all along. His ears perked up, alert. "Uh…" He didn't want to seem too desperate or that he actually was hungry at all, and thought of what he could say that sounded just right. His sibling, a hanyou and human-hating (not to mention an everything-hating) grumpy demon being present all the time didn't help, either. Inuyasha had his own reputation to keep up. Though what it was, I don't think not even he was sure of.
Kagome noticed his reluctance and believed to know why he hesitated to answer. Though half a century apart men, scientists discovered, had never changed.
Guys.
"You can tell me later, when it's finished." Her history studies had been paying off. She could read Inuyasha's jesters like a book, most of the time. His ways of living were her specialty. But as long as the two demons had something in their stomachs, the better she felt that humans would be checked off their what-to-eat list and her cooking would be what would save them in the long run. Though Inuyasha wasn't the one she should be afraid of, since over the last few days she'd learned that hanyou's ate pretty much anything other than human meat, the fact that they were half human being one of the primary reasons.
Again, Sesshomaru was the one she had to look out for. And the brothers being able to smell just about anything, as they'd told her the day before, was a major drawback. They cold smell fear, so that was a luxury Kagome had to be aware of not having.
Rin was bored from their conversation and had started stretching on the floor. First she sat Indian style and bent, stretched, twisted, and curved her body in many unusual ways, before spreading her legs in a split and doing even more fancy moves, including touching the ground with her chest. Inuyasha looked on with amusement and Sesshomaru kept his eye on her from the corner of his socket.
After a while Rin stood up and slowly bent her back backwards, gaining her balance once she reached her hands to the ground in a backwards, arched bridge. Inuyasha was astonished. What in heck was she doing!
It seemed like Rin danced as she continued her antics, finally doing a hand stand and spreading her legs into a split, then curving them into more artistic stances. Her balance was impeccable and she had even managed to sustain her weight on only one hand at one point. By that time her shirt had started to slide down to her neck slowly, revealing her purple lingerie-covered breasts.
Inuyasha's lips parted a little, again curious to the era's eccentric fashion. He'd silently thought that no woman ever wore anything else under their kimonos, so this girl shouldn't have been different. His eyes had darted to the wall so as not to see her in her most vulnerable state, but hey darted back once his eye caught something else besides more flesh underneath. A bra. One of the finest wonders of the world.
Sesshomaru had noticed it too, and doing the same as his brother, he wondered what else this era had in store for them, if humans had decided to wear more than two pieces of clothing on their entire body. Strange indeed.
Upon noticing Inuyasha staring curiously at this creature, he found himself snarling a bit, feeling protective of her for some reason. Could it be because his royal scent was all over her, giving him reason to believe that Rin was something of importance to him once, when he was a mutt, as gruesome as that sounded? And why was his brother looking at her in that way? If Kagome was supposed to have been his human, why didn't he keep his dirty eyes off of his?
Certainly 'his' Rin, though a mortal, couldn't be infatuating his filthy hanyou of a bother?
Kagome, very much busy in the kitchen, hadn't noticed the tension had gone up in the room until she noticed Sesshomaru already beside Rin, staring at her upside-down form.
It was then that the younger female noticed him as well, staring at his feet in front of her like she was, upside-down. "Wow. Those are really cool boots you have," she said, forgetting that her shirt in her face impaired half her vision.
Kagome looked in horror as a new shock of worry went through her body; youkai or not, they were males. And Rin was just flashing them. "Rin—look out—"
Sesshomaru grabbed Rin by the waist with both arms with incredible speed and sat her down properly on the floor in one full swoop, making the girl hold on to her head from getting dizzy. Her shirt fell back into place, covering her from top to belly. He looked at her confused face for a while and then strode back to his corner again, going down the length of the wall as he sat down in his former position, but not before sending Inuyasha a death glare to back off his territory.
Inuyasha sort of got the hint, more confused than anyone to what had just happened. Was his brother doing what he thought he was doing? Did he not like him looking at the human like that? Who knows? Wasn't he supposed to hate them? Then why did he seem to care that he was eyeing her like that?
He looked away and found his former chew toy on the couch again, and made it his duty to stare at it until everyone in the room felt less uneasy.
Rin looked back at Kagome, blinking. What had just happened? Kagome gave her the silent cut-it-out sign, arranging her stiff hand at one side of her neck and moving it across in a swift manner to the other side. Rin shrugged.
"What? What did I do? I was only practicing gymnastics again," she asked innocently. Kagome repeated her actions, hoping the girl would get the point and do something else. There was more silence in the room except for the steam coming from the kitchen and the sound of the utensils stirring and clinking as they hit the pots.
When he thought the time was right, Inuyasha asked shyly, "what were you just doing now?" It wasn't that he was intrigued by the shirt mishap, but amused by the arm and leg dance, as he saw it.
"Oh? You mean gymnastics? I was just stretching."
"Stretching? Since when do people stretch like that?" Inuyasha scratched his cheek with a claw, interested in what she had to say.
"I don't know. For a long time now, I guess…" Rin held her chin up and tapped her forefinger close to her mouth, thinking. She didn't know herself. "Well, I'm not quite sure, but I know it's fun! Do you want to give it a try?" Kagome opened a bag of pasta as she looked over at Rin, who to her, was about to do something stupid again. Then her eyes went to Inuyasha, waiting to see what he'd say.
Inuyasha seemed to be thinking for a moment until he nodded just barely, forgetting the incident with Sesshomaru and all. "Uh…sure." It beat doing nothing, which was what he'd done for days now.
Inuyasha joined the human on the floor, moving the couch further away to the wall for space. The two began stretching; Rin being the teacher and Inuyasha trying to mirror her movements. Soon enough everyone in the room was reminded just how women were more flexible than men. Rin was crowned the queen of all that is bendable, and Inuyasha nearly broke his neck twice, to Sesshomaru's amusement.
Inuyasha threw himself on the floor, exhausted from the entire workout. He laid panting, limbs stretched out wide apart. Rin, on the other hand, was making a clean landing as she laid herself on the floor next to him, after having outdone him in a single-armed hand stand. Impressive. Even so, that the older sibling had to admit he was impressed by it. Then again he always thought everyone was better, stronger, smarter, and more agile than his brother, but no one ever believed him.
"So," Rin said between shorter breathes, "how old are you guys?" Kagome's ears picked that up. She hadn't really thought about that much.
"Uh," Inuyasha looked at the ceiling, as if counting. "I'm over a hundred. Don't know about Sesshomaru, though. That guy's old," he teased somewhat.
Rin immediately stood up, startling him a little. "Now way!" That news came as a shocker to her.
Inuyasha shrugged. "What?"
"That's not possible!"
Inuyasha felt a smirk coming up. "What do you mean? All demons live for hundreds of years!" This time, Kagome almost dropped the lasagna mold. Oh dear. That wasn't good. All hopes of them dying of old age before her so she had a way of not having to have them around went flying out the window.
"Shut. Up!" Rin squealed.
"I beg your pardon?" Inuyasha asked, rather offended.
"Shut. Up! No way!"
Inuyasha growled, getting a little annoyed. "I already said it's true! If you don't believe me--"
"She means she's surprised, Inuyasha," Kagome clarified. She always had to serve as the translator on these things. "'Shut up' now-a-days, if you say it a certain way, means that something sounds so incredible that the person thinks your just pulling their leg."
"Pulling what?"
Kagome sighed. This translation thing was harder than she thought. "It's the same term for when you're…uh…lying to someone, in a way. You know; saying a tall tale?" She waited for him to respond but hearing none she walked over to the living room herself to straiten things out.
She looked down at the hanyou, her hair sliding to the side as her hands rested on her hips. "Just forget about it; it's nothing." She turned to her girl. "And Rin? No more talking."
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Inuyasha couldn't help but lick his lips slightly as the lasagna was set on the table in front of him, the sweet smell of cheese pouring into his nostrils. Kagome took her oven mittens off and started cooling the food. "Doesn't it just look yummy!" She smiled at him, trying for conversation. Inuyasha hid his tongue inside his mouth again and nodded, happier than usual. Boy was he starving! He didn't dare ask for or take food until now, and he didn't care a rat's ass if everyone made fun of him at this moment. Not even Sesshomaru who was still in the same corner, preferring to save his dignity over taking any assistance from humans (as always) could make him want to say no to this heaping dish of chow.
Rin came in with the salad and dishes, and soon the table was set for four.
"Come and join us, Sesshomaru! It's very good, I promise!" Rin smiled at him brightly.
Sesshomaru, who'd been looking at the three for some time now looked into her eyes first, then at Kagome who exchanged looks with him, lastly at Inuyasha who took the time to ignore him. He finished by closing his eyes and dropping his head down indifferently.
"I don't eat human food." His cold voice waned Rin's joy a little.
"Uh…Then, would you like something else?"
"Rin," Kagome warned, hoping the demon wouldn't ask for a side dish of corpse.
"Don't bother," Inuyasha stated folding his arms and squiggling in the strange, new high chair under him. "He'll eat when he's hungry enough. Just let it go."
Though that was what Kagome feared of, she nodded and sat down, tapping Rin's arm to sit down as well. Rin obeyed after looking at her former dog for one last time.
After a minute or two there was only silence in the table, expect for the clinking of the forks against their plates. Still struggling to find a way to eat from the quadrupled teeth-injected stick, Inuyasha let the lasagna piece fall off his utensil, staring as it drooped to the plate. Forks, spoons, sforks! What in damnation did these futuristic people think! It was one thing to be eating without chopsticks and from a plate, but it was another to be sitting three feet above the ground for this.
"Inuyasha, please don't play with your food."
Inuyasha peered at Kagome.
"Um, Kagome? Maybe he doesn't like lasagna?"
Kagome eyed Rin annoyed. "Of course he likes it! I made it myself!"
Inuyasha looked form one girl to the other. Cat fights were a familiar term in his day as well. "It's not that, it's just…" He fidgeted a while with his fork and lasagna again and the girls stopped eating too.
"I don't like it here. I mean… I want to go home. No offense, but I prefer my time better…"
They weren't expecting that. Needless to say Sesshomaru either, though he was thinking the same thing…
Kagome exhaled softly and looked at him. "Well, I'm sorry for that…but I can't do anything about it." Inuyasha was showing his less grouchy side, and she thanked him for that. His saddened, baby-face reminded her so much of when she used to cuddle next to her dog at night, a time that seemed so long ago right now.
A thought came into Rin's mind. "Well, I don't know how to make you feel better, but I do know this…"
Next thing you knew, the three were eating on the floor, sitting on the couch cushions and using the coffee table as their dinner table. Inuyasha smiled.
"Thanks. That was…nice."
Kagome smiled back, chiding herself for not thinking of that sooner. Though she was having undesired company over for who knew how long, she should have made it easier for them to adapt to modern society. The table thing was a good start.
"You know," Inuyasha began, finally being able to gulp down heartedly a mouthful of Ramen with chopsticks, "you guys aren't that bad, really…"
Rin smiled. "Thanks. Your welcome."
Kagome nodded, but held back a tear, knowing he'd preferred heated noodles over home-made gourmet. Men.
When everyone had finished, Inuyasha pet his stomach, overly thankful for the food. He'd swear he'd never go hungry again! But as soon as his frown showed itself on his face, it turned upside down. The girls noticed something was wrong; something was unsettling him. His ears even drooped down and he held his stomach tight, almost moaning.
"Inuyasha, what's wrong?" Kagome wondered, patting him on the shoulder subconsciously.
"I…I…" Inuyasha tried to look up to her as manly as he could. "I need to empty myself out a bit…"
Kagome knew what he meant. That was old talk for 'I need to go potty'.
Suddenly the color in her face faded to white, thinking back when she had wondered days before how the brothers had managed to 'go' while in their home. Now she realized that they hadn't. And there wasn't a tree or a bush in sight to use like in old times, meaning…
She'd have to show them the industrialized world of toilets and plumbing, and how they had to use it.
Oh shit.
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P.D. and Happy Birthday to meee! (June 27) Right now, your looking at a nineteen year old fanfic writer who feels like a deer caught in headlights when she realized that being this age means you only have a year before 'teen' will never again be used on you. This is sugarsweet pie, saying you don't know what you have until you out grow it, and waiting dreadfully for that big two-decade celebration of my life here on Earth. And I'm only on the twelfth chapter of this fic. That's so me…
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