"Inuyasha."
He snapped awake at once, sitting up straight and almost knocking her over. Kagome scooted back, blinking.
"Are you okay?" she whispered.
Feeling like he hadn't breathed in a thousand years, he sucked in a large breath. His lungs expanded painfully and he coughed a little, startled. "I'm fine," he managed to get out, covering his mouth. A half-full bottle of water entered his vision and he accepted it gratefully, gulping the rest of it down.
"I told you you need to drink more..." she said, a strange emotion in her voice.
"Relax, will ya?"
"I should be saying that to you," she shot back, still whispering.
Sango and Miroku were asleep again, this time laying down properly in their own sleeping bags. Their hands almost touched. Almost. The television was off, just a little red light in the darkness. The chair Sesshoumaru had been in was gone, back at the table, and the albino nowhere in sight.
Moonlight spilled through the window onto the floor, splashing across their friends' legs and winding down the foyer into the kitchen in an ethereal river.
"You were having a nightmare," she explained when he looked her in the eye. "Or something close to it."
He looked away. "...Sort of," he admitted after a few moments of silence.
"What were you dreaming about?"
"The past." The two words had a note of finality to them that made her not pry.
"Why do you let your brother rile you up so?" she asked instead.
He scowled visibly in the dark, the mist of the moon on his features. He bit down hard on the neck of the water bottle. It crunched lightly in his mouth.
She waited patiently for him to say something.
Knowing that she wasn't going to give this up as easily as the past, he shifted the bottle away from his mouth and sighed.
"He pisses me off."
"I've noticed as much," she said sarcastically. Her face softened afterwards. "Why?"
"We're too... different." He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, settled the bridge of his nose against one forearm. He could still see her as he mumbled into the skin. "Everything about us is a complete opposite."
"Oh? Really?"
"Personalities, aesthetics... Maturity..." The last word had stuck in his throat and he choked on it. It wasn't something he would admit to admitting later on.
"They say opposites attract," she pointed out, not even mentioning the maturity thing, as it was a sore spot for him.
He growled lowly at her words.
"Inuyasha," she said, looking him in the eye. He blinked at her. "You're not very different, you know."
"How so?" he asked.
"You're both trapped in a cage."
Whatever snarky comment he had meant to say died in his throat.
"The same cage," she continued. "The one built by your father and his death."
He bit his lip.
"Despite supposedly hating your existence, he is still here, isn't he?" she asked of him, touching his arm. "I don't know very much about your brother, but I feel like he'd be the type to completely ignore you if your life was in danger, if he truly, genuinely hated you. He's..." she looked around the room, searching for a word. Her eyes spotted the family crest on the fireplace, doused in shadow. "He's cold, like steel. But he's straight, and he's true. And he's still here."
At these words of truth a hot dart went through his body and he flushed in its wake. Not knowing if she could see the blush on his face, he looked away, scowling. "You sound like you're in love with him," he half-joked, but watched for her reaction out of the corner of his eye.
She flared up immediately and punched him in the right knee. He hissed in pain and clutched the leg with both hands as she shook her knuckles and frowned at him.
"What?" he growled, rubbing his knee. "Well, are you?"
"Inuyasha."
"Are you?"
She crawled towards him and he slumped back against the arm of the sofa, heart beating fast, mostly in fear at what she might do next. She straddled his waist, eyes ablaze, and he closed his own.
He flinched when he felt something soft on his forehead but when nothing else came after it, he opened his eyes. Her own brown ones, black in the night, stared down at him. Her dark locks cascaded from her shoulder, the black strands a curtain around them both. She'd placed her lips on his forehead and pulled back enough to look at him.
Then she settled down against his chest and sighed. He hesitantly wrapped his arms around her.
"I'm not going to leave you either," she whispered, so softly he barely heard her.
His hesitant arms tightened their grip and he rolled them both over so that her back was against the sofa cushions. He gently touched her face when she looked up at him. She covered his hand with her own and closed her eyes.
It was probably the closest he would ever come to saying "Please stay". But that was enough for her.