A/N: Warnings! Definitely focused on mostly Adult Content. Descriptive Yaoi. Inucest. Shounen-ai. Druggish behavior that may or not strike you as especially out of character. If you can't tolerate any of this, or if you're too young to be reading anything like it, leave now. You have been warned. By continuing to read you understand that you are now stepping into what you may not be able to unsee, and will not hold me responsible for any emotional distress this causes you. You make your choice.
Semi-canon setting, at least, the backdrop environment and all characters and behaviors are meant to fall within certain canon-like parameters. Set not long after Kagome returns from the modern era to live with Inuyasha forever. Indeterminate. Let's say within the first two years following that. While the authenticity of considering Yashahime as canon is debatable, this is set way before those things, therefore ignores any implication of Sesshoumaru having a romantic attraction to Rin-at this point she'd still be far too young for him to be that sick in the head. I really never considered him to be the pedophile type, did you? Thought so! (If you thought he was then keep it to your DAMN SELF! Jerk.) However he Did always strike me as the type to be...well, he seems very Bishounen, if you know what I mean by phrasing it like that. Spinning around like a ballerina and flicking his hair like a deva and wearing a shirt that's Technically a woman's cut of sleeve...RuPaul would be very proud. I digress.
Reviews appreciated and welcome, even with criticism or hate or arguments or flames. I'll take it all, and thanks for the read!
Mini-Glossary for less familiar terms :
jyaki, youki, shouki = actually Not Always Interchangeable; far as I recall, jyaki would be what one might call "demonic energy", youki would be more like the "aura" and shouki would be "miasma" if I were to really dumb it down for you. It's actually a little more complicated than that but suffice it to say, youki looks too much like youkai for me to like using it all the time and so I often sort of mentally substitute jyaki for both. Shouki would be like the toxins Naraku used in foggy clouds of poison gas or pools of liquid.
"Damare" = "Silence"
"Temee", "Chikusho", "Kisama" = rude ways of saying "you" (almost like saying "You Fucker", "You Son of a Bitch", "You Bastard")
*For a more in-depth glossary see my other more recent (at this time) longer fics like Love and Bacon. I don't think this story will really need more than that ^ though.
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"Lord Sesshoumaru!" Rin greeted, but something sounded Different this time.
Usually when he flew in she was giddy, excited to see him and overwhelmingly cheerful as per her habit. Today, though, he could already catch the sharp tang of other emotions, unpleasant ones, when he drew near. His eyes narrowed as he landed.
"Rin, what's wrong?" he cut to the chase, uncomfortable with her discomfort.
"Mmmm," she noised, "it probably shouldn't worry me, but your brother was supposed to be back last night from slaying a simple youkai. But it's been all night and half the day, and he still hasn't returned. Miroku didn't go with him this time because Kohaku asked him for some help with another stronger youkai he had a contract for, one that was resistant to many brute force methods. So while they were away another man showed up and said their village was having a problem with an oni terrorizing them at night, and Inuyasha went to go handle it alone."
"Hn," Sesshoumaru thought that over briefly, then shrugged one shoulder slightly, "he likely got himself killed," he deigned to snort.
"OH NOO! Lord Sesshoumaru, do you really think Inuyasha is Dead?!" Rin's lower lip trembled.
Shit. Sometimes he forgot just how Sensitive she could really be.
"No," he murmured, tilting his head at her curiously, "but you do, it seems."
"Well I hope not!" she whined, sniffing back tears as they began to crest-
"Rin, don't cry," he huffed at her, "it takes more than a common oni to kill that hanyou mutt."
"But then why isn't he Back Yet?!" she started to whimper, and he balked slightly as she started to tremble and sniff harder.
"I don't know," he said honestly.
"See, See, Nobody knows!" she wailed, and the tears burst from her eyes like a flood cracking through a dam, and she cried and wrapped her arms around his leg and fluff and part of his armor a little awkwardly, burying her tears in Mokomoko-sama.
Oh Great. He knew what That Meant. It almost made him sigh and roll his eyes, the pretense of the staged play alone would probably-
"Rin," he decided to skip that pretense, because he just Knew Better Already, he really really did and he really didn't want to go through all the perfunctory motions this time, "would it alleviate your anxiety if I sought him out and dragged him back here?"
"Would you Really? Oh that would be Wonderful, Lord Sesshoumaru!" Rin gasped in glee, sniffing back her tears and smiling up at him.
He could have rolled his eyes. Sometimes he didn't know if she was Aware of how much she got away with conning him into, or if her innocence had kept her truly oblivious this whole time...he suspected she was starting to catch on to just how much sway she had over him...
"I have no other pressing matters to attend," he grumbled to himself, then absently, "now go settle yourself and wait for my return, Rin. I'll go Rescue that whelp you are so fond of."
"Thank you Lord Sesshoumaru!" Rin smiled and waved as he headed off again.
Now he sighed and rolled his eyes, nobody was there to see it while he flew off in the direction his brother's scent had headed.
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For about an hour he coasted along lazily, tracking the distinct scent of hanyou over a few villages away, landing when the scent was fresher and strong enough to mean that his little brother should be around here somewhere...
He didn't smell an Oni, though. The other scent he caught was strange, and reeked of magic, of toxins, and of tanuki. Not a familiar tanuki by his estimation; he did know that Hachi, Miroku's right hand vassal, would sometimes assist them how he could, mostly with transportation of many people at one time with his large flying form. But this was certainly not Hachi.
Sesshoumaru paused to evaluate this scent even more. Did he detect...
Oh Shit. That isn't good.
"Dogfever," Sesshoumaru snarled, and with a more purposeful stride, he started to pace the fringe of the area, seeking a sense of where the battle had taken his brother from here.
A few minutes later a noise caught his ear. He'd been trying not to use his nose too much; dogfever was one of the few things he wasn't exactly immune to, it had an especially potent effect on most dog youkai, and even with his poison-gifted blood he still felt it's effects when he took in too much. A wispy smoke of an infusion of some kind of dogfever-mix toxin still lingered in the air and he didn't want to inhale it.
Hoping he'd accurately guessed this noise to be Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru turned sharply in that direction and sprung over to where it sounded like it came from, and when he spotted a flash of red, he dipped down and landed next to the prone form of the hanyou on the ground.
"Kisama," Sesshoumaru snarled softly, giving a hard nudge with his boot, or perhaps it was a very soft kick, "wake up, hanyou mutt."
Inuyasha exploded. Literally exploded! What the-
It was a copy, he realized, a dummy made to look like Inuyasha, one that fumigated his whole person with a thick, heavy, sweet-smelling mixture of dogfever and fugu oil and other substances that might have been toxic to someone else. He'd reacted with reflex when the copy exploded and had taken a tiny gasp of that air, but swiftly leapt away when it did. However, the smoke had already found it's way quickly into billowing in his silken clothes, and microscopic particles already clung to his skin, and he started to feel...
Sesshoumaru snarled and refocused. Dogfever was mind-affecting, but not deadly, not even really what one might call Dangerous to a dog, as far as poisons went-well, not Physically Dangerous. Mentally, though...he knew he'd have to find Inuyasha fast if he'd taken in a lot of it. If he didn't, the dumb mutt was likely to do some awfully stupid things.
"SSoooo," a dark voice cackled nearby, and Sesshoumaru, having refrained from taking in any scents and breathing very shallowly to avoid taking in more dogfever, hadn't caught the scent of the tanuki until it was nearly upon him, "you smell Related to my new pet!"
Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes and bared one fang, a tiny growl rising up in him.
"Your New Pet? Ridiculous," Sesshoumaru snarled and raised his claws, and they began to glow with the light of impending Dokkasu, figuring he'd not need to draw Bakusaiga for a youkai as pitiful as this.
"He will be, when he wakes up," the tanuki chortled darkly, "as will you!"
"Hn," Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes, nearly amused by the tanuki's arrogance, "never," and darted in for his strike.
His speed was unholy. His aim was perfect. His claws clutched the tanuki's neck and snapped it clean.
The tanuki exploded. Sesshoumaru growled and felt more dogfever coursing through his body as his airways involuntarily sucked up more, and with resignation to this fate, he decided, Not Using his nose was not working in his favor-clearly this tanuki had some experience with Dogs and had figured out how to thwart them thusly.
Closing his eyes and taking a deep whiff of the air, Sesshoumaru felt the tingle of the dogfever increasing it's hold on him, but also found the scent that identified the tanuki's true location, and slashed in that direction with his claws.
The tanuki shrieked and tried to run, but the flick of an angry bright yellow whip caught him and wrapped itself around his throat, yanking him back to the irritated taiyoukai. Sesshoumaru wasted no time lopping off his head with a swift swipe of claws, then paused and sniffed around for Inuyasha, because after all, finding the stupid hanyou mutt and dragging him back home was the whole reason he was even here to begin with.
It took him a few minutes, but finally he found a mucky little hole the tanuki had dug out to shove the hanyou into, something almost like a rough den of a burrowing animal.
Sesshoumaru snarled low and glared at his brother when he Did find him. What a disgrace. He almost wanted to kill the brat right now, just to rid himself of the sight of such disgrace. Is he really This Helpless?!
Inuyasha was unconscious, and the scent of his blood brimmed with a dense saturation of dogfever. He may as well have swallowed a smoke bomb full of it, Sesshoumaru figured, because it was nearly overpowering in his veins. The hanyou was tied with his wrists and arms laced with a tight criss-cross behind his back and neck, looped and fashioned in such a way that struggling lead to self-strangulation. Tetsusaiga was near and still in it's sheath, but presently not at his side. There were only a few injuries, nothing that would be major for the hanyou, but the drugs coursing through his system had apparently knocked him out cold and swift, there was a knot on his head that looked swollen and a spot of blood seeped from his skull into the white mane near his ear; he'd heal, of course, but it might take him a bit to awaken in this state.
Sesshoumaru was furious. Why did he have to babysit this stupid mutt hanyou again?
Rin. Right. Rin. Sometimes he wondered if she knew-
Sesshoumaru growled and grumbled and dragged Inuyasha and his sword out of the mucky hole. He thought about untying him, but decided, if he left that alone he would have less of a struggle delivering the lost whelp back to his safe village where he fucking belonged. And the stupid mutt Deserved to know how much he'd embarrassed himself, how undignified it was for Kono Sesshoumaru to have to save him from some low-class tanuki's pranks...
A hiss of protest left his lips as he felt the slime and mud on his brother's person, mud from the hole the tanuki had shoved him into.
Inuyasha was going to Owe Him for this.
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A/N:
So that whole "Kono Sesshoumaru" thing. "Kono" is an honorific way of saying "this" but was also a way of addressing oneself with High Regard. For a Lord especially, it was far more typical, apparently, back then at least, than a lot of people who grew up in an English-speaking Western culture would understand by nature. Research suggests-well I'll get to the point. I often write it in as a self-slip, a sort of a Freudian behavior. It's probably not exactly consistent with how Rumiko Takahashi herself would use it, but that's how I roll with it. The English transliteration of this behavior never really fully conveyed how it would have looked or sounded to a Japanese eye or ear, nor did all the wildly overdone stories where he never does anything else help to correct this misconception. Sesshoumaru does know how to use "watashi" ("I") just as well as he knows that he is not "Sono Sesshoumaru" (because that would infer that he is suggesting the person who is listening to him is psychologically closer to him than he is to himself.) So what it really suggests is a self-declaration of his own worth, whether for intimidation, confirmation, reassurance, or...well. "This" and "that" words are called demonstratives and you can look up the Ko-So-A-Do- / -No-re Japanese demonstratives on Google if you care any more than that.
