Evanescent
By: HalcyonMoments11
Heaven help me
My mind changes like the wind.
Please excuse me
I don't know where to begin,
But I didn't think I cared.
I could be your friend,
But I'm unprepared
Oh, I've never felt like this.
I was unaware
That you were lighting flares,
Now I'm running scared
Oh, how did it come to this?
-Gabrielle Aplin (Waking Up Slow)
"You'll wear a mark into the engawa if you don't stop pacing, Inuyasha."
Sango sighs as the hanyou passes the door of their room again, grumbling, "They should have found us by now… they know we can't come to them!" His ears twitch in her direction before he disappears beyond the shoji door once more.
Shippō barks a laugh beside her, tilting his head as he shifts the paper he's coloring on the floor to add a new design. "Might as well give it up, Sango. Dog-breath's got an itch he can't scratch with Kagome on the other side of that barrier he can't break."
The taijiya rolls her eyes, absent-mindedly scratching Kirara behind an ear as the neko stretches on her lap.
"What's that, runt?" His red-clad figure finally lingers for a moment in the doorway, a clawed hand on the door frame as he leans into the room menacingly.
The kitsune swallows audibly and holds up his hands—crayons and all—in a wave of innocence. "N-nothing!"
"That's what I thought," Inuyasha bites back, adding, "Besides, I could break that barrier easily with Red Tessaiga 'n woulda done it if those two weren't on the other side of it."
"It's only been a day," Sango tries again, finally catching the hanyou's amber gaze. Shippō darts behind her as the inu's attention is diverted, peering around her arm carefully. She knows this place has Inuyasha on edge—the unfamiliar people, the overwhelming number of smells, the barrier, the separation from their friends—and she knows that he's also concerned that Miroku and Kagome may not solve this issue before the Shingetsu—a little over a week away—but his anxiety is also putting her on edge.
She smiles kindly, stating "Breaking down that barrier is not going to get them back to us any sooner; and it's not going to make their lives any easier."
The tension in his shoulders fades slightly, his grip on the doorframe loosening. He sighs a "feh" in response and shifts so that his back leans against the door instead.
"I'd hate to see what you'd have done to Mizukagami if Sango-chan wasn't here to talk some sense into you."
The miko's voice is teasing, warm as she and the houshi round the corner of the inn's engawa leading to the inu-tachi's quarters. Sango laughs at the timing, raising a hand in greeting as Inuyasha spins around to greet their friends.
He isn't fast enough. The kitsune gets to them first, zipping past the hanyou and leaping into Kagome's arms with a tearful grin and a cheer of her name. Inuyasha crosses his arms behind his head with a huff, and Kagome ignores him in favor of rustling her kit's hair fondly and then follows him into the rooms they've been provided by Osamu at the kit's beckoning. She greets Sango with a smile, answering Shippō's barrage of questions—What have you been doing? Where have you been? What's the shiro and daimyo like? What's with your funny outfits?—as she admires the drawings he shoves into her hands to look at once she takes a seat beside the taijiya.
Miroku follows her into the space absentmindedly, briefly greeting Inuyasha and Sango as he steps into the room and sits on the opposite side of the taijya, smiling gently as the neko youkai hops from her lap into his with a mewed greeting.
There is something off about him, something contemplative and bothered about the quiet he carries into the room, barely mustering a response when Inuyasha grumbles: "Keh, it's about damn time you two showed up."
The houshi replies simply, "It's not exactly a small jōkamachi, Inuyasha; it took us some time to find you."
"Find us? Didn't Osamu tell you we were staying at his family's inn?" Sango questions curiously.
"Hai, but he failed to share the location."
Sango hums in response, concern and confusion lining her features. Osamu had ensured them that he would inform Miroku and Kagome of their whereabouts when he left them here the day before.
"Then how'd you find us?" Shippō asks from Kagome's lap where he happily tears into a small candy supply she has unearthed from the depths of her backpack for him.
"Some villagers were kind enough to share information with us while we toured parts of Mizukagami earlier today," the houshi replies.
Something in the way he phrases that statement makes the taijya lift a hand to cuff him on the back of the head. He winces when she does, rubbing the offended area and meeting her chocolate gaze with an expression that is both surprised and aggrieved. "W-what was that for, Sango-san?!" he questions, voice taking on an indignant tone.
"We all know what you mean when you say 'villagers shared information' with you, hentai," she retorts.
Kagome muffles a laugh on the opposite side of her, drawing their attention. Something settles in the monk's posture when he regards the miko, even as her blue eyes dart between Sango's now amused quirk of her lips and his violet hues almost bashfully. Whatever has kept him moving stiffly, his lips thin with a tension he has been carrying since they joined the rest of the inu-tachi at the inn, unfurls beneath the miko's gaze.
"If ya had ta resort ta being a lech to find us… do ya think they're trying to keep us apart?" Inuyasha asks gruffly, shifting the attention of the room once more.
"Ano… I don't think so…" Kagome replies quietly, contemplatively. "They seem very protective of information about this place and the daimyo… We still don't know exactly what they need from us," she adds. Miroku hums his agreement as the rest of the group considers this quietly for a moment.
"What have you learned and how can we help?" Sango inquires, spurring the two to share what they have learned in their brief meetings with the daimyo and her daughter, of the wani's attack and the damage they witnessed during their tour of Mizukagami earlier that day, and the contrasting and, at times, contradicting information they have gathered through conversations with Kaito, Osamu, and other people both within and outside the shiro. Sango, Inuyasha, and Shippō share oddities they have noticed in the jōkamachi in turn.
They strategize a meeting to examine the ruined sector of Mizukagami together the next morning, and, noting the late hour, gather a few supplies of their own from Kagome's pack to return to the shiro.
Kagome hugs the kitsune and taijiya goodbye before stepping out into the night and casting a brilliant smile over her shoulder in the hanyou's direction when he grumbles a "be careful" in response to her wishing them all sweet dreams. Miroku follows after her, casting a rejected sigh in the taijiya's direction when she swats his hands away with his proffered hug.
"Careful up there, Houshi. Something's off 'bout this place," Inuyasha states as Miroku pauses at the threshold of the room to grab his shakujō from the corner he'd left it in upon entering. Miroku nods once in response, turning to follow the miko out the door.
"Oh, and don't give me a reason to show this jōkamachi what the Red Tessaiga can do."
The hanyou's amber gaze catches his amethyst with the warning and Miroku huffs a laugh, waving his hand dismissively over his shoulder in response and ignoring the way his pulse picks up as he closes the door behind him.
Their return to the shiro is marked by silence, by precise, careful movements around each other when they arrive in their chambers, by cautious glances that never quite meet. This quiet is nothing like the serene simplicity of the evening prior, of the hushed warmth of that morning. There is nothing tranquil here; it is awkward, stifling. It is a harbored breath, held so long that his lungs are burning; the raw feeling of a chapped, split lip that he can only be sure is bleeding when he flicks out his tongue to wet it; the unexpected, tender burn beneath his skin where a bruise has not yet bloomed. He hates it, is sure he cannot take it much longer, but he's not sure how to break it, how to bridge the space between them.
Kagome readies herself for bed first, changing into a pair of pajamas she had grabbed before they left the rest of the inu-tachi at the inn while he starts a fire to chase away the dampness of their room. Miroku takes his time in the changing room afterwards, pausing at the muffled clack of the crystals tucked away in a pocket of his kesu. He reaches for them and his heart is in his throat again, thundering in his ears.
He tugs them from the pocket hesitantly, a tangled mass of crystal and twisted leather cords from having been hastily stuffed into his kesu earlier that evening. He hardly remembers doing so. He recalls the old woman behind the stall, the way her dark gaze assessed him and his miko companion, the way Kagome had spun away from him and the booth, stuttering and face aflame.
He had been focused on the story of the Tide Jewels the shopkeeper had shared, trying to decipher the elements of the narrative that remained important to the circumstances that had brought them to the jōkamachi. He had been occupied with trying to ignore the way Kagome's fingers curled delicately over the crystals in her palm and pressed gently into his own as he lingered, body curved carefully around her, hand hovering over hers. And so when the flustered miko speedily retreated to the streets of Mizukagami, he hadn't quite understood. Before he could follow, the elder woman behind the stall laid out the appraisal she had come to in her observations.
"…one can only yearn to understand how the tide churns so long before they're swept under; as this is true for the ocean, so it is for love."
He recalled the cacophony of noise in his head, booming in his ears, in his chest.
Love.
Denial, panic, something hot and leaden that knotted in his stomach, caught in his throat, forced his breath out of him quaking, as if his lungs were struggling to drive something out, out.
The shimmering blue and purple hues of the crystals in his palm feel weighted, impossibly heavy considering their size, just as they had when the shop keeper had first tucked them carefully into his hand and given him a little push in the direction Kagome had fled.
Love.
'I don't—. I can't be…'
There are other words for how he feels about his miko companion: friendship, devotion, fondness, trust. There are even words for what they have flirted with in their short time in Mizukagami: intrigue, curiosity, attraction, temptation, lust. He knows they toe a fine line, knows he purposely prods those boundaries between them at times, can recall a handful of moments in just the past several months where he's certain she has stepped up to the line herself, reached out, pulled him in.
And yet that single word resounds within him even now, drowning everything else out.
Love.
He clenches his fist around the crystals, ignores the way his breath trembles as he breathes in, and tucks them back into his kesu. Every part of him feels tumultuous, unsettled, unmoored.
The houshi disrobes, folds the clothing the shiro has gifted him and carefully tucks it beside Kagome's matching miko attire, and then shrugs into his sleeping yukata. He washes his face, grateful for the coolness of the water on his skin, takes a steadying breath and then returns to their shared quarters.
By the time he emerges, the miko is fussing with a pile of blankets by the small fire pit at the center of the room and he watches her curiously for a moment before asking: "what are you doing?"
Kagome startles and meets his gaze over her shoulder.
Something in him unravels, gulps for air.
"A-ano… since I had the futon last night, I figured it was only fair to let you take it tonight."
"That's kind of you, but not necessary."
"I'll be fine here." She looks away to tuck the fold of a blanket into a crevasse in the cushions around the fire. Miroku takes a few slow steps toward her, attempting to catch her gaze once more.
"In the whirlwind that was our day, I forgot to request a second futon. I can remedy that tomorrow. Until then, you should take it."
She waves her hand in his direction dismissively. "I'm good here. These cushions are better than my sleeping bag!"
"I insist."
"So do—wha—hey!"
His body moves of its own accord—a hand reaching out to grasp beneath her elbow, tugging her to her feet, the other sweeping beneath her knees before she can steady herself to lift her into his arms. Her hands grasp for something solid to regain her bearings, her fingers clutching at his yukata and wrapping around his neck, tangling in his hair.
"M-Miroku-sama, put me down! What are you doing?!"
He flashes a winsome, playful smile down at her that portrays none of the unwonted restlessness he feels as his name tumbles from her lips in a hot breath that flutters across the skin of his collarbone, his throat. Ignoring the noise in his head, how unsettled he still feels, he falls back on the familiar.
"Taking you to bed" he practically purrs in response.
The flush that blooms across her cheeks is immediate. Her fingers twitch, tightening their hold on the collar of his yukata, in his hair, whether out of apprehension or something else, he's not sure, but the sensations those small touches stir set his heart pounding again.
"W-what? N-no, I'm—"
Before Kagome can complete her sentence, Miroku quickly adjusts her in his arms with intent to toss her carefully onto the futon, but she shifts as he does, arms wrapping more fully around his neck and pulling him off balance. They tumble to the futon together in a flurry of tangled limbs and muffled, startled cries.
The houshi catches himself on his hands and knees above her, bracing himself against the weight of her that still hangs from the arms secured around his neck and shoulders. His stomach flips when her azure eyes flutter open to meet his amethyst gaze.
He sees the way her breath hitches, pupils dilating in a way that he's sure echoes his own. He is back in the intoxicating proximity of that morning, heart-racing, breathless, and at a loss for words finding the miko in his arms.
Kagome's grip around his neck slackens gradually and she lowers herself onto the futon in a way that seems agonizingly slow, hands sliding down his neck, across his shoulders, and lingering on his chest as her back settles onto the futon below them. For a moment, they are both still, and he aches to close the space between them, capture her lips in his, and mold his body to hers.
Instead, his voice at a whisper, he says: "There. That wasn't so bad, was it?"
Kagome barks a laugh that tugs a grin to his lips as she gives him a little shove where her hands remain on his chest. He rolls away from her with the push and lies beside her on the futon with a huffed laugh of his own.
"What a day, huh?" Kagome mutters after a moment, eyes on the stone ceiling of their quarters.
Miroku hums a response, his gaze also on the stone curved high above them. "It was certainly eventful."
A comfortable silence envelops them then, and they lay together shoulder-to-shoulder. As always, this shift in atmosphere seems easy, the give and take between them effortless despite the clamorous feelings this day has wrought.
Kagome turns her head in his direction after some time, eyes surveying his profile, assessing. The monk watches her out of the corner of his eyes and waits.
"How did you know where we were going tonight?" she asks quietly, as if this is a question she has had on her mind all evening.
A small smirk tugs at the corners of his lips as he turns his gaze fully toward her. "Did you think I was simply flirting with those women this afternoon?"
This earns him an eyeroll and a scoff. "So, you admit you were womanizing?"
Miroku 'tsked'. "Strategically fraternizing."
Kagome shakes her head, amusement curving the corners of her lips into a small smile as she inquires, "Is it the palmistry that differentiates your philandering from strategic fraternizing?"
The houshi chuckles. "That, and a few other tricks I have up my sleeves."
"Do those tricks usually involve using your reiki?"
He understands immediately what she's referring to, recalls the moment he had held her hand in his own as they walked through the city that afternoon and—feeling flirtatious, emboldened, enticed by their easy bantering—called his reiki to his fingertips as he trailed them across her palm and relished the way it caused her breath to catch.
She has looked away from him, a faint flush lining her features, and so she doesn't catch the mischievous glint in his violet eyes as he raises himself up on an elbow carefully, angling himself toward her.
Miroku reaches for her wrist, turns her hand toward him on the futon between them, and when she still doesn't look at him he echoes his actions from that afternoon, pressing his reiki lined fingertips into her palm to trace a few of the lines there. Her attention snaps to him then, azure orbs a bit wider, chest raising with a deep shuddering breath. Her own simmers beneath the surface, warm and enticing.
"I can't believe I've not yet had the pleasure of reading your palm," he states, his voice silken and playful.
"Ano… I've had reason to be wary of the 'tricks' up your sleeves."
Miroku chuckles, a charming smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Without letting his ki fade, he draws his finger along a line that begins at the webspace between her thumb and index finger, curves into the center of her palm, and dips toward her wrist.
"This is your life line," he says quietly, glancing up at her through dark lashes to ensure she's following his movements. "The curve and length of it signifies strength, enthusiasm, and vitality. The breaks in the line," he pauses at both, "indicate a change in the direction of your life."
She's following the way his fingers dance across her palm closely.
"This…" he traces a line that begins at the base of her middle finger and stretches down to the base of her palm, "is your fate line. It's deep, suggesting your life is strongly controlled by fate. The two breaks and slight changes in direction in this line illustrate moments where changes in your life have been or will be caused by outside forces."
"Like Mistress Centipede?" Kagome asks quietly.
Miroku nods. He has heard the priestess's stories about the youkai that had pulled her through the Hone Kui no Ido for the first time and began her travels through the Sengoku Jidai. "More than likely," he replies, meeting her gaze.
"And the other break in both lines, could it be when I met Inuyasha?" She flushes slightly, looks back down at her palm, and then continues quickly, "Or, maybe, when we defeat Naraku?"
The houshi ignores the way his stomach dips as her first question sinks in and hums in response to her second. "Perhaps. Palmistry doesn't predict the future, so much as detect patterns and potential."
He turns his attention back to her palm and presses the pad of his thumb to a line that starts at the base of her index finger, dips toward the center of her palm as it crosses it horizontally, and curls around the outside edge of her hand.
"This is your heartline," he says, dragging his thumb along it. "A long, curved line often means you express your emotions and feelings freely." He glances up, smirks when he catches her gaze. "No surprise there."
"H-hey!" she protests half-heartedly, nudging his elbow with her own.
Miroku chuckles and traces the line in her palm once more. "Interestingly, your heartline is a bit wavy…" he pauses and waits for her to react.
It doesn't take long. She sits up eagerly on her elbow, the top of her head almost knocking against his. "What does that mean?" she asks curiously.
He suppresses a laugh. "Well, a wavy heartline can mean that you'll have more than one lover in your life."
When she meets his amethyst orbs, he waggles his eyebrows suggestively. She flushes and he feels the way her reiki responds with her, rising to press back against his own, all electricity and heat.
"So, that leaves the question… we know one…"
"W-what?"
"I'm curious… who else has captured your heart, Kagome-sama?"
"N-no one! There's no one else!"
A smirk lifting the corners of his lips. "Could it be Kouga-san?"
Her flush deepens as she shakes her head. "No! Of course not!"
Miroku hums, amused, tilting his head slightly, his forehead ever-so-slightly brushing hers. "Perhaps, someone back in your time? A classmate?"
Her embarrassment wanes a bit, and she huffs a laugh in response. "Ha! Hojo-kun wishes."
"Oh-ho! The potential classmate suitor has a name?"
"No! No, Hojo-kun is not a s-suitor! I mean, he's kind and caring, but he's just… he can be rather irritating at times and I—"
"Well, then we're running out of options, aren't we?" Mirkou interjects teasingly. "It certainly can't be Sesshomaru-sama…"
Kagome winces in response, drawing another chuckle from the monk.
"Then who else is there?"
"You?"
Miroku leans back slightly, breath catching inexplicably in his chest as he attempts to ignore the way his heart flutters in his chest. Her azure eyes widen and she tugs her hand away from his to cover her lips as if hoping to catch and stifle the words that have already tumbled forth.
"Me?" He hopes the question sounds flirtatious, hopes the longing he feels like a fist clenched in his chest, in his throat does not come through.
"I-I… I was just… I was a-answering your question. I didn't mean… Miroku-sama, I…"
He forces a laugh that comes out in a huffed breath and reaches up to gently pull her hand away from her mouth, still balancing carefully, precariously on his elbow. He brushes her bangs out of her eyes carefully with his other hand and trails his fingers along the edge of her face, hooks them around her jawline to cup her cheek, the pad of his thumb brushing across her cheekbone as softly, deliberately as he had traced the lines in her palm with his fingertips.
The flush on her cheeks has warmed her skin. He feels as if his own is humming.
His eyes follow the flutter of her ebony lashes, trace the angle of her nose, the cupid's bow of her lips. She's holding her breath. He is barely breathing.
"Just don't let yourself drown beneath their weight."
The old woman's voice comes back to him now, thrums in the back of his mind, mingling with every inclination he has to lean forward, to press his lips against hers, to let himself fall. Fall into her. Wrap himself around her. Drown in the warmth, in the sensations fluttering through his body in this moment, a golden glow beneath his skin as comfortable as the dawn they'd awoken in that morning.
That's not what this is. It can't be. Is it?
"That's the difference, isn't it?"
Kagome's voice is soft, a flush of hot air against his skin, but it's just enough to draw him out of his thoughts, to drag his eyes back up to hers.
"What?" he asks at a whisper.
"T-this is the difference. The difference between you flirting and 'strategically fraternizing.' R-right?"
Miroku's eyebrows raise as her question settles in and he cannot help the laugh that escapes him then, is immediately relieved to hear, to feel her own laugh join his as they fall back to the futon side-by-side once more. There is a mutual fondness here, a tenderness he understands with her—an intimacy he has never shared with anyone else. And he doesn't know how to feel as this realization settles in as he lays beside her, as they continue to laugh quietly together. There is a storm churning in his chest, in his head, a muddled deluge of fear over what this could mean for the amiable relationship they have, the devoted companionship they've built; of guilt tied to every hushed expression of affection he and Sango have shared; of the envy that has lingered, coiled within him since the first days he began travelling with the inu-tachi and Inuyasha staked his claims.
He's not sure when his head slipped beneath the surface of the alluring give and take, the push and pull between them. He doesn't know how to navigate these new found sensations, can't imagine how to locate and break the surface now. All that he's certain off when he turns to catch her ocean blue eyes once more is that he's been caught, that he's sinking deeper, and there's nothing he can do but swim.
You know I've never been so lonely on my own
And it shows
'Cause I don't see you like I used to
Now I'm going back on the things that I know
Oh, all my nights taste like gold
Yeah, when I'm with you it's like everything glows
And all my days, we can lay low
Yeah, when we're waking up, we're waking up slow.
-Gabrielle Aplin (Waking Up Slow)
Vocabulary: miko – priestess; houshi – monk; reiki/ki – spiritual powers; engawa – porch; hanyou – half demon; taijiya – demon slayer; neko – cat; kitsune – fox; Shingetsu – New Moon; inu – dog; shiro – castle; daimyo – powerful landholding magnate; wani – sea monster; jōkamachi – city; kesu – outer robes; ano – well; Hone Kui no Ido – Bone Eater's Well; Sengoku Jidai – Feudal Era; inu-tachi – dog pack;
A/N: A longer chapter to make up for my delayed update. It's been a difficult couple of months, but I appreciate you all sticking with this story and for all of your kind words!
