Tuesday, October 5, 2004

inuyasha 14
"Inuyasha, you're being completely unreasonable!" Kagome hissed at him, her cheeks still flushed as she cast a glance back to the highly amused faces of Miroku and Sango.

She couldn't think of anything that could have been more embarrassing than waking up to the sounds of badly-muffled hysterical laughter, only to find herself tangled so hopelessly around Inuyasha that she'd had to wait for the horrid sounds to rouse him as well before she could even move.

While Shippo slept on, dead to world under her shirt, she'd managed to crane her head down to find Sango and Miroku on the ground below. They'd brought along her pack, but that had carelessly been dropped in what she imagined was their current laughing fit. They had their hands clamped over their mouths, peering up at her predicament without the slightest hint of sympathy for her plight.

Kagome had been whispering down to them, pleading for quiet but threatening all sorts of retribution and only managing to set them off more. Their amusement had prompted her to attempt to extricate herself from the hanyou, but the more she tried to shift about and escape his hold, the tighter the sleeping arms became. She'd given up on getting free on her own, glaring down at the pair before shaking Inuyasha's shoulders and calling him name to wake him up.

Inuyasha had taken his time about it too. She knew the moment he woke when he ears started to twitch, flattening down and then turning first to her and then towards the source of the laughter. Yet he still sat there, eyes closed and fully aware of her situation, pretending for a while that he couldn't hear the pair down below them. She'd given into the urge and brought her knee into his kidney with as much force as she could muster from her tangled position before he finally cracked one eye open and looked down at her and then Sango and Miroku with his most bored expression.

Then he'd taken a ridiculously long time stretching, quite a trick considering he hadn't taken his arms away from her waist the entire time, just shifted his position, tensing and untensing his muscles when they both knew it was all for show. But finally he gave into her growled demands, though not quite in the way she had hoped.

Without warning, he simply kicked one leg over the branch so that he was seated on it rather than straddling it and rolled off. Kagome shrieking, the action nearly stopping her heart and reflexively she wound her arms tightly around his neck and renewed her grip on his waist with her legs. That is, until he landed with effortless silence on the ground and gave her what could only be described as an evil grin before taking his arms away from her completely.

Unfortunately for her, by letting go and folding his arms casually behind his back, the chuckling hanyou had effectively given their friends a perfect look of just how tightly she was clinging to him on her own.

And that bastard had the audacity to grin about it when the others hit the ground laughing all over again.

She'd detangled herself from Inuyasha so quickly it was a wonder she hadn't ripped his robes off and taken them with her, her face so red it looked as though she'd been staked out in the sun for weeks. But just as she was forming an angry tirade to cover her embarrassment, Shippo just had to ruin her ability to yell at the hanyou in a timely manner.

The baby kitsune happened to choose that precise moment to slip out from under her shirt and make his way to her shoulder, complaining he was hungry and could Kagome please make him breakfast?

All in all, it was the most singularly embarrassing morning of Kagome's life and, if the proud look on his face was any indication, one of Inuyasha's most satisfying.

For him it had only gotten better, but for Kagome, it went from bad to worse.

Directly after breakfast the hanyou was moving them out back towards home, but setting them at a sedate pace that normally would have driven him out of his skull. The reason became obvious when after they had barely begun walking, Inuyasha grabbed Kagome's hand and began to recite, "The Rules."

It certainly didn't help her sanity or their amusement that he spoke clearly enough for Miroku, Sango, and Shippo to hear every word.

"You disobeyed me, Kagome, and it's not going to happen again," Inuyasha said calmly, still leading her along behind him with his hold on her hand. He briefly wondered if she was even aware she had interlocked her fingers with his on her own, but decided against mentioning that. "You put yourself in danger and that is completely unacceptable," he squeezed her hand to emphasize his point.

"Until we sort this out, you will not be out of my sight, regardless of the circumstances," he glanced back at Sango to reinforce that particular rule, grunting when he noticed the exterminator was looking at them both with a look that was at the same time pitying and ridiculously amused. Shaking his head and grumbling about nosy companions, he turned back to Kagome's blushing face, "I'm keeping you right where I can reach out and grab you so that nothing like this has a chance to happen again. I've done a shitty job of protecting you and that's going to stop."

She looked at him in surprise at the fierce determination in his voice, 'Does he... think he's responsible?'

"Once we've gone far enough for today, you and I are going to sit down and you're going to tell me what happened that night from start to finish," he continued brusquely, yet his thumb was absently stroking her hand and distracting her to no end. "No more secrets. At all. That means all the things from your time too. I want to know everything so we don't get any more nasty surprises."

Kagome set her jaw when she heard a strangled sound from Miroku, glaring straight ahead and refusing to acknowledge the priest, "You wouldn't understand everything in my time, Inuyasha."

"I'll learn," he shrugged nonchalantly, pulling her forward to wrap his arm around her waist and bring her to his side. "You understand it, so how difficult could it be?"

"Have I told you yet this morning how much I'd love to strangle you?" she gritted out, wondering if her face was going to be permanently red because of the hanyou's confusing behavior. She had never blushed so much in her life!

He just patted her shoulder and smirked, "I'll keep it in mind."

Kagome responded by sticking out her foot and tripping him, ducking under his arm as he went down. She gave him an irritated huff and kept walking, trying to ignore the renewed laughter of her friends behind her, with one new voice mixing in.

**

True to his word, the moment they stopped for the night, Inuyasha was standing in front of Kagome, his hand outstretched, "C'mon, Kagome. We have to talk."

"Can't it wait?" she gave him a hopeful look from her rather comfortable spot on the ground.

Inuyasha was already shaking his head before she'd even finished the sentence, "I put it off all day so we could think about it, but I need to know what happened. I'm not letting you get possessed again, and the sooner we figure out what caused it, the sooner we can fix it."

Miroku took that chance to interject, having regained enough to control to give her his perfected solemn expression, "Kagome-sama, this is a very serious situation. You should not challenge Inuyasha's request."

Kagome gave into her urge to kick the priest in the shins for his wording, glaring at him when he winced and gave her a "what did I do?" look. Kagome's expression darkened and she growled out, "Miroku-sama..."

Sango took pity on her friend, catching the priest by the ponytail and dragging him backwards, "You go on ahead, Kagome-chan, we can handle things here."

"Ite ite, Sango-chan, my hair!" Miroku wailed as she carted him away from the two staring rather blandly after them.

"Better than you head," she was grumbling back at him. "Let them sort it out, you brainless hentai, Inuyasha doesn't need that kind of help."

"You can be so cruel," he feigned a hurt look that was completely ignored as the exterminator released him to drop unceremoniously onto his head.

Kagome sighed, shaking her head and turned back to Inuyasha to slide her hand into his, "You're right. I think we should leave them alone for a bit."

"Keh," Inuyasha sent a disgusted look to the sprawled priest and turned to hoist Kagome onto his back. "Fucking lech."

"Be nice, Inuyasha, he's not really a bad guy," she scolded lightly as she climbed on, inwardly groaning. This could only mean this was going to be one of those "private" talks where he bounded off away from everyone else for an indeterminate distance, "Do we have to go so far away?"

"No interruptions this way," he shrugged, leaping off into the trees.

"Great... Lucky me," Kagome's lips quirked in annoyance, but she offered no other complaints. She HAD been putting this off...

"Don't make me say it," he warned softly but she could hear the smile in his voice.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what put it there, and she made a face at the back of his head, "You've been dying to say that to me, haven't you?"

He shrugged as he came so a stop in a rocky section of the woods, casually looking over the terrain for a suitable seat as he responded, "What? You mean use your own threat against you? Fuck, yes."

"Sometimes I think you're enjoying this mess too much," she tugged on his hair, smiling when he grunted, and turned his head to avoid another pull.

"Some of it," Inuyasha slid her off his back and walked to a large boulder that had been worn smooth from time and the elements. He took her by the waist and lifted her onto it, letting his hand move down to lightly stroke the tattoo before he pulled away and took a few steps back. "The rest of it though, absolutely not. Those are the parts we need to fix."

She rolled her eyes, "So you don't want me to find a way to break the subduing spell?"

He smirked at her, baring his fangs briefly with a glint in his amber eyes, "Now why the hell would I want you to do a silly thing like that, hn?"

Kagome's brows rose and her voice went dry as she leaned over to give his rosary a tug, "If I'm stuck, then so are you. I absolutely refuse to be the only one of us with a subduing spell."

"Fair enough."

"You can really be an ass, you know that?" she laughed softly, releasing the beads and sitting back.

"And you can be a stubborn bitch," he shrugged, but smiled to take the insult out of the words. "But I didn't bring you out here to expand your vocabulary. Remember, part of our agreement is that you tell me the whole story."

"Agreement nothing," she wrinkled her nose and gave him a light kick in the thigh, more to convey her irritation rather than actually hurt him. "You said that when you were rattling of your new set of 'rules' for what I can and can't do."

"For your protection," Inuyasha reminded her with a frown. "But I can always add to the list if it becomes necessary. I still haven't forgiven you for lying to me, but it's a lot more important to keep you safe."

"Inuyasha, you could drive me absolutely insane if I let you get to me," Kagome rubbed at her temples as she tucked her feet up beneath her on the smooth boulder.

"How would you act?" he snorted, folding his arms over his chest and leaning against a nearby tree. "Honestly, Kagome, if you were in my place, what would you do?"

She paused at that, looking off into the woods to give the question some real consideration before she shrugged and answered candidly, "I don't know."

"Don't you think you'd be more than a little concerned if I'd been possessed and you didn't know why? Or how?" he arched one brow in question.

"Damn, I hate it when you make sense," she growled under her breath. "I never thought one stupid spell would bring out this side of you."

Inuyasha smiled affectionately at her disgruntled tone, "Who knew? Start talking, Kagome. Fill in the holes for me."

Kagome rolled her eyes, leaning back as she obediently recited, "My friends came over the night I went back and wanted to take me out, so I went. I didn't think they would really set out to get me drunk."

"But they did," he commented, his chin lowered towards his chest and his eyes closed, but his ears were perked in her direction. He gave every impression of being deep in thought, and he was definitely listening carefully.

"Hai, they did. And before you puff up, it was just girls. They might be a little short-sighted, but they aren't stupid enough to mix in boys with a girl they just got drunk," she shot him a look when he opened his mouth, but that was apparently just what he needed to hear. He closed his mouth with a faint blush riding his cheeks and grumbled at her to go on.

Kagome's lips twitched faintly and she nodded, curling her knees to her chest so she could fold her arms over them and rest her chin on her forearms. "So I was drunk and everything was like a blur. I don't remember where we were but I felt this strong magic pulse and I wandered off to check it out. I know, I know, it wasn't smart..."

"I didn't say anything," Inuyasha pointed out, earning himself a speaking glare. "All right, I was thinking it," he admitted with a rueful smile.

Satisfied with the honest response, she nodded and looked away again before continuing, "I found a shrine, and I remember thinking it was bizarre because it was so old and it was in the middle of the city."

"And you went in."

"It was like a compulsion," Kagome's brows furrowed thoughtfully as she spoke. "I can't remember the monk's face, just that he had... marks, tattoos all over and he was bald. He looked surprised to see me, but then he smiled and said he was expecting me."

Inuyasha started growling at that, bristling at the thought of the monk and the gamut of emotions that Kagome had been run through since this incident, "Expecting you... you said that before."

"He gave me a cup of tea and from there everything is even fuzzier," she went on as though she hadn't heard him, her eyes introspective. "All I remember is this tingling feeling and hearing a buzz. But the next thing I can remember is being out in the street like I'd never left. My friends didn't even seem to realize I'd been missing and when I looked around the magic and the shrine were just...gone. It wasn't until I was about to shower that I saw it. I was wearing a bandage."

Inuyasha was silent for a long moment before he inquired, "Is that all?"

Kagome blushed and turned to look at him, "I felt the magic in it when I touched it. It got stronger when I did that, and that's when it started to...pulse."

He nodded, leaning his head back against the tree, "All right. So... you touching it had to be some sort of activation if that's when the magic started, and then when you came through the well you heard me yelling and that set the word."

"That's about it," she agreed easily. "Kaede told me that there wasn't any way to reverse it if it was a tattoo and that a spell worked into something like that pretty much made it permanent."

Inuyasha grinned at that, turning his head down to look at her irritated face, "So if yours is the tattoo, I suppose this means I'm really not losing my necklace any time soon, hn?"

"No chance in hell, Inuyasha," Kagome gave him a dry glare.

"Didn't think so," he let his smile fade as his thoughts took a more serious turn. "Did he say anything except that he was expecting you?"

She thought about it for a moment and shook her head, "No, nothing else."

"Damn," he frowned, scowling in frustration. "It just doesn't make sense."

"No kidding," Kagome snorted in disgust.

"I still don't understand why you didn't tell me about this sooner," he looked back in the direction they'd left the rest of the group, his ears flicking in that direction momentarily as though caught by a stray sound.

"I answered that already," her shoulders tensed a little.

"But you didn't have to be scared," Inuyasha frowned at her, his eyes showing a glint of confused hurt before he covered it with subdued anger.

"Hell, Inuyasha, what was I supposed to do?" Kagome let her own temper rise to meet his. "It's your name!" she growled out, before she fell back into a moment of uneasy silence.

Inuyasha waited patiently, watching her profile as the muscle in her jaw starting jumping with strain. It was clear that she wanted to say something else and he had a pretty good idea what it was going to be.

"You haven't even said how you feel about it being your name," she blushed, looking away from him self-consciously.

Yep, definitely what he'd been expecting.

"Kagome," he kept his voice low, but couldn't help the scowl that touched his features when a light touch of fear entered her scent again. "Dammit, bitch, quit getting scared every time you bring up that thing!"

"I can't help it, okay!" she rounded on him, her hands fisting tightly, her eyes shimmering with the threat of tears. "This has turned my whole fucking life upside-down, Inuyasha, don't you understand that!?"

Inuyasha shook his head, unfolding his arms and crossing the space separating them before giving her a nudge to indicate he wanted her to make room. When she slid aside, he perched calmly and looked off in the same direction she'd turned her own gaze, "It isn't that bad."

Kagome turned back with the most disbelieving look he'd ever seen, "Not...that...bad...?"

He dropped his hand down between them, tapping a claw on her jeans over the tattoo, "How long has it been? That you and I have known each other?"

Confused by the abrupt change in topic, she frowned and gave him a suspicious look, 'I'd almost rather have the immature jerk I'm used to. Who knew Inuyasha could be like this? But...the touching is nice...' she cut off that thought when she felt her cheeks start to warm.

Finally she just cleared her throat and shrugged, "About two years, why?"

"Do you spend more time here or in your time," Inuyasha continued, fighting the urge to smile again when her eyes filled with annoyance.

"Here, but that's-"

"Is there a man there you like being with?" his brows lowered at that thought, moving his hand away from her hip.

"Well, no-"

"You said years ago that you wanted to be by my side, has that changed?" his expression relaxed, but only slightly. He held his breath as he waited for her answer this time.

The blush she'd been able to keep down broke free of her control to flood her cheeks, and she dropped her gaze as she answered quietly, "No."

Inuyasha smiled gently, sliding an arm around her shoulders and tucking her against him, "I have one more question, Kagome, and I need you to be honest."

Kagome was nervous at the complete gravity in his voice, swallowing a lump in her throat and nodding, "A...all right..."

"Is it that you were tattooed that bothers you or is it that it was my name that was tattooed on you?" he tilted her chin up with his thumb to look down into her eyes. "Tell me the truth."

Kagome's eyes widened, leaning back in surprise, "I...I hadn't even thought-"

Inuyasha's own expression was carefully blank, "Think about it now."

She looked away from him, her hand going down to her hip as she chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully. Inuyasha's hand had moved to her arm absently rubbing from shoulder to elbow in a soothing motion, but there was an odd tension radiating off him that brought a frown to her face. He was waiting, and apparently not very patiently.

Kagome let out a heavy sigh, ignoring everything around her so she could focus on the loaded question he'd just dropped on her. She'd been so determined to hide it from them, so concerned about his reaction that she'd never thought about her own. Was she that worried about her own feelings? No...

She lifted a hand to her mouth as she had a rather humbling revelation. No, she'd just never had to think about it because she'd already known how she felt about it, and she didn't have the heart to lie about that. Not when it sounded so important to him.

"That I... was tattooed," she answered him quietly, closing her eyes as she waited for how he'd respond to that.

She vaguely heard the quiet rumble in his throat as he pulled her close enough to drop his chin on the top of her head, "You belong with me, Kagome. Whatever else, you have to know that. Stop trying to do this on your own... Let me take care of you."

Kagome slid her arm around his waist, biting down hard on her lower lip when she felt her throat tighten and tears well in her eyes happily. "I think I do know," she mumbled into his chest.

"Good," Inuyasha rumbled in satisfaction, unable to stop the smile that had pulled at his lips when he heard her answer. "Then my name on you will only help me keep you safe..."

However he was unable to tamp down the nagging suspicion teasing the back of his mind. It had been so difficult getting anything at all out of her about this, was it possible she would still try to hide more? "Is there anything else that you need to tell me about all this, Kagome?"

Kagome shook her head, unwilling to bring up the disturbing voice so close on the heels of explaining everything about that night, "Not yet."

"But you'll tell me if anything happens?" he pressed, a low note of command leaking into his voice.

"Hai," she promised softly, letting her eyes drift closed again.


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