Just Like a Cat by Neutron
Happy Birthday to Chie!
“It’s hopeless.” Kagome didn’t care that she was pouting, or that her best friend was groaning at her yet again, because it was true.
“I swear if I have to hear about him one more time, all while you seem allergic to actually talking to him, I am going to catfish him by pretending that I am you,” Shippō grumbled, but not before throwing a fry in his mouth. “And stop calling him Lord Sesshōmaru; it sounds weird.”
“But he is!” Kagome whined. “He is tall and gorgeous and has this long silver hair that is also sort of pearly? Ugh, and his eyes. They peer into my soul, Shippō!”
“So talk to him.” Shippō stuffed another fry into his mouth.
Okay, sure, they had been going around this point for a long time. Ever since Kagome set foot into her comparative literature class and sat next to the tall and physically perfect demon with the purple stripes on his face and the half-moon and the ears and the bored golden eyes and…
Kagome was hopeless.
“Remember that one time that I—”
“That you tried?” Shippō finished Kagome’s sentence. “And he looked at you, rolled his eyes and walked away? Why yes, Kagome, I do believe that I remember that time. Because you’ve told me about it now at least fourteen different times.”
“But it’s still trueeeeee!” Kagome dramatically slumped into her chair at the diner, her pasta still sitting mostly uneaten. “And there was also the—”
“The time that you asked Sesshōmaru if he had done the reading, and all he said was ‘yes’?... Um yeah, at least a dozen times.” Shippō was officially no longer very fun to be around.
“He said ‘yeah’, not ‘yes’, and he also looked really offended, okay?” Kagome wasn’t fixating—she wasn’t.
“Kagome… Kagome… Kagome…” Shippō tut-tutted her; the edge of exasperation in his voice kept Kagome from immediately retorting. “You talk about him as if he’s some sort of untouchable god. No wonder you weird him out…” Shippō then clapped his hands together and continued. “You need to stop treating him like a god and start treating him like… a cat.”
“A… cat?” Kagome surely misheard Shippō.
“Yeah, a cat.” Shippō threw Kagome that sad-but-accepting look that he sometimes did when he thought she was being extra-stupid. “Because treating him like a human being is not working for you.”
“He’s technically a demon,” Kagome retorted.
“And you’re an idiot,” Shippō huffed. “Treat him like a cat. Seriously. And if that doesn’t work? Then at least you have your answer about how Lord Sesshōmaru feels about you.”
Kagome wanted to argue, really she did, but… well… two months into class and she had managed to get two spoken words, five eye rolls, one scoff, and half a scowl and… she wanted at least like a dozen spoken words.
“So you’re saying… treat a dog demon like a… cat.” Kagome was skeptical.
“It’s a smarter idea than any of the others ones that you’ve had,” Shippō drawled. “Now. Listen closely. I only want to have to tell you this once.”
Nonchalance.
Kagome was going to be the master of nonchalance. She was so blasé and relaxed that she didn’t have a care in the world. Nope. Not for the absolutely gorgeous demon who had taken his usual seat in one of the left-handed desks. Sesshōmaru had worn his hair back in a ponytail that day, something he only seemed to do one out of every four days, not that Kagome had tracked it.
She turned her head away quickly and looked back down at the laptop on her own desk. The one that she definitely had not created a doc called “Shippō’s Cat Advice” on that she was currently staring at. That would be weird.
Ignore, especially if they might be paying attention to you.
Kagome would ignore him! She would not look at the ice blue button-down that he was wearing, or the ponytail, or the way that he sometimes bit the top of his pen when he was concentrating, or how dog-eared his books always were from the class readings.
Or how intelligent his answers always were, even if sometimes they seemed so detached that Kagome wondered if there was anything that had ever interested him in his entire life (...she could be interesting…).
Nope. Ignoring.
Shippō was right. That was Kagome’s family cat—Buyo’s—style too. If you wanted him to come say hello, he would dramatically turn and walk away from you, tail in air. But the moment he did not think the attention was on him, he would be in your face.
This was a really stupid idea.
Sesshōmaru was not a cat, and it was insulting to treat him like one.
Except…
While Kagome was concentrating all her energy on her laptop, there was a flash of yellow.
Sesshōmaru’s eyes.
He was… looking at her?
Keep strong Kagome! It was not the first occasion that Sesshōmaru had looked her way in class, but this time, unlike all the other times, she would not look up and wear a shit-eating grin. She would keep looking at her laptop and she would type things and do the things people in classes do when they are not staring and drooling over a classmate that they had started calling Lord because reasons.
100 Years of Solitude is an excellent example of Magical Realism.
(also a bit of a mindfuck of a book…)
Kagome just needed to keep staring at her notes from her reading. Just had to be as interested as possible in it all. That would work! She could do this.
Plus, not paying attention to Sesshōmaru meant actually paying attention in class, and taking part in the discussions of the book (apparently others in class had similar opinions to her).
Huh. Gabriel García Marquez was critiquing elitism...
Maybe Kagome should have started to pay attention sooner…
When class was dismissed and Kagome packed up, she couldn’t help but smile. Not only did she get to take part in a discussion of the Buendia’s self-deception, she actually realized that some of the people in her class had come from a working class background, like she had.
She also didn’t notice Sesshōmaru looking at her, a lot more than usual.
You are the stupidest person ever with the worst taste in gifts.
Kagome stared down at the utterly idiotic item that was in her hands, then back at the desk that Sesshōmaru usually sat in, then back again.
Who buys a katana bookmark?
Apparently Kagome Higurashi buys a katana bookmark.
Instead of staring at his luscious hair or his perfect skin or his long and elegant muscles, Kagome decided to observe a little bit better. Because now that she was actively participating in the discussions in class, her “staring constantly at Sesshōmaru” time had been cut to next to nothing. That was good—really good, because it had made a difference in her papers and in her grades.
Apparently treating Sesshōmaru like a cat had freed enough of Kagome’s brain to, well, prove to herself that she was not actually stupid all the time, she was only stupid the times she was fixating completely on her crush.
That was how she noticed that he (aggravatingly) had the habit of folding over the edges of pages in the books he was reading to keep his place. That that was why all his books were dog-eared; it was because they were being abused terribly by the demon.
It made her laugh. Apparently Lord Sesshōmaru was not actually perfect. Kagome could fix him!
I saw this bookmark and thought of you. What did those books do to you personally? This will help you fight to remember your place without collateral damage! —Kagome
The puns were definitely bad. But being intentionally corny was now considered cool? Apparently? And the idea of trying to be serious about buying Sesshōmaru a sword-shaped bookmark to lecture him on his book abuse sounded like a kamikaze activity, and if Kagome was going to go find herself a hole to die in, she wanted to do it through a terrible dad joke, not through a persnickety lecture.
Just do it. Worst that is going to happen is eye roll number six, Kagome pep-talked herself. She dropped the note and the bookmark on Sesshōmaru’s desk before retreating to her normal seat, to open her laptop and ignore.
The class was still talking about 100 Years of Solitude, though now it was turning into a larger scale discussion of elitism, which was really interesting. Sadly, Kagome was not going to be concentrating on the class basically at all. Not when Kagome had presented Sesshōmaru with a sword. Not when she had been so successfully ignoring, even as she was fairly certain that wayward glances in her direction had increased, and that the scowl-to-mild smile ratio had increased (but she was ignoring).
Yep, she was currently ignoring Sesshōmaru pausing at his usual seat and picking up the little sword bookmark. She was also ignoring his opening the note to read it, and definitely ignoring him giving off a mild smile in her direction, sitting down, and placing the bookmark into his abused copy of 100 Years of Solitude.
She was also definitely not smiling because he had looked at her when he did it.
Because she was ignoring.
Alice in Wonderland was an amazing book specifically because you could read the writer into the book, high out of his mind on acid. Kagome had fun reading it, because she could not extricate the idea of Lewis Carroll tripping while he wrote, picturing the flamingos and the Mad Hatter and the queen.
That was probably why she was currently arguing with the annoying kid in class with the toad-like face, who did not appreciate the genius of the book.
“Alice kept a level head in the upside down world around her!” Kagome probably didn’t need to raise her voice, but something about Mukotsu always made her want to punch him in the face, as if even his looking at her poisoned her soul. “And she kept going!”
“Just because she is a girl does not automatically make her a good protagonist.” Kagome wanted to punch him so so so bad. “Just because you feminists cling to any female heroi—”
“Stop quoting from reddit, Mukotsu.” That was a dry voice that Kagome had rarely heard speak up in class before. A voice she should be ignoring. “And try reading the book first.”
Sesshōmaru, who barely ever said anything, had just defended her from their class’s resident incel. And his look was murderous enough that the toad stopped talking. Kagome looked at Sesshōmaru’s book, and saw, sticking out of the middle of it, the handle of the paper katana.
He was still using her bookmark!
She had continued to ignore (mostly), and only nodded once when Sesshōmaru nodded his thanks for the bookmark. And she had not gotten three whole smiles! (Which she ignored.)
This was the first time that an actual sentence had happened; though it was not aimed at her per se, it had done an extraordinary job murdering Mukotsu. Kagome needed to stay strong, needed to keep being nonchalant, but… it was getting harder by the day. Because Sesshōmaru was warming up, and Kagome wanted to charge after him to tell him that the one time he wore his hair in that braid made him look gorgeous and—
No. Just like the time she demanded snuggles from Buyo that he did not want to give her, and he took a swipe, Sesshōmaru would not be okay with her smothering energy.
It was never about treating him like a cat; it was about treating him like a person. Just because he was Kagome’s personification of perfection didn’t mean she had any right to treat him like that. And just because she took on his coldness as a personal quest to break through, did not mean that it was fair to him to force such expectations on him.
He loved books. She could tell from the wear on each of them. He only spoke when he was sure that what he was saying was interesting, which is why he was a man of few words. And he didn’t like all the attention his being gorgeous brought him, which was probably part of why he had honed and perfected “resting bitch face.”
All the things that she could not see when she obsessed, she saw so clearly now that she ignored. It made her like Sesshōmaru a lot more, but this time (she hoped), for the right reasons.
“Hey…” Kagome knew that voice. She looked up. She knew those golden eyes. Ugh, and she sure as hell knew that purple half-moon.
“Hey.” Kagome could be nonchalant.
“I never thanked you for the bookmark.” Sesshōmaru waved his copy of Alice in Wonderland in the air. “Or told you that your attempt at a pun was miserable.”
Dammit! She wasn’t supposed to giggle! She was supposed to be cool, because being too excited about this conversation was not part of the plan.
“You were abusing those poor books,” Kagome explained; she would get her heartbeat under control! “And beats coming after you with a real sword?”
Oh god, that joke was worse and was weird.
“You are passionate about books.” Wait, Sesshōmaru was smiling, and it was not the little mild smile normally seen in class; this was actually big enough to be categorized unequivocally as a smile. “Either that or really terrible at making jokes.”
“Both,” Kagome replied; Sesshōmaru’s smile got bigger.
“Well, then. Perhaps you would join me for coffee to continue discussing Alice in Wonderland?” As he asked, Sesshōmaru looked away from Kagome’s eyes, almost as if he were being a bit shy about asking her to coffee.
But that was impossible. Sesshōmaru needed only to look in the mirror to see what he looked like to know that there was no reason whatsoever to feel anything except certain that Kagome would say yes.
Stop idealizing him, you dolt, and treat him like a person. Kagome frowned inwardly at herself for being an idiot.
“Sure,” Kagome answered. She resisted the temptation to bounce, or to squeal, or to openly admit that it had taken her four days to settle on the bookmark.
Because just like cats, people also didn’t like getting smothered. Kagome liked Sesshōmaru the person, not Sesshōmaru the fantasy, and she had not seen beyond Sesshōmaru the fantasy for far too long.
She would need to thank Shippō for his amazing advice, because without treating Sesshōmaru like a cat, Kagome was not sure she would have ever treated him how he deserved to be treated: like a person.