Step One, Two by Abigail

Chapter 1

Summary: Taking an aerobics class had to be one of her stupider ideas; she ranked it up there with that brief pole dancing experience last month.

Step One, Two.

Taking an aerobics class had to be one of her stupider ideas; she ranked it up there with that brief pole dancing experience last month. With as much running around as she did in the Sengoku era one would think she would be in a lot better shape than she was finding out. Her mother, however, was stepping circles around her and just generally putting her eighteen year old to shame.

Sweat dripped off her chin, and she swiped at it absently all the while glaring at her mother through her bangs. Hair stuck to her forehead, neck, and curled around her earlobes in a way that made her want to shave her head when she got home. All she wanted to do was just lie in the middle of the floor and not move until tomorrow, but her mother was still fresh faced and smiling humming in tune to the stupid jingle they were playing in the background.

T-This…is ridiculous!

***

“Inuyasha, if you don’t shut up.”

Much to her anger when she finally had her mother agreeing to leave the God awful aerobics class, Inuyasha was waiting for her at the top of the shrine steps. She knew that the final battle was drawing close, but was it too much to ask to for a day to herself?! She was feeling stretched thin, with her mother wanting to spend more time together and Inuyasha demanding all of her time she was one surprise away from tearing someone’s head off.

She felt like a horrible daughter – and all around shitty family member – when she had hopped out of the well three days prior. She had been gone for almost three months, and it broke her heart to have to sit around the table and catch up with her family like she hadn’t spent the last three months five hundred years in the past.

Sota had a crush, and she wasn’t around to give him advice on girls. Her mother had met someone and she had missed when she brought him to meet the family by a single day. She wasn’t sure why she had thought living in the past meant the future wouldn’t keep on keeping on, but if she hadn’t understood what she was sacrificing to make sure there was a future, she understood it as her mother wrapped her in one of her tight I’m-Scared-This-Will-Be-The-Last-Time hugs.

***

“Can I at least take a shower before you drag me down the well?”

“Why can’t you just take one when we get back to the village?”

“Because the village doesn’t have soap. Or shampoo. Conditioner either, and I really like the fact I have a loofah to wash with.”

“No, woman – hey! Kagome!”

“Inuyasha, I’m taking a shower here and so help me God if you rush me in any way I will ‘sit’ you so hard that you won’t need to use the well to get back.”

***

When she had tried to sort out her feelings with her mother, her solution had been to simply write it out. Kagome had never felt so torn about her future, in fact only months ago she had thought she wanted to continue living in the Sengoku period after they gathered all the shards of the jewel. Why wouldn’t she, after all? She had wanted to stay by Inuyasha’s side…right?

Scrubbing harder at her head, she had realized she wasn’t so sure anymore.

So, at her mother’s prodding, Kagome had meticulously kept a diary that detailed her comings and goings of each day, dreams, and random thoughts that she couldn’t bring herself to share with her merry band of travelers. As incredulous as the idea had seemed at first, having something to return to gave her this sense of solidarity in her life she hadn’t thought possible.

Except…

Except she had lost the damn thing on her mad dash to the well three days ago.

And this Kagome, you idiot, is why you can’t have nice things.

She was terrified Inuyasha had found it, or would find it. She only ever wrote in it when everyone was sleeping, and even then she would scoot as close as possible to the dying firelight to scribble out her thoughts as quickly as she could. Living with three other people and a child Kagome didn’t have many things that were just hers, and having that little kitten covered book had given her this sense of ‘mine.’

Now she just felt like an idiot for losing something so precious. Why couldn’t she have just wished on a damn star?

***

One thing she would never tire of in the Sengoku was that land stretched as far as the eye could see. When she first ended up here, the sheer wildness of it all overwhelmed her; she couldn’t go anywhere without running into spider webs or bumping into some animal that wanted to eat her. She appreciated it more now, her world seemed too loud, the air wasn’t as crisp and clean and at night she couldn’t see the stars. Now, it was her world that was overwhelming to her.

“Sesshomaru!”

Inuyasha’s snarl set her teeth on edge, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. While they were still far from friendly with the taiyoukai they were on better terms with him than they were three years prior. Or, at least everyone with the exclusion of Inuyasha and by better terms she realized it really only meant that Sesshomaru had stopped trying to kill Inuyasha on sight. Sometimes he waited ten minutes now.

The taiyoukai didn’t even glance at his younger brother, instead he raised a brow at her and…ohmygod, “Sesshomaru, that’s mine!”

Sesshomaru had her diary. Sesshomaru had her diary.

She would’ve been less mortified had Inuyasha found her kitten covered diary because he wouldn’t have pried the damn lock off like she could see Sesshomaru had. He didn’t have to fear the ‘sit’ like his brother, so there was no shame in his being nosey.

Kagome had one more little secret she was keeping: she had been meeting with Sesshomaru to discuss the possibility of him aiding them in the final battle. She wasn’t stupid, in the years she had been chasing the shards she had long ago realized they wouldn’t be able to do this alone. Not that Sesshomaru was special by any means, she had also been meeting with Koga to discuss the wolf pack possibly showing themselves.

Inuyasha believed they could do it alone, and everyone would come out alive. Kagome dreamed of a battlefield littered with the body parts of her loved ones, she would wake in a cold sweat, the dying screams of her friends echoing in her ears and of a river so filled with blood it ran red.

She couldn’t let that happen.

“Wait here.”

***

“Give it back.”

Infuriatingly, he raised the same eyebrow.

“Sesshomaru. Give me my diary.”

She could feel the blood rush to her face so quickly that her cheeks tingled, she knew he had read most of it, if not all of it. He was just that much of an ass.

While the relationship she had with the older brother was tenuous at best, she knew how far she could push without him sticking a poisoned claw through her gut. In return for his aid, she was to help with Rin. The child needed a female figure, he reasoned, and what better female than a miko?

She had been sneaking around with Sesshomaru behind Inuyasha’s back for almost six months now, that just makes me sound like such a bad person, she sighed inwardly as she held her hand out in front of her. It would make it easier to explain to Inuyasha if she really was sneaking around with his brother in a romantic sense, rather than having to explain why she felt the need to lie about something like spending time with the taiyoukai and Rin.

She couldn’t quite pinpoint when, but something in the dynamic of Kagome tutoring Rin and Sesshomaru just supervising changed. He would accompany her to and from their campsites, rather than sending her off on Ah-Un. She would find herself asking questions about the history of their family – his history – and she would catch herself enthralled by the baritone of his voice, when her responsibilities became just a little too much to bear, he would be her silent companion in a forest that was pulsating with the need to eat her alive. Perhaps most importantly, when Kagome had really needed to feel needed, when she needed the reminder of why she was here, Sesshomaru had been the one to deliver.

And it was all captured in that damnable book Sesshomaru held between clawed fingers.  

“Why is this so important to you?”

She ground her teeth, “Don’t patronize me. You’ve read it. You know why it’s so important to me.”

“You have written quite a bit about me.”

She felt her eye twitch, “There’s a lot about everyone and everything written in there, Sesshomaru.”

“Why waste the time in writing all of this down,” he waved the book in the air, “and not speak it to those you write about? To what end does this solve anything?”

She knew what he was referring to, and she inhaled deeply, “Sometimes, it is better to not waste the energy on talking. I’ve talked for a little less than three years Sesshomaru, and I am realizing if I want peace of mind, that I need to start figuring things out for myself. I need to be less reliant. That little book you are waving around is my step forward, and if you don’t stop waving it around I’m going to purify you.” 

While his questions were innocent, she was humiliated that someone had been able to see into a part of psyche that she wasn’t yet willing to share with people who knew her for years let alone someone she had just been on a tolerating their presence basis for six months.

In the midst of her self-loathing, Sesshomaru had taken the whole two steps needed to close the space between them and placed the book in her hand, “You want to become less reliant on that half breed? Learn to protect yourself with something other than words.”

Sesshomaru’s presence was suffocating, he had this air that commanded absolute respect from anyone that was near and sometimes it was just too much for her. She rarely argued with him, and it was their regular if they didn’t speak at all, having grown accustomed to the silence. So it didn’t surprise her at all she when no words came to mind, and instead she steady stared at his breast plate. Sesshomaru was huge next to her, she came just below that breast plate and he knew how much it bothered her to have to look up to him. The taiyoukai took every chance he had to stand as close as possible so that she had to crane her head back.

Who knew the lord of the west had such a sense of humor?

She held her diary limply at her side, taking a step back she squinted up at the taiyoukai who was staring down at her, “What.”

“Your…cat book is important to you?”

She frowned at him, and curled her fingers around the diary, “Why…do you want to know,” and before the last word had left her mouth it clicked, “You read it.”

She held her diary protectively against her chest, as if to keep the taiyoukai from defiling it further.

If possible Sesshomaru deadpanned her even deeper, “Do you really think I have so little to do? I merely asked because the edges are well worn, and your cat’s faces are becoming crinkled with use. I figured you may be missing it.”

For once, she was at a loss of words. Since when was Sesshomaru so…thoughtful? And he was right, she was missing it but for an entirely different reason than what he was thinking.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…thank you.”

She felt blood rush to her cheeks; she wasn’t one to apologize even when she was wrong but for Sesshomaru to do something so out of character felt like it deserved its own good deed.

Until she saw the smug smirk play on the corner of Sesshomaru’s lips, Jerk! Can’t even take an apology gracefully!

“Bend down for a minute.”

He raised a brow at her, “I’m not going to hit you Sesshomaru, bend down!”

She didn’t think he’d listen, Sesshomaru took orders from no one, but ever so hesitantly he bent down to her level. She had seen Inuyasha’s golden eyes too many times to count, and she figured that Sesshomaru’s magenta laced gaze wouldn’t be too different.

She had never been glad to be so wrong.

Kagome flushed even deeper, there was a depth in Sesshomaru’s eyes that Inuyasha’s lacked which seemed to cut her straight to the core. Her bravado left in a ‘woosh’ of air, and she swallowed thickly. Having spent her most important teenage years with a clueless half demon and perverted man of God, Sesshomaru seemed so very male in a way she hadn’t yet experienced.

 Steadily, Sesshomaru reached for her before she got the chance, and tangled his poisoned claws in her raven hair. Her heart was going to leap out of her mouth, she was so sure, until Sesshomaru covered her mouth with a fierceness that had to be ingrained in all taiyoukais.

She gasped softly, and he took complete advantage to delve his tongue into her open mouth, thoroughly exploring in a way that let her know it may not ever happen again.

Except this was their second kiss, not their first, and it happened much in the same way.

His kiss demanded complete submission, the hand that was tangled in her hair angling her head up so that she could not deny him. If she wasn’t enjoying it so much, she may have been angry at him.

Catching her bottom lip with his teeth, fangs grazing the corners in a way that was too ticklish, he slowly opened his eyes to stare into her darkening ones. She could see red bleeding into the edges of his vision, a sure sign that the beast was enjoying this a little too much and that he was going to cut this short.

“You’re welcome.”

And with that, in typical Sesshomaru fashion, he was gone.

A/N: End ;) This was just a one shot, to make sure I had my writing quota in for the day.