InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bishies Without Shirts ❯ Don't Ask... ( Chapter 34 )

Chapter 34: Don't Ask…

Inuyasha grabbed Kagome by the arm, between her shoulder and elbow, and pulled her roughly out the front door, slamming it behind them.

"Oh dear." Higurashi-san sighed. "What do you suppose we should do?"

"Let him go." Sesshoumaru said without looking up from the watercolor portraits on the table before him. "If we confront each other now, he'll just do something rash and hurt himself. I don't want to have to break his arm, or worse."

"I hate to say this, but after the way the two of you have been treating each other over the past few days, I'm a little surprised. That's actually very kind of you not to take advantage of him when he's weakened like this."

"No." Sesshoumaru said softly, his face unreadable, "I'm just not interested in anything less than a fair fight. There is nothing to be gained, no honor in killing him when he's as defenseless as a child. There's no sport in that."

"Why don't we talk about something else?" Higurashi-san said, squirming uncomfortably at the dark turn the conversation had taken. Desperately trying to change the subject, she sat down next to the demon and suggested "Here, now, why don't you show me the rest of your Tsukikage's paintings?"

~

"Koi, how many more times are we going to go through this? Tonight?" Kagome pleaded as he dragged her along down the shrine house stairs.

"Until I don't have to look at his stupid face anymore!" Inuyasha seethed, plowing on ahead, undaunted by the tiny noises of protest his woman was making at being manhandled.

"Well, would you at least tell me where we're going?" she asked when he refused to release her arm from his death grip.

"No!" he shouted, squeezing harder and picking up his pace. Kagome had to break into a jog just to keep herself from falling.

"Why not?!" she shouted back.

"Because I don't know!" he cried, lengthening his stride.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome cried, "Do you think we could slow down?!"

"No, I don't think I can at this point!" he growled, tugging so insistently at her arm that, had he the use of his full hanyou strength, he'd have ripped it right out of the socket.

"Alright, that's it! We're stopping!" Kagome said. Not knowing how else to accomplish this, she jumped up onto his back and their combined forward momentum sent them sprawling to the ground, face-first.

"Oooowww…" he moaned after a few seconds when he could draw breath into his lungs again. Rolling her off of his back, he managed to push himself up onto his hands and knees. "Listen, stupid, the next time you're going to pull a stunt like that, warn me first! I'm breakable tonight, you know!"

"Well I'm sorry," she huffed, "but you just weren't listening to reason!" He opened his mouth wide to shout an angry protest, but then let out a heaving breath instead and said sullenly,

"Yeah."

Kagome reached forward and lovingly brushed some dirt off of his cheek, trying to bridge the gulf that was threatening to come between them.

"You are so beautiful…" she said softly, moving her hand up from his cheek to his brow to brush aside a few stray hairs that hung in his eyes, only to have them immediately fall back into place once she moved her hand away. "It's too bad that the girls couldn't have met you tonight. You wouldn't have had to wear that stupid hat, either. I know how much you hate to."

"Hmph." he grumbled. "Those harpies are the last thing I need when I'm stuck like this!" Kagome managed to ignore the derogatory remark about her friends, in favor of keeping the peace between them. He was already so very upset.

"What do you need, koibito?" she asked seriously, taking his face in her hands.

~

"Wait a minute, what was that last one?" Higurashi-san asked as Sesshoumaru tried his best to shuffle the painting in question beneath the small pile of watercolors that they had already looked through.

"It's nothing," he said, a little too quickly, "I think it's one we've already seen."

"I haven't seen it." Higurashi-san insisted, holding out her hand expectantly. "May I?"

'Damn it all…maybe that Higurashi woman is TOO perceptive…' Reluctantly, Sesshoumaru pulled the watercolor out from under the pile and laid it face down on the table in front of himself. The wegome's mother reached over and slid it across the table to herself, then picked it up carefully by the edges and turned it over.

"Why, this, this is…?" she looked up at him, a soft, emotional glint in her eyes. "When was this?"

"That," he mumbled into his lap, "…obviously, was a very long time ago."

"Yes…" she said, smiling a little sadly, "It would have to have been, wouldn't it?"

"It's a bit of foolishness." he murmured, feeling somewhat self-conscious.

"It's beautiful…" Higurashi-san whispered, her eyes beginning to sparkle as they moistened with unexpected tears.

"Then it is yours, Higurashi-sama."

"Oh, I couldn't, Sessho-kun!" she said, trying to hand it back to the youkai. Sesshoumaru lifted his hand to stop her and shook his head.

"Yes, please. Consider it the least I can give after we've caused you so much trouble. That, and I can see you'll appreciate it far more than I do."

"Arigatou, Sesshoumaru…I will treasure this. It's hard to believe you were ever so young… both of you…" she smiled, looking down at the small scrap of paper in her hand. Rendered in a wash of soft pastel colors was a slightly hazy portrait of the two sons of the great Inutaisho. The younger, maybe two years old, sleeping across the breast of his onii-san, who was little more than a boy himself and also fast asleep. They dozed together beneath a cherry tree, laden with white blossoms, forever young, forever frozen in time, a perfect moment captured by the brush of the young woman who had loved them both so desperately.

"Hai."

~

Inuyasha looked down at the girl before him, his dark eyes burning like her own as he spoke to her of his need.

"I need…chocolate." he said. Kagome blinked in surprise.

"What?"

"Chocolate. I need chocolate."

"Chocolate?" she said, eyeing him as uncertainly as if he'd just sprouted tentacles.

"Yes." Inuyasha said certainly, nodding his head.

"This is going to make you feel more emotionally sound? A candy bar?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Inuyasha, you're going to have to deal with your feelings," she said, trying to reason with him, "you can't just choke them back with sweets." The hanyou-turned-ningen considered this for a moment, then shook his head adamantly.

"No, I'm pretty sure that I can." She stared at him for a full minute, incredulous.

"Are you pregnant?" she asked finally.

"Are you?" he asked back, his voice sounding a little too hopeful for her liking. Ignoring his question, she tried a different approach.

"How about a reassuring hug, Inuyasha?" she said, wrapping her arms around his middle and leaning into him. "A kiss? Some playful necking to help you forget your shitty childhood?"

"Yeah, that all sounds great." he agreed. "That, and a Hershey bar."

"I never should have introduced you to that stuff." she muttered, pulling herself up and dusting herself off. "How is a little chocolate going to make you feel better, huh?" she said, offering him her hand. What really surprised her, however, was that he accepted it.

"It tastes good." he said simply as she pulled him to his feet. He had a point there…how could she argue with that?

"Well, I'm afraid I don't have any, Inuyasha."

"Then we'll get some." he said, frowning. "I just don't want to go back in that house right now."

"Alright," she said, accepting defeat. "if you're sure it'll make you feel better. There's a convenience store not too far from here, if you don't mind the walk."

"I don't mind." He reached out, taking her hand in his own, for once not having to be mindful about where he put his claws.

"Baka." she laughed softly, leaning into his arm. "Let's go get my hero a Hershey bar."

"A big one." he added.

"Don't push your luck, buster."

~

"Here, you'd better put this away too, before it falls into the wrong hands." Sesshoumaru had been packing the watercolors back into their leather box, when Higurashi-san came up from behind him and handed him Tsukikage's small journal, the one he had handed to his brother and the girl when he had first opened the box.

"Ah, yes." he said, taking the book from her hand and placing it back in the leather box on top of the watercolors where it had always sat. "It wouldn't do for your son to see such things."

"Actually, I was thinking of your brother. You know, I caught him trying to…" she paused, unable to think of a way to continue that sentence without resorting to vulgarity.

"Re-stake his claim?" Sesshoumaru offered helpfully.

"Hai." she nodded, chuckling. "That's one way of putting it, Sessho-kun. I caught them in my room, earlier, when I sent Kagome upstairs to get your things and they didn't come back down right away…"

"I caught them in a similar position this morning, when you and your daughter had just returned from your errand."

"I knew it was too quiet." Higurashi-san lamented as she walked over to the stove and put the tea kettle on. "Tell me you stopped them."

"Hai." he answered tersely, thinking that she'd probably be better off not knowing how far her daughter and the runt had actually gotten before noticing his presence. "But I'm afraid it's only going to get worse as time goes on."

"I realize that, Sessho-kun. Human beings aren't THAT different from youkai, you know." she teased. Sesshoumaru had his own ideas about this statement, as innocent as she had intended it to be, but he kept his mouth shut so as not to offend her. 'Now that is odd…when DID I start caring what a ningen thinks?' he thought to himself as he recalled his oto-chan's words from the previous day. He mulled this over for several minutes, during which time he must have had a slightly glazed-over expression on his face, because he soon found Higurashi-san intruding upon his thoughts.

"Sesshoumaru?"

"Oh, gomen. I was just thinking…"

"I can see that." she said, getting up to fetch the kettle, as it had started to whistle it's high pitched song, signifying that the tea was done. "Care to share?"

"I was thinking that it's a good thing you've procured some of that medicine we were speaking of this morning for your daughter." he lied. "I'm not interested in any more relatives at this point in my life."

"Mmm… Especially ones with tainted blood, ne?" she said evenly as she poured his tea. He flinched inwardly at the remark.

"You don't have to answer that." Higurashi-san said after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"Arigatou." he said, keeping his voice smooth and unaffected with an ease that could only come from countless years of practice. Slowly, he lifted the cup to his lips and blew the steam from his tea.

~

He never saw them coming.

As he and Kagome passed by a murky alleyway on the not-too-well-lit street, four men, probably not much older than himself, had he been mortal, seemed to appear from out of nowhere, as if having apparated from the foul-smelling smoke that snaked off the ends of their cigarettes.

"Hey, aren't you that little shrine girl?" one of them called after Kagome, but judging by his voice, the question was not meant to be taken kindly.

"Just keep walking." Kagome said in a low voice, gripping Inuyasha's hand more firmly and keeping her head down as she started to walk faster. "The convenience store is only a few more blocks this way."

"Alright." Inuyasha said bemusedly, not in the least bit troubled by the four thugs that now seemed to be pursuing them. Well, maybe a little…

"Hey, little girl!" another, more gravelly voice called from behind them, "My friend here asked you a question! Don't you have any manners, or are you just a stuck-up little bitch?"

"That's it, isn't it?" another disembodied voice joined the first two, laughing menacingly. "She's too good for us."

"Hey, that's some get-up your little boyfriend is wearing!"

"Boyfriend? Shit Yuza, I thought that was a girl! Wow, man, you just saved my life, I was about to start hitting on that thing!"

"Ok." Inuyasha said, stopping dead in his tracks.

"Uh-oh, Chen, she heard you! Look, she's turning around! I think she wants you."

"That's sick, man." the first voice laughed.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome hissed, tugging on his arm. "Let's just get out of here!"

"Run away from these guys? Are you kidding me?" he snorted derisively.

"Koi," she pleaded, "aren't you forgetting something?" She grabbed one of his black forelocks and held it out in front of his face.

"Please, Kagome, even in this form I can easily kick the asses of some stupid, pathetic ningen morons like these guys."

"Oi, what did you just call us pal?" the one called Chen asked, stepping forward. Pushing Kagome behind him with one arm, Inuyasha stared back at the group of would-be attackers, grimacing.

"I'm not your pal, asshole. I hope you like red, cause you're about to be wearing a whole shitload of your own blood!"

"Step up, punk! I ain't afraid of no sissy little girl in a kimono! I'm gonna bust your head in, shrine boy, and then we'll see about teaching your girlfriend to speak when she's spoken to!" Inuyasha tilted his head to one side and his mouth cracked into a huge, lopsided grin.

"Heh. Ningen, you're about to brighten up what's been a fairly shitty evening."

~

"So why is it that your brother decided to lock himself in the bathroom?" she asked, peering over the top of her steaming cup to look at him. "Was it because you interrupted he and my daughter?"

"No." Sesshoumaru replied after pondering for a moment while he sipped from his own cup. "He was trying to hide his transformation from me, I think. He must have believed that I was going to take this opportunity to finally kill him." Higurashi-san suddenly leaned over the table to give Sesshoumaru a hard, piercing look, straight in the eye.

"You know, I don't think I realized until just this moment that you two were being serious. You really have tried to kill each other, haven't you?" When he nodded, she cried out in disbelief, "I thought that was just an expression! Kids here say it all the time to their brothers and sisters. If I had Y50 for every time I heard Kagome say that she was going to kill Souta… But you two! I should've known it was serious when Kagome told me about your arm, but you both seemed so…polite. A little rambunctious, perhaps, but still…" As she leaned back in her seat, a thought suddenly occurred to her. "That's why he's been acting so strangely the last few days!" she cried, quickly sitting back up to slam her hand down on the table for emphasis. "No wonder! He's probably been so nervous that he doesn't know what to do with himself! Oh dear, this is much more than just a severe case of sibling rivalry…" she paused for a moment and stared off into space, apparently thinking. A few seconds later, when she had appeared to have reached a conclusion, she turned to the youkai and asked him earnestly,

"Are you going to?"

"Kill him?" Sesshoumaru shrugged, starting to become annoyed with the direction this conversation was taking. "Probably. Someday. If Inuyasha is going to die, then it will be by my hand, and no one else's."

"Why?" Higurashi-san asked, her eyebrows knitted together as she tried to wrap her mind around this disturbing information.

"There are many reasons," he said coolly, "none of which are any of your business."

"Aren't they?" she asked, probing uncomfortably deeper. "Or is it that you really don't have any? From what I understand, that sword up in my…I mean, wherever I hid your weapons, was meant for your brother. It's not his fault your father left it to him. If you're going to be angry at anyone, be angry at your father, but don't murder your own blood over some stupid katana, especially when you already have two of your own!"

"I don't care about Tetsusaiga anymore, haven't you been listening?" Sesshoumaru said coldly.

"Oh, I see. It's the principal! You don't think he deserves it, but he won't hand it over, so you'll have to teach him a rather harsh lesson, is that it?" Sesshoumaru swallowed hard, but somehow managed to still look impassive.

"If nothing else, Higurashi-san, there is the rather obvious loss of my arm."

"I'll admit that that does trouble me." she said softly. "Why did he cut off your arm? He mentioned something earlier about you ripping apart his eyeball…is that why?" Sesshoumaru looked at the woman for a moment while he tried to decide what would be wise to say next, and what would be unwise. It would not improve his current situation any to tell her that he'd been trying to kill her daughter when Inuyasha had amputated his limb.

"There was no special reason." he said finally. "Just our mutual hatred for one another. The same hatred that I believe will someday drive me to end his miserable existence."

"I don't believe that for one second. The young man I've gotten to know over the past few days is not capable of killing his baby brother." she said quietly.

"Woman, you have no idea what I am capable of!" he snapped back at her. "You know nothing about this Sesshoumaru, and furthermore-" he stopped abruptly, pausing to sniff the air around him.

"What?" Higurashi-san asked, her voice pitching up with a lilt of concern. "What is it Sessho-kun?"

"I can smell the hanyou's blood."

~

He hadn't heard the faint clicking sound over his own battle cries as he pounced on the ningen with the big mouth, and by the time he heard Kagome's cry of warning, it was too late. He turned just in time to see a cold glint of steel, and the rest was obscured by a hot flash of pain. The thug who had snuck up behind him, the one he recognized as Yuza, had stabbed downward hard and fast, embedding all six inches of the switchblade into the back of his right shoulder. He cried out in pain and frustration, staggering backward, away from the man he'd been pummeling and right into a very frightened Kagome, the hilt of the blade sticking out of his shoulder like some strange parasite.

"Kuso!" he cursed softly, gingerly trying to reach back and grab the hilt, but when his fingers made even the slightest contact with it, he was hit with sudden waves of intense pain and dizziness. Quickly, he dropped into a crouch in front of the girl. For one brief, absurd moment, she thought that he wanted her to climb onto his back so that he could get them out of this situation, but that hope was dashed to pieces a second later when he growled "Kagome, pull it out."

"I-I…" she stammered, her eyes widening and her heart pounding so fiercely that she was afraid it might pop out of her chest. The three boys, now minus Chen, whom Inuyasha had knocked completely senseless, were regrouping, and beginning to advance on the hapless couple. Kagome had never felt so helpless before in Inuyasha's presence. Where was her bow now that she really need it?

"Goddamnit Kagome, I said pull it out!" Inuyasha screamed, breaking her away from her trance. "Don't go soft on me wench, you've done this before!"

"Ok! Ok!" she cried. Grabbing the hilt of the switchblade firmly in both hands, she jerked upward with all her might, causing two things to happen at once; True, the blade had been freed from Inuyasha's shoulder, but now he was bleeding heavily, and she didn't know what she could do to stop it, short of shoving the knife back into the bloody hole.

"Thank you." he said, standing back up, a little shaky on his feet as his body was beginning to go into shock.

"Don't thank me!" she cried, "You're bleeding!"

"You think you'd be used to the sight of my blood by now, koishii…" he laughed darkly, his voice shaking with the effort, almost as much as his unsteady feet. "Run, Kagome. See if you can make it to that store you were talking about. I'll make sure you get there!" he said, heading back into the fray.

~

There it was again. No mistaking it… and this was no shallow cut, either. The smell of the hanyou's blood was strong. Shit. How much trouble could one person get into in the course of a day? The whelp seemed to have a real talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time…or perhaps he had gone looking for it, hoping to blow off steam? Doubtful, he'd had the wegome with him… Sesshoumaru lifted his nose into the air again, breathing rapidly in short, shallow huffs.

This way…

~

Kagome watched the battle as she did most others, from the sidelines, calling his name. If only she'd had her bow, or a rock, or anything at all for that matter, then she wouldn't be standing there, feeling so useless and weak. She had contemplated running for help for about half a second before she realized that there was no way that she could leave him. So instead of doing the intelligent thing, she stood and watched as he was beaten to a bloody mess. Not that he wasn't giving it right back to them, but he didn't have his normal speed and strength to fall back on, and he had seriously misjudged this fight, going in to it with his usual overconfidence. There were all of those factors, and then there was the fact that he was starting to weaken from the loss of blood…Kagome didn't know what to do. He wouldn't run, would never run, never back down…and when they were done with him, they were going to remember that she was still standing there.

'Well, I won't go down like a weak little coward!' she thought furiously, scanning the ground around her feet for something to defend herself with. 'I'm coming, Inuyasha!'

She was so intent in her search, in fact, that she hadn't even noticed that the fight had suddenly taken a very drastic turn. It wasn't until she saw an eerie green glow casting crazy shadows on the ground in front of her that she even noticed that someone else had joined in the altercation… someone otherworldly.

~

The human thugs were disposed of in a matter of seconds, and he hadn't even had to kill them or get his hands dirty. He'd simply grabbed them by their necks, as if they were merely rag dolls and not rather large, violent men, and tossed them back into the alley from whence they'd came. How dull. They didn't come back out again, probably due to the fact that their heads had collided with the cement wall at the end of the alleyway after he'd tossed them. They made a neat little pile, he thought to himself smugly, before he turned his full attention to the human boy he'd come looking after, who lay in a senseless, crumpled mass of limbs on the pavement. He shook his head and hissed through his teeth while he gave his brother a once-over, taking in the dark red stain that was seeping down the entire length of the back of his haori. When he heard the tiny gasp, his head shot up and he found himself locking eyes with the wegome, who was standing maybe ten feet away from where the short-lived battle had taken place. With a subtle movement of his head, he called the girl over and she obeyed, trotting up to them quickly. Then he leaned down and carefully scooped up the whelp, attempting to shift his brother's limp body over one shoulder.

"Come along, runt." he grunted under his breath as he heaved Inuyasha's dead weight onto his shoulder and stood back up. With a quick glance back at the wench to see if she following, he started back in the direction of the shrine.

~

Inuyasha began to come to as they were ascending the long staircase that lead up the shrine and Kagome's home. It was all the jostling about as Sesshoumaru took each stair that had finally awakened him.

"Nani…? Uhnn…" he moaned softly. As his eyes began to shift into focus, he saw a familiar red floral pattern emerge, centimeters from the end of his nose.

"Sesshoumaru?" he asked, very confused.

"Hai. Nani?" came the clipped reply from somewhere around his right hip.

"Put me down asshole, I know how to walk." he mumbled weakly.

"Hmph." Sesshoumaru sniffed in amusement. "All those years of begging me to pick you up, and now that I finally have, you want to get down. Typical hanyou stubbornness, oto-chan."

"Oi, Sesshoumaru…put me down…I can walk…" he continued to protest, but his tone wasn't very convincing, and soon he gave up all together and sank back into unconsciousness.

~

"Oh no…" Higurashi-san gasped when she opened the front door. "What in the world happened, Kagome? Even I can smell the blood!"

"Street gang." Kagome said quickly as she ran to the hall closet to grab an old blanket. She hurriedly spread it over the couch, then helped Sesshoumaru get Inuyasha down off of his shoulder to lay him across it. "He was stabbed, I have to bandage his shoulder." She called back to her mother as she ran off again, this time to the kitchen to get the first aid kit down from on top of the refrigerator.

"Stabbed?! Kagome! I'm sorry, but this time we have to call a doctor!" Higurashi-san protested frantically as she stood impotently in the middle of the living room, torn between tending to the injured boy on her couch and chasing after her daughter.

"Mama? What's going on?" Souta called suddenly from upstairs. "What's all the shouting about?"

"Nothing dear, Inunii-chan just had a little accident, that's all. Now go back to bed!"

"Aw man!" the boy cursed under his breath as he left the landing and headed back to his room. "I miss out on everything good!"

"Now what was I doing again?" Higurashi-san said, looking around anxiously. "Oh right, I was going to call an ambulance…" She had reached for the telephone, when Kagome returned to the living room, carrying the rather large first aid box in both hands.

"No, Mama, it's ok, really." Kagome said reassuringly as she knelt down beside the couch. "I've seen him much worse off than this. A doctor's not going to do anything that I haven't done a thousand times before. I'll bandage him up like I always do, and in the morning, his youkai blood will return, and he'll be as good as new in no time, you'll see. It's really amazing." Higurashi-san was stunned by her daughter's poise and self-assurance in caring for the boy she was, for all intents and purposes, engaged to. While she herself was practically falling to pieces on the living room carpet, Kagome was calm and confident, opening the kit and going through it to find various bandages, antiseptics, and gauzes.

"Kagome-chan…" her mother breathed softly in amazement. Her little girl was becoming a woman right before her very eyes.

"This is what I do." the girl said simply. "I don't have time to be nervous…of course, it helps that he heals at a super-human rate." Then for the third time in twenty four hours, Kagome expertly began to strip Inuyasha down to the waist. Only in this instance, he wasn't fumbling with her clothing at the same time.

"You seem to know your way around those ties pretty well, Kagome." her mother said as if reading her thoughts, a trifle scandalized. Kagome blushed and mumbled,

"Yeah, well, he does get injured quite a bit…" hoping that would end the discussion right there. After her mother's astute comment, however, she fond that her hand were a little shaky. As she tried to turn him over so that she could clean and disinfect the stab-wound, Inuyasha let out a loud groan and his eyes snapped open, suddenly very awake.

~

"…dammitsofuckinghumiliatingcutbysomestupidweakhumanan dthenrescuedbySESSHOUMARUmightaswellkillmyselfrightfuckingnow…" he grumbled under his breath as he began to realize what had happened, followed by a loud "OW! THAT FUCKING HURTS!" as Kagome began to clean around the area.

"Language!" Higurashi-san scolded, unable to control her reaction any more than he could.

"I have to clean it, Inuyasha." Kagome said firmly. "I don't want it to get infected. Heaven knows where that knife has been…"

"Well you don't have to stick your finger in the hole!" he growled.

"Don't be ridiculous." she said calmly. "I'm trying to help you."

"OW!" he screamed again as she wiped over the area, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth against the pain that seemed to radiate from his back to his front, wrapping around him like a thick blanket.

"Kagome," Higurashi-san whispered, eyeing the boy's face nervously. "He may heal quickly, but he's obviously in a lot of pain right now. Isn't there anything we can do for him?"

"I was hoping you'd know…Tylenol?" Kagome said weakly. Higurashi-san gave her daughter a look before turning to address her father.

"Jii-san, what do you think?"

"Hmmm…" the old man mulled it over for a minute, then said suddenly and excitedly "Don't worry, I have just the thing!", and quickly left the room. A few minutes later, he returned with a cup full of clear liquid.

"Here, drink this." he said, carefully handing the cup to the boy who had managed to pull himself upright while he had been gone. Inuyasha peered down into the cup, then looked up at the old man, eyeing him suspiciously.

"What is it?"

"Medicine, my dear boy. An old home remedy that cures whatever ails you. Drink it up and I promise you, you'll be feeling no pain." Raising one doubtful eyebrow, Inuyasha brought the cup to his lips and took a small swallow, only to spit it out again with a very large, dramatic 'PHTTTT!!!!', spraying it all over his lap.

"It's Sake!" he cried out, eyes wide as saucers.

"Right you are lad!" Jii-chan exclaimed happily. "Now bottoms up!" Reluctantly, Inuyasha tipped his glass and downed the rice alcohol in a matter of seconds.

"Good! Good!" Jii-chan exclaimed. "Alright, almost done."

"Almost?!"

"You think one was going to do it? Don't be ridiculous! Here, give me your glass!" As Jii-chan poured glass after glass, Inuyasha drank them down. After the fourth or fifth time Jii-chan filled it, he noticed that he was beginning to go pleasantly numb.

"Are you alright?" Kagome asked softly as she helped him into one of Jii-chan's soft white robes. His own clothing would have to be washed again, and mended this time around.

"Yeah." he said thickly. His head was buzzing from the alcohol and his speech was already beginning to slur, yet for some inexplicable reason, he found himself with another full glass every time he looked down.

"I can't feel my face." he mumbled, blushing at Kagome.

"Yes, but how's you back?"

"I don't know. You tell me. You're the expert…" he said stupidly, trying as hard as he could to focus on her face. She had such a pretty face…

"I'm not so sure that this was the best idea, Jii-chan." Kagome said quietly as she watched Inuyasha down another glass, then put her hand out to stop her grandfather before he refilled it yet again.

"Are you kidding?" Jii-chan laughed proudly. "Look how happy he looks! Is that the face of a young man in pain? I think not!"

"Hey wegome!" Inuyasha said, staring at her very intently with his most serious, wide-eyed drunken face. "I never got my shhhocolate…"