InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bishies Without Shirts ❯ Hardball ( Chapter 40 )

Chapter 40: Hardball

"Inuyasha, I already told you!" Kagome ranted in the quietest voice that her anger would allow. "I can't just leave whenever I feel like it, I have to finish out the day! Get it through your thick skull, I am not leaving! Baka!" Sesshoumaru tightened his grip on the hanyou's shoulder the second he felt the muscles beginning to tense and contract beneath his fingertips. The growl in Inuyasha's throat began to permeate throughout his entire body, and Kagome's withering glare lost some of it's fire as the noise filled the hallway, echoing off lockers. It no longer sounded like the angry rumblings of irritation that her ears had become accustomed to through her dealings with him. No…this sounded more like a rabid animal. When he spoke, his words barely cut through the thickness of it to reach her ears.

"If you make me tell you again Kagome, you are going to be one very sorry little girl…"

"Are you threatening me?" Kagome could have laughed, would have laughed, in fact she almost had, but there was something lurking in the corners of his eyes that killed that impulse quite effectively. So instead she grimaced at him, her voice turning dark and malicious in an effort to match his. "Who the hell do you think you are?!"

"I'm you're mate, bitch." he snarled softly, burning holes into her body with his eyes. "And don't you forget it."

"How could I forget?!" she cried out, her voice beginning to waver, just a bit, at the deadly quality in his. "You've told everyone from here to the sengoku jidai!"

"That's right! And I'll tell whoever I want, whenever I want! It's the truth, Kagome, and people need to know it, especially THAT GUY!" he barked, pointing to the classroom door where Houjo had escaped to only moments before. In truth, it was the fact that Inuyasha could still smell the ningen male's scent lingering on Kagome that was triggering this violent reaction. It was mocking him with it's very presence, and would continue to do so long after they had left it's owner behind, until Inuyasha had the chance to cover the scent with his own again.

"Why are you trying to hide it, bitch? You know that once we get back home, every youkai within a ten mile radius is going to know that you're mated to me!"

"I don't care about the youkai!" she hissed through her teeth. Then noting the odd expression on Sesshoumaru's face, she corrected herself. "Uh, gomen nasi, Sesshoumaru, what I meant to say is that I don't care about most youkai… Look, the point is that humans can't smell that you've marked me, and everyone I know with the exception of you two, Shippou and Kou-, uh, …Kirara… is a human." Kagome paused to catch her breath and mentally pat herself on the back. 'Phew! Careful, girl…that would have cost you…' Inhaling deeply and slowly, she tried to continue in a calmer tone of voice. "Houjo had no way of knowing that he was breaking some sort of… oh, I don't know… youkai taboo? Which shouldn't count anyway, since he's not even a youkai…" she reasoned to herself before returning her attention to the glaring hanyou. "And no one else would have known either, if you hadn't opened up your big fat mouth!"

"That's what I'm telling you!" Inuyasha countered. "If I hadn't said anything, he would have thought it was ok to keep hanging on you!"

"It is ok for him to hang around me!" she argued, not hearing him properly.

"NO IT ISN'T!" he roared.

"No, actually, wegome, he's right, it isn't…."

"YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!" Kagome and Inuyasha screamed collectively at the youkai. Down the hallway, teachers began opening their doors to see what all the fuss was about. Grabbing Inuyasha by a forelock, Kagome dragged the youkai brothers down the hall and into the boiler room, hoping that the steady drone of the machinery inside would drown out the rest of their argument. When she had closed the door behind them, sealing them up in the warm, poorly-lit room that seemed to pulse from the machinery hidden within, Inuyasha grabbed her wrist and squeezed, hard enough to get her attention, but still very gentle for him, as he didn't want to break anything. She gasped, and her hand went limp, releasing his hair. He did not return the favor. Instead, he used his tight grip on her wrist to pull her face close to his so that they could speak more intimately.

"As soon as we get home, you and I are going to have a very long talk about your behavior."

"MY BEHAVIOR?" Kagome squeaked furiously. "Are you insane?"

"Probably!" he shot back at her. "I could have picked some nice, quiet little village girl to settle down with! She would have called me 'Inugami' and worshipped the ground I walk on, coming to my bed and cooking for me whenever I wanted, jumping at my every command, just to make sure that I never got cross and decided to slaughter her entire family… but no! I had to pick the strange-looking miko from the crazy world with all the opinions!"

"Oh please, like you're such a catch! Of course! Didn't you know? Every little girl dreams about the guy who'll come visit her at school and treat her like an escaped convict! You're acting like my mother, for crying out loud, or like…like Sesshoumaru!"

"Nani?" a soft voice questioned from somewhere outside of their little hate bubble.

"No I'm not!" Inuyasha fought back, defending himself against that most heinous insult. "I'm acting like the man you agreed to bind yourself to! You're my mate, goddamnit, and you'd better start acting like it, or I'm going to have to reprimand you!"

"Oh really?!" Kagome exclaimed in a mockery of astonishment. "Is that so? Ok tough guy, bring it on! If you so much as raise a single claw in my direction, I'll say the word so many times that you won't be capable of siring pups EVER!" Some of the anger seemed to melt from Inuyasha's eyes as he was taken aback, saddened by her accusations, disappointed by her behavior, but his jaw remained set and his arguments firm.

"Kagome, I would never hit you." he said steadily. "But I am done with fighting you. I want to go home. So this is what's going to happen. I am going to walk out that door," he said, motioning with his head. "You are going to follow me." When Kagome opened her mouth to speak, he quickly cut her off.

"If you think that you're going to defy me again, and NOT follow me, then I will be forced to follow you…everywhere. If you go back to class, I will go back to class. I will sit on your desk, and who knows? Maybe I'll bark at your teacher for a few hours. Meanwhile, Sesshoumaru will be left all alone to wander the hallways, and I'm sure you can imagine what sorts of things he'll find to entertain himself with. I wonder how many of your classmates he could devour in the time it would take me to drag you out of this school?" Kagome was silent for more than a few seconds, and Inuyasha didn't disturb her, but rather let it all sink in nicely.

"You wouldn't-" she began weakly before he silenced her with a crushing, possessive kiss.

"Try me." he said softly as their lips parted when she tried to squirm away from him. "I'm so angry at you right now that even I'm not sure what I'm capable of." Kagome frowned at him defiantly, nibbling on her bottom lip. She looked from the scowling face of her koibito, to his brother, who looked like he was enjoying himself immensely. She wondered if he would wear the same expression on his face as he walked down the hallways of her middle school, decapitating her fellow students right and left.

"Ok." she seethed finally through tight lips and clenched teeth. "Let me get my backpack."

"Don't make me wait." Inuyasha warned, releasing her from his grip.

"I won't." she muttered. Storming over to the boiler room door, she threw it open and stepped back out into the hallway. To soften the blow, Inuyasha allowed her to walk back to the classroom unescorted. After all, there was no need to follow her. He had won.

"I'm impressed." Sesshoumaru whispered quietly from the shadows of the boiler room. "You got her to behave and you didn't even have to…persuade her." He flexed his claws at Inuyasha as if to illustrate his point. "Maybe you're smarter than I give you credit for, oto-chan." Inuyasha, however, was paying no attention, as he had already moved on to bigger and better things.

"Hey, Sesshoumaru!" the hanyou called happily from where he stood out in the hallway. "Look what I found!" he held up his hand, revealing a tiny, bright pink rubber ball captured between his thumb and his fore finger. "Heh. It kind of looks like the shikon no tama…" An instant later, he had stuffed it into his mouth and was chewing on it, delighting in the high-pitched squeaky noise that it made as it rubbed up against his teeth.

"Then again, maybe not…" Sesshoumaru sighed. Kagome returned a few minutes later, her face tightly drawn in anger, the impossibly enormous yellow backpack slung over one shoulder.

"Spit that out." she sighed irritably at the hanyou, holding out her hand. "You don't know where that thing has been. Knowing our luck, you'll probably catch some horrible foreign disease."

"Keh!" he huffed, but obediently spit the ball out into her hand. "Like that could ever…humph…" he finished feebly, remembering the chicken pox.

"Ew." Kagome whispered under her breath, handling the slimy, wet ball. She tossed it unceremoniously over her shoulder, and it bounced crazily down the hall behind them, zigzagging in random directions. Inuyasha watched it go, a pitiful look in his eyes. He wasn't exactly sure why, but he longed to chase after it. Maybe if he hadn't been hurting so much, he would have gone and brought it back, and then Kagome could have thrown it again, and he could have chased it and brought it back, and then she could have thrown it again, and he could have-

"Are you coming, oto-chan? It was your idea to come here and retrieve the wench, was it not?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, right." with one last, longing look back at the pink rubber ball that had finally come to a rest at the end of the hallway, he turned to his companions and said, "Alright, let's get out of here." As they walked out the door and into the bright, midday sunlight, Sesshoumaru chuckled softly into his brother's ear.

"It was tempting, wasn't it?" Inuyasha turned a slight shade of crimson and stuffed his hands into his pockets, scowling.

"I…I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Don't waste your breath denying it, oto-chan. You never could resist a game of fetch. When you were just a pup, I used to wear you out that way. You'd spend an entire morning chasing that damned ball around the garden, and by afternoon you were spent for the day, leaving my mate and I to ourselves, without your incessant interruptions." Sesshoumaru interrupted himself at that moment, with his own laughter. "You know, sometimes I wouldn't even throw the ball, I'd just pretend that I had! But you still went racing after it anyway. Then after about ten minutes, when you couldn't find it anywhere, you'd start searching through my robes… Aha… But it worked like magic, every time, and you never caught on that I was doing it on purpose, to make you go down earlier so that Tsuki-chan and I could have some peace for a few hours. You were so stupid…"

"You know, nii-chan, as much as I love hearing you brag about all the different ways you've cleverly managed to torment me over the years, I think you'd better give it a rest now, before I get all choked up…. Oi! Kagome! Where the hell are you going? The shrine is THIS way!"

"Sure, if you want to walk a few miles! Me, I prefer the subway, it's faster and you're not totally exhausted by the time you get home. But if you really want to drag yourself all the way back on your own two feet, then be my guest!" Actually, that didn't sound very appealing to the hanyou at all. After the long walk up and the tense confrontation, he was all but dead on his feet.

"Subway, huh? Is that something we can sit down in?" Kagome glanced up at the sun, squinting, a habit that she'd picked up on the long, dusty roads of the sengoku jidai, where clocks were not readily available.

"At this time of day? Probably. There aren't usually a ton of commuters between here and our stop. Besides, even if we can't, it's better than walking. Come on, guys." she called, turning down a side street and then descending into a rather large opening in the ground that lead below the surface of the earth.

"A cave?" Sesshoumaru questioned, giving his brother a puzzled look. Inuyasha shot him back an equally puzzled look and shrugged.

"Got me."

"I thought that you were supposed to be well-versed in this place and it's many…oddities."

"It's a big world, Sesshoumaru. Just hurry up, I've lost sight of Kagome." They followed her scent down the long staircase, into the abyss. However, they lost it about halfway down, as it became mingled and confused by the scents of hundreds of other ningens. The stench was remarkable. It was warm, wet and foul, and the youkai brothers had to cover their mouths and noses to keep from gagging.

"Gah! This is awful…" Sesshoumaru cursed, his words muffled by his hand. "This smell…it's overpowering!"

"Never mind the smell, we have bigger problems. How the hell am I supposed to find Kagome in all of this?"

"What? You mean you can't pick your own mate's scent out of a crowd?" Sesshoumaru said dryly. Inuyasha peeked over the fingers that were clamped over his own nose and mouth to furrow his eyebrows at his older brother.

"You're kidding, right?" came his own muffled reply.

"Yes, of course! Gods this is awful…"

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I think I'd rather walk after all." Inuyasha said, beginning to cough as he accidentally inhaled some of the dank air. Without really being conscious of the gesture, Sesshoumaru patted his little brother on the back, helping him get it out. A second later, it registered in his mind that he was feeling something wet beneath his palm. He turned his hand over slowly, to see it glistening a pale red in the lamplight. A bit horrified, he looked down at his brother's back to see a dark blotch on the back of the shirt, where he had clapped his hand a moment ago.

"…kuso…" he cursed softly.

"Nani, nii-chan?"

"You're bleeding."

"Kuso" Inuyasha echoed. "How badly?"

"I can't be sure…. I couldn't even smell it. Look…" he said, holding his palm out flat for Inuyasha to see. "And the back of your shirt is wet with it."

"Wet? Shit…it must have sopped right through the bandages then…dammit! I don't understand this! It isn't like my body to be this weak! Back home, a little stick like this would have been healed by now. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"It could be any number of things. Perhaps the illness we contracted when we first arrived hasn't completely left your system, or perhaps it's because you were human when you received the wound."

"No, that's not it, that's never mattered before."

"Well then maybe it's because you've mated with the wench, and you're blood is acting strangely. Or maybe it's simply because you never stopped to rest long enough for it to heal! How are you feeling now?"

"Not too bad, a little dizzy… Where the hell is Kagome?! Don't move, I'm going to see if she went around this corner." As he took a shaky step forward, his knees buckled beneath him. Luckily, there was a pillar to his left, and his arm shot out in time to catch himself. Unfortunately, Sesshoumaru had seen it all.

"Alright, up oto-chan!" he said, turning the hanyou around and staring to bend down so that he could hoist him up onto his shoulder.

"Hey, hands off pal!" Inuyasha barked, backing away from him. "I don't need you to carry me around like I'm some fucking infant! Stop trying to pick me up all the time! You just trying to show off, I know you…" Sesshoumaru's face remained expressionless, but his voice nearly betrayed him.

"You are hurt. I am trying to help you."

"Yeah, sure you are. You mean you're trying to show your superiority, that's what you're trying to do, just like always!"

"That's not true."

"Bullshit! What other reason could you possibly have for helping me? You hate me!"

"Perhaps." he said, gently placing the hanyou's right arm around his neck, and wrapping his sole arm around the younger demon's waist for support. "But first and last, you are my brother, Inuyasha."