InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Movie House Hanyou ❯ It's Not a Date ( Chapter 4 )

That night after work, Inuyasha drove home in silence. Not even the radio, or a tape in the tape deck. Just the sounds of nighttime traffic in Downtown Minneapolis. He needed time to think, and he wasn't going to get it by having his ears assaulted by music or other voices, no matter how pleasing or irritating those sounds might be. Just the hum of his sleek winterberry Saturn as he drove it at barely the speed limit south along Hennepin Ave.

Just my luck, he thought as he made a turn signal when he was halfway to a particular intersection. She just had to be my new employee, he grumbled to himself silently. "Why the fuck does this shit always have to happen?!" he yelled aloud to himself, growling and baring his fangs despite the fact that no one could see or hear him. If he didn't like his car so much, he would have already shredded the material on the steering column and steering wheel by now.

Inuyasha continued to bitch and curse to himself as he pulled up to his house, a nice brick building just northeast of Uptown. It was small, but he didn't need a whole lot of room, living alone. Once inside he opened up a cupboard in the kitchen and pulled out a cup of instant ramen noodles. He was too lazy, too tired, to make it his usual way. Times like this called for pouring cold water in the Styrofoam cup and nuking everything in the microwave for six minutes.

When it was done, he immediately and hastily removed it from inside the microwave, but in doing so, some of the ramen broth spilled on his hand, severely burning his skin. "Fuckin' A!" he cried out with a hiss, being very careful with the soup cup now as he brought it over to the small kitchen table. Thankfully it was his left hand that got burned, so he could still eat his ramen with his dominant hand. He was all thumbs with it came to chopsticks and his left hand, that was for sure.

In the midst of eating, he examined the burn and found it pretty severe, coming close to some of the popcorn kettle burns he'd received over the years. Thankfully, however, he always healed fast, no matter from burns, broken bones, or massive cuts and bruises. His back could attest to that last one, he thought with a smirk, reminiscing some quite pleasant experiences. Images of fingernails digging into his shoulderblades and leaving long, excruciating trails of scratched flesh that crawled down the back of his ribs while in the heat of passion crossed his mind, as well as amusement concerning how his past lovers always reveled in the quickness and hardiness with which he always recovered from their tussles and pain infliction excursions.

Inuyasha licked his lips calmingly in remembrance. Damn, came another mental curse boomeranging him back to the current situation, it's times like these I wish I didn't live in a world with so many laws constructed everywhere for just about everything. He sighed and finished his nighttime meal. "Well, I guess I'll just have to do the best damn job of training her so she can get promoted, even if it takes me months. Once she's a supervisor like me," he mused to himself aloud, sitting back and removing his hat, "she's fair game."

He tossed it over his shoulder and allowed his tufted dog ears a chance to rehabilitate themselves to not being all cramped and confined within the barrier of his hat. They poked out from the upper corners of his temples. As usual, the left one needed the fur stroked back into place. For some reason, no matter what he did, when he wore that hat, it would always happen. And only to that ear. Never to the one on the right. It bugged him to no end, but no amount of hair care "stuff" could keep Lefty from getting mussed up. He snorted as he fingered the soft, short fuzz along Lefty smoothly back into place with his thumb. Then after removing his hairbinder he ran his clawed fingers like a wide toothed comb up along the back of his head through the mane that now hung free till he reached the back of his ears, massaging the bases of where they met with his head for a few moments. How he missed having someone else be the one to do things like that.

He sat in silence for a few moments, his hands back at his sides. "Kagome, what an interesting creature thrown into my path," came his thoughts aloud again, a bemused half-grin on his face as he slumped in his chair and closed his eyes, wanting to visualize. Visualize what, he wasn't exactly sure. He had no specific fantasies that were pressing to be released. He just knew that she would be invading his dreams and waking thoughts on a regular basis from now on, and if he wasn't careful, he would need to release built up tension on a regular basis.

"Such a sweet little girl she is, peppered with just the right amount of deviancy potential. I've lived long enough that I can just predict things like this," he reconfirmed to himself. He was confident that after enough passage of time and enough effort, he could get anyone he wanted. He'd always been told that there was just… something… about his charm that could work over even the most stubborn of targets.

His friend Miroku was very jealous of this special talent and had prodded him for years to give away his secrets, but this was something he just couldn't teach to someone. It was part of who he was. That's not something one can teach, he knew that. It was inborn.

A light crackle sounded outside, Lefty taking particular note of it. Thunder crackled again a few moments later, and soon a light yet tumultuous drizzle began outside. Inuyasha got up and walked to the window, inhaling the moist air just inches from the screen. Out of his back pocket he pulled a blunt and a lighter, and within moments he had already lit it and taken a long drag, holding the smoke within his lungs for a long time, till he needed to breath again, odd curls and tendrils of pot smoke exiting his nose finally.

This was going to be one of those nights when he didn't sleep. His sleep cycle was such that he only needed sleep every other day or so, and in order to get through the boredom of the very early hours of a Saturday such as this, he often needed a… distraction. His stash was getting low, and as summer would be coming up in another month or so, prices would be going up.

The next time he saw his dealer he'd have to stock up on grass, and on blotter if he could get any for less than $10 a hit. That shit was really getting expensive. Only four years earlier it cost him half that from that Velvet Acid Christ fanatic, the blonde guy with the weird haircut, yet two months ago he couldn't get anything for less than $25 a pop.

Inuyasha took another long toke on his blunt and exhaled the smoke out through his nostrils, reveling in the fuzzy cloud that seemed to melt into his face, a strange tingling that he knew would blow over in a moment but which he loved. He didn't know why, but weed always made rain smell sweeter and fresher.

---

Kagome had been working at the Pierce movie theater for two weeks now, and as of yet, she had had no real complaints. Despite the roughness she'd felt radiating off of Inuyasha her very first shift, she didn't really sense any malice or disgust from him. Her thoughts went back to his words from their first run-in… "I'm a bastard, but not all of the time," he'd said, or something along those lines.

In a way, she could use the same type of explanation of herself to someone who may have been exposed to just her bitchy side, something that might go like, like, "I'm a really nice person, but I can be a real bitch when the time comes." Yup, that's who she was, all right. She could easily be Little Miss Cheerful and then do a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, becoming what her close friends back in Chicago oh so lovingly dubbed MegaBitch.

She giggled and snorted with laugher just thinking about Mimi and Kelly coming up with it in a random burst of spontaneity back when she was only 14. I haven't heard from them in months. They're probably still not happy about when I told them I would be coming back to the US but to somewhere a good, long car ride away from them.

"Kagome!" her classmate Kohaku called out to her, ousting her from her daydream. She snapped her head over to look at him from her desk.

"Huh?" She'd been quite spaced out and had no idea why everyone except for themselves had already left.

"Class has been over for about two minutes, and Teach wants everyone outta here asap," he told her, pronouncing the acronym as if it were a real word. "C'mon, I wanna see where you work, I've never been to a movie at that place." He placed a hand on his head and looked around.

Kagome blinked before responding, "Well, I can't just show you around the place right now. I gotta start work at 5 tonight, and there's no loitering when off-duty. But I, I uh, I wouldn't mind taking you as a guest sometime, and we could see a movie together," finishing off her offer with a sheepish grin.

She didn't really like Kohaku like that, but he was a nice guy. A little shy at times, and he'd had an anxiety attack in class two days earlier, but hey, she really needed friends now, since the school year was almost over, what with little more than a month left. Girl, you have no idea just how cheesy that sounded, she told herself with a mental self bitchslap. I'm 17, and I still can't talk to guys.

"Maybe sometime next week, Kagome?"

"Maybe."

---

An hour before work she stopped by the café on the first floor of Border's and sat down for a root beer and a chicken sandwich wrap with salt and vinegar chips. The food selection was fairly meager, but it was better than what she had found available at most coffee shops, and even if the wrap wasn't worth the $5.49 she paid for it, it was still damn tasty.

While in the middle of a bite she felt a tap on her shoulder, and she turned with her mouth full, mid-chew, to face her supervisor. Or, to be more accurate, to look up at her supervisor as some "juice" from her wrap dribbled from her lip down her chin and throat. He wasn't dressed for work this time, and he was wearing similar clothes to the ones he'd worn the day she was interviewed, including the very same spiked collar and his facial jewelry, though instead of that bandana he had the Akira hat, just like she was accustomed to seeing stuffed quite hard onto his head.

Inuyasha reached out a finger to wipe the damp trail off her face before smirking and asking, "Issho ni suwatte mo iin da?" Kagome, somewhat startled by the contact between his hand and her face, held up a single finger from one of her hands to signal to him that she needed to swallow her food first before she could answer him.

After a moment, she was able to give him a "Iin da," and motion for him to sit in the chair across the table from her, which he quite quickly did.

"So, you're aware of the staff meeting tomorrow?" he asked.

She eyed him before answering, "You made a point of pointing it out to me my first day, remember?" She took another bite of her wrap and wondered what he would eventually be getting at.

"Ever since Naraku became the General Manager back in October, things have drastically changed. Of course, you'd know nothing about that, but trust me, you'll start seeing and hearing things just like the rest of us, most definitely starting with during tomorrow's staff meeting."

Kagome looked at him with a questioning look on her face, her eyebrows furrowed. After another swallow of her current bite, she set her food down on her plate and took a sip of her pop. "And you're telling me this because…?" He sighed and closed his eyes, trying to compose himself, deciding what to say now and what to leave for in the future.

"To make a long story short, let's just say that I've been working here a long time, and ever since late October, I've been sensing something not quite right. We never used to have a high turnover rate. It's difficult to keep employees for much longer than a month."

"How can they, what with that Allen guy as the hiring manager?! I'm surprised I didn't walk out after hearing what not only Allen said about me but having heard Naraku himself be the one to happily tell me so!" she disgustedly exclaimed with an outrageous gesture of her hand.

"The point is," he began, then stopped. He paused, deep in thought, for a moment, a worried look on his face.

The point is, the new management here, as far as I've been able to tell, is hiding something. As a supervisor, I was previously allowed to do a lot more handling of money and stock. These new fuckers are, shall we say, a little more than a bit secretive, and nowadays I'm lucky if I get to do anything much more than above a floor staff person's responsibilities. I would have left long ago if I didn't get paid so damn much here.

"The point is, I like you as an employee, and I don't want Naraku and Kagura to scare you into quitting," he confessed, his voice low.

"Um," Kagome started, not sure what to think.

"If you want to know what kind of shit's gone on and probably will continue to go on, I'll tell you. I just don't have enough time right now. I do, however, have a plan," he went on as he pulled out a folded up sheet of paper from the bag he'd set on the floor by his chair when he had sat down.

"Inuyasha, what the hell-"

He cut her off. "Kagome, you are a damn good worker. If you can get yourself promoted to a supervisor-"

"What?!" she exclaimed with more than just surprise. "I barely know what the hell I'm doing, let alone do anything well!"

"That's not true! Every single night you're on a register, believe it or not, we've gotten customers telling the management, hell, even me, about just how good of a job they think you do! You're cheerful, quick in reducing lines, and, in the customers' opinion, the most friendly employee they've ever been served by here," he countered, thankfully being able to speak the honest truth and not have to make something up or cover up what he really did want to say for fear of being the one to scare her into quitting. "Naraku has been talking about you ever since you started. And he doesn't talk about anyone unless he really… likes… them. Trust me on that." He eyed the uneaten portion of her chicken wrap, his gaze switching from her face to her food and back again. After a pause, he asked, "Can I have a bite of that?"

She pushed the plate toward him and said, "It's all yours now. Anyway, you were saying?" She was now quite intrigued. Only two weeks and she was already the talk of the management, in a good way?

Inuyasha quickly devoured the remains of her food offering and reached for her pop but found she pulled it out of his reach. "What," he bluntly complained, "nothing to wash it down with?"

"Get your own straw, and maybe," was her reply, slightly tinged with perturbedness.

He grumbled but continued on speaking without a sip of her beverage. "If you can get on his 'good side,' so to speak, then I can practically guarantee that he'll have you promoted by the end of summer. Normally it takes new employees a good couple of months to grow on Naraku and his First Assistant, Kagura. You, however, are pretty exceptional for fresh meat-"

"Hey!" Kagome retorted with a scowl, her nostrils aflare. She grabbed one of his silvery hair tufts and yanked on it hard as he grunted and squeezed his eyes closed for a moment in annoyance, pulling his face up close to hers across the very narrow table. "Call me fresh meat again and you're dead!" She met his pretty eyes in a glare, desperately trying not to focus on just how much he affected her right then and there. It was difficult to stay pissed at him when he had that weird smile on his face, his eyes about two thirds open. What color were they, technically, she wondered.

Inuyasha read something in her eyes, saw her composure slightly begin to collapse, and opened his mouth, bringing out his tongue and bopping her lightly on the tip of her nose with the top of his barbell. How fitting that he had decided to wear a particularly long piece of jewelry that day, he thought. He wasn't sure what she would do after getting hit on her nose with a piece of metal that was jammed through his tongue; however, he hoped it would prove quite amusing. He was not expecting what did happen, though.

Kagome's face went blank with surprise as her scowl disappeared, and her eyebrows went up and her eyes wide, a small "eep" coming from her in reaction to the quick motion. But she quickly recovered from the slight shock and brought her gaze to his mouth.

"Can I see that again? How long is that barbell?"

"Huh?" Inuyasha was more expecting her to get grossed out or annoyed at his action, not curious about his body jewelry, so her response surprised him a little and caught him off-guard. His mouth dropped slightly open, his lower canines showing prominently.

"Can you pick your nose with it?" She smiled now, letting go of his hair and trying desperately not to giggle from the absurdity of her question. It was now her turn to smirk at the other's not so enthusiastic reaction.

"Jaa, chotto hen da kedo, bishoujo ga… mou suki nano," he replied dryly, his eyes half-lidded. "And yes, I can, but no, I won't show you. I would, however, be more than happy to show you what I can do to someone else's tongue with this, though. Trust me, you'll never think about kissing the same way," he slyly offered with a toothy grin and a hand bent under his chin, his gaze never leaving hers.

Okay, so it was a bit ham-handed, but hey, he liked to see her squirm after being hit on. And being her supervisor solely meant he couldn't get involved with her. Nothing wrong with spitting the game a little here and there, he thought amusedly.

"You don't give up, do you?" She smiled back at him after rolling her eyes and sighing.

"Nope," was his curt and to-the-point reply. "Come have breakfast with me tomorrow morning. This is the address of the place," he said as he handed her the folded up sheet of paper he'd been holding onto for a while. "It's only open 6am to 2pm, or something like that, every day of the week. Meet me there at 7:30am, and we can have a nice, long, chat-filled meal together, before the staff meeting. And," he continued on in a serious tone, "I promise I'll be on my best behavior… if you want, that is."

Something in her scent changed, he noticed, and she lost some of her previous tension. "Hell's Kitchen?" she asked, more to herself than to him, desperately thinking about considering his offer. "Is this a date?"

"I'm your fuckin' supervisor, baka, I can't date you without risk of demotion," Inuyasha flatly told her. "I can, however, take you to a nice morning meal before the meeting at work, and as long as it's not a date, I'm safe. So, what do you say? Care to get to know me a little better?"

His smile was just irresistible. No way could she turn him down. "Fine, Inuyasha, I'll meet you there. Now c'mon, we both start work in 15 minutes, and you still need to change." Kagome smiled, finally willing to admit to herself that she really did like him after all. Besides, it wasn't a date; he promised.

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A/N:

Japanese vocab-

Issho ni suwatte mo iin da? - Is it okay if we sit together?
Iin da - it's okay
Jaa, chotto hen da kedo, bishoujo ga… mou suki nano - okay, you're a little weird, but I still like you, pretty girl
Baka - stupid