InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Movie House Hanyou ❯ Of Honey Days and Boys in Black ( Chapter 17 )

The room was stifling and rank with the heady scents of the slick upon his skin, the slick that made his hands slip as he tried to grip her shoulders and then her wrists where they lay on either side of her head, and the erratic puffs of hot and sticky breath from them both as they squirmed, her fingernails deeply gouging the flesh just below his shoulder blades. He licked and laved his tongue upon her neck, one hand momentarily slipping from her pinned down wrist to the twisted bed sheets and shredding them in the process. With a gasp and a murmur from the woman below him, Inuyasha tore his mouth away from her and licked his lips like a lion after a tasty meal, his eyes shutting in bliss as he reveled in the delicacy that was the odd mixture of his saliva and the sweat that had coated her neck. He let out a pleased growl and went back to her neck.

The hands clawing at his back loosened and fell limply to the bed mattress. Beneath him, the woman writhed and bucked--

Wait a minute… that's not physically possible. Inuyasha nipped the woman's neck a little harder than he had intended as he realized that she had more than two arms, a stunned expression on his face.

"Ow! What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" she yelled out in annoyance with a grimace and squinched shut eyes. He looked at her, then glanced at her shoulders to see that there were indeed two arms sprouting out from each side. His own hands still pinned down two of her wrists, while the other two grabbed at the bunched up sheets and blankets covering the mattress of her bed.

"What the hell are you?" His golden eyes fretted over what he saw. She hadn't had more than two arms earlier, when he'd picked her up at the club.

At his demeaning inflection, she opened her eyes and glared at him. After an unladylike snort she took one of her free hands and slapped him on the face. "How dare you! What is it with you and your freaky bedroom behavior?"

Inuyasha was fazed, not from the slap, but from the fact that she had twice as many arms as he remembered.

"Get the hell off of me!" Kikyou somehow wrested her pinned limbs free from his grasp and pushed against his chest with all four hands so forcefully that she easily dislodged Inuyasha from inside her and shot him backwards across the room. He landed against the far wall with a strange smack and a guttural oomph and a groan from deep within.

Just how the hell did she throw me across the fucking room? She's just a human female, Inuyasha thought to himself for a moment as he slid downward and crumpled to the floor in a naked heap, a mess of sweaty skin and stringy hair that lost its metallic color in the dark.

The door to her room opened, and in walked a middle-aged Asian man with a cell phone, smirking as he surveyed everything in the room. "Hello, police? This is Suikotsu Kawarazaki, and I would like to report a strange man violating my 15 year old daughter--"

"Violating? Fifteen?!" The naked hanyou now stood at attention, in more than one manner, as he growled at the four-armed human female who was now laughing as if she had overdosed on laughing gas one too many times. Shit, this isn't real! It can't be! It's too surreal!

"If you want to live, you had better run, Inuyasha," she warned in a gradually lowering voice, her vocal chords thickening like a boy going through puberty without the crackling and screeching side effects. "Run…" she whispered in a scathingly drawn out voice lower than anything he could ever successfully attempt.

Dread began to pool into the lower regions of his belly, where only moments ago it had been filled with aching desire and the need for sexual gratification. He glanced around the room looking for his clothing. She was still on her bed laughing, staring at him even in her state of undress, leaning back on one set of elbows.

"Run, before Daddy has the police arrest you--" She smirked and quelled her laughter. "Oh, and you might want to think about getting a bigger dick, cuz I barely felt anything."

His eyes narrowed with a murderous rage. "Excuse me? For the last fucking time, seven inches is more than enough! What's there to complain about?!" Inuyasha's gaze found his pants, and he quickly pulled them on. "Bitch," he muttered before turning around to look at where her father still stood jabbering into his phone. This is defying all logic, indeed, he contemplated to himself. With one last glance at her, he went to tear off his bandana, only to shockingly realize it was not there in the first place. His dog ears twitched freely atop his head. This isn't right at all. Stressed out and shaking slightly, he took a running start toward the glass window of the next wall and jumped right through, the pane cracking as he smashed through it and shards and shrapnel sputtering everywhere as he passed through the portal, only to fall downward into a void like a cylindrical elevator shaft.

The air whooshed around him, his still stringy hair trailing high above him, as he sped down and down with increasing velocity. Nothing could be seen. It was pitch black. The window portal must have disappeared. He felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole but deprived of visuals and nothing but the sound of the air as he shot more than fell downward. His limbs felt weak.

When Inuyasha finally felt something other than the rush of air pelting him as he continued to fall, it was the feeling of being repelled. He hit a surface not unlike that of a trampoline, and a sudden bright light shone at that exact moment, momentarily blinding him.

"Shit! What the fuck--" He closed his eyes, feeling more sensitivity to the light than Riddick ever could with his Furian eyesight.

Upwards he shot with a deep, discombobulating bounce and a frightening increase in speed. When he finally fit the ceiling with a sickening smack and a thud and an ache in his entire frame, his back was flat against it and he was looking downward. Metal clamps locked his waist, wrists and ankles to the ceiling, his hair trailing downward and his face in a fantastic grimace.

Please let this dream end soon, he thought as he sighed to himself as he tried not to show any signs of pain. His entire body flared up in small spasmodic episodes of aching that blistered beneath his skin and curled around his bones. He let out a gasp as he looked downwards, really the only direction he could look, and saw a tall, slim figure walking toward him as she defied the laws of gravity and stood completely parallel to him and the ground perfectly and effortlessly.

The short-haired woman slowly approached, stopping only a few feet from him. His long hair was only inches away from her now outstretched fingertips.

Inuyasha's hardened length still tented outward due to his lack of gratification. He glared at the woman before snarling in annoyance, "Dawn, get the fuck away from me, you relapsing cunt!"

Silent she remained, her expression somber yet blissful. After a deep breath, she closed her eyes and whispered, "It feels just like the good old days."

Blinking from the still present irritation from the light that seemingly had no particular source anywhere that he could detect, he caught sight of the needle marks in her outstretched arm, just past the crook of her elbow. Fresh needle marks, not the scars he had been so accustomed to seeing.

"You junkie!" he screeched. "When I met you, you told me you had been clean for two years and had no intention of going back to that shit!"

"I didn't, initially," she responded in a strangely echoed voice.

She looked thinner and more emaciated than ever. Giving her oral had always secretly disturbed him because her thighs had been so fleshless and bony. Everything about her was bony, in fact, now that he thought about it in retrospect.

"Buy why? I could smell the junk in your veins the first time you went back to it, Dawn," he pleaded. "You told me you were clean, for good."

"Why? I don't have to answer that," Dawn responded haughtily, almost looking like a mannequin how she didn't move from her spot or even move her outstretched arm. "Why, however, did you keep what you really are from me?"

I didn't know if you would accept me once you knew. "You should be able to figure that out, unless the heroin rotted most of your brain," he replied in a low and threatening voice. And I was right; you didn't accept me. You screamed in horror when you saw I had dog ears. You ran off. You left me. You left the state. "Get away from me. Let me go." Get me out of here before I scream.

He unknowingly started trembling within his restraints, the only things keeping him from falling down the blinding, painfully white shaft. What would happen if he were to hit bottom again? Would the trampoline thing still be there? Why was Dawn here? Why was all of this happening to him?

"So it was okay for you to smoke weed and drop acid and drink that wormwood-infested green stuff, but not okay for me to find bliss my own way? You hypocrite!" she accused with a strange grin on her face, her words echoing and vibrating through the shaft. He winced, and her voice trailed off into a giggle, making him shudder.

Dawn wordlessly began to melt slowly into a pool of glistening, translucent blubber, Inuyasha watching the entire, creepily silent process in unmasked horror. You've watched The Matrix way too many times, boy. It's just a dream, just a dream, just a nightmare….

A low rumble traveled upwards toward him, and he shut his eyes fiercely, wishing for the nightmare to end. The clamps holding him to the ceiling dug into his skin, and he started to grow nauseous from hanging in that position for so long. His sense of smell was overwhelmingly muted.

"Inuyasha? Inuyasha? Open your eyes," a strangely familiar voice spoke up, and he flashed his golden eyes upon a sight he had hoped not to see. Not when he was like this, exposed, his demon heritage plainly obvious.

"No, not like this…" he mumbled to himself.

"What?"

"I don't want you to see me like this." He turned his head to the side, allowing the curtain of hair to shield him from the unwanted and unpremised sight. He flattened his ears against his head, hoping to hide them within his cascading hair.

"Why?" the voice implored.

What will you do when you find out? This is only a dream. You've never seen what you see right now. "Kagome, I just don't."

"Don't you trust me?"

His eyes widened, his eyelashes brushing against his silvery locks as he blinked several times very quickly, and he turned to look at her again, his ears perking up with a will of their own.

There stood Kagome, defying gravity in the same place where Dawn had just morphed into a pile of translucent, watery goo. Her expression was unreadable, and his gaze frantically tried to detect whatever he could from her, passing over her short and petite constitution, her rounded hips and bust, her long, slightly wavy black hair that fell backwards behind her much in the same manner that his own hair did.

He cringed with a stifled gasp, his ears drooping. I don't know. I don't know yet. "I want to," he offered in a small voice.

She offered up her hands toward him as she took small steps forward.

"Don't come any closer," he softly but quickly uttered, tensing all his muscles. He tested one of the bindings on his wrists, but it held even against his hanyou strength.

"Inuyasha, it's okay," she replied, her expression finally taking form… she looked forlorn.

The thunder-esque rumbling vibrated through the tunnel-like shaft again, and the light flickered before overcast shadows took over and bled into his sight. She stood before him in indistinct apparel, cupping her two hands together in front of her, letting the tips of his hair pool into them.

He shook his head violently, swishing his hair out of her grasp. His heart raced, and he felt something cold drop from his chest into his stomach, something other than dread, something he couldn't, wouldn't identify. She only stepped closer, almost robotically.

"No!" he snarled and bared his fangs, "Kagome, no!"

"Trust me, Inuyasha. Trust me." And then her hands parted and went for the agitated white triangles of fur that had almost been swallowed up by his hair due to his position.

He screamed and shut his eyes, squirming in his metal bindings.

His limbs were free, and he thrashed about in his bed sheets, covered in a sheet of sticky, glistening sweat, his hair damp from the humidity and the fur upon his ears feeling mussed and grimy, though grimy from what, he could not guess. He shuddered himself awake, glanced about the room, and listened intently as he gasped for breath erratically, his chest heaving.

After a few moments of realizing he was merely in his bedroom and had finally woken up from the nightmare, he calmed himself down gradually and chewed his lip. Only fleeting moments of his visions were still in his immediate memory. He hoped he would forget them entirely.

Running his fingers through his hair delicately and frantically, Inuyasha checked the digital clock on the far wall with its light-up LCD display. It was shortly past three in the morning. Only the first day of July, and it was already proving to be the Month From Hell. He shuddered and lay awake a while longer. Sleep did not claim him again for quite some time. Somehow, he was glad, despite how achingly tired he was.

---

"I'm here to pick up three rolls of film for the last name Higurashi, please," Kagome told the clerk at the Walgreen's photo developing counter, anxiously tapping her fingers in a drumming motion.

"Higurashi, Higurashi," the clerk repeated as she turned to look through the bin for last names starting with 'He.' "How do you spell that?"

"H-I-G-U--" the teenager began to spell out.

"Ah, wrong bin. Here we go," she interrupted and she switched her hand over to the 'Hi' bin and quickly found the three envelopes in question. Handing them to Kagome, she asked if that was all she would need or if she still had some shopping to do. Telling the clerk the former, Kagome quickly had the developed photographs from the All the Pretty Horses show paid for and everything.

Once she had left the small convenience store and pharmacy, she gave in to her anticipation and opened up the photo packages. She had done her best to capture some particularly enticing shots, not only of the eye candy of everyone on stage, but also of Inuyasha exclusively. He had specifically told her she could have a copy of every single photo she had taken, as well as the negatives, so, of course, it was the perfect opportunity for obtaining pictures of a half naked Inuyasha to fawn over at home.

Standing in one spot right in front of the store, she quickly flipped through the glossy photographs from the first two packages, reminiscing for a short moment with a smile as she looked at each shot separately. Upon opening the third package, the first few shots turned her expression into one of surprise.

Those shots were not from the show. Whoever had used his camera last before he had brought it to the show for her use must have taken them. Kagome shifted through the images, clearly able to identify one particular person in a couple of them but not the one who was present in all of those surprise photos from the beginning of the roll.

"Damn, that guy's attractive, almost as hot as Inuyasha," she said to herself in appreciation with an offhand lick of her lips. "Did he take these pictures? Did he even know they were on this roll?" After a moment of contemplation, she smirked and overshot her own questioning. "Well, just more eye candy for me, I guess. I bet he'll never know the difference if I keep both copies of those photos."

Kagome had to admit that not only was the young man with long black hair very attractive, but something about the image of a guy tied to a chair gave her a sudden rush. If she thought about it, the photos may as well be used for aid in those lovely fantasies that occupied her mind on such a regular basis. Attractive male with long black hair, attractive and half naked Inuyasha with swishy silvery braids and extensions… both men aptly drool-worthy, and since she had no idea who the former was, they were both out of her league for the time being. What else was there for a teenage girl to do but fantasize?

"I am so going to have lovely dreams tonight," she said aloud in anticipation, a grin spreading from ear to ear.

---

Inuyasha mulled over the nightmare once again.

Bits and pieces of it did indeed come back to his fleeting memory from day to day, and the surrealism of the first part, of that four-armed Kikyou, of reliving a strangely diluted and warped version of that fateful night, absolutely left him in a fitful chill of disturbance.

The hurt that needled its way inside him from the confrontation with Dawn didn't leave him with much peace of mind either. He had never wanted to think about the reason why he had initiated the whole break-up causing fight ever again, but unfortunately his unconscious felt that such a scene would be perfect for torturing him in his sleep and even long afterward.

Slapped on top of those two atrocious dream interpretations, of course, had to be placed something about Kagome to bother him. Even though his coworker, er, employee typically kept quiet nowadays, every once in a while she sent strange looks his way, no doubt silently asking him for explanations of his quirks, and he just didn't know anymore about when, or how, or even if, she would become privileged. In his nightmare, and there was no way he would ever admit it to anyone else were he to tell anyone about it, but he had been scared shitless, even with her repeated attempts, her ambition, everything. It was simply too soon for him to tell.

He scraped his mind blank quickly as he winced from the last lash and sting of a flogger upon his lower ribcage, recoiling in reaction to the harsh contact. Water buffalo, it had been made from the leather of water buffalo. Not only did he recognize the scent despite all the other distracting scents that wafted near him, but he also knew by its sting, bite, impact upon his flesh.. He coughed; his mouth was dry from having been pried open for so long. The skin of his fingertips had splinters, as his claws always dug into the same gouges in the wooden X frame of the rack every single week.

Sleepwalker, dream talker
In a shady world of disbelieving
Love seemed always to be leaving
Sleepwalker, dream talker
Comotosed to walk the ceiling
Numb, and never feeling

Doesn't the city look so pretty
In a late night lazy sort of way
Floating through my life

In a somnambulistic decay

Love, love, where did it go?
Gone to the land of satin and snow
Long gone with that look on my face
Lost in your box of feathers and lace

I was a drifter, a dreamer
A delusion believer
When emotion I was thieving
My heart was really grieving

Life, life, where did it go?
Off to the land where the cold winds blow
Numb, numb, dumb as can be
Someone made a zombie and the zombie was me

I was a drifter, a dreamer
A day dream believer
When to everybody I was lying
My heart was softly crying

Tears run down my paralyzed face
Your head a confusion of snowflakes and mace
Lost in a sea of jelly and glue
With my half lit illusions what am I gonna do?

As footsteps walked away from him and the din of the overhead song drew him in, Inuyasha managed to relax his sore and restrained frame for a few moments, his mind clear for the first time in several hours. He sighed and swallowed dryly.

At the sound of the returning footsteps, he cringed and shuddered due to the presence of a new sound so like and yet unlike that of a buzzing tattoo needle gun, both approaching slowly while acrimonious tension engulfed him. His hidden dog ears flattened themselves against the sides of his head in a fruitless attempt to block out the familiar noise.

Shit. Jakotsu was going to use a violet wand this time.

It wasn't fair. Even though he was voluntarily putting himself through this, it just wasn't fair.

Electrical sensory play involving electrode attachments delicately jammed into the tip ends of violet ray generators, body contact probes, streaming mylar floggers-- Inuyasha tried not to tremble at the thought. No, it wasn't fair. It was his favorite.

Beneath the blindfold, Inuyasha tightly shut his eyes and somberly awaited the encroaching dom behind him and his favored toy.

Not fair.

---

One of Kagome's days off was a Saturday of the opening weekend for Pirates of the Caribbean, and she gladly took advantage of it. Unable to take advantage of free pass privileges due to it being a Saturday, she came for one of the matinees for the cheaper price. At the box office Mandy commented on the bandages and white adhesive tape covering her left forearm, and while she brushed it off as just a burn incident with the kettle, inside she cursed to herself.

An entire two weeks had already passed, fifteen days to be exact, since she had suffered the injury, and the damn thing was still so unsightly that she had to keep it covered up and bandaged at all times. For the first few days it had wept a disgusting discharge, and even after that had stopped, she still needed to change the bandage twice a day. It was too large to leave uncovered for long; she worried it would get infected before it could scab over properly, even when she was at home or at least away from work.

There was also the fact that as an employee working with food it made sense that she keep an open wound, and a large one at that, covered up. Besides, what customer would want to look at some giant burn mark completely exposed on the forearm of the person scooping the popcorn or bagging the hot dogs, right? She mentally shuddered, imagining her disgust were she in a customer's position in that same scenario and shying away from the grossness of the visual.

Onward upstairs she went, feeling lucky to have actually gotten a ticket for the busiest afternoon showtime of the exact same movie that had just opened up three days earlier in the middle of the week. She passed by her coworkers in the stand, waving to them from afar since they had massive lines, and was about to pass by the auditorium doors for Screen 15 on her left when she heard muffled screaming.

She paused in place, looking at the sign displays halfheartedly to see which movies were playing and when to her left and across from her on the other side of the hallway on Screens 13 and 14. They were all movies that either would not start for at least half an hour or were still in the opening commercials, the rolling stock, that always played right before the movie trailers, much to many moviegoers' annoyance. The other moviegoers in the hallway kept on walking as if it was something to be expected.

The screaming came back for a moment, this time accompanied by some light sobbing. Kagome could not make any more deductions as to whether it was just from a movie playing or if it came from somewhere else when the GMO door abruptly opened in a jarring motion with a harsh click and out walked a short figure whom she immediately recognized. Before she could say anything from her somewhat hidden position of observance, the hunched figure, currently sobbing with a covered up face, turned to run farther up the hallway. More indistinct yelling sounded from the door of the office as it slowly closed.

A large hand caught the edge of the yellow door and pulled it back open from the inside. "In the future, Miss Brizova, you do not go over my or Kagura's head. Do you understand me?" Naraku called out after the blur of black, blue, and purple that sped away from him down the hallway as he stuck his head out to glance at her, not noticing his off-duty employee's presence in the other direction.

From her spot, Kagome finally began walking down the hallway with a façade of nonchalance, trying to ignore what she had just seen and heard. It was yet another occurrence of one of the things Inuyasha had told her about that one day in the café section of Border's on the first floor of the very building she was in right now. It was not the first time she had even seen that type of display between those two, either, but more like the fourth or fifth time. If she didn't harden herself, she would never be able to handle the tasks that still lay ahead.

The General Manager caught sight of her and offered an afternoon greeting to her as she walked by. Out of courtesy she spoke an offhand "Hi there" with false cheeriness and continued walking with her gaze forward, somehow unnerved that he could completely switch from such an angry tone to one so congenial in a shuddering flash, as he had just done.

At times she often wondered why she continued working at a place run by such an uncouth character, why she didn't just quit and find a job elsewhere. It would be so easy. But, at the same time, she hated change. She had moved around so much during her years of growing up, lived in several different cities, even in more than one nation. Being uprooted repeatedly had taken its toll on her. Now that she had only one year of high school still ahead, Kagome had absolutely no intention of moving elsewhere or changing routines unless dire circumstances proved necessity.

Shortly after arriving in Minneapolis, she had noticed a public high school on Nicollet Island, right in the middle of where she crossed the Mississippi on the way to school or work. Yet, the thought of asking her mother to switch her education registry to the school not even a five minute walk from home had never occurred. She had done enough switches and uprooting over the years, and it was about damn time she stuck with where she was placed. To her, that meant schooling, living arrangements, and employment.

As she reached the end of the hallway and turned left to approach Screen 8, she thought to herself about how surprisingly quickly she had gotten a response to her application at the movie theater and, even more surprisingly, how quickly she had been hired. She attributed it to the high turnover rate that Denise had told her about the day she applied. Managers desperate to hire, and prominently because no one would stay for long… somehow Kagome felt that most other places would not hire in such a hungry manner. If she were to quit, to give up on this place just because a couple of the managers ran the place in an uncivil manner, she would disappoint herself.

The only reason she disliked working at the theater, she told herself, was the management. However, when there is a problem, it should be fixed. If it cannot be fixed, remove it. Naraku himself had said so, or at least implied thus, at that first staff meeting. She snorted with an offhand laugh on that thought. Somehow, her strange sense of humor managed to find amusement in that the very being who had made such an announcement was the removal-needy problem of which he had spoken. Once he was gone, and hopefully Kagura with him, things would go back to the way Inuyasha had told her they had been under the old management.

Kagome passed several ushers coming toward her, no doubt off toward Screen 11 far behind her, which had just let out. A couple of them said hello to her, while the ones she still didn't know by name or face merely went along in silence down the hallway that amazingly was not flooded with customers. Inside the auditorium she found a lone seat somewhere in the back surrounded by some particularly enthusiastic Orlando Bloom fans who just would not shut up, even though the slide projections with advertisements were the only thing on display. In a way, she was glad the rolling stock and trailers had not yet started, merely hoping the fan girls would cut with the chatter once the film itself had started.

As the movie had opened on a Wednesday, it was more than plausible that they had already seen it, and so it seemed based on the portions of the movie they were currently discussing and fawning over; she couldn't help but overhear in annoyance, they were so loud. She shrugged them off; she would sit closer to the screen, farther away from them, but most of the empty seats left were in the floor section. Eventually she was able to filter them out, and she felt relieved when they indeed clammed up once the Pierce Theaters segue leader between the last trailer and the beginning of the film itself played upon the giant screen.

After the movie let out, a good two and a half hours later, Kagome walked home with a big smile on her face and a sea of swashbuckling one-liners milling through her head in an effort to file them away for later quotage. Walking along the bridge and half paying attention to the passing traffic, she took in several deep breaths of air and reveled in the lovely weather. Instead of taking a left when she reached Main Street, or Historic Main Street, as the additional signs noted, she paused, glanced at the cobblestone only feet from her spot on the curb, and then crossed the street before taking a right, following the very path she had taken on her way to meet her supervisor that one day.

The walk was refreshing. She didn't get out enough, she decided, so before finally ending up at home she thought it harmless to take a side trip to the plaza again. Thankfully it was not too warm out; she could leave her very lightweight jacket on. Upon reaching the expanses of concrete off to her left that led to the RiverPlace buildings, she glanced around at the few people that stood in a huddle with a large video camera on one man's shoulder up toward the top of the final concrete step, platform, whatever it would qualify as, before immediately turning and watching a couple sit on the very bank where she and Inuyasha had sat once.

Turning back, she saw a partially concealed staircase that descended to a place downward underneath a building that bordered the right of the concrete platform like steps. Having nothing better to do and feeling eager to explore the already somewhat familiar area, she made her way down the concrete stairs. She felt like she was on her way to someone's basement hideaway or the fruit cellar of someone's home. At the very bottom she took sneaking peeks through the darkened windows off to her right, particularly the one in the locked door in front of which she now stood.

"The museum's been closed for more than a year and a half, young lady," a gentle male voice called down to her.

"Huh? Museum?" Kagome looked upward and saw a young man's face, partially obscured in detail due to lack of sunlight, leaning over the stairwell and staring down back at her, his long black hair trailing down in a thick, almost wavy ponytail over his shoulder. "Uh, hi there."

"Hello yourself, young lady." She wasn't sure, but she thought it looked like he was smiling back at her.

"What museum was here?" she asked, curious. The place looked a bit too rundown to have ever housed a real museum.

The man's face disappeared for a moment, and she turned toward the stairs to see him at the top, standing directly in the path she would take to get past the stairs.

"The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices," he answered with deep seated interest, leaning against the top of the railing. His face was much clearer now that there was proper light; she guessed him to be in his early twenties. "Some guy around here housed his personal collection of the stuff in there, everything on display and all. He had a huge collection, and it only grew once the place got a bit of a following. Health care organizations would actually donate things to the museum, or at least loan them to the museum owner for display and educational purposes. But, this was a non-profit place, and eventually the owners of the rental space felt they'd rather a coffee shop be in its place, though as you can plainly see, there is nothing here still. The museum owner ended up donating much of his collection to the Science Museum of Minnesota, over in the capital, St. Paul."

Kagome blinked a few times as she processed the information she had just received from the stranger. "Well, that's… very interesting. You mean questionable as in things that didn't have a purpose?"

He smiled back at her. "Anything that was either dangerous, like this one device that would x-ray your feet to see if your shoes fit properly but was deemed unsafe due to x-ray leakage, or anything that didn't do what it was claimed to help with. Quack stuff, you know? There were all sorts of cool shit in that museum the few times I went. Too bad, but oh well." Shrugging, he glanced off to his left toward something she obviously could not see.

"So…" she trailed off, wondering if he would stand in front of the stairwell forever or if he would move anytime soon. He seemed to be listening to others trying to talk to him from far off. Maybe he was one of the guys with the video camera she had seen earlier. She hadn't paid enough attention to what any of them looked like, other than that they were all male.

"Be right over there, guys!" he called out, confirming her suspicions. Turning back to look at her, he offered a smile with just a hint of mischief and asked, "How would you like to be in a skit my friends are filming for our cable access show?" He winked.

She wrinkled her brow and forehead in contemplation. "A TV show?"

"Yeah. It's called Perfect TV. Basically, it's half an hour of me and my boys showcasing a bunch of raunchy humor infested skits, and then half an hour of this funny-ass fake wrestling federation we came up with."

"Ummm," she uttered uncertainly.

Sensing her unease, he continued, "Look, we're just filming something called The Smokers' Olympics. Ever seen that one episode of Monty Python with the Upper-Class Twit of the Year skit?"

Kagome was unable to stifle a laugh. "Oh, yeah, that is one of my favorites, right after the Dead Parrot skit."

"Think along those lines for the Smokers' Olympics. Oh, and we're going to film a bunch of the guys walking around doing funny walks, and then play it backwards on the show so it's even weirder."

She cocked her eyebrow at him and snorted with a giggle. "Sure, what the hell, I guess. I've never been on TV before."

Bankotsu smiled back at her. "Right on. Come, the camera's already rolling and the guys are hounding for me to get my ass over there."

---

Once home after helping out the guys in their strange but humorous filming excursion, Kagome received a phone call from one of her old friends in Chicago. She chatted with her friend for a while to play catch-up, then ended the call and went back to reading a book that Tanaya had suggested to her. As much as the moody and annoying girl bugged her, she had gotten used to her antics and frequently had become able to hold civilized conversations with her in the break room. Kagome didn't like being at odds with people, so usually when she disliked someone, she kept it hidden. She was now grateful for that quality of hers, as so far she had been thoroughly enjoying Darkchild by Sydney van Scyoc.

The book had been nearly impossible to find. She had had to ask her mother to buy her a used copy of it on Amazon's website, the author was so scarce. Apparently, the only way to get the woman's sci-fi/fantasy fiction was through obscure sources-- everything was out of print and had been for at least 15 to 20 years, it seemed.

Kagome sat back on her bed and read for an hour or so until it grew dark, the lighting in her room growing dim enough for her to need artificial lighting supplementation if she wished to continue engrossing herself in the magical world where Darkchild's characters existed. She sighed and sat up.

When she set her book off to the side and stood up, she glanced at her desktop and saw the pile of photographs from the show. They were the only photos, the only pictures at all, of Inuyasha that she had.

She walked over and picked up the top half of the stack, planting herself into the chair in front of her desk so she could sit while flipping through the pretty images again. Inuyasha hadn't questioned her about anything when she had handed him his copy of the concert photos; perhaps he had long forgotten about the other photos at the beginning of that roll. It didn't seem like he would miss them. They were nothing but that extremely attractive black-haired double of him, occasionally with Inuyasha's friend Sango standing behind the unhappy looking guy. She had only met Sango once, but she somehow had the young woman's named embossed into her memory.

"I wonder who that is in these pictures," Kagome said aloud to herself. "Well, it's not like it matters, I suppose. But Inuyasha certainly knows how to please a girl, letting me have all these photos of him." She smiled. "I kinda wish he'd told me sooner about his brush with the cops, or I wouldn't have been so persistent," she immediately commented in a disappointed tone, though no one else was listening. The scenario originally had bothered her in its implications when he first told her, but something about how he acted during his recap touched her somewhere deep inside in ways she could not describe. "I had no idea something like that had been making him so paranoid. I just…."

Her train of thought dissolved as her mind went back to the prep room, when she had been standing there firmly in his grasp, his gorgeous golden eyes shutting slowly as their lips met, the sharpness of those fanglike teeth as she smoothed her tongue across their tips, the weird feeling of that little retainer in his tongue when it scraped against any part of the inside of her mouth--

"I would be more than happy to show you what I can do to someone else's -tongue- with this. Trust me, you'll never think about kissing the same way," she heard his voice in her head say, the final few words plagued by an echo, and all the proper and almost seductive inflections he had used being perfectly replicated. Just the thought of him doing so made her shiver in want, a throbbing between her thighs forming and her breath catching in her throat.

Kagome startled herself back into the present the moment she felt her tongue thicken and swell with just mere thoughts of kissing him. Shaking her head with a sigh, she set most of the photographs back on the desk and stood up, a couple photos of her half-naked lust-object --did she really just call him that?-- and one particularly nice looking shot of the mystery photo guy in her hands. Walking over to her bed, she lay down and tried to relax after putting on Peter Murphy's Deep CD.

Her thoughts kept going back to nearly every single moment of enticement she had ever been in with Inuyasha. In the parking lot, when he embraced her after she had smacked him with his crop. In the prep room, his lips upon her neck and his tongue lapping up the disgustingly sweet Coke syrup upon her skin that had splattered all over them both, the taste lingering during that deep and mind-melting kissing that caused desire to flare up within her like it never had before. In the GMO, as he looked like he was about ready to suck on her fingers the way he kept touching her arm after bandaging up her burn. In his car in the lakeshore parking lot--

At that last visual and reminiscence, Kagome shut her eyes and unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, quickly sliding a hand beneath the waistband of her panties.

It's not fair, she thought to herself with a whimper and a lick of her lips as she brought up visual after visual, her fingers quickly going to work. That night she fell asleep feeling sad yet slightly satisfied, small trails of dried tears from the corners of her eyes to where they had dripped and dried by her ears. It was going to be a long nine months ahead of them both, and she was not looking forward to it very much at all. She hoped that he would not go to anyone else for gratification before she turned 18, but at the same time she felt guilty for wanting him to suffer celibacy like she was forced to.

---

"Hey, Christonn, come over here," Inuyasha called out to the tall usher not currently busy with anything at the moment despite it being closing cleanup time.

"Yeah?"

"Follow me."

"Oh? What is it?"

Inuyasha raised his eyebrow in a suggestive manner, his eyes in a half glower. Basically, he was giving Christonn his "isn't it obvious, what else could it be" look. Christonn smirked as he caught on.

The two slinked away from the cleanup for the concession stand and off down the hallway into the break room, thankful that no one else was in there.

"Now, what did you need to talk to me about, 'Yash?"

"You still deal, right?" Inuyasha asked in a low and curious, questioning voice.

The tall black male caught the drift. "Your stash low?"

"Yeah." Low is an understatement, he thought to himself with a harsh laugh. "I guess you could say that.

The two quietly discussed the details of the upcoming transaction before somehow getting onto the subject of their coworkers, particularly the most recent flood of new employees who had been hired during the last week or so, instant replacements for the burned out and fed up greenies and veterans who had left in the last month.

"Hey, I heard that Tamisha quit, too," Inuyasha commented. He'd always thought she was one of the better female ushers. For some strange reason, this particular Pierce location constantly had loads of trouble keeping female ushers on staff, whether it was because they always quit or because they were fired for incompetence. "If she's gone, we're down to two female ushers, man."

"Yeah, she did quit. I don't know why, though. She seemed a bit paranoid the last time I seen her." Christonn was silent for a moment. "So, 'Yash, is there something between you and Kagome?"

"No," he promptly lied with a roll of his eyes. "What in the living fuck gave you that idea?"

"I just notice things that most people don't see, is all," was all the taller male would say.

Inuyasha grew paranoid, his eyes narrowing. "Look, she's only 17. Cops spew out of this place's ass half of the week. I'm not stupid." Christonn did not know of his brush with the cops back in Seattle, but he did know of the two's age gap. That, and he was one of only two Pierce employees who knew that Inuyasha was a hanyou. "Nothing will happen between me and her," he continued in a low, difficult to hear voice, "until I am absolutely fucking positive I can't get arrested. Demoted, I could live with. Cops? Fuck no. Do you understand, Pippi Longstocking?"

"Yeah, I hear you. By the way, I understand your paranoia, but I think you're going to end up just stressing yourself out over this."

"You're the one who brought up Kagome," Inuyasha half-heartedly accused in a brooding manner, his arms folded across his chest. He glanced off to the side for a moment.

"You need to relax," Christonn offered sympathetically. "And I don't mean, get stoned off your ass like half of everyone working here." The hanyou snorted childishly.

"Is anyone else saying anything about me and her?" Christonn reassured him that while there were hints in general that the two had chemistry, no one was really saying anything or giving opinionated implications. After a sigh in relief, Inuyasha motioned for the two of them to get back to helping the others with the final after-hours cleanup.

As soon as Sashka gave the go-ahead for him to leave, Inuyasha was clocked out, outside, and off toward The Saloon over on 9th. He didn't bother changing out of his work uniform beforehand; he was in too much of a hurry to get to Hard Mondays.

Inside, he quickly found Kouga and Miroku having an engrossing conversation with their friend Renkotsu over by a table a few feet off to the side from the bar counter. The three were more than happy to welcome him into the discussion, but Inuyasha was quickly distracted when he glanced over to the doorway entrance and saw Zara enter.

"Hold on, guys," he spoke up before digging out his cell phone to check the time at the light-up screen. "Whoa, I totally blanked out. As of about five minutes ago, Zara is officially 21," he softly said reminded himself. "Guys, guys," he announced to his chat buddies over the din of "Seconds (Fixed)" by Autumn, catching their attention. "Someone needs a drink, and that someone is a short little Slovak friend of ours," he continued with a finger point toward her, half-amused.

Zara made her way over to their table as soon as she recognized them. Miroku started to greet her when she asked about Sango. Inuyasha also commented on how he had noticed her lack in presence.

Miroku sighed uncomfortably and began, "Well, you see, about two hours ago I tried calling her, and she told me she had to take her little brother to the ER. Wouldn't say why, but I'm guessing it's nothing too serious." He gazed off toward the bar before standing up from his stool. "Well, birthday girl, what's your poison?"

Zara quickly stole his stool spot; she looked absolutely exhausted, even in the poor lighting of the club. "Vodka Red Bull. And I want one from each of you four. I've had a long day, and no, I don't want to talk about it," she answered.

"Zara," Kouga began uneasily from his seat across from her, "just how do you plan on getting home tonight? You can't drive. Or, for that matter, from the party on Friday?" He did not want to be responsible for carting her back to her home in the bordering northern suburbs in either situation, even if she was a guest of honor at the party he would be hosting.

"Tonight, taxi. Friday, I don't know. Maybe 'Yash can drive me," she answered, sounding bored and uninterested. Miroku soon walked toward them again and set down her glass by her elbow.

Inuyasha quirked his eyebrow and promptly replied, "I said I would drive you there. I can't guarantee I'll drive you home. I'm not your chauffer." He was about to continue, his mood slightly soured over what he'd heard about Sango, when Miroku tapped him on the shoulder and vied for his attention. "Yeah?" he asked with a turn of his head.

"Can I talk to you away from the others?"

"Whatever, sure. Lemme get Zara her drink from me first." He glanced at his ex, watching her suck down the spiked energy drink like Hi-C. "Just so she doesn't bug me about it later."

After Inuyasha had given his grumpy and liquor-thirsty coworker another Vodka Red Bull, he allowed Miroku to pull him aside near the restrooms. "What is so important that you don't want the others to hear?"

"Oh, it's nothing like that. I just wanted to ask you something," Miroku covered up.

"You're being secretive, Fukuda no baka." Inuyasha narrowed his eyes. "Are you hiding something?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Miroku replied, putting his hands up in defense, a cheery expression on his face. "It's just that the others won't have a clue what I'd be talking about."

"Nani?"

"Well, when I was talking to Sango, she had asked me to talk to you for her."

"What does she want?"

"She wants to know if you plan on bringing that coworker of yours to the party?"

Inuyasha looked confused. "Huh?"

"Huh, indeed," Miroku scoffed. "I mean that coworker that Sango and I met by chance."

The hanyou's gaze grew guarded, mentally ignoring his own blatant brainfart. "Why the fuck would I bring Kagome to a party? Just because I like her doesn't mean I'm going to bring her to a party, especially one hosted by Kouga, of all people."

"Well, since Sango is asking, would you consider it? She and Chelsea are both interested in meeting her again."

"Why?"

"Inuyasha, remember how surprised Sango was when she saw Kohaku at a movie theater with her? Don't tell me you've forgotten how infrequently she is able to get him to leave the house for something other than school. Why do you think he needed to be taken to the ER tonight?"

"You yourself said she didn't say why she needed to take him there," Inuyasha countered.

"She didn't explicitly tell me what happened, but I got the gist that he lost control again. You know the kid's a little psycho with strangers. Anyway, Sango wants to meet Kagome again, wants to get to know her a little better. She'd do that in the case of anyone who could bring him out of his shell like that," Miroku explained. "Come on. It wouldn't hurt to bring her, would it?"

"I don't know, Miroku." Inuyasha sighed. "Things are a little tense between her and me. I can't even joke around with her without getting distracting thoughts. If I bring her with me, I also don't want to have to watch her the entire time."

"Why would you have to?"

"Duh, Kouga will be there. I don't care that he has a girlfriend. He hits on any pretty woman. I can trust that you have enough sense not to touch her, because you know I'll rip your nuts off if you do," Inuyasha muttered, forcing himself to laugh at the last comment. He thought for a moment, ignoring the faint twitch that graced his friend's face at the only half-joking threat. "If I bring her, do you and Sango promise to keep an eye on her for me?" Miroku tried to answer but was interrupted. "If she goes, I'd want her to actually socialize with the other people there, not cling onto me. I do not plan on being in the same damn room with her at all times. I most especially do not want to be in the same room with her alone and would like to avoid all possible occurrences of such a situation." He finally paused long enough to let his friend respond.

Miroku blinked, then smiled. He honestly had not thought it would be this easy to con his friend into inviting Kagome and had been prepared for a long, drawn-out argument. "So, this means you'll bring her with?"

Golden eyes beneath black eyebrows formed an expression of irritation. "Do you promise to keep an eye on her? Don't make me repeat myself."

"Of course. I myself am also interested in meeting her again-" Inuyasha snorted. "-and of course I would never dream of risking castration by your doing," Miroku quickly quipped right afterward. "If I wanted to be castrated, I would want anesthesia to go along with it."

---

"What's with the blindfold before the retractors this time, Jakotsu?" Inuyasha asked peevishly, quirking his eyebrow even though he knew the dom could not see the annoyed gesture.

Standing behind the hanyou, Jakotsu buckled the blindfold tightly, a smirk on his face. As he walked off toward the cabinet again, he harmlessly answered, "Oh, I just thought it would be good to change things up a bit. That's all. Make things more interesting." Anyone listening to the man's tone of voice could just hear the self-amusement dripping from his statement.

Inuyasha bristled, not liking the sound of it in the least. When the dom returned, he was fitted with… something other than the expected dental retractors. As Jakotsu was in the middle of locking the gag at the back of the hanyou's neck over his silvery hair, Inuyasha ground down on the gag bit and found it to be lacking in resistance. It wasn't metal. He felt the shape of what was in his mouth. When he recognized the shape, he grew pointedly infuriated. With a grunt, he tore off the blindfold before Jakotsu could stop him and bit down as hard as he could, easily snapping the gag into two pieces, the ends popping off.

"What are you doing?" Jakotsu managed to sputter in surprise as Inuyasha turned around and glared at him, the bitten-off gag piece in his mouth still. The taller man shifted uneasily, losing composure. Oh shit, he silently said to himself.

Inuyasha obstinately spat out the offending item at Jakotsu's chest; it landed in the dom's outstretched and cupped hands afterward. "What the fuck gave you the idea to gag me with that, of all things?" He growled. The remainder of the gag fell off his shoulders from where it had lightly settled earlier.

"But, but Inuyasha, it's just--" Jakotsu tried to explain.

"I don't fucking care what you think. Jakotsu," Inuyasha spat at him with malice. "Just about every single session I've had with you, you always have to pull some stupid shit. You testing me or something to see what all you can get away with?" He repeatedly jabbed a clawed finger into the taller man's chest, a furious scowl warping his own features.

"But--" Jakotsu tried to explain but was once again cut off.

Inuyasha flared his nostrils with a snort and angrily seethed out, "You've grabbed my cock, you've gone too far trying to get familiar with my body in other ways, you've gone between the lines of what is on my contract, and now you're wanting me to wear a gag with a doggie bone for the mouthpiece?" He growled again. "I was agreeing to this for my own sake, not to let you get off. I have been more than humanly patient and didn't even complain about the times when you deviated from what I had specifically allowed, most especially last week with the violet wand stuff."

"Well, Inuyasha, you see, I was, ummm," Jakotsu trailed off with a sheepish grin and a semi-apologetic look. "The dog bone gag was just supposed to be a joke." He laughed nervously and shifted his gaze elsewhere; Inuyasha was now glaring at him.

"If you continue to press my personal limits and subvert from what I have delineated for allowance, trust me, you'll be needing that strap-on quite soon," the fuming hanyou threatened.

"I'm only trying to help you," Jakotsu tried.

"The only reason you even know about what happened to me in Seattle is because Miroku opened his big, fat mouth to you and Bankotsu so many years ago," Inuyasha commented, his eyes narrowing even further, if it was possible. "You are also the only person who knows why I'm even having these sessions and the situation at hand, and the only one who knows I even have them aside from anyone who has seen me having them, and things are to remain that way. I trust that you are smart enough to stick to my guidelines from now on, or I will personally see to it that you suffer excruciating bodily harm. Is that understood?"

Jakotsu swallowed uneasily, fearing Inuyasha's wrath should he find out that at least one other person knew about his therapy sessions after all. "Yes." After an uncomfortable silence, the pissed off hanyou still glaring at him and no doubt with his ears flattened against his skull beneath his bandana, the dom attempted a meager request. "Are you at least willing to pay for a replacement of what you just bit into pieces?"

"No." The answer was frigid yet simultaneously burning. Jakotsu blinked and shivered with a reflex, it was so unnerving and creepy. "Now, the dental retractors."

---

A/N: lyrics are from "Sleepwalker" by Marc Almond. This chapter has been chopped in half due to its length and the fact that I am getting restless about not having posted a chapter in over 2 weeks. Plus, I think it ends well at my designated spot. Gomen. Chapter 18 shall be the party! Yay!