InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Open Your Eyes ❯ When First I Saw ( Chapter 2 )

Open Your Eyes - When First I Saw

Acting on a brilliant thought Kagome caught on the drive, the young woman called up Yoko, asking her to tell her father that she had taken his car to pick up a friend from the airport who had a change in flight plans, and to say she was sorry for not actually seeing him herself.

"Don't you worry, Kagome. I'll be sure to tell him. You just concentrate on driving safetly in that damned import of Doctor Higurashi's, you hear?" Yoko's voice was high and tinny over the cell phone. Kagome was faintly surprised the the phone had actually worked.

Kagome truly felt as if she had a starring role in the newest horror flick, "Guys in Comas with Deadly People After Them." Sounds like a box office hit. . . Though probably only in America.

She could see it on the script now: College student drives madly while camera switches to view of many men in black coats contemplating murder. Except in better film format.

Perhaps instead with a bunch of men in white coats. Kagome sure felt like she was going crazy.

The jazz was getting on her nerves, so she turned it off. With the heater on full blast, mostly for the benefit of the man next to her, Kagome was feeling a bit put out. "Just what the hell ARE you?"

The man in question flinched in his semi-natural slumber.

"I mean, I might not be a doctor or anything, but I sure as hell know that people don't just wake up perfectly unharmed from a coma! Especially not one that's lasted five years! Hell, most people would have pulled the plug by then! That's what they wanted us to do with Souta, at first. Bastards." Kagome's face was flushing from her own heated argument with. . . Herself.

"What's even better is that you jumped out of a third story window and didn't even flinch!" Her mind had come back to the enigma that was Inuyasha. "Is Inuyasha even your real NAME?"

The young woman paused, squinting through the snow ahead. She felt ready to clobber something.

Kagome was most assuredly not acting like herself. The young woman wished she could balme her change of temperament on the patient she had more or less kidnapped, in the eyes of the authorities, but the reality was she had only herself to blame. Her own hopes of waking her brother that was slipping ever further from her grasp. What would he be like if he did awake? Would he be the same, would anything be the same?

There were no answers, and Kagome didn't like the uncertainty this brought. Beside her, the person labeled `Inuyasha' started to snore.

Glancing over at her unexpected passenger, Kagome noticed something she had previously forgotten. By some miracle he still had the necklace her brother had given her years ago.

Leaning over, Kagome tugged the jewelry out of his hand, jerking the wheel sideways at the same time due to an unconscious tightening of his hand. Sitting up again while simultaneously slipping the necklace into her shirt pocket and steering the car back to her side of the road, Kagome decided that it was better to concentrate on driving. For a moment, her mind flashed the images she had seen of various car accidents.

None of the images were comforting.

Especially not after her brother. . . Not after what had happened to him.

Does the hurt ever go away? Kagome couldn't say.

More time passed, the silence that Kagome had fallen into interrupted only by the intake of breath from the young man. Young. . . Thing. She had no idea.

Eventually, she pulled to the roadside, near the base of a mountain of stairs. "Home." The word was a sigh. Memories assaulted Kagome's inner barriers, but she crushed them under her firm sense of now and here.

The momentuous problem that now faced her was getting the sleeping Inuyasha up all those very imposing steps to the house at the top. She was most certainly not looking forward to the experience.

As Inuyasha tossed in his sleep, cringing back from the cold air she was letting into the BMW, Kagome could tell he wasn't either. For a moment she pitied him.

That moment was soon gone. "Screw it." Pocketing the keys and stepping out into the flurries, she slammed the door shut. Watching her step, she made her way to the passenger side, yanking the door open by its friged handle. Her passenger let out a sleepy snarl, recoiling from the cold.

Too fucking bad, asshole. Addmittedly she had felt pity for the guy when she had learned someone was out to kill him, but past that he had attacked her, stolen the last present she had ever received from her brother, and fallen unconscious in the snow, forcing her to drag him to her father's car.

All completely valid reasons. Except, perhaps the unconscious thing, but from the short time she had know Inuyasha, she doubted this was the case. He'd fall unconscious just to piss her off, she was sure.

It was on these thoughts that Kagome leaned over his prone form and unbuckled him. Grabbing his shoulders, the young woman dragged him out of the car, his legs hitting the snow-covered and slightly trampled ground. Inuyasha whimpered, whilst Kagome stumbled under his deadweight. "Jack ass."

Even so, Kagome felt bad for the former patient wearing only his flimsy hospital gown, and now her jacket. Managing to prop the annoyingly unaware Inuyasha up against the car, Kagome pulled him onto her back. That is, she managed to get his head and arms over her shoulders, his chest and stomach pressed to her back and his longer legs dragging in the snow. Knees coming close to buckling, Kagome made her determined way to the first stair.

It was the longest three steps of her life.

"Why'd. . . You have. . . To be so. . . Heavy?" she managed to gasp out. She was answered with an exhalation in her ear. The tickling sensation fueled her irrational anger further. As she started up the stairs, she positively growled with pent up frustration.

Her own mental image of what she must look like right now did nothing to help. The even more disturbing image of the men in white coats that she had thought of earlier popping out of the snow and taking her into custody was worse. She had to be crazy, going to the lengths that she was at the moment. For a stranger, whom hadn't even said a noteworthy word to her.

Lost in thought, she stumbled and almost went down, Inuyasha's deadweight helping her not at all. The young woman fell to her knees before scrambling to her feet. By some miracle, she had made it three quarters of the way up during her unseen climb.

The next miracle would be making it to the top.

So, in an effort to motivate herself, she began couniting her breaths. Labeling her actions. In, out, step, in, out, step, step, in, out, pause, readjust. . .

It wasn't until Kagome attempted to climb a stair that wasn't there that she realized she had done the near impossible. She had carried a man larger than herself up at least a thousand stairs as deadweight. "Take that, all you doubters!"

Which ones she meant, since none had witnessed her struggle, was unclear.

Resorting to dragging the peacefully snoring Inuyasha through the drifting snow to the house's front door, Kagome weakly attempted to relieve the stress she had put upon her back by laboring up the `Damned Stairs' as she had taken to referring to them as in the last half-hour.

It wasn't working, and for a brief moment of complete cruelty Kagome was tempted to kick the hunted idiotic thing that had---Okay, that had appealed to her somewhat sensitive nature and turned her into the mother hen from hell.

She gave up trying at the door.

And discovered, after digging around in her pocket for a while, that her house key was in the jacket Inuyasha had on. Mumbling under her breath, the college student reached into her coat pockets on the sleeping man, half expecting him to wake up, grab her wrist, and start the whole thing over again.

He merely snored.

Kagome felt slightly triumphant, and promptly decided that she was going to need profound psychiatric help after all this was over. Which would be soon, because there was no way she was going to keep him, her, hell, it around for long.

He is male, though, most unmistakeable. So she was given to a bit of drama, at times. Considering her major, she believed it was her right.

Unlocking the cold door, Kagome pushed in and wondered if someone had either recently set fire to the building, or if her father had turned up the thermostat. It was almost burning hot in her child-hood home. Talk about a ridiculous homecoming. . . And then some.

With a soft sigh, she surveyed the entrance, untouched in the years she had been gone. The young woman had attempted to avoid the house and shrine after Souta's near death, as if it were cursed somehow. Until tonight, she had been successful.

Such was the way of fate.

Returning for her unplanned and not entirely welcome visitor, Kagome once nore managed to prop him up and drape his upper-body on her back. At this rate, her back would be gone by the time she was thirty.

Not good to think about.

Managing to clomp her way to the living area, Kagome eyed the couch in relief. She could dump the sleeping Inuyasha there (How did he manage to do it? Light sleeper, her arse.) and then wash up, eat, and hit the sack.

However, things did not start as she had planned. Firstly, as soon as she was near the couch, Kagome collapsed on it with her sleeping charge still on top of her. Secondly, she was a hell of a lot more tired than she had thought, which meant she was more than tempted to just sleep where she lay, weight on her back or not. Thirdly, Inuyasha's scant body heat, coupled with the temperature of the room, was making Kagome yawn even now.

There is no way in hell. . . She had drifted off to sleep before the thought was even finished.

Some time later, Kagome was awakened by cool air on her face. The front door! The sluggish woman tried to get up, only to be pinned down by a large amount of weight. Struggling for a bit, Kagome heard someone groan and remembered all that had happened. "Ah, damn." She concentrated on wriggling herself free, not feeling like inviting every snowflake falling over Tokyo into her parent's home. Well, make that her father's home. Her mother had been in a mental institute ever since her brother's accident.

Almost free, she froze as she felt something pricking her side. Trying to catch a glimpse of what was poking her, Kagome attempted to move Inuyasha's wandered arm. As the points of slight pain dragged in proportion to her movement of Inuyasha's arm, she had her answer. "You're the only person I know who could manage to be this annoying while asleep."

Finally freeing herself entirely from the confining body weight, Kagome fell to the carpeted floor with an inelegant huff. "Today is so not my day." She be damned if she didn't sound like she was right back in highschool, with her highschool friends and her highschool work and worries. . . Not in college, with a grown something or another sleeping on her couch.

And most definitely not sitting next to that something's feet. Cold feet, she amended, lightly touching their pale surface. Really cold feet.

Not that she really cared, that is. No, she could really care less. . . Though she realized as she slowly gained her feet she was walking to the door to ensure it's state of closedness and next she would be finding. . .

What?

Hope? Hell no, not with the lying leech of a-

Of a what? What exactly did she have against Inuyasha? His walking about, speaking as if it were only yesterday that he had fallen alsleep, as if years had not come and gone? Oh, yes, she could tell herself this was the ultimate reasons, his waking at her touch while Souta. . .

While Souta's heart beat and his lungs were filled with air. "Every reason in the whole damn world." Her footsteps clacked on the floor, and she understood for the first time that she had never taken off her shoes. Sighing, Kagome decided to deal with that later.

Right now she had a freezing creature on her couch, and a wet one wearing a hospital gown to top it off. Which reminded her. She'd need to pull out something dry from her father's weardrobe.

In turn, this only meant she was going to have to undress him, if removing her jacket and the flimsy gown consisted of `undressing', Inuyasha.

At least she'd know for sure if he was male.

Bad Kagome. Think about what's really important-Sexing the bastard on your couch isn't one of them. The irony lie within the fact that keeping said bastard warm did count as an important deed. Marching up the steps while fuming as best as one so physically exhausted as she could, even after her brief nap, Kagome let the anger take hold of her weakened body. So a few fumbling advances and a half wavering walk to her father's room consisted of her rage.

Go me.

Annoyed that she had enough pity for a person she didn't particularily like to make sure he didn't die, she grabbed the first shirt and sleeping shorts that she encountered. After a brief though, she pulled the comforter off her father's bed as well, dragging it behind her as she made her way back down the hall and stairs. Pausing at the entrance to the living room, she blearily eyed the thermostat.

. . . 89°?

No wonder the house was so warm. Had her father expected to be half frozen when he came home, into the extremes of cold? Perhaps-Even now Kagome felt her senses growing fuzzy from the warmth. Amazing, really, that she had ever felt the cool air from outside. Almost did it defy logic, almost. Not quite.

Cranking down the thermostat, Kagome wearily tossed the clothing onto the small coffee table her father had imported from France, dropping the comforter with a whuff. She forced herself to observe her unwilling guest. Inuyasha was on his stomach. His silvered-white hair was splayed across the coushins, one leg hanging completely off the couch, and the other near to following it. An arm lay pinned underneath him, the other hanging loosely to the floor where she had shifted it to earlier. All in all, she was amazed he'd even been able to stay on the couch in his current state.

For the thousandth time that night, she snidely thought, Light sleeper my ass.

Moving around the couch, she reluctantly dragged both his legs up to rest on it's surface. Reaching for her jacket, she felt a nervous twitter begin in the back of her mind. Ruthlessly she squashed the annoying voice, yanking her jacket away as a reaction within the world of the tangible. Inuyasha groaned, moving a little in the absence of warmth. Which was absolutely absurd to Kagome, as she was now working up a light sweat just moving in the heat of the room.

Gingerly, she began to work the hospital gown off, digging his arm out from under him to finish the job. Satisfied, and unconsciously checking out the nude male, and for various reasons both anatomical and not (she was certain of this), Kagome set herself on clothing him in her father's gear. Lifting the shorts, deciding they would be easier to put on him than the shirt, she paused.

Hearts, kittens, and red lips decorated the item of clothing. She laughed softly, the absurdity of the boxers finally hitting her. Exactly how tired had she been? Nevermind all of that now-She was too tired to bother making an extra trip up the stairs just to find something potentially less humiliating.

Putting his feet through, she began to guide the boxers up his legs, idly thinking on what exactly had possessed her to take on the role of nurse. In reflection, the answer was as obvious as it had been since she was a small child. Kagome had always sought to help, even if those she offered her assistance to held no love in their hearts for her.

Who had said her sentimentality would be her doom? Probably the same person who had said Kagome could be so obtuse. Sakki, perhaps, had told her as much. Phsycology majors are such great room mates.

Absolutely no sarcasm unintended.

With a start, she realized she was finished. Boxers on-Mission accomplished.

The shirt mocked her from the table, and she gave into inevitability. Sheer physical exhaustion would prevent her from doing more. If he wanted a shirt, he could damn well put it on himself. With that, Kagome sat down with a `humph'. "I won't do it."

"I think you've done quite enough." She stiffened. Holy shit!

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Now the evil laughter - I make you wait forever, give you a shorter chapter, and end with a cliff hangar! *thought strikes* Erk---Might be baaaaad for me health. O_O Noooooo! Update sooner rather than later! :-P