InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Pill Poppers Anonymous ❯ A New Prescription ( Chapter 10 )

Disclaimer: All characters from the show Inuyasha are © Rumiko Takahashi.

 

ch-san: Hell-oooooooooo one and all! Someone reminded me that I needed to update. Duuurrrrrr… summer lag. Leave me alone. X3

 

 

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It was a long, slow transit home. The passengers jiggled and leaned with the underground train like Jell-o on a rickety tray taped to a remote-control car. Inu Yasha's insides felt like the latter, at least. He hated taking the subway more than any other kind of transportation, preferring to spend extra money (that he usually couldn't afford to fork over) on a taxi than to take the subway. Being a doctor, he cringed at how disgusting and germ-infested it all was. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and he found himself on the 8:30 M-line home.

When the train jolted to a stop, Inu Yasha wormed his way through the crowd as quickly as he could. He wouldn't call his subway dislike a phobia per-se, but it certainly wasn't the most comfortable place in the world for him. The sooner he got out, the better. He blindly pushed himself through claustrophobic crowds of people to emerge out on the street with a gasp of air. It was as beautiful and painful as when a swimmer breaks through the surface of the water after being under for ages and ages. He gulped down as much of the gorgeous, heavenly, polluted air as he could before straightening his sweater and plodding off home.

It was only a few blocks and seven flights of stairs to his apartment. He lived in what he imagined to be an upper-class ghetto; people weren't terribly poor, but they weren't rich enough to afford a house or the odd pair of shoes every once in a while. But no one really went hungry, and the fighting wasn't too bad. There was one couple down the hall from him that seemed to argue and break things at least once every two weeks, but that was it. For being so down-and-out, things weren't too down and not at all out.

Inu Yasha climbed the last flight of dilapidated stairs up to his home when the sound of something shattering reached his over-sensitive doggy ears. He pretended that he couldn't hear a word that the neighbours were shrieking about, but even a human could clearly understand every word, never mind a dog daemon.

“You fucking little sonuvabitch!” a woman cried out at the top of her voice. The sound of flesh hitting flesh rolled out into the hall. Inu Yasha fiddled with his keys, trying hard to ignore what was being said, although one could argue that ignoring something like that was as easy to ignore as, say, a rhinoceros taking up residence on your duvet in front of the fire. In other words, not as easily as one would think. You could just ignore the rhino, but sooner or later you'd find that you're offering it tea and a quick look at the family album. It just can't be done.

“If that whore of a daughter I spawned hadn't have run off with that… that MONSTER-“ `Ah, so it's about daemons,' Inu Yasha thought as he slid his key into the lock.. `Well, whatever. It's got nothing to do with me.' Actually, it had everything to do with him. Suddenly, the door of the frantic, angry couple shuddered as something heavy was thrown against it and popped open. The heavy object rolled out into the hallway. It was Shippo. Inu Yasha couldn't believe it. He stared, slack jawed, at the kitsune. `Shippo? Shippo?' His brain wasn't registering what his eyes were seeing. What looked like a hippo burst out of the room, its many strands of plastic pearls swishing to and fro. Inu Yasha blinked a few times. It was no hippo, but a rather large woman in violet. Her auburn wig was tilted slightly and her nostrils were flared with passion.

“Get back in here, you snot-nosed bastard child!!” she hissed threateningly. Then, completely out of the blue, something happened that, even to this day, Inu Yasha has never been able to explain. A sudden feeling of quasi-maternal adrenaline flooded through him. Before he fully understood what he was doing, he had positioned himself between the whimpering Shippo and the enraged hippopotamus. The woman scrunched up her nose in frustration.

“Exc-USE me, but THAT is my grandson, and he needs to be taught a lesson!” she growled threateningly. `Oh my, a human growl. How terrifying,' Inu Yasha thought sarcastically.

“Well exc-USE me,” he mocked, “but just WHAT does he need to be taught a lesson FOR?”

“That is none of your goddamn business, mongrel,” she snipped agitatedly. A snarl built in his throat that would have made a pack of wolves clear out in an instant.

“You listen here: I'm taking this boy with me and calling Social Services. If you so much as LOOK at him sideways, I will have your head on display for the world to see out on the fire escape. That INCLUDES your disgusting choice in jewelry and your cock-eyed wig. Perhaps dyed blue with a bird's nest in it. Do you understand?” he sneered. She eyed him with the look of a chess player calling their opponent's bluff. When she saw that there was no bluffing in his eyes, the blood drained from her face, making her look like an albino toad with far too much rouge on her cheeks. To add more comedy to her expression, she seemed to emit a bit of a croak as she backed up into her apartment and slammed her door, latching both locks (just in case). Inu Yasha allowed a triumphant, animalistic snort to escape from his nose. He did, however, resist the urge to scratch out his territory on the floor. One must be civil, after all. A small sigh behind him was a reminder that he was not alone. He turned and collected Shippo in his arms.

“Hey kiddo,” he whispered.

“Heya doc,” Shippo grinned. “Bitchin' fight.” Inu Yasha could only laugh as he took the fox daemon into his apartment. When Shippo was lying on his back on the moth-eaten couch, Inu Yasha flicked on every light he owned and began to examine his patient. There was a nasty head wound that had a number of glass shards in it. Bruises the size of peaches were all over his body. His foot jutted out at an odd angle, clearly broken. The good doctor sighed the anguished sigh of one who had won a battle, but clearly lost a war.

“What did you do?” he asked incredulously.

“I… I piked some food from the fridge. She said she wasn't going to feed me because I wasted `so much damn money on a room at NIMH when there wasn't anything wrong with me, you little fu-`.” Inu Yasha stopped him before he could continue.

“Really? That's all? Heh. Social Services is going to have a BALL with this one,” he grumbled. Shippo's eyes widened in fear.

“No no no no no!! You can't call them! Granny'll just beat me more; you can't!”

“You don't get it; I'm calling them to take you AWAY from her. What she's doing isn't right. A child should never be hit. You- ohmigosh what a frikkin' idiot, we need to get you to the ER!” the hanyou exclaimed.

“Wha? Why?”

“Have you looked at yourself?” Shippo shook his head. “Well I have and it's not good.”

“But I don't feel… well I don't feel great and I've got a splitting headache, and everything's kinda goin' white, but other than that…”

“Oh yeah, besides those things you could run a marathon. C'mon buster, we gotta get you to the hospital.”

 

~*~

 

Of all things that he was grateful for that night, Inu Yasha was grateful that they allowed him to ride with Shippo in the ambulance. Without a car, he would have had to take the subway to the hospital, and although he didn't mind, he wanted to be with Shippo through the whole thing. It wasn't really because he wanted to “be there” for the kid, but he wanted to find something in his busted, blood-stained face, that little something, that made him dash out in front of a raging neighbour and save him. I mean, he would have done the same for a CAT, for crying out loud, but this was different. He wouldn't have gotten that feeling from a cat. What was so special about Shippo? Why was he so important? As the ambulance screamed past Nice Intentions Mental Hospital, it suddenly hit Inu Yasha like a bicyclist who looks the wrong way and pedals himself into a stop sign: Shippo was important to Kagome. A lump built in his throat that he fought to force down. What in the hell was going on? First he risks life and limb (more limb than anything) for a silly little kid that he hardly knows, and then his boss' daughter is bringing an unswallowable lump to his throat. `It must be the stress,' he reasoned. That had to be it. He was just under a lot of stress from having to cure so many patients so quickly. It was absolutely no consolation whatsoever to him when he was told he had to sit in the waiting room while Shippo was in surgery.

With a slight grumble, Inu Yasha trudged into the blank, heartless waiting area. Desolate faces of the tired and worn examined the tiles of the floor. Their heads were hung in desperation and exhaustion. A feeling of suicide rolled over plopped down onto Inu Yasha's shoulders. `Fan-bloody-tastic atmosphere. Just pass out the punch and call it Jonestown,' he inwardly moaned. But then he thought better. These people were probably waiting for a mother or a wife or a father or a grandfather or… he could go on and on. These thoughts only deepened his depression as he fell into one of the nearest chairs. It was going to be a loooong night.

 

~*~

 

The next day, after MUCH persuasion from the hospital that Shippo may have internal problems and needed to stay the night for some more tests, Inu Yasha reluctantly took a bus to work. Dark, saggy bags hung under his eyes; visual contraband of a sleepless night. He grumbled and growled and was all around nasty for most of the morning. Not that anyone noticed, actually. He was usually like that, so it made no never mind to anyone on this particular morning. Kagome, however, noticed a change in atmosphere.

“What's wrong, Inu Yasha?” she asked straightaway when he handed her her medication in silence.

“Nothing,” he snapped. She gave him a look.

“I'm not buying it,” she stated dogmatically. He sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Look, it's none of your business.”

“Why not? I want to know what's wrong with you.”

“No, really, you don't.”

“But I just said I did!”

“Well… you lied!”

“To myself?! Are you on something?”

“No, but you should be. Take your meds.”

“Not until you tell me what's wrong!”

“Fu-… No way, Kag. Take `em.”

“No.”

“TAKE THEM!” He shoved her against her bed and tried to wedge her mouth open with his fingers. She squealed and kicked, trying vainly to fight him off. He growled and tried harder. Suddenly, her mouth flew open with a cry of pain. Inu Yasha leapt off of her like a salmon out of water and looked at his hand with wide eyes. He had blood droplets on his hand. Kagome pressed two fingers against her bottom lip.

“I-I'm all right,” she said hastily. “It's just a scratch. I'm okay.”

“Oh Kagome, I'm so sorry, really, I am.” He blurted out. `Sorry? Sorry? Since when did I start saying `sorry'? Well, I am, but…'

“Honest, it's just a scratch. I'm fine, look!” She pushed her fingers away. Her lip still bled a little, but it was such a tiny cut. He sighed.

“Man, after a night like that I did NOT need to see more blood,” he said soberly as he sat next to her on her bed.

“What, you start your monthly last night?” she snapped sardonically. He gave her a look. She shut up. Then, with more effort than he could muster, he told her about what happened. By the end, she was absolutely flabbergasted.

“You must be joking! So THAT'S why Shippo was in here?” she gasped.

“Yup. To escape from his evil grandmother.”

“There seems to be a lot of those, I've noticed,” Kagome said bitterly. (A/n: LOVE YOU, KLU~!) Inu Yasha was going to respond, but thought better of it. Kagome's mum had to get that mean from somewhere, right? It only made sense.

“Yeah, well…”

“You're a good man, Inu Yasha,” Kagome blurted. The hanyou in question turned to look at her, speechless. No one had ever said that to him before. No one. She stared at him, large eyes filled with question, but lips of sealed porcelain. `Beautiful, delicious lips…' he thought. `I just wanna-WHOA boy! What the hell!?' A quizzical, helpless look fell upon his face. What was he thinking!? Why!? He can't think this. Not for Kagome. Not for his boss' daughter. Not for anything!

“I-uh…” he stuttered hopelessly. “I-I need t-to-“ All of a sudden, Kagome had her lips pressed against his. It was nothing special, and awfully quick, but still, it was enough. She broke away with a blush. What on earth was she doing? Even she didn't know. But Inu Yasha responded well enough. Something animal in him had taken over, and before either of them knew it he had her pressed against her bed, completely devouring her in eccentric, powerful kisses. What was going on? Everything was just a whirl of passion and excitement. The blood was pounding in his ears. He suppressed a horrible urge to howl. What in the HELL was going on?!

*Knock knock knock*

Inu Yasha sat bolt upright in terror. Kagome looked just as fearful. The doorknob turned almost in slow motion as both doctor and patient tried hard to conceal what had just occurred. Their hair was a mess, the bed looked like a bomb had gone off, and both were red and breathing heavily. SHITE!

“Hey, Kagome, what's goin' on?” said Sango as she pushed through the door. “I- oh heeeeeeeeey now… Did I interrupt something?” A coy smirk played about her lips. Inu Yasha gulped down a mouthful of fear.

“So just take eight of those every two hours with a glass and you should be no time in hopping!” he shrieked with fear as he stumbled past Sango. The middle aged receptionist watched him go before pouncing on Kagome like a starved tiger on a hunk of meat.

“Spill,” she grinned wickedly.

 

~*~

 

It was much later in the day when Kagome sat down to an early dinner in the NIMH cafeteria. Meatloaf. Lovely. She prodded it with her spoon, just to be sure it didn't reach out and attack her. Although she considered herself a risk-taker, Kagome still cut up her meatloaf into tiny squares before eating it. You never know, right? As she chomped on a bit of the rubbery loaf, Kikyo (`of all people', Kag grumbled) sat down next to her.

“Did you take your medicine today, Kagome?” she asked airily.

“Uhm… I think so,” Kagome mumbled.

“Well that's just lovely. I want you to start taking these, too. Inu Yasha forgot to give them to you when he did his rounds. So… yes. I'll be coming by to give you two every five hours and three before you go to bed, okay? Enjoy your lunch.” Kikyo got up to leave.

“Are you not eating?” Kagome asked sincerely.

“No, the smell of your cologne made me lose my appetite,” the nurse replied bitterly before waltzing off. Kagome smelled her robe immediately. She smelled just like Inu Yasha. `Well farg.'

 

 

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ch-san: Was that satisfying? ^.^ <3 to all my chicklets!