InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 3: Forever ❯ Hell Hath No Fury ( Chapter 3 )

~~Chapter 3~~

~Hell Hath No Fury~

 

“Oi, old man,” Ryomaru said as he strode into the Izayoi living room with the still-unconscious girl in his arms.

 

InuYasha stood up, dropping the essays he had been grading onto the table as he shot his son a quizzical look seconds before one of absolute disbelief filtered over his expression. “Your mother is going to have your ass.”

 

Ryomaru winced. “Where is Mother?”

 

InuYasha crossed his arms over his chest and leveled a glower at his son. “She had to run to the store, and don't change the subject.”

 

“I thought we were discussing Mother.”

 

“I haven't used Tetsusaiga in awhile,” InuYasha pointed out. “I could change that.”

 

Ryomaru bowed. “I apologize, Father.”

 

“Keep it up, pup, and I might drag you outside anyway. You want to tell me why you smell . . . different?”

 

Ryomaru sighed. “Honestly? I don't know how it happened.”

 

InuYasha's eyes rounded incredulously. “You don't know how it happened? Well, you took your---”

 

“I know how that happened . . . I just don't remember . . . how it happened.”

 

InuYasha digested that in silence. After a few moments, he headed toward the back doors without a word.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

InuYasha didn't stop. “Gonna go find a nice spot to bury you, Ryo. After Kagome's done with you, I doubt there'll be much left to bury, but what the hell. You were a fine son . . . till you did something so colossally stupid.”

 

Ryomaru bit back a groan as his father slipped out the doors and ran down the patio steps before disappearing from view. `Between Mother and the old man, don't suppose this could get any worse . . .'

 

“You don't . . . remember?”

 

Ryomaru grimaced. He really had to stop thinking things like that . . . He turned slowly and tried to force a reassuring smile at Nezumi. She looked like she was ready to cry even though she seemed to be fighting it valiantly. He made a face. “No . . . I don't. I'm sorry.”

 

She waved off his concern as she sat up and pushed his hands away when he tried to force her to lie down again. “I'd really appreciate it if you'd keep your hands to yourself, Ryo. You understand.”

 

“This isn't all my fault,” he growled.

 

“And I say it was,” she shot back.

 

“How do you figure that?”

 

Slowly she swung her head to glare at him, her eyes cold as blue ice. “Because I remember it, baka!”

 

Clamping his mouth closed at her indelicate reminder, Ryomaru was still attempting to think of a good come-back when he heard the front door open and close. Seconds later, Izayoi Kagome stepped into the living room, and judging from the look on her face, he was pretty sure that his father had already told her the `good' news.

 

Ryomaru's ears flattened as he waited for the gauntlet to fall. Kagome was livid. Eyes bright, cheeks flushed, staring at her son as though she were contemplating his early demise, her miko's aura crackled with her irritation as she gaped at her first-born son.

 

“Your father told me . . . something, Ryomaru,” Kagome said, her voice calm, even, despite the surging pulse of her aura. “Care to explain . . . what . . . happened?”

 

“We, uh . . . well . . . I mean . . .”

 

“Don't choke on it, pup. Spit it out already, will you?” InuYasha grumbled as he strode through the living room with two bags of groceries.

 

“I mated Nezumi,” he blurted.

 

Kagome nodded slowly. “Yeah . . . that's what your father said . . . was this planned? Please, kami, tell me it was . . .”

 

“Uh . . . no . . .” he admitted. “It's Kich's fault! He said something stupid, so I went over to her apartment to see her, and---”

 

“She is right here!” Nezumi ground out as she clamored to her feet. “And now she is leaving! Bye, Ryo, you baka!”

 

“Wait, Deirdre,” Kagome requested as she stopped Nezumi with a hand on her shoulder before glowering at her son. “Even if Kichiro said something stupid, I don't think you can really blame this on your brother, Ryomaru! Stop being so insensitive! You're obviously hurting Deirdre's feelings!”

 

He winced. “Sorry,” he grumbled, sounding anything but sorry. “Can this be . . . undone?”

 

InuYasha dropped the bottle of water he was drinking as he stepped out of the kitchen. “Can this be what? No, Ryo, you baka, you can't undo a mating once you've done it! Why else would we have told you over and over that you had to be careful?”

 

Gin breezed into the house through the back door and stopped short as she winkled her nose and blinked in confusion as she narrowed her golden gaze on her brother. Slowly her gaze shifted from Ryomaru to Nezumi and back before widening in obvious amusement as she sank down in a nearby easy chair.

 

InuYasha frowned at his daughter. “Gin, we're trying to have a talk with your brother.”

 

Gin grinned as she got up and ran toward the kitchen. “All right, Papa. This would be much better with popcorn.”

 

InuYasha rolled his eyes as Kagome continued to glower at her son.

 

“What do you plan to do, Ryomaru?”

 

Ryomaru shrugged. “Nothing I can do,” he grumbled.

 

Kagome sighed and shot InuYasha a pointed look. InuYasha wrinkled his nose but stalked toward the back doors again. “Come on, pup. You and I need to talk.”

 

Ryomaru tried to hide his wince. He could count the number of times InuYasha had uttered those words in particular, and not one of them had been a pleasant experience . . . Still he followed his father outside and trailed behind as InuYasha stalked over to the pond and sat down on a flat boulder.

 

“I ain't gonna ask you what you were thinking since it's pretty obvious you weren't thinking at all,” InuYasha began.

 

Ryomaru sat down on the ground by his father's feet, as he did whenever he was forced to come out here for one of these `talks'. He felt like he was twelve years old all over again, which was the last time he'd had one of these little excursions . . . That time was about gluing a stack of Grandpa Higurashi's Ofuda together. He had a feeling this talk was going to be so much worse.

 

“How could you do something so fucking stupid, pup?”

 

“I just . . . I went over there to see her, and she was in a towel, and---”

 

“That's not what I meant, and you know it,” InuYasha cut in with a growl. “Don't you get what you did? How could you take a mate who knows nothing about our kind? You didn't even give her a chance to turn you down, did you?”

 

Ryomaru sighed. “I know . . . I just . . . It's never been that way before . . .”

 

InuYasha's gaze narrowed. “What do you mean, before?”

 

“When I've been with other women.”

 

InuYasha snorted, his cheeks pinking as he turned his head to stare out over the pond. “Feh! Well, that'll end, too. You claimed your mate. I dunno how you're going to smooth things over with her, though. She don't seem too pleased.”

 

Ryomaru nodded. “I didn't mean to do it. Hell, if it weren't for the smell this morning, I wouldn't have known . . .”

 

InuYasha frowned. “Your blood didn't tell you?”

 

“My blood?”

 

“Your youkai blood, pup. If you listen to it, it'll tell you when you find the right one. `Course, that's sort of a moot point now, ain't it?”

 

Ryomaru winced, ears flattening against his head. “All right, I get it. I fucked up.”

 

InuYasha snorted. “Fucked up? Fucked up is letting a human accidentally see your ears or breaking your mother's dishes. What you did is way off the fuck up scale.”

 

Ryomaru shook his head slowly.

 

“I thought you were smarter, Ryo. I thought you knew what the hell you were doing.”

 

“It wasn't like I planned it . . . I didn't mean for it to happen.”

 

“Ryo . . . if you told me that you did mean for this to happen, I'd kick your ass, myself.”

 

Ryomaru frowned as he shifted uncomfortably. “Did you ever really screw up? With Mother?”

 

Half expecting his father to go on the defensive, Ryomaru was surprised when InuYasha grimaced and slowly nodded. “Yeah, I did, a few times. We told you about Kikyou and the well---at least, your mother did. I came close to losing her, but she always knew what I was.”

 

“Nez . . . fainted when I showed her.”

 

InuYasha shook his head. “Baka.”

 

Ryomaru grimaced. “I never saw her like that before. She was all . . . different.”

 

“What do you mean, `different'? `Different', how?”

 

He shrugged as he tried to find a way to tell his father what he had thought last night when he'd first seen her like that . . . “She was . . . softer, I guess. More approachable, like she wasn't being so tough.”

 

InuYasha heaved a sigh. “It could always be worse,” he relented, shaking his head as he stared over the pond. “At least she's a friend. Maybe she'll forgive you.”

 

Ryomaru only wished he were half as confident as his father sounded.

 

“So when you going to marry her?”

 

His head shot up as he stared at InuYasha. “Marry her?”

 

InuYasha shrugged. “She's human, ain't she? Humans get married, like your mother and I did.”

 

Ryomaru stifled a groan. He had a feeling he'd have better luck trying to get the polar icecaps to melt than he did in convincing Nezumi to marry him . . .

 

 

-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-

 

 

Nezumi stared in shocked incredulity as Ryomaru flopped down on her sofa with a bottle of water. Anger quickly nudged the disbelief aside as she stomped over to him and snatched the bottle out of his hand. “You're kidding, right?”

 

Ryomaru reached for the water and scowled as she pulled it out of his reach. “Nope. It's a done deal anyway. We might as well.”

 

She snapped her mouth closed on her retort as her cheeks blossomed in indignant color. “Might as well? You're such a jackass, Ryo! Get out, baka!”

 

“I can't.”

 

She started to tell him what she thought of his stubbornness but stopped when she noticed his silvery ears flattening against his head. For a moment Nezumi could only stare. “Why aren't you hiding those?” she growled, waving a hand at his ears.

 

He snorted. “Feh! Like `em, do you?”

 

She shot him a scathing glare.

 

“If you can see them, it's only because you want to because my concealment is in place.”

 

“Right,” she retorted. “Fine. Now go, will you? Just leave!”

 

He shook his head slowly. “I can't, I told you. We're mated. That means---”

 

“I don't care what you say it means! It doesn't mean anything to me!”

 

His eyes narrowed, and Nezumi realized she'd just managed to offend him. Stubbornly lifting her chin, she refused to back down. “It damn well should mean something to you,” he growled. “We're mated. Nothing can separate us.”

 

“Want to bet?”

 

He stretched out on the sofa and crossed his ankles. “What's the problem? You're a girl, aren't you? All girls want to get married.”

 

One of her ebony eyebrows lifted. “Maybe we do, when we're asked!”

 

“I asked you!”

 

“You did not! You ordered me, and even if you didn't, I wouldn't marry you! You'd drive me nuts!”

 

“That's a good one! Who's trying to drive whom nuts now?”

 

“You are, you ignorant baka, and doing a damn fine job of it, too!”

 

“Why do you have to be so unnatural?”

 

“Why am I unnatural? Because I don't fall at your feet? Because I don't jump when you tell me to? You're such a jerk, Ryo---a stupid, arrogant, inconsiderate, spoiled baka jerk!”

 

Indignant color washed into his skin as he slowly shifted his gaze to her. “Then why did you let me mate you?”

 

She refused to answer that. Crossing her arms over her stomach protectively, she stared at the floor as she told herself furiously not to blush. “I want you to go, Ryomaru,” she said quietly. “Just . . . go.”

 

“Feh! Fine!” He stalked to the door but paused before leaving. He sighed suddenly, glanced back over his shoulder as those tiny triangular ears perched atop his head twitched nervously then drooped. “Nez . . . for what it's worth . . . I'm sorry.”

 

Closing her eyes and clenching her jaw as she tried to swallow the thickening lump in her throat, Nezumi blinked back the sting of tears that suddenly clouded her vision. “Sorry,” she whispered with a pained smile. “I'm sorry, too, Ryo.” Peeking over her shoulder, she winced. As hurt as her pride might be, Ryomaru was her friend---her best friend---and she hated the sadness in his tone. Another pang tore at her heart as she turned to stare at the void space by the door.

 

He was already gone.

 

 

-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-

 

 

Ryomaru leaned his forehead against the closed door, squeezing his eyes tight against the sound of Nezumi's softly uttered words, words that he shouldn't have been able to hear but thanks to his hanyou blood, he could. `Nez . . . I'm sorrier than you'll ever know . . .'

 

Straightening his back and pushing himself away from the doorframe, Ryomaru turned around to walk away. `How could I be so stupid? She's my friend---probably my best friend, and I . . . baka! She'll never want to look at me again, let alone speak to me, all because I couldn't control my own fucking urges?'

 

He had almost reached the staircase when a voice inside his head stopped him in his tracks. `Mate . . . cry . . .”

 

Lifting his chin as he swung around to glower back down the hallway again, Ryomaru cautiously sniffed the air. Even if she were crying, he wouldn't have been able to discern it. Still, the voice in his mind kept muttering those words over and over, forcing his feet to move, forcing him back to her door again. The compulsion was too strong to ignore. As if he were being controlled by an entirely separate entity, he couldn't help himself as he knocked on her door.

 

He heard Nezumi clear her throat, could smell her upset through the door. “Who is it?” she asked, her voice muffled.

 

Ryomaru made a face. “Who the hell do you think?”

 

She sighed. “Go home, Ryo. I think we've talked enough for one day.”

 

“Let me in or I'll bust down the fucking door.”

 

Her upset dissipated only to be replaced by absolute irritation. “I'll call the police if you do,” she countered.

 

“Yeah, do that, Nez, but you're going to open the door!”

 

He waited a few moments. He heard the soft rustle of her clothes as she moved away from the door. Obviously thinking that he wasn't about to make good on his threat, he snorted indelicately and thumped on the door again.

 

She didn't answer. He didn't really expect her to. When it came to displaying obstinacy, Nezumi always could hang with the big boys. `Feh! Why do I even fucking care?' he fumed as he glowered at the closed door. `Because, damn it . . . she's my mate!'

 

“I'll count to three!” he bellowed as his temper soared. Unaccountably irritated that she would try to lock him out, Ryomaru didn't stop to think about why it bothered him that she refused to let him in. “One . . . Two . . . Three!”

 

Unleashing all of his hanyou strength as he threw his shoulder against the door, the sound of the splintering wooden frame was oddly comforting as he stuck out his arm to keep the swinging door from coming back to hit him.

 

She wasn't in the living room, she wasn't in the kitchen. It didn't take long for him to figure out that she had barricaded herself into her bedroom way before he'd knocked in her door.

 

Snorting as he stared at the shattered door frame, Ryomaru pushed it closed and dragged her table over to brace it. It wouldn't keep out an intruder. Then again, it didn't really have to. He was there, and he wasn't leaving. If someone really was stupid enough to try to break in, Ryomaru would rip him apart with his bare hands.

 

Satisfied that the door was closed at least, he stomped down the hallway toward Nezumi's locked bedroom. “Nez! Open the fucking door.”

 

He heard the whisper of movement and gritted his teeth when no answer came. “Nezumi!”

 

“Shut up, will you, Ryo?” she finally yelled. “You're going to wake up the entire building!”

 

“Open the damn door.”

 

“Dream on. I'm sleeping in here---alone---and you're buying me a new door tomorrow!”

 

He considered breaking down her door, too. He even backed up to get a running start. He stopped suddenly and heaved a sigh. If he broke any more of her doors, she'd probably never forgive him---that was, if she would ever forgive him, in the first place. Trouble was, he couldn't leave her, either.

 

After a moment of deliberation, Ryomaru hunkered down in front of her door, knees spread, hands flat on the floor. Ears twitching to catch the slightest sound, he winced when he heard Nezumi's soft sigh.

 

All in all, he figured that he'd pretty well screwed up their first day of being mates. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to fix that, either . . .

 

 

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A/N:

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Final Thought from Kagome & InuYasha:

He's so your son, InuYasha.

…How do you figure?

…He's a baka; a complete baka.

… … …

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Forever): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~