InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Strike a Pose ❯ Road Trip ( Chapter 19 )

Chapter Nineteen: Road Trip

“It's over,” Inuyasha crowed for the seventh time that day.

Valentine's Day had been over for a while now but he still hadn't shut up - they were beginning to think that those girls that had captured him had made significant psychological damage.

They were astutely ignoring the ridiculous Hanyou, but it was hard when he was being so loud that it was liable to make their ears bleed. It was quite honestly getting annoying, so no one was surprised when Sesshoumaru turned, punched him in the stomach and then sat back down again.

This effectively winded Inuyasha and a comfortable silence resumed. That was, until he recovered his capability of speech.

“Where are we going anyway?” he grouched folding his arms across his chest as he slumped against the backseat of the car. Kagome was the designated driver, with Sesshoumaru claiming the front seat because he refused to share the backseat with Inuyasha.

“We've told you” Kagome sighed “we're going to see our cousin! It's his first gig and it's really important to him!”

“Do you even know if he is proficient?” Sesshoumaru asked

Kagome wrinkled her nose “I guess, he's the lead singer and he's always been pretty good.”

“What do you mean `this is a big deal'?” Inuyasha demanded “You said it was just some open air concert with a dozen other bands playing!”

Kikyo sighed “Bankotsu is out cousin Inuyasha, we're offering him moral support because we love him, stop complaining!”

“He's just a cousin!” Inuyasha scoffed “why's he so special?”

“He taught me to swim” Kagome offered.

“He introduced me to the cello.”

“He taught me to draw,” Kagome commented.

“And he taught me to take a good photograph” Kikyo reminisced.

Kagome grinned “He taught me how to develop one.”

Inuyasha scowled “So?”

“Are you jealous, dear brother?” Sesshoumaru mocked softly.

“Shut up asshole!” Inuyasha snarled.

Sesshoumaru's smirk widened considerably and he winced as Kagome slapped his arm sharply “Don't taunt our Hanyou, he can't deal with it, you know that.”

Inuyasha sputtered and Sesshoumaru rolled his eyes.

There were a few blessed minutes of silence before Inuyasha piped up again.

“Are we there yet?”

This time it was Kikyo who punched him.

Kagome grinned “We won't be there until tomorrow; we have to stop off at a hotel along the way”

“What?” Inuyasha demanded.

“Don't worry, its fine, like a road trip I guess.” Kagome shrugged in a blasé fashion.

“Where are we staying?” Sesshoumaru enquired.

“Okasan booked us into this little hotel in the mountains; it used to be an onsen before the springs dried up.” Kagome nodded to the glove compartment. “There's a brochure inside.”

Dutifully Sesshoumaru popped the glove compartment open and perused the faded brochure that looked like it was at least twenty years old. It proclaimed amazing service, en suite bathrooms and a mini-bar in every room but the outdated photographs were not exactly reassuring.

“Hn.”

“Don't be so pessimistic!” Kagome, so used to Sesshoumaru and his `hning', correctly interpreted it.

When they pulled up outside the inn at sundown Kagome took back her words.

“Okay, so maybe pessimism is apt,” she muttered.

The others climbed from the car to surround her and frowned up at the poor dilapidated place. The inn was bedraggled and leaning crookedly against the mountain for support, there were no other cars parked and there was no noise of any guests or staff.

“I think that when the hot spring dried up so did their patronage,” Kikyo whispered.

“Yeah” Kagome nodded “do you think there's anyone here?”

Sesshoumaru sighed “If no one was here, how did Megumi-san make reservations?”

“Oh yeah” Kagome shrugged and grabbed her bag “Let's check in then.”

They traipsed into the check in area, too small a place to really actually hold all four of them and Kagome hit the bell on the weathered desk. The bell didn't make a ding, it broke into its components and Kagome looked down at it helplessly.

“You broke their bell” Inuyasha accused.

“I'm aware of that!” she snapped. “Now what?” She looked to Sesshoumaru and Kikyo.

“We were expecting you,” a soft voice called and they jumped as a small hunchbacked woman appeared from a back room. She had long greying hair and her eyes protruded ridiculously far from her skull like she had been startled by something. It gave her the quality of a beady eyed toad and Sesshoumaru instinctively pulled Kagome away from the desk slightly.

She blinked up at him and he lowered his head to whisper in her ear “Witch.”

“I am Urasue,” she nodded “I will show you your room.”

She tottered out from behind the desk and walked off in the direction a spindly staircase that groaned worryingly as she stepped onto the first step. Hesitantly, they followed her until she led them to a small room on the first floor with four single pallets in a square formation. The bedclothes were clean at least but the room was seemingly in a state of disrepair.

“Please forgive this old Urasue for the mess, my son said he would come and help me tidy for our guests, but he did not come home,” she smiled, though the effect was more creepy than reassuring and left them in the room.

“I vote we sleep in the car,” Inuyasha proposed as soon as the door closed behind her.

“You're paranoid,” Sesshoumaru deduced.

“Okay.” Kagome geared herself up to be optimistic but failed, wincing as she looked at the gloomy room.

Kikyo frowned and pulled a small chest from her bag before setting it upon the table in the middle of the room.

“Mah-Jong,” she announced, “we'll play Mah-Jong.”

Three hours later saw the mini-bar emptied courtesy of Inuyasha, Kikyo reading through sheet music and Kagome and Sesshoumaru still locked in an epic battle of Mah-Jong.

It was common knowledge that Sesshoumaru had a competitive streak a mile long and, combined with Kagome's unfailing stubbornness to persist in anything she tried, they could be at it for a while.

Inuyasha groaned as he polished off the last of the contents of the mini-bar. “Don't we get any food?”

“We had food, she brought us rice an hour ago, remember?” Kagome reminded, eyes fixed on her tiles.

“And you've eaten the entire contents of the mini-bar,” Sesshoumaru noted, “all that chocolate should have made you sick.”

“Do Inu Yokai get sick from chocolate like normal dogs?” Kagome asked interestedly.

“If we are foolish enough to consume our entire body weight in chocolate?” he asked, discarding a tile into the centre. “Yes.”

“I'm still hungry” Inuyasha grumbled.

“Do you have hollow legs?” Kagome asked flippantly.

“Fine” Inuyasha huffed, getting to his feet sluggishly due to the copious amounts of food he had ingested. “I'll go and look myself!”

With that he wobbled to the door.

“I wouldn't do that,” Sesshoumaru cautioned.

Inuyasha's response was to flip his big brother the bird and continue out of the door.

“Why wouldn't you do that?”

“He might eat something he's not supposed to” Sesshoumaru shrugged “he has a knack for getting himself in trouble, when he was five he got stuck up a tree in my grandmother's orchard for seven hours”

Kagome snorted and Kikyo smiled indulgently.

“I'll bet he was a cute kid” Kikyo offered softly

Sesshoumaru quirked a brow “Indeed, until he opened his mouth of course”

They laughed as one this time, halting in their frivolity only when they heard Inuyasha shriek from in the kitchen.

“What now?” Sesshoumaru asked disparagingly as they all clambered to their feet and rushed down the stairs to the aid of their Hanyou friend.

The sight that greeted them was unexpected to say the least.

Inuyasha was sprawled on the floor of the tiny kitchen, crumbs coating his chops looking up at a livid Urasue with baleful eyes as she pelted him with eggs.

“Bad dog!” she hollered before launching two more projectiles.

“Did we just step out of our own reality and fall into another one?” Kagome asked bemusedly

“What happened?” Kikyo asked, loudly enough to gather Urasue's attention.

“He ate my gingerbread house!” she screeched.

The three exchanged a horrified glance.

“Well don't I feel like Gretel?” Kagome asked rhetorically, “Do you suppose she'll try and put him in the oven” Kagome glanced at the tiny stove ponderingly, “because he'll never fit.”

Urasue calmed down slightly “I was making a mini gingerbread house for my grandchildren, they're visiting tomorrow” she confessed “but he ate it!” she pointed an accusing finger at the cowering Inuyasha.

“Inuyasha!” Kikyo snapped “Apologise!”

“She's the one throwing eggs!” he yelped.

“Inuyasha” Kikyo's voice got quieter when she was annoyed and, at this point, she was barely audible.

“I'm sorry!” he blurted, unwilling to face Kikyo's wrath.

“I should curse him!” Urasue declared hotly folding her arms huffily.

“No need” Kagome interjected cheerfully “with the amount of chocolate he's eaten he'll be puking his guts up all night!”

As if this was its cue, Inuyasha's gut made its presence known and he scampered away quickly to find a bathroom.

“Instant karma!” Kagome chirped.

***

Bedtime was an amusing affair, with Inuyasha decidedly absent, Kikyo listening to her iPod, oblivious to the rest of the world and Kagome and Sesshoumaru sharing a pallet as they continued their game of mah-jong.

Kagome claimed another victory to add to their tally that Sesshoumaru had drawn up after Kagome's insistence that she was beating him. He was ahead but she was gaining momentum; he was only one game in the lead.

“Hn.”

The tiles were restacked and a new game began and the intensity of their concentration only rivalled by the bizarre quality to their fixation.

The rhythmic clinking of tiles being tossed into the centre permeated the air but no other noise was made, their determination was slightly overdramatic but they didn't appear to care.

Kagome glowered at Sesshoumaru, she needed one more tile to win and she knew he probably had it. He merely quirked a brow and threw down another useless tile.

She scowled as she tossed out a useless tile and balked when he snatched it up triumphantly. He'd won!

She threw a tile at him, her eyes growing to the size of dinner plates when it actually caught him squarely in the forehead, right in the crescent moon.

His eyebrow twitched spasmodically. “You are a sore loser, Miko,” he intoned.

She collapsed sideways onto the pallet, wrapping her arms around her middle and rocking backwards and forwards with apparently hysterical laughter.

He waited for her to calm down for a few moments before boredom possessed him and he rolled her off the pallet with a foot.

She glowered up at him. “Did you just kick me off my pallet?” she asked.

“It is mine,” he sighed and pointed at the one next to Kikyo, “that is yours.”

She frowned distrustfully at him and trotted over to the thing before picking the pillow room it and diving onto Sesshoumaru, fully intending to beat the living arrogance out of him but he brought up his own weapon(another cushion) and soon they were engaged in mortal combat.

The impromptu battle ended soon after it began because Kagome couldn't breathe; physical exertion coupled with almost hysterical laughter had brought her down pretty easily and, as they lay there regaining their breath, Sesshoumaru listened to Kagome's heart rate calm and her breathing become rhythmic. Sitting up slightly on his elbows he looked down at her and quirked a brow.

She was asleep.

Worse, she was asleep across his chest, her fingers tangled in his hair and her legs entwined in his own. There was no escape from her presence for him, at least not on that night.

He pressed his face into her hair and inhaled deeply, saturating his lungs with her intoxicating scent. He couldn't say he minded not being able to escape her.

***

The next morning they departed, Kagome saluting Urasue from the front seat whilst Sesshoumaru drove. Kikyo was in the backseat as temporary nursemaid for Inuyasha. It was her responsibility to make sure he didn't ruin the upholstery.

“I'll never eat chocolate again!” Inuyasha swore vehemently.

“Hn,” Sesshoumaru intoned.

Kagome was happy to translate. “That meant if he had ten yen every time you said that, he'd be rich by now.”

“Shut up!” Inuyasha groaned.

A/N: I don't own Inuyasha. This is a two partner with the next half being the actual meeting with the band! Thanks for reading and review!