InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Wolf Like We ❯ Chapter 1
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Resmiranda 
It's a damned fine game, and we can play all night.
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Psychological / Drama / Hentai | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 04.29.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 5.5K | Visits: 5.5K | Status: Completed
It's a damned fine game, and we can play all night.
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Psychological / Drama / Hentai | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 04.29.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 5.5K | Visits: 5.5K | Status: Completed
Title: Wolf Like We
Fandom: Inuyasha
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Rin/Kouga, Rin/Sesshoumaru, Kouga --> Kagome
Words: 4,917
Warnings: sex, oral, a little anal play, a little blood
Summary: He made an impression. Sometimes, she still feels the bruise.
Author's Notes: Written as an InuErotica request for Northstar333, but I've been meaning to write a Rin/Kouga for, like, two years. Inspired by TV On The Radio's "Wolf Like Me" and "Staring at the Sun."
"Beat the skins and let the
Loose lips kiss you clean;
Quietly pour out like light,
Like light, like answering
the sun - "
- TV on the Radio, "Staring at the Sun"
..o..
She dreams of teeth.
Time goes on and the memory decays - the thick reek of blood-gummed fur, the hushed, heated, hunting breath, the mud and the rocks and the flint-focused madness of wild eyes - all of it melts and falls apart, disintegrates into nothingness until she can no longer quite recall them. Yet even though its flesh may rot the bones of the memory remain, sharp and blinding in the shattered darkness, and when they rattle in her head in the thin hours of the night she flies into waking, dead again.
The shining white of his clothes always catches her eye when she wakes up, never beside her, always away, and she turns her head. His eyes are always closed even when he does not slumber.
"Go back to sleep, Rin," he says, without fail.
Without fail the moonlight catches the gleam of his fangs, slicing through the secret shadow of his mouth.
And without fail she lays awake until morning.
..o..
Something burns in her throat, pointing back and back again, dragging her with it. Jaws snap at her heels.
He is unsurprised when she tells him she has to go, or maybe he just pretends that he expected it all along.
"Do as you wish," he says, has always said, then turns away from her and stares off into space, as he always does when he dismisses her. Rattled and thin with sleeplessness, she walks away, head bowed. His indifference is too painful to bear. When night falls she beds down as far from him as possible, shuts her eyes, and dreams of loneliness.
The next morning when she awakens there is a tanto next to her, its sheath finely wrought in leather and gold, its blade as sharp as memory. It lays languorously across the thick, fine fabric of a new kimono. Aun is gone. So is Jaken.
So is he.
On a tree at the edge of the clearing there are four deep grooves, bleeding sap, scoring the wood white. When she reaches it, she spies another one further off, the same four grooves raked into the trunk of a tree. Looking beyond that one, she sees another, and another again.
The way back; his final gift to her.
Rin dresses, slides the knife into her obi, and sets out for home.
..o..
Sad skeletons greet her when she arrives. Ruined huts gape at the prodigal daughter, at the one who escaped. (After a fashion.) The one who lived. (In a way.)
They spill their secrets from rotting doors and fallen walls, the remains of lives cut short, all the precious detritus of the dead. A broken twig doll with no clothing; a teapot tipped on its side, filled with dust; a sickle stuck in the ground with its handle to the clouds. Everywhere there grows grass and sprouts and weeds and climbing vines rambling over dead wood. The forest is moving in to reclaim its own.
She stands in the middle of that graveyard and feels the rumble of the sun as it rolls down the sky. All around her is the sound of nothing moving.
And she realizes: one of these huts had been hers, but she can no longer remember which it was.
Lost and uncertain, unsure of why she needed to return, she drifts between the houses and through the barren fields until the shadows swell and swallow her sad ghost village, mercifully softening its edges. Exhausted from walking, not knowing what else to do, she chooses a hut by the river, lowers herself to its broken floor, and stares at the sky through the gaping holes in the roof.
High above the stars pinwheel gently around her, and she thinks she is the last person in the world.
..o..
Days shuffle along, and nights slink past. She talks to herself to keep from going crazy in this dead village, full of bones and dim memories of a family and a tiny, happy life. The memories of death, and of he who chased it away. She misses him. But she can't go back, not before...
She circles the place where she died, weaving near, weaving far, and still she is unable to return. She cannot face it now, not now, not yet.
So she stays occupied. She hunts and fishes, forages in the forest, and waits for the dreams to stop.
Time trudges by as summer settles in, draping itself over the land.
It lays heavy against her skin.
..o..
Then, one day, she finds a man crouching in the center of the village.
She nearly trips over him before she sees him, and is so surprised to find another person she drops the mushrooms she has gathered in the forest. They fall about her feet with a soft patter-pat. The man looks up.
A gasp lodges in her throat at the blue of his eyes. His hair is long and black and tied at his crown. He wears armor and a sword and a pelt around his waist, but his arms and legs are bare and brown. He looks almost human except for his eyes and pointed ears, and he seems just as astonished to see her.
The overwhelming urge to laugh and grab his hand and speak to him sweeps across her heart, washing away the aching emptiness that has been living there. Her face hurts from the wide, abandoned smile that rules her lips.
Something flashes in his eyes as his mouth falls open and he rises. He takes a step toward her, a hand half-raised in the space between them.
"Ka - " he begins, and then she sees the flash of sharp animal teeth in his mouth.
She jumps back, her hand flying to the tanto in her obi, and as she draws it the tail that hung behind him twitches. She'd thought it was just a part of the pelt.
Then the blade is out, flashing bright in the still summer air.
"Don't move," she says. Both her voice and the fingers holding the tanto tremble, certain this youkai will kill her.
But he simply lets his hand fall, and the expression on his face is like a wound.
They stand there, frozen. Then he drops his eyes to her arm, and then to her feet, and she knows he is looking at the shining map of scars left behind by the teeth that she dreams about. He opens his mouth again, and the sharp gleam inside drags her words and her bravado out of her throat.
"Leave," she tells him quietly. "Leave, or I'll kill you."
For the barest of moments he hesitates, but then he steps back, turns, and in a whirlwind of hot summer dust he is gone.
Rin stands there for a long time before she can bring herself to sheathe her knife. When she does, she sinks down to the ground, wraps her arms around her knees, and rocks back and forth, shaking.
That night she sits with her back against the wall of her broken hut, tanto in hand, and tries to wait out the fear.
..o..
A long purple pain in her neck wakes her; she fell asleep sitting up. Groaning, she stretches and massages the sore muscles, then yawns as she rises and shuffles to the door.
On the doorstep she finds three fish, fat and pretty, all in a row.
..o..
Three days pass before she sees him again, and this time it is on the banks of the river. They face each other from opposite shores. He could cross it easily, but he doesn't. Instead he squats down, lazy and insolent as she stands with her feet firmly planted on the ground.
"I won't hurt you, you know," he says.
She doesn't know that. She simply glares back at him, her hand on the blade at her waist, her legs bare and cold from the mud and the water.
He smiles at her, a hint of some bravado hidden behind his blue, blue eyes, but he keeps his lips sealed, his deadly jaws hidden inside. "I'm sorry I startled you," he says, one hand coming up to idly scratch an ear. She notes that his fingers are not tipped with claws. "I mistook you for someone else. Someone I'm waiting for."
She is silent. Something tickles her throat, but she holds it under her tongue.
He seems to think for a long moment, studying her with a strange gaze that almost makes her think of hunting breath and flint-filled eyes, but not quite.
"Where did you get those scars?" he says at last.
She freezes.
Immediately he backs up, his hands spread out in front of him, placating. "I'm sorry," he says. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
Rin hears echoes. The rushing of the river is loud.
"Thank you for the fish," she says stiffly. Then she turns her back on him, and though her legs scream at her to run, hide, leave this place and never come back, she walks calmly away.
..o..
She finds him some days wandering between the forest and the village, and finally one of those day she stops, her arms full of field greens and nuts.
He pretends not to notice her staring at him. Instead he gazes at the trees. His body is a long trembling line from heel to nose; the look of a dog who strains to hear footsteps, who lists towards his master's return. At any moment, she imagines him taking flight.
"I met someone here, once," he says suddenly. He glances at her from the corner of his eye.
Taking a deep breath, she nods, once. "Who is she?" she asks.
He blinks.
"The one you're waiting for," she supplies.
He frowns slightly. "She was - " he says, and then his breath catches in his throat, and shadows crawl across his features and he casts his eyes down.
And he looks so sad and so lost that she thinks she can see herself in him. She steps forward, her hand rising -
His head snaps up, his mouth still open, and those teeth, those teeth, they flash in the sunlight, and with a strangled cry she shies away. Her foot catches on a rise in the earth, and she is falling, falling.
Then his hand is around her wrist, arresting her descent, but she can't see the concern in his eyes for the wickedness of his fangs.
A flurried tangle of limbs and then she is pinning him to the ground, blade at his throat. He stares at her, shocked, and she stares back, her breath coming short and brutal.
They lock eyes, and as they do his scent rises up around her, and he smells like sunlight and earth, hot and sharp and heavy and wild. The fur covering his hips chafes the tender skin on the inside of her thighs and his neck is bleeding where she has nicked the skin. A long tendril of red rolls down, behind his head to where her hand grips his hair. Her fingers are growing slippery. The sun sparkles in the sweat on his brow.
His hands lay next to his head, relaxed and limp and open to the sky, like sleeping birds. Then he breathes deeply and his chest brushes against her breasts.
Suddenly she is dizzy and heavy and as she pushes herself away the hot ache between her legs rubs over him and sends her head spinning. Scrambling to her feet, she backs away, unable to look at him.
"I - I'm sorry!" she gasps, her cheeks prickling with blood rushing beneath the surface. "You just - I - sorry - "
"It's okay," he says, and she can barely hear his voice above the thunder of her heart.
She doesn't answer, and after a long while she looks up.
He is gone, and only a few drops of blood in the dust to mark where he had been.
..o..
The moon is full when she finally finds herself in the place where the teeth caught up. She may not remember where her hut is, or the faces of her family, but she remembers this place, and she should, because it is the place of her birth. Not many people remember their own birth. She has always felt oddly lucky that way.
But now, seeing this place for the first time in ten years, she is strangely disappointed.
It should be dark and twisted. There should be a black stain of blood on the ground, the stink of tears and suffering, but it is just like any other forest path. Empty of memory, and without teeth, small and insignificant and meaningless.
There are no teeth, and there are no tall figures all in white, and it isn't really right. Shouldn't he be here?
Behind her, leaves shift under feet.
"Wolves," she says suddenly.
She hears him freeze.
"Wolves?" he asks. His voice is faint in the heavy night, the sound of remembering.
"It was wolves," she repeats. Slowly, gently, her hands float to her neck, across her breast and down her stomach, where the worst of the teeth had cut jagged paths. "That's how I got these scars. A long time ago."
"...I see," he says at last.
"I know you're a wolf," she tells him, staring at the place in the dirt where ten years ago her tiny body lay beneath the teeth. "But it's okay."
And he laughs, a sharp, bitter bark. "Is it really?" he asks.
There is a rustling sound and then the air behind her shifts and changes, and she turns to see him, on his knees, his forehead pressed to the ground.
She returns his laugh. "Maybe," she tells him. "Maybe."
She walks back to the village, and he follows at her heel.
..o..
She pushes him against the wall of her hut, and he lets her. She's so angry and so scared and so lonely she can't feel herself think, so she doesn't bother trying. Instead she pulls the headband from his brow and tosses it aside. Growling low in her throat, she struggles with the leather straps that hold his armor in place, and he watches her struggle, making no move to help or hinder. It's so hot and humid inside the hut that she feels as though her lungs are full of water.
With a cry she lets the stiff leather and metal fall away and her hands find flesh, stroking against the muscles that quiver beneath his skin. He makes a strangled noise as she rakes sharp fingernails down his chest, over his nipples and across his ribs. His eyes are shut tight.
"Look at me," she demands, and he obeys with a drugged, sleepy gaze. Her mouth goes dry.
Slowly, deliberately, she slides her hands into the fur at his waist, her sweaty palms moving smoothly against his skin. She doesn't really know what she's doing, but he doesn't seem to mind much. The hushed, hungry, hunting breath that she barely remembers drags across her ear as she moves in and presses herself against him, moulding her body to his, wanting to make him cry out, make him pay, make him beg -
Her hands find the base of his tail. Slowly she rubs her fingertips over it in a long, hard circle.
He groans into her hair, his back arching, and she watches his hands convulse against the rotted wood as he slumps against it, his trembling legs unable to hold him up. She can't find whatever it is that holds the pelt in place, so she just shoves her arms deeper, under his fundoshi, over the swell of his buttocks where she grabs handfuls of flesh, wanting to own him as she works the fur from his waist. Her struggles shrug her shoulders from her kimono until it falls about her arms, and when she finally slides the pelt down over his hard straining thighs, her breasts graze his stomach. She gasps at the sudden shock that rockets through her, from the aching tips to her aching core.
The fur and fundoshi fall to his ankles. Unceremoniously he kicks them from his feet, but he makes no move toward her. In the thick darkness her eyes are drawn to the stiff erection that bobs with his movements and then stills to a faint pulsing. Her heart skips and trips with a vague fear until she realizes that he isn't going to make a move.
Not unless she lets him.
She breathes in, out, and moves forward. Tentative fingers find the slick head. She explores, rotating her palm over the aching softness, and he cries out, jerks, thrusts into her hand. His voice is deafening in the hot, still air.
She feels powerful.
Closing her hand around the velvet steel she strokes him once, twice as he moans and bends like a bow pulling taught. Trailing fingers through the thick thatch of hair at the base she moves upwards, over the taut muscle of his stomach, over his ribs, grazing the insides of his arms, catching his nipples and ghosting over the angry wound she left in his neck. At last she lets loose his hair, reaching up, his hot breath dancing on her throat as she unties the leather thong that holds it in place, and then it all comes tumbling down, thick black ropes slithering against her skin, slipping over her arms like silk as her fingers fasten themselves close to his scalp, holding him in place as she climbs his sweatslick body.
He pants, gasping for air as her lips traverse the terrain of his face, as she traces the trail of sweat from below his ear to the hollow of his throat, the salt stinging her tongue. Her thighs hook over his hips, the slickness at her center rubbing against his own, and down and down she drags him, until he is sitting on the floor, trapped between her and the wall. She straddles him.
The head of his erection presses against her entrance, but she isn't sure what to do. Gingerly she reaches down and holds it still as she works her hips back and forth, dragging a moan from his mouth as she slips and slides over him. And then she tilts up and back and catches him inside her, tight and hot and oh -
She slides down his shaft, achingly slow, the hem of her kimono falling around their legs. It is sweltering under there, but she has no desire to change it. It makes him slick and smooth and easy to take. Her hands twitch on his shoulders as she moves up and down again, at last taking all of him.
A shuddering breath snakes through her as she waits for her body to adjust to this strange invasion.
"Please," he whispers, a hiss of agony.
Rin grits her teeth. Then they fuck.
Sharp and quick, she pounds into him, rubs her swollen clit against his stomach and through the thatch of fur as he fills her to the brim. Violently she turns his head to the side and bites down on the pointed tip of his ear, hard enough to bruise, but he just groans in pleasure until finally she releases him and lets her limbs and lips fall where they may.
Up and down, back and forth she grinds against him, their whimpers and whines mingling together as he curls and thrusts helplessly into her, the only movement she'll allow. With fingers tangled at the base of his skull she holds him in place and presses her brow to his in the sweltering heat, their sweat capturing flyaway hair - his, hers, it doesn't matter - and plastering it over their skin in fine faultlines, a thousand tiny cracks crisscrossing between them. Panting, she passes her breath to him, and he passes it back, like a sacrament.
His hands flutter near her face, tracing the outline of her body in the air, begging to be gentle.
"Let me - " he says, but she snaps her own blunt teeth in his face, inches from his nose, and he shuts his mouth. Lazily her hand wanders down between their urgently undulating bodies until she finds that tiny bright spot of need and works it with her own fingers, and around them the world coils and tightens and funnels down down down -
When she comes around him she doesn't make a sound, simply clamps down with fingers and jaws and thighs and hot rippling body. It is too hot, too tight for him and he howls a strange strangled note as he jerks and empties deep inside her, hot and quick and hard, his pumping hips stuttering to a stop.
After a moment they both gasp and fall away, slipping apart. She collapses on the floor, her thighs burning. His softening erection flops wetly against his stomach.
Rin stares at it, and he watches her warily. Then, reaching out, she gingerly lifts his member from its place, then lets it flop back again.
His mouth twists with rueful exasperation as she begins to giggle.
..o..
They fuck every day, there by the river, sometimes in the woods. After a few days she lets him kiss her skin.
His favorite place is her heart. Every time they join he lingers in the valley of her breasts, brushes his lips against the hammering beat. It tosses and twists inside her, something like pain, so sharp it is almost joy.
The first time she lets him tip her onto her back he is so gentle and slow that at last she rakes her fingernails down his arms hard enough to draw blood, letting him know that she is not so fragile as that. He takes the hint, and they pound into each other until they are both sore and bruised.
One day she takes him in her mouth, runs her teeth along his length as her fingers work the soft weight that hangs below, and he jerks and comes within minutes, deep in her throat. Startled, Rin gags and spits, and her hand clenches reflexively around his balls. He yelps so loud she goes deaf for a moment, and they are not on speaking terms that night when she pushes him down into the mud and holds him there with the blade she no longer needs. He bleeds and she comes, then rolls off, leaving him to finish himself.
He always warns her, after that.
The first time she lets him fuck her against a tree, her legs folded over his shoulders, she asks him to tie her hands around the branch above her. He almost refuses, but she lets her kimono fall a little, and he groans his concession.
He nips her breasts and works her clit with his thumb, and she comes three times to his once.
When they aren't wrapped up in tangled limbs and sweaty skin, they fish and hunt. He teaches her to howl, and she teaches him the value of good hygiene. He always smells wild, though, no matter how long they spend in the freezing water, splashing at each other. She likes that.
And each night they watch the moon rise, and after that they moan and sigh until they fall asleep, still locked together. After a while, just the sight of the moon makes her slick and wild.
..o..
And then one night he grins at her in the moonlight, his bright teeth flashing white, and she is no longer afraid.
But something inside her still twists, dark and sad, and she knows it has nothing and everything to do with memory.
..o..
Finally she lets him chase her down and drive her to her knees.
A footfall behind her. She has been bathing and he has been out hunting. On the sun-warmed rock she shivers, waiting, completely naked, letting the thick sunlight bake her as brown as he. Her breath comes quick and short as he draws near, but she forces herself to stay still, stay perfectly still, unmoving and hot and when at last his hand alights on her thigh she leaps away.
She doesn't look back. She knows he'll follow.
Feet pounding the ground, long hair flying behind her, she flies down the river and into the forest, following that track, the one she knows so well, and she can hear him behind her. He let her run, even though he could easily catch her. He waits for her signal.
And when she reaches the right spot, Rin lets her feet find a root, and stumbles.
He is on her instantly, pinning her to the ground, her face and breasts in the dirt as he lifts her hips. Without ceremony, he does what he's been wanting to do for months.
His hot, wet mouth latches onto her as she gasps in surprise and revelation. He feels good, so good she can't stand it. Her vision dims as she struggles for air, the need and want washing over her, pulling her under.
He teases her swollen nub, coaxing cries from her throat, the howls he taught her. And she knows she should be focused on the rough firmness of his tongue as he strokes and flutters -
- but she can feel the curve of his teeth, his sharp bone crunching teeth, sliding down her swollen lips.
And she loves them.
Lost, she moans, presses back until his hands grasp her hips and he pushes his tongue inside. The tip of his nose nudges her other entrance, his hot breath curling in the humid space. She wiggles and he lets his tongue wander where she guides it, which is everywhere. He makes every inch of her slick until her whole frame shudders under the impact of her orgasm, and then he is on her and inside her.
Face down in the dirt, she lets him ride her, lets his lips, sticky with the taste of her, wander over her back and throat, and when his fangs graze over the shining scars on her skin, she begs him for more.
"Yes," she hisses.
And he growls and snarls and traces the paths left long ago, unwriting her fear and her sadness, giving her a new memory that is whole and fresh and good and hot and bright -
Rin shuffles off her old life, and howls beneath the noonday sun.
..o..
And now it is time to go.
He knows it, and she knows it, and it hurts. But it's a sweet, healing kind of pain, the pain of muscles knitting back together, remaking themselves stronger, the pain of skin scarring over, becoming tough and smooth and white.
They stand at the edge of the forest, looking at each other for a long time.
"My name's Rin, by the way," she says at last.
"Kouga," he replies.
There is a moment, then in the space of a breath she leans in and they kiss, once, long and lingering, tongues dancing together, over blunt little teeth, over sharp fangs.
When at last she retreats, she knows she is going to cry, so she just smiles.
"I'll see you again," she lies.
"Yes," he lies back.
Then each turns and walks away.
..o..
She follows the scored white wood back to him. When she finds him standing in the clearing and staring at the sky, as if she never left, she laughs out loud.
"I'm home," she says.
Jaken hadn't heard her footfalls, and he squawks with poorly disguised joy and bounces over to her, waving his staff until she scoops him into her arms and gives him a smothering hug. "Foolish child!" he barks as she gives him a kiss. Behind her Aun nudges her with one of his insistent noses. She sets Jaken on the ground, turns, and gives the dragon his hug as well.
When at last they all quiet down, Sesshoumaru turns around.
She knows now what she is looking at, and what he sees when he looks at her. His golden eyes widen slightly, his nostrils flare, and behind him the moon is rising.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asks, but she knows he can see that she has.
She stretches and yawns. "I'm beat," she tells him, not bothering to answer. "I'm going to bed."
"Insolent!" Jaken yells, but Sesshoumaru merely stares.
She gives him a wicked smirk.
Even across the clearing she can hear the heated whisper of hunting breath as it rasps in his throat. She settles back against Aun, squirming on the grass, and she smiles.
She is dark inside her new skin, and his eyes lay heavy on her body. If she went to him, he would have her.
But there is time enough for that, yet.
Rin stretches out under the moon, full breasts, long thighs, wild hair spread around her, and closes her eyes.
..o..
And years and years later she sleeps next to her Lord, but that does not keep her mind from turning back, every now and then, on the nights when the moon is high. She doesn't try to stop it, simply casts a sad smile over Sesshoumaru's sleeping form before turning again to the window and the sky.
Beneath the swollen moon, she slips into sleep and slowly tumbles down through time, to that summer by the river.
..o..
She dreams of teeth.
Fandom: Inuyasha
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Rin/Kouga, Rin/Sesshoumaru, Kouga --> Kagome
Words: 4,917
Warnings: sex, oral, a little anal play, a little blood
Summary: He made an impression. Sometimes, she still feels the bruise.
Author's Notes: Written as an InuErotica request for Northstar333, but I've been meaning to write a Rin/Kouga for, like, two years. Inspired by TV On The Radio's "Wolf Like Me" and "Staring at the Sun."
"Beat the skins and let the
Loose lips kiss you clean;
Quietly pour out like light,
Like light, like answering
the sun - "
- TV on the Radio, "Staring at the Sun"
She dreams of teeth.
Time goes on and the memory decays - the thick reek of blood-gummed fur, the hushed, heated, hunting breath, the mud and the rocks and the flint-focused madness of wild eyes - all of it melts and falls apart, disintegrates into nothingness until she can no longer quite recall them. Yet even though its flesh may rot the bones of the memory remain, sharp and blinding in the shattered darkness, and when they rattle in her head in the thin hours of the night she flies into waking, dead again.
The shining white of his clothes always catches her eye when she wakes up, never beside her, always away, and she turns her head. His eyes are always closed even when he does not slumber.
"Go back to sleep, Rin," he says, without fail.
Without fail the moonlight catches the gleam of his fangs, slicing through the secret shadow of his mouth.
And without fail she lays awake until morning.
Something burns in her throat, pointing back and back again, dragging her with it. Jaws snap at her heels.
He is unsurprised when she tells him she has to go, or maybe he just pretends that he expected it all along.
"Do as you wish," he says, has always said, then turns away from her and stares off into space, as he always does when he dismisses her. Rattled and thin with sleeplessness, she walks away, head bowed. His indifference is too painful to bear. When night falls she beds down as far from him as possible, shuts her eyes, and dreams of loneliness.
The next morning when she awakens there is a tanto next to her, its sheath finely wrought in leather and gold, its blade as sharp as memory. It lays languorously across the thick, fine fabric of a new kimono. Aun is gone. So is Jaken.
So is he.
On a tree at the edge of the clearing there are four deep grooves, bleeding sap, scoring the wood white. When she reaches it, she spies another one further off, the same four grooves raked into the trunk of a tree. Looking beyond that one, she sees another, and another again.
The way back; his final gift to her.
Rin dresses, slides the knife into her obi, and sets out for home.
Sad skeletons greet her when she arrives. Ruined huts gape at the prodigal daughter, at the one who escaped. (After a fashion.) The one who lived. (In a way.)
They spill their secrets from rotting doors and fallen walls, the remains of lives cut short, all the precious detritus of the dead. A broken twig doll with no clothing; a teapot tipped on its side, filled with dust; a sickle stuck in the ground with its handle to the clouds. Everywhere there grows grass and sprouts and weeds and climbing vines rambling over dead wood. The forest is moving in to reclaim its own.
She stands in the middle of that graveyard and feels the rumble of the sun as it rolls down the sky. All around her is the sound of nothing moving.
And she realizes: one of these huts had been hers, but she can no longer remember which it was.
Lost and uncertain, unsure of why she needed to return, she drifts between the houses and through the barren fields until the shadows swell and swallow her sad ghost village, mercifully softening its edges. Exhausted from walking, not knowing what else to do, she chooses a hut by the river, lowers herself to its broken floor, and stares at the sky through the gaping holes in the roof.
High above the stars pinwheel gently around her, and she thinks she is the last person in the world.
Days shuffle along, and nights slink past. She talks to herself to keep from going crazy in this dead village, full of bones and dim memories of a family and a tiny, happy life. The memories of death, and of he who chased it away. She misses him. But she can't go back, not before...
She circles the place where she died, weaving near, weaving far, and still she is unable to return. She cannot face it now, not now, not yet.
So she stays occupied. She hunts and fishes, forages in the forest, and waits for the dreams to stop.
Time trudges by as summer settles in, draping itself over the land.
It lays heavy against her skin.
Then, one day, she finds a man crouching in the center of the village.
She nearly trips over him before she sees him, and is so surprised to find another person she drops the mushrooms she has gathered in the forest. They fall about her feet with a soft patter-pat. The man looks up.
A gasp lodges in her throat at the blue of his eyes. His hair is long and black and tied at his crown. He wears armor and a sword and a pelt around his waist, but his arms and legs are bare and brown. He looks almost human except for his eyes and pointed ears, and he seems just as astonished to see her.
The overwhelming urge to laugh and grab his hand and speak to him sweeps across her heart, washing away the aching emptiness that has been living there. Her face hurts from the wide, abandoned smile that rules her lips.
Something flashes in his eyes as his mouth falls open and he rises. He takes a step toward her, a hand half-raised in the space between them.
"Ka - " he begins, and then she sees the flash of sharp animal teeth in his mouth.
She jumps back, her hand flying to the tanto in her obi, and as she draws it the tail that hung behind him twitches. She'd thought it was just a part of the pelt.
Then the blade is out, flashing bright in the still summer air.
"Don't move," she says. Both her voice and the fingers holding the tanto tremble, certain this youkai will kill her.
But he simply lets his hand fall, and the expression on his face is like a wound.
They stand there, frozen. Then he drops his eyes to her arm, and then to her feet, and she knows he is looking at the shining map of scars left behind by the teeth that she dreams about. He opens his mouth again, and the sharp gleam inside drags her words and her bravado out of her throat.
"Leave," she tells him quietly. "Leave, or I'll kill you."
For the barest of moments he hesitates, but then he steps back, turns, and in a whirlwind of hot summer dust he is gone.
Rin stands there for a long time before she can bring herself to sheathe her knife. When she does, she sinks down to the ground, wraps her arms around her knees, and rocks back and forth, shaking.
That night she sits with her back against the wall of her broken hut, tanto in hand, and tries to wait out the fear.
A long purple pain in her neck wakes her; she fell asleep sitting up. Groaning, she stretches and massages the sore muscles, then yawns as she rises and shuffles to the door.
On the doorstep she finds three fish, fat and pretty, all in a row.
Three days pass before she sees him again, and this time it is on the banks of the river. They face each other from opposite shores. He could cross it easily, but he doesn't. Instead he squats down, lazy and insolent as she stands with her feet firmly planted on the ground.
"I won't hurt you, you know," he says.
She doesn't know that. She simply glares back at him, her hand on the blade at her waist, her legs bare and cold from the mud and the water.
He smiles at her, a hint of some bravado hidden behind his blue, blue eyes, but he keeps his lips sealed, his deadly jaws hidden inside. "I'm sorry I startled you," he says, one hand coming up to idly scratch an ear. She notes that his fingers are not tipped with claws. "I mistook you for someone else. Someone I'm waiting for."
She is silent. Something tickles her throat, but she holds it under her tongue.
He seems to think for a long moment, studying her with a strange gaze that almost makes her think of hunting breath and flint-filled eyes, but not quite.
"Where did you get those scars?" he says at last.
She freezes.
Immediately he backs up, his hands spread out in front of him, placating. "I'm sorry," he says. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
Rin hears echoes. The rushing of the river is loud.
"Thank you for the fish," she says stiffly. Then she turns her back on him, and though her legs scream at her to run, hide, leave this place and never come back, she walks calmly away.
She finds him some days wandering between the forest and the village, and finally one of those day she stops, her arms full of field greens and nuts.
He pretends not to notice her staring at him. Instead he gazes at the trees. His body is a long trembling line from heel to nose; the look of a dog who strains to hear footsteps, who lists towards his master's return. At any moment, she imagines him taking flight.
"I met someone here, once," he says suddenly. He glances at her from the corner of his eye.
Taking a deep breath, she nods, once. "Who is she?" she asks.
He blinks.
"The one you're waiting for," she supplies.
He frowns slightly. "She was - " he says, and then his breath catches in his throat, and shadows crawl across his features and he casts his eyes down.
And he looks so sad and so lost that she thinks she can see herself in him. She steps forward, her hand rising -
His head snaps up, his mouth still open, and those teeth, those teeth, they flash in the sunlight, and with a strangled cry she shies away. Her foot catches on a rise in the earth, and she is falling, falling.
Then his hand is around her wrist, arresting her descent, but she can't see the concern in his eyes for the wickedness of his fangs.
A flurried tangle of limbs and then she is pinning him to the ground, blade at his throat. He stares at her, shocked, and she stares back, her breath coming short and brutal.
They lock eyes, and as they do his scent rises up around her, and he smells like sunlight and earth, hot and sharp and heavy and wild. The fur covering his hips chafes the tender skin on the inside of her thighs and his neck is bleeding where she has nicked the skin. A long tendril of red rolls down, behind his head to where her hand grips his hair. Her fingers are growing slippery. The sun sparkles in the sweat on his brow.
His hands lay next to his head, relaxed and limp and open to the sky, like sleeping birds. Then he breathes deeply and his chest brushes against her breasts.
Suddenly she is dizzy and heavy and as she pushes herself away the hot ache between her legs rubs over him and sends her head spinning. Scrambling to her feet, she backs away, unable to look at him.
"I - I'm sorry!" she gasps, her cheeks prickling with blood rushing beneath the surface. "You just - I - sorry - "
"It's okay," he says, and she can barely hear his voice above the thunder of her heart.
She doesn't answer, and after a long while she looks up.
He is gone, and only a few drops of blood in the dust to mark where he had been.
The moon is full when she finally finds herself in the place where the teeth caught up. She may not remember where her hut is, or the faces of her family, but she remembers this place, and she should, because it is the place of her birth. Not many people remember their own birth. She has always felt oddly lucky that way.
But now, seeing this place for the first time in ten years, she is strangely disappointed.
It should be dark and twisted. There should be a black stain of blood on the ground, the stink of tears and suffering, but it is just like any other forest path. Empty of memory, and without teeth, small and insignificant and meaningless.
There are no teeth, and there are no tall figures all in white, and it isn't really right. Shouldn't he be here?
Behind her, leaves shift under feet.
"Wolves," she says suddenly.
She hears him freeze.
"Wolves?" he asks. His voice is faint in the heavy night, the sound of remembering.
"It was wolves," she repeats. Slowly, gently, her hands float to her neck, across her breast and down her stomach, where the worst of the teeth had cut jagged paths. "That's how I got these scars. A long time ago."
"...I see," he says at last.
"I know you're a wolf," she tells him, staring at the place in the dirt where ten years ago her tiny body lay beneath the teeth. "But it's okay."
And he laughs, a sharp, bitter bark. "Is it really?" he asks.
There is a rustling sound and then the air behind her shifts and changes, and she turns to see him, on his knees, his forehead pressed to the ground.
She returns his laugh. "Maybe," she tells him. "Maybe."
She walks back to the village, and he follows at her heel.
She pushes him against the wall of her hut, and he lets her. She's so angry and so scared and so lonely she can't feel herself think, so she doesn't bother trying. Instead she pulls the headband from his brow and tosses it aside. Growling low in her throat, she struggles with the leather straps that hold his armor in place, and he watches her struggle, making no move to help or hinder. It's so hot and humid inside the hut that she feels as though her lungs are full of water.
With a cry she lets the stiff leather and metal fall away and her hands find flesh, stroking against the muscles that quiver beneath his skin. He makes a strangled noise as she rakes sharp fingernails down his chest, over his nipples and across his ribs. His eyes are shut tight.
"Look at me," she demands, and he obeys with a drugged, sleepy gaze. Her mouth goes dry.
Slowly, deliberately, she slides her hands into the fur at his waist, her sweaty palms moving smoothly against his skin. She doesn't really know what she's doing, but he doesn't seem to mind much. The hushed, hungry, hunting breath that she barely remembers drags across her ear as she moves in and presses herself against him, moulding her body to his, wanting to make him cry out, make him pay, make him beg -
Her hands find the base of his tail. Slowly she rubs her fingertips over it in a long, hard circle.
He groans into her hair, his back arching, and she watches his hands convulse against the rotted wood as he slumps against it, his trembling legs unable to hold him up. She can't find whatever it is that holds the pelt in place, so she just shoves her arms deeper, under his fundoshi, over the swell of his buttocks where she grabs handfuls of flesh, wanting to own him as she works the fur from his waist. Her struggles shrug her shoulders from her kimono until it falls about her arms, and when she finally slides the pelt down over his hard straining thighs, her breasts graze his stomach. She gasps at the sudden shock that rockets through her, from the aching tips to her aching core.
The fur and fundoshi fall to his ankles. Unceremoniously he kicks them from his feet, but he makes no move toward her. In the thick darkness her eyes are drawn to the stiff erection that bobs with his movements and then stills to a faint pulsing. Her heart skips and trips with a vague fear until she realizes that he isn't going to make a move.
Not unless she lets him.
She breathes in, out, and moves forward. Tentative fingers find the slick head. She explores, rotating her palm over the aching softness, and he cries out, jerks, thrusts into her hand. His voice is deafening in the hot, still air.
She feels powerful.
Closing her hand around the velvet steel she strokes him once, twice as he moans and bends like a bow pulling taught. Trailing fingers through the thick thatch of hair at the base she moves upwards, over the taut muscle of his stomach, over his ribs, grazing the insides of his arms, catching his nipples and ghosting over the angry wound she left in his neck. At last she lets loose his hair, reaching up, his hot breath dancing on her throat as she unties the leather thong that holds it in place, and then it all comes tumbling down, thick black ropes slithering against her skin, slipping over her arms like silk as her fingers fasten themselves close to his scalp, holding him in place as she climbs his sweatslick body.
He pants, gasping for air as her lips traverse the terrain of his face, as she traces the trail of sweat from below his ear to the hollow of his throat, the salt stinging her tongue. Her thighs hook over his hips, the slickness at her center rubbing against his own, and down and down she drags him, until he is sitting on the floor, trapped between her and the wall. She straddles him.
The head of his erection presses against her entrance, but she isn't sure what to do. Gingerly she reaches down and holds it still as she works her hips back and forth, dragging a moan from his mouth as she slips and slides over him. And then she tilts up and back and catches him inside her, tight and hot and oh -
She slides down his shaft, achingly slow, the hem of her kimono falling around their legs. It is sweltering under there, but she has no desire to change it. It makes him slick and smooth and easy to take. Her hands twitch on his shoulders as she moves up and down again, at last taking all of him.
A shuddering breath snakes through her as she waits for her body to adjust to this strange invasion.
"Please," he whispers, a hiss of agony.
Rin grits her teeth. Then they fuck.
Sharp and quick, she pounds into him, rubs her swollen clit against his stomach and through the thatch of fur as he fills her to the brim. Violently she turns his head to the side and bites down on the pointed tip of his ear, hard enough to bruise, but he just groans in pleasure until finally she releases him and lets her limbs and lips fall where they may.
Up and down, back and forth she grinds against him, their whimpers and whines mingling together as he curls and thrusts helplessly into her, the only movement she'll allow. With fingers tangled at the base of his skull she holds him in place and presses her brow to his in the sweltering heat, their sweat capturing flyaway hair - his, hers, it doesn't matter - and plastering it over their skin in fine faultlines, a thousand tiny cracks crisscrossing between them. Panting, she passes her breath to him, and he passes it back, like a sacrament.
His hands flutter near her face, tracing the outline of her body in the air, begging to be gentle.
"Let me - " he says, but she snaps her own blunt teeth in his face, inches from his nose, and he shuts his mouth. Lazily her hand wanders down between their urgently undulating bodies until she finds that tiny bright spot of need and works it with her own fingers, and around them the world coils and tightens and funnels down down down -
When she comes around him she doesn't make a sound, simply clamps down with fingers and jaws and thighs and hot rippling body. It is too hot, too tight for him and he howls a strange strangled note as he jerks and empties deep inside her, hot and quick and hard, his pumping hips stuttering to a stop.
After a moment they both gasp and fall away, slipping apart. She collapses on the floor, her thighs burning. His softening erection flops wetly against his stomach.
Rin stares at it, and he watches her warily. Then, reaching out, she gingerly lifts his member from its place, then lets it flop back again.
His mouth twists with rueful exasperation as she begins to giggle.
They fuck every day, there by the river, sometimes in the woods. After a few days she lets him kiss her skin.
His favorite place is her heart. Every time they join he lingers in the valley of her breasts, brushes his lips against the hammering beat. It tosses and twists inside her, something like pain, so sharp it is almost joy.
The first time she lets him tip her onto her back he is so gentle and slow that at last she rakes her fingernails down his arms hard enough to draw blood, letting him know that she is not so fragile as that. He takes the hint, and they pound into each other until they are both sore and bruised.
One day she takes him in her mouth, runs her teeth along his length as her fingers work the soft weight that hangs below, and he jerks and comes within minutes, deep in her throat. Startled, Rin gags and spits, and her hand clenches reflexively around his balls. He yelps so loud she goes deaf for a moment, and they are not on speaking terms that night when she pushes him down into the mud and holds him there with the blade she no longer needs. He bleeds and she comes, then rolls off, leaving him to finish himself.
He always warns her, after that.
The first time she lets him fuck her against a tree, her legs folded over his shoulders, she asks him to tie her hands around the branch above her. He almost refuses, but she lets her kimono fall a little, and he groans his concession.
He nips her breasts and works her clit with his thumb, and she comes three times to his once.
When they aren't wrapped up in tangled limbs and sweaty skin, they fish and hunt. He teaches her to howl, and she teaches him the value of good hygiene. He always smells wild, though, no matter how long they spend in the freezing water, splashing at each other. She likes that.
And each night they watch the moon rise, and after that they moan and sigh until they fall asleep, still locked together. After a while, just the sight of the moon makes her slick and wild.
And then one night he grins at her in the moonlight, his bright teeth flashing white, and she is no longer afraid.
But something inside her still twists, dark and sad, and she knows it has nothing and everything to do with memory.
Finally she lets him chase her down and drive her to her knees.
A footfall behind her. She has been bathing and he has been out hunting. On the sun-warmed rock she shivers, waiting, completely naked, letting the thick sunlight bake her as brown as he. Her breath comes quick and short as he draws near, but she forces herself to stay still, stay perfectly still, unmoving and hot and when at last his hand alights on her thigh she leaps away.
She doesn't look back. She knows he'll follow.
Feet pounding the ground, long hair flying behind her, she flies down the river and into the forest, following that track, the one she knows so well, and she can hear him behind her. He let her run, even though he could easily catch her. He waits for her signal.
And when she reaches the right spot, Rin lets her feet find a root, and stumbles.
He is on her instantly, pinning her to the ground, her face and breasts in the dirt as he lifts her hips. Without ceremony, he does what he's been wanting to do for months.
His hot, wet mouth latches onto her as she gasps in surprise and revelation. He feels good, so good she can't stand it. Her vision dims as she struggles for air, the need and want washing over her, pulling her under.
He teases her swollen nub, coaxing cries from her throat, the howls he taught her. And she knows she should be focused on the rough firmness of his tongue as he strokes and flutters -
- but she can feel the curve of his teeth, his sharp bone crunching teeth, sliding down her swollen lips.
And she loves them.
Lost, she moans, presses back until his hands grasp her hips and he pushes his tongue inside. The tip of his nose nudges her other entrance, his hot breath curling in the humid space. She wiggles and he lets his tongue wander where she guides it, which is everywhere. He makes every inch of her slick until her whole frame shudders under the impact of her orgasm, and then he is on her and inside her.
Face down in the dirt, she lets him ride her, lets his lips, sticky with the taste of her, wander over her back and throat, and when his fangs graze over the shining scars on her skin, she begs him for more.
"Yes," she hisses.
And he growls and snarls and traces the paths left long ago, unwriting her fear and her sadness, giving her a new memory that is whole and fresh and good and hot and bright -
Rin shuffles off her old life, and howls beneath the noonday sun.
And now it is time to go.
He knows it, and she knows it, and it hurts. But it's a sweet, healing kind of pain, the pain of muscles knitting back together, remaking themselves stronger, the pain of skin scarring over, becoming tough and smooth and white.
They stand at the edge of the forest, looking at each other for a long time.
"My name's Rin, by the way," she says at last.
"Kouga," he replies.
There is a moment, then in the space of a breath she leans in and they kiss, once, long and lingering, tongues dancing together, over blunt little teeth, over sharp fangs.
When at last she retreats, she knows she is going to cry, so she just smiles.
"I'll see you again," she lies.
"Yes," he lies back.
Then each turns and walks away.
She follows the scored white wood back to him. When she finds him standing in the clearing and staring at the sky, as if she never left, she laughs out loud.
"I'm home," she says.
Jaken hadn't heard her footfalls, and he squawks with poorly disguised joy and bounces over to her, waving his staff until she scoops him into her arms and gives him a smothering hug. "Foolish child!" he barks as she gives him a kiss. Behind her Aun nudges her with one of his insistent noses. She sets Jaken on the ground, turns, and gives the dragon his hug as well.
When at last they all quiet down, Sesshoumaru turns around.
She knows now what she is looking at, and what he sees when he looks at her. His golden eyes widen slightly, his nostrils flare, and behind him the moon is rising.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asks, but she knows he can see that she has.
She stretches and yawns. "I'm beat," she tells him, not bothering to answer. "I'm going to bed."
"Insolent!" Jaken yells, but Sesshoumaru merely stares.
She gives him a wicked smirk.
Even across the clearing she can hear the heated whisper of hunting breath as it rasps in his throat. She settles back against Aun, squirming on the grass, and she smiles.
She is dark inside her new skin, and his eyes lay heavy on her body. If she went to him, he would have her.
But there is time enough for that, yet.
Rin stretches out under the moon, full breasts, long thighs, wild hair spread around her, and closes her eyes.
And years and years later she sleeps next to her Lord, but that does not keep her mind from turning back, every now and then, on the nights when the moon is high. She doesn't try to stop it, simply casts a sad smile over Sesshoumaru's sleeping form before turning again to the window and the sky.
Beneath the swollen moon, she slips into sleep and slowly tumbles down through time, to that summer by the river.
She dreams of teeth.