By
CinnamonGrrl
“Another
day, another shard,” Miroku quipped, thinking himself clever. Kagome smiled as
she always did so as to not make him feel bad, but Sango’s face was impassive
as she strapped Hiraikotsu to her back once more. In the course of their latest
battle, against an enormous grasshopper-youkai, she’d been bowled over onto
Miroku, and of course he’d taken full advantage of their position to explore
her figure with both hands.
It had not
been an accident when she swung the huge boomerang for another pass and clipped
him on the head, sending him rolling. Even now, the knot on his forehead was
enflamed and throbbing, and he would wince every so often when it hurt particularly
much.
“Serves
him right,” she muttered, slicing him a sour look from the corner of her eye,
then grimacing as she flexed her hands and realized they were covered in dried
gore from their fight. Hiraikotsu was pretty disgusting, too. She sighed. “I’m
going to go wash off,” she called to Kagome, who was tenderly looking over Shippo
for any injuries the kitsune had gotten whilst trying to protect her. “You,”
she said to Miroku, who’d opened his mouth to comment, “will stay here, or I
will thump you so hard you’ll wish that grasshopper had bitten off your head
when it had the chance.”
He
blinked, and nodded. Kagome waved absently, cooing to Shippo as she bandaged
his hurt paw, and Sango took off toward where Inuyasha had said there was a stream.
It was clear and sparkled in the midday sunlight, and Sango sighed in relief as
she removed the boomerang and most of her armour, leaving her in her
undergarments. She quickly scrubbed the blood and whatever-else from her
belongings, then jumped into the water briefly to wash her body. Then she put
her clothing back on, knowing it would dry quickly as the day was bright and
warm. She was just about to put Hiraikotsu back on when she heard a familiar
voice, yelling.
“Come back
here, you… you fish!” Inuyasha yelled, bounding downstream in hot pursuit of,
presumably, a fish.
He
pounced, and Sango could see a flash of quicksilver leap from his hands to arc
back to the water, swimming frantically toward freedom. “Inuyasha,” she said,
“why not just try to get another one?”
He peered
at her through narrowed eyes. “Because this,” he replied grouchily, “is
personal. I’ve been trying to catch him for ten minutes now.”
She
couldn’t help it—she started laughing. “Personal?” she gasped between laughs.
“Against a fish?”
He glared,
about to say something insulting, but seemed to change his mind before he
could. Inuyasha grinned suddenly, and waved his hand in the direction the fish
had gone. “Enjoy your freedom,” he called to it. “You won’t get a second
chance, if we ever meet again.”
It only
made Sango laugh harder, and with a quick leap, he left the stream to stand
beside her, still grinning. He had removed his upper garments and was shirtless
once more, his wet skin gleaming in the sunlight and silver hair hanging damply
around his handsome face.
Sango
found her laughter stopping abruptly as awareness of him crashed over her.
Wide-eyed, she could do nothing but stare at him. He smelled fresh, like pine
and clean water, and she was filled with this terrible yearning… before
she knew what she was doing, her hand reached out, wanting to see if his chest
was as smooth as it looked. The first touch of his cool flesh under her
fingertips was like a balm to her—she felt all the jagged edges inside sort of
melt away.
“Sango,”
Inuyasha asked hesitantly, “what are you doing?”
His
question snapped her out of whatever insane spell she’d been under, and she
snatched her hand back, cradling it against herself like she’d been burnt. “I
don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
She turned
and started to run away, tears welling up to blind her. The unwieldy boomerang
on her back bumped, bumped, bumped with every step, hampering her speed and
grace, but all Sango knew was that she had to get away, away from Inuyasha
before he could see she was crying.
But he was
there already, one lithe bound bringing him to land directly in her path.
“Sango,” he said, his hand outstretched. “Don’t be sorry.” Awkwardly, he
reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m… not sorry,” he added,
clearly uncomfortable.
“There’s
nothing for you to be sorry about,” Sango shot back, feeling bitter and
confused and wondering why in the world she was so upset. “You didn’t do
anything.”
“Neither
did you,” he said, looking a little mystified.
“But I
wanted to,” she declared passionately, a jolt of satisfaction passing through
her at the sight of Inuyasha’s golden eyes widening in surprise. “But I have no
right to. You’re in love with Kikyo. Or Kagome. Or Kikyo and Kagome…”
Sango
wrenched herself from under his hand and walked around him, scrubbing at her
wet eyes with her hands as she stomped away. She was furious with herself, for
doing and saying things that revealed to Inuyasha that her friendship had
turned into something else. She wasn’t sure when it had happened—perhaps it had
always been there, and she hadn’t noticed until last week?—but somewhere along
the way, Inuyasha had become more than just dear to her, as a friend. He was precious
to her, in the way a lover would be.
But he had
jumped in her way yet again. “No,” he said then, making her blink to refocus
her blurry eyes, “I’m not.”
“You’re
not what?” she asked, her voice hoarse with unshed tears.
“I’m not
in love with Kikyo or Kagome,” he said, tone irate at having to explain
himself.
“Of course
you are!” Sango argued. Of course he was! That was the whole point of
Kagome being in Sengoku Jidai, after all! To make amends for the broken trust
and shattered heart of Kikyo, Inuyasha’s first love.
“I think
I’d know, idiot,” he growled.
“You
wouldn’t know your head from a hole in the ground!” she countered, stung. Sango
folded her arms over her chest and tapped one foot impatiently. “Ok, tell me
why you think you’re not in love with either of them.”
Inuyasha
mimicked her pose, glaring down his nose at her. “Because,” he replied through
gritted fangs, “if I were in love with either of them, I wouldn’t be
thinking about you all the time, now would I?”
Sango
blinked, then blinked again. “Wait. What?”
Inuyasha
turned away, disgusted, and began walking upstream. “You heard me the first
time. I’m not saying it again.”
She
scowled. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, and jogged to catch up with him. “You
can’t just say something like that and then walk away.”
“Then I’ll
jump away,” he snapped, and tensed his strong legs to spring. But she
latched onto his arm at the last moment, and when he went airborne, so did she.
They flew through the air, his glare of anger, hers of determination, until
gravity demanded its due and they alighted on the ground once more.
“I told
you,” she said, “You can’t just leave after saying that. I won’t let you.”
“Oh,
yeah?” he demanded, the expression on his face changing from ire to speculation
as he took a step closer. “What will you ‘let’ me do, then?”
He was so close,
Sango thought, a wonderful and horrible sense of hope streaking through her
belly. “Anything but that,” she said, her voice small. “I’ll let you do
anything but leave me.”
He was
silent a moment, just watching her, absorbing her words. “Would… you let me
kiss you?” Inuyasha muttered, his head down and voice so low, she almost didn’t
hear him.
“Yes,” she
replied softly. “I’d let you do that.”
And she
did. Inuyasha took another step toward her, so that the front of her taijiya
outfit brushed against his chest, and tilted his head down as she raised her
face to him. His lips were soft when they finally brushed against her own, and
she parted her own under them almost immediately.
“Inuyasha,”
she murmured against him, hands coming up to lay flat on his bare skin, and his
mouth opened over hers. There was little skill in his kiss, inexperienced as he
was, but plenty of curiosity and, Sango was delighted to realize, passion. It wasn’t
long before his arms were around her, holding her body tightly to his as he
kissed her.
She
explored the tips of his fangs with her tongue; he sucked in a breath of
surprise and Sango felt a sudden hot pulsing against her belly. A wave of
longing flowed over her and she felt her knees dissolve; she simply gave
herself into his embrace, knowing he could hold her up, and leant her body
against him entirely.
“Sango,”
he said, his voice harsh, and slanted his mouth over hers again and again. As
weak as her legs felt, her hands simply could not stop moving, once they had
started; over his chest and shoulders, down his arms and into his hair, combing
the silver locks with her fingers: she had to touch him.
It was
when the cheerful tones of Kagome and Shippo could be heard in the not-too-far
distance that their heads cleared of some of the desire fogging them, and they
lifted their heads away. To her surprise, Sango found that somewhere along the
way, Inuyasha’s thigh had insinuated itself between hers and she’d been
gripping them around it, moving against him even as his hands on her backside
had pressed her rhythmically on him.
Eyes wide
in shock and terror that they would be discovered, they sprang apart. Inuyasha
leapt up into a tree and was gone in a heartbeat, and Sango was barely able to
run to the stream and splash water over her flushed face and kiss-swollen lips
before her friends burst from the trees and approached her.
“Sango-chan,”
Kagome said, her brow wrinkled in concern, “are you feeling okay? Your face is
all red.”
“I’m
fine,” Sango said, wiping her hands over her face to clear off the water before
using her trousers as a towel for her hands. “I’m fine.”
Kagome
believed her, of course, but Shippo stared at her, his little nose twitching.
Sango felt her heart sink—he was youkai, of course he could smell
something in the air. “I bet you are,” he said, but played dumb at Kagome’s
confused look and started burbling something about the pretty flowers lining
the bank of the stream.
Sango
looked up toward where Inuyasha had disappeared and wondered, not for the first
time, if she had lost her mind.