The Hair and Now by mynightshining

The Hair and Now

Written for Bi/Gender Non Conforming Sesshomaru challenges on Discord.

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The Hair and Now

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Kagome fidgeted with the strap of her purse as she stared at the lavish entrance of an upscale salon. Nerves were getting the best of her yet again and a deep, heavy feeling rolled in her gut. At 26 years old, she’d never been to a real salon, having spent all of her time and money since returning to the modern era on completing high school and university. The most she’d ever done for herself in the ten years since, had been a quick trim here and there at the local barber shop, not even having the desire to maintain her bangs. They’d completely grown out years ago. Her natural curls were lost and her once beautiful natural shine faded away. After all this time, she still hadn’t gotten used to the woman in her mirror’s reflection. Something always seemed out of place, intangible, that the woman looking back at her was someone else entirely and not the person Kagome knew she was and could be. The moment would pass as soon as she looked away from the mirror, the feelings forgotten as she focused on her thesis once more.

It wasn’t until Ayumi, the only friend from junior high that she was still in touch with from and who always had the most glorious hair, gifted her a full salon experience for her graduation, boasting about the hot, tattooed stylist who managed to work miracles.

“Maybe they’ll be able to find the Kagome you’ve been missing all this time,” Ayumi had said as she handed her the card.

Where had that Kagome gone? A Kagome who had been tenacious, stubborn, wearing her heart on her sleeve, and running head first in to danger to save those who needed help? She seemed to have vanished just like everything else when the well closed.

Perhaps now was the time to try and find herself again? Even if she never had a chance to go back, even if her friends had somehow survived the yawning expanse of centuries before them and never found her in modern Tokyo, she could try to regain a small portion of what she had lost.

Sighing and looking down the empty early morning streets, Kagome steeled her nerves and grasped the door handle, turning it and pushing her way inside.

The style was a combination of ancient japan meeting modern, and Kagome breathed a sigh of wonder at the nostalgia. The floors were long dark grey tile that imitated wood grain, giving the illusion of hard wood floors. In stark contrast, the walls were white and covered the iridescent crescent moons that only appeared when looking at them at a certain angle. The built-in shelves holding various haircare products, aromatherapy blends, and make-up lined the walls and matched the darkness of the tile. Beautiful, gigantic ink paintings hung above, each featuring various androgynous figures in formal kimonos and sweeping hair. Kagome found it hard to look away. The action of the figures within the paintings seemed so life-like, she swore they moved before her eyes.

“Welcome to Crescent House!” A beautiful young receptionist dressed in a stunningly beautiful kimono enthusiastically exclaimed, causing Kagome to jump out of her skin. “You must be Kagome, right? Ayumi has told me so much about you!”

Kagome barely had time to nod before the woman was before her.

“I’ll take your purse.”

She handed her purse over and followed the receptionist through a shoji screen at the far end of the entrance into a plush sitting area equally as stunning. The cushions were as soft as clouds, and Kagome gratefully knelt onto the warm cocoon. Low tables were covered in a variety of sweet edible confections, lit candles wafting a soft fragrance, tabloid magazines, and booklets of style references.

“Do you prefer coffee or tea?”

“Tea, please.”

“Wonderful! You’re in luck,” the receptionist said handing Kagome a plate and tongs. “The blend today was picked by our owner, and he always picks the best flavors.”

“Oh?” Kagome responded, but the young woman was already heading through another shoji screen. Feeling overwhelmed and out of place in such an elegant place, Kagome looked to the plate and tongs in her hand, before hesitantly reaching for the mochi squares.

The receptionist returned with a tray, tea kettle steeping and a tiny bouquet of orchids cascading over the edge.

“Your stylist will be out in a moment, but you have time to enjoy the snacks.”

Once again, Kagome was left alone and she poured herself a cup of tea, the aroma wafting throughout the room. The flavor, floral and sweet, tickled something in her memory, seeming almost familiar. She nibbled on the mochi, perused the style booklets, and waited.

A shick of a shoji screen being opened caught her attention. Looking away from a page of undercut styles, she barely had a moment to take in the person in front of her before gasping in shock and knocking over her tea cup as she launched to her feet.

The stunningly beautiful man wore a black tunic-like dress that hugged his defined upper body and flared out below the waist, revealing form fitting black denim pants underneath. Slender, ankle-high, black boots with nearly a three-inch heel increased his already massive height. He wore many rings that adorned long fingers with tapered, sharp, brightly painted nails. Silver earrings, cuffs and studs and chains, decorated his nose, eyebrow, and rounded ears. Eyelids were covered in sweeping, smoky eyeshadows, long cat-like eye-liner, silver crystals that lined his winged liner to his temples, and beautiful long black eyelashes curled skyward. Blush highlighted cheek bones and a deep maroon lipstick accentuated full lips. But even though all these features blended together to create a god among men, it was the iridescent silver hair piled into the most elegant messy bun Kagome had even seen and the pale skin that displayed two twin stripes along his cheeks, that made her breath stop short and her heart ache with overwhelming intensity. And even though the person before her had steel grey-eyes instead of gold and no crescent moon above his brow, she knew with all certainty who he was.

“S-Sesshomaru?”

Seemingly in equal shock and frozen in the doorway, Sesshomaru merely cocked his head at an angle regarding her with an almost imperceptible twitch of his nose.

“Miko?”’

Her nod was stilted, but her voice was stronger than she expected, “You’re alive?”

“Hn,” his grey gaze was heavy, calculating. “I could ask you the same thing. Humans do not live more than a century, let alone five.”

“I’m, um…” Kagome looked with uncertainty to the other shoji screen leading to the front of the shop where the receptionist surely was.

“Mizumi has her headphones in, and the next client isn’t expected for another twenty minutes. You may be frank.”

“This is when I’m from,” Kagome started looking back at him with a modicum of confidence. “The Bone Eater’s Well was a portal through time. I-I got stick here after we defeated Naraku and the Shikon was wished away. Did… Inuyasha... never mention…?”

“Ah,” was all he said as if pieces of a puzzle were finally in place. “My brother may have mentioned something in the last decade or two, but he has never been entirely forthcoming with information.”

“You’re talking about him in present tense. Is he… Is he still alive?”

“Of course he is,” Sesshomaru huffed, “It would take more than a few centuries to defeat my hard-headed sibling.”

The relief she felt at knowing Inuyasha had survived all the catastrophic moments in history tangled with unbearable sorrow that he had not come to find her.

Sesshomaru’s nose twitched one again.

“You are not pleased?”

“I-I am, but I thought he would have…” her sapphire gaze dropped to the spilled tea before her. “I thought he would have at least tried to find me again.”

Kagome could feel the weight of Sesshomaru’s gaze before he spoke.

“I would not take it personally. My brother is an imbecile, and it is more likely he did not know when to find you instead of intentionally avoiding your presence.”

Kagome met his gaze then, and there was no deceit in his surprisingly open face.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“I suppose we have you to thank for his insufferable insisting we flee Japan sixty years ago?”

Kagome nodded. “I was very adamant that he remember what to do to if he ever made it that far. Maybe I should have done that for my own time?”

“You cannot change the past, only the present and the future, Miko.”

He was right.

“Please, call me Kagome.”

“Kagome, then.”

They stood in silence for a moment, five centuries stretching between them. Kagome looked at the tea one more, a memory finally emerging.

“This blend of tea – I gave it to you, didn’t I?”

“Hn. As a gift when we became allies. When I ran out, it took quite some time to track down all the ingredients. At the time, I had not taken into consideration how you managed to find such a global blend of flavors. It has become one of my favorites, and I now sell it at the Crescent House Tea Shop not far from here.”

Kagome failed to fight the blush that rose to her cheeks and cascaded down her neck, and the complexity and nuance of time travel became known. A small laugh escaped her lips.

“That’s where I bought it originally. It was their signature flavor.”

A small lopsided smile tugged at his lips, and Kagome forgot to breathe.

“Hn. Small world, is it not?”

“I guess so.”

“Come, Kagome,” he said as he turned back into the doorway behind him. “Let us put the past aside for a moment and focus on you in the here and now.”

Sesshomaru led her to an open work area designed like a massive reception room from the palaces in the Sengoku Jidai, but featured the grey, white, and crescent moon color theme, filled with all modern chairs, mirrors, wash basins, and tools.

As she took in her own reflection in the mirrors they passed, Kagome couldn’t help comparing her plain features to that of the being next to her. How drab she felt in his presence.

She took a seat in the chair he indicated, and before long she was covered in a drape, warm towel around her neck, and Sesshomaru’s fingertips massaging oil into her scalp, little pricks from his claws sending shivers down her spine. Her eyelids slid closed in secret bliss.

“I never would have thought you’d have worked in a place like this.”

She heard a soft chuckle before he spoke, “I own this salon, and two more throughout the country. And the tea shop, of course.”

“Don’t the chemical smells bother your nose?”

“They did at first, but I have become used to them over the decades.”

Kagome sighed has he increased the pressure against her scalp.

“I thought you weren’t a fan of humans, it’s interesting that you choose a business that requires near constant contact with them.”

“I am a dog demon Kagome, dogs like to groom and care for others. I do not think it is that far of a stretch in that regard.”

“When you put it that way, it makes sense.”

They spent the next two hours while he worked on her hair catching up on old times. Other clients and employees started trickling in, so most of the conversation regretfully centered around herself and her family, friends, and future career. Sesshomaru shared what stories he could, and she learned that many of her yokai friends were still alive, blending into the human world around them. Jinenji maintained a swath of farmland to the west; Kirara watched over all generations of Sango and Miroku, and Rin and Kohaku’s children; Shippo had grown, mated Soten, the two had many children, and they made their living creating glamour spells for yokai to blend into human society; Inuyasha, who had waited years for Kagome’s return, decided to travel the world with his brother before returning to Japan and falling in love with a fellow hanyo, Shiori. The two had no children of their own, until the invention of invitro fertilization, but they took in every partial yokai child they found, giving them a home when no one else would. Sesshomaru himself had no mate, but a long line of lovers throughout the centuries, men, women, human and yokai alike. He adopted children as well: yokai, hanyo, and human, though not as many as his brother.

Now knowing she never returned to the past and Inuyasha had allowed himself to find love again, Kagome’s heart twisted painfully before letting go. He found happiness and acceptance that was all she ever wanted for him. And it seemed, that the centuries had worked a miracle and brought the two brothers together.

By the time Sesshomaru had colored, cut, and styled Kagome’s hair and added a small bit on makeup to her face the two of them were laughing and gossiping like old friends. Kagome relished the deep raucous laughter of his, and she found she never wanted him to stop.

“It is time, Kagome.” Sesshomaru said as he stepped in front of her, tunic skirt swaying, heels clicking against the tile, and grey eyes sparkling so much she could have sworn a flash of gold slipped through.

She fidgeted in anticipation as he turned her to face the mirror.

Kagome gasped at the woman in front of her.

This was the woman she was missing,

Her drab flat hair, was now luxurious and shiny, reflecting the light of the room as it moved. The color was still dark, but had lowlights of blue. Sweeping curls bounced with a lightness she hadn’t felt in years. Light, feathered bangs teased her lashes and framed her face. And the make-up Sesshomaru used was so natural it only accentuated her features. There was a vibrancy to the woman before her, exuding fierce confidence, tenacity, and determination.

“Oh,” was all she could manage as tears pricked at the corners of her vision.

“You are dissatisfied?” Sesshomaru’s voice seemed hurt.

“No!” She said vehemently a she turned to him. “No, that’s no it at all. I just…” Kagome gestured to the mirror. “I haven’t seen that Kagome in a long, long time.”

“That Kagome has always been here,” Sesshomaru tapped his chest above his heart, “within you. She’s simply been waiting to be let loose.” Her turned her once more to the mirror, standing behind her chair and catching her eye in their reflection. “Though I suspect it has more to do with finally knowing your friends’ fate than a simple cut and color.”

“Thank you, Sesshomaru.” She spoke softly, knowing he could hear her, and smiling to match his own. Kagome no longer felt as out of place next to him now.  

“My pleasure, Kagome.”

Sesshomaru walked her back to the front desk, helped her gather her belongings, and accompanied her outside. The late-morning sun was bright and joyful as they began to part ways.

After many thanks, and shared smiles, Kagome turned to leave before a clawed had gently grasped her wrist.

“May I…” Sesshomaru started, searching her face. “May I take you out to dinner, Kagome?”

“Dinner?” She asked surprised. “Like, a date?”

“Yes.”

Kagome blinked owlishly at him, clearly in shock.

“I have not laughed that much ages, and I find I thoroughly enjoy your company.”

“Oh.”

One pierced, silver brow rose in question, and the familiarity of it caused something warm and inviting to bloom within her chest.

“I’d like that very much.”

With a glowing smile gracing his painted lips, Sesshomaru’s clawed hand reached out and rolled a lock of Kagome’s hair between his clawed fingertips. He stepped closer, and she couldn’t take her eyes away from his intense gaze.

“Wonderful. Are you free tonight?”

Her heart stuttered.

“I am,” she responded breathless.

“I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Before she could blink, he’d placed a quick kiss to her cheek and was heading back into the salon with a lopsided smirk.

Excitement welled up within Kagome threatening to boil over. She forced out a sigh to prevent herself from dancing along the now crowded sidewalk. She walked back to the train station with quick, steady strides, hair bouncing and swaying with each step. Eagerly, she dug through her purse, flipped her cellphone open, and hit speed dial.

“Ayumi! I went to the salon – thank you, by the way – and you’ll never guess what happened!”