A/N: Right then, I give to you all what I had planned as my first Dokuga offering. Finally got it the way I wanted it, or at least I’m pleased with it. Enjoy the silliness?
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One: It Came Upon a Midnight Loud
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I know I can’t come near you:
Every time I do,
I get shaken inside and the sun in my eyes,
I’ll stay away…
“Anywhere With You”/ Saves the Day
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Thursday
Her mother was right: common decency, common courtesy, was dead dead dead as a doornail.
Kagome Higurashi dragged herself out of bed, bleary-eyed and very cranky. Now normally, Kagome was a very cheerful, upbeat sort of person. She had been described several times as having a decidedly sunny personality. Then again, she was not normally awakened at ungodly hours of the night by loud, obnoxious pounding at her door. And Kagome was pretty sure that she would be forgiven for not being all rainbows and sunshine since that very thing had, in fact, occurred for the first time. Or more accurately, was in the process of occurring, and appeared to be growing in volume and frequency.
“I’m coming!” she hollered, stuffing her arms into the suitable holes for them in her robe, and shoving her feet into her old, threadbare slippers. She shuffled out of her bedroom without bothering to turn on the lights, which she immediately decided was a grievous mistake on her part when she tripped and fell over some shadowy blob on her floor.
Kagome made it to the door after several more unceremonious introductions with her (hard) wood floor. So by the time Kagome had reached the door, she was, to quote Inuyasha, “pissed like a motherfucker.”
She threw the door open and glared at her visitors, still a little bleary, and bellowed,
“What the hell do you want?”
Two things immediately caught her attention: one, she had cursed, however mildly, and Kagome never cursed ever; two, she had just bellowed said curse word at her landlady, who was standing in the doorway gaping owlishly at her usually mild-mannered and cheerful tenant; and three (okay, three things immediately caught her attention), her best male friend’s older brother was also standing in her doorway, staring at her with one eyebrow raised. Of the three, the last one was the one that made Kagome freeze, wide-eyed, before paling. And then, her self-preservation instincts kicked in:
“Boogers!” she yelped, slamming the door shut.
Good game, Kagome.
“Higurashi!” her landlady immediately shouted. “Open this door this instant!”
“I—I—I—I,” Kagome began.
“You what?” came the dry voice of the tall male on the other side of the door, sounding so obviously amused that Kagome wanted to scream.
A fist pounding against the door jarred Kagome, who was leaning against it. She leapt away from it, startled by the force of the blow.
“You come out here right now and explain some things, or I’ll call the police!” the landlady threatened shrilly, and Kagome, who had no aspirations toward making a television appearance in handcuffs, threw the door open again, her landlady nearly falling into her apartment.
“Gah!” Kagome said as she grabbed the older woman by the arms to keep her from meeting Kagome’s floor, which Kagome had already met and determined she didn’t particularly care for. “I’m so sorry, Seki-san.”
Seki-san glared at the younger woman and pulled her arms out of her grasp, and Kagome meekly sent her a painful, “please-don’t-hurt-me” smile.
“You told me you were a single woman when you moved in here!” Seki-san accused.
That got Kagome’s attention: she blinked several times, gaze blank.
“What?” she said finally, deciding she must not have heard the woman right.
“You told me you were unmarried!” Seki-san all but shrieked, pointing her finger in Kagome’s face.
Wide-eyed, Kagome moved her head back to avoid being poked in the nose by her landlady’s rather imposing digit.
“I am,” Kagome replied, confused.
Unfortunately, Seki-san didn’t seem to find that answer satisfactory. In fact, if it was possible, her already plenty red face got even redder, and Kagome watched her, a little fascinated, wondering how such a dark red color was possible in humans without the capillaries under the skin all bursting at once.
“I run a respectable establishment here Higurashi, and I won’t have harlots living in my building! You—”
“WHAT?!” Kagome shrieked, sending the older woman a horrified look. “Seki-san, what are you talking about?! I teach at a local high school!”
“I’m talking about your illegitimate children!” Seki-san shrieked back, pointing to something on her right.
Kagome followed the rigid digit…and saw a little girl, no more than four, curled up in a ball on the floor, fast asleep. Beside her another child, a little boy of roughly the same age—if one was going by human years rather than demon ones, which, considering the boy was a full-blooded fox demon, would have been a little silly—who curled protectively around the girl, slept beside her. Kagome wondered, a little frantically, how it was possible that the children had slept through all that, until her foggy brain took in the fact that she knew those children—they were related to the silver-haired, amber-eyed male standing in the hall with his hands in his coat pockets. And they were related to her too, though less directly.
She looked up at the man, eyes narrowed.
“Sesshoumaru,” she hissed.
“Are those or are those not your children?” Seki-san demanded, waving her finger in Kagome’s face. The young woman wasn’t quick enough this time, and her landlady stabbed her right in the nose.
“Ow!” Kagome cried, holding her nose, her eyes tearing up. She sent her landlady an offended look. “No!” she snapped. “They’re my cousin’s children! And this idiot standing there smirking like he’s the gods’ gift to women is their moron uncle!”
“She calls me a moron, but she sleeps in cow pajamas,” Sesshoumaru observed, and Kagome glared at him. He had the nerve to smirk at her.
It took Kagome several excruciatingly long minutes to assure her landlady that there was nothing shady going on either in her apartment or her life—in fact, there was nothing going on in her life, period. She made the mistake of sharing this information with her landlady, which wouldn’t have been so bad, really, if only Sesshoumaru weren’t standing there next to her, listening to every word and looking as though trying not to laugh out loud was fast becoming an impossible feat.
Kagome sighed in relief when Seki-san, satisfied that her tenant was living an appropriately boring life, jerked her head, turned and stalked down the hallway toward her own apartment. Kagome sagged against the door jamb, hand to her forehead.
“Well?” Sesshoumaru said once he was sure the offensive old woman was gone.
Kagome glared at him.
“Well what?” she snapped.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
The young woman let out a strangled sound of rage.
“You almost get me thrown out of my very nice, very affordable, very convenient apartment by telling my landlady that these are my children, and you expect me to invite you in?” she shouted. “What is wrong with you?!”
Sesshoumaru sniffed importantly.
“I didn’t know you were so callous, Higurashi,” he said. “If I’d known you weren’t going to let the children into your home—”
“Oh they’re free to come in,” she interrupted, smiling sweetly, eyes diamond hard. “But you’re not.”
“I’m part of the package,” he announced.
Kagome snorted and went to where the little girl lay.
“Yeah, you’re one of the extra, annoying features that no one ever really wants but always gets stuck with.”
“If you don’t let me in, I’ll stand outside your door all night and make your landlady think you were lying to her,” he threatened.
Kagome, who had stooped down and gathered the little girl into her arms, froze, then looked over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowed.
“You wouldn’t,” she said, half in disbelief.
Sesshoumaru sent her a slow, thoroughly terrifying smile:
“Try me,” he invited.
Kagome was not stupid enough to take the chance that her surprising little bout of luck would hold out in the face of more of Sesshoumaru’s outrageous lying, and she knew he was more than capable of going through with the threat should she call his bluff—she’d found that out at Inuyasha and Kikyou’s wedding six years ago.
It was not a pleasant memory.
“You’re the reason I think all men are scum,” Kagome told him. “Pick up Shippou and come inside, you pest.”
Smirking, Sesshoumaru did as she ordered, entering the apartment behind her and shutting the door with a soft click.
Kagome used her elbow to flip the lights on in her kitchen, which gave her enough light to see where she was going. She walked into her room and to her bed, Sesshoumaru behind her. Ignoring him, she laid the little girl down in her rumpled sheets, then took off her little boots and tights and her jacket, and covered her up. Then she turned around, removed the little boy from his idiot uncle’s arms and laid him down too. She also divested him of his jacket and footwear, then tucked him in next to his sister.
“He’ll fall,” Sesshoumaru murmured, voice sounding serious for the first time that night.
“No he won’t,” Kagome replied, leaning down and picking up the decorative pillows littering her floor. She piled them around the sides of the bed, then looked over her shoulder at Sesshoumaru and sent him a smug look she knew he could have seen even without the weak light of her kitchen (darn demon sight). “Ta-da: instant barrier.”
“Very nice Higurashi,” he sarcastically drawled.
She stuck out her tongue at him and then shooed him out of the room. She left the door half open, then walked back to the kitchen, Sesshoumaru trailing along behind her.
“Okay,” she said once she’d reached the kitchen. She went to the stove and picked up the tea pot, then went to the sink to rinse it out and fill it. “Start talking.”
Sesshoumaru ensconced himself at the little table, one eyebrow raised.
“Don’t try to intimidate this Sesshoumaru with your pitiful human scare tactics, woman.” he advised.
Kagome glared at him.
“I’ll have you know that tone of voice scares high schoolers out of their minds,” she informed him.
The amusement in his gaze should have warned her what was coming:
“So would those pajamas.”
Kagome gritted her teeth.
“Sesshoumaru…I may no longer be a working priestess, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still zap your arrogant butt, interspecies goodwill laws notwithstanding. Now what are you doing here with Rin and Shippou?”
Sesshoumaru shrugged. “They wished to see you,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s after midnight!” Kagome yelled, and Sesshoumaru glared at her, nostrils flaring.
“Quiet,” he snapped, “you’ll wake the children.”
“Oh if they slept through Seki-san’s screech-fest I’ll sound like a lullaby!” she returned irritably, turning on the stove.
He snorted. “Good gods, woman—what the hell kinds of lullabies did your mother read to you as a child?”
“For the love of—Sesshoumaru!”
“Stop yowling—obviously acquaintance with the half-breed has been detrimental to what few feminine charms you possess.”
Kagome bristled, wounded by the barb but determined not to let him know that. Gods help her if she did: he’d never let her hear the end of it.
“Well?” she demanded, leaning against the counter, arms folded over her chest.
“I decided your apartment was more appropriate than mine,” he said after a moment.
Kagome stared at him.
“Why do you do that?” she asked finally.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Do what?”
“Say things that make no sense. Why don’t you try not speaking in riddles for a day—I guarantee you wouldn’t get so many blank stares.”
Sesshoumaru scoffed.
“I can’t help it if I’m surrounded by idiots, wench.”
Kagome glared at him; trust him to remember the one name that made her want to blow her stack.
“Says the King of the Idiots from his Idiots’ Throne.”
Ooo, he didn’t like that—not if the flashing amber eyes were any indication. Kagome, though a little nervous, ignored the feeling. He couldn’t kill her—first of all, killing someone always left behind a messy clean-up, and second of all, he wouldn’t touch a hair on her head so long as Rin was anywhere in the vicinity. Using children as blackmail was pretty low, but then again, Kagome was of the opinion that Sesshoumaru was a low person himself. Oh, he was cultured all right, but you’d never know it by talking to him—he was too much of a stuck-up asshole.
Kagome walked to the fridge, opened it, reached in and produced a box of doughnuts from the vegetable crisper drawer. She didn’t normally keep them in the fridge, but her brother had dropped by earlier, and he had the annoying male habit of eating everything in sight, however unappetizing it was. She had watched him consume things he’d complained were gross as hell in between bites of the gross as hell whatever it was, and he always ate it all. And really, Kagome thought that that was gross.
She set the doughnuts out, then went to the cabinets and got out two cups. Sesshoumaru, she noticed, had opened the box and was currently taking stock of the situation. It was odd for her to think of Sesshoumaru liking sweets, but Inuyasha had confided to her that his elder half-brother had a horrible sweet tooth. It was such a weird quirk for someone so nasty and unlikable that it had stuck with her.
“There’s a coconut one in there,” she mentioned, turning off the stove before the tea kettle began whistling; she’d learned from experience that dog demons’ hearing made them susceptible to noises humans only found mildly annoying. And as much as she disliked the dog demon currently sitting in her kitchen—eating all her doughnuts, she thought with a huff—she didn’t think of herself as a particularly cruel person.
“I know,” he said, taking a bite out of the very same doughnut.
Kagome rolled her eyes, then fixed up their cups of tea and delivered them to the table, taking the seat across from him. She tugged the box over her way, an action which made him frown at her. She ignored him and fished out the last chocolate frosted doughnut, knowing he wouldn’t complain; although chocolate wasn’t fatal for a dog demon, and only large doses could make them horribly ill for a little while, Sesshoumaru disliked the stuff. It was the only candy that she knew of, for sure, that he didn’t eat.
“So the kids wanted to see me,” she said, going back to their original conversation—if one was in a generous mood and thought “conversation” was a good way to describe what had transpired.
“Yes,” Sesshoumaru returned, making a grab for the box.
Kagome deftly tugged it back, out of his reach, taking a sip of her tea.
“Wrong answer,” she said pleasantly. “Let’s try again—the truth this time, if you please.”
Sesshoumaru glared at her.
“Are you calling this Sesshoumaru a liar, woman?” he growled.
“If the doggie collar fits—Fluffy…”
He growled low in his throat at her. She, used to his scare tactics after a little over a decade of dealing with him, sent him an unimpressed look.
“Either you explain yourself, or I put these doughnuts under a barrier,” she offered, and she saw him pause and mull over his options. She knew she’d won when he sent her a bitter look.
“There was a problem,” he said.
Kagome raised an eyebrow, cradling the box against her chest as she sipped her tea, eyes on him.
“Oh?” she asked.
“You’re aware that Inuyasha and Kikyou finally went on their honeymoon?”
Her heart clenched ever so slightly, but she brushed it off—that was a closed chapter in her life, she firmly reminded herself.
“Uh-huh, Inuyasha called me yesterday and said they were leaving this after…” She trailed off, staring at him owlishly. “Wait a minute,” she said, setting her cup down. “Don’t tell me…they left the kids…with you?”
“And the last pony makes it to the finish line,” Sesshoumaru dryly remarked, reaching forward for the box.
Kagome pushed herself back from the table as if it were perfectly natural to be playing keep-away with a dog demon in her kitchen at half-past midnight.
“That had to be Dog Boy’s inspired idea,” she said wryly, “because Kiki isn’t dumb enough to think of leaving her children with a man with abysmally little child-rearing experience.”
“Yes, well, apparently, she’s dumb enough to be talked into it,” Sesshoumaru said in exasperation. “Now give me the box before I take it from you.”
The way he said it left little doubt that she would not like his methods in the slightest, but Kagome wasn’t too worried—Sesshoumaru was above getting into a fight over doughnuts.
She hoped, anyway…
“Oh no, you haven’t told me the whole story yet,” Kagome replied with a crooked grin. “See, I’m not at all surprised that you showed up at my apartment with Rin and Shippou. I’m surprised you know where I live, but I’m not really surprised to see you here. What throws me off is the time. You’ve always struck me as a thoughtful sort, Fluffy. Inuyasha’s the one to go to for half-cocked ideas, but not you. So there’s a reason why you chose this particular hour of the night to pay me a visit.” She patted the box she held against her chest. “So once my curiosity’s been satisfied, you may have the doughnuts.”
Sesshoumaru glared at her. She smiled cheerfully in return, and patted the box again for emphasis.
“You’re evil,” he muttered.
“Nope—if I was evil, I’d have let the tea kettle whistle. Now answer my question.”
The dog demon sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Kagura won’t leave,” he admitted finally.
Kagome blinked at him.
“What?” she asked finally.
“Give me the accursed box!” he snapped. “I’ve answered your ridiculous questions—”
“And all you did was confuse me—how in the world does confusion equal satisfied curiosity?” Kagome interrupted. “Now use your words, like a good boy, and speak plain: you’ll get your doughnuts back faster if you do.”
The look he cut her for the “use your words” bit was absolutely deadly, and left no doubt in her mind that his terrible vengeance would be swift, but Kagome refused to apologize for what she considered a brilliant jab.
“She’s the woman that’s been living with me for the past…I don’t know, year, I suppose. But I’m tired of the bitch and now she refuses to leave.”
Kagome stared at him, disgust in her features.
“You know, the more I see of you, the less I like you,” she told him, holding out the box, which he grabbed from her with a growl of irritation.
She watched him select a new doughnut—cinnamon—her chin in her hand, her forehead creased into a frown.
“So she won’t leave,” she said. “I have to admit, I kinda wonder why she wants to stay, given the way you probably treat her—”
“I don’t treat all women the way I treat you,” he said.
“That’s for sure—you hate me,” Kagome dryly replied.
“I don’t hate you—I dislike you rather strongly. There’s a difference.”
“Of course,” she dutifully agreed. “She might not have a place to go to, Sesshoumaru. Did that possibility cross your mind?”
“Why should I care?” he asked with a shrug. “I just want her out of my apartment.”
She sent him an appalled look.
“You’re such a pig,” she said finally. “You use that poor woman for a year, then, because you’re tired of her, you throw her out?”
“First of all, wench, I didn’t use that “poor” woman, and second of all, I gave her an ultimatum. Either she was to leave by today or she’d be forcibly removed from the premises. I already called the police to have them take care of that last detail.”
Kagome looked horrified.
“My gods, I knew you were horrible, but that's just disgusting!”
Sesshoumaru shrugged.
“At least I didn’t keep the children home,” he pointed out.
Kagome rolled her eyes.
“He hides from his ex-girlfriend like a coward then says he was protecting the children—what a guy,” she muttered.
Sesshoumaru's glare was appropriately glacial and unamused.
“At least I have a love life to speak of, Higurashi—and Kagura wasn’t an ex-girlfriend. She was simply a woman I deemed worthy of letting live with me for a period of time.”
“You sound like an asshole when you say things like that,” Kagome said flatly, offended on several levels on all womankind's behalf, and Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow at her choice of words.
“My my my—I had no idea you were capable of such foul language,” he remarked. “I’m beginning to wonder if bringing the children here for the night was as good an idea as I thought it was.”
Kagome started.
“What?” she blurted, a little panicked. “You’re leaving them here?”
“No, I’m not leaving them,” Sesshoumaru replied, and Kagome sighed in relief—or at least she did until he continued with, “I’m staying with them.”
The young woman stared at him, gray eyes wide with obvious surprise.
“You’re staying here?” she asked after a tense silence.
Sesshoumaru smirked.
“That’s right—roomie.”
And then Kagome decided that yes, actually, her life could become more unfair.