Secrets in the Night by aimee_blue [oneshot#55]
Title: Secrets in the Night
Author: aimee_blue
Prompt: Flourish
Rating: T
Genre: Romance Drama
Words: 2,149
Summary: AU. Kagome stumbles across someone in the dead of night, and Sesshoumaru is concerned.
“Are you sure your mother doesn’t mind us spending the night here?” Sesshoumaru asked quietly as he rolled out his futon next to Kagome’s on her bedroom floor. The wallpaper was the same sugar pink it had been when she had been small, the bookcases stacked with tales of fairies and magic, the pink desk covered with Hello Kitty stickers held dominion over its corner. It was hardly the bedroom Kagome had wanted to take Sesshoumaru to, but aside from a snort of amusement upon entrance, he’d failed to mention it any further.
Inuyasha and Kikyo had been allocated the spare bedroom and they had retired, holding hands, surrounded by an almost visible haze of post-honeymoon bliss.
Rin and Mee had claimed Souta’s old room that had been cleared of some of his childhood memorabilia to make way for the futon’s of his wife and daughter. Kagome had wondered over this arrangement, worried that it might upset Mee more than necessary. After all, staying in the old bedroom of her dead husband could be upsetting, but Mee seemed to derive a certain comfort from being amongst Souta’s things. Kagome would often catch Mee running her fingertips over Souta’s things, a small smile playing at her lips as her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Mama loves having the house filled up to the brim,” Kagome confided as she brushed her hair with her old pony-covered hairbrush, “almost as much as she enjoyed cooking for all of us.”
Sesshoumaru frowned at that. “She taught you to cook?”
“Of course!” Kagome smiled as she took her earrings out to lay them on the bedside table.
Still stung over his apparent inability to cook, Sesshoumaru mulled this over for a moment. “Would she teach me?”
Kagome giggled at his strangely adorable consternation. Truth be told, this little blip of imperfection made him sweet in her eyes and not as overwhelmingly perfect as some people believed him to be. “Sure, if you can put up with her nagging you for grandchildren the entire time!”
Blinking in mute horror at the prospect, Sesshoumaru shook his head and pouted slightly. There was something creepy about Mrs Higurashi’s obsession with grandchildren.
Kagome giggled at his horrified expression as she walked past the reclining demon to the dresser.
With a flourish, Sesshoumaru snagged her pillow and pitched it at her head, quickly composing himself to sit motionless and innocent so that, when she turned around in a fit of pique, he would appear to have done nothing.
Growling at his back, she snagged the pillow that had made a shambles of her sleek, just brushed hair and attempted to hit him across the head in retaliation.
Of course, this move was parried with exceeding agility from her demonic companion and she was casually flipped beneath him onto the futon. Claw tips teasing sought out her ticklish spots and Kagome was wriggling and thrashing around on the sofa, laughing until tears sprung to her eyes.
They both started and sprung quickly apart when the sliding door was peeled open with a bang, Rin tumbling into the room soon after.
“Kagome-obasan!” she hissed in a stage whisper, cheeks flushed red with excitement. Fresh from the bath, Rin’s feet were cased in slippers, her wet hair gathered into a braid, light blue paisley pyjamas donned and sleeves folded back to free her hands.
“Rin-chan!” Kagome exalted, pouncing upon her niece and hugging her tightly, inhaling the scent of her strawberry shampoo as she lowered her face to Rin’s scalp.
Sesshoumaru, leaning against the far wall, watched with softening golden eyes as the Kagome tickled Rin into a blaze of giggles and the little might protested somewhat, but it was merely a pretence. Clearly she adored the attention.
“Mama went to bed,” Rin mumbled against Kagome’s pyjama top as she buried into her aunt’s shoulder, “so will you take me to the usual place please?”
Kagome frowned slightly. “Maybe in the morning Rin-chan,” she cajoled, smoothing the top of the girls head, “it’s already dark out and we are in our pyjamas.”
Rin pulled back from Kagome slightly to look up at her with beseeching eyes. “Please? It will be fine! Like a pyjama party... and if Sesshoumaru-san comes with us he can see in the dark!”
Sesshoumaru blinked at the inclusion, having previously thought that this was something Rin wanted to do with Kagome alone.
“I will go.”
Shooting Sesshoumaru a surprised look, Kagome ruffled Rin’s hair. “You’ve got this all figured out, huh?”
Rin beamed toothily up at her aunt and Kagome grinned back. “Then, lets get you a flashlight, okay?”
“Yay!” Rin cheered as she raced down the stairs three at a time, leaving Sesshoumaru and Kagome in her wake.
“Softy,” Kagome heckled gently, grabbing his hand in hers and tugging him after her down the stairs.
As they donned wellington boots in the genkan, Sesshoumaru steadied Kagome by her elbow as she teetered on one foot whilst putting on a wellington and whispered in her ear. “Is it okay for me to come with you?”
Kagome blinked in surprise and her heart melted just a little at the shielded concern that darkened his golden eyes. “It’s fine, Rin invited you and I’d like you to come.”
“I have a torch!” Rin exclaimed as she skidded to a stop at their side, pink Hello Kitty torch in-hand and wearing wellington boots that were obviously meant for a man.
Souta’s, Kagome recognised after a moment, seeing the daughter of her dearly departed brother in his wellingtons brought her heart into her chest. Rin probably knew whose they were and if this was how she felt close to her father, Kagome wouldn’t stop her.
Six years already, huh?
“Let’s go!” Kagome tried to match Rin’s enthusiasm, the girl was accepting of it, but Sesshoumaru’s hand tightening on her shoulder let her know that he didn’t buy it.
Grabbing the penknife from the kitchen drawer, Kagome ignored Sesshoumaru’s raised eyebrow and followed Rin’s lonely light out into the deafening darkness of the night.
Golden eyes flashing, Sesshoumaru followed after.
“Kagome-obasan!” Rin called from the distance, her torch light bobbing as she bounced up and down on her heels in her anxiousness.
“We’re coming,” Kagome bid her, hurrying across the moonlit garden to the faint outline of Rin, Sesshoumaru caught her elbow, mindful of the dips and bumps in the garden that the night-blind woman was unaware of.
Rin was stood under an old tall tree tracing her tiny fingers over the numerous grooves in the surface of the darkened bark.
Upon closer inspection, Sesshoumaru could clearly distinguish a number of indentations running up the tree in a line until they reached the height of a grown male, and, next to them, was a trail of indentations that only grew up to the height of Rin’s eyebrows.
Stroking the indentation that was just at eyelevel, Rin smiled sweetly at Kagome over her shoulder.
“Back against it,” Kagome instructed gently, putting a finger level with Rin’s head as the girl pressed herself to the tree. Rin stepped away gleefully and Kagome carefully scored another notch in the tree with her penknife.
“Nearly as tall as your papa at your age,” Kagome said, tracing a slightly wonky line between the two notches, “but then, he was always kind of scrawny,” she smiled nostalgically as Rin leaned into her side, burying her head in Kagome’s midriff, “probably why he liked climbing trees so much, the smaller you are the higher you want to be.”
Crack.
The duo spun at the sound of the tree branch snapping, pulses racing, though Sesshoumaru stood nonchalantly by, his superior sense of smell alerting him to the intruder’s identity.
“Inuyasha!” Kagome exclaimed, relived that it was just her long-time friend.
“Hey,” he murmured, nodding respectfully to Rin and Kagome, “Sesshoumaru, I need a word.”
Kagome smiled as the half-brothers retreated a whiles away; this was probably a scheme of Kikyo’s to allow Rin to spend some time alone with her and the memories of her father. Inuyasha generally would have point blank refused to talk to Sesshoumaru willingly; it appeared that Kikyo had a great deal of control over her puppy-husband.
“You see those apple trees?” Kagome asked Rin, as soon as the brothers had left her sight, pointing at the apple trees hanging over the fence of the border to their lands.
“Mhmm,” Rin murmured softly, clinging to Kagome’s pyjama t-shirt.
“When Souta... when your dad was a year older than you he decided he had to have one of those apples, and of course, by this time climbing trees was second nature to him.”
“But, that tree’s not on shrine property,” Rin mumbled, slightly confused.
“I know,” Kagome replied lightly, “and Souta knew that too, but he also thought he was good enough to get away with it, the idiot.”
Rin giggled, hiding her face in Kagome’s shirt as it turned into a watery hiccup.
“He got the apples alright, but on escape he put his hand in a birds nest, panicked and fell,” Kagome chuckled, “I think he must have been made of rubber of something, because he only bruised his bottom... and his pride. Not to mention, mama saw and he was grounded for so long! She took the apples from him too, and let me and grandpa eat them instead of him.”
Rin’s face peeked up to gaze at the apple tree longingly. “Dad... dad was silly, huh?”
Kagome clung to Rin as tightly as the girl could stand. “Sometimes... sometimes he was brave and gentle, sometimes he was a brat who would tease me and play pranks on me, sometimes he would sulk and be moody. But he was always your dad and always my brother.”
There was a stretch of silence, encompassing them in their moment of solitary grief, of melancholy memories, of wistful wishes.
Up above them, a star fell from the sky in a brilliant arc of light. And Kagome wished.
Fly free, brother.
Rin, who had looked at the star with her fingers crossed, composed herself and flicked a wry glance at her aunt. “But now you have Sesshoumaru-san?”
“Sesshoumaru is a jerk and he definitely sulks over his inability to cook,” Kagome conceded laughingly, “but he’s never played an outright prank on me like your dad used to, I don’t think he has it in him.”
“Tell me about the time dad locked you in the storehouse,” Rin pleaded.
“That again?” Kagome exclaimed, a half-laugh in her voice, “I think I’ve told you that one a million times already, Rin.”
“Again!”
This time, the cracking of twigs was preceded by a prickling sensation at the back of Kagome’s neck, so whilst her heart jumped into her throat, she did not jump a little into the air as Rin did.
A man in a priest’s garb stepped from the foliage and blinked in surprise when he saw them.
“Who are you?” Kagome demanded, voice terse as she clutched Rin to her side.
The man smiled a gentle reassuring smile and spread his hands peaceably. “You are Kagome-san, correct? Your grandfather speaks of you very often,” he sketched a polite bow, “I am the new priest your grandfather recruited to help around the shrine with the visitors and rituals and whatnot.”
By this time, Sesshoumaru had breezed back into the dell, eyes guarded as he perused the form of the priest snootily.
The priest straightened from his bow and nodded in a clipped manner at Sesshoumaru.
“Why are you hear so late at night?” Sesshoumaru demanded coldly.
“I am always here,” the priest answered calmly, “Mrs Higurashi has graciously allowed me board in one of the storehouses.”
“You live in a storehouse?” Rin piped up curiously, removing her face from Kagome’s midriff.
The monk smiled down at her. “It is enough of a home for me, little one.”
Rin blinked a few times and scrunched up her nose before brightening. “You’re that priest who came into school to talk to us about the meaning behind the tanabata festival!”
The monk nodded astutely. “Yes, I recognised you... Rin I believe?”
“Yep,” Rin nodded.
“Well then,” Sesshoumaru interjected, glaring frostily at a suddenly stiff priest - who looked annoyed at the interruption, though he pasted a smile across his face - “we will be leaving.”
“See you later, Rin-chan, Kagome-san!”
Kagome cast him an uneasy look over her shoulder as Sesshoumaru frogmarched her and Rin back to the house at a breakneck pace.
Once they were safely inside the Higurashi home, Kagome turned to Sesshoumaru, who looked about as tense as the string of a bow.
“What’s the matter?” she asked softly, placing a calming hand on his elbow.
“There was something about that priest...”
“What is it?”
Golden eyes flickered sideways as he held her concerned gaze. “Why would a priest need to mask his scent?”
Author: aimee_blue
Prompt: Flourish
Rating: T
Genre: Romance Drama
Words: 2,149
Summary: AU. Kagome stumbles across someone in the dead of night, and Sesshoumaru is concerned.
“Are you sure your mother doesn’t mind us spending the night here?” Sesshoumaru asked quietly as he rolled out his futon next to Kagome’s on her bedroom floor. The wallpaper was the same sugar pink it had been when she had been small, the bookcases stacked with tales of fairies and magic, the pink desk covered with Hello Kitty stickers held dominion over its corner. It was hardly the bedroom Kagome had wanted to take Sesshoumaru to, but aside from a snort of amusement upon entrance, he’d failed to mention it any further.
Inuyasha and Kikyo had been allocated the spare bedroom and they had retired, holding hands, surrounded by an almost visible haze of post-honeymoon bliss.
Rin and Mee had claimed Souta’s old room that had been cleared of some of his childhood memorabilia to make way for the futon’s of his wife and daughter. Kagome had wondered over this arrangement, worried that it might upset Mee more than necessary. After all, staying in the old bedroom of her dead husband could be upsetting, but Mee seemed to derive a certain comfort from being amongst Souta’s things. Kagome would often catch Mee running her fingertips over Souta’s things, a small smile playing at her lips as her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Mama loves having the house filled up to the brim,” Kagome confided as she brushed her hair with her old pony-covered hairbrush, “almost as much as she enjoyed cooking for all of us.”
Sesshoumaru frowned at that. “She taught you to cook?”
“Of course!” Kagome smiled as she took her earrings out to lay them on the bedside table.
Still stung over his apparent inability to cook, Sesshoumaru mulled this over for a moment. “Would she teach me?”
Kagome giggled at his strangely adorable consternation. Truth be told, this little blip of imperfection made him sweet in her eyes and not as overwhelmingly perfect as some people believed him to be. “Sure, if you can put up with her nagging you for grandchildren the entire time!”
Blinking in mute horror at the prospect, Sesshoumaru shook his head and pouted slightly. There was something creepy about Mrs Higurashi’s obsession with grandchildren.
Kagome giggled at his horrified expression as she walked past the reclining demon to the dresser.
With a flourish, Sesshoumaru snagged her pillow and pitched it at her head, quickly composing himself to sit motionless and innocent so that, when she turned around in a fit of pique, he would appear to have done nothing.
Growling at his back, she snagged the pillow that had made a shambles of her sleek, just brushed hair and attempted to hit him across the head in retaliation.
Of course, this move was parried with exceeding agility from her demonic companion and she was casually flipped beneath him onto the futon. Claw tips teasing sought out her ticklish spots and Kagome was wriggling and thrashing around on the sofa, laughing until tears sprung to her eyes.
They both started and sprung quickly apart when the sliding door was peeled open with a bang, Rin tumbling into the room soon after.
“Kagome-obasan!” she hissed in a stage whisper, cheeks flushed red with excitement. Fresh from the bath, Rin’s feet were cased in slippers, her wet hair gathered into a braid, light blue paisley pyjamas donned and sleeves folded back to free her hands.
“Rin-chan!” Kagome exalted, pouncing upon her niece and hugging her tightly, inhaling the scent of her strawberry shampoo as she lowered her face to Rin’s scalp.
Sesshoumaru, leaning against the far wall, watched with softening golden eyes as the Kagome tickled Rin into a blaze of giggles and the little might protested somewhat, but it was merely a pretence. Clearly she adored the attention.
“Mama went to bed,” Rin mumbled against Kagome’s pyjama top as she buried into her aunt’s shoulder, “so will you take me to the usual place please?”
Kagome frowned slightly. “Maybe in the morning Rin-chan,” she cajoled, smoothing the top of the girls head, “it’s already dark out and we are in our pyjamas.”
Rin pulled back from Kagome slightly to look up at her with beseeching eyes. “Please? It will be fine! Like a pyjama party... and if Sesshoumaru-san comes with us he can see in the dark!”
Sesshoumaru blinked at the inclusion, having previously thought that this was something Rin wanted to do with Kagome alone.
“I will go.”
Shooting Sesshoumaru a surprised look, Kagome ruffled Rin’s hair. “You’ve got this all figured out, huh?”
Rin beamed toothily up at her aunt and Kagome grinned back. “Then, lets get you a flashlight, okay?”
“Yay!” Rin cheered as she raced down the stairs three at a time, leaving Sesshoumaru and Kagome in her wake.
“Softy,” Kagome heckled gently, grabbing his hand in hers and tugging him after her down the stairs.
As they donned wellington boots in the genkan, Sesshoumaru steadied Kagome by her elbow as she teetered on one foot whilst putting on a wellington and whispered in her ear. “Is it okay for me to come with you?”
Kagome blinked in surprise and her heart melted just a little at the shielded concern that darkened his golden eyes. “It’s fine, Rin invited you and I’d like you to come.”
“I have a torch!” Rin exclaimed as she skidded to a stop at their side, pink Hello Kitty torch in-hand and wearing wellington boots that were obviously meant for a man.
Souta’s, Kagome recognised after a moment, seeing the daughter of her dearly departed brother in his wellingtons brought her heart into her chest. Rin probably knew whose they were and if this was how she felt close to her father, Kagome wouldn’t stop her.
Six years already, huh?
“Let’s go!” Kagome tried to match Rin’s enthusiasm, the girl was accepting of it, but Sesshoumaru’s hand tightening on her shoulder let her know that he didn’t buy it.
Grabbing the penknife from the kitchen drawer, Kagome ignored Sesshoumaru’s raised eyebrow and followed Rin’s lonely light out into the deafening darkness of the night.
Golden eyes flashing, Sesshoumaru followed after.
“Kagome-obasan!” Rin called from the distance, her torch light bobbing as she bounced up and down on her heels in her anxiousness.
“We’re coming,” Kagome bid her, hurrying across the moonlit garden to the faint outline of Rin, Sesshoumaru caught her elbow, mindful of the dips and bumps in the garden that the night-blind woman was unaware of.
Rin was stood under an old tall tree tracing her tiny fingers over the numerous grooves in the surface of the darkened bark.
Upon closer inspection, Sesshoumaru could clearly distinguish a number of indentations running up the tree in a line until they reached the height of a grown male, and, next to them, was a trail of indentations that only grew up to the height of Rin’s eyebrows.
Stroking the indentation that was just at eyelevel, Rin smiled sweetly at Kagome over her shoulder.
“Back against it,” Kagome instructed gently, putting a finger level with Rin’s head as the girl pressed herself to the tree. Rin stepped away gleefully and Kagome carefully scored another notch in the tree with her penknife.
“Nearly as tall as your papa at your age,” Kagome said, tracing a slightly wonky line between the two notches, “but then, he was always kind of scrawny,” she smiled nostalgically as Rin leaned into her side, burying her head in Kagome’s midriff, “probably why he liked climbing trees so much, the smaller you are the higher you want to be.”
Crack.
The duo spun at the sound of the tree branch snapping, pulses racing, though Sesshoumaru stood nonchalantly by, his superior sense of smell alerting him to the intruder’s identity.
“Inuyasha!” Kagome exclaimed, relived that it was just her long-time friend.
“Hey,” he murmured, nodding respectfully to Rin and Kagome, “Sesshoumaru, I need a word.”
Kagome smiled as the half-brothers retreated a whiles away; this was probably a scheme of Kikyo’s to allow Rin to spend some time alone with her and the memories of her father. Inuyasha generally would have point blank refused to talk to Sesshoumaru willingly; it appeared that Kikyo had a great deal of control over her puppy-husband.
“You see those apple trees?” Kagome asked Rin, as soon as the brothers had left her sight, pointing at the apple trees hanging over the fence of the border to their lands.
“Mhmm,” Rin murmured softly, clinging to Kagome’s pyjama t-shirt.
“When Souta... when your dad was a year older than you he decided he had to have one of those apples, and of course, by this time climbing trees was second nature to him.”
“But, that tree’s not on shrine property,” Rin mumbled, slightly confused.
“I know,” Kagome replied lightly, “and Souta knew that too, but he also thought he was good enough to get away with it, the idiot.”
Rin giggled, hiding her face in Kagome’s shirt as it turned into a watery hiccup.
“He got the apples alright, but on escape he put his hand in a birds nest, panicked and fell,” Kagome chuckled, “I think he must have been made of rubber of something, because he only bruised his bottom... and his pride. Not to mention, mama saw and he was grounded for so long! She took the apples from him too, and let me and grandpa eat them instead of him.”
Rin’s face peeked up to gaze at the apple tree longingly. “Dad... dad was silly, huh?”
Kagome clung to Rin as tightly as the girl could stand. “Sometimes... sometimes he was brave and gentle, sometimes he was a brat who would tease me and play pranks on me, sometimes he would sulk and be moody. But he was always your dad and always my brother.”
There was a stretch of silence, encompassing them in their moment of solitary grief, of melancholy memories, of wistful wishes.
Up above them, a star fell from the sky in a brilliant arc of light. And Kagome wished.
Fly free, brother.
Rin, who had looked at the star with her fingers crossed, composed herself and flicked a wry glance at her aunt. “But now you have Sesshoumaru-san?”
“Sesshoumaru is a jerk and he definitely sulks over his inability to cook,” Kagome conceded laughingly, “but he’s never played an outright prank on me like your dad used to, I don’t think he has it in him.”
“Tell me about the time dad locked you in the storehouse,” Rin pleaded.
“That again?” Kagome exclaimed, a half-laugh in her voice, “I think I’ve told you that one a million times already, Rin.”
“Again!”
This time, the cracking of twigs was preceded by a prickling sensation at the back of Kagome’s neck, so whilst her heart jumped into her throat, she did not jump a little into the air as Rin did.
A man in a priest’s garb stepped from the foliage and blinked in surprise when he saw them.
“Who are you?” Kagome demanded, voice terse as she clutched Rin to her side.
The man smiled a gentle reassuring smile and spread his hands peaceably. “You are Kagome-san, correct? Your grandfather speaks of you very often,” he sketched a polite bow, “I am the new priest your grandfather recruited to help around the shrine with the visitors and rituals and whatnot.”
By this time, Sesshoumaru had breezed back into the dell, eyes guarded as he perused the form of the priest snootily.
The priest straightened from his bow and nodded in a clipped manner at Sesshoumaru.
“Why are you hear so late at night?” Sesshoumaru demanded coldly.
“I am always here,” the priest answered calmly, “Mrs Higurashi has graciously allowed me board in one of the storehouses.”
“You live in a storehouse?” Rin piped up curiously, removing her face from Kagome’s midriff.
The monk smiled down at her. “It is enough of a home for me, little one.”
Rin blinked a few times and scrunched up her nose before brightening. “You’re that priest who came into school to talk to us about the meaning behind the tanabata festival!”
The monk nodded astutely. “Yes, I recognised you... Rin I believe?”
“Yep,” Rin nodded.
“Well then,” Sesshoumaru interjected, glaring frostily at a suddenly stiff priest - who looked annoyed at the interruption, though he pasted a smile across his face - “we will be leaving.”
“See you later, Rin-chan, Kagome-san!”
Kagome cast him an uneasy look over her shoulder as Sesshoumaru frogmarched her and Rin back to the house at a breakneck pace.
Once they were safely inside the Higurashi home, Kagome turned to Sesshoumaru, who looked about as tense as the string of a bow.
“What’s the matter?” she asked softly, placing a calming hand on his elbow.
“There was something about that priest...”
“What is it?”
Golden eyes flickered sideways as he held her concerned gaze. “Why would a priest need to mask his scent?”