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Kagome was bent over, towel in her hands, ruffling her hair dry. The smell had taken forever to get out. The very memory of it made her stomach curl in nausea, and she shoved the thought away hastily. Sango had borne the brunt of it; it was hiraikotsu, after all, that sliced the pig demon into pieces. Its blood and entrails were flung absolutely everywhere—and all five of them had been drenched. Luckily, there was a river nearby, and they were able to clean themselves of the worst of it. Sango had been grateful for the shampoo and soap, which was equally strong with its floral aroma.
The girls had gone first, of course; currently, Inuyasha, Miroku, and Shippo were making use of the river, though Kagome doubted it would do them much good; she and Sango had used up all of her soaps during their cleaning, and the boys would unfortunately be going without. Not that she thought Inuyasha in particular would have used her perfumed shampoo… but still.
The girls were working together to get a fire going for dinner when the men and Shippo returned. They at least looked better, Kagome noted immediately. She would make sure to purchase some unscented soaps whenever they passed the next village. The soap of this era was far less offensive to demonic senses, at least.
Fifteen minutes later, and they were all sipping on venison soup, thanks to Inunyasha’s successful hunt earlier that evening. It smelled glorious, and they were all grateful for the additional refreshment to their olfactory glands.
But afterwards, when they were settled around the fire to ward off the dropping autumn temperatures, Kagome got a whiff of that terrible scent again. It happened right as Inuyasha plopped down next to her—and she immediately roamed her eyes over his figure.
“What?” he accused sharply.
“That smell. Where’s it coming from?” she said, getting right to the point. “Your clothes look fine.”
He grit his teeth. “It’s this stupid thing,” he said, gripping the beads around his neck. “It’s impossible to clean. Too many crevices.”
“…Oh,” she said, rather stupidly. She shared a look with Sango, and then Miroku. They both shrugged at her. Inuyasha was picking something from under his claws when she returned her wary gaze to him. “Do you… want me to clean it?”
His fingers stopped their twiddling. “Huh?” His eyes widened briefly before narrowing. “Are you messing with me?” he charged.
Kagome swallowed, solidifying her decision. “N-No. We can take it off for a minute,” she said.
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Right. Go ahead, then!” His tone was sarcastic as he dramatically leaned his head down, as if he was daring her.
Kagome took one last look at her friends. Apart from Shippo, they seemed… relatively okay with the idea. They were probably having the same sort of doubts she was—that he’d be a little insufferable for a bit, but that he’d surely do nothing too diabolical.
She returned her gaze to him. He was peering up at her now, seemingly convinced that she wasn’t actually going to do it. But when she lifted her hands to grip the beads, his breath stuttered, and his eyes widened. She lifted and lifted, detangled some hair, and then lifted the rest of the way.
He was gawking at her. She lifted her hand and closed his mouth. “You’ll catch flies,” she snapped before flipping her still-damp hair and walking away.
He immediately turned to look at his friends, who were staring at him tensely, and he couldn’t help himself.
He hooted.
Kagome expected something like this, that the first thing he’d do is scare the kit a little. As she tinkered near the campfire to boil some water, she heard Inuyasha chasing Shippo around with terrible laughter, and she felt an inner peace take her. Of course he would be harmless. He didn’t even have it in him to actually catch Shippo; he just wanted to mess around. If he was good, maybe she wouldn’t make him put it back on until tomorrow. She grinned at the thought.
The thing really was filthy. Not just from the pig demon, either; it had needed a good cleaning for months, most likely. The plaque and grime was disgusting, even after letting it soak in the boiling water for ten minutes. She decided she could spare an old toothbrush and used it to scrub the thing bead by bead. Before she knew it, she’d been working on it for an hour.
Inuyasha gave her no more time than that; he was ready to set off toward their next destination. She tried to convince him to let them keep that campsite another night, but it seemed he was… a little too confident in his newfound freedom for her mere pestering to work.
She didn’t think much of it. He wasn’t wrong to be in a hurry; there was a lead to follow, and it would be risky to linger. So they indeed set out.
After a rather… bothersome three hours of walking, night finally fell. Inuyasha graciously allowed them to stop, and they ate some leftover soup for supper.
It looked like he would make it to tomorrow without having to put it back on, after all; Kagome still wasn’t done scrubbing it, and she was too exhausted to pick up where she left off before.
“Don’t go crazy from excitement, Inuyasha,” she told him as she crawled into her sleeping bag. “I’ll finish cleaning it tomorrow, and then it’s back to real life.”
She heard him scoff from the tree he’d chosen as his resting place. “Yeah, right,” he laughed.
Her stomach sank a little at this. Kagome did worry a little that he’d fight her about it, and if she was being honest, she didn’t quite know how she would go about winning that argument. But she told herself it would work out, somehow. She wouldn’t worry about it just yet.
But in the morning, after they had broken their fast and she had completed her cleaning job, she found herself at the moment she’d feared sooner than she expected. He was lounging in a low branch of a thick tree, eyes closed. The others were closer to camp, trusting the task to her.
She cleared her throat. “I’ve finished, Inuyasha.”
“Hmm.”
Well, that wasn’t a helpful response.
“Come on down so I can put it back on,” she tried with a forcibly normal voice.
“No way,” he said simply.
“…What do you mean, ‘no way’?”
“I mean what I said. I already told you I wouldn’t let you put it back on.”
Her stomach hardened into a knot at that. This was going to be more difficult than she’d hoped…
When she threw a pebble at his head, she at least succeeded in getting him out of the tree.
He landed roughly on both feet, growling. “What was that for? You tryin’ to start something?” he said, glaring down at her.
“That’s my line. Stop being childish and put it back on,” she said, lifting it up with her hands.
He instantly stopped the movement by gripping the beads with his own hand, tugging and holding it back down with a strength that humbled her own.
He was smirking. “You couldn’t do it if you tried.”
Her mouth was agape.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’ll catch flies,” he said mockingly.
“Inuyasha,” she scolded, keeping her temper down. She tried tugging the beads, but they didn’t budge from his grip.
His smile was more cruel than playful, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t scare her a little.
“Are you being serious?” she tried.
“Of course. You’re an idiot if you think I’m gonna let you put that thing back on me,” he goaded.
“Hey,” she huffed, mask slipping. “Don’t call me an idiot. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
He chuckled bitterly. “You’re not the one who kisses dirt because of it.” Releasing the beads, he pressed two fingers into her shoulder and gave her a weak shove, though it was enough to jostle her back a step. “You can’t make me,” he grinned savagely.
She saw that he was playing… sort of. He was smiling, for sure, but there was something resentful behind the facade of banter. He seemed genuinely vengeful.
She wouldn’t show her growing fear—no matter what. Better that she acted the same as always, right? If she acted the same… maybe he would, too.
“Come on,” she badgered. “I’ll get you more ninja food next time I go home.”
“Nice try, Kagome,” he spat, towering over her with a puffed chest. “Admit it. You messed up. Stupid,” he drawled.
She would not let the tears form. Yes, she was growing terribly frustrated, but she couldn’t let him see. She’d have no shot of convincing him after that; she had to stay level-headed. Had to keep her reins in her own hands. She couldn’t reveal that she was getting embarrassed at her own naivety, and she certainly didn’t want him to know he was succeeding likely more than he meant to in intimidating her. Kagome didn't like thinking that her confidence in him depended on his wearing the beads; the thought made her feel dirty, like she had broken some sacred unspoken part of being his friend.
But then, he went a step further. And a physical step closer.
“Say it,” he taunted.
She scowled up at him, weighing whether to try and surprise attack him. But she knew he was too quick for something like that to work. “Say what?”
“Tell me to sit. I just wanna hear you say it.”
“Why would I?” she fumed. “It wouldn’t work.”
His smile was less of a smile and more like a smug way to remind her of the sharpness of his teeth. “Exactly.”
The sight was not ineffective. Her heart began to race, and not for entirely pleasant reasons.
“You’re being mean, Inuyasha,” she said in a desperate attempt to regain herself.
He didn’t falter. If anything, his expression grew in vitriol. “I’m a demon, Kagome.”
“I know,” she yelled, rising to her toes. Her fist clenched around the necklace at her side.
“Then maybe you should start acting like it,” he growled. He was seething now, and Kagome realized that he had probably wished to say this—to reestablish his pride as a demon who wasn't leashed by a little human girl—for a very long time. In his view, the beads had been a sign of humiliation. Kagome had always known this, but she had come to believe that he didn't take himself so seriously as to be genuinely offended by it. The revelation of her mistake was no less than discomfiting. Yes—of course she knew he was a demon. But when he had the beads, this fact had seemed... unimportant. And as it turned out, an unfettered Inuyasha was a little more overwhelming than she'd expected.
What had she done?
“You’re—” she stuttered, and she wondered if the moisture gathering on her lash line was real or imagined. “You’re so…”
She watched the muscles in his jaw clench, watched his pupils grow to slits. Her ears stopped working; her eyes were blurring.
And when he lifted his hand toward her face, she couldn’t help herself.
She flinched.
And it was quite dramatic. No way to hide it if it ends with your feet tripping over each other and your butt landing on the filthy ground. No way to cover it up when your breath is still recovering from a gasp like that.
The shame of the moment had not hit her yet; she was still reeling, still refilling her lungs, still blinking her vision clear. She kept her head bowed, stuck on her lap.
When she heard her name on his lips, she began to sense her mistake. But before she could fully decipher it, his hands were on her, under her knees and behind her back. She was in the air. She clung to him as he bounded through the trees, not even remembering the beads still wound around her fingers, until he found one he liked and burrowed them there within the branches.
Her hands were plastered to her face even after he released her.
“Kagome…” he said, voice dangerously low. “Are you really…?”
Pounding. Her heart was pounding. She knew she was being stupid, but she had lost control of her body—and all she had was instinct, instinct, instinct when she saw him bring his fatal fingers toward her neck. Luckily, when he made the same motion this time, her eyes were shielded from seeing their approach. His hands pulled her wrists down, freeing her mortified face. She stared down at where he gripped her.
“Hey,” he said, jostling her hands. “Look at me.”
He didn’t continue until she obeyed. Kagome wondered if she looked as terrified as he did in that moment, and it encouraged her to attempt a calming breath. His voice, however, retained its anger from before—though its direction had changed.
“I would never hurt you. Got that?” He shook her again, desperation taking over his features. “Burn it into your damn head. Beads or no beads, you’re—“ he halted abruptly, black brows still drawn taut in the middle. “To hell with it,” he growled to himself. He loosened her wrists and gripped her shoulders instead, bringing himself closer. His golden eyes bore into hers. “You’re everything to me. The only person who’s in danger if I don’t have the beads is any person who’s stupid enough to lay a finger on you.”
Her tears streamed outright now, but she didn’t even notice. She was staring at his mouth, which was snarled in an angry frown. She licked her dry lips and said meekly, “I’m sorry, Inuyasha—I shouldn’t have doubted you. I don’t know why I…” she trailed off, the risk of her voice breaking too great to ignore.
“Keh,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Give it to me.”
Eyes widening for only a second, Kagome managed to nod her head before she loosened the beads from around her fingers. His right hand unlatched from her shoulder, and he placed his palm in the air to receive it. She lowered it onto his skin, the beads clacking quietly against each other as it collapsed from gravity.
She supposed it wouldn’t really change anything for him to break them. He hadn’t lost control of his demonic blood in a very long time, and she figured the beads had lost their edge against him in such a form, anyway. Tetsusaiga was far more effective. And she supposed she technically didn’t sit him nearly as often nowadays, either. His behavior today would prove an outlier, she told herself; he was just readjusting to his freedom. It would be fine. She believed this firmly now, and she was ashamed that she didn’t from the start.
But Inuyasha did not break them; instead, he pulled them right back over his head and let them drop with a loud clatter around his neck.
“Wait, Inuyasha—“
“Shut up,” he snapped, but his remaining hand on her shoulder was gentle, and his eyes were, too. His voice remained firm, but he softened it for his next words: “I don’t ever wanna see that look on your face again. And if this is what I gotta do to prevent it, then I’ll do it.”
“Inuyasha…” she winced. “I’m sorry. Really, I trust you—you don’t have to wear them anymore.” Kagome pushed herself onto her knees and lifted her hands to grab the necklace, but his own hands were faster: he gripped and halted her wrists against his chest. She froze, eyes locking onto his from a mere foot away.
His eyes flashed in warning. “Leave ‘em,” he scolded. “I’m not letting go until you say you won’t try to take them off.” He punctuated his words by a quick squeeze of her wrists, which were still pinned to his firm, warm chest.
Kagome gulped, half dazzled and half annoyed. “…Only if you promise you believe me when I say I trust you.”
He looked at her, hard. She wondered at how his anger, for a moment, seemed to sharpen. Then, in one fluid movement, his hands shoved hers off of his chest and backwards—back, back, back until her wrists were pinned behind her against the thick trunk of the tree. She had lost her balance on her knees in the movement, and she fell back on her rear. He was leaning over her now, face even closer than before, close enough to feel his hot breath on her face.
“Do you trust me, Kagome?” he said doubtfully.
Kagome’s breath caught. “Inu—”
“Prove it. Don’t sit me.”
Before she could question him, his nose was at her throat. He opened his mouth—she could feel his heavy sigh—and he grazed his teeth against the skin there. “I don’t blame you for being afraid of me without them,” he said bitterly. “It’d be easy for me to kill you.”
“You would never,” she whispered, eyes clenching shut at the feel of him on top of her, at the strength of his hands, at the edges of his teeth.
Something like a whine escaped him. “Sit me,” he said.
“No.” She angled her chin toward him, cocooning him even closer to her throat.
“Do it,” he begged, hands tightening around her wrists.
“Inuyasha,” she crooned.
Her tone was more effective than that damned word ever could have been. He tore himself from her neck and stared down at her with an expression so pained that her heart ached. Their eyes met with an intensity he wasn’t ready for—and when she broke away to look at his mouth, he looked like he was going to lose his godforsaken mind.
As a final nail in his coffin, she tilted her head up to brush her nose against his. “I trust you,” she said again, and he was off of her in a flash.
Chest panting, he watched in awe as she sat up, brushed her fingers over her neck, and eyed him sadly.
“Kagome, I…” He trailed off, the apology sitting on his tongue.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
She was wrong, though. He did mean it. He meant everything he had done. Maybe not everything he’d said, but… there was something depraved inside of him that enjoyed hearing her heart beat insanely beneath him. Whatever it was—whether it was the demon inside of him, or the man even deeper within—he knew that whatever it was that gave him pleasure at seeing her flustered and heated and pliant was what the beads were really for.
He would never hurt her—he knew that. He prayed she did now, too. But he also knew that there were different kinds of pain, and while he knew he would never hurt her with his hands, he couldn’t say the same about his words… or about his mouth, in general.
And it was for days like today, when temperatures were running a little too hot, when words were flying a little too sharp, that he needed that extra incentive to stay in line. To not push her (or himself) too far. To remember that she was still just a girl, and he was almost fully a man, and that that might matter even more than the fact that she was human and he was not.
Maybe one day it would be different. Maybe one day, she would be ready to take those beads off of him—to keep him in line the way that he wished she would, with different words and a different method. A better method.
But in the meantime, he supposed they could just keep bickering like they always have, as if petty little arguments were really the worst thing he could do to warrant a kiss to the dirt.
“Inuyasha,” she said, pulling him out of himself again.
With just a look, he understood her, and he gathered her onto his back. They were back at the outskirts of camp before the others even noticed they were gone.
But what they did notice was Kagome’s commanding voice as she let fly one resounding word, and the loud crash (and wince) that followed immediately after.
They also noticed that he didn’t even complain about it.