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Protection (Prompt #08) | Inuyasha
Collection Title: Fleeting
Genre: Drama/Romance
Rating: T
Summary: Right now, this is just a collection of various oneshots/drabbles for this prompt table. There is currently no plan for a overarching storyline that I'm working towards (for a change, LOL). We'll see how the prompts work themselves out, though - I never say never :)
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un_love_you Prompt Table here. Prompt for this piece is: #08: “I’m cruel.”
Title: Protection
Universe: Alternate (modern era)
Rating: T (language)
Word Count: 2246
Pairing: Sesshoumaru/Kagome
Summary: Sesshoumaru shields Kagome from the unsolicited advances of others – and offers her unwanted protection from himself.
Author’s Note: This is another entry into the universe first started with Come My Way, and continued in Valor and Longing.
Disclaimer: The Inuyasha concept, story, and characters are copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Media.
~*~
He was at the end of his rope, and he was running out of time.
This chapter was due in six hours.
He was 2500 words short.
No matter how he tried, he just could not find a way to stretch the material to meet the suggested word limit.
This is ridiculous, he groused, pushing himself away from the desk and the mocking glow of the computer screen. His chair bumped against the side of his bed, and he slumped forward, pushing his hands through his hair. Nothing short of quoting the entire conclusion of that last reference will do it.
His fingernails raked against his scalp as he banished the idea from his mind. His advisor was riding him pretty hard, but not nearly as hard as he was treating himself. He was on a deadline, dammit. If he didn’t graduate by May, everything would be absolutely ruined.
Nobody understood the sheer amount of stress he dealt with on a daily basis. It seemed like no matter what he did, he never quite measured up to his father’s lofty standards. Graduating first in his class in high school with full marks? Not good enough. Earning entrance into the toughest undergraduate program in the city? Not good enough. A bachelor’s degree in three years, conferred with highest honors?
Not. Good. Enough.
It had been that way his entire life. Even when he was five years old and brought home his first academic prize, his father’s reaction had been the same: a narrow, assessing glare that edged down the slope of his nose - a single glance that had the power to cut straight through its target.
Perhaps that’s when he had committed his gravest mistake: taking his father’s reaction as a challenge. His five-year-old heart was determined to bring something other than thinly-veined disappointment to his father’s face, and thus set in motion an endless, vicious cycle of events. But it seemed that no matter how hard he tried, he could never erase that end result.
When he was seventeen, it all came to a head. His father called him into his office the day before high school graduation. He’d been largely absent the prior few months, as he worked round the clock to secure yet another takeover of a holdings company. With that merger, his corporation became one of the most formidable in the country, controlling stakes in everything from hospitals to road works.
He remembered the moment well: standing in front of his father’s desk, holding his head as high as he dared as he stared back at the man he so desperately wanted to impress. His father had calmly returned the gaze, ever calculating, before throwing down the gauntlet:
“If you wish to succeed me, you must prove you are worthy of being the heir to my power.”
The ultimatum brought Sesshoumaru’s entire world into focus. It had taken twelve years, but finally, he understood: just because he was born into privilege didn’t mean he was going to have his inheritance handed to him. It was obvious his father was going to do absolutely nothing to help him. This realization, proving to his father that he had the brains and the balls to do whatever it took to succeed him, became his obsession.
Thus, he was no longer surprised at his father’s distinct lack of enthusiasm at his achievements, academic and otherwise. But that look never disappeared, and it still made Sesshoumaru’s blood boil. It was a veiled threat, the only thing that could make him feel vulnerable and frustrated and helpless in an instant.
It was the last straw.
He had to graduate from this program in the spring. There was an opening at one of his family’s rival companies, a strategic internship with the possibility of becoming a permanent arrangement. The position?
Merger negotiation.
To hell with never measuring up to his father’s impossible standards. If he was blocked from inheriting what was rightfully his, he’d simply stage a takeover.
The slam of the apartment’s front door broke him from his thoughts. He growled and cast a deathly glare at his bedroom door. Judging by the general commotion wafting through the common room, it seemed his roommate had returned from wherever she had been that morning.
Oh, he liked her well enough – she was generally quiet and considerate, never bothering him unless he was in one of their shared spaces. He was amused by her breezy, seemingly uncomplicated lifestyle; she lived her life in a veritable social whirlwind, the complete opposite of his staid existence.
But their dynamic had taken a turn for the uneasy in the past few months. He had been surprised – and disappointed – when he learned that she was sticking around over the winter break from classes. Unused to living with someone else for such an extended period of time – no one had lasted as long as she had – he’d so been looking forward to a stretch of time alone to focus on his work.
The last thing he needed right now was a distraction.
~*~
“Koga, keep it down, please,” Kagome pleaded, watching him flutter around her kitchen with her good eye. A knot of dread was already beginning to form in her stomach. This was not a good idea, she reminded herself. Sesshoumaru can’t stand him!
Koga continued to bang around, oblivious. “What are you talking about?” he asked her cheerfully, filling her tea kettle with water and setting it on the stove. “I’m only making a pot of tea!”
She winced as the door to her tea cabinet slammed shut, cringing further at the sharp pain that streaked across her face. Gingerly, she touched her red, sore cheek. She’d been on her way home from the bus stop when the skies opened and rained hail and sleet down upon her. It had come seemingly out of nowhere, and she’d been completely unprepared for it. Luckily – or perhaps unluckily – Koga had been on the same bus, and offered to walk her home after draping his outer coat around her.
In her moment of desperation, she rescinded her vow of giving up on the flaky men in her life and agreed, only to remember too late that Sesshoumaru was hard at work on his thesis at home, and would not welcome an extra set of feet stomping around the place. He’d been snippy with her all week already, hence her need to get out of the apartment despite the dreary weather.
“Listen, Koga, I appreciate this,” she tried again, resting her head in her hand, “but it’s really not necessary. Besides, Sesshoumaru’s here – ”
Koga laughed out loud. “Of course he is, that pathetic little prick,” he interrupted, giving her a satisfied smirk as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “The guy doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fun’. Always got his nose in a book, planning cocky little strategies to take over his daddy’s companies.” He shook his head in mocking pity.
“He’s not that bad,” she protested. The reasons why she didn’t thrill over being in Koga’s company for a long stretch of time were coming back to her, and fast.
“Yeah, about that…” Koga’s words trailed off as he eyed her. “Do you two have something going or what? I can’t imagine a perfectly sane, perfectly hot girl such as yourself choosing to live with that jerk voluntarily.”
Kagome flushed in response. How was she supposed to answer that? Things had certainly changed between them since that fateful Halloween night. As she struggled to find her voice, Koga leaned over and shut off the heat under the whistling kettle.
“Besides,” he continued, placing the kettle on the tray and bringing it to the table where she sat, “I think I deserve to know if I’m sharing my woman.”
“Your woman?!” she sputtered. “Since when?”
He ignored her question, placing his arm on the back of her chair, invading her personal space with an uninviting leer. “Please, Kagome, know that if you’re in some sort of trouble with him, you can always come to me.”
“Ahem.”
Kagome breathed a silent sigh of relief at the interruption, quickly scooting away from the fervent embrace. She glanced over Koga’s shoulder, the knot in her stomach doubling.
“If you’re quite finished castigating me and my roommate, kindly remove yourself from my property,” Sesshoumaru said calmly, coldly. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, openly glowering at the pair of them across the room.
Koga straightened and turned in his chair, latching onto Sesshoumaru’s scowl with a matching glare of his own. “‘Castigating’? Dude, can you even speak plain Japanese?” he scoffed. “Besides, I’m here because Kagome invited me. I was protecting her – ”
“The only thing she needs protection from is you,” Sesshoumaru interrupted, closing the space between them in languid strides.
“I’ll leave when Kagome tells me to,” Koga replied, his lips curling into a sneer as his opponent approached.
“Oh, really now?” Sesshoumaru responded before Kagome could even open her mouth. “Last time I looked, this was my property, so what I say goes.”
“Is she your property, too?” Koga asked sarcastically, jutting a finger in Kagome’s direction.
Sesshoumaru gave him a small, hard smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “What is our relationship to you?”
Koga’s eyes bugged out of his head. “So it is true,” he muttered, casting a suspicious glare at the girl whose honor he was just defending.
For her part, Kagome was completely stunned; she didn’t think it was possible to feel any worse than she had a scant few minutes before, out in the hailstorm. Again, she struggled for the words. “Koga, I – ”
“I mean, holy shit, I knew you were easy, but this?” Koga cut in, incredulous. “This is pretty pathetic, even for the likes of you.”
“Easy?!” She bolted upright, knocking the chair over in her unsteady, half-numb state.
At the same moment, Koga was lifted from his seat as well. His face turned seven shades of red and purple as Sesshoumaru’s grip tightened around his throat. “You ready to put that particular theory to the test?” he snarled, digging his fingers into the skin of his neck. Koga battled for breath, swatting uselessly at the iron wrist that held him.
“Get out,” Kagome cried, pitching his heretofore forgotten coat – his “protection” and now-apparent flimsy excuse to get in her pants – across the room. She didn’t have the words to express her anger and humiliation to finally know what he truly thought of her – why he was still hanging around her even as the rest of their friends shunned her.
Koga’s nails jabbed into Sesshoumaru’s wrist, his clawing growing desperate as his air supply thinned. “And stay out,” Sesshoumaru added, releasing him unceremoniously.
Koga gasped for air as he lay on their kitchen floor. “You two deserve each other,” he wheezed. “You’re both fucking insane!” He reached for his coat and began to half-walk, half-crawl out of the room. Sesshoumaru followed him to make sure he left, giving the door a not-so-satisfying slam when the defeated asshole finally exited.
“Thank you,” came a soft voice from behind him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, throwing the lock of the door before turning to face her.
“This is all your fault, you know,” he said, unable to hold his irritation in check.
Her brow wrinkled as she peered at him. She clutched the cup of tea she held in front of her, as if it was a shield. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” he replied with an annoyed sigh. “How could you?”
As he attempted to pass her, she caught the sleeve of his shirt. “Sesshoumaru, wait!”
The soft scent of peppermint drifted around him. “You knew,” he began, his fingers curling against his palms. “You knew I was extremely busy, on a very tight schedule with this chapter of my thesis. And what did you do? You brought over that asshole to stomp around and be his general annoying self.” He cut a cold glare at her over his shoulder. “Very mature.”
Her eyes widened and her hands tightened around the cup. “Mature?” she mocked. “And what about that little display back there, getting in his face? Oh, yeah, that’s how real men settle their differences – with violence!”
He merely stared at her, not willing to give her the satisfaction.
She swallowed convulsively under his intense gaze, her expression shifting as thoughts tumbled through her mind. “Did you mean what you said back there? About our ‘relationship’?”
His eyes hooded. “My business is my business.”
She licked her lips. “And am I your business?”
Right now, all she was to him was a fucking distraction. A thin smile graced his lips as his gaze moved forward again. “You’re a sweet kid, Kagome, but frivolous, irresponsible party girl isn’t exactly my type.”
Her sudden intake of breath stabbed at his stomach, an unpleasant reminder of how that wasn’t exactly the truth. She was nice, and usually considerate, and incredibly attractive – but he didn’t have the time or inclination to do anything about it just yet. His thesis – the key to his future – was too urgent, too pressing at the moment.
“Like I said before, don’t start something you aren’t prepared to finish,” he murmured. “You’re not ready to tangle with me.” You’re not ready to deal with my shit, and I’m not ready to subject you to it.
Genre: Drama/Romance
Rating: T
Summary: Right now, this is just a collection of various oneshots/drabbles for this prompt table. There is currently no plan for a overarching storyline that I'm working towards (for a change, LOL). We'll see how the prompts work themselves out, though - I never say never :)
un_love_you Prompt Table here. Prompt for this piece is: #08: “I’m cruel.”Title: Protection
Universe: Alternate (modern era)
Rating: T (language)
Word Count: 2246
Pairing: Sesshoumaru/Kagome
Summary: Sesshoumaru shields Kagome from the unsolicited advances of others – and offers her unwanted protection from himself.
Author’s Note: This is another entry into the universe first started with Come My Way, and continued in Valor and Longing.
Disclaimer: The Inuyasha concept, story, and characters are copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Media.
He was at the end of his rope, and he was running out of time.
This chapter was due in six hours.
He was 2500 words short.
No matter how he tried, he just could not find a way to stretch the material to meet the suggested word limit.
This is ridiculous, he groused, pushing himself away from the desk and the mocking glow of the computer screen. His chair bumped against the side of his bed, and he slumped forward, pushing his hands through his hair. Nothing short of quoting the entire conclusion of that last reference will do it.
His fingernails raked against his scalp as he banished the idea from his mind. His advisor was riding him pretty hard, but not nearly as hard as he was treating himself. He was on a deadline, dammit. If he didn’t graduate by May, everything would be absolutely ruined.
Nobody understood the sheer amount of stress he dealt with on a daily basis. It seemed like no matter what he did, he never quite measured up to his father’s lofty standards. Graduating first in his class in high school with full marks? Not good enough. Earning entrance into the toughest undergraduate program in the city? Not good enough. A bachelor’s degree in three years, conferred with highest honors?
Not. Good. Enough.
It had been that way his entire life. Even when he was five years old and brought home his first academic prize, his father’s reaction had been the same: a narrow, assessing glare that edged down the slope of his nose - a single glance that had the power to cut straight through its target.
Perhaps that’s when he had committed his gravest mistake: taking his father’s reaction as a challenge. His five-year-old heart was determined to bring something other than thinly-veined disappointment to his father’s face, and thus set in motion an endless, vicious cycle of events. But it seemed that no matter how hard he tried, he could never erase that end result.
When he was seventeen, it all came to a head. His father called him into his office the day before high school graduation. He’d been largely absent the prior few months, as he worked round the clock to secure yet another takeover of a holdings company. With that merger, his corporation became one of the most formidable in the country, controlling stakes in everything from hospitals to road works.
He remembered the moment well: standing in front of his father’s desk, holding his head as high as he dared as he stared back at the man he so desperately wanted to impress. His father had calmly returned the gaze, ever calculating, before throwing down the gauntlet:
“If you wish to succeed me, you must prove you are worthy of being the heir to my power.”
The ultimatum brought Sesshoumaru’s entire world into focus. It had taken twelve years, but finally, he understood: just because he was born into privilege didn’t mean he was going to have his inheritance handed to him. It was obvious his father was going to do absolutely nothing to help him. This realization, proving to his father that he had the brains and the balls to do whatever it took to succeed him, became his obsession.
Thus, he was no longer surprised at his father’s distinct lack of enthusiasm at his achievements, academic and otherwise. But that look never disappeared, and it still made Sesshoumaru’s blood boil. It was a veiled threat, the only thing that could make him feel vulnerable and frustrated and helpless in an instant.
It was the last straw.
He had to graduate from this program in the spring. There was an opening at one of his family’s rival companies, a strategic internship with the possibility of becoming a permanent arrangement. The position?
Merger negotiation.
To hell with never measuring up to his father’s impossible standards. If he was blocked from inheriting what was rightfully his, he’d simply stage a takeover.
The slam of the apartment’s front door broke him from his thoughts. He growled and cast a deathly glare at his bedroom door. Judging by the general commotion wafting through the common room, it seemed his roommate had returned from wherever she had been that morning.
Oh, he liked her well enough – she was generally quiet and considerate, never bothering him unless he was in one of their shared spaces. He was amused by her breezy, seemingly uncomplicated lifestyle; she lived her life in a veritable social whirlwind, the complete opposite of his staid existence.
But their dynamic had taken a turn for the uneasy in the past few months. He had been surprised – and disappointed – when he learned that she was sticking around over the winter break from classes. Unused to living with someone else for such an extended period of time – no one had lasted as long as she had – he’d so been looking forward to a stretch of time alone to focus on his work.
The last thing he needed right now was a distraction.
“Koga, keep it down, please,” Kagome pleaded, watching him flutter around her kitchen with her good eye. A knot of dread was already beginning to form in her stomach. This was not a good idea, she reminded herself. Sesshoumaru can’t stand him!
Koga continued to bang around, oblivious. “What are you talking about?” he asked her cheerfully, filling her tea kettle with water and setting it on the stove. “I’m only making a pot of tea!”
She winced as the door to her tea cabinet slammed shut, cringing further at the sharp pain that streaked across her face. Gingerly, she touched her red, sore cheek. She’d been on her way home from the bus stop when the skies opened and rained hail and sleet down upon her. It had come seemingly out of nowhere, and she’d been completely unprepared for it. Luckily – or perhaps unluckily – Koga had been on the same bus, and offered to walk her home after draping his outer coat around her.
In her moment of desperation, she rescinded her vow of giving up on the flaky men in her life and agreed, only to remember too late that Sesshoumaru was hard at work on his thesis at home, and would not welcome an extra set of feet stomping around the place. He’d been snippy with her all week already, hence her need to get out of the apartment despite the dreary weather.
“Listen, Koga, I appreciate this,” she tried again, resting her head in her hand, “but it’s really not necessary. Besides, Sesshoumaru’s here – ”
Koga laughed out loud. “Of course he is, that pathetic little prick,” he interrupted, giving her a satisfied smirk as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “The guy doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fun’. Always got his nose in a book, planning cocky little strategies to take over his daddy’s companies.” He shook his head in mocking pity.
“He’s not that bad,” she protested. The reasons why she didn’t thrill over being in Koga’s company for a long stretch of time were coming back to her, and fast.
“Yeah, about that…” Koga’s words trailed off as he eyed her. “Do you two have something going or what? I can’t imagine a perfectly sane, perfectly hot girl such as yourself choosing to live with that jerk voluntarily.”
Kagome flushed in response. How was she supposed to answer that? Things had certainly changed between them since that fateful Halloween night. As she struggled to find her voice, Koga leaned over and shut off the heat under the whistling kettle.
“Besides,” he continued, placing the kettle on the tray and bringing it to the table where she sat, “I think I deserve to know if I’m sharing my woman.”
“Your woman?!” she sputtered. “Since when?”
He ignored her question, placing his arm on the back of her chair, invading her personal space with an uninviting leer. “Please, Kagome, know that if you’re in some sort of trouble with him, you can always come to me.”
“Ahem.”
Kagome breathed a silent sigh of relief at the interruption, quickly scooting away from the fervent embrace. She glanced over Koga’s shoulder, the knot in her stomach doubling.
“If you’re quite finished castigating me and my roommate, kindly remove yourself from my property,” Sesshoumaru said calmly, coldly. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, openly glowering at the pair of them across the room.
Koga straightened and turned in his chair, latching onto Sesshoumaru’s scowl with a matching glare of his own. “‘Castigating’? Dude, can you even speak plain Japanese?” he scoffed. “Besides, I’m here because Kagome invited me. I was protecting her – ”
“The only thing she needs protection from is you,” Sesshoumaru interrupted, closing the space between them in languid strides.
“I’ll leave when Kagome tells me to,” Koga replied, his lips curling into a sneer as his opponent approached.
“Oh, really now?” Sesshoumaru responded before Kagome could even open her mouth. “Last time I looked, this was my property, so what I say goes.”
“Is she your property, too?” Koga asked sarcastically, jutting a finger in Kagome’s direction.
Sesshoumaru gave him a small, hard smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “What is our relationship to you?”
Koga’s eyes bugged out of his head. “So it is true,” he muttered, casting a suspicious glare at the girl whose honor he was just defending.
For her part, Kagome was completely stunned; she didn’t think it was possible to feel any worse than she had a scant few minutes before, out in the hailstorm. Again, she struggled for the words. “Koga, I – ”
“I mean, holy shit, I knew you were easy, but this?” Koga cut in, incredulous. “This is pretty pathetic, even for the likes of you.”
“Easy?!” She bolted upright, knocking the chair over in her unsteady, half-numb state.
At the same moment, Koga was lifted from his seat as well. His face turned seven shades of red and purple as Sesshoumaru’s grip tightened around his throat. “You ready to put that particular theory to the test?” he snarled, digging his fingers into the skin of his neck. Koga battled for breath, swatting uselessly at the iron wrist that held him.
“Get out,” Kagome cried, pitching his heretofore forgotten coat – his “protection” and now-apparent flimsy excuse to get in her pants – across the room. She didn’t have the words to express her anger and humiliation to finally know what he truly thought of her – why he was still hanging around her even as the rest of their friends shunned her.
Koga’s nails jabbed into Sesshoumaru’s wrist, his clawing growing desperate as his air supply thinned. “And stay out,” Sesshoumaru added, releasing him unceremoniously.
Koga gasped for air as he lay on their kitchen floor. “You two deserve each other,” he wheezed. “You’re both fucking insane!” He reached for his coat and began to half-walk, half-crawl out of the room. Sesshoumaru followed him to make sure he left, giving the door a not-so-satisfying slam when the defeated asshole finally exited.
“Thank you,” came a soft voice from behind him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, throwing the lock of the door before turning to face her.
“This is all your fault, you know,” he said, unable to hold his irritation in check.
Her brow wrinkled as she peered at him. She clutched the cup of tea she held in front of her, as if it was a shield. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” he replied with an annoyed sigh. “How could you?”
As he attempted to pass her, she caught the sleeve of his shirt. “Sesshoumaru, wait!”
The soft scent of peppermint drifted around him. “You knew,” he began, his fingers curling against his palms. “You knew I was extremely busy, on a very tight schedule with this chapter of my thesis. And what did you do? You brought over that asshole to stomp around and be his general annoying self.” He cut a cold glare at her over his shoulder. “Very mature.”
Her eyes widened and her hands tightened around the cup. “Mature?” she mocked. “And what about that little display back there, getting in his face? Oh, yeah, that’s how real men settle their differences – with violence!”
He merely stared at her, not willing to give her the satisfaction.
She swallowed convulsively under his intense gaze, her expression shifting as thoughts tumbled through her mind. “Did you mean what you said back there? About our ‘relationship’?”
His eyes hooded. “My business is my business.”
She licked her lips. “And am I your business?”
Right now, all she was to him was a fucking distraction. A thin smile graced his lips as his gaze moved forward again. “You’re a sweet kid, Kagome, but frivolous, irresponsible party girl isn’t exactly my type.”
Her sudden intake of breath stabbed at his stomach, an unpleasant reminder of how that wasn’t exactly the truth. She was nice, and usually considerate, and incredibly attractive – but he didn’t have the time or inclination to do anything about it just yet. His thesis – the key to his future – was too urgent, too pressing at the moment.
“Like I said before, don’t start something you aren’t prepared to finish,” he murmured. “You’re not ready to tangle with me.” You’re not ready to deal with my shit, and I’m not ready to subject you to it.
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BTW, I finally got my first one up on the site! Let me know what you think!
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I'm glad you enjoyed it even though he was jerky :) Even though it was written pretty much straight out, I've been mulling it for a good week or so. Originally the ending was going to be more dramatic but I couldn't decide if her running out would be just another example of immaturity or not.
*sigh* Decisions, decisions.
BTW, I finally got my first one up on the site! Let me know what you think!
*runs to Friends list to find it*
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I chose Koga because I thought it would be more amusing to riff on his canon persona...plus I haven't completely decided if Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru are indeed related in this universe.