InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 4: Justification ❯ The Movie ( Chapter 32 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Gin handed the movie she'd picked up after her girls' afternoon to Cain and flopped down on the sofa, grabbing the small throw pillow and hugging it to her chest.  "It's a romance," she informed him as he scowled at the title.

"Romance, huh," he echoed as he tilted the box from side to side, reading the title through the cloudy plastic box.  "You sure you want to watch this, Gin?"

"Yes," she said.  "The back of the box sounded good."

Cain shot her an inscrutable look.  "Did it?"

"Uh huh . . . You'll watch it with me, right?"

Cain made a face.  "It's not that," he assured her.  "Gin . . . This is a rather . . . artsy movie . . ."

She nodded slowly.  "Oh, I get it . . . You're one of those guys who can't stand to watch romances, aren't you?"

He wrinkled his nose.  "It's not that, really . . . I've heard of this movie, and . . . I just don't think you'll like it.  Why don't we take this one back and get a different one?"

"I thought this one sounded good, and I like the actor," she argued.

Cain sighed and rubbed his eyes.  "Were any of the following words in the description: torrid, tempestuous, sordid, or voluptuous?"

Gin scrunched up her shoulders, her face contorting in a thoughtful frown.  "Yeah, all of them, I think . . . Why?"  True enough, she hadn't really heard of the movie she'd chosen, but it did say it was a romance, and even if it had those words in the description, that didn't mean anything really.  Since she normally picked out comedies or Disney movies—she was a sucker for those—she had just looked for something that she might like.  The picture on the box had been the silhouettes of two people locked in an embrace as the rain poured down on them.  That wasn't so bad, was it?

"Did you happen to see the rating this movie got?"

"You mean from the critics?"

He shook his head.  "No, I mean the MPAA rating . . ."

She shrugged.  "No."

"Yeah . . . This is rated 'NC-17' in the States."

"What does that mean?"

Cain made a face.  "It means . . . This movie shows . . . stuff . . ."

"Stuff?  Like what?"

"Like more graphic sexual situations," Cain explained.  "More than what you would normally see in, say, an 'R' rated movie."

She stopped and stared at Cain for a moment, unable to tell if he was being truthful or not.  He didn't look like he was joking.  She bit her lip and shrugged.  "Surely it's not that bad," she mumbled, hoping that Cain would agree.

He narrowed his gaze and heaved a sigh, slowly shaking his head as though he wasn't sure exactly what to say.  "All right," he gave in despite the reluctance in his tone, "but I'm warning you, Gin . . . If you insist on watching this, then you've got to watch all of it."

"Of course!" she scoffed.  "I mean, even if it shows some stuff, it still sounded interesting."

Cain got up and stepped around the coffee table to slip the video into the player.  "You're sure?" he asked again before he closed the drawer.

Gin wrinkled her nose and laughed.  "I think I'm old enough to watch it, don't you think?"

Cain didn't comment, but he did push the drawer closed.

He sat back down and glanced at Gin again.  She curled up on the sofa, leaning her forehead against the high back and folding her knees with her legs tucked under her and the pillow clenched in her arms.  Cain rubbed the back of his neck and sighed softly, lifting the remote control to start the movie.

'This isn't so bad,' Gin thought.  The workaholic lawyer and his dysfunctional marriage were the highlights of the first ten minutes of the movie.  She frowned.  This was the main reason she didn't like most movies.  They were always so . . . sad . . . People tended to get caught up in the trappings of the life they thought they'd wanted, not ever realizing that it wasn't really what they wanted, at all.

'I won't be like that,' she told herself as the lawyer—Tom—entered a bar.  'I want to live and be happy . . . and I want the people around me to be happy, too . . .'

'That sounds rather idealistic.'

'Maybe, but not impossible.'

'Not impossible, if you remember what it is you want.'

'What I want, huh . . .'

'Uh oh, doll . . . What are you thinking?  I know that tone . . .'

'Hush, now.'  Gin cleared her throat.  "Cain?"

"Yes, Gin?"

"Thanks for letting me stay here."

He shrugged.  "It's fine.  It's my fault.  I missed the exterminator."

She wrinkled her nose.  "But he can't come again for another week . . . Are you sure it's not a problem?"

Cain finally smiled just a little.  "You're hardly a problem, Gin.  Now watch your movie, will you?"

"I am," she argued, guiltily glancing back at the television as she hoped Cain didn't notice that she hadn't actually been watching.  A sex scene.  A very graphic sex scene.  Gin gasped and pulled the pillow up to cover most of her face, though she was still peeking over the top.

Cain chuckled.  "Thought you said you wanted to watch this," he teased.

"I did—I do!  I guess I wasn't paying that much attention . . . Who's that girl?" Gin admitted then shook her head.  "Wow . . . She's . . . uh . . . She's really . . . flexible . . ."

He coughed and rubbed a hand over his eyes.  "I don't know . . . He picked her up in that bar . . . and I've seen better flexibility."

"Better than that?" Gin quipped, lowering the pillow as she glanced from the television to Cain and back again.  "She's all folded over, like a paperclip."

A vague blush stained his cheeks, and he refused to look at her.  "Yeah, well, Isabelle was a dancer."

"Oh . . ."

"Don't ask it," he countered before Gin could get her question out.

She made a face and threw the pillow at him before uncurling herself and standing up to rummage around for something to snack on.  "I wasn't going to ask a thing."

"You so were," he shot back.

"Yeah, you think you're so smart," Gin retorted as she retrieved a plastic container of rice crackers and dropped the lid on the counter before shuffling back to the sofa.  "What was I going to ask?"

"I am so smart," he informed her, "and you're entirely too predictable.  You were going to ask how flexible she was."

Gin held out the crackers.  Cain waved them away.  "So?"

"So, what?"

"So . . . How flexible was she?"

Cain rolled his eyes and didn't answer.

Gin concentrated on the rice crackers and tried not to look at the television too much.  Loathe to ask him to stop the movie since it was her idea and since she really had insisted on watching it, she stifled a groan and sighed inwardly.

'Maybe you should have rented one of those Disney movies.'

'Yeah,' Gin thought as she flattened her ears for a moment.  'Maybe I should have . . .'


'You know, Cain, in the realm of the stupidest ideas you've ever had, I'd have to say, this one ranks right up there.'

Cain shifted his gaze to the side as Gin stared, wide-eyed, at the television.  She might have seen sex portrayed in 'R' rated movies, but he could tell she'd never, ever seen anything quite like this.  Her expression was one of morbid curiosity, and he had to look away before he did something really, really bad . . . like laugh at her.

'She wanted to watch it,' he thought.  'I didn't make her.'

'No, but you didn't try too hard to stop her, did you?  You'd have a fit if Bellaniece were to try to watch this movie, and you know it.'

'Hell, yes, I would,' he agreed readily enough.  'That's different, though.  Bellaniece is my daughter.  Gin . . . isn't . . .'

"Uh . . ." Gin gasped as she pointed at the television.  "She's . . . oh, my . . ."

Cain blinked and focused his attention on the television.  The woman was kneeling on the floor in front of the man, and while the camera angle didn't show what she was doing, the implication was loud and clear.  "You okay?" he asked.

Gin shook her head as her hand dropped back into her lap.  "I had a couple of friends who said they did that with their boyfriends," she commented idly, as though she wasn't aware she was talking out loud.  "I . . . I don't get it.  It doesn't look like that great a thing . . ."

He chuckled at her dubious tone.  "You don't think so?"

Gin shrugged.  "Not really . . . It'd just be like sucking your thumb, but . . . not . . ."

Cain nearly choked.  "What?"

Suddenly realizing just what she was talking to him about, Gin slouched down and pulled the pillow up over her face a little.  "Nothing," she mumbled, cheeks reddening as she stubbornly stared at the television.

'Oh, my God . . .'

'Mine, too . . .' Cain agreed.

'Did she just say it was like—?'

'Yes, she did, and don't repeat it, thanks.'

"Cain, can I ask you something?"

He nearly groaned, half of him dreading what she was going to ask.  The other half way too curious to ignore.  "All right."

Gin sat up a little straighter as her cheeks pinked even more.

'Yeah, I'm not sure we should encourage her questions . . .'

'Shut up, you.'

Cain's youkai sighed.

"Has that—Have you—Did you ever—?"

"Have I done that?" he asked.

Gin grimaced but nodded.

He sighed, too.  "Well . . . uh . . . sure.  Yeah."

"You have?"

Scratching the back of his neck as he willed himself not to blush, Cain took a deep breath.  "Gin, I was married, remember?"

Gin thought that over and slowly shook her head as her expression shifted from confusion to something more akin to disbelief.  "I don't think my parents do . . . that . . . and they're married."

Cain snorted.  "Then I feel sorry for them."

"Cain!"

'Oh, hell . . . I just said that out loud, didn't I?'

'Pfft!  Yeah.  Yeah, you did.'

'. . . Crap.'

'Damn, Cain . . . you're on your own here.  Try not to make us sound like a big pervert, okay?'

He sat up straighter and turned toward Gin, bending his knee and holding up his hands as he tried to figure out how best to explain things to her without leaving her with the impression that he was, well . . . a dog.  "When people get married . . . certain things, like that—" he said, waving a hand at the television.  "It's not bad."

Gin nodded slowly.  "Maybe not.  It still doesn't seem very . . . gratifying."

"I guess it depends.  Some women enjoy that sort of thing."

Gin's already dubious expression darkened even more.  "Did you like it when you had it done to you?"

Cain sighed.  "Gin—"

She shrugged.  "I don't have anyone else I can talk to about this," she told him.  "I can't ask my parents, and my brothers?  They'd kill me.  Most of my friends are away at college or busy . . . I learned all this stuff in school, but . . ." she trailed off, shaking her head slowly as she nibbled a rice cracker.  "I always just thought it was kind of . . . weird; like something girls just did because their boyfriends wanted them to."

He relented.  She wasn't trying to make him uncomfortable, and he knew it.  She was curious, and she was right.  He didn't have to know her family any better than he already did to know that she was right.  "Guys like it," he admitted slowly, "but no guy worth his salt would expect a girl to do anything that she wasn't comfortable with.  Sex isn't supposed to be an ugly thing."

"No," she agreed quietly, deep in contemplation as she stared at her hands.  "I guess I just never really thought about it that way.  Maybe I never really thought about it at all."  She peeked at the television again, ears twitching as she tilted her head to the side.  "And that?" she asked, nodding at the screen.

Cain glanced over and shook his head.  The couple had reversed positions.  "That?" he echoed.

He could feel Gin's gaze without looking at her.  "Have you done that?"

"I . . . Yes."

"And you liked that, too?"

Cain sighed.  He was doing that a lot with her . . . "Yes."

Gin giggled.  "My girlfriends never really talked about that."

"I don't suppose they did," he remarked ruefully.

"It looks . . . kind of . . . nice," Gin ventured.

'Oh, God . . .' he thought with an inward wince.  "Uh, yeah . . ."

"This movie isn't so bad," she went on.  "Not as bad as some of the movies I found once in Ryo-nii's room . . ."

"Do I want to know?"

She giggled and tossed a cracker at him.  He caught it in his mouth without thinking.  'Why'd I do that?' he wondered as he crunched the cracker.  Gin giggled more.

"His movies were really bad, I think.  The women on the cover looked like they were doing that," she remarked, waving a hand at the television.

Cain made a face.  "Oh . . . uh . . . those movies . . ."

Gin snorted.  "The covers were enough for me.  He lectured me for an hour about not watching such things, even though he did . . . My brother is a baka!"

"He's got a point," Cain agreed, "those movies aren't very . . . nice."

She shook her head.  "Well, of course not!  They're nothing but graphic sex filmed by perverts who exploit graphic sex just because they can."

Momentarily shocked by Gin's harsh but accurate assessment, Cain didn't comment right away.  She surprised him all the time, didn't she?  One minute she was shy and sweet—the Gin he knew best—and the next . . . The next she was spouting something that sounded almost cynical, especially coming from her.  "Those movies aren't great examples of what sex should be," he told her.

She smiled.  "I didn't really think so."  Her gaze slipped to the side, and she stared at the screen with a thoughtful frown.  "Why do people do that?"

Cain shook his head.  "I don't know . . . Guys . . . think differently.  We're simpler that way."

"No, not that," she remarked, waving her hand to stop him from continuing.  "The tongue, and the kissing . . . I mean, I get the kissing, but the tongue? Eh . . ."

He chuckled.  "It's not so bad."

The look she cast him bespoke her doubt on that score.

Cain's chuckle escalated.  "No, it's really not."

"I'll take your word on that."

"Wait . . . Gin . . . The other night, when I . . . when I kissed you?  Was that your first kiss?"

Her cheeks blossomed in color, and she cleared her throat, gnawing on her bottom lip as she refused to meet his questioning stare.  "Well, it's kind of hard to kiss someone when you're not allowed to go on a date," she grumbled, her tone halfway between apologetic and embarrassed.

Deliberately trying not to think about why he was so pleased that he'd been the first—and thus far only—man to kiss Gin, Cain forced a smile.  His stomach was tied in knots; his breathing was stilted, harsh.  He swallowed hard and shook his head.  "That's why you didn't kiss me back?"

"You surprised me," she insisted.  "I wasn't expecting you to . . . I just thought maybe I was bad at it, you know?  The kissing . . ."

"It wasn't so terrible."

Her laugh was sad.  "I'll be twenty-five years old next week," she admitted.  "A few of my friends are married.  One has two children, and I just got my first kiss."  She twisted a lock of hair around her finger.  "I know; it's sad."

"No, it's not sad, at all."

"Hopefully I'll react better, the next time someone tries to kiss me."

Cain snatched her pillow away and slowly shook his head.  "Your reaction was fine, Gin, and you're missing the end of your movie."

She grabbed at the pillow.  He yanked it away.  Gin wrinkled her nose and crawled over to settle herself against Cain's side, snuggling close to him as she sighed happily, her head resting on his shoulder.  "You're nicer than the pillow, anyway."

He swallowed hard, tamping down the regret that ate away at him.  In another time or in another place, he could see himself falling in love with her.  Her sweetness, her innocence . . . her smile . . . If only . . .