InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bound For Tomorrow: Sesshomaru and Rin ❯ Reaching Out ( Chapter 6 )

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

“It was a gift, from your Haha-ue.”
His reply is so simple, and for any other couple it would be nothing to get excited over, but for Rin, this level of acceptance is completely unexpected and she isn't sure she will be able to contain her tears much longer…
He'd told his mother… and she… accepted it?!
“Your mother gave me that as a gift?” the girl's disbelief is obvious.
“No.” his reply caught her off guard… she makes to question him but before it can leave her lips, he continues, bringing himself from his knees to standing once more.
“She gave me the shard as a gift… the gift of you.” He reaches out and placed his hand on her shoulder, and gives it a small squeeze, before sliding the backs of his claws up to the back of her neck, squeezing there as well, and using his leverage on her to pull her close and tuck her into his chest, then bringing his own head forward, and letting his nose graze her hair, taking in her scent and feeling his chest clench, before forcing himself to continue,
“The gifts she commissioned for you are packed in the crates you see attached to ah-un's sides, there are many, and you will have a chance to survey them when we reach my brother's hut.”
With nothing to say that is adequate for the situation, she simply bows her head, tucking herself closer to his body, and allows her sleeve to come up and hide her giddy smile. This is… real. He told his mother, and, that somehow makes it… official… in her simple village girl's mind.
She looks up when she sees his black boot clad feet move slightly away from her, and feels him release her from his half-embrace. Then, in a gesture ripe with meaning, he extends a hand towards her, intent on making his way towards the village, and his brother's hut, where Rin has been staying for nearly a moon now, since being evicted by the local human lord's samurais, only two days after Kaede passed away.
Luckily, it was expected, and all of her precious silk kimonos, her bone combs, her silver mirror, and the other expensive trinkets he has brought to her over the years had already been packed away in the large wooded box, with the ornate designs on it, that Sesshomaru had gifted her with when he realized she was running out of places to store his other gifts, and had already been moved, so they could not demand any of her things as payment for the last year's tributelessness… truly, she will admit, but he would deny, he has spoiled her over the years.
She still has it. The first material thing he ever gave her… the checkered silk kimono she wore when she traveled with him. She had never felt silk before, and, at the time, she was still mute… but he must have figured it out when she brushed her hand against his sleeve that first day and stopped to stare in wonder. She didn't know to be afraid of him, or not to touch him, so she had reached out again, and run fingers over the material slowly, with a look of awe on her face.
The next morning she had woken to find the new child's size silk kimono laying in front of her, and her new guardian staring off into space, perfectly content to pretend it had shown up there by magic.
She spoke her first word in 2 years then… her voice, raspy with disuse had managed to choke out an `arigato' before coughing from the unfamiliar strain in her throat.
He had said nothing at first, then he had informed her that she stank of blood, wolves and death, and her `human stench' was disgusting him.
He'd taken her to the nearby river, and commanded her to bathe. He watched over her while she did so, and when she was dressed, he'd handed her something from his sleeve. It was a bundle of stuffed rice balls.
“I won't make a habit of this; you'll have to find your own food.”
But…
Whenever she'd been unable to find food, he'd do the same thing, and repeat his command, even if he'd given her food several days in a row, he'd still claim that he'd not make it a `habit', and she'd `have to get her own food.'
She'd smiled at him, the whole day through, and it felt like, since that day, she'd never stopped smiling at him.
She took his hand and gave him a questioning look.
“We have a monk to find.”
If memory served him, the monk had been the one to perform the human ceremony for his brother and his miko. He was also fairly certain that this particular monk would be one of the only monks to be willing to `marry' a taiyoukai and a young ningen woman.
He was… nervous. Not about the ceremony itself, not about entering into a life with Rin, no… that was something he was looking forward to with no hesitation or reservations. It was the acts he would be expected to engage in the night directly following the wedding that had him so… uncomfortable. He had never been… intimate… with anyone before. He was…concerned…
He wanted, for the first time in his life, to please another being. He was unsure of how to go about it. He was unconcerned for his own pleasure. He rarely thought of such things, and even more rarely pleasured himself. He considered himself to be… above… such basal needs, but… with Rin…
He wouldn't lie to himself and he had to admit that the girl had a certain ability to… excite… him, with even the most innocent of gestures.
He was…not impatient…exactly… he was more… eager, yes, he concluded silently, eager was a good word for it.
He would also use the opportunity to place the meidou shard into Rin, implanting it in her body the same way that the shikon shard was placed in the boy.
However, he did not want it in her neck, but, in her chest, in the valley between her breasts, where, whenever he was fortunate enough to indulge himself in that particular part of her anatomy, he would see it there, reminding him of her now, permanence in his life.
Ah-un's reins in one hand, Rin's in the other, he realized two things; one, that he did not have a hand free to grab a sword, and two, he felt… complete, in some unnamable way. He had, for so long, had nothing but the swords at his hip to reach for, and now… now he had Rin's hand to reach for as well. He was reaching out, literally, and figuratively to the world beyond himself, beyond his own small circle of existence, beyond power and battle and fighting and death, blood and tears and the smell of fear.
For the first time in his life, there was something he wanted to hold, beyond the hilt of a sword.
Rin.