InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Big Trouble Comes in Small Packages ❯ Worse Before Better ( Chapter 16 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha yet, but I will soon when I and my army of old ladies using handbags for weapons take over the world! (And in return for their help, I'll let them have Miroku.)

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Big Trouble Comes in Small Packages

Chapter Sixteen

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'So, how would someone ask a girl to go on a date?' Inuyasha wondered to himself early on Saturday morning. He frowned at the wording of the question. 'Not that it's really a date or anything, just an outing for the runt! It wouldn't really be considered a date unless it was the two of us alone…right?'

It was the morning after Kagome had taken Rin to the theater, and Inuyasha was standing in front of the steamed-up bathroom mirror, leaning against the sink and staring at his wet reflection. As hard as he was staring at himself, he really wasn't seeing anything because he was so preoccupied with trying to decide his plan of attack. He was also trying to scrounge up the courage he would need to ask Kagome to join them for the day.

Sadly for him, he was failing miserably.

'Gah! The day hasn't even gotten started yet and I'm already regretting it!' He resisted the urge to bang his head against the porcelain edge of the sink and instead turned down to look into the drain as if it held all the answers to his problems. 'Why did I have to be so stupid? Why couldn't I have just asked her what was wrong last night?'

The room was quiet for a moment before he finally answered his own questions out loud.

"Because I'm a damn coward, that's why."

Inuyasha scowled at his reflection as if it were the cause of him actually admitting a weakness.

"Why am I so scared of one stupid girl, anyway?" He questioned himself, looking frustrated and annoyed. "It isn't like she's going to attack me the minute I have my back turned!"

'Maybe it would be better if she did.' A snide little voice in the back of his mind replied. 'Her hurting you physically would be a lot easier to handle than her hurting you emotionally.'

"Keh, she's turning me into some sap! Worrying about stuff like that…"

'Obviously, she has also driven you crazy.' The voice responded once again. 'Anyone normal wouldn't talk to the voices in their head like this.'

Inuyasha cringed, realizing how stupid he must look.

Deciding from that point on to just keep his mouth shut, Inuyasha resumed staring at his blurry image in the mirror like he had been doing before he'd gotten into an argument with himself. This time, though, the expression on his face was much more critical than before.

'Was she really frightened of the way I looked last night? The ears, the claws, the fangs…I guess they probably are kind of scary to a human, but my mother wasn't ever bothered by them. I'd just supposed that Kagome wasn't, either…why do I keep comparing the two of them, anyway?'

A timid knock suddenly sounded on the bathroom door, interrupting his train of thought.

"Uncle Inu, are you still in there? Did you drown?" There was a small amount of worry in Rin's voice, and Inuyasha couldn't help but smirk at her question, his introspective mood gone just as suddenly as it had appeared and replaced with his usual one. Would she believe him if he answered yes?

Instead of playing with her mind like he wanted to do, he decided to be nice for once - well, as nice as Inuyasha could ever get.

"Of COURSE I didn't drown! What do you think I am, some pathetic human?"

Rin's sigh of relief was loud enough for him to hear over the sounds of morning cartoons playing in the background. "That's good, cause Rin's gotta go to the bathroom really, really bad, Uncle Inu!"

And here he thought that she had actually been worried about him. Figures…

Grumbling to himself about the unfairness of having to share HIS bathroom, Inuyasha opened the door and walked out, wearing nothing but a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist. He barely made it out before Rin shot past him and slammed the door, missing hitting him by barely an inch. Inuyasha didn't notice the close call, though.

Instead, he stared in shock at the couch while the occupant of it stared back, blushing madly.

"K-Kagome?" He stuttered, self-consciously tightening his fist around the edge of the towel as if he thought it might fall at any second. "What are you doing here?" He winced, realizing how blunt he'd sounded.

The girl sitting on the couch snapped out of her shocked stare at the question and laughed nervously. "I-I knew it was probably a bad idea to drop by so early, but I wanted to apologize for last night…" She trailed off, unable to stop herself from becoming distracted by the sight before her.

Embarrassed as he was, Inuyasha enjoyed her reaction immensely.

"Should I get dressed first?" Inuyasha finally offered, smirking. The smirk just got worse when Kagome was only able to nod before swallowing thickly and turning to stare down at the floor instead of him.

For Inuyasha, the day wasn't looking nearly so bad as it had a few moments before.

When he finally took pity on his guest and went into his bedroom to put on some clothes, Kagome groaned and buried her head in her arms. 'Oh, why in the world couldn't I have just used the phone instead? I am such an idiot sometimes!'

There was silence in the small apartment while Inuyasha dressed and Kagome continued to regret her stupidity, but that was soon broken by the muffled sound of the toilet flushing and small feet padding across the tiled floor. The still flustered girl looked up just in time to see the door burst open.

"Aunt Kagome!" Rin shouted, dashing out of the little bathroom and barreling into Kagome so hard that she almost fell off the couch. "Rin is so excited! Guess where Uncle Inu promised to take Rin today!"

The older girl pushed Rin off of her just enough to be able to breathe before looking at the little girl curiously. She looked as if she was going to burst with excitement at any moment, and Kagome had to try hard not to laugh.

"Well, are you going to guess?" Rin prodded her after not receiving an answer within an acceptable amount of time.

Smiling with amusement, Kagome put on an expression of mock deep thought as if she were giving the question serious consideration.

"Do you know yet?" Rin asked yet again.

Kagome sighed, doing her best to look stumped. "I have no idea."

"We are gonna go to the zoo!" Rin shouted happily.

Kagome blinked, not sure that she was hearing things correctly. "The zoo? Your Uncle Inu is taking you to the ZOO?" It was all she could do not to ask Rin what kind of horrible thing he'd done that he had to make up for.

Rin nodded. "Uncle Inu said he would rather go somewhere else because the zoo is smelly, but then he said that we couldn't go anywhere else because the only place people are allowed to take a monkey is to the zoo. Rin doesn't understand what he meant, but Rin doesn't care because Rin gets to go to the zoo!" She barely stopped to take a breath during her rambling because she was so excited. "And best of all, he even said that he was gonna invite you, too, so you get to come with us if you want! Do you? Huh?"

The older girl nearly laughed as Rin's expression turned from happy to anxious in a split second. She obviously wanted Kagome to go with them very badly.

"I'm not sure, Rin. I think I have to talk to your Uncle Inu first."

"Talk to me about what?" The bedroom door suddenly opened and a fully dressed Inuyasha stepped out. Seeing him caused Kagome's face to redden all over again, much to Inuyasha's amusement.

Kagome glanced at Rin. "Well…"

Inuyasha got the hint. "Hey, runt, go brush your teeth or something." He motioned towards the bathroom with one clawed hand.

"But Uncle Inu, Rin already-"

"I SAID brush your teeth!" After this was said, Rin hastily ran to comply, frightened that if she got him angry it might ruin her chances of getting to go to the zoo for the first time in her life. Such a reward made brushing her teeth twice in the same morning more than worth the suffering.

Once Rin was gone, Kagome smiled in amusement. "You know, you almost sounded like a father for a moment there!"

The slightly grumpy hanyou only grunted in response before leaning against the wall closest to the bathroom door, just so he could listen to Rin splashing in the sink. That way he would know if she were safely distracted.

"Inuyasha," Kagome began hesitantly. "I really am sorry about the way I acted last night. I know it was rude-"

"Why WERE you acting that way?" He interrupted her, wanting to get to what he felt was the important part. Now that she was in front of him, he didn't feel half as worried as he had before and was back to his usual confidence. The fact that she'd shown up on her own to apologize didn't hurt either.

To Inuyasha, it was proof that her being scared of him wasn't the problem.

Kagome glared at him for his rudeness. "If you didn't notice, I was in the middle of apologizing to you! Don't make it any harder for me than it already is, okay?"

"So you're sorry, apology accepted." His gruff voice made no pretense about that not being important in his mind. "Now what I wanna know is why you were acting like you didn't want to have anything to do with me last night!"

His eyes met hers, and she flinched when she noticed the hurt he was obviously feeling over her actions the night before. He was doing a very poor job hiding it, though he was trying hard.

'How am I going to manage to explain this one?' Kagome wondered nervously. 'There's no way that I'm telling him the truth! What would he think if he knew I'd gotten so flustered over something so silly? Well, not really silly…I'm sure he wouldn't have reacted much better if he were told by someone that I - I mean, a girl - loved him.'

Inuyasha watched her face with a suspicious expression. "Well?"

"It was nothing at all. Rin and I had just been talking a few moments before about something and it upset me, that's all." Kagome crossed her arms and refused to look at him, a sure sign that she wasn't telling the truth, or at least the whole truth.

Inuyasha regarded her critically. "Why do I get the feeling you aren't telling me everything?"

"I don't know." She still stubbornly kept her gaze locked on the TV.

"Liar."

Kagome's eyes widened, and she whipped around to glare at him furiously. "How dare you call me a liar? And even if I am lying, it's not really any of your business anyway!"

"Ha! So you WERE lying!" Inuyasha pointed a finger at her triumphantly, while Kagome looked like she really wanted to slap herself. "And the hell it isn't my business since it was me you seemed so upset with! What did Rin tell you anyway?" He searched her averted face carefully for any clues to the missing information.

Kagome, predictably, wouldn't look at him again.

Inuyasha's face paled as he considered all the possibilities and latched onto one that would certainly cause Kagome to be upset with him. "Oi, she didn't tell you about that time I shaved my mother's cat bald, did she?" He growled. "For such a small kid, she sure has a big mouth!"

"You shaved a cat BALD?" Kagome cried in horror, once again staring at him. Not exactly the smartest thing to tell a cat lover.

Inuyasha cringed. 'Okay, maybe that wasn't what she and the runt were talking about. Better get the subject back on track quick before she finds out any more horrible things about me that I don't want her to know.'

"That's not important." He stated roughly, a slight blush staining his cheeks. "So, what were you and the brat talking about last night?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, right!"

"Like I said, we didn't talk about anything you need to know!"

"I told you to quit lying!"

"And I told you that it isn't any of your business!"

The two bickered back and forth for several moments, neither Inuyasha nor Kagome gaining or losing any ground. Fights like that get old fast, though, and Kagome was the first to get sick of the repetitive arguments.

"Gah, that's it!" She finally shouted at him. "If you really want to know, she was commenting on our 'relationship'! There, happy?"

Inuyasha blinked. "What do you mean, 'relationship'?"

"The one that isn't there, obviously! So now you see why I was so embarrassed over the whole thing." Kagome glared at him, seething angrily. "And now because of you being so stubborn, I had to tell you and get even more embarrassed when I was only trying to be nice and apologize to you for being so rude!"

In the face of Kagome's anger, Inuyasha could feel his own hair-trigger temper starting to rise up again as well. "Well what was I supposed to think with you acting like that? And I don't like being lied to by anyone! Especially-" He suddenly cut off and turned away, not wanting to finish what he was about to say.

In his mind though, he did continue it. 'Especially you! Are you really that disgusted by the thought of anyone thinking we might actually have a relationship?'

Kagome knew she was wrong for losing her temper like she had, but she was also too stubborn to take back what was said, just as Inuyasha was too stubborn to let on how much she'd really upset him.

The living room was oddly silent when Rin opened the bathroom door and peered hesitantly out. She couldn't have missed the angry voices on the other side of the door, and was obviously upset.

Upon seeing the pale little girl, Kagome's anger instantly deflated. "Rin?"

Inuyasha ignored the guilty twinge he felt at the sound of Rin's name being spoken out loud by Kagome. He'd nearly forgotten about her in the heat of the fight, and felt bad for yelling where she could hear him. He might act like a jerk most of the time, but he'd never really had any intentions of causing her to fear him.

"Rin, come here." Kagome motioned to the little girl, ignoring Inuyasha as he shifted uneasily by the bathroom door, still leaning on the wall next to it.

Rin complied. "Is everything okay?" She questioned anxiously.

Kagome nodded, managing a small smile along with a hug for Rin. "Everything's okay, Rin. I'm sorry if we scared you with all the yelling. Adults are just stupid sometimes."

"I don't care about that." Rin glanced from Kagome to Inuyasha and back. "But Rin doesn't like it that you and Uncle Inu are upset with each other. Are you not gonna want to come to the zoo with us today?"

Kagome finally looked Inuyasha in the face, knowing the best thing they could do at the moment would be to set aside their differences and try to make Rin feel better. Inuyasha met her gaze, and an unspoken understanding passed between the two.

"I'll still go, if your Uncle Inu doesn't mind."

Inuyasha shifted again. "You can come if you want."

The exchange was awkward, but the heat of their previous anger had long since been extinguished, leaving each of them feeling unsure about where they stood with the other.

Rin could still tell that there was something wrong, but the fact that they weren't yelling at each other anymore was a good sign in her mind. She smiled and took Kagome's hand, pulling her off the couch. "Let's go, then! Rin really wants to see all the cute animals!"

When the pair passed Inuyasha, Rin took his hand as well and lead them both towards the front door of the apartment. Kagome glanced anxiously at him, trying to gauge his reaction to Rin's small gesture.

When he didn't pull his hand away, Kagome smiled slightly.

Perhaps things would work out. The day was still young, after all…

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Whew, this chapter was a nightmare to edit! I just wasn't completely happy no matter what I did. But I think I finally got it about how I want it. I hope you'll all be kind and let me know what you think of this chapter! ^_^