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And You, My Brother	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 15027 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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Chapter XI: Is the day so young?
"Wake up." Sesshomaru's voice slipped into his dreams.
"Hmm?" Inuyasha mumbled and opened his eyes to see daylight, and to find that he was still resting against his brother's back. "Are we back at the village?" he asked sleepily, lifting his head and hoping that he hadn't drooled into Sesshomaru's fur.
"No. Let's stop here first. I had planned for the possibility of being away for three days, in case things did not go well with the kuma oni. We settled that last night, so we can spend a bit of time here. At least it will give the houshi and miko space to research the spells they could use on the apparition without our interference."
Inuyasha looked around and saw that the "here" Sesshomaru referred to was the spot by the spring pool he had taken him to on the night of the new moon.
"You like this place, don't you?" he asked, as the mokomoko uncurled from his body, and Sesshomaru dismounted from Ah-Un.
"It gives me the peace and quiet I regularly require. Naturally, I never bring Jaken here."
Inuyasha chortled. He jumped from Ah-Un's back and followed Sesshomaru to the shade of the trees, where his brother seated himself on the same rock he had sat on to watch over Inuyasha in his human state.
"Let me see where the bear got you," he said, standing before him, as Ah-Un ambled over to the pool and took a deep, long drink.
"It's healing well."
"Show me, anyway."
Sesshomaru unfastened his armour and shrugged his left shoulder out of its layers of clothing to expose five deep puncture wounds in the pale flesh of his finely muscled upper arm. The flesh was closing up, and the powers of his body had pushed out the oni poison, but Inuyasha could see how far in the claws must have sunk for the marks to still be visible in the morning, after an entire night.
"Don't do that again," he said. "I meant it when I told you I don't want to be your weakness in battle. If you get distracted by me once more, I'll kill you myself."
"A pointless act, if your original intention was to prevent harm to me," Sesshomaru said dryly.
"You know what I mean," Inuyasha grumbled.
"Strangely, I do. Now I must wash these bear smells off my clothing."
"What's the point? It's youkai silk. Doesn't it get itself clean after a bit?"
"Yes, but I have to put up with the smell until then, and I prefer not to."
Inuyasha sniffed him. "Most of the bear stench is on your haori and fur. Give them to me. I'll wash them. You can detach your fur, can't you? I've never figured out how that whole giant dog transformation business goes without you ripping your kimono to shreds or dropping your mokomoko thingy, but hey, if it works for you, I'm not going to scratch my head over it too much."
"I can remove it, but I'm not having you drag it all over the ground between here and the pool. I'll do it myself."
"I'm going into the pool anyway. There's bear all over my fire rat robe, and if you can't stand the smell on yourself, you're not going to stand it on me either, so I'm getting clean. If you won't part with your precious fur, at least give me your haori. Come on, off with it."
The curious experience of being nagged by an Inuyasha who was cheerfully giving orders seemed to amuse Sesshomaru, who acquiesced, removing his upper outer garment with its red-dyed and embroidered shoulder and sleeves, and handing it to his brother.
"This dye won't wash off, will it?" Inuyasha asked.
"No. My clothes have been soaked before, obviously. The colour doesn't run."
"Good. I don't want to get beaten up for ruining your gorgeous wardrobe," Inuyasha said, as he headed for the pool. At the water's edge, he stopped to untie the Tetsusaiga and set it down on dry ground, saying over his shoulder at the same time: "By the way, if you're hoping I'll get naked again, you'll be disappointed. I'm going in fully dressed this time."
"I'm devastated," Sesshomaru said sarcastically.
As Inuyasha waded into the pool, he observed that the water flowed down from a hot spring in the rocks to his right to fill the large depression that formed the pool, then overflowed at the lowest point of the other end to create a stream that disappeared down a slope and through the forest to wherever it went. The light current and warmth worked the bear scents out of his robe and Sesshomaru's haori, and he ducked his head under too to wet his hair, though he had to shake the water out of his ears after that.
When the clothes smelt cleaner, he jumped out and hung the haori over a branch to let it drip dry in the warm morning air. He then walked back over to Sesshomaru and began removing his own suikan and its white underlayers.
"I thought you said you were remaining fully dressed this time," the taiyoukai remarked, raising an eyebrow by a fraction of a millimetre.
"Oh, I'll be putting these back on, don't worry," Inuyasha said breezily, as he stepped around the rock, stood behind Sesshomaru and started sponging down his hair and fur with his undershirt. "This should get some of the smells off, and I just have to wash the undershirt again after that. No point in both of us getting soaked, right?" He also took the liberty of slipping the layers of silk off his brother's left arm to see to the fast-healing skin over the wounds.
Sesshomaru took this unusual grooming service in his stride, but noted that the undershirt was the same one whose sleeve he had ripped off sixteen days ago. "Don't you have other hadajuban?" he asked.
"Nope. Not exactly drowning in spare clothing."
He took another sniff at Sesshomaru, found the bear odours satisfactorily reduced, and dipped into the pool once more to rinse his undershirt, then tossed that over a branch as well.
"I'm hungry," he announced as he pulled his sopping wet suikan over his body, but did not bother to tuck it back into his hakama, so that when he secured his Tetsusaiga to his hakama sash again, the hilt disappeared under the half-open suikan. "I smell rabbits. I'm going to catch a couple – and hunting them will help me dry off. Want any?"
"I don't need to eat right now."
"I don't think I've ever seen you eat at all. You do eat, of course?"
"Yes, but I don't like rabbit."
"Myoga tells me our old man had a fondness for cows. That true?"
"He did consume a lot of cattle."
"So I suppose that's more to your taste. Raw, presumably?"
"Mostly." Sesshomaru still seemed amused by this chatty, slightly hyperactive take-charge style of Inuyasha's, and was going along with it.
"Well, it's rabbit or nothing today – I think your frequenting this place has scared off anything bigger and smarter than that within hunting distance. I'm off."
He leaped into the trees and was gone from sight in a trice, although Sesshomaru could still hear, smell and sense exactly where he was in the forest nearby, as he stalked and swooped down on bunnies that had strayed a mite too far from their burrows. He could also hear where Ah-Un had wandered off to, out of view but well within summoning distance, as the dragon moseyed along a trail, munching on leaves.
Before too long, Inuyasha was back, two freshly killed rabbits swinging by their ears from his right hand, and his fire rat top still hanging loose. Under the noon sun, on a stony patch of ground, he worked to start a small fire using dried leaves and twigs for tinder, sharp-edged stones to generate heat and a spark, and a small log to catch the flames. While waiting for the fire to grow, he skinned and gutted his prey with his claws.
When the fire looked decent enough, he skewered one rabbit on a branch and held it over the flames until it was cooked enough not to be too bloody. That done, he stepped away from the fire, went over to where Sesshomaru sat, and held out both the cooked and raw rabbits to him.
"Go on, have one. Even if you don't need to eat and don't like this stuff, it's probably good to get something down in case your next meal is a longer time in coming than expected."
"Something you know a lot about?" Sesshomaru asked, accepting the raw rabbit.
"Not for these many years, no," he replied, sitting on the ground in front of him and tearing a strip of meat off the bones with his fangs. "But it was sometimes hard catching my food when I was a lot younger and smaller, after Mama died and I was completely alone. I always managed, though. Obviously. Wouldn't be here otherwise."
It hung in the air between them as he chewed on half-cooked rabbit that he would never have gone hungry if his big brother had taken him under his wing, but Inuyasha thought they had said what needed to be said on that score thirteen days ago, so he changed the subject: "We don't make a very good team, do we? We were too easily separated last night."
"We are unaccustomed to working together," Sesshomaru said sensibly, before he sank his fangs into the raw rabbit. For such a predator, he dug in almost delicately, tearing off the meaty bits neatly and somehow managing not to drip blood over himself and his clothes.
They ate quietly for a few more minutes, and when they finished and tossed the bones onto the log that still burned several feet away, Inuyasha licked the stains off his fingers and commented: "We're supposed to be dogs, but the way we teamed up against those kuma, we might as well be cats. I'm too used to fighting alone, even when I have my friends around me, and you're worse."
Sesshomaru accepted the truth of that in silence, and they sat there facing each other, not speaking for a while, he from his rock and Inuyasha from the ground. Then Sesshomaru said: "I was proud to have you by my side last night."
Those words instantly brought a lump to Inuyasha's throat, but hell, no, he wasn't going to dissolve into tears again, so he swallowed hard but said lightly: "Well, you didn't embarrass me too much yourself."
His casual words were a poor screen for his deeper, instinctive response, and Sesshomaru saw right through them. "It means that much to you?" he asked seriously. "That I am proud of you, and acknowledge you as my brother?"
"You know it does," Inuyasha said. "Look, unless the idea of me bawling into your sleeve again turns you on, let's stop talking about this. Maybe I should just go off and stand behind that tree before I embarrass myself any further."
He stood up and turned to go, but Sesshomaru suddenly had a vise-like grip on the back hem of his suikan, preventing him from moving another step away. "You don't have to hide in a corner for that," the taiyoukai said.
"I'm starting to think you get a kick out of seeing me all weepy. I swear you're nearly as bad as Jakotsu."
"If you're referring to that undead psychopath who had the temerity to tell me I was not his type, I will have to take that as an insult."
"No shit – he said that to you?" Inuyasha asked in amusement, turning to face Sesshomaru.
The taiyoukai rose to his feet as he released his hold on the hem of the fire rat suikan, only to transfer his grip to his companion's left arm. "He did. But obviously, you were much more his type. And I can see why," Sesshomaru said with an intensity that brought a small growl into his voice. Smearing rabbit blood into the hanyou's hair and clothing, he pulled him to himself so that Inuyasha's head came to rest on his left shoulder.
Inuyasha no longer felt inclined to dissolve into tears. Another conflict reared up within him as he realised they were crossing a line now. The flirting, infatuation and innuendo that had gone on for days were pushing them beyond the borders of the unfamiliar emotional territory he had been exploring to discover how close he could get to the only family he had left in this world, while trying to figure out exactly what it was he wanted, and if his undefined desires were the same as Sesshomaru's.
His brother's left hand was working into his hair, his right clutching the small of his back under his clothes, his breath warming his left ear, then in the next moment those bloodless lips were on his neck, fangs brushing the skin there, and suddenly, it was all too real for him – unnervingly so – although he thought that he would rather cut off his own arm than refuse the taiyoukai who held him now.
But Sesshomaru himself seemed to realise at the same time Inuyasha froze that he had gone further than they were both ready for. He stopped, relinquished his hold on him and drew back quickly, saying: "I'm sorry – I said only two days ago that we would work out what we were doing as we went along, but I've gone ten paces too far. You're just looking for the brother you never had before, and I'm making it up to you in all the wrong ways."
Inuyasha had lost too many people he loved not to feel his soul rattled by what seemed like another separation, another threat of impending loss, and he blurted out: "No – I was just taken by surprise, that's all, though I shouldn't have been – you haven't gone too far."
Staring into the burning golden eyes of a hue identical to his own, Inuyasha lifted his face to Sesshomaru's and kissed him on the mouth, then closed his eyes and slipped his hands round to the nape of his neck. But Sesshomaru gently eased him back, and shaking his head, said: "No, Inuyasha. That's not what I want from you. You're not a slave who has to cater to my whims. I said I wanted you to be strong and independent, and I meant that. You needn't pander to me for fear of losing the only brother you have. You won't lose me. I am still your brother, and I am still very proud of you, and I will protect you. But I won't ask you for more."
"You could ask me for more. I could –"
"You could do what you think I want you to? You would try so hard to hold on to the only family you have that you would be willing to become anything for me, even if all you really want from me is to be your brother?"
Inuyasha could not reply.
Sesshomaru continued: "For pity's sake – if I merely wanted to possess you, do you imagine that I couldn't just push your face into the dirt and take you right here and now? Keep you weak and dependent on me just for my gratification? That is not what I want. You mean much more to me than that."
The look in Sesshomaru's eyes startled him. And he understood, once again, what it meant to be loved just for who and what he was – he recognised the look, because he had seen it in his mother's eyes, in Kagome's eyes, only here, it was fiercer, less gentle, and utterly uncompromising.
"Enough of this. Come here – let me hold you the way you would expect a brother to," Sesshomaru ordered, reaching for him and embracing him as Inuyasha had always imagined he should, except that now, he felt something was missing.
Then he released him and said: "It's time we got going. Put out that fire and get our clothes, if you don't mind. I'll get Ah-Un."
Inuyasha wanted to say something, anything, but he couldn't produce a single word that seemed appropriate, and Sesshomaru was striding into the forest after the dragon, so he turned to the fire and put it out with some earth and a few well-placed kicks, went to the pool and scooped some water up in his hands to splash over the log as a precaution, retrieved his brother's armour from the ground, and the haori and his own undershirt too, from the branches they hung from.
Sesshomaru reappeared, leading Ah-Un, and took his haori and armour from his brother. The haori was still damp, but he put it on anyway, as the flight and the heat of the afternoon sun would dry it off quickly. From Ah-Un's left saddlebag, he extracted something white – two neatly folded pieces of fabric, which he handed to Inuyasha.
"New undershirts for you. Please get rid of that ripped-up one – here, give it to me," he said, taking the torn old hadajuban away from him.
"Thank you," Inuyasha murmured, staring at the clothing in his hands and not knowing what else to say.
"Go on, put one on now."
So he removed his suikan and pulled on one of the undershirts, cut from a finer cloth than any he remembered wearing before. Over that he donned the nagajuban and his suikan, both of which were still damp. He secured all the ties, and tucked everything neatly into his hakama. He carefully slipped the other undershirt inside his clothes, right next to his skin, so that it wouldn't fall out.
Sesshomaru himself had been rearranging his outfit, complete with armour, into its usual ordered appearance. He looked Inuyasha up and down – but briskly this time, shorn of all the previous penetrating interest his once-over of two days ago had held, and stated: "Good. I don't want to return you to the village looking dishevelled – your friends would think I'd been beating you up."
They mounted Ah-Un, and Inuyasha no longer knew where to place his hands. He put them on Sesshomaru's shoulders half-heartedly, holding his breath, although what he really longed to do was to throw his arms around him again. But could he?
Sesshomaru seemed to read his mind, for he turned his head and said: "Inuyasha, you can hold me any way you like – I won't read all the wrong messages into it."
Inuyasha exhaled and slipped his arms round Sesshomaru's waist in relief, pressing his face into the fur as he had before, and hoping that with the wind roaring past them as the dragon flew, that Sesshomaru wouldn't be able to tell he was crying again.
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And You, My Brother