Adult-FanFiction.org : Inuyasha / Yashahime

The Tale of the Demon Lord	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 56279 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
XXVIII: Indecent Proposals
Although the sight of Naraku made Inuyasha seethe when they met again in the late afternoon, the prince remembered Natsumi's advice and followed Sesshomaru's lead. As he observed his brother, his admiration for him grew. Sesshomaru had ways of putting Naraku down without resorting to outright insults, and knew how to keep him from getting the reactions he desired without appearing to deliberately thwart him.
Inuyasha quickly became bored with the formal discussions that were on the table for that day. Naraku, Sesshomaru and the ministers were clearly going over old ground covered a dozen times before, judging from the fact that they seemed to Inuyasha to be starting in the middle of an exchange whose opening he had not been party to.
They touched on dull details concerning Naraku's borders creeping deeper into the neutral zone (which the spider lord denied), Sesshomaru's dragon-mounted guards crossing neutral airspace (which the dog-demon king said was occasionally necessary when the bandit attacks got out of hand), the welfare of spider demons residing in the Western kingdom (good, apparently), and a host of trading issues that almost put Inuyasha to sleep with their endless talk about imports, exports, deficits and surpluses.
The prince stayed awake only because Hakudoshi, Naraku's second child, stared intently at him out of mocking purple eyes; and Byakuya, the youngest, kept smiling at him in a manner that looked so genuinely friendly and yet knowing, that it was rather disturbing.
Inuyasha's ears pricked up only when he caught some none-too-subtle statements by Naraku expressing a hope that he could form an alliance with Sesshomaru through a mating union between the dog-demon lord and the spider demon's daughter, Kanna.
"She may look like a child, but I can assure you she is not," Naraku spoke of the demoness as if she were not present. "She has the full range of… capabilities that any mature demon possesses." Coming out of his mouth, the words sounded positively indecent.
Inuyasha glanced at the girl. She was seated on a chair, her little feet far off the floor, staring vacantly into a mirror she held in her lap. The mirror, he had gathered, was a weapon; but in a formal meeting with another state, the use of a weapon without extreme provocation was strictly forbidden. Inuyasha only hoped that the demon girl was even aware of such etiquette.
"You are far too generous to offer me your daughter as a mate," Sesshomaru said blandly. "The Lady Kanna can undoubtedly choose a mate far better suited to her preferences than myself. In my tribe, we have by and large chosen mates from within our own clan, so I regret to say that I cannot consider your offer."
"Oh, but your honoured sire himself chose a second mate who was not only from outside his family clan, but even from outside his own species, as the very existence of Lord Sesshomaru's beloved brother proves. Perhaps he was setting a good example for his son?" Naraku suggested.
"My father chose his human mate for love," Sesshomaru stated frankly. "There he set us all an excellent example. However, where mating unions are discussed like business deals and love has no place in the matter, then the old traditions of making matches within the clan are expected to hold true in my tribe."
"Most unfortunate," Naraku sighed dramatically. "Kanna would make you a highly devoted consort, and her tiny body can do things that less… petite ones could not do quite so effectively. It is a pity that I am no longer able to offer you my eldest daughter, Kagura, who I am sure would have been more to your taste, as she is with us no more. If I believed rumours, I might be led to think that I would have no need to offer her to you even if she were still with us, as some lie that you already have her! Quite absurd, the things some demons say."
"The words of some demons are certainly never to be trusted," Sesshomaru replied coolly.
"I would even venture to propose myself as a match for you," Naraku continued smoothly. "Except that we have explored that option before and found it… not viable – can I put it that way? I had previously hoped that the obstacles we faced before could be overcome, but when you state so plainly that you will either mate within your tribe, or for love, then I must conclude from such a declaration that you are unable to love me."
"You may put it in any way that pleases you," Sesshomaru answered.
"Ah, I see the prince staring at me in disbelief!" Naraku cried, his red eyes sliding over to Inuyasha. "Perhaps His Highness is too young to know that matings between male demons are not as unviable as he might think – there are always ways to create, through magic, children that share the blood of both their male parents, so that their bloodline can continue. Lord Sesshomaru presumably finds me unsuitable for other reasons. Do we have any alternatives here? I don't suppose Lord Sesshomaru would consider me as a potential mate, not for himself, but for his beloved brother? I understand that he is not fully of age yet, but he is completely physically mature, which means that he can take a mate, or be taken as one."
Sesshomaru's golden eyes glinted dangerously, but his voice was as calm as before when he gave his response: "I have decided for some time now that my brother should be free to choose his own mate, and not be offered to anyone as if he were an object to be bought and sold. And in my family, we strongly believe in creating our children through natural means and not through magic – although I understand that cultures and practices differ widely, and others may find acceptable what we do not."
"Such a pity," Naraku sighed again. "His Highness looks as if he would make an excellent consort to a lord or a king – but if your family believes only in natural offspring, then there is no hope that His Highness would ever have children with a male companion."
Inuyasha's eyebrows had first ascended almost to his hairline when Naraku brought up the notion of creating children artificially, then they had descended all the way down to hood his bright golden gaze when the spider lord proposed him as a mate. With words fired by anger but a stillness of body echoing Sesshomaru's calmness, Inuyasha shot back in a purposely naïve tone of voice: "Great pantheon of gods have mercy – are you seriously having that much trouble finding a female to spawn your sprogs?"
Minister Atsushi hid a smile, Minister Ryota held his breath, and Sesshomaru's expression did not change. Hakudoshi frowned, while Byakuya smiled on, and Kanna did not appear to have heard a word.
Naraku, utterly taken aback, stared at Inuyasha while smiling mechanically, until he finally summoned a short laugh and remarked: "The young prince clearly has little experience with political matings and other unions. Such naïvete. Is your Majesty really set on not allowing me the consolation of taking his brother into my household after having refused me in so many other ways? There is a great deal I could teach such an innocent child."
"Inuyasha, might you have any interest in becoming Lord Naraku's consort?" was Sesshomaru's ice-smooth question to his brother.
"No, my lord," Inuyasha replied, giving his brother a flawlessly demure bow of his head and neck from where he sat beside him. "I am honoured that any demon lord would find me of interest as a consort, but I am determined to choose a companion only for love."
"Then it is out of the question," Sesshomaru said, turning to Naraku with a forbidding look in his eyes.
"Pity," was the spider lord's simple response, accompanied by yet another exaggerated sigh.
They returned to other dull topics after that, and continued in that vein until the business of the day was over, and they were ready to move on to the pleasures of the evening feast.
Dinner itself was a fairly grand but uneventful affair, with the ministers and their highest-ranking staff keeping Naraku's three children and aides occupied and entertained, while Sesshomaru and Inuyasha conversed with Naraku about a wide range of matters that seemed superficial and yet ripe with underlying meaning.
Only when they moved from the dining hall to the event hall was there any trouble. The hall was decorated with tall plants and bold, translucent drapes, but laid out with low seats and cushions for comfort, so they could recline against them while watching entertainment provided by both Naraku's entourage and Sesshomaru's musicians. The plants and drapes sectioned up the hall into a number of nooks, conferring upon each space an air of privacy.
Sesshomaru, Inuyasha, Naraku and Minister Atsushi were in one niche, facing the musicians across the hall. Minister Ryota, Hakudoshi and Byakuya were in another nook. Kanna sought a different corner for herself and her two female attendants. Naraku's other aides and attendants found their own corners, in the company of Sesshomaru's and the ministers' aides and other staff. Castle servants moved about the hall constantly, serving finger desserts, wine and flower tea.
In their niche, Naraku called for a glass of wine and turned to Inuyasha, who was leaning against a cushion and talking to Minister Atsushi.
"Your Highness," Naraku said, holding out the wine to Inuyasha. "You drank absolutely nothing at dinner – you must drink some wine with me – it can't be too much to ask, after you and your brother refused me so absolutely."
Minister Atsushi was quick to respond in his steady way, saying: "Lord Naraku, His Highness is too young to have consumed much wine, and I understand that he is unaccustomed to the taste of it."
"Come now, Sesshomaru," Naraku said laughingly to the demon lord. "I know very well that you were drinking wine at your brother's age – isn't it time for him to acquire a taste for it?"
"My brother and I are very different," Sesshomaru replied, watching the situation keenly. Atsushi could tell that the demon lord was carefully sniffing the air around them to see if he could smell anything wrong with the wine that Naraku was offering the boy.
Naraku apparently picked up on that too, for he commented: "I haven't poisoned the wine or the goblet, I assure you."
Inuyasha did not want things to get unnecessarily awkward. He reasoned that if Sesshomaru was drinking wine at his age, then he could learn to like it too, so he reached out and accepted the goblet as graciously as he could.
"Thank you, Lord Naraku," he said in a neutral voice, although he itched to punch him in the nose. "I am an uncultured half-demon, but I am prepared to learn what my brother was able to appreciate at my age."
He took a sip of the wine, watched by Naraku, Atsushi and Sesshomaru. He was not used to the strong taste and smell of such a beverage, but it was not intolerable. Besides, it was top-quality wine from Sesshomaru's cellars.
He had tasted common wine before while living in the village. The village men would insist on treating him like an adult – after all, they had known him for decades – and often tried to get him to join them in their evening drinking sessions behind the priestesses' backs. Fortunately for the priestesses' peace of mind, and Inuyasha's well-being, he had found that he disliked the flavour and effects of alcoholic drink, and generally declined by running away from his village friends after their evening meals and taking to the trees where they could not follow him.
"There, that's not so hard, is it?" Naraku asked. "Your brother has some excellent wine here – so excellent that merely a taste of it might be enough to make one fall in love."
Naraku was making it fairly obvious that his remark was intended to cover both the wine and the prince.
Inuyasha took another sip, but turned his eyes onto Sesshomaru instead, and drew patience and strength from him. But to his surprise and displeasure, when he lowered the goblet from his lips, Naraku placed a caressing hand over the goblet, covering Inuyasha's own fingers, and tilted the vessel towards himself to look at how much liquid remained in it.
"Hardly touched," was the spider lord's remark as the tips of his fingers stroked the back of Inuyasha's hand. "How cautious you are – perhaps it will not be as easy as I had hoped it would be to interest you in anything new."
Sesshomaru reached out swiftly and grasped the goblet, which he firmly but elegantly extracted from his brother's and Naraku's fingers, enabling Inuyasha to slip his hand out of Naraku's.
"Naraku," Sesshomaru said in a sharper tone than he had hitherto used on the spider lord. "My brother is not yet mature." He set the goblet down beside him, out of Naraku's reach, pausing in his speech for a moment before continuing in a more even voice: "It is well past his usual bedtime, and sipping wine to which he is unaccustomed will hardly help him to stay awake."
Inuyasha scarcely needed another hint. Naturally honest as he was, and more used to making a point with his blunt speech, claws and fangs than with sophisticated talk, he was out of his depth amidst such verbal and socially political manoeuvrings. He felt more uncertain by the second how he was supposed to respond to anything at all, and was on the verge of letting his fists do the talking. So he rose gratefully and bowed to his brother, Naraku and Minister Atsushi, to take his leave.
Sesshomaru stood up with him and said to the assembled party: "I shall return once I have seen my brother to his room. Please carry on and enjoy the entertainment and wine."
The demon lord and his brother did not speak until they were safely within the corridor of the royal wing, at which point Sesshomaru said: "You did well, Inuyasha. I am proud of you."
"Did well?" Inuyasha scowled. "I was completely lost. I had no idea what to do. If you hadn't defended me so, I'd have been totally adrift and probably done something stupid like swipe off his ugly face with my claws."
"You were perfect," Sesshomaru said, taking his upper arms in his hands and looking him full in the face. "I could not have asked for more from you, on your very first day of interacting with such a tricky guest."
"Tricky? He's disgusting. I don't know how you can let him talk on and on in his filthy way."
"Unless there are outright hostilities between two lands, this is the way it is at such meetings."
"How do you put up with it?"
"I couldn't in my youth – Father was always swooping in and extracting me from one faux pas after the other, before I offended allies and enemies alike unthinkingly," Sesshomaru revealed, taking Inuyasha's hand and almost unconsciously wiping it with his sleeve where Naraku had touched him. "But I learnt much from watching him over the years. And watching my mother, of course – she was even more deft than Father when it came to difficult social situations and twisted politics. You will learn too."
"What if I don't want to?" Inuyasha asked, turning his huge pair of eyes upward to gaze at his brother. "What if all this isn't right for me?"
"Then that will be your decision, and I shall respect it. But you won't know what you can learn to be good at until you give it time. Until then, however, may I say how much I appreciate your innocence and honesty?"
The corners of Inuyasha's mouth twitched into a little smile, then he frowned as he said: "I don't like the way he talks as if there were something between the two of you – well, I mean, I don't know if there was in the past, but he goes on as if there was still something."
"It is nothing more than his wishful thinking, founded on incidents that I would prefer not to dwell on. You should go to bed now. I must return to the event hall."
Inuyasha did not know why he said what he said next, but he found himself blurting out impulsively: "Do you really have to go back there?"
Sesshomaru searched his face curiously before answering: "Yes, I should return to the hall and continue to entertain the guests. Would you rather I didn't?"
"No – of course not!" Inuyasha said hastily. "You should go back. I don't know why I said that. I must be drunk – keh, no, that's a dumb thing to say as well. Two sips wouldn't make me drunk. I guess… it's just that I never knew a mere social gathering could feel so dangerous…"
"You find it bewildering because it is new to you. It is a more subtle setting than a battlefield, but in many ways it is not that different. I shall be back upstairs once I am done below."
Sesshomaru kissed Inuyasha on the forehead and saw him to his room door, then left the royal wing.
~ - ~
As Inuyasha slipped into the hot, welcoming bath Natsumi had prepared for him, he thought about Naraku's weird children and the strangely loathsome yet hypnotic spider lord. He scrubbed extra hard at his right hand with his washcloth, to further erase the feel of Naraku's touch from his skin.
When he emerged from the bath at last, he pulled on his sleepwear, left the bathroom and sat down on his carved wooden stool as always to let the racoon girl dry and comb his hair.
"Naraku's icky," he pronounced his verdict on the spider lord.
"He is outwardly charming, but once you know how cruel he can be, no amount of his charm and stolen good looks can disguise his nature," Natsumi said.
"Stolen?"
"It is said that Onigumo, his predecessor, stole and absorbed the body and soul of a handsome human prince. Although Onigumo himself did not utilise that body, it seems that when Naraku was created, that was the primary body he took."
"Yuck," Inuyasha said, sticking his tongue out. "What a creepy creature. I hate the slimy way he talks to Sesshomaru – as if he had some kind of claim on his interest and affection."
"Well, Naraku and Lord Sesshomaru do go a long way back," Natsumi revealed. "Naraku professed friendship for Lord Sesshomaru mere minutes after he emerged from Onigumo's remains. Lord Sesshomaru had no iron-clad reason for refusing his friendship then, from what I understand – I don't know all that much, but one hears things after being enslaved there for decades and working here for another few decades. I only know that Naraku was keen on forming a very intimate alliance with Lord Sesshomaru, but was rebuffed, at which point he attempted to force the issue, but by what means I do not know."
Inuyasha did not like the sound of that.
When Natsumi was done with his hair, he briefly considered the logistics and implications of keeping his female attendant in his room all night. Having lived with Kikyo and Kaede for so many years, and internalised their considerations with regard to having a male sharing their hut, he was more conscious than full demons would be about sharing a room with a female who was not a mate or relative. Natsumi herself was unconcerned, being a demon who was well accustomed to demon ways; but Inuyasha put himself into Kazuki's place and reasoned that he would not like to have his lover spending all night in the same bedroom as another male.
He briefly considered telling Natsumi that she could use his mother's bedroom. However, he was not sure that Sesshomaru would like it if an attendant was permitted to occupy an unused room in the royal wing as if she were a member of the family. So he told her to rest here, while he would sleep in Sesshomaru's room.
However, when he lay down in his brother's bed, it was to toss and turn for an hour. The bed was comfortable, but his mind was racing with all that he had seen, heard and learnt in the course of the day.
All the talk about Naraku's ambitions of matching himself or one of his children to Sesshomaru disturbed him. Sesshomaru having one of those strange creatures as a mate seemed utterly wrong. Naraku's creepy behaviour also plagued his mind – insinuating a tentacle down his boot, proposing himself as a mate, touching his hand over the wine goblet… yuck, thought the prince. At least Sesshomaru had been direct about his lust for him instead of engaging in under-the-table manoeuvres with weird appendages and sneakily trying to get him drunk.
Wait a minute… it wasn't that he had enjoyed Sesshomaru's attention or anything, just that it was better than Naraku's freakish actions – no, better wasn't quite the right word – it was… different… or was it in fact better…?
Turning over in Sesshomaru's bed for the thirtieth time since lying down in it, Inuyasha buried his face in one of the pillows, taking a deep sniff of the demon lord's scent. All he could think was that it was a nice scent, although nice was not really an appropriate word for Sesshomaru. It was a powerful and familiar scent, intoxicating and pleasing to him, a little like his own, but different enough to be interesting.
He sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed, possessed by the urge to see Sesshomaru. He was wearing only his sleepwear, so he pulled on Sesshomaru's dressing gown before leaving the room. The guards must think his behaviour very strange, leaving his own bedroom while there was a pretty female attendant in it and seeking his brother's empty room, then leaving that too and heading out of the royal wing in his bed clothes and the demon lord's dressing gown which was too big for him.
But these guards must have seen it all, considering Sesshomaru's two hundred years of debauchery.
He made his way past the attendant on duty at the end of the passageway and down the stairs, which were guarded at their top and bottom. To the servants on night duty, he presented an oddly clad, barefooted figure lost in an over-large gown as he wandered through the grand corridors of the ground floor towards the event hall, which was situated towards the front of the castle, beside the dining hall.
It had been close to two hours since he had left the hall. Surely the gathering had dispersed by now, so why wasn't Sesshomaru back upstairs yet? It was hard for him to track Sesshomaru's scent because it was all over the castle, but he could smell Naraku all right. The spider lord was definitely still in the hall. Guards stood before the large, open doorway, but he shook his head at them to tell them not to announce him.
The guests were gone; even the servers and entertainers were gone. The plates and drinking vessels had been cleared away. Everyone had left, except for two individuals: Naraku was here, and Sesshomaru's scent was stronger now, meaning that he too was here. The many drapes and tall plants helped to conceal Inuyasha as he entered, and Sesshomaru's thick dressing gown smothered his scent.
It was never Inuyasha's intention to eavesdrop. He had thought to walk in and see if it was an appropriate time to go up to Sesshomaru to ask why he was taking so long. However, the very first thing he heard when he stepped in made him hide himself, for it declared plainly that he was walking in on a very private moment.
"You can't have forgotten my embrace," Naraku's soft but clear voice came from within the niche Inuyasha had been in earlier with his brother, Minister Atsushi and their spider guest. "I cannot forget the feel of you enclosed within my limbs, every inch of your skin enfolded in mine –"
"Shut up, Naraku," Sesshomaru's cold, deep voice answered. "Talking about a past incident in an indecent manner only clothes it in a filthy light, but does not magically turn it into something else, however much you might wish it."
"I wanted you – you must have felt through every pore of your flesh how much I wanted to make you an integral part of me – and that has never changed. Do not tell me that you never felt the same way. Perhaps some part of you desires me also. Is that why you are so resistant to the idea of my taking your brother as a mate? Are you jealous of the fact that the pretty half-demon caught my eye today?"
From his hiding place behind a plant, and through the translucent drapes, Inuyasha saw Naraku lift a hand and caress Sesshomaru's face as he spoke – and the movement of a tentacle a little lower down suggested that he was also caressing some other part of Sesshomaru's body. The sight made him ill. Everything that Naraku's words implied launched a sickening roil of emotion in his breast.
Sesshomaru slapped Naraku's tentacle away from his groin and caught his wrist in his hand, forcing it down in a single violent push as he growled menacingly: "Leave my brother out of this, Naraku. If you touch him again, if you speak one more filthy word to him or about him, if you hurt him, I will destroy you so utterly that your artificial children will not find one atom left of you to burn or bury."
"Oh, Sesshomaru – are you protecting him, or trying to keep me to yourself?"
"Keep your delusions to yourself while you are under my roof," Sesshomaru snarled. "Only diplomatic etiquette stops me from ripping your heart out of your false body. If you were not my guest, you would have been dead well before now."
"Come now, diplomatic etiquette alone would never stop someone like you from killing anyone he pleased…"
Inuyasha stepped backwards to get away from the scene. Sesshomaru had shifted position in the course of his conversation with Naraku, and was now able to see the movement that he made from behind the plants and the drapes. For one second, the two brothers locked golden eyes through the leaves and wispy red silk, then Inuyasha turned and strode quickly out of the hall.
In his emotional turmoil, he headed back towards the royal wing without thinking, until he found himself stranded halfway down it, neither wishing to enter his room and disturb Natsumi, nor return to Sesshomaru's room. He could not turn back and go down the stairs either, because he guessed that Sesshomaru was now on his way up. As for entering an unoccupied bedroom purely to leap out of the window, well, that would only startle the guards above and below and create an unnecessary spectacle.
So he stomped all the way down the corridor right past the four room guards as a maelstrom of feelings he could not name swirled chaotically inside him. He strode to the very end of the passageway and entered his father's room.
Of course Sesshomaru would sniff him out here. Inuyasha partly wanted that, because he wanted to hear what Sesshomaru had to say. He partly wanted to avoid it too, because he could not pinpoint what his feelings were, or why he had had such a strong reaction to seeing and hearing Naraku speak with his brother as if they were old lovers. He hated it – hated it – that Naraku had touched Sesshomaru so intimately, but why should he be so upset by that when he knew all along how promiscuously his brother had used his body?
Torn between wanting to know what Sesshomaru's explanation for that scene would be, and wanting to pretend that he had never been there and never seen a thing, the prince paced his father's room frantically as he knew that with each passing moment, Sesshomaru was coming closer and closer to this room.
But he could not organise his thoughts and feelings fast enough, so that when Sesshomaru turned the handle after what felt paradoxically like a swift eternity and stepped into the room, Inuyasha had no words for him, other than the immediate, childish imperative: "Go away."
Sesshomaru closed the door behind him and said softly: "Is that really what you want me to do?"
"Yes," Inuyasha said. But that word was followed by three more, spoken more quietly: "Yes and no."
"Then I'll stay."
- 27
- 28
- 29
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Tale of the Demon Lord