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Inuyasha had never thought of himself as greedy.
Hell, he’d spent most of his life just trying to scrape by. From the moment he’d born he’d had almost nothing he could call his own. The bastard son, the dirty half-breed. Shunned by the court, the clans, humans, youkai, even his own old man.
For a while he’d had his mother and she...she’d done what she could. Until she couldn’t anymore. It wasn’t her fault. Still, after she’d left a part of him had wished he’d never had her, either. You couldn’t miss something you’d never had.
And so that’s how he’d lived- having nothing and wanting nothing. It was easier that way. Even when his old man had decided to fuck him over one last time by willing him the throne for some kami-forsaken reason, nothing had changed. He was heir to a throne of nothing, somehow even more screwed than he had been before he was named Tennō. So greed had never really been an option for him.
Until now.
Inuyasha reached out, clawed hand hovering just over the face of the woman lying beside him in the darkened room. Her face was relaxed in sleep, a dark sweep of lashes stark against the pale skin of her cheeks. Her dark hair was spread out in a riot of whorls and tangles across her pillow, a few long tendrils slipping forward to drape themselves across her face. Her lips were slightly parted, soft puffs of breath and a thin line of drool escaping them. Inuyasha bit back a grin at the sight. He was pretty sure she still had no idea that she did that.
But he did.
He knew all sorts of stuff about her. He knew that her eyebrows did that weird pinchy thing when she was really working herself up over something. He knew that a lot of the time she forgot to eat when she got too busy and he knew the annoying grumbling noises her stomach would make all day afterwards. He knew how her eyes crinkled around the corners when she laughed when it was just him around. He even knew the little sound she made in the back of her throat whenever he dragged his fangs over her lower lip.
He’d gathered all this and a hundred other tiny things since he’d first met her, though it had taken a while for him to realize that that was what he was doing. But she had been there, had made sure that she was always there, right beside him, and so it hadn’t been so hard to believe after a while that it was just natural. That he wasn’t hoarding these scraps, clutching at them as if he could keep them all for himself.
Until the moment he’d overheard them and realized that maybe he wasn’t the only one doing it.
The thought of that fucking flea-bitten wolf having been with her when she was outside of the court, having maybe had the chance to hear that annoying stomach grumble or to see how messy her hair always was in the first light of day or to feel the almost burning warmth of her lips pressed against his...the thought that he might know all the things Inuyasha knew about her, might even know more, was enough to crack something within the hanyou that he hadn’t even known was there.
Inuyasha grimaced, withdrawing his hand to rest between them on the futon. Just the memory of that feeling, that disgusting mix of bone-deep rage and gut-churning terror, was enough to make his skin crawl. He had snatched her up on pure instinct, some urge in him snarling that if he could just separate her from the wolf then he could take back all those pieces that were his. That he could find new pieces, pieces that she would share with only him.
And somehow he had. The memory of that night still sent a mixed heat through him, the warm desire of it tinged with shame. He had been pathetic, desperate, grasping at her with both hands. And she’d still reached back, opened her arms and her body to him in a way he was sure she’d never done with anyone else. She’d willingly given him more pieces of herself- the feeling of her weak human nails digging into the skin of his back, the taste of her tongue sliding against his own, the strangled sound of his name on her lips as he moved inside of her.
And it still wasn’t enough.
Because then she had left. Then she had told him that there were pieces that she wouldn’t give to him. That he would have to settle for this, for her warmth is his bed and handfuls of pieces but never the whole. And that couldn’t ever be enough.
Because Kagome had made him greedy. Because anything less than the whole of her, even these hundreds and hundreds of precious pieces he’d managed to scrape together, could never be enough.
He was greedy now. For maybe the first time in his damned existence he wanted. He wanted the scent of her on all of his clothes, he wanted the warmth of her hand in his as they walked through the lanes of the court, he wanted the promise of years and years to come.
And he wanted to be able to give her his pieces, too, all of them, and for her to take them like he had taken hers. He wanted her to accept them.
Kagome sighed softly in her sleep, the sound dragging him from his thoughts. For a moment her lashes fluttered as if she might wake, but she quickly settled back. Almost without conscious thought Inuyasha reached out once more, the pad of his thumb trailing lightly over the warm skin of her cheek as he curled an errant tendril of her hair around his fingers. He pressed it back from her face, enjoying the smooth glide of her hair beneath the rough skin of his palm.
Kagome stirred under his touch, sleep-fogged eyes the color of early morning mist blinking owlishly up at him.
“‘Smup?” she mumbled, in what he was pretty sure was an attempt at words.
Inuyasha felt one corner of his lips curl up in the way it only did when it was just her around.
“Nothing,” he said, somehow understanding the attempt. “Go back to sleep, dummy.”
She muttered what might have been a protest at the insult, but her eyes were already sliding shut once more. His fingers carded through her hair several more times until he was certain she was settled again, knowing as he did how the movement soothed her.
Kagome had made him greedy. It had taken time, probably longer than it should’ve, but he could accept that now. The real question was, could he make her greedy, too? Could he show her that there was a way that his pieces and her pieces, all of them, could exist together? That there was a way forward for them and, if there wasn’t, that he would carve one out with his bare claws?
Could he make her as greedy for that future as he was?
Inuyasha shifted, settling in close enough that he could feel the warmth of her from his chest down to his toes. She was sound asleep once more, but light was beginning to creep in through the high window of her chamber. Soon she’d wake up.
He smiled to himself, laying his head down beside hers. He was greedy, but he could wait.