Chapter Text
They married each other when they were five. A traditional Shinto wedding.
It was a ceremony held in Kagura's childhood home, attended by toy soldiers plundered from her elder brother Byakuya's room in exchange for leaving him alone for an hour while he had his boyfriend over. A barbie doll wrapped in black and white crepe paper held up by Kagura's powers was the priest that officiated their union, and they drank apple juice out of their cartoon water bottles in place of ceremonial sake.
His montsuki haori was a blanket draped over his shoulders, and she wore a headdress made out of the previous week's newspaper. She told him to kiss her, afterwards; said it was something she saw couples do at weddings she had attended with her parents. He had objected vehemently, because it was a revolting suggestion. Just because adults did it does not mean that they had to as well.
It was their private wedding ceremony - no one else had to know and so they could hold it however they wanted, and no, he was not going to kiss her.
She had sulked, snapped a curt 'fine' at him, and they had gotten married. He had even prepared rings - thin transparent hair ties - the ones that snapped if you pulled it wider than the width of a hand - that he had snatched off of his mother’s dresser when she was not looking.
Just a stupid game between two stupid kids.
Years later he would look back and lament his folly.
He should have kissed her; the heavens had given him that one chance to kiss her and yet five year old him threw it away like it was nothing.
Child Sesshoumaru was a fool.
But as he pressed his nose to her temple, a hand on her hair, murmuring reassuring words as she soaked his shoulder with tears over yet another unworthy bastard who broke her heart, with his own heart yelling at him to just fucking do something, anything, before her next lover took their place beside her for good and his chances of being with the only woman he had ever wanted in his whole life was lost to him forever, he thought, not for the first time...
Adult Sesshoumaru was a fool, as well.
An obstinate, cowardly, fool.
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"I'm never going on a date again after this one." Kagura announced, two weeks after she had sobbed herself sick and he had to hold her hair back as she bent over the god-damned toilet after a whole night of emptying beer bottles like it was a fucking competition.
He scoffed, but did not look up from his tablet. He had made himself comfortable on her couch in her pathetically small living room, his feet resting over the armrest while he reread the same line about Nietzsche for the umpteenth time. "Thrice."
"What?" She was in the midst of pulling her hair up into a bun, a hair tie gripped between her teeth.
He rolled his eyes. "Thrice I have heard this from you."
She huffed, stalked over and squeezed herself to sit on the couch, pushing his legs into the seat cushions.
"Fuck off. I mean it this time, Sessho. I'm sick of it." She turned to face him, poking at his knee when he did not look at her. "You'll stop me if I try to." He looked up, and glared.
Tch. And she would listen?
"Since when had this Sesshoumaru been able to tell you to do anything?"
"Since now." She shrugged, then grabbed the socks she had placed on the coffee table to slip them over her toes.
He eyed her leather high-waisted pencil skirt and white t-shirt combination, her eyelids a dusty pink lined with a sharp black wing, and scoffed.
"Remind me again what you are doing this evening. Or should I say, 'who'?"
She had the gall to shoot him an irritated glance as she paused in pulling up her socks. "Yura's just a friend. And it’s a group date that I already promised I’d go."
Friend. Of course.
"Hn." He flicked his eyes back to his device that he held with one hand, frowning at the black pixelated texts of the poorly scanned reading that he had to read for next week’s tutorial at college dotted the screen. So be it. She could pretend she was not interested in this girl and he could pretend he was not bothered by that.
Coward.
He flipped the page, not taking in a single word. She had put on cologne. The one some girl from college had given him as a white day gift awhile back which Kagura had promptly stolen from his dresser after she learnt that he was going to discard it.
Indeed, Yura was just a friend. Just a friend that she was going to try to fuck.
"Besides, she's straight. I think."
Or maybe not.
He frowned in irritation at the weight that lifted from his shoulders.
Fool.
"Sorry to hear that."
Kagura rolled her eyes. "I mean it. She's just a friend." She turned around abruptly, and leaned closer, her lips stretched into a grin. "In fact, she thinks you're hot. You know what, I could set you up with-"
"No."
"Come on, Sesshoumaru. When's the last time you've been with someone? I did ask if you wanted to join in on this group date, you know? I know plenty of people who are bugging me to set you up with them and you've never-"
He lifted his eyes to glare at her through his lashes, and she shut up, rolling her eyes.
"Fine. Be boring." She punctuated with a stab of wind that threw his hair over his face.
Tch.
He pushed at her back with his knee, exerting enough strength that so she slipped off the side of the couch, all the while glaring. She smirked, then stood up, hands patting down her thighs to straighten her skirt before she moved to grab her bag off the floor near the kitchen counter.
"But yeah, like I said, I'm not dating again after this. I'd die alone. I don't give a shit."
He scoffed, shaking his head. As if she would keep her word. His best friend since childhood may have been the valedictorian at their high school, may have topped the national college entrance examinations with shocking ease, and may have been on the dean’s list for the past three semesters now, but she was, at the core of it, a dumb horny slut.
He cared for her more than he does for anyone else. Would do anything if it meant it made her smile. But a spade was a spade, and Kagura Onigumo - his best friend in the entire world, the person who knew him better than his own family did, the woman he would commit murder, arson, and kidnap for, had a libido that was too high for her own damned good.
It would be fine, if not for the fact that she took every breakup as a personal affront to her ego and dignity, and sobbed for days each time like the drama queen she was.
She turned to him, and narrowed her eyes. “ Don’t give me that fucking look. I’m serious this time. I’m not some dumb horny slut. You’re the unusually rigid one. And it’s not like you’re not attracted to people.”
“Hn.” He grunted noncommittally. He was attracted to men and women both, as did she, and they had known this since the cusp of teenagehood, but she did not get it.
She would never get it.
The girls who gifted him chocolates throughout highschool - the ones who also wrote nauseating love confession letters that were slipped into his lockers - the random men who would try pick-up lines on him at bars and clubs, the women who flicked their hair coyly and gave gentle touches on his arm when asking for his phone number, and the guys at college who put in effort to find out which modules he was taking at just to be placed in the same classes as he was...
As beautiful as they were, and as intriguing...
None of them had been her.
And for him, it had only ever been just her.
Fool.
He pushed himself upright from the couch armrest, running a hand through his bangs as he placed his tablet down on her coffee table. She had slipped on her white sneakers, and was rummaging in her bag for her keys. “You’re gonna be staying here then?” She asked with her brows raised.
“Hn.”
She rolled her eyes. “You have your own place just two blocks away, you know?”
He ignored her, grabbing at a mug on the table to take a swig of water. She came over to his apartment frequently enough too, either to hang out or for a study session. Brought her friends over without asking him too, on occasion.
No fucking boundaries, this Kagura.
He got to his feet, then trudged towards her bedroom. “I’m going to sleep.” There was no way he could continue with the reading now, anyway. Not when she was...
Tch. Coward.
“It’s three pm in the afternoon.” She replied drily.
“Wake me up when you return.”
“Dumbass.”
The soft chuckles that accompanied her good-natured insults tugged at his heart, as they always did. But he did not turn around, even as he lifted a hand to wave at her in response to her saying goodbye, even as when the jiggling of her keys signalled her leaving the apartment.
A better man would have asked her to stay. Would have confessed. Would have taken his chances despite how small they were.
But alas, he was a fool.
Just a fool.