A/N: So it's been like.. Years? Sorry! Don't know if anyone's reading this anymore, but on a whim I decided to update. The direction of the fic has changed a bit, since naturally I lost all my notes and haven't even thought about this in a long time. But for those of you who come back and to those who are new, I promise there's a distinct plot line!

To be young again

There was an unaccustomed weight at her throat, and when she shifted, the sound of beads clinking together merrily had her wrinkling her nose in confusion.

Her head was foggy, her eyes were gummed together with sleep, and the softness of the mattress embracing her heavy bones was just too sweet a siren song to rejoin the land of the living.

Instead she huffed a deep breath and snuggled down deeper into the blankets, shifting over on to her left side as she was accustomed to when she slept.

Her head was swimming sluggishly at even the slightest movements and she frowned, aware on some level that something wasn't right. And even as she tried to wrap her head around the sense of wrongness, her scalp went tight and tingly, and all the hair on her arms stood up.

The feeling of someone watching her was suddenly so overwhelming that her eyes flew open and she reared back, arching her back and thrusting her feet into the thick mattress below.

"Oi, calm down. You'll only make yourself dizzy like that." a familiar voice warned from the darkness of the room.

Years of working the graveyard shift had sharpened Kagome's eyesight a great deal, and she tracked the source of the voice to catch the outline of the vampire lounging lazily against the wall, his arms crossed casually across the toned expanse of his chest, one foot crossed in front of the other.

Kagome regarded him warily, her mind niggling with memories that were slowly resurfacing of the night before.

She remembered the horrible exchange with Tsubaki, and the feel of Inuyasha's hands on her, when he carried her, as he supported her against his mistresses' powers, and again when he restrained her…

'So, to summarize, there was a whole lot of touching going down. But then… The car. Something happened.'

And then she remembered with a start, her fingers flying up to her throat and meeting the hard, skin-warmed beads.

Go to sleep he had said…

And before she could even fight it, she had gone down into that dark chasm of frightening unconsciousness that had instantly yawned up to meet her.

Kagome was frantically tearing at the beads before she could form the thought fully, first trying to draw them over her head, but when she tried the horrible necklace of teeth and beads began to shrink, impossibly, drawing tighter and tighter until they dug into the soft, yielding flesh of her throat and she began to gasp for air.

Still, stubbornly she tore at the beads, trying then to break the binding that held them together, wedging her digits beneath the beads to try and stop the pressure around her throat from strangling her. Panic began to overwhelm her, and she slammed herself back into the wall with a thin keening noise.

Suddenly, strong hands wrapped around her own, tearing her hands away from her work and pinning them to the mattress.

"You stupid idiot! It's obviously not coming off, don't kill yourself over it!" He spat.

The beads began to loosen as soon as her fingers stopped tugging at them, and she sucked in great, heaving breaths of precious air. As soon as she felt like she got a proper lungful, Kagome pitched herself forward with a hoarse cry and landed on a very surprised Inuyasha, knocking him over so that she was straddling his abdomen.

She slammed the flat of her open palm into his nose, which made a satisfactory crunching sound, and followed it by digging her thumbnails into the soft flesh of his windpipe. She leaned into it with all her body weight, feeling a fleeting sense of retribution when he began to make a gurgling noise.

Her vengeance didn't last long before he had her by the wrists, pulling her away from his throat, and with a thrust of his hips he reversed their positions faster than she could follow.

Once Inuyasha had her trapped underneath the solid weight on his body, his knees pinning her at the hips, and her hands held above her head, he stared at her. He opened his mouth hesitantly and then shut it again.

"You fucking bastard!" She shrieked. "What is this thing? Take it off!"

He winced at the sheer volume level and pitch she managed to achieve but resolutely shook his head. "No."

"No? Did you just say no?" Kagome bucked wildly, but didn't even manage to shift the solid bulk of the vampire above her. She might as well be trying to move a marble statue.

With her pelvis.

The rage building inside of her was enough to distract her from getting embarrassed over their compromising position however, and she nearly bit through her own lip in frustration.

"I said no. And if you'll stop writhing around like some sort of, uhn!" He growled when as she managed to dislodge one wrist and bring it up to clap over his sensitive ear. "Bitch!"

He regained her wrist and locked down harder with his knees until she cried out.

"I swear to God, I'm going to make you dead-er when I get loose," she hissed, still struggling wildly. She tossed her head from side to side, and tried bringing her own knees up to loosen his hold on her hips.

"All the more reason not to let you go!" He spat back, his face slightly red with the exertion of holding down one extremely pissed off bounty hunter.

'Good, I hope it's harder than he thought it would be.'

"Kagome! Stop it! I'm trying to explain!" He shouted, then cursed as she leaned over far enough in his grip to bite him on the forearm.

For not having any fangs, she managed to do a pretty good job of marking that pretty white skin of his if she said so herself. She didn't stop until she tasted blood, and even then she grimaced but held on.

"Oh screw this noise," Inuyasha hissed, and he leaned forward until his mouth was close to her throat.

Kagome felt his hot, panting breaths on the column of her throat before she realized how close he had gotten to a very dangerous territory, and then she released her deathgrip on his forearm and froze, her entire body going stock still. A scream built up from the very depths of her diaphragm but stayed locked inside.

Fear spread cold tendrils through her belly.

"Kagome…" Inuyasha breathed her name like he owned it.

She prepared for the first tear of teeth into flesh, for the feel of hot, spurting blood coursing over cold skin, for the awful sensation of lips and tongue nursing and sucking on the wound. If there was any way to be prepared for those things, she was.

He inhaled deeply, pressing his nose to her skin like he was memorizing the scent. "Relax."

And remarkably, she did.

There was the oddest sensation of heat spreading out from the beads around her neck, rippling down her veins like liquid comfort. Her head swam for a moment, and she got the queerest sensation in her belly, like she had just taken a big gulp of straight rum.

Every muscle in her body went slack, and just like that Inuyasha let go of her wrists. He remained where he was, but shifted slightly so he wasn't pinioning her with his knees quite so firmly.

He gave a sigh and pulled back from her throat, but she noticed his eyes lingering there for a moment, filled with a very tangible need.

Funny, she couldn't quite summon the urge to be appropriately frightened by what she saw. Or the position she was still in.

Her body was filled with a languid energy, and she pulled her hands down from above her head to touch the necklace with cautious, gentle fingers.

"Okay.. I think I'm ready for you to explain now." She said reasonably.

Sango was standing in the middle of Kagome's living room, her eyes affixed to the rather liberal smearing of crimson luridly painting the carpet like some sort of obscene Rorschach test.

Even Miroku was uncharacteristically silent, although his mouth opened and closed several times without sound.

"Oh Kag," Sango whispered, her mind automatically going to the worst case scenario. "What happened to you?"

And really, when you looked at it rationally, when your friend was missing and the only clue they left behind was a severely bloodied carpet, what other scenario did you go with?

"Maybe this isn't Kag's blood." Miroku postulated aloud. "Maybe she just brought a lot of it home with her."

Sango smacked him in the shoulder and bit her lip. "It's obviously Kag's blood. And now she's missing. Oh Miroku, what the hell happened here?" She murmured, drawing her arms up to wrap around herself.

"Well it's at least a couple days old, look, it's all dry. And the rest of the apartment seems to be in order. There's no real sign of a disturbance, Sango. Where are the overturned couches? The broken lamps? You know our girl didn't go down without a fight," Miroku persisted stubbornly.

Although to give him credit, that last bit rang true.

Kagome was a fighter to the core. She would fight tooth and nail if she had to, and had in the past. She wouldn't have gone down without taking her own pound of flesh.

She hoped fervently her friend hadn't gone down at all.

"Wait! Miroku look!" Sango pointed to a black smudge on the carpet and wall, just a little off from where the ominous bloody patch demanded attention. "Is that what I think it is?"

Miroku's brow furrowed and he stepped cautiously over what she refused to think of as her friend's blood pooled into the carpet, and knelt in front of the black smear. "Oh, it's definitely ash. Something burned here."

Suddenly a small hope unfurled in Sango's chest and she found she could breathe easier.

With a fierce, dark look replacing his normal mask of mischief, the caster ground his fist into the rug beneath him and gave a grim smile. "We'll find her, Sango."

She swallowed and gave a nod, unable to rise to the challenge in his eyes that she disagree with him.

Inuyasha took a deep breath to calm himself, his pulse still beating wildly from the implicit challenge that had been in Kagome's eyes, the desire to feed still surging in him.

'Steady now.'

He opened his mouth just as Kagome gave a jaw-cracking yawn and stopped to glare at her.

"Get to the explaining already, I'm dying of old age here," she griped, rubbing at her wrists to restore some of the circulation.

"I'm trying, bitch!" he growled, resisting the urge to tear her throat out and make his life a whole lot simpler.

'Then maybe I could watch T.V.'

The temptation grew a notch stronger.

"So, what is this necklace? And where's Shippo? And how come I'm all loopy? Also, I haven't eaten in like, a day. Do you keep people food in this joint?"

Inuyasha snarled and rubbed a hand against his left eye, which had begun to twitch. He thought he liked her incrementally more when she was trying to claw his eyes out.

'Kill her. Dead. Then the noise will stop.'

"That is a vampire rosary. It's made from the fangs of dead vampires and the beads were fired with vamp blood," he explained painstakingly slow, trying to impress on her in her new state the seriousness of the subject they were discussing.

Kagome made a disgruntled face and tapped a fingernail against a glass bead. "Ew, gross."

"Yeah. It was crafted for those who can resist compulsions, to make them more… Receptive to our gifts."

The girl stretched beneath him and craned her head back to stare up at the ceiling. "So- Relax?" She murmured.

"Exactly."

"And if someone were to tell me to jump off a bridge?" She asked with a frown.

"It can't just be anyone. It has to be me, lover. It's my blood in the beads, and one of the fangs on there is mine," he clarified.

"Oh. How come I've never seen one of these before?"

"They're very rare. It's hard to get a vampire to part with his blood and fangs. And even harder to cast the kind of magic to bind the spells. You need a very powerful caster, of reprehensible moral character."

"Hmm," she stopped playing with the beads. "I can't take it off can I?"

He gave a grin, grateful that she couldn't see him as she studied his bedroom ceiling. "No. You saw what happened when you tried. And no one else can either. Only me."

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to protect you! And you won't listen to a damn word I say!"

"No, seriously, why?" She asked, gaze drifting down to him, and lifting an ebony brow in bemusement.

"That is why! I need to keep you alive long enough to.. I need to keep you alive. And I can't do that if you won't do what I fucking say!" He spat, flushing at his near slip up.

"Pfft," Kagome blew a raspberry and then laughed at the noise.

"Oh God. I said relax, not regress." He dug his fingers into his temples and closed his eyes.

There was a muffled banging noise from the closet that set the mirrors rattling, and his sensitive hearing picked up on a whimper.

"What's that?" Kagome asked, sitting up to brace herself on her elbows and looking in the direction of the closet.

"Fuck if I know," Inuyasha snapped, distracted by the taut line of tendon in her throat when she craned her head.

"It's coming from your closet," she pointed out reasonably.

He gave a long suffering sigh and reluctantly pulled himself off her, slightly surprised to find he had enjoyed the contact.

He opened the closet door with more force than was necessary and growled as the kitsune came tumbling out, ending up sprawled on the wood floor and looking a little the worse for wear for his experiences.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome cried, managing to pull herself out of the rosary induced state of calm long enough to dredge up a little disbelief and concern. "You put him in the closet?"

"I had nowhere else to put him while you slept!" He snapped back defensively.

Scrambling up from her prone position on the bed, Kagome reached cautiously toward the young youkai. "You okay?"

He scrambled up onto the bed with surprising speed and dove behind the dubious safety of Kagome's back. "He's a bad man!"

Kagome looked up at Inuyasha for a long moment, studying his face. One of her hands toyed unconsciously with the rosary. Then she turned to the quivering ball of fur behind her and gently patted him on the back.

"Yes he is,"

And Inuyasha found himself clenching his fists so hard that he drew blood as his claws dug into the soft flesh of his palms. Something in him ached, and he found himself growling at the sensation.

"But he's on our side."

The spell wore off after about twenty minutes, and slowly Kagome noticed the anxiety and stress creeping into her muscles again. Soon after that came the anger, and they almost got into a second bout of pointless wrestling until Inuyasha arrogantly pointed out that all he needed to do was tell her to relax again and they'd only end up going in circles.

So she forcibly restrained herself from beating him to his second death with a fancy lamp.

It had been so hard to carefully replace the lamp on the nightstand and take calming breaths, but she had managed.

Soon after Kagome decided she needed to distract Shippo, who had taken to either blankly staring at the walls or hissing at Inuyasha and cowering behind her.

So she carefully took him by the hand, mindful of the instinctive way he bared his teeth when she moved too suddenly and they went exploring Inuyasha's home together.

Both of them pointedly ignoring the vampire who skulked behind them, very obviously pointing.

Inuyasha's lodgings turned out to be a rather large apartment, big enough to hold her tiny one bedroom in the pimped out, stainless steel kitchen. He had metal storm doors covering the only windows in the living room and kitchen, that fit flush against the walls.

The kitchen itself had all the amenities, which struck her as funny (maybe not ha-ha funny) seeing as how he didn't actually keep to a kosher diet. There was a big island of natural wood and glass in the middle, and he had spread over top of it a large assortment of magazines.

Curious, she studied the covers. Car and Motorcycle subscriptions, mostly, and a hunting guide, which struck her as even funnier than the stove.

'Contradictions, Inuyasha, so many contradictions.'

He even had mail addressed to him lying unopened next to the sink.

She was dying to see what kind of mail a vampire got, but considering the fact that the vampire in question was leaning against the wall and giving her icy looks, she had a feeling that that might literally be a death wish.

There was also one flyer for what appeared to be a nightclub called 'Crimson'. It featured a girl with enviable curves in a tight minidress lifting her blonde hair away from the pale column of her throat.

'Blood Donor' was tattooed just above her ample cleavage.

Kagome shivered in disgust.

'There are willing donors? How can they..?'

She literally had to take a moment to swallow back the urge to be sick in the stainless steel sink, and a faint memory of pain surged through her multiple scars, centering around the one at her collarbone.

Shippo peered up at her with fear when her hands clenched spasmodically and she realized that she had crumpled up the glossy flyer in one hand and probably crushed the youkai's in the other.

"I'm so sorry Shippo!" she murmured, rushing to soothe him and bending over to meet his green eyes. "Are you okay?"

She got a solemn nod in response and then he opened his mouth to show gleaming little fangs not unlike a vampires. "I'm hungry!" He declared.

Kagome stared at those little sharp teeth with a feeling of dismay.

'My, what big teeth you have Grandma.'

"Me too," she offered back weakly. "Let's see if Inuyasha has anything to eat before we look around more."

"No," Inuyasha answered before she had the chance to ask, his voice muffled slightly as he had wandered off toward the living room and was now speaking to her through the wall.

She jumped slightly at the range of his hearing.

"Unless you like blood, I think we'll have to go out!" She chirped brightly, and then repeated her own words in her head.

'What if he does like blood? How the hell would I know what to feed a kitsune? What if he only eats like bird gizzards?'

Shippou grinned, baring those sharp teeth with delight, almost as if he was following her thoughts.

Kagome shuddered.

A short time later they were sitting at a picnic table in a small park surrounded by trees. The night was hot, but there was a cool breeze that picked up his hair and cooled his skin.

Kagome was watching Shippo gleefully tear through the long crabgrass and weeds, following the scents of animals and children, dancing up the steps to the metal slide only to throw himself down it headfirst with abandonment.

His delighted shrieks echoed around them in the night.

"Jeeze, you'd think the kid had never been to a park before," he muttered, tapping his nails on the much graffitied aluminum table and soothing himself with the rhythm.

"Maybe he never has." Kagome murmured back, sounding sad and distant.

He turned his head in her direction and wondered if she was projecting a little of her past onto the youkai pup.

Studying her in profile, he watched her stormy blue eyes follow the boy as he claimed the empty park as his own with enthusiasm, marked the pale curve of her shoulder, noting the ripple of white scar tissue over her left collarbone and the distinctive mark of teeth on her throat.

He wondered how many other scars she hid beneath those layers of clothing, and where she had gotten them.

'Is that what made you a fighter Kagome? Or is that what made you scared?'

With a sigh she picked up the empty fast food containers she and the pup had littered the table with and went to throw them in the garbage can chained to the picnic table.

"You know," she began, in that pesky way she had of telling him things he should apparently already be aware of. "I have to go home."

Inuyasha stopped drumming his fingernails on the picnic table and flattened his palm against the cool surface. "No, you can't."

"See? There's that can't word again. You're the little engine that can't. Or however that saying goes," She said happily, unperturbed at his flat out rejection of her declaration.

"I mean it Kagome, you cannot go home. You don't know what's waiting for you there."

"What do you mean what's waiting for me?" She inquired with a cocked head, suddenly looking serious.

"I mean, now that Tsubaki's got you on her radar, the rest of the supernatural community will too. And she's not the only one with power," he explained, trying to keep his tone level and not menacing. He needed her to understand the gravity of the situation, but he didn't want to flat out terrify her.

'Why though? Why am I so protective of her feelings?'

"Wait.. What?" She demanded, furrowing her brow in confusion.

"Tsubaki was just the first to notice. You glow, Koibito. Like you're frigging radioactive. So she had someone watching you at all times, and she had you shielded. But that won't last forever. Sooner or later someone's bound to notice. That kind of power attracts all sorts of sleaze."

Kagome thought that over for all of about a minute. "I need my clothes though!"

Inuyasha snorted his opinion of that idea. "You don't need your clothes. Those are a tragedy. I'll get you some."

"What the hell is it with everyone and my clothes?" She ground out, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Listen, we'll get you and the brat clothes and food. You'll be fine in my apartment-"

"I am not sleeping with you!" She cried out, then, as the words echoed around them and even Shippo looked up with a confused expression, she realized what she had said. "I didn't mean it like that!"

She whirled around as he began to laugh, throwing her hands up in the air and stomping towards the woods before he leapt up to catch her.

"I meant I'm not sleeping in your apartment with you," she clarified, sniffing and raising her chin proudly, as if salvaging her embarrassment.

"Tough shit, if that's what you think," he tossed back with a grin, grabbing her chin in his fingers. "Little girl, you're with me whether you like it or not."

To further prove his point he gave a tug on the rosary and his grin grew wider at the look of frustration on her pretty face. "While you have these on, you have to do what I say. Or otherwise I'm going to get creative in my usage…"

Kagome's eyes went wide as she contemplated just how creative he could get and her mouth fell open.

He would have given his eyeteeth just to know exactly what thought occurred to her to have her going a pretty shade of crimson that crept even down her chest as he watched. Inuyasha gave a delighted laugh and feeling a little lighter than he had in days, he grabbed her by the wrist and gave her a twirl.

Kagome wobbled as she balanced and slapped a hand against his chest. "You are completely warped," she offered darkly.

He only nodded his agreement.

There was a familiar tingle on his exposed skin and he gave a sigh. "Sunrise is coming soon, we have to get home."

"Home?"

"Not your apartment," he backtracked.

She heaved a great, long suffering sigh and went to collect the little boy who was hanging from his knees from the highest pole he could find, green eyes studying the pair of them.

The three of them made the short trek back to his apartment, and he couldn't help noticing the space Kagome left between the two of them, even though she and Shippo seemed on the fast track to bonding and the kit already had his hand fastened firmly in the extra fabric of her jeans.

Sleeping arrangements were not quite what he had envisioned either. Since Kagome flat out refused to sleep in the same room with him again, he was forced to either take the high road (which meant the couch) or cheat (which meant the rosary). Since the second option would only mean another fight, Inuyasha let out a string of curses that had Kagome blinking in awe and opted for the couch.

Shippo was already curling up on his bed before he'd even turned his back, making a nest out of the comforter.

"Oi, he gets to sleep with you?" Inuyasha growled, unable to keep the hint of jealousy from creeping into his voice.

"Oh for… He's a little boy Inuyasha!" And Kagome shut the door in his face.

"Well. Fuck."