Hey guys! For those of you who may be following sketch pad, it is temporarily put on hold as I start this one, I got the idea and just had to write it. I usually don't like AU or modern day Sesshoumaru, preferring canon or further in the past, but here I am writing one, so even if you are like me, I hope you like it.
Chapter 1 – Single fathers and desperate daughters
Why was it so hard to find a competent nanny these days? How hard could raising a young child be, single women as young as 17 years old were doing it, and they were barely more than children themselves? Honestly, if he could look after a child, admittedly it had not been for very long, then surely it should not be hard to find a nanny to do it. He knew his child could be very difficult, the fact she refused to bond with anyone accept him was making finding someone to take care of her while he worked a very trying task. She cried when he was not in her line of vision, but not all the blame was on her, it also just so happened that the attention of the women he had hired to care for her thus far had been... misplaced.
Oh he was well aware that women found him desirable, his wealth and social status only attracted more females, youkai and human alike. Yet he had never wanted to take a mate before, he had never met someone who he shared a connection with. The women he brought home were either after his wealth and status, or liked those parts about him just as much as they liked his appearance. After a while he had stopped caring about being tied down to one women, and as he realized how repulsive some of the women could inwardly be, even the casual sex he used to enjoy teetered very close to never. This sparked of new rumours about him and he found himself being lusted after be men as well as women who claimed not to care, after he heard this said, the content of these rumours about his person became pretty clear.
The number of one night stands he had were now down to no more than once or twice every three or four weeks, just to relieve the tension he felt. This was not just because he did not like the women who threw themselves at him anymore, seeing past their made up faces and feeling crushed by the attention rather than lavishing in it. When you have a young child at home you end up needing to give up such indulgences to look after him or her. He was finding that he ended up staying up a lot of the night to tend to her, not only did she demand to be fed several times night, but seeming as she cried whenever he was not near her, he could not go to bed until she was asleep, and had to get up as soon as she awoke.
What made matters worse was that it took him a while to get to sleep after he had been forced to wake up. He could easily spend thirty minutes staring at the ceiling until tiredness overcame him enough to go to sleep once more, and it would only last an hour or two before the infant woke once more. This meant he was occupied at night or too tired for such activities after the adoption of the infant he had literally scooped out of the gutter, but he really did not care. He wanted to find someone he loved for a mate, and would not mind being a mother straight away, to take care of her, for it was the mother who was meant to care for a young pup.
He had always been against hiring someone to do a mother's job only to let her go once the child grew up and no longer needed her. However none of the women identified with the child, preferring to ignore her existence and the infant had done the same, leaving him to play the role of both mother and father to the child. It affected his work and could not be all that good for the child either and he had come to the conclusion a nanny was needed. Now if only the girl would bare to be away from him for a little while, so far she screamed if she were with anyone else without him also there, the crying started as soon as he walked away.
The reason the child was so attached to him was probably because he had taken her off the streets for he could not walk past and let the baby die. He had found her thrown out with the rest of the rubbish and he could scarcely believe someone could be so cruel to an innocent. He had taken her in out of pity and meant to give her a temporary home before finding an adoptive family for her. However he had inevitably become attached, he should have seen it coming really. The fact she cried without him meant many of the families wanting to adopt he found did not want her. So the time they spent with each other grew, he bought a cradle, bottles, clothes, toys, dummies, and then it just seemed common sense to keep her.
At first he was irritated by the hours of rocking and coddling she required each day. Most of the time it served no practical use, but there was nothing else he could do to make her settle, and when she held her arms out wanting to be picked up a tantrum would transpire if she was not obeyed. He could get through piles of paperwork in the time he spent tending to her needs of comfort, work he now had to do instead of yet more sleep and regular meals to compensate. Yet in time, it all became routine, and while he did not enjoy getting up in the night, he no longer growled when it happened. He even grew to thoroughly enjoy the quiet moments he spent with the child on his lap, clinging to him like one would a lifeline. The only thing about caring for the child he continued to dislike was changing her diapers.
The turning point in their relationship was when he was caught with the child by one of his workers. She had come to his residence to deliver an important file he had forgotten, courtesy of needing to spend no more than a couple of hours a day at the office due to the child. he thanked the Kamis that the worker was not anyone prominent in the business and was therefore unlikely to be taken seriously even if she did gossip about how 'loving' they looked together, he had a reputation to keep up after all. He also thanked the world she was female for this enabled her to see past the fact that Lord Sesshoumaru Taisho was bottle feeding a small human infant o his lap, and allowed her instead to simply gush at how adorable she was.
She asked what her name was and he answered straight away with 'Rin'. Without even realizing it he had named her, he could not very well leave her now, there was a deep bond tying them together. in fact the more he thought about the idea of finding another family for her, the more the mere thought of leaving her pained him, so he officially adopted her. She had been his daughter for just over two months now and she was ten months of age, so young, not even all of her milk teeth had come through yet. Teething was another thing he did not like, she howled in pain as they did and everything she got her hands on ended up in her mouth.
Sesshoumaru was not an expert on how fast human infants developed, but was pretty sure she was advanced. She could speak – but not well, while she was capable of understanding what was said to her most of the time and experimented with many words, she was not yet developed enough to string sentences together. She could crawl and would begin walking soon, but was still an infant; his business would crumble if the C.E.O was never there to oversee it. However, the search remained fruitless, Rin would wail if she were to b held by someone who was not him, and screamed if he left them alone with the stranger. Most nannies who decided to give it a go could not stand this and did not last half a week.
In all honesty he was surprised the child was attached to him in the first place given the fact that he was a Daiyoukai, and she a human. There should be an evolutionary safety device within her somewhere that made her wary of him, but this did not seem to be the case. The fact the child was attached to only him was even more uncanny, yet still, he was the one she always clung to. It was 3:30am; she should not awake now until morning, which for her was usually around half past five. Her need for food in the night had decreased as she got older, but she still awoke several times crying, he assumed due to the fear of abandonment.
He was never going to abandon her; he did not know who could be so cruel as to throw a child into the gutter. He loved her now, there was no escaping it, and while he could pretend to complain he got no free time anymore, the truth was, spending time with her now was his free time. He would give her as much time as she needed for the psychological scars to heal, and would lavish her in love in the meantime. Seeming as he was up now he may as well use these couple of hours to get some of that tide of work that kept piling up done. He was lucky indeed he was a Daiyoukai and did not need as much sleep as a human did, that was the only reason why he was managing a child and a top business without breaking.
He kissed the ebony curls on top of his little Rin's head as he put the newly slumbering girl back into her cradle and drew the covers up to her chin, tucking her in. He spent a moment just looking at her asleep in her bed, he assumed he must look like a love struck new mother, but there was no shame in being a love struck new father. He looked at her lovingly, one hand clutching onto a teddy bear with all her might, while the other thumb was in her mouth. Putting the baby monitor he had learnt to never go anywhere without into his pocket, silently he cracked open the door and slipped out of the room, heading for the study.
Having an august birthday means that you are always off school for your party, which is great when you are a kid. However, it also means that everyone is older than you – she had always been the baby of the year. While all of her friends were sixteen and getting jobs, she was unable, and all the vacancies in all the shops and businesses were being filled, leaving her on a paper round, the sort of job little kids did. Her tiny, childlike frame did not help her case any, she just wasn't trusted with the responsibility of work, instead she looked like someone who needed to be protected, and it was true, but she was still perfectly capable of stacking a shelf.
She needed to find someone who was looking for a worker like her, or at least was capable of seeing through her flaws. She was thin, short and childlike, not just in her outward appearance but the way she acted too. She still liked cartoons and she pouted and whined sometimes, but she was still responsible, she could act mature when it mattered, she just liked to be carefree. She was clumsy and had bad hand-to-eye coordination, and she was not all that good in school either, though history and English were subjects she excelled in. She was bad with computers or anything technical and ended up messing it up.
She was not at all that athletic and she sucked at sport. She was always the last to be picked for a team, unless it was football, because Hojo was the captain and for some inexplicable reason he had a crush on her and she soaked up that attention by clinging to him like glue. She was useless in any sort of combat though she had won second place in the national archery competition a few short weeks ago. She had raven black hair and navy blue eyes, not at all like those blonde haired, bright blue sparkling eyed girl around. She was nothing special, quite the opposite; she was nobody who would be looked twice at.
Down to a dime and resorting to borrowing money off Souta who was still a kid and therefore still receiving pocket money, Kagome was growing desperate. Her friends were not ones who forgot about loans, and therefore she either sulked until they bought her something in their cafe trips after school or she cancelled on them. Hojo was more generous, and she could enjoy her dates with him seeming as he insisted on paying for everything. But she could scrounge off other people forever and she needed to save up for college, not to mention she needed more clothes, and her emergency chocolate supply was running dangerously low.
Kagome was growing desperate, she would not usually go to such extremes but given the current situation with university looming ever nearer and all, she deemed it necessary: she asked her mother for help. Aya Higurashi was a cleaner for Taisho industries. She was a nursery school teacher too, but took up the extra job when her husband died to enable her to support her two children. There was a worker there by the name of Onigumo who liked her and that meant she had more influence than a cleaner usually would because Onigumo was pretty high up. Kagome had wanted to find a job on her own to prove her independence, but it was inescapable, nobody would accept a random, desperate 15 year old girl whose clothes didn't even fit. The one thing she had not been expecting when she approached her mother on the subject was a refusal.
"No, I am sorry Kagome," she started as soon as she understood what her daughter was getting at, not sounding at all repentant, "but there is nothing Onigumo or I can do." Her mother had the famous, 'and that's final' tone to it, but Kagome was standing for none of it. All of her friends in lower years at school had parents and siblings who had gotten them jobs, so why was she the only one who got answered 'no'? "Seeming as you are not yet 16, it would be too much hassle with all the special arrangements that would have to be made in order to make you working here legal," she claimed, "it would hardly be worth it."
Kagome had to agree, it made sense. Seeming as she was not of age she would not be able to work more than a certain number of hours a week and not past a certain time. If she was the employer, she would just hire someone who was of age, maybe with experience, everyone wanted to work with the Taisho Company, even if it was just as a cleaner. "But I don't mind working long, hard hours, I can handle it, and there isn't that much difference between a newly turned 16 year old and a 15 and a half year old. Surely there is something you can do!"
"I'm afraid not Kagome," her mother said, still not sounding at all sympathetic, "and Sesshoumaru really isn't the sort of person you can approach in order to ask if your fifteen year old daughter can have a job as a cleaner. Certainly not the sort of person you approach to ask if your love crush's fifteen year old daughter can have a job. I'd ask Keade, my boss, but the truth is we have already received applications to process. Just stick to schoolwork darling, and if you help around the house I'll give you some pocket money."
"You mean chores? I shouldn't be paid to do chores, I do them because I am obligated to do them, I want to help out around the house and in the garden. More than that, I enjoy knowing I am helping out and would feel left out if I didn't cook dinner and/or breakfast once in a while." Her mother had stopped listening to her, that was something she did when she was about to hang up. Well, the matter was closed, she had resorted to asking her mother for help and it didn't even get her anywhere. That left asking Hojo for help, while it was likely to get her somewhere it would probably be hard, unpleasant and pay just as much as her paper round.
"I don't have any more suggestions Kagome, now I have to get back to work. Oh and Onigumo has invited me out for drinks afterwards – his treat, so I won't be back 'till late, don't know the exact time. Who knows, maybe we'll get to first base this time," Kagome rolled her eyes, who'd have thought her own mother would sound more of a teenager than she would? "So be a dear and collect Souta from football practise today for me. Make sure he does his homework and both of you get to bed on time, you have school tomorrow."
"Yes mum, have fun on your date," it was not like she did not want her mother to find love with someone else, and Onigumo was a nice guy. The thing was, as soon as she saw Onigumo she was transformed into a teenager. She was already talking about their future and they had only been on a couple of dates. She did not want her mother to end up being disappointed; she was very much acting like this was her first crush and very much forgetting that she was a widow. She had already hung up and did not hear her.
Grabbing her coat she headed out to collect Souta, without a car, seeming as she could not yet drive, it would take her three quarters of an hour. She did not like it when this happened, not that she had anything to complain about really. She was allowed to use a whole bunch of money to buy them dinner on days like these, and she was going to spoil Souta rotten, she did love him so much, she loved kids a lot. She would get them Chinese on the way back from football and then they'd watch a movie, not do a scrap of homework and not hit the hay until at least 11.