Title art by Michelle

CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE Chapter Two

     Inu Yasha crawled out of the well inside the shrine, snuck over to the door and pressed his ear against it to listen for any sounds of people (namely, Kagome). He didn’t expect any noises behind him, though.
     "Oi, Jerk Boy!" Shippo hailed him, and Inu Yasha just about jumped out of his skin.
     "Go home!" He reached down to snatch up Shippo by his god-given handle and toss him back into the well, but the little fox darted through his legs and out into the main shrine grounds. In the middle of the courtyard, he turned around, tugged at his eye with his finger and stuck out his tongue.
     "Nyeh-nyeh! You can’t catch me! Nyeh! WOOPS!"
     "Oh, you’re so cute!"
     Inu Yasha buried his face in his hands and sighed. Figured the first person to see the stupid kitsune was Kagome’s mother, who had taken such a fancy to Inu Yasha’s ears upon their first meeting. Mrs. Higurashi scooped up the thoroughly startled Shippo and hugged him, then ran his tail through her hand and chirped: "It’s so soft and fluffy! And look at those tiny, little feet! You’re a fox spirit, aren’t you? Kagome brings home the strangest friends sometimes!"
     "Strange?" Shippo echoed, then gave her his cutest smile. "Oh, you mean Inu Yasha! Yeah, he is pretty strange."
     Inside the little shrine, Inu Yasha cracked his knuckles and growled. "Why you…! I’m strange now, am I? We’ll see who’s strange when I’m done with you, you little furball!"
     Kagome’s mother laughed. "Well, Kagome seems to like him… She talks about him all the time. And I think he’s Sota’s hero. Is he really half-demon?"
     Hero, huh? On that high note, Inu Yasha decided it was time to make his entrance. Kagome’s mom was alright! And that kid brother of hers, too. Heh. Sota’s hero. He should be Kagome’s hero, too, dammit! After all the times he’d saved her life, you’d think she’d idolize him! But nooooo! Little Miss I Don’t Have Time For You was probably off idolizing Hojo!
     Mrs. Higurashi put down Shippo and gave Inu Yasha a great, big smile. "Well, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Inu Yasha?"
Inu Yasha turned red and ducked his head. "Uh, yeah, I guess. Um, is Kagome around?"
     Mom tweaked his ears, turning Inu Yasha’s face even redder. "You just missed her—your ears are so cute! Do you mind me doing this?"
     "Yes."
     She stopped. "Sorry."
     "What do you mean ‘just missed her’?" Shippo asked and reached up his arms so she’d pick him up again like Kagome always did. What a nice lady, he thought as she stroked his tail some more.
     Mom scratched Shippo’s head and replied: "She already left for the beach." She frowned at Inu Yasha, who was turning many shades of jealous green and growling at Shippo. "I really don’t think you two could blend at a public beach, so don’t try telling me you were invited." Shippo licked her cheek, which put a smile on her face again. "She’ll be back next Saturday."
     Inu Yasha’s eyes bugged. "A whole week?!" He clenched his fists and petulantly stomped his foot. "I can’t believe her own mother is letting her spend a whole week at the beach with a boy!"
     "What boy?"
     Inu Yasha was taken aback. No boys? No Hojo? Just Kagome and her girlfriends? A wave of relief washed over him and left him almost giddy. Kagome wasn’t with a boy after all!
     Mom laughed all of a sudden. "Well, there will be boys there—and that nice Hojo she’s been seeing is going, too. But Kagome isn’t going with a boy, she’s going with her girlfriends."
     Inu Yasha shrieked: "She’s been ‘seeing’ Hojo?!"
     Shippo flipped his tail over his face. "Oh-ohhh…"
     "Well, they’ve only been to the movies a few times," Mom amended a little sheepishly, "but he seems so nice." Then it hit her. She saw Inu Yasha’s heartbroken expression and did the math: There was definitely something Kagome hadn’t been telling her about her relationship with this dog-eared boy. "Is there something I should know, Inu Yasha?"
     You should know your daughter’s a two-timing trollop! But Inu Yasha didn’t say that. After all, it wasn’t as if he owned Kagome, or like they were ‘official’ or anything. They hadn’t even really talked about it (and finished the conversation). Was she talking about it with Hojo even now as they made their way to an entire (romantic!) week together at the seashore? AUGH! "So is it just Kagome and this Hojo guy?"
     Mom raised an eyebrow, the pieces in this little puzzle rapidly falling into place in her brain. So, her daughter had a half-demon admirer, did she? Mom wasn’t so sure she approved of that, except for the fact that Kagome said Inu Yasha had saved her life a few times and was a nice boy deep down inside. Nice Boy wasn’t what Mom was seeing before her. That would be Jealous Boy cracking his knuckles with a dangerous gleam in his strange eyes, none of which boded well for any boy on the beach trip with Kagome and her girlfriends. Better stop any trouble before it got started.
     "It’s several boys and girls from Kagome’s class," Mom told Inu Yasha pointedly, "and I know every one of them and their parents very well! Kagome doesn’t need a jealous boy like you ruining her vacation! So if you can’t calm down and behave yourself, I don’t want you anywhere near my daughter!" She hugged Shippo a little too tight as she got in Inu Yasha’s face and exchanged looks of death with the half-demon. Much to Shippo’s astonishment, Inu Yasha backed down.
     "I won’t ruin anything…" Inu Yasha moped. He scraped his toes in the dust and refused to meet Mom’s eyes. "I just want to—" he paused and looked up, "—um, be where she is." And keep that stupid Hojo kid’s hands off of her!
     Mom didn’t waver in her resolve. A jealous boyfriend was dangerous enough, but a jealous half-demon boyfriend was simply out of the question. Kagome could do a lot better. And anyway, the poor girl really needed this holiday with her normal friends. "Well, that’s very nice, but you’re just going to have to live without her for a week. I’m sorry." She put Shippo down and gave his backside a shove in Inu Yasha’s direction. "I think you boys should go home now."
     Like hell. "Ok," Inu Yasha thought, "I can’t attack her mom, or Kagome’ll never ever forgive me. Can’t threaten her, either." He scrambled for a plan that wouldn’t further his image as a dangerously jealous half-demon but was completely at a loss about what to do. Shippo to the rescue.
     The kitsune fluffed his tail and made his eyes as big and dewy as possible as he looked up at Kagome’s Mom and wrung his tiny hands. "I really envy Kagome," he sighed. "I’ve never been to the beach before. It must be so much fun to have all those friends to hang around with and just play at the shore for a whole week. I’ll bet they’re going to a nice resort, aren’t they?" Big, big sigh.
      Inu Yasha gave his little partner in crime a funny look but decided to go along with whatever Shippo had up his sleeve. The kid had a much higher tolerance for sappy behaviors than he did.
      Mom wasn’t fooled. "I’m not telling you where she went."
     "Shit." The boys said in unison, with feeling. It was very much the wrong thing to say.
     "Is that how you talk around my little girl?!" Mom accused, jabbing an angry finger at each demon in turn. "I was wondering where she was picking up that kind of language! She was getting it from demons! That’s it," she declared as she spun on her heel and headed for the house, "when Kagome gets back I am absolutely forbidding her to have anything more to do with you two—and those other bad influences she’s hanging around with in the past! I’m surprised she’s hasn’t taken up with Oda Nobunaga, himself, and tried to sack a village!"
     Inu Yasha felt this wouldn’t be the best time to tell Kagome’s mom that they’d met a boy calling himself by that name and they had almost sacked a castle with him, but it was just to save a princess (and a lot of other girls) from having their souls eaten by a toad demon. Inu Yasha also felt it would be unwise to reveal his past sacking of Kikyo’s village and the slaughter of villagers that had gone with it.
     Suddenly, Mom spun back around and stomped back to stick her finger in Inu Yasha’s face again. He actually took a step back. "You better not have tried anything with my baby, you—you—overgrown mutt, or I will personally rip off your ears and make you eat them!"
     "With soy sauce, or--" For which, Shippo got his furry butt punted back into the shrine by Kagome’s mother, who no longer found him adorable.
     "Go home!" With that, she stalked off to the house and slammed the door with great finality, leaving Inu Yasha trembling with rage and hurt in the courtyard, and Shippo on his head at the foot of the stairs down to the well.
     Going from jerk to hero and back again that fast was pretty disorienting, so Inu Yasha just stood there for a while and digested what had just happened. Kagome’s mom planned to forbid her to see him. Ever. No more Kagome going into the well to his time and having grand (and dangerous—but that just gave him more opportunities to be heroic) adventures. And just what the hell had happened to "Kagome talks about you all the time, you’re Sota’s hero"? Didn’t that count? Just because he got a little bit jealous and said a naughty word, Mommy wouldn’t let him near her little girl again. His first instinct was to snarl: "Who does she think she is?" But the answer was: The one person he had to impress if he ever wanted to see Kagome again, that’s who.
      "This sucks," Shippo said as he emerged from the shrine once again. "Oh well, I guess we couldn’t expect you to actually be able to impress a girl’s mom." He ducked Inu Yasha’s claws with admirable calm and continued to mock. "Too bad. You were actually in the nice guy column for, what? Five whole *duck* minutes? That’s a *dodge* record for you, *duck* isn’t it?"
     "Will you shut the hell up?!"
     Shippo had a really good snotty remark all ready but one look at Inu Yasha’s face made him choke on it. "Inu…Yasha? Are you crying?"
     "SHUT UP!"
     And Shippo was once again sailing through the air, this time headed in the direction of the house. Inu Yasha watched him through misty eyes as he tumbled end over end, then dropped right into Sota’s waiting arms. Sota? Things were looking up. Mom might think he was the scum of the earth, but he was little brother’s hero!
     "Sota!" He grinned, covering the distance between himself and the little boy in ten giant, eager steps. Sota stood in the shadow of the house, holding Shippo and playing with his tail, which seemed to be a very popular item that day. "Long time, no see!"
     "She went to Green Mermaid resort. It’s about thirty kilometers north of here."
     Inu Yasha and Shippo blinked at him as if struck. Inu Yasha’s ears twitched. "How far is thirty kilometers?"
     Sota rolled his eyes, then realized he had no idea what unit of measurement people had used in the Warring States period and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to convert it to metric. "Uh…ok, it’s pretty far, but follow the coast north until you come to this really big—I mean, huge—building that’s painted green and has a sign in front of it with a mermaid on it. You know what that is, right?"
     "The sign or the mermaid?" Shippo asked, and got thumped on the head for it.         "Geez, Inu Yasha, it won’t kill you to have a sense of humor!"
     "Mermaid," Inu Yasha repeated, "I know what those are. Huge, green building on the shore. Anything else?"
     Sota thought about it. "Well, there’ll probably be a lot of people there, and you’ll need money to rent a room, if they have one available, which they probably don’t."
     Inu Yasha snorted: "We don’t need a room. We’ll camp out."
     "That wouldn’t be a good idea," Sota advised, "you’ll just get arrested. They don’t let people do that." He pointed at Inu Yasha’s ears and tugged Shippo’s tail. "And you can’t go like this—or wearing those clothes. Nobody dresses like that."
     The two demons sighed impatiently. Inu Yasha narrowed his eyes at Sota, who wasn’t proving to be quite the great, white hope he’d promised to be a few minutes ago. "Look, Sota, we don’t have money, we don’t have other clothes, we can’t do anything about our demonic parts, AND WE DON’T BLOODY HAVE TIME TO DEAL WITH IT!"
     Sota frowned, hip to the whole situation, since he’d overheard his mom’s conversation with these boys. "You think Hojo’s gonna make his move, don’t you?"
     "Is he planning one?" Inu Yasha demanded.
     Sota shrugged. "I know he really likes Kagome a lot."
     Inu Yasha started quivering and misting up again, then mastered his emotions.    "Thanks for the directions," he said and made as if to leave, but the little boy had a death grip on his kimono. "Let go!"
     "If you go off like you are now, you’re not gonna score any points with Kagome,"   Sota said bluntly. "She’ll hate you for embarrassing her in front of her friends."
     Shippo bit back on his remark about how Inu Yasha was probably going to do that anyway. His head still hurt, and his butt was definitely bruised. "Any suggestions?" He asked instead, just as Mom called Sota to come inside and eat his lunch. "Damn!"
     "You shouldn’t talk like that in front of a little kid, you know," Sota scolded him, then shouted: "I’m coming!" To Inu Yasha and Shippo he said: "Wait for me inside the well, ok? Gramps thinks you’re cool, so I’ll ask him to help. I’ll be back after lunch! Don’t go anywhere!" With that, he ran into the house to eat.
     The two demons realized at that moment that they were very hungry and the odds of getting a meal out of Kagome’s mom were slightly less than zero. Also, lacking money, they couldn’t go buy food, either. Well, the only thing for it was to go back home and grab a bite to eat, then come back and meet with Sota, and maybe Gramps, again. This was definitely not going as planned (not that Inu Yasha actually had a plan, beyond showing up on Kagome’s doorstep and insinuating himself into her summer vacation). She didn’t say anything about going to the beach! Sounded like fun, though. Inu Yasha had never seen the ocean up close and had certainly never gone swimming in it. What would Kagome and her friends do there? Just lay around on the beach and swim in sea? Or did the resort offer other activities to amuse its patrons? Inu Yasha pictured Kagome in that tiny outfit she wore when she took a bath (after he saw her naked once…heh), then he imagined lots of pretty girls in similar attire, frolicking on the beach.
     "What’re you grinning about!?"

     When Inu Yasha and Shippo returned to the well an hour later, it wasn’t Gramps who was there with Sota. "Who’s that?!" Shippo asked with great interest as he spied the shapely, pretty young girl who was with Sota and another little boy.
      Sota introduced her as Yuki. "She’s Kei’s big sister." Kei, apparently, being the small boy with Yuki. Yuki and Kei waved at Shippo, then Inu Yasha when he emerged. He gawked at the sight of the pretty girl in shorts and tank top at the top of the stairs. (Did all the girls in this time take their clothes off?) Yuki’s eyes bugged at the sight of the two demons and had the usual reaction to Shippo: She picked him up, hugged him, played with his tail and declared him "adorable". Inu Yasha let her touch his ears once, noting that she had pretty eyes, a nice smile and smelled like jasmine flowers.
"ACK! What am I thinking?!" He berated himself. "I’m here to spend time with Kagome!"
      She smiled at him and said sarcastically: "So, Sota tells me you guys wanna blend at the beach." She looked at Sota. "You must be joking."
      "Look," Inu Yasha told her, "I just want to find Kagome and—" he almost said "keep her away from Hojo", but didn’t want to risk getting the same reaction out of Yuki as that sentiment had gotten out of Kagome’s mom. "And, um, you know, play on the beach."
     Yuki narrowed her eyes and frowned at him. "Yeah, right. You’re afraid she’s gonna run off with some other guy, aren’t you?"
     Inu Yasha gave Sota a dirty look. "Squealer."
     "What?! I didn’t say anything about that, I swear!" Sota stammered, waving his hands defensively.
     "Hmph!" Inu Yasha crossed his arms and looked away. "Sure you didn’t."
     "He didn’t," Yuki told him. "It’s written all over your face: You like Kagome and you’re afraid she’s gonna have too much fun at the beach with Hojo. You know they’ve gone out, right?"
     "I don’t wanna talk about it."
     "Uh-huh," Yuki snorted. "There’s no way a guy with dog ears, claws, white hair and wolf-eyes is gonna fit in at the beach. Sota, what am I supposed to do? Cut off his ears, give him shades—hey, wait a minute! That might work!"
      Inu Yasha grabbed his ears and jumped back a foot. "Stay away from my ears!"
      Yuki rolled her eyes. "Not cut them off! Cover them with something—like a hat or a bandana! And you could wear dark sunglasses and color your hair."
     "I’m not coloring my hair like some…woman!"
     "You got a problem with women?" Yuki growled, hands on hips.
     Shippo asked: "What about the claws?"
     She frowned. "I guess we can leave those go," then, with a withering look for Inu Yasha, "and I guess we can leave his hair alone, too. It is sort of pretty."
     "Sort of!?" Inu Yasha echoed in an outraged voice.
     Yuki smirked. "And, I suppose you’re kind of cute—for a demon dog."
     "Who’s a dog?!" Inu Yasha sputtered and clenched his fists.
     After getting off to such a swimming good start, Inu Yasha and Yuki finally stopped butting heads and got down to some serious disguise planning. It was decided that he would go shopping with Yuki, for which purpose, Sota borrowed a ball cap from Gramps to hide Inu Yasha’s ears and a pair of sunglasses to hide his eyes. Until they got him something else to wear, his kimono would simply have to do. Fortunately, Shippo had been able to talk him into leaving the Tetsusaiga with Kaede, so they didn’t have to deal with the sword.
     "And you have to pay me back for the clothes," Yuki told him as they left the shrine.
     Inu Yasha stopped her just as she opened the car door and gave her a menacing growl. "I didn’t ask you to do this, you know…" He looked at the car with great suspicion, but Yuki didn’t seem at all apprehensive about getting into the contraption, and damned if he was going to show fear to a girl!
     "You wanna get between Kagome and Hojo this week?"
     He seethed, he shook his fists at her, he started to stomp back to the shrine, changed his mind and came back. "Fine. How do I get the money for that?"
     Yuki grinned a very disturbing grin and purred: "Who said anything about money?"
Inu Yasha looked like he’d been bit.
     Shippo giggled. He’d used his kitsune powers to make himself appear to be a boy of about Kagome’s age in a Yuki-approved outfit of shorts, T-shirt and sandals. He imagined what sort of payment Yuki would want other than cold, hard Yen.
     "…but you don’t have to worry about the condo," Yuki said as she fired up the car, the sound startling her passengers, though neither said anything about it, "since my family owns it already."
     "What’s a ‘condo’?" Inu Yasha asked suspiciously. And why did this machine make so much noise? Did it have a dragon under the hood? Was that what was making it go? And where was that awful music coming from?
     Yuki smiled. "It’s a small house on the beach, about a kilometer from the Green Mermaid, so you’ll have easy access to the same beach as Kagome. Are you guys really demons? That is so cool! And from Nobunaga’s time! Wow! Have you met him?"
     Inu Yasha growled, but Shippo happily told her about the toad demon (as told to him by Kagome), only he left out all the bits where Inu Yasha had played the hero. That forced Inu Yasha into the conversation, if only to make sure Yuki understood how brave, strong and daring he was and how much Kagome needed his help whenever they got into trouble. He then told her about Yura of the Hair, leaving out Kagome’s heroics, which Shippo hastened to fill in.
     Compared to the shopping trip to the mall, the ride in the mysterious vehicle with the loud music (Yuki’s car) was a cake walk. Picking out clothes for Inu Yasha and getting him to try them on proved to be a battle every single time Yuki tried, but there was no way she was going to put up with any crap from some half-demon with an attitude problem. No matter how cute he was.
      "I don’t like this," he announced, throwing yet another set of clothes into Yuki’s face.
      She handed them to Shippo, the designated hanger-upper of rejected outfits. He grumbled but did his duty. Yuki crossed her arms and frowned at Inu Yasha with a terrifying gleam in her eye. "Ok, Miss Thing, what do you like? And not what you have on!"
     "Bitch."
     "Go fetch."
     Inu Yasha growled at her, considered ditching her completely before remembering he had no earthly idea where he was or how make her "car" go where he wanted it to, so he bit his lip and started browsing. As he walked around the store, he cast sidelong glances at the other males who were shopping to try and get an idea of what might be popular. It occurred to him that a pretty girl like Yuki would know what girls liked on a boy, but everything she picked out was so…girlie. He was the mighty half-demon Inu Yasha, dammit! His clothes needed to reflect his natural toughness. With that in mind, he dragged his escorts into a store with manly-looking garments in the display window, grabbed whatever looked the most butch and like it would fit him and dragged that off to the dressing room.
     Here’s what he wound up with (and, yes, he owed Yuki a lot of money, or whatever it was she planned on accepting as payment):
     1 Pair of Levis 501™ button fly jeans, pre-washed and pre-faded
     1 Harley Davidson™ T-shirt
     1 Button down white cotton dress shirt
     1 Button down denim chambray casual shirt
     1 Pair of khaki pants (to go with the dress shirt)
     1 Black leather motorcycle jacket
     1 Pair of black leather motorcycle gloves
     1 Black leather gaucho hat (to go with the dress up outfit)
     1 Harley Davidson™ baseball cap (to go with the casual outfits)
     1 Green khaki cotton blazer (to go with the dress clothes)
     3 Bandannas: Blue, red and black
     2 Pairs of shorts: Dark blue and gray, both knee-length
     1 Pair of men’s swim trunks, black
     2 Plain white T-shirts
     1 Pair of Converse All Star™ sneakers, black
     1 Pair of loafers (to round out the dress up outfit)
     1 Pair of Birkenstock™ sandals
     4 Pairs of socks
     7 Pairs of underwear
     1 Set of men’s pajamas, dark blue
     1 Pair of dark sunglasses
     1 Bottle of shampoo
     1 Bottle of Curve™ men’s cologne
     1 Toothbrush with tube of toothpaste
     1 Bottle of sunblock, SPF 15
     1 Stick of roll on antiperspirant
     1 Hair brush
     1 Large duffel bag to put it all in
     He begged for a motorcycle (since they looked so tough in the pictures at the Harley Davidson display where he got the T-shirt), but Yuki drew the line right there. Not only were motorcycles expensive, none of them had a license to operate one.
     "You would have expensive taste, wouldn’t you?" Yuki muttered as they put their bags in the trunk and piled into her car once again. "Oh, and before you ask: No, I won’t let you drive my car, so I don’t wanna hear you whining about it like you did with the motorcycle."
     "Bitch."
     Shippo snorted: "Oh, like you know how to drive!"
     "And you do, I suppose!" Inu Yasha shot back. He was wearing his bad-ass biker clothes, and Shippo had to admit they bloody suited his personality to a T.
     "Kagome’s gonna hate it," Yuki yawned and watched for his reaction out of the corner of her eye. "She likes nice guys."
     "If she liked nice guys," Inu Yasha shot back, "she wouldn’t hang around with me." Anyway, he felt good in these clothes! Yuki was probably just trying to get a rise out of him, anyway. Wait till Kagome saw him in his dress up clothes! It would be goodbye, Hojo! Yessiree! "You’re just jealous ‘cause I want Kagome, not you."
     "Ex-SKUZE me?!" Yuki punched him in the gut with her free hand. "What in the hell gave you the idea that I am in the least bit attracted to you, you conceited jerk!"
     Again with that jerk thing. "I am not a jerk!" Inu Yasha grunted and rubbed his stomach. Hm, leather jackets made good armor.
     "You’re a jerk," Shippo said under his breath and got growled at for his attitude.
     Inu Yasha smirked at Yuki. "You like me and you know it." Ha! That’ll get her! He’d never met such a stuck up, control freak girl in his life! Inu Yasha, wear this. Inu Yasha, don’t wear that. Inu Yasha, I know what’s best. Whatever. Only he knew what was best for him, not some girl.
     She snorted her opinion of that. "I think you like me. A girl can tell, you know."
     "Not if you were the last woman on earth."
     "Likewise."
     Shippo grinned. "Sounds like love to me!"
     As they approached her house, Yuki said: "Ok, you guys just let me do the talking with my parents. All you have to do is be polite to them, not make conversation. I’ll tell them I’m just giving you a ride to the beach, since we were all headed there anyway. Got it?"
     "Whatever," said Inu Yasha. Shippo nodded.
     As it turned out, her parents weren’t home, so they got in, got packed and got out without having to make up stories to explain themselves. Yuki left her parents a note, then called the Higurashi’s to ask if someone could bring Kei home, since something had come up which prevented her from doing it. She wisely refrained from mentioning the beach. That done, they piled into her car and headed off with a CD of music by some idol singer Yuki adored blasting from the stereo, and Inu Yasha’s hair blowing out the window. Shippo could hold his human illusion no longer, so he reverted to his normal form, curled up for a nap on the back seat and dreamed of Kagome riding around on a motorcycle with Inu Yasha.