Kagome groaned, trying to hide her eyes from the sun that was very rudely intruding on her rest. Her half-asleep mind registered quiet laughter before she felt a soft kiss being pressed to her forehead.

            “I’ve got to go, Kagome,” Bankotsu said quietly. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

            “Mmmm, Bankie, where ya goin’?” she mumbled.

            “I could have sworn I made you promise not to call me that anymore,” he said with amusement in his voice.

            “Nuh-Unh… Just not in front of people. You’ll always be my Bankie.” Kagome smiled and slowly opened her eyes to see her best friend smiling back.

            “And you’ll always be my little miko Kaggie. I’ve got a couple things to do this morning. Gotta get to the bank before they close since its Saturday. I need to grab some groceries and take them to my mother, and then I’m gonna visit Jak for a bit. He’s been complaining that I haven’t come to see his new place.”

            “Ooohh, alright. Tell your Mama ‘Hi’ for me,” she paused for a moment. “And tell Jak that I sent kisses.”

            “I am so not kissing him for you.”

            Kagome giggled for a minute. “No, you don’t have to kiss him. Just tell him I sent kisses. I miss him. He hasn’t invited me to see his new place yet,” she said while sticking out her bottom lip in an adorably pouty fashion.

            “I’ll make sure to tell him he’s broken your heart,” Bankotsu replied before bending down and lightly kissing her forehead again. “I’ll see you in a few hours and then you will tell me why your bed needs to be burned.”

            “Yeah, yeah. Go on. Get out. I wanna go back to sleep,” she said before rolling over to face the wall.

            “And she kicks me out of my own room. Classic Kagome.”

            “Ha ha,” the miko grumbled before pulling a pillow over her head. She heard the door click closed and started to drift back into the sweet land of dreams but was unpleasantly ripped back into reality when she found the bed suddenly moving so much she was almost bounced to the floor.

            “Cool it, runt!” Inuyasha yelled from the doorway. “Bank would kick your ass if he caught you jumping on his bed. And I think you might have just scared the shit out of Kagome,” he added as he caught her peeking out from beneath a pillow.

            “Well, then maybe Kagome shouldn’t sleep all day,” Shippo said teasingly into the pillow that she’d returned to covering her eyes.

            “You’re not gonna let me go back to sleep, are you?”

            Inuyasha plopped down on the bed next to her, Shippo hopping into the air before landing in a lying position on her other side, his speed causing all three to bounce off the bed an inch or two. “Damn it Shippo! Go jump on your own bed,” Inuyasha snarled before answering Kagome. “Nope. I couldn’t possibly let you sleep when I don’t know why or when you got here.”

            Letting out an exasperated sound, Kagome smacked the hanyou in the face with a pillow before sitting up and stretching with a yawn. “Fine, but I get the shower first then.”

            “Not a problem. I took a shower hours ago. Come on,” he said before pulling the blankets off her, picking her up bridal style, and leaving the room. He knew Kagome, and Kagome and mornings weren’t friends. If he’d left her to her own devices she’d never have made it to the bathroom at all. A shower would wake her up though and he was too worried and interested to wait for her explanation. Bankotsu had told him very little before leaving to run his errands, just that she’d crawled into bed with him and said something about burning her mattress. Neither had any idea how she got in the house in the first place since she’d refused their offer of her own key.

            The silver haired half demon walked into the bathroom, closing the door with his foot and sending it right into Shippo’s nose since he’d been following closely behind his friends. “Bastard,” Shippo murmured before walking away to try to find something to pass the time with. He really wanted to hear why Kagome had spent the night. She hadn’t done so unplanned since the fight she’d had with the whores she lived with, which made the kitsune nervous. If they’d done something to her he would be more than happy to use his fox magic to ‘alter’ their perfect faces. ‘A giant mole here, a crooked nose there, a suddenly sprouting and constantly regrowing moustache, a volcano sized zit… the possibilities are endless,’ he thought to himself with a wicked grin. Of course she would disapprove even if they deserved it, which he was sure they did. Kagome was just too nice for her own good.

            Inuyasha had turned the water on for her and when she felt the heat beginning to spread through the room she smiled. She loved their shower. It had triple shower heads. It felt fantastic and she usually had to be dragged out before she turned into a ‘rather shriveled prune-like Kagome creature’. She laughed to herself as she remembered how Shippo had said exactly that to her in an attempt to extract her from the facilities. Inuyasha looked at her funny for a second before shrugging his shoulders and picking up his toothbrush.

@@@@@The Syndrome@@@@@

            Sesshoumaru finally rolled himself out of bed, even more exhausted than when he got in the night before. He hadn’t been able to keep his thoughts, conscious or unconscious, off of the beauty sleeping in the next room in another man’s bed. It was killing him. He had to figure out some way to end this absolutely crushing frustration. He felt like he was being forced to walk a tightrope while balancing a giant boulder on his shoulders. His mind elsewhere, the taiyoukai opened a random drawer and pulled on a pair of pajama pants before glancing in the mirror, seeing that the dark circles under his eyes were going to be impossible to hide. For a moment he mulled over the idea that if he wasn’t such a powerful demon, the overpowering need he had been feeling would surely have killed him by now. Hell, it might still kill him.

            He opened his bedroom door, this time with a lot less force as he remembered the hole in his wall that he would have to fix. He certainly couldn’t hire someone else to fix it. No one needed to know that he’d lost control of his temper and imbedded a doorknob rather deeply into an innocent wall. No, he would have to do it himself. Inuyasha would never let him hear the end of it if he found out.

@@@@@The Syndrome@@@@@

            “Alright, so out with it then. What happened last night to make you come back?” He could hear her sigh over the sound of rushing water.

            Feeling much more awake already, Kagome started her tale. “I returned to a giant party. There was garbage covering every surface, alcohol everywhere, huge stains on the carpet and broken glass in the picture frames. There was something splattered all over the wall over the stairs and someone busy with a guy in the middle of the staircase.”

“Someone?” he asked, curious.

“I didn’t notice who it was on the way up but I stepped on her hair on the way down. It was Kikyo and I have to say, she’s got some talent, being able to shove a dick as far down her throat as she was. I wonder if she has no gag reflex. Is that kinda thing hereditary?” She heard her hanyou friend growl and sighed again. “Inuyasha, I told you before that you don’t want her, at least not unless your goal is to contract as many sexually transmitted diseases as you can in one shot. You might be able to break a world record!” 

He snorted in laughter. “Yeah, I know you’re right. There’s just something about her that makes me curious.”

“Well I suggest indulging your curiosity from a distance. Now do you wanna hear my story or what?”

“Yes, wench, or I wouldn’t have fucking asked!”

“Touch-y. Alright, well, when I walked past the bathroom there was a girl getting fucked on the sink right next to my damn toothbrush. Someone else was in Kikyo’s room since she was on the stairs. Kagura was screaming out the most vulgar things she could think of and Tsubaki… You should have seen it. No, scratch that. Miroku should have seen it. I think he might cry when I tell him what he missed, although there was a camera set up on a tripod. He might just be able to find it on the internet,” she said thoughtfully. “She looked stoned out of her mind and she was being fucked by seven guys!”

“I don’t think it’s physically possible for seven guys to fuck one girl at the same time,” he mused. “That might be a world record.”

“Yeah, well she had a one in each hole and one in each hand.”

“That’s only five.”

“I wasn’t done yet! The last two were busying themselves with her tits, I guess until it was their turns. It was awful, so gross, and yet I couldn’t look away.”

“And the monk thinks I’m rubbing off on you!”

“I know. I just stood there for at least two whole minutes. I’d never seen anything like it before.”

Inuyasha growled. “I would hope fucking not.”

“Get over it, Inuyasha! I’m going to have sex someday!”

“Only when you find someone we approve of.”

Kagome sighed and rolled her eyes, muttering “I’m gonna be a virgin forever.”

“I fail to see the downside,” he said jokingly.

“Well I do! Do you have any idea how much batteries cost?” she screeched before clamping a hand over her mouth. She peeked out from behind the shower curtain and saw him smirking at her. “Don’t say a word. You never heard that. I never said it.”

“I don’t know. It’s gonna be hard to forget something like that. It’s gonna cost ya.”

“Whatever. You promise not to tell?”

“You promise to do it for me?”

“Fine, fine, I promise. Now you promise,” she said with a growl.

“Alright! I promise. Now finish. I still don’t see why you need to burn your mattress.

Kagome rolled her eyes before continuing her story. “Where was I? Oh, when I finally got to my room and opened the door there were three, I repeat three, couples in my bed! Then one of the girls had the nerve to tell me to leave and one of the guys tried to get me to join in! I had to get out of there and I’m glad I did. A couple cop cars passed me heading to the house. I hope they all got arrested.”

Sometime towards the end of their conversation, after Kagome had peeked out at Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru had entered the room. Inuyasha, who was used to blocking him out and ignoring him completely after years and years of practice, didn’t register his presence, the sound of the water blocking out the opening of the door and the steam filling the room making smelling anything but her shampoo impossible.

“Three couples? Like as in six people? No wonder you wanna burn the bed.”

“No kidding. One of the girls had my pillows under her ass!”

“What were your pillows doing under someone’s ass?” Shippo asked as he walked into the room, completely ignoring the inu still standing completely frozen in place a few steps from the door.

“Kagome’s roommates threw a party and she came home to people using her bed,” Inuyasha answered, mumbling slightly with his toothbrush still in his mouth.

“Aww, nasty!” Shippo called out while bending over and digging through a drawer in search of something or other.

Sesshoumaru’s thoughts were driving him nuts. Part of him wanted to kill Inuyasha and now Shippo as well for even thinking about being in the same room as a naked Kagome while the other half couldn’t help but pray for a peek. Finally, having decided on dragging both offenders forcibly from the room, he took a step forward before freezing again as he heard the sound of the shower stop. Once again the part of him hoping for a chance to catch sight of a naked Kagome took control and he once more could do nothing but stand and stare.

Having seen each other naked enough times that they could probably chart freckles with a 98% accuracy, Kagome didn’t worry about either Shippo or Inuyasha seeing her. It was the same with Miroku and Bankotsu too, though Miroku was still a perv about it. There were times in the past when she’d been so sick that Bankotsu had changed her sweat soaked clothes. She wished she could forget the time she decided to find out just how much tequila it would take to make her really drunk. She’d thrown up all over herself and Inuyasha had been there to help her get out of her disgusting clothes and even stood in the shower with her to make sure she didn’t fall when all she wanted to do was pass out. It was like that with all of them, both ways. She’d taken care of them just as much as they did her. All in all, there wasn’t anything that they hadn’t seen so there wasn’t any point in hiding it. Both Shippo and Inuyasha saw her as a pack member anyway, and since Bankotsu had known her since kindergarten he couldn’t see her sexually. Even though Miroku made jokes he saw her as a sister just as she saw him as a brother. They were all family.

“Hey, Inuyasha? I forgot to grab a tow…” Kagome pulled back the shower curtain as she spoke, her words stopping and a screech leaving her lips as she spotted Sesshoumaru standing there like a statue, staring at her. She immediately clutched the shower curtain to her body, covering herself from the intruding male. “Inuyasha? Why didn’t you tell me he was in here?” she practically screamed.

Immediately the hanyou turned his attention from watching himself in the foggy mirror as he brushed his teeth to the ‘intruder’. Shippo turned around as well and both started to growl threateningly, pissed that he had invaded Kagome’s privacy and that he still stood there like he owned the place. They were also pissed at themselves for not noticing his presence. Apparently they’d perfected the task of ignoring him too well.

It was then that Miroku appeared in the doorway, a towel draped over his shoulder. He slowly took in the odd sight in the large bathroom. First his eyes studied Shippo and Inuyasha. Shippo’s tail appeared bristled and Inuyasha looked like he was foaming at the mouth thanks to the toothpaste he’d yet to spit out. His eyes traveled from his growling friends to a stunned looking Sesshoumaru before looking at Kagome, seeing her hiding behind the curtain and looking quite distressed. “Forget your towel again, my love?” he asked playfully. Shippo snatched the towel from the monk’s shoulder and handed it to Kagome before turning around and crossing his arms over his chest, looking like he was guarding her.

Inuyasha spit into the sink at his side and tossed his toothbrush on the counter before stalking towards Sesshoumaru who was finally realizing just where he was and what he’d just witnessed, wanting to pinch himself to make sure this wasn’t another dream. His attention was drawn to Inuyasha as the hanyou snarled at him and then spoke. “Did you enjoy the show?” he asked with his voice rough and dangerous. “I hope you got an eyeful because you’ll never see it again. Don’t you have somewhere else to be, you pretentious peeping bastard?”

The taiyoukai found himself searching his mind in a desperate attempt to find some excuse, some cover for his behavior. Without even considering it, he said the first thing that popped into his mind, lifting a brow with his statement. “This Sesshoumaru fails to see the reason for her distress, as she obviously has no issue with giving you both a show. Even the pervert is welcome.”

As soon as the words passed his lips he regretted them, glancing up and seeing the hurt in her eyes. Immediately he was searching again, this time for some way to take it back so she wouldn’t look at him like that, like he’d just drowned her puppy or punted a bunny the length of a football field, like he was nothing but cruel.

He was so deeply engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t notice as Shippo moved closer, standing beside Inuyasha directly in front of him. He didn’t even see the fist coming before it collided with his jaw, the force causing something to crack. Just as he’d missed Inuyasha’s fist the demon also missed Shippo’s punch to the gut, which landed hard enough to cause him to double over in pain. Miroku grabbed the taiyoukai’s long silver hair, giving it a hard tug which sent the stunned and off balance Sesshoumaru to his ass in the hallway. The monk quickly slipped into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind him.

Inuyasha caught Kagome’s eyes as she still stood in the shower, now covered with the towel Miroku had brought and Shippo had given her. “Sorry Kags. I should have noticed him,” the hanyou said, at bit of shame in his eyes and voice, before picking up his toothbrush and returning to his task, making sure his fangs shined a brilliant white.

Shippo shot her a grin. “I finally had a legitimate reason to punch Sesshoumaru… and it was fun!”

Miroku approached Kagome, holding out a hand which she took before stepping out of the shower to the bathroom floor. She picked up a brush and moved to stand next to Inuyasha in front of the large mirror before running it through her damp locks.

“Hey Kagome?” Shippo asked.

“Hmmm?”

“Do you know where my extra hair ties are? I snapped the last one and can’t find any more.”

Kagome giggled before setting down her brush and opening a different drawer, immediately pulling out an unopened pack of the ouchless ties the kitsune preferred. He took them with a quick ‘thanks’ before picking up the brush she’d set down and started the fight with his fiery hair. The miko leaned back against Miroku who was leaning against the wall and was silent for a moment before speaking once again. “You guys didn’t have to hit him,” she said, feeling a little guilty at her friends’ response to her surprise and shock.

Inuyasha spit once more before taking a drink of water, swishing, and spitting again. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he growled deep in his chest. “He dared to look at what’s mine.”

Shippo looked over at the hanyou and growled as well. “Ours,” was all the kitsune said and Kagome let her shoulders slump a bit, knowing that she’d never win about something like this. Instinct was too powerful of an opponent.

@@@@@The Syndrome@@@@@

            Sesshoumaru was still sitting on his ass in the middle of the hall, staring at the closed door completely stunned. They’d hit him! Actually hit him and it actually hurt! No one ever got to hit him, no matter how hard they tried because his reflexes were too quick. Apparently they became completely retarded in her presence… him too. He couldn’t believe he just stood there and looked at her. Now on top of her thinking he was cruel and violent she would think he was a pervert too! Sure, she allowed the monk to be a perv but Miroku was her friend. He had no such allowances. He was certain she would hate him even more for his words. He’d basically called her a whore to her face! He couldn’t blame them for punching him. He wanted to punch himself too.

            Oh, but she was beautiful. He found himself insanely jealous of the droplets of water sliding across her flawless skin, which he then had to admit was ridiculous. Her breasts were just as perfect as he’d imagined; her nipples a dusky pink that stood out nicely in contrast to the pale flesh that he ached to touch, one of the few areas on her body that was not sun-kissed. And the small triangle of short black curls at the apex of her thighs, he found his hands twitching as he wished he could brush his fingers through it. He wondered if the curls there were as soft and silky as the midnight waves that lay over her shoulders, framing her perfectly symmetrical face. She was a classic beauty, not a stick figure that looked like she would break under a stiff breeze but a woman with curves in all the right places.

He growled at himself as his body responded to his traitorous thoughts. Sesshoumaru lifted himself off the floor and locked himself in his room. He had to find some way to fix this. He had to let her know he didn’t mean it, that he wasn’t all bad. Even though he knew she would never want to be with him, the thought of him hurting her feelings, of her hating him, made his chest ache. ‘There has to be some way to stop this! Surely there is some way to force my beast to move on to someone we can actually have! If this continues as it is now, this Sesshoumaru will be dead by the end of the month from sheer exhaustion alone.’

‘Or of a broken heart,’ his beast added.

‘Or of a broken heart,’ he agreed.