[AU, rated R] Dog's Body 4/? "Touched"

[Smarty Cat]

<B><U>Chapter Summary</B></U>: Inuyasha experiences a brief (very brief) moment of guilt and then he tries to eat while Kagome tries to feel him up.

Previous chapters can be found at http://www.fanfiction.net/~smartycat or in my author forum here on BI.

As always, C&C is greatly appreciated, and if you have any favorite dog or animal-in-general related quotes please pass them on to me in a review or via my livejournal (linked to below and in my user page). I want to have one at the beginning of each chapter, and my current list doesn't cover every situation I have plotted. Credit will, of course, be given if I use a submitted quote.


<B>Dog's Body
</B>by
<B>Smarty Cat </B>
smartycat9383(at)yahoo(dot)com

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<B>Chapter 4: <I>Touched</B></I>
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<I>~If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
--Mark Twain~
</I>
"Inu!"

Inuyasha raised his head from his paws and turned his hard golden gaze in the direction of the humans' path as the drawn-out singsonged call echoed among the forest trees. He snorted, ears pricking forward as he tested the air. The hair along his neck and shoulders rose reflexively when her approaching scent teased his nostrils.

<I>'So, the girl is back . . .'
</I>
He consciously forced his hackles to lower and his muscles to relax. It had been a very strange adjustment process getting used to this peculiar human. Even now he could not completely control this body's natural reaction to a smell so similar to the one that had created it.

He had thought she was Kikyou in the beginning, Kikyou come back to taunt him for his weakness. And he had been unable to kill her because of that weakness. It had left him raging in his husk of a body, helpless to defend himself, helpless to rend and crush those seeking human hands until her screams shattered the air and her blood ran hot in his mouth. Though infuriating at the time, he had realized in hindsight that it was probably in his overall best interest that he had been physically unable to attack the girl. When she had approached him despite her fear (and she had <I>reeked</I> of fear), when she had touched him, freed him, fed him, the subtleties of her scent, so like Kikyou's yet so markedly different, had cleared his mind of the blood haze.

And underlying her natural odor had been the damning evidence of blood and illness wrapped in his own scent.
<I>
'So, she was the one . . . the one I hunted.' </I>His ears flattened briefly against his skull in shame as vague, disjointed memories of his previous madness drifted hazily through his mind.

For a very long time he had had no sense of time and reality. Rage and betrayal, compounded by hunger, had reduced his intellect to its most primitive level, stripping his consciousness to only the basic necessities of survival. Fight. Flee. Hunt. Kill. However, he had never fully adapted to the form Kikyou had trapped him in. He lacked the coordination and agility to catch small, fast-moving game, and deer were rare in the forest so close to the city. Even if he did come across one, unabated hunger had sapped his strength, making a kill next to impossible. In final desperation, madness, he had taken to stalking humans. When he had still been aware of his actions they disgusted him. It was cannibalism in its way due to his hybrid lineage, and cannibalism of their own kind was forbidden among both his mother's and his father's peoples.

But eventually he became too hungry to care.

The girl had come along at quite a convenient time, or so it seemed. His hesitance to directly attack humans had reached its lowest point, and an isolated young female would be an easy and much needed meal. But he had underestimated her strength. Or overestimated his own. Whatever the true reason, she had severely injured him, and the new moon of the next night had left him on the verge of death. She had found him then and, not realizing who or what he was, had proceeded to restore him to health.

The regular meals of table scraps she brought revitalized his body, and he inwardly scoffed at her amazement at his quick recovery. He might be trapped in a dog's body, but he was still a hanyou with a hanyou's healing abilities. However, despite the generous amounts of food the girl brought him, he had yet to return to his full strength. Because she was ignorant of his true identity she did not realize the bounds his appetite could have, especially the amount required to recover his lost health. Though she starved him in a kinder way than he had starved before, it was not fatal. Some food was far better than none, and each day he grew stronger. Soon he would have enough strength to hunt and to kill and would no longer need to concern himself with her offerings. Then he would decide what he would do with the girl.

"Inu!"

Inuyasha rose, stretching extravagantly. His eyes narrowed as he set off toward the crashing sounds of her progress through the forest. Didn't she realize how loud she was?

<I>'One day you will realize what I am, human girl, and you will attempt to kill me as all the others have. But you too will fail.'
</I>
<hr>

"Inu! Inu, where are you?"

Kagome cupped her hands around her mouth to amplify the call. She walked steadily down the forest trail, her large yellow bag slung over her shoulder and bouncing against her back with each step. Despite still fresh memories of the attack, the forest during the day was far less forbidding, and each day she found herself relaxing a bit more upon entering its shadows. The dog had a significant impact on her new attitude, of course. He was soothing, bad tempered as he was, because he was alive, had stayed alive. Her fear of the demon beast's forest evaporated with each new day marked by shafts of sunlight arching down through the trees and by the presence of the white dog . . . when he choose to reveal himself.

"Come on, Inu! I have ramen!"

She held up the still warm carton, waving it in the air expectantly. The undergrowth rustled to her right, followed seconds later by a large furry head staring balefully at her from between the leaves.

"That's a good boy!" she cooed, ignoring his snarled response as she approached a fallen tree. Kagome grimaced as she eyed the no doubt rotting wood. She dropped her bag unceremoniously beside the log before perching the ramen carton atop it a bit more carefully. She beckoned to Inuyasha as she shrugged out of her new, red uniform jacket and spread it over the tree before sitting down. "Come over here. We're going to try something different today, okay?"

The dog approached her warily, stopping well out of reach and sitting down. Kagome's lips quirked, and she quickly cupped her chin to hide her wry smile.

<I>Well, someone obviously doesn't like the routine deviating from the norm, but I've spent the last few weeks leading up to this moment. He's not going to change my mind now.
</I>
She honestly had not expected him to survive the first night after she had found him, but he had managed to surprise her. She had taken to leaving food for him near the tree where she found him. It was always gone by the next day, and he slowly began to move around. Kagome was overjoyed, and a plot began to form in her mind. She had always wanted a dog, and now she had one . . . even if he was wild, dangerous, and starving.

So Kagome was crafty and patient and embarked on a surprisingly successful process of desensitizing him to her presence. Each day she moved the food a little farther away from the tree and closer to her log, and each day she sat a little closer to him and stayed a little longer. Gradually he became accustomed to her presence, and some of his aggression and skittishness towards her vanished. However, he tolerated her only because she was useful to him, because she fed him, and she knew it.

<I>But I won't let it end there.
</I>
"Now, are you sure you don't want this yummy, healthy dog food?" she cajoled, pulling a small but still full bag of kibble from her bag. As always he turned his head away and raised his nose in the air, grumbling under his breath. In a human such an action would be considered an obvious negative and a deliberate snub, and the dog?s action never failed to amuse Kagome. "Beggars can't be choosers, you know." She snorted. "Then again, you've never begged. Fine, fine, have it your way then. But that cost me a lot of money. Dog food isn't cheap! But I guess if you really don't want it then I'll stop offering."

Inuyasha huffed impatiently and flexed his paws, gouging lines in the dirt to release some of his annoyance. <I>'I am not your pet, bitch, so just shut up and give me the real food.'
</I>
She leaned forward, tilting her head curiously. "I wonder why you're the way you are though. I wish you could talk and would tell me what happened to you. Did someone poison you once? Is that why you won't even touch it? Were you betrayed?"

He turned his head back to her, and a curl of fear twisted in her stomach at the sharpness in his cold golden stare.

<I>Don't be ridiculous, Kagome! You're imagining things. There's no way he could have possibly understood what you just said.
</I>
"I know, I know, just get on with the feeding, right?" she forced with fake cheer, pulling various containers from her bag. "You're lucky I'm so generous . . . and that Mama hasn't realized I've been sneaking out leftovers." She tossed a handful of fish cakes at his feet and watched him wolf them down, relaxing back into fond annoyance as the tension eased from his body. "You could at least show a little gratitude. Every day you get half of my lunch in addition to the leftovers, and <I>I </I>get hungry too!"

Several rice balls disappeared down his gullet, and he turned his remorselessly expectant yellow gaze to the ramen carton at her side even as he dipped his head into the obento box she had shoved to him with her foot.

"Somebody's got a healthy appetite. Guess I would too if I'd been starving though," Kagome mused aloud, idly stuffing the empty containers back into her bag.

His stare did not waver in its intensity, and she suppressed a triumphant grin. The dog loved ramen. He seemed to love all food actually, and who could blame him after he had gone without it for so long? However, ramen had been the first food she had ever given him, and that first life-saving meal had left quite an impression on the dog . . . which was why Kagome was using ramen as bait. She had not touched him since she had freed him--he did not want her to and, despite her cavalier attitude, she had a great deal of respect for his teeth--but she was determined to change that today.
<I>
It's good that he's so focused . . . since I'm not going to allow my intentions to be swayed no matter what.
</I>
As his eyes followed her every movement, Kagome carefully put the ramen into two shallow bowls that she had brought just for this occasion. One bowl she put on the ground and slid carefully to him with her foot, but she clutched the other one tightly to her. The dog slipped forward cautiously, keeping his strange eyes on her even as he dipped his muzzle in the bowl. The flavored noodles and broth disappeared quickly, and he raised his head, eyeing the bowl in her hands hungrily.

The girl smiled and slowly extended her right arm, cupping the bowl carefully on her palm. Inuyasha's ears pricked forward, and he eased closer. Kagome just as slowly drew the bowl back. The dog stiffened, glaring at her angrily, something between an indignant snarl and a pleading whimper rising in his throat.

"Come on," Kagome cajoled softly. "You know you want it. Just come and get it. I won't hurt you."

Inuyasha bristled. <I>'How stupid do you think I am, human? I know what you want. You won't get it. I am not a fucking pet!'</I>

But the warm scent of the ramen teased his nostrils, and against his will his body pressed forward.

Inuyasha walked forward one step.

Two steps.

Three.

Every muscle in his body tensed to move and his eyes locked on her face, he began lapping at the noodles. Kagome held her breath, afraid that her tiniest action might drive him away. However, she could not withstand the temptation of those soft triangular ears forever, and her left hand rose slowly.

Her fingers barely brushed against the top of his lowered head. Inuyasha snarled savagely, jerking his head away from her touch and sending the empty ramen bowl flying out of her hand. He sprang away into the forest shadows, leaving the bowl facedown in the dirt and Kagome clutching her hands to her chest. Kagome slid off the fallen tree onto the ground and laughed shakily as she felt her heart racing through the material of her shirt. She closed her eyes, slumping against the rough wood at her back and raising her face to the treetops.

"Well . . . that went better than I expected."

[Lara Winner]

I'm glad to see you updated. I thought this fic was a goner which would have been a real shame. Great chapter. I hope to see more.