A Functionally Dysfunctional Valentine’s Day
Set in the Functionally Dysfunctional AU
@inuyasha-valentines
Contrary to popular belief, out of the two of them, Inuyasha was the romantic. While Kagome did love a good romance movie and a date night with her husband, it was Inuyasha who loved to plan and perfect their outings. Kagome had been the one to introduce him to the world of wooing, but once Inuyasha got a taste of it, he was addicted.
Kagome’s work at the clinic had been busier than usual, due much in part to the recent cold snap, and she had all but forgotten Inuyasha’s favorite holiday was coming up. But he hadn’t, and was busily using the extra time that his wife was at the clinic to prepare his ultimate plan. ‘When you getting home?’ He texted his wife because he knew a call would prove to be fruitless. He also knew that expecting a response right away was stupid, so he tucked his phone into his pocket, and set to rotating the tires on the car that had been dropped off that morning. Once he was done, he set to changing the oil, mentally preparing a list of things he needed for his special day with Kagome. ‘I have the roses and chocolate…maybe wine? Oh I should stop by the card section and see if there is a good one. I think we need more dashi stock…’ The good thing about being excellent at his job was his mind could be elsewhere while he was working. It was well over three hours later that Kagome responded. ‘It’s slower today, so I can be home for 4!! :D’ Inuyasha snorted at the emoji attempt, knowing that Kagome had expected it to auto fill but it hadn’t. But nonetheless, 4 pm was good. It meant they had a long evening to themselves. ‘Maybe I should pick up bubble bath stuff too…but she probably has quite a bit of that...’ Inuyasha shot back an actual emoji, just to mess with her a little bit, before looking at the time. ‘Almost one…’
He turned back to the cars he had to work on, and decided that if he worked efficiently enough, he could close up by three, giving him enough time to get to the store. When it came to Valentine’s Day, Inuyasha was always the first person to have in his order for flowers at the local flower shop. He also preordered all the chocolates from the fancy Swiss store on the other side of town, so he knew he was safe in that regard. He had picked them up that morning, and keen to get them home. It was sometimes a toss-up if there were any good cards left, but Kagome loved either cheesy or mildly offensive cards, so he figured he could find one that fit either category. After all, most wives wanted to be wooed on Valentine’s Day, but Kagome just wanted to spend time with him. Locking everything up for the day finally, after calling his regulars to let them know he was closing a little bit earlier than normal, and starving off the jabs from Totosai to ‘Go and love her right up’, he texted Kagome to tell her he was heading to the store, and to let him know if she needed anything. He arrived just after 3 pm at the mom and pop grocery store that Kagome loved, but he wasn’t the only person standing in the card isle. There were dozens of men, trying to find a nice card for their special someone, some toting kids along, some toting carts full of stuffed animals and chocolate. Inuyasha silently judged all of them for their lack of organization, while mentally praising himself for being such a thoughtful spouse. The only reason he waited until the last minute to pick out the card was because the more picked over the isle was, the more visible the most ridiculous cards were, which saved him time in finding one. Scanning quickly over the options in the Funny-For Her section, Inuyasha picked up the first one that caught his eye. It had a dog squatting on it, with ‘HEY HOT STUFF!’ written across the top at an angle in a font suspiciously similar to the word affects in Microsoft Word that every middle schooler loves. Opening it to read the inside, Inuyasha barked out a loud laugh before closing it, grabbing the envelope, and walking away, heedless of the stares the other people in the isle were giving him. He checked his phone, but Kagome hadn’t texted back yet, so he chanced a phone call to her. “Hi handsome!” She answered the phone. He smiled, always happy to hear her voice, “Hey beautiful. I’m at the store, what do you want for dinner?” “Oh! You’re there right now? I need some soy sauce, dashi, and veggies? I think I still have some tofu in the fridge. What are you thinking for dinner?” “Oden or something, should I grab some meat?” “Okay!” Inuyasha heard, her excitement at the thought of having her favorite meal for dinner shining through. “If you pick up a cake mix, we can have that tonight too! Weight need eggs though...” “Got it. I’ll pick up the mix and the ingredients for the cake to be sure.” “Good idea. Also grab whatever snacks you want. I’m certain we are out of those.” Inuyasha swung down the baking isle, grabbing a vanilla cake mix, vegetable oil, and pink canned frosting. “On it. Anything else?” He asked as he made his way to the refrigerator area. Kagome sighed loudly on the other end of the line. “No, I’m just really excited to come home at a reasonable time. I can’t wait to pet my cat while it’s still light out.” Inuyasha snorted while inspected the eggs in the carton he had picked up. “Your cat is more important than your husband? I’m mortally injured, wench.” “Oh you’ll get your attention. But you know how Buyo gets when you get kisses before him.” Inuyasha places the eggs carefully in the basket he had in his arms, and wondered if he should go back and get a cart. “Maybe I should start being fussier than him. I wonder if that would get me the attention I desire.” “… don’t you dare…” Kagome’s voice held no malice, and Inuyasha knew that she was just as amused as him. Deciding a cart was too much of a hassle, Inuyasha meandered towards the snack section, inspected sales as he walked by. “Tempting idea though.” “You’re being a brat. But I do have to go if I’m going to get out of here on time. I love you.” “Hmm, love you. See you at home.” “Bye!” Kagome hung up quickly. Inuyasha rucked his phone back into his pants pocket, and picked out his choice snacks for home. He had to back track to pick up the meat, but it was fate in a way. Kaede was standing next to the fish, inspecting the choices available. She mustn’t have noticed him, but, to her credit, she didn’t jump when he approached. “What are you going for Valentine’s Day, Inuyasha?” Inuyasha selected some thinly sliced beef, wrapped it in a bag, before placing it in his now-teetering-fully basket. He then reached over and took Kaede’s nearly empty basket. “Spending it with the wife at home. What else should I do?” “You’re not taking her out to dinner?” Kaede selected a nice and plump, but small, white fish, and placed it in her basket that Inuyasha was holding. “She’s not to into going out. You have plans?” “Oh yes. To come here tomorrow, once the sweets are on sale, and have my fill.” Kaede grinned up at his with a full smile and a sparking eye. Inuyasha smiled back, responding, “Now there’s an idea.” Kaede turned on her heel, making her way to the front to check out. “Well I have all I need. What about you, young man?” Inuyasha closely followed. “Yeah, I’m done.” He placed the two baskets at the register of a young teenager, who looked completely unenthusiastic. The boy started to mindlessly ring the items up, not even greeting either of the customers, not that either minded.
The two mildly chatted over the different Valentines Day sweets that they liked the most. As the boy finished scanning and bagging Inuyasha’s grocery items, Inuyasha finally spoke to the cashier. “Her items too, please.” The teenager grunted and began to empty the second basket.
“Inuyasha, please. I can pay for my own groceries.” Kaede chided, but made no indication that she wanted to stop him from doing so.
Inuyasha grinned over at her, pulling out the enough cash to cover the transaction. “I can’t ask you to be my Valentine, but I can pay for your groceries.”
Kaede laughed, and Inuyasha picked up the multiple bags, although only one was the older woman’s. Kaede continued her comments regarding the Valentine sweets she remembered from childhood, and how few of them were still around, while the two of them walked to Inuyasha’s car.
Once they were settled in, and Inuyasha was beginning the brief journey home, Kaede took a peek at the card Inuyasha had purchased for his wife. She read it out loud, pausing at the end to chuckled good naturedly.
“If I didn’t know you two,” she croaked out, her voice caught up from her deep laugh, “I would think this was man trying to get a divorce.”
Inuyasha laughed too. “That’s why Kagome’s the best wife. She thinks these things are funny!”
Kaede placed the card back into the envelope, and leaned back for the last block home. “You two are a match made in heaven.”
Inuyasha smiled, but said nothing further to her comments, knowing that she spoke the truth. Pulling into the driveway of their small but present home, Inuyasha turned the engine off, and grabbed Kaede’s grocery bag. He walked her over to her house in a comfortable silence, and was patted on the cheek for his efforts. After making sure she secured her door, he went back to the car to bring in the rest of the bags of groceries. He had enough time to start chopping the vegetables for the oden before Kagome came back and took over.
He figured his car, although it was his baby, could spend one night outside, especially since it was predicted to be a mild night.
Kagome came home just as Inuyasha was putting the broth in the serving bowl to heat it up and boil the vegetables, left over tofu from the fridge, and meat. Kagome greeted him with a warm kiss, and a soft “Happy Valentine’s Day” before jogging to the bedroom to put her pajamas on, with Buyo hot on her heels, true to his nature and displeased that Inuyasha had received any sort of affection prior to him.
Inuyasha took the brief repose from his wife to quickly sign the card, and put it on the table for her, next to the vase of roses and fancily packaged chocolates.
Kagome entered the room, wearing her soft fleece pajama pants with hearts all of over it and one of his old t-shirts he wasn’t allowed to wear in public anymore. Her hair was haphazardly tossed up into a messy bun, and she carried the vocally displeased calico cat in her arms. She saw the card, and tossed a sheepish look at Inuyasha.
“It’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it?” She asked, remorse already filling her eyes and body.
Inuyasha placed the oden ingredients into the broth, and grunted. He rinsed his hands, and walked over to her. “Don’t stress, woman! Christmas is your thing, Valentine’s is mine. After all, I tried to stay open on Christmas this year.”
Kagome laughed, her tense shoulders easing, letting Buyo slip a little bit. Buyo quickly informed both of them exactly what his opinion of that was, but they ignored him.
“Tried being the key word. No one was willing to come themselves!” She leaned into his embrace.
“Ah, what diligent customers I have, thinking of my wife just as much as I do!” He planted a kiss on her head, before picking up the still yowling cat from her arms and placing him on his shoulder. “One day, someone is going to call the cops on us for animal abuse with the way he carries on.”
Kagome patted the larger brown spot on Buyo, snorting, “If anyone tries to take him away, I’m sure they’ll bring him back in the hour.” She reached down and opened the envelope to reveal the card front. She tossed him a deadpan look. “I think I made something similar to this in middle school.”
Inuyasha grinned. “Isn’t it great! Just wait, it gets better!”
Kagome narrowed her eyes, and read the card. “Hey hot stuff…” she opened the card to reveal the image of the dog defecating with a grimace on its face, “You’re the shit.” There was cartoon steam coming off of the pile of excrement, and the color of the words was a deep brownish yellow, also appearing to be a special word affect, done with bad taste.
Inuyasha looked back and forth from the card to his wife’s face once, and then twice, before Kagome let out a howl of a laugh, which proved to be too much for Buyo who demanded to be place on the ground instantly. Inuyasha complied, knowing that something was probably going to get destroyed by the cat, but not really caring.
Kagome’s laugh was infectious, and Inuyasha started to laugh along with her. “Inuyasha!” she exclaimed, “You’ve out done yourself!”
“I knew you’d love it!” He accepted her arms as the flung around his neck so she could pull him in for a kiss. Pulling back from her affection, he added his last thought for a while, “The only issue is, it’s not really work appropriate, so you can’t show it off.”
“Oh well, it’s the thought that counts,” Kagome retorted before kissing him again.
He was only released when the boiling of the soup pot became loud, and Kagome took a moment to smell the flowers and appreciate the chocolates. They ate their dinner in comfortable quiet, only interrupted by the whizzing of cars outside, and the groans of a grumpy cat in the back ground. They held hands under the table, like bashful lovers, even though they were in their own home with no one looking. Together, they cleaned up the kitchen, and made the cake mix kinda-sorta to package directions, but not too terribly worried if it turned out.
Once it was in the oven and the 58 minutes on the clock, Inuyasha moved into the living room to put on a movie. While Kagome did love a good romcom upon an occasion, Inuyasha couldn’t be bothered to sit through even an hour of it, so he put on a good action movie that he knew Kagome would love.
She sauntered into the room holding glasses of wine. “Look what I found under the sink!” she called to him before noticing his movie choice. “Rush Hour? Heck yeah!”
Inuyasha accepted the glass from her. “Only the best for my better half.”
Kagome blushed mildly, pleased by his comments, but more interested in the movie than further the conversation. Together they snuggled, drinking wine, until the timer went off, and Kagome left to take the cake out of the oven. She came back with one of her abnormally fluffy and large blankets, and dropped her head on his lap for the rest of the film.
Inuyasha absent mindedly twirled her hair in his fingers, and appreciated the warmth of their love and home.
Once the movie was done, Kagome was lightly dozing off on his lap, her breathing deep and regular. Inuyasha made no move to wake her up, but as soon as the noise from the television stopped, she opened her eyes. Her body tensed for a moment, before she released a loud sigh and stretched long.
She rolled over to meet his eyes. “Wanna bath?” he asked her.
“Everyday.” She sat up, and lifted her hands above her head. “Whatcha thinking of?”
“You, in a bubble bath, me, on the floor reading you some stupid tweets.” Inuyasha rose himself, placed his hands on his lower back, leaning back to stretch. He then stepped just in front of her to lift her into his arms, carrying her bridal style.
Kagome laughed gleefully, “Ooohhh, Mr. Romantic! You know the way to a woman’s heart!” Inuyasha carried her up to their bathroom, before turning on the faucet for her bath. Kagome stripped down, wrapped herself in a towel, before reaching to grab some bath salts and a bubble bath gel. She handed them to Inuyasha who put some under the running water. Soon the bath was heavily scented and frothy – just the way Kagome liked.
Kagome crawled into the warm water, sighing in appreciation, and Inuyasha sat on the floor next to the tub. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, where it had yet to leave from his trip to the store, and pulled up his Twitter app. It was virtually the only social media that Inuyasha consumed, but he was never active on it. He just enjoyed the different tweets from comedians that he followed.
He read all of his feed, filtering none of it, and he and Kagome rated whether they thought they were funny or not. If there was a picture included, Inuyasha would show it to Kagome, and some of the bootlegged items that were begin inspected caused quite the uproar between the two of them.
“Oh yes,” Kagome exclaimed between her giggles, “the collaboration between Nike and Winne the Pooh was my favorite one.”
Inuyasha gasped out his laughter, nodding his agreement.
Once the wine and hot water got to Kagome, she beached her way out of the tub, completely unconcerned that she was the opposite of graceful, knowing Inuyasha had seen much worse from her. He handed her a towel after tucking away his phone again. Kagome stumbled, still chuckling to herself to the bedroom. She called over her shoulder, “Bring the car to the garage. Then come back to bed.”
Inuyasha knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that she remembered his car better than he did, but if it was important to him, it was important to her, and he was pleased to hear her remind him to take it in. Although he hadn’t intended to do so, he went to pull his favorite car into the garage. As he grabbed his keys, he saw the destruction Buyo had chosen to wreak. Looking at the little pieces of paper that was strewn all of the entry way to their home, Inuyasha halfway hoped the paper wasn’t important, but chose to do nothing at the moment, because, hell, it was already done.
Inuyasha stepped outside and brought his car into the garage, and was back in the house before Kagome could get her inebriated and happy self into bed. She had managed to get her pajamas back on, but was fighting a losing battle with the duvet. Inuyasha watched for a little while, Kagome’s giggling preventing her from being able to easily pull back the cover, and her wobbly legs making her teeter her and there. Eventually, after he got his fill of amusement, Inuyasha helped her into bed, before changing into his pajamas of light sleeping pants, and no shirt. He went downstairs to frost and bring up the cake that had been momentarily forgotten. He hadn’t realized at the store that the frosting container came with some gaudy hearts and kisses sprinkles, but he poured them on top of the frosting anyways. Although Kagome was a much better cake decorator than him, he knew she would love it regardless. He climbed back up the stairs with two larger slices of the cake, and found Kagome had snagged his phone out of his pants, her mostly likely downstairs in her purse still. She was playing Whitney Huston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ at full volume. When she saw him enter the doorframe, she sang with it. Normally, Kagome had a lovely voice, that reigned in its listener, but slightly drunk Kagome was singing for the gods. And not in a good way. Inuyasha’s ears immediately pinned against his head, and he looked at her in horror. Kagome only lasted about 10 seconds before she started to cough from the effort, and began to laugh instead. “Let’s not do that again, wench.” Inuyasha approached the bed and put the cake slices on the side table on his side. Kagome rasped out, “You got it, dog boy.” Inuyasha took then phone and turned off the song. He set his alarm, a little later than normal for Kagome’s sake, and put the phone on the nightstand. Kagome was still laying down, looking up at him with eyes that shone so much love that Inuyasha had to take a second and kiss her. She tried to wrap her hands up into his hair and pull him closer, but he moved away from her to grab the cake slices. Kagome was easily persuaded to change her course of action, and accepted the plate with a wholehearted, “oh my, my, my! Thank you!” Inuyasha settled in next to her, still on top of the duvet, but in close proximity. They took turns feeding each other bites of their respective slices of cake, interrupted by kisses here and there. The cake was sweet, but not as sweet as the loved shared between the two lovers. Once the cake was finished, even the crumbs gone, Inuyasha picked up the plates, and walked them down to the dishwasher. He came back with a glass of water for both of them, but Kagome appeared to have already fallen asleep. She was curled up toward his side of the bed, her arm reaching out for him already. Kneeling on the edge of the bed, Inuyasha reached over her to place her water down on her nightstand. Placing his glass on his side, Inuyasha laid down carefully, waiting for Kagome to move her arm before placing his whole weight on the mattress. She pulled her arm back from instinct, and waited for him to settle on his back before reaching her arm across his torso and scooting closer. Inuyasha wrapped his arms around her, whispering, “You’re such a damn lightweight.” Kagome mumbled back to him, “But I’m your lightweight.” Inuyasha snorted lightly, “Yeah, you are,” before closing his eyes and chasing sleep himself. Except, Kagome’s giggles returned with a vengeance, and soon her entire body was shaking uncontrollably, and she looked up into his one opened eye and said, “You’re the shit…” Inuyasha screwed his eyes tight, trying to not laugh, but failing miserably. He too began to shake, and the two of them fell into hysteria together. Kagome reached up to pull him into a wet kiss, pulling away to say, “Happy Valentine’s Day to the best husband in the whole wide world. I love you more than you can ever imagine.” Inuyasha placed his hand on the back of her neck, and puller closer to him, tucking her head into the crook of his neck. “I love you too. You’ll never know how much.” Kagome sighed, and closed her eyes, finally succumbing to the call of sleep, with Inuyasha not far behind. The next morning, they’d go downstairs to find out Buyo had destroyed the water bill, and that they would have to call up the company for the amount they owed, would eat cake for breakfast, and would continue their week the best way they knew how: functionally dysfunctional. But for the moment, they were just in love, and happy to be that way.