Disclaimer: I don’t own Inuyasha.
The pat on his shoulder made Sesshoumaru glance up from the till to look at the manager who was wearing a weary smile.
“Sorry, Sesshoumaru-san, there’s a customer for you,” the manager said as he rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
Shrugging blithely, Sesshoumaru followed the direction of the manager’s gaze to a woman slumped over the corner of their quiet little bar. Bemused golden eyes flicked back to the manager; she was not the customer that he was usually sent to deal with. Being a Yokai of considerable status he was generally deployed when male customers got too violent, this woman wasn’t his usual.
The manager pursed his lips in a troubled manner. “I know, I know, but she really has had enough and needs to go home now. I sent Hojo-san over to tell her but he ran past me with a nose bleed five minutes later. When I went over she tried to talk my ear off... you’re the only one who hasn’t tried.”
“I understand,” Sesshoumaru acknowledged, walking down towards the woman and looming over her imposingly.
Certainly not the usual customer, the woman was delicately beautiful with big unfocused blue eyes and black wavy hair that was spilling over the bar haphazardly. She hiccupped adorably as she warbled her way through a warped rendition of the American song ‘That Ol’ Black Magic’.
“Okyaku-sama,” he murmured, rapping a clawed finger on the bar next to her head, “don’t you think you should go home?”
The woman lifted her head feebly and narrowed her watery eyes at him. “Can’t.”
Sesshoumaru schooled his features so that he didn’t look as bored as he felt. This was the part where the customer poured out their life story, detailing how nothing was their fault and how if they’d just done something differently... It was annoying. And boring.
“My legs won’t move!” she lamented feebly, head falling back down onto the bar with a crack that made Sesshoumaru flinch.
“Okyaku-sama?” he asked concernedly. He didn’t really know much about human physiology, could a human get a concussion from that?
“I was going to go straight home!” she protested feebly, voice muffled as she was face down on the table, “but I don’t like home!”
“Right...” Sesshoumaru suddenly gained enlightenment over the manager’s predicament. She certainly was hard to handle.
“There’s a scary person there!” she yelled, lifting herself from the bar to gaze at him beseechingly, grabbing a handful of his shirt to yank him closer with a strength he hadn’t expected from a human.
Possibly she was a lightweight... he glanced down at her glass and realised she’d been drinking some pretty good sake... expensive sake.
But, now that he noticed it, her clothes were pretty expensive looking too, the delicate diamond drop necklace accentuating her graceful neck and the pale pink dress shifting softly against her long pale legs. She would have been the epitome of elegance, had she not been grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt.
The bar door opened with a dramatic bang that was usually reserved for old Western films, revealing an elegant man in a dark purple kimono, red eyes gleaming above a golden fan as long black hair tumbled over his shoulders.
“There you are, Ka-go-me-chan!” he muttered ominously, fairly floating across the bar to her side.
Sesshoumaru suspected that if she’d been able to summon up the coordination skills required, she would have jumped over the bar to be away from this Hanyou.
As it was though, she couldn’t, and soon found herself thrown over the shoulder of this Machiavellian man.
“I hope she didn’t cause you any trouble!” he sang cheerfully as he carted the pathetically protesting woman away.
They left with a clang of the door and a wail of the woman and a fluttering of autumn leaves. Sesshoumaru blinked mutely. That had been... weird.
Surprised, he lifted his hand from the counter to discover that the man had tucked an address card under his fingers alongside a pile of money amounting to enough to keep a small family fed for a year.
“What was with those people...” Sesshoumaru wondered exasperatedly, starting to head back to the other customers...
And then he saw it.
The stupid drunken woman had left her bag.
“Baka.”
A/N: This was written for the prompt ‘That Ol Black Magic’ and amounts to 715 words.