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The first time Shiori met Inuyasha, he was drunk as fuck.
It was, funny enough, at another dingy bar. This particular bar was dingy because of actual dirt, grime and grossness, and not because it was the sort of aesthetic the downtown crowd liked to feel superior in. College bars tended to lean that way no matter how hard they tried to keep it clean. Shiori had been minding her own business, sitting at the bar and listening to the music pounding out the speakers. It hadn’t been all that late – probably close to one a.m., which was Shiori’s prime functioning hour. Her drink was finished, but she didn’t want another.
Something tugged at her hair.
Whirling around, Shiori wondered what exactly was going on when she came face-to-face with an exceptionally attractive man. Really hot. Like, if immortality was a thing, the guy would have absolutely been a muse for all the hot dude sculptures that were around. Shiori had never been into boys – either romantically or sexually – but general aesthetic appreciation wasn’t lost on her. Dude was hot, blinking at her owlishly like he hadn’t realized the hair he tugged on was attached to a real person, and then he winced.
“Ah,” he stated. Eloquent, too, apparently. “I’m an asshole.” He was slurring his words slightly, golden eyes a little glassy. “I was surprised.”
Shiori was so taken aback by his vague self-awareness that any irritation she felt disappeared near instantly. “What?”
“Sur-prised,” the man repeated, eyes narrowing as if the effort to say the word was exuberant. “Your hair is like mine. We match.”
Oh. It seemed absolutely insane to be talking to some random guy at a bar about their matching hair colour, but Shiori infinitely preferred this to being – say – hit on aggressively. “It is,” she agreed. “I think yours is longer.”
The man looked down, made a face, and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty smart.” He was so drunk, Shiori was embarrassed just being near him. “I’m sorry, though. For the—” He poked a little at a few strands of her hair caught on the sleeve of her shirt. “Fuck,” he said then, “I did it again.”
“You need some water, I think,” Shiori told him kindly, letting that go. “Do you want some?”
The guy blinked at her, looked back down at his own hair for a second, before shrugging. “Yeah, sure.”
“Are your friends around?” Shiori tried. She flagged down the nearby bartender – Hakkaku – and mouthed her request. It wasn’t like he’d be able to hear her over the music all that well.
“They,” the man announced rather dramatically, sitting down with flourish, “are over there somewhere.”
He didn’t even point in a direction. Shiori had to bite her lip to stop from laughing, thanking Hakkaku as he brought over a water bottle and giving it to the drunk man beside her. “Will they miss you?”
The man looked horrifically insulted by that. “What? Why would they do that?”
“Because they’re your friends?”
“They,” he declared with emphasis once more, “are jerks. I am better off here with you. Whatever your name is.”
It wasn’t even an attempt at a pick-up. The guy was laser focused on opening the water bottle, struggling far more than a guy his size should have. Laughing outright, unable to stop herself, Shiori pulled it from his hands and opened it for him. “Shiori.”
“Who?” the guy asked, blinking owlishly at her.
“Me. I’m Shiori.”
It took a long second, but then the guy’s mouth opened in surprise. He made a short sort of noise, one that Shiori couldn’t make out properly with the volume of the music. Eventually, with Shiori’s prompt of lifting the water bottle in his hands to his face, he guzzled half of it in one go.
“Inuyasha,” he said afterwards. His eyes narrowed again, and Shiori was wondering if this would be the moment that he’d go from drunk-but-not-intolerable guy to, well, drunk-and-intolerable. She’d given him water and he was sitting beside her. While neither of those things screamed hey, hit on me I’m interested, Shiori knew the score. He opened his mouth, shut it and frowned harder, and then shook his water bottle at her a little, using it to point in her general direction. Water spilled everywhere. It was horrifying for both of them. “You know,” Inuyasha started, “you kind of look like… You’re way too young to be here.”
“I’m nineteen,” Shiori replied.
“Huh.” He frowned again. He didn’t seem to believe her. “Are you here alone?”
While this would normally send red flags flying, the guy seemed more confused and genuinely unhappy by the prospect. Maybe he was simply far too drunk to communicate correctly. Either way, it was better to play it safe. “No, just waiting for someone to finish up.” At his blank stare, she sighed. “My date.”
Inuyasha blinked at her and then drank the rest of his water. When he slammed the empty plastic down onto the bar, it crumpled like wet paper. Shiori was, vaguely, impressed. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he started, and Shiori pasted her smile on because in the history of every sentence said out loud, nothing good ever came after ‘don’t take this the wrong way.’ “But something about you makes me think you’d be a good bro.”
That was…not what she expected. At all. In fact, Shiori realized, she was vaguely horrified. Shiori intentionally put out many vibes into the universe. A bro vibe was certainly not one of them. “Never say bro again, please.”
To her amusement, Inuyasha actually snorted. He propped an arm up on the bar and used it to hold his head up. “Okay.”
Shiori waited for something more. Inuyasha simply stared at her, drunk and content. She demanded another water bottle, opened the lid for him, and forced him to drink it. “Should I be trying to help you find your friends?”
Wrinkling his nose at her, Inuyasha took sulky sips of his water. “No.”
Well, alright then. “Do you want me to call you a cab?”
“But then who would protect you from assholes?”
The question startled her, and she wondered what was going on in this drunk guy’s mind that he came to such a strange conclusion as to why he was there. “Excuse me?”
“A ray of sunshine,” Inuyasha said nonsensically, shaking his head like he was deeply disturbed. “That’s what you are. I mean that in a non-weird way. But you’re just—” He waved a hand at her, like that explained anything. “A baby. And some asshole’ll come up and touch your hair and you would do what you did with me. Smile at them. You know who does that? Idiots. No,” he exclaimed, flopping upright somehow and resettling into nearly proper posture. “No, I will wait here and protect you until your friend comes.”
“I don’t need protection,” Shiori told him seriously, even though the entire display of Inuyasha’s drunken chivalry was entertaining to witness. “I’m an adult.”
“But our hair matches and you’re a baby, so I must.” Inuyasha nodded firmly and waved at one of the bartenders, Ginta. Smartly, Ginta walked right on by. “God, how hard is it to get a drink in this place?”
It should have been demeaning. Shiori was well-aware that her penchant for believing the best in people often led her to trouble. This was some random dude that looked like a Greek God sitting beside her, drunkenly declaring them bros of all horrible things and imposing unneeded – and unwanted – protection. There were red flags all over the place. Shiori wasn’t stupid, just…too nice. Her father lamented over it constantly. It just felt uncomfortably wrong to send this guy away, especially since he wasn’t hitting on her and was only being friendly.
Her indecision on what to do was disrupted when Ayame sauntered up to her from behind the bar, Shiori’s favourite drink in hand. She winked, those green eyes sparkling as she leaned across and smiled all cute.
“Just five more minutes, I promise. I’m clocking out. Rei was late for his shift again.”
Shiori smiled back, helpless. “That’s fine.”
Ayame was two years older than her, taking one of the same requisite science classes. She was cute, bouncy, and terribly hung up on some childhood crush that refused to even look her way. That was fine with Shiori, though. She wasn’t looking for serious, just fun. College was the first taste of freedom she’d ever had. The liberation was a thrill all its own.
Still, even casual as they were, Ayame shot a look at Inuyasha and then raised a brow. “Are you good then?”
“Totally fine,” she promised.
“Well, drink’s on the house. So enjoy that until I come back.” Ayame winked, twirling away with shiny red pigtails and a sway of her hips. Shiori was happy just watching until a now-familiar presence loomed into her shoulder.
“How did you do that?” he whispered, though it wasn’t much of a whisper at all. His golden gaze kept darting between her and Ayame, puzzled.
“Do what?”
“Get the bartender’s attention. I didn’t even see you try,” Inuyasha replied, like the answer should be obvious. “And a free drink!”
“She’s the one I’m waiting for,” Shiori patiently explained, watching as Inuyasha tried and failed to push himself back up, his forehead bopping on her shoulder before he righted himself.
“Oh.” Inuyasha nodded his head. “I need to be like you and get a bartender best friend. I want free drinks like you get.”
Shiori laughed, amused despite herself. Oh, to be straight. “I’m a lesbian, Inuyasha,” she told him plainly. “She is not my bartender best friend.”
It was absolutely worth it to see the way he drunkenly processed that. He blinked at her, looking frozen in time for all of two seconds before he twisted to look back at the redheaded bartender that was Shiori’s date. Or, whatever they were. Shiori didn’t really put a lot of stock into properly labelling things.
“I’ll be damned.” This was closely followed by a slow blink. “Wait. Oh no,” Inuyasha said solemnly, looking at her like it was the very end of the world. Shiori prepared, as he opened his mouth, for something stupid to come out. Instead, all he said was, “How can I protect you from unwanted attention if the main attention you’re getting is from girls? I can’t punch them.”
Oddly endearing, vaguely insulting. Shiori patted him on the shoulder. “That’s not how that works at all.” In fact, men knowing that she was gay tended to up the stupid-factor when being unwillingly hit on. “And I don’t need your protection.”
“But we’re friends,” Inuyasha told her seriously. He tugged at his own hair. “We match. Of course I would protect you.”
Shiori knew that finding this whole thing endearing was too dumb for words. She could never tell anyone about this, ever. Not even Ayame, who would be coming out at any minute ready to leave. Decision made, she leaned over the bar and grabbed one of the dry cocktail napkins. She pulled a pen from her purse and gave in. She wrote down her phone number, and signed it your matching lesbian friend, Shiori, and then gave it to him. “Since I’m going, do I need to call you a cab?”
“No, I’ll be fine.” Then, Inuyasha did a funny thing. The whole time, he’d either been frowning or smirking, sloppy expressions that showcased his drunkenness. But now, with her cell phone number clutched in his hand, he smiled. It was full of teeth and he was still very clearly drunk, but Inuyasha was undoubtedly pleased.
“Can you—” This was stupid. Shiori was far, far too nice. Still. “Can you let me know if you make it home okay?”
There was no way he would. Shiori would worry anyways for this endearing, dumb, attractive man.
Inuyasha nodded though, and she got him one last bottle of water before Ayame came out.
The rest of the early morning hours were amazing. Fun. The hour was late, but Shiori never minded staying up. Still, something nagged at her even as she stripped Ayame of her clothing, distracting her from their late night snack with a far better late night snack.
When her cell phone pinged, Shiori only felt a tiny bit bad for pulling away and checking it.
i’m home, mom, the message read. It was signed, your matching straight friend, Inuyasha.
And the rest, as the poets would say, was history.