In a field of greenery, alone on the tabletop, there sat a single carton of cookies. But not any cookies. They were sugar cookies shaped like Santa’s head; white and red crystals of sugar made his hat and beard glitter like the most precious of jewel-encrusted broaches. They were not meant to sit in that meager, insufficient plastic carton; like the manger that had held baby Jesus, the contents were far more valuable than what held them. These were meant to be displayed—perhaps on a platter—where they could be admired by all.

And there was only one carton left.

The instant Kagome Higurashi saw them, she knew they had to be hers. More than the pyramid of crackers and chips in her shopping cart, more than the Cheese-Whiz, more than the seven other kinds of topping and dip, more than the strawberry-kiwi Jello, more than the celery and carrot sticks she knew no one would touch, more than the ten liters of varying soda, and more than the twenty-four boxes of six different kinds of Pocky—more than anything else that threatened to collapse the unfortunate cart. A bright smile flashed across Kagome’s face when she spotted them from fifteen feet away, and immediately she began shoving her cart towards the baked goods section, toiling at it like Sisyphus and the stone that never saw the head of the slope.

Then, over the trembling stack of Wheat Thins, she spied an elderly woman drawing near to her cookies. The old woman was the picture of the loving grandmother, with a lacy shawl knotted around bony shoulders, spectacles with lenses that magnified her eyes to about seven times their natural size, wispy white hair, and to top it all off a purse with knitting needles poking out, strangled in yarn of one of those revolting shades of green senior citizens seemed to favor. Her hands shook like she was preparing James Bond’s martini, and she took shuffling, tiny steps, looming closer and closer to the cookies.

It was clear to Kagome that this woman was pure, unadulterated evil, sent to earth merely to rob her of her pastry goodness. Abandoning her cart, she strode to the stand that housed that last carton of sugar cookies, a warm smile on her face and fire in her eyes.

But just as she got there, one pallid, quivering hand touched down on the plastic box.

Immediately the old woman saw her and retracted her hand, smiling feebly. "Oh, I’m quite sorry, dear. Did you want these? I don’t really need them…"

Fantastic. If she took the cookies, the old woman was going to make her feel like shit for as long as humanly possible.

"No, that’s fine," Kagome said, her voice a bit forced. "I’ll find some others."

"No, I insist." The woman picked them up and held them out to her, her grip so infirm that the cookies clattered in their unworthy plastic casing like a rattlesnake’s warning.

"No, it’s all right." Kagome gave the cookies a little push back towards the woman.

The old woman’s eyes narrowed—it didn’t do much, because thanks to the glasses, she still resembled a praying mantis—and a few sparks in them began whirling into a fire not unlike Kagome’s. Whoever took the cookies got the guilt now: it would be a fight to the finish.

"You absolutely must take them. It’s clear you’re shopping for a party."

Kagome kept a snarl off her face. That sneaky old hag! She’d looked at her shopping cart! "Well, I think it’d be better if I tried to keep it healthy," she returned. "The cookies are yours."

"But you’ve got potato chips in there," the woman pointed out, nodding at the cart. "I wouldn’t exactly say those are healthy."

"That’s very observant of you," Kagome said a bit shortly. "Enjoy the cookies, ma’am." Turning around, she headed back to her shopping cart.

The elderly soul stared after her. The girl had just won, leaving her with the cookies and the weight of a guilt trip. Like she could eat them now without thinking of all the people who’d be missing out on them…"Little bitch," she muttered under her breath before dropping them back on the table and moving off.

Kagome counted to ten, then turned around and went to claim her prize.

"So let me get this straight." Miroku leaned back against the couch in the dorm’s common room, deadpan. "In order to buy one box of cookies—"

"Santa cookies! With sugar sprinkles! There’s a difference, you know!"

"—one box of Santa, sugar-sprinkled cookies, you beat up an old woman and made her feel like crap until she didn’t even want the cookies anymore."

"If you put it that way, I sound like a total bitch," Kagome objected. "And no, in the spirit of giving, we both insisted the other should take the cookies, because there’s a moral obligation at Christmas to be nicer." She took a sip of her hot chocolate. "I just happen to have remarkable moral flexibility."

"In other words, you were a total bitch." Having known Kagome since they’d been in preschool, he could get away with comments like that—until she got fed up enough to threaten to tell everyone that in preschool he had had a nasty habit of eating sand. They’d gone to the same elementary school, middle school, high school, and even now they were in the same college dorm building.

"Morally flexible," she corrected. "There’s a difference with that too."

"What time do I need to be at your house?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Four o’clock if you want to help set up, five thirty if you’re a lazy ass. And no, before you ask, it is not a co-ed slumber party."

"It is if we all get drunk off our asses!" he said with a little too much cheerful determination for her liking. "And who all is coming?"

"I was thinking Shizuku, Ayumi, Maiko, Sango, you, Houjo, and a couple of others." She counted off the numbers on her fingers. "But you can bring a friend or two. I want people to see those cookies."

"I can?" He tapped his chin. "You don’t suppose…I could bring along…"

One of Kagome’s eyebrows rose. "No."

"I wasn’t done yet!" Miroku protested.

"You have only one friend that you’d hesitate to ask about, coincidentally the same person whom I equate with scum on a urinal."

"So I can’t bring those male strippers?"

"Male strippers, yes. Inuyasha, no. Inuyasha as a male stripper, and I will severe your head from your shoulders with a spork. And believe me, I can."

"I don’t get why you dislike him so much," argued Miroku. "What’s wrong with the guy?"

"If I listed all the reasons, we’d be here all night." She scowled and wedged herself deeper into the armchair.

Miroku grinned. "I can live with that."

"No thank you." She sent him a dirty look. "But he’s rude, he’s arrogant, he’s clueless, and he always looks down on me like whatever he doesn’t like about me is contagious. I’d rather not spend my Christmas Eve with someone who behaves as if my goal in life is to make him contract Ebola."

"Point taken." Miroku stared at the ceiling for a moment, brow furrowed. "I’ll just have to call up those male strippers, I guess."

"Please do." Kagome stared into the distance. "I hope my parents bring me back something from Hawaii. Lucky bastards, you’d think they’d take their daughter."

"Look on the bright side, Kag—no matter how smashed you get, they won’t be there to capture those Kodak moments on film. We will, but hopefully your parents won’t see."

"That’s supposed to be the bright side?"

"Well, that and the male strippers."

"I see." She snorted—if Miroku knew any strippers, they’d be female, but it was fun to joke about it—and didn’t comment further.

Then something crossed her mind, and she sat up straight. "Oh, crap! I forgot the mistletoe!"

"The what now?"

"It’s a European custom—you hang this plant somewhere, like over a doorway, and if you’re under it you have to kiss someone! I promised Maiko I would, her boyfriend’s coming…" She stood and pulled her coat off the chair where it had been drying. "I’ll be right back, okay?"

"Fine." Miroku waved to his friend, then sat back with a thoughtful look on his face. This ‘mistletoe’ sounded like it had possibilities…A lot of possibilities…

Inuyasha huddled in his coat, ears flattened. Catching a snowflake on your nose was cutesy and quaint and all that—getting several in your ears was not. Being a hanyou was even more of a pain this time of year, because the world of earmuffs was forbidden to him. His other options were to wear a hat, which would hurt his ears, or to wrap a scarf around his head. The scarf, combined with his white hair, made him look not only ridiculous but like an old woman. After the third Boy Scout had volunteered to help him at a crosswalk, he’d abandoned the scarf and left his head bare.

Now, a full youkai wouldn’t have minded the cold. Any that didn’t have a humanoid form still wouldn’t be as vulnerable to the cold as he was. And a human—well, they’d made many wondrous inventions in the way of weather-resistant garments, but that didn’t change the fact that they were meant for humans, not a hanyou with ears in the wrong place. Not for the first time and undeniably not for the last, his damned heritage was making his life difficult.

The snowflakes drifting down blended well with his hair, making it seem as if they vanished when they came near him. People passing on the sidewalk initially met his eyes, then saw he was a hanyou and averted their gazes, hurrying past. A frown darkened his features, and he hunched his shoulders but kept walking, eyes smoldering like live coals.

Winter sucked. The holidays sucked. And that was the way it would always be.

As Inuyasha rounded the corner by the herb store, he kept his gaze on the slushy sidewalk. Looking in the windows would remind him of the holidays he was fated to spend alone, in a cold house, eating a microwave dinner and watching crappy made-for-TV movies. At the moment, all he wanted to do was get to his apartment and drink himself into oblivion, since college was out for the next two weeks and no one was going to want anything to do with him—other than Miroku. And Miroku wouldn’t think anything of him getting blissfully drunk.

As the young man had learned in Physics, every action has a reaction, or a consequence. In Inuyasha’s case, he wasn’t watching where he was going. The consequence was that he collided with someone hurrying out of the herb store, and fell over with an undignified thud. Something that reeked of plant life flew out of the bag the young woman was holding and landed in his bangs, and he would have plucked it out had he not been a little preoccupied right then.

Not only was he on his back on the cold, hard, damp sidewalk, but there was a young woman on top of him. And their lips were touching.

Why is my life an effing chick flick? part of his mind wondered darkly as he sat up with no regard for the female he was serving as a mattress for. "You want to watch where you’re going, lady?"

The ‘lady’ blinked at him, a bit dazed. And then recognition hit them both at the same instant like a ton of bricks.

"Oh my God!" Kagome shrieked, stood up hastily, and scrambled over to nearest car, scraping off the snow piled on the top and rubbing it on her mouth. "Ew! Ew! Ewwwwwwwwww!"

"Aaaauuugh!" Inuyasha staggered to his feet and spat on the sidewalk, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and then for good measure also shoveled a handful of snow into his mouth, washed it around, and spat that out as well. "What is wrong with you, you goddamn harpy?!"

"What’s wrong with me?! Pretty rich coming from you, Chester the Molester!" Her face, already pink from the cold, was turning a bright red from anger and embarrassment. "God, you’re as bad as Miroku! Worse! And that’s saying something!"

"You’re the one that attacked me, you stupid bitch! And what the hell is this?!" He dragged the sprig of shrubbery from his hair, squinting at it.

"Give me that!" She stalked over and pulled it out of his hand, but not before he had gotten a good look at it.

Inuyasha smirked. "Desperate, Higurashi? I doubt anyone in their right mind would kiss you, no matter how much mistletoe you waste your money on."
"What about you?" she shot back, eyes and face aflame. "Whatever happened to little mister ‘I’m dating the Teacher’s Aide! Watch me ace the class!’?"

"You don’t know what you’re talking about," he snarled. There was warning in his glare, warning Kagome didn’t heed.

"Oh, that’s right, she cheated on you with that guy, the one who got convicted for child pornography the next month. Doesn’t say much about her taste in guys, huh? I mean, the porno guy I can understand—"

Then Inuyasha was in front of her, glowering down with a look in his eyes Kagome had never seen. "Shut up," he growled, voice soft and shaking with fury. "Shut up and never even think about bringing this up again, or I will make it so you won’t be able to."

Turning around, he walked away, tense and silent. Kagome stared after him a moment, wide-eyed, then swallowed and yelled, "I’m not afraid of you!" He didn’t seem to hear her, continuing on, and she clenched her fists, then spun around and stormed up the sidewalk.

Bastard, she thought contemptuously. He doesn’t scare me! Little fluffy baby kittens are scarier than he was!

Of course, the memory of those scalding eyes piercing through her told quite another story entirely. There had been barely-contained rage behind them, like a tsunami of flame held in check by mere cobwebs. And yet a note of pain—had she overdone it? He just made her so angry somehow…but throwing Kikyô in his face hadn’t been right. Though she’d never met his past girlfriend, the story was a well-known one. Even an asshole like him didn’t really deserve something like that…But it was too late to take back anything she’d said, and he’d been rude enough as well.

There was nothing like liplocking with your worst enemy and feeling guilty about it to put her in a good mood. And she had snow down her back.

Sango glanced up as the bar door swung open, letting in a stream of dusky light before it closed again. The newest customer was familiar, if not expected. "You’re here early, Inuyasha," she said, idly rubbing a rag over the counter. "Christmas shopping done already?"

"Give me…something," he snapped, dragging a barstool out and dropping onto it, a stormy scowl clouding his face. "Something strong."

"What’s the matter?" she asked calmly, fishing a bottle out from one of the drawers. Cheap stuff they kept at easy access. The good stuff, the stuff with fumes that could knock out a guy on their own—that got kept in the drawers.

"I don’t see how you can stand being friends with that Higurashi chick," he muttered, eyes narrowed to slits. "She’s a real bitch."

"I don’t know how you can stand that Miroku guy," she returned. "I’m surprised he doesn’t try to grope you whenever he gets drunk."

Inuyasha didn’t reply, instead downing his drink with eyes averted. Sango noted that and made a note to ask if Miroku actually had groped him at one point…but not now, when the hanyou was two steps from growling at his shot glass and challenging it to a fight. A little alcohol would hurry those steps if she wasn’t careful…Best to keep him talking.

"Why don’t you like her?" she asked, leaning on the counter. "Kagome’s perfectly nice."

"She can’t stand me and she doesn’t try to hide it," he said bitterly. "She does the weirdest stuff and says the weirdest things in Literature and gets all pissed off when no one understands what she’s trying to say. She’s hypersensitive, annoying, stubborn, and can’t stand to have someone disagree with her."

Sango raised her eyebrows and kept from commenting that he’d just named several of his own major faults.

"Plus she’s always been a bitch to me." He threw down another shot. "And you know why? Same reason Kikyô dumped me for that bastard."

"Oh?" What she’d put in his glass was rumored to work miracles on even perpetually stone-faced and tight-lipped drunkards, but even this was acting faster than she’d expected.

"Y’know what I heard Kikyô say right before she tells me we’re through? I heard her say, ‘He’s cute and all, but he’s…a hanyou.’ And Kagome’s just like Kikyô. She hates me ‘cause I’m half-demon. Bitch."

"I…wouldn’t wager on that," Sango said slowly, mind racing. She, Inuyasha, Miroku, and Kagome had Literature together at the college, and if they went back to the beginning of the year when Inuyasha and Kagome had first met…Well, that had been interesting. But Kagome was the last person she’d think of to dislike him on the grounds that he was a hanyou.

"Yeah, well, I didn’t think Kikyô minded it either, and then I hear her tell that sonofabitch the opposite. Could’ve fooled me, but I guess my life sucks that way."

Sango opened her mouth to point out that Kagome and Kikyô didn’t even know each other, but a scuffle broke out in one corner of the room and her attention was diverted. By the time she returned, Inuyasha was gone and a couple of bills left on the counter in his stead.

"Merry Christmas," she sighed. Outside, moving through the cold, snowy, lonely night, he couldn’t hear her.