Author's Note: Thanks for being so patient, SwordsxRoses! Here you go.
Much as he missed his mother, Kurama quickly discovered he enjoyed the newfound freedom of his apartment much more. It was modest, anonymous on the outside and cozily furnished once entered—an elegant sofa, a television, cushy chairs and a large bed—and was indelibly marked with touches of Kurama, despite the aura of a hotel room that never quite left. Tucked into the twenty-third floor of one of the high-rises Tokyo sprouted like weeds, it was comfortable, though the smog and city stench of the buildings' respiration leaked in through the vents and the windows and assaulted Kurama's tender nose. Some nights he woke up delirious from the smell, gasping for air and dreaming that the city was burning. In summer, when everything shimmered outside the glass with the heat baking the sidewalks, Kurama lowered and raised the thermostat compulsively to keep his plants (almost all sweet-smelling—Kurama couldn't help but try to mask the abominable odor) hale and healthy.
It was solitary up so high, too high even for the pigeons, but not always. Every month or so Yusuke or someone would bang on the door and invade Kurama's quiet reclusion with beer, rock, laughter, video games, and recollections. Kurama eventually got used to the sensation of acceptance that surrounded Team Urameshi. He secretly enjoyed the abrasive music that pulsed and screeched, the smiles on his teammates' faces as they ducked in and out. Yomi refused to visit him up in his loft, and Kurama was just fine with that: business and pleasure should be kept apart, he'd decided. He would never have suggested such an idiom in his Youko years, but times change, and so do people. Kurama had found that nothing in life is really static.
There was, however, one face that remained missing, and its absence ached. Hiei was even more of a hermit than Kurama, prone to disappearing, and he'd remained aloof, never visiting Kurama after the first time. It was no wonder that the last thing Kurama had expected, one smothering night in August, was to wake up with a presence in the room so comfortable it made Kurama want to turn over and go back to sleep.
He awakened instead, eyes open and fixing lazily on the dark silhouette of Hiei, standing erect and proud, all his diminutive height drawn up as he fondled his katana's ebony sheath between small, powerful hands. Hiei turned the moment Kurama awoke, the city lights muddy dabs on his scowl, dappling and shading his olive skin at weird intervals. The restless glow made his eyes shine in the night like a predator's, hungry and hunting. Kurama's lips twitched to see it directed at him.
The fox broke the impasse finally, snorting once, to himself, and rustling gracefully out from between the white cotton sheets, his feet finding the rug at the edge of the Western bed with easy charm. A plant he kept in the dimness beneath the mattress box reached out and bumped affectionately against his ankle, frightened. When Kurama tugged on the tendrils of his power, he saw why his plant was so disturbed, and quirked his lips in wry annoyance.
"I left the roots," Hiei grunted. "You'll be able to grow them again."
Kurama shrugged. His plants wouldn't have let Hiei inside otherwise, and there's only so many ways to get around a group of dangerous guardian species and the traps Kurama had set without automatically awakening their owner. He understood.
"To what do I owe the honor?" Kurama asked instead, walking over to the cramped kitchen area, consisting of a refrigerator, small oven, stove top, microwave, marble counter, sink, and a few shelves and drawers, all crammed into a too-small space and crisscrossed with flowers. Kurama began to putter around, filching a kettle from some cabinet and filling it with water, pausing to rub along the leaves of a fern placed in a pot beside the sink, barely noticing the familiar motion.
"I wanted—" Hiei began after the silence had stretched uncomfortably long, and never finished. He sunk into a brooding melancholy after that. Kurama cocked his head and lit the burner, settling the kettle on top of it and eying Hiei mirthfully.
Hiei was goaded into action by the amusement in Kurama's glance. Suddenly he was there, and leading Kurama away from the kitchenette and back towards the bed with a brusque grip on his wrist, Kurama following bemusedly.
"Hiei?"
Hiei grunted in response, and then pulled the wrist abruptly. Kurama allowed himself to twist and hit the bed back-first, but was shocked when he couldn't regain his balance to rise.
"Hiei—" Kurama growled, dangerous. His plants began to raise themselves menacingly, thorns appearing, tendrils snaking up the baby blue walls, made grey by the dim light.
"Relax, fox." Hiei was the one amused, now. "I just have something to tell you."
"That requires me being tied up?" Kurama inquired, his voice too sharp and cold to be pleasant.
Hiei winced, but didn't respond. He stood awhile, his jagan, the source of the restraints, pulsing lime from beneath the ward on his forehead. Hiei fingered his chin strangely and glared with glowing sanguine eyes at a bed lamp. Kurama was impatient and annoyed, but he didn't fear for himself. It was not trust so much as knowledge—Hiei despised the destruction of comrades, and Kurama had done nothing to him. Besides, there was hesitance, but no bloodlust in the air.
"Much as I love—" Kurama began, his voice biting with sarcasm, before he was overridden and cut off.
"You are very beautiful, fox." Hiei didn't sound like he was complimenting someone—he sounded bitter and angry, in point of fact, and Kurama stared at him, eyes as green as his plants blinking up from the simple red coverlet that he was laying back on, arms canted oddly. Hiei watched fondly as the moist lips that had tried to speak parted in astonishment. Then, not quite thinking about it, Hiei leaned in and kissed Kurama, sudden and wet. He sniffed and stepped back, unsure and glowering at Kurama, clearly blaming him for the sudden sparkle of lust.
The steadily rising whistle of the teakettle startled them both, and Hiei looked sheepishly back towards it, lowering the restraints. Kurama blinked, once, and again, as the kettle rose to a crescendo. Then he smiled.
"Hiei," he intoned lightly as he got up from his bed to turn off the burner, "would you like to stay the night?"
Hiei smiled, relieved, and stayed until morning.