It's the funniest thing Yusuke has ever seen, even though it's happened almost every night for a week now. He can't stop giggling about it, even when Karasu tells him to shut up because he isannoying, but he can't help himself.
It's Hiei, at the bar, knocking back four shots, one after the other. Usually about an hour, hour and a half after he's announced to everyone that thistime Kurama isn't going to get him, that this time they're really done for good. Then he comes back smelling like sweat and shame and sex and knocks back four shots of something the bartender doesn't even have a name for, but even from here Yusuke can smell Goldshlager and Mint and probably Everclear.
It's even better when Kuwabara is over in the corner by the ancient jukebox and thinks Depeche Mode is just the right thing to turn on at that very moment, and Hiei shoots him a glare that should have everyone's hair on fire.
"Why do you try?" Yusuke asks eventually. "I mean, why even fucking bother?"
Karasu sitting opposite shoots him a look over the top of Hiei's head that reads: If you were fucking Kurama, would YOU have an easy time leaving that fine ass? Not to mention Karasu's been trying to bribe the redhead into a threesome for something like a million years, but Kurama's a tease. Everyone knows that.
"Pride?" Bui suggests, returning with a little more alcohol than anyone needs right now, but alcohol is the only thing that gets Hiei to talk to anyone in something more than an enraged grunt.
"Self preservation," Kuwabara mutters, and nobody but Yusuke pays attention to that one.
"Lack of self control," Karasu says, removing the cloth mask that's becoming a permanent fixture on his face to take a drink. Yusuke wonders idly if he really has a cold or if he thinks it just looks cool.
"The zone," Hiei mutters. Everyone stares. The collective 'what' is varying degrees of confusion and flat humor. Bui, for some reason, seems to know what he's talking about.
Hiei looks at them all like they're stupid. Then Kurama walks in and any explanation is put on hold. Even with alcohol, Hiei can't talk while Kurama is there. It's the way he looks at people.
There's a moment where Karasu makes his traditional grab for Kurama's ass, earning an evade and a saucy wriggle from the redhead, and Yusuke wishes he really was crazy enough to tap that, but Karasu is enough of a handful already. Two-hands-and-a-cock-full. Yusuke really needs to reevaluate his taste in men.
Kurama drifts past them and sits Shizuru and a pair of blue haired girls Kuwabara has been striking out horribly with. One of them is Hiei's sister, but Hiei didn't notice and if no one else knows, he isn't going to be the one to tell them. Hiei collects swords, and Yusuke has no interest in being a castrati.
Yusuke tips back his beer and almost chokes when Hiei starts talking again.
"It's the… boyfriend zone," he says, grinding out the words like gravel in a cement mixer. What the hell.
There is a prolonged silence in their little corner of the bar. Bars in Tokyo aren't known for their size or privacy, but they still manage to get it, probably because Bui is huge and intimidating, and Kuwabara is huge and awkward.
"He…" Hiei's really trying to talk through the haze of alcohol and shame, and it's starting to be more sad than funny, but nobody wants him to stop because someone has to be the butt of all the jokes this week. "It's like, like he knows. And then he does this… thing."
Bui's actually leaning in, and Karasu's put the mask down and is slurping up his fruity-looking drink with a look on his face like a little kid at Christmas. But then, he's jealous of and hates Hiei with the kind of burning passion usually saved for demolishing buildings and probably torturing small animals.
Finally, Hiei growls out, "he's hypnotizing me."
Hours later and Karasu is still snickering to himself, even as he starts stripping for a shower. Yusuke is sitting on the bed, smoking because it's winter in Tokyo and he doesn't want his nipples to freeze off. They could cut glass already, but watching Karasu peel himself out of that jacket does that to him.
"I gotta ask," he said, eyes trained on Karasu's ass, "what did he mean by 'zone?'"
Karasu barks out a laugh and tosses his pants into a corner. "Oh it's rich.Positively glorious."
"And impossible to describe without a twenty-adjective lead-in?" Yusuke prompts. It earns him a glare, but Karasu wouldn't turn down mocking Hiei for anything.
"Kurama knowsHiei wants to dump him," Karasu says and the smirk in his voice is so loud Yusuke actually takes time to look away from the mad bombers ass and at his face. Yep, smirking. Like a bully after the school just got remodeled with bigger toilets.
"And?"
"He simply suggests they have sex instead." Karasu flourishes into the bathroom, and Yusuke sits, contemplating this. He hears the tap turn on and a minute later Karasu is actually whistling in the shower. And while he knows it's at Hiei's expense, he can't help but enjoy the fact that a happy Karasu is a Karasu who'll fuck him at leasttil dawn and probably up to right before either of them has to go to work. One of these days it'll get him evicted from his flat, but until then? Hiei can suffer all fucking day.
Yusuke casually situates himself by the bathroom door, hooking his thumbs into the belt loops of his pants and peering in at Karasu.
"He just suggests it?"
Karasu peeks out from behind the shower curtain, grinning. "Your pants are still on."
"Really? Just, 'let's have sex' and Hiei does it?" He doesn't realize his hands are on his fly until his pants are down to his knees. "He looks down at himself. He looks at Karasu, still smirking. "Oh. Just like that."
"Just like that."
Five minutes later, taking Karasu's cock so far down his throat he thought he might choke, knees slipping on the linoleum of the tub and Karasu's fingers tearing into his scalp, he mused again,
Just like that.
Kurama is talking to Bui.
Even stranger than it sounds, but normally, they don't even look at each other. Yusuke thinks it's because they have some kind of long-standing gay competition to see who can out-fag the other one first. Or most. Or whatever. He can't really judge too much, because he is in the first quarter of an involved fantasy covering just about all the things he wish he could ask Karasu to do to his cock (but won't for reasons of some grasp on his sanity.) Still, he's becoming more aware of the special levels of gay his friends who are actually more like enemies that haven't killed him yet are capable of.
Especially Bui.
And extra-especially Kurama.
Yusuke decimates a Jagerbomb and watches Hiei pluck up the courage to come within ten feet of Kurama when Bui finally breaks off the conversation to sit next to Kuwabara, who is apparently trying to learn French.
Yusuke pays attention.
"Why were you talking to him?" Hiei demands, looking about as haggard and cross as he did yesterday after the very failed break-up. Bui stares at him. "Why were you talking to my..."
"Your?" Bui prompts, an eyebrow lifting.
"My... my... guy I have sex with. Why were you two talking? You never talk. To each other."
"Because we work together? We were talking about his next assignment."
There's a pause, and the air seems a bit more chill than it was before. Yusuke sits up straighter, and notices Karasu leaning over the arm of his chair, a grin of pure evil on his face.
"His next-" Hiei splutters for a second. "Since when do you guys work with each other?"
"Since college? Where have you been, man? No wonder he only lets you fuck him once every other month. You're so neglectful."
A stunned silence is broken by Karasu choking on his fruity drink and falling out of his chair.
"How do you know about that," Hiei asks, flatly.
"He told Botan. And once Botan knows, the whoooole company knows, sweetheart." Bui takes a sip of Long Island Iced Tea and is probably doing mental tallies for the 'who can hurt Hiei's poor brain today' scoreboard.
"Why... the hell... would he tell Botan?" Queries Hiei.
"Because she's our HR chick. And yes," another sip of tea, "everyone also knows about your collection of Moomin DVDs and the stuffed dolphin. So you don't have to be alone in your shame. Except, wait, you're completely alone."
Hiei's head hits the bar with a resounding thump.
"With your shame."
Later, when Hiei is dragged out of the bar by Yukina and Kuwabara, Yusuke sidles up to Bui, Karasu flanking.
"So I can't help but wonder exactly what Kurama does these days," Yusuke says, while Karasu eagerly spins back and forth on a bar stool guzzling down a drink nobody has any idea where he got, seeing as the bartender cut him off something like three years ago. Bui seems unconcerned.
"Well, he didwork for IT until sometime last year."
"And?"
"There was an incident."
Usually, when the sirens went off at BlackCorp, it was because someone in R&D had set some deadly gas or another on the unsuspecting drones, or Itsuki had hit the fire alarm, which happened a lot more than Sakyo liked to think about. This time, it actually seemed like it was an issue he should pay attention to.
He pressed the button for the intercom.
"Toguro, why are the sirens going off this time?"
Static. Then, "One of the IT personnel, sir. Er, the last one."
"By the 'last one,'" Sakyo said, rifling through the files in his IT drawer, "do you mean that cute redhead you fucked into the job or something else?"
"Kind of... both, sir. He stabbed Okuni in the neck. And I think he's disemboweled Kamiya. I can't tell from here, he's shooting computer parts at us."
"Why the hell is he doing that?"
There was an uncomfortable pause, where Sakyo could hear shouting down the hall. Somehow, his decision to have IT close to the office didn't seem the best idea anymore. Harmless nerds my ass.
"Sir? He says it's because you wouldn't let him quit. And something about desk jobs being the lowest common denominator of work he's capable of."
Sakyo considered that for all of five seconds. "Well. Give him a promotion."
"So, you work for BlackCorp too?" Yusuke's on the couch, a beer nestled in one hand, the TV Guide in the other. Karasu, burning dinner, shrugs.
"In a manner of speaking. They pay me for certain services."
Yusuke considers this for a few minutes. "I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here, but do they pay you to only blow up the competition?"
Karasu has the affrontery to look offended. "I do no such thing. I just overlook certain things when the squad covers buildings that should be demolished for the betterment of mankind anyway."
Yusuke considers further. "Since when are you for the betterment of mankind?"
Karasu tilts a pan of burned stir-fry into a bowl. "Since it allows me to be in the same room as Kurama without alcohol involved. Alone. For more than two minutes at a time."
Yusuke climbs off the couch to take his bowl of crispy dinner. "You follow him into the bathroom, don't you."
"Well, one day he won't get into a stall before I can get in the door. A man can dream."