it's so short! maybe I will expand on it...someday.
Sometimes, the trees were too hard.
Hiei liked to sleep in the trees when he was in the human world. He could have easily found the money to get a hotel, to stay somewhere very comfortable, but the trees suited him; they were aged and rough on the outside — and equally rough on the inside. They were uncomfortable, and it made him feel. Period. Everything in the human world was so fake to him; the humans were always so desperate to move on to the new fad, to look like something they weren't. But the nature, the trees-those were real. Those immobile, soulless plants were more real than any other being on the planet.
But, sometimes, the trees were just too hard. And he would escape into a warm bed.
He hated the bed he escaped to, because of what it represented. It made him feel. Period. Just like the trees. And yet nothing like the trees.
In the trees, he could feel sticks in his back, rough bark rubbing against his skin, the wind tossing his hair and cloak around as it pleased and enabling his necklace to dance. But in the bed, he felt soft sheets, soft skin, red hair splaying out against the pillow, tickling his cheek. The owner of the bed was unlike those other beings-he was more real, more like the trees, than any of them. And he was more of a lie than any of them.
It infuriated Hiei, what he did-Youko was more powerful than Hiei would ever hope to be, and yet Kurama shunned him. For what? For a human life. For a relationship. For love. Because he chose feelings over power.
Hiei was learning more and more that the values he had come to depend on were not necessarily values that he should hold in such high regard, but he couldn't be this wrong. What Kurama did-what Kurama made him feel — couldn't possibly be right. It felt too real. And Kurama had chosen a human life-he had chosen to be one of them, which meant he couldn't be this real. He couldn't make Hiei feel something so pure and right and true and honest if he was as he claimed to be.
But still, Hiei returned to Kurama's bed. But only when the trees became too rough. Only when the memory of Kurama's bed was too inviting; the thought of it too enticing.
And Kurama invited him, because they had trust. However real or unreal he was, Hiei knew that they could trust each other. Kurama was the only person Hiei would trust to lie next to him all night while he slept.
And if a hand slipped over a waist while they slept, or a mouth was accidentally pressed against skin as they dreamed, or legs were rubbed together as they tossed and turned during the night, then Hiei could take comfort in the fact that it wasn't real; it didn't mean anything. So he had no reason to fear the weight that pulled down his stomach, or the fire that he normally had such control over take a life of it's own and burn through his veins; these were just illusions, as was Kurama. Because something so human couldn't possibly make this fire demon feel so fragile and open, so fearful and needy, or so real.