A/N: I think this is the most romantic thing I've written. I also think I need my head checked (see previous statement).
There's a swirling darkness to Kurama at these moments, something deep and still and lethal like a predator in the shadows, sensed only by prickling spines and chills of fear, and even though he is utterly focused on the fight he can't help but be hyperaware of it. It's awe-inspiring, terrifying, this total consciousness of a thing that isn't a part of him, except he is.
As a warrior, he regards his weapons and his skills as an extension of himself, but what he shares with Kurama is more, body and mind independent and different but meshing seamlessly with his intent, his tactics, his will to form a creature that is almost one. It's a connection they have shared since the first time they fought, that allows them to flow like water around each other, reach around him to stab at that one, here, and the sensuous slow-motion coil of Kurama's whip caressing the air and ripping apart the youkai clawing for Hiei's back, there.
It's a connection Hiei has never understood, he knows neither of them ever will, a thing that winds between and around them, composed of equal parts respect, lust, harmony, blood-rage and affection, whatever claim creatures such as they can make to the emotion. It sings through him at the strangest moments, as often apart as together, as often in battle as in sex, and if he listens closely he can hear its counterpoint in Kurama's heartbeat as the kitsune whirls around and away, a vine spiking from his hand to clear a space.
It's a connection that makes them seek battle together, as they have today, to find that balance and taste that perfect union of unbroken movement, to savour together the ultimate power of death as intensely as they savour life, for one cannot be valued without the other. It's why violence is the soul of a demon, the only possible response to immortality, and their opponents know this as well as they do. Pack against pair, unfair odds, but not to Hiei, not to Kurama, because together they are invincible, or so the dark rush of blood through their veins whispers tonight as Hiei flickers around and through the curling whip to eviscerate a youkai before Kurama can, as Kurama smiles slowly at their eternal game.
There's a swirling darkness to Kurama at these moments, he can't help but be hyperaware of it, as close as his shadow it is and as inextricable a part of him. He craves this darkness in Kurama, the balance to his light and the twin to Hiei's soul, as the light within Hiei, suppressed so long, freed at last, is the twin to Kurama's. The insanity of desire that runs through Kurama here, now, it is sweet to the taste of his mind and Hiei smiles, a true smile, joyous and open as he could never have been before Kurama; and he fights, bending, dodging, stabbing, slicing, killing, loving, and loved.
After, they turn to each other with undiminished intensity, fingers tearing cloth away, and there is nothing gentle or tender or giving in this coming together, although there has been and there will be. Dark and light collide within him like the feeling of hands and teeth and lips and nails, like touching and being touched, contrasts and yet the same, always the same until he can't tell the difference anymore. This is another form of oneness, but no more intimate than any other, and should it never happen again nothing will change, they twine too closely to be torn or told apart.
And yet there is satisfaction in the quiet lacing together of fingers, in the gentling of breath, in the fading glow of sensuality and deadliness, in the black and white tangle of their clothes, silver hair spread over dark ground, midnight hair curling against a pale chest; in lying together, like light and dark, each concealing the other.