34

ChuyaDud: Yay, you're back! I'll admit I was a little worried. Kurama's sex life is something I've wondered about too, probably too much. I've thought about these characters way too much over the years. So this chapter will partially answer your question, at least for the purposes of this story! It's been hinted at before, ages ago, but he comes out and thinks about it in this one. Numbers-wise I think Chouko has him beat by a lot though, even if we count his pre-death hanky-panky.

Kitsune Kiyoko: Thanks so much! Hope you like this one :)

Have: Haha, I really love when Hiei runs up against modern things and just doesn't get them. He doesn't even try sometimes and I love his dgf attitude. There should be a series like 'Hiei encounters the human world,' with him dealing with things like the subway, and selfie-sticks.

Mr. Minamino,

I have some questions in regards to your final examination. Please come by my office as soon as possible to discuss. I will be here all day.

Professor T

Kurama reads the email twice. He gets up, puts on the tea, fixes breakfast and reads it again. From the bedroom come Yusuke's snores. Kurama didn't mind giving up his room for a week. When Keiko arrives it makes more sense for her and Yusuke to share the actual bed and his sofa is comfortable enough for him. It also allows him to have a quiet meltdown while cleaning every surface in his apartment. To anyone who doesn't know him it would look like perfectly normal, if very methodical, housecleaning.

He'd done well on the test, or so he thought. It had been easy but maybe that was the problem. Maybe he'd done too well and he is going in to find an accusation of cheating waiting for him.

He emails back:

Professor Tanaka,

I hope nothing is amiss. I can come by this afternoon around one.

Sincerely,

Minamino Shuichi

The response comes five minutes later. Five minutes which he spends pretending not to be watching his inbox. It's just two words: One works. That's it. Kurama groans and has some tea.

He texts Chouko a picture of the professor's first email, not caring how early it still is, and gets a frowny face in response. He doesn't know if it's because he texted or because of the message and drops his phone between the couch cushions. He never expected to feel this axious about schoolwork. It was always something he did well so that he could please his mother and feel superior over the humans trapped in a class with him.

But now.

Now this is something he's chosen to do. He selected this major, these classes, and he wants to do well. For himself. Who would have ever guessed the most infamous demon thief of the past five millennia would be panicking over an introductory engineering course at a human college. And texting his florist girlfriend about it. And worrying over whether or not she's his girlfriend.

Thinking of Chouko he fishes the phone out of the couch and sees a follow up text: I'm sure he's going to give you an award or a scholarship or something. Don't worry.

He sends back a frowny face (Yukina had shown him how to use emojis) and puts the phone back out of sight. He needs to get out of the cramped room and considers waking Yusuke. But he knows how deeply and intensely Yusuke sleeps and leaves a note on the coffee table instead before sliping out the window. It's early morning still but the air is already hot and Kurama heads towards Shinjuku Goyen with the growing and intense need to be around living things that aren't humans. He can loose himself there, at least a little bit, and get away from the cloying pressure of the city. The constant smell and feeling of other people. In the gardens he can slip under a tree branch and disappear into the shadows, lay back on the ground and feel the pulsing energy of the life around him.

It's unlike him to react so strongly to something as trivial—as human—as this. But then it's not the only thing on his mind. Besides the constant threat of an attempted murder by an unkown enemy wielding poison, there's Chouko. He considers whatever's happening between them far more dangerous. He'd always left Shizuru's even though they'd always planned it so no one would be home. Kuwabara didn't even know until it was almost over. Kuruma was still in high school then, living at home, so she'd never stayed the night with him either. Whenever he held her he thought about carrying her unconscious and bleeding body up to the burnt-out wreck of Yusuke's apartment and knew if he wasn't careful something like that could happen to her again. Kurama always thought Shizuru deserved better.

And then before that…he tried not to think about all the things that had gone wrong before that. If he wasn't careful he'd end up wallowing in all his regrets, replaying all his missteps. Things had been so much easier before he'd had any sense of his own mortality.

"Grass-eating boy, are you there?"

Kurama opens his eyes and turns his head slowly to find Chouko standing a few feet away, bathed in the sunlight beyond the branches and squinting in at him. She's wearing a dress so blue it could blend in with the sky and her dark hair falls in waves. A white umbrella with cat ears dangles from one hand while an oversized purse bulges at her side. She doesn't look anything like a demon. And Kurama watched her rip out a man's beating heart.

"Chouko-san, good morning."

"So formal today," she says, stepping into the shadows and dropping the umbrella on the ground. "I thought you might be here."

"What made you think that?"

"Oh a lucky guess."

"Not Hitsuizen?"

Chouko smiles and kneels beside him, spreading her skirt around her legs. The scalloped edges remind him of petals.

"No, that would be if I just stumbled across you on my morning walk."

He smiles and closes his eyes, soaking in her presence and half-wishing he could run away.

"You look very pretty today," he says and is rewarded with a nervous laugh.

"Well thank you. I'd say the same except I don't know how you'd take it."

He openes his eyes and smirks at her.

"Mirror mirror, on the wall," he says in English and catches her surprised expression before it disappears back into her usual teasing smile. "Are you jealous of something, Chouko-san?"

"We both know I'd win that contest, Shuichi-kun," she says and bats at him before pulling her purse onto her lap and rooting through it.

"I brought you something."

"Oh?"

Chouko holds out a small box filled with beautiful little namagashi. There are six desserts shaped like fruits and flowers in a rainbow of delicate pastels and he catches the scent of red bean paste, along with sugar and fruit jellies.

Kurama sits up on his elbows and frowns. He didn't want to worry her and he certaintly didn't want sympathy desserts.

"Chouko," he says, while trying to think of the best way to not accept the proffered sweets."I don't—"

She leans forward, smiles, and pops one half into his mouth.

"There," she says. "Better. Now I want you to listen to me. There is absolutely no way you're in trouble with a professor. If this Tanaka-san wants to talk to you it's probably because you've had some insight or made some unique argument and they want to pick your brain. If there is something else bothering you, we should talk about that."

Kurama swallows and dodges her implied question.

"I was accused of cheating once, when I first got to high school. My teacher couldn't believe I had gotten a perfect score on her test. My mother was called in, and the principal. Everyone was very upset."

"What happened?"

"I offered to retake the test while she and the principal watched me. She accepted and gave me a slightly different version. When I made another perfect score and completed the bonus questions she was mortified."

"Well, if there really is a problem with your professor let me know," Chouko says, a slight frown on her face. "I'll make some calls."

Kurama takes a second to let that sink in. She certainly doesn't sound like she's joking.

"And who," he says, keeping his tone light and teasing, "would you call?"

Chouko smiles and pats him on the cheek, a mischevious smile playing across her face. "Don't you worry your little head about that, dear."

He catches her wrist and pulls her closer.

"You're quite the yakuza henchwoman, aren't you?" he says as she leans over him, one arm planted beside him, letting him hold her other wrist. "You sound just like Yusuke's mother."

"Oh no," Chouko says. "I'm no henchwoman. What do you call the woman in charge? It's a nice flowershop but it doesn't pay for my imported shoes."

"Then what does?"

"What do you think five hundred years of real estate investment around Tokyo gets you?"

"You weren't in Tokyo for the past five hundred years."

"No," Chouko smiles, "but my partners have done a good job holding down the fort. And they weren't even that salty when I finally came back to collect."

Kurama can't help but laugh. Shimoda had told him the other Tokyo demons brought her in for her money, not that she showed up to take it from them. It leaves him to wonder how much more there is to her that he just doesn't know. He's looking forward to finding out.

"I might have to let you pick up dinner from now on."

"I never suspected you were a mooch, Shuichi!"

He smiles and lets his hand trail up her arm, enjoying the feeling of her skin beneath his fingertips. Chouko has an arm planted to either side of him and her hair falls over her shoulder and dangles around her face, brushing his chest.

"If you get tired of sleeping on the couch," she says, smile spreading across her face, "let me know."

Kurama grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her down until their mouths collide. The scent of tangerines fills the air. He can feel the subtle warmth of her body as it presses aganst his. Teeth drag across his bottom lip and he holds her closer, one hand on the small of her back. She caresses the side of his face and it sends a shiver through his body. Kurama rolls to the side, pinning her beneath him. Chouko tries to sit up but Kurama kisses her back to the ground.

"Someone will see us," she breathes when he still won't let her up.

"No," he says and the tree moves, droping its branches to enclose them proectively. The grass and bushes around them grow suddenly, into a discouraging barrier. "They won't."

"Well, well," she says, but that's all he lets her say. She certainly doesn't complain.

She only complains when he stops.

"What—?"

"There is something else."

"What."

"I want you to meet Yusuke," he says.

Chouko groans and tries to push him away but Kurama won't budge. "I told you I would, eventually."

"But—"

Chouko sits up on her elbows and glares at him, their noses almost touching. "Do you really want to talk about this right now?"

"What about this Saturday? It will be a large group going to dinner, so you won't—"

"I really hate you right now."

"No you don't," he says with a smile before going back to what he'd been doing.

A minute later he stop again. "So, Saturday?"

"You're torturing me!"

"I highly doubt this constitutes torture."

"I think it does." She looks ready to kill him but he pushes on.

"Around six? Unless you have plans."

"You are the worst boyfriend—" she stops, breathing heavily, as his lips find her neck again, before continuing, "—in the world. The Worst."

"Really?"

She groans. Well, it starts out as a groan.

"Kuwabara and Yukina will be there as well."

She pushes his hands away. "Fine, if it's that important—fine."

He tries to make it up to her but Chouko pushes him off of her and sits up.

"Chouko," he says as she's piling the spilled contents back into her purse.

"There's no escape apparently. No escaping it."

"Chouko, I promise it won't be a bad time. And we can leave if—"

"Kurama," she says, staring down into her open purse. "You know that's not it."

"There's nothing to be worried about."

She looks back at him over her shoulder, her expression grave.

"I'm afraid of him."

On a more positive note than Chouko's worries, I saw Trainwreck last week and it was amazing. I cried I was laughing so hard at some points, so if you like raunchy, messed-up humor I definitely recommend it.