As it was, throwing a pitcher full of urine at his kidnapper was not, in fact, a calculated risk, no matter how long he had sat on it.

Nothing after the moment that black-haired man stormed out and guards immediately came and grabbed the pitcher from Hiei's room was calculated anything.

Not on his part, at least.

Hiei almost wished they'd get around to torturing him already.

The response of his kidnappers was pretty underwhelming. They weren't doing anything, and it was driving Hiei insane. He had nothing to occupy himself with in that stupid room with its stupid cream walls. He was left to lay on the bed, all day, all night, waiting for when his food would be delivered, or he would be taken to the washroom. He had been handed a change of clothes at some point and shower time was only allotted once every, what he roughly calculated to be, three days, but if he was being honest with himself, he didn't truly have a clue.

The edges of his world were starting to blur and collapse in on themselves, and just to entertain himself, in his saner moments, Hiei referred to the daze as 'muted lunacy' sneaking up on him. He found his mind drifting off for long stretches at a time, wandering without purpose, without a thought. It was terrifying, because he forgot why he needed to get back home so urgently during those periods, and not only were they getting longer, but also more frequent.

He really, really wished they'd do something to him before the emptiness inside him swallowed him full.

His prayers were answered in the worst possible way.

…

Hiei couldn't tell how many days it had been since the urine incident, how many hours he had whiled away staring at that cream ceiling. What was interesting was… it had stopped being ridiculously boring.

The swirls and the creases in the hastily done paint job formed interesting figures and Hiei was starting to really enjoy crafting amusing tales for them. He was in the middle of one such story session when his door was thrown open by his pee chaperones and Hiei almost forgot to stop grinning before he turned to face them.

It was the first time that boring brown-haired, big-jawed man spoke to him and with a smirk, he muttered,

"You're losing it."

Hiei stared.

He was dragged and thrown into the washroom. The guards told him he had fifteen minutes to shower and if he were more like himself, that would have been enough to alert him.

The cycle had been broken. It wasn't supposed to be shower time, yet. He was nowhere near smelly enough.

But of course, he didn't notice, his mind still caught up in thinking up of a connection between the bear and the crane he had recently spied along the single crack that ran down the wall behind his headboard.

He had taken off all of his clothes when he noticed something.

The shower was locked.

It was a small detail, but Hiei always had been sharp, even if the better part of his brain had been intent on remaining asleep for a good while now. He felt a jolt run through him, which he recognised a couple of seconds later as wariness. Something was wrong, his body had sensed that before his consciousness did.

Deep inside of him, Hiei felt something click in place and the deep seated caution and fear his current abode warranted made itself known to him again, numbed as it had been by the shapely cracks in his ceiling till now. Hiei's entire body froze and he knew it before he so much as turned to check, that he wasn't alone inside the washroom.

He wasn't wrong.

Both of the guards stood on both sides of the door, sporting lecherous smirks that made Hiei's skin crawl. One of them had his pants around his ankles, hand shamelessly fisting his half-hard penis as he stared at Hiei's naked body.

Hiei could take them on so fucking easily that he had trouble biting back the manic grin that wanted to unfurl itself across his mouth. He told himself to calm down.

"Don't try anything." He warned them, and was immediately laughed at. Hiei couldn't help but pity these fools.

"You really shouldn't have locked yourselves in here, all alone with me."

Trash talking, how he had missed it.

"Oh yeah, big guy," one of the two spoke, his eyebrows waggling as he glanced down at Hiei's dick, innuendo clear as day and lame to boot. It made his partner laugh though.

"Why don't you come up here and show us what you got?"

Hiei rolled his eyes, and leaned down to collect his dirty, smelly trousers off the floor.

"You are not gonna need that, pig."

Hiei put his trousers back on.

"Didn't you hear me, I asked you to come here!"

He turned his back to the two, ears still cocked to catch the softest of footfalls.

When one of the guards came to grab Hiei by the shoulder, he was ready.

Before the man could even realise what had happened, he was elbowed in the stomach and flipped over, a loud cry, more of surprise than pain, tearing out of his mouth.

Hiei grinned.

He blocked the punch the other screaming guard threw at him in the nick of the time, finding himself nearly losing balance and tumbling to the floor. He steadied himself in the nick of time, trying to land a kick to the guard's genitals, bare as they were.

His foot was pushed away, but luckily his toes jabbed themselves into the crease of the man's abdomen and hips. He howled in pain and stumbled away, giving Hiei enough time to tackle the other dude, who had picked himself up now.

Both the guards were taller than him but Hiei was faster, sharper and as was becoming increasingly evident, probably more experienced in dirty, hand-to-hand combat than they were.

Before either of them could co-ordinate their movements enough to immobilise Hiei, the door of the washroom was opened again. Suddenly, there were arms pulling him away from the two and Hiei forced himself to still at the cold press of a barrel behind his neck.

There were more than five voices in the room now, but Hiei didn't bother to turn his head and check, nor did he try to defend himself when the two guards started making stories about Hiei attacking them out of nowhere. There would be no point in trying to tell them the truth, he already knew.

Plus, the two losers hadn't even got a chance to finish their excuses when the man holding him growled,

"Why were you two dumbfucks inside the washroom in the first place?"

Then, everybody noticed one guard was half-naked and somebody started yelling about how 'master' had specifically said no harm was to be done to Hiei till he arrived.

He was not allowed to stay and hear more. Rough hands turned him around to face a tall man with a tuft of purple hair on the crown of his head, who quickly checked for any injuries Hiei might have sustained, his mouth curving into a smirk when he noticed the two were in a way worse state than Hiei.

He was then taken back to his bedroom and locked inside.

Hiei smirked.

…

The next time his door opened, Kurama entered.

Their eyes met, and Hiei felt his jaw tighten.

The redhead was dressed in a sort of belted tunic with a white undershirt and yellow harem pants. He looked good, healthy. It pissed Hiei off.

"Why are you so insistent of making life harder for yourself?" Kurama smirked, as he came to lean against the wall, arms crossed in front of him.

"Yeah, because everyone here is so scary. I threw a pitcher of piss on your husband and he did, what? He took the pitcher away. Honestly, mind-numbing boredom is the worst thing that has been done to me here, so far."

Kurama raised his brows.

"Oh? And what was that then, a cry for attention."

Hiei shrugged, unfolding his legs from under himself and falling back to lay across the bed. He couldn't bring himself to look away from Kurama, though.

"Hardly. It was self defence. I was saving the piss for you, actually. Didn't your husband tell you?"

Kurama chuckled, shaking his head a little. He looked amused, brilliant green eyes twinkling.

"Self defence? Really? Yomi doesn't hit prisoners. What did you say to him?"

Hiei grinned.

"Why would you marry someone named 'Yomi'?"

Kurama remained staring at him till Hiei rolled his eyes, a huff falling out of his mouth.

"I said you like my cock better than his."

It wasn't exactly what he had said, but he didn't really care about the accuracy of his words.

"To be honest, I probably would."

Hiei smirked.

The anger he had decided to devote to Kurama wasn't coming, for some reason. His gut wasn't coiling into hot ropes of fury at the sight of the redhead. He speculated it was because of the events that happened in the washroom. Small as the scuffle had been, it had given him a sense of power, some amount of control over himself. Hiei was in a better mood than he had been in a while.

… and much as he did not want to admit it, Kurama was a familiar face, as bad as it sounded.

"I hate you."

He said it anyway, because it was true and it was fun to see the surprise flashing across Kurama's eyes when the words registered.

His lips lapsed into a small smile, soon enough.

"I know. Here's the thing though, Hiei. It was either my life or yours and I tried to keep you safe. I tried to come closer to you, I tried to look for the bracelet in your house without you finding out. I even convinced Yomi to try interrogating you first. I tried and you're the one responsible for the situation you are in."

Hiei scoffed.

"Lies, all of those. Is it getting too hard to live with the person you are, Kurama? Because you are fooling no one but yourself. Certainly not me."

Kurama didn't say anything for a while, his eyes darting across Hiei's face, almost as if seeking confirmation that that wasn't what he actually believed. When he finally spoke, it was with averted eyes.

"Yes, it is. It is very hard to live with the person that I am but you'd know all about that, won't you?"

Hiei felt his brows knitting together, body automatically tensing in defensiveness. Kurama didn't needle him anymore, however and Hiei didn't bother to respond to that question. Not that he had to, it was obviously rhetorical.

After a while, Kurama straightened and took a step closer to Hiei. It didn't actually achieve anything. The distance between the two of them did not decrease by any considerable degree. Hiei almost laughed. Kurama was fidgeting, he needed to move, the silence heavy between them, and pointedly so.

"I envied you for a while." Kurama began. He uncrossed his arms and clasped them behind his back. Hiei didn't look into his eyes.

"I envied you because you'd escaped, escaped this life. From what I could see you looked happy and I didn't want to be the one to drag you back into this filth but as time went on I realised I had no option. I realised you must know too; you don't leave this world once you've entered it, Hiei. No one can."

"That's a load of bullshit!" Hiei growled, because how fucking dare Kurama imply this was any fault of his. "I did! I left! You dragged me back here."

"Because between your life and mine, I'll always choose mine and don't even pretend like you'd have done anything else."

"What do you want?" Hiei shot up to his feet. Kurama's face remained impassive, brow uncreased, jaw unclenched. It was making Hiei's blood boil.

"What do you fucking want?!" He screamed. "Why are you here?! Why are you telling me this?! What does it change?! You did what you did and now I am here and why in hell do you think I care about your stupid sob story?!"

The colour of Kurama's eyes was a very, very bright green, uncomfortably so. It made Hiei feel bare, defenceless.

"I suppose you don't." Kurama muttered, and then a tiny, resigned smile spread across his mouth.

Then, he schooled his expression into a mocking smirk, gaze sharp on Hiei's skin.

"But it's always so much fun," he purred. "to watch you squirm in rage, helpless, always so helpless, Hiei. I don't even know what else you were expecting. Why did you think you could get away with it?"

Before he knew it, Hiei had lunged at Kurama, who didn't so much as flinch before side-stepping him. Within seconds Kurama had both of Hiei's wrists in a tight grip and Hiei found his back pinned to his mattress, Kurama leaning above him.

Crimson strands slipped past Kurama's shoulder and pooled onto Hiei's. He growled.

"I did not think I would get away with anything because I did not do anything. I did not steal any stupid bracelet and you have to let me go."

Kurama laughed. Now that his expression was once again twisted cruelly, Hiei found he missed the open expression Kurama had originally entered the room with.

"Don't embarrass yourself, Hiei, you know I can't do that. As for the bracelet; stop lying and making things worse. You're on borrowed time as it is."

Hiei clenched his teeth. As much as he hated Kurama, the man was devastatingly beautiful, and up close, Hiei found his mind wiped of all thoughts except those of Kurama's hand on his cock.

He hissed. Kurama laughed harder. Hiei desperately wanted to stab the bastard to death.

"Your goat-faced husband doesn't scare me."

Kurama, however, was starting to.

"He should, especially since this time when he returns, he won't be alone." Kurama's grin widened and Hiei's breath nearly got caught in his chest as he detected something manic dawning on the redhead's face. Kurama was prone to 'snapping', Hiei had known, but he had forgotten just how terrifying he could get.

"Karasu is coming."

…

That night, Hiei occupied himself with something even more interesting than the supposed figures he saw on his wall and ceiling.

Remaining angry at Kurama was difficult… not because of the entire 'horny Hiei' issue (though that was annoying). Hiei figured that was natural, Kurama was gorgeous. What made it absolutely impossible for Hiei to hang on to his fury at Kurama was the fact that he wasn't lying.

… he had tried every other way to get this bracelet thing from Hiei.

Everyone here seemed convinced he had it, and it was pretty obvious that Kurama was, in no way, shape or form, the top dog here. He had exhausted all his resources and if his life actually had been on the line (which wasn't a very unlikely thing), Hiei knew he'd had no other choice.

… because Hiei had been on the other side of the line. He knew how little of yourself remained once you stepped into this world. Either you gave the orders or you followed them. Disobedience didn't fly, especially not if you were less powerful than your adversaries.

Hiei knew, he understood, loathe as he was to, and he couldn't hang on to his anger at the redhead.

Hiei tossed and turned all night, mad at himself for countless reasons, but mostly for not asking Kurama who Karasu fucking was, and for not punching him when he pulled away.

Though Hiei knew it won't have been easy. In Kurama, he had found his match.

That thought turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant one.

For too long now, Hiei had been abusing, and then protecting. Kurama, however, would stand neither of those. He won't break if Hiei hit. He won't stumble if Hiei pushed. Most importantly, he won't blame Hiei for his own weaknesses.

As soon as the thought registered, Hiei landed a ringing slap to his own cheek, horrified that he had lapsed into that thinking again. He had hurt Yukina more than enough. The consequences of his bad choices did not translate into weakness on her part. She'd done what she could, backed him for as long as possible. She never deserved what he threw at her and yet she had taken it. It wasn't her fault that she'd had enough, stood up for herself. If anything, Hiei was grateful to her. He never would have tried to work himself out of the mud if she hadn't smacked him in the face that one night and ordered him to open his fucking eyes and see what he'd made of their lives.

Yukina… was probably waiting for him.

He needed to get to her. He needed to go back to the only person keeping him sane and right. Even if he somehow managed to survive this nightmare, this place, these people would reduce him to a cruel, mindless adrenaline junkie again. He couldn't let that happen.

He needed to leave, and for that to happen, he needed a plan.

…

"I want to see Kurama." Hiei said to his new guards when they came to bring him water that day. He wasn't expecting anything, if he was honest with himself, but he was surprised when what appeared to be a few hours later, the redhead walked in.

"You called for me." He sounded surprised, the statement coming out more as a question.

"I figured if I am going to die," Hiei fingered the first button on his shirt, smirking when Kurama's gaze narrowed on his fingers. "I might as well enjoy myself."