Not mine, not gonna be mine, never ever ever gonna be mine no matter how many times I try to pull them out of my posters... um, yeah. I make no money, don't sue b/c you'll just get a touchy little cat and a lot of dirty laundry. Warnings: No overt yaoi or shonen ai (please don't kill me), lots of green-eyed monsters, high amounts of vanity.
Green Tea
It rankled sometimes.
Kurama couldn't help it. He sat quietly in the background of another meeting at Genkai's, waiting for Yuusuke and Kuwabara to quit posturing at each other in their friendly rivalry, and brooded.
He was still beautiful, of course. It suited him better now, the beauty that of his trademark roses rather than an icy blade. In fact, his slim ningen form was even better for most aspects of theft than the taller, less innocuous silver youko body. More than that, though, he'd gained a softness from his human mother's love that he would never have given up. It was strange how he'd become like his flowers, so much more so than the cold youko whose magic had first created them.
But sometimes...
His eyes fell on the small fire demon sitting in the window.
It wasn't fair!
Kurama blinked, astonished at himself. Had he just thought that? Life itself wasn't fair. It was often distinctly unfair, in fact, though Kurama was used to it being unfair in his favor. But still...
Hiei wasn't beautiful in the way he was, Kurama told himself. He was decidedly short; he barely reached Shuiichi's shoulder, and Kurama wasn't all that tall in his human form. His hair was wild and uncontrollable, much like Hiei was himself, and the starburst was startling at first. But the little demon's eyes smoldered in a perfectly heart-shaped face, and the heavy fabric of his clothing concealed a flawless, toned body. And when he moved...!
Hiei shifted restlessly under Kurama's thoughtful eyes.
Damn! What right did a... an outcast streetchild nobody!... Kurama froze that line of thought. It was wrong. Hiei didn't deserve that. They were friends, sort of. There was an element of wariness that human friendships didn't have, but they were more than allies. And he DID like the little rat, grouchy as he was.
No. Rats didn't move like that. Even in this body's early adolescence, when most humans resembled gangly newborn colts, Kurama had retained a dancer's grace. But Hiei was a demon, a warrior, a being of magic as well as flesh, and it showed in every minute shift of his posture. Next to Hiei, Kurama felt like an ox.
Oh, the humans wouldn't notice. In fact, most demons wouldn't notice, either. Kurama had a dancer's poise, that of an acrobat's and a warrior's. But he'd spent centuries as the famed Youko Kurama, and though he was as beautiful and as cunning as ever... though not in the same way... he felt the loss of his demonic, magical elegance keenly.
Kurama accepted a cup of tea from Yukina, absently mouthing some polite phrase to the sweet ice maiden. She also had that certain fey movement, he noted with a faint mental wince, though it wasn't the same as Hiei's feral, honed perfection. It was about equal to his own, human-tainted manner.
He hid his attention behind his teacup now, drinking the hot, bitter liquid carefully.
They weren't like the oni, or the nonhuman demons, he mused. The nonhumans were too far removed for comparison, and the oni were clumsy, bulky creatures now, eons of Reikai paperpushing having left their mark. But his type of demon, the humanoid beings that caught at people's imagination, they were different. How few of them could pass for human? Even he hadn't been able to before, his ears and tail beautiful, but lupine and furred. Yukina could easily; she was small, but very few would ever imagine she wasn't human. Ah, but Hiei; he'd walked with them once or twice in the Ginza, and every person they'd gone by had gotten a somewhat bemused look in their eyes as the dark little demon passed. Human as he looked, he just didn't... couldn't... move like them.
Abruptly, Hiei stood. "Ningen. Bah!" he grumped, and darted away.
The others blinked. "I wonder what that was all about?" Yuusuke wondered.
"Who knows? That shrimp's just weird." Kuwabara said.
Kurama sat and sipped his tea. Before he'd vanished, Hiei had glared directly into Kurama's eyes. ~Quit watching me, you jealous fox.~ His low voice had slid through Kurama's mind, pressing warningly at the barriers.
Jealous? Him? Of a little three-eyed mouse like Hiei? Ridiculous.
Right?