Author's Note
I am aware that Japanese restaurants differ from western ones in the way that orders are taken, etc. There is a restaurant scene here, but since it's delicacy is foreign food, I figured that the way in which the restaurant was run would be foreign as well.
-- This Chapter was updated 9-1-2008 --
Huminshou
By Zelia Theb
Disclaimer: Yu Yu Hakusho is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi.
Yusuke and Kuwabara were heading toward the arcade (after having smashed the faces of some annoying goons in). Kuwabara insisted on taking a shortcut through an alleyway, which is when they were stopped for another fight.
"You. Fight me," Hiei demanded, pointing at Yusuke.
"I don't want to fight you, how about fighting lughead here?" Yusuke said, checking a thumb in Kuwabara's direction.
"Yeah, come on shrimpy! I can take ya!" the classmate offered. In less than a moment's time (after having sighed at the waste of such a moment), Hiei had laid Kuwabara flat out on the concrete of the alley.
"You," Hiei said, dusting his hands off on his quite clean (and mountain spring scented) black cloak, "fight me."
"No," Yusuke answered, "I'm hungry."
"Hn. Go eat and then fight me."
"Yusuke!" a female voice called out from the street entrance of the alley. It was Botan, with Keiko in tow. Hiei caught Yusuke rolling his eyes as the two girls ran up to him. The greetings were swiftly made, and Yusuke's hunger was announced once more.
"Oh!" Keiko exclaimed. "Well I just received a gift from my aunt, and I wanted to take everyone out for dinner!" Did the Universe like him, or did the Universe like him?
"All right!" Kuwabara shouted, "That's so nice of you, Keiko!" He turned to whisper to the other boy, "You got some woman there, Urameshi." Yusuke's face twitched.
"Are you coming, Hiei?" Keiko asked. His own expression copied the detective's.
"He's coming," Yusuke answered for him. He walked over to Hiei and questioned, "So what kinda stuff you got on underneath there?"
"Hn. Clothes," Hiei replied. A smirk crept across the boy's face at the answer. He bent down and lifted up the bottom of the red-lined cloak, peeking under it as if it really were a 'demon dress.' The demon fought the knee jerk reaction to kick him in his head.
"Ooh… normal people clothes," Yusuke mused. He quickly (faster than Hiei could react, surprisingly) removed the cloak, revealing a black pair of jeans and black tank (a mixture of their two wardrobes).
"Hey!" Hiei protested.
"Well we can't exactly have you looking like that in a restaurant, Hiei!" Botan remarked. This coming from the master of disguises.
The black-haired boy proceeded to stuff the cloak into his school bag. Despite it's shape and small size, the bag was empty (how surprising), so the cloak fit inside fine. At least Yusuke thought so.
"You're wrinkling it!" Hiei yelled, suddenly embarrassed that he had said something so…girly.
They had chosen a new and quite popular Mexican themed place that had opened up three blocks away. Hiei wondered how he had let himself get talked into such a mess. He came to the conclusion that he was hungry, and he had actually never rebelled against the idea.
Wonderful. So he actually liked Yusuke.
They were all seated at a large booth (able to hold three people on each side) in a corner with purple lighting. Yusuke and Kuwabara (being the gentlemen that they thought they were) sat in the booth first, on opposite sides. Hiei, because of his desire to not sit next to the tall imbecile, quickly sat next to Yusuke. Keiko and Botan were both too scared to sit next to Hiei, so they moved in next to the orange-haired kid.
"I don't get it," Hiei remarked, setting down his menu.
"It's spicy. Don't worry. I'll order for you." Yusuke set his own menu down in near unison with the other three. Hiei was somewhat content, at least Yusuke had some sort of idea what Hiei liked (even though he didn't like food, let alone ate it for that matter).
Their server, a cute waitress in a red, green, orange, and black dress, greeted them with a smile as she set down a large curved plate covered in tortilla chips with a large bowl of tomato salsa in the middle. The group placed their orders (aside from Hiei of course; Yusuke had ordered him a plain chicken tortilla and a black coffee).
Hiei curiously watched as his four dinner companions dipped chips into the salsa and chatted about random things; school, Koenma, things they hated in the city. He was hungry, so he asked, "What is so great about that stuff you're shoving into your mouths?"
"It's good, Hiei!" Botan told him.
"Yeah, try some!" Keiko suggested. Hiei went to reach for one of the airy and hardly greasy chips.
"Hey, I don't want that guy touching all the chips!" Kuwabara complained. Yusuke kicked him under the table and then dipped a chip in the salsa for Hiei before handing it to him. As the demon placed it in his mouth, Yusuke realized that giving Hiei salsa was not the best idea in the world. It was rather spicy for free salsa.
Hiei struggled to swallow it. He couldn't let his eyes freely water up, nor could he spit out the food in front of everyone, especially him. He felt like he had swallowed lava. Delicious lava.
"Are you okay, Hiei?" Botan asked from across the table.
The demon heaved a heavy sigh, then tightly gripped Yusuke's hand, which was previously resting unbroken on the booth under the table. He glared at him, and stated in a very low and clear voice, "Don't you ever give that to me again." After seeing the disfigurement in Yusuke's face, he slowly lightened his grasp.
"Sorry," the boy apologized, resisting another urge to maul the person next to him. Botan kicked him under the table, claiming that her foot 'slipped', though it was really because she noticed how strange the interaction was between the two across from her was.
The rest of the meal continued on like that. Everyone enjoyed their meal, even Hiei, who thanked the detective for his good choice of dinner by actually eating it. The entire time, Kuwabara was being kicked by Yusuke for every height-joke made at the demon's expense, and Botan kicked Yusuke for every non-Keiko loving moment he had. The two boys ended up having severely bruised shins at the end of the dinner.
"Why the hell do you keep on limping like that?" Hiei asked Yusuke. They were a few steps away from entering Yusuke's apartment.
"Um, Botan kept kicking me, that's why," Yusuke replied sarcastically. He stopped as he went to turn the knob of the door to ask, "So…I'm glad you liked that."
"The food?" Hiei pondered. Of course, silly demon. What else could Yusuke be referring to…?
"Dinner," Yusuke played back. "Uh…Can I ask you something?"
"Aren't you always asking me questions, Detective?"
Yusuke twitched his raven eyebrows and gave Hiei an evil glare (which could contend with that of the Jagan eye). He proceeded to ask anyway. "What did you eat before I made you food?"
"If I told you then you wouldn't eat for an entire week." Yusuke cringed at the thought of what could make him lose his appetite for a week (an assortment of dead demon parts and squirrel muscles wasn't exactly a dessert platter to him).
Yusuke shrugged the thought away and made a move to unlock the door to the apartment. Luckily for him, the door was already open. Hiei had vanished. Atsuko was home, for once!
"Hi, Yusuke," his mother said as he stepped inside and removed his shoes. He was amazed at the amount of groceries and other so called 'goodies' that littered the kitchen. He set down his bag and greeted his mother.
"Wow, Mom," Yusuke remarked, helping her put away the items like a good son, "where'd ya get all this money?"
"A little from work, a little from Nenosuke," she answered.
"Wow, candy!" Yusuke exclaimed as he sifted through one of the bags. There was strawberry licorice, chocolates, sour gummies, hard fruit candies, and other miscellaneous sweets.
"Yeah, Neno thought I should get ya something since we go out a lot," Atsuko replied, lighting a cigarette. "Did you know he has a son, Yusuke?"
"No, so?" Yusuke was already anxiously putting the rest of the goods away, and stumbled upon a bunch of junkfood (among some nice microwaveable goods and rice).
"So…he's not the same age as you, but I thought that you should know." She exhaled a cloud of smoke.
"So I guess that means we're moving, huh?" the boy sighed. He just hoped that it wasn't out of the boundaries of the city.
"Maybe, maybe not," she said, "so don't think about it. What I want to know is whether or not you've been going to school." Yusuke opened his mouth to answer, but she interrupted with, "And don't lie."
"I went to school. I even did a project with Keiko," the teen stated.
"Ooh, Keiko," his mother smirked. "You better not have done anything that I wouldn't have done!" Yusuke jumped back at the sudden shout directed at him.
"Eer, no…though if I had done what you did when you were about my age, then there'd be little Yusuke's running around." He laughed at his own joke, but was smacked by his mom (more playfully than disciplinary).
"Shut up, kid," she laughed. She put out the butt of her cigarette and told him, "I'm going back out, but I'll be at Nenosuke's apartment. The number's taped to the fridge. We're going house hunting this week, so you better keep going to school." Yusuke assured her that there was nothing to worry about. Five minutes later, the items were put away, and Atsuko left when Nenosuke came to the door to get her.
"What a surprise," Hiei said, entering through the window as usual, "you're home alone again." Yusuke sighed, it wasn't as if he could make good use of his alone time. At the least Hiei had forgotten about the fighting after dinner (which Yusuke never gave a firm reply to).
"Now we can fight." Or maybe not.
"Hey, I never said that I was going to fight you!" Yusuke shouted. He rubbed his hand, it still sort of hurt from when Hiei nearly broke it in the restaurant.
"I went to dinner with you for nothing?" Hiei said, exasperated. That wasn't the full reason, but Yusuke didn't need that knowledge in his head.
"Ya got to eat, didn't you?" Yusuke argued back. Sometimes…Hiei just…was a pain in the ass! But he fought him anyway. A fifteen minute battle on the roof of the building, devoid of any spirit guns, swords, or soul eating dragons from the pits of Hell. A good (semi-clean) martial arts battle. It was a draw.
"There, are ya happy?" Yusuke asked him as they re-entered the apartment.
"Hn."
"Ya look better without the bruises, man," the taller one teased.
"Why must you always go back to those same worthless insults about my looks?" The teasing was getting to him. He hardly ever initiated it unless provoked.
"I was just kidding, sheesh," the detective answered, going into a closet and retrieving two towels. He tossed one to Hiei and said, "I told you that you weren't ugly."
"No, you didn't," Hiei retorted. Everyone hated him
"Uh, yes, I did," Yusuke recalled. "In fact, I think it's when you got that cold a few weeks ago!"
Why did the boy always have to find fault in him? He was just hopping on the bandwagon that all three worlds already were on. What was next, bringing up what happened a few days earlier? The event aptly named 'Stupid Idea'? Oh, he wished that another Stupid Idea would occur, but the Detective clearly wasn't into him.
Clearly.
Hazily.
Opaque-ly (the word ranks up there with pissitivity).
So he figured that maybe there was a slight chance that Yusuke would be into him. But would he accept something so strange? Maybe not, but then again, the entire time some sort of 'relationship' would go on, Hiei himself would not be able to cope with the arrangements. Demon slash bad guy thwarting human plus human hating outcast demon? There are too many possible solutions (such as: impossible, strange, detestable) to think about.
Oh, yeah. Plus the fact that Hiei didn't care about anyone except Yukina (…riiight…).
"You're spacing out, man. Why dontcha come over here and try some of this?" Hiei glanced over to find his infatuation seated on the sofa, surrounded by bags of human food, and watching one of his…videos.
"What is that?" Hiei asked, graciously accepting Yusuke's offer.
"It's candy, eat some," Yusuke said, plopping a bag of mixed hard candies into Hiei's lap. He picked it up curiously, and unwrapped it. It was a red and white peppermint. He popped it into his mouth and was overcome with feelings of joy. Sugar was absolutely the best thing on the face of the planet, but he never imagined it would be that good!
Hiei quickly grabbed another piece of candy and ate it. It was divine (the video wasn't that bad either).
"How do they do that? I don't think that the elder Toguro could have done something so contorted," Hiei remarked, rather out of character.
"Practice." Yusuke sucked on a string of licorice, wishing that he could practice something like that (the way in which he was treating the sweet was definitely not some sort of inference either…).
"What is this human obsession with the neck? Are you all vampritic parasites or do you eat your mates like spiders?"
After scrunching his nose from the peculiar question (potential wrinkle number three hundred), Yusuke remarked, "Vampritic? Or Vampiric?"
"Hn. Whatever."
"It feels good. There's not blood sucking or whatever, unless you're one of those weirdos whose into the whole vampirism thing." He turned on his side to see Hiei covered in about ten candy wrappers and questioned, "Didn't Kurama do stuff to your neck?"
"It didn't feel good." Not anything remotely close to the pleasure he was watching on the screen.
"Well, he was just being a jerk anyway for show." Yusuke smirked, thinking of a way to indirectly come up with a Stupid Idea. He gave up, as it was too much work to think, eat candy, and watch porn at the same time. Instead, he opted for this: "At the risk of getting murdered, can I do something?"
"What could you possibly do that could get you murd…" He paused, his words suspended by the tingle his neck was feeling. The detective was gently tickling a trail with his fingers between the back of Hiei's ear and his throat.
"Th…that's not funny…" Hiei stuttered.
"Not to you, maybe," Yusuke joked, leaning back into the couch.
"I should kill you," Hiei muttered, unwrapping a piece of strawberry filled candy.
"Hey, I said 'at the risk of being murdered,' didn't I?" Yusuke noted. "So go ahead."
"It didn't feel like anything anyway, who cares," Hiei lied. He couldn't deny it to himself. That tickling sensation felt great.
"Yeah, right!" Yusuke yelled, "I'll show you!" Within seconds, Yusuke was working at the right side of Hiei's neck with his mouth and the left side with his fingers. It was twenty-five percent driven by his recently acquired lust for the demon, and one-hundred ten percent driven by his desire to show Hiei up (Yusuke's not that good at math).
"Uhnn…Yuuss…" Hiei moaned. He gripped tightly onto the cloth of the boy's shirt, hoping that he wouldn't fall over backwards. He had to put a stop to it before it went any further (Hiei figured that he would be the one to ease up and give in). He uttered one last time, " Yusuke…st…stop…" Flushed, angry, and strangely aroused, Hiei found himself released from the boy's hold and breathing once again.
Stumbling over words, trying to find the best ones to shout out, the frustrated demon finally let out, "Stupid!" He settled down, grabbing a handful of the sour gummies, and pouted. He glanced down in his lap and suddenly wished that he had his cloak.
"I'm stupid? I think you're the one that was just proved wrong!" Yusuke retorted.
"I'm leaving," the demon announced.
"Go right ahead," Yusuke grinned.
"I will," Hiei threatened. He didn't move.
"Ooh, I thought you were leaving, Mister Tough Guy!" the detective taunted. Inwardly, he was happy. The more Hiei opened up to him, the more fun they had (though the video wasn't really placing healthy ideas inside the boy's head).
"After I wake up," Hiei sulked childishly. He figured that if he fell asleep that certain things would be less noticeable. He pushed away the candy and rested his head on Yusuke's lap (any outsider would have seen the obvious attraction, but these were just two stupid guys). The blue blanket from a few nights ago was still resting over the back of the couch, so Yusuke snagged it and draped it over Hiei, who had his eyes closed, but wasn't asleep.
Yusuke clicked on the remote and flipped the naughty movie off, changing the channel to watch whatever random show was on. He placed his arm around the demon in his lap, interlacing his fingers with those that peeked out from under the blankets. Wondering how long the two of them were going to avoid the apparent issue, he smiled when Hiei brought the hand in closer to his body. He's in such denial, he thought.
"How come you won't let the others see you like this?" he uttered in a soft tone.
"They don't need to," Hiei mildly murmured.
"Are you really that tired of their insults, Hiei?" The strange spiky hair in his lap was poking through some of the fabric of his shirt. Yusuke had to hold back a laugh from the tickle.
"Right now I'm just tired, so feel free to shut up," Hiei barked (or whimpered if one considers whispering a bark to be anything).
"Hey, it's that episode where the manga left off," Yusuke pointed to the TV screen.
"What are you blabbering about?" the demon queried, opening his eyes slightly.
"That manga you were reading. The one you told me to go get more of," Yusuke reminded him.
"Oh. I read that already." Hiei closed his eyes again. He cursed at himself; was it really wise of him to admit to another crime he committed?
"How'd ya read it?" Yusuke asked. He thought about it for a moment, then scolded, "Hiei! You want to get in trouble again?"
"Who cares," the demon grumbled. "You steal stuff. I steal stuff. I've taken plenty of things from this naïve city that Koenma doesn't even know about. Nor does he need to."
"Just don't get caught."
"The only reason I was caught was because that ridiculous baby has some sort of fetish for demon relationships." It was true. Koenma would never find his hoard of goods. If Hiei bothered to get involved in the human ways of buying and selling, he would be the richest among the bunch. He planned on giving the diamond necklaces to Yukina some day, and the sword collection was for his own personal use. The snowglobes and piccolos he just found amusing to look at. There was nothing like turning a tiny world upside down and changing the weather with a small and violent shake for pleasure.
To Be Continued...
A big thanks to:
Kurama-sweethart, cinnamonkit15, Yoko's Babby, HottieKarasu, Averon, Hieis/Kuramas-Angel, Sorry Im Me, Little Sakura 87, Skittles the Sugar Fairy, FluffysBijin05, sakurasango, always/a/dreamer, Vflames, InuAngl, danceDANCEdance, RR, Tsuname, HieiWannabe, ShadowDragon, Kittengrl39, Parariillusion, Umi no Oni, and Black Angel of Destruction.
Update to author's note: Going through this fic a few years later, I can't believe I wrote it. I hardly remember what happened, and I find myself getting absorbed into it, instead of editing. That being said, can I now say, "Wow! Kurama is quite out of character." I realized that at some point, I know I was trying to parody other fanfics (mainly Hiei-Kurama ones since at the time of this writing, a good one was really, really, really hard to find). But I can't quite remember if Kurama's OOC-ness was a result of the parody, or just an oversight.
One thing I do remember though, is that at this point, I hadn't seen the rest of the series (I believe I was in the midst of Chapter Black). So keep that in mind when reading!
-Zelia Theb