Author: kajamiku
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Pairing: Kurama x Yusuke
Disclaimer: I own nothing but words
Summary/Notes: A phone call sets things in motion. Two bodies pulled helplessly towards one another. Maybe bad language, smut possible but not certain… uh, I don't think it needs to be said but this is kind of yaoi. Kurama x Yusuke.
This was originally a one-shot. I've wanted to write this pairing for so long that I keep attempting and then giving up because I don't have enough push to do it. Finally, I finished this and realised there really isn't enough in it to be a one-shot. I've decided it'll have more chapters, but please don't rush me or it'll never happen. I work well with deadlines, not pressure. Still, if you like it I'd definitely like to know! At a guess I'd say this is going to have maybe three chapters, depending on how much plot I decide to put into it. If I make it last too long then I have more of a chance of losing interest and I don't really want that to happen. Hope you like it!
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When It Began
It had been a long time.
That's what Yusuke thought as he walked. As he wandered through the hopelessly familiar streets, eyes on the long shadow that preceded him. It had been a long time since he had walked this particular route. Since he had been given a phone call like the one he had been surprised to receive that morning.
He had not expected that voice – that utterly unsettlingly pleasant voice – let alone been able to guess at what it would say. When he had reached for the phone, abandoning dull daytime television droning on in the background for the promise of a real person's invasion of his solitude, he had expected someone else. Four or five other people had come to mind before he lifted the receiver, before he heard the voice he had not expected.
It was ironic really, unbelievably so. Despite his surprise it had been this voice he had been wanting to hear since he had returned to Human World a month ago.
Spending his time lazing around town or sitting at home watching TV that had changed so much in the time he'd been gone wasn't, despite the weird cravings he had suffered when these pastimes were denied him, the way he wanted to use the free time he found himself floating in.
It was a kind of suspension, being back, seeing everything differently as if from a vantage point he was sure he had never even considered before. He was more demon than he had been. More himself, you could say. It had shocked him that everything could seem so pale and texture-less. So unlike the place he remembered. It was like being used to a room with a brightly coloured rug and returning home to find the floor bare.
Moving around the city was like exploring a totally new place now, he didn't recognise much of what existed in some places and his mother had moved to a part he hadn't known well to begin with. It was a different world, he understood that, but at every turn he found himself comparing it with Demon World, with the place he had somehow found to be home. He acknowledged that his demon blood helped, but the comforting feeling he had acquired in Demon World, and which he now knew had once resided only in his birth world, was strangely absent.
Demon World had more colour than this. More life. That was odd as well, that he thought of Human World in such a depreciating light nowadays. When had that started? He couldn't remember.
Living here was less. Just less. It was like drinking coffee that had too much sugar in it, a sweetness, a security, that only poisoned and made the real flavour difficult to detect. Yusuke had never thought of this place like that before he had travelled to Demon World. He had rebelled and argued and hated authority, but the world itself he liked. How could he not? He was born there, grew up there, fought there…
It just wasn't the same anymore. Not after discovering so much more of himself.
Yusuke rotated one shoulder, lips twitching at the satisfying but barely audible crack, and allowed his eyes to run over the street he was walking along. The newly filled stone pavements – the old cracks he remembered were long cemented over and didn't look quite right to him anymore – the ugly metal railings that edged the road, the litter that was at an all-time minimum for a place in this area, and the shops that lined it.
The shops were all the kind that never seemed to be the same every time you passed. Yusuke remembered that the sports shop across from him had been a pasta bar when he was last here; that the corner toy store had been a fruit and veg shop, and before that a small, dingy bar.
He hadn't walked along here since… it had been a long time.
The natural light was dimming now, the short notice but pre-arranged meeting having been planned for just after the sun went down. The mostly empty streets – still people closing up stores for the day, a kid or two running home, the odd lone pedestrian – were bathed in a warm orange glow, the normal colours dyed for the minutes the sun set possessed them.
The day had been a normal autumnal one, warm still but with a brisk wind that scattered leaves and, to his silent indignation, ruffled his recently styled hair.
He was wearing a jacket, his hands habitually hanging in the pockets, and his walk was slow, lazy, practically a saunter. There was no need to hurry. He wasn't late and even if he was, it felt like the kind of walk that was meant to be taken slowly, thought about, considered sufficiently before he reached his destination. It was however, despite its casual appearance, a purposeful walk.
Yusuke considered, as his hand left its pocket to push some hair from his face, that as much as he had missed pockets he could use in this way, he didn't miss these kinds of clothes at all. In fact, had it not been for a forever lingering sense of pride and the impulse to appear somewhat normal, he would have been all for making this trek across town in one of the outfits he had brought with him from Demon World, the fighting clothing that felt like a second skin. The stuff he'd shoved into a bag before he left, crumpled into a ball and packed in tightly with the rest of his travelling gear.
Kurama would have laughed to see the creases. But he hadn't seen the fox recently enough to know. Yusuke thought he might have been in Human World with his family still, since his visits to Demon World were, though frequent, usually short.
Same with Hiei really, who Yusuke had seen last when he had been caught by the patrol doing something less than reputable. The petite demon had smirked somewhat when he realised who the grunts had actually 'caught' and he and the creepy ex-Queen Mukuro had teased a little before they released him, bantering back and forth about the pros and cons of detaining him until he wanted to beg for mercy.
Kuwabara was, obviously, still in Human World. Although Yusuke got regular calls from the big idiot now that he had been found out to have been hiding in his mother's apartment for the past month, he still had no idea what he was doing. He could vaguely remember Kuwabara ranting on about Yukina for three hours, while he abandoned the phone receiver on the arm of the sofa and watched bad soap operas until the lovesick guy was done. He had long ago decided that the red-head was only good in small doses, too much and you went mad and too little and you started to think you were going mad because you somehow started to miss him.
It had been Yusuke's short-lived ambition to stay out his small visit to Human World indulging in the good things and avoiding the bad or annoying. However, a mere two hours after he arrived at his mother's new apartment, Kuwabara was on the phone blabbering about how glad he was that Yusuke was back and how he just had to visit him and get beaten up… the usual.
Then, one month of miraculously unfamiliar TV adverts, bad programs and ridiculous amounts of junk food later, there was that phone call.
He had, admittedly, believed it would be Keiko. Even after so long, it was still Keiko who called most often during his infrequent returns to his birth world. Or, it had been. In fact, his last visit had her calling at least once a day. A few days before he left however, everything that had held the two of them together had crumbled. They both knew it was a thin thread that remained anyway, she had told him that she thought they had both been expecting it, but Yusuke had still managed to be surprised.
They fought a lot, everyone knew that, but on that sunny June afternoon it had been worse than usual. 'The ultimate lover's tiff', Kuwabara had called it. Yusuke didn't think 'tiff' was a good enough word for it. He didn't think that a word existed that could do it justice. The aftermath had been much cooler, the talk that followed the tongue lashings, and it had done more damage than the yelling.
The trips back to Demon World started it. It was one thing that he had made her wait for so long, it was another thing entirely that he couldn't stay in Human World for very long and had to take increasingly long visits to his other world of residence.
Perhaps it was Keiko who kept the colour in Human World. He considered, as he walked, that it might well have been Keiko that really kept him coming back so much. From what he heard, she now had a new boyfriend and was still studying somewhere on a scholarship. That's what Kuwabara had said, at least. In the month that he'd been back he hadn't had one call from her. Not even one. But then, it took a week for him to realise that he didn't really mind. And he didn't, not one bit, because he had gone so long without speaking to her that they really had very little to talk about even when they tried.
She became quiet and had secrets. He couldn't think of anything to tell her that she would want to hear about. And so the silences had grown. As she had said the last time he spoke to her – on the phone of course, he hadn't seen her in about two years now – it really had been inevitable. They were far too different by now.
Yusuke wondered why he was thinking about all of this. He wondered why walking alone on this sleepy, quiet Thursday evening had brought so many things to mind, why it had made him think so deeply about things he generally tried not to. His 'not thinking before he barrels into something' reputation was going to be at risk if he continued on like this. And reputation always had been important to him.
The smell of stale coffee wafted through an open doorway as he passed it, a café he had never even noticed before, reminding him of his mother's kitchen and its constant coffee smell, the source-less scent that filled the room no matter how much airing he gave it. A glance into the place confirmed that it was closed and in the process of being cleaned, the disinfectant mixed with the coffee to produce an even less appealing smell and Yusuke pulled a face as he continued on.
The walk was coming to an end now. He could see his eventual destination from his vantage at the top of the hill and he felt all the closer to it, even though one step earlier it had been a distant address.
Somehow, the walk felt shorter than he knew it had been. The sun had dipped so far that the streetlights were coming on and the earlier orange glow had become black. Yusuke's shadow was gone now, mixed with hundreds of others that made their home in the open when the sun was gone. The lights were slow coming on, flickering like unsightly false flames, one after another down the hill, catching up with and finally overtaking Yusuke on his descent.
The dark had come quicker than he thought it would.
The remnants of sunlight were visibly making their attempt at climbing over the trees' silhouette, but as Yusuke watched he knew it was futile. The light had to fade for his meeting to take place, after all.
Despite such a slow pace, it didn't seem to take very long for Yusuke to reach the bottom of the hill, the end of the street, the kerb and fence and gate that welcomed visitors to the edge of the park. It wasn't the kind of park that immediately came to Yusuke's mind; the kind with a climbing frame and swings and such, it was purely green. A real public garden surrounded by a fence and a tall, thick green hedge that looked more harmless than it was. Yusuke could remember falling into it when he was younger and getting covered in scratches. It wasn't funny at the time.
The gate was left open, of course, since it had been put to rest a little way into the place after it had been brutally ripped from its hinges some years ago, and no one had bothered to repair it. It lay twisted and rusty, discarded in a corner beside the outer hedge, shining dully in the fading light.
It was an attempt at order, this garden, solidly cut borders in the turf with common flowers arranges in lines that had, over time, grown wild. There were weeds among them, showing the general neglect as much as the forgotten gate, and random plants had appeared among the originals, invading the no longer straight lines of rhododendrons, azalea and other plants Yusuke couldn't name. Rambling jasmine and honeysuckle fought with ivy in places on the trees and fences, nondescript shrubs had appeared, greenery poking through the cracks in the stone path Yusuke now paused on. A large patch of roses stood in one corner, wild and tall and unconquerable, and the sight of them made his lips curve at the familiarity.
Wandering further into the jungle of tall grass and lush plants, Yusuke finally found himself fighting his way through the final barrier of overgrown hedges, attempting with minimal success to get to the centre garden. He near fell from the tight grip of the branches that caught him, tearing at his clothes and skin, tumbling onto the noticeably shorter grass on the other side of the hedge with a grunt of annoyance.
The grass here was a manageable length, ankle-height perhaps, and the plants were quite noticeably tamer. It was fairly obvious that someone had been in this place, visiting the neglected area and treating it. A gardener of some skill, naturally. Or perhaps Yusuke only thought that because he knew it was true. Either way, it didn't surprise him in the least to see that there was a figure sitting on the stone bench in the middle of the docile flora.
What did surprise Yusuke, however, was not that the figure made no move at his appearance – he was expected after all, and had made no effort to conceal his presence – but something else, the fact that it was not red hair that was visible in the dim light, but silver. It had been Suichi-Kurama's voice on the phone earlier that day, Yusuke knew, because Youko's voice was deeper, more feral, than the red-head's. Then again, he was used to the silver fox's appearance well enough too because he had seen it many times in Demon World.
Many times…? This made Yusuke think back. He had seen Kurama right before he came to Human World. A month? It had only been a month? It felt like he hadn't seen the fox for a year or more… It seemed as if 'a long time' had a different meaning in relation to Kurama. Not that the fox didn't usually re-write the rules. It was rare that he obeyed if he could find a way to break them.
Finally one of the fox ears twitched. A visible sign that he had been noticed, even if he knew Kurama had felt his approach some time ago. He took it as an invitation to advance and, climbing to his feet, he took it, strolling to within inches of the stone bench before unceremoniously dumping himself onto it beside his old friend.
"Hey there Kurama." He paused to take another glance around the immaculate garden. "I like what you've done with the place." A gruff, but unmistakable, sound of amusement escaped the fox and Yusuke grinned. "I haven't been here in about two years." Unspoken the reason arose between them; it had been the night he left after the trouble with Keiko. He used to spend months in each world, a few here and a few there, but it had been a full two years since he'd last visited the Human World this time.
"Yes." Not much, but at least he had said something. Yusuke assumed that because there was nothing wrong with him this time, it was Kurama's turn to need the comfort. That was, he supposed, the purpose of this garden and their meetings there.
Yusuke watched Kurama through the silence, his eyes not looking where his head directed them. The demon was staring up at the sky, evidently watching the sun do its last disappearing act, his golden eyes their usual nonchalant selves, his expression calm and carefully neutral. But there was something there, Yusuke decided, something he didn't think was usually there. It was something like bitterness. Bitterness and melancholy. It was deeply sunk in the endless gold, half hidden behind clouds of indifference. With so little sunlight, it was left up to Yusuke's ability to see in the dark and the almost full moon to help him try and work out what was going on.
It wasn't often that they met like this, it had only ever happened three times before, and they had all been Yusuke's problems. It was strange that the usually composed fox would call them to this place for comfort of his own, stranger still that it was the Youko form that greeted him, sitting unnaturally still with his silver hair and tail glimmering in what little light there was.
"So… what's up?" It was not in Yusuke's nature to be silent for long, especially when he could tell something needed to be said. They both knew that.
Breaking the silence was like breaking glass between them. Kurama finally turned from the sky to fix his golden gaze on his companion, his ears dipping once in a way that seemed, somehow, to scold the boy for his impatience.
Another moment descended upon them, smothering anything Yusuke wanted to say as he saw just how serious the face opposite him was. It was a moment that sent all kinds of thoughts flying through his head, but he was still unable to think of something they might have been here for. It was like trying to think up an answer to a question he hadn't even been asked yet.
Then everything became glaringly clear.
Kurama's face dipped so close that Yusuke could feel the skin that wasn't even touching him, could feel the heat of the demon's breath on his mouth, and could see nothing but gold. And he hovered there, waiting while Yusuke's brain put two and two together and finally got four, waiting until he finally used two clawed fingers to tilt the boy's head back and made their mouths meet.
Both pairs of eyes remained open, there was nothing but the press of lips against lips, the glare of gold into brown and the returning force.
Then there was a tongue slipping between Yusuke's lips, a tongue he didn't even try to stop, and that was when his body lost contact with his brain. Fox hands were suddenly everywhere, the clothes he was wearing obviously not even considered an obstacle, and it was in the moment that the fox demon pressed the boy's back to the bench that Yusuke really realised what was going on.
It was just before he lost coherency, before any thoughts beyond 'oh my god' and 'fucking hell' were gone in a mad whirl of sensation, when a talented mouth was attached to his flesh, moving from neck to chest, that he decided that he was glad he took that phone call.