Thank you to Self-Proclaimed Everything, RomanceNovelistYuki4563, and mystice for reviewing

Thank you to thoth-moon, Self-Proclaimed Everything, SPS-kun, BlueUtopiah, and PaintedDeath for reviewing.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho; I make no profit from this story

Burning Angels
by R. M. Weiss

Chapter 3:

Shafts of moonlight broke through the space between the shades and the window sill. Falling in a white glow across the sheets of the hospital bed and running straight into and up the walls on the far side of the room, they divided it in half. As the clock on the wall ticked by the seconds, mirroring the soft beeping of the monitors hooked up to the still form in the bed, Yusuke passed his hand occasionally across the thin line, breaking its flow.

He had been sitting the provided hospital chair for an hour now. Yukina had never come back to make sure he went back to his room. Most likely she had gotten her hands full taking care of the young boy that had been brought in with Itsuki.

No officer had yet come to guard the door either, and this bothered Yusuke to no end. A million reasons as to why ran through his mind as he glanced back to check the door. 'Did Koenma not get authorization? That's impossible…even if it's not to keep this guy under arrest, it could have been done as a security thing. Someone tried to kill him…or he tried to kill someone and then they tried to kill him.'

Lines of concentration appeared on his forehead. His mind drifted away from his thoughts and back to the night he that had landed him in the hospital. Having gotten a tip-off from one of his many connections within the city, Yusuke had gone to finally make a bust on Sensui and his gang, bringing along Kurama, Hiei, and fellow officer Kuwabara in as back up. They had barged into the condemned warehouse down at the wharfs. Number thirty-two. It was large and rusting on the inside. Cold and damp, the warehouse provided the perfect hide out for the Seventh Shinobu-gumi; no one went to the warehouse ever, even the rats stayed away.

Yusuke had led his group into the belly of the beast without enough forethought. Running into a spray of bullets, he had been forced into cover. With a team effort, the detective's group managed to make it through the lines of shatei and wakashu and in the very end, Yusuke had gotten to the top floor and the very back of the warehouse to face Sensui.

He could still see the man's smug smile as he faced Yusuke, dark eyes flashing in the light provided by the naked bulb that swung slowly over his head. He was sitting in an empty office, whose windows had long since blown out and furniture had warped and rotted from the constant sea breeze drifting in.

Yusuke had not seen Itsuki at first, the man slipping out of the shadows of the room the second the detective had made to level his gun. The sudden movement had surprised Yusuke, and had it not been for quick thinking he would have gotten shot right through the heart.

Itsuki had fought him with everything he had, pushing him back, out of the office, towards the railing on the top row. They had run through the semi-dark, up and down stairs, around long forgotten machinery, and every time the detective made to get a shot at Sensui who followed them slowly, Itsuki would appear.

Twice the green haired man had taken a bullet from the brown eyed detective's gun, and each time he had come back nearly stronger than the time before. They moved as if partners in a dance, a dance that stopped suddenly when Sensui called off his saiko komon. The kumicho had then asked for Itsuki's gun, and shoved the man into the open elevator car the second he had come with in reach. He had sent the car to the bottom floor, Itsuki's protests heard echoing up from the elevator shaft as he tried to override the controls and get back to his leader.

Yusuke could still hear the man's voice in his head as he told him about his plans. How he had wished to ultimately dominate the criminal underworld, reconstruct the way the yakuza went about its business, and, above all else, live a normal life at the same time. He had pushed every one of Yusuke's buttons then, and only when he had the detective enraged did he level his gun at him.

In all the ballistics reports, it was clear that Yusuke had somehow managed to shoot first, hitting the kumicho squarely in the center of his chest. While the brown eyed detective had been shocked as he watched blood bloom on Sensui's chest, he could tell that the older man was not. In fact, he seemed almost serene as he fell to the ground.

The last memory Yusuke had of that night was Kuwabara being the first to find him standing over the cooling body of one of the most wanted men in their city. He had been told later that blood loss had caused him to black out, and only after all his operations were over did he recall getting hit by a number of Itsuki's bullets.

A sudden beep from the monitor by his side caused the detective to look up. He was no doctor, but he recognized the sudden series of spikes on the heart rate monitor to be signs of distress. Getting up as fast as he could, Yusuke reached across the bed to grab the call button for the nurse. Hands unresponsive and sluggish, he only succeeded in knocking the device on the floor.

Cold flesh closed around his wrist in a painfully tight grip. Jerking his head up, Yusuke's brown eyes went wide as he found himself looking into frantic, uncomprehending golden eyes. Itsuki was awake.

The saiko komon thrashed in the bed under Yusuke's weight, setting off all the monitors attached to him. With his free hand he tried to remove the respirator that had been helping him stay alive after surgery. He did not know where he was or even who he was. All he knew was the blinding pain radiating from what felt like every cell of his body. The added weight across his abdomen did not help either, yet Itsuki did not have the strength to force the body sprawled on him away. Gripping tightly to the wrist in his hand, he sought for an anchor in reality that would bring him back.

He had been hurt before. Each time Sensui had been there to pull him back from the depths of pain and into the world of the living and healing. This time though, Sensui was dead. The person he had swore his life to, who he had given everything to, was dead and buried and could not help him this time. It was that pain which kept him from wanting to fully wake up when he felt consciousness begin to sink its claws into his mind.

The monitors continued to scream, deafening Yusuke in one ear as he tried to free his wrist from Itsuki's grasp. With his free hand, he pried at the fingers until they loosened, only to have them clamp down on his hand now. Maneuvering himself off the bed, the detective continued to try and shake free as his leg protested to the sudden movement and nurses rushed into the room.

"What are you doing here? This room is private," one of the nurses snapped, manhandling the startled detective towards the door. In her hast she did not notice he wore the usual hospital in-patient clothes, and manhandled him out of the room.

Yusuke stumbled into the hallway, catching his balance when he reached the wall across from the door. Feeling a hand steady him, he looked over, and found himself face-to-face with a very broad neck. "So they put you on guard, huh?" the detective asked.

Kuwabara was easily taller than Yusuke by a head, the carrot-top built big compared to the detective's leaner stature. His height made him stand out in the precinct, though he never really paid much attention to the differences between himself and the other cops. A 'lumbering-ox', as he had been dubbed by Hiei, Kuwabara was probably one of the most reliable officers on the force. Though he had a stubborn streak a mile wide, he was loyal to a fault and had an uncanny ability to sense things others couldn't, his hunches almost always correct.

Currently, Kuwabara was shoving papers, having just gotten back to work after being in the hospital himself. Like Yusuke, he had been unlucky enough to get clipped in enough places to require bed rest during their raid on the warehouse lair of the boryokudan.

"You got chased out of there pretty fast," the carrot-top said, clapping a hand down on Yusuke's shoulder to steady him. "How's the leg? We going to be able to go to the gym soon? I still have to beat your record you know."

"You're really eager to lose aren't you? I'm injured here, give me time."

"You should be resting still. Yukina said you already tore your stitches once," the blue eyed man said in a hushed voice. He strained to hear what the nurses were saying on the other side of the door.

Shrugging off Kuwabara's hand, Yusuke leaned back against the wall. "He woke up."

"What?"

"He woke up," the detective said again, brown eyes closing. "I was sitting there and everything started going crazy on the monitors."

Looking towards the closed door, Kuwabara frowned a little. "Koenma wants him to stay alive. He's our best chance at taking down Sensui's old racket."

"Yeah," Yusuke sighed, "he is." Even through the closed door, the screams of the monitors could still faintly be heard, and they bothered the brown eyed detective to no end. He'd been in hospitals enough to know sounds like those weren't good signs. All he could do now was wait and see what would happen.

Down twenty-blocks from the hospital, two off-duty police officers lay in a tangled heap of limbs upon their bed. Panting for the air they had starved themselves of, they rested for now, neither wanting to move away.

Stretched out on his stomach Kurama let one hand trail behind him and gently run through the spikes of his lover's hair. "Are you alright now?" he whispered, feeling a sweaty forehead press against his shoulder and a rush of warm breath let out in a sigh hit his back.

A soft squeeze to his hips was the only answer he got. Feeling a smile tug at the corner of his lips, Kurama turned a little to look at Hiei. The redhead could see the relaxation settling into his partner, noticing it most in the lazy way Hiei closed his eyes half-way, still seeking his grounding.

"Did it help?"

Closing red eyes the rest of the way, Hiei sighed and turned his face so it could bury itself in fiery colored hair. "Yes," he said, voice a little hoarse. His body still hummed with the adrenaline rush he had gotten mid-way into their love-making. It was a common thing when they were together like this, the shorter driving his willing lover into the bed hard enough to make the bed shake in its sturdy frame. 'Satisfaction of basic primal urges', the psychologist at the precinct said when Hiei had been forced to go there.

Koenma had all but ordered the black haired officer to seek out Botan's help when it was brought to his attention that Hiei was not handling the after-effects of harder assignments well. For three months, Hiei had been forced to go see Botan every Friday for two hours. She had given him an answer to his 'anger-issues' right away. The blue haired woman had gone in detail about similar cases she came across, and time and time again assured Hiei that there would be nothing wrong with asking Kurama to humor him when he was in one of his moods. She had been the first to suggest they should try sex after nerve wracking cases, insisting that it was a way for Hiei to find the grounding he needed—since going to the gym and letting off testosterone did nothing—in order to function properly again.

'It's not strange or wrong. Some people just need to do that after trying situations. Sex is a basic need, and it reminds us that we're alive.'

Shaking himself out of his musings, Hiei slowly rolled off of his lover. He stared at the ceiling for a little while before closing his eyes. The bed dipped under his partner's weight as Kurama sat up and stood on still shaking legs.

"I'm going to go take a shower, are you going to sleep?"

Responding with a soft grunt, Hiei stretched out a little more on the bed. There was no need for words between them. They'd already reached the point where they could hold a conversation just with a shared glance.

Kurama shook his head in amusement and gathered his clothes of the floor. Tossing them in the hamper by the door, he slipped into the bathroom that was attached to their room, looking back over his shoulder for a second at Hiei.

The dark haired officer on the bed listened to the sound of a handle being turned which was quickly followed by rushing water. With a heavy sigh, Hiei sat up and pushed his hair out of his eyes, fixing the ever-present bandana on his forehead. He recognized the 'come-hither' look in viridian eyes that had fleetingly looked his way. A barely perceptible smirk tugged at his lips as he made his way towards the bathroom.

He didn't feel the frantic need to claim the redhead any more, his fears abated with the rough love making they'd just finished. There was a different fire beginning to race through his blood now, making it simmer in his veins as he watched the closed door of the shower slide open and a pale hand stick out.

Kurama crooked his finger in a beckon, and with a wolfish grin Hiei responded.

Damn but his foxy was frisky tonight.

TBC

Thank you for reading chapter three. I'm sorry for the delay but school hit me heavy the past month so I was unable to update soon. Chapter four will be up shortly after the next chapter of Pressure is posted.