What I steal...I keep

*I apologize in advance for any errors you may find in this chapter (and the others) as this story has not be beta’d.


Chapter 2

Yusuke stirred, pulled from the unconscious of sleep. Yawning he turned over and tried to bunch his pillow closer to his body. Grumbling sleepily at its hardness, he tried to knead it to the proper shape for sleep. He clutched tighter at his pillow when it tried to move.

“Stop it,” he mumbled, burrowing tighter against his pillow.

Fuckin’ stupid pillow, he thought with the vague anger of one unfairly deprived of his precious sleep. Soon as I get some money, I’m gonna buy me another pillow. And it damn well better be a pillow that knows its place, he thought darkly.

On a good day, Commonsense and Yusuke generally passed each other with a vague sign of recognition.

Half asleep?

They were complete strangers.

“I have a Spirit Gun and I’m not afraid to use it,” he threatened his pillow half-heartedly without opening his eyes.

“You are in my spot,” pronounced a coldly annoyed voice. It was weird, Yusuke thought muzzily, how much it sounded like Hiei. Curling tighter around his pillow, he buried his head in the silk. With a determined squirm, Yusuke tried to return to the oblivion of sleep.

“Move now or pick how you wish to die.”

“Great, even in my dreams Hiei’s bugging me,” Yusuke grumbled. Go away, he mentally ordered and tried to bring back the scantily clad dancing chicks. Chicks with huge knockers, he grinned and wiggled happily.

At his wish, they appeared and proceeded to smother him with said huge knockers.

Oh, yeah, now we’re talkin’! A thoroughly lewd smile wreathed Yusuke’s lips.

The sharp poke to his back had the smile vanishing and his eyes snapping open in shock.

Greatly amused, eyes of a startling green met his. With a yelp, and babbling apologies, Yusuke hurriedly released his grip on Kurama. When he turned over to face Hiei, he froze.

Eyes widening in shock, he simply stared in gape-jaw shock.

Arms crossed over his chest, the dark, foreboding look on Hiei’s fine-boned face would have been intimidating enough. Were it any other circumstances, perhaps Yusuke would have felt a momentary pause.

However, there was the fact that Hiei was naked.

Naked as in having no fuckin’ clothes on, his mind gibbered unhelpfully. “You’re naked…”

Hiei’s glare darkened even further. “Of course I am,” he said impatiently.

And you’re remarkably well hung, a fact Yusuke’s mind couldn’t help pointing out. Especially considering that the object in question was practically in his face.

“So very, very awkward…” he half whispered.

He looked over his shoulder at Kurama, and aimed a half-grin at the kitsune. “I think I might be jealous,” he said conversationally.

If anything, Hiei’s face became stonier. Kurama aimed a hard, stinging blow to the back of Yusuke’s head. Stung, and head aching from the blow, Yusuke opened his mouth to rail at the unjustness of the hit. The icy blankness descending on Kurama’s face was sufficient warning.

A familiar reminder to think before speaking.

Obeying that unspoken command, he used the precious seconds allotted him. He wasn’t stupid…just thoughtless. More times than not, when in an unusual situation, his mouth ran away from him.

Like now.

A fleeting look of chagrin flickered over his face.

Hiei, not one for making jokes, had a difficult time telling the difference between friendly jesting and outright cruelty. With others, he knew precisely how to respond to jokes. It usually ended fatally for the jokers. However, with Yusuke and Kuwabara, members of a select few he called ‘friend’, he didn’t quite know how to react to their comments. He was vaguely sure that cutting their heads off wasn’t an appropriate response

Darting a quick look at the fire yokai, Yusuke silently groaned. “Dude, you know I’m not my best when I’m half asleep,” he groaned in apology.

Hiei sneered, his mask firmly in place. “As if that makes a difference. You’re not any good when you’re fully awake either.”

“Fuck off, shorty,” Yusuke heatedly. He sat up, the light of battle clear in his eyes.

It was time for the ritual exchange of brisk insults. The venom of each insult rivaled its ridiculousness. It was traditional method towards restoring Hiei’s temper.

Which typically translated into either ‘pissed off’ or ‘vaguely annoyed’…depending on what time of day it was. Fortunately for Yusuke it was the right time of day.

Or, you know, night.

With a grunt, Hiei ended the growing battle of words. “You’re still in my space.”

Seeing another argument brewing in Yusuke’s stormy face, Kurama quickly stepped in. “Yusuke, please…just switch places with me.”

Muttering under his breath, Yusuke huffily did. Calm restored, Hiei slipped into bed with them.

Yusuke had time to ponder how the hell he had gotten from the car to wherever the hell he was when what Kurama and Hiei did next totally blew his question straight out of his mind.

To…tal…ly.

Green eyes softened as Hiei edged closer. His movements slow and unthreatening, Kurama leaned closer. His mouth briefly caressed Hiei’s firmly held lips. Lips softened—gentle and supplicating—as he teased until the tightly sealed lips parted.

Allowing him entrance.

With careful restraint—respecting the boundaries Hiei imposed—he gently fitted their mouths together. For years, obsessed with being the perfect son and paranoid about his mother finding out her son was not human, he rigidly withheld himself from the familiar touch of another yokai.

To feel flesh not of human origins was all that was sublime. Humans, for all their variety, were fragile.

So very breakable.

Unable to withstand even the slightest of love taps.

And for years, he had held himself aloof from such contact….Though he craved what he forbade himself to touch.

Despite his austere manner, even in his incarnation of Yoko Kurama, he had always been a tactile creature. Kitsunes conveyed much in the touch of their bodies, the cant of their ears or the movement of their tails.

Whole conversations could be held, all without opening their mouths.

But reborn in this frail human shell, the risk had been too great. He had to lock that part of him away.

However, with this request of Hiei’s, he was able to at least, satisfy a small portion of that desire.

Not once did he allow the pity he felt to show in either his movements or eyes. Nor did he in any way forget the heat from his other side. He could feel Yusuke’s incredulous stare burning a hole between his shoulders but did not let that stop him from his task as
Hiei had enough pride to fill the sea.

He would see any hesitation as rejection.

That Hiei—bristly with his own version of honor—broken in ways difficult to comprehend, had come to him humbled him. It made him determined to be worthy of Hiei’s trust.

For that was what Hiei was gifting him with…trust.

And not even to protect Yusuke’s sensibilities would he damage that precious gift.

Hiei quivered minutely.

Grimly—and with a supreme effort of will—he lowered his guard. He had asked for this….And this yokai was his friend. The first time they had did this, his instincts had kicked in and Kurama had just managed to escape with only a black eye.

Shamed, it took days for Kurama to convince him to return.

For him, physical contact had always signified pain.

Or a prelude to an attack.

Growing up in the Makai, he had fallen in with a group of yokai. Rarely was anything offered for free in the Makai.

Not even safety.

There had been a price attached to the tiny space where he slept, ‘protected’ within in the thieves’ camp.

He had paid for such ‘protection’ often with gritted teeth. After the first time, he found a way to escape the pain. Then after, it became easier to simply not feel anything other than impatience for the grunting, laboring fool to be done.

No matter how much his dislike, there had been little he could do.

Without power, he was weak.

And the weak were anyone’s meat.

Eventually he grew and discovered his own power. Harnessing it and practicing in secret, he had brought a rude awakening to the next one that sought him out for a bit of ‘sport’.

It didn’t take long for them to decide his small stature was not worth the pain involved.

He had been allowed to walk away. It hadn’t been long before he heard they had found another child to replace him.

Humans would call it abuse…he had called it survival.

It took years but he was chagrin to realize that the humans…had a point.

What he had to endure had hardened him. But it had damaged him to a degree that he was just coming to realize. He had found it difficult to stifle the instinct to protect his self anytime someone touched him.

Mukuro had been right, he had realized some time ago. He just hadn’t known how to fix the problem.

They were both broken, he and Mukuro. Messed up in ways hard to understand. The difference between them was the fact that she had conquered her ‘demons’.

She was well on her path, working to mend her broken parts.

He…only knew how to function with broken and damaged parts.

He did not want to go into their union like this. She deserved better.

It went against everything he had worked towards, but he had also learned that with friends came a certain responsibility. Or at least with the kind of friends he had.

He was quite certain that they were unusual in one regard. If he asked them to journey with him to certain death, they saunter along—either beside him, behind him or in front of him—bickering endlessly. Probably betting who could would have the ‘best’ death.

Or arguing that they were going the wrong way.

He had turned to the one person capable of helping him. And found Kurama—manipulative bastard that he was—already waiting.

Mukuro was too important for him to lose because of his problem.

He…loved her. A fact that continued to play havoc with his finally honed sensibilities. When he thought of her, he felt this irritating, mushy softness.

It was so unbecoming, he mourned to himself.

Kurama, who finally intuited that surprising fact, found it hysterically amusing.

Still, the fox agreed to teach him. To learn to sheathe his sharpness until it was needed.

“Ohmigod…”

The hushed whisper reached both demons ears. Two sets of eyes rolled to where a red-faced, wide-eyed Yusuke was pressed defensively against the wall. “I…I…I can sleep on the couch downstairs,” he said in a trembling voice. Putting actions to words, he hastily began crawling out of the bed.

Hiei and Kurama exchanged devious looks. Reaching out a hand, Kurama snagged Yusuke’s ankle and yanked. A muffled oomph and Yusuke was flat on the bed.

“You, my dear kit, are frighteningly homophobic,” Kurama said with amused derision. Then he sighed. “Yusuke, despite your being a yokai, you don’t have the slightest clue about our culture and mores, do you?”

Huffing at the implied reprimand, Yusuke snapped as he struggled to his knees, “Oh yeah? Dude, I see two of my friends, guy friends mind you, kissing and you’re saying I’m jumping to conclusions?”

On a roll, Yusuke continued without pause. “And? And? Where the hell are we? And how the hell did I get from the car to your bed without waking? And, and,” he continued breathlessly, “Why am I in pajamas?”

“That it’s a yokai thing, our winter vacation home, I carried you, because I thought my mother would freak if she saw a naked guy in my bed,” Kurama replied succinctly. It left Yusuke blinking in confusion. Kurama sighed. He motioned for his two bedmates to lay down. He gathered his thoughts before he began speaking.

“Yusuke, what you saw between Hiei and I was nothing more than a yokai version of greeting. It is something that generally occurs between yokai who are friends. Because of our very nature, you’ll agree that most yokai find it difficult, if not impossible to actually be that close to another yokai.” He glanced to his left to see if his words were making an impression on Yusuke. Something within him eased as the wary suspicion in Yusuke’s eyes faded.

Not by a flicker of his eyes, did Hiei react to Kurama bold-face lie.

“So, um…okay,” Yusuke muttered. He felt like an absolute idiot for getting all worked up. Though somewhat mollified by the explanation, he still felt unsettled. In typical Urameshi fashion, he decided mask his feelings with a joke. “So, it’s only between yokai that are, like really close and shit?” He leered at Hiei, wiggling his brows lecherously.

Hiei merely grunted agreeably when Kurama hit the fool again. He turned over, his back stiff with annoyance. He raised the covers, pulling them over his shoulders and firmly closed his eyes. His lips twitched despite himself.

The detective was stupider that that other towering oaf.

And a complete idiot.

His thoughts turned to his soon-to-be mate. Soon, my proud beauty, he thought to Mukuro. A gentle caress brushed delicately at his mind. It would have surprised her people that she was capable of softness after centuries of brutality. Perhaps we should set a date for our union? The answering feeling of warmth/love as well as anticipation was the reply.

“Precisely.”

Eying the kitsune grievously and rubbing his head, cause Kurama could hit! Yusuke decided to go back to sleep. Twisting, he gave his back to the other two and faced the wall. The hurt that washed over him at Kurama’s answer confused the hell out of him. Like why the fuck would I be hurt? Besides, me and Kurama are friends.

But not kissing friends, a quiet part whispered. It made him frown slightly. He decided not to think anymore and closed his eyes. He only stiffened slightly when Kurama turned over as well and whispered ‘Sleep well, little kit’ in his ear.

And since Kurama had never steered him wrong before he took it.

As he eased into sleep, only subconsciously did he register the arm that slipped over his waist and tucked him against a warm body.

His subconscious made a vague, token protest. But the feelings of safety and familiarity were too strong to ignore.

With a sigh and unconscious move deeper towards the feelings of home, Yusuke relaxed utterly in Kurama’s arms.

Kurama smiled as the lean body in his arms went limp. He tucked his face into the warmth of Yusuke’s neck and, breathing in that warm, seductive scent, sought his own oblivion.

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