Youth Gone Wild

A/N: The beginnings and ends of years seem to have become my most likely time for writing and actually getting updates, um, updated. Also seems to be the same time as my school’s winter break. Fancy that.

But I’m gonna try--try--to be a tad bit more diligent about that. This story’s younger than some of my other WIPs so I haven’t been quite as negligent, but something I’m aiming for for 2011 is being more apparent on the Latest page.

In the meantime, we’re revisiting Alice Cooper in light of characters’ hangovers in this chapter (interpreting “poison“ literally), and one specific character’s continuing quest toward corruption. Read on!

---

Youth Gone Wild
Chapter 4: Poison
December 28, 2010

“Hey, Mukuro!”

Hiei’s eyelids creased, then parted, allowing the red orbs underneath to glare into the dark. The bedroom door was open, and the hall light on. A shadow could be seen travelling up and down its length, contorting as its fleshly lead bent over or crouched down, looking for something.

“MUKURO! Have you seen my nose ring?!”

“Did you check the counter?!”

Grumbling, Hiei sat up, hissed and held his breath as a burning pain shot up from around the base of his spine. He’d expected it, but still.

“It’s not on the counter!”

Hiei rolled his eyes, untangled himself from the sheets.

“Is it in the bathroom?!”

“ Shit! What if it went down the sink?!”

Hiei shuffled into the bathroom, turned on the light, blinked, rolled his eyes again. “It’s on the sink, shitheads!” he bellowed on his way to the toilet, at which he dropped his pants and began to piss.

The bathroom door, partially open, was flung so the rest of the way as Shigure bolted in and reclaimed the found piece of jewelry. “Anything burn?” he asked Hiei casually while he slid the ring through his nostril.

“My piss, or my ass?” Hiei replied, pulling up his pants and slamming down the seat. Mukuro had finally trained him to do so when he was done. He’d never realized how serious she was about the whole thing until he’d left it up one time too many, and she stormed in the next time and slammed it down right on him.

“If it burns to piss, you should probably see a doctor.”

“You mean a licensed one, right?” he retorted, shoving Shigure out of the way so he could wash his hands.

“Just remember, the lubricant just allows things to slide easier. You’re not dying if you’re sore.”

He was not that naïve. “I think I’ll live,” he said, rear-slamming the bigger man on his way out.

Mukuro was in the kitchen, eating an orange while the tea kettle made warm-up hisses. “Hey.” Hiei looked, took a step back and quickly caught the key she threw at him. “Get a copy of that made today. You should probably go let your foster dad know you’re alive, but you shouldn’t have to sleep on any porch again. Bring me the original at work.”

Hiei pocketed it. “Thanks,” he said, putting a pair of Pop-Tarts in the toaster while looking for his backpack.

“How’re you feeling?”

Why all the solicitations—“I’m fine. Shit, you’re more concerned about a poked sphincter than you were when I split open my hands.”

“That’s what you get for being a dumbshit and playing catch with the knives,” she said.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his breakfast popping up. He put one in his jaws and felt melted chocolate ooze into his mouth. “’A’er,” he managed, throwing his backpack on with one hand while waving his intact Pop-Tart at her with the other.

“Mukuro!” he heard on his way out. “Have you seen my eyebrow ring?!”

***

Keiko read through the description. “This play…”

“Gay,” Yusuke and Kuwabara opined unanimously.

A red brow quirked. “Well, yeah,” Shuichi said. “The titular character’s a boy concubine.”

Something got skewed in the meaning of that statement. “He’s got tits?” Yusuke grabbed the script for Chigo and searched for that phantom detail. Keiko sighed.

“Are you going to try out for a part?” Yukina asked her.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe if I can do drag. The only female role I’ve seen so far is the chigo’s shrew stepmother.”

“Not true,” Shuichi told her. “There’s … the lover’s shrew wife, hm…” He frowned, while beside him Keiko grumbled, “Why do I get the feeling Karasu Bankudan’s a misogynist?”

There was a silence, where something like a barb should have been, but didn’t deliver.

Kuwabara paused, then screwed up his face, and said in a crabby, munchkin-like voice, “Maybe Thespian wrote it with those Koorime bitches in mind!” And then, in his normal voice, “Sorry, Yukina.”

“Don’t censor me, asshat. Those bitches are not girls.”

Everyone jumped. “Shit!” Yusuke exclaimed. “Kuwabara, you didn’t even have candles or a mirror!”

Hiei scowled. “Not so loud.”

“What, you got a hangover or something?”

Actually, Hiei wasn’t much into alcoholic stuff. His choice of liquid vice would probably be caffeine—until cardiac arrest, on his moodier days, if Mukuro were inclined to not give a damn. “We’re in a library, dolt. Or didn’t you notice the book you’re getting?”

Indeed, the school librarian, Ayame, was giving Yusuke a most pointed look. “Eh,” he dismissed. “So, what, you wuss out halfway through dicking off from school or something?”

“I had shit to do.” Retrieving some stuff, safely stowed in his locker now, while his foster dad was at work. “The fuck does it matter to you?”

Yusuke shrugged. “Doesn’t. Didn’t even notice you were gone ‘til Shuichi pointed it out. Hey, check out this gay-ass play that Bakudan guy wrote.”

Shrugging off the momentary disappointment that it wasn’t Yukina who’d noted his absence, Hiei said, “Why’re you interested in the Thespian’s play?”

“It ain’t my script. Shuichi found it.”

Shuichi didn’t bother correcting him. Knowing, or at least taking an educated guess, that Hiei disliked Karasu, who from the looks of it reciprocated, the redhead didn’t feel like mentioning that the script—tentative script—had been given him by its writer, who still hoped Shuichi might try out as his chigo.

It was a matter they would probably discuss further on Saturday, tomorrow.

***

Indigo and violet eyes stared at each other, the former pair more intensely than the latter. A crease formed in the forehead presiding over the blue orbs, pushing dark eyebrows down over them. They practically bore into the violet pair, which blinked innocently, its owner completely unaware of the appraisal at hand.

Kuronue eased up his chin, unfolded his hands, and leaned back in his chair, despite his more relaxed posture staring no less intensely at the creature seated opposite him, in the highchair.

Solemnly he said to Shura, “You remind me of the babe.”

“Stop,” Yomi growled. “Right there, stop. You get that stuck in my head again, you’re out of the house for a month.”

From the couch Kurama stirred, and half-yawned, half-groaned, “Get what stuck in your head?”

“Oh hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Kuronue greeted with a wicked smile, and baited, “The babe with the power.”

Disoriented, Kurama fell for it. “What power?”

Regretting it, as voices immediately shot up in volume. “The power of VOODOO!”

“FUCK YOU!” Yomi shouted.

“You do!”

“What?!”

“Remind me of the babe!” Kuronue crowed triumphantly, while Shura laughed and clapped his hands. “Thanks for the help, Hangover Hero.”

Wincing, Kurama tried to think, found it painful. “Uh…” Yawn. “You’re welcome?”

From the kitchen he was reprimanded: “Don’t encourage him, Kurama! Fuckin’ thing’s gonna be stuck in my fuckin’ head all fuckin’ day…”

Kuronue smirked. “Wait until I teach the whole spiel to your kid.”

“How can you teach him,” Yomi retorted, “when you’ve been banned for a month?”

“I’ll go see if your babysitter and his boyfriend want a handsome boy toy.”

“You’d be biting off more than you can chew. Speaking of—.” Yomi was holding a breakfast burrito, took a sizeable bite off one end, and ripped the rest in half as cleanly as possible.

Kurama awoke a little more. “Where’d you get that?” he asked, as Yomi set the unbitten half on the coffee table in front of him.

“I bought it at the gas station,” Kuronue said. Actually he’d bought two, and scarfed down his en route to brining the other one home to Yomi, while Kurama lay more than sat passed out in the passenger seat. He finished his coffee, decided he’d be nice too and sacrifice the last cup to the certainly hung-over flaxen-haired boy. “Now, how much did you drink last night?”

Last night there’d been a party at Mukuro Herru’s, celebrating her younger Gothic boy toy having his own key to the place now. “Shigure wanted an excuse to drink,” Yomi had accused knowingly when invited that Friday afternoon, to which Mukuro replied with a prompt “Yep.” He had passed the invitation up, not feeling well and Shura besides; but Kuronue and Kurama had both gone, and left around five this morning, after Kuronue located and removed a dead drunk Kurama from the bedroom, where still awake he’d been conversing with Hiei Jaganshi.

Thinking for a moment and still finding it painful, Kurama answered, “Not enough to puke.”

“Uh-huh.” At times like this Kuronue wished most of all that Yomi had his sight want. He wanted someone to share a pointed, conspiratorial glance with.

Thank Freud for wicked ids, though. Grinning evilly, the blind man felt around the drawers, found a couple of pans…”

“AH!” Kurama fell off the couch, curled into the fetal position, and clamped his hands over his ears. “Don’t you have work?”

“What do you think I’m getting ready for?” To Kuronue: “Don’t you have to warm up the car?”

“Drink lots of water today, precious,” Kuronue cooed to a hateful, still horizontal, Kurama on his way out. Kurama replied by hissing.

“Aren’t you meeting what’s-her-face today?” Yomi asked. The hissing thickened into groaning. “Get you ass moving! Are you taking Shura, or am I asking Itsuki to watch him?”

“Yes,” Kurama grumbled. “I am. Okay, I will. And yes, I am, so no, you’re not. I’m not telling her that Shura’s being babysat by the upstairs psycho’s spousal punching bag.”

“So long as someone’s got him.” Yomi grabbed his glasses off the end table, grabbed his jacket out the front closet, and pushed Shura’s head playfully. “Hope she doesn’t think you’re a drunk. I’m out.”

“Dance magic dance!” Kurama snarled after him.

***

Seeking quietude, and hoping to dodge the majority of the after-party clean-up, Hiei had opted to play the good student and spend Saturday morning in the library. He’d thought he’d found the quietude, too, until a voice that was still too flat to be sarcastic—still too flat even for sarcasm’s lethargic half-cousin, deadpan—bumped into him:

“That looks educational.”

“Hn,” Hiei sniffed. He was reading Coin Locker Babies. “Inspirational, maybe.”

“You should give Miss Enshutsu a book review,” Yoko said.

“Maybe I’ll review some of your psychobabbles from last night instead,” Hiei shot back. “What’re you doing here?” Almost no one ever showed at the school on a Saturday, sans compulsion.

Kurama held up his hand, bringing to attention the thing clasped onto the other end. “Library has some kids’ books, and I have to keep him entertained for a while later.”

“Yeah,” Hiei said dryly. “You told me.” Kurama grimaced at him. “Actually, so’d your cousin.”

“Pardon?”

Hiei pointed to a table in the Quiet Area, where Shuichi Minamino had set up shop. “I feel bad for anyone who shares a class that matters with him. He’s been vivisecting the shit out of stuff since before I came in.” Which had been a few hours ago; their buddy had probably come in at opening, or a little after at latest, Hiei wagered.

“Hm.” Shuichi was studying under the clock. “Gotta run,” Kurama said, steering Shura toward the check-out desk. “Give my regards to the harem.”

“Does your glass house echo?” Hiei dismissed, still watching the table under the clock. Shuichi had just put away the latest textbook, and pulled out a stapled mess of papers that looked somewhat familiar.

Recognizing it, Hiei narrowed his eyes. Karasu Bakudan’s play. He shifted into a position he’d have to take care not to conk out in, and resumed reading.

Shuichi, meanwhile, moved his eyes back and forth as rapidly as possible without losing cognition of the content. Like everyone else in his family, he had a meeting today.

More than a few times a scene would make him grimace. Well, he’d heard that the life of a chigo wasn’t pretty….

Time passed. Almost closing, and Ayame was beginning to cast an almost predatory expression towards Shuichi. He in turn looked at the door, and began to gather up his things.

A shadow fell across the desk, long enough to engulf Shuichi as well.

“Ready?” Karasu asked.

“Yes,” Shuichi replied, accepting the hand held out toward him.

***

“How much did you drink last night?” Mukuro ventured.

“Less than you,” Yomi retorted, massaging his forehead. “I have a kid; I can’t stumble home or drink alone and pass out.” He heaved a sigh and tilted his head back, he lower part of his face stretching this way and that, the upper part pinched in on itself. “I thnk I’ve got something,” he said as though it were a labor. “You should probably do all the food-handling today, and the cleaning, and--”

“Fuck you.”

“Okay, but you can keep your guys; I’ve got two at home.” His grimace loosened momentarily into a smirk. “I hear they could probably fuck each other in your absence. Copycat.”

Mukuro rolled her eyes, and made a corresponding sound for his benefit. “Shigure’s pierced. Hiei was curious.”

For a moment the stressed contortions of Yomi’s face gave way, and he managed a weak laugh. It cut short, though; his features screwed back up into a poisoned-looking expression, and he was in agony again.

***

Dark-haired, middle-aged woman in a gray vest and skirt, already sitting at the booth. Kurama wondered why the hell she had to ear something so businesslike, and assumed nonchalance as he carried himself and his burdens to the table.

Shiori raised her eyebrows a little when she saw the diaper bag and toddler. “Who’s this?” she asked.

“His name’s Shura,” Yoko replied, arranging everything on his side of the booth.

“Do we need to ask for a highchair?”

“No.”

“And … this is your friend’s son?”

“Yes.” Everything arranged, he sat down now, and looked at her.

She looked back. Yoko’s platinum hair fell loose over his shoulders, and in this restaurant’s lighting looked a little dingy. His eyes reminded her of mustard, but judging from the purplish marks beneath them, she didn’t think their tired look was merely an effect.

“Was it hard bringing him?” she asked.

“Kuronue dropped us off,” he negated blandly.

Shiori chose her words, her tone carefully. “Another friend?”

It was the tilt of her head that Yoko took offense to. He nodded his answer, then gave her an almost challenging look. “My father knew about both of them, you know. Walking in without knocking’ll do that.” Slight lilt of Shiori’s eyebrow. Carelessly-sounding Yoko added, “He was a little surprised about Yomi, but that was more because he’d fathered Shura than anything.”

She looked at the child, the smaller one. “Experiment baby?”

Actually, he didn’t know, so he shrugged. There’d been a thing between Yomi and Mukuro after Shura was born, he knew that; but also after Yomi’d gone out with a biker named Raizen for a while. Kurama didn’t even know how long the mother herself had been in the picture, if she’d ever been, and figured that Yomi had probably gotten the raw end of a one-night stand.

“Shura has plenty of honorary parents,” he shrugged, and as if on cue, Shura piped up with “Mama!” and pelted him with a spoon.

The lilt became an all-out lift. “It’s how he says ‘Kurama’,” he said. “Shura, can you say ‘Shiori’?”

“Shori!”

See? he challenged with his eyes.

Shiori ordered for them, and waited until her quasi-charge, as she viewed Yoko, and his quasi-charge both had food and drink, before starting her second volley. “You’ve been going to school?” she asked Yoko.

“Everyday,” he replied, “practically. Ask Shuichi, we see each other.” Pausing, he added, “It’s not like Dad was doing much parenting from his deathbed, you know. I’ve been taking care of myself for a while. I was taking care of him almost exclusively the last six months.”

Where were you?

She pushed onward. “So now that you don’t have to anymore, it doesn’t matter what happens to the house and everything?”

“You’re the executor,” he dismissed blandly. “When I left I took anything I was really interested in, anyhow.” The challenge returned to his gaze. “Shouldn’t I be focused on school and things like that now?”

“Right, right.” Shura put a gob of something in his mouth; Yoko wiped it. “I’m just not sure that a child falls under ‘things like that.’ Has Yomi tried looking for any groups that help kids as parents?”

“Yomi’s an adult,” Yoko pointed out, following with, “I am an adult.” He’d tossed his head; his eyes looked like sulfur. “You know when I started taking care of Shura I already had experience changing diapers?”

He was too defensive for her to get anywhere this way. “Do you have anyone to watch the child during school?” she asked.

“Always,” replied Yoko curtly. Even if sometimes they weren’t ideal. Emphatically he said, “Living with a child isn’t interfering with my school.” Unlike Yomi, he could keep up with classes; and unlike Kuronue, he attended them regularly.

“Okay.” Shiori wondered if she might get the school to show her grade trans—but no, Yoko was eighteen now. “Do you have money?” she asked him.

He knew what she was getting at. “My inheritance,” he replied. “Yomi’s job. Kuronue and I work sometimes, too. I don’t need any help.”

Yoko had always been a reserved child. Even when he was small, speaking with him was somewhat like a verbal chess game. “You don’t miss the house,” she tried, “or anything?”

The adolescent, or young adult, tilted his head, pressed his molars down on a piece of bread crust. “A house is a mere material structure,” he said with a shrug. “If we’re talking about missing Inari, I think it’d make more sense if I moved out to the cemetery. I have no problem with you and Shuichi living there now, if that’s what you’re worried about.” No quick reply, so Yoko wrapped up: “This is my last year of school; we have a source of income; what concern is it to you?” His tone never changed, nor did his eye contact ever break.

Checkmate?

***

“What revisions would you have in mind?”

Shuichi took a sip of sweetened iced tea while he pondered what to answer. “I don’t know what you ought to change,” he confessed. “As is, though, I don’t think the school would allow its performance; it’s too violent.”

“It’s supposed to be violent,” Karasu said. “Violence is a motif of the chigo monogatari.”

“I think as a piece it’s excellent,” Shuichi said hastily. “But I still don’t think you’d get away with performing it in school.”

Karasu took a bite of chicken and appeared to be in thought. In reality, his thoughts were less on the food in his mouth, or the play on the table, than on the redhead seated across from him. Eyebrows knitted slightly, forming a small bead of flesh just above the bridge of his nose. One cheek puffed out further than the other, chewing his food on one side of his mouth. Pupils focused on that puffed-out cheek. His mind doubled it, made it symmetrical. He imagined it was something other than a chicken leg that filled Shuichi’s mouth, that the liquid shining on the younger boy’s chin was something other than grease.

Molars ground on bone. He held the end of it between finger and thumb, and slid it out, stripped of any flesh or skin whatsoever.

Green eyes widened. “Good?” Shuichi asked.

“Succulent,” Karasu replied, eyes never leaving the redhead as he set the remains of his appetizer on his plate.

***

“Whassup, Iron Maiden?”

Listlessly Mukuro turned her one blue eye onto the darker pair crinkling down at her. “Contending with what you dropped off this morning,” she replied.

“Pardon?”

“He’s dying out back.”

“Huh,” Kuronue said, more an utterance of contemplation than an expression of confusion. Looking behind him, he addressed a seemingly empty-looking booth: “Maybe you oughta ask him later. Or if he’s actually dying, maybe you won’t have to ask him at all.” The booth made an irritated yet half-hearted growl.

“Pardon?” Mukuro mimicked.

“Tell you in a minute,” Kuronue promised. “Just tell him we’re here.”

“Just a minute,” she retorted, and went back into the kitchen, where she opened the back door, and told the figure lying across a row of crates in the alley, “Family’s here.”

The lines along Yomi’s temples intensified. “Feed the kid or whatever else they’re looking for.”

He looked miserable. “Should I ask Shigure to take a look at you if you’re feeling so bad?”

“No. Maybe. Ask me later.”

“Got it, Eight ball.”

Kurama, who lying down had been the voice of the booth, sat up when Mukuro came back out front. “Yomi smoking or something?”

His voice had taken on a “mother hen” type of tone: Yomi’d sworn off cigarettes when Shura was born. “No, but he’s probably gathering near as much disease lying in that alley.”

“In the gravel?” Kuronue asked.

Giving him an Are you an idiot? look, she replied, “On some crates.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “No worries, then.” Kurama snorted. “For now,” the brunet added.

“Yeah, how did that thing with your cousin go?” Mukuro asked, suspecting she knew the reason for Kurama’s current mood.

Gold eyes narrowed. “Yomi tell you?”

“Sort of.” In the state her coworker was today, the only time he spoke was to blow steam.

A snort from the booth in the corner. “You all gossip like women.”

“Yeah?” Kuronue smirked. “You know I heard that Shigure made you feel like a real woman the other night. How was that?”

A spiky black head bolted up into view, a dark face cast Mukuro an even darker look.

She shrugged. “I am a woman.”

“She wants to meet the other person responsible for that,” Kurama muttered, ignoring the lovers’ spat and pointing to Shura when he said “that.”

“I used to be responsible for ‘that’,” Mukuro pointed out.

“Yeah, I tried the communal values thing; she wants the actual parent.”

“Overrated,” Hiei muttered. He considered Kurama more blatantly now, and said, “So long as everyone’s butting into everyone else’s business—”

“Butting,” Kuronue snorted.

Red eyes swiveled, narrowed on him a moment, then returned to Kurama. “I saw your cousin get on the bus with the Thespian this morning.”

“Who?”

“Karasu Bakudan.”

There was a pause. “That guy that blew up the chemistry lab?” Kuronue asked. “Loon.”

“That alone doesn’t make someone a loon!” said Hiei defensively. He was banned from a few other school vicinities aside from the shop.

“Maybe,” Kurama said. “But he is a loon.” To Kuronue, “I told you about him.”

Kuronue thought a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “Don’t worry,” Kurama concluded. “If they’re on a bus they’re in public, and I know where he lives anyhow.” Thoughtfully he looked past the kitchen door. “He’d probably bite off my head if I went back there right now, wouldn’t he?”

“If he bit off mine he’d have to do everything himself until Enki comes in later,” Mukuro replied.

“Figured that.” He could tell Yomi Shiori’s request later. “Wanna go break into Bakudan’s place?” he asked Kuronue, who smirked. No answer needed.

------------

A/N: Coin Locker Babies is a novel by Ryu Murakami, about two guys who as babies were found abandoned in adjacent coin lockers in a subway station. Our hero’s goal in the novel is tracking down and killing the mother that abandoned him, but it’s all a lot weirder than just that.