The Substance of Need
folder
Yuyu Hakusho › Yaoi - Male/Male
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
3
Views:
2,145
Reviews:
5
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Yuyu Hakusho › Yaoi - Male/Male
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
3
Views:
2,145
Reviews:
5
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own YuYu Hakusho, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
The Substance of Need
The Substance of Need
Notes/Warnings: It’s 2:00 fricking a.m. as this fic idea invades my brain. Give me a fricking break and just read it. I will say this: I tend to do some damn good work when I’m blind from exhaustion, so with any luck, some of you will enjoy this. Oh, and by the way; I can't believe I wrote a fluffy either, but ph34r not all you horn-dogs out there, this will almost-probably-perhaps-definately become a Lemon-fic by the end. Don't ask what prompted this other than watching the Sensui Arc of YYH all by myself with no one to kill the plot-bunnies for me. T_T
Read and Review.
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It had begun as a simple arrangement. Yusuke’s latest apartment was now in a pile of rubble because of Sensui, and though Atsuko had made plans for her and her son to live with a distant relative until the place was rebuilt, said offspring had had other ideas. He was still in sort of a funk after the whole “being possessed and killing Sensui only it wasn’t really him who did it” thing, not to mention finding out so recently that he had demon blood in him, and he didn’t feel like enduring the company of some people he’d never met while the city contractor guys pieced the apartment complex back together. Atsuko had told him he didn’t have to come with her, but he had to find someone to stay with.
He’d had a few options, but he’d narrowed them down fairly quickly. Kurama would have taken him in, but the fox-boy was a neat freak and used to being an only child, and Yusuke knew they would start getting on each other’s nerves really fast. Genkai might have let him stay, but the thought gave him the creeps. Training with her was one thing; living with her casually was another. Hiei…lived in a tree, so that was right out. Keiko’s parents would give him the scolding of his life if he even asked (not that they didn’t like him, because they did; they just wouldn’t like him living under the same roof as their daughter), so that was a no go. That left Kuwabara, and honestly, he’d thought it was the safest bet at the time.
The redhead had been agreeable enough once he was done posturing and taunting Yusuke about making him his eternal slave in exchange for this favor. They both knew he’d never follow through with that threat anyway, so it was all good. Yusuke had put away his things in the spare room, and settled in.
Now, a week or so later, he had begun to think he should have thought it through better. It wasn’t that Kuwabara was hard to get along with; on the contrary, he and Yusuke shared a lot of habits, so as long as they stayed out of each other’s face, they got along as well as they ever did. It wasn’t the way they fought that was the problem either. In fact, these days they rarely engaged in anything that could adequately be termed a spar.
The problem wasn’t what was going on in the now. It was something from their recent past that hung over their heads, like a cloud full of rain, ready to pour with the right provocation. It was the subject of Yusuke’s death.
Kuwabara never said anything about it, never confronted his rival about the incident and all it had involved, and that was precisely what had Yusuke on edge. Or maybe he wasn’t on edge exactly. Maybe he was just exasperated. He wasn’t sure, but it was really starting to get to him. And when something was getting to Yusuke Urameshi, he went and got it right back.
He tried numerous times to corner the other teen so they could have that talk they’d been avoiding, but Kuwabara was deceptively good at changing the subject, and oftentimes at not being caught at all, which proved he was a good deal smarter than people usually gave him credit for. Something, however, had to give eventually, and through persistence Yusuke was finally able to get his friend in a situation where he couldn’t retreat. He broke the rules set at the time of his coming to stay at the Kuwabara Household, and entered the other young man’s room without permission, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it to cut off that escape route.
“All right,” he said sternly. “I’ve been after you all week so we could throw this down, and now we’re going to do something no man should ever have to: we’re gonna talk about our feelings.”
“I don’t have time for this, Urameshi,” the carrot-top insisted. “I got homework to do, and so do you, not that you care.”
“Don’t brush me off over some fricking algebra,” the spirit detective told him, sienna eyes narrowing. “This is important, because it’s obviously bothering you, and I live here right now, so it’s bothering me. We’re going to talk about it, because if we don’t, we’re going to fight about it, and that’d just suck.”
“Geez. Have you been reading self-help books or something?”
“Tch. No. I doubt any of those would do me any good anyway.” Yusuke smirked. “I mean, think about it. I don’t think they have any self-help books for demons.”
There. The flinch would have been invisible to the average human eye, but Yusuke no longer had average eyes. Was that the root of their problem? His newly discovered demon heritage? Damn....
He straightened up, stepping away from the door and further into the room. “Kuwabara,” he asked, frowning slightly, “Are you scared of me?”
The taller boy’s eyes, a dark enough blue to seem black without the proper lighting, flashed angrily at him. “Don’t be stupid! Why the heck should I be scared of a punk like you?”
“Oh I dunno,” Yusuke snapped. “Maybe because you saw me go all possessed and brutally murder a man? Maybe because you wonder if I’ll lose control again and attack you or someone else we know? Jesus, Kuwabara! You won’t even let your cat rub against my ankles, and I think it’s because you’re afraid I’ll eat her or something!”
“It’s not—” Kuwabara realized he was starting to shout, and stopped. “It’s not that,” he said, more quietly. “I told you, I’m not scared of you.”
“Then what is it?”
The long silence that followed did nothing good for Yusuke’s agitation, but he held his tongue. The less he pushed, the more likely the other teen was to be honest. When at last Kuwabara spoke again, he was obviously uncomfortable with what he was revealing.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he reiterated. “I guess I’m afraid for you.”
Yusuke blinked in surprise. “What? But why?”
“When you first came back, you know how glad we were you weren’t dead, right? Then you fought Sensui again, and right towards the end you fought him the way you fight everybody: like yourself.” The redhead grimaced. “Until you had that transformation of yours, and after that, you were stronger, much stronger; but you weren’t you anymore. I know I didn’t get it until later, after you told us somebody else had control when you killed Sensui, but I think I knew while it was happening, and just couldn’t make the connection. Now that I think back on it, that couldn’t have been you for real.”
“It wasn’t,” the detective replied.
“I know, okay? My point is…dang it, I don’t know what the point it, except maybe that you weren’t you then, and maybe I’m afraid you’ll stop being you again. Like maybe you’ll lose yourself to whatever took you over that time. Or maybe that what made you you was already gone, and Sensui really had killed the real Urameshi, and the person who was left was like you in a lot of ways, but he wasn’t really you.”
“Kuwabara....” Yusuke murmured, taken aback. He’d thought about the possibility of what his rival was saying, but he hadn’t thought anyone else might have been harboring the same doubts. To have it put so accurately was an eye-opener for sure.
But apparently, sharing time wasn’t quite over. “You bastard,” Kuwabara ground out. “I know you could hear me telling you not to do what you did. Didn’t you hear me begging you? Didn’t you get what I was saying? I know you thought it’d make us stronger, but what were you gonna do if it turned out that wasn’t enough, and you were dead and couldn’t help us anymore?” He stood and glared at the shorter boy. “How were you gonna apologize if it turned out you couldn’t pull a miracle out of your ass?”
There wasn’t anything he could say. He’d done what he’d done believing he would die, and in a more permanent sense than what had actually happened. He hadn’t known there was a miracle to pull out. He’d gone into that knowing full well it was the end. So he stood there, silently, and let Kuwabara chew him out, because when you got down to it, he couldn’t deny those words.
“What were you gonna do,” Kuwabara demanded, his voice strained from containing himself, “If it turned out he really had killed the real you? You have no idea how the idea that you might never be yourself again makes me feel, do you!? I never called you a friend out loud because we knew, and that was enough, but you knew I cared about your sorry self and you still threw it away on some stupid gamble! I lost you to that sonuvabitch once, and now I can’t be sure it’s not happening again!”
Stop, Yusuke thought, a pained expression tightening his features. Don’t say stuff like that. It makes me realize how much you really do care, and I…I can’t handle that.
His silence only infuriated the redhead. Kuwabara seized the front of his shirt, anger rolling off him in waves, but with hurt tinting the edges. “And you still won’t answer me. Don’t you get it yet? If you’re not Urameshi anymore....”
“Then who is Kuwabara,” Yusuke said quietly. “Right?”
A startled look flitted across the other’s face, but then he closed his eyes and nodded. “Right.”
“You said that,” Yusuke told him. “When you were trapped and I was trying to get myself killed. You said, ‘If you’re not here, then who am I?’ That struck me pretty hard, harder than you know. I couldn’t undo my decision by then, but you have to know I heard you.”
“I got that you heard me,” the taller boy said. “What I couldn’t get was why you didn’t seem to care.”
“You don’t understand! I did care, but I had to do what I did. If there’d been any other way, I would have taken it. Sensui was going to kill me anyway; there was no way around that. The only difference is that I let him, and that gave you guys the motivation you needed at the time.”
“I don’t care what you thought we needed,” Kuwabara seethed. “It was still a dumb, selfish move, and it might have cost you more than we thought.”
“Then I’ll deal with it,” Yusuke shot back. “If I’m not me anymore, I’ll come to terms with that, and so will everyone else. I’m not going to turn into some baby-killing monster, all right? Even if a part of the old me died then, I know I’m still Yusuke Urameshi. I’ll just have to fill the holes somehow.”
“Well good luck with that,” Kuwabara snapped, the hurt clearly visible now beneath the anger. “Now get lost; I’ve still got studying to finish.” He started to turn away, but was halted by a hand grabbing his arm.
“Goddamnit,” Yusuke growled at him. “Don’t shut me out. I realize now that I hurt you really bad, and I’m sorry, okay? I suck at apologizing, but I’ll do it again and again until you understand!”
Kuwabara just stared at him. Embarrassed and somehow desperate to make things right again between him and his friend, Yusuke pressed on. “I’m sorry. You don’t even have any idea how sorry I am. If the Nazi’s suddenly saw the error of their ways and went to apologize to the Jews, they couldn’t be as sorry as I am right now.”
One corner of the carrot-top’s mouth twitched, though he tried to suppress it. “Gee wiz, Urameshi, if I knew you’d grovel like this, I woulda yelled at you ages ago.”
The smaller teen gave him a lopsided grin. “Yeah?”
“Tch. You look like a puppy begging for treats. Quit giving me the eyes; it’s creepy.”
Yusuke didn’t have to ask if this meant they were cool. He knew the answer already. He released the redhead’s arm, but before he left to let Kuwabara return to his homework, he had one more question. “Hey,” he asked, “All that stuff you said back then about me always having to be there and you needing me? Did you mean that?”
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” Kuwabara replied, sitting back down at his desk with his back to Yusuke. “I just didn’t want you dead before I’d beaten you like I promised.”
Yusuke grinned. “Right. ‘Cause a real man never breaks his promises.”
“Darn straight.”
The detective’s smile softened just slightly, in a way that a rare few people had ever seen or ever would. Kuwabara didn’t catch it, but as the newly discovered half-demon left the room, the redhead couldn’t help sensing the feeling behind it, and a little half-grin of his own found his lips. It lingered there long after Yusuke was gone.
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Thank god that's out of my head. XD At least until the next chapter. Still this one came easily enough, unlike the other fic I'm currently working on. I won't say much about that one, other than that the bunnies chewed on my brain for an entire year before I gave in, and that this fic is partially a result of requests by the readers of "Once Burned."
Plz Review! It makes me smile a lot.
Notes/Warnings: It’s 2:00 fricking a.m. as this fic idea invades my brain. Give me a fricking break and just read it. I will say this: I tend to do some damn good work when I’m blind from exhaustion, so with any luck, some of you will enjoy this. Oh, and by the way; I can't believe I wrote a fluffy either, but ph34r not all you horn-dogs out there, this will almost-probably-perhaps-definately become a Lemon-fic by the end. Don't ask what prompted this other than watching the Sensui Arc of YYH all by myself with no one to kill the plot-bunnies for me. T_T
Read and Review.
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It had begun as a simple arrangement. Yusuke’s latest apartment was now in a pile of rubble because of Sensui, and though Atsuko had made plans for her and her son to live with a distant relative until the place was rebuilt, said offspring had had other ideas. He was still in sort of a funk after the whole “being possessed and killing Sensui only it wasn’t really him who did it” thing, not to mention finding out so recently that he had demon blood in him, and he didn’t feel like enduring the company of some people he’d never met while the city contractor guys pieced the apartment complex back together. Atsuko had told him he didn’t have to come with her, but he had to find someone to stay with.
He’d had a few options, but he’d narrowed them down fairly quickly. Kurama would have taken him in, but the fox-boy was a neat freak and used to being an only child, and Yusuke knew they would start getting on each other’s nerves really fast. Genkai might have let him stay, but the thought gave him the creeps. Training with her was one thing; living with her casually was another. Hiei…lived in a tree, so that was right out. Keiko’s parents would give him the scolding of his life if he even asked (not that they didn’t like him, because they did; they just wouldn’t like him living under the same roof as their daughter), so that was a no go. That left Kuwabara, and honestly, he’d thought it was the safest bet at the time.
The redhead had been agreeable enough once he was done posturing and taunting Yusuke about making him his eternal slave in exchange for this favor. They both knew he’d never follow through with that threat anyway, so it was all good. Yusuke had put away his things in the spare room, and settled in.
Now, a week or so later, he had begun to think he should have thought it through better. It wasn’t that Kuwabara was hard to get along with; on the contrary, he and Yusuke shared a lot of habits, so as long as they stayed out of each other’s face, they got along as well as they ever did. It wasn’t the way they fought that was the problem either. In fact, these days they rarely engaged in anything that could adequately be termed a spar.
The problem wasn’t what was going on in the now. It was something from their recent past that hung over their heads, like a cloud full of rain, ready to pour with the right provocation. It was the subject of Yusuke’s death.
Kuwabara never said anything about it, never confronted his rival about the incident and all it had involved, and that was precisely what had Yusuke on edge. Or maybe he wasn’t on edge exactly. Maybe he was just exasperated. He wasn’t sure, but it was really starting to get to him. And when something was getting to Yusuke Urameshi, he went and got it right back.
He tried numerous times to corner the other teen so they could have that talk they’d been avoiding, but Kuwabara was deceptively good at changing the subject, and oftentimes at not being caught at all, which proved he was a good deal smarter than people usually gave him credit for. Something, however, had to give eventually, and through persistence Yusuke was finally able to get his friend in a situation where he couldn’t retreat. He broke the rules set at the time of his coming to stay at the Kuwabara Household, and entered the other young man’s room without permission, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it to cut off that escape route.
“All right,” he said sternly. “I’ve been after you all week so we could throw this down, and now we’re going to do something no man should ever have to: we’re gonna talk about our feelings.”
“I don’t have time for this, Urameshi,” the carrot-top insisted. “I got homework to do, and so do you, not that you care.”
“Don’t brush me off over some fricking algebra,” the spirit detective told him, sienna eyes narrowing. “This is important, because it’s obviously bothering you, and I live here right now, so it’s bothering me. We’re going to talk about it, because if we don’t, we’re going to fight about it, and that’d just suck.”
“Geez. Have you been reading self-help books or something?”
“Tch. No. I doubt any of those would do me any good anyway.” Yusuke smirked. “I mean, think about it. I don’t think they have any self-help books for demons.”
There. The flinch would have been invisible to the average human eye, but Yusuke no longer had average eyes. Was that the root of their problem? His newly discovered demon heritage? Damn....
He straightened up, stepping away from the door and further into the room. “Kuwabara,” he asked, frowning slightly, “Are you scared of me?”
The taller boy’s eyes, a dark enough blue to seem black without the proper lighting, flashed angrily at him. “Don’t be stupid! Why the heck should I be scared of a punk like you?”
“Oh I dunno,” Yusuke snapped. “Maybe because you saw me go all possessed and brutally murder a man? Maybe because you wonder if I’ll lose control again and attack you or someone else we know? Jesus, Kuwabara! You won’t even let your cat rub against my ankles, and I think it’s because you’re afraid I’ll eat her or something!”
“It’s not—” Kuwabara realized he was starting to shout, and stopped. “It’s not that,” he said, more quietly. “I told you, I’m not scared of you.”
“Then what is it?”
The long silence that followed did nothing good for Yusuke’s agitation, but he held his tongue. The less he pushed, the more likely the other teen was to be honest. When at last Kuwabara spoke again, he was obviously uncomfortable with what he was revealing.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he reiterated. “I guess I’m afraid for you.”
Yusuke blinked in surprise. “What? But why?”
“When you first came back, you know how glad we were you weren’t dead, right? Then you fought Sensui again, and right towards the end you fought him the way you fight everybody: like yourself.” The redhead grimaced. “Until you had that transformation of yours, and after that, you were stronger, much stronger; but you weren’t you anymore. I know I didn’t get it until later, after you told us somebody else had control when you killed Sensui, but I think I knew while it was happening, and just couldn’t make the connection. Now that I think back on it, that couldn’t have been you for real.”
“It wasn’t,” the detective replied.
“I know, okay? My point is…dang it, I don’t know what the point it, except maybe that you weren’t you then, and maybe I’m afraid you’ll stop being you again. Like maybe you’ll lose yourself to whatever took you over that time. Or maybe that what made you you was already gone, and Sensui really had killed the real Urameshi, and the person who was left was like you in a lot of ways, but he wasn’t really you.”
“Kuwabara....” Yusuke murmured, taken aback. He’d thought about the possibility of what his rival was saying, but he hadn’t thought anyone else might have been harboring the same doubts. To have it put so accurately was an eye-opener for sure.
But apparently, sharing time wasn’t quite over. “You bastard,” Kuwabara ground out. “I know you could hear me telling you not to do what you did. Didn’t you hear me begging you? Didn’t you get what I was saying? I know you thought it’d make us stronger, but what were you gonna do if it turned out that wasn’t enough, and you were dead and couldn’t help us anymore?” He stood and glared at the shorter boy. “How were you gonna apologize if it turned out you couldn’t pull a miracle out of your ass?”
There wasn’t anything he could say. He’d done what he’d done believing he would die, and in a more permanent sense than what had actually happened. He hadn’t known there was a miracle to pull out. He’d gone into that knowing full well it was the end. So he stood there, silently, and let Kuwabara chew him out, because when you got down to it, he couldn’t deny those words.
“What were you gonna do,” Kuwabara demanded, his voice strained from containing himself, “If it turned out he really had killed the real you? You have no idea how the idea that you might never be yourself again makes me feel, do you!? I never called you a friend out loud because we knew, and that was enough, but you knew I cared about your sorry self and you still threw it away on some stupid gamble! I lost you to that sonuvabitch once, and now I can’t be sure it’s not happening again!”
Stop, Yusuke thought, a pained expression tightening his features. Don’t say stuff like that. It makes me realize how much you really do care, and I…I can’t handle that.
His silence only infuriated the redhead. Kuwabara seized the front of his shirt, anger rolling off him in waves, but with hurt tinting the edges. “And you still won’t answer me. Don’t you get it yet? If you’re not Urameshi anymore....”
“Then who is Kuwabara,” Yusuke said quietly. “Right?”
A startled look flitted across the other’s face, but then he closed his eyes and nodded. “Right.”
“You said that,” Yusuke told him. “When you were trapped and I was trying to get myself killed. You said, ‘If you’re not here, then who am I?’ That struck me pretty hard, harder than you know. I couldn’t undo my decision by then, but you have to know I heard you.”
“I got that you heard me,” the taller boy said. “What I couldn’t get was why you didn’t seem to care.”
“You don’t understand! I did care, but I had to do what I did. If there’d been any other way, I would have taken it. Sensui was going to kill me anyway; there was no way around that. The only difference is that I let him, and that gave you guys the motivation you needed at the time.”
“I don’t care what you thought we needed,” Kuwabara seethed. “It was still a dumb, selfish move, and it might have cost you more than we thought.”
“Then I’ll deal with it,” Yusuke shot back. “If I’m not me anymore, I’ll come to terms with that, and so will everyone else. I’m not going to turn into some baby-killing monster, all right? Even if a part of the old me died then, I know I’m still Yusuke Urameshi. I’ll just have to fill the holes somehow.”
“Well good luck with that,” Kuwabara snapped, the hurt clearly visible now beneath the anger. “Now get lost; I’ve still got studying to finish.” He started to turn away, but was halted by a hand grabbing his arm.
“Goddamnit,” Yusuke growled at him. “Don’t shut me out. I realize now that I hurt you really bad, and I’m sorry, okay? I suck at apologizing, but I’ll do it again and again until you understand!”
Kuwabara just stared at him. Embarrassed and somehow desperate to make things right again between him and his friend, Yusuke pressed on. “I’m sorry. You don’t even have any idea how sorry I am. If the Nazi’s suddenly saw the error of their ways and went to apologize to the Jews, they couldn’t be as sorry as I am right now.”
One corner of the carrot-top’s mouth twitched, though he tried to suppress it. “Gee wiz, Urameshi, if I knew you’d grovel like this, I woulda yelled at you ages ago.”
The smaller teen gave him a lopsided grin. “Yeah?”
“Tch. You look like a puppy begging for treats. Quit giving me the eyes; it’s creepy.”
Yusuke didn’t have to ask if this meant they were cool. He knew the answer already. He released the redhead’s arm, but before he left to let Kuwabara return to his homework, he had one more question. “Hey,” he asked, “All that stuff you said back then about me always having to be there and you needing me? Did you mean that?”
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” Kuwabara replied, sitting back down at his desk with his back to Yusuke. “I just didn’t want you dead before I’d beaten you like I promised.”
Yusuke grinned. “Right. ‘Cause a real man never breaks his promises.”
“Darn straight.”
The detective’s smile softened just slightly, in a way that a rare few people had ever seen or ever would. Kuwabara didn’t catch it, but as the newly discovered half-demon left the room, the redhead couldn’t help sensing the feeling behind it, and a little half-grin of his own found his lips. It lingered there long after Yusuke was gone.
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Thank god that's out of my head. XD At least until the next chapter. Still this one came easily enough, unlike the other fic I'm currently working on. I won't say much about that one, other than that the bunnies chewed on my brain for an entire year before I gave in, and that this fic is partially a result of requests by the readers of "Once Burned."
Plz Review! It makes me smile a lot.