Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Blood and Popcorn ❯ Blood and Popcorn ( One-Shot )

Title: Blood and Popcorn

Author: Flamika

Email: flamika27 @ yahoo.com (w/o spaces)

Pairing: Yuusuke/Kurama

Warnings: yaoi

Notes: This is a 1000-word ficlet written for a Livejournal challenge.

Rating: PG-13

Yuusuke used to wonder what death was like.

He was raised by a drunkard of a mother who would get plastered and babble drunkenly to her sullen son for hours on end. He heard about sexual exploits and suicides when he was in elementary school. If he thought it worth his time, he would have blamed his mom for putting such crazy ideas in his head.

Of course, now Yuusuke knew what it was like to die. In fact, he'd died twice, and death wasn't much better the second time around.

Death was one thing he and Kurama shared. He wished there were more. He wished he was smarter so they could study together. Yuusuke always fell asleep and drooled all over his schoolbooks. Nowadays even Kuwabara studied. Loser. Yuusuke no longer had anyone to go to the arcade with. Hiei couldn't set foot in a human establishment because he was weird-looking, and Kurama was smarter than all the games in the arcade combined. It was no fun to play against someone who could discern all the computer-generated strategies and outsmart you in a matter of minutes.

Besides, ever since his demon blood had awakened, Yuusuke no longer found arcades interesting. They were places of human construction, and human just didn't do it for him anymore. Instead, he felt the Demon World calling him from somewhere in the distance, somewhere right in front of him, from everywhere at once. Its song boiled his blood, filled his dreams with images of lightning-ridden skies and red, acidic soil. The Makai was a place of nightmares, and Yuusuke burned with the desire to return to it.

Hiei smelled strongly of the Makai, but Hiei wasn't very accessible these days.

Kurama smelled of the Makai, but also of the Ningenkai. He smelled of blood and popcorn, of lightning and cologne. Kurama was everything Yuusuke wanted to embrace, and everything he was going to leave behind.

Personally, he would have liked to work on the "embracing" part, but he hadn't even known he could swing that way until Kurama strode into his life with his crimson hair and jade-green eyes and even white teeth and great ass. Yuusuke was still new at this bisexual thing. How did you tell a guy you liked him? Yuusuke tended to express his affection by calling people names or beating them up, neither of which would impress Kurama.

"You seem restless, Yuusuke," Kurama told him one day when they were studying in Kurama's room. Or rather, when Kurama was studying and Yuusuke was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

"Ah..." Yuusuke said dully, unable to rouse himself from his stupor. Why was he here again? Oh yeah, he didn't have anywhere else to go, and Kurama's room smelled better than his house.

"Isn't there somewhere you want to be?" Kurama asked.

Yuusuke made an annoyed noise and rose to a sitting position. "If I was bothering you, you should have just said something."

Eyes still fixed on his homework, Kurama put a graceful hand on Yuusuke's chest and lowered him back down. "That's not what I meant. I was just wondering if there was something bothering you. You haven't been yourself lately."

Yuusuke folded his arms behind his head and tried to ignore the hand Kurama had left on his chest. "You try turning into a demon with tattoos and hair down your ass, and see if that doesn't bother you."

Kurama took his gaze away from his schoolbooks long enough to smile down at Yuusuke. "Will a demon with hair down to his waist and fox ears suffice?"

Yuusuke stared at him dumbly for a moment before laughing, realizing his slip-up. Kurama acted so damn human sometimes that Yuusuke forgot he'd been born a demon.

The redhead's smile faded a little around the edges. "I know you're torn between the two worlds, Yuusuke. I've felt it, too, every moment of my life. I share your torment."

Yuusuke felt embarrassingly relieved to hear someone understood. "How do you stand it? I've had to deal with this for all of two weeks, and I'm miserable! Sometimes I can't even sleep because it's too damn quiet with no heartbeat in my ears."

Kurama's fingers flexed on the front of his shirt, the tip of one sliding beyond the dipping collar of the tank top to touch Yuusuke's bare skin. "I felt something similar as I grew up with a heart beating without cease. In my greatest fits of aggravation, I wanted to put a knife in my chest just to get the thing to shut up."

Yuusuke laughed at the morbid image, knowing Kurama wouldn't say his amusement was inappropriate.

The redhead's fingers slid from Yuusuke's chest to his collarbone, tracing the curve of it. "And all throughout my adolescence, through puberty and into young adulthood, I craved the touch of another demon, the smell of their skin, no matter how foul. I wanted the skies to be red and filled with lightning, but I also wanted white clouds and sunlight." He leaned over Yuusuke, crimson sidelocks brushing flushed cheeks. "I would have given anything for a taste of something that was demonic and human at the same time."

Yuusuke didn't think, he just brought his hand up behind Kurama's head and crushed their mouths together, fingers sinking into thick tresses, red like the blood Yuusuke dreamed of. Hot, soft lips sucked gently on Yuusuke's lower lip, tongue languidly tracing the tender flesh. Yuusuke's heart came alive in his chest, sending a burst of heat through his veins as he let Kurama settle between his legs.

He wanted to tell Kurama all his fears, all his nightmares, but words didn't matter. Yuusuke knew without a doubt that Kurama understood all of what he felt, and it was on the wings of this realization that he finally surrendered and let himself be consumed by the scent of blood and lightning, of popcorn and cologne, of his past and his future.

~fin

26 April 2004