Kitsune-bi (Foxflare)

Chapter 1: An Outcast Cast Inward

A Yû Yû Hakusho fanfiction by Sir Psycho Sexy

Musical themes for this chapter: "Rose" and "Orestes" by A Perfect Circle.

Quotes from themes:

Rose: "…stay rose and compromise what i will i am

bend around the wind silently blown about again i'm treading so soft and lightly compromising my will i am i am i will so no longer will i lay down play dead play your doe in the headlights locked

down and terrified your deer in the headlights

shut down and horrified when push come

to pull comes to shove comes to step around this

self destructive dance that never would've ended

till i rose i roared aloud here i will i am…"

Orestes: "metaphor for a missing moment

pull me into your perfect circle

one womb

one shape

one result

liberate this will to release us all

gotta cut away clear away slip away and sever

this umbilical residue keeping me from killing you

and from pulling you down with me

here i can almost hear you scream

give me one more medicated peaceful moment …"

Minamino Shûichi, in the grand scheme of things, or so he thought, was no one.

Sure, he was in all of the accelerated classes and his teachers said he was practically perfect, but this was junior high. That didn't matter much. What did matter was his appearance, his attitude, his differences from others that made people either avoid him or stare at him like a carnival freak show.

It was difficult to actually sit down in study hall and do calculus problems, since there was bound to be some punk blowing spitwads into his long red tresses. He ignored them, as violent confrontation didn't seem to suit him, and just began to tense up ever-so-slightly when they whispered, "Hey, I bet you that damn homo won't fight back…such a wuss…Minamino…"

And a chorus of serpentine whispered laughter echoed in the redhead's ears.

He got called all sorts of names…"homo", "queer", "sissy boy"…just because he didn't really fit in with the prevailing stereotype of masculinity held by seventh-grade boys. He just liked to be alone, quiet, with a good book in his lap or a scientific thought experiment circling about in his head. But the girls were more mature than the boys, he thanked the kami for that. He had his own little gaggle of obsessed girls following him around, praising his long red hair, sparkling green eyes, and gentle demeanor, but in stealth, so their more macho boyfriends wouldn't hear.

After his last period class, Shûichi started to walk home when a gang of eighth-grade boys jumped him and started to beat him up.

"Hey, my friend told me about you," one of them said as he landed a fierce right hook into his ribs. "You're a pansy who won't fight, and all you do is homework and crap!"

"Yeah," snorted another, "another fag who'd be better off as a girl!"

This elicited infantile laughter from the group. Shûichi stood up, hand over the bruised area of his ribcage, looked them straight in the eye and said, "I am not. You have no right to judge."

"Whatever!" laughed the boys. "You're just sayin' that 'cause you need an excuse not to act like a man…"

At home, the tension built, more upon the redhead's own accord than anything else. His ribs still hurt, but there was no major damage; the perpetrators hadn't punched hard enough to break anything. Just some bruised soft tissue, that was it.

He felt guilty not being able to do anything about it, which kept him from reading the book on botany he had borrowed from the school library. He just sighed, bookmarked his page, worrying whether or not he would ever get to the chapter on plant hormones, and laid down on his bed.

His mother, Shiori, wasn't home at the moment, as she had to stay late in the office. He loved her dearly and compounded his anxieties by wondering if she'd get home in one piece. He barely got through dinner, a shower, and more studying before he had felt he'd reached his limit.

The only thing to do to refresh the body and mind, Shûichi figured, was to go to bed. It was nine o'clock PM already, and his mother still wasn't home. Usually he would stay up and wait for her arrival, but tonight was one of those rare nights where the boy felt much too exhausted to run down the stairs and welcome his o-kâchan home.

And so he fell asleep, just like any other normal night…

He awoke around midnight, to discover his mother's car in the driveway and her light snoring in the bedroom across from his. He walked to the bathroom, since this was one of those nights where he'd drank too much water during the day and had to relieve himself…

Upon returning to his bed, he snuggled down in the warm sheets and tried to close his eyes…

But he couldn't. In fact, he really couldn't move any part of his body. He just wondered if this was all a strange part of some REM sleep cycle he was going through…

And then the other appeared out of thin air, crouching down on top of him. He had long silver hair, piercing copper-green eyes, a nice body covered by a loose-fitting blue gi that seemed to cling to him in all of the right places, and…fox ears and a tail?!?

Kistune-yôkai? Liken the ones in his mythology textbooks? Impossible. Besides, whenever aforementioned fox spirits took on human form, or so he read, it was always female…

Shûichi was both awed and mortified. "Who-Who are you?"

The other smiled. "You see me every day in the mirror, boy, and yet you do not realize it. I am Kurama, a fox spirit… the other you."

"The other me?"

"To make a long story short, I had to escape into the human world…and could only do so via a human body as a vehicle. And that body is ours." He grinned, a feral smile that spoke of too many things for Shûichi to handle…

The redheaded human gulped. "You mean…?"

"Yes."

"I read that people who have chance encounters, or even are driven mad by kitsune, die. Why not me?"

"In a way, Minamino Shûichi is already dead. Yet you, no, we, are alive in the human realm…"

"So it's kind of like the Schroedinger's Cat…erm…FOX…paradox?"

"Sort of. Except we need to become one person, since you are a mature adult now and you are going through quite a lot of trouble. You need to be strong, I can give you my strength."

Shûichi just stared blankly, contemplating everything his yôko form was saying. If he wasn't himself, who was he? If no one was themselves, who were they? Did they have masks, other identities, other roles? How come he never observed them…?

"In short, I would like to mate with you. It is the union above all others that will make both of us into a whole, unharmed 'me'."

"Nani…?" Shûichi just looked up into the yôko's glimmering, greedy eyes.

"I need to finish what I started…that luxurious red hair, the very color of roses; those vibrant green eyes, opposing and yet in perfect harmony with the rest of your good looks; your soft rose-petal lips, just aching to be kissed…yes, I made you look that way…" The fox-spirit sighed and bent down over Shûichi's face, tracing a gentle line down from his temple with his finger.

Shûichi blushed. "But…what of genetics..?"

"You're a skeptic?" Shûichi nodded "yes".

Just then the fox-spirit's lips brushed over the human boy's and the boy whimpered a bit.

"That should do." Again, the feral smile returned to the yôko's mouth. "Now," he said sticking one hand inside of the redhead's pajama top, "let's…"

A thousand breaths, a thousand heartbeats had been interchanged between the two.

Now the yôko was gone. The redhead's body, with Kurama within, remained.

And a shadowy figure was watching from inside Shûichi's…no, Kurama's…closet…

"Che'. Every time I meet up with that rat-bastard fox, he's always mating with somebody…guess he got so desperate he had to do it with that human he's occupying this time…"

The figure sneaked around to the crack in the closet doors, holding on to the handle of his katana…watching…waiting…

END CHAPTER 1

A/N: Ya like? I know it was weird, but weird is what I do. ^^