For Sonnet
Fairy-tale Endings
epilogue to the Poltergeist Reports
Sleep wrapped around Yuusuke like a web, smooth rope clinging to his mind and body, dragging him down into the soft mattress and hot sheets, until he slowly drifted into unconsciousness.
Only to rocket back in to the waking world.
"Wait a minute!" He shot upright in bed and rolled onto his side, propped up on one arm and reaching out to poke violently at the still form curled along his side. "Why didn't I have to kiss you?"
Kurama blinked, sleepiness evident in the slow way he analyzed that. "You didn't kiss me? What?" The youko's jaw cracked as he yawned. "I must have been dreaming then."
Yuusuke huffed. "Not now, I mean then. With Yakumo. I never kissed anyone!"
"Did you want to kiss Yakumo?" Kurama asked patiently.
Out of sheer self-preservation, Yuusuke managed to pretend he'd never heard that. "When I died, I had to get someone to kiss me before I could come back to life, right?"
"As I understand things." Kurama, who hadn't been around at that point of things, looked thoughtful. "I wasn't there first hand, of course, but Kuwabara-kun has mentioned the details once or twice." He grinned and gave Yuusuke a teasing glance from beneath a curtain of red hair. "Usually after a particularly horrific recurring nightmare."
"Shut up! The point is why did I have to run around begging people to kiss me - and almost failing, thank you very fucking much - when you guys just popped back to life without so much as a peck on the cheek!"
Kurama yawned again, the strain of the last few days showing in the lines around his eyes, and the slight droop of his eyelids. "What brought this on, Yuusuke?"
He crossed his arms and scowled. "It's a karmic injustice, that's what it is."
"We died saving the world from a megalomaniacal ex-god bent on the extermination of the human race. You, little shop-lifting pickpocket that you were, were struck by a car." Kurama stretched, head back and toes pointed, a full body effort that was probably not deliberately intended to draw Yuusuke's eye, but did so nonetheless. "Maybe Koenma figured we deserved some special circumstances." He rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin in one hand, looking thoughtful. "Maybe it was because your death was chronicled and witnessed. There was paperwork to fill out and procedure to follow. Botan collected you, your soul was processed - there must be a point where Koenma looses control of the process, I suppose. The five of us died relatively quietly-"
"The building blew up!"
"But there were no human or spiritual witnesses," Kurama pointed out. "No one to whom Koenma would have to account for our sudden revival."
Yuusuke's glower deepened. "I witnessed."
"Don't dwell," Kurama advised him. "You're bad at it anyway." He curled onto his side, pulling the blankets up over his shoulder, obviously done with the conversation. "Honestly, Yuusuke?"
The human boy looked down at his tired companion and resisted the urge to pursue the subject. Kurama's reasoning was sound - Kurama's reasoning was always sound, annoying a fact as it was - and it wasn't the youko's fault anyway. Yuusuke wrapped a strand of bright red hair around his fingers and settled back down, too warm with Kurama plastered against his side, but content despite it. "Yeah?"
"Probably Koenma just didn't like you very much."
"I knew it!"
Two and three when I get home!
epilogue to the Poltergeist Reports
Sleep wrapped around Yuusuke like a web, smooth rope clinging to his mind and body, dragging him down into the soft mattress and hot sheets, until he slowly drifted into unconsciousness.
Only to rocket back in to the waking world.
"Wait a minute!" He shot upright in bed and rolled onto his side, propped up on one arm and reaching out to poke violently at the still form curled along his side. "Why didn't I have to kiss you?"
Kurama blinked, sleepiness evident in the slow way he analyzed that. "You didn't kiss me? What?" The youko's jaw cracked as he yawned. "I must have been dreaming then."
Yuusuke huffed. "Not now, I mean then. With Yakumo. I never kissed anyone!"
"Did you want to kiss Yakumo?" Kurama asked patiently.
Out of sheer self-preservation, Yuusuke managed to pretend he'd never heard that. "When I died, I had to get someone to kiss me before I could come back to life, right?"
"As I understand things." Kurama, who hadn't been around at that point of things, looked thoughtful. "I wasn't there first hand, of course, but Kuwabara-kun has mentioned the details once or twice." He grinned and gave Yuusuke a teasing glance from beneath a curtain of red hair. "Usually after a particularly horrific recurring nightmare."
"Shut up! The point is why did I have to run around begging people to kiss me - and almost failing, thank you very fucking much - when you guys just popped back to life without so much as a peck on the cheek!"
Kurama yawned again, the strain of the last few days showing in the lines around his eyes, and the slight droop of his eyelids. "What brought this on, Yuusuke?"
He crossed his arms and scowled. "It's a karmic injustice, that's what it is."
"We died saving the world from a megalomaniacal ex-god bent on the extermination of the human race. You, little shop-lifting pickpocket that you were, were struck by a car." Kurama stretched, head back and toes pointed, a full body effort that was probably not deliberately intended to draw Yuusuke's eye, but did so nonetheless. "Maybe Koenma figured we deserved some special circumstances." He rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin in one hand, looking thoughtful. "Maybe it was because your death was chronicled and witnessed. There was paperwork to fill out and procedure to follow. Botan collected you, your soul was processed - there must be a point where Koenma looses control of the process, I suppose. The five of us died relatively quietly-"
"The building blew up!"
"But there were no human or spiritual witnesses," Kurama pointed out. "No one to whom Koenma would have to account for our sudden revival."
Yuusuke's glower deepened. "I witnessed."
"Don't dwell," Kurama advised him. "You're bad at it anyway." He curled onto his side, pulling the blankets up over his shoulder, obviously done with the conversation. "Honestly, Yuusuke?"
The human boy looked down at his tired companion and resisted the urge to pursue the subject. Kurama's reasoning was sound - Kurama's reasoning was always sound, annoying a fact as it was - and it wasn't the youko's fault anyway. Yuusuke wrapped a strand of bright red hair around his fingers and settled back down, too warm with Kurama plastered against his side, but content despite it. "Yeah?"
"Probably Koenma just didn't like you very much."
"I knew it!"
Two and three when I get home!