I DID WHAT??

[Three]

by Lori McDonald







"All right, people, it’s MILLER time!"


Lifting his head from the mud puddle he was sprawled in, Kurama spat dirt out of his mouth and pushed a mass of what used to be red hair out of his face. His clothes were utterly ruined and his entire body ached.


Sitting in the same mud only ten feet away, but too far for him to crawl over and kill him, Yuusuke grinned at his team. He’d lost his shirt sometime in the fight and looked like someone had been beating him with a truck, his normally slick hair sticking up in all directions. Kuwabara knelt beside him, his trenchcoat tattered and both eyes blackened, looking as pleased with himself as Yuusuke. Kurama rolled his eyes and shifted his head through the slime to look the other way at Hiei. The little fire demon was just as dirty as the rest of them, licking at a wound on his arm and ignoring the world, his sword lying across his lap.


Why couldn’t they have a nice clean battle for once? Bad enough they had to chase a crazed demon across half the Makai and into the biggest mud puddle in both worlds. But he had to explode when they killed him. Kurama picked a piece of entrail off his sleeve and stood up.


"I want a bath."


Yuusuke and Kuwabara were high fiving each other. "We showed him! Did you SEE the way that guy’s guts blew out?? It was better than a Quentin Tarentino flick!"


"We are the BEST!"


"I want a bath NOW."


The two continued crowing. Muttering insults in their direction, Kurama turned and started shuffling in the direction of the distant forest.


One good thing about looking like the floor of a charnel house. People tended to avoid one. Kurama breathed a sigh of relief as he came across a stream and followed it up to where it pooled at the base of a cliff with a waterfall plunging into it.


"Oh, thank Inari," he murmured, shuffling over to it, not actually wanting to bend his legs so they touched his trousers as little as possible. Checking first that it actually WAS water - not a guarantee in the Makai - and that there was nothing in it waiting to eat him, he started stripping off his clothes, dropping them into a pile on the bank and swearing to himself that if he couldn’t get them sufficiently clean, he’d walk back to the Ningenkai naked.


Happily, he waded into the water. It was summer in the Makai, so the water was deliciously cool and clean. Ducking under, he started washing himself, using sand from the bottom to scour himself clean. The waterfall provided an excellent source of rinsing water and he thrust his head under it, letting the pounding wash the muck out of his hair and bring back the red colouring. A good ten minutes of soaking and he started to feel human again.


A ki registered on his senses and the young human looked over at his shoulder to see Hiei standing on the bank, still in his clothes and filthy as he had been, watching him. Kurama smiled, all sorts of thoughts running through his mind at the sight of the little fire demon he’d been trying to seduce. Not that he had gotten past first base, though Hiei was a great kisser. Kurama chuckled and eased into the water, kicking himself towards him as he rolled in the water like an otter.


"Care to join me?"


Hiei blinked. "Hn." Looking almost bored, he stripped off his clothes and dumped them on top of Kurama’s before stepping into the water. Dirty though he was, Kurama watched appreciatively, enjoying the sight of that well-muscled little body. He wanted to swim over there and grab him as he washed himself, but he didn’t. He’d been chasing Hiei a long time, but never too far or too fast. He loved the little fire demon too much and if he threw himself at him, he’d only run away. Kurama didn’t know if he could handle that.


So instead he just smiled as the little fire demon thrashed in the water, cleaning himself off vigorously. Treading water though the pool was only waist deep on him, he watched his hopefully future lover and chuckled.


"What?" Hiei growled, pausing from scrubbing one ear to look at him.


"Nothing," he told him, wondering if Hiei would be agreeable to the idea of a chase. It had been a lot of fun chasing him at camp a few weeks back, though he never did catch him, and now he wanted Hiei to chase him instead. The last time he hadn’t realized it was Hiei after him and did his best to get away. This time he wouldn’t be nearly so thorough in his efforts.


Hiei straightened up, still looking at him, and Kurama’s breath caught in his throat as he waded towards him, an indecipherable expression in his eyes. Kurama leaned towards him as his hand reached out to touch his face and-


"CANNONBALL!"


The two jerked away from each other as a huge splash erupted between them. Clearing water from his eyes in surprise, Kurama looked at a grinning and soaked Yuusuke.


Sometimes he really hated him.


Their clothes were finally clean, draped over Makai bushes that blew hot air across them. A series of leaves knotted around his hips for decency, Kurama knelt before a series of bushes, carefully growing edible food for them all. There was no way they were going to get back to the Ningenkai that night and he breathed a sigh of relief that he’d told his kaasan he’d be staying over at a friend’s house all weekend.


Behind him, Yuusuke worked on getting a fire started while Kuwabara collected firewood - complaining bitterly that it was beneath him to do so - and Hiei hunted something fast moving to eat. They’d gotten the ritual of camp set-up down ages before and Kurama sighed as his plants finished growing and sampled a fruit from one bush early.


"Hey, Kurama!" Yuusuke called. "Can you make some kind of alcoholic plant or something?"


Kurama looked back over his shoulder at him, one eyebrow raised. "Aren’t you only fourteen?" he asked.


"So?? I’m a great warrior. I can handle liquor!"


And if he didn’t make him some, he was going to whine until he drove him mad. Kurama sighed. "Sure, whatever." Besides, maybe he could get both Yuusuke and Kuwabara so drunk they’d pass out and leave him and Hiei alone. He flashed the boy a truly evil grin, which he of course misinterpreted.


"All RIGHT, Kuwabara!" he yelled. "Tonight we DRINK!"


Bored, Kurama nibbled on a piece of meat from whatever it was Hiei brought back and listened to Yuusuke and Kuwabara sing, both drunk on a fermented green fruit he’d grown for them. More than a little buzzed himself, he rested his hand on his palm and wondered how to get Hiei to do more than just sneak kisses with him. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the little fire demon was just playing innocent with him. As far as he knew, Hiei was a virgin, hence his slow approach with him, but sometimes he wondered if he weren’t after all.


Grumbling, he bit into his fruit. He wanted to jump him right there, but of course he couldn’t. He’d scare him away and then Yuusuke and Kuwabara would know. He had no intentions of letting them find out so they could tease he and Hiei both. He was nothing if not discrete.


Hiei sat across from him, nibbling earnestly on what had to be his fifth fruit and Kurama smiled at him sappily.


"Uh oh! Kurama’s had too much!"


To Kurama’s shock, Yuusuke snatched his fruit from him. "What are you doing??"


The boy grinned blearily at him. "We don’t want you rolling on the ground with Hiei again," he told him. Kuwabara started sniggering.


Kurama tried to think through the mild haze in his mind. Hiei continued to nibble on his fruit, ignoring them all. "What are you talking about?"


Yuusuke’s grin split his face in half. "You don’t remember, do you?"


Kurama glared at him. "Remember what?" Hiei kept nibbling.


Yuusuke looked almost demonically amused, Kuwabara sniggering and rolling back and forth on the ground. "The last day of school?" he prompted.


The kitsune frowned, trying to remember. His last clear memory was of drinking the punch they had there. The punch which turned out to be heavily spiked. According to his friends, he filled the entire school with plants and punched a massive tree out through the roof, and it had been all Botan and Koenma could do to keep his secret from being blown wide to the world. As far as he knew, though, that was all that happened. Once he drank the punch, everything in his memory was blank.


"What about it?"


The two boys fell over each other laughing. "He doesn’t remember! He really doesn’t remember!"


"Remember what?" Kurama screeched, face red and almost ready to strangle them both with plants if they didn’t start explaining themselves.


Yuusuke shook his finger at him unsteadily. "You don’t remember what happened with you and Hiei?"


He shot a look at Hiei. The koorime had finished his fruit and was starting on the next one, sitting with a definite lean to the left. He seemed oblivious to what was going on around him. "No."


The boys howled. "You’re gonna freak!" Yuusuke shrieked. "You’re just gonna die when we tell you!"


"Tell me what??" Kurama screamed at him. What did he do?? Try to kill Hiei? Oh, Inari, he hoped not.


"You were a bad boy," Yuusuke teased.


He DID try to kill him. Kurama felt like crawling into a very small hole. "I was?"


Yuusuke started nodding until Kuwabara grabbed his sleeve. "Wait, we swore we’d never tell him, remember?"


"We did?"


Kuwabara nodded earnestly. "Yeah. We both swore that we’d never tell Kurama he had sex with Hiei in the middle of the school."


Kurama’s heart stopped.


"What?" he squeaked.


Kuwabara glared at Yuusuke. "Now you’ve done it."


"Me?? You’re the one who told him!"


"Oh, oops."


Kurama was trembling, staring between them and the little koorime, who was leaning even more to the left and chewing on a fruit pit. He SLEPT with Hiei???


"I slept with Hiei??"


Yuusuke grinned. "Yup. It was really gross. Did you know you’re a screamer?"


Kurama gaped at him. He slept with Hiei. In public. In front of his friends…


"I SLEPT with Hiei??"


"Yep. Too bad I didn’t have a camera."


"I’m still having flashbacks," Kuwabara muttered with a shudder.


He’d had him, won him. And he couldn’t remember..?


"I SLEPT WITH HIEI??"


Hiei started to realize someone was screaming his name and began to look around, then went back to his fruit pit.


"AND I MISSED IT?????"


Yuusuke and Kuwabara exchanged glances. "Y’know," Yuusuke commented philosophically. "I knew he’d be pissed off, but I didn’t think it would be about THAT part of it."


What followed there was a string of shrieked curses that would shame the masters. Kurama threw himself over the fire, grabbing Hiei’s shirt and yanking him close. "WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME???"


Blurry red eyes looked at him. "You were having too much fun trying to seduce me."


More cursing. Scooping the little koorime up under one arm, Kurama bolted for the privacy of the woods, the hysterical laughter of his teammates behind him. To hell with subtlety and discretion. He was making up for lost time.


THE END




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[On to the next story: Bad to Worse]