Effing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
effingunicorns) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly2016-03-18 07:59 pm
effingunicorns) wrote in fandomweekly2016-03-18 07:59 pm
Entry tags:
[#007] To the Moon and Back (Yu Yu Hakusho)
Theme Prompt: Traveling
Title: To the Moon and Back
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Rating/Warnings: G
Bonus: No
Word Count: 887
Summary: Sometimes, Kurama's loyalty involves third parties dying. Right now, it just involves helping Yusuke get some distance.
Notes: If anyone's familiar with it, this is sometime vaguely post-canon.
Yusuke drops into the passenger seat and yanks the door shut. The lines of his body are tense with something that looks like anger but smells like misery, and he refuses to look at Kurama. "Let's get out of here."
Kurama is nothing if not loyal. (That's a lie. He's good at those.) They get out of there.
There's no one else on the road this late, just streetlights and traffic lights and the flash of reflectors in the headlights. Kurama could drive them anywhere right now, make them disappear without any effort at all, but he would miss his mother and Yusuke would miss their friends. Instead he drives them out past the edge of the city, past tiny little suburbs to a sprawling park with posted operating hours that have long since passed but no gate blocking the entrance.
Yusuke doesn't say anything.
Kurama brings the car to a stop in the second parking lot they come to, picking a spot right up against the forest. Since Yusuke still doesn't seem to be interested in talking--about what's wrong or anything else--he turns the radio on, cranks the window down, and goes to sit on the trunk for a while.
The only sounds this far out are of animals in the forest and one idol after another singing about feelings and parties and money. It feels normal and human, both things Kurama has never been and Yusuke ceased being years ago but which are nice to pretend are true. If Kurama was human, he might not have to pretend he can't hear Yusuke fighting off tears in the car right now. If Yusuke was still human, maybe he wouldn't be here trying not to cry in the first place.
On second thought, perhaps it's better that they're not human. Yusuke could just as easily not be here right now because he died for good as because being human would give him fewer things to try not to cry about.
"Your car smells like wet dog," Yusuke says at last. He turns the radio up and emerges from his false privacy to stretch out next to Kurama, who has since laid back against the rear window to stargaze more comfortably.
"It didn't seem prudent to spend time drying my hair," Kurama replies, tracking a shooting star; it's the third he's seen tonight, probably part of that meteor shower he remembers hearing about.
Yusuke goes quiet again, and then: "Has anyone in Demon World ever been to space?" Kurama has no idea what such a thing would have to do with why Yusuke is upset, but he answers anyway.
"I believe there have been apparitions in the sky as long as we've existed. It's complicated getting up there, though, and equally complicated getting back."
"Have you ever been?"
"Once, long ago. I tricked my way into a wedding party headed to the moon and was stuck there for a year, but the things I was able to bring back kept me living comfortably for a century." A thin bluish streak shoots across the sky: meteor number four. "Everything was pale and beautiful there, and people bested each other with puzzles and cunning rather than fists."
"Sounds like your kind of place." Yusuke's voice sounds a little lighter this time, and the misery in his scent has lessened; simple distraction triumphs again.
"It was both exhilarating and humbling," Kurama admits. "It's easy to grow overconfident in my own mental skills here. Few up there enjoy the simpler pleasures of a good fight, however, or I might have stayed much longer."
Yusuke sits back up, face still tilted towards the sky. "I want to go someday. Not to strain my brain on stupid riddles or anything, just to see it for myself. Make a nice memory, you know?"
Kurama hums in agreement. "Yusuke Urameshi, first punk on the moon." Yusuke laughs, short and happy, and flops back down next to him.
"We'll go together. You can fight with me when I get antsy and I can listen to you talk about how everything's changed since you left."
"Would we invite Hiei and Kuwabara to join us as well, or is this a two man trip?"
"Those jerks can get their own friend-trip, this is just gonna be you and me."
The misery is almost completely gone now, so Kurama allows himself to mean it when he smiles. "Then we're going to the moon."
"We're going to the moon."
They finally get back in the car when Yusuke starts to yawn, no doubt more exhausted by bottling things up than by the hour itself. He's asleep well before they make it back to the city proper; by the time they reach Yusuke's apartment, he's so firmly asleep that Kurama is able to haul him up the side of the building and deposit him safely in his bed without any feedback more troublesome than a mumbled "I didn't know foxes could climb trees".
He leaves a vine of sea moonflowers coiling up the foot of Yusuke's bed--not as a reminder so much as because the room is depressingly void of greenery--and uses it to lock the window behind him.
If Yusuke should forget, it just means he'll be that much happier when Kurama gives him the moon.
Title: To the Moon and Back
Fandom: Yu Yu Hakusho
Rating/Warnings: G
Bonus: No
Word Count: 887
Summary: Sometimes, Kurama's loyalty involves third parties dying. Right now, it just involves helping Yusuke get some distance.
Notes: If anyone's familiar with it, this is sometime vaguely post-canon.
Yusuke drops into the passenger seat and yanks the door shut. The lines of his body are tense with something that looks like anger but smells like misery, and he refuses to look at Kurama. "Let's get out of here."
Kurama is nothing if not loyal. (That's a lie. He's good at those.) They get out of there.
There's no one else on the road this late, just streetlights and traffic lights and the flash of reflectors in the headlights. Kurama could drive them anywhere right now, make them disappear without any effort at all, but he would miss his mother and Yusuke would miss their friends. Instead he drives them out past the edge of the city, past tiny little suburbs to a sprawling park with posted operating hours that have long since passed but no gate blocking the entrance.
Yusuke doesn't say anything.
Kurama brings the car to a stop in the second parking lot they come to, picking a spot right up against the forest. Since Yusuke still doesn't seem to be interested in talking--about what's wrong or anything else--he turns the radio on, cranks the window down, and goes to sit on the trunk for a while.
The only sounds this far out are of animals in the forest and one idol after another singing about feelings and parties and money. It feels normal and human, both things Kurama has never been and Yusuke ceased being years ago but which are nice to pretend are true. If Kurama was human, he might not have to pretend he can't hear Yusuke fighting off tears in the car right now. If Yusuke was still human, maybe he wouldn't be here trying not to cry in the first place.
On second thought, perhaps it's better that they're not human. Yusuke could just as easily not be here right now because he died for good as because being human would give him fewer things to try not to cry about.
"Your car smells like wet dog," Yusuke says at last. He turns the radio up and emerges from his false privacy to stretch out next to Kurama, who has since laid back against the rear window to stargaze more comfortably.
"It didn't seem prudent to spend time drying my hair," Kurama replies, tracking a shooting star; it's the third he's seen tonight, probably part of that meteor shower he remembers hearing about.
Yusuke goes quiet again, and then: "Has anyone in Demon World ever been to space?" Kurama has no idea what such a thing would have to do with why Yusuke is upset, but he answers anyway.
"I believe there have been apparitions in the sky as long as we've existed. It's complicated getting up there, though, and equally complicated getting back."
"Have you ever been?"
"Once, long ago. I tricked my way into a wedding party headed to the moon and was stuck there for a year, but the things I was able to bring back kept me living comfortably for a century." A thin bluish streak shoots across the sky: meteor number four. "Everything was pale and beautiful there, and people bested each other with puzzles and cunning rather than fists."
"Sounds like your kind of place." Yusuke's voice sounds a little lighter this time, and the misery in his scent has lessened; simple distraction triumphs again.
"It was both exhilarating and humbling," Kurama admits. "It's easy to grow overconfident in my own mental skills here. Few up there enjoy the simpler pleasures of a good fight, however, or I might have stayed much longer."
Yusuke sits back up, face still tilted towards the sky. "I want to go someday. Not to strain my brain on stupid riddles or anything, just to see it for myself. Make a nice memory, you know?"
Kurama hums in agreement. "Yusuke Urameshi, first punk on the moon." Yusuke laughs, short and happy, and flops back down next to him.
"We'll go together. You can fight with me when I get antsy and I can listen to you talk about how everything's changed since you left."
"Would we invite Hiei and Kuwabara to join us as well, or is this a two man trip?"
"Those jerks can get their own friend-trip, this is just gonna be you and me."
The misery is almost completely gone now, so Kurama allows himself to mean it when he smiles. "Then we're going to the moon."
"We're going to the moon."
They finally get back in the car when Yusuke starts to yawn, no doubt more exhausted by bottling things up than by the hour itself. He's asleep well before they make it back to the city proper; by the time they reach Yusuke's apartment, he's so firmly asleep that Kurama is able to haul him up the side of the building and deposit him safely in his bed without any feedback more troublesome than a mumbled "I didn't know foxes could climb trees".
He leaves a vine of sea moonflowers coiling up the foot of Yusuke's bed--not as a reminder so much as because the room is depressingly void of greenery--and uses it to lock the window behind him.
If Yusuke should forget, it just means he'll be that much happier when Kurama gives him the moon.
no subject
no subject