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“Do you remember the first time I told you I wanted you?”
The question catches Kurama by surprise, though perhaps it shouldn’t. Now that several months have passed, it’s become clear that Yomi actually enjoys Kurama’s company, and not just because he’s found a way to keep him subordinate. Kurama supposes he is meant to be grateful that the position isn’t more openly humiliating.
Then again, this is Yomi. If he actually believed Kurama would be happy with this arrangement in the long run, he probably would have made another one.
“As I recall, you phrased it more bluntly than that,” Kurama says, eventually.
Hey, Kurama. We’ve been doing good work together for a while… how much longer until we fuck, anyway?
Yomi smiles. “It wasn’t the phrasing that I wished to remind you of, but your response.”
Yomi had been sloppy drunk—not an appealing condition to Kurama, generally speaking. Yomi had his charms, certainly — his well-defined body and handsome face among them— but the presumption, the demand had rankled.
You'll have to work a lot harder to earn that particular privilege, Yomi.
And then Kurama had gotten up and left without looking back.
“What about it?” Kurama says, now.
“Your pulse has changed,” Yomi observes, setting Kurama’s teeth on edge. “You manage your anger well, as always, but we both know that you’ve been caught in my trap. Our positions have reversed in more ways than you’ve yet begun to understand, I think. Then it was easy for you to humiliate and look down on me, but now…”
Slowly, Yomi closes the distance between them. Kurama does not back away, but he keeps alert, even though Yomi’s intent does not seem violent.
“I understand why you felt that way,” Yomi remarks, with deceptive mildness. “Even if I do not like understanding it.” His hands reach forward and find Kurama’s shoulders— Kurama tenses, but does not flinch. “I was not your equal. You doubted I would ever amount to much.” Yomi’s smile returns, wider, as his grip tightens. “And now, of course, I have surpassed you.”
“You’re wrong,” Kurama says flatly. “If I really thought you were nothing, I would have killed you myself.” Instead of leaving you alive with a parting message to teach you the one lesson you needed to learn most.
Yomi smiles, faintly. “Still, one question remains.” His left hand caresses the side of Kurama’s face, no doubt finding its shape and bone structure different from the one Yomi remembers. “Have I earned it, Kurama?”
Kurama almost laughs out loud. It’s absurd that after everything that has passed between them, after centuries spent growing in different directions and even after finally realizing that it was Kurama who was behind his blinding all along, that a part of Yomi still does crave Kurama’s approval.
Or perhaps he simply doesn’t trust anyone else enough to take them to bed.
That, Kurama would understand.
Kurama has lived as Minamino Shuichi for eighteen years now. Just as Yomi has had to become accustomed to the loss of his vision, Kurama acclimated gradually to a new body that did not always do what he needed it to. A body more prone to injury and disease, though he learned to heal himself as his youki returned.
A body which had to undergo a new kind of puberty in order to mature, which in many ways was even more inconvenient and embarrassing than Kurama remembered it being the first time around. After all, puberty effectively was maturity for a fox— and there were no pimples. But there was nothing mature about being a thirteen year old human, surrounded by other human children who barely understood what their hormones were trying to tell them about their own desires.
Still, for the most part Kurama hadn’t found it too difficult keep a lid on his lustful urges when it wasn’t appropriate. The last few years had been eventful, to say the least, and he was in no hurry to have sexual experiences in this body under less than ideal conditions. Living two different lives at the same time made trust more imperative than ever, and there were precious few people Kurama trusted enough to let down his guard with simply for a fleeting moment of pleasure.
Which made it all the stranger that he found himself seriously considering Yomi’s proposition.
Yomi was not someone Kurama trusted— at least, not in any conventional sense. He trusted Yomi not to kill him in his sleep, but only because he’d already had ample opportunity to try to murder Kurama if that was what he wanted. But, much as Youko Kurama had once upon a time, Yomi clearly found Kurama more valuable and interesting alive.
And… this was Makai. About as far as he could possibly get from the life he’d cultivated as Minamino Shuichi— in fact, sometimes it felt like that life had never happened at all, which was by far the most unsettling aspect of living here again. But one upside to this distance was that Kurama didn’t give a damn if there was gossip about him and Yomi here. Which, naturally, there had been since practically the moment Kurama arrived.
“Half of your council believes I gained my position by sleeping with you,” Kurama remarks, temporarily sidestepping answering Yomi's question.
“At a low estimate.” Yomi chuckles, not in the least impatient. But then, he wouldn’t be, would he? He’s waited over five hundred years for this moment. “The ones who deserve their own positions have realized that they were foolish to underestimate my judgement— and you. The ones that do not will learn or die.”
But, Kurama thinks, they believed it in the first place because of how abruptly Yomi brought him in, and promoted him with only the most cursory of introductions. Clearly, Yomi enjoyed the misconception, or at least found it amusing to mislead others.
“I don’t particularly care what they think. However, just between the two of us, let us make one thing entirely clear.” Kurama pulls out of Yomi's grip, taking a couple steps backward. When Yomi reaches for him again, Kurama catches Yomi’s wrist and tightens his grip enough to bruise. “I am not your Number Two when we’re alone, Yomi. I’ll take your orders on the Council, but never in my bed. And it will be my bed, not yours.”
Time has broadened Yomi’s shoulders, and given him a gravity and presence that he hadn’t possessed in his youth. His horns have grown out, along with his hair, and even his additional sets of ears have an aesthetically pleasing shape, almost like petals.
Has anyone ever dared to grab Yomi by those horns?
Yomi smiles. “You aren’t bluffing, are you?”
Kurama releases Yomi’s wrist and turns around, walking towards the exit. “Those are the terms. Take them, or don’t bother asking me again.”
“Wait!” For a moment, just the slightest moment, Yomi sounds more like the hungry, eager bandit that Kurama remembers. When Yomi speaks again, he has regained his self-control. “I accept your terms, Kurama.”
“Good.” Kurama does not bother turning around. “I’ll expect you soon, then.”
Yomi may look good now, but he will look even better on his knees.