Yusuke wakes when the couch cushion shifts, a warm weight settling against his hip as Kurama looms over him, the planes of his face just barely illuminated by the moon and city lights. He blinks blearily up at him, but doesn’t startle, doesn’t move, breathing in the smell of wild flowers and forest that always surrounds Kurama no matter where he is.
“Yusuke,” Kurama whispers, and Yusuke meets his eyes.
After years of couch surfing between Kuwabara and Kurama’s apartments (or on a rare occasion, Keiko’s floor), Yusuke’s used to his friends’ nightly habits. Like, Kurama stays up late reading despite his early morning classes. Or that Kurama likes to sleep with his windows open, especially when it rains. Or that Kurama will often wait up if he’s expecting Yusuke late at night to greet him with a cup of tea.
But never before has Kurama approached him like this.
Kurama’s eyes are nearly gold in the darkness, but his fingers are delicate, blunt human nails soft when he touches Yusuke’s jaw. His hair is a red wave that falls over his shoulder, and Yusuke doesn’t stop himself (like he has countless times before) to reach up to feel the silky strands soft between his fingers.
“What are you doing?” Yusuke whispers, eyes caught on the way Kurama’s hair shifts like water at his touch.
Humming, Kurama leans closer, bracing himself against the broadness of Yusuke’s chest. He cups Yusuke’s jaw in his hand, tilting his face up just enough that their noses brush. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re going to kiss me,” Yusuke says, flatly. He doesn’t like being toyed with. “Which pisses me off, since you told me I couldn’t kiss you.”
Backing off a scant inch, Kurama gives him an apologetic smile. “I know,” he says gently, tracing his fingers along the line of Yusuke’s hair along his neck. “I was… scared, I suppose.”
Yusuke doesn’t scoff. He doesn’t pretend to know Kurama’s history, all three thousand years of it, and he’s sure Kurama doesn’t care to dwell on it. “So why now?” he asks instead.
This time, when Kurama smiles, it’s soft and warm, without a hint of the barriers he likes to place between him and anything that could hurt him. “You’re still here.”
Which, Yusuke guesses is true. He was nineteen the first time he’d tried to lay one on Kurama, and now they were twenty-six and Kurama was well on his way to a PhD and Yusuke owned his own restaurant, and here they still were, an unwavering constant in each other’s lives.
“Yeah,” Yusuke sighs, and tugs on Kurama’s hair. “I am. You’re a jerk for just now noticing.”
Kurama laughs, a delicate, musical sound and Yusuke can count on one hand the few times he’s actually heard it, so he leans up, crossing the space between them, so that he can taste it on Kurama’s tongue.
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