Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho

Bit sleep deprived when I finished this chapter, but I thought it came out ok.

I woke up again ten minutes later with a killer headache.

Unfortunately, Shiori was now running late to work, and left me with free reign of the house, with orders not to be seen, as her son would not be returning til later that night.

So I sat on the comfy couch, took a few Advil, ate a bowl of fruit and drank a lot of water, watching the early morning cartoons.

Sometime around noon, when I was feeling more alive, but much sleepier, I untangled myself from the blankets and wandered upstairs to the room of this son of Shiori's, who, if I was reading into things right, was a reborn demon who had been in love with me before he, and presumably I, died, and hung onto the flame into this life.

Finding the bedroom was easy; I just had to find the one with the strongest musk-scent coming from it.

The room was full of shelves, books, pot-plants, boxes and drawers, and it only took me nosing around for a few minutes to snag myself a pair of shorts that barely fit, unearth a few stashes of money, jewellery and what appeared to be seeds, and a whole host of other things this boy probably didn't want his mother finding out he had.

Then I cuddled down into his bed, under the blankets, and immersed myself in his scent and the nagging sensation in the back of my mind.

I was asleep again within minutes.

(space)

I half-woke periodically, disturbed from slumber by brief flashes of my life that invoked particularly powerful emotions.

All of them involved one of two kitsune: a golden fox with long blond hair and blue eyes that enjoyed changing from male to female and back again, and a silver male whom I felt an overwhelming adoration for.

Sometime around mid-afternoon, I woke up, too tired to get up, but unable to sleep anymore, so I reached over and grabbed a random book from the bookshelf beside the bed. The dust cover said 'Life of Tropical Plants'.

It turned out to be a x-rated yaoi manga featuring a teenaged nekomata going through the daily life of school, home with his adopted human 'grandparents' for whom he served as a family kami, and his interactions with the local youkai, oni and kami, specifically those chasing his 'tail'. As a nekomata, he had some power over fire, healing, luck, boundaries and the dead, leading him from one catastrophe to the next, accidentally building up a reverse-harem of a pair of nogitsune 'twins' he went to school with, an inu-youkai detective he solved a case with, an ookami lawyer he broke a curse on and a hi-youkai he thwarted and turned to his side, all while a shadowy stalker followed him around, mumbling about whether or not he was the 'one' he'd been looking for.

It had just reach the climax where the shadowy stalker had been revealed to be the hot koumori bartender the nekomata tended to bemoan his life to and had now kidnapped the nekomata away to a shrine in the middle of a bamboo forest at the edge of a lake, trapped in the lake's reflection to boot, and was coming on to the little cat-boy quite strongly, when Shiori-san's part-youkai son returned home.

I was fully immersed in the manga, the sheets having tangled around my waist and twirling a lock of hair around my right index finger, when he walked into the room.

Normally we'd both be surprised and probably started arguing until Shiori-san came home, but I hadn't noticed him come into the house and take a shower, while he hadn't expected someone to get into his house and not be informed when the plants inevitably attacked. The plants hadn't attacked as his youki, itself, recognised me as a 'family member' and I was being quiet, having not noticed him return.

I can honestly say that I was surprised when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, only to look up to an eyeful.

I can say with all honesty that Shiori's son was a natural redhead.

Towelling his hair, the boy who was really a fox spirit apparently in love with me, or who he thought I was, turned to the dressers and dropped the towel onto the chair, giving me a very nice view of his lightly muscled back, arse and very long legs, damp red hair hanging to the bottom of the shoulder-blades.

He rummaged around in his drawers, grabbed some clothes and turned around.

My eyebrows, by this point, were up under my fringe and I was smirking, face red and eyes locked at waist level in a totally acceptable mix of amusement, embarrassment and fascination. Then my eyes drifted up a few inches to frown at the partially-healed wound in his abdomen.

There was a sharp intake of breath and the clothing slipped from limp fingers.

It was only as the young man took a step forward and swayed that I turned my attention to his face, which was pale with wide green eyes, looking like he'd seen something too good to be true and was expecting it to be snatched away at any moment, and put on my best attentive face.

And loudly wolf-whistled.

Between one moment and the next, there was suddenly a damp, naked teenager between my legs and cuddling around my waist, babbling and crying and apologizing in a manner that set the hair on the back of my neck standing on end from the sheer wrongness of this behavior associated with that youki signature.

My hands were fluttering in the air, caught between confusion and the reflexive comforting behavior, and I must have made some kind of distressed sound, because he was suddenly looking up at me with his big green eyes and…

"You snotted on me!" I wailed, flipped him off me and onto the floor, blankets and all, and scurried into the bathroom to wash it off, wings fluttering and teeth chattering in revulsion the whole way.

When I poked my head out the bathroom door a few minutes later, he didn't appear to have moved in his room at all. Creeping forward, I peered around the corner of the doorjamb to where he had been dumped.

He wasn't there.

I put my head in further and looked around some more.

The room was empty.

My ears twitched and I extended my senses out to find him and found him…

I shot forward and turned to find him right behind where I had been, hand half-raised.

And I totally did not squeak like a startled bat pup.

I leant away from him, hands held protectively to my chest and glared at him mulishly.

He still looked a little shell-shocked, so I had no problem darting past him and using my wings to help me safely jump down the staircase to the from door.

The front door Shiori-san was opening, a pair of women standing behind her. I clasped my hands in front of me and gave my best look of 'Vapid Innocence'.

There were a couple of raised eyebrows from the three women before they focused on and blushed at the male behind me, who was, from the sounds of things, scrambling back up the stairs.

He was totally still naked.

Keep in mind that Kuronue has lost the vast majority of his personal memories, so he has kinda 'reset' his personality to a juvenile 'imprinting' stage, while retaining most of his learnt memories. He's having to essentially relearn and remake his personality from pretty much scratch.