How have you changed over the last 5 years?
The memorial hit Ali unexpectedly. She cursed as she dropped her mug of tea in her lap.
“You alright?” Yuki leapt to her aid with a hand towel.
She grumbled to herself as she mopped up the wasted liquid. “Yeah, I’m just a klutz.”
Yuki frowned at her. “You never drop a mug of tea.” He picked up the mug and went to the kitchen to refill it.
“I just realized what day it is,” she sighed.
“Oh.”
He wasn’t likely to forget. It was the day they were reunited, after all. “Weird to think it’s only been five years,” she said, accepting the fresh mug as he returned.
“Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been that long,” Yuki said, picking up his study notes where he’d left off. “It feels like only yesterday I was learning how to act like a human.”
“You fake it pretty well,” she teased.
“I’ve had great teachers.” She and Kurama had led by example, always having his back when he struggled to suppress his demon side. Although, as a wolf demon, it was second nature to him to fall into a disguise and live amongst sheep. “And now I have human friends and a part time job and I’m studying business. If you had told me that five years ago, I would have bitten your head off for being a damn fool.”
Ali giggled. “I didn’t exactly foresee this future, but I’m not entirely surprised by it either.” She had had her fair share of foretellings, but they were rarely so mundane. “I think I’ve mellowed out since my fight with Sai. At the very least, I’m way more in control of my abilities than I was before I got my memories back.”
“Except when you burn a hole through the bed when you have a nightmare,” a voice answered from her bedroom door.
“Hiei!” Ali scrambled off the couch to embrace her beloved.
“When did you get back?” Yuki asked, suppressing a chuckle at the sight of the dark-haired fire demon being smothered with affection. Speaking of things that had changed in five years…
It was a measure of Hiei’s trust in Yuki that he allowed the man to witness his softness for Ali. Or he had given up trying to be sneaky about it since it was hard even for the stealthy swordsman to slip in and out without being noticed by a spiritually sensitive roommate at least once in a while. “I delivered my report to Koenma this morning, then found a tree to take a nap in. I figured I should make sure our resident wolf god was staying out of trouble.”
Yuki laughed as Ali punched Hiei’s shoulder. “That’s “goddess” to you, punk.”
Hiei shook his head and gave Yuki a look that plainly said “can you believe this delusional woman?” Maybe that was exactly what he was thinking, because Ali punched him again.
“I’d better leave that to you to sort out,” Yuki said, collecting his notes. He would go to the library to finish going over them. Hiei had been gone nearly a month on his latest mission. Yuki didn’t think his timing was coincidental. He could certainly distract her from her pain easier than Yuki could at this point. Some things, at least, hadn’t changed in the last five years.
Notes: I was gonna just do another quick anecdotal piece for this prompt, but then I remembered that the second “book” in Ali’s story takes place five years after the end of the first and figured I could get at least a little scene out for you instead of just rambling about myself again. The characters certainly change a lot over the course of five years.
I’m living dangerously with my early flight and debating even going to bed. At best I’m going to have a nap. I think I take more naps than I did 5 years ago. That’s my personal contribution to the prompt anyway.
Alright, time to schedule the rest of this week’s posts, pack, and figure out if I’m getting any sleep tonight. Off to the west coast in 8 hours! Have a great week guys! See you when I get back!
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Closet Full of Notebooks 