thenearshore | This is a post title

Kurama's spent far too much time in his own head the past two days and means to spend more, but caller ID convinces him to answer the phone instead of silencing it when it starts to ring.

"I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind." His tone is patient rather than accusing, suggesting he knew Gojyo would get back to him eventually and is only poking fun, but that sort of lie is easy.

"Yeah, well..." He doesn't bother to disguse the relief in his own tone -- it has been several days since he promised to come by, and he wouldn't have blamed Kurama in the slightest if the man didn't want to waste his time with some hanyou would stood him up. His luck usually isn't this good. "Somebody let a wild animal out of its cage, and it was a mess gettin' him back in."

"You mean Susano'o's attempt at supervillainy last week?" He lets Gojyo's audible relief go unmarked, preferring not to embarrass him into changing his mind when teaching might actually give Kurama something to do other than mope. "That explains it. Are you well enough to start now, or do you need more time to recover?"

Attempt at supervillainy -- Gojyo has to snort at that. Guess that's as good a description for it as any though, huh? Susan sure came off like some kind of cackling comic book baddie.

"Don't throw me off th'roof any time soon and I'll be okay," he jokes, but he's only half-joking. Who knows what learning magic entails? The only people he knows who can do magic either spend most of their lives studying, or went through what he's gonna very politely call some bad shit. If it was easy everyone would know how to cast spells and stuff, right? So he's prepared for the worst. "We doin' this at your place?"

"If you can make it. Don't worry, though; throwing people off roofs is advanced training, so you won't get to that for a while." If Gojyo's half-joking, Kurama's maybe three quarters, and that's only because he considers throwing people off of roofs to be an inefficient and graceless option. "You remember where it is?"

"Yeah." He remembers the plants that eat smokers, too. But if he has to refrain while he trains... damn that's going to be a hard sacrifice, but he'll make it.

"I want to get started on this as soon as possible. When's good for you?"

"My day's wide open, so anytime." The rustling of plants may be audible over the line--all he's doing right now is cross-breeding poison ivy with some of the guard plants out back, and that he can take a break from at any time.

The plants are a useful reminder to smoke as much as he can on the walk over, thank you.

"I'm on my way then."

And about a half an hour later, he arrives, stopping at the edge of the property like any rational smoker would and calling out for Kurama.

"Ooooi, it's the smoke-smellin' Sha Gojyo here, hopin' not to get eaten on his way inside."

Half an hour is plenty of time for Kurama to wash his hands of the poison ivy's irritating oil--not a problem for him anymore, but possibly unpleasant for Gojyo depending on how his human blood manifests--so he's ready and waiting when Gojyo arrives. He doesn't bother calling down in response this time, instead turning the plants at the foot of the stairs into a twining archway that's more flower than greenery.

That should be sufficiently welcoming, right?

It's weird, is what it is. But weird is what he came here for, so...

"I feel like I'm gettin' married," he grumbles as he nears the top, but it's clearly not an actual complaint. The flowers are very pretty, Fox, well done. "You better buy me dinner first, you got it?"

Somebody clearly needs more flowers in his life, but Kurama can run with a joke. "If you insist, but I promise I had an exceptionally clever plan for carrying you off without warning."

He's waiting patiently at the top of the pyramid, already seated in one of several wooden lawn chairs he ~~stole~~ scrounged up somewhere rather than force an injured man to sit on the ground. Isn't he a good teacher? "Come sit, our first lesson is primarily mental."

He's not injured! ...Okay, his ribs are still healing, but they only barely hurt when he strains them (by breathing, or smoking, or talking), and he's got no problem walking and running and hell, he could fight if he had to. He doesn't need to be coddled by some underage-lookin' shape shifter.

But he'll take a chair, thanks.

"Mental?" he asks, settling onto his seat. "You mean like meditation? Because I should warn you, I'm not very good at that."

This underage-looking shapeshifter is older than most of the other new gods and shinki combined, so he'll coddle who he wants when he wants and hear no complaints.

"We'll work on that if it becomes necessary. What I mean for now is spiritual awareness, of others' energy and your own." He conjures up a little ball of energy as he speaks, reddish-magenta like what he puts into his plants, and presses it between his palms like a solid ball. "Do you know anything about sensing another's presence?"

"Kinda?" he replies, scratching his head. The little ball of energy looks a lot like the ones Hakkai generates, so much so that he's honestly surprised that it's reddish instead of a cool green-blue. But then, given Kurama's love for all things red, maybe that's not so surprising after all.

"I can feel youki. Demon energy," he clarifies, "but usually only from somebody who's worked themselves up half-crazy and ready for a fight." And that, he's got a lot of experience with.

Kurama nods; that means he can skip the most elementary concepts. "I want you to use that ability to focus on the power I've drawn out. You can close your eyes or do whatever else you need to to find it." He feeds more energy into the ball, just to make it a little bit easier.

His focus shifts rapidly from the ball to Kurama and back -- he feels like a fool already -- but what the hell. He hunches over slightly, staring hard at the ball, turning his head from side to side as though he's listening to it.

When that doesn't work, he tries it again with his eyes shut. It's hard to tell, but there's... something? "I think I can feel it?" he says at last, eyes still shut. He frowns, leaning in closer -- it's really hard to tell if he's feeling the presence of the ball of energy, or if he just thinks he is because he's trying to feel it so hard. "Can you make it bigger?"

"Of course." Except he's going to do something else first. Rising silently to his feet, Kurama moves over to the side, watching to see if Gojyo can track his progress. Then he strengthens the ball further.

He can almost see it, although see isn't the right word. There's this... this feeling? That's like a glow and like a blast of hot air and like something... what, fresh? He's not a poet, he can't describe it.

But he can sense it. It's there, right in front of him, and it's definitely, definitely there. ...But then it's gone. Gojyo cocks his head, listening intently (shut up, it helps). Where did it...? Ah, there, to the side. He turns his head, opening his eyes at the same time, to confirm that yes, Kurama had in fact moved. The sneaky bastard.

Somebody's feeling damn proud of himself. "I did it."

"Very good!"

Kurama had been prepared to work on this all day if necessary, but judging by the amount of energy he's used so far to test Gojyo's senses, that won't be an issue. Now he drags his chair closer and sits down in front of Gojyo again, close enough now that he only has to lean forward to bring the energy ball within easy reach. "Now we're going to expand on that. Hold your hands out, palms up, and focus on the ball again."

He doesn't need more flowers in his life -- he needs to be told very good! more often, if his smile is anything to go by.

Gojyo straightens up when Kurama comes back over, then leans forward again, his hands outstretched toward the ball of energy like it's a glowing fire. "So you just want me to, what, watch it?" Because he can see it, for lack of a better word, but he can't really feel it. At least, not the way he's always imagine Hakkai feels his own energy blasts.

That's just blasphemy, but Kurama can work with blasphemy. When he's sober, anyway.

"I want you to focus on the feeling of it." He places the ball in Gojyo's hands, keeping his own on it to maintain control. "If I were to poke you in the knee right now, your sense of touch would tell you that I had done so. This is the same principle. Do your hands feel any different?"

If he were this close to Hakkai's chi, he'd be worried about his hands feeling like they were getting blasted off. "Warm?" he guesses, and it really is just a guess. The energy is warm, or warm-ish anyway. He's only got words to describe five senses, okay, talking about stuff outside of that is hard!

He concentrates for a moment, trying to feel, what, though the ball maybe? To feel the texture of the ball, like he would with a basketball? But all he can feel is that nebulous warmth. "Yeah. Warm."

Warmth is a common enough early sensation that Kurama accepts it at face value; there's no point doubting Gojyo when he's just demonstrated he can sense the energy without seeing it.

"I want you to visualize that warmth within your body. Pick an image that's easy for you to maintain. It can be something simple and direct, like light or embers, or something metaphorical, like warm winter clothes or the water of a hot spring. The important thing is that it's something you can imagine without any effort at all."

"In my body," Gojyo repeats dubiously, staring hard at the ball of light. He can feel the warmth in his hands, of course, because they're close to the ball. But he can also feel the energy from the ball, tugging at the back of his skull and beneath his breastbone and low in his belly. It's sort of like standing next to a gong, and having the sound vibrate through him... only without the going deaf part.

But it's stronger in his hands than anywhere else. Gojyo narrows his eyes, his breathing deepening as he tries to feel the same heat in his chest that he does in his hands. But he can't, no more than he could feel the heat of a fire on his back the same as on his front.

"It's still just warm," he reports at last, shaking his head. He's still trying to hold that focus, but he's really not a focus kind of guy, and it's hard. "I mean, I can feel that it's there, but I can't feel it, not the same as--" he briefly holds up his hands "--here."

Edited 2016-09-21 21:02 (UTC)

"That's alright." It sounds like the most expedient route would be to simply knock Gojyo out of his body, but Kurama's trying to be patient here, so he's going with something a little less traumatizing first. He returns to his feet, drawing the energy ball back into himself with little difficulty, and moves over to stand right behind Gojyo.

"We're going to try submersion. Warn me if it's too much." Then Kurama loosens the stranglehold he keeps on his energy--not as much as he did two days ago, because he doesn't want to draw a crowd again, but just enough to envelop Gojyo as well as himself. There's less red to it this way, less refinement, but then he doesn't need refinement right now. "How's that?"

Gojyo eyes Kurama uncertainly as the other man moves around behind him, but then settles back, senses primed for whatever Kurama is about to do. Submersion -- that means getting dunked, right? -- doesn't sound so bad, but he can't figure out how Kurama's going to dunk him in a vat of ene--

...Oh.

When Hakkai's healed him in the past, it's always been localized -- energy gets sent up his arm, maybe, or into his back, always right next to where Hakkai is touching him. Less distance to travel means less effort for Hakkai, and less risk of anything unintended happening. The few times he's been pumped full of Hakkai's energy he's been unconscious and unaware.

Kurama's energy is in him, touching every inch inside and out. He can barely breathe for the sensation -- every nerve ending is vibrating, his heart's rocketed up to eleven, he's broken out in a sweat... oh, and he's hard as a rock. His mind's gone nearly blank with arousal -- all he can manage in response to Kurama's question is a gasped "...fuuh."

Edited 2016-09-21 23:08 (UTC)

Arousal is hardly an unfamiliar scent--Kurama's hardly spent his centuries celibate, and this form really is unfairly pretty--but under the circumstances it's entirely unexpected, and certainly in such a sudden flood. A half-formed word is the final signal that this plan has gone completely off course, so Kurama wastes no more time in putting his energy back where it belongs: safe inside him and noooobody else.

"Sorry! I didn't expect you to, uh..." be an actual slut for magic, he wants to say, but that feels like the wrong direction entirely, so he changes course. "Do you need a moment?"

The sensation pulls back, and Gojyo can't help but groan -- he can feel it leaving every cell, and part of him wants to lean back and bury himself it it again.

But the rest of him is too busy being embarrassed enough to quite possibly die from it.

"Yeah," he breathes, barely loud enough to be heard. He hunches over, trying to catch his breath, and wills his body to, ah. Lie down. "What the hell."

Kurama takes a couple steps back, putting all his attention on ramping up the perfume of the nearest flowers until they cover the scent of horny kappa. That doesn't do anything about the sounds Gojyo's making, but. Well. Kurama can just choose to ignore all that, same as he's choosing not to think about how it's been literal decades since he got any.

Yyyup. Just gonna keep standing over here where Gojyo can't look at him.

"Some people are, ah, more sensitive. To energy. I imagine your educational circumstances made it easy to miss."

What sounds, he's not making any sounds, he's just... whoooo, okay, deep breath, and one more, and okay, there. There. It's not his first unwanted public erection, although if the gods were just those would have stopped back when he was still a brat. Everything's fine now.

Except for that giant-ass elephant in the room.

"That's never..." Whoops, that came out a little more emphatic than he'd intended. He licks dry lips and tries again.

"I've been around demon energy for years, and that's never happened before." He half-turns in his chair to scowl at Kurama. "How do I know it's not just that your energy's weird, huh?"

"I thing I've been around long enough to know the effects of my own energy." His cheeks are still a little flushed, but otherwise the annoyance of fielding such a transparent attempt to shift blame has done wonders for calming Kurama down. Now he puts his hands on his hips and meets Gojyo's scowl with his most finely crafted air of unflappability.

"Were you ever that close to the center of a non-hostile energy before? Because otherwise my best guess without further investigation is that your spirit's got a thing for foxes."

It had to be something Kurama did. There's no way Gojyo's got a thing for foxes.

"Hakkai's healed me a dozen times. More than that!" he exclaims, totally steady hands digging in his pocket for a cigarette. Totally steady. Not at all freaked out by this turn of events. "Head to foot, there's something he's healed on me, and this has never..." Wait, no, if he's going to repress this then he has to stop talking directly about his reaction to it.

"I've never seen anyone do the full body thing you did either, though." Maybe it's just a difference between their types of demon?

Healing as Kurama's experienced it is a different beast entirely from what he did a moment ago, so he remains doubtful until Gojyo offers his second bit of information. With actual thinking to do, he moves back over to his chair--no sense straining Gojyo's injuries in the meantime.

"It's more a posturing technique than anything, like if a peacock could use its tail to beat you to death." But this is good, focusing on the facts of the situation, so Kurama decides to lay things out as best he can. "What I intended to happen was for my energy to surround you, essentially an everywhere-at-once version of what we were doing with your hands."

"So I could feel it, like I was feeling it in my hands," Gojyo nods -- there's still a bit of a blush there, but he's actively willing it away. "Well I sure felt it!"

He stretches his hands out, rubbing one over the other, trying to recall exactly how Kurama's energy had felt when he was holding it like a glowing beach ball. "It didn't feel anywhere near like... that, when it was just my hands. Not even close." It was just warm, like a fire... and he sure as hell doesn't like being immersed in fire.

Really, what they should do is try it again, a bit at a time until they find the point at which it stops being warm and starts being, well. What it was. But Gojyo's understandably hesitant to risk it. He runs his hand through his hair, pulling it roughly back and wishing briefly that he'd brought an elastic for it. "So what now?"

Maybe Kurama should've stayed where he was before, but even as he considers that alternate path he knows it wouldn't have done any good: he'd still have to see Gojyo's fading blush, and the revelation of his neck from behind a curtain of hair would certainly be worse from behind. The only good thing here is that he's managed to keep sitting there like he's not checking Gojyo out.

He'll just have to buy more time for them both to cool down, since changing forms to evade dumb teenage hormones feels too much like waving a white flag. Fortunately, Kurama is a master of buying time and of finding other useful things to do.

"Now we're going to see if it did any good, and if not then we'll try again with a bit more control on my part. Does that sound agreeable?"

No. Not in the slightest.

"Yeah," Gojyo nods, still looking everywhere but at Kurama. That won't happen again. He's not some dumb kid, getting a wet shot in his shorts every time a pretty girl walks by. He's Sha Goddamn Gojyo, and he's going to learn how to do magic.

Leaning forward, forearms on his knees, Gojyo addresses his next question to the air just to the right of Kurama's face.

"So how're you going to see if it worked?"

"Focus on your hands again. Recall the warmth you felt earlier, when you were having trouble visualizing, as clearly as you can. Picture a source of that heat, a little flame in whatever color you like best, resting in the space between your hands."

It's still a bit of an abstract, but he hopes the reliance on sense memory will help where simple imagination failed. If their little misadventure worked, Gojyo will produce the flame. If not... well, this time he'll try to take it slow.

Focus on your hands again, says Kurama, and Gojyo lets his head drop, closing his eyes and holding his hands out like he's cupping a large bowl. Picture a little flame and that's what he does: it's a brilliant, snapping orange in his mind, the color of a fire that's been fed paper, bright and medium-hot and short-lived.

He takes a slow breath, exhaling against his chest so as not to blow the tiny flame out. It's there, in his mind's eye, and he can almost feel it between his hands. It's warm. It's alive. It's...

...not actually there. Whether his energy isn't strong enough or his focus isn't good enough, who can say. The end result is the same -- no flame.

It seems, for a moment, like there's a breath of potential in the air, but it's so faint and brief it could just be Kurama's wishful thinking. Nothing happens, but if Kurama gave up on the first attempt every time it failed, they wouldn't be having this lesson.

"Again. The flame is weak now, but it's yours and yours alone. It will grow stronger if you feed it the warmth in your hands, and the warmth in your hands is replenished even as you feed more of it to the flame." He leans forward as he speaks this time, elbows resting on his knees; maybe proximity will help him see whether Gojyo's actually conjuring something.

That's starting to sound like some monk bullshit, but hey, monks tend to know stuff about spells and magic so manybe Kurama's on to something. Gojyo squeezes his eyes tightly shut to avoid all distractions, and pours everything he's got into creating a flame between his hands.

But nothing happens. In fact, if Kurama is able to read his body's energy, it's not being affected in the slightest by Gojyo's exertions. (Well, his muscles are flexing because he's tense, but that's not the same thing at all.)

"Is it working?" he grunts out, not wanting to open his eyes for fear of not being able to hold the spell. "Tell me this is doing somethin'."

Kurama wishes he could give Gojyo the answer he wanted, but pretending there's anything in his hands but air is only a waste of time for both of them. He leans back in his chair and reins in the effort to sigh.

"I'm afraid not. Perhaps with the proper object, but..." The materials for those are hard to come by, and the people skilled enough to craft them even rarer. He feels bad getting Gojyo's hopes up only to crush them, though, so he follows this immediately with something intended to soften the blow. "We should still work on your spirit sense. Just because you can't whip up a ghost flame on command doesn't mean you can't become a good tracker."

Proper object? He doesn't have the first clue what Kurama means by that, but he understands enough. He flops back in his own chair, sighly heavily.

"So I can't do magic after all." Tracking isn't doing -- it's just seeing what's already there, right? It might be useful, but it's not nearly as useful as being able to blast ki balls or put up a shield, like, Hakkai can. Or shapeshift, like Kurama can.

It's more than a little disappointing.

"Not in the traditional sense, I'm afraid, but it's not the end of the world." And there's more of that feeling bad, but Kurama refuses to let it stand. The appeal of a skill lies in its form or its function, so he must make tracking appealing. "Come find me."

And then he's gone, teleported off to sit in a sturdy, sprawling oak on the eastern face of the pyramid. His energy flows just freely enough that, based on his earlier observations, Gojyo should be able to figure out the general direction without even trying.

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