A/N: None of these characters belong to me, of course.

It's been awhile since I did the Jutendouji part in the game, so I may have made some mistakes. Feel free to correct me. Comments and criticism welcome.

STORY: Growing Pains
RATING: PG-13
CHARACTERS: Yuri Hyuga, Kurando Inugami
WARNINGS: Light innuendo. Spoilers for Kurando's optional fusion?

Growing Pains

The river had a peaceful quality to it, in the way that its muddy banks sloped gently, softened by a long accumulation of moss and reeds. Large, lazy flowers drooped over the protruding rocks, worn so smooth by the passing river, that the water barely broke over them as it ran by. The blood and dirt left a temporary smear, red and uneven across the surface. But even this was soon carried off and dispersed by the current, so that, presently, not a trace of it remained.

At last, having scrubbed himself to his satisfaction, Yuri emerged from the river and climbed back up onto the bank. Tiny streams of water ran all down his arms and back, eventually gathering in muddy puddles around his feet. Well, wasn't it just the truth, that the minute you got out of the bath was the minute you started collecting dirt again? Yuri laughed at this thought and walked over to the little tree where his clothes were waiting.

So warm and quiet was this little wooded path, that he didn't even go immediately back to the camp. Instead, he let his steps wander a ways up the small, shady cliff that bordered the river. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of the others, laughing, splashing in the water, and calling out to each other. It was so enjoyable, that he almost didn't notice Kurando, who was sitting just ahead of him, as still and silent as the rocks themselves.

Is he praying, Yuri wondered, taking in Kurando's kneeling stance and air of concentration. But the boy's eyes were intently fixed, not on the incomprehensible heavens, but on some very real point just beyond the cliff's edge. An ambush?

The harmonixer hurried forward and crouched down next to his cousin, trying to follow his gaze. "What is it?"

The question was met with a very unexpected response. Without warning, Kurando yelped and fell back, landing awkwardly on a pile of very prickly-looking weeds. The younger boy grimaced in silent pain, but Yuri was more interested in the hue of his face, which was blushing as red as a tomato, a color that Yuri didn't think had anything to do with the weeds' thorns. Because, as it happened, in that brief moment of looking out over the cliff, Yuri had already seen what Kurando had been looking at.

For a moment, the two harmonixers stared at each other in silence. Then Yuri burst into laughter.

"Don't laugh," Kurando cried in muted dismay, mortification and betrayal warring on his youthful face. "I was just…"

"Oh, you don't have to tell me what you were doing," Yuri cackled, lowering his voice. And because Kurando still didn't seem to see the humor in the situation, he added, "It's not like I'm criticizing you. In fact…" He ducked his head under a low-hanging tree branch and looked back out at the river below. "… I commend you." And indeed, this particular spot yielded an excellent view of Karin and Lucia, who were wading in a shallow bend in the river just below, washing their clothes with a mixture of soap and old-fashioned scrubbing. And since the two young women were busy washing their clothes, the natural consequence was that they weren't wearing them.

Yuri's reflection on this happy coincidence was interrupted by the sensation of Kurando yanking him back by the collar of his jacket, accompanied by an urgently hissed, "Stop that!"

"Oh, nobody's gettin' hurt by it," Yuri said flippantly, but he left the cliff edge and turned back to face his cousin. By this time, Kurando's face was no longer so much red as a sickly white with crimson splotches around the cheeks, so that even Yuri was surprised by the intensity of it. "Come on, it's not so bad."

"You can't tell them!" Kurando persisted. "Please."

"I wasn't gonna tell them," Yuri replied with mirthful incredulity. "You think I want to get kicked in the face by Karin?" This reply didn't seem to do anything to assuage Kurando's fears, so Yuri simply rocked back on his heels and began to stand up. "There's no harm done, so forget about it," he said, eyeing some wild raspberries growing on a nearby bush. They weren't quite ripe, but he plucked one anyway and put it in his mouth. He immediately made a face. Too sour.

It took him a moment to realize that Kurando wasn't following, that he was still rooted to his earlier spot, staring with renewed purpose at Yuri's back. "I… I've been wanting to talk to you about something," he said, with a clear effort at keeping his voice calm and strong.

Yuri choose a more promising-looking raspberry with a deeper hue and popped it into his mouth. "Oh, yeah? What?"

"I've started having these urges…"

Yuri spit the raspberry out with such force, that it flew half a meter in front of him and landed with a splat on a gnarled piece of root. The younger man had stopped talking, his resolve apparently shaken, so that Yuri had to look around and catch his eye. He felt the laugh coming and tried to suppress it, managing only to turn it into a very loud snort. "What did you say?"

The blush was back, but Kurando pressed painfully on, his hands clenched, white-knuckled, at his sides. "I mean, I've had them before… but ever since Jutendouji… I've… "

"Oh, that." Well, it was a little better than Yuri had feared, but not much better. "That's just the demon talking. They have a way of intensifying that stuff."

"It was never like this with Tsukiyomi."

"Yeah, well, Tsukiyomi isn't exactly the epitome of… manliness."

"I don't know what to do!"

"Do?" Yuri sighed. He wasn't sure what the heck Kurando was expecting him to say about all this. His instinct told him to make a run for it, but when he glanced at Kurando's sagging shoulders and embarrassed expression, he felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy. After all, he'd grown up without a father too.

The poor boy looked like he needed a hug, but Yuri wasn't a particularly demonstrative person. He settled for an affectionate punch on the shoulder which almost sent Kurando reeling. "Come on, kid. You'd think you'd killed somebody. It's perfectly normal. The demon's probably just making you feel it particularly, ah, hard."

"Was that a joke?"

"Don't be so stiff."

Kurando turned away with a frown. "Of course I've read about it," he muttered. "About the demon's influence…"

The corner of Yuri's mouth turned up wryly. "But you're finding out that reading about it doesn't mean jack compared to living it, huh?"

"Was it like this for you when you first changed?" Kurando asked desperately.

Yuri didn't reply right away. His gaze wandered off into the trees, whose high boughs waved gently back and forth with the breeze, rustling continually against one another in a never-ending chorus. "I don't really remember," he said at last, and the softness of his voice seemed to startle Kurando. "I've been carryin' this thing around inside of me so long, I barely remember what it was like before. Plus there's so many of 'em now…" He didn't even mention the curse, whose power was slowly eating away at his memories so that some days, his entire childhood felt like a dream.

"I'm sorry," Kurando murmured, and those two words jolted Yuri back to the present, a present where he was embarrassed to have been caught getting so sentimental.

"Ah, it's nothing," he replied hurriedly, waving a dismissive hand. "Look. There's no reason to be ashamed. It's part of who you are. The sooner you accept it, the easier it'll be to deal with."

"And there's nothing I can do about it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that…"

The two men descended on the camp to find it deserted. Fortunately, Karin and Lucia were still washing clothes. Even more fortunately, Anastasia was not around, having gone with Joachim to gather firewood. Making a mental note to yell at everybody later for abandoning the base camp, Yuri swiftly made his way over to his pack, Kurando in tow. He knelt down, unbuckled the straps that held it closed, and began rummaging around. After a moment, he pulled out a handful of photographs and drawings. The top one showed a burly samurai wearing nothing but a katana and a loincloth. Yuri colored. "Not that one," he said hastily, shoving it back in the pack.

The other pictures showed women. Most of the women were posing with innocuous items, like umbrellas and flower vases, and missing several important items of clothing. Some had adopted very creative poses, indeed. One picture revealed a tall, beautiful woman dressed as a dancer, with "dressed" being a generous term, considering she wasn't technically wearing much of anything. Her suggestive stance managed to make her look inviting and exotic at the same time. At the bottom of the picture, a feminine hand had scrawled "love, Margarete."

"What—" Kurando protested, but he couldn't even finish his sentence.

"Take 'em," Yuri replied, after a moment's fond contemplation of the images. "You need 'em more than I do." Kurando tried to back away, but Yuri gathered up the images, grabbed his cousin by the neckline of his kimono, and shoved the pictures at him. "Now get outta here."

Kurando hesitated a moment, then seemed to accept this turn of events. He began to move over towards his own meager pile of belongings, but he looked back around when Yuri called out.

"And Kurando," the older harmonixer was saying, raising an eyebrow at the young warrior, "try to relax."