(AN: This fic contains adult content!! That means if you are unable to handle dudes bangin', you might wanna go elsewhere – although if you are unable to handle dudes bangin', I don't know why you're reading MY fanfic of all things, but whatever. Written as usual because I love deviantART's RacerEff. And do I need to warn for Eikichi...?)

Comes Out In The Wash

"Again?"

Yusuke groaned. He'd seen this coming a mile away.

"Yeah, again, okay? Geez, it was awkward enough havin' to ask you this in the first place!"

"What is it with you, Urameshi?" Kuwabara said, shaking his head and smirking a bit to himself.

Yusuke scowled. "Hey, what do you mean, with me? If you'll recall, dumbass, the last time my house caught on fire, I was, gee, I dunno, dead!"

Kuwabara, to his credit, looked a little sheepish. "Uh, yeah, okay. Never mind, then."

"Yeah." Yusuke folded his arms and looked off away from Kuwabara.

"...So wait, what'd you do last time? 'Cause you guys sure as hell didn't stay at my place."

"Well, back then, Mom actually had friends living close by, and our insurance came through fairly quickly to get us enough for a new place," said Yusuke. "Now that Haruna-san's moved out of town we're kinda outta luck, and you guys have the biggest place out of people we know, so...."

"I guess that makes sense," Kuwabara said. They kind of just looked at each other for a moment. All in all, Yusuke could think of worse people to shack up with for a little bit. (Hiei, for starters.) He knew his sleeping bag would fit on Kuwabara's floor, and that way his mom could have the couch, so everything seemed like it'd be all right. For now, anyway.

"So uh...where should I put my stuff?"

-xxx-

It seemed a little dumb now that he thought about it, but for some reason, Yusuke had not been prepared for the cat.

"It's Eikichi," said Kuwabara. "You remember her."

"This fat sack of fur grew outta that little fuzzball?" Yusuke said, poking it with a skeptical finger. Surely a cat should not grow to be that huge.

"Hey, don't call her a sack of fur!" said Kuwabara, defensive. He reached down to stroke the cat between its ears, and it started purring loudly - if you could call that thick snoring sound a cat's purr in the first place.

"Oh, sorry, Kuwabara. I didn't know you and your little kitty were so close." He sneered and scratched at his nose, which had started to itch a little.

And then he sneezed all over Kuwabara's sofa.

Kuwabara's hand stilled in petting the cat's head, and overtop of her, they made fearful eye contact.

"Oh, great."

-xxx-

That was when Yusuke started taking the showers.

If any part of him that had touched the cat or large clumps of her hair got anywhere near his face, Yusuke would break out into massive sneezing fits, sometimes five or six on end. He'd tried to get Kuwabara to at least keep the cat out of his bedroom, but the idiot had refused, insisting that his sweet Eikichi sleep on the foot of his bed. This meant that Yusuke had to configure his sleeping bag in a way that the cat wouldn't accidentally walk over him or shed in his face in the middle of the night, which had him basically cramped up into a corner, all just to give the stupid cat free rein of the room.

And even then, his eyes were watery more often than not, and he would go out of his way to avoid entering the house for as long as possible. He actually found himself spending more time that usual at school or with Keiko, desperate to steer clear of the beast and its domain.

But if he did have to go inside, the one place he could escape the oppressive fur was in the shower.

Yusuke didn't think he'd ever been so clean in his life. Every morning and every evening - before breakfast, after dinner - he'd hole up in the bathroom and scrub himself clean of the horrible cat hair. Like all sane cats, Eikichi was horrified of water, and if Yusuke came out of the shower dripping he could usually make it all the way to Kuwabara's room without running into her, or scare her out if she was already there. And as long as he washed his sleeping bag and his clothes with the same rigid regularity, he could usually avoid getting hit with anything serious.

After a week, though, Yusuke was starting to wonder when they were going to get out of there and back into a cat-free house of their own.

"No, the insurance still hasn't hooked us up with anything new," Yusuke found himself telling Kuwabara, almost before he asked, on Friday at lunch.

"I don't understand, it was so fast last time."

"Well, I guess they're less keen on insuring people whose house has burned down twice," Yusuke grumbled.

"That kind of sucks, man," said Kuwabara around his mouthful of rice.

"Yeah, no kidding. Your cat's about to kill me."

"Well I'm sorry that you and Eikichi have your differences, Urameshi."

"Our differences? She's a freaking cat! Now it's my fault that her fuzzy ass has made me sneeze my nose raw?"

"Stop talking about her that way!" said Kuwabara.

"Geez, you're so protective of her," said Yusuke. He slurped at the straw of his juicebox, getting the last couple of drops from the bottom. "I guess it's hard for me to get it, 'cause I've never really had a pet."

"You have that Puu thing."

"That's different," said Yusuke. "That's...that's me. God, it's so hard to explain when you don't have one. But I don't really need to feed him, or take care of him, let him - " he shot Kuwabara a bit of a glare - "let him sleep on the foot of my bed... He kinda gets by on his own, like I do. If I had to be responsible for something like that...well, I'd be shitty at it. I guess it's...kinda cool, that you're so on top of things with that furball."

"I...I found her, y'know?" said Kuwabara, softly. "In the street. If I hadn't taken care of her, nobody would have. It kinda just happened."

There was an awkward pause that Yusuke had to break before he couldn't stand it. "Yeah, well, I wish it had happened to someone else. Then I wouldn't practically die in my sleep every night."

"Damnit, Urameshi, you'll just have to get over it," he said, pouting.

"Look, could we at least go out to the arcade or something after school today before we head back to your place? Just to stay away for a little while - "

"Maybe Monday," said Kuwabara, "but not today. I got that detention, remember?"

Yusuke thought on it. "Oh yeah. Explain to me how you always manage to get more detentions than I do."

"Because I actually serve them," Kuwabara shot back. "You just skip them all the time, so they've lost their effect as a form of punishment."

"Ha! That's convenient. I knew your chivalry would bite you in the ass someday."

Kuwabara threw his candy bar wrapper at him.

-xxx-

So Yusuke was alone.

In the house.

With the cat.

His mom had apparently gone out - it was a Friday evening, after all - and Shizuru was at the later of her two jobs. Keiko had gone out with a couple of her girlfriends, so she was useless as a distraction, and Yusuke didn't really have enough money to go to the arcade alone. He didn't really have any alternative.

He couldn't sit on the sofa, so he plopped himself on the floor in front of the TV and flipped through the channels in search of something good. There wasn't anything. He stuck a random game into Kuwabara's Famicom and played it for a little bit, but it was boring without another human player to fight against, so he turned it off pretty quickly. And that was when he heard it.

"Aaow!"

It was coming from the general area of the kitchen, but Yusuke was determined not to pay it any attention.

"Aaow!"

But damn was it stubborn.

"Aaow!"

"All right, all right, already!" he yelled, and he leapt up from the floor and went to the kitchen to discover fat, calico Eikichi sitting patiently next to a pair of blue plastic bowls on the floor. One of them looked to be full of water; the other was almost completely empty, save a few brown crumbs.

"Oh, you're hungry," Yusuke groaned. "Why didn't you say so? Did Shizuru forget to feed you before she went back to - " Then he caught himself. Was he really talking to this horrible cat? Just looking at her was making his eyes start to water. The thing could just starve, see if he cared.

But Kuwabara would care, said his conscience. As much as he frequently felt like kicking it, the cat's owner clearly loved it a lot, and it would be pretty easy for Yusuke to rummage around in the pantry and give the cat a cup of food. Grudgingly, he unrolled the top of the food bag, scraped the cup around inside, and poured some into her bowl. Immediately the hungry cat nosed into it, but after a few bites she leaned up and nudged thankfully at Yusuke's hand.

"Yeah, don't say I never did anything for you, you damn thing," said Yusuke, who was sneezing before he even stood all the way back up. There was a patch of fuzzy white residue on his pant leg, and his eye had just actually dripped a tear onto the floor beside him.

His shower tonight was going to have to be a little early.

-xxx-

Yusuke cranked the water up hotter, and thought a little bit about his life lately.

He was a spirit detective in addition to being a (mostly) full-time student. He had to deal with trying to pass this grade and kicking demon ass sometimes. He was living a double life. His sleep schedule got annihilated sometimes.

His house had caught fire. Again. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that his mom was a raging alcoholic. He mostly had to take care of himself.

He was staying with his best friend.

He actually had a best friend.

Yusuke thought back to when his house had caught fire for the first time. That seemed to be the start of all this ridiculousness. It was the first time he'd had to do anything weird and spiritual, considering he'd been pretty dead at the time. And it was the first time he'd actually started considering Kuwabara an ally instead of a rival. After all the shit they'd been through together now...well, Kuwabara really was his best friend. He had Keiko, but she was a girl; he had Kurama, or Hiei, but they were demons, and he didn't see much of them anyway. Kuwabara was...well, he was the only person dumb enough to stick around him even when he beat him up, or when he had to go fight giant monsters, or when he needed a place to stay until he had a house again.

He was also apparently the only person dumb enough to barge right into the bathroom and not realize the shower was running.

Yusuke, shampoo-filled hands in his hair, froze. Kuwabara, towel slung over his arm, froze. And both of them did the one thing you were absolutely not supposed to do: they looked.

Yusuke, for one, was kind of surprised. Despite being best friends for a decent period of time, he didn't think he'd ever seen Kuwabara completely naked before, and even just seeing him without a shirt hadn't given him the full picture. Underneath his awkward school uniform, Kuwabara was pretty ripped. He wasn't huge and bulky - not one of those creepy thick-necked wrestler types, or anything - but his bigger build allowed him to sport more muscle than Yusuke really did, for all his own whipcord strength. He was just a bigger guy.

He was just a bigger guy.

Slowly, awkwardly, both of them managed to get around to covering up what needed to be covered, and bring their eyes solidly back into contact with one another, not looking anywhere else.

This moment never happened, willed Yusuke. Say it. 'This moment never happened.'

"Th...thanks for feeding my cat," said Kuwabara, and he bolted from the bathroom, leaving Yusuke to finish his shower.

-xxx-

So yeah, that didn't make it hard to share a bedroom afterward.

Yusuke tried not to think about it, but the more he tried, the more he realized that by actually having to try, he was already thinking about it more than he should have been. Kuwabara had walked in on him in the shower.

And after he gave up trying not to, the more he thought about it, the more he seemed to remember Kuwabara flushing red just a little.

There was no way that was it, of course. He was probably just totally embarrassed - though he didn't have much to be embarrassed about, all things considered - and combined with how hot the bathroom had probably gotten over the course of Yusuke's shower, it had probably been enough to tinge Kuwabara's cheeks a little darker, just a bit. There was no way it had anything to do with -

"Hey, Keiko, I gotta question."

Keiko slipped her milkshake straw out of her mouth and looked up a bit to meet his eyes. "What is it now, Yusuke?"

"Do girls check each other out when they're naked?"

Her eyes widened enormously, then narrowed in fury. "Yusuke, you big pervert!"

"Hey, hey, don't assume the worst!" Yusuke said, though he did have to admit he probably could have been less blunt about it if he'd been trying a bit harder. "I just wanted to know. What do you do, like, compare boob sizes, or something?"

"Yusuke!"

"I'm just saying! Are you even allowed to look at each other, or what? Do you get all awkward and flustery and turn pink?"

Keiko still looked extremely scandalized. "I'm not sure if I should even answer that question."

"Look, it's not like I want some hardcore girl-on-girl kinda answer or anything, I just wanna know if it's anything like guys," Yusuke told her.

She was blushing a little now, and she had to take another sip of her milkshake before she could continue. "Well...I guess, if I were to see another girl...like that...I mean, I know we're pretty much the same - biologically - but it would still be pretty uncomfortable, you know? I don't know, Yusuke, this is a stupid creepy question!"

"Fine, fine, forget I ever said anything," he said with a shrug. "I guess I better go. Try to brave the cat-beast back at Kuwabara's house for another day."

But as soon as the name left his lips, Keiko - stupid smart Keiko - put all the pieces together.

"You saw Kuwabara!" she cried. "Oh my goodness, I can't believe it didn't come to me sooner! Ahahaha!"

"Hey, none'a that girly giggling shit!" said Yusuke. "It was totally an accident!"

Keiko tried to rein in her laughter. "Ohhh, Yusuke. Look, if you're worried about your huge crush on Kuwabara, you shouldn't be. I think he likes you too, you know?"

Yusuke's face turned bright red even as his words contradicted it. "What do you mean, huge crush?!"

"You mean you really haven't admitted it to yourself yet?" she asked him, almost as if she were genuinely surprised. "Gosh, Yusuke, I don't know if that's healthy."

"I'm not some kinda fag!" Yusuke insisted. "Kuwabara and I are just - just really good friends!"

"Well, if you say so," she said, standing up to throw her empty milkshake cup in the nearby trashcan. "It just seemed pretty obvious to me and Botan. So, uh, how much do I owe you for the shake?"

"...What?!"

-xxx-

So yeah, that didn't make it hard to sleep that night.

It wasn't like Yusuke didn't have enough trouble getting to sleep when he was trying to do it on the floor in a cat hair-ridden environment. But after dodging awkwardly around Kuwabara all evening until they'd finally gone to bed, watching every word he spoke, analyzing every seemingly-normal action for evidence of Keiko's accusation, all Yusuke really wanted to do was sleep...

And he found himself sitting upright, leaning on the edge of Kuwabara's bed, and holding in sneeze after sneeze just so he could watch him sleep.

He'd had to think pretty hard on what Keiko had said, and kind of cross-reference it with his thoughts from The Shower a few days ago - from right before it had become The Shower. Thinking about how Kuwabara really was closer to him than pretty much anyone else - even closer than Keiko herself, because Kuwabara had been there through the whole rocky, rickety start of this spirit world bullshit, in addition to being there for a while before and for the entire time after. Kuwabara had risked his life for Yusuke a bunch of times, and had never really asked for anything in return. And despite the fact that it was also the domain of an animal that Yusuke was convinced really was out for his life, Kuwabara had let him stay in his house for an indefinite amount of time with relatively zero questions asked.

And okay, Yusuke had seen him completely naked, and he hadn't exactly hated it.

Sitting awake at night listening to Kuwabara's faint snores, however, Yusuke found himself less fixated on his friend's hard-muscled body, and more on his face, the way it relaxed so completely when he was asleep. The moonlight streaking through the window made it kind of blotchy with shadow, but for the most part, he looked exactly like he was on the inside - kind, caring, and an all-around good guy. Ugly as sin, to be certain, but not mean. Not some jackass tough guy like he pretended to be, but the real Kuwabara.

"When is he gonna learn that we've only got enough room for one jackass tough guy, and that's me?" Yusuke whispered to no one.

No, not no one. Eikichi, her footfalls stocky little thumps on Kuwabara's carpeted floor, padded in through the cracked-open doorway and made her way over to Kuwabara's bed. As she jumped up, Yusuke jumped back, careful not to let her touch him, especially not near his face. He stifled back another sneeze, trying not to wake Kuwabara, who had rolled and shifted once Eikichi had settled in place by his knees.

Yusuke looked at her, and tried to imagine a life years into the future, if Kuwabara was still his best friend - or if he was more. There was no way she wouldn't be in it - or if not her, some other mangy ball of allergic reaction. Could he deal with that?

"What do you think, cat?" he asked her in the darkness. "Should I just go for it?"

She opened her eyes and fixed him with an irritated stare; then, slowly, she extended out her front paw and pressed it firmly onto Yusuke's thumb on the bed in front of her.

Well. If the queen had given her blessing, that pretty much settled it.

-xxx-

By the time Yusuke managed to convince himself that he needed to be awake, it was later than it should have been. No sooner had he sat up than he started sneezing, and he didn't manage to stop until halfway through Shizuru's first sentence.

"Oh, good, you're awake now," she said, poking her head past the half-open door. "You'll have to hurry, or you guys'll be late for school."

"What time is it? Where's Kuwabara?"

"Bro got in the shower already. He was gonna leave it for you but then you wouldn't wake up and wouldn't wake up - believe me, I tried. Sleeping like the dead must run in your family or something."

"Probably," Yusuke admitted, as he crawled out of his sleeping bag and stumbled to his feet. "Do you think I'll - atchoo! - have time to catch a shower once he gets out? I can't atchoo! - can't deal with this cat hair..."

"You'll have to make it quick. I'll see what I can do about getting you guys some breakfast to go." She ducked back out into the hallway and disappeared downstairs, leaving Yusuke to wipe the gunk from his eyes and start formulating his plan.

Since The Shower, Kuwabara had put up a new shower curtain. No one had asked about it, despite how random it must have seemed to Shizuru and his mother - they must have been smart enough to know that neither he nor Kuwabara would give them an answer. Regardless, it now made it much easier to slip into the bathroom unseen by anyone in the shower, and Yusuke, steeling himself for what he was about to do, did just that. Making extra-sure that the door didn't creak to announce his entry - not that Kuwabara would have heard it over the noise of the water anyway, Yusuke reasoned, but still - he first leaned in with just his head, and then stepped completely into the bathroom, closing the door behind him when he realized that yes, Kuwabara's shower had fogged up the mirror, and his plan was going to work. Using his index finger, he started to scribble a note to Kuwabara in the steam.

I know we've known each other for a really long time, and we haven't always been the best of friends, he began, but I think we kind of are now. And I don't wanna mess that up, so just as a precaution, please, PLEASE don't let this change anything. But something somebody said and some shit that's gone down lately has got me thinking about stuff, about us, and I'm pretty sure what it means is that I

But Yusuke never got to finish the note, because a warm, wet hand extended from behind the curtain, hooked a couple of fingers into the back of the collar of his pajama T-shirt, and yanked him into the shower, clothes and all, to stand in very close proximity to a very wet, very naked Kuwabara.

"E...enough'a this foolin' around," he said, and Yusuke was incredibly inclined to agree.

Before he knew it Kuwabara was kissing him - something a week ago he probably wouldn't have ever dreamed of doing (well, except for that one time...but that was different) but now, one cat, one milkshake, and several dozen showers later, it didn't seem so bad. In fact, if Yusuke knew anything about what a good kiss ought to feel like, Kuwabara did not seem so bad at all, with the exact-right firmness and speed of the pressure of his tongue against Yusuke's own, the perfect angle, the perfect movements. With the water streaming down onto them and their mouths otherwise occupied it got a little difficult to breathe, so they broke apart after a moment, giving Kuwabara an opportunity to tug Yusuke's soaking wet white T-shirt up over his head and toss it back out into the rest of the bathroom.

"God damn, Kuwabara, what took us so long?" Yusuke panted against his jaw.

"Beats...beats me, man," Kuwabara agreed, and then started kissing him again.

It was so intense they had to do it in bursts - first the fevered kisses, the slicked-up give and take that was just made better-slash-worse by the stream of the water, Kuwabara's tongue tangling around his own, and then the pausing, panting, gasping, where Yusuke tried to touch Kuwabara everywhere at once and Kuwabara just made sure the water wasn't getting cold. Yusuke's boxers disappeared somewhere in there too, and it wasn't long at all before both boys lost enough control that their hips were pumping toward one another, striving for friction on the places that needed it most.

Kuwabara's sturdy hand kept pressing insistantly at its handful of Yusuke's ass, and so finally, reluctant as he was to put a more permanent halt to the kissing, Yusuke turned around and aligned himself with Kuwabara back-to-front. The shift was not drastically different, but their maneuvers...changed, and with them, the motives behind them. Yusuke leaned hard against the shower wall, and Kuwabara curved perfectly around him, fingertips coasting over his skin, lips marking at the curve of his jaw into his shoulder. Every inch of Yusuke's skin was alive, singing, thrilling with a feeling he'd never been expecting, but that he'd have to be an idiot to turn away now. It was all so, so good.

And then, just by moving his hands to the right spot, Kuwabara made it better.

Snaking down from its grip at Yusuke's hip where he'd been all but grinding the two of them together, Kuwabara's right hand with its long, powerful fingers reached over and curled around Yusuke's erection, their mere presence startling the first of his loud groans out of his panting mouth. "Kuwabara..." The fact that any feeling could be this intense - this good - was insane, and never mind how totally gay it made him, Yusuke wanted more. Kuwabara's grinding from behind - he wasn't inside, just there, getting all the friction he needed - started to pick up speed a little, and his grip around Yusuke tightened just enough that Yusuke cried out again.

"Hang on," Kuwabara whispered in his ear, and Yusuke braced himself for the broad hand and fingers to start pumping, anything to bring him off, but all they did was heat up - heat up hotter than the shower water, and with a ferocious orange glow that seemed to get brighter and brighter without ever illuminating the surrounding area any more and oh, oh, oh my god. Yusuke knew what this was.

"Oh god!" he screamed, because this, this was, could he actually do this? The thrum of it in Kuwabara's hand, curving around him, was overpowering, electrifying, and he cried out more and more - Shizuru and his mother be damned - as the sword formed more fully, until finally he just couldn't take it and he thrashed back, grinding his shoulders into Kuwabara's hard, solid chest, and giving out, overloaded on the pleasure and the craziness of it all.

It was kind of at that point that it hit Yusuke that he was having sex with his best friend in his best friend's shower. Of course, with Kuwabara's hard, heavy erection still pumping against him from behind, it didn't take Yusuke very long to decide that he didn't really care, because damnit, this was hot. Or at least he hoped it would be - as long as the water didn't give out.

Well, he'd better do this fast.

Turning back around to face Kuwabara, Yusuke planted his hands firmly on his shoulders and pushed, swinging his legs up to wrap around Kuwabara's waist. And then he started kissing him again. With a few more thrusts upward, most of which felt absolutely amazing, Kuwabara came, too, grunting out Yusuke's name and planting kisses absolutely everywhere his mouth could reach.

Somehow, one of them managed to shut off the water before they slumped to the floor of the shower in a heap together, grinning and panting and altogether pretty pleased with themselves, considering how retarded the whole situation had been in the first place.

"So. About that," Yusuke said after a minute.

"...Yeah," Kuwabara agreed.

"I think we might be uh. Late for school."

"I've got another tardy I can blow before my next detention."

"Good."

Neither one of them felt like moving. All Yusuke could do was press his face against Kuwabara's chest - he could hear his heartbeat - and smile.

"Urameshi, when in the hell did we get like this?" Kuwabara asked after a minute.

Yusuke smiled broader - he had an answer to this one. "The last time my house burned down."

"And...you're okay with that?"

"As long as we never do it anywhere near that damn cat."