Hi everyone! I'm back for a short time with my entry into the Yu Yu Hakusho Big Bang! That's right: this year I put together this huge fan event where authors and artists did anonymous collaborations, and even wrote my own fic!

The art for this fic was done by galen-kun on tumblr, and it's absolutely gorgeous! PLEASE go check it out: I can't tell you how thrilled I am with what they came up with! Then, go check out everything from the Big Bang, tagged yyhbb on tumblr!

Without further ado: I do not own YYH. Also, Warnings include: angst to fluff, some gray dubcon (rated T), and Kurama being an ass.

"What I'm saying, Urameshi, is he's not coming!" The room went deathly silent, the clinking of china and background laughter coming to a premature halt. Even Keiko - who thought herself immune to the sudden changes in volume and excitement due to the company she often kept - jumped, dropping her tea spoon to the carpeted flood with a dull thud. Yusuke could feel a fist forming purely out of reflex; a fight was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

"I just don't get it."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you!" Kuwabara lowered his voice once the stares began to set in, not having meant to reply as spiritedly as he did. He shifted from foot to foot, waving his hand as Keiko offered him the empty chair at their small, round table. "There's no way around it. This last time he wouldn't even see me: I had to ambush him on his way to his mom's. He says he's busy."

"He's always busy."

"Like I don't know that!" A server had started over to the table with a nervous gait, but Keiko was shaking her head that it was alright. Kuwabara only seemed more distressed with her approach; he knew he was making a scene, but didn't let it stop him. "I've tried just about everything."

Yusuke scowled: the same look that he'd often taken with Koenma when he thought he was being kept out of the loop. Those days had long passed, and Kuwabara found himself disturbed with the way it sent a chill down his back. He'd not seen Yusuke this bothered - seriously bothered, as opposed to his usual childish whimsy - in years.

"I don't see why you can't just ask-"

Kuwabara's face went from agitated to severe, a hardness setting in that quieted the former spirit detective. Again, Keiko was left to calm those on their periphery.

"You know damn well why."

There was a moment of tense silence, one in which the two men stared each other down while the rest of the world worked on regaining its natural equilibrium. Kuwabara could feel the other thinking, a skill that he'd acquired after years of having its absence serve as his talent, and gave him the time. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing more to say on the subject. He wasn't going to come, and nothing in the three worlds was going to make him. Nothing, and not anyone.

"I don't know anything," Yusuke settled on, slouching back into his chair in a posture that reminded the two of his delinquent middle school days. His positioning had been something that mortified Keiko as they'd gotten older, and as he caught on to her discomfort he'd made efforts to curb the habit. It was more difficult when he found himself in an upsetting circumstance, it seemed. "And that's the problem. I'm really worried about him. You've been saying that something's been up for ages, but I'm starting to really see that now. I mean, what kind of friend…" He stopped, dark shadows covering his eyes.

"Well, you're not being very friendly yourself, asking me to do this," Kuwabara said, his voice clipped. "It's just not right." Yusuke was looking out the window, his jaw set in an uncomfortable manner that could only mean he was grinding his teeth.

"Fine. I'm not asking you anything." He didn't look back up at the other, his gaze set on something beyond the other's lines of sight. "Thanks for telling me. I'll see you at the tailor's, 'kay?"

Keiko was muttering some sort of apology, but Kuwabara was deaf to the words, squeezing her hand reassuringly and saying something that his brain didn't register about how she shouldn't worry before wandering back through the maze of tables to the shop's entrance. With enough presence of mind to apologize to the nearest waitress for causing a commotion, Kuwabara departed, his shoulders heavier than they had been bringing the news through those doors to begin with.

"Yusuke?" Keiko's soft voice paired with the feeling of her hand closing over his broke through the thick wall that the former detective had put up between him and his surroundings. "This doesn't change us, Yusuke." With the hand that wasn't tangled in his, Keiko lifted a forkful of chocolate cake with a delicate raspberry mousse to his lips, which he opened on instinct. "Eat this; it'll make you feel better."

The fork slid away and he swallowed, his elbow braced against the table as his head drooped into his hand. Keiko's thumb rubbed his fingers gently, the feeling counteracting the denial that he'd

been fighting to maintain until the day actually came.

"I'm sorry, Keiko," Yusuke said, placing the fork against his napkin so delicate in appearance that he'd been too afraid to touch it before. "This one doesn't taste like anything, right now."

scene cut

The institutionalization of widespread caller id was a change that, up until now, Kurama had taken for granted. In the last few weeks, he'd learned just how necessary it was when avoidance by human means was needed, but that did not stop him from unplugging his landline and telling anyone of importance to forward their calls to his mobile. Conveniently, blocking calls had also become a development in the mobile technology industry, and with a quick note to his service provider Kurama was free of the nuisance that was Kazuma Kuwabara.

That is, if he didn't insist upon waiting for him at his mother's home when he was expected for weekly dinners.

There was some part of him - a part deep down, that he'd grown accustomed to ignoring as of late - that felt guilt over cutting the other man out of his life; they had been, after all, the closest pair out of the remaining Tantei. In those final years, back in the days when everyone still spoke to each other and things were only different in the appearances they kept up, Kuwabara had become an invaluable part of his human life. The human child within him had lived vicariously through Kuwabara, being the only one of them with the opportunity to attend university, while the halfling that was his default state was always happy to take on responsibilities as helper to the newest spirit detective. With the most in common in regards to their lifestyles and their shared Tantei history, it was only natural that they'd grown close while the rest of the world had developed

independently.

The past eighteen months, though, had solidified the changes that Kurama knew would come: Kuwabara was stepping down as spirit detective now that other things had taken priority in his life. The gleeful romps through memory lane were fewer and far between than ever before. Koenma had released him of any and all Reikai duties long ago, and had not called on him since.

Yusuke was getting married.

Like all of the other things, Kurama had known it was coming. He'd had a pretty good idea of it since he'd met the boy all those years ago, had been told definitively after meeting him again during their journeys in Makai, but it was that one piece of delicate paper that had been the confirmation he'd needed. In black ink, a date had been set. Not that he cared.

Even denial wouldn't stick through saltwater tears.

Loving Yusuke had not come as a surprise to the kitsune; one day, simply, he'd put a name to the emotion he'd been incubating since their first meeting. Intrigue was far too light a word for what he'd taken with the boy; many others had intrigued Kurama, but few had worked their way as seamlessly into his life as Yusuke. Fewer had known his origins and still took his words at face value. None did so without risking themselves. None, except Yusuke.

The aspect of risk was one that Kurama was left to define; it was, after all, his call on whether or not the person in question would be of use to him. Kuwabara had been a case of timing - he'd not been ready for Kurama's needs within their first few years of acquaintance - and with growth Kurama had made him his biggest ally in procuring a reference for his humanity. The sheer number of times Kurama had used the other man as an excuse for his whereabouts or odd behavior, as friends often did, was staggering. His mother, he was sure, was suspect of a secret relationship. If she hadn't been before, she certainly was after that last stunt he'd pulled.

Of course, he'd instructed his mother to kindly ask Kazuma to leave if he did it again.

Being his excuse for absenteeism, Kurama hadn't come up with another viable alternative for the black-written day. He'd taken in the news privately, avoided all contact with anyone who wasn't necessary, and talked around the phrase "busy" when confronted outright. He'd almost felt sorry for Kuwabara; the first conversation they'd had on the subject left him nothing but confused and the second ended similarly, just with a dash of frustration on both their parts. The final time he'd been less than delicate about the matter: Kuwabara's shocked face had grounded him long enough to realize that he had lashed out, and needed to excuse himself.

He'd thought himself unlikely to forget the hurt look on his friend's face so soon, but his own hurt overshadowed it exponentially.

Unconsciously and unwantedly, Kurama had built his identity around Yusuke. The him that existed before the detective fell into his life had been a neutral rendering; the feelings that he'd developed for humanity bewildering and changing, but only enough to affect his priorities, not him. Who

Kurama was, then and before, remained a mystery that he himself was blind to until Yusuke had brought the light. Nothing had been the same after that, and everything that he found different he also found to be for the better.

In the life he'd lived in Makai, wearing a different skin and with a different mind, Kurama had been perceived as cold and calculating. He'd been the angel of death to both friend and foe, the shadow in the dusk of tragedy, the triumphant king of goblin-eyed thieves. After loss and death and rebirth, he himself had forgotten that throughout all that time, he'd been a creature of emotion. He'd felt and hid, clay under a ceramic mask, soft and warm and cold as ice. Back then, he'd known that his feelings were the fuel for his brutality, and in them lay his mind's greatest asset as well as weakness. In Makai he'd held longing, he'd drowned in desire, and fed upon rage and happiness like only the commonly uncommon could.

Death had taken that from him - more precisely, he had taken it from himself with his choice to live - another act of selfishness. With the loss of his strength, all that remained was his mind: his organ of survival. Life and breath became his only priority, and with it the complex emotions of the greater beings was lost. As a human child, he was also animal: logic his weapon of accustom.

Otherwise, he'd have found his situation fascinating.

Otherwise, he'd not have been blindsided by the love of a mother.

Even not knowing the experience, the sheer estrangement he'd been overcome with at Shiori's protectiveness should have been a sign that things within him were not the same. After all, he'd known love in its different forms; this was certainly far from different. In Kurama's mind, this was epiphany: shouldn't he know more than what he had? What he felt? Why, of all things, was he conflicted over something he'd once experienced?

Shouldn't he be in mourning?

The years that followed were spent in deliberation: over love and feeling and the things he now lacked that he hadn't before. Excuses of human flesh over a demonic soul wore thin over time, as memories that contradicted the features which he thought defined these species made themselves known. His life in Makai had not been devoid of any of the things he missed now, simply governed differently. Human,demon: the greatest disparity came in structure. And in power.

Again, Yusuke contradicted this theory.

The boy's strength was not the first thing to capture Kurama's attention: that was his compassion.

He'd known the other was strong - he was Koenma's boy, after all - but what he hadn't counted on was his willingness to throw himself into harm's way for the sake of a stranger. Subjecting himself to the will of the Forlorn Hope held no logic and no benefit: but it did capture his attention. It wasn't long before Yusuke became the subject of his constant intrigue - his power far greater than even he knew while his emotions kept them in check - a human with the soul of a demon.

Like him, Yusuke was not of the world he was born into, but unlike him he was trying to carve out a place in it. Kurama had been aiming to survive, while Yusuke struggled uphill against a landslide just to live.

Even with the love he held for his mother and his plans to stay in Ningenkai, Kurama had always made a contingency for afterwards. His slow work to regain his power and control surpassed the short-term goals he'd set for himself: one day he would return to Makai. All of his human life would be nothing more than a dream, one in which his form and mind had changed, but faded away nonetheless. That had always been his goal: he'd just put it off after the incident when he was ten.

Yusuke had been a factor entirely unforeseen: one that had changed his mind without him even realizing it. The formation of the Tantei was, for him, punishment, but the more time he spent with Yusuke the more he found himself planning for human life in ways he had never considered.

Before long, before even a whisper Ankoku Bujutsukai had ever crossed the folds of his consciousness, Kurama found himself invested in a life that included Yusuke Urameshi.

A life that was now over.

A date set in black ink: that would be his downfall. Kurama had thought himself better than that, better than this, but here he was sitting in the dark in his apartment listening to the sounds of the rain as it mimicked his agony. They'd grown apart, he and the former spirit detective, and now Yusuke was embarking on an adventure he would not be a part of. His future was taken, stolen away by a human woman. Worse yet, Kurama even thought her worthy. This, he thought, was nothing short of despair.

The extreme numbness that he'd known when first taking the form of a human had decreased dramatically with the developments between him and his mother, and him and the Tantei. Since then, he'd come to know love again, to know pain and loss and humor and warmth, to know determination beyond the instinct to survive. He'd regained that part of himself, both human and not, and for the first time he deeply lamented this form of awareness. If this was the outcome, having experienced love seemed hardly worth it. No, not worth it at all.

He wouldn't go to the wedding; at the very least he'd spare himself that. Going would only either force the delicate state he was in to breakage or push him to do something he'd later regret.

Kurama knew better than to think himself able to cope in that situation: after the Makai tournament he'd been moments from moving in on the other's instability - inches- but had held back by no more than a thread. Something in him had known that the Mazoku would return to Ningenkai: and he had. He'd come back for Keiko.

Years had passed, their distance had grown; surely Kurama would not be missed and left to lick his wounds in private.

The wind seemed to disagree. It howled outside, rain pummelling his window with such force that it could have been mistaken for knocking. It was a moment before Kurama realized that it was happening, lifting himself from his misery just long enough to pull back the curtain and make sure that the tree outside was not scratching the pane with its branches.

He was met with the last thing he could have possibly imagined.

Two red eyes could be made out behind the fogging glass, their owner perched outside and soaking wet. The knocking sound stopped immediately: the cause suddenly clear. With a movement more reflexive than courteous, Kurama unhooked the latch and stood back as the window swung open, sending his curtains aflutter and letting the rain shower his carpet with its violent arrival. Dirty boots landed with a soft thud, and their owner pulled back the hood of his sopping wet cloak.

"Hiei."

With eyes narrowed and a look sharp enough to cut, Hiei sauntered into the living room as if he owned it and dropped the black bag he'd been carrying over his shoulder. All the while, his gaze did not leave Kurama's worn face.

"Where exactly does one get a suit?"

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