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Kuwabara Kazuma can pretty much categorize all of the women in his life in one of two ways. There are those he fears and respects – his sister and Ukimura Keiko are two excellent examples – and he treats these with the utmost care, in order to avoid the fury of their flying fists. On the other hand, there are those he fears for – the tiny, delicate girls who seem to make up, much to his dismay, the majority of the female half of the student body at Saryashiki Junior High. He walks on eggshells around these, made painfully aware that a single stumble – just one careless touch from him – could hurt them, bruise them, break them. And in all of this, he has never found himself drawn to a woman in any context greater than that of a dear friend.
Except, of course, for Yukina. Gentle Yukina has always been the one exception to Kuwabara's clean-cut understanding of women: the kind-hearted Koorime with the hint of icy strength who flat-out refuses to be neatly categorized. He loved her, once – and is convinced that he will never really stop – but she is an ice maiden, forbidden from relations with men of any kind, much less a human. He knows that, if she returns his love, she will be ostracized from the only family she has ever known, and that if – god forbid – a child should be born to them, it will bring only pain. His love will not let him harm her, and so he gently lets her go, hides his enduring love in a dark corner of his heart, and takes up the role of protector: from the world, and from himself.
When he meets Kurama, Kuwabara is sorely tempted to categorize the demon as he does women. After all, it is rather difficult not to think of the long-haired, delicately-featured fox-demon as a woman at first glance, but Kuwabara soon learns the folly of that assumption. No woman can move like the demon can. No woman can think like him, fight like him, kill like him. Still, there is a gentleness in his eyes and in his heart, visible when he is with his adopted mother, when he tends to a fallen teammate, when he brushes his fingers over his budding plants and smiles as they burst into full bloom.
And it is the sum of these things that make it feel so natural to fall in love. Kurama is gentle enough to understand Kuwabara; he knows – though he doesn't always agree – that Kuwabara views his strength as a responsibility, and he is willing to stand aside and let the human step in to protect those weaker than himself. Yet running underneath and above and throughout the gentleness is a vein of pure steel: cold, hard, and ruthless, the demon possesses a strength Kuwabara can never dream of – a strength born of millennia of existence and the eternal struggle for survival. His skin is soft, his hair slick, against Kuwabara's skin, but his body is hard, lean muscle. Kuwabara need not fear for harming the slender demon, and yet is comfortable enough to know that he can be gentle and protective – should he so desire – because Kurama will indulge him with soft eyes and a warm smile. And while Kuwabara can never forget his first, indescribable love, he can take solace in those innumerable qualities within Kurama that allow him to love and live fully as himself.