(I actually have no real author's note. I just have to make a formal statement: Kuwabara is the cutest thing in the whole damn world.)

Headspace, pt 2

Yusuke eyed the objects sitting in Botan's hand warily. They looked weird. They looked stupid.

"They look like big purple cockroaches."

What he said.

There were exactly two of them, and each was an oblong shape about the size of the pad of Yusuke's thumb. They were a sick color of purple that reminded Yusuke way too much of his previous case, except for a small spot on each - one had a red cyclops eye, the other a yellow one. And to complete the weird buggy image, each had four needle-thin "legs" sticking out from underneath it, curled under as though they'd eventually grip something.

Yusuke was unimpressed. "Uh, Botan, don't you think I've kinda graduated beyond the 'gadgets' level by now?"

"Not for this case, you haven't," said Botan. "Your own skills won't be enough to get over this particular hurdle, I'm afraid."

"Well what the hell do they do?"

"If everything goes right, these pods will allow the two of you to communicate across the dimensional barrier via your brainwaves. That way, Yusuke, you can tap into Kuwabara's knowledge or skills at any time - and that includes his spiritual awareness."

"Hey, whaddya mean, if everything goes right?" asked Kuwabara, hesitant.

"Well...this is kind of experimental technology. It hasn't failed yet in laboratory testing, but it's never been put into a field situation where matters of life and death have been riding on it."

"So basically it's not gonna melt my brain by itself or anything, but there's not a money-back guarantee," said Yusuke.

"Bingo."

"So wait, does that mean this big idiot here is gonna be able to read my thoughts?"

"Not one hundred percent," Botan assured him, but it wasn't very reassuring. "It's remarkably easy to adjust to the device and its capabilities, and once you do that, you shouldn't have any problem putting up a sort of mental wall to hide away all your dark, private fantasies." Botan sniggered at her own joke. Yusuke didn't think it was very funny. Kuwabara started laughing, too.

"Yeah, I'd hate to be subjected to visions of perfect princess Yukina," Yusuke shot back. "I might be sick." That shut Kuwabara up rather quickly, and internally, Yusuke smiled.

"So what do we do with 'em?" said the scowling Kuwabara.

"When you're ready to use it, just hook it over your left ear," said Botan. "The pod will take it from there. A word of warning, though, they have to synch to one another, so you'd better make sure you put them on at the exact same time. Otherwise there'll be a sort of delay, and you'll be getting thoughts that are a few seconds old."

"And when are you shipping me off to happy fun poison land?"

"As soon as possible, if you don't mind. Lots of lives are at stake."

"Lots of demon lives," Yusuke grumbled, but he didn't argue with it. "Might as well do it now before I change my mind."

"I'll give you two a minute to work this out, then," said Botan, placing the yellow-eyed one in Yusuke's hand and giving the red one to Kuwabara. "When they first activate themselves, the change can be...overwhelming. It helps to not have a lot of added stimuli."

"Then get out of here already," muttered Yusuke with a glare.

Botan left, and Yusuke and Kuwabara were alone again.

Yusuke didn't know how he felt about this whole thing. Sharing brainwaves with Kuwabara? He still wasn't quite used to swapping saliva all the time. He was having a hard time seeing this as anything but an intense invasion of privacy. Not to mention the whole experimental technology thing. What was he now, Koenma's guinea pig? The only thing that almost reassured him was that Kuwabara looked just as nervous.

"As much as I was looking forward to picking up where we left off - "

"Go do this, Urameshi," said Kuwabara with a nod. Yusuke nodded too, and then, making sure their movements were aligned, the two of them lifted the purple cockroach pods to their ears.

"For the record, I don't really have any princess Yukina fantasies," said Kuwabara. "Not any more."

"Good to know," said Yusuke, and then the thing's little legs shot out and clamped hard onto his cartilage.

"Ow! Son of a bitch, did that go all the way through?"

"I think so!" cried Kuwabara. "I didn't really wanna get my ear pierced!"

But they didn't have a lot of time to focus on the pain or the unexpected body-mod. The one on the side of Kuwabara's head started glowing red, and next to Yusuke's temple he felt his own heat up a little and start shining yellow. They seemed to detect each other, and align their lights in a beam of orange, and Yusuke was opening his mouth to comment on how crappy this case was already turning out to be when quite suddenly, he was not alone in his own head.

I've been here a while, Shizuru's probably wondering when I'm coming home. Man I was pissed about that detention. Urameshi's pretty hot when he's angry. My ear still hurts. Is his mom still downstairs? Oh, Botan's gonna come back soon. Wait, that's weird. Urameshi's looking at me funny. Urameshi can hear me. Urameshi can hear me.

"Ahh!" Kuwabara yelped out loud, and Yusuke was inclined to agree with him. He was getting Kuwabara's constant stream of thought almost just as loudly as his own - and that included all the info he was getting from his five (no, make that six) senses. He had to close his eyes and prop himself against his wall to keep from keeling over. Kuwabara didn't think quite that fast - Yusuke felt him not think that fast! - and sat down hard on the floor.

In the cacophony inside his brain, Yusuke scrambled to pick his own thoughts out from the mess. The more he probed for them, the easier it was to distinguish - somehow, some way, the only word Yusuke could use to describe his own thought processes was that they were colder. And after a minute or so, he figured out that he could freeze some of them as hard as ice and build a big wall, like an igloo or something, out of mundane things like the sky is blue or I could use a shower. The other thoughts that weren't so mundane, the constant streaming of more sensory and emotional things, he corralled back behind the wall until their two minds were separate again.

Then, very carefully, he opened his eyes, and inside his brain he removed half a brick and looked out through the hole.

Hey, Kuwabara, he ventured.

Kuwabara's eyes shot open, too, and mentally Yusuke could feel out his wall too, which actually kind of seemed more like a really thick curtain instead of Yusuke's igloo. ...Urameshi?

Well who else would it be? thought Yusuke, and both inside and out, the two of them smiled.

A knock sounded on Yusuke's door and they both turned to look, moving almost as one. "Is everything all right in there?"

Kuwabara stood up from the floor, and Yusuke called back, "Yeah, I think we've got it under control now."

Botan stuck her head back in, then followed all the way through when she was sure the coast was clear. "I heard some shouting..."

"You could have warned us that these things were gonna punch us a couple new holes!" complained Kuwabara.

"I would have if I had known!" she insisted. "All I know about these things is from lab reports and eyewitnesses, I've never actually seen them in action myself."

"Well next time, remember to ask," said Yusuke pointedly. His ear still stung from the two tiny punctures, and faintly, like a thin breeze coming from behind that thick curtain, he could feel that Kuwabara's did too.

"If you're done complaining, Yusuke, we really ought to be leaving," she said. Reluctantly, Yusuke reached for his uniform jacket and tugged it back on. There was no point in messing up his real clothes. With Botan standing in the doorway, there wasn't exactly room for heartfelt goodbyes, but Kuwabara got a word in edgewise anyway.

Don't die, asshole, he thought to Yusuke, and Yusuke smirked a little, even with Botan watching.

Ch. Like that's ever stopped me.

-xxx-

If Yusuke hadn't had Kuwabara to mentally vent to, the walk to the portal downtown would have been painfully long and seriously annoying. It was bad enough as it was.

She is so freakin' annoying, he informed Kuwabara, and got nothing but a wave of amusement in response. Oh, thanks. I'm glad to know my pain amuses you.

"How is your connection working out?" Botan pressed for about the third time. "I'm very curious about this, it must be quite fascinating."

"Not really," Yusuke maintained. "It's like if you stuck vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream in a bowl together and they started to melt, and there was part of it that was all running together but you still kinda had the one scoop and the other scoop."

"What a sweet analogy." She grinned at him, and he scowled.

So. Freaking. Annoying.

"I'm just hungry," he said out loud.

"You and Kuwabara didn't go get a snack together after school, or something?"

"No," said Yusuke, "why would we?"

"Oh, no reason I suppose," she said. "I just feel like I've barely seen one of you without the other since your last case."

Yusuke nearly missed a step in his walking, and he was certain that his nauseated wave of panic slipped around his igloo wall and over to Kuwabara's half of the ice cream. "So? We do kind of go to the same school you know."

What is it, Urameshi? Kuwabara demanded mentally, confused by Yusuke's anxiousness, but he didn't respond immediately. He needed to feel out Botan first.

"Well, yes, but you're not in the same class, and you've both got other friends... It just seems to me you've been spending an awful lot of time together."

"Maybe we've got a lot of stuff to do that doesn't involve anybody else," said Yusuke, defensive. And the way he phrased that, it wasn't even really lying.

"If it's spirit detective stuff, there are other people that are in the know now," she pointed out. But when Yusuke stopped responding, she mostly gave up. "Oh well. I suppose it's no big deal."

But it was. It was definitely a big deal. It was all Yusuke could do to keep following behind her, especially with the frantic thoughts of Kuwabara resounding in his head. What's going on? What's wrong? What happened?

I think Botan might know.

Kuwabara didn't have to ask what he meant. The thought's implications had traveled to him right along with the thought itself. Yusuke tried to fortify his wall with Botan's shoes are ugly and That cloud looks like Hiei to brace himself for what was inevitably coming next.

But Kuwabara surprised him and gave the opposite reaction: he just flat-out didn't know what to say.

Oh.

Yeah, oh, thought Yusuke. If Botan knew - if Botan knew... well, Yusuke couldn't think of too many people that were worse at keeping secrets than Botan. If she were the first one to figure it out, everyone else wouldn't be far behind. Yusuke could already see people's reactions in his half of his head: ostracization at school, Kurama's silent scorn and Hiei's incessant derision, Keiko's teary-eyed confusion...

Behind the curtain, he started to feel Kuwabara's thoughts milling around too, rustling quietly like a bunch of honeybees on mute, but he knew better than to push it. Kuwabara did stupid shit when he got emotional.

"Hello? Earth to Yusuke?"

And besides, they were here.

Crawling back out of his head, Yusuke eyed their surroundings skeptically. "Hey, I've been here before."

"You have, yes," said Botan. They were in the basement of a run-down building downtown, where Yusuke once before had crossed over into other realms, on a case a long time ago.

"So the portal that was here before is still here?"

"Well...not quite."

"Wha--?"

And before he had a chance to react, Botan had whipped up the carpet on the floor to reveal exactly one tile's worth of empty space in which he had to fit. With two hands heavy on his shoulders, she crammed him down into the narrow space, scraping holes in the sleeves of his jacket as his arms and shoulders barely fit. On the other side, he landed with a thump in something that almost felt like swamp. The amount of mud that was caked to his pants when he managed to stand up assured that they were equally ruined.

Yuck, Kuwabara commented.

Yusuke frowned, inside and out. You can feel that?

A little. You were extra grossed out.

This thing is so weird, Kuwabara.

Tell me about it, he agreed. I think it got cranked up a little harder now that you're in demon-land, too.

They were avoiding the subject, thinking about mundane stuff like Yusuke's mud-soaked pants. If they had been talking out loud with voices it would have been so much easier, but inside their heads, with the ice cream/igloo/curtain thing, it wasn't so easy to ignore.

I think she knows, Yusuke thought again, unable to skirt it any longer.

Yeah, thought Kuwabara, yeah, she might.

What are we gonna do?

Kuwabara's mind remained silent, but Yusuke felt the curtain rustling again, little waves of uncertainty. Well, actually, I think Sis might have figured it out a couple days ago.

Yusuke balked. What!?

You know how hard it is for me to keep secrets from her, Urameshi, thought Kuwabara, apologetically. She's even better at this awareness thing than I am. There was no way it was gonna stay completely on the down-low.

She's not telling anyone, is she? Yusuke demanded.

Kuwabara hesitated a little, and when his answer came, it was almost...well, even sharing the headspace Yusuke couldn't really figure out what it was. Kuwabara was good at this. No, she's not.

Yusuke tried to poke at the curtain - he was extra curious to find out what the hell that meant - but before he managed to accomplish anything, his whole head started pounding like it was inside a police siren.

Get down, Urameshi! cried Kuwabara's mental voice. Now!