Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

Stuck With You

Summary: AU, Kurama Minamino and Botan Fukuyama are sworn enemies. What happens when one day, they are handcuffed together and they don't have the key? Will they be able to put aside their differences and form a friendship... or something more?

Chapter 4

There's always something about the person you hate that just annoys the hell out of you.

In Kurama's opinion, it was Botan's rash actions. It was the way she just do something without putting much thought in it. There was always some sort of drive that pushed her to do things that people would say crazy or just over the top: for example, whenever she gets furious, she resolves into beating the hell out of the other person. Then again, maybe there was no drive. Maybe she was just weird; loony, out of her mind, lost her marbles... Kurama could go on and on.

After the whole bathroom 'incident', the duo went on a mouth-war with Kurama demanding to know the reason she'd slapped him and Botan blaming him for looking at her when she was naked. It took them about fifteen minutes to sort things out; they got Botan some spare clothes and Kurama went and took a shower of his own. No awkward moments occured (thank god), and all this they did with less words and more actions, lest they'd end up arguing with each other again.

If there was one thing they had in common, it was that they both had a silver tongue, and had a knack of getting under each other's skin.

. . .

Kurama sat indian style on the bed, with Botan facing the other side; their backs facing one another. The redhead focused all his attention on his book, and dismissed Botan's every attempt at trying to get him to talk to her. The blue haired girl, after getting bored of persuading him to say something, immediately stopped uttering out another word.

It had only been the first day and they were already on bad terms.

Well, not that they weren't on bad terms in the beginning, but still...

The two knew that they had to try to get along, or at least just stand being in the same room with each other. If they wanted to get the handcuffs off, that is. And fighting like this was making it harder to achieve.

They remained silent for a moment, neither saying a word... until Botan cleared her throat.

This gained Kurama's attention, but he made no move to acknowledge her. Instead, he waited for her to say something.

Despite not receiving any response, Botan went up and started to talk,

"Um... sorry for slapping you. I just... panicked," came her slightly inaudible voice, the words passing her lips almost too slowly for her taste.

There, she said it.

It wasn't so hard as soon as she did it; and yet, to think they spent the entire time in the bathroom arguing over that.

Kurama was unresponsive, and for a moment, Botan was afraid he might never say anything. In the back of her head, she could see herself running after a gold key, one that she knew would open the handcuffs trapping her and the redhead together. It was slowly but gradually getting further away, and she felt her legs wobble in her mind... and it almost felt as if they would stay like that forever unless a word escaped Kurama's lips.

A pause.

A very long pause.

But then, Kurama finally spoke. "I'm sorry too. For... um, you know..." the redhead trailed off, a pink color now tinted his cheeks.

It hardly seemed fair that Botan was able to finish her sentence and he stopped midway, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.

He heard a girlish giggle, which could only come from the girl behind him.

"Apology accepted." For some reason, a smile tugged at Botan's lips; it almost felt unreal to hear him apologize. Before, even if he did, the words would always be dripping with sarcasm, with no sincerity at all. And yet, now, he sounded like he actually meant it.

"You know, Kurama... I know it may be difficult, but... if we want to get out of this..." Botan didn't finish, already knowing that the redhead caught on what she meant without her needing to.

"I know," came his response.

Kurama hesitated for a bit, took a deep breath and turned around to face her... at the same time, the girl also whipped around to look at him. They blinked at each other, neither expecting to copy the other's movements.

The redhead scratched his cheek, while Botan fixed her gaze elsewhere. "Uh..."

There was another pause.

"... So, um, what do you think we should do?" Botan asked after a short while.

He raised an eyebrow at her, the corners of his mouth curling upwards into a smirk. "What else?" he merely answered. "I guess we're just going to have to try and get along. I mean, that's the only way to solve this situation after all."

"I know that, genius," she retorted with a laugh, "I mean, like, there's literally nothing we have in common... and we've been enemies for as long as I could remember. Do you really think we can pull it off?" she inquired, and arched one eyebrow in a quizzical manner.

Kurama shrugged his shoulders in response. "To be honest, I don't know. But at least, I think we should give it a try."

"... I suppose you're right."

A smirk tugged at the redhead's lips. "I'm always right," he said proudly, a haughty look now plastered on his handsome features.

Boran rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't get too smug, smartass," she retorted, her voice lacking the usual animosity it had whenever she spoke to him, despite her words.

Kurama faked a laugh. "Thanks for the compliment."

Botan made a sound that sounded between a snort and a laugh. "Sure."

A moments of silence followed after they had a few exchange of words. However, it was swiftly broken off moments later by Kurama.

"In spite of saying that we should get along, I still hate you and I can't guarantee we won't fight again."

Botan hummed in agreement. "Yeah, well, nothing's ever easy to accomplish without hard work, isn't it?" she stated more than asked. Kurama parted his lips to respond, but she quickly cut him short before he could manage. "Rhetorical question."

Tugging back the sleeve of Kurama's white shirt that had managed to slide of her shoulder, Botan went on, "Plus, who knows? Maybe after this whole ordeal, we can be friends," despite knowing there was a slim chance of that coming true. They could barely stand being in the same room without trying to bite each other's heads off.

Which was why it was no surprise when she heard Kurama say:

"I doubt it."

"I like the new look, B."

The girl in question rolled her eyes, a groan of exasperation escaping her once again as her friends teased her and a certain redhead about a certain... pair of handcuffs. The four people, Kurama, Botan, Yusuke and Kuwabara sat under a tree, eating the rest of their lunch.

She fixed a heated glare on the boy with his hair slicked back with gel. "That's not funny, Yusuke," she said dryly.

An obnoxious grin began to spread on the delinquent's face. "But it is, B... especially when you consider it's you two."

"Yeah, B," Kuwabara's voice chimed in. The carrot top's face matched Yusuke's. "I mean, imagine being handcuffed to the guy you hate... must be hell, huh?" he said teasingly, a laugh erupting from his throat.

A groan began to build in Botan's chest, only to escape as a small sigh. She turned to look at Kurama sitting next to her with a slightly annoyed expression on her face. "Aren't you gonna say anything?" she asked grudgingly.

"You know, the best way to get someone to stop teasing you about a touchy subject is to simply ignore them," he simply said, without looking up from his book. "People like that are stray cats; one acknowledgement and they never leave you alone."

Kuwabara's eyebrows furrowed. "Are you implying that we're stray cats here, Kurama?"

"No," and the redhead flipped another page, "Just giving an example, is all."

"Right. Funny 'cause I'm not at all like a stray cat. If you ignore me, I'll never stop bothering you," Yusuke remarked with a small smirk.

Kurama spared him a brief glance, before focusing his gaze back on the book in his hands. "Not my problem, Yusuke. You can bother us all you want, but you'll eventually get tired of it."

The delinquent's smirk felled, his mouth forming a thin line. Sometimes he hated how smart and arrogant Kurama sounded at times.

"Fine, we'll forget about the handcuffs," Yusuke said, and raised his arms in defeat. "For now," he added in a mumble, but both Botan and Kurama heard him quite clearly.

The girl let out a loud irritated groan, but the redhead remained composed, as if he didn't really care.

Botan stared at Kurama with a weird but thoughtful look on her features. She could never guess what went on in that head of his.

"Hey, you guys going to the Maya's party?" Kuwabara inquired out of the blue and leaned closer to the other three. "I heard there's gonna be a few foreign students coming over as well," he whispered.

"Man, I'm jealous at how rich Kitajima is... she gets to organize those things and have foreigners at her house," Yusuke stated, a soft sigh escaping him. "Lucky girl." He paused, and thought it over. "I guess I'll go."

Botan arched an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah," the delinquent replied. "I mean, who knows? Maybe I'll get to hook up with a female foreigner," he went on, wriggling his eyebrows.

The only girl in the group gawked at him in horror. "The nerve of you, Yusuke! You know all too well you already have Keiko!"

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Oh, quit it, Botan."

She ignored him, and proceeded to shake her head in disbelieve. "I'm taken aback, Yusuke."

"I'm taken aback he even knows the word 'female'," Kuwabara added playfully, and burst into a fit of laughter. His laughter died down soon after however, as Yusuke tackled him to the ground and said something about "kicking his ass". It didn't take long for them to start engaging themselves in a fist-fight.

Botan shook her head once again. "They never change," she muttered to no one in particular.

Despite being sworn enemies, Kurama and Botan were friends with the same people. Yusuke, Keiko, and Botan were childhood friends and went from kindergarten to highschool together. For some reason, the delinquent soon became close friends with Kurama, the redhead hanging out with them once in a while. Then came Kuwabara, his sister, Shizuru, and twin siblings, Hiei and Yukina. It was weird when you think they had the same group of friends, in spite of having different personalities and hating everything about each other. They soon got used to it though, and hung out a few times (although they were usually forced to, what's with them befriending the same people), but it didn't stop them from having a mouth-war here and then.

"Are you going?" Botan asked, cutting the silence between her and Kurama like knife through butter.

"To the party?" he answered absent-mindedly. "No."

"Oh right, I forgot. You have a dim few of everywhere with a loud crowd," she stated all too knowingly.

"And you don't?" Kurama shot back. He fixed his gaze on her and quirked his eyebrows quizically at her, to which he earned a small shrug in return.

Despite their not so friendly relationship with each other, Kurama and Botan found that they noticed a lot about one another. Especially the former, as he was more of an observant person than the latter was. If there was one thing he knew about her on his long list of facts about her, was that she was never the party type. Sure, she liked surrounding herself with a lot of people, but he was certain she never favored an occasion where she could gain no benefit from. Besides, there was something that told him, underneath all that friendly and lively personality of hers, that she liked being alone at times, despite being around people most of the time.

"I suppose not," the girl responded in a low voice, eyes focused on Yusuke and Kuwabara (the former beating up the latter), on anywhere but Kurama. "Are you sure you don't want to go? What about Kitajima?"

"What about her?" came Kurama's nonchalant response.

"I thought you guys dated each other?"

The redhead rolled his eyes at the thought. "That was just a rumor, Botan. Everyone stopped talking about it a long time ago... Why are you bringing that up now?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I was just curious."

He raised his eyebrow questioningly at her. "And even if I did go, that meant you have to come along as well. What's with this thing," Kurama raised their cuffed hands and waved it in front of her, "keeping us stuck with each other."

Botan's eyes widened as a look of realization dawned on her features. "You're right. I forgot about that."

A smirk tugged at Kurama's lips. "Stupid."

The expression on the girl's face faded away, as she started to glare daggers at the redhead. "Oh, I'm sorry, but in case you don't know it yet, not everyone's as smart as you."

"You don't have to have a high IQ to know that," Kurama retorted simply, his smirk widening ever so slightly as Botan's glare intensified.

"Jerk," she called indignantly.

Kurama made no move to acknowledge her, and that served to annoy her even more.

"Why is it that you always try to pick a fight with me?" she asked grudgingly, threatening to burn a hole in Kurama's head. If only looks could kill...

"Why is it that you always try to bother me while I'm reading?" he shot back.

"Asshole."

"Idiot."

They both said at the same time.

Kurama's face soon matched Botan's, his emerald eyes menacing as they heatedly stare into her amethyst ones. The girl refused to back down, and didn't even blink as she glared back.

"I hate you, Kurama."

"Feeling's mutual."

After what seemed like forever, the duo averted their gaze. Botan 'hmph'ed and Kurama went back to his book. He didn't even manage to read the first word of where he left off, when a hand swiftly grabbed it, and took it out of his hold. Kurama blinked at his now empty hands, too surprised to react. Then, his brows furrowed... only to unfurrow as he lifted his gaze and shot a death glare at the girl beside him.

There it was, the book. Botan held it in her uncuffed hand, waved it around to taunt him and had a satisfied smirk on her face.

"Looking for this?" she mockingly asked.