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Kuwabara did not kiss Yusuke to bring him back to life.
Before the whole "ghost" incident, Kuwabara absolutely never thought about kissing him. Nope. Never. He did think of Yusuke often—while he was walking to school or work, while he was doing laundry or glaring at his homework, while he was curled up with Eikitchi under a pile of blankets—but only to imagine pounding his face into the dirt. He would close his eyes and let himself sink into the daydream: the bones in his knuckles connecting with the bones in Yusuke's face, grinding and creaking. The sole of his uniform shoe resting on Yusuke's skull, pressing down hard enough to leave a perfect imprint of the tread. The sweet sound of Yusuke's voice pleading for mercy, begging Kuwabara to let him up, saying he'd do anything.
Yep. Honestly, imagining the ways he'd pay Yusuke back for every bruise and broken bone was the only way he bit back the urge to snap at a teacher or punch a fellow classmate.
Then Yusuke got his dumbass self killed, and Kuwabara's life fell apart. His friends told him he made a scene at the funeral. Though he believed them, the moment someone told him Yusuke had died, the whole world whited out. He didn't come back to himself until a day later, curled on top of a pillow he didn't remember staining with tears, his voice hoarse from shouting things he couldn't recall.
Things only got weirder and worse from there, from waking up hugging some random girl on the street to dreams about Yusuke coaching him through his test.
And then... there was the kissing dream.
Now, Kuwabara had plenty of weird dreams. It was part and parcel with his tickle feeling. Sometimes he dreamed about creepy old ladies trying to tell him where they hid their money. Sometimes, he dreamed things that came true, but only useless stuff, like who'd win in PE at school, not whether he'd finally cream Yusuke or if a girl liked him back. And sometimes he dreamed normal, completely off-the-wall stuff, holding tea parties with Eikitchi or doing cartwheels down the Great Wall of China.
The kissing dream should have fallen into the third category, something Kuwabara laughed at when he woke up—if he even remembered at all.
But he didn't forget, and he couldn't laugh at it, either. The dream was exactly as vivid as his fantasies of punching Yusuke. He could smell the cologne Yusuke pretended not to wear, feel the faint heat of his skin and the light brush of his breath.
And his mouth. He felt his mouth touching Yusuke's as vividly as he'd ever felt his knee digging into Yusuke's back.
In the end, Keiko did the kissing, and when Kuwabara saw Yusuke again, Yusuke immediately gave him a fresh set of bruises, and they never talked about what might or might not have happened while Yusuke was supposed to be dead.
But Kuwabara never forgot the dream, and he stopped imagining beating up Yusuke for fun because he could never count on his own brain anymore. Half the time, instead of bringing up a punch or a kick or a body slam, his mind would skip straight to their lips pressed together, the whole world fading to nothing but that point of contact, until the thought of kissing Yusuke became as natural and easy as the thought of taunting him for a fight.
***
Kuwabara did not kiss Yusuke when he got his ass kicked by Rando.
It wasn't like he could have even if he wanted to—he was in too much pain to move. It wasn't just the broken bones or the bruises and scrapes from the previous fights or even his throbbing headache from using his spirit energy so deliberately for the first time.
No, it was something deeper. Everything in his body seemed to have rejected shrinking and regrowing so quickly. He could take a punch; he could handle a fracture. But his mind rebelled at the memory of everything so large around him, at the pressure of Rando's fist.
And yet still, when Yusuke bent over him to check if he was breathing, Kuwabara immediately remembered the Kissing Dream. Sure, their positions were reversed. Yusuke was leaning over Kuwabara, not the other way around. And Yusuke was yelling something, probably calling him a dumbass or a jerk who didn't know his own limits. And even though Yusuke’s hand was fisted in Kuwabara's shirt, it was only to yank him up to a better yelling position, not to pull him closer.
But Kuwabara could feel his breath. The warmth of his body. Smell his cologne, the pomade he put in his hair. Bare inches separated their mouths; Yusuke could lean forward and close the distance in a heartbeat.
And maybe Kuwabara was loopy from the pain, but suddenly, he wanted that, Yusuke's mouth on his. Especially if it was the last thing he was ever going to feel. Especially if he was about to slip away somewhere dark and cold where Yusuke couldn't follow.
Yusuke didn't kiss him, of course, only settled him back on the ground, his palm brushing over Kuwabara's chest so gently they barely made contact. When Kuwabara woke up safe and whole in his own narrow bed with Eikitchi curled on his stomach, he remembered that touch. Even more, he remembered the longing, the wish for something to carry home with him, and the ache it left inside him felt even more dangerous than simply wanting to kiss.
***
Kuwabara did not kiss Yusuke at the Dark Tournament.
Sure, the venue wasn't exactly what any human would call romantic, but that didn't stop Kurama and Hiei from climbing all over each other every chance they got. And it was the most time Kuwabara and Yusuke ever spent together outside of school without trying to kill each other. Kuwabara spent most of the tournament getting his ass handed to him, but the thing he remembered most when it was over wasn't the pain, or even the righteous anger at the way everything had been rigged against them.
No, it was lying in a narrow hotel bed, listening to Yusuke snore next to him. Realizing how narrow the gap was between them, how easy it would be to roll over and find himself in the position from the Kissing Dream. Or just pull Yusuke against his back, rest one hand on Yusuke's hip to reassure himself he was really safe, really there. That somehow, this goddamn mess hadn't managed to kill them yet.
And he would have had the perfect opportunity, too. Sort of. When Yusuke straightened up after his big speech about emotions—Kuwabara tuned most of that out because acting was hard and he was waiting for the right moment to reveal himself—he marched over and grabbed Kuwabara by the collar of his white jacket.
And part of Kuwabara thought, yes, this is it, even as the rest of him braced for the punch he knew was coming.
It would have been so easy to kiss him then, so easy to lean down or let Yusuke pull him down, so easy to say oh my god, I can't believe we're both still alive and I haven't done this yet.
They didn’t kiss, of course. Yusuke just beat the shit out of him. But after the grueling weeks of the tournament and the grueling saga of training before that, a good, old-fashioned Yusuke beatdown was honestly a welcome relief, as familiar and friendly as the sound of Yusuke's breathing while he slept.
And maybe Kuwabara thought about the missed opportunity more than he wanted to admit, but as long as they were both still alive, they'd figure it out eventually.
***
Kuwabara did not kiss Yusuke after he died the second time.
He'd thought nothing could be worse than Yusuke dying the first time, but at least he didn't remember most of that, between the possession and getting his ass kicked from here to Sunday.
This time, he remembered every second of watching Yusuke die, and he would never forget any of it. Not the screams, not the blood, and especially not how shockingly small Yusuke seemed when the life left him. Kuwabara knew Yusuke was shorter, but he never felt like it. He was ten feet tall with a punch to match, and he blazed brighter than every star in the sky.
When Kuwabara punched a hole through the worlds, he knew he wasn't coming back, but honestly, it seemed like a small price to pay to erase the sound of Yusuke's screams, his last, agonizing breath. At least he was dying with his friends next to him. Kurama would take his body back to Shizuru and make apologies for him, and she would understand in the end.
Then that son of a bitch showed back up riding Puu. Here Kuwabara was, trying to square his memory of Yusuke's body cooling in his arms with the reality of him standing just a few feet away, cocky as ever... and the piece of shit was cracking jokes like nothing happened. Kuwabara could have killed him again.
Kuwabara didn't want to kill him, though. Kuwabara wanted to kiss him. He wanted to grab Yusuke's face in his hands and smash their lips together, feel his breath and the returned warmth of his skin. He wanted one minute where the two of them were both definitely alive together, one minute where the nightmare he'd been living in since the Megallica concert faded away and there was only him, only Yusuke, only the dumb teenage life they should have been living together instead of all this demon bullshit.
Kuwabara still didn't kiss him. But for once, he didn't fault himself for sinking into the fantasy. Not while the images of Yusuke's hair tangled in his fingers, their bodies crushed together, dissolved the memory of Yusuke's crumpled body like spring sunlight melting the last vestiges of winter snow.
***
Kuwabara didn't kiss Yusuke before he left to train with Raizen.
He was both glad and upset he'd agreed to study instead of participating in the tournament. Since Yusuke got hit by a car, he’d been in over his head. For the first time, he felt like he was swimming somewhere instead of only treading water, trying not to drown. Sure, he couldn't assume Demon World would leave him alone forever, and he felt guilty for letting his friends handle the tournament alone, but it sure was a relief to do nothing but go home and cram every night instead of lying awake wondering if any of the techniques he'd learned over the last few months would be enough to save his life. To save the lives of the people he cared about. To save Yusuke's life, since the asshole seemed bound and determined to make a hat trick of dying.
And, as it turned out, when he wasn’t jumping from crisis to crisis, he could think clearly about what he wanted. He wanted to make Shizuru proud. He wanted to get into a good high school.
And... fuck, he wanted to kiss Yusuke. It wasn't a fluke. It wasn't going away. He wanted to kiss Yusuke, and he wanted Yusuke to kiss him back, and if there was ever a time to tell him, it should have been before Yusuke left for god knew how long. Letting him go with that secret lying between them, letting Yusuke leave believing Kuwabara only thought about him to consider the best way to beat him up, felt… dishonorable.
But what if Kuwabara telling him the truth threw him off his game? He knew Yusuke cared about him too—maybe not in the same way, but there was a reason they pushed and pulled at each other like this, a reason Toguro had gone after Kuwabara when Yusuke needed motivation. That reason wasn't necessarily kissing, though. Kuwabara could say he kept his mouth shut for Yusuke's sake, but really, he was just a big fat coward.
Kuwabara didn't even remember what he told Yusuke. Some bullshit about doing his best so Kuwabara could beat him up when he came back, probably. That was what he always said. And he walked off laughing like an idiot, because he always walked off laughing like an idiot, but it didn't feel good. It didn't feel right. Kuwabara could make all the excuses he wanted, but he knew he hadn't done the right thing. He promised himself he'd fix this once and for all once Yusuke came back.
(He didn't admit he was afraid of making this vow because he wasn't entirely convinced Yusuke was going to come back. But he was only allowing himself to walk away now because he would have another chance to fix it later, when the dust settled.)
***
Two years felt like a goddamn eternity, but it was probably for the best. The brief period of his life where Kuwabara was constantly at war with forces bigger than himself started to feel like a weird dream, washed away by the mundane rhythms of his normal life like stones worn smooth by the passage of a river.
He wasn't some dumb thug picking gravel out of his teeth every day; he was a halfway decent student who picked up shifts at the ramen shop on the weekends. If he felt a tickle on the back of his neck, he walked away. People called him by his first name.
And it stopped being so fucking weird to think about kissing Yusuke. As it turned out, Kuwabara wanted to kiss a lot of people, and he even got that far a couple times, though he always called it off because it felt wrong. In a lot of ways, he was a ghost haunting his high school, walking around the hallways waiting for a chance to finish his business.
He finally got that chance when Yusuke came back from Demon World. He should have looked different somehow, the same way he should have looked different when he came back to life, or when he scraped up some new impossible level of power, or when he got his ass handed to him.
But he looked the same. He was scrawny and wiry and maybe ninety pounds soaking wet. He'd gotten taller, but it didn't matter because Kuwabara was taller too.
And at the sight of him, something Kuwabara didn't realize he was missing clicked into place. He could make it complicated, or he could just admit he didn't make sense without Yusuke Urameshi.
Not that he went blurting it out immediately. He was grateful for the time elapsed since it meant he'd gotten a little better at keeping his mouth shut. He played it cool for as long as he could, until the sun was setting over the water and everyone was beginning to settle down on the beach.
Then he kicked sand over Yusuke. (He never claimed to be completely grownup now, just more mature than he used to be.)
"Aw, thanks, Kuwabara," Yusuke muttered, pulling his towel further over his head to shade his eyes. "Nothing says 'I missed you' like sand in my ass."
Almost nobody called him Kuwabara anymore, but he didn't point that out. "I did miss you. C'mon. I wanna talk to you."
Yusuke shifted the towel, revealing one cranky dark eye. Kuwabara wished he saw something besides irritation there, but he knew better. He wasn't expecting this to go the way he'd fantasized about for so many years, but at least he wouldn't have to keep the secret anymore.
Fuck, though, he'd missed those eyes, dark-lashed and the color of ink. It'd be worth fucking all this up just to look at them for a while longer.
"So talk to me," Yusuke said, after apparently not seeing whatever he was looking for in Kuwabara's face.
"Not here. Alone."
Yusuke opened his mouth like he was gonna argue, but Kuwabara stared at him, and maybe Yusuke didn't realize exactly what Kuwabara was on about, but he knew it was serious. "What, did somebody else die?" he muttered, pushing himself up.
"Don't be a jackass. C'mon." Kuwabara couldn't help the clipped tone to his voice. It wasn't really how he wanted to do this, but the soft, wounded part of him that had been thinking about kissing Yusuke Urameshi since he was fourteen was already bracing for pain, the same way he clenched his abs in preparation for a punch.
They walked down the beach, out of earshot of even the demons (and hopefully Genkai, though Kuwabara wouldn't really put money on it). Yusuke didn't say anything, only followed him, and Kuwabara was grateful for that much. Yusuke might slap him in the back of the head and say what the fuck, dude later, but he knew when Kuwabara needed quiet.
Once Kuwabara was satisfied they were far enough away, he turned to Yusuke, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. "Look, I gotta tell you something, but I'm not doing it because I want something, okay? I just have to get this off my chest 'cause it's been driving me crazy for years."
Yusuke frowned, putting his hands on his hips. "What, Kuwabara, you finally gonna confess the massive fucking crush you've got on me?" He smirked, because he was joking—of course he was joking. Yusuke Urameshi couldn't go five seconds without a smartass remark, or he would finally, actually die.
Kuwabara knew it was a joke. He knew he should have expected this. And yet somehow it still caught him off-guard, and somehow he still lost the thread of what he was going to say, just long enough so Yusuke's emotional intelligence kicked in.
Because Yusuke might have acted like some dumb thug, but his heart was pure gold, shining out no matter how many layers of crap he tried to hide it with. It always had, and Kuwabara always saw it, even when he tried his damndest not to.
Yusuke blinked once. His face didn't fall, exactly, but it didn't light up, either, which was more of an answer than any response in words. "Unless—"
"Don't." Kuwabara couldn't help the low, animal tone of his voice. Honor aside, no matter how much time he spent telling himself this was going to happen, he wasn't actually prepared for the force of his own emotions.
Here he thought he'd spent all this time growing up, getting a handle on himself, learning how to chill the fuck out, but actually, he just hadn't had anything serious happen in a while. Exams and cram school and pissy customers were nothing compared to Toguro's fingers buried in his chest, but this? This was dying. This was his own voice echoing back at him off Yusuke's coffin; his body shrinking and growing; Yusuke's corpse cold in his arms.
"Dude." Yusuke touched his arm, digging his nails in when Kuwabara instinctively tried to pull away. Kuwabara had almost forgotten how gentle Yusuke's voice could turn, how he knew exactly when to roll over and show his soft parts if somebody needed him to.
Well, no, he hadn't forgotten, and that was the entire goddamn problem.
"Kazuma."
Kuwabara froze. He didn't think Yusuke had ever called him by his first name, and if he had, he definitely hadn't said it so... fondly. Like he knew the weight it would carry to hear.
He met Yusuke's eyes, and Yusuke was looking at him patiently, those ink-dark eyes fixed on his face. "Tell me what you wanted to tell me," he said, without taking his hand off Kuwabara's arm. "I want to hear it."
Yusuke prided himself on his ability to act like an asshole, to keep everything inside him locked up so tight no one, not even him, was entirely sure what was in there. But as much as he liked to act otherwise, it wasn't the truth of him.
Nah, the truth of him was this right here: quiet compassion. A constant urge to reach out to others. A hand reached out to help someone else up.
Well, shit, when Kuwabara thought of it that way, how could he not fall in love with Yusuke Urameshi?
The idea made it easier to relax, though not by much. He sighed and deliberately made himself stand loose and open instead of stiff and closed off. If Kuwabara had learned one thing over the last couple years, it was that even if the end was already written, he could choose how he met it. And he always chose upright and straight-backed, honorable and straightforward.
"So what if I was carrying a torch for you, Urameshi?" He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yusuke," he corrected himself, and a little flash of surprise crossed Yusuke's face, not at the torch comment but the use of his first name. "It don't feel right keeping secrets anymore. The truth is I've been thinking about kissing you since we were kids, and I've never been able to shake it."
Yusuke still watched him with the same soft expression, but Kuwabara didn't read too much into it. He'd seen that look on Yusuke's face when he was talking to Toguro. Yusuke could act like a tough dog all he wanted, but the truth was, he never gave up on people, never stopped looking for their own hidden vein of gold. This wasn't any different.
"I didn't tell you this to mess you up or anything," he said, after waiting a beat to see if Yusuke was going to reply. But he always jabbered when you wanted him to talk and kept quiet when you wanted him to blab. Typical. "I wanted to ‘fess up so we can... you know... move on. Or I can. Whatever."
Yusuke crossed his arms over his chest. "So are you gonna?"
"Gonna what?"
Yusuke smacked him upside the head, the movement snake-quick and familiar as Shizuru's forever out-of-tune singing voice. "Kiss me, dumbass. You said you wanted to, so do it. I'm right here, ain't I?"
"Wh-what?" Kuwabara stumbled a step back, not from the slap but from sheer shock.
"Honestly, I have to do all the fucking work."
The next few moments were more a series of brief impressions than anything else: Yusuke's hands, fisting in his shirt, strong and callused and surprisingly small. A sudden waft of his cologne, still the same after two years in another dimension. Those eyes, so black they could swallow Kuwabara like a sinkhole.
And his mouth. Kuwabara had spent an inordinate amount of time over the last three years imagining how Yusuke's mouth would feel. Yet somehow, he still wasn't prepared. Soft and warm, chapped despite the layer of Vaseline he always smeared on. Yielding, opening under Kuwabara's with the slightest tilt of his head, like...
Well, maybe like Yusuke had been thinking about this for the past three years too.
"What," said Kuwabara when Yusuke let him go. "What the fuck."
"Make up your mind, big guy." Yusuke rapped his knuckles against Kuwabara's chest. He was still right there, within easy kissing distance, his eyes holding Kuwabara fixed in place like an insect on a pin. "Do you want to kiss me or not?"
Before he really realized he was going to do it, Kuwabara seized Yusuke by the shirtfront and kissed him again, as hungry as though he were trying to fit three years of kisses in one touch. And maybe he was, because now that he was finally kissing Yusuke fucking Urameshi, he didn't know how he'd held off so long.
At some point, Yusuke let go of him, but only to wrap his arms around Kuwabara's neck. One hand tangled in Kuwabara's hair, pulling on the strands hard enough to hurt. But the pain was sweet, like Yusuke's teeth grazing his lip, like Yusuke's fist smashing into his face.
"What the fuck," Kuwabara repeated, when they came up for air, and Yusuke made a disgusted noise.
"Fine, asshole, let's talk." Yusuke pulled Kuwabara down onto the sand beside him, closer than they ever would have sat before and yet somehow not close enough. Kuwabara sort of wanted to pull Yusuke onto his lap, but he was too disoriented to move.
And, of course, Yusuke didn't continue for a moment, watching the last rays of the sun drop below the water.
"You gonna say something or what?" Kuwabara snapped, when he couldn't stand the silence anymore. He hadn't felt this way in a long while, but now he recognized the feeling, the same one once driving him to taunt Yusuke into beating his ass or calling him an idiot. He needed Yusuke's attention like air, and if he didn't have it, he'd find a way to get it. He’d always wanted this. He just hadn’t always seen it for what it really was.
"I shouldn'ta been so rough on you, I guess." Yusuke tucked his hands into his armpits, screwing up his face like he did when Botan asked him a riddle. "This is harder than I thought."
"What is?"
"Telling you how I feel, shithead," and Yusuke said it so calmly, like he was asking Kuwabara to pass him a fresh pair of chopsticks. "But for the amount of times I've screamed at you over the years, you shoulda figured it out by now. You're supposed to be better at this stuff than me."
Kuwabara stared at him, floored. "No I'm not!" he spluttered, when he could manage words. "You're the one always making those hokey fucking speeches. I just hit stuff with my sword ‘til it goes away."
"You really think my speeches are hokey?" Yusuke looked at him for the first time since they kissed. Before Kuwabara could strangle him for asking, Yusuke waved the question away. "Never mind. Not the point."
He stared at Kuwabara for a long moment. Even in the dim light, Kuwabara couldn't miss the fondness in his eyes. "You big dumb lug." But he said it like somebody else might've said I love you, and then he crawled into Kuwabara's lap himself, as if to make sure he couldn't miss the truth.
Hesitantly, Kuwabara set his hands on Yusuke's waist, not holding him there, just trying to get used to the idea of touching him outside of a street brawl or the precisely one desperate hug they were allowed after narrowly dodging death.
"You know what I realized while I was stuck in Demon World and you weren't there?" Yusuke took Kuwabara's face in his hands, studying him like there was something worth memorizing hidden there. "Nobody understands me like you do. Everybody else in my life is window dressing. You get at what makes me me without even trying."
"It's the same for me," Kuwabara finally managed to spit out, if only because Yusuke had already done the hard part. Like always, he was two steps behind and clueless as hell to what was really going on. But for once in his life he didn't mind one bit. Not while Yusuke was warm and alive and looking at him like something precious. "It's always been the same for me. I knew for a long time, but I was too freaked out to say it before you left."
"I didn't realize," Yusuke said softly. He softly knocked on Kuwabara's temple. "Then again, it's always hard for me to tell what's going on in that thick skull of yours. And under all that fucking hair."
"You should talk. Ain't there any barbers in Demon World?"
Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Kuwabara, shut the hell up and kiss me. It's getting cold."
For once in his life, Kuwabara did what Yusuke said without arguing, slipping his arms around Yusuke's back and pulling him close.
"That's better," Yusuke said against his mouth. "You're like a fucking furnace, you know that?"
Instead of rising to the bait, Kuwabara kissed him again, because when he kissed Yusuke, he found exactly what he forever hoped to find: the two of them alive and safe, together and relaxed. It wasn’t just what he’d always dreamed of. It was better.