Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Behind Blue Eyes ❯ Day One: He Arrives ( Chapter 2 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: kiokukaiba 
The project gets off to a rough start.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama | Type: Yaoi | Uploaded On: 07.02.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.8K | Visits: 780 | Status: Work In Progress
The project gets off to a rough start.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama | Type: Yaoi | Uploaded On: 07.02.2007 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.8K | Visits: 780 | Status: Work In Progress
“Behind Blue Eyes”
Jounouchi/Seto
- - -
I awoke in the morning to a rather unpleasant sound. It was that of loud pounding on the front door. I rolled onto my side to check the time. Eight o’clock in the morning. I lay there for a long while, wondering why in the hell someone would be at my apartment so early.
It finally occurred to me that Seto was to be coming over this morning and the offending person was very likely him. Quickly tossing the sheets aside, I leapt from my bed and hurried to the door, flinging it open and peering out.
I was stunned. I had expected to find him to be dressed in his white coat or perhaps his white business suit. . . or maybe that purple coat that was rarely seen. . . however, he wore none of these outfits. Instead, Seto dressed in a thin, white, long-sleeved dress-shirt that hung loosely from his thin frame. His fine, shapely legs and hips were adorned with those tight, black-leather pants that frequently went unnoticed. They hung low on his narrow hips, and went down, covering the tops of his -expensive I imagined- black dress shoes.
Skimming over him again, I saw that his shirt was unbuttoned at the top, revealing his pale, unmarred collar-bone. His arms were folded, and his expression was that of. . .
“Why the hell do you always stare at me, you filthy mutt?”
. . . annoyance.
“You’re dressed strange today.” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oh? So do you always go to sleep in your uniform?” He put his right hand on the doorframe, his left hand delicately placed on his hip, and he leaned forward as though to gaze through my eyes or intimidate me. His loose shirt fell forward as he leaned, exposing more and more of that gorgeous flesh to me, “Earth to Jounouchi!”
“Oh! Uh, what?” I shook those perverted thoughts, which were currently enveloping every sense I had, away, watching as Seto’s sapphire eyes flicked down at my body, causing me to bend my head forward, “Oh yeah, I forgot to change last night.” I looked back up at him, rubbing the back of my head with my right hand, fingers catching small tangles as they went.
He rolled his eyes, using his hand to push himself from the wall and away from me. Those slender arms folded again, “I honestly don’t see how you could forget to change out of those filthy things.” He scrunched his face up slightly, which was quite adorable, and then straightened it up again, “Anyways, I didn’t feel like wearing a coat today. I wanted to be as comfortable as possible, besides. . .” He came close to me again and looked down into my eyes. . . I hated how he viewed me as inferior, “I don’t need to try to impress someone like you.”
I grabbed the collar of his shirt, both hands clenching the thin cloth tightly in fists, and pulled him down to my level, which really wasn’t so far from his own, “Don’t you ever talk down to me like that again. I am not lower than you.” I didn’t yell, but my anger was quite evident in the way I spoke. He only smirked, his blue eyes narrowing to slits as they mocked me. I tried to see past those icy orbs, trying to spot some sort of fear or intimidation within them. . . it was like attempting to see through a brick wall.
“Is that supposed to scare me, Jounouchi?” He moved even lower so that our noses were touching, I wondered if he could sense my tension, my frustration. . . my absolute hatred!
I released him and he straightened up again, adjusting his collar and running a hand through that chestnut hair of his.
“Let’s just go inside already,” I was irritated and I knew that he could hear it in my voice, “I’ll give you a tour or something.”
“A short tour it will be, I’m guessing.”
“Would you shut the fuck up about where I fucking live?! I’m sorry that I don’t have all the fucking money that you have!” I stormed inside and he was quick to follow at my heels, apparently he wasn’t in the least bit surprised or offended by my language or the volume and anger of my voice. He shut the door behind him and I spun on my heels quickly. He stopped just short of running into me, those blue eyes still taunting me, laughing at me, frustrating me, “Maybe if my daddy gave me a company, I’d be fucking rich too!”
I thought that my spine would crack as I was shoved against the nearest wall, Seto’s hands wrapped tightly around my neck, his body still pressing harshly against my own. Those blue eyes, no longer taunting, were filled with something along the lines of blind rage . His cheeks began to turn a light shade of red and I could feel that his breathing was heavy, quick, and abnormal.
The world seemed to stop then. All that I could think about was breathing, keeping alive. His hands seemed to only clamp tighter and tighter, breathing becoming more and more difficult as each second ticked by. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest in an attempt to pump oxygen throughout my deprived body. I dropped to the floor, the pain in my neck disappearing, and my mind becoming coherent once more.
He had released me without so much as a word, at least, I don’t think that he had said anything. Hard to hold a conversation when you’re being strangled. I glanced up at my offender, he had turned to walk out the door, and for a moment I thought that he was going to return to his mansion. . . but he had simply gone to retrieve his bags! Did he just completely forget what happened?!
“About that tour. . .” His blue eyes gazed into my golden eyes, and again his expression had changed. It was a dull expression, really holding no explanation. It was just. . . blank really. I gazed around the room as if there were some wild chance that this was all some cruel joke being filmed for laughs.
“Uh, yeah. . .” I got to my feet in a rather clumsy manner, but stood straight nonetheless, and sighed, trying to forget the incident and continue on as though it had never happened. “Well,” I motioned a hand to our surrounding room, “We’re in the living room right now. . . and the kitchen is just over there,” I pointed to an open doorway and Seto’s eyes followed. He nodded in recognition.
There was an odd air about the place as he followed me down the one lonesome hallway. I stopped at my father’s bedroom door, “This is my dad’s room. Uh, don’t go in there.”
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“Oh, he’s. . . out of town for a week.”
“And the rest of them?”
“Them?”
“Your family, moron. I know that you at least have a sister.”
“My parents got a divorce when I was really little. My mom got my sister and my dad got me.”
“Oh. . .”
I left it quickly. He lingered in front of the door for awhile, but returned to me without the waste of much time. “Alright, so that door right there is the bathroom, and just across the hall. . . is my room, which is where one of us will be staying.”
Finally he had a reaction to something! His eyes opened wide and he put a hand on my shoulder, turning me around to face him, “What do you mean by that?”
“One of us will get the couch and one of us will get the bed.” I stated, matter-of-factly.
“I get the bed.”
“I don’t think so. My apartment, my bed.”
“I refuse to sleep on a fucking couch.”
“I thought you didn’t use that word.”
“I don’t use it around Mokuba. . . I’m still not sleeping on a couch.”
“Then sleep on the floor.”
“Absolutely not!”
I laughed, and he arched an eyebrow, apparently confused at this, “Sorry, it’s just that you are so pathetic!” I folded my arms in a mockery of what he had done when he first arrived.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just that you think you are too good for such things when regular people do it all the time. . . actually,” I began, as a wonderful idea struck my mind, “You could always sleep in the bed with me.” I grinned and his brows knitted together, a light blush creeping to his cheeks.
“With the way you’ve been acting these past couple of days? I think not.”
It made sense, really. I mean, I did kind of sexually harass him the day before that, giving him a very relevant reason to decline my perverted offer, “Oh, come on!” I persisted, trying not to sound too eager, “What do you think I’d do? Rape you?”
He visibly shook. . . shook like a frightened animal. What had I said that could possibly make him react in such a way? “Woah, hey. . . what’s wrong? Does the word ‘rape’ creep you out or something?” As the word left my lips, he turned his face away from me, and it seemed almost involuntary as he did. It didn’t occur to me at that time how much of a bad sign that really was. . . it didn’t click that perhaps he had had some issue with such a subject in the past. . . so I laughed, “You’re so weird when you aren’t in public!”
He breezed past me, luggage in tow, and plopped onto my bed with a light bounce. . . the bed was very springy, you see, for Seto Kaiba certainly never bounces. . . and slung his bags to a corner of the room, “I think I’ll stay here, and you can sleep on the couch.” It was more of an order, one that I didn’t intend to follow.
“Listen Kaiba,” I began, being sure to use his surname, “You’re on my turf now, and what I say goes. I have to live with your spoiled ass for two weeks, and I want to be in control for at least half of it!” I stood in front of him by this time, looking down into those mysterious blue eyes. I felt almost superior now. In control for half of the time? I studied his body intently, eyes fluttering over every curve, every muscle. . . how thin he was! I could snap him in half! “Unless you want to fight me for it.” I added, sure that I could knock him to the ground.
He smiled at me and sneered, “A pathetic puppy could never beat a human.”
“Too bad I’m not a puppy. . . ever seen how bad a dog can tear a person up?”
His eyes narrowed to slits, “Is that a threat?”
“What if it is?”
He sighed, closing his eyes and turning his head. He opened them again, gazing across my bed as though he were trying to determine if it were truly safe, “It’s a lot more spacious than I had first assumed.”
“Big enough for two people to fit with a little space left over.” I hinted. A grin crept to my lips, as had become habit now, as he snapped me a quick glare, “Oh come on! We’re both guys! Dude, I’m fucking straight.”
“I don’t believe we would fit comfortably.” He looked bored.
“You’re so thin, it’d be like there were only one and a half people in it.” He rolled his eyes and I laughed, “Oh come on! Learn to take a joke rich-boy! You’re skinny as hell. Did you even eat breakfa- oh yeah! I need some money.”
“Excuse me?” He glanced up at me again. I could tell that I was trying his patience. Those blue jewels were gorgeous, taunting me as though to say that I could never break that wall, that barrier. Oh, I’d fucking break it all right. I’d melt that icy wall and watch the tears roll gracefully down those porcelain cheeks, stopping only to kiss his trembling lips as I-
“Are you on drugs?”
“What?”
“You keep dazing out.”
“Oh, yeah. . . uh, no! I’m not on drugs, what the hell?!” I gave him the ‘are you stupid?’ look which I learned from others. . . hey, everyone seemed to think I was some sort of dumbass. . . and shook the thoughts from earlier away as best I could, “There’s no food in the house, and I don’t have any money to go grocery shopping. . . would you mind buying some for me? I’ll find some way to pay you back, honest.”
Seto pursed his lips, and he almost looked as though he held the emotion of pity. . . why? He patted his hand on the bed next to him as though expecting me to take a seat. I didn’t react, not understanding what he was getting at, even though it was rather obvious, “Sit down Jounouchi.” I sat, like a dog obeying his master. This was getting ridiculous.
“Is your father an alcoholic?” I froze and that blue-eyed devil nodded his head, “I thought so, I could smell it when I first walked in. He’s out of town you say? Where?”
“Las Vegas. . .” I was mumbling now. I didn’t want to talk about my father. My father was a disgusting pig. He chased prostitutes and drank anything that reeked of alcohol. He would come home drunk and smelling of cheap perfumes and cigarette smoke. . . much like our couch really, since the man would usually crash on it from intoxication. I had to hide then, for one wrong word, one wrong look, one wrong movement, and I would be the target of his drunken rage. It didn’t happen often, but had occurred enough for me to learn what and what not to do.
“So he gambles then. . . in debt? He gambles your money away, and so you have no money, no food. . . what a fucking asshole.”
It was like he knew everything. . . how could he have possibly just taken all of that from walking in? Did everybody sense this? Did everyone truly know about my family life that I tried so hard to keep secret? Perhaps he was just highly intelligent in this matter. . . no, Seto never had hardships like I have, “You act like you understand. You’ve never fucking had the hardships that I have!”
He slapped me, hard. My own hand flew up instantly, covering the red flesh, a hiss escaping my lips at the harsh stinging sensation that flooded my face, “You don’t know anything about me, Jounouchi Katsuya.”
“Then tell me!” I nearly pleaded, “Tell me about you!” There was no reply, no reaction, just a blank look off into nothingness. I reached to the floor, snatching up my bookbag and flipping through papers, quickly retrieving the project packet. There was a section entitled ‘guide questions.’ I guess that they were questions we could ask each other if we didn’t know where to begin.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding questions to ask you for the project. We’re going to start working on that project right now.”
“Why are you so eager to do this? The whole school knows how much of a slacker you are.”
“Let’s just say I have reasons of my own.”
“Generally a person’s reasons are their own.”
I rolled my eyes and he smirked. He did that a lot. . . never did smile though, smile genuinely I mean. “Alright then. . . let me find a good one.” I skimmed the list. They were general questions about where the person was born, how many siblings they had, just your typical shit. “Actually, I’ve always wanted to know why you’re such an asshole.”
“Heh, there aren’t enough hours in the day to explain that.”
“Well, for now, give me a brief reason as to why you act the way you do.”
“My step father.”
“Your step dad? What did he do?” I had absentmindedly opened my notebook to the first page, grabbing the nearest pen, pulling the cap off with my teeth and spitting it out nowhere in particular, holding the ball-point tip to the paper, ready to jot down notes about his answer.
His eyes inched slowly from the notebook to my face, where they rested on my eyes. He was not angry, he was not annoyed. . . he looked very out of the ordinary. His eyes were sad and dull, lacking their usual luster and mystery. Whatever had happened between him and his step father, he didn’t want to talk about it. . . perhaps that was why he showed such strange expressions when the project was announced. He had buried a ton of secrets and wanted to keep them that way. . . hidden, unknown to the outside world.
“You’re already making assumptions in that little mind of yours, aren’t you?” His hands were folded in his lap, his fingers intertwining unconsciously, like a nervous tic of sorts, “Why would you start with something as big as that? I wasn’t adopted by my step father until I was twelve.”
“Twelve?” I wrote this down, and I could see he wasn’t appreciating my therapy-style approach to the project. “What happened to your real parents?” He sighed and looked down at his hands. It was very likely that he was contemplating whether or not to tell me. I guess that deep down, I felt the same. Sooner or later, whether I wanted to or not, I would have to spill my guts about my family, about my father. . . about my abuse. My end of the project would likely be easy. Seto’s hardship and details would be centered around his parents’ death’s most likely, and the rest would be a story of luxury with a hint of tough training to be the CEO of a gaming company. . . gee, how difficult. I rolled my eyes without thinking, but Seto was too preoccupied to take notice, “Kaiba? I got another pizza in the freezer. Want me to put one in the oven and we can work on this over eating?”
He looked confused and, for some reason unknown to me, younger and more innocent, “But it’s just nine o’clock.”
Nine already? Hell, time flew! “Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly get a chance to eat breakfast, you kinda woke me up. . . and you need to eat more anyways! I’ll put some meat on those bones while your staying here!” I stood, taking my notebook with me just in case, and made to leave the room. I could have sworn that Seto had smiled, even if just a little bit.
“Jounouchi?”
I spun on my heels, “Yeah?”
“Perhaps you should change. I’ll put the pizza in the oven. I can cook, you know.” With that catlike grace that was so usual for him, he up and left the room, shutting the door behind himself so as to give me privacy.
Yeah, a change of clothes was a good idea. I had totally forgotten about being in my school uniform! I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, so I just pulled an old white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans and slipped them on with great ease. I was also sure to put on my sneakers, didn’t like walking around without shoes on for some reason. I nearly tripped in the process. . . over Seto’s two black bags that he had carelessly placed on the floor.
It was tempting, knowing that those were his, knowing that his belongings were in there. . . tempting not to take a little peek inside. There really wouldn’t be any hurt in looking, I mean, what could he have possibly brought? Most likely things like clothes, a toothbrush, things for work, his school books. Just the necessities. I sat down beside them, glancing over at the door to check that it was still closed, waiting for a brief moment as though I expected it to fly open the moment I laid a finger upon his possessions.
My heart pounded against my chest, who would of thought this could be so exciting? My fingers gripped one of the zippers, opening the main compartment of one of his bags. I must have been grinning like a schoolgirl as I glanced in. How boring! Only some shirts and. . . more leather pants. He really must like those. The shirts weren’t so bad either. Nice thin one’s. I dug deeper. Underwear, which I must say brought a bright blush to my face, socks. . . nothing interesting. I zipped it back up, turning my attention to the one lonesome outside pocket. As I thought, there was a toothbrush, some toothpaste, some floss, and. . . pill bottles?
Okay, now that was interesting, certainly unexpected too. I pulled them out, only two of them, and studied the labels.
The first read ‘Paxil’. I shook it around, gazing at the tiny, oval-shaped, green pills that swirled within. Little 40's on the pills stared back at me. The second bottle was a medicine called ‘Wellbutrin XL’. Long-ass name, if you ask me. They were round, white pills, with little 300's on them. I guess the numbers were the dosage? Both were to be taken once a day, as the labels instructed. I just wished that I knew what they were usually prescribed for.
“I could look these up on the computer later. . .”
“I should of known that you’d go through my things, Jounouchi.”
The hairs on my neck stood up, and I felt as though my heart would stop cold. I turned around, the terror of being caught obvious in the size of my eyes, “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to notice your interest in my medicine.”
I glanced down at the bottles in my hands, “What are they for?”
He folded his arms, leaning against the doorframe and looking down the hallway, “Well, Paxil is for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Wellbutrin is an antidepressant. . . the pizza is in the oven, come out with me.”
I knew what an antidepressant was, but that Post Traumatic whatever was a new one. Traumatic. . . some sort of trauma in his life? It was only the first hour of the first day, and already I was learning so much! I followed close, nearly running into him. My butt was quick to fall into the first chair at the kitchen table. Seto sat across from me, his uneasiness was slightly evident on his face. Those blue eyes looked distant, hopeless, depressed. . .
“I know that you have questions, so ask them. We’ll have to do this eventually anyways.”
“Well, you can start by telling me the real reason you’re so skinny.”
He sighed, “Wellbutrin has a side affect of loss of appetite. . . not to mention my stomach has shrank over the years from a lack of eating.”
“Why wouldn’t you eat?” My brows knit together and I leaned forward, getting close to his face.
“Well, when you go through enough, you just don’t feel much like eating.”
“Okay. . . will you answer my question from earlier? The question about how your real parents died?” I cursed myself for forgetting my notebook. It was still laying on my bed from when I had stopped to get dressed. I would have to remember to write all of this down later.
He lay his folded arms up on the table, placing his head on top. . . how cute he looked, “My mother died when she gave birth to Mokuba,” My eyes widened with shock, “And my father died in a car accident years after.” He glanced up at me, unmoved by his own words.
“Wow. . . did you ever hate Mokuba?”
“I did at first. I used to tell my father to give Mokuba to God in exchange for my mother back.” He looked down at the table, apparently ashamed for ever allowing those words to leave his mouth, “I regret saying that, now. Mokuba’s life is more important to me. He was only a baby, it wasn’t his fault that she died.”
“What about the rest of your family? You know, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins?”
“They passed us from family to family, until they had all of our inheritance, and then dumped us off at the Domino City orphanage.” He chuckled low in his throat, a rather pitiful laugh at that, “I don’t give a fuck about them.”
I bit my lower lip. Okay, so his life wasn’t exactly perfect in the beginning. He did get to be the richest guy in the city though. I had absentmindedly begun to rub his head slightly with my left hand, my fingers running through those silky locks of brown hair. I was about to pull away, believing that he would instantly go off on me, but instead I watched as his eyes fluttered closed. “So,” I continued, “You had a childhood full of misery. . . and then were adopted into a life of luxury?” I had thought that it was an innocent question, but his reaction told me otherwise.
“Fuck no!!” He slapped my hand away, standing quickly and nearly falling. I had jumped up as well, in an attempt to catch him, but he only pushed me away again, backing up until he was against the wall, “You don’t fucking know anything! My life was never good, you fucking mutt, you fucking coward! You don’t know how good you have it! You don’t know! You don’t know!” Without thinking, I didn’t tend to be thinking much lately, I roughly grabbed his arms, pulling him against me. He grabbed onto my shirt, his head over my right shoulder, and he barely whispered into my ear, “You don’t know what he did to me. . .”
I shivered. I didn’t really know what he meant, but the whole aura of it. It were as though the room had come down with some sort of icy chill. You don’t know what he did to me. . . Just the sound of it was unnerving. Not only that, but his voice was not confident. It was barely even audible, as though he wasn’t sure if he truly wanted to tell me or not. “Do you mean,” I started, “What your step father did?” His head nodded against my shoulder, his grip loosening. I could feel him squirm slightly against my body, but I held him tighter, “Seto,” He became rigid at the use of his first name, “I want you to give me your word right now that you will tell me about your life with your step father.”
“Why?” It was almost choked out, like how a child would speak when you told them you had to take their favorite toy away.
“Because I have a feeling that you’ve been hiding something horrible all these years and that you need to tell someone. You need to let everything out. If you do, you’ll feel better about it. I promise you, I won’t laugh at you, poke fun at you, spread your secrets. . . what you tell me stays between you and me, do you understand? And what I tell you stays between just us as well.” Again, he nodded, though slightly more hesitant than he had last time, “Now, give me your word.”
“I will tell you, in time.” My arms loosened slightly, giving him enough space to lean back and look into my eyes. His own sapphire-colored eyes were cold again, protecting him. The eyes really did seem to be the window to the soul. . . too bad they weren’t the window to the mind as well. I would give so much to know exactly what he was thinking right now.
A light ping rung through the air and as though on cue, both of us turned our heads towards the oven, “Let me get it,” I offered, “You just have a seat.” For once, he listened to me and returned to his place at the table, staring off into space again. I grabbed the oven mitt off of the counter slipping it on and using my other hand to pull open the oven. I reached in and pulled it out with ease, being careful not to burn my arm on the edges. The smell of freshly baked pizza flooded my nostrils and I looked back to see if perhaps Seto had, by some strange chance, reacted to it as well. He only watched me.
“Stop looking at my ass.” I joked and smiled at him, and like many times that day, I could have sworn that I saw a slight smile sneak up on those little pink lips. I sat the hot pan on the stove, so it wouldn’t burn the counter, and slipped off the glove, making my way over to the table and leaning onto it, using my arms to hold me up. “Smile.”
“What?”
“Smil e. If you smile, I won’t ask anymore questions about your family until tomorrow.” I grinned stupidly at him.
His mouth shifted into numerous little poses. He frowned deeply, apparently not liking this one bit, “You won’t ask me anymore questions about my family until tomorrow if I smile? That’s all I have to do?”
“Yup, somehow I think that’ll be more difficult for you to do than anything else.” He turned his face up at me, “Oh, and it has to look genuine.”
For a moment he hesitated, licking his lips attractively as though in thought, before his lips parted, showing perfectly straight, white teeth. His lips stretched in a manner foreign to him, his cheek bones lifting up towards his eyes. . . his eyes which seemed to sparkle by the power of some non-existent light. He was . . . “Beautiful.”
The smile was gone and now he looked uneasy, “What?”
“Nothing.” I turned back to my. . . our neglected pizza, bringing out the pizza cutter and slicing it, “Let’s just eat this before it gets cold.”
Again, I’ll skip through that boring half hour of eating in silence, with occasional glances at one another whenever the awkward quiet got to be a bit too much. I cleared the table, leaving him to sit, which he was likely accustomed to at his own house, and look around for awhile.
“What do you do all day?” My question was pretty random, if I do say so myself, but the perfect way to start a conversation.
“School and work.” He leaned back in the chair, arms folded loosely, those rosy lips curled into a slight pout. His eyes has their usual color, his barrier apparently back up after that slight change in pace earlier.
“That’s it? Don’t you go out with your friends?” I felt stupid right away. Who would be friends with an asshole like him?
“I don’t have friends, I have acquaintances.” He said it plainly as though it was uncool to have friends or something. He really acted way too old for his age.
“Why don’t you try acting like a teenager for a change, rather than acting like an old fart all the time?” His eyes widened a bit, likely at my word usage, but dimmed soon after, not being one to show much emotion. Though he had been ever since he came here. . . “I think you’ve let your guard down.”
“I don’t need to guard myself around one little runt like yourself.”
“Do you always have to be such a fucking asshole?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to act like this the entire project?”
“Absolutely.”
It was another standoff, me glaring and him just looking amused. I hated that. I wanted to wipe that holier-than-thou smirk right off that doll-like face of his, “Stand up.” I demanded it, not really sure why yet, but I did, and he chuckled a bit, not phased by my sudden order, “I said stand up!” His smile was gone now, replaced by a rather annoyed expression. His eyes studied me intently. I guessed that he was just realizing how dead serious I was.
“And why, dare I ask, would I listen to you?”
From that point on, it were as though something else had taken ahold of my body and begun moving it like I were a puppet on strings. . . but at the same time, I knew what I was after, I knew, what I was going to do. In a flash, I was at the tables side, holding him high above his seat by his right arm. He winced slightly, in shock from my strength probably. I looked like a fucking weakling, but I was fucking strong as hell. I had to be strong to get through what I went through growing up, “You think I’m fucking playing, Kaiba?” He swung at me with his left hand, an almost frantic movement, but I caught it with ease, holding it with the other wrist in my right hand. I moved to the wall nearest the kitchen table and shoved him against it. Careful to shove him down to make him appear shorter than me, I crushed my body against his, eliciting a few grunts from that lithe body.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
“Teaching you a lesson.” A look crossed his face as though he’d seen a ghost. The color drained from his face, his blue eyes going blank as total shock, or so it seemed, swept across him. I could feel him go limp in my grip and I let go quickly, letting him drop to the floor. I fell to my knees beside him, “Woah, you alright?” I was in a slight panic now, what the fuck happened? Was that some sort of freakish form of self-defense?
“D-don’t. . .” He muttered, his eyes glazed over. . . his shook slightly when I moved to touch him, “N-no! No, don’t! Don’t do it! I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It won’t happen again! Don’t touch me! Leave me alone! No! It hurts, it hurts!”
Okay, I was officially in full blown panic by then, my eyes were open so far, I thought they’d soon pop out of my skull, my hands were waving about in a fury as he screamed and shouted and called out. I wasn’t doing anything! “Seto, chill out, dude!”
“I hate you Gozaburo!” He wailed this out, as though it were a last resort against some unknown force. Wait, that name. . .
“What did you call me?” A perfectly natural question to ask, in my opinion.
He trembled, “M-master. . .” I pulled him into my arms, he fought against me, but I was stronger and held him against my chest.
“Shh,” I whispered, rubbing his back, “It’s me, Jounouchi.” Never in the seven layers of Hell did I ever imagine I would be sitting against the wall of my kitchen, hold ‘the great’ Seto Kaiba and rocking him like a two-year old. Trauma. . . Gozaburo. . . Gozaburo Kaiba? His step dad? It was slowly coming together. Was Seto abused as a child?
His eyes fluttered open, he looked like he had just awaken from a years sleep, “Huh?” His quickly analyzed our position, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Trying to calm your ass down.”
“What?”
“You spazzed out and started screaming for me not to touch you and that something hurt, then you called me. . .” I stopped, actually thinking before I spoke for once. Perhaps, I thought, it wasn’t such a good idea to bring it up right now. I did promise to leave his family life alone for the day.
“Called you what?”
“I don’t remember, don’t worry about it.” I looked into his eyes, and for once, I think I understood what they were trying to tell me. They were thanking me very subtly. Perhaps this sort of thing happened more often than he’d like for it to, though I’m sure he’d prefer it to not exist whatsoever. There was a sort of silent agreement between the two of us. I just wish I knew what triggered that, so I wouldn’t do it again. Was it something I said? Was it the act I committed? I sighed audibly, “You wanna go out somewhere? To help pass the time?”
“Out? Where?” He sounded like a child asking his mom or dad about something he was ignorant to. Had he never been out with friends? Had he never just gone out for the hell of it? “Kaiba, we’re going to go to the mall, or a club, or the shops around town. . . anywhere to get you into teenage life. You have got to get out more often!
“The mall? With you?” His tone was degrading, but his eyes laughed, his mouth curving up slightly at the edges. I nearly got defensive, pissed off even. . . but I thought for a moment and smiled at him.
“You don’t really mean that.” A strange feeling came over me. Perhaps, deep down, he was a nice guy. Perhaps, all of those times he taunted and teased me, it was his way of playing around, like I would do with Yuugi and Honda, “You’re just joking, right?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. . .” He stood and brushed himself off. Okay, so he wasn’t ready to admit that he was a good guy just yet.
I headed for the door, “We’d better get walking then, it’s about five miles to the mall.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” I smiled, though he couldn’t see, as he was staring at my back. I knew he’d react that way, “Walk? There is no way in hell I’m walking.”
“Well. . . you could always pay our way in a cab.” It was my turn to smirk. I suppose that my intentions finally dawned on him at that point.
“Fine, whatever. . . just as long as we don’t have to walk.” He walked out the door, keeping his distance from me as I followed soon after.
I couldn’t wait to introduce Seto Kaiba to life as an average teenager.
- - -
Jounouchi/Seto
- - -
I awoke in the morning to a rather unpleasant sound. It was that of loud pounding on the front door. I rolled onto my side to check the time. Eight o’clock in the morning. I lay there for a long while, wondering why in the hell someone would be at my apartment so early.
It finally occurred to me that Seto was to be coming over this morning and the offending person was very likely him. Quickly tossing the sheets aside, I leapt from my bed and hurried to the door, flinging it open and peering out.
I was stunned. I had expected to find him to be dressed in his white coat or perhaps his white business suit. . . or maybe that purple coat that was rarely seen. . . however, he wore none of these outfits. Instead, Seto dressed in a thin, white, long-sleeved dress-shirt that hung loosely from his thin frame. His fine, shapely legs and hips were adorned with those tight, black-leather pants that frequently went unnoticed. They hung low on his narrow hips, and went down, covering the tops of his -expensive I imagined- black dress shoes.
Skimming over him again, I saw that his shirt was unbuttoned at the top, revealing his pale, unmarred collar-bone. His arms were folded, and his expression was that of. . .
“Why the hell do you always stare at me, you filthy mutt?”
. . . annoyance.
“You’re dressed strange today.” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oh? So do you always go to sleep in your uniform?” He put his right hand on the doorframe, his left hand delicately placed on his hip, and he leaned forward as though to gaze through my eyes or intimidate me. His loose shirt fell forward as he leaned, exposing more and more of that gorgeous flesh to me, “Earth to Jounouchi!”
“Oh! Uh, what?” I shook those perverted thoughts, which were currently enveloping every sense I had, away, watching as Seto’s sapphire eyes flicked down at my body, causing me to bend my head forward, “Oh yeah, I forgot to change last night.” I looked back up at him, rubbing the back of my head with my right hand, fingers catching small tangles as they went.
He rolled his eyes, using his hand to push himself from the wall and away from me. Those slender arms folded again, “I honestly don’t see how you could forget to change out of those filthy things.” He scrunched his face up slightly, which was quite adorable, and then straightened it up again, “Anyways, I didn’t feel like wearing a coat today. I wanted to be as comfortable as possible, besides. . .” He came close to me again and looked down into my eyes. . . I hated how he viewed me as inferior, “I don’t need to try to impress someone like you.”
I grabbed the collar of his shirt, both hands clenching the thin cloth tightly in fists, and pulled him down to my level, which really wasn’t so far from his own, “Don’t you ever talk down to me like that again. I am not lower than you.” I didn’t yell, but my anger was quite evident in the way I spoke. He only smirked, his blue eyes narrowing to slits as they mocked me. I tried to see past those icy orbs, trying to spot some sort of fear or intimidation within them. . . it was like attempting to see through a brick wall.
“Is that supposed to scare me, Jounouchi?” He moved even lower so that our noses were touching, I wondered if he could sense my tension, my frustration. . . my absolute hatred!
I released him and he straightened up again, adjusting his collar and running a hand through that chestnut hair of his.
“Let’s just go inside already,” I was irritated and I knew that he could hear it in my voice, “I’ll give you a tour or something.”
“A short tour it will be, I’m guessing.”
“Would you shut the fuck up about where I fucking live?! I’m sorry that I don’t have all the fucking money that you have!” I stormed inside and he was quick to follow at my heels, apparently he wasn’t in the least bit surprised or offended by my language or the volume and anger of my voice. He shut the door behind him and I spun on my heels quickly. He stopped just short of running into me, those blue eyes still taunting me, laughing at me, frustrating me, “Maybe if my daddy gave me a company, I’d be fucking rich too!”
I thought that my spine would crack as I was shoved against the nearest wall, Seto’s hands wrapped tightly around my neck, his body still pressing harshly against my own. Those blue eyes, no longer taunting, were filled with something along the lines of blind rage . His cheeks began to turn a light shade of red and I could feel that his breathing was heavy, quick, and abnormal.
The world seemed to stop then. All that I could think about was breathing, keeping alive. His hands seemed to only clamp tighter and tighter, breathing becoming more and more difficult as each second ticked by. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest in an attempt to pump oxygen throughout my deprived body. I dropped to the floor, the pain in my neck disappearing, and my mind becoming coherent once more.
He had released me without so much as a word, at least, I don’t think that he had said anything. Hard to hold a conversation when you’re being strangled. I glanced up at my offender, he had turned to walk out the door, and for a moment I thought that he was going to return to his mansion. . . but he had simply gone to retrieve his bags! Did he just completely forget what happened?!
“About that tour. . .” His blue eyes gazed into my golden eyes, and again his expression had changed. It was a dull expression, really holding no explanation. It was just. . . blank really. I gazed around the room as if there were some wild chance that this was all some cruel joke being filmed for laughs.
“Uh, yeah. . .” I got to my feet in a rather clumsy manner, but stood straight nonetheless, and sighed, trying to forget the incident and continue on as though it had never happened. “Well,” I motioned a hand to our surrounding room, “We’re in the living room right now. . . and the kitchen is just over there,” I pointed to an open doorway and Seto’s eyes followed. He nodded in recognition.
There was an odd air about the place as he followed me down the one lonesome hallway. I stopped at my father’s bedroom door, “This is my dad’s room. Uh, don’t go in there.”
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“Oh, he’s. . . out of town for a week.”
“And the rest of them?”
“Them?”
“Your family, moron. I know that you at least have a sister.”
“My parents got a divorce when I was really little. My mom got my sister and my dad got me.”
“Oh. . .”
I left it quickly. He lingered in front of the door for awhile, but returned to me without the waste of much time. “Alright, so that door right there is the bathroom, and just across the hall. . . is my room, which is where one of us will be staying.”
Finally he had a reaction to something! His eyes opened wide and he put a hand on my shoulder, turning me around to face him, “What do you mean by that?”
“One of us will get the couch and one of us will get the bed.” I stated, matter-of-factly.
“I get the bed.”
“I don’t think so. My apartment, my bed.”
“I refuse to sleep on a fucking couch.”
“I thought you didn’t use that word.”
“I don’t use it around Mokuba. . . I’m still not sleeping on a couch.”
“Then sleep on the floor.”
“Absolutely not!”
I laughed, and he arched an eyebrow, apparently confused at this, “Sorry, it’s just that you are so pathetic!” I folded my arms in a mockery of what he had done when he first arrived.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just that you think you are too good for such things when regular people do it all the time. . . actually,” I began, as a wonderful idea struck my mind, “You could always sleep in the bed with me.” I grinned and his brows knitted together, a light blush creeping to his cheeks.
“With the way you’ve been acting these past couple of days? I think not.”
It made sense, really. I mean, I did kind of sexually harass him the day before that, giving him a very relevant reason to decline my perverted offer, “Oh, come on!” I persisted, trying not to sound too eager, “What do you think I’d do? Rape you?”
He visibly shook. . . shook like a frightened animal. What had I said that could possibly make him react in such a way? “Woah, hey. . . what’s wrong? Does the word ‘rape’ creep you out or something?” As the word left my lips, he turned his face away from me, and it seemed almost involuntary as he did. It didn’t occur to me at that time how much of a bad sign that really was. . . it didn’t click that perhaps he had had some issue with such a subject in the past. . . so I laughed, “You’re so weird when you aren’t in public!”
He breezed past me, luggage in tow, and plopped onto my bed with a light bounce. . . the bed was very springy, you see, for Seto Kaiba certainly never bounces. . . and slung his bags to a corner of the room, “I think I’ll stay here, and you can sleep on the couch.” It was more of an order, one that I didn’t intend to follow.
“Listen Kaiba,” I began, being sure to use his surname, “You’re on my turf now, and what I say goes. I have to live with your spoiled ass for two weeks, and I want to be in control for at least half of it!” I stood in front of him by this time, looking down into those mysterious blue eyes. I felt almost superior now. In control for half of the time? I studied his body intently, eyes fluttering over every curve, every muscle. . . how thin he was! I could snap him in half! “Unless you want to fight me for it.” I added, sure that I could knock him to the ground.
He smiled at me and sneered, “A pathetic puppy could never beat a human.”
“Too bad I’m not a puppy. . . ever seen how bad a dog can tear a person up?”
His eyes narrowed to slits, “Is that a threat?”
“What if it is?”
He sighed, closing his eyes and turning his head. He opened them again, gazing across my bed as though he were trying to determine if it were truly safe, “It’s a lot more spacious than I had first assumed.”
“Big enough for two people to fit with a little space left over.” I hinted. A grin crept to my lips, as had become habit now, as he snapped me a quick glare, “Oh come on! We’re both guys! Dude, I’m fucking straight.”
“I don’t believe we would fit comfortably.” He looked bored.
“You’re so thin, it’d be like there were only one and a half people in it.” He rolled his eyes and I laughed, “Oh come on! Learn to take a joke rich-boy! You’re skinny as hell. Did you even eat breakfa- oh yeah! I need some money.”
“Excuse me?” He glanced up at me again. I could tell that I was trying his patience. Those blue jewels were gorgeous, taunting me as though to say that I could never break that wall, that barrier. Oh, I’d fucking break it all right. I’d melt that icy wall and watch the tears roll gracefully down those porcelain cheeks, stopping only to kiss his trembling lips as I-
“Are you on drugs?”
“What?”
“You keep dazing out.”
“Oh, yeah. . . uh, no! I’m not on drugs, what the hell?!” I gave him the ‘are you stupid?’ look which I learned from others. . . hey, everyone seemed to think I was some sort of dumbass. . . and shook the thoughts from earlier away as best I could, “There’s no food in the house, and I don’t have any money to go grocery shopping. . . would you mind buying some for me? I’ll find some way to pay you back, honest.”
Seto pursed his lips, and he almost looked as though he held the emotion of pity. . . why? He patted his hand on the bed next to him as though expecting me to take a seat. I didn’t react, not understanding what he was getting at, even though it was rather obvious, “Sit down Jounouchi.” I sat, like a dog obeying his master. This was getting ridiculous.
“Is your father an alcoholic?” I froze and that blue-eyed devil nodded his head, “I thought so, I could smell it when I first walked in. He’s out of town you say? Where?”
“Las Vegas. . .” I was mumbling now. I didn’t want to talk about my father. My father was a disgusting pig. He chased prostitutes and drank anything that reeked of alcohol. He would come home drunk and smelling of cheap perfumes and cigarette smoke. . . much like our couch really, since the man would usually crash on it from intoxication. I had to hide then, for one wrong word, one wrong look, one wrong movement, and I would be the target of his drunken rage. It didn’t happen often, but had occurred enough for me to learn what and what not to do.
“So he gambles then. . . in debt? He gambles your money away, and so you have no money, no food. . . what a fucking asshole.”
It was like he knew everything. . . how could he have possibly just taken all of that from walking in? Did everybody sense this? Did everyone truly know about my family life that I tried so hard to keep secret? Perhaps he was just highly intelligent in this matter. . . no, Seto never had hardships like I have, “You act like you understand. You’ve never fucking had the hardships that I have!”
He slapped me, hard. My own hand flew up instantly, covering the red flesh, a hiss escaping my lips at the harsh stinging sensation that flooded my face, “You don’t know anything about me, Jounouchi Katsuya.”
“Then tell me!” I nearly pleaded, “Tell me about you!” There was no reply, no reaction, just a blank look off into nothingness. I reached to the floor, snatching up my bookbag and flipping through papers, quickly retrieving the project packet. There was a section entitled ‘guide questions.’ I guess that they were questions we could ask each other if we didn’t know where to begin.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding questions to ask you for the project. We’re going to start working on that project right now.”
“Why are you so eager to do this? The whole school knows how much of a slacker you are.”
“Let’s just say I have reasons of my own.”
“Generally a person’s reasons are their own.”
I rolled my eyes and he smirked. He did that a lot. . . never did smile though, smile genuinely I mean. “Alright then. . . let me find a good one.” I skimmed the list. They were general questions about where the person was born, how many siblings they had, just your typical shit. “Actually, I’ve always wanted to know why you’re such an asshole.”
“Heh, there aren’t enough hours in the day to explain that.”
“Well, for now, give me a brief reason as to why you act the way you do.”
“My step father.”
“Your step dad? What did he do?” I had absentmindedly opened my notebook to the first page, grabbing the nearest pen, pulling the cap off with my teeth and spitting it out nowhere in particular, holding the ball-point tip to the paper, ready to jot down notes about his answer.
His eyes inched slowly from the notebook to my face, where they rested on my eyes. He was not angry, he was not annoyed. . . he looked very out of the ordinary. His eyes were sad and dull, lacking their usual luster and mystery. Whatever had happened between him and his step father, he didn’t want to talk about it. . . perhaps that was why he showed such strange expressions when the project was announced. He had buried a ton of secrets and wanted to keep them that way. . . hidden, unknown to the outside world.
“You’re already making assumptions in that little mind of yours, aren’t you?” His hands were folded in his lap, his fingers intertwining unconsciously, like a nervous tic of sorts, “Why would you start with something as big as that? I wasn’t adopted by my step father until I was twelve.”
“Twelve?” I wrote this down, and I could see he wasn’t appreciating my therapy-style approach to the project. “What happened to your real parents?” He sighed and looked down at his hands. It was very likely that he was contemplating whether or not to tell me. I guess that deep down, I felt the same. Sooner or later, whether I wanted to or not, I would have to spill my guts about my family, about my father. . . about my abuse. My end of the project would likely be easy. Seto’s hardship and details would be centered around his parents’ death’s most likely, and the rest would be a story of luxury with a hint of tough training to be the CEO of a gaming company. . . gee, how difficult. I rolled my eyes without thinking, but Seto was too preoccupied to take notice, “Kaiba? I got another pizza in the freezer. Want me to put one in the oven and we can work on this over eating?”
He looked confused and, for some reason unknown to me, younger and more innocent, “But it’s just nine o’clock.”
Nine already? Hell, time flew! “Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly get a chance to eat breakfast, you kinda woke me up. . . and you need to eat more anyways! I’ll put some meat on those bones while your staying here!” I stood, taking my notebook with me just in case, and made to leave the room. I could have sworn that Seto had smiled, even if just a little bit.
“Jounouchi?”
I spun on my heels, “Yeah?”
“Perhaps you should change. I’ll put the pizza in the oven. I can cook, you know.” With that catlike grace that was so usual for him, he up and left the room, shutting the door behind himself so as to give me privacy.
Yeah, a change of clothes was a good idea. I had totally forgotten about being in my school uniform! I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, so I just pulled an old white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans and slipped them on with great ease. I was also sure to put on my sneakers, didn’t like walking around without shoes on for some reason. I nearly tripped in the process. . . over Seto’s two black bags that he had carelessly placed on the floor.
It was tempting, knowing that those were his, knowing that his belongings were in there. . . tempting not to take a little peek inside. There really wouldn’t be any hurt in looking, I mean, what could he have possibly brought? Most likely things like clothes, a toothbrush, things for work, his school books. Just the necessities. I sat down beside them, glancing over at the door to check that it was still closed, waiting for a brief moment as though I expected it to fly open the moment I laid a finger upon his possessions.
My heart pounded against my chest, who would of thought this could be so exciting? My fingers gripped one of the zippers, opening the main compartment of one of his bags. I must have been grinning like a schoolgirl as I glanced in. How boring! Only some shirts and. . . more leather pants. He really must like those. The shirts weren’t so bad either. Nice thin one’s. I dug deeper. Underwear, which I must say brought a bright blush to my face, socks. . . nothing interesting. I zipped it back up, turning my attention to the one lonesome outside pocket. As I thought, there was a toothbrush, some toothpaste, some floss, and. . . pill bottles?
Okay, now that was interesting, certainly unexpected too. I pulled them out, only two of them, and studied the labels.
The first read ‘Paxil’. I shook it around, gazing at the tiny, oval-shaped, green pills that swirled within. Little 40's on the pills stared back at me. The second bottle was a medicine called ‘Wellbutrin XL’. Long-ass name, if you ask me. They were round, white pills, with little 300's on them. I guess the numbers were the dosage? Both were to be taken once a day, as the labels instructed. I just wished that I knew what they were usually prescribed for.
“I could look these up on the computer later. . .”
“I should of known that you’d go through my things, Jounouchi.”
The hairs on my neck stood up, and I felt as though my heart would stop cold. I turned around, the terror of being caught obvious in the size of my eyes, “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to notice your interest in my medicine.”
I glanced down at the bottles in my hands, “What are they for?”
He folded his arms, leaning against the doorframe and looking down the hallway, “Well, Paxil is for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Wellbutrin is an antidepressant. . . the pizza is in the oven, come out with me.”
I knew what an antidepressant was, but that Post Traumatic whatever was a new one. Traumatic. . . some sort of trauma in his life? It was only the first hour of the first day, and already I was learning so much! I followed close, nearly running into him. My butt was quick to fall into the first chair at the kitchen table. Seto sat across from me, his uneasiness was slightly evident on his face. Those blue eyes looked distant, hopeless, depressed. . .
“I know that you have questions, so ask them. We’ll have to do this eventually anyways.”
“Well, you can start by telling me the real reason you’re so skinny.”
He sighed, “Wellbutrin has a side affect of loss of appetite. . . not to mention my stomach has shrank over the years from a lack of eating.”
“Why wouldn’t you eat?” My brows knit together and I leaned forward, getting close to his face.
“Well, when you go through enough, you just don’t feel much like eating.”
“Okay. . . will you answer my question from earlier? The question about how your real parents died?” I cursed myself for forgetting my notebook. It was still laying on my bed from when I had stopped to get dressed. I would have to remember to write all of this down later.
He lay his folded arms up on the table, placing his head on top. . . how cute he looked, “My mother died when she gave birth to Mokuba,” My eyes widened with shock, “And my father died in a car accident years after.” He glanced up at me, unmoved by his own words.
“Wow. . . did you ever hate Mokuba?”
“I did at first. I used to tell my father to give Mokuba to God in exchange for my mother back.” He looked down at the table, apparently ashamed for ever allowing those words to leave his mouth, “I regret saying that, now. Mokuba’s life is more important to me. He was only a baby, it wasn’t his fault that she died.”
“What about the rest of your family? You know, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins?”
“They passed us from family to family, until they had all of our inheritance, and then dumped us off at the Domino City orphanage.” He chuckled low in his throat, a rather pitiful laugh at that, “I don’t give a fuck about them.”
I bit my lower lip. Okay, so his life wasn’t exactly perfect in the beginning. He did get to be the richest guy in the city though. I had absentmindedly begun to rub his head slightly with my left hand, my fingers running through those silky locks of brown hair. I was about to pull away, believing that he would instantly go off on me, but instead I watched as his eyes fluttered closed. “So,” I continued, “You had a childhood full of misery. . . and then were adopted into a life of luxury?” I had thought that it was an innocent question, but his reaction told me otherwise.
“Fuck no!!” He slapped my hand away, standing quickly and nearly falling. I had jumped up as well, in an attempt to catch him, but he only pushed me away again, backing up until he was against the wall, “You don’t fucking know anything! My life was never good, you fucking mutt, you fucking coward! You don’t know how good you have it! You don’t know! You don’t know!” Without thinking, I didn’t tend to be thinking much lately, I roughly grabbed his arms, pulling him against me. He grabbed onto my shirt, his head over my right shoulder, and he barely whispered into my ear, “You don’t know what he did to me. . .”
I shivered. I didn’t really know what he meant, but the whole aura of it. It were as though the room had come down with some sort of icy chill. You don’t know what he did to me. . . Just the sound of it was unnerving. Not only that, but his voice was not confident. It was barely even audible, as though he wasn’t sure if he truly wanted to tell me or not. “Do you mean,” I started, “What your step father did?” His head nodded against my shoulder, his grip loosening. I could feel him squirm slightly against my body, but I held him tighter, “Seto,” He became rigid at the use of his first name, “I want you to give me your word right now that you will tell me about your life with your step father.”
“Why?” It was almost choked out, like how a child would speak when you told them you had to take their favorite toy away.
“Because I have a feeling that you’ve been hiding something horrible all these years and that you need to tell someone. You need to let everything out. If you do, you’ll feel better about it. I promise you, I won’t laugh at you, poke fun at you, spread your secrets. . . what you tell me stays between you and me, do you understand? And what I tell you stays between just us as well.” Again, he nodded, though slightly more hesitant than he had last time, “Now, give me your word.”
“I will tell you, in time.” My arms loosened slightly, giving him enough space to lean back and look into my eyes. His own sapphire-colored eyes were cold again, protecting him. The eyes really did seem to be the window to the soul. . . too bad they weren’t the window to the mind as well. I would give so much to know exactly what he was thinking right now.
A light ping rung through the air and as though on cue, both of us turned our heads towards the oven, “Let me get it,” I offered, “You just have a seat.” For once, he listened to me and returned to his place at the table, staring off into space again. I grabbed the oven mitt off of the counter slipping it on and using my other hand to pull open the oven. I reached in and pulled it out with ease, being careful not to burn my arm on the edges. The smell of freshly baked pizza flooded my nostrils and I looked back to see if perhaps Seto had, by some strange chance, reacted to it as well. He only watched me.
“Stop looking at my ass.” I joked and smiled at him, and like many times that day, I could have sworn that I saw a slight smile sneak up on those little pink lips. I sat the hot pan on the stove, so it wouldn’t burn the counter, and slipped off the glove, making my way over to the table and leaning onto it, using my arms to hold me up. “Smile.”
“What?”
“Smil e. If you smile, I won’t ask anymore questions about your family until tomorrow.” I grinned stupidly at him.
His mouth shifted into numerous little poses. He frowned deeply, apparently not liking this one bit, “You won’t ask me anymore questions about my family until tomorrow if I smile? That’s all I have to do?”
“Yup, somehow I think that’ll be more difficult for you to do than anything else.” He turned his face up at me, “Oh, and it has to look genuine.”
For a moment he hesitated, licking his lips attractively as though in thought, before his lips parted, showing perfectly straight, white teeth. His lips stretched in a manner foreign to him, his cheek bones lifting up towards his eyes. . . his eyes which seemed to sparkle by the power of some non-existent light. He was . . . “Beautiful.”
The smile was gone and now he looked uneasy, “What?”
“Nothing.” I turned back to my. . . our neglected pizza, bringing out the pizza cutter and slicing it, “Let’s just eat this before it gets cold.”
Again, I’ll skip through that boring half hour of eating in silence, with occasional glances at one another whenever the awkward quiet got to be a bit too much. I cleared the table, leaving him to sit, which he was likely accustomed to at his own house, and look around for awhile.
“What do you do all day?” My question was pretty random, if I do say so myself, but the perfect way to start a conversation.
“School and work.” He leaned back in the chair, arms folded loosely, those rosy lips curled into a slight pout. His eyes has their usual color, his barrier apparently back up after that slight change in pace earlier.
“That’s it? Don’t you go out with your friends?” I felt stupid right away. Who would be friends with an asshole like him?
“I don’t have friends, I have acquaintances.” He said it plainly as though it was uncool to have friends or something. He really acted way too old for his age.
“Why don’t you try acting like a teenager for a change, rather than acting like an old fart all the time?” His eyes widened a bit, likely at my word usage, but dimmed soon after, not being one to show much emotion. Though he had been ever since he came here. . . “I think you’ve let your guard down.”
“I don’t need to guard myself around one little runt like yourself.”
“Do you always have to be such a fucking asshole?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to act like this the entire project?”
“Absolutely.”
It was another standoff, me glaring and him just looking amused. I hated that. I wanted to wipe that holier-than-thou smirk right off that doll-like face of his, “Stand up.” I demanded it, not really sure why yet, but I did, and he chuckled a bit, not phased by my sudden order, “I said stand up!” His smile was gone now, replaced by a rather annoyed expression. His eyes studied me intently. I guessed that he was just realizing how dead serious I was.
“And why, dare I ask, would I listen to you?”
From that point on, it were as though something else had taken ahold of my body and begun moving it like I were a puppet on strings. . . but at the same time, I knew what I was after, I knew, what I was going to do. In a flash, I was at the tables side, holding him high above his seat by his right arm. He winced slightly, in shock from my strength probably. I looked like a fucking weakling, but I was fucking strong as hell. I had to be strong to get through what I went through growing up, “You think I’m fucking playing, Kaiba?” He swung at me with his left hand, an almost frantic movement, but I caught it with ease, holding it with the other wrist in my right hand. I moved to the wall nearest the kitchen table and shoved him against it. Careful to shove him down to make him appear shorter than me, I crushed my body against his, eliciting a few grunts from that lithe body.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
“Teaching you a lesson.” A look crossed his face as though he’d seen a ghost. The color drained from his face, his blue eyes going blank as total shock, or so it seemed, swept across him. I could feel him go limp in my grip and I let go quickly, letting him drop to the floor. I fell to my knees beside him, “Woah, you alright?” I was in a slight panic now, what the fuck happened? Was that some sort of freakish form of self-defense?
“D-don’t. . .” He muttered, his eyes glazed over. . . his shook slightly when I moved to touch him, “N-no! No, don’t! Don’t do it! I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It won’t happen again! Don’t touch me! Leave me alone! No! It hurts, it hurts!”
Okay, I was officially in full blown panic by then, my eyes were open so far, I thought they’d soon pop out of my skull, my hands were waving about in a fury as he screamed and shouted and called out. I wasn’t doing anything! “Seto, chill out, dude!”
“I hate you Gozaburo!” He wailed this out, as though it were a last resort against some unknown force. Wait, that name. . .
“What did you call me?” A perfectly natural question to ask, in my opinion.
He trembled, “M-master. . .” I pulled him into my arms, he fought against me, but I was stronger and held him against my chest.
“Shh,” I whispered, rubbing his back, “It’s me, Jounouchi.” Never in the seven layers of Hell did I ever imagine I would be sitting against the wall of my kitchen, hold ‘the great’ Seto Kaiba and rocking him like a two-year old. Trauma. . . Gozaburo. . . Gozaburo Kaiba? His step dad? It was slowly coming together. Was Seto abused as a child?
His eyes fluttered open, he looked like he had just awaken from a years sleep, “Huh?” His quickly analyzed our position, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Trying to calm your ass down.”
“What?”
“You spazzed out and started screaming for me not to touch you and that something hurt, then you called me. . .” I stopped, actually thinking before I spoke for once. Perhaps, I thought, it wasn’t such a good idea to bring it up right now. I did promise to leave his family life alone for the day.
“Called you what?”
“I don’t remember, don’t worry about it.” I looked into his eyes, and for once, I think I understood what they were trying to tell me. They were thanking me very subtly. Perhaps this sort of thing happened more often than he’d like for it to, though I’m sure he’d prefer it to not exist whatsoever. There was a sort of silent agreement between the two of us. I just wish I knew what triggered that, so I wouldn’t do it again. Was it something I said? Was it the act I committed? I sighed audibly, “You wanna go out somewhere? To help pass the time?”
“Out? Where?” He sounded like a child asking his mom or dad about something he was ignorant to. Had he never been out with friends? Had he never just gone out for the hell of it? “Kaiba, we’re going to go to the mall, or a club, or the shops around town. . . anywhere to get you into teenage life. You have got to get out more often!
“The mall? With you?” His tone was degrading, but his eyes laughed, his mouth curving up slightly at the edges. I nearly got defensive, pissed off even. . . but I thought for a moment and smiled at him.
“You don’t really mean that.” A strange feeling came over me. Perhaps, deep down, he was a nice guy. Perhaps, all of those times he taunted and teased me, it was his way of playing around, like I would do with Yuugi and Honda, “You’re just joking, right?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. . .” He stood and brushed himself off. Okay, so he wasn’t ready to admit that he was a good guy just yet.
I headed for the door, “We’d better get walking then, it’s about five miles to the mall.”
“Woah, woah, woah,” I smiled, though he couldn’t see, as he was staring at my back. I knew he’d react that way, “Walk? There is no way in hell I’m walking.”
“Well. . . you could always pay our way in a cab.” It was my turn to smirk. I suppose that my intentions finally dawned on him at that point.
“Fine, whatever. . . just as long as we don’t have to walk.” He walked out the door, keeping his distance from me as I followed soon after.
I couldn’t wait to introduce Seto Kaiba to life as an average teenager.
- - -