Chapter Text
Jounouchi's dad warns him not to run with the wrong crowd.
So, of course, that’s exactly what he does.
It’s not hard, considering Domino City is like a coin on the sidewalk—sun shiny on the surface, rubbed raw and grimy underneath. Behind all of the silver screens and mega-corporations and fresh-faced kids with card decks in one hand and school bags in the other, there’s the people running the show, suits with too much money and men with bloody knuckles controlling the more unruly parts of it all.
Jounouchi misses being one of the fresh-faced kids, if he’s honest.
He’s sitting in his apartment on the floor, counting out his rent money one last time before it’s due at the end of the week, making sure everything is in place and accounted for before he shoves it in the envelope at the top of his closet.
He hides it more out of instinct than necessity—anyone who broke into his shoe sized apartment would be more eager to steal his couch than go rifling through loose envelopes at random. There’s not many places to hide much either, and as far as he can tell no one can even see into the place to tell if someone lives there; his sole window points out at the brick of the identical apartment complex next door.
He can hear an argument happening in the alleyway below, but it’s I’m going to beat the shit out of you for a reason arguing and not I feel like beating the shit out of you for no reason arguing, so he really doesn’t feel the need to intervene. Everyone’s got their own shit going on.
He grabs a jacket off of the back of the chair at his kitchen table that creaks (he’s only got two chairs, and the one that creaks worries him enough that it’s been demoted to coat hanger) before he sweeps out of the front door, checking the lock once, pulling hard to make sure the whole thing is closed for real, and then throwing in one more tug for good luck.
Honestly, Jounouchi can admit that most people would probably hate life like this. Living week to week off of the occasional part-time odd or odder job, scrounging around in the couch cushions for coins when rent payments sneak up on him, listening to the city come to life at night in the loud laughter of drunk people in the alleyways and couples fucking from an apartment over.
Jounouchi though? He loves it. It’s where he belongs.
There’s a skip in his step when he hits the first floor, hands in his pockets as he heads for the main street, ready to meet up with a couple work associates who had mentioned needing a few extra hands with a job they were working. Jounouchi doesn’t look too hard at the details of it—not when he’s getting paid.
They’re meeting halfway across town, where the East side intersects with the rest of Domino City. Jounouchi loves his section of the city, sure, but his jobs usually drag him far enough that he wonders what it would be like to live near all the high rises and hoity-toity assholes—not like he has any way to get himself there. His best attributes are the five fingers involved in a left hook, daydreaming be damned.
He takes the train part way and walks the rest because it’s January and nicer out than he would have expected. It’s a change of pace to get some fresh air when he’s spent the better part of the week wasting away at home. He had hobbies once, he thinks.
The two guys he’s meeting—Lumis and Umbra—are standing together on the sidewalk, lit cigarettes held aloft like they think they’re in a gangster movie. Jounouchi snorts and tries to remember to keep his comments about their matching ensemble to himself.
“Yo!” he shouts, nearing, his breath puffing out in a cloud of steam. “You guys waiting for me?”
“Hardly,” Umbra grunts. “We would’a left you if you’d been—” he presses his fingers together. “This much later.”
“I’m sure you would have,” Jounouchi says, a grin lighting up his face. “I’m real grateful you didn’t, though.”
Lumis huffs. “Come on, Joey. Let’s get this over with.”
Honestly, Jounouchi doesn’t know what this even is. When he’d gotten the rundown from these two’s boss (calling him a boss is maybe wrong, probably just their bigger, smarter friend, ‘cause Jounouchi doesn’t fuck with guys who have Bosses anymore) he’d just been instructed that he was going to be on lookout while they shook down some guy that owes them some money.
Jounouchi knows they probably just pinned some poor fucker as an easy target, but he gets a piece of the cut anyway, and rent is two days out. Plus, they pitched it to him as a chat, and plausible deniability is a hell of a drug. He probably won’t have to hit the guy himself, anyway. His sympathy has its limits too—even he knows not to borrow money you can’t pay back. That’s one adage Jounouchi’s dad passed down that managed to stick.
He keeps his fingers warm with his breath as they walk, glancing around as the city gets brighter the closer they get to downtown, seedy parlors making way for bright game shops and arcades and the lingering family-owned restaurant. Umbra and Lumis keep conversation to themselves, and Jounouchi drowns it out by going over his grocery list in his head.
Their group looks suspicious as hell among the stream of people moving with them down the street, but that’s what they bring Jounouchi along for in the first place, and a flashed smile from him at a passing glaring woman melts most inhibitions. Jounouchi, ever the people pleaser. He wishes Hiroto could see him now.
Or, maybe he doesn’t, considering his two partners stumble to a stop, and Jounouchi promptly plows into their backs, tumbling to a halt with a sputter. “What the hell, guys—”
“Hey!” Lumis says, glaring ahead. There’s a flash of a flipped finger, a dark suit, and Lumis turns around to grab Umbra by the arm. “Motherfucker pushed me!”
“Look at his suit,” Umbra hisses, an undercurrent of excitement in his voice. “That thing could probably pay off the tab at every bar I’ve ever been to.”
“Boys,” Jounouchi starts. He puts a hand on both of their backs, though Umbra and Lumis both take off in the direction the man was walking. “Let’s stay focused, yeah?”
“Nah,” Umbra says, and cracks his knuckles. “Let’s fuck him up.”
Now, this is shit Jounouchi is used to. The guys he works with have eyes that wander worse than Hiroto in high school. They pick marks and get distracted, and Jounouchi has weaseled his way out of more than a few unsavory situations because someone couldn’t keep their hands out of someone else's pockets.
“Hey,” Jounouchi says, trotting after them. “Quick reminder? I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Keep your trap shut,” Umbra sneers, “and we’ll give you a cut of whatever we take off this guy too.”
Damn, this is stupid. He’s not about to turn his nose up at a bonus, though.
“There,” Lumis says, and the man they’re tailing peels off down a side street. “Dumb bitch went into the alley to take a call.”
“Let’s go teach him a lesson, Umbra.”
“Don’t kill him,” Jounouchi offers, and earns two flat glares that make him snicker.
Umbra and Lumis disappear down the alleyway, and Jounouchi glances around, makes sure no one saw them disappear, and then leans up against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He’s close enough to hear any commotion from the alley and still be able to watch the streets. His hand twitches for a missing pack of cigarettes—Yugi convinced him to quit, and the last pack he bought is gathering silt in the river near his apartment.
He only used to smoke when he was doing stupid shit like this, like karmic tradeoff or something. He’ll buy his way to forgiveness with a pack of menthols and leave the upper crust of Domino City to get mugged in alleyways.
“Excuse me,” he hears, quiet over the soft bustle of the street in front of him. “Say mister, you wouldn’t mind helping us with something real quick, would‘ya?”
Jounouchi snorts. Their routine is tired but effective, even if Jounouchi knows that it always ends in some high-class businessperson shakily handing over all of the money they’ve got on them.
He pauses, though, when the quiet droning of their cornered victim cuts in quickly. “I would. Can’t you find someone else to beg money off of, bum?”
It takes a moment, the silence settling in the alley, Jounouchi’s mouth hanging open, to realize that voice is familiar. It sends an immediate curl of annoyance to take hold of Jounouchi’s chest, and he frowns, because familiar doesn’t mean recognizable, even if his reaction feels instinctual. Like muscle memory.
Lumis snarls, “What the fuck did you just say to me, rich boy?”
“I said,” the voice repeats, and realization crashes into Jounouchi like a fucking freight train. You’ve got to be kidding. “Get lost, nobody.”
Seto fucking Kaiba.
Jounouchi turns on his heel, shooting off of the wall. He doesn’t believe it. Not because Kaiba is being blatantly rude to two men with enough mass combined make a second Kaiba, but because Kaiba is here, on this street, in Domino City. He was sure at this point that Kaiba spent most of his time jet setting off to Egypt and America and Europe advertising his goddamn game tech. He didn’t expect, didn’t even think—
“Jesus,” Lumis growls, and Jounouchi turns the corner quick just to see Kaiba held tight by the collar, staring down Lumis’s death glare. Lumis doesn’t have much height on Kaiba, because Kaiba’s always been ridiculously, annoyingly tall, but other than that, Kaiba looks as cold and uncaring as he usually does. Like he’s not about to get his ass beat into the ground. “It sounds like you’re trying to get hit.”
“Go for it,” Kaiba says, lips lifting in a fake smile. “Shot’s wide open.”
“Hey,” Umbra says, and grabs the edge of Lumis’s track suit leg. “T-that’s Kaiba, man. Like Kaiba Kaiba.”
“So?” Lumis says, and tips his head side to side with an audible crack. “I don’t care how much money the rude bastard has—he can still get his ass beat.”
“Lumis—”
“Shut it, Umbra.”
Jounouchi's voice is caught in his throat. He’s always been a fight over flight guy, though he knows rationally that it’s fight, flight, or freeze. Used to feel more than natural that his first instinct upon seeing Kaiba’s ugly ass sneer was trying to take a shot at him, even with Yugi enlisting Hiroto to hold him back.
Now, though, he stands completely still as Lumis pulls his arm back and slams a fist into the side of Kaiba’s face, a quick, angry shot that leaves Jounouchi wincing and Kaiba getting shoved up against the wall.
It’s a hit that’s going to bruise, the kind of thing that makes your teeth ring just looking at it. The kind of shot you can only get in on a guy holding still and waiting for it, and Kaiba’s always been a prideful bastard, but you expect he’d retain some of the basic caveman instincts that make you flinch away from an incoming fist. Flight, fight, or freeze.
“Hold it, hold it!” Jounouchi shouts, watching Lumis gets ready for another punch and getting nothing in return from Kaiba but an icy glare. His cheek is scuffed and already starting to bruise, blooming a bright pink Jounouchi knows will turn a mottled, plum color.
Even at the sound of his voice, Kaiba doesn’t turn, and Jounouchi doesn’t really expect him to, considering Kaiba’s previous attitude about him. Jounouchi's astonished he managed to hold onto that for so long. He’s either just as much of an asshole as Jounouchi remembered or really trying to get his ass beat right now.
Jounouchi steps up to put a hand on Lumis’s arm, icy anger worming its way around his sympathy when Kaiba is giving him nonverbal attitude. “Bad target,” he hisses, shaking Lumis when he won’t look away from Kaiba. “Come on, man, let's just leave him.”
“I don’t give a shit if he’s the fucking emperor. Nobody talks to me like that.”
“How terrifying,” Kaiba says with some effort. His jaw’s probably fucked—Lumis has smacked Jounouchi softer than that and he still spent a week icing bruises after. He’s surprised when Kaiba turns his head and spits and one of his teeth doesn’t come out with it.
“Dude,” Umbra says again, more urgently, “You know we’re not supposed to shake down big heads like him.”
Lumis jolts Kaiba by the collar. “Where’s your little army of bodyguards, trust fund brat?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Kaiba says.
Alright, Jounouchi has lost hold of this situation much faster than he realized. His luck goes up in smoke when Umbra says, “Dude, if you attack him like this, you’re gonna have to get him, like, bad. He’ll remember you.”
Lumis cracks his neck again. “Not when I’m through with him.”
“Fuck,” Jounouchi hisses, stomach plummeting.
He winces when Lumis slugs Kaiba across the face again, hard, one punch that cracks Kaiba’s head dangerously against the brick, and then lays in with another that seems to crack his nose the exact same way. Kaiba just sniffs, glances up through mused bangs and asks, “Is that all you’ve got, loser?”
“Stop,” Jounouchi wheezes, reaching down to grab Umbra’s arm, hissing through his teeth. What the fuck is wrong with Kaiba? He’s been confrontational before, sure, but there’s confrontational and there’s stupid, and Kaiba sure as hell knows he’s not about to win this fight.
Jounouchi sees Kaiba’s gaze flick down to him, his blue eyes hard as steel and devoid of light, and Jounouchi sucks in a breath, more than familiar with that particular look. He sees it in the mirror sometimes. It fucking terrifies him.
He says, quickly, “We’ll find someone else—”
“I don’t give a shit about the money, Joey,” Lumis one hisses. He draws his fist back for another punch. “Someone needs to teach this bitch a lesson.”
Fuck, Jounouchi is so dead.
Before he realizes it, he’s reeled back and slammed his head straight into his Lumis’s, wincing as Kaiba crumples from his hold. Lumis spends half a second reeling before he turns, anger flashing fast enough in his face for Jounouchi to barely register it, before Jounouchi punches him so hard it makes his knuckles smart.
“Fuck!” Lumis yells, caught and steadied by Umbra. He glances up, one hand to his face, snarl curled tight. “You’re fucking dead, Joey!”
“I told you to chill,” Jounouchi says, arm out, the one barrier between Lumis and Kaiba. He shakes his left hand out as pain throbs through his knuckles again, before he steps back. “Come on, let’s go.”
Lumis sneers. “We’re not going anywhere with you.”
Jounouchi reaches behind him, finds Kaiba’s arm, and grins. “Good thing I wasn’t talking to you, then.”
Kaiba chokes out a surprised wheeze when Jounouchi jerks him to his feet, and then drags him out of the alleyway and into a dead sprint. Jounouchi's probably quicker than Kaiba, but they’re only able to go so fast when they have to bob and weave through an unhappy flow of people walking mostly in the opposite direction. Behind them, Jounouchi can hear Lumis and Umbra shouting, and he peels Kaiba down a few side streets, a corner, and then down into the subway station.
They get lost in the crowd underground, and Jounouchi pops up on his toes to shove Kaiba’s head lower than the crowd—tall motherfucker—and prays that they’re out of the clear.
They are for about ten seconds, before Jounouchi spots Lumis standing on one of the stairs that lead down into the station, scanning the crowd, and he shoves Kaiba forward, hisses, “Go, go, go—”
Jounouchi manages—because he’s done it on more than one occasion—to tug Kaiba through the automated turnstile on the ass of the woman in front of them, and then onto a train at random, not managing to let a breath go until the doors close, and Lumis and Umbra are out of sight.
Jounouchi pulls Kaiba over to a seat and sits with a sigh, head tipped back against the window behind him. He groans. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me?” Kaiba scoffs, wrenching his wrist out of Jounouchi’s hand. It’s weird since he’s been dragging Kaiba around the entire time they ran—the flat of his palm goes uncomfortably cool. “You never have been one to stay in your own lane, Jounouchi.”
“My own lane?” Jounouchi repeats incredulously. He sits up straight to glare up at Kaiba, who’s apparently too good to sit on the subway. “You’re the one that waltzed out of your penthouse into my part of town. What the fuck were you doing on a Domino City backstreet? I thought people like you stuck to fuckin’ luxury hotels and shit.”
Kaiba glares. “I didn’t need your help.”
“The hell you didn’t!” Jounouchi shouts, wincing when the few people around them glance his way. Jounouchi growls and drags Kaiba down to the seat next to him. “Kaiba,” he hisses, quieter. “Were you trying to get the shit kicked out of you? I know you always loved picking a fight, but—”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Kaiba says, cutting him off, closing up like a shutter. “Like I said, mutt, I had it handled.”
“Ugh,” Jounouchi groans, sitting back in the seat. “You’re fucking incredible, you know that? Goddamn—”
He wipes his hands over his face, and Kaiba lapses into cold silence, the rumble of the subway humming around them. The windows turn their car golden when they pass out of the underground and onto the train tracks, sunlight pouring in freely, dust catching on sunrays. They pull up to a stop, and a few people get off, and less get back on. Jounouchi glances up and confirms that they are, in fact, on a route he knows. It’ll take him back to his place, at least.
Christ, Jounouchi is still a bundle of nerves and adrenaline, hands shaking where they’re laced in his lap, his knuckles beyond bruises. He casts a glance to the side at Kaiba and sees that he’s not any better off—one of his eyes is starting to purple with a shiner, his jaw is kinda swollen, and his clothes are wrinkled to hell and back.
“You look like shit.”
Kaiba grunts. “Likewise.”
Jounouchi sighs, and it’s like all the anger, the adrenaline, drains out of him immediately. He feels like a person again. A person who has fucked up very, very badly. Kaiba slumps at his side like he’s coming to a similar conclusion.
It’s the first time Jounouchi has really looked at him since he realized it was Kaiba specifically about to get his teeth kicked in. He hasn’t seen Kaiba in person since their high school graduation ceremony, though he sees him in passing sometimes on TV. Or when he makes an appearance with Yugi, and Jounouchi has to slog through press photos of them together.
He looks the same as he did in high school, still with the same carefully cut hair, broad shoulders, staggering height. Jounouchi can admit that he’s objectively handsome, the type of handsome that lands him ads with cologne companies sitting loose legged in expensive chairs, tugging on more expensive cufflinks. Jounouchi’s well aware he was always a little jealous of that, just because his own looks were good for getting him out of trouble, not into modeling contracts.
But TV Kaiba is not Train Kaiba, and Jounouchi doesn’t fail to see the marked differences. Poor guy’s got first class eyebags, ready for a weekend trip to Milan, a slump to his shoulders, the usual air of arrogance he carries gone like he actually did get it beat out of him. Jounouchi feels a twinge of something sharp in his chest, a feeling that darts his eyes away when he can’t stand to look any longer. It’s sympathy pain most likely, because Kaiba has always had this annoying, constant strength to him. And Jounouchi is more than familiar with the kind of hole that leaves when it starts to slip.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Jounouchi asks, glancing sideways at Kaiba.
“Do you think I’d let you drag me in here without checking?”
“Right,” Jounouchi drawls. “Is that the reason you’re headed towards the East side?”
Kaiba glares at him as hard as he can manage. “I said I knew where I was going, not that it’s where I needed to be. It’s not like you gave me much of a space to intervene.”
“Oh,” Jounouchi says, his momentary victory folding in on itself. “Right. Sorry.”
“It’s… fine.” Kaiba glances out the far window. “It’s not like I can go home like this.”
“Like…?”
“The bruises,” Kaiba huffs. He rubs at one almost mindlessly, and then winces. “Mokuba will worry.”
Right, Kaiba’s kid brother. Jounouchi remembers how he’d follow Kaiba around constantly when they were in high school, a burst of elementary school energy on Kaiba’s melodramatic coattails. Though Jounouchi never saw Mokuba at large the way he did Kaiba once they’d graduated. Apparently, they’re still close, if the hesitance on Kaiba’s face means anything.
Still, he feels a little bad for the guy. Jounouchi knows what it’s like to have a sibling you never want to show your worst, though Mokuba probably wouldn’t have a conniption about it the way Shizuka would. Or, maybe he would. That kid worshiped his older brother.
Jounouchi sighs.
“This train goes back to my place,” he says hesitantly. “If you want, I can patch you up real quick.”
Kaiba shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye. “I have world class physicians at my beck and call. I think I’d like to be more than patched up.”
“Fine then, asshole,” Jounouchi snaps, turning in his seat. “Go home then and call the world class physicians to freak your brother out.” He sits back again with his arms crossed, “That’s what I get for trying to help your selfish, ungrateful ass.”
They lapse into silence again, and Jounouchi huffs, glancing out the window and watching the scenery rolling by, the train stopping at a few more stops, people filtering in and out of the doors. They’re only a few stops away from his apartment now, and Jounouchi will be glad to rid this whole experience from his mind. Maybe he’ll tell Yugi about it the next time they catch lunch. Guess who I ran into—
“Wait,” Kaiba says eventually, the stop before Jounouchi’s. He looks like he’s put something particularly poor tasting in my mouth, nose wrinkled. “You’re—” he clears his throat. “You’re right. I can’t go back like this.”
Jounouchi sighs. He lets his posture unspool. “What do you want from me then, Kaiba?”
Kaiba dips his head. He breathes out hard. “Help.”
—
“Your apartment is shit.”
Jounouchi doesn’t even bother rolling his eyes. He just tries to get the door open without breaking the hinges again.
To be fair, Kaiba’s not wrong. Jounouchi’s apartment is one big room, save for his teeny tiny bathroom just through the door at the foot of his underwhelming twin bed. He bought the mattress off his neighbor before he could throw it out, and before that, he’d been sleeping on a bunch of folded up hoodies. It saved him a quick buck, but that had coincided with the two months he waited tables at a bougie Thai restaurant, and standing on his feet all day and then coming home to sleep on top of a bunch of lumpy shirts had made him feel fifty instead of nineteen.
That was a few years ago, though. Since then, Jounouchi’s managed to secure a couch, his kitchen table that barely fits in the space between the genkan and his kitchenette, his two rickety wood chairs, and his TV that goes to static after you’ve been watching it for about half an hour. A couple thumps to the side usually gets it in working order again.
“Sit,” Jounouchi says, and the front door groans loudly as it closes behind him. Kaiba glances over his shoulder and down his nose, and Jounouchi is struck with a familiar resentment, like putting on an old coat. Nobody pisses him off quite like Kaiba does.
“What diseases am I going to catch sitting on your biohazard furniture?”
“Nothing your beloved physicians can’t fix,” Jounouchi snaps. “I’m just here to help with your bruising.”
Kaiba sniffs indignantly but sits down anyway, glancing around the room with a carefully guarded expression. Jounouchi chooses to ignore it, beelining away from the couch to get something to ice Kaiba down while he sulks.
“So,” he says, pulling a bag of mostly frozen peas out of his freezer. Honestly, his fridge doesn’t work the best, but it’s better than nothing, and at least his milk goes bad in a matter of days instead of hours. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Kaiba protests, watching Jounouchi with a close eye when he crosses the apartment to squat at Kaiba’s side, offering him the bag of peas. “I’m statistically and objectively better off than most people—why are you handing me a bag of frozen vegetables?”
“Bruising,” Jounouchi explains. “I ain’t got any of them fancy ice packs so. Put it on your eye until it stops throbbing, and then press it to your jaw. Let me see your back.”
Kaiba freezes. “Why?”
Jounouchi rolls his eyes. “Because, jackass, I saw how hard Lumis’s dumbass pressed you into a brick wall. That shit scratches, and I have antiseptic.” He tips his head and scrutinizes Kaiba’s face closer. “Your lip is split too. Fuck it, I’m just going to get the antiseptic. Take your shirt off.”
Jounouchi pushes himself to his feet by his knees, grunting quietly when they pop, before he turns and heads towards his bathroom. “And don’t be weird about it!” he yells from the bathroom, rooting around in his medicine cabinet for the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and bandages. He rips a couple pieces of toilet paper off as well and reenters the room just as Kaiba finishes undoing the buttons on his shirt, his back turned to the bathroom, and slips it over his shoulders.
Entirely involuntarily, Jounouchi sucks a breath through his teeth. Kaiba’s shoulders and back are a little scratched, sure, but those are far from the only marks on him. He’s got faded but still there scars, horrible things, the kind that must have run deep when he had them, that probably lived in his skin for weeks.
Jounouchi is quiet, and Kaiba tosses a hard glance over his shoulder. He looks kind of endearingly goofy like that, with a pack of frozen peas pressed to his eye. “Quit staring, mongrel,” he says, and just like that, Jounouchi is reminded why Kaiba is so hard to feel sympathy for.
He just rolls his eyes and takes his place at Kaiba’s side again, huffing when Kaiba goes stiff with Jounouchi behind him.
“Relax,” Jounouchi scoffs. “I’m just gonna clean up back here. Take this,” he says, and hands Kaiba the pieces of toilet paper. “Press those to your lip ‘till the bleedin’ stops.”
“World class supplies here,” Kaiba says flatly. Jounouchi considers pouring the antiseptic directly on his wounds with no warning.
Instead, they work in relative silence, Jounouchi cleaning Kaiba’s wounds slowly and carefully, shushing him when Kaiba’s breath catches, his muscles shifting under Jounouchi’s hands. Kaiba’s not as sturdy under his clothes as Jounouchi would have imagined, like his sharp suits and clean clothes would make you believe. He’s kind of skinny, even with the broad shoulders and the tapered waist. Jounouchi’s fingers slide over the slight poke of his ribs, and he frowns.
“I’d rather you not take the scenic route with my body, if you don’t mind,” Kaiba says flatly, and Jounouchi clutches his offending wandering hand against his chest with a wave of embarrassment.
“Sorry.”
They continue in silence, and Jounouchi puts a hand between Kaiba’s shoulder blades with a sigh, a roll of gauze in one hand.
“This is going to hurt.”
“It’s fine. Just get it over with.”
Jounouchi is hit with the urge to calm Kaiba somehow, like a nervous horse he’s trying not to get kicked by, and the comparison makes him laugh, something that has Kaiba going stiff with anger.
“Is something funny, Jounouchi? Would you like to share with the room?”
“Not everything is about you,” Jounouchi says, and presses the gauze to Kaiba’s back a little too hard. Underneath his hands, Kaiba jolts, and Jounouchi thinks, serves him right. “Even if you try an’ make it that way.”
“Please,” Kaiba scoffs. “The world revolves around me.”
Jounouchi is hit, suddenly, with the same simmering envy he felt for Kaiba in high school. Because as much as he hates it, Kaiba isn’t particularly wrong. All signs point towards Kaiba being the reason the world goes round, his money and power and influence eclipsing what most people would manage within three of their lifetimes. Kaiba is allowed to say he owns the world and mean it, and people bend at the knee, nod, say yes, Kaiba. With Jounouchi, he’d get a simpering laugh, a pitying glance. Kaiba hisses at the pass of the antiseptic over his next scrape.
“Is that why you think you can just provoke some punks on the street and not get killed?”
“Please. They couldn’t have killed me if they tried.”
“Dumbass,” Jounouchi hisses. “They sure fucking could have. You’re lucky you’ve just got some scrapes and a broken nose. Speaking of which, where’s your fancy security team or whatever? Seems like you never used to go anywhere without those guys.”
Kaiba goes stiff again, all over, but seems to shake it off quickly, scoffing and crossing an ankle over his knee. “My security team is with me when I need them. Which I don’t always. I’m well within my rights to go wherever I’d like to without them.”
“Yeah, sure. Allowed to go wherever and get the snot beat out of you.”
Kaiba rolls his shoulders, and Jounouchi watches his shoulder blades flex, settling under his skin. “Well, considering you managed such an elegant escape, I don’t think I would have had much trouble.”
“You—” Jounouchi starts angrily, snapping his mouth shut. He knows Kaiba is headstrong, but this is just fucking ridiculous. “We’re not kids anymore,” he snaps, and patches the last of Kaiba’s scrapes. “You’re not fucking invincible.”
Kaiba stays facing away from him as Jounouchi turns his treatment on himself, cleaning and bandaging his busted knuckles and raw skin. He’s lucky Lumis and Umbra went easier on his face than they did Kaiba’s.
“I know,” Kaiba says.
“What?” Jounouchi asks, and Kaiba turns, his hands folded around the peas in his lap, staring straight at him. All the light is drained from him, same as last time, dull and foggy instead of crystalline sapphire. It sends an uneasy shiver down Jounouchi’s spine.
“I’m not invincible,” Kaiba says, with his chin tipped high. “I’m… very aware.”
They hold eye contact for a second, and seeping dread cools Jounouchi’s veins. “Kaiba,” he says slowly. “Should I be worried about you?”
It’s instantaneous, the way Kaiba's face splits into an ugly sneer. “I don’t need lowlife trash worrying about me.”
“Well,” Jounouchi says, breathing past a fresh flare of anger. “Should someone be worrying about you?” He thinks back on Kaiba’s passing concern about Mokuba’s assumed reaction if Kaiba showed up bruised at home. “Is there anyone who can?”
“Fuck you,” Kaiba spits, moving the shitty makeshift ice pack. “You do not know me, Jounouchi—”
“I don’t,” Jounouchi cuts him off with quickly, a thought welling quickly. The scars on his back, Kaiba’s eyes, the way he just seemed so intent on getting the shit beat out of him. “I don’t but I—” he gestures at Kaiba. “I know this, I think.” Jounouchi knows, because he was here once. Going out to get the shit beat out of him on a regular basis, just so it hurt less when his dad did it when he came home. Pushing away worry, bandaging his broken noses in alleyways. Doing the same thing when he was older, without being able to blame it on his dad, just because he was so goddamn miserable.
Kaiba just keeps staring at him. Jounouchi stares back. There’s scrutiny in both of them, unspoken appraisal, like they’re both trying to figure out which of them is worse off. Sitting there with matching bruises, Jounouchi would be hard pressed to pick one over the other.
“You don’t know what this is like,” Kaiba says, with no measure of difficulty. “You don’t know what my life is like. You never will. You’re a stray dog who's barely worth my attention. I should have gone home.”
Familiar hurt pricks, and then rolls off of Jounouchi’s shoulders. Jounouchi had thought, maybe, that him and Kaiba were coming to some kind of understanding. Leave it to Kaiba to still think Jounouchi is beneath him all this time.
But part of him knows that Kaiba can’t keep going on like this. Jounouchi had friends to pull him out of it, Yugi, and Anzu, and Hiroto, who missed when he wiped out on his ass but helped get him back to his feet.
And all Kaiba has, as far as Jounouchi knows, is a little brother that he cares too much about to tell about this.
Jounouchi takes a very deep breath, because he is probably going to deeply regret this.
“Do you want to stay here?” he asks, and Kaiba locks eyes with him, his eyebrows pressing in. “Tonight, I mean.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know.” Jounouchi huffs. He shoves his hands through his hair. “You don’t want to go back home because Mokuba will worry, but you’re still… bruised. Your fucking nose is broken, and whatever you’re running away from—”
“I do not,” Kaiba hisses. “Run away.”
“Take a fucking break then,” Jounouchi snaps. What he doesn’t say is that he worries that Kaiba is just going to go right back out on the street and get jumped without old high school rivals around to save his ass. “Stay here, where nobody knows you, and just… fucking pretend like nothing is going on.”
They watch each other.
Jounouchi has no idea what’s going through Kaiba’s head. He can’t tell if this is an internal thing, or a work thing, or both, or nothing and Jounouchi is just projecting. He knows that he can’t—shouldn’t—just leave Kaiba like this. But asking him to stay is ridiculous. Kaiba’s eye twitches.
“Or fucking don’t,” Jounouchi says, and throws his hands up, standing. “Do whatever, I don’t fucking care. Jesus fucking christ, Kaiba—”
“Sit,” Kaiba says, firmly. It’s not a question, it’s a command, and Jounouchi doesn’t follow it, staying standing but stopping in place. “I’ll text Mokuba,” he says, and glances down at his hands. “I don’t want him to see me like this.”
“Fucking finally,” Jounouchi says, and sweeps his supplies into his arms. Secretly, he’s a little relieved. He starts walking towards the bathroom. “You’re buying dinner.”
Jounouchi orders them delivery while Kaiba sits still on his couch, corresponding with his brother. Jounouchi doesn’t really want to ask how it’s going, and Kaiba isn’t giving up the information willingly, so it doesn’t really matter. They skate around each other in the time it takes for the food to get there in strange, but not uncomfortable silence, and Jounouchi pops the bag of peas back in the freezer when Kaiba’s eye starts to swell and replaces it with a sports drink from the fridge.
Eating is a near silent affair, Jounouchi sat on the floor with a box of takeout, Kaiba still on the couch, picking at his food. They’ve never actually spent this much time together alone before, and Jounouchi doesn’t know what to do with it. Does he try and open Kaiba up? Does he just start talking?
In the end, he says nothing, and Kaiba says nothing, and the interaction, the days’ activities, leave Jounouchi so exhausted that he gathers their things for the trash and says, “You can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Kaiba says, “I had assumed as much,” and Jounouchi bristles, snapping, “You’re an asshole,” as he dumps their stuff in the trash.
Jounouchi doesn’t realize that Kaiba is really here, in his apartment, until he’s dragging out a too big sweatshirt and a pair of sweats for Kaiba to sleep in that he eyes with distaste, lifting the sleeve of the jacket with a frown.
“You could sleep in your own clothes,” Jounouchi says, and Kaiba frowns at him, before resigning himself to his fate with a sigh.
Jounouchi bathes first, happy for the warm water he has for a few minutes, and not at all guilty that Kaiba won’t get the luxury when he goes in next. He changes in the bathroom, tripping over his own pajama pants because he’s way too big for the tiny bathroom stall and tries not to think about how often he sleeps and wakes in the same clothes without someone to catch him on it.
When he comes out of the bathroom, Kaiba is sitting in his bed on the phone, texting quickly.
“Mokuba?” Jounouchi asks.
Kaiba frowns. “No. I’m making sure I don’t have anything important scheduled for tomorrow.”
Jounouchi blinks at him. “It’s a Sunday.”
“And I’m still a CEO.” He blinks at his phone, and without a change in expression, glances up at Jounouchi. “What do you do on Sundays?”
“Nothing on purpose.”
Kaiba breathes through his nose. “Of course. I don’t know why I suspected anything different.”
“Don’t push it,” Jounouchi says, sliding onto his couch. “Don’t forget whose house you’re in, rich boy.”
“The heights of luxury,” Kaiba says flatly. He stands, and heads towards the bathroom, Jounouchi’s clothes tucked up in his arms. He stops, though, just at the door, and asks, “Do you actually do anything, Jounouchi?”
“Duh,” Jounouchi says. “I pick up part time jobs, go to the gym. I make a living for myself.”
Kaiba turns to stare at him. “Does it make you happy?”
Jounouchi shrugs. “Does your CEO bullshit make you happy?”
“No,” Kaiba says quickly. “But I do it too well to care.”
—
Jounouchi has the same recurring dream he’s had about his dad for years.
In high school, he started lying about his age around town, working part time night shifts, saving up money in a shoebox underneath his bed. It wasn’t even his shoebox, he’d found it outside their apartment building on the way back from school. It had tumbled out of a trash bag someone had searched through, and Jounouchi had recognized the brand, because they were nice shoes, ones he’d always dreamed about buying when he finally had enough money.
He’d started saving the money for just that when his dad lost his job, and started coming home earlier, and gambling more, and drinking himself unconscious before Jounouchi had even gotten back from class. The money stopped being for sneakers pretty fast. It became the money he was ready to drop on a security deposit for his own place when he knew he couldn't take it anymore.
In his dream, his dad can’t speak. But he finds the shoebox, the money inside, and he grunts and groans at Jounouchi and rips all of his money to shreds, and Jounouchi watches several years of his life go down the drain. He realizes he has to stay here forever, rolling over on the shards of beer bottles in the middle of the night, and suffering the men that come by their house who ask for his dad whenever he’s conveniently not home. He sees it all laid out for himself in the flash of his dad’s angry, quick moving hands.
Jounouchi doesn’t say anything in the dream. He doesn’t have any energy left to try.
—
In the morning, Jounouchi wakes before Kaiba does. It’s because he’s not used to having anyone else in his apartment, not several years off from group sleepovers and his dad’s chainsaw snoring. He’s used to being alone.
Still, he sits up on the couch—oh his neck is so fucked up—and looks over at his bed, quick to remember the previous day and his unfortunate offer for Kaiba to spend the night.
Kaiba sleeps uncomfortably flat on his back like a corpse, even though his mouth is pinched. His bruises look worse today, purple and red, his nose slightly crooked. Jounouchi hopes his expensive doctors can fix that.
He makes himself a cup of coffee as quietly as he possibly can, because he feels like if anyone needs the sleep, it’s Kaiba.
The familiarity of routine is nice, watching his cheap coffee maker drip into a mug Yugi bought him a few years back for his birthday. It says #1 Duelist on it, which always makes Jounouchi laugh. Great gift, Mr. King of Games.
“Is that coffee?” Kaiba asks from bed, sitting up slowly, wincing when the morning light hits him, and then hissing when the soreness from his injuries comes right in on its heels.
“And painkillers,” Jounouchi offers, raising the white bottle he had on the counter, shaking its contents. “Come get ‘em.”
Kaiba gets out of Jounouchi’s bed slowly, stretching for a moment, grunting when his back pops, and then hissing, reaching up to touch gingerly at his nose.
“Don’t touch it,” Jounouchi says. “It’s broken, jackass. Come take a painkiller and deal with it until you can get to a doctor.”
“It’s alarming how typical this all seems to you,” Kaiba says, crossing around the small counter into the kitchenette, reaching for the bottle of pills. He also confiscates Jounouchi’s cup of coffee, which earns him a barked hey! as Kaiba pops a pill into his mouth and then promptly drains the whole thing. Jounouchi huffs, annoyed, but turns back to the counter to make himself a new cup of coffee to replace the one Kaiba just decimated. “I suppose if you spend your days harassing anyone stupid enough to come across you and your associates, a few broken bones are nothing.”
“That’s not—” Jounouchi says, stopping himself with a sigh. He has to give Kaiba the credit of how they got themselves into the situation they’re in in the first place and rubs at the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry, actually. About the whole… trying to mug you deal.” He glances up and Kaiba is looking at him unmoved and unsympathetic. Jounouchi supposes that’s fair. “That’s not… a regular thing. For me, I mean. For the guys that hit you, maybe, but…”
“Not regular, but not out of the ordinary.”
Jounouchi glances off to the side. “Money gets tight.” Kaiba is quiet, and Jounouchi snaps to look at him. “Don’t fucking judge me, alright? Not all of us have fucking—savings and shit—”
“I’m not,” Kaiba says, tipping his head to the side. “I’m thinking.”
“Thinking,” Jounouchi repeats, staring blankly at Kaiba. He expects him to say more, but Kaiba just keeps watching him, inscrutable, and Jounouchi rolls his eyes, huffs, and turns back to making his own coffee.
Eventually, as Jounouchi finally lifts his mug up to his mouth, Kaiba says, “Come work for me.”
Jounouchi abruptly spits the bit of coffee back into his mug with a cough. “What?”
Kaiba traces the rim of Jounouchi’s mug with a finger, watching him closely. “Work for me. No more money being tight.”
Jounouchi balks at him for a moment, wondering if this is some kind of weird prank. Kaiba looks entirely sincere, though, his expression calculating. Jounouchi watches, horrified, as the edge of Kaiba’s mouth twitches up into an impression of a smile. “Look, Kaiba, I don’t do suits and shit. KaibaCorp’s not for me.”
“I didn’t say work for KaibaCorp,” Kaiba says, like the assumption in and of itself is stupid. “I said work for me.”
“You…” Jounouchi says slowly. “You are KaibaCorp. It’s literally your name.”
Kaiba leans back against the counter but keeps his eyes on Jounouchi. “That’s the assumption, generally. But KaibaCorp is a conduit, if anything. I am not KaibaCorp. I’m not even the Kaiba it was named after. I could be my father, or Mokuba, and it wouldn’t matter.” He looks up sharply, and Jounouchi sees it, just for a second. That gaze he remembers from high school, hard, determined and focused. “KaibaCorp issues me power, and control. I get more money than I could possibly spend, and at the end of it all, what I really get out of it is…” He huffs. Jounouchi glances at him, head tilted, like it will help him get a better read on whatever the hell Kaiba is talking about.
Kaiba reorients with a shake of his head. “I don’t need a suit issued to me by KaibaCorp. They send me bodyguards that wouldn’t give a damn about turning around and shooting me if they got enough money out of it.” He’s gripping Jounouchi’s mug so hard that his knuckles are white. He glances up. “I need fatalistic sympathy for nothing other than your weird guilty savior’s complex. I need someone too stupid to double cross me.”
“Fuck you,” Jounouchi spits. “I wouldn’t double cross you because I’m not a goddamn coward.”
“Semantics,” Kaiba huffs. “Who cares? Yesterday you hit a man near twice your size just to protect me.” Jounouchi grits his teeth. It pisses him off like nothing else when Kaiba is right. “At least I know that you hate me. There’s no surprises there. I don’t need you to like me.” He takes a step forward, and Jounouchi takes a step back, his back bumping against the opposite counter. “I need you to be willing to throw yourself in front of men twice your size again. Over and over. And I need you to win. I need to own you—I don’t want an unattached KC professional.”
“What a pitch,” Jounouchi says flatly. He gestures around him. “I’m happy here, Kaiba. I don’t need you coming in doing fairytale prince bullshit like offering me a job. Even if it might be a life you don’t see any point in. This,” he gestures at Kaiba’s broken nose, the leaky faucet, his bruised knuckles. “Works for me. I know how this goes.”
“This,” Kaiba says, and grabs Jounouchi by the left wrist, lifting his hand. “Is all I want of you. Over and over.” He grins. “I need an attack dog that doesn’t care about his salary before anything else.”
Jounouchi kind of gets it, suddenly, the reason that people tend to follow on Kaiba’s heels. He’s disastrously magnetic, an event horizon pulling you in, and despite the fact that working with Kaiba, even being around Kaiba, seems like a nightmare, Kaiba’s kind of got something right. Jounouchi is fatalistically loyal, and something inside him still feels bad that he’s the reason Kaiba’s got a black eye.
But Kaiba also wants something Jounouchi just can’t give. He’s gotten used to the ins and outs of Domino City’s grit, and his freedom, and hiding money in shoeboxes and taking punches from people who never hit as hard as his dad did. He doesn’t need to be Kaiba’s charity project. He doesn’t need anything from anybody.
“No,” Jounouchi says, chin lifted, like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is Kaiba. “Fight your own battles.”
“You—”
“No,” Jounouchi says again, and pushes Kaiba away from him with his heartbeat in his teeth. “I’m happy here.”
Kaiba watches him closely. His eyes are clear, his gaze unwavering. “Fine,” is all he says, and Jounouchi realizes he can breathe again when Kaiba steps back. “You’ll see, though. Because you were right.” He puts Jounouchi’s cup by his sink. “I always get what I want, in the end. I was born for it.”
—
Around midday, long after Kaiba is gone, when Jounouchi is still trying to get his head in order, get his life back together, figure out how the fuck he’s going to make it up to Lumis and Umbra for losing them the biggest grab of the century, he goes to count his rent money.
And it’s all gone.
Shit.