Start Epilogue
White Conch Shell

"You're certain this is everything?"

"Yeah," Jounouchi said loudly, rolling his eyes as he slung the second duffel strap around his shoulder. "You didn't think I had more, did you? I've been broke like, all my life, you know, plus--"

"Your father originally bought several of the remaining items," Seto finished, rolling his eyes in return. Honestly. "I remember. I simply find it hard to believe that the futon will be the biggest thing."

"Well, believe it," Jounouchi snorted rudely, hefting said futon onto his freer shoulder and straightening again. This had the effect of making him look something like an anemic fiddler crab, but Seto managed not to say as much. "No computer, no bath stool, the couch stays, the floor lamp folds, the dishes pack up easy inside shirts 'n shit, I already gave all my books to Honda 'cause we're studying together anyway...what else? I mean, you've been here enough to get the picture, genius."

"Spartan," Seto supplied helpfully, enjoying the way the double meaning would go right over Jounouchi's head. It was also an accurate description: the apartment had been threadbare before, but with the single bedroom empty and the whole thing cleaned from top to bottom, it looked all but unlived in, permanent stains and wall damage aside. "That's the word."

"Yeah, that," Jounouchi agreed, and had already started to move toward the door by the time he finally hesitated, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. Seto almost applauded. The blond really had gotten much better at discerning his tones in the last four months. "Damnit. I hate it when you do that."

Seto raised his eyebrows, smirking.

"That." Jounouchi was glaring now, eyes bright. The November light was weak, but Seto had no trouble discerning the expression. "That thing where you make fun of me and I don't even get it. Fuck. You asshole--I'm gonna spend all day thinking about that now. Grab the damn pillow."

"Of course," Seto returned obligingly, and collected--without commenting on its quality--Jounouchi's beaten, ugly pillow from the couch, where they had piled all of the blond's things prior to packing them in the duffels.

...well. Maybe he commented a little. "You do know that these can cause back problems if you don't maintain them regularly?"

"Do you ever think happy thoughts?" Jounouchi complained, making his way toward the door.

This was an interesting question. "A few times a month," Seto admitted, following after him. "They're very startling."

"I'll bet," Jounouchi mumbled, and headed out without so much as looking around one final time, reaching back without turning to lock the door by feel. Seto slipped quietly past him, into the hall, then stood and watched as he shut them out for good.

Jounouchi was for a moment utterly silent and still, staring at his fingers on the handle with his mouth pursed, saying nothing. Seto remained silent, giving him time to absorb the moment.

He murmured something eventually--it sounded like finally, but Seto couldn't be wholly sure--right before he straightened up again, turning toward the hall at large. "Hey, I'm leaving!"

Several returning muffled congratulations and well-wishes were shouted back from various apartments, punctuated by Kogata opening her door to reveal her small, pretty face. "You're still coming for dinner Tuesday, right?"

"Yeah, 'course," Jounouchi laughed. Cheerfully he grinned, and flashed an unashamedly cheesy peace sign in the air with his free hand. "Good luck with the cicadas, Ko-chan."

"Don't say that, Jou-kun, you'll make me cry," she pouted, and stepped back into her apartment without another word.

Seto shook his head in wonder. He'd only seen her a few times since that first night, but she never seemed to get any easier to understand. "She is..."

"Kinda bizarre," Jounouchi agreed, and for once Seto had to admit, he'd filled in the blank well. "Not like we aren't, man."

Seto shrugged philosophically, readjusting the strap of the second duffel he was carrying at the same time. "So long as you feel up to the confession. It must not be so lonely to speak for yourself after years of practice."

"Asshole," Jounouchi snorted, but let that end it, half-smiling this time as he went for the stairs. Seto again followed, trying not to smirk in reply.

-

"So anyway," the blond started halfway between floors, just a few moments later. "Since when did you like me?"

Seto had long ago given up thinking that Jounouchi would one day cease to find new ways to totally shock him. He still almost fell down the stairs. "You didn't think to ask that until just now?"

Jounouchi actually had the nerve to pout and look irritated at the same time. "Well, yeah. It wasn't important first off. One thing at a time."

"Sound logic for someone as incapable of multi-tasking as you," Seto drawled, temporarily distracted from coming up with a response that wasn't humiliating. Sometimes the idiot just made it too easy.

Jounouchi's ears reddened, but he managed to keep the rest of his composure, having unfortunately become somewhat more difficult to goad recently. "I know you're stalling, Kaiba. Just answer the damn question."

Seto, however, didn't have an answer. Not a good one, at least—the only thing in his head was always, and that was not only hyperbolic, but unacceptable.

It was still humiliating how clearly he remembered his first view of Jounouchi five years ago, crossing the campus in his first year of public middle school and seeing him in passing (he'd gone to a private institution the year before, but Gozaburo had transferred him as soon as the new year rolled around, displeased with the orphanage's choice of education for him). It was impossible not to notice the mutt with that stupid hair, but for Seto at that age the attraction had been somewhat more...instinctual, he supposed.

He had been completely and utterly strange, new. Seto had wanted to talk to him desperately, to find out if he was worth knowing, believing already that he was, hoping that he would be able to have something in him that Gozaburo couldn't touch. By that point Seto had already realized that he would never be interested in girls, but this was the first opportunity he'd had in his peaking adolescence to search through a large, predominately fixed population of people his age who were, in essence, available. And Jounouchi had been the very first to catch his eye.

Then, three weeks into term, after days and days spent trying to work out a way to speak with him, Seto had actually overheard a conversation between the idiot and his idiot friend Honda, and been forced to instantly and painfully recognize that they were, in fact, just idiots. One of them simply happened to be far better looking than he had any right to be, to possess a charisma he had no business possessing.

It had been one of the most disappointing moments of his life. He wasn't quite sure what he had been expecting, but a thug had certainly not been at the top of the list. He had wanted...

...well, he had wanted someone all to himself, utterly dissociated from his new life as a Kaiba, something private to enjoy. Gozaburo couldn't go to school with him to monitor his every action, and he had still been little better than a child, willing to hope against all odds that he would one day find a person who was perfect for him, and for whom he could be perfect in return.

But the someone who just so happened to push all the right buttons in his head kept showing up to school with black eyes, and Seto was certain they'd never have anything in common. So he had retreated with his original good opinion, and damn Jounouchi anyway for not living up to any real standards, particularly Seto's. He would find somebody else.

Only there hadn't been anyone else. Nobody so immediately striking, and certainly nobody who continued to seem, in the most distant and frustrating manner, attractive. He felt in one sense extremely shallow for this, but in another inclined to be overly defensive; it certainly wasn't a conscious choice, so how could it really be his fault if in the back of his mind he occasionally wondered what it would be like to forget his own standards, or if his fingertips sometimes tingled when Jounouchi was close? It was just autonomous nerves.

Seto, after all, had been only thirteen that first year. He'd had all the time in the world to be dissatisfied with his options, and plenty of reasons to believe every inconvenient crush could be accordingly crushed out of existence. Disdaining Jounouchi had not only been a matter of principle, but a logical move. Insulting him at every opportunity, deriding him; Jounouchi had deserved all of it, whether or not he was aware of this.

Then suddenly he was eighteen, and still nothing: no better match, no variety of choices, no perfect individual. It was the worst irony in the world that with literally every country open at his feet, only the most mediocre of mediocre classmates could ever take full prominence, no matter how many people he saw and examined within his many spheres of activity.

Probably the most insulting occurrence, however, came when Seto wasn't looking, as by some sort of miracle Jounouchi developed a conscience and shook all the gangster out of himself, leaving in its place the most bizarre combination of bravado and sweetness Seto had ever seen in a person. Something that was at last worth having.

And it was all untouchable. Jounouchi continued to live his very separate life, and Seto learned for the first time a lesson about burning bridges.

Worse still, Jounouchi kept improving with every year. It was offensive, this very obvious example of the world mocking him for his mistakes, making it impossible for him to ignore the blond even as he got farther and farther away, putting them in the same class in high school and totally removing them from one another's worlds. That whole group of idiots had always unwillingly caught his attention, in part because they kept getting in his way, but Mutou and Jounouchi forever the most, the one for his potential and skill and the other for...whatever the hell it was his subconscious continued to pick up on.

Sometimes he wished he could find Mutou's looks appealing instead of just silly, if only to spare himself the humiliation of tingling in the presence of the mutt, but fate had never favored him that way. As Gozaburo perfectly illustrated, he was simply not allowed to have a good thing without a whole host of flaws to accompany it.

"Kaiba?" Jounouchi said curiously. The sound of his feet on the stairs was very far away, as was his voice.

"Always," Kaiba murmured softly, thinking out loud, and instantly came back to himself to properly wish he hadn't just said that.

Jounouchi stopped a few steps below him, turning with his mouth stupidly open to stare. Seto's heart began to pound uncomfortably.

Then Jounouchi laughed, shaking his head. "You prick. You're messin' with me."

No. "Yes," Kaiba lied, and distantly wondered if he'd ever get the chance to approach that honestly.

Probably never.

-

How did it happen?

Seto had been asking that question for four months now.

Obviously there were the physical facts--they had been sleep deprived, they had been bored, they had been lonely, they had been drunk, and Seto, losing control in that single moment, had grasped an opportunity he had no right to. What confused him was the knowledge that he should have gotten nothing in the attempt, should only have been reminded of what he'd given up on all those years ago when he first wrote Jounouchi off.

But something had gone right. For just one second it had worked, worked in his favor.

He couldn't remember any other time in his life that had happened.

Sighing, Seto pressed both of his hands momentarily over his face, listening to the clock by the door tick, tick, tick quietly, listening to his breath puff against his skin. This was enough for several long seconds, until reality again began to press in around him, filling his head.

His head was always full, usually too much so. It occurred to him on occasion that he probably ought to have gone crazy by now, usually right before he remembered that he probably already was. He'd never had himself examined for a name to put to it, but this was more because it wasn't necessary than because he was afraid to do so. He had always known that he thought of things differently than the people around him; he simply had better things to do with his time than waste energy labeling the reason.

Tea. He needed a tea. Opening his eyes, Seto took in the sea of papers on his desk critically, working out how much he had left before he could sleep, how much could be put off until later. The clock when he turned to glance at it revealed the time as a little more than half past eleven, which meant the head housekeeper would still be available to brew a pot for him.

Seto considered this option. Then he got to his feet and headed silently downstairs. Tonight was a night for total self-sufficiency. He could torment his employees later.

The kitchen lights were so unpleasantly bright when he flipped them on that he immediately turned them back off, making his way in by feel and turning on the much weaker stove light instead. This was perfectly appropriate for his purposes, and allowed him to move fluidly around the cabinets and counters without concern for obstacles.

He could only turn off his mind for so long, however, and halfway through measuring the tea leaves, he again found himself returning to that same question: how did it happen?

It was more than simply physical.

No, that wasn't true--it was more than simply physical for him. He still had no idea exactly what the hell this was to Jounouchi. He'd looked back into the blond's past as much as he could, dug up his criminal records and his father's criminal records, discovered the separation of his parents, unearthed the various pieces of documentation which had accumulated throughout his life to mark him as the functioning individual Jounouchi Katsuya, birthdate January twenty fifth, but none of this addressed Seto's personal questions regarding his private interests.

What did he want? Jounouchi's exact interests as far as he had stated them out loud were simply to screw around with him if he felt like it, which was not only crude, but unfortunately ambiguous. After all, if this was entirely dependent on what Jounouchi felt like, what would happen when he stopped feeling any interest? What were Seto's options? Did Jounouchi even care to leave him any?

And why the hell was this so complicated? Seto had never had trouble ordering his life before this point, even at the times when it had spun most drastically out of his control. He hadn't wanted his parents to die, but once they were dead, he had had the option and the inclination to reorder, reform his conceptions. When he had fallen into his new life as a Kaiba, the same options had been open to him.

But Jounouchi, like Gozaburo, was unpredictable. In fact, he was worse; Gozaburo at least had wanted only a few very clearly defined things from him. Jounouchi was a free radical, and potentially destructive. If Seto let him, he could ruin his life. Or he could improve it. It was unquantifiable, and that was unspeakably disturbing.

Seto bit his lip gently, narrowing his eyes against the steam which rose from his cup as he poured, nearly finished by this point. The tea was strong and black, slightly bitter, brewed precisely the way he liked it. He kept his housekeeper on hand in large part because she was the only one who had ever managed to perfectly replicate his technique for achieving this.

The problem, he decided as he watched the reflection of the stove light shiver across the surface of the liquid, was that this situation, which might have been acceptable had their entanglement remained entirely emotional, had gone far beyond that. He, in point of fact, had messed it up personally, and now it dominated everything, this strange impasse of bodies and unspoken intention.

Strictly speaking, their relationship was sexual, but they weren't having sex in a true textbook sense. Jounouchi didn't want to go there yet, and Seto didn't want to be the one to bring it up, since obviously it was the idiot who was having the biggest problem to begin with. If it had looked like Jounouchi was working his way toward wanting to, Seto might not have even wasted the energy worrying, but in these four months nothing had changed. Things had neither progressed nor regressed from that night in the blond's old apartment, and Seto had no idea what to do with that. He wanted something that was apparently much more definite than what Jounouchi was at present comfortable with, and there was literally nothing he could say. Not yet.

His feet were pleasingly silent as he moved across the stone of the reception hall, covered with socks and carefully placed. When he was particularly bored he sometimes amused himself by gauging his ability to move around the entirety of the house--mansion, Jounouchi's voice reminded him softly, which Seto ignored--without sound, measuring his skill at rapid escape.

Seto had absolutely no interest in being loved. He wasn't even particularly invested in being liked. What he was afraid of was going unnoticed. Those two years in the orphanage had been slow torture, and a horrible, merciless reminder of how weak he really was.

Mokuba would have stood a much better chance of being adopted well if Seto hadn't refused to be separated from him, hadn't convinced him that they couldn't be separated when he was still just young enough to believe him. They certainly could have. But Mokuba had been the last person in the world to know who he was, that he existed--and if he had gone, wouldn't it have been the same as ceasing to exist in the first place? He couldn't stomach it.

So he had ruined Mokuba's chances through his own selfishness. In a way he often felt that his treatment by Gozaburo had been only fair by comparison, a just conclusion to a painful series of personal humiliations and failures. It was at this point that he had come to rest everything on Mokuba; this moment when he had at last realized that he was not meant to exist for any other purpose. He was comparatively unimportant.

Did Jounouchi think he was important?

Would Jounouchi ever become interested in more than the safe satisfaction of an idle curiosity? They saw one another rarely for the sorts of things that were troubling him so deeply, only a few Saturday evenings every month, because Jounouchi worked and Seto worked, and they couldn't precisely speak to one another at school, and there was only so much time in the day. Two or three days a month was all they could really hope for as long as they were trying to keep this discreet. Apparently even to one another.

Seto wanted him there all the time. Seto hated him for being so damn hard to understand, and hated himself more for being even less consistent. He hated his body for the way it could want something so impossible. He hated how Jounouchi was still the first, last, and only.

Seto didn't know what to do. On the one hand, he abhorred inaction. On the other, this wasn't all his responsibility to work out.

Jounouchi saw him as a person. He didn't call him Kaiba-san, and when he did call him Kaiba, Seto knew that he wasn't thinking of his father, or of either of their legacies. He called him Kaiba because it was his name now, and because he was lazy and rude and didn't believe in using honorifics like he was supposed to nine times out of ten.

Jounouchi recognized that he was a human being. But Jounouchi was only human himself, and this was, ultimately, an all but insurmountable problem.

Back in his study, Seto looked at the papers on his desk for a long, long time, teacup warming his hand, reluctant to sit down. Then he sighed through his nose and began cleaning up, mind too thick with questions to be of any good.

He didn't know what to do.

-

Jounouchi showed up almost exactly twenty minutes later, just as Seto had finished clearing his desk of detritus and work for the future. The tea had lost most of its real heat in this time, and so didn't burn the hand he held it with as he was opening the door, standing in the dark hall in his socks and somehow knowing that this had been inevitable. That he'd been waiting.

"Did you forget it was Wednesday?" he began, flat and unamused. His lungs, as always, ached dully at the sight of the blond, a persistent discomfort. "Your natural aptitude for subtlety is astounding."

Jounouchi grinned broadly. For the hundredth time Seto found his eyes drawn fleetingly to his bottom row of teeth, where the left canine and lateral incisor were slightly crooked. To this day he couldn't determine whether this was from injury or the fault of genetics, but he had been noticing it for as long as he'd known the blond.

"You should ask how good I do sneaking up on people," said Jounouchi, and muscled his way in uninvited, kicking his beaten sneakers off in the genkan and immediately wiggling his right big toe free through a hole in his sock. There was also, Seto noted clinically, a hole in the top of his right shoe--or more precisely a neat slice, roughly the width of a knife blade, the edges dark with dirt. Seto wondered if he had a scar on his foot, tried to remember if he'd ever looked when he had the opportunity, and found he couldn't recall. This was frustrating.

Jounouchi was still talking. "See, I got stuck in this museum once a few years ago with this fucking zombie--well, he was a professor first, but then he went totally nuts, I dunno why--"

"Jounouchi," Seto interrupted, frowning down at him. Some of the grin faded from the blond's face. "Tell me why you're here. We're not repeating July, are we? Because I have to be up at five, and I know you have work to do."

For a second Jounouchi didn't move, just frowned at him and fidgeted. Then he said, "You got more tea?"

"It's cold now."

Jounouchi shrugged philosophically, moving around him in the direction of the kitchen. The false leather sleeves of his sports jacket made a soft, dry sound as they rubbed against the felt body of the garment. "You got a microwave."

"And you still have no taste," Seto replied, speeding up to pass around him silently. "I'll make a fresh pot."

It had gotten easier recently to pretend that he wasn't doing exactly what Jounouchi had hoped he would. That he wasn't getting easier to predict. It was too disturbing to think otherwise.

-

The second pot actually turned out a little better than the first, sharper and stronger, with greater depth of flavor. Jounouchi sniffed his cup appreciatively for a few seconds right after he got it, the steam building a fine, nearly invisible layer of moisture across the tip and bridge of his nose.

Seto looked away carefully, pouring his own cup.

"Okay," Jounouchi hummed behind him. "Study now."

Oh, wonderful. Frowning, Seto turned around to stare at him. "Because you have to disturb my private space on every visit?"

"Because I fucking hate these lights." Seto had turned on the overheads, despite his earlier disinclination to do so, figuring that the blond would have poorer night vision. Jounouchi wrinkled his nose, casting a sharp glare up at them. "Feels like they're gonna open a hole in my brain. We're going to your study."

Of course they were.

True to form, Jounouchi chose the bottom of the stairs to explain himself, speaking casually as they moved up the steps through the dark: "So here's the thing. I gave my old man the number to my new place in case there was like, a really huge emergency, right? And the asshole's been calling every fucking hour since about five. Guess he didn't think I'd actually go."

There was a very easy and obvious solution to this. "Unplug your phone."

Jounouchi gave a short bark of humorless laughter, just loud enough to echo faintly around the large room. "Yeah, I did that. But it still--I dunno, it felt like a really bad way to start things."

The blond's feet, despite the near foot of difference between their heights, were almost twice as loud as Seto's as they passed down the hall toward the study. Absently he wondered if the younger man would ever remember how to walk without turning it into a challenge, and doubted it. "Why not bother one of your other idiot friends?"

The loud footsteps stopped. Seto paused, hand on the study door, and turned. In the dark Jounouchi was almost invisible, little more than a floating voice and a smear of barely-present, messy hair.

"You fucking know why, Kaiba," Jounouchi said quietly. "Don't be a shithead. Can I stay or not?"

Seto, in point of fact, knew exactly why. It was the same reason he never discussed Gozaburo with anybody, even Mokuba; because Mokuba had thankfully escaped the worst aspects of their stepfather's parenting (his training), and Seto didn't want to be the one to ruin that. Because it would be attention seeking, too much like self-pity, to take his problems to someone without that kind of baggage. Because he had a reputation to maintain, and it was only romantic to flash around your skeletons in books.

Jounouchi had come here because he knew, even without the details, that Seto knew all of this, and because he would neither have to explain more than the bare facts of his given situation, nor feel selfish for burdening someone else with his tragedies.

It was, Seto reflected, a very pathetic thing, one that made dogs out of both of them. He opened the door anyway, glaring, and walked in without a word, waiting for the sound of Jounouchi's graceless steps to follow him; which, after a few seconds, they inevitably did.

-

Jounouchi fell asleep in one of the armchairs roughly an hour later, his teacup empty on the desk next to Seto's.

Part of him was tired and angry that this had happened, frustrated that he wouldn't be able to rest now. The thought of Jounouchi being left alone with all of his work was too disturbing to allow him to retreat to either his own bed or sleep. Part of him was simply resigned.

Around one thirty Seto went out to the balcony to stare across the city, watching his breath cloud white in the dark and letting his mind briefly overflow. Occasionally he had to do this, just to keep the noise down, and it was easier in the cold. Then he went back inside and stared at Jounouchi for an even longer time, frowning.

Seto believed deeply in constancy, predictability, permanence, but he was painfully aware of how unrealistic these beliefs were. He understood very well the nature of transience; that this moment, this precise instant where he breathed and Jounouchi breathed, where he watched and Jounouchi slept, was fleeting, would be gone as soon as it arrived. He understood that this was true of all life.

But at the same time Seto wanted to remember everything, every second of meaning. So he stood and watched and didn't move, and the idiot slept with his mouth open, breathing loudly, oblivious to everything. These were the moments where he probably envied Jounouchi the most.

Seto didn't know what to do.

end all

end notes
So. Um. The story doesn't really feel finished, does it? I was kind of profoundly unhappy when it came to me that this was the case--though that was maybe more because I'd been shotgunning writing it for over a week at that point, and 50k words is a lot for 7-10 days, only to realize at the end of them that holy shit, all you've done is set yourself up for another 50k.

You guessed it. Sequel. Can't yet say how many chapters it'll be (I'm thinking four, but four REALLY LONG ones--like, 10-15k a pop long), but the first one's done, as is the first quarter of the second, plus a lot of miscellanious scenes (app. 20k typed, not including the whole fucking notebook of additional material that I haven't yet had time to commit to pixel). I would like to be magical and say that I'll have it done within the next couple of months, but honestly, what with finals approaching and the following spring quarter being my last one before graduation? I'm not too hopeful for copius amounts of free time. Spring break ought to give me enough to reach the third chapter (unless lightning strikes, in which case yay), but for now it would be more honest of me to just be depressing and say yeah, summer.

Thank you all so much for reading, espcially fanficlunatic234 , JuniperP, and ahsie, who stuck with it the whole way, Shantih, who left me a lot of nice long reviews that, good god, used actual quotes from the story to illustrate points (!!!), and Nothing Gold, who put it in her/his C2 community! I would like to include a heart here to express the depth of my affection, but the code is sadly unavailable. Pretend you can see it.

I honestly wasn't expecting very many people to read this in the first place, so almost 2,000 hits, thirty+ reviews, and an archiving have obviously been REALLY EXCITING. You guys have delivered sunshine into my life. :)