The Girlfriend Experience
Summary: After years of silence, Jounouchi Katsuya and Kujaku Mai meet again... in unexpected circumstances. Post-canon. What-if.
A/N: First stand alone piece of the collection Shinjuku Ni-chōme (新宿二丁目), a grimy AU in which the whole Yu-Gi-Oh cast live on the fringe of illegality one way or another. Enjoy, and don't forget to review.
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A week after Jou made it clear to his employer that he was not one: reciprocating his feelings and two: of the gay persuasion, Otogi summoned his spokesperson for a briefing in a … host club.
It was a seedy place with booths packed like hives; one fat client being tended to by ever so busy, slender little bees eager to please and to end their shift. Jou truly detested this place, its smoky, opaque air and above all, its illegality. Not to mention that he dreaded recognizing... a certain long lost female amongst those busty, fake blondes.
Otogi's own booth was, however, the exception to the rule. A little haven of sorts. The emerald eyed man had no difficulty in winning the attention of the prettiest male hosts of the place, three lanky, relaxed blonds actively engaged in chatter with one another, like tame little animals picking each other's fur. He earned genuine smiles and giggles from them, makign sure their glasses were permanently filled to the brim rather than the other way around. He was overly indulgent in champagne, which made Jou frown; his boss, owner of Japan's third biggest gaming company, was the type to get depressed when he drank.
There was no real briefing to be had, of course. The unofficial reason for this meeting was the early celebration of Jou's birthday. Which was to happen in the middle of an unavoidable mid-season, promotional tour. Jou caught himself wondering which stage name of sorts she would have taken, should she indeed happen to work here.
"Are you sure?" Otogi motioned towards Jou's untouched flute, trying to get his attention. As he waited for a reply, he united one of his boys' delicate fingers to his own lips in a chaste kiss. The lucky victim blushed in a twitter. Jou, meanwhile, kept contemplating the tiny bubbles escaping the still virginal glass in front of him.
"I'm tryin' to stay dry," chided the only straight male of the place, deftly refusing Otogi's offer. "You don't..." He squinted his eyes to try and read the label of the last uncorked bottle soaking in the tin ice bucket, and gave up. By the looks of the place, the bottle was probably not an expensive one. Then again, Otogi had acquired highly refined tastes over time. Jou blinked out of fatigue, then rubbed his eyes. They were painfully dry.
"Oh, honey." Otogi chuckled, and the quiet murmurs of his adorable lackeys ceased upon the disbelieving tone of their patron's voice. When Jou looked up, he saw them exchanging half quizzical, half disbelieving looks between themselves, while Otogi laid his newly empty glass before him with a grin. Jounouchi realized how naively he had interpreted the 'offer', as 'it' started chatting again with one another.
"Sweetie," Otogi started again as if though he were accepting a truth of life, "I tend to..." He trailed off, grabbing the chilled Veuve Cliquot to help himself anew before Jou's unimpressed eyes (he knew next to nothing about champagne). "It's this oedipus complex of yours, I imagine."
The somewhat distant quality of Otogi's gaze was not lost on the ex-duelist, who was, at that very moment, patting himself on the back for the tolerance he had developed with his employer's tendency to beat around the bush. He stared at the condensation rings on the black table to avoid looking at the balmy beauties, who had initiated a very specific type of 'wet warming up', perhaps to soothe their patron's melancholy.
After a moment of silence, Jou realized his knee was being drummed on by his own fingers and sighed. He was willing to give Otogi a chance to express himself and listen to his incoherent ramblings a few more minutes, and then he'd excuse himself.
"Don't make that face," said Otogi quickly as he slid a dark, rectangular piece of paper on the table - a business card - between the wet spills and next to Jou's stemware. "I'll you soon enough."
"What's this-" Jou asked immediately, dismissing the self-deprecating insinuation. He flipped the card over and only found some shiny cursive that was impossible to read in the dim light of the booth. "Okay, what is this? Is this for my birthday?"
"Trust me. She's the best in the business," announced a now officially inebriated Otogi, his voice full of a quiet melancholy Jou now attributed to the private conversation the two of them had a week ago. For having spent countless evenings with him, Jou knew what was coming when Otogi started to lean on his elbows and rub his temples like his permanent heartache had relocated in his skull. The boys sensed the malaise by instinct and Jou decided that the man was in good hands. Without waiting for Otogi to explain himself and the nature of the cart, he pocketed it, feeling sorry for its bestower, then promptly stood up and bee lined for the exit.
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The duelist-turned-spokesperson found a way to pace in the empty elevator cage of the hotel where he had been instructed to go. The best in the whole prefecture, Otogi had dropped casually. In addition to treating him like the VIP he claimed he was, the businessman frequently swarmed his own private celebrity with gifts. When Jou finally told his employer he just didn't swing that way, the gifts stopped altogether.
And then this.
Some kind of sick joke, a clear misconception of Jounouchi's tastes, or a weird and desperate tentative by Otogi to please his professed favorite blond at all costs.
In Jou's hands, the peculiar business card. The English words 'My Valentine' were embossed in gold against a rich, dark, violet paper that almost felt velvety. Save for a room number, it provided no further information on its maker; understandably so, knowing what line of work this person worked in. Jounouchi placed it back in the inner pocket of his finely tailored business suit and stepped out of the elevator cage.
He wondered for a moment what his life would have been if, after he reached the Duel Monsters Hall of Fame, he had accepted to work for Kaiba Corp or Pegasus instead. Yuugi said Kaiba was demanding but that he paid more than enough; Industrial Illusions was on the fringe of bankruptcy. Honda had opted out, got married and was now serving in the Self-Defense Forces. And the enigmatic Kujaku Mai, well... True to her nature, she had simply vanished after the Dartz incident. It was regrettable in a way; she easily could have earned more than Jounouchi did, had she also chosen to become the image of a gaming company.
His feet took him to the room in which he was to meet his birthday present, and then Jounouchi's heart sunk.
Not because he hadn't gotten over Mai, no. Because he still hadn't decided whether he was accepting Otogi's birthday treat of sorts. Jou secretly knew that he would enjoy it - he was a mature man, after all, and one did get lonely travelling from one midsized town to another, seeing more faces than one's short term memory can handle, acting like the golden boy he was known to be even on rainier days.
His fingers fumbled again with the foreign objects in his pocket, grabbing the magnetic key he'd been given at the front desk. The card slid easily in the slot and Jou saw that the skin in his palm had moistened a little when it stuck to the handle longer than it should have. The door gave into the dimly lit hallway of a royal suite, the sound of lithe fingers typing away and faint whiffs of lavender and honey that lead to her. The woman.
Unperturbed by her client's arrival, she typed away at her laptop on the only small table of the suite. Dressed in a suggestive but impeccably tailored suit and skirt sat a voluptuous woman. The unpredictably sober, silver lined, anthracite outfit served as a backdrop for those generous sandy curls.
In the second that it took to identify her, all of Jou's studied public persona melted down to the easy to read boy he'd always been.
"Mai?"
She didn't bother looking up from her laptop to him. He walked across the living room area of the suite to join her at her table, then sat uncomfortably on the edge of the chair.
"Uh, hey." He swallowed, and the tie around his neck - that's right, a tie - suddenly felt constricting.
"Hello, Jounouchi." Her eyes flickered to him, then back to her data. "Otogi was right. You've grown," she hinted with a smile.
Which made him shiver. Just how much information had the endearing slimeball given her? And how on earth had the able, talented Mai ended up in prostitution? Dignified prostitution, perhaps, but renting your body is renting your body, no matter what the price.
"I can't believe you're..." He licked his lips, a nervous habit he'd taken up as a teenage when his lips started taking more blows than they could handle. "I mean... How- how have you been?" His inner teenage had taken over.
The corners of her own, full lips twisted even more at the sight of his easy to read face. Without a word, she grabbed a handful of stapled documents, none of which were visible to Jou from across the table.
"So you," he sighed, "you're doing okay."
She flipped a few pages, not gracing him with her gaze. She cut him - "Otogi had you - " only to be cut herself.
"Mai." He felt like his heart was popping out of his chest and his hand, glued to the table. "Mai, can we..." He could hear his own blood rushing in his eardrums. "I always," he swallowed again, "we wondered if you were doing okay."
The shuffling of papers stopped, and for a split second Mai looked very much aware of Jou's gaze on her. She then resumed, sorting out some sheets, putting others away. He noticed she still had that same french manicure.
"We'll go over a few formalities first," she resumed in a perfectly professional tone. She hadn't once looked at Jou in the eye. But her voice hadn't wavered at all.
"Mai..."
"So! Otogi Ryuuji, my client, had you signed up for GFE."
Jou hesitated, struggling to guess the meaning of the acronym, and maybe trying to brace himself for a carnal encounter with his unresolved crush.
"Is that correct?" Mai pressed gently.
"I, I guess." Jou's own voice felt strangely distant to him.
"And because these tests-" she pointed a pink carbon copy of a form that had to bear some physician's signature "-came out negative, you are eligible for a few extras," she added, weighing each word.
Jou froze. To him, 'extras' meant 'pizza toppings'. Not body parts. Or accessories. Or positions. Or anything else his conservative mind hadn't yet considered.
"A few..." His brain was still having a hard time registering the current situation and shut off from the list that Mai was reading out to him. Was Mai really discussing the terms of their coupling in such cold, business-like terms? Kujaku Mai, the escapist, the Houdini of commitment, the runaway...
"... and anal," she concluded on a perfectly controlled tone.
The young man cursed internally at the twinge his cock felt upon hearing that last word. On him a pair of violet eyes rested comfortably, their dull glow reminding him vaguely of the unusual luster of her business card. His mouth went dry. He was being studied. Tested?
He made a decision.
"No," he shook his head for emphasis, "not like this." He thought he saw something wavering in Mai's gaze. "I wanted to be you," he let out in a broken voice, lowering his gaze from her body in shame, "but not like this." By the time he ended the sentence his voice was barely audible.
He kept pretending there was something incredibly interesting about the folds in the fabric of his pants for a while, hearing nothing but the thumping of his heart in his chest. So that was it. Years of silence and denial, only to propose to her in the most awkward fashion ever. He was about to stand up and dart to the the door when Mai shouted something in the direction of the wall behind him.
"Jenna! Come on out."
Startled, Jou turned to see a bathroom door open, the tip of a curling iron wrapped in platinum blond hair, and a purple, silky gown. Then, peeking through the ajar door, the youthful face of a girl his own age or maybe younger, biting a full, round lip. "I'm almost ready, Miss Mai." A very likable mix of bubbly, shy and sexy.
As the door closed again, Jou sprang up to face Mai.
"Wait."
He wanted to argue further but his mouth went dry.
She, steadying the quivering hand clasped around her laptop, ready to leave, did not venture to look at him in the eye.
"You take care of her." She still wore as much makeup, but it wasn't as outrageous as it was in the past. A single, arc-shaped crease had found its way in between the corner of her lip and the rim of her nose. "She's a good kid." The table had been cleared and she walked away, her rolling case in tow.
The click of her heels were muted by the lush carpet of the suite, and the lock clicked.
"Wait."
Jou was already alone. Again. But not quite.
The bathroom door opened a second time and the girl in the gown headed for the massive bed that had caught his sight earlier, while Jou remained in his awkward, half standing position.
"Happy birthday."
"Thanks." He didn't know what else to say, unsure whether or not he felt an obligation to partake in the feast that was almost candidly offering herself to him.
Without further ado, she unfastened the silk gown and a downtrodden Jou found himself aroused against his will, and now unable to look away. A shiny matching purple outfit, fake leather and zippers galore - mini skirt, zipping sleeveless top and that revealing white top that Jou once had declared to look like his grandma's underwear, only hotter.
Uncovered and looking a little bit too comfortable with cosplay, lovely Jenna now sat idly on the edge of the mattress, crossing her arms on her thighs, waiting.
"So you're a friend of Miss Mai?"
The jubilee nodded.
Otogi was right.
She really was the best in the business.
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FIN
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Special thanks to beta reader extraordinaire the7joker7.