Rating: PG-15 for swearing and sexual implications

Warning: Kaiba being a cold, cold asshole. Possible OOCness.

Beta: Shiary [also rewritten at DjinniFires' suggestion]

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Sostenuto (noun) - a passage or the performance of a passage to be played in a sustained or prolonged manner. Italian for 'sustained'.

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Even if he had bothered to devote any thought to it, Kaiba Seto wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the exact moment when the happening started.

If he had, he would have put a stop to it. Crushed and brutalised that pathetic seedling of sentiment as soon as it popped out its shy, little head. How else would he have been expected to react? He was Kaiba Seto. He didn't do emotionally invested.

Or did he? He would like to be able to claim rock-solid affirmation from himself, but he couldn't. He could never be sure now even if he had the ability to go back in time, and unravel every possibility that could've paved this course: Their first meeting, the first exchange of words, the first punch thrown. The first detention where they endured one another's company; also that second time in his life Seto had realised there were instances when money did not write the rules.

Their first encounter with each other, stripped of their respective veneers.

He would never forget that strange, taut surreality that had materialised between them. How the very public and rather roomy school showers had instantly become too cramped and terribly intimate. There should have been a lot more attacking at that, verbal and physical, from both sides; they should've been enraged at being caught–by a well-hated person no less–at the zenith of their bareness and vulnerability.

Instead, Jounouchi had frozen, likely unsure what to do, and Seto had been…beguiled. He found himself honing in on Jounouchi's scars before he knew it, inspecting them with experienced, transfixed eyes. With a mind that abruptly knew, that there were too many; too life-threatening to be all gangfights or parental abuse–and understood. Why the boy had been so intent on Yuugi before; happily, unfairly innocent Yuugi, with his creamy, unmarked frame; just as Seto almost grasped that he himself knewbecause, because–

(Because his own synapses had once ferried a similar-sized sorrow.)

He had been so ANGRY then.

Who was he anyway? He was only a toothless dog; a low-class, no-good duelist; a peas-for-brains who would never amount to anything useful. Who was he to show Seto, the genius billionaire teenaged CEO Kaiba Seto, that they could be one and the same?

He was already a fucking insomniac, dammit! He didn't need anything else to mar his blurry, barely-remembered dreams.

There was no going back after that. Fight they did, scream they did, dragging the other down to new lows, more vehemently than ever. They just circled closer and closer.

One had to be within hitting range to inflict any substantive damage, didn't they?

That had been his truth, as each took the intense rivalry with them to full-time work like a graduation present. They became a bizarre version of close friends, keeping tabs on the other until they were always aware of any main events in each other's lives–like they were. In fact, Seto had been right there to laugh in the blond's face when he'd gotten laid off, shaking the man out of his drunken stupor enough to slug his tormentor a black eye –and be reciprocated with a fat lip as handsome.

(And if the blond picked himself up all that much faster after that, Seto didn't think. It had nothing to do with him.)

Jounouchi, in turn, had also been there when Seto finally settled on his choice of millionaires' daughters. In a way. While neither he nor Yugi (nor, God forbid, any of their old Geek Squad) had been invited, the new bridegroom could just imagine the misfit slouching over his weather-beaten couch, saluting a grudging toast with cheap beer at the television. So he added an extra edge to his smirk, the one he was aware irritated the blond to no end, and raised his glass–mindless of all the cameras, reporters and sycophants–in return.

Eventually, his wife did catch on, shallow and distracted by the luxuries and phony affections as she was. Being the perfectly spoilt daddy's girl, she promptly gave him a piece of her mind. Hmph. As if Seto could everbe wholly anyone's, much less hers, when nearly all of him was Mokuba's before she ever entered the picture. Something he had not refrained from telling her, with many embellishments; he was not about to be denied the pleasure of watching her cry and stalk off since she'd outlasted her usefulness.

He was instantaneously rewarded.

The divorce came and went. As expected, the stocks were hardly affected; neither was his business with her father. He had been right when he judged the man to be competent enough not to throw away a collaboration this important. (Of course, there had been those anonymous, untraceable photos his freshly-signed partner had received of several gigolos entertaining his then still-wed daughter…) If there was any derailment in his plans at all, it was the slight stir to Seto's peace of mind at his trophy wife's parting words.

I refuse to stick around any longer when you're already married to someone else, you sick, cheating fag of a fucking bastard.

Good riddance. Except what on earth had that skank been nattering about? It was as though she hadn't meant his work, but a…person.

Well. At least it broke up the monotony in the usual separation excuses.

Unlike Jounouchi's spectral presence at his wedding, Seto had actually deigned to grace the funeral in the flesh when the invites came. From what he'd heard, it was surprising that Jounouchi senior had taken this long, if at all, to kick the bucket. Advanced cirrhosis could be incredibly vicious.

Or not, since he'd been living on time borrowed from his son. Jounouchi's hair was much greyer now than it was supposed to be; the initial financial pressures had to be immense with no insurance. Up to that point three years ago, when his side job photographing shit had finally sold, the monthly costs always ate up his salary to the last thousand.

Which was probably why the marital status tag on his file was perpetually 'single'.

It could also be Yuugi's reason. The reason why Atem had stayed behind, and Mazaki Anzu became Fubaika Anzu instead of Mutou Anzu. Seto's hired digging did not extend to spying.

Oh, how it should've struck him then: that even the knee jerk reflex which had hurled years of entertaining vitriol onto Jounouchi had not kicked in and blamed the man's absent love life on his physical attributes.

He would have run if he'd realised. Scarpered with his tail between his legs. He would've tasted pure terror for no one else but himself once more in nearly twenty years.

Because several hours later, after even the best friend had left, Seto somehow had a perfectly legitimate reason to loiter. As if he had nothing better to do than observe how ridiculously well he could envision Jounouchi's current posture: the slight hunch of those lanky shoulders, the pocketed fists and lifted left heel, pressing-not-pressing on the autumn earth (as it did on the school shower's tiles when his first glimpse of those scars had occurred, so insignificantly long ago). He could also visualise the exact look in those eyes all too well as the sunset forcibly ushered the frantic gauntlet that was Jounouchi's life to its crashing close.

Because the revelation would follow. And assail him with escalating panic and horror; teach him that he was far, far too assured in recalling many things that were completely unmemorable. Like the shape of Jounouchi's jaw from the gritting of his teeth, the sharp the lightning the warmth the weight the laugh the bark the quiet the scented muss of his stupid hair and the goddamn, fricking, eye colour.

/humid sepia summer/

Shit.

It was only by some nameless power that he managed to saunter, calmness supreme, to where his Porsche was parked (so far away yet where Jounouchi, alone on the hill, would see). After which he fucking bathed himself in a haze of Hvorostovsky and top-notch leather upholstery while he waited (though he wished there was Chianti).

If the damn horse-bones had really occupied, no, pirated a good chunk of his brain's capacity–that could've alternatively churned billions–for seventy-six quarters, Seto had better be compensated.

That night, as the man beneath him accommodated something that was too big to fit in him naturally, Seto'd also opened his arms to a whole host of potential problems. Problems that he was sure would be too much for either of them to handle. He also understood how wrong it was that they'd always been there (will always be there) for each other this way, how wrong it would sound to society and to everyone around them (and yet it wasn't). But the blond hadn't pushed him away, and that was what counted.

(The blond had never pushed him away since.)

(He didn't think about himself, about how he would never be able to push the latter away. He won't think about it. For now.)

Presently, he supposed, staring at the hypnotic, enigmatic absurdity-yet-not sleeping in his bed, it wasn't the worst bargain he could settle for.

(Until the day he notices the tightly-bitten lips during their sessions, as if Jounouchi was afraid he'd say what Seto was afraid to say.)

(Then he had a new mission.)

(*Owari)

Notes:

1. There isn't any character in Yu-Gi-Oh with the surname 'Fubaika' that I know of. So this is just an OC.

2. Hvorostovsky- Dmitri Hvorostovsky, an opera singer.

3. Chianti- type of wine

4. Horse-bones- a Japanese insult, referring to a useless person.

5. Since this fic follows quite a lengthy time progression, I've dropped a few references to show the duration of time passed. For example, "quarters". Kaiba's a businessman. (*hint hint)

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Kaiba, oh Kaiba. Can't ever be honest with his feelings, even to himself. Hates and fears the loss of control and display of weakness he associates emotional ties with. What a magnificent mess you are.

Thank goodness he's got people–Mokuba, Jounouchi, Yugi–who'll reach out to him no matter what.